The flight from Sanctuary was draining, both physically and mentally. I knew my partner was young, strong, and energetic, but the sheer reserve of his stamina was a sight to behold as I struggled to keep up with his ground-eating run across the Wasteland forest. He moved almost as if he had eyes in his feet, dodging half-buried tree stumps and shattered rock outcroppings with ease. In contrast, I lumbered along, pushing bodily through debris and tangled brush, making a racket I was sure could be heard as far away as Boston. At least I'm not collapsing in exhaustion after only a mile or two.
"Come on, Boss!" MacCready hissed, returning from scouting the forest ahead to roughly haul me up a small crumbling cliff face. "Can't you at least try to move quietly?"
Landing hard on my palms when my foot slipped, breaking free a scattering of small stones to land noisily in the thick carpet of dead leaves below, I snarled, frustrated by my partner's unreasonable expectations, "Fast or quiet, MacCready. Pick one."
"Right now, you don't have either, Boss." He scanned the surroundings from our elevated vantage point, grudgingly allowing me a moment to catch my breath and dust the gravel from my hands as I stood up.
I growled, digging deep for the strength to try and keep up with his driving flight across the broken terrain. As soon as I had regained my footing, MacCready was off like a shot, leading us along a game trail he had found. After several minutes of a clumping jog, I finally caught sight of my companion ahead. He had slowed to a deliberate walk, still covering ground deceptively fast, but at a pace that allowed me to keep up. His sniper was held at the ready, head moving constantly to survey our line of movement. He barely acknowledged my presence when I fell in behind him, glad for the reprieve. Now that we weren't running hell-bent for leather, I could get some answers.
"All right, we're away," I said, wheezing slightly from the effort of keeping up with my partner. "You gonna tell me why we left so quickly?" I hope he appreciates the trust I still have in him to have packed up and left without so much as a word in disagreement. With the slower pace, I also unslung my rifle, checking to make sure it was loaded and ready to fire at a moment's notice.
"Trashcan Carla," he said, as if that explained everything.
"What?" What does a wandering trader I've never even met have to do with our sudden departure?
"She somehow knew you were here. She was asking all kinds of questions, specifically about a woman named 'Anne' with long brown hair and a fancy Pip-Boy. Sound familiar?" He had stopped at the crest of the trail, using the scope of his sniper rifle to get his bearings. "Guess the Institute is more embedded in the doings of the Commonwealth than we thought."
I let out a groan. "So we can't even trust the traders anymore. That's going to make resupplying almost impossible." Slinging my rifle back over my shoulder, I patted the thigh pocket holding my Pip-Boy. All for a stupid invasive portable computer... and the link to my world.
He nodded, finally turning to look at me. The bandanna around his mouth kept me from seeing his full expression, but his gaze was solemn, and a little withdrawn. The forest around us was preternaturally quiet; no birdsong graced the dead branches, no scuttling of tiny creatures in the undergrowth. Only a light sighing of the breeze playing through the brittle leaves broke the silence.
"How far do you think we've gone?" I asked MacCready, peering upwards at the sun. It feels like we've been running forever, but it's only been a few hours, I'm sure of it.
"By dead reckoning? Maybe four, five miles west of Sanctuary. We twisted a bit, though, doubled back and ran some circles to try and lay false trails."
"MacCready, you are a gem. I would never have thought to do that." I smiled at him behind my own bandanna, hoping that since we were alone again, maybe he'd relax. My hopes were dashed when he shrugged and briskly reattached the scope to his rifle. The scope I gave him as a token of affection, I sighed mentally.
"It's my job to keep you alive." He pointed down the hill. "If you're bound and determined to go to Vault 81, south is that way." He waited for me to move, but I had had enough of this impersonal facade. With an affected sniff, he started to move off again and I caught his arm, halting his steps.
"What is going on with you, MacCready?" I demanded, staring angrily at his stone-faced profile. "You've been distant and bad-tempered since the Prydwen. Did something happen with Maxson?"
"Maxson?" He sounded surprised. "No." He turned to face me, and I could see his jaw muscles working behind the thin fabric of the bandanna.
"Then what's wrong? You know I'd do anything to help you." I took a chance and sidled against him, hugging his waist while pulling his arm across my shoulders and tucking my head under his chin. A moment passed, then another, measured only by his ragged breathing. Then, with a sigh he tightened his arm to pull me closer, pressing his head against mine. The embrace lasted only a brief instant before he pulled away.
"No," he choked out, holding up his hand to ward me off. His eyes glittered, pleading with me to believe the lie. For just an instant, I saw the haunted look in his gaze before the hated surly emotional shield snapped back in place. "It's nothing, Boss."
"Bullshit." I clenched my fists at my side, my own eyes stinging with sudden tears. "I can tell something's wrong. Please, just talk to me. I can't help if I don't know what it is."
"I... I just can't." He shook his head, suddenly turning to lope down the hill to the south with calculated nonchalance, leaving me alone at the top of the trail, weeping quietly in confusion.
-0-
I kept my distance after that. Making our way in a generally southerly direction, MacCready ranged out and around my plodding track, scouting for obstacles or adversaries to our journey. I barely noticed the desiccated woods around me as unhappy thoughts and feelings whirled in my head.
I can't trust anyone anymore, can I? Traders could be agents, spies for the enemy. People could be not human, but Institute Synths. We sent runaway Synths to live in Minutemen settlements! My stomach dropped at the thought. Could one or more of them secretly be under the Institute's control? How would we know? Did I doom innocent people to be victims of Institute experiments? My head spun. No, I think the Railroad knows what they're doing, don't they? A brief image of Deacon at Bunker Hill flashed through my mind.
MacCready was right about me. I can't read people for shit, much less be able to tell who's in league with the enemy when the locals can't! I can't go to any of the settlements, it's too dangerous. I can't trust the traders, we know at least one is in contact with the Institute, maybe more. And the Vault? Hell, for all I know, the Institute is in league with Vault-Tec! I could be walking into a trap! But where can we go?
The Railroad HQ might be trustworthy, but had kicked us out on our asses. With the traders compromised, Bunker Hill wasn't even worth considering. Returning to Sanctuary was completely out of the question, even if it was originally my first choice. Poor Sturges, the wayward thought flitted across my consciousness. Goodneighbor was too chaotic, though I felt that Hancock would probably be on top of any Institute shenanigans. Problem is, it was also MacCready's stomping grounds, and it would be too easy for him to be recognized. I don't know if the Institute knows about him, but I can't take that chance.
Diamond City was a possibility; I had heard a fair amount of talk while there about how Synths (and Ghouls, unfortunately) were not allowed. How would they know? Gen 3 Synths are indistinguishable from humans! Finding out someone is a Synth after we've been taken or killed doesn't do any good; and apparently the Institute has agents who are human, anyway. No, too many people there...too many unknowns. Cambridge was worth considering, though spending any length of time with the Brotherhood of Steel would be torture of another sort. At least we know they aren't in league with the Institute. But I left the military for good reasons, and I don't want them getting ideas about confiscating my Pip-Boy. I guess we could head there if things got out of hand, but only as an absolute last resort.
I had run out of ideas. A wave of rising panic threatened to steal the breath from my lungs and I was forced to slow my pace. "Breathe" I told myself in a wheezing gasp. "Just keep moving... roll with the punches."
Advice from a man I thought I knew. And now, even MacCready has walled himself off. Oh, he's keeping up his end of the original contract to watch my back, but the affectionate, caring partner I fell in love with disappeared. What happened? He shut me out all of the sudden. I could have sworn we had something special...
A horrible thought floated to the front of my mind. Was he just using me this whole time? A meat shield to help get the cure for his son? With the benefit of sex on the side? The heartbroken ache in my chest grew with my confusion. No! I can't be wrong about him. He was kind, thoughtful, even shy at times when we were together, emotions he never displays in public. There are countless ways he's shown me he cares, shown the depth of his love. He even told me his full name, something no one else seems to know. There has to be something I'm not seeing. But what is it?
Whatever he's going through right now, it won't change the love I feel for him. I just hope we can work this out. I miss the man inside that prickly shell.
The light was deepening into the dark gold of late afternoon. We had trekked across a large portion of the uninhabited woods to the very west of the Commonwealth, finding nothing more threatening than a half-grown radstag doe which MacCready dispatched with a single round. I had heard the retort of his sniper and come to investigate, finding him deftly butchering the carcass. Wordlessly, I knelt down next to him, unfolding the piece of scrap canvas we used to carry our kills. Neither of us spoke, but the familiar actions we had undertaken together in the last few months eased some of the emotional tension. Carefully avoiding physical contact as well as spoken words, we each carried one end of the bloody bundle between us, looking for a suitable place to set up camp.
An old cabin tucked away in the woods looked promising, and I silently motioned for MacCready to cover me from the vantage of a clump of dead trees as I cautiously approached the crumbling structure. Not having my Pip-Boy to rely on sharpened my nerves to the point of frantic reaction when the first of three feral Ghouls staggered ravenously out of the door towards me. I dropped to my belly, my own rifle lifting to find center mass of the closest one, firing rapidly to make up for my lack of steady aim. The new double-feed rife, the rifle MacCready gave me, did its job admirably, blasting gaping holes in the torso of the feral, staggering it and ending its non-life before it got more than a few feet from the cabin. MacCready had taken his usual precise head shots of the other two ferals, dropping them as soon as they had stood up fully. I waved at him to stay put, and quietly opened the door.
The cabin was a mess. Its original furniture was splintered and decayed from years of neglect. I poked around the piles of debris with the muzzle of my rifle to make sure there weren't any nasty surprises hiding inside. Once satisfied that the room was free of any other inhabitants, I dropped my pack next to the mostly intact fireplace and went to help MacCready bring in our dinner.
We roasted every last scrap of the radstag in the fireplace, making as close an approximation to jerky as we could given time and materials. The resulting strips were tough and mostly overcooked, but vaguely edible. At least I know I can keep this stuff down, I thought sardonically, keeping my commentary to myself. If we weren't talking, I could pretend that everything was almost okay as we prepared to sleep. MacCready was still withdrawn, but every so often I caught the flash of his blue eyes as he gazed at me, an almost sadly despondent look on his face. The emotional split between his aloof demeanor and his caring actions was distressing and bewildering, but I was damned if I was going to press him.
A long time ago, he asked me to be patient with him. I need to respect his wishes. In my pack was a scrounged bottle of bourbon. Remembering the night after my trip to the Memory Den, I dug it out and pointedly set it between us with two small glasses scrounged from the debris. We were sitting on our (thankfully, since the nights are still chilly) shared bedding, the ghost of a mattress providing enough space for us to sleep. Silently, I mimicked that night, pouring two shots and firmly handing one to MacCready while I took the other. We sat sipping the burning alcohol, watching the flames in the fireplace get lower and lower. Once or twice, I thought he might say something, but at the last moment, he would shake his head instead and take a drink.
When the fire had died down to barely glowing coals, I cleaned out my glass, stowing it in my pack. The bottle of bourbon could stay here for all I cared, or MacCready was more than welcome to finish it. I groped my way back to the sleeping area in the near-darkness, crawling around my motionless bodyguard and into the piled fabric to curl up on my side. My head landed on something soft that wasn't there before... a clean, comfortable pillow.