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corvega-assembly · 3 years

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Can’t See the Future

Summary: Nora switches pods at the last minute, not that anyone was informed. Rosalie isn’t sure what the hell she’s meant to do, but finding Shaun seems like a noble goal. Right up until the weight of the end of the world comes crashing down on her. She’ll need a little more to keep her going than avenging her sister's family and running head first into a half assed goal with no plan. At least Hancock’s got her back. Rating: Mature Pairings: Hancock X sosu (FOC) Warnings (for this chapter): canon typical violence

Chapter 21: Through the storm, we reach the shore

The Glowing Sea is just as rough the second time through, regardless of Hancock’s words of encouragement. Rather than deathclaws there are glowing ones, and she gains one additional bear to her tally. But they are both in Power Armor which provides her some small amount of comfort. It isn't enough to dampen the sinking feeling that returns and stays planted however. She has to go into The Institute. While Virgil hasn’t said it, she doubts they’ll be pleased to see her, doubts it's the sort of place she just fights through. All things considered, she’d rather not die. So Rosalie focuses instead on her improvement with Ashmaker, even telling Fahrenheit about it once they make it back. Fahr just rolls her eyes and says, “Your hair is a weakness, shave it.”

Which she doesn’t agree to do, but she does discuss with both Fahrenheit and Hancock who she should speak with about building the relay. The relay that might kill her.

Fahrenheit votes for The Brotherhood, leaned back smoking and watching it rise, “They’ll use up valuable resources getting you in. Weakening them for the rest of us. You may even get some good intel off them, our people aren’t getting nearly enough.”

Hancock however votes for the Railroad, sitting beside her, three Mentats deep, “Des’ got the resources for it, doubt they’d let you go in blind either. Bet they’ve got people on the inside, maybe ya go in all covert like.”

Neither are wrong. Which is agitating, they both have a point. She doesn’t want to take resources Des might use to help synths, but she’d also like to know what she’s going into. Rosalie spends so long staring at the coffee table in their office that Fahrenheit’s voice startles her.

“You need a good orgasm if robbing The Brotherhood is really bothering you. I’m gonna go check in on Irma,” Fahrenheit says, standing and slowly exiting the room. Being told she needs an orgasm is a new one.

When Rosalie looks at Hancock sitting beside her he’s sucking on a cigarette, that judgmental look on his face again. She can see him roll his tongue around in his mouth, likely chasing a Mentat, considering her. His lips turn down and he narrows his eyes at her. In the end he just shrugs and settles back into the couch, knocking ash from his cigarette occasionally into an ashtray. Not sharing his thoughts with her.

Rosalie thinks of Deacon telling her to meet him up north. And thinks of Preston, which makes her feel a little ill. “I think… I think we should go do whatever job Deacon has for us, maybe see if the Railroad actually wants me. And then, if we have time, go up to Sanctuary. I feel like a real ass for just leaving them.”

Hancock murmurs, “We’ve got time, we’ve always got time to help.” When she turns to look at him he's got a wide smile on his face, one that tells her he's pleased she's back to helping. They won’t always have time she wants to say, she feels like the clock will soon turn midnight and she’ll be joining her family in the ground. But she doesn’t speak her thoughts because he just seems so pleased.

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Deacon’s mission isn’t too bad, he’s as mean and chatty as Hancock in battle. Between the three of them they have no trouble clearing the path to the prototype. It would be a pretty calming mission, except for the fact that the two men seem to strongly dislike each other. Hancock huffs a canister of Jet and Deacon stares daggers at him. Deacon tells a tall tale to her and Hancock is snorting behind him. Once they’ve detonated the mine field from the safety of the coffee shop, she waves Deacon goodbye with a promise to swing by with the prototype ‘soon’.

They make it to Sanctuary before nightfall, Codsworth is the first to greet her.

“Miss Nora , I’m so glad you're back! I’ve been teaching your friends about the neighborhood, but I’ve kept your house just for you.”

She takes a step back, Hancock placing his hand on her lower back. It steadies her enough to get out a broken, “Thank you, Codsworth,” to the bot. That seems the right move as it makes the bot float back towards the center of the settlement telling her all about what the settlers have been up to.

It takes her three tries but she loses Codsworth in the settlement and finds Preston. Who positively beams at her. “I knew you’d show up eventually, Dogmeat came to join us a while back, he’s been a big help.” The relief she feels makes her legs feel a bit like jelly, she’d been worried about the dog.

“Yeah, I had to take care of a few things.” She can see that they’ve started fixing up two of the houses for the group, various boards leaning against them. She can hear banging and catches sight of Jun carrying a large box at the edge of one of the houses, beside a little makeshift greenhouse placed between the two homes. They've made a lot of progress in such short time.

“You find Shaun?” She shakes her head. “Damn, I’m sorry. It’s pretty late, but Sturges could really use some help setting up defenses. I’ve got some work that needs doing too if you're willing, but that can wait till morning. Not to dismiss you or anything like that but I’ve got to get back on patrol. It's been real quiet up here. I’d like to keep it that way”

“Sure Garvey, it’s good to see you guys doing so well!” Rosalie moves aside for Preston who slides the rifle from his back. His grip is firm and steady as he sets out.

Sturges is in a little garage with what looks like a decent set up and is clearly happy to see her again. That she doesn’t know anything about turrets doesn’t seem to bother him, he knows plenty about tinkering and is more interested in her and Hancock moving them into place around the area. Which isn't easy, heavy as they are. But they get it done. By the time they are all in place and running it’s well past nightfall and Sturges is yawning.

“Thanks for that, starting to almost feel like home. Codsworth made sure your place is still nice and cozy.” He waves them goodnight and enters the slightly larger of the two homes.

“So uhhh, we going to Nora’s old house then?” She turns with a look of horror on her face, and Hancock laughs, his grin wide. “I’m joking, I’m partial to the one at the end of the street myself. If you don’t mind the noise of the turrets.”

Preston doesn’t say anything to them when they pass each other a few minutes later. He is humming some tunes to himself and gives them a quick nod, focused on doing his outer parameter sweep. They settle onto a small bed for the night, likely a childs. But it's bigger than some of the couches she’s slept on so they do their usual nightly rituals and nod off.

Rosalie is jolted awake, it's still pitch black out with the clouds blocking the moon and she blinks into the nothingness trying to figure out what woke her.

From her side she hears Hancock say, “Yeah yeah pooch, just get off the nuts.” With an oof and moan. The bed shakes, its frame protesting the action, and she feels Dogmeat curl up on her legs.

“Dogmeat! Hey boy!” The dog nuzzles into her hands that dig into his fur. “Oh I’ve missed you, you fantastic, good, good boy.” Dogmeat’s tail wags so hard the entire bed sways with it. “Hancock, it's Dogmeat!”

“Uh huh,” is all he says before tossing an arm around her waist and using her shoulder as a pillow. “Reunion tomorrow, sleep now.” And just like that he’s out. She laughs and silently pets the dog. She’s still awake when Dogmeat starts snoring, but the moment of calm is something she’d like to remember. Because the reality is, she’s going into The Institute. Soon. And there is no promise that she’ll ever come back. She runs her chin against the top of Hancock’s head. You can’t miss something when you're dead, but if you could she’s pretty sure she’d miss this.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 20: Under pressure but not bent out of shape

“Who the hell are you?” Okay, to be very fair, yes she’s just barged into their secret lair. But it isn’t like they had a doorbell. No way to ring ahead to let them know she was dropping by.

There are two pistol’s pointed at her and a minigun. Hancock’s taken up a spot on the wall, letting her do all the talking, and they certainly aren’t aiming at him. Left out to dry. Which has her word vomiting about not being their enemy, just slightly panicked.

The woman in front of her doesn’t buy it, doesn’t buy her. Desdemona begins a more formal introduction, interrupted when Hancock coughs loudly as a man slips in from behind the three.

“Courser Killer” he calls her. This is her tail? She squints at him trying to place him, and gets nothing. Desdemona and Deacon discuss if they should let her in, and she feels strangely left out. She tries to put on the friendliest smile she can. But honestly it's a pretty rough position she has just put them in.

After Deacon has spent several minutes being her hype man, Des has her follow behind to a door that goes even deeper into the crypts, their headquarters. In between graves there are beds, gear, and so, so much equipment. A man named Tom with a very funny hat is passed off the chip and begins trying to hack into it, while shouting self-encouragement. If Rosalie wasn’t so on edge she’d be delighted to listen to this man. Instead Des warns in an even flat tone it could take an hour or more and she’s left awkwardly standing trying hard not to listen, or smile, or move. The sound of Hancock’s knife flipping around behind her draws her attention, he’s sitting cross legged on top of a grave, occasionally looking over to give Deacon a dirty look. Des eventually has mercy and decides to talk with her about possibly joining the Railroad.

“That sounds like slavery.” Rosalie says in response to Des' question, Hancock behind her joins in with a firm “Everyone deserves freedom”. Des seems as satisfied as she can be, telling her to talk to Deacon and then Des moves to stand beside Tom, waiting. Only occasionally glancing back to peer at Rosalie through shrewd eyes.

There isn’t much else to do so Rosalie talks to her shadow. Deacon is a slippery sort of man. And speaking with him is like trying to talk to Nora when she’s in a certain mood, half-lies, half-truths and a lot of bullshit, all just to say a few words.

Rosalie agrees to meet him ‘later’ to help on his little mission. “How will you know when I can help? I mean I have to head back into The Glowing Sea after this.”

Deacon smiles and says, “It’s my job to know these things,” at the same time Hancock lets out a dry laugh. Why exactly Hancock seems to dislike Deacon is beyond Rosalie, especially when he seems to like Des and agrees with the work the Railroad does. He even occasionally tosses a word of encouragement at Tom.

Rosalie, after a while on her feet, joins Hancock perched on the grave. She does her best to keep quiet, Hancock however doesn’t seem overly concerned, shaking out a canister of Jet. Down here she is the one getting dirty looks, two different people tell her in passing that they hope she doesn’t betray them. But no one seems to care that Hancock is even here. “We have an agreement, I ignore them.” He’d said. And in turn they seem to ignore him. She opts to lean against Hancock which he grins at her for, his arm wrapping around her side, pulling her close. It's extremely boring just waiting while trying to be as silent as she can… not looking too hard at anything in the room. But Hancock is comfortable, in another place she'd opt for a nap. The decoding, it turns out, takes close to three hours to do.

Tom shouts, “I’ve got it!” Which startles her, and Hancock chuckles at.

A moment later Des hands her the information she needs, and tells her in a cold, stern voice, “...you share it with us first. Otherwise our relationship will be in jeopardy.” Hancock responds with a ‘got it’ before she can even begin to respond, so she defers to him and heads out.

Once outside she relaxes, leaning backwards to crack her back a bit, Hancock glances around the area, nodding to himself and falls into step beside her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Look at it this way, we keep to the same route we took last time it’ll probably still be clear. `Sides with me watching out for ya, you got nothing to worry about.”

He isn’t infallible. She’s seen him take some hard hits, especially today, and while he’s a decent shot with the rifle she can’t help but worry. So rather than go back to Goodneighbor she’s headed back to County Crossing, and the pier with Power Armor in the subway. Hancock follows along but seems mostly confused as to why they are back when the settlement doesn’t need their help at the moment.

The smell of death and decay meets her nose when she opens the door to the subway entrance. The bodies have begun to rot. It’s warm enough still that they have bloated, and stepping on one causes its stomach to burst. Hancock for the first time since she's met him, gags. “Christ can we not do this. Please?” But Rosalie is on a mission now.

“Sorry, sorry, just, wait outside a bit?” He does as she asks and she strips the rig of what pieces she doesn’t have from the second set she found at the Guard. Filling in the gaps, so to speak.

He looks at her legs once she’s outside, and declares, “Shit sister don’t take this the wrong way, you need a bath. Badly. Smell worse than brahmin shit.”

“ You need a bath. Sorry. That was rude, I just feel like I’ll never be clean again.” Hancock just shakes his head at her and walks beside her, at a bit of a distance. She absolutely smells horrific, which is true, but also her ankles are… wet.

“So, here’s my plan, I put this together with the extra pieces I found at the yard, that way when we head back we can both be in Power Armor. You can take the T-51 cause you're a better shot than me.” she says, shaking one of the pieces at him, which is maybe half of the truth.

He looks at her, appraising, she figures he’ll argue which suit he’s going to take. But instead he just watches her, shrugs and shakes out a Mentat. Popping it into his mouth while watching her.

Entering Goodneighbor, one of the watch sniffs, realizes that yes the smell is from Rosalie and then promptly leaves the area, not saying a word. Luckily KL-E-0 can’t smell, or at least Rosalie doesn’t think she can. She gets KL-E-0 to help her attach the pieces to the rig and shoots a thumbs up at Hancock. Hancock just sighs, shaking his head, deciding to sit on a bench and watch her work.

They get the armor as reinforced as they can, but the raider pieces just aren’t as strong. But it’ll do. It’ll have too.

Once she’s done Rosalie follows Hancock into the statehouse, who bullies her into the bathroom and yells at her through the door, “Please, soak ‘em. Or burn ‘em. Shit.”

Which makes her laugh as she strips down dropping the clothing into the sink to try and soak the smell off. “You are aware that burning them will just make it smell worse right?” Hancock groans and walks away.

One bath and a meal later and she falls into bed beside Hancock. Who’s turn it is on the couch she doesn’t know. Doubts it matters. She knows she should be worried, not about propriety, whatever that means anymore. But about the fact that she likes , likes him, and even after the end of the world she’s likely to still feel it if her heart breaks. Hancock of course is oblivious to her thoughts, this particular night he opts for rum and a Jet chaser. In another time she’d be concerned about his habits, but he seems to have a better handle on everything in this world than she does.

Hancock offers her some rum, shaking the bottle above her, and she agrees to it for the night. He smiles at her wide, “Atta girl.”

It still tastes like shit, but she swaps the bottle back and forth with him for a while, both sitting so they’re leaning on pillows piled against the headboard. Nora would have been offended at her swapping spit with a man she’d known days , let alone with that man being a ghoul. But Rosalie isn’t Nora and would rather be swapping spit a different way, but for the moment the nasty taste and burn of the rum will do.

He’s quiet tonight, seems content to just ride his high, so she lets him. And watches, pondering. Despite the amount of chems he does in a fire fight he’s quick and lethal. His movements are never slow or sloppy and he has far more stamina than she does. Vaguely she wonders if it's a ghoul thing, or if he’d always been like this. Or if maybe it's just the harsh world she’s found herself in and only she is left behind.

Hancock offers her some Jet and she shakes her head, which has her wobbly with the alcohol, and makes Hancock laugh. It’s a clear friendly thing, his smile broad and cheerful. How exactly he’s remained as jovial as he is despite it all is a mystery to her, but it's infectious. The world is harsh and messy and despite it he’s rushing headlong to greet it, wicked grin on his face, knife in one hand. Somehow maintaining hope that the future can be brighter. He’s described it as simple, hurt who needs hurt, help who needs helped, but it seemed to be anything but.

Once she’s got far more rum than she’s ever drank before in her system she leans her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes. She can hear Hancock chugging the rest of the bottle and dropping it on the table beside him. He’s still warm, his usual smell of Mentats and smoke deeply comforting.

Someone in the building is singing Frank Sinatra and Hancock starts humming along, and damn if it isn’t down right cozy and domestic. She figures she nods off at some point because she wakes to Hancock pulling her down into the covers and spooning her, one arm up under her head the other wrapped around her gripping her shoulder. She wonders, as she dozes back off, if she drools.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 19: Just give me what I want and no-one gets hurt.

Rosalie, against her better judgement, puts the Power Armor back on. Hancock levels one look at her when she goes to leave Goodneighbor without it and then she’s sliding back into the damn thing. He still has her Pip-Boy, which a member of the watch absolutely freaks out over. The man is off telling the entire town as if she’s just given Hancock her class ring. Hancock seems pleased with himself over being the source of more gossip, and Rosalie just rolls her eyes and follows him to the CIT ruins. Nora had taken a few classes here, but Rosalie had only ever ridden past the place.

Hancock tells her it's been picked completely clean, no sense even attempting to find any goodies. He sounds damn sad about it, but the beeping of the Pip-Boy gets his attention. It beeps and beeps until they’re inside a building full of Gunners.

Rosalie uses the rig to box people in, Hancock returns to his shotgun and knife. Gunners overhead relaying that yes there is a courser in the building, and no they aren't going to go down without a massive firefight. In a spark of luck it turns out that punching people with the Power Armor is an effective way to not waste ammo and get the killing done quickly. It isn’t easy, Rosalie having never punched anyone or anything before this, but it also isn’t the worst challenge they’ve had. The Gunner leader screams orders, which end up being good tips for where they'll be. Hancock steps behind her as they are crossing a bridge from one side of the building to another when Rosalie hears a whistle past her head, then the wall behind her exploding.

“Fucking missile launcher.” Hancock manages to bite out when Rosalie turns back. His road leathers are completely ruined and his side is growing red with blood. Rosalie briefly thinks it's good that their clothing is currently being washed, his red coat would be ruined. The relief for his clothing is quickly squashed for worry over him when she notices the several inch long piece of metal sheeting sticking out of Hancock’s leg. Blood drips onto the walkway in several thick globules before she moves, lifting him effortlessly in the Power Armor. Pulling him back and around into an office with a lock. He swears viciously and leans on the rig, bumping her chest piece with his head when she puts him down.

His side needs a Stimpaks badly, but the metal sheeting is being held into his leg with spite and spite alone. “Hey, I’m gonna pull that out okay, then quick Stimpaks, you ready?”

“No” is what he says, but he nods yes, “Just do it.” His fingers tense against her cobbled together rig.

So she grabs hold of the metal and pulls it back and out of the meat of his thigh. Rosalie would have screamed, or vomited, or something . Instead he just says “Fuck me,” to which she responds “Maybe later,” and he laughs. It is a wet garbled noise that leaves her more concerned than amused. Rosalie injects him with two Stimpaks in his side and he asks for Med-X. Which she administers as well. Then snarkily asks, “Anything else my dear?”

Hancock smiles up at her, his face still pinched in pain, “I can... think of- think of- a.. a few things we could do,” and while he’s trying for humor it makes her worry grow. So she goes for another Stimpak.

“Can ghouls use blood packs? Do you think you need one?” He nods vaguely and sits back on a counter. Rosalie gets out of the rig to administer the blood pack, Hancock's eyes tracking her, but he looks tired. Her fingers roll back the tattered bits of leather to get to his veins, which are easy to find, far easier than her mothers. It doesn’t take long for his flesh to knit back together or the blood to drain into him. When she looks up at him, he’s got that look on his face again. The one she can’t really read, it isn’t admiration, and it isn’t the one he gives her when she says yes to helping the people of the ‘wealth. Hell it isn’t the one he gave her last night, high and comfortable asking her millions of questions. It's… almost judgmental. Like he’s trying to make up his mind about her. But the blood pack is finished and she’s stepping back into the rig before she can really assess the look. She really should have made him wear Power Armor too.

"Hang back a bit? At least till I take the ass with the launcher out okay?" It is a testament to how badly he's been hurt that he stays behind cover.

“Don’t end up dead, ain’t wanna drag you back to Goodneighbor either,” Hancock says, but his face says he doesn’t like being left behind.

It doesn’t take long for her to smash the Gunner with the launcher's face in, two punches exactly. Hancock rejoins her after she whistles down to him.

"It's too quiet. Like -" Hancock is cut off by voice up above, a man pleading for his life from another voice who is even toned, calm, patient. "I think we've found your courser."

Rosalie nods and they make their way up and into a room with three Gunners tied beside a man in all black.

The courser doesn’t look any different from a normal person. But regardless he knows why they are here once Rosalie steps fully into the room, “If you're not here for the synth, then you’re here for me. What do you want?”

“I need what’s in your head.” It’s more polite than she is really feeling but telling someone I need you to die for a chip seems… gross.

Hancock moves from behind her the same time the courser moves in front of her. Rosalie is damn grateful for the Power Armor, her face hurts just thinking about Kellogg tossing her to the ground after breaking her nose. And she’s reminded heavily of him, as the courser vanishes the same way.

“Stealth boy, little shit.” Hancock shouts from her right. She worries that the courser will go after him, but it's like Hancock doesn’t even exist, the courser is fully focused on her. Specifically her chest piece, his fire focused on it as he moves left to right across the room, the edge of his steal field shimmering and twisting. The chest piece is nearly broken by the time the man goes down. And Rosalie has to make a choice about the Gunners.

If she leaves them, they’ll go after the synth, the woman, again. But its fully murder, execution, if she kills them. It doesn’t really feel like a choice. She fires point blank into each of the Gunners and Jenny is free.

Then Rosalie is digging into another skull. Kellogg’s had been much softer. Which is disgusting, and her mother would have been delighted to hear. ‘Bastard took my grandkid, of course he has a soft skull’. She expects Hancock to pass judgement about the Gunners, about her digging in someone's head. Instead he’s standing behind her watching the door, smoking a cigarette, weary.

It takes a few tries to get the coursers head open and the chip out. “Well now that wasn't revolting or anything. Now we just need to find someone to decode it.”

Hancock looks wholly conflicted when she glances up at him. He looks like shit, leathers and jeans in tatters, his hat off kilter and he looks tired and high in a way that doesn’t look pleasant. She figures he’s about to say he’s headed back on his own and braces herself for it.

Instead he sighs, the hand not holding the nearly burned out smoke rubs at his face. Glances back towards where Jenny had left before focusing on staring at her in the suit of Power Armor. “Look. About the Railroad. They… ain’t exactly subtle.” He shifts from one leg to another, like he can’t decide how to break it to her. “You know how to find em?” So it is goodbye.

“Follow the Freedom Trail,” she chokes out. Damn pleased about the helmet right now is what she is. She is absolutely gonna cry.

Hancock relaxes considerably. “Good. Don’t want them up my ass cause I told ya how to get to in. We got a little agreement, the Railroad an I, I ignore them, and they don’t fuck with me. We can swing by the Commons on the way back so your tail thinks you figured it all out by your lonesome.”

“My... what now?”

And oh his grin is absolutely sinister, which does something to her insides, “Your shadow, he’s been following ya for weeks. Wouldn’t be surprised if he thought we were having a real good time when we left the Sea. Didn’t notice him outside Daisy’s? Or in with Irma?” And she’s shaking her head because what the actual fuck .

“Hell he was even one of the folks lining up to tell me all about you joining up with Bobbi. Although I think he wanted me not to kill ya. Don’t know which of them he is, didn’t come around much before, but he’s been touring the neighborhood a lot since you showed up. Got an admirer.” If Hancock could see her expression he’d be howling with laughter. Instead she just calls him a jackass and stomps out the building. Which would work better if her stomping didn’t sound exactly like her walking.

They stop by Boston Common, and Hancock is just as on edge as Piper was, but not as scared. She reads the fluff at the start of the Freedom Trail and then they’re headed back to Goodneighbor to get fixed up. Once they’re out of what she hopes is earshot of the park, she turns and asks “What's with the Common? Everyone's really spooked around it?”

He nods, “Swan’s Pond. Swan being the Super Mutant Behemoth that likes to hide in the pond.”

“A what now? A Behemoth? Is that like.. Bigger than the supe mute beauts? Brutes? Shit.” And Hancock is laughing his ass off at her stumbling on her words.

“Supe mute beaut? Remind me to tell Daisy that one. Ya like their looks huh?” He can barely get them back to his city he’s so amused. Once they approach the gate Hancock points to the red painted trail markers right beside the pile of bodies. Which is… something. Not exactly subtle as Hancock said.

They swap out gear, Rosalie opting to get back into her vault suit and armor, and Hancock back in his... Well Hancock duds. Rosalie leads as they follow the trail till its conclusion. A church. The church has a few strangler ghouls leading down into crypts and eventually they are at a locked door with a puzzle on the side.

She looks at Hancock who just looks… deflated. It isn’t hard to guess the few missing letters she doesn’t know and she gets why he just looks hurt. It’s like locking the terminal with 1234. But they’re in.

And the Railroad? Not exactly pleased to see her, if the guns pointed at her are anything to go by.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 18: A harbour in the tempest

It’s pouring down rain when Rosalie wakes, Hancock still deep asleep, one hand wrapped up in her hair, the other under his head. The rain is echoing throughout the building, made loud by the metal roof. Rosalie wants to cry again, but she decides it’s time to see the damage. “November 10th 2287 05:26” the Pip-Boy reads. Which means she cried for literal days .

She wonders if her mothers head stone is still there, or if time ruined it. There were some headstones in that little cemetery from the 1850s, but with the acid rain, who knew. Rosalie debates turning on the radio just to hear some extra noise, but opts instead to go back to listening to Hancock’s heartbeat. He’s a good man, and a good friend.

She’d been too busy disliking him, and then crushing after him to bother to learn much about him. Didn’t even know he was John Hancock. Now she’s cried on him for days on end, so as far as friends go, she’s been a really shitty one.

If she’s really honest with herself, she’d say the crush was shifting more towards like, liking him. More than a little. Crushes were simple and pretty one dimensional, and she’d like to get to know him before going on a ride. Which is a stupid way to phrase it all things considered, her mother would have cackled and told her the word was sex, use it. But she’d also rather have a friend and a good one at that than a quick romp, as nice as that sounds. And it sounds really nice.

So she nuzzles back into him, wrapping her arms around him, her cheek pressing against the part of his chest that's exposed. Rougher skin like a burn or heavy scars brushes her cheek. It isn’t unpleasant, just a little strange and new. And for what is in all likelihood, knowing Hancock, hours, she simply listens to him sleep. Occasionally he snores, but for the most part he’s quiet, his face at ease, his fingers still firmly knitted into her hair.

When he finally does wake she makes her apology, which is accepted and then dismissed, he doesn’t even bother to get off the couch, just shifting her while he fiddles with a pill bottle and pops at least two different chems. Then he’s back to wrapping his arms around her.

“Wet ghoul isn’t exactly a great smell, in case you didn’t figure that out. Once it stops raining we should probably head back to Goodneighbor”. He’d been wet in the glowing sea and didn’t currently smell… or rather his clothing smelled pretty bad but he was fine. Which led her to dramatically sniffing him and then calling him a liar.

He laughs, only responding with, “Feral ghouls after a rain ain’t a pleasant smell sister, soaking wet ghoul is also pretty bad, but you do you my friend. You wanna go smell up all the ghouls in the neighborhood be my guest.”

She actually eats this time, some old Salisbury steak, it isn’t good exactly, but she’s hungry enough to not care. She expects Hancock to say something about her breakdown, to treat her differently. And after half a day of him sitting on the couch next to her as she listens to Diamond City radio while he plays Red Menace on her Pip-Boy she finally asks why he isn’t.

“Sweetheart, I’m surprised you ain’t been crying on and off the whole time. Everyone you know is dead, hell you ain’t even from Boston, huh?” A shake of the head no, “I don’t think anyone with any sorta feeling left in them wouldn’t just eventually pop. Hell you were trying to kill yourself trying to keep up with Nick. I love him, but he ain’t the best judge of when we need a damn nap.”

It isn’t the first time he’s called her sweetheart, and from someone else it’d be patronizing, or gross considering they aren’t… anything really. But instead it's just kind of sweet, which is what he is in truth.

Talking while clunking around in the Power Armor is hard, but she tries to ask Hancock about himself and about the new world when they finally leave. She doesn’t get much aside from Hancock thinks Power Armor is kinda hot, chem’s don’t actually do much at all for ghouls, and the weather patterns are lessened, but winter is still gonna be nasty.

She’d planned to be out of Boston before it hit, now she was being cheerfully told that Christmas usually involved sleet and rad-rain mixes. Which sounded pretty bad until he told her every few years they got what the old ghouls still called nor-easters. Snow wasn’t exactly rare, it just didn’t really stick anymore. But when the nor’easters rolled in, the winds alone could freeze the tits off a deathclaw he claimed, and the snow sometimes piled so high even super mutants couldn’t get through it.

Getting information about Hancock however seemed a bit more difficult, he was flippant and self deprecating. Which was a stark contrast to his whole ‘sexy and deadly ghoul’ thing he’d offered up to begin with.

She does learn that up until KL-E-0 passed him gear he was a shit shot. His parents had taught him to use a shotgun to kill mirelurks near their home, and he knew his way around a pistol, but otherwise his training to take down Vic was where his skills came from. Which was impressive. She wanted to ask what happened to his family, but that just felt like prying. She asked about the pants around his ankles story and he just flashed her a shit eating grin and told her ‘later’. She had the feeling later meant never.

By the time they make it back to Goodneighbor, she’s about to throw herself out of the suit and scream.

“Oh sweet lovely ground.” Rosalie drops out of the suit onto the floor of KL-E-0’s shop.

“You were on the ground -” Rosalie cuts Hancock off with loud shushing, and he laughs. Sure she was on the ground but she couldn’t feel it, just could feel the vibrations of the suit.

They do some swapping of gear, Hancock doesn’t think the minigun is the best idea in the CIT ruins, so she switches to her pistols. KL-E-0 points out that she has even better guns and Rosalie swaps out her pipe pistol for a much nicer one, with more stopping power. The ammo is more expensive but her cap collection is growing. Kellogg’s pistol is still her meanest, and KL-E-0 teaches her how to beef it up. Hancock has a look of concern when she calls it “Kellogg’s gun”, but she tries to assure him it's fine.

Rosalie decides she wants to get the courser in the daylight, so they spend most of the day getting restocked and at The Third Rail before they crash back in Hancock’s bedroom. On a technicality it’s her day to take the bed, but she also doesn’t call him on it when Hancock falls into the bed beside her, thoroughly blitzed on Daddy-O. She’s spent the day asking him questions, which makes it fair that he asks her questions well into the night, the occasional mentat chaser.

He asks about the town she grew up in, which was tiny back then but absolutely massive these days. He tells her nothing on the east coast is that big. He asks so many questions about schooling, and government, and how highways work and honestly most of it is stuff she’d never thought to even discuss, it's all just. Normal.

But now it isn’t. Rosalie falls asleep when he starts asking her about how satellite broadcasting works. It’s the first night she goes to sleep with a smile on her face in months .

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 17: Don't leave me here alone…

It’s November and the rain falls in sheets. It’ll turn to snow soon enough. She’s lost weight, despite doubling her calories, again. Nutritional shakes taste like hot wet ass, she says. She’s happy enough about the baby, but much more concerned about how her little Rosie is doing with her entrance exams. A decade late and a dollar short she says. But she’s pleased that Rosalie is gonna go to college, although she wishes it was in a big city so she could get a better paying job.

It’s November and she’s so angry at the post man for hitting the mail box again that she swears revenge against the little dicked prick. Rosalie spends a week carefully pouring cement and angling metal bars just so, the thing looks like tin chicken but weighs 200 lbs. She laughs and coughs and laughs some more when he ploughs into it, totaling his truck. And it’s his and not the post-offices, rural carriers come in some dense flavors. Rosie did a good job, nothing like a little revenge against the man. She draws a dick on the frost on the window when the nurse comes to do another damn home visit. She’s dying can’t they just let her do that in peace? The woman takes a look at the penis on the front door and sighs. None of them have a sense of humor. But once the woman is gone Rosalie adds a little pair of tits beside it and she’s laughing and coughing again.

It’s November and Hancock draws a dick in a pool of mysterious fluid. They’re deep in The Glowing Sea, a cultist has lectured them about Atom for nearly an hour and Rosalie needs another dose of Radaway. Another cultist scoffs at Hancock’s massive phallus and leaves, but Rosalie just laughs. The Radaway leaves her dehydrated as hell, she can hardly keep up with the water intake, and that's after they stopped and helped a farm in return for her bag being filled with clean water.

Hancock tells her on the way into the Sea, that not everyone can look as good as him when they go ghoul. Which is in contrast to what he’d told her minutes ago when her rad levels were dangerously high and they had to stop. His exact words were, “You’d make a damn good looking ghoul, just something to consider if you wanna go long term.”

She gets that he’s trying to cheer her up, but if Fahrenheit hadn’t insisted they bring her minigun they’d be dead. So far between two Deathclaws, a very unfriendly bear and a massive scorpion they were not having a great time. Hancock had switched to the rifle and KL-E-0’s upgrades to the power armor let her mark targets. Which he can read, because she is a shit shot with the rifle when panicked and had handed it and her Pip-Boy off to him.

She’s been marking targets and he’s been picking off what he can at a distance and everything else she’s mowed down with Ashmaker. Of course the woman named her guns, so had Danse. Then again Rosalie had named the squirrel at home with no tail Cheesy , so none of them were winners after all. Maybe Cheesy was a rad-squirrel now, maybe he was massive. And maybe she had really bad rad-poisoning and Hancock wanted her to be happy as she died.

Die, she did not, and before she can add some balls to the dick, Hancock’s heading to Virgil’s hideout. That there is another deathclaw right outside is great, Hancock backing up the hill taking shots at its head while she unloads into it. That Virgil is a super mutant? Really racking up the scores today.

She has a single moment to remove her helmet and gulp in air before they need to head back out into the Sea proper. It doesn’t smell bad in Virgil’s cave, but then he lacks the stench of most super mutants. She closes her eyes and wishes she didn’t have to walk all the way back now. Just to come back later. God damn does she miss cars. And planes, and Nora. She doesn’t even notice she’s gasping in too much air until Hancock has his fingers under her chin gripping her face firmly in his right hand. His left goes to check her temperature while he makes soft little noises at her. Far too soft for Virgil to hear, it's sweet as hell which gets her to start taking full deep breaths of air.

They make it out of the Glowing Sea, into some sort of old production facility. Not too dissimilar to where she’d worked most of her adult life. When her mom wasn’t just so sick . Hancock checks the parameter, tells her to get settled into a manager's office. Rosalie manages to get out of the rig, make it four steps and promptly have a panic attack.

Which is how Hancock finds her; her vision is gone, all black and splotches, her hearing damn near, just ringing and muffled noises, she isn’t sure how she hasn’t passed out yet. He tries to get her to respond, or at least that is what she thinks he’s doing, which makes it worse . She’s gonna vomit again, right on his pants, which reek like mildew and wet ass, a little reminder of the Sea. She’d like to warn him, really she would, but talking isn’t something she can do, and she wonders if she’ll pass out once she pukes.

His hands go under her armpits and she’s up and on something much softer than the floor, that much she can tell and he’s holding her face again. This time just both hands on the side of her head. She doesn’t puke, hell she doesn’t even pass out.

He’s telling shitty pirate jokes when she can finally hear again. “So, sister, why couldn’t the pirates play cards?” He barely pauses before responding in one of the worst pirate voices she’s ever heard, “Because the captain was sitting on the deck.”

Her mother would have loved it. And for the first time since she’s died Rosalie just falls apart. “I miss my mom,” is all she says for what feels like hours, and likely actually is, for how hard and long she cries. She cries so hard she gets the hiccups, and Hancock is shifting her to sit on his lap as he lays down on the couch, pulling her down with him. She cries so hard his shirt is wet, adding to the smell. She never notices crying herself to sleep, but she does notice crying herself awake. She’s still on top of Hancock for which she mumbles an, “I’m sorry.”

He hums a bit and tells her no reason to be, his hands run through her hair, which last time she remembers was still in a tight bun. She’s grateful it's down, it would have added to the hellish headache she’s got. She could use some pain reliever, which reminds her of morphine, reminding her of the last month of her mothers life. She sobs again, for hours. At some point Hancock decides they need food and water. She barely eats, even when he fishes out a bit of leftover tart.

Hancock has a patience of a saint, or a real thick headed idiot is what her mother would say, because she repeats the cycle of crying and barely functioning for a very long time. It’s likely days, although he has the Pip-Boy still so she doesn’t know the exact timeline, and really , really doesn’t want to know. Nora would say she needs therapy and a good church, but she’s never believed in god, and she doubts grief counselors exist out here.

Thinking of Nora gets the tears to eventually stop. She’s curled back up on top of Hancock, who doesn’t seem overly bothered by her… mess.

“She died in June. She would have adored you.” Hancock looks at her with black eyes, the only light in the room, her Pip-Boy, sitting on the ground beside them.

“She into sexy zombies?” Which is more of exactly what her mother would have loved.

“Ya know, she collected dirty magazines, I wonder if someone looked in her house after the bombs. Old lady house, full of quilts and quaint little knick knacks... the gaudiest jewelry collection. And then in her quilting room she had stacks of the nastiest nudie books and magazines and oh boy, the holos . Just the names were enough to make me want to evaporate.” Rosalie thinks for a moment, “She’d have also given you a run for your money with booze. She out drank my father, and he was a lifelong alcoholic. She once got Nora’s pastor drunk, I thought Nora was gonna kill her.”

“Colorful grandma huh?” Mother. Grandmother. A full life, cut way too short. “My kinda lady.”

“She was 65 when she died, only four years retired. Nora hadn’t been home in years, too busy with law school and her new family. Nora would have hated you, just for reminding her of mom.” Hancock shook his head and muttered a soft ‘shame’ before he adjusted slightly and settled one of his arms over Rosalie’s back.

“I took care of her for years, even had to get training from the hospital. My bedside manor is shit, she made fun of my dosing and I threatened to kill her in her sleep and she’d laugh and laugh. How the fuck am I meant to raise a kid? Nora should be out here or Nate, getting their son. Not me fumbling around.” She’s teary eyed and it hurts to talk, but she’s not back to full sobs just yet. Hancock’s heart is beating nice and even under her ear. If she wasn’t so upset she’d be taking assessment of him, instead she just wants to go back to sleep.

“I told ya before,” He pauses to brush her hair out of her face before he settles his other arm around her, “You don’t know what would have happened. Who’s to say either of them would have made it. You don’t see many folks raising kids alone anymore anyways, once me and my brother were big enough to start to wander mom moved us to Diamond City. Not saying that's where you should go, bunch of murdering assholes up there, but most larger settlements raise kids together.” It’s the most he’s actually talked about his past, and that he was raised in Diamond City makes some sense. Hancock hasn’t been ghoul for even a decade, and he has all his teeth, straight and neat.

“‘Side’s sometimes you need to scare little shits like me into not running out into the middle of town with their pants down around their ankles.” That's a story Rosalie wants to hear, but she’s tired and Hancock is very warm. Despite being as lean as he is, he makes a comfy bed, and she nods back off after a few more tears.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 16: Here's my heart and you can break it

A young woman asks them to clear out a building to the north west in the morning, saying she knows some people who will move in if it’s clear. Hancock’s surprisingly cheerful this morning, only telling the lamp to get bent. But otherwise he’s jovial and chatty, telling her about the CPG as they head into what looks like an abandoned warehouse surrounded by a few storage buildings.

That it was so brutally silent in the area should have been the first massive red flag for them both. But Rosalie is distracted by watching Hancock’s walk, all swagger and confidence. It might even be sexier on him than anyone else. Hancock is distracted by explaining the nuances of settlement governance.

They enter some offices surrounding a central storage bay, and it looks empty. It's even devoid of the usual stink of the Commonwealth. As they head across the loading bay, Hancock freezes in place lets out a single ‘ Fuck ’ and grabs Rosalie’s hand and starts sprinting back the way they came. Rosalie isn’t as fast as him, she doesn’t know what has Hancock scared, but it must be bad.

They are nearly to the doors when one of the big Fuck Off Monsters is right there in front of them. Like the one Mama Murphy had told her was comin. The one she’d killed in Concord. Horns high up, arms and claws extended. Hancock barely manages to stop them both and spin them, running towards a row of shipping containers lining one of the walls. A blood chilling roar echoes in the distance followed by another close to their left. The monster can’t fit between the wall and the containers, at least not here, but it slams into the containers all the same. The metal screams and the entire stack shudders.

Rosalie is certain, as they continue to run between the wall and the containers looking for some way out, that she would have pissed herself had she had any urine in her system. It's one part fear of more of them, and one part fear because Hancock is scared. He pulls her under the metal floor of an overlook station, it's wider here but there is a door. He reaches it and tries the handle. Locked tight.

There is another roar, terribly close. Rosalie screams. Or she would have if Hancock hadn't turned and covered her mouth with one hand, the other wrapping around her waist and pulling her back against him, startling her silent. Her back flush with his chest, his breathing in her ear.

His breathing is harsh, coming in gasps that he’s doing his best to quiet. Her breathing can’t be much better. From below one of the containers a horned head sniffs, a rusted part of the container shows her just enough of its head and body that she knows without Power Armor they’re dead. She knows from experience that they are bullet sponges, and she has no minigun.

She pushes backwards, a slight bang of metal rings out as Hancock falls back against the door and a groan as her ass pushes against his crotch. She’s about to die in a horrific way, and her mind is fully in the gutter. She’d prefer his hands in her hair and a nice bed but, well.

Hair . That's all it takes for her to snake her arms up to her hair, which is pinned up in two buns today. Hancock lets out a slight breathy moan at her shifting, his fingers clench on her stomach. Her own fingers are in her hair, knocking the buns loose, she’s suddenly very glad she didn’t take Fahrenheit's advice and shave it. The right bun comes undone, hair spilling out, mostly onto Hancock’s face as he shakes his head to regain his sight.

Hancock doesn’t let go of either her mouth or stomach, which is fine because it's anchoring her, among other things. Her hands shove under Hancock’s ass so she can reach the lock behind them. His lips are against her throat and damn it . He’s doing it on purpose. They might die, and the first pin breaks. It snaps so loud in her ears that she freezes. So does Hancock, the nearest monster shifts and sniffs the air. Its snorts, ever so loud.

Rosalie idly thinks that if it's so rusted she can see through it, then it's rusted enough the monster can get to her. So her hand is back under Hancock’s ass looking for the spot to pop the lock. His fingers move down from her mouth the column of her throat, rough thumb brushing her lips. The second pin snaps. She would scream at him to stop messing around, but she’d like to live and he’s pushing his hips into her ass. Which is really nice, but it also gives her just enough room to navigate the third pin in and around the lock. The door swings open with a groan of rusted hinges and neither are ready for it, so they both fall backwards.

Hancock’s vice-like grip on her doesn’t lessen until the sound of the metal container in front of them being knocked apart echoes through the room. Then he’s rolling them both and pulling her up by her armpits. She barely manages to fully stand when the monster runs at them and slams into the door, the frame bending.

“Had to be a fuckin deathclaw party in here.” Deathclaw seems an great descriptor as it claws at them both, its body too big to reach them. They both start to back up, Hancock’s hand finding hers again and pulling on it hard.

From the left she can see another of the monsters, inside the room with them, as she spins to follow Hancock. It’s so close behind her she can feel its breath, but Hancock manages to swing them into a side entrance to the offices. “Holy fucking, shit , how many of them are there?”

“You know, some places need to be nuked again. This? This is one of those spots.” Is what he responds with, while Rosalie pulls them both into a kitchen. Hancock’s gestures for her to help and they barricade the room with a Nuka machine.

Rosalie turns to get a look around. It's a small kitchen, but there are some windows to the outside. She grabs a toaster and throws it as hard against the window as she can, its glass made fragile by time, breaking and falling. “Coulda shot it ya know?” She doesn’t dignify him with a response as she looks down out the broken window. It's a long fall. This side of the building? It’s at least a full story drop. Broken ankles are gonna be a concern, especially as she sees movement in one of the other buildings.

“Okay, you first.” She turns to Hancock and he has another one of his looks that she can’t read on his face.

“No. You can hold onto me and then drop” He’s shaking his head at her and is moving towards the window.

“One of us runs a town and needs to live. Him first.” They don’t have time to fight, if the deathclaws got into the building, they can get back out.

Hancock stares at her, unblinking, “One of us has a kid to find, I’m not gonna argue it Rosie. I’m a ghoul, fall like that could kill you, ain’t gonna hurt me.” The only person who ever called her Rosie is long dead. It makes her a little angry and then it fizzles out, she’s never been one to stay angry about anything for long. She knows nothing about ghouls and their recovery time so she’s the first one out the window, and the fall hurts. Her joints are screaming at her for the compression.

Hancock jumps after her rolling to his left, his shotgun comes up and out the second he rights himself. Then he grabs her hand again and they bolt south into the treeline.

At first it sounds like they won’t be followed, but the roaring starts back up and they don’t bother to slow down until Rosalie can’t run a single moment more and falls to the side of a dirt path and vomits.

Her legs burn, her eyes water and she hasn’t ever run so much in her entire life. Maybe even all the times combined. She tries to gasp in air but just smells her sick on the pavement and she retches. Hancock gets her up and moved over to a fallen tree to sit on after that. He sits beside her, slings an arm over her shoulder and then proceeds to get a cigarette, light it and smoke it, all with one hand as he holds onto her with the other. Her breathing eventually evens out and she gives up and leans entirely against him. It isn’t even afternoon and she’s done for the day. Week. Lifetime. He offers the cigarette, she declines, and he just pulls her tighter, arm eventually dropping to her side.

“Shoulda fuckin noticed the lack of anything living for a mile.” He sounds just as worn out as her, his voice even more rough than normal.

“So, bad place for a settlement I take it?” His heartbeat is still up in her ear, which is pressed in tight against the fluffy clothing of the other John Hancock. He chuckles and she can feel it rumble through him.

“Yeah, sweetheart. Great bit of real estate, shitty neighbors. Eat all the food at your parties, don’t even share the chems or nothin.” Hancock doesn’t bother moving for a long time. Rosalie’s too tired to bother, and Hancock is warm and comfortable under her. She should tell him off for messing with her while they were about to be killed. Or messing with her in general. But she’d like to maintain the idea that he liked her, and wasn’t just pushing her buttons. For a little while anyways. She’d rather not be played with truth be told, the crush is embarrassing enough as it is. But for the moment they just sit and enjoy being alive.

It’s dark when they return to Goodneighbor. The young woman looks both terrified and crushed by the news that the area is still unsafe. Hancock after a few Mentats says he has some ideas about that to run by KL-E-0 later with a vague hand gesture that means nothing to Rosalie.

Later Rosalie heads to the bathroom piling her leather armor in a corner, likely for Hancock to curse at in the morning. Once she's back out into Hancock's room she finds all her stuff moved from the couch to the bed, her knitted blanket included. Hancock pats the spot beside him on the bed, it's certainly much larger than the mattress they shared before. “Too tired to fight about it, you’re gonna be in Power Armor all day tomorrow, just get in here and sleep.”

So awkwardly Rosalie does, shoves the blanket under her chin and curls up on her side, Hancock doing his nightly hits of Jet beside her. She falls asleep to the slow sound of his breathing and a settler arguing with Fahrenheit about something up above.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 15: I'm the kind of trouble that you enjoy

Fighting through a high school is like something from one of Rosalie’s nightmares. Only now, instead of Mr. Kople forcing her to write about the geo-political outlook of the 13 states endlessly without pause, she’s killing raiders who call her “Little girl” and “Little bitch”. Always little . Hancock is especially feisty about raiders, the hate in his eyes almost something she can touch, and it twists his face in a way that isn’t wholly unpleasant. Which might be a problem.

Especially when she gasps out loud at him grabbing her around the waist, hauling her up and over fallen ceiling debris. Quickly pushing her into a bathroom as a grenade goes off. He’s leaning against the wall beside her breathing hard, his arms and hips pushed up against her. Also might be a problem. Hello, yes, the world ended, I should be busy worrying about that and instead I’d like to take a ride?

He turns to look at her, his eyes running down her face before snapping back up to meet hers, his face cracking into a smile. “You get into the best kinda of trouble.” It’s dripping with affection, which also might be a problem . He’s out the door before she can respond and she’s just doing her best to keep focused. Which isn’t too hard when one of the raiders on the second story shives her in between her ribs.

The woman smiles at her, all broken teeth, the smell of bad breath and body odor strong and she fists her hands into Rosalie’s shirt under her armor and pulls her close. “Not so tough now are you little one?” Her voice is meant to sound seductive but it just sounds revolting, and again with the little bullshit. Rosalie tries to suck in air and instead gets a load of blood in her mouth.

Hancock yells “Push.” and Rosalie is shoving the woman as hard as she can. Which isn’t enough to get her fully off Rosalie but is enough for Hancock’s knife to go sailing and embed itself in the woman's neck. She stabs Rosalie again and screams, Rosalie drops her gun and reaches up and grabs Hancock’s knife as the third stab hits her chest armor and bounces back off. Pulling the knife through the woman's neck is hard, but she goes down quick enough, her hand still gripping Rosalie’s shirt and pulling her down too.

She needs to Stimpak herself, there is movement beside her and she figures Hancock is here to help, when a man’s voice so close to her ear says “Found you.” Rosalie’s got Hancock’s knife up and into the man's groin before she can even open her eyes. He rolls over and screams while she manages just enough effort to jam a Stimpack into her side.

The sound of boots crunching on the floor and Hancock is pumping his shotgun into the man's head, looking at her with concern. She manages to wave his knife at him, trying to signal that she’ll be fine, but instead his face shifts to fear. He’s on his knees digging through her pack grabbing more Stimpaks. She tries to say she needs a moment, but instead coughs up blood all over him. When she finally stops coughing he’s already got a blood pack going into her arm and several Stimpaks litter the ground.

“Sorry about the mess.” He blinks, not understanding, so she reaches up to wipe her blood off his face. He’s looking at her some sort of way for a moment, before he’s back up and telling her to stay down while he checks to make sure they aren’t caught with their pants down.

He circles back around and she’s more or less back to normal by the time the blood pack is done. “Gonna get you some lining for the vault suit. Shit, you scared the hell out of me.” She hands him back his knife and he shakes his head at her in disbelief. “Ya real lucky her knife was so short.”

They clear out the rest of the building with less fuss. Hancock keeps looking at her with concern which is enduring, but also annoying. In the end the school is free and clear and several survivors are freed, which Hancock is pleased about. “Letting them go was the right move, I like it. Need more like you out here.”

They poke around a few random buildings for salvage heading back to Goodneighbor late in the evening. At The Third Rail a tall ghoul approaches her and asks her to do some vague mission for his boss. When she turns to see what that was about Hancock shrugs at her. It doesn’t sit right with her that Hancock doesn’t know exactly who and why someone is in his town, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it.

Back in his room they’re swapping spots again. Hancock opting to sit on the couch and light up a cigarette.

He stares at her long and hard and then completely floors her when he speaks. “Look that sorta shit is the reason I became Mayor in the first place” And damn. She didn’t know what to expect from Hancock, but apologizing for using her to kill Bobbi isn’t one of the things she was ever anticipating. It takes her aback, and whatever vague thoughts she had about him shift. With the change, the lingering anger at him she had, fades. He’s telling her about a man named Vic and she gets up and sits beside him on the couch. He doesn’t look at her while he talks about Vic, just stares at the wall. He just sounds… tired. Disappointed in himself maybe.

Her brain shorts out. She has questions, about Vic, about Hancock and instead what comes out of her mouth is, “Wait. Fuckin. Hancock as in John Hancock. As in the man who claimed to be sick and then wasn’t and then… fuck me .” Which gets Hancock to laugh, and raise where an eyebrow had been at her, a slightly lascivious look on his face. “Wait, you uhhh. You don’t actually think the clothing spoke to you? Right?” Because boy is that gonna be a whole different sort of ride.

He shakes his head, “Nah, I just felt, you know, a connection. It seemed like he and I were dealing with the same shit - serious oppression.”

She listens, Vic’s end was brutal, but it seemed like he got what he deserved, and she understands Hancock. John. Just a bit more.

“I just hope you get where I was coming from. I ain’t out to bring harm to anyone that didn’t earn it. Though I’m getting the distinct idea you got the same plan” His cigarette is nearly to the end, and he sucks the last bit before putting it out in an ashtray. He puffs out some smoke before turning to look at her, “So, didn’t figure out the Hancock was Hancock thing, huh?”

“No. I don’t know, figured you were like Preston, just a dude in an old Minuteman uniform.” She tilts her head to the side, she really didn’t make the connection, which should have been obvious.

“There is a Minuteman still kicking around? I thought they all gave up or were killed in Quincy.” He looks impressed and Rosalie has a strange feeling, like she’s left something important back at home.

“He said his group came from there. He wanted me to come help him and the settlers at Sanctuary but I just...I was so worried about Shaun, and he was still a baby, I thought. I just left them.” Her stomach rolls, she should have helped them, shouldn’t have been so.. so..

“Hey, no one’s blaming ya, we got word someone was trying to settle up there about a week ago, we can go check it out later if you want. You gotta take care of your own first.” Which is comforting, but she’s still worried that she just left a bunch of people to die for nothing.

Rosalie asks about Quincy and the Minutemen instead, maybe to distract herself, but Hancock obliges her and tells her about the massacre. It wasn’t even two full months ago.

“Time… moves faster now.” She looks at her Pip-Boy and tries to think how many days it’s been since she killed Kellogg, and struggles. It seems like months.

“Whaddya mean?” Hancock is spread out, one of his arms behind her head on the couch looking for all the world relaxed and calm while her brain is off running.

“I mean, look. I’ve been out of the vault less than two full weeks. I’ve killed dozens of people, it feels like I last saw Nick months ago but it’s been only a few days. I’m worried Piper will hate me for leaving her hanging for so long but it's been days . Not months. But I feel like I’m betraying Nora every single day that I'm not out there looking for Shaun. It's been days just waiting and Nora would be doing something.” And shit, Nora would already be in the Glowing Sea, she would have hunted down Daisy’s suppliers and been there and back by now. Nate would have stolen a brotherhood Vertibird, as a little treat to himself.

Hancock pops a Mentat and considers her a moment, “Lifes short and brutal for most out here. Ya gotta make the most of the time you have. You’ve been helping people, running yourself ragged. You’ve got time. Sides, you don’t know what she woulda done and she ain’t you .”

Once they’re finally laying down for the night Rosalie can’t help but imagine Nora already with Shaun. Her hands clean, settling in Diamond City with Nick and Piper. A little house devoid of clutter, with Shaun playing with Nat.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 14: How far are you gonna go before you lose your way back home

Hancock, when left to his own devices, is an even later riser than Piper, and when he does finally get up he slings curses at everything. The couch? Too lumpy. The Floor? Too cold. By the time he finally makes it into the bathroom he’s slinging curses at the toilet. She hears something clatter to the floor and Hancock tells it to die down there for all he cares.

Which cracks her up, there is a groan from the bathroom and Hancock yells out to her, “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up vaultie, see how much fun you have later.”

Once he’s ready, and has offered her an entire dresser drawer full of chems, starting his day with Med-X for the hangover, he’s looking at her with a look she can only guess is pleased.

“Ya ready to do some real wasteland learnin?” He says with a cigarette in hand the smoke curling up towards the ceiling.

“No idea what that means, so… no?” She’s been up for several hours, eaten what remained in her little cooler and has been staring at her Pip-Boy’s map while he’s gotten ready. She’s been trying to map out some sort of path to the center of the glowing sea, but the map hasn’t been updated in hundreds of years and she isn’t even sure where it starts. Or ends.

Hancock’s mouth is set in a smile that a few days ago would have scared her, it's all teeth and his expression isn’t pleasant. “Oh we’re gonna have some fun, a bit of practice with your skills. Do a little Gunner mop up.”

Gunners ring a bell, but it takes her a moment to place that Nick had suggested they could have taken Shaun. Rosalie follows Hancock out of the gates, albeit reluctantly, and down several streets. Before he stops and signals her to move with him towards a run down building’s fire escape. Once she joins him he’s pulling the rifle out of his bag and handing it to her. “Ya ever used a rifle before?”

“Does a varmint shooter count?” It doesn’t, she knows, but Hancock blinks at her and asks ‘a what?’. “It’s a smaller rifle used to kill like… squirrels and birds? Bolt action?” Hancock nods and hands her an ammo belt, the bag back over his shoulder.

“This ain’t no bolt action. Just pick off the asshole’s and their turrets and we can move inside. Fred wants something from the building.”

There aren’t many of them, and they are acting erratically, which makes picking them off both easier and much more difficult. Hancock leans on the fire escape beside her smoking. Just staring at her, as she finishes killing everyone on the outside. Not offering up any advice or even a single comment. When she turns back to him with the rifle, his expression isn’t something she can read. But he takes his rifle back and puts it in the bag and is dropping down to the ground without using the stairs. Show off.

He seems somewhat impressed once he gets a look at the damage. “Ya want a real, fancy, lesson, ask Mac. Personally I like the practical approach. Learn by doing, either you figure it out or your guts are decorating the wall.”

Gunners it turns out, have a lot of guns. Who knew. She rolls her eyes at herself as they walk into the building, a fine mist covering the floor. Which is weird. When she turns to tell Hancock just that, someone screams. It freezes her in place, Hancock just moves his shotgun into position slower, listening. He steps beside her making a ‘be silent’ gesture and is looking up above them where the noise is originating. The sound of gunfire and inane rambling continues for what seems like hours.

Once the gunfire has stopped and the man ranting hasn’t , Hancock looks back at her with concern. “We get in, we grab the fucking tank, we get out. Don’t know what this shit is, don’t want to find out.”

“Righto.” Rosalie has gotten used to, or at least as used to as you can become of something in a few days, swinging in behind Hancock. She expects him to run ahead and start bashing skulls as he usually does. Instead he’s hanging back with her, checking corners.

The Gunners are unstable at best, and she feels a little bad killing them when they are so clearly unwell, but they are also doing their best to try and kill her. It takes almost an hour before they get the tank Fred wants and are headed back out. Not stopping to pick any bodies clean, Hancock seems to have reached the same conclusion as her, don’t bend into the mist.

Hancock is breathing deep the moment they reach the outside. “Smell that? Fresh smell of freedom.” It’s so cheesy she pushes him. Which nets her smile before he’s pointing them back towards Bunker Hill to make a few more sales.

Once there one of the trader’s asks Rosalie if she’d clear out some ghouls for her, up at the National Guard training yard. They’ve still got a few days before they can move out, so Rosalie says sure before even thinking to double check with Hancock. When she turns to ask him if they’re good, he looks at her like she’d just discovered the cure for cancer or something. Awestruck and amazed. He responds with such a loud “Fuck yeah, sister!” that it startles her when she does ask. Grin on his face all the way back to the yard.

She gets a good look at him while he fights ferals. He’s vicious, and brutal. And not the most efficient. He plays with his food so to speak, truly enjoying the fight. He is a good looking man, she knew that already. Even despite all his own ego boosting he is handsome, in a roguish way. The ghoulification may have added to that. Which would be a weird thing to think, a ghoul handsome, if Nora hadn’t given her shit for having a crush on a fish ma n from some far off planet that aired on late night TV all through High School. Hancock is a living breathing real person, and the fish man was just a man in a costume.

Fighting ferals is easy, fighting the massive angry robot of doom, less so. But Hancock is running around in a big circle as she fires into it’s back and they take it down in no time.

Inside the building reveals one of Danse's mentioned lost patrol members. “Tried to wall herself off in here. Bad move.” Hancock mutters, mostly to himself. Rosalie can’t help but think it's what she would have done.

“Okay, so walling yourself in a room is bad , what are you… supposed to do?” Hancock stares at her, like she just asked him a trick question.

“You're better off runnin, ferals won’t follow you forever, not enough brain left.” He shrugs and looks through a footlocker.

“But if you do get trapped in a room? Then what.” He sighs and stands.

“Ya stab the ones that get in close, or knock em over. Get em to circle around while you get the hell out. Ferals linger, you aren’t gonna outlast them. You ain’t got a chance in hell once you’ve blocked yourself in. Better to die fighting.” Rosalie figures that he’s done talking for now.

Instead he hands her the ammo from the footlocker and directs her to the second floor with a wave of his hand, “Now the big green bastards? Ain’t too smart, they’ll get bored eventually and leave, not a bad plan to block up the doors.”

“Raiders?”

“Depends on what they’re doin. Now, if they’re riding a real nice high they’ll try and wait you out, but if they’re just looking for an easy target? Nah they’ll leave ya too it. Gunners will just blow the room if they want at ya. No sense of honor with them.” It's good information to have she supposes, but shit . Can’t people just leave each other alone?

“Is it like this… everywhere?” If she heads west is home like this? He pulls open the door to the outside, shoots a feral who runs at him, closes the door again and regards her with what she can only guess is concern. “Maybe. You hear rumors, of course, that the NCR is rebuilding the cities and it has millions of folk under its banner. But mostly? Yeah it's like this. East coast got the brunt of the bombing, I’ve been told. Some traders from down south say there are spots that are pretty well built up. Not sure about out west, half the shit you hear about Chicago sounds like a load of bull.” He opens the door and sprays another feral in buck shot and they head to the next building.

“What do they say about Chicago?” Because that's a lot closer to home than Boston.

He laughs, kills a feral and as natural as could be answers her in the next breath, “That they have talking deathclaws, and super mutants in The Brotherhood. Might be some truth to it, but I haven’t met anyone from out that way.” She shoots a feral, “So, who knows, but even the traders are light on the detail. Which means no one has a good picture of it. Personally I think it's all some rumor to keep people from messing with The Brotherhood.”

Which is too bad. Maybe her little town made it, not a big city for hours. Nothing to bomb but wide open fields of corn.

As they make their way back to Bunker Hill the family from before waves them down and gives them some sort of tart. If people are willing to feed her for fighting it might not be a bad gig honestly.

When they’re headed out, done selling and buying in Bunker Hill, one of the guards asks them to speak with her privately. The three of them duck into an unused trader stall and the woman asks them to rid the settlement of their raider problem. Rosalie does look to Hancock to confirm this time, but he’s got that look on his face again and tells her it's all her, so she says yes they’ll work on it tomorrow.

Hancock takes the bed and Rosalie takes the couch and he isn’t wrong. The couch is lumpy, the floor is cold on her toes. But otherwise it’s fine. Someone outside is loudly signing off key Hank Williams as she nuzzles into her blanket. She can hear Hancock shake a canister of Jet and occasionally take a huff. She’s nearly asleep when Hancock asks in a rough, low voice if she’d like to take a ride with him.

Briefly she wonders exactly what he means, a blush rising to her face. But he shakes the canister and mumbles something about Jet being best enjoyed with others. She politely declines, and hopes he doesn’t catch the disappointment in her voice at it not being a different sort of ride. Which is embarrassing as all hell. She has other things to worry about, which she should be doing. She’s far more awake and aware than she was before he asked, mostly thinking about Hancock and trying hard to think about Nora or Nate or someone else instead.

Hancock sighs and rolls around in the bed for a while before going silent. His breathing evens out while Rosalie debates the stupidity of what could be a crush on a man who used her to kill rivals without getting his hands dirty. Who also looks at her like she’s the sun whenever she says yes to helping anyone.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 13: When all is lost we find out what remains

The National Guard training yard is right across the way from the little farm. The family is still so pleased by Hancock and Rosalie taking care of the raiders that they make them breakfast. And when Hancock says he’s too hungover to go yet, lunch.

Rosalie debates calling him out on the lie, but he falls back asleep almost as quickly as he said it, so maybe he was tired too.

Rosalie is full, and rested for the first time in what feels like weeks, but her legs are still sore from overuse. Hancock complains about how bright the sun is and it makes her wonder about so many things…

“Why aren’t there more farms? There are a lot of raiders, and not really enough farms to keep them all fed if all they do is steal.” Hancock looks surprised and then he ponders a moment.

“Most settlers left, between The Institute swapping people out and generally being a pain in the ass and then the Minutemen folding, ain’t a lot of safe real estate for folks. Some turned to raiding, even the scavvers been awfully hostile lately. ‘S why everyone takes turns on the walls of Goodneighbor, too many people just want to oppress others, keeps everyone remembering they need their neighbor.” Hancock seems honest at least, even if Rosalie wonders if it's to keep the neighborhood safe or keep people dependent on him. “But there’s still pockets of people just trying to survive. That's why I came with you, try and do some good out here.”

There is a lot Rosalie could say to that, but settles for, “I just.. I just want to find Shaun, I’m not-”

“Hey, you’ve already done more than most. Helping Kent alone shows you're willing to get into the middle of shit and kick some ass. I respect that.” If Rosalie is slightly awestruck she can’t be blamed as they approach the training yard.

Hancock says they should circle around the outside before making their way inside, so they start towards the helipad.

As it turns out they never even have to go inside a single building, there in a crate, behind an all too easy security gate is a set of pristine, T-51 power armor. It even has a full fusion core. So Hancock follows along behind her as they make their way back to Goodneighbor. If anything was debating giving them shit, it decides against it.

KL-E-0 is eager to give Rosalie instructions on how to make the suit even beefier, but they quickly run into an issue that KL-E-0 can’t help with. Keeping it juiced. Fortunately Daisy says that given four days and a little mission run for her she could get enough Fusion Cores… if Rosalie is willing to pay.

So Rosalie parks the rig in KL-E-0’s shop, counts out her caps for what she hopes will be enough core’s to get her through The Glowing Sea. She braces herself for another Bobbi scenario, running all over Boston. Instead Daisy, sweet as could be, just asks for her to clear out the library of mutants and to drop her book back in a return.

Hancock looks at her with awe as she proceeds to spend an hour talking to Daisy about life pre-war, with a promise to not only return the book but try and check out some new ones for her. His expression doesn't fall, even as they head out into the ruins towards the library. Hancock follows this time, as Rosalie steers them through the street’s Nick had taught her to take.

--------------------------------------------------------

The super mutants are dug in deep at the library. Only one entrance is even an option to them and once they’re in, it reeks. Blood and sweat and piss. The smell is so strong it burns Rosalie’s eyes. Hancock doesn’t have the luxury of the squishy bit of her nose doing its job to dampen the smell. But he seems prepared for anything and everything, pulling a red, white, and blue bandana out and tying it around his face. He even pauses to offer her a red one that he has folded up inside a vest pocket, she takes his proffered gift and ties it on. It smells like him; Mentats and smoke, and under it all the smell of abraxo.

Once it’s on her face, Rosalie turns to give him a thumbs up and his face is set in a serious line. “Stay behind me, you look like a tasty snack.” To them or to him she wants to ask, and it's the dumbest thing she’s thought in at least a week so she falls into step behind him. Debating just sinking into the ground to join her family in embarrassment.

Hancock doesn’t seem to notice her awkward pause and instead is pointing and yelling for her to take out a turret. Which she does, but he’s already moved on to the super mutants, rolling under one and shooting it point blank in the chest. It goes down, screaming ‘stupid ghoul!’ at him. Hancock seems to be trying to control his shots, avoiding spraying the already picked over bookshelves in gore and buck shot.

Not that these books will ever get the smell out of them. But still, it’s sad when a super mutant knocks an entire shelf over trying to swing a sledgehammer at Hancock and missing by a mile. Books falling to the ground in thuds.

Super mutants are horrible awful things, and their hounds are just as bad. The noise they make is unnerving and when one bowls into her, knocking her over and standing on her chest, she is reminded of raw sewage as it opens its mouth to bite her. Luckily, or unluckily, several protectrons enter the fray, one blasting the hound on her chest, distracting it long enough for her to roll away from it. She gets under a table and shoots at its legs.

Rosalie loses sight of Hancock while crawling on the floor, firing at super mutants who pass by. But she can at least hear him yelling back at the mutants. So she keeps up the good fight, occasionally peeking her head out to fire at the seemingly endless horde of green enemies coming from the subway below.

“Super Mute Brute!” Hancock yells as he rolls in under the table she’s occupying, his side bumping hers as he’s wrestling with his gun. He’s pulling out a different ammo from his belt, glancing her way a moment, a grin on his face that spells trouble, “Having fun yet?”

Then as fast as he was with her, he’s gone and she can hear him get on top of the table. He is enjoying the fighting, enjoying the bloodshed and the… effort. Rosalie would much prefer to be reading these books than fighting among them.

Eventually, after what feels like a full week, the last mutant is dead. An intercom message plays and the protectrons switch back to being friendly. The marble floor is hard on Rosalie’s back and knees. She thinks she’ll bruise as she starts to crawl out of her hiding spot. Hancock is sitting on the marble railing, shaking a plastic bottle’s contents out into his hands when she finally stands up.

Rosalie bends backward to crack her back, and Hancock is staring her down when she straightens. His handful of pills forgotten. With the bandana around his face it’s hard to judge what he’s thinking. Although he’s clearly been caught, it doesn’t seem to bother him. He keeps staring at her as he pulls down the bandana, pops a mouthful of pills and pulls it back up.

Confusing man. She turns and walks to a book return. As she pulls the book from her bag, Hancock slides up behind her, watching. “Think the lollipop’s are still good? Oh shit they have pencil toppers, never mind.” For the return of one book, Rosalie nets two pencil toppers that look like hearts and are hard as rocks. Which is exactly as they were 200 years ago.

“You always so excited to get lame prizes?” Rosalie responds the only correct way for a 29 year old woman to do so, by pulling her bandana up and sticking her tongue out at him. He chuckles a bit and shakes his head.

Rosalie is trying to find at least a few books that are still worth grabbing for Daisy, and maybe herself, as Hancock goes through bodies. Eventually she’s almost used to the smell. In the end she has a Jane Austin and a ‘new’ release by J.I. Flintin. Something her mother would have loved to read.

On the way back to Goodneighbor Hancock tells her about the way ghouls are treated, often turning to books when no one else would speak with them, he’s flippant about about his own treatment however. “Never had that problem myself, heh.”

He sounds down on himself at times and then he’s singing his own praises. She wishes she knew if it was all bravado or if he’s got as much ego as he lets on.

Before they reach Goodnieghbor he stops her in the street with a hand, “Listen, ain’t saying you gotta or nothing, but the offer stands. If you wanna crash at the statehouse you can. Take my bed, I'll take the couch, it’s pretty full upstairs.”

“Or I take the couch and you take your bed. I was sleeping on a couch before the war.” She shrugs and smiles at him, honestly the offer is lovely because if she meets the man from Vault-Tec one more time she’ll scream. But he’s looking her over, pulling his bandana down and frowning. So maybe not a real offer then.

“Sister, going into a ghoul’s bedroom, even one as handsome as me, isn’t gonna win you any favors with some of the locals. And Goodneighbor loves to gossip. You take my bed behind a solid locked door, I bunk in the office, rumors fly that I’m sweet on ya. That’s fine. We close the door and doesn’t matter if we’re doing the deed or not, half the statehouse will have their ears against the door just hoping to hear anything.” Or maybe a real offer with added worry.

“I really am out of fucks to give about anyone's opinions of me. If you didn’t get that from The Shroud get up and shitty acting.” She frowns, for fucks sake a few months ago she was washing her mothers ass. The world had gone and ended and people are still concerned over who is sleeping with who.

Hancock gasps, big and dramatic, he’s got his big smile back, the one that reaches his eyes. “Shit you mean to tell me you’re The Shroud? You been holding out on me sister.” He bumps his hips into hers, “If you don’t care then fuck em, let em talk. It’s all some of them are good for.”

He holds the gate open for her, and follows her to Daisy’s. Daisy is pleased with the effort, even if she agrees with Hancock that Rosalie could have picked nearly anything else at the return. Rosalie is surprised, somehow, at Hancock dropping a small collection of bloody bits and parts he’s shoved into a backpack being placed on the counter. There are claws and bits of creatures Rosalie can’t even imagine in the bag, and Daisy buys the lot.

Hancock turns to her and says, “Mutes grab up all kinds of shit and stick em in those bags, sometimes you can get real lucky.” He’d put his hands in the gore bags and she can’t help but to gag. Both Daisy and Hancock laugh at her. Daisy asks if she wants a drink at The Third Rail, to which Rosalie says yes.

It feels normal, almost, if she turns her head and squints. She’d never gone out to drink with friends before, no time to do so. Rosalie opts for a Nuka instead of booze, which doesn’t bother Daisy one bit. Hancock is sipping some sort of beer that he says tastes like piss in the happiest voice. Rosalie gapes at him for a moment before Daisy tells her it all tastes bad. It’s the first moment she has had that hasn’t been focused on either survival or Shaun. Daisy leaves a few drinks in with a much younger, for her anyways, man, while Hancock hoots and hollers after her.

In the quiet, with Magnolia singing on stage, her thoughts twist and turn. Nora wouldn’t be sitting here, even as social and outgoing as she was, she’d be planning and plotting. Rosalie hasn’t spent time with children since she was one, she doesn’t even have a home to take Shaun too. So even if she manages to get The Institute to give Shaun back, she’s left with no real way to take care of him. Hancock must sense her thoughts darkening because he pays for their drinks, telling her, “Bedtime, sleeping beauty.”

In the end they’re in one room with Hancock on the couch(just for tonight) and Rosalie curled up with her new knitted blanket on the bed. She focuses on the sounds of people pressing against the door, and eventually, the sound of the watch talking amongst themselves just outside it. They really do gossip and it makes her smile. It’s easier to sleep when they’re are people around she realizes as she slips away.

Notes:

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 12: Now the wolves are every passing stranger

Hancock seems to know the area well. He’s a great guide, pointing out various areas of interest, and he’s much chattier than anyone she’s been with. Or he is until they approach a Brotherhood patrol, then he is swinging to Rosalie’s other side and giving them dirty looks.

As they begin to pass by, one of the patrol members turns and says to her with a sneer, “Keep your feral on a leash.”

She’s about to stop to tell the man off when Hancock’s hand meets her lower back. It’s warm and is enough of a surprise to keep her moving with him, his fingers drift a bit towards her side and he’s flipping off the man behind them.

“He’s just jealous.” He keeps his hand guiding her until they are well clear of the Brotherhood, his fingers lingering as he steps away. When she turns to face him he’s frowning at her, his hands clasping the strap on his duffle bag pulling it higher over his shoulder.

“Ain’t worth fighting with them right now, Brotherhoods been calling in backup whenever someone pokes them. Sides ain’t the worst I’ve heard.” He shrugs slightly and turns to move again.

“Still, it was rude.” Rosalie matches his strides which are longer now, a bit harder to keep up with as tired as she is.

“Brotherhood doesn’t like ghouls. Or Synths. Hell anyone that isn’t well… you.” He looks her up and down and then adds, “You’re like… the perfect fit for them. Pre-war vaultie, even got all your teeth.” He points to his, he has all his too, as he gives her a toothy grin. His are also nicely aligned, not very different from hers.

“I wondered what their deal was, Danse tried to get me to join, without giving any information hardly at all. God what an asshole.” Rosalie thinks of Nate, she’d assumed he would have joined, but Nate? Nate would have told them to shove it up their ass. He would already be back at the patrol lecturing them. So, she got that one wrong.

“Not everyone is as friendly as you sister.” He sounds despondent about it, but before she can question what she’s missed there is a young man running up to them.

“Shit. Hey, did you get our message?” Rosalie is shaking her head, while they both mumble their own ‘no’s’. “Raiders. A whole lot of em, they keep hitting the farm, we can’t live like this. You’ve got to help!” Rosalie isn’t sure how to respond, but Hancock’s whole demeanor changes. He’s standing straighter, he looks a lot meaner, with his upper lip curling. She isn’t stupid, Hancock clearly wants to help. So she follows along with the two as the young man… boy really, tells them where the raiders have come from, a subway station off a pier to the east.

Hancock asks to store his bag inside a little shack, and the family agrees readily. Rosalie drops most of her things as well, leaving her bag behind.

When they are circling around towards the pier from the back, Hancock points out a nest of some sort, ‘lurks’, and is swinging them farther out to avoid it. He bites out, “Always some asshole picking on the little guy. This sorta shit pisses me off.”

“There are a lot of raiders, I’ve seen a few settlers, but not really any… I don’t know, that’s the first farm I’ve seen.” She’s pointing back toward the family’s home, looking up to find Hancock gesturing for her to quiet.

The pair crouches in the grass a while and watch some of the raiders pacing around the pier. Hancock leans over and says into her ear. “We got one in Power Armor, might be able to grab a few pieces if we’re careful.” He pulls back enough to gesture towards her 10mm and then towards his head.

He drums his fingers on his thigh for a moment and then asks, his breath ghosting over her ear and neck making her shiver, “How do ya wanna do this? We head into the station and they’re all gonna run in after us, might bottle neck em, might fuck us hard.”

Rosalie is exhausted. It feels like years since she’s slept well, which might actually be the truth. If they filter them in through the door she might be able to use a few grenades. So she turns her head and whispers in his ear, “I say we funnel them right to us.” To which Hancock responds with a “hell yeah” and then they're up running for the doors to the subway station.

Rosalie nearly falls down the stairs, Hancock grabbing her arm to stabilize her, pulling her into the station behind him, as a wave of raiders follows along. She's through the turnstiles and aiming her pistol at the first few who come in behind. Hancock stays close to the door and just to the right of it. The doors are a good bottle neck, but not as good as the one that naturally occurs when the bodies start piling up.

Eventually the one in the power armor comes in. She’s got the tiniest little pipe pistol and is so distracted by trying to step over her fallen friends that Rosalie feels bad about unloading into her head. The helmet breaks into pieces but the rest remains intact.

“No rest for the wicked, the idiots down below will be up before too long, you ready?” Rosalie isn’t, the sound of gunshots is ringing in her ears, there is a mountain of corpses before her and she wants to just… lay down and be done with it all. But she nods and follows.

By the time the last raider has fallen, their trip having taken them in a circle around the subway, Rosalie is a dead woman standing. She stumbles over her own feet and Hancock, hands full of his shotgun, can do nothing to catch her as she barely misses a turnstile. She looks up to Hancock staring down at her, his lips pulled down.

“I’m fine” she manages, as she puts one arm under her and Hancock reaches down to grab her other to haul her back up. He doesn’t let go of her bicep, which she dumbly stares at a moment before looking back up into his eyes. Jet black. She doubt’s she’ll ever get used to it, but this close she can see the iris, see the pupil.

He hums slightly. then bluntly responds with, “Bullshit. When was the last time you slept?”

“Last night,” she’s busy looking over where his eyebrows and eyelashes had once been and doesn’t notice him push her with the hand still gripping her arm, she teeters. His grip doesn’t waver and he’s pulling her back towards him, she can’t even manage to catch herself from crashing into him.

He hums again. Pulls her upright, letting go of her arm and patting her shoulder. Hancock turns and begins to step over the bodies, she doesn’t even think to mention that they’re leaving the power armor pieces behind as she follows after.

“You drink sister? Or got a ride of choice?” She shakes her head but realizes he isn’t watching her; he's opening the door to the outside and peering around.

“Nah, shit tastes like… shit.” Okay yes, she’s tired, she knows it, he knows it. Which is likely why he’s two steps behind her the whole back back to the farm, grabbing her arm every time she nearly falls ass over tits.

The family is so thankful they instantly accept when Hancock asks if they can crash on the extra mattress in the shack. The family even finds pillows and a knitted blanket for them to use, and encourages them to take the night's leftovers. It is brahmin, the cows, they say and some sort of tato sauce.

Hancock watches her warily as she eats as they sit together on the mattress. There is almost no difference between the taste of the steak she’s eating tonight, and the one Nate had made for her the night before the world ended. Which is so comforting she eats the whole thing and then happily eats the half of Hancock’s he doesn’t. Although she doubts he wasn’t hungry.

For a moment Rosalie wonders if they should take watches, if maybe it's weird to share a bed with a man that this morning she, frankly, disliked. But he’s been nothing but helpful and she just ate a two headed cow. Instead she lays on the outside part of the bed and asks if he minds the radio. He mumbles a no as he lays down beside her, on his back. She hears him huff a few puffs of Jet beside her as Travis talks about his sponsors.

Rosalie wakes up from a nightmare when the sun is barely peeking through the boards of the shack. Travis is back on the radio talking about Bobbi vanishing.

Hancock’s voice is rougher than normal, and Rosalie in the dim light can at least admit she finds him attractive, his voice a large part of that, “Go back to sleep.” Is all he says. He moves slightly closer to her, the warmth of him at her back and she does just that.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Chapter 11: Colours crash, collide in blood-shot eyes

It’s November, a doctor drones on about how the cell count is all off and hammers the nails in the coffin; She can’t take another round of chemo. Rosalie calls Nora. Nora pauses on the line for a long, long time. Finally, breaking the silence with, “Tell mom she’s gonna be a grandma! I didn’t want to tell anyone until we were sure…” Life and death. Mother. Grandmother.

It’s November and mom, Nate and Nora are dead. Shaun is gone, a kid now. A kid who doesn’t know anything but what life he’s been shown by the institute. Stealing him from that seems wrong. But she wants answers, so she keeps pushing forward, there isn’t anything else she can do.

It’s November and Hancock is discussing the purchase of a power armor frame with KL-E-0. He cracks a few jokes about being unable to operate heavy machinery being as chemed up as he is, and then he’s explaining to her they need to find armor pieces and fusion cores otherwise the glowing sea will eat her alive. His expression is serious and grim.

Rosalie tells him about the one in Concord and he considers it for a moment. “Doubt it’s still there, bunch of traders poke around Concord, probably scrapped it for parts”. So they count her caps, she’s a little short of being able to afford a new frame and Hancock dismisses the idea until they have parts. So they head out into the ruins, Rosalie not even sure where or what to do next to make more caps. Running after jobs given by the Watch is much harder than it sounds in the end.

They’re five feet out the gates of Goodneighbor when Hancock says, “The institute’s playing a funny game taking your kid.”

“Shaun isn’t mine.” Rosalie’s voice is harsh, angry, like scolding a child. Features creasing up in confusion, Hancock looks ready to respond, Rosalie cuts him short, “He’s my sister’s kid, but the institute thinks I’m Nora, so Piper’s keeping it that way.” Which is stupid to tell him. She doesn’t trust him, not really, and he could be working for them.

Hancock must guess her thoughts because he laughs and then tells her honestly, “Ain’t an institute spy, they aren’t big fans of ghouls, doubt they’d spend the time trying to get our looks just right.” Wiggling the ruins of his eyebrows at her and laughing, he turns to walk backwards into the rubble, facing her. “So, I was thinking, Power Armor first. Then we can get Fred to give up all his stash of Radaway, we get some ordnance from KL-E-0. and then we can head into the sea. Doubt anyone’s picked the National Guard clean, too many damn ferals.”

Which surprises Rosalie, she figured he’d backseat drive her the entire time. A few shots over her shoulder and he’d just watch her fumble around the ruins of Boston.

“Where’s the Guard?” She asks, gesturing with her arm to the computer attached to it. Hancock moves in close, scarred hands on her Pip-Boy, plugging in the coordinates. He’s quick in doing so, taking several steps back to give her space as soon as he’s done. The smell of Mentats and smoke. There and gone.

When she looks up she catches a look of trepidation before his face relaxes and he’s shoving his right hand into his coat pulling out a Jet canister, shaking it at her. “Wanna hit?” she mumbles a no and he huffs it before falling in step beside her as they head north.

They don’t make it particularly far before Rosalie gets to see Hancock fight. Admittedly her expectations are low, the rifle still in his bag.

Instead of Hancock hanging back and letting her put forth most of the effort, Hancock rushes headlong ahead of her into the group of raiders. He’s yelling and taunting just as good as he’s getting. Where the shotgun had come from she isn’t sure, but he’s up in their faces leaving them heavily injured for her to clean up.

She’s just shot a woman with a golf club when she sees Hancock take a knee. Her concern over him having fallen is short lived. He’s got his knife out and is ramming it up and into the raider in front of him. Right between the armor pieces on his chest, Hancock pulls down and left and the man's guts are on the pavement, another screaming ‘don’t die on me!’. The other man rushes Hancock and as Hancock stands he’s lifting the raider up into the air and dropping him on his head, his neck breaking at an angle that makes Rosalie’s own neck hurt just looking at it.

“Jesus.” Is all she gets out when she looks out on the absolute mess they’d made. It’s gory and chaotic.

“I know right?!” Hancock looks and sounds so thoroughly pleased with himself that she can’t really find it in her to be too grossed out or offended. Piper and Nick had taught her to grab ammo, food stuffs if they were stable, the occasional grenade. Hancock however is taking… everything.

“Uhh... what are you doing?” Hancock looks up just as he's removing a man's pants. The body falls to the ground, completely nude, with a thud, the man’s pants fisted in his hands.

“Heh, Bunker Hill is up ahead, might as well strip these assholes and sell it all.” Hancock barely pauses in his strip down of the next raider, the nudity clearly not bothering him.

“People in Bunker Hill will buy used, bloody clothing?” At this Hancock fully gives her his attention. He stares up at her, black eyes searching before he stands and sighs.

“Leave it to Nicky to play nice. Sister, I don’t know a trader in the Commonwealth that won’t buy everything a person has. Including their bones.” Which is… alarming. “Even Daisy?” Hancock’s head tilts back and he’s laughing hard.

“ Especially Daisy, you don’t get to be as old as her without playing in the dirt.” Huh. So Rosalie awkwardly helps Hancock strip naked every raider in sight. Rosalie blushes occasionally, not exactly used to being that close to that many naked folks, Hancock laughing at her expression to which she sticks her tongue out at him. His grin softens and he crinkles his eyes at her, it’s sorta cute.

All the gear is heavy as hell, too heavy for them both, so Hancock shows her how to pick out what's worth the effort to carry. Which is surprising to her. A gun is worth less than some foods. Although she suspects, as Hancock shoves various chems in his pockets, that she’ll never see some things again.

She’d skirted around Bunker Hill before, not bothering to stop in, in the middle there is a post of traveling sales folks. He’s right, the traders aren’t bothered by the blood, and they manage to sell everything they’d grabbed. Hancock even reaches into his pockets to sell the chems he’d stashed away.

But Rosalie grabs his right hand with her left and pushes the chems back to him, his hand knotted and warm under hers. She’s made far more than she would have without his help. Hancock’s head whips up when she touches him, she figures he may not appreciate being touched. Instead he’s got a look on his face she can’t exactly place and his, “You sure sister?”, is said quieter than he’s been so far. She nods, he grins at her and she files 'don't touch Hancock' away in her head.

She’s grabbing up more stable food stuffs, mostly Sugar Bombs when he comes up behind her and click his tongue at her. Hancock is again teaching her something new moment later. He insists on her buying some fire starting gear, a knife not dissimilar to his and a small cooler that he attaches to the outside of her messenger bag. “You gotta eat some real food at some point sister.” Then into the lunch cooler, which is what it really is, he puts some various fruits and vegetables in. Whatever a Mutfruit is. Once she’s got her new little bundle of goods, he nods and they’re off again.

“Can’t blame Nicky for not teaching you how to cook on account of being metal,” She makes a noise of protest, she knows how to cook. “You know what I mean, you keep eating that shit your insides gonna get twisted up. You ever field dressed anything? Butcher anything? ”

“No, god no.” Rosalie frowns, they’re walking down an alley and Hancock is again walking backwards, it's impressive sure, but it also feels like he’s showing off.

“Heh, no need to get grossed out. Lotta folks in Diamond City don’t either, but out here? You don’t wanna catch food poisoning or worse, best to do it yourself. Plenty of shit trying to kill you anyways.” He turns and falls into step beside her again.

Hancock isn’t what she expected. At all.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 10: Scream without raising your voice.

Hancock is thoroughly amused by her endeavors, she was right in guessing he’d approve. Which is strange in its own way. He doesn’t seem threatened by her gaining some control over his turf. Instead he back sits and grins at her, black eyes squinting at her in mirth as he tells her who to go after next. Fahrenheit, however, is a terrifying woman, his bodyguard sets Rosalie on high alert, if Dogmeat were here he’d be nuzzling her hand to calm her. The woman’s chess analogy doesn’t go over Rosalie’s head, she’s the pawn and Fahrenheit is not above crushing her entirely if she so much as breathes wrong at Hancock.

So Rosalie leaves the relative safety of Goodneighbor and heads out into the ruins of Boston. Pickman’s gallery is her first stop. The smell makes her gag, the sights get her emptying her stomach repeatedly and by the time she’s killed the freaked out raiders and made it to Pickman she knows; he has to die.

Pickman won’t keep to raiders, serial killers progress in specific ways. There was one up north who prayed on older men for nearly 30 years, his crimes ever worse until he turned to children. Pickman won’t keep to raiders, so she shoots him, his blood blends in with everyone else's, a sticky pool she walks through to get out of his lair.

Rosalie hunts down Sinjin’s minions later in the day and starts to head back to Goodneighbor when she hears Sinjin’s message for her across the waves. Running back to The Memory Den, Rosalie gets there just in time to catch Irma trying to send her a message through the radio.

The older woman cries a bit, worried sick for her friend. Two things occur to Rosalie, the first; Sinjin walked into Goodneighbor and took Kent. Past all of the watch, all of the watch , who reported to Hancock. The second is that Hancock clearly is using her, she’s cleaning up his streets without him having to be associated with it. Irma must sense that Rosalie has lost just a touch more hope and encourages her to sleep in the backroom.

“He’ll keep Kent alive until you get there, no sense trying to run on empty, honey.” Which is true, but he’s taken Kent pretty far south. So Rosalie steps out into the street and glares at the first member of the watch she sees, who has enough sense to at least look slightly guilty.

She trudges south and west, farther than she’d ever made it when Nora was alive. It’s too quiet without Dogmeat. She prefers hard and loud, but she sees one of those big monsters in the distance and tries her best to be sneaky and quiet. The night is dark by the time she makes it to the hospital, the stars twinkle above.

The raiders here are decently spread out, the layout just right. Not so tight she’s in close quarters(which she’s horrid at), but not so far her pistol can’t do some decent damage. It is a choice, but Rosalie knows that if she’s going to one shot this man, she'll need something with far more power behind it, which is how the gun used to kill Nate comes out. Comes out of her bag, is loaded up, her fingers brushing against the cold steel, and all Rosalie feels is hate. Hate for Sinjin, and Kellogg, but also for Hancock for using her, and Nate for making her come visit, and Nora for… For what she doesn’t know. For leaving her, maybe.

Rosalie is so angry by the time she makes it to the basement that Sinjin’s friends nearly piss themselves and run off. She fires Kellogg’s side piece, one shot, clean through Sinjin. She climbs the stairs towards Kent and looks down at Sinjin’s head. He died at range, not close up, and he looks nothing like Nate. His blood splattered bright and red, not pale and pink. His brains are mostly still inside his head, whereas Nate’s were all over the walls of his pod.

Getting Kent to his feet Rosalie shoves the gun back into her bag. He isn’t okay, tells her he’s going home. She feels so drained, the rage entirely having left her. A hollow feeling bubbles up and stays put. The only thing she can really do is lay down on a mattress on the floor, cry and get some of the worst sleep of her life. Her dreams entirely blending between reality and horrors she conjures up on her own. She remembers none of it when she wakes and makes her way back to Goodneighbor.

----------------------------------------------------

Kent’s up in Hancock’s office, Hancock’s cheer and smile at her not reflected on the other man at all. She wants to tell him to read the room, instead she slips back into her voice as The Silver Shroud. Right now it's easier to be someone else. Hancock at least pretends to be concerned about Kent, for which she’s grateful, she isn’t sure she could avoid screaming at him otherwise. His encouragement of Kent seems just as real as his warning to her to keep his streets from running red. Kent is one of his, she figures, and while Hancock sounds genuine in his care for them, she can’t help but look at Fahrenheit and remember what she said about pawns yesterday.

Once Kent leaves, Hancock gestures for her to sit, which she refuses. He shrugs and grins at her, but it's guarded, not reaching his eyes like before. Hancock settles in where he’d gestured for her to do so, arms spread across the back of the couch, feet up on the table and he stares at her. Hancock isn’t just a politician, and she doesn’t see the point in buttering him up, “Pickman’s art won’t have much resale value once the bodies start decaying.”

He laughs. “Well, they say all artistic inspiration is ephemeral, am I right?” His grin still doesn’t reach his eyes but he sounds happy, telling her he’ll keep his people clear of the area and then handing her 200 caps. “Hiring you was definitely one of my better moments. Here. Spend the money in good health.” Then he winks at her.

He’s good looking, but a user and a bit of an ass, if she’s honest with herself. So she takes the caps, says nothing more and makes her way out. She reaches the ground floor when one of the members of the watch whistles at her from up above.

She looks up at him from the bottom floor past the spiral staircase, he leans over the railing to look down at her, “Hey toots, you should join a crew, Bobbi's hiring. There is always a catch with the No-Nose. But she pays.” Rosalie can’t help but wonder if this job is from the watch, or from Hancock, either way she needs more caps. By the time she’s bought ammo for her three pistols, done some repairs, gotten some extra padding for her gear, she’s gone through half her cap stash. It stings, two steps forward and one step back.

Digging sounds amazing , she’s tired, she’s sick of being shot at, and just honest, hard labor sounds nice. Which of course means it isn’t digging she’s dealing with and instead it’s mostly running back and forth for Bobbi and then shooting more feral ghouls. She feels guilty for not stopping by Piper or Nick’s, but she just can’t face them right now. 'Hey I may have left Nick with Kellogg still in his head, ya know, the fuck who killed Nate and kidnapped Shaun?'

Having Bobbi and Mel at her back is a relief while she charges ahead of them in the tunnels. But they aren’t Nick, aren’t Piper, and are neither friendly, nor helpful. She doesn’t feel welcome. In fact Bobbi and Mel are often talking about her behind her back, or right in front of her, staring at her and talking about her like she’s just a tool. And maybe that's what she is out here. Maybe she’ll end up like Kellogg, just a merc for hire - a puppet as he’d called himself.

Rosalie certainly feels like a puppet when they break in and meet Fahrenheit and two of the watch in Hancock’s store room. Hancock, the man who’s been using her, Hancock the man who isn’t just a mayor. Shit. Fuck .

“The man tends to hold grudges.” Mel states to her right. The sort of grudges that can leave her body sitting outside Goodneighbor as a warning.

Rosalie debates what to do, killing Fahrenheit isn't an option she’ll take, no matter how Bobbi tries to wheedle her into it. If she goes back into the hole she can’t imagine Hancock will just let this go, and she’s seen enough that it's vital to not be on his shit list. So she makes a choice. “Bobbi you lied to us, you tried to rob Hancock, you have to pay.” It feels dirty and gross and she wants to go home and shower.

It’s Kellogg’s pistol again that rips through Bobbi’s brain matter, Mel tries to threaten her but ends up just walking away. Fahrenheit however... Not only tells her to go talk to Hancock in person, then gives her a minigun.

Which of course just drives home the fact that she’s been set up. Again. Not only did Hancock know Bobbi was trying to rob him, but had his men ask her to join. The reasons for it aren't clear to Rosalie. Maybe he knew she’d be desperate to stay on his good side. The thought makes her sick.

Makes her so sick she vomits once she’s outside. Walking back to Goodneighbor is more of a trudge, and each step makes her feel stupider. Foolish. Nora used to manipulate her into doing chores, taking the fall when she’d been the one to make a mistake. But this feels worse. The stakes aren't mom looking disappointed, they're her dead as Nora.

Rosalie ignores the statehouse and shuffles into the Rexford and she ignores the salesman who wants to try to draw her into conversation. She sleeps, it's fragmented and she spends half the night trying to get comfortable on the old bed.

----------------------------------------------

When she wakes in the morning she manages to shower, but doesn’t feel any cleaner. Although it costs her far too much for comfort, she’s desperate for the clean feeling right now, so she pays to have her clothing washed and dried. Once her clothing is clean, and she’s dressed back in her usual outfit, she goes to talk to Hancock. What she’s even meant to talk about she doesn’t know. ‘Hey sorry for almost robbing you, but you set me up, see you again next week!’

He isn’t in his office, instead one of the watch directs her to his bedroom. It smells of smoke and rum, and other than a few bits of chem paraphernalia, it’s spotless. He’s leaning against a door on the far wall when she enters, he gestures for her to close the door with two fingers, not even bothering to uncross his arms.

His chin raises and he squints at her, “Well if it ain’t Bobbi’s little patsy.” A feeling of rage passes through her, but it’s gone just as fast as it came, he gestures for her to step closer to him. Rosalie wonders for a moment if he is going to stab her, but she figures if he is going to stab her, he’ll do it some place that isn’t his bedroom.

He uncrosses his arms and pats at his red coat, for the first time she really gets a look at him. The belt made of a flag is a nice touch. The red, off white, and blue looks so old she’s surprised it's holding together and she can see the stitching where his coat has been patched back up. His skin is pocked and damaged but it doesn’t carry the same sort of aging as Daisy’s or Kent’s. Hancock isn’t much taller than her, but he carries himself as if he’s much larger.

He shakes out a bag of caps from his coat and hands it to her, his fingers barely touching hers as he passes it over. “Here, for protecting my stash. Wise choice putting Bobbi down like that.”

There is so much Rosalie could say, she hears Nora call him a slimy toad in her head, Mom calling him a little dicked prick. Instead she settles for a half assed apology, for everything. She is tired, she wants to go home, but the need for caps has her at least playing nice.

Hancock shrugs and tells her no hard feelings, then he’s staring out past her. His frown is deep and his sigh sounds more like a growl when he bites out in frustration, “Lemme tell ya. This classy little tricorner hat of mine is getting heavy.” At this he bumps it with his knuckles and then rubs his face. He looks tired, and she wonders exactly how many people see this side of him

“Am I turning into the man? Some kind of tyrant?” Rosalie wants to say yes but bites her tongue. He tells her he needs to get out of Goodneighbor, to ‘take a walk’. He seems serious, and seems genuinely concerned that he’s gone soft. Rosalie isn’t Nora, doesn’t have quite the skills at reading others, but this she can read well enough. Hancock has spent nearly every minute she’s been in town using her, and it seems to have bothered him to do so. So Rosalie sits down on the arm of the couch next to him, dropping her bag beside her and listens to him. Why he has decided to actually speak with her, she doesn’t know.

“Where exactly do you… ‘take a walk’ to, is that like a vacation? Go up north to see the northern lights?” Hancock laughs and then she asks, ”Do the Northern Lights still exist?” He smiles at her, then goes back into his pockets, this time with purpose, grabbing what he’s looking for quickly. Bringing out a little tin of Mentats he shakes it at her asking without words if she wants any, she shakes her head no.

With a shrug he opens the little tin and grabs a few Mentats and pops them in his mouth and considers. “Hmm, I guess when I was a kid you’d hear about em. Not really something people are willing to die for these days. You’re the one Piper wrote about, pre-war vaultie right?” It takes Rosalie back a bit that Piper’s story has not only been written and published, but that Hancock has read it.

“Yeah that’s me, guess the vault suit gives me away, huh?” Hancock nods slightly and stares at her for a moment, she can see he’s rolling the Mentats around in his mouth. Rosalie isn’t really sure what exactly to even say so she reaches back to grab her bag to say goodbye.

He crunches down on the chems before speaking, his tone light and friendly, “Look, you just might be the kind of trouble I’d like to run with. ” He gestures vaguely towards his face with his right hand while his left dives into a pocket. “Rads left me looking this good, but you need someone going into the sea with ya,” Rosalie must have looked completely stunned. Because he simply waves her off, “Word gets around. Anyways a few more rads aren’t gonna hurt me. So what’d ya say? You ever think about having an exquisitely handsome and deadly Ghoul at your side?”

This morning she was fully sick of his shit, but Hancock seemed self aware enough to know what he’d done. And aware of her need for help. If the world hadn’t ended she would have said no, if Shaun wasn’t still missing or she was a better fighter. If she knew her way around Boston, her answer would have been no. But instead she stares hard at him, he doesn't flinch under her gaze, doesn't back down. So she says okay, not yes, not really, but she needs any help she can get.

He grins wide at her, all teeth, “Let me just have a little chat with my community and I’ll meet you by the front gate?” He stands up straight and pulls open the door, a slight breeze blowing his red coat around.

Rosalie opts not to watch this speech, although she can hear it. Sitting on a bench waiting for him she considers what they were even going to do. His people sound disappointed to have him leave, and for what it was worth they really seemed to adore him. It took him a while to finally make his way down to her, and when he did she was somewhat surprised to see him with a duffle bag over his shoulder with a rifle barely poking out of it.

“Ya ready to get this duo going?”

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 9: You’re dangerous, you don’t know what you want.

At face value Goodneighbor was significantly flashier than even Nick's agency. With spray painted arrows that pointed towards the entrance, neon lights and open signs for blocks around. Once they finally made it to the front gate however there was also a small pile of bodies outside. Which made Rosalie pull up short. She was staring at them so long Nick finally spoke up.

“Either Hancock and the watch got sick of someone, or they just never made it.” He took a look at one of the bodies. “Hasn’t been looted so I’d guess they just didn’t make it in. Sad way to go.” There was something… bad about trying to loot someone freshly dead that she hadn’t killed; so she walked around him and stepped in front of Nick as he held the gate open for her.

She got exactly two steps in before a man standing in front of her, smoking, glaring at her through the smoke, greeted her. Or rather accosted her. The gate slammed behind her and the asshole in front of her just kept talking. Nick at least seemed amused by the conversation, but Rosalie was tired.

How many times did the man need to be told no, that she wasn’t giving him money, before he’d just… go away. “You hand over everything you got in them pockets, or "accidents" start happenin' to ya. Big, bloody, "accidents."” Once more it seemed, though it was doubtful he’d just go away. Getting in a fight with the first person to greet her in town seemed a poor idea. As she started to look past him at who else was around, a man, a ghoul, walked up beside him. A ghoul who seemed set to go back even farther in time than Preston. The clothing makes the man Nick had said, this clothing made the man some sort of revolutionary or something similar. History hadn't been her best subject. She'd been up close with the ferals, faces warped and melted, bones rotted out; this man still had his bone structure. The warping and twisting of his flesh hadn't changed the fact that he was a good looking man. It surprised Rosalie all things considered, the divide between a ghoul and a human small, and a ghoul and a feral oceans wide.

“Whoa, Whoa. Time out.” It was such an odd thing to say that Rosalie almost laughed, a man was shaking her down and he was being told ‘Time Out’. While she managed to not laugh she did smile, which got her a small smile from the ghoul in return, if she was a little younger she would have blushed something terrible. As it was the ghoul turned from her, looking irritated at the man. “Nick Valentine makes a rare visit to town, and you're hassling his friend here with that extortion crap? Good to see you again, Nick.”

Rosalie turned to see Nick who simply responded with a “Hancock.” and began fiddling with his pockets, likely searching for a smoke. Which would make this the man who could pile bodies up outside the city. Huh.

But it made sense, especially when moments later he asked “No love for your mayor, Finn?” Followed by a very sickly sweet ”I said let her go.” Finn it would seem was an idiot. And Rosalie a bit jumpy today as she flinched when Hancock shoved his knife into Finn… Twice.

He put his knife away with little fanfare or effort, the killing over and forgotten it would seem, before he moved slightly forward over Finn’s body towards Rosalie. When she didn’t back up he smiled at her again and asked, “You all right, sister?” Finn’s blood pooled under his body, it had taken so little to kill him. She’d been shot in nearly the same place yesterday. Shit .

“Fuck no. I mean yes.” Nick chuckled behind her and began walking around her. A woman leaning on a building close by snorted and Rosalie looked up to see her rolling her eyes. Hancock in front of her however just seemed concerned with his full attention on her. “With that. Okay with that,“ She pointed towards Finn’s body, “I’m fine, thanks for that… I think”.

Hancock went back to smiling at her, “Good. Now don't let this incident taint your view of our little community. Goodneighbor's of the people, for the people, you feel me? Everyone's welcome.” He began to turn back and his smile didn’t drop but his words were stern and clearly a threat ”So long as you remember who's in charge.” He walked away joining the eye rolling woman and they both entered a building to the left. Nick approached the spot the woman had been leaning and made a gesture for Rosalie to follow. No one made a move towards the body so Rosalie side stepped it and followed.

--------------------------------------------

Rosalie would be lying if she said didn’t feel for Kellogg. She did, but it didn’t really matter that he’d tried to be a good dad, he’d killed a random innocent man for what? An infant? That someone else raised, and for what? She left the pod with yet another headache, and far more questions than when she started. Amari discussed with her the hard reality that she needed to make it into the glowing sea to find a single man. Someone who was running scared of the institute and Kellogg. When she went to speak with Nick what tiny amount hope she’d built up, came to a jarring end.

It felt wrong to just… leave Nick when Kellogg might still be inside him. But Rosalie knew she wouldn't be able to shoot him. One of the three friends she even had in the world, of which one was a dog. He at least told her she’d need to buy all the radiation meds and get a suit of Power Armor to try to protect herself and then he was out the door.

She wanted to break down and cry. Which sent her running into a side room to hide and calm down. Instead she was gaining a mission from a sweet man to get a costume. She would have said no, if Shaun was still a baby or if she was still running to find a random man who had kidnapped him. But that wasn’t the case any longer. Plus she needed something to do while she processed the days information, and processed what she was gonna say to Piper. And hopefully to Nick when she saw him again. When she headed out toward the comic shop, Hancock was giving a speech to the neighborhood and she felt extremely out of place. They cheered and shouted and it felt more like a campaign rally than anything else. Vote for me on election day! Did they have elections still?

Without Dogmeat ghouls were fucking horrid to fight. Glowing One’s it turned out? Significantly worse. By the time she made it back to Goodneighbor, she was sick with rad poisoning and needed sleep. Which had her headed to the Rexford, and into the path of yet another person who was convinced she was Nora. The salesman from Vault-Tec was not who she would have expected to see, or ever wanted to see again truth be told. By the time she fell into bed she was too emotionally drained to even try to sort out her emotions or stop the crying.

In the morning she spent some time to try and do the math of how much time it might take her to cross the glowing sea, how much Rad-x and Radaway she might need and then figure that for how many caps she’d need based on her glance at Daisy’s prices. Without knowing the exact amount of time she’d be spending there, and potentially how many glowing ones she might fight, her numbers were a mess. She needed a Power Armor as Nick had said. She knew where one was, if Preston or raiders hadn’t grabbed it, but she’d need caps and materials to fix it. And FC’s to even make it to the glowing sea. Or out of Concord.

She just needed caps. A lot of them. A thousand was a low ball estimate, five to eight thousand sounded better. And she currently had two hundred and some to spare.

She'd been happy to help Kent with the costume honestly, it felt nice, and he was damn pleased to get it and the other goodies. Nate had called her a helper once, said that was her calling while Nora rolled her eyes and told her she need a hobby. So when Kent sent her off to deal with bad players in Goodneighbor, she was a little bit on the desperate side, and a lot on the side of seeing him happy to have someone doing some good.

If nothing else the guards in Goodneighbor, the watch, seemed to think she was hilarious with her get up and very awful voice acting, which was a welcome feeling. Playing up the part and making herself look ridiculous was easy, and felt comfortable. People weren’t looking at her vault suit and how much she stood out, they were looking at the Shroud, who may not have fit in, but was at least a welcome sight.

Being on the neighborhood watch’s good side was a good place to be it seemed, because they started flagging her over to tell her of things she can do, people she can talk to, to gain caps. One tried to share a smoke with her, and another asked in all seriousness if she’d please go sell her extra gear to Daisy so she wouldn't get mugged. The Third Rail was interesting, but not as interesting as the man at the door telling her that Hancock says newcomers are welcome. Hancock isn’t just a mayor, he isn’t just the leader of the watch, or even a business owner. There is so much loyalty to him in Goodneighbor it makes her head spin. The Mr. Handy who asks her to be a ‘Dirty girl’ and clean out some buildings for Hancock even sounds impressed by him.

She expects breaking into a warehouse would get her on the bad side of the watch, considering they can see her doing it. But they just watch her go into the buildings and much later walk back out with arms full of gear that she trades to both KL-E-0 and Daisy for supplies she needs. While she stands in front of one of the watch later, who asks her how Goodniehgbor is treating her, she debates the fact that, as far as she can see Goodneighbor is run oddly well. Yes there is massive crime, it even seems encouraged in some ways, but it is controlled. Crime is openly allowed in some areas but only some crime, and in some places, at some times. Rosalie wonder’s if the asshole selling chems to kids had done so in front of the watch if he’d have lived. She doesn’t know, but gets the feeling that the people of Goodneighbor like her ‘cleaning the streets’, and she wonders how Hancock will feel once he finds out.

Late at night, several calling cards later, and her bag filled with a few hundred extra caps, she curls up in a bed, having managed to avoid the salesman tonight. Planning to listen to the Silver Shroud Radio to get to sleep, Kent comes back on and says that Hancock wishes to see her. Rosalie wonders if he’ll approve of her clean up. If the neighborhood watch is anything to go by, he will. She dreams of her mother outside in the sun, the corn knee high, showing her how to clean a pistol; her sister singing along to Elvis in the house.

#FFfo #FFfo4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

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Can’t See the Future

Chapter 8: Not waking from these dreams

Piper, it seemed, didn’t like disappointing Mr. Valentine, because she was up moving around the house early. She barely paused to get them both food before she was shoving them out the door towards his office. Nick's office was indeed filled with smoke when they arrived, and Ellie looked much better. Her eyes brighter, she smiled and insisted on giving Rosalie a detective's uniform. Which made Rosalie’s eyes burn, between the jacket to keep out the rain and the replacement shirt for the one she’d left behind yesterday it felt like an emotional gift from someone who knew her. Silly thing to tear up about really.

Her quick to tear up response should have told her how the day was going to go. Rosalie barely got through Nick’s questions without bursting into tears, her fingers running over the trench coat in her hands, and Piper occasionally gripping her shoulder keeping her grounded. Ellie was a good person it turned out, sensitive, she seemed to know when it the questions were getting to be too much, insisting on taking little breaks while talking about the murder of Nora and Nate. In the end they had a small lead.

Rising from the chair hurt, her legs still burning from the day before. But she managed, shoving her new clothing in her freshly washed bag and following Nick and Piper out into the alley. After they made it to the stairs he caught her eye and frowned. He started, “I didn't want Ellie to hear this, but I think you should know. Everything I dug up about Kellogg before his disappearance is bad news.”

Nine to one odds he said. Rosalie felt like an extreme pessimist as she begged McDonough for a key, nine to one meant there was a chance this was a dead end. Some mercenary with a kid who had a scar across his face wasn’t much of a clue. Many of the people she’d met out here had scars across their faces, if she hadn’t had stimpaks yesterday she’d likely have a pretty nasty one herself. As she and Piper descended back down after getting the key, the thought from what felt like years ago bubbled back up to the surface. She was a murderer. This man, Kellogg, had a kid of his own, the ‘raiders’ she killed… They were people. Maybe with families and friends and people who would miss them. Her boots dragged along the metal grating, Dogmeat running from Nick’s side to hers, he barked at her, nuzzling her hand, seeming to sense her dark thoughts. “I’m okay boy. I’m sorry.” Sorry for it all.

Where Piper's and Nick’s houses were organized chaos, clean with their own unique smells, Kellogg’s home smelled… stale and heavy. Like dust and disuse. The little home reflected it. There are no signs a child lived here. Nat livened up the space, made the house hers and Pipers. This was nothing like their home. It put Rosalie on edge, but made the button easy to find. The room was full of gear which Rosalie gleefully started grabbing, with only a slight thought about being a thief. Nick and Piper look over some stogies and beer and are discussing Dogmeats nose when Rosalie finishes clearing out the room.

Dogmeat sniffs one of the cigar’s Piper is holding out for him and gives her a bark for turning towards the door.

Nick turns towards Rosalie, his eyes shifting over to Piper and back. Rosalie has clearly missed some conversation. “Well looks like he’s got a whiff. Listen. I know this is personal business. If you have to face Kellogg on your own, just say so.” Rosalie is floored, how the hell is she meant to face this man on her own, without fully knowing if this is the right man! He’s a professional killer and she is a student from the midwest with rough bedside training! Before she can even begin to respond Nick continues, “Besides, you already have plenty of company. We can't all go sniffing through the Commonwealth after one man.”

Holy shit. While she was ravaging through all of this man’s water and snacks they were discussing how to break it to her. Rosalie desperately wants to sit. The familiar feeling of her stomach rolling is back and her mouth feels too dry. Both Piper and Nick are staring at her with the same look, one that says “Sorry, it hurts but that’s life.” It's quiet, they’re really leaving this up to her. Dogmeat scratches at the door. What exactly she thought was gonna happen she’s not sure. Her legs burn, her face is bruised and it hurts to frown, and it feels like a betrayal. It isn’t, she knows, but still.

In the end she decides to go with Nick, mostly because there is still a chance this is a dead end. Nick sounds pleased to go with her and Piper surprises the hell out of her by hugging her tight. “You’ll get him I know you will, you and Dogmeat come back safe okay? Find me when you get back.”

Then she’s off on a very long walk after Kellogg.

------------------------------------------

Rosalie firmly believes Kellogg is just a shitty man with a kid until she’s inside Fort Hagen. Until she sees exactly how many damn synth’s he has protecting him. There is a feeling in her chest, almost hollow, almost empty and it hurts . Everyone was so sure Shaun was taken by the institute, and finally she’s getting that sense too. It’s terrifying, she can’t go up against some massive force by herself. She can’t even take a few drug addicted, suit wearing, assholes in a subway for fucks sake.

Nick is damn good with computers, and Rosalie spies over his shoulder trying to learn his ways, maybe just a bit of avoidance of the real issues at play in her mind. He doesn’t seem to mind, in fact he seems to like the attention, playing up the process for her. His smile is softer than Piper’s but no less genuine Rosalie thinks. It's just her and Nick and it's going smoother than her fighting with Danse or Piper. Danse feels like ages ago, she can’t even remember if he smiled. He certainly didn’t give her pointers for how to throw grenades, and what to pick up for caps later.

She likes Piper, and finds herself liking Nick just as quick. His sense of humor is dry like her mothers, and he is so damn friendly and helpful she wishes like hell he’d been the first person she’d met out here.

By the time they’ve made their way down to the basement she feels comfortable with the small rhythm she and Nick have picked up. Nick fires a few shots, the synths run towards them and she lobs a grenade or fires at them herself, then once they get close Nick knocks them down and she kills them. They don’t bleed and Rosalie can’t help but be thankful that for once she isn’t absolutely covered in filth.

Rosalie’s world comes to a complete dead stop when she hears Kellogg’s voice. “If it isn't my old friend, the frozen TV dinner. Last time we met, you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler.” She breathes wrong and coughs, she tries to draw in air but it hurts, the cold feeling of the vault begins creeping back in. The smell of Freon. Nick touches her arm looking at her with concern. “It’s him. This fucker killed them. He killed them. ” It’s almost a scream. It is certainly loud. Nick’s thumb, the one with a false skin rubs at her arm and he nods at her.

“Yeah… If you need me to wait outside --” She cuts him off her head shaking. When the hell she’d fallen to her knees she isn’t sure.

“No god, NO. I need help. I don’t, I can’t.” The words won’t come. So Nick grabs at her other arm with his bad hand and starts to haul her up. His bright back lit eyes staring into hers, his face serious and grim. “We’re gonna get the bastard, of that you can be sure.” He nods, confidence is sexy. And disarming, and comforting.

So on unsteady legs they start going farther down. It doesn’t even register to her that Kellogg says her house has been a wreck for 200 years. Doesn’t register that maybe he thinks she is Nora.

Right up until she’s standing in front of him so angry her teeth hurt. And he is looking at her with a sinister smile, and says, “Your son, Shaun. Great kid. A little older than you may have expected, but I'm guessing you figured that out by now.” Nick moves a little to her left behind her, she wonders if he has caught this little bit of information too, he begins to flank one of Kellogg’s synths and she finishes her conversion. Kellogg mostly speaking in lies of omission, he knows far more than he'll tell her, and it delights him to be able to lord it over her.

Nora would have told her to play her cards close to her chest and to not let him know anything. So she plays it off and he tells her with a shitty smile across his face, voice full of humor and confidence that Shaun is home. In the Institute. So she screams in his face and he makes more excuses and avoids her questions.

It’s an ugly fight. Nick is busy dealing with the synths behind her and Kellogg has a new trick Rosalie hasn’t ever seen before. One second she has shot him twice to the chest. The next her hardhat is off and her ponytail is being fisted in his hands and her nose is broken against the metal wall of a cubicle beside her. It hurts and makes a sickening crunch as it shifts to the right. His leg is in between hers and then he’s pulling her back and down over his leg, knocking her to the ground, her back the first to hit, stealing her breath. Before she can gulp down air, her side explodes in pain. Her eyes fly open and for a moment she can almost make out the outline of him with the bright lights behind him, so she lifts her arms and empties her entire clip into where he is standing. He barely makes any noise from being hit, but his body makes up for it by knocking into the metal cubicle wall, knocking a chair over and coming to rest beside her with a crash. The light is way too bright now.

Nick leans over her, blocking the light, as she tries to gasp in some air, grabbing at her side which is wet. “Well kid, think that went pretty well all things considered.” Lovely words to say while he pops her nose back to the left and she finally just screams. “Don’t know if Kellogg was the kind of guy to take notes, but there’s a lot of old terminals here, and one that looks out of place. Institute tech I’d reckon.”

Nick has already given her two stimpaks and begun to poke around the room a bit before she finally gets off the floor. It isn’t a nice floor, the carpet reeks, its uncomfortable, and the lights are too fucking bright but she’s overwhelmed. That's the word she’s been hunting for. Overwhelmed by everything.

She rolls over long enough to dig through Kellogg’s pockets. She thinks for a moment she could sell his gun, but images of a man with his head exploded against the pod wall, blood frosted pink, flash through her mind and she just can’t see herself using it, or selling it. So away that goes in her bag, he’s got a chunk of wires clipped to the back of his head which she uses a knife she finds on his body to dig out of his skull. She drops the brain bits into a vase she finds empty in the room, her mind offers up the image of a lovely floral arrangement made of bits of brains and she wants to puke again. His terminal gives up some basic information that she and Nick decide corroborates his story.

“So, Kellogg wasn’t giving us any bull, Shaun really is on the inside. Even I don’t know where the institute is, and they built me.” He pauses. “Ya know, what gets me is, he thought Shaun was your boy. You said he was Nora’s kid right?”

“Yeah, Nora she… She went into my pod. I was making stupid faces at Shaun and then she just… she just.” Fuck. Why was this still so hard?

“Hey, hey now, don’t push it. It’s just that. Look, if the institute thinks Shaun is your kid that gives us an advantage, I think.” He looked perplexed for a moment and then his lips turned downwards.

“How do you figure?” Rosalie puffed out some air and took down her ponytail, blood sticky hands making a mess of her hair. But her head hurt again.

Nick sounded tired, “If we play this right, the institute won’t know that you’ve switched. So if someone is swapped and calls you Nora you’ll know they're a synth. I get the feeling the institute is so deep on this one it’ll come up later, somehow.” He signed and rubbed at where his eyebrows would have been. “Anyways we’re in the weeds here, we need to take a step back. I say we head back to Piper, she’s the only one willing to snoop up the Institute's tail feathers. She’ll be able to help talk this through.”

“Alright...but I gave Piper a story. I told her that Nora and I switched,” Rosalie’s shoulders dropped. “I’ll bet the Institute can read.”

Nick chuckled a bit at that one. “Well given how much Piper wants them wiped out I’m sure she’ll be willing to do a tad bit of alteration. Besides, which is more compelling, a son? Or a nephew?”

It’s well past 1am by the time they make their way outside. Just in time to see Danse’s backup, and what backup it is, arrive. Nick goes full poetic and then informs her they’re here for war. As she watches the Brotherhood float by, their ship blocking out the stars, which she finally has a moment to really stare at, Nick lights up a cigarette and leans against the railing next to her.

“Listen, I don’t need sleep or to eat or anything, but it’s been a hell of a day, I know you don’t want to head back in, but there were some decent bunks down below. I know the night just got darker, but we’re gonna find Shaun. Just a few more steps” He puffs out some smoke and looks back up at the ship.

Rosalie doubts she could make it anywhere else tonight, so they make their way back in. Rosalie finding some blankets and pillows and makes a small blanket fort on one of the bunks. She opts to listen to Diamond City Radio again tonight on her Pip-Boy. But the lack of Dogmeat, who had likely returned back to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary, and the smell of dust aren’t comforting. She tries and fails to sleep for what seems like hours before she hears Nick clicking away at a terminal on the other end of the room. So she focuses on the sound and finally drifts off. That she wakes up screaming a few short hours later doesn’t stop Nick from typing, so she just lays there in her little fort, wondering what her mother’s house would look like now. It’s dawn when they head back to Diamond City, and to Piper.

Piper takes one look at Rosalie, her bruised face, her black eyes, and recoils. “Shit Nick, where’s her hardhat?”

Rosalie pats at her hair and frowns slightly, “Aww hell, dropped it.” Which is… hilarious. Considering the week she’s had that she is sad about a lost hardhat is hilarious to her, so she laughs at herself. Which must make her look too raw, because Piper grabs her shoulders and forces her onto the couch, and then forces gumdrops into her hands. And begins to make coffee and talk animatedly. It's so over the top and played up that it makes Rosalie laugh again. She's about the tell Piper she's fine and then Piper is pulling out a box of mints and telling her to be good and eat them with a serious expression. So Rosalie zips it for the moment.

As Rosalie slowly chews on some very hard gumdrops and eyes the little dinner mints, Piper and Nick begin a back and forth that is honestly beautiful to watch. So she does. Nick goes poetic again, and Piper seems less than impressed by his analogy of them being like acid rain.

Piper’s hunting for mugs, while Nick leans against a wall looking at ease and if it wasn’t the end of the world Rosalie would say it almost felt normal. Just a bunch of friends catching up. Talking about how one of them murdered someone yesterday, totally normal. Eventually Nick stands straight and says “Huh, gets his brains blown out. You know, we may not need the man at all.”

“You’re talking crazy here Nick. Got a fault in the ole’ subroutines?” She pauses to pass Rosalie a mug of coffee and then sits beside her. And seconds later nearly spills her coffee as Nick lays out his plan to try and do a memory dive into a dead man.

By the time he’s done Piper is thoroughly grossed out and Rosalie is completely full of junk food, candy and coffee. Once she would have felt bad about the lack of vitamins and minerals, now she was just grateful for the calories.

“One more thing Piper, and this might be a big ask. We got a bit of an issue to take up with you.” Nick leans back to where he’d been before settling in eyeing Rosalie.

“Uh huh, not sure I like the sound of that.” She looks back and forth between Rosalie and Nick. “You gonna fill me in?”

“So how do you feel about lying to the commonwealth?” On one hand Rosalie had known Piper a few days, she wasn’t that close to her, so asking her to bend her integrity on the most important thing in her life shouldn’t have been too bad. On the other hand, Piper was also her first… friend in the ‘wealth. So Rosalie looked up pleadingly at Nick, who just shook his head and decided to save her.

“Turns out the institute can’t see all. Kellogg seemed to think our Rosalie here was Nora, wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Shaun was hers.” Nick rubbed at his chin a moment. “Might be a real good thing if we kept up appearances. Let the institute think that Rosalie was the one in the vault and Nora made it out. Only a few of us know, so if say…”

“Say I printed her name as Blue and didn’t write about Shaun being her nephew might trip them up. Huh.” She looked at the two and shrugged. “Had me worried you needed me to write something big, lies of omission are easy, just need to change a few lines.” She made a huffing sound.

A few minutes later they made their way out, Piper waving them off as they headed towards Goodneighbor.

#FFfo #FFFO4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

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Can’t See the Future

Chapter 7: It’s just a moment

Piper wasn’t the earliest of risers, which unfortunately left Rosalie to lay staring at the rusted metal ceiling for what felt like ages. If Nora wouldn’t have made it out of Concord, where would Nate have gone? He wouldn’t have spent as long getting to Diamond City, he would have likely joined with the Brotherhood. But god, Nate was not a good people reader. He would have liked Piper fine, but that interview would have been depressing. Nate was also the one in charge of cleaning, and his need to have a complete mess, and personality in Rosalie's opinion, free home would have killed him out here. Plants growing through buildings seemed kinda neat to Rosalie, pretty in their own way. But Nate would have hated it. How the man had handled battlefields Rosalie didn’t know. But then there was a lot she didn’t know, Nora may have gone the distance and made it to Diamond City just by talking people into escorting her there. She may have hated guns, but even as a kid she was good at getting people to help her, like her.

Eventually Piper got up when Nat started moving around the little house. Getting moving late may have worried Rosalie some, but having a partner was soothing, and more than welcome.

Piper wasn’t wrong, she was a big help. She led them north along the river, steering them mostly clear of combat. They did stop and clear out a shop full of clothing, and raiders. Piper insisted that grabbing some more ammo and maybe weapons was a good idea(“Clear the way for folks heading to Bunker Hill, or we can at least try to.”). She wasn’t wrong, the little hideout, finally, blissfully, gave up ammo. And with the ammo was plenty of clips. The prospect of saving time struggling to reload the clips in between fights had Rosalie relaxing just a bit. Even if, moments later, Piper told her in a serious tone that fights downtown were common and expected. The score of a messenger bag felt like even more of a victory. Even if Piper just laughed as Rosalie exclaimed, "Hell yeah look at this very professional messenger bag! It's even got extra pockets for holotapes!"

It began to drizzle slightly as they made their way towards Boston Common. Piper wouldn’t, or possibly couldn’t, tell her what was so terrifying about it, but they snuck their way in from the North, keeping close to the buildings. It just looked like a park to Rosalie but Piper was agitated, and Dogmeat was sticking close by.

“There’s the station, you ready? Gonna be a bunch of hot heads down there, but we can take em.” She gestured with her head but her gun was still pointed out towards the pond. A robot clunked around off to their right and Rosalie had the strangest sensation, not of being watched exactly, of something lurking around just out of sight. Unnerving.

“Yeah, I guess I’m ready as I can be,” The three snuck in, or as best as they could all things considered, Piper had some skill, Dogmeat was fairly quiet, but Rosalie could hear the echo of her boots crunching around her. They still managed to get the drop on the first group, and Piper was a good shot with a pistol. And she wasn’t squeamish, Rosalie still felt nauseous looking at the gore, but Piper? Just another day for her it would seem. When they finally made their way to the subway proper, their skills failed and it all went to shit too quickly for Rosalie to even guess what had gone wrong.

Dogmeat went down, a shot to his side, he began yowling and whimpering in pain, Rosalie had managed to duck down and get around several benches to stimpak the poor dog. But the sheer feeling of terror, about the dog dying on her when everyone else was snuffing out like candles, distracted her long enough to get hit in the head with a baseball bat. She briefly wished she’d bought a baseball helmet. Her vision became unfocused and light was more painful than where she’d be struck. The bastard stepped on her right hand as she tried to get up and kicked the gun out of her hand. She could hear Piper screaming ‘Blue get up!’, as the man went to swing at her head again. Dogmeat recovered just enough to rip into the man’s arm. His blood spraying over Rosalie’s face, she groped around for her gun, vision swimming, as the dog tried to rip the man's arm apart. Feeling the pistol's grip, she pulled the gun towards her, too fast, far too fast, and promptly vomited all over her own arms. The man fell on his side beside her so she simply put her gun against him and fired. Point blank was much different. Even with her skull pounding she could still feel the bits of bones and concrete double back to splatter her and Dogmeat.

The dog began whining at her and grabbed at her messenger bag. Rosalie reached into the messenger, looking for another stimpak, blood and vomit slicked hands couldn’t quite guess the size and shape, her feeling around making her sway and her stomach threatening to come up again. Once she had the stimpak and had administered she sat still while her world came back into focus. Eventually, after far to long from the lessening sounds of a firefight, she got herself up enough to shoot at a man taking aim at her across the room, his own shots erratic. The recoil of the gun causing the pain to regrow and redouble inside her own head.

All she could do was sit there and try not to vomit anymore as Piper and Dogmeat finished clearing out the room. Her head killed , her stomach was churning, the smell of vomit requesting more with every movement. She wanted to cry, but her head simply hurt too much to even manage that. So she focused on her breathing, and how much her hand hurt gripping her gun.

With the sound of dirt and crunching debris under foot, Piper slowly, and very loudly, made her way into Rosalie’s eyeline and kneeled beside her.

“Oh hell, that’s a shiner for sure. Dang Blue, you take a stimpak?” Rosalie attempted to nod and instead focused on not puking on Piper. “Alright, lets get another one in you. No, you need it,” She ignored Rosalie’s very mild attempt to dissuade her, with a “Gross Blue, did you puke in the bag?” muttered under her breath. Piper got her another stimpak and clean water which she insisted Rosalie sit and sip while she went and stripped the bodies of anything interesting.

By the time the second stimpak had run its course, Rosalie had finished the water and was beginning to strip out of her armor and shirt. “Hey Blue, I found a hardhat for you, and jesus I hope you're tossing that poor shirt.” Piper helped Rosalie remove the shirt and wipe as much of her own vomit off her as she could. Once she was mostly redressed Piper put the hardhat on Rosalie.

It gave her a wave of homesickness, she’d been given one similar as a kid, something an uncle gave her, with the little flashlight on the top. This one had had the batteries die centuries before however. Rosalie wondered if he was dead now, she hoped like hell he wasn't a feral. Once she was up and mostly stable on her feet Piper looked her over. “Guess this isn’t your day, but they’ll send someone to see why these guys haven’t checked in if we wait too long. And I don’t want to risk the Common’s again.”

“Onward I guess, shit I’m sorry Piper I didn’t help you at all.” At this finally Piper smiled softly at her.

“Nah, they were so busy shooting at you, I could just pick them off. If you wanna play it that way all you gotta do is say so, no need to go a round with a tough.” She laughed slightly and held out her arms dramatically for Rosalie to lead them on.

They took it slowly through the subway into the Vault, but the fighting wasn’t anywhere near as intense. For which Rosalie was thankful, she could feel the side of her face bruised, even after the stimpack had done its duty.More assholes with baseball bats, and even more with machine guns.

By the time they made it nearly to the atrium Rosalie had learned two very important things about Piper. She loved digging around, and snooping through people's possessions. And she loved seeing their valuables even more. As Rosalie popped another lock with a bobby pin, a talent picked up with Nora in school(Maybe they had a gig where Rosalie broke into offices and Nora altered grades. Maybe. Who’s to say.), Piper whistled and grinned. She could barely contain herself leaning over Rosalie’s shoulder, one hand bracing herself on Rosalie's arm, looking into the safe, “Ohhh what's in there?”

“One extremely fancy watch, and oh my god my mother would die for these.” The nicest pair of gold earrings, with little emerald’s set into green gold that was formed to look like green leaves sat inside the safe.

“Yeah? You should wear them then!” Piper ruffled through the small stack of paper at the bottom of the safe pouting when she found nothing worth the effort to read.

“Oh my god no, they’re tacky as could be.” But Rosalie pocketed them just the same.

They finally made their way into the massive central room. Vault 111 had nothing on this vault, Rosalie’s vault didn’t have half the space this one did, they hadn’t even meant for the scientists to live inside. At the top was a man yelling at a window, and judging by the man yelling back out the window; Rosalie made the guess that Nora would have loved Mr. Valentine.

Dino went down with one bullet, and then Rosalie was face to face with her first friendly synth.

He struck quite the silhouette in the dimly lit room, he would have fit right into a film she’d have snuck off to watch in high school. His thin metal fingers reflected the light of his cigarette as he lit up. His smooth synthetic flesh was torn and rough which gave him a sort of… nonorganic, 5 o’clock shadow. It fit him, fit the persona he was presenting. If he was too clean he’d stand out even more. Mr. Valentine was interested in why he was being saved, but seemed more concerned with her missing person case.

It struck her as she told him that Shaun was missing, that she didn’t even know when Shaun had gone missing. But, thankfully, he didn’t seem bothered by her lack of information.

“But now ain't the time. Let's blow this joint. Then we'll talk.” He even spoke like an old school detective from a novel.

Getting out of the vault with Valentine was much smoother than getting in. ‘Hard and loud’ is what he called her style, but he’d followed her lead. He was amusing, Mr. Valentine, with his comments about the vault and the gang. And he wasn’t wrong about the stairs, Rosalie still wasn’t used to the sheer amount of walking, and her legs were cramping bad. She stopped several times just to rub at them, which earned her a very slight pat on the back from Piper in sympathy.

Rosalie truly thought they were going to be in another large firefight once they made it to the entrance, but oddly Darla had listened when she pleaded with her to just go home and live. There was some sort of long history that Skinny and Nick had, and Rosalie was thankful. She'd killed enough people today.

It was deep and dark, the drizzle transformed to a hard rain by the time they made it back out of the vault. Nick seemed to know just the right roads to avoid fighting entirely. Rosalie and Dogmeat without trench coats of their own were soaked completely through by the time they made it back to Diamond City. So Nick waved them off, requesting the three to swing his office by in the morning.

Once inside Piper's place, Nat took one look at Rosalie, covered in sick and blood and yelled at her to go shower. A very demanding kid, Rosalie thought as stripped out of her gear to be washed, again, and got in the shower. She tried to think if she’d ever been that demanding as a kid. Probably, kids were made of something far tougher than adults it seemed at times.

Rosalie took the couch again with a slightly damp Dogmeat, the pain in her head too distracting for her to feel sorry for herself. Travis talked about Valentine returning to town briefly before he signed off for the night, some really godawful music from the 1930s playing after. Rosalie fell asleep wishing for something for the pain, her dreams reflecting it back with her mother's final dose of morphine, her hands so thin and so cold. And then she was in the vault and it wasn't Nora who was stuck in the pod, it was Mom. She woke up sobbing with Civilization playing while Dogmeat snored and twitched.

#FFfo4 #FFfo #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 6: To color in the cold grey night

The neon signs are bright against the fading light. Pink and pretty, Rosalie wonders if there are people who make neon signs still or if these are scavenged? A pair of people are discussing something called The Railroad as they make their way down a small alleyway. Piper elbows her after they pass. Her eyes lock onto Rosalie, pay attention they say, so she does.

Follow the Freedom Trail. Piper gives a single nod with her teeth clenched and eyes boring so far into her head she wonders just how many people ignore Piper. But once she nods back, Piper seems to relax and they turn and enter the agency.

It’s dimly lit, Rosalie expects it's often filled with smoke judging by the smell. It is mostly neat with piles of paper stacked up, again in ways she can’t understand. It smells a little of coffee as well, which is far more pleasant than the smoke. It reminds her a bit of her mother, which gets Rosalie to fully commit to paying attention to anything else, anything at all.

The woman sorting papers towards the back of the room doesn’t even seem to notice the two women standing behind her.

Rosalie turns towards Piper, who shrugs and finally breaks the silence with, “Hey, Ellie, where’s uhh, where’s Nicky?”

The woman turns towards them, she looks tired to the bone, something that sleep won’t help, Rosalie expects she looks the same. “Nick’s gone missing Miss Piper. I told him his luck would run out.”

Piper elbows Rosalie, hard, in the ribs giving her another intense stare down that prompts Rosalie to ask, “Where did he go? Maybe we could help find him?” Piper gives her a tiny thumbs up below Ellie’s eyesight.

Ellie puts the papers she was shuffling down and leans slightly on a filing cabinet. Arms crossed, lips thinning from the frown she makes. She sounds worried sick with an edge of defeat in her voice, “Nick was working a case, kidnapped daughter. He tracked her to Skinny Malone’s gang all holed up in Park Street Station. He headed over there and then… he hasn’t been home in weeks. I told him it was a trap but he just went on ahead like he always does”. She shrugs slightly, but her face doesn't read as nonchalant.

“Jesus Ellie, gone that long? We'll find him, don't you worry,” Piper says, pointing with her head to go back out the door, tugging slightly on Rosalie's jumpsuit.

Rosalie pauses a moment, she isn’t equipped to fight anything else right now, let alone a gang , unless it's more ferals, a feral gang, and too many questions are burning through her. “Who is Skinny Malone? How big is his gang?”

Ellie seems more relaxed for a moment, the details things she’s likely replayed in her mind, “I don’t know much about Malone, he’s from Goodniehgbor, which means he’s in the well pressed suits and machine guns school of thuggery. And I’m not sure about the gang, I know they’ve holed themselves into that old vault below the subway.“ Vault. Fuck. Because the one she’d been in was so much fun.

“Hey, thanks, we’ll be back before you know it.” False cheer never hurt anyone right? With that she followed Piper out into the alleyway. “So uhh I don’t know about you, but I need to buy more ammo if we are going to fight… and maybe more armor. And a helmet.” There was an frantic edge to her voice that she hated, but Piper at least was more level headed.

“Hey, hey, we’ve got this. Honestly, a bunch of drunk and drugged up thugs doesn’t concern me. Walking into the common does. People don’t come back from there, but maybe we can scoot around the pond with that Pip-Boy of yours.” she gestured towards Rosalie’s arm.

“I’m all for creeping. But seriously, I need to buy some more ammo... And find some place to sleep, I don’t want to go out during the night.” At least one of them was calm, and being around Piper was rubbing off on her a bit, Nora had once said confidence was sexy. Maybe there was something to that, maybe not sexy but deeply comforting.

“You can sleep on the couch back at my place, so long as you don’t mind Nat listening to Diamond City Radio all night, and I think Arthuro closes in a few minutes so we better head over.” Her hand is warm on Rosalie's shoulder as she lightly pats her. From anyone else it would be patronizing, but it doesn't feel that way coming from Piper, maybe the confidence thing also was disarming.

What was left of Rosalie’s small cap collection was spent on ammo, and a little bit of lining for her leather chest piece. Piper insisted on getting information from the noodle making robot and laughed herself silly at the look on Rosalie’s face, eventually buying her some more noodle’s to go.

The couch was actually more comfortable than anywhere else she’d be staying in the past few days, and far more importantly, Piper had spare clothing, a washer and dryer… and a shower. If Rosalie cried over finally having her hair clean of blood, Piper didn’t say anything. She did however make Dogmeat go shake himself dry outside after he sprayed half her little home in water. The dog came back in with the stuffed bear that was almost pristine. And stayed that way for a few solid minutes before it was coated in drool.

The radio DJ was… a mess honestly, maybe just as much of a terrified mess as she was, and somehow that was soothing, that someone from here was just as terrified as her. So she listened as he talked while she curled up with Dogmeat on the couch much the same as her first night out here. But with Travis' voice filling the room she slept, blissfully free of dreams.

#FFFO #FFFO4 #FFcstf #sosu_rosalie

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corvega-assembly · 3 years

Text

Can’t See the Future

Chapter 5: You’ve got to get yourself together

Myrna wasn’t crazy, she was paranoid and terrified with an aggressive personality that made Rosalie’s head spin. Add to that some clear bigotry at work and it was easy to see why she was avoided so much. Arthuo had called her the New Girl and had been friendly enough and had given her a little bag of caps for her Fat Man and ammo for it, moments after Polly had taught her what it was the people ate. In the end the lack of ability to cook anything, or to make a fire, or to carry it left Rosalie purchasing never-expiring food stuffs. Mostly TV Dinners. And a fair amount of dog food for Dogmeat. Dogmeat, who the hell had named him Dogmeat ? Yes, this is my son, Humanmeat.

More importantly she had gotten a toothbrush, toothpaste and various other sundries. And clean water, that had been amazing. She’d spent most of her time shopping asking questions that had exasperated the sales people, but hell if everyone already knew she was 'New', then who cared how strange her questions seemed. She even got some noodles for her and Dogmeat before heading back to speak with Piper.

Outside Piper’s place, was a little girl who had the same confidence and moxie as Piper, clearly a sister, who sold her a paper and warned her of synths. But not the kind she’d fought, no, according to Nat they looked just like everyone else. Rosalie felt like she should be surprised, or alarmed at the very least, but instead it just was another thing that was weird about this place she found herself in. There were too many new things putting cold fingers down her spine already, someone she didn’t know not being who they said they were was pretty minor, all things considered.

“How you holding up blue?” Piper asked once she made her way inside, gesturing for her to take a seat on the couch while Piper sat on the edge of a coffee table. Her place was clean. And chaotic. Everything in its place, which only Nat and Piper knew where that place was. Unsurprisingly it smelled like paper, but there was also the smell of cedar mixed in as well, not a bad smell.

“Why are you calling me that?” Rosalie said, distracted by looking at chalk drawings on the metal walls.

“Blue vault suit. You’re a Vault dweller.” Piper’s response was no nonsense, but disbelieving, she knew a lot it would seem, or saw a lot. Another thing she had in common with Nora, Nora was good at picking up things that Rosalie never noticed. She could say with certainty Nora would have liked Piper. The thought hurt, but Nora wasn't good with a gun, Rosalie couldn't see in making it past Concord. But maybe, with Shaun missing, maybe she could have...

Piper took a breath before continuing, “So here's the deal. I want an interview. Your life story in print. I think it's time Diamond City had a little outside perspective on the Commonwealth. And as a bonus for helping me out, I help you out, I can come with you. Watch your back while you get used to this crazy, above ground world.” She laughed a bit, not unkindly, her grin said she knew the answer already.

Rosalie glanced down at herself, was the vault suit really that big of a give away? It was under the rest of her gear but… well. “Uhh I guess, but I didn’t spend a lot of time in the vault. Well I did, but I wasn’t aware of it. We were frozen? Cryostasis pods that -”

“Wait, you’re from before the war?” Piper was on the edge of the table now, her pencil stopped entirely, eyes large, her grin absolutely massive.

“I' over 200 years old, yeah.” Rosalie winced, saying it out loud gave it more weight, sharing it gave it permeance. There were sci-fi books about this, but generally people woke up to a magical and shining future not… this.

“Oh my god.” Well, at least one of them was excited, “Okay, so you’ve seen a bit of Diamond City, and seen some of the commonwealth. How does it compare to your old life?” Pencil poised, Piper looked so genuinely intrigued that it was a little easier to try and continue.

“It doesn’t, not really. But I see people trying out here, and that makes me want to try too, to keep going... even if I want to stop and cry.” Which was true, this place was nothing like home, even before the war. Boston had been uncomfortable and way too busy, too many people going way too fast. But if other people, who likely had it worse than her kept going, why couldn’t she? It was a nice thought even if deep down she didn’t believe it.

“Now, I know you’re looking for a baby? Shaun? Who’s that?” If Piper sensed a lie she was good enough to not address it, looking back down at her pencil and paper.

“My.. My nephew. My sister and her husband died in the vault, and someone came in and took him. He was only a few months old.” Rosalie frowned. Once she found him, how the hell was she going to take care of him? She’d only watched him twice and didn’t know anything else about children. Biting her lip she wondered how she would even feed him.

Before she could ride another downward thought process Piper asked, “Do you suspect the institute?”

“The people that make the synths? Why would they want a baby?” She said, surprised, Rosalie’s eyebrows knitted together.

“Hmm I’m not sure, but no one really knows the motives of the institute, sometimes they wipe out entire towns, or swap people out for synth doubles. So do you think it could be them?”

“Sure sounds like they might be.” A give, not exactly something Rosalie felt herself, but she could see what Piper wanted and Rosalie was desperate for a friend, for help.

“For the last part of our interview I’d like to do something different. I want you to make a statement to Diamond City directly, the threat of kidnapping is all but ignored, everyone wants to pretend it just doesn’t happen. What would you say to someone who’s lost a loved one, but might be too scared, or too numb to the world, to look for them?” Piper sounded concerned, but if ever there was a fishing, probing, question this one was it. Rosalie thought about it for a moment. Honestly finding Shaun was all she had left. She couldn’t go home, not any time soon anyway, if it even still existed.

“I guess… I would say, No matter how much you want to give up. Don’t. You need that hope, that you’ll see them again, or at least you’ll know what’s happened.” That, at least, was what she hoped someone would say to her.

Piper stood, putting her pencil and notebook into her jacket, her smile was softer now, “That’s it, it will take me some time to put it together but you’ve just given Diamond City plenty to talk about. And hey, I promised I’d come with you, so what do you say? Ready to talk to Nick? His place will still be open for a while yet.”

So Rosalie stood, stretched, gestured for Dogmeat to follow and headed out to meet the Detective.

#FFFO4 #FFFO #sosu_rosalie #FFcstf

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