Chapter Text
The yao guai hadn't stuck around after the explosion. The small playground where it had decided to live was deserted.
Nora dragged her ass behind him. Most people walked right through the middle of Boston to get between the two cities, but Nora had insisted that the riverfront had been cleared and was perfectly safe for traveling. The Minutemen had apparently been hard at work trying to make it a safe passage from one end of the city to the other.
The sound of the Charles rushing past and splashing against the concrete embankment made the walk almost serene. Nora's slow pace, which was driving him up the wall before, suddenly seemed a reasonable speed to take. It was so quiet and uneventful, he found himself spacing out a bit.
The sun had long since set by the time they made it to Hangman's Alley. Nora kept her head ducked as she passed through the guard station.
"What happened to you?" The guard asked.
Nora lifted her hand to rub her nose when she answered, concealing her bleeding gums. "Oh you know. Found some trouble. Can you do me a favor and not let anyone know I'm here yet? I need to clean up…"
The guard nodded, eyeing MacCready in his dusty coat. "Sure thing, ma'am."
The Minutemen had been busy building the alley up into a usable outpost. MacCready had assumed that they'd been trying to build another town within the city, a representation of the Minutemen in the ruins of Boston. What he found was part workshop, part hostel, part store room. There were several workstations set up with various tools strewn about on them. The whole alley was lined with crates seeming to contain everything from food and blankets to weapons and armor. A structure had been built overhead, connecting the two buildings.
"That's the bunk house," Nora pointed to the stairs leading into the skybridge. "You can have any bed that's open." She pointed to a cookpot at the base of the stairs. "Food and water's there. Help yourself to whatever."
MacCready studied the tarps that had been carefully strung between the buildings, effectively making the whole alley a passable shelter.
"How long has this been here?" he asked. It couldn't have been there the last time he'd passed through this way. Although… when was that anyways? A month and a half ago? Two, maybe? He'd taken a job for a random merchant a while back escorting them out of the city. Had he really not noticed this then?
When he didn't get an answer, he turned to find Nora gone. He looked around helplessly. Had she really just left him to his own devices? They passed a crate on their way in that looked like it may have had some medical supplies in it and he'd noted it as a cashe of small, high value items.
Before he could make a move, though, Nora had emerged from a little shack that was tucked away between work stations. She held out a handful of those neatly stacked caps for Mac, not bothering to unwind them this time.
"Thanks for sticking with me. I'm sorry about…" Nora sighed, her face twisting into a look of distaste before finally she said "Sorry about earlier."
Mac didn't really know what to say, so he just said "Yeah."
Nora gave a firm nod before turning and advancing on the spigot tucked away in a muddy corner.
Mac counted the stack of caps she'd handed him, and then he counted them again. 120. He eyed the door she'd come out of. Had she done that on purpose?
He pocketed them quickly, before she could realize.
Nora had started pumping water into a bucket when a slight woman with short blonde hair appeared from the other end of the alley.
"Nora!" she exclaimed, too loudly by the look on Nora's face. "I thought I heard your voice. What happened?"
Nora oriented her back to the woman before picking up the bucket of water and dumping it over her head. She gasped, shocked by the cold water. It was unseasonably warm that night for a Boston winter- meaning it was fucking frigid. The alley was fairly well closed off but it wasn't exactly a sauna. She shook the excess water off quickly, dropping the bucket and pushing her hair out of her eyes.
"Christ, Nora! It's freezing out here!" The woman grabbed a blanket from one of the nearby crates. Nora was shivering violently, but was already busy filling another bucket and lathering the soap.
"I've just been out there too long, Annie. I'll be fine. A bath and some radaway," she started scrubbing at her face, wincing as she touched her rad burns, "and I'll be back on the circuit. Good as new."
Annie tsked and hovered helplessly nearby, holding the blanket up as if she hoped to catch Nora in it. Nora splashed water over her face before working at the buckles on her armor with shaking hands.
Mac picked up a bucket of his own from the stack nearby, carefully avoiding Nora's splashing and mud flinging.
He took off his coat and splashed water over his bare arms, his neck, his face. Fuck it was cold.
"How are things here?" Nora asked, scraping at the sludge on her arms.
Mac snatched up a nearby towel and dried his face. When he opened his eyes, Annie was eyeing him.
She blushed and looked away quickly when she realized she'd been caught. "Fine miss Nora. Things have been…" she sighed, shuffled her feet. Mac gestured for Nora to hand over the soap. She did so without argument, even as precious a commodity as it was.
"Well, really it's been a little overwhelming. I think that recording you made may have been a little…" Annie trailed off and Nora froze, nails poised to scrape more grime down her arm. Mac tried not to make it too obvious that they'd piqued his interest.
"A little what, Annie? Did it work or not?"
"Oh it worked alright. We had 6 people just today. 2 singles, a couple, and a mother and son."
Nora's mouth hung open for a moment while she stared at the woman. "Wow," she finally said, dragging her nails down her arm and flicking the grime away into the corner.
Annie turned to Mac again, shyly but openly this time. "Seven now, I guess." she said, regarding him from under her eyelashes. Cute.
Mac winked at her as he picked the dirt out from under his nails and she flushed a deep red, turning her gaze abruptly away.
"He's not a recruit," Nora said quickly, oblivious. She began unbuttoning her shirt and Mac made a point to turn his back to the women. "So then are there any beds open?" Nora asked.
"No, I'm sorry," Annie's meek voice replied. "We're full up. Got people sleepin' on the floors…"
Mac rinsed the grimey suds from his face and arms. Great. No bed. Not like he hadn't been sleeping on the floor of the statehouse already, but still. He'd gotten excited about staying in a cushy Minuteman settlement for once.
He wasn't completely clean but it was way too cold to do any more. He put his coat back on.
"Well then," Nora paused and Mac heard her upend the bucket over her head again. Annie squealed when the water splashed their feet.
"You're gonna catch your death, Miss Nora, and I ain't gonna bury you!"
"Yeah you will," she answered cheerily.
The spigot squeaked as Nora pumped more water into her bucket. "Sounds like we're gonna have our work cut out for us in the mornin'. You should go on to bed."
"But you just got here…"
"And I'll still be here tomorrow."
Mac left his bucket to dry with the others before moving towards the food stash.
"There are blankets by the workshop that you can use," Nora called after him.. "Sorry there aren't any beds."
Mac waved her off before raiding the pantry.. There were noodles and noodles and a few noodles to choose from. What looked like grilled radstag sat wrapped in paper next to the cook pot. He wondered if it was spoken for. Mac grabbed a can of water and cracked it. When he poured it in the pot, the label caught his eye.
The can had the Minutemen sigil stamped on it along with the words '*Sanctuary Pure* est 2287'
So the Minutemen were bottling and labeling their own purified? He eyed the stack of crates where he'd found it. Each had the same stamp on them, and they were huge. There had to be a couple hundred cans there.
He emptied the can into the cookpot and then fished out and cracked another, downing it in one go. He checked to make sure Nora and Annie weren't looking before stuffing a few more in his pack. Purified was expensive. Is this why Nora seemed to have such deep pockets?
"G'night, Mac," Annie called across the alley as she started up a flight of stairs into the skybridge. He raised his empty water can to her. She turned away and practically ran up the stairs. Cute.
When he turned to see what Nora made of that, he found that she had left him alone again. Light shone out from underneath the same door from earlier. The workshop, maybe?
Mac finished up boiling his noodles and added the radstag bits for flavor. If anyone was going to miss them, they should have hidden them better. After filling up on noodles, (and filling his bag with more cans of water,) he was ready to find a place to make a pallet and get a few hours in.
He was going to have to make it back to Goodneighbor in the morning and look for more work, and not just for pennies this time. It was time to do whatever he could to make some serious caps. Fast. If the brush with death earlier that day had been good for anything, it was good for delivering him a swift kick in the ass. Enough dawdling around, sneaking under the Gunner's noses and twiddling his thumbs while he waited for a MedTek solution to drop into his lap. He needed to go out and get that cure.
MacCready looked in the crates surrounding the workshop. No blankets. Had she said "by" the workshop or "in" the workshop?
He knocked on the workshop door. Nothing. Maybe she had just left the light on accidentally and gone somewhere else for the night...
He opened the door and found two blankets. One was neatly tucked in on a small, dingy looking cot next to a workbench, unoccupied. The workbench was sizable with neatly arranged piles of wiring and screws and bolts and gears and things scattered across it.
The other blanket he found was draped over Nora who was herself draped over the workbench, dead asleep. There was a IV bag of radaway hanging from a peg on the wall, the tubing running under the blanket.
Asleep and with the soft light of the bulb overhead, Nora's face came off less sickly and thin. She was still undernourished, there was no doubt about that, but her skin looked clearer and softer than it had under all that dirt. The stern concentration she had expressed most of the day had dissolved into a quiet, peaceful innocence. Mac wondered what her face might look like with the radiation burn healed as well.
He also wondered if she was gonna move to her bed at some point or if he could take it.
After adjusting her blanket to sit more firmly over her shoulders, Mac retreated and shut the door quietly behind him. He found the bedding she'd mentioned, headed up into the bunkhouse and found a place to drop off into sleep.