Chapter Text
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war.
-Julius Caesar, Act III
By the time she comes strolling into the Third Rail to interrupt his trainwreck of a life, she's already made a name for herself, not that he knows who she is at first. Even here in Goodneighbor they've heard that the Minutemen are back, that they took the wreck of the old Castle and they've started broadcasting again. Mac's even heard tell of a new General in their ranks, though he never got a name or description. He's caught snatches when he's in and out of some of the shops - Daisy likes to swap to Radio Freedom when Travis starts rambling too long - but he hasn't paid 'em much mind. Good to know they came back after Quincy, but- Not really something he wants to think too much about, all things considered. And history aside, there's not much call to go getting himself involved with a bunch of do-gooders, anyway. If there's one thing he's learned over the years, it's that there's no caps in being a nice guy.
Unfortunately.
Mac notices her when she comes into the room, of course - he didn't survive this long by being oblivious to his surroundings, especially not when they involve well-armed strangers - but she doesn't interrupt, just gives him a nod and goes to the back wall to wait, lighting a cigarette and watching him mouth off to Winlock through the resulting haze of smoke.
"You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you're still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?"
Fuck him so hard with a rusty chainsaw. "You finished?"
"Yeah… we're finished. Come on, Barnes."
He keeps a wary eye on their exit, not entirely sure that they're not going to turn and pull on him at the last minute until they're gone. Then, and only then, does he let out a long, slow breath and turn to the stranger who came in after them.
Hard case, he thinks immediately, but there's plenty of those down here, and at least she's not threatening to fill him with lead, unlike his previous visitors. Her clothes have seen better days, but she's got money in her gear: the leather armor's clean, of good quality, and stained dark to blend in against her patched leather duster. She's got a pistol strapped to her left thigh and a sawed-off shotgun on her right, and she's wearing a pair of damn nice shooting gloves that makes him willing to bet that she left something bigger with Ham up the stairs. Strapped like that, with her long red hair shaved away at the sides raider-style, she's pretty much gotta be a merc - but damned if he's ever met a merc that could afford a Pip-boy like that. Out of a vault, maybe?
If so, she's been out for a long fucking time. There's an old plasma burn on her forehead, a mess of white splotches on her cheek that look like cryo-treated rad burns, and there's a fresh-looking tangle of pinkish scars over her mouth and down her chin that looks like something got to her with claws. It's hard to eyeball her build with her loose clothes, but her cheeks have the hollow look of the perennially underfed, so she's been living lean for a while. She's no junkie, at least - her fingers are perfectly steady on the cigarette, no jet jitters or psycho twitch - but there's something a little wild about her, a coiled kind of danger in the seemingly casual way she leans against the wall. He wonders if her fuckoff dark shades are there to hide a bad case of crazy eyes; there's not much call to wear them down in this smoky shithole otherwise. She's gotta be half blind.
You can't afford crazy, MacCready, he tells himself, but the hollow feeling in his belly tells him he can't really afford to turn down work, either. And only someone crazy take on someone who's feuding with the Gunners. If she's willing to pick up a gun with a target on his back, he's not sure he can tell her no.
Duncan, he tells himself, and takes a deep breath. You're doing this for Duncan.
"Look, lady," he says, because he always mouths off when he's nervous and the fixed, blank way the lenses of her shades are fixed on him is making him pretty fucking nervous. "If you're preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you've got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun… then maybe we can talk."
She doesn't answer at first, just turns to stub out her cigarette out against the countertop, and he sees that her right ear's down to just a stump, either chewed off or cut with a bad blade. She lets out a last stream of smoke and folds her hands over her belt, confidence writ large in every lean line of her.
"What makes you think I'm here for business?" Her voice is unexpectedly low and smooth, startling in comparison to her scarred-up face. "Maybe I got lost on the way to bathroom."
"I'm an optimist," he says flatly. And she's a comedian; just his fucking luck. "Either you're here to pay me to shoot somebody, in which case it's two-fifty caps upfront, no negotiation - or it's out the hall, third door on your left, can't miss it."
If she’s put off by his bad attitude, she doesn’t much show it. “Two-fifty’s a little rich for my blood,” she says. Tap-tap-tap, go her fingers on her belt buckle. "And I only need you for a single job. Think I could talk you down?”
“Am I talking to myself? I said no negotiation.”
Fuck, he wishes he could read her better. The slow, lazy grin that curls her scarred mouth doesn't do much to counter his sense of unease, either. “Everything's up for negotiation," she says, and that'd be a bad sign even if her hands weren't so conspicuously close to her holsters. "But let me tell you the job, first, and we'll see if you're willing to take it."
"I don't do anything with animals, kids, or birthday clowns," he says promptly, a little bit because the way she's eyeing him is starting to nerve him out a little but mostly because he doesn't know how to keep his smart mouth shut. He doesn’t expect the burst of laughter that cracks out of her - real rusty, like she doesn’t laugh much. Her hand drops away from her holster and she pushes her shades up onto the top of her head with an impatient swipe, revealing sharp green eyes that are crinkled up in the corners from mirth.
Huh, he thinks, staring at her. She doesn't look crazy at all.
"You," she says, her voice warm with good humor. "I like you. I think we're gonna get along just fine, MacCready."
"Yeah?" he says, a little disoriented by her sudden change of tone but game. He could really use the caps, and the Gunners haven't exactly made it easy for him to get a paying gig. "You could at least give me your name, y'know. If we're going to be working together, and all."
She straightens away from the wall, closes the distance between them in a lazy saunter. Sticks out one gloved hand. "Call me Sole," she invites. "It's good to meet you. Say, how'd you feel about breaking into a vault?"
"I was wrong," he tells her, a few hours later. Another bullet pings off the canister above his head, and he scowls and leans out from cover, gets off another shot. "You're absolutely crazy."
"I said we were breaking into a vault, I don't see what the problem is." Sole eases the tip of her rifle - a beautifully modded semi-auto that he'd be admiring under any other circumstances - over the edge of their cover, braces it against her shoulder, and then leans up, sights, and fires in one smooth motion. There's a gurgling yelp followed by a thud, and the rate of fire from the other end of the room cuts in half. "You were the one who was more concerned about getting caps up front than information."
"Shouldn’t have let you talk me down on the payment,” he growls. There’s four other goons on the ground next to them, and another two across the railway. Mac’s good in a firefight, but damn. “You can’t spend loot if you die first. If I'd known you were breaking into a vault full of Triggermen, I would have asked for double.”
She just grins at him, and he realizes that her whole body is loose and relaxed, no sign of stress on her at all. She seemed more tense buying him a drink at the Rail, and while admittedly there's always a chance someone's going to try and put a blade in you down there, the odds are a lot better than a whole bunch of trigger-happy mobsters trying to put a bullet in them down here, so who the hell knows what her deal is.
"Yeah, but then you'd miss out on all this fun," she chirps, and sets her rifle down so she can pull her shotgun out of its holster. "Look, it's simple. Our target is down in that vault. Those welcoming fellows are between us and our target. We eliminate the obstacles, retrieve our target, and get the hell out. Done and done."
"Simple, huh?" he says, and entirely in spite of himself, he starts to smile. She's crazier than a radroach on Jet, but hell if he doesn't like her style. "Well, when you put it that way, Boss, how can I refuse?"
She grins back at him. "That's what I like to hear."
"You want some covering fire if you're going to wave that thing around?"
"If you'd be so kind," she says, and cocks the shotgun. "Count of three?"
"One, two, three," he says, and swings his rifle back up, starts firing as fast as he can. Sole vaults over their cover and works her way down the railway to the steps, moving fast and keeping low, ducking and weaving to avoid gunfire. Mac manages to get a bullet in the mobster's thigh right before the bastard could get a bead on her, which makes him swing his gun back around towards Mac and he has to duck again. But that's okay, because a moment later he hears the crack of her shotgun, loud and echoing in the train station, followed by the muffled wet noise of a knife sliding into something vital. There’s the thump of a body dropped carelessly to pavement, and then a moment later she sounds the all-clear whistle and he cautiously pokes his head back out of cover.
"You good?" she calls over, and he takes quick stock of his extremities and then gives her a thumbs-up. "Good job. Go over the bodies, take everything you can carry, and then meet me over in the office. We move in five."
"Got it." He picks up her rifle, whistles low and cocks an interrogative eyebrow. "Catch?"
"Yeah, throw it over," she says, and puts away her shotgun so her hands are free. He steps to the edge of the platform and tosses it in a gentle arc, and she snatches it out of the air and gives him a quick wink before she holsters it and turns away. "Keep an eye out for any spare ammo," she adds, already rifling through one of the Triggerman's pockets. "I don't exactly think this was their entire security by any means. The last thing I want to do is run out of bullets when we're too far in to go back."
"I'm on it, Boss," he says, and turns away. Not so fast that he doesn't catch the small, pleased grin she gives him from the other platform, like he did something right. It leaves him with a pleasant warmth in his belly as he bends to his task, despite his best intentions to ignore it.
Sucker, he tells himself. But there's worse things to be.
Sole's 'target' is Diamond City's premier synthetic detective. You could honestly knock him over with a feather.
"Not that I don't appreciate the reverse damsel-in-distress scenario here, but what the hell are you doing here?" Valentine asks. "I didn't know anyone even knew I was down here, much less would want to come looking."
"I got a tip that you're the only one in the Commonwealth who can handle an... unusual missing persons case," Sole says. She's tense again, though you couldn't tell it from the easy tone of her voice; it's only the tight line of her back that gives it away. "Let's just call it a favor for a favor."
"Some favor," Valentine says, his eyebrows raised. "But sure, not exactly going to look a gift horse in the mouth right about now. Think you can get us out of here?"
"We cleared away most of the men on our way down, though I'm sure he's got more where those came from," she says. "We can go back the way we came, but I'm sure someone's found the bodies by now and called for reinforcements. You got a gun?"
"They weren’t real keen on leaving me armed,” Valentine says, looking torn between amused and annoyed. "But what I do have is a faster way out. I don't think Malone was exactly planning to let me go this time, so he took me down through the back entrance. If the guards are following you-"
"-then they're less likely to be clustered around the back door," Sole finishes. "I like it. After you, Mr. Valentine."
"You're saving my life, I think you can call me Nick," Valentine says dryly, and heads out the door. Behind him, Mac gives her a speaking look.
"What?"
"You could have told me we were on a rescue mission for one of the most famous residents of Diamond City," he points out. "I'm just saying, you're not real great with sharing information."
"And you're not real great about asking," she says, but not accusatory, just making a point. "We get out of here alive, we can discuss it further. That work for you?"
"Sure thing, Boss," he says. She grabs his shoulder and gives it a quick squeeze, then follows Valentine out the door.
The detective has managed to arm himself in the intervening moments, with a pistol that looks a lot like the one ol' Dino had on him before Sole splattered his brains against the storage room window with that fuckin' beautiful shot. "You kids ready to go?"
"Watch it with the 'kid' shit," Sole says mildly, before Mac has a chance to do more than bristle. She slings up her rifle to rest it over her shoulder. "But yeah. After you, detective."
"Try not to shoot me in the back," Valentine advises, and cranes his head to show the empty place where his throat should be. "I've got enough holes in me as it is."
"I think you'll be satisfied with our performance," Sole says easily, and grins that shark grin that Mac's already gotten used to seeing in the middle of a firefight. "Lead the way, detective. We'll cover your six."
When the shooting's done, Valentine heads for the surface and Sole sets to scavenging the corpses with the same businesslike thoroughness she's displayed all day. Mac does the same, settling into the comfortable silence that rides between them, only to be surprised a few minutes later when he hears a laugh from the other side of the room. He looks up to see her with Skinny Malone's hat perched on top of her head.
"So, how's it look?"
Mac only raises an eyebrow. "I thought you already had a hat."
She balls up the little cloth cap she wears to keep the light out of her eyes when she's shooting and shoves it in her pocket. "Yeah, but this is fancy."
"I dunno, Boss, you sure black is your color?"
She tilts it to a rakish angle. "Black is everyone's color."
He grabs another pocketful of caps and gives her a considering look. It's not that it doesn't look good on her, it's just- "It'll fall off the second you start shooting."
"Fuck, you're right," she sighs, and pulls it off, dropping it carelessly back onto the body. "You're a practical man, MacCready. I like that about you." And then, before he has a chance to figure out what to say in response, "You about done? Only I figure the good detective isn't going to wait forever."
Mac does a quick pat-down of the final goon, liberates a sweet-looking boot knife, and then stands. "Yep. Ready to head out when you are."
"Thank Christ, I was starting to think we'd be stuck down here forever." She falls into step with him easy as anything, their boot heels ringing in perfect sync on the metal walkway out of the vault. "Man was not made to live underground. It's unnatural."
"Ah, I don't know," Mac says, with a quick look up at the roof of the cavern above them. He's lived in a lot of places in the last ten years, but Little Lamplight will always be home. "I don't feel quite right without some stone over my head, myself."
She shoots him a quick sideways look. "You grew up in a vault?"
"Something like that." He clears his throat. "What about you? You from around here?"
Her quick flash of a smile looks more bitter than anything. "For a time. Been away for a while, though. Feels like a whole new world now. Still getting used to it."
"I hear that. Came up from the Capital Wasteland myself, and it's a bit different than I remember. Politics, mostly. Still, you know what I think?"
He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, why he even opened his mouth, but she just glances over at him with nothing but mild interest. "What's that?"
"People are the same all over the da- darn place. The factions might change, the landmarks are a little different, but everything else? Nah."
"You figure?"
"Yeah. You live by the gun, you die by the gun, or you just die. Nothing ever really changes.”
The pause that follows is almost uncomfortable, she's staring at him so intently. He has the feeling that she's seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time. She cocks her head to the side, and he braces himself.
“You know what, MacCready? I couldn’t agree more.”
Aboveground, Valentine is waiting for them, leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette. Mac looks at it a little longingly (man, what does a robot even need with nicotine, anyway?) but promises himself that he’ll just buy a pack off one of the scavvers when he gets back into town. Between Sole’s caps and the looting, he’s about as flush as he’s been in almost three months, so he can afford it.
“Ah, that Commonwealth sky," Valentine says. "Never thought anything so naturally ominous could look so inviting."
"Doesn't take much to get to a point where anything looks better than the hole you're in," Sole says. There's an ironic twist to her mouth. "Glad you made it out with your sense of humor intact."
"What else is there?" Valentine says. He stubs out his cigarette and straightens. "Thanks for getting me out, by the by. How'd you even know where to find me? Not many people knew where I went."
"I have my ways."
It's hard to tell on a robot, but Mac thinks Valentine looks somewhere between amused and annoyed. "Well, whatever your ways, I owe you one. You mentioned something about a missing persons case?"
"Yeah, it's… complicated." She shoots Mac an uneasy look, but he just holds up his hands. Not like he wants to get involved in her personal shit anyway.
"I'll just be over here."
"Thanks, MacCready," she says, and gives his shoulder another quick squeeze. She's got a good grip, steadying, and he smiles a little to himself as he goes over to wait in the doorway.
The December air nips hard at the back of his neck, and he shivers and wishes that he'd gotten around to putting in the extra lining in his duster like he meant to do a few weeks ago. Cold season hits a little harder up north here than it does in the Capital, and he's not going to be spending this one holed up all snug in Gunner quarters. Maybe he should forgo the smokes in favor of an extra sweater or something.
He watches Sole explain something to Valentine, her gestures muted in the small space between them. The detective pulls a little flipbook out of his coat pocket and makes a couple quick notes, then gives her a short nod and they exchange a friendly-looking handshake. Whatever favor she asked in return, it can't be too bad.
She comes back over as Valentine heads off down one of the side streets, hands stuck in her pockets and a pensive expression on her face. He clears his throat. "All good, Boss?"
"Hmm?" She gives a tiny shake of her head, and then a rueful smile. "Yeah, all good. Listen, there's something I wanted to talk about."
That's always a bad sign, Mac thinks. "What's that?"
She shoves her hands a little deeper into her pockets and hunches her shoulders. “I think we made a pretty good team back there.”
Well, that was better than he was expecting. “Yeah?” says Mac, all casual, like she’s not the best fucking gun he’s ever worked with. “Not too shabby, I guess.”
“Better than that,” she says, with an amused look that says she sees right through his posturing. “Been around the block a time or two, not many who can keep up like you did."
“Stop it, Boss, you’re going to make me blush,” he jokes, partly because he’s an asshole and partly because he doesn’t know what to do with an honest compliment. “What’s your point, anyway?”
She rolls her eyes. “My point, asshole, is that I’d be down to… extend our association a bit. If you are.”
Fuck yes, he thinks immediately, but does his best to keep his eagerness off his face. She was quick enough to take advantage of his desperation earlier to drive down the price; no need to give her ammunition to do it again. “I might be,” he says cautiously. “Depends on what you’re asking.”
“Nothing too complicated. I’ve been picking up a fair bit of work lately, and I could really use a second gun. I’ve got some contracts to finish down in the city, but most of my work is out in the Commonwealth. Clearing out raider nests, feral packs, that kinda thing. It’s a lot of travelling, not sure if that’s a problem for you.”
Truth be told, Mac feels better on the open road then he does in the city - there’s a lot more room to shoot, for one thing, and a lot less people to bother you. A lot less safety in numbers, too, but her offer takes care of that pretty neat. Still, a whole lot of road with only two people on it either means you get real close, real quick, or your association tends to end bloody. He’s not sure how he feels about those odds just yet.
“Like I said, I came up from the Capital,” he says. “Travelling isn’t an issue.”
“Yeah, good, that’s what I figured,” she nods. “Look, the work is steady, I can tell you that much. I'm doing a sort of... freelance gig. Farmers and traders are always willing to pay for a little defense on hand. And the loot’s good, real fucking good. You could make a living just from that, most weeks.”
He doesn’t doubt it. "Doin' settlement work, huh? And here I thought the Minutemen were takin' care of that kinda thing these days."
She says nothing. His jaw drops.
"No way. You?"
"Uh, well." She looks about as discomfited as he's ever seen her. "You wanted full disclosure, right? I, uh, I'm the General, I guess." She grimaces, not seeming to notice the way his heart's suddenly lodged itself somewhere around the back of his throat. "God, that still sounds stupid. There's like ten of us, we're not much of an army, but- yeah. I led the hit on the Castle, so I guess that means I get the fancy hat." She scrubs a hand over the top of her bare head. "Metaphorically speaking. Look, is this going to be a problem? We've got buy-in from a bunch of the farms in the area, and the badge is like an automatic in on protection jobs even for the ones who don't fly the flag, so- Like I said, the work's steady. I'm not asking you to sign on the dotted line, just shoot some shit."
"I am good at that," he says, a little faintly. The fucking Minutemen. Goddamn, but fate's a fickle bitch sometimes, ain't she? "No, uh, no problem on that front. As long as the caps are good."
The relieved grin that splits her face pinches at him a bit, but Mac isn’t about lying to himself. He doesn’t want to walk away from this, and he sure as hell doesn’t want her to walk away either. History's dead just like every other bastard he's shot, and he's paid his price in blood. If fate's going to drop this one in his lap, he's going to grab on for as long as he can.
“Trust me, there's no problem on that front. Full split on any loot we grab, and if we go through a lean week I’ll make up the difference in caps - say, three hundred minimum? That sound fair?”
Better than any other offer he's likely to get anytime soon. Fuck Winlock, anyway. Would it have been so hard to just leave him the fuck alone? “It’s on the low end of my usual price, but steady work is better no matter how you slice it, and I get the feeling that you don’t have a lot of lean weeks. Yeah, I could do that, for a while at least.” No sense in letting her get cocky. “Not promising forever.”
“And I’m not asking it,” she says. “We’ve each got our own shit to handle, I know how it goes. But if you’ve got a couple months to give me, I could sure as shit use the help.”
“I don't know about a couple months,” he temporizes. He's not making promises he can't keep, and with the Gunners on his back there's not a lot of longevity he can swear to. "Things are a little… up in the air for me at the moment."
"Fair enough," she says. She's tapping her fingers on her belt buckle again, but this time it doesn't feel like a threat, just thoughtful. "How about a couple weeks then? Nick said he's going to make the rounds of his usual haunts, let everyone know he's back in town, and then I'll meet him at his office. I don't want to wander too far from Boston til then. Think you could give me that?"
A couple weeks, yeah, he can definitely do that. They could make a pretty penny in that time, enough that he'll have some options for the first time in three years. He can figure out what he wants to do then. "Yeah," he says, and holds out his hand. "It's a deal."
“Fuckin’ A.” She grabs his hand in her own and gives it a hearty shake, a huge grin on her face. He grins back helplessly, weirdly aware of her ice-cold fingers from where her shooting gloves don’t cover, the way the smile pulls at the scars around her mouth. “It’s good to have you on board, MacCready. Damn good. I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
“You got it, Boss,” he says, and shoves his hands back in the pockets of his duster. “You just lead the way.”
Later that evening, holed up warm and safe in an abandoned building Sole decided was theirs for the night, Mac curls up in the far corner and pulls out a worn notebook and a pencil. He flips quickly through till he finds an empty page, then takes out his lighter and lights the little stump of a candle someone left on the floor, giving him just enough light to write by.
Hey little man, he scratches out, slowly and carefully, your old man’s luck might just have taken a turn for the better...