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Sanctuary was lit up - literally and figuratively. It had been a little over a week since the Institute had been destroyed, during which time Ashleigh Weathers had spent most of her time sorting out loose ends with the Railroad and in Diamond City. News spread fast, however, and there was no way Piper was going to let this go without having some sort of celebration for Blue. Curie, having never been to a party before, was enthralled with the idea and had a hand in every step of the preparation as well. MacCready was put in charge of drinks, and Hancock... everything else.
So, for the first time in 200 years, the town of Sanctuary Hills gathered for a neighborhood party to celebrate the return of the Minutemen and the end of the Institute. The warm June weather was perfect for late night celebrations, and thankfully there looked to be no radiation storms on the horizon. Most of the town was gathered around the bonfire placed in the center of the street, while others congregated around the bar. Codsworth mixed drinks for the partygoers and awed them with the colorful concoctions that had once been his specialty. Of course, the mixers weren't the same quality as what he had been used to before the bombs (some of them became entirely different drinks altogether), but he did what he could, and no one seemed to know any better. Even Marcy and Jun were present, sitting near the fire and keeping their unpleasantries to themselves for once.
There was, however, one notable absence. Piper, who had been keeping an eye on everything, approached Nick with a troubled expression on her face. "Nick, have you seen Blue anywhere? She was here a while ago, but I haven't seen her for at least an hour."
Nick looked around, a slight hint of concern creeping onto his face. "I saw her go into her backyard earlier. Maybe she just needs some time to herself. These last few weeks, hell, months have been a lot for her."
Piper looked down, considering. "Do you think the party was a bad idea? Maybe she wasn't ready to celebrate just yet. Dammit, I should have asked her first. Think before you act sometime, Piper."
Nick shook his head. "No, everyone else needed this. She'll come around, just give her time." Piper shifted uncomfortably, but seemed slightly more at ease after Nick's reassurance. "Go have fun, I'll keep an eye out for her."
Piper nodded. "Thanks, Nick. Let me know if she needs anything." Piper turned towards the gathering at the bonfire and inserted herself into a conversation between MacCready and Cait about the best flavor of snack cake as if nothing were amiss.
Nick turned to face the figure to his left emerging from the workshop. "Deacon," he started. "You know it's rude to eavesdrop."
Deacon flashed his trademark smirk. "And when has that ever stopped me?" He dropped the smile and lowered his voice when Nick only shook his head at the quip. "I'm going to go talk to her. I was there too, at the Institute. I figure she might be more willing to tell me what's on her mind."
Nick looked toward Ashleigh's dilapidated home where he knew she was hiding out and sighed. "Don't you think she might just want to be alone for a while? Let it all sink in? She hasn't had any time to herself since this all started."
He thought back to the last few days, once she had returned to Sanctuary. Ashleigh seemed bright and cheerful as she helped Preston escort new settlers into the town and took care of some business for Caretaker at the Red Rocket safehouse. But even then, he could see a heaviness in her step. She smiled for the settlers, thanked Piper graciously when she told her about the party, and laughed at Dogmeat's excited nips every time she returned from being anywhere out of his sight. But there was none of the light in her vivid green eyes, and her laugh had a hardness to it, as if the bells he has been used to hearing had rusted.
Deacon noticed it too. It was his job, and despite all her bravado, she had always been easy to read. "If I know her like I think I do," he started, "then I know she's just waiting back there for someone to ask her what's wrong." He thought back to the time she freed her first synth. H2-22's holotape had devastated her, but it wasn't until several days later when he asked why she had been wearing a permanent scowl that she poured her heart out about how erasing his memories of the Institute and the Railroad felt like killing him. Ashleigh was an open book, always asking to be read.
Nick gave Deacon a pat on the shoulder. "You're right. I'll assume you know how to handle things like this."
Deacon laughed, the darkness from before completely erased from his face. "Of course, Valentine. I have weeping damsels throwing themselves at my feet on a daily basis. I'm an expert at comforting people."
What the hell am I doing? he thought to himself.
----
Ashleigh sat at a rusted patio chair in the corner of her backyard, an open bottle of whiskey at her side. She took a swig from it as she felt a figure approach, silently. Though she barely heard the footfalls, it was a presence she could recognize anywhere.
She really wasn't in the mood for Deacon's games tonight.
"You know, sneaking up on people at night is a good way to get shot," she said without turning around.
"Ouch. That hurts, Ash. And here all I wanted to do was find out why you were hiding from your own party."
Of course he was. She turned around to face him. He seemed at ease in the tee shirt and jeans she only ever saw him in at HQ. The wig and sunglasses adorned his head (doesn't he know it's dark out?), and a familiar smirk sat on his face while he awaited a response. There was probably no getting out of this. She would at least make him work for it. She turned around, swirling the bottle of whiskey around with a bored look on her face. "The flamingos looked lonely."
He approached cautiously, eyeing the pink flamingo garden sculptures in the lawn next door. "Ah, of course. The prewar symbol of ultimate tackiness. Wouldn't want to leave them out, would we? They might get upset, take revenge at the centuries of being called out on their ugliness." He sat down beside her and studied her expression. She didn't even tease at a smile - her eyes glazed over, she stared at the flamingo wordlessly. "Ash, what's wrong?" he said, letting the concern show in his voice.
She didn't break her stare as she spoke. "Our neighbors had these flamingos for years. They both worked in Worchester, at the art gallery there. And everytime they saw me looking into their lawn they'd tell me about how the original plastic flamingo was designed and produced near here. They have them in the garden of the art gallery. Had. The artist won a Nobel prize for them. Fucking hideous." She took another swig of the whiskey. She wasn't drunk, but she planned to get there soon enough. She found it took a lot more alcohol to get intoxicated these days.
"I don't know, they're oddly charming," Deacon said. He took his own drink of the whiskey.
Ashleigh turned toward him at last. Deacon tried not to focus on the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes for fear that they might come spilling out - then he definitely wouldn't know what to do. She looked down for a minute, before returning to the flamingos.
"The couple that lived in this house died in the blast. The ones next to them died in the vault. Across the street, the house collapsed with people still inside. Nate..." She blinked, and the movement allowed the moisture in her eye to escape, rolling down her cheek, hot and heavy. "Shaun..."
Deacon put a hand on her far shoulder, turning her towards him slightly. She looked down again, afraid to make eye contact, tears flowing freely now. "Hey," he offered. "It's over now. The Institute is gone, and the Commonwealth is all the better for it. This was all you." Deacon was surprised at the softness in his own voice. He really wasn't used to this kind of thing.
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. "Yeah, it really was all me, wasn't it. Ashleigh Fucking Weathers, savior of the Commonwealth. Brilliant. Life destroyed by a goddamn nuke, so she nukes the only fucking thing she has left in this fucked up world." She swatted Deacon's hand off her shoulder and pretended not to notice the hurt look on his face as she stood up and walked across the broken fence to where the flamingos stood in their eternal vigilance.
"You know, it's just the worst goddamn irony, isn't it?" Her voice was raised, the anger and bitterness apparent. What was she even doing anymore, she wondered in the back of her mind as she continued on her rant. "Everything and everyone that used to be here is gone, because of some stupid, selfish war that no one ever wanted. Fucking cities were leveled! And these fucking flamingos are standing here like nothing was ever wrong." She was sobbing now, big ugly tears flooding her face as her voice choked out word after word. She hardly even sounded like herself anymore.
"Who the hell decided this?" she continued, working her way around the grove of flamingos anxiously. "Who the hell decided that everything I ever had, everything I ever knew, had to die like that, but these fucking flamingos get to stand here for 200 years like the world wasn't fucking destroyed? Who the hell decided they still get to have a family?"
She was practically shouting now, all the anger and sadness and stress of the past year directed at these lawn ornaments. She let out a sudden scream and kicked at the nearest flamingo, only to have it pop right back up like a spring. "They fucking cemented them down, didn't they?" she said, bemused, her voice barely a whisper.
A hand touched her shoulder again and she startled slightly. She had forgotten anyone was even there. She shook her head, thinking about how insane and pathetic she must look to him.
Deacon spoke, his low voice smooth and piercing in the newfound silence. "Remember what I said before, Ash. I'm in your corner. Always will be. Promise." He surprised himself about how much truth was in that statement. He had never seen this side of her before. Ash was strong, and even when she let things weigh her down she tried to distance herself from them. He had never seen her cry, definitely not like this, and all he wanted was to do whatever that sympathetic people thing was that he was usually so bad at faking and make her feel better. See her smile at his terrible jokes again. Shake her head in that way that made her golden curls bounce off her face as she laughed for him in her special way that he imagined was like how songbirds sounded before everything good had died.
For the first time, he realized: he was in deep, and he expected he would certainly drown.
She turned around suddenly and wrapped her arms under his, around his waist, burying her face in his chest. Deacon made a surprised noise. Not many things caught him off guard, but this? This was unexpected. He struggled with what to do with his arms before finding a place to comfortably set them on her shoulder blades, rubbing her back gently. Is this how people hug? It had been a long time, and he suddenly felt woefully inadequate, unprepared and entirely unfit for something as important as helping his only friend through her grief.
They stayed like that for a long time, enjoying each other's warmth, each realizing how devastatingly long it had been since they had held or been held by someone else. Ashleigh spoke softly after a time, breaking the silence gently. "Dee. I don't know if I did the right thing. It sure as hell feels like I didn't."
He stopped rubbing her back to hold her tighter as he spoke. "Of course you did. You saved the synths. You destroyed the Institute. People don't have to be afraid anymore. You did more for the Railroad, hell, the whole damn Commonwealth, than anyone has managed, probably ever. You're kind of a big deal. Big damn hero. From where I'm standing, you've done everything right."
She shook her head, and Deacon felt hot new tears run through his shirt. He must be soaked. "You weren't there," she said, soft and low, even quieter than before. "In the director's office, when I went to access Shaun's terminal before we escaped."
She stopped for a moment, gathering herself. She was tired of crying. Deacon held her still, and she wrapped herself around him even tighter. "It's ok," he whispered. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Believe me, I understand."
She shook her head against him and took a deep breath in. "Shaun was there. He was dying, it was only a matter of time anyways. But the way he looked at me... It was like he couldn't stand to see me after what I'd done. And when I looked at him then, I realized my Shaun was already dead. This was a stranger. My child couldn't have supported the things the Institute was doing to people, let alone order it."
Voicing these things made it feel so much more real what she had thought at the time. These were the thoughts that she hadn't quite allowed herself to have until that moment, and here they were flowing out of her in a dark confession while Deacon, for probably the first time since she had met him, was completely silent. He had once said that he didn't deserve her friendship, but in this moment she knew that it was her who didn't deserve him.
"I killed him," she said, quietly. "I killed Shaun."
"I knew Dez shouldn't have made you push that button," Deacon said softly. "I'm sorry. But you were right, he was practically brainwashed by the Institute. He wasn't really your son anymore."
"No," she responded, holding back a sob. She tried to strengthen herself, but it was getting more and more difficult to distance herself from that fateful day. "You don't understand. In that room... Shaun didn't die from the explosion. I shot him. I couldn't let him die like that, alone in the blast. It had to be then. It had to be me. And I was just so angry, at everything he had done, and everything that had happened to get us into this fucked up world in the first place. So I killed him. I killed my son."
Her voice trailed off, barely perceptible by the end of her story. Deacon was speechless. This didn't change anything about how he felt about her. She still did the best she could given the worst situation anyone could ever ask for. But how could a liar like him make her believe that?
So Deacon just held her tight as she cried again. Once she composed herself somewhat after what felt like forever, she pulled away. "Thank you, Dee."
"Anytime," he responded. Her eyes were red and puffy and completely dried from too many tears, and god how he wished he could make her smile again in the way she used to, where her full face lit up and she looked as if nothing in the world could ever bring her down again. But he wasn't the right person for that, and this wasn't the right time. The only kind of comfort he was familiar with was escape, and she was far too honest for that. She was far too honest for him.
Ashleigh lightly laced her fingers through his and led him backwards, pulling him down beside her as she took a seat against the back of the neighbor's house, sitting in solemn silence beside the family of flamingos. He looked at her with uncertainty, unsure of what to do with his hand. She held his fingers tight with hers and offered the saddest smile he had ever seen before resting her head sideways against his shoulder.
Deacon didn't know what he was doing anymore, but he vowed silently to himself that he would do everything in his power to make sure she never had to feel this way again.
Some whooping from the other side of the street reminded him there was a party going on behind them, but Ashleigh did not stir. As some time passed, he wondered if she had fallen asleep. She spoke suddenly, piercing the silence with her voice, much clearer now that the tears had dried.
"I don't know how to make this place my home now. I did what I've been trying to do for this past year. I found my son. Now I'm here, and I don't know what to do. I don't want to be alone, but I feel like there's nothing left for me anymore."
Deacon smiled, willing some humor into his voice. "You're smart, I know you'll figure it out. Hey, we can start up that housekeeping service!" Ashleigh chuckled softly at that and grasped his hand tighter. "I'm serious, though. You have done so much good here. The Minutemen need you. The Railroad needs you." I need you.
"And if I need some help, sometime?" she asked, turning towards him. "I definitely can't do this alone. Sometimes I just need to have a little breakdown, kick a flamingo, cry for a while, you know?" There was a lightness to her voice that had been absent for far too long. He was right earlier in suspecting that all she needed was someone to listen.
She surprised him for the second time that night by reaching out and pulling off his sunglasses. Deacon felt like all his defenses had been stripped away. He had always been afraid of his eyes showing too much of what was going on inside, but he supposed he owed it to Ash to reveal a little bit of himself for once.
Ashleigh smiled warmly at him. Blue eyes? She had not been expecting that.
"Promise me, Deacon. That you've got my back through whatever might be ahead."
"I think I already have," he smirked coyly. "Always. The Death Bunnies stick together, right?"
Right.
And because she could, because it really just seemed like the correct thing to do in this moment, Ash leaned in and pressed her lips to his.
Deacon was at a loss (something that had been happening to him far too much today, he realized). On one hand, this was probably wrong. She was emotional, probably not drunk but he could still taste the whiskey on her, and he couldn't escape the feeling that he was taking advantage of that. But she had kissed him. And here he was, having no idea what to do for what seemed like the fortieth time in a really confusing and honestly quite stressful day, but holy hell did she feel good.
So he kissed her back.
And the way she responded to the returned affections was positively electrifying. He felt her hand raise to his cheek, brush against the stubble there, and pull his face further towards her, deepening the kiss. She adjusted herself, one hand pressing against his chest, and she shifted her body to be directly in front of him. He sat cross-legged on the ground, and she moved onto her knees in front of him, pressing his body back so that he was pinned between her and the wall. When he uncrossed his legs she moved them to either side of her, closing the distance even further so that he was entirely wrapped around her. He could feel her weight as she moved with him. He savored the way her curves fit against his own body.
She brought her fingers behind his neck, scratching lightly with her fingernails beneath the wig, eliciting a throaty moan from Deacon that made him wonder where the hell that had come from.
Yeah, this confirms the earlier suspicion. He was in way too deep with this girl.
Well, he figured if she realized this was probably a bad idea she'd have pulled away at some point before sticking her tongue down his throat. No going back now, and he sure as hell didn't want to anyways. He wrapped his own arms around her body (he wasn't sure what they had been doing before, probably just flopping around before he figured out what to do with them, hopefully Ash hadn't noticed), lacing his fingers through her bright blonde hair. How does she get it this soft? There's no way...
Everything was kind of a competition with them on their best days, and he failed to see why kissing should be any different. He fought for control, nipping at her bottom lip, which drew a small moan out of her. He briefly teased the idea of coming up for air, but decided the chance of suffocation was worth the risk of making sure this absolutely, under no circumstances, was stopping anytime soon as he brought his other hand under the fabric of the loose shirt she wore on her rest days, running up the skin on her lower back.
Except, of course, his brain took that moment to remind him that they were sitting outside in the backyard of her long dead neighbors while their friends had a bonfire just barely down the street. The plastic flamingos that she had tried to murder less than an hour before were probably staring on in abject horror at the depravity taking place in their pristine, nuclear wasteland of a garden.
But when Deacon pulled away, Ashleigh redirected her kisses to his neck. That had always been his weakness, and this time was no exception. Maybe it was just because he hadn't been with a woman in any intimate way in god knows how long, or maybe it was because she was prewar and they just made them different back then, but she was just unfairly soft. The smooth contours of her lips conformed to the sensitive spots of his neck in ways that almost made his eyes roll back into his head. When she had a small piece of skin thoroughly sucked and licked she had the nerve to bite down lightly, and that was it. Deacon had no idea the kind of noises that he was making, but he really didn't care.
This is it. RIP Deacon. Died from confused erection and really not deserving any of this. Worth it.
Except they should really probably stop. At least go somewhere else. Really.
It took all his willpower to speak. "Ashleigh. You know we're outside, right. And there's a party going on behind us. And maybe they call you Whisper for a reason, but I'm pretty sure the entire fucking town is going to hear me if you keep doing that thing for any longer."
Ash flashed him a sly smile before returning to the spot on his neck she had been sucking. "This thing?" she asked between nips.
"Yes. Yes, that. Ash..." He was positive that she could hear the shudder in his voice. He was coming undone underneath her touch and it terrified him, this honesty. You can really only be yourself when a beautiful woman is biting at the skin on your collarbone and scratching the back of your neck, and being himself was something that Deacon was entirely unused to. But here she was, doing all of that and more, pressing her body even more flush against his. There was no way she didn't notice how hard he was.
She brought her face back up to his and gave him a long, slow, deep kiss. Much less desperate than before, but all the more soft.
After not nearly enough time, she pulled away. Her eyes met his, and she smiled a warm, sad smile. "You're right. This probably isn't the right time. But, thanks. For not running away from my crazy. Maybe we should do that again sometime." Her eyes sparkled with a warmth and affection that Deacon felt should have been directed at someone better than him. But it wasn't. It was all his.
She suddenly popped up onto her feet. "So, you know, thank you for sticking with me. I know you don't believe me, but from where I'm standing you're one of the best things to come out of the apocalypse." She stretched out a hand to help him up. "Come on, let's go crash my party."
He took her hand, but hesitated to lift himself. "I'd love to, but I'm not entirely sure I can stand up right now, Ash. Just... Give me a minute."
She turned her back to him and considered the flamingos again. After a time, she knelt next to the closest one and pulled up on the post. It budged slightly. Standing, she put all of her weight into lifting it, until finally the stake holding it down gave way and the flamingo was freed from its dirt prison.
She looked at the object in her hand for a moment. The neighbors would have been horrified at their broken flamingo. She let out a small chuckle before throwing it as far as she could into the woods behind the town.
It was time for her to make her new life here in the wasteland, and these flamingos can finally fuck off.