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“Piper, why doesn’t mom like me?” Shaun asks you one day in that out-of-thin-air sort of way children do because their social filter is undeveloped. Well…children and you , of course, but it’s really more of a professional obligation in your case. How else will you get to the truth if you don’t ask questions…is what you tell Blue whenever she looks at you funny each time you stop a stranger in the street to grill them on their current thoughts on the commonwealth.
But in this moment, just like in many others, you feel so, so bad for Shaun.
You glance around the dank catacombs of Railroad HQ. Despite the mustyness, the space buzzes with activity. With just over one year since the liberation of the synths, business booms. Safe houses spring up like weeds and get filled to bursting almost immediately. The collapsed back tunnel nears reconstruction and PAM and Tinker Tom pour over schematics for a new server room as The Railroad's need for elbow room transcends the physical world into the digital one.
A few yellow streamers hang limp from the ceiling and in one corner, a large pyramid of empty Gwinnett stout bottles stands, shaking and clinking together every time someone rushes by. Remnants. Of last Saturday. You smile at the memory. Last Saturday was the one-year anniversary of when Blue blew up the Institute, and everybody was throwing a party. You had every intention of staying at Publick Occurrences and celebrating with a small-get together, but the next thing you know, Nora’s hand is clasped in yours and you’re being dragged to Nick’s, then the Railroad, then Goodneighbor, and then just anywhere in Boston that was partying.
The next morning, you and Blue sit at the booth outside the Dugout Inn. Your feet are kicked up on the table, still wearing the heels you break out maybe once a year, her arm is around your shoulder, still wearing the crumpled suit jacket the two of you salvaged from Fallon’s Basement, and both of you are hungover and dying for a cup of coffee. But of course, so is everybody else that morning, and you and Blue wanted to sleep in for once, so by the time you get to the Dugout, Vadim had run out of coffee hours ago. You have to settle for some warm, flat Nuka Cherry.
“Piper?” Shaun asks again. You sigh and wish that he’d waited to ask this until you were actually back to “work” instead of taking your lunch break, not that Railroad work consisted of much more than pencil pushing for you these days. You’re not necessarily complaining, it’s just that if Des isn’t going to give you much to do, you’d rather go back to Diamond City and try to break the bucking bronco that is the ever-growing Publick Occurrences. Unshockingly, wiping out the Institute, an event that was probably the most important thing to happen for 200 years, is the kind of thing that really boosts readership.
You look down at your open lunchbox, lovingly packed for you that morning before Nora headed out to the Taffington Boathouse to check up on the safe house there. You bite your lip; the bloatfly is going to go cold because you can’t put off this conversation even more than you’ve already done so in your mind. You try to look confident under Shaun’s unwavering stare.
“Shaun…it’s not that Nora doesn’t like you, it’s just very complicated.” You wince at your own words. You treat your sister with the respect she deserves, you should do the same for Shaun. “But I’m going to try and explain it anyway. Father made you in his image and used you as a tool to try and convince Nora to continue his legacy and become the next director of the Institute. As you know, that plan did not work. And yet…”
You think about the many colorful things you can say, but decide against all of them. You may be honest, but one of your superpowers is knowing exactly what to say to break someone down, to hurt them, and every day you wake up and fight the urge to be willfully cruel.
“...and yet you’re still here. You know, Nora went through a lot of trouble to bring you here-”
“Why even bother if she can’t even look at me?” Shaun retorts. The vein in your neck tightens; you hate when people interrupt you.
“Just give her time-”
“It’s already been a whole year-”
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way!” you shout at him. A few people at some nearby desks look over, but with the generalized hubbub of the rest of HQ, you’re not worried about causing a massive scene. “Nora and Nate were supposed to grow old together in Sanctuary and their son was supposed to become a toddler, then a kid, then a teen, like you, and then their son was supposed to become an adult that his parents could be proud of. He was supposed to fall in love, make a career, be successful, have kids of his own and Nora and Nate were supposed to be able to look at their son and then she was supposed to whisper to him ‘we did a good job raising him, didn’t we’ and then he was supposed to whisper back ‘we sure did, honey.’. Instead, the bombs fell, Nate’s dead, but eventually everybody got saved by Nora, except she had to kill her son in the process. Do you know how much of a mercy it was that she killed Father in his bed? If I was her, I would have let him wait for the explosion. Just lying there prone, in the agony of knowing the end was near but not knowing exactly when. How much time is enough time to make peace with your impending doom? So that’s why, Shaun. That’s why it’s a little bit hard sometimes for Nora to be around you.”
Shaun stares at you, tears welling in his wide eyes. “I WISH SHE HAD LEFT ME IN THE INSTITUTE.” And with that, he stalks away. You puff out your cheeks and sigh. Although it’s not yet clear whether or not Shaun will age physically, he’s certainly got the mindset of a teenager. And as if you didn’t get enough of the attitude at home from Nat…
But it’s different. It’s not like you can blame Shaun. He’s just a confused kid growing up in the catacombs underneath a church (Nora decided fairly quickly that keeping Shaun at HQ would be the safest place for him to be, and although you found the idea sad that the boy was going from being cooped up at the institute to being cooped up in a crypt, you agreed with her).
But you also can’t blame Nora because even if Shaun doesn’t think so, she is making an effort. Sure, usually when Shaun is allowed to go out and explore, it’s just with you, but occasionally the jazz combo of Piper and Blue becomes Piper, Blue, and Shaun. It’s even been just Blue and Shaun once or twice. Plus, ever since Blue enrolled Shaun in school he’s started spending more and more time in Diamond City.
And sure whenever Shaun has a sleepover with Nat, it’s always at the Publick and Blue always goes home before the kids are asleep. But you’re Piper , Blue’s wife , and you don’t even really technically legally live with Blue. And sure, you’re searching your brain for every qualifier you can think of when you know full well that you sleep at Homeplate most nights, sleep better at Homeplate, have every intention of moving into Homeplate, and the only reason you haven’t yet is because you both are simply just too busy to facilitate a move right now. The one downside to turning the Publick into just your office instead of your domicile as well is the commute. To walk across the town square instead of right downstairs. A nightmare.
But the point of all this is that you and Blue are married to each other but still don’t legally live together, so Shaun shouldn’t really be surprised.
You spin your wedding band around your finger and think back to the horrifying circumstances that led to your shotgun wedding in the first place.
“How long will this hold?” Nora asks Tinker Tom, unable to tear herself away from staring at the terrifying and completely working teleporter.
“What?” Tom replies, incredulously, “You have to go now. A courser could show up here any second.”
“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now, Charmer,” Desdemona cuts it. For once in your life you find yourself unable to say anything.
Blue walks to Desdemona where they argue in hushed tones. You can’t make out what they're saying, but you become unnerved when Des looks over Blue‘s shoulder to look at you . After a few more seconds of arguing, Desdemona throws up her hands.
“Tom, shut it down.”
“ WHAT- ”
“I said , shut it down,” Desdemona turns her attention back to Blue, “Charmer, we will reconvene at this location in exactly 48 hours in which you will go through the teleporter whether your affairs are in order or not. That is an order. If you do not come back on your own, I will send someone to bring you .”
Your confusion mounts, only growing stronger when Blue replies, “Yes sir.”
Desdemona addresses the rest of the assembled agents, “Everyone else, get ready to hunker down. No one leaves until Charmer comes back. We will ensure that nothing happens to this teleporter.”
The agents grumble to each other as Blue pulls you to the side.
“What’s going on?” you ask.
“We should get married.”
“You’re cute”
“Piper…”
You look at her then, the way she’s worrying her bottom lip.
“Oh my god, you’re serious, aren’t you.”
Blue nods.
And you’re smart, and not only that, but you like to think that you know Nora inside and out, or at least better than anyone else currently alive. So she needeth not say why; you understand it has something to do with the high probability that none of this teleporter stuff works and Nora ends up dead…then yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You deserve to be her widow, not just some girl whose lover died.
Noble. Noble noble noble. Stupid, mind you, so stupid. But noble.
And you love her.
So you and Blue get married at the little chapel across the street from home, witnessed there by the preacher, Nat, Nick, and Ellie.
Because you love her. Sickness/health, richer/poorer, life/death. All of it.
You didn’t tell anyone else until Blue came home safe. After that, the first person to congratulate you was Deacon. He said it casually one night when the two of you were up late on the graveyard shift. It was a long, rambling string of words, unusual for a man so guarded, but he only accidentally called Nora Barbara once.
When you were young, and your dad was still around, you used to play with the other girls whose dads were also in the militia. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and one night you all stayed up late, lounging in your sleeping bags and giggling about girlish things.
You whispered about what your Prince Charmings would be like and at the time you imagined a tall, smart, proud man who was just like your father.
You could never imagine you’d fall in love with a god. And by all the powers that be, was it sometimes damn hard to love a god. How can someone deal with the weight of their own shoulders when they have the hopes and fears of the entire world piled on top?
Nora said she didn’t regret killing Kellogg and would do it again, given the chance.
Sometimes, out of nowhere, it all becomes too much, and Nora turns off all the lights at Home Plate and sits in the dark.
Nora turned part of the downstairs of Home Plate into an office and restarted her law practice, championing the advancement of civil and legal rights in Diamond City and the Commonwealth.
Nora assassinated Marowski. She slit his throat while he slept soundly in his bed. And then used the payment from Latimer as seed money to start the Diamond City Public Library, built out of the empty house that Kellogg once took Shaun to, for reasons that still aren’t clear to anybody. (The only man it ever made sense to is gone, obliterated, turned to dust).
For a long time, whenever referencing something “bad” that Blue did, you called her Nora, and you didn’t realize it until Blue pointed it out, but the two were separate in your mind kind of. You didn’t want to think about Blue killing somebody, even though you’ve seen it happen many times. She begged you to stop, and you did, because you have to love the one, not part of the one. Besides, you feel so blessed to love and be loved by somebody who does the “right” thing waaayy more often than the “wrong”.
Later, Drummer Boy gets a message to you from Nora. It says that she’s on her way home, but she’ll probably be late so you should eat without her.
You do, and you, Nat, and Shaun have a tense dinner back at The Publick. You box up the rest and have it waiting for Blue once she arrives home.
It’s dark when she finally slips in the door, quiet, knowing the kids are asleep by now. You yourself are half asleep on the couch, the radio turned down low, but are halfway awoken when Blue greets you, flopping down into the couch and pressing a lingering kiss to your lips. You curl into her side, muscle memory.
“Shaun and I had a fight today,” you say, breaking the peace.
Nora chuckles, “Teenagers.”
“It wasn’t like that. I need to apologize in the morning.”
“You? Apologize? Who are you and what have you done with Piper Wright?”
You don’t have the energy to fight, just enough to tell the truth. “I told him a little bit about what you and I talked about. About him. What we talked about about him.”
“Oh.”
“Told him might be untrue. Yelled at him more like. I’m sorry, Blue. He asked me why you’re always so distant, and he wouldn’t let up and we’ve been so busy lately and I just…well, I’m sorry.”
Blue thinks this over, gives a little hmm, lets her head loll to the side, her cheek resting on the crown of your head.
“It’s not like you said anything that was untrue. I’m the first to admit that I keep Shaun at arm’s length. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
“Good.”
Nora turns the dial up on the radio just a smidge. You settle deeper into one another.
“Blue, did I ever tell you that I think my daddy would’ve really liked you?”
“I would’ve loved him,” she says without a moment’s hesitation.
And by God, you’re sure of it. In the same way, you’re sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, the same way you’re sure about the ring on your finger and the matching ring on Blue’s finger.
She kisses your lips, then your cheek, then the shell of your ear. “God Piper, I just love you so much,” she mumbles into the side of your face before standing, picking you up, and carrying you up the stairs to bed.
You smile, your hands locked strong around her neck. “What you’ve heard is true, Blue. I love you too.”
And then you fall into each other. Just like yesterday, just like tomorrow.