Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Danse
February, 2288
Life in Diamond City shares one familiar quality with life every place he's ever called home: it’s crowded.
Danse weaves through the mass of people congesting his path, pausing occasionally to let someone by or to check that Dogmeat is still with him. Night brings a shift in the settlement’s momentum as hungry traders converge in the town’s center to graze from the selection of food carts and outdoor grills. Knives and cleavers clatter against cutting boards, and the hiss of grilling meat sends steam billowing into the air. Street vendors shout their specials over the throngs of patrons who mull from one eatery to the next, talking with their friends and neighbors.
Danse knows this tightly compacted, functional chaos. He knows it from meals in the Prydwen’s packed galley. He knows it from hot bunking in the Citadel with barely a moment of privacy to dress or shower. He knows it from cramming into the Muddy Rudder with the other Rivet City shopkeepers after hours, venting about customers and suppliers over a beer. A man like him should seem out of place in the Commonwealth’s capital settlement, but Danse eases into Diamond City’s rhythm as if he’d lived there all his life.
Dogmeat whines when they pass the food stalls without stopping. His own stomach protesting the choice, Danse double-times it for the merchants’ street. The neighborhood is mostly abandoned when they get there, but one storefront is still brightly lit.
“Ah, Mr. Cutler!” Arturo glances up from locking storage containers. “You’re running late tonight. I was about to give up on you.”
“Overslept. I apologize,” Danse says, digging a couple dozen fusion cells out of the messenger bag and setting them on the counter. Arturo gives him a forgiving shrug and turns to inspect the ammunition.
“You keep odd hours, my friend. Anyway, looks like… twenty-six? Very nice. Let me get your payment.”
Dance waits for Arturo to count out the caps, tugging down the sleeves of his recently purchased jacket while taking stock of the surroundings. There’s little activity on the vendors’ street to note. A single DCS officer maintains a patrol in front of the most prolific stores, every so often giving a door a lackadaisical tap with his baton. His mind is elsewhere. Nearly forgetting himself for a moment, Danse is tempted to chastise him for his lack of vigilance. His overstep is prevented by Arturo returning to the counter.
“I was wondering something. This magic you do, turning empty fusion cores into piles of ammo? Could you make something besides energy cells? I’m thinking EMC cartridges. I’d give you the same percentage of the sale, of course.”
The synth considers his proposal. Arturo is already coming out ahead in their arrangement by supplying the worthless components and receiving a marketable product in return, from which only a small margin of sale goes back to the source. Danse is the one squeezing water from stone, but the work to siphon out the last watts from a fission battery only requires a little know-how and some of his ample free time. That, and Arturo hasn’t been too nosy about where he’d learned such efficient recycling techniques and energy weapon maintenance.
“I can make the cartridges, but not with exhausted cores like these.”
“I’d give you more juice to work with. Nobody buys cores that are more than half used anyway.” Arturo sighs. “Truth is, the market for the things is dead. The few people who have power armor mothballed their suits. Too afraid the Brotherhood’ll confiscate it.”
Danse keeps his thoughts on that to himself. While seizing all operating battlefield technology was standard operating procedure, Maxson’s chapter has bigger concerns at the moment than a few tattered T-45’s in the hands of scavengers.
“Provide me with the raw materials and I’ll see what I can do,” he says, steering the topic back to safer territory. Arturo claps his hands together.
“Excellent! I’ll start telling people to bring in their spent cartridges. And just so you know, I’m still looking to hire some extra help around here. You obviously have a knack for this kind of work…”
“I’ve tried the merchant thing before. It’s not who I am.”
“There are worse places than Diamond City to settle down,” the man replies, but seeing that “Cutler” won’t be swayed, allows the subject to drop.
Arturo hands over a supply of expended cell casings and four low power cores. After packing the salvage into his bag, Danse doubles back towards the center of town with his pocket full of caps. Dogmeat, seeing where they’re finally headed, runs ahead and barks with excitement.
“You act as though I’ve ever neglected to feed you,” muses the disgraced soldier, having long gotten over the absurdity of talking to an animal.
He makes a point to take the long way around to pass the butcher’s shop. The stern-faced woman with the cleaver has never spared Danse so much as a pleasant word, but for Dogmeat she produces a brahmin knucklebone wrapped in the latest edition of the Publick. The dog rewards her generosity by hopping in a circle on his hind legs, a trick that cracks her facade a little. Danse, meanwhile, has to trade his pay at the stalls for two skewers of seared radstag with vegetables and a bowl of mirelurk bún riêu.
Canine and synth dine at a table near the open-air market as is their habit. Nobody sits to join them, and Danse doesn't invite company. Integration isn't the point, nor is ot a fantasy he'd allow himself to indulge. Merely surrounding himself with the sights and sounds of a world carrying on as normal is a key component of the ritual that keeps his days from spiraling into idle nothingness. The isolation had gotten to him at the listening post. Below ground, it was easy to lose sense of the passage of time. The mental reprieve he found in the processes of maintaining his gear and taking inventory of his supplies dried up in short order, given nothing changed from one day to the next. He was told to keep his head down until he was needed again. Going outside alone was ill-advised in the wake of Maxson's warning. The stagnation became miserable enough that by the time Valentine and Wright arrived to badger him about relocating to the city, he mustered only a token protest for the sake of his pride. It turned out neither of them was offering their own homes out of pity, at least. Their mutual friend owned a house on the old ballfield. Having been entrusted to keep an eye on the place, Valentine presented him the key and said he'd be doing them all a favor by moving in until Noah came back.
A weight settles on Danse’s thigh. It’s Dogmeat, resting his head to blink pitifully up at him. Danse surrenders the last cubes of radstag on demand. He’s lost this standoff with the dog enough times to know it’s not worth resisting.
Four weeks.
It’s been four weeks since the assault on Libertalia. He hadn’t been there, naturally, as Noah was to be accompanied by an Institute Courser for the mission. Everything he knew had been relayed to him after the fact by Ms. Wright, including that the synth they were tasked to retrieve was, for better or worse, returned to its creators. Danse wasn’t pleased about that for multiple conflicting reasons, but he understood earning the Institute’s trust would give Noah room to maneuver within their operation. Their inside man needed more time to find a weakness for the Brotherhood exploit and use against them. He needed to discover where they were holding his son. If that meant going along with their expectations to preserve his cover, as long as they didn't demand anything too amoral, Danse would forgive his transgressions. What other choice was there when Tamer had gone to such lengths to protect him?
But it turned out to be a moot point. Since then, there's been no more transgressions to forgive. A full month has passed since the vault dweller last disappeared into the enemy's lair. No one reports having contact with Noah in weeks. His associates try to remain optimistic, but on those rare occasions when he emerges during the day and seeks them out, he notes the concern on their faces.
No longer hungry, Danse puts what remains of the soup on the ground. Dogmeat abandons his bone to finish it off.
The draws of Diamond City’s nightlife aren’t enough to drudge the synth from his melancholy. He folds his arms over the uneven table and bows his head, waiting for nothing in particular. People wander past, engaged in laughter and business-related conversations as the hub ekes closer to the end of its day, but they’re all just moving fixtures on the other side of a transparent barrier. He might be acquainted with the trappings of human society, but Danse knows he doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong anywhere, really. Just as it seemed like he could find a place in this world without the Brotherhood, the keystone keeping him pieced together went missing.
He releases a long exhale through his nose. A selfish part of him remembers confessing to Noah how hard it'd been to lose all the people closest to him. How Noah had said, so earnestly that it had made Danse's heart pound against his ribs, "It would never be like that with me". How the bastard had made a promise never to up and disappear just like this, leaving Danse to wallow in helplessness and fear. They both knew he couldn't keep that kind of promise, but Danse still wanted to believe it anyway. He did believe it, fool that he is. And now look.
After loitering for a while longer, Danse stands and heads toward the hill leading to his accommodations. The sounds of people fail to placate the creeping loneliness tonight. He leaves his companion behind, whom he last sees coercing some traders to part with their table scraps with big, hopeful eyes. Dogmeat knows the way back when he’s ready.
The door to Home Plate groans on its hinges as he enters. Even upon his initial arrival to the flat, it wasn’t difficult to understand why Noah wasn’t all too fond of the place. It's sparsely decorated, poorly laid out, and oddly cold. The emptiness echoes too easily in this metal box. That’s why Danse always has the radio on, even when he leaves. Now, though, there’s a distinct absence of music. He flips the lights on, closes the door behind him, hangs his bag on the coat rack, and offhandedly wonders how long it will take the local radio station manager to realize the broadcast has fallen into dead air this time.
He retrieves a pre-war coffee tin from one of the kitchenette’s lower cabinets. He opens the lid and judges it to be about half-full of caps after depositing the evening’s gains. There’s no call to fill it, save for giving Danse a goal to work towards until he’s presented with an actionable plan to help Noah. For now, it’s enough to manufacture and sell the ammunition that feeds it.
He turns his attention to the counter where the radio sits, reaching for the tuning dial to find a different station. His hand halts before touching the knob.
The appliance is powered off.
The silence feels suddenly heavy. It feels occupied. Stock still and listening, Danse catches the noise of the upper level settling beneath a shifting weight. Movement, up on the balcony.
His body reacts, darting toward the wall beside the door. His laser rifle is leaning right there, primed and waiting to deal with any intruder who would try to confront him at the door. He lunges for the weapon. His fingers are inches from the cold steel of the barrel when he hears the words being called out in a flat, lifeless baritone.
“M7-97, reinitialize in safe mode. Authorization code delta four two gamma.”
The impulse to grab the rifle vanishes. Danse’s hand drops to his side, his knuckles brushing his knees as his spine lurches. His eyes remain open, staring at the dust motes dancing in the dim light as the trim of a Courser’s back jacket sweeps into view.
With that, Danse ceases to exist.