Chapter Text
I spent the rest of the supper hour copying over the document to a clean sheet of paper, and then, when we reconvened, read it back, asked if anybody had any more questions or concerns, and then said, "OK, if nobody has anything else, I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned. I'm also going to ask everybody here-- every Minuteman-- to come up to the table and sign this document. Once you've signed, please meet me out in the courtyard, where we're gonna have that demonstration of farming techniques I mentioned before. After that's over, you're all good to go-- or you can camp out here overnight if you want, and get going in the morning. If anybody needs any ammo or other supplies, or weapons tune-ups, before you go, come to me and I'll see what I can do for you. Thank you all again so much, for coming. I'll see you outside, OK?"
As the line for signatures began to form, I went to get Tanvi from her lab, where I found Shaun, too. He wanted to come with her and help with the demonstration, so I let him, and watched him beam with pride at the assembled Minutemen in the courtyard as the two of them showed off their techniques and took questions. Neither of them seemed shy in front of the crowd; Tanvi was in her element, of course, demonstrating scientific methods and results, and Shaun, shy as he'd been in front of Danse, seemed more than thrilled when Tanvi suggested he field Jake Finch's question about fertilizer.
Afterwards, a lot of people lingered to ask for things, or just to say goodbye, and a few asked where they could sleep, and it wasn't until after I'd gotten all the Minutemen supplied and/or settled, and a lot of people hugged, and Preston and Ronnie thanked profusely, that Silver and Cooper approached me, and Silver said, "General--"
"Yeah, Scribe."
"This is--" He swallowed. "I didn't expect-- when I asked you about-- organization-- I didn't expect you to-- do this."
I smiled at him. "I listen."
"I can see that you do," he said. "It's-- a good quality. In a leader. I look forward to working with you further, General Bowman."
"Same," I said. "Thanks for pointing out where we could improve. You, too, Paladin."
Paladin Cooper nodded. "We'll be going now. If you need Scribe Silver, let us know via Radio Freedom."
"I will," I said, "and if you guys need anything from me at any point, or if there's any conflicts with my Minutemen, send him to me, OK? And we'll work it out. Anything you need now?"
"No," said Cooper, and hesitated for a moment before adding, "General-- thank you for-- everything."
I beamed at her. "You're welcome. Thank you for coming."
Then Hancock, Michael, Emily, Kasumi, and Danse were around me, and Shaun was leaning up against me, having apparently forgiven me for letting Deacon escape, and Emily said, "Let's go to the book room and tell Cog and Victoria and Max we're done."
So we did, and crowded onto couches and chairs and beds, as I tried to ignore the pang Deacon's empty bed gave me, and his books on the shelf. Shaun clambered into my lap.
"Sorry about all the commotion," I said, hugging him, and leaning against Hancock. "But hey, so guys, Emily and Danse are now officially two-fifths of the official Minutemen advisory council, and if I die, they're two-fifths of in charge. And Hancock is another fifth, so, you know. If anything happens to me, you guys should be-- fine."
"That's good," said Max. "Advisory council, huh? Congrats."
"Thank you, Max," said Danse, and Emily smiled.
"Why aren't you on it?" Victoria asked Michael, and he answered, "I declined the position."
"So does that mean Emily and Danse outrank you now?" Cog asked.
Michael smiled slightly. "I suppose it does, in some areas. Although I think I can trust them both not to abuse their authority over me. And if they do, for the moment, I can still appeal to my mother."
I grinned at him, and Emily laughed, and said, "Isn't it funny-- having a mother?"
"Funny's the word," said Victoria.
"One time I saw a little kid fall down, in the Institute," said Cog, "and he hurt his knee? And there was an adult human right there, and she tried to pick him up and take him to the med bay for treatment, but he kind of fought, and he just kept screaming for his mom. And then his mom showed up, and he calmed down. Even though she hadn't done anything to-- treat him-- she just kind of-- held him. But it was like her just being there made everything better. I used to think, so that's what it would be like, to have a mom."
"So that must mean you're my mom," Victoria said to him.
He looked startled, and laughed a little, uncertainly. She didn't smile.
"That's just love," said Emily, smiling at the two of them. "It doesn't have to be your mother who you love, and who loves you. Being with somebody you love is what makes everything better. That's how I feel with our mother, and with all of you-- but I feel that way with just Kasumi, too."
"Me too," said Kasumi, squeezing Emily's hand. "Like I belong here, finally. Not here at your Castle-- although thank you for having me, Ms. Bowman-- but-- anywhere. On earth. With Emily."
"I know what you all mean," said Max. "I never-- belonged-- anywhere. Till here. And you-- you folks."
"I used to belong in a little room," Shaun volunteered. "You saw it, mom. In Advanced Systems. Sometimes people told me to go back there where I belonged. But I didn't like it. Nobody loved me. Until you were my mom."
I hugged him tight. "I'm always your mom. And the rest of us are all your family. You belong here with us."
"I know," said Shaun, and laid his head down against my chest. "But I wish Jonah was here."
"Me too, baby." I stroked his hair. "But he'll be back. He knows he belongs with us, too."
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This is a really bad idea.
He got momentarily distracted trying to decide whether he'd ever actually had a non- bad idea in his life. There was the-- nope. And the-- well. Kind of hard to call that one, yet. Like Solon said to Croesus: count no idea good until it actually manages to kill you. Or something like that.
Holding the Brotherhood baby, for example, had been a bad idea, one of those things where you thought, how bad can it be, it can't be worse than sitting here wondering how bad it would be, so I'll just do it, and then it turned out that however bad you were scared it might be, you had absolutely no clue.
Like this, maybe. How bad could this get?
Well, it could kill him, in which case he could either finally relax and feed the worms, or he'd have to deal with an afterlife. He went back and forth on that one. If you just saw a dead body, you'd think: meat, obviously. But when you actually saw somebody die, the moment when it happened, you thought: wait, where'd they go? Maybe it was an optical illusion, but it really seemed like something left, separated itself out from the meat and-- who knew. Dissolved. Escaped. Went somewhere, or nowhere. Who knew. He'd find out someday, anyway. Some old kid's book he'd read: To die will be an awfully big adventure.
Did I come here to die?
Kind of, was the answer, just like it had been when he'd joined the Railroad. This idea-- like most of his ideas-- was not the idea of a person with a strong, thriving survival instinct. Like Nora. If he didn't die, Nora was going to kill him.
Or rather, she was going to yell at him. But he'd never minded being yelled at. Scolded: a prim, cozy word, conjuring images of a lipsticked, aproned, laundered prewar mom. (Like Nora, although it was hard to picture her in either lipstick or an apron. Had they really dressed like that back then, or was it all just picture books?) Nobody scolded you unless they cared what you did; you're late meant you should have been here sooner, a sweet sentiment. He'd had no idea Nora had been so scratchy about Des's scolding-- really should've picked up on that, super-spy, although God knew the only thing you knew for sure with Nora was that she'd be weirder than you'd imagined possible.
At least he'd taken some time, to get his affairs in order, such as they were-- once he would have checked in with Des, but face it, she didn't really need him anymore, not even to wrangle Nora; she might not be able to read Nora, but he could, and they were gonna be fine from now on-- and to make sure he really wanted to do this. That it wasn't just some kind of insanity caused by-- whatever it was his bloodstream flooded with around Nora. It wasn't romantic, thank God-- he couldn't have stood to fall in love at this point, even if she hadn't already had a guy. It wasn't as bad as that, and also it was worse.
It was fine at first. The Railroad was her way into the Institute, which was her way to find her son, and he was her way in with the Railroad, so it made sense, the way she played nice, ran with him, protected him, patched him up, laughed at his stupid jokes, forgave him for his lies. And he liked her. She was smart and tough and funny and generous, and things were never boring when she was around. Spending time with her was-- something about life that didn't completely suck. Those were few and far between; he'd take what he could get, while he could get it. Even after the Prydwyn, aside from the few moments where it had looked like she was going to snap and shoot him in the face; even after the Institute, when she officially had no more use for him-- she hadn't seemed to mind him hanging around sometimes, popping up with Railroad missions, or just to say hi. That didn't suck, either, and he made sure not to wear out his welcome.
It was now that didn't make sense. He'd run out on her, proved himself useless for even the marginal errands she still used him for, and she'd responded by giving him the most extensive scolding of his life so far and dragging him home to live with her. Babbling about love and family, two things he'd had absolutely zero intention of ever getting entangled with again. Babbling not just to him, but to Hancock, to Shaun, to Des. Because of Deacon. Because I love Deacon. Hugging him. Making promises.
It was too much, it was all insane. She didn't respect the system, the system that worked, that kept things even-keeled and livable, the system where favors got done and favors got owed and everybody kept a reasonable distance, a disentangled distance, so that when it was time to move on, it was easy, and nobody got hurt. Even when he'd deployed what he thought was the nuclear option, to make her back off-- it's all a big lie, there's no Barbara-- she'd just shrugged. Held him, his shades in her hand. Called him honey. Come on, I'll tuck you in.
He couldn't really deal with it. Couldn't sleep, although he played possum when she woke up to feed the kid. The scales were out of balance. Piling his little favors-owed on his side like pebbles, and then it was like she just climbed on the other side of the scale and sat her muscular butt down, sending his hard-won pebbles flying. You know you don’t actually have to earn favors from me. You know I’ll do anything for you, just because I love you and I want you to be happy.
So here he was. One more try, Nora, you freak, you anachronism, you rogue variable, you bleeding-heart, heart on the outside and glowing and stuck full of knives like in those bizarre old religious pictures, to balance the scales. Or remove himself from the equation entirely. Whichever.
Funny to be here in daylight, instead of dead of night. Fewer memories that way, though, which was good. Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Whatever a geranium was. Some kind of shrub, the dictionary said, but when he'd first read the line he'd pictured an animal, a dessicated reptilian thing, that rattled as it was shaken.
No one downstairs. Elevator shut off. He left his gun at the bottom of the stairs, paused to consider what else he should leave behind. There wasn't much; he traveled light. I am not in the habit of overburdening myself for travel. One thing he had in common with them, anyway.
He went up the stairs slowly, trying to keep his footsteps at a neutral volume: not sneaky-quiet, not aggressive-loud. Hands where they could see them.
At the top of the flight, he saw exactly who he'd expected to see, which didn't explain why his heart seized so violently at the sight that he seriously thought, for a second, he might be dying already. The uniform, the one that popped up in his favorite nightmares. The sunglasses, even indoors-- hey, another thing they had in common. Two sets of hidden eyes, looking at their own twinned reflections in the other's black lenses. Only one gun, though, leveled straight at one racing heart.
He raised his empty hands. No armor, except the ballistic-weave lining of his T-shirt. No disguise, except his face.
"Hey, X6-88," he said, in a voice that somehow, miraculously, didn't shake. "I'm a friend of your mother's. Can I come in?"