The Stranger

We all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out to show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk, and some are leather
They're the faces of The Stranger
But we love to try them on

"You know, Boss, I'm all for ops-preparation, but do you think the whole standing out in the rain bit is totally necessary?"

Deacon stamped his boots against the broken pavement once or twice in a childish attempt to induce a little warmth, the leather of his jacket creaking as his arms folded all the more tightly in front of him. There wasn't any venom in his voice, however actually annoyed he may have been. At this point - at this time, in this place - he'd wait out here as long as she needed.

He just hadn't really expected her to need this long. It didn't sit well with him.

"Sorry," she choked out through a kind of self-deprecating chuckle. "I know I'm being an idiot." She was on her tenth attempt at bringing her lighter to life, both hands shaking too much to accomplish the task with any longevity, and the cigarette between her lips threatening to vibrate out of her grip at any moment.

"Well so long as you know," he teased, unfolding his arms and gently relieving her of the zippo, succeeding in coaxing a flame from it and holding it steady for her, a palm cupped above it to shield it from the rain. He didn't mention the shaking - he wouldn't mention it. He'd let them both keep the pretense of it being from the cold.

"I'm just--"

"I know," Deacon cut her off, his tone somehow simultaneously sharp and gentle. She didn't have to tell him anything, didn't have to explain anything. And he wasn't going to watch her force herself to relive anything, either. Not here, not now. "It's a good night for stargazing, gotta brush up on my astrology anyhow." He smiled up toward the cloud-covered sky, not a single pinprick of light in sight.

"Astronomy," she laughed, sucking down a grateful lung-full of smoke so intensely nearly half the cigarette crackled into ash at once.

"What's the difference?" As if he didn't know. But he was still grinning. It was comforting, in its way. She needed easy banter right now.

"One's a science."

"Are you telling me you've run through the scientific method on this stuff?" He clicked his tongue in mock-admonishment, shaking his head. "Such an Aquarius."

She laughed again, and it was easy on the ears. It was genuine, however tentative, and he was glad of it. She hadn't been laughing for a long time, and now that he could hear it again in earnest, it was the sum total of anything he wanted to hear. God knew she deserved it.

A silence passed between them for the time it took her to burn that cigarette down to a nub, and she held it in her fingers even after its little cherry of light died out. She stared at the ground, the puddle building around her boots, and he stared at her. He hated it like this, hated her having to be like this. He understood, of course. But that didn't make it any easier. It was simpler for him, he supposed. If your entire life is a card-house of lies, knocking it down doesn’t hold much weight. But she was so damned honest. And now she was trying to lie and he could see it twisting her up. She wasn't good at it, either.

"I fucked up, D," she said at last, rolling the dead filter between her fingertips in idle nervousness. "I did a shitty thing."

"There's no way you could have known, Bullseye."

"Oh, don't..." She heaved a shaky little sigh and looked up at him from under the brim of her soggy cap, smiling in a sad little way. "I - it's okay. I mean, it's not okay. But...it's shitty. I did a shitty thing. I have to - I should have - I should have told someone. That's exactly what he's going to say to me and he's going to be right."

"Are you telling me you would have wanted anyone following you there?" This time his tone was unapologetically firm. She didn't get to beat herself up for this. He wasn't going to let that happen. He wasn't going to let her turn into that person.

"...no." Nora's voice was quiet, noncommittal. But she knew it was true. They both did. Nobody she cared about, nobody she thought even remotely fondly about - she wouldn't have wanted that.

"And you think nobody would have come after you? You really think he wouldn't? His whole life is chasing after people." He frowned, tucking his arms against his chest again with an honest little shiver of his own. "Look," he began again, voice hitching for just a moment of hesitation, "no bullshit."

Her eyes snapped up then, narrowed in that piercing way she had. It gave Deacon one more moment of hesitation. He wasn't allowed to say that and follow it with a lie. It was just one of their rules, and that look held him to it. He didn't know if he could lie to that look.

Well, no, of course he could. But he didn't want to.

"Not everybody is gonna understand no matter what you tell them," he continued at last, "probably least of all the truth. But that doesn't mean you made the wrong decision. Sometimes all the choices are bad."

She seemed to consider this, chewing her lip thoughtfully for another quiet moment.

When he couldn't stand it any longer, he spoke up again, breaking her momentary downward spiral with his usual, terrible humor. "I'm saying we went sailing. Fell over the edge of the earth, had to hitch a ride with some space dudes to get back. Took the scenic route. Mars was nice."

Nora laughed again, and he drank it in like sunlight. She'd become something like a sister to him over time, and after this last year, it was cemented. They were a family unit baptized in fire and bullets. It was...difficult, admitting that at first. He didn't like to need anybody. He told himself he still didn't need anybody. But here he was, holding her hand through her first wobbly steps. It hadn't even occurred to him not to do it.

"You sure you want that to get to Tom? You know what it's like when he gloats."

"Mm," he pondered this dramatically for a moment giving a curt, committed nod. "Sure. I just won't tell him anything about the Mars Men, sworn to secrecy and all that. Drive him crazy. Well, crazier."

"Don't chase him too far up a wall. We need him every once in a while." She laughed a single note without any humor and flicked the butt of her cigarette into the haze of rain. As if they didn’t need Tinker and his trinkets every second of every op they ever ran. As if he hadn't saved their lives a thousand times over.

With a short, hard swallow, she finally slammed the base of her palm into the little intercom's call button, perhaps a bit harder than she meant to, but certainly with no force the bit of machinery hadn't seen already. A few moments passed before a voice crackled into life at the other end, sounding just a little annoyed at the late hour.

"Wha- Who's there?" As guard machismo went, it wasn't the best.

"Father Christmas," Deacon replied immediately, earning him a soft punch in the arm from his partner.

"Oh ha ha," came the sardonic, tinny reply, "thanks for waking-- bothering me with that. Guess you can just stay out there for the night."

The two agents looked at each other, Nora with her brow raised, Deacon with a shrug.

"Danny?" She called into the little speaker, a note of disbelief in her voice. "Were you...sleeping?"

"What - no! Who is - is that Nora?"

"One and only," she answered, cheeriness brittle and a little wary.

"Holy shit. You're supposed to be dead!"

"Nice to see you too, buddy," Deacon chimed in, bristling under the inconvenience of being made to wait in the rain far longer than he considered necessary.

"I got better," Nora answered, again giving her partner a playful, albeit warning little shove.

"Jesus. Does Piper know you're here? Where the heck have you been?"

Nora grimaced. "Can we save the catching up for when we're not about to drown out here, Danny?"

"Oh - oh yeah, just, hang on--" there was a hurried fumbling from the other end of the intercom, and the sound of something falling "shit, uh - let me just..."

At last, the hulking steel of Diamond City's gate creaked rumbled into life, hinges squeaking with rust and damp. The pair outside ducked under as soon as there was enough room, and Deacon shook himself like a dog on the dry side, sending spray nearly straight out from his body in all directions. For her part, Nora gave a shiver and another little chuckle, snatching the newsboy cap from her head and snapping it in the air a few times to free it of the better part of rain it had soaked up.

"Jesus," came Danny's voice as he struggled out from behind the counter, all decorum lost, rifle hanging haphazardly at his side. "It's really you! Where - we all thought--"

"Yeah," she cut him off, bracing a hand against his leather-clad shoulder. "Sorry about that. Things got...hectic."

"She's being modest. Alien abduction - you should've seen her take on all those little green men with nothing but a disposable razor. The pink kind."

The guard gave Deacon his best bewildered face - a particular talent for Danny - and Nora intercepted before more trouble could be started. "Listen, Danny, nobody knows I'm here yet," she began, shooting her partner a barbed look, "it's - sort of a surprise. So if you can just keep it between us, for now..."

"Jeeze - I mean, yeah, I just - this is gonna be kinda hard to keep under wraps."

She couldn't help but smile at his put-upon expression. Poor kid. He'd given a lot to the city, what little he had to give. He was a simple man with a simple life and here she was, tasking him with the unbelievably complicated. "I know, sorry." She paid him a pained but pleading look, pinching her shoulders up in a "nothing-you-can-do" sort of shrug. "I'll let everyone know soon. You don't have to sit on it for long."

"Yeah, okay," Danny breathed a little relief into the air before seeming to remember himself, yanking his rifle to the more respectable in-hand and at-the-ready position. "Uh - I guess you should go in then, huh? Everyone will be awful glad to see you."

"Thanks, kid." She stood on tip-toe to deliver a peck to his forehead and left him standing there in the wake of it, turning red at the ears, while the rain-soaked pair scurried into the city proper.

They splashed their way past the silent office of the press and into the cover of the noodle stand. Deacon took up a stool immediately, making a show of his displeasure with the weather and walking combined. "Takahashi," he whined, spinning his seat childishly to face the bot, "I'm starving, Bullseye never feeds me. You can hook a buddy up, right?"

Nora scoffed, taking up a place beside her churlish partner and folding her arms over the countertop. "You saying some 'Claw snuck up and ate those Fancy Lads out of my pack last night?"

In a gesture fit for the worst kind of Shakespearean actor, Deacon clapped a hand over his heart and struck a pained expression behind those ever-present sunglasses. "You wound me," he scolded, turning his gaze back to the protectron-gone-barkeep as though that was any place from which to coax sympathy, "you hearing this? Next she'll accuse me of --" he gasped for the ridiculousness of it "-- lying!"

An elbow connected softly with his ribs, and he put on another display of pain and betrayal. Deacon laughed and held up two fingers while shoving his other hand in his pocket to scrounge for a handful of caps. "Two of your finest, my good bot."

"No," Nora cut in, turning away from the incoming bowls of noodles and letting her eyes dart treacherously over to the mouth of that alley, tinged with the neon pink of that familiar advertisement. "Not for me."

Deacon frowned at this, and he shifted in order to follow her gaze, though he needn't have bothered. He knew well enough where her mind was going, and how fast it was running ahead of her to get there. She was going to drive herself bonkers that way. "Don't think you'll need your strength?"

"Don't need to throw up on his doorstep," she countered.

"Wow." Suddenly the humor was gone from him, and he swiveled in his seat again to lock eyes on her. He might not even have existed, the way her concentration was throwing itself across the empty space of the market square. "That's an image." More out of habit than anything, his eyes darted from one shadowy guard to the next as a shift in patrols occurred, someone relieving someone else of the late shift and starting the graveyard. He could see Bullseye doing the same, and couldn't stamp down a little pride. Even like this, worried as she was, she was alert. Astute. Even after...well. She was a tough cookie, to say the least.

"You sure you don't want backup on this one? You seem..." He didn't really have the heart to finish that sentence, however kindly he could think to do it. She was still on point, it was just...different. A little more harried, more urgent. If he was the kind of person to admit to fear, he'd say it scared him a little.

"No, I think - I should do it alone. I have to...it's better that way, I think."

"Your call, boss," he relented, though with obvious reluctance. He would have gone with her through the thickest of it if she'd have him. But he was trying to respect her choice to go it alone. He understood it, at least, even if he didn't like it.

At her deepening frown, Deacon leaned forward, nudging his partner gently with a shoulder. "You're gonna be fine." She didn't often need reassurance, and he could feel how rusty he was as a result. How did you comfort the eternally calm and collected?

She gave a hollow little laugh, twisting her hat between her fists in a building nervous energy. "Yeah," was her empty response, and there was no sense of security in it. In his heart of hearts (of hearts, of hearts -- had to keep enough layers there), he wasn't sure he believed it, either. This wasn't the kind of situation where anyone got through being "fine." Didn't help when nobody even started there.

"Wanna wait until morning? The Dugout--"

"No," she spoke up more firmly this time, screwing her still-damp cap firmly back onto her head, "I think I've just gotta do it quick, like a Band-Aid." She kicked herself off her seat and onto her feet, heaving a deep breath of nervous preparation.

"What's a Band-Aid?"

"What? Oh, it's like this little piece of--" But she caught the hint of a smirk behind those sunglasses, and the hand she'd been using to illustrate the idea in gestures curled into a fist to sock him on the arm, even as a chuckle was rising in her throat. "Jerk."

"You love me," he pouted, rubbing the offended bicep with overdramatic care.

"Lucky you." She let her punching hand fall to his, giving his fingers a little squeeze as the smile faded from her face.

"Hey," Deacon's voice was soft again, and he looked up at her from over the rim of his dark glasses, "it's all gonna be fine. I'll be here when you get back." With this, he took up the bowl Takahashi had prepared for him at last, spinning again in his stool to rest his back against the edge of the counter. "Alone," he added, snapping the bound chopsticks in two, "with my noodles."

"Poor baby," Nora supplied with a laugh before straightening her pack over her shoulder and marching off into the dark of the city. For a moment, he could see her hesitate, silhouetted against the neon glow of the arrow that hung just outside the mouth of the alley. Then she was gone, disappearing between rusted buildings. He sighed a little, shoving a healthy helping of noodles into his cheek to free up his mouth for a comment.

"Whatcha think, Tak? There gonna be fireworks at this dysfunctional family reunion?"

"Nan-ni shimasho-ka?"

"Yeah." There was a small spray of hot broth. "Me, too."

It was a few moments before Nick could reel his senses in enough to even wrap a metal hand around that sheaf of papers, and still he couldn't stop gaping at the figure in front of him. If he had a heart, it would have stopped, despite the noisy buzz of his suddenly overloaded processors. He never really had trouble with the whole "seeing is believing" concept before -- he'd never experienced a hallucination; his sensory detection merely provided empirical data. But this -- but her...

"You, uh, gonna let me in or is this your way of saying I need a shower?"

The glow of those yellow eyes flickered for a moment in some kind of miniature reboot, and the fact that she was standing in a downpour finally registered. Nick stepped back quickly, gesturing with the arm that now held the paper bundle toward the inside of the rather cramped space.

She shuffled in gratefully, trying to gather herself into the smallest space possible so as to avoid dripping on anything important. The office was, just as she always remembered, littered with paper and folders, scraps of notes in Nick's cramped and hurried hands, stray books Ellie hadn't yet attempted to wrangle. It smelled like smoke and parchment, and the nostalgia of it all hit Nora hard, like an arrow through the chest. It was such a physical sensation that a hand reflexively reached up to latch onto the front of her coat, as if attempting to still the flutter that rose within her by force.

"You - uh - all right?"

Of all the things he could have said to her, Nick supposed this probably wasn't the most eloquent, but it was the most honest. And that seemed to resonate enough with her to give the woman pause. She tucked some of the hair that had been plastered to her cheek behind her ear - short, he noted, so much shorter than when he'd last seen her; it barely brushed her chin - and looked up at him, now in better light. Their view of one another was stark and plain now, and they both registered little changes in one another.

The new scar on her lip. The new band securing a handful of wires to the column in his neck. A collection of freckles the sun had drawn out on her cheeks. A fresh patch under one lapel of his coat.

And then - all the things that were the same. So much the same. Painfully easy to project against perfect memory.

"I - yeah," Nora managed at last, folding her arms across her waist against the dry cold of the room. "Sorry," she added, glancing down to the puddle she was creating at her feet.

"Forget about it," was his answer when he realized what she meant. "Lemme take your coat."

She didn't resist as he helped to ease her arms out of the garment, and she set her pack out of the way in the corner. He hung the jacket up on the rickety coat stand, then, almost instinctively, removed his own to drape around her. She tried to object in that odd, modest way of hers, and he just shook his head. Never did take her shit.

"Getcha anything?"

She couldn't help but smile. It was awkward, sure, and difficult but - so familiar. Like home.

"Still got that whiskey?"

"Have a seat," Nick nodded to the plush - well, as plush as anything could be nowadays - chair in front of his desk before disappearing momentarily into the back partition of the little building. He returned with a glass two-fingers full, setting it lightly in her cupped hands before depositing the papers next to another pile of his own. He leaned against the front edge of his desk, half-seated, and simply watched her while she took in the warmth of the drink and settled into herself a little more.

"Lookin' at me awful hard there," she noted at last, offering him a weak smile.

"Just wonderin' if I'm having my first dream."

She laughed, and though it was small, it was so earnest - it hit him like a ball of lead lodged in his chest and sat there, hot and pointed. Nora gestured to herself in a somewhat expansive way, as if to indicate the entirety of her rather shabby appearance. "More like a nightmare, maybe."

"Nah," he replied, fishing into the pocket of his slacks to fetch a battered pack of cigarettes. Sinking into habits so old they were part of his nature - their natures, maybe - he shook one to the opening of the little box and offered it to her. She took it gratefully, and he shook his head just so. Just as heavy a smoker as he was. Always had been.

"Light?" The flip-lighter was open and boasting a proud little flame even as the word left him, and she leaned forward to catch it on the end of her cigarette.

"Thanks," she managed after a first, deep breath of smoke. She watched him tuck his cigarette into the corner of his mouth after lighting up, and they sat in another moment or two of quiet - his arms folded over his front, smoke blowing through his nostrils and drifting up through the open spaces under his jaw; she with whiskey glass in one hand, now almost empty, and cigarette in the other. It was...too familiar. Too easy. How many nights had they spent like this? Just quiet, just thinking, smoking, drinking - hashing out case details or laughing good naturedly at Ellie's latest lecture.

"So." And it was Nick who broke the silence this time, finally plucking his cigarette free between thumb and forefinger, blowing the last bit of smoke politely above her head. "We gonna address the pachyderm at this party?"

She chuckled, downing the last of her whiskey like a woman seeking courage anywhere it might be offered. "Can I interest you in a second helping of pretending nothing happened?"

The smile on his face had an ache behind it, but he bowed his head slightly in agreement. "Sure, sure. How 'bout them Demolishers?"

"Moe hasn't actually revived a team, has he?" She looked almost fearful at the idea, and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"Not for lack of trying. Even tried recruiting here at the office."

"You?"

"Ellie."

Nora couldn't stifle another laugh at this, and she deposited the empty glass on the corner of the desk before nerves or forgetfulness or the first taste of alcohol in far too long caused her to drop it. "She give him a talking to about the morals of blood sports?"

A mild grin cracked under the shadow of that beat up fedora, and Nick simply shook his head. "Took the safe way out. Said Piper'd make both their lives hell if she found out."

"Ha!" And now there was a grin on her face, too. "Bet that got him out of here quick." There was a nostalgic little sigh before she pieced together a part of this statement that hadn't initially processed, and she raised a brow over a curiously pleased expression. "Ellie and Piper finally?"

"Way I heard, Nat shoved them both in the print room and locked the door until they finally talked to each other. Said there was a lot of stammering, but they got there in the end."

The way Nora's face softened in that wistful sort of way nearly tore him in two. He knew her, knew she couldn't have possibly wanted to be gone so long, but...

"Looks like I've missed a lot." And this thought seemed to sober her immediately. She took another nervous drag of smoke and he watched the way she smoldered the thing to ash in a handful of seconds. Always smoking like she was running out of time. "Nick..."

He stiffened under the sound of his name. She floundered for a moment or two with words she couldn't put into any sensible order. "Is he - where--"

"He's upstairs," Nick supplied before she could twist herself up enough to drown. "Sleeping. Ellie shacked up with Piper like she is, figured he could just have the room. Not like I need it."

The pain in her face finally broke whatever dam she'd erected in front of that flood of emotions, and tears welled up hot and furious in her eyes. "He's here?" Nora's voice was a cracked whisper, and she might as well have cut him. He couldn't stand it. "He's - oh. You kept..."

"'Course I did," he answered sharply, perhaps with a little more force than he'd wanted, but with at least as much as he deserved. "Think I'd do anything different?" It was a cheap jab, he knew, but he was entitled to a little anger, a little hurt. And now, as the novelty and newness of her was wearing off, that sizzling sense of betrayal was burning its way to the surface.

"No! No," she assured him desperately, depositing her spent cigarette in an ash tray he was already holding out for her. "I didn't mean - I don't - I just didn't expect..." She drew in a shaky breath to steady herself, fingers clenching and unclenched against the fabric of his coat. "Can I see him?"

The way it was practically a plea - like she needed his permission. If he needed to breathe, he wouldn't have been able to for a moment. No one did guilt like Nora. And suddenly he felt a little ashamed. He didn't know the whole story - didn't know any of it, really. And there was an ache in her that was palpable, a longing and a sense of disappointment in herself.

"Nora..." There weren't words appropriate enough for the situation. There was nothing he could say. So he stubbed out his own cigarette and offered a hand out to her. She took it, unflinchingly as she ever had been at his metal fingers, and he helped heave her out of her seat before leading her up the little twisty set of stairs. He could feel her shaking before they were even halfway up, her grip tightening on him, her breath catching.

And there he was. Red hair tussled with sleep, curled up on his side with his back to them. Breathing so soundly. It was such a simple scene, and it seemed to poke a hole in Nora's entire world.

"Oh," she breathed, barely audible. She took a hesitant step toward the bed before catching herself, looking back to Nick. He merely nodded, folding his arms again and leaning a shoulder against the doorway. That she thought she needed to ask him - to see her own son...

He knew then, he would realize later, that something had happened. Something had gone wrong. But at the moment, he could only watch as a mother reached the edge of her son's bed, uncontrollably shaking hand hovering above his lanky arm for a long pause before daring to settle against the fabric of the blanket covering him. Her world burst. Tears were coming now with wild abandon, though she forced herself into silence. Even now, even after so much time, she was thinking of him in the smallest ways. She didn't want to wake him. Like he wouldn't have given the world to see her right then.

"Oh, Nick." And now he realized she'd been looking around the room. What had once been Ellie's space had become unquestionably Shaun's. A repaired ham radio was cluttering the top of a small dresser, salvaged posters and strange technical diagrams were hung on the walls. Gadgets in various states of completion and deconstruction were scattered across a shelf, an open drawer, beneath the bed. God, he'd always been so smart.

"Nick," she managed again, lifting her hand to wipe her now considerably wetter face. "Oh, Nick. Thank you. I'm so - thank you."

He felt his whole body pinch towards his center. How was he supposed to parse simultaneous anger and pity and that - that light in him, that mirror that reflected her...something, whenever she was near. He dipped his head in response. What could he say? What words could properly convey what it had meant to him, what it had meant to her?

She looked on the verge of speaking again what the lithe figure under her hand began to stir. The pair of them froze as Shaun blinked himself out of sleep, craning his neck to stare blearily up at the face hovering over him, streaked with dirt and tear tracks.

"...Mom?"

Nick could have sworn he heard her heart break. Funny thing, such a small person able to wield such ridiculous strength. But it didn't surprise him. How many times had he experienced it for himself?

"Hey, kiddo."

And then the boy was upright in bed. He stared, wide-eyed at his mother for a moment that seemed to stretch into forever. Both adults were again frozen in fear - his reaction, Nick knew all too well, could very well be the death of her. Nora wasn't an easy woman to put down, but that little boy could kill her with a word.

But then he was on her, arms wrapped around her middle and face buried into her shoulder. Nora sat stock-still, face a picture of shock melting into relief. "I'm so glad," came the muffled voice against Nick's borrowed coat, "I'm so glad."

And her arms were around him in an instant, gathering him up practically into her lap, pressing her face against the crown of his head and letting the sobs come without restraint. There may have been an attempted apology in there somewhere, Nick was sure he heard her try to form some semblance of a sentence, but the pair had always had some otherworldly communication between them. Shaun was...well, unique. And so was his mother. Neither of them really needed to speak, Nick supposed. They both had always just...known.

He watched mother and son cling to each other for dear life for a few moments longer, choking back laughter and tears and the both of them shaking with a fragility that he had never before seen in either. At last, he cleared his throat as politely as he could, and Nora's face lifted, blotched and unreadable. "Sorry, I--"

"No." He held up a hand to stop her there, shaking his head. He wasn't going to let her do that yet. He wasn't sure he wanted any apologies. He didn't know if he could accept them. He was lost, which wasn't unfamiliar territory around this woman, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"Are you leaving?" Shaun was looking up now, too, his expression desperate. "Please don't go."

Nick would have sworn he felt his own heart break, if he'd had one.

"Oh, honey." A silent look passed between Nick and Nora, and he shrugged a little helplessly. There was that faint, aching smile under the shadow of his hat again, and he pushed himself off the doorway in order to prepare his retreat.

"I'll be downstairs. You two..." He trailed off ineffectually, but Nora met him with a grateful smile, and again there was that twist in his gut, that hot ball of lead in his chest seizing and burning.

He left them there to bask in each other, plodding back to his desk and flopping into his chair again. Before he really registered what he was doing, there was another cigarette in his mouth and smoke was already curling toward the ceiling, mixing with the haze of the dim lamplight. Leave it to Nora to pull his life apart in an instant. She'd always been good at that.

Distractedly, his gaze fell on the papers she'd provided him earlier, and he leaned forward to give them a tired once-over. Time passed. The night grew darker. He burned through another three cigarettes before tearing himself away from the package of documents, face screwed up in what might have been disbelief. When he rose to the top of the stairs to see if he couldn't squeeze in a question or two, however, the picture in the room was quiet and comfortable. They lay on the bed, asleep and still clinging to one another, both tucked under the expanse of his patched coat. It was strangely domestic, and it left a bittersweet taste in his mouth.

Quietly, he stepped forward and tucked the collar of his coat a little higher on the pair of them before gently relieving Nora of her cap, still slightly damp from the rain. She stirred just enough to crack one sleepy eye at him, and he hushed her back down before she could fully wake. "You sleep," he insisted, "we'll talk in the morning."

Absently, his hand swept briefly over Shaun's hair in a paternal sort of way, and he caught himself in the middle of the act. Something that had come so naturally after so long with just him and the boy. And here, in front of his mother, it made him feel like a thief.

He lingered in the doorway for a brief moment after retreating again, glowing eyes settling on the pair of shapes beneath their makeshift blanket. Every part of him that had wanted to revel in her return, and every part that thereafter wanted to scold her - to demand answers - whirred into a hush. Here, at the sight of them reunited, he was impotent against it all. He knew he'd take her answers, whatever ones she provided. He'd find a way to settle with them. The realization was like drinking battery acid. Sure it didn't hurt him, but it burned him all the way down to his core.

A damn year. She'd been gone a whole damn year, without so much as a word of warning, and now that she was back, the most he could feel was grateful. He sucked back a bitter laugh, descending the stairs again to settle helplessly into his chair. And he'd help her, too, he knew. With whatever mess she had brought him. He wanted so badly to be angry, to be steaming on the surface like he knew he deserved to be. But now, all he wanted was to know how she was, to know that she was all right, to know - he gave another, hollow chuckle - that she was staying.

Nick the synth. Ha. "More like Nick the spaniel," he muttered to himself, gathering the papers again to browse through them. Like a kicked dog.

And yet, for a brief moment, knowing she was upstairs, safe and asleep - he smiled.