Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 47: Phantom

I love you.

Three little words. Every time Kelly looked into those dead brown eyes, those words whispered out from the back of her skull, echoing through the atoms that forged her soul in it's place, capturing every shred of her emotion to well up without release when the whisper drifted unspoken on her lips.

Danse was a phantom. A phantom clad in steel skin. He was in a land where she could not reach him. She could reach out, search for rifts in his mask, but only ever find that steel barricading her, damming up his void. He was lost, adrift, a reverie of his former steel.

Kelly didn't know what to do.

Those three little words could reach him in his lost land, dissolve that steel mask and cradle him through his void... or they could force him deeper into his void and bolster the steel to keep her out.

Chances were he didn't even feel the same way about her. A bond of affinity infused with a mutual attraction was one thing, but love was an unparalleled connection. Danse still loved the Brotherhood of Steel. Even as an outcast. It seemed he was an Outcast once again...

And she still loved Nate...

Kelly sighed into the breeze as it played with her hair, dark wisps of it caressing her face. The sun was cresting over the hill outside the bunker, waning with the coming of night. Warm hues splashed through the clouds, reminding her of how warm hues would once splash through Danse's eyes. She had tried luring him out to the surface for some fresh air, but he had just mumbled something inaudible and buried himself back into whatever task of tedium he had devised for himself for the day. Today it was sleep.

His holotags entwined in her fingers, the chain falling to glimpse the wavers of long grass in the wind and join them in their sway. She had thought of offering them back to him, but feared how it might affect him, remembering his words to her.

"I might physically be a synth, but my heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood."

Kelly didn't know what to think of that. Was his loyalty a cure or a curse? Was he thinking with clarity or in denial? Was he devoted or delusional? Should she support it or oppose it? If she gave back his holotags, it would be her declaration of supporting his loyalty to the Brotherhood. After what they had just done to him, they didn't deserve him.

She was still competing with Maxson for that devoted or delusional loyalty. Even after the Elder had tried to kill him, condemned him to exile, and mauled everything he was with his intense hatred, Danse still exalted him.

"If I'm seen by the Brotherhood out in the Wastes, not only would I be killed, but I'd undermine Maxson's authority. I won't do that."

Could a mere woman ever hope to compare with the bond of brothers? Where Kelly wanted to rip out Maxson's beard and strangle him with it, Danse truly believed that Maxson's reaction had been just, his words sage-like and all-knowing. She wondered if his mourning was more for the Brotherhood, or for Maxson...

Frowning, her finger traced the rim of Danse's holotag, her thumb skimming the print of his personal detail and service number. As the days died on, Danse died with them. Little by little, piece by piece. The bunker was haunted by pain and memories, the shadows in the corners festering with wounds and taunts at what he was and what he had lost.