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Chapter 13: It's All In the Game

Fandom: Fallout 4 Words: 7,475 Characters: Georgia Tate (Canon Divergent Sole Survivor), Nate, RJ MacCready, Nick Valentine, Conrad Kellogg Notes: content warnings for graphic-ish descriptions of gore? canon standard tbh but just thought i'd give a heads up :) enjoy ! read on ao3 / read on tumblr

August 28th, 2075. 7 PM.

The place Nate ends up taking her to is a dive bar near some place called Fort Hagen, a military base, one he tells her he spends lots of time at with his friends. Its patrons were mostly servicemen, which was how Nate found out about it and it isn’t exactly prime date material in Georgia’s mind, but he reassures her that it’s a fun place.

“Something is always going down there,” he says, and he’s cute enough that she lets it slide. It’s only one date; she might as well see where this goes, right?

On the drive there, she learns that he’s been out of the military for a few months now, and picked up a job as a line manager in his uncle’s Corvega factory. He brags about being one of the only managers who likes to actually be out on the floor with the guys, and she’s able to spin it as him being dedicated to his job. He blows past a stop sign on a thankfully empty street when he grins over at her in the passenger seat.

“Aren’t you the little optimist,” he says, one hand on the wheel and the other on the arm rest between them. “I’ll have to tell that one to the boys at work next time they give me shit.”

“I’m a brightside kinda gal, what can I say?”

“That you are,” Nate agrees. “You’ll fit right in at the bar. They’ve got a jukebox, karaoke, a pool table. You’ll love it.”

“Pool?” Now he has her attention; she’s been pocketing 8-balls since she was thirteen, but he doesn’t need to know that. She plays coy, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “I’ve always thought pool was fun.”

“Oh, really? You’re a woman after my own heart, Miss Walker.”

Georgia beams back and sits pretty beside him, hair done up in curls and her best dress already riding up her legs. He drives a cherry red Corvega Blitz with a creamy leather interior that sticks to her thighs in the late summer heat. That detail is not lost on Nate, whose eyes dart to the exposed skin before she artfully smoothes out the fabric. His scarred lip twitches into a self-satisfied smile as he pulls into the parking lot. Up the hill, Fort Hagen itself looms ominously despite its spotlights. Georgia can’t help but wonder what goes on inside a building as imposing as that; probably nothing good, she decides, and definitely not as entertaining as her date is about to be.

Things inside the bar are much more inviting, loud and raucous with music spilling out of the promised jukebox and people dancing across the floor. Georgia hopes that Nate is a dancing kind of man, her hand already tapping the beat against her leg. She doesn’t want to speak too soon, but if it goes well, maybe a club and a good band would be a nice second date. She’s about to ask him if he dances when a group of men at a table in the corner catch sight of him amongst the crowd and begin to shout him over.

“Hey, let me introduce you to my friends really fast,” Nate says, already steering her in their direction.

Georgia attempts to hide her frown. Maybe she jinxed it. “I’m sure they’re nice, but…I thought this was a date.”

Nate looks down at her, eyebrow raised. “It still is. They were gonna be here anyways, might as well say hi, right? C’mon, they’ll love ya.”

Hm. Georgia could appreciate a man who maintained his friendships—surely that was a green flag. Nate ducks down and whispers next to her ear, “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to show you off, huh?”

This gets her blushing, pink from her hairline down to her collarbones. Well, she certainly wouldn’t mind that. She puts her best face on as they approach.

They see Nate first and greet him warmly, clapping him on the shoulder and offering him a seat. Georgia steps out from behind him and before Nate can introduce her, one of his friends nods at her over his beer and asks, “Are you gonna tell us who this fine young thing beside you is, Tate?”

Georgia doesn’t hide her frown this time and goes to open her mouth before Nate opens his first.

“Hey, knock it off,” he tells his friend seriously. “I’m a gentleman tonight. You should play along.”

Another friend laughs and derides him, “Just tonight, Natey? Is your broad aware of that?”

The men descend into a round of obnoxious laughter, but Nate just waves them off while Georgia crosses her arms in contempt. He puts an arm over her shoulders and turns them away from his friends, leaning down to talk to her again.

“Don’t mind them,” he tells her. “They’re already drunk and trying to give me shit. I think they’re just jealous. Who can blame them? Out of that teacher get-up, you look gorgeous.”

Her brow furrows deeper. “Those are my regular clothes.”

Nate must sense he’s said something wrong, because he readjusts on the fly. “I mean to say, you look sexier without a dress code holding you back. Better?”

She will admit, his petty appeals to her vanity are working in his favor. She decides to let him off easy.

“Better. Now, let’s turn this back into a proper date, shall we?”

Nate acquiesces to her and finishes up with his friends, then guides her towards an empty pool table.

“Now,” he says, pulling out his wallet and flashing a few hundred dollar bills that catch Georgia’s attention as he pulls out his driver’s license, “how’s about I grab us a few drinks and I teach you a thing or two about pool?”

Her eyes flit from his wallet to his face and she perks up, unable to stop the mischievous little voice in the back of her head telling her to take him up on it. When she smiles, it’s saccharine-sweet.

“Sounds great. You get the drinks and I’ll grab us some sticks?”

Georgia spends some time inspecting the pool cues, finding two without much warping or worn tips. She chalks her own but doesn’t touch Nate’s until he comes back with the drinks—she doesn’t presume to tell a man how to handle his stick, both on the billiard’s green and off…but she can give a couple pointers.

“You shoot with an open bridge?” she asks conversationally after he makes the break shot. Nate looks at her, raising an eyebrow over his bottle of Gwinnett. She mimics the shape with her hand and he nods. She gives him a playful look. “I thought you were gonna teach me a thing or two about pool?”

Nate laughs, but she can sense a touch of stung pride, just enough that it gives him more of a competitive drive. Georgia can’t say she doesn’t delight in riling up her competition.

“So you were just pulling my leg earlier,” he says, then sets her with a daring look. “Alright then, let’s play some damn pool.”

They play the game and he commends her for her trickshots and doesn’t even seem upset when she sinks all of her balls and calls the winning pocket for the eight ball at the end. In fact, he looks downright eager to get her to hustle his friends for money. So he sends her back over to their table and she plays the part of Nate’s innocent little tagalong, asking them if they want to join in on their game. A few take her up on the offer, sharing looks between themselves like they’re just humoring her. She catches Nate’s eye as they walk back, sharing her own sneaking look with him as he casually asks his friends if they want to put money down on the game. For fun, he says. They agree and soon enough, the game begins.

By the end of the night, Georgia has five grown men nearly snap their pool cues when they are forced to empty out their wallets. As a team, she and Nate had done pretty well, even if she had done most of the work.

Her latest victim sneers, throwing a few crumpled bills on the table. “Bullshit beginner’s luck.”

“Maybe so,” Georgia shrugs, chalking up her cue again, “but then that still means you lost to a beginner, so what does that say about you?”

The man, Jacobs, sneers at her. “Tate, if you don’t control your lady—”

Nate steps between the two of them, putting a hand firmly in the center of his friend’s chest.

“Get a fucking grip, Jacobs, it’s pool,” he snaps.

“And she cheated me out of my last dime!” Jacobs all but shouts and Georgia suddenly feels that maybe hustling people at pool in a military bar wasn’t their brightest idea.

Nate, however, looks entirely unbothered. All he does is give the other man a flippant shrug. “And? You’re the one who put it down. No one forced you to lose at pool.”

“And no one asked you to bring her to our bar,” Jacobs counters and glares at her over Nate’s shoulder. “The little bitch is a cheat, and I can pr—”

Georgia isn’t even able to get an astonished “excuse me?” out before Nate’s fist connects with Jacobs’ nose. Jacobs stumbles back, wiping the blood from his face and doesn’t pause before he charges Nate, nearly pushing him into her had she not stepped out of the way in time. She puts herself safely on the other side of the table as the two men descend into a brawl. She wants to stop them, yells at Nate to do so, but she can’t put herself between them so all she can do is watch as the punches fly.

Nate fights like a caged animal, going for any weak spot he can see and hitting them more often than not. She has a front row seat to the rage now coursing through him, teeth bared and fists bloody as they wail on each other. Jacobs catches him in the cheek but then Nate has him pinned to the pool table in front of Georgia, slamming him down on top of it. The man’s face is a patchwork of black, blue, and red as Nate holds him down by his shirt. He leans down, close enough where only he, Jacobs, and only incidentally Georgia, are able to hear.

“You don’t get to disrespect me and mine just because you’re a sore fuckin’ loser, alright?” he mutters and something in his words makes a warm, fluttery feeling start in the pit of Georgia’s stomach.

Nate spits on Jacobs’ chest before letting him go. When he looks up and sees Georgia standing in front of him, however, all the fight leaves him at once. His face goes pale and that’s when the both of them realize just how many eyes are on them and the silence that now pervades the bar. The fluttery feeling is quickly replaced by embarrassment and Georgia makes the executive decision to hurry the two of them out of the bar before they’re kicked out. She goes around the table, takes Nate’s arm into hers, and leads the two of them out with her head down. As they leave, his muscles are still taught in her grasp.

Once they’re standing next to his car in the parking lot, Georgia turns on him, hands on her hips.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Nate leans back against the driver’s side door and doesn’t meet her eye, just pulls his cigarettes and a lighter out from his pocket. He lights up and takes a drag before speaking to her.

“He called you a bitch,” he says, blowing his smoke into the wind and it tickles her nose. “I didn’t like it. What, did you want me to stand there and let him?”

Georgia puts a hand on her forehead and sighs. On one hand, she’s pissed. This is categorically not how first dates were supposed to go, and she had been on enough to know. She’d had high hopes for the charming man that had walked in and picked up his nephew from her classroom that afternoon. Now, she was standing beside a man who would fistfight one of his friends at the drop of a hat. She can’t help but replay the fight in her mind and as she does, that same fluttery feeling comes back as she recalls what Nate had said to Jacobs. Me and mine.

On the other hand…

Watching him go from zero to a hundred in half a second, all on her behalf…well, no one had ever fought for her like that. First date or not. All that anger and power emanating from him…that had been because of her. For her. Something about it, as terrible as she should find it, makes her reconsider if this date–this man–was a total loss.

Her silence must make Nate antsy, because he speaks up again and this time looks her in the face.

“I didn’t want you to see me that way,” he says, and reaches out to touch her. When she doesn’t move away, his hand runs down her arm until it's holding hers, and he squeezes it with an infant’s strength. “I just…it’s like the anger gets loud, you know? And it’s all I can hear. It was stupid to let it get the better of me. I’m sorry.”

Out in the parking lot, half-lit by street lamps and out of the bar, Nate doesn’t look so imposing anymore. Slouched beside his car, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and a bruise rapidly forming across his cheek, he appears regretful. And, Georgia can’t help but notice, increasingly attractive.

“You’re right. It was stupid,” she agrees, going to lean against the car beside him and he looks down at her with a furrowed brow, “but no one’s ever fought someone for me. It was…kind of nice, almost.”

Nate laughs and puts an arm around her, pulling her close. She leans her head onto his shoulder and looks up at him.

“You’re one surprise after the other, Miss Walker,” he says and she grins. “Might have to keep you around.”

“Just don’t make it a habit, alright? I can handle bein’ called a bitch a time or two, it wouldn’t be the first time,” she tells him, and plucks the cigarette from between his lips to steal a drag. “Besides, I don’t think we’ll be able to come back here for our second date. I was hopin’ you were a dancin’ kind of man.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You’ve cleared me for a second date already? Color me surprised.”

“What can I say? I guess I have questionable taste and a thing for men with a solid right hook,” she jokes, only half meaning it, and he throws her that smile that got her to agree to all this in the first place before he takes his cigarette back.

They stand there for a little while longer, smoking cigarettes until Georgia says it’s getting late and they should both go home. They sit in his car a while longer, though, dragging out the date minute by minute until, by unspoken agreement, they decide to get a little hot and heavy in the backseat of the car. When they kiss, she’s careful of the bruise on his face and even softly presses her lips against it. Things escalate from there, a fire in Nate’s eyes, but Georgia doesn’t let him past the first five buttons on her blouse at first, per her own dating rules. He does get a hand up her skirt about halfway through and she allows it, so whether or not it counts as putting out on the first date is up in the air.

After, Nate drives her back to her little apartment a few blocks from the school, and very politely asks if he can kiss her goodnight outside her door despite the fact that he had her moaning his name not even an hour earlier. Flushed from hairline to collarbones, Georgia invites him in under the guise of getting him some frozen peas for his face, and if they end up between the sheets, well.

Georgia thinks she can bend her own rules, just this once.

-----

January 31st, 2288

When Fort Hagen comes into view after hours of chasing Dogmeat’s nose, past wild mutated bears (yao guai, Mac had called them) and a decimated assaultron, Georgia almost has to laugh at the irony. Just down the street are the ruins of her first date with her dead husband and before her is the foreboding tomb she may or may not find her son in. She hasn’t been the praying type in a long while, more so after waking up two hundred years in the future, but she throws a little mental prayer to anyone listening anyways.

The sky above them had been gray since they left Diamond City that morning, making vague threats of rain from the north that hadn’t yet come to pass. Dogmeat ends his tracking at the boarded up doors to the fort and barks once.

“I knew Dogmeat could sniff our man out,” Mr. Valentine says from her left. “Let’s you two and I take it from here, give our four-legged friend a break.”

Georgia bends down, knees popping, to give the hound a rewarding scratch behind the ears. “You did your part, boy. Stay out here while we find a way in, okay? Good boy.”

Dogmeat barks again like he understands—at this point, she’s pretty sure they have some kind of mental link from how in tune they are—and lays down, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

“Front door isn’t an option, and even if it was it wouldn’t be the smart one,” Mac says, attempting to look around for another entrance.

“There’s scaffolding around the side, maybe this place has rooftop access,” Mr. Valentine says, so the three of them seek it out, only to find several automated turrets on said roof that put a bead on them almost as fast as he can shuffle them back down the platforms.

Mac offers to take them out, reminding her of the training yard job, but when she reminds him they should probably keep a low profile, he surrenders to her point. It’s only when she spots the parking garage connected to the building that she remembers they usually have interior entrances. It’s surprisingly deserted when they get down there, and almost like a light at the end of a tunnel: a door, lit by a single emergency light amongst the darkness. When she puts her hands on the crash bar and it begins to open, she pauses.

“You ready?” Mac asks from beside her. She swallows.

“You don’t know until you know,” she says, and presses forward.

The synths scattered among the inside of Fort Hagen are Gen 2’s, according to Mr. Valentine. Metal and plastic like him, but without his sparkling personality, as he put it. Georgia’s been lucky enough that she hasn’t crossed paths with many of them since she thawed out, and those she did, she and Preston had steadfastly avoided. Now, with their hollow, robotic voices echoing off the crumbling walls around her, it sends chills down her spine. They’re damn good shots, too, because by the time she, Mac, and Mr. Valentine clear the floor, they’re all sporting new holes in their coats and multiple plasma burns of near misses from their energy weapons. Mr. Valentine seems the most well-off, all things considered, while she and Mac quickly patch up the burns on her thigh and the one on his arm.

The further they go, they manage to find an elevator that provides the only way forward. It takes them below the surface and it reminds Georgia far too much of the vault. She tries to push it out of her mind as they press forward past another handful of synths, a turret, and a few easily disabled trip wires. For a moment it all seems too easy, like the three of them are just blowing through minor threats before rolling up to the big one, wherever he is. But then something crackles along the hallways, like a classroom intercom, and Georgia is sent back to cold metal and glass, thin air, and Shaun’s wailing cries. She nearly trips going down the stairs.

“If it isn’t my old friend, the frozen TV dinner,” a rough cadence says, echoing down the never ending hallways. “Last time we met, you were cozying up to the peas and apple cobbler.”

“Whoa, careful now,” Mr. Valentine says as he catches her by the elbow, looking around for the speakers.

“That’s him, that’s his voice,” Georgia says, her own voice trembling and her legs feeling like they’re about to give out from under her. She’s not ready. “Mac, Mr. Valentine, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can, Georgia,” Mac says firmly from the other side of her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “We didn’t come all the way here for you to turn back now. If he’s here, let’s go find the bastard.”

“Take it slow, one step atta time. We’re right behind you,” Mr. Valentine nods, readjusting the grip on his gun.

Georgia bites down on her lip to keep it from quivering. The speakers hadn’t come back on and she consoles herself with the fact that she has one of the best guns in the Commonwealth beside her as well as its best detective. One she trusts implicitly and one she trusts enough to help her see this through. She resolves to press forward. Mac was right; she didn’t come this far to only come this far.

Once she’s able to keep going, they take out a few more of Kellogg’s defenses and when his voice crackles overhead again, she isn’t as caught out by it. She can’t stop the shaking in her hands, though, shotgun wavering in her grip.

“Sorry your house has been a wreck for two hundred years,” Kellogg says, snarling when he adds, “but I don’t need a roommate. Leave.”

The words continue to bounce around her skull as they push open a set of metal double doors, opening up to some sort of command center. It’s like a game—they snuff out a few more Gen 2’s, Kellogg comes over the speakers to taunt her. She feels like a rat in a maze, the man who tore her family apart the mad scientist watching her every move.

“Hmph. Never expected you to come knocking on my door. Hell, I thought the Commonwealth would have chewed you up like jerky if you even made it out of that old neighborhood alive,” he muses, voice no less like sandpaper across her face even through the speakers. “What a surprise you turned into.”

Eventually Georgia’s fear morphs into anger and frustration. The closer they seem to get, the further away Kellogg seems. A game of cat and mouse, except the cat sends minions to do his work for him. She takes her rage out on a couple of Gen 2’s and hopes Mr. Valentine doesn’t take it too personally.

“Look,” the mercenary says after Georgia’s shotgun blows apart the plastic skull of yet another synth in front of her, “you’re pissed off. I get it. I do. But whatever you hope to accomplish in here? It is not going to go your way.”

She can’t help it; the pressure builds and she screams back at him, something deep and raw from within, “Fuck OFF.”

Mac and Mr. Valentine jump at her intensity, so on edge for everything else around them that they don’t expect it. There is fire and fury within her now that she can only do so much to keep contained. She thinks, briefly, of how much she can relate to Nate right about now. That only makes her angrier and she does away with the thought as she does away with the next synth that crosses their path.

They descend further into Fort Hagen’s depths and Georgia doesn’t want to dwell about how far underground they must be. Surely not as far under as the vault, but with the walls closing in around her as they enter a red-lit tunnel, she can’t really tell the difference. It knocks the wind out of her sails, her breathing starts to thin and she can barely get the words out to ask her two companions for a moment. She tries to grab at the walls around her for purchase when her knees buckle again, Kellogg’s voice ferrying her through what must be the start of a panic attack.

“You’ve got guts and determination, and that’s admirable. But you are in over your head in ways you can’t possibly comprehend.”

Faintly, over the sound of ringing in her ears, she can hear the mechanical voices of more synths around the corner, and Mac tries to yank her back into a standing position.

“We can’t stop here,” he tells her, an ironlike grip on her arm, “we have to keep moving.”

And they do, though every one of Georgia’s footsteps feels heavier than the last and her vision is tunneling and her chest feels too tight. Mac and Mr. Valentine take care of most of the synths, because all she can focus on right now is trying to push ahead. Her hands still won’t stop shaking long enough for her to aim her gun.

“It’s not too late,” Kellogg says, enticing her to give up already. “Stop. Turn around and leave. You have that option. Not a lot of people can say that.”

She’s caught between wanting to bolt and being so desperately close to her son’s kidnapper as the three of them come upon a red door.

“We’re close,” Mr. Valentine says, sniffing the air for something neither she nor Mac can detect yet. “I can smell that old merc’s cigars…”

Past the red door is what Georgia can only assume was an office for whoever commanded Fort Hagen back in its heyday. Now, it’s full of all sorts of tech and pristine, anachronistic furniture and smelling of cigars. There’s a bed that looks like it belongs more in a hospital than an old military fort, just as out of place as the rest of the furniture around it. It’s almost enough to jolt her out of her spiraling until the speakers come on again.

“Okay, you made it. I’m just up ahead. My synths are standing down. Let’s talk.”

A set of maglocks on a door across the room slide open. The man who took everything from her is just on the other side.

Georgia fights the urge to flee and the pent up energy just redirects back to the anxious jittering of her hands. Fingers try to disappear under her sleeve, but have a hard time getting under Mac’s bandages. She doesn’t even register him coming to stand beside her until her quivering hand bumps into his and she latches onto it like a lifeline. He’s a warm, steadying presence beside her and doesn’t even flinch at her white-knuckle grip. The shaking starts to fade.

She turns to him, and he meets her with a steely look as he nods. To her left, Mr. Valentine motions to the door ahead of them.

“Into the belly of the beast,” he says. Georgia lets go of Mac’s wrist to brace herself.

The room is dark when they open the door, weapons drawn, but spotlights begin to flicker on one by one. The last spotlight turns on and her breath catches in her throat when he steps into the light. The rest of the room fades out around her. It’s just the two of them.

“And there she is,” Kellogg says, walking out from behind a desk terminal with three synths at his back. He gestures to her with the pistol in his hand. “The most resilient housewife in the Commonwealth.”

He’s just as she remembers him: gritty, scarred, and worn-looking, but no less threatening, no less predatory. His visage had been the harbinger of her family’s demise, instilling a bone-deep panic into her now that she has a clearer look at him.

Unfortunately for him, all of Georgia’s panic evolves into rage at the sight of him. It’s like she can feel Nate’s hand on her shoulder, giving her the permission she never needed to snap.

“Where the hell is Shaun?!” she barks, more animal than woman.

“Right to it then, huh?” He has the gall to laugh, casual as you please, only fueling her fire. She should shoot him right now before he even gets a chance to gloat, but she knows that he knows the only thing keeping him alive right now is the information on Shaun’s location. If he decides to tell her the truth at all.

“Okay, fine. Your son, Shaun. Great kid,” he continues, casual as you please despite the severity radiating off her to the point where the shaking returns in a different way. “A little older than you might expect, but I’m guessing you figured that out by now. But if it’s a happy reunion you’re after, it’s not gonna happen. Your boy’s not here.”

Georgia’s teeth grit together so hard she swears she’s cracked a molar.

“You can either tell me where the fuck he is, or I blow your goddamn head off,” she seethes. Her gun has been aimed at his chest since he stepped out. “This is the end, Kellogg. Only one of us is walkin’ out of here. You die. I get my son back.”

“If only it were that simple. I’m just a puppet like you—my stage is just a little bigger, that’s all. Doesn’t change the fact that your boy isn’t here,” he shrugs, his revolver glinting in the light. “He’s with the people pulling the strings.”

“Where is he?!” Georgia screams, finger twitching on the trigger and held only by some modicum of restraint still left in her.

“Shaun’s in a good place,” he tells her and she almost believes him. “One where he’s safe and comfortable and loved. A place he calls home.”

Her resolve is starting to slip. Her vision tunnels.

“The Institute.”

A flash of gunfire cuts through the gloom, pulling Georgia out of the moment as the room descends into chaos.

Kellogg stumbles back from the blast of her shotgun, some sort of armor underneath his clothing the only thing blocking what would’ve ripped apart the chest of a regular man. Then Georgia feels herself pulled to the ground, behind one of the desk terminals scattering the room. Streaks of energy from the synth’s weapons fly overhead and she can hear Mac cursing beside her as his rifle sounds off, but then he’s stumbling around the corner of the desk. It takes her a few dangerously long seconds to realize what’s going on, diving behind another terminal as one of the synths falls beside her.

“He’s got a stealthboy!” Mr. Valentine shouts, and she doesn’t even have time to think “what’s a stealthboy?” before a bullet whistles past her ear. “He’s gone!”

She has no idea where anyone is, world turned upside down in the firefight, but her mind catches up to her with a shot of adrenaline. A few terminals down, Mac darts past, low to the ground and Georgia hears him shoot before something falls. She pokes her gun around the edge of a desk before sneaking over to one closer to where she’d last seen Kellogg. Another gunshot, this time from Mr. Valentine, cuts one of the Gen 2’s off mid sentence and then everything goes quiet. Her heart is thundering in her ears as her eyes dart around for any signs of a threat. Another shot rings out to her right so she goes left and makes a break for another piece of cover.

It’s an agonizing few seconds that feel like hours before she sees something flutter out of the corner of her eye. A centuries old piece of paper, falling from one of the desks as if someone had brushed past it, invisible. Her blood runs cold.

One of Mac’s rounds hit a terminal nearby and that’s when Georgia can see a dirty, booted footprint manifest itself on the fallen piece of paper. She lines up the shot.

She pulls the trigger twice and Kellogg materializes before her eyes, falling over sideways as his ankle practically disintegrates under him. He manages to roll over as he falls, landing face up. He doesn’t call out in pain as she rushes him, putting another round in the hand that goes to reach for his revolver on the floor next to him. It turns into a bloody stump, conjuring up images in her mind of ground beef at the supermarket. He barely even makes a sound when she unloads again into his knee cap and is pinned under her boot, the threat of all she’ll do to him a heavy weight in her hands. There isn’t any fear in his eyes when she levels the gun at his head. Instead, with the barrel at his temple and her heel on his chest, he has the gall to smirk at her. Like this was what he had planned all along. Like it was some game to him. She pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. A smirk like he might take the upper hand is the last thing to appear on Kellogg’s face before she changes plans.

The grip on her shotgun has never been tighter than when Georgia uses it to bash his head in. She brings the stock down on his face again and again and again and she doesn’t know when she starts screaming, but her throat is torn raw by it as she lets go of every piece of frustration that’s been building up inside her since she thawed out. Every downward swing is another fuck you to the world, to karma, to the Institute, to him. The air turns coppery as blood—his, her own, she can’t tell the difference—covers her torso. The drops that manage to fly into her still screaming mouth burn on her tongue as she drops to her knees above him, dead set on reducing him to nothing just as he did her. Then she’s grabbed by both arms and dragged away.

She tries to fight it at first, not realizing who has a hold of her. The adrenaline makes her twist and try to launch herself back at the mangled remains of Kellogg’s corpse. “I’m not done!” she shrieks, but Mac and Mr. Valentine’s separate grips on her shoulders don’t give. Together, they pry her hands away from her gun, finger by bloody finger.

Mac is beside her ear, repeating, “It’s over, Georgia, he’s dead, you did it, you’re okay—”

The hands only come off her once they have her away from the carnage. The two men sit her down on something hard and solid and are careful to block the view of her destruction. She doesn’t know why they bother; she already knows the former mercenary is nothing more than mincemeat from the neck up. Distantly, she hears Mr. Valentine say something like “at least the bastard won’t be hurting anyone else” before telling Mac to watch over her.

“I’ll look around, try to get all the intel this place can hide,” she hears him say and he disappears behind one of the overly large desk terminals.

Mac takes a seat beside her as she buries her face in her hands. She chokes on a sob, fury fading into distress as crimson consumes her, covering her arms, her chest, her legs. It’s everywhere and suddenly she feels like she can’t breathe, that red is all she’ll ever see until Mac wordlessly takes her glasses off her face. Blurrily, she sees him wipe the smears of blood off as best he can with his shirt. Instead of handing them back when he’s done, he hooks them on his collar and swings his pack around to rifle through it. He comes out with one of the tins of water from the Gunner base and reaches for the knife he keeps strapped to his boot.

He stabs a hole into the aluminum top, then points to her hands. “Here,” he says quietly, “let’s get that off you.”

She doesn’t move, too trapped inside her own head, but then she feels him move her trembling hands, softly, to pour the water over them. Blood and water pool together in her palms before spilling to the floor and he doesn’t say a word as he silently washes it away, gentler than any words of comfort he could have given her. He even changes out the bandages on her left arm now that the old ones are soaked through with new blood.

In the quiet of his care, all Georgia can think is that she failed. Sure, the man is dead, but she is no closer to finding her son.

The Institute.

She’d heard all the stories, or at least the ones people weren’t too scared to share. Becky, in Diamond City, whose lost husband may or may not have been snatched up. The settlers who wouldn’t look her in the eyes in the early days because new faces were suspicious and not intriguing. Piper, who seemed to have her own personal vendetta against the Commonwealth’s biggest boogeyman, the blade in the dark that struck when you least expected it. The Institute, whatever it was, had Shaun. If Kellogg was telling the truth. That at least meant he was still alive, possibly. She just didn’t know for how long.

While Mr. Valentine pokes around, Georgia slowly comes back to herself. Her vision stops tunneling and the ringing in her ears begins to fade. She doesn’t speak until Mac finishes cleaning her off and bandaging her up. What comes out is hoarse, like someone has taken a nail file to her vocal chords.

“Thank you,” she manages to get out, barely above a whisper. There are so many other things she wants to say (thank you for being careful with me. Sorry I dragged you into this. I’m glad you were here) but they die in her throat.

He shakes his head, unhooking her glasses from his collar and handing them back to her. His voice is only a little rough when he says, “Don’t mention it.”

By the time Mr. Valentine comes back over, she is as put together as she can be in the moment, but even then the grasp she has on herself is tenuous at best.

“So, turns out Kellogg wasn’t giving us any bull. I bullied my way into his terminal—your son really is on the inside,” he says, regretful to be the bearer of bad news. “I’m sorry to say it, but even I don’t know where the Institute is, and they built me.”

Mac pipes up from beside her, indignant, “There has to be a way, right? Otherwise, how the hell did he get in and out?”

“We’re in the weeds here, kids,” Mr. Valentine sighs with a mechanical shrug. Mac’s lip twitches like he wants to rebuke something in his words, but stays silent. “I looked over the body and found these, though.”

From his pockets he pulls out what had once been the pristine pillow case on the bed in the other room, now dark with viscera. Georgia can’t help but wrinkle her nose. A funny, involuntary reaction, considering.

“You did quite the number on him, but I noticed this between all the gray matter. Cybernetics,” Mr. Valentine continues, then puts it back into his coat. “I may not know where the Institute is, but with this, we may have just won the lottery.”

Her brow furrows as she looks up at the detective, confused.

“What do you mean?” she asks, purposefully quiet to not agitate her still-raw throat.

“There’s a place in Goodneighbor called the Memory Den. Heard of it?”

Georgia nods. She’s seen the hazy neon sign over the former theatre in her scant few visits to the town. She’d never been inside, however, before or after the end of the world.

“The place to be to relive moments of your past in your mind as clear as the day they happened. If anyone can get a dead brain to sing, it’ll be Doctor Amari,” he says. “She’s the mind behind the memories.”

“Who is Doctor Amari?”

“She runs the place,” Mac supplies. “Well, kind of. Irma’s the real owner, I think.”

“I’ll let Amari give you her life’s story in person,” Mr. Valentine cuts in, pushing ahead, “but if we head out now, we can get there before it gets too late.”

“And you’re sure she can help?” Georgia presses, not wanting to take more out on hope.

Mr. Valentine’s yellow-filament stare holds her own, “She might be our best bet.”

“Then let’s go,” she nods as she stands, but Mac catches her by the sleeve.

“Hey, hey, slow down a minute,” he says, looking between the two. “Shouldn’t we, I dunno, think about this a little more?”

“What’s there to think about, Mac?” she pleads. She pauses to cough, the more she talks the more it stings. “If the Memory Den is our best bet, then I have no other choice.”

Mac stands up beside her, crossing his arms. “What I’m saying is maybe we should take a break, rest for a little bit, plan before you go shooting off—”

“Mac, I’m fine,” she stresses, clenching a fist at her side. “I don’t want to put it off anymore. I…I want to know.”

She gives him a speaking look that she hopes will say everything she can’t, that after this, she’s done not knowing. All she wants to do now is make up for all the time she’s wasted, and then maybe she can find her boy.

Mac sets his jaw, then tears his eyes away to look at Mr. Valentine. “Fine. Plan is, we go to the Memory Den and talk to the doc, but after that, you’re taking a break.”

“Christ, okay,” she can’t help but snap (now was when he decided to start disagreeing with her leadership?) but when his expression shifts, she sighs, apologetic. “I’m sorry. Let’s just go. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

She makes to leave, but Mr. Valentine reaches out, putting his plastic hand on her shoulder. It’s surprisingly weighty.

“Hey, chin up,” he says, trying to bolster her. “I know the night just got darker, but it won’t last forever.”

She knows he’s just trying to be supportive, but this time, it doesn’t land. “Doesn’t change the fact that it’s still dark,” she mutters, and walks past him, stepping over Kellogg’s mutilated corpse without so much as an acknowledgement of her violence.

It’s a long way up in the elevator they find tucked into a hallway. It takes long enough that being stuck inside starts to make her antsy again, fingers grasping for purchase on something, anything, until they end up catching on the cuff of Mac’s sleeve. He doesn’t make a show of taking it into his own and squeezing, once, and for that Georgia is grateful. When the doors slide open, he lets go, but she can still feel the lingering roughness of the calluses from where he holds his rifle. Mr. Valentine goes to work on hacking through a terminal attached to the only way out, and he mentions something about the turrets outside being put to rest.

The sun has almost dipped completely under the horizon when they exit. It’s finally raining, too, matching just how Georgia feels on the inside, but it does nothing to obscure the massive, brightly-lit airship coming in from the west. It catches all of them by surprise and takes up the sky like one of those big radstorm clouds, demanding she look at it. What look like vertibirds—are vertibirds, she realizes—undock from the sides and take to the air. She squints up at the thing, putting a hand over her eyes to shield from the rain. A booming, bellowing voice cuts through the skies.

“PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH. DO NOT INTERFERE. OUR INTENTIONS ARE PEACEFUL. WE ARE THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL.”

“Son of a…it’s the goddamn Brotherhood,” Mac breathes, eyes transfixed on the airship. “What the hell are they doing there?”

“That man…at the police station…” Georgia trails off, remembering how she and Preston had helped a man in power armor defend his dwindling squad’s base from feral ghouls in Cambridge. They hadn’t been much help in looking for…whatever it was the man had been looking for. She doesn’t even remember his name now, instead only how much he favored Nate…

“What?” Mac asks, tearing his gaze away from the sky.

“Nothin’,” she says, shaking her head as she heads for the scaffolding on the side of the building. “Let’s move.”

#what do you Mean i never reblogged this???#anyway everyone go read about georgia getting kelloggs ass #rae this chapter was so good #georgia deserves to snap. as a treat.#fiction collection #fo4 #fallout

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