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“You give that to Desdemona and she’ll have to let you join our merry band,” Deacon said. He let earnestness color the tone, that deep-down belief in all that was good and holy.
The sole survivor of Vault 111, the soldier from another time, looked from the square device to his face, doubtfully. “What is it?”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “Would you believe that I don’t know.” He didn’t know...he had a good guess though.
The doubting look turned into a frown.
“Seriously. I may be the head spy—er, information officer but there’s still things that I don’t know. Look, the Railroad is in a very precarious position. Operational ignorance has saved us more than once. When the Institute breaks down the doors to murder us all--as happens on a regular basis—that limits the amount of damage.”
She hesitated, and the moment of silence dragged out. Damn. He usually had them eating out of the palm of his hand by this point. Then she shrugged and stuffed it into her pack. Deacon kept his face calm. Interior victory yells only. He was almost sure that the person before him was the final weapon that the Railroad had needed all along. Well—she was either that or the Railroad’s death.
As an organization, they’d been on the edge for a while. The Institute was just too strong, too powerful, too well-informed. Between actual synth infiltrators making it through the doors of HQ and purchased information from any wastelander that needed some caps, the Railroad was usually only a step or two away from annihilation. Maybe the Sole Survivor would be the key. Or maybe not.
She shrugged into her backpack and then started fussing with her Vault suit sleeve. She pulled it up and his smile died on his face. Dear god, her forearm was like an artist’s palette of color. Green, blue, red, yellow—some looked like fingerprints but others were just...smears, impossible to tell how they’d gotten there. Some nearly glowed with the intensity of the color and others were faded and dull.
He took three steps back before he registered it and started shaking his head. “No.”
She looked puzzled. “Touch me.”
“No can do.”
“It doesn’t have to be your hand. Bump your elbow or something.”
He wrapped his arms around his mid-section. He was shaking, but not with cold. “No. No. It doesn’t work that way....not for me.”
“I don’t understand.” She looked back at the guy with her, a mercenary named MacCready and said to him, “I didn’t think it was a big deal?”
The merc raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He was a typical wastelander, with a scattering of visible marks and no doubt more that Deacon couldn’t see. He was good with his rifle. Not a double entendre, Deacon, he reminded himself. The merc had put paid to a respectable number of the enemy on their crawl through the Switchboard. Cute, a little skinny, but muscles where it mattered.
His hands were the usual jumble of color. The brightest was his left palm, colored forest-green, with a magenta right fingertip, the colors deep and intense. He checked out Sole’s kaleidoscope and found a single fingerprint’s worth of shiny azure, right above her wrist. The colors fit them both. They were equally bright, saturated with color. Soulmate-dark.
Deacon clenched his hands inside the oversized wastelander gloves and swallowed hard. “My people, uh, we don’t mark lightly. That’s not something I can do, sorry, Boss.”
He could feel her gaze searching his face for a long moment before she spoke. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I didn’t mean to offend. But I move faster alone. You mind if MacCready heads to HQ with you?”
He understood all her unspoken meanings. She didn’t trust him, not without seeing his soulmark. So she was going to sic her pet lapdog on him and see if he bit. Eh. He was relieved; he’d suffered worse.
“Your wish is my...strong recommendation,” he said cheerfully and winked at her. This would all work out. He’d take her little buddy to HQ, currently in the church crypt and deliver him safe and sound. Desdemona had no issues marking and when that proved out, well, Sole would be trusting him in no time.
_________________________
To his credit, the merc—MacCready something or other—lasted nearly all evening before asking. Deacon saw the signs. Quick glances over while they built the fire, lingering stare at his hairline and his neck when he turned to grab more wood. He finally took off the jacket and heavy gloves and ate his roast molerat in his shirtsleeves and bare hands. Both were unmarked, the skin as blank as the day he was born.
MacCready had a mark on his forearm, a respectably-dark bluish-black, now stretched and distorted, as if he’d gotten it when he was very small. Probably a parent; they were generally the only significant marks that took on a child. Another was a clear handprint across one side of his neck, under his ear, with the thumb across his cheek. An intimate touch for a first, the way you would touch someone to caress them—or to kiss them. It was faded now into grayish-pink. Someone deceased or gone from his life. His right knuckles were purple—knuckles? Interesting. His right hand had a mish-mash of different colors, most soft and light with a few that were brighter, in addition to the green and Sole’s magenta on his other palm.
“Do your people not mark at all?” MacCready asked finally, while they were finishing dinner and drinking water from their bottles.
“We do,” Deacon said, tensing despite his best intentions and trying to sound casual. MacCready just stared at him blankly. “It’s considered private,” he went on. “We don’t touch...casually.”
MacCready looked skeptical. “I’ve never heard of that.”
Deacon had to give him credit for being both right and open enough to say it to his face. And it was because Deacon was making all this up, pure-D Deacon bullshit, as good ol’ Tommy Whispers used to say. Deacon was tempted to tell him the truth: It’s just me. I don’t mark casually. That was a dangerous temptation for a spy. Time to deflect and change the subject.
He gestured to MacCready’s neck, the mark even more worn looking compared to the brightness on his hand. “That mark is interesting.”
MacCready’s face closed up, but not before Deacon saw a flash of pain in his eyes.
MacCready put one hand up to his neck, hiding the color. “She was my wife,” he said quietly. “She’s dead now.”
Deacon immediately felt both guilty and annoyed. He wanted to snap back, say something like, See? It’s not so fun having strangers able to see your relationships on your skin, is it?
Instead, he closed his mouth, a rarity for him. He's just doing a job, Deacon. He doesn’t deserve your crap, he told himself. He slowly unbuttoned his coat and showed MacCready his upper arm, the mark there even more faded than MacCready’s. “Her name was Barbara.”
MacCready’s eyes widened. He leaned closer, inspecting it and then sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Deacon grabbed his sleeping bag and unrolled it. He lay down so that he could see the sky, with its bright silvery stars. “For what it's worth, I’m sorry, too,” he said and turned onto one side. “Let’s get some rest.”
___________________
Deacon didn’t remember his two oldest marks, from his parents. One on his back, and the other on his abdomen. The marks had since faded to paler versions of what he’d remembered when he was young—when they were still alive. A few from his teenage buds, the Deathclaws, but they were all faded too.
His current brightest mark was a silvery-grey smear across his back, just above the curve of his buttocks. Sleeping in HQ on his stomach, with the pillow tucked over his head and blankets disarranged. Tinker Tom, on the mattress next to him, thrashed awake and smacked into the bared skin of his lower back with his knee. Tom didn’t even notice, but sat up and hissed, “D! D! Deacon, wake up, I got to tell you about the robots, the tiny ones! Wake up, man, we got to search everywhere right away!”
Deacon had jerked awake at the spine-chilling tingling over his body—followed by leaden despair, as he realized what had happened. He had been only an agent, then, not the head spy and number three in command. He didn’t want to like Tinker Tom, the poor brilliant pathetic bastard. He didn’t want to sympathize, to wonder if he could be coaxed back to sanity, with care, with treatment. Desdemona kept using him, reasoning that they needed all the help they could get. Two years later, she brought him into HQ, but the stress didn’t stop. It never would, Deacon knew that himself. Her, his, their decision to treat Tinker like a fucking robot tool box of wonders had doomed his mind forever.
When Deacon had gotten a look at the mark in a mirror the next day, it was a glittering swathe across his skin. He’d stared at it, this inconvertible proof that Tom was someone important to him. And when he died, it was going to hurt. Deacon wasn’t sure that he could take that pain again.
He’d started updating security protocols and planning an escape tunnel that day. When Tom came to HQ, his work area was closest to the evac point.
Barbara’s was on his upper arm—a faded orange. Before he had even known about the Railroad. He’d been sweating in the fields of a tiny settlement, moving rocks and breaking up the soil. A low skill job, suitable for a homeless laborer working for a meal and a bed. The person next to him hit a rock with her shovel and stumbled sideways, her shoulder bumping his arm. Bare skin to bare skin.
She jerked away, and started to apologize and then fell silent, staring at his arm and then down at herself. Deacon’s own bright acid-green fairly glowed with intensity against her tanned skin. And on his own arm was an orange oval the luminous shade of dawn—or sunset. She reached out to touch her color on his skin, her eyes wondering. Then she looked up at him with a shy smile. He didn’t know what to say, coughed, cleared his throat and still didn’t know what to say. Only gradually became aware of the other settlers around them nodding and smiling. He’d spent the night at the settlement—and didn’t move on the next day.
Barbara had had a few marks on her hands and lower arms—all highly visible, but they were the light even color of a casual friend or lover. Most had faded by the time they’d celebrated their first anniversary, leaving her nearly unmarked. At the time, he was determined not to find that strange or unusual. He told himself that it didn’t matter, because their own marks on each other were deep enough.
Later, in the Railroad, he learned that they carefully marked smuggled synths, disguising their designed-to-be-blank skin with color. Once they were free, the marks took, yet another way to hide them from the Institute. He never asked who had volunteered their colors for Barbara. It hadn’t been enough. But too often the story of any synth was a tragedy. He was just another fool caught in the cross-fire.
When he was a member of the Railroad, Deacon abstained. Everyone knew by then that Deacon did not mark. That he would not bare his soul to another. It was better for a spy. There was makeup that could hide—or imitate—soul marks. It was easier to color himself a new life with each mission. Or to cover up, to hide all his visible skin and with it, anything that might identify or distinguish him.
_______________________
The mercenary—Robert Joseph MacCready, the old-fashioned three full names saying something about his heritage, that and the faint Capitol accent that marked his speech—was a decent-enough ally. Whatever payment arrangements were between him and Sole, but he killed raiders, carried messages and scouted drop sites with an easy professionalism that Deacon found himself appreciating. The Railroad had no lack of wild-eyed extremists and/or idealists but fewer with training or competence. Deacon didn’t necessarily trust him, per se, but he couldn’t deny that the mercenary got the job done. When they were paired up, the other man was a quiet solid presence. He asked no questions and offered no answers.
The others of Sole’s loose confederacy of associates weren’t nearly so agreeable. A chaotic ex-Raider, a reporter, Goodneighbor’s ghoul mayor and surprisingly—three—no, four—synths. New marks bloomed on MacCready’s skin, with each new person. When they changed before missions, or after in the security of HQ, Deacon found himself looking at them, hidden behind the rims of his sunglasses. Red and tan and teal. A steel-grey handprint on one bicep, the edges as precise as the machined hand that had made it. A cheerful yellow mark across his chest, above the smattering of fine brown hair, that darkened into a faint trail down his belly. It was solid enough to be from a lover. Deacon swallowed hard and did not wonder how this first contact happened between his chest... and someone else’s...body. Or face?
It wasn’t any of his business. Except the next time they changed, MacCready pulled his t-shirt and soft long john shirt over his head with a quick motion and a grimace. Touched his chest lightly. “Turns out a stimpak and medical aid when you’re bleeding out is significant,” he said wryly, cocking his head at Deacon.
Deacon smiled, the easy, noncommittal smile that he’d practiced. “It changed your life, did it?”
MacCready shrugged. “Yeah. Curie not so much. I left barely a trace on her.”
Deacon checked to make sure they were done—both wearing an inconspicuous hodgepodge of armor and clothing, just a couple mercs trying to get along—before he clapped MacCready on the shoulder. Three layers of insulating cloth between them. “That’s just like me!” he exclaimed. “Dust in the wind, man. I leave no marks behind.”
“Really?” MacCready retorted. “I’d like to see the proof of that.”
It was a light, throwaway comment. Deacon’s heart did not skip a beat on hearing it.
_____________________________
That night, he dreamed that he was putting on a new disguise and the other members of the Railroad kept pointing at him and laughing. Tom, Dez, Glory, even Dr. Carrington. Finally, fed up, he walked over to look at himself in the mirror, to see what everyone found so funny. His lips were an intense azure blue.
_____________________________
There was a time, a couple of weeks or so, when neither Sole nor MacCready were around. Off doing something else, something personal. Cool, cool. He worked better alone anyway. He took it upon himself to do some checking with his network of informants and uncovered the story of MacCready’s sick kid. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. When he’d first gotten the bare bones of information about MacCready--that he’d left a kid behind in the Capitol Wasteland, he’d thought deadbeat dad, typical. When he’d gotten to know him, that didn’t seem to gibe and now he knew why.
MacCready was a better person than he’d imagined. Sole was a better person than he’d imagined. Full of old-fashioned ideals about the making the world a better place and freedom for all. Even for poor Synths, hopelessly enslaved by the Institute and hated and feared by everyone else. It was...a lot to digest. Now the Sole Survivor was getting the medicine MacCready needed for his kid and not even asking for money for doing it.
Deacon splashed water on his face in the privacy of Ticonderoga, with the luxury of a real bathroom and a locking door and stared down at his body. Faded pink, faded brown, faded orange, faded green, all the different colors of death. Some were almost indistinguishable from his skin, and only long practice enabled him to find their faint outlines. Live long enough with grief and it sinks past your skin and into your bones, where it aches and burns invisibly.
He found himself wondering, next time he was at HQ, what Desdemona would do if he walked up to her with open hands, no gloves or barriers. He’d seen her fuchsia marks before; would his green be as bright on her skin as hers on his? He suspected not.
He spent a great deal of effort convincing people not to take him seriously, and in making them believe that he did not care about them. Des had long since crept past that border in the years they’d saved synths together. Her pink might blaze revealingly: showing her to be significant—a true soulmate, for all that it would be platonic, while his green would be merely solid: a friend, yes, but nothing special. Discrepancies could make things awkward, so it was better to put the thought away. He stared down at his blank skin and he did not feel dissatisfied, not at all.
______________________________________
When MacCready returned, it was with a wide infectious smile, looking happier than Deacon had ever seen him before. He actually opened his arms and stepped toward him, forcing Deacon to hastily retreat, nearly tripping over a sarcophagus. Something flickered briefly across the other man’s face—disappointment? Sadness? And then he was smiling again, and steadying Deacon with a hand carefully placed atop his shirt sleeve.
“Easy, buddy. You know about my son, Duncan? We got the cure for him and sent it back to my friends. He’s going to be all right!”
“That’s great news, MacCready,” Deacon said, trying to make it sound mocking and failing miserably. No one at HQ wore MacCready’s blue, not that Deacon had seen. He was just someone passing through, whose primary allegiance was to Sole. Deacon’s eyes lingered on the blood-red on MacCready’s fingertip. “So you’re out of here, then? Back to the Capitol Wasteland?”
MacCready frowned and shook his head. “Not until I help take down the Institute. That was my deal.”
Deacon studied him. “Sole wouldn’t hold you to it.”
MacCready stared at him for a long moment and Deacon found himself holding his breath, wanting to lean closer and— and— What, he was thinking like an idiot, for god’s sake. He could feel the warmth of MacCready’s hand even through the material of his shirt. He carefully straightened, casual, oh so easily with no hint of strain or—anything else and put some distance between them. MacCready’s hand slipped off his arm and his lips tightened.
“I hold myself to it,” he said shortly and turned away. And then Deacon could breathe again.
_________________________________
Most stories about synths end as tragedies but not this one. He had never believed that he would live to see their victory achieved. But Sole, that improbable, unpredictable wild card, had other plans. Together, they blew first the Brotherhood and then the Institute to smithereens. The night the light from the explosions unfurled across the sky, an impromptu celebration sprang up. There was laughter and some crying and he would never let Drummer Boy live it down. They left the dank crypt behind and spilled out onto the waterfront, carrying bottles and food, tables and chairs and blankets. Some of the rescued synths were with them.
History was hovering over their shoulders, Deacon thought, on this, the day the Institute fell. Would their descendants congratulate or condemn them? Deacon didn’t know, but given his reading, figured it was probably an even chance either way. He lifted his vodka bottle to imaginary future generations and decided to sit closer to the water, at one of the old Pre-War picnic tables. Diamond City Radio was playing behind him and the party was heating up. Some folks would be waking up with new marks on their skin, he had no doubt.
He stumbled on a bit of rubble and almost dropped his bottle. No, no, no. Couldn’t have that. He’d have to go inside to get another and potentially expose himself to Dr. Carrington’s censure. Deacon blinked at the waterfront and shivered in the wind.
“Deacon?” There was a familiar voice behind him.
He wheeled around and saw MacCready standing in his duster and cap, looking the same as every other time he’d seen him. Except not, because this would be the last. MacCready’s eyes flicked from the bottle up to his face.
Then he held out his hand. “Can I have a drink?” Deacon nodded, and for a second, he thought this would be it, their fingers brushing as he passed the bottle over, then the thrill of bare skin to bare skin that meant a mark had formed.
MacCready grabbed the top of the bottle. Their fingers didn’t touch. “You’re not wearing your gloves,” he commented as he lifted the bottle and drank from it. Deacon didn’t feel disappointed. He didn’t.
“No,” Deacon said and then waved a hand at the table. “Sit down, pal. I thought you’d be gone by now.”
He sat, his arm brushing Deacon’s as he did, and if his clothing had a hole or rip, then they would be touching.... Except they weren’t. There was no answering rush, just Deacon’s idiotic pulse pounding in his ears.
MacCready sat the bottle between them, at a considerate distance—so that Deacon could reach it without contact with the other man. He wiped his mouth and rubbed the side of his neck thoughtfully, over his wife’s faded handprint. “I’m not actually,” he said. “I’m bringing Duncan here. The Commonwealth is going to be a good place to grow up, I think. Better than Little Lamplight or Big Town.”
Deacon was struck speechless, staring out over the irradiated ocean that was nonetheless still beautiful. He thought about seeing MacCready on a regular basis, in a settlement or at the market, while he shepherded the remaining synths to safety and then....did what? Shut down HQ, buried their secrets and moved on. To what, he couldn’t imagine, but he’d think of something. He’d have to.
“Deacon,” MacCready said. He was rubbing his neck again. “I hate seeing it fade,” he said. “When I see it, it feels like losing her all over again. Do you think—” he took a deep breath. “You could reinforce it? So it doesn’t feel so...empty.”
Empty? Deacon is the original hollow man, light enough to blow away and be missed by no one. MacCready has so much more anchoring him to the earth....but.
“Sure,” he said, and it must be the vodka making his voice unsteady. He shrugged out of his jacket and indicated his arm, where Barbara’s poor dim orange lingered. “And can you do mine?”
MacCready’s voice was quiet. “Yeah.” They sat for a moment, staring at each other. Then they leaned forward together. Deacon put his hand on MacCready’s neck, positioning his fingers so they wouldn’t obscure the other, but so the soft pink would outline them.
Simultaneously, there was MacCready’s warm hand on Deacon’s arm, with a shiver of sensation that swept over him. They waited for a few heartbeats. Then Deacon moved his fingers, just enough to see brilliant neon green on the skin underneath. Bright azure covering his fingers and palm. Glowing. More shining blue on his arm, lower than Barbara’s so that the mark of MacCready’s fingers were surrounded by orange that seemed brighter for the contrast. MacCready’s right palm was acid-green, while his other was darker—Duncan-green.
Then Deacon’s hand flexed, seemingly without input from his brain and pulled MacCready closer and kissed him. They’d already touched, already marked, so there was no disorienting tingling rush, except there was and Deacon felt as if he were falling down and down and down, with only MacCready’s touch and hands and the softness of his lips to cling to.
He broke the kiss and breathed out slowly, tipped their foreheads together.
MacCready sighed. “It’s about time.”
Deacon felt a real, by-god for genuine smile trembling across his mouth, chasing away the deflections, sarcasm and lies that usually lived there. “This is going to be difficult,” he said, and leaned forward to nuzzle his face into the joining of MacCready’s neck and shoulder. So intimate and yet it felt so natural, that MacCready belonged in the circle of his arms and Deacon belonged there, as well.
MacCready laughed out loud. “You know it’s not.”
Deacon felt filled with hope for the first time in a long time. He pulled back enough to see the blue of the other man’s eyes, deep and clear, as beautiful as his soul and smiled back. “You’re right, it’s not.” He clasped MacCready’s hands between his own and they watched the sun set, while the synths and the humans danced and drank to the future.