The crash of distant green thunder nearly threw her Geiger counter into hysterics, the little needle tapping insistently against the glass in a desperate attempt to tell her what she already knew. A rad storm was fast approaching and she was at least a day away from the nearest settlement.

"We'd better get a move on, sister, unless you wanna end up lookin' like me." Hancock said casually, hand held up to shield his eyes as he watched the radioactive clouds roll in.

Katarina sighed, gloved fingers rotating the little dials on her Pip-Boy to bring up her map, tiny locations she's found on her travels flickering merrily. "Yeah, yeah. We're about a day out from Oberland Station, but there should be a old greenhouse around here somewhere." She rotated the dials a bit more, maneuvering the map a bit until she found what she was looking for, and tilted her arm to allow Hancock to see. "See? Should be just around this bend."

"Mhm, we'd better get moving." He says, face peering over her shoulder and breath ghosting over her cheek. The thunder booms again, closer this time, and her Geiger counter crackles in sporadic bursts once more. She nods and unholsters her pistol, starting off on an almost leisurely jog as the sky darkens.

They're out of breath and soaking wet by the time they reach the abandoned greenhouse, the radiated rain stinging the skin of her face and throat. Hancock shuts the door behind them, latching the locks and shifting a thick board underneath the handle to wedge it shut. Katarina shucks off her Minutemen general's jacket and gloves, draping them over an empty planter to dry as she pops a couple RadAway in her mouth and swigs it down with Nuka Cola. She passes the bottle off to Hancock as she digs around for some old sleeping bags she'd stashed weeks ago.

Her Pip-Boy continues to alert her to the dangers of radiation as she rolls out the bags, so she unclasps it and sets it aside, dropping down to the thin bedding with a soft grunt. She sets up her pack against the wall behind her and shimmies down to lay her head and shoulders against it, mutfruit in hand and her snowy white hair pulled out of its usual ponytail to air dry around her head.

Hancock makes himself comfortable on his own bedroll, long and lean legs stretched out and his back pressed against the wall, he digs a canister of jet from inside his coat. He offers it to her silently, a quiet offer in the face of the oncoming storm, but she declines with a smile and a shake of her head.

They're both silent for a long time, the only other sounds aside from their breathing being the insistent clicking of her Geiger, the occasional puffing hiss of Hancock's jet, and the harsh patter of rain against the tin roof.

"You know," he says after a long bout of silence, eyes heavy lidded and muscles lax with chems. "After all this time traveling together, never once have I seen you take any chems."

She snorts into the darkness, the dim glow of her Pip-Boy casting her features into sharp relief against the black of the room. "Is that a problem?"

"No, but most people who enjoy spending so much time around me usually enjoy my...services, too."

"First of all, who ever said I enjoy spending time around you?" She says, smile apparent in her voice. "You're just a good shot."

"Mhm, keep tellin' yourself that."

Katarina barks a quiet laugh. "Secondly, I'm sure you have at least one friend who likes you for reasons other than your drugs."

"Yeah, you." Hancock says, only slightly wounded by the truth in his own words. He knows what kind of people he keeps company with, knows what kind of people Goodneighbor attracts, and he damn well knows a little chem isn't going to make his friends bad people. Nevertheless, her significant lack of usage or addiction leaves him wondering. Hell, half the Commonwealth eat Mentats like they're candy, but he's only ever seen her touch the stuff only to hand it off to him to keep.

"Awe, I'm sure that's not true. Dogmeat likes you!" She says, smile dripping from her words as she turns to look in his direction, sky gray eyes barely catching his outline.

The deep boom of thunder overhead nearly drowns out Hancock's laughter. "Dogmeat only likes me because I look like a walking slab of radstag jerky."

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe that's why I like you?" Katarina asks with a spark in her eyes, one that's nearly ignited with the flash of radioactive lighting that sets their little hideaway ablaze with burning light, if only for a moment.

He blinks into the sudden darkness, eyes adjusting once more as his mouth quirks into a crooked grin. "I always thought it was my irresistible charm and endless supply of chems that you enjoyed so much."

She's rolled back over onto her sleeping bag and pack, her hair a tangled halo. "Thought we just ruled out my need for your chems."

"Yeah...that brings be back to that- why don't you take any?" He can see her brow quirk upwards, see her hand come up for her fingers to rub at the spot behind her ear, a telltale sign he's learned over the weeks that they're entering personal territory.

Katarina is silent for a long moment. He watches as her hand dips beneath the collar of her undershirt and vault jumpsuit both, bringing forth the worn golden ring he'd seen a handful of times before. She worries it between her fingers, the metal of the necklace chain clinking softly against both the ring and a dual pair of old dog tags. Hancock sometimes forgets she isn't what she seems, she isn't just another wastelander who'd been born in some shack and grew up living in fear of raiders or mutants, that she's a woman that time forgot and left behind. He forgets that she's so much older than him, older than most people roaming the Commonwealth, and that she'd known a life before all this.

"Do you want the truth or a fun lie?" She finally says, eyes unfocused and settled on the far wall, on the sparse trees shaking in the rough winds outside. For a moment, he considers dropping the topic all together- it's none of his business why she isn't a junkie- but his curiosity is piqued. If she's offering the information, something that he knows not to be done often, then he might as well take the opportunity.

So, he shifts a little to get more comfortable, settles in for the long run, and says, "Save your lies for Deacon."

Her lips shift weakly, barely twitching into the remnants of a smile that disappeared just as quickly as it came. "He says I'm not a very good liar anyway, but I think that might be a lie in itself." Katarina pauses, fingers still worrying that old ring and her free hand now resting on her stomach. "I used to take chems." She says, the words heavy on her tongue like an unwilling confession, as if she weren't sitting with the one person in the world who wouldn't judge her for it. "Back...back before, even. Mentats were a soldier's best friend in Anchorage- kept us awake, alert, alive. I swear I ate more of them than I did actual food." She huffs something that's not quite a laugh but more of a quiet, self-depreciating exhale.

"Once the battle was over, though, we were all given a trifold flag and an addictol for the road. I thought that was the end of it- I never touched a chem again after that."

Usually, that would've been the end of that. It would've been the perfect reason for not wanting chems, but Hancock could tell there was more, there was something she wasn't letting out. And nobody knew better than him that it was better for everyone if those feelings were either let out or drowned in chems before they had the chance to fester and spread like a cancer.

"Until-?" He prompts, hoping to nudge her in the right direction, hoping she won't shut herself off again like the last time they almost dug into her past.

A sigh blows past her lips, heavy like a physical weight that seems to settle on her chest. He sees her eyes flicker his way, as if checking to see if he was still there. "Ah, after...well, after everything, when I came out of the Vault-" She cuts herself off, seeming to choke on her words, but when he looks, she isn't crying. Her eyes are dry and her breathing is only a little uneven, but even so a part of him begins to wish that he'd left well enough alone. "I dunno," she says with a shrug. "It was a lot to take in. Losing Nate and Shaun, the end of the world, two hundred years gone- it was so much and I didn't know what to do with myself. I started using again. Hell, chems are almost scarily easy to find, if you know where to look."

Katarina scrubs her hand across her forehead in what seems like frustration, upset with herself for breaking. It's strange for him to know she doesn't see herself the way everyone else does. When she looks in the cracked and dirty mirror, she doesn't see this amazing woman who almost single handedly rebuilt the Minutemen and became the Silver Shroud and walked the Freedom Trail. What does she see, he wonders. Does she see a force to be reckoned with, a person almost every raider in the Commonwealth sees as a threat? Does she see the woman who found the key to calming feral ghouls and helped runaway synths escape the clutches of the Institute?

Hancock can tell that she doesn't, that she doesn't see any of that. He can see it in the guilty slump in her shoulders after she laughs and the shattered look in her eyes every time they stumble upon a broken crib or a child's abandoned toy, and he can see it in the way she seems to deflate immediately after she saves an innocent settler, the weight of her lost child sitting on her shoulders.

"You wanna know who I saw every time I took chems?" She says it like a statement, like she's asking herself when she already knows the answer. "Every damn time...I saw Nate." Katarina sounds so bitter, so angry and upset and undeniably bitter about the hand she's been dealt in this world and Hancock can't quite find it in himself to blame her. Despite all the shit he's seen and done and experienced, he knows it can't quite add up to her situation. She's going through something so horribly unique that the chances of her ever finding someone who can fully understand are next to none, the only one alive who might have an idea of what she's going through is Codsworth, and even then it's not the same. Hancock can walk into any given bar and find at least one person who's seen some of the same shit he has, and he's not sure if the thought is comforting.

"Your husband?" He asks, if only to show that he was still listening and to fill the silence that'd otherwise taken up by the pouring rain.

Katarina swallows thickly, the sound near deafening in the relative quiet space between them. "Mhm. Every time, every goddamn time...there he was. With that same crooked grin and 'Hey, baby. Sorry I've been gone so long.'" Tears roll from the corners of her eyes and stream down her temples to get lost in her hair, her fingers continuing to worry that ring at her throat. "No matter what I took- Mentats, jet, psycho, buffout, day trippers...You name it and I probably took it, just looking for an escape only to run into a wall at every turn."

Her breath shudders out and her eyes close, her hand fists around the ring. Hancock watches her silently, his chest feels tight and he wants to do something, anything, to ease the pain of his closest friend. Instead, he lances the sore, encourages the hurt to pour like the rain. "What made you quit?"

"It actually took me awhile to do it. I just, I don't know. I liked seeing Nate. I liked thinking he was there with me. Of course when I woke up the next morning I had a hangover from hell and I was half tempted to call it quits." Katarina rolls onto her side, Pip-Boy backlighting her form into a stark outline. His eyes are almost hungry in the way they travel over her features.

From her face to the way her shoulders bunch up as her hands tuck themselves under her head, to the slope of her strong waist and the rise of her hips and the lean length of her legs. She's all soft skin and pre-war curves, but she's also strength and muscle and pure determination. She could snap him over her knee like a branch for the fire and damn if he isn't a little turned on by the thought.

"I kept taking chems because I didn't have to deal with the reality that my husband was dead." She whispers, her voice naturally warm and worn, now threadbare and exhausted. Hancock swallows, sure that if he could still blush, shame would color his cheeks. Now is not the time to address his crush on the 'Savior of the Commonwealth' (seriously, that clan of cannibals that worshiped her were even weirder than the Children of Atom- he almost lost a finger to an overzealous child).

He shimmies down until he's laying the same way she is, his tricorn hat discarded and one of his hands resting in the empty space between them. She reaches out and laces her fingers through his, holding onto his hand like he's her anchor in the tossing waters of her life. He hesitates for a moment before giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. "One morning," she begins again, the mutfruit on her breath clouding in the air between them. "I woke up, an empty psycho still stuck in my arm and a crick in my neck from slumping on an old toilet all night, and I realized this wasn't what I wanted. This...this isn't what Nate would've wanted me to do. So, I quit."

Hancock snorts. "You quit? Just like that?"

A smile blooms across her face, eyes shining and her shoulders shake a little with a silent laugh. "Okay, not 'just like that'. Turns out I was a little more addicted than I'd originally thought."

"A little?"

"Okay, wiseguy, a lot." For once since the conversation started, her smile doesn't disappear. Thunder booms and lightning flashes, her Geiger counter spikes, but she doesn't move and she doesn't look away. She wets her lips, and he's helpless but to watch, fully aware that she knows he watched, but she doesn't comment and doesn't tease, instead opting to continue her story. "Anyway, I quit. Withdrawals were a bitch, but I didn't think I'd deserved to splurge on an addictol. Then, I went back to the Vault."

"What?" He asks, true shock coloring his tone as his brows pull together in confusion, "Why?"

Katarina shrugs like it wasn't a big deal, like going back to that glorified grave where her life went to shit wasn't something huge. "I realized that if I wanted to see Nate, I didn't have to get high to do it." Her eyes finally flicker away, and she looks down, lips pursing to the side in thought. "Sounds pretty damn morbid, I know, but it helped. Sitting down there, my back pressed against my old cryo pod and staring at Nate while I damn near froze- it was like getting punched by a deathclaw, but it woke me up."

"Punched by a deathclaw?"

"Heh, yeah. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it; hurts like hell and you'll probably die. Just ask Preston about the first time we met." She runs her free hand through her hair, pushing the white locks back away from her face. "Anytime I felt like using again after that...I just went back to the Vault. I sat with Nate and half our old neighbors- sometimes I even talked to them. I figured if there really was a heaven or an afterlife, then they might be listening in. I don't know. I felt like I was losing my mind but I didn't know anyone else who could compare my life before and after."

"Why'd you go back though?" Hancock asks, thumb running over her knuckles comfortingly, his rough skin catching slighting on the scabs and scars on her own. "Why go back when, well, you know."

"I look at it this way; getting high on chems so I could forget what happened and spend time with my dead husband was like running away." Her eyes catch his and he can't look away, couldn't even if he wanted to. A super mutant could burst through the wall with a deathclaw in a headlock and he wouldn't be able to tear his gaze away from the woman before him. Her eyes are burning, searing, flaming constellations that turn him inside out and backwards. She's intense, all of her is, and she could level the entire wasteland with a single look if she did so wish. "I'll run away from a lot of things," she says, voice quiet but ever commanding of attention. "A deathclaw, a large pack of mirelurks, a dedicated mole rat," her lips quirk briefly into a playful smile.

"But there's no way in hell I'll run away from my own life. I'm not going to run from my husband or my son." She swallows thickly, jaw setting in determination and he can't imagine this woman in her life before, can't imagine her wearing one of those old pre-war dresses as she cleans or puts curlers in her hair.

She's like a summer storm, like the radiated clouds boiling overhead or a swirling dust storm that cannot be tamed and cannot be beaten into submission. She's a phenomenon to be experienced, she's an event condensed into a single body and if you're not careful she'll tear you apart before you know what hit you or where to send the bill. Anyone and everyone that meets her and lives to tell the tale hold her with some amount of respect or love or fear, and it cannot be helped. She can't be contained and the fact that he's able to be this close to her, able to be her friend and see her in such an open and vulnerable light is like standing in the eye of a hurricane.

Katarina's hand, thin and rough and capable, gives his own a gentle squeeze as her lips canter into a soft smile that almost borders on apologetic. "Sorry for talking your ear off."

"I lost my ears long before we met, sister."

She snorts, but the tension has leaked from her shoulders and the little line of worry that usually rests between her brows isn't as pronounced, and for that he is thankful. Her eyes shut, and he allows his to slide close too. It must be late, or maybe it's early. He was never one to pay too close attention to the ticking hands of time anyway, even more so now that he was a ghoul.

He hovers on the verge of sleep, Katarina's hand a comforting weight in his palm, and he's sure she's already is, until she whispers, "Thanks, Hancock."

His eyes open heavily only to find her's closed and her face relaxed with sleep. She looks different this way, he notes. She looks calm, unburdened. Her lips are parted slightly and her pale lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, a light snore whistles in the back of her throat. In that moment, he can see her as she was and as she is.

The scars and burns that mar her skin are just as beautiful as she, and they mark her as the woman from before, as the woman who fought in Alaska and came home just in time for her life to come together and the world to fall apart.

The dust and dirt and blood that stains her skin and clothes mark her as the woman she is now, as the person lost in time, forgotten and broken, held together by sheer determination and her own strength.

He smiles softly, black eyes glittering in the sporadic green flashes of the storm outside. They may be lost and broken, made brittle by life and it's abuse, but they're stronger than spider's web, as untouchable as that pretty pink pie in a Port-A-Diner. Katarina may not believe it, may not believe she's still salvageable, but if she can make a turret out of an old desk fan and half a bottle of wonderglue, well, he's damn sure she can make a life out of this.

"Anytime, sister. Anytime."