Sure enough, Hancock awoke the next day to the feeling of Bonnie's leg resting on his stomach. She lay on her front with her face turned to the side, a waterfall of curls laying over her face. Groggily smiling, he reached out a hand to remove a lock of her hair from her mouth, a habit she had retained since infancy. It tickled her nose, and she scrunched up her face and turned away. She was awake, he was sure of it - just playing possum - and she knew the rule; once he or Talia was up for the day, then so was she. From the sunlight pouring into the room, he could tell that they'd slept long past the norm and almost all the way to 10 AM. He sat up and his head throbbed a little, making the fog of suddenly wakefulness intensify that much more. A bit of a mentat hangover, he assumed. He reached for a container he kept in the nightstand and remembered that only a foot away was his 6 year old daughter. He decided against a little hair of the dog just yet, and turned his attention back to his more pressing concern - getting Bonnie to admit she was up.

He tried bouncing the mattress a couple times with his hand, and though Bonnie flopped around on the mattress, her expression remained that of a sleeping little girl.

"C'mon Bun, up an' at 'em", he said sternly but playfully.

She stayed motionless.

"Oh, so that's how you're gonna play this huh? That suits me just fine."

He rubbed his hands together with a menacing grin.

"If you don't get up right now, I'm gonna feed you cold Insta-Mash for every meal you have today."

He paused, half-expecting his bluff to work. "You do that anyway!", he hoped to hear in an exasperated squeak.

No dice. She stayed in the awkward position she had fallen back onto the mattress in. He noticed her chin quiver as if to stifle a comment hurriedly.

"Catfood, here girl!", he yelled out.

When Dogmeat had puppies with another dog, Daisy who was bought from - to Talia's delight and confusion - a dog breeder she'd come across in her and Hancock's travels, as a way to help Bonnie cope with her mother being gone at least one week out of every month, she and Hancock decided to bring her one of Dogmeats puppies; one of the friendliest ones, a girl whom Bonnie had kept in grand tradition and named 'Catfood'. She idolized her human, and was a little more than enthusiastic at the opportunity given to be with Bonnie. Hancock could hear the little click-clack! of puppy claws on the wooden floor as she raced from the first floor into the master bedroom. Seeing Bonnie laying on the bed with an arm dangling off the edge made Catfood let out a sharp bark! and immediately dashed to the other side of the room - sliding into the wall when she tried to stop. She yelped at her mistress some more, but still not even the sound of her best non-human, nor ghoul friend made her stir.

Hancock could see the crack of a smile forming on the edges of her lips, and knew that he almost had her.

"Alright, give kisses!", he encouraged the little over-zealous puppy.

She licked Bonnie's hand gleefully, but seeing that she still would not move concerned her. She whined at her, and looked back at Hancock with a concerned expression. Still, Bonnie would not move.

"Remind me not to let anyone teach you to play poker, kiddo", Hancock mused.

Bark!

Catfood jumped up on the bed and bounded towards Hancock before he knew what was happening, and leapt into him, knocking him to the ground with a thud! and licking his face with gusto.

"Ack! Catfood no! Bad girl! Not me, Bonnie! Down girl!", he cried, pushing the joyful puppy off of his chest and dramatically wiping the dog drool from his face and chest. He glared at Bonnie, picked himself back up off the floor, and shrugged.

"Alright. I guess I'm just gonna have to pull my trump card out, ain't I?", Hancock said in a mock-serious voice.

With a flouncing movement, he sat on Bonnie's side of the bed, right next to her.

"Last chance."

He waited for her to roll over and giggle, holding her hands out in front of her. No such luck - for Bonnie that is. She wore a shivering smile now.

Hancock rolled her part of the way over and - light handedly - began to tickle her. It was barely two seconds before she opened her eyes and shrieked, laughing.

"Oh you lightweight!", Hancock laughed along, not stopping his improvised waking-technique even after she'd started to try and pull his hand off her stomach.

She decided to opt for attempting to tickle him after she realized that that wasn't going to cut it.

"Ha! Nice try little girl; you have to be a smoothskin for tickle-attack to work!", he taunted, suddenly pulling her onto his lap and giving her a side-ways hug.

"Nuh-uh!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! I heard Uncle Clancy telling someone three days ago that he likes the way Manny feels, and that he tickles! What else could he've been talking about but tickling?", Bonnie blurted with vigor.

Hancock made sounds like tea-kettle (or a rusty one, rather).

"Bun... Were you supposed to be listening to that conversation?"

Bonnie crossed her arms defensively.

"Maaaaybe...", she replied.

"Oohhh Bonnie. He ah, wasn't talking about tickling. When you're older, you'll get it", he said wiping tears from his eyes.

Bonnie stuck her tongue out and swung her legs back and forth on his lap, gaining momentum to jump to the ground with a slap of little bare feet. She picked up Catfood and padded her way to her own room, stopping abruptly before exiting Hancock's room and turning to look at him with a grim expression.

"Daddy... Please don't make me eat cold Insta-Mash this morning!", she said very seriously.

"Go get dressed and we'll see what I can do", Hancock answered, getting off of the bed to get dressed himself.

Bonnie ran to her room and shut her door hard behind her.

"And don't brush your hair yourself! Let either Daisy or me do it!", he yelled after her.

Talia was only a few short miles from home - from Goodneighbor that is - and from her family. Well, her biological family anyway.

She wasn't sure she was doing the right thing by her children anymore, keeping Shaun and Bonnie from knowing about each other. While she knew that Bonnie would be able to handle the situation better than most adults, Shaun had been... Unpredictable lately. It had been hard enough when he hit puberty, and still even harder when he'd eventually figured out that he wasn't quite like the other boys; even with all the male synth role-models a young man could ask for in both Danse AND Nick, he was still moody and sullen when reminded of his inhumanity in even the slightest ways. And with this last visit, he'd been pushing her away and pulling at her fraying nerves even more than normal.

"It's natural for little boys to want to be independent from their mother's at 14, Talia! Give him some space - but still be within earshot!", she had been told countless times by anyone within eavesdropping distance.

Fat lot of good that rhetoric did to her worries and fears for her son. She knew she wasn't the perfect mother for Shaun or Bonnie; but she loved them with enough ferocity for a thousand mothers of one, and she was only doing what she thought was best for them. But it was quickly becoming not the best thing for them. The older and more withdrawn Shaun was becoming, the more she was realizing that he needed to be told about his half-sister ASAP; before the impact of finding out he has a baby sister becomes less of an indent and more of a blast zone.

So now it was a waiting game. Back and forth between Sanctuary and Gooneighbor, and back and forth in her mind. Check on Bonnie, check on Shaun. Wait for Shaun to reach a more temperate mood, and then in a split-second, decide if he's ready to know the truth. Who knows how many weeks or even months will be in between all of those checkpoints?

And so, Talia was reasonably lost in thought as she stumbled and climbed through the crumbling building ruins along the way to the ever-expanding Goodneighbor - so much so that she almost didn't pick up on the echoing ping-ping-ping of a small metal object on concrete.

Once it had captured her attention, she had immediately mistaken it for the firing of a pipe pistol. But the firings weren't rapid enough, nor were they loud enough. Whoever was making those sounds was likely one of two things; either someone harmless or nearly so, or a feral ghoul either chained up or accidentally hitting something. She decided to take the risk and follow the sound, climbing over enormous piles of rubble that formed man-made mountainscapes, the valleys of which were so deep and narrow that as she went along it became apparent that the source was much further away than previously anticipated - the sound must have been rebounding off the dry canals of the city from at least a couple miles away, deeper into the mutant-infested streets.

The closer she came the darker it got, and though she had been in the Commonwealth for well over 5 years now, Talia realized that she'd never been outside of Goodneighbor yet inside of Boston during sunset before. It was almost breathtaking. The view around her as she scaled hill over hill of destroyed glass and steel and cement that was almost constantly set in a state of vastly muted already-drab hues that would be a perversion to even consider 'colors' were suddenly glowing red and orange and yellow - and for once, it wasn't because of any Earth-made radiation. Sure, she had seen the sun rise and set over the Commonwealth wilderness, and around the various suburbs and towns, and even around Diamond City, Far Harbor, and Nuka World - but never before in the urban jungle surrounding Goodneighbor on all sides. The dystopia around Goodneighbor was so much heavier and more thickly lain than anywhere else in the Commonwealth, though MacCready and Danse had told her that it was nothing compared to that of the areas by Rivet City in D.C.

The pinging grew more insistent, snapping Talia out of the semi-trance the sunset had left her in and ushering her forward once more. Once, she misplaced a handhold and skidded halfway down a pile of rubble, leaving a scraped knee and a bruised palm, but she persisted. The light from her pipboy wasn't much help to combat the eeriness around her now that it was nearly dark out; hell, the green glow made it almost worse. Soon all manner of nasties would be coming out in larger droves than during the day. She needed to hurry.

She traced the sound to a nearly closed off area of debries, around what appeared to be decrepit townhouses, but she could see nothing to make the noise. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it appeared to be coming from a thick slab of cement structure. She shrugged off the natural fear of danger, and cleared her throat warily.

"Is someone there?", she asked loudly, and held her breath.

The noise stopped, and a finalizing-moment stiffness hung in the dusty air.

"Y-yes? Yes! Hello? Yes! I'm down here! Behind this big piece of cement! Can you hear me?!", a rough-yet-attractive young voice shouted from behind the wall.

"Hello! Yes, I can hear you! Do you need some help?"

"Oh God yes I need some damn help, please help me! I've been trying to dig myself out of her for what feels like forever!"

Uh-oh.

"Ah, okay just stand back! Like, all the way back!", Talia shouted back once more, knowing what to expect once she got this person out of there.

"Okay! Thank you, thank you so much!"

Talia drew a shotgun off her back and held in her hands for a moment. She wasn't sure it would be enough, but she'd seen it chip off things harder than crumbling ancient cement before. She took a few steps back to avoid the shrapnel, aimed at the bottom of the slab, and squeezed the trigger.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

She fired three times, hoping that would be enough to make a hole wide enough for whoever was trapped to crawl out. She wasn't as concerned about their eyes, since it was now nighttime, but she was concerned about their ears. The shells from her shotgun were much louder than whatever they were using to shovel themselves out, and even her own veteran ears were ringing from being in such close proximity.

Sure enough, there was a hole just large enough to put your head through, but not the whole body. She quickly looked around for a pipe and took a good swing at the wall.

It crumbled quickly after that, each strike knocking loose handfuls of cement. Soon she could see just inside, a black form standing in front of a dim lightbulb.

"Come on out. You're safe now, so long as you stick with me."

The form stepped in front of the hole, blocking the view entirely.

Just as Talia suspected, it was ghoul; a girl, young by the looks of it, in a sleeveless blue checked shirtdress. She had long, wavy brown hair, and blue eyes like most ghouls, skin the color of wood-polish. Aside from the amount of hair she had, and for the most part her voice, she had the usual ghoul physical appearance. In her arms was a cat. Or at least, Talia thought it was a cat; the poor thing was a bit grizzled with patches of skin showing, and while she still had her nose, her ears were full of holes, and the tip of her tail was gone.

Talia didn't so much as flinch. She just held out her hand to help her through the wall.

"Welcome to the Commonwealth kid. I'm Talia", she said with a smile, prompting her to take her hand once more.

With an unsure look, the girl took it.

"Maria Lantigua. This is Patches", she replied, nodding her head toward the cat comfortably resting her head on her shoulder like a baby.

"Well Maria. As you can see, things aren't quite the way you left them when you got trapped. How old were you? When the bombs fell?"

"I'm 18. What do you mean, "How old was I"? It feels like it's been a long time, sure; but the lights haven't gone out, and I haven't run out of food... Not even cat food."

Talia looked around them, and sighed.

"Then you're old enough that I don't have to worry too much about how you're going to take this. Look, it's... It's been a very long time since the bombs fell. Trust me, I was there too. But it's not safe here, so we need to get going. I'll try to explain as much as I can on the way. Let's go", Talia told Maria solemnly.

Seeing the rubble and decay to such an unthinkable degree in the dim glow of Talia's pipboy and the light behind her from her basement was exactly the thing to make Maria inclined to believe her, or at least to consider her safer than staying on her own. Talia was strapped. From her shins to her shoulders, there was every kind of weapon Maria would have thought necessary if the Chinese took over - plus some she'd never even imagined. And someone who stopped to help a young girl get out of a blocked off basement couldn't have been a danger to her...

Right?