The Publick Occurrences was in a slump. After Nate helped clean up the Commonwealth, she had months of stories to write about. Any time she needed something in a pinch, she would move a Nate the Sole Survivor story into the rotation, and it would sell like hotcakes. But now, there really was nothing new for Piper to write about.

Her hands itched every time she saw Mayor McDonough, but Nate had told her that he was off limits. Not that it mattered, ever since Nate took over the Institute, the idea that the mayor may be a synth was no longer scandalous. He was still incompetent and crooked, but Piper respected Nate enough to honor his requests.

She was frustrated with all the fluff pieces she was writing just to be able to pay the bills. The fact that Nat had hit a growth spurt and needed new clothes wasn’t helping either. Piper needed a real story. Something that would sell papers. The new girl in town, Marian, only managed to point out all of Piper’s problems.

Piper had pinned all her hopes on the mutual associates between Marian and Nick. She wondered if the two had a history. She could do a whole expose on Marian, while tracking down this Lupin guy and exposing a new organized crime ring that needed to be broken up. People would be helped; papers would be sold. She could take care of Nat’s needs.

When she went to Nick for information and a quote, all she got was laughter. He explained that Arsène Lupin was a French literary character, and Maurice Leblanc was his author. Marian didn’t lie, but she did mislead Piper. Piper still wondered why Marian would mislead her. She still believed that Marian was hiding something. Nick had less to say about that. He just looked very angry and told her that they had only met the day before. Any other questions were answered with “no comment”.

Marian had to be hiding something. Why else would she had been so misleading? Every time Piper saw her, she could smell a story wafting off this enigmatic woman. The problem is, knowing there is a story is very different from having a story that will sell papers.

Piper pored over her notes. There were about half a dozen stories in the making among her notes, none of them were ready for printing. Piper wondered if any of them were good enough for her to hope to break even on.

She took a sip of her moonshine while looking at what she had. The Dugout Inn was a good place to overhear possible stories she could follow. It also helped that she was still being given all the free moonshine she could ask for. How long the free moonshine was going to keep flowing was still unclear. As usual, the Bobrov brothers were divided on how long she would receive the compensation for the story she wrote. Vadim insisted that she would receive a lifetime supply of their signature moonshine. An idea that made her both excited and quesey at the same time. Yefim argued that it would only be a month-long supply. She left the two to their fight.

Vadim moved over to Piper with his overly friendly smile. “Do you want another of our award-winning moonshine?” he asked, making an awkward joke out of her news article. The same awkward joke he made every time he offered her another drink.

“Sure, hit me with another,” Piper droned. At least if she was drunk, she could forget her troubles for a moment.

Vadim gave her another bottle and wandered off to talk to customers, loudly. If there was gossip in town, Vadim would let everyone know. Piper listened to his voice rove around the bar, trying to hear if there was anything she could track down before she was too drunk to walk.

Vadim’s voice made it where she almost missed another familiar voice. Luckily, Marian’s voice was distinctive. Even when she talked low, it carried.

“Hello, Yefim, I need a favor from you,” Marian said.

“That depends on what you need,” Yefim told her in his businessman disposition.

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“I have someone who is in a bad way,” Marian explained. “They can’t pay for a room. Can you advance me, and I’ll find some way to pay you back?”

“If they can’t pay, they can sleep outside,” Yefim insisted, “this isn’t a charity.”

Piper turned to watch the conversation, and to hear it better. There were times when she wished Vadim wasn’t so loud. The fact that she couldn't listen in without being obvious made tonight one of those times. Yefim was standing up from his chair, towering over Marian. He had a concerned look on his face. Marian was standing in front of him looking upset; her body was ridged, and she was contorting her face in weird ways.

“I know this isn’t a charity. But I will pay you back, I can find ten caps by the next time I come here, but this is an old man. It’s too cold to make him stay outside,” Marian pleaded.

“I have no way to be sure you’ll come back,” Yefim corrected. “You do seem to pride yourself on your ability to disappear from people’s lives.”

“You heard about that?” Marian was looking somewhat sheepish. Piper wondered what Marian tended to say when she was drunk, or how often she was drunk.

Piper knew she should be taking notes, it seemed she had a deal going with Yefim. It also looked like that deal was in the middle of changing.

Yefim sighed, “You know I like you, but this isn’t personal, this is just business.”

“I know, I know,” Marian responded, looking down at the floor. It was almost as if she was hoping an idea would dig itself up from that floor. “I know this isn’t personal. I know we are still friends, but there has to be something I can do for this man.”

Yefim stood passively and watched her. The amount of concern he showed he normally didn’t show to customers who couldn’t pay. This was obviously different. It wasn’t that Marian couldn’t pay; it was that her client couldn’t. Piper wondered how much Marian got for this specific job if she managed to drain her client to where he didn’t even have ten caps for a room.

Marian started taking her backpack off her back. There was some juggling to keep her rifle on her back while removing the pack. Soon she was holding her thin backpack in front of her. She opened one of its many pockets and rooted around for a few seconds. She pulled her hand out as a fist. It looked like a chain caught onto her hand, but she pushed it back in before bringing her hand back out. She put her backpack on the floor, freeing her other hand.

“Here,” Marian said as she grabbed one of Yefim’s hands, pushing the item in question into it and closing his hand around it. “It’s an heirloom. It’s worth more than ten caps, and it’s priceless to me. You can be sure I will find the caps to buy it back from you. If I die before then, you can sell it to get all your caps back and then some.”

Yefim looked down at the palm of his cupped hand. Piper couldn’t see what was in it. The way Marian was shaking and looking at it, it was clear that she wanted to snatch it back.

He looked back up at her. “This isn’t a pawn shop either,” he told her.

Piper could have sworn she saw tears in Marian’s eyes, but it could be blurry vision from all the moonshine. “It’s all I have that’s mine,” the outsider said. “Please, I promise not to leave the Commonwealth until I can pay for it back.”

Yefim was quiet for a moment, he seemed to be weighing his options and then he sighed as he pocketed the item in his hand. “Ok, I will hold this as collateral for a time. I know you will pay me back as soon as you can. Do you want us to provide this man with meals?”

Marian closed her eyes and sighed. Piper watched patiently. Was Marian shaking, or was it just Piper who was shaking? Damn she wished she hadn’t taken so much advantage of the free moonshine.

“Yes.” Marian’s voice sounded far away. It felt almost as if someone else was speaking through her. “Take care of him.”

“You can take this back,” Yefim told her.

“It’s just an object,” Marian said looking at the floor again. “I shouldn’t be attached to objects. His wife should mean more to him than that ring means to me. Don’t tell him what I just did, just tell him that…tell him that everything is paid for.” The woman seemed to be shrinking inside herself. Piper wondered if she was talking to Yefim anymore, or to herself.

“You are a good person,” Yefim said.

Marian looked up, there were definitely tears in her eyes this time. “That’s the problem, I’m not. I’m a monster. That’s why I do this kind of shit.”

She picked up her backpack and walked away from Yefim. Piper could have sworn Marian had become pale under her sunburn. Her steps looked jerky, almost like a malfunctioning synth. Yefim stared at her as she walked out. He looked pained before going into the hotel area.

Piper turned back to her notes and started writing. She just witnessed something big. She had no doubt that she will be able to rewrite her notes legibly when she was sober. It may have been a small encounter, but Piper had been doing this job long enough to know when something small is part of something big. She wasn’t sure of the details, it could be anything from Marian trying to help set up organized crime in Diamond City, or she was trying to bring people in from the Capital Wasteland. Either way, Piper finally had a story.