Melting Steel ➼ Fallout

Seven

❝ This ain't no place for no better man ❞

➼ The Heavy

I close my eyes as the wind caresses my face, cool and relatively fresh, carrying the scent of the ocean. I sit on the wide balcony outside of the Prydwen, above Elder Maxson's favourite place to stand and brood. I attempt to ignore the Prydwen's loud engines and focus on the squawk of seagulls.

Gazing out at the ravaged land, I note that it's a place I've become accustomed to calling home. The Annabel that stepped into Vault 111 with terror grasping her heart was not the same Annabel that stumbled out with rage clawing up her throat. I have walked lands plagued by nightmares, a sea of radiation and horrors, walked cracked roads that had once led to places but now lead nowhere beyond what someone is willing to search for in the rubble.

I became a soldier for the Brotherhood of Steel, but I could never be like the others. I had faults that I had to adapt. I couldn't run blindly into battle in a suit of that wretched power armour, I had to apply my skills elsewhere. It's why Maxson and many others always referred to me as a ghost, able to slip away into the darkness, able to kill without being near. I had to find my strengths within myself and become a completely different person to the pre-war relic that was often scoffed at in this world.

All of this comes down to a simple fact, the dreams I once had for a stable family, a clean home, can never come to pass. I am a killer, not a mother. I am a wanderer, not a wife. I am an utter mess, and can never hope to be a friend. I've accepted this. I accepted it the moment I turned that gun on Danse and left behind the last shreds of my former self. And now Maxson is asking me to do something that I can't possibly. Become a mother, settle down like none of this ever happened, like I didn't have a hand in destroying hundreds of people, like my gun isn't molded permanently into my palm.

I stand and move towards the railing that separates me from the drop to the water below. I lean into the wind, allowing it to embrace me. Here I stand, seemingly on the edge of the world with everything that I have tried to run from sitting at my back. Decisions loom before me, paths stretching and none of them are easy, none of them are even. All I have to do now is decide which pain I wish to endure. All I have to do now is decide which part of myself I can bear to sacrifice. It will never be an easy decision, it never has been.

♤

I dust off my hat, grateful beyond measure to have my possessions back, like a part of myself has been returned.

A small knock on the door that's slightly ajar has my heart leaping in my throat. Either it's Maxson or someone else who wishes to pester me about choices and responsibilities. But I find myself welcoming them into the small space anyway, aware that I can't hide forever.

The boy that pushes into the room isn't who I expected and my mouth goes dry at the big silver eyes and mop of black hair. He wrings his hands, standing before me and shuffling his feet.

"Hi," I say, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed.

"Umm," he murmurs and I tilt my head, his unease seeming to emanate from him.

"Did Elder Maxson send you?" I question and his eyes meet mine. He hesitates for a moment before nodding. I let out a sigh and shift over on the bed, patting the space next to me and watch him approach with uneasy steps, the excitement from earlier that day gone from him. Perhaps I'm not what he expected, perhaps he thought I would sweep him into my arms and cry with joy. But I don't know him and I don't know what falsehoods have been planted into his head. "You like it here, don't you?" I presume and watch his eyes light up.

"Arthur lets me help Proctor Ingram in the machinery rooms, he says one day I'll be able to build my own power armour." 

I laugh softly. Nate was a tinkerer, always fixing something on the old bike that he adored or making adjustments to the Mr Handy. "You want to be a soldier then?" I ask, leaning against the wall behind us as he shrugs.

"Arthur says I can choose my own path. He also says that I'll have to go with you." Some of that excitement fades and there's mixed feelings in my stomach. He wants to stay here, he wants to stay with Maxson but he knows he has to come with me. I don't even know what I would do with a kid. "I don't want to go out into the wasteland," he says quietly, staring at his shoes. "There are too many... monsters out there."

"The monsters aren't everywhere," I flatly reassure him.

"Father said that I should never go to the surface, that it's not safe."

"Father..." I breathe, knowing who he speaks of with a sickness in my stomach. The real Shaun, the human that this synth is modelled after.

"That reminds me," he says, jumping up and pulling something from his pocket. "I kept this with me everywhere I went in case I... ran into you. Father thought you would be at the Institute when it was destroyed, he told me that I should go with you but you weren't there."

"No," I murmur, taking the holotape from his hands. "I wasn't." I look at the faded yellow square in my palm, contemplating what could possibly be on there. "Thank you." I stuff it into a pocket of my leather jacket. He returns to his place beside me, swinging his legs and twisting his striped shirt in his hands.

"I won't be a bother," he says quietly and I frown.

"I don't think you are," I say truthfully. No, not a bother, just in sever danger. If the people here find out he's a synth then he'll be killed but I'm the only one that knows, I'm the only one that seems to be able to protect him. I don't know if I'm ready for that. "This place isn't any safer than it is out there," I say and he looks at me with raised brows. "The Brotherhood will always have enemies and some of those enemies aren't going to like seeing a big ship floating in the sky. This place won't be safe forever."

"Then shouldn't we help them?" 

I laugh and shake my head, looking up at the ceiling. "The Brotherhood don't want or need our help, kiddo. They dig their own graves. I have tried to help them but Maxson is bent on having things his way. There's no helping a man like that."

"Where will we go then?" he asks and I let out a sigh. Isn't that the question of my life? Where to go, especially with a little synth boy following. He'll either die here or I'll keep him alive long enough to die in the wasteland.

"There are settlements that will help us," I tell him, thinking of the place I left behind and the little boy that loves guns, other places too. "There's also a whole world beyond the Commonwealth." He seems to pale at that and I let out another breath. He's reluctant to leave the Prydwen, I can't imagine how reluctant he'd be to leave the Commonwealth. "I'll figure something out, Shaun," I murmur and squeeze his knee before standing, his name feeling like ash on my tongue. "Come on, let's go find some Nuka Cola and comics." A grin splits his face and I can't help but smile back at him as he jumps up and leads the way.

The boy may be a synth, a twisted creation, and that holotape seems to burn a hole in my pocket, but Danse was a synth too. He was a man of honour, kindness, optimism, and loyalty. He didn't know he was a synth, he thought he was human and he was loved by many, even Maxson. Why can't Shaun be the same? Why can't I accept that he may never truly be my son but he is still a boy frightened by monsters and clinging to his mother? Perhaps I can push aside my own monsters and accept he is just a lost little boy.