Fawkes

The door opens on a vista of rocky landscape punctuated here and there by yellowed, rough-edged grass and low, scrubby brush. There's a hint of coolness on the breeze in the otherwise warming air, and a scent of distant rain. "We are," Fawkes rumbles, "some hours' distance from the Citadel. We're likely to stop at the town of Megaton first, and then make for the Arlington route the rest of the way."

It’s dark out, though the sky’s beginning to lighten around the eastern edges. No matter how many times Fawkes sees that happen, that’s never going to be anything but amazing.

He’s made a habit of this. Coming outside, if he’s indoors, or waking up early, if he’s outdoors, and watching the sky as the blackness slowly brightens into morning. For… longer than he can remember… morning only meant waking up, or maybe being thrown whatever the others thought would be amusing to make him eat. There was never darkness, or even just a change in light, unless something broke. It was inevitably, invariably, eternally the same.

On the surface, it’s different. Out here there are no walls. The open space stretches from horizon to horizon, forever. The sun exists beyond anyone’s reach, and no one can break it or tinker with it for their amusement. Darkness falls, and gives way, and returns again. No hand can force it. No flailing brute can change it. It is. It’s its own kind of freedom. It’s worth watching, being present in that moment.

Something happened today he doesn’t understand, at this ‘Milliways’ place. People changed- externally, anyway. He still seems to be himself, for all that he’s smaller, and darker, and speaks and smiles with ease. It seemed to be random, and none of it seemed to be harmful. Or permanent, either. All things change, he knows that, and nothing is really permanent; it is as it is now, and later it is as it will be. This… this is just one more thing. It will pass. He’s near the lake, watching the dawn.

After a while, there’s someone else near him. Yesterday he could’ve seen who it was more easily. Meta-human eyes have less trouble piercing the dark than human ones. But the stranger’s not going anywhere, and neither is Fawkes, so there’s time to look and to adapt. The man’s as dark as Fawkes is now, and he’s…

He’s wearing a Vault suit. A Vault 87 suit.

He’s looking back at Fawkes, too. Dawn is slow in coming, so Fawkes can’t be sure, but there’s just enough light that he can’t help but murmur, “You look familiar.”

“I’d like to think so,” the man says, giving him a calm and level gaze. “You knew this face pretty well once.”

It’s the voice that does it. All day it’s been nagging at him, the voice he was given when he walked in and his form changed. Familiar, but not familiar enough. Like something he should’ve known. Hearing this man speak-

“It was you,” he says, the words a little slow with disbelief. “On the holotapes I found.”

“It was,” the man says. Shelton. The voice on the tapes called itself Shelton Delacroix. “I recorded all those tapes, before they got me.”

He inclines his head to Fawkes.

“There’s some people who’d say you recorded them.”

There’s silence for a while. The motions of speaking are easy in this body. The thought behind the speech- that’s… right now, that’s hard.

Fawkes looks away eventually, to the eastern horizon. Shelton’s still looking at him. “It’s funny,” he says to… the other man; that’s the easiest way to put it, just now. “I’d wondered, when I found those. When I found a player that the others hadn’t ruined.”

“Sounded familiar, huh?” Shelton chuckles. It’s a rueful sound. Maybe a little tired. “Guess you didn’t forget everything after all.”

“You’re who I used to be.”

There, it’s been said. Out in the open, where it belongs.

“That’s the size of it,” says Shelton. “Shelton Delacroix. Thirty-eight years old. Vault-Tec security officer assigned to the laboratory level in Vault 87, as of October twenty-third, two thousand seventy seven.”

“Until you found out what was going on behind those doors.”

Shelton nods. “The beginning of the end,” he says. “I found out, and I ran like hell. Not that it helped. It all ended up the way it was going to from the beginning. In the vats.”

“I’m sorry,” says Fawkes. “That… should never have happened to you. To anyone.”

“Not that I don’t agree with you,” says Shelton dryly, “but if it hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here now.”

Silence, again, for a time.

Fawkes looks back to Shelton. The man’s expression is neutral. Curious, perhaps. He’s waiting for an answer, and Fawkes doesn’t know what to say.

Except, maybe, “I’m still sorry you suffered.”

Shelton sighs, and even in the dim light of early morning, Fawkes can see how very tired the man is. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I know.”

He stands up, shoves his hands in his pockets. Fawkes stays where he is, watches Shelton face the dawn.

“I’ll tell you,” Shelton says, “I don’t think there was a purpose to it. I mean, a purpose purpose. Bad things happen, you know? They don’t happen for a reason. They’re not destiny, or setting up for some great big thing down the road. They just happen. I got screwed the same as everybody else in that Vault. That’s all.”

He glances over his shoulder, at Fawkes.

“I sure hope your life has some kind of meaning. I don’t think mine did.”

Fawkes stands up- and up, and up; somewhere along the way it stopped being Halloween, because he’s looking down at Shelton now, the way he does at everyone. “I think perhaps it does,” he says, the familiar strain and struggle coming back into his voice now. “I make the best of any moment given to me.”

“Guess that’s something,” says Shelton. “Probably more than I did with my life.”

“You lived,” says Fawkes. “You left a message.”

“You’re the only one who ever got it. It didn’t change a damn thing.”

“Perhaps not for you,” says Fawkes, “but for me, it did.”

Shelton raises an eyebrow silently. Fawkes has never been able to do that.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, slow and careful as he picks his way through the words. “About Vault 87, and about what it means to the people of the Wasteland. The danger it poses, even after all this time.”

“I’m listening.”

“I don’t think,” Fawkes says, “that the current inhabitants have much more future ahead of them. The vats are starting to run dry. They search the city ruins for more, or clues to find more, but they’ll never find any. I know that much. Within a few decades, there won’t be any more new horrors coming out of that Vault.”

Shelton’s giving him an odd look. He does his best to smile, produces an odd grimace instead. Alas. He’s going to miss being able to smile. “I’m aware,” he says, “that technically, I am one such horror.”

“I was gonna say.”

“Believe me, I’ve considered that, and thoroughly. Two hundred years is a long time. In all that time, I and one other have been the only subjects of that Vault’s experiment who’ve been anything but horrors. I believe the term for that is ‘statistically insignificant’. Our number is small enough to be ignored.”

“Wouldn’t know. Math was… math and I didn’t get along.”

Fawkes nods. “It’s unimportant. What matters is this. That Vault produces pain and suffering for its prisoners, and more for every life its inhabitants touch. In time, there won’t be any more inhabitants. I could, perhaps, let that go on. Wait it out. Protect people in the meantime, and watch the others of my kind die of attrition.”

Shelton doesn’t say anything, only fidgets a little, waiting. He’s listening, though. Fawkes can tell.

“That would be easy. And it would avoid many hard questions.” Fawkes glances towards the Bar, and then back again. “But I’ve listened to your voice. I’ve heard your fear. I’ve seen what became of others like you. No matter how long, or how hard, the humans of the Wasteland hold their ground, someone will always wind up being carried off to that place- unless it’s destroyed completely.”

“I have a friend, now, and she has allies. They have resources, and they’re willing to listen when I speak. We have a plan for that place now. No one else is going to suffer in there the way you did, Shelton Delacroix. We’re going to bring it to its end, once and for all.”

“Your life… might not have had meaning when you lived it. And your suffering may have been without purpose, when it happened. But you left a message, and I received it. It may not save the people you would’ve wanted saved… but it’ll save someone. I hope that’s enough meaning for you.”

Shelton considers it a while, hands still in his pockets. Then he smiles. “It might be,” he says. “It just might be.”

He reaches out a hand to Fawkes, who moves to take it in his own, much larger hand with infinite care. There’s a hesitant moment, and a motion almost like the beginning of a shake; but the horizon’s light has been growing brighter all this time, and the sun is up at last, and Shelton is gone.

Well. That was unexpected.

But there are much worse ways to end the night.