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pajama-nerd · 1 year

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So, my friends and I are playing an irregularly scheduled, episodic campaign of Fallout. Which is a setting designed to hurt your feelings.

I knew this. This is not a complaint post. I love this campaign so much, shoutout to my DM, who has an account but is like... never on here, lol.

Anyway, the cast:

Scarlett: a sociopathic Vault Dweller who experiments on people and animals to try to mutate them into something interesting and also bring back spiders for some reason. Also a sniper.

Roy: A Mr. Handy Medic bot. Two eyes, three limbs, one of which is a boxing glove. Played by my boyfriend.

Rev: a former Brotherhood of Steel member who is traumatized by the things he witnessed and took part in.

Bam: our Eight-Foot-Tall Supermutant, wielding a piece of a billboard as a weapon and wearing a pink apron with applique daisies on it. She is clearly the heart of the team, and also (technically) a DMPC. (Our DM is an experienced RPGer who knows how to handle his shit, and Bam is not a main character. We do love her tho. Hard not to)

And Alexis: my character. A survivor. I designed her to be the charismatic face of the group, and by that metric, it was decided that Alexis was the one who found everyone and brought them into the settlement, which Alexis had named Hopestead. She affects a southern drawl and a 'butter-wouldn't-melt' persona that's pretty effective in a lot of situations. She is not actually from Appalachia. Her name is not actually Alexis.

And now for our NPCs! Because we needed some of those:

Elizabeth Owens: Officially the Mayor, although the others made it a running gag that for anything really serious, everyone goes to Alexis. It's just that Alexis desperately hates paperwork. Still, Mayor Owens cares about her community and was the second person that Alexis collected on her way to building Hopestead.

Robert: Our Brain in a Jar Bartender with a Porky Pig affectation (we know it's an affectation because it disappears in serious situations). As far as we've uncovered, he used to be a part of the Enclave and (somehow) ended up as a brain in a jar 'as a last resort' (whatever the hell that means, DM!)

Wilbur: Rev's Supermutant assistant. Super unsure of himself. Recently kidnapped, and on our immediate to-do list to rescue. (Not super relevant to the story, but not...not relevant.)

Adam: a member of the cult of Atom who proselytizes on the street opposite--

Martha: a member of the Mothman cult.

They could not more obviously be in love and using their soap box hours to make eyes at each other. It's adorable. They're not in this story, but I couldn't not tell you about them.

Damian Wayne: Exactly who it sounds like. We took Batman's hardass ten-year-old son and made him our Quartermaster. He is delightfully ready to gut whoever he's talking to. We adore him.

So the context, then:

In the first adventure, someone was trying to wirelessly transfer our consciousness into synthetic bodies to live in a perfect replica of Hopestead in a Vault nearby. He had also sabotaged our GECK. We stopped him, which ended with the termination of every synth in town, which was horrifying, because some of those transfers had completed. Very sad. But we swapped our GECK with the one in the Vault, so yay. Clean water. Crops. woot.

Then we used our sabotaged GECK to blow up a nearby Brotherhood of Steel outpost because everyone in the settlement is constantly worried that they'll catch wind of our peaceful settlement and come in and wreck our shit. (And then it turned out they were part of the less xenophobic branch and I felt real bad, y'all, but consequences is the name of the game. (Actually, the name of the game is...Fallout RPG. I'll stop))

THEN a few months passed, and we got more people in town. Yay! But then we noticed that some of our citizens were going missing, and that it was all the ghouls and supermutants and some of the synths (but not Bob or Roy). Our settlement is very inclusive. Alexis was not down for any type of segregation. So we investigated and found that some of the people who flocked to Hopestead were spies for The Top of the World, and that they'd kidnapped all our ghouls, and all our Supermutants.

Including Bam.

And obviously, this was not to be borne, so we mounted up and sallied forth, and Alexis talked them in and then they split up, and Roy and Alexis went after Bam, and Scarlett went to go blow shit up (Damian had given us a nuclear grenade. Where did he get a nuclear grenade? Don't ask questions). Rev was unfortunately not with us, because his player went on a cruise with his family.

Anyway, it turned out that the Raiders had been traded a bunch of munitions for the ghouls and supermutants, including several nuclear armaments, so Scarlett set a mine and moved on.

We found Bam. We beat some ass. We fucked off. And then the bombs went off, and took out the whole tower, which fell on the arena and killed a mess of folks.

Also we received a message from the Enclave via some...floating radios (I admit I am not as well versed in Fallout terminology as I would like to be. I've yet to sit down and actually play through the series). But basically, 'The President' called us out for being a nuisance and told us to stand down and submit ourselves to Enclave rule or be destroyed.

After knocking down the killer radios, we were able to fashion ourselves a radio tower, and Alexis responded to this ultimatum by basically saying, 'stay out of our way or you're next, kay?'

They were not pleased with this, as you might imagine.

So, while the main cast was at an amusement park, celebrating Bam's birthday, the Enclave unleashed 2 Scorchbeasts on Hopestead.

...

Which sucked.

But anyway, one day I was craving some emotional devastation, so I asked our DM if I could write up the aftermath, and he said, 'sure, why not?'

So I asked him who died in the attack.

Apparently none of the established NPCs perished in the initial onslaught, so yay, but that's not the only way a Scorchbeast can get you, so then he told me who caught the Scorched Plague.

SO ANYWAY, I WROTE THAT.

If you don't want to hurt inside, don't read this.

Seriously:

Trigger Warnings: Eye Trauma, Death, Gore, Semi-Graphic Depiction of Death by Shotgun, Assisted Suicide, Blood, Descriptions of the Scorched Plague Victims' Conditions, Burning Bodies, Suffering, War Crimes (Probably)

The ending is only vaguely hopeful

Otherwise, off you go:

Three Deaths

The moments immediately following the fight are chaos.

Alexis, half-blind from staring one-eyed down a scope as the Fat-Boy went off, leans against a rock, hissing and cursing as tears spill into the palm cupped over her blinded eye. She hears scurried footsteps approach and doesn’t even look up as Rev’s heavy hand grabs her shoulder.

“I’m fine, go!” she snaps, accent slipping as pain and worry cloud her mind.

There’s a moment’s pause before Rev’s hand leaves her shoulder and his footsteps carry him away.

Alexis tries to breathe. Tries not to see the cloud of Scorch Spores drifting down from the mutated bat-dragon onto her town. Tries to take solace in the fact that there’s no wind; in the knowledge that the spores will drop on the settlement and not much further beyond its borders.

It doesn’t help much.

Who’s dead? Is a thought that rings loudly inside her head, above even her own pain. Who’s infected? Is a thought she tries to block out, and failing, her stomach churns.

Minutes later, she manages to lift her head and squint one eye towards Hopestead.

Rev paces a couple hundred yards away from the South Fence, anxiously waiting for Roy or Scarlett or someone to bring him a hazmat suit so he can help his community.

Alexis ducks her head again and spits a curse at the ground before slowly, painfully, making her way in the direction of Hopestead.

She gets to where Rev has given up pacing – where he is standing, shoulders moving visibly with each heavy breath – and leans on the gun she’d been given to fight with.

The cloud is still visible in the air, mostly concentrated over the central cul de sac that they’d designated the ‘Town Square’. It’s difficult to see through the gaps in the houses. They only have the one avenue of sight down the main street. Even from a hundred yards away, they can hear crying and screaming, and they stand there in silence, hearts thundering.

After an interminable number of moments, Rev turns to look at Alexis, zeroing in on her closed right eye and rolling his own in irritation.

“...Are you fucking blind, right now?”

“Just the one eye, Rev, calm down. Nuke Flash,” Alexis drawls. Rev sighs, but reaches into his pack and grabs a length of bandage.

“Sit down,” he orders gruffly, and at first, Alexis shrugs off his command, only to find herself roughly sat on a nearby boulder. Her hat is plucked from her head despite her protest, and she glares up at Rev with her good eye, an act that he takes advantage of to start wrapping a bandage around her bad eye.

Alexis suffers the attention with gritted teeth, but looks up into Rev’s own clenched jaw and says nothing.

Neither of them do well with inaction. They can do nothing for their little village, and it is tearing them both apart.

She sits and she suffers, and she hopes that it does something to ease the pain of her friend.

It is an agonizing eternity before Scarlett marches out of the cloud, making her way over to them. She waves them back, and they go, waiting impatiently as she sets out two hazmat suits. She treats them to a brief blast with the flame thrower each, flipping them over to give the backside an equally brief burst.

With a thumbs up to both of them, she turns and runs back into the town as they hurry over to the suits.

“We’ll need to burn the dead,” Scarlett says, and Alexis sighs as quietly as possible inside her hazmat helmet.

“Carefully. Bam and her new friends will have to do all the work to that end, bein’ that they’re immune to the plague,” Alexis says, arms folded over her chest in her suit as she looks away. “Speakin’ a which...”

“Roy’s w-w-way ahead of you on that one, Boss,” Bob interrupts gently. She nods. “So far, only a c-c-couple of people reported in to the infirmary with symptoms, b-b-but now that w-we’ve got most of the spores burned off, Roy’s goin’ door to door, making sure no one who’s g-g-got it is hiding,” he says. She nods again.

The silence descends and oppresses. No one says anything. They barely move, the slip of hazmat material a sharp hiss that cuts awkwardly.

“Well...” Alexis starts, and then clears her throat. “I’m gonna head that way,” she says. Her swallow is convulsive and pushes bile back into her stomach. “Rev can’t bandage worth a shit, so I gotta see Roy about this eye, anyway,” she aims for a joke and falls short, but Rev still huffs.

“Fuck you,” he spits half-heartedly. Her smile is just as weak.

“Scarlett, take whoever can fit a hazmat and do a burn around the perimeter. Anythin’ looks infected, kill it,” Alexis orders, and Scarlett nods, leaving without a word. “Rev, see what you can do about our fortifications. I know you’re down an assistant, but maybe one of Bam’s new friends’ll be willin’ to help you out,” she said.

“I’ll ask,” Rev says, before leaving.

Alone aside from Bob, Alexis takes a moment to just breathe. She stares down at the hardwood table that she’d eaten at with so many members of Hopestead, and touches the top of it, broken inside at the thought of how many people will never sit at this table again. She swallows hard and blinks to compose herself, as a subtle whirring draws nearer. A cold, metal appendage settles over her hand on the table.

“You don’t gotta do this, Boss,” Bob says, and she takes a deep breath, looking at Bob through one tearful eye.

“You gain a lot of responsibilities when you put a family together, Robert,” she tells him. Then she takes another breath, blinks back the tears, and sighs. “And this is one of them.”

She puts her arm on his shoulder servo as she passes on her way out of the bar.

The clinic is crowded when she arrives, but not as disorderly as expected, and she stares at the two hallways that branch off the main lobby, both a low buzz of sobbing and chatter. She straightens her spine as she prepares to see to the final moments of people that she knows intimately, only to jolt in shock at the sight of Elizabeth, who parts a screen and then folds it back into place before hurrying down the hall.

She pulls up short at the sight of Alexis in her hazmat gear and one bandaged eye, and for a moment, the two of them are frozen in place.

Alexis is staring at Elizabeth’s bare forearms, where the skin was already a blotchy gray that stretched up under the folded sleeves of her blouse, and down to parts of her fingers. There are other darkening splotches visible at the collar of Elizabeth’s shirt, and when she looks into Elizabeth’s face, Alexis can’t help the look of betrayal she feels forming on her own.

Elizabeth sighs, looks down, and then straightens.

She’s the mayor, and her town is in crisis.

“We’ve got sixteen infected so far. I’ve quarantined them as best I can, but even if we manage to contain the spread from person to person, you’re probably going to have to burn down this building,” she reports in a strained voice, and Alexis can’t speak; can’t move; can’t do anything but stare at the woman who helped her build Hopestead from the ground up – one of the two people that Alexis had known the longest out of everyone. “I’ve had everyone who came in with symptoms shower in the decontamination chambers, but I don’t know that that does anything. I’m just glad those pipes don’t feed into the main water lines.”

After saying all of this, Elizabeth looks at Alexis, chin up, lips pressed into a thin, tight line to keep them from trembling.

“The onset is fast. Everyone here is in steadily worsening pain, but I’ve given them the minimum dose of painkillers according to some notes that Roy made. Some people aren’t handling it as well as the others; I’ve already euthanized John Peters and Gretchen Turner. We don’t have much time. According to rumor and hearsay, this takes days to kill you but it damn near drives you crazy from the pain first. I was hoping Roy would be back by now with the rest,” she says, before stopping. She puts her hands on her hips and blows out a slow, uneasy breath while looking away.

Alexis moves then, taking a single step towards Elizabeth, who immediately takes a step away, putting up her blackening hands and shaking her head.

“Don’t,” she says, and Alexis chokes out a sob.

“What do you mean, ‘don’’?” she demands.

“I mean don’t, Alexis,” Elizabeth snaps, before cutting herself off. She puts a hand to her mouth and looks down one of the hallways, but everyone else is too preoccupied with their impending demise to worry about their equally doomed mayor raising her voice. She looked back at Alexis, shoulders dropping. “The one thing I know for sure about Scorch is that it’s hideously contagious. One scratch, one microscopic spore on a split lip or a papercut… A sneeze could...”

She trails off and shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and Alexis flinches, her trembling lips pulling back from her gritted teeth. “We saw them coming and I tried to get everyone to shelter, but I couldn’t...” She stops and shakes her head again. “I’m sorry.”

Alexis looks away, but not for long. Time has never been her friend – there has always been so much to do and never enough time to do it in – but it is her enemy now, and she has to fight for every second.

“How long?”

“It’s manageable right now. Mostly, I ache, and I feel as though I’ve gotten a mild steam burn over most of my body. I probably have a few hours before it becomes difficult to think, at which point...” Elizabeth says.

She trails off with a defeated shrug and Alexis nods.

“I...”

What?

I’ll fix this? That’s not true, this is beyond her power and they both know it.

I’m sorry? What good would that do?

I’m here for you?

I’ll stay with you?

I love you?

“I’ll do it,” she says, and her voice breaks as her heart does.

Elizabeth stares at her, eyes red and starting to gather moisture.

And then the door opens behind Alexis.

She moves to the side, clearing the space for whoever it is, and is momentarily buoyed by the sight of Roy’s orbicular form. She hears Elizabeth’s sobbed, ‘oh my god,’ half a second before she registers that Roy is herding a scared, huddled, six-year-old Alice McGregor, whose hands are black past the wrist, already cracking at the fingers to reveal red, weeping sores.

She looks up at Alexis and Elizabeth with tear-stained, black-smeared cheeks and gives a little sob.

“My han’s huwt,” she whimpers.

Alexis’ hands tremble, and inside, despair turns to rage.

She watches Elizabeth scoop Alice up in her arms, watches them walk away, and looks at Roy.

“Where are her parents?” she asks.

“It appears they were killed in the attack. When I found her, she was trying to shake them awake,” Roy reports, and Alexis turns away, raising a hand reflexively to her mouth and stopping just short of bumping her helmet.

Her hand clenches into a fist and lowers to her side, shaking.

“I’m going to kill every last fucking one of them,” she tells him. Her voice is low, and carries no trace of Appalachia in it as she stares into the middle-distance, imagining her vengeance.

Roy observes her for a moment and then hums.

“I will help you,” he says, before floating down the hall after Elizabeth. “But first I must see to my patients.”

Damian’s hands shake as he finishes the note, and he clenches them into fists, staring at the jerky last few letters. He considers re-writing it, and then shakes his head, grabbing the letter and the note and shoving them into an envelope. He seals it, writes the robot’s name on the front, grabs his shotgun, and slips out the back.

Outside, everyone is busy with cleanup, too preoccupied to notice Damian as he slinks through a few backyards and then scoots across an empty stretch of street to the house he rarely sets foot in. It’s one of the smaller ones, barely more than a trailer, really, but it’s entirely his.

He runs a lighter over the doorknob after he’s touched it and does the same with the inside knob after he’s closed the door.

Inside, he looks around, hands clenching on the shotgun.

This is the only house he’s ever lived in.

His entire life before Hopestead had been lived on the run, first with his parents, and then by himself. He’d been a self-sufficient survivor before Alexis found him and tried to convince him that he could belong here.

He’d known even as he had accepted her offer of ‘giving it a trial run’ that he’d never belong in Hopestead. He’d also known that without him, it would probably fall to pieces, and they’d all die. Alexis had been nice to him, and that had been most of the problem, in his eyes. It had taken him weeks to see the hard edge under Alexis’ drawl.

He wears violence on his sleeve like a badge.

Alexis hides hers under a smile and an extended hand.

These are both means to the same end:

Protecting Hopestead.

Protecting Hope itself.

He respects her. He respects the others, too.

He’s learned things from Rev, even though the man never knew he was a teacher.

He’s appreciative of Scarlett’s dispassionate disregard for the notions of morality, because in the wasteland, there’s no time for second-guessing, and no time for regrets.

He loves Bam like a sister.

He wishes he’d died in the attack. That would have been preferable.

But it isn’t how it is, and so now he’s going to see to it that he doesn’t become an infection vector for the town he’s sworn to protect.

He swallows the lump in his throat and goes to his bedroom.

He slaps a biohazard sticker on the door before closing it.

He draws the blinds and closes the curtains and then gets to work.

It’s easy to set up the shotgun, and he tests his trigger assist before loading it.

He doesn’t say anything throughout this process.

What would be the point?

Finally, he stands in front of his loaded, mounted shotgun.

He wipes his face. They aren’t going to find tears on his body.

His hands still shake as they pull the string around the trigger. His eyes squeeze themselves shut, and a choked off whimper of fear is heard by no one under a sudden, final blast of noise.

The obliteration of his chest cavity is swift and violent.

He feels nothing.

Alexis hovers at the entrance of the small, partitioned space as Elizabeth comforts Alice, who sniffles occasionally, bandaged hands curled into her chest. Despite Roy’s protests, once Alice is showered off and in an oversized scrub shirt, Alexis removes her helmet. She wants to keep Alice as calm as possible, and she knows the helmet is scary. She also knows that she is going to see a child die in front of her, and that there is nothing she can do about that except to limit the distress Alice feels in the meantime.

“Mayor,” Roy starts, and Elizabeth gives a groan.

“I think that’s about done, don’t you, Roy?” she says. Roy hesitates.

“Miss Owens,” he says again. “If you could hold her arm, I can administer the shot.”

Alice whines in protest, and Alexis can’t stand it any longer.

“Hey, now,” she says, stepping into the room and ignoring the way Elizabeth freezes. She sits on the bed and puts a gloved hand on Alice’s head, giving her as big a smile as she can manage. “What’s with the frowny face?”

“Don’ wike sho’s,” Alice whines. Alexis gives a sympathetic whine in return before sighing.

“Don’ I know it. Painful. Scary,” she says with a nod. “But you know what? Doc’s gonna give you somethin’ to take the pain away from your hands,” she says, still nodding slightly. “It’s gonna make you a little sleepy,” she stops to take a breath before smiling again, briefly. “And then it won’ hurt no more. Doesn’ that sound better?” she asks.

Alice sniffles, but nods, and Alexis nods too.

“Good,” she says, running her hand over Alice’s head and hiding her alarm at the way several locks of hair pulled away in her hand. “And if you’re a good girl, I’ll get Roy to bust out his lollipop supply, and you can have as many as you want,” she tells the child, whose eyes light up a little at the mention of Roy’s secret trove of (sugar free) treats.

“Reawwy?” she asks, and Alexis nods.

“Really. Hold out your arm, sweetie, it’ll only sting for a second, I promise,” she says, gently taking the child’s hand. Elizabeth supports the little girl’s elbow, and the two of them exchange looks of quiet devastation as Roy quickly and efficiently delivers death to his patient.

Once the shot is administered, his metal appendage finds Alexis’ shoulder and pulls her away with undeniable strength.

“I’ll be back with lollipops, I just need to speak with Alexis for a moment,” he says, before shutting the curtain behind them and pushing Alexis down the hall. On the way, he snags her helmet.

“That was reckless, and as a medical professional, I do not approve,” he says, using one appendage to efficiently brush away any of Alice’s hair that stuck to Alexis’ glove and then sterilize the glove with a spray, before pushing the helmet into her chest. It forces her back a step, and her hands come up automatically to take it from him. “You are not infected. Congratulations. Put the helmet on and do not remove it until I – your medical authority – authorize it,” he says, before floating back down the hall, already producing several lollipops.

It doesn’t take long for Alice to succumb, and Alexis closes her eye as Roy carries her little body, wrapped in a sheet, away to the pyre being tended to outside.

There’s quiet for several minutes before Elizabeth’s breath hitches, and Alexis looks at her.

Her brow furrows for a few extended moments, and her blackened fingers curl as she fights the urge to scratch an unending itch. After a moment, she settles, but does not relax.

“I’m sorry,” Alexis says, and Elizabeth blinks at her lack of an accent. Alexis stands from where she’d been hovering and moves to the foot of the bed, setting her hands on the footrest to stop herself from reaching out. “I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth doesn’t react for a moment, and then just tilts her head.

“For what?”

“Bringing you here,” Alexis says, ducking her head and giving it a shake. “Hopestead was a mis—”

“Shut up,” Elizabeth snaps, and Alexis’ head jerks up. “Just shut the fuck up. Whatever you were thinking of saying, whatever pity party you were about to throw for yourself, you can just can it,” she adds, before hissing in a breath and looking at the curtain partition separating her from the others. She lowers her voice, and stares hard at Alexis. “Hopestead is the best thing that has ever happened to any of us,” she insists. “You took 100 lonely, wandering souls and turned us into a community – a family – and you don’t get to regret this now just because some asshole is so scared of our happiness that he tried to take it away from us. Tried, Alexis. Tried and failed.”

“Failed?” Alexis asks, looking around and gesturing helplessly with one hand.

“Yes,” Elizabeth snaps. “As long as Hopestead endures, they will have failed.”

“Liz,” Alexis starts, shaking her head. Her one visible eye closes and when it opens again, it is filled with tears. Elizabeth sighs at the sight of them.

“I know.” She folds her arms and shrugs. “People are dying today, and it’s not fair. But we would all have been dead a long time ago if we hadn’t come together and built this,” she says. She leans forward to impress upon Alexis the importance of her words. “We built this. And we built it to last. And you are going to see that it does, because you started it, so you’re going to finish it,” she says.

Alexis shakes her head but doesn’t argue, and they lapse into silence.

“I want...” Alexis starts after a while, clearing her throat when the tears choke her. “I want to hold you,” she says.

“You can’t.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to help Roy see to the others,” Elizabeth says after a while. “And then you’re going to tell me why you suddenly don’t have an accent,” she adds.

She leaves, and Alexis sits down on the bed.

It doesn’t take very long at all.

Most of the citizens of Hopestead, once they are given the facts, take a quick and relatively painless death over slow, torturous transformation into something they can barely understand. Some want to take their chances, and Elizabeth orders Roy to render them unconscious before administering the shot herself.

Before very much time has passed at all, Alexis looks up to find Elizabeth standing at the entrance of the partitioned space, emotionally drained, physically exhausted from fighting through the pain. Alexis moves to a bedside chair so she can lay down, and then looks up at Roy as he floats through the curtain, holding a needle.

“Roy,” Alexis says, and he pauses. “I’ll do this one,” she says. He looks between her and Elizabeth and lays the needle down on the sterile instrument tray.

“I need to make another sweep of the town, to ensure there are no more infected,” he says, turning to float away before stopping and turning back to Alexis. “Do not remove your helmet,” he orders, and she nods.

“Yes, Roy,” she says. He stares at her for a moment, and then leaves.

Alexis stares at the needle, and Elizabeth stares at the ceiling.

“Are you really from Huntsville?”

“Vegas.”

“Your parents?”

“Never knew Dad. Mom was a showgirl at the Ultra-Luxe. Pretty successful, but miserable all the time. OD’d on pills when I was twelve. They decided I needed to be trained to take her place. I didn’t want that, so I ran.”

“That...sucks.”

“It did, at that.”

“The stories?”

“True aside from locations,” Alexis says, finally looking away from the needle to turn her eye to the ceiling.

“I knew you had secrets,” Elizabeth says, and then doesn’t say anything else, occasionally wincing or moving restlessly in a futile effort to ease her own discomfort.

“I’m sorry I lied, but I didn’t want that life following me around. I did...Liz, I did horrible things to survive,” Alexis says, but cuts herself off at Elizabeth’s laugh.

“What, you think I’m some kind of saint?” she asks, and then frowns.

“You never left anyone to die,” Alexis says. Elizabeth closes her eyes.

“Al, I just killed...fourteen of my closest friends and neighbors, including my God-Daughter,” she says, turning her head to meet Alexis’ good eye. “Your secrets don’t define you. I know who you are.”

“Fuckin hell, Liz.” Alexis hangs her head and shakes it.

“It’s...well. It’s not okay. But it needs to be done,” Elizabeth said.

Alexis nods, rocks, nods again, but says nothing, reaching over with shaking hands to grab the needle.

She is hyperventilating as she slips the needle into Elizabeth’s vein and depresses the plunger.

The moment it’s done, she throws the needle away, pulling the chair closer and desperately clinging to Elizabeth’s hand as tears stream down her cheeks. Elizabeth’s other hand cups the glass around her face and she holds it there.

“My name’s Zoe,” she says between sobs.

Elizabeth, eyelids drooping slowly, smiles.

“That’s who you used to be. The you that ran. It’s not who you are now,” she says.

“Yeah? Who’s that?” Alexis asks. Elizabeth closes her eyes.

“You brought us all together. You don’t run...”

She trails off and does not speak again. Alexis whimpers as the hand she’s clutching relaxes and the hand cupping her helmet goes limp. She presses that hand to the glass with her own and breaks in the silence of the clinic, sobbing and burying her face in Elizabeth’s chest.

It’s Roy who finds Damian.

Picking up where he left off and finishing his sweep of the neighborhood, he realizes that on his internal registry of citizens of Hopestead that he has been steadily checking off in his first sweep, he has not encountered Damian at any point. He floats to the Supply Depot, where Damian spends most of his time, and scans the area. The exterior will need to be treated with anti-fungal agents to prevent the spores taking root, but he doesn’t have much on him at the moment, and so he treats the door handle only before entering.

Inside is mostly untouched by Scorch, although Roy’s sensors pick up a low concentration making a trail to the main desk, which has small traces of fungus in a few places.

Also on the desk is an envelope, bearing spore laden fingerprints belonging to Damian.

On the front, in small, neat, disciplined script, is written, ‘Roy’.

He opens the envelope, already floating away from the desk as he inspects the contents.

He has three hands and two eyes. He can multitask.

Inside is a short note, and a larger packet of three folded-together pieces of paper.

The note reads:

Roy. You’re the only one who can and will properly

disinfect these papers. Make sure you do that

before you give the letter to Alexis. Then come to

my house. Alone. There’s going to be a lot of blood.

The note is not signed, but as Roy reads it, he can see the slip of ink as Damian’s hand grew unsteady. Perhaps it was from the pain growing in his small body, but it’s just as likely that despite his fierce demeanor, he was still a ten-year-old boy who has realized he will never reach eleven.

Roy changes direction from the bar (Damian’s second most likely location) as he disinfects each page of the letter carefully, front and back, before tucking them into his storage cavity. Despite Damian’s wishes, Alexis is currently occupied with the grief of little Alice McGregor’s death and the current passing of her friend and (apparently) lover. He will give the letter to her later. Damian would understand.

He finds Damian slumped against the wall of his bedroom where the shotgun blast had thrown him. There is blood and gore everywhere, and Roy is careful not to touch very much of that as he gathers a few supplies.

He packs the chest cavity with towels to soak up the majority of what remains of Damian’s lifeblood before carefully wrapping his body in a thick blanket. He does this quietly and efficiently and then takes an uncharacteristic moment of silence to consider the small man in a child’s body. He knows that Damian is dead and cannot hear him, but he considers his experiences with the boy and composes a sentiment that he thinks Damian would have liked to hear before his untimely end.

“This was undoubtedly a difficult execution of a simple and practical solution. Doing this has certainly saved many more lives. I commend your bravery and regret it’s necessity.”

Silence meets his words, as he expected, and he simply hovers there for a moment before gathering the small, shrouded body, and floating away out of the house.

Bam and Scarlett are the ones manning the pyre when the Clinic doors open and Alexis carries out the body of Elizabeth Owens, mayor of Hopestead. Bam makes a noise like a wounded rhino and takes a few steps forward, but can’t quite bring herself to do anything more than impotently reach for someone who’d been her friend nearly as long as Alexis had.

Alexis looks up at her with one bandaged and one red, cried out eye, and then walks past her to the pyre.

When she steps up to it is when Bam snaps out of her stupor, stopping her from getting too close to the fire and gently lifting Elizabeth out of her arms.

Bam sets her near the top, ignoring the way the fire licks at her arms as she makes sure that her friend has the best spot on the funeral pyre.

The other Supermutants have taken the responsibility of making sure the fire doesn’t spread to nearby structures, spraying water from a hose on the outskirts of the fire.

Once Bam has settled Elizabeth, and Scarlett has bullied her with the fire extinguisher, Bam goes to Alexis, stooping down to give her the gentlest hug that she can manage while her arms still have fire retardant foam on them.

Alexis puts her arms around Bam and stares over her shoulder at Elizabeth’s corpse as it catches fire.

There’s nothing but the heat and the sound and the smell for several long minutes before the sound of Roy’s hover motor draws their attention.

There’s no reaction to the sight of Roy carrying a corpse shrouded in blankets, just a sense of weariness that settles over everyone. Roy, unable to set the body directly on the pyre, sets it at Bam’s feet, and the Supermutant frowns, reaching down to pull back one corner of the blanket.

“Bam, I don’t think that’s—” is as far as Roy is able to get before Bam roars in protest at the sight of Damian’s blank, sightless eyes. The Supermutant picks up the little body and holds it close to her, wailing in protest as fat tears roll down her cheeks.

Alexis turns her head, closes her eye and sighs, but has no more tears to give.

Scarlett stares at Damian, frowning.

Roy waits, and lets his friend grieve loudly for several minutes before setting an appendage on her shoulder.

“I am sorry, Bam.”

“He-he…He was muh…my friend,” Bam sobs, lower lip trembling as she looked up at Roy.

“I know. But he did a brave thing. And now it’s time for you to do a brave thing,” he says. She whines, ducking her forehead into Damian’s little concave chest before standing and reluctantly turning to the fire.

They all huddle around Bam after, as she cries, and watches Damian’s blankets melt around him.

It’s nighttime before Alexis has judged the fire to have burned down enough that they can leave it with Bam’s new friends.

“I don’t know about y’all,” she rasps, not bothering to clear her throat. “But I could use a drink.”

“Alcohol will only dehydrate you further. May I suggest waters all around?” Roy says as Bam lurches to her feet and shuffles in the direction of Bob’s bar. “May I also suggest that before there are drinks, there are decontamination showers?” he suggests in a slightly firmer tone.

Thirty minutes later, they sit, hair wet, hazmat suits cleaned, around a table in Bob’s bar, drinking water in sullen silence. Roy has fitted Alexis with an eye patch.

“Hard Day,” Scarlett says, and though her eyes are dry, she frowns.

“And it started off so well,” Alexis quipped without much feeling. “Bam won an eating contest, got that...mascot suit…” She trails off and then looks at Bam. “Hey,” she says, and Bam slowly lifts her head. “Where’s your mascot suit?”

“Got dirty; washed it,” Bam mumbles, and then goes back to staring at the floor, occasionally sniffling and hiccoughing. Alexis nods and silence descends again.

After they’d drunk a few glasses of water each, Roy emulates the noise of clearing his throat.

“Alexis, I know that it’s possibly not the most opportune moment, but I sense that you are suffering from a level of emotional exhaustion that makes it less likely you’ll be able to cry about this,” Roy says.

Alexis snorts, closing her eye as she shakes her head.

“What is it, Roy?”

“Damian left a letter,” Roy tells her.

Everyone lifts their head, turning to look first at Roy, and then at Alexis, who stares at the robot, drinks the rest of her glass in one go, and then gestures for him to hand over the letter.

It’s only a few pages, but that’s far more than Damian has ever had to say unless he was ripping someone a new asshole for improper handling of a weapon or misplaced shipment of supplies.

Alexis,

Words are cheap, which is probably why they’re your weapon of choice.

Alexis huffs despite herself, smirking briefly at the kid’s cheek.

I don’t have much to say, but I know that you need words in order to move on. Know that I do this solely for that purpose, because the thought of you moping around after I’m dead is fucking irritating.

I always knew that I would die here.

The world has been at war with itself since before it was set on fire, and people who think like you act – who think that peace can be achieved with a smile and an open hand – are always going to be set upon first. They’re going to be set upon by people who are absolutely certain they are wrong and despise seeing them make any progress. They’re going to be set upon by people who crave power over others and see the peace they’re building as a threat. They’re going to be set upon by people who see kindness as a weakness.

And kindness is a weakness, Alexis. Most people who are kind are not going to want to hear that, but it’s true. Kindness by itself will result in people taking advantage of those who share it too freely.

But you know that already, because you’re not just kind, Alexis, you’re smart.

Smart enough to know that Hopestead would need someone like Bam to scare away small threats.

Someone like Rev to build defenses against bigger threats.

Someone like Scarlett to take care of insidious threats.

Someone like Bob to warn you about threats you can’t see or don’t already know about.

Someone like me and my big ass arsenal, to take care of the threats too big for Bam and Scarlett.

And Someone like Roy to put you all back together afterwards.

You’re not kind for Kindness’ sake. You have calculated your kindness into a weapon.

This is why they’re not going to win.

This is why it’s okay for me to go.

You are going to take your kindness and twist it like a knife into that old bastard’s heart.

Maybe twist a literal knife in there too, if you can manage.

I have a present for you. A precaution.

Bam helped me move my shit to the bunker a few weeks ago. We used those tunnels, the location of which I weaseled out of Bam when she let slip that they existed.

The same tunnels you’re going to use to get everyone out of town and down to the bunker, so that the next time they send their attack dogs, there’ll be nothing for them to find. It’s the smart thing to do to keep our community safe. I don’t have to tell you that.

Do not mourn for me. That is a waste of time you no longer have.

Keep bringing in new people.

Keep being kind.

Keep making people care enough that they’d die for you.

Every person you turn to your cause is a poison to their ideology.

Make him choke on it.

Damian.

Alexis finishes the letter and sighs, passing it around to Scarlett and the others. Bam takes it last, but just stares at Damian’s handwriting for a while before folding the paper as carefully as possible and pressing it against her chest over her heart. Her big brows furrow and she closes her eyes and rocks back and forth slightly in her chair.

“He’s right,” Scarlett says, and Alexis looks at her. Scarlett shrugs. “Tactically speaking, the bunker is the best bet. In fact, if that’s what we’re doing, I’m going to want to get a head start on moving my laboratory equipment. Tunnels?” she asks abruptly, and Alexis sighs again, rolling her eye.

“When I found this place, I wanted to make sure there’d be a safe egress in case of...”

She trails off, gritting her teeth for a moment and tapping the table top.

“We’ll start moving folks out tomorrow. Quietly. If someone’s watching, I don’t wan—”

She breaks off as the door opens and Rev, still wearing his hazmat suit, rushes in. He stops at the sight of them sitting there, but Scarlett and Alexis quickly don their helmets before looking up at him. Roy hovers over to Bam to take the letter and keep it safe in the storage compartment.

“I hate to break up the funeral,” Rev says, and Alexis doesn’t comment on his assumption. It’s a safe one, given the givens. “But we have a problem,” he tells them. Scarlett rolls her eyes as Alexis just stares for a moment before getting to her feet.

There’s never going to be enough time to do what needs doing.

She sets her grief aside.

She has work to do.

#RPG Fiction #Fallout RPG #Original RPG Characters #Angst #Hurt/Very Little Comfort

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