Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Late Summer, 2288

Piper Wright hated the smell of brahmin. No matter how much you washed them before heading out with them, they reeked of shit. She could never figure out how the merchant caravans were able to tolerate it. The allure of caps must have helped, but it had stopped being enough of an incentive for independent caravan companies since the beginning of the year. Secretly, Piper was relieved that it was not just her perceptions and heartbreak that caused her to feel as if the world had slowed to a crawl. She joined these escort missions to force her mind to accept that everything since December last year was real. 

This particular mission was to escort a caravan of scrap and food back to Concord and Sanctuary Hills. General Garvey, though Preston would express frustration if she called him that to his face, was optimistic about the harvests in the agricultural settlements they still controlled. The weather had been good and the treasure trove of fertilizer they had found after a successful raid into Oberland Station augured well. Despite this, Concord and Sanctuary Hills had been facing some food problems with the refugees coming over the Charles in droves. Cait had been concerned about the nature of some of these refugees and if some were Brotherhood spies. That had been a long war council meeting, but ultimately it was decided that they could not just refuse the refugees, especially if they were willing to enlist or work. 

Blue couldn’t be that cruel! She had wanted to say that night, but the words died in her throat. Not just because her Blue was gone, long gone. But because he was absolutely that vicious. Few of them had been happy when Bl- Nate had said he had joined the Brotherhood or that they would be aiding them in their war against the Institute. Piper hated them as much as any proud Commonwealther, but the Brotherhood had left her with a bitter taste in her mouth each time she had dealt with them. She supposed that was why Nate had stopped taking her along whenever he would meet with them. He had told her in that soothing voice of his that he knew she didn’t like the Brotherhood, so she was sparing them the ear ache she would give them when she talked to them. Despite herself, she had found it a funny enough quip to believe he was genuine.

The mask of Blue, the grieving father and soldier trapped out of time who talked of making the wasteland better, fell quickly in December. She and Nick had been investigating possible allies against the Institute, hoping that a grand alliance would prevent the Brotherhood from cementing their grasp on the Commonwealth. Then, in the span of a few hours, they had learned the unbearable, blinding truth. Nate Jackson had executed Paladin Danse on the grounds of him being a synth. Doctor Virgil had been murdered in his workshop. And most galling of all, when he returned to Diamond City it was with the blood of the Railroad fresh on his power armor. Screams and curses filled the conversation on their side while Paladin Nate looked at them with a terrifying apathy. Nick had demanded of him to know why Danse had to die, Nate had shrugged and called it a necessity. What synth could be trusted, after all? 

Nick had been aghast when the words left Nate’s lips. What of himself? The man out of time simply shrugged and said that Nick was one of the good ones and was “not a threat to humanity.” The screaming began anew. Piper had screamed herself raw, loosening all sorts of invectives fueled by betrayal and pain. She had trusted him and came to love him. Sure, some of his actions had been a touch extreme at times, but there was an aching soul beneath his rough and dispassionate exterior. He tried to convince her to come along with him, to give the Brotherhood a chance. Piper smacked him upside the head so hard, he went reeling backwards and a bruise was left on his cheek. That was when the mask slipped fully and she saw the callous emptiness in his eyes. Nick Valentine had more humanity in his eyes than Nate did in that moment.

The familiar sight of Concord appeared in the distance. Super mutants, remaining synths, and robots bustled around not too far in front of them building walls and homes. Already she felt the allure of kicking off her boots and jacket and drinking an ice cold bottle of Nuka Cola call out to her. After some much needed rest, she’d sit down in front of her terminal in her office and write up a report and then perhaps a story for Publick Occurrences. Bl- Nate had tried to stamp out her newspaper during the Battle of Diamond City. The presses there may have been destroyed, but Sturges had been able to set up fresh ones up here in Concord. In exchange she simply had to go out on a date with him. In spite of her feelings of betrayal and bitterness, she agreed and had great fun as Sturges didn’t try and press anything other than wanting her to enjoy herself. 

As they got closer to the gates, she gave a half smile and waved at some of the laborers. She got a few nods or waves back. A grunt from the brahmin indicated it was nearing exhaustion so the caravan guards moved it off the road to start unloading. She glanced down the road as she stretched out her arms and back. Concord was bustling and moving in ways not seen since the Great War, if she had to guess. While she herself may not have really contributed to the rebuilding, she felt proud of the efforts of the Minutemen and their Allies in the short time since they were forced to flee here. Preston was loathe to abandon the Castle again, but he had seen reason in the end and if Piper had to guess, he too was quite pleased with how it turned out.

Piper was knocked out of her thoughts by a pair of arms wrapping around her. 

“You’re back!”

“Jeez Nat, you nearly scared me!” she laughed as she ruffled her sister’s hair. 

“Preston needs to speak to you, but Nick said that you’d be less likely to give him an earful if I told you in advance.” Piper had to resist the desire to pout.

“Fine,” she grumbled. “But there better be Nuka Cola on ice when I get in there.” 

“Nick asked one of the Mr. Handies to fetch everyone fresh cigarettes and to start mixing drinks. I think it was something with whiskey, but I’m not sure.” 

Piper sighed as she felt the exhaustion seep into her bones. At least those robots knew how to mix a drink, as the news could not be good.

~~~~~

The fresh jagged scar over the left side of Nate’s face still ached, even months after Strong nearly crushed his skull in whilst he was wearing power armor. The scar wasn’t the only permanent damage he suffered when that brute nearly killed him when he led the Brotherhood into that den of corruption and abomination, Goodneighbor. That fucking rough-skin Hancock had rigged a trap as soon as he entered the town hall with a squad of knights and apprentices. There were nights he could still hear the crackle of EMPs as they fried and sparked their armor and allowed for green-skins to move in and attack them. Both Strong and Hancock would be purified, but at the cost of a dozen knights, eight paladins, countless squires, and permanent damage to Nate’s eyes. MacCready had taken down a vertibird with a well placed mini-nuke and slew a number of scribes in a second one before finally getting a sniper round lodged in his neck.

It was fortunate that the Scribes were able to find a fix- personalized sunglasses to help limit the brightness. Now he went everywhere with them and only rarely took them off, otherwise his eyes would ache in the light. It did, however, serve as a reminder of the costs of letting sentiment get in the way of duty. On a personal level he did once feel some sort of affection for both Hancock and Strong, especially the latter. But he chose duty to humanity above those ties and paid the price for his lack of commitment. In a meeting with the Elders, he had managed to convince Elder Maxson and the rest of the Council to adopt the hardline measures proposed by many of the veterans of the war: give no chance to the enemies of humanity a chance to destroy them. It was them or us, Nate had argued. 

As Sentinel, Nate was one of the most senior members of the Brotherhood in the Commonwealth. Because of this, his fervor to the cause, and his pre-war experience with managing occupations, Maxson gave him de facto command over the wastes of what used to be Boston. By the time of Maxson’s departure for the Capital Wastes due to a minor crisis brewing in what was once Maryland, Nate was a respected and feared leader among the Brotherhood’s faithful. 

It was September now and despite the war with the Minutemen, it was hard for Sentinel Jackson to not be pleased with how everything was going in his part of the wastes. Everyday the Synth population was culled, feral ghouls were wiped out en masse, the roads were safer now that raiders and non-humans alike were facing patrolling Knights and Paladins. Many fled across the Charles and into Minutemen territory, but he was unconcerned. 

Once Nate had been offended and pained by their lack of vision and refusal to accept the plain truth of the Brotherhood’s system being the only one that could master the wastes. Now after months of thinking on the matter, it was so very clear to him. The Minutemen and their allies were a threat he took seriously, but they could not win long term. There was no cohesion within their ranks, they were former raiders, simple wastelanders, green-skins, rough-skins, and rogue robots with delusions of personhood. Their leadership was what, an out of depth lackey who tried to pawn off leadership and responsibility to the first person who showed any strength of will? An addict raider with a temper and fear of her own demons? The recordings of a man with legs and a silly hat? A woman blind to the way of the world and deluded by fantasy? None of them would or even could match the strength of his own will. That was why they had been drawn to him, they called out for a person of action, a person of rare abilities and mindset. 

But without him to pull them kicking and screaming into the best possible versions of themselves, removed of weakness and frivolity, they would be able to hold out for a while longer. But by this time next year, their heads would either join Hancock’s and Strong’s in his collection or they would join former “Mayor” McDonough’s and MacCready’s on a spike outside of Diamond City. 

He watched the city below from his office. Below him civilians bustled about their lives under the watchful gaze of Brotherhood overseers and eyebots. The streets were clean, the shanties were being demolished and rebuilt in a more appropriate style. The city was so much better now than it had been when he arrived nearly a year ago. If the denizens of the streets below were to glance up at the Sentinel’s Office, they would see Nate in his customized greatcoat and personalized high collared uniform. When he had realized that due to his rank he had special dispensation to create a uniform how he pleased, he had his new outfit based on what he remembered the generals he served under in the Sino-American War would wear. And it was fitting, was it not? He always wore this uniform and the General’s Overcoat with Brotherhood insignia on it as he was a conquering general in his own right. 

Under his sunglasses, he watches various pedestrians with a hawkish gaze. Things were not perfect yet of course, but he feels great satisfaction and pride in the Brotherhood’s efforts. There was a clear hierarchy and structure to society that was necessary for any civilization to function. It was what made America during the war stronger than the classless nightmare of communist China, after all. There was order and clear structures of authority. Everyone knew their place and worked towards the betterment of civilization and humanity. 

Nate turns away from his domains and sits back down at his desk, drinking a whiskey and cola whilst rereading the recent recon reports. The conflict against the Minutemen reminds him of his time serving in Canada. Granted he wasn’t running the show back then, he just followed orders and shouted them to lower ranked grunts in between neutralizing rebels and terrorists. It was less glamorous than his time in Anchorage, but it was even more vital. 

He was 20 and a proud member of the Infantry stationed in the French Social Republic, protecting American corpos in extracting any resources out of the dying continent when President Atticus walked out of trade talks with China. Good, he had thought at the time. That stupid hick was finally standing up to the commies. In spite of his loathing for the man, Nate had done his duty and not killed any Soviet operatives in the region. The Soviets and America had a friendship treaty in all but name by that point. He had just turned 21 when Atticus referred to Canada in a speech as “Little America”. But it wasn’t until the great President Richardson that America finally united North America under the banner of freedom and liberty.

Pre-war Nate had always loathed politics. He’d frequently get into fights with his father over it. Nathaniel Jackson Senior was a proud union member  and prouder supporter of Jefferson Atticus’ New Horizons Movement. Nate had rarely got into fights about it until that hot August day in ‘66 when a brave patriot killed that communist loving traitor. It had felt good to shout back at his father and belittle his beliefs. It had ended with his father going for a low blow. Nate stormed out and signed up to join the Army that evening. Every time he and Nora would go back to visit, the two would sit silently and stew as his family expressed such ungrateful politics.

He had been 31 and Nora 30 when they had last seen his family. They invited his family to their home for Thanksgiving that year since his siblings struggled for food and his father had been in and out of prison for his labor activism. It had started off well, they were grateful for Nate and Nora’s generosity and finally seemed understanding that their socialist sympathizing views and un-American activities was the reason they were in such dire straits. 

The Old Man has been quiet most of the dinner, silently eating or occasionally fussing over one of his other children. Finally at the urging of Nate’s eldest sister, a truce was attempted.

“You two have done well for yourselves,” the Old Man had finally said after several drinks of whiskey. 

Nate had pulled a cigarette out of a packet, lit it with a lighter, and casually flicked both back on the table. He had leaned back in his chair and draped his arm around Nora.

“We’ve gotten here through hard, honest work. Something the rest of you should try,” the words had slipped out before he had analyzed them. He had cursed himself internally for the display of emotions. His face had remained impassive and as detached as it always was, something which had only made his father angrier.

“You… you…” his father had shook with rage. “You think that a lack of hard work is what is starving us?” It had been an accusatory whisper. “You think that a lack of discipline is causing the country to go to shit?”

“The world could use a lot more discipline.” The fighting had escalated from there and ended with his family leaving their home. Not that it bothered Nate and Nora. Good riddance. It was the last he had seen of his siblings or nieces and nephews. An angry phone call with his father a few days later when Nate had refused to support his younger brother upon his arrest for un-American activities had resulted in Nora leaving an anonymous tip that Nathaniel Jackson Senior was a known pro-Atticus rabble rouser and dissident. Nate’s father vanished in December. 

Nate took a long drag of his cigarette as he scanned over the full damages of recent Minutemen raids. Fertilizer, food, and base components. Spies would report back soon with a better picture of just what it was they had snagged. Some of the Knights were getting antsy about restoring order to a new part of the Commonwealth. It was just a matter of picking the right target. He reached out for his glass and found it emptier than he liked.

“Codsworth?” he called out.

“Sir?” his long suffering robot butler said, floating in from the next room. 

“I could use another whiskey and Cola,” glass in hand, he held it out for Codsworth to grab without looking up. Low cost. High reward. The words bounced around his head. The obvious points to attack were heavily defended and the Brotherhood was focusing on rebuilding and training. The Minutemen and their Allies may have been dealt a major blow when they failed to recapture CIT, but it was paid for in the blood of several dozen knights. Already Proctor Teagan and Knight Clarke were talking of needing to expand recruiting available engineers and scribes to repair the power armor that was damaged in the battle.

His glass was removed from his hand as Codsworth hummed to himself. Nate continued to smoke and savored the taste as ideas began to form in the back of his mind. He liked this one. It may not be a devastating tactical blow, but it would certainly be personally satisfying. 

“Codsworth?” he said suddenly.

“Just a brief moment sir, and your whiskey and Cola will be chilled to perfection!”

“Before you bring it, could you turn on the radio for me? I want to hear what WRVR has to say.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mean to question your good taste, sir, but they are hardly worth listening to!”

Nate chuckled lightly. “You can’t blame me for being curious who they are accusing me of being again. Do you think it’ll be MacBeth or Iago?”

“I believe Madam Curie detected that they performed MacBeth yesterday, so it follows that they may switch to Iago or perhaps the works of Kit Marlowe,” Codsworth intoned as he floated back over with Nate’s drink, stopping briefly at the radio and tuning it to WRVR. Listening to that station was forbidden across the Commonwealth, or at least the parts that the Brotherhood controlled. 

The insufferable voice of Rex Goodman doing that blasted impression of him came on the air. 

“ Conscience, my dear Brotherhood, is but a word that cowards use. ‘Twas devised at first to keep the strong in awe… ”

Richard III. He was being directly compared to Richard the fucking Third. As he angrily grabbed his drink and took several gulps of it, his mind flashed to when he and Nora were dating and he was on leave. They had gone to a local production of Shakespeare’s Richard III . It had become their play. 

“SQUIRE!” he shouted. Several seconds later a lanky 17 or 18 year old redhead girl came stumbling in, panting heavily.

“Yes Lord Sentinel?” she gasped for air several times. 

“Squire Gamble,” he intoned, voice full of authority. “Bring me Proctor Teagan and his best radio scribe, I wish to speak to them.”

“Right away, Lord Sentinel!” she said as she sprinted out once more. Very satisfying indeed, he thinks to himself as he glances at the wedding rings on his desk. 

~~~~~

Alliance Meetings, as Preston liked to call them, were dull affairs most of the time. Piper just used it as an excuse to talk to the few people invited to participate she actually liked and have some drinks with them. This one was hardly different. Piper was on her second martini of the night and had no real desire to stop if the leader of the merchants’ association and Colonel LeBlanc of the Minutemen were going to continue bringing their lover’s quarrel into the meetings. As she propped herself up on the couch at the edge of the room, Nick sat next to her in his wheelchair, smoking all the while.

“What did that mad scientist say? You met with him today, right?” She asked him in between sips.

“I did. He seems optimistic about the jury-rigging something together, though he says it will be resource intensive,” Nick says casually.

“I think people will be willing to pitch in whatever’s needed to get back our favorite law man,” she smiles as she speaks. “Besides, I think everyone will be happy to get you out and about to solve disputes instead of relying on Preston’s dart throwing style of conflict resolution.”

Nick chuckled. “It would be nice to get out there again.” There was a beat of silence. “And to have legs of course, but I can’t shake knowing that those resources could be better used elsewhere.”

Piper downed the last of her martini and motioned to a waiter for another one.

“How you can sit there and say that, I will never understand. You're widely respected and admired. Compare that to the rest of us. Preston is respected and well liked by the Minutemen but is seen as too cautious and indecisive by the super mutants. No one trusts those two Institute survivors. The ghouls are too easily fractured. Cait scares the bejesus out of everyone. Jack Cabot creeps me the fuck out and I've pissed off more people than I can count. You're a rock of stability and are vital to keeping the peace,” Piper said. 

Nick was silent for a moment before sardonically replying “Well when you put it like that, you make it sound so simple. I've always been more of an investigator rather than a peacekeeper.”

Piper shrugged. “You help people is what you do.”

“Sounds like you're trying to convince me to run for office, Miss Wright.”

Piper sat up and moved closer to Nick’s wheelchair.

“What I am about to tell you remains a secret between us.”

That caught the synth detective’s undivided attention. “Go on,” he said.

“Ever wondered why we are holding so many of these meetings with allied representatives, even if nothing gets done?” She asked in a hushed tone. Nick nodded.

“It's not just to try and plan attacks. Preston wants to give creating a Commonwealth Provisional Government another shot.”

The synth detective gave a low whistle.

“Bold. Didn’t take Preston to be the type to go for elected office,” he muttered.

“He's not,” Piper replied. “The details aren’t worked out yet as he wants all the community leaders involved in setting up the system. But he told me and Cait that he intends on remaining as General of the Minutemen and creating for civilian government. Could be one elected leader, could be a council of some kind. I'm not sure when Preston will announce it, but it'll be soon.”

“So are you trying to get me to run?”

Piper didn’t have an answer for that. She sipped on her fresh martini before finally answering.

“All I know is that I would rather you be involved somehow instead of someone like Cabot or one of those ex-raiders.”

They sat in silence for a while longer, listening to the meeting they were supposed to be paying attention to. It droned on for a while with minor bickering punctuating the end of each item of discussion. Eventually an argument spiraled into a shouting match. Doctor Stevenson, formerly of the Institute, made a snide comment about the effectiveness of inviting a super mutant to a “meeting of intellectuals”. The super mutant representative was a surprisingly erudite fellow named Bloodmasher and he had taken offense to that. A physical altercation was only avoided with Minutemen cowing them into submission and Preston losing his patience.

“Now is not the time for picking fights and opening old wounds! An existential threat faces us all and what have we been doing at these informal councils? Fighting one another. You know who benefits from that? You know who benefits from us rushing to our feet and threatening to cut each other's heads off?”

The room was dead silent. Piper hadn’t seen Preston this angry since Nate conquered the Castle in the Brotherhood’s name.

“The Brotherhood of Steel,” Cait finally muttered when it became clear an answer was demanded.

“Exactly. Every time we fight, every time we bicker, every time we show off our lack of coordination, the Brotherhood benefits. We lost at CIT because instead of having a unified command structure, we had some of us going rogue and veering from the chain of command. We had units refusing to work together last minute. If this keeps up, we will lose. Every. Single. Time.” His fist hit the table after each word to emphasize his point.

“This alliance of ours does not work and perhaps never will.” Piper realized that in the midst of this she had started holding her breath. The room was completely still, even the robots were staying in place and listening intently. 

“To ensure the continued safety of the free peoples of the Commonwealth and to better ensure that the Brotherhood is expelled from our homes, I have a proposal for this body. 56 years ago the peoples of the Commonwealth tried to come together and create a united body to ensure there was peace. Why not try again?”

The crazy son of a bitch was actually going through with it. Piper was suddenly wishing she was more sober so she could be writing this down. Maybe one of those Mr. Handys or Miss Nannys was recording this. 

“I know, I know. You don’t trust each other. You have grievances that go back who knows how long. But none of that matters now. If we do not work out our differences, it will be settled for us by the greatest peacemaker of all: death. We have one choice to get us out of this. We must join as one, or die alone.”

~~~~~

If you had told him a year ago that he would burn the same flag he had sworn to defend, you would have been knocked on your ass. Yet here Nate was, watching with smug satisfaction as the symbols of the Minutemen, the symbols of an Americana hundreds of years past, were burned by men and women under his command. The plan had gone spectacularly, better even than he or Knight Rhys had anticipated. 

Three platoons had been sent out across the Charles River’s west banks, but before they crossed they made it clear to lookouts at the WRVR radio station that there was an attack of some kind, so the local settlements mustered up their militias and converged on the bridge near the station. The first Brotherhood platoon launched a minor raid on the so-called Scrap Palace, where a settlement of super mutants had been set up. Apparently the forces started bickering and since all commanders were equal in rank, the super mutants moved back south to defend the Scrap Palace, walking right into a trap. 

The second platoon had captured a minor hobbyist club and more crucially, a pre-war disposal site occupied by ghouls. Similarly to the super mutants, the ghouls broke off to defend their homes rather than stay with the human Minutemen and the robots. The survivors of the Scrap Palace and of the Mass Fusion Disposal Site immediately retreated back to WRVR, but it was too late. They had to abandon their anti-air rocket launchers and fat man launchers. After a final assault with minimal Brotherhood casualties, the defenders were either dead or in shackles and a massive foothold had been gained. Most importantly, the resistance radio station had been rendered inoperative and the materials were prepped to be transported back to the Scribes. Initiates and squires looted the interior of the station. Nate had ordered them to take anything of technological value out and destroy anything that might be of personal value to the defenders. 

As the smoke from the burning Minutemen and American flags rose higher, Nate looked at the prisoners. The Minutemen glared at Nate with pure loathing. His presence here must be a personal devastation. The savior of the Minutemen, the embodiment of pre-war American virtue, here to slaughter them and clap them in permanent bondage. He’d wanted to support the Minutemen when he first arrived, even been pleased when he got promoted straight to General after taking the Castle. But there was nothing to them. They were loyal to America and that had been appealing, but it was an empty patriotism. One bereft of purpose, bereft of an in group and an out group. They did not have a purpose beyond simply existing nor did they have any defined opponents. The Gunners were opportunists, not worthy of contempt. The Brotherhood may have been ostensibly opposed to Americana, their greatest rivals having been the successors to the US Government and the ideological heirs of American heroes such as President Whitelaw and President Dickie Richardson, but they embodied the spirit. Sure, the enemies were different. It had taken some time to get used to it, but he had learned to oppose the abomination just as he had once opposed the communist and the Chinese.

Perhaps the strangest part of this ordeal so far had been the sense of uncanny valley that seeped into everything he saw. His neighborhood in ruins, his home that he and Nora had worked so hard to get- nothing but a barren wreck. Worst of all was his ability to recognize and fail to recognize places he had been to hundreds of times in the same second he saw them. He’d been to the Museum of Freedom countless times as a kid. Seeing exhibits about the American Revolution, hearing stories from professionals about the War in the Heavens and the famous Sea of Tranquility campaign, all of it had drawn him in. He had hoped one day his name might go into the museum’s records. A childish fantasy of course, but it had left an indelible mark upon him. 

To see it in such a ruined state and filled with bandits and raiders and filled him with rage, well, even more rage than he had felt already over the death of Nora and the kidnapping of Shaun just hours before. The raiders had gone out in painful ways. The ones outside had been the lucky ones. Inside one had his kneecap shot out and he fell to his death. Two more were killed by makeshift shrapnel bombs in the form of poorly placed gas canisters. The final group on the top level has a poor time of it. One's guts were spilled across the banister, another’s head flew off after a careful shot with his 10mm, and the last one was alive but rolling around on the floor in agony.

Actually meeting the survivors had been a moment of great amusement. Codsworth had told him it had been 210 years since he was frozen, but here was some jackass in a colonial style outfit with what had to be the silliest laser weapon he had ever seen. After discussing the plan with Preston and Sturges, he had quietly asked Preston if he knew that there were two communists in his midst and that he would take care of them if necessary. Preston had no idea what he meant and what a communist was. Nate dropped the issue but kept a close eye on the Longs afterwards. Their kind had sent the world into war, after all.

Paladin Wong escorted a line of ghoul prisoners forward. Nate gave her a slight nod and she commanded them on their knees as human prisoners dug a large trench at gunpoint. Nate turned to the human Minutemen and the last of the WRVR performers, George Cooper. The actor’s eyes were red rimmed from tears and his nose twisted from the butt of a laser rifle smashing it. A warm breeze picked up and sent Nate's greatcoat fluttering.

“Minutemen, you fought bravely. Your professionalism in the face of untrustworthy… ‘allies’ shows off a fortitude and dedication that should not be wasted. I give all of you a one time opportunity. All of you are free to join the Brotherhood and fight for humanity. Stand up now and join us to fight for a better future or remain kneeling and serve another way, though it will be through hard labor. You will be tied to your Lord's and Knights, unable to disobey and you shall work on farms or in factories. Your families shall join you there. Serve with honor and dignity, or serve without. The choice is yours.”

No one stood, but Nate presumed they were weighing their options. One particularly bloodied man kept making eye contact with one of the ghouls, the kind reserved only for heartbreak.

“What about our friends?” He said, jerking his head towards the ghouls and some of the few remaining super mutants. 

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Friends? None of their kind can be friends of ours. How could they be? They are only moments away from turning feral and eating you. They are ravening monsters with the veneer of civilization.”

Another human laughed bitterly. “None of you fucking Brotherhood freaks can shut up about ‘humanity’ yet when I look at any of you, I see more humanity in deathclaws.”

The Sentinel looked at the woman who said that. Her face was defiant.

“Tell me, ‘Sentinel’, what humanity are you defending?”

His jaw tightened and behind his sunglasses, his eyes narrowed in hate.

“Squire Gamble, take this prisoner over to the pit and restrain her there.”

Gamble looked first startled to be addressed and then terrified of what Nate had in mind. 

“M-my Lord?” She squeaked out.

“You heard me.”

She gulped and scrambled over to the prisoner and pushed her near the pit where the ghouls were forced to kneel. Nate looked toward the Knights standing behind the captured ghouls.

“Paladin Wong, you may fire when ready.”

The air was filled with the sound of laser fire and screams. Some of the ghouls vanished into dust, other lost their heads, and some simply fell forwards. 

“Dump the bodies into the pit,” Nate said off handedly. “And make sure to throw in this one last.” He gestured towards the human woman near the pit. The rest of the humans were forced to their feet by Knights and started getting escorted back to Brotherhood territory. He turned to the remaining Knights, Squires, and Initiates.

“By striking terror into the hearts of our foes, they will know the price of resistance.”

The smell of charred flesh and burned homes permeated the air. Cold winter winds whistled through the trees and remains of what was once a bustling town. Nate yanked a captured rebel to her feet and pushed her over to the rest of the captured anti-American radicals. She could barely have been 17. One of his friends, Hank Turtletaub, seemed queasy at the pile of burning bodies he was having to add more fuel to. He puked his guts out just as a group of power armored soldiers marched by. Their laughter through the helmets was mechanical and scratched. 

“You’ll get used to it,” one had said.

“Just look at Jackson over there,” the other said while pointing at Nate. “He puked his guts out the first time he joined us in flushing out the roaches. Now he’s a natural at disposing of these ungrateful little shits.”

Nate shrugged. “It becomes a task like any other.”

“Good man,” an authoritative voice said. All the soldiers scrambled to their feet and saluted General Buzz Babcock.

“Thank you, sir!” Nate said.

“At ease boys,” Babcock drawled, his Alabaman accent thick.

“Sergeant Jackson, a word with you if I may?”

“Uh… yes sir, of course sir.” What did the General want with him?

His mind raced for what this could be about. As they walked through the carnage, soldiers continued searching the town for sequestered resources and resistance figures dug the trenches that would soon be filled with their own loved ones. Finally they stopped near where the General’s tent was set up.

“Now, Sergeant Jackson, I want to ask you something important,” Babcock said. “Tell me, Sergeant, about you reporting Captain Sato to the DIA.”

Nate’s breath hitched as he ran through what the right answers would be in his head. This process was hardly more than half a second, but he maintained his stoic mask regardless.

“I was concerned about the Captain’s judgment and handling of the anti-American rebels. His orders seemed to not be taking the threat seriously.”

“So why did you report him for pro-commie sympathies instead of going to another officer?” the General’s question wasn’t accusatory, mostly just curious.

You could see it in his eyes, Nate had wanted to say. But figured that such an emotional response would not have the intended effect. So he thought of another approach.

“I did not believe that there was time for a quiet investigation, sir. Our task, that you yourself ordered us to do, was to find the pro-Chinese cells within the British Columbia area and wipe them out. The Captain’s attempts at leniency and clemency to those who surrendered was being seen as a sign of weakness. Why should they fear us and accept the inevitable if they are being coddled instead of having their spirits shattered?”

Babcock looked at him, no, he stared through the mask and looked at what was beneath. Nate’s jaw clenched. Had his planned words failed? The General then grinned and slapped him on the back.

“Good thinking, son. Better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the protection of America. No action taken in the name of duty to the flag and our great system can be wrong.”

Nate breathed a sigh of relief. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to Captain Sato after he got arrested?”

Babcock just shrugged. “He’s been sent to Turtledove while we investigate his possible ties to China and the leaf fucker resistance. But don’t worry about that, he’s gone forever. What is important, however, is that we need a new Captain.” He grinned at Nate and Nate grinned back at the General. When he looked at Babcock, he realized that he had the same face he did beneath the mask.

~~~~~

Piper woke up as she did most days now: hungover. She instinctively reached out to the space in the bed next to her, reaching out to someone who wasn’t there. In a moment of disorientation, Piper remembered her first night she had spent with Nate. He had set up a home of sorts at the Red Rocket station just outside of Sanctuary, too many bitter memories of the before times to stay there long. She’d giggled maniacally when they had arrived at the former gas station and she realized that was where they were going to consummate their romance. Some part of her, in spite of what kind of monster Nate had revealed himself to be, longed to return to those days. The intellectual part of her knew that in retrospect there had been signs she continues to beat herself up for missing.

When it had become clear just how old he was, Piper found herself giddy to ask him about what America was like before the war. She started it off slow, asking about what life was like in Sanctuary, what he did for a living, that sort of thing. In retrospect his descriptions of Sanctuary were suspicious and filled with omissions. But the very first sign she had picked up on but ended up forcing herself to forget and ignore as she felt her attraction to him grow was his views on newspapers.

She’d asked him about what the state of journalism was like before the war. It wasn’t her most tactful question and she admittedly was trying to fish for info on if she was doing a good job or not. He’d evaded the question when dealing with McDonough when they first met, but she assumed his hesitance was out of politeness. When he answered her now, it came as a shock to hear.

“Ehh… I tried to avoid most journalists and news media if I could.”

“Really? Why?”

He just shrugged at her. “Most journalists in my time were self serving unpatriotic types. Only news group I could trust to not spread lies and distortions was Galaxy News Network.”

“What do you mean that the others were unpatriotic? Wasn’t news in your time supposed to be about the truth rather than comforting lies?”

Nate was a stoic man, she knew that, but he got uncharacteristically emotional. It flashed across his face and she wasn’t really sure just what he was expressing. The conversation would end there as they came across a nest of raiders and they got caught up in a gunfight. The conversation would never be brought up again, but it had always lurked in the back of her mind as odd.

With the flashes of memory piercing into her mind, Piper decided early on it would be one of those days as she lit up a cigarette and desperately inhaled the tobacco and nicotine as she sat in bed. Cigarette in mouth, she forced herself out of bed and felt the midday air hit her nude body. She searched for nearly a minute for where she put her robe last night only to vaguely recall that she had lost it last night while drinking in the living room with Sturges. The scope of the horrors of what happened a few days ago had sent everyone into despair. 

She stumbled into the living and kitchen area, trying to remember if Nat was there but then remembered she had already left for school. Good, good. She didn’t need to see Piper like this. Piper made her way into the kitchen and saw that Sturges had made her some brahmin meat and bread. Her stomach rumbled, but she felt nauseous. Coffee, she needed coffee. Nothing special in it, just coffee. Near the counter top where a cup of coffee was sitting, she noticed her robe dangling half out the open window. She groaned. Okay, she would not imbibe any spirits today. She’d let it get out of her system today and just have soft drinks today.

Piper tried to remember the details of the night while she mixed her cup of coffee. They had all been at the council meeting. Scouts had reported the details of the massacre at WRVR and the carting off of the survivors. She’d been drinking before coming to the council, but she definitely remembered drinking more as a Minuteman officer regaled all of the details of the battle and subsequent massacre. She remembered that she wasn’t the only one crying as the officer continued to read out more and more details and names of those captured or murdered by Nate’s command. Piper does not know for sure if super mutants can cry, but Bloodmasher had been silent and emotional throughout the presentation. The last thing she remembered clearly was her and Cait leaving the council room and going off to find a stash of bourbon as Cait had fallen off the wagon. What a mess they had all become once that awful man came into their lives and fucked off to his fascist fantasies.

Fuck it. She added some whiskey to her coffee. Perhaps it would make the pain easier and dissipate throughout the day if she began numbing herself now. Piper finished her spiked coffee in a few minutes, the burning heat stung at first but the pain was ignored and forgotten. She dreaded work today. There was really only the one story to write about. It was her duty to report on what was going on in the rest of the Wastes, after all. Early on it had been agreed that there would be a level of transparency with the decisions of the slowly ratifying Commonwealth Provisional Government. Even with every intention to honor it, she knew that reporting on the WRVR Massacre with full details would be a blow to morale. Slowly an idea crept into her mind. Perhaps the way the article should be framed and written is as a call for unity. Focus on the disunity as the main factor that allowed for this nightmare to happen. Infighting, disunity, rivalry. Perhaps this could be the kick in the pants needed to get people to accept the existential threat they faced.

She got dressed quickly and was still adjusting her jacket with a lit cigarette in hand as she rushed out the door. Her mind was buzzing as she walked over to the Publick Occurrences building. Along the way she was already piecing together what needed to be said. 

It was sometime in the afternoon whilst the presses were churning out the next edition of the paper when Piper found herself dragged into a conversation involving two people she absolutely loathed. She’d been heading off to visit Cait and check on how she was doing when that creep Jack Cabot and Dr. Stevenson had caught her. Piper tried to talk her way out of having to deal with them until Stevenson had said that he was going to attach Nick’s new legs in a few minutes. 

So now she stood in his lab and workshop smoking a cigarette as the ex-Institute scientist hummed some pre-war tune and connected Nick’s old wiring with new legs. Well, new was perhaps the wrong term. They were created out of spare parts from the Synth infiltration squad sent to Fort Hagen with Kellogg all those months ago. The tech was still in working order, so the scientist had been ordered to cannibalize as much of it as possible to help with the war effort. Stevenson had been pretty tight-lipped about just what exactly he was doing with them, but he did have enough spares to fix Nick’s legs after his got blown off in a failed assassination attempt back in February.

It had been an early war council meeting in the ruins of CIT. It had been thought the symbolism of a meeting of various factions over the ruins of the Institute would be powerful. Perhaps it had been that power and Blue’s sense of irony that had caused such a strong reaction. Piper was writing down notes of what everyone had been saying when the first explosion had been heard. They immediately rushed for battle readiness and a Minuteman Lieutenant reported grimly that a Brotherhood infiltrator had been caught trying to lay explosives in an area where the ghouls had been staying. When caught, she simply shows to prematurely detonate. 

Piper’s immediate fear had been for Nat. As all kids do, her interests had been jumping around a lot. Recently she had been expressing interest in mechanical stuff, so Piper agreed to let her do a temporary apprenticeship with Sturges and the other engineers as they tried to turn the CIT ruins into something functional. She and Nick rushed to find her while the rest fanned out and searched for more saboteurs. 

They fanned out once they got into the library. Piper hardly remembers the frantic search until she hears a scream. She rushed over and saw Nick trying to hurriedly defuse a bomb after throwing the Brotherhood assassin to her death over the railing. She rushed Nat out and heard Nick running behind her, but he was caught in the blast. His synth body ensured he survived just fine, but his legs had been blown off.

“I have a… proposition for you,” Cabot said to her while Stevenson worked. 

Piper suddenly wished she had brought a bottle of something with her. She was silent for a moment as she smoked and restrained her intense distrust of this man. She remembered the story Nate had told her about the Cabot family. Creepy fuckers, all of them.

“Are you asking me for a favor, Mr. Cabot?” she asked, acidly. 

“I would not use that word, has unsavory implications you see,” he said somewhat tactfully. “I’d say that it’s a… quid pro quo. If you will aid me with this, I will offer you something that you may not even have realized you wanted.”

Piper was quite sure that favor and quid pro quo in this context meant essentially the same thing. She signed. 

“What is it?” her tone was mostly neutral.

“When we have our reprisal attack against the Brotherhood and seek to do a great deal of damage, I would like promises that some amount of FEV could be procured for some experiments I wish to run.”

Piper had no idea where to start with that. So she tried to go for the one that she could wrap her head around rather than… that request.

“Who says that there’ll be a reprisal attack like you’re thinking?”

Cabot chuckled politely. “Ah Miss Wright, it’s quite simple. The Brotherhood has just given us a great boon to our cause with their Nazi-esque murders at WRVR and with their occupation of the nearby settlements. With unity within our government at an all time high, it would be only logical to use that fervor to deal a blow to the Brotherhood, but it cannot be a direct pitched battle, they are too well defended at any of the obvious points. So that leaves instead either raiding or a behind the enemy lines operation to deal damage to them in some way. Raiding could work, but I think we both know that the council will push for the second option, something risky but something with much higher rewards. Besides, even if it does not go as intended, if we show them that their security is not as good as they want, they will become paranoid. Especially if Fuehrer Nate is anything to go by.”

Piper hated to admit it, but Cabot’s logic did make sense and knowing Cait and the other personalities on the council, the option to really fuck the Brotherhood up would be the big one. She had to evade answering lest she get pulled into agreeing without knowing what this was for.

“Perhaps,” she muttered. “What’s a Nazi and a Furrer?” That question was genuine.

Cabot smiled. “Apologies, got carried away there. The Nazis were a group, over a hundred years before the Great War, that followed a fascist ideology not too dissimilar to what dear patriotic Nate followed in the pre-war period. The Fuehrer was their supreme leader. While Nate may not be the top of the Brotherhood food chain, he is for all intents and purposes, the symbol of them in the Commonwealth.”

Piper was silent. She didn’t fully understand all of that, but she’d just ask Nick about that. She’d been asking him about the pre-war stuff he could remember.

“But why do you want me to ensure that this hypothetical mission secures FEV for you?”

Cabot’s eyes were wild with excitement. They both covered their faces as Stevenson pulled out a welding torch in the background.

“How much of the intel that our friend in Diamond City has been sending us have you read?”

Piper felt herself grow curious in spite of herself. “Bits and pieces. Not much of it was really relevant to publish.”

“Last night, we received a treasure trove of top secret data and records. Most of it will have to be sifted through, but there was one section that was immediately relevant to my interests and my studies. Out west in a place once known as southern California, the Brotherhood forces out there encountered a bizarre group led by a FEV abomination that sought to turn the whole of the wastes into super mutants. Among this person’s entourage was someone who was granted through the FEV, the ability to use psychic powers.”

Laughter escaped from her lips before she realized it.

”I’m sorry, psychic powers? Seriously?”

“Oh yes,” Cabot said, not showing any offense at her incredulity. “But I must ask you something. I am over 400 years old and have remained young through the use of a serum and bizarre powers that were granted to my father through an artifact that is older than the concept of civilization. You’ve seen the secret at the Dunwich Borers dig site.” 

A flashing memory of running out of that quarry in the dark as whispers and flashes of centuries gone by while trying to escape with the dagger to hide it away from what Nate was desperately trying to fight in that cave seared through her mind, as hot as a fever.

“So tell me, Miss Wright, why is the possibility of psychic abilities being unlocked through mutation so hard to believe?”

Because it’s impossible, unnatural, she wanted to say. But then again, Deathclaws were unnatural, super mutants were too, the man standing in front of her was an unnatural impossibility as well, and most of all, so was that primal terror she felt when she and Nate entered the Dunwich quarry.

“So that’s what you want the FEV for? To give yourself… psychic powers?” Her voice was dry. 

“Not myself, not necessarily. I’d have to find someone that would be willing to be subjected to it as well as a super mutant and ghoul test subject figure out if there is a difference based on level of mutation. And before you ask, no, I will not be giving a human subject enough to worry about turning into a super mutant. Instead, it will be a series of micro doses as most of the rest of my research indicates that there are more important factors than the amount of FEV in one’s system.”

A chill ran down Piper’s spine. She looked at Jack Cabot and analyzed him. He was young again, but she remembered seeing him when he was old. She heard the horror story from Hancock about Lorenzo Cabot. Just how different was this Cabot from the old man?

“You said that you would do something for me if I helped you?” The voice that came out was hardly a whisper. Nick and Stevenson were still talking in the background.

“It is two-fold and wrapped in one at the same time. If this manages to work, the psyker that is created will be able to infiltrate the mind of dear Nate. All his secrets, the very essence of him lain bare. No deceit, no deception on his part can work. You and everyone else can get the answers that are so desperately craved.”

“Would it hurt him?”

”Beyond the obvious emotional damage of him losing control of his secrets? Quite probably. I’ll admit I have no idea what the experience is like, but if this power is anything like the nature of my father’s powers, then it comes with a price.”

Could she do this? Could she agree to giving Jack Cabot the secrets of a forbidden power? Could she agree to potentially torture Nate in some way? Her mind answered for her as her thought lingered on all that he had done. The Massacre at WRVR, the Pogrom of Goodneighbor, the enforcing of forced labor across the Commonwealth. Then it went to his attempts to assassinate them at CIT and the near success of nearly killing Nat, of Nick losing his legs, of Cait relapsing back into addiction, of Preston getting more gray hairs every day he had to be in charge. 

Stevenson gave Nick a thumbs up and the synth detective went to stand. He pushed himself to his feet and was able to stand for the first time in months. Deep down, in her gut, she had her answer.

“I’ll talk to Preston and Cait. If you can find willing participants, you will get your FEV.”

~~~~~

Perhaps what surprised Nate the most about living in the post-apocalypse was how quickly natural systems managed to adapt and recover. The first rain he had been under after thawing, he was grateful he was in power armor to protect himself from what he assumed would be the pre-war acid rains but worse. His shock was palpable to those around him when it was explained that the rain was mostly harmless. Sure it would need to be cleaned and purified before drinking, but it wouldn’t irradiate anyone for simply being outside in it. 

He stepped over the threshold into the newly created Diamond City Laboratories where the Scribes and Engineers experimented with tech and reprogrammed robots. Just behind him was his Squire, desperately trying to keep up with his vigorous pace. The lab was alive with activity and energy. Countless figures scrambled back and forth working on some project or another. It pleased him to see them so productive. As they walked through, he stopped upon seeing a familiar Miss Nanny.

“Good afternoon Curie,” he said early as he and Gamble sidled up to the French science robot. 

She said nothing, instead one of her eyestalks rotated and looked at him unblinking. Even with her eyes being nothing more than cameras, Nate felt the pure unending hatred she felt towards him. He was quite glad that the restraining bolt placed in her chassis prevented her from using any weapons and from leaving the confines of Diamond City. He’d been able to prevent her from killing him after he had killed Danse. It took a few weeks but she came around to him again. But then… synth Shaun.

It was odd walking through the irradiated and shattered ruins of the great boogeyman of the Commonwealth. Right now countless Scribes in radiation suits and Knights in power armor moved about, looting everything of even potential value in sight. Nate’s own power armor was off being repaired, so he sufficed with a radiation suit for the time being. He and Curie were moving deep into the ruins. It had been a small miracle to convince her to talk to him again after he had killed Danse. She accused him of betrayal and all sorts of other things. It blended together after a while. He explained to her that it was a difficult decision and it was made fully with Paladin Danse’s consent. It was a partial truth. The decision was not difficult in the slightest, but it was certainly made with Danse’s consent. He didn’t want to live as an abomination. But Nate didn’t feel the need to tell Curie that part considering she was in the process of finding a still intact latest gen synth body to have her mind transplanted to.

“Wha- what on earth is this?” her French accented speech echoed down the hall from a separate room. Knowing the institute, it could be any number of things. So Nate lightly jogged over and immediately remembered which part of the Institute this was. He reached for a small black device that was left on the table, mostly intact, and held it tight in his left hand.

“What is what?” he asked innocently. He stepped up to here and saw what he feared it was: the fried remains of the abomination Shaun. He knelt down and acted as if he’d never seen it before. 

“How odd-” his hand moving part of the synth skeleton activated some remnant spark of power and life in it and it whirred to life. The voice that came out was admittedly haunting as it was heavily warped and stripped down to pure mechanical noises rather than an approximation of human speech patterns.

“Why… kill… dad?”

“What a busted piece of shit, eh?” He moved himself back up to aim a shot with his plasma pistol when the whirring of a saw blade cut through the air.

“Why did it call you ‘dad’?”

Nate weighed the options of trying to bullshit something and not.

“When I was leaving the Institute after rigging the reactor to blow, I came across that thing. Apparently my oh so wonderful son Shaun thought that it would make up for killing my wife and all the monstrous things he did to the Commonwealth,” he explained.

“You… didn’t take him with you?!”

Nate was genuinely baffled by the question and he was sure his face was completely dumbstruck.

“Why would I have done that?”

“Because he is your son!”

“No, he's not. He's a knockoff. My real son, I turned into a pile of goo. For all the genius he purported to have, he thought that a synth child would be of any use. It can’t grow, it can’t change. Just stuck forever in a useless child body with a useless child mind in a mockery of my flesh and blood son.”

Curie’s voice was pure icy malice. “He thought that you would possess enough love in your heart for what was just a few months ago for you to accept a form of apology for all of what he has done. But he has misjudged you.”

“I can compartmentalize, I can put my emotions away in a box and analyze things rationally-”

“You feel nothing but pure ego. All of your emotions relate to you and you alone. Your wife dies and what is just days from your perspective you begin a romance with another woman who just so happens to look a lot like your dead wife. You search for your son and you get distracted by other things that catch your interest. You murder people who inconvenience you without thought or reason. Not to mention you know that ghouls and mutants and synths are all people with complex emotions and you join this group? The one that advocates for killing your friends? I doubt you hold any actual hate within you for non-humans, you picked it up as an affect because it benefits you.”

“That’s… that’s not true…” Nate stuttered out.

“You hold less humanity than a computer terminal.”

He felt a gust of heat collide with his radiation suit. He dove out of the way of the spinning saw blade as he considered his options to handle the fire and ensure the restraining bolt was still in his hand. He scrambled to the wall and pulled himself up, but the saw blade cut through his suit began to slice into his back. The built in geiger counter on the Pip-Boy on his arm began clicking wildly as the radiation was flooding into his body. He pressed the button on the restraining bolt and slammed it onto Curie’s chassis. She screamed as her body stopped responding and fell to the ground. 

Curie had not spoken a word to him since the incident. What was there to be said, really? She had tried and failed to kill him and in a show that he was not the monster she thought him to be, Nate allowed her to continue her scientific work. Some might call her situation slavery, but that was such a dirty word. Really this was for her own protection while slavery was not about protecting the enslaved. He was protecting her from herself. She must just loathe the compassion he is showing towards her by forgiving her for giving him radiation poisoning.

“G-good af-afternoon Madam Curie…” Gamble muttered out while blushing heavily. Nate’s squire thought she wasn’t obvious that she had a massive crush on Curie. He figured it was just teenage nonsense, so he never said anything about it. She’d outgrow it anyways.

“Good afternoon Sofie! I hope you are staying dry,” Curie said with genuine joy and warmth in her voice. 

“I-I’m well. Erm, Madam, I-I am tr-trying out going by Gamble now, my last name.”

“Oh, my apologies, would you prefer for me to call you that from now on, Gamble?” she asked the deeply blushing squire. 

“Y-y-yes p-p-please.”

“Squire,” Nate said suddenly. Gamble snapped to attention and Curie turned her eyestalk back to him and he felt the utter loathing and contempt radiate out from it.

“Assist Curie with her experiments for the rest of the day. Return to your bunks at your standard time, I will not be needing you for the rest of the day.”

Nate walked off without hearing a response, but considering Gamble’s massive crush on Curie and the robot’s clear doting on the girl, he doubted he had any cause to worry. 

Proctor Teagan was giving orders to a group of Knights when Nate walked up. The group gave the salute and cried out “Ad Victorian” at the Sentinel and left. Teagan saluted to Nate as well before motioning for him to follow. They stepped through a hallway and into an area that used to be a bar. Teagan saddled up behind the bar and poured them glasses of rum.

“What’s this problem you want to keep so secret?”

Teagan took a long drink of the rum and made a face.

“This stuff tastes like piss,” he spat out.

Nate raised an eyebrow and took a drink. The Quartermaster was most certainly not wrong.

“Is that what this is about? A bad bottle of rum?” He asked sardonically.

“Only somewhat- no, don’t get annoyed, let me explain. We have two major problems, although one ties in directly to the other more major problem.”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Lay it on me.”

“We are having the beginnings of a possible supply shortage when it comes to luxury goods such as alcohol.”

“Can’t we just produce more by assigning laborers to work in distilleries?”

Teagan shook his head. “That is the bigger, underlying problem. Overseers are reporting massive morale and loyalty problems among the civilians. What groups we can get to work are doing so without much enthusiasm or competence.”

Ah , Nate thought. There it was.

“The Capital is under our control, right? How did we get things running smoothly there?” He asked.

“Simple,” Teagan said after braving another drink of the rum. “Brotherhood rule offered clear, immediate advantages over the alternatives. We had the purifier up and running, we provided security, cleared out the abominations, and with all that we were able to assign work shifts and create large fields for people to work on with ease. Over time they saw the benefits of a well ordered society, but short term? They needed real incentives.”

Nate sipped his rum while in thought.

“With the resistance up and running, we can’t show people the benefits of Brotherhood security as we are too busy having to secure our annexed lands. To put it simply, we need to find something to prove that we are the positive change we claim to be.”

“Do you have any ideas, Teagan?”

He shrugged. “A few, but a few tests need to be run before I propose anything solid. The main areas we could consider are clean water by setting up mini-purifiers and powering up Boston. Either way we need to run some tests and make inquiries as to what the biggest demands among the laborers are. If you grant me permission, we can begin immediately and I'll take a personal interest in investigating some other avenues.”

Nate longed for the opportunity to finally eradicate the last of the resistance and their so called Provisional Government, that way they could showcase the wonders of Brotherhood security and the benefits of a wasteland without abominations. One day it could be like the Capital. 

“You have my authorization. Keep me in the loop for what the laborers are saying and let me know what the results of your various tests are.”

He finished the last of the rum in his glass before standing up to leave. With the rain still coming down outside, he considered which way to head back to his office before finally deciding to take the longer way. Couldn’t hurt to see some of the morale problems himself.

~~~~~

A figure clad in dark blues slipped through the streets unseen. It had been two days after the news of the Massacre at WRVR that he received a most fascinating offer. A man in a red and white jacket had shown up on his doorstep with an offer from “a mutual friend”. The well dressed man had raised an eyebrow at that until he placed the voice of the man in front of him. Travis, that radio announcer from Diamond City. He showed Travis a secret way back into Diamond City that would allow him to avoid the gaze of the patrolling Knights.

The offer itself had been… intriguing. The reward was certainly tantalizing, but the veracity of it seemed doubtful until he recognized the flourishes in the message itself. He was a visual artist himself, but was never one to deride the written arts and the woman who wrote him this offer was certainly an artist.

Piper Wright was informing him that her side of the Charles River was going to launch a sneak behind-enemy-lines attack on the Brotherhood and disrupt their research and war efforts as much as possible. But they needed a cover, a distraction to keep the Brotherhood on alert for something else. The thrill of the challenge excited him, especially since his creative pursuits had been curtailed by the Brotherhood wiping out so many raiders. He had nothing personal against Nate Jackson, but that was not part of the equation. He had the opportunity to create a new kind of art and branch out into doing satire and societal critique. What artist could turn that down?

Last night he had spent most of the evening preparing for this morning. Tracing escape routes, finding materials, checking the patrol routes that had been sent to him, and setting up the actual infrastructure of his first public art piece.

Up a rusted fire escape he climbed. Once he was on the roof of a ruined building of some kind, he saw the Brotherhood patrols moving by. Right on cue. One of them split off to patrol a section of narrow alleys. Even better was his lack of power armor. 

The man in the blue suit quickly and quietly traveled over rooftops until finally slipping down another fire escape and finding the patrolman all alone investigating what appeared to be a skull. He crept up behind the patrolman, his blade in hand.

“Now who do you belong to?” The patrolman said with mild amusement. A serrated, jagged blade flicked upwards against the femoral artery with expert precision. Immediately he collapsed and tried to call out for help, but the man in the blue suit clicked his tongue as he sliced the jugular to fill the mouth with blood.

“Can’t let you do that now can I?” The voice was nasally and higher pitched than the patrolman expected. His mouth opened and closed like a fish repeatedly as it filled with blood. The man in the blue suit tossed his jacket off to the side, rolled up his sleeves, and retrieved an apron and a box of medical tools tucked away behind an empty dumpster. 

The man with the blade was saddened he could not take the trophy he always did as the head would be required for the presentation. But no price was too high for true artistic expression and he would not let his own desires get in the way of his vision. He watched as the patrolman’s eyes lost their light inside them and pulled out a blood spattered bone saw. By the gods, it was good to have a project to work on again. If the thrill and comfort this one brought continued to the rest, he would consider this a fair price to pay for not being able to prey upon raiders. 

This , he thought. This will be the start of my magnum opus.

~~~~~

Chapter Text

The past three days had been completely unexpected. Each morning Nate awoke to alarm and panic spreading in the ranks. During those initial days, he was quick to maintain a semblance of discipline and redirect focus towards improving security. Initiates and Knights on patrol had to pair up and avoid getting split up once it became clear this was not a one time event. Yesterday’s orders had been that any off-duty soldiers had to remain within the confines of Diamond City. The three dead had been lower ranks and clearly were taken off guard by whoever was doing this. 

Today when Nate was shaken awake by Paladin Wong, he knew that this one would be different. The normally loud and brash Paladin was quiet and had a disturbed look on her face. The dread deep within his gut only grew when he saw so many seasoned veterans look shell-shocked and sickened. How bad could today's… incident be?

Nate got his answer as he stood 100 feet away from Diamond City’s main entrance and looked into the eyeless and tongueless severed head of Proctor Teagan. From his tongueless mouth was a waterfall of either red paint or red blood. Below his mouth was the same question that all of the others found had asked. What is the color of death?

“Scribe uh… Victor, is it?” he asked a particularly emotionally drained Scribe.

“Yes my Lord,” he said, turning and saluting.

“Is it like the others with the uh…” he struggled for the right words. “Body placement I suppose?”

Victor pointed to the limbless torso on the ground with red wax candles melting into it.

“As you can see, my Lord, the torso is just like the others. The arms were found several yards to the left and right, with the left one holding a note with the same blue heart as the others had. The right had our logo carved into it.”

Nate felt the energy drain from him with each word. Fuck, fuck, fuck.  

“And the legs? Shooting the dogs that had found and eaten the legs had not been good for morale among the civilians.”

Victor hesitated.

“It’s… probably worse than that. Early Knights on the scene report that it’s likely that the legs were stolen by indentured laborers for-”

“God fucking damn it! Is the food situation now that bad?”

“Not quite, my Lord. Food is being distributed in proper amounts to everyone but the laborer class. The influx we’ve had has stretched our rations for them thin, not to mention the recent cuts that my Lord has recently instituted after the flare up of violence at the Warwick Farmstead.”

Nate sighed in frustration and shook his head.

“Oh well, nothing to do for it. Get the Knights out there and start rounding up suspected cannibals. Tell them to bring a medic along so they can analyze any suspicious bones. Can’t let them feel that they can get away with uncivilized behavior.”

“Yes my Lord,” the Scribe said. 

Nate relayed his orders to the other Knights and Paladins. Decisive action, that was what was needed to restore order and find this psycho. 

“Paladin Wong, mobilize as many Knights as we can spare to going door to door to find this monst-”

“ALERT! ALERT! WE HAVE ENEMY HOSTILES IN THE BASE! ALER-” the familiar crackle and hum of a laser musket cut the cries of the caller short.

“Where was that?” he demanded of one of the Knights.

“Sounded like Gavil, my Lord. He’s stationed at the Poseidon Energy Turbines,” the Knight said.

“Fuck! Forget searching for the killer, go reinforce him!” he shouted at Paladin Ramos. The Paladin began shouting into his radio as he ran towards the direction of the Poseidon facility. 

“Victor, get into contact with the people ordered to hunt down the cannibals and tell them to break off and go reinforce Gavil-”

“I’m sorry my Lord, the radios just cut out. We’ve only got short range.”

“What? How is that-” a familiar whistle, massive flash of light, and explosion some distance to the north of Diamond City immediately cut off all thoughts. 

The darkness enveloped them as the roar of the atomic shockwave rumbled overhead. In that darkness he said “I love you” to Nora for the last time. Shaun’s whimpering was the only reprieve from roars of annihilation above. He hoped against all hope that the Vault was sound proof as he was not sure he could handle the rest of his life hearing the death throes of the human race up above. What he feared most of all was his oncoming uselessness. Captain Nathaniel Jackson Jr was a soldier, a warrior. He feared what the eternal peace of the end of the world brought.

Nate was frozen in place, the unfamiliarity of pure adrenaline coursing through his body. In the back of his mind, the cold logical part of him tried to press through. How did Preston pull this off? The Minutemen and the ghouls and the robot's and the super mutants couldn’t get along, how did he get them to work together now?

“My-” static.

“Lor-” static.

“Super m-” static.

“-inutemen” static. 

“-ini nuke-” static.

“-gman’s Alley” the static after this one lasted longer.

Nate controlled his breathing and finally quashed the panic in his mind. It was not a full nuclear device, some green-skin fired off a mini-nuke. That’s fine, that makes sense.

“Paladin Wong, bring your men and reinforce Hangman’s Alley. I'm going to mobilize everyone I can in Diamond City to reinforce you first then the Poseidon facility.”

Everyone scrambled into different directions, orders being shouted back and forth. Nate took off running for Diamond City, all the while trying to figure out what changed.

=====

Piper wasn’t sure how Pickman would react to her message. There had been some squeamishness about asking for his assistance among the war council and temporary government of the CPG, admittedly. But she had been resolute. Pickman had been left alone after the Brotherhood takeover, he knew the secrets of the city well, and had a methodical ruthlessness that he could use to cause a crisis. 

He did not disappoint when Travis managed to leak the reaction of the Brotherhood to the first murder. It was a shame it was not the prelude to a full attack to expel the Brotherhood, but it would suffice to give them a busted nose and cripple their morale as recruits trained back behind their lines. Who knows, perhaps if this one goes well enough, an advantage could be pressed.

Piper was forced out of her own head as Cait motioned for their squad to move up through the service entrance into the Diamond City barracks. They were lucky that this was a bathroom and with people mobilizing, no one had time to use it. One group led by Colonel Wolf went left while she joined Cait and her group going right. 

Leaving Diamond City may have been one of the hardest things Piper had ever done. No matter how many times she had bickered and argued with its people, no matter how many times she loathed that blonde air head Geneva, no matter how many times the people had expressed elitist and bigoted views towards others, she loved and cared for them. With smoke turning the orange sunset sky a sickly grey, she gave her home one last look and felt just as she did all those years ago when carrying a very young Nat towards the caravan that would take them away from their home and towards the intimidating Green Jewel of the Commonwealth. That town had been something their father had fought for and believed in. It was where she became who she was, or perhaps more accurately, figured out who she was deep down. The kind of person who couldn’t stand for injustice, who couldn’t stand for lies and self serving nonsense. But it had also been where her father was slain, where she had seen the face of humanity laid bare, where she had realized the need to recognize when to leave. 

So now here she was, walking across the bridge near Hangman’s Alley with tears in her eyes and an ache in her heart that she would treat with bourbon, leaving another home, for perhaps the final time. If she ever returned, would she recognize it under Brotherhood occupation? How many people would remain? Nat walked beside her and tears were in her eyes. Far too young to have to face this, far too young to have to live with the consequences of all of this. Piper pulled her little sister into her side as they walked across the Charles River. Nat wrapped her arms around Piper and her heart ached even more. In the cart a few feet ahead of them, a bottle of rum whispered to her. Perhaps she could start dulling the pain now.

The first group they had come across had been dispatched with ease. Piper was sure she still had the vaporized remains of one stuck to her shoe, but couldn’t stop now. Only Cait and herself had non-energy weapons here. She was quite skilled with a 10mm pistol, if she said so herself. But she was far more comfortable with using it on beasts of some kind. Before actually interacting with super mutants who were on the more… sane side of things, she had no compunctions about shooting at them. But having spent enough time with Strong, Bloodmasher, and the others that were now part of the Commonwealth Provisional Government, she probably would feel just as uneasy going into battle against them as she did humans. In a fight? She could handle how queasy her insides felt. But afterwards, it was always rough. When she and Nate were together, he was able to support her and give her comfort and connection. Now all she craved after battle was the bottle.

Cait slinked at the head of the group. Piper caught a glimpse of the intensity in her eyes and wondered just what the Irishwoman had taken this morning. Based on her focus on what was in front of her and on the plan, Piper was sure Cait had popped some mentats and if only because of knowing her before she initially kicked her drug habit, Piper was also sure that she had washed it down with whiskey. What a mess they had all become. 

“Contact,” Cait whispered as they scrambled for cover. A group of Knights were rushing down the hall. The Minutemen opened fire with a volley of shots from their laser muskets and fell back behind cover as Cait and Piper opened fire with their ballistic guns while the laser muskets were cranked again. They repeated this pattern several times until a Ghoul had enough.

“Fuck this,” the rough voiced Minuteman Captain said. He flicked an EMP grenade towards the cluster of power armor clad fascists. They ducked back behind cover as the Knights screamed or gasped in agony. The Knights were finished off in short order. They crept forward until finally reaching the main lab. It was empty save for one.

“Curie? Is that you?” Piper asked the Miss Nanny hovering near a fume hood.

“Ah, Piper! It is so good to see you! And you as well Cait!”

Piper never thought she would get so emotional at hearing Curie’s bizarre accent. She scrambled over and hugged the robot the best she could.

“Smash and grab everything you can, lads,” Cait ordered. The Minutemen immediately spread out across the room to skim for anything of value. 

“How can we get you out of here?” Cait asked.

“You would have to remove my restraining bolt and find the terminal that links the bolt to the defense systems. If I try to leave the boundaries of the stadium, the defense systems will blow me up.”

“We’ll find the terminal later, first let’s get that bolt off you. Walk me through the process,” Cait said warmly as she grabbed a toolbox. 

Piper gave Cait a knowing look and Cait reluctantly nodded her head in agreement. The news reporter began searching in the lab for confiscated FEV. 

=====

The screams of missiles and agony pierced the air even within the walls of Diamond City. Behind Nate was a platoon of Brotherhood veterans, both power armored and not. Nate had weighed his options about putting on his own power armor, but decided against it when his mind was filled with the agonizing and terrifying memories of being trapped in a dead suit in Goodneighbor. No, he wasn’t putting on that death trap ever again.

“Paladin, how much heavy ordinance do you require before we leave for Hangman’s Alley?”

“Just a few, if we spook them enough they’ll probably break ranks. Once we get them out of the way we can mobilize some of the Vertibirds, my Lord,” the gruff one eyed Paladin said. 

“Let’s swing by the armory and grab them. We need to reinforce Wong ASAP.”

They wouldn’t reach the armory. A plasma grenade trap had been triggered within 20 feet of the door, killing three. Within 10 feet EMP mines had been placed, killing two. At the door itself was a handwritten note that simply said: Open this door and two mini-nukes get detonated. By that point there wasn’t any use in risking any more lives. Instead they scrambled for the lab, some experimental weapons were in there. Adrenaline coursed through all parts of Nate’s body, sweat pouring down his back. This wasn’t a mere flight or fight response coursing through him, he realized. It was full blown panic. Everything was falling apart, but he couldn’t just let it all collapse. Decisive action, that was what was needed to restore order. 

They pushed open the doors to the lab after a swift march and Nate began to understand just how much the resistance had actually been tricking them. He dove out of the way before several experimental plasma weapons were detonated in front of a group of power armor clad knights. Two initiates and an unarmored Knight were incinerated instantly. Nate managed to turn a Minuteman into a puddle of green goo with his custom plasma pistol, but he could only watch in horror as the soldier was avenged by a ghoul in a Minuteman Captain’s uniform missing Nate by less than a centimeter. At first he was concerned with how close it got to hitting him, but that concern mingled with his underlying panic when he saw that it had successfully bounced off a refracting mirror and hit a power armored Knight in a weak spot. He could see the dust of what used to be a person spill out of one of the gaps in the plating.

Between the flashes of energy weapons firing, Nate noticed a figure in the background wearing a long red coat and a newscap. Piper. As he fired a cluster of shots at Minuteman, he stole a glance over at her. In spite of himself, his heart ached. If only she understood that this was for the best, if only she realized he was right. Nora would have understood. Why couldn’t Piper? What was it about her that made her incapable of seeing the bigger picture and made her so stubborn?

…

Why was it that he still felt this way about her, longing for her to return and to fill the hole in his heart that Nora used to fill?

That was when she looked up from whatever she was doing and they locked gazes. Hate radiated off of her. That frustrated Nate even more. Did none of them realize what he had done for them? Why were they so ungrateful? If it wasn’t for him, Piper would have been living homeless on the streets when McDonough tried to have her kicked out. Cait would be a slave to drugs, pleasure, and fighting. Preston would have been butchered by those raiders. Nick was a synth with the memories and personality of someone else, someone real. Yet Nate had helped him anyway. Yet they all stood against him now. They would be nothing without him, he gave them all purpose, he shaped this wasteland, he tipped the balance. Where was the gratitude? Where was the acknowledgement? Why did they treat him as if he were a mere average Joe? He was Lord Sentinel of the Brotherhood of Steel, the highest authority in the Commonwealth, the destroyer of the Railroad and the Institute, the Slayer of Abominations. Why did they not fucking listen and obey?!

Piper smirked at him and Nate suddenly realized just what she had been doing. The Minutemen had retreated out of the lab through the other door. She waved at him as she pressed a button on a detonator and the room was filled first with a flash and then the roar of heated plasma and the crackling of electro-magnetic blasts scattering everywhere. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was catching a glimpse of Curie setting Brotherhood reinforcements on fire.

~~~~~

After crossing the Charles River with their mission a success, more or less, Piper and Cait’s groups met up with Bloodmasher’s group and pulled back to the recaptured CIT. With the amount of casualties all reported groups had taken, it seemed likely that it would be a few weeks before a true attack could be made. After seeing the damage Bloodmasher’s super mutants and the Minutemen had done to Hangman’s Alley and the Brotherhood, Piper was feeling a lot more confident about the future. They’d have to find a new person to leak them info from behind Brotherhood lines as the horrible feeling in her gut told her that Curie was not long for the world. 

Piper pushed that pain down with each drink of Vodka Quantum. Though admittedly she’d put more vodka in there than she originally expected to better cut down on that taste. Cait was staring emptily up at the starry night sky while the others mingled and either celebrated or mourned the dead. Bloodmasher was telling an admittedly fascinating story about a particularly brave Brotherhood Paladin that tried to rush across the bridge in her power armor and kill him. It did not end well for the Paladin as Bloodmasher, in the ecstasy of battle, simply clapped his hands on either side of her head and crushed it into a pulp. Apparently her helmet had taken a bunch of hits in the battle and was a lot more fragile than anyone expected. It felt odd to take comfort in the deaths of others, but their coordinated attack had killed a lot of Brotherhood Knights. They’d need that airship of theirs to return to refill their numbers, but who knows when that is going to return.

The festivities were cut short with the return of Preston’s group, though notably he was not at the head of it. Instead, Colonel Ridge’s rugged face was at the front. Not that she’d ever admit it, but Piper did think that Ridge looked quite handsome for a ghoul.

“MEDICS!” his gravelly voice shouted. Any lingering ambient celebrating or mourning was halted as the medics and doctors scrambled to their bags. Much of the returning Minutemen looked ragged and exhausted. Preston’s blue uniform was nowhere to be seen, which made the growing concern within Piper deepen. Then she spotted him being carried on a stretcher. Her blood froze and time slowed. Bloodmasher put down his literal barrel of… whatever it was super mutants drank and pushed himself through the crowd to carry Preston over to the medics. She pushed her way through the crowd just as Bloodmasher laid Preston down on a sleeping bag next to the fire. 

“What the fuck happened?” she heard herself asking Ridge.

The ghoul had taken his hat off and took a long swig of gin before answering.

“We’d managed to ambush the Brotherhood freaks at the station and captured it with ease. When we were building defensive structures and downloading all the data from the computers, Brotherhood reinforcements arrived on the scene. One of them had a plasma caster and just narrowly missed Garvey’s head.” He paused to take another drink and sighed heavily. “The supercharged and heated plasma hit the metal pillar he was facing and some of the plasma splattered off to the side and hit him in the face. Got into his eyes mainly. Our own medic, may she rest in peace, said that his eyes were liquified, most likely.”

“Will he live?” her voice sounded as panicked as she felt. 

“Yeah he’ll live alright,” one medic said as he administered Preston a dose of med-x and then a stimpak. He looked up at Ridge.

“Whoever that field medic of yours was did a good job of cleaning out plasma before it could get deeper and preventing him from going into shock. If you hadn’t brought him back he might not have made it even then, however.”

“We couldn’t just leave him,” Ridge grumbled. “General Garvey would fight and die for us, he knew that going after the turbines would be the most dangerous of the missions so he led it himself. When he was able to form words he kept begging us to leave him behind, that he was useless. But we couldn’t leave him there.” The ghoul choked up near the end.

“Cait…” Preston hissed out as the medic wrapped gauze to cover the empty sockets of his eyes and the damaged parts of his upper nose.

Everyone froze at his words, most of all Cait.

“Cait, where is Cait?”

“I’m here.” She knelt down as she spoke and grabbed his hand.

“I need you to take my place… I’m useless.”

“No, don’t say that. That’s just the med-x talking,” she whispered.

“Not yet it isn’t. I can’t lead like this, someone else who has the fear and respect of everyone else, someone with the experience. I need you to be the next General. If you hate the job, then just hold it until we get an official government in. Please, do it for me.”

General Cait , Piper thought. God help us all.

~~~~~

Squire Gamble was no longer speaking to him. Nate wasn’t particularly surprised that she was angry at him, she was a teen after all and after the… incidents of the day of Proctor Teagan’s death, he supposed that killing Curie had upset her. He dragged her along and made her watch not out of any desire to punish Gamble, as she must be foolishly thinking, but instead to show her that the object of her affections was a manipulative traitor. He was trying to help her! Nate could have reported her for keeping one of Curie’s hands in her jacket pocket and had her whipped for holding onto illegal artifacts, but he didn’t as he was being kind to her. Ah well, she’d come around eventually. For now though, she slunk behind him in his shadow, staring daggers into his back. 

Curie had not been acting alone in her treasons, however. An investigation had discovered that she had been smuggling encoded information out of Brotherhood territory to the resistance, but she had not been the one to physically send it over the radio. She was merely the one to gather the information and encode it. It did not take much to figure out who it was and to say that Nate was profoundly disappointed in the culprit would be understatement. 

“I don’t understand, Travis, why would you do this? You had a good job, Scarlett was given a good position, you were given good housing and rations. Hell, I was the one who gave you your confidence. So can you explain to me why you would throw all this away, throw away the very future of the Commonwealth?”

Travis’ beaten and bloodied face stared back at Nate defiantly. There was a part of him, deep down, that was impressed with the resolve and genuine bravery within the soon to be ex-DJ of Diamond City Radio. It was not long ago that Travis was a meek, anxiety riddled man who could barely talk to anyone without surrendering. The face that Nate looked into now was proud, brave, defiant, and filled with that same seething hate that all the others outside of the Brotherhood and now even Gamble gave him. It was fucking infuriating. 

“What information did you give them?”

Travis’ face became even more smug. “Everything on your computers.”

That was impossible. An initiate punched him in the face, knocking a tooth out.

“Which sections did you and the robot steal from?”

“We took everything. Historical records from the east, historical records from the west, schematics, formulas, even some rumors from out west that may prove a shock to read about. I’d suggest you look through your own records someday. Hell, we even stole your medical records. Did you know that three of your very own Paladins fucked non-humans in the past six months? Oh and no, I don’t even mean with ghouls, that was four knights and six squires. These three Paladins seem to have had some interesting animal DNA picked up on them-”

This time a power armor covered fist smashed into Travis’ gut, causing him to cough out blood as he laughed. 

“You have no idea what we took, do you? Guess you’ll just have to find out!”

“How long have you been giving information over to the resistance?” Nate asked, marshaling his anger into the same stoic affect he usually had. God, he was so tired. He hadn’t gotten any sleep since the night before the attack. He needs to remain calm, he needs to keep his anger in check. He was the one in control here, not Travis. 

“Since the day your band of tyrants conquered Diamond City.”

Another blow to the face from an Initiate. Nate decided it was time for another line of questioning.

“Tell me the name of the degenerate that is going around murdering people.”

Travis got serious for a moment.

“Okay, alright. I didn’t like helping that freak. He’s killed too many people.”

Ah, finally. They were getting somewhere.

“What’s his name?” Nate asked.

“Nate Jackson.”

“Cut off his fucking hand, see if he keeps up this fucking smart ass routine.” Nate’s jaw clenched tight. Rage and anger coursing through him. He fought the sudden urge to beat Travis to death with his bare hands. The formerly meek radio host stared at Nate defiantly as a superheated sword came down swiftly upon his left hand, removing it from his wrist. Travis cried out in pain but soon was chuckling again.

“You’re brave, I’ll grant you that. I may have given you your confidence, but rest assured, I will take it away from you just as easily. Then I will have my answers.”

Travis’ laughter grew louder and more raucous until he started coughing up more blood.

“No. You can’t take this away from me. Here’s the thing about you, Nate. You have impacted the lives of countless people through the Commonwealth, even before you exterminated their loved ones or enslaved them. Some of the ways you impacted them were great, wonderful things. Perhaps there is a soul in you somewhere, perhaps it was just in the hopes of manipulating them later. But there is just something you fundamentally cannot understand. We’re our own people. You’re not owed special loyalty if you do nothing to keep it. You’ll never get the love and respect back that you once had from nearly everyone in the Commonwealth. Because you showed everyone who you truly are. An absolute-”

Nate had simply blinked and now found himself choking Travis against the wall, unending rage seething within him.

“You speak awfully confidently for a man whose girlfriend is within these walls. Will you be so confident when I have her brought in here and allow my confessors to do whatever they like with her?”

“She’s already out of the city, you fucking idiot,” Travis said between choking gasps. “The killer snuck her out almost as soon as you walked out to investigate that guy on the day of the attack.”

Nate slackened his grip for a moment in shock. Nowhere was safe. They needed to mobilize all Knights and Initiates immediately, search every residence in their territory for secret passages and tunnels, perhaps that way they can find this monst-

“AAAAGH!”

Nate sunglasses snapped in two from Travis headbutting him. The pain from the headbutt and the light hitting his sensitive eyes caused him to fall back. He squinted searching for the two halves of his sunglasses hoping that tape could put them back together for the interim when a knight blasted Travis with a laser pistol, the light coming out of it temporarily blinding Nate. He finally opened his eyes again and squinted at what had occurred. Travis’ head was separate from his body, the shot hitting him in the neck, it seemed.

“Squire!” he called out, but Gamble wasn’t in the room. Gone to get more guards, he assumed. “Fuck, Initiate. Help me up and find my sunglasses.”

“Yes my Lord.”

“My Lord?” one of the Knights asked.

“What?”

“What do we do with the corpse?”

“Stick the head on a spike in a place where everyone can see it. Impale the body on a spike in another spot a distance away where everyone can see it. No one shall escape the reminder of what happens to traitors. Now, get me to the Scribes so they can fix my glasses.”

~~~~~

Useless…

The word had haunted him all his life. His mother had shouted it at him for a lot of his childhood as she drank their caps away. His ever revolving cast of stepfathers whispered it when they thought he wasn’t looking. His father had certainly thought it, he knew, even if his dad was too polite to ever say it out loud. He had counted the days until he was 17 and could leave them behind and join a company in the Minutemen so that he could finally find a use for himself.

Useless…

Preston Garvey had never regretted joining the Minutemen, not for a second. But he frequently knew that he simply was not enough. He didn’t have the technical aptitude to fix what was broken like others did, so when they arrived in settlements all he could do was stand around awkwardly as the more talented and skilled tinkered away. He didn’t have the fighting prowess that plenty of his colleagues did. He was a good shot with the laser musket, but he didn’t have a warrior’s instinct. Preston had been part of the taskforce keeping General Joe Becker alive back in 82, but he knew it was his fault for not being the soldier needed to keep him and the Minutemen as a whole alive.

Useless…

The word had followed him around when he was helpless to prevent Quincy from falling into the hands of the Gunners and Colonel Hollis was captured. The word had clung to him like a bad stench when he was unable to save anyone on their march to Sanctuary Hills in the aftermath. Before they had gotten holed up in the Museum of Freedom in Concord, Preston had decided that he would get the remaining survivors to Sanctuary, set up some defenses, and then he would wander off into the woods forever. What good could he have done anyways? While they were holed up in the Museum and he fought off raiders, he remembered asking Mama Murphy at one point what she saw in his future. He had gotten pretty drunk off a bunch of beer he and Sturges had found.

Only darkness , she had said. At the time he took it to mean that he ought to go through with his plan to finally stop dragging everyone down with him. Now of course he knew that she meant he would lose his eyes. The bitter irony there would probably have gotten a smart ass response from her. He missed her, some days. It wasn’t until after Nate had officially joined the Brotherhood that Preston had realized Mama Murphy’s overdose was probably fueled by Nate just “leaving” drugs in nearby containers to “sell to merchants as an emergency.”

The thought of Nate filled Preston with bitter despair. That man had saved his life in multiple ways. The obvious one had been that he had killed the raiders that were besieging them and he then escorted them to Sanctuary Hills. The less obvious one was that his presence had given Preston purpose again. Preston knew he was not worthy to lead anyone, the march from Quincy had proved that decisively. Someone else had to lead and here was a bonafide American soldier. The perfect General. There was a man Preston was willing to serve and obey. Preston had long known that the closest thing to talents he had was in the planning side of things. Give him a map, an objective, and a list of resources and he could come up with a plan that would probably work. He could plot out a schedule for guard rotations and patrols to coincide with shipments to a highly accurate degree. 

General Nate Jackson had been the one to point out to Preston that his penchant for logistics and planning was one of, if not frankly, the most useful thing someone could focus on in an army. There had been a phrase he had told Preston that he couldn’t get out of his head. An army marches on its stomach . For the first time in a long, long, time, he felt as if he had a purpose.

Preston would have followed Nate almost anywhere at that point. He had been one of the few people close to him that was willing to hear out his rationale for joining the Brotherhood. The betrayal had stung, but he could listen to his General’s reasoning anyways. The vile words Nate had said about ghouls, synths, and super mutants that day would have pushed him away no matter what, but Nate’s defense of the Brotherhood massacring non-feral ghouls in the southern part of the Commonwealth sent him into a rage. 

It was only at the insistence of some of the very few people he could honestly claim to call friends that he donned the blue uniform of the General of the Minutemen and traded his regular hat for a tricorn. He did his duty every single day, never taking time away to rest more than was strictly necessary. Even then, he would frequently shave a few hours off his sleep schedule when focusing on keeping the fragile alliance of anti-Brotherhood forces together. With so much of his work focusing on planning out patrols, planning out guard rotations at various settlements, creating a functioning bureaucracy, negotiating food shipments and sending in proper escorts, he had to convince Cait to handle training the new recruits. She was reluctant, but he knew she was the perfect person for the job. Just as she was now the perfect person to replace him.

Useless…

He could not think of the last time he had spent so long in bed, not that he really had any understanding of time anymore. The only real way to tell the difference between sleeping and waking up when he was not drugged out of his mind for the pain was by hearing the people around him. People did visit him often, but he knew deep down that they were only visiting him due to their fear of General Cait. One of these days when she finally visited him, he would have to tell her to stop sending people in claiming that they loved him and respected him so much. He knew it was a lie as he knew what he was deep down.

Useless…

At some point after being set up in a room he would never recognize again, he was visited by Jack Cabot. He knew that Piper was creeped out by him and he had heard the stories from Nate about the secret of their longevity. Personally though, Preston found Jack to be a nice enough if deeply eccentric fellow. But if what Lorenzo Cabot was like was anything to go by, it would have been stranger if Jack hadn’t turned out odd. Preston had known that with the FEV they had brought back from their attacks, Jack had almost everything he needed to begin his bizarre experiments.

If anyone but Piper had been the one to go to him to plead on Jack Cabot’s behalf, he would have declined the request to get FEV. But if even she felt there was merit to his quest to find psychic powers, then Preston felt obligated to acquiesce. Jack’s visit had initially started off like all the others. Phony statements of sadness at his incapacitation, despair at the fact he could no longer lead. All bullshit. But then an interesting conversation happened. Jack had found a ghoul and a super mutant test subject but had yet to make any inquiries about a human test subject to take the FEV and the other nonsense to trigger psychic powers. He asked Preston point blank if he was interested in giving being a test subject a shot. He was going to say no, but it’s not as if he was going to be able to do anything to help out the fight against the Brotherhood ever again. So why not? Besides, a small part of him felt useful again.

So it was now that every day he was dosed with a tiny amount of FEV and other bullshit that he couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to. So far he hadn’t really noticed much of anything. Just something to look forward to each day. He began to time his periods of transition between consciousness and unconsciousness so that he was always conscious around the time that Jack was there giving him his daily doses and slowly phasing in a few experiments.

One morning he was in terrible pain and agony after being given the daily FEV. A doctor had finally given him some med-x to allow him to feel nothing. As he drifted out of consciousness and into a deep blissful sleep, he heard an argument erupt. The doctors and Cait were on one side, Piper and Jack on the other. He paid no attention to the words as his brain slipped away. Always alone, never useful.

?????

Preston was swimming, but wasn’t wet. It wasn’t a sea of water he was swimming in, rather, it seemed to be a sea of… firing synapses and neurons. There was a sort of purplish haze and taste to what he was swimming in. Was he… swimming in his own brain? What an odd dream this was. But perhaps since he knew this was a dream, he could change it up a bit. He focused on the idea of swimming out of his brain. His dream body swam forwards and upwards through the sea of synapses until… 

He was floating in the room where had been residing. He could see Piper, Cait, Jack, Doctor Freeman and a very anxious Sturges. These were his friends and his heart ached that he could never see them again. He focused first on Cait, who he felt somewhat guilty about forcing into being the new General. 

I’m sorry he whispered. If it makes you feel better, General’s blues suit you more than bloody tank tops.

Cait immediately went into a fight or flight response. Preston wasn’t sure what caused it, so he just reached out to give her comfort for whatever it was that prompted this.

Preston was suddenly standing in a garden filled with flowers and a bunch of domesticated animals. The dream had certainly taken a strange turn. He reached down and scratched the ears of a dog that reminded him of poor Dogmeat. 

“What in the flying fuck are you doing here?!” an Irish voice shouted angrily.

“What? This is my dream. What are you doing here?” Preston responded, incredibly confused.

“No, this is my fucking happy place. I come here whenever I’m stressed. I was already stressed about that fucking freak’s experiments and then suddenly I hear your voice in my head despite the fact that you’re passed out and not speaking.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll leave.” A beat of silence. “But how are we both here?”

“I don’t fucking care! Fuck off already!”

Preston swam upward and back into the sea of synapses outside of Cait’s dream. But… it wasn’t a dream, was it? He’d had immersive dreams before, but there was always a vague sense of cloudiness around the edges of his vision that helped him distinguish between dream and reality. Preston looked closer at the synapses he swam in and suddenly it was as if an eye was opened. These weren’t the synapses of his own med-x addled brain. This was a sea of connections, each synapse leading to a person and in the opposite direction, to something else, something beyond the perceptions of reality. He should have felt alone in this strange place, but instead there was a level of peace that washed over him. The infinite expanse of people connected to something beyond perception should have dwarfed Preston and shattered his mind. Yet… he felt the connections envelop him and retained himself, the connections began to slide and obey his hand movements. A quick burst and flash of images, sensations, and emotions that were not his own but were those of others, countless infinite others, filled his mind. Preston was not alone here- he was himself and part of everyone else.

~~~~~

Somehow, things kept getting worse. The funerals for the fallen had resulted in rioting, which was swiftly put down, but not without a bunch of laborers having to be placed under arrest and thrown into the Diamond City jails. Just when order had been restored for a few days, Travis’ head and body were put on display and the rioting got worse. This time a few Initiates and Lancers were slain. Those responsible had been executed and order eventually restored. There were still enough Knights to occupy and patrol the most vital areas, but with every loss an Initiate had to be promoted to full Knight without the necessary training to compensate. The number of Paladins had been dropping as well, so even more vacancies had to be filled by Lancer-Knights and Scribes doubling their standard duties with occupation ones.

Just when he thought that things were finally beginning to calm down and order had been restored, that fucking psycho struck again and damaged morale amongst the Brotherhood again. This phantom killer had not only struck again, but managed to murder and mutilate one of the Knights involved in Travis’ interrogation. Now the incredibly sleep deprived Nate stared blankly at the eyeless and tongueless head of Knight Lloyd. Out of his mouth poured a cascade of orange paint and in between the limbless torso on the ground and the severed head mounted on a wall in the same orange hue, was the same nonsensical question that had been asked each time before. What is the color of death?

Had it not been for everything that happened in 2077, 2076 would have gone down as the worst year in American history. What should have been a year of triumph with the final annexation of Canada into the United States was instead the beginning of the end. The sinking of the food fleets from Europe and Africa by Chinese steal subs had revealed the face of the average American. The rioting they engaged in sickened Nate at the time. America was in a war to the death against the forces of Chinese communism, a little discomfort and sacrifice was necessary. Nate and Nora had sacrificed much over the past ten years and had earned their privileged place in society. It was about time for the ungrateful civilians to sacrifice a little. They could afford to not gorge themselves at every meal and exercise some damn responsibility as a form of gratitude towards the government’s actions against the Chinese.

The coddled populace of Americans who had fallen to the siren song of Jefferson Atticus’ welfare programs and government guarantees of food showed their true colors during the August Riots. Daily riots for energy and food but without service to the country. How could anyone be surprised or upset when the great President Richmond Richardson had suspended all elections until the un-American activists were quashed?

Nate wondered what happened to President Richardson. He remembered an old war buddy telling him about the President setting up a top secret command center on an old oil rig off the coast of California. If that was indeed where he went in the months before the war, it seemed like a smart move. Perhaps one of these days he would look up what happened to him in the Brotherhood records. 

The eyeless face stared back down at Nate. Was this what Richardson felt like near the end? The question had been on his mind as everything unraveled around him. As he looked at the crime scene once more, Nate realized something. Not only had Lloyd been involved in Travis’ interrogation, he had been the one that killed the radio host. A chill crept up Nate’s spine. There was a new traitor somewhere, leaking information to the killer. The Scribes at the radio stations were all loyal and long-time members of the Brotherhood, so no information would leak out to the resistance. 

“How many have seen it?” he asked newly anointed Paladin Victor.

“No idea, my Lord. I’d have to assume a lot of people have.”

Morale would take another blow. Confidence in the Brotherhood as defenders and law enforcement would plummet. A downward spiral was hard to reverse. 

“Fine, okay.” Nate sighed with heavy exhaustion. He couldn’t put it off anymore, he was going to go to sleep for a few hours after finishing up here. “Is there any chance anyone knows that the one who executed Travis is the one dead here?”

Victor shifted uncomfortably.

“Victor…”

“There area where we found his right arm had a note painted in Lloyd’s blood. It said ‘The hand that slew brave Travis Miles’ with an arrow pointing at it. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the day all of our zones of control will know.”

Nate couldn’t decide whether to scream in anger, laugh hysterically, or simply shut down entirely. 

“Paladin, find a replacement for Knight Lloyd. Give Lloyd a burial, and shoot anyone that tries to disrupt his funeral.”

“Yes my Lord,” Victor said. He saluted and walked off to gather some Initiates and Squires to clean the area.

Nate promptly left and walked back through the maze of Diamond City’s current layout to return to his office and bunk. He threw his greatcoat onto his desk as Codsworth passed by.

“Anything I can do for you, sir?” Codsworth asked cheerily.

“Turn off all the lights, draw all the curtains, and don’t wake me for the next six hours unless it’s an emergency.” He was unbuttoning his uniform and tossing his boots away as he finally reached the door to his bedroom.

“Very good, sir!” Codsworth said. He began humming as he turned down all the lights and made his way over to the windows. Nate placed his sunglasses on the table next to the bed and collapsed onto it. He just needed some sleep. Once he got some, he would be able to figure out a plan. 

He and Nora were strolling on the boardwalk at Point Lookout in Maryland. It was their honeymoon. They’d gotten married the day he started his leave of absence from the Army and would spend their honeymoon here and it would last until his allotted days were up and he returned to the front. Some of his buddies had told him to be careful when it came to relationships. Most civilians weren’t happy with their loved ones being so far away and in danger all the time only to see them a few times a year. 

But Nora… she was different. She was like him. Driven, ambitious, unfailingly patriotic, unflappable in the face of adversity. They understood each other on a level that they each had never felt before. Nothing would get in the way of their relationship. They each wore their masks in front of each other but knew and loved what lurked beneath. 

Nora had just started law school and was happy to spend part of her summer vacation away from Boston. For the past three days they had seen the sights, got drunk on overpriced booze, and enjoyed the sunsets. It was a happiness he would cling to in the years to come while fighting in the cold north and when the bombs finally fell. Returning here after all that had happened relaxed Nate’s mind. They waltzed over to an open air bar and took a seat on the patio, enjoying the hot summer evening breeze as they ordered ice cold drinks. 

“How have you been, sweetie?” Nora asked him suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. I died and you had to move on.”

“Well… what do you want to know then?”

“How are things with the Brotherhood?” she asked. How could she know about the Brotherhood?

“Babe, this is a dream, stop questioning the logic,” she said laughing. That was a fair point.

He told her about the problems that they were having with filling the losses. He explained that they were having to consolidate a lot as well since there was massive unrest in the laborers.

“Are you going to ask Elder Maxson for reinforcements?”

Nate sighed and shook his head. He’d already considered it, as embarrassing as it would be to tell him that he needed more men and more firepower.

“Last we heard two months ago, he was leading a brief expedition to the east. Something about reports of an expanding Enclave state in the midwest he wanted to appraise the defenses of. Haven’t heard from him in a while, not least because the fucking Minutemen managed to somehow cripple our radios during their attack. We have nothing long range.”

Nora’s face was suddenly unreadable. 

“So let me get this straight. You’re taking losses that can’t be replaced, you have no chance of contacting reinforcements in the Capital Wasteland, you have a serial killer running loose and seemingly able to appear and disappear at will to kill your officers, and you are on the brink of a revolt of your indentured laborers?”

Nate chuckled bitterly. “That’s about the size of it.”

“So if the resistance was to attack you at some point in the next few weeks, it’d go poorly I assume.”

“We’d be able to hold them off as long as they didn’t attack us with damn near everything they have. The Charles River is a great defensive tool, but it’s not infallible. We can probably get our radios back up and running in two weeks, if the Scribes are right about their guesses. By then we can ask the Capital for reinforcements and see if Maxson is back.”

Nora looked at him with that same unreadable expression. She was studying him, peering through him and reading him. Then her face started shifting and warping, becoming incredibly uncanny.

“Thanks Nate,” the voice wasn’t hers. A blindfolded Preston Garvey sat in front of him. “The Minutemen and the Commonwealth Provisional Government under the leadership of First Secretary Nick Valentine thank you for your information and cooperation.”

The dream shifted and Nate bolted awake. He was pouring with sweat and his heart was pounding in his chest. A nightmare, that’s all it was. 

Not quite .

He stumbled out of the bed, scrambling for the light box. How the fuck did Preston Garvey get into his room?

He flicked on the light despite the sudden pain in his eyes. 

Nobody’s there, Nate. Just me.

Suddenly the room started warping and spinning. The edges of Nate’s vision purpled as Preston Garvey stepped out of the ether. His General’s blues singed and burned in spots loomed large. Nate’s gaze went up and saw that Preston’s eyes were wrapped in bandages. What the fuck happened there?

“How are you here?!” he shouted.

Here? No, I’m not here. The words expanded and created pressure against the insides of his skull.

I’m just in your head .

Nate screamed in agony as his head felt on the verge of exploding and then suddenly he passed out unconscious just as a worried Codsworth burst through the door.

He awoke with a pounding headache while laying on a medical examination table.

“Ah you’re awake, good,” the Doctor said.

Nate moved to sit up but his head hurt too much.

“Easy there, my Lord. Just lay still and explain to me what happened.”

Nate gave his best explanation of events. Much to his annoyance, the Doctor was looking at their computer terminal the entire time.

“Huh, well, that might be why they stole some FEV during the attack…”

“What does FEV have to do with what happened?”

The Doctor turned to face him.

“Simple, it appears that the Commonwealth Provisional Government, as they arrogantly call themselves, has managed to find a way to unlock psychic powers. Something we had only previously heard second hand reports of from our chapters out west.”

“But that’s…” Nate couldn’t even bring himself to finish his train of thought. What could he really say? That it was absurd? Everything about the world had become absurd since the bombs fell. Impossible? Well, the impossible happens all the time. 

“What can be done about it?”

The Doctor sighed. “I’ll be frank. I have no idea. But I’ll have every available Scribe pour through our archives for anything to prevent these psychic attacks. In the meantime, I’ll help you with whatever means you want to keep yourself from sleeping as that is when you are in danger.”

“Just give me some good painkillers and whatever stimulants you recommend, Doc.”

~~~~~

The Commonwealth Provisional Government had only inaugurated its first elected government a week and a half ago, but already it was in full swing. It had taken Nick a lot of convincing to agree to run for the Commonwealth wide elected position of “First Secretary”, but he had grudgingly agreed on the condition that no one would force him to serve more than the one year term. The rest of the Council had been local elections, the various settlements sending their representatives to Concord and being assigned a Secretary position to focus on and oversee. 

Piper was not convinced that this exact model would last long, but it was a fair start. She and Captain Zao, the ghoul Councilor and now Secretary of the Army, had discussed the idea of expanding the structure somewhat to possibly involve three legislatures each with different levels and types of representation, and three executives to ensure that no power could be concentrated and that everything was fair and open. But the consensus between the two of them for now was to shelve it until they retook Diamond City and kicked out the last of the Brotherhood. Once things were stable enough, a proper non-provisional government could be created. Piper technically didn’t have a position within the government, which she was more than happy about, but instead sort of occupied a weird space as an advisor to Nick and served to print the government’s business so as to make everything transparent. 

Preston’s newfound… abilities concerned her greatly. But she couldn’t deny that Jack Cabot had kept up his end of the bargain. They had gotten the information they needed and regardless of whether it gave Nate pain to have his mind entered like that, the psychological humiliation and paranoia he would feel afterwards would appease the darkest parts of Piper’s heart. As she lit up another cigarette shortly after finishing the first one, she wondered if she was a bad person for her part in this. 

Perhaps that was something to wrestle with when this was over and the comfort of a clear conscience could be afforded.

“Want me to refresh that drink?” Sturges asked.

“Please,” she said smiling. He stepped over and poured her another large glass of his homemade bourbon and lemonade recipe.

Right now the two of them were sitting outside her and Nat’s house, watching the sunset on the eve of battle. If Preston’s intelligence gathering and their newest spy within the Brotherhood’s ranks was to be believed, they were close to fixing their radios. Once they did, it would only be a matter of time before reinforcements arrived and slaughtered or enslaved them all. It was now or never. 

The plan was simple. Pickman would create an incident that would send all of the laborers that kept the Brotherhood afloat into a massive riot and revolt. Their spy within the Brotherhood would fire off a flare when this was happening, and the Army of the Commonwealth would launch their multi-pronged invasion of Boston. Cait and Piper’s team would retake Diamond City. Bloodmasher, the super mutant division, and the heavy ordinance Minutemen would push through Hangman’s Alley with their rockets, missiles, and mini-nukes before finally moving to take advantage of taller buildings and focus on sniping the Brotherhood soldiers or shooting down Vertibirds. Colonel Ridge would take the bulk of the army to reinforce the revolt north of the airport. With the full might of the Commonwealth Provisional Government and all the free peoples within, it should be enough to expel the Brotherhood of Steel once and for all.

Tomorrow, Piper would say goodbye to people she cared about for likely the very last time. Tomorrow, the man she once loved would face the justice he so desperately deserved. Tomorrow… she wouldn’t have a target, an enemy to work all of her energies towards fighting and exposing. The thought should have brought her excitement and giddy joy. Instead, it brought her fear and anxiety. There was a comfort, in a strange way, of having an enemy, however ill-defined it may be. When the Brotherhood were gone, she’d have no real goal to push towards anymore. The Institute was gone. Nate and his band of tin can wearing fascists would be gone. What would she do with herself?

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Sturges asked as he lit up a cigar.

“I’m thinking about tomorrow,” she replied in between drags of a cigarette and drinks of Sturges' so-called “Feel Good Lemonade”.

“Sorry, dumb question. Shoulda known that. What about tomorrow has you pulling that crease you get when you’re working yourself up into a migraine?”

“What? I don’t have a crease like that!” she said, scowling bitterly.

“Yeah you do.”

Piper turned and scowled even more as she saw Nat walk out, pull up a chair, and take a long drink of lemonade through a straw. Sturges was dying of laughter in the background.

“That better be regular lemonade…” Piper grumbled. Nat simply stuck her tongue out at her.

“Now come on, tell me.”

Piper took a long drink as she thought of how to articulate it. 

“For so long, I've pushed through hard and easy times by focusing on fighting against some large injustice or conspiracy or… an enemy, I guess. If any kind. First it was those raiders that bribed the town guard that killed Dad, then it was minor corruption rings, then the Institute, and now finally… him .”

“The future looks bright, but we’ll need someone keepin’ us honest. There’ll be new things to focus on, new mysteries to unfurl, new conspiracies to put in the light of day,” Sturges said as he grabbed Piper by the shoulder and squeezed it.

“I just… I just don’t know how to feel about the end of this part of my life. It's gone on so long and it will be strange to have to let it go.”

“We’ll be here for you Piper, this won’t be easy for any of us. We’re headin’ full speed into a new world.”

“I'm here for you too, sis,” Nat said. 

Piper leaned over and gave her sister a side hug.

“But even still, we can’t forget those that are gone or will die tomorrow. Into a new future, yes. The sacrifices of those who got us here can’t be forgotten.”

Sturges nodded as he took a long drink. “Oh I agree. Maybe when this is all wrapped up and we’re in Diamond City again, someone should write a book or a history of how we got here.”

Piper rolled her eyes at the thought, but it did grow on her. All the good and the bad should be remembered and… it did give her something to work towards. The three of them sat out and watched as the sun set on the Old Commonwealth. If the sun tomorrow set on a free Commonwealth or on a Brotherhood one, none could say. 

~~~~~

Nate hadn’t slept since the psychic incident thanks to the drug cocktail that the Brotherhood doctors kept him on. He was looking forward to the next time he could sleep, but he would not succumb now. Sleep was when the Scribes theorized people were most vulnerable, so all of the Brotherhood was ordered to either take the same drug regimen Nate was on, or to practice taking power naps through the day to stay rested but vigilant. It had seemed to work so far. There had been no reported psychic incidents and the Scribes and engineers had been able to work on the radios without any interference. 

The early morning sunlight shone through the windows in Nate’s office. He read through reports on the terminal while he chain smoked and drank a cup of coffee mixed with his drug cocktail of stimulants. The radios would likely be fixed by tomorrow afternoon, according to Scribe Victor. It was embarrassing to have to call for reinforcements after he had relayed the story of his role in pacifying Canada to Elder Maxson, but it was clear that there needed to be more boots on the ground. More firepower, more resources to strike the fear of punishment into the hearts of the Commonwealth. More, more, more. 

A strange whimpering sound caught his attention suddenly.

“Do you hear that?” he said suddenly to Squire Gamble, who was cleaning out a bunch of Nate’s personal sidearms so as to stay awake. She sat in front of his suit of empty power armor.

“No?” she said, confused.

Just as he was about to get to the next report, he heard it again. This time, he got up out of the chair and walked out of the room to the balcony area to see where this dog was. The morning air was crisper than he expected, but he was far too focused on finding the noise to grab his greatcoat. He glanced down into the main market of Diamond City. Knights marched through, some people were waking up to head to their work assignments. He glanced upwards towards the upper stands. None were awake up there. It was still far too early in the morning for most to be up.

He shook his head and dismissed it. Clearly it was just the sound of Gamble polishing a gun. He started turning back to the door and there sat a very familiar dog.

“Dogmeat? What are you doing here? I thought you died,” he said as he knelt down to pet him.

Dogmeat woofed at him and panted happily as Nate scratched behind his ear. 

“Funny how much that dog loved you, despite the absolute piece of shit you are, Blue.”

Nate froze at the voice. That one was absolutely impossible. He pushed himself up and found himself face to face with John Hancock.

“No, no, no. I have your head in my collection. I know for a fact you died.”

Hancock pulled his own head off and cradled it in his arms.

“That better, Blue?”

“You’re dead, you and everyone in Goodneighbor is dead.”

“Oh, very dead. But guess what? Psychics can apparently commune with the dead. And there’s a lot of us here that have something to say to you.”

“Hey pal, how’s it hanging?” MacCready looked at him. “You know, I was also fighting to help my son. But I guess you never remembered that, did you?”

“It was Duncan, wasn’t it?”

“Oh ho ho, so you do remember, you just don’t care when you condemned him to being an orphan and well, he’s not long for this world since I can’t bring him a cure, you fucking son of a bitch.”

Nate clenched his jaw. 

“That was not my fault, we never found the cure you were looking for. If you had simply gone along with the Brotherhoo-”

“YOU BLEW UP THE INSTITUTE BEFORE SEARCHING IT FOR A CURE!”

“Dad!” two voices said in unison. 

Nate turned around and reluctantly looked down. Two Shauns stood there. 

“One of you is not real.”

“It’s him!” the both said, pointing at each other.

“I guess it doesn’t matter, he killed both of us anyway.”

“Dad why did you kill us?”

“I have no son,” Nate growled. “My only son was taken from me and turned into a monster that crafted abominations. He died long before I shot him.”

“That funny. You call someone else ‘monster’. If I break you, no milk of human kindness comes out. Wanna see if I am right?”

Nate scrambled backwards and back into his office.

“What’s wrong Blue?” Hancock asked. “We’re your friends and family! Why can’t we join you on the eve of your triumph? Soon there’ll be no one like us left alive, you can only celebrate your final victory once!”

“And you have no one left to celebrate with,” MacCready called out.

“Squire Gamble! Alert the base, the psychic attacks are back!”

Gamble wasn’t there.

“Gamble?”

Nothing.

Had Preston done something to her? Or maybe he had made Nate unable to see her? What was even real right now?

A very real sharp pain slammed into the base of his back as he felt himself lose control of his legs. He fell forward onto the sofa that Gamble had been sitting on. Maybe she had left him a gun before Preston did whatever it was to her.

“That was for Curie,” Squire Gamble said with more emotion in her voice than Nate had ever heard come from her. 

He tried to push himself up, perhaps this was another one of the psychic phantasms. He couldn’t get up, but he did pull himself farther up. To his horror, he saw his power armor open.

“If you had ever paid the slightest bit of attention to your own armor, you’d have realized when it was empty and someone was pretending it was empty.”

Out stepped a bearded man in a dark blue suit. He straightened his tie as he hummed and waltzed over to Nate.

“My my, excellent work!” he said to Gamble. 

That voice, he knew that voice. Wait, a singularly vicious man with artistic pretensions and someone who knew the secrets of Boston like the back of his hand.

“Pickman?” Nate groaned as he pushed himself to his side. To his horror, an absolutely seething Gamble was standing beside a particularly malicious looking Pickman.

“The one and only. I’m almost offended that it took you this long to recognize my work. But then again, I suppose not taking their heads confused you. I must say, your own head collection could use some work. Collecting the heads of friends and family seldom augurs well for what comes very soon for you.”

“Wha-what…”

“I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you since you’ll be the star of the final piece of my magnum opus. In a few hours, after the darling Gamble here rotates a few schedules and patrol routes from your terminal over there, you’ll be found with the answer to the question I’ve been asking all this time.”

“Then, when you’re found, panic will spread and riots and revolts will start again by those you keep shackled and bound. When the Knights across our lands are focused on massacring civilians, I’ll shoot a flare and the entire Commonwealth will come marching in,” Gamble said as she furiously typed away at his terminal. 

“And done. It’s all yours, Pickman. You know a secret way out? I need to get going.”

Pickman nodded. “Most excellent work Gamble! When this is all through, I should teach you about the wonders of art!”

“I look forward to it,” she said as she slipped out the front door. 

Pickman flipped Nate on his back after pulling out the serrated dagger.

“I wonder if you’ve figured out the answer to my question. Think hard on it, Blue, based on all the other colors I’ve used and the one primary color I have left, I think you might be able to piece it together. Do you know what the color of death is, Blue?”