Sunlight glistened on the tiles of the Jefferson Memorial. A new dawn rose from above the water to the east as the Lone Wanderer gazed over his handiwork. 5 years had passed since he had purified the waters of the Potomac and already the fruits of his labor were beginning to show: A trading post had been set up on the riverbank, not a ramshackle affair made of sheets of metal, but of stone, actual stone. Even months later, the Wanderer could still not believe it: the first stone buildings in D.C. in over two centuries. Unthinkable.
He made a mental note to thank Scribe Yearling at the Arlington Library for that. After years of collecting Pre-War Books for her, a discovery of something so simple and yet so groundbreaking came out of her research: Cement. Out of all places, in a book on Ancient Roman history. The knowledge gained from it allowed the inhabitants of the Wasteland to make cement out of broken up rubble.
Looking towards the ruins of D.C., he chuckled and said to himself in a coarse voice: "Well, we have plenty of that."
Even D.C. looked different. Slowly but surely, the effort to clear the Supermutants out of D.C. was joined with the requirement for new rubble. This was, of course, the Lyon's Pride pet project, war and peace joined together. The Supermutants were driven back west to Vault 87 to nurse their wounds, where, rumor had it, "The Lone Wanderer slaughtered them all, 500 of them, with a switchblade."
The rumors were greatly exaggerated.
The Supermutants had left the ruins of D.C. just shy of one hundred strong. A force that strong headed west would have caused death and destruction to any and all settlements in their path, and the Wanderer would never have allowed that. So he followed them, sticking to the shadows, picking off stragglers with his Infiltrator silenced-machine gun. He herded them away from settlements, like a dog with a herd of bloodthirsty mutated sheep. Away from Megaton, Big Town, even Paradise Falls. Not even slavers deserved what Supermutants did to their prey.
North and West he drove them. The Supermutants knew they were being followed, pushed west, but their limited understanding could not comprehend that they weren't just being pushed away from D.C., they were being pushed towards a determined location. By the time they had reached the mountains in the North West, there were only 58 mutants left, held together by the combined wills of their overlords as their companions suddenly fell in the silence of the night, their bodies left by the road side for the Yao Guai to eat.
Once there, the Wanderer began shooting at the weaker members of the horde from a distance with a basic Sniper rifle, opting for the loud noises the rifle would make in order to spook the already demoralized mutants, who in their panic, began running into a nearby cave. At that point all the Wanderer had to do was let the myriad of Deathclaws who inhabited their sanctuary in the mountain slaughter the mutants entirely.
Brutal, yet effective. Such was the Wanderer with his enemies. He couldn't help but smile at the memory, two enemies of the Capital Wasteland destroying each other in one fell swoop. For good measure, he had launched several Fat-Man bombs at the cave entrance, just to block the few stragglers in.
"Do you always stare or is today a special occasion?"
The voice broke him out of his reverie as he realized he had been staring at Sarah Lyons hauling a slab of stone out of the D.C. ruins as his thoughts had wandered, her power armor doing most of the work for her. She looked as if she was carrying a moderately heavy pack, not a 200 pound slab of cut stone.
"Sorry Sarah, my mind was somewhere else," He said, "How's the construction going?"
Sarah brushed a lock of blonde hair out of her face. "Slow," she admitted, "these stone buildings last longer but they also take longer to build, and new refugees keep coming out of the west to come partake in the 'Waters of Life.'"
She paused and looked over at the half-finished large shell of a building her fellow Pride members were working on. "Who woulda thought, huh? The 'Great and Valiant Lyon's Pride' now nothing more than glorified construction workers."
The Wanderer smiled, a rare sight in the Capital Wasteland, "We've been fighting for so long, it's hard to adapt to not having a gun on hand at all times. I can understand that."
Sarah paused, looking pensive. "No, not you. You're no city boy. You're a wild man, Wanderer. You'll always have a gun in your hand."
And with that, she picked up her stone slab and hauled it over to her brothers.
Far to the West, another wanderer looked over the ruins of the once powerful Enclave stronghold. Raven Rock, built over two centuries earlier to guard a few powerful men and women from nuclear hellfire. A bastion to both the ingenuity and the paranoia of civilization. He understood this.
He understood that at its core, civilization was nothing more of a parody of life, a cycle of death and destruction masquerading as liberty and security. He once thought the solution to such a conundrum was to rain flames from the sky and start anew, without civilization. Another man had stopped him then, had showed him a new way and a new path.
The Wanderer turned and walked away from the ruins, and walked towards the nearby bluffs overlooking the Capital Wasteland, his brown overcoat buttoned above the belt, a new acquisition which reminded him of his former duster, given to a friend. The significance of his overcoat was lost on him, and neither were the pins and stars adorning the lapels. He was wearing history. No, he *was* history.
Beneath him sprawled the Wasteland, the Potomac a snaky river in the distance, and the great city on its bank a testament to what was, what is, and what is to be.
The newcomer smiled, and made his way down the cliff. He was far from where he was born, in the deserts far to the south and west. Far from allegiances past, broken in blood and steel in the Mojave. Once a courier, now a wanderer, after many years Ulysses he had come home.
You're a wild man, Wanderer. You'll always have a gun in your hand.
The Wanderer woke with a start, Sarah Lyons' words echoing through his head. He was in his Megaton home, scarcely furnished with bare essentials. He wasn't groggy, that was a habit he had eliminated from years of sleeping in the wilds. Grogginess dulled the senses, slowed reaction times and perceptions. Life or death outside the steel walls of Megaton. Rising from his bed, he moved quickly to the small bathroom, splashing water on his face. His brown chestnut hair combed out of his face at shoulder length and a 5 o'clock shadow adorned his head, while tired eyes and a thin mouth completed the picture.
He had to admit, he looked… tired. Scarcely thirty, the Wanderer's eyes seemed twice that age, having lived and seen enough for two lifetimes. He couldn't shake away Sarah's words. She was right, of course. She had a knack for that. He wasn't equipped to deal with peacetime, not anymore. Maybe once, over a decade ago, when he stepped out of Vault 101 for the first time, but now… he had seen too much. Lived through too much. Peace wasn't for men like him.
Doc. Church had called his condition PTSD. What that stood for, the Wanderer wasn't sure. He had been prescribed some chems for his mood, minor amounts of Ultrajet and Mentats taken once a day in the morning. The boxes and inhalers lay unused on his kitchen table, gathering dust. He knew he didn't need them, plus he didn't want to risk succumbing to addiction. Chems led to addiction, addiction led to weakness, weakness led to death.
Vigilance, always vigilance.
This was a lesson the Wanderer had learned the hard way.
In the wastes, in the land beyond the walls of Megaton, the Citadel, Rivet City, or even confines of the four walls of his house, distractions killed you. Deathclaws, Supermutants, Raiders, Talon Mercs, the Capital Wasteland demanded nothing but your absolute best at all times. There was another reason, a darker reason, for his avoidance of his medications.
Over 10 years ago, when the Wanderer left the vault that he had called home, he had trouble understanding the Wasteland. Megaton he understood, the first settlement he encountered. There were good people there. Decent people trying to get by. He even understood the nefarious Mr. Burke, someone evil and heartless for sure, but with clear motivations.
What changed him was his experience at the Super-Duper Mart and the Raiders.
He had gone on an assignment for Moira Brown. He needed the caps to make his way east, but he had also wanted to help the quirky woman. Like him, she just wanted to help the people of the Wasteland. His first encounter with the Raiders changed the Wanderer. Moira had warned him of their ferocity and he had heard the stories around the town, from Jericho, but he had dismissed them as tall tales. Nobody could be that depraved.
The first thing that struck him as he entered the Super-Duper Mart was the smell. He almost gagged at the thought of it. An unholy combination of mildew, stale air, unwashed bodies and rotting flesh. All these years later, he still couldn't shake the sight of the bodies hanging from the ceiling from chains and hooks. He had learned enough from his father to know that many of them hadn't yet died before being hoisted up in the Raiders' perverse crucifixes.
No Raider survived his righteous fury that day. He couldn't fathom the senselessness of the Raiders, the killing and torture of their fellow wastelanders for no reason save the sake of killing itself. After gathering the medical supplies and various quantities of Jet from the bodies of the slaughtered Raiders, he locked himself in a back room, protected by a Protrection he had activated. Surrounded by bottles of alcohol, syringes of Med-X and Jet inhalers, he consumed them all, trying to forget, to cope with his new reality. Hours, days, he still did not know how long he had spent in that dusty room, sitting on the floor with his head in hands. He consumed all of it, anything and everything to dull his senses.
When he emerged from the Super-Duper Mart he was a changed man. He knew he had a purpose, to protect the Wasteland and its inhabitants, whatever the cost. To himself or to his enemies. The Wasteland and its inhabitants demanded perfection from him, and he would give it to them or die trying.
Shaking out the bad memories, he moved towards his locker and donned his usual garb: a longcoat given to him by Vance, a friend, in Meresti Station. Brown, like much of the ground in the Wasteland, it allowed him to blend in with his environment. He then pulled Poplar's hood over his head. There was no particular strategic reason for this, other than that it fit his outfit, however the hood retained the clean, woodsy smell of the Oasis, and it reminded him of the saintly old Bloomseer.
Tapping Wadsworth affectionately on his hull, he said "I'm leaving for a bit, Wadsworth. Keep the house from burning down, ok?"
The Mister Handy butler's voice module replied glibly "I couldn't even if I tried, Master. Please stay safe, heaven forbid some other Wasteland-wandering Vault Dweller tried living here."
Shutting the door behind him, he made his way to the Megaton exit, where Lucas Simms awaited him. The Wanderer held Simms in high regard, and the feeling was mutual, ever since he had saved Simms' life all those years ago. He had abandoned his position as Sheriff (and the duster that came with it) a few years ago, citing a need to "give these old joints a break". He still looked imposing in his Merc Cruiser Outfit.
No words were said between the two, there was an implicit understanding between the two. Just like Simms could not imagine life in the Wastes outside Megaton, the Wanderer could not imagine life settled down in civilization. Simms, even after retirement, still felt he had an obligation to the inhabitants of Megaton. Similarly, the Wanderer had an obligation to the whole Wasteland, and part of that meant roaming the wastes, eliminating threats and becoming one with the land.
That was the Wanderer's secret. What made him so deadly to enemies of the waste, and what made him so much more effective than the Regulators. They inhabited the Capital Wasteland, but they did not respect it. They merely tried to live their lives in it, getting by day by day, receiving nothing from it. The Wanderer, instead, learned the land, he lived the land. The Wasteland could spit out the unprepared, the disrespectful and the ignorant. That was why the Brotherhood of Steel, no matter how well intentioned, could not survive outside the confines of civilization. They were equipped to fight in open ground, in ruined roads of D.C., not the hilly outcrops of the western Wastelands. That was the Wanderer's domain.
Leaving Megaton behind him, he made his way North and West. He needed the solitude of those mountains, to allow him to collect his thoughts and understand what his role in the new Wasteland would be.
You're a wild man, Wanderer. You'll always have a gun in your hand.
The words still echoed back and forth in his mind, and struck at some unknown nerve deep within him. They had been said without malice, and yet truer words had never been said: The Wanderer had no place in civilization, his senses too attuned to the wilderness. He passed Vault 101 to his left, the place that had once been his home, now lost to him forever. He trudged further north, quickly dispatching a Giant Ant which came too close. To his right, in the distance, he could make out the broken overpass where Arefu was located. He continued his path north, as the sun began to set. The Potomac now extended before him. This far north, the water was still irradiated, but the Waters of Life would make it soon, he was sure.
He sat down on the bank of the Potomac, pensive. In front of him, he could make out the Roosevelt Academy, once filled with Supermutants, now merely an empty shell of a once prestigious high school.
As he sat on the riverbank he observed the school. The Wastelanders had already begun prospecting the ruins, dragging out sheet metal, steel rods and other scrap for use in construction. He began to make out one such prospector exiting one of the buildings, his face masked by the shadow of the edifice, however he was covered in a familiar overcoat. One that he had seen before on another man, the man who killed his father.
Autumn!
The Wanderer's mind went red as he sprinted to the water's edge and began crossing the river. It wasn't possible. Autumn was dead, by his hand. He had avenged his father by shooting the cold Enclave general in the heart… repeatedly. It was simply not possible that Autumn was still alive. The colonel was dead, the Enclave was gone.
How?
The Wanderer made it to the other riverbank and crested the ridge leading down into the courtyard. In the moonlight, the stranger's features becoming clearer. It wasn't the long dead Colonel, and it wasn't his overcoat either. The stranger was imposing, tall and dark-skinned, his overcoat in a similar style to the incriminating garment but in a dark olive and featuring pre-war insignias on the lapels. The man's fair was shoulder-length, tied into many twisted dreadlocks framing his face.
The stranger was observing in the burnt tree in the middle of the courtyard, rubbing the bark, his back to the Wanderer.
"Do you know the history of this place, Wanderer of the Wasteland?" he said in a gravelly voice, his back still turned.
The Wanderer eased out of his hostility, his hand, however, still hovered at his side, where he had a 10mm Pistol, in addition to the silenced Infiltrator assault rifle strapped to the inside of his open duster.
"It was a school before the War.," the Wanderer replied warily. The stranger appeared to be alone and unarmed, surprising for someone this far west. "Supermutants used to hold this place. Gone now."
The stranger turned, revealing a grizzled, haggard face and a strong chin. He grinned, a slightly disconcerting sight.
"Aye, a school. The best and brightest sons and daughters of America came here. Studied. Lived. Laughed. America's history shaping its future. Gone now. Like them Supermutants of yours."
The stranger knelt as if to sit, but instead pulled a bundle of sticks, as well as a makeshift flint and tinder. In silence, he expertly lit the bundle, creating a small fire in the courtyard. He sat on the stone edge of the planter and gestured for the Wanderer to join him by the fire.
The Wanderer hesitated. This man seemed alien to him, alien to the Capital Wasteland, and yet at the same time, his gut feeling told him there was no danger. Not now at least. He knelt by the fire, warming him self as the night sky began to raise a chill. Mist rose from the Potomac, hugging the ridge surrounding the academy.
"I've heard stories about you, Wanderer. The stories spread, always changing, never the same. The Lone Wanderer. Kid from Vault 101. All over the North-East. Pitt, Maryland. They heard your name even up in the Commonwealth. You're changing the history of this place." he began, looking intently at the Wanderer, in particular at his Pip-Boy for some reason.
The Wanderer shrugged, "I've been around. Knew there were stories about me around. Not all true." He met the stranger's eyes, "You've heard a lot about me, but I can't say the same about you."
The stranger laughed then, something perhaps even more disconcerting than his smile, revealing perhaps a slight madness in him.
"I'm just a traveller, a wanderer like yourself, searching for my home. Was a courier once. Back West. Things happened. People like yourself change history with every step you take, history changed me. A sign. Just like this meeting tonight is a sign."
The Wanderer was not quite sure how to respond, and so he didn't. Instead opting to gaze into the dancing flames. They sat in silence for a while, until the Wanderer, compelled by curiosity, asked:
"A sign of what exactly?"
Another grin.
"Who knows? Civilization maybe. Change. Endings and New Beginnings."
"If it's civilization you're looking for, you're in the wrong place. Nothing but ruins and Deathclaws out here. You need to look for D.C. to find that."
"Aye, maybe. But that's not what I came looking for. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is set on finding my home. What are you looking for, Drifter of the Wastes?"
"Who says I'm looking for something?"
Another laugh.
"The fact that you're still wandering these wastes alone, trying to change history once again."
"I do it because it is necessary."
"Is it though? History is pushing you further and further away from civilization. Who needs your help out here? People, they moving to D.C., to salvation and safety. Not you. You live with the Yao Guai, wild man."
"Who are you? You know much about the Capital Wasteland for a stranger."
The stranger looked apologetic, embarrassed by his own faux-pas.
"My apologies Wanderer, I am Ulysses, of the Twisted Hair tribe. I come from beyond the great storms of the midwest. For 3 years, I have been traveling East. Until now. I look for answers, and I will find them here."
He held out his hand in greeting, a formality of a former time.
"John." The Wanderer took the hand and clasped it.
"John, let me tell you about the Mojave."