It's been three years, since Cain and I left home in search of answers. Answers that we hoped would soothe our curious minds, and provide something of substance to his origin. We left in search of a better life together. A life I didn't feel the Capital Wasteland would provide, or even dare to offer. We left together, north towards what once was Canada. We began our adventure to the Commonwealth, three years ago near this very day. Three years ago, my parents passed, and three years ago I left all of what I learned of my life, my history, and the history of my parents behind.
Three long, brutal, treacherous years. People will often look back, and reflect on how quickly time passes. How when you think of it, three years is nothing but a blink of an eye. But when you live nearly forever, when your time in this world isn't burdened by withering age and brittle bones, your entire existence seems like one big today. One long, dreary, struggling day. My mother may have seen this trip differently. She may have seen it as an adventure, excited to be strictly beside my father. She would have loved to endure what Cain and I were forced to, loved to be in such different lands, with such different climates and witnessed horrendous creatures. In a way, I wish I was like her in that sense. I wish I could have enjoyed this voyage. Instead, I find myself longing simply to return home. To return, and take time to figure out how this began. How I came to be as I am now, and why I can't seem to figure out what's me, and what's my parents.
It's true that ignorance is bliss. Nobody wants to tell you that though. Even in today's day and age, where the ignorance of man surrounds one on a daily basis. Ignorance is bliss, because had I been so ignorant of my parents, of their personalities, then I'd be dumb enough to accept this human being, this thing, this...abomination…as myself. I don't call myself that because I truly feel that way. It's just, in these three years; many things have come to surface. Many dark and desperate things. When you've gone four days without water, food, or radiation, your mind does things to you. It brings all those inner demons to a head. They bubble to the surface, and scream in your mind so loudly it makes you wish you could just go deaf. Those demons were all I had sometimes, when even Cain couldn't reach me. They helped me realize that I don't know who I am. That my entire life, my entire existence, was based around what my parents built. Their reputation. Their actions. Their wise choices. None of it was mine. None. Even fleeing to New Vegas didn't release me from the grip of their actions and events.
Our trek to the Commonwealth proved less fruitful than our excursion to New Vegas, though. It was rumored that the Commonwealth was filled with people. Scientists. People who could provide us with answers to our questions. Provide us with rations, ammunition, and perhaps even a home. If there were people in the Commonwealth, Cain and I never found them. The entire land was worse than the Capital Wasteland ever was before. Red smog filled the air, thick, and too thick for even radiation to penetrate. The sun lit everything in red, though. Smog isn't actually red. If there was hope in the Commonwealth, or even a chance of anything for Cain and I, it has since been destroyed. By what, we didn't bother to find out. It had taken us so long to get there, and we had given up so much, that simply arriving to nothing but desolation destroyed any willpower we had left. It shattered us. And the voices in my mind grew louder than ever before, as I stood among the rubble and trash of a once-great city.
We spend a year and a half travelling to the Commonwealth. Bearing the elements, facing creatures like super mutants and deathclaws combined together. Cannibals, ghouls who weren't feral, but angry, and more powerful than I've ever encountered. There was no reasoning with the people we met on our way here. As if all logic and rationality was dead to them. Their only want was to survive. We'd never encountered such things, or needed to survive as desperately as we did in our journey there. Knowing we had done in all chasing a pipe dream, chasing absolutely nothing, destroyed more than our drives and hopes. It destroyed us. The elements threw everything they had at us. The world wanted to test us. Test our ability to work together, to communicate, and keep our heads in place and high during even the worst times. But we failed that test. We failed, and I'm not even sure it bothers us anymore.
As I said. When we arrived at the Commonwealth and discovered it in its current state, there were no words. There was no need for words. We had put everything we had into this trip. Exhausted our resources, our minds, everything. In return we gained nothing. We simply turned our backs, and began the long journey home. But why home? Why the Capital Wasteland, when we had no reason to return? When we had spent so much time trying to escape it? Because where else could we go? Where else in this world, could we turn to, knowing now more than ever, it may not even exist? At least in returning home, we had a small comfort in knowing that it's still there.
Neither one has spoken to the other since leaving. Before, the silence would have bothered me. Shaken me to the core, with fear and insecurity. But now, after enduring all that I have, after earning scars and wounds just as my mother before me has, the silence is the most peaceful thing to me in the world. I'm not sure if Cain feels the same, but I'm too drained to even care. I'm too drained to worry about anyone else other than myself these days. There's no need to speak it. No reason for it all to be solidified in words. We both know the relationship that grew between us has died. And when it died, when that love that sparked so violently and burned so brightly faded away, I realized that a love like my parents had together isn't meant for everyone. It's only meant for those willing and strong enough to fight for it. I'm not willing, nor am I strong. I've only learned that I do not want to be any part of my mother, or my father. I watch to etch my own world, my own story, into this world. I crave my individualism upon returning. I crave to be Dizzy, and not just Dizzy, daughter of Charon and Dezbe. I crave it, I long for it, I need it just as my body needs the blood that courses through my veins. In this time, I've discovered many, many things. I've discovered that despite my happy childhood, I resent my parents for casting me in their shadow. For sheltering me, and forcing me to a life in Megaton. I imagine now, what my life could have been, if they had let me wander into the world at a younger age. I imagine how different I'd be, had they not unknowingly bound Cain to my side. What loves and adventures I may have found on my own. I want no more part, in the stories my mother and father burned into the land of home. I am not them. I am Dizzy.
Cain and I are together now, because still without me, he can't survive. Despite the fact that I want so much to be alone, I'm not cruel enough to let him die. He is still a large part of my life. He still means something to me. I'm not sure what he means to me, but I know it's something. You'd think, being a copy of my father, he'd come to be just like him. The only similarity I see between the two is the constant serious expression etched into their faces. His eyes focused, serious, and never flinching. But is he anything like my father? Is his personality that of the man I loved and thought could do no wrong? No. Cain is nothing like him. Cain is emotionless, serious, and never letting enjoyment affect him. In these years, he's forgotten how to feel anything. I can't decipher if it's because of his own experiences here with me, or because of his programming. People would tell me of how serious and solemn my father was, but I can't imagine him being anything like Cain portrays. I can't imagine my mother having stayed with a man like that for very long.
Before, when this journey began, Cain and I were stupid, and hopeful. We were filled with dreams and our imaginations ran wild with what we'd find as we traveled further and further north. At night, we'd lie awake and compare our thoughts of the matter, usually after a bout of passionate love making. But those days have since died, and no more do we share dreams or imaginative ideas. I'm not even sure we have them anymore. We don't speak, we don't communicate, we do nothing but walk together, and keep our hands in constant quick reach of our guns. The two of us, have become so vastly different, that if we could leave one another's side, we would have a long, long time ago.
I dream of my parents sometimes. At night, I sometimes sleep and images of them flood my mind. In some, they try to lecture me. Tell me what I need to do, what I have to do, and other such things parents bother their children with. But I never listen, and when they enter my mind I force myself awake. They've been gone too long now. I no longer want any part of them. No longer want them in my life, other than distant memories. I hold the memories of my childhood close, and still take some pride in being the daughter of a vicious mercenary, but that's as far as it goes now. Because they failed to tell me of the most important things in life. By sheltering me, I never learned how terrible life out in the wasteland is. Never fully realized the amount of strength, and determination it took just to simply keep one's mind. It was a shock when I realized traveling north wasn't like traveling across the Capital Wasteland. When it required more than just ample supplies and keeping an eye out for threats. Mom and dad never bothered to tell me, the strain it puts on you. The emotional toll it has on you, and those around you. Had I known it before, I would have probably chosen to stay a bit closer to home. Or at least if I didn't, I would have left home with a better knowledge and understanding of what exactly I would be getting myself into. But I didn't know. I knew nothing. And now, there is nothing more to be done. All that I want to do, is figure out who I am apart from my parents. Apart from Megaton, and apart from what everyone expect from me. If I can find a way, I even want to leave Cain behind.