To Set The World On Fire, a fallout fanfic

A/N: Old readers of TSWOF, please check out the note at the end of the chapter!

He wondered, idly, if he was dead.

He was fairly certain that dying meant going to a Better Place; that is to say, into Absolutely Nothing. He had really looked forward to an eternity of Absolutely Nothing, because Absolutely Nothing sounded better than Absolutely Anything At All.

He was equally certain that on the off chance that there was a Hell, he was going. He was okay with this as much as one can be okay with anything while not actually caring one way or the other.

But this didn't feel like Hell. It didn't feel like anything in particular, but it definitely felt too much like Something to be Absolutely Nothing.

His head felt like an Old World terminal turned on for the first time in centuries.

Dusty circuits firing, neurons lighting up.

Please stand by.

Loading. Loading. Loading.

There were sounds, he realized, grunts and breathing and beeping, further deepening his suspicion that this was not truly Nothingness but indeed, a rather severe case of Somethingness.

He could even start to make the noises out, though it felt like there was water in his ears.

Ah Ooah eik? They said.

Beep. Beep. Beep. They whistled.

Yes, this was definitely Something. Not only was it not Nothing, it might not even be death.

This thought sent a shudder through him. Then he realized he had shuddered, and realized that he could feel himself shuddering, and that he could feel the dry air and the wooly blanket and the scratchy mattress, and realized that these things meant he was almost certainly alive, and he shuddered again.

The sounds noticed. They got water in his ears dribbled out.

AH OO AHEIK?

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I'm alive, was his first thought.

Do I have to? was his second.

Why can't I see anything? was the third.

Loading. Loading. Loading.

At some point, he realized it would probably help if he opened his eyes.

So he did that. It took several tries to get them unstuck, and several more to keep them open, and then he had to squint, because somebody had apparently set off a nuclear bomb inside a light-bulb, and everything was exploding white. It was like leaving the Vault all over again.

Vault. A familiar word that was familiar because…

Loading. Loading. Loading.

"Are you awake?" A voice that belonged to a shape in the whiteness asked again. There was a pause, and then: "Yeah. You are."

Beep. Beep. Beep. Said something out of sight.

Loading. Loading. Loading. Said his brain, patiently.

He squinted harder.

The room started to dim.

A bed. That was what the thing he was lying on was called. The shape was sitting next to this bed. The shape was bulky.

The shape that had spoken tilted forwards, looming over him. It was like watching a mountain bend over, trying to touch its toes.

"Are you still there? Vargas says that you're probably brain-dead. 'Like a doll,' is what I think he said, and we both had a laugh because that seemed ironic— am I using that right? You're the only person I know who uses that word besides my father— yeah, it seemed ironic to see somebody with as big a head as yours drooling all over yourself."

"That is what I said," agreed a voice whose owner was out of sight. "And I got fifty caps, say the same thing."

Dimmer. Dimmer. He could see the outline of a face now, sharp and pinched, and found himself looking into eyes as soft and welcoming as a cliff face. He wasn't sure, but he thought her hair, cut close to her scalp, was a color called blond, and he was pretty sure that her face was something called pretty when it wasn't doing quite so good a job of telling him how much she wanted to hurt him.

Beep. He couldn't see the source of the noise, but somehow he knew it was a holter monitor because Dad had showed him that one time and...

Loading. Loading. Loading.

"But I didn't think so," said the first voice, the woman in power armor (funny, the things that popped into his head immediately). "Because that would be exactly what you deserve— a lifetime of shitting yourself and needing somebody else to wipe your ass for you— and people like you never get what they really deserve."

Her voice became dry. "And that's what my fifty caps say, and damn if I'm losing good money over the world making sense for once."

He knew that he recognized her, and the venom in her voice, and he knew that he agreed with her… he just had to figure out who the hell she was and why he did.

Loading. Loading. Loading.

The room got dimmer still, and he could see how she kept her fury rigid in her jaw, in her cheekbones. How she tucked pain under her tongue, and tears behind her eyelids, in case she needed them for later.

"So, who's going home with heavy pockets tonight? Hmm? Do you remember who you are? The lives you ruined, and the stack of bodies you stood on to make yourself taller?"

Loading…

She bent even closer. Her words hissed like sparks escaping a fire.

"Do you remember your name, monster?"

And the last circuit fired, and everything clicked into place neat as the gears of a watch, and yes, the monster remembered his name. He felt disproportionately proud of the feat.

"Brian...Moore," he said, only realizing he was whispering after his name slithered through the air and hung there. His throat felt like he had spent a few hours gargling gravel.

She looked at him expectantly.

"The Lone Wanderer," he added absentmindedly.

"Good boy. And do you remember who I am?"

Do I? Brian asked himself.

Yes, you do, Himself answered.

"Sarah Lyons," He said. "Which means I'm in the Citadel."

Lyons narrowed her eyes, and nodded.

"You...rescued me?"

"Against everybody's better judgement, yes. Fished you right out of the Potomac."

"I'm going to live?"

"Unless our doctors have been doing the smart thing and lacing your meds with poison."

"Huh."

She looked up, past him, and raised an eyebrow. There was a soft curse from the other voice, and the rhythm of frustrated rummaging, and then a jingling, a jangling, and then Lyons held a bulging pouch, which she tucked into...wherever those fools kept spare change in power armor.

Feeling was starting to return to him, sensation crawling over him like a swarm of insects, and it took him a few moments to realize how much of it was pain.

There was a real variety; it was like walking into a museum. Over here's the ache between your shoulders when you haven't moved in who knows how long, down there you can learn what it feels like to have more ribs broken than not, around this corner, if you use your tongue, you can explore what's left of your teeth, and of course, ladies and gentleman, if you look to the left, or the right, or really turn your head at all, you'll see just how fucked up your neck is!

Brian peered down his body, from the legs suspended in casts to the undershirt of bandages, to all the lovely things they had plugged into his veins. Catheters and Auto-inject stims. He looked like a heavily medicated hedgehog.

"Got yourself some of what you had coming," Lyons was saying, noticing his examination.

He was not dead.

He had been saved by the Brotherhood of Steel, for some reason carted off to the Citadel.

He was crippled, in considerable agony, and Sarah Lyons had decided to visit him.

His eyes grew wet, and tears spilled over and slid down his cheeks like warm fingers. His shoulders began to jerk, and then quake up and down, up and down. If they had been able to, his legs would have kicked.

Brian Moore, the Lone Wanderer, laughed so hard he thought for a minute he might break another rib.

He laughed, and when every muscle in his body screamed at him to shut up, he swallowed the pain like a pill and laughed harder, and harder, and harder, until everything hurt and his face was slick with saltwater.

Lyons, he noticed, had drawn back considerably, her vicious smile twisted into a look of disgust.

"And what's so funny?" She snapped.

"I was wrong," he snickered. "All my life. Never believed in the afterlife. But I was wrong. So wrong!"

"What…"

Brian moved his head to look at her, even though the pain took his breath away. He gave her his ugliest, most broken smile, and wiggled his tongue in the spaces of his missing teeth.

"There really is a Hell, after all."

And that set him off again.

A/N: Well, for a long time I wasn't sure how I would continue this story. I simply wasn't sure how to pick up from where I left off in the story. It took me a while to realize what the problem was; I was too good for my own sake. By which I mean this; I'm constantly growing as a writer. At the time, TSWOF was some of the best work I'd ever done, but within four months, six months, I was already uncomfortable with how I had started the story. The story wouldn't flow smoothly when I picked it up because I was trying to build the best story possible out of what now felt like a mediocore, half-baked beginning. The solution: start anew, and tell the story in a way that's fun for me. I don't want to have to write the "fun" scenes. I'd rather just write scenes that are fun in and of themselves. So I wasn't sure how I was going to begin this new, reloaded TSWOF.

And then I wrote this chapter in one night.

Might be a while before the next update, as I have to figure out the details of how everything fits together; but I'm telling the story the best way I know how. Even if you're just casually reading, I'd love a quick review as simple as "Read it, liked it, cool!" Of course, it's fine if you don't, I don't write for reviews, but anything that reminds me that yes, I'm not yelling into a vacuum, real people look at the things that come out of my head; that is amazing to me. Thank you for reading, peeps.

P.S. Who else is psyched for November 10th?

P.P.S. Oh, if you liked this story and haven't done so already, you might like my FNV one-shot, Sympathy for the Devil! Check it out!