AN: A disclaimer: I don't own Fallout and I'm not making money off of my writing.
Another disclaimer: for anybody reading one of my stories for the first time, I've already put a lot of thought into developing Arcade Gannon's identity and back-story. One thing that I've always been sure of is that he is ethnically Jewish. This heritage fits aspects of his worldview and family dynamic that I intend to explore here; it also explains why his middle name is given in canon as "Israel."
However, I can't write a story about an sinister shadow-government hiding in America's ashes starring Jewish characters without first issuing a strong repudiation of the real-life brand of anti-semitism that uses conspiracy theories to threaten and endanger people in the present day. The Enclave preserved the worst of pre-war American ideology - the superiority complex, the xenophobia and isolationism, the might-makes-right militarism - but that has nothing to do with the incidental ethnic or religious identities of the characters in this story. I have nothing but respect for these.
I'm also not trying to do convoluted apologetics on the Enclave's behalf in this story. Without excusing what they did - and tried to do - I want to further explore what Fallout: New Vegas did so well with the Remnants: made the individual soldiers of a despised cause sympathetic and human, instead of just cannon-fodder for a cartoonishly evil faction.
That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading!
-ScrimshawPen
Why is this night different from all other nights?
On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, and on this night only matzah.
On all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs.
On all other nights, we don't dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice.
On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and on this night we only recline.
-"The Four Questions" of the Passover Seder
April 21, 2247, Navarro Army Base
"Mah nit-... ma nishtanah… hala… ha-lailah… ha-zeh m-m-mi-kol… um…" He'd lost his place and squinted at the lines of transliterated text, finding the next word after just a few seconds. The only other child at the table interrupted him before he could begin again, his mocking tone breaking his concentration again.
"It's 'Mah nishtanah ha-lailah ha-zeh mikol ha-lailot,' idiot. Mom, why does he get to ask the questions? Little squirt can't even read yet." Stanley Carrington was nine years old and insufferably superior. Arcade often wished that his parents were not friends with Stanley's parents: the older boy could be a bully, and always liked to remind Arcade that he was better than him at everything.
"Can so." It wasn't Stanley's turn to read the questions, and he knew it. That honor went to the youngest child by tradition. He set down the prayer book with a scowl, careful not to damage the ancient binding despite his childish anger. "I can read now. These words are funny, that's all."
"It's Hebrew, moron."
"Stanley-" Rachel Carrington began reprovingly, but fell silent when her husband made an abrupt gesture. An imposing bear of a man with a temper to match, he laid a heavy, work-roughened hand on his son's shoulder, squeezing it hard. If it hurt, the boy had the sense not to say anything, but only hung his head, biting his lip in subdued frustration.
"Go on, Arcade," Miriam Gannon whispered, cupping a gentle hand over his small one. "You're doing fine, my love."
The adults in the room were on edge, and some of their tension had settled upon the children as well, making them quarrelsome. This Seder service was not like the other holiday meals the Gannons had shared with the only other practicing Jewish family on base. For one thing, Israel Gannon was absent, out on yet another patrol of their shrinking borders. For another, in between the liturgical reflections upon their ancestors' flight, there was subdued talk of a mass exodus of their own, of abandoning this base for an uncertain future. No one knew where they would all be a year from now.
With his formal role over, Arcade was bored and sleepy, uncomfortably full but still picking at the rich food in front of him. The meat, the haunch of a young bighorner (closest thing to lamb they could find), was good. He also liked the flatbread and the bitter herbs, and ate as much as he could of the sweet paste called charoset, made of fruit and nuts. He did not, however, like his small glass of watered wine, even though he'd begged to be allowed to taste it this year. It was too sour and it made his head feel funny. The adults' conversation was low, anxious, and confusing, and went on and on for what seemed like hours. Nobody paid attention to him, and he and Stanley started accidentally-on-purpose kicking each other under the table until they were sternly lectured and excused to play.
Once he was free to explore, Arcade found the afikoman, the hidden piece of matzah, beneath the living room rug. Whichever child returned the broken piece of bread to the table would receive a reward. Pleased at his success, he nevertheless forfeited it to the older, stronger Stanley without a fight. Arcade was small, nearsighted, and timid, and didn't care enough about the prize to raise another fuss with the adults.
He left Stanley to gloat over the gift - a tiny model of a vertibird, just like the ones Leonard Carrington repaired at work - and crept quietly to the kitchen to watch his mother prepare tea for the guests. Her honey brown hair was long and light, and hung past her waist in a single braid that twitched back and forth with her quick movements. He admired his father deeply, but adored his mother unconditionally. It was just the two of them most of the time. It was she who had taught him to read, and who sought out books for them to read together, borrowing the precious volumes from their friends and neighbors. With her stories, she made their tiny house and treeless yard on the old army base seem magical, a little world created just for them.
Still, Arcade wished that his father were here tonight, so that his mother would stop worrying. The house seemed empty without him, even when they had guests. A tall man who wore his blonde hair slightly too long for regulations, Israel Gannon dwarfed his wife, towering a full head-and-a-half over her small stature. On the rare occasions when they went on long walks together as a family, he would carry Arcade on his shoulders when his short legs grew tired. It was an incredible height to see the world from, and those were the moments when he loved his father the best. A thoughtful, educated man, he spoke only sparingly and was difficult to anger, but when he did speak, everyone listened respectfully. Arcade wanted to be exactly like him when he grew up, even if that meant being a soldier as well. People said he looked like him already. His hair was just as blond.
Miriam caught him daydreaming, jaw cracking in the middle of a massive yawn. "Arcade, can you carry the sugar to the table, please?" She handed him the sweetener - a small bottle of agave syrup - and a spoon, and gave him a little push. "Go on, then. Mr. Carrington will recite the nirtzah soon, and then you can go to bed."
He resumed his spot at the table, nibbling on the last fragment of matzah as his eyes grew heavier. His mother reentered the room, carrying a metal tray with the willow-patterned teapot and three tiny china cups, fragile heirlooms from before the War that children were never allowed to use. She stood waiting for Rachel to clear a space for the tray, when a knock at their door made her jump, making the utensils rattle in their places. She set everything down with characteristic grace, but from his place at her elbow, Arcade could see that her hands were trembling. He was nervous himself, and soothed his feelings by running ahead to open the door for her.
He blinked and stepped back, confused but not unhappy. It was Aunt Daisy, the pilot for his father's unit. She wasn't really his aunt - his father had no brothers or sisters, and his mother's entire extended family had been on the oil rig in 2242. But she loved him and he loved her, all jolly and full of life and jokes. She'd promised to take him up in a vertibird for his fifth birthday, just a few weeks away. Only she had never come univited to his house at night before, let alone on a holiday like this. Arcade decided on the spot that he didn't mind the surprise, though.
"Aunt Daisy! Guess what? I found the matzah, but Stanley said…" Something about her face made him fall silent, and he froze in the act of running to hug her. She hadn't changed out of her flight suit yet and her helmet was tucked under one arm. She didn't look at him or crack a smile, but kept her gaze level, eyes intent on a point high above Arcade's head. Behind her, lingering in the dark beyond the doorstep, Arcade could see his father's other comrades - Judah, Orion, and Ebenezer ("Uncle Eb") - standing silently in full power armor, helmets held awkwardly at their sides. Struck by the strangeness of the scene, he was filled with a undefined sense of dread.
Daisy cleared her throat and began, "Miriam. I'm sorry-"
From a few few behind him, Arcade heard his mother let out a little gasp. Then she spoke, interrupting Daisy before she could get very far. "No. No. No!"
The last "no" turned into a wordless howl of grief. Arcade went cold. He had never heard his mother scream like that - it was an animal's sound, full of pain and terror, and did not belong to her. Leaving the newcomers standing at the threshold, she ran to the back of the house. They all heard the slam of a door, and stood frozen for a moment. Arcade wanted to run, too, if not to his mother then to the hiding place under his bed. He realized at last that someone was missing from the assembled squad.
"Where's my daddy?" he asked Daisy, using a word that he would normally have deemed too childish to say in front of Stanley.
A muscle in her jaw worked, and she looked at him for the first time. As if his simple question was a catalyst for action, everyone began speaking and moving at once.
"I'll take Stanley home," Leonard offered gruffly. "I'm sorry, boy," he said to Arcade in passing. With that, he lead his own son out into the night. Before he followed his father, Stanley walked over to Arcade and handed him the coveted toy aircraft without a word, dark eyes big and solemn. Arcade accepted the gift automatically, puzzled by this sudden change of heart.
"I'll go to Miriam," Rachel said, exchanging a searching look with the pilot as she finally stood up from her place at the table. "If if there's anything I need to know first…"
"It's what you think." Daisy's voice was shaking and it looked as though she might start crying. "You can tell her it was quick. The other details can wait. We retrieved… him."
"Someone needs to tell the boy." This was Eb Johnson, now looking over Daisy's shoulder. His tone, usually loud and bluff and happy, was almost inaudible, and the corners of his mouth were turned down under his bristling black beard. "Look at him. He still doesn't understand. But he'll remember this night forever. I did, and I wasn't much older when my..." He trailed off, looking around helplessly for support.
This was met with an unhappy sigh. "Arcade, can we go to your room, honey?" Daisy put her helmet down on the table, still strewn with the messy remains of dinner, and held out her hand for him to take. "I need to tell you something."
After sitting him down beside her on his bed, Daisy told him that his father was dead. He could never later remember the words that she had used, but he never forgot what they talked about afterwards.
She stayed with him until she thought he was asleep, letting him cry into the fabric of her uniform. She smelled like sweat and engine oil and cigarettes. He'd always found the combination comforting, but now he wished his mother would come to him instead. The walls of their house were thin. They could both hear Miriam Gannon's muffled sobs and her friend's words of consolation.
"I don't understand, Auntie. Why do they hate us so much? Why did they kill him?" Arcade didn't know much about the world beyond his neighborhood. He had gotten the impression that their enemies were diseased, ignorant barbarians, of no particular threat or significance. And yet they had destroyed the oil rig...
"Those are hard questions. I don't have easy answers for you. Basically, the world's not big enough for us and the NCR anymore. Now that they have the Brotherhood of Steel as their attack-dogs, things are a lot more dangerous for us. Israel died helping to keep you and your mother - and everyone else here - safe." She wiped her eyes with a dirty hand, leaving a dark smudge across her forehead. "Our enemies won't make it here," she added with forced confidence.
He wanted to believe her, but didn't know if he could anymore. "How do you know?"
She smiled at him, eyes hard and shiny. "Well, because me and the other guys are ready for them. Ain't nothing can beat a vertibird in flight, Arcade, and we have a ton of them. You know that."
"But…" He looked up at her, his lip trembling. "What if you die, too? An' Eb, and Judah, and Orion, and all the rest..."
"Shh. We won't. It was bad luck tonight. We landed when we shouldn't have, where we thought it was safe. There was a trap. That won't happen again. We'll always take care of you and your ma. Count on it. Go to sleep now, okay? I'll come back in the morning and we'll go for a walk by the river."
While a small boy mourned his father, the surviving officers, politicians, and scientists of the Enclave left their homes in the dark of night for another hard meeting, circling the wagons a little tighter and arguing the future of their people. Many of them could see the writing on the wall now, for all that they had tried to ignore it for almost five years now. For some, it was finally time to pursue new options. To consider accepting the mysterious invitation that had come over the radio waves, summoning them to a new home.
Arcade was aware of none of this - he was a very little boy, after all, and no one had yet thought to give him an honest account of recent history. He only knew that bad people had torn his family apart and that he was scared of losing everybody else he cared about. He was scared that some faceless enemy, like an evil robot in a comic book, would come for him next. Anger would come later; for now, there was only grief and fear.