Ice Cold Corridors
Blue thought she would never come back here, to Vault 111, even for a moment, for the most important of reasons, and yet the elevator was before her, that awful and stupendous hatchway leading down on a pulley system into the bowels of the irradiated earth. To the Vault where her journey into the Commonwealth, her new world, had begun.
The area around it was untouched from when Blue had excavated herself from the Vault, where she had found out that she had been the sole survivor of it. Everyone else had died in cryosleep, apart from Nate, who had simply been shot by Kellogg and whose body still lingered in his pod. On that day when she had escaped her frozen sleep she'd made sure to stow her own wedding ring on his corpse and fold his arms over his chest like a vampire. It was the only ceremony she could think of at the time as she cried over him. And then, with determination to get out, to survive and maybe even find Shaun, her baby at the time, Blue closed the pod and froze Nate once again, letting sleep eternally in the ice that had saved them from the bombs that fell two-hundred years ago above.
It had been on her own orders that the settlers of Sanctuary, now thriving as the seasons came into summer and the rays from the still gorgeous sun nourished them, stay clear of the Vault, that it was not to be disturbed. Hell, it was not even to be touched, looked at, even thought of, and Blue herself had done none of those until now, as she stood above the elevator platform. She didn't want to be here, and that was evident by her hesitation as her companion wandered up the hill after her.
Piper was running, Blue could hear her distinguishable breaths, those light and dainty noises shocked her back from her existentialism and into the irradiated reality of the Commonwealth and twenty-two-seventy-seven.
"I asked you not come, Piper. I need to do this alone." Blue called to her from the edge of the gear-shaped elevator, but Piper still ran to her and into her arms.
Her embrace was shocking, so warm and loving and Blue could feel the ripples of her concerned energy passing into herself. Piper felt almost distraught now, holding onto the decked out sole survivor with all her might. Blue could not help but wrap her own arms around her girlfriend and nestle her face into the nook of the reporter's shoulder. Was Piper crying? Blue couldn't tell although she felt like breaking down in the arms of her lover herself. Just coming back here was mortifying, disgusting to the core and overwhelmed by such a besmirched and hateful memory. Kellogg, the bastard. He was all that consumed Blue's thoughts when she thought of this place, even months after finally riddling his entire body with lead in Fort Hagen with Valentine as her companion. The synth detective had to hold Blue back from ripping Kellogg's corpse limb from limb. He'd even excavated the mechanical parts they needed from the bounty hunter's body, tearing his brain apart from the upgrade.
"Why didn't you stay at Sanctuary?" Blue asked, trembling a little as she held Piper in her arms and vice versa. They were both shaking but Piper certainly felt like the strongest of the pair.
After kissing her girlfriend on her forehead and holding her again closely, Piper calmed herself and spoke softly, reassuringly. "I couldn't let you come back here alone. You wouldn't even take Dogmeat, I knew you weren't okay with this." She confessed, her eyebrows arcing to sadness and her arms slacking from all strength they had. This was her, doing what she did when things were emotional. She lay her cards on the table and poured her overabundant heart out for her Blue.
"But… This is…" Blue could hardly speak.
"This is something you shouldn't do alone, Blue. I know what's in there. I know what we need to get - the cooling agent from the prime cryohub. If it's even still intact. If we take it… All the remaining cryopods…"
Blue breathed, trying not to think of what would happen in there but she knew anyway. "If we take the cooling agent, all the remaining cryopods will lose power and all the bodies will thaw out. And if we don't take it, our food stores will spoil within two weeks and we'll lose most the store. I have to go get the cooling agent, Piper…" She told her girlfriend, holding Piper's hands in her own and looking at her fingers. Piper's fingers were so sleek and slender, and Blue had mapped out their distinct touch over months and months of feeling those fingertips over almost every crevice and inch of her body in their shared house. She knew the feel of those fingers anywhere, distinguishable from any other person in the Commonwealth.
Piper kissed her again, on the lips this time, full of reassuring passion and lucid love, pouring it into Blue like water from a never-ending fountain. It was so warm, and the gorgeous splendour of a tasting tang of apple washed into Blue's core. Still caught off guard, however, her hands lightly graced Piper's cheeks as the reporter kissed her, knocking her back a few dimensions. It was most certainly something she needed.
"Listen to me… I'm coming in with you. We're a team, you said so yourself, and I'm with you no matter what. I know what's in there, what… part of you you left behind Blue. We'll face it together. What'd'ya say?" Piper requested, her eyes welling and silently begging her to let her come into the Vault with her.
As Blue looked into girlfriend's eyes, she could tell that Piper was telling the unconditional truth to her. She did not give a damn that there were parts of Blue deep in the Vault that would need confronting.
Piper Wright was in this for the duration.
As soon as they entered the envelope of different air of the Vault, Piper began to shiver uncontrollably. The cold of it touched her arms and snaked under her road leathers and jacket. It crept into her skin and coiled around her bones, chilling her skeleton inside of her and freezing her there. When she and Blue breathed, the carbon became visible and even Blue was a little cold - the vault jumpsuit she'd kept from this place was insulated but not to a degree that could withstand the cold wrapping itself around her and Piper. Blue had forgotten just how cold it was in this place. The last time the adrenaline of getting out of it had pushed her body temperature into the positives. This time the dread was making her colder.
The corridors were ice cold to the touch as the pair meandered through the welcoming lobby filled with skeletons and came into the main system of the Vault. Blue knew not to venture into the Overseer's Office as there was nothing there that she remembered. She did not know where the cooling agent really was, but she'd find it soon enough she was sure. It was her usual approach to spelunking in the Commonwealth's many underground complexes. But she did not take out her assault rifle, there was no need. The Radroaches were dispatched the first time she was here and there wasn't likely a source of other enemies. Still, the long and curling intestines of the vault creeped Blue out and made her shiver more than the cold.
She felt the familiar sensation of Piper's arms wrapping around her body to keep them both warmer, and she felt the vibrations of a mild pur from her lover.
"I don't know why you chose to survive the bombs in this place, Blue," Piper chuckled between the clattering of her pleasant teeth. "I can think of better-heated places, to say the least." She joked, shivering still inside her lover's embrace.
Blue had to laugh, only briskly for the cold threatened to take her breath away if she did so too much. But Piper tickled her with her teasing joke. It was one of the many qualities that attracted Blue to her like the north and south of a magnet. Ever since meeting her in Diamond City she felt some pull towards the plucky young reporter on a one-woman mission to discover the truth and the whole truth. Piper was changing the way of living in Diamond City, slowly but surely, and Blue felt the tugging power of the journalist tick all of her boxes. It was strange at first. Being married had settled Blue into a gentle darkness of peace. But meeting Piper, getting to know her, wandering the wastes with her, even taking down The Institute with her and The Railroad… All made Blue realise that not only was she attracted to women in a very real way that she had not contemplated since her teens in the twenty-fifties, but that she was falling very quickly and powerfully for Piper Wright.
And now, as they traversed the halls of the place where her Commonwealth life began, Blue was cuddling the young woman close to her body to share the warmth as they edged closer to where Blue believed the cooling agent would be.
"Sanctuary better be grateful for this, lemme tell ya." Piper griped, feeling yet even colder as they progressed. She cuddled up to Blue all the more and her wrapping arms became almost constricted the colder she became.
Blue didn't mind at all. She cuddled Piper all the more in an attempt to warm her. "We'll make them bust out the Nuka when we give them this thing. I'm feeling… Quantum, how about you, doll?"
"I'd settle for a damn blanket rather than soda, honey. Mama Murphy better get a move on with that damn kitting."
The older woman let out a stark laughter and rubbed her girlfriend's shoulders some more to heat her up. She could feel they were getting closer, much closer. The corridors were coming back to her and she remembered where the generator room was from here. By Blue's guess, the cooling agent would be either behind a terminal and security gate, locked in some safe, or just strapped to the wall. She hoped for the latter.
"Who… Who's there?!" Shouted a voice from beyond the hallway that Piper and Blue rounded into, and instantly both vixens pulled out weaponry in chilled fingers. Piper pulled out her standard Pipe Rifle - The Savage Poetry, and Blue was clutching her Assault Rifle in hand with her Pip-Boy torch turned off. How was someone in here? She'd told the settlers to stay away. Who the hell could even be here? Blue felt furious, silently as she looked deeper into the corridor. The voice said nothing more but he had made his location, and gender very clear. The shiver in his voice told Blue he was cold but not as cold as her, and his waver made questionable his mental state or his surprise.
"S… Sound off! I know you're out there, I can hear your footsteps! Come out!" He bellowed, followed by quivering stomping to signal he was coming down the chassis of the corridor.
"It's okay, honey, stay calm," Blue whispered to Piper and took up a crouching position next to her, aiming down the reflex sight of her modified rifle. "Behind me, Piper, please." She requested and the reporter did as asked, taking up a reinforcing prompt behind her flame.
The stomping was synonymous with heavy armour. Either combat boots or power armour… Unless the suspect was a Synth, in which case Blue was frightened at how lifelike his voice modulator was. Most Synths, when self-aware, had a slight tinge to their voices, something to give them away. Danse had it, yet he claimed to never hear it when he spoke, but Blue could hear it, and she had done so since the moment she met him at Cambridge. Plenty of others had it too - it was something that The Institute could never rectify. And Blue had seen their attempts and research to first hand under the C.I.T. building in Central Boston.
Blue had an idea.
"Star!" She yelled into the icy crevasse of the corridor. Already she was feeling warmer from the shock horror of someone else being here. Her exclamation was a challenge - if this person was a settler from Sanctuary, they would know the correct response, which was agreed to be 'Texas'.
There came no response from the man down the hall. Instead all Blue and Piper heard was the oncoming of more footsteps. "Star!" Blue cried again just to be sure, but after no response again she determined it could not be one of the Sanctuary settlers, which meant it was an intruder from an unknown faction. And he was between them and the cooling agent.
The sole survivor stood up again and waded down the corridor several steps, holding the rifle to her eye to aim. "Identify yourself or you will be fired upon, sir!" She bellowed to him down the hall.
"Woah! Alright, calm down there shogun," the man called out, peering around the corner to meet the barrel of the gun. "Who're you two supposed to be?"
"Better question yet, who the hell are you and how did you get in here?" Piper chimed in, standing up and walking the distance open between her and her lover. She still had her Pipe Rifle in hand yet lowered.
The man was wearing Power Armour, naked of all plate but he was still bulky and yet looked skittish. He was old, balding and wearing battered and broken steel glasses, the lenses were cracked all over and his eyes looked very wild. What little hair he did have was sticking out as if he had been electrocuted and in his hands was a very large and very antiquated curiosity. Blue had seen it before, in the Overseer's Office on her way out of the vault before. Something referred to as the Cryolator.
"Where the hell did you get that?" Blue asked him before he could tell them who he was.
He looked to the Cryolator in his hands and smiled a little too enthusiastically for Piper's liking. His smile looked dementing and his teeth were absolutely ruined as if he had been eating nothing but irradiated Gumdrops and Bubblegum for decades and drinking either Nuka-Cola or nothing at all. And his skin was almost bordering on ghoulish. It was ancient and raggedy and dirty too. This man had not bathed in presumably a long while.
"Why this is…"
"The Cryolator… But how did you get it out of the case?" Blue asked him, already remembering what it was and where it was in the vault. It was behind an almost unpickable lock in the Overseer's Office and it was depowered. "More importantly how did you get it powered? It wasn't making that noise or those colours when I was here."
The man looked mighty proud of the working machine in his hands, so much so he nearly leapt for joy with it. The mania exhumed from his clear grey eyes as he looked at the weapon in his grasp to Blue and to Piper. He had made some modifications to it since prying the icy blue treasure from the masterly locked case, and now the thing was purring for him. The cooling agent and breathed glacial life into his weapon, and it now resembled something of a cannon of ice and snow. It looked colder than anything Blue and Piper had ever seen and the man was very very pleased with his work it seemed.
He edged closer to Blue. "I've made some special modifications after I got it out of the case… I picked the lock. Took me over one hundred attempts to slip the lock of that case open." The man professed crudely and proudly, waving the cannon back and forth. "My name is Evan Glass. And I have been down here for… Oooh, I can hardly remember, months I am sure." He added, shaking his head back and forth with an insane spin. Blue was convinced his mentality had taken a nosedive into the realms of crazed delusions and that the real Evan Glass if that was his name, was not in his own mind.
By her calculations, he must have come here shortly after she had left.
"You tried… A hundred times?" Piper repeated in question, as Evan lead the way back down the hallway to his domain, with Blue and Piper walking in tow behind them.
"Oh no, well over a hundred times. I almost ran out of bobby pins." He corrected her as he turned the dial of the switch to open his iced over door. The sliding bulkhead slid up and open to reveal the man's hovel that he had made for himself - it was the generator room, completely frozen and iced over from top to bottom, presumably with the Cryolator in his hands. The Power Armour had a stand near the corner, frozen too, and there was still no modules to attach to his frame. Toolboxes gathered ice, there were even stalagmites coming from the ceiling and more spears of ice from the floor. It looked as if it had been modelled on an ice castle from a film back in the twenty-seventies. It made Blue shiver with a different kind of chill in her bones - one of dread instead of cold.
Piper could tell the discomfort in Blue and held her hand in her own, linking fingers with hers. The welcome warmth from the younger reporter's hand was much needed and appreciated.
"Hey, it's okay, I promise," Piper whispered as lowly as she could.
Blue gave Piper's hand a loving squeeze and tried to hold back her emotion as she looked around the room. There was a table near the frozen toolboxes and on it lay two familiar gold bands with some small engraving on each. Blue knew what both of them said. One of them was engraved 'Nate' and in the other was the etchings of her real name. She didn't want to see them, but she had to know how Evan had pilfered them.
"Those rings… Why are they here?" She asked him, trying to resist the urge to raise her rifle at the man. Secretly she was looking for any reason to have to shoot him like a common raider. Glass was making her feel uneasy.
Evan turned around, looking between Blue and the rings on the table. "Oh, those? They're not important…"
Blue's rifle rose of its own accord and got pointed right at Evan's chest. "Don't say that! Where did you get them?!"
"I found them in one of the cryopods in the main freezing bays! On a dead man. I took them from his person and kept him in the pod, although I did have to relive the power from his pod… He thawed a few months ago… I had to move his body you see." Evan explained, not the slightest bit concerned about what they meant to Blue, which was evident. He only cared about the tale and where they were in his little home, his freezing cold home.
"Where did you put his body?!" Blue screamed at him again.
With his hands up and twitching, still gripped around the trigger of the Cryolator. While Blue did not see the twitch and twinkle of his bold eyes, Piper certainly did. She saw the moving pupils looking at his wrist. There it was, the madness, the madness in some people in the Commonwealth, and while Blue had been acquainted with it before in some characters in her travels, Piper had seen the mania of living in this world a lot more. Some called it the 'Whispers of the Wasteland' and it was as deadly as a cancer at times, in some people. Evan was infected with it, and Piper could smell it coming from him. She feared for Blue.
Evan paused, thinking, for what seemed like the longest, most torturous time, as Piper eased around the side of her girlfriend, hand still clutching the other one. "There was nowhere to put the bodies… I had to…"
"Bastard!" Blue yelled, her eyes aflame and even tearing up.
The crazed lunatic lowered his weapon, aimed right at Blue's torso, but Piper was already too quick for him. She rose the barrel of her pipe weapon and slotted one into his chest, through the frame of the Power Armour. Though it didn't kill him outright, it stopped him from shooting an icy blast at her lover. Evan stopped and looked at the bloody wound through his chest, at which point Blue rose her own weapon and the two women glared at him. His arm flexed as if he was going to shoot once more and Piper and Blue were left with no option other than to riddle the man with homemade bullets into his chest and arms. He fell with a thud and a bang from the Power Armour.
There was silence for a few moments until Blue took a step forward and took the Cryolator from Evan's dead body and holstered her steampunk looking Assault Rifle. "Let's go." She said very drearily.
Piper did not move. "Do you… Do you want to take these?" She asked, holding the rings in the palm of her hand.
"I… No… I left them here for a reason, honey. I… I don't need them."
"Blue… Stop, come on, don't shut me out here. I'm here, I'm… well, I'm cold and a little hungry but I'm right here, and I know there's something more… I… I love you Blue…" Piper confessed, as apologetically as she could. She didn't want to tread onto the past, for Blue didn't want the past revived, she only wanted the present and the future. The past was unreachable now and nothing could be as it was - nor should it be.
There was a clang; Blue dropping the Cryolator on the icy floor before gliding through the distance between them and holding Piper closely. One hand came to the curve of her lower spine and the other to crook of her gorgeous neck, and Blue kissed her passionately and full of fire, taking her off guard and without any patience. Once they were kissing, Blue caressed Piper's hands, taking the rings into her own and dropping them onto the floor as she engaged in gorgeous and loving kisses. That was the point. The past was gone. It didn't matter, and there was nothing left of it now apart from these rings. They could be left here, they could be bartered away for caps, they could be lost to the annals of time and never seen again by Blue's eyes. She didn't care if they existed or not, they meant nothing except the fact that Blue had been married in another life, and in this one she wasn't. She was a widow of a husband that had died in the time before this one. Blue didn't need to remember it, while she would, she didn't need it. And she certainly didn't need a reminder of it.
All that mattered to her was the future.
"Come on, honey. Let's get back to our house, okay?"
Blushing, lost for words, and fully understanding what Blue had done and why Piper was lovestruck. She looked down at the rings, as if they were nothing, exactly what her lover had wanted, and smiled in a loved-up haze.
"I love you, Blue."
Blue chuckled as Piper caught up with her. "I love you too… You lovely dork."