Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing. Trigger warning for depression, death, violence and fantastic racism, and mentions of drug addiction. First Fallout fanfic with some AU elements, so enjoy!
…
The feral ghouls in Cambridge were endless, a growling wave of rotting, irradiated flesh that would drown Recon Team Gladius and consign them to the same unmarked graves as the other two teams sent here by the Brotherhood of Steel. Knight Rhys was already down, Scribe Haylen kneeling by him and administering one of their precious stimpaks to his bite-crippled thigh. Danse held the line at the centre of the courtyard before the compound, intending to take as many ghouls to hell with him as he could. If he could buy Rhys and Haylen enough time to retreat back into the police station-
A flash of dust-filmed blue appeared in the corner of his eye just before the sound of another gun signalled hope like a trumpet. The civilian who entered the fray was firing wildly with shaking hands, the gold-edged garment that moulded to her body like a glove from neck to ankle emblazoned with 111 on the back. The 10mm pistol in her right hand was unmodified and dusty, clearly in need of proper tending, but the bullets were just as fatal as they struck the rabid ghouls.
The tactician within Danse advised taking advantage of the distraction the Vault Dweller presented by picking off the tougher ghouls while the lesser ones attacked her but the man dedicated to protecting others as a member of the Brotherhood of Steel demanded that he take action to save her. Three headshots with Righteous Authority cleared the space for the Vault Dweller to reload her gun with shaking hands – three attempts to get the cartridge into the pistol – and give Danse a despairing glance. Behind the Paladin, Scribe Haylen must have used the stimpak on Knight Rhys because she joined the battle again, coolly picking off the rest of the ghouls that surrounded the civilian.
"Hold the left flank!" Danse barked at the wild-eyed woman who'd stumbled into their battle. She obeyed, reaching the left entrance to the compound just in time for the next wave of ghouls to attack. If she could take orders, there was hope for her yet.
In the tight confines of the entranceways, the ghouls were easier to pick off, though when the Vault Dweller ran out of ammo she was reduced to smacking the creatures away with a nail-studded board. With a sudden cry of rage, she charged through the ghoul corpses and pulled a grenade from her belt-pouch, throwing it at a knot of rapidly approaching ferals. It exploded, leaving them shredded and crippled, and after ascertaining that no more approached, Danse strode out and finished them all with headshots.
After making certain of the other ghouls, he turned around to face the Vault Dweller, torn between thanking her for her assistance and asking just what the hell was she thinking to ignore orders and charge in like that. The woman had fallen to her knees, staring at violently trembling hands, and blood stained her vault suit.
"Haylen!" he barked. "Get a stimpak for the civilian!"
The slender Scribe, hair tucked up beneath her hat, ran over and jammed the stimpak into the Vault Dweller's arm. "It's over," she told the civilian sympathetically as the healing chem did its work.
"Thanks," rasped the woman as the needle was withdrawn from her arm.
Danse jerked his chin at Haylen and she wisely backed away as he approached the Vault Dweller. "Thank you for your assistance, civilian," he said brusquely. "But what is your business here?"
"I'm trying to find my son," the woman replied in a small, soft voice. "He's a baby – someone took him."
Haylen gave Danse a glare that dared him to say something negative about the woman. Given that the Scribe was their recon team's medic as well as technologist, the Paladin wisely refused to accept the dare, instead trying to moderate his gruffness a little. The Vault Dweller could have gone past while the ghouls were distracted, after all.
"Do you have any idea who took him?" he asked, figuring that he could at least send the woman in the direction of Diamond City, the greatest settlement in the Commonwealth. The Brotherhood of Steel didn't have the resources – yet – to help find random children.
"Some balding bastard with scars on his face with some bitch in a hazmat suit," the Vault Dweller answered bitterly.
"I'm afraid to say that no one matching that description has passed through Cambridge," Danse told her. "Your best bet for answers would be Diamond City to the south – everything and everyone in the Commonwealth passes through there sooner or later."
"Thank you," she replied as she stood up, looking a little unsteady. "The world's… changed a lot since 2077."
Haylen's eyes lit up and Danse sighed. "You survived the Great War?" the Scribe asked eagerly.
"My husband Nate, my son Shaun and I just made it to Vault 111 as the bombs fell," the Vault Dweller replied as she hugged herself. "We were in some kind of cryo facility – put on ice – and only time I thawed out was when those bastards came to take my baby and kill my husband. Then… I woke up and the world has… altered beyond my imagining."
"It's 2287," Danse told her gently. "I… don't wish to be the bearer of bad news, but if you were frozen again, your son may be a man grown or even dead."
The Vault Dweller made a small choked noise and the Paladin flushed with shame. He might have just ripped away the only hope this woman out of time had. But the wasteland was unforgiving of the weak and deluded.
Then the woman's lips tightened in determination and her eyes hardened. "If that's so, I'll hunt the bastards down and destroy them," she vowed softly.
"Paladin?" Haylen's voice was tentative and when he looked at her, her gaze was thoughtful. "For someone to enter an unknown Vault and take a baby – that implies a high level of sophistication and organisation. Combine that with those disturbing energy readings I picked up…"
It was Haylen's job to make connections between disparate pieces of information. Still, Danse rather thought she might be stretching it out of compassion for the poor mother who lost her baby.
"Paladin?" The Vault Dweller's tone was uncertain.
"I am Paladin Danse, the woman is Scribe Haylen and the injured man is Knight Rhys," he told her.
"Sparrow Finlay," the Vault Dweller answered, offering her hand. "I apologise for my lack of manners. It's been a trying couple days."
He took it. Danse was gruff but he wasn't completely without manners. "It's been that way for all of us," he reminded her as he shook it.
"Well, not everyone gets caught in a zombie apocalypse," Sparrow noted with a flash of dry humour. "It's good to meet people who aren't intent on killing me for my vault suit and Pipboy."
"I don't know about kill, but I'd love to examine it," Haylen said chirpily. "Paladin, I think we and Sparrow might be able to help each other out."
Danse released the woman's hand and turned to the Scribe. "How so?"
"We need the Deep Range Transmitter at Arcjet Systems to broadcast to the Brotherhood," Haylen answered, completely ignoring protocol about discussing Brotherhood business with outsiders, even sympathetic ones. "Rhys is injured and I can't leave him – and he won't accept an outsider treating him. It needs to be you and Sparrow."
"I passed Arcjet on the way here," Sparrow said quietly.
Danse sighed. He didn't like working with outsiders and no matter how sympathetic Sparrow's cause was, she was a civilian who was more helpless than even your average wastelander. But Haylen was also correct – he couldn't go on his own when he commanded Recon Team Gladius and at least Sparrow had proven herself willing to help.
"You're kidding," Rhys said flatly from his position on the stairs of the police station. "She's not one of us and frankly, she's a lousy shot."
"We don't have a choice," Haylen retorted. "If Danse can make me a soldier, he can do the same for her."
"Just because of some sob story that mightn't be true, you're willing to piss away protocol?" Rhys demanded scornfully of the Scribe, who he'd sponsored into the Brotherhood.
"We need her help," Haylen said flatly. "We have ammo for three more days and supplies for six. Unless you have a better suggestion, I'd like to hear it."
"Haylen's right," Danse confirmed. "Unfortunately."
"I have some stuff," Sparrow offered, pulling off a satchel that rattled metallically and upending it onto the crackled concrete. Another 10mm pistol, several pipe pistols and a mixture of ammo poured out alongside several different chems, four stimpaks, a few days' worth of food and some wild plants. "All I could carry from the bandits who tried to kill me."
Haylen assessed the supplies with an experienced eye. "That could buy us a day or two more."
"Three if we ration," Danse, no stranger to scrounging himself from his days in Rivet City, observed.
He looked up at the reddening sky. "We can offer shelter and clean water for the night no matter what you decide, Sparrow, but we need your help. Our situation here is grim and well… if we fail, the consequences could be catastrophic."
"I'd appreciate the shelter," Sparrow immediately answered. "And… I'll help. You didn't have to keep the ghouls off me, Paladin."
"You were assisting the Brotherhood," Danse said awkwardly. "It was the least I could do."
He and Haylen got Rhys, who didn't look happy with their decision to include Sparrow on the mission, inside as the Vault Dweller followed. They had a spare sleeping bag from the Initiate they lost in Medford, so there was somewhere for Sparrow to sleep.
Danse noted approvingly that the first thing Sparrow did was excuse herself and go to the bathroom, emerging in a clean vault suit with the grime and blood wiped off, hair damp from washing. Beneath the dust and dirt, she was a small woman, straight chestnut hair pulled into a bun at the nape of the neck, her intelligent brown eyes peering out of a tanned, slightly careworn face. Something had left a scar that slid across the left side of her mouth and down to her chin while there was a patch of lighter skin spread across her cheek above it, a birthmark or some such thing.
"Thank you," she said as she sat down on the sleeping bag left pointedly empty for her.
Scribe Haylen produced the first acceptable meal in weeks, combining the standard Brotherhood rations of Instamash and Blamco Mac and Cheese with the tatos and potato crisps Sparrow brought to create a carb-heavy crunchy baked dish that would keep well over the next couple days if they all ate some sparingly. Danse watch the Vault Dweller eat, noting that her initial rush of energy had subsided, leaving her shaky and subdued. There had been Jet in the satchel she emptied.
I'd better make sure she isn't addicted to the chems, he thought grimly. The occasional use of Buffout or Jet was permissible in Brotherhood doctrine, but if any member of the order became addicted, they were forcibly weaned off the drugs the first time they were caught and then thrown out on the second. While she helped them, Sparrow was effectively an Initiate and he would treat her as one.
"Sleep well," he advised her as he took their bowls to be scraped back into the pot and then washed. "It will be a long day tomorrow and we leave at first light."
…
Sparrow flinched inwardly as Danse packed up their supplies, deliberately setting aside the Jet. Since she'd emerged from Vault 111 and stumbled across the wasteland to Cambridge, she'd avoided unconsciousness by inhaling the chem – she feared to lose more time in blackness. But surrounded by the even breathing of Haylen, the snort-snork of Rhys and the gravelly snore of Danse, she'd slipped into the darkness softly, feeling safe for the moment.
The Paladin had woken her about an hour ago, handing her a bowl of Sugar Bombs that were soaked into a sweet mush with clean warm water. Once she'd scooped it out with her fingers, leaving no scrap behind, and washed her bowl, he picked up her 10mm pistol and showed her how to clean and modify the gun using the scrap that the Brotherhood of Steel had collected as he explained his order's mission of searching for and neutralising dangerous technology. It was an interesting reaction to the Great War and the devastation the bombs had left behind, one that Sparrow found herself agreeing with. Nate would have been up there with Danse, wearing the heavy power armour like it was cloth and wielding a mini-gun to mow down the ghouls.
"You aren't a member of the Brotherhood but while you work with us, I will be treating you as an Initiate," Danse said as she cleaned and modified the other 10mm. "That means no chems unless truly necessary and never more than once in a fight. You follow my orders, treat Rhys and Haylen with respect, and be honest and honourable."
"Yes, Paladin," Sparrow responded. Had Nate shown that gruff authority as a soldier?
Once Haylen was awake to take over the watch, they moved out, the trip to Arcjet Systems relatively uneventful but for the band of raiders who'd just ambushed and murdered a trader in front of them. Danse charged into the fray as Sparrow targeted the middle of the raiders' bodies, doing her best to avoid hitting the Paladin and swallowing the sour bile that came up as people died. It was soon over, Danse spitting in disgust and then ordering Sparrow to put on the metal armour one wore and collect the arms and ammo.
Inside Arcjet, there were Protectrons scattered everywhere like broken toys, leading Danse to curse softly. "Institute Synths came through," he said grimly.
"What are Institute Synths?" Sparrow asked cautiously.
"The sort of abomination created by scientists who failed to learn the lessons of the Great War," Danse answered dourly. "The Institute, it's said, are the descendants of scientists who went underground after the atom bombs fell."
Sparrow's grip tightened on her gun. "Do you think they might have taken Shaun?"
"I can't say, honestly," Danse told her, jaw set stubbornly. "Follow me. We need to get that deep range transmitter before the synths do."
Plastic and metal mockeries of humanity attacked shortly after and they were forced to fight their way to the engine core. Sparrow's knack for terminals allowed them to bypass a security door and restore power to the elevators – but when she looked up and saw Danse overwhelmed by synths, she blanched at the sheer amount of metal monsters.
This was some kind of experimental rocket, she thought as she dashed for a console she recalled looking over the window. Nate swore a T-60 suit could survive a engine blast – I hope he was right!
She pressed the button and as the engines fired up, Danse hunkered down in a protective stance. Within moments, orange flame melted the synths to puddles of metal and plastic before dying away, leaving scorch marks in their wake.
Sparrow ran out into the engine core and hoped that she hadn't killed the Paladin.
When he moved, the ablative coating of his power armour cracked and scorched by the flames, she gasped in relief. The Paladin pulled off his helmet and the hood of the protective suit he wore under it, revealing a messy shock of dark hair. "I'm alive," he groaned. "Cooked, but alive."
"I need you to remove the arms so I can administer a stimpak," Sparrow told him crisply, falling back on the first aid classes she'd taken in college.
The Paladin regarded her with a raised eyebrow but obeyed, hissing a little in pain as she jabbed the needle in. "You were a medic before the war?" he asked.
"No, but I took some first aid classes – they were required by my college," she replied, pressing the plunger and watching the reddened weals of first degree burns fade into tanned brown.
"College?" Danse spoke the word as if its taste was foreign to him.
"Yes. Once, we would do – oh, about twelve or so years of basic schooling and then choose our life path, which sometimes involved more education," Sparrow told him. "My husband volunteered for the army instead of being conscripted. He was a corporal before being honourably discharged after the Battle of Anchorage."
"And yourself?"
"I studied law." Sparrow laughed a little despairingly. "We cracked jokes about Nate being the brawn and I the brains of the operation."
She pulled out the needle and tucked it away for sterilisation and reuse. Danse attached the sleeve of his power armour with quick, deft movements but left his helmet off and hood down, carrying the former under his arm.
"We need that transmitter," he said gruffly. "Also, collect as much of the synth technology as you can. Haylen and the other Scribes will need as much as they can to counter the Institute."
Sparrow obeyed, every bone in her body aching. She wanted to sleep for a year – but she'd lost so much time. What if Danse was right and she awoke too late to save Shaun?
By the time they emerged from Arcjet Systems, it was the middle of the afternoon and the sky glowed an eerie green. "Radiation storm," Danse said with a sigh. "We'll need to wait it out inside."
The rain that fell down glowed the same poisonous green as nuclear material but there was a strange beauty to it. Sarah watched it through the windows of the security trailer they sheltered in, her hands busy as she cleaned the guns they'd collected, the Institute lasers stuffed away for later study by Haylen. Danse was busy checking over his own laser, a weapon he had named Righteous Authority.
"That mission was sloppy," he finally said. "We were caught by surprise more than once."
Sparrow licked her scarred lips. "But we survived and got it down."
"So we did," Danse conceded. "You proved yourself, Sparrow. If you weren't there, I would have been killed by the synths."
He tossed Righteous Authority over to her. "You've earned this."
Reflexes from another life allowed her to catch the weapon. "But don't you need this?" she asked.
Danse smiled thinly. "The Brotherhood of Steel always keeps a backup weapon."
"Then thank you." She tucked it and the fusion cells she'd collected into the satchel made from scraps of a dead woman's dress.
"There's one other thing." Danse's hard mouth almost curved into a smile. "You obeyed orders, proved yourself useful and kept a cool head."
"I… Thanks," Sparrow answered, blushing at the praise, so unexpected after her underwhelming performance yesterday while strung out on chems.
"You're welcome. I'd like to offer you the chance to join the Brotherhood of Steel." When she looked up in surprise at the Paladin, he smiled subtly. "The Brotherhood looks after its own – and if I may be frank, with the Minutemen wiped out at Quincy and the Railroad dubious at best, we're your best chance of finding out what happened to your son."
"Do you think the Institute took my son?" she asked quietly.
"Haylen brought up the possibility and… it seems plausible," Danse admitted with a twist of his mouth.
"Why do you want me to join the Brotherhood?"
"Because you're intelligent, quick to learn and by dint of being kept on ice for two hundred years, you are a source of pre-War knowledge that isn't a ghoul and therefore potentially a threat to humanity if your brains rot," Danse answered bluntly. "You also helped without being asked to in Cambridge and well… That's too rare in the Wasteland outside of the Brotherhood."
Sparrow looked at the Paladin for a long moment, seeing the shadows of past wars in the haunted brown gaze and the scars that pocked his strong features. "My husband would have liked you, Danse," she said quietly. "If he'd survived, he w-would have m-made a f-fine soldier in your o-order…"
She burst into tears, the first she'd shed since taking the wedding ring from Nate's frozen corpse. "I-I should be dead-"
Muscular arms enfolded her and let her weep into a cloth-covered shoulder, a hand rubbing awkwardly down her back, trying to soothe her as the tears fell. For a moment she was back in 2075, the year she met Nate after he told her of her father's death in Anchorage and let her cry on his shoulder.
But Danse wasn't Nate. He smelt of sweat and metal instead of Old Spice, stubble rough and catching in her hair where her husband had been clean-shaven, silent where her husband would have made shushing noises to quiet her sobs.
"You survived for a reason," the Paladin told her when the tears finally ceased. "Life is hard in the Wasteland. But the Brotherhood of Steel would stand at your back, ready to spill its own blood if necessary."
Sparrow looked into those solemn brown eyes and found something resembling a smile in herself. This wasn't the world she chose but it was the one she had now.
"Then I would be honoured to join, Paladin Danse."
"Outstanding." Danse looked out at the darkening forest-green sky. "We will overnight here, Initiate. This storm will clear out by dawn."
"Yes, Paladin." She extricated herself from his arms, feeling the slide of his callused fingers as he reluctantly let her go. "I'll set up the sleeping bags."
"Good." Danse reached over for another gun and began to examine it as Sparrow unrolled the sleeping bags.
"Thank you," she said after a long, comfortable silence, the kind she'd never had the chance to share with Nate.
"You're welcome, Initiate."
Beneath the glow of an irradiated sky, Sparrow listened to the gravel of Danse's snoring and wondered if this world was so desolate after all.