Nate hadn't felt this guilty in a while. His two beautiful granddaughters were standing at the gates of Sanctuary looking worse for wear compared to the last time he had seen them. They'd been wide-eyed and excited to meet him – the polar opposite of their fathers reaction, for starters – and their platinum hair tied up in matching buns. Now, they were dressed in typical wasteland armor and their hair, while still strangely matching, was matted and looked like it hadn't come out of the ponytail they were in in weeks. And yet when he came to the gate they looked so relieved to see him, as if they didn't know it was his fault their home was blown to pieces.
"Oh, thank goodness!" Octavia practically shrieked, bolting into his arms. Evelynn took a more hesitant approach, but still pulled him into a hug when she reached him.
"How did you two find me…?" He wondered aloud, partially to himself as he stared at Octavia's glassy eyes. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she was high on something; he was hoping it wasn't anything too heavy.
"Well," Evelynn smiled ruefully. "When we escaped the Institute, we just started asking around. It's not like we didn't know who you were; when we got to Piper she gave us the exact location in exchange for an interview." Of course. Nate thought, leading the two women up the hill towards his house. He made a mental note to thank his girlfriend when she finally came back to Sanctuary.
"We didn't know where else to go." Evelynn said after an awkwardly long pause, looking anywhere but him. "You're the only family we have left, and we figured with how hard you fought to find Father, you wouldn't be opposed to us wanting to be close to you." They knew him pretty well already, it seemed. Then again, they'd been in the small group of scientists on his side from the moment he stepped into the Institute. Coaching him on who was who and explaining the best approach for handling things; he was so proud of them. That pride hadn't faded at all when he'd caught sight of them running amok when the sirens went off, helping synths and children alike escape the building while simultaneously gathering as much information as they could save from the nearby terminals.
"We're not mad at you for what happened." Octavia spoke up, seemingly lost in her own head as her wide blue eyes shifted from place to place curiously. "I mean, we were, but we're okay now. It was inevitable that someone would take a shot at us eventually. Father never did understand how to be… compassionate. Even when we were kids, he was like that. Mom was the one who did a lot of the emotional footwork with us." Her grin was infectious, but he was floored by the fact they'd mentioned their mother. Inside the Institute, they'd always been very careful to tip-toe around his questions about her. Evelynn had said one time that she was a beautiful person and had died too young, but that was all he'd gotten from them about it.
As they took a seat in his renovated home, he tried to come up with something to say, but they seemed content to just be in his presence. The twins were identical in every way. From their unruly curls to their button noses and the shade of their eyes – he couldn't find any noticeable difference.
"I'm so glad you found me. I was afraid that you had stayed with Father." A dark look came across Evelynns features and she pursed her lips.
"Our mom was a ghoul," She said abruptly, folding her hands together in her lap. "Father wanted to see if he could extend the human lifespan without the exposure to radiation, but every other attempt was a resounding failure. So he decided to try the old-fashioned way." Horror crept up Nates spine, his stomach rolling in disgust.
"We were conceived and birthed in a cell they had the audacity to call a lab, and for the first twenty years of our lives, we were just experiments. Our mom loved us, don't get me wrong, but Father? I don't think he ever did. We were raised like normal children for the most part, and when we stopped aging, he finally let us join the Institute. Mom was executed." Pain erupted in his chest once more at the thought of what his son had become. There was no doubt in his mind that he had become a monster, after hearing the story of how his grandchildren came to be; he'd made the right decision.
"I'm so sorry." The words were almost cut off by the tightening of his throat as tears threatened to spill. "How old are you really?" Nate found himself asking quietly, eyeing them curiously.
"Thirty-five. We were the experiment that put him on the list of possible successors to the previous Director." Octavia spoke up then, apparently coming down from her high.
"We don't miss him." Evelynn admitted, looking distraught. "Part of me was so relieved when you blew that place up and I feel so guilty for feeling that way. He was still my father, so what does it say about me that I hated him so much?" The seemingly young girl burst into tears then and Octavia looked as surprised as he felt but pulled her into a hug anyway. Nate suddenly got why she was on the chems as her own eyes started to water; she closed them rather than cry, rocking her twin gently as she sobbed into her shoulder.
He moved to take both of them in his arms, pulling them close as their small family suffered quietly in the privacy of his home. Well, mostly private; their moment of mutual pain was interrupted by his front door bursting open to reveal Shaun, who was panting at the effort it took to sprint here from wherever he was. The girls in his arms jerked to attention, righting themselves as the young boy looked at them with wide eyes. The duo looked horrified for a moment and Nate stepped back to address his son, but before he could the ten-year-old synth tackled them into a hug.
"Tavs – Evee! You guys are okay!" They seemed tense, even as they returned the hug with a questioning look his direction.
"Dad!" Shaun turned excitedly to him then, grinning eagerly. "These are my sisters Octavia and Evelynn!" Those words broke something in the two girls, and he watched their faces crumble as more tears poured out and they pulled him back into a group hug. Father really was a sadistic bastard, it seemed. Programming the miniature version of him to call his own children his siblings – to call him his dad. Or maybe the old man had been experiencing regrets, and wanted to redeem himself with the synth Shaun; wanted his children to know the love of an actual family. None of them would ever know, now.
"Why are you crying?" The child asked, clueless, but didn't pull away as the twins held him close for several minutes, even rubbing their backs and saying things like, 'hey, it's okay now!' and 'I missed you guys!' that only seemed to make them cry harder.
"We missed you too, Shaun." Octavia righted herself first, rubbing her eyes with dirty sleeves and Nate came to the conclusion they probably hadn't had the opportunity to shower since they escaped the Institute when she looked at him with newly dirtied eyes.
"I have a working shower down the hallway, if you guys want to clean up before we discuss the technicalities of you staying with me. I'll go make you some food, okay?"