Quod sum causa tuae viae
He was dead. Dead, gone, deceased … Unbidden, an image from an ancient television show she'd seen once on a history night came up: a man in a petshop, banging a stiff parrot on the counter to prove to the salesclerk that it was indeed very dead. And Annie laughed. Tears streaming down her face, she slid down the pod that held her Nate and choked with hysterical laughter that wouldn't subside.
How long it took her to get herself together, she didn't know. Her watch was gone. Shakily, Annie got to her feet and trudged through the deathly silence. She found creatures as long as her arm that had no right to exist. The hysteria threatened to resurface, but she kept it down. Killing things was all right. No-one knew better how to kill things.
When she was outside and everything was barren, she kept it down. Survival in adverse conditions was also fine. She could do that.
When she found Codsworth back in Sanctuary, one thing that hadn't been destroyed and taken from her, she kept it down. If the bad hadn't cracked her open, the good wouldn't either.
But when she heard the words 200 years from the robot, she lost it. And this time, the darkness wouldn't go away. Not in Sanctuary, not in Concord, not even when she tried to distract herself with the village of her brand-new friend Preston's settlers.
Her life was gone. And no-one, absolutely no-one in this cock-up that called itself a world had any right to make demands of her.
