The Vault-Tec representative glances about the dimly lit study, hands gripping the arms of the leather chair.
This was not the first time he had been invited into a potential client's home. Indeed, it happened quite often-well, in the beginning, anyway, when people did not entirely grasp what he was selling. That was when he began seeing more closed doors than faces.
He got used to it. Apocalypticism was not really a subject one usually broached in polite company. And between the economy and the war and the elections, well, was it any surprise-
"And here we are."
The representative gave a start, in spite of himself. He prided himself on nerves of steel, his mettle tested by countless Vault-Tec emergency drills and work parties-but there was something off about this man.
He was just beyond marrying age, and lived alone. He seemed to have a meticulousness towards fashion and grooming, even within the privacy of his own home. The representative's brow furrows-could this man possibly be what the papers talked about? A 'confirmed bachelor,' in the wild?
… And was he in its den?
"Ah, yes-thank you, thank you." The representative takes the cool glass of whiskey with both hands.
"So," the man says, sitting opposite in another leather armchair. His head tilts lazily to the side. "Enlighten me about this so-called Vault. One-hundred-and-eleven, I believe you said?"
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Major Adam Smithson, Army Special Forces. Son of Seth, son of Seth, son of Keenan, son of Jared, son of Noah. Soldiering ran in his blood more than blood itself, a molten alloy of iron and lead and the tears of widows. Deployed to… well, he couldn't really say. Operational security. Op-sec, in the jargon of the cannon fodder. But reports of trails of butchered Communists, played on repeat by American news broadcasts, left little to the imagination. Lascaux couldn't help but glance now and again at Adam's hands, to see if he had scrubbed under his fingernails.
When the Smithsons threw house parties-and God, they threw them-it would inevitably be brought up. Adam, the leader, the soldier, the hero. The men who were cowardly enough to escape the draft would ask, breathlessly clutching their highballs, for war stories. For tales of his valor.
It was about that time that Lascaux would leave the room. Upstairs. Outside. It didn't matter. He knew how Adam would react: with humility, with kindness, with selflessness, and finally with an attempt to elevate Lascaux in the eyes of their peers.
"What do you do, Vic?" the partygoers would say, unsure of what tone of reverence to address him with.
"Corps of Engineers. Electricity, water, roads, bridges, fallout management."
"Oh," they would say, rolling their eyes and getting another drink.
Lascaux chewed his ice to keep from chewing his glass.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"You doing okay?"
Lascaux didn't look up at Yumei's voice. He just kept staring out across their backyard, over their pool, into the light-polluted sky.
"Yeah."
He can't lie to Yumei, so he doesn't put much effort into it.
She knows his routine, by now-then again, she caught on after the first time. Lascaux can only take so many hours (well, minutes) of polite, domestic, American mingling before he needs to eject-the-fuck-out like a fighter pilot over Moscow on Victory Parade Day.
So they sit there, together, saying nothing, looking up at blind sky.
She could tell him that he doesn't need to go to these things-that they're just a formality, a way to keep the peace with the neighbors, that Adam doesn't really like it either. But it means a lot to Adam to have Lascaux backing him up-two soldiers amongst soft civilians. So Lascaux bears it as much as he can, every time, pretending to not care and to show up… just because.
"Thank you," Lascaux says, unsure why.
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"Well, I don't want you to."
So, from then on, he doesn't. And that's that.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Before we begin, let us take a look at the one called Victor Lascaux. Not a long look, but enough to understand who he is. Or what he is, at least.
He had one mother, and one father, as was the style at the time. Both loved him, though in different ways, and the mother more than the father, as, again, was the style at the time. Their names are not particularly important, as is the case with most parents.
He was born small and late, and spoke late, and walked late. His parents were concerned, the neighbors whispered, and the doctors wrung their white-gloved hands, but little Victor lived up to his namesake and defied the infant mortality statistics. The U.S. Census Bureau took note, surely.
We will not overdwell on Lascaux's childhood and the trauma within (or lack thereof), for we are not psychiatrists. If you actually are a psychiatrist, well, by now you are used to being disappointed by patients, so this will all be very familiar to you.
He lived a painfully ordinary life. The most remarkable things about Victor Lascaux were perhaps his very neat handwriting, easily mistakable for typescript at a distance; or that he wrote upon graph paper instead of lined all through school. He said the Pledge of Allegiance three times a day like the rest of the children, and partook in the burning of the red-and-gold flag of Communist revolutionaries on Joseph McCarthy Day. He could duck and cover underneath his desk with perform form when the bombing drills went off, and though he was shockingly terrible at America's pastime (a psychological result of being picked last every time at recess), he somehow could recall the results of the past fifty American League championships without error. And woe to the schoolyard joker who called him a "French faggot," for they would soon find themselves sprawled at the base of the flagpole after school. To be sure, he possessed just enough typical deviation from the societal norm to be normal.
Up to West Point, that is. Things changed, then. Because that is when he met Adam Smithson, and life as he knew it became quite different.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The unlikeliest of places: Quebec. There, his uncles and cousins taught him in days what West Point could not in years:
How to string a bow and shoot it like a man.
There was little wilderness left in the United States. One had to drive the backroads for hours and hours to see the stars, much less greenery that hadn't been agonizingly manicured. Aside from the occasional raccoon or opossum or pigeon, there was little wildlife to see within the eyeshot of city lights.
Lascaux had never killed anything before. Ants, cockroaches, houseflies, the pride of schoolyard rivals, but little else. But he wanted to. For what seventeen year old boy, red-blooded and blue-balled, did not want to kill?
The arrow missed the heart.
The caribou ran for a mile, the pain and the taste of its own hot blood driving it mad. And the humans pursued, the thrill and the scent of that hot blood driving them mad. And then, the heaving beast rounded on them-and looked down at them, with pure contempt-and fell.
Steam rose from its body.
Lascaux had killed.
Lascaux would kindle that small solace, whenever Adam outshot him on the range, or outwrestled him in the ring, or outran him in the field, or outdrank him at the bar. It was a solace that required quite a bit of kindling, as you can imagine.
There were no deer left in Massachusetts but for the last nature preserve. So the two of them trekked out between the few remaining trees and set up their targets stolen from the range: red-eyed and befanged Chinese Communists, of course.
"Watch and learn." Lascaux drew, and shot.
Adam, with his characteristic sureness, drew and shot.
It was ugly and raw and beautiful.
"Like that?" he asked, tentative yet hopeful.
Lascaux frowned. "Watch me again."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
He was reading the letter again. He knew.
"Well?"
Adam's sharp eyes emerged over the folded-and-refolded paper, peering through the smoke.
Lascaux pointed at the letter with his cigarette. "Are you going to marry her or not?"
Adam blinked. Lascaux would remember that for years after as a rare victory. "I... what do you mean?"
"It wasn't a rhetorical question, Smithson. Yumei writes you love letters, perfumed in God-knows-what. You write them back, cologned in God-knows-what you wear, with me as your dutiful editor."
"I don't have a house, Vic."
"Buy one."
"Real estate-"
"Get an apartment. Build a house. Live at home with your fucking parents, even." Lascaux flicked an ember expertly into a waiting ashtray. "There's a war on, if you haven't taken a look the papers recently. Men like you are in short supply, and tend to have shorter lives."
Adam ran a hand through his hair. "I... I want to. God! Of course I want to! Who wouldn't? But-"
"Are you a man, Smithson?"
"I-"
"Yes or no, Smithson. Are you a man?"
A pause. Iron and fire. "Yes." Conviction.
"Then we know your answer." Lascaux flicks away hot ash, forcing himself not to smile.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
He was the best man at the wedding.
When he rose to his feet to give a toast, his speech was ready in his mind. He cracked his neck. How it would be the perfect blend of commendation and insult. Damnation with the faintest of praise. Enough to get him adopted into the (good) Marx family. Just enough.
But everything came out wrong. He lost the thread and hung himself with it. First he started with how they met, and how they bonded, and suddenly there was a story that made them seem like best friends. And the days at the range with the bows. And then how he helped Adam write letters, and...
Oh, by the end of it, there were tears in the Smithsons' eyes. Even the children, usually playing and restless, had stilled to listen. The guests rose and gave him a standing ovation.
Adam and Yumei clapping the loudest of them all.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"... Speak, or hold your peace."
Lascaux was a statue, but rage shook his guts apart.
Actions