Chapter Four: Frozen

He stood in silent shock for what felt hours. Finally muttering a curse under his breath he trudged out of the ward. He needed a drink, desperately. The adrenaline from earlier had subsided, leaving him feeling hazy and anxious. He slammed the door to his quarters letting the silence envelope him. Sinking into his desk his emotions crashed over him like a tidal wave.

Her fingers on his wrist, the words she spoke to him before slipping into unconsciousness left his resolve shaken. He couldn't understand why it had sunk beneath his skin the way it did. Perhaps her tenderness, a similar tenderness to one of his ghosts, Sarah. He sighed, slamming back his second glass of whiskey, as it burned its way down.

These vault dwellers had a way of boring their ways into his very being, but why? He began thinking about the kind of people that must have existed before the Great War. Were they all strong, resourceful, and full of driving fire? Or did the wasteland shape them into something entirely new? He didn't know. But he did know he would be a fool letting something like that happen again. He couldn't lose someone else.

He leaned back in his chair, the overbearing urge to sleep closing in on him. He tried hard to remember Sarah's face, her kind smile, her blonde hair. Blonde hair, he thought of with sleep overtaking him. But not of Sarah's silken strands, instead he dreamed of wild golden curls.

Iliana's breath was cold in her throat; she was motionless, struggling against her cryopod. How did she get back here, wasn't she aboard a great air ship? She pushed violently against the hatch, trying to escape her icy coffin. Her fingers tingled and ached, she could hardly feel her nose. One more heavy push and the door gave way, creaking open and echoing through the eerily silent facility as she fell out, tumbling to her knees. She coughed, an icy burning sensation stinging her throat, a feeling similar to being in the snow too long.

Nate. Shaun.

She jumped up running to their pod. Empty. She began yelling, calling for them. How did they escape? That's when she remembered something, her head aching.

The scarred face of Kellogg and his scientist friends clad in hazmat suites. The man who stole her baby and shot her husband. He wasn't really a man, he was a monster. He took everything from her. The institute took everything from her. Iliana fell to the cool metal floor, tears pouring from her eyes leaving ice cold trails on her cheeks.

"Ili..." she heard his voice, soft and warm. She missed that voice, after all it had been over two hundred years since she had heard it, or at least she thought. She was hardly sure about anything anymore. Iliana looked around for her husband, he had to be somewhere around this vault.

That's when she saw him, his warm hair, masculine build, clad in jeans and a plain white shirt. And he had Shaun in his arms! Oh she had just been having a cryo-nightmare, the Vault Tech rep had warned her briefly about those. "Thank god," she sighed, picking herself up off the floor.

She began running towards them, ready to have them in her arms again. She ran and ran, the hall stretching on for eternity. Cryopods zipped past her as she sprinted, heels clicking on the vault floor. Running, and running. Nate and Shaun seemed to get further away from her with every step. She looked at the floor and sprinted with all her might trying to catch them, and when she thought she had reached them she dove, trying to grab onto something.

Iliana hit the floor with a thud, sliding into Nate's black boots. She grabbed for him, trying to wrap her arms around him. Opening her eyes, trying to locate her boys she found herself grabbing for a dusty charred skeleton in a heap of clothing.

"No!" She cried, jerking herself awake. She sat up, wiped sweat from her brow and struggled to make out where she was.

Her eyes finally adjusted to the harsh lights of the med bay on the Prydwen. She had been dreaming. Iliana took a deep breath, cradling her head in her hands, and swallowing back her tears.

"Oh good, you're awake" Cade spoke as he approached her on the gurney. "How're you feeling?"

"A little disorientated, honestly. What am I doing here?" Her throat ached, longing for water.

He must have read her mind, handing her a glass, "that's just a side effect of the Med-X and it'll wear off soon, and not to mention you lost a hell of a lot of blood. Do you remember anything?"

Of course she did, she remembered Danse at Fort Strong, she remembered struggling to get off the Vertibird, she remember giving her report, albeit briefly, to that obnoxious man, Maxson. "The last thing I remember is presenting Maxson, er Elder Maxson, with my report after Paladin Danse and I cleared out Fort Strong." She paused trying to think past that, finding nothing else but blackness, "that's it..."

"Apparently you suffered a particularly nasty mutant hound bite at the fort. Passed out right in front of Elder Maxson during your report."

Iliana felt her cheeks burn, she couldn't believe she did that, and she was sure there would be some kind of repercussions as a result. "Um... did he say anything?" She asked sheepishly, hoping to gauge his anger through Cade's response.

"Not really, he carried you down here from the command deck. Maintained pressure on your wound until I got here. Elder Maxson waited in here for quite some time, he was quite troubled with the whole situation, really. If it weren't for his fast thinking it's entirely possible you would have bled out." Cade busied himself checking her vitals and her wrappings.

Iliana was shocked to speechlessness, she was sure he would have let her writhe in a pool of blood on the command deck.

"Everything looks great, Knight Anderson. You'll want to keep weight off of that leg but you should be fit for light duty in a week or so." He clicked together a crutch and handed it to her.

Iliana hopped off the table, the stitches in her leg screaming. She inhaled sharply, and remembered she had promised herself a drink.

"Thank you, Knight-Captain Cade."

"It's what I do, Knight Anderson. Oh by the way, Elder Maxson requests an audience with you when you're feeling capable."

She nodded and hobbled towards the mess hall.