When does something change from news to history?
No one knows what the Commonwealth will look like in a hundred years, but if there are history books then the year 2281 will definitely have its own chapter. And it will start on February 27th, the beginning of the Gunners War.
Eventually people will speculate on what happened, on what was fact or fiction, kids will play war games in their backyards with sticks for guns, arguing over who gets to be Minutemen or Gunners.
But for the time being, it's not a distant memory or speculative history.
For the time being, it's news.
There are still people who remember how calm it seemed the night before, how the entire commonwealth seemed to breathe one last calm, easy breath, and how everyone seemed to sit together, sharing one last peaceful moment.
The scene was almost picturesque, a campfire keeping everyone warm, blankets and coats keeping everyone comfortable.
If it hadn't been for Liam's less than graceful awakening, you could almost call it peaceful.
Liam had woken like a housecat waking to thunder. Lot's flailing, skirting, and even metaphoric claws out in the form of a revolver being pointed at the sky.
"And that's why I never sleep with a gun," Allen, who until recently had been tending to the campfire, remarked.
"Hard to sleep without it," Liam panted out.
"Bad dreams?" Allen asked, maintaining a casual demeanor.
"Yeah," Liam confirmed, holstering his gun and flicking his hands open and closed as if getting water off of them. "Can't seem to shake 'em."
Liam shook his head like a dog. "How 'bout you? Do you get nightmares?"
"Sometimes," Allen admitted, "My therapist once told me that there are three common types of nightmares: what we've done, what's been done to us, what we've seen." He seemed to gloss over his own admission. "What kind of nightmares do you have?"
"Six of one, half dozen of the other." Liam said, forgetting there were three options, "I've done a lotta killing, Marks, that sort of thing wears on you." He finally seemed to wake up, dragging himself closer to the fire. "But the worst ones are those of my friends, ya'know, the people I couldn't protect."
Liam gave a humorless chuckle, "Guess I don't need to explain it to you. You probably know better than anyone what it's like to hold a friend while they die."
Allen shuffled a bit, seeming rather uncomfortable by Liam's observation.
"You're mostly right." Allen finally admitted, "I know loss, but I've never actually held a friend, someone I tried to protect, in my arms as they died."
"You're shittin' me."
"Closest I came was losing Nora, and even that was between a glass and steel door," Allen said. He tried to explain, "I was a spy. When I lost friends, they were usually a continent away."
"I'd say you were lucky but…" Liam trailed off.
Allen replied, "It's hard to see a guy who lived through a nuclear fallout as lucky."
Liam snapped and pointed his finger. "True."
He looked over their sleeping companions, his eyes pausing on the sleeping Curie. "You sure it was a good idea to bring Curie along?"
"She wants to help," Allen said, "At least this way I can keep her close, keep her safe."
"That's not how that works, Marks," Liam chastised him quietly, as if he couldn't keep the words in but was hoping Allen wouldn't hear them.
"Pardon?"
"I said," Liam spoke slightly louder than necessary, "That's not how that works, Marks."
Liam shuffled a little closer to Allen, "There's no 'radius of safety' around us. People can get hurt around us just as much as they can get hurt elsewhere."
Allen opened his mouth as if to respond, but no words came out.
"'I tried' are not comforting words, Marks," Liam continued, "You'll always wonder if there's more you could have done, I hope to God you never have to learn that lesson."
"I've been at this longer than you have," Allen pointed out, "I bet I could teach you a thing or two."
"This is a new world, Marks," Liam reminded him, "don't get too attached to your way."
"Or what?" Allen challenged.
"Or you'll end up dead or, worse, you'll be too obsessed with bringing back the old world that you'll forget to find your place in this one."
Liam's words had gravity, as if each syllable was weighted by stories he'd rather not tell.
"If I tell you to shut up and sleep, will you actually follow that order?" Allen demanded.
"I'll have you know, Marks, I always follow orders." Liam said, laying back down, "I just prioritize my orders to myself first."
There are still people who remember those who couldn't handle it, who remember seeing unflappable friends being sent home, because their nerves were so shot they became a danger to themselves or worse.
Curie had been the first to go. She returned to Dr. Amari, to the relative safety of Goodneighbor. Too many patients, too many people left behind, too many people lost to a simple lack of stimpaks.
Curie wanted to help, she wanted to heal, she had heart, and did not leave quietly.
"I can still help, monsieur," she assured the retreating back of Allen.
"Not with those hands," Allen said, turning around, and motioning slightly to Curie's trembling hands. "You're smart, Curie, you know that this isn't the place for you, not right now."
"Monsieur!"
"Curie," Allen sighed and placed a hand on Curie's shoulder, "You've gone as far as you can go, there's no shame in this. Please, for my own sake, go back to Amari."
For the time being there are Minutemen who still know what it's like to try to hold a position and for all to seem lost, when all of a sudden, strangers in brown coats appear and turn the tide.
There are still people who cried out the general's name as if it were God's in hope that either would save them.
There were twenty-five yards of no man's land between the Minutemen and the Gunners. And our boys in tricorne hats were low on ammo. Somehow the Gunners sensed it and made to charge.
But the first one who made himself a target went down, it didn't take long for the second one to hit the ground, exactly as long as it takes to eject a bullet casing and queue up a new one.
This was a familiar enough occurrence, and while he didn't stick around, by now the Minutemen had figured it out.
When every shot seems lucky, and blind shooting becomes kill shots, when no one knows where the shooting is coming from, it's coming from the general, and what he puts in his sights, he puts on the ground.
Eventually the list of the fallen would become...just that, a list.
Sacrifices from so long ago no one really feels the weight anymore, no one knows how each one died.
But for now, even the least likable were heroes.
"If I wanted foreplay I would have talked to your mother!"
An hour ago, in front of a dozen Minutemen prisoners, the Gunners took Lauren Mcnamara and Dennis Murray into a side room for interrogation.
"If you shag your boyfriend this softly, no wonder he came to me for a good time."
Dennis was supposed to scream, he was supposed to beg for it to stop, he was supposed to turn on Lauren, to tell them anything, just to make them hurt her instead of him.
"Careful, if you keep hitting me that hard you'll give me a hard on."
Instead ten minutes later an unscathed Lauren rejoined her comrades, only for an unnamed Minuteman to take her place.
"C'mon, a threesome's only fun when your girl's there," Dennis continued his taunts focusing the Gunners on him and his smart mouth "How's she doing anyway, does she still moan my name in her sleep?"
Dennis lasted an hour and twenty-three minutes, before it became too much, before the wounds became too ghastly.
His resolve never wavered, and when he was found dead on the ground, an hour and thirty minutes from the moment his interrogation started, it was only his body that was broken, never his will.
People would eventually wonder why the war ended the way it did. Why, when the war had been so surgical, the assault on Quincy had seemed so improvised.
But there were a dozen and some change witnesses to the breaking point. A dozen people who saw the look in Liam's eyes as he poked at Dennis's side, like a pup pawing at a dead friend, who saw something in him snap. A dozen or so saw it, but only Allen could keep up, only Allen could match Liam step for step on their way to Quincy.
A long night, before a really long day.
Liam and Allen were holed up in the Quincy church, the one piece of Quincy real estate they had managed to hold onto.
The only part of the original plan they had managed to hold onto was to clear the overpass for a vertibird the Minutemen had managed to commandeer.
As the reinforcements made their way downstairs, Sam Smith greeted them.
"Having a bad day?" he inquired.
"Better with a few friends by my side," Allen reassured him, shaking Sam's hand.
The reunion was quickly interrupted, not by Gunners though, but by a series of electrical bursts, each one signaling the arrival of a synth.
For a moment, it was almost comical, Allen and his Makarov quickly dispatched the pseudo-humans.
But it was the final electrical burst that made things interesting.
The person that came out didn't seem synth like, didn't seem like a scientist, no. With not a doubt in Allen's mind, this was a courser.
"B3-28 Initialization…" The courser started, approaching Sam.
"Run, Sam, run!" Allen ordered, rushing the courser.
Reaching the newcomer, Allen cradled the back of the courser's head with his left hand and struck with his right.
For a moment, it seemed all the synth could do was get hit. Allen pulled every trick he remembered, every tactic, every style he'd ever known or practiced.
But punching the synth was like hitting a practice dummy, it just seemed to keep getting back up.
The coursers weren't the Institutes ultimate weapon for nothing and eventually he caught Allen's hand, twisting it, pulling the arm, and striking the shoulder.
Even with his left arm dislocated and hanging useless, Allen was still a formidable foe, but what can you do with one less hand than your opponent?
It didn't take long for Allen to find himself on the ground, staring up the barrel of the synth's sidearm.
But the shot that rang out wasn't that a laser weapon, it was a high caliber revolver, one that Liam was particularly fond of.
Outnumbered and outmatched, the synth did what he needed to do - and ran.
Allen tried to give chase, but there were other matters to attend to, and as much as it pained him...today, Quincy came first.
At first there was noise, enough to shake the Commonwealth, the celebration in the Castle could be heard in Diamond City.
But people don't really remember the moments after a party, when all that's left is the host and anyone he may live with. People don't remember the come-down - they forget what it's like to just lie around a fire and think.
Liam thought he was the only one awake, an unimportant detail, but it explained why he was talking to himself.
"If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I forget you."
Liam was lying on his back, staring up at the night sky, his hand above him, as if his prayers were scripted on his palm.
Allen was the first to interrupt Liam's musing.
"What's that mean?" he asked, turning over to show Liam his open eyes and less than tired demeanor.
Liam let his arm fall onto his chest.
"It means…" Liam paused, testing his words, "It means something else for someone else, but to me," he turned to look at Allen, "It means I'd rather forget my skills, my trade, than forget who I used to be, where I came from, and what home means."
Allen nodded thoughtfully.
From nearby, Piper spoke up. "Why do you do that?" She pulled the hat from over her eyes. "I see you do that every now and again."
"I'm a priest," Liam explained.
"Chaplin," John corrected, his voice muffled by his arm, which he was using as a pillow.
"You're religious?" Piper asked, incredulous.
"Surprised me to," Lauren admitted, "to be honest."
"Okay," Liam sat up, looking around the camp, "Would everyone who's awake and plans on staying awake please declare themselves?"
There was a quick chorus as everyone, save John and Glory, admitted to their insomnia.
"So, what brings this verse to mind?" Allen backtracked, "Homesick?"
Liam scoffed at the mere thought "Not hardly," Liam lifted his arm towards the sky again, as if his fingers were pulled by a string, "It was Murray's favorite verse."
"Dennis was religious?" Piper asked.
"Academic curiosity, I'd wager," Liam mused, his fingers plucking at his palms, "Mixed with a poet's flair for the dramatic."
"Why that verse?" Allen asked, "He didn't seem like a homebody."
"Some things stay between a priest and his people."
"Chaplin." John corrected again, his voice still muffled.
"Shut the fuck up, Johnny," Liam said, a grin spreading across his face.
"I never hated Dennis." Lauren reminisced, "He didn't think much of my hobbies, but he saw the value in me. Never took me out of the fight, saw the 'strength of my conviction' as he called it." She smiled wistfully, "He was a better man than he seemed."
"That's all we can hope for," Liam said, letting his arm fall to the ground. "That our last moment's a good one."
On that cheerful note, everyone started trying to get some sleep again.
Liam was the last to fall asleep that night. The last thing he did before finally getting some rest was to scratch six tallies into the dirt, then quickly wipe them away.
Eventually, when history books become a thing again, 2281 will have its own chapter.
But for now, all it is, is news. And like all news, it can get lost in the wake of the next story. For the moment, Allen, the Minutemen, the Regulators, are all heroes.
But the public opinion turns on a dime, and while eventually, when the historians ply their trade and find the truth, they'll all become known as heroes again, in the coming days...things got more complicated than that.
