Note: It has been a long run, and I am grateful for all my faithful readers. I'd be nowhere without you guys. :) I hope that this story has treated you well, and that you enjoyed reading. Thanks for sticking by me.

Major edits. Clarified a few things. Made more Autumn torture, because why not?


Of course she wasn't dead. How could he have been so obtuse?

Every moment from his entry into Raven Rock up until now had been skillfully directed. For eighteen years, the girl had been mislead by that heinous machine. She was indoctrinated as much as he was, and the outcome was that neither one of them could go against the flow of thought released.

He did not understand his own heart; Lillie's emotional state agitated him into allowing her to complete her mission. She clearly felt that this was something she must do, and if Eden had put her to it, it was... well, the likelihood of it benefitting the Enclave was absolute. He had to give the supercomputer that much credence. Eden would not have killed her, if its plans were not complete.

Augustus had failed at identifying the true purpose of putting Lillie out into the wastes, so many weeks before. And he did not think that he understood, even now, what she'd been sent to do at the purifier. He hadn't seen the whole truth, having been blinded by his feelings for the girl. The revenge he'd taken on her behalf showed him how much he had actually invested in the girl.

Perhaps that was the only wise thing he had done in his entire life, but now―now it bade ill for the Enclave, for his future, for everything that he had wanted. All future had gone to waste, because he had allowed himself the luxury of making himself free. Eden would have tipped the scales against the Brotherhood eventually, but for Augustus' pride and Lillie's broken innocence.

How appropriate. Eden had finally bested him at their game, with its death.

Eden was dead. No more did the insidious words whisper in his mind. And Lillie stood before him once more, and he knew the plot was not finished. Until all parties involved were dead and gone, the plot would not be finished.

She should have given him the code, before. The game they had played... the game they were still playing. Eden's plans were foolproof.

He was that fool. Lillie would not willingly go to her death without proper reason―even a reason only she understood―and he would not allow himself to fail the Enclave in this last, final effort to assuage his pride. They were, both of them, damned to see the plot to the end. No one would go down with them, if he could salvage the situation.

Staring down Lillie, his heart teetering inside of his chest as if it were suspended on a razor wire, and knowing that he would forever be bound to her by that asinine emotional attachment he'd let himself feel―

He truly was a fool. Damned and bound for Hell.

"Lillie. Activate the purifier."

She wrenched herself out of the state she was in, wet and shining eyes on his darkened ones. How she could still see, he didn't know. The uplink had been terminated when Eden was destroyed, and by its own actions the base destroyed. The action he'd taken to rid himself and his people of the supercomputer led to what might be his demise at the hands of a lovelorn teenager. Removing his people of their long-time home had been unnecessary, and he would pay for that decision.

Surely, given the time without her to distract him, he could have found a way to remove Eden without destroying Raven Rock―

Augustus kept his eyes on Lillie's. It was useless to think of what could have been. His mouth was dry; his heart beating a terrible rhythm against his rib cage. He wished, for one moment, that he had been able to properly elucidate the torturous sentiment to her. That he was not so bound by that godawful Autumn pride, and that he were not the man he had been molded to be.

But when one made a decision, one must control the situation. Augustus opened his mouth slightly, breathing a little too hard for his own good. "That is your final order, soldier," he said, keeping his voice as free of the shaken nature of his thoughts.

Lillie jerked her head up and down, taking the few long steps toward the control room of the purifier. The grimy wastelander she'd rounded up gave Augustus a glare that he couldn't quite interpret.

Augustus' mouth hooked up in a knowing smile. She'd executed her own variety of manipulation on the man, no doubt. He wouldn't have followed her this far, into Hell, if she had not won him over, somehow. Her charisma was like that of her father's; indomitable and discerning, she would find no person she couldn't sway with the time to prepare.

That thought did not bring to mind confidence, unfortunately. Augustus watched the man pick up his feet and slowly limping, follow her up the stairs. If she'd felt she needed a person of this one's stature to protect her in the wastes, it meant she was complementing her own natural aptitude in the same manner that Eden had used him as devil's advocate. Eden had brought her up as its successor, just as warped and twisted as it was, but she... God, he hoped she could still fight against that.

Augustus closed his eyes for a moment. His hands still shook, though he quelled the majority by clenching his fists and feeling the leather of his gloves creaking.

One of the men reported an issue. Augustus didn't hear the words at first, his mind still reeling from the shock of Lillie being alive after all and his own stupidity. When he pulled himself from the reverie he could hear the insistent nature of the report, and understood the dire nature of what was happening.

The Brotherhood had made their final attack on the memorial. It was unsurprising. They had been biding their time, and in that time they had repaired and set into motion their ace in the hole. Their massive robot was stomping through the ruins, and heavy Enclave casualties were to be expected. Augustus breathed in, then out, and ordered the men to mobilize.

The room shook with a massive blow from the outside―that damnable robot, potentially damaging the building in their fool's errand to reclaim the purifier. Augustus felt the tremors shaking the structure continue even past the hit. That was―

Alarms blared out around them, distracting him from his thoughts. "Sir! The facility has taken damage!" the radio sounded.

Of course it had, but he was surprised to hear that it wasn't from the fighting. Sabotage? And the technicians hadn't noticed the damage prior to this point? Of course they hadn't. Augustus wondered if this was how Eden had felt when Lillie managed to route its plans, forcing it to pursue alternate solutions on the turn of a dime. He listened intently to the radio, wondering the meaning of this revelation.

"Pressure's building―olding tanks. It needs to―eased now, or the―" The radio was garbled. Augustus barked a command, asking the technician to repeat themselves, but the static was simply too much to lend to any coherence.

If the purifier was damaged―no end of outcome could result. Augustus' brows drew together, his thoughts racing through everything that had been done. Everything that James could have done―what he had done, in the past, sacrificing himself―

"Lethal levels of radia―" the radio crackled once more, a technician's frantic voice ringing out into the shuddering room. "―Now, or the damage will be catastrophic!"

Augustus' eyes widened in realization. Even with all the time in the world the Enclave would not have noticed the subtly of James' final changes to the project. Who else would have seen his creation destroyed before being put to use by the enemy?

"Lillie!" he shouted, his head snapping up to stare her down once more.

She'd gone into the control room. The wastelander watched her from the outer door, his face alternating between annoyance and confusion. Lillie didn't register his words behind the glass, her face intent on the control panel in front her. She wiped her face, then put both hands onto the panel and leaned into it. She lifted one hand after what seemed like far too long and punched in the code.

It was too late. He'd always been too late.

Augustus felt his throat rumbling with a bitter laugh.

One of the soldiers spoke to him, a low voice but with pressing tone to it, and he knew that it was time to let go of his pride. Drawing his sidearm, he nodded and allowed himself to be escorted from the rotunda.

The loud thump behind him was not the slamming of the door upon his exit.


In the end, the Enclave was forced to withdraw from the purifier. He'd assured the remainder of the men that this was not their defeat, but that they had dared and that they would reclaim the resources needed to continue their mission.

When the dust of the battle had settled, and he stood in Adams Air Force Base, he commended the men and women who had stayed true to the Enclave. The American government would prevail. They were the only authority that truly ruled the wastes, and they would make certain that their goals were met.

Staring out over the wasteland and knowing that what had happened would not have been changed even if he'd made different decisions, knowing that his actions had little change... he appreciated that damn computer, now. What the Enclave faced ahead would be more than difficult and with only himself and the bare minimum of officers that had survived the assault at the purifier, well, Augustus didn't begrudge the ones who wanted to leave.

He understood, now. Why his father had let the others go, when they'd fled Navarro. Their hearts would always be Enclave, but their spirits were unwilling. Perhaps his father had let go of his pride, then, just as he had at the advent of the loss of the purifier.

Just as he had, when he realized that the only folly he'd even made was to be human. He had outpaced a ZAX supercomputer, and he had humbled himself in the process. What Eden had not had, and what ultimately triumphed in the end, was the emotional state of being that was normal for all persons. He was no longer ashamed that he had let himself come to that state.

The love he held for the girl was more fond in her absence. If he were to assume that she was finally, and ultimately, dead, well―

Augustus smiled to himself, tiredly. He would not assume she was dead, but it truly seemed his direction had brought her to her final end. Radio chatter brought nothing to his ears; intelligence on the Brotherhood was lacking in any mention of Lillie other than some idle mention of the Lyons woman who had led the assault on the purifier. Found gravely wounded in the rotunda. No other survivors accounted for, inside the memorial.

He was... still proud of Lillie. Continuing her actions, following his orders to the end. The reason she had to bravely march forward, the understanding that he wasn't able to comprehend until it was much too late... He should have not let her finish her mission. But she had, and he would live with his decision to let her take those actions.

And so, many others would live. Provided that the Enclave could channel their efforts and eradicate the opposition they faced, even still. The Brotherhood of Steel would not give up their pursuit of Enclave destruction. It would be foolish to assume the base was a safe fall-back plan.

It would be foolish to assume that anything that had happened, was the end-all.

Augustus held the vial that Lillie had brought to him, the one she had left behind. Collected by a prudent soldier, handed over to him in the aftermath. It contained a virus that would have ended the mutation in the wastes. All mutation, including Lillie and other wastelanders. People who had not been born of pure human stock would have slowly died out, leaving behind only those who hide behind walls and in the secret Vaults of ages past.

People like him. She had sacrificed herself to save those people, and he'd only waved his hand to allow it. He was a coward. A coward and a fool.

Augustus smiled.

He was a living coward and a fool, and by God, he was thankful for that.

God bless America.


"Forsook her lord and land, to prove
What woes await on lawless love,
Had fairer form adorned the shore
Than she, the matchless stranger, bore."

~ Seige of Corinth, verse 9, Lord George Gordon Byron


END