Jennifer's mouth pinched in concentration as she turned a - what was it? a fuse? - over in her hands a few times. The Project Purity team had been out at the Memorial for several days now. Jennifer threw the possible-fuse back into a box full of other junk with a resounding rattle. They'd been out at the Memorial for a few days now, and she'd been doing about fuck-all nothing for most of them.

Her father, predictable as always, had pretty much abandoned her to focus on his precious water project to the exclusion of all else. Only if he wasn't lecturing her, of course. It was especially bad between them now after Tenpenny Tower. He didn't much like the way she handled that whole situation, and he wasn't afraid to let her know that in excruciating detail. While, of course, ignoring the fact that she'd been helping all kinds of people since she'd left the Vault.

She sighed and ran her hand through her hair in agitation. Jennifer turned towards the door and grabbed the tubing she'd been sent off to get on the way out. She wanted to help with the project, too, but it was either something so technical that it went completely over her head, or it was some menial fetch task that sent her out of the team's way for a solid hour or so. Like this one. Jennifer noticed that, too. Her father was at least trying to keep her out of everyone's way while they worked. Useless to him as usual, she supposed.

Her boots hit the metal walkway in a series of echoing clangs that sent the dried blood of the previous supermutant inhabitants flying in small flakes. As she neared the main work area, she softened her footsteps in response to the gentle, echoing voices that drifted down the hallway towards her. It sounded like her father and . . . Doctor Li? Strange that they're not yelling. The two of them argued almost as much as she and her father did.

". . . Telling you . . . not a problem . . ." She frowned in consideration and came to a complete stop. She heard Doctor Li mumble in reply, but it was too faint to decipher. ". . . Not possible . . . thinks I'm dead . . ." Who thinks that? Why?

Doctor Li muttered something about increased surveillance activity and Jennifer wished for once in her life that she would be as annoyingly loud and confrontational as she usually was. Their shadows moved alarmingly closer to the doorway leading to the hall she was lurking in, and she panicked at the thought of them catching her eavesdropping. "Dad?" Her voice echoed through the mostly-empty space and the shadows froze in response.

"Over here, Jennifer!" His response prompted her to start moving again. They met in the doorway leading to one of the offices. As expected, Jennifer could see Doctor Li was standing near a stack of papers on the desk, staring at her shrewdly. She turned her attention back to her father. He smiled at her, but she could tell it was fake. Probably worried that she'd overheard them.

She lifted the tubes in response and raised an eyebrow. "I got these like you asked, but when you weren't in the Rotunda, I wasn't sure where to look." She lowered her arm back down and the tubes smacked her hip. "Didn't realize you were gonna run off on me."

He chuckled, slightly more genuinely, grabbed the tubes from her, and clapped a hand onto her shoulder. "Thanks, honey. It means a lot how much you're doing to help with the project, and I appreciate it."

Confusion swept over her in a painful wave, and her brow crinkled in response. She wondered what angle he was playing here; he'd already reassured himself that she hadn't heard anything. So . . . what?

Jennifer smiled, or it felt a little like her face pulled in what seemed like a smile, and she extracted herself from under his grip. "Yeah. Of course. I'm just gonna go . . . do something else? If you don't need anything, that is." He shook his head in response with a strange look growing on his face. Right. Of course not.

She headed towards the room she'd claimed after moving all the supermutant bodies out of the Memorial. Moira's next chapter of the Wasteland Survival Guide wasn't going to finish itself, after all.


Jennifer blew gently on the page she held lightly between two fingers. Eraser shavings dramatically fell to join the growing pile on the desk, alongside several other papers covered in drawings. The last time she'd met with Moira in Megaton, she'd been given several tasks to complete for the second chapter. One was to give a detailed field guide of general emergency medicine. As Jennifer had been trained as a doctor in the Vault, this wasn't a particularly difficult task, but still rather time consuming. She'd also saved herself from becoming Moira's guinea pig, again. She still didn't know the side effects of the mutation she'd gotten after her little brush with death by way of radiation poisoning.

Jennifer had already finished the actual written guide and decided to brush up on her drawing skills and include a few diagrams. The first few pages had turned out pretty badly, showing her little practice in the years since she'd given up the talent - or, rather, been told to stop after paper shortages in the Vault had gotten too bad. She was slowly getting the hang of it, though.

Jennifer leaned back in her desk chair and slowly stretched her cramped wrist. Chapter two also included the history of the second oldest settlement in the region, Rivet City, and general tips for founding and governing a large settlement. The last was to check out the Arlington Library and retrieve the book catalog. As she stretched, she realized with dawning comprehension that both of those sites were close to the Memorial. Rivet City was practically a hop, skip, and a step there and back.

Jennifer almost slapped herself. Why the hell am I just sitting around here when I could be getting other shit done? With renewed invigoration, she started collecting her papers and throwing them into her bag. Dogmeat looked up from his perch on her mattress with a startled tilt of his head. "Need to go tell dad that we're gonna run some errands. Shouldn't take us very long, huh, boy?" He started to wag his tail in enthusiastic response, which she took for agreement.


Her father hadn't been in his room, or anywhere else she could find, so she just left him a note outlining her plans and headed out with Dogmeat. He ran around, happy to finally be free to roam around with minimal supervision, sniffing everything in reasonable range. Her cigarette dangling from her fingers, Jennifer let out a snort of smoke at his antics. Right, and she'd gotten a lecture about that new habit, too. With growing annoyance, she rebelliously stuck the thing back in her mouth. She was an adult, and she could do what she wanted.

Rivet City was just as ominous and grand as the last time she visited, a dark silhouette against the horizon, the creaking of the metal on the water echoing in the silence. The positive difference between then and now was that she wasn't sleep deprived and wielding only a 10mm pistol. Her skin crawled at the memory. How she'd survived that little endeavor, she'd never know.

Rivet City security had luckily been by recently to clear out the supermutant camp, or so she assumed, so entering the city was a matter of climbing the ramp, pressing the comm button, and waiting for the bridge to swing across.

The marketplace was just as crowded and dim as it had been last time. She dropped off her laser rifle with Flak and Shrapnel - thinking about it breaking had made her paranoid, and she justified to herself that it definitely wasn't too soon for another tune-up - and made her way through the maze of hallways and staircases to the Weatherly Hotel, ditching her cigarette along the way.

Jennifer had barely stepped through the doorway, Dogmeat on her heels, before a little body had shrieked and slammed into her. "Jennifer!" She tensed instinctively before she remembered where she was and forced herself to relax and return the hug. Bryan Wilks was doing well, apparently. Emotionally and physically; she took note of his clean clothes and hair, and how his cheeks had rounded out already, and felt a warm glow suffuse her body. I sure as hell helped him, didn't I, dad?

Her thoughts returned to the present as Vera Weatherly stepped out from a back room, took in the sight of them, and laughed prettily. She meandered over, and by the time she was in speaking distance, Bryan had finally released his death grip on her leg and turned his attention to Dogmeat, who had been patiently waiting very admirably for the boy's petting.

"Hey there, vaultie." Vera dropped the box of cleaning supplies in her hands off onto the counter, and settled her hands on her hips with a friendly smile. "What's new with you?"

Oh, no. Small talk. The bane of her existence. Jennifer hadn't considered the fact that she would have to talk to people when she decided to visit. "Go ahead and tell me first what Three Dog has said on the radio." She rolled her eyes briefly. "I've learned it's easier to get that out of the way before we start talking."

Vera laughed again and gestured to the dining table set towards the back of the room. Jennifer took the invitation and sat as Vera grabbed three water bottles and some sort of homemade food.

She carried it in a little covered basket; it smelled delicious and, strangely, a little familiar. Her brow furrowed at that. She definitely hadn't seen many familiar foods out here unless they were pre-war, simply because the Vault had a working hydroponics garden and the outside world, well, didn't.

The arrival of food was enough to drag Bryan away from scratching Dogmeat's ears, and the two of them hurried over to the table. Inside the basket were some delicious looking bread rolls. She and Bryan politely waited for Vera to take one first, before they both dove for them like they'd been starved.

Vera swallowed a bite of bread and raised an eyebrow at the two of them. "I was going to save these for dinner, but I figured I may as well feed you if you're going to drop by to visit us."

Jennifer guiltily stopped chewing her delicious mouthful of roll. "You don' haf to feed me, Fera." Speaking with her mouth full, too. Her father would have her head if he could see her. Bryan was already on her case, as it was.

"No talkin' wif your mouwf full!" He pointed a finger at her accusingly and spoke through his own full mouth. If only he was old enough to understand irony.

Vera just shook her head at the two of them in mock despair.


After everyone had calmed down and eaten their fill, Jennifer filled Vera in on what had happened since they'd seen each other last and what she was doing in Rivet City now. She actually didn't have to do most of the talking, because Vera could talk enough for the both of them. Turns out some of the new things Three Dog had reported on her included her venturing into the Anchorage simulation, saving Bryan, killing the Evergreen Mills raiders, and her and her father arriving at the Jefferson Memorial. He also accused her of murdering Alistair Tenpenny on the grounds that she had already had a hand in everything else happening, so why not that, too?

His reports were somewhat accurate, she supposed, but they generally made her out to seem much more heroic than even she considered herself. Except for whatever the hell he thought happened between her and the Brotherhood Outcasts. Apparently everyone thought she had gone down there and slaughtered them, which they had actually done to each other, and she told Vera that rather heatedly.

Vera raised her hands in innocence. "I believe you, but that doesn't change what Three Dog has been saying about the situation for however long that story has been running. Just be careful if you run into any more of them, alright? They're certainly not going to want to be your friend now."

Jennifer conceded the point rather dejectedly. Just another thing she needed on her plate.


With Vera's advice, Jennifer visited Seagrave Holmes, who had apparently lived in the city since he was young and would know who to speak to for the history of the city. After talking with him, he pointed her to Pinkerton, who she should have thought of first, anyway.

Jennifer grumpily dragged herself through the cold, disgusting water and further into the broken bow of the ship. At least the mirelurks hadn't returned, or she really would've been in trouble, as her laser rifle was still on Flak's worktable in several pieces.

Emerging through the doorway, Pinkerton's lab was a cluster of different equipment and electronics of various purposes. Most of the medical tools she could recognize, but a lot of the more stuff lying around was completely foreign to her.

Pinkerton had his back turned away from the door and was facing some man with his shirt off, sitting on a medical exam table. She hadn't realized anyone else knew about the old scientist down here, except, of course, for . . .

"Hey, Harkness." She approached the two of them, Pinkerton now leaning down to type on a terminal, grumbling, and the security chief still sitting stoically on the table's edge. He nodded politely back at her.

"Jennifer. What are you doing down here?" He waved a hand around, generally indicating their surroundings.

"Why, the same reason you're down here, I assume." At his raised brow, she elaborated. "To enjoy Doctor Pinkerton's lovely company."

Harkness smirked at her, and they both looked over to the doctor in question, as his grumbling deepened at their conversation. She smiled more fully at Harkness. "Actually, I've been sent to find out about Rivet City's founding and general governing history. What about you?" Her eyes roamed across his chest, noting the scars scattered across his pectorals. She wondered how they had gotten there. "I've read enough novels to know that I may not want to stick around with you half-naked. Might get steamy in here."

He sputtered at her insinuation, and she smoothly cut across his embarrassed stammering. "Only joking, Harkness. Calm down and breathe."

He shook his head at her. "I'm only here for a check-up. Seemed prudent to make use of the one doctor that knows anything about my unique . . . condition, I suppose, while I can."

Pinkerton straightened up with a series of cracks and turned an eagle eye on the two of them. "If both of you are quite done, then? You're free to go, A3-21, and I'll speak with you further about the things we discussed at a later point." Harkness hopped off the table and donned his undershirt. She didn't miss the way his face darkened at Pinkerton's use of his old android name. The doctor turned to her. "As for you, I'll help you with your damned research as long as you never again imply I'm having sexual relations with my patients, especially the mechanical ones. Clear?"

Jennifer caught Harkness's eye on his way out, and the two of them almost burst out laughing. "Crystal clear, doctor."


Jennifer woke up slowly and stretched. She had stayed overnight in a room rented from Vera, and now she wanted to check in with her father at the Memorial and go finish up at the Arlington Library. That would also require getting out of bed, which she wasn't particularly inclined to do at the moment, as she had just had the first full night's sleep since she had left Megaton and she wasn't particularly inclined to ruin that just yet.

She rolled over and considered everything that had happened yesterday, with Harkness in particular. He seemed hesitant at first, but he didn't seem to hold any ill will towards everything that happened between them. That was good. Her actions, while rash, were still what seemed to be the best decision, and she was glad to note that he hadn't tried to reinstate his memory block.

A wet nose touched the back of her neck, interrupting her thoughts, and she yelped in surprise and jerked away. Dogmeat took this as an invitation to jump up on the bed with her, which it most certainly was not, and start huffing at her for something. Food, probably. She sighed at him in exasperation. Damn mangy animal.

She rolled herself out of bed and grabbed him some of her brahmin jerky. He started munching on it noisily, and she pet the scruff at the back of his neck. "Good boy." He wagged his tail at her without looking up from his meal. "Except for the part where you put your gross nose on my neck. That sucked." He promptly ignored that part. Bastard.


The Jefferson Memorial rose up in the distance as she left Rivet City, and she felt a lightness in her chest that hadn't been there in a long while. She didn't know what put her in such a good mood, but she was determined to ride out the feeling for as long as possible.

Dogmeat followed her through the winding halls of the Memorial, where they briefly dropped off her bag and went to go see her father. She supposed she should check in with him, even though she had left a note. He may be curious about what she'd been up to, and she could sit and tell him about the things she did at Rivet City, and-

A loud and abrupt bang derailed her thoughts, and she turned wildly to try and locate the source of the noise. She caught a brief glance of somebody rushing at her before she was locked in their arms and she couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe-

The person pulled back, and as she gathered her wits enough to realize it was her father, he shook her by his grip on her upper arms. Not hard, but hard enough. "Jennifer! Where the hell have you been?!"

She knew he was speaking to her but the words didn't make sense and she still couldn't breathe. Her breath wheezed out of her chest. "What? I-"

He interrupted her, wide-eyed and panicked. "It's dangerous out there, Jennifer! You shouldn't have left, and especially without telling me where the hell you were going. What were you thinking?"

Jennifer's chest finally, finally loosened enough for her to take a deep breath and ease the pressure behind her eyes. Her heart thudded in her chest, loudly. "I told you where. I left a note in your room. I couldn't find you."

He looked at her with wide eyes and shook his head; his grip on her upper arms was still tight, too tight. "No, I meant you should have told me where you were going. Why would you just leave without saying a word?"

Righteous indignation flooded her veins, along with a bucket of ice water. She felt cold, very cold, all the way down to her bones. When she spoke, her words spilled out of her smoothly and easily. "Yeah, I wonder where I got that from, huh, dad? Just leaving without a word and only a note. You should be grateful there wasn't a dead body to go along with it."

He reared back from her and released his grip on her upper arms. "I- you-" He stuttered, seemingly unsure what he wanted to start with. "You shouldn't talk about what happened like that, Jennifer. I already apologized for how I left."

Her brow wrinkled in confusion. "No. You didn't." Was that how he interpreted the mess of a conversation they had after they escaped Braun? He thought he apologized? She wondered what the hell reality he was living in.

He shook his head in denial, confused hurt plain on his face. "I just- That's not the point. I was just saying that if you plan on leaving, please let me know, alright? I worry about you."

She tried to reign herself in, but she couldn't control the snap in her words. "Were you worried when you left me in the Vault?"

He father sighed, that pained look still on his face. "You want to have this conversation now?" He looked over his shoulder, over at the lab. Jennifer could see the research team pretending they weren't listening in on the conversation.

Which is what he was more concerned about, of course, as always. His research. She scoffed and walked around him, starting back towards her room. "No, we don't have to have this conversation now, seeing as you're more concerned with your project." She sneered at him over her shoulder. "As usual."

Her father grit his teeth in response, but his patience had held out slightly longer than it ever had before, which surprised her. "Come on. Let's have this conversation, then."

They walked to her claimed room in tense silence, and the door shut behind them with a loud bang. Silence unfolded between them, sharp as a knife.

He turned towards her. "Well? Go ahead and say whatever you want to say, then."

The cold fury that had been building into a ball in her chest exploded, sending piercing shards to the furthest reaches of her body. "You never listen to me! You didn't in the Vault and you still don't now. You never let me help with Project Purity, even though I keep asking for things to do! You just send me around to grab things and- and- and I thought it would be different from how things were in the Vault, but they're just the same."

She took a deep breath and he looked like he was about to say something. "Don't interrupt! You're still not listening, don't you see? All I've ever wanted is to help you, to be useful, but you barely even talk to me! You would just get annoyed and send me away and-" She had a sudden memory, from before she took the G.O.A.T. "And you didn't even want me to be a doctor, even though I've only ever wanted to be like you and mom-" She choked on her sudden tears. She didn't even know she'd been crying. The thing she wanted to know for so long was screaming to be let out and she couldn't stop herself when she asked. "Do you blame me because she died?"

She couldn't see well through her tears, but he looked stricken by her words. "No, no, honey. How could you ever-" He stopped himself so abruptly that she heard his teeth click as his jaw snapped shut. He sighed, deeply. "I don't blame you, baby. Things like that . . . they just happen."

He reached out and she flinched away from him, the burning memory of his grip on her arms just a minute ago too fresh, and he reluctantly pulled his hand away. He still took a step closer to her, though. "I never wanted you to feel like that. You don't annoy me, honey. I worry about you because I don't feel like you talk to me about your feelings." His mouth twisted. "I can see why you feel like you couldn't, though. And all those things you said, about keeping you away from my research and not wanting you to be a doctor, I was trying to keep you safe from the Overseer." He shook his head sadly. "I never thought he would hurt anyone, but I knew he didn't like us and I didn't want it to be directed at you."

She sniffed loudly, her face wet with tears. That made a little sense, but not enough to make all the hurt she's felt go away just like that. But it was something, at least. A beginning. "Okay." She paused, hesitant. "I love you."

His eyes widened in surprise. "I love you too, honey." He reached out again, pleadingly, and she slipped into his arms and hugged him. She also wiped her snotty face against his shoulder for good measure. "I'll try to show you how to do some of the things we're working on with Project Purity, okay?"

She nodded against his shoulder. The cold drained out of her, and her chest felt lighter than it ever had, even compared to this morning, even though the hurt wasn't gone completely. This thing between them didn't feel fixed. Maybe more like burned down. Something new and stronger was taking its place, and she couldn't wait to take these next few steps with her dad, hand in hand.