The Girl in the Tower
There was a tower in the Capital Wasteland unlike any other. It was maintained, it was repaired, it was cleaned. A patched and white-washed scar upon the bleak landscape of the decrepit, bygone world.
Its windows were solid panes, not cracked and shattered frames. Its walls were firm, devoid of cracks, and with no hint of rubble. The tower stood amongst the dust and the ruin, defiant against the passing of time, a streak of vanity denying Armageddon its prize.
This was Tenpenny Tower.
Movie stars, politicians, mobsters, socialites, and atomic scientists had flocked to the tower in the before time when it was a resort for the wealthy and powerful; it was a playground of money and means, a garden of catered whims and desires. Then the bombs fell.
The tower was saved by a quirk of geography. A nearby hillside was vaporized and blown away in the tower's stead as the nearest bomb burned and boiled away at the once beautiful landscape. Homes, streets, people, all blown away in a flash of nuclear fire. But the tower remained. A looming skeleton, a charred memory of glitz and glamor, an ego waiting to revive.
The tower waited and soon it captivated the shrewd eye of an opportunist. Allistair Tenpenny saw the tower and it spoke to him. Ghosts and phantoms of glory and power entranced him in the silent, dusty halls. Visions of excess and ease fell over the fallout and ruin. Allistair saw what was and what could be again.
A tower anew. His tower. Tenpenny Tower.
With a cash infusion, the heart of Tenpenny Tower began to beat. Rubble was cleared, burned out furniture was dragged away, and the collapse was pushed back. Traders, merchants, and artisans were lured with the promise of a roof over their heads and walls around them. The emaciated corpse of Tenpenny Tower began to swell. Patches were replaced with repairs, repairs were covered over with remodels, and remodels were polished with artisanal design.
Slowly, Tenpenny Tower began to breathe once more. And as it breathed, its walls tightened. The drifters and wasters who cleared the rubble and rebuilt it brick by brick were turned away. The settlers and prospectors were rejected at the door. And all the while, those who'd scraped together wealth, who'd stumbled upon treasure, and who'd stolen their fortunes were welcomed with open arms. Pre-war movie stars and idols were replaced with water barons and caravan queens. The walls of Allistair Tenpenny's dream loomed tall over those huddling in the dirt. The cold, envious eyes and grasping hands were pushed back by the barrel of a gun, while the affluent were sheltered and housed.
In the Capital Wasteland, Tenpenny Tower stood. Guards and servants and guests milled about with Allistair Tenpenny sitting atop, the king of his castle. Every piece in its place, and a place for every piece. Nothing awry.
Almost.
There was a suite hidden from Tenpenny's view. A forgotten and isolated collection of rooms. No high-paying guest had ever wanted this suite. Separate from the tower's amenities and looking out at the blasted remains of the hillside that had once sheltered Tenpenny Tower, the suite had drifted off the registers, and the floor in its entirety had been relegated to storage. Rarely did someone stray to this floor for long, and never did they enter the forgotten room.
For it was not empty. There was a girl in the room.
She was a very unusual girl who revelled in the solitude of her ornate suite instead of recoiling, who somberly pondered the desolate expanse out her window instead of sneering. She was as far from Tenpenny's desired guest as the wasteland mongrel that travelled by her side. She was no normal resident.
This was the Lone Wanderer.
Today the Wanderer didn't feel like taking part in the life she'd fought so hard for. The bars and restaurants of Tenpenny Tower and the allure of their decadence held no sway over. She wanted solitude. She wouldn't get it, for she was not alone.
"You mind opening a window?" her guest asked her.
The woman was seated on the floor and leaning against the wall. She waved a hand through the trails of smoke that were winding through the room. The Lone Wanderer had been listlessly smoking a cigar she'd found during one of her forays into the Wasteland. The Wanderer grunted at the request, taking a long drag on the cigar with her head tilted back before spewing a cone of smoke up towards the ceiling like a chimney. The two watched the ethereal wisps for a moment longer before the Wanderer's guest repeated herself.
"But seriously, a window, please."
The Wanderer grunted again and dropped the cigar into the ashtray beside her chair. Next to it sat an inhaler of Jet. It waited there with the expectation of use. The Wanderer stood up unsteadily, rubbing the heel of her hand against the side of her head alongside a jagged scar that stretched from ear to temple. The pressure thudded within her skull as it always did. She opened the blinds, letting a shard of bright sunlight bisect the room. Fresh air joined the light as she cracked the window. A dusty breeze stirred the smoke and fresh, wasteland air began to circulate.
"Thank you," her guest called politely as the Wanderer ignored her and returned to her seat, kicking over an empty beer bottle as she went. On the bed her dog yawned, exposing rows of canine teeth, before putting his head back down on his paws, asleep.
Collapsing in the chair, the Wanderer threw her head back again, grasping for the cigar. "Fucking thank you's," she muttered. "I fucking hate you."
"No, you don't. You hate you."
The Wanderer paused with the cigar at her lips and tilted her head forward to fix her guest with a steely eyed glare.
Little Miss 101, the Hero of the Capital Wasteland. She couldn't stand her. Little Miss 101 and her perfect politeness and her perfect face. She wanted to make that face bleed. She settled for reaching for the Jet instead.
"And here we go again," 101 commented, watching the Wanderer pick up and examine the inhaler. "That junk is toxic for you."
"If I live long enough to be killed by chems, I'll consider that a fucking win," the Wanderer replied flippantly. She eyed 101. "Besides something has to take the edge off your fucking stories."
101 snorted. "Fucking this, fucking that. You know who you sound like?"
The Wanderer pressed the inhaler to her lips and inhaled deeply, welcoming the rush of chemicals into her lungs. "No… who?" she wheezed in response, keeping her breath in as long as possible before exhaling. The drumbeat in her skull receded the slightest bit.
"Jericho," 101 answered as she watched the Wanderer sag placidly in her armchair, idly watching the last trails of smoke dance in the breeze.
The Wanderer chuckled. "Jericho? Really?" Her head lolled in 101's direction. "I remember when you met Jericho."
101 didn't respond; she knew what the Wanderer was referring to, but she didn't fall for the bait. Her composure remained and she stayed just as unflappable as she always was.
It was occasionally easy to forget how far back their history went. 101 had made her arrival in the Capital Wasteland first, arriving in the shantytown of Megaton and getting her footing. But the Wanderer was only a few months behind. Whereas Little Miss 101 had stepped forward front and center, heroically defusing Megaton's namesake bomb, the Wanderer had slid in through the background. She wanted nothing to do with the spotlight. 101 didn't really recall properly meeting the Wanderer until months after the moment she was hinting at.
One night 101 had been strolling down to the Brass Lantern, Megaton's local food shack and had stumbled upon an altercation between the Stahl brothers, the shop's proprietors, and Jericho, the former raider turned town muscle. She didn't even stop to inquire as to what was going on. She just got in the middle of it and tried to get both sides to simmer down. In response, Jericho broke a bottle against Leo Stahl's head and then turned his drunken rage against 101.
Hero of the Wasteland or not, Jericho was a big man with a foot of height and weight over her. Before she knew it she was head over heels with his hands wrapped around her throat, slamming her repeatedly against a table right up until the moment the Wanderer slipped a knife between Jericho's ribs and kicked him off of her. 101 was still catching her breath as townsfolk descended and the Wanderer disappeared off into the crowd.
Jericho lived, but with half the breathing capacity. No more smoking or shouting from him or he was likely to keel over. Now, he gave 101 a wide berth when she visited the town. Not that she visited anymore.
"Fucking Jericho," the Wanderer chuckled again. She took another hit from the Jet and sighed, slumping further in her chair. The Jet made her fingers tingle and the colors of the room run together.
"You're going to blow out a blood vessel in your eye again," 101 cautioned. "You don't want what's-his-face, Doctor Banfield, to notice, do you?" she asked, stretching Banfield's name out into an uncertain inquiry. She'd never met the man.
"Subconjunctival hemorrhage," the Wanderer said, tasting the diagnosis against her teeth. She managed to fix her wavering gaze on 101, flexing that the little Vault-rat wasn't the only one who could read a medical textbook. Beyond the taunt she refused to give thought to the doctor. She'd drawn her line in the sand with Julius Banfield from day one. He was to leave her alone. The Lone Wanderer wasn't one to subject herself to the whims of a doctor.
She waved her fingers at 101, looking away and out the window. "You were telling a story. Or do you want to keep lecturing me?"
The other girl had been in the midst of spinning one of her epics. The Wanderer was of the opinion that 101 liked to talk too much (101 considered herself sociable). 101 knew this. She wasn't stupid and she was far from oblivious. She could recognize that the Wanderer was trying to get her to move on. Her comment about a burst blood vessel and the doctor must have penetrated the fog of chems. Good. Someone had to try and talk sense to the Wanderer even if everyone else had given up. But 101 didn't press further. She had time to continue working on the Wanderer.
"What was I talking about?" she instead asked flippantly. "Brotherhood or super mutants?"
"Both," replied the Wanderer. "You were saving the day at GNR Plaza."
"Oh… yeah!" 101 replied brightly, her eyes twinkling just the slightest bit. She couldn't help it, she loved telling stories. It always made the Wanderer the slightest bit angry how easily 101 could sit down and just talk with anyone. The words and camaraderie came easy to her. Rage came easy to the Wanderer. Not that she could feel much rage through the Jet.
101 stepped back into her tale of assisting the heroic Brotherhood of Steel to save the Wasteland's resident DJ, Three Dog. The Wanderer listened through the highs and lows. The Lyons' Pride, the super mutant attack, the behemoth, the Fat Man. All trotted out in bite size pieces.
The Wanderer had never had the displeasure of meeting Sarah Lyons, but she'd had her fair share of run-ins with the Brotherhood. Jumped up scavengers in her opinion. They'd found themselves some fancy power armor and decided to "save" the Capital Wasteland. There was no saving it. Too many assholes. And too many super mutants. The swollen, muscled, green monstrosities ran rampant through the area. 101 had a particular dislike for the mutants. The Wanderer had long suspected why, but she'd never pursued a discussion. Their relationship was punctuated with not talking about things.
She on the other hand had no particular issue with mutans. In her opinion, everyone in the Wasteland was waiting their turn to shoot their neighbor. The super mutants were just up front about it. But for 101, they were going to be the bad guys in her story.
101 narrated each roar and bellow of the green men, every shout of panic and fear of the Brotherhood, the boom and rush of heat of the Fat Man, and the inevitable cheers of victory. The Wanderer had heard it all before. Multiple times. Repeated on the radio, in bars, and by 101 herself. People liked to talk about her. It was annoying. However, the tale being told to her now and the versions she'd heard before differed drastically from when she'd heard it first from 101 herself.
They'd had a habit of flitting in and out of each other's lives. Megaton, Big Town, Rivet City, Arefu, sometimes they'd stumble upon the other at a fire out in the Wasteland. The Wanderer remembered when she'd found Little Miss 101 deep in her cups at a merchant's bar in Canterbury Commons. It was a shocking sight to see the lauded hero (much lauded since Three Dog had returned to the airwaves with her assistance) drunk off her ass in public. Against her better judgement, the Wanderer stopped to speak to her and she heard the tale for the first time.
101 was tired. So, so tired of the Wasteland and its people. Everyday she got up and put herself to service for those around her and all she wanted to do was find her deadbeat father and go home. That was all. But even as she stopped to help every wayward soul, no one stopped to help her. Every tip, hint, or rumor was bartered for her time, her aid, her blood, sweat, and tears.
She'd heard so much about the Brotherhood of Steel and their Knights, she'd thought maybe they'd be different. They were not. Soldiers in fancy armor fighting a losing battle and pressganging every passerby they could to their cause. Demanding her aid before they'd even consider letting her pass.
Three Dog, the radio personified. The man who was out there "fighting the good fight" and working to inspire others to do the same. That man withheld his promised information and "everything" he knew until she agreed to help him. And help him she did all for another vague rumor.
The Lone Wanderer was no stranger to drowning her misery. Wwhen she'd seen 101 like this it was jarring, but she'd understood it. Her hardened heart bled a little for her. But it was temporary. When next she'd seen the vault dweller, 101 was spinning her story of GNR plaza with a grin. Whatever depressive throes she was in had been shrugged off and the hero was back. The Wanderer loathed her for it. She carried her pain with her. She didn't try to dress it up.
Because that's what Little Miss 101 did. She took her pain, her anger, and she dressed it up to be something else. The Wanderer remembered when she first saw her tattoos. It was in Megaton. The Wanderer was passing through as she always did, collecting some chems from Moriarty, going quickly about her business, and being on her way. Little Miss 101 was down in the town square seated at a table, socializing with a few townies when the Wanderer saw her. She was dressed in her trademark, VaultTec-issued, blue jumpsuit, but had shrugged out of the upper half and sat in a tank top. Seated next to her was Billy Creel, working away at one of her arms. When the Wanderer got close enough, she could see the ink and pen Billy was working with.
Shock and mirth hit her first. Little Miss 101, the good-girl of the Vault was getting a sleeve of tattoos! Whatever would the rest of her people think when they saw that? She couldn't help, but grin until she looked closer. The grin dropped and any good cheer bled from her body along with any semblance of kinship with the girl from the Vault. A snake, a lion, a gear, a clover, a ship's anchor, symbols one and all of the misery this world had forced upon her and here she was branding them to her skin in colorful ink, and she laughed all the while regaling the crowd with stories about where each one came from.
The Wanderer stared down at 101 where she sat on the floor, still rambling on. Her drug-addled gaze intensifying to a sneer. 101 wore tattoos. She wore scars. The two had always stood in stark contrast. Where 101 was olive skinned with just the slightest bit of perpetual sunburn, the Wanderer's skin had browned and weathered in the sun. 101 had her pristine jumpsuit that she'd armored up, and the Wanderer had scavenged her clothes from where she could. 101 pulled her jet black hair back in a functional bun, and the Wanderer shaved the sides of her head and dyed her remaining hair an unnatural scarlet.
And then 101 had gone and intentionally marred her perfect skin. The Wanderer clutched her own arms self consciously. They were a criss-cross of scars and damage. The bullet hole in her bicep from the first time she'd gone to Megaton. They'd shot at her, mistaking her for a raider. The shallow canyons in her leg from an unlucky swipe from a Deathclaw. Unlucky that it had gotten her. Lucky that she had kept the leg. The crude surgical scar on her head from those animals in Point Lookout. And the mottled, electrical burns across her chest from those Enclave bastards. Her canvas was one of scars and wounds while 101's was of bright colors and thrilling tales.
101 had caught her staring. The former vault-dweller knew about the scars and how they ate at her. She'd even gone so far as to ask the Wanderer if she wanted to talk about it. She'd never received an answer. The silence served as its own refusal.
The room drifted into silence. 101 stopped talking and the Wanderer stopped glaring, both waiting for the other to do something. They were spared the pregnant silence by a knock on the door. Both of them stiffened in tense caution. The dog's ears perked, but he didn't move.
The Wanderer's floor was largely a no-go zone for the people of Tenpenny Tower. A knock on the door would best be described as unusual. The Wanderer's eyes flicked to 101. The message was clear, she would stay where she was.
Silently, the Wanderer slid from the chair and to her feet, pulling a pistol from behind her as she did. She approached the door. When she'd moved into the tower, she'd suspected that the building's security teams kept keys to every room. This was unacceptable to her and she'd reinforced her suite with additional chains and locks. She undid a few and cracked the door ajar with several chains still strung across it. Her pistol remained pointed at the door all the while.
"Gustavo," she greeted tersely.
Chief Gustavo was the head of the security forces of Tenpenny Tower. He and his platoon of combat-armored troops patrolled the building and its walls, a show of force to the Wasteland. He was also one of the few people who would brave knocking on her door.
"Mr. Burke, wants to see you," Gustavo said, just as shortly as the Wanderer.
"It's my day off."
He fixed her with a baleful-eyed stare. He dreaded interacting with her in the course of his duties.
"You don't have days off," he replied. "He's in his office." And with his message delivered, Gustavo turned on his heel and left.
The Wanderer watched him go and waited until she heard the elevator ding before easing the door closed again. She let her gun hand fall to her side with a sigh and rested her head against the wood.
"I need to go speak with Burke," she said to the door before turning to look at 101. "Stay here."
Miss 101 held up her manacled hands and jingled the chains bound to the floor. "Not like I'm going anywhere real fast," she replied dryly.
The Wanderer fixed her with a glare.
No. No, she wouldn't be.
Tenpenny Tower Contractor Residency Requirements
1 ) Weapons are not permitted to be carried openly in the tower. See Chief Gustavo for a weapons locker. And use it.
2 ) Shower upon returning from assignments. Use the guard's locker room in the basement. Blood stains and ichor will not be tolerated in the tower.
3 ) Bathe your dog. You brought that damned hound with you, clean up after it.
4 ) Acquire a bi-monthly bill of clean health from Doctor Banfield. Just do it.
5 ) When possible, avoid speaking with residents. You and I both know that you don't want to hear from them anyway.
6 ) Do NOT speak to Mr. Tenpenny.
Signed, Mr. Burke
PS. Not Burke. Not Burky. Mr. Burke.
AN: Hello. How are you? It's been awhile. Fractals is a spiritual successor to an old story series, Shattered Illusions, I wrote and have since removed. I started the series so, so long ago that it was rooted in a lot of things that I poorly understood. Particularly trauma, abuse, and mental illness. I was not proud of it as it was and I regrettably do not have the time to do a full rewrite. So I took the story and its sequels down.
I'm now in a place that I can sort of tackle a rewrite. Not entirely, but partially. So this is what we're doing. For new readers, this might feel disjointed, it's going to be a lot of moments that sort of tie together. For old readers, there's going to be a lot of new stuff here. I hope all enjoy!
I try not to leave Author's Notes at the bottom of each chapter, so I'll say this now and once more at the end, if you enjoy Fractals, please leave a Favorite or better yet a Review. I truly appreciate them and they help me keep going. Thanks!