Chapter 30 - Memories


"Well, unless your father was one of those Super Mutants, I think it's safe to assume he's not here." Jaune reported, sheathing his sword.

"Somehow, I highly doubt that." Ruby rolled her eyes in response, though she appreciated his corny attempts at lightening her spirits. Her father had much better vocabulary than the Super Mutants, thank you very much. Also, last she'd checked, he wasn't an eight foot-tall screaming mass of mutated muscles. As she looked around her father's old lab (and she could tell it was her father's; it was just as organized as his office had been, back in Vault 101), she couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed. Sure, she and Jaune hadn't expected to find him here, but the fact that he'd somehow always been a step ahead of her was just frustrating!

Jaune came up next to her, and looked over the messy desk. He wasn't the best student in Beacon, and the science of this world was probably different from the science of Remnant, so he felt like he couldn't be blamed for not knowing what any of this was. "Hey, Ruby... what's all this?"

"I... don't know." Ruby replied. Her father often hadn't seen a need to actually label his reagents or experiments, instead relying on his memory. But if she had to guess... "Maybe this is related to all that Project Purity stuff Three Dog and Dr Li mentioned..."

"Any idea what that is?"

"Well, by the name, I'd assume it's a purifier." Ruby replied. "But what it's meant to purify, I don't know..."

"Hey, what are these?" Jaune asked, holding up a set of small boxes that were scattered on the table, away from any beakers or liquids.

Ruby's eyes widened, and she grabbed them from his hand. "Holotapes! They must have been my dad's! Maybe these will tell us where he went!"

Ruby looked over the three of them. For once, they were labelled; 5, 8, and 10. She figured playing them in numerical order couldn't hurt, and quickly slotted the first one into her Pip-Boy.

With a burst of static, her father's voice came out of her Pip-Boy, and she felt relief, at hearing her father's voice again, at receiving some definitive physical proof that he had really survived.

Jaune, meanwhile, smiled softly down at his friend, and moved to give her some privacy.

Ruby's relief quickly turned to muted horror, however, as her father admitted to still working on Project Purity while in the Vault, and doing some really stupid stuff like sneaking around the Vault at night, and getting drunk and hacking into the Overseer's terminal.

"Oh, Dad..." Ruby moaned, rubbing her temples with her fingers, wondering if this was why the Overseer didn't seem particularly fond of her and her father, even before they'd escaped from the Vault.

The tape continued, and she learned about a man named Stanislaus Braun, and his involvement with the creation of the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, or GECK, before the tape ended.

Unsatisfied, she immediately ejected it, and played the next tape, which went into more detail about the GECK. A terraforming module, capable of producing life from complete lifelessness. It sounded like a miracle; too good to be true. After all, if the GECKs existed, and had been distributed to Vaults throughout Pre-War America, like her father mentioned... then why was it still such a wasteland outside the vaults?

The rest of the tape, and the next one, held clues as to where her father had run off to next. Stanislaus Braun's name was on the reservation list for Vault 112, whose location James had narrowed down to a garage West of some place called "Evergreen Mills", and her father was looking for it, hoping that it might hold any of Braun's knowledge; files, research notes, computer records. He sounded desperate for any scrap of information, if Ruby was being honest with herself...

As the tape cut off, she quickly pulled out one of the Pre-War maps she had, of the D.C. area. There it was! Evergreen Mills had been a Pre-War factory! Once again, she had a lead!

Jaune came back out of the room he'd stepped into with a holotape, as Ruby excitedly bounced up to him, ready to tell him the good news. Before she could, however, Jaune spoke first: "Hey, Ruby, I found another one of those holotape things you mentioned. Want to listen to it?"

"Hmmm, well... I already know where my dad's going..." Ruby replied, even as she accepted the proffered tape. Huh, rather than being labelled with a number, it was just labelled as "Better Days". Intrigued, she slotted it into her Pip-Boy. "But I guess one more holotape couldn't hurt."

To her surprise, though, rather than her father's voice coming through the Pip-Boy's speakers, a female's voice started speaking: "...that batch of tests was inconclusive, but Madison and I are convinced it's a problem with the secondary filtration system."

"Mom?" Ruby whispered in disbelief, her silver eyes tearing up, as she just stared at the Pip-Boy. Where... when... how?

"I... should probably give you some time alone." Jaune murmured, shifting uncomfortably, feeling like he was intruding on something intensely personal.

"No, it's fine." Ruby gripped the hem of his jumpsuit before he could walk away, finding comfort and strength in his familiar presence. She didn't know if she could make it through the whole tape by herself, not without breaking down.

"Well... if you say so..." Jaune answered hesitantly.

Ruby didn't let go of his clothes, didn't answer, as she listened to her mother playfully address her father, the affection clear even through the audio distortions. A long buried ache in her chest made itself known to her, and for the first time in a long while she couldn't help but wonder, what if. What if Summer had survived. What if they'd been a whole family.

A warm hand reached for her shoulder, and she looked up at Jaune, silver meeting sapphire. Jaune looked down at her, remembering all the times his sisters had been sad, and he'd tried cheering them up. Seeing as he wasn't the best with words, sometimes it was better to just let proximity do its thing.

After the tape ended, a comfortable silence filled the room.

Finally, Ruby spoke: "Thanks, Jaune."

Jaune didn't know if she was thanking him for giving her the tape or for staying with her. Instead, he simply smiled warmly at her, and replied: "Any time, Vomit Girl."

-VAULT 112, FOUR DAYS LATER-

"So, this is a Vault..." Jaune stared in surprise, at the thick metal door, as Ruby plugged her Pip-Boy into the nearby console, and opened the vault.

"Yup. Honestly... the one I grew up in was like a completely different world, compared to the outside." Ruby happily shared her knowledge, as the door was pulled inwards, before rolling to the side.

Jaune stared at the room ahead of him, beyond the door. Yeah, he could see why she'd say that. To him, though, the word that came to mind wasn't so much "clean" as "preserved". Then a thought occurred to him, and as he walked into the vault with Ruby, he grinned, and offered: "Hey, want to bet if your dad's still here?"

"Oh? And what's the loser do?" Ruby didn't back down from the challenge.

"Loser gets to taste-test those cooked rodents from the garage." Jaune's grin widened. Truthfully, though, he did want to see if he could apply the outdoor cooking skills he'd learned from camping when younger to the wildlife here. At the very least, it would help bolster his food supplies...

"Ugh... only if you use that food sanitizer Moira gave you." Ruby feigned disgust, though she was secretly excited. After all, she wasn't going to be the one doing the cooking, and she'd seen what Jaune had pulled off with some Pre-War Salisbury Steak, Pork n' Beans, Potato Crisps, and a bit of fire and water. Of course, she didn't intend to be the taste tester.

"Of course I will!" Jaune exclaimed in mock outrage, before shuddering. "After what that doctor told us about radiation poisoning- hold on, there's movement ahead of us."

"Do you think it could be my dad?" Ruby asked, even as she froze behind Jaune, and casually unslung her rifle.

"I don't know..." Jaune admitted, gripping the hilt of his sword tightly. Transforming his sheath into a shield, he held it up, and called out: "Who's there?"

"Who are you? And how did you find this place?" A voice demanded, one that Jaune had briefly heard on Ruby's Pip-Boy.

Ruby, having grown up listening to it all her life, shouted in relief: "Dad!"

"Ruby?!" James Ironwood peeked around the corner incredulously. Sure enough, there was his only daughter, looking at him with relief, inside Vault 112. And not Vault 101, where he'd left her. Oh god, was he still in Braun's simulation?!

"It's you!" Ruby ran up to her father, even as Jaune relaxed his guard fractionally, and decided to start the fire and prepare the massive mole rats (and let the family have a private conversation; he doubted this one would end up like Serana and Valerica, at the very least). He made it out of earshot just as Ruby exclaimed: "You're okay!"

"It's good to see you too, Ruby." James returned the hug, as his daughter tried crushing the life out of him (thank god she wasn't never the strongest girl in the Vault). "But... what are you doing here?!"

"I came here looking for you!" Ruby explained, like it should have been obvious. "I found your notes in the Jefferson Memorial, and, well... here I am!"

"No, I mean, why aren't you still in Vault 101?" James clarified, fighting away the mental image of Ruby being subjected to what he had gone through in Tranquility Lane. Then he blinked, as he processed her words. Even he'd had a hard time sneaking past the Super Mutants. Incredulously, he asked: "How did you even get into my lab in the Jefferson Memorial?"

"Easy. We just cleared it of the Super Mutants." Ruby answered, like that was the most obvious thing in the world.

James stared down at Ruby, as if he was looking at a stranger. The girl who couldn't even stand up to Butch, casually talking about clearing out a nest of Super Mutants? How did she even know about Super Mutants?!

"And, well..." Ruby hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain things without sounding like she was blaming her dad for everything (even if it was partly his fault). "They, uh... kind of blamed me, for you leaving... so I escaped."

"What?!"

"Yup."

James leaned back against the wall in muted horror and disbelief. He'd never meant for his baby girl to be blamed for his actions!

"By the way, Dad... why didn't you tell me that you were leaving?" Ruby looked up at her dad with tear-filled eyes, wondering if he'd had doubts about her, that she'd just never known about.

"Ruby..." James sighed, feeling guilty. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to be held responsible for my actions. I wanted you to stay in the Vault, where you'd be safe, rather than experience the Capital Wasteland. Clearly, I miscalculated..."

"Isn't that an understatement..." Ruby murmured.

"... I'm sorry." James just hugged his daughter tighter, glad to see that she was still alright. That she hadn't paid the ultimate price for his ambitions, and that the Wasteland hadn't claimed her like it did so many others. "I'm just glad you're safe, Ruby."

Ruby didn't need words, as she returned the affection, and a comfortable silence filled the room. Finally, Ruby asked: "So... did you find what you were looking for?"

"I did." James replied, unwilling to elaborate further as he began walking out of the Vault, not wanting to spend another minute in it. He'd always heard of Stanislaus Braun as the sorcerer-scientist of Vault-Tec, the man who made miracles. He hadn't expected him to be a psychopathic sadist with a god complex when he'd met him in person. The fact that he'd had administrative privileges in the simulation, too... "The technology Braun developed is unstable, even dangerous. But it can be adapted for Project Purity."

"What is Project Purity, anyway?" Ruby asked, following after her dad. She could see the way his fists clenched slightly, before relaxing, hear the tension in his voice, but she decided not to press it, not yet at least. Maybe when they were out of the Vault, and he'd calmed down... "Three Dog and Dr Li mentioned it a few times, but I'm still not sure what it is."

"It was... a dream." James began, as he remembered all the work he and Summer had done, since they'd left Vault 21 and ventured into the Capital Wasteland. The glory days, full of hopes and naive idealism, when he'd had a full team, support from the Brotherhood, and it had all seemed so close, so promising. "You know how a Vault's water purification system works using a water chip, right?"

Ruby nodded, intrigued, as they began ascending the stairs leading to the garage the Vault had been hidden in.

"Our plan was to do the same thing, on an even larger scale." James said. Once, his voice would have been full of confidence, of conviction, sweeping up people with his charisma. Now, it just sounded bitter and hollow, though it was lightly tinged with hope, now that he had a lead. "We wanted to build a facility, in the Jefferson Memorial, that could purify all the water in the Tidal Basin at once. No radiation, no muck, just clear water."

"That sounds amazing!" Ruby had seen many people suffering from either dehydration or from gastrointestinal problems from the dirty water, in the two weeks that she and Jaune had travelled through the Capital Wasteland. She'd seen how desperate people had been, for clean water. Providing the Capital Wasteland with a source of fresh water... "I'm sure Jaune would find that amazing too! He's always trying to help people, after all!"

"Jaune?" James echoed, a pit forming at the bottom of his stomach, as they reached the top of the stairs.

"Yup!" Ruby chirped happily, excited to introduce her new friend to her father. "I met him after leaving the Vault! He helped me find you!"

Huh, come to think of it, there had been someone else in the room with Ruby, hadn't there? James had just been so surprised to see his daughter, he'd kind of forgotten about that.

As Ruby opened the door of the garage, she and James found Jaune sitting by a campfire, cooking chunks of meat and humming to himself.

"Dad! Meet Jaune!" Ruby gestured to him with a flourish. "Jaune, Dad."

"Uh, nice to meet you, Mr Ironwood?" Jaune offered his hand, wondering why James was glaring at him so much.

James, for his part, did his best to rein in his temper and crush Jaune's hand as he shook it, and his voice was terse as he spoke to the man who he'd never seen before, who was in the company of his only daughter: "Charmed."

"I'm sure you'll love him, Dad!" Ruby spoke, completely oblivious to her father's growing mental anguish.


Author's Note: Just a short chapter this time. Don't expect the next chapter for a while, though. A very long while, probably.

First of, let me apologize to all those lore purists for not making Ruby and Jaune go through the Tranquility Lane simulation.

I'll be honest, Tranquility Lane, in-game, seems like a straightforward quest. Enter the pod, go into the simulation, and either follow Betty/Braun's instructions and torture the inhabitants, or activate the Chinese Communist Commando Invasion Program, which would disable to failsafe and kill the inhabitants for real life, leaving Betty/Braun alone for all eternity.

But, when I tried to imagine Jaune and Ruby going through the quest... no. Just no. There was no way Jaune was going to let Ruby get into a suspicious pod and upload her consciousness into a simulation run by a megalomaniacal narcissist with a god-complex (not when everybody in said pods were basically dead to all outside stimulation), and there was no way Jaune could fight or talk his way out of the Tranquility Lane simulation. Nor could I imagine them following Braun's instructions and torturing the inhabitants of Tranquility Lane.

That left the failsafe. As a quick explanation, the pods come equipped with a failsafe that stops the inhabitants from dying in real life, even if they die in the simulation. The Chinese Communist Commando Invasion Program disables the failsafe, meaning that they die in real life if they die in the simulation. Also, the program overrides administrator privileges, meaning that Braun would no longer have any power in the simulaiton.

Jaune wouldn't have been able to figure out the steps needed to activate the failsafe, and Ruby would be utterly traumatized by causing the actual deaths of all those innocent people, even if it would have been a mercy. And, like I say... this isn't a trauma porn story. The characters grow from overcoming the challenges they face, sure, and Ruby and Jaune would definitely be forced to grow from confronting such a moral dilemma... but I wouldn't have enjoyed writing it, I wouldn't have been able to write it well, and I doubt people would have enjoyed writing it.

And that's why I changed things. This time, when they get to Vault 112, they find James leaving the Vault, having saved himself from the clutches of Braun. Is it cheap? Sure.

Also, why wouldn't James dislike Jaune? Ruby and Project Purity are all he has of Summer, and James knows Ruby to be a timid, socially-awkward kid. Sure, he loves her anyway, but he also knows that she can barely even stand up to Butch. And suddenly, after not seeing her for two weeks, here she comes, with a suspicious looking guy in tow.