CHAPTER 61
Did it really all lead to that?
Plagued with nightmares of a nuclear burst of fire the size of a whole state, pestered and harassed by internal debate on what he was, what everything around him was, and how it all worked- Sanford had found liberation in Nyx, and the nightmares stopped.
Attacked on all sides by ravenous monsters, evil groups of pillaging people, thieves and murderers - Sanford had found liberation with combat training, and use of skillfully made weapons by his own hand.
Loneliness with a touch of insanity? He found Hancock.
Having lost his only family all these years? Well, that was still a bit of Hancock's department of fixing.
All of those things combined, and all the nonsense, all the messed up garbage that had clogged his life to the bursting point? There really wasn't a specific thing that Sanford had found to cope with that.
Ever since he had stumbled out of that Vault, frigid cold, bleeding from tens of insect bites, holding whatever blunt object he had picked up to defend himself, his shivering hand raised over his eyes whilst the lift took him back to the surface... Sanford had always been searching.
While he survived out there, gathering resources, finding food, water, building his little fortified bailey at the Red Rocket station- the thought of his family was always in the back of his mind, kind of like a secondary priority, something he'd keep an eye out for.
Sanford didn't hold it in essentials for himself because the likelihood of his parents actually being alive at that point, was... slim, at best. VERY slim.
What were the chances?
He lived out the rest of his young adult life in the ruins of Boston, establishing himself, his name, his crafts and his talents for something that he technically didn't even know if he held passion in- and that whole time, he had his father's watch, his mother's jewelry, as the only momentos of their memory, and he wondered what would happen if he found them.
Well, now, guess what? Twelve years, give or take, and he HAD found them.
Every day he asked the same question- 'What would my parents say about me? What would they think?'
-It just happened to turn out, that his parents were asking the same thing about him, even though, they believed he had been dead. It just happened to turn out, that his parents didn't even know what to say to him in the first place.
And it just happened to turn out, that Sanford didn't know what to say either.
Like clockwork, his undying question had been answered-
-And the answer was that nobody knew.
Which meant that theoretically, nothing had been solved.
His mother didn't know, his father didn't know, and he HADN'T known since he had gotten out of that damned Vault.
Nobody freaking knew.
Twelve years to just end up with the same shit, times three.
Nobody knew.
Sanford had taken to slumping against the glass of the lift shaft down there in the plaza, falling onto his backside, and leaning back inside his suit in exhaustion. He had his eyes locked to the ceiling up there, just past the rim of the second-story walkway up there, connecting the lift shaft to the middle story of the tower behind him.
His eyes were so heavy that eventually he stopped tracing lines on the metal up there, and he just shut them, and wallowed in the swimming blackness of his internal lids. He could feel their eyes on him, all four of them, glued to his exposed face- the ones they belonged too still, and silent.
Sanford's chest protruded and settled in a great sigh- he opened his eyes and angled them as far down as his leant-back head would allow- he saw his mother standing in the corpses of all of her synths, still in her combat harness, the holo-blade from her wrist shield absent, her helmet still lost in the mounds of dead.
She was still crimson all over her face, her eyes were puffy, her nose was runny- a big frown was shown over her features, and she was so congested that he could hear her breathing through her nostrils from where he was.
Sanford looked upon this woman that he had not seen in almost a decade of becoming what he was now- because if it wasn't for this fight, for this encounter, his parents might not have even recognized who he was.
His eyes trailed around her face, and gradually, they lowered past her hip to the bionic hand that replaced everything from the central forearm up- he looked at her chrome fingers, sectioned in pill-shaped pieces connected by flexable circuitry of black and silver.
Sanford shut his eyes and muttered to her- "-...What happened to your hand, ma'?"
Linda broke her gaze from him and looked down at her hand- she raised it and flexed the fingers, where they whined and gave off tiny whirs of a motor.
"...I lost it a long time ago..." She answered. "...-Industrial accident."
"...You never told me." Ordy muttered through his hand as he bit his knuckle, eyes still on their son, down on the floor- he stood among all the wrecked Gen-X's just like Linda, keeping this painful distance from Sanford.
"-We were at war." Linda snapped. "Should I have sent a report whenever I took a shit, too?"
"...Damn it, Linda-"
"-Hey," Sanford interrupted both raising voices, with a meer grunt towards the two of them- he raised his gauntlet tiredly from the ground, and it was as if the Mesiah had come down and told his parents to be silent and listen.
Linda and Ordy looked down at him immediately- forgetting everything, their developing fight, each other, the whole facility around them.
"...You know, I wandered around for a decade wondering where the two of you were..." Sanford sighed, shutting his eyes again, letting his gauntlet slack onto the tile by his hip. "...Eleven, twelve years, I don't fuckin' know... I would really appreciate it if, you know, you didn't take the first opportunity to start going at each other like a couple of fuckin' dogs... Seeing as, you know, you had a long time to do that with and without me..."
"-S-Sanford," Ordy took his hands away from his mouth- the left's knuckles were bleeding from his teeth's work. "-I-I'm sorry, we'll stop, I'LL stop, I'll-"
"-Dad,"
"-Y-Yes? Yes, my son? My son."
"...Shut the fuck up and give me a minute."
"...O-Okay."
"-Oh Sanford..." His mother gasped for the hundredth time.
Sanford whipped his eyes open, and growled at her.
"-You too."
-Linda reclined with more tears broiling in her eyes.
Sanford let himself settle into his slump again- too exhausted, too tired, too drained, to even comprehend what he was emotionally feeling right now. He didn't understand if he was angry, or mourning, or relieved, or... It was a swimming lake of raw emotion, negative emotion.
That pent up feeling, that need for something to be let out? To be released? Sanford had that, but he didn't know what it was that needed to be let out, or how it needed to be let out. So he festered with it.
ckssh... -Metal shifted, he heard his mother crying again, her voice jolting quickly as she fell back, onto her posterior, among all the destroyed synths- she curled up in a ball and started heaving with wracking sobs.
Note, she had done this twice now.
Ordy watched her cry and he started chewing his knuckles again.
Sanford opened one eye, took it all in, and then shut it again.
And so they sat, in the aftermath of the carnage enacted by his own parents.
...Sanford bathed in the quiet, he listened to his mother cry, he listened to his father start to choke up again.
...He didn't even know who these fucking people were anymore. It didn't matter that they had given him life. He didn't even know who they were. Not anymore.
Images of their kitchen- the tiled floor, the wood table that he and dad sat at, talked about the world, talked about each other and their days... Sanford could now remember what his father looked like when he put down the morning paper, and smiled at him.
After so long Sanford could finally remember what his father's face looked like when he was a baby, he could remember what his mother's face looked like, he could remember how happy the two of them always sounded, he remembered dad's sedan as it bucked and hummed while the two of them drove across New England for fun, or for dad's work...
...By God, Sanford had found these things and now he did not want them.
These images were corrupted with what his parents had become, they were corrupted with what HE had become.
That little boy, that innocent little boy who liked reading about the army, talking with his father over the kitchen table about life and how it was going with their family... Had become-
Sanford opened an eye and looked down at his rounded, steel cuirass.
-Had become THIS.
"...-I've failed both of you," Ordy's voice broke him out of the shadowy confines of his head- Sanford parted his eyelids and watched as his father hunched over and started having at it again with the water-works- at this point they were both going to run out of tears. "-I failed my own son."
There were so many questions that Sanford wanted to ask, COULD have asked...
All he got out was-
"-...Why'd you leave me, dad?"
-Ordy sobbed, teetered.
"-The pod- the pod said your vitals had ceased-" His mother choked, still on the floor. "-You were DEAD! You were dead! My little boy- was DEAD!"
"We didn't- we didn't have the-the override codes," Ordy gasped. "-The pod's core power-power source had-had failed- S-Sanford- my Sanford was dead, and I... and I... T-There were... There were bugs..."
"...So you didn't try to bust it open?" Sanford muttered, unfazed.
"-W-We tried..." Linda heaved. "-We tried- and it just- WOULDN'T OPEN!"
"...I... I should have come back..." Ordy shuttered. "-No life signature or not... I should... I should have come back and I DIDN'T, because I- I thought my boy was dead- and that- and that there was nothing left-"
"-And low and behold, ORDY-!" Linda screamed at him. "-We left our- our boy there! WITH BUGS! We left our boy there with man-eating bugs-! SANFORD! Sanford- WE, should be dead! FOR WHAT WE DID! WE SHOULD BE DEAD!"
"-I know that-"
"-YOU'LL NEVER KNOW THAT!"
"-I... KNOW... it... I know it... I... Oh my God..." Ordy couldn't even speak. He choked out a little- 'I'm so sorry'- or at least some amount of comprehensible English so that his son could piece it together.
Sanford looked between his parents, and now he watched, and listened, to both of them cry.
There was his father, once the bravest, brightest person in his life- hunched over, pitiful, lost, bawling in his own anger, mourning, overwhelming sense of betrayal to his own flesh and blood.
There was his mother, once the most passionate woman he had ever known, the most driven, the most oportunistic and industrious, the one who fixed everything and could do anything- on the floor, kicking and crying, apalled at herself, at Ordy.
Sanford cast his glance down to his weapons, particularly his Laser rifle, magnetized to his hip.
He remembered what Hancock had asked him in the lift.
What would he have done if he had to shoot one of them?
He looked at them again. Crying. Writhing around like they were wounded.
"...I still have your old watch." Sanford didn't understand why he put that out there, but he did, and Ordy cried harder. "...I still have your old jewelry, ma'." -His mother went silent, didn't show her face underneath her bionic hand.
Sanford shuddered out a breath.
"...How long have the two of you been... Out here? Wandering?"
"...I don't know..." Linda whispered. "...I stopped counting the days..."
"-A-Almost twenty years..." Ordy said. "...T-Twenty years after we left that Vault..."
"Twenty. Huh." Sanford lazed his head forwards. "...I have to piss."
csshm-CRK
-The suit rumbled, creaked- both Linda and Ordy looked down at their own laps whilst a towering titan stomped past them, kicked a few stray pieces of synth around, and thudded towards the smoking doorframe of the wrecked bulkhead.
Sanford stopped over the balled-up carcass of one his own mother's Gen-X synth models, and the suit whined and hissed, unfolding at the back and it bloomed apart like a flower of steel pedals.
Ordy broke eye contact with his feet to watch his son step out from inside the padded interior of the X-01- garbed in salvaged ceramic he had gotten from old Army uniforms, still tinted a faint shade of drab on their surfaces.
Sanford didn't even look at him as he rounded the side of the stilled, opened exo- he fiddled with his combat belt, bunched his hands and parted his legs- there was a pattering sound as he emptied his bladder onto the metals of the dead android without a second thought.
Ordy turned away, still quivering, still caught in hell within his own head as his past literally came back to piss on his conscience.
He glanced at Linda, who still hadn't moved from the floor- she was fiddling with a snapped-off synthetic finger in her bionic hand, flexing it between her chrome digits, looking at it with red, puffy eyes.
Sanford sighed, hiked up his pants.
"...Hancock should be back in a little bit..." Sanford muttered. Very soon, the X-01 was hissing and creaking again as he re-garbed himself to its interior.
"-So, Ordy," Sanford trotted over, looking down at his own father from beneath the helmet of his suit. "You've told me of a tracking tag you put on your little animal friends down here. Wanna' home in on the one you put on my girl?"
"...Your... Girl...?" Linda asked lowly from the floor.
"Yeah." Sanford dismissed her. "-So, are we good?"
"...F-Follow me..." Ordy stuttered.
"-GOOD NEWS, SIR! Hostiles have been totally eliminated!" Hancock suddenly shot out from one of the ground-level doorframes of the plaza, waving his buzzsaw erratically. "-Ha-ha! See that? We're professional douchebag exterminators! We could charge our services! WE'RE THAT GOOD!"
"Ordy's teleporting me to Nyx," Sanford ignored him as the two of them trudged through the dead synths to reach the lift platform. "-C'mon, man."
"-Uhm, pardon me, sir, but don't you mean... US?! Like the two Democratic badasses who can make a room full of women toss off their panties for us at the mere SIGHT of us?!"
"Just shut up, and let's go, Han'."
"-FINE! DENY me the rights of capitalism!"
"Having women is a right of capitalism?" Sanford laughed.
"By JOVE' it is!"
-It took a minute, but Linda eventually stood up and followed after them.
The four were silent as the lift carried them up to the highest connection walkway, the third level that Sanford and Hancock had escorted Ordy to after beating the synths, and Laslar to a degree.
Within minutes, all of them were standing in the same office, overlooking the massive chamber outside- Linda was hunched over a console beside Ordy, and the two Directors were clicking away soundlessly as they tapped into the teleportation matrix of the Secession's now ruined, facility.
Sanford was behind them, looked OVER them, not at them, and Hancock levitated beside him- agitated, at being told what his friend's plan was.
"-You're LEAVING ME?!"
"I want to talk to her."
"SO WHY CAN'T I BE ON THE SIDELINES?! Like some rash you get on your shin or some shit?! It's not essential, and it's not really NOTICEABLE, it's just there?!"
"...Stop talking," Sanford chuckled after a moment. "-You're a freak."
"A BADASS ONE, AT THAT!"
"You've been a good friend, Han'. Robot or not."
"Nah! Don't kid yourself, San' of the Ford'! WE, ARE GOD-LIKE! The team to undo all teams!"
"The duo to undo all duos."
"-EXxxxxaaAACCTTLY! Ha! Ha-HA! I taught ya' well I did!" Hancock bumped his saw against Sanford's fist.
"I want to talk to her alone."
"Yeah-yeah-YEAH! I get it! I don't wanna' see you pork her, anyway!"
"I'm not... 'Porking'- anything, damn it."
"PORKER!"
"I thought it was fucker?"
"FUCKIN' PORKER!"
"Ugh."
"Good luck, sir! Don't be yet another victim to the rage of women!"
"Are we set?" Sanford nodded at his parents.
"...Lucky for us, she hasn't gone too far..." Ordy nodded over his shoulder. "-Only a few miles away, towards the west-"
"-Wait, she got out? She got out of the facility?"
"...Yes, she did." Linda answered for her estranged husband. "-She probably took one of the sewage vents. I see a breach, here."
"...Oh, Nyx..." Sanford ran a gauntlet down the face of his helm. What was it with her and sewers? "-Where is she?"
"-She's in..." Ordy leant down and squinted. "-She's in some kind of... Structure..."
"What KIND of structure?"
"...Underground..."
"Can you beam me right to her?"
"...It's risky-"
"-Fine, beam me to a surface entrance. You can DO that, right? What kind of structure is this?"
"...I don't know, I don't have it on record..."
"Just do it."
"...Y-Yes, son."
Sanford turned to look at Hancock.
"-Watch them. Make sure they don't leave until I come back."
"-AFFIRMATIVE!" Hancock saluted with his flamethrower. "Baby-sitting duty! SHIT! I HATE baby-sitting..."
"...W-We won't leave, Sanford..." Linda said over her shoulder.
"LISTEN," Sanford jabbed a finger at them. "-I. Do. Not. TRUST, you. Hancock will stay with you until I get back. We'll talk about the facility, and... YOU... Then."
"...S-Sanford," Ordy clicked a final key. "-It's done. -B-But, Sanford... P-Please don't... Don't leave us like we left you- i-if we had known you were alive we would have-"
"Stop." Sanford held a gauntlet up, even as he heard a distinct whining in his hearing. "-Just stop."
"...I still love you, my baby boy..." Linda choked. "-I still love you."
"...-One day," Sanford said lowly, on the verge of tears. "-One day, I might have the strength in me, to forgive you. One day. But right now, I am incapable of it... I can't do it."
He glanced at his father, at his mother, he looked over at Hancock.
"-I'll be back in a few hours, buddy, and Nyx will be with me, I promise."
"-I'd sure hope so! Can't have the Trio-of-DESTRUCTION! -Without the mutated Frog! Who'll control the fly problem without her, sir?!"
"Good point." He frowned underneath the helmet at Ordy and Linda. "I'll be back soon."
"...B-Be careful, Sanford." Ordy said. "-Be careful. I love you."
Sanford didn't respond.
CHSK-! Zzzzzzzzzz... -He vanished into thin air with a flash of light, crackle of ozone.
Linda started crying again.
..."-HEY! Director Toad-stool! Is that an EMP grenade?!" Hancock suddenly asked.
"...Y-Yes, why?" Ordy sighed, fiddling with the charge that hung from the hip of his beltline.
"-Lemme' see that thing!"
"...O-Okay-?"
-0-0-0-0-0-
CHSK-SHMzzZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz...
-Beforehand, there was swirling dust, undisturbed dirt to the ground, calmed and silent air.
The next moment, there was a flash of quickly distilled light, swirling tan dust, flickering bolts of miniature lighting- where nothing but dirt and dust had been, there was now a fully garbed Power Armored man standing tall, proudly, defiantly.
Sanford Tobs teetered on his creaking boots for a moment after the teleportation jump- he was pleasently surprised to see that the whiplash-like results he had suffered last time were very minimal, and faded after a second of stabilization.
Taking out his Laser rifle, his cutlass- Sanford spun around slowly and took in his surroundings.
He was in a... Cave, of sorts. The walls were made of jagged, cut stone and earth- there were wooden support beams that dug into the walls and formed upwards to splay in the form of struts connecting each side of the cavity above to each other.
Light streamed in from a wooden door just behind him, boarded, and chain-linked on the other side of the boards- it sealed out most of the sunlight, which stung Sanford's eyes briefly beneath the helmet from all his time underground recently.
The door capped a dirt path in here, that wound down from it, under his boots, past him, and he turned around follow it with his gaze- he was momentarily stupified to see what exactly the path ended at in THIS direction.
The earthy walls ended at the halt of the passageway, which was stopped by a wall of bolted steel, rusty, and covered in soot- a raised podium had a blinking, keyboard-laden console at its top, and the podium's grated plat was ringed by dented railings, and had a skeletal staircase leading up to it from the ground level.
Ahead of that, was a rounded gateway- a door arch, that was shaped, like a toothed cog.
It was opened, there were yellow lights pulsating inside the black, pipe and tank laden interior beyond it- and right next to this gaping entry, was a bulkhead that was round, like a giant coin with square teeth.
The great rotating door was lazed off to the flank of the entryway, it was centered with a small, three-digit number of yellow coloring.
It read- 110.
Sanford angled his head to view inside the yawning, silent interior of the Vault.
He gazed back at the wooden door.
His... Deathclaw, was in there?
How did she fit through that tiny door?
...Well, she DID fit inside the door to his old house, so... Maybe it wasn't horrendously outlandish like it came off to be, now that he thought about it for a second.
He checked his signature scans.
The Vault looked empty, from the scans alone, and they penetrated pretty deep throughout its warrens.
Sanford huffed, and he held his rifle and cutlass at the ready.
Stepping past the podium, towards the opened gateway- he lifted his boots past the raised portion dividing the beginning stairwell of the Vault's standardized layout design from the dirt outside. His heels thudded hollowly against the metal steps.
Standing in the rectangular lobby chamber, Sanford looked about the cylindrical power tanks lining the walls on both sides of the chamber, the plated ceiling, the hallway ahead that lead to the interior of the Vault's spaces.
Sanford had been in this Vault before- throughout his myriad of delves across Boston, he knew the layout of it, and he and Hancock had killed a SHITLOAD of Bloodbugs in it when they had scoured it for salvage several years ago.
It reminded him of Vault 111, HIS old Vault.
Sanford snorted.
He trekked inside.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Most of the hallways and rooms were pretty much the same from how he and Hancock had left them. Any pieces of furniture they had moved or shifted, was still moved or shifted in the same spot- all the Bloodbug carcasses had rotted away, but there were still shell casings in the corners of the floor, bullet holes in walls and the ceiling.
Plasma burns even pock-marked some of the bulkheads from where Hancock had peppered swarms of the blood-sucking insects that had turned the Vault into a hive of sorts- and the reason that that had happened, was another side effect of the sick, and twisted experiments that Vault-Tec had been running on its people.
Sanford had come to discover a metallic odor when he and Hancock had first gotten through the security bulkhead- and as they investigated more and more of the Vault's innards, they found records, some from the inhabitants, some from the Overseer and staff- that chemicals had been pumped into the ventihilation systems.
Bluntly, it was another effort to modify people's behavior using narcotics delivered through the air ducts- Vault-Tec had tried it in other Vaults too, and, just like those, the result had been horrific.
Sanford would later come to understand that the smell he was cursed with as he and Hancock salvaged the place, was not the smell of the chemical that had long run out in the air ducts- it was the smell of blood.
It turned out, the Vault's citizens rebelled, and they had tossed the Overseer into the vat tank that was mixing and distributing the chemical throughout the vents- in other words, the Overseer's blended remains had been vaporized and shot out across the Vault's air ducts.
It was pretty disgusting, when he had first found out about it- that he basically was smelling a dead guy the whole time- and of course, Hancock didn't give a crap on the grounds of his lack of a nose.
So now, in a suit of Power Armor, all this time later, Sanford stalked through the dark rooms and chambers of the Vault, looking at all the furniture, kept clean and tidy, to remind people of their old homes- all the momentos left behind, the rusty radios and Radiation Kings, the rotted walls and grimy windows...
Sanford didn't have to scour the Vault long to find the main two-floor lobby, with two raised levels, divided by railing, on either side of an expansive chamber lined with metal tables, and stacked with trash in all corners and sides, and all up the two flights of steps leading up the second floor on either side.
Sanford sighed at the mess, he glanced at his scans, put his weapons on his hips, and stalked quietly between two of the tables for a chamber on the ground floor a few steps away, through an ajar bulkhead arch, into a rectangular cell, with a long table drawling down the northern wall ahead.
Seated atop its grimy, steel blue surface, having shifted away all the trash littering its top to splay it all in a messy pile on the floor ahead of herself- was a great, scaly mass, bunched in on herself, claws draped between hanging legs, feet compressed to the floor, head sunken to her belly.
Sanford's heart flared at the sight of her, and, he knew it was her this time, not like that incident back at Diamond.
If she noticed his entrance, she did not do or say anything to present her caring.
For awhile, she sat there, and he stood there.
Some of the structuring moaned in quiet settling in the backdrop from the old Vault.
Sanford quivered out a sigh, and he angled his helmet up.
"Yo." He croaked.
She didn't say anything. She didn't even raise her head.
Sanford looked across her body. He saw burn wounds, places where her scales had been scythed apart for black trenches. Plasma scoring.
He stepped over to her, and placed his gauntlets on her arm without fear, not even looking at her face as he leant closer to examine the damage.
Nyx twitched at the contact, and a held-in breath hissed through her congested, larger nostrils. Her tail twitched in its lazy drape and curl over the table's top, and Sanford already had a handful of stimulation injections out of his rucksack, she didn't interfere as he emptied three of them into her arm.
"Hold up your arm for me." He muttered to her, hanging the last pack in his gauntlet. "Nyx, c'mon."
"..." -She didn't say anything, or do anything.
Sanford huffed, creased a gauntlet into her arm pit and shoved her limb higher- she huffed from the contact, and draped her head in the opposite direction, avoiding eye-contact as he stuck the syringe gently into her breast, and then took it away, released her arm for it to settle back into place.
Sanford watched her, smacked his chops, and flicked away the empty syringe.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"..."
"...Nyx."
"..."
"NyyyyYXXxx." He pressed, sing-song.
"...Non'." She muttered.
"You were shot?"
"...How did you find me, monsieur'?"
"Did you think I wouldn't?" He smiled.
...Silence.
He shifted on his heels.
"The Director helped me."
"Mm. Why?"
"-Because-" He faltered. "-I-I'll tell you later."
"Non'."
"What?"
"You are leaving this Vault the way you entered."
"...What do you mean?"
"I do not desire to travel with you any longer, Sanford." She said, raising her head, looking at him deathly with her glowing, yellow eyes. "Laisse'-moi' tranquille'."
"...No."
"Non'?"
"No. I don't think I will."
"I give no other choice to you." She snorted. "I don't want to see you anymore."
"-Y-Ya' know something? Something really grand?" He angled his head. "I went through hell, and I went through hell again and BACK again, to save your life. I've shot more shit in the last day and a half then I have in my entire life, it feels like. Come back with me."
"Non'."
"Nyx," Sanford inclined. "Come back."
"Non'."
"-Nyx, PLEASE, come back with me. Come back with me now."
"-I, said, NO!" She barked at him, her voice loud enough to rebound throughout the whole Vault itself. "You cannot FORCE me, Sanford! I. REFUSE. Go away! Go away and do not come back!"
"-But I can't DO that-!"
"-You mean you don't WANT to do that!"
"No! I CANNOT, just leave you here-!"
"I'M NOT GIVING YOU A FUCKING CHOICE!" BMMK! -She stomped her foot, shook the whole chamber. "-GET OUT!" She screamed, tail lashing more trash off the table's surface.
Sanford clenched his fists, his chest pumping out into the cuirass of the suit.
"-Why?" He snapped.
"..."
"Why won't you come back with me? Huh? WHY?"
"..."
"-Oh for-" He raggedly huffed. "-This is about that woman in Diamond? That's it? The one we saved?"
"..."
"-NOTHING, happened! I was an idiot! I was a fuckin' idiot! I kissed that girl because I haven't kissed someone in a decade and I couldn't control myself and I felt SICK afterwards! I-It wasn't right! It wasnt- I couldn't DO that! I'm regretting it! I'll probably regret it until I'm DEAD!"
"...I... I do not CARE about that... 'Woman'..." She wasn't used to using that word. "...I do not even care about the- the horrible things you said to me..."
Sanford deflated like a balloon.
"-Oh Christ, Nyx, I-"
"-I do not even care about... what you see me as..." The Deathclaw raised her head to him, her eyes were narrowed, her lower jaw looked like it was shuddering- but Sanford examined it for a moment to determine that it was quivering. "...I care about what I have always known, since the very start, monsieur'."
"...I don't... I don't see you as anything but my friend, Nyx-"
"-Do you know what it is? Sanford? What I've always known?"
"...N-Nyx, please-"
"I have always known, that I would destroy myself, for how much I have come to care about you." She stated. "Since day one, depuis le' debut', I knew that it would spell nothing good for either of us, because that's what I DO, I bring death with me, everywhere I go."
"...No, no Nyx, you don't bring DEATH with you everywhere you go, look at me-"
"-So, on this fact," She started having a hard time speaking, as what faint light existed in the Vault, allowed Sanford to see rotatng orbs of wet reflection rolling down her scaly face. "-Why can't you make this easier for me, and GO? Why? Monsieur'? Why can't you do that?"
"B-Because-! I-! I-I can't do that-! I... I came here to apologize to you! To tell you that I was a fuckin' asshole! That I was at fault! That I opened my mouth, and that I disrespected you twice over! And that-! And that... I..."
-She bowed her head again, and he heard a tiny, muffled hop coming from her, as the Deathclaw literally started... CRYING, in front of him, for the first time.
A giant seven-foot tall reptile? Crying? Hogwash, skullduggery, fairy tail. It was completely outlandish.
But... Here it was, right in front of his face.
She snorted wetly.
Sanford raised and lowered his arms, he looked down at his boots, his own face starting to quiver.
Arms of dark mist swirled around the interior of the grimy, blasted out Vault- a place that Sanford had once explored, and had discovered its mysteries, with no intention of ever returning. It reminded him of the caress of this... Negative energy, that had gripped him over the years.
Sanford blinked a few times.
"...Nyx," He said. "...I can't leave you, because I'll be lost if I do."
"..."
"...I don't care what you look like, I don't care how you sound, I don't care if people are afraid of you, and- and I don't care that my faults happened, b-because you are worth, TOO much to me, for me to dwell on mistakes that I need to learn from... I... I haven't found another living being in this Wasteland that I strive for, y-you hear me? I- I mean- Nyx, I've come to love you, I... You're my friend, my scaly... Seven-foot tall, friend...
...N-Nyx, I can't... LEAVE you. I can't go back to how I was after meeting you- d-don'tchya' see? Don't you see that- that now that I've been exposed to it- I can't go back to my life without it! I can't go back to how I was living- without YOU! I can't do it!"
"..."
"...I..."
"..."
"...Oh Christ, Nyx, listen to me... I... SAY something! Anything! T-Tell me to go fuck myself! I mean-! ANYTHING!"
"..."
-For the first time, in twelve years, of his natural life-
Sanford Tobs, broke down, and started crying.
Like a big baby.
He hunched down his head, and he started sobbing, he started just, BAWLING, like his father kind of had back at the Institute facility, now in tatters.
Sanford Tobs, was lost. Just like he said he would be.
Today was just crashing down on him.
So there he stood before the Deathclaw, surely, outclassing her water works by a long shot.
Like a big, metal-encased, baby.
...Well then, that was it.
That was it, the jig was up.
If she didn't want to come back to him, she didn't want to come back to him.
"...Okay..." Sanford took a huge intake of breath, and he tried to calm himself, he held up a quivering gauntlet. "...O-Okay. You don't w-want to come back with me. T-T-That's fine. I won't try to stop you. I-I won't even look for you, again, if that's what y-you want... No matter what, though, I'll never- I'll never just, FORGET, you know?"
The armor hissed, creaked, whined and opened up at the back.
Nyx didn't look up, even when she felt warmth resonating over her from the smaller form of Sanford Tobs, who fearlessly stepped up to her, and hung his arms over her scaly shoulders- she felt him peck the space at the center of her cranium, and he squeezed his arms.
"-I love you, you know? I really do. If this is what- what you feel is best, then... It's fine." He pecked her again, squeezed her again.
He couldn't pull away, after that, though- her big old hand over his back prevented that.
Sanford didn't surge back, he surged forwards, and Nyx entrapped and clenched the smaller man to her- sliding him up onto the table with her, encircling him with her arms, Sanford conjoined his reddened forehead with hers, and they both cried on each other like that.
Her yellow eyes opened, she stared into him, and she examined his pale head, his REAL head, beneath that stupid helmet all the time- she opened her jaws and blasted out a held in sob from this emotional crapshoot she had been trying to contain, probably foolishly, at that.
"...I'm sorry-" She shook her head slightly- not very much, she didn't want to disconnect with him. "-I'm so sorry, Sanford-"
"-W-Why the shit- a-are you sorry?" He half-laughed half-cried. "-I'M the a-asshole-!"
"-You're not an 'Asshole'- non', non' non' non'..." She shook her head again. "-Just stupide'- stupide', like all men..."
"-H-Hey..." He grinned. "-That may be true, but- c'mon..."
"-I cannot hide this anymore, Sanford-"
"-We-we were hiding it?"
"I don't know- I don't care, non', I want to go back, I want to go back with you, Sanford-"
"-I-It was that easy, h-huh?"
"-E-Excusez'moi'?"
"-A-All I had to do was t-tear up, huh? Aw, man... I-I wish I knew that s-sooner..."
"-S-Shut up, monsieur', shut up..." She bent lower, her laughter muffled in his breast.
Sanford, for the first time in twelve years, had cried like a big stupid baby.
But for the first time in twelve years, he also saw this big, big light within himself.
A weight that had barred him down half his life, felt lighter.
-0-0-0-0-0-
CSsshkk...
-The wooden door slid across the dirt, and both parties hissed quickly due to the large, copious beams of the sun.
"-Say, this is on the other side of the Charles River,"
"Mmhm, monsieur'."
"-How'd you get over here, THAT fast? The CIT Campus is like, twenty minutes from here."
"I swam."
"You swam? Across the Charles River?"
"Oui'."
"...Holy crap, you ARE fast. How'd you find 110?"
"That's the number, is it?"
"Yep."
"It looked... Lonely."
"-What were you, going to do, if I, hadn't... Showed?"
"..."
"You don't know?"
"Oui'."
"That's good. We won't have to worry about it ever again. Y-You, uh... You wanna' go home?"
"What of the Institute? The connards who imprisoned me?"
"I took care of them. I'll go back and clean the mess up later."
"Where is the usiner?"
"He's there, watching the Directors."
"The... Who...?"
"...I don't wanna' talk about that right now... A-Are the stims working?"
"I believe so. Are you okay, mon cher'?"
"Fine now that I have your scaly toukous' back, eh?"
"Hmmph." CHK! -She bumped him with her hip.
Together, man and Deathclaw carefully trotted down the raise of dirt that spilled from the gutted, square-like construction of brick that jutted out from the rear section of a great warehouse, long collapsed, and ruined.
Ahead of them, a road drawling along the concrete flank of the Charles River extended west and east, and the skyline of Boston, including the roundness of the Great Dome, was a blue-tinted backdrop across the stilled mass of the river itself.
Sanford looked at her and smiled beneath the helmet, and Nyx bumped him with her hip again when they reached the bottom of the incline.
"So... You took a sewer dispulsion pipe?" Sanford started.
"...Similarly to the time I met you and the usiner, yes."
"You just didn't fall out of the sky this time."
"Non'."
"Too bad, maybe I could've caught you this time."
"Mm. Interesting consideration, mon ami'."
"I could've held you, dramatically, like this," Sanford simulated his arms in a dipping motion. "-Held a gun up and fired at a mass of encroaching demons, just like a comic book hero!"
"You are around that machine too much, Sanford."
"I know-I know... Gotta' admit, though, hearing you say- 'Oh! My HERO!' -Would be pretty awesome."
"It'll never happen."
"Why not?"
"It's... Icky..."
"Sexy?"
"...'Sex'-'Y'? Non', non' I do not think so."
"Certainly would be." Sanford hauled back his arm and swung his hand forwards lightly- clp! -and Nyx hopped forwards with a tiny squeak leaving her jaws as he smacked her rump besides the tail.
"-Sanford-!" She giggled.
"-Is 'My hero'- following that?"
"Non'. Don't do that, you filthy little human..."
"...Alright, alright... I'll stop..."
clp!
"-Ooo-! You little-!"
"-Ha-HA!"
-0-0-0-0-0-