15. Never Again
No, never again
Never the strange unthinking joy
Never the pain
And then, finally, she stood in the doorway of the science lab. Her eyes closed and she breathed in the smells of science being done. For all that her father was a doctor, a healer, he was almost always trying to improve life in the vault beyond just the physical health of the inhabitants. She hadn't realized how much she missed the stringent smell of cleaner and antiseptic. And plants. They were growing plants. Actual, green plants. Plants that were still irradiated but they weren't dead.
B felt her eyes tear up looking at them. This was apparently what she'd actually been missing from the vault besides the people. Some of them, anyway.
There was a slight woman standing at some equipment, her back to B. She was clearly a scientist, lab coat, and that sleek yet frazzled look she remembered from her own father, from nights of having to coax him to eat because he was too focused on his work to pay attention to his own needs.
B slipped down the stairs, not wanting to disturb the others she could see quietly working.
"Hello?" she asked, dipping her head uncertainly. It didn't hurt that the motion put her closer to the other woman's level. "Are you Dr. Li? Dr. Madison Li?"
"I'm busy. Talk to one of the others." The woman glanced at B, quickly turning her attention back to the clipboard she was writing on.
Then her head whipped around and the clipboard fell to the ground with a clatter. B straightened up, a little intimidated by the intensity in her eyes. "Catherine? Please tell me you're not a ghost."
That answered that question. Also, she was definitely from out here. That answered that question as well. Damn it. Moriarty hadn't been lying. "Catherine was my mom."
The woman peered more closely at her. B knew what she she would see. She'd spent enough time in front of the mirror trying to figure out what of her face was her father's and wondering how much of it was her mother's. The scar may have been distracting and a little concealing but she knew her face and what Li would see even if she didn't know what would be recognized. "You're James' daughter?"
"I go by B out here. It's easier."
The woman still looked like she was looking at a ghost, that or Catherine had come back from the dead. B wasn't sure. But she relaxed a little. "B." She smiled. It was a little thing, barely an upwards tilt of her lips. But it was fond in a way she hadn't seen in a while. Not since the Vault, anyhow. "I don't blame you. Catherine found a book on British monarchs when she realized she was pregnant with you. You're lucky. If you'd been a boy, she wanted you named Charlemagne." She bent down to pick up the clipboard and rest it on the desk she stood at.
B grimaced. "Really? That's...Really?"
"Well, James was born there. She wanted to make sure that you had a connection to your dad's home."
B tok a couple steps closer, still far enough away that Dr. Li didn't have to crane her neck to look B in the face. "I guess you knew my mom and dad pretty well, huh?"
Dr. Li rolled her eyes. "He didn't talk about me. Figures. I was the one who introduced them. James was useless around Catherine until they got to know each other."
"Dad doesn't talk about Mom much either. I-I didn't even know I wasn't born in the Vault until I got out here."
The woman considered the taller teenager. "Oh. Yes. I am Dr. Li. I'm not sure if I answered you before."
"No, you didn't but I assumed that that's who you were. She was supposed to know Dad. You know Dad."
"Good guess." B could see the intelligence in her eyes, intelligence and education, something she hadn't really seen since she left the vault. She liked this woman. "James said he left you in the Vault. What are you doing out here?"
"He...did leave me there. But things...I had to leave. He left a mess behind him."
"Of course he did." Dr. Li sighed. "He did that here too."
B frowned. If she didn't know better, she would almost think Dr. Li had a thing for her dad. There was an old wound there, more than just a professional one. It would probably be nicer to just ask her where James had gone.
But this was her first real chance to find out about her parents, find out what was so important that he would abandon her in the Vault. "What did he leave behind here? Other than you."
Dr. Li winced, confirming B's suspicion. But she looked around, and whatever she saw… "Come with me." She led B to a what looked like a bedroom and shut the door behind them. B tensed up unconsciously but when she realized what she had done, she forced her shoulders to relax. Li faced her, dark eyes serious. "Your parents had an idea, a fool's dream. Clean water for to the Capital Wasteland. Project Purity, they called it."
"What happened? Because I've been in the Potomac. It's still pretty irradiated."
"You happened." B stared at her, confused. "Your birth. Catherine's death." Oh. That made sense. As far as anyone was ever concerned, the two things were one and the same. She'd never really been able to celebrate her birthday because it was a constant reminder that she'd killed her mother. "He didn't," Dr. Li sighed, again, "It wasn't just because of you. We were having problems. Everything worked on the small scale but every simulation when we went big failed. Super mutants were causing problems. The Brotherhood was starting to withdraw because we weren't producing results like they wanted or like James promised. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Catherine died and James couldn't, or wouldn't, take anymore. He packed you up and abandoned Project Purity. The others and I tried to keep it going but here we are." She didn't even try to hide the bitterness in her voice.
B blinked thoughtfully, trying to process all of this information. She knew the Brotherhood from her run-in with Lyon's Pride. She'd gotten the impression that they weren't likely to really just help out. Though no one out here was that way. Did something draw the super mutants to the memorial? More importantly, where were they coming from if the Brotherhood had been here for at least twenty years but hadn't managed to eradicate them?
And then there was the entries in his work computer talking about water, but they were all dated after-
"Was it a problem with the delivery system?" B asked, heart sinking. Her jaw tightened.
"Yes. Why?"
"Son of a bitch!" B exploded, shaking her head viciously and stalking around the room, fists clenched. "Son of a fucking bitch! This is bullshit!"
Dr. Li's eyebrows shot to her hairline. "Language."
B stopped, momentarily. "Sorry." Then she was shaking her head and pacing again. "No, you know what? No. I'm not sorry. I thought he-" She turned on Dr. Li, eyes narrowed. "Where is he?"
"The Jefferson Memorial or at least that's where he was headed when he left here. That's where we were based and he left everything there when he left with you."
"And you never thought to retrieve them?" B asked, voice sharper than intended.
Dr. Li's eyes narrowed in response. "You have no right to pass judgement on me."
"No. But you were in a position to keep the research safe and you didn't."
"There was no point. No one else in either the Brotherhood or our team could make up for the loss of Catherine and James."
B paused, head tilting, distracted. "What- What was her role?"
"A tinkerer. I've never met anyone as good as she was with machines. She promised to teach some of the Brotherhood scribes after they were done, to share what she knew. But..."
"But it was never completed," B murmured. That explained the look of pain James would get on his face when she did something she was particularly proud of. Her mother's talent she'd apparently inherited plus the Vault education had produced a fertile ground that in turn had birthed the solution to the delivery system problem he'd given her when she was back to working full-time in the depths of the vault.
"No. That broken promise is why the Brotherhood left so soon after James left with you."
B couldn't help it. She winced at the accusation sitting there.
A thought popped into her head and she took enough time to consider the ideas before she was saying the words. "Madison? Er- Dr. Li? You're a doctor, right?"
Dr. Li gave a snort, gesturing at the lab coat. "You think I wear this for the aesthetics? Yes, I'm a damn doctor."
"Are you also a...a medical doctor?"
B shuffled under Dr. Li's suddenly sharp gaze, looking away from it. "Why? Is something wrong?"
"Can you, ummm… Would you be able to…" Her throat closed up in fear every time she tried to choke the words out. Dr. Li just kept staring at her, silent. Eventually, B took a deep breath, trying to hold the dread at bay, and dropped her hand to the faint stretch marks below her belly button, where the last real fat vestige she had from the Vault remained. Her fingers curled protectively around it.
She swallowed hard before she lifted her head to see Dr. Li staring at her with a strange mix of horror, sympathy, and understanding. "Oh, Bou-"
"It's just B," she cut the other woman off sharply, feeling heat rising to her ears.
"Was it…?" Her voice was oddly gentle.
B shook her head. "No, it was...mutual."
"Are you sure?" Li's voice was still gentle and she kept her distance.
"I know the difference between sex and rape, Madison," B snapped, shoving the hand cradling her belly into a pocket on Butch's jacket. "And I'm not going to take any blame for something that I didn't willingly participate in."
Her defense seemed to take Li back, before B watched her shift into doctor mode. "Do you know what the date of conception is?"
"Course I do. Sperm fertilizes egg and the zygote is then implanted in the uterine wall." B's voice and eyes flattened out as she recited dutifully. Dr. Li's mouth twitched into a smile.
"And when would that oh so clinical sounding event have occurred?"
B pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to count days. "Six? No, five. Maybe six. Either five or six."
"That's pretty early. Do you-"
"Can you at least do a blood test to see if I have elevated hormone levels?"
Li studied her. "I can't guarantee you'll get an answer." She frowned, looking at B. For a moment, the doctor facade slipped and an almost motherly concern came over her face. But then...B realized Li had probably been there at her birth, might even have expected to take over mothering duties when Catherine died. Instead, James had run to a Vault.
B swallowed back a surge of fury at how selfish her father was and then remembered some of her own choices. Her anger went out like a light, leaving behind only a deep grief for everything that had been lost.
"That's fine." Mentally she winced at how dead her voice suddenly sounded. "I'll be able to tell in a couple weeks anyway, right?"
"Bou-B," Li corrected herself, shaking her head.
B just blinked at her before a smile twitched to life on her face. The smile transitioned to a snicker, and then it erupted into a full-body guffawing. She bent in half, unable to breathe. Her pack, much lighter and jingling a little after trading, swung off her back and hit the floor with a solid thump "Boobie!" she gasped out. "You said 'boobie'!"
"Oh, for- Really?"
Eventually, after about five false starts and pained abdominal muscles, B recovered and managed to get herself into some semblance of serious though she still had bright eyes and a barely restrained grin. "Sorry, Madison. I just… You said 'boobie.'" Her voice cracked a little under the strain of keeping her laughter under control. "It was, ahem, it's funny."
"You're, what, nineteen?" Dr. Li was doing her best to sound miffed but she couldn't quite disguise the smile on her own face.
"Turned nineteen last month, actually. Why?"
Dr. Li groaned, running a hand over her hair. "God save us from the minds of teenagers."
B shook her head, still thoroughly entertained by it all and started to shrug off Butch's jacket. "Okay. Happy feelings. Let's get you your blood and then I'll be on my way."
"You're not going to stick around to find out the results?"
B shifted her weight, glancing at the metal wall. "Ah, no." Her smile drooped. "I'll wait to find out until Dad's back or I end up back in Rivet City. Thank you, Madison." She'd know in a couple weeks anyway, one way or the other.
"You be safe out there. Your dad is better than most at not being seen when he doesn't want to be but you clearly don't have the same skills." Li nodded to the scar going through B's cheek.
"I'll drag Dad back so you can yell at him. You'll have to get in line though. If he thinks he can just waltz out of my life, he's got another damn thing coming."
Dr. Li smiled as she pressed a needle to the crook of B's elbow. "You look a lot like Catherine, even sound like her sometimes. But that? That was all James right there, sweetheart."
"You're lucky he's the one I'm most like. The people I was around in the vault, whew. Attitude adjustments the lot of them." B grimaced as her blood began to fill the little syringe. "None of us were entirely stable. Kind of what happens when you grow up in a metal prison. One of my best- ow! God damnit!" B swore as the needle left her vein.
"Again, all James."
B gave her a curious look. "Dad swore?"
"Like a raider. He stopped when Catherine got pregnant. Said he didn't want his child growing up with his mouth."
Huh. B smiled again at Dr. Li, eyes flicking down to the syringe against her will. Ugh. She really didn't like the sight of her own blood. "Thanks. Really. I'll let you get back to work."
"I'll have the results when you get back."
As B walked out, she couldn't help but compare her life to her parents. She was literally walking in her father's footsteps but she could see enough of her mother's past in the present that she couldn't help the worry that she would die the same way.
Especially after she and Leo… And she was living in the wasteland. Medical treatment was nowhere near what it had been in the vault and people still died in childbirth there. With the stress of living in what essentially amounted to a warzone? Problems. So many problems.
"Excuse me."
Her head snapped up to see an older man standing at the door. Her muscles tightened, wary. He was dressed way too well and had some sort of bodyguard. Something about him reminded her of Burke and her gut screamed at her not to trust him.
"You can help me, can't you?" He wet his lips, looking irritated. B shifted her weight back, eyes going to the bodyguard. The man had an oddly blank expression but she could see vicious intelligence there despite that. He wasn't...right.
"Depends on what you want," she answered slowly, one hand resting on the holster at her hip. Not inherently threatening, and she watched the bodyguard zero in on the movement. She expected him to relax when she didn't pull it. He didn't. She looked uncertainly to the too well-dressed man.
He smiled, showing too white teeth. "You see, I seem to have lost something."
AN: I honestly have no idea if anyone is even reading this. And you know what? I don't care. I like this chapter. I hope people are reading this because this is kind of a fun chapter and things are going to get even fun from here.
Also as a side note, the number of pages in my document for this story is almost ninety. ALMOST NINETY PAGES YOU GUYS. LIKE WHAT IS THIS CHAOS.
Happy birthday to me!
AND I ALMOST FORGOT. Chapter title and lyrics from "Never Again" by Carmen McRae (1957). Gotta give credit where credit is due, guys!