Chapter 30: Your Story

Manny and Doc walked in with the rest of the ghoul troops as I brushed past them with a vile stare that shook my insides. My family may be in danger. I knew I was being baited into a trap.

"What happened?" Manny asked me.

"Where's Tai?" I asked him, ignoring his question.

"I thought I saw her run ahead to catch up with you guys." Manny said to me. I had an even worse feeling in my stomach.

I looked at Doc and Manny and ran back to the previous room. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted Tai's name. After minutes of shouting, a low voice answered me. I ran to a flipped over couch, where Tai laid with blood over her armor. I ran to her and called over Doc. Doc stared in horror at Tai, she had a buckshot emptied into her stomach and lower body. Doc then injected Tai with a syringe and tended to her bullet wounds, breathing heavier than usual.

She looked at me, a spot of blood at her mouth, her eyes glossy with tears, her face for some reason devoid of anger.

"Remember what I said before?" She asked me hoarsely.

I stared back at her.

"When you—" She gagged on blood and swallowed hard, her head bobbing back. "—When you see me… like this… do you even care?" She asked. Her voice was tired, almost sad. It broke my heart, so much that I couldn't answer with the truth.

"Yes."

She scoffed and smiled. "No you don't. I'm not sure what you care about…"

She winced: Doc tore buckshot out of her skin.

"But it's not us… it's not you either… it's something else."

I stared back into her eyes. "I never planned to survive this mission… even if I lived." She confessed.

"I hope you find out who you really care about, Jace… because I know… I have that much on you…."

Tai muttered to herself as she bled from all over. She fell back in a puddle of blood as her eyes twitched and separated from her brain waves and finally shut down. She exhaled a final breath and was still.

I never took the time to look at someone as they died; I always looked away or figured they deserved it: but this was different. She didn't deserve to die. I didn't deserve to watch this happen to another human being. But even after that I thought to myself: it was my fault, she knew this would happen and knew I wouldn't care. Death is an unreal experience, so unreal that us human beings don't truly believe that it would ever happen, otherwise we'd be living in holes in the ground, taking useless tests in a metal shelter while people smarter than you talked down to you. This is what I wanted ever since I was a child, and I finally had it. This was the life I chose, to leave my best friend in the vault and chase a man to his death. To make new friends and have them hate me and leave. To have a child so she could be put in danger while I wasn't there. It was my choice to push this makeshift team to their limits along with me. This Wasteland wasn't meant for people to live in, I realized it then. I wasn't sure if there ever will be a place that existed like that. But death was stuck onto me and everyone in the Wasteland as soon as they're born; I was the only idiot who decided to look for that feeling. And now, as I watched a woman die next to a molding couch around people she never liked and maybe despised, I realized I had a responsibility: not to do my job and get paid money, but to protect what I chose to care about. And I chose those people who hate me because I never took responsibility for my actions.

But I was going to now. I had to make yet another choice then, one that was never going to work out the way I hoped. But that was what growing up was all about: you're never going to be truly happy with your decisions, but others can be.

Doc and I looked at Tai for a moment, and looked down in silence. We then slowly got up and walked back to the main room. Manny looked into my eyes as he was about to ask a question, but didn't after he realized the answer was buried in my facial expression. I packed up my guns and began to walk out of the room. Manny stopped me as I tried to rush away.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"Stay here, I have something to do." I told him.

"Well what do you plan on doing? It's too dangerous to go out alone!" Manny shouted.

"Listen to me…" I told the child in a low voice.

"You need to leave this city now: all of you. Get as far away from this as you can, Manny. What happened back in that room to Tai doesn't have to happen to you. You need to leave."

"W—What ever happened to doing the mission? You've been yelling at us the whole time about it!"

"Things are different. Your job is done. Congratulations, you'll be paid next week." I told him as I left the room. That wasn't enough for him. He was going to do something, maybe because there was unfinished business or he just wanted to go against my word one last time.

Victoria held tightly onto her daughter as everyone was huddled against a wall. The raiders covered the entrance to the door as Chain watched with his arms folded.

"The gunfire stopped, should we go check?" Someone asked in the raider encampment.

"No. Stay here." Chain told them. He smiled and looked back at Victoria. She didn't understand why. But Chain and I understood the feeling we mutually felt. We were drawn to each other since I first met him: we knew when we were around each other. We were bound to meet and end this eventually, except this time in my foolishness I went alone across the street, my pistols drawn and firing at any stray feral that sprinted towards me and hissed. My eyes were set at the entrance to the museum, these eyes saw through the door and right into Chain as he stared back: waiting. I was ignorant and blind, and now for the first time I realized how the Wasteland truly worked. You either die or destroy anything that is a threat to you or your family, no matter what your definition of a family is. Whether it be a daughter you don't know anything about, a wife who hates you and a best friend who spits on your memory because he knew something you didn't: you weren't a man.

Victoria clutched onto her daughter for dear life as my gunshots got closer. She looked down at her daughter and she started to cry as she looked at her mother. Why? She thought to herself, but then she realized why: she was crying too. She had made her child cry and that fact ruined her. She realized at that moment she wasn't a mother: just a guardian. She didn't care about her daughter, she never loved her. Deep down she had to take care of her because it was her responsibility. And that's not what Sarah deserved. She deserved to be happy and to be loved, not to have parents that loathed each other and screamed every night at each other. Sarah deserved to live a life that Victoria would have been jealous of, because she was robbed of her parents love-by force-by the man in front of her. But she didn't care about him. Other problems concerned her and she realized how selfish she had been. She was the only person there who was capable of stopping him, and she finally had a chance to fix her mistakes, or at least start to. The man in the road sign armor was the only thing standing in her way from being happy, and she didn't even move him out of the way. But she was going to now, because she was the only one left who could. In her mind, everyone else was dead: her husband… her best friend. And in a way, she was right.

Joe took cover behind a blue mailbox until his ears stopped hearing the loudest firefight he had ever heard in his life. He saw raiders sprint and retreat into a museum that was fortified but not guarded from the inside due to the roaming ferals. He kept low to the ground and inhaled sharply. His body still hurt, but he couldn't pay attention to that now. His face was set towards the inside of the building because he too could feel the evil that sat in there. And with his bag emptied and a detonator in hand, he limped towards this building, breathing roughly. His bloodshot, tired eyes stared sternly at the side of the museum as he advanced towards it. The man with the jokes and sarcasm now walked coldly towards the man who was about to harm the ones he loved. There wasn't a smirk, no clever line or beer in his hand: only hate, pain and two explosives explosive taken from the Vault 101 armory, and the bitter feeling he felt that would stick to his personality for the rest of his life.

This was it for these four people: the one who wronged them was about to settle a score with the three people who went to hell and back to make sure he wouldn't ruin anyone else's lives ever again, because their lives were completely and utterly destroyed, inside and out. This was about to end, and there wasn't going to be a winner, because there never is. This was a war set from the start.

And war, war never changes.

We do.