I stared across the table at my father. He looked almost wary, as if he were worried one of us children would deck him in the mouth for leaving us. Honestly, I wouldn't put that past me. I was happy to see him, but my feelings had culminated into a fair amount of confusion and a betrayed kind of hurt since I'd gotten to Rivet City.

"Well," Mike began, his eyebrow furrowed with what could have been worry or well-concealed agitation, "I know he didn't leave us there for anything other than the possibility of safety."

"I..." My heart had sank deep into my gut by now, and admitting this did hurt quite a bit. I wanted to be angry, dramatic. I stammered out instead, "I figured as much."

Dad then cut in, in his most soothing of voices, "I knew you kids were mature enough to understand. You know that as your father, I love you, and well, I hated to ask for your help on this project, but your mother would be so proud to know that you're helping out."

"Well, I don't want any of my family getting killed or anything, do I? Not much of a choice I have, but I'm always willing to help my daddy, right?" I crossed my arms and looked over at Charon, who placed a hand on my shoulder silently, the comfort of his hand ironically feeling like a giant relief being lifted off my shoulders.

Mike seemed a bit more understanding of the whole ordeal than I was, and I couldn't say that I was surprised. He always was the more mature one, after all.

Morgan sat behind him and ordered a drink amidst all the dramatic tension, his only explanation for it being, "Come on, kiddos. Why would I pass up drinks at a time like this?"

I raised a hand into the air, "I might as well have one, just since it's no fair to let someone else drink alone."

Morgan chuckled and slid over a shot full of whiskey.

I downed it all at once, and it burned like hellfire going down.

Charon put a hand over the glass, "Alright, that's all she gets today, unless someone else wants to carry her out of here."

Dad looked rather appalled at this, and agreed with Charon. "Catie, what's happened to you?"

I looked over at Charon, "He calls me that. Short for Catherine. Not sure if you-"

"I knew."

"Oh, right. You were there last time when we-"

My dad interrupted by clearing his throat. "I brought you both here to tell you something important. It's something that I knew and did not tell the two of you because we were living in the vault, and keeping it so that the two of you thought you were born there was a priority."

I looked over at my father, my features cast rather seriously, my brow furrowed in focus and my lips pursed as I listened.

Dad sighed. "There's no easy way to go about this, so I have to spit it right out. You have a brother."

"I know I have a brother, he's right the-" I paused mid-sentence, realizing what he meant by this. I had a brother somewhere from... what? A drunken escapade of my father? This was scandalous, the kind of thing that Butch's unknown father would have done, not mine.

"You seem to misunderstand, Catie," Dad began again.

Charon whispered to me, "Like glass again," and my features cleared as I realized that even my father could see right through me.

"Catie," Dad said soothingly, putting a hand on my forearm, "This is going to be harder for you to stomach more than anyone else. I suppose I should just come out with it. You weren't the only baby born on the day your mother died. In fact, she died from giving birth to twins without proper medicine. You have to understand, it's a wasteland out here. We had no idea there would be two of you."

I felt crushed, as if someone had stepped on me and rearranged my organs as their foot was on its way off my chest. "Well, I don't see why you wouldn't tell me that. Who was he?" I felt a strange tugging sensation at my chest as I thought for a split second that maybe it could be Butch. After all, who knew his father?

"He seemed stillborn, Catie. That's why he was never taken to the vault with us."

I felt like a monster for this, but I was a little relieved. I then felt a bit silly for even thinking someone three years older than me could even be my twin. "So why are you telling me this now? And wait, seemed?"

"Because he was still alive and I had been too careless to check. I was so distraught over his and your mother's deaths that a Brotherhood member who was going to give your mother and the baby a burial was the one who noticed that he was alive after I'd left. It didn't cry or so much as whimper to show that it was alive or hungry. I corresponded with the Brotherhood for years getting updates on the baby, and he's got less of an idea who he really is than we do. I know who he is, but he doesn't. It must be a sad existence for him.

All I really know is that we named him Jason before he was born. He's in the Brotherhood right now, and has no idea the rest of his family is out there."

I stood up, shoving my chair backward as I did so, slamming both my hands on the table and wincing as I heard the chair clatter to the floor. "I want to find him. He's my twin brother. I mean, goddamn, look at me. It can't be that hard to find a red-headed Brotherhood member."

"Fraternal twin, so he won't be as easy to spot as you are," Mike piped up. "Yeah, you never get cases of boy-girl identical twins, since they split off from the same egg. You guys could look worlds apart."

"Dammit!" I already felt a strange sense of closeness to this brother, just from knowing we were born at the same time.

Charon crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. "Not much you can do."

"You don't say." I picked my chair back up and sat down, huffing a breath out and blowing a lock of hair off of my nose. This was going to be a long night, and tomorrow morning, we were going to do this 'Project Purity' thing. I needed all the sleep I could get.