Games We Play: Truth

Notes: Everything belongs to Bethesda and Obsidian, I'm just playing with their toys.

This is the end, folks. Thanks to everyone who had fun on this ride with me - it's been a great time writing this and knowing that something I created touched so many people. Special thanks to everyone who took the time to give me feedback on this - like a cat, I thrive on attention (and may lie on your keyboard to get it).

I have a couple new somethings in the pipeline and am looking for a betareader or two. If you're interested, contact me on tumblr and we'll get the ball rolling. ;)


truth

noun

the body of real things, events, and facts

or: sincerity in action, character, and utterance (archaic)

He's not Deacon anymore. With the Institute gone, the Railroad...well, they haven't disbanded exactly, but by the time he came to four days later, Desdemona had decided that with the threat gone, they could all be themselves again, the people they had been before they joined the fight. It starts with names; slowly the agents take up their old identities like discarded clothes left on the floor. Desdemona's real name turns out to be Marianne, Drummer Boy is Alex; Tinker Tom, as it turns out, actually is named Tom. Calavera tells everyone to fuck off when they ask her for her birth name, and so Calavera she stays.

Charmer wrinkles her nose the first time he calls her Momoko, and so he starts calling her Peaches. She laughs at that, and he thinks of the first time he slipped, that warm day in December when he called her a peach, and he slides his hand over hers.

When they ask the man who used to be Deacon what they should call him now, he doesn't have an answer for them. He's had so many names in his life but none of them seem to fit anymore; each one of them has been discarded like a snakeskin and he's left, nameless and lost, in his hospital bed in Covenant.

He wonders if this is right, he worries that maybe they've jumped the gun in their hurry to pick up what's left of their old lives, their scrapped identities. There are still Institute scientist out there. Des - Marianne - tells him he's paranoid, that he's startling at shadows and he isn't sure which one them is right.


Each day, Charmer - Peaches - sits with him, despite his bad temper, despite the way he growls and groans in pain. One day, desperate for him to feel some relief, she gives him a dose of Med-X and the high is so intense that even though it holds the misery at bay, he begs her to let him feel it all. He's afraid that if he takes another dose, he'll chase it with a third, a fourth, a fifth, that he'll lose what's left of himself in a swirling euphoric abyss. So he suffers, and he snipes, and then he feels guilty and apologizes. When she smiles tightly at him and runs her hand over his scalp to feel the baby hairs growing in, he wonders how he got so damn lucky.

The Institute is gone, but there's still hundreds of synths out there unprepared for the violence of the real world, and so when he's finally up to walking three weeks later, he insists on going back out into the field. Dr. Carrington clicks his tongue and gives him the beginning of a lecture about healing, but Deacon puts on his sunglasses and grabs his cane and makes his way slowly to the clinic door, barely resisting the urge to flip the good doctor the bird on his way out.

Somehow it became fall while he was horizontal; the sky has that golden tinge that autumn in the Commonwealth always has, the air so crisp that makes him want to take deep breaths, no matter how much it hurts.

Carrington said he died when they got back to Covenant; apparently he was dead for three minutes. It might have happened sooner if Peaches hadn't used both their emergency stimpaks on him. He supposes, staring at the cloudless sky, that she made the right decision, refusing to allow him to stimpak her earlier that day. It's hard to decide, really; after spending his life fighting for this, he still never thought he'd succeed.

He knows now what all those old-world widgets feel like. Obsolete before he's even fifty; what a strange sensation..

Walking this far already has him winded; he casts his eyes about and finds a bench next to the door. He cautiously maneuvers himself down the stairs and over to it before dropping bonelessly into the unforgiving plastic. He's joked about being old before, but this is the first time he really feels it; the ache in his chest is bad enough, but his joints all feel sore, and the flesh on his chest prickles and itches where an enormous, angry scar is forming.

Better than dead, though. Right?

A boy approaches. He's seen the child looking curiously through the windows at him. Shaun. A synth made to look like Father at ten years old, one final perplexing fucking experiment - or is he a gift? - for Charmer.

Peaches? Momoko?

The boy is small for his age, or for the average ten year-old, at any rate. His hair is black, like his mother's, and his dark eyes are fringed with the same lashes as Peaches'. He watches Deacon with the same guarded gaze, and he smiles slightly as he walks over. Same crooked grin, higher on one side than the other.

He holds a bottle in his hand and presents it to Deacon shyly, as if he's worried Deacon might smack him, or snatch it away. The glass is chilled, and the boy has already opened the cap. Thoughtful; he doesn't think he could manage a cap right now. Deacon takes a sip, grateful for the sweetness of the cola on his tongue after so many weeks of dry mouth and bland water. He smiles slightly at the boy and pats the seat next to him.

Shaun sits just far enough away from him so that their knees don't bump.

"I'm Shaun," he says, smiling timidly. Deacon offers him the bottle and the boy takes it and sips thoughtfully. "My mom calls you Deacon. Is that what I should call you?"

His mom. His mom. Peaches. He has a vague memory of her telling him she didn't know what to do about the synthetic boy - it hurt so much to have him near, but she couldn't stand the thought of sending him away - but it's distorted by pain. Deacon guesses she's decided to keep him around, despite her conflicted feelings.

"I guess…" he starts, and then stops. The boy hands him back the bottle and he takes another drink. "I don't really know."

This earns him a giggle, and the boy's shoulders relax. "You don't know your own name?"

Deacon cracks a smile. His chest hurts, but he can see why the boy thinks this is funny; if it weren't him, he might think it was, too. "No, I guess I don't. How about...Uncle Sunglasses?"

Shaun takes the bottle again and takes a long drink, eyeing him thoughtfully. "No, that's silly."

This is true, Deacon thinks.

"What about Pears?" Shaun's suggestion confuses him.

"Why?"

"Well, if my mom is Peaches, then why can you be Pears?"

This is so adorable it startles a painful laugh from Deacon. He tries not to wince, but he sees the boy's eyes trained carefully on him anyway. Doesn't miss much, Deacon thinks. Just like his mother.

No surprise there.

"Does it hurt very badly?" Shaun's eyes are on the place where Deacon's shirt buttons, at the ruined red skin visible just above his collar.

"Nah," Deacon lies, grimacing as he accepts the soda bottle back from Shaun. He takes a sip and tries to think of what to say. "Maybe a little."

Shaun's face is sympathetic.

"My mom said you saved her life." Deacon feels a flickering pride when he hears this, a tender heat in his chest, behind the pain. He nods, thinking of the look on Charmer's - Peaches', dammit - face when he leapt in front of her, and the sizzle of his skin roasting.

He'd do it again in a heartbeat.

"That's really brave," Shaun says, and the flickering pride turns into a warm wash down his arms and legs. He can feel his cheeks turning pink and hot.

"She would've done the same for me."

They sit for a few minutes, watching the Railroad agents going about their business. Somewhere above them, over the wall, there's a bird singing.

"Mom says -" Shaun stops, his cheeks flushing. It's cute. Deacon can't believe he keeps forgetting the kid is a synth, a replica of Father.

A second chance? Maybe.

"What is it, buddy?" Deacon leans back against the bench and digs in his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter.

"She says you used to live in the Institute, like me."

"I sure did," Deacon drops the smokes back in his pocket. He shouldn't do that in front of the boy.

"Was it hard? What you first moved up here?"

He sighs, trying to think back that far. He remembers being scared, being unprepared; nothing in his life before had prepared him for the total shithole that the Commonwealth was compared to where he'd grown up. The first two months, everything he ate made him sick and he couldn't so much as fire a gun. He's still surprised now that he even survived.

"It was pretty scary," he acknowledges, unsure of how much to share.

"Can I talk to you sometimes? If I'm scared, or, like, homesick? No one else here really... just keep telling me how lucky I am."

The boy looks up, away from Deacon, at a tree partway up the hill and continues, "Sometimes I miss it there."

There's a prickle in the corner of Deacon's eye as he looks down at Shaun's narrow shoulders, at the paleness of his skin. He wonders if Shaun - the first Shaun, the one who grew up to be Father - was like this as a child. Something in him thinks not, that somehow he'd lost his humanity alarmingly early.

Strange to think this mechanical boy, made in a lab, is more human than the person that created him.

"Of course, we can talk any time you need to," he says, his voice cracking slightly. Shaun grins and take the Nuka-Cola out of Deacon's hands, drinks the last of it, and runs to a nearby trashcan to throw it away. When he comes back, it's clear he has one more question.

"Hey, uh...Deacon?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"You're not going anywhere, right?"

No, Deacon thinks as he tries to find a comfortable position on the bench. He thought he would be ready to go back out with Peaches soon, but just this little jaunt into the sunshine has proven how incredibly misguided he was. He's already exhausted, and his chest is killing him. If he made it down the road, even a baby mirelurk could chew him up.

"I'm not planning on it." Another smile from Shaun.

"Great. Well, I'll see you later." The boy runs down the hill to grab a ball, and then out of sight, to play.


It's another month before he's able to travel safely, before he can handle a gun and doesn't feel like a strong wind might knock him over. Afternoons grow chillier, and at night it's actually cold. He moves out of the clinic and back into the house with Peaches and Shaun. Finally, one day, they set out for Sanctuary. He has to take his time and Shaun is a child, so they walk slowly down the road, the three of them chatting as Peaches scans the area around them for threats.

Sanctuary is different than the last time he was there. A town has grown up where before there were only ruins; the destroyed houses have been repaired and a motley collection of tin and wood structures have been erected to provide additional housing. At the town center, around a big oak tree, are shops and stalls open for business; on the concrete pad where a house used to be is even a bar. A farm has grown up on the sloping hill littered with the skeletons of old playground equipment; water purifiers sit in the river, powered by rumbling generators.

Peaches' house from before the war is gone. In its place is a new, two-story wooden structure. Inside is a loft bedroom for the boy and even a composting toilet. Deacon tries not to let on his surprise that someone leveled the old place; it had been in fairly good shape.

He can't help it, though; here, in her old neighborhood, he feels like an interloper. Shaun at least is a synthetic copy of her own son. He is nothing, in no way related to her former life. He'd thought coming here would make him feel better, but somehow - instead, he walks around town each day, gathering his strength and wondering why he's even still here.

Gradually, synths from the Institute begin trickling into town, sometimes escorted by former Railroad agents. Sometimes they know who and what they are; other times their memories have been wiped. He finds some solace, some purpose, in helping them find work and build a life together. As he walks around town in the evenings, people nod at him, or smile. The more he walks and works, the easier it is; he doesn't need to use the cane at all anymore, and pain of the wound in his chest begins to recede.

Some afternoons he and Shaun play ball together, and the way the boy laughs makes him feel warm for the first time since they rode the relay down. It's like he's never played before - which, when he stops to consider it, may be true. Peaches is distant, busy; most nights she sleeps on the couch instead of with him, and more than once he's heard her crying in the night.

He knows the feeling.

Deacon begins walking farther and farther from town. Each day he goes out, wandering; he's not sure what he's looking for until he sees it, up on the hill overlooking the vault. His camp, just the same as he left it, if a bit weathered after being unoccupied for two years. The white symbol for "ally" is chipped and fading; the tin of mac 'n' cheese he left is still intact, despite some toothmarks in the lid. He brushes some leaves off the chair and sits down in it.

From here, he can see the whole valley. There's the rusted equipment around the vault elevator, and the town of Sanctuary below. The sky is clear blue with just a few puffy clouds to the southwest; probably there will be a radstorm tonight.

A crunching of leaves, and then Peaches walks up behind him. There isn't another place to sit, so she stands beside him, looking out at the view.

"You weren't kidding when you said you were always on my side, were you?" He can hear the smirk in her voice. Something about it makes him think of the days before they destroyed the world again, of the woman she was before she killed her son, before he destroyed his home. He reaches his arm up, wrapping it carefully around her waist, and she sways, leaning her hip into his cheek.

"I may have spent some time up here waiting for you."

"Mmm, sure looks like it."

Overhead a crow cries.

"I'm sorry I've been...different."

"I don't know why you're saying that to me." It's true; he doesn't. Of course she's been different. Her whole life was taken away, and then she had to destroy it again. He can understand that. He runs his hand down her leg, feeling the muscles through the soft fabric of her pants, and she wraps her arm around the top of his head, running her fingers through the gingery strands. It feels nice. He leans his head back and looks up at her.

"I guess I just want you to know that I don't blame you for...everything. Anything. I still want this. I still want you."

A smile takes over his face, his body processing what she's saying before his brain does.

"I want you, too," he says, grabbing her hip more firmly and turning her so she's standing in front of him. She gives him her own smile and lifts first one leg and then the other over his lap to sit carefully, facing him, her legs dangling off the back of the chair. Her face fills his vision.

"I need to tell you something," he says, then stops. She nods, slightly, and he wonders if she knows what he's going to say.

She can't, can she?

"I killed my wife. Barbara. She was a spy, for the Institute, and I killed her."

"I killed my son. He was the Director."

"I know that, but -"

She leans in, kissing him warmly on the lips. It starts quietly, a way to shush him perhaps, but then it changes. It's a voluptuous kiss, full of promise, pregnant with meaning. When she pulls back, he's gasping. He'd forgotten how good she feels, in his arms, pressed against him. For the first time in months, some part of him feels alive. He thinks of the town below, of the synths down there still needing help to get settled, to become acclimated.

The work won't end. He won't end.

And yet - there are things he wants in life. Things he never knew he wanted, not until he met her. Not until he found Shaun.

Now feels like as good a time to ask as any. He pulls off his sunglasses, squinting in the winter sun, and looks into her eyes. She looks happy, lighter somehow. Her eyes trace the line of his jaw, the shape of his nose.

It's now or never, and so he goes for it.