- I -
He stood as the living embodiment of the Brotherhood's core values, built by his own hands into the man his birthright decreed. During the ten years of his ascent from lowly squire to respected Elder, he had shaped his image into that of a leader—a beacon that inspired others to follow. His people looked to him for validation and guidance, unmindful of his youthful age in light of his proven skills. No other individual shared his credentials, his drive, or his vision.
For his very soul was forged from eternal steel.
And yet, for one perched so high on the metallic pedestal, his gaze sometimes shifted from the horizon to the ground. He often caught himself watching the shine of golden blonde hair crossing the airport below. The Brotherhood's newest knight carried out her assignments diligently and without hesitation, and not a day went by where she failed to report in. She opted to wear the T-45 power armor instead of the newer T-60, a choice that struck him as both peculiar and disquieting.
Whenever she came in for new orders, he conducted himself with utmost decorum. But even as his outward composure remained stern and collected, everything inside grew more and more affected by her appearance. She sported defined Anglo-Saxon features, arguably generic, but also familiar in their structure. Icy blue eyes lured him in every time he met them, cool in expression and shrouded in mystery. He never gave any indication that he considered her different from the other knights, but he found himself assigning her missions meant for more seasoned officers, if only to ensure her return to the command deck when she completed the tasks.
For her part, she followed through with each order and brought back more than satisfactory results. He considered her proficiencies and abilities, aware of the frequent comparisons he drew. She impressed him, he admitted. And with every successful job she relayed back, the stalwart line he had set began to dissolve.
Her investment in locating the Institute aided greatly in her work for the Brotherhood, but she never divulged the reasons that served as her motivation. He started giving her more leeway to reach her objectives, including granting permission for her temporary liaisons with the Railroad. Although his instincts protested his own confidence in her loyalty, her clear appreciation for his trust put the internal argument to rest. The stark resemblances in her smile and posture influenced his logic, he knew, and he was the first to call himself out on his compromised wisdom in matters that concerned her.
Even in the evenings, she sometimes filled his thoughts. During these times in the privacy of his quarters, he opened the locked drawer of his desk and produced a small picture frame, spending the better part of an hour merely gazing at the preserved photo. The more he tied the perceived connections together, the more he entertained the idea that perhaps something lost had been regained. A bit of an unfair notion to all parties, but her existence threw a significant part of his mind into disarray.
As the weeks passed, and she spent more time on the Prydwen, he started to catch her peering at him in return. Around the main deck, across the docking stations, or through the open door of his quarters, their eyes often met. Word around the ship informed him that she had been asking about his background and the Brotherhood's history. He attempted to disregard the new shade of interest in her stare, intending to brief her on the Brotherhood's standard of professionalism but unable to completely dismiss his own responsibility in this development. And although she said nothing of it through her lips, her gaze spoke of a thousand different indecipherable facets.
The day she managed to infiltrate the Institute, he couldn't remember experiencing a stronger sense of pride for one of his soldiers. He did question her decision to approach a different faction for help in building the teleporter, as the Brotherhood possessed full capabilities to construct such a device. Still, considering she reported in the moment she returned, he saw no reason to pursue the matter further. More doors had opened, and vital missions loomed ahead.
However, something within her had changed.
Her face now bore a grim shadow, blue eyes darkened by some unspoken burden. He refrained from prying into her personal affairs, but his curiosity increased with every second spent studying her troubled demeanor. Her field performance suffered little, but even he could feel the turmoil she harbored inside.
Then, days after her initial visit to the Institute, she came to him in the command deck unannounced.
"Elder Maxson, could I have a word?"
Arthur turned from his standard position in front of the glass panes overlooking the dusk-colored Commonwealth, donning the stoic mantle of the Brotherhood leader even as his full attention centered on her. "What is it, knight?"
She ambled toward him, garbed in the Brotherhood uniform and combat armor instead of her usual T-45 suit. "They say a man named Roger Maxson founded the Brotherhood of Steel, and you happen to be the last of his descendents."
He raised an eyebrow, analyzing her tone. "That's correct. What of it?" What is it you really want to say?
She bit her lip and glanced toward the floor. "So… you know exactly who you are. Your place in time and in the familial line. Yours is a straightforward lineage. I'm sure you have your share of stresses and problems, but your chronology isn't one of them."
Confusion overtook his bearing, but he disguised it beneath an impatient and annoyed veneer. "Knight, I'm a very busy man. Is there a point to this conversation?"
Her line of sight snapped back to his face, and in the flicker of the lights, a sheen of unshed tears glimmered. "You might have noticed something amiss with me since I returned from the Institute. The truth is, I've learned that my life is going through an endless upheaval. I woke up months ago in Vault 111 and stepped into this world after having been frozen in cryosleep for over two hundred years. Two centuries, Elder."
His mask slipped as he registered her words. "You… excuse me, what?"
"There's a reason I've been so intent to hunt down the Institute. Sixty years ago, they came into the Vault, murdered my husband, and kidnapped my infant son. I witnessed it all, trapped in my pod, helpless to stop any of it. They re-froze me like some experimental specimen. When I was finally freed this past October, I had only one goal: I needed to find my son. Everything I've done since then, I've done for him. For the chance to find my child and take him back." She laughed then, a bitter sound of anger and grief. "Well, I found him. He was there to greet me at the Institute."
Arthur stared hard at her, trying to discern the source of her quandary. "And yet something plagues you."
"I lost a baby, and I found a sixty-year-old man. A man who grew up never knowing his parents, never learning love and compassion. The director of the Institute." She stepped toward him, looking lost, pleading. "What am I supposed to do, Elder? Your enemy is my son."
He drew in a sharp breath, at once understanding the full extent of her predicament. Assuming her story was true—and he found himself believing it—she now posed a viable hazard. While he had never doubted her allegiance prior to this, the knowledge that she had blood ties to the Brotherhood's primary foe left him apprehensive. Despite the complexity of the situation, his views remained locked in black and white.
"He's… twice my physical age," she went on, voice breaking. "Our chronology, our relationship, our lives… all of it is ruined. I don't even know what I—"
"From where I'm standing, knight, you still have only two options," Arthur told her, his spine straight and firm as he regarded her solemnly. "Stay devoted to the Brotherhood and continue fighting for our cause—or defect and, depending on whom you subsequently ally with, become an enemy target."
She blinked at him, clear shock and dismay replacing her bereavement. "Is this an ultimatum?"
"It is the reality of your circumstances. The choice is yours. I trust you'll pick the correct one."
A few seconds of silence went by.
She drew herself to her full height, something closing off in her countenance. "I will, Elder."
x-x-x-x-x
No other complications arose for several more weeks.
He watched for any lingering effects of the conversation, but if anything, she accomplished her assignments quicker and more efficiently than ever. He saw the resolve in her manner, recognizing the one-track mentality of a woman carrying the world on her shoulders. Whatever solution she had found for her dilemma, it left a sense of ambiguity in the air. He kept a vigilant eye on her activities both on and off the Prydwen, but the familiar way she conducted herself brought about memories of a gilded past.
He had seen that focus before, the determination and pride that comprised her character. Echoes of yesteryear coiled around them, and despite the implausibility, he saw her in another setting, in a different position, but under the same banner. She continued to return his gaze, never speaking of whatever connection sparked between them. They sized each other up for days on end, keeping their observations to themselves as the link grew into near-tangibility.
And then came the M7-97 fiasco.
Shock and betrayal consumed him above all others in the Brotherhood. It gnawed away at his temperament, serving as a reminder that even he failed at identifying the best-constructed of the Institute synths. The shattered picture of Paladin Danse as one of his top field officers plagued him in the subsequent days. He checked and double-checked the accuracy of the reports at least a dozen times, disappointed when their verities held up to critical inspection. When he came to terms that there had never been a "Paladin Danse"—that only M7-97 existed all along—he made one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
And judging by the look on her face when he heaved the full responsibility of Danse's inevitable demise to her, he could already tell she considered the mission impossible.
"I can't," she told him in an unsteady voice.
"You will," he all but growled, a considerable amount of his aggression aimed at himself. "This is a direct order, knight. No matter what history he has with the Brotherhood of Steel—and with you—he must be eliminated. An exception would only show the Brotherhood as weak. And weakness, especially for a military faction guided by my hand, is the most unacceptable thing of all."
She shook her head, the compassion in her expression only twisting his gut even more. "The world operates in shades, not in extremes. I don't know his story, but I intend to find out."
"Your pre-War attitude is the one facet that holds you back, knight," Arthur barked. "This isn't the world you left behind. There is no longer any room for an idealistic moral spectrum. In this society, you are strong or you are weak. You hold firm or you cave in. You live or you die. There is no in-between. And there will be no debating this. Hunt down Danse and execute him. I won't repeat the order again."
In a movement so subtle he almost missed it, she quirked an eyebrow and peered at him as if he would rue this moment in days to come.
"As you wish, Elder Maxson."
Defiance disguised under acquiescence.
He knew it well.
x-x-x-x-x
When she tracked down Danse's whereabouts within the span of two days, he followed her by vertibird to the location of an old bunker. As he waited in the aircraft, vision glued to the entrance through which she had disappeared, he could only hope she did the right thing. However, the longer the evening stretched on, the more his instincts clawed at him in warning. And as soon as the bunker door swung open to reveal two people walking out instead of one, he completely snapped.
The confrontation reached explosive proportions. In a flash, he appeared in their path, cornering them under the spotlights of the bunker's exterior. Arguments flew back and forth between her and himself while the subject in question stood gawking from the sidelines. Arthur condemned her nerve, her lapse in judgment. And yet she continued to insist on Danse's survival, much to his everlasting ire.
"It is the embodiment of everything mankind has done wrong," he snarled. "It is a danger. A weapon. How has this fact not gotten through to you?"
"He's a thinking, feeling, intelligent person," she retorted in her first outward display of impassioned emotion. "He's killed for you, bled for you, put his life on the line countless times for you."
"Even now, if you asked me, I'd still be willing to serve you," Danse added, stepping closer to her in a gesture that didn't escape Arthur's notice. "It's true, I had my mind erased once to free myself from the Institute's grasp. But what did I do when I was granted a new start? I chose to join the ranks of Steel. This wasn't Institute programming, it was a choice I made on my own. No matter what you think of synths, I am not a traitor to you or the Brotherhood."
Arthur glowered at both of them, further infuriated by their inability to understand the error in their perspectives. "You are utterly deluded if you believe synths—or mutants, or ghouls—are equal to humans. You're nothing but a tool, Danse. An artificial, man-shaped construction built to simulate human behavior. There is no alternative outcome here. You must be destroyed."
"Why?" she cut in, the outrage prominent in every inch of her frame.
"Because it is science that has overstepped its bounds. Take away the components that make it look like a man. In the end, it's only a machine."
"And if you're supposed to be such a superior human, start acting like one," she fired back, blue irises ablaze with a ferocity he'd seen in only one other individual. "Life doesn't run on a binary scale. There is a spectrum whether you like it or not, Maxson. If you want to prove you're more human than a synth is, learn the concept of mercy. Because without it, you're no better than any other unfeeling robot walking the Wastes."
Arthur went very still. He maintained his glare, but processed her statements. "Is your stubbornness a product of your misguided attachment to this thing's creator?"
She lifted her chin, eyes flashing with open challenge. "That isn't it. I'm being stubborn about this because I—"
She cut herself off, but the insinuation resonated between them, catching both men off-guard. Arthur pressed his lips together, part of his chest going cold. One glance at Danse's stunned but elated countenance told him that the sentiment was reciprocated. All at once, the months leading up to this went up in smoke. Arthur regarded her somberly, remembering that the connection resided only in his head. Even so, he still found it impossible to shake off. If he killed Danse now, he would lose her as well.
Faced with such a situation, he drafted one acceptable solution.
"…I see. So your stance is of a personal nature, then," Arthur remarked. Turning to Danse, he went on, "Fine. Danse, as far as I'm concerned, you're dead. You were pursued and slain by this Brotherhood knight, and your remains were incinerated. From this day forward, you are forbidden to set foot on the Prydwen, or speak to anyone from the Brotherhood of Steel."
The former paladin exhaled in relief and sent him a grateful look. "I can live with that. Thank you for believing in me, Arthur."
"Listen again, synth. You will not speak to or meet with anyone from the Brotherhood of Steel. That includes her," Arthur rumbled, narrowing his eyes when both individuals in front of him gave a start.
She opened her mouth, but it took a few tries for her to emit a sound. "What?"
He swept out an arm, fighting back the smirk that pulled at the corners of his lips. "You heard me. If either of you chooses to ignore my warning and communicate after tonight, know that Danse will be fired upon immediately."
As they gaped at him, speechless, he pivoted on his heel and made his way back to the vertibird.
Facing the darkness, he allowed himself a satisfied smile. "Is that merciful enough for you, knight?"
x-x-x-x-x
A/N: My insane muse wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote this, so here it is. The story will be told in two parts. Last chapter coming soon. Enjoy/I'm sorry/it's the muse's fault.