Author's note: The song for this chapter is David Guetta feat Emile Sande - What I Did For Love.
Here we are, folks, the big finish.
What We Do For Love
Trielle
"I'm sorry. I wish there were some other way, but there's just no time. It has to be done now, or the damage will be catastrophic!"
Doctor Li's words rang out through the intercom like a death knell, specifically my death knell. Things had actually been going well with the mission to retake the purifier. Liberty Prime, the Brotherhood's giant robot, had performed as promised, clearing us a path to the Jefferson Memorial and deflecting most of the artillery bombardments that the Enclave threw at us. Despite our small numbers, the members of Lyons' Pride and I managed to carve our way through the remaining Enclave troops that Liberty Prime missed and emerge victorious outside the gift shop entrance to the memorial. We entered and mopped up the last few bits of resistance, then Sarah Lyons and I headed for the rotunda.
I should have known that I hadn't seen the last of that bastard, Colonel Autumn, despite blowing up the Enclave's base at Raven Rock with him presumably inside of it at the time. The man had more lives than a pre-war cat, but I was determined that he wouldn't be leaving this meeting alive, in spite of his two mini-gun wielding bodyguards. He spouted his usual propagandist bullshit, and I calmly dispatched his companions with Harkness' trusty plasma rifle, then turned it on the Colonel.
"Any last words?" I barked.
"The Enclave will rise again!"
"Like hell!" I popped him in the head with my rifle and watched his body fall into the waters surrounding the control room. "Try coming back from that, asshole!"
Sarah barely had time to congratulate me when we heard Doctor Li's urgent voice over the intercom. She informed us that the Project Purity facility had been seriously damaged in the fighting, and also possibly through Enclave sabotage, and that one of us was going to have to enter the control room, filled with enough radiation to be almost instantly lethal, and turn on the purifier to keep it from exploding.
Blood roared through my ears as I realized what her words meant. One of us wouldn't be coming back from this mission. One of us, Sarah Lyons or myself, would be sacrificing our lives for the promise of clean water for all the peoples of the Capital Wasteland.
"So, what should we do? Draw straws?" Sarah's tone was deliberately casual, belying the sick look on her face at the realization that I'd be sending her to her death…or she'd be sending me to mine.
Despite the almost paralyzing fear curdling in my veins, I knew there was really no choice about which one of us would be activating the purifier. My parents had started it, and I would finish it. The entire Miraven family would have lived and died for the dream of clean water in the wastes, as it should be. I really wished that I'd been wrong in my prediction to Harkness that I wouldn't be coming back from this mission, but I hoped that he'd be able to find happiness again when I was gone.
"I'll do it," I said resolutely. "I'll start the purifier."
"You're going to have to be quick about it," Sarah said. "If the radiation is bad enough, you won't have much time."
"I know," I said, popping a triple dose of Rad-X in my mouth. Now was not the time to be worrying about an overdose of the radiation resistance medicine, and it might help me last a little longer in the irradiated control room. "Sarah, will…will you do something for me?"
"Anything, my friend."
"Tell Harkness I love him," I said softly.
"I will." Sarah was almost in tears, a first for the leader of the Lyons' Pride, but she put on a brave face for me. "I won't forget what you've done here," she said quickly. "No one will. Thank you."
I nodded, my throat too thick with unshed tears to reply, and stepped into the airlock for the control room, hearing the door seal behind me with a grim finality. As the door to the control room opened, the radiation hit me like a sledgehammer, and I nearly keeled over right there, only making it to the control panel through sheer force of will.
"Revelations 21:6," I intoned through numb lips as I punched in the code, drawn from my mother's favorite passage in the Bible. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life, freely." My finger hovered over the last button, the one that would enter the passcode and activate the purifier. "I'm so sorry, Harkness," I sobbed, tears running freely down my face at last as I pushed the button. I collapsed onto the control panel, overcome by the radiation, and as the purifier began to whir and hum, a blinding flash of white light overrode my vision, and I knew no more.
"If this is what the afterlife looks like, I'm not impressed." I couldn't quite stop the sarcasm as I opened my eyes and blinked in the dim light of what looked very like the medical clinic at the Citadel. "Where am I? What the hell happened?"
Elder Lyons stepped forward to assure me that I had not, in fact, died when the purifier was activated, but rather been knocked out by an energy surge that incapacitated me and Sarah, and that we'd both been brought to the Citadel to recuperate. He advised me that I'd been in a coma for two weeks, that Sarah still was in a coma herself, and that the Lyons' Pride was busy rounding up the remnants of the Enclave and, I hope, shooting them all somewhere extremely painful. The purifier had worked, he said, the tidal basin was full of clean water, which they were hard at work distributing to all four corners of the wastes, and by the way, they could really use my help with a number of tasks, now that I was back on my feet.
"She needs at least a month to heal, far away from you people, then she might think about helping you," rasped a familiar voice from across the room.
"Harkness!" I shrieked. I tried to extricate myself from the gurney I was sitting on, and only managed to nearly fall on my ass as my legs wobbled underneath me.
"Easy there, sweetheart." He scooped me up and deposited me back on the gurney, then bent me over his arm in a passionate kiss that left me breathless.
"I'll…just leave you two alone then," Elder Lyons stammered, beating a hasty retreat from the clinic.
"I'm so glad to see you!" I cried, burying my face in the crook of his neck. "When did you get here?"
"I've been here the whole time," he murmured into my hair. "Ever since they brought you back." He chuckled. "They tried to deny me entrance and I may have…punched a hole through the outer door, so they had to let me in."
I laughed at that. "Get me out of this murky hellhole, Harkness. I need some sunshine."
"Your wish is my command." He swept me up in his arms and carried me outside, sitting down in one of the chairs in the courtyard with me in his lap. I managed to get a good look at him in the sunlight, and I didn't like what I saw. His eyes were red rimmed, his chin had a liberal covering of stubble, and he looked like he hadn't slept or eaten much for the last two weeks.
"You look like hell," I told him.
"It's been two weeks of hell," he said softly. "They assured me that you would wake up eventually, but you just lay there like a puppet with the strings cut, and you were so pale and cold…"
"I'm back now," I said, cupping his cheek and giving him a reassuring kiss. "And I'm not going anywhere."
"Elle, I…have to tell you something," he let out in a rush. "I…I love you. I wanted to tell you before you left, but…"
"It's okay," I said quietly. "You don't have to explain yourself. I love you too."
"You do?" He looked incredulous.
"Yes, you silly man, I love you!" I swatted him on the shoulder. "Is that so hard to believe?"
"But…but…I'm a grumpy old fart," he protested. "And a synth," he whispered.
"You already know I don't care about that," I chided, "so why should you care about it?"
A wondering look came over his face. "You really love me," he said in amazement. He laughed, the most joyful sound I had ever heard come out of his mouth, then captured my lips in a scorching hot kiss that ended with me very nearly fucking him on that chair, in full view of all the Brotherhood initiates.
"I don't know what I did to deserve you," he said, "but I can't picture my life without you in it. Let's get you home so I can show you just how glad I am to have you back." He helped me stand and kept his arm around me as we headed out the main gate and back to Rivet City.
"Is now a bad time to tell you that I've got a dog?"
His laughter rang out over the wasteland.
Author's note: That's it then, all 66 and some thousand words of it. I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.