Note: Or maybe it's this one...?

Augustus sat at VIOLA's monitoring station, an elbow on the edge of the desk and eyes shaded with one hand. His other hand trailed past his knee, grasping a nearly-empty scotch bottle with a trembling hand. The darkened room was empty of attendants, having been ordered out in a half-drunk rage, and the only illumination available was the terminal in front of him.

He jabbed at the keyboard again, replaying the footage from earlier that day. His hand moved back to his forehead, shadowing his eyes as he watched Lillie in her room. She had discovered her physical development, and was examining the effects of the discontinued hormone injections. Her gaze then moved to the wall, to the intercom light, and went blurry for a moment or two.

He kept his eyes on the video until she entered the training room, and faced him. Closed his eyes against the expression he'd fixed on her, opening them again to see her knees and the footage blurry again. When she looked at him again―

Augustus brought the bottle to his lips and took a long drink, then dropped it to the floor and leaned over the terminal. Stared at the recorded footage, watching Lillie running the obstacle course, watching her fall. The blood in her periphery as it dripped onto the mat, her shakiness as she righted herself. Her sudden jerking motion when she saw him approaching her.

He stopped the footage. She'd peeked out of her arms, covering her head, and stared at him when he was turned away.

Augustus wobbled slightly, lowering his hand and rewinding the holotape. He leaned back in the chair, arm dangling loosely, and hit the keyboard again.

"Disgusting." He was disgusted with himself. Acting like that. It was unprofessional, uncouth, and decidedly not who he was. Everything about the situation infuriated him, and he'd let that anger push him into a disgusting display of abusive behavior against a person that he had deliberately weakened.

It wasn't the scotch that brought him to watch the VIOLA feed. Once the training was completed for the day and Lillie'd gone off to her studies, he'd retreated to his quarters. Realized the ramification of what he'd done, what terror he'd inspired in the girl. Admitted to himself his behavior was despicable, and he'd immediately wished to retract it. Blinding migraines in his eye brought him to the alcohol, and his guilt brought him to VIOLA.

What was it worth to terrorize a stupid girl who had no more choice than he had, in being held firmly under Eden's thumb? He did not care what Eden might think about his behavior. Augustus no longer felt the bunker was a safe place, a haven for his men and future generations of Enclave. If he were to be censured by the President, so be it; none of his men would go down with him. They weren't complicit to this... personal rebellion he seemed to be waging.

He closed his eyes again, watching as Lillie watched him stomping over to her. Without him, spearheading the Enclave, the bunker would surely devolve into whatever untoward plot the supercomputer desired to enact on the wasteland. Without him―

He paused the footage. A blurred frame of himself staring at the girl. The hatred in his eyes was disgusting.

It wasn't for her. He'd taken out his frustration on the girl and now she was absolutely terror-stricken and thoroughly intimidated by him. Her life, as his, had been dictated by a puppetmaster of higher caliber than he, or she, was able to comprehend. The hatred he saw in his own eyes wasn't for the girl, but for his stymied attempts to overcome the President.

He hated himself for his continued failure. When he'd come to Raven Rock with his father, the Enclave was broken. Before his father died, he had been proud to be Enclave. He hadn't known about Eden until his father passed command into his hands. And in the last thirty-some years, he'd disgraced his father's memory and let the Enclave slip into this mire of mad science and awkward plots.

Lillie was an innocent roped into the rodeo without care as to her final outcome. Eden did not care about the girl. Augustus... did, but only because every able body was of value to the future of the Enclave.

That was what he'd told himself. He did not have to enjoy the personalities of his subordinates. He did not have to care if they were unhappy with his executive decisions, because they knew their safety was guaranteed by the Enclave and they paid the price. Everyone in the bunker worked for a better future.

Even Lillie, who had been kidnapped along with her father from the wastes. It wasn't hard to see why James had decided to offer his services to Eden. Lillie must have been less than a month old, when they were captured.

Augustus rewound the tape again and paused it near the beginning. The girl had been nothing but an experiment to Eden―part of a devious plan, whatever that included. Augustus had unsuccessfully attempted to unravel the mystery. There were several layers to what was happening, and Eden had changed the game yet again.

Not only had Lillie been made into an effective camera and been in training to survive the wastes, she had been physically delayed for some reason that Augustus didn't fully grasp. There was no good reason to deny the girl her normal physical development; Augustus did not buy into Eden's excuse of acclimating her to society outside of Raven Rock.

She'd lived in a veritable ivory tower for her entire life. She'd never had a meaningful conversation with a human being beyond her own father, including Augustus himself. There was absolutely no way in hell the girl would be capable of infiltrating any place of value, not with a head full of patriotic lessons and Augustus' purposeful brand of ineffective instruction.

She didn't have half of the knowledge Augustus did. Didn't realize Eden had manipulated her from the very beginning, allowing her to incriminate herself. Allowing her to reach the reactor level, to log into a terminal―none of that should have been possible with Eden watching every system in the bunker. It'd allowed her to cause a panic, and it'd allowed Augustus to react predictably in his curt castigation of James.

He still wanted to put a bullet between the man's eyes, but at least he knew that wasn't because of Eden's stealthy manipulation. He honestly hated the man, and felt his presence would not be missed in the world. One less egghead scientist with lofty goals that were better suited in the hands of someone with power, rather than a feel-good idealist.

Augustus coughed, his hand twitching against his knee. Stared at the terminal again, seeing Lillie's hands working across her chest. She was slender, too thin to perform the rigorous exercises in which he'd instructed her. Prior to her returning to a normal state, her general appearance had been that of a gender-neutral child. He was not so sure she resembled that, now; her reaction to his staring at her development was proof enough that she was maturating into a woman.

If Eden's plan of delaying her physicality was to allow those hormones to appear when it saw fit―Augustus shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing out slowly. He was drunk. He did not need to think about whatever plan the supercomputer might have, related to that. Never mind that this particular development was apparently designed to push him to his limit, including the oh-so-convenient "business" Eden had had to deal with. How markedly disastrous that Augustus had been alone with the girl, right as she was beginning to show that she was no longer a child.

Jesus Christ, could he truly believe that Eden would do that? It sounded like absolute horseshit. Like the insufferable thing was trying to push him into some terrible action.

Augustus ejected the holotape from the terminal and stared at it for a moment, feeling the bile rising in his stomach. Pain pounded through his eyes, bouncing from one side to another. To even think such thoughts...

He dropped the tape to the floor and stood, crushing the plastic casing under his boot.

Disgusting.

He woke the next morning with a foul taste in his mouth but, curiously, no headache. Shifted himself from the cot and stared at himself in the mirror for far too long, noting a blue mark across his forehead from walking into the doorway when he'd managed to get back to his quarters.

The scotch hadn't improved his mood, nor had it improved his behavior. He really must remember to stick to two drinks, and no more. It was unbecoming to be as drunk as he had been, the night before.

He had a straight-razor to his throat and was shaving when an alarm sounded in his quarters. Cut himself enough to draw more blood than the wound should have, swearing and pressing a towel to his neck. His eyes went to the intercom light and he waited.

The President's voice filled the room with urgency, declaring a medical concern regarding Lillie. Augustus dropped the towel onto the tiny sink and adjusted his collar. Another day, another insidious plan.

At some point during the previous night, Lillie had been having trouble with her implant. It was probably related to the spill she'd taken on the obstacle course; Augustus was at fault for not having her report a head injury to medical as soon as it had happened. As a result of the jarring impact, she was temporarily blinded.

He took the upbraiding that Eden gave him, without much concern. The girl was smart enough to know better, herself. And Eden should have known; Augustus highly doubted that it'd actually left them alone. However the supercomputer "saw" what was occurring in the bunker, it was certain that it did observe the actions of the residents.

As Lillie's official representative―because Eden determined this to be the best course of action once James was imprisoned, not because of Augustus' willingness to have the girl under his ward―he was required to be available when she went under surgery. It was this control that had allowed him to send her in for repeated unnecessary surgeries, in the past.

Dr. Isben related to him that the lenses implanted in her optical nerve were compromised. Would have to be replaced. Lillie would remain blinded until he could requisition the necessary material.

Augustus understood that this would mean weeks of impairment; the lenses implanted into her eyes as a child had been replaced on occasion, but the raw material used to construct them was repurposed once the surgeries were ordered stopped. Probably, anything that could be used to construct a prosthetic lens was currently being installed into a suit of Hellfire armor.

Augustus stared at the girl, fighting the urge to rub his temples again. Paperwork was what delayed the repair of the lenses. He allowed the doctor to seek what he needed. It was only time; and time was something that he had. No active threats were laid against Raven Rock.

They were safe from the outside world, if not from the inside.

To that end... he felt it necessary to repair some of the damage he'd inflicted. He couldn't bring himself to apologize to the girl; doing so would only confuse her and make his attempt to repair his own ego, useless. Perhaps, with time...

He sat at the side of the bed, watching her plucking idly at the fabric of the coverlet. Without visual input, she was undoubtedly worried. Probably frightened. Her expression was neutral, but a thin sheen of sweat across her brow led him to believe she'd panicked at one point. Thin wisps of blonde curls stuck to her forehead, a purple and black bruise spreading across her nose and forehead from the impact with the mat.

With time, he might assuage his own ego and lessen his disgust of his behavior. It was worthy, he thought, making his own life less miserable, if he extended something of an olive branch to the girl.

And if Eden did send her into the wastes, and she did die out there, he could say he'd been a decent human being toward her, at least once.

Augustus removed his glove and reached out, curling his hand around Lillie's fingers and stilling them in their motion. She jerked in surprise, blinking and turning her head to his general location.

When he'd told Lillie that her father was dead, he'd wished it was true. It was no skin off of his nose to admit that he wanted the man dead. But, as she stared at him with a bruised face and confusion at his gesture, he felt like it had been a cruel thing to say.

"...Hello?" Lillie asked, quietly. "Who is...?"

Augustus didn't remove his hand from hers, but lifted the other to rub furiously at the sudden spike of pain in his temple. Lillie fell quiet, and he did not respond to her confused question.

This was going to be an uphill battle, regardless of how he viewed it. He had the time and the wherewithal, but perhaps not the patience.

But, he told himself, if he could not sway the heart of a gir―a woman, who he'd dreadfully abused, then he couldn't expect to sway the brilliant mind that watched their every move, plotting constantly to confuse and mislay them.

He had to make it worthwhile, and worth what he'd wanted for the Enclave.