PART THREE

"For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestow'd on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honour'd race.―It was a name"

"The Dream" by Lord George Gordon Byron

Lillie turned and ran, her boots pounding the stairs. Jericho was right behind her as she grabbed Dr. Li by the back of the collar and dragged the woman away from the rotunda, muttering under his breath.

It was the last order her father gave that she could ever obey. She ran.

Lillie didn't think. Feet hit the access tunnel, slipping and falling in their hurry on the last few rungs of the ladder. She stayed up top and watched for Enclave soldiers―the ones who she hadn't dealt with were still in the foyer of the memorial, and the place was rumbling with the untimely activation of the purifier―

She still couldn't form any thoughts. Pushed herself and the others into the Taft tunnels and regrouped, stomping their way through the dingy sewers filled with feral ghouls and shit. Jericho kept her moving, his never-ending stream of obscenities a brush of static on her mind. She needed that―to keep her from thinking―

The tunnel ended out above ground, across the river and away from the memorial, with the impressive sight of the Citadel emerging above them. Lillie reached down and thumbed her Pip-Boy, but stopped herself.

Ignored what had just happened. Better that way. If she left her eyesight intact, President Eden would see and she would be found―

He'd killed him.

Lillie turned away from the sight of the Citadel, facing Jericho. The man was staring at her, grinding his teeth and giving her a look of extreme anger. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, flexing his hands into fists and clenching them, knuckles gone white under the layer of dirt he permanently wore.

"Got your answer, alright," he said pissily.

She blinked for a fraction of a second before she exploded into tears.

He'd killed him!

Jericho watched her crying for about five minutes, letting her beat her head off of his chest. She raised her hands and started hitting him with her fists repeatedly, each one less powerful than the last, until she'd exhausted herself. She grabbed his shoulders weakly, then leaned into him and slid down, resting her forehead at the bottom of his rib cage, sobbing.

After what felt like forever, Jericho breathed out over her head and poked her in the side. "Turn on the radio, Lillie."

She felt the pain spiking in her chest, and rubbed her forehead on his chest. Didn't answer.

He'd killed her dad.

He'd killed Colonel Autumn.

She could barely hear Jericho talking, her ears were so full of ringing and the muffled pain of crying. Kept telling her to turn on the radio, sounding more and more irritated as he repeated himself.

They were―

Dead.

Lillie reached over under her chin, flicking on the radio on her Pip-Boy, numbly. Jericho muttered something approvingly, then grabbed her by her shoulders and pushed her away from him. "Don't get all fuckin' weepy," he said, removing his hands from her as soon as she was away. "Get yourself killed, doin' that shit."

She dropped her arms and stood in front of him, staring at the buckles on his jacket. Couldn't... couldn't stop the pain. She could feel the wind gently teasing at her hair, blowing curls into her face. Cold when it hit the tears that still fell down her face. She could...

Wait.

She brought up a hand and touched her eyelid, feeling her own fingers become wet. Stared at her hand, saw the glistening wetness as it seeped into the whorls of her fingertips. For a moment all she could do was appreciate the visual input as a testimony to how much she'd truly―

Wait!

The radio was on―but she could still see.

Lillie lifted her head and focused on Jericho, staring at his face. He looked―different, but yet the same. The―the colorful world that she had become used to was gone. She―

Lillie blinked, feeling her breath squeezing in and out of her chest. Suddenly it had become very hard to breathe. "Oh, God," she strangled out, her eyes widening. Panic. The―the feed was continuous, even with the radio interference―

She could see. VIOLA still operated, inside of her head.

Lillie turned away from Jericho, staring at the wasteland. Everything was clear, a clean image of the area without static. And it was in monochrome―

She should have known. She should have known!

And he'd killed them both.

She jerked her head around to the ex-raider, setting her mouth. "Jericho," she said, her voice hard.

"Yeah," he replied, staring at her. He swallowed and clenched his jaw and she watched his Adam's apple bobbing under his chin, narrowing her eyes.

"Plan's changed," she told him, quietly.

"Alright," he said, shifting his weight and crossing his arms over his chest. "So now what?"

"We've got work to do." Lillie moved and spoke, striding away from the tunnel entrance toward the Citadel.

"I ain't never gonna get paid," he muttered under his breath, as he followed.

She laughed, bitterly. "Welcome to the fuckin' wastes," she said, as her feet hit the hard ground.

Dr. Li introduced Lillie to someone called Elder Lyons. She was entirely unfamiliar with the Brotherhood of Steel, other than a vague memory of their being a pain in President Eden's side. Couldn't recall what he'd been talking about, at that time. It was a conversation with the Colonel that she'd walked in on, and the President had diverted the topic quickly.

So, if she were to take everything that she had learned up to this point, she imagined that President Eden wanted her to experience the Brotherhood as an innocent. To use her own personal opinions and the―the constant propaganda he'd put into her head―and make her own decision of what they were. Either she was intended to have her interest piqued by the sudden change of topic, or she was intended to have taken nothing away from it.

He had not brought the topic up, in conversation with her, after that minute overheard comment. She assumed innocence was the preferred outcome, that it was accidental for her to hear. Her actual opinion of the Brotherhood had been formed primarily when she approached GNR, viewing them as a powerful force to fight against.

The battle in GNR's courtyard against the super mutant behemoth had shown her their capabilities as soldiers―Lillie pressed her mouth together and sized up the men in front of her. Even for the Enclave and the technology they possessed, the Brotherhood was a threat.

Regardless of their military strength, the Brotherhood of Steel was still neutral toward Lillie. They had only her reputation to rely on, and her relative anonymity prior to entering the wastes lent to her a certain amount of leeway in creating that reputation. Helping Three Dog with his satellite dish had been in her favor.

The aid she gave him proved she could not be working with the Enclave, giving him an opportunity to overpower the Enclave signal. Considering the recent events, and her dash to safety from the Enclave threat at the memorial, the Brotherhood could only see her as an ally.

Elder Lyons spoke to her very gently, but he was charismatic. Lillie kept herself quiet, for the moment. Gauged how much use she might have, allying herself with the Brotherhood. Allowing herself to be used, for further purpose, by a group of people who were similar to the Enclave and held lofty ideals like―

She wasn't sure it was to her benefit, to work with the Brotherhood. Not yet.

"James found a way to make the purifier work," Dr. Li was telling the Elder, as Lillie stood watching.

Cued a discussion that ended up inside of the Citadel, staring at a group of Brotherhood soldiers in power armor and the woman Sarah Lyons. Lillie had met her before. Didn't care much for the woman's attitude, now or then.

She let them speak while she thought. They were content to run the show, the matters relating to the purifier, without her input. Which was fine by her, because she had no intent to get involved with that―

Unless it served a purpose other than her father's sad dream, she couldn't see why she would care.

Now that her dad and Colonel Autumn were dead, Lillie had no reason to continue working with anyone. Even Jericho, and he was easily dealt with compared to those who'd made herself their enemy.

President Eden. He'd―

She clenched her fists and fixed her gaze on the floor, staring at the boots of the soldier standing in front of her. What might have been a vague attempt to set things right, was now solidified in her mind. She must remove the President from power.

Blindly obeying his orders had led her down a rocky precipice, and his actions had proven to be sly. Unforgiving, manipulating. Everything that had happened was ordained by him.

He was not a president. Presidents did not encourage blind obedience, but freedom to choose. Even if duty was to be expected of their subjects―some must serve, that others might thrive―presidents should be held to a standard.

And that standard should not include lying, manipulation, and the pressing of others into service without the freedom to choose service.

She could see. There must have been another backup plan. President Eden activated it because he needed to see what she was doing, what was going on in the wastes. Her eyes provided him the best opportunity of intelligence that he could hope for, even with his masses of eyebots roaming the wastes.

Perhaps he thought that the deaths would break her spirit and make her malleable, again. He was wrong.

Given the information she could provide him, she knew that he was watching. Waiting for her to show to him that she was as easily handled as she once had been. Waiting and assessing her actions. It was accessory to the real goal, which was... obtaining intel on the enemy, accessing knowledge of everything relating to the purifier.

Why. She mulled the thought over in her head. Before, she had thought that she was pushed into the wastes in order to get into Vault 101. But―

The thought seemed stupid, now. Sending her into the wastes seemed a stupid decision, really. If President Eden had wanted her to convince the people of the Vault to join his cause, he could have sent better emissaries than a combat-trained teenager and her dad. Her dad would have fought the Enclave, regardless of her existence―it was part of who he was, who he had always been.

So she had been deviously molded and made into what she had become, by the President. Probably because he'd intended for her to react in the way she did. She respected that he was smarter than she could have imagined. But she did not appreciate that intelligence being used to produce this obligatorily complex deception. And she was not a plaything.

"You payin' attention?" Jericho asked her, as he stood behind her.

"Always," she said, flicking her eyes up to the map on the wall.

"Good. I sure as shit ain't followin' all this." Jericho coughed and spat.

Lillie flicked her eyes toward Elder Lyons, considering. No one in the Citadel would know of her affiliation with the Enclave beyond the ex-raider, unless her father had told Dr. Li what had happened. That was an unknown that she would allow to remain so, because to ask the irate woman what her father had told her would only open the conversation for the reveal.

What information President Eden received... she controlled that. What he took away from what she saw, she couldn't anticipate. But she could skew the situation to her advantage.

If he was willing to play this dirty game that she had been part of since the very beginning... since her arrival at Raven Rock and his deliberate attempts to control her using VIOLA, her father's "death", Colonel Autumn's irascibility, and his own persuasion―

This was the nail in the coffin.

She had no reason to play nice, for the sake of Colonel Autumn or her father.

Everything she did from here on out, was for herself.

Lillie stared at the map and narrowed her eyes.