When I started this story I decided the actual peace conference would happen offscreen because, let's face it, if I really knew how to make peace between warring factions I'd be working at the UN or something instead of writing fanfic here in the Great State of Quarantine. So I'm covering it only in the broadest of terms and leaving the details to your imagination.
Begin Recording
Negotiations
Recording by Scribe Ellison
Of course you want to hear about the peace conference. It's not much to put on a holotape; most of the negotiations happened by messages. By radio, dead drops, and the molecular relay.
My son sent the first one, a holotape teleported to the airport with a message saying that for the good of the Commonwealth, the Institute was prepared to talk terms. Maxson's reply was basically, "Prepare to be bombed you abominations."
But it turned out there were… reasons. Maxson could have sailed the Prydwen over the CIT ruins to the spot that Haylin had traced the relay signal to and bombed the tar out of it, which probably would have damaged the Institute.
Except that the Prydwen has a coolant shortage, so it can't get far from the airport. And the airport is within range of the long guns at the Castle. By the time that sank in Maxson had heard from Paladin Danse, who'd heard from me, just how much non-abomination technology the Institute had. The proctors on the Prydwen were counseling, 'Sure, kill the synths, but not until we have their hydroponic gel formula.'
The rank and file Brotherhood were starting to calm down a little too. When you show up to collect donations from farms and the farmers have everything ready to go and then they invite you sit down for dinner and a beer it softens the martial spirit a bit.
The Institute had problems by then too. Their surface agents were disappearing, their sources of information going quiet as the Railroad snatched up those agents and set them free. A few dozen of them joined caravans out of the Commonwealth to start new lives.
So both groups had turned to me, the person who could go everywhere, to be their assassin.
Only I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't put a bomb on the Institute's reactor for Desdemona, and I certainly wouldn't poison everybody. I wouldn't put a bomb on the Prydwen's hydrogen tanks when my son suggested it. There are a coupe of kids on the Prydwen, squires, and I wasn't going to kill them any more than I was going to kill the kids in the Institute.
There was discussion, several different discussions, on the wisdom of just shooting Maxson. I can't say I wasn't tempted. But turning him into a martyr would probably have done more harm than good. And he's backed by the West Coast Brotherhood, and we don't know who they are or what weapons they might bring along if they came to punish the Commonwealth for killing their boy. That was a big point against assassination.
Also the best chance to assassinate Maxson would have been to have me do it, and I wasn't sure I could. Certainly not without dying in the attempt. And neither my son nor my friend was willing to sacrifice me. I was almost surprised by this; Desdemona puts the cause above her own life and I wouldn't have been shocked I she'd put it above mine, and Shaun… he worked so hard to build the Institute as it is today and he's so proud of it I wouldn't have been shocked if he'd been willing to sacrifice me to protect it.
But he didn't, and he was willing to try diplomacy instead.
I think Deacon mentioned it first, as a joke. "Maybe we could get everybody in a room and have a peace conference. We'd need a round table, of course." and we were… at the Castle, because Deacon was there to talk to a girl who'd just escaped from the Institute and signed up as a recruit. She ended up staying as a Minuteman, but happier to know the Railroad was there to help if she needed it. So Deacon said this and Preston and Ronnie kind of gaped at him and Preston said, "Nice idea but I can't imagine either side actually showing up." And Ronnie said, "And would the boss of those people you have nothing to do with come talk peace with the boss of the Institute?"
Deacon was looking very thoughtful, which was interesting. "You know, I bet she would."
I said, "I could ask Shaun..."
Preston, also thoughtful, offered, "We might be able to put some pressure on Maxson. I know you don't want to fire on the blimp, but we could threaten if we had to."
"We might not have to. I know some of his people, and some of the settlers know some of his people, and we can pitch 'the Institute isn't making any more abominations and they'll sell you a measles vaccine..."
Deacon looked at the lot of us. "You think it could work?"
Everyone looked at me. "Let's try. We've got them talking, sort of, let's take it all the way. Official peace."
So more letters back and forth, a lot of fast talking on my part. And some begging and bribing and making promises I wasn't sure I could keep. There were good reasons for everyone to take a step back from the violence, I just had to be convincing enough with them.
In the end it worked. My son, and Elder Maxson and Desdemona and Hancock all agreed to come sit down face to face without shooting each other. Diamond City was a problem, since the mayor had until recently been property of the Institute and nobody knew it. He sent his secretary who, the mayor said, was, 'smarter than she looks and doesn't know anything about this.' The rest of the settlements chose me to represent them, which I didn't think was right since I was in the center of the thing, but nobody else seemed right to do it. Preston would be there with me of course but he made it clear that he wasn't the person to take charge. And Ronnie is… Ronnie. The recruits understand that she growls and snaps because she cares, but she doesn't really turn it off around anyone else.
And then we did it. Everybody came, they talked. Shaun did it, he stood up to say that the Institute was rethinking its policies and would be communicating and trading with the people of the surface in the future. He handed over records, proof that the Institute had disappeared people but not as many as was believed, and for reasons. That was important, letting people see that the Institute had reasons no matter how terrible they were.
The other delegates made their feelings clear, made a lot of demands for reparations, said they didn't believe a word of it. Then there was more yelling, which eventually wound down to just talking and finally anger gave way to the possibility of actually finding solutions.
Maxson was the worst. He's here to wipe out abominations and it's hard to counter that with practicality. But knowing the Institute didn't really want almost-human 'abominations' either and was going back to making robots that were just robots made him at least listen to everybody else.
It took days. Days and every bit of persuasion I could muster and at the end all we had was a tentative agreement: 'all right, we won't shoot first.' I wasn't sure I could trust Maxson not to roll out the army after all, or Desdemona to go after the Prydwen, or even worse one of the division heads to go behind Father's back. But we'd done something.
And that's it, really. If you want to hear it all, we did recordings and Piper took the minutes in shorthand.
Of course the moment everybody went home they all started wondering who was going to shoot first, and we had some close calls. A dead synth that turned out to have been shot by raiders. A rash of disappearances in Diamond City. A vertibird downed by laser fire—that was also raiders. A Gunner raid on Boston airport, god only knows who put them up to that. Each time, I was sure one group was going to start the war, but each time someone was there to talk the leaders down.
I was thankful for every day that passed without violence, and once in a while I got to be happy that something good had happened. The Institute really was letting synths leave, and had halted synth production to rethink just how human synths should be. Gen-two synths aren't intelligent but they also don't run away so they're a better value.
The Railroad pivoted instantly from hiding synths to helping them find communities where they won't face prejudice, and learn skills and get their heads on straight after being controlled by codes in the Institute. It took years but they've almost worked themselves out of a job by now. Pretty soon Desdemona's planning on heading to the Capital Wasteland to track down the last remaining slavers. I think she's already got Tinker Tom making something that jams those bomb collars. Maybe you should warn the Citadel.
And your Brotherhood… I confess, my money was on Maxson being the one to start the shooting. Brotherhood honor would demand he keep his word, but it's hard not to see how hungry for victory he is. Making deals with the enemy kept everybody alive but it's not much of a victory. I was uninvited from the Prydwen for insubordination as soon as I refused to wipe out the Institute so I don't know what happened up there. If I had to guess—Paladin Danse is well respected and he eats and breathes the rulebook, he has no other loyalties but he can see the bigger picture. I bet anyone who wanted to start something, he talked them down and he did it all by appealing to honor and without even mentioning the long guns at the Castle.
I stayed at the Castle for, it must've been two weeks, just in case. We had a plan. If the Prydwen turned towards us the Castle would be evacuated except for a dozen people to man the artillery and hope we could hit a vital spot before we got bombed into oblivion. I had nightmares about it.
But for whatever reason it didn't happen. Instead the patrols started hitting prewar ruins likely to have interesting tech which was fine, and showing up to requisition crops which was better than fine because that meant contact between your soldiers and the people they depended on for food. Last I've heard Maxson wants to go up the coast to Portland and Saint John but some soldiers don't want to leave girlfriends or boyfriends in the Commonwealth. They're talking about making the airport a permanent settlement like your Citadel while the Prydwen explores.
