AN: Sorry for the late upload this month! I started a new book (and spent a long time considering making this chapter a standalone. Obviously I ended up including it). The May chapter will likely be up tomorrow. But it's finals season, so apologies if that doesn't go as planned.
Shards of a Bottle
Synopsis: Butch and Aniss feud within the confines of Vault 101, but this time, the Overseer isn't having it. (T)
Vault 101, June 21, 2271.
Father's Day was Butch DeLoria's busiest day of the year.
Butch didn't know who his father was, and his mother had never bothered to narrow it down for him. But they were all crammed in a tin can with no entrance or exit, so that left fewer than a hundred candidates of the right age. Even less than that, if he discounted the ones who looked nothing like him. Still, that was a lot of guys to despise at once.
Add to that every snot-nosed kid around him who had the nerve to try and celebrate, it was a lot of hate for one thirteen-year-old to handle.
It helped to know that Mom hated the guy too. Maybe the feeling was mutual, because he'd never stepped up to announce himself. Given the small number of potential culprits, Butch was always on alert for clues, and the fact that none were ever forthcoming made it feel like the whole vault was in conspiracy against him. He didn't trust anyone who wasn't his age, and he didn't like anyone but the Snakes. (He might have gotten along okay with Susie Mack, who hadn't yet shown signs of her family's habitual narciness, but Wally said he wasn't allowed to.)
Sometimes, he wanted to wring this vault's scrawny little neck until it told him what everyone else took for granted. And today, that was what he intended to do.
On his Pip-Boy, Butch had made a list of every lowlife who could have participated in his mom's bad decisions fourteen years ago, ranked from most to least ideal. The Overseer was at the very bottom of the list, not because he beat on his kid or anything, but because Butch didn't want to share a category with Amata the Vault Princess.
There was nothing else to do about it — Butch was just going to have to walk up and ask them. He figured he could get about halfway down the list before somebody stopped him. On a Sunday, almost everyone would be in their apartments. It was just a matter of asking, direct and polite, no fru-fru stuff. Like a kid a guy could be proud of.
The first stop was the clinic, which meant he needed an excuse. The Doc was a busy man, and Butch had to find some way to warrant his attention long enough to ask. The problem was that Butch rarely warranted anyone's attention unless he was getting in trouble. So he had to get injured, enough that it couldn't be fixed at home with a splash of vodka and some bandages.
Staring at the list, he flicked his switchblade open and closed. It was the obvious solution, but it risked raising too much suspicion. His eyes cast around the apartment for something that wouldn't hurt too bad.
They landed on a broken bottle tossed into a corner beside the couch. Not what he'd had in mind, but nobody would think twice about the drunk's kid falling on glass. If he did this right, it would bleed a lot but not need stitches, which, as far as Butch DeLoria was concerned, made for the perfect injury.
Butch miscalculated.
He knew glass cuts bled, of course, but he hadn't thought there'd be so much, enough to turn most of his sleeve a deep purple. Ellen rushed her son to the clinic in a panic, smoothing his hair and muttering pet names the whole way. He hadn't meant to freak her out like that.
He sat down heavily in the waiting room, faintly dizzy. Jonas Palmer came out to calm Mom and stop the bleeding, which was all wrong because he wasn't on the list, and where was Doctor Lawrence, anyway? Butch shook his head wildly, trying to get the ringing out of his ears.
"Look, everything's fine," Jonas told them calmly. "See, the cuts aren't deep at all. I just need to get antiseptic and bandages, and then you'll be free to go if you agree to drink lots of fluids —"
"You're too young," Butch complained, still dazed with low blood pressure.
"I've been practicing medicine since you were in diapers, Butch. I can do a simple patch-job."
Butch groaned angrily. "Where's the Doc?"
"At home. Nobody's supposed to be getting injured today," Jonas said flatly.
Butch grouched so hard that his head hit the wall behind him, which hurt so much that he used the opportunity to pretend to faint.
Butch was on a mission, so he stayed totally limp while they positioned him against a wall, tenting a loose sheet over his face to protect from the harsh vault lights. He was especially proud that he didn't flinch while Jonas saw to his injury.
Then he was left alone behind the sheet, free at last to drop the act. Trapped there in silence, there wasn't much to do except fall asleep.
Butch woke up when the sheet was pulled back, and he opened his eyes to see James Lawrence, the vault's lead doctor, studying him. Butch broke into a smile when he saw the man, a smile that dropped as soon as he saw Aniss standing behind him, hands on her hips like the snarky goody-two-shoes she was.
Aniss Lawrence was the bane of Butch's existence. He couldn't remember at what point he'd come to hate her or why. It was like she'd always been there, frowning at him. He liked to think he'd been there at the bedside during her birth, peering down at her wriggling newborn form and uttering his first word, "Punk." (The fantasy was ruined by the knowledge that her mother had died soon after.)
Aniss was the one he hated most on Father's Day, along with Amata. They felt the same about him on Mother's Day (he assumed), so it evened out, really.
Aniss was Butch's antithesis, and not just because she was such a daddy's girl. She seemed to care about everything at once, while Butch tried very hard to care about nothing at all. Whenever Butch made a snide comment, she arrived out of thin air to tell him off, whether it had been directed at her or not, whether it had been real malice or just a jab. She read books for fun. He had already considered the possibility that this plan, if successful, would make them siblings or something, but he was calmed by the knowledge that the weaker of the two would be dead within the month if it came to that.
She hung back as her father helped Butch to his feet, one hand guarding the back of his head in case he tried to faint again. Butch was completely fine, aside from his stinging shoulder, but he felt too young and too fragile when the man guided him onto an examination table. He didn't say a word, fearing a shake or crack in his maturing voice.
The Doc seemed worried by his silence. "Now, Butch, lie down immediately if you start feeling faint again. We're going to get you eating and drinking, then you'll be on your way." He adjusted the bandage in what might have passed for a pat on the shoulder.
Butch's opportunity was slipping away, but he couldn't do anything about it with Aniss in the room. Did she just sit here and watch her dad work on people? No wonder she was such a know-it-all.
A few minutes passed in near silence, but Aniss still didn't feel any call to be elsewhere. Butch couldn't chase her off with words or the Doc would take her side, so he tried another tactic. If he could win something in James's eyes, score one point over his beloved daughter, it would prove it. Teachers always took Aniss's side — if James didn't, he must love them both equally, and then Butch could just come out and ask.
"I wrote a poem for class this week. It rhymed," Butch pointed out. He thought the Doc might like something dweeby like that.
"Look at that," James smiled kindly. "Your voice has returned and your memory is intact."
Aniss chimed in with an annoying comment, just as he'd planned. "Poems don't have to rhyme, you know," she said.
"Well, mine did. It wasn't hard. You could've made yours rhyme," he fired back.
"You didn't read the assignment, did you? We were supposed to use literary devices. Do you even know what a simile is, Butch?"
"Sure, sure." He didn't want the doctor knowing he didn't know that. "I used the one with the... boom, crash, squish, y'know?"
"You can't use onomatopoeia in a poem about cheese."
"Can and did. Yours was about water. That's stupider."
He saw her starting to get upset, and realized he might have made a misstep when he'd brought out the s-word, but James diffused her rage with a quick squeeze of his arm around her. Barely pacified, she retreated and shut herself in his office. Finally.
The doctor sat down in a chair without comment, exhausted by the latest in a string of altercations. Butch was a little embarrassed, but undeterred.
He let the silence ring for a few more seconds, sipping artificial orange juice through a straw. Then, before he could stop himself, he jumped in.
"Are you my father, Doc?"
The doctor's eyes flashed with quiet surprise. Butch wanted to think that the reaction was too muted or too exaggerated to be genuine — that, really, James had been expecting this question for years — but the maturity and compassion that came afterward proved him wrong.
"No, Butch, I'm not. I'm sorry."
"Well, good," Butch said quickly. "That would mean my dad is a cheater, and I don't like that." In truth, of course, almost everyone in Vault 101 married young, unless they had an excuse like infertility, genetic problems, or — in Ellen's case — other priorities. Whoever the man was, he almost definitely had another family in here, which explained why he'd never contacted Butch before.
"Butch, did you come here just for that? Jonas said you'd been asking for me."
"Not just you," Butch defended himself. "I have a list."
James was quiet for a moment, absorbing the situation. "Did you ever think you may be happier not knowing?"
"I'm not. I promise you I'm not. It's the not knowing, I hate wondering, and I hate him—"
"Settle down, son, settle down." James stuck a hand out. "I know it's difficult to grow up without a father. I... spent a lot of my childhood away from my parents, and you know I'm raising Aniss by myself. But we're so lucky to have Vault 101. We have a tight-knit community here — there are people you can come to with your troubles... even without sticking glass in your arm." He ended with a grim smile.
Butch might have seen his point, but he had already put up his guard. Watching another loon praise the vault and the Overseer set him off. "Not me. People don't just invite me for tea, you know. I might as well try my chances outside."
It wasn't the first time Butch had made a comment about leaving the vault. It usually wasn't taken seriously, and he was mostly exaggerating, but James looked away. "We don't know what's out there, Butch, but I can promise you that we're the lucky ones... If there is anyone else. Be thankful for what you do have, okay?
Butch growled. "Bet there's a whole city of mutants out there. Someday I'll go teach them to read and they'll make me their king."
This time, the doctor laughed, a laugh that exuded tension. "Well, your majesty, I think you're clear to run along to your mother now. I'm sure you have her worried."
So Butch left the clinic, but not before glimpsing Aniss back in the office doorway, and wondering how much of that conversation she had heard.
Butch half-concentrated on his school assignment, distracted periodically by the soft thwaps of Paul kicking Aniss's chair in front of him. Such an event would normally be interesting, but right now, Butch wanted to stay out of the girl's way. Doc Lawrence had been so understanding yesterday that Butch hadn't realized that he'd been acting like a total wuss. If any of it reached Aniss, it could spell trouble — she'd be eager to use it against him at the first opportunity. Aniss was inconvenient like that.
She hissed as Paul's kicks grew stronger. He pretended not to notice her, and she buried herself back in her work, shoulders hunched and head down. Butch lost interest and hoped that Paul would too.
The kicking hit a crescendo, and then, through some combination of forces that Butch didn't witness, Aniss's chair clattered to the floor, taking her with it. There was a stunned silence, then Aniss's hands hid her face in shame, and the sounds of sniffles came from behind them. Amata, sitting in the front seat, immediately dropped to her friend's side.
Of course Aniss had to be a girl about it. Probably just trying to get Paul in trouble. Sure enough, Mrs. Westerly bustled over, face set in a frown unique to teachers of preteens, and ordered the two to switch seats. Westerly didn't like the authority part of teaching (or any part, really), so she preferred to remove the distraction and let kids sort themselves out. Aniss now had the opportunity to repay the favor, but Butch knew she wouldn't. Paul shrank down, embarrassed, behind the fuming Amata, and Aniss sniffled into her workbook behind him.
Her neck craned to the side after awhile, and she snuck quick glances behind her, like she was trying to see what Butch was up to.
"What's your problem?" he muttered.
"Are you gonna pick up where Paul left off?" she asked bitterly.
"I got better things to do."
"Like what, roll around in broken glass?"
Butch's hand clenched into a fist automatically. "So what if I do? You think I shredded myself up for fun?"
Mrs. Westerly looked up from her desk in irritation, but didn't bother to solve the dispute. "No," Aniss whispered, "you were trying to bother my dad. I don't know what your problem is." She pushed away her assignment and turned fully around in her chair. "He sat me down last night and told me I shouldn't 'antagonize' you. You're such a jerk."
Butch didn't see how those two things were connected. "You should listen to him," he said snidely. "Don't wanna disappoint your dear old daddy, do you?"
She bit her lip fiercely at his mockery. "Well, unlike some people's dads, he won't just disappear into the woodwork if I do!" Unshed tears still shone in her brown eyes.
Butch felt a peculiar pang when she mentioned his father. "That's low," he grit his teeth. "That's dirty. I ain't ever said nothing about your mom. Never."
Frozen for a second, Aniss buried her face in her arms and cried for the rest of class. Everyone else in the room studiously ignored her, except Amata, who shot accusing glares at Butch from the front row.
Aniss wasn't a wimp. If Butch could say one good thing for her, it was that. She was taller than all the boys still waiting on growth spurts. She shot radroaches for fun, according to rumor. In the clinic, she'd witnessed the most gruesome injuries and symptoms. She was also the vault junior league's pitcher, and she was no slouch there, either. If she cried, Butch assumed she had a good reason. But he hadn't done anything this time.
Class ended. Butch tore out up his untouched workbook page, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash while the rest of the class filed up to turn theirs in. Amata gave Aniss an awkward side hug and took her assignment up for her, leaving Aniss free to mope her way out. Butch couldn't understand it. He wanted to pummel her, and decided that was what he was going to do.
Aniss beat him to it.
Once they were alone, she slammed him against the wall with her full body weight. She had something to say, but Butch was done talking. He grabbed her arms and threw her to the ground, but she kicked out at his shins and scored a painful blow. When she used the distraction to get to her feet, he aimed at the blue of her vault suit with a shoulder, then a fist.
Butch didn't hold back because Aniss was a girl. She'd have ended the fight quickly if he did, and he wanted it to go on and on. She had asked him what his problem was, and he told her, in the only language they could ever have a fluent conversation in. He wanted her to know how the adults looked at you in the ration hall when you had a reputation like he did, how it felt to come home to your mom raging over a bottle, how much he wanted to be free of all these walls. His pain couldn't be dismissed, not when he was inflicting it on someone else.
Whether they realized it or not, Aniss did the same. He felt her losses and secret fears, respected her pain as it bloodied his nose. Her eyes were dry now, but she yelled as they exchanged blows.
Someday they could carry this conversation out in words. Someday the skills they learned through schoolyard fights would save their lives. Someday their battles would be fought back-to-back. Today, they were just two angry kids with something to prove.
The gathered class stared in excitement or horror as Aniss finally fell to the ground and didn't try to rise. She seethed, as tight as her fist, as Mrs. Westerly muttered in confused frenzy.
Two officers rushed onto the scene. Security was never far off — a full third of the men in the Vault wore the uniform. It seemed unbalanced, but who could argue with the infallible G.O.A.T.? Officer Wolfe grabbed Butch roughly while Park peeled Aniss off the floor.
"Are you always in trouble?" Wolfe interrogated him.
"Sometimes I'm sleeping."
"Quiet."
From the Overseer's closed-off office hissed the blunted corners of a raised voice — Normally, Butch would tune out the man's lecturing, but the subject of conversation wasn't normally him. Aniss stared blankly at nothing, also listening. Amata was also there, for some reason. Making a pouty face just to prove she had the power to frown at the Overseer. Chief Hannon had taken over guard duty and was glowering at the three of them with equal distaste. He wasn't on Butch's list, but if he had been, he'd have dropped a few places for that look. Butch and Paul were already brothers, anyway.
Inside the office, Ellen and the Doc were being lectured. The kids caught snatches of words — "for the security of future generations" — "don't have to tell you what dire" — "made an example" — "troubling."
"Sheesh," Butch muttered. "When's he gonna clam up and give us an extra work detail already?"
"Oh, no," Hannon contradicted him, up on his high horse. "You two are teenagers now. No more slaps on the wrist."
"I'm twelve," Aniss corrected him.
"Quiet."
The Overseer's door opened, releasing the three single parents back into society. Ellen, petulant as always, gave Butch the cold shoulder as she left for her evening shift at the diner. The Overseer still looked mournfully smug, leaving Doctor Lawrence as their only cue as to what had been determined.
Something was clearly wrong, because Doc made no move to soothe his daughter's worries. His brow was set and he looked... no, not angry. Not really scared, either. More like... sad, in an angry and scared sort of way. Which was not an expression Butch wanted to see on such a nice guy.
Aniss saw it too. "So, what happened?" she asked. Her voice was steady, but she wanted her dad back.
"Aniss." She straightened at his tone, mirroring his stiff stance. "You're a citizen of this vault, and that means you earn your place. Nothing is assured." His eyes pleaded with her to understand something, but if Aniss got the drift, she didn't show it.
"Dad, I wasn't—"
"Listen to me. There's more to this than you know. Show us that you belong here. Please." He stared into her eyes a moment longer, seeing that, if not the meaning, the gravity of what he'd said had reached her. He took her hand, kissed it, and followed Ellen out of the atrium.
Amata had no time to ask what that had been about, because the Overseer was ready to hand down their sentence. "Children," he mused, "James is absolutely right. For our vault to prosper, everyone needs to be an individual asset. We must have order. If our citizens are fighting against each other, they can't work, can't prosper, can't bring more citizens into the Vault—"
Butch died a little.
"—Which is why I'm taking an unusual course of action for your discipline. The two of you will be chained together by foot until I've decided you've learned your lesson. At night, you'll sleep in the cell. Your work schedules will be changed to put you both on the same shift."
Butch died a lot.
"That's the worst thing you could have done!" Amata shrieked. "How could you be so mean?"
Making use of her hysterics, Butch chimed in. "Yeah, if you make us live together, we'll just fight each other more!"
"He's just the worst, Dad."
"Quiet," Chief Hannon snapped. "We're headed to the security office now, and the more you complain, the longer it'll take before all of this is behind us."
Amata started up again, her father reprimanding her, and Butch chimed in with his own complaints. Only Aniss was silent, struck dumb and helpless by her father's behavior.
Obviously, their complaints weren't recognized. The Overseer had the final word, no matter what. Hannon shuffled the two of them off to security as the Overseer brought Amata home.
At the chief's order, Officer Mack pulled the imposing length of chain out of the bottom of a disorganized filing cabinet. It looked brand new, as much as a chain can. On either end was a buckled leather strap, with a place for a small padlock. Butch had no idea why a vault would come equipped with something like that, but here it was, stark and sinister.
Feeling the need to resist, Butch muttered, "Don't you get near me with that thing." But he was thirteen, and outnumbered, and he wasn't about to draw a switchblade on the officers. Aniss was no help either; she stared silently at the wall, loose fists by her sides. Butch wondered if he'd knocked her brains loose.
"Overseer's right," Hannon mused coolly. "These kids have no respect."
"'Bout time we taught them a lesson," Mack agreed.
"Why don't I ever see you teaching your own kids lessons?" Butch growled.
Mack fixed a glare on him. "Leg. Chair. Now."
"No."
The order hadn't been directed at Aniss, but she propped her foot up on the folding chair anyway. Mack let her distract him from the confrontation long enough to affix the chain securely to her ankle. Her face wrinkled in discomfort and humiliation, but she still didn't say a word. Her father had told her to prove something, and his word was law.
It took some veiled threats and a bit of jabbing with their batons, but the officers managed to get Butch's left leg chained to Aniss's right. There was about three feet of metal in between them, sufficient to keep them from tripping on each other's feet, but not nearly enough for personal space.
And unfortunately not enough for either to strangle the other with.
They laid out their sleeping bags as far from each other as possible, equidistant from the tented-off bathroom corner. The chain lay between them, untethered, like an adder at rest.
Butch DeLoria was one snake who couldn't rest, not tonight. Aniss seemed the same way, reading a book by Pip-Boy light. The beam caught on her thick black curls, and Butch contemplated them. He had always wondered what it would be like to cut hair like that, until the day he'd tried. (She'd won that fight, but that time, they'd been smart enough not to get caught.)
She still hadn't spoken a word to him since today's fight had started, even as a squarish bruise from the corner of her Pip-Boy bloomed on his face. Butch despised Aniss, of course, but somehow, she was even more irritating when she was ignoring him.
"Hey."
"No."
Butch fumed quietly for a second, then rebounded. "Can you believe the Overseer? He was talking like we were throwing Molotovs at each other."
Aniss's attention was piqued when she realized that Butch of all people knew a word she didn't. "What's a Molotov?"
"It's a weapon. You take a bottle of booze, stick a rag in it, and light it on fire. Then you throw it and it'll explode."
"Cool."
"Yeah. Wicked cool." She had thawed a bit, and Butch returned to his point. "I don't get it. If I shove you, you can just hit me back. If the Overseer shoves us... who's supposed to hit him?"
"Well..." Aniss hesitated as she parsed this out. "He 'shoved' us for hitting each other. Not just out-of-the-blue. So it's not like he's a big bully who does it because he can." Her eyes flicked pointedly to her partner in crime.
"That's stupid," Butch protested. "Our score was settled. He wasn't helping you, and he wasn't helping me, so who did he help?"
Aniss spent a few seconds in silence. "We shouldn't talk about this. Someone could be listening." It was true. Someone could always be listening. But Butch had no reputation to protect.
"The only reason we have to do what he says is that we're trapped in here. The vault, I mean. And because he has all the guards."
"Those are two pretty good reasons."
"Nuh-uh. If I said I'd punch you unless you licked the reactor, that doesn't make licking the reactor a good idea."
"Good thing the Overseer would keep you from doing that, then," Aniss wrinkled her nose.
"You're such a twerp." Butch didn't know how to put his ideas into words, but he didn't want to stuff them down like everyone else did. He felt an overwhelming sense of wrongness in this place, while everyone else seemed to accept it all as fact.
Everyone except James Lawrence. That sad-mad-scared face... it was the face of someone who knew. Maybe that had drawn Butch to the doctor to begin with.
And yet, James had said to accept the punishment. As if... there wasn't anything to be done about it.
"What the heck was your dad talking about back there? It was weird."
Aniss put down her book with a satisfying *thwap*. She frowned defensively, but seemed to find herself unable to argue the point. "I don't know. It's like something bad could happen if we don't behave." Her eyes drifted down to the coils of the chain on the floor. "I don't see what could be worse than this."
Far from being offended, Butch agreed. "What's he gonna do, kick us out into the Wasteland? Nobody's ever had the guts to open the door."
Aniss didn't laugh. Butch was about to press further, ask if she had seen the same unknowable things in her father's eyes, when she flicked off her light.
Aniss sat in front of him in class once again. They had to stretch out their legs to keep the line from going uncomfortably taut. The teacher shot them disapproving looks.
They were a curiosity, the kind you might want to be around but never want to be, like the kid who tries out his father's gun without asking and gets a sprained wrist for his efforts (Freddie, for the record). The others hovered at a minimum safe distance, laughing nervously but unwilling to attempt contact. Either they didn't like that the two came as a package deal, or they thought that being seen with troublemakers might land them in a similar predicament.
So Butch and Aniss had each other for company. Hanging around public spaces felt like an obscenity, and Butch was unwilling to invite her into his apartment, so the Lawrence place was their home base. The Doc welcomed them with his customary warmth and politeness, abandoning all traces of the haunted prophet he'd been at their sentencing.
Butch wanted to listen to the radio. Aniss wanted to read. They compromised by Butch throwing the book and refusing to allow her to go get it, while Aniss sang badly off-key over the sound of the radio until Jonas appeared and begged them to stop.
Work details were fun. The kids' collective productivity decreased to about 25%, not entirely by necessity. The Overseer was informed and they got a talking-to.
Their productivity increased to 30%.
Aniss finally broke and suggested her favorite hideout, a target range down on the reactor level. She denied owning a BB gun at first, but he pestered her until she reluctantly taught him to shoot it. He got frustrated, and she got mad at him for wasting her BBs. Hair was pulled.
Neither planned on joining the security force, so the knowledge wasn't strictly useful, but both accepted the escape, privately imagining themselves as daring adventurers against the forces of evil, fighting whatever dark power had chained them to a moron.
Ellen, free from parenting for a week, used her newfound liberation to make bad decisions.
Butch wanted to run to the clinic as soon as they gave him the news, but Officer Mack refused to open the door until the chain was reattached. Recognizing a hopeless situation, Butch shut up, unwilling to prolong it with a lecture.
Upon release, he dragged Aniss through the halls as fast as he could without wasting precious time on tripping her. She had the good sense not to complain, or to remind him they were late for class. He'd take the ration cut for truancy if he had to.
James intercepted them, with hands on Butch's shoulders and gentle shushing. The boy would have run past him, through the door and to his mother's bedside, if not for the dead weight on his ankle, doomed to obey. So he closed his eyes, and he blocked out the words until not a syllable of prognosis could reach him. The only variable that mattered to him was whether Ellen's son was at her side. Aniss was speaking now, too, and he tried even harder not to hear her. He was sick of this family and their idealism.
Butch broke away. Aniss's protests didn't reach his ears until he was halfway across the room, to the bed half-surrounded by medical partitions. Unequally yoked, he slowed up for half a second, then restrained himself to a reasonable pace for the last agonizing steps.
Mom's hand was cold when he took it, but she breathed. Her white skin emphasized the red welt spanning her cheek and temple — she'd fallen into something as she lost consciousness. She lay on her side, one arm over the blanket. A tube snaked from her inner elbow to a clear plastic bag with liquid in it. She stirred at a light slap to her face, but her eyes didn't open.
"She's resting, Butch," James said in a low voice. "Please, will you come sit?"
"Is she gonna be alright, Doc?"
"Like I've been trying to tell you, yes. We're keeping her here while her system flushes itself out."
"I don't wanna hear about the — the systems, and stuff. Just, how long until she's better?"
"Not long. At this point, I'm more worried about her concussion. But I have no reason to believe she won't be up within the day."
Butch finally regained awareness of the way he leaned forward in his seat, his breath, the sharp ache in his left ankle. One by one, his muscles released him, until he worked up the energy to slouch again. His stuttering heart slowed, still uncomfortably tight, and he cleared his throat.
"Well, heck. Why does everyone have to be so dang grim down here?"
"You have to understand, Butch," James continued. "It could have gone much worse than it did. If Officer Kendall hadn't been near your apartment, I would be telling you a very different story right now."
"Three guesses what he was doing there," Butch muttered.
James resolutely ignored him. "I've asked the Overseer to shorten your parole in light of all that's happened. If you don't give him any reason to change his mind," — He shot them both a very knowing look — "then you should both be back to normal next morning."
Butch groaned gratuitously, swinging his head back and around "Finally! I've had this leech stuck to me for the whole week and I'm way past ready for it to be over."
His head swiveled to Aniss and he waited for her to fire back, never to leave a point unscored. Instead, her brows knit and she side-eyed the wall, unable to get far enough away from him for comfortable eye contact.
"I'm sorry about your mom, Butch."
She might as well have just punched him. As James looked on, and Ellen inhaled sharply of the stale vault air, Butch swiped the stinging from his eyes.
"Thanks."
"Bet she smelled, too!" Wally prompted
"Oh, yeah. Like a walrus!" Butch had never smelled a walrus, and he hadn't particularly noticed any strong scents during their confinement, but he agreed automatically to all of the Snakes' cruel assumptions. Showing insufficient displeasure over the whole affair would be impolite, after all.
The girls rounded the corner approaching their classroom — all four in the same place, for once. Apparently the ordeal gained Aniss some temporary celebrity, herself. She was gesticulating wildly, making some grand influential point, probably to his detriment. Butch made a big show of tripping her as she neared the doorway, sending her books sprawling across the floor to the sound of taunting twelve-year-olds.
Aniss was up in a second, Butch's collar balled in her fist, when Amata was at her shoulder reminding them of the whole past week they had suddenly forgotten. Aniss stepped back. "...After class. By the reactor," she muttered lowly. An invitation for violence, defiance, and no lessons learned. Three of Butch's favorite things.
"You'd better not chicken out, pipsqueak."
"I'll show you who's a pipsqueak."
"Uh, guys? Mrs. Westerly is on her way," Christine warned them nervously.
And so they sat through the lesson, went down to Aniss's shooting range, and discussed the matter very civilly until the start of afternoon work shifts. As much as he hated to admit it, Butch had learned one thing from this whole ordeal, a truth he needed no father to tell him:
Don't get caught.
The second man on Butch's list was Floyd Lewis. He worked long hours in the engine room, so getting him alone would be a challenge...
Timeline - Very much TBD until Fallout season 2
2262-
Protective Custody
2263-2265 -
2266 -
January - Distance, No More
October - Power and Beauty
2267-
2268-
Ensnared
The Way Forward begins
2269-
2270-
The Way Forward ends
I Can't Help Falling in Love With You begins
2271-
June - Shards of a Bottle
2272-2273 -
2274-
I Can't Help Falling in Love With You ends
Tik Tik Boom begins
2275-
Tik Tik Boom ends
Treacherous begins
2276-
2277-
January - Sage destroys the Divide
February - First Battle of Hoover Dam
July - The Mummy Returns
August 17 - Aniss leaves Vault 101
The Prodigal Son
September - To Set the Record Straight
Dead Man Walking begins
Treacherous ends/Partners begins
November - The Burned Man Walks
2278-
March - Dead Man Walking ends
April - James dies (Purity War begins)
June - Guide Her Through the Night
Bitter Springs
September - Project Purity activates
October - Partners ends
November - Human Capital
2279-
Adams Air Force Base (Purity War ends)
2280-
May - Dogmeat's Vacation
August - Boones are married
2281-
New Canaan is destroyed
October 11 - Sage is shot in the head
October 19 - Sage wakes up
2282-
ED-E, My Bud
2283-
January - Second Battle of Hoover Dam
February - To Have and To Hold
April - Awake, O Sleeper
May - Worst-Case Scenario
July - Mercury's Messenger
August - Safe Haven
September - Power and Beauty (pt. 2)/East and West begins
October - East and West ends
