The old laboratory. It is just as I remembered it.
Madi, I hope I did not cause you any unnecessary hardship or pain in my quick departure, but this matter is time sensitive, painfully so.
Just as it was then.
I ought to have left sooner than I did, as well. Truly, I wanted to ask you to accompany me, but I know better. You have your own work, your own staff, and it would be, I am sure, nothing more than an irritation had I asked. Yet, so much as I wish I could deny it, I know full well I lingered for the sake of your companionship, and it was not fair to you. I promise, though, things will be right as rain when I return, and, then, I should have the GECK in my possession.
The strangest part about being here, now, is not the discomfort with my behaviour, however. No, the discomfort in being here is due to the memories. Everything is as we left it, give or take a few things here and there. The Brotherhood did quite a fine job sealing it up, a good sign for us. The fact they even bothered to seal it in the first place suggests, to me, they may be willing to return to and unseal the project if given good enough reason.
And reason they shall be given.
Our old offices are almost pristine, everything we didn't take with us still here after all these years. For the time being, the facility's small sleeping and bathing quarters, too, are sufficient as well, now I have been able to get the primary generator back online. It was no easy feat getting one of the portable fusion generators we left behind up and running, but, thankfully, it ended up being enough to get most of the facility's power-necessary functions into being operational, which is quite the relief. This will serve for now, but I will need help powering up the mainframe, later, something which will have to come once I have what I need to prove to Madi we can see Purity through this time around.
Then, of course, there are the purification systems. They are as they were then, still offline, still quite the conundrum in the control room and even more so in the mechanisms we left to rot which, themselves, are meant to do the task of purifying the water itself. It does seem, standing here, strange to come back after so long but I know it is necessary.
I shall see this through for you, Catherine, my love, just you wait.
It is also standing here, painful as it is, I am reminded why I had to leave Annie behind. Catherine, please do not worry about her. I left all this behind for so long to make a good, safe life for our dancing princess, our little girl. The Vault may not have been perfect, certainly not without you, but it was safe, and that was all I – we – ever could have hoped for. She is still there, happy, safe, and with the woman she loves, the woman whom, too, adores and loves her, and is caring for her. I think, Catherine, you would be quite proud of our Annie. She is grown, now, and is a beautiful, intelligent, confident, and kind hearted young woman, just like you were.
I do not like admitting it, just the notion is painful, but she does not need her daddy anymore.
Annie, dear daughter, please stay safe. It is all your mother and I ever wanted for you.
Catherine, I am terribly sorry for the betrayals of you my dreams have been bringing. It is not only the dreams, though, and for those and the thoughts accompanying them, I know the fault for them is no one's but my own. My thoughts of Madi…they have only grown more impure since I saw her, again, for the first time in nearly two decades. I do not know what is wrong with me, Catherine. I swore a sacred oath to you, yet I am betraying it in sleep and in consciousness. Wanting Madi is wrong. I know it to be so. I cannot, however, shake the feelings of care and, most troubling, desire. I should not want to lay with her the same way we laid together, my beloved Catherine. Somehow, though, I do. It is quite the sorry state to be in, I suppose. In some ways, maybe I am being forced to pay penance for the way I departed so many years ago. I cannot say I do not deserve to have a price to pay for my actions. I was hasty in my departure and in duress, caring only for our baby girl being kept safe only in my arms and no one else's.
Other than, so terribly briefly, in yours.
Other than in Madi's.
No, this will not do at all. I am back here with a purpose, and, once it has been seen through, I will return to my duty as the father of our child. Someone needs to be there to walk her down the aisle when she and Amata are wed, after all.
I so wish you could have watched her grow up into the kind and bright young woman she has become, Catherine, so much like you though she was unable to know you. I ought not ruminate on my memories of you when I must work towards finishing the project you devoted your life to, but I am finding it harder and harder to with each passing day. With so much here untouched, it feels nearly as though I have taken a step back in time. Oh, Catherine, you have missed so much you should not have had to. I hope you are right about there being a life after this one, wherein we can be reunited one day and you can, for now, continue to watch over me but especially our dear daughter. You would have loved to see her first steps, her first words…you would have, I am sure, also been proud of her, watching our baby girl grow up. She has even taken after your smallest habits. Annie has never cut her hair since she was twelve after learning you never cut your hair shorter than fluttering down to your knees. Her hair is just as long as yours was, now. She says it makes her feel closer to you. She ties it up with a ribbon as tall as her, too, just as you did. Our daughter has her measure of courage, just as you did.
Our sweet little Annette Christine. I really think she is the best of the two of us and has none of our vices, at least, apart from a bit of pride.
What surprised me the most about her, Catherine, was the way she speaks. You had the softest southern accent – your family was from what was once Georgia, was it not? – but I, the second son of an Irish man and his wife who braved what I can only imagine was a terrible and long journey from the Isle to here, to what had once been the Commonwealth Of Virginia? I always have had their accent, and it was only after I met you, dearest Catherine, I chose to embrace the timbre and tone of my voice, knowing how it soothed you so. But, not having known you, and being raised by me in the Vault, where nearly everyone were descended of Americans…
I will never understand why, until Alphonse became Overseer, the previous Overseers of the Vault had let people in and out all the time for trade, for interaction with the outer world. I was the last person – well, I and our infant daughter in my arms – ever let in. I suppose it matters not now.
But Catherine, I know you would not care for my ruminations. They are too much a distraction. I am only grateful for the safety I secured for myself and our little girl, the safety she still has with Amata.
I think you would like Amata, Catherine, for how thoughtful and kind she is and, of course, for how she loves Annie.
I know you would love our little girl, too, even if you might tease her a little for her soft, almost English accent. Truly, she has without even knowing it taken up near half of my own and half of what she heard most from those around her as a child. My parents would be horrified, I suspect, and, proud as I am of them and our people, I think it is rather sweet our little Annie has such a gentle tone to her voice. It is perhaps another gift from you. You could not have given me a better daughter. I hope you are as proud of her as am I.
She is nineteen, now. I can scarcely believe it. So many moments, so many you missed…I think her first sentences were what I will always remember the most vividly, especially…
"She's probably bored to tears by now," Jonas had chortled as he walked with me back to the apartment in which I raised our Annie, dearest Catherine. "Unless she took a small nap like a cat."
"I'm free for the rest of the night, now, so I'm quite sure she won't let me forget it if she took a small nap," I had replied, smiling at him whilst he walked past me and I unlocked the door to the apartment. "Always appreciate the encouragement, Jonas."
When I had stepped into the apartment and shut and locked the door behind myself, I could not help but start laughing when I realised, in no more than a few seconds after my arrival, Annie, barely eighteen months old at the time, had run as fast as her little legs could take her over to me, tightly hugging my legs when she reached me. She had pried her playpen wide open, mischievous little thing she was.
"You're quite the little explorer, aren't you?" I had said, laughing when I gently lifted her up into my arms. "Serves me right for trying to pen you in!"
"Silly daddy!" She had squealed, taking my reading glasses off my face and trying to balance them on her head. "I play! Play play!"
"Yes, you do," I had smiled. "Alright, then. Come on, honey, let's go see if your little friend Amata wants to play with you."
I still believe, to this day, the most amusing word in her vocabulary as toddler was 'abomination.' When she realised she absolutely hates eating kiwi, she declared it was an 'abomination.' She was barely two at the time. She named a few other things 'abominations' as well, but, that being the first, it was the one which has stuck with me the most and never fails to make me smile.
I am sure you are proud of her and love her as much as I do. I would do anything for her safety.
That is why I had to, this time around, leave her behind.
I only wish Madi had been able to understand that.
Now I think of it, if I am being forced to pay penance for the way I departed the first time, it is perhaps guilt, then, driving my improper thoughts towards Madi. The last conversation we had before my first departure those nearly twenty years ago was heated. I had trampled over her feelings in preference of my own. It was wrong. There must have been a better way. When she extended her hand and home to me, this time around, I realised my mistake. She could have helped me, and Annie, maybe even bought me more time to get my wits about myself before seeking out the Vault.
It was then I came to realise why she had felt so betrayed.
"I'm sorry, Madison," I had been hasty, shoving anything and everything I could think of I and Annie, then so tiny and asleep in her crib, needing. "I am, truly, I'm sorry about this but what choice do I have?"
"I thought I knew you…I trusted you! We all did!" Madi had been correct. I left them in the lurch, with unnecessary haste. "How can you be so selfish?"
"Selfish? This is my child we're talking about, Madison! My child!"
I had been so defencive of you, Annie, even when you were barely a month old. My urge to defend and give you everything…it has not changed. It is, for certain, why Madi's accusation of abandoning you stung so deeply. There is nothing I would not do to ensure your safety and happiness, Annie. It is all your mother and I ever wanted for you, and I will do everything in my power to ensure it.
Madi, I hope you can forgive me, once again. I will need you to bring Project Purity to completion after I retrieve the GECK. If I have drawn your feelings out and on, I am terribly sorry. I know you mean well, and you still care deeply about our friendship even all these years later. It is my own selfishness to blame. My selfishness is what has hurt our friendship most, and I am so sorry for it. My indecorous thoughts are, I fear, the underlying issue. I have been dreaming of you more lately, Madison, and dreaming of you completely bare, with me inside you…somehow it is an endearing fantasy.
Why do I want you, Madi? It is wrong. You deserve much better than the person I am.
I suppose it matters not. There is too much to be done, too much requiring review to become distracted. I am here for a reason, and there is so much I must ensure to be secure before I can begin my search for the GECK. The maps in Rivet City were less helpful than I had hoped, and, perhaps, hoping they would be was a mistake. Then again, where would I have begun otherwise? I left the Vault because of its existence. I must find it, or I will have left for naught. Vault 112. If a GECK will be anywhere, it will be in the same Vault as the one Braun had become resident of the day of the War.
If I do not keep reminding myself of that, I fear I will become aimless.
It matters not. I have a bit more of a lead from research and word of mouth. I have good reason to believe and follow it, and I am here, now, and able to properly assess what we still have. What we will have access to.
At the moment, the facility is at least liveable. Not comfortable, per se, but liveable. The lack of supplies on hand will, for now, be able to be made up for with that which I brought with me from Rivet City. I doubt I will be here so long, but I have the supplies to sustain myself for a little over a month, in the old laboratory, before I will have to leave to continue my search outside. As Rivet City did not yield much in the way of information about Vault 112's location, it is my hope other, smaller settlements may know more. I did not intend for my time out here again to mirror so closely the circumstances which drove me into Vault 101, but I am starting to wonder if, of all places, the people of Megaton may know more. They certainly have more…eccentric folk passing through than Rivet City.
I wonder if Moriarty might know something. I hope he is still there, if for no other reason than because he is good company. He can be quite brash and sarcastic, but it is part of what makes him so very entertaining to talk to. He certainly does not hold back nor reduce even the worst parts of the stories he has to tell. I wonder if he has gotten what he wanted, with the safety and security of Megaton in mind, and the bomb in the city's centre has been disarmed. The Children Of Atom were always a bit too enthusiastic about it and its potential to explode. They are quite the eclectic bunch, though most of them are as fine a folk as you would meet anywhere, if a bit detached from reality. They have quite a few interesting tenets that are worth consideration; their belief of the universe and world being created when the first atom split is almost scientific, insofar as it is similar to the basic principles of the 'Big Bang Theory.' Then again, the ones I have met have never seen too eager to discuss the science behind the radiation they worship or the devices that spread it, so, perhaps, it is just the same as any other religious belief and held on faith alone.
That in and of itself is just about the opposite of my own life and drive. Faith alone is never good enough.
But it was, also, one of the things I most admired about you, Catherine.
I keep telling myself not to let my memories of you distract me from my work and purpose here, yet I seem to be unable to help it. Everywhere I go within these walls is somewhere you once walked with me, our hands entwined.
The deeper into our old base of operations I go, the harder it is to not think of you. We may very well have spent more time here than we ever did at home, certainly in the last few months before Annie's birth. It never was quite home, though, even when we had to sleep here, deep in the basement. There was little we could do about, though. Our work was more important than complete and utter comfort. It still is.
Almost absentminded, I only realise as I approach and sit down before one of our old computer terminals that I realise I have been holding onto my briefcase for…
I did set down my large backpack, in my first look over the sleeping quarters.
No, even little questions for myself are too much of a distraction. Even the loading screen of the computer terminal feels too distracting, the animated bubbles floating around until the screen asks for login credentials. I am only beginning to feel somewhat less annoyed by my own aloofness once I am able to open our old files, all of which, thankfully, are uncorrupted. I will have to thank Lyons and the Brotherhood for managing to ensure the safety of Memorial and Project Purity even after we were forced to give up the endeavour. Soon enough, I can only hope, we will be able to present to them the need for restarting our efforts.
This time, they will be brought to fruition.
There is so much more to be done, but all things must begin with a review. Nothing can be done properly without a thorough analysis of what one has to work with, now can it?
I feel strange saying it, but you always did before you worked, so, I will too, my dear Catherine.
One. Two. Three.
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…"