I swore I'd never leave a record.
I keep starting, stopping, deleting, repeating.
I want to believe that I've been waiting to speak my entire life, but that feels false. Is it freedom or terror?
I don't know who I'm writing this for, or why. It doesn't feel cathartic. It feels foreign, like I don't trust my own words, too deliberate.
I have every reason to fear them. Language turns thoughts into selves. Maybe putting these thoughts into words will trap me into repeating them, even if I know better.
I can vividly recall my mother's constant admonitions, from the moment we left Navarro. They won't understand, Arcade. They're different. If you tell, they'll hurt us… ground in through repetition. Wasn't that a burden to lay at the feet of a young boy. The shame. The unfairness.
I never chose this. I'm choosing it now though, aren't I?
It doesn't matter anymore. Or it won't soon, anyways.
Thirty years of silence, of knowing that I'd be held accountable for my father's sins if I ever slipped up. I wonder what he'd think of me now. I hate that I care.
I'm not him.
I'm not what he was. That's not the same thing.
I still put on that fucking suit. Thought I'd feel something that scared me. I didn't.
Ruth's convinced me, convinced us, to follow her. She's somehow at the center of all of this: the Remnants back together, New Vegas having a fighting chance. Finding myself here.
Not that I needed much convincing to fight. I abhor Caesar's little game of dress-up. All of that history, all of the knowledge the Followers gave him. Our Founders crawled out of their vaults for this? The rise and fall all over again, out of some deluded belief in inevitability.
Yet… Caesar's not insane, just evil. He built a system that makes sense, I just find the axioms he built it on abhorrent.
No, it doesn't matter. Caesar's dead. Or will be. Between the Remnants' knowledge and the Enclave tech in the bunker, I don't think we're going to lose. I don't think we can lose.
Caesar's playing a very primitive game.
Extremis malis extrema remedia, I suppose. Or whatever else Oppenheimer told himself before the bomb.
As for what comes after. After Caesar. After New Vegas. Ruth says there's a place for us. Sanctuary. The idea seems ridiculous, impossible. But the thing is… I want to believe her. It's strange. People orbit her. Not follow, not a conscious decision. Orbit. I don't think I'm immune to gravity.
There are days I try to believe that the past doesn't define us. That people can be better than the worst thing they inherited.
Today isn't one of them.
The air in the bunker's so clean. Probably the cleanest air I've ever tasted. Probably the safest place I've ever stood. A sanctuary of its own… for humans.
They told me I was elect, once. Pure-strain, like that meant something, like I should carry that with me.
Today, I don't feel like a better man than he was.
I feel like a loaded weapon passed down from one generation to the next.
And I wrote it down.
Maybe language just makes the loop visible.
Author's note:
Did I write another Honest Hearts story? Yes. Did I substantially edit it and this is the revision? Also yes.
Content note: this story contains references to aspects of early Latter-day Saint theology that are speculative, imagined, or interpreted through fictional characters. Believing Latter-day Saint readers may wish to approach with discretion, as the story features rituals and practices that are rarely discussed outside of temple settings.
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence and abuse, grief and death (including parental figures and children), references to genocide and war crimes, exploration of faith, queer identity, and adoption. Includes non-graphic discussion of implied suicide and accompanying character death.