Schematics

There is absolutely nothing improper about the project, you're telling yourself for the hundredth time. Nothing at all. You're Order of the Sword. This is what you do. You look at Brotherhood weapons and you say, I can fix that. You look at other weapons and you say, I can make something better than that, and then you do it. It's your job. You'd do it for anybody on the project. You fixed the Initiates' laser rifles, you upgraded them to have three times the punch, that was your job, right? So this is your job too. 101's ... sword thing... it was effective, yeah. With the fire. And- well, mostly the fire. It was effective. But you saw it and you saw her with it and you knew you could do better.

Even if swords weren't really a thing for Brotherhood fighters. Most of the close-in types? They use supersledges. But they're bigger than 101, they've got the build for it. 101 has that fire... sword... thing (you wish she wouldn't call it a Shishkebab, you keep wanting to laugh at the name and you do NOT want her to hear you do that). Says she made it herself. Says it's made from lawn mower parts from before the War. That's... it might be effective but it's a disgrace to the Brotherhood to run around with something like that out in the open. And anyway it's awkward and gets in the way of a supply backpack, when she uses one. You can do better. It's your mission.

You'd do that for anyone, right?

... well no. No, for someone else you'd just quietly improve their regular weapons, so they'd stop using the old one because their guns were at full repair and full efficiency. You wouldn't sit down with the records from the Brotherhood archives and look for records of effective swords in modern warfare. You wouldn't find the Arlington library's archived newspaper reports from the Anchorage campaign that talked about Jingwei the Demon of Anchorage and what his shockblade did to American armor. You wouldn't spend two nights in a row awake because you had too many ideas for anybody else.

But there's still nothing improper about this, you're telling yourself. You could just as easily- when this is over you'll turn the plans over to the Senior Scribes and tell them you developed something new they can build for the rest of the Brotherhood. They'll be thankful. You'll be justified. It'll all be okay-

"Scribe Cancio?"

Ohgod. She HEARD you. 101 HEARD YOU THINKING. Ohgod.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

You cough, and shake your head. "No ma'am! I was just-"

She's biting her lip, and she's watching you. Why is she doing that.

"... well, I was working on the- here, you can see the schematics if you want..."

"Oooh."

That was a good sound, right? That was a positive reaction. It sounded like one. And she's looking at your shocksword schematics, which is better than looking at you. So that's a good-

That's not looking, suddenly. That's staring. She's following the lines of the circuitry you're going to have to build up and down the paper with one armored hand and... wow, she's not blinking. Just staring.

Is she even breathing?

"Ma'am?"

"Huh?" She shakes her head suddenly, hard, and looks up at you. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

"Sorry, ma'am, you were-" You sort of flail one hand towards the paper (oh, God, Cancio, could you be any less professional right now?). "You had me worried there."

"Oh-" It's her scars that darken first. The rest of her face kind of pinks up a bit, but there's places where she was knifed or grazed by bullets or something, and they stand out more when the blood rushes in. You can't help but notice, even if you do look away immediately. "I'm sorry. I was... your work, here. It got my attention."

"Good attention, I hope?"

She smiles a little. Just a little. Just enough to make you realize you're looking back at her again, instead of doing the polite thing and keeping your eye on the page. "Oh yes," she says. "I used to have one of these."

"What?"

And now she's laughing. At you. Oh hell you're never going to live this down. But it's not an unkind laugh, which you don't realize until your pulse stops rushing in your ears and you hear her say, "Oh, yes. The original, in fact. Did you know why Elder Lyons sent me specifically to bring the Outcasts here?"

"...no? Ma'am," you add belatedly.

"I think you can stop calling me that, Scribe, I'm not actually your superior," she says, and she's gone all sober without any kind of warning at all. "I talked to Senior Scribe Jameson about that."

It would be really nice if you could remember how to breathe right now.

"She said I might be in charge of the project, but as far as chain of command goes, I'm not your superior. The Scribes answer to the most senior Scribe on the premises. I'm in a combat order. You're not."

"Oh! Right. Okay. Right. Yeah, that's... I thought you knew that." Deep breath. Let it out. Breathe again. "So I'm not being dismissed?"

And now she's staring at you as if you'd grown another head. "No! Why would I do that?"

"Be... cause...?" Isn't there a hole in the floor you could fall through? Why is this place so well constructed?

She crosses her arms over her chest. It's not a loud gesture, her armor's pretty light stuff when it clashes against itself, but it carries the same implication as racking a combat shotgun. Also? She's still staring at you.

"... because unwanted personal attention is a serious distraction from the mission regardless of whether it constitutes fraternization or not oh God I'm a dead man."

Beat.

Two.

Three.

"Oh, so I was right," she says suddenly. "Oh good."

"........."

"You, um. Might want to close your mouth," she suggests, and makes a little two-fingered upward gesture.

"Sorry! Sorry." Yeah. Um. Yeah. "Go back to the, um, the part with 'good' in it? Good how?"

"Well-" And she's pinking up again, and this time it's her that's looking at the schematics instead of meeting your eyes. "Look, I thought- I'm not very good with this kind of thing. People, I mean-"

"According to Three Dog, half the Wasteland would probably disagree with you," you can't help but mutter, and then clap your hands over your mouth when you realize you've said it out loud.

But she just nods and doesn't look up from the sword schematics. "Sorry. I- you're right. I meant- specifically, I meant 'people' in the 'between a man and a woman' sense-"

"Really."

"Yeah." She glances your way for just one tiny, tiny moment, and then it's back to the schematics. "I- I didn't get on very well with the boys my age, back in- back in the Vault. And up here- well, up here it's different. It just... it didn't come up. Or if it did I didn't notice- anyway the point is-"

One of her hands goes down to your schematics again, starts tracing a line of circuitry upward from the microfusion cell in the hilt.

"The point is, you always... seemed like a good person. I mean, when you helped me bury the raider, everything you said... you understand what you're doing, and you think about your actions and your morals, and you try to do the right thing the whole time. And you're intelligent, and you're hard-working, and you stand up for yourself, and you don't have a whole Vault full of personal issues to deal with. And I really like that."

Where did that- no, never mind, not important. She's trying to give you a compliment, dimbulb. "Um. Thank you, Paladin."

She nods again, and this time looks up at you properly. "The sword project here," she says. "This isn't really for the Brotherhood, is it."

You can talk. You know you can. You were doing it three seconds ago. Surely you can remember how?

"No," you finally manage. "... no. It's for you."

She's smiling. It's not the smile she had when she asked you to check over the Gauss rifle. It's something else. "Thank you," she says softly.

Oh wow.

But then she says, "I only wish I could do the same for you," and looks at you hopefully, and now you can't even tell if she means this is an excellent project and I should be supporting you work-wise or you are a wonderful person for coming up with a shiny new toy just for me and I find that really attractive. And you wish the floor here were a little less solid. Again.

"You- ah- you could... call me Jerald? I mean- that's my first name- I'm sorry, I sound like a moron-"

"It's okay! It's okay," she says hastily, holding up both her hands. "And you don't. Sound like a moron, I mean. It's okay... and my name is Ellen."

Oh.

"Okay then," you manage. "Ellen. All right."

And there's that smile again. Which you're suddenly pretty sure she's never given anybody else.

Oh wow.