The Compromise

Scipio's busy talking to his companion. They're going to be talking for a long time, if she knows him at all. Might as well step out for a bit and go back to the Citadel. She'd come to the Bar by accident, after all- the door surprised her when she'd stepped into one of the equipment rooms for women, planning to get out of her armor. The Tesla gear was fine for the journey back across the Wastes from the Deathclaw Sanctuary, but for things like talking to people or trying to get a drink, it's damned inconvenient. Neither the Enclave nor the Order of the Shield has ever been able to make power armor that lets the wearer scratch an itch.

No one will notice. She might as well.

She's back in the barracks in B ring, unfastening her gauntlets, when- raddada raddada tat- there's a knock at the door. "No one's asleep," she calls. "Come in."

"Paladin 101?" The door opens; it's one of the scribes, a dusky young woman whose name Ellen can't remember at the moment. "Oh, good, it's you. Um, I mean, hail. Senior Paladin Tristan wanted me to find you."

Ellen's lips thin a moment. Tristan had said she'd have time after the Deathclaws to go back to Megaton with Jerald. And pretty much as soon as she'd finished briefing him on what they'd found in the Sanctuary he'd told her it was time to turn around and go into the field again. Okay, situations changed and he was her superior, so orders were orders, but-

"He also said to tell you to leave that armor on if you hadn't taken it off already."

".... what."

Tristan is in A ring, just outside the Great Hall. "Good, you're still dressed," he says. "Listen, I have a compromise for you, if you're interested."

"A... compromise, sir?" Ellen says carefully.

"Before we sent you north you were making arrangements to get married in a week's time," says Tristan. "I know you're in a hurry to make an honest man out of Scribe Cancio. Personally I don't think you're in any danger of not coming back from the ruins to do exactly that, but I've had it pointed out to me that missions you go on have a habit of spiraling into much, much bigger things." His eyes flick up to he hairline- where the scar she got in Point Lookout used to be, she realizes. "Cancio's here. I sent someone to talk to him too. If you're willing to put the Megaton garrison celebration off until you and your mole people allies can verify the nature of the Library ruins, we can get you two properly married now."

The last time Ellen went into a building full of documents in the DC ruins, insane robots spent the next several hours trying to laser her face off.

"I need to go get a token to give him during the ceremony," Ellen says. "He's a Scribe- a weapon is traditionally okay, right?"

"For the Order of the Sword? Sure," says Tristan. "Do you need an authorization for the quartermaster?"

"No, no, I found something in the Deathclaw Sanctuary that should do just fine," Ellen says. "He likes lasers. There was a Gatling in the caves."

"Excellent choice," says Tristan. "Be back here with it in your armor in fifteen minutes, and we'll get this thing done."

The Paperworks

The door that opens is the door in the side of what was once a barn. That was two hundred years ago, when this was Virginia and still green. The barn's beams are splintered and scorched with the vestiges of war and age; the roof is next to nonexistent. Between the pillars that once held up the second floor, the sun shines through, yielding glimpses of scrub and rock and yellowed-looking bushes. The burnt-out wreck of what was once a sizable automobile sags into the sandy soil off to the right.

"As I said," comments Ellen, "I didn't want anyone to come here unwarned. I'm sorry, Javert."