Outside Megaton
Dec. 2nd, 2013 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyThere is nothing to be ashamed of in having those scars, Ellen told herself for the fifth time since leaving the gates of Megaton. You were captured, and it happened while you were bound; you lived. All of the aliens who did it are dead by your hand. Odinson said it, you took your vengeance. It wasn't weakness, only an ambush, and then a purge. Even the Founder suffered at the hands of an ambush, didn't he? There's nothing wrong with that, if he came out of it alive.
It's Jerald you're talking to, anyway. The best weapon is the one that ends the fight the fastest. You ended that particular fight and a whole bunch of others before that kind of damage could be inflicted on anyone else. He'll understand.
It would be great if I could just think of a way to get the first sentence out.
That was the problem, when it came down to it. She could talk about what happened to strangers- mostly- kind of. The less she knew them, the easier it was. They didn't know her; they hadn't met her and they wouldn't be likely to meet her again unless she sought them out. She didn't have to live with them looking at her and knowing, day in and day out- or with what would happen if she started the conversation exactly the wrong way and everything snowballed. It wasn't like she'd still have to work with that Jason person day in and day out even after giving him more than he wanted to know, after all. She could talk to them and walk away, which was... pretty much exactly the opposite of the situation here. Even if the subject wasn't shameful (and it wasn't for the Founder, and it wasn't in Thor's eyes, so why should it be in hers), there was still the presentation. That was the important part. That was where the trouble lay-
Something rustled in the distance, a sound like scorpion chitin dragging over exposed rock. Ellen shook herself, hard. Even in the more civilized parts of the Wasteland distraction could still get you killed. Plan for the future, live in the moment, that was the rule.
She took a deep breath and stepped across the all-but-invisible line on the ruined old road that marked the Megaton Brotherhood garrison's perimeter. The Sentrybots would be coming to meet her in a moment.
Jerald's red robes- well, everything about him, but the robes especially- stank of burned argon when he finally emerged from the garrison-house's basement. "Sorry about that," he said, pushing his goggles up from his forehead. "I was working on a plas... ma... something's wrong, isn't it."
"What? No-"
"No no no, something is wrong." He tried to make a dismissive gesture. It came out as flailing. Stupid hands. "It's practically dark and you're out here in the heavy armor and the sword. Who died?"
"Nobody died," said Ellen, her eyes a little wide- wider than usual. Oh God something was wrong, that was the something was wrong face. (And she was swallowing, that was even worse.) "I just- I needed to talk to you-"
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no. That was practically we need to talk, and Jerald had studied enough of the old records during his days of aspiring to the Order of the Quill to have seen that phrase and its consequences. Nothing good, nothing good ever in the history of men and women, could ever come after that phrase.
"I... okay?" he said, and thanked the Master of Engineers and Architect of the Universe that the words came out sounding puzzled, but steady. "I'm... thinking not here, though. Am I right?"
"You're right," said Ellen. "Not here."
Oh no.
A jagged silver streak ran from one ancient fence-post to another up ahead: the wire that marked the edge of Megaton's cattle-lands. There was a whiff of Brahmin on the wind, but nothing so great as to be a problem- and anyway, they were upwind from Moira's printing-house here. The Brahmin were the lesser of two evils. Ellen was never a great fan of the big room with the blue ceiling, but even fresh out of the Vault she'd found being outdoors at night a little easier. As long as she didn't look too closely at the Moon, she could about convince herself that she was back in the Atrium, under strategically dimmed lights. It helped, a little.
"This seems like- like a good place," she said, and winced. The stress-stammer she'd picked up after her father's death didn't surface much these days. Just when things actually mattered. Great. "I don't- I've been trying to-"
She faltered. Even in the dying evening light she could make out the twitchy, wish-I-had-a-screwdriver motions of Jerald's hands against each other. Whether his face matched the fidgeting, she couldn't say. She didn't dare look up, or her nerve would fail her.
"-Jerald, I need you to promise me something," she finally said. "I have to- to tell you something and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to tell you unless I can get all the way through from start to finish without stopping. If- if-"
"I can listen," he answered, fingers still sliding over each other as if it would somehow help. "I'm good at that."
"Okay," Ellen said, "okay. Um."
So many ways to start. So many ways to fail.
"Please don't be upset that it took me this long to tell you about this," she began. "I just- just- do you remember the ship? The one in orbit, that we contacted with the Second Diana mast?"
"The one with the death ray? How could I forget?"
Ellen had to smile a little at that. "That's the one," she said. "It's like this..."
Jerald listened. As he'd said, he was good at that. He listened at first because he'd promised, and then because he wanted to know what had happened next, and at the end he was listening because he couldn't have made words come out of his mouth if he'd tried. You heard things, sometimes- read them in the old texts, in captured Enclave holotapes, in the Founder's diary. About experiments. Old world things, mostly. People didn't have the resources for them so much since the War. Or you hoped they didn't, anyway, they weren't the kind of thing you wanted to think still went on. The world was bad enough sometimes.
But there'd been Point Lookout. And there was this.
(At least, he thought, this... wasn't humans. At least people hadn't done it to her.)
(At least she'd killed them all.)
(Probably faster than they deserved.)
She was looking at him, and it might've been her Tesla armor, but it looked as if she had her shoulders hunched a little bit more around her ears than usual. Like she was bracing for a- oh, it was his turn to speak, wasn't it...
"I had no idea," he said, and cursed himself for sounding so, so trite. "If you hadn't told me-"
"-you would have found out eventually," she finished for him, and dropped her gaze. "And that's an awful kind of surprise."
"Well, yeah, it-" He paused. "Seriously?"
"Seriously what?"
"Seriously I would have found out. We were going to...?"
She still didn't look at him. It was pretty well dark out by now, but she didn't have her helmet on, and there was a little moonlight. The lines of old injuries got dark at sensitive times, and boy howdy, were the ones on her face darkening now. "I... planned to, yes," she finally murmured.
... that wasn't where he thought that sentence was going to go. "Um," he started, and promptly ran out of words.
She looked up then. He knew that look. Just- from the inside. That was his look when he'd started to ask Scribe Peabody something waaaaaaaay above his water ration and was just sure he was about to get thumped for it. "It's okay," he said hastily. "I just- didn't- what were you planning to?"
"Um." Ellen looked away then, armored hand halfway to her face. She dropped it a moment later. "Um. Well."
"I'm still listening, you know. Do you need me to not talk?"
"No, I- no." She inhaled, and then she made a face. Jerald couldn't blame her. They were, after all, on the edge of a Brahmin pasture. "This is something else..."
"Okay, well-"
"I'm not my father and I don't ever intend to be," she said, her words hurried to the point of tripping over one another. "Don't get me wrong. I loved my father. And he was a- he was a good man and we owe him and the water purifier is the best thing that happened to the Wasteland since Elder Lyons but honestly, my father had really bad planning skills."
.... yeah, that wasn't what he was expecting either.
"Dad just- just tended to decide on things he wanted to do and kind of assumed that whatever he needed to take place for them to happen, would take place," Ellen went on. "And it caused a lot of trouble for- for a lot of people- anyway, the point. The point is, if there's one thing I ever learned from my father it's that I don't want to wind up like him-" She kicked at the sandy soil in frustration. "Argh! This made more sense in my head."
"Keep going," Jerald said carefully. "I'm not going anywhere."
She flashed him a grateful smile, but sobered as she said, "I guess it's like this. People die and they leave a lot unfinished. Dad wasn't even a soldier and it happened to him. I get shot at or pounced on all the time. If I want something to happen before I die, I can't just assume that it's going to come to pass. I have to think about it way in advance and line up the things that have to be done first, and then I have to make it happen myself."
"Like with-" He pointed southward, towards the distant lights of the robot factory. "How long were you planning that out?"
"Months. I don't even know how long." She shrugged. "This is... not quite so long that I'd been planning, but it- it was pretty close."
Okay. So. She wanted a thing- a thing with him- to happen. A thing that might involve finding out about those alien scars. And she'd been planning it for a long time. That was good. He was pretty sure that was good, anyway. It sounded like a good thing to him. You didn't spend months planning the most practical way to tell somebody you never wanted to see them again.
But, uh, you didn't really plan that long on a whole lot else, either. Not unless it was something that would change your.... entire...
"Ellen?" he said with supreme care, because even the Architect of the Universe couldn't always prevent his voice from going squeaky under stress. "Do you think you could maybe just, I don't know, stop trying to explain and tell me exactly what it was you've been planning for?"
"Sorry," she said, and it wasn't just her scars that darkened that time. "I'm really not good at things between a man and a woman."
"I'm gonna need you to be a little more specific than that, Ellen."
There was a clank of cerasteel and polymer, the sound of her armored hands coming together in front of her face. When she dropped them, she looked up at him and said, "I stink at things between a man and a woman, but I'm reasonably good at practicality. I would prefer to do the responsible adult thing and get married before something out in the Wasteland kills me. Have I completely ruined the possibility yet, or is that an option you might be interested in?"
It's Jerald you're talking to, anyway. The best weapon is the one that ends the fight the fastest. You ended that particular fight and a whole bunch of others before that kind of damage could be inflicted on anyone else. He'll understand.
It would be great if I could just think of a way to get the first sentence out.
That was the problem, when it came down to it. She could talk about what happened to strangers- mostly- kind of. The less she knew them, the easier it was. They didn't know her; they hadn't met her and they wouldn't be likely to meet her again unless she sought them out. She didn't have to live with them looking at her and knowing, day in and day out- or with what would happen if she started the conversation exactly the wrong way and everything snowballed. It wasn't like she'd still have to work with that Jason person day in and day out even after giving him more than he wanted to know, after all. She could talk to them and walk away, which was... pretty much exactly the opposite of the situation here. Even if the subject wasn't shameful (and it wasn't for the Founder, and it wasn't in Thor's eyes, so why should it be in hers), there was still the presentation. That was the important part. That was where the trouble lay-
Something rustled in the distance, a sound like scorpion chitin dragging over exposed rock. Ellen shook herself, hard. Even in the more civilized parts of the Wasteland distraction could still get you killed. Plan for the future, live in the moment, that was the rule.
She took a deep breath and stepped across the all-but-invisible line on the ruined old road that marked the Megaton Brotherhood garrison's perimeter. The Sentrybots would be coming to meet her in a moment.
Jerald's red robes- well, everything about him, but the robes especially- stank of burned argon when he finally emerged from the garrison-house's basement. "Sorry about that," he said, pushing his goggles up from his forehead. "I was working on a plas... ma... something's wrong, isn't it."
"What? No-"
"No no no, something is wrong." He tried to make a dismissive gesture. It came out as flailing. Stupid hands. "It's practically dark and you're out here in the heavy armor and the sword. Who died?"
"Nobody died," said Ellen, her eyes a little wide- wider than usual. Oh God something was wrong, that was the something was wrong face. (And she was swallowing, that was even worse.) "I just- I needed to talk to you-"
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no. That was practically we need to talk, and Jerald had studied enough of the old records during his days of aspiring to the Order of the Quill to have seen that phrase and its consequences. Nothing good, nothing good ever in the history of men and women, could ever come after that phrase.
"I... okay?" he said, and thanked the Master of Engineers and Architect of the Universe that the words came out sounding puzzled, but steady. "I'm... thinking not here, though. Am I right?"
"You're right," said Ellen. "Not here."
Oh no.
A jagged silver streak ran from one ancient fence-post to another up ahead: the wire that marked the edge of Megaton's cattle-lands. There was a whiff of Brahmin on the wind, but nothing so great as to be a problem- and anyway, they were upwind from Moira's printing-house here. The Brahmin were the lesser of two evils. Ellen was never a great fan of the big room with the blue ceiling, but even fresh out of the Vault she'd found being outdoors at night a little easier. As long as she didn't look too closely at the Moon, she could about convince herself that she was back in the Atrium, under strategically dimmed lights. It helped, a little.
"This seems like- like a good place," she said, and winced. The stress-stammer she'd picked up after her father's death didn't surface much these days. Just when things actually mattered. Great. "I don't- I've been trying to-"
She faltered. Even in the dying evening light she could make out the twitchy, wish-I-had-a-screwdriver motions of Jerald's hands against each other. Whether his face matched the fidgeting, she couldn't say. She didn't dare look up, or her nerve would fail her.
"-Jerald, I need you to promise me something," she finally said. "I have to- to tell you something and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to tell you unless I can get all the way through from start to finish without stopping. If- if-"
"I can listen," he answered, fingers still sliding over each other as if it would somehow help. "I'm good at that."
"Okay," Ellen said, "okay. Um."
So many ways to start. So many ways to fail.
"Please don't be upset that it took me this long to tell you about this," she began. "I just- just- do you remember the ship? The one in orbit, that we contacted with the Second Diana mast?"
"The one with the death ray? How could I forget?"
Ellen had to smile a little at that. "That's the one," she said. "It's like this..."
Jerald listened. As he'd said, he was good at that. He listened at first because he'd promised, and then because he wanted to know what had happened next, and at the end he was listening because he couldn't have made words come out of his mouth if he'd tried. You heard things, sometimes- read them in the old texts, in captured Enclave holotapes, in the Founder's diary. About experiments. Old world things, mostly. People didn't have the resources for them so much since the War. Or you hoped they didn't, anyway, they weren't the kind of thing you wanted to think still went on. The world was bad enough sometimes.
But there'd been Point Lookout. And there was this.
(At least, he thought, this... wasn't humans. At least people hadn't done it to her.)
(At least she'd killed them all.)
(Probably faster than they deserved.)
She was looking at him, and it might've been her Tesla armor, but it looked as if she had her shoulders hunched a little bit more around her ears than usual. Like she was bracing for a- oh, it was his turn to speak, wasn't it...
"I had no idea," he said, and cursed himself for sounding so, so trite. "If you hadn't told me-"
"-you would have found out eventually," she finished for him, and dropped her gaze. "And that's an awful kind of surprise."
"Well, yeah, it-" He paused. "Seriously?"
"Seriously what?"
"Seriously I would have found out. We were going to...?"
She still didn't look at him. It was pretty well dark out by now, but she didn't have her helmet on, and there was a little moonlight. The lines of old injuries got dark at sensitive times, and boy howdy, were the ones on her face darkening now. "I... planned to, yes," she finally murmured.
... that wasn't where he thought that sentence was going to go. "Um," he started, and promptly ran out of words.
She looked up then. He knew that look. Just- from the inside. That was his look when he'd started to ask Scribe Peabody something waaaaaaaay above his water ration and was just sure he was about to get thumped for it. "It's okay," he said hastily. "I just- didn't- what were you planning to?"
"Um." Ellen looked away then, armored hand halfway to her face. She dropped it a moment later. "Um. Well."
"I'm still listening, you know. Do you need me to not talk?"
"No, I- no." She inhaled, and then she made a face. Jerald couldn't blame her. They were, after all, on the edge of a Brahmin pasture. "This is something else..."
"Okay, well-"
"I'm not my father and I don't ever intend to be," she said, her words hurried to the point of tripping over one another. "Don't get me wrong. I loved my father. And he was a- he was a good man and we owe him and the water purifier is the best thing that happened to the Wasteland since Elder Lyons but honestly, my father had really bad planning skills."
.... yeah, that wasn't what he was expecting either.
"Dad just- just tended to decide on things he wanted to do and kind of assumed that whatever he needed to take place for them to happen, would take place," Ellen went on. "And it caused a lot of trouble for- for a lot of people- anyway, the point. The point is, if there's one thing I ever learned from my father it's that I don't want to wind up like him-" She kicked at the sandy soil in frustration. "Argh! This made more sense in my head."
"Keep going," Jerald said carefully. "I'm not going anywhere."
She flashed him a grateful smile, but sobered as she said, "I guess it's like this. People die and they leave a lot unfinished. Dad wasn't even a soldier and it happened to him. I get shot at or pounced on all the time. If I want something to happen before I die, I can't just assume that it's going to come to pass. I have to think about it way in advance and line up the things that have to be done first, and then I have to make it happen myself."
"Like with-" He pointed southward, towards the distant lights of the robot factory. "How long were you planning that out?"
"Months. I don't even know how long." She shrugged. "This is... not quite so long that I'd been planning, but it- it was pretty close."
Okay. So. She wanted a thing- a thing with him- to happen. A thing that might involve finding out about those alien scars. And she'd been planning it for a long time. That was good. He was pretty sure that was good, anyway. It sounded like a good thing to him. You didn't spend months planning the most practical way to tell somebody you never wanted to see them again.
But, uh, you didn't really plan that long on a whole lot else, either. Not unless it was something that would change your.... entire...
"Ellen?" he said with supreme care, because even the Architect of the Universe couldn't always prevent his voice from going squeaky under stress. "Do you think you could maybe just, I don't know, stop trying to explain and tell me exactly what it was you've been planning for?"
"Sorry," she said, and it wasn't just her scars that darkened that time. "I'm really not good at things between a man and a woman."
"I'm gonna need you to be a little more specific than that, Ellen."
There was a clank of cerasteel and polymer, the sound of her armored hands coming together in front of her face. When she dropped them, she looked up at him and said, "I stink at things between a man and a woman, but I'm reasonably good at practicality. I would prefer to do the responsible adult thing and get married before something out in the Wasteland kills me. Have I completely ruined the possibility yet, or is that an option you might be interested in?"