L'Enfant Plaza Hotel - Washington, DC, 2009

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Yesterday's journey from California to Washington, for all that most of it was spent in a cramped metal tube sitting still, was still a dickens of an experience. Between one thing and another, Ellen was all but exhausted by the time they'd checked in. She scarcely noticed the condition of the hotel around her on the way up to the room.

This morning is another story. Ellen sits up, blinking, as the light begins to stream into the room. That much light in her house in Megaton would mean something had gone disastrously wrong with one of the walls, after all. It takes her several minutes to cudgel her brain into accepting the room before her as real, and not an extension of some dream or other. Cautiously, she braces both hands on the mattress (there is nothing this soft in her experience!), swings her legs over the side (there were carpets in the Vault but they were little area rugs, threadbare from hundreds of years of use), and pads across the floor to peek out through the gap in the curtains.

She's going to be standing there, staring, for a good little while. The sky beyond is blue, dotted here and there with cloud. The buildings, all of them as far as the eye can see, are whole and entire. Green patches of ground and tufts of high vegetation she can't identify dot the spaces between the buildings in the places where cars aren't puttering through the streets. A virtually pristine, marble-clad Washington Monument rises to the sky startlingly close at hand. And the-

It may be a while before it really sinks in that she's looking at blossoming cherry trees far below. The only blooming plants she's seen before this have all been farmed vegetation, pea plants and tomatoes grown under indoor lighting and the like. Certainly nothing that big, or that massively effusive in the amount of flowers put forth- and it's a dead certainty that she's never even seen a cherry tree, anyway, so there you are.

Like we said, she'll be staring for a while.

Comments

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"No, it's okay."

Really. It's not like she's going to post it to her MySpace page or something.

He still has the most wooden smile imaginable.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"If you're sure," Ellen says doubtfully. "You just look like you'd rather have a tooth pulled, that's all."

She'll take the picture anyway. The sooner this is over, the sooner Mills will stop looking like that.

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

That actually makes him laugh, and that's the picture she catches on her camera.

Wonder of wonders.

He leans over to see the picture, and grins again, waving a hand as she takes it back. "Kim says almost the same thing."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"She's in a position to know," says Ellen solemnly. "Okay, I should finish this thing so we can get going..."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Right," he gives her a soft smile, and his eyes look down to the table.

He shows her how to save the pics she wants and delete the others, and then how to get back to the normal phone display.

"And so you know, I've only been home for Kim for a couple of years. I was in the field for the rest of her childhood. So you've still had more time with your father than she had." He doesn't sound upset, just matter-of-fact.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Well, yes," says Ellen, "but what I meant was that she's known you longer than I've known you, that's all."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps in days, Ellen. But not in moments."

He's not quite sure that makes sense, but he can't really find the words to explain what it's like to see his daughter grow up and away. It's a triumph, because she's a beautiful young woman. But it's like losing her all over again, this time by increments.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen's not quite sure she understands that herself, either, but she nods anyway. Sooner or later, she figures, she'll make out what he means.

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Let's do this thing, shall we? I think it's a few blocks walk before we get to the good stuff."

He stands and hands her the map. "Lead on, MacDuff."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I thought it was lay on," Ellen says absently, but she's busy gathering up what needs to be tidied up before heading out. "All right."

She's still more than a little surprised by how humid the air is outside, even though it's not a particularly damp day, but not enough to let it distract her from looking at everything else as they make their way down D Street.

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Yeah? Probably is."

He switches mode on the street, becoming more of the Mills she recognises from the bar.

"Which way do you think?" It's a joke, really. The riot of pink is only in one direction.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"We had to memorize stretches of Shakespeare plays for Mr. Brotch's classes. I got some chunks of that one and Hamlet. Some of the other students got tapped to memorize entire plays," says Ellen. "Just in case."

She smiles a little and heads in the direction of the pink, but her walk slows as they get closer. There's going to be some judicious staring now that she's close enough to do so properly.

Well, her and about one in three other people on the street. It is tourism season, after all.

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Don't forget the camera," he reminds her, rather enjoying the trees himself. His eyes skip off a few of the other bodies also sharing the path with them. Nothing to worry about.

"Shakespeare's good. Know anything else?"

In the distance, the curving white dome of the Jefferson Memorial is just coming into view.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods; the camera is in her hand and not likely to leave any time soon. "We had to study Dickens in English Literature," she says. "And some of the old Greek classics, too, although all of that was in English. I... don't think a lot of foreign languages survived in the Vault, other than knowing what some of them looked like, written down."

After a momentary pause, she starts taking landscape pictures. Because she can, really.

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Dickens. That's strangely fitting."

He follows behind her, hands in his jacket pockets, taking in the scenery.

"So, how big is the Vault, anyway?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It was originally designed to hold close to a thousand people," says Ellen. "There's not nearly that many any more, but after two hundred years in a closed system I guess you really can't expect replacement rate population refreshment no matter how hard you try."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

His brow furrows. "So, it wasn't the only one of it's kind, was it? I mean, a thousand people. Not a lot when you're trying to preserve the human race."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh no," says Ellen. "They were numbered sequentially. I grew up in Vault 101. I actually met someone at Milliways who came from Vault 13, somewhere in California." She pauses for a few more photographs. "I don't know how many Vault-Tec built total, just that there were at least a hundred and one of them in the United States for sure."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"Hmm."

Mills walks on a bit, processing this.

"So, there was a corporation that built this bomb shelters." She can hear a hint of skepticism in his voice. "I wonder what part they had in the war itself."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"There'd been war all over the world, over similar resources, for decades before the nuclear exchanges started," Ellen points out. "I don't think Vault-Tec had much to do with the oil fields running dry, or the coal veins starting to tap out."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

"They just stood to make a profit from it. So it sounds like you have a good idea of what caused the wars and the nuclear exchanges. So the core of your civilisation survived intact, at least."

Always the pragmatist, Mills.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That was pretty much the point of the Vaults, really," Ellen says. "So... yes, there was that."

(In point of fact, that was not the point of the Vaults. Ellen, however, has no way of knowing.)

"... wow. I didn't realize how close we were getting to the Memorial..."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

Mills glances up at the neo-classical structure and has to pause. It is truly a beautiful sight.

"Did they teach you about Jefferson in school?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh yes. And all of the other Founding Fathers," says Ellen. "Mr. Brotch made very sure of that, even if some of the other people in the Vault thought we didn't need to know as much about not putting up with overbearing authority as he seemed to think we should."

[particularskill.livejournal.com]

That gets a dry chuckle out of Mills.

"There's one in every crowd, isn't there. It's why they wrote those documents in the first place. So we'd know we had rights and responsibilities as citizens."