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“This is the one. Here.”
… Why was everything so damn cold?
The first thoughts that bloomed in his mind when he was suddenly, slowly lured from some kind of sleep he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. His body wracked with shivers that struck him down to his core and he could feel his skin tingle like it was on fire the longer he strained himself to remain conscious. When he finally struggled to squint open his eyes, it was like he was caught in a Russian blizzard the likes he hadn’t felt since he was just a baby. His breath caught his neck like a noose, and burned like whiskey down his throat and continued the whole way through his lungs. Every inch of him hurt. Everything was pain.
But not nearly as painful to him as the sight before his hazy vision, in that tiny frosted window pressed so closely towards his face. He could just barely make out the image of his husband, but over the shaking of his own body and the pounding pressure in his head, he couldn’t make out any of the words he was saying to the mysterious figures beside him.
The figure to the left had a gun. Nati struggled to keep holding onto their son, when the one on the right tried to take him out of his shivering arms.
“Nati…”
The voice was unrecognizable as his own, strained and hoarse from the frigid containment. But the man on the left was raising his gun, leveling it towards Nataniel’s head. He needed to warn him. He needed to do something to save him…
“I’m not giving you Shaun!”
A shaking fist rose. He couldn’t feel anything besides the sudden intense pain through the numbness in his arms as it punched against the glass in a futile attempt at breaking free. He felt so weak, but he couldn’t stop the fist rising and falling over and over into the barrier until the metal edge of the window sliced his palm and the blood smeared on the glass blurred away his vision.
Then there was a gunshot, so loud he could feel the reverb blast through his very soul.
And he couldn’t hear Nati any longer.
“At least we still have a backup…”
The scarred man’s face encroached upon his prison like a predator on its feeble cornered prey, staring into his eyes with a vicious look of some kind of smug hate while his companion walked out of the vault with his son.
Ilyana closed his eyes, trying to will the image away; trying to tell himself this was just a nightmare, and he’d wake up again back at home, with his baby. And his husband.
His eyes shot open, almost hopeful.
In his left hand, still smeared with his own blood as it had been before, he was now clutching a knife— the blade clean and gleaming in the darkness of the poorly-lit room he stood in. Around his feet was the sparking of surged out electronics, shaped almost identically to a real human, but internally nothing more than another pile of plastic and metal. Synths, as he had come to know them.
In his right hand, he held the neck of the scarred man—grappling against his grip, wheezing, struggling to breathe around the crushing hold he held him in, but unable to stand due to the bullet holes penetrating each of his knees and gushing crimson all along the dirty floor. He blinked again.
The knife was gouged into the man’s throat beside his palm as easy as a hot iron through ice. With a slow and methodical movement, his hand moved to slice upwards along his jawline, beneath his chin, and up along the trail of that hideous scar that mutilated his repugnant visage. He could hear the gurgled scream of agony ring in his ears, almost as clearly as he could hear the gunshot that took away the life of his husband.
He could feel the hot blood surging from the massive wound, running over his palm, down his decorated arm, almost as clearly as he could feel the frozen, frosty air of the cryopod when he had helplessly watched this person steal away his child.
His eyes fell shut slowly, nearly overcome with the relief and satisfaction in finally achieving his revenge. He’d finally be able to find his son; he knew now where he was. He felt happy, for the first time, since being thrown into this new world.
When they opened again, he was staring back down at his hands.
No longer drenched in blood, his left hand was holding onto another—a hand wrinkled and worn with a lifetime of age. His eyes turned upwards, but his vision was impossibly blurred again.
Not with the frost.
Not with the blood.
But the tears that burned his eyes and silently ran down his scarred cheeks hurt worse than any of those other things he had ever felt before.
He tried to blink it away, hoping to wake up in another world, hundreds of years from this one. But the sight remained the same every time he looked.
His son, older than he was, laying in a white room, on a white bed, surrounded by clean white sheets, no longer drawing breath.
Someone beside him was saying words, calling him “Director,” but the sound was like a muffled hissing through the fog of his mind. He found he could barely breathe himself—the pain crushing his chest making the movement slow and labored. He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing, but the excruciating weight sinking him down nagged him into the horrible realization that this was no dream. This wasn’t something he could escape. His eyes closed tightly, blinking away the tears that seared his sight in an added offence of pain to what he already felt deep inside himself.
“… -yana?”
A gentle voice was trying to entice him from his mind, but it was impossible to hear over the sudden sound of soft crying that guided him away from the cloud of white and into a smoky, dusty smelling room. He didn’t want to open his eyes again.
He didn’t care this time. Nothing mattered anymore.
“I trusted you. I loved you, goddamn it,” a woman sobbed, her voice cracking with the desperate agony she was pouring into each word. He recognized the familiar noise immediately. The reporter. He had spent months with her, believing it might be possible for him to feel something for someone again, in his own selfish vanity—especially someone as clever as she was, perhaps, she could’ve been more than just a distraction—but it was of course just going to end. Everything did.
He didn’t care.
He didn’t want to see the pain that he had caused drawn across her beautiful face. He knew he was doing her a favor in leaving. He wasn’t worth those tears pouring down her cheeks, from those bright and intelligent hazel eyes he had stared into night after night.
All he could feel was her hand, rough with the life of the wasteland, touching his arm and trying to draw him in. He remained rigid in the spot. “Why won’t you say anything? Why won’t—“
“ –you fuckin’ look me in the face when I kill you, boy?!” The sudden braying of a Cockney accent physically pained him and he cringed in response. The jeering and screaming of a massive crowd swelled over the sound of the reporter’s tears, backing up the idiotic threats. The transition was so jarring that he sighed, his eyes calmly opening once again.
But instead of seeing the source of the voice, clad in the electrified power armor, ready for the predictable match to the death, all he saw was a fucking squirt gun clenched in his left hand. He casually looked past it, down to the ground, where a shattered, mangled pile of metal encasing the bloody crushed in skull of the person who had previously worn the suit like a proud and indestructible force lay. Around him there was a ringing silence of hundreds of people, stunned, unable to formulate words to adequately react to the sight they were seeing.
But then, the same voice as before whispered to him. Softly, in his ear, over the volcanic burst of raucous anger from the raiders that filled the arena around him—
“Ily-…”
He blinked open his clear blue eyes abruptly, and he was no longer forced into another new layer of the nightmare. This time, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, in what he perceived to probably be the present.
“…-ana?”
The open –area room of the Fizztop Grill was stagnant with the warm summer’s night air. Ilyana was greeted by the dim light from the multicolored bulbs that hung above his head, draped in slow little lopes from when he had half-heartedly tried to redecorate from the previous resident’s maniacal mess of mannequins and other failed, sophomoric attempts at making the place look intimidating. It wasn’t much better looking, still grimy and half-destroyed, but the warm light in the hazy evening made the place almost inviting. Definitely less gross than it had looked before.
Immediately he was aware of a painful burning in his hand and he jerked his vacant stare down towards the offending sensation. The shriveled stub of a cigarette was held between two skinny tattooed fingers, having burned all the way down through its ancient filter to singe angrily into his skin. He couldn’t recall how it got there, or remember if he had even lit it—but with an irritated hiss, he tossed it down to the wooden floor below him and crushed it out beneath the sole of his bare foot. With all the reluctance he still felt from reliving the memories still swirling through his mind like a pervasive and unrelenting hurricane, he turned his head towards the source of the quiet little voice.
Fierce blue eyes dragged along the floor, as though he was forced into some kind of slow motion—first up the tan legs planted beside his own ghostly pale ones, lingering only for a moment on the gruesome scar across the top. Then they continued on his way across the bare chest, marred with several burn marks and various other old injuries—and right before him, his thoughts vividly flashed to a much different image of this same person.
Shocked, gasping breaths filling the room, kneeling on the floor several feet from where they were now, blood pouring from a pair of two neat little bullet holes in his left shoulder. He shook the thought away, and the sight of the splotchy healed scar from the same wound, two matching round marks right beside one another, replaced the gory vision.
When he finally met those kind blue eyes, brows furrowed with such a pure and honest look of concern, he could hear all those voices in his head seem to silence all at once.
The memories subsided, withdrawing into his mind like a wave receding over a coast after its crash, and all he could see was him. For some reason he couldn’t quite explain, he felt such a sudden rush of relief that he sighed out a tense breath he hadn’t even noticed he’d been keeping in.
Sitting close by his side on the filthy makeshift bed, he was greeted by the gentle smiling face of none other than the leader of those who fought for everything he himself sought to destroy. The one who stood up for those people him and his men tore down on a daily basis.
The Minuteman General… Someone with every reason he could possibly imagine to hate everything about him, instead just pouring himself into his doleful gaze with some kind of sweet look of genuine affection.
Ilyana forced himself to offer a sly little smile in return, betraying his tormented thoughts in a way he knew could be convincing enough to avoid questions.
“I’m sorry, Sunflower… I know how you hate cigarettes,” he purred, the words coming from his lips in a silky fog that disguised the remaining tremor in his throat, as if the burnt stub of an unsmoked cigarette could possibly be the reason Adam was looking at him with those concerned eyes in the way that he was. A hand rose and immediately his attention was drawn to his palm, where without realizing, he had been clenching a fist so tightly that small, red, moon-shaped cuts now decorated the pale skin and began to swell tiny droplets of blood from the newly opened wounds. He tried not to pay it any mind. He knew Adam would worry far too much if he did—with everyone he ever met, he was always like that.
Ilyana reached forward to rest each fingertip against the General’s jaw, so softly that he almost couldn’t feel the way Adam’s face burned with just that tiny touch, and he guided him closer with hardly any effort to draw him into a gentle kiss.
Adam, as always, was helpless to resist. He was just as instantly flustered as Ilyana always expected him to be, but the way that he leaned in just ever so slightly to return the gesture breathed a new life into Ilyana that he had been drained of by his cruel and incessant reminiscence of the months past. Never since his late husband had he ever met someone with such a natural ability to brighten even the darkest of times as Adam had.
But the auburn-haired man pulling back from the kiss in such a clearly reluctant manner when Ilyana moved to deepen it proved that maybe he wasn’t quite as convincing as he had thought. Adam glanced away, and after a momentary pause, gently took ahold of the hand that rested on his flushed cheek to turn it over and reveal the line of angry looking cuts splayed out across the palm. When he finally looked up again to meet the Overboss’ harsh stare, his blue eyes didn’t show any fear of him, as so many others had before—instead, just that same beautiful, compassionate look he was so good at.
“Ilyana…” he began again, even when Ilyana curled his hand back shut and withdrew it to his side. “You know I don’t mean to pry, but… You can tell me anything that’s botherin’ you.”
His soft country accent was like a melody, so calm and familiar that it made Ilyana just want to close his eyes and listen to him talk for hours, if he could. But when he did allow his eyes to daze shut once again, all he could see was the same intrusive image as before: General Adam R. Lee, in his Minuteman grays, collapsed on the floor of the Fizztop Grill, clutching onto the profusely bleeding bullet wounds in his shoulder, staring up at him with such a look of horror and betrayal that that sight alone made Ilyana screw his face up in disgust. And then his mind seemed to drift him back to Vault 111…
The pod in front of him opened. Only there was no scarred man to blame this time for injuring someone he cared for—no vengeance to be sought to make the attack right. Holding the .44 pistol, empty bitterness in his eyes, it was only himself. And Adam there before him.
And the shot rang out just as deafeningly loud as the one that took Nati away from him.
You did that to him.
You hurt him.
His mind berated him with the underlying guilt that hung over his head with every kind look or word the General offered him. And somehow, against all reasonable logic, Adam was right back here, staring at him so trustingly that it made Ilyana sick.
You don’t deserve this.
His hand moved from his side to grip onto the bare shoulder right before him, marked with the ugly scars he had caused, to gently trace the shape with the tip of his thumb. He was momentarily aware of the way his palm left little blotched prints of his own blood over the area and he winced at the irony of it, and then forced himself back into Adam’s eyes.
He could brush it off, find some way to make Adam forget about it—which was never very hard to do –and try to move it from his own conscience; but at the moment, he felt no inclination to allow himself that pleasure. Instead, he wrapped his free arm around behind Adam’s back to pull him closer, leaning down only a bit to join him at his height and to press a series of ghostly kisses against that spot on his left shoulder that stood out like a painful beacon to him over the rest of the expanse of his perfectly tan, freckled body. He could feel Adam’s skin radiate with the warmth from his typical embarrassment, but he didn’t draw back to make any sort of amused comment, like he might ordinarily do. Instead, Ilyana just laid his head down, nestling his forehead against that spot as he held the smaller man close into his one-armed embrace.
After a long, comfortable silence of finding himself entranced by just breathing in the pleasant scent Adam always seemed to somehow have— something like a flower he had encountered in the wasteland before, but wasn’t really sure which one— Ilyana finally spoke again.
“Why do you keep coming back?”
He didn’t want to ask. He especially didn’t want to break his confident, “always in control” aura that he always tried to maintain, but it seemed as though Adam has found his way through that one too. As a rule, he never let himself get attached to others anymore. No one mattered. No one but him.
Although the more he told himself that lately, the less he found himself being convinced by his own words.
It had been a long time since their first meeting, which began in a particularly unorthodox way with an unexpected kiss from the white-haired Overboss, attempting to easily sway his supposed enemy in a way that threw Adam for such a loop that he couldn’t even properly recall his demands that he had originally planned to bring forward to the raider leader. He took the chance in his confusion to take him in, lock him away, and consider how to further deal with the intrusion.
But somehow along the lines of his capture, Ilyana had accidentally began to take an interest in him—so when a troop of Minutemen stormed Nuka World to try rescue their General, he couldn’t quell the violent internal urges as backlash for the inevitable betrayal he scolded himself for, that he should have expected, but naively didn’t think would come from someone like Adam.
So he shot him.
And had Gage throw him outside the Nuka World walls in an uncharacteristic show of mercy, to be spared, and taken back with his men.
Only he hadn’t counted on Adam finding his way back again, just two weeks later, on his own accord… With no men to back him up, and no apparent drive for revenge. It didn’t make any sense to him. This person should despise him, should be trying to arrange some sort of massive retaliation—but instead, he stood there alone in the doorway before the balcony of Ilyana’s bedroom, red hair glowing like silk under the warm afternoon sun giving him some sort of halo of light that only further emphasized the fact that there was no sign of anger or hostility in his face. In fact, he was blushing…
Ilyana was baffled—completely thrown back as to how someone could possibly put that much faith into his enemy as Adam was.
But Ilyana was never one to turn down an opportunity such as this when it presented itself. Without ever letting his slip-up of confusion show, not to allow his enemy to get the upper-hand in his own home, he wordlessly ascended upon the smaller man in as vicious a way as he possibly could, so he could gauge his reaction. He needed to know just what kind of trick this person could be trying to pull on him…
But Adam hadn’t flinched. He stared up at him with those sweet, round eyes, as if the scowl on Ilyana’s face had no effect on him whatsoever.
So Ilyana kissed him. Aggressively this time—dominating, drawing him into his lair like a snake pulling its victim into its hole. But Adam still didn’t fight back.
After that, it seemed the Minuteman General, whether intentionally or not, had begun to take an interest in him too. Adam began making it a point to pay him a visit again every chance he could… And Ilyana was pleased to indulge those urges.
Only now, for some reason, he couldn’t seem to shake this sinking feeling whenever the memories of their first meeting resurfaced. He couldn’t seem to quell the hatred he felt for the version of himself who would have shot him and left him to die. And he also couldn’t stop the warmth he felt in his chest, or the way his heart seemed to race whenever Adam showed up out of the blue on his balcony, as he had so many times at this point.
He hated that feeling.
But no matter if he tried to push him away and go back to the dark, comforting solitude that he was used to, Adam somehow always seemed to find a way to coax him back into the light.
He still didn’t know what to think of that.
Ilyana buried his face further down into the crook of Adam’s neck, and when he felt Adam shrug slightly as a delayed answer to his question, he clung onto his arm even tighter.
“We didn’t come to any agreement over the settlements under Minuteman protection,” Adam plainly stated, as if it should’ve been obvious. But then he hesitated for a moment, and with a little bit less confidence, added, “And also, well… you kissed me. I needed to know why.”
Ilyana let out a dry, humorless laugh. He pulled back just enough so his deadpan stare could meet Adam’s, but the nervous, embarrassed look on his face didn’t give any indication that this was just some kind of joke. He examined him cautiously before answering.
“I’m a bad man,” He stated with such a clear resentment for the mention of himself that his hand which was clenched onto Adam’s arm dug harder into him with the strain of the words—the look in his eyes only exemplifying the insistence. He knew there was no way a person could care about someone like him, even just in some sort of dangerous game of curiosity. There was no reason he should be forgiven, and to him, Adam’s kindness was damn near unfathomable. In his own twisted way, it was as if he needed to instinctively search to try to see where it ended.
“I hurt you. I could have killed you if I wanted to—“
“ –But you didn’t.” Adam quietly interjected, his hand crossing over to rest on top of Ilyana’s so carefully that he felt his sharp grip loosen reactively. “I believe there is good in all people. You included. Your life led you into a bad place, but… you’re not a bad person.” Adam smiled gently, and Ilyana only furrowed his brow in response. He didn’t believe a word of it, of course, but from the sincerity in Adam’s voice, he almost could think that he actually believed himself.
“This ain’t the life I thought I wanted. Heck, this isn’t even the world I thought I wanted—“ Ilyana’s face briefly flashed with a slight confusion at that statement, but he chose to silently let Adam continue instead of questioning it. “–but people adapt the only way they can. By surviving. And survivin’ is what forces people to choose what side they want to be on. For me… I couldn’t live if I wasn’t doin’ all I could to help people out here in the Wasteland.”
Ilyana glanced away pensively towards the window beside them, overlooking the kingdom of murderers and thieves that lay dormant in the decrepit theme park below. Adam brought himself willingly into the den of monsters, saw all this carnage for himself, and still could believe in the good of people.
It was astounding, really.
“…You never killed any of those settlers whose homes your men stole. I’ve heard the stories from all of them.” Adam added the statement with such trepidation that the tension he felt in bringing up their business at a time like this was almost palpable. “You always demanded that those innocents were spared. If you ask me… That ain’t the sign of a bad man.”
Ilyana scoffed, but found himself unwilling—or perhaps unable—to come up with some sort of excuse as to why that was. He couldn’t even explain it himself if he wanted to. He didn’t care about those people. He stole their homes as if it was nothing. He felt no remorse. He was as heartless as he was supposed to be. Revered for being merciless amongst his men.
But the stereotypical raider persona he was expected to have grew… tedious. And something within him felt an intrinsic drive to let those people live. He didn’t ever question it before, until now.
“Everyone is only out for themselves in this world, Sunflower. Myself included.” The last addition was slid in nearly as an afterthought, sounding so resentful that the words were enunciated with a sneer. “I don’t see good in anybody.”
Slowly, he turned again to meet the watchful look from the General beside him. Adam didn’t appear disappointed in him, as he’d expected. Not even judgmental. Just the same kind stare as always.
“No one but you.” Ilyana smiled, only a half-hearted, exhausted little smirk, but enough that it seemed to brighten Adam up anyway. “If someone like you says there is good in me… maybe I will put some thought into it. Don’t get your hopes up.”
Ilyana hesitated for a long moment, and then reached a hand out to cup Adam’s cheek thoughtfully. As usual, he could feel him blush beneath his touch. His clear eyes scrutinized Adam’s blue ones, as if he could provide him some further solace to the bitterness inside that he felt towards himself, but he found no lingering answers to those unasked questions. Just the same feeling of warmth rising in his chest like it did every time he saw him again—and that same awkward skip of his heart when it seemed to try to race free from its confines.
He hated that feeling.
But when he leaned forward, reconnecting their lips so slowly and with such a careful movement, allowing his eyes to fall shut again—and no longer finding himself to be plagued by the terrors that came before with every blink of his eyes—he felt that maybe that feeling wasn’t actually quite as bad as he always told himself.