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A decade. It had been a decade since Alex had walked into The Ninth Circle, and changed his life forever. He thought about it daily. Tried to remember her as she had been then, a scared nineteen year old, shivering in fear in her leather armor. She’d stuck out to him. So out of place, even for a human in a city of ghouls. She screamed vault dweller.
It got more difficult to remember that version of her every year. At that point she had been out of the vault for only two weeks, and still was blinded to the horrors of the waste.
Two months later, and she had been a completely different person. He couldn’t say when she had changed, if it had even been a certain moment. It could have been when she first saw the aftermath of a super mutant attack. It could have been when she ventured into an abandoned vault for the first time, and saw what Vault-Tec had actually been doing. It could even have been when she saw Gob’s bruised face again when they ventured back to Megaton.
Or it could have been when she saw her father slamming against the glass of the rotunda, telling her to run.
Before, she had been willing to go out of her way to help others, even at her own expense. She’d go through a super mutant infested building, just to grab a supposed heirloom for somebody. She’d sneak through a raider hideout, just to save somebody’s supposed sweetheart. Until she realized they were traps, and that nobody cared about heirlooms, and nobody cared about others. Charon had had to teach her. Show her the cruelty of the world.
She’d been so determined to make the world a better place, even as she added more pieces of armor to her ensemble, as she stopped tearing up when she came across the mutilated bodies of people trying to carve out a living, as the track marks on her arm became more and more pronounced. Even as she slowly became more scarred, inside and out. She had never stopped trying to improve the world.
Starting in DC, with Project Purity, and wiping out the Enclave, on a larger scale. Destroying Paradise Falls, and putting a bullet in Eulogy Jones' skull. On a smaller scale, helping Brian Wilks find a home when he had lost his. Helping Ian West accept his parents death. Then they moved on to Vegas, and she continued to try to help, always help. Protecting Goodsprings from the powder gangers. Finding Primm a new sheriff. Helping the NCR, helping Boone, helping Novac, helping that cult of ghouls that Charon could not stand. Paving the way towards an independent Vegas, even after taking twin bullets to the head.
It mixed with the failures, no matter how hard she tried. She couldn’t save her father. She could never go back to her vault, her home, again. She couldn’t save Dogmeat from the bullet that had felled him. She couldn’t stop the atrocities that the Enclave had committed, or that the Legion had committed. She couldn’t save everyone, no matter how hard she tried to.
Ten years later, and they were almost back where they started. Back on the East Coast, because they’d received a message from the Brotherhood, asking them to come back.
And Alex wasn’t that scared nineteen year old anymore. At all. Every trace of that girl had been wiped clean. The girl who had taken the GOAT and gotten the assigned job of Pip-Boy programmer. Who preferred to spend time with Edwin Brotch then with her peers. Who had trouble killing a radroach. Who had butted heads with the Overseer at every turn. Who would sneak off with Butch when her dad wasn’t looking. The girl who idolized her father. The vault girl who had never really fit in with the others, even with Amata.
Now she was a twenty-nine year old woman. Red hair pulled back into a ponytail, held in place with a first recon beret, so nothing could interfere with her vision, Bandana pulled over her face, to hide the scars she had accumulated over the years. Sunglasses for the same reason. The woman who kept the same, aged 10mm pistol on her belt, to remind her of the day she’d left home. Who wore a leather jacket with a snake on the back, to remind her of somebody she had lost a long time ago. Who shot with no hesitation. Who avoided going near a vault if she could help it. The woman who realized that her father had been an incredibly flawed man. The woman who had at least three people with her at all times, who she trusted without a doubt.
The woman who was curled up against Charon in a rusty bed, in an old Red Rocket wasn’t the same person who he had met a decade earlier. Because while War might not change, people certainly do.