Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I swore I’d never leave a record. 

I keep starting, stopping, deleting, repeating.

I want to believe that I’ve been waiting to speak my entire life, but that feels false. Is it freedom or terror?

I don’t know who I’m writing this for, or why. It doesn’t feel cathartic. It feels foreign, like I don’t trust my own words, too deliberate.

I have every reason to fear them. Language turns thoughts into selves. Maybe putting these thoughts into words will trap me into repeating them, even if I know better.

I can vividly recall my mother’s constant admonitions, from the moment we left Navarro. They won’t understand, Arcade. They’re different. If you tell, they’ll hurt us… ground in through repetition. Wasn’t that a burden to lay at the feet of a young boy. The shame. The unfairness.

I never chose this. I’m choosing it now though, aren’t I?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Or it won’t soon, anyways. 

Thirty years of silence, of knowing that I’d be held accountable for my father’s sins if I ever slipped up. I wonder what he’d think of me now. I hate that I care. 

I’m not him. 

I’m not what he was. That’s not the same thing.

I still put on that fucking suit. Thought I’d feel something that scared me. I didn’t. 

Ruth’s convinced me, convinced us, to follow her. She’s somehow at the center of all of this: the Remnants back together, New Vegas having a fighting chance. Finding myself here. 

Not that I needed much convincing to fight. I abhor Caesar’s little game of dress-up. All of that history, all of the knowledge the Followers gave him. Our Founders crawled out of their vaults for this? The rise and fall all over again, out of some deluded belief in inevitability.

Yet… Caesar’s not insane, just evil. He built a system that makes sense, I just find the axioms he built it on abhorrent. 

No, it doesn’t matter. Caesar’s dead. Or will be. Between the Remnants’ knowledge and the Enclave tech in the bunker, I don’t think we’re going to lose. I don’t think we can lose.

Caesar’s playing a very primitive game.

Extremis malis extrema remedia, I suppose. Or whatever else Oppenheimer told himself before the bomb. 

As for what comes after. After Caesar. After New Vegas. Ruth says there’s a place for us. Sanctuary. The idea seems ridiculous, impossible. But the thing is… I want to believe her. It’s strange. People orbit her. Not follow, not a conscious decision. Orbit. I don’t think I’m immune to gravity. 

There are days I try to believe that the past doesn’t define us. That people can be better than the worst thing they inherited.

Today isn’t one of them. 

The air in the bunker’s so clean. Probably the cleanest air I’ve ever tasted. Probably the safest place I’ve ever stood. A sanctuary of its own… for humans. 

They told me I was elect, once. Pure-strain, like that meant something, like I should carry that with me. 

Today, I don’t feel like a better man than he was.

I feel like a loaded weapon passed down from one generation to the next.

And I wrote it down.

Maybe language just makes the loop visible. 

Chapter Text

They were Enclave. I said it. 

Julie. I needed her to hear it from me. 

Didn’t feel like there’s a polite way to say sorry, I’ve decided to take up arms with the fascist paramilitary faction I was born into.

So, I just told her. 

“I’m leaving,” I said. “I’ve agreed to fight, with a group I used to be connected to. My parents were, anyway. It’s… if there were any other way to save New Vegas. But there isn’t.”

She raised her eyebrows. Waited.

I stared at the floor when I said it. “They were Enclave.”

It was quiet. She left me standing in her quarters without saying a word. I’d started to convince myself to run when she came back, offering me a bag of caps and medical supplies that I know the Fort can't really spare. 

She took my white coat. Message sent and received. I can't wear the garments of a Follower ever again, not after waging war under the banner of the Enclave.

I didn’t ask for forgiveness. Tried to tell her that I’d always remain loyal. That our past meant something.

She looked at me with this mixture of pity and regret that will be burned into my memory forever. Asked me if I thought Bill Calhoun heard the same thing once.

I wonder… if she had found out under better circumstances, would it have been different? I'm not sure I want to know.

I wonder if I was telling her the truth. The shape of loyalty, what I believe, who I am. They were Enclave.

It strikes me now, thinking about it. Julie isn’t afraid I’ll become Caesar. She’s afraid I’ll become useful to someone who might. That’s what frightens the Followers, what I’ve known since I was a child carrying this secret. Not corruption. Not violence. Proximity.

They were Enclave. And so was I, once. A secret I’d kept because I knew the fear it inspired, the hatred. It felt unjust, being tainted by proximity. Yet… were they wrong?

It feels like everything I’ve built since I was a thirteen year old boy studying in the Boneyard is falling apart. Is this just the price? The whole duty of man?

I hope I’ll be able to find Ignacio. Last I heard he was planning on heading back up to New Vegas. He wants to fight for people. He always has. Some selfish part of me needs him to believe that I haven’t fully betrayed his ideals. That being a Follower wasn’t just a cover for me. It gave me purpose. Reason.

A decade of hiding from him, running. Don’t want the only truth he knows about me to be the Tesla armor.

I didn’t have much to pack. Clothes. Some essentials for a long trip.

My mother’s holotape copy of the Tanakh, the only part of her I have left. A relic of a God who spared her, then stood silent for the rest.

All those plasma cartridges for my Defender that Gloria’s always happy to sell me without question.

A respirator fashioned with HEPA filters I cut out of some unfortunate vault’s defunct filtration system. When the dust kicks up, all that plutonium-239 I’m not resistant to...

Some purity. 

Chapter Text

I told Nicole, Dr. Usanagi, today.

This starts somewhere else.

I first heard of Ruth months before I met her. A story on the radio- a Mohave express courier who had miraculously survived being shot in the head and was recovering in Goodsprings.

Then came the other stories. There’s no shortage of gossip I hear… that I’ve overheard in the Fort.

Several insisted she'd left a Vault, although nobody could seem to decide which or where from. One traveling merchant speculated that perhaps she had been one of the New Canaanites once, that she had abandoned their Heavenly Mothers and Fathers and fled into the Mojave to start anew under a quieter sky. Others insisted that she had come from the East, a mix of places the locals could not name, and places that made my chest clench when I heard them spoken.

Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, and even just once D.C.

I even overheard a woman gossiping with Beatrix that the Courier had been one of the Legion, maybe even that of Caesar himself, that she was the real reason his army marched relentlessly west.

Then, finally, that night in Nicole’s clinic, long after the doors were locked for the night and most of the guards had gone to sleep. We shared a bottle of wine sitting together on her little cot, reminiscing about our days at ABMU, how coming out to New Vegas had felt like watching history rewind itself as we left civilization. We’d taken years of safety and hot showers for granted, hadn’t been entirely prepared for what practicing medicine outside those walls would really look like.

She told me about the Courier, who had come into the clinic seeking one of those nociception regulators to manage headaches that had never quite stopped since the day she’d woken up on Doc Mitchell’s exam table. Said the Courier claimed she’d grown up somewhere South, surrounded by pine and mountains. Told me she didn’t believe her, and I asked her why.

I imagine the alcohol gave her courage, or at least foolishness, because she looked at me so earnestly and said “She’s like us. All the signs of good nutrition and limited rads during early childhood. But…” she’d continued, so quietly I could barely hear her, “I know you weren’t borne of any vault.”

She never brought it up since that night.

I told her everything. I told her about the Enclave, the life I can scarcely remember in Navarro, an inheritance I’ve never stopped running from. I told her about FEV, that my father’s fathers created it, gave her the missing piece to a puzzle she’d already been putting together.

She just let me speak, unflinching. Told me she’d wondered if I’d ever trust her enough to tell her the truth.

I asked her why she’d never said anything after that night.

“Your reaction,” she answered, so blindingly obvious in retrospect. “Whatever it was, you’d protected it your whole life.”

I can’t tell the truth about myself without invoking everything I’ve tried to leave behind. These gifts my father gave me: more than flesh and blood, the parts of me that are of him under the layers of deflection and humor that I wear as armor. I told her that I would fight the Legion and defend these people. Told her about an uncertain future following Ruth away from this place and hoping the NCR and Brotherhood never caught up to us.

Whatever I’d expected, I wasn’t prepared for her simple, decisive response. “People always need doctors.”

She packed her bag, purchased medical supplies from her own clinic with caps I gave her. Said her goodbyes to the guards who have been protecting her day and night for years, asked them to pass a letter on to Julie.

All the things I’ve told her… and she still walked with me to the bunker.

She saw me and didn’t flinch. I don’t know what to call that, don’t understand. Love? Duty?

I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this loyalty, but I’ll try not to waste it.

Chapter Text

I can’t sleep. I keep replaying it, everything, all at once. Maybe writing it will help shape it into something I can make sense of. Maybe these thoughts need a name. 

The war ended today. 

New Vegas is free. 

Or it’s about to become someone else’s problem again, which is close enough for history to smooth the difference.

The tales of power and might I’d heard as a child brought to life. We humans will take back that which is rightfully ours. It was fast. So fast that the battle was already decided by the time Daisy landed the Vertibird. 

I can’t stop thinking about that part. Remnants moving together like this was a play they’d rehearsed a thousand times, because of course they have. The way the suit snapped into place perfectly around me, the way I filled my father’s shoes so readily. The clarity of purpose I felt in that moment. 

I’m compelled to tell whoever might read this one day that Caesar, Edward, was a disease that wanted to consume us all. To see him lain before me was such intoxicating relief. 

I washed his blood off of my father’s Tesla armor. I wonder sometimes... how many? I could ask Daisy, but I won’t. My thoughts keep drifting back to all the times growing up that Johnson said that my father was a good man, told me I was like him in a lot of ways. If I carry on any part of his legacy, let me be good. Whatever goodness means, today. 

Daisy, Johnson, Judah, and Nicole are safe with me. Daisy hasn’t lost her touch, had us back in the air and out of NCR territory before the dust settled. The Remnants were clear on their duty: get the Vertibird and the suits back in the bunker, no matter what. I imagine they’ve always hoped, on some level, that their fellow countrymen from the East are going to arrive one day. 

Ruth showed up with Veronica, Ignacio, and that Eyebot she calls ED-E in tow. I don’t know if they’re running from or towards something, but they will follow her. I couldn’t face Ignacio. Not yet, not tonight. 

Doc Henry left us just as soon as we landed, says he’s going right back up to his lodge in the mountains. I don’t think he’s afraid of what might come. 

Moreno died today. I don’t think he could stand the idea of running again, wanted to go out on his own terms. For all that he maintained that America had ended for us the day we left Navarro, these past few weeks have been like watching him come to life again after decades, newly imbued with purpose. I hope that he went believing that he gave the last full measure to what was still his country. In the morning I’ll lay him to rest outside this bunker. It feels right, close enough to the country he never really stopped believing he was a part of. Maybe he’ll find peace in its shadow. 

We brought a child (aged perhaps eight or nine) with us, Melody. I found her in the Legate’s tent, frozen with fear and clutching a patched-up teddy bear that’s seen better days. The horror I felt… I couldn’t leave her alone there. Nicole coaxed her back to the Vertibird with the promise of water and ration bars. What little we could get out of her was that her father was killed when the Legion came, and that her mother didn’t make it to this camp. Nicole is tending to her now, as we rest and gather our strength for all that comes next.

I trust Ruth. Trusted her when she said this battle could be won, that New Vegas deserved better than subjection to unjust kings. Trusted her as my hands shook getting into that godforsaken suit of power armor. 

I'm not sure I believe her, now, when she tells me I am more than my father's son. 

My thoughts keep returning to that clarity. The quiet. The moment Caesar fell, and I stood before him. I wonder what that clarity cost me. Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Chapter Text

We walked our first fifteen or so miles today. Had to veer off course a few miles north before we stopped to rest, as far away as we can get from humanity.

Ruth thinks it’ll be safer this way, less chance of running into anyone from the NCR who might have questions about how, exactly, Caesar fell so quickly.

I imagine they’ll be asking that question for decades. Let them.

I miss the bunker already, wonder if I’m too old for a new beginning. I’m certain that I’m not worthy of it… but I don’t want Melody to die alone in a concrete box one day.

It’s a strange thing, just how fast obligation can root itself. How quickly you can become responsible for someone else just because you were there. I never wanted children, not really. I think I’ve seen too many of them live and die senseless, miserable lives for that. 

But I can’t look at her and not feel it.

It feels like stepping into a story that I've already lived.

This sharp, urgent need to make sure she survives. To make sure she has something that even looks like a life.

I try not to let my mind drift, imagining the life she had before we found her. There’s this itch at the back of my mind, to turn around and burn everything that’s ever touched her.

I’m glad the suits are packed away in the bunker. That feels like a mercy. I’m not sure I ever needed to know firsthand: the way people look at you, what you’re capable of. The way the hiss of the airlock and the HUD visor lighting up makes the world smaller, actions cleaner, decisions binary. I need my distance from that.

Distance from Moreno, too. We weren’t ever close. The ideological difference between us was a chasm that seemed impossible to cross as I grew from a child of the Enclave into the man I am today. There’s something there now, though. I’m starting to understand the price he paid at Navarro, the fact that he sheltered me and ran. My compassion for him feels tainted, complicit.

I need to sleep. We’re trading off guard duty, and I hope so desperately that nobody finds us. The last thing I need is to stack more bodies behind us.

Chapter Text

I feel so empty. I’ve sat here with this file open for an hour and I can’t…

Daisy died today. 

We’ve been walking for six days now. Ruth found her in the morning, already long gone. I can only hope that she was at peace. It hurts my heart to know that she’ll never find this sanctuary we’re all seeking. 

I want to say something good and dignified about the mother who chose me, but I think my grief has used up all the words. 

My thoughts circle back to Navarro. She could have fled East. Single, a pilot, she’d have been chosen. She’d have been saved. But she chose me. Or maybe she chose to honor my father’s memory, and maybe that’s the same thing. 

If I had left her. If there had been another way. If. Tonight, I bury her. 

May the All Merciful One shelter her with the cover of His wings; bind her soul in the bond of life. I don't believe, but I know the words. I hope that's enough.

Chapter Text

Swirling thoughts mingled with exhaustion. There are still a couple of hours left on my guard shift, so I might as well make the best of it and try to write everything down.

We’re all worn down beyond belief. Despite my best efforts, my feet are a mess of weeping blisters. At least I had the sense to ensure I brought along every single item I could muster to cover up from the sun, because my supply of zinc cream is dwindling even though I've rationed it to the tiniest slivers of exposed skin. If only I’d had the brilliant foresight to occasionally exercise beyond running my mouth. 

Johnson and Judah are old soldiers. The most complaint I’ve heard from them was a muttered joke about Daisy having the right idea, but it’s clear they’re suffering too. 

Veronica and Ignacio are often in their own world. I’ve overheard her peppering him with questions about life as a Follower more than a few times now. 

As for me, I’m the coward who avoids them. 

What do I say to Ignacio? How can I bridge the distance between the man I left behind and the one who walks with me? How do I even start to make sense of everything that led him here, with us, like he has nowhere else in the world to be? 

Memories together in the Boneyard feel inseparable from the present, and I feel every bit the teenager still paralyzed by the fear of being known. 

As for Veronica, my heart breaks for her. All her idealism, all her devotion, to an organization that would want no part of her now.

Melody and Nicole are already joined at the hip, though I haven’t missed Nicole’s gentle efforts to include me in ways that won’t scare her. I’m trying to be rational. I understand she might never want anything to do with me. I don’t believe in fate. Yet I look at her and... there it is. 

She’s taking this better than any of us, and I loathe that I know why.

Ignacio’s better at this than I am. I wonder… It’s not performative. He’s good with her, patient, treats her like she’s worth his time. Asked her for help tinkering with a broken solar panel, includes her in a way that feels natural and gives her space. 

Seeing him with her feels like glimpsing something I never quite had. Something I didn’t realize I was missing until now. 

I know I need to be patient, that I can’t force a connection. I’m trying. I just… have I ever been taught? 

Chapter Text

Where do I even start with Ruth?

We’ve had nothing but time and space out here, and maybe she can sense how much I yearn to understand.

As we walked, she spoke.

Told me that she didn’t start believing in God until after she died.

I laughed, because I thought it was a metaphor. It wasn’t.

“There was a grave for me. In Goodsprings. Cross and everything. I stood over it for a long time.”

There’s a thought: anti-resurrection. Her God didn’t raise her. Maybe he just let her look.

Then she told me about the divide. Not even the wildest rumors could have prepared me for the reality of who she’d been before the bullet.

It doesn’t even make sense. It can’t make sense.

How could the NCR have been so ignorant, so foolish in handing her that package from Navarro and directing her to deliver it to the one place it could unleash horrors?

Could it have been...

Why do I hesitate to write this, even now? I hate how plausible it feels, how familiar. I’m no stranger to my father’s atrocities anymore. Taking back that which is rightfully ours.

I tried to reason with her, to rationalize. Maybe she hadn’t done it. Maybe she didn’t know what she was carrying. Maybe it wasn’t her fault.

She quoted doctrine in response, looked at me like I’m missing something critical.

I looked it up, after.

The rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow; for their iniquities shall be spoken upon the housetops, and their secret acts shall be revealed.

She told me that people lived in the Divide. Families. A community that prospered, that governed itself. If they were fortunate, they met a brutal end. If they weren’t, they remain. That they mattered.

Said something else, too. Talked to me about Joshua. Told me that she made it through knowing because of him.

I already knew about what little is left of the New Canaanites, the tribes, and the man who brought about their downfall finding redemption from them all the same. It still seems impossible. The things he’s done... yet she says his name like it means safety. Speaks his doctrine like reason.

I don’t think I’ve ever said my father’s name out loud. Decades later, I can barely grapple with his evil, much less my jumbled feelings about it. Yet here she is, refusing to look away from the worst within herself.

What does it mean to carry something like that, and allow yourself to be unburdened?

It gives me more context to her gravity. The way people defer to her, even though she doesn’t demand it. Like she’s already paid the price of leadership in full.

There’s something else that’s scratching at the back of my mind, thinking about that package. The ration bars from the bunker. There’s no date stamp, but I found a torn and faded fragment of a sticker on one. It could be the end of a date, it could be nothing. 269.

I haven’t said anything. I want to protect Johnson and Judah from the possibility that they were passed over yet again. I checked every single bar we brought with us after that, nothing.

Lastly… Daisy. All this talk about graves. It’s all I can do not to break when I think about where we left her. No headstone, no grave marker, no funeral, no eulogy. Empty words. She is alone. It isn’t enough.

I’m exhausted. Ruth says she expects we’ll reach the Virgin River tomorrow, although she doesn’t know how far up the river we might have to travel to find them. There’s something in her silences as she stares down the endless road that unsettles me.