Chapter Text
“Message begins:
It feels like you left home a long time ago, but I know you're still out there. I just hope you're still alive to hear this. Things got worse after you left. My father's gone mad with power. If you can hear this, please stop looking for your dad and help stop mine. I changed the door password to my name. If you're hearing this, and if you still care enough to help me, you should remember it.”
“Message repeats…”
The low, white winter sun is glaring into Billie’s eyes from low over the hill as she strides through Springfield, her goggles providing her sore head no protection from its light, and she curses her past self for not thinking to bring her sunglasses. She only turns to shoot down a passing eyebot with a scowl, but otherwise does not stop – she already left late in the day, and has no intention of spending a pitch-black and freezing night alone in the wastes when her destination is so close.
As much as she feels a draw back to Megaton – and her stomach clenches at the thought of it, the sound of her front door slamming shut behind her – Charon, Dogmeat – the pull forwards is irrevocable, a rope wound tight around her heart and hauling her forward. All the leaden weight that has been dragging on her limbs and sitting in her stomach for weeks has boiled abruptly into simmering restless energy under her skin, and it propels her every step even as she feels increasingly on edge.
It’s strange, being back here now – apart from a few brief outings when she was freshly topside to scavenge the relatively safe area around Megaton, she’s avoided the area near the vault almost completely. Despite the fact that no vault dweller would hear her walking over the hillside above them any more than she could hear them below, it gives her the same sensation as taking the rooftop walkways in Megaton – knowing the inhabitants would hear her footsteps, hearing their movements through the creak of the metal, being in orbit of each other’s private spheres for a moment before pulling away. While there in Megaton it becomes almost intimate, a choice for its citizens to become part of the web of those slender connections. Here, it felt like a closeness she was no longer welcome in, like walking over something akin to a grave.
But now the gravitational pull of the old link solidifies as she retraces her footsteps from all those months ago, dragging her back up the hill. Billie pauses only once at the overlook point to take in the view. The light is different now as the sun is setting – she had emerged from the first time in the blaze of morning, clutching at her face blindly while her eyes adjusted – but the view is much the same with the city in the distance, and the river out of sight. She takes it in and sniffs wetly, the bite of the cold air making her nose run as she shivers. Then she sighs out an abrupt breath that steams and curls in the bitter air in front of her, and turns away.
Finally, she reaches the weathered door and pushes through, barely pausing to click her Pip-Boy light on and step over the ancient skeleton in the doorway that had once frightened her so much. Finally, her relentless pace slows to a full stop in front of the vault door.
In the shelter of this in-between space, Billie gives herself a few bare moments – pulls her goggles down, lifts her helmet to shake the dust of the wastes from the mess of dark brown curls underneath before settling it back on her head. She takes a long drink of water to chase away the last of her headache, checks the magazine in her assault rifle, breathes. The inside of the cavern is chilly but at least sheltered from the biting wind outside, and she clasps her hands close to try and stop their trembling before she can bring herself to touch the keypad.
The hiss and clank of the giant vault door releasing sparks a kaleidoscope of sense memories – the smell of the recycled air, the deep clanking of the door releasing and starting to roll aside becomes the last hurried squeeze of Amata’s hand and the shout of guards coming closer, of bullets whistling past her ears as she sprinted harder than she had in her whole life with the sick rush of adrenaline and her breaths burning in her throat. One bullet had grazed her hip as she passed through the door, and she had thought for a moment that the slitted light coming through the distant door would be the last thing she would ever see. Billie hardly realises that her rifle is pulled reflexively up to her shoulder until the vault door comes to a stop, ready for a threat that doesn’t come as she instead stares down the barrel into the empty atrium, still alone as ever.
She forces herself to lower her rifle for a moment and breathe again, and it comes out harder this time as her hands drop to her knees.
“Come on Bill. Come on, come on, come on.”
She takes one last shaky breath before straightening - re-shoulders her rifle, checks the magazine again and her ammo pouches at her belt, and prays she won’t need them. And then, still trembling minutely, steps into her home.
The man trudges up the hill, weary and sweating in the late summer heat, praying that no wasteland beasts decide to make an appearance at the last moment when he is so close to his goal. He misses his armed escort already - they had decided she would wait for him in Springfield for two days, power armour being too conspicuous and too threatening for the final part of the journey, in case he is not successful.
God, he can barely stand the thought of walking back to Cross with nothing to show for this journey, of returning to the Citadel; going back to bunking in a borrowed room next to the barracks where all the initiates and paladins give him pitying looks in between licking their own wounds from trying to beat back the super mutant hordes from downtown DC. Of yet another failure. So he forces his mind forward, one step at a time, and curls his arms around himself and the bundle at his chest.
Sure enough, his intel is correct, and on cresting the hill there is a shabby wooden door in front of a rocky outcropping that overlooks the view back towards the city. He can’t see the river from here. Its absence pains him. Carefully he pushes the door open, pistol drawn. Nothing greets him but an empty cavern and a grasping skeleton reaching for the doorway – and beyond that, a great vault door. Stepping cautiously over the skeleton, he walks into the cavern and lets the door close behind him as it swallows him in the earth.
The vault door looms before him in the dark, a great steel relic of a time before, a guardian against the horrors of the irradiated wasteland. Old as the city itself but pristine, showing none of the ravages of the outside world. He picks his way over towards it and solemnly lays his hand on the colossal hatch like he might be able to feel the life inside, like a great metal belly. There’s a CCTV camera over the door, and a keypad to one side. He withdraws, curling his arms back around himself and his precious package and clasping his hands in a final desperate prayer, before he hits a button on the keypad.
The silence yawns in the dim light. There is no movement, no sign of life. He hits another button, and the vault door does not open.
“Hello?” His voice cracks, parched from the heat, and he swallows to find it again. “Hello? I’d like to request entry to your vault.”
No response. He hits another button, and then another. And then another, and holds it down in the desperate hope that he might alert someone’s attention.
Abruptly loud, there’s a burst of static that resounds through the empty cavern. James’s head snaps up as the ancient speaker on the keypad crackles and pops and flares into stuttering noise for probably the first time in decades, if not centuries.
“This vault is closed. We do not accept outsiders.” The clipped voice from the intercom snaps off as quickly as it starts, seemingly uninterested in further dialogue, but he isn’t giving up that easily.
“My name is James Morgan. I’m willing to exchange my services for entry to your vault.”
There’s a burst of static as air hits the microphone. “What arrogance.” The crackle of the intercom doesn’t mask the disdainful tone of the speaker behind it. “You wander in from whatever backwater hell-hole you came from, and you think you have anything to offer that we would want.”
“I’m trained as a doctor - I’m not suggesting that you don’t already have medical personnel, but in my experience having more medics can only be advantageous, particularly in a settlement of sizeable population. And I am a scientist, I am educated on a variety of other subjects – biology, chemistry, computing, engineering…” He can feel himself rambling into the silence. It feels like giving a speech to an empty room. “What I mean to say is that I could be a great asset to your vault, if you would let us stay.”
“A doctor, you say?” There’s a pregnant pause. A faint movement catches James’s eye. When he looks, the security camera above the vault door is pointed straight at him. Then the speaker stirs again.
“And why should I believe you?” The voice is harsh now, and full of suspicion. “You come to us seeking shelter within our vault. It is in your interests to enter through whatever means possible, and not necessarily honest ones. What evidence do you have that this is true?”
“I…” His medical bag, all of his tools, got left behind at Project Purity when the supermutants attacked – he hadn’t been able to face returning to the clinic there and then there was no time to fetch them in the evacuation. “I can of course demonstrate on a patient -”
“For which of course you will need to enter our vault, yes. A clever ruse, but it won’t work. Goodbye, Dr Morgan. Better luck with your next mark.”
“Wait! Please, if you will just give me a chance-”
But the speaker has already cut off, him alone in the cave. He presses the buzzer again desperately, and again.
“Fine, you want me to prove I’m a doctor?” He holds his hand up to the camera and points. “Bones of the hand: distal, medial, and proximal phalanges for each finger, which join to the five metacarpals. Then the eight carpal bones at the wrist: scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate. A broken carpal can easily trap either of the two nerves that run through the wrist, so setting the break properly is vital to avoid nerve pain and muscle damage in the hand.”
No response. His hand is shaking. He keeps going – has to keep going.
“The median and ulnar nerves control five groups of muscles in the hand, and branch off from the brachial nerve plexus at the shoulder-” James’s voice chokes, and he slaps at the keypad. “Please. Please let us in.”
There is no reply but the dull dripping of water in the cave, and James’s hope dies in his throat. He punches the keypad with a final strangled cry.
The noise echoes in the cavern, and the bundle at his chest stirs. James stops and smooths his hand over it, hoping by some slight chance he won’t have pushed things too far, but the bundle begins to wiggle and grizzle.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay sweetheart, it’s alright…”
The grizzling soon erupts into a full bawl as the tiny face of his infant daughter wiggles free of the cloth wrap holding her against his body, face scrunched and red as she cries. James curls his arms around her, rocking her back and forth and crooning at her, trying to soothe her back to sleep.
“What - ” The voice crackles over the intercom again, sounding incredulous. “Is that a child?”
“My daughter.” James curls around her, shielding her with his arms. “Billie. She’s a month old. I managed to deliver her safely, but…” His throat tries to close, and he swallows it down before continuing. “There were complications that I couldn’t treat with the facilities available. We’ve been making do with formula and Brahmin milk, but really she needs a wet nurse to mitigate the likelihood of further complications-”
He breaks off, swaying back and forth to soothe the baby in his arms and the lump in his throat. There’s silence from the little speaker.
“Please. Please, I want no trouble, I’ll do whatever you ask, I just want somewhere safe for us.”
He waits. There’s no response from the speaker, the quiet only interrupted by the continued restless grizzling from Billie. She’s been difficult to get down ever since – ever since they left their little room at the Memorial, never drifting off to sleep unless she’s being rocked in someone’s arms. He feels his weariness intensify in his arms and legs as he waits and waits.
He sniffs and squeezes Billie close to his chest, and is about to turn back towards the door when the static sputters again.
“Security officers will meet you on the other side of the hatch. They will take your weapons and packs. They will then escort you to a holding area where we can negotiate your admission. If you resist or you try anything untoward, you will be shot without warning. Do you accept?”
The gasp of relief that flies out of James’s mouth is wet and choked, and he pulls it back for fear of spooking the baby further. James looks down at his daughter in his arms, still whining slightly but more settled against his chest. He presses a kiss onto the soft downy hair at the crown of her head, inhaling the faint scent of baby’s skin and the faint wisps of her dark hair already starting to come through.
“Yes. Yes, I accept.”
With an almighty hiss, the great vault door releases, startling Billie again as she curls into his chest. James looks over his shoulder towards the wooden door behind him and the faint sunlight that stretches itself into the darkness in the cavern through the crack underneath. Who knows if he’ll ever see the sun again. He closes his eyes and drops his chin back on Billie’s head as she makes a small startled noise at the grinding of metal, humming softly to sooth her. He keeps humming as the giant door rolls away and as he hears the sounds of guns being readied in the space before him. Hums as he raises his empty hands above his head, and he walks forward with a flicker of hope for what is left of his family.