Chapter Text
Arthur Maxson was twelve when they first put him into T-60 power armour. From that day forward, he was surrounded by walls of steel, flesh and belief, forced to take command of his squad when Knight-Sergeant Tamsin was shot in the gut because the other Squires were running around like radroaches with their heads blown off. At thirteen he killed a deathclaw with a ripper as a Knight lifted it off him. By sixteen he was an Elder after negotiating the Outcasts back into the fold. By twenty, he was going to war in an airship with an army and a nice coat.
Steel became flesh and belief – his vision clear, direction straight and mind dedicated to the goals of the Brotherhood. It became easier to justify his actions for the good of the Capital Wasteland – directly taking control of Megaton and Rivet City, ruling as the king he was named for. The walls surrounded him, an immovable bulwark that anchored him to the Prydwen and the Citadel. His walls were his protection – everything outside of them was chaos and confusion, the Wasteland in need of cleansing. He had to bring everyone under his reign so he could protect them, within his walls so he could control them.
The Commonwealth was a veritable paradise compared to the Capital Wasteland and Arthur envisaged bringing it under the Brotherhood of Steel’s protection, then bridging the Wasteland between there and the Citadel. He dreamed of cleansing the super mutants and ghouls, synths and scientists who created such monstrosities. He imagined farmers working under the watchful eye of Knights and Paladins. He dared, maybe, to imagine something that might be called peace.
Arthur grew to fear the open skies – he never left the Prydwen unless he was enclosed by Paladins in steel or the own walls of his power armour. Every time he had to come down to the Airport for something – to deal with a local settlement leader or oversee some project that needed his approval – he hid the shaking and quaking beneath a gruff, steely-eyed demeanour. The man whose soul was forged from Eternal Steel had none he could confide in – even Paladin Danse, his right-hand man, had a childlike confidence in his infallibility. So Arthur endured and wondered if steel screamed silently as it was hammered and quenched.
The amount of liquor bottles stashed in his quarters, in hidden lockers and under the bed, grew as the war against the Institute went from simmering tension to hot within the span of a week. Synths and soldiers shot at each other in Cambridge as the Railroad, the dark horse in this war, took out both sides with clever guerrilla tactics. Arthur sent out Paladins to scour the C.I.T. ruins with fire and steel, finding only shattered buildings and Gen-1 synths. He took to staying on his command deck until sleep forced him into his quarters, the walls of his belief protecting him, blinding him to other possibilities, to the idea that he might have bitten off more than he could chew.
Then Danse returned with a Vault Dweller who had critical information on the Institute and wanted a way inside. He had teleporter plans, a Courser chip and a goal: retrieve his son.
In return for his allegiance, Arthur gave him what he wanted.
He returned with Madison Li and more information. He promoted him to Knight.
Weeks passed and they rebuilt Liberty Prime. Then Proctor Quinlan discovered particular information and the first crack in Arthur’s protective walls appeared.
The machine, at least, had brought a replacement and he sent him to prove himself worthy of Paladin by eliminating it.
He never came back.
Arthur couldn’t understand it. He’d given him everything he asked and more. How could he abandon them – him – like this?
He began to prepare his Brotherhood for an assault on the Institute. Liberty Prime was nearly ready – they just needed a Beryllium agitator.
Then he discovered what happened to the Sole Survivor of Vault 111. He was there, wearing black leather, coordinating the Coursers who tore his soldiers to shreds. They died screaming his name – he heard them over the radio.
He tightened the walls around himself and the Brotherhood, recalling everyone to the Airport. His soldiers looked at him pleadingly, that he would save them, while he refused to even look outside the windows at the horizon. He donned his power armour, an extra wall between him and the Wasteland, and prepared to be besieged by the Institute.
They didn’t bother. A surge of synths overwhelmed the Airport and Liberty Prime was hacked. The Prydwen burned around him as it crashed, only his power armour and those of a few Knights and Paladins who were suited up at the time keeping them alive. He formed them into a wedge and went straight for the traitor, intent on taking him to hell. If the Brotherhood had to die, it would die in blood, fire and molten steel.
By the time he got to him, the plates of his power armour were compromised, but that didn’t stop him. Final Judgment lived up to its name, burning through that black leather and the pre-War soldier’s body within. If only he’d thought to do that when he first saw him.
The few, the brave, the best of the Brotherhood fought against the Coursers and one by one, each of them exploded their armour to take the hunter-killer machines with them. Arthur screamed as his walls went down and charged the last of the Coursers, a dark-skinned male who was cradling the body of the traitor like he was precious to it.
It wasn’t even a battle. The Courser tore off the rest of his armour, leaving Arthur in a power frame, and then pulled a revolver from the traitor’s pocket.
It aimed and fired. Blackness took Arthur’s world, the open horizons of the world closed in by soft walls, and he fell into them with a smile.
…
He awoke in a rough infirmary, Danse by his side.
The synth had escaped the traitor somehow and headed northwest, finding a group of trapped settlers in Concord and rescuing them. All the time that the traitor was working for the Institute and Arthur was trying to stay safe within his walls, Danse was reforging the Minutemen into a tough force of soldiers, helping them prepare to take on the Institute. Stunned by the destruction of the Prydwen, he and his men had come to see if there were any survivors, even though it could mean his death.
When Arthur discovered he was the only survivor aside from Haylen, who’d quietly deserted to join the Minutemen with Danse, he locked himself in a small storage closet and screamed his throat raw. It took Danse and Preston Garvey to kick down the door and drag the shattered Elder out into the courtyard, which was too open and the walls too far away, where a lean, grey-haired woman in military fatigues slapped his face twice and had the men throw him into the Brahmin trough. “We don’t have time for a spoilt child to throw a tantrum because he lost his toys,” she said harshly after he’d surfaced, spluttering and coughing weakly.
“Ronnie, the Brotherhood lost two thousand soldiers, civilians and even children,” Danse said grimly. “All of them hoping that Arthur could save them. It’s a hell of a thing to know you’ve failed the people relying on you.”
“I could argue they invaded us,” the Minuteman retorted.
“Colonel, there were children on board,” Garvey repeated flatly.
“Well, he put them there,” Ronnie said, glaring at Arthur.
“That was how he was raised,” Danse explained flatly.
“They were going to execute you for being a synth!” Ronnie insisted.
“The Brotherhood wasn’t to know Finlay was a traitor once he returned from the Institute,” the dark-haired man pointed out before turning to Arthur. “I’ll keep the explanation simple: Nate Finlay’s son is the head of the Institute, according to the Railroad, and they fed us false information through him – including the fact that I was a runaway synth. According to Sturges and Haylen, who put together a machine that can scan for plastic and metal parts, I’m not.”
Arthur whimpered, unable to do anything more. He was trapped under the open sky, the walls of belief, flesh and steel shattered. Why had they woken him up? He should have died with the rest of the Brotherhood.
“At least you got Finlay yourself,” Garvey added flatly. “Bastard left us to die in Concord.”
Arthur supposed he should be grateful to get something right.
Danse looked at Ronnie. “Are we still a go for the attack on the Institute?”
“We are, General,” she replied, saluting him.
“Then start getting Minutemen in. We’ve all lost friends and family to the Institute and it’s high time we got rid of the cancer in our midst.”
“Yes, General.” Garvey saluted as well before turning smartly on his heel and walking away.
Danse offered his hand to Arthur… who took it and was helped to his feet.
“I have an X-01 suit for my personal use but there’s a decent T-45 available,” Danse said gruffly. “If you’re up to it, I want you to join the assault on the Institute.”
Arthur nodded, unable to speak. He could feel the walls about him again. He could feel safe.
“We’ll avenge our brothers and sisters, I promise,” the General said.
“Don’t you hate me?” Arthur managed to rasp.
“I never could,” Danse said tenderly before turning away.
Arthur found himself weeping brokenly, the tears of the past decade surging forward past the barricade that time and duties had placed upon him. Danse wrapped his arms around him and for a moment, he was safe and surrounded by walls once more, someone else bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He’d come full circle.
…
Arthur never really got over his agoraphobia and the crippling agony of failing his soldiers, but in time, he learned to cope. When the Capital Wasteland Chapter sent a Recon Squad to find out what happened, Danse told them that he’d gone down with the Prydwen and died taking a traitor with him. They offered to make the big man the new Elder but he refused, citing duties to the Minutemen – who’d succeeded where Maxson had failed. Decimated by the disaster, Star Paladin Cross had no choice but to accept it and declare herself the new Elder.
Arthur never really got over what happened and neither did Danse. But they learned to live with the scars they’d given each other. They loved each other and Arthur threw himself into the life of an anonymous farmer, taking satisfaction from growing crops behind safe protective walls.
Walls protect but they also enclose. They blind people to the horizon of possibility but allow them to function in a hostile world. One man’s shelter is another’s prison.
Sometimes, in the dark of night with Arthur sleeping behind him, Danse wondered what drove Nate Finlay to betray the Brotherhood. It couldn’t have been the love of his son, an old man dying of cancer by the time the Minutemen blew the Institute to hell and back. Or perhaps it was that simple. Creator knew that for Danse, protecting Arthur meant that there was no act too vile to commit.
People, human, ghoul and synth, built for themselves walls and enclosed themselves in their own worlds. For some, they were prisons. Others, shelters. But everyone had their walls.