#ammoth

SO

first of all what the fuck is this imposter child it doesn’t even have red hair is it possible to edit your Shaun asking for ME--

FIRST OF ALL, meeting bab Shaun in the Institute and having Father disable him Fucked Up Norma big time. It’s been kinda hard for her to imagine what it’s like for people to see someone they love or even KNOW or THINK THEY KNOW turn out to be a synth, and here... here she definitely felt that. Her heart sank, she probably felt like throwing up there and then - I’ve been following a synth child. This is not my baby. This isn’t my baby. this isn’t--

I mean this child without a doubt is a person in her head, no question about it, but immediately the thought is ‘this isn’t MY child but someone’s been letting me think it is shitshithsi’ it’s just. a bunch of feelings hitting at once. ‘this isn’t my child’ ‘this is a trap’ ‘my child is probably gone’ etc, it Wasn’t a Good Time.

And that’s like where her Mourning begins and great I’m about to cry already - because even though she (unlike Jay) believes that Father IS Shaun, he was taken from her and in essence she DID lose her child and all she got for it was This Asshole, essentially - you  know, it’s. This is Shaun, but this isn’t her son either, if that makes sense, in anything other than the biological.

And then when the Institute was about to be blown up and up comes poor little robot child - I think Norma would have looked for him during Nuclear Option because the goal WAS to save everyone - she’d save this kid even though he wasn’t her Shaun, and even when he obviously doesn’t know her, he’d just. be somebody else’s child.

... and he calls her ‘mom’. Fuck. I can imagine how Norma would have shaken, how she’d feel like her knees are going to give, like this is where her journey may end, because it’s unfair, it isn’t right, it’s too much-- No. This isn’t her Shaun, she really doesn’t feel that he is - her Shaun is dying of cancer inside the Institute (and will be blown up by the bomb) and hates her and she him pretty much. It isn’t the right word, hate, it’s too simple for such a complicated mess feelings, but it’s close.

But - she’s not going to leave him there. She does tell him she’s not his mother, he’s not her son, even though it feels cruel, but... at the same time she really can’t take this child and be his mother. And that’s something she sees more and more when they take him to the Castle and are still looking for a new home for him - I think Norma stays a while at the Castle afterwards, because it’s secure and feels better then than Diamond City which... doesn’t have any of the people in it who went through all of this with her, right? So anyway, there she is, and there’s this child.

She tells Ellie - Ellie comes to be there for her - she tells Ellie one night that she can barely look at this Shaun, and every time they talk she wants to cry, and talks about (between crying herself ragged and hoarse and dry) how she feels like none of this was worth it, and how she can’t propelry mourn the loss of her child and keep THIS child but how at the same time she feels so guilty--

It’s a Time. But Shaun has good company in Sturges and many others, even if he doesn’t get his Mom. I’m sure it’s incredibly difficult for him too! Poor baby KNOWS Norma is his Mom! He’s been programmed to! And so it’s going to be incredibly difficult for him to understand why his Mom doesn’t want him and why she’s being Like That! Probably hates her like he says in the Institute if you keep telling him you’re not his parent. It’s gotta be Awful for him too! I don’t know if he’ll have his memory reprogrammed or not, but either way... it’s a Time for him too. (Like, Norma DEFINITELY, and probably the Railroad too, do not trust Father’s motivations behind this synth child and are probably really wary of any weird programming hiding in there in the child’s programming; you just don’t know.)