#ntzsche misc

I have plenty more little bits of nonsense in various states of readability, like character backgrounds, alt-ending scenes, slice-of-life banter between characters, etc. These will be posted under the tag #ntzsche misc

Noteworthy WIPs:

Bad Blood - A Fallout Nuka-World fanfic (#ntzsche Nuka-World)

My longest story is a fanfic, but with a cast of characters largely not in the Fallout 4 DLC. I intend to eventually write this in a way that someone who hasn't played the game would be able to easily read.

Lafayette, the son of a 'retired' raider, left his abusive father to find his place in the world and was taken in by an eclectic trauma-bonded found family that inspires him to be a better person and shows him love he is certain he doesn't deserve. When his father comes across them in a raid, Lafayette is given the offer to join him, and he agrees in order to save the settlement and his little brother. Lafayette finds that being with his dad again, and being the son he always wanted him to be, isn't nearly as difficult as he thought it would be. He struggles to maintain the person he wants to be with the person he suspects he is, all while a cast of scheming raiders, wastelanders, and slaves vie for power in the raider city built within the rusted remains of an amusement park.

Salem's Child (#ntzsche Salem)

A background on one of the lesser Nuka-World characters that I got carried away with.

Andrew Rook doesn't look like his parents. He looks like someone they are desperate to forget. Growing up in post-apocalyptic Salem, Massachusetts has it's perks, though. In a fading settlement run by incompetent men who would rather blame the population of feral black cats for their problems than try to solve them, Andrew and his two best friends build a world in their imagination that shields them from the wretchedness of the wasteland and the people they have to rely on to survive.

Hechizo

Another character background that I would love to expand into a few short stories around.

Mateo Zavala was born in the vibrant and tight-knit community of Navarro. His great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, a pre-war ghoul, is still the ruling matriarch, and it's hard for her not to play favorites when she has over 300 living descendants.

The Crash (#ntzsche Crash)

A what-if real-world rewrite of an event from another story. I just really enjoy writing these two.

Hell was other people. He was tired of it all, the idiocy, the selfishness, the squabbling, and the demands. The frustrating way no one ever had their shit together and couldn’t seem to stay the hell out of his way. Lumbering animals, no better than livestock. Blind to how giving a fuck about what everyone else thought of them guaranteed a miserable existence - yet so quick to criticize someone else when they hadn't done shit with their own sad little lives. He wanted to be as far away from humanity as he could be. He wanted above it, beyond it. The only thing that tempered his anger was to trek deep into the forest, for as long as he could. Giving himself to the untouched wilderness, to the primal depths of nature, both welcoming and fundamentally uncaring.

He stared above, hypnotized by the wind blowing through the gaps between one tree and the next in the canopy above, swaying like the alveoli of massive lungs, expanding and contracting. All at once he thought of a rhyme he had nearly forgotten, from so long ago it could be one of his first memories. He couldn’t recall the story it came from, not quite, but it was something that had been melodically read to him by his mother, or maybe his grandmother, as he fell asleep. 

“Here in the forest, dark and deep,” he recited to himself, eyes closing. “I offer you eternal sleep.”

He knew the next line was the child’s reply, etched in his mind in the way of nursery rhymes. The forest is lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. 

Fuck those promises, he thought to himself. He took pleasure in the roots cradling his back, in the damp smell of leaves turning to dirt. He felt like he could sink into it so easily, as if his body longed to become part of the earth. He slowed his breath, imagining his body growing as cool as the damp ground beneath him. He started from his toes, willed one piece of his body at a time to relax. To stop churning, to stop beating, to stop pumping these fluids and gasses around and instead submit to something so much more powerful, so much greater than himself.

Smiling faintly, he slowly worked the words this way and that, until they formed a different reply. “I accept your offer, deep in the forest, to sleep peacefully in your roots. I give you my body to keep, while in my eternal sleep, to grow flora anew as it reconstitutes.”

Mateo breathed out long and slow, easing every bit of air from his lungs. Eyes still closed, he paid attention to the smell and the sound of the forest around him, the strength of the ground beneath him. He really could sleep here. The forest could have his body, if it meant becoming part of the forest. It wasn't that he wanted to die, but he didn't want to be alive for a while, didn't want to be anywhere or expected to do anything.

His head turned sharply when he heard the shifting of something very heavy. There had been a fallen tree on the slope nearby, so massive the trunk was nearly as tall as he was. The roots had been left shorn from the ground, the far branches snapped and disintegrating, and a new colony of moss and mushrooms thriving between the splintering bark. A great creaking groan chilled him to the core as the rotten trunk rolled over, a sift through the deciduous mulch around it collecting the pale bones of small rodents and an aged carcass of a deer, flesh dark and hard where it strewn between the joints.

Mateo was frozen where he laid, but his mind was frenzied to come up with some explanation for this. It wasn’t an apparition. This wasn’t a creature. It was neither dead nor alive, somewhere in between yet neither. A demon, or a god. Maybe no god humans would worship, but something venerated by the roots and praised by mycelium. It didn't belong in the forest - the forest belonged to it.

Fungal threads expanded among the bones, replacing tissue long dissolved. It rolled its shoulders forward and lifted its head to turn toward him. Massive horns sprouted and veined through the air. No, not horns. It was more like something that spread and branched across a gnarly petri dish. Like roots from the eyes of a tuberous stem searching for soil. Something like an eye opened, in a place where an eye shouldn’t be, and shifted into the socket of a deer’s skull. A lateral root stretched to the other side, a bud blooming into a matching eye.

It continued to shift uncomfortably, as if this wasn’t the shape it normally took. He got the feeling that this was something it was trying to make for his benefit, which was all the more unsettling. Gradually it slowed, then crouched to simply stare at him. Confused, as if it hadn't expected Mateo to be there, either.

He knew he had lost his fucking mind when a deep, damp voice said, “Lo siento, Mateo. You weren’t supposed to be here yet.”

A terrified, hysterical laugh burst from him. This-this thing, this wretched cryptid of the appalachian forests of central New Hampshire, shouldn’t sound like his abuela. “Why the fuck would you speak spanish?!”

Mateo screamed as something happened to his head. Swamped with buzzing, sharp static, like the screeching feedback of a microphone next to a massive speaker. Its absence was almost as bad as the sound, his ears ringing. Somewhere in the cacophony, the creature had asked, “What language would you have us speak?”

The question had been asked in all of them.

“Ok, ok, ok,” he whimpered. He wanted to press his palms to his ears, but his limbs were so heavy, rooted even as they trembled. “S-speak however you want.”

It crawled closer, and that rich tone grew contrite. “You are not supposed to be a part of us, not consciously. Not yet.”

As it looked over his prone and paralyzed body, a small breeze lifted his hair like fingers petting through the roots. Every inch of his skin prickled cold.

“You always come to us, eventually, though. Once your bodies have cooled from their suffering and grief. You commit an act of unbirth, and pieces of you seep into the ground to be drunk up by the grasses and the trees. You change your forms so often - billions of years of evolution, trillions of different species. But we always know you."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mateo cursed on each panicked breath, struggling to get up. "This isn't-! I'm not-! N-no, no, fuck this! What the fuck are you talking about?!"

“None of that, mi dulce niño. Be proud of your place in the cosmos. It is small, but it is."

The more he struggled, the tighter he was held, until he felt himself sinking into the dirt and tree litter beneath him. He bucked, kicked and clawed at the roots he could reach, but as soon as they ripped apart there were more to replace them. He could do nothing to hurt something so immense.

“No," it sighed, watching him sadly. "You think we are unfeeling? You are wrong. We feel everything.”

Mateo couldn’t hear himself scream this time. The acidic burning. The thick, choking grip of exhaust and oil and rot so foul it couldn’t be natural. Pressure, immense pressure, crushing past bone and breaking him into dust. It was all so hot. His mind simply shattered.

“The horror of what you have done covers us,” it whispered. “That pain? That poison? We will never truly get used to it. Sometimes we think we may conquer it, sometimes we lash out and hurt you back, but then you just find a more efficient, more devastating way to destroy us.”

It didn’t stop, but faded. It left him arid, bleached and splintered, but he could breathe again. 

He should breathe again.

“Oje, but we could never hate you for it. We miss you too desperately.”

With mounting terror, Mateo realized he was dying. He couldn’t move as he was swallowed into the earth, mosses and mushrooms coating his body as it sank, as roots pushed down through him. Breaking him into pieces.

“You are not dying.” Soothing, like cool water. “You are coming alive in so many places.” 

He wanted to go back. He wanted to wail and claw and dig back up to the surface. 

“You're early, but that's alright. You can let go.”

“No,” he begged, though his tongue and jaw were no longer where they needed to be to make noise.

“Al mal tiempo, buena cara,” it chuckled, as if comforting a child. “This is what you wanted, isn't it, Mateo? At last you are free, and no longer have to be anywhere.”

He could feel his thoughts coming apart like beads scattering from a broken string, flung into an abyss so endless it made him wonder why he ever bothered.

“You will no longer be one person. How lonely that must be. It’s a small wonder you cause so much suffering, when you are in such great pain"

There was such an immense, heavy weight before him, an infinite depth below.

Dust cake in the blood around his nose and mouth. The left side of his face felt stiff, but the pain hadn't caught up to him yet. The girl beneath him coughed, wet and choking. Her dirty face was flushed and vicious, her hands clawing up at him. He had a longer reach than her and reared his head back as he twisted the knife lodged between her ribs. She screamed and fought harder, desperate as an animal in a snare, blood quickly filling her lung. Dizz flinched as he became speckled in it when she coughed harder, blood bubbling up from her mouth and seeping between her teeth. Then she slowed, and as her eyes lost their focus he snatched the blade back to plunge it into her chest again, and again, and again, desperately for it to just be over.

The drunken, roaring applause of more than two dozen people drowned out her last gurgling breath.

Dizz stayed caged over her, chest heaving as he frantically looked around the arena for the next threat. The body of another child laid face-down in the dirt nearby, and after three rounds, no one else was shoved into the ring at him. It was only beginning to dawn on Dizz that he'd won when Sidney snatched him up by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet.

"I knew you had it in you, spitfuck!" the boy shouted over the din. Instinct had Dizz reeling back on him, but Sid caught his wrist before the knife got anywhere near him. Exhaustion was taking hold and slowing him down, and the older boy easily wrenched it from his grasp. Dizz watched him toss it aside - it hadn't been his in the first place. Sid couldn't stop grinning at him, his piercing blue eyes wild with glee as he looped an arm around his chest and dragged him from the makeshift arena.

"Pay up, bitches!" a large, barrel-chest man was reveling at the center of a dense crowd of raiders, few of which looking pleased. "100 from each of you twats!"

He didn't bother to look at the kids as they returned to his side, Sid easing Dizz down on a bench as he finally had the sense to contend with a deep cut across his calf that kept him from walking on his own. It was supposed to have sliced his achilles, and though it had landed too high, he couldn't use the leg. Dizz inspected the bloody, gaping wound with a grimace while Sid took his sweet time fetching a stimpack. He jammed in his thigh with no warning, and called him a pussy when Dizz cried out in surprise. 

There was so much dirt caked into the blood covering his body, drying it into a sticky sludge, making it hard to tell what was his and what wasn't. His adrenaline was still up, but without the momentum and distraction of fighting for his life, the injuries were making themselves known. His cheek was swelling beside a blackened eye, and his nose steadily dripped blood. These things were so common that it was more unusual if he didn't have a black eye or busted nose. The welts and slashes across his lean body were worse, but as the stimpack did its work, the lacerations grew tight and itchy as they worked themselves back together. Dizz gritted his teeth, hating the feeling almost as much as getting stabbed in the first place.

Only once he collected all his earnings did the large man turn to them. He looked Dizz over with a huge grin, making the hook-shaped scar running from one side of his mouth up to his ear crinkle.

Albert Jackson. "Smiling Jack," to his friends and acquaintances, but he was "Uncle Jack" to them. Dizz immediately dropped any hint of pain or discomfort from his face, head bowed slightly as he looked up at Jack from beneath a filthy mop of black curls. He knew a smile didn't make him any less mean. Even after his wins, even with his pockets brimming with caps, Dizz still didn't know if he had been good enough.

"Atta boy," Jack said fondly, giving him a rough shake by the shoulder. Dizz was a kid that didn't smile very often, and he wasn't any good at it. The smirk that dimpled his cheek didn't reach his eyes. "They didn't wanna play fair, sending in two after ya, huh? But I knew you were a demon, so I raised 'em double-or-nothing, and sure as shit you came through! You'll be eatin' good tonight, my boy!"

As he spoke, a stocky teen shouldered his way through the dispersing crowd to stand beside Jack, but didn't so much as look at Dizz. Nearly a man grown, Mutt was the oldest of them, and took post as Jack's bodyguard in case anyone thought about trying to get their losses back. A few moments later, a scrawny little girl with matted orange hair squirmed through the crowd to cackled at Dizz.

"I thought for sure your ass was done when that bitch pulled out that third knife!" Marigold grinned, words whistling through the gap from her missing front teeth.

"Mari," Jack reminded her, a sing-song tone in his voice as he held out his hand. Marigold went stiff, her smile gone, and whipped around.

"Just a little of this and that, Unc," she said in practiced nonchalance as she began emptying her pockets of all the things she had pilfered from raiders in the crowd. Caps, mostly, but a couple of mags of ammunition, a few explosives, a gold watch and a sturdy bowie knife. Marigold was still too little to be of any use in the pits, but she was tenacious and earned her keep in other ways. Despite her young age, she knew that being a wiry, crusty, gap-toothed little kid wouldn't spare her from what became of most girls who were alone in the wasteland, and was keen to never give Uncle Jack a reason to turn her out.

She held her breath as Jack considered the haul thoughtfully, then nodded his head. He wasn't impressed, but his good mood extended unexpected mercy. "Always put business first, baby," he said, and her shoulders relaxed. She turned back to Dizz, looking him over and was about to say something else when Jack declared they were leaving.

Dizz was lucky he turned to lead them away, because when he stood, he nearly blacked out. Sid was quick to catch him under his arms before he hit the ground. Glancing up quickly, Dizz felt only momentary relief before his eyes met Mutt's, the older boy smirking maliciously. Just behind him, Marigold pretended she hadn't seen a thing.

"Next time you oughta keep more blood in your body, dipshit," Sid said cheerfully, steadying him until he found his feet again. "You'll get the hang of it."

That night, in the derelict old house they bunkered down in before heading back home to the half-collapsed block of apartments the rest of Jack's gang inhabited, Jack made good on his word. He used a gemerous portion of the night's earnings to reward Dizz with a huge slab of steak, eggs and tatoes, with a luke warm beer to wash it down with. It was more food than he might see in a week. As ferociously as Dizz jumped on the spread, he was well aware of the target on his back as the other kids looked on - they had been told to fend for themselves, like usual. Jack announced he was going out for a drink, commanded them to stay put, and left.

Mutt was immediately on the other side of the table, staring down at the younger boy. Dizz paused, chewing slowly as he glared right back.

"You hot shit now, huh?" he asked, a mean smile inching across his face. He had a webbing of scars across his cheek and jaw, and his mouth didn't move much to that side. "Just because you didn't die tonight don't mean you won't die next time. They went fucking easy on your virgin ass."

Dizz watched as he plucked up the larger portion of the steak he had only just cut into. Mutt took an exaggerated bite, gnashing with his mouth opened and smirking when Dizz did nothing to stop him. He was at least five years older than him, and while Dizz was unusually tall for his age, Mutt still had at least 50 lbs on him. Even if he weren't exhausted and injured, he couldn't beat him in a fight. Mutt seemed appeased when he didn't rise to the bait, and as Dizz glowered up at him, he laughed and swiped the beer before walking out.

Sidney was more patient. He even smiled in inauthentic surprise and appreciation when Dizz split what he had left. It made Dizz furious to watch his hard-won meal dwindle to almost nothing, but he reminded himself that things would be different now. Dizz knew he hadn't just survived the pits, he had excelled. He had made Uncle Jack happy, and he would be more inclined to favor him now, to train and feed him and give him shelter. Sidney would take credit for his success, but even that would benefit Dizz. They were close in age and equal in size, though Sid was a bit older and sharper while Dizz was cautious and baby-faced, still growing into his increasingly lanky body. Rather than compete with each other, they would form an alliance now. Sid had promised as much - so long as Dizz won his fights. It had been a struggle for him to hide how desperately he wanted the older boy's friendship as they trained. As ravenous as he was after tonight's fights, Dizz would pay his dues.

Gabe pressed his forehead against the murky glass, looking up at the old man seated in the pod. He just sat there, unnaturally still, unblinking. Just like the rest of them.

The glass fogged from his nose, and he tilted his head to see around it. The man was classically handsome, and clean in a way that made him seem fake. He looked like some sort of realistic mannequin, staring blankly at a small monitor Gabe couldn't really see except the lights and shadows that played across his face. He wondered if Dave would look like this, if he ever reached old age. They were undeniably related. Same aquiline nose, same thick brows and dark blue eyes, minus the glasses. There wasn't a chance that those thin clumps of hair on Dave's jaw could ever become such a well-groomed beard, though.

"What the fuck am I still doing here," Gabe whispered to himself, his eyes focusing instead on his own reflection in the glass. It wasn't a normal habit of his, talking to himself, but this place gave him the fucking creeps. The robobrains rolling about didn't help or offer much conversation, besides trying to get him to put on a goddamn vault suit. Dave was a fucking weirdo but if this was what he grew up in, Gabe was beginning to think he was shockingly sane.

He had followed Dave all the way to the rusted up Red Rocket from Rivet City. Squashed all the radroaches and mole rats while Dave messed with the computer monitors and used his pipboy to get the giant door hidden beneath it to roll open. The whole time Dave was trembling, pretending to be angry, going on and on about the irony of having gone through so much trouble chasing his dad out of a vault, only to follow him into a different one. It was sorta funny how Dave still seemed to think Gabe couldn't see right through him.

Dave flipped out even more when he found his dad's corpse in one of these weird fucking pods. Gabe was certain he was dead - certain they were all dead, frozen or something, because how could someone live so long without being a ghoul? But Dave checked every terminal, and they were all supposedly alive.

His next idea was to storm into the Overseer's office, thinking someone, likely this Dr. Braun, had to be behind the whole thing. Banging on the door elicited no response, so they proceeded to turn the vault upside down trying to find a clue about the password. Gabe was a lot more impressed with the loot in the equipment room than solving their problem, but when Dave suddenly ran off with a post-it note he found in a locker, it was all Gabe could do to keep up. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Dave was beating the butt end of his already shitty rifle on the glass of another pod, a dusty old man sitting inside, undisturbed. 

Then that fucking idiot climbed into a pod, too.

On second thought, maybe he wasn't so sane. None of these vault people were. What the fuck was he still doing here?

One of the robobrains rolled up and tried to solicit him again. With a half-hearted 'fuck off', Gabe retreated back to the equipment room. It was an untouched cache of ammo, pristine weapons, and a whole mess of pre-war chems. He decided he would help himself, get a nice clean high without any of the worries of the chems being cut with abraxo or some other crazy shit, and mull over his options.

Gabe wasn't getting anything out of following this fool around. Not anything worthwhile. Sure, Dave was pretty fun to party with, and he had to admit, that annoyingly positive attitude could be a bit contagious. He gave a shit about people, aboud Gabe, when nobody else would. But he was also a complete moron, and would be dead a thousand times over if Gabe wasn't constantly keeping him alive. He was generous and kind, but to anyone, and it was more trouble than it was worth.

Ok, so they had been through some shit together. Some real dark, ugly shit. Their sanity had been on its last leg more than once, and the other man had been there to haul them back from the cliff's edge. Gabe had got himself (mostly) together again after everything that happened in Big Town, and Paradise Falls, but now Dave was being driven to madness by this obsessive chase with his dad. This shit just kept getting crazier and crazier.

So, Gabe told himself this was going to end one of two ways: either the idiot was stuck in this pod like the rest of them, forever, or by some insane luck - which, admittedly, Dave seemed to have - he would get his dad out.

And that would be it. Father and son, reunited. Dave wouldn't need Gabe anymore. 

Yeah, he said they were friends, but what did that matter? There wasn't really anything more between them. What happened that last night in Rivet City proved it. Of course, sex never really mattered to Gabe, and he and Dave had fooled around a little bit before then, too. This time seemed to freak him out for some reason, so the next morning Dave made it abundantly clear it was all the booze, just the booze, and that he never wanted to do it again. Forget the fact that he practically came the moment Gabe climbed on top of him, then reciprocated with an eagerness Gabe had rarely been on the receiving end of. It was all just the booze.

Hell, at first Dave flat-out refused to believe it had happened - again. The evidence was in the hickies all over both of them, some in the most intimate of places, and the tacky mess between the blankets. When Dave couldn't deny it anymore, he claimed not to remember a thing and, when pressed, said that he had absolutely no attraction to Gabe.

Gabe had laughed in his face then, and laughed at himself again now, dry and humorless each time. He should be grateful, right? Relieved to know for once that wasn't what someone was trying to get from him. But he felt this uneasiness in his guts when he thought about it. He must be getting soft, to let the green-gilled look of disgust on Dave's face get to him. He wasn't used to being rejected, but he would be pretty fucking pathetic to let a closet-case, near-virgin vaultie moron hurt his feelings.

No. None of it meant a fucking thing. They didn't owe each other shit. Dave kept Gabe around because his blind ass couldn't shoot for shit and he had no clue how to survive above ground. His dad seemed capable of jetting around the wasteland just fine, so Dave could be his responsibility now.

Speaking of jet, he wasn't high enough to chase away the annoying feeling of guilt when he finally turned to Dave's pack, rooting around for anything useful, then dumping it out to carry more valuable loot in. He needed to fix that.

Gabe took his sweet time sorting through the guns, ammo, and supplies. He packed and repacked, humming to distract himself from the fact he was stalling.

This was the right decision. Long overdue.

He finally loaded up and, chiding himself, took one last look at the vault boy in the pod. His eyes were unfocused, brows furrowed and lips parted, as if asleep. How he had gotten so sentimental for this big nosed, baby-faced, nervous wreck of a boy, he didn't know. 

"Well," he announced, only to struggle with his words. It didn't matter what he said, he wouldn't hear shit, so why was this hard? ".. It's been.. good knowing you, I guess? Hope you, ya know. Wake up some day. You fucking idiot."

When Dave's head abruptly turned to look at him, Gabe yelped.

"Ohhh! Thank god!" The words were muffled behind the glass as he frantically shoved the lid open.

"What the f-!?"

"DAD!?"

Dave pushed Gabe aside, and before he got far, a man stepped out from behind another pod. Disoriented, but relieved. Dave crashed into him with a shout of relief. The crazy bastard had actually done it.

"You saved me," James said, shaken. He hugged Dave back just as hard. "I was afraid I would be trapped in there forever. It's so good to see you, David, but.. what are you doing here?"

James held Dave back a bit to look him in the eye, and the teen trembled. "What are you doing here!? God, I-I thought I might have killed you, too!" he shouted, somewhere between anger and horror.

"You did the right thing," James said gently. "These people never should have lived so long. This wasn't a life for them, this was hell. You freed them."

Dave shuddered, his father wrapping his arms around him again as his hyperventilating finally gave way to heavy sobs. Gabe hadn't a goddamn clue what they were going on about, but as he saw James frown at the other pods, he put two and two together. He was rather shocked that Dave made a choice like that, just to get his dad out, and wondered what the hell happened in there.

"Now that I'm back," James said, his voice still so gentle as he began to let go despite how Dave clung to him. "I need to get back to work. I need to tell Madison what I've found."

"Wait, what? Like, right now?"

"Yes."

Dave rubbed his cheeks with the dirty sleeves of his vault suit before looking up at the man imploringly. "Dad, what.. I-I need some answers."

"You came all this way for 'answers'?" he chuckled, as if oblivious to why Dave was so upset.

".. What the hell is wrong with you!?" Dave cried, his hands open to him. "Dad, why.. what about me?"

"Yes, what about you? Why are you here? Vault 101 is where you belong," he said simply. "Out here is my part, my responsibility. You were never supposed to be part of this insanity."

"You left me there. The Overseer went berserk because you left, th-they killed Jonas! Tried to kill me, h-he even put a gun to Amata's head.."

James heaved a big sigh, and shook his head. None of this seemed to surprise him. "I had hoped he would simply seal the vault. It would have been worth it, even if you spent the rest of your life hating me, to know you were safe."

Dave stared openly at his father, trembling. James was still so calm, contrite but clinical, as always. "You planned to abandon me there from the start," he accused in a low voice.

"I didn't see it as abandoning you. I saw it as moving on, knowing you were safe."

"Fuck you."

"David! Come now."

"D-do you even hear yourself!? How do you just move on from your own kid?"

James frowned at him impatiently, as if Dave simply wasn't understanding him. "I'm sorry that I left you. I did what I thought was best for you. I don't know how else to say it. I want to work this out, David, but my work needs to come first. You'll just have to come back with me to Rivet City."

"Your 'work,'" Dave repeated, looking away from him in disgust.

"You have to understand, as much as I love you, Project Purity was my responsibility long before you were born. Too many people have made sacrifices to give up now. Including your mother."

"Don't bring her into this! You can't just bring her up to win an argument!"

James frowned at him, then shook his head. "Coming all this way after me, I thought you would want to help. I can't stop now. When project purity is done, we can sit down and really talk, but I want you to be there when we change the world."

Dave stared at the other man, searching his face for a long time. Then he repeated, "Fuck you, dad."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," James sighed. He ran a hand through his hair with an air of disappointment. Then he checked the laser pistol on his hip and added, "The last thing I want is to lose my son. I hope you change your mind. You can find me in Rivet City if you do."

With that, James walked away. Dave stood there, dumbfounded as he watched his dad leave again, tears still running down his cheeks and his hands clenched into quaking fists.

Gabe chewed on the inside of his cheek, awkward in the silence left behind. The argument had harshed his buzz, but he was sort of impressed that Dave had called him on his bullshit. When they first met, Dave sure didn't have a backbone like that.

Gabe started to speak and stopped awkwardly. "Heeeey, buddy," he finally offered lamely, stepping around to face him.

Dave startled. He seemed to have forgotten about Gabe entirely, and smiled in embarrassed apology. "Hey, uh. Sorry about that."

"So.. your dad is a gigantic prick."

"Yeah," Dave muttered as he wiped his nose and adjusted his glasses, finally looking at Gabe. Then at the heavily loaded packs he had set on the ground just behind him, one of which was his. "Were you.. were you robbing me?"

"... Yeah." Gabe shrugged.

He half expected Dave to lash out in anger again, to feel betrayed by him too. Instead, Dave laughed, tearful but honest. "How long was I in there?"

"I dunno. Three hours, maybe more?"

"Well.. that was more time than you gave me at Tenpenny Tower."

"When you stop doing insane-ass shit in stupid-ass places, I'll stop assuming you're dead."

Dave nodded in agreement. He pushed his glasses up to his forehead, roughly rubbing his face with both hands. Then he sighed, puffed air out through his lips, and muttered to himself, "I need a drink."

"I bet you do."

"I think.." Dave started, dropping his hands tiredly. "I think I'm done."

"You're done?"

"With all of it," he replied, gesturing to the vault around them. "All the insane-ass shit in stupid-ass places. I'm done."

"Bullshit," Gabe smirked. "You can't help yourself."

"I mean it. We can do whatever you want to do now."

"Huh," Gabe replied. He hadn't really considered what he would do next, beyond selling the extra weapons he was carrying. He had just been ready to get the hell out of here.