the rot runs through him like an impassive plague, something that can't be seen nor felt but it's there, curing the uncureable. knitting over wounds that should trounce the healthiest of wasteland wanderers. for a moment it feels something like permanence, a fortress imperishable — but what is godhood to a drifter? a subject without a place. an abomination to the brotherhood, everything thaddeus had prized turned to water in his hands. all that was learned had to be unlearned for the sake of preservation. but what was the point now? [you were not born strong, you were not born loved, so what does eternal life mean to a beast like you?] maybe death at a brother's hand would have been a kinder fate. thaddeus finds his reflection in everything now, peering into every puddle of discolouration to find what lay waiting for him — marking the time that it took for this vessel to betray his true nature and fall into a state of decay. and then, come what may; the brotherhood had never dealt with an abomination with any dose of kindness, and thaddeus, a mere victim to their preaching. purging the wasteland, cleansing the wasteland, so one day it would anything but waste; a bullet to the head for the brotherhood, now that would have pledged his love and loyalty and written it into history. what other brother could say that he had left such a mark? but as thaddeus ponders upon it, the more it twists his gut. [when is a soldier not a soldier? when it looks like a monster.] doomed to his hamartia, a rotten thing of antagonistic greed and self-preservation, thaddeus chased survival and found it, but the cost proved to be far greater than anticipated. he supposed it was just, in some way; putting a stranger in his sights and ordering him to perform a miracle. now he rots too, slow and rather painlessly; most times, he can barely sense it's there. what a fucking coward.
‘yeah, look — can i get some of that radaway or not?’ astrid's words fall on deaf ears, he rinses them clean as they pass through him. there was nothing to be said that he'd not dealt by his own mouth. my name is thaddeus. my name is thaddeus. but for how long would he remember that fact? punishment can take a while; days or weeks, months or years, he did not know. every fucking day is punishment already, he thinks, awaiting that very moment his complexion began to foster every ill thought he'd ever conjured, every bruise he'd ever issued, until his skin is just as rotten as he is.
