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Celeste has been sick to his stomach ever since he woke up. Codsworth does his best with warm compresses and purified water. The Longs offer advice on pills to settle nausea. Sturges rigs up a chair with extra padding along the back to balance his body when sitting. Mama Murphy suggests that ambient radiation could be affecting his health, and Celeste starts to check everything with the Pip-Boy’s geiger counter before consuming it. Celeste thanks them all and pretends like it helps.

He never felt like this before the war, but nothing of this sort had ever happened to him before the war. It starts getting easier to hide as he grows more accustomed to it, and he makes a habit of eating several small portions during the day. When he finds his first pack of Grey Tortoise cigarettes, he remembers hearing about the supposed calming effects they had for an upset stomach (among a host of other claims). He remembers rolling his eyes at the idea with his sister, never having any desire to pick up smoking of any kind and being constantly wary at putting anything in his body that he wasn’t sure about.

Celeste pulls his hand out of the desk drawer, and asks Preston if he wants to share the pack.

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Shaun isn’t Celeste’s son. He’s Solana’s. She would be awfully cross if she found out that Celeste was taking all the credit of raising her son, but the story starts to warp more and more as it passes from person to person. The General of the Minutemen is looking for a baby, a nephew, a sister’s son, someone’s son, a son. The word comes to be associated with Shaun so heavily that Celeste stops correcting people about how the two of them are actually related. He finds that it benefits him overall; people are more eager to help a father than an uncle. By the time Celeste makes it to Goodneighbor, even his friends are no longer clearing up the misunderstanding. They clearly find the lie a little difficult to handle, but the difference in reaction and sympathy is evident even to them. They don’t dare do anything that could jeopardize what little help Celeste might get in his desperate journey.

Whatever will help him find Shaun, Celeste reminds himself, and knows that Solana would do the same if she were searching for a theoretical son of Celeste’s while he laid frozen and dead in a cryopod. In a world where everyone else Celeste could call his family is long-dead, Shaun might as well be his son.

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He’s a good person, according to his friends. Codsworth calls him a dutiful guardian. Preston and Hancock like the way he wants to help the helpless. Piper and MacCready praise his steadfast focus on what really matters. Cait finds him trustworthy, which is the conversation where Celeste feels like he’s been rocketed back to reality for the first time in a long time.

“Really?” he asks her, and she mirrors his disbelief right back at him.

“You’re the General of the Minutemen, and you’re shocked that someone trusts you?”

“No, I... You’re with me because I paid off your debt. I know you said we’re friends, but it’s a little more like mercenary work for you, isn’t it?”

“I like ya just fine, dunce,” Cait replies.

“You don’t think I’m too soft?”

That gets Celeste a scoff and a roll of Cait’s eyes.

“I never said that. You are soft, and it drives me up the wall. But you’re soft when it matters. I’m not expectin’ that bill anymore, if you get what I mean.”

What a way to think about friendship, Celeste had thought back when Cait expressed her fears about owing something to Celeste. It’s not as though the idea was new to him; he had his own share of expected reciprocity in his life before the war. His mother wanted to pull her family away from all of that, even if it meant losing their lofty social status. Back then, the money was paper and the sums were much bigger, but Celeste had learned how to buy and sell social capital with the best (or perhaps worst, by another metric) of them by watching his parents. All of that careful planning had been for nothing in the end. Celeste wishes he could tell his mother how much he appreciates everything she had done for her family, even if it only worked out for a short time. The house in Sanctuary Hills was bought with money she inherited, a gift for her beloved children so that they could have a life like normal people.

“Celeste? Hellooooo? Anyone home in there?”

Cait snaps her fingers in front of Celeste’s face. His power armor helmet prevents her from seeing the dazed look on his face, thankfully.

“Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

“Maybe I oughta start chargin’ ya’ for dozin’ off,” she says.

“If it helps, I was thinking about what you said?” Celeste tries, and gets thunked in the shoulder for his attempt at appeasing her.

“Anyway. We’re friends, and I can trust ya’. I just wanted to say that, so we’re on the same page.”

“I appreciate it, Cait. I trust you too. Couldn’t ask for a better Irish gal to stomp giant crabs with.”

Celeste grins when Cait’s eyes go wide and she scowls.

“Ah, hell, don’t tell me we’re huntin’ mirelurks again!”

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Celeste meets people from before the War here and there, but nobody is more surprising to see than Jack Cabot. He knows this man’s face, met him more than a few times under a different name, and he hates the way Jack looks at him with a mix of pity and sadness.

Cabot House is still spotless, and probably has been since far before Celeste’s ancestors even set foot on the North American continent. The pristine nature is offensive in a way that not even untouched Vaults upset him. Maybe he’s just bitter because he had to live through the muck. Maybe he wishes he was able to survive the bombs with his family (mostly) intact. It’s gone, long dead, that way of living , he wants to tell Jack. Quit trying to hold onto it. These mimicries of life before the War grow more and more unsettling to Celeste the longer he has to experience them. It’s like looking at a taxidermy puppet being shown off as a live animal. Eventually, the Cabots will die, just like how the old world died. Celeste wonders how they feel about what will happen to the house. Will they expect Edward to maintain it even without a family to inhabit it? Will the robots patrolling the front continue to float in endless circles? Will they decide to name heirs so that Cabots will continue living within spotless walls?

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Finding Shaun is the priority, but dealing with things that slow down that objective is a good thing. Helping Ada means helping others in the Commonwealth, and having an ally made from an actual combat robot is probably a better idea than having Codworth take a few rounds to his casing just so that he can set a raider on fire. This is good, Celeste reminds himself. This is helping people who are helping him, and anything that helps people will also help him. He is not off galavanting through the Commonwealth going on wild adventures while Shaun is trapped alone and scared in god knows where. Ada can tell that he’s antsy. She’s sympathetic, but both of them agree that roving packs of unsupervised robots blowing people up are far more urgent to address. It won’t do Shaun any good if Celeste can’t keep him safe.

It’s not just helping Ada. Any time Celeste opens his mouth and promises to help someone, part of him wants to kick himself in the shins. You have a kidnapped infant to find, you fucking moron, curses his own voice in his head. Realistically, it’s not as if he can chase down Shaun’s kidnappers without help or preparation. The turrets at Fort Hagan had nearly taken his head off his shoulders, and he had to flee with Nick and Dogmeat before they all ended up getting killed.

“I went on an adventure with a robot and all I got was this stupid-ass power armor,” Celeste mutters to nobody in particular as he tries to fix said power armor. It’s not stupid, and it’s actually decent enough that Celeste plans on using it to attempt his second break-in at Fort Hagan. Priorities, though. First, stop the Mechanist (so that Celeste will stop being ambushed by robot hit squads); then, find Shaun.

“Can’t find him if I’m dead.” he reminds himself.

“Indeed, sir,” Ada replies. “Your survival is crucial to the mission.”

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“…and then he called me a mercenary,” Celeste laughs as he recounts a few adventures over late-evening dinner at the Castle, and everyone else joins in. What a ridiculous idea, calling the General of the Minutemen a merc, but it’s not as if that Brotherhood paladin knew who he was. To these Minutemen sitting around the table who see Celeste as their leader, the concept is absurd.

“You’re not considering joining the Brotherhood, are you?” Preston asks again, still anxious about the possibility. Celeste puts out his cigarette and makes a noncommittal sound.

“Joining doesn’t seem like a good idea so long as I’m General. I can see merit in allying with them, but I don’t know how that could help us right now. We have our priorities, and they have theirs.”

“I would love a suit of power armor though. We could even paint it blue and white!”

“Who’s going to maintain it? I am not a fan of fixing my own personal set, and I can’t imagine anyone else would enjoy fixing a whole militia’s worth,” Celeste replies to the suggestion from the group.

“They’re not gonna let us have any of their stupid power armor. They’ll try and steal the General’s if we’re not careful.”

A small debate breaks out on whether or not the Brotherhood of Steel would attempt to tussle with the Minutemen over Celeste’s tesla power armor. He worked damn hard to get it while helping out Ada, and he certainly isn’t handing it over any time soon. Paladin Danse’s offer still hangs in Celeste’s mind regardless of the risk, a tempting aid to utilize superior firepower against an enemy as powerful as the Institute.

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Celeste pulls Kellogg’s body apart with more precision than he thought himself capable of. It’s technically been over 200 years since he even picked up a sharp medical instrument, and it wasn’t like he was doing surgery at work. Nick seems attentive but overall unphased by Celeste doing an unpracticed, messy autopsy on the floor with the assortment of scavenged scalpels he has in his bag. As a medical professional, Celeste should be doing this with more respect. As a brother and uncle on a mission of vengeance, he doesn’t give a shit.

He’s not sure what he’s even looking for. The only reason why he started was because he spotted something obviously inorganic inside of all the flesh, and assumed he would find something useful if he looked. Celeste sees more things he shouldn’t be seeing in a body and continues cutting out of mounting curiosity. A part fused to the brain, a joint attachment, a subdermal implant. Celeste takes what he can from the human-shaped pile of gore. He does Kellogg the basic courtesy of sewing the skin back into one closed container (nothing he can do about the skull, shattered into pieces all over the floor), and is about to stand back up when he pauses.

Celeste pulls the leather jacket and belt off of the torso. That finally rouses Nick’s concern.

“What are you doing with all of that?”

“It’s good quality. I wouldn’t want to waste it.”

Neither fit Celeste’s, and he’s fine with that. Codsworth sews the leather into chew toys, and Dogmeat destroys all of them within a week.

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Kellogg’s lingering thoughts were right about one thing; you never really realize how happy you are until it’s gone. Celeste hadn’t particularly considered himself happy living in Sanctuary Hills, but that was because he was focused on trying to establish himself outside of his existence as his mother’s son. Living with Solana and Shaun was a far better alternative than living alone all of a sudden, and it wasn’t like they were hurting for money. He only left the family estate because he knew that he was dependent on his family to his own detriment, and they all needed a bit of distance. The day he moved out, he promised his parents that he would call every day. They managed to convince him to cut it down to every other day, and Celeste is certain that it took them a lot of self-control not to simply agree to what he said.

“I need a hobby,” Celeste declares to empty air, lying on his back on Piper’s bed at Publick Occurrences. She’s out chasing a story, and Celeste is babysitting for her. Nat looks up from her homework and eyes him weirdly.

“Doesn’t shooting lasers at raiders count as a hobby?”

“That’s work, Nat. I need a hobby, something that I can focus on that isn’t work. Don’t you have hobbies?”

“Yeah, I do.” She doesn’t elaborate. Celeste finds her standoffish nature endearing; it reminds him of his younger sibling.

“So,” he continues, sitting up and swinging his legs off of the bed. “Hobbies. Do you have any ideas?”

“You could collect stuff, I guess. Like Moe does with baseball.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to collect pre-War stuff,” Celeste lies through his teeth. He does not bring up the fact that the suitcase under his bed at the Red Rocket station is close to overflowing with wooden toy blocks, baby bottles, and toy cars.

“What did you do before the war?”

“I used to dance when I was younger. And a bit of singing too, I guess? Not really enough to call it a hobby, but I liked doing it.”

“Why not try that again? Maybe Magnolia will let you duet with her,” Nat suggests, and Celeste raises an eyebrow.

“Why do you know who sings at the bar in Goodneighbor?”

“I’m thirteen, General. I know things.”

“Yeah, alright, I’m telling MacCready he’s not allowed to tell you things anymore.”

“What? Hey! That’s not fair!”

Celeste mentally shoves away the memories of Rigel’s teenage aloofness that he sees so clearly in Nat’s outrage, and allows Nat to beat him on the head with a pencil so that he can think about something other than his family for once.

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People know who Celeste is. Not just as the General, but by his actual name. He knew this would happen eventually, and it’s a welcome change of pace. All of the help he’s rendered was done so out of the goodness of his heart, but being recognized for it by complete strangers is heartwarming. People walk up to him and Preston just to offer thanks, and sometimes small gifts. This increase in popularity doesn’t go unnoticed when Celeste goes to speak to Paladin Danse about meeting with the Brotherhood’s Elder.

When they last met, Celeste never told Paladin Danse that he ran a growing local militia, but Paladin Danse never told Celeste that the Brotherhood had a flying warship headed to Boston. They regard one another with cool looks, gauging their footing with one another. Knight Rhys and Scribe Haylen stand behind their squad leader, Rhys trying to stare Preston down while Haylen’s eyes flicker from one man to the other. Preston ignores the attempt at intimidation, his eyes fixed on Celeste.

“If your Elder wants to coexist with the people of the Commonwealth, he needs to recognize the people of the Commonwealth. He won’t get far without at least speaking to me.”

“Which is why I still extend the offer for you to join us. The Brotherhood’s goals are for the good of all humanity, and we have no desire to fight the Minutemen.”

Celeste looks over his shoulder at Preston, whose face easily shows his lack of confidence in this line of discussion.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, General,” Preston replies to Celeste’s silent question.

“Me neither,” Celeste says, before turning his head to face Paladin Danse again. “If I join, I have a responsibility to follow Brotherhood orders. If I disregard them for any reason, I make myself and anyone who associates with me an enemy of the Brotherhood. I don’t think that’s fair to the Minutemen under my command. They signed up to help protect the Commonwealth, not be shot by vertibirds.”

Danse sighs.

“Elder Maxson is not an unreasonable man. I’ll see if he’s willing to meet with you, but he's unlikely to leave the vicinity of Boston Airport for his own safety.”

“I’m alright with meeting him on the airport grounds or here in Cambridge, as long as he’s willing to talk. I’ll come back in a week to see what he decides.”

Celeste nods to the three Brotherhood soldiers, and starts to turn to leave when Paladin Danse speaks up.

“You don’t need to worry about hostility between us. Even if we go our separate ways, the Brotherhood holds no animosity toward you or the Minutemen.”

It’s not a reassurance that holds much water, but Celeste isn’t eager to break any possible truces at the moment. He’s silent as he tries to think of a good way to word his thoughts.

“Tell your Elder that I know what he’s thinking,” Celeste settles on saying. “I used to think that you could see everything so much better from above, but if you never come down, you have no idea what’s happening under your own feet until it’s too late.”

It’s silent until Celeste and Preston close the doors of the police station behind them. Celeste leans backward against the wood and sighs. The grounds are still stained with old blood from the feral ghouls.

“It is so tempting, Preston,” Celeste groans. “But I can’t do that to you all.”

“I understand. I can’t pretend like the Brotherhood isn’t a big threat to the Institute. They have the people and the technology to go toe-to-toe with them.”

“It won’t mean anything if they just turn into a second Institute, though.”

Celeste pushes himself off of the doors, wincing a bit. He still needs to get to Hangman’s Alley and track down the source of a string of strange attacks from wild mongrel dogs. Then, figuring out some mods for his power armor that will keep him from melting in the Glowing Sea. And taking out the Gunners hassling MacCready, and clearing out Quincy, and—

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Deacon lies through his teeth every other word. Celeste can tell. He hardly believes it when Deacon claims to be a synth and hands over his recall code, because quite frankly who the hell would do that kind of thing? But people who tell lies have reasons for them, and Celeste has already started off his membership with the Railroad by lying about how Shaun is related to him. Deacon is probably attentive enough to know that Shaun isn’t Celeste’s son. If so, he certainly never said anything about it when Celeste talked to Desdemona in the catacombs. Celeste doesn’t press and doesn’t question when Deacon says something and all the bullshit detectors go off in his head. There’s no time to be calling out habitual liars right now, especially ones that are willing to do so for you without a word. As long as Deacon keeps lying in Celeste’s favor, the two of them will get along just fine. It feels a little wrong, and Celeste certainly feels like a hypocrite, but there are worse things to be in this world.

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How would Solana have fared in the wasteland? Would she have made the same friends, taken the same paths? The idea that she would be so much better at this crosses Celeste’s mind frequently, but that’s just the self-loathing talking. Celeste knows that his sister was just as dependent on their family as he was. If she were in his place, she’d be crying over him and wondering what their mother would do too. It’s comforting in a strange, backwards way.

He hasn’t tried to find his family’s house in Boston yet. He plans on doing so after he finds Shaun. Going home alone feels deeply wrong, as if he’s allowed to run away back to safety. Maybe he’ll fix it up, or tear it down and rebuild if the frame is too unstable. He could run a clinic out of it, or train other wastelanders in emergency medicine. Maybe it could just be a home for himself, but all of those empty rooms would be too depressing to live in alone. Celeste doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he knows better than to do things that could get him haunted. Would his family haunt him? What a silly question; they already do without meaning to.

Maybe the house isn’t such a good idea. Celeste sets the thought aside to worry about later he hears the tell-tale clicking of a turret tracking a target, followed by Strong’s bellowing voice announcing the imminent death of whoever was stupid enough to try and raid Taffington Boathouse. Celeste sighs, picking up his plasma pistol and motioning to Dogmeat to hold position. He’s about to open the front door and start shooting when the turrets blare a siren declaring all-clear.

“Strong?” Celeste asks, cracking the door ajar. “You alright, buddy?”

“Strong swat stupid bugs,” he declares, holding three bloodbugs by their spindly legs. He’s covered in drying blood.

“Eurgh, they spat on you? Go clean that off before you get sick.”

“Strong not—”

“Strong is going to listen to me if he wants to be let back inside,” Celeste insists as he stands and opens the door fully, putting his free hand on his hip. “Go scrub that off in the river.”

He’s almost as bad as Dogmeat sometimes, Celeste thinks. At least Strong does as he’s told, instead of jumping around and hoping that being endearing will make up for it.

Chapter Text

The terror of watching a gun point at Solana’s chest still slams into Celeste whenever he sees a weapon raised against one of his friends. He lets it motivate him. Instead of freezing in fear, he allows the terror to warp into wrath and vengeance. He’s always had a quiet mean streak in him, and nobody suspects such rage from a person like him. Sometimes just screaming like an animal is off-putting enough to make raiders hesitate. He taps into that part of his brain that wants to crush all that would hurt what he loves, and it rushes through him with far more efficacy than a shot of Psycho.

The problem is that he doesn’t know how to turn it off.

A Minuteman argues with a Brotherhood soldier within earshot. The Brotherhood patrol is uncomfortably close to the Castle, and they’re being told as such by the perimeter guard. Celeste stops mid-conversation with the radio technician, giving a quick “sorry, excuse me” and walking toward the source of the commotion. The arguing only gets louder. Celeste starts walking faster. Preston pulls the hot-headed Minuteman aside, and tries to take control of the situation. His voice is quieter and more level, calming rather than agitating. The Brotherhood initiate is ordered to step back by his superior in power armor, and he does with a glare. They’re talking, not yelling, and Celeste can’t hear what they’re saying as clearly anymore.

There’s a laser rifle being pushed in Preston’s face.

Celeste doesn’t know how it happened; he turned his head for a moment to check that everything within the Castle’s walls was okay, and the next moment his blood was hot in his face and his feet were running. He yells something that he isn’t even sure is English, maybe an outburst in Japanese or just a wordless snarl, and then his hand is on the barrel of the rifle and his arm is pushing it straight up into the air and his other elbow is digging into the Initiate’s chest armor and he wants nothing more than to rip this man’s throat out with his own teeth.

The soldier in power armor tries for a split second but seemingly thinks better than to level her weapon at Celeste. Her words are still laced with deadly intent as she barks orders to stay back. The smart move would be to stop wrestling a loaded laser rifle away from a soldier trained to use it. The anger pounds in Celeste’s veins.

“Point a weapon at my Minutemen again, and your Elder will be getting your pieces back in a cardboard box,” Celeste snarls, then looks over the Initiate’s shoulder to stare directly at the power armor helmet’s eyes. “If you want to start a war, you better be damn sure it’s worth it.”

The laser rifle clatters against combat armor as it shakes under two opposing grips. Nobody speaks for an uncomfortably long stretch of time.

“General. I apologize for the rash behavior of this Initiate under my command. It will not happen again,” the Brotherhood knight finally says, and Celeste takes that as an opportune time to distance himself. He lets go, and the Initiate immediately takes several steps back before falling in line behind the knight as if scrambling away to safety. Celeste can still feel the flames under his skin, but this is not the time to press forward. His whole body shakes.

Later, the Initiate is going to be chewed out and sent on some irritating job as punishment, and Celeste is going to lecture his people not to handle situations with the Brotherhood by themselves if he’s around. Right now, Celeste unclenches his right hand and tucks the lock of hair that fell into his face behind his ear, trying to look like the General of the Minutemen and not an animal about to feast on steel and bone. The Brotherhood soldiers flinch, for some reason. Celeste pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a knuckle, and ignores how his fingers sting from scraping against polymer armor.

“Apology accepted,” he tells them. “Go.”

Celeste watches in silence as the patrol walks away. Once they disappear past the ruins of the old diner, Preston tugs on his arm urgently.

“Where’s your eye?” he asks in surprise when Celeste turns around. Celeste lifts his hand to feel under his glasses around his left eye socket. He blinks, and realizes that he doesn’t have his usual prosthesis in.

“Oh my god. No wonder they looked scared,” Celeste says. There’s a solid black sphere in his left eye socket at the moment, something he keeps in while cleaning the prosthesis made to resemble an organic human eye. He had just rushed a Brotherhood soldier, nearly disarmed him, made a threat to butcher the soldier, then shown off a dark void in place of his eye.

“I don’t think it was just your eye that scared them. So much for keeping that on the down low, though,” Preston chuckles, but there’s a nervous tone underneath.

“People were going to find out anyway. It might as well come with a story where I went a little crazy.” Celeste looks around. “Is everyone okay?”

He receives a round of assenting voices. That finally brings the burning in his chest down to embers.

Chapter Text

A huge lion rampages through Boston. It bashes the Castle’s walls into the ocean, leaps up and bisects the Prydwen between its teeth, digs its claws into the ground and crushes the catacombs under its feet. Celeste can hear all of the destruction as he hides behind the counter of his own home, cradling Shaun to his chest and trying to level his breathing. If he’s quiet enough, it won’t hear him and it won’t find him. The air won’t stop shaking. The beast’s footfalls are like bombs. It destroys everything without a thought, aimless and wandering. The ocean overflows with the lion’s weight, tidal waves burying the Glowing Sea to form a true body of water. Celeste sees massive claws through the window of his kitchen, and curls over Shaun protectively.

Dogmeat yelps when Celeste falls directly on top of him.

Celeste blurts out apologies in Japanese, before realizing where he is and who he’s talking to. He’s sprawled on the floor of the State House, a growing ache in his hip and leg from rolling off of the couch where Hancock told him to crash for the night. Dogmeat whimpers.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Celeste groans as he recovers from his impact with the wooden floor. “Did I hurt you?”

Celeste isn’t exactly lightweight, but nothing should be too badly injured. Dogmeat stands up on all fours and shakes his body, as if to test all his bones. He sits down, mouth open in a “doggie smile” to reassure Celeste that all is well.

“You still calling your dog that?” Fahrenheit asks from the doorway. Celeste looks over his shoulder with a frown, still sitting on the floor.

“He’s a baby, so I call him a baby.”

“Don’t you have a real baby you’re looking for?”

“He’s probably a preteen by now. Did you need something from me?”

Celeste hauls himself back up onto the couch, and Fahreneit sits down across from him with a lit cigarette in her mouth.

“Heard a thump, wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”

“Thanks.”

Celeste rubs the soreness out of his leg with a grumble. While Hancock is the type to wax poetic when he feels like it, his lieutenant has none of those tendencies. She keeps smoking and watching Celeste as he brings himself back to earth.

“You need guardrails?” she asks, and Celeste is almost irritated enough to yell at her.

“I need a fucking bed,” he snaps back.

“No change in cognition,” she says, parroting Celeste’s words from when he inspected her once after taking a blow to the head, and Celeste throws his pillow at her face without caring that the cigarette might set it on fire.

Chapter Text

Celeste brings Preston with him to the Prydwen. The ride to the airship in a vertibird is short but nerve-wracking; Celeste doesn’t like how open the craft is. He keeps one hand firmly gripped on a handle, and the other hand wrapped around Preston’s forearm the whole way up. Knight Rhys’s eyes are glued to the back of Celeste’s head, obviously wanting to comment but keeping it to himself. Paladin Danse offers a hand to help Celeste onto the platform once they’re docked, and Celeste hesitates for a moment before accepting it.

He walks through the Prydwen in his General’s outfit, although he wears the usual Minutemen hat for the reason that the General’s hat makes him feel ridiculous. It takes him back to his younger years of using his appearance and demeanor to make an impression; this time, he’s trying to be imposing rather than beautiful. The way Brotherhood soldiers stare as he passes is probably a sign that he’s succeeding. Preston remains as professional as always. Regardless, he cracks a smile when Celeste looks at him. They’re nervous about this for a good reason, and Celeste even felt the need to break out the “big guns”, so to speak: a good luck charm in the form of a large silver bell, attached to his ponytail by a loop of red and white decorative rope. It was a hair piece Solana owned a long time ago, and when she stopped trying to present herself the way she felt like others expected of her, she gave it to Celeste. It was both a sign of her acceptance of her true self, and of having a younger brother. Hand-me-downs were unnecessary for kids whose parents were rich and understanding enough to buy them anything they could ever want, but it seemed like the kind of thing normal siblings had. When Celeste’s mother and Solana’s father were married, he wore that bell in his hair with such pride. Two hundred and ten years later, its soft ringing compels Celeste forward.

Elder Maxson is much younger than Celeste is prepared for. He clearly has his own image to maintain, using a heavy coat and beard to make him look older, wiser than his actual years. What a familiar sight. Flanked by his officers, he’s firm, commanding, and most of all does not betray a hint of hesitation while standing in front of the Lion of One-Eleven.

(It’s a stupid title that Pickman of all people came up with, commenting on his hair that had come out of its bun. Celeste puts up with people calling him that only because it’s starting to freak raiders out.)

They manage to have as pleasant a discussion as they can, until Maxson's eyes flick to Paladin Danse, then back to Celeste, and he asks for their side of the story of the scuffle outside the Castle. There’s no getting around it, and Celeste prepares to stand his ground when Preston speaks up.

“General. May I?”

It makes Celeste pause. Not the interruption, but the idea that someone other than Celeste should offer up his defense. He wants to refuse. Preston steps forward to stand next to him.

“I was there when it happened, and you acted in my defense. I think I owe you this much.”

“You owe me nothing, Preston,” Celeste sighs. “But go on.”

And so he does. Preston’s voice is level, steadfast even as he recounts the laser rifle held to his face. He falters for a brief moment at Celeste’s appearance in the incident, glancing to his General as if to question how okay Celeste is with having his anger explained in such pacifying words. Preston knows how much the incident enraged Celeste and how he had fumed for days afterward. Celeste still doesn’t find any shame in his reaction, and if that makes him a terrible person, so be it. The Elder can deal with it, he thinks.

“You threatened to send that soldier back to me in a box, from what was reported to me,” Maxson says once Preston finishes.

“In pieces, in a cardboard box, if he ever pointed a weapon at my men ever again,” Celeste adds. He can feel everyone in the room bristle at his demeanor. “I have a responsibility to protect those under my command, just the same as you do to your soldiers.”

“Surely the situation could have been dealt with without a threat?”

Celeste can feel his expression turn to indignation before the full feeling hits him.

“I’d ask the same of your soldier, Elder. What warranted pointing a gun at someone who approached to diffuse the situation? I will not apologize for defending against unwarranted violence. I will be dead in the ground before anyone, whether it be raider or Institute or Brotherhood, takes someone I care about ever again. I did not let a deathclaw tackle me into a wall to save Preston’s life for a Brotherhood soldier to kill him as intimidation.”

The bell jangles when Celeste’s head jerks in emphasis on the last word. The sound is utterly out of place on a warship, but it reminds Celeste to pause. Don’t back down, but don’t charge ahead. Stay driven, but stay calm, stay collected. He can hear Solana’s voice ringing from the back of his head, and it keeps him from sinking too far into his anger.

Chapter Text

Celeste’s geiger counter is built into his Pip-Boy; Felix’s geiger counter is in the shop. A few agents get wide-eyed on first meeting, a few show a flash of familiarity across their faces, but all of them know better than to say anything. Felix can’t go around changing faces every few months like Deacon. Instead, Felix equips himself with Tommy Whispers’ pistol, shadowed leather armor, and a slightly sarcastic lean in his humor. He tracks down dead drops, clears out escape routes, and climbs up skyscrapers with the best of them, and he’s the Railroad’s star heavy in no time. Deacon is so proud, and acts like Felix learned everything from him.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Deeks,” he warns, sipping on a Nuka-Cola as he, Deacon, and Drummer Boy patiently wait to see how Tinker Tom’s newest invention fares. The agent holding the steam-powered doohickey doesn’t look like he has much faith in the whole thing, but he is willingly testing it. That has to count for something.

“I am an excellent mentor. You’ve flown through the ranks thanks to me!”

“From rank of nothing to agent, sure,” Drummer Boy adds. “I don’t think Desdemona making an executive decision counts as your mentorship.”

“Thanks, Drummer.”

“Oh, so you’ll thank him but not the guy who taught you the ropes? Brought you into our merry little family? I see how it is.”

“Deacon, shut up. I can’t hear what Tom’s saying.”

Felix actually does want to hear Tom’s explanations about water cooling and steam power in small arms, and does his best to ignore Deacon’s affronted noises. The experimental firing of the rifle goes sideways, as expected, and Drummer Boy leaps out of his chair as a part of the gun flies off of the barrel and bounces across the stone floor. No injuries this time, except for the heat shield on the ground that seems to be a bit... floppy?

“That doesn’t look good,” Felix says, nudging it with the side of his boot to avoid touching it directly. “Tom, did that just melt part of the barrel?”

“Well, you know! These things happen. I’ll just adjust the pressure a bit more.”

“It might need to be a lot more.”

Felix likes it here. Yes, the open coffins with visible skeletons are morbid and unsettling, and there’s no decent air flow, and everyone is on edge, and Desdemona seems to be in a permanent quarrel with Carrington, but everyone is here because they want to be. These people are certain in their beliefs and know that they’re doing the right thing. Everything they do is for a better future for someone else who can’t make it on their own. It’s a noble calling.

“Noble” might be the wrong word. It’s a drive to never let the light burn out, to throw it forward even while being consumed by the dark so that someone else can continue carrying it. By the candlelight of the past, the future comes into light. There’s no guarantee that the one who lit the flame will be there to see what it illuminated in the darkness, but Felix knows that reality quite well.

Felix closes his eyes for a moment, and Celeste thinks of his dad. He thinks of blood transfusions and self-sacrifice. He thinks of the emptiness in his skull where his left eye once was, and how that was the only thing that had to be taken from him despite his sickness. He thinks of Desdemona’s most important question and the invisible new moon that comes before the waxing crescent.

“Hey Felix,” Deacon says, and Felix opens his eyes again. “You dozing off on us?”

“Just thinking about some stuff.”

“Leave the guy alone, Deacon. He’s busy.”

“Actually, I was thinking about how funny it would have been to kill Kellogg with one of Tom’s doohickeys. I should have blown his head off with a spike. Or just, lobbed a cannonball at him.”

“Grim, Felix,” Deacon says. “That’s one way to get through a skull.”

“Same end result, right?”

“More or less? Wouldn’t that have crushed some important bits, though?”

“Can we talk about something other than head crushing?” Drummer Boy begs weakly.

Chapter Text

Paladin Danse joins Celeste’s travels as some sort of peace offering from the Brotherhood. He’s there to assist the Minutemen with fire support and act as a line of communication to Elder Maxson, supposedly. Celeste can tell when a gift is bugged, thank you very much, and wonders if he should be insulted that Maxson thinks that he’s stupid enough to fall for it. For what it’s worth, Danse firmly denies any intentions of sabotage and doesn’t try to open fire on Hancock or Nick. He’s icily polite to them, even though Celeste can tell that he’d very much like to throttle the mayor of Goodneighbor on multiple occasions.

Danse sticks out in Celeste’s circle of Commonwealth traveling partners. He doesn’t attempt to foster friendship with the others, never dropping his professional demeanor once. He’s got a job to do, of course, but even when the day winds down and Danse peels himself out of his power armor, he never turns off the Brotherhood Paladin persona. There’s no sense of trust between Danse and the others. MacCready and Deacon can needle each other as much as they’d like, but neither seems to worry about whether the other will have their back in a fight. There’s a clear air of resentment and distrust when it comes to Danse. Celeste can’t bring himself to fault anyone for it, although he does tell MacCready to give it a rest already, RJ, the man is trying to be civil at one point. The robots are the nicest to Danse, except for Jezebel who immediately starts insulting him and Celeste has to explain that she’s just like that toward everyone.

There’s one major benefit to having a Brotherhood Paladin around, though; he knows how to fight in a squad. Most of Celeste’s friends are used to going solo, and while they understand the theory in combat as a group, their actual execution is… mixed. Celeste would actual appreciate a few pointers from someone with structured military experience, but unfortunately Danse comes from a rival faction that may or may not start an all-out war with the Minutemen within the next year, and Celeste is not keen on having knowledge on the Minutemen’s combat tactics be used against them. Danse offers advice anyway, and while Celeste’s friends grumble and scoff at it, Celeste silently files the information away for later discussion with Ronnie Shaw. Distrust and tension aside, nobody can argue against the efficacy of a laser rifle in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Danse teaches Celeste how to create cover for allies while in power armor, and much to Celeste’s chagrin he notices that he’s using less stimpaks on his friends by following the paladin’s instructions.

This gift is definitely still bugged, though. That much is certain, no matter how helpful Danse is. Celeste watches what he says around this double-edged sword, and assumes every single word is making its way back to Elder Maxson.

Chapter Text

“Christ alive, what do we even do here?” Celeste asks, pushing himself away from the table in frustration. His room in the Castle has never felt so cramped, with so many people gathered around the table to help him plan how to get through the Glowing Sea.

He’s already overturned any offer from anyone hurt by radiation to accompany him. That leaves Codsworth, Nick, Hancock, Ada, Strong, and Curie as possible backup. Codsworth and Curie are out due to lacking sufficient combat functions for Celeste’s comfort in such a dangerous area. Ada fares better, but Celeste would rather rebuild her legs back into Assaultron form before taking her. Nick and Hancock are decent options, but need to be outfitted with better armor. Strong is eager to walk into the Glowing Sea for the sake of the challenge, which is exactly why Celeste forbids him from going.

“We are trying to avoid combat,” Celeste tells Strong again when he demands he go. “This is not like clearing out raiders. We need to go in and get out as fast as possible.”

“Strong kill any obstacles.”

“We are not spending time fighting obstacles. Power armor probably isn’t enough to make up for the sheer danger of what’s out there.”

“Others too weak for Glowing Sea. Robots and metal man and ghoul break, hard to carry,” Strong points out. Codsworth lets out an affronted “well I say,” from the back. “Humans no good, hurt by glow. Strong not hurt by glow and not break.”

“He kind of has a point,” MacCready agrees. “You can’t take anyone human or you’ll just double the weight of Rad-X and Rad-Away you gotta carry. Ada’s made for carrying scrap, not fighting. Codsworth and Curie aren’t going to last in the Glowing Sea. Valentine and Hancock might not either, no offense.”

“Aww, I’m touched. You afraid a deathclaw might eat me?” jokes Nick. Hancock isn’t here for the little impromptu meeting, unfortunately a little too high to be of much use. If he was present, Celeste is sure that he’d have an opinion about this too.

“And then we’ll be the ones responsible for robbin’ the Commonwealth of its best detective without a face.”

Celeste shoots Cait a look, silently warning her to be nice.

“I’ll think this over some more. I still need more time to gather supplies. Can we regroup in a week?” Celeste asks, as though anyone has any other choice.

Chapter Text

Nick isn’t his best friend, per se, but he comes very close to holding that position for Celeste. They started as private eye and client, and now Celeste is discussing identity crises and the inability to express complex feelings about one’s sense of self with the old synth. The manner of how both of them struggle is dramatically different. This makes Celeste appreciate that they share this situation much more.

Nick builds off of the memories of a pre-War cop to create an identity for himself, but that doesn't do away with the reality that those aren’t Nick’s memories. Celeste asks an intriguing question about that.

“Does it really matter whose memories those are, at this point? They’re not yours, but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to learn something from them. Nick Valentine the cop is teaching you something from beyond the grave.”

Celeste stubs out his cigarette. Nick extends the open pack to him to grab a new one.

“Is that how you feel about your dad? I know it isn’t the same, since you don’t have his actual memories, but you sound like you’ve given this type of thing a lot of thought before.”

“Sort of. I know it worried my parents that I was trying to be so much like him, but I still want to be my own person. I could be Lune Asagao’s son and still be Celeste Asagao, too.”

“I wonder if your parents were more worried because he was dead.”

“Probably,” Celeste admits. He slouches back in his armchair and lets his face fill up with smoke. “Trying to emulate someone who’s alive is inspiring. Trying to emulate someone who’s dead is grounds to worry about being possessed. But I don’t think that was their concern. My dad being the way he was is what led to his death, even if it wasn’t directly his…”

Celeste makes a spinning gesture with his hand, unable to find the right word.

“It happened because of choices he made, but he didn’t choose or intend to die,” Nick offers helpfully.

“Yeah. So my parents were worried that I would do that, too.”

It’s difficult for Celeste to open up about himself with most of his friends. He isn’t afraid of rejection or even difficulty understanding; none of them would brush him off, and Celeste can live with the average wastelander’s lack of experience in whatever the hell was going on with his family. The problem is how much more of a burden it would put on them trying to play therapist to Celeste. They already walk straight into gunfire for him on a near-daily basis, and they don’t need to spend extra time figuring out how to fix him. At least, that’s what he tells himself. It’s easy to justify being closed off when he frames it as doing someone a favor. With Nick, it’s a common ground that helps Nick figure himself out too, and Celeste can’t seem to stop talking.

“I’m not saying this to be a jerk, but I see why they were so worried.”

“See, this is why I travel with you,” laughs Celeste. “I need someone who can say things like that to me.”

Chapter Text

The Glowing Sea is a nightmare. Celeste ends up going with Nick and takes a few Stealth Boys with him just in case. They still have to shoot down all manner of mutated bugs and deal with one deathclaw, but they make it to Virgil and back without dying. The whole time, Celeste fears that this will lead to nothing. Yes, he’s one step closer to getting to the Institute, but now he has to track and kill a courser without getting himself killed. Every step forward feels like it just drags him further back, even though he knows that he’s inching ever closer to Shaun.

Despite it all, Celeste doesn’t give in. If there is anything that Celeste has learned to hold on to, it’s hope. The wasteland has a way of draining its inhabitants of everything; despair is the expectation. In a place like this, the mere idea that things might change for the better can cut like steel. He doesn’t expect anyone else to agree with him, but Celeste never stops trying. He lives and breathes the spirit of proud defiance, and if the world decides that its mission is to strip him of his hope, he will do everything to keep it in his grasp. It tells him to cry, and he laughs.

That’s exactly what he does when the courser’s knees hit the floor, stealth boy disengaging. The rush of adrenaline and panic tumbles out of Celeste with another hysterical giggle, and he nearly loses his composure. The strange, twisted knife (machete?) in his hand seems to hum as the courser’s blood drips onto the floor. Celeste had lashed out with it, hoping to make a mark that would make it easier to track an invisible enemy. Instead, he managed to slice open the entire front of the black uniform and spray red everywhere. Some of it is on his face, some smeared across his own chest, most of it pooling on the floor. The courser dies the same way a human would, choking, coughing, twitching. Celeste has just enough clarity to mourn the loss of a soul that could not be set free. The moment passes, as does the courser. And then, Celeste raises the blade and cuts directly into the corpse’s spine to begin yet another dissection.

Chapter Text

“So, what is your type anyway?” Hancock asks Celeste. The question catches him so off-guard that he doesn’t even give a response at first, a glass of rum and Nuka halfway held to his mouth. Celeste can actually hear the crickets chirping in the grass in the stretch of silence. He’s had a long day, and the evening has mostly consisted of his friends antagonizing chatting with each other over alcohol and cigarettes while Celeste leans back in his chair and figures out what’s so great about this specific bottle of rum that Deacon gave him. All the eyes around the patio table swivel toward him, under the lights of the Red Rocket station.

“Um. Men?”

“That’s not a type, Blue,” Piper adds, joining in on the light-hearted needling. “Come on, you have to have a type!”

Celeste has to stop and think. He’s had boyfriends, a few crushes here and there, but he can’t really think of what kind of person he tends to fall for. This shouldn’t be such a mental exercise, and yet here he is scrambling for an answer to what should be a simple, funny question. Sensing that he’s floundering, Cait throws him a bone.

“I think you’ve got a thing for optimists,” she says, smirking in Hancock’s direction. “Hancock’s only askin’ because he thinks he’s got a chance.”

It’s not an untrue statement. Celeste likes Hancock well enough, although he’d very much wish the ghoul would stop using so many drugs for his own good.

“Hey, I’m not the only one that fits that description. We got our favorite Minuteman over there, too.”

“Funny that the General isn’t your favorite Minuteman,” Preston chuckles as he takes another sip of his beer.

“He’s our favorite general, but you’re our favorite non-general Minuteman.”

The explanation makes no sense, and it makes everyone laugh. The group eventually settles on assigning Celeste a type, which Piper declares to be “optimists who don’t let you do crazy shit.” Celeste has to admit that it’s true, although that’s such a broad category that it could theoretically apply to several men he knows. It’s a start, and a far better answer than Celeste’s own.

He ponders the topic while everyone watches MacCready introduce Curie to her first ever shot of whiskey. Celeste never gave it much thought as to who he finds attractive, much less who he might decide to date. Yes, the sudden spark of attraction has hit him multiple times, but he was always unsure of what exactly made him like those people. Not that it matters now. Celeste has far more pressing matters to worry about than crushes and his own love life.

Preston claps a hand on his shoulder while walking past to grab another beer, and Celeste smiles. He doesn’t even realize that he does it.

Chapter Text

“Okay, I think I have you straight…”

“I sure hope not,” Celeste says, to which Piper lets out a wheezing laugh.

“Here we go. Does this look right?”

She slides the piece of paper across her desk for Celeste to inspect. Piper keeps making funny mistakes as she tries to map out Celeste’s family tree for another interview with Celeste. The article needs visual representation thanks to how complicated the Asagao’s familial relationships were, and Piper has somehow messed it up twice already.

Celeste starts from himself, following the line up to where it splits into his dad, Lune Asagao née Yuugami, and his mother, Callisto Asagao.

“It’s already interesting that your dad took your mother’s last name,” Piper opines as she watches Celeste inspect her work. “He really wanted to make sure she left her mark with the family name, huh?”

“My mother wanted to be known as an Asagao, not as anyone else. She loved my dad, and maybe in another time she would have wanted his surname. But she wanted to stamp out the old reputation of the Asagao name, and make it hers. She didn’t want to be notable just because everyone had heard that name. There had to be something to be proud of with it, and she did everything in her power to use what she’d taken from her father to make the world a little bit better. Everyone knew her as an heiress philanthropist, but she did a little dirty work too when working within the law couldn’t protect people.”

The year next to Lune’s name marks him deceased. There’s a question mark next to Callisto’s, because as realistic as it is to assume that she’s dead, Celeste doesn’t have any proof.

“My dad died when I was just barely two years old. I was sick with... something, I don’t even remember if they ever truly found out what it was. It was one of the diseases that spread like wildfire at the time, and they hit so fast that you couldn’t do anything to save most people. Blood and plasma was in such short supply, it just couldn’t be bought. So, my dad treated me. He was my doctor, and my blood donor, and eventually he caught what I had and died. I lost an eye from infection, but I could have had a lot worse even if the illness didn’t kill me. All of that was thanks to him.”

Above Lune, a bracket forms and connects to Celeste’s uncle and Lune’s brother, Cynthe Yuugami.

“My uncle Cynthe was my dad’s brother, but a lot of people mistook him for my mother’s brother. They treated each other like it, anyway. He was constantly afraid that everyone just wanted to use him, but he trusted my dad. And eventually my mother too. I don’t know why or how he was able to overcome his paranoia for her, and he had no idea either. I asked him once and he just couldn’t explain it. Whatever the reason, he said he was glad it happened because if he didn’t trust her, he probably would have been dead within a month after my dad.”

Celeste frowns and scratches the paper next to Cynthe’s name. He backtracks to his mother, and follows the line extending on the opposite side of Callisto’s name. It leads to Telus Asagao née Morino.

“My father was a friend of my dad and my mother. They’d known each other for a few years before I was born. I knew him decently well before he and my mother started a serious relationship, and so it was kind of easy for me to see him as my father. I know he’s technically my step-father, but I’ve never called him that, and I never will. He’s my father, ever since he married my mother.”

Branching off from the line connecting Callisto and Telus is Rigel Asagao.

“My younger sibling, Rigel. He was... interesting. He really loved goats and sheep and rams and... that general category of animals. I’m not sure why, but it made him happy raising them. He managed to train a few to let him ride them too, which really enhanced the whole ‘Asagao eccentricity’ thing that people loved to talk about. Imagine a moody teenager telling you that you’re a complete lame-ass while he’s sitting on a sheep. That was Rigel.”

Tracing the line up and back toward Telus, a dotted line trails into Solana Asagao née Morino.

“Solana was adopted by our father before he married our mother. She was... ten? I think? I don’t know why I don’t remember, I really should, but I do remember meeting her at a social event for the first time. We ended up being good friends. My father said that what convinced him to finally propose to our mother was seeing how well we got along, and how it seemed like a good sign that we’d fit as siblings. And he was right. My sister and I were close, and maybe it was because we’d been friends before we were siblings.”

Further down, a solid line descends into Shaun Asagao.

“Did you know that Solana would call Shaun by his middle name sometimes? Orion, like the constellation. His birth mother was the one who named him Shaun, and Solana gave him his middle name. I actually don’t know who his birth mother is. I know she was a friend of Solana’s, and she agreed to be a surrogate. I understand why Solana never told me who, because it isn’t my business to know. His birth mother wasn’t trying to be a parent, she just wanted to help Solana be a mom like she wanted to be.”

The family tree centers around Celeste, naturally, but it feels so odd to see himself front and center. When he thinks of his family, he always pictures his mother at the core of it all; the one whose name they share, the one who binds them together. Now that role has fallen to Celeste, like a crown passing from queen to prince. It really is him now at the helm of the Asagaos.

Piper lays her hand on top of Celeste’s, and he finally realizes that he’s been silent for a long time.

“Hey, Blue? You don’t need to do this if you aren’t ready. I can scrap this story and write something else.”

“No, it’s fine—” This was Celeste’s idea to start with. He wanted to talk about his family so that people could see what he was like beneath the mythic names of General, Lion, Vault Dweller. “I’m fine. I want people to know. It’s just… sort of hitting me now that I really am all that’s left of my family. It’s just me and Shaun.”

“I understand,” Piper replies. She’s lived that same realization, probably some years ago while she was still carrying Nat in her own arms. Of being all that remains. Of the line reaching yourself and stopping. Shaun’s name hangs at the bottom of the page, past Celeste, but he can’t bring himself to find peace in that.

“Sometimes I wonder what I’m going to do if I don’t find Shaun alive,” Celeste admits. He would need to continue onward. He would lead the Minutemen and fight the Institute regardless. But outside of that? What would Celeste do with himself as a son, a brother, a nephew, an uncle? How could he continue on as an Asagao alone? They weren’t made to be solitary people. They were made to trust one another, save one another, live and breathe and bleed for one another.

Piper’s reassurance that they’ll find him alive is easy to believe, easy to lean into. She’s never steered Celeste wrong yet, and he’s certain that she isn’t going to start now.

Chapter Text

“That is disgusting, Asagao.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You have a—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it! This isn’t for you, and I’m not interested in the opinion of someone who has no idea what happened.”

Celeste stomps into Sanctuary with Danse on his heels, both of them clad in power armor. Preston follows behind, looking a little shaken. The trio make their way up the broken road, arguing all the way.

“General, I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Preston agrees, to which Celeste scowls and continues onward anyway. He keeps his hands firmly on the metal boxes he’s carrying, ignoring the way that the heavier one shifts with wet noises. A few settlers have come out to see what the fuss is about, and Celeste ignores all of them.

“I fail to see how this is an appropriate—”

That’s the final straw for Celeste. He whirls around (as fast as power armor lets him), and points an accusatory finger at Danse.

“You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for this situation, Paladin ,” Celeste snarls. “You saw the blood on the wall. You can put two and two together. If you hate it so much, you can go tell your Elder that the Minutemen General is out of his mind and wash your hands of me.”

“Your lieutenant general is expressing his own reservations about this. I understand if you disregard my opinion, but does his mean nothing to you?”

“Preston can talk for himself, and I am allowed to disagree with him!”

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Preston warns. “I agree with Paladin Danse that this is… gruesome.”

“Was it not gruesome enough that we left the rest in Quincy to rot?”

Neither replies to Celeste. They share a look of helpless frustration as he turns around and continues making his way to the Longs’ residence.

“Marcy! Jun! I have something that you should see!”

The door opens before Celeste has a chance to fully remove himself from his power armor, and Marcy looks unhappy to see him. Her expression shifts when she sees the serious look on Celeste’s face as he steps onto the dirt.

“What are you yelling about?” she snaps, but Celeste is undeterred.

“Where’s Jun?”

“Sleeping. Maybe not anymore with all of that yelling.”

“Wake him up. It’s important.”

Celeste never orders anyone around like that. Marcy opens her mouth to argue but, sensing the strange change in demeanor, does as she’s told. Jun comes to the door rubbing his eyes.

“Can I come in? This really isn’t something to make a spectacle of.”

“Too late for that,” Danse mutters, and Celeste shoots him a nasty look.

“I… I guess so? What’s going on?” Jun asks, holding the door open for Celeste. Preston and Danse stay outside, visibly hanging back. The door closes.

“Okay. I have… two things. Jun, you may not like the second one, but I think Marcy will want to see it.” Celeste places the two metal boxes on the floor as the Longs sit down on their couch. The smaller box opens up, and Celeste removes a toy car and baseball hat. “Preston, Danse, and I went to Quincy. I found your old store. And your house. It didn’t look like you had any time to grab anything, and… I think you should have these.”

Marcy takes the hat, and Jun takes the toy car. Both of them sit there, speechless.

“How did you get back alive?” Jun asks quietly. “Quincy is swarmed with Gunners. It’s… it’s not safe to go anywhere near there.”

“I hate to admit it, but having a soldier with power armor and a laser rifle following you around has its benefits,” Celeste sighs. “We sniped as many Gunners as we could. The rest we had to fight directly, but we managed. All of them are dead.”

“Are you sure.” Marcy’s tone isn’t questioning, more like a demand. Celeste nods.

“All of them. We swept every inch of Quincy twice. I made sure every corpse was actually a corpse.”

Celeste doesn’t go into detail, for Jun’s sake. Marcy’s firm nod tells him that she understands, and her head snaps to the side at the sound of a sniffle.

“We had to leave him,” Jun sobs, his tears finally breaking through. “He was already gone when we found him, and everything happened so fast, and I tried to carry him but—”

He curls over the toy car and tries to muffle himself. Marcy puts both arms around him and pulls him close, putting her chin on top of Jun’s head as he cries. Celeste stays kneeling on the floor next to the boxes, giving the two the time that they never got to have to grieve. He’s never seen Marcy cry, and maybe she doesn’t need to; she holds her husband and her eyes meet Celeste’s, and her expression doesn’t change but she swallows and presses a kiss to Jun’s head.

“What’s in the other box?” Marcy asks. Celeste glances at it, and hesitates for a moment as he remembers Preston and Danse’s objections. There’s no backing out of it now, though.

“Proof,” Celeste says simply.

“Proof?”

“Proof that Clint is dead. I would have brought the rest, but I didn’t see a reason to. I figured that this would be enough.”

Marcy freezes as she visibly processes Celeste’s words. His face is still as dead-serious as it had been when he entered, and she slowly turns her head toward the box as Jun lifts his head.

“What do you mean, proof?” he asks, then yelps as Marcy leaps up from the couch to fall to her knees in front of the box. She wrenches the lid open. She stares into it, then at Celeste.

“What gave you the idea to do this?”

“My mother. She did something similar.”

“Your mother—”

“When she got rid of her father, this is how she proved it to my dad. They incinerated the proof, but you can do whatever you want with it.”

Marcy stares at Celeste, dumbfounded. Jun tries to approach to take a look himself, but Marcy slams the lid shut.

“No. You don’t want to look.”

“But—”

“ Jun . Trust me.”

“I don’t think you’ll want to see it. Just know that it’s proof that Clint is dead,” Celeste adds.

Jun sucks in a sharp breath and Marcy grabs the handles of the box. She stands up and makes a beeline for the exit, yanking the knob so hard that the door bounces off of the adjacent wall on impact. Celeste and Jun both scramble to their feet to follow her out. Preston and Danse look bewildered as Marcy storms past them with the box, and Celeste shoves Danse aside as best he can when the paladin tries to say something.

The group of five continue onward like that: Marcy on a warpath with the box, Jun and Celeste running after her, Preston and Danse trailing behind in concern. The path ends at the edge of the retaining wall that keeps the creek walls stable, and Marcy hefts the box over her head and throws it with all of her might.

The latch comes undone as it hits the water, and Celeste claps his hands over Jun’s eyes in panic. He doesn’t need to have worried; Jun buries his face in Celeste’s shoulder to avoid seeing the contents spilling out. Preston yells out what the fuck and comes to a skidding halt behind Marcy as she picks up a rock and pitches it into the creek too. The water level has risen with the recent heavy rains, and Celeste watches as the glinting metal box is rapidly pulled away by the current. Marcy screams after it in words that Celeste doesn’t recognize, and Jun clings to her and stares at the water and cries. Danse tries to get Celeste’s attention again, no doubt ready to ask him what made him think this was a good idea, but Marcy turns around and Jun turns with her and both of them envelop Celeste into a hug that he nearly collapses under. He catches both of them and slowly lowers them to the dirt, leaning backward against Preston’s stabilizing hands to keep from toppling over.

By the time the rest of Sanctuary makes it down to get a look at the fuss, there’s nothing much to see other than rushing water.

Chapter Text

Celeste isn’t sure what’s more embarrassing: that Hancock found the suitcase filled with toy blocks, or that he saw Celeste having a meltdown over the suitcase being full. He can easily find another container to put these in. There’s plenty of space under his bed to shove more boxes. He could rearrange the furniture in the little side room in the Red Rocket station and move a cabinet in here, or literally anything other than sitting on the floor and sobbing as though being unable to fit one more wooden toy block into an already bulging cloth suitcase is going to be the end of him. Hancock stands at the doorway, frozen in place with his hand on the knob, and Celeste swallows nervously as he tries to calm down.

Key word, tries. He does not succeed in doing so, not at all helped by Hancock’s sudden arrival. Celeste buries his face in his hands again.

“Christ, what happened?” Hancock asks as he kneels down next to Celeste. “Hey, talk to me. It’s alright.”

“Get out,” Celeste hisses, but even he can tell that there’s no bite to his words.

“Celeste—”

“Get OUT!” he yells this time, slapping away Hancock’s hand and diving for the bed. He gets himself under the covers with the pillow clutched to his chest. The door hastily slams shut and remains closed. Celeste shoves the pillow into his face and he screams into it in frustration.

He stays that way for a while, crying his heart out into the pillow. The blocks not fitting in the suitcase, the uncomfortable realization that he’s been collecting toy blocks for so long that the suitcase is full, the fact that he’s having a breakdown over something as stupid as the blocks and the suitcase, Hancock seeing all of it; a terrible combination of events that really isn’t helping his mental state right now. There are certainly much worse ways to cope with Shaun’s kidnapping, but Celeste wishes that he could manage it without falling apart over the tiniest problem possible and then snapping at his friend.

It started with collecting baby supplies. He needed to prepare to care for Shaun, and that meant stocking up on things like baby bottles, clean rags, and toys. Wooden toy blocks were included in that, and even after Celeste discovered that Shaun was older now, he kept grabbing them out of habit. Every time he saw them, he’d think of what he would do the day he brought Shaun home. Where would he take him? What would they do together? What would Shaun want to do? Who would they meet first? Celeste looked forward to all of it. But now, this feels less like collecting and more like hoarding. Like he has to find every single toy block in the Commonwealth, or he’ll lose the drive to find Shaun too.

Some time later, there’s a knock at his door. Hancock asks Celeste if he wants anything to eat, because it’s getting late and turning on the stove once night falls might attract wild dogs again. Celeste thinks for a moment, before dragging himself out of bed and slowly opening the door. Hancock clearly isn’t expecting that; his dark eyes widen for a brief moment.

“I’ll just have a mirelurk cake from the fridge. I don’t want to bother with the stove,” Celeste mumbles.

“I wasn’t going to make you do it,” Hancock chuckles, and tilts his head. “Come on.”

Hancock goes to the fridge and starts rummaging, and after a moment of hesitation Celeste follows him out.

“It’s on the second shelf from the top, in the box,” Celeste says as Hancock struggles to find what he’s looking for. The breaded cake goes into a pan with some oil, and Celeste sits down on a stool with his elbows on the counter. He might have dozed off for a while with the heels of his hands pressed against his mouth, because he startles when Hancock places a plate and glass bottle in front of him. Celeste fishes a fork out from the glass cup on the counter, and finally looks directly at Hancock.

“I’m sorry for lashing out at you,” he says quietly.

“You were having a rough day. I’m not gonna judge you for that.” Hancock has an easy smile on his face that Celeste can’t help but mirror. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“You sure?”

Celeste cuts a portion of the mirelurk cake and takes a bite to avoid answering. Hancock can tell that it’s a distraction, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll be okay. Things weren’t going too well to begin with, dealing with that stupid broken pump, and... yeah.”

Celeste doesn’t mention the suitcase or the toy blocks. Hancock watches him as he eats, clearly wanting to ask but unable to bring himself to do so.

Chapter Text

Celeste’s knees give out from under him and he stays down for longer than anyone is comfortable with.

It’s a stroke of luck that it happened while he was at Home Plate. Piper finds him on the floor next to an overturned ammo box, and runs shouting for Dr. Sun. Celeste is awake but delirious, and mutters names that nobody can recognize before losing consciousness. After he falls asleep, he stays asleep. Seven hours turns to eighteen turns to thirty. A fever starts, and spikes. MacCready rattles off every single thing he can remember that Celeste touched within the grounds at Med-Tek. It takes both Curie and Dr. Sun to reassure him that the sickness is likely a result of exhaustion and recovery from irradiation, not infection. Codworth and MacCready watch over him for a few days, until the merc comes bursting into Valentine Detective Agency in another panic.

“Nick, Nick, you gotta come. Something’s wrong with Celeste.”

MacCready can’t explain what exactly is wrong, and Nick knows better than to waste time trying to get him to talk. The door to Home Plate is left ajar, and Nick hurries upstairs to find Codsworth tending to Celeste sitting up in bed, drinking water. He lowers the glass, stares at Nick for a moment, then waves awkwardly.

“Jesus, MacCready. You made me think the kid was dead,” Nick says as MacCready nearly trips climbing the stairs. “What was that about?”

“Where’s Piper?” MacCready asks Codsworth. “She was here a second ago.”

“Miss Piper has fetched Dr. Sun. Sir, you remember Mr. Nick Valentine, yes?”

Codsworth’s voice carries an edge of desperation as Celeste inspects Nick. It’s a little strange how focused he is.

“Nick… I think so. You’re the detective?”

“Not many other synth detectives out in the Commonwealth as far as I know,” Nick replies. “Codsworth, what’s going on?”

“Well, you see, Sir is… having memory issues.”

That is quite the understatement. It turns out that Celeste can’t remember most of his time since leaving the vault. It’s a miracle that he hadn’t forgotten all of it and woken up in a panic. Impressions of people and places remain in Celeste’s mind, but he can’t recall names or events without some prompting. He seems to remember Codsworth well, Piper and Nick a little less so, but amusingly he recognizes Dogmeat instantly.

“Hi baby.” Celeste spreads his arms as Dogmeat bounces over and leaps directly onto his lap. “I don’t remember your name, but I do know you’re my dog. Sort of. You’re your own man, right?”

Dogmeat barks at the repetition of Mama Murphy’s words. Celeste buries his face in brown and black fur, sighing in relief.

Dr. Sun appears and kicks everyone out, except for Codsworth (who remains to assist the doctor) and Dogmeat (who refuses to leave to the point of growling, and only whines in apology when Celeste chastises him). The rest are left to loiter at the front door of Home Plate and smoke their anxiety away. MacCready is particularly put-off by not being recognized; Celeste asked if he was a soldier upon seeing MacCready, who grabbed the brim of his hat and pulled it down over his eyes and told Celeste not to worry about who he was.

“He didn’t mean to forget you,” Piper reassures him. “Come on, MacCready. He’s sick.”

“I’m not mad.”

“You sound an awful lot like it for someone who isn’t,” Nick points out, earning him a scowl.

“I know it’s not his fault! I’m not mad at him...” MacCready plucks the cigarette from his mouth and sighs, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “It’s just... the soldier thing. It wasn’t some random guess. Me and Cel, we... We talked about stuff a little while ago. It was kind of personal. I guess he remembers enough of what we talked about, even if he doesn’t remember me. I dunno how to feel about that.”

Dr. Sun interrupts the commiserating and informs the group that Celeste seems alright for now, aside from the memory loss. He has no explanation for it, but there isn’t much he can do other than ensure that Celeste’s fever is managed and that he doesn’t show any signs of radiation poisoning. The three file back inside miserably, unsure of how to talk to their clearly exhausted and ill friend.

“Robert, are you alright?” Nick asks softly as he approaches the merc. Piper swiftly takes Codsworth’s place to keep Celeste’s attention away as the robot fetches more water.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I’ll be fine. You worry about Celeste, not me.”

“Hey, um, the man in green? The one who got Nick for me?”

Celeste’s voice is uncharacteristically uncertain, but he still smiles when MacCready’s head snaps to his right to look.

“You said not to worry about who you are, but if you’re in my house, I’m going to worry about it,” Celeste adds, a hint of teasing in his voice. “Do I get to know your name, at least?”

“Sir, this is Mr. Robert Joseph MacCready!” Codsworth booms before anyone can stop him. MacCready is about to swiftly excuse himself when Celeste’s face takes on a pondering look, as if trying to remember something. Instead of speaking, he puts his arms over his stomach and looks down at the blankets.

“I’m sorry to order everyone around, but... can someone get me something to eat? Something warm, if possible?”

“On it, Boss.” The words are out of MacCready’s mouth before he can register that he’s said them. Already halfway down the stairs, he looks over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back, Takahashi’s fast with those noodles!”

The front door slams with the rush of a man on a mission.

“Am I really his boss?” Celeste asks Piper.

“You used to be. I don’t think it counts if he gives you your money back.”

“I paid him for something?”

“He’s a mercenary, Blue.”

“Oh.”

Celeste fidgets while he waits for his food. Piper continues to fill him in on his adventures, and MacCready returns in the middle of a story about breaking out of a lab in lockdown. When he hands over the bowl of warm noodles, Celeste reaches for his upper arm and pulls him into an awkward sideways hug.

“Thanks, RJ,” Celeste says. And then, “Can I call you that?”

MacCready thinks he might cry for a moment, but manages to choke out, “Yeah, that’s fine. RJ’s good,” without spilling broth all over the place. If Celeste notices the wavering in the response, he doesn’t say anything.

Chapter Text

It takes about a month for Celeste to fully recover. He has trouble keeping food down, and his memory improves and worsens in waves. Even so, there’s something cathartic in helping Celeste after all he’s done for his friends. It’s not quite the same as returning the favor, but being able to do something for him keeps everyone’s spirits up even as he struggles to put names to faces sometimes.

Outside of Diamond City, his friends refuse to remain idle as well.

“You’re joking.” Celeste stares at the massive machine in front of him, built atop the foundation of one of the collapsed pre-War houses in Sanctuary. Electricity snaps and pops, and wires criss-cross every which way. It is simultaneously the ugliest and most beautiful thing he has ever seen. “You have to be joking. I—”

He turns around, completely at a loss for words. Behind him is a lineup of smiling faces, all present for his reaction to their hard work.

“Those drawings were no schematics, but we got close enough to ‘em,” says Sturges. It’s a miracle of its own that he could decipher Dr. Virgil’s scribbles, but Sturges is no slouch and doesn’t give up so easily. He grins at Celeste, who still looks somewhere between shocked and overwhelmed.

“It’s finished? Where did you get all of these materials?” Celeste asks weakly.

“Marcy and Jun had everyone round up as much scrap as possible. MacCready and Cait helped move some of the stuff from the city up to here, and Piper managed to cut a deal with Myrna for a shipment. Everyone helped out,” Preston explains. “I wish I could have helped some, but—”

“You made sure the Minutemen didn’t fall apart while I was out.” Celeste can’t stop looking between the relay and the group gathered behind him. “I just...”

He buries his face in his hands and sinks to his knees, and feels the immediate rush of people crowd around him. Celeste leans into whoever is in front of them, grabbing the front of their clothes and dragging them in close.

“I don’t have the words for how thankful I am. I don’t know where to start, I can’t—”

His glasses get knocked off of his face in the process, and someone swiftly picks them up before he accidentally crushes them. Celeste wipes his eyes on his sleeve, and his vision blurs again immediately.

“It’s finished. It’s working . God, it’s actually working,” he sobs

“Everything is ready. We have the data from the courser chip. Once you’re prepared, we can send you in,” Preston says, rather patiently despite Celeste’s death grip on his arm and tears all over his scarf. He rubs his hand against Celeste’s back but stops suddenly, as if realizing what he’s doing. Celeste only notices when he stops.

“There’s still a lot to prepare for. I... I need to figure out what to take, how I’m going to approach this...”

Celeste gets his feet under himself again, standing with Preston’s help. He’s still a little woozy from recovery, and it’s not at all helped by the crying fit. His head swims with all sorts of ideas, worries, plans, imagination running amok with what meeting Shaun will be like. So much is unknown, and Celeste has to walk directly into it. Now that the relay is done, he has absolutely no reason not to.

Chapter Text

“Des isn’t too happy. She really wanted you to do this with us,” Deacon tells Celeste.

“I understand, but I have my reasons. I started this search, and I’ll finish it through my own power where I can.”

Celeste puts his Ripper down on the countertop, and pulls a plastic container full of plasma cartridges toward himself to count. He starts grouping them off in sets of four, before being interrupted again.

“So what’s the huge final blowout, if things don’t go the way you planned?”

He actually hadn’t thought about what he would do if things did go south. If they tried to kill him, what would he do other than defend himself? If they backed him into a corner with no escape, what would Celeste do as his last act? He certainly hasn’t prepared anything. For someone so ready to let his defiant side run loose at a moment’s notice, Celeste hasn’t thought of anything he could do against the Institute.

“I don’t know,” he admits readily to Deacon. It comes surprisingly easily. “It’s probably going to be some spur of the moment thing. Going into the Institute with mini-nukes on me would give off a bad impression, you know?”

“Hey, so you’ll let the flow take you wherever. That’s not a bad idea.”

“Yeah, the bad idea is teleporting into the Institute.”

Deacon lets out an amused huff. The tension in his shoulders is obvious, and they both know that this might be the last time they ever talk to each other like this again. Nothing is left unsaid, per se, but the finality of it all is heavy regardless. Celeste picks up a stealth boy he bought from Tinker Tom, and puts it in the stack of items he’ll be taking with him.

“I know you’ll want to see me go in, but try to make yourself scarce when it happens. I don’t want anything trailing you back,” Celeste reminds Deacon. “The Minutemen can handle this.”

“I’m more worried about you, the guy walking into the Institute alone.”

Celeste smiles, and after a moment of deliberation, tugs Deacon closer by the wrist and gives him a sideways hug.

“I can handle this, too.”

Chapter Text

Preston hasn’t seen Celeste for weeks. Maxson and Desdemona have hesitantly written him off as dead; they have other leads, other personnel, other resources that need their focus. Despite their warring ideologies, the Brotherhood of Steel and the Railroad’s leaders are of the same mind that they cannot rely on the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 any longer. Only the Minutemen remain hopeful, holding down the fort under the Lieutenant General’s command. They have no other choice. The Minutemen don’t have spies like the Railroad or technology like the Brotherhood. They have laser muskets and boots and a Commonwealth to keep safe. Even if the General never returns, they have to continue onward. The pit in Preston’s stomach grows, the same way it had settled heavier and heavier until the day he saw a stranger walk up to the doors of Museum of Freedom. He tries not to think about what might happen if it overtakes him.

Piper and Nick continue where Celeste left off. Their investigative spirits just don’t know when to quit. They sit in Nick’s office, burned-down cigarettes and empty mugs of coffee strewn about between notes on unusual Institute activity. Dogmeat curls up at Ellie’s feet and dreams about digging endlessly into the earth in search of a scent he can’t trace anymore.

The Red Rocket station near Sanctuary is empty. Codsworth floats down the road once a day to ensure that it remains spotless. The fridge is restocked with cuts of meat and fresh-picked produce, and he always heaves a simulated sigh as he removes the uneaten food to be ground up for the brahmin and junkyard dogs. Workstations are wiped down, floors are swept, and each Vault Boy bobblehead is carefully dusted before being returned to its rightful spot. He knows, deep in his circuits, that he will survive this loneliness. He survived it for two hundred years; what’s a few weeks in comparison?

Chapter Text

The door to the detective agency opens with a little too much force at much too late a time of night, and Nick wonders whose spouse has run off this time. The sound jolts Piper into wakefulness on the couch, one hand jerking toward her hip before realizing that there’s no danger. The pink neon light dances across a sweep of long black hair that has fallen over half of the visitor’s face. Nick rises to his feet hastily once the visitor passes the threshold of the doorway.

“Kid?” he asks, equal parts relieved and terrified.

Even with his hair down, there’s no mistaking that round face and deep, dark brown eye. Celeste isn’t wearing combat armor, or even his vault suit. His clothes are replaced with an unusually spotless blouse and skirt. Even his boots are gone in favor of comfortable-looking sneakers. His skin practically glows from how clean it’s been scrubbed, and his hair looks soft and bouncy as his head moves. His usual prosthetic eye is gone, and in its place sits a solid purple sphere decorated with concentric gold circles mimicking an iris. All traces of the wasteland seem to be stripped from Celeste. Even so, he doesn’t look pre-War as much as he does brand new in a way that doesn’t fit right.

“Hey, Nick,” Celeste replies with a voice that cracks and a smile that pulls his mouth thin. “Do you still need help with that case up north?”

Chapter Text

“It’s not the best news, but at least I’m alive,” Celeste jokes to everyone, but he’s never been the type to meet heavy situations with levity. So much about him is off now. He’s still identifiably Celeste in his appearance and mannerisms and feelings, but all of it seems like it’s been tilted off-kilter. It’s so obvious that even Piper has a hard time believing that the Institute just replaced him with a synth. They’d never do such a shoddy job of it, and they certainly wouldn’t let the replacement immediately leave the Commonwealth to track down a runaway girl. No, this is Celeste’s genuine response to an unthinkably horrible third possibility that nobody could have imagined, something that might break him even more so than discovering Shaun to be dead. Investigating with Nick is a good distraction for now. Nobody dares call it running away, but Piper is certain that most people see it that way. She can’t blame Celeste for wanting the distance.

Nick sails back alone some time later, to Piper’s alarm. He’s not happy about it either, but there’s a harborman guide watching Celeste’s back while he’s up there and Dogmeat is with him too.They found the girl they were looking for, but now they need to convince her to come home. There’s more going on with the island itself, too, and Celeste being Celeste, he wants to help those people. 

“He asked me to get some stuff he didn’t take with him. I gave the Nakano’s a heads up so that they’re not left wondering what’s going on. I’ll be going back as soon as I get all the stuff he wants,” explains Nick. A few guns, some more ammo, plenty more Rad-X and Rad-Away. He reassures everyone that Celeste is definitely still alive, has not decided to permanently skip town, and has every intention of coming back once all of the business in Far Harbor is dealt with.

Chapter Text

Celeste peers into the ruins of yet another house, and gets very quiet. Longfellow follows, and sees a yellow crib buried in the dirt and trash that have taken over the ruins.

He’s noticed that the mainlander falls quiet at seeing skeletons; it’s likely not out of fear or repulsion, definitely not when he’s seen this man stand his ground and fire a harpoon directly into a mirelurk’s face. Maybe it’s the reminder of the dead that bothers him, that someone once existed here and now nothing remains but a scattered set of bones. Longfellow doesn’t believe that the mainlander was actually around since before the Great War, but he’s got some strange sensibilities that really can’t be explained otherwise. This is one of them, a quiet palpable sadness for the remains left behind by the bombs.

Celeste walks around the house to open the mailbox, and his face goes blank again. There’s a teddy bear inside, the wrapping paper that once covered it having disintegrated into nearly nothing from moisture. If Longfellow was the talkative type, he might ask if Celeste is alright. But he’s not a friendly old man, he’s a harborman. Celeste should know exactly what he’s gotten into by now.

Interestingly, Celeste doesn’t take the teddy bear. He’s already filled his pockets with every wooden toy block they’ve tripped over; why leave this toy here? Celeste closes the lid on the mailbox and murmurs something under his breath. He glances toward the baby crib again, before tearing his eyes away and moving onward to follow the road. Maybe it isn’t just the skeletons that bother him, then. Longfellow wonders if the mainlander has a soft spot for children.

Chapter Text

Deacon has to swear up, down, left, and right to Desdemona that they did not just lose one of their best agents. The holotape full of Institute data is at least an indication that Celeste still cares for their cause.

“That doesn’t mean that Felix hasn’t abandoned us. This may be his way of saying goodbye.”

“Des, it’s a holotape absolutely filled to the brim with info on the Institute. If he didn’t care about coming back, why’d he give this to us?”

“He can care about us and still decide to leave. Maybe all of this was too much for him. I can’t find it in my heart to be too harsh, given the revelation he’s been forced to grapple with.” Des fiddles with the cigarette between her fingers as she speaks. “Deacon, he showed a lot of promise and he got things done. We owe a great deal to him. I know that you want to believe that he’s going to return, but we can’t rely on that. Felix was a good agent while he lasted. I don’t take any pleasure from this, and you know that.”

“You could trust him a little more, if you think he’s such a good agent.”

Her face pinches into something unreadable. Deacon feels like quite the hypocrite to be talking like this.

Chapter Text

There’s never been an outsider quite like Celeste. Mainlanders have come and gone, but few have thrown themselves into helping Far Harbor with such zeal. He doesn’t even ask about caps or any kind of reward. Naturally, the harbor folk get to hypothesizing his real motivations.

Longfellow walks into The Last Plank just in time to overhear someone question how the mainlander can shoot straight with only one eye.

“The same way you can talk with most your brain missin’,” he calls back, and is met with gleeful greetings.

“Longfellow! You’re just the person to ask!” Mitch says, grinning. “You know the mainlander best out of all of us. What’s he doing all of this for, do you think?”

Longfellow fixes Mitch with a look. It doesn’t work, the effect having worn off by now after years of use.

“A drink on the house for your thoughts?” Mitch offers, and Longfellow sighs as he accepts the free glass.

“The Cap’n is a good man, and he likes helpin’ folks. He won’t blow up the harbor, if that’s what you fools think he’s up to,” Longfellow replies, taking a seat at the table closest to the bar.

“He’s friendly with those synths up in Acadia. Got a metal man of his own following him around, don’t he?” someone says.

“I’m surprised he didn’t end up in a Gulper’s belly,” someone else chimes in. “That’s how most of ‘em mainlanders go.”

“But not this one. Not even the Fog’s gotten to him yet.”

“I think he’s just being nice.”

“Nicer than we deserve, probably. Not even Allen pisses him off. Maybe he’s one of those folks who never gets mad.”

Longfellow lets out a snort of laughter at that.

“Oh, he gets mad alright. Nastiest temper I’ve ever seen once he gets going,” he says. “He loves that dog of his. Calls it his baby. Every time anything tries to go after it, he loses his mind. Shoots ‘em in the legs, then beats ‘em down with a fish hook.”

“Eh, so he’s an animal lover.”

“He cares about people too. He didn’t seem convinced about doing the Captain’s Dance until I brought up feeding everyone,” Teddy adds, and Longfellow turns around in his seat to listen. “He’s a tough guy who knows he’s tough and uses it to help people. We don’t deserve someone like him.”

“So he’s just helping because he likes it?”

Longfellow’s back aches when he leans back, and he winces. A few days ago he’d been thrown off of his feet by a yao guai and hit the ground hard. The beast had one paw up ready to slice his face open, but was stopped by Celeste’s fish hook looping around its snout and dragging it back. Longfellow had enough time to get back on his feet and watch Celeste drop his grip on the weapon, only to reach for his plasma pistol and empty the entire cartridge into the yao guai’s chest. Something in Celeste’s gaze had been very different in that split-second time frame. He wasn’t desperate, or fearful. It was as if he was burning on the inside. Like if Celeste had claws and teeth of his own, he would have sunk them into the yao guai and dragged it into the water, held it down until all the air in its lungs bubbled out.

It hadn’t cleared up after the fight, either. Even as he injected a stimpak into Longfellow’s shoulder, Celeste’s eye looked almost as if it was glowing. That’s nonsense, of course; humans don’t glow, not even those Children of Atom fanatics can do that. But this wasn’t the Fog’s madness, either. Celeste wasn’t consumed with bloodlust or a need for violence. All of that anger was targeted specifically at the yao guai, and once it was dead his focus was entirely on getting Longfellow healed up.

Longfellow isn’t scared of Celeste, not by a long shot. He doesn’t scare easily, nor does he find the mainlander all that terrifying when Celeste baby-talks to a grown attack dog and sheepishly laughs at himself when he breaks bobby pins. He is, however, very much aware that Celeste is something else.

“He likes being helpful,” Longfellow says, knowing full well that the explanation is sorely lacking.

Chapter Text

Drinking from that spring was a horrible idea. Both Nick and Old Longfellow have berated Celeste for it. He hasn’t been able to argue back on account of him vomiting up his guts for several days, but neither of them are certain that he’s really hearing them. The cultists claim that he’s seen the Mother of the Fog and Celeste seems to believe them; if their insane ramblings take another person, Longfellow is half a mind to kick their door in and shoot the High Confessor himself.

“She was real,” Celeste mutters, hunched over with a bucket between his knees. He’s sitting on Longfellow’s bed, where he’s been stuck ever since he was dragged back practically glowing. There’s nothing left in him to spit up aside from water and acid, but his stomach still squeezes in on itself. “But why me?”

He’s asked this question over and over. Nick has tried to appeal to the more logical and scientific side of Celeste’s mind, to no avail. What Celeste experienced is a hallucination, but the fact that he made it to the locked shrine at the Mother’s instruction still grips him.

“Because you drank water that nearly killed you, and you saw things in the Fog,” Longfellow sternly repeats for the third time..

“But it didn’t kill me. It should have, and it didn’t.”

“You don’t think the Rad-X might have had a hand in that?” Nick asks, his irritation growing. As much as he understands Celeste’s desire not to shoot without necessity, partaking in the Children of Atom’s deadly rituals should not have been his first choice.

Celeste doesn’t answer.

A few days later, he takes several hits to the chest from a radium rifle. The physical damage is minimal, most of it absorbed by the marine armor he switched to after arriving. The rads, on the other hand, should have been nothing to shrug off. Celeste’s Pip-Boy crackles heavily as the irradiated bullets impact, yet shows minimal poisoning when he checks his rad levels. Celeste and Longfellow both stare at the screen in disbelief, the bottle of Ware’s anti-rad brew still clutched in Celeste’s hand. Neither of them dares to hypothesize aloud what might have happened.

Chapter Text

Choices, choices. Celeste has many, and he hates all of them in one way or another. He won’t blow up the Children, most certainly won’t let the Fog overrun Far Harbor, and absolutely won’t put Acadia in danger. The only way to stop all three is to do the most immoral thing Celeste has ever heard in his life.

This plan is a mess. Nick is clearly against it, but can’t argue against the reality that the Children of Atom need to be pacified to avoid further bloodshed. Would destroying them help anyone? What about Ware, who sought refuge in Atom away from a life of violence? What about the Archemist, who treats the ailing despite her own frail condition? And what of Far Harbor? Is Allen’s anger so wrong, seeing his home swallowed up by the Fog and taunted by the Children that everything he cares for ought to be overrun by the radiation? Does the synth Avery deserve death for what DiMA molded her into doing?

Nobody deserves to die. Nobody deserves to be killed. Nobody deserves to be wiped. Nobody deserves to be replaced.

“For the good of everyone on the island,” Celeste says, even as his heart sinks heavily. He thinks of how Cody will never exist again. He thinks of how Tektus will never see his family again. He thinks of how Avery remains buried under the factory. What good has all of this done them?

“Is this really what you want to do?” Nick asks.

“What else can we do? Tektus drives the Children to attack Far Harbor. I can’t blame them for their anger, but this isn’t even revenge anymore. They want everyone dead or converted.” Celeste turns to DiMA, as if seeking out the one who helped orchestrate this catastrophe is a good idea. “If we could just… get Tektus to listen…”

“Perhaps. You hold some sway with the Children now, do you not?”

“I saw the Mother of the Fog, but that doesn’t mean I’m greater than Tektus. He’s still the High Confessor, and I’m still just a follower. Even the most well-liked of them aren’t immune to Tektus’s orders if he thinks they’re disloyal.” 

Celeste lets out a huge exhale, and wanders over to a computer chair to sit down. He puts his elbows on the terminal’s workstation edge, head in his hands.

“I want him to listen. I just want Tektus to listen. Maybe, if I can get him to listen…”

Chapter Text

Celeste leaves Far Harbor with promises to return. He hugs Longfellow tight, eliciting a grumble from the older man and chuckles from the other harbor folk. No matter how much they like Celeste, he’s not quite like them. That’s alright; after all, it was the mainlander’s big heart that led him to help the island’s people.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” Celeste asks, his chin against Longfellow’s shoulder. Longfellow pats him on the back, signaling that he would like to be let go now. Celeste takes a reluctant step back, and some of his hair that slipped from its bun falls over his face. Longfellow hesitates, then figures that there’s really no need to. He sweeps those loose hairs back and tucks them over Celeste’s ear. The purple eye prosthesis with gold concentric circles stares back at him; the rings seem to glow faintly, a trick of the light reflecting off of the paint.

“I suppose you’ll have to live with knowing that you did your best,” is all Longfellow can think to say.

To be quite frank, he doesn’t believe that the peace with the Children of Atom will last. Still, weeks pass without any sign of them near the homesteads. A few harbor folk claim to have seen Children watching from a distance, but none ever approach. They never fire a shot, never lay their hands on the fog condensers.

Maybe things will be alright.

Chapter Text

That whole reciprocation thing that Garvey and Cel are so intent on doing is going to get them both killed one day, Cait thinks. The average wasteland scavenger might not dare raise a weapon against the Minutemen’s leaders, but Celeste is inching ever closer to taking the fight to the Institute. There is no way that those assholes are going to be swayed by sweet words and a love of humanity. Hell, this might get her killed too, but the idea of fucking off to god knows where and leaving Celeste behind doesn’t sit well with her. At least she’ll have the chance to go down fighting, and slugging it out with the Institute is a far more badass way to die than face-down in a raider cage fight arena with more Psycho than blood in her veins. That aside, there’s another more pressing issue at hand.

The Institute courser that walks alongside Celeste is quiet. Not that Cait expected any different, but the silence is unsettling. Celeste seems to do most of the talking in their conversations. For every word that X6-88 speaks, another five come from Cel; he’s awfully chatty for someone usually so good at staying quiet and listening. She wonders if he’s trying to save the synth. What a pointless endeavor. While it might be in the Railroad’s best interests for Celeste to sweet-talk some self-determination into a courser, Cel himself doesn’t gain much in trying. Is he attached already? It figures that he would fall head over heels with the chance to play the hero again. He even introduces the courser to her, smiling as if he’s showing a new settler around while he cheerfully tells Cait that the courser’s name is X6-88, and that he’s going to be watching Celeste’s back for a little while.

A few weeks later, Cait finds out that Celeste is building the damn courser a little house at Murkwater. She wonders if it might be too late to knock some sense into Cel.

Chapter Text

“X6, I don’t think you’re giving the people here a fair chance. I don’t think the Institute has given them any chance at all.” Celeste scuffs at the dirt with his foot, leaving a wide scrape across the ground. X6-88 has noticed this frequent repetitive action, and wonders why Celeste does it. “This is humanity. These people are humanity, just the same as the people down below. If we want to advance mankind, we have to do it for everyone. This... resource-hoarding is the exact reason why the old world died.”

“The wasteland is beyond help, sir. The Institute tried, and found that it couldn’t be salvaged.”

“I think the Institute gave up far too quickly, and hasn’t bothered to try making any improvements on that front. Replacing people so that we can get intel? Why do something as horrifying as that rather than just... working with people?”

“It’s a matter of trust, sir.”

“It always is, isn’t it?”

Celeste falls silent, but continues to watch X6-88 with a forlorn expression. Of course even Father’s uncle has feelings, and isn’t going to be confident about the future at all times. Father himself has had his moments of doubt.

“Come on, let’s talk somewhere that doesn’t have Brotherhood vertibirds flying over our heads,” Celeste says, and beckons X6-88 over to a broken-down house. Both the sea air of Nahant and the decay of time have dealt significant damage to the structure. The front door is completely missing, but the roof is partially intact. Once inside, Celeste sits down on a two hundred and ten year old couch without hesitation, and pats the spot next to him. X6-88 swallows down his distaste and does as he’s asked.

“Shaun wants to keep the Institute contained to itself. I see that as being sheltered. I don’t blame him for feeling that way because that’s how he was raised. I just... I don’t agree with it. I’m sure he knows that I don’t agree, and he still decided to name me his successor. I’m trying to figure out just why he did that.”

“He believes in your ability to lead. Father was especially impressed with your work with the Minutemen and how they obey you, despite having very limited... resources at your disposal.”

“Hey. Be nice to them. They’re trying, and that’s a lot more than can be said about some people,” Celeste replies firmly. “And I’ll remind you that I wasn’t the first General that they ever had. Yes, they fell apart, but the Minutemen had good generals before I came along. Those people did the same thing I did, with the same resources, and they still managed to create something that kept the Commonwealth relatively safe for long stretches of time. Why am I so great, if those people are beyond help?”

X6-88 doesn’t have an answer to that. He tries to formulate one, and fails.

“Being Shaun’s family doesn’t make me any better than anyone else out here. I’m a wastelander too, X6. Keep that in mind for me, okay?”

“But you’re not. You’re a pre-War human. You’re physically unlike those in the wasteland,” X6-88 points out. Celeste huffs and his posture slouches.

“X6, I swear to god. I’m not talking about whether my genes are less mutated. I’m talking about myself as a person. Yes, I’m pre-War, but I lived through the wasteland before I got to the Institute. Other people are surviving in the wasteland every single day, too. I don’t see how I’m special, while they’re just trash.”

Celeste fishes out a loose cigarette and a lighter from a pouch on his armor belt. He fumbles with the lighter for a moment before successfully igniting the cigarette tip. The burning embers illuminate his face in red, and for a brief moment X6 remembers the appearance of Celeste with blood splattered across him, as immune to the brutality as the raider whose back he had just sank a fishing hook into.

“My point is, you have to stop putting me on a pedestal. I’m just as hopeless as the wasteland. The wasteland is just as precious as I am. The Institute needs to realize that if it really wants to save mankind, it has to save all of mankind. Otherwise, we’ve just got another Brotherhood on our hands, don’t we?”

The comparison makes X6-88 bristle.

“The Institute has very little resemblance with the Brotherhood of Steel. They place the blame of humanity’s fall on the advancement of science, and choose to enforce a world of squalor.”

“A world of squalor, huh?” Celeste’s voice echoes with amusement. “I’ll have to keep that one for the next time I’m face to face with Maxson.”

Chapter Text

Celeste sighs in irritation as he discovers an empty pocket when he goes to grab a smoke. Reaching into his bag to find the pack that should be there, he finds that empty as well. He must have pulled the rest of its contents when he refilled his pocket. He usually keeps a few cigarettes in his waist pocket along with the lighter for easy access, refilling it as needed. The empty pack is tossed aside as he searches for another. He finds two more empty boxes, wonders why there’s so much trash in his belongings, then remembers that he had restocked his bag with supplies just yesterday before leaving Starlight Drive-In. He’d turned his bag inside-out, gotten all the crumbs and paper scraps and sand out, and placed what should have been three days worth of food, medicine, and other necessities.

The realization hits him harder than he expects; part of him wants to take this as a sign that he should toss all of it and go cold-turkey (something he knows isn’t a good quitting method, and an easy way to cause withdrawal), while part of him wants to pretend like he hasn’t picked up a smoking habit that’s starting to grow in intensity.

Medical professionals have their health-related vices too. Many that Celeste knew and worked with tended to be smokers, drinkers, heavy on the coffee or Nuka-Cola, so on and so forth. Knowing how the body functioned didn’t make them less likely to make healthy choices, so to speak, but informed ones. That was the most important thing, in Celeste’s opinion; he’d prefer if everyone were able to live for a long time, but some preferred a fun time. As for Celeste, he prioritizes keeping himself functional. It may not be the best for his lungs, but he can’t eat if his nausea isn’t dealt with, and he can’t fight if he can’t eat. Regardless, it may be time to pace himself on the cigarettes. This is the last one of the day, he promises himself.

Celeste clenches the lit cigarette between his teeth and exhales heavily through his nose. Enough sitting around! He has a job to do. There are two limp bodies sprawled across the floor of Listening Post Bravo that he has to do something about. Danse has to be taken… somewhere. Anywhere that isn’t here. He isn’t going to leave of his own volition, but letting him die would be unconscionable. As for Rhys, he’ll be fine. He’s a resilient bastard, and once he wakes up he’ll go straight back to the Prydwen and report that the Minutemen General trailed him to the listening post and knocked him out with a pulse weapon. Maxson will be furious, but Celeste is still the Brotherhood’s best asset in infiltrating the Institute. The inherent danger of interfering with Brotherhood missions is tempered by how critically important Celeste is.

“Is he going to be okay?” Haylen asks quietly, from the corner of the room where she had tucked herself into earlier to cry. She has her knees hugged against her chest, and refuses to meet Celeste’s eyes.

“They’ll both be fine. The pulse gun only knocks them unconscious. We should move sooner than later before either of them wake up,” Celeste says, getting to his feet and dusting off his pants. Haylen looks at him as if he’s grown a second head. “Don’t give me that look. I can’t get Danse out of here on my own.”

“Where do we even take him?” she asks.

“Greentop Nursery. They’re allied with the Minutemen, and unless Maxson wants artillery raining down on his head, he wouldn’t dare try to storm it.”

Celeste kneels down next to Danse, before realizing that Haylen hasn’t approached. He looks over his shoulder in confusion, to where she still remains frozen in place.

“Haylen? Come on, we need to go.”

“What if he doesn’t want to stay there?” she asks, voice quiet. The smoke of Celeste’s cigarette slowly starts to waft about the room.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Chapter Text

Standing at Celeste’s side is simultaneously the safest and most dangerous place in the Commonwealth. Nowhere else will you be subjected to the most ferocious protection and nerve-wracking threats all at once. Hancock wonders if Celeste ever grows tired of getting himself into situations, but at the rate he’s going, it’s doubtful that the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 gives a shit. This is now the second major incident that he’s caused with the Brotherhood of Steel, but very few of his friends have the heart to tell him off for it. Cait had made an attempt to reason with him; Celeste pointedly ignored her until she walked off in defeat while muttering about his stupid bleeding heart. He doesn’t even like the ex-paladin, as far as Hancock knows. They’ve traveled together, but every time Hancock has seen them talk, it’s like watching a dog and a cat get into a stand-off. Danse looms over Celeste in his power armor, lips curled back over bared teeth. Celeste visibly bristles, his back curved slightly as he leans in. They bicker about something, get all worked up, then storm off. Celeste usually shows up somewhere in Hancock’s vicinity to bitch about it afterward. Brotherhood this, inflexible that, can’t stand his tin-can ass , Hancock has heard and heartily agreed with it all.

And yet, Celeste shows no hint of regret or hesitation as he packs what is obviously a survival kit for Danse while he hides out in god knows where. Celeste won’t tell Hancock. It’s not for a lack of trust, Hancock knows; plausible deniability is protection.

“Hey, Cel. You’re sure about this?” Hancock asks as he slouches against the counter of the Red Rocket station, which does little to slow Celeste’s roll. Celeste picks up a few bottles of beer wrapped in cloth and duct tape, and fits them neatly next to a stack of potted meat in the backpack.

“Positive,” is the response that Hancock gets. Not even a glance in his direction, huh.

“This doesn’t seem like you.”

“I guess so.”

“C’mon, brother. You don’t gotta spill your whole soul, but this seems a bit much even for you. Don’t tell me you caught feelings or something?”

“The feelings I’ve caught are all murderous, to be entirely honest,” Celeste says, flipping the backpack’s top closed and tightening the buckle straps. “I’m angry, Hancock. It’s not fair, even though you could probably call this... comeuppance of some sort.”

“I agree with you on both counts,” Hancock reassures him, putting both hands up with palms open in a pacifying gesture. “Just remember that you’ve got a lot of eyes on you, alright? A lot of people who wouldn’t care about collateral damage.”

“If I get one of my friends killed doing this, I’m killing myself.”

Hancock isn’t sure if it’s meant to be a joke or not; Celeste doesn’t usually say things like that. At least he understands what Hancock is trying to get at.

“Okay, maybe don’t do that.”

“It’s good enough motivation,” Celeste replies, shrugging one arm through the backpack’s shoulder strap. He finally turns around to look directly at Hancock. “I’ll see you later.”

Celeste strides across the tile and wraps one arm around Hancock’s shoulders, pulling him into a sideways hug. The hard edges of the marine combat armor dig into Hancock’s skin.

Chapter Text

Are you having fun?

Always too afraid to have a baby of your own. You were so eager to move in with me and Shaun, weren’t you? So happy to be an uncle with a nephew. Couldn’t come up with the courage to be a parent, so you played pretend with someone else’s child. He wasn’t yours, so you didn’t need to take responsibility. If something happened to me, you could just take him back to Mother. She’d take him. She married a man who took a little child off of the street, raised a son who took a little child from his mother. Are you having fun, being a father to a baby who isn’t yours? Is it nice to be a grieving dad and have everyone’s sympathy? You get all the satisfaction of being a parent with none of the hard work. It’s perfect! You’re just a sad dad looking for his son, while someone else takes care of your baby. You never had to do anything, and you’ll never need to. Taking someone else’s child... and you have the audacity to kill a man for the same thing. What makes you any different from Kellogg? Did you kill him for me? Or did you kill him to tie up loose ends? The only one left who knows who you really are, the only one left who knows who Shaun really is. My poor baby. My poor Shaun. My little boy, taken from me twice. I’m nothing but ice now, and he’ll be nothing but ash soon. At least you can’t keep him from me in death. Or will you do that too?

Chapter Text

“Shaun, you can’t .”

“You have forced my hand. I didn’t want to do this, but you can’t keep running from your responsibilities.”

“The wasteland is my responsibility too!” Celeste shouts, tossing his hand out and gesturing toward the ceiling of Shaun’s room. His left wrist feels uncomfortably light without the weight of the Pip-Boy. “I’m the General of the Minutemen!”

“The wasteland is hopeless. Whether you lead the Minutemen or not, the Commonwealth is a lost cause. You continued to waste precious time above, all the while ignoring the critical needs of the Institute,” Shaun retorts, his eyes narrowing. Celeste feels a cold wave wash over him at how Solana’s face shadows across Shaun’s expressions. “And do not pretend that the Minutemen are the only ones you’ve been assisting. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“I think you write people off far too easily,” Celeste replies. He has operated under the assumption that his cover was blown long ago.

“I suppose I do. I believed that you just needed time to come to your senses.” Shaun shakes his head; whether in frustration or disgust, Celeste can’t tell. “I know your heart, though. I know that you would never do anything to hurt your family, no matter what. I know that you believe in the Institute. All you need is some time to put your priorities back in order.”

“Give me my Pip-Boy.”

“You’ll have it returned when you can be trusted with access back to the surface.”

The reality of his situation starts to dawn on Celeste; he’s trapped here. He’s a prisoner for as long as Shaun wishes, and he has no way out. He can’t reach any of his friends, call for help, or even explain what has happened to him. As far as anyone in the wasteland is concerned, Celeste simply vanished into the Institute as he always does. This time, for good.

“I don’t even get to say goodbye to them?” Celeste asks, his voice cracking as he holds his tears back.

“There is nothing worth saying goodbye to out there. This is your home, as it was always meant to be.”

Shaun crosses the empty space between them without hesitation despite the anger on Celeste’s face. He slides into a hug as easily as any of Celeste’s family.

There is no way for Shaun to have known, but to be held is a truce, a gesture of trust no matter the situation. Celeste has hugged his mother, his father, his siblings, his uncle with rage whistling in his ears. He has never once rejected or been rejected in it. The anger could return afterward, could be as wildfire-incendiary or deepwater-freezing as the two wished, but a hug was a moment of respite. It reaffirmed that they were still family, that they still cared about each other, that anger was not mutually exclusive from love. Shaun had nobody to teach him such an idea about those emotions. He followed it anyway, trusting that Celeste would never hurt him.

Celeste isn’t stupid. He knows what this means. He knows what Shaun is doing. He’s powerless to put an end to it, regardless.

“You’ll thank me later,” Shaun says, so self-assured. Celeste places both of his palms on Shaun’s back, and squeezes with his arms.

Chapter Text

The beryllium agitator falls into the hands of the Institute. Multiple soldiers report that they saw a human combatant in unfamiliar armor standing among the synths, flanked by a courser. These sightings corroborate the circumstantial evidence of the Minutemen General’s presence, such as the plasma burns and conventional ammunition embedded in armor and skin. The Institute has always relied on laser weaponry, and only one person under their command would eschew that.

However, analyzing the damage leads to confusing results. The laser burn marks on the dead and injured show expected patterns: primarily aiming for the head and chest for kills. But a great number of injured soldiers have hand and arm injuries from ballistic ammunition, and plasma burns are most prevalent on the limbs of those who wore power armor. One soldier claims that he was battered in the head with the handle of a fish hook pole, and the bruises on his scalp match up to being struck by a thin, long object.

Captain Cade reports his staff’s bizarre findings to Elder Maxson, who looks just as bewildered. Why continue using inferior weapons despite access to the Institute’s armory? Why aim for limbs? Why the blunt end of a fishing hook, of all things?

Chapter Text

He’s gone. He left them all behind, and he’s never coming back. Celeste didn’t even take Dogmeat or Codsworth with him, and Preston isn’t sure if that’s better or worse. All of his usual base camps across the Commonwealth lay vacant and untouched, left exactly as they had been. Raiders try to hit a few for their supplies in their unattended state, successfully breaking down the automated defenses at them. The house at Murkwater where X6-88 was staying is abandoned. None of Celeste’s friends have heard anything from him. News of the Old North Church being stormed by the Brotherhood reaches Sanctuary, and a few days later Deacon shows up in bad shape at the Castle, demanding to see the General.

“What do you mean, he’s missing?” Deacon is supported by a Railroad fighter with white hair, her arm looped around his waist. His sunglasses are cracked, and Preston can actually see his eyes for the first time. They’re wide, scared, angry.

“He relayed to the Institute and never came back,” Preston explains, the words sticking to his tongue in a way that makes him want to claw his throat out. “We haven’t seen him in two weeks.”

“Two— Two weeks? He was at HQ two days ago!” Deacon insists, and winces at how his shouting aggravates his injuries. “He said that the Brotherhood found us, and we needed to make a break for it!”

What was Celeste doing? How could he have known that the Brotherhood intended to attack the Railroad? Ever since Celeste practically kidnapped Danse, the Brotherhood hasn’t shared a single amicable interaction with the Minutemen. None of it was outwardly hostile, of course, but the knowledge that the General harbored a synth traitor did no favors to their already shaky neutrality. Where did that information come from, and how did he get his hands on it? Did Danse have a change of heart, and spill everything he knew to Celeste? Hell, where is Danse?

“Felix told us to look for you,” the white-haired Railroad agent says.

“Felix?”

“Celeste. That’s his callsign.” Deacon winces again, his body tensing up. “Shit, Glory, I need to sit down.”

“How many more of you should we expect?” Preston asks, motioning with his hand to raise the front gate higher.

“Just us. Everyone else took off to the safehouses. Did Celeste not tell you anything?”

“I’ve heard absolutely nothing from him since we last saw him.”

“Christ.”

“Why did he tell you to come here, then?” Glory questions out loud, doing her best to support Deacon as she pulls him toward the Castle’s entrance.

“He said something about a safe,” Deacon adds.

“The General has a safe in his quarters, and I know the combination,” Preston says, slowly coming to a realization. “Did he leave something for you in there?”

“God, it better be a lifetime supply of Mini-Nukes.”

Deacon’s humor doesn’t fade despite his injuries. Preston hurriedly helps Glory get him inside, calling on the Castle’s doctor to follow them as he leads them toward the General’s room. Deacon lies down on Celeste’s bed, while Preston goes to unlock the safe. To his chagrin, there’s nothing inside except a piece of paper when the door swings open.

“This is all that was inside,” he says, returning with the folded note. He hands it to Glory, who opens it and immediately looks puzzled. She extends it to Deacon, who grabs it between two fingers as the doctor starts to cut through the side of his shirt to get to his hastily-bandaged wounds.

“Well, huh,” is all Deacon has to say about it, then flips it around for Preston to see.

Dead rabbit down.

“What does that mean?” Glory asks, crossing her arms as Preston stares at the paper. Deacon blinks.

“Dead rabbit,” he says to nobody in particular. The gears in his head are clearly turning; Preston could swear he hears them whirl.  “Oh my god. Death bunnies.”

“What?” Glory asks, as Deacon sits up much too quickly and he hisses in pain.

“Death bunny down,” he mutters again, and rubs his forehead. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Felix.”

Chapter Text

The lion still stalks Celeste’s dreams.

He knows where it comes from this time. The ruins of the CIT building pry open like jaws, the beast emerging from its den to rampage once again. It roars and thrashes, shattering concrete and rebar in its mouth, swallowing up the radioactive glow and trailing it like dripping blood from a fresh kill. Celeste stands at the top of the Castle’s walls and watches the lion. It has ripped the mechanical heart out of the Prydwen already, ink-black oil spilling in great heaves from the airship’s remains on top of Boston Airport. The engine whistles and whirls as it’s pinned between stained teeth. The lion spits its prize out, letting the machinery crash into the ocean.

Celeste hops down and lands softly on sandy, wet dirt. He can make out the beast’s body covered in panels of white metal; a mane like sharp fragments of glass or maybe crystals erupting from its neck; the yellow glow of eyes staring Celeste down, irises overlapping in concentric circles of endless distance; besmirched teeth lining a grin of destruction. 

He sees himself in the lion’s reflective eyes, but the image isn’t mirrored properly. His prosthesis appears on the reflection’s left. Celeste raises a hand to the right side of his face, and watches himself cover the only eye he has vision in.

Chapter Text

“X6, do you trust me?” Celeste asks, the two of them tucked into a corner of Celeste’s quarters at the Institute. Drying tear tracks leave sticky smudges on his cheeks as he keeps wiping his face with his hands, no matter how many times X6-88 offers a clean towel.

X6-88 doesn’t know how to react to the question. He has an answer, has had one for a while now, but the timing of it baffles him. He was summoned to Celeste’s quarters by Dr. Volkert without much explanation, and as soon as the doors opened Celeste had dragged him inside and sobbed directly into his chest. Between clipped words and gasping breaths, Celeste managed to break the news.

And X6-88 had slid to the floor, suddenly unable to carry his own weight.

Now, they find themselves here—a courser and the new Director of the Institute, backs pressed to a wall, tears rolling down both of their faces. X6-88 doesn’t know what to do. His heart hammers in his chest at how he can’t control his reaction. Father’s loss is a great blow to the Institute. Nobody should find satisfaction in his death. X6-88 should mourn, of course, but why can’t he stop crying? And not just crying, but something else too. X6-88 can’t describe it, but it’s akin to the way he can loosen his focus when he relays back to the Institute from the wasteland. It’s similar to the way he trusts the safety of this place, but this time it’s not about the Institute, it’s about Celeste. What is it about Celeste that inspires a sense of safety? Would that not mean there is something about the Institute that he feels unsafe about? What changed, between the time he walked to Celeste's room and heard the news?

“X6?”

He hasn’t answered Celeste. Something spikes in his chest at the realization that he was too lost in his own thoughts to respond. Celeste looks at him in concern, the way one might hold toward another unresponsive person. A human, not a synth. Celeste’s hand lays on top of X6-88’s forearm, and squeezes lightly.

“It’s okay if you don’t.”

“I trust you.” The words spill from his mouth rapidly. They’re true, despite the rushed way he speaks. “I trust you.”

“Can you do something for me?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Okay, hang on. First things first, stop calling me sir.” Celeste cracks a faint smile underneath his sorrow.

“You’re the Director of the Institute now. It’s the correct way to refer to you.”

“Not right now. Not for this.” Celeste takes both of X6-88’s hands in his own, clutching them together. His smile fades and his expression turns serious again. “Right now, you’re my friend.”

Friend. Synths are not human, synths cannot have friends. Synths cannot decide for themselves to keep secrets, or feel relief, or cry, or else—

Or else what?

Chapter Text

This is Celeste Asagao, General of the Minutemen and Agent Felix of the Railroad, speaking. I’m recording this message in the hopes of reaching my friends and allies. I know that most of you think I’m dead or, even worse, a traitor. I promise that I’m neither of those things. I’ve been working with the Railroad for months in the hopes of bringing down the Institute. Unfortunately, my cover was compromised. Fortunately, I’m much more useful alive than dead for the Institute, but I’m trapped here. I need help.

There have been a few… situations in the Institute, and now they’re fractured. I wish we had more time, but we need to strike them while they’re at their weakest. They’ve kept the Commonwealth under their thumb by dividing us. Well, here’s our chance to give them a taste of their own medicine. No more cowering in fear of the Institute’s next move. No more uncertainty of who that might take next. No more struggling just to survive, while they hide underground! If you’re afraid of the Institute, trust me when I say that they’re scared shitless by you. They’re terrified by the humans who live on the surface because of how strong you all are!

And to the synths hiding in the Commonwealth, afraid of the Institute… you scare the Institute too. They’re too afraid to admit that they created life, that they made individuals. They’d rather continue pretending that you are anomalies instead of the inevitable end result of their work. You scare the shit out of them, because they know that you deserve better!

Now is the time to fight back. Now is the time to come together and force the Institute back into the light. No more hiding, no more sneaking, no more ignoring their own sins. You have my support, and the support of those in the Institute who aren’t afraid to do the right thing. If you want to do right by the Commonwealth, join us. Help the Minutemen and the Railroad in any way you can. They know what they’re doing, and I trust in them. They will not let you down.

To the Minutemen and the Railroad, you both know what to do. You have the information you need. I know we can do this.

If this is the last time anyone outside ever hears my voice… to the Commonwealth and to my allies, please know that I tried my best. To my friends, I love you, and I’m sorry.

Chapter Text

Those who heard Celeste’s words and believed in them make their way to the Castle, taking up arms to fight the Institute. Their numbers are few but exceed what anyone expected. Preston doesn’t allow most of them to join the fighting; they’re too inexperienced, more than likely to end up as laser fodder. He doesn’t need any more deaths on his conscience.

Desdemona eventually contacts the Minutemen, despite her lack of confidence that they would willingly help synths. Preston tries to point to Nick as an example, how well-liked and trusted he is despite being so obviously non-human. She shakes her head and asks if Diamond City would be so kind if Nick wasn’t useful to them. They don’t have any other choice, though. Celeste clearly wants them to work together. They argue about his transmission as it loops on a radio in the background. Is this a trap? Is this bait? Is this really Celeste? Even if it is, can he be trusted? They need a united front to destroy the Institute, but what if the Institute simply wants to wipe them out in one fell swoop? I know we can do this, the radio croons. Who is “we”?

Celeste once told Preston a myth (considered ancient even in the old world) of a lion with impenetrable skin. The hero of the story defeated the animal by beating and strangling it, and skinned it with its own claws. Maybe the Institute is much the same, impenetrable to anything but itself, only capable of defeat through using it against itself.

Chapter Text

The stars in the ceiling correlate to a true view of the sky as seen from the CIT ruins, shifting as time goes by. Celeste has confirmed it himself. Strangely enough, the moon is conspicuously absent. He should have it added with a proper lunar cycle. Why should a night sky be without a moon? Maybe it’s metaphorical. There isn’t a sun during the day either, technically speaking; the lights turn on individually, not from a central point. Solana is dead, and Celeste was frozen. The sun and moon were out of reach for Shaun. That seems like just the kind of overdramatic imagery an Asagao would love to indulge in. Is Celeste projecting? Does he want this to have been Shaun’s intentions, another connecting line tying Shaun to his family he was torn from? It’s too late to ask. It’s too late for a lot of things.

“Sir, are you certain that this will work?” asks X6, walking in lock-step with Celeste.

“It either will, or it won’t. We don’t have time to consider anything else,” he replies. “Are you having second thoughts?”

X6 shakes his head. “Of course not. You have me until the end.”

“It’s not too late to run,” Celeste reminds him, stopping in his tracks. He takes X6’s hand, fixing a serious look onto his friend. A heavy wave rocks the floor under them, accompanied by the sound of a far-off explosion. It’s much stronger than Celeste expected, both himself and X6 briefly losing their balance.

“It is now,” X6 chuckles.

“Well, shit.” Celeste looks down the hallway in the direction of the explosion’s sound. He unholsters his plasma pistol, holding it ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. X6 follows his lead. “Maybe Ayo isn’t as much of a coward as I thought.”

Celeste will put the moon back into the sky. That is one of the few things he still has enough time to do.

Chapter Text

“M0-09?”

“Hmm?”

“Is Uncle Celeste going to be okay?”

M0 wants to tell Shaun to stop caring about Celeste, but that’s not the appropriate thing to say to your not-nephew. He keeps his eyes fixed to the closed doors with the radium rifle in his hands. Shaun sits on an old chair that he found somewhere in the abandoned labs, the padding split open in a few places.

“He’ll be alright. A few Brotherhood soldiers won’t be able to take him down,” M0 reassures Shaun. He turns to Shaun with a little smile, which is nervously returned.  “Just sit tight, okay?”

“Okay.” 

Shaun is obedient to every order, and it’s almost distressing. Asagaos were never meant to follow orders just because they were told to. Is this because Shaun is a synth? Or is it because he’s been forced to obey adults, humans, for his whole short life with no other option? Listen or be reset, do as you’re told or be turned off. In the Institute, there is no worse fate than being a failed experiment. Shaun must know this too, even as Father’s personal pet project. M0-09 wonders if it would have been a kindness for the human Shaun to have died over two hundred years ago, but the sound of heavy metal footsteps pulls him away from the thought. It’s not much use to consider that right now; it won’t change the fact that M0 exists, or that the synth Shaun exists, or that Celeste Asagao has gotten himself into such a fucked up situation that he’s waging a two-front war. The doors slide open and M0 readies a shot at the first sight of power armor.

“Hold your fire!” barks the figure, and M0 realizes that they’re wearing a set of X-01. He doesn’t lower the rifle but he doesn’t pull the trigger, unsure of who this is. A Minuteman would have their emblem painted on the front, and the Railroad is too obsessed with covert operations to use anything as loud as power armor. The figure pulls their helmet off smoothly (proof of practiced familiarity with power armor), revealing a face that M0 has never seen before.

“Asagao?” the figure asks, bewildered.

“Yes, but probably not the one you’re looking for. Celeste isn’t here.”

“Your appearance is too distinctive for you to pretend to be anything else,” the figure retorts.

“I’m not Celeste. I’m a synth made to look and think like him. Celeste is busy running a coup at the moment. Do you really think he would be hiding with his nephew instead of raising hell himself?” scoffs M0, and that seems to convince the figure; the suspicious furrow in his brow eases up. “You’re not Minutemen or Railroad, and that armor is wrong for Brotherhood. So, which side of the Institute are you on?”

“I’m not with the Institute. My name is Danse,” the figure snaps back. “I’m here with the Minutemen.”

“With them, but not one of them?” M0 asks, and the question causes the figure to flinch.

“Yes. I… I know Acting General Garvey.”

He must also know Celeste. It’s odd that he would go by just his surname, nor would he like it very much. That means that Danse is choosing to call him that, and the only people who do that…

“I take back what I said. You’re Brotherhood,” M0 accuses, his finger on the trigger. “The only people who call Celeste by his surname are Brotherhood. The armor is wrong, but the military talk is a dead giveaway.”

Danse hesitates again, but surprisingly lowers his laser rifle. M0 doesn’t copy the motion.

“I was with the Brotherhood in the past. They were going to execute me, and Asa— Celeste saved my life.” Speaking the words out loud seems painful, and Danse has to take a deep breath before continuing. “I owe him for giving me a second chance, even if I don’t deserve one.”

M0 feels a hand against his hip, and sees Shaun clinging to his side. He thinks of shooing him back and away from Danse, but there’s a determined look set into his face.

“Why did the Brotherhood want to kill you?” he asks Danse, voice wobbling with sad disbelief.

“I’m a synth.”

This isn’t the face of a regretful infiltrator, or a courser turned rogue. The pain in his tone can only point to an escaped synth who had no idea he was never human to begin with. M0 suddenly feels so incredibly sorry for the man in front of him.

“And now you’re beholden to helping Celeste?” M0 asks.

“He hasn’t asked anything of me.”

“You’re storming the Institute because he asked. What are you doing by yourself, anyway? Where are the other Minutemen?”

“I broke off to search for Celeste with a few of his friends. We’ve been separated due to the fighting.”

Against his better judgement, M0 lowers his rifle.

“I don’t know much about the situation,” he tells Danse. “I’m to protect Shaun until told otherwise. I haven’t heard anything through the radio from Celeste since he said he was ‘getting the big guns.’ Whatever that even means, not that he told me.”

“Is he using you?”

“I could ask the same question of you,” M0 replies, making Danse visibly bristle. “I can’t say that I’m free, but…”

He glances down toward Shaun, still clinging to his side. He puts one hand on Shaun’s shoulder to pull him closer.

“I don’t plan to leave just yet.”

Chapter Text

Ringing, ringing, ringing. The screeching pressure of the ringing continues to rattle his head until it stops abruptly, and Celeste doesn’t feel anything at all. It’s surprising that the process was so painless. He has no eyes at all, and he can see through every camera. He has no ears, and he can hear through every microphone. His body is still breathing, although he can’t feel it. His vitals pop into his awareness much like how a thought might cross his mind. It’s distracting, this sensation of being so… incorporeal. 

Celeste tries not to think about how terrifying this must have been for the victims of Robo-brain testing, subjected to darkness and sound. All of that data literally harvested out of human beings, their brains cut out and experimented on with an attitude more suitable for playing with clay than handling human souls. Celeste hopes that the dead can find some comfort in knowing that their suffering helped make the world slightly better over two hundred years later, but he knows that they wouldn’t care. The weight of their grief and anger remains. They died in fear, in pain, at the hands of uncaring jailors. Who could possibly care about the greater good in that position? They never got to see any of that good.

Celeste needs to use this power for good. If he’s going to harness the data taken from horrific human experimentation, if he’s going to wield the control he’s wrenched away from the Institute, he needs to be good. God, he needs to use this for good.

Information flickers and bursts through his consciousness like fleeting thoughts and spontaneous memories. He sees Brotherhood soldiers in a shootout with a squad of Gen 2 synths. He hears the voices of Minutemen asking for orders as they roam the hydroponics room. A Railroad heavy shoots at a mounted turret and successfully destroys it, the data stream immediately cut off.

“Dr. Ayo, do you really want to continue this?” Celeste asks, every speaker in the Institute bursting to life at once. He can’t locate Ayo, but he must be somewhere within the SRB still trying to call the shots. “Look at what’s happening. The Minutemen are here. The Railroad is here. Both answered my call. The wasteland is fighting back, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Surrender with dignity before someone who wants you to suffer finds you. You know that I treat people fairly.”

Ayo doesn’t answer. Instead, a microphone from Advanced Systems lights up.

“ Director Asagao,” booms Elder Maxson’s voice. “I’m disappointed to learn that such a promising individual like yourself has fallen this far.”

Celeste searches, and finds that the cameras closest to the microphone are offline. The Brotherhood is more cautious than he expected.

“Elder Maxson, your forces have fired on the humans and synths working with me. They’ve done nothing to justify your aggression. Care to explain yourself?”

“Do I really need to explain to you why you’ve made an enemy of the Brotherhood?”

Celeste pauses, just to annoy Maxson.

“And here I was hoping you might feel even a little bit terrible for what you did to your own most loyal soldier. Are you going to keep fighting me while I do my damnedest to finally drag the Institute into the light, or are you going to find your conscience? I’m sure that you’ve still got one in there, buried under all of that Brotherhood bullshit. It’s not too late to get that poison out of you. You’re not dead yet.”

“You’ve chosen to follow the very monsters who stole Shaun from you. You told me that you wanted nothing more than to carry out your revenge against the Institute. What are you trying to do by joining them?”

“I am getting my revenge, you idiot!” Celeste grinds out, and he can sense speakers go tinny with the sound overload. “I’m taking everything that the Institute ever made, and giving it back to the wasteland! I’m ensuring the safety of every human and synth in the Commonwealth, giving them everything that was kept from them out of greed and hatred and entitlement! I couldn’t save Shaun, but I can save what he left behind. I’m going to take everything twisted that they put into him, and make something good out of it for once. This is my revenge, and I will not let you steal it from me!”

“How can you think this is revenge? What would your sister say if she saw what you’ve done?”

In a physical form, Celeste might have burst out laughing. What would Solana say if she saw how deeply Celeste cared, the kind of horror he endured to claw his way to Shaun, the effort he had made for each strike at the Institute’s foundation? What would she think about how Celeste had flipped the entire Commonwealth for Shaun, her baby, her little star?

“I think Solana would be proud of me.”

How dare Maxson deign to understand what Solana Asagao would have wanted, as though he could ever understand the depth of the revenge Celeste had orchestrated. Celeste turns off all of the lights in Advanced Systems out of pure spite. Over the confused shouting, he can hear someone question how Celeste could do that, and he lets himself have a moment of smug satisfaction at their panic.

In the back of Celeste’s consciousness, Solana’s silver bell rings, and rings, and rings.

Chapter Text

Sun rays pierce the window, shattering into a thousand shards of light against the dust suspended in the air. In the sterile environment of the Institute, such a view was impossible. Celeste realizes just how much he missed the surface as he buries his cheek into the pillow and blinks. The Med-X in his veins goads him into sleep, but he wants to watch this view forever. Medication be damned, rest be damned.

(The prickling pain at the base of his neck reminds him that he tried to give this up forever. He doesn’t have the brainpower to unpack that right now.)

He’s not sure where he is, other than topside. It smells like the surface. The walls are bare wood. The room is small and hardly furnished, just the bed, a rolling cart, and a small set of drawers. Someone is having a conversation on the other side of the door. Celeste can’t hear the words, but they sound upset.

“Quit arguing, ‘m trying to sleep,” he shouts. The conversation outside stops. He wonders if he’s going to be left alone, but the door opens slowly and Celeste’s eye swivels slowly to look.

It’s Nick and Piper. They look a little apologetic, but also mad as hell.

“Blue,” Piper says in a way that suggests that she’s going to continue, but words fail her.

“Is Shaun okay?” Celeste asks.

“Alive and well. We kept an eye on him, just like you asked,” Piper replies. When Celeste opens his eyes again, she has something clutched in her hands. She unravels a roll of paper and shows him the contents. A purple lion sits in the middle of green scribbly grass, a big smile drawn onto its face. The sun and moon are both in the sky, also with little grins of their own. Underneath, in handwriting that looks vaguely familiar, it says FEEL BETTER SOON! “He said it’s full of magic that would heal your injuries. I’m not sure what that means, but he insisted that it would work.”

The drawing is pinned to the opposite wall so that Celeste can look at it as he rests. For as angry as they must be, Nick and Piper are extremely gracious. They fill him in on the state of the wasteland. The Minutemen are holding down the fort with Preston at the head to rally the troops. The Railroad are regrouping their safehouses, still operating with discretion. The Brotherhood swarm the airport but haven’t made any move outward. The Institute relays in and out to share medicine and food with the surface, withdrawn but willingly assisting under Dr. Binet’s guidance.

“So everyone is playing nice?” Celeste mutters, more to himself than as a question to be answered. “I need to go back. I’m sure Alan is doing alright, but people need to see me.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. You’re not a wasteland savior to everyone,” Nick says.

“Trust me, I know. But it’s better if I’m seen making the decisions for the Institute, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think you should go anywhere right now. You’re still scrambled from that… whatever you did to yourself,” Piper adds. “The brain thing. God, that was terrifying, Blue.”

“It’s not as scary as you think it is. It’s like using a memory lounger—”

“Your consciousness was integrated into the Institute’s database and software system. I think that’s horrifying,” interrupts Nick. “It took Curie days to figure out how to even start to detach you from that monstrosity of a machine.”

The base of Celeste’s skull throbs dully again, as if to stress Nick’s point.

“Where am I?”

Nick and Piper exchange glances.

“Come on. Where am I?”

“We aren’t exactly allowed to tell you that,” answers Nick. Celeste frowns.

“Why not?”

“X6 was worried that you would try and make a break for it.”

“That doesn’t reassure me in the slightest.”

“Hey, it was his idea,” Piper points out. “He and M0 said that you would try and get back to the Institute before you were healthy and hurt yourself.”

“I don’t believe you. X6 would never think that anyone could outclass the Institute in medical care, and M0 would probably throw a party if I died.” Celeste winces. “Actually, I take it back. M0 was probably a big fan of this plan to refuse to tell me where I am because he knows how much it would irritate me.”

“Exactly,” says a voice identical to Celeste’s.

M0-09 stands in the doorway, his hand on the knob. There’s a satchel slung crossbody on him, and he’s changed his hair since Celeste saw him. He looks much more like how Celeste did pre-War, letting his bangs cover his left eye and keeping the rest of his hair bundled into a ponytail swept over his opposite shoulder. It’s still jarring for Celeste to see his own face and hear his own voice like this, but having a synth copy is admittedly not the most bizarre thing to happen to him. The fact that his synth copy doesn’t like him very much is just the cherry on top of this confusing sundae.

“Preston told us to bring you here. Just wait until you’ve healed before galavanting off on another ill-fated quest,” M0 scoffs, crossing his arms.

“I just want to know where I am.”

“So that you can call in a favor with an Institute friend and have them sneak you out? Absolutely not.”

Celeste closes his eye and lets out a rumbling sigh. “I love being trapped in places by people I trust,” he says, rolling over to face the wall. “I’m really glad that it’s happened twice now.”

Chapter Text

Celeste proposes that he leaves the Commonwealth. He’s done all he can for it, and he can live with being despised by some of its people. If people feel better that way, so be it. There are plenty of places that would take him in. He could go underground to the Institute or even head back to Far Harbor or Acadia, putting distance between himself and the Commonw—

“That sounds like cowardice,” Cece, formerly known as M0-09, declares.

Celeste glares from his spot standing by the bar counter. He brought his friends and allies here to discuss the future, not to be interrupted by someone who can’t stand him. They’re all scattered about in the living room of Celeste’s Sanctuary home, sitting on the couch or leaning against walls. Shaun is asleep in the house across the street under Marcy and Jun’s watchful eyes; keeping him here while a tense discussion happens is a poor idea for many reasons.

“Do you think that I want to leave?” Celeste asks, incredulous.

“No. You want to stay here, but you’re also afraid of what will happen if you do. That is why you framed it as other people’s wishes.” Cece leans backward against the front door with an expectant look aimed at Celeste.

“I would have worded it differently, but I sort of agree with what Cece’s saying,” adds Deacon, awkwardly fiddling with his bottle of Nuka-Cola. “A lot of people respect you for bringing the Institute to heel. Not everyone agrees with what you did, but... leaving won’t make the Commonwealth better. If you want to go, you need to make that decision for yourself.”

“It’ll be awfully boring without you. Besides, raiders are scared of you, and that keeps people safe. Without the Lion of One-Eleven around, who knows what might happen?” Cait agrees.

“I don’t want to be the Lion of One-Eleven. I don’t see how that’s any different from being the big scary Institute.”

“So scaring raiders is too much, but you want to go back to the Institute? The hell kind of logic is that?” asks MacCready. His arms are crossed over his chest. “What’s the point of that if you’re just gonna be the Director of the weirdos that everyone is still scared of?”

“You don’t need to be anything, Blue. Hell, can’t you just hand off being the Director to... I dunno, Dr. Binet? Or Dr. Li? They seem like people who won’t do the whole ‘random kidnapping’ thing again,” Piper offers instead.

“Folks, I think we’re losing the thread here,” Preston says, standing up from his armchair. “This isn’t about the Commonwealth or the Institute. We’re talking about Celeste. He wanted our input on what he should do next for himself.”

He squeezes the thumb of his other hand, taking a moment to think his words through. After a few seconds of silence, he continues speaking.

“I don’t want you to leave. I won’t stop you if you decide to go, but thinking about it hurts. You mean a lot to me and a whole lot of other people. I’m upset with some of the things you’ve done, but I don’t want you to think that you’re not wanted here anymore.”

Celeste’s gaze moves from Preston, to a spot on the opposite wall, to the countertop.

“I don’t know if it’s a matter of being wanted. I’m not supposed to be here. I should have died with my family.” Celeste raises his head to look at Cece. “You’re right that I’m just an echo of who I was before. I can’t do anything without my family, and I don’t want Shaun to end up like me. You—”

“If you tell me to be Shaun’s caregiver, I am going to punch you in the face.”

Cece looks livid. He’s up on his feet faster than a blink, striding across the room and pushing X6 aside to slap his palms down on the other side of the bar counter. Dogmeat barks at the suddenly aggressive gesture, and Curie grabs him by the collar before he lunges forward. Celeste doesn’t recoil when Cece leans in to stare in straight in the eye; both stand their ground with firm defiance.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but our family is dead . Mother and Father are dead. Solana and Rigel are dead. Uncle Cynthe and Dad are dead. They are not here anymore. None of them are here to tell you what to do. Everything that you’ve done since you unfroze has been your decision, under your own will. I know that you didn’t turn the Commonwealth upside-down for Shaun just because it’s what Solana would have wanted. You chose to do that because you wanted to do it. You chased down your nephew because you cared about him. You took revenge because you cared about him. And besides that, this—”

Cece gestures wildly around the room, making a few more waving motions with his hands as he tries to come up with words that he can’t think of.

“—whatever you want to call this group of people, they are clearly your family now. You aren’t alone, and you never were! They love you enough to put up with each other. Some of them can hardly stand to be in the same room with each other, and yet here they are, sitting in your living room, listening to what you have to say, because they care about you.”

“This isn’t the same. You know it isn’t the same,” Celeste retorts, curling his fingers into fists across the laminated wood. “You know the difference between friends and family. You’re the one person who knows why it’s not the same for me.”

“How can you not see this when I can?” Cece takes a step back and sighs, still staring straight at Celeste. Despite what his demeanor might suggest, he isn’t backing down; Celeste knows himself too well to misread Cece’s body language. “Let me demonstrate.”

There’s a pistol in Cece’s hand, leveled at Piper, and Celeste is over the counter before he even realizes it. The whole room explodes with noise and muffles into a dim buzz all at once as Cece’s back hits the ground and Celeste channels every ounce of anger in his body into his hand clamping down on the throat of the synth wearing his face.

“Blue, let him go before you kill him!”

Someone grabs him and lifts him with extreme ease. Celeste leans back, and realizes that it’s X6 once his brain can recall anything except a dire need to beat the shit out of Cece. Still on the floor, Cece waves off Hancock’s hand and coughs. He’s staring straight at Celeste again with a triumphant grin on his face. Celeste desperately wishes that he could kill people with his mind.

“Why would you do that?” he hisses. The tears welling up start to spill over, trailing down his face.

“Not family, my ass,” Cece says once he’s able to speak again. His voice is a bit strained, but he has never looked so self-assured before. “You might hesitate to call them family, but you would tear up the Commonwealth for them just like you did for Shaun.”

Celeste lets all of his weight fall backward as his knees give out on him. X6 lowers him to the floor carefully, one hand around his waist.

“You pointed a gun at her just to make a point?”

“It’s empty. Nothing would have happened. I’m sorry for scaring you, Piper.”

“Apology accepted,” Piper replies a little hesitantly. “Next time, warn a gal?”

“Cece, you’re a fucking asshole.” Celeste sniffs and rubs away his tears. “You really had to do that? I could have actually hurt you.”

“The point wasn’t getting across with words, was it?” asks Cece. He clears his throat again and gets back up on his feet with Hancock and Danse’s help. Celeste finds his footing with one hand on the counter and the other gripping X6’s forearm.

They stare at each other for a moment.

“Asagaos aren’t meant to be alone, but you never were. You only convinced yourself of it. Stop living in a misery of your own making. There’s no reason for you to leave.”

Cece turns and steps over the pistol still lying on the floor, heading for the front door.

“Mister Cece? Where are you going?” Codsworth warbles when he puts his hand on the doorknob.

“I’m going to check on Shaun. I think I’ve caused enough panic in one night,” replies Cece, looking over his shoulder to shoot a smile at the Mister Handy. “Good night everyone. I hope the rest of the conversation is productive.”

The door opens, the door closes. Nobody says anything; Celeste finally settles on breaking the silence.

“I can’t stand him. He’s overconfident and stubborn and too willing to risk his safety.”

“He really is a copy of you, huh?” Nick says.

Celeste can’t argue with that. He plops himself down onto the couch between Nick and Piper, putting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands.

“Monsieur Celeste, might I ask a question? It seems that the distinction between ‘family’ and ‘friends’ is very significant to you and Monsieur Cece. I... I do not understand why it distresses you so that your friends have become your family,” asks Curie, her hands clasped together over her lap. “If you do not mind, could you please explain?”

“It’s not distressing. I’m just a moron.”

“Strong not understand. Human is crying because human think human is stupid?”

“I don’t think that’s what he means, big guy,” MacCready says. “But I don’t understand what’s happening either.”

“I don’t think I could explain it even if I tried. There’s all this... baggage about it. It won’t make any sense to anyone except Cece.”

“I admit that human emotions are a tricky subject for me, but I would like to hear how you feel, sir. I may not fully understand, but I believe it will help bring us closer, regardless,” adds Ada.

“There’s no harm in trying.” Danse clasps his hand over Celeste’s shoulder a little awkwardly, but Celeste appreciates the gesture regardless.

“You’ve listened to us, even if you didn’t understand everything. I think the least we can do is return the favor.”

Celeste lifts his head up to look at Preston, who smiles back at him. Every eye in the room points in Celeste’s direction, waiting for what he has to say. These people who love him, these people who he loves, who he would rip the world to shreds for just the same as he would for his mother, his father, his siblings, his uncle, his nephew. These people who followed him into bullets and fire and lasers and radiation, who carried him home when he couldn’t walk, who heard him scream from underground and chased his voice into the depths of the earth without knowing what awaited them in that darkness.

To hell with it , Celeste thinks as Dogmeat puts his chin on Celeste’s lap.

“Did I ever tell you about my dad?” he asks.