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Being part of the Brotherhood of Steel comes with wonderful privileges (power armour, cool tech, safety and security, fear and awe from the general populace) and painful challenges (crazy people, orders, schisms, being a huge target, endless war), with nothing being a bigger challenge than my husband - Colin Moriarty. Having his rust and rad kingdom blown up beneath his feet was the best thing that ever happened to him, but a lot of terribleness had to go down before he could even begin to recognise that fact, and here I am, askin him to go back over No Man's Land, and climb the barbed wire of his memories.
Well, not me, the cult, the group, our faction is asking him to, I'm only the messenger. One with at least half a chance. Maxson could order him to put pen to paper, but, you know, that risks relationship damage.
Bong bong bong, my feet can't be stealthy on the steel floors of the ship I call home for much of the year. Rivet City, a nuclear powered supercarrier and merchant paradise carrying gunships, missiles, powerful minds and a crap tonne of caps, it's the pride and joy of the Brotherhood, a big baby equaling, and maybe even surpassing the Prydwen itself. Takes longer to get places than the airship though, but when it does arrive, well, ’bombardment’ is too soft a word.
It's not comfy though. Never has been and never will be. Inside is a warren, a digestive tract made of metal. Miles and miles of cold corridors noisy with life, human and otherwise. Finding Moriarty, the ranking officer, is hard, not cause I don't know where he is, he spends most of his time in his our bar, but because even longtime residents can get turned around in endless identical passageways.
When I do stumble on the right door to the right corridor, he's just finished working at his favourite job - slinging drinks - and turned to his other one, plotting, scheming, thinking, the stuff Maxson would like him to do more of. He's not the man I used to know, and I mean that as a major compliment, but also as a description. I mean, he doesn't look any different than he did ten years ago, for starters. Well, I mean…he isn't any older. I am, though, a little. Just a little.
“I prefer execution to suicide, thank you very much, sweetheart. My enemies need to put in some effort if they want me dead.” My man steps off the topmost shelf of his garage, turning away with a rustle from admiring his favourite suit of power armour, a black and white edition made especially for him. It has no jet pack, none of them do. There's a pink suit standing amongst its manly brothers. That's mine, although I'm not a knight and putting me into battle is a net negative. Moriarty likes it that way, and me getting good with a gun might be the only thing that could get him to lose interest in me, haha. Like most men who have advanced far enough up the ranks, he has a large collection of suits, but, despite being a Sentinel, he rarely wears power armour. Heavy stuff has never been his thing. Heavy external stuff, anyway.
He lands softly on the ground, despite weighing almost twice what he used to. He's not overweight or anything, not gross with muscle, but the same, the same, but very different. Life ponied up at last.
“Colin, hun, it's just a book.”
“It's an autobiography, Mia, dear. There is no more heinous conflagration on God's green earth. I'm a saloon owner, not a wordsmith! You want me to write a book? I may as well retire.” When he reaches me, stepping across a floor perfectly free of clutter and dust, we pause in our discussion, becoming too busy with reaffirming our love via physical affection. Never ever, ever, could I have expected any of this, not the ship, not the Brotherhood, not the kisses, and definitely not the hugs. My dreams were small, nonexistent. Only when Moriarty began his long defrosting, before Megaton was even gone, did I realise there was an ember of one burnin away in my heart.
We eventually separate. My guy is still the same modest height he always was, so no one has to stand on their toes to press lips. “The Brotherhood is payin big bucks. You like big bucks, doll.”
“I'm not tellin anyone my secrets. There ain't enough caps in the world to pay for even one.”
“Baby, you're such a drama queen.”
“There's nothing in my life worth tellin.”
I have to smile at him in silence for a moment. Even after everything, I still wouldn't call him humble exactly, the situation is darker than that. It's more like…shame. Guess my work is cut out for me if I want him to even hack up a ‘chapter one’. The mission to get him to turn his pithy writing skills to an inspiring tale is not something I care about, except that it'll be good for him, and he deserves more recognition. Writing is so good for putting things at a distance, pushed back, and back some more, till you can look at it without flinching and narrowing your eyes.
“Ten things worth telling come to mind without even thinking, but, you know, it's still early, the children won't be back for a couple hours, so do you wanna, I don't know, discuss this, in…closer…quarters?” My bit of manipulation. Marital. Womanly. It almost always works because even after fifteen years, he hasn't drunk this sweet well dry.
Hubby's eyes widen and his pupils expand, flashing crimson thanks to the cybernetics backing them. Metallic joints click, synthetic feathers rustling as he prepares to leap into the air with me, the wings moving minutely to counter the sway of the ship, moving like he was born with them.
Ambition, whatever happened, he never lost ambition, and the Brotherhood is happy for its trusted members to hoard technology inside themselves. And there's a bunch of people who took the words ‘brotherhood of steel’ literally, for one reason or another. Most cyborgs in the ranks are a hundred to two hundred percent less flashy than Moriarty. Most of the time you don't even know they're there until light catches their eyes in a certain way, or you realise you've never seen them eat, or you see them out of their armour.
And it's not like he's styling on anyone either. He wanted enhanced lifespan as the first thing. Greatly extended lifespan, replaced vital bits, anti-ageing, no need to sleep or eat, super vision, subdermal armour, accelerated healing, raised strength, intelligence (etcetera), and more, and then massive natural mobility as the peak, all so he can escape. So much money so that he can evade, flee, fight. Escape the threat of something he's still very reluctant to name. The rest of the group think little of it. He's eccentric, but brilliant, and giving themselves robotic wings is just what those sorts of people do. It's definitely more relatable than putting your brain in a tank or dog or jar or space station, or whatever else goes on. My guy is still very much a guy.
‘Giving himself’ - a bunch of equally brilliant men helped give him attributes suitable for a Wasteland Legend, braving serious risk of death. Now he's known by his our last name, out there in the post apocalyptic desert. More magpie than angel or devil, swooping down to kick ass, loot valuables...and sell boozy information.
None of what he did to himself, or risked, was ran past me. He just came home one day, whistling, grinning up a storm. Then he came home with bandaged eyes, whistling some more. Our relationship still retains some of the old flavour - a little bit of king and princess. A little bit paternal. He proclaims, I obey. I love it, mostly.
Arms, thick and hard but still coated in soft, warm skin, lock around my back and waist, beard tickling my neck. Vertigo, incoming.
💥
As predicted, some loving quickly breaks down Moriarty’s resistances, but only cause he super secretly wants to write about himself and his pet peeves, and there are a lot of those. And only if I work on it with him, probably so I can help leapfrog over certain things. Or at least, I assume he's going to apply a heavy gloss to his words, make things pretty, put some verbal bows on a bunch of hideous pigs.
Punctual and work loving, he begins while we're still luxuriating in bed, relaxing under fluffy blankets. Well, most of us. Feathers stick out all over the place and I wish they wouldn't cause they're a peacock design, with eyes. To scare enemies, to see more. The implants mean he can't lie on his back, at least not when I'm with him, so he lounges like a decadent Eastern prince of something or other, resting on a hip, head supported by a hand, his eyes fixed on his Pip-Boy. He can communicate mentally with it, but he speaks for my benefit. How he begins makes me jerk.
“Five years. Five years wasted being a prick, a jackass, and a greedy little shit. I'd spent decades being those things, but the last five years before Megaton's destruction by Lone Shithead are the ones I most regret. Why? Because I spent those years pimping the love of my life and mother of my children.” he looks away from the screen of the wrist mounted computer, to me, his eyes lazy with contentment. The red is more noticeable in the bright sunniness falling through the skylight. Ramped up from crimson to scarlet. Why are robot eyes so often red? “What's up, Nova, dear? Want to add something?” he asks.
He mostly uses my real name now, but sometimes he forgets. I don't mind. It's a pretty name he chose for me, and the pain of getting it has faded to almost nothing in the glow of undoubted commitment and constant affection and attention. Of all the wives and women onboard, or in the Brotherhood in general, I'm sure I worry the least about what my husband is getting up to when he's not with me. There aren't even any nasty rumours.
Boy, did it hurt getting here.
“I'm surprised you began like that, is all.” We've done all the Big Scenes, the crying at my feet, the apologies, the promise to make it up or die trying, all that, but still, I'm surprised.
“I think about what I did all the time, my love. All that torment. So many things I wish I could redo and take back. Still can't believe you forgave me.”
Saying ‘what else was I gonna do’ doesn't sound right, but it's the first thing that comes to mind. I still don't know if that's nerves and bullshit speaking or what, cause it sounds cynical and caustic. It's like when you get an urge to leap off a cliff or bridge. I don't believe in soul mates, but me and him formed craters in each other's lives so deep that other options ceased to exist. Though I met him when he was forty-five, he'd never married, and though I had offers from a bunch of would-be heroes, I never took any.
“I played a part in all that, Colin. I coulda walked. And not forgiving you would only have harmed me. Besides, I also had a spiritual experience, you know where.”
“Raider base, you can say it dear. It doesn't hurt anymore.” metal clicks, both bedsprings and wing claws, which he uses to hook onto a bit of wall and help him shift position, just like he uses them to disembowel enemies.
‘It doesn’t hurt anymore.’ That's not what the frikking robot wings sticking out of your back, say, Colin! I want to yell. That's not what the shit tonne of implants say, or the collection of power and combat armour. Or what the guns, the ship, the cult, and everything else, says. One of the most valuable members of the Brotherhood, he only has to frown and hundreds of badasses will line up to ask what they can do for him, and it's still not enough. I don't regret the raider base experience, but I'm not totally sure about him.
He smiles, the crooked smile of Megaton, a brief look into what forms the substrate of his being - power and cunning. “I wouldn't have let you walk, love. Never. There would have been blood. I knew it, and I think you knew it somewhere deep down. I know it's soothing to tell yourself you had a choice, but it's a lie. You forgave me even though you knew I might never change. And I don't take that lightly.”
“That's why you need to tell people how it is. Cause you've been on both sides. And realised it.”
“Acknowledged it, more like. I always knew I was evil, dear. I liked it. That and looking at rusty caps. Gave me a shitty version of Christmas cheer to keep me warm at night. Just enough to stave off the barrel of a gun for another tedious day.”
“Me and Gob, we knew you were miserable, but not that miserable.”
“Pity. Might have made you feel better.”
“No. No it wouldn't have. Colin…it was complicated. For us.”
“There's an Old World word for it, sweetheart - Stockholm Syndrome.”
“It wasn't that, hun.”
“Well, you're going to have to tell me all about it for this super hardcore and dangerous ‘mission’. I'm looking forward to hearing how I didn't cause you brain damage.”
Our kids come home from school so we've gotta put clothes on and pretend like we weren't tryin to make some more. Difficult, in a ship. Watching hubby spend time with them is the best part of any day, even if I have to keep pinchin myself while it's happening, just to make sure it's real and I'm not back in Megaton, dreaming jet dreams in a sweat stained bed. The children, like kids are, see nothing unusual about their dad, though I suspect some teasing goes on in school. Someone always brings up my former life, like a prostitute is more significant than her pimp, and now Colin plans to broadcast our extreme lowliness in his very first paragraph. Your sentinel started out bottom of the barrel, brothers and sisters. It doesn't get more wretched than this. That is inspiring. Genius beginning. I wouldn't be bothered, if it weren't for the children.
And what exactly am I going to add to his already sordid recollections?
‘You were shit, you were shit, you were AWFUL I hated you, you were shit, you were okay, you were shit, you were kind I was confused, you were shit…and then you weren't.
And then we weren't.’