Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 50: Alive

"You are alive."

Danse was back home, the Capital Wasteland. With her.

It was beautiful. She was beautiful. Both ruinous ghosts of their pasts, both dark and dangerous, but both beautiful if he rummaged through the ruins; if he looked deeper.

Both home. Both alive.

Kelly took his hand, smiled, gave him gravity with her deep sapphires, and guided him through the ruins, of his world, of her soul. Shadows of the forgotten befell their wake—ghosts of the city, ghosts of the world, ghosts of the past. The sobs of the mourning, the cries of the pained, the whimpers of the lost, the chuckles of the children innocent to it all. The world, her soul; both cried as they fell to fire nurtured to fruition by chaos.

All around them, his brothers and sisters battled with honor and fury, raiders fought with flame and blood, radiation hunted and punished all, the city bled and fell, the world bled and fell. Whispers, voices, screams, the miasma of chaos surrounded him. But by Kelly's hand, nothing could touch him, he could hold onto that illusive calm in the chaos. He could be the calm.

He could go home,

Could take on the world,

Take on his demons.

It was back inside him. Visceral, condemning, torturing. In the deep grotto of his memory, it crawled back up to shatter his great fortress and render him it's prey once more.

Danse drifted through his own distorted memory, tearing up air and land in search of Cutler. Blood and sweat was spilled, sustenance cast aside, emotions threatening to betray him each night he closed his eyes on an unsuccessful day. Mornings came with anxious sickness, kept at bay only by the will to push on.

The hive.

Danse remembered it vividly. Death and gore, red and rage, fury from the blood. The sight terrorized his eyes in sharp, fractured memory, flashes stabbing into his brain like a knife and latching on to etch out the images that would forever haunt him.

Human beings, mutilated, severed, dismembered, hung up in gorebags and strewn across the walls, their gore spread in decoration. The filth of it saturated his airways. His every step was over bloody bile, the sound unforgettable.

Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.

He was stepping on people. He could be stepping on Cutler.

Shadows assaulted him and his squad. Heavy footsteps penned them into a tight formation. Mutant laughter boomed off the gory surrounds.

Danse roared his battlecry as the hive awakened.

Laser and plasma met lead and hate. The super mutants roared with Danse, though their nature was of merry madness against his malicious insanity. He stood with the fortress of his squad, commanding it, melding with it's current as one mobile force against a horde of disarray.

Where is Cutler? Am I shooting Cutler? Was that him? So many faces, so many voices, all the same, all with lasers and plasma in their brains. Cutler? Cutler!