Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 126: Are You Lonesome Tonight?

Danse walked the plains of his despair in solemn fortitude. Through fiery rains and ashen winds he traversed, hunted and haunted by conjured nightmares of his own making. Days slipped into nights untended by sun or moon, calm reveries spilled into storms foretelling nothing but a shadowed horizon ahead of him. His world was foreign and bleak, whispering of unknown entities, all stories untold but there for the seeking.

But he knew this place all the same. The Capital Wasteland. Barren and infertile, it crawled with destitute sparsity. Lonely cries echoed from the distance, where dead trees keened in silent entreaty.

Why here?

It was home, but it wasn't. He never belonged here. It was just the place he first remembered. His childhood memories were taut with poverty, strife, hunger, desperation, danger, and loneliness. He flitted from hole to hill, rubble to ruin like a wayward moth, drawn by light and warmth, but he never remained in one place for long, they always caught the thief that overstayed his welcome.

When he had travelled far and come to know the lay of the land like the back of his hand, he found that he had outgrown the vagabond lifestyle. Or perhaps it had outgrown him. He sought to become one of the very people he stole from, a stayer, a settler, merchant. Junk was his trade. Rivet City was his settlement.

Here, Danse walked the empty decks. Nostalgia colored the hull like the burnt rust it boasted at every seam and joint. The beached sea ship was on a perpetual lean, the metal groaning through the ages in forewarning of it's inevitable demise. Perhaps it was humbling to sleep within a dying relic of the past. It's mortal fate soothed him in his immortal slumber, in this immortal place.

He lingered for days, weeks, walking the same path through the decks, looking for something he could never find.

Would he linger forever in his immortal shell?

Some days he could hear light footsteps down the halls, but whenever he glanced back, nobody revealed themselves to him. Were they his ghosts, tracing the remnants of his shadow, trailing behind and snagging on things that never belonged in his memories?

Sometimes his eyes would behold something specific, a rusted pattern, a scratch in the hull, a slip of cloth tied about a broken pillar of metal to be tossed by the wind, and his memory would vie to hold onto it.

But did he ever really discover this place of his own accord, or was he planted here, sown into the lamentations of ageing metal like the rust?

The voice punched through the winds over the upper deck. "Where are you?"

Danse tipped his head skyward, unseeing. "Who are you?"

The voice never responded.

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That should not have happened.

She had lost herself in Maxson's presence again, spiralling into animalistic instincts that made demands and leeched her of her sanity.

Kelly sat prone in her quarters, on Danse's bed, her bare feet planted firmly on the deck beneath her. She was still surprised to discover that these quarters hadn't been allocated to some other Paladin after her exile, and the theory of the Brotherhood superstition of the space being tainted was growing more and more solid.

She sighed. Sand still hugged the crevices of her toes and dirtied her toenails, making an unsightly scene of her feet. They were what she stared at while her mind worked to unfold her memory.

What had she said in those caves? The exact words that flew from her tongue were foggy to recall, but she had alluded to her son's existence, she was sure of it.