At The Precipice Of Something New

Something Dark

Diamond City
December the 1st, 2289
20:26

The forewarning of an Institute visit to, specifically, the Branson home and one personally made by a former friend of the family by Dr. Lorianne Jennifer Scara had come just days after Derek Johnathan Branson had returned to Diamond City, and did away entirely with what he had very much hoped to be a peaceful week (though hopefully month) with his family.

When Dr. Madison Brianne Li stepped into the family home with Emmett Branson and Jacqueline Spencer, she was surprised to see the General of the Minutemen was there and Scara was not. For his part, Preston, who had been visiting with one Nicholas Julius Valentine just hours earlier, kept a perfectly neutral face at her arrival, something which the woman sitting on the stairs up to the rooms which her four children kept could not. There was a sharpness to the usually round face of Hadley Anne Branson, partly attributed to how thinly her lips were pressed together and how tightly pulled back in a high ponytail her hair was, and the severity of her expression was carried from how tightly clenched her jaw was, how perfectly straight she in her petite frame was sitting, and how strained her already pale hands looked resting on her knees, almost holding herself in place. She barely reacted when her elderly tortoiseshell cat, Sunflower, sat down almost as primly beside her and hissed when Madison started to step cautiously towards her. Taking a look to her right, Madison sighed when she saw, standing in the living room, twenty six year old Lana Marie Branson, the eldest of the four siblings, twenty four year old Lisanna Branson, the second eldest, and eighteen year old Addison Branson, the youngest and the only one of the three sitting though, with how shaky the slight and bony Lisanna's hands were around the mug of, she suspected, tea in her hands and fogging her glasses, Madison found herself wondering why she wasn't the one sat. To a bit of her relief for the twenty four year old's sake, another young woman gently pulled her over to one of the couches to sit down next to her, wrapping an arm around her, but that relief faded when she saw the word 'Press' on hanging onto part of the hat the woman set down on the table in front of the two women.

"I'd ask for a statement, but I don't think the Institute are too keen on giving one," She said when she noticed Madison had been warily looking between her and her hat. "Not with the lengths you go to for discretion. You guys are pretty good at that."

"Evidently," Derek said, calmly intervening though he stayed where had been stood silently beside the stairs where his wife sat. "To the point you did not consider approaching us until you were left without choice."

"Dad," Emmett said, cautiously approaching his parents. "I've spent most of my life wanting to be able to work with people who have the same interests as me, and –"

"Join the fucking Brotherhood, then!" Hadley snapped. "Not as if you and Ingram wouldn't –"

"You don't want me to join the Brotherhood, mom," Emmett said, irritation starting to bubble in his chest. "You just want to get back at Dr. Li for not dragging a woman on a wild goose chase into the Institute."

"Nora –" Hadley started with a warning edge stepping into her voice.

"Is not another one of your fucking children! You talk about a desperate woman who's bargaining for any way to get her life back to what it was before the War as though she's one of us! She may be physically about May's age," He said, casting a dark look at his eldest sister who scowled at him. "But she's not one of us! And, even if she were, asking Dr. Li to put herself at risk because you're set on this is not fair! Especially not when you're treating Nora as if she's one of us because, if she is, then it'll spare you the pain of having lost more pregnancies than you were ever able to carry to term!"

Sunflower, who had leapt into Hadley's lap at the sudden slackening of her hands on her knees, let out another hiss when Emmett, who looked suddenly apologetic and startled, took a step towards his mother before being stopped by a firm hand from the General of the Minutemen on his right shoulder. He looked at him, surprised by the stoniness of the General's countenance but unsurprised that, just behind the General, Lana Marie was staring at him in disbelief, Addison had tensed and pulled her knees up into her chest, and Lisanna had let out a horrified squeak before setting down her mug of tea and curling into her wife, looking worriedly over at her mother. Feeling she should not be there, Jacqueline walked back to the door and stood silently beside it, ready to leave as soon as possible but Madison stayed where she was. A minute passed with only the hum of electricity and the living room's ceiling fan running ringing out but, unable to get any words out, Hadley stared at her feet, not wanting to cry and, her glasses faintly fogging, blinking as fast as she could to prevent it. The quickest of them all to move, however, had been Derek, who had moved so quickly and so naturally that him sitting beside his wife on the stairs and holding her steady could have appeared to be what he had been doing all along. The gentleness he had for her, however, evaporated when he looked up at his son.