skyfiwreck: Letters from the Wasteland - Part 6

Fallout 4 is the smash hit RPG video game by Bethesda. It was released worldwide on November 10, 2015 for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. https://www.fallout4.com/ (all screenshots used under creative commons licence or used with permission via PS4 share)

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The only surviving photograph of the Wanderer.

Month unknown, 2288

Dearest Lucy,

This will be the last letter from me for a while. I hope it reaches you safely and gives you some comfort that I am alive and I am okay. There is something I need to tell you, big sister. But bear with me. There’s other things you need to hear first.

There was a world that existed here long before you and I were little girls chasing kittens around the gangplanks above Diamond City. A world where some of the trees stayed green all year round and you could walk from one side of the Commonwealth to the other without carrying a gun and fearing for your life. That world is gone. It was destroyed not by a great god falling through the earth but by us, Luce. Humankind. The fire that consumed the world was lit by our hatred and by our malice and the scars it tore in the earth are now the lands we walk upon.

The day the bombs fell.

Marius took me to the Institute. I can barely describe what I saw there but I will try. With the help of a member of the Minutemen named Sturges, Marius had built a teleportation device that allows access to the Institute. That’s all it was, the Institute being able to spirit people away. Not shadows and magic. Just technology.

Inside, it was stark, and cold, and clean. Synths everywhere, some of them indistinguishable from you or me. A great glass greenhouse where they grow plants greener than anything I’ve ever seen. Food and water from things they call ‘faucets’ that is so clear it sparkles like crystal.

We remained there for a few weeks. I stayed in Marius’ room and he let me use the shower. Hot running water from a nozzle and it’s never-ending. The first time, I stood under the warm spray for so long, my eyes closed, just letting it wash the grime from my skin and massage my scalp. It was incredible.

As I sat on the bed wrapped in a towel, my skin still warm from the shower, Marius told me everything. He lived before the Great War that destroyed the world, with his wife and baby boy. That’s where the old photographs came from. He lived in Sanctuary Hills and was there the day the bombs fell.

It sounds so crazy, Luce, and I’m sorry. You probably have a million questions but until I understand it all myself I cannot answer them. When I see you again I will tell you everything. But until then, just know that everything we heard about the Institute growing up was a lie, and the truth, well, it’s not much better.

A rare photograph from inside the Institute

On our last day there, Marius said that he made the decisions he made because he thought that somehow the Institute might be able to make the world the way it was. He looked around at all the clean and bright and shiny things and said he had hoped they could bring everything they’ve learned and done here to the surface and let everyone prosper from it.
‘That could still happen,’ I told him. ‘Maybe not in our lifetimes but it could be done.’
‘I was so wrong, Daphne. They just wanted control like everyone else does. And the Brotherhood? They’ll never understand any of this. They just want to destroy it and everyone who doesn’t agree with their vision for the Commonwealth. They won’t stop fighting. They won’t stop killing. They won’t stop any of it. Nothing ever changes.’
‘Some things do,’ I reached for his hand and I was about to tell him but his Pip-Boy buzzed and he looked at it.
‘Croup Manor is under attack again,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘Daphne, you can stay here. You’ll be safe. Nothing can reach you here, nothing from out there in the wasteland. Clean water, food, and a safe roof over your head. You once told me that’s all a girl could ask for, right?’
I wanted to say shutting me away to keep me safe won't change what happened to her. But instead I said ‘This is not my home.’

We were just past Cambridge, making our way along another cracked road through a maze of old houses when the lasers started firing. We barely heard the vertibird descending before the mounted minigun opened fire and we were ambushed in a laneway by two Brotherhood knights. Marius and I opened fire and of course Dogmeat leapt at the first Knight and latched onto his power armor. Marius called to him to let go and he did, and then he turned to me and shouted ‘Run!’ and we did.

I’ve never run that fast in my life. A bolt from one of the laser rifles whipped past my ear and I could smell burning hair. We were able to keep ahead of the cumbersome knights, and Marius kept fire on the vertibird as we made our escape. Eventually we were able to slow down and we took refuge just outside a settlement called The Slog. The sun was going down, casting angry fire against the dying day.

As we sat there catching our breaths Marius removed his armoured chest piece and I saw the blood. He looked up at me and simply said ‘I’m sorry.’
He collapsed, and Dogmeat fell to his haunches beside him and started whimpering. I knelt beside him and even through his leathers I could see it was bad.
‘I took a few rounds from that goddamn minigun,’ he said, and tried to laugh but just coughed up a mouthful of blood.
‘We’ll get you back to the manor,’ I said, ‘You’ll be okay.’
He grabbed hold of my hand as Dogmeat started licking the blood from his face.
‘I’m done, Daphne,’ he said. ‘You have to leave me here and get back to the settlement.’
I shook my head and said I wouldn’t leave him.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said. ‘This is the only way it could end for me. I know that now.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve killed so many,’ he said. ‘I saw my wife murdered and I watched my son die, and seeing all that changed me in ways I didn’t know and couldn’t realise. It made me do things I regret. It made me do things in service of a greater good that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not made for this world. The world I belong to died a long time ago. This world is yours, Daph, and I don’t belong in it.’
‘Maybe you didn’t save millions of lives, maybe nothing will change,’ I said. ‘But you saved me, Marius. And there is a child within me who will be born into this world, our world, because of that. You don’t have to save the whole world. You’ve done enough. More than anyone could have asked for.’
He struggled to speak again but could not, and those deep grey eyes of his filled with swirls of blood like paint poured into water.
‘Go,’ he managed finally. ‘They’ll be tracking us. You have to get out of here.’
I didn’t want to leave him, but I didn’t want to die. It’s a choice I’ve never had to make before, and one I hope I never have to make again. I could already hear the whirr of the vertibird in the distance.
‘Take him with you,’ Marius choked, taking Dogmeat by the collar and gently tousling the fur by his ear.
I stroked Dogmeat’s fur. ‘I’ll use my last stimpak on him if I have to.’
‘I know you will,’ Marius coughed blood again and the pain shut his eyes, but he struggled them open and placed his hand on my belly. ‘He’ll be good around kids too, I know he will.’
The vertibird shrieked closer, just over the hill to the northeast. My Wanderer looked at me a last time and then his eyes closed and he was gone.
I stood to leave but Dogmeat paused over his body, sniffing at his master one last time before sitting back on his haunches and howling at the darkening sky. For a moment I thought he would not leave the Wanderer’s side, but soon enough he started following me. He knew the score. It was time to go.

I arrived back at the settlement and the Island had been destroyed and there were laser rifle burns in the fences. Once I got inside the walls I saw there were two graves beneath the stone structure at the centre of the compound. Elise was sitting on the steps of the manor house with her head in her hands. Eliza was at the corn rows, her back turned, going through the motions rather than actually tending the plants. Gerald stood at my post, a pipe pistol in his hand, his white t-shirt stained with blood. He came down the stairs when he saw me and Dogmeat enter the compound.
‘Hey Daph,’ he said.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.
He looked down at himself. ‘It’s not my blood.’ He gestured to the graves, marked with small white crosses. ‘Miranda,’ he said of the one on the left. ‘And Skull.’
I looked at the graves and felt my chest tighten. ‘What happened?’
‘Super Mutants,’ Gerald shrugged. ‘I don’t know how many. They came in the middle of the night.’
‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here,’ I could only stare at my own boots.
‘We didn’t stand a chance, Daph,’ Gerald said. ‘If you’d been here you’d be in the ground too.’
He looked at the graves again. ‘We’re alive because of them… Skull was holding them off at the west gate, and Miranda got us all inside the house. She took three grenades from the workshop and headed outside. That was the last time we saw her alive. She took down three of them. The others were too wounded to do much. They retreated back to the mainland.’
I looked around the compound. Only one turret was unscathed, the others were shattered piles of junk. There was blood everywhere.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
Gerald just shrugged. ‘They took off. Said they didn’t feel safe here anymore. Frankly, I don’t blame them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re leaving,’ he said. ‘Me and the twins. Gathering what food we can carry and getting the hell out of here. We’ll strike southwest and head for Diamond City.’ He looked down at Dogmeat. ‘The Wanderer?’
I looked up at him but couldn’t speak. He saw the look in my eyes and knew.
‘All the more reason to leave,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long before those big green bastards regroup and hit us again. You should come with us.’
I stroked Dogmeat’s head and he nuzzled my hand. ‘I’m going to stay here awhile. You should get going though.’
‘We’ll wait for you to gather your things,’ Gerald offered.
‘It’s okay,’ I touched his shoulder. ‘Maybe I’ll see you sometime and finally play a game of chess with you.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’

I furiously started writing as Gerald and the twins gathered corn, mutfruit, potatoes and all the water they could carry, slung the packs over their shoulders, and we said our goodbyes. The only thing I asked of Gerald was that he take this letter with him.

The bomb fell somewhere to the south, so I’m going to head north, up the coast to avoid the roads. I look down now at the wonderful shepherd sitting at my feet, patiently waiting for me. I know he will never leave my side. And I’ll never leave his.

"Dogmeat ready to follow wherever I lead him."

Someday I’ll come to Diamond, Luce, I promise. But not yet. It’s too much a reminder of the world left behind. Maybe Marius was right, that a relic from the past and a protector of the excess that destroyed it does not belong in a future forged by those who survived to make a new world.

I never knew the world Marius spoke of yet somehow it is a past I feel compelled to forget. If I don’t, then how can I build a life for my child that is not tainted by want of a golden future that was burned to ashes and now can never be? The life I give to my son or my daughter is one I must seek out and find and build on my own. I owe that to them. And I owe that to the sacrifice a man made for us for no reason other than wanting a better world for us all.

The view north from the settlement, Daphne would have headed this way to avoid the roads.

So I’m going to strike out and find a new little corner of the world to call my own and do my best to make it better. That’s all that can be asked of anyone, I guess.

I love you.

Your little sister, Daph.

------------Note from the Wasteland: It's not clear if Daphne ever made it north or found her new corner of the world there. These letters are all that remains of her, her friends at Croup Manor, and the Wanderer. She included a few extra photographs with her last letter to her sister. I've included them below with her captions.----------------