the story in which Alex Seattle Geer is right for hating enclosed spaces,

[doubletap]

and Neil Park is blamed for his knowledge of vaults.

---

Terminal Entries:

1st Floor, Vault Entry-Room Computer:
- Data Entry 1: Year 20XX, Month XX; There's no escape.
- Holotape Entry 1: Y#4@ SDhig^8705 H98 [data corrupted]; This is hell and I want out of it.

1st Floor, Cafeteria Luncheon:
- Holotape Entry 2: Private Recording; I've had better?

1st Floor, Cafeteria Supply Room:
- Inventory List: Inventory List; A list of food....
- Data Entry 2: Shift Notes; Maybe I should tear the walls down.

1st Floor, Broken Cave:
- Data Entry 3: Preparations; Everything's fine.
- Data Entry 4: Near the End; I'll tell you the truth, but I won't give up my soul.
- Data Entry 5: Finally, the End is at Hand.; This is far enough.

1st Floor, Office:
- Data Entry 6: Vault-Wide Public Service Announcement; Get back to work everyone.
- Data Entry 7: Locked Administrative Reply; You're reaching for straws.

1st Floor, Administrative Secretary's Office:
- Data Entry 8: Drama Hoes; It is sort of funny that people aren't able to lie, though.
- Holotape Entry 3: Bill Self-Log; Byron's access still works everywhere.

Comments

[goodfight]

[He stills. He doesn't smile back.]

It is hard to accept.

[Hard to swallow down, what with Neil's general aversion to connections.]

Even knowing I can't lie. I've always been two minded about things, and maybe I got used to that. Still.

[And yet.]

Maybe it's the vault. Maybe it's actually me, but I'm pretty solid on how I feel about you.

[Not so much on the outcome of that love.]

[doubletap]

Tell me.

[ He says in the way of a request, and can't remember if they've touched on this before. ]

When did it change? When did it get to the point that you love me that much?

[goodfight]

[Once upon a time, Neil would have answered with Novac. In that rundown motel, he confessed he loved someone, and from that moment, he became a changed man. He thinks to repeat that sentiment, that time.

But the truth isn't so simple as that.

His heart stutters. The weight on his chest suddenly feels like it could crush him.]

When I finally realized the past is dead.

[doubletap]

[ Under his knuckles, Neil's heart shifts in its beats. And in the jumble of mussed chairs, Alex shifts to lay to the side, curling around Neil like he had in a downtrodden house on the border of Illinois. He holds him.

Wonders where to go. Right here. ]

For me, it was when I realized I was scared to death of you dying. More than anything I could remember.

[goodfight]

[Alex lays beside him, arms and legs adjusting to hold him, and Neil shivers as if cold.]

It doesn't seem right.

[He cannot help murmuring.]

Supposed to fall in love over happy things. Not death.

[Not complete and utter loss, real or a possibility.]

[doubletap]

I don't think it'd be real if it were like that.

[ He muses. Wonders at himself speaking of love. He would never have thought it. ]

How can you know how deeply someone is part of you if life is just joy?

[goodfight]

How can you know of hope if life is just death?

[Neil swallows, his throat thick with something he can't name.]

We've got some good things, don't we? It can't be all bad.

[doubletap]

[ Neil is upset over something Alex might not be able to understand, but he--

He reaches. Touches Neil's face. ]

I want to understand why you're upset. Tell me?

[goodfight]

[The hand at his face burns. Neil wants to tell Alex to forget it, dismiss everything as the ramblings of a mind off its rocker, but he can't.

He can only answer.]

Things fall apart in the new world.

[New. Old. Terms common in the West, defining past and present. Possibly shaping the future.]

People love and people leave. I shouldn't feel for you this much when that's the way things are. That's asking for trouble. Begging for it.

[doubletap]

Except you're you.

[ He says, and he finds himself not speaking in the way of convincing, but just of telling the goddamn truth. ]

And I'm me. We're two people far too different from the norm. Too strong, too fast, too clever, too smart. Too goddamn successful, and too many fucking failures. Before you, there was no one I could really speak to. Really communicate with. No one to understand my point of view. I'm not going to let go of that. And hell if I'm going to let any wasteland take that from me. Or take me from you.

[goodfight]

[Except Neil Park is a lonely little boy. Except Alex Seattle Geer has something broken inside him. Except they're going 'round and 'round, and it hurts to hear how different they are from other people. Even as it sings sweet nothings in his head.

Alex will not let him go, and Neil--]

You think I'd want to let you go? I said before--

[After he smashed his fist into the wall.]

--you're going to make me never want to leave you. But I don't know... I don't know where we're going anymore. I don't know anything. Feel like I'm walking blind right now. In circles, maybe.

[doubletap]

[ God, it's so fucking simple. So simple that it hurts and he loves the shit out of it. Out of Neil. He hefts himself up, props himself on an elbow--the hand touching Neil moving to grab his shoulder.

His eyes are bright, seemingly more blue than pale. ]

West. We are always going fucking west. We chase the damn sun as it goes down and we find out everything it left behind. We are seeing your fucking ocean and we are going to Frisco and when I show you everything you had better damn well hold to never leaving me, because there is a shit ton of great stuff out there, and I want you to see what I love.

[ ...Remember? ]

I want you to see what else there is to see. It's not a fucking circle. It's a path to a destination. The only thing that matters. The experience. The finding and the knowing. The person right next to you as you walk.

[ It's a lot, not the most he's said, but possibly one of the most revealing. His cheeks start to flare, slightly embarrassed, but he refuses to look away, to try to take back his words. It may not be the most... realistic thoughts, given the way things are, but they are his, and Alex-- ]

...I'm who I am, all right? Truth or not, bullet to the head or no. I'm myself, and the person who I am loves this damn crazy kid from Vault 101 in the east, and I ain't never going to let go. You either. We're walking. We're following the sun to the sea.

[goodfight]

[Alex grabs his shoulder and looks him in the eye, and Neil can only see the color, the blue overtaking all else.]

"By the time we get there, this will just be a memory."

[It's a repeat. An echo. It was spoken in the basement of the Jefferson Memorial as ED-E filed the jagged edges of the hole in his skull with a fine laser.]

Isn't that what you told me? "This is nothing but a moment." And I--

[Another echo screaming inside his skull.]

--want to see the sun set on those shores. With you. But you have to show me where to go.

[Before Neil loses himself along the way.]

[doubletap]

[ Neil speaks of that time, that place, and what happened, and he calls to the things that Alex said-- The first things he said, utterly his and only for Neil. Alex's eyes soften, his grip holding instead of grasping, and instead of smiling, he nods once. ]

I don't mind being your navigator, kid. You're my sun and air, after all.

[ But still. Still. It pushes. Reaches for him, those words. ]

...Is it now?

Nothing but a memory?

[ A moment. A singular bad step in time. ]

[goodfight]

And now yours. Entirely.

[Given in bittersweet tones. Neil blinks away the damn tears, wishing he himself was an adequate offering. But Alex raises a question. The part of Neil's skull that's a fraction softer than the rest aches in its utterance.

But still. Still.]

A no good, fucked up, nightmare-inducing memory. But a memory.

[More ghost than flesh.]

[doubletap]

[ At the words, Alex leans down to kiss Neil's forehead. He doesn't linger and only tightens his hand in affection. It's fact, his brain supplies. Fact that Neil is his, and while a part of him accepts it, the rest is dizzy from it.

It makes him more willing to allow a reply to the latter, to speak when he perhaps shouldn't. ]

A memory that still haunts you? It's been nearly half a year. Do you still see him?

[goodfight]

[Him. The ferryman, dressed in trader ware. He smiles, all stained teeth.

Neil trembles, his mind holding to the image, to the memory, to the Sacred Bog and what happened there.]

See him rarely.

[When he really thinks about it, definitely. However.]

I hear him sometimes. Only in my sleep.

[doubletap]

You should tell me. I would... do nothing useful really, but I'd be there for you.

[ It's always... ]

...It kills me, that I couldn't help you, that I couldn't grind him to ash while he was alive, but I've always been so damn proud of you for taking care of yourself. Holding it together and tearing him apart. I fucking look up to you for that shit.

[goodfight]

[Alex overthinks. The solution is far more simpler than anything else.]

You only have to wake me up.

[Pull him away from the depths.

Discomfort swirls in his chest, and Neil looks pained.]

I held nothing together, Alex. I just reacted. Went completely out of control. Didn't even know he had died until I started smashing the floorboards.

[doubletap]

You took care of it.

[ He repeats firmly, eyes holding Neil even through his expression. Because it's truth. The goddamn, absolute, awful truth. ]

Don't you ever think otherwise. You did what you should have.

[ The solution for the other is simple. Simple as everything Alex likes. He wants to respond, but instead-- ]

I want to ask you something.

[ --Surprises himself. He didn't think he had questions for Neil. ]

[goodfight]

[Neil watches Alex, searching. Seeking out the faults in that unwavering voice.

There's only truth and nothing more. Neil pauses, also surprised at the turn of conversation.]

...Alright.

[doubletap]

That girl...

[ He doesn't mean to speak, and for the first time in a long stretch of existence, looks insecure. He blinks; continues. ]

She said you hadn't slept since it happened.

[goodfight]

[Red-haired and feisty Nadine flashes in Neil's mind. She and her mother must be traversing the coast somewhere, rich from selling punga fruit. He briefly wonders if she knows the full extent of the damage done to her body.

He smiles sadly, despite the discomfort between them.]

I hadn't slept since the surgery, yeah. Until I came back to D.C.

[And into Alex's arms.]

[doubletap]

[ There's a beat. This is hard to get out. It's strange. ]

...But then you did. Almost instantly. After I treated you so roughly.

[goodfight]

[His smile widens.]

Yeah, I did. It was the best thing ever after being on a rickety old boat for two shitty weeks.