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The first you hear of him is a rumor, one that arose before you ever woke from stasis. He's something of a legend in the wastes, and all the stories about him differ. You chase word of him in towns, ruins, every place he was said to have been. You find holotapes he left scattered around. Diaries, of sorts.
A half dozen or so are from your spouse, though. The tapes detail how your darling left Vault 111 with your infant son. Your heart plummets when you hear that your son's first birthday was fifty years ago. But that also gives you hope; your beloved might be alive. The time between you doesn't matter.
You keep chasing your ghosts because they're real. The holotapes are leading you somewhere, you just know it. They're a road you have to follow to its end, no matter how far or how hard.
And you do. You bleed and you sweat and you suffer for these scraps, but they're yours, damn it. Maybe you've killed for them. Bad people. Innocent people. Who knows? You'll try not to think about how that'd disgust your family if they knew. There are some things you'll never tell them. You wonder if there are some things they'd never tell you.
What you hear on the holotapes is isn't good, though: grief, bitter survival, the hardening of a kind soul. Your spouse changes in the wasteland, and you hang on to any sign of the person who once was. Glimpses of the old world in the new. Your love has a new mission after your son is old enough to take care of himself: trying to find you. To save you. Abandoning you in that vault was a hard choice to make, one deeply regretted. A new journey begins for your spouse.
Then you find a new tape. A new voice. Your son. You steady yourself because you know what this means.
He mourns the loss of the parent he knew and curses you. Says that you killed your beloved in the end. That the guilt about you, the memory of you, the effort to try to save you, was poison. Maybe you agree; maybe you think he's wrong; maybe you're too fucked up with grief to care right now.
Any way you feel about it, you press on. You live another life, of sorts, through your son. He's a good man, or tries to be. Easy decisions don't show up very often in this new world.
You understand, and you're proud of him. You want to tell him that.
And your chance comes when you finally learn from a passing trader that Shaun settled down. Carved peace out of destruction. A small town. The marker for it burns on your map. There's no question of going.
Your heart rises. You're almost there. What will you say to him? Will he believe you are who you say you are? Does he still hate you? Does he forgive you? Could he try to kill you? (Could you blame him?) The road curls into your destination, reminds you of that yellow road from a Pre-War story, the one where a girl only wanted to go home. Family is your home. You know that now.
A stranger greets you after the guard lets you past the gate. She looks a little familiar. Like your spouse. You look familiar to her too because she tells you so. She guides you into the biggest, brightest house in the settlement. There, she shows you an old, worn photograph, one you remember. It was the first picture of your family together. Momma, daddy, and baby makes three. There's another picture, one of your son, all grown up, taken by one of those Institute folks at the cost of a few hundred caps. A young whim, the girl informs you.
She shows you another picture, one of your son, your baby, holding a baby of his own. Strange, isn't it, she says, having a grandchild who is almost the same age as you? You laugh about it, but know that something isn't right, that there's something she's holding back. When you say so, she tells you what you knew all along:
Shaun is dead. Went last winter, in his sleep. Didn't feel a thing, doctor said.
So close. You were so goddamn close that it hurts. In your rage and anguish, you barely feel something pressing into your hand. Another tape, one your granddaughter says she's been waiting to give to you. For your ears only. She doesn't know what it says and she isn't curious. This is between you and her father. She steps outside so you can be alone with a dead man.
Her footfalls fade beneath the pounding of your heart. Each breath aches through you. A few more feet to go before you've hit the end of your road. Giving up after coming so far isn't an option. The last holotape goes where it belongs, finally.
You press play.
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