[ Only in these past few nights, secondhand, has Danse come to understand the experience of dreams that aren't just synonymous with flashbacks. Dreams with landscapes that shift, timelines that skip, knowledge that appears in one's head as if it's always been there. But the truly disorienting thing is still the part where he finds himself in dreams that don't belong to him, and in that, at least, he's in good company with everyone else here.
This one...couldn't be his, even at first glance, because he's never seen a base like this from the inside. But there's enough of the familiar about it to ground him, even so. It's all just recognizable enough: the colors and the insignia, the vertibird wrecks, the distant whir of power armor servos and merciless metallic treads. The gunfire and explosions could be any gunfire, any explosions. Those never change. Only the emblem visible on the wreckage makes something savage and deep-conditioned in his gut think we won.
But it's strangled and short-lived; it feels wrong. Not only because a victorious soldier shouldn't still be inside a building as it crumbles, or because he doesn't recognize this as home or see anyone he can identify as a comrade-in-arms, but because there weren't children at the battles he remembers fighting. Not on the Enclave's side. Not ones the enemy had been willing to put in harm's way.
Danse doesn't register quite enough detail to recognize the frightened little boy yet. He acts on quick horrified reflex, kneeling--his armor protests as he does; he's somehow been in this suit all along--and extending a gauntlet. ]
We need to get you out of here, son. It isn't safe. Come on.
navarro
This one...couldn't be his, even at first glance, because he's never seen a base like this from the inside. But there's enough of the familiar about it to ground him, even so. It's all just recognizable enough: the colors and the insignia, the vertibird wrecks, the distant whir of power armor servos and merciless metallic treads. The gunfire and explosions could be any gunfire, any explosions. Those never change. Only the emblem visible on the wreckage makes something savage and deep-conditioned in his gut think we won.
But it's strangled and short-lived; it feels wrong. Not only because a victorious soldier shouldn't still be inside a building as it crumbles, or because he doesn't recognize this as home or see anyone he can identify as a comrade-in-arms, but because there weren't children at the battles he remembers fighting. Not on the Enclave's side. Not ones the enemy had been willing to put in harm's way.
Danse doesn't register quite enough detail to recognize the frightened little boy yet. He acts on quick horrified reflex, kneeling--his armor protests as he does; he's somehow been in this suit all along--and extending a gauntlet. ]
We need to get you out of here, son. It isn't safe. Come on.