route666rp | MAY EVENT LOG

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MAY EVENT LOG

Out of the thorn brush, the land still looks twisted and broken. And it turns a lot more jagged as rocks burst up and out of the ground like teeth… And keep reaching upwards, in defiance of all the gravity that should be pulling them down. The further up the rock spires reach, the more they splinter until the stones are free floating. The same happens to the threadbare trees, their branches and leaves breaking off and hovering in empty air. The nature of this place becomes clear: reach too high, and eventually gravity gives up.

01: BATTLE GROUND

The ground grows rougher, pockmarked with craters and rents, like the landscape is scarred. A little further up the road is the source of those wounds. Curious Drifters will find a tangle of rock and metal reaching high up to the sky. It’s a snarl of wrecked vehicles, rock spires… And bodies.

Robotic hunters are half melted into the bones of a giant monster, and the lights have long since gone out of their lens eyes. Many of them still clutch weapons; swords, guns, and bullets by the bag-full. The hunters and weapons remain locked with the corpse of a horn crowned monster with arm length teeth, and it’s clear this tangle is the only thing that keeps the hunters or their weapons from floating off. Drifters can potentially loot the weapons… They just have to be careful about not floating off while they salvage equipment. The footing here is uneven, and the ground looks ready to break with a wrong step.

These hunters also carry prayer screen beads, but the data on them is horribly scrambled. Any attempts to tamper with them cause them to repeat a single message: “I STILL LIVE” before shorting out and shutting down.

02: HEALTH INVERSION 

A building grows out of the valley; a hospital that has been turned upside down, and its foundations reach for the sky like weird tree branches. The hallways inside are all sorts of twisted up, and the building can’t seem to decide if Drifters should walk on the ceiling or the floors.

Twisted as the building is, ruins gutted by time and overgrown with vegetation… There is salvage available. Medical supplies, healing potions, healing herbs, all of it is bountiful in the hospital. The hospital is also rife with Husks, but all of them are inert… Or have already been broken apart long ago.

Then there’s the matter of the hospital screens flickering on in the wake of the Drifters. Warning lights try to flicker on, as old electronics try to scan the Drifters. The machines give up flickers of data, declaring Drifters to be “infected.” The old restraining systems of the hospital are still active, as manacles and straps alike shoot out, trying to restrain Drifters. The bonds keep them inert until they can be sedated and enclosed in what look like holding pens for violent patients. Best hope there’s someone around to help break a Drifter out.

03: SHARED THOUGHTS

The valley is overgrown with strange plants that glow with eerie light. Sometimes in camp stray glowing tumbleweeds roll through… And any contact has interesting side effects. Drifters will find they’re more aware and capable of picking up on unsaid things. These powers can the month. Each glow confers different abilities:

Blue Glow: Makes Drifters more empathetic in a psychic sense. They can register the emotions of those nearby, and may start to feel those same emotions.
Green Glow: Makes Drifters capable of projecting their emotions to other people.
Purple Glow: Gives Drifters telepathy, to hear and send thoughts to others.
Orange Glow: Grants Drifters limited psychometry. (Object reading.) Using it in the hospital or the battleground will yield unique visions and messages. Please comment to the mod/NPC thread below if your character wishes to do so!

Drifters can stack these effects, but this can overload their minds and force transformations. Those with Swarm traits will find it easier to handle psionic abilities. Additionally, ALL DRIFTERS who experience psionics will find themselves susceptible to Events 4 and 5.

04: MONSTER SHIFT, HIVE-MIND

Worryingly, extra contact with the glowing plants can not only stack mind abilities, but also force Swarm traits. The more a Drifter is overwhelmed by psionics, the more likely this is. Drifters will have access to all Swarm traits for this event, and the following:
+Psi Hunger. A need to eat psychic energy in the form of dreams, psi-infused objects (like sage brush) or even psychic minds.
+Psi Senses: luckily, Drifters can glimpse heavy psychic energy in the brush through enhanced senses, and pick out strange brain monsters. These are good eating for Swarm monsters… And there’s an unnervingly high number of them.
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to spend more time in the wilds, absorbing power from plants and hunting prey in wilderness. May also be compelled to share this prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.

05: WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

On several nights the wind picks up, and sage brush is uprooted and sent tumbling into camp. The plants trade their prior glow to something more baleful and crimson. With the wind whipping through the camp, it’s almost impossible to avoid unless a Drifter is already secure in the Convoy.

The effects aren’t immediately obvious, until the Convoy sleeps for the night… And that sleep is different. Namely the sleep is connected, showing both memories and dreams from other Drifters.

Memories from their pasts can blend together to form a strange dreamscape, that connected Drifters can travel through. But those dreams can easily turn into nightmares. Those who were exposed to the fear toxin in February will trend towards nightmares and may have their old fears make a reappearance.
If those nightmares are vivid and unsettling enough, they can force a transformation. (This may be either current monster traits, or a Swarm monster!) And then…

06: BRAIN ATTACK 

It happens just before dawn, during the blue hour… Or perhaps it might be more apt to call it the red hour, with how the sky is stained crimson. It’s just bright enough to distinguish something moving in the hills. Drifters can pick out a rustling in the brush; something that isn’t wind. There’s something moving, crawling on claw tipped legs… And looking less like sage brush and more like a brain.

The Intellect Devourers numbers in the hundreds. Their claws scour the ground as they race towards the Convoy and smash into the shield. Numbers start to overwhelm the generator, along with the chaos the brain brush has sown with their psychic echoes.

The psychic echoes increase as they swarm the campsite, trying to drive Drifters into a frenzy with nightmares, fears, and strange visions. The brains are also ready to use those long sharp claws to tear anyone disoriented enough into ribbons, and start feasting on them.

06-A: BRAIN BRAWL 

Hallucinations: The Intellect Devourers try to whip up more terrifying visions. Anything to disorient the entire Convoy, or drive the Drifters into a madness that leaves them transformed and too wild to easily counterattack. These hallucinations may be past trauma, or something a Drifter fears happening; the ultimate goal is to leave Drifters panicking, changed, and vulnerable.

Rally: Still, there’s one thing the Devourers didn’t anticipate: and that is how sharing a mental link has given the Drifters an anchor with each other. With all the psychic echoes spreading through the camp, any and all mental links from before can easily flare back up. Drifters who have shared dreams or some form of mental connection may still transform, but their mental link can keep their minds stable and coherent instead of growing feral.

Scars: Whether through brute force battles or mental link resistance, eventually the Convoy is able to shrug off the attack… But there is still some damage done. The shield generator has shorted out, and the Convoy itself has taken a few gashes and gouges. Not to mention any transformed Drifters will still need to be talked down. Luckily the mental links are still in place to help with that, and there’s a truck full of medical supplies to help with patching up any hurts.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Disorientation: When wandering through the brush, Drifters may experience a swarm of disorientation: their thoughts suddenly scramble, they forget where they were going or what they were doing. They may also come to with a set of gashes along their legs, and a sense that they may have seen something in the sage brush move… Or maybe it was just the wind.

Float: Occasionally, parts of the road just give up their hold on the ground and go drifting skywards. Hopefully those chunks of road don’t take Drifters and their vehicles with them. Tough vehicles can likely survive the drop, while Fast vehicles can speed away before they float too far upwards. Drifters caught outside their vehicles will have to hope they have fast reflexes… Or are either good fliers or good jumpers for the leap back down.

Raining Down: On occasion, gravity will flicker and warp oddly… And that means that other odd things can fall where they used to float; rocks, plants, not to mention the odd bit of hardware and buildings. Watch for falling objects of various shapes and sizes!

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ He's wearing the right armor (or close enough - even Arcade couldn't name the exact model, but knows the make) and he's saying the right things (it's what Johnson or Judah or even Moreno might, if they found him first). But Arcade still hesitates, slowing in his frantic tracks to look up at the (somebody who shouldn't be here) stranger with more caution than trust.

His glasses try to fall down and he pushes them back up reflexively. ]

I have to find my mom.

[ It's not a whine or a plea, but a statement of fact colored with the flat neutrality of barely held-back panic. The voice is right, but the cadence of it is wrong, too much a match for the haunted look in those too sharp green eyes. ]

We were supposed to stay together.

[ His voice does break on that, just a little, because that plan has already gone wrong. He doesn't know where he lost her or when, but he knows they're separated, now. And that was the one thing he wasn't supposed to let happen. ]

[ Even if Danse didn't have reason to recognize those glasses, the anonymity of this was never going to hold for long. The only reason it's lasted for this minute or so already is the distraction of ever-nearing gunfire and the alarm of seeing any child so close to it, when even the Brotherhood's child soldiers need to be about twice this one's age before they're allowed to witness combat. (He tells himself these things.) Underlying that as well is the disorientation of subconsciously trying to place himself in space and time here, and the part of his mind that's processed the "Enclave base" signifiers without reading the signs has simply assumed this one to be Adams, when it fell in 2277.

But he knows exactly when and where he is now when he looks down into those familiar green eyes, the shock of understanding making him stand up and step back with a clank of metal. He wouldn't, still, if not for Len's drawl in his head. But he can't say now that he wasn't told, no matter how he'd insisted then on playing devil's advocate rather than accept it as solid truth.

"I know what the Enclave's done. But the last stronghold they had on the west coast was wiped off the face of the earth by the NCR in 2246, so the math ain't mathing."

Well. It's mathing now. ]

I--

[ Another explosion, another rain of dust. There isn't time for guilt or analysis. He doesn't know if Arcade's mother is still alive to find at this point; it's certainly not something he could have asked about in waking life, or would have. He can hardly make the same confident "we'll find her" promise that he had when they were just searching for those lost glasses. His stomach lurches a little at that crack in Arcade's voice. ]

I'll search with you. [ His tone is as gentle as he knows how to make it, the one he uses with the smallest squires. ] But we need to move, all right? And you need to stay close to me.

[ Arcade doesn't flinch when Danse pulls back from him, but he's been surrounded by towering figures in power armor his entire life (short as it has been, from this stunted, unconscious perspective). His natural inclination toward wariness aside, he isn't afraid of this one, either, even if his face isn't one Arcade knows as safe. It's the next rumbling explosion that startles him, prompting him to throw up an arm to shield himself from the shower of dust and bits of plaster, this time.

The ceiling still doesn't cave in, and the noise of boots on the ground and crackling gunfire still doesn't come barreling around the next corner, though it sounds like it should. But the heat of the fire pressing in around them is incentive enough not to linger in place for long. ]

Yes sir.

[ His voice is quiet, but it doesn't waver, this time. He just watches Danse expectantly, sullenly. Afraid but struggling not to show it on his face. ]

Outstanding.

[ Nothing has ever been less outstanding than this situation. Danse's mouth is just kind of running on autopilot, because if there is a protocol for what to say to the frightened, kindergarten-aged dream-manifestation of a man you've been threatening to extrajudicially shoot over war crimes he was too young to commit, he sure doesn't know it.

He draws his rifle, and he will reflect later on the irony of doing so in defense of the same person who once lectured him on waving it menacingly around with children in the vicinity, but there are a whole lot of more pressing matters right now. Danse knows in theory the procedure for escaping a burning building while evading hostiles, though this presupposes that the building is going to obey the laws of physics. Time will tell if it actually does.

Checking around the corners and keeping as low to the ground as his armor allows, he starts for what seems the likeliest direction of the exit, glancing back to beckon Arcade forward. For all Danse doesn't often find it that easy to guess at another person's emotional state, it's hardly a mystery right now. Of course the kid is afraid. Danse is afraid. The measure of character, he's always thought, is whether someone can still carry on in the midst of fear.

If there's anyone he wouldn't begrudge the inability to do that, it would be a child this young, regardless of how well he might get along with the adult version of said child--but there isn't anything to begrudge. The boy isn't freezing up or alerting the enemy with crying or anything of the sort. Danse has known squires he would have to pick up and carry right now, but nothing about Arcade gives any indication of being that way. Danse has to respect that. ]

How long has it been since you last saw your mother?

Edited 2025-05-09 20:34 (UTC)

[ Arcade doesn't need to be told twice to keep moving; he doesn't want to be alone, and even if Danse is still someone unfamiliar in the context of the dream, in this muddled memory's child-mind, he's someone unfamiliar who's trying to help, at least. Little that he can, to change the past.

Arcade reaches out to press a hand to the side of that armor as he follows, fingers kept carefully away from pinching joints and moving parts. It's solid, though, familiar, and serves as another kind of reassurance. ]

I don't know.

[ He never lost her, in the true memory. She never let them get separated, but for weeks, afterward, he still woke from this same nightmare nearly every time he nodded off. And in the dream, these hallways always feel as if they simply go on forever. Space has no meaning, time has no measure. He's just always here, choking on poisonous smoke and struggling not to cough, not to alert the soldier-sounds that are always just on the verge of catching up.

Phantom footsteps race up the hallway behind them, another deafeningly close blat of gunfire cutting them off, and when Arcade looks ahead again, the hall abruptly ends - in a pair of doors, their signage faded and illegible. But through the narrow gap between them, the light of the flaming wreckage strewn tarmac outside glows. It's a way out, but not to what feels like safety. ]

[ There's something oddly heartbreaking about that practical and trusting little gesture, something that makes Danse feel all the more protective. The understanding that this is a dream is still there, ever-present, in the background of his thoughts, but it feels almost like a neutral and meaningless bit of trivia now, something incapable of affecting the world they're both currently inhabiting. Even if he's still never unaware that the child holding onto his armor for help is in actuality a 35-year-old man who despises him, he knows this in the same way he knows that Washington was the first president of the former United States. Important in other contexts, entirely irrelevant at this moment in time.

It has to be something about the way the walls seem to be closing in, the way everything is louder and brighter and closer with every passing minute, more real and more immediate than anything in the waking world. He turns sharply at that gunfire, his own gun at the ready, starting half a step toward it--but nothing more comes of it, not yet. He looks back and realizes with sickening uncertainty that he doesn't know which way to go. He understands on some deep-down level that this is the point. There is nowhere to run.

He's never fought the NCR, or encountered any of its representatives in the flesh before, but even on the opposite end of the country, it has a reputation for overreach and overkill. Or perhaps that reputation exists only in Brotherhood propaganda, because its real crime, as far as anyone Danse listens to is concerned, is that it poses a threat to the authority the Brotherhood wants to claim for its own. In some ways, this is the true nature of the Brotherhood's objection to the Enclave too, and the Institute.

Maybe there's something about being inside Arcade's head that forces this understanding closer to the surface of Danse's mind than he ever lets it get. Maybe he's just a little more primed to realize it on his own, when he finds himself abruptly forced onto the opposite side of a conflict and realizes how little difference it actually makes. Were there children at Adams? Did the Brotherhood care? Would his brothers and sisters have been any more cautious with their fire if they'd known there was a terrified little boy roaming the halls in search of his mother?

He knows the answer. Given the choice between the fire out on the tarmac or the prospect of being trapped in close quarters with those soldiers who might as well be wearing the Brotherhood's crest, he thinks the former option is still the safer. He kicks the doors open and checks to be sure the immediate area outside of them is clear of fire before ushering Arcade through them and taking position in front of him again. ]

Good. You're doing remarkably. Keep it up.

[ It's something to say. He means it, but it probably wouldn't be reassuring even if his voice weren't tense and distracted as he scans for new threats. ]

Edited 2025-05-14 15:15 (UTC)

[ Outside, it looks as if the world might be ending. But, in the mind of a child who's known nothing else beyond the far end of the base, it might as well have been. Smoke billows across the tarmac between raging fires, blending with the dark sky and making the destruction around them seem to range on infinitely.

There are plenty of threats, out here - but none of them seem to notice one lone soldier or the child with him. They're too busy locked in bloody combat with each other, the two sides barely distinguishable but for the occasional suit of power armor or flag-wearing recruit in fatigues. There are other things, out there, too, shadow-shapes that move through the darkly roiling clots of oily smoke pouring from burning buildings and destroyed vertibirds and vehicles. The flicker-fast race of nightstalkers chasing prey through the dark, silent except for the blended, menacing whisper of a hiss and rattle. Buzzing, fluttering cazadors the size of men, whipping past through the smoggy air.

They're beyond the facts of the situation (whatever they really were, to spawn that familiar nightmare) and out in the open clash of old, dead fears and new, living ones. Some of the soldiers are dressed in leather and red-painted armor, clashing savagely with NCR troops.

Arcade looks pale and a little sick, stricken - until he takes a sudden, jerking step forward, as if he means to break into a run. He stops short, looking back up at Danse almost guiltily, before reaching for his armor again, as if to drag him along with. ]

They're leaving—

[ The without us is implied in his desperate, imploring expression. Out on the very opposite edge of the chaos, just glimpsed through the smog, there's a still-functioning veritbird, preparing to take off, as a last few evacuees climb in through the open side door. His mother is there, with them, he's certain of it somehow, but in the moment he isn't quite sure how to articulate that and be believed. ]

[ Even if Danse were used to the kind of dreams that build on themselves and drag in terrifying additional pieces like a growing vortex, this would be enough to give him pause, faintly overwhelmed by the new and unfamiliar horrors that even Arcade's adult mind finds worth dwelling on. Oddly enough, it's the darkness that sinks the deepest hooks into Danse's own fears, more so than the foreign Mojave wildlife or the ever-heightening flames--but all of it is of a piece, and it's only for his charge's sake that he snaps himself out of it with his heart still thudding.

He wouldn't be able to blame Arcade for fearing that Danse wouldn't believe him about the necessity of getting on that flight. If Danse had a track record of believing him about anything important, they wouldn't be here right now. But he takes Arcade's word about this, even if he doesn't know the exact thought process here, because if he doesn't know better now, he never will. And in any case, that 'bird is the only way out of here that he can see. Trying to catch it is imperative.

It would be cruel, and borderline impossible besides, to expect a small child to run that far with time so much of the essence, and so Danse makes the quick decision to scoop him up--the weight no burden at all--and cross the distance as fast as he can with the benefit of his armor to lengthen his stride. Halfway there, he calls to the pilot with a voice that's good for nothing in the world so much as shouting orders across a battlefield and having them heeded. It's particularly well-trained to carry over vertibird propellers, after the Brotherhood commandeered ones like these for themselves. ]

Hold departure! There's one more!

[ Just one, though, because as genuinely touched as he is by Arcade's impulse to turn back for him, he knows he doesn't belong on that vertibird, with as much certainty as he knows Arcade needs to be on it. But he doesn't belong on the battlefield, either, whether he's wearing borrowed Enclave armor or not--wouldn't belong on either side now, even when he would so recently have reveled in throwing himself into that fray. It doesn't matter. He'll find somewhere to be. He hands Arcade off into the arms of someone waiting in the vertibird, someone whose face he can't see. ]

It's all right. You'll be all right.

[ He can say that now, he realizes, even when everything else about this has been frightening and uncertain. Time has at least decided that already. ]

Edited 2025-05-17 02:37 (UTC)

[ He doesn't complain about being scooped up, nor about being handed over. He is used to having his decisions made for him, at this point in his life. It's just a relief not to have been ignored, not to have to try to explain himself, in the midst of all of this urgent chaos.

The same way that he's relieved to see that it is his mother, after all, who takes him up with her into the open side of the vertibird, all at once a clear and detailed memory. The soldiers with her are the same, as some clear, crisp-edged glimpse of the past leaches back into the surreality of the dream. Arcade bears the woman holding him no specific, immediately recognizable resemblance - he takes after his father in those ways. But it's obvious who she is, just the same. She has the same haunted, sharp-edged gaze, the same furrow in her brow.

She says nothing to Danse, or anyone else, looking beyond him at whatever it was they did see, as the vertibird lifts off and begins to leave the known world behind. One of the soldiers begins to say something, standing at the edge, the toe of his boot hanging over into open air—

Arcade wakes with a start, fumbling first to escape the layers of his makeshift bedroll and then for his glasses, in the dark. Eventually, he manages to shake the stark, vivid terror of his dream (because that's all it was, in the end, and letting himself get so worked up over it is silly, childish), but he knows even as he manages to find some measure of composure again that he won't be falling back to sleep, tonight. ]

[ On the opposite side of the camp, Danse wakes in that same instant, as the dreamworld pops like a bubble without Arcade's consciousness to sustain it. His heart is still racing, and for a long moment he feels like there might still be nightstalkers out there in the darkness, even though he's not entirely sure what a nightstalker is.

Hands unsteady, he pushes his own blanket aside and sits up in his truck bed. The darkness still feels oppressive. He slides into the driver's seat instead and turns on the light, enough that he can think. It was real, nearly all of that was real enough, and he's been terribly wrong.

He's apologized once already for being an asshole about the truck, but that apology had only then served as extra fuel for his anger and mistrust once he'd come to feel like he'd been played for a fool--the more fool him now, for letting that make him so stubbornly insistent on condemning an innocent man. It's not as if the truth wasn't there, had he been willing to listen. Though it's not as if Arcade had explained anything, either; Len's attempted mediation had done more heavy lifting there than Danse had wanted to let either of them know.

What's done is done, anyway. But Danse can't just let Arcade keep thinking he's liable to get shot if he puts a foot wrong. It would be more sensible to just try to find him at breakfast like before, but there's no guarantee he'd be there, and anyway, the last time Danse felt this queasily unable to think about eating anything, he'd needed Arcade to medicate him for it. He sits at his steering wheel, lost in thought, until the camp finally begins to stir again and he can see movement around the Enclave truck, and gets out of his own to approach with some hesitance. ]

Can we talk?

[ It's earnest, finally devoid of suspicion or hostility. ]

[ Danse lurking around isn't something he really pays attention to, anymore. Sure, it's still a low-grade anxiety, constantly bubbling at the back of his mind - but that's all it is, now. Len seems entirely convinced the man won't make a move unless he actively catches Arcade in the act of whatever it is he's waiting for. Killing puppies or eating babies, or something equally heinous. (Though with none of either in evidence, perhaps Arcade will simply be caught on suspicion of wanting to, either way.) And, for the moment, that's enough for him to let it lie.

It isn't enough to keep those thoughts from invading his dreams, though, apparently. The tired circles that linger from that restless excuse for sleep can attest to that, as well as the stray patches of scales that have cropped up on his face and neck, creeping palely down from his hairline and up the sides of his throat.

He's outside, leaning against the truck's front bumper and lighting a bent and slightly smashed cigarette (the mint ones aren't so bad - actually, he didn't think honey-toffee was, either), when Danse decides to break the weird little ceasefire they've been standing in, after all. Maybe it's the exhaustion that prevents Arcade from being too shocked, or maybe it's the dream still weighing on his mind - but it could also be those ears.

His gaze tracks upward, over Danse's brow, before he replies. ]

If it has anything to do with a medical query or - those— [ He gestures vaguely upward. ] Can it wait?

Or--what?

[ There are a few different ways in which this is all immediately throwing Danse for a loop, and the more serious ones promptly take a backseat to raising a hand to the side of his head in utter bafflement. He's been sitting by his rearview mirror for two hours and somehow failed to notice the way his ears have taken on a different size, shape and degree of hairiness. ]

For the love of--

[ He despairs. But it would be worse if he were talking to someone with more room to judge, he thinks, as his eyes scan in turn over those new scales. He doesn't immediately draw the connection that the dream has stress-triggered any of this. And he has to wonder now, at this reaction, if the dream really had been shared at all--if his own subconscious hadn't just somehow invented a scenario, in a way it's never done before but other people claim theirs always do, and Arcade hadn't had anything to do with it at all or been any the wiser.

(Danse has not been lucky enough to find any cigarettes lying around the ruins. He has never craved one more desperately than he does right now, in a way strong enough to unconsciously project.) ]

No. It's not a medical query. I assumed you would... [ Recognize what he wanted to talk about, if not actually want to talk about it in turn; Danse hasn't assumed the conversation would be welcome. He certainly doesn't know where to begin if he has to explain all of it, or ask what Arcade had dreamed about. ]

I shouldn't have bothered you.

[ Arcade doesn't make more of it than he must, glancing away as Danse appears to come to a rather belated realization. He must be even more out of sorts than Arcade, to not have noticed that change. And why should that be, Arcade finds himself wondering, shaking out his match before it lights the tips of his fingers, too.

That I assumed you would nags at him just as immediately, as sharp a tug as the craving that sweeps over him at the same time. He holds out the crumpled, nearly empty pack of cigarettes almost automatically, the look he turns back to Danse sharp and scrutinizing, now. Considering. He'd feel incredibly stupid asking just about anyone if they maybe, perchance, had happened to have the same exact dream as him, last night. But asking that of Danse? Exponentially worse.

Not that it would even be approaching the status of most absurd touch on this whole situation, of course. So maybe he should just get over himself a little. ]

Wait. What was it? Maybe I... Maybe it's going around?

[ It's generally second-nature for Danse to refuse things people offer him, out of longstanding habit, unless he knows them well. But none of his reasons for that apply anymore, and he wants that smoke badly enough right now to accept it with a nod of sincere thanks, all the more when he sees how close the pack is to empty.

It's enough show of goodwill, paired with that intense and searching look, to make Danse think it would be worth the risk of looking ridiculous to try and articulate an answer to that question. He doubts Arcade would be pressing out of curiosity alone. He pulls a half-empty matchbook from his own pocket, and uses the time it takes to light up to find the words to explain--cautious, halting, after a fortifying drag and slow exhale. ]

I had this dream last night. You were in it. I imagine this doesn't sound unusual on its face, but...so much about it was completely foreign to me. Things I wouldn't even have known how to invent.

I've been having strange dreams for days now, but--not like this. This was different. It felt almost like it was all happening to you, instead.

[ I had this dream last night. Well, that about settles it, doesn't it? If Danse had led with anything else, Arcade may've been able to maintain plausible deniability. He could tell himself that dreams are only dreams, no matter what other thoughts he's had put in his head, lately. Feelings he's felt without wanting to. He could pretend that his nightmare was only a perfectly understandable, entirely reasonable mixture of traumatic childhood memories and new, unpleasant experiences. That's just how the subconscious works.

(Except Danse wasn't really an unpleasant part of the dream, was he? Somehow, actually, his presence made it more tolerable than it ever was, before.)

He doesn't speak for a long moment, similarly using the act of smoking to stall, to sift through his thoughts as he eyes a scrubby patch of brush, studies it in the early morning light. ]

It was, I think. Navarro, right?

[ He glances, briefly, at Danse again, sketching a shrug. ]

I had that dream every week for months, when I was a kid. Only it was... Different, then. It didn't have an end. I'd just wake up, terrified, convinced I was going to suffocate on all that smoke.

[ That does settle it. There was always far less plausible deniability available to Danse here, because his subconscious only ever works like that when it's borrowing from someone else's, and that has only become possible in these last strange, mentally-communal weeks around the convoy. But he might have believed another explanation, if it was presented to him--might still have wanted to believe something else.

(Would he really have? He's tired, and the vigilance has made for increasingly hard and lonely work, with nothing to support it and everything Arcade's done only managing to erode his suspicions further and further.)

He remembers the name on the signs, anyway. There can't be any more doubt. He listens without judgment or interjection now, only the occasional soft breath of smoke as he focuses. He's not a stranger to this genre of nightmare, at least. This one would have been enough to rob him of sleep even as an adult--even as someone who's never had anything but an adult's mind to process these things. It's hard, makes the heart ache a little, to imagine enduring either the dream or the reality as a child that young. ]

I didn't know.

[ There's only so much that excuses. He doesn't think he has the right to presume he was anything but the catalyst for the dream, if anything. He looks away. ]

...Did you still have your mother, at least?

[ He doesn't know why he wants to confirm that. Not everything about the dream had seemed necessarily so straightforward or factual, at the end, and the question has been stuck somewhere in the back of his mind. ]

It's not something I enjoy talking about.

[ Arcade shrugs again, a more decisive motion, this time. If Danse wants to be excused, he's excused. Of course he didn't know. No one told him.

Despite his admitted reluctance, though, he seems unbothered by the follow-up question. Although talking about his far longer-deceased father tends to needle at him, he doesn't mind so much talking about his mother. He did have her for a while, though. He nods, back to idly-but-not-so-idly considering that dry bramble of scrub. ]

She'd sleep in an old armchair in the corner of my room, most nights. I used to think it was purely for my benefit, but in hindsight, I suspect she needed the excuse as much as I needed her presence. At least in those first few months. After.

Might have saved us both some grief if you had.

[ He won't push the matter. There's no sense dwelling on might have, even if it's tinged with some regret.

It doesn't occur to him to wonder much about Arcade's father, except for some faint curiosity about why he wasn't in the dream-picture at all, and something tells Danse it would only serve to disrupt the new and tenuous clotting-over of this wound here if he did ask. It's not as if Arcade would have been living on an Enclave base at random in the first place. Better not to know the details.

But there's still a weird kind of relief in knowing that the ending of the dream was accurate after all, that the effort to help reunite mother and son hadn't been futile from the start, and that Arcade had at least had someone to care for him after...well, after. He nods along, eyes focused on his cigarette ash. ]

I don't think anyone could blame her. The dream alone was pretty harrowing, and it didn't even feel like you were my kid.

[ He might not push, but Arcade will - just a little. He turns his gaze to Danse, at that remark, the weight of his full attention abruptly back on him. ]

And you'd have believed that? Taken me at my word? No, 'how convenient'? 'A likely story'?

[ There's a note of accusation in the words, but no anger, no reproach. Maybe a touch of patient incredulity. Truthfully, he wouldn't have blamed Danse for not believing him. It wouldn't have made sense to, really.

On that point, Arcade won't excuse him, because he simply can't see all of it amounting to different, whether or not he spilled his guts from the start. But he also clearly isn't hoping to hold a grudge, either. ]

The reality of it was worse. My mother had no special love for the Enclave, or what it was about. She was born into it just like I was - and they didn't exactly have an open door policy on ideological differences. But that didn't really make it any easier to watch it all burn.

If you'd explained the situation before giving me a reason to doubt everything else out of your mouth, maybe--

[ He cuts himself off, and sighs. The "maybe" is operative here. He'd been furious enough, at the first sight of the truck, that it wouldn't have made sense either to expect Arcade to stake his life on a "maybe." Danse wants to think he'd have been reasonable, weighted a little further toward the benefit of the doubt by the budding camaraderie of the conversation that had come before, but even he isn't completely sure.

But this much, he understands--in a piecemeal sort of way. Neither the Institute nor the Brotherhood is any more forgiving to would-be defectors, though he'd relish the thought of watching the former go up in flames. But he's never stopped to consider the mundane individual reality of all those generations born to the Enclave without a choice in the matter. It's not the sort of thing the Brotherhood ever wanted its enforcers thinking about too hard. ]

...no. It really wouldn't have been, would it.

[ He thinks of the cannons on the battlements of the Castle, all of them pointed toward the looming shadow of the Prydwen. ]

Even if you haven't struck me as someone with much allegiance to what it's about, either.

Edited 2025-05-22 04:25 (UTC)

[ Maybe isn't much to hang your hat on. Or your life. But Arcade reads that sigh as understanding, whether or not either of them need belabor the point, aloud. They could go around in circles forever about the possibilities and the should haves, could haves, but that won't change what's done. At least now, maybe, they can just - move past it.

Arcade scoffs, genuine disgust beneath the mirthless sound (and in that tenuous mental connection, too). ]

That's putting it lightly. But I try not to ally myself with fascists or genocidal maniacs, typically.

Not a bad rule of thumb to live by.

[ Danse can do ironic understatement, sometimes. It's another one of those things he has to admit he's already been plainly told, and seen plenty of evidence for besides, but feeling that ripple of emotion is a different matter even if he did still need that to believe it. It makes sense now why they'd been in unexpectedly sincere-sounding agreement about the Institute's brand of eugenics, if not on too many other ideological points.

(Though still perhaps more of those than Danse would readily admit, after all, when approached in the right way.) ]

I'm told the west has a problem with those on a few fronts. I certainly don't envy you those alleged hordes of costumed slavers.

Edited 2025-05-23 18:09 (UTC)

There's nothing alleged about the Legion.

[ There's a sharp note of offense in his reply, but it doesn't have the sound of burgeoning argument, only correction. ]

Whatever you've heard, I can assure you it's true. And that there's far worse that you haven't.

[ Danse is a little taken aback by the vehemence, eyebrows raising, but he doesn't protest. It's a tone he's taken often enough himself when someone is being flippant about a threat personal to him, even in ignorance. And the small amount he has heard had implied the Legion's threat to be a powerful one--just a far-distant one, from his eastern perspective. ]

Worse than slaving and torture?

[ And conquest, he supposes, though something in his mind stops short of letting him say it. Look at our strength and our numbers, he can hear his own voice telling Nora. The Commonwealth is as good as ours. It's never made him feel like a hypocrite before now. ]

[ Arcade considers this, mulling it over for another moment as he smokes. He could easily outline all of the Legion's crimes in detail, but in all honesty, he'd prefer not to. It's been a relief, in some ways, to know, at the very least, that when the Convoy tops the next rise, they won't be seeing rows of crudely crucified bodies silhouetted by the sunset. He may be turning into something he can't control, here entirely against his will, but there are some small mercies left in the world.

Eventually, he sighs, shaking his head. ]

There are different kinds of torture, different, uh, methods of enslavement. What the Legion does to people is the worst of both.

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