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Preston had never liked Ronnie Shaw. He’d never really met her, not in any meaningful sense, before the General had dragged him out to see her at The Castle, but he’d heard plenty about her exploits in training. She was, overall, a good woman. Stubborn. Strong. Protective. In every sense of the word, she was what a Minuteman should strive to be, up until she’d gone off the radar after things started going to shit, but there was just something about the way people talked about her that seemed…off that made Preston wary whenever her name was mentioned.
And then Preston met her. Really met her, when Nate hauled his ass back to The Castle following a thirty-hour nap post-shitshow-mission. And she was…well. Somethin’ like a real pain in the ass, that’s what. She was in her late fifties or maybe early sixties, ancient for the Commonwealth, but stood at least six feet tall, still wiry and strong with her spine straight as an arrow. She chewed tobacco and spit foul-smelling brown goo everywhere she went and could cuss enough to make a sailor blush.
She took one look at Preston and told him he was a soft little sissy and asked if he needed his mommy to change his diaper.
And Preston already didn’t like her, but that just put the final nail in the coffin.
Ronnie Shaw, did, however, take somewhat of a begrudging liking to Nate. Even in his blue Vault-Tec jumpsuit with his poorly-fitted mishmash raider armor over the top, he cut a more imposing figure than Preston did. Ronnie respected Nate for not letting the Commonwealth chew him up and spit him out, and did, actually, defer to his orders as General, even if it was with a grumble and a sarcastic comment under her breath.
“I don’t know why he puts up with you, Garvey,” Ronnie liked to tell him, chewing her tobacco and breathing her rank breath directly into Preston’s face. “You’re too soft. Sure, you follow the cause, but there’s a fine line between loyalty to a creed and foolishness. You’re riding that line hard, Garvey, and one day, it’s gonna screw you so hard you won’t know what hit you, and you won’t be able to save anyone.”
Preston would scowl, predictably, as memories of Quincy surfaced. He hasn’t been able to go back there, not since the massacre. He knows he’ll have to, eventually. He can only hope Ronnie’s not right.
But even with their…disagreements, Ronnie was a damn good fighter. She would spit her chew in the face of danger; she’d call raiders sissies and shout obscenities at deathclaws. She’d ask muties if they needed mommy and crack the shells of mirelurks with her bare hands. She was formidable, and more than earned Preston’s respect in that regard.
Still. She was just so hard to get along with.
But weeks went by after she took up residence at The Castle with no issue. Weeks turned into months. They survived a winter together by holing up in one of the supply rooms around a pile of smoldering coals, too worried about suffocating for any real fire, and eating radroach meat smoked over the embers. There were six of them living in The Castle, then, and somehow, with Ronnie Shaw’s incessant military encouragement, all six of them came out alive, with most of their toes and ears and noses still intact and only slightly frostbitten.
Months, then, turned into the better part of a year. Preston ate mushy razorgrain porridge with Ronnie Shaw on one side of him and Nate on the other. They’d tease each other, poking fun and finding each other’s soft spots and hesitantly calling each other friends. Ronnie even asked, though Preston couldn’t tell if she was being mean or not, when he and Nate were getting married.
It was…fine. Nice, even, having an old head around who seemed to know what to do when everything else went to shit.
And then…
Well. Everything went to shit.
The poor thing was terrified. Of course she was. She didn’t even have a name yet, just an Institute designation of H3-92, and looked to be all of eighteen. Her eyes were enormous, and so blue they almost hurt to look at, and her white Institute jumpsuit was covered in red and brown stains from God-knows-what. She stood hunched, though she was already tiny, and stared at Ronnie with unabashed terror.
“I…I can go,” the synth girl said once Ronnie pointed her laser musket at her, “please, I meant no harm, I just thought…”
“Well, you thought wrong, sweetheart,” Ronnie said, though there was nothing sweet in her voice, “your kind ain’t welcome here. I’ll be nice and make it quick.”
Preston had rushed over just in the nick of time. He grabbed Ronnie’s arm, the one holding the laser musket steady, and yanked it. “Ronnie, what the hell are you doing? She’s looking for help!”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re falling for that bullshit!” Ronnie snapped, turning her murderous glare on Preston. Her breath reeked of chew. “She’s a spy!”
“I swear I’m not!” The girl held her hands over her head and took a tiny step back. She was shaking something fierce, and Preston was sharply reminded of his younger siblings. “Please, I just…I heard the Minutemen helped people. Really, I can go. I won’t bother you again, please.”
“Ronnie, we’re Minutemen,” Preston hissed, yanking harder on her arm and making her stumble, “we help people, regardless of who they are or where they came from. We don’t point our weapons in their faces.”
“She’s a synth, Garvey, or do I need to remind you? She’d blow our brains out the second we let her in and then go back to report to her owners!”
Preston and the synth both winced at that word, but before Preston could open his mouth, Nate was there.
“What the ever-loving fuck is going on?” Nate snapped, knocking Preston and Ronnie apart and eyeing the synth with distrust, but not hostility. “Ronnie, why are you going to shoot this girl?”
The synth whimpered and ducked down farther, turning her face away as if she could keep herself alive so long as she didn’t have to look at Ronnie. She couldn’t be more than four-foot-ten, and all the hunching and cowering just made her look even tinier.
“She’s an enemy of the people, General, and it’s our duty to keep the people safe.”
“Is she not a person to you?” Nate asked, expression unreadable.
Ronnie hesitated at that, her laser musket lowering more. “She’s one of them, General. If we let her in, she’d kill us all, or spy on us and report back to the Institute. People die when we let in the wrong refugees.”
“Ronnie, do you really think that if she was a spy, she’d tell us she was a synth?”
Ronnie scowled. Even she couldn’t argue with that. “It’s probably just some kind of ploy.”
“She can stay,” Nate said, in that tone that makes Preston weak at the knees and his heart soar with pride, the General voice that leaves no room for arguments, “and to make you happy, Ronnie, I’ll find somewhere else for her within a week. She’s clearly a scared little girl, Ronnie, and that you’d point your gun in her face before even asking what she wants says a lot about you. That’s not how the Minutemen operate. I thought you, of all people, would know that by now.”
Ronnie spat a wad of brown goo at Nate’s feet and gave him a look that could curdle milk. “Fine. One week, and I want her gone. I’ve learned a lot of things over the years, General, and one of them is that in trying to save everyone, you’re going to end up saving nobody.” She turned, and shoulder-checked Nate on her way back towards the armory. “If you trust the wrong people, try to save enemy ‘runaways,’” she made air quotes with her fingers on the word runaways, “you end up getting a lot of people killed. I just hope you’re making the right call.”
All three of them, Nate, Preston, and the synth watched her stomp off, grumbling under her breath all the way back to the armory, where she was no doubt going to sulk. “C’mon, honey, let’s get you some clean clothes,” Nate said, reaching for the terrified synth and bringing her onto Castle soil. “Do you eat? We’ve got some stew over the fire as long as you don’t mind deathclaw meat and tatos. We’ve got spare beds, too, if you wanna rest. You got a name?”
The synth relaxed a little once Nate’s arms were around her shoulders. She really was just so small, probably less than ninety pounds, with matted reddish-blonde hair and those big blue eyes that made her look perpetually surprised. “No, I…my Institute designation is H3-92, but I don’t have a name other than that.” She spoke so quietly that Preston had to strain his ears to hear her. “I was mostly just maintenance. HVAC and electric. I’m small enough to fit into the ducts and fiddle with all the wires. They didn’t…they didn’t trust the gen-one and gen-two synths with something like HVAC, so they made me. Is there any way I can take a bath?”
Nate gave the poor girl a warm smile and ushered her into the Castle’s more fortified walls. The lights flickered, and her eyes shot straight to it. “I can fix that for you,” she practically blurted, “the flickering. It’s either a generator problem or the tungsten core of the bulb is starting to wear, since all the lines seem intact.” She slapped her hands over her mouth and went beet red. “I’m…sorry, that was rude.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid, old habits die hard,” Nate said as he moved her through the hallways. “It’s not much, but we’ve got a bathroom with a water pump and some soap. It’ll be cold, but you’ll be clean.”
H3-92’s eyes welled with tears and she flung herself at Nate, squeezing him tightly in a hug. “Thank you,” she said into his chest, “thank you so much. I promise, I won’t be any bother while I’m here. You don’t need to feed me, and I-I-I’ll fix all your electrical problems, and you won’t even know I’m here.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Nate said, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a squeeze. “We’re Minutemen. Helping people is what we do.”
An hour later, Preston found himself detangling H3-92’s wet hair with the help of one of the female Minutemen, an older woman named Jessie with two grown-up daughters. H3-92’s hair really was a train wreck of mats and knots and tangles. Preston’s pretty sure that, in a healthy state, it would have been curly, but now it’s so raggedy that it can barely even be called hair.
“Ow,” H3-92 said when Jessie’s brush caught on a particularly rough tangle, then immediately followed it up with, “I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t mean to complain. Ow!” She winced, then kept talking, nervously nibbling at her fingernails and fiddling with the edge of her towel. “I don’t even know how it got so bad. I’ve only been out ten days or so, but I guess I just…let it go.”
“Don’t you worry about it, darlin’, my babies were twice as bad as you ever were, and their hair wasn’t nearly as thick or as tangled,” Jessie replied warmly, that Appalachian accent sweetening her words like sugar. “You got such pretty hair, shame it’s all tangled now. We’ll get it fixed up for you, don’t you worry.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Call me Aunt Jessie, sugarpie, none of this ma’am nonsense. You remind me of my nieces anyway, you’re just so little! We’re gonna have to fatten you up, aren’t we?”
H3-92 winced. “I…I really don’t need to eat. It’s alright, I already promised Preston and Nate that you didn’t have to feed me.”
“Oh, did you now?” Jessie turned to look at Preston with a murderous gleam in her eyes. Preston held up his hands and went so far as to drop the hairbrush he’d been holding.
“Hey, don’t blame me. Nate offered her food and she shut him down.”
“Well, darlin’, we can’t have that! You might not need to eat, bein’...whatever it is you are, but we don’t like it when our friends leave our home hungry. It may not taste too good, but it’ll fill you up just the same.”
“Thank you, m- I mean, Aunt Jessie.”
“It’s no trouble at all, sugar. Oh, by the way, what’s your name? I don’t think I caught it.”
“My Institute designation is H3-92.”
“H3-what now?” Jessie blinked.
“H3-92. I don’t really have a name other than that. Nobody ever bothered to give me one.”
Jessie’s expression shifted to sadness. She sectioned out another layer of hair and began brushing. “Well…that just ain’t right. Let’s see here…H3…H3…H3…” Jessie mumbled H3 a few more times before practically shouting, “A-hah!”
H3-92 jumped at the noise. “I’m sorry, did I do something wrong?”
“Sugarpie, you’re gonna have to stop apologizing for everything, you have done absolutely nothing wrong. I just figured out what we can call you. A proper name, you know? I’m gonna call you Helena, if that’s alright.”
H3-92’s face shifted into one of confusion. “Helena?”
“It was my great-granny’s name. It means ‘beautiful,’ and I think it fits you pretty well. Better than H3-hoo-hah or whatever it is the Institute called you. Now, if you don’t like it-”
“No, no,” H3-92 (Helena?) shook her head very fast, nearly knocking Jessie’s hands off her. “I like it. I like it a lot. Thank you. It’s an honor to wear her name.”
“It’s your name now, sugarpie. Now turn back around, I’m trying to get your hair fixed. Preston, if you do not pick that brush back up and get to combing, I’m gonna take you over my knee and whack you with it!”
That got a laugh out of Helena, who did turn back around to let Jessie and Preston finish dematting her hair. She lost a lot of it, but what was left was, in fact, curly, reddish-gold, and when Preston turned around to check on Helena after Jessie had left, she was smiling and running her fingers through it, a calm, pleased expression on her face.
How could Ronnie have ever thought about shooting her?
Six days go by, and the Castle falls head over heels for little Helena.
She’s not a kid, not really, but she behaves like the eighteen-year-old she was clearly designed to look like. It took some time for her to come out of her shell, but she’s actually kind of a goofy kid. She smiles and laughs at silly jokes, loves Fancy Lads and mutfruit preserves on porridge, and is, actually, a whiz with anything electric.
She’s also wicked fast and smart and could probably outpace just about anyone in a footrace.
Jessie’s practically already adopted her. Horace and Jack were more hesitant, but even they warmed up to her. Nate and Preston needed no convincing, of course, but Ronnie and a couple of the newcomers to The Castle still didn’t trust her.
It doesn’t help that, two days after Helena showed up, the Institute sent a Courser after her. Just one, easy enough to put down with enough lead in its gut, but a Courser nonetheless.
Preston wasn’t aware that synths could have panic attacks until Nate had to bring Helena out of one following the Courser attack.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying from the little alcove she’d wedged herself into, burying her face in her knees and wrapping her arms around the top of her skull, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know.”
Nate was kind to her, bringing her out of her panic attack with gentle words and reassurances. Ronnie Shaw just looked at Helena with a blank expression, chewed her tobacco, and adjusted her grip on her laser musket. “Five more days, General. Five more days, and she needs to be gone.”
Four days have passed since then. Every electrical problem in The Castle has been fixed. The lights have stopped flickering, the generators have stopped smoking, and Helena has even jerry-rigged an air conditioner out of vacuum tubes, duct tape, fans, and wiring. It’s janky, and creaks something awful, but it keeps the temperature inside The Castle below ninety, which is quite a feat given the Commonwealth sun beating down on it.
All of their temperature-sensitive equipment can be housed in the main armory rather than below ground for the first time since…maybe ever because of her.
She still apologizes for her existence. Nate and Jessie and Preston keep reminding her she doesn’t have to, but it’s Ronnie who’s not helping things.
“I still say we should’ve shot her the second she set foot on our soil,” Ronnie tells Preston on the morning of the sixth day, scowling into her bowl of cold leftover pottage, stabbing it with her spoon like it owes her money. A chunk of mystery meat floats to the surface, and Ronnie picks it out with her fingers and stuffs it in her mouth. She chews, then scowls harder. “Goddamit, I hate Cram!”
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t make the food,” Preston says, but he knows it’s weak and won’t actually change the subject.
Ronnie swallows, then goes back to aggressively stirring her food. “She’s been nothing but trouble. I’ve heard word from the traders. There’s a squad of synths comin’, the fancy ones like…” Ronnie somehow manages to scowl even harder, “like her. Heading this way from the south.”
“Coursers?”
“They didn’t say. Could be Coursers, could be runaways like her. It’d be easier for everyone if we had just shot her.”
“She’s a person, Ronnie. A runaway slave,” Preston gives her a very, very pointed look. “She’s far from the first runaway slave we’ve rescued and housed.”
“A band of raiders is a hell of a lot easier than a pack of Coursers to deal with!” Ronnie snaps, throwing her bowl on the ground in a fit of rage. It shatters, sending brownish-red slop across the ground. “I’ve got one hell of a bone to pick with you, Garvey, y’know that? You were there at Quincy. You should know better than anyone the cost of trying to save them all.”
Preston feels his features set themselves very, very flat. “I was at Quincy,” he agrees, “and I know better than anyone the cost of fighting with each other. A house divided-”
“Yeah, yeah, cannot stand, all that Lincoln mumbo-jumbo,” Ronnie waves her hand dismissively. “We wouldn’t be divided if you and the General had listened to reason.”
“Reason to you is shooting a runaway slave looking for help?”
“Reason to me is protecting the masses even if it means costing the lives of a few. How many settlers have lost their lives to Coursers? To the Institute? To…to things just like her?”
“So you’d take hers from her?”
“Jesus, Preston, what kind of a life does she even have?” Ronnie snaps, standing aggressively and rummaging through her pockets for her can of chew. She stuffs a lump of it in her cheek and gnaws on it for a moment. “She’s not…she ain’t a real person. She’s not natural. What kind of a life does she even have?”
Preston’s eyes scan the Castle courtyard. He spots Helena, crouched in front of the armory door and playing a game of jacks with Horace and Lindsay, laughing when the ball whacks Horace straight in the forehead. She’s smiling, if a little nervously, and her body language is more open than Preston has ever seen it.
“Clearly a life she feels is worth living,” Preston replies, and Ronnie screws up her face and spits brown goo onto the ground.
“Well, what does she know? Do you even think she’s a year old? Maybe two? What life has she experienced? It’d have been better for everyone, her included, if I’d shot her.”
“So…now we should shoot anxious people and children?”
“Dammit, Garvey, now you’re putting words in my mouth!”
“You didn’t have to say them to mean them.” Preston takes a bite of his pottage and frowns. “She’s a person just as much as any of us.” He hesitates, then, “It’s always the people that are made to be slaves that are thought of as less-than.”
“Don’t bring that into this, Preston, it’s different and you know it.”
“Is it?” He asks, and Ronnie, instead of a real reply, spits her chew on the ground at Preston’s feet and stomps off.
Just one more day. One more day, and they can pretend this never happened. Nate will send Helena to Sanctuary, or maybe to Sunset Drive-In, where she’ll be safe and welcomed. Maybe if he doesn’t mention that she’s a synth, the settlers won’t even notice.
Helena deserves so, so much better than this, and she certainly never deserved to die.
The synths show up just after two in the afternoon. It’s less a squad and more a mishmash of terrified maintenance workers and bruised chefs and exhausted janitors and even a rogue Courser. There are eight of them in all, led by the former Courser who calls herself Johanna and seems to be nursing a few broken ribs and several nasty scratches on her face.
“We fled after one of the scientists…” Johanna trails off, her face twisting into rage, then agony, then pity, “after one of the scientists put his hands on Emma. He told her she needed to go clean the men’s bathroom, and she went in there, and he followed her in. She…she attacked him with her mop and he didn’t get back up, so she ran and told me what happened. I couldn’t…” she trails off again, sighing wearily and then wincing in pain, cradling her side. “I couldn’t just let her stay there. It’s like a switch flipped in my head. Emma rounded up a few more friends and we all made it out, but none of us are unscathed. We’re not looking for much, but could you please spare some medical supplies and let us rest here until tomorrow? We’ve heard…we’ve heard the Minutemen help people.”
Preston looks over the group. All of them are pretty banged up, but it’s clear Johanna is the worst off. A cut still oozes blood above her eyebrow, and her breathing is labored.
“It’s your call, General,” Preston says, and feels more than he hears Ronnie scoff beside him. She must be itching to tell them to beat it, or to shoot them down, something to make sure everyone in the Castle stays safe even if it means eight more lives being lost.
Although it’s pretty clear to Preston that Ronnie doesn’t see synth lives the same as she sees natural human ones.
“Is there anyone trailing you?” Nate asks Johanna, who shakes her head wearily. Her Courser uniform is ripped nearly to shreds, and Preston wonders, absently, what she’d gotten into a fight with that could bang up a Courser this badly.
“Not yet, as far as I’m aware, but that’s why we only want to stay until tomorrow. This many of us missing, and they’re bound to try and retrieve us.” Johanna grimaces. “Please, even just something for the pain. We don’t need to eat, and we’ll be as discreet as we can be, but please, anything at all.”
“Our supplies are limited, but we’ll help however we can. Lindsay, the lady in the red shirt over there, can patch you up, Johanna, and anyone else who’s wounded, and we’ve got some aspirin around here somewhere if you don’t mind that it’s…two-hundred years or so out of date.”
Johanna sags, visibly relieved. Several of the synths around her also appear much, much more relaxed, and begin whispering among themselves excitedly.
Ronnie clenches her jaw, spits a wad of chew on the ground, and keeps her mouth shut.
Jesus, she is pissed. Preston’s beginning to think she’s regretting joining the Minutemen again.
Apparently, Johanna had found herself on the wrong side of a seriously pissed-off yao guai. She’s certainly in better shape than any human would be after that fight, but she’s not in good shape, either. She’s got half a dozen bruised, maybe broken ribs, and her lungs are slowly recovering from having the wind knocked out of her several times. She’s covered in scratches, scrapes, and bruises, with the worst being above her eyebrow and on her upper thigh, from up near her crotch almost down to her knee on the other side, like she’d rolled away from a set of claws.
“I managed to get everyone to safety,” she says, gritting her teeth as Lindsay cleans her wounds with a rag soaked in vodka, “but I took the brunt of the attack. The others…mostly just plants and bugs that got them.”
“Hold still, let me clean your face,” Lindsay says, and very gently begins dabbing at the cut on Johanna’s forehead.
“How on Earth did you get into a fight with a yao guai?” Preston asks as he carefully sets out the cleanest rags for Lindsay, eyeing Johanna warily.
Johanna bites off a curse as Lindsay pokes and prods at the edges of her wounds, trying to see which ones need stitching. “We were…looking for a place to rest. We don’t need sleep, technically, but being rested does make life a little easier. R9-77 found a cave, and we thought it was clear at first, but I guess not.”
Preston lets himself chuckle at that. “Rule number one of living in the Commonwealth wastes: if you think it’s abandoned, think again. Every cave, old cabin, dry riverbed, anything that looks like it could be shelter is already claimed, and the safer it looks, the more claimed it is.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Johanna grouses, then swears loudly as Lindsay swipes at the wound on her thigh again. Every muscle in her body stands out rigidly as she tenses, for just a moment, and Preston-
Fear. Raw, animal fear, that’s what that feeling is. Johanna could tear him to shreds with a flick of her wrist if she wanted to.
He thinks, briefly, of Helena, of tiny, eighty-pound Helena who built the air conditioner and loves sweets and plays jacks with Horace. The two couldn’t be more different if they tried.
“It’s my duty to help those in need,” Preston says, only just keeping the shake out of his voice, “it’s what Minutemen do.”
Johanna’s quiet except for her occasional hisses of pain as Lindsay sews her wounds. Then, when Lindsay is done, she says, “Do you think…there could be a place for someone like me here?”
Preston stops dead. From the corner of his eye, he makes out the pile of black fabric Johanna had deposited in the corner of the sickroom, the destroyed Courser uniform that she’d shucked off to get examined without a shred of embarrassment.
The Minutemen accept everyone who wants to help. People of all races and genders and religions are more than welcome in the Minutemen. Even ghouls are welcome, so long as they keep their minds about them.
But…a synth? Not just that, a rogue Courser?
“She’s a spy!” Ronnie’s voice echoes in Preston’s ears. “She’ll cut our throats in our sleep!”
“I…don’t know. It wouldn’t be my call to make.”
Johanna nods and sits up. Even as injured as she is and without her Courser uniform, she’s intimidating. While she isn’t very tall, she’s broad and well-muscled, clearly built for combat. Her face, while nothing particularly beautiful, is full of hard lines and sharp angles and has permanently downturned eyebrows, like she’s always just a little ticked off.
Everything about her, even her utilitarian black underwear, screams that she’s unfriendly.
“I understand,” she says, rubbing gently at her ribs despite Lindsay’s frustrated instructions not to, “I…know how people think of me.”
Preston ignores that. “Let me get you some fresh clothes. They’re not pretty like the Institute ones are, but they’re clean and dry and should be better for your wounds than your old ones.”
“Thank you,” Johanna gives her head an appreciative bob. “I think I’m just going to…stay here for a minute. I don’t want to test my leg just yet.”
“Damn right you don’t,” Lindsay grumbles, but Johanna doesn’t seem to hear her. Preston hightails it out of the hospital room and heads for underground storage, eager to be away from Johanna, though he feels guilty for being so spooked around her.
She’s just a person with a bad past. She’s just a person with a bad past, just like him.
Preston’s so lost in thought on the way down that he nearly crashes straight into Ronnie Shaw, who’s standing in front of a crate full of empty jars and scowling, a lit cigarette between her fingers.
“Sorry,” Preston says halfheartedly, attempting to ease past her, but Ronnie moves to block his path.
“The General,” she says very, very slowly, blowing a stream of smoke into the air, “has let a Courser into The Castle. And you…stand by his decision?”
She’s calmer than Preston has ever heard her. Somehow, that’s more terrifying than if she’d been screaming.
“He is the General,” Preston says, managing to push Ronnie out of the way so he can get to their stash of clothes. He starts digging through the boxes and frowns a little when he realizes there’s a good chance a lot of it is too small for Johanna. “He got us this far. Got us the Castle back. Got into the Institute. Kept us all sane. He’s rebuilding us from nothing.”
“And he still let the enemy into the Castle.”
“You’re not talking about Helena, are you?”
“I’m not just talking about Helena. I’m talking about Helena, and the Courser, and every other synth he’s allowed on Castle grounds. He’s too trusting, and you know it.”
“Ronnie-”
“Don’t ‘Ronnie’ me,” Ronnie snaps, and Preston hears her puff hard on her cigarette. His mouth itches; he has half a mind to get into the stash down here and light up with her, but he won’t. “Look past your feelings for him, Garvey. I know you two have…whatever it is you have, but you’ve got to see what I’m saying. I’ve seen entire settlements razed to the ground by Coursers, settlements full of women and children. Do you know what it is to be too late to save a village ransacked by synths?”
Preston stops digging through the crate. His hands have closed themselves into fists around one of Ronnie’s spare shirts. “You don’t need to tell me.”
“Then why is it that you’re standing by the General’s decision to let one in?”
“Because she’s a person asking for help. They’re people asking for help. We’re the Minutemen, Ronnie. We help the people at a minute’s notice.”
Ronnie curses loudly. “Garvey. Preston, please. We can’t trust them.”
“Ronnie-”
“Wait a second,” Ronnie cuts him off suddenly. Preston stops breathing, and that’s when he hears it.
The unmistakable metallic whoosh of laser rifle fire.
The Institute has found their synths.
Seven Minuteman casualties. Seven.
Helena’s tiny body lays lifeless on the ground, her reddish hair fanned out around her, like a crown for her halo of blood. The hole in her forehead says she’d gotten caught in crossfire rather than been shot by a synth, but she’d still lost her life because Preston couldn’t protect her.
Emma’s dead, too. And Horace. And Lindsay. And three more of the synths Johanna had brought with her. Johanna herself is barely clinging on to life, her fingers plugging an oozing wound up near her shoulder, and it looks like she’d caught a bad case of hand grenade, since her left arm is nowhere to be found.
She’s more distraught about the deaths than her lack of an arm, though. Her face is white as a sheet under her freckles, and she kneels over the body of a janitor, staring down at him as if waiting for him to wake back up despite half his torso being blown off.
“R9?” She keeps whispering, green eyes wide with shock, “R9? R9?”
Preston’s ears won’t stop ringing. He doesn’t know if it’s a concussion, or if his brain is still trying to catch up with everything that’s happened.
Horace, one of Preston’s best friends, burnt to a crisp with laser fire. Lindsay, their doctor, neck twisted in an awkward position from being broken by a Courser. Emma, who Preston had never even spoken to, throat sliced open ear to ear.
Helena. Poor, sweet, terrified Helena, lying in a pool of her own blood.
It’s summer. They’re going to have to…have to burn the bodies before they start stinking, before they start attracting bugs. Already the first flies, little ones, have started buzzing around Helena’s body.
It seems they don’t care if her flesh was made in a womb or in a lab. Meat’s meat, after all, when you’re a black fly.
Preston thinks he’s going to be sick, and not just because of the gut-punch he’d taken from a pissed-off Courser.
Ronnie and Nate are still alive, at least, even if they’re starting to shout at each other. Nate’s got a hand pressed to one of his eyes, and Ronnie’s hunched over, one leg bent at a strange angle, and they’re shouting at each other, but they’re still alive.
“...wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t let them in!”
“They’re people, Ronnie!” Nate shouts, voice rough and angry, “What, because they were made and not born they’re not worthy of help?”
“Maybe it’s that,” Ronnie grits, attempting to straighten and immediately hunching back down to take the weight off her leg, “or maybe it’s that you let them in and that led the Institute right to us!”
“They would have died without our help!”
“And now they’re dead anyway, including your little maintenance girl!”
“That doesn’t mean you should shoot them or-or-or-or leave them to die in the wastes!”
“A round to the head would be a lot quicker and a lot less painful than this. We lost good people today, General, because of your decisions.”
“And we would have lost all of the synths if I didn’t let them in! Are their lives worth less than ours?”
Ronnie laughs, but there’s nothing humorous in it. “Yes!” she shouts, “They’re not…not the same as us, and now look what’s happened!”
“If you don’t think the Institute would have snuffed us out either way, you’re a fool, Ronnie Shaw.”
“And you’re a fool for bringing them here sooner, General.”
The funeral pyre is lit by sunset. It’s large, and has to be set outside Castle grounds to avoid any risk of it getting out of hand and damaging the structure. All seven bodies are piled on it, their hands and feet bound, caps set on all of the corpses’ remaining eyes. Helena’s so small that she almost slips through an empty spot on the pyre, and Preston has to try not to cry while fishing her out.
The blaze is stunning. The grief is maddening. Preston buries his head in Nate’s shoulder (Nate, who’s now missing an eye and mending a broken wrist) and allows himself to weep.
Ronnie is nowhere to be found.
Preston wakes up from his fitful rest that night to hushed arguing.
Nate’s missing from the bed. The sheets on his side are rumpled, but his warmth is gone, like he hasn’t actually been in bed for a while. Judging by the light streaming in from the window, it’s around four in the morning. Dawn is just breaking, and outside their room, Preston hears Nate arguing with Ronnie.
“-thought you were better than that!” Ronnie snaps, clearly exhausted, clearly having been fighting for a while already. “I thought between you and Garvey, you were the smart one!”
“Ronnie, please,” Nate begs, and he sounds awful, even worse than he did when he took Preston back to Vault 111 to see the body of his wife, “arguing isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Clearly,” she scoffs, “cause you ain’t listening. Has Garvey’s softness rubbed off on you? You picked up his ideals just cause he sucks your dick?”
“Jesus, Ronnie, is that really necessary?”
“Oh, I’m startin’ to think it is,” she hisses, volume rising a little, “Your judgement’s clouded. You don’t see synths, you see him, don’t you?”
“I see people, Ronnie.”
“We lost our own protecting those people, General. You can’t save them all, not when it costs so much, and not when they’re…they’re…”
“Not when they’re what, Ronnie?” Nate says patiently, voice carefully, dangerously neutral and yet so sharp Preston’s shocked he’s not bleeding just from hearing it.
“You know what.”
“I wanna hear you say it.”
“They’re not like us,” Ronnie grits, “and you know it. You’ve been inside, haven’t you? In the Institute? They ain’t people the way we are.”
“You know who else they used to talk about like that?”
“Oh, Christ, not you, too,” Ronnie spits, and Preston can almost hear the sound of her chew being mashed around between her teeth in frustration. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
There’s silence for one terrifying, deafening moment, then:
“It is. The synths, the Coursers, are dangerous, and you let them waltz right in.”
“Johanna saved your life, Ronnie,” Nate snips, and Preston didn’t even know that, “she shoved you away from that grenade blast and lost her arm for it.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” Ronnie says carefully, “One good deed don’t make up for a lifetime of murder. If you’d seen what synths are capable of, really capable of, your tune wouldn’t be so merry.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Nate asks, more tired than Preston has ever heard him. “Shoot all synths on sight? Turn away people in need just because of how they were made? Because of their past? We’ve all got our demons, Ronnie.”
“That doesn’t mean we take everyone.”
“‘Help the people at a minute’s notice,’ right?” Nate questions softly, “We help the people who are in need, Ronnie. That’s why I joined the Minutemen. You know I was military before the war. I joined to help people. I’d seen enough death for a lifetime, and I won’t choose to see more just because you think it’d be easier-”
“Not easier,” Ronnie says, and she sounds just as tired as Nate does, “kinder. For everyone. A bullet to the head for the synths, and it’d be quick and painless. We wouldn’t have lost Lindsay and Horace. Everything would be fine.”
“We would have kept two while nine more died!” Nate snaps angrily. “Is that their weight to you?”
“You’re not listening!”
“You’re not listening either, Ronnie!”
“They’re the enemy. It doesn’t matter if they ran away, they’re still synths. They’re still Institute. They’re still going to send Coursers after them. How many more innocents have to die before you see that?”
“Ronnie, they’re not just sending Coursers after the synths. They’re sending them after me, too, you know? I’m public enemy number one to the Institute.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is!” Ronnie snaps. “You’re not a synth, you don’t slaughter villages, you don’t raze settlements, you’re not a murderer!”
“Aren’t I?”
Silence, for an entire minute, then two, then three.
“The hell is that supposed to mean, General?”
“Aren’t I a murderer?” Nate asks again, and Preston’s heart thuds against his ribs. He hasn’t moved a muscle since waking, but somehow, he’s frightened that Nate will hear him. “Even before I got put on ice, there was blood on my hands. I was a soldier. Do you know what the United States army was doing to Chinese people in Alaska? Do you know what I did? And now, in the Commonwealth? I shoot raiders almost every day. Raiders, and Gunners, and ferals, and muties that all used to be people. Raiders and Gunners are still people, they’re just people that made bad choices. What does that make me, Ronnie, besides a murderer?”
Ronnie doesn’t say anything.
“So tell me again, Ronnie,” Nate says slowly, very, very slowly, “how protecting the synths is different than protecting anyone else, myself included, with bad people after them?”
Silence again, and it stretches on for what feels like forever.
“I think,” Ronnie says, and she’s deathly calm again, “that it would be best if I take my leave. General.”
“Fine,” Nate replies, “go ahead. But if you leave, Ronnie, don’t come back until you’re seeing clearly.”
“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that, Nate.”
It’s the first time Preston has ever heard Ronnie call Nate by his first name. There’s a sort of…distant, pained respect to it, and Preston hates it.
“It’s…been an honor working with you, Ronnie,” Nate breathes, “And I mean it.” There’s a pause, then, “Stay alive out there.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
Ronnie’s footsteps echo as she walks away. She’s not stomping, or dragging her feet, or running, she’s almost moseying, and somehow that’s so much worse.
Preston might not like Ronnie Shaw, but to see her go like this? To watch someone so central to the Minutemen just…leave?
It hurts.
Preston pretends to be asleep when Nate finally crawls back into bed. He rolls over and wraps an arm around Preston protectively, and Preston pretends he doesn’t hear Nate crying.
Before Ronnie left, there were fifteen Minutemen living at the Castle, counting the remaining synths.
In the morning, when Preston takes a mental roll, there are ten left. It seems Ronnie wasn’t alone in her ideals.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” Nate tells Johanna, who’s staggering topless around the courtyard, her chest and torso covered only with bandages, her missing arm making her lopsided, “You can stay and heal, you and your friends.”
Johanna looks at Nate, then at Preston with tired eyes. She doesn’t seem so scary when she’s missing an arm and tired and in pain; she just seems like a person.
“Thank you,” she says, “I mean it. Thank you.”
“I know a doctor in Diamond City who might be able to help you with your arm,” Preston blurts before he can stop himself, “it won’t be perfect, but a prosthetic should help you adapt better.”
Johanna smiles wearily. “I can’t ask you to smuggle me into Diamond City.”
“I’ll do it,” Nate says swiftly, “Don’t you worry about it. After all, I wanted to…offer you a place among the Minutemen, and it’d be pretty tough for you to do it with just one arm.”
Johanna’s eyes widen. “You… you don’t mean…”
“You’re a capable fighter with a drive to protect. We…lost more people than we thought we would in the fight yesterday,” and Nate’s voice is tight, very tight, “and we could use all the help we can get.”
“But I’m…I was a Courser. I’ve done terrible things.”
“We’ve all got our demons,” Preston says, and turns to Nate with a sad smile. “Some of us…more than others. Just keep your wits about you, and you’re more than welcome here. Plus, I get the feeling you might have some insider information about our enemy.”
Johanna’s bottom lip begins to tremble, and tears fill her eyes. She flies forward and crushes Nate in a one-armed hug, then lets him go and squeezes Preston, too.
“Thank you,” she breathes into his ear, squeezing Preston so hard his ribs ache, “thank you. You won’t regret it.”
Preston thinks for a moment about Ronnie Shaw, about where she and the other Minutemen she took might be. He’s certain they’re alive out there, maybe even helping people under the Minuteman name, and his chest burns with grief.
But he knows he’s made the right decision. He will stand with Nate, with his General, on this.
He’s going to keep helping people, even if it kills him.
Preston is, after all, a Commonwealth Minuteman.