milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: They're calling it the Lyons Doctrine.]

The front door opens on the usual tumbledown wreckage of the Megaton city walls. Ellen clatters through, her silver-grey power armor smelling vaguely of cow and Dogmeat at her heels. Then again, given her riding habits, all her armor tends to smell vaguely of cow. "Bar?" she says. "Could I have a holotape player, please? I've got some new recordings I don't want to risk in my Pip-Boy. Um. Also a bottle of Gamma Gulp would be nice."

The beer and the player materialize, along with a bowl of meat for the woeful looking heeler (who mysteriously perks right up at the sight of the chow). Ellen smiles a little and takes the whole lot over to one of the tables, setting the meat down and turning the holotape player on. Shortly thereafter, the air in her vicinity is saturated with the sound of a lone violin playing... an excellent lone violin.

There are, she thinks, worse things to discover on patrol.

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William's been reading The Three Musketeers every chance he can get and looks up when he hears the music.

Once he realizes it's coming from near Ellen, he smiles and comes over to listen.

Ellen looks up and waves. "Hi, William," she says. Dogmeat thumps his tail at the new arrival. "How're you doing?"

He pets Dogmeat and sits down,

"Pretty good, the book my costume's based on is one of the best ones I've read."

"Oh really?" Ellen says. "That sounds promising. How far along in it are you?"

William lifts up the book which is thick and has a piece of leather as a bookmark a quarter of the way through,

"This far, I keep readin' it whenever I can."

Ellen nods. "Good move," she says. "We had a couple of books that size in the Vault, but a lot of them were really boring. I can't stand Charles Dickens, even though I tried. Is Porthos the way you remember him?"

"He is, I'm lucky all I got out of that fight was a nicked ear. Yeah, I've read some Dickens and don't like him, he's not good at keepin' stuff goin'. What were you listenin' to?"

One of Ellen's hands goes reflexively to her own ear, but the notches there are the result of a knife attack at close range and her own carelessness, not a master swordsman. She drops her hand and says, "One of Johann Sebastian Bach's violin pieces. I don't think I ever turned on my Pip-Boy's radio for you when we were traveling, did I?"

The nick on his ear is small enough that no one's noticed, he's been hiding it with his hair and hat,

"No, you didn't."

Ellen nods. "Well," she says, "back... oh, back when I was first out on the surface, and trying to find my Dad, wherever he'd gone... I found a Vault by mistake. It was the wrong Vault, and it- it really wasn't a good place."

( "I've been feeling a little sick lately. Kind of woozy after playing in the studio usually. It gets so stuffy in that place, but it's sure worth it..." )

"The only thing I found in it that was worth bringing to the surface was a violin in a sealed, airtight case. It turned out to be a violin made by a man named Antonio Stradivarius- one of the best violins ever made."

"Did you find someone who knows how to play it too?"

She looks like she doesn't want to say more about the Vault she found and he won't ask, her world has a lot of types of horrible.

"An old lady named Agatha," Ellen says. "She was a musician, and so was her husband, before he died. He built her original violin, but it broke, and she didn't have the means to fix it. Turned out the violin I'd found had belonged to one of her ancestors who'd gone into the Vault, so I gave it to her. She makes her living playing it for traveling traders and caravans now, and broadcasting the music to the Wasteland for people to hear."

"She sounds wonderful. Music's good at fillin' the empty spaces."

Ellen nods. "She wrote down as much of her music as she could on paper," she says, "and recently, she came into possession of some new equipment..."

She indicates the small stack of holotapes next to the player.

"I don't think I ever told you, but I met a cowboy once before I ever met anybody from your time here. Have I ever told you about Mr. Paulson?"

"I don't think you did. Writin' music must be hard,"

William knows how to sing but that's because singing is something everyone does in his time.

"I'll show you some written music one day," Ellen promises. "I've seen it, but I'm not very good at understanding it."

"Anyway... Mr. Paulson is somebody I met when I was in a very bad situation. I don't know how to describe it without it sounding more ludicrous than a comic book- one that's more ludicrous than a dime store novel. Have you met people here from other planets? Worlds that aren't Earth, and people that aren't human?"

"I've seen it, you can buy music for singin' at home. Yes, I have,"

They always confuse him a lot but he's getting a little better at dealing with them.

"Okay," says Ellen. "Well- well, they're not always as polite as they are here. Some of them- some of them are just as horrible as any human could ever be. I found them, once, by mistake, when I was traveling with Dogmeat. I stumbled across one of their spacecraft, crashed in the Wasteland north of Minefield. When I got close enough to investigate it, there was this huge light, and I passed out. I woke up on board their ship."

Twice. The first time... is best not remembered too hard, or too often.

"They've been coming to my world for a long time, and they've been stealing people from their homes- to study, and to experiment on."

"Hell, that's horrible. A blue one that looked like a dog gone wrong tried to attack me durin' the sausage thing,"

He reaches out to pat her arm since that looks like a bad memory.

Ellen smiles gratefully. "Thanks," she murmurs. "These were green. Little fellows, about so high. No hair, eyes all black, three fingers on each hand... most of them are dead now."

Kind of a lot of Ellen's stories include the line most of them are dead now at this point. What's disturbing is that she usually means it to be reassuring.

"They have ways of putting a person into stasis so he doesn't ever get any older, physically. Like putting you to sleep and putting you in a freezer, then thawing you out when they need you. They've been doing it for hundreds of years, and one of the people they did it to was Mr. Paulson- back sometime around 1850 or 1860 or so."

"Damn, that must have been hard for him. How's he been adjustin'?"

William tries not to think about it too much, Ellen's a soldier and a survivor.

"He's had a hard time of it," Ellen says. "He was married, before. The aliens killed his wife and little boy when they took him. He didn't really expect to live through our fight to escape the ship, so when he did he took as many supplies as he could and just had the people who stayed on the alien ship send him down to the Wasteland to see how long he'd last. He got lucky, though- he's been staying with Agatha for a while now."

"I'm glad he's got someplace. I don't know if it'd help for me to meet him or not, but I will."

Ellen nods. "I'll let him know," she says. "The next time one of the traveling merchants comes to Megaton, I'll send word with them. Agatha's place is too small for us to send a water caravan from the Purifier, but Doc Hoff and Crazy Wolfgang always stop at her place. They'll bring him the message."

"Yeah, and I don't know how hard it would be, but if gettin' back to when things felt more the same would help. We could always try takin' him through my door. Enough travelers come through Bisbee not wantin' people to know their past that he could figure somethin' out."

"He doesn't talk much about before anyway," Ellen says. "I don't think he'd stand out much among people like that."

"No, he wouldn't. I hope I can help just for bein' someone who might understand."

"It'd be more than I can do," Ellen says. "I told him that if he ever needed a change, I could put in a good word for him with the Regulators; they're always looking for people willing to try and civilize the world a little. I have a feeling he'd be better off in Bisbee, though."

"Whenever there's a good time for me to meet him, let me know and we'll figure it out."

"Will do," Ellen promises. "It might be a week or two. Depends on how long it takes for the caravans to come around, but I'll let you know as soon as I do." She smiles. "Thank you, William."

"Time's on our side here and I'm glad to help. Your world's a strange place and I'd hate to be left on my own there."

"It was a strange place to be alone in when I got to the surface, and I was born there," Ellen agrees. "He'll appreciate it, I"m sure."

"Maybe I can bring somethin' with me too. Do you know if he smokes or chews tobacco?"

That's something most men in his time find reassuring.

"I saw a few packs of old cigarettes in Agatha's house when I stopped by," Ellen says, "and I know she doesn't smoke, so they must've been his. Wasteland cigarettes are kind of nasty overall, so something good would probably go over really well."

She knows about lung cancer and all of that, but considering what the man's been through, she's not gonna deny that he could really use a good smoke.

"I'll see about bringin' him some along with maybe some of Ma's biscuits."

"That would go over really well," Ellen says. "Flour's hard to come by."

"I will. I've got some money saved up here from my work in the stables and Ma's always glad to make extra."

"If there's anything I can offer in trade, let me know," Ellen says. "I don't have much that you'd be likely to find useful, but it's only fair."

"If I ever think of somethin' I'll let you know, I promise."

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