etoile_noire: (Default)
L'étoile Noire ([personal profile] etoile_noire) wrote in [community profile] fandomweekly2019-01-09 11:16 pm

[#002] Collateral Damage (Fallout 4)

Theme Prompt: 002 - Heartbreak
Title: Collateral Damage
Fandom: Fallout 4
Rating/Warnings: Main Quest spoilers
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 246
Summary: Parent and child reunited.


She was twenty-six; he was sixty.

He was laying on his deathbed, dying from cancer. Once he’d been an infant, laying in his crib and babbling up at a mobile. She had a hard time meshing those two images. It would be one Hell of a lot easier if she hadn’t given birth to him at twenty-five. But that had been two-hundred and ten years ago.

And now, he was on his deathbed.

Shaun was scolding Nora as if she were the child and not his mother. He had dismissed her, his cold fury audible just below the surface. He’d known she was his mother, if only in an academic way. Even still, she had hoped they could have had some relationship.

“Goodbye, Shaun,” she said quietly, her voice trembling.

She turned away from him, leaving him to die in his medical bed. They still had a job to do. They still had to blow the Institute. Because even without her son, his people would carry on with what they had been doing; they would see it finished.

A sob caught in her throat and she forced it down. All the blood, and sweat, and tears she’d shed; all the pain she’d endured. All of it had been to find him. And now, she prayed silently for him to die, and fast. She prayed that he wouldn’t still be alive when she blew the reactor. She prayed that the cancer would kill him before she did.
canadiandiamond: (Default)

[personal profile] canadiandiamond 2019-01-15 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow, very moving indeed. I've been very lax in playing Fallout 4 and knew there were spoilers going in, but this was pretty powerful, I can only imagine how difficult a call it must've been in game. You've made it just as impactful in so few words here though, well done.