Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Don’t remember your last check-up? Congratulations– it worked!”

Shadowheart stands under cold blue light. Is it morning? The salty, metallic tang of lithium lingering on her tongue tells her yes but the odd quiet of the Vault around her says otherwise. She doesn’t care to know, of course.

“A washed mind is a healthy mind!”

A tinny announcement bounces about the corridors. As if it’s just for her.

A washed mind needn’t worry– the mainframe whispers, rippling through the implant in her palm. Words unsaid that she’s understood since…well. It would be silly if she could remember, wouldn’t it?

“There’s one thing we can’t forget! Our Mother Mainframe is always watching out for you!”

At the end of a colourless, quiet hallway, the Vault Boy grins back at her from a poster flaking and somehow sun-faded under the fluorescents. He looks…happy. It’s so hard for her to follow the stretch of pink to teeth, to eyes, to crinkles at the temple that tell of age. It’s a smile, perhaps? The mascot flashes her a thumbs up as Mother Mainframe lovingly carves down the dotted line of his skull. Long automaton arms scrub his little cartoon brain– wish, wash, scritch scratch– against a mainframe washboard ‘til it shines.

Her own head pounds.

‘All better now, champ!,’ the poster says. That’s a smile, she reminds herself, that last panel, as Mother sets the soft pink thing back in his skull and pats his head.

She tests it on her mouth. It feels strange. Too tight, too many teeth. Shadowheart feels a hot flushed on her rounded cheeks. Embarrassment, maybe. She scowls like it’s some reset button but that feels strange too. It’s as if she is made of clay, too malleable, melting beneath the hot fluorescents.

The pneumatic hiss of the medbay doors drags her away from her racing thoughts. The poster disappears as the door slides open. She steadies herself with a breath. If you can’t remember, it means it worked. If you can’t remember–

She thinks the bay looks a little like a great ribcage around a pulsing, mechanical heart. Faintly glowing coolant tubes all pour into the Lucidity Lounger in the centre. The whole room seems to have a beat to it: the steady hum of machinery, of life, of Mother in her infinity. It’s…beautiful.

The Lounger opens with a great, heaving hiss and a churn of blood above. It swivels towards her like a dripping open maw.

“Come in, citizen,” A woman’s voice, tinny and clinical, beckons. “Sit. Let Vault Tech wash those pesky worries away. You’ll only remember: Mother knows best.”

Shadowheart swallows. She’s been here before. She can feel the Lounger’s leather seats slipping beneath her own sweaty palms, she can see the flashes of terminal green and hear the folio flip of text upon the screen. Welcome back, citizen, Welcome back, citizen, welcome back citizen welcome back welcome– the tinny recording begins to glitch. “Doctor Sharon Singer, Recording begins.”

She remembers a woman crying.

But more than anything, she can feel the chip squirm beneath the delicate bones of her hand. Shadowheart fights to keep her face neutral. To not melt under the sun.

The sun? The light, she means. The coolant glow and terminals flickering green.

A song she knew before plays through the pod speakers. It’s like…the false sky above her bed, the paper moon and the faraway patter and crackle of what Mother told her were pre-war nuisances of things called rain and fire. It’s a memory that lies in blood, something even the mainframe can’t scrub away. It’s whatever lies beyond the stars painted above her bed.

We three, we're all alone

Living in a memory

My echo, my shadow, and me

Warmth seeps through the pod’s leather as she sits, as if someone had been in just before her. The awful part of Shadowheart clings to what’s left of it. She lets the last of them seep through her thin vault suit and she tries to memorize the curve of a pair of shoulders that fit so well against her own.

As the Lounger begins to close its mouth, they become nothing but burnt soot against bombed out buildings. She is scraping her skin against the ashes until she becomes nothing but fodder for the next citizen.

If they are as weak-willed as she is.

She remembers being so claustrophobic the first time. Before she knew Mother’s embrace. The Lounger seals with another hiss and she can see her breath begin to fog the plastic around them. It smells like sweat-soaked leather and salt and iron. Like bleach over blood. The lap belts tie her in, the restraints are just for safety. Her wrists ache as the leather self-loops around them– her skin is already so raw. Why is it always so raw?

The terminal monitor swings to fill her field of vision. It’s static, for now, with nothing but the gentle chyron of Mother Mainframe. Upon the terminal she is two perfect lips and a gaze covered by a fluffy eyemask. There’s a fetching pair of eyes embroidered upon its silk: lined dark and painted deep purple. They stare out with a knowing gaze while Mother, every-working through every vein of the Vault, sleeps softly beneath.

With a few knowing blinks that end with those dark eyes trained upon her, it fades. The Lounger tilts just so– for heart health, of course!– and Shadowheart feels her pulse crawl thick up her throat to her eyes.

Mother sighs and smiles beneath her mask. The face on the monitor fades. For a moment, she is alone in the blue moonlight of the medbay.

She doesn’t answer. Something tells her she doesn’t need to. Beneath her name, her metrics begin to spill out in stark green.

The whole world is Mother. Shadowheart feels her heart quicken at the numbers though she can’t quite place what they mean– surely integrity meant she was doing well. The Lounger hums around her. Perhaps that’s Mother, pleased with her too.

The question takes her by surprise. Shadowheart takes a moment to think what pain truly is, was, will be. The lance pain against her eyes as she wakes up under fluorescent lights. The shift of her chip beneath skin.

The ache in her chest as something has been carved out and replaced with perfect, cold machinery.

“I… a headache, I suppose.” This morning? Mother would know. “Yes. A headache. From the lights.”

Mother’s voice slips through the speakers– soft, whispering hidden behind shiny metal.

“We must tell the truth, here, child. It’s the only way for a better future.”

Her own voice sounds so small. So human. “... No. I’m well cared for. We all are.”

The terminal whirs and clicks. Somewhere far away, she hears a great pneumatic sigh. Mother is only there in the foggy warmth of the pod and ebbing heat from her coils. There, still, always.

The next question types itself out on the terminal.

She thinks of the poster. The grinning mascot with his mouth stretched a little too wide. Had Mother been watching…even then? Shadowheart feels pinned under the green light. She shifts but there’s nowhere to go– her wrists burn in cracked dry leather and her cheekbone collides with the fogged-over plastic pod. Breathe, forget, breathe. There’s so little air to answer.

“No. No– I– I don’t know. I just do.”

The text on the terminal disappears letter by letter with a few definitive clicks. The cursor blinks between her eyes, unmoved. Shadowheart can only see her own body, carved out in tight Vault blue and cast in sickly green.

“Excellent.”

Mother’s voice washes over her. Somewhere far away, she can hear cheerful music, as if the mainframe has stepped out from a party as is speaking softly from a quiet room. She can only see slivers of light beneath the Lounger, shifting like there are shadows moving around her bound form, watching, noting, studying.

She hesitates.

“I think I know you.”

She hesitates and she knows it will be the end of her.

“I think I knew you, before.”

She hesitates and hears a voice that is not Mother. Not her own. An echo of a memory of– deviation.

“I think I–”

“We shouldn’t–”

“Shadowheart?”

And it’s so unlike the forced smiles and the strange scowls– it’s kind. Unquestionably and unconconsciously. The spindly hands of mother are there tracing her veins, pulsing beneath her with mechanical perfection she’ll never know.

The question is still on the screen, chilling in its stillness. The cursor blinks at her, filling the lounger with sick light.

She grits her teeth. “I– I wouldn’t.”

It’s too late. The chip pulses beneath her hand, arcing electric beneath her skin. It burns. She twists in her bonds until it feels like her wrists might rub down to the bone. She’s been here before. She knows because the words Mother, please die before they leave her lips. There’s no mercy to be found here.

Somewhere, with her ears ringing and pure hot light in her blood, she realizes the memory of this pain is one that Mother always lets her keep.

She doesn’t know how long it lasts. The world is just white hot pain– clarity correction. That voice is gone, if it ever even existed. But soon she’s gulping at the stale air, she’s dying in the fog as the terminal flickers back with a final parting message.

When was the last time you felt pain? The question had hit her in the chest, had bounced about her ribs until it carved out what little was left inside. She lied through the ache. It’s still echoing now, deep inside.

The screen fades and for a moment she is cloaked in claustrophobic darkness. Like this, it’s hard to tell where her own blood begins and where Mother’s rush-hum of machinery ends. They churn together, her and the mainframe, and Shadowheart feels nothing but lithium-sick and so profoundly lonely.

Here, Mother, she imagines saying in a moment weakness, eyes full of Vault blue and blood. Why is it always here?

With a renewed pneumatic rush, the Lounger awakens. The medbay lights come back on, one by one, like floodlights. The terminal screen flickers back to the face she knows so well.

Two drawn on eyes watch her. Mother smiles, serene behind her mask. Shadowheart winces as the restraints draw back into their dens. Her suit sleeves are fraying. Little rubies of blood bead up between the seams. Her failure is sharp in the sting of every one.

Mother’s voice rises above the Lounger’s opening lock-hiss-heave. The air outside isn’t any fresher. Shadowheart gulps it down anyway, until her vaultsuit pulls tights around her ribs, until there’s nothing left. Mother’s voice rises above that, too.

“That’s about all the time we have for our session. We hope you enjoyed your dose of pep here, SHADOWHEART, in Vault 24’s premium Lucidity Loungers. We’ll see you next time.”

She slides, boneless, from the lounger seats with the heartsick ache that this won’t be the last time. As she stumbles down the hangar path, eeries lights activating with each step, back to whatever life lies behind those medbay doors, she can feel a pair of eyes on her back.

Mother’s voice comes from on high and batters the steel around her like a storm.

“And remember: Mother knows best!”