The Consequences of Action 2

**the complete revised Book 1, Chapters 1-5, has been uploaded to the File page linked below **

The next day was a celebration in the Pitt, and nobody worked. It was a celebration that I wanted no part of. I sat on the edge of a scaffold and watched the slaves below dance, and drink, and sing of the fall of the tyrant. Wehrner came out of hiding and amongst them, and they thanked him, raised him up as a hero. He was given the credit for what had happened. That was fine, I didn’t want it myself. Ulysses sat with me for most of that time, watching with me. I didn’t want to talk, and sensing that he said nothing, but I was comforted to have his presence near me, regardless. I saw no sight of Midea. She was probably still trying to comfort the baby. I didn’t want to think about that, either. It was hard not to, though.

I was there for another three days, and by the end I saw it would largely be the way it had been before. The second day they turned the lights back on in Haven, and a large party killed the trogs left over in there. Then Wehrner moved in, with Midea, the baby, and about seven or eight other ex-slaves he had picked. No one else did much that day. The next day Wehrner and his men went out and started badgering people to get back to work. Some did, but there was some resistance as well. The new bosses became increasingly aggressive in their motivations. It was, I thought, only a matter of time before they broke out the machineguns again.

There was only one small, positive change that I could see. On the fourth day, two workers were taken by Wehrner’s men into Haven. They were ones that had actually gotten back to work at their posts on that third day, and had worked the most diligently. They came back a few hours later healed of their sickness, at least partially. There was some improvement, at least. It was announced that in the same way two slaves would be cured every other week, awarded to those who worked the hardest. It seemed to help a little with motivation. But I noticed that here too there was trouble below, so to speak. With so little to go around, cure for a few was as much a cause for jealousy as motivation, the two that were cured seemed more spurned after that by most than held up as proof of hope. They could increase the rotation, perhaps. Once a week, for two or maybe four, or whatever, but the need was much greater than the supply, and there would not be enough to help everybody any time soon.

I watched them, and it was bitter to see how little difference I had wound up making in this place, and the horrors of those few hours kept intruding. I did not sleep well due to nightmares. There was little for me to do during the day. I had already accomplished the purpose that I’d come here for, and it had given me no satisfaction. I had done nothing, it seemed. There would still, I could see, be guards, and still labor. For a very long time there would still be the cancer as well, and the ever-present threat of the Trogs. And that was only if Wehrner succeeded in making his position strong enough to protect what was there, as Ashur had before I had destroyed it. It could all still dissolve, too.

I had done nothing, it seemed, except bring about a great many deaths, and it robbed me of any joy or thought of celebration alongside the people that I had supposedly liberated. I had no attachment to this place. I was not from there at all. I had done very little for them, and there was no point in my being there, anymore. It wasn’t my home. I started to think about the home I had left, those weeks before, and my friends there. People who would willingly talk to me, and who knew my name. Who didn’t stare at me as an abnormality for my title as the Trog Killer, or the lack of sickness on my face and skin. I remembered how much I had needed to get away from it all, but now I longed for familiar sights and faces again. This place wasn’t my home, and it would never be that. I wanted to return to my home. By the end of that fourth day I had made up my mind, and I prepared to leave, to make my way back down the rails to the south.

The Forgotten Past, Chapter Four: Of Hearts and Darkness

Page One: A Voice Through Despair
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Page Two: Ambush At The Gates
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Page Three: A Life Of Labor and Cancer
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Page Four: An Inescapable Sickness
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Page Five: The Killer of Trogs
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Page Six: Quiet Shift of Fates 1
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Page Seven: Quiet Shift of Fates 2
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Page Eight: Let The Games Begin
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Page Nine: Where Only The Strong Survive
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Page Ten: One Precious Life Part 1
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Page Eleven: One Precious Life Part 2
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Page Twelve: One Precious Life Part 3
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Page Thirteen: The Consequences of Action Part 1
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Page Fourteen: The Consequences of Action Part 2
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Page Fifteen: By a Campfire At Night
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The complete story can be found as downloads in the optional files here: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16864
Or can be seen in my gallery at Deviantart.
http://jonas66.deviantart.com/gallery/

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