[h1][center][color=39b54a][b]Richard Moreau[/b][/color][/center][/h1]

He cried shamelessly.  Shoulders heaving.  Head down.  Hands in his knees.  Snotty nosed.  Trying but failing to speak.

"Well Richard?  What do you have to say for yourself?"

He shuddered anew with the finality of it all.  He knew what was coming.  They'd done this before.  In the last year.  Since the opening.  All the empathy was gone.  They didn't have to just go along to get along anymore.  They had a new solution for the troublesome.  They could be made to disappear.

"I...." these would be his last words recorded for posterity.  They would ask him if he was done.  He would tell them he was.  That would be recorded curtly.  It didn't matter if he swore or cursed them all the way to the door.  It would be recorded as "Former Citizen Moreau confirmed he had completed his final statement and so began his exile on this the 28th Day of September 2093"

There was only one suitable answer.

"I loved her."

His head sank again.  Lower, under the weight of all those eyes.  They had seen him all his life.  All the little wrongs, all the bad habits, all the good deeds too.  Everything.  But within the next few moments they would never see him again and he would never see them.  And she wasn't even here.  She could have been, but dammit she wasn't.  She was probably with him.  Still.  Even now.  Hand on his gravestone instead of here with him.  With her Richard.

"Richard Moreau, have you finished your statement?"

It was Edmund Burke.  Once a teacher.  Once his teacher.  And hers.  Now he was the kindly face they put on exile.  An expression of embarrassed pity on his face but a stern posture.  Maybe it helped them sleep at night.

"Yes.  Yes Mr. Burke, I'm quite done."

He'd not give them the show they wanted.  He wouldn't be carried out of here kicking and screaming.  Not screaming at them, not for himself, not for her.  He'd not make it any easier for Mr. Burke either.  Sending him out into the wastes to burn, to starve, to die, alone.

"Richard Moreau," Mr. Burke intoned in his familiar voice, "It is the judgement of those gathered here, a panel of your fellow Vault 8 Citizens, that although you were born and raised here to love and respect your fellow man and to be loved and respect in turn, you have turned from these ways.  You have been found Guilty of the crime of Murder and you have left your fellow Vault 8 Citizens with no choice but to exile you.  It is with a heavy heart that..."

Mr. Burke went on a bit longer about the heavy burden of such a choice.  About the gravity that their considerations had had and about how though he was to be hereby exiled they would not just throw him to the wastes.  He would be provided survival materials.  So much of this and this much of that.  Whatever they hadn't run out of after outfitting the previous exiles.  He wasn't the first.  He has heard it before.  From the other side of the room.  This speech, it wasn't for him.  It had never been for the Exile.  It was for the others.  So they could tell themselves they'd done all they could.  He kind of hated them for that.  All the fake feelings.

The new stuff came next.  The stuff you only saw once.  Unless you were Burke and his little team.  He'd seen them escort or drag, sometimes even carry, Exiles through that big metal door before but this time it was him and before he even really appreciated that he should remember the moment it was over and he was through.  The Blue and Yellow of Vault 8 left behind forever.  

He'd never admit it but he missed it immediately.  The stupid gleaming happy clean colors he'd grown so sick of.  Now it was a long utilitarian hallway stripped of all the niceties.  Shades of grey and black.  Occasional highlights of yellow but not the Vault happy showy yellow.  Purposeful yellow.  Tying together this or that bundle of wires at regular intervals.  Then he was in front and a second later he was through that big Vault Door he had only seen before in paintings and educational videos.

He'd never admit it but here he pushed back against the escort momentarily.  Suddenly more aware that yes this was really really actually happening.  It was the dirt walls on the other side that did it.  Dirt walls with big concrete beams spaced at regular intervals.  He'd expected a shove but instead they just stopped for a moment like it was a normal part of the process.  Maybe it was.

"It's alright son," old Mr. Burke who had grown a stomach that pushes his Vault Suit out in a most undignified way said, "Gather yourself up."

He'd never admit it, but he began, "Can.  Can we."

"No son.  I'm sorry.  I'm real sorry.  I am.  But no, we can't."

"I could.."

"You take a moment now.  We can't be too long.  They'll send more after us if we take too long and then it'll all go too fast.  I hate it when it goes like that.  You take that moment but don't take too long now."

He kind of hated him for that.  The real feelings.  He stood there for a moment waiting for a last second reprieve that never came.

"We need to get a move on now."

A bit further and there was a seam of light shining through a door at the end of the tunnel.  A door set between a long length of heavily reinforced steel beams and concrete.  With an armed guard on either side.  Both holding guns a lot bigger than the pistol Mr. Burke's helpers had discretely on their waists.  These weren't discrete and they weren't the old long guns or the six shooters from those old Cooper Howard films.  They weren't ray guns from Captain Cosmos .  They weren't even those blocky jumping things from Sgt. Granite.  He didn't know what to call them but he knew what they were for and the faces on the men holding them told him they knew how to use them.

This was it then.  This was the door.  Heavy and reinforced.  He stood before it as Mr. Burke explained again all of what was in the duffel bag he was being presented.  He wasn't really listening.  But he did hear one thing.  One thing that sounded like maybe it wasn't the regular rigmarole.

"Listen now Richard.  We're only a few years from opening up proper.  We were supposed to a couple years back but, well, you know how things can be in a Vault.  You be careful out there.  Find shelter.  Try and make friends.  You'll never be allowed back in the Vault, but might be we could let you sleep in the little trading hub we want to build.  We got a plan Richard and a doohickey.  Might be real nice.  Come on back in a few years if you can."

Burke gave a nod of the head to the two armed men and each pushed a button resulting in a blast of air and a depressurizing sound as the door unlocked and slowly ratcheted open.

"This is it now Richard.  Get that bag comfortable on your shoulders.  Take a deep breath.  I'm afraid you won't be coming back through that door son but that doesn't mean you can't make something of yourself."

With halting steps he crossed the threshold.  Burke offering last pieces of advice from behind him as the door began ratcheting closed once again.

"Try to stay out of the wind.  Head South.  Boil your water.  Make something of yourself son."

And then a faint and weak goodbye.

Richard Moreau began walking, following the old man's advice though he would never acknowledge it.  From disaster to massacre to graveyard he traveled, and then again, and then again, from one fresh hell into another.  Not making "friends" so much as temporary travel companions.  Often losing them when they betrayed him, or he betrayed them, or they were attacked by raiders, or wild animals, or traps set up by some clever but cowardly scavengers.

In just that manner Richard Moreau traveled into the wasteland never to be seen again, and in just that manner a new man was born.  A learned wasteland doctor.  Doc Grey, Doctor Richard Grey.