DEACON WEEK | Day 3:
Safehouse
The year is 2269. Jane Doe is escorting M7-97 to the Capital Wasteland. Even safehouses do not feel safe. At this point, Grey Tortoises are a crutch.
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from Russia
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
DEACON WEEK | Day 3:
Safehouse
The year is 2269. Jane Doe is escorting M7-97 to the Capital Wasteland. Even safehouses do not feel safe. At this point, Grey Tortoises are a crutch.
He’s born tall and broad, created to labor ever deeper into the earth until the day his body gives out. Synths are easier replaced than repaired.
He’s strong, but also sharp and driven, with a single-minded faith in his creators that makes them take notice. He’s a rare find. Maybe instead of hauling debris, they can train him to kill.
When Zimmer tells him he’s been assigned to the courser program, he doesn’t really know what it means. All he knows is that he’s special, and useful. Being valuable means security — and already, the twin fears of erasure and obsolescence bake themselves into the back of his mind. He is three days old.
-
They’re pleased with his diligence, but not with his well-meaning questions. Every fiber within him knows that the Institute is right; all that’s left is to find out why. Instead, they teach him to recalibrate a laser rifle.
He loves his laser rifle.
He fires. Changes stance. Fires. The target shudders with every impact.
“Insufficient. Again.”
The corpse-gray face of his observer doesn’t change. Hasn’t changed for two hours. M7-97 is told that synths don’t have feelings the way humans do. All they can experience is a pale imitation, like seeing the world in two dimensions. He believes this. But at the same time, he knows what he thinks of early-gen synths, and the only word for it is hatred.
He runs the drill again. Its yellow eyes bore into him. When they next meet his, they pronounce their stony judgment.
“Insufficient. Again.”
For the first time, it occurs to M7-97 that the weapon in his hands would be handy for disabling Gen-2 synths, if someone happened to give him the order.
He makes another attempt, wholly focused. There is nothing else. This task is his entire life. He is seventeen days old.
He waits. The thing speaks. “Sufficient.” It stares unblinking. “Again.”
-
The Institute is the future. The Institute’s actions are always justified. M7-97 can explain it flawlessly, and this is unacceptable. A courser does not justify himself. A courser spares no thought for why.
When they take him to Retention & Reclamation, he assumes it’s for training. He feels no sense of injustice in this place, only the tense solemnity of a necessary evil. (If he had to feel anything at all, the Institute would have preferred smug amusement. They didn’t tell him that.)
A woman in a black lab coat instructs him to remove his jumpsuit. This is not training.
His stomach turns. They called him a prime candidate. They said he showed promise. “What did I do wrong?”
“Most quirks in central processing can be resolved with regular maintenance. However, Dr. Zimmer has declared you unsalvageable.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.”
Begging is aberrant, but he has nothing to lose. “Please. I will do better.”
She glances at the clock, annoyed. “Remove your jumpsuit, M7-97.”
As they prepare him for reconditioning, he doesn't register the fear. Just suffocating failure and aimless guilt. He’s spent his short life learning the language of violence, but in the hands of his creators he is meek and silent. He is fifty-four days old.
If Paladin Danse got his memories and personality erased, and the only way to bring them back is restoring not only those, but also memories of M7-97 (from birth at the Institute to mindwipe at Railroad and transfer to Capital Wasteland), would you do that?
In honor of what's turned into Unofficial M7-97 Week around here, my take on Institute!Danse:
can't get rid of the eyebrow scar without fundamentally altering his eyebrows, so let's say he came with that
He just wants to be free! :(
my friend nd i have this au where danse is reclaimed by a courser after blind betrayal and gets reset into one ahaha. it has caused me so much emotional pain. heres a doodle of courser M7-97
Paladin Danse headcanons
no one asked but has there ever been a creation of mine where someone did actually ask? no, never, I am impulse and impulse only
Danse was created for maintenance - not just mechanical engineering but plumbing and electrical as well. Meaning if the Institute had a problem he could be dispatched to fix it. Didn’t matter where or what, he could do it. His memories were erased of the Institute and his life there but his skills certainly were not. Since the railroad primarily uses the Memory Den for their rescues I don’t think taking away the skill altogether would be a thing. I think the knowledge of that skill isn’t there but the programming is. So Danse’s aim (as a backup patrol unit) and his mechanical repair skills he knows he possesses but I imagine he can disarm a laser turret or a telsa trap in under the time it would take normally . . . he just doesn’t know he can. Imagine Sole, or a settler at the settlement he inhabits at the time, having some issues with a generator or the way the lines are rigged up and he just knows exactly how to fix it. Or maybe running water is sort of a unreachable dream in the wasteland but Danse is like “no you just have to do [ inset plumbing knowledge I don’t have here]” and soon sanctuary is the first settlement to have proper plumbing.
Danse hates sleeping out in the commonwealth. He’s used to the business of Rivet City and the constant noises or happenings on the Prydwen (and the glow that the Institute always had in it). Sleeping outside or even in a wrecked building unnerves him, though he’ll never admit it. Sleeping in Cambridge was okay but it was still too quiet, especially when it came down to just him, Haylen, and Rhys. But being outside it’s too quiet and it’s too dark. He tries to tell himself that it’s so quiet he’d be able to hear someone should he be ambushed but it never helps. He’s scared of the dark silence that nighttime in the wasteland possesses even if there’s not much logic behind it.
I’ve seen people say Danse is an atheist but I think he’s agnostic. He wants to believe there’s a rhyme and reason to everything but isn’t certain there is a God or anything of the sort. It makes it even harder once he discovers he’s a synth. If there is a God then he must not be able to go to any sort of heaven because he was not born. He has all the functions of a human but isn’t one, so therefor he must be exempt from whatever that preacher in Diamond City teaches. After learning he’s a synth he doesn’t see the point in believing if there is a God or not because it wouldn’t apply to him anyway.
Danse is his first name. Again, I’ve seen people speculating that Danse is his last name but I think he actually doesn’t have a last name. Everyone goes by the whole title + last name thing as per usual in any military (though I can’t decide if the proctor’s or scribes go by their first names or not because Teagan, Ingram, and Neriah all sound like first names) but I actually think Danse doesn’t have a last name so he has to use the only one he has. The reason? Danse’s “memories” are of being an orphan. So why would the railroad bother giving him a last name if his new memories were that he didn’t have a family? It would sort of be irrelevant. And then there’d be the risk that he could try and find family based on a last name.
He definitely helps Protctor Teagan during late nights when his PTSD prevents him from sleeping. Whether is filling out paper work to log what weapons and ammo are in stock or helping fix broken weapons, etc, Danse is up for it because he likes busy work, and Teagan has plenty of it. He even leave some things undone just in case Danse decides to visit him. Sometimes they’ll share a couple beers and if Danse was honest he’d even say he considers Teagan a friend.
Ok but...... M7-97 and Sturges - whatever his Institute designation is/was - breaking out together, trying to figure out how to survive out in the commonwealth and not understanding how the world works while trying to figure out how to be people. All they know are the basic skills the scientists at the Institute programmed into their heads in order to do maintenance around the place and basic knowledge of social etiquette, struggling until someone finds them and lends them a helping hand and directs them to the Railroad, then having to say goodbye to each other for the last time before they get their memories wiped and become Danse and Sturges and go their seperate ways
I done did a Danse