I just want to start a flame in your heart....

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I don’t want to set the world on fire
I just want to start
A flame in your heart

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It was a long day for William, all the raping & pillaging was getting to him.

Not with regret, but with the fact that he had nearly ran out of places to rape & pillage.
Ever since he became a raider he had done nothing but the two activities, besides, of course, the regular functions required to live. He taken his radio out of his backpack, and taken off his mask. His face was, by wasteland standards, relatively clean, despite the fact that he had not even tried to bathe in several months. He assumed it was because his mask had blocked most of the dirt. It was sort of like a burlap sack with red lights underneath a pair of goggles, and a inhuman smile painted as a mouth, with another feature, human hair collected via scalping his kills, in three clumps on the top and sides.

He had went from the savior of the wastelands to the destroyer of them, and nobody knew why. Besides him, obviously. His reasons were many, too numerous to list here, but all were valid. In his opinion, that is. He flicked the radio he had taken out to Galaxy News Radio, a decent station, but he was considering butchering the host for his insolence.

"Public service announcement, children! That kid from Vault 101 is at it again, this time at a little settlement called Canterbury commons! Our friendly neighborhood Sentinel, Sarah Lyons, has the grim report;"

William sighed regretfully. Sarah had been a friend to him during his constant stays with the Brotherhood of Steel, up until the day he left the Vault, Vault 101 to be specific, and became a cold blooded killer. Ever since Amata kicked him out, he slowly turned into a new person. He finished his work on Project Purity, finally waking two weeks after a mishap that put him in a state of unconsciousness. After that, he left for the Pitt, driven to leave his old home behind him. Amata was the cause of this, every night he thought back to that day....

(I'm sorry. You're a hero... and you have to leave)

He winced at the thought. He decided to continue listening to the radio.

".....And stabbed a girl, who called herself Machete, twenty one times, before setting her on fire. Due to these heinous crimes, we're raising the bounty from 100,000 caps to 500,000. Hopefully this will entice you people enough to end him. We DON'T WANT HIM ALIVE. If you get him, KILL HIM, and bring his head to us at the Citadel."

William rolled his eyes. No pathetic wastelander had came after him three months, ever since the incident with the Regulators. Without giving too much detail, I'll tell you that, what was left of the bodies was hard to tell apart from a Centaur. The Talon company was basically crippled as well, the mercenary group's base of operations, and all of their hideouts, reduced to rubble.

After this, Three-Dog gave his usual witty reply, seemingly oblivious to the fact that everybody in the settlement, sans the child, were dead. Most of them feeling the worst pain in they ever experienced before dying. As the Pre-War phrase went, He 'Taught them the meaning of pain'.

Finally finished his rant, the station's host flipped on a song. One that was particularly meaningful to William, in fact.

"I don't want to set the world on fire....."

The voice started in. William sat up straight at this, caught off guard by the song. The last time he had heard it was in Moriarty's (now Gob's) Saloon, after being kicked from Vault 101 by his 'Friend' (as well as the only person he ever loved 'that way'), while downing a bottle Scotch. It was eerily appropriate at the time, and it made him cry. Honest tears for the second time in his life. The first had been when Amata's father forced him into fleeing the Vault.

The Lone Wanderer stared at his Pip-Boy, and peeled off a piece of ruined fabric that concealed his only possession left from Vault 101 (besides the Pip-Boy itself, but that wasn't the same). He stared at what was under it, a picture of Amata, smiling as her friend took her picture, awhile before the G.O.A.T, about a week before, he would say.

The soothing voice chimed in, with perfect timing;

"I’ve lost all ambition for worldly acclaim
I just want to be the one you love
And with your admission that you feel the same
I’ll have reached the goal I’m dreaming of"

Its true. Maybe the meaning was a tad different (he interpreted the song as meaning that they'd given up any want for being renowned, and that they could focused on becoming the object of their love's affection), but it still applied. He WOULD have reached the goal he dreamed of, if she had returned his love. Hell, he still loved her. He also hated her. Ambivalence, he supposed. Regardless, she had no knowledge of what she had done to him, and couldn't really have been blamed. However, if she ever DID leave the Vault, she would never love him back. The second she heard about his new hobbies, she would hate and fear him, as did the rest citizens of the post-apocalyptic hellhole called the Capital Wasteland. She would never know she was to blame for him snapping, though the few friends he had would probably shun her despite this. They knew exactly why he went from the knight in shining armor to the foul, disgusting, dragon.

He made them swear they would never tell a soul, and he knew they would keep their promise, despite his actions. Of course, they feared him now, but before, they were like family. Gob heard more than the others, due to the fact that he was the nearest to William when the man was drunk as hell, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Believe me
I don’t want to set the world on fire
I just want to start
A flame in your heart"

The main difference between the situation here, and the one in the song?
William DID want to set the world on fire.
He turned off the Radio, putting it back in his backpack.
The burlap-sack mask slid over his face, it's wicked grin concealing the fact that he was crying.
His shotgun was now sheathed under his backpack as he walked away.
He still wanted to set a flame in her heart.


.....And possibly on her hair.

The tune echoed through the Capital Wasteland as he whistled it, walking down a long-abandoned highway with a sort of dance in his step.


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An expansion on William, my Lone Wanderer, and his past. He was previously featured in a picture called The Dark Side, which I submitted earlier today. I'm thinking of somehow including him in my 'Red October' story.

I'm posting this on both the FNV and FO3 Nexus, so anybody who is interested can read it.