Ash's arrival in Megaton as a quiet shadow. A boy who worked, nodded when spoken to, and carried a gun too strange for most to question. He ate little, spoke less, and watched everything.
But a year inside the walls changed him.
The House
Odd jobs stacked coin slowly, but steadily. The deputy vouched for him when some settlers doubted a child could hold his own. By the end of that first year, Ash had enough to claim one of the small, unused homes along the inner rim of the crater — a structure patched from scrap, leaning slightly, but his.
Inside, there was a cot, a chair, and a workbench he hauled in piece by piece. It wasn't much, but it was his space. No fire, no corpses, no silence pressing down on him. A place to return to at the end of a day.
For a boy who had walked through hell, it felt like a kingdom.
The Voice Returns
At first, Ash spoke little. His words came short, clipped, as though each one cost him effort. But Moira never let the silence rest. She pulled him into her chatter, her strange ideas, her optimism that bordered on madness.
And slowly, Ash started answering.
He began to tell small stories of his people — not outright legends, but fragments. A turn of phrase, a proverb, a way of looking at the world that was pure Cinderfang.
The settlers noticed the change. He was still quiet, but when he spoke, his words carried weight. Not yet the voice of a Balladeer, but the faint return of one. The first ember of the old ways.
The Revolvers
The workbench in his home soon became more than a place for tools. It was where Ash laid out his revolver, stripped it apart, studied its flaws, and began to improve it.
He learned quickly that power without restraint was dangerous — the weapon overheated after too many rapid shots, the recharge too slow for close fights. He tinkered, adjusted, tested.
By the end of the year, he had built a second.
A twin revolver, born of the same scraps and brilliance, but balanced differently. Where the first had raw power, the second was tuned for control and speed. Together, they answered each other's flaws.
He wasn't yet the gunslinger people would one day whisper about. But the roots of that legend began here, in a patched house with a boy at a workbench, forging weapons that no other hands could make.
Life
Megaton gave Ash something he hadn't had since his tribe burned: peace.
He worked odd jobs still — sweeping, hauling, chasing pests — but now he had a roof, a voice, and the beginnings of purpose. Moira remained his closest companion, bright where he was steady, wild where he was quiet. The deputy remained a watchful figure, shaping him with small lessons about when to fight and when to hold.
And though the fire of the Cinderfangs burned quietly in his chest, he let himself enjoy the stillness.
For the first time, life was not only survival. It was good.