What If the Institute Rebuilt the Commonwealth and the Brotherhood Burned It Anyway

The story: a single narrow Directorate vote after the Broken Mask incident sends the Institute toward disclosure instead of secrecy. Sixty years of purified water, allied Minutemen, a surviving Commonwealth Provisional Government, and an openly uniformed courser corps buy the region real peace — right up until Recon Squad Gladius reports back to Elder Maxson that the Institute hasn't hidden, it's colonized the surface in plain sight. The Brotherhood invades with full aerial superiority; the Institute answers with a relay-teleportation strike straight onto the Prydwen's flight deck, and Paladin Danse discovers mid-war that he's the very thing he's been ordered to burn out. It ends unresolved and grim, the way the format wants it to.