Chapter Text
All I can hear is screaming. It fills my entire existence, and I know that it's from me, but I already shouted myself hoarse. This is a higher pitch, anyway. It drones on, and on, and I'm starting to think it's an alarm of some kind, but no, there's just silence in the air. Then finally I realize it's that little part of my brain that exists to tell me how I'm responsible for whatever horrible thing is happening at any given time. It's just ... screaming.
I lean back, away from the pod don'tlookdon'tlook, and I take a breath. I make a few quelling notions with my hands, and the wail gets a little quieter. Grounding techniques! Eyes closed.
"I hear ... water dripping, steam hissing, my voice drowning them both out, my internal screaming drowning me out, and ... nothing else. I can see ..." I crack open donotlook only my right eye. "... a row of cryo pods, a hallway, flickering light sources, and Vault-Tec Blue."
People have told me they can hear the capital letters when I say stuff like that. I've given up trying to explain compulsive irony.
"From where I am sitting, I can touch ... this jumpsuit, the floor, and ... a cold pool of liquid I refuse to look at. I can smell ... copper, and ... decay. I can taste ..."
I don't actually say 'bitterness,' because there's no point to such melodrama with one here to hear me. I look up, reflexively, double-checking that assumption, and I'm looking right at her corpse. The internal screaming intensifies considerably.
Nora. Nora, Nora, Nora, the love of my life. The one who made me understand that love really was magic, really did exist, and really could even happen twice, even for an idiot loser like me.
Regretfully, I have to admit that what got me up was the need to pee. I'd been on my way to the bathroom when we left the house, and then we were shoved straight in here, and frankly being re-frozen twice hadn't helped. It took me some time to find the fly of the Vault suit, and I got a little frantic. When I was finally free, the relief was overwhelming. I wound up braced against the wall, and as I gradually ran out of steam, my shoulders sagged.
I straightened up, and straightened myself out. Deep breath, centering. It must've worked, because the internal screaming finally subsided, freeing up my that little part of my brain. As I turned back to Nora, it informed me triumphantly,
This is all your fault.
"No, I think you can miss me with that one. Nuclear armaggeddon is actually not my fault."
But participants are complicit in the horrors of the system! You're American! You went to war!'
"I was drafted, man."
Yeah, because your life as a drug-addicted wastrel was so much better.
"What the fuck does that--"
I'm standing over a puddle of piss, staring at a wall instead of looking at my dead wife, and arguing with myself out loud. Half out loud, actually, so even if there were witnesses, it still wouldn't make sense.
Straight. Centered. Deep breath. Get it together.
I turn back to Nora and I don't deflate, which feels like a victory. I instantly feel bad for feeling victorious while looking at my dead wife.
"I love you so much, Nor." I lean in and kiss her cold cheek. "I'm never going to stop. And I promise, I am going to get Shaun back."
The words hang on the air between us. I turn to go, then grimace. I can't not say it.
"But, for the record, bringing a child into this crazy world when everything might go tits up at literally any minute was, it turns out, a bad move. I don't want to have to say I told you so, but boy howdy, did I ever call it."
My shoulders collapse.
"Sorry," I add. I know she can't hear me. "I love you." It doesn't matter.
The sight of Sanctuary is a gut-punch. I hated this fucking suburban nightmare. Nora had loved it, right down to the white picket fence. Her plan was to be the perfect mom in the perfect home and this place fit the bill like it'd been ordered from a catalogue. It probably had, by some corporate asshole.
I take stock of the development. Houses mostly still standing. I think of my neighbors--Skinny DiPietro, Crazy Baker, Angry Jahani and Plug Hawthorne and ... God. Maybe the military really did send all its problem children to one place. Or maybe everyone in this entire country had been secretly hooked on something.
My house looms, and I wonder if I'm hallucinating. "Codsworth?"
"Mr. Nate! How delightful to see you again!"
Therapy robots can go mad too! That's actually terribly exciting. I feel like it's the sort of thing that scientists should be studying. Though I suppose there would be ethical quandaries. Not to mention the lack of scientists.
My liquor cabinet was small. I had only just started drinking again before the bombs fell. But there is an entire handle of gin. I toast to Codsworth, drinking straight from the bottle. It burns, even more than it had before the war, and I hold the bottle up to my Pip-Boy. Irradiated, but only as much as a typical Nuka Cola. It adds a certain mouthfeel that I mostly don't hate.
Through the broken windows, I see the clouds draw up in the sky, much more abruptly than I'm used to. I see a blast of lightning, and I raise my arms in celebration. Gin sloshes out onto my hand, and I curse, trying to get as much into my mouth as possible. By the time I've finished that, I realized that the geiger counter in my Pip-Boy is cranky. Another bolt of lightning tears down, and it hits close; I watch a tree burst into flames.
Something something, discretion, valor, you know. I bolt for Jahani's bunker, the one he insisted on calling a 'root cellar.' As though it were unreasonable to have a bomb shelter. As though several of us we didn't all have a massive bomb shelter, right over yonder. 'Root cellar.'
As I close the door, shutting out the radioactive storm, I wonder what Jahani did in service, to get sent to this little pocket of alleged paradise without a Vault pass. "Speaking of unethical science. Town would've wound up with a damned caste system," I mutter.
Yeah, it would've been a legitimate shame if you'd somehow acquired yet more unearned privilege.
"Ugh, fuck you." I take another swig of gin.