Shelter For A Stray

by harleytje

River lived her whole life in Diamond City until her problems with chems forced her into leaving. Taking to travelling the city ruins instead, she slowly attempts to remake her life. Dealing with gunners, raiders and addiction while trying to get to the bottom of one of the many mysterious disappearances in the Commonwealth. (Mostly set 2291. Rating may change.)

1. Prologue

Diamond City was the best place in the Commonwealth.

Everyone said so, which meant it had to be true. Even with the disappearances, the discrimination, and the people too poor to keep a roof over their heads. It was the great green jewel of the commonwealth and of course that meant perfect. To say anything different would be to earn the scorn of most people in the market and certainly more than just a few dark looks.

So, we pretended everything was perfect, didn't make waves and hoped the next disappearance wasn't someone we loved.

Dad said the city was so much better because the mayor cracked down on the ghouls and kicked the local population out. I said it was like putting a bit of tape over a bullet hole- you couldn't see the problem, but it was still there.

My best friend Lee sided with my dad, along with pretty much everyone else in the city. The ghouls were better off far, far away from all of us good citizens of Diamond City.

But no matter how often people ranted about all ghouls being monsters and reminded me how it was ghouls that killed my mom and my little brother- I just couldn't agree with it. The feral ghouls were dangerous of course, but that didn't mean all of them deserved a bad rep. I knew too much about getting a bad reputation in Diamond City, after all.

I tried my best to go with the flow, but I had a habit of rocking the boat. Some people let it slide, putting it down to the grief and the fact I was a young girl growing up without her mother. It had been four years and not everyone was as patient as they had been but mostly they cut me some slack. Dad dealt with his grief by travelling for long periods of time and being an angry, unreachable stranger. And I dealt with it by pissing dad off and spending all my caps on whiskey and jet. We were miserable together, wasting our lives in different ways.

But of course, this was Diamond City. So, we did what everyone else did- pretended everything was fine and that we were happy living in the great jewel of the Commonwealth. Just kept pretending it was perfect until it all blew up in our faces.