Sloan wasn't sure when she first thought those hopeful words, but she kept thinking them, even when it filled her with despair, even when she knew the world didn't work like that.
The walk back from Concord was a strange one.
Doug had used Power Armour in his time in the army, but it was always kept at the base, and even during visiting tours, the closest that civilians were allowed was a few feet away.
Base security didn't want anyone getting hurt or damaging the armour. It was boasted to be near-indestructible, but that didn't mean that someone untrained in its use couldn't cause serious damage.
It was...it was lighter than Sloan had been expecting. The armour itself didn't even touch her, just the exoskeleton that clamped around her arms and legs. All she had to do was move her arm the slightest bit upward, and the exoskeleton sent a signal to the surrounding armour, and she lifted her massive, metal plated arm with ease.
It was incredibly weird, and more than a bit disconcerting, and...okay, yeah, it was the main reason she'd fallen off the roof. The other had been vertigo sickness from being up so high, but the way the armour moved around her had been hard to control, and one small movement from her became a huge one for the armour.
She'd lifted one hand to grab onto the wall for support-and the following surge of momentum from her metal arm swinging out to the side had caused her to lose her balance, and she went toppling over the side of the roof.
She knew the armour made falling damage almost completely nonexistent, but those few moments right before she hit the ground had been filled with nothing but horror.
That horror only increased when the mini gun she'd gone up onto the roof to get went skidding away across the road, right as the few remaining raiders began to scream.
In terror.
She still wasn't sure how she got to her feet and got to the minigun in time.
The thing had died before she could even register anything more than the fact that it was huge, and coming straight toward her.
Its blood had spilled into the gravel and had filled the cracks in the sidewalk, splashing up across the bricks of the shop it had collapsed against.
She'd been too afraid to get any closer than a few feet away, sure that it would suddenly rear up and spring back to life.
Preston had seen the whole thing from his balcony, and led the others outside while she was still standing there in shock.
They'd stood back for a moment or two, before Sturges slowly walked over. "So, uh, you said your name was Sloan, right?" He said hesitantly. There was a catch in his voice when he spoke her name.
She nodded, and took a step away from the thing. It still felt weird moving in the power armour, and she quickly put the minigun down, suddenly afraid of it accidentally going off.
"Yeah." She said softly, "Sloan Bree." Her voice sounded strange coming from the power armour's speakers.
They'd talked, and decided that Doug would take her last name when they got married. They'd already decided on names for their future children, and agreed that Shaun and Julia Bree sounded better than Shaun and Julia Moore.
"Huh. That's a…nice name." The way Sturges hesitated, Sloan was suddenly certain he was lying.
Sloan Bree. A strange combination wherever she went. Nevermind the fact that she seemed to have two first names, Sloan in itself was an incredibly unpopular name, finding almost singular representation in the creepy villains of children's TV shows.
That, or it was the name given to the obligate selfish, air-headed cheerleader in young adult books.
It had been strange, growing up. Her name was that of a villain, or at least an enemy. But at the same time, it had always been her name, and if there was one thing she wouldn't stand for, it was people mocking her for her name.
But this...this wasn't her world anymore. This wasn't the Concord she had visited on weekends, this wasn't the Museum of Freedom she had gone to as a child, and the power armour surrounding her didn't even belong to her husband.
She didn't even know if she would ever see her husband alive again.
So she remained silent, ignoring the implied slight against her name, and the awkwardness grew until Sturges spoke up again.
"So, uh, how much would you want for it?"
She blinked, and turned to look at him. He was standing closer to the thing, one hand on his chin as he carefully appraised it.
"Excuse me?" She couldn't keep the confusion out of her voice.
Sturges nudged the thing with his boot. "I know it's gotten pretty messed up from that minigun of yours-and hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or nothing, because I can tell you with certainty that if I had gone up against that thing, it'd be nothing but bullet holes right about now. But you've definitely got more self control than I do, so most of the thing looks pretty intact. Now, I'm no butcher, but Preston here," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Preston, who stepped forward obligingly, "Knows how to prepare almost any animal you can kill. And I've heard that these things make for pretty mean steaks. So…" He inclined his head to the thing again. "How much do you want for it? I can't say I've got many caps to my name, but I'd like to think we could make out a deal. But if you aren't looking to sell, I totally understand."
He suddenly took a step backwards, as if to assure her that he wasn't going to force the issue if she declined.
She stared.
He wanted to buy...he wanted to buy the thing's body.
For food.
"Um…" What the heck was she supposed to say? He looked so hopeful, and, looking behind him at the others in the group, she could see the way they all seemed to be looking at the thing like it was hope incarnate.
"Um…" She took a step back, away from them all. "You can...you can keep it. I don't want it." Truer words had never been spoken. The mere thought of cutting the thing apart after what she'd already done to it made her stomach churn in threat.
Sturges' eyes went so wide they could have popped right out of his head, but he seemed too shocked to speak, or maybe he thought that if he did, she would take her words back.
Preston stepped forward then, his brow furrowed in confusion.
And...something like concern. "Wait." He said firmly, stopping her from moving any farther away, "You're serious?"
She didn't even know at that point. It was probably all some huge, messed up nightmare that had been dragging on for far too long.
But she knew she wasn't dreaming.
There was dried blood on her arms, and the armour was just covered in it, and there was no way she'd been imagining the terror and horror that had filled her mind since the news reporter confirmed that bombs had been dropped.
And now...now here was a group of people that were filthy and skinny and mourning, asking her if they could buy the monster she'd just killed that had almost killed her, and had killed more than a dozen people armed to the teeth, so that they could eat it.
So they could turn it into steak of all things.
Was she serious about letting them take it?
Dead.
"Please, just take it." She managed to get out past the lump in her throat.
She moved a few feet away before they could try to argue, suddenly sure she was going to throw up. But she didn't, and her stomach just continued to churn nauseatingly until she sat down in the road, pressing her helmet into the metal plating of her knees while she struggled to keep breathing normally.
The others had fallen quiet, but she could still hear their voices as they discussed their plans for the future, though she didn't pay attention to any of the details.
What kind of future could she possibly have now?
She sat there, staring at the blood-stained blacktop and feeling sick, for what felt like an eternity before the crunch of boots over gravel alerted her to the fact that someone was approaching.
Preston stopped just in front of her, and after a moment of hesitation, crouched down in front of her, his gun strapped across his back, his hands held open and pleading.
"I hate to ask you for more help than you've already given, but...we're going to need some help transporting that Deathclaw to a more secure location, and since you've got that power armour, I figured we could drag it on a tarp or something."
Dogmeat chose that moment to suddenly reappear from wherever he'd gotten to, and immediately started prancing around her, wagging his tail and panting with his tongue hanging out.
Exhaustion settled over her like the sky on Atlas' shoulders. But she couldn't just sit there. She needed...she needed to do something.
So...that was how she spent her first night in her new world, walking home in a suit of blood-stained power armour, dragging a makeshift sled with a dead, giant, mutated Godzilla lizard tied to the back, while five strangers followed her at a sedate pace, and her new dog danced happily in front her.
And all the while, the terrible nausea still rolled in her stomach.
Two days later, she still hadn't had anything to eat.
Immediately after exiting the power armour, the nausea that had been threatening her had finally made good on its promise.
She didn't have much to lose. The only thing she'd had before the bombs fell was a sip of coffee. And she hadn't been given any food in the Vault. They'd just ushered them all inside, made them change into vault suits, and then they'd been put in...into those chambers.
It had been two days since she'd woken up to find herself alone and freezing cold.
Her stomach had growled during the first night, and she'd known she should find something to eat but…
It just...it just hadn't seemed important.
Why eat when her entire world had ended? Why eat when she sat awake through the entire night, reliving all of the nightmares that had come to pass since she'd woken up what felt like only hours ago?
Why eat when her home was in ruins, and her family destroyed? Why eat when there wasn't anything to eat, and she had so many things to do?
She needed to clear the dead trees from the town before they became dangerous, she had to set up a water filtration system, she had to clear all the debris out of the Wallace's house, since they weren't here and couldn't do it themselves, she had to search for anything that could even be remotely useful for keeping herself and her new neighbors alive, and she had to try not to think about the fact that just a few days before, she'd been running down this very same road for her life, and the trees then had been burning vibrantly orange with life.
She had to force herself not to think about the man she'd seen, desperately trying to regather the things that had fallen from his suitcase while his hysterical wife tried to pull him toward the Vault every time she looked across the short bridge to where her husband now slept.
She hadn't known their names, they'd just moved in down the street. The only people she'd really known were the Wallaces. And they…
She'd found their bodies on the sidewalk in front of their house, right where she'd seen them standing as she ran past them towards the Vault.
She hadn't had time to worry about anyone but herself, hadn't had time to worry about anyone but Shaun and Douglas.
And now Shaun was missing, and Douglas was frozen halfway in between life and death, and she didn't know how to help him, didn't know how to help any of the ones that were still frozen down in the vault.
So, her stomach growled, and her limbs grew weak, and her mind felt fogged, but she didn't eat, because what was the point in eating when she didn't even have any food, and even if she did, what was the point in eating when she didn't have any time to do anything but worry?
Her husband was dying. Her friends were dead. Her son had been kidnapped by the man who had shot his father. She'd been frozen for over two centuries, and the world had left her behind.
Her house was in ruins, her town destroyed. Molly's dog bowl was still in the kitchen, and Dogmeat sniffed at it with disinterest as though it had never belonged to another dog at all.
Her world had ended.
She'd become a killer.
What was a little hunger against all of that?
On the fourth day since she'd woken up in the apocalypse, she finally collapsed.
She'd been walking Preston around the town's border, showing him all the landmarks she could remember that were still there. She told him about all the best fishing spots and the places where children liked to play hide and seek, and he told her which spots raiders would be likely to target, and which areas they would need to avoid, because the now-marshy ground was perfect Bloatfly bleeding ground.
He'd seen her confusion, and carefully told her the grisly details. Giant, mutated flies that spit their own larva as a weapon. Larva that intentionally sought out open wounds to borrow into. Larva that would infect the blood and use the human body as a host until they reached maturity, and hatched.
She didn't want to know what would happen once they hatched. She'd turned and walked away before he could say anything more, before she could hear anything more. She didn't want to know.
She could guess it all for herself.
It was as she was speed-walking away up the riverbank that the dizziness hit her.
It happened so suddenly she didn't even have time to comprehend what was happening. One moment she was walking, trying to keep the disgust rolling in her stomach from making her puke again, and the next-
Something must have happened. Her brain must have shut down for a moment, or at least the part that stored memories.
Because the next thing she could remember was cold mud against her face, and pain all over her body.
It took her far, far longer than it should have to realize that she was underwater.
It took her far longer than it should have to realize that she'd fallen into the water, and been carried to the middle of the lake by the current.
It took her far longer than it should have to realize that she was lying on the bottom of the lake, half buried in the mud.
And after that, it took her even longer to realize that she wasn't drowning.
By the time she found enough strength to pull herself out of the thick, shifting mud, and made her sluggish, slow, painful way to the surface, every inch of her skin felt like it had been baking in the sun for hours, and her head ached so badly it was a struggle just to keep her eyes open.
By the time she reached the surface and her head broke out of the water, she felt so weak she was sure she would slip back under again.
It took every ounce of strength she had to roll onto her back, and keeping her limbs straight so she would float seemed to take as much effort as holding up the sky. But somehow she managed it, and kept herself up above the water even as her consciousness flagged, and darkness more profound than the night sky above her crept along the edges of her vision.
She floated there for what felt like years before she found the strength to call out for help.
But her voice came out raw and scratchy, and didn't even carry over the quiet sound of the waves.
She should have brought a whistle. She'd seen The Titanic. She should have had a whistle. Then they would hear her.
But she hadn't survived a sinking, unsinkable ship. She'd survived the end of the world. She'd survived falling into the bottom of a lake.
It had been morning when she'd been walking with Preston. Now the stars were shining brightly overhead.
They probably thought she was dead.
She should have been dead. But she wasn't going to think about that now, wasn't going to question it. Nothing made sense anymore. One more impossible thing to add to the list wouldn't tip the scale.
Her limbs still felt like dead weights, her head still felt like it was being split open from the inside, but she slowly, slowly found the strength to begin kicking her feet, and despite everything, she was able to swim backwards, hopefully heading back toward Sanctuary Hills.
She was told later that Coddsworth had found her washed up against the riverbank, and had carried her back to her house once he realized she was still alive. He'd woken everyone else up at the house they were sleeping in down the street, and practically dragged Preston and Sturges into her bedroom so they could help her.
She couldn't remember any of it, but Coddsworth told her that Sturges had given her something called 'Radaway' to treat the radiation she'd gotten from being in the water so long, and she had woken up several times just long enough for them to feed her some broth they'd made from the Deathclaw.
All she could remember was waking up to find Dogmeat practically lying on top of her, in a room that wasn't hers.
Sunlight was streaming in from the broken window, and dust covered almost every inch of available space in the room.
There were five mismatched and patchy sleeping bags spread out on the floor around her, all of them empty, and all of them in sharp contrast to her own.
She'd found it while escaping the Vault. It was made of a slippery white and grey fabric that didn't seem very comfortable at first, until you crawled inside. Within minutes, she could go from freezing cold, to comfortably, perfectly warm.
It couldn't do much for the rough texture of the ground, and didn't provide a lot of cushioning on its own, but it definitely kept her warm.
Especially when a dog was curled up on top of her, with the tip of his nose against her chin, every puff off his breath sending a gross wave of air into her face.
Whatever he'd been eating, she didn't even want to know.
She contemplated the idea of moving, but her sleeping bag was so warm, and Dogmeat, despite his bad breath, was very soft and comfortable to sleep with. His weight against her side and on her chest made the decision easy.
After all, you weren't allowed to move a sleeping dog.
When Coddsworth finally found out the reason for her fainting, he hadn't been happy, not one bit. He wasn't angry though, mostly he was just worried, and very, very sad.
He must have told the others that she hadn't been eating, because after that, Sturges made it a point to drop off little bowls of roasted meat and broth on her front porch every few hours. That, or he would track her down wherever in town she was, and he'd give it to her there.
Jun had approached her at one point, his eyes tired with his own mourning and grief, but he'd told her that no matter how bad it got, she needed to take care of herself. How could she ever find her son if she was dead or sick?
After that, she hesitantly tracked Preston down one night while he was sitting by the cooking station he'd set up. She needed to learn how to survive, and if she was going to survive, she needed to learn how to get food.
Two hundred year old cans of soup and snack cakes weren't going to cut it. The thought of eating the so-called Deathclaw had turned her stomach before, but if she was going to find her son, she wasn't going to have much of a choice.
Sturges had planted a few gourd and watermelon seeds behind one of the abandoned houses, but it would be months before they bore any edible fruit.
As much as she hated the thought of killing anything ever again, she knew she would need to go hunting for something soon, to prove, both to herself, and the others, that she wasn't going to just give up and die.
Preston promised that if she brought back anything, he would teach her how to butcher and prepare it, so she set off the next morning with Dogmeat eagerly prancing at her heels, to track down the nest of mole rats that had originally brought them together.
No one ever brought up the topic of how she had survived falling into the river, so Sloan decided not to either.
Things were already crazy enough without having to think too hard about what had happened.
Butchering the giant rats was a messy task, but not as difficult as Sloan had dreaded it would be.
At any rate, it was easier than killing them had been.
By the end of the day, they had several dozen pounds of fresh meat ready to be dried into jerky, and though Sloan had difficulty cleaning some of the blood out from under her fingernails, she found that she was able to live with herself, despite the violence it had cost her.
Preston was the leader of the group, Sturges was the unofficial second in command, Marcy and Jun Long were somewhere in the middle, and Mama Murphey was…
Well…
She was a junkie. There was no nice way of putting it. On the way back from Concord, Sloan had overheard Preston arguing with the old woman about her 'chem' problem, trying to convince her that she needed to stop.
Sloan wasn't proud to admit that she'd made sure to keep an eye open for the "Jet" the old woman asked her for over the next few days whenever she dared venture outside of Sanctuary Hills' walls, and she was even less proud to admit that, when she found some of the elusive 'chem', the first thing she did was bring it back to the old woman.
Her desperation for answers, for some sign of hope, some sign that she would find her son again, that she would be able to figure out a way to save her husband, had forced her to temporarily take leave of her senses.
It finally took Coddsworth pulling her aside, sitting her down on the couch that was still miraculously in her living room, and telling her frankly how worried he was about her, and how disappointed he was in her actions, before she finally woke up and realized what she was doing.
She was helping to sustain and old woman's addiction to dangerous drugs, and for what? For vague, catch-all 'visions' that didn't tell her anything she didn't already know? That didn't tell her anything that Mama Murphy couldn't have made an educated guess about?
She'd sworn to Coddsworth that she wouldn't ever let anyone near another drug as long as she lived, and the relief in his voice had almost made her cry. The one person she really knew and trusted, and she'd almost driven him away.
After that revelation, she couldn't see Mama Murphy the same way again. She'd been used. Her fear and worry had been used to turn her into a willing puppet who would do anything just to hear another vision of a false, lying future.
Where she'd once seen a misunderstood and kind person, she now saw nothing but a cold, manipulative junkie who could spin lies like a spider wove its web.
After that, she had to get out of town, at least for a while. She went to the gas station and stayed there for most of the day, mentally cataloging everything that could possibly be of use, and clearing the ground for the plants she hoped to transplant.
Marcy had introduced her to what was known as 'mute-fruit', an apple-sized, mostly purple fruit that resembled a very large, very firm, blackberry.
There were dozens of wild bushes of them around Sanctuary Hills and in the nearby woods, and since Marcy had assured her-in her snippy, short-tempered way-that they were all edible, Sloan had come to a decision.
She was either going to replant the bushes somewhere that they were easier to get to, or she was going to start cutting off small branches to see if she could clone them. Apparently they produced fruit all year long, but she'd been warned that only the seeds from cultivated mutfruit were big enough to replant.
But there were enough wild bushes growing to make that statement a moot point. The plants had a way of spreading somehow, and whether it was through sending out runners or the seeds being dispersed by animals, Sloan was going to figure it out, and she was going to replicate it.
She'd tried one of the 'Green Diamond' Mutfruits that had come from somewhere called Diamond City, and while it was good, it was nothing compared to what the wild berries tasted like.
So step one: gather wild mutfruit.
It had gone well for the first few hours, until, that is, she got distracted. Specifically, she got distracted by a bird.
Dogmeat had wandered off somewhere hours ago, but Sloan had gotten used to it, and was trying to keep her worry in check. He wasn't Molly, and he certainly didn't belong to her. If Dogmeat wanted to stick by her, then she was more than happy to let him. But he hadn't even glanced twice at the can of dog food she'd found for him, and from what Mama Murphy had said about him-which Preston had confirmed-Dogmeat had always hunted for his own food.
So Sloan was alone in the thin woods for a while, without a dog to make noise. That was when she noticed it.
It might have been a crow.
Sloan wasn't really sure. It had black feathers, and its beak was the right shape, and it was about the right size but its neck...it was too long, too thick. When it wasn't flying, it was on the ground, hunched forward with its head angled downward and its wings folded across its back.
It almost seemed...snakelike, the way it moved its head to look at her on its too-long neck.
She was pretty sure it had been following her.
She went back to carefully picking the mutfruit from the bush in front of her, making sure to leave plenty of them on their stems for animals, just in case her plans to regrow them from seed didn't work out.
When she had gotten several handfuls, she moved onto the next bush, which was several dozen feet away.
As soon as she had finished moving, the bird jumped into the air, and swept a inches above the ground until it came to a stop only a few feet away, its strange neck arched upward, its head tilted to the side.
As an experiment, she picked out one of the smaller mutfruits from her bag, and rolled it toward the bird.
It lifted its wings, and a hissing noise slithered out from its beak at the sudden move, but didn't do anything else. Even when she made herself comfortable where she was, and didn't move anywhere else for over half an hour.
It completely disregarded the fruit, and continued to watch her with its beady black eyes.
Eventually, Dogmeat returned from wherever he had wandered off to, with his muzzle bloody and his breath stinking even worse than usual, and scared the bird away.
But Sloan was now determined to find it again.
She would take this wasteland of a world, and she would tame it one thing at a time.
That plan was quickly put by the wayside as she abruptly decided to head for the "Diamond City" Mama Murphy had first mentioned. Preston and the others had confirmed its existence, and Preston had drawn out a map for her on a piece of mole-rat hide.
It wasn't the most...detailed map Sloan had ever seen, but it would get the job done.
There wasn't anything more for her to do in Sanctuary Hills that the others couldn't do by themselves, and she felt...stronger...than she had before.
Whatever was waiting for her in Diamond City, she felt like she would be strong enough to face it.
Sloan had just stepped into the shadow of a huge tractor trailer when Dogmeat suddenly suddenly stiffened, his hackes rising, and out of the corner of her eye, Sloan saw something crawl out from under the truck.
It felt like her heart stopped.
She hadn't seen the movement clearly, but she could have sworn it had been human.
Aside from the Abernathys-who were nice enough, if wary-that lived just a few minutes walk away, the only people she'd met so far who weren't hostile were Preston and his gang.
And Dogmeat's slowly rising growl told her that this person-if it had even been a person she'd seen-wouldn't be friendly.
She pulled out her gun, and prepared herself for a fight.
Sloan never wanted to see a feral ghoul ever, ever again.
She didn't know how long she'd been sitting on top of the truck, or how many bullets she'd fired, or how many grenades she'd thrown.
They just kept coming and coming, and it seemed like they would never stop.
They swarmed, lurching, staggering, growling and shrieking, from every direction at once. Their shrunken eyes gleamed yellow in the pre-dawn light, and the shadows seemed to writhe with twisted rotting bodies.
They clawed and bit at the people-soldiers?-trying to defend the police station with an animal frenzy Sloan had only ever seen in holovids of sharks going after chum.
All of the soldiers wore some sort of armour, but that didn't seem to be stopping the-the what were they? Zombies?-at all. If their claws couldn't cut through the armour of their victim, they would just surge en masse and thrown themselves at the person until they were forced to the ground.
Sloan didn't know how many soldiers there were. She didn't know how many zombies there were.
But she saw one of the soldiers get knocked down.
He fell with a strangled cry that cut off suddenly when one of the zombies landed on top of his head as it tripped over another one's flailing legs, and the man fighting from inside a suit of power armour charged to his rescue, bowling zombies over and crushing them underfoot like they weren't even there.
She watched one of the creature's heads burst open like a watermelon, and saw another one get its stick-thin arm get torn off them it reached for a seam in the armour. The very next second the man moved, the gap closed, crushing the rotting flesh and weakened bone into a bloody pulp.
The man continued running. The startled zombie let out a groan, and tried to pull its arm back out.
Sloan could see the distorted white of its shoulder blade poking out through the leaking mass of red that was what was left of its arm.
One of her bullets lodged itself in the creature's skull a second later-the luckiest shot she had fired yet-and it fell to the ground with barely a sound, at best, put out of its misery, at least dead, so it couldn't hurt anyone else.
The entire scene had lasted maybe five seconds. The man moved. The zombie reached. Its arm was gone. It was dead.
Sloan was probably the only one that had even seen it, but she would never forget the sight.
She lost track of the greater battle after that, because one of the zombies had finally noticed her where she crouched on top of the oil rig outside the police station.
It let out a shrieking cry, and charged towards her.
She fired wildly with her pistol, every single shot hitting far off the mark. The zombie scrabbled with stinking hands against the metal of the truck, trying in vain to climb up towards her, its gleaming yellow eyes locked onto her own with vicious intensity.
She pointed her gun at its face, and pulled the trigger.
She was met with a useless click.
She was out of ammo.
The zombie jumped, its hands reaching, and one clawed finger snagged at her shoe.
She screamed in terror, and lashed out with her foot. She caught the zombie square in the face, and it fell back to the ground, where it struggled to regain its feet like a beetle stuck on its back.
She had one more grenade left. But she was standing on an oil rig, and she wasn't ready to die.
She pressed herself flat against the curved metal below her, her blood pounding in her ears, her heart in her throat, hoping against hope that none of the other zombies would notice her, and that the one that already had wouldn't be smart enough to climb up from front of the truck like she originally had.
Sloan closed her eyes as the battle continued to rage around her, and prayed that she would survive to see the sun rise.
It felt like hours had passed before the sounds of battle ceased, and she heard the familiar hydraulic sound of power armour footsteps coming closer. The man in power armour approached her, his hands held up in a calming gesture when she finally lifted her head up enough to look at him. "Easy there." He said slowly, drawing her attention away from the streets and alleys she'd darted her gaze to, "They're gone for now, you can relax."
How was she supposed to relax when she'd just watched hundreds of monsters swarm from every direction at once? How could she relax when she couldn't even count the number of them that she'd shot?
This man didn't even realize that he'd torn one of their arms off. She could see the exact spot its arm had been crushed, because the metal was caked in a curdled, powdery something that might have been rotted bone marrow.
The man seemed to realize that she wasn't going to calm down so easily.
He moved closer, so that he was staring directly up at her. "What's your name, scavver?"
She didn't know if he'd just insulted her or not.
The man hadn't been swarmed by any more of the monsters yet, so Sloan slowly lifted herself back into a sitting position, clutching her gun like a lifeline even though it was now useless.
"My name is Sloan." She said carefully, darting her eyes along the road again to make sure they were actually safe. "...What did you just call me?"
He raised an eyebrow, and lifted one hand up toward her. "How about we get you down from there first, huh?"
She hesitated, then glanced behind him at the people waiting-the man who had fallen was now leaning against a wall, and a woman was leaning over him-and the sea of bodies that separated her from the steps of the police station.
She didn't want to have to cross that sea alone.
She took a deep breath, then accepted the offered hand.
No one at Sanctuary Hills had mentioned anything about the Brotherhood of Steel, but stopping humanity from abusing technology?
It seemed like a worthy goal, and one that Sloan was eager to help accomplish, in any way that she could.
She'd already had her entire world destroyed once. She wasn't about to let it happen again.
She followed Paladin Danse to the Arcjet building without any further hesitation.
She had so many things shoved into her backpack and pockets that by the time they were outside again, she was sure that if she tried carrying anything else she would just fall over and not be able to get back up.
So, of course Paladin Danse decided to give her yet another thing to carry.
She was touched by the gesture, she really was. But she had very quickly grown very fond of one of the shock batons she'd scavenged inside-so much more reliable than her shoddy aim with a gun-and somehow, in the few minutes after Paladin Danse left where she put everything she had on the ground around her and tried to figure out a way to carry it all without dropping anything, she lost track of Righteous Authority, and no matter how high she turned her pip-boy light, she couldn't find it.
It didn't help when Dogmeat decided to tackle her pile of things, sending weapons and armour scattering off in every direction. It took her half an hour just to find everything that had fallen into the grass, but even then, Righteous Authority was still lost to her.
After another ten minutes of fruitless searching, she was finally forced to call it quits. The sun was starting to peek out over the horizon, which meant she hadn't slept in almost twenty-four hours.
And she still had somewhere she needed to be.
The first conclusion she came to upon arriving at Diamond City?
She really, really didn't like Piper.
She wasn't really even sure why. The lying definitely didn't help her cause any, but it was more than that.
There was just...something about her that made Sloan's hackles rise.
Diamond City wasn't anything like she'd been expecting.
Jewel?
Try garbage heap.
She couldn't even see anything that was green enough to warrant its title.
Sloan was horrified.
"It is good plan, yes?" Vadim was grinning like a child on Christmas morning.
She stared. "That-that is the worst plan I've ever heard!" She exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air in disbelief, in utter, utter confusion. How could anyone ever think this was a good idea?
Vadim's face fell at her reaction, "Hey, hey, it will work! Trust me!" He smiled again, as if trying to reassure her.
It didn't work.
"This is-I'm not having any part in this plan, Vadim." She said firmly, "You need to figure out some other way to give Travis confidence. Have you tried talking to him? Or-or finding him a therapist?"
Vadim blinked.
After a moment, he said cautiously, "You want me to get him a flaming power fist?" After another moment, his eyebrows slowly rose and his mouth opened slightly. "That-that is a great idea!" He stuttered, looking amazed, "With a weapon like that, Travis would have nothing to be afraid of! His confidence would skyrocket! Where do we get such a weapon, though? Do you have one we could give to Travis?"
"That's not what I-" Sloan stopped herself before she could finish the sentence. Which would be worse, hiring someone to beat Travis up, and hoping that nothing went horribly, horribly wrong, or finding the kid a weapon so he would have nothing to be afraid of?
...Neither of them sounded particularly pleasant, but then again…
Sloan bit her lip, and felt the comfortingly light weight at her hip that was her newest acquisition. A snap-out security baton that delivered an incredibly painful shock. So much more reliable than the 10mm pistol she'd been using ever since she escaped the Vault.
She had never been comfortable around guns, even after almost a month of having to use one almost daily. It felt so much better having the baton in her hand. It gave her so much more control, so much more comfort.
She also had a mahogany baseball bat tied to her backpack, but she didn't use it as often.
With the baton, there was no chance of it going off accidentally and hurting someone. It was only dangerous when it was extended, and then only if she hit something with enough force. When it wasn't extended, it was clipped to her belt as a little metal tube maybe six inches long.
There was no way she was letting Vadim hire someone to beat Travis up. That was so completely wrong on too many levels to even think about.
But if she could find a weapon for him-something that was only dangerous when he wanted it to be, something that was easy to use and yet deadly efficient…
Vadim was watching her expectantly, and when she focused on him again, his smile widened even more. Whatever expression she was wearing, he liked it.
"I uh..." she shrugged. "I don't have a flaming power fist," to be honest, she didn't even know what a power fist was, "But I do have something I think could help."
The Arcjet building was filled with destroyed robots, and though she'd taken everything she could carry the first time she'd entered it with Paladin Danse, there had still been a lot of things left over.
Like laser rifles.
And more shock batons.
"It'll take me a day or two to get it." She said slowly, mentally mapping her way from Diamond City to the factory, "But in the meantime, why don't you try taking the old-fashioned approach?" She smiled.
Vadim looked excited, then puzzled. "The old fashioned approach? What is, eh, the old fashioned approach? Hit him over the head and hope it knocks some sense into him?"
Sloan rolled her eyes. "No," she said slowly, "You talk to him."
Yeffim gave her a room for free that night, as thanks for talking Vadim out of his crazy plan, and the next day, she and Dogmeat left, setting out for the Arcjet building.
She didn't know if it was some weird surge of adrenaline, the radioactive Nuka Quantum she'd just dranken, or both.
All she knew was that one second, she was swinging her baseball bat as hard as she could at the Deathclaw that she'd been sure would have been the end of her…
And the next…
She was staring up at the sky, watching the Deathclaw sail through the air, unable to comprehend what had happened until it slammed into the ground hard enough to make her stumble, just a few feet away, its spine crushed, its skull fractured and leaking colorless fluid onto the dirt.
Dogmeat growled at it for a few more seconds, before lunging forward suddenly to sink his teeth into its neck, before darting back again. When it didn't react, his tail began to wave madly, and he pranced around it in a circle, looking as proud as could be, as though he'd been the one to deliver the deathblow.
But he hadn't.
She had.
She had launched a Deathclaw into the air with a baseball bat.
A giant, deadly, mutated lizard that weighed at least three hundred pounds.
And she had thrown it into the air like it was a softball.
Doug is never going to believe this.
That was the first time she could ever remember actually putting the concept into words. But it wasn't the first time the thought had struck her. It was in little moments, like running for her life as radiation clogged the sky and turned the air in her lungs into fire, burning at her eyes until she was running blindly up the hill toward the Vault, Dogmeat, somehow unaffected, dragging her by her hand, his teeth clamped down almost painfully tight around her fingers, but never breaking the skin.
It was in little moments like sitting on the elevator right inside the Vault, crying and shaking in pain and fear, unable to take a single step farther into the place that had simultaneously destroyed and saved her life, while Dogmeat curled around her, whining softly.
It was in little moments like when she had to set up a crude IV system-using the metal grating that separated the elevator from the rest of the room to hook up the bag of Rad-Away, and clumsily sticking herself with the needle that came with it-just to stop herself from growing a second pair of arms, or fish scales, or a third eye.
In an abstract way, without bothering to put it into words, she wondered how she would ever be able to go back to being herself once this was all over.
Once she woke up, and was back in her husband's arms.
She was sitting in a puddle of blood, huddled behind a wall of sandbags, her heart pounding but her breathing steady, as an enraged, terrified voice called out past the roar in her ears, "You can't hide forever!"
Dogmeat lifted his lips in a silent snarl beside her, but he didn't move. He wouldn't, not until she gave the signal.
She wasn't going to hide forever. All she needed to do was wait until the raider was close enough.
And then they would die, just like the asshole who's blood now covered her new knife had died.
God, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do when she went back. Doug had fought in the war-he would recognize the signs of it in her, but he wouldn't know why.
How could she tell him that she'd turned into a killer?
She heard footsteps getting closer, and gripped the knife tighter, suddenly realizing how stupid and meaningless her thoughts had become.
This wasn't a dream, this wasn't a story. This was her life now, and there was no waking up, no going back.
The footsteps were closer, but still more than a dozen feet away.
She didn't care anymore.
She leapt out from behind her cover, and charged toward the raider with a scream of hopelessness and rage.
Maybe he wasn't afraid of her, maybe he thought he could shoot her before she got too close, or maybe he was just too surprised to scream.
It didn't matter.
Once her knife slashed open his throat, he couldn't have screamed if he'd wanted to.
This is Diamond City Radio, with your host, Travis "Lonely" Miles. Now folks, before we get back into the music, I've got some news I'd like you all to hear. Some of you may have heard of Sanctuary, the new settlement that's been founded up north. Well, I've just received word that the raiders that had taken control of the nearby quarry have been taken care of, and if the reports are to be believed, the settlers in Sanctuary have taken over. They say production of the stone can begin in as little as a few weeks, and they're looking for caravans to hire for transport. So if you're looking for a job filled with adventure, that might be a good place to check out, wouldn't you agree?
"Now, on a slightly different note, here's Uranium Fever. Let's hope those settlers don't repeat the mistakes of the past, shall we?"
No one was sure exactly how Mama Murphy had gotten onto the roof, but one thing was certain-she wasn't going to get back down on her own.
Coddsworth had tried flying up to help her, but Mama Murphy had just crossed her arms, and sat down, refusing to move.
"I ain't going anywhere unless she comes up here to get me." She called out so that everyone in the group that had gathered at the back of the house could hear her.
Preston, Sturges, Marcy, Jun, Stella, Frank, Jordan...everyone had turned to look at Sloan. They all knew who Mama Murphy was talking about.
Of course she was talking about Sloan.
Which meant that Sloan had to spend the next hour carefully constructing a ladder out of scrap pieces of fencing and tree branches, while everyone who should have been tending to the crops or patrolling the walls, stood there and watched like it was the most interesting thing they'd ever seen.
Of course, none of them volunteered to help. When it came to innovation, Sloan had found that even the seemingly brightest of Commonwealthers were entirely lacking in that department.
Eventually, she got the ladder sturdy enough that she trusted her weight on it, and climbed carefully up onto the roof.
To her credit, Mama Murphy had picked one of the houses that wasn't completely falling to pieces. The roof barely even creaked beneath Sloan's weight, giving her enough confidence to walk, rather than crawl, to the old woman's side.
Mama Murphy grinned up at her, baring all of her teeth in one of her trademark, highly disconcerting smiles.
"I knew you had it in ya, kid!" She said, patting Sloan's knee affectionately.
Sloan had to resist the urge to turn around and make someone else get the old creep back down, but she steeled herself, and simply took a step backwards, putting her out of range of Mama Murphy's way too touchy-feely hands.
"Mama Murphy, it's time to go inside." She said, trying to keep her tone light, but firm. "You could get hurt up here, and besides, the fog is rolling in." Sloan waved a hand towards the slowly creeping wall of white to the north. "If you stay up here, you'll freeze. And Carla isn't due back for another week at best, and we're almost out of Stimpacks. We can't afford to waste them on you if you get yourself sick."
...Okay, maybe she could have put it a bit nicer, but it was true. They needed those meds for real emergencies, like infections or bullet wounds or broken bones. Mama Murphy couldn't just jeopardize everyone else's safety by letting herself get sick for no good reason.
But Mama Murphy just laughed, as though Sloan had said something hilarious. "Oh kid, you're real, sweet, you know that? I never asked anyone to waste their meds on me, now you're telling me you would if it came down to it."
Sloan clenched her jaw. She didn't like the old woman, and her stupid drugs, and her stupid, useless 'Sight'. But there was no way in hell she was going to let her die if she could help it. The old hag might have been creepy and annoying, but that didn't mean she deserved to die.
"Are you coming inside, or not?" Sloan's temper had been getting shorter and shorter as the days and weeks passed without end, and it was hard to keep her voice from turning into a snarl. She was glad Dogmeat was playing in the fields, or he might have gone on the offense, mistaking her anger for the signal to attack.
She rarely got angry at anyone who wasn't trying to kill her.
Mama Murphy pursed her lips, as though she needed to think about the question, before she shook her head, and shrugged. "Nah, I think I'll stay right where I am. I like it. It's such a great view."
She spread one arm in the direction of the field overlooking the majority of Sanctuary Hills, and smiled her disturbed smile again.
"I'm thinking, a wall and roof to keep the rain off me, a bed, a few chairs, maybe a carpet or two...it could be a pretty nice place for me, don't you think? And you're such a sweetheart, I know you won't mind putting it all together for me." She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, as though she were basking in the sunlight straining weakly through the growing cover of clouds.
"You're serious." Sloan's voice couldn't have gotten any flatter if it had been run over by a truck.
"Oh, dead." Mama Murphy replied, not even bothering to open her eyes. "Since you still haven't gotten me that Buffout I asked for, there's not much else I can do but sit here and wait…"
Because God forbid she help out around the town. God forbid she even lift a finger to help harvest the crops or even water them.
Sloan's glare was hot enough to melt steel, but Mama Murphy refused to budge.
After it became clear that nothing short of dragging her bodily off the roof would move her, Sloan stomped her way back down the ladder, and returned a few minutes later, her arms completely filled, so that she had to balance on just her feet to get back up the ladder.
She threw the sleeping bag at the old woman, and stomped back away without a second glance.
Mama Murphy survived the night no worse for wear, and still refused to come down. It was all very obviously a ploy to get more drugs, but since there was no way in hell that was happening, Sloan decided she would play Mama Murphey's little game.
So that was how she ended up spending the next week painstakingly extending the roof, adding in walls, and creating what was essentially, a very large lean-to.
It wasn't exactly pretty, but it wasn't going to fall apart at the drop of a hat either.
Sloan managed to wrangle Marcy Long into helping her carry a beat-up arm chair up the stairs she'd replaced the ladder with, and traded a few caps for one of Stella's new paintings, and two of the rugs she'd woven.
Okay so maybe not all Commonwealthers were devoid of innovation, but it was such a small percentage of the population that it didn't even warrant a real number.
In the end, the final product wasn't half bad. It was kept warm by the cooking station on the porch below, and offered enough shelter from the wind that she wasn't too worried about the old woman freezing to death, even though it was the middle of December, if her Pip-Boy's calendar was anything to go by.
Toss in a second thick sleeping bag and a radio, and the old geezer was living it as good as could be.
And as Sloan settled in for the night in her own sleeping bag, with Dogmeat stretched out beside her with his head on her shoulder, she thought to herself, Doug is going to be so impressed when I build us that new shed…
Preston probably should have been patrolling the Castle's walls, but he wasn't.
He was watching Sloan as she worked, and, for once, this didn't annoy her. Usually it was nerve grinding when people stopped doing what they were assigned to do just to watch her do something, but not today.
Today, Sloan was crouched by the edge of the ramparts high above the water, carefully constructing a pile of assorted seaweeds, seashells, and random garbage that she had found washed up on the small beach surrounding them.
She hadn't bothered to tell anyone what she was doing, she figured they either wouldn't understand, or wouldn't care. But to her surprise, Preston finally spoke up.
"You know, General, I heard this rumor from a buddy of mine from the Capital Wasteland about a woman who tamed a Deathclaw. She uses its eggs for omelettes."
Sloan stopped for a moment, her slimy hands halfway between her pile of garbage, and the large, lumpy sack she'd been carrying around since the night before, contemplating his words.
He obviously knew what she was up to. But the question was, would he actually help?
"So." She said cautiously, turning her head to look over at him where he stood, laser musket as always, at the ready, "Ever hear any rumors about tame Mirelurks?"
She knew what Doug would say when he found out. Any animal can be befriended, as long as you were patient enough and put in enough effort.
He'd been trying to convince her to let him keep the baby squirrel he'd found in their backyard.
She'd never gotten the chance to give him an answer. In the back of her thoughts, she'd worried how Molly would react to it when they got her back.
The thought had never crossed her mind that she'd never see her dog again.
Now, as she turned away from her Preston and carefully, carefully pulled one of the large, mottled grey eggs from the sack she'd stuffed with straw and grass, and placed it gently in the nest she'd made, she knew what her answer would be when she next saw him.
"What is it you're always saying?" Preston said from behind her, and she could hear the smile in his voice "'Anything's possible', right?"
"Right." She said quietly back, patting the grey egg affectionately, before reaching back into the sack for the next one.
She would have to get started on building an enclosure right away, they were going to have a lot of new mouths to feed.
Originally, she'd been nervous about going into Vault 81. It was only the increasingly overstuffed backpack on her shoulders that finally forced her to give in. She'd even made a little backpack for Dogmeat to wear, so he could help carry some of the lighter things, but it still wasn't enough. She was over encumbered, and needed to find a trader.
So of course another traveller chose that moment to tell her about Vault 81, just up the road, and how they were always good for a friendly trade.
The Overseer had asked her to get them five fusion cores before they could let her inside, to prove that she wasn't just some wandering raider looking for an easy target, and the surprise in the woman's voice when Sloan told her she already had some was definitely worth it.
As a matter of fact, Sloan had exactly eleven of them on her person, but wanted to keep the remaining six in case she found another set of power armour in her journeys.
The Brotherhood of Steel was willing to pay a small fortune for any she found, even if it was just the shell. Not to mention how much some of the settlements she'd helped to found could use them for extra defense. Sturges, especially, enjoyed tinkering with them from time to time, and Marcy became an outright berserker when she got the chance to wear one.
The few raiders that dared target Sanctuary Hills soon learned to stay far, far away.
Sloan helped rescue one of the Vault kids' cat, Ashes, when it escaped through the open door outside, and had fun in the classroom that had been set up for the children, telling them all about the time she'd knocked a Deathclaw into the air like it weighed nothing.
She was pretty sure their teacher didn't believe her, but the kids went crazy about it, and she even heard one of them telling her friend how she was going to be a great adventurer when she grew up.
Sloan...wasn't really sure how she felt about that, but then she was crawling through the walls, getting swarmed by angry mole rats, and she had more pressing concerns to worry about.
Whoever had designed the Freedom Trail obviously didn't want anyone reaching the end of it alive. There were Super Mutants, and Raiders, and Feral Ghouls, and some horrible thing named Swan.
Sloan wasn't even sure how she managed to follow it without getting killed.
There had been a horrifying few minutes after Swan had attacked them that Curie had shut down, all of her arms pulling inward and the jet that kept her aloft abruptly turning off, and Sloan had struggled to drag her out of the line of fire that had erupted between the Raiders and the thing named Swan.
Sloan had been sure Curie was dead, but after a few tense minutes she'd slowly rebooted, expressing confusion about their location. The ten minutes before she'd been injured hadn't been saved to her memory files.
Sloan was almost glad. She didn't know what Swan was, but she knew she'd probably be having nightmares about it for a long time to come.
It felt strange going back to Doctor Amari after what had happened the first time she'd visited the Memory Den.
But this time, it wasn't about her, or Kellogg, or the secrets he knew to getting into the Institute.
This time, she was there for Curie.
They were standing in the wing of a long-crashed airplane, surrounded by skeletons and studiously note-taking Brotherhood Scribes, and Curie had tears in her eyes.
And Sloan's eyes were starting to blur, too.
The wedding ring on her finger had never felt heavier. She was betraying her marriage, betraying her husband, betraying her son, but the words needed to be spoken. The feelings in her heart had to be released.
She stepped forward, and took Curie's hands in her own, the tears that had been threatening finally spilling down her cheeks as she whispered, "I love you too, Curie."
Before she could stop herself, she leaned forward, and placed a soft kiss on her companion's lips.
Douglas, Shaun, please forgive me…
Maybe jumping off of the Prydwyn's deck while it was docked hundreds of feet above the shore hadn't been the smartest idea, but it was fun.
Curie already knew what would happen, but seeing the look of first shock, then horror, on the face of Elder Maxson had been worth it.
Sloan screamed all the way down, out of pure, unadulterated exhilaration, not even attempting to slow her descent in the slightest.
When she crashed into the water, she did so half-way upside down, limbs all spread in different random directions from the force of her fall.
The water wrapped around her like a living thing, pulling her down even as it caught her in its churning embrace.
She spun head over heels, and opened her eyes to watch air bubbles stream past her toward the surface like a swarm of lightening bugs.
The sandy bottom was only a foot or two away, and strands of softly glowing seaweed brushed her forehead as she slowly sank deeper, still upside down.
In one smooth motion, she kicked her legs, sending herself into a half-somersault so that her back was to the sand, and her belly up toward the surface, her arms spread out to either side to keep herself still.
Even from probably more than ten feet down, she could still see the way the sun rippled across the surface, the way it danced over the waves like a living thing.
Though it was blurry, she could see the silhouette of the Prydwyn, a dark blotch against the sky that, from down here, seemed more of a murky green than a clear blue.
She closed her eyes, and for a few moments, simply let herself drift beneath the calming waves.
Let Maxson fret and worry. He had authorized the destruction of any and all fictional books the Brotherhood of Steel came across. A man like that deserved to be scared.
Hell, she half-hoped he would be scarred for life. She's asked him to rescind the order, or else she would be forced to do something drastic.
He'd laughed in her face.
So she'd jumped off the side of the ship before he could stop her.
It was the logical response.
Obviously.
She laughed, letting a stream of big air bubbles escape her mouth, then pushed against the water with her hands and swished her feet until she was upright in the water.
Curie was probably getting impatient.
She took a moment to flip a small switch on her-thankfully, fully waterproof-Pip-Boy, lowered her arms back to her sides, counted to ten, closed her eyes, and then, with all the strength and speed she'd built up over the long months, sped toward the surface of the water.
She exploded into the sky as though the water were forcefully expelling her, and had spread her arms out infront of her before she even reached the peak of her jump.
A heavy weight crashed into her almost immediately, she heard a loud oomph, and then she had wrapped her arms securely around Curie, and twisted so that when they hit the water, her back and shoulders took the brunt of the hit.
Curie hugged her tight as she pulled them back to the surface, and started laughing the moment her head was above the water. "Oh my love!" She cried, "That was too much fun! Can we do it again?" She smiled widely, as though it was everyday that she dropped from hundreds of feet in the air, and Sloan couldn't resist smiling back.
Someday, she would teach Shaun to swim. She would take him to all the best water parks, and she'd take him out to swim with dolphins.
He'd be able to brag to all his friends that his mom was a superhero.
And she knew the perfect name for her secret identity.
Aquagirl.
Water...had become weird.
If Sloan found a river or a creek or a lake, it wasn't just a source of water and potential food.
It was...a sanctuary.
Nothing could harm her underwater. Most people seemed terrified of it, and she hadn't yet met anyone that was able to swim, yet alone willing to walk out into it.
The deeper rivers were always murky and covered in a layer of plant matter and garbage, so no one could even see her most of the time.
And on the few rare occasions where someone actually saw her jump or "fall" into the water, they always assumed that it would kill her.
Hence, why no one at Sanctuary Hills had expected to ever see her alive again. Hence, the exact reason why she'd had so much fun jumping off of the Prydwyn.
Even Super Mutants and Ghouls avoided going near the water, and the settlers at the Slog had all stared at her like she was a ghost when she came walking out of the river, soaking wet and tired, to report that the 'Greenskins' that had been bothering them were no longer a problem.
In the new world she lived in, water had become a double edged sword. It was death, and pain, but it was also life, and safety. 'Raw' water could be used as a poison if used on someone with a weak immune system, while its purified form could help mend cuts and bruises within hours instead of days.
It hadn't been able to do that before the world ended, but then again, Sloan hadn't been able to breathe under it before the end of the world, either.
Things changed, and this was one change Sloan could accept wholeheartedly.
And until she woke up in her own bed someday, Sloan would remain content, resting at the bottom of a river with just a rope to hold her in place as she slept.
Curie had gone to stay at Hangman's Alley for a few days to help them set up a water purifier since they'd dug deep enough to break through to the sewers, and Sloan had gone out to find more supplies.
But the area around her was crawling with feral ghouls, so beneath the waves, she slept.
She never slept more peacefully than when she was underwater.
Some day, she was going to look back at all of this and wonder how it had ever come to be normal for her.
A few months ago, 'normal' meant putting up Halloween decorations and having to go back to the store for more candy because she and Doug-but mostly Doug-had already eaten all of it.
A few months ago, 'normal' meant trying to figure out which of her costumes she would wear during the trick or treating, and wondering if she could find a matching one for Shaun.
There weren't many kids in Sanctuary Hills, or at least, not many that were old enough to go trick or treating. Most of the trick or treaters they got came over from Concord, since, like Shaun, most of the children in Sanctuary Hills were infants, either only a few months old, or less than two, with a few exceptions. The neighbors across the street had a baby girl and an older son who was around ten or eleven.
A few months ago, normal had meant waving to the kid as Sloan went to get the mail.
...Then the bombs had fallen, and she'd watched him run for his life, toward the Vault he wasn't allowed into.
Now, normal was finding a sturdy piece of debris in the bottom of a river that she could tie herself to for the night, and injecting herself with home-made Stimpacks when a Raider with a baseball bat broke one of her arms.
Now, normal was loading everything she could carry into a backpack, and not even stopping there. She put on as many layers of clothing as she could, tied the arms of more around her waist, and used cords of leather to tie anything else she possibly could to the back of the backpack.
Then she loaded up her arms, and went on her slow purposeful way back towards Hangman's Alley as she finally noticed the grey clouds starting to hang low in the sky.
It was going to rain.
She sighed wearily. Water, standing water, was nice. Rain? Pelting, freezing, sometimes-acid rain? Not so much.
What she wouldn't give to have a working car.
It turned out that swimming while it was raining was even more fun than swimming while it wasn't. Even weighed down with everything she'd scavenged, it was still effortless to hang a few feet below the surface and watch the raindrops impact the waves.
Beneath the water, the world was quiet. But up above, she knew it was filled with the roar of the rain and the rolling of the thunder
She wasn't afraid of getting shocked-there was now a lightning conductor in Diamond City that attracted almost all the bolts towards them, and they used it to power their generators.
Curie's idea, but don't tell Myrna that.
Sloan closed her eyes, and allowed herself to drift calmly beneath the water.
She was going to have to explain a lot of things to Doug when she saw him again.
Sloan was floating, but this time, it wasn't in water.
Her eyes were open, but she couldn't see.
Distantly, she could hear Curie's panicked voice, but it seemed far away, barely loud enough to understand.
-Sloan? Sloan, please, you have to get up! Sloan!-
She was vaguely aware of...pain...in her side.
Oh.
Oh.
She'd been stabbed.
A Super Mutant with a sharpened two-by-four. It had attacked her while she was in the water.
She'd killed him, but…
She could feel wetness beneath her.
Too warm to be water.
Too much of it.
The world burst upon her like a hurricane, and suddenly, she could see, and suddenly, the pain in her side wasn't dim and vague, it was sharp, excruciating agony.
She would have screamed, she tried to scream, but something was wrong with her lungs. Her voice left her throat in a wet, horrible gurgle, and something warm dribbled down her chin.
Rain deafened and blinded her, and lightning split across the sky before her eyes found Curie, crouched beside her, facing away, screaming an endless scream as she fired blast after blast of the alien weapon they'd found in a cave.
In the distance, a second supermutant roared in pain, and fell silent almost immediately.
Curie lurched back to her side, and Sloan struggled past the agony clouding her mind to move her hand.
Curie was soaking wet, and Sloan could have been fooled into thinking that the wetness on her cheeks was just from the rain, if not for the redness of her eyes and her running nose, and the paleness of her skin.
"Sloan!" The moment Curie realized she was conscious, she dove closer, leaning over Sloan so that all she could see was her, the sky hidden from view behind her distraught face and dripping hair. "My love, please, you must hold on!"
Curie seized the hand she had been twitching, and brought it to her chest. "My new Stimpack formula! I have almost perfected it! I can heal you, I just-"
The howl of a mutant hound that had spotted prey interrupted her.
"I just need more time!" Curie screamed over the sound, twisting away to reach for her blaster with one hand, and never taking the other out of Sloan's.
There were three flashes of blue light, and the mutant hound skidded to a stop barely two feet away, dead before it even stopped rolling, its flesh liquefying even as Sloan watched, until it had dissolved into a puddle of glowing blue goo.
Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. The rain continued to fall.
She could hear people shouting, screaming, the sound of gunfire and fighting. The guards at Hangman's Alley must have realized she was in trouble. They were only two blocks away.
They'd charged straight into a Super Mutant camp to save her.
Sloan found her gaze dragged skyward, and felt the edges of her world beginning to fade to black.
Curie's voice was a distressed cry, "Sloan, please, you must stay with me! Just give me more time, I can heal you, I know I can! My love, please, please stay with me. You cannot die, you cannot!"
Another howl, another laugh from a supermutant.
Curie screamed. Sloan had never heard a sound so filled with rage.
More flashes of light. More lightning crisscrossing the sky. More thunder shaking the earth. More blasts of gunfire. More of Curie's heartbreaking scream of rage. More super mutants and mutant hounds falling dead by the moment.
In a few minutes, they would all be dead. They would all charge straight at Curie, and they would get shot and they would die, or the settlers would cut through them with their miniguns.
All they needed were a few more minutes.
But Sloan didn't have that long.
She didn't have any time left at all.
She couldn't feel the pain in her side anymore. She couldn't see the flashing shots of the blaster. She couldn't see the lightning, she couldn't hear the thunder, and she couldn't feel the rain drenching her skin, or Curie's hand still in hers.
The last thing she knew, was a single, quiet thought.
I'll find you again, Curie, I promise.
And then everything…
...Just stopped.
…