Hi, so first bit of fanfiction, please review even if it is negative. Set 40 years after the events of Fallout 3, I do not own any rights to the fallout universe or it's characters. Enjoy.
Chapter 1: The prodigal son.
Visiting the old guy was always hard, even though he still had that famous old sparkle in his eyes something... something was missing, Luka had known him for pretty much as long as he could remember, and while he wasn't around for the glory days he still knew the lone wanderer for some of the best years of his life.
The lone wanderer had found him living in an upturned bus on the edge of the DC ruins. His family were killed in a super mutant attack that he couldn't remember; afterwards he spent almost a year scavenging through the ruins living off of whatever he could. Soon he got snapped up by raiders who used him to defuse mines. Most of the time they let him creep over and try to disarm them himself. Sometimes they just threw him onto the mine and stayed to watch the fireworks, luckily, Luka had a habit of only landing on dud mines. That lasted for a few months before Luka gained an affinity for explosives and snuck a bottlecap mine into the campfire. He stayed to watch the fireworks. Afterwards he went back to scavenging; the Lone Wanderer found him and offered him a place to stay in megaton. Nothing in return, well, almost.
The lone wanderer had been around 40 by the time he found Luka, world weary but still fighting the good fight, tough as he ever was but unfortunately, after a large dose of radiation in the project purity control room, completely infertile. Luka was effectively his adopted son. The lone wanderer (or Dad, to Luka) had taught him everything, how to shoot, hide, behave. Every night he would tell him tale's, his search for his father, the downfall of the enclave. Other stories that, although Dad would insist were true, Luka still would not believe, Dad had once told him he had been abducted by aliens, Luka knew he was just trying to be funny. Luka got all sorts of junk, from crude homemade dartguns to a 44. Magnum that he carried to this day. Of course the best gift he had gotten was deadmeat, or dogmeat, depending on what you saw him as.
One birthday Dad had given Luka deadmeat. He used to be called dogmeat, but age and too much radiation had ghoulified him. It was a medical marvel, the science teams at project purity had run numerous test's on the only ghoul dog in the DC ruins. Deadmeat had retained his mental and motor functions. In fact the only thing that had degraded was his ability to retain fluids. Many old dogs have this problem however it does become an issue when these fluids are glowing green irradiated dog urine. Now on the eve of his twentieth birthday Luka couldn't help but wonder what sort of surprise Dad had in store.
Luka's train of thought was interrupted by the sighting of megaton on the horizon. The walls had been built up somewhat over the years as more and more settlers moved in. Not surprising really, everyone wants to live in the safe presence of the Lone wanderer.
Luka had been in Rivet City for almost three months, a long time for Luka who wasn't the sort to stay in one place for too long. But the money down there was good. Luka had been making plenty of caps hunting mirelurks for their delicious meat. Not many people had the resolve to hunt such dangerous creatures but Luka had discovered that a railway rifle was an effective method of putting them down. Their armour clad joints got locked up if you fractured their thick armour with a railway spike, slowing them down and turning their natural defences against them. Still, he realised that he hadn't visited home in some time, he knew Dad would be ecstatic for his return.
Approaching Springvale Deadmeat gave out a low, guttural growl. Luka ducked and took cover along the wall of a burnt down ancient house. Drawing his 44. Luka surveyed his surroundings. He knew Springvale well, this, being the closest uninhabited location to megaton it had been where Dad had trained him in all the necessary skills he would need to survive the DC ruins. Luka looked for anything out of place, Deadmeat crouched behind him and growled quietly. Behind a pile of rubble Luka saw movement, he slowly raised his weapon, lining a shot at whatever would poke it's ugly head out.
Luka fired off a round, his arm bending under the force of the recoil, there was a crack, the top of the rubble pile exploded in a cloud of dust and gore. As the echo died out the sound of gunfire was replaced by silence. Luka waited for five minutes, staying completely still. Until Deadmeat calmed down and raised his one remaining ear, giving the signal for the all clear. Luka ran over to the rubble pile, behind it lay a dead mole rat with a hole the size of a baseball in it's head. Luka let out a sigh, picked up the mole rat and headed along the road. The word "lunch" crossed his mind more than once as he finally allowed himself to acknowledge the hunger he'd been feeling.
There was a knock at the door, The lone wanderer looked up from his workbench and yelled into the kitchen.
"Fawkes... the door"
"I'm coming, hold your horses old man" Came the deep and menacing voice from around the corner. Admittedly it had been a bold move to allow the tame super mutant to live in Megaton with him, but the lone wanderer held a certain amount of sway in town, and the residents had grown accustomed to him over time. Fawkes bent under the doorway wearing a kitchen apron, The lone wanderer laughed out loud, seeing an eight foot tall monster wearing an apron cracked him up. Still, even though they had to do major extension work on the small megaton house in order to build him a room of his own, and his strength sometimes meant him breaking things, The lone wanderer couldn't care less, fawkes was his best friend, loyal to the end, it would seem.
Fawkes opened the door and bent over to see under the frame-
"Sheriff Harden, fancy seeing you here", The sheriff, a spitting image of his father, and still wearing his regulators leather coat was taken aback by Fawkes's oddly sweet greeting.
"Evening Fawkes, umm, is he in?"
"Of course he's in, the old dog never moves" Fawkes let out a deep laugh "I'll get him now".
"No need, I'm just helping Luka with his mole rat" The lone wanderer heard his adoptive sons name.
"Luka's home? My god, Luka come in, let me see you" The lone wanderer wheeled himself away from his work bench and towards the door where the sheriff and Luka were struggling to carry a dead mole rat past a super mutant, with a ghoul-dog snapping at the moles dead corpse. It was quite a sight, he smiled, thinking 'I never got to see this shit in the vault'.
"Oh give it here puny men" fawkes grumbled, picking up the rat with one giant green hand, Deadmeat had grabbed on to a leg and was now dangling underneath the rat, growling as he was lifted off of the floor by the super mutant.
The lone wanderer's laughter grew and grew until it turned into frantic coughing, the cough went unnoticed by all except Luka who detected something wrong with his beloved father.
As the chaos subsided Fawkes retreated to the kitchen with the mole rat, Deadmeat ran upstairs in search of wadsworth, the household Mr. Handy. Not finding him the dog sat at the bottom of the stairs and cocked his head, confused.
"I bet your wondering where the robot went aint'cha?" Dad questioned the dog, who responded by poking his tongue out of his half decomposed cheek. The lone wanderer laughed and sat back in his chair, he was over 60 now, a miracle as far as wasteland life spans go, even more so considering all the bullet holes, scorch marks and radiation burns that riddled his old and frail body. Luka looked up from his ice cold nuka cola and gave the old man an inquisitive look.
"Hehe, that old bucket of bolts was losing his touch, his circuit fried and tried to give Fawkes a haircut. Didn't end well for Wadsworth"
"So what did you do with him?"
"Used him to replace the motor in that old cola machine, I was tired of warm soda, and his terrible jokes"
Luka sat up in his seat and put his feet on the table, his dad pointed to his filthy shoes and they were swiftly removed. Luka spoke to avoid being yelled at.
"Your looking good". The old man bellowed with laughter, once again his raspy lungs threw out a slew of phlegm and other substances.
"Don't try it, I look awful, my legs finally gave up a month ago and my shoulder's giving me grief again"
"Old battle wounds acting up that's all" Luka said quickly, hoping to avoid the conversation
"It's more than that son" he said, his usual cheery persona abandoned. "I'm Dying"
A long silence followed. The noise of Fawkes butchering a mole rat downstairs was not enough to detract from the icy atmosphere of the room.
"But you knew that didn't you?... That's why I haven't seen you in six months"
"They needed-"
"Y'know, I never took you for a coward"
"They needed me in rivet city"
"What were they being overrun by those mirelurks you were hunting? Hmm" Luka went silent.
"Yeah I knew you were there, and what you were doing, my old friend Harkness kept tabs on you for me, so, what, what is it you were doing that was so important? Or were you just too scared to come back and look a dead man in the eye?"
Luka had nothing to say. So he went upstairs to bed, he could hear the old man chuckling to himself downstairs, the chuckle turned into a deep rattling cough.
"Dad" Luka whispered to himself.