Leslie is fifteen years old when she wants to run away for the first time.
"The whole reason we're in here is so humanity doesn't die out, right? We grow up, pair off, have kids, and die. That's the whole point," Leslie's voice is muffled through the mattress.
"I mean… I guess so. That's one way to look at it." Amata fiddles with her pen, not really paying attention to Leslie or her homework.
"I don't want my reason for existing to be some guy's baby-maker because Vault-Tec says so. I don't want to die in this dark cramped hole. I want to get out, I want to explore, I want to live." Leslie sits up, a serious expression on her face. "I want to see the sky and the stars."
"Do you really think you could do that? Given the chance, would you really leave?" Amata asks, brow furrowing. Leslie has never really had a conversation like this with her. She's been afraid to, a little bit, since the Overseer is Amata's father. But Amata is her best and only friend.
"I'd like to think so. I mean, wouldn't you? If you were given the chance of a lifetime, wouldn't you take it?" Amata sighs, throwing down her pen and pinching the bridge of her nose.
"I don't know if I could. We've lived here for generations, I can't deny that the vault is an important part of me. Besides, we don't even know if anything's left out there."
"Amata, don't you even want to try? Don't you hate being in here, don't you hate that you can never get away from Butch and his band of idiots because he can't leave either? Don't you hate that we're all stuck in here forever?" Leslie is close to tears. Amata gives her a harsh glare.
"Leslie this is where we live. We can't leave, there's nothing left out there to be a part of." Leslie swallows thickly.
"Okay," she says shakily. "Okay. I get it." She grabs her books and stands to leave, but stops in the doorway. She turns to look at Amata, with a hint of fear in her eyes.
"Please don't tell your dad," she whispers. Amata nods.
Leslie runs through the hallways on her way back home, trying not to cry. She isn't really paying attention to where she's going, she knows the way so well her feet are moving on their own. As she rounds the corner, she runs into someone.
It's Butch, and he looks like he's on the verge of tears too. They can both see it in each other's faces.
"What're you lookin' at Nosebleed? Scram." His words are harsh, but there's no venom in his tone. They still push Leslie over the edge.
"Why are you always so cruel? What did I ever do to you?" She's fully crying now, tears streaming down her face to land in the collar of her jumpsuit. Eyes widening, Butch opens his mouth but she cuts him off. "You are always so awful to me and Amata and I hate living here because of you!" Leslie is shouting at him now, and he starts to stutter out a response but she shoves past him, knocking him to the floor as she runs to her quarters.
He watches her go, breathless, his cheek still throbbing from his mother's palm.
Leslie bursts through her quarters and goes straight to her room, crying. James knocks on her door, wanting to comfort her, but she can't face him. He's the reason she's here, he's the one that caused her creation.
He doesn't want her to go outside. Nobody does.
Leslie decides, with dried out eyes and a deep-set exhaustion in her mind, that she's going to see the stars someday.
She won't let anyone stop her.
Butch is seventeen when he wants to run away for the second time.
"I just don't understand how she can let him run around like that, so out of control."
Butch stiffens in his hiding spot, stuffed between a tall stack of crates and the ceiling in a maintenance alcove. He recognizes the voice of Pepper Gomez, Freddie's mom. She must have just sat down on a bench around the corner with someone else. No one can see him, but he can hear everything. He sits up on his elbows now, placing his journal face down on his chest, intent on hearing the rest of the conversation.
"Well, you know, it's the…" Butch can almost hear Beatrice Armstrong miming putting a bottle to her mouth. His stomach drops out, leaving a gaping hole inside him. "She gets into her moods and spends up their rations coupons. She can barely function, the poor girl." Butch digs his nails into his palms. He fights the urge to bite his tongue, to pull out his toothpick and cut the anger out of his body.
"If the boy's father hadn't disappeared, maybe he would have been able to discipline the brat and keep Ellen in line. She never talks to anyone, I don't know why she even bothers, pretending everyone doesn't think she's a complete trainwreck." Butch stops listening. Blood is roaring in his ears and the rage moving through him is encouraging him to fight them, fight anything.
"Oh Pepper, you're so naughty," Beatrice laughs. Pepper joins in, and they giggle as they mock his mom. "If only you could talk Herman into knocking some sense into him."
Butch jumps down from his hiding place and lands on his heels. He imagines he leaves a massive dent in the metal floor, that his footsteps leave fire in his wake. The two women pause in their gossiping at the sound. Rounding the corner, he punches the wall next to them, leaving a bloody mark on the cold steel and a loud metal clang echoing down the hallway. Butch doesn't see their shocked expressions, his vision is blurred with angry tears. His hand smarts, and he takes off running down the hallway.
He realizes his feet are steering him towards the clinic.
Nosebleed is there, watching her father stitch up a cut on Stanley's arm. The doc and his daughter look shocked to see him standing there in the doorway, breathing hard, close to tears. For a minute, he stands there like a complete idiot, before he holds up his throbbing bleeding hand.
James whispers, "Go ahead honey," and Leslie grabs some gauze and disinfectant from the tray table next to her.
"What happened?" she asks, taking his hand and leading him to sit down in a nearby chair. Butch wipes at his face with his other hand, but says nothing. He doesn't want the anger bubbling inside him to spill out, so he just frowns. Her mouth quirks to the side in a quizzical, but understanding expression. Holding his hand, she dabs at his bleeding knuckles with a cotton ball and all Butch can think about is how much he wants to be out of this awful tin-can purgatory. Hot tears prick at the corners of his eyes again.
To be away from everyone who's ever known him and every awful thing he's ever done. Leslie looks up and meets his gaze, and part of him thinks she knows how he feels.
Part of him knows he's the reason she might feel that way.
Amata is nineteen when she wants to run away for the third time.
She wakes up to screams and blaring alarms. The vault is in chaos, Jonas is dead, she's pretty sure others are too, and she's waking Leslie from her sleep to get her out of there. Amata's father wants blood, because James is gone and there are rad roaches everywhere and Amata knows that everything has changed.
They run down the hallways, hand in hand, terrified of what might be around the corner, and Amata really sees the vault for the first time. A place of fear and danger. And she knows that part of it is her father's fault. She separates from Leslie, hoping to reason with Alphonse, hoping that maybe he isn't crazy and he can fix everything. He's the Overseer, he's supposed to fix things.
It goes poorly.
Just as she's afraid Alphonse might actually let Officer Mack hurt her, Leslie talks him down, wearing what must be Butch's jacket. Amata wants to ask about it, but there's no time. They escape down the secret tunnel to the massive metal door that leads outside.
"Okay. Okay we… we made it. You need to go." Amata is out of breath. Her heart is beating loud in her ears. Leslie is staring at the control panel, and suddenly snaps out of her reverie, as if she finally realizes where this is heading.
"I couldn't have done this without you." She's close to crying. Amata wants to cry with her, but she can't.
"No, you didn't need me. If anyone can survive out there, it's you." Leslie shakes her head, and her gaze catches on the vault door. Amata can see the fear in her eyes.
"Come with me," she asks suddenly, and Amata's heart sinks. She was afraid Leslie was going to say that.
"I can't. You know I can't." Amata isn't sure if she's telling that to Leslie or herself. Leslie opens her mouth to fight her, but the shouts of security guards are much closer now than they were a second ago. "Don't fight me, just go. You need to go." It's too soon for both of them, but they both know Leslie can't stay.
Leslie fights back tears, but she nods, and pulls Amata into a crushing hug. She whispers into Leslie's ear, "You got what you wanted. Be safe." They pull apart, and Amata mashes the control panel until steam hisses from the ceiling and different alarms add to the cacophony around them. The massive door begins to shake and groan, rolling away to reveal a dark, rocky exterior.
James' daughter hesitates at the edge, before a shout from Officer Park makes her jump and cross the threshold, into the world that none of them know still exists. Amata feels compelled to follow her, but Officer Wolfe puts a heavy grip on her shoulder and pulls her away from the open entrance before she can take a step.
Leslie is nineteen when she runs away.
It's Butch who finally convinces Amata to ask for help. A week after Paul died, he was angry, real angry, not the quiet indignance he'd been living with his entire life. She was up late, trying to come up with a solution that would lead to peace, and he comes up next to her with a distinct look on his face. She follows him down an empty hallway, and he stands with his back to her.
"We ain't gonna fix this by ourselves." His voice is quiet, they don't want to alert anyone, but she can tell that it's also close to breaking. "You gotta get her back here. She can do something, anything. But I just can't take it anymore." Amata knows who he's talking about. She knows he's right.
"She could be dead for all we know, Butch. And I don't think she'd want to come back anyways. Everyone made it pretty clear last time that they didn't want her here." Butch whirls around to face her.
"I didn't, damn it. You didn't either, I'm pretty damn sure." He starts pacing, arms crossed tightly over his chest. "You always do this, you always think of reasons why we can't—well what about some god damn reasons why we can?" Amata can't think of a response, but Butch plows through the silence anyways. "If we don't do something, everyone is going to die. I can- I can help Stanley find some electronic junk, we can rig the PA system or something, we can send a message out and get her to come here and make this stop." He comes to a stop right in front of her, breathing hard. Amata looks up and tears are streaming down his face. She wishes she could show him that she feels the same way. She wishes that she could cry like he could.
Instead, she takes his hands and stands on her toes to push her forehead against his. Both of them have their eyes closed.
"Okay," she breathes. "We'll send a message."
A month of hard living and strange encounters feels like a waste when Leslie gets the signal to come home. She considers ignoring it, what did they ever do for her anyways, but she misses Amata with an ache and she doesn't want to abandon the few people she called friends in that bunker of lies. No one seems glad to see her when she arrives, but she does what they want her to do.
Amata and Butch are grateful, at least. She sees them holding hands late at night while planning the raid on the Overseer's office. She misses both of them, but she knows that she isn't going to be staying long. She knows it can't go back to the way it was.
She doesn't really want it to.
Leslie realizes she's some sort of fixer for everyone, a multi-purpose tool to provide the right amount of force, a properly placed bullet, a push in the direction people want things to go. So she pushes, and she pushes Alphonse right down to the ground.
He concedes the hopelessness of their situations before she has to put his head under her boot and push. A small part of her is glad she didn't have to. Amata tells her she can't stay, as though she wanted to come back to the place she'd wanted to leave since she was fifteen years old.
Butch watches all of this, and when Leslie is standing at the entrance to the vault with a hard look in her eyes and a strength in her shoulders he's never seen before, his idiot feet plant themselves right next to her. He remembers the time she gave him that look over his bloody knuckles, the time she saved his mom from the roaches, and he knows that he can't stay here any longer. Especially now that the fragile civility the vault lost months ago might be on the verge of repair.
"Anyone else?" she asks. Butch sees her pointed look at Amata, the unspoken offer hanging in the air between the three of them. No one else comes forward. Leslie takes Butch's hand. "Let's get out of here." She pulls him along, he doesn't even say goodbye to his mom, he doesn't know where she is, and his feet hit real rocks.
Stumbling on the uneven terrain, Leslie pulls him through the small cave towards a wooden door with sunlight streaming through the cracks. It must be sunlight, but he's not sure. He's never seen it before. The sound of the vault door closing distracts him and he turns back for one final look before being jerked into the blinding outside world.
Butch is nineteen when he runs away.
When night falls, they make a small camp halfway to "rivet city" (what the hell is a rivet) and Leslie shoves her pip-boy's map under his nose and asks, "Where do you want to go?"
His mouth is dry as he considers the fact that he can go. He can go anywhere.
He doesn't want to go anywhere.
"Where were we going before we stopped?" Butch is dodging the question, he knows, Leslie knows. Leslie answers.
"Rivet City. It's safe, it'll probably remind you of home. We've got about another day to get there, so you can get your fill of the scenery."
"Are you…" he pokes at the fire. "Are you still looking for your dad?" Leslie sighs.
"Someone there might know him. I was going to try to find them and ask." Butch lets out a long breath.
"That sucks." She snorts.
"Yeah." Butch is burning with questions but he can't find the courage to ask any. He tries to go to sleep instead, but it feels strange having the limitless space above him instead of the cold metal ceilings.
Still, he thinks. The stars are nice to look at.
They get to Rivet City the next day, and Leslie is right. It does remind him of the vault. But it also doesn't, because it's filled with people. People who have no idea who he is, or what kind of failure he's turned out to be. She sits him down at a bar, buys him a drink, and disappears into the bowels of the old ship. He chats up the bartender, who teaches him a lesson about living outside the vault (apparently she likes Leslie) and gives him a free refill (apparently she likes Butch).
Two hours later, Leslie reappears with red-rimmed eyes.
"I'm leaving. My dad was just here and Dr. Li knows where I can find him." She looks at him like she's expecting an answer. Butch doesn't know what she wants from him. Leslie rolls her eyes like his response should be the most obvious thing in the world.
"So you have a decision to make. Are you staying here, or are you coming with me?" Leslie extends her hand toward him, palm up.
After a second's hesitation, Butch grabs it, knowing she's his best shot at making it in this crazy gigantic upside-down world.
He doesn't want to run from this.
After two weeks of trying to rebuild order and establish reliable contact with Megaton, Amata is exhausted. Her father is completely unwilling to help, unwilling to leave their quarters. Half the residents are still scared and resentful at their forced introduction to the outside world. The rest, though willing, are few in number, and are just as tired as she is.
The dead have been buried outside (Freddie Gomez and Susie Mack were ecstatic about digging in the dirt) and most of the damage to the interior has been repaired. Things should be easier. But each time Amata steps outside, each time she travels to Megaton and speaks with the people there, her urge to not go back gets stronger and stronger. The sunlight feels so nice on her face, and she fears she's becoming addicted to fresh air. Part of her knows that somewhere, Leslie and Butch are looking at the same sky.
She misses them both, a lot, actually. Amata became friends with Butch after the rebels joined up against her father. Adjusting to not having Leslie in her life had been difficult.
But someone always needs something, a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, and Amata is running out of patience and platitudes. She's too busy to leave. That's what she tells herself.
Two weeks, three days, and about five hours after the vault opened up (after Leslie and Butch left) Amata is up late reviewing trade negotiations when her pen spits ink all over the page. Hours worth of careful penmanship and rough drafts is ruined. Amata bursts into angry tears and rips the papers apart, crumpling up the shreds and throwing them against the wall of her father's old office like the baseball player she used to be when she was nine years old. She can't sit back down, breathing hard in her frustration, and makes a decision, much like the one she had to make almost three months ago. But this time, it isn't about the vault.
It's about her.
Amata wipes away her tears and picks up the radio receiver. She takes a deep breath.
"I don't know if I'll be so lucky this time, but it's me again. If you get this message, come back one more time, please. I need your help and… I'll be waiting. The door will be open this time."
She sets the message to loop on the same frequency her old message was playing on. Not wanting to face the consequences of her decision, she goes back to her quarters to sleep, exhausted. She doesn't see her father.
In the early morning, Amata brings a chair outside to watch the sunrise. It's something she's been wanting to do ever since she opened the doors. The faded gray sky lights up yellow, and her ears pick up a quiet conversation that seems to be getting louder.
"... didn't want to the first two times, what makes you think she'll…" Amata recognizes the voice, the name and face attached to it deeply engraved in the planes of her memory.
"... else would she put out a message like that? It was on our…" Boots crunch on the gravel path leading to the entrance of the vault. Amata stands up, pistol tight in her hand hanging loose at her side. She's learned to be careful. The conversation grows louder until she comes face to face with Leslie and Butch, holding hands, both dirty and bruised and thoroughly changed by the new environment they had been living in. They both seem surprised to see her outside, waiting for them.
Butch's stupid mouth opens up and the words "What up," fall out. Amata ignores him completely. Her gaze is wholly focused on Leslie, who has the slightest knowing smile on her face.
"Come with me," Leslie asks her again, an echo of months ago. This time is different, Amata thinks. This time, she says,
"Okay." Leslie takes her hand, and together, the three of them leave the vault behind.
Amata is nineteen when she runs away.
This is slightly AU, mostly because of Amata, but also for the fact that you don't get Trouble on the Homefront until after The Waters of Life, where (spoiler) James dies. I thought it fit the pacing better for LW to still be looking for him, and I like to think when Butch and Leslie pick up Amata in the end they're coming back from Vault 112.
I really love these kids, I really love writing about them, and I hope you love them too! I also love writing teen vault angst.
Big thank you to Pugglemuggle for beta-ing and encouraging my giddiness! This would have been much worse without you.