Notes and Musing: So the author here loves to ramble a lot. After seeing a lot of Fallout fictions and rather upset they do not portray a female Lone Wanderer correctly, I have started my own retelling of Fallout 3. But this story will not start out at the Vault like so many others. That story has been told countless times by others. Oh no, this one is placed countless time after the original Fallout 3 and before Broken Steel. This is placed in a setting where the Lone Wanderer truly lives up to her title. In this, she is truly lost and wandering the endless wastes forever. Until a promise and chance meeting can save her... Without further ado, Summer Spring Fall Winter presents...

The Garden of Eden

Act 1: Lone Wanderer

Thin carbon joints, frail and daint, stroked the exhausted warmth of the lengthened tube gingerly. Tips ran down the impressive length, each swipe bringing a slight shock of unfeeling ice which never failed to impulse shivers down a weakened back. It comforted the other to know they were this close to each other, how they often became one in day and night. Each day and night were spent with the other huddled up against the other, that closeness bringing a sense of security to the one who needed the most. At times, when it was needed, nimble joints would wrap and enclose the heavy long length in a veil, protecting the vital nakedness from predatory eyes. And most of all, they would both stimulate and clean up the other, seeking to bring a moment of heaven to their exhausted irradiated bodies in this dying world.

Such was the Capital Wasteland.

A faint radio crackled out oldies music, the kind which wanted to make any sane person dance.

And they would have...if a worn gaze was not seeing the sad sight of a man assaulting and raping a young girl.

The silence was deafening but the high pitched faint screams coming from the girl and the twisted laughs of the man, both a good three hundred meters away...

"Daddy!"

A single moment was all it took for a worn tired gaze to immediately harden into a cold impersonal glare, what previous flicker of empathy now silenced and replaced with cold nothingness. With not even a grunt, lithe joints and limbs shifted the length into position. The night served them both well as a cover for their actions. One bore skin while the other grew in bulk and length. Gently resting a cheek upon firmness, a pleasant heat rose forth to overtake and fill a long frozen over core. A cold gaze blinked.

Just for a moment, a heart fluttered and skipped a beat.

"I am Alpha and Omega. The Beginning and the End."

Lips frowned at the sweet verse.

Lining the sights of the massive wrapped length to vision and target over three hundred meters away, a breath was sucked in, released half-way. Held.

"Daddy! Please stop, it hurts. It hurts so..."

The radio's song ended.

"Helloooo Capital Wasteland~! It is I, Three Dog, your lord and master of the Universe and mixer of music~. Like always, ol' Three Dog is more than ready to calm your hearts and soothe your souls with the classics and give the now in what's been happenin' in our lovely D.C area and beyond. But first, some news..."

A cracked lip lifted upwards in a dying smile.

"Now I know that some of you have been dying to know whether the Super Muties have been pushed back or not. After all, they're the ones with sneering faces and bulk which can rip Wastelanders a new one in seconds. Ya know, the same old who have been fighting against our beloved..."

Worn digits, bony and frail from years of use and filth of the outside world, weakly drew back coarse canvas to shield fair flesh against the irradiated climate of the wastes. It was harsh and unforgiving out there, in this dead world they all lived in. Gone in a literal display of fire, brimstone, and flash. It was the end of humanity. Yet, at the same time, it was not. Time and nature proved that humanity could survive, even in the midst of a radioactive shattered atmosphere. With civilization in ruins, many people had fallen and surrendered into the darkest desires of humanity, the lawlessness and corruption in full swing.

A water caravan stopped to hand out precious supplies to a few stragglers in desperate need, just simply giving out the fresh life substance for free. And people had stopped rioting and stopped demanding, stopped fighting entirely.

It seemed the same old same old...

Humanity had life...

Finger tips brushed up against smoothed wood and cold metal as a few figures dressed in punk armor lept out from their hiding spots to attack. And in a moment, finger tips relinquished their wary caress from the familiar as the figures were gunned down cleanly. On the rooftop above the caravan, two light blue armoured figures silently withdrew their weapons after signaling the all-clear.

And Life went on...

"In other parts of the Wasteland, the Brotherhood of Steel has been slowly expanding Project Purity beyond the Jefferson Memorial, with the help of Rivet City..."

Project Purity. The waters of life that her beloved had started, stopped, and started again. Suddenly stopped by a lethal dose of radiation...

Delicate joints closed around the gem kept close to a home. Stroked lovingly how a long lost memory could only bring. Squeezed gingerly how lingering pain could only bring.

"I am Alpha and Omega. The Beginning and the End."

Her beloved had died and she had taken his place.

"As for our very own Lone Wanderer from Vault 101, nothing much has been heard ever since she's activated the purifier for her good dad. It's as if she's vanished off the face of the Wastes for good! I guess Daddy James-"

She turned off the radio to block out what came up next. She didn't need some disc jockey telling the entire dead remnant of the world that her...

Coughs racked a frail thinned wasted form as her anger flared, then was quickly subdued by sharp unforgiving explosion as her very soul burned once more. Heavy combat leather stomped forward a couple more steps, then teetered on edge. Dusty irradiated air sacs struggled to keep a rhythm steady, her entire frame convulsing violently. Frail joints and a cracked hand gripped an erratic chamber tightly, threatening to rip out the very thing keeping her body alive. An already hurt mind was hurting more, forced to relieve the moment where he told her to run. All she wanted to do that moment was to rip into that stupid room and save her beloved. To hold him in her arms at least once and tell those precious three words one last time.

But instead, here she was, clawing at her weak dying heart, in pain that could only be experienced and never described.

A stray buckle on her cloak switched the radio back on.

"...And 101 may be our strange Wandering Loner, but that doesn't mean we want her to die, lost and alone. She deserves so much better than that. All this time, she's been alone and it's been one accident after another, making more enemies than friends. So if any of you Wastelanders see her, do something! Take her in and give her shelter, food, water. Even just simply talking to her will help. Anything to keep her comfortable and safe. Help her as she has helped you. Poor thing... Girl, if you're out there, which I'm sure you are, our hearts and souls are with you! "

She crumpled to the ground as her legs suddenly went dead. Nothing was felt...nothing but the constant ache and burn of loneliness and longing. Which could never be quelled for the rest of her miserable existence.

Ashen cracked pink turned upwards in a wee sad smile.

It had been almost a year since she had activated the purifier and almost succumbed to radiation poisoning. Ever since then, since her father had died in front of her eyes, she had never been the same. She had fallen apart, spiritually and physically. Her mind would always linger to the words and feeling of her beloved every step of the way she took. What was once bright fresh sea of blue eyes had died down into a dead tinted empty sky of gray, affected by the ashes of the fallout still lingering in the air. Past smooth skin which remembered the shivering shocks of pure love, now pulsing in constant unending pain as pieces would literally fall apart. Scars and cracks danced in the surface of her appearance, fissuring deeply into half dead cells and irradiated carbon. Physically and mentally she was still alive.

But her heart, her once soft innocent encompassing love for her only beloved...now nothing but an endless infinite stratos of misery. And it had affected her choices during the rest of her journey. Instead of trying to become closer to others, she had sealed them off completely. Handed over that kind black sheriff the keys and deed to her spacious apartment and simply left without a goodbye. Essentially resisted and set that shotgun-toting ghoul free into the Wastes when he had tried to open up to her. Told that friendly Super Mutant that his services were not required anymore, despite how much she desperately wanted to scream and let out all her sorrows in front of him. She refused to respond to even her dog's attempts to cheer her up, putting on a fake smile and pointing the way to Vault 101. Reluctantly, the dog had obeyed. Collected all the deads' holotags and simply dropped them in the old man's face, bloodied and rusted over from the climate and desolate ash of the Wasteland. She added a final holotag to that group of the dead, telling the wise man that she had died with her only love. They had saluted as she walked past them, unaware that she was leaving them for the last time. As a last request, the girl asked that they close the fortress gate behind her.

Reminiscing about the various perils she had faced, her broken body and shattered soul had guided her to these places. From the lock of her previous home of Vault 101, the airplane wings of Megaton, the broken glass doors of various buildings of the DC area, the hatches of Rivet City, the gate of the mighty Citadel, to the irradiated chambers of the GECK of 87. There she stayed, simply waiting for the horrors to claim her. An hour later, the girl found herself sitting blankly in the DC ruins, a bystander to a three way skirmish of the Brotherhood, Super Mutants, and Enclave patrols. Somehow, she had sat in the middle of it all, her position a vantage point for no-man's land. Everything was a blur to her then, watching it play out like some macabre drama. The Enclave had reached her first, almost immediately questioning her and yelling at her to get up. When no reaction was elicited, an officer bent over to slap her in the face. Only to have parts of ashified skin and blood running down the black leather glove.

Everyone had avoided her after that.

The Lone Wanderer was truly alone. Orphaned and banished even from her only home. The only home she knew...back in the safety of the Vault. She had saved them and just about fixed everything which had gone so terribly wrong in there within such short notice. Even that fucking water chip. Then that bitch practically asked her to leave. Just like that. They had betrayed her like all the others. Like everyone else she had met. A fucking fool she had been and still was, thinking that they would accept her back with open arms. No. Each and every single person had betrayed and left her like trash...

A low pitiful growl escaped her lips as her thoughts drifted back to the only person who truly loved her and never left her until the bitter end. Then...he had to go too. All that was left was longing for the one thing she wished for the most, but could never have back. Fingertips gingerly tapped the blue gem just a few moments away from her face. Dull azure gazed forlornly into the abyss.

The abyss stared back into her.

Kaho Serizawa, the Messiah of the Wastes, the Last Best Hope for Humanity, cried.