*Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own Fallout and will not profit from this story in any way.*

"You have a daughter of your own? Then you'll understand. I would give up everything to keep her safe. Even my freedom. Even my wife's dream. The world out here is no place for a child. Cardiology. Pediatrics. Psychiatry. Whatever your needs. You'll find I can handle, well… I can handle just about anything."

"There can be no second thoughts about this, Wilder. We need a doctor, not a dreamer. Once the two of you come in, you can never leave. As far as your daughter knows, she was born in the vault. She'll die in the vault. Do you accept these terms?"

"Without reservation."

If there was trouble in the grade-school classroom, there was seldom any question about who was to blame. The child never tried to hide it: whether it was taking responsibility for the teetery desk pyramid she'd gotten the others to build when the teacher stepped out of the room or apologizing when a particularly messy experiment went wrong, she always stepped forward to accept blame - and invariably helped clean up afterwards. Yes, Marilyn Wilder was a handful, but she was also among the boldest and brightest in her cohort, a natural leader and the kind of student a less constitutionally-nervous teacher than Beatrice Armstrong would delight in. As it was, however, the vault dwellers half-blamed the doctor's nine-year-old daughter when her teacher took an early retirement for health-related reasons, thereafter emerging from her quarters only to surprise people with her darkly unstable poetic offerings.

Even as the council leaders chastised the girl and urged her absent-minded father to rein in his child's behavior, there were those among them who secretly wished that their own offspring had half the vibrance and creativity of this cuckoo who'd fallen into their nest. Why, the Overseer's own daughter, Amata, was a shy little thing, too timid to be remarkable, a perfectly forgettable wallflower who followed the rules so perfectly that she never did anything significant, whether good or bad. The others fell out uninspiringly into groups of sheep like Christine Kendall and Paul Hannon or bullies like Butch DeLoria. No one wanted to admit it, but Vault 101 was not thriving, and hadn't for generations: the population was shrinking, depression was rampant in every age group, and everywhere one looked there was a malignant apathy that stifled innovation.

Similar only in appearance - both brown-eyed, olive-skinned girls who wore their dark hair long - Marilyn and Amata were nevertheless fast friends, and constant companions from an early age. Their birthdays fell within days of each other - Marilyn's was July 13, and Amata's was the 16th - and they always helped make each other's party special, even with a shoestring budget for decorations and gifts. By the time they were both five, Marilyn had noticed that Amata never seemed to want to go home to her father, preferring instead to linger in the Wilders' cramped quarters long enough to be invited to dinner; for long afternoons, they would play in a corner of the clinic, quietly building houses from the massive overstock of tongue depressors, out of the way of the bustle of the patients going in and out. At first, Overseer Almodovar didn't seem to mind - as he said if the children happened to wander in search of a missing toy, his office was no place for them to play. As they got older, however, he began to scowl whenever he saw the two of them together, and then started sending one of his lackeys to collect Amata long before she was done playing. After the infamous noodle incident of 2270, he forbade his daughter to go to the Wilders' quarters at all, barred Marilyn from visiting Amata at their home, and banned children from the clinic altogether. They still managed to spend time together - at school and in secret corners of the vault - but the idyllic times were over.

Partly a result of the Overseer's interference, but also partly due to their own changing interests, the girls grew slightly apart in their teen years, though they still remained friends. Marilyn had moved beyond her childish antics by this point and no longer tormented her teachers with disruptive behavior, though she did continue to push the envelope with her questions. Mr. Brotch, a cynical, jaded man who had been better suited to a different profession, took to assigning essays in response to every difficult question, dismissing his student to the vault's database to search for her answers there. The papers she turned in, after reading them aloud to Amata and discussing the topic with her at length, were quite often flawed and incorrect because of the computer's limited information and poor search function, but they did betray a dangerous amount of independent thinking, as well as an unhealthy interest in the world outside. These small rebellions did not go unnoticed, and many eventually found their way to the Overseer's desk. Marilyn realized this at some level, but considered it a good thing: she'd succeeded in speaking her piece, and was willing to let the world respond how it would.

Though a perfectly satisfactory student herself - indeed, her grades were consistently the highest in the class - Amata couldn't always follow her friend's leaps of imagination, nor understand why she found all of these questions worth pursuing, but she still listened attentively when Marilyn told her about aspects of history, sociology, and science that the official curriculum never touched upon. These mini-lectures always ended with the perfunctory question, "It's interesting, isn't it?" And Amata always nodded, smiling tolerantly at her friend's infectious enthusiasm. She herself was much less interested in breaking convention, having inherited a portion of her father's conservative attitude; this reticence was a constant source of frustration to Marilyn, and the root of most of their disagreements. Every time Amata had been punished severely in her life, it had been because of something Marilyn did or said; as she repeated, again and again to deaf ears, Marilyn's way of doing things always brought misery - to herself and to everyone around her. She wasn't asking her to stop being who she was, but could she please be more careful about it? At this point, Marilyn would usually adopt a waspish tone and accuse Amata of being a stick-in-the-mud (or worse), and the old arguments would begin anew.

At the end of one such fight when they were both 13, Marilyn became uncharacteristically serious. "Please tell me you'll loosen up a little when you're Overseer. Help me make this vault something to be proud of."

"I'm not going to be Overseer. I don't want to be. You know that." Marilyn didn't say anything. She knew - and Amata knew, for that matter - that Almodovar intended the supervisory track for his only child, test results and inherent ability notwithstanding. Amata had other plans, however. Drawn by the memory of her childhood's happiest moments, she aspired to work in the clinic when she was older, to train as a doctor with Jonas and James. She wanted to help people, not to boss them around; let someone else do that. At their age, children were expected to volunteer for ten hours every week at the duty station of their choice; while Marilyn usually divided her time between the lab, the reactor, and the hydroponics bay, Amata almost always spent her hours in the clinic, learning and helping however she could. "You should be Overseer, Marilyn, not me."

The other girl grimaced, looking down at the essay that had sparked their fight in the first place ("Why the GOAT Exam Is Necessarily Rigged"). "Yeah. That'll happen. Just do me a favor, okay: if and when you do take over for your father, promote me out of whatever hole he's thrown me into. I don't want to die before I've done something important."

"Of course. My first decree as Overseer will be to switch places with you. Won't that confuse them." And just like that, their anger forgotten, the two girls were laughing together again, children with all of the optimism that comes with being young.

The teenage years marked a growing schism between Marilyn and James. They were both passionate, opinionated people with a tendency to feel and express things deeply, and this was doubly true for Marilyn in mid-adolescence. Anger over her situation, while mostly held in check at school and other public obligations, tended to spill over in private with her parent; challenging conversations became shouted arguments at a moment's notice, and his resolute calmness only infuriated her further. An awkward witness to some of these flare-ups, Amata didn't understand her friend's constant attempts to provoke the doctor; her father's only communications took the form of cold, unilateral commands, and she would have given anything to be able to have a real conversation with him. She said as much one day at lunch.

"You don't know how lucky you are. Your dad is nice. I don't get why you treat him like you do."

This remark rang hollow to the angry fifteen-year-old. "Oh, stuff it, Amata. You don't have to live with his bullshit. He grounded me to quarters and clinic for the next two weeks. For my last essay. Overseer got wind of it and raked him over the coals apparently, accusing him of disseminating 'seditious literature.' Dad dismissed it as a schoolgirl fantasy. He can't even stick up for his own kid."

"He's worried about you. I'm worried about you. I don't know how you expected 'Term Limits and Elections for Supervisory Roles in Vault 101' to go down, but my father obviously took that as a threat. You need to stop doing that sort of thing, for both yours and your father's sakes. For God's sake, Mari, grow up already. You're not a kid anymore. You're too smart to be this stupid."

Marilyn's face grew ugly. "Right away, Almodovar. What else would you like me to do? Lick your boots? Write a poem in honor of your father's twentieth year in charge?" She shook her head, flipping her loose hair out of her face. "You're becoming as bad as he is. I don't know why I expected anything else." She picked up her tray and moved to a different table, leaving her only friend fuming in stunned shock. It was weeks before they spoke again - no small feat in such a small community - and even then there was no offer of an apology, only a shamefaced confession: "I miss you." "Me too." And so they went on as friends, for lack of anything better to do, but something had snapped between them that would never be mended completely; if either of them regretted their harsh words, then neither said so until it was too late.

All too soon, the day of the GOAT exam arrived, a few months after their sixteenth birthdays, with half the class suffering the aftereffects of a scuffle in the hallways. Mr. Brotch, conveniently too late to witness any of it, pretended not to notice Butch's bloody nose, Marilyn's torn vault suit and split lip, or Amata's tearful sniffling. Butch's penchant for small cruelties had been the genesis for his gang of three, or "Tunnel Snakes" as they were calling themselves now. On this particular morning, what had begun along the usual lines of name-calling had escalated to actual violence after he'd given Amata's hair a vicious jerk in front of Marilyn, who was nothing if not loyal. Paul and Wally at least had the decency not to join into a fight against two girls, one of whom was crying, but Butch still had the advantage with his superior height and strength, with Marilyn only getting one lucky hit in before he'd punched her in the belly, winding her and ending the fight. The only thing you could say to Amata's credit was that she hadn't run; she hadn't helped either, too afraid of those fists and feet to leap into the fray.

The test that they'd spent so much time dreading was inane, with most of the multiple-choice answers either meaningless or equally wrong. Throwing caution and appearances to the wind, Marilyn filled out all of her answers before the questions even began, a straight line of A's all of the way down, and then stared straight ahead, waiting for Mr. Brotch to finish proctoring the exam. When he was done talking, she turned the paper in, accepted his immediate verdict without comment, and was the first to leave the classroom.

Scalp aching from where Butch had yanked her ponytail, Amata took more time, answering how she imagined a doctor - or, at least, a non-sociopath - would answer. It made no difference; he didn't even glance at the paper she set in front of him, but turned it upside down and looked her in the eye.

"Supervisory track, Miss Almodovar. No surprises there." His voice was gentle, sympathetic even, but she didn't notice. In a moment, she too was gone, off to find her estranged friend to commiserate.

"...I know it's not what you wanted, sweetheart, but you could have done much worse. At least this will make you fairly indispensable." Dr. Wilder was speaking normally, but there was a tense undercurrent beneath his cool facade. "I hope you'll come to appreciate the work we do here."

Marilyn snorted in disgust, then caught sight of Amata lingering in the doorway. "Watch what you say, Dad. Here comes our future Overseer. Hey, thanks for the help back there with Butch, by the way. You're a really kick-ass best friend."

"There's no call to be unkind, Marilyn. Hello, Amata. How did your test go?"

"Hi Dr. Wilder. I… I… guess I won't be volunteering here anymore. All of my work hours will be with my dad and the security officers now. I've learned a lot these past few years, though. Thanks."

He gave her a warm smile. "You're welcome. I'm sorry it didn't work out as you hoped. If it means anything, I did recommend you for the physician's track. You'll be fine in leadership, though."

Marilyn leaned against the wall, arms crossed. She also smiled, but it looked forced and it made her lip bleed again. "You know what, Amata? I'm starting to think me'n you were swapped at birth, or maybe both of our dear, departed mothers were fooling around seventeen years ago. What do you think, Dad? It's obvious that you'd rather have her as a daughter."

"That's enough," he snapped, visibly angry now. "You won't talk about your mother that way."

Marilyn wasn't done digging her own grave. "I got the job you wanted, Amata. And I don't even want it! How does that make you feel?"

Amata found her own anger for once, "Ashamed. Ashamed that I've wasted so much time on a selfish brat like you. You don't know what you have. What you have to lose. You should be grateful that your father gives a shit about you. You're an obnoxious, ungrateful beast and I hope you figure that out before it's too late." Red-faced with anger and embarrassment, she stalked away to compose herself. It was time to find her father and formally accept her role.

Three years passed relatively smoothly. Once the GOAT had sorted them out, young adults divided their time evenly between continuing education and on-the-job training. After a long cold spell following exam day, there was cordiality, but scant warmth between Marilyn and Amata, and little time to spend together in any case. Butch continued being Butch, however, and they were united at least in self-protection; Marilyn insisted that the two of them should carry police batons in the corridors and train together twice a week in their use. ("After all, I'm not always going to be there when he starts something.") As they got stronger and Butch got whacked a few times where it hurt, the "Tunnel Snake" seemed to shrink from a real threat into a posturing boy, and they stopped worrying about their safety; at around the same time, Amata finally found in herself to act like the Overseer-in-waiting, and shut down not only the attacks, but also the insults. Life became all tolerable, repetitive sameness, day after day, world without end; slogging through boredom, they almost missed the fights. Still, they kept training. Just in case.

One night, however, on an evening two days after Marilyn's nineteenth birthday and one day before Amata's, the older girl broke up the routine. They'd been exercising on the reactor level, which was as private a place as you could ask for in the vault, and just as they were putting their sparring tools aside, Marilyn tapped Amata on the shoulder and grinned, holding up a small bottle of whiskey.

"Want to celebrate? Happy birthday to us."

Amata's eyes grew wide with surprise. "Where'd you get that?" Like all consumables, liquor was tightly regulated in Vault 101. Only adults, age twenty and up, were issued ration cards redeemable for food and drink.

Marilyn shrugged. "Dad's stash. He won't notice. Or, if he does, he'll just think he drank it himself and forgot."

"Does… does he drink a lot, then?"

Marilyn got comfortable, leaning back against the wall and speaking to the ceiling. "Hm. Less than Mrs. DeLoria, but probably more than his patients would be comfortable with if they knew." She took a sip and passed the bottle over. "The man is not happy. I've only just realized it in the last couple of years, but he fits in even worse than I do around here. He's just quieter about it." She smirked, watching Amata's expression after she took her first incautious swig. "You ever drink before?"

Amata shook her head, choking, eyes tearing up from the harsh liquid. "D-d-dad doesn't ever keep alcohol around."

"You get used to the taste. That isn't its selling point anyhow." Despite what she'd said, her mood wasn't celebratory; quite the contrary, her tone was mournful, reflective. "Why is my family so weird, Amata? Me and my dad… we really don't seem to belong here. He dreams bigger than the vault, and I think that's why I do too."

"I don't know." She tipped the bottle for a more careful sip. "There's bound to be an outlier or two in every generation, right? Lucky you."

"Will you open the vault someday, Amata? When your turn comes?" She leaned forward, intent on the answer. They hadn't talked like this in a long time, and she'd clearly missed it.

"I don't know, Mari. I'll have to weigh that decision carefully. There's a lot at stake there. For everybody, not just you."

"What about just me, then? Let me go or I'll be an eternal headache to you. Dad too, if he's still alive by then." Her smile looked sick now. "All threats aside, I don't know if I can take fifty years in this place."

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

Disappointed, she sat back. "I guess that's that, then." They didn't say anything else, and when the bottle was empty, each wobbled off to their own quarters and back to the jobs where they'd spend the rest of their lives.

A month after this last conversation, the fragile stability of Vault 101 collapsed when, taking advantage of a radroach outbreak in the night, James Wilder escaped from the vault, taking with him the remainder of Overseer Almodovar's sanity. No longer differentiating between friend and foe, innocent and guilty, he pursued the doctor's daughter with armed men, tortured his own flesh and blood for information, and threatened any hint of mutiny with immediate execution. By the end of that long, violent morning, a dozen people lay dead, three of them within sight of the vault's heavy door, now rolled aside.

The last person standing, the woman whose reputation would one day span the entire east coast, stood trembling beside Officer Park's body, still holding the gun that she'd fired in desperate self-defense. She'd killed him, a man she'd known her entire life. Him and Wolfe both. She'd had to, because they'd killed her friend. They would have killed her next. Turning back, staying, was no longer an option - not that it really ever had been, not since she'd learned that they'd beaten Jonas to death. They'd crossed a line, and now so had she.

Knowing there wasn't time for this, that more guards would be coming soon - and the gun was empty - the fugitive dropped to her knees beside the third body, checking for a pulse for no better reason than she wanted to touch her hand one more time (her eye was gone, oh God, her head wasn't all there anymore) and stroked the hair she'd often brushed and braided as a child while idling away the hours in the clinic, getting blood on her hand as she did so. Guilt, grief, and horror threatened to overload her already unbalanced psyche, keeping her paralyzed, kneeling here until someone walked up and shot her in the head as well. She wasn't to blame for everything that had happened today, but this… this was on her.

Marilyn had convinced Amata that they should - that they could escape together - and at first their plan had seemed to work, with the confusion caused by the lock-down and the roaches allowing them to slip through the vault unnoticed. But then Amata got caught sneaking back to her quarters to get the Overseer's office key and her own father had her questioned until she was screaming, until Marilyn came to save her. But Amata was slow, scared, and unwilling to fight the people that were trying to kill them, and in the end their escape was only half-successful.

After what felt like an hour, but was probably only a minute, she made herself get up and go. Leaving the gun behind beside the body - an immensely foolish act that she'd live to regret bitterly once she learned more about the world outside - the future Lone Wanderer gave her now former home one last look and stumbled out into the unknown with nothing more than the Pip-Boy she'd had since her tenth birthday, the clothes she was wearing, and a bloodstained holodisk in her pocket. There had been no chance to play it since she'd found it on Jonas' body, but it was there for when she had a chance to breathe. Outside.

It was high noon, with the sun at its zenith beating down and desiccating every creature unlucky enough to be caught out in it. Lucas Simms stood under the overhang of Megaton's gate, keeping his eyes on the wasteland. He didn't always take up watch out here - the city had a robot deputy on duty, after all - but sometimes a sheriff had to lay his own eyes on the land. That's how he had the dubious honor of being the first wastelander to lay eyes on Megaton's newest misfit.

His first inclination was to wonder how she had survived a journey of even a few miles from the vault in the hills. That blue jumpsuit marked her as easy prey far worse than actual nudity would have done. One encountered screaming, naked, juiced-up raiders that would take your face off as soon as look at you, but no one had anything but pity or contempt for an obvious vault dweller. They got better or they died, more commonly the latter, but they lost that suit pretty damn quick if they were smart. The girl - in her late teens or early twenties, he'd guess - didn't even have a weapon. Or any supplies at all. She was wild-eyed, battered, and already dehydrated, and looked up at him with mixed hope and terror.

"May I have some water, please?"

Simms liked polite people. He nodded, tipping his hat back to get a better look at her. "We have water to spare inside. And it's not even that irradiated. I got questions for an'body who comes in, though. For you, I'll keep it real simple until you've gotten that drink: what's your name?"

This was meant to be an easy one, but maybe the kid had been out in the sun for too long, because even this seemed to throw her. She stood there, blinking stupidly at him, mouth moving soundlessly.

He started opening the gate anyway, talking as he did so, using the same soothing tone that he would on a wounded brahmin. "Hey, if you're running from something or someone, now's a great time to start fresh. You can be whoever you want to be now. Choose a new name if you don't want your fellow vaulties to track you down, or if you can't stand the old one an'more."

"I was… I am… that is, I'll be… Amari. You don't think she'd mind, do you? Me stealing part of her name?" She was deadly serious, waiting earnestly for his response..

Having no idea what the girl was talking about, but inclined to be agreeable, Simms shook his head. "'Course she wouldn't. Amari. That's pretty. You got a surname to go with that?" She shook her head, face twisted like she wanted to cry, but lacked the moisture to shed tears. "'Kay, no matter. Welcome to Megaton."