Nora is not here. She's warm and safe in her own bed, with her husband sleeping soundly beside her. This ruin is not the room where Nate kissed her an hour and two hundred years ago. The bombs never fell on their little patch of Heaven. They couldn't have.
It's too big, too terrible. This is a nightmare, and when she wakes up she'll tell Nate, and she'll feel so silly, being so upset over a dream. And Nate will laugh and kiss her fears away. And that vault will lie empty, waiting for a day that won't come, when they'll be torn from their homes and lives.
Because she can't be here, all alone in the ruins of their old house with only their battered Mr. Handy and a gun for company. She remembers Nate's insistence that she learn how to use one, and the faraway look in his eyes when he said "You never know, you might need it one day." The unspoken "And I might not be around to protect you."
That's how she chooses to remember him now. His breath on her cheek and his hand on hers as he taught her how to hold a handgun. She absolutely will not remember him in those last moments, his body riddled with bullets, so desperate to hold on to their son-
God, their son.
She stands now in what should have been his nursery. This husk of cracked wood was his crib. She touches the ruin where he lay two hundred years ago and her fingers come away stained with dust and ashes. She closes her eyes and pictures it as it was. Shaun is there now, in the other room, sleeping peacefully (for once). He's not God knows where, in the arms of some murderer.
Nora leans against the wall, hoping it won't crumble under her weight. In fact, it feels solid underneath her. Too solid.
Codsworth is waiting for her outside. And she's dreaming, after all. Waiting here won't wake her up any faster. She takes a breath of the pure autumn air and walks out of what used to be her family's home.