EDIT: I've always liked writing in first person, but I've never been very good at it. So, although this WAS in first person, I'm altering it to third person so that it won't be so completely 'fail' later. To those who have read this already: I hope it's not too confusing a change. D: I also attempted to make her come off as less Mary Sue-like, maybe it is better now.
This is my first Fallout 3 fanfiction; I hope I do the game some semblance of justice. Per usual, I have no idea where this is going or for how long I'll be inspired to write it.
Disclaimer: Fallout 3 and its original characters, plots, settings, etc. are property of Bethesda Softworks, LLC, a ZeniMax Media company.
1
She knew from early on that she was different. She didn't feel different, didn't look exceptionally out of the ordinary, and yet, she was the one who escaped from the vault—albeit after her father, but he, at least, didn't have someone to alert the entire vault of his planned absence beforehand. Luck was the only thing she felt could explain her life up to this point. While Tom and Mary Holden were downed by Officers Richards and O'Brian, she was able to incapacitate the two gun-wielding vault guards with her BB gun. What's more, she made it this far: physically survived the Super Mutant onslaught while traveling with the Brotherhood to Three Dog; emotionally survived the death of her father—witnessing it with her very own eyes. Among other conquests, she disarmed a nuclear bomb, all the while being reminded by the rather probable chance that she would fail and blow everything and everyone in a couple miles' radius; settled an ongoing dispute between a superhero and a supervillain; and, by way of diplomacy, made it possible that ghouls and humans could live peacefully together in Tenpenny Tower.
She stared at the cookie-cutter holes in the metallic ceiling, the light from the lamp sitting on her desk on the other side of the room—the whole three feet away—cast eerie shadows in each of the ones that didn't completely open to the pre-dawn sky. Wadsworth hummed downstairs, and she envisioned his chassis hovering about as he dusted her living room. Beside her bed on the floor she could hear Dogmeat's steady breathing. These things she found somehow comforting. To a girl who had proverbially taken on the world (or Washington D.C. and other areas close in proximity, to be exact), she found there wasn't much more she could want for, or at least that's how she should have felt. But there it was: much. Had that one little word been left out, her predicament could have been so much easier.
But there were things she still had to do: the purging of Paradise Falls, for example. It weighed on her conscience that she chose to first follow in her father's footsteps before giving a town full of slaves their much-deserved liberation, but isn't it human nature to be unnecessarily selfish? She grasped onto that thought guiltily. Although she had no excuse as to why she went to opposite corners of the Capital Wasteland to settle irrelevant disturbances before saving Big Town from slavers, raiders, and Super Mutants. Why, really, did she disarm an obvious 'dud' of a bomb before delivering Lucy West's letter to her family in Arefu? It wouldn't have been anymore out of the way than, say, Tenpenny or Canterbury, by a long shot. Though just as many such tasks were proven to be harmless and insignificant, as much as she suppressed it, she was utterly afraid to handle most on her own. Luck and a brave façade, she knew, wasn't enough to save this part of the world; it wasn't even enough to save her from herself. However different she felt, it wasn't necessarily a good different. For all she knew, she had been allowed to escape with her life thus far so that she could eventually be ready to destroy the world. Her few good deeds here and they might've just been used as a distraction from her real purpose on earth, outside of the vault. Maybe not sharing her sweetroll with Butch so many years ago was just the first step on a journey to deceit and mass-murder.
What she needed was sanity.
What she needed was a partner.
Or, a friend, for lack of a better word, in crime or otherwise; just to help keep her head on her shoulders and to coax her into going where she needed to go and doing what she needed to do. Because, so far, her own conscience hadn't seemed too worried about coaxing anything but cowardice out of her.
She threw a quick smile at Dogmeat's yawning form. "I just need someone I can relate to a little more personally. Someone I can discuss life with, among other things, and expect them to reply coherently," she whispered to nothing in particular.
She sat up, folding the blanket back and slipping her legs over the side in a single movement (she had realized the necessity of a pillow and blanket soon after gaining the key to her Megaton house). Dogmeat was already alert a few feet away, tail wagging and tongue lolling. With a flick of her index finger, he trotted through the doorway and down the stairs to wait patiently by the front and only door. At the realization of how small her room was and exactly how much space Dogmeat took up while in it moved her to find out how easily Dogmeat could be trained to do useful tasks if given the initiative—or a hock of Brahmin.
She quickly stripped herself of the white t-shirt and shorts she donned as sleepwear and changed into the be-spiked leather armor she had altered to her liking. Dyed black and affixed with tactically placed zippered pockets and spiked metal plating, she felt safe and maybe just a little badass. She pulled her stark-white hair back into a ponytail and threw on a pair of heavily-tinted glasses.
She first made her way to Moriarty's and bought seven Stimpacks from Gob, making the most of her needed discount. She was about to leave when a thought popped into her head. The mischievous look on her face quickly hid as she replaced it with a pair of puppy-dog eyes.
"Go-oob!" she sung, dancing back to the counter. He looked back at her warily, his hands never stopped from the motions of cleaning the shot glass.
"Ye-ees?" His ragged voices lilted back.
"Have you ever considered… exploring?"
"Exploring?" He rubbed his chin, or what was left of it, before giving a drawn-out sigh. "I'm sorry, but even if I weren't indebted to Mr. Moriarty, I'm honestly a coward. I don't even know how to hold a gun right, much less shoot it—and kill."
She frowned, there went the only viable option in Megaton. Of course, there was always Jericho, but, as knowledgeable as she was sure he may have been in the Wastes, he was an old, worn-out lecher—in a nutshell.
After all the run-ins she'd had with her own species, race—whatever—meeting Gob has made her a hell of a lot more hopeful that there was good beyond the mentally-frayed like Moira and the power-hungry like those of the Lyons' Pride. And although she'd only met a few ghouls so far, aside from the ferals, they had all been readily polite and intelligent—maybe even more so than humans. Thoughts clicked in her head and another idea soon made its way out of her mind, as well as her mouth.
"What's-the-quickest-way-to-get-to-Underworld?" The words spilled from her, leaving no room for interruption, and then she added a puppy-dog pout for further effect.
His hesitance was obvious but only momentary, his hands easily resuming their habitual cleaning.
"Why?"
"Weeell, I don't exactly trust humans—not after all I've seen us do. Really, how many ghoul raiders do you see? Talons? Enclave? Brotherhood, even? Exactly. And if ghouls are half as amazing as you, well, then, I want my exploration-partner to be a ghoul!" She hoped that he didn't suspect her trying to flatter him for the information, or, if he did, it wouldn't make him feel used; surely her tone showed how adamantly she felt about the idea.
He sighed again. "I agree that many humans are… unpreferable to ghouls, but won't it make you uncomfortable? How much do you really know about us?"
"Well, after I met you, I became so curious that I had to do a little research. I know that you came to be ghouls from the exposure to large amounts of radiation over an extended period of time, beyond that no one really knows the specific genetic differences that allow you to change rather than die like most. I also know that you guys live a hell of a lot longer than humans because of your DNA's ability to regenerate at a much higher rate. And if I'm correct, all of your 'parts' work fine, but the production of offspring is impossible?"
She smiled widely and tilted her head to the side like a child getting caught with their hand in a cookie jar and playing it off as if nothing happened; she knew that she probably studied up on them with more enthusiasm than a normal human would have, but it was fascinating how superior they were to humans. And yet, humans treated ghouls as underlings—and they took it with little complaint—just because they were a little more… decayed?
"Ahh… You should have been a detective, most people don't know half that much. Humans don't tend to care to get past the exposed muscle and veins, much less take passion in learning." He smiled at her for a moment, and then she noticed as a light bulb proverbially lit above his head. His brows—or what could be considered brows—furrowed as he glanced around the saloon, making sure that Moriarty wasn't skulking behind any corners, or so she assumed. He quickly shoved his hand in a pocket, and for a fraction of a second she almost thought it was a gun—like, maybe she found out some super-secret ghouly information or something and he had to make sure it was kept unknown to the public, but then his hand came back out. He reached his arm across the counter toward her. Something small and wrapped in a floral-patterned fabric was grasped in his hand, and as she reached up he set it in the palm of her hand. Whatever it was, it was tiny.
"I'm sorry, I only have one, but it will hopefully come in handy during your travels. It's a Grape Mentat; eating one allows you to be a lot more persuasive for a little while, although I'll never understand how medicine can do that sort of thing..."
She pulled the fabric away just enough to see the purple tablet, then she unzipped the pack attached to her outer left thigh and set it inside to rest with her Stimpack supply.
"Oh!"
He gawked at her outburst, then, realization struck momentarily, and he nodded and motioned to her Pip-Boy.
"It can be confusing if you don't know where to make the right turns, so make sure you map it out correctly..."