The silent, internal screaming that began the moment Sara saw her father collapse against the glass door separating them was now so loud in her head she thought she was going to explode. It had steadily increased in pitch and urgency as she led Doctor Li and the surviving team members through the Taft Tunnel system, not even muted by the reassuring bangs her hunting rifle made as its .32 caliber rounds sliced through Enclave armor and feral ghoul flesh. Alex Dargon's cries as he fell against the dirty walls, mortally wounded by an Enclave soldier, were nothing compared to the screaming in Sara's head. She could hardly hear Elder Lyons over the noise once she, Doctor Li, and Daniel Agincourt, the sole survivors, stumbled into the Citadel.
And now as she lay on a lumpy mattress, graciously given up by a scribe so she could rest for a while, she could hear nothing else. Her father-the whole reason she spent the last three and a half weeks beating down Radscorpions with baseball bats and carving her way through super mutant infested museum hallways to retrieve a panel that could fix a radio signal-was gone. Sara had left everything behind that 13-ton steel door emblazoned with 101 on it-her belongings, her secure (albeit somewhat boring) future as a Pip-boy programmer, her best friend-to find him, and it was all for nothing.
A part of her wanted to be angry with him, not only for abandoning her in the first place, but also for immediately sending her on bullshit tasks around the Jefferson Memorial to fix fuses and activate drainage pipes. He didn't care. Had he ever? Or had her entire childhood been an agonizing wait until the day he could run off again and work on his true baby at Project Purity? The very thought made her sick.
Deep down, she knew he did love her in his own way, even if that meant sending her to clear out the Memorial of mutants with only a mutt to assist her. He saw potential in her, but that potential died with him. What the hell was she going to do now? Sure, she could return to the dumpy house in Megaton and listen to Wadsworth's obnoxious banter until she grew old and died, but how long would the safety of even that settlement last? The Enclave's arrival signaled the end of humanity's feeble attempts to reorganize throughout the Capital Wasteland.
Sara raised a hand to wipe away what she thought were a few tears and found her entire face wet with tears, snot, and sweat. Disgusted, she rubbed most of it off on her sleeve and tried to breathe deeply. Her attempt only caused more sobs to wrack her body, seizing up her sore torso and dizzy head.
It was then that something startlingly cold and moist pressed itself against the back of her neck. She jumped and twisted around violently to see what it was. The object's owner, Dogmeat, back away at her sudden movement and whined. It was his nose that found its way to her neck.
"Geez, Dogmeat, you scared me," she whispered, stretching out a friendly hand to reassure him that everything was okay. He craned his neck, pushed his head up against her hand, and let out his signature "Aroo" sigh.
"Get up here, you lump," Sara said, affectionately. The dog did not need to be told twice. He leapt up to join her on the mattress, practically smashing his furry body against her in an effort to find space that did not exist to stretch out in. His cold, wet nose found hers and licked it, managing to slobber extensively on her mouth.
"Ughh," she whined, not really minding. She and this mutt had been through a lot since she'd found him in a scrapyard somewhere to the northeast. They had renewed hope in the abolitionist cause at Temple Union, disarmed a bomb, and accidentally tripped each other up on the steep stairwells in Rivet City together. Dogmeat followed her through the Taft Tunnels, ferociously bounding forward to tackle ghouls and reminding her that she had to be brave while the incessant screaming in her head threatened to consume her.
Her father was dead, taking the last remnant of her relatively easygoing childhood with him. There was no one left in this world to give any semblance of a shit about her, except this dumb brown and black dog. There was nothing remotely okay about that, but for now Sara and her mutt were a family. She would finally get some much needed sleep tonight with her arm draped over the dog. The steady rise and fall of his torso was a source of inexplicable comfort.
Nothing made sense anymore, and it quite possibly never would again, but at least she had Dogmeat. That was more than enough.