The creaky Vault elevator slowly brought her to the surface of the Earth… or whatever remained of it.

What waits for me up there?

She nervously wrung her hands together, her new and unfamiliar Pip-Boy device clunking against her chest as her arms twisted. Her eyes were clamped shut, and she was too afraid to force them open. Will there even be anything left?

The elevator stopped with a groan of finality. It may not make the trip down again.

Slowly, she peeked one eye open, then the other. She shielded her eyes from the glaring sun - good, the sun is still here, that has to be a good sign - and coughed once as the wind blew sand and dust into her mouth and nose. Wind. Air. I can still breathe.

She turned in a full 360, surveying the land. It was a total wasteland - trees that had once flourished were dead, cracked to pieces. The grass had turned an ashy brown and was so withered it was hard to tell it was evergreen, luscious grass. She gasped, starting to hyperventilate. This was once her home. Now… it was foreign to her.

She slowly stepped off the elevator platform, tripping on something - a skeleton, still dressed in military fatigues. Even the military didn't have a chance. Why did I?

She felt an unstoppable urge to go home - to her old home, whatever became of it. In her head, she knew that if it was destroyed, so she would be… but her heart told her to put one foot in front of the other and head to where she needed to be.

"Miss Holly! As I live and breathe!" A familiar, posh English accent rang out to her as she approached her worn, blue house.

"Codsworth? Oh my God, I can't believe it!" If she could have hugged the Mr. Handy, she would have. She observed him for a moment, though - his body may still have been shiny and polished, but the seams of his metal plates were rusted, bent and damaged in some places. "Is this all that's left? How long has it been?"

"Ma'am, you've missed out on approximately 76,650 family dinners! Ha ha!" Codsworth chuckles, sounding strained, if a robot could.

"What?"

"210 years, ma'am. You must be hungry, and so very dehydrated. Please, let me fetch you some water." Codsworth's internal tubes and pipes hummed and from his "chest", he produced a bottle of water - cold and clean.

"Thank you," she said as she cracked open the bottle and chugged nearly half of it in one go. "210 years… how can that be?" She struggled to wrap her mind around it - over two centuries. Everyone she knew was dead - if the bombs didn't kill them, time surely had.

"Ma'am? Where is sir? And young Shaun? Are they with you?"

Her heart skipped a beat. It hurt, so badly, to think about what she had just witnessed. "Nate… he's gone. And his killers kidnapped Shaun. I need to find him, but I don't even know where to start."

"Oh, no… my deepest condolences, Miss Holly. Master Nate was a good man." She nodded and fought back a sob that threatened to tear her up - no, not yet. If I start now, I'll never stop.

"Could you have seen them? Have you seen anyone around here?"

"No, ma'am. I… rarely leave the neighborhood. I ventured to Concord once, and once was surely enough. No manners, they had."

"What have you been doing all this time? Alone?"

"Oh, ma'am. I've been so lonesome. There's been no one to wait on, nothing to do for 200 years! I've tried to keep the house tidy but nothing, absolutely nothing gets nuclear fallout out of vinyl floors! And the car! How does one polish out rust!" Codsworth seemed, if he could be, extremely distressed.

"Codsworth, it's okay. We can rebuild. You did a great job taking care of things while I was gone." She sighed heavily, surveying her domain, and ran a hand through her long, red hair. "I guess I should get my house cleaned up, use it as a base of operations. I need to find Shaun, and I'll need somewhere to call home while I do it."

Four hours later, when the sun was setting and the nightlife of the Commonwealth took their places, Codsworth and Holly had finally cleared out and cleaned up her small blue house - sometime during the 210 years, handfuls of folks had crawled to Sanctuary Hills looking for solace and had set up shop there. They had scrapped many of the house's old appliances for parts - the stove, the washer and dryer, the refrigerator, but had left behind the couch, and huge crates stocked with food, water, and stuff called Jet and Psycho. By some grace of whatever God may still have existed, they had left Shaun's crib alone - only the ravages of time had taken their toll on it.

With much help from the Mr. Handy, they together managed to remove the dirt, debris, and leaves from the house. Codsworth's disinfectant spray settings even allowed Holly to properly clean the floor, a chore she had been itching to do even before the war destroyed everything. She was able to salvage enough cloth and soft material to even throw together a makeshift bed, just for now - she would figure out a better option later.

Holly flopped down onto the couch, stretching her arms above her head. "Alright, Codsworth, I think that's all we're going to be able to do today. There's not much left, and it can wait. I'm starving and exhausted. Is there any chance you could whip up some food for me?"

"Right-o, ma'am!" He floated over to the crate stocked to the brim with boxes upon boxes of nonperishable foods, collecting a variety. He then floated to the table they had salvaged, preparing the food for her - his internal components could do so many things, from purifying water to heating up food almost instantly. Man, they did a good job making him.

A few moments later, Codsworth floated back over to Holly with a steaming plate - salisbury steak, mac and cheese, and even a small bread roll. Her mouth watered - even though, to her, almost no time had passed during cryosleep, her body knew differently and it was starved. Her exertion from the day hadn't helped, either. Codsworth extended one of his "limbs" to her, detaching a spork from his mechanisms - she gladly accepted it and dug into her hot food.

"Ma'am, I did find this holotape. I believe sir was going to present it to you as a surprise, but then, well… everything happened. I have never listened to it; it didn't seem right to invade your privacy. I believe your Pip-Boy device there would be able to play this." A mechanical arm from inside his chest emerges with a holotape. She plucks it from the arm.

"Thank you, Codsworth. I'll… listen to this later."

Codsworth puttered around, dusting and sweeping, while Holly attempted not to shovel her food into her mouth - it was so good, and so hot she couldn't help herself. When she finished, she habitually put the plate and spork in the sink in the kitchen - then chuckled. "I'm going to guess the house doesn't have water anymore."

"On the contrary, ma'am. The well has stood up to the test of time quite successfully. I will get to work tomorrow on repairing and cleaning it if need be. … Ma'am, if you are no longer in need of my assistance, I would like to go into sleep mode for the night. I have not rested my gears for over 200 years; I've been far too concerned with other things."

"Go ahead, honey. I'll see you in the morning." Codsworth hummed as he floated to what used to be the laundry room, and she heard his machinery quiet to a low hum in his sleep mode. She leaned against the counter, facing out to her old living room - the only thing that remained there was the old couch and a lamp, both of which had seen far better days.

Holly removed the holotape from her pocket and inspected it - in Nate's fine scrawl, he had written "For Holly" on the top. Before she popped it into her Pip-Boy, she wondered, afraid, if it would even still work after all this time.

"Oops, haha. Keep those little fingers away... Ah, there we go. Just say it, right there, right there, go ahead. Ah, yay! Hi honey, listen...

I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are. But, we're going to anyway. You are kind, and loving, and funny, that's right, and patient. So patient, patience of a saint, as your mother used to say.

Look, with Shaun and us all being home together it's been an amazing year but even so, I know our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure, things we'll need to adjust to. I'll rejoin the civilian workforce, you'll shake the dust off your law degree.

But everything we do no matter how hard, we do it for our family.

Now say goodbye Shaun. Bye bye, say bye bye.

Bye honey, we love you."

Holly sank to the floor as the holotape beeped with a finality that made her chest ache. It was almost as though Nate had known something terrible was about to happen and she would need this final goodbye from him. They had been through so much together; college, the military, law school, a miscarriage, marriage, the death of Nate's father, having Shaun… and now it was all for nothing. She felt like she was inside of a nightmare - husband dead, baby son has gone hell-knows-where, her only solace a robot companion programmed to be polite. Between her sobs she pinched herself to try to wake up, and it didn't work - this was reality. This was her new life. She reached into her bra and pulled out Nate's wedding ring, remembering her last words to him. I'll find who did this. And I'll get Shaun back. I promise.

Holly awoke late the next morning, 10 AM according to her Pip-Boy. She was in her bed, though she didn't remember climbing into it at all. She must have been sideways with grief last night. Whatever had happened, it was cathartic - the thought of Nate and Shaun made her chest hurt, yes, but it wasn't the agonizing pain it was yesterday. Maybe this new world she woke up in was all about moving forward, never looking back. What else am I supposed to do? Can't change it now. All I can do is work on finding Shaun.

She left her bedroom feeling grimy, the sweat and grease from the previous day layered on her skin. I'll have to get the shower running soon. I won't be able to stand to feel this gross for much longer. Codsworth fluttered around the kitchen, a prepared breakfast on the countertop ready for Holly. Pancakes, sausage and eggs… she could have only dreamed of a meal this good.

"Good morning, Codsworth. Thank you for breakfast."

"My pleasure, ma'am. I have also taken the liberty of clearing the well, and you should be able to get clean water. Irradiated, but clean."

"Radiation? So that's… still a problem, then? Even 200 years later?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am. The radiation storms that travel through here nearly every day rain down heavily. But no worries! Humans can withstand certain amounts of radiation before you become ill." She remembered the internal aching and the nausea after witnessing the bomb dropping. "I've located some medicine for you to take with you in the event that you do fall ill." He turns toward the table where some packages were laid out carefully, well-organized. Next to the packages was a large knapsack that looked like it belonged to a member of the military.

Holly shoved the last bites of her breakfast in her mouth and crossed the room to the table to inspect the knapsack. It was huge - easily twice as wide as her torso, and just as deep, with 10 or so pockets fastened with snap buttons. "Codsworth, this knapsack is amazing. Where did you find it?"

"In Ms. Rosa's house, ma'am. Across the street. Perhaps it belonged to her late husband."

"Oh, Rosa… and her son. They weren't in the Vault with me. I… can only hope they had a quick death."

"I spotted young Louis running around in his Halloween costume after everything happened, ma'am. I think they were just fine." She furrowed her brow at the Mr. Handy, wondering if he had lost the plot entirely. I don't have the emotional energy to be concerned with that now.

Holly inspected the medicine next - bottles of something called Rad-X, IV bags labeled RadAway, and a handful of Stimpaks, like the ones she kept finding in the Vault. This was more than enough to keep her going for a while, and she thanked whatever deities existed that Codsworth was still alive. She would never make it without him. After carefully placing these in a left-side pocket of the knapsack, as she was left-handed anyway, she plucked handfuls of the other drugs, Jet and Psycho, from the crates on the floor and shoved them into another pocket haphazardly - whether she wanted to drug herself silly or sell them for whatever passed as currency these days, she was set for a while.

Codsworth had told her he'd seen people in Concord, and that they'd shot at him - she investigated, but as she hid around the corner of an old house, she overheard one man, decked out in spiked, blood-coated armor, telling another man about a child he'd killed recently, how the boy had begged for mercy. There were at least seven decked-out strangers, all wielding weaponry that would make the military nervous. Holly decided she would come back when she had backup, because if she tried to infiltrate them now, alone and fueled by her rage, she would surely be killed.

She gave Concord a wide berth, heading south - she was familiar with the territory to an extent, as her old law office had been right there in the center of it. What a convenient commute that was. She came across a small cabin in the woods, but it was surrounded by four or five creatures that looked like… zombies. They clambered and shuffled around, some heads whipping from side to side but not really seeing. I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends.

Holly crouched behind a bush by a tree, trying desperately to be silent while she reached for the hunting rifle she'd picked up just outside of Sanctuary; it would have much more range than her 10mm, and if she failed to land a shot, she would have more time to run for her life. She peered through the terrible scope and focused on one of the creatures, holding her breath before pulling the trigger - just as her mother had taught her in her teen years. You need to know how to shoot in case you ever need to keep yourself safe, she heard her mother's voice in her memory.

The bullet clipped the first creature in the side of the neck, just enough to cause blood to spurt, and it went down. One. Maybe not dead, but dealt with. The other handful of creatures grunted and groaned, turning every which way to find the source of the noise and she quickly tried to pick them off before they moved around too much. Two. Three. The fourth had gone missing while the fifth had crept up on her while her eye was in the sight. Its body slammed into her crouched figure full-force, knocking her down and sending the rifle flying a few feet away. Before she could get her bearings it slammed into her again from above, starting to claw at her stomach - its nails tore through the thick fabric of her Vault jumpsuit and scraped against her soft skin.

Holly threw her leg sideways and kicked it off of her just enough; she rolled to her knees and kicked off the ground hard with her feet, running faster than she'd ever run before. All she needed was enough space between her and that thing, and she could riddle it full of 10mm bullets.

It stumbled confusedly, 15 yards away. She crouched once more, hoping more for shot stability than stealth. She fired once, twice, five times before the thing collapsed. Four.

She took a moment and caught her breath. Her stomach was bleeding, not enough to be life-threatening, but enough that it stung with every twist she made. It would be a waste of a Stimpak, she winced as she inspected the wounds. Just have to make do.

She wandered over to where she had been knocked down to find her rifle - there it was, stuck in the brush. Now where is the last one? She was sure she had seen five of these things… but it did not do to dwell. She wanted to inspect the cabin; maybe it had medicine, drugs, or even food for her to stash away.

Inside, she found the last creature. A small thing, the size of a young teenager, crouched in the corner of the one-room shack covering its face.

"Hey," she said softly. "I-I won't hurt you, okay?" She stepped toward it, palms up, with small, quiet steps, trying not to alert it. It didn't matter - the creature was terrified, hiding its face and not moving an inch. "I don't know if you can understand, but I'm just going to look around, alright? Then I'll leave." Holly moved toward the sturdy-looking metal door at the back of the room. Before she walked through it, she paused. "I'm sorry I killed your family." She would never know if the thing understood her… but it made her feel better to try.

Inside the makeshift bunker in the cabin, there had been tons of great stuff - ammo, weapons, food, water, and a magazine labeled Wasteland Survival Guide #5. The magazine was filled with crude, childlike drawings of some strange and inexplicable things, but it contained a map to a place called Diamond City. Holly followed the map's trail on her Pip-Boy and marked the general location on her personal map - it was a start. Diamond City was located right in the heart of downtown Boston, and she realized she was almost too anxious to see what had become of her old stomping grounds. If this map was accurate and the city still existed, it would be in the perfect location to be a central hub for the rest of the Commonwealth. Maybe someone there will be able to help me.

She made her way down the destroyed streets of the Commonwealth, keeping a watchful eye all around her as the sun set in the distance. It was kind of beautiful, if she was being honest with herself. Back in her day, there was so much light pollution, noise pollution, pollution pollution… the sky wasn't often clear enough to enjoy. The only issue now, in 2287, was the radiation that tinted the sky green on occasion and brought in the nasty rad storms. But even those were beautiful in a way she couldn't explain with words. She had always liked storms, anyway.

It was only the late evening, and already she could see the twinkling of stars beyond the blue.

(AN: I've noticed that not a lot of people come back after reading this first chapter, and that's okay - but I want to just say that the second chapter jumps ahead in time. There isn't a whole lot of "ooh I'm all new to the apocalypse and I have to get my bearings and it's sooooo haaaaaard". I wouldn't want anyone to think "well, I wouldn't enjoy this story very much if it's just going to be the beginning of the game all over again". I assure you, we jump right into it.)