She gasped as her vision cleared from the harsh glare of the sun. Logically she knew that the atomic bombs fell, had felt the blast of heat and wind as one had detonated in Boston just before she and her family had been lowered into the vault. That knowledge still didn't prepare her for the devastation she saw as far as the eye could see. The landscape was nothing but endless sickly yellows and browns of dead vegetation and burnt topsoil.
She could see Sanctuary Hills below, and how even from here she could see the dilapidated neighborhood she had once called home. On the homes still standing there were giant holes in the walls and roofs, and she thought she could see an entire house completely collapsed in on itself. Shakily she looks down at her Pip-Boy. She had hoped that the system had malfunctioned in some way, and the date had been wrong. Two-hundred and ten years exactly since she had entered the vault. She hadn't believed it at first, but seeing the world around her now made the possibility all the more real. She still held the hope that the machine was wrong…just not much of it.
Almost in a daze she turned and searched the immediate area for anything that looked useful. Vaguely she was hoping for more ammo for the pistol she had found- the giant cockroaches she had killed were a horrifying sign that the wildlife would be almost monstrous. She found a few medical supplies- hopefully the liquid inside them was not irradiated- and slipped them into a pocket on her jumpsuit. After scrounging everything she thought would be useful together she took a steadying breath and began the short trek down the hill to return to what was once her home.
Stepping between the houses after the small bridge she could really see the disrepair of the homes. She looked around cautiously, but there didn't seem to be anybody around. Turning to the left she made her way up the street back toward the house she used to own. As she got closer she could see movement in front of the wrecked house and she laughed in disbelief.
"Codsworth?!" She hurried over as the robot turned to her. The three mechanical eyes flickered up and down excitedly.
"Mum! It-it's really you!" The way his robotic arms moved made her think that if he could have he would have wrapped her in a hug. Given the buzz saw attached to one arm she was glad he couldn't. His presence, and his default posh British voice brought a small smile to her face.
"You're still here. So there must be other people around, right?"
"Surely you didn't think a little radiation would deter the pride of a General Atomics International robot. However, you do seem a little the worse for wear. Mustn't let the hubby see you in such a state now. Where…is he by the way?"
Her stomach clenched in grief. She reached in her pocket and wrapped her hand around the wedding ring she had taken off of…off of his body. Her throat closed painfully at the thought.
"He's…in a better place," she choked out over the lump in her throat.
The conversation devolved from there. Codsworth seemed to be completely ignoring the fact that the world was destroyed, and that Nate was…gone, and he refused to acknowledge that their son Shaun had been kidnapped. She mostly ignored his comments about hunger induced paranoia and the suggestion that a game of checkers might make her feel better. She only focused fully on the conversation when Codsworth mentioned how long she must have gone without proper nutrition.
"You're two hundred years late for dinner," he said with a mechanical chuckle. His next words were drowned out by the sudden rushing sound in her ears.
"Two hundred years?" she said quietly. It was true, the Pip-boy hadn't been malfunctioning. She couldn't tell herself that two different machines had the same defect in their calendar.
"Two hundred and ten give or take a few years accounting for the Earth's rotation and a few knocks to the ol' chronometer, ha ha ha."
"Codsworth, are you ok? You're acting… a little weird." His jovial attitude was beginning to worry-bother- her. Her eyes widened slightly when he began to do what she assumed was the robotic way of crying.
The next few minutes were full of a tear-?- filled account for how the poor butler had spent the past two centuries. He had remained faithful to the family and tried to care for the house as best he could, but as she could imagine it was very difficult to get nuclear fallout out of wood flooring. After she had managed to calm him down he perked right back up with a suggestion to search the neighborhood for Nate and Shaun. She agreed -if only for him- and they went through some of the homes. She had been completely disgusted by the mutated flies they had come across, and she made sure to shoot them as quickly as possible after the first one had shot some vomit inducing mass out of its ass at her.
If the bugs were this large she didn't even want to imagine what other creatures looked like. Codsworth seemed to finally understand that Nate and Shaun weren't around, and he pointed her towards Concord in the hopes that someone there might be able to help her find the people who took Shaun.
After that she mainly wandered the neighborhood, one part of her processing everything that had happened in the past what had felt like to her a mere scattering of hours. To her it was still the same day the bombs fell, the same day they went into the vault, the same day Nate was murdered and Shaun kidnapped. Going back into her old home and seeing how it was basically an empty shell of what it used to be she sat on the dirty, run down couch and curled up so her head was buried in her knees with her arms wrapped tightly about her shins. Everything crashed down on her at once, and she sat there and cried. She cried for everything she lost, everything the world had lost. She cried until she was empty; as empty as this broken house was. Just like her old home she was nothing but a shell of a person; nothing but the broken down remnants of what it once was.
This new world she had woken up in had managed to break her apart completely in the span of a few hours. As she lay down on the couch, exhaustion and grief finally overtaking her, she had no idea if she was up to the task of whatever tomorrow might bring.