Hello! Welcome to my second video game fic (the First was Elder Scrolls)! I sort of have an unhealthy obsession with Bethesda games. Anyway, I hope this story is enjoyable for all y'all. I wanted to do an untraditional fallout fic.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything relating to the Fallout series—otherwise I could afford a new computer.

Note: Not sure how often I'll be able to update since school just started for me, but I'll try my best! :)

Breathe in, breathe out.

Owen focused on keeping his breathing calm, but it was easier said than done with all the adrenaline coursing through his veins. This was the first time a Radstag had gotten close enough without detecting him. He couldn't let it go to waste, or he'd go hungry tonight.

A little less than three yards away, the Radstag peacefully grazed on the grass. Unlike most irradiated creatures of the Commonwealth, this mutated deer had a fairly decent pelt—it only had one or two ugly, red bald spots. It would fetch a good price. Owen was already counting up its value in his head.

Owen peered into his makeshift scope and tried to keep his breathing steady so that his laser musket wouldn't bob up and down. The duct tape he'd used to hold the capacitor in place was starting to lose its adhesiveness. It didn't matter. He could fix it once he got back to the farm. All it needed to withstand was one more shot.

Slowly, so slowly that he wasn't even sure he was moving, Owen rotated the crank on his musket one, two, three times.

The Radstag tensed suddenly, its ears twitching. It had heard him!

Owen immediately pulled the trigger, and for once it didn't stick. BOOM! Red energy burst forth from the end of the musket, taking the Radstag in the face. Or, well…one of them. With a high-pitched moan, the dual-headed deer collapsed to the ground.

Owen breathed out heavily. For a moment there, he almost hadn't had dinner.

He stood from the long grass and slung his laser musket across his back. Being careful not to trip on a tree root, he quickly moved to the dead Radstag's side. It was a clean shot, one that he was lucky to have made—right through one of the mutated deer's four eyes. The only evidence to show the kill was a black laser burn that smelled strongly of ozone around the eye socket.

Grunting, Owen grabbed the beast's front legs and began to drag it behind him on the slippery grass. It was a long hike back to Finch Farm.

Owen had shown up there about a year ago. It had been right after his father's death, and he'd been looking for somewhere to make some caps. He'd struck a deal with the inhabitants of the farm: he'd help out in the fields and they would give him twenty five caps a week.

However, he'd quickly discovered that the caps he earned weren't enough to keep his head above water. So he'd started hunting. He usually sold his spoils to passing caravans—and he had a stache of three hundred caps to show for it.

Not nearly enough.

When Owen finally reached the farm, he found that he was late—there were already two caravans waiting, their brahmin loaded down with wares. Luckily, neither of them were his usual buyer/supplier, so he ignored them for the time being.

Finch Farm was a big place, but the central hub was the old farmhouse—some two-hundred and thirty five years old. Most of the farmhands and the Finches lived inside, but Owen was stuck with a small hut around the back—just barely big enough for his bed and his footlocker.

He hurried towards it, ignoring the offers that several farmhands and the caravan traders made him for the Radstag he was dragging. There was only one caravan he'd do business with, and the owner gave him fairer prices than any of the other caravans could.

When he was a safe distance away from all the bustle of the makeshift market, he drew his hunting knife and quickly skinned the Radstag. He figured he could sell the pelt and some of the meat. Most of it, however, would make up his meal that night. Finch Farm may have grown food, but the Finches were clear: everyone pays for their own meals. Owen couldn't afford to go down to the largest settlement nearby, County Crossing, for food, so he usually made his own.

When he was finished with the Radstag, he washed his hands off with a bottle of water. He caught his reflection in the puddle it made and winced.

Owen was twenty-one, but everyone always told him he looked like a teenager. Maybe it was how messy his dark brown hair was—no matter how many times he cut it, it always grew back quickly and sticking nearly straight up. Maybe it was just his face—he had sharper cheekbones than all the other farmhands, so it could be misinterpreted as youth. Bright blue eyes stared back at him in the puddle. His skin had tanned nicely in the past few weeks. He didn't understand why he looked so young—did most teenagers carry a laser musket and sport a long, thin, red scar reaching from their forehead to their cheek, over their right eye? No.

Besides, he didn't dress like a teenager. He sported a t-shirt (that used to be white but was now more of a grayish color) with a pair of blue jeans and hiking boots that he had scavenged from an old hunter's cabin. Over his shirt he wore a leather jacket so dark of a brown that it was almost black. It had belonged to his father, and was surprisingly sturdy for something so old. More than once, it had taken a blow from a wandering Feral or a Stingwing so that he didn't have to. He'd also taken the liberty of lining the inside with scavenged combat armor plates. It was frayed at the bottom, like it had used to be a trench coat, but Owen preferred it this way. Wraparound goggles hung around his neck, ready for action. He mainly used those to protect his eyes while crafting.

He forced himself to focus and packed the meat he was going to sell in a salt-packed little container, and the meat he was going to eat in a bigger one. He stored the bigger container under a plank in his shed and grabbed the hide and smaller container of meat. He also took the liberty of grabbing some of the junk he had scavenged in the past week. With all his sellable goods in hand, he exited his shed and headed for the main farmhouse.

It wasn't a moment too soon. There was a third caravan waiting beside the first two. The brahmin was a little older than the others and may have carried less items, but Owen knew from experience that the items it did carry were life savers. But he was far more taken with the owner of the caravan.

Hazel Lewis was a woman of about twenty-three, with bright red hair, green eyes, and an athletic figure. Some would have called her average looking, but Owen thought she was fairly pretty. She was wearing no armor that he could see, just a dark purple leather jacket and black cargo pants—which seemed odd for an unguarded caravan owner, until Owen remembered that she was more than capable of taking care of himself. In her holster was a small pistol unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was slimmer than a ten millimeter but packed a wicked punch. As he approached, she smirked at him.

Owen had secretly been taken with her for months.

Not that it mattered. Even if she had shown the slightest interest in him romantically, he never could have acted on it. For one, she only showed up at Finch Farm once a week. For another, Owen couldn't afford to be distracted by that kind of relationship—it interfered with his plans.

"What have you got for me today, Nerd?" Hazel asked, crossing her arms.

Owen rolled his eyes, trying to suppress the rapid heartbeat that she had induced in him. "How many times have I asked you to stop calling me that?"

She gave him a small smile. "I'll stop calling you that when you start speaking English."

She was referring to when they had first met, a month or so after Owen had arrived at Finch Farm. He'd sold her some old mods for his laser musket, and she'd asked him what they did. He'd launched into a lengthy spiel about what each mod did and how, and she'd called him a nerd. The name had stuck.

"I speak English," he said defensively. "You just don't know how to listen."

Owen plopped his goods on the ground right in front of her. A couple of the farm hands were looking greedily at the pile, and he had no doubt that someone was raiding his shed right now, trying to find something valuable. It was a rookie move. Everyone knows that you never keep anything of value where you live. The only thing they'd find was a bunch of worthless junk, and none of the other farmhands were smart enough to check under the floorboards for his dinner.

"Down to business, then?" Hazel asked, eyeing the small pile. "All right."

And so they both launched into "barter mode"—essentially, Owen handed her stuff, she gave a price, and he thought better about trying to persuade her to pay more. This time around was a bit more profitable than others. She offered 105 caps for the Radstag hide, 80 caps for the meat, and 200 caps for the pile of junk—only because he had scavenged a gold watch and she was feeling generous—for a grand total of 385 caps.

He would have been excited that he had doubled the caps he owned, but then he realized that he needed some supplies. After buying a couple of fusion cells, wonderglue, and a box of Abraxo Cleaner, he now only had 100 caps. Still, it was better than what he made most days.

"So what do you need all those caps for, anyway?" Hazel asked, leaning casually against her brahmin, which was lying on the ground. It was probably just sleeping, but the poor thing looked dead.

"I'm going to buy you a new pack-brahmin," Owen said, placing his caps in a small bag hooked to his belt.

"Aw, I don't need a new one," she replied, patting her brahmin on the neck. It didn't respond. "Bessie here has still got a lot of years on her. Seriously, though."

He sighed and straightened the strap that held his laser musket to his back. "My dad wanted me to move to Diamond City someday."

Hazel cocked an eyebrow at him. "Diamond City, huh? What are you planning to do there?"

Owen shrugged, a little uncomfortable. He hadn't really shared his plans with anyone before. "I dunno, start a business. Maybe run for mayor."

She grinned at the joke. "Ha. What would you sell?"

Why was she so interested? His palms began to sweat. "Weapons, probably. Maybe scrap."

Hazel's eyes lit up, like he knew they would. It was no secret that Hazel Lewis loved weapons.

"Energy or projectile?" she asked.

"Energy," Owen replied, crossing his arms.

"Bah," Hazel said, rolling her eyes. "Projectile weapons are far better."

He opened his mouth to reply with what would have been a (hopefully) withering retort, but before he could a loud bell rang. He turned back to the farmhouse to find Daniel Finch, the grumpy old man who ran the place, standing on the porch.

"Thank you for your time," he told all three caravans. "But Finch Farm is officially closed for the day to travelers."

Everyone groaned. Once upon a time, there hadn't been such a thing as "visiting hours" on the farm, but ever since the Minutemen had reduced the amount of guards on the farm (for reasons unknown to Owen), the visiting hours had been installed as a precaution.

"Well," Hazel said, cracking her neck, "looks like my time is up. See you next week, Nerd."

Owen tried to mask his disappointment. "Yeah. See you in a week."

After the caravans were gone, Owen went back to his shed. Sure enough, he found one of the younger farmhands—maybe seventeen, probably hired for a couple caps—searching the place. Owen sighed and kicked the kid out before checking to make sure that everything was still in place. Satisfied, he retrieved his food and sat down in front of the campfire near the farmhouse.

"Heya, Owen," another farmhand said.

It was Joshua—one of the only workers on the farm that found his presence bearable. There was a reason that Owen slept outside the farmhouse. Joshua was an older fellow, maybe in his mid-thirties. Despite that, his hair was still jet black, and his brown eyes showed a sort of boyish charm. Owen had heard some of the female workers swooning over Joshua.

"Hi, Josh," Owen said, setting his box of venison in front of him, between his legs. It made it harder for others to steal, that way. He'd made that mistake more than once.

"What did you do today?" Joshua asked, munching on a couple of Sugar Bombs.

"Scavenged," Owen replied, taking a long stick and shaving some of the bark off with his knife. Once that was done, he impaled a couple pieces of venison on the branch and held it over the small campfire. Overhead, the sky began turning dark. "What about you?"

Joshua grinned. He was the one who looked like a teenager. "Scrounged up some caps."

Owen hid a sigh. "The answer is still no, Josh."

"Oh, come on, at least hear my offer!"

He rolled his eyes. "All right. What's your offer today?"

"900 caps, and I'll even throw in a couple boxes of rations that I found." Joshua seemed sure that his offer was compelling.

It wasn't. Owen didn't even hesitate. "I'm not selling you my laser musket."

"Oh, come on!"

They went through this every day. It had started from day one—Owen would sit down to cook his dinner, and Joshua would make him an offer for his gun.

It wasn't like Owen didn't have any other guns—he did, but he kept them where he stowed his caps. He just felt a personal attachment to his laser musket. It, too, had belonged to his father, who had called the rifle "Old Faithful" as a joke. The laser musket and the jacket were the only things Owen had left of his father. No matter what Joshua offered him, he wasn't selling those.

Owen withdrew his venison from the fire calmly as Joshua spluttered more insane offers at him—"a full suit of power armor!"—and, satisfied that the meat had been cooked fully, he blew on it to cool it down a bit before taking a bite. Chewy, but filling. It was better than what he usually ate.

Joshua sighed when he realized that Owen was no longer listening. "Fine, Owen. You win today. But some day you'll give in!"

Doubt it, Owen thought. "Sure, Josh. One day. But not today."

Joshua sighed again and left for the farmhouse.

An hour later, his belly full, Owen packed his satchel with the rest of the meat and the caps he had earned, and looked up at the overpass that shadowed the farm. It was dark outside, now. Most farm hands would be returning from County Crossing or preparing to bed down for the night.

Owen shouldered his bag and walked towards the overpass, until he was right underneath it. It took a little doing to find what he was looking for in the dark, but eventually his hand closed around the thick steel cable. He looked around him once before starting to climb.

It didn't really matter whether the other farmhands saw him or not; none of them were anywhere near physically fit enough to climb up to the overpass. Owen was only able to accomplish it because his father had made sure his son was in shape. His father's hope was that one day Owen would join the Minutemen just like his old man, but Owen never thought that was in the cards for him. Still, he tried to stay fit, if not for his father than for himself.

It took him longer than usual to reach the top, which was understandable, because he was tired. His arms aching, Owen crawled onto the top of the overpass and pulled a flashlight from his belt so that he could see. He didn't want to tumble off the edge accidentally.

His secret hiding spot didn't really look special. It was just a large wooden crate that spilled out from one of the wrecked trucks up top. Owen mopped sweat off his forehead with his jacket sleeve and opened it up.

Inside was a wide variety of things that made up everything he owned. There were a couple of fragmentation grenades (he had discovered them in an abandoned military base), a gray-knit cap (found on a skeleton), a laser pistol (also found in the military base), combat armor leg guards (from the occasional raider), patrolman sunglasses (also from raiders), and of course, his caps. Owen added his freshly made currency into the box and closed it up tight.

The next thing he did was sort of a daily ritual for him. He sat on his box of possessions and stared up at the moon, which was peeking out at him from the clouds. He reminded himself that he was looking at an asteroid that had struck the earth and bounced off. And everyday, the earth would rotate so that each half of the world got sunlight and night in different measures. If nothing else, even if everyone had died in the Great War, at least that would never change.

And then he thought about what it would be like to move to Diamond City, and to never have to worry about where food was coming from next, and to have a home bigger than an outhouse. Having a steady flow of caps. People that didn't treat him like a communicable disease.

Someday, Owen promised himself.

When he finally reached his shed that night, the last thing he thought before sleep took him was how strange it was that none of the Minutemen guards had come in for dinner.

Yeah, this first chapter is sort of slow. But the next chapter starts up pretty quickly. Just a note: this Is twenty-five years after the main quest in Fallout Four.

Please shoot me a review!