A/N: Hello! If you followed my New Vegas fic For a Demon with a Queen, welcome back! If you're new, greetings! A few notes before we get started. Despite what the listed genres may indicate, there will be some element of romance in this fic, just as there is any other fic I write. Only, it may not be as prominent in this one, so other genres were appropriate in identifying this one.
Once of my favorite things about the Fallout games is how intensely personal they make it for your player character. In Fallout 3 it was your dad. In Fallout 4 your whole family! I was instantly connected. And so, as a result, my Sole Survivor (named Nora) will reflect upon those familial elements. This will follow the main storyline to some extent, but as can be expected with Demon, it will diverge to its own path. We've all played the game to some extent, we're familiar with what happens. I will avoid being redundant as much as possible. Other characters will be featured in the future. Please note the title and officially listed genres and prepare yourself for a lot of angst and dark tones. Otherwise, the only other warning I can provide is to not assumed on the pairing. I do like to play on polyamory and what you might expect.
For now, enjoy!
Postpartum
Chapter One
Joy was indescribable. At least, hers was. Nothing could compare to the feeling of floating through life painlessly. It moved quickly, seamlessly. Perhaps a shade too quickly. Too fast to feel and relish the experiences, like a blur.
But she remembered enough.
Her highest moment was the birth of her son. Shaun's entrance into the world signaled not only a new page to her life. This was her life, as if it started in that moment. She had no need for an epidural; she felt no pain. For when she heard the cries of her newborn, there was nothing but life, bliss. Love.
The doctor passed the swaddled baby over to her, proclaiming its sex. When she took the baby into her arms, Nora felt a gentle squeeze on her shoulder, a kiss against her head. She looked up to see the smiling, tearing face of her husband.
When their eyes met, it was always a magical moment, like tangible electricity coursing between them. When their eyes met this time, she felt it all over again—life, bliss. Especially love, and it was crushing. A wave of it pressing against her chest, suffocating. They were fortunate enough that he had been honorably discharged over a year ago. They were fortunate in almost everything it would seem, how they found each other. Not everyone could find their utterly perfect mate as they had.
"What should be his name?" the doctor asked.
"Shaun," Nate whispered through his tears. The name they had both settled on.
"Shaun," she repeated softly, looking into the dewy black eyes of her baby.
News of the increasing conflict with China mattered little to them, though it probably should have. But when the Vault Tec representative came knocking, offering them space in the local vault, it would seem as though their good fortune continued smiling. So, it almost mattered very little when, within the hour, the first nuclear bombs had been dropped on U. S. soil.
Shortly after the broadcast, they fled with Baby Shaun in hand up the hill to Vault 111. Despite that the Vault Tec representative was turned away, they were allowed through the security check.
They waited anxiously, huddled together on the vault platform. She stroked Shaun's cheek as he slept soundly in Nate's arms. Nate pushed some hair behind her ear, cradling her face.
The moment could not even be shattered when another bomb dropped over Boston. They saw the mushroom cloud but escaped the rushing wave of heat and radiation as their platform descended in time, another token of their luck.
But it would be their last.
Nora watched her beloveds directly across the aisle. Nate with Shaun, climbing into the decontamination pod. She touched the glass of her pod, reaching out to him. She saw Nate do the same.
Only, it wasn't decontamination. It was hell. And this hell came with frozen tendrils of ice and frosted glass. Cryogenics.
Her next breath was a gasp, fogging her window of the vault. She saw Nate awakening as well.
But something was terribly wrong. She felt it deep in her core. The vault was dark. A scientist in a cleanroom suit pointed to Nate. A rugged man with scars and dirty clothes, armor.
Nate's pod was the one.
"Open it."
The pod opened. Nora's didn't. She pounded on hers, knowing her pleas were muted, ignored.
The scientist reached for Shaun, her baby.
Nate—blessed, beautiful Nate—in his dazed confusion could detect the threat of danger. He clutched their baby to his chest. "No, I've got him."
The man produced a gun and had no hesitation in pointing it to Nate's temple. "Let the kid go."
"I'm not giving you Shaun."
The gunshot echoed throughout the vault and pierced the boundless silence of her own cryogenic pod, piercing her chest and rupturing her life.
Shaun was collected like a parcel or bounty. The murderer turned to look at her screaming and pounding against her cell. Her throat went numb and her hands stung bright red. He sneered, revealing a menacing countenance and issued some taunt of Nora being a backup.
Her hell froze her in place again.
Her joy was indescribable, and her life had floated through bliss like a cloud. Looking back, her fortune, her luck could not be denied. She couldn't imagine anyone ever being so fortunate to experience such happiness.
But it was fleeting. Her grief dragged through excruciating, painful minutes. When she finally emerged from the catacombs of corpses of Vault 111, blinking in the watery sunlight that illuminated the ruins of her decimated home, she knew this started a new life for Nora, a life forged from her grief and the ashes of her vengeance.
They could take her purpose. But they would not win.
Electronic feedback. Baby giggling.
Hi honey! Listen...
I don't think Shaun and I need to tell you how great a mother you are. But, we're going to anyway. You are kind, and loving...
Baby giggling.
and funny! That's right. And patient. So patient, patience of a saint as your mother used to say.
Look, with Shaun and us 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.
Baby giggling.
Bye honey, we love you.
Her energy was sapped. She fell to her knees and did not even have the strength to weep, to express her devastation. Her loss rippled through her veins, reflecting in the rubble and debris of Sanctuary Hills. Two centuries of destruction.
While Codsworth tried to awkwardly comfort her with one of his robotic appendages patting her back arrhythmically, she looked into his optical lens as his words eventually transitioned into despairs over their gardenias.
She lost Nate. She lost Shaun. But at least she had Codsworth, at least she had something. And something was better than nothing.
Something dragged her through the neighbors' houses in a futile search for her lost family. She felt odd about entering them, almost like it was trespassing. But she quickly overcame her unease. The only things that lived in these houses now were the over-sized insects she had already familiarized herself with at the Vault. The insects and skeletons.
God, the skeletons. They littered the ground everywhere.
But Codsworth, though misguided, his concern in his brief search was genuine in intention. Soon, he too came to accept the sad reality of her new life.
The first several days of her freedom was spent cleaning up her house. Codsworth easily complied, whizzing around with tasks he was originally programmed for. He would often titter about how lucky he was to have found her again, how everything had been hopeless before. It at least provided her with a small amount of comfort.
There were several other houses in Sanctuary Hills that were ruined beyond repair. Her house at least was—mostly—structurally sound. She picked through the garbage methodically. The bed she had shared with Nate was nothing but rubble that she cleared out. His service flag remained, which she displayed on their still standing kitchen table. Not that they had any visitors to see it on display.
Once she got to the nursery, however, things changed. Her breath escaped her lungs. She gripped the door frame for support. She saw the toy blocks, the baby book, tricycle, all laying abandoned. In the middle of it all, like a shrine, stood his crib.
The baby mattress had been reduced to dust, and the mobile hung in broken shambles. The paint was peeling from the charred wood, but its blue color was still visible after all this time. Two centuries.
She didn't enter the nursery. She couldn't. She wouldn't dare.
And so instead, she sat on the ottoman that remained in the front room, fiddling with the controls of the Pipboy she had lifted from the remains of a scientist in Vault 111. It had operated the door and elevator, allowing her outside in an otherwise locked down vault. Little good it did in finding her son.
"I need to find Shaun," she said aloud, affirming her new purpose in this life.
Codsworth approached her from the kitchen. "Ma'am, if I may, I never saw anyone leave through Sanctuary Hills. But someone else might have seen young Shaun passing through. Someone in Concord, maybe?"
"Concord?" she repeated, looking up. Concord, as she remembered it, was not far away.
"Yes, but be careful. I've seen more seedy individuals than I would care to count since the bombs fell. You should be prepared, armed even. I believe Master Nathaniel had something hidden away from his military days that might prove useful.
It was a .50 caliber rifle stowed away in the bottom of their closet. Nora remembered it well. It required some cleaning, parts of the assembly rusted through, and some modification in order for it to be useful once more, but overall, Nora was surprised with its intact condition.
Codsworth helped her with cleaning it and modifying it, improving it. At the workbench across the street, they worked on its accuracy, its recoil, and ammo capacity. By the next day, they had a gun worthy of her mission. Nate had taken her to the shooting range a few times to practice her marksmanship, but she tested a few shots in the hillside behind Sanctuary Hills. Luckily, Nate had stockpiled ammunition, and Codsworth's diligent watch over their home had discouraged looters over the centuries.
"May I accompany you, ma'am? To find young Shaun?" Codsworth inquired eagerly.
Nora looked at him sadly, suffering a small smile. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the robobutler's company, but she really needed to do this alone. "You should stay here and watch the homefront, just in case Shaun comes back."
Codsworth's gyrosphere whirred in agreement. "Excellent decision. Please be safe. Take care of yourself."
She kept smiling, reassuring her grip on the rifle. "I'll be fine. I've got this with me."
"If I may—Master Nathaniel told me once that soldiers would name their weapons as a sign of good luck, or something to that effect."
Nora gave a small chuckle, looking at the heavy rifle in her hands. She thought of her dearest home and family and how she hoped to be reunite with them once again.
"I'll call it... Sanctuary."
And her sanctuary it was.
-Strigi
