"Do you miss your husband?"
It was a weird question to start on, Nora had to give Piper that. She was different than most of the press Nora had to deal with when she was a lawyer, that was for sure. The press always wanted to barge in on her cases, leak information to the public, with no real concern for those involved in the cases themselves. Piper, she was different. She had a different air about her. When they first met, she was yelling at the mayor. That seemed like a normal thing for the press to do, if Nora was being honest, but she'd supported Piper, supported the freedom of the press. And reading 'The Synthetic Truth' really had Nora agreeing with Piper. The Commonwealth did have the right to know. People were being kidnapped left, right and centre. Piper was doing a better job than more reporters Nora had met. The fact that she didn't ask about the vault like everyone did when they first caught sight of the blue body-hugging suit did was something Nora couldn't say she would have expected, not when Piper asked to write 'A View from the Vault'.
"Husband?" Nora asked, leaning back into Piper's sofa, raising an eyebrow at Piper questionably, prompting the reporter to go on.
"Yeah, your husband." Piper motioned to Nora's ring, tilting her head. "I'm a reporter, I notice things." Nora followed her gaze to the ring on her left hand, gleaming as the light hit the ring at just the right angle. She hadn't really remembered when she put it on, but being 235 years old would do that to you.
"Oh. Oh, Nate wasn't my husband." Nora looked back at Piper, watching as the woman sat up straighter on the chair, ever ready to listen. "Nate was a client. I was a lawyer, before the war. Uh, I helped people who were done wrong by others." Nora trailed off, realising the Commonwealth wouldn't have lawyers any more, hell, they didn't even have laws any more.
"Like you did today? Killed those raiders for Abernathy?" Piper asked innocently, jotting down notes in her book. She could write a book on Nora's stories she'd heard already, just from what she had told Moe, how the world was different before, how Diamond City was a respectable ball park where the Red Sox didn't beat people to death for sport like Moe had told everyone.
"Not quite. Instead of killing the wrong-doers, I'd help both parties agree on a reparation price. Like, they killed one of their Brahmins, they'd pay 1000 caps." At Piper's nod, Nora carried on. "I was in the middle of fighting his case, his wife was killed in a hit and run, back when the cars were running and not littering the streets. I was at his house gathering information when the warnings went off. He had Vault clearance. I didn't. He grabbed his son and put the ring on my finger, telling me to follow him. He ran with his son all the way to the vault, me trailing behind. I would have been killed in the blast, but he told me he'd explain later. Only, there was no later, he was killed, his son taken. I, I want to find his son, but I don't know how much time has passed. I don't know when I was woken up. To me, all these things, running to the vault, Nate's death, waking up, you, it all happened today to me. It's so much. A few hours ago, I watched Nate die, a few hours before that, I was driving up to Sanctuary Hills to talk to him. It's all so much. But they're together now, in a better place."
"Blue…" Piper pushed her pen back into her glove, leaning out of the chair she'd dragged over to her sofa, allowing the tired and weary vault dweller to rest on a more comfortable surface, resting her hand on Nora's knee, head tilted and eyebrows furrowed in sympathy.
"Part of me wants to find Shaun, y'know, because without his father, I wouldn't be here, I owe that to Nate, but, like, part of me thinks he won't even be alive. He could have been taken at any time in the last 2 centuries. Who knows if he's still alive." Nora leant back, feeling the warmth spread through her knee as the heat from Piper's hand spread through her vault suit, calming her down.
"If he's alive, you'll find him, Blue. If anyone can, you will." Piper dropped her notebook onto the table next to her, all while keeping her other hand on Nora's knee, smiling slightly at the vault dweller.
"You've known me all of 10 minutes, Piper." Nora cracked a smile, mock rolling her eyes at the woman.
"Hey, I'm a damn good reporter, I can read people." Piper laughed, opting to remove her hand from Nora's knee to poke her in jest.
"You remind me of this girl I dated once. Facially and personality-wise. Harper. Hell, I said once, I dated her yesterday . Look at me, understanding the passage of time." Nora laughed at herself as Piper extracted herself from the chair and picked up her notepad, jotting down a few final notes as she listened to Nora ramble.
"Oh yeah? Was this Harper a badass journalist fighting for survival every day?" Piper asked, tucking her notepad into the pocket of her red trench coat.
"Well she was a reporter, but she didn't fight for survival. At least not like you do, only to survive on the job."
"She sounds like a riot. Go on, I've got to write this up into a story worthy of our hero from underground. Go explain to Moe how the players didn't use the gloves to suffocate each other in fights to the death again."
"Paint a good picture of me, Red." Nora laughed, swinging open Piper's door and leaving before the reporter could question her again.
"I will d- Wait, ' Red '?"
View from the Vault by Piper Wright
Whenever I take a walk through Diamond City, there are so many things people tell me to be grateful for. Purified water, working lights, electricity, security. True, what we have would have been unthinkable even a few decades ago. But it's easy to forget that, even after all the progress we have made, we are still living in the shadow of the world that was. A world before the threat of radiation. Before the Super Mutant and the Feral Ghoul and the synth.
So, as fortune often has it, I crossed paths with her. Vault Dweller. A person who is experiencing the Commonwealth for the first time. What would her fresh set of eyes say about how far we've come? Is Diamond City the "Great, Green Jewel" we have always claimed it to be?
Before we begin to answer that question, we have to know who she is. Where she comes from. To my surprise, she did not have much to say about her life in the Vault at all. Because she spent all that time staring at a piece of frozen glass. Every day. For over two centuries. That's right, she isn't just a Vault Dweller, she's an original Vault Dweller. She spent her entire time on the inside cryogenically suspended.
So what does Nora have to say about seeing Diamond City for the first time?
"Honestly, seeing everyone surviving out here? Rebuilding the world? It gives me hope."
Hope. When was the last time someone in our city talked about hope who wasn't some politician fishing for points in the next election, making empty promises at the Wall? But our outsider hasn't let the cynicism of our strange world get the better of her.
This is all the more remarkable because of the reason Nora came to the Commonwealth. You see, Nora had a friend. A friend who had a son. Shaun. And even though they were in the relative safety of a Vault, someone broke in, and took Shaun from his father, and now the friend, nay, an acquaintance, is now risking everything - wandering through this strange and unfriendly world of ours - in order to save Shaun from his kidnappers. This all happened today for her. The bombs, the killing of her friend, the kidnapping of his son, Diamond City. This happened today. And she still feels hope at seeing this place. And that is refreshing. Hope. Even after kidnappings and killings.
We all know the rumors and whispers that surround every missing person in Diamond City. The guilty looks we pass to mourning family members as we "thank the Wall that, this time, it wasn't us." You can end up dead in the Commonwealth for a million reasons. Why spend our time worrying about kidnappings?
Why, indeed.
It's easy for us to be cynical about the missing. We have spent so long knowing the Institute is out there, but knowing so little about them. They are not the only ones responsible for kidnappings, but the fact that they sometimes are, and the fact that we have been so powerless to stop them when they do, causes us to treat all victims of kidnappings as if they are a lost cause.
But the people left behind, those loved ones, friends, and neighbors who may never see the faces of those taken from them again, they do not have the luxury of being able to just look away. They have to carry that loss with them, even if everyone else tells them to move on and forget.
"You can only take it one day at a time." Nora said. "Just keep going. That's all anyone can do."
And that's coming from someone who remembers the first bombs dropping. To her, they dropped today. If she can take the days as they come, so can we.
She's the sole survivor, but together, we can all be survivors.
Every one of us.
