A/N: Alright folks, my first shot at a Fallout fic. For those of you who haven't read any of my other work, I should warn you that I'm slow to update. Anyway, there will eventually be some Butch/FemLW. Just be patient. If you notice any formatting errors or anything, don't hesitate to let me know so I can fix it. :)
A special thanks to my stalwart beta companion, S Zix .
Chapter 1
Ellen DeLoria clutched Butch by the side of his jumpsuit collar, pulling him back home with a drained, angry look on her face. She mumbled furiously under her breath, not even looking at her son, who was stumbling along behind her in an attempt to keep up.
He couldn't make out much of what she said, aside from a few curse words, and things like "so embarrassed" and "I didn't raise my son to..." He got the gist. It had been the same thing ever since he'd been in diapers.
Ellen slapped the "open" button on their front door and dragged Butch in behind her. She repeated the motion inside to close it, led the ten-year-old boy to the couch, and pushed him into a sitting position.
Butch watched her pace back and forth in front of him, until she finally stopped and spoke, hissing the words through gritted teeth, emphasizing them to a disturbing degree.
"What on earth possessed you – to hit a girl on her birthday?"
He slowly focused his gaze somewhere else. "I dunno..." he mumbled.
Ellen's mouth flattened into a line. "I didn't send you to that party to get in a fight, I wanted you to make some friends!"
He looked down. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Butch DeLoria," she said forcefully, crossing her arms, "explain yourself. Now." He stayed silent, still staring at his feet. She waited for a moment, and sighed when she realized a response wasn't coming. "Just make sure to apologize to Julia. Tomorrow." Like that was going to happen. She sat on the couch next to him and rubbed her forehead. "God, I need a drink..."
Butch's jaw clenched as he remembered the comment a certain birthday girl had made less than an hour ago. "She..." Ellen's attention was brought back to her son. She watched him expectantly. "She said you drink all our ration coupons."
After a long silence, she leaned back. "That's not something you should worry about."
But it was something he worried about. He may have only been ten, but he wasn't stupid.
She could sense his discomfort. She scooted toward him and angled herself so she could see his face. "If it means so much, I'll cut back."
Her eyes were warm. They told him she was telling the truth. She probably even believed herself. Butch knew that whether she knew it or not, she was lying, but he was glad she said it anyway.
Butch's clothes were wrinkled and sloppy. One blue pant leg was crammed awkwardly into a boot, while the other hung down over his shoeless foot. His jumpsuit was unzipped almost all the way, revealing a sweat stain on his chest, and his Tunnel Snakes jacket lay crumpled on the floor. Even his hair, which he spent so much time getting perfect in the morning, was disheveled. It was far too early for someone to come around, yet there he stood in his doorway, staring grumpily at an awake, smug, and to his misfortune, very familiar face. "What do YOU want, nosebleed?"
The G.O.A.T. had happened several months ago, and everyone had been assigned jobs. Since then, Butch hadn't seen much of Julia. Without class to worry about, the younger crowd tended to stick around their friends or keep to themselves. Considering the mutual animosity, they hadn't exactly gone looking for one another.
"You here to get punched out again?"
Julia laughed falsely. "Oh, ho ho ho. Yeah, you sure showed me, didn't you?" She leaned on the door frame. "Only, the way I remember it, I punched you in the balls after that, and you screamed like a little girl."
Butch looked away moodily. "In your dreams." She laughed again. "What do you want anyway? You woke up the Butch-man, so you better have a good reason."
"I need a haircut."
Butch groaned and drooped his head. "You've gotta be shitting me. NOW?" He looked back up at her. To be fair, her hair was pretty bad, now that her old mohawk had grown out, and in a way, it was calling out to him to be fixed. It was bad enough to distract from her creepy, huge, brown eyes with long, fluttering eyelashes, which made her look like a damn deer. Other than that, he admitted mentally that she didn't look too terrible. She had a nice smile, he thought. Not that he saw it much.
He threw his head back, groaning. "FIIIINE." He stepped away from the door and glared at the ground, biting his tongue to keep himself from saying anything too rude to the 'customer' now making herself comfortable in his home. The Overseer had it out for him already. No point in making it worse. "Just keep it down, my mom's asleep." He closed the door and turned his gaze to her, pointing at a workstation he had set up. "And get your ass into that chair."
She sat happily, with a small bounce as he lumbered sleepily over to her. "So!" she started in a light conversational tone, "How's the whole hairdresser thing working out for you?"
"I'm not a damn hairdresser." He grabbed a bottle of water and started spraying it heavily on her hair, soaking it through. "I'm a barber."
"That's not what the G.O.A.T. said."
Butch rolled his eyes before getting to work untangling her hair. He decided to start at the roots, rather than the ends, tugging in what he hoped was a painful way through the knots. "So what'd you get then?"
He felt her wince and resisted the urge to grin. "I didn't take it."
He snorted. "Yeah, right..."
Julia closed her eyes and grinned in a self-satisfied sort of way. "I'm serious. I don't really have an official job, so my dad's just been teaching me what he knows at the clinic. But go ahead and think what you like."
"No – No way! How the hell did you get out of it?"
"Uhh, by notbeing an asshole to Brotch maybe? You weren't exactly a model student."
He continued combing through her hair, which was now tangle free. "Great... So you get to do whatever you want, and I'm stuck doing your damn hair."
"Oh, don't be so bitter. It's not my fault you were assigned a girl's job."
He stopped combing and glared at the back of her head.
Julia leaned out of his grip and looked back at him. "Are you going to actually cut it? Today?"
Butch glowered down at her. He wanted to smack her. He grabbed her shoulders, sat her back in the chair, and reached for his scissors. "So what, you come here just to gloat?"
She let out a short laugh. "No. I also came here to see how ol' Butchie is at his cool new job."
That did it. He took a deep, slow breath, and exhaled through his nose. "Well," he began, chopping her hair off right at the hairline, "Guess you'll get what you came for." He trimmed the excess so it was about 2 inches long all over. "I think I have a special 'do in mind for you." He slammed the scissors down and grabbed his clippers.
Julia's eyes followed the device until it disappeared past her peripheral. "Uh, Butch-"
He shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it, man, you'll love it." He flipped it on and a buzzing noise filled the room. Butch grinned. He worked from the bottom up, pulling away a little over half-way up each time. Clumps of hair fell around the chair. Julia was tense now.
Butch finally turned off the razor and set it down. He picked up his hair gel.
Nervously, Julia asked "So – another mohawk, right?"
He just laughed in response. After squeezing some gel into his palm and distributing it between his hands, he worked it into her hair, carefully spiking up the upper half. He grabbed a comb with his still sticky hands and combed the outside of it up to make it look a bit neater. He walked around front of her and lifted her chin to get a better look from the front.
Her expression made it even better.
"Looks good," he uttered proudly. He grabbed a damp towel and cleaned his hands, then handed her a mirror. Hand shaking, she took hold of it. She glared an ugly glare at the flat-top on her reflection.
He was grinning from ear to ear. "Yeah... Yeah! I call it the Wally Mack!"
Julia threw the mirror onto the desk. "YOU..." She seemed to hold her breath to keep from bludgeoning him to death. Her hands rose, and for a moment, Butch was pretty sure she was going to try to strangle him, but then she sighed and let them drop, looking defeated. "God, you're an asshole. I was hoping to finally get something more grown up looking, but – oh well..." She mussed it up a bit, to keep it from looking so much like a military cut. It looked more like a windswept bowl cut now, which was considerably better, but still certainly not what she had wanted.
"Yeah, well, that's what you get for messing with a Tunnel Snake!"
"Whatever, jackass. Not like I thought you'd do a good job anyway." She stuck her tongue out.
His nostrils flared, and his chest puffed up. No one insulted a Tunnel Snake. Not even when it was about some sissy job he had. "Get your tongue back in your mouth, or I'll rip it off your face!"
"I'd like to see you try." She gasped and dodged the swing at her head. "What the fuck, man?"
"You mess with the Tunnel Snakes, you get the fangs!"
Julia stared, her eyes shining with baffled amusement. Her face broke into a gleeful grin. She leaned against the wall and howled with laughter.
He glared furiously. "Shut up." She didn't seem to hear him. He stomped over to her and wrapped his hands around her neck. "Shut up!"
"Awk!" She gritted her teeth and struggled in his grasp.
Butch felt a fist connect with his stomach. "Urgh!" All the air left his lungs, and he hunched over in pain. He stumbled a few steps back. "You bitch!" he wheezed. He threw another punch, hitting her square in the breast.
"Oh fuck!" She clutched the spot he'd hit, her face screwed up in pain. "You hit me in the boob! What the fuck is wrong with you, you lunatic?"
Both their eyes darted to the bedroom door at the sound of footsteps.
He frowned at her, lowering his voice. "Great. You woke up my mom." He glanced at the door again. "You win, alright? Just get outta here."
She whispered back incredulously. "I woke up your mom? You're the one who gave me this stupid haircut."
Butch licked his lips nervously. "Yeah, fine. My fault. Now go."
Julia seemed like she was about to continue when the door slid open.
He glared at her for a moment longer, then stood painfully. "Uh, hey mom."
"Butchie...?" She stopped in the doorway and glanced at Julia. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and a near empty bottle was limply hanging from her hand. It was like she was so used to holding one, that she didn't even realize it was there anymore.
"Y-yeah?"
Ellen leaned her head on the door frame. "Keep it down out here, would ya? Trying to sleep this off." She raised the bottle a little.
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry." Butch felt embarrassed, even a little angry. Why did Julia have to come when she did? If she had come a day earlier, or maybe a few hours later, it would have saved them both from this. Instead, he stood awkwardly between the two women. He could handle one or the other, but both was just too much.
"You're a good boy, Butchie," his mother mumbled. "G'night..." She slid back into the bedroom and closed the door.
Butch turned and glared at Julia. Her expression pissed him off more than ever. Her forehead was creased, and she struggled to avoid looking at him, like she hadn't just seen what she'd seen. She had a weird face, and stupid hair, and she was the one pitying him. "Forget what I said before. This is your fault."
"Well-!" She stopped and looked at the ground, trying to collect her thoughts. "...I-"
"Just get outta here." She turned quickly and left. Butch stayed in the same spot for a minute and looked thoughtfully at the open door, wondering what she would have said.
The imitation sunlight had been dimmed to an orange glow for the night. This usually served as a sign that it was time for bed, but it was one that the Tunnel Snakes always ignored. The lights had been that way for six hours, and the trio was finally returning to the apartments after a last shared beer. "What do you guys think of Christine?" Wally shrugged, and Butch cocked an eyebrow at Paul.
"Why, you thinkin' of gettin' with her?"
Paul smiled a little too much and waved a hand dismissively. "Nah... But... but what if I was? I mean, she's hot, right?"
Butch chuckled and looked forward again. "Whatever, man, just go for it."
"Just don't screw it up," Wally mumbled.
Paul nodded firmly and started to part from the group. "I'll catch you guys later." After a few more steps, he turned and looked back, his fist in the air. "Tunnel Snakes Rule."
After he had rounded the corner into his home, Wally scoffed. "Why does he still do that?"
Butch shrugged. "Because we rule."
"He's a fucking child." Butch wasn't sure when Wally had become so serious, but he was pretty damn sure it was a poor attempt at being a 'grown up'. They continued to walk side by side in silence, until they parted without a word or a look.
He continued down the hall alone, mulling over recent events. He felt odd about his current place in the Vault. He loved cutting hair when the other residents came to him and, oddly, he never looked forward to pulling stunts with his friends anymore. The Overseer had begun offering them special privileges in exchange for going after specific people. It had become a job instead of a way to feel alive in this pit. But there was no real way to get out of it. There was no escape from any of it. What little he had – his friends, food, clean water, and a bed – he would trade away in a heartbeat for a way to leave.
Butch expected his mom to be passed out drunk, as usual. He never had to worry about being too loud when he came home late. Yet, as he turned down the hall to his front door, he was swept with an odd feeling of dread. There was something about the air that felt unsettling and unfamiliar. He stopped and looked up and down the hallway. After seeing nothing, he continued, trying to stay alert. When he was close to his front door, he finally realized what was wrong.
It was open.
At that moment, the alarm began blaring loudly, echoing throughout the halls. Butch looked around in surprise. In his 19 years in the Vault, the alarm had never gone off. He didn't know they even had one.
The Overseer's voice rang out through the PA system. "This is the Overseer. All residents of Vault 101 are hereby confined to their quarters." Having already forgotten the peculiarity of the open door, Butch hurried inside and closed it behind him. Halfway to the couch, he heard his mother in the other room, crying his name. He immediately perked up and ran to the sound of her voice. He froze in the doorway. She was huddled, crying next to her bed as three large radroaches leaped and bit at her.
The alarm sounded distant. All he could hear was the hammering of his heart in his chest, begging to burst out. The switchblade in his pocket suddenly felt like it was pressing hard against his leg.
"Just get it out" he thought to himself, "Just pull it out and do anything."
The pulsing in his chest seemed to extend its reach through his whole body. He stared, wide-eyed at his mom being torn into, begging his body to move and being told "no".
One of the radroaches scuttled around, taking notice of him. It had barely moved an inch in his direction when Butch's legs took action for him and bolted in the opposite direction. He tore through the other room and darted out the door. Alarms continued to ring overhead as he ran down the hall. "Help," he panted, struggling to yell over the blaring noises, "Help!"
He caught sight of someone running in his direction. He quickly moved to block their path as they approached. It was Julia.
Suddenly their years of rivalry didn't matter. All hostility he'd previously had toward her melted away.
He gripped her shoulders. "You gotta help me! My mom... She's trapped in there with the radroaches!"
Julia looked passed him restlessly, aching to hurry on her way. She turned back to him. "Where is she?"
Butch searched her face, amazed that she was so quick to help him. "She – She's back in there." He pointed to the right toward his door.
She nodded once and jogged into his apartment. He followed at a safe distance and stopped as he reached the entrance to the bedroom again. One of the radroaches jumped and bit at Julia, who had taken out a bat. The other two were still going for his mom.
Butch suddenly felt very small and useless. For years, he had pictured himself in these situations, whipping out his trusty Toothpick and saving the day. Now that time was here, and all he could do was cry for help and watch someone else take care of things.
A loud THWACK brought him back to his senses. The weight of Julia's bat had done the work for her, and the radroach attacking her lay still a few feet away. She swung the bat in the other direction and took out another, almost taking Ellen DeLoria's knee with it. Butch winced. The remaining one was on top of his mother, making it next to impossible for Julia to accurately hit it without injuring the older woman in the process.
Julia's eyes darted back and forth, assessing the situation, frantically trying to find a way to get it off so she could take care of it. Taking advantage of the pause, the radroach managed to sink its mandibles into the neck in front of it. Julia stiffened in shock, and punted it off. It had barely stood back up when she brought her bat down on its back with a sickening crunch.
Julia strapped her bat to her back again and turned to Ellen. Blood was pouring from her neck, and she made vile gurgling noises as she struggled. Julia dropped to her side and began desperately trying to put pressure on the wound. She was pressing so hard it looked as though the older woman would choke, but dark red liquid quickly appeared and flowed freely between her fingers. Ellen spluttered. Flecks of blood landed on the side of Julia's face. She turned her gaze to Butch, frozen in the doorway, once again. "Help me, goddamn it!"
His eyes were glued on his struggling, gasping mother. "How?"
Blood covered Julia's hands, and dripped and sputtered all over her jumpsuit. "Get me a t-shirt or something." Butch moved mechanically over to his dresser, opened the drawer, and stared blankly inside at the twenty matching white shirts. His brain finally kicked back into gear, and he pulled one out, hurrying it to Julia.
She snatched it from his hands, and held it tightly against Mrs. DeLoria's neck. Julia's eyes were wide, darting between the pool of blood on the floor, the white shirt, slowly being soaked with red, and the older woman's terrified face.
"Why isn't the bleeding stopping?"
Julia's breaths were coming out fast, panicked. "I don't know."
He was stunned. She seemed so confident, to start with. She seemed comfortable in telling him what he should do, but here she was, as unsure about what was happening as he was.
Her eyes were filled with unshed tears, making them unnaturally shiny. She stared at the bleeding woman in front of her, trying to collect herself. "I'm doing everything I can."
It wasn't going to be enough. The shirt was soaked through. Mrs. DeLoria was becoming paler and more still by the second. The room had become nearly silent. Julia's hand wasn't pressed quite so tightly to the wound anymore. His heart was no longer pounding, his breathing had slowed, his head was not buzzing with thoughts. He simply stared at her, knowing and understanding exactly what was happening. Her breaths grew fainter, and they finally stopped.
His mother was dead.
Julia let out a sigh, as though she had been holding her breath, and let her head drop in defeat. She stood up, a little unsteady, and took a few steps toward Butch. Her hands and sleeves were soaked in blood, along with the knees on her jumpsuit. There was a slight smear across her forehead where she'd tried to wipe away sweat at one point. The layer of water was gone from her eyes, but they were filled with shame and sadness. They looked at each other for a moment, gathering their thoughts. She finally spoke. "You okay?"
Butch was about to reply, when the Overseer's voice came on again over the intercom. "Do not interfere with Vault Security personnel. Any resident found outside his or her quarters will be dealt with. Severely. That is all." Julia looked at Butch again. She muttered a "sorry" and ran out.
He stared after her for a full minute, wondering if she'd run back to her own quarters. He eventually looked back at his mom. She was propped limply up against the wall, her whole torso soaked with blood. Her heavy lidded eyes open and glazed over.
He couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at the sight. He finally moved across the room, tore the sheet off the nearby bed, and draped it over her. Her feet stuck out of the bottom awkwardly.
Butch looked at her for a moment longer, before picking up a bottle of whiskey that had fallen on the floor, and taking it back to the other room.
He stayed up all night, too afraid and distraught to go to sleep. Too uncomfortable to even try when there was something that was no longer his mother in the next room.
It wasn't until morning that someone came for the body, and he discovered why Julia was running.
Butch wandered through the corridors later in the morning, after his mom's body had been removed. It was quieter than usual. He saw most of the residents, but quite a few seemed to be missing. He wanted to see Julia badly. His friends just didn't seem to be the right people to talk to about how he was feeling. He thought she was the one person here that might understand.
As he made his way through, he started noticing odd things. He thought there had simply been some sort of breach, and a lot of radroaches had gotten in, but there was a whole chunk of the living quarters that looked charred, like there had been a large fire. It was Paul's area. Butch felt his stomach drop, and quickly changed direction.
Near the Atrium a hallway was splattered with blood and had bullet holes in the walls. It seemed like the gunfire had come from both directions though. Last time he checked, radroaches couldn't use guns.
As he studied the holes in the walls, the Overseer's voice came on once again. "All residents, gather in the class room immediately." Butch reluctantly left the area.
As he walked toward the room, barely noticing his legs moving, he saw Wally Mack leaving his apartment after his family. Wally looked at him seriously, and waited for him to catch up. As Butch approached, Wally grabbed his shoulder quickly and let go. "Hey man, I heard about your mom..."
Butch bit the inside of his lower lip and nodded. "Have you seen Paul around?"
"You don't know?" Butch stared blankly as Wally waited for some sort of response. "Radroaches got him."
"Oh." The response left him as naturally as though he were hearing about a weather forecast. He turned his gaze to the floor. Wally stared down the hall. Butch didn't know what to say. He had lost most of the people he cared about in less than 12 hours. He finally choked out his next question. "What about Julia?"
"Julia?" Wally repeated the name harshly. "It's that bitch and her fucking dad's fault all this shit happened in the first place! Why the fuck would you want to see her?" Butch stared at him, surprised and confused. "Come on, we gotta go."
They walked in silence the rest of the way, their boots clunking against the metal ground. When they got to the classroom, they sat in their old desks across the room from each other. It was somewhat startling that all the residents could fit so easily inside a small room. Had the population diminished that much? The Overseer stood at the front of the room.
"Very early this morning, we faced something terrible." Butch could see where the speech was going. He looked around the room, for other missing people. Julia and her dad were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Jonas, and he'd always been close to the two of them. He cocked an eyebrow. "I must give my deepest condolences to those of you who lost a family member, or someone close. Our security and I did all we could to prevent disaster, but given the situation, casualties were going to be difficult to avoid." By the look on Old Lady Palmer's face, her grandson was one of the losses that was being talked about. "Now, it is time to explain what happened.
"The Vault door was opened." This caught Butch's attention. He slowly straightened in his desk, his icy blue eyes focusing on the speaker. There were a few gasps and murmurs. Wally didn't seem surprised, but then his dad was head of security. Of all the younger crowd, he was most likely to be in the know about these things.
"That's right. For a reason that is yet to be discovered, our doctor, James, broke through our security and escaped. Before the door had been closed again, some creatures from the outside managed to get in. We attempted to question his assistant, Jonas, but the radroaches had already gotten to him."
Out of the corner of his eye, Butch noticed Amata's face. She looked furious. Figures the Overseer's daughter would immediately side with daddy.
"Not long after, James' daughter Julia followed her father and also escaped. During the upset, she killed, or otherwise harmed many of our neighbors who were in the way."
Butch's mouth hung open.
"I'd like to take a moment of silence to remember Officers Kendall, Park, Wolfe, Richards, and O'Brian, who fought so bravely, as well as Vikki Hannon and Paul Hannon Jr., Floyd Lewis, Ellen DeLoria, Anne Palmer and her son Jonas, and Tom and Mary Holden, who were also killed. Perhaps if I had kept a closer eye on James and his daughter, I could have foreseen this and somehow prevented-"
"That's a goddamned lie!" The Overseer looked coldly at Butch, who had shot out of his chair.
"If there's something you want to say, Mr. DeLoria, it can wait until later."
Butch clenched his fists, and stood his ground. "That's not how my mom died. You lying about the others too?"
The Overseer stared at him for a moment. The small crowd was also staring now; some scattered whispering around the room. "Absolutely not. We have security footage of her murdering the those who were in her way as she was leaving."
"Maybe she wouldn't have done it if you hadn't sent your goons after her with loaded pistols." All eyes turned to the girl in the front desk. Amata was looking at the ground, clutching the loose fabric of her jumpsuit with a death grip.
Butch was confused for a moment. The daddy's girl couldn't possibly be on the opposite side of dear old dad. She looked at her father.
"Julia isn't a killer. She would only ever do something like that to defend herself. I'll bet she had nothing to do with the Holdens, too." She spat. "Isn't that right? Dad?"
"That's enough." The Overseer no longer looked composed. An ugly sneer was plastered across his face. "The two of them put the entire Vault at risk with their selfish needs. That door needs to remain closed. That is, as it has always been, law. It's not safe out there."
Amata stood."It's been opened before!" She whirled around to face everyone else in the room. "The Vault has been opened before! The search team even made it back okay! There's a whole town less than a mile from here!" She looked at her father again. "Our numbers get smaller every generation! Do you expect us to survive down here for much longer with no outside contact?"
"I said that's enough!" The room fell silent. Butch looked around. Some looked angry, and decent number seemed to direct it toward the Overseer.
"I think it is time for all of us to return to our homes. I recommend you all stay there. It's still not safe."
Butch caught Amata's eye, and they looked at each other meaningfully. For once, they seemed to be on the same side.
