AN - This is going to be a full retelling of Fallout 4, no word of dialogue will be lifted from the game. I also want to focus more on the interactions between Nate and the people around him. Please feel free to PM me or leave a review if you think there is something I can improve on. I hope you like the story I've made
He felt only half conscious
"It's Cold" "What happened?"
"Where am I?"
"Why can't I move?" "My arms are numb"
"My eyes feel frozen shut"
"Where's… Nora"
The memories came flooding back, like a wave of pain pulsing throughout his body.
"Oh god… Nora"
With another shock of pain, they were pulled fully into consciousness, leaving behind their deep sleep.
The door to the cryogenic cell lifted open, and he stumbled out of it, only barely moving his legs to stop the fall.
It was like a bat had just slammed into his head, a ringing noise that slowly got quieter, and a face that feels like its being pricked with dozens of tiny needles. He slowly recovered, stood straight up and leaped at the cyro cell across him.
"Please no" he said, he wanted to scream it, but all his body would allow was a quite whisper.
He fumbled on the controls and managed to flip the lever and the cryo cell's door cracked off from its frozen position.
He stood at the edge of the cell. Legs feeling weaker than when he got out of the cell.
In front of him, sat his wife, completely frozen over, and with a thick red stain on the left side of her chest. He inched closer to his wife, not wanting to accept the corpse of his wife.
His legs gave way and he fell in front of her, kneeling before the pod. He looked up at the body of Nora, tears trying to flow out of his ice-cold eyes.
He lifted his hand, shaking from the immense cold, and held Nora's.
He stared down at the floor, gripping her hand tighter
"Why" he whispered, so silently even he couldn't hear it himself. He then felt the ring on her hand. He looked up at the golden piece, shakily getting up. He looked down, and leaned into the hand, giving it a ginger kiss. He then let go, leaving the ring on the finger. "I'll come back" He croaked, "I love you"
He stumbled off down the hallway, head still spinning and teeth chattering.
The thought of his dead wife ached in his head, he tried hard to suppress it. If he wanted to get out, he'd have to postpone his mourning.
Ignoring the bodies of the other victims, he made his way to the first door, flipping the switch to open it.
With every movement Nate made, ice broke from his body, making it easier to make the next movement.
He limped through the first door jumping at the sight of a massive cock roach. Letting out a small scream, and after standing there staring at the creature for a few seconds, he gently started to make his way out of the room.
The next room was filled with a broken generator, so powerful it launched bolts into the air.
After ignoring that room, and wandering around some more, he made his way to the main door, the one that connected the main hallway to the vault entrance.
After a bunch of buzzes from the switch as Nate flipped it repeatedly, he realized that the only way through was through the generator room. Nate knew electricity was dangerous, especially when it arcs through the air without any general direction, he would be playing the lottery in order to make it out. But he saw no other option to get out of the volt.
He couldn't rewire the door, he didn't know enough about electronics. The door might as well of been a concrete wall.
Inhaling a deep breath, and closing his eyes, he sprinted across the room, completely ignoring the skeletons on either side of him.
He tripped on the step going up from the room and fell on his face, but knowing that he was still in danger of the arcs, he hastily scampered away from the edge.
Leaning against the door leading out of the room, he let out his breath in a massive sigh of relief.
Getting up and dusting himself off, he opened the door and was shocked still by a couple of those massive roaches.
He knew he couldn't sneak his way past this one, so he ran headfirst into the room ahead and vaulted onto the first one he saw.
He couldn't focus on how disgusting this made him feel, instead, he ran to the nearest door, opening it, jumped through and closed it behind him.
After a few more rooms, he made his way to a terminal, with a skeleton sitting on the chair, holding a 10mm pistol. Nate smiled at the sight of the pistol, knowing that he didn't have to jump on one of those roaches again made his day slightly better.
Grabbing the gun, the handle somehow feeling colder than his skin, he pushed aside the skeleton and sat down on the chair.
Activating the terminal, he was happy to see an option to open the evacuation tunnel.
Pressing the option and jumping across the desk, he made his way to said tunnel.
When he saw that all that stood between him, and freedom out of this godforsaken vault, was a bunch of roaches, he grinned. If he wasn't anything else, he was definitely good with a pistol.
Shooting eight shots rapidly, one eye closed and the other squinting as he aimed, then calmly walking down a hallway with eight roach corpses.
Opening another door, he saw the vault entrance.
Shooting another two roaches, he walked over to the skeleton lying on the ground next to the vault control panel. The skeleton was wearing a Pip-Boy on its arm, and without a second thought, he grabbed it off the dry bones of the skeleton.
After fiddling around with it, he found out that it had a plug on the underside, a plug that just so happened to fit into a hole on the control panel. He pressed it into the plug entrance, waiting a few seconds for his Pip-Boy to load, then the "Emergency Exit" button flipped open and he punched it.
Blaring red lights and a massive buzzing sound ensued, with a massive gear shaped object getting rolled out of the way, and a pathway extending out of the entrance lobby.
Walking across the cheap metal pathway that shook with every step, down the stairs, he now stood at the elevator the leads to the world above. What this world looked like, Nate had no idea, it could be a nuclear hellscape with high temperatures and constantly burning trees, it could be a frigid plain after a long nuclear winter. Hell, the nukes could still be dropping from the sky for all he knew.
After a while of contemplation, he decided that meeting an untimely death atop the elevator, would be a lot better than meeting a long, drawn out one below it.
Stepping onto the platform, the gates shifted closed and it started up to the surface world.
The gates on the surface opened up, letting a bright, brownish yellow light shine in. Nate stared up at the gates in awe, gently lowering his face until he reached the top.
The platform came to a sudden stop atop the surface.
Nate looked around his breathing staggered and without pattern
"It's all dead"
He thought. Dead trees loomed over him, and dead trees rooted in bone-dry dirt stretched as far the eye could see.
He only heard ringing in his ears, his sense of touch numbed, his eyes were the only thing that functioned as it was supposed to.
Nate felt like he was already dead, and this was his version of purgatory, an endless wasteland, devoid of any life.
He looked down at his hands, squinted at them as he made a hard fist, he wasn't going to lose hope that easily.
He started down the hill determined to make it to his house, trying his best to ignore the bones of long dead people. People that he felt like he'd seen them alive and healthy ten minutes ago. A little tricycle lay broken along the stream, its pedals creaking in the wind. Walking across the stream, and making it to the main street, looking right, then left – Was that Codsworth?
"Codsworth!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice a lot deeper and louder than in the vault.
He ran over to the robot, who was trying to trim the dry twigs that he considered a 'hedging'.
"Good lord above, Mr Nate!"
Codsworth's voice had a lot of emotion behind it, Nate couldn't tell which emotion it was though.
"Codsworth I… I- I don't know what to say, how the hell did you survive that blast?"
"Although my programming tells me to say that it's 'because of General Atomics International' but I truly have no idea"
Nate tried to talk more, but the Mister Handy cut him off
"It's so good to see you, you have no idea how 200 years can feel like 1000 when there's no one to bloody talk to!"
The Robot's voice sounded like he was somehow on the edge of crying.
"Wait, how long?" Nate said, feeling like he'd misheard something.
"200 years sir" Codsworth said, triumphantly
"Counted each and every day myself"
"Jesus Codsworth, I'm sorry about that"
Codsworth let out a cry, "You have no idea how lonely it's been, no one to talk to, no one to command me, and no one to turn me off! I've had to live each and every fucking day in this monstr- "
Codsworth's tone the changed, as if he noticed something wrong.
"Where's the missus and the boy?"
Nate couldn't hold back the thought of her anymore, barely holding back tears to let out a cohesive sentence.
"She's… She's… She's dead Codsworth"
"Oh my" Codsworth sounded genuinely surprised, and without a moments delay he followed up with "Sir, I think now is the best time as any to give you this, it's a holotape, ma'am asked me to give it to you when… when. Odd, I seem to have forgotten"
Nate took it from Codsworth's hand.
Trying his best to say "Thank you Codsworth" While holding back a monsoon of tears.
He walked into the house that he once lived in, ignoring everything else and headed straight for the bedroom.
The bed's frame still lay there, the mattress no where to be seen. Nate sat on the bed frame, and with shaking hands, he loaded the holotape into the Pip-Boy.
The tape started with Nora speaking playfully to Shaun. Hearing her laugh was like a cold knife piercing his heart, eventually she started to speak to Nate
"Hi Honey- "
Nate popped the tape out quicker than he would shoot a gun.
Just hearing her voice, like an angels, speaking to him, it was too much. He held the tape in his hand, looked down at the floor and started to cry, tears dripping from his face onto the floor. Codsworth could hear the wails of pain from outside the house, he figured it would be better to let Nate mourn.