Nathan...' a dream self calls in a whisper then it all goes back black.
Nora wakes up in a cold sweat, to what feels like a dream, hazy rubble surrounds her and the stench of decay fills her nose. It's not a dream she remembers as she begins to sit up. It is her new much too harsh reality. It closes in around her threatening to suffocate the last shreds of her sanity. She sighs and reaches for one of the many wine bottles in her bag. It's 200 years old and tastes like sour vinegar but its alcohol content is through the roof and with just a swig she's warm and fuzzy again, almost sane. Nora was trying to get to the old apartment she had before she met her late husband Nathan. She was only a few blocks away from the Cambridge Police Station, which meant she was only a few blocks away from one of the most dangerous parts of what used to be Boston, her beautiful home city. Now laying in ruins. Having the police so close meant danger. If only she had more than just the 10mm that she found in Sanctuary Hills, once a stunning small suburb on the edge of the Commonwealth but now was as good as a graveyard to her.
Her Pip-Boy beeped quietly and she looked down at it. The green glow making her skin look sickly. 2:36 am, she needed to get a move on if she wanted to find that apartment. If it was even still there. Nora hoped beyond hope that it was. This world was so different from what she remembered. There were very few stable buildings and everything was so spaced out and lonely. She half slid half stumbled down the rubble of the building she was sleeping in and tried to make her way to the cracked and mangled asphalt of the street below.
"God I miss him." she said to herself, silently wishing that she too had died that day. Selfish. She was acting very selfish here lately. Stealing, injuring others, and even killing them if she needed to. She felt that Naten would have been disappointed in her because of it though. He was always so selfless. A Marine through and through. Nora strides down the crumbling road as quietly as she can, her Pip-Boys light off barely visible in the dark streets. She knows this place. She stops and looks as she realizes she can hear gunfire in the distance.
'Shit.' she thinks ' I need to go help.' She knew that Nate would. As she silently made her way towards the gunfire, and unmistakably the sound of power armor and laser pistols. Reluctantly she draws her gun, makes sure it's loaded and checks her stash for extra ammo which thankfully she has.
Nora loads it and comes upon a startling scene, a man in a full suit of power armor being mauled by several dozen ghouls. And opening her Pip-Boy and using her wonderful V.A.T.S system she takes aim at a ghoul. Feral from the radiation all around it. Was it once one of her neighbors? Maybe even a friend? She couldn't tell now the skin was leathery and radiation burned their minds so lost they will attack and kill anything in their way. It was easier not to picture them as they once were.
"Help!" his voice is rough, gravely, and slightly robotic through his helmet, man fighting for his life and seeing only one person who may be able to help. She fires in to the crowd of ghouls taking them down efficiently with shots to the head. And when they are all dead she goes closer. These are the first people since that Preston fellow and those settlers from Quinsy that she has really seen without having to kill on sight. Slowly she approaches the man in power armor, she puts her gun away to show she means no harm.
"State your business civilian." He says with all the air and presence of a military commander. Then he looks around him embarrassed at his own gruffness. "I-I mean thank you. For stepping in like that. I thought I was done for, for a moment" He says shyly.
Nora looks up at him towering above her in his tin can, and feeling the alcohol wearing off she reaches for the hip flask full of vodka and takes a generous pull.
"No problem." She says shortly with all the grace of a woman who's been drunk for far too long.
"Well thank you. I am Paladin Danse of the Brotherhood Of Steel. It seems I am in debt to your sharp shooting skills and your kindness. Allow me to repay you, we have supplies and a medic in the buil-" He cut himself off seeing Nora sway and collapse. Her thick radstag hide jacket falling open to reveal her blue and yellow Vault suit bright against the greys and browns of the ground.
"Scribe Haylen! Haylen! We have an emergency here!" He yells as he picks her up rushing her into the station. The doors nearly come off their hinges as he busts through them protecting what seems to be a skeletal body. He lays her down on a pallet made on the floor that he was actually using as a bed and exits his power armor having to duck slightly to get out of it without hitting his head.
"No I need her over here!" Haylen points to a desk with a mattress on it serving as a kind of hospital bed.
He picks her back up and walks carrying the unconscious woman and feeling her weightlessness even after getting out of his Power Armor, and being shocked that she seemed to weigh nothing. He could feel her hip bones dig into his stomach even though all of the clothes.
'How is this woman alive?' he thought "Surely with the skills he just saw she could hunt, or at least act as a mercenary to be able to pay for her meals.'
He looks at her, noticing her vault suit is undone at the neck showing her very prominent collar bones and just how slim she really is. He laid her down on the mattress on the counter and motioned for Scribe Haylen to take a look.
As she looks over the skeleton of a woman and begins to undress her trying to see if she is bleeding somewhere or find a reason she had lost consciousness in the middle of speaking with her superior.
"I need to undress her to check her for wounds." Haylen stated " Can you go find something to drape over her? I know people this thin get very cold easily."
"OH, UM, right… yes. I will go find something to drape over her..." Paladin Danse was suddenly very embarrassed not thinking she may need to be undressed.
Covering his eyes some and walking quickly from the room as he began to search for some kind of cloth to drape over her.
'You'd think he had never seen a woman nude before...' Scribe Haylen thought as she pulled the pack and clothes off of the woman who had effectively saved all of their asses. A mysterious stranger indeed. She pulled the shirt covering the odd blue jumpsuit off of her and laid it neatly on a table. She didn't appear to be bleeding but this jumpsuit was far too big on her. She unzips the front and gasps.
'Oh my... this woman is nearly a skeleton.' she soon realized that at one point this vault suit may have actually fit her properly. From her breast pocket slid a pristine card. An ID card. From before the war. Nora Wallace, birthdate 2-1-2040. The photo... was of the woman laying before her. Albeit with a fuller face and less skeletal but unmistakably her. Who was this? And how had she survived all these years? Once she got all of the clothes including the vault suit off she breathed a sigh of almost relief. Immediately knowing why the woman was out cold suddenly. She was probably starving. At least she hadn't been shot or mauled by a ghoul. Starvation she could fix easily, a gunshot wound though, not so much. She decided to put the ID card back in Nora's pocket, Haylen couldn't make heads or tails of how she was still here, she decided to keep it to herself for now.
'Nathan... honey? Are you there?'
'I'm in here! With Shaun!'
'Home...? I'm back home? The bombs? Did they drop? Am I dead?' Nora walks through her pristine living room and down the hallway. Her gut screaming that something is wrong but what? She opens the door and cold washes over her. Her baby's room is in ruins and her husband lays dead in the cryopod that is somehow in her house. Nora begins to scream.
"Hey! Oww! Stop thrashing! Urghhh..."
Nora feels her foot connect to something soft and fleshy... and warm? She looks down and realizes she is nearly naked but for her bra, underwear, and a thick blanket that has been lain over her body. Then she sees a man doubled over and realizes what happened.
"Oh! I am so sorry!" she says panicking, hoping the man doesn't hurt her. She feels dizzy and nearly falls from the bed she's on.
"No, please miss don't get up! I'm fine I promise!" Everything is so blurry, she begins to look around for her glasses but to no avail. The blurry shape of a man's hand reaches out with them and she puts them on, wishing she had something to clean them with. He hands her a small clean cloth as well. As if he read her mind.
"I'm sorry they're so dirty
That voice... the one calling for help... and then blackness...
Nora sat up slowly and saw the man she had briefly seen before she had passed out. She saw him now though without the haze of booze and drugs. And once she saw him clearly, she was shocked. He looked so familiar.
