There were a lot of things in life that Nate didn't expect. He didn't expect the nuclear war, not fully, anyway. A part of him always hoped that the inevitable destructive end to humanity would never come. Then it did.
He didn't expect the evil of Vault-Tec.
He didn't expect to be frozen alive, or to be thawed out long enough to witness Nora's murder and Shaun's kidnapping.
When he finally awoke from his icy-slumber, he definitely didn't expect the nuclear wasteland that awaited him outside of Vault 111. The Sanctuary and the Boston he knew were gone. The bombs made sure of that. The rolling green hills and the shining, distant metropolis that was once Boston had been washed away by radioactive waves from the unimaginable might of the bombs.
After stumbling down the hill of this foreign, old land, Nate didn't know what to expect. He doubted he would find any friendly faces. After all, how could anyone have survived the blast, especially if the other vaults were as treacherously run as his had been. Who runs 'scientific' experiments on refugees?
And yet, despite the world Nate found himself in, he found friendship, first in Codsworth in Sanctuary. His old Mister Handy robot was still functioning after all this time and doing his damnedest to keep the house in order. Despite the impossibility of the task, the robot offered to help search through Sanctuary for Shaun. While they didn't find what they were looking for, the search turned out to be just what he needed. It reminded him that he couldn't give up. He had to keep looking for his son. With that in mind, and directions from Codsworth, Nate headed for Diamond City, a settlement built within the ruins of Fenway Park.
Just outside of Sanctuary, as Nate passed the old Red Rocket Truck Stop, he encountered his first creature of the Wasteland, and it wasn't what he had expected. A German Shepard strolled up to him, barking excitedly. The pooch made it clear that he planned on sticking with Nate, and he didn't mind the extra company, so they continued on their way. They soon encountered a group of raiders attacking a group of people, and the dog proved to know how to handle himself in a fight. Together, the pair managed to fight off the raiders and rescue the group, who were refugees from Quincy far to the south. A man under the name Preston Garvey was leading the small group, doing his best to keep them safe. He claimed to be a member of the Minutemen, a civilian militia named after the group of the same name from the American Revolution. The group thanked Nate for his help, and even revealed that they knew the German Shepard. Dogmeat was a weird name, but the pooch didn't seem to mind it one bit. With the raiders, and the surprise attack from a Deatchclaw, taken care of, the refugees headed for the safety of Sanctuary while Nate and Dogmeat headed for Diamond City.
As the pair arrived at the Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth, Nate wasn't prepared to find a locked door with a very loud and angry reporter trapped outside. When Piper offered him a way inside, he didn't think twice about where it might lead. He needed to find his son and that meant getting into the city. He didn't care how he did it and never expected that that first bizarre encounter would lead to one of the strongest friendships he'd ever known. Once Piper learned exactly why Nate was in the city, she didn't for one measly second think of doing anything other than offering her help.
Piper took him to Nick Valentine, the town's detective, or tried to anyway. His assistant informed them that Nick had left on a case and hadn't returned in several days. Refusing to give up, Nate went in search of Nick, and Piper tagged along as well. Together, the trio of Nate, Piper, and Dogmeat stormed Vault 114. Yet again, Nate was impressed to learn that one of his new companions could handle herself so well. While she didn't appear dangerous at first glance, Piper had a 10 mm concealed under her worn red trench coat and she knew how to use it with deadly efficiency. Once they found Nick within the vault, Nate was surprised to learn that the private investigator was a synthetic man. He didn't know how the people in the post-apocalyptic world managed to advance in science enough to create something like Nick, but he didn't really care if it meant help. In this new world, he'd take anything he could get. Together, the ragtag group set out to help Nate find his son, and avenge his wife. It took longer than any of them thought, and there were many more unexpected twists along the road to finding Kellogg, but Nate made it there. Nate found the man that shattered what remained of his world, and he killed him.
He didn't expect to feel remorse for doing so.
As his group of friends began the hunt to track down the Institute's whereabouts, a part of Nate, the doubtful part, didn't expect they would actually find it. Piper had made it clear that no one had been able to track down the Institute. She'd been looking for years alongside Nick, and neither of them had found much of anything. So together with his companions, Nate set out across the remains of the Commonwealth, looking for any sort of clue he could find, and helping a lot of people along the way.
He helped defend settlements from raiders and super mutants. He encountered the Brotherhood of Steel and helped them when able, despite their radical and often harsh tendencies. Tradelines were established between settlements that he helped construct from the ground up. He aided the Railroad in rescuing and relocating synths, artificial people who looked as real as anyone else, from enslavement within the Institute. With each passing day, the Wasteland became a little less destroyed thanks to him and his allies.
As he helped out one of the few intact, apparently un-experimental vaults, Vault 81, he stumbled upon the underground bunker's true purpose when a boy became infected with a deadly disease. As Nate dove into the secrets depths of Vault-Tec's carefully selected horror show, he didn't expect to find a friend hidden within the walls. A special Miss Nanny robot that called herself Curie had been hiding within the facility, studying infectious diseases bred within the mole rats. With her help, Nate managed to save the young boy and gained yet another ally.
At times, with the way things were going, it felt like Nate had a whole army of people behind him. He wasn't complaining. They were good people, all of them, and he would do anything for them because they would do anything for him. That's why, when Curie approached him about becoming more than a robot, he didn't bat an eye at the thought of helping. Sure, the prospect of turning a robot into something living seemed impossible and caught him off guard, but he wasn't about to let that stop him from helping a friend.
So, they set to work. With the Railroad's help, they managed to place Curie's robotic mind into a synth body and Curie took her first real, living breaths. As far as Nate was concerned, she'd always been a real person, much in the same way Codsworth was, but seeing her standing there, taking in life with a fresh set of eyes, he couldn't begin to understand what he was feeling. In a way, it felt a lot like when Shaun had been born. Though, unlike Shaun, she was not a baby. While she was naive, she had a fully developed mind ready to take in and process all of the information that it could. He'd never gotten to experience that with Shaun, he'd been too young in Nate's old life, and with each passing moment, he grew older, meaning Nate was missing more and more precious time. These thoughts drifted over Nate as his friend marveled at her new form.
He never expected such an exciting and happy moment could hurt him so much.
Once Curie was comfortable with her new body and living in Sanctuary, Nate doubled down on finding any information about the Institute. At first, he didn't care that no one had ever succeeded in their own searches. He was resilient and had plenty of friends by his side. As the weeks stretched into months, Nate's confidence in his success began to dwindle. There were times when his losses grew heavy and outweighed his hopefulness. In those moments, the Wasteland and all of his burdens became too much to bear.
And then Piper lent him a hand.
She'd been traveling with him a lot by then and had grown to know him better than anyone else. She could sense when he was down in the dumps, and always offered a shoulder to lean on. She would get him to open up and share his thoughts, and help him see the bright side of situations, much like he would do for her. Up until then, he never expected that he could find love in the Wasteland.
When they finally managed to figure out where the Institute was, and just how to get inside, they all couldn't help but celebrate. It was a little premature, sure, but it was a small victory. Those needed to be celebrated in the Wasteland. Tracking down all of the parts and pieces to build the teleporter to the Institute took even more time, but they managed and soon had the device built and ready to go. Due to the unknown nature of the device, and the possible dangers held contained within the Institute, Nate decided he would be going in alone. He thought he was ready for his companions to complain about this.
He wasn't.
They all voiced numerous complaints against this plan, with Piper shouting the loudest of all. She refused to let him go in alone. He always had her back and she would always have his, especially for this. He wasn't the only one looking to settle some scores with the shadowy organization. If he thought she'd let him go alone, then he must've taken a few too many hits to the head during his adventures. In all the time that Nate had known Piper, through all of the battles they'd fought together, he'd never once seen her so infuriated with anyone, let alone him. He realized he'd be facing one of his hardest battles before ever stepping foot within the Institute.
It took a few days, but he managed to convince her that he needed to go in alone. Not only would it be dangerous, but if Shaun were in there, well, he wanted to see his son on his own. He would introduce Shaun to everyone once he returned from the Institute. Mentioning his son caused Piper to cool off a bit. From there, their conversation grew quieter.
Piper realized something that even Nate had missed: he was scared too. No one knew what would be waiting for him on the inside. Nate hoped he'd find his son. He knew his boy had grown since his kidnapping, but he didn't know by how much. Nate didn't care about the dangers he would face. He'd proven that already. What concerned him most was how his son might handle his sudden appearance. What if Shaun wanted nothing to do with him? What if he preferred the Institute? Could he force his boy to leave if he didn't want to? There were so many questions that had Nate worried, and no matter how hard she tried, Piper couldn't answer those questions for him. In the end, she agreed that he needed to do this on his own.
So, Nate went to the Institute, and he found his son.
Turned out his boy, wasn't a boy anymore. Shaun was a grown man and had been leading the Institute for decades. Nate was shocked to learn just how long he'd been frozen after Nora's murder and Shaun's kidnapping. He'd missed so much of Shaun's life, but that didn't matter. Nate just wanted his son back and did what he could to build a relationship with him. This meant anything from learning about the Institute to running errands for the Institute on the surface.
When Nate finally returned from that first trip to the Institute, he didn't know how his companions would react to the news. He didn't expect to be so nervous about telling Piper. She loathed the boogieman of the Commonwealth and everything they did to terrorize its people. He assumed she wouldn't want to help him anymore after learning that it was his son running everything. She'd go back to her home in Diamond city and never wander the wastes with him again. The thought of that left him feeling empty. But then she surprised him and stuck around. She still wanted to help. She reasoned that if Nate and Shaun could grow closer, maybe they could assist the Institute in taking actual strides in helping the people of the Commonwealth.
It soon became clear to Nate that Shaun had a disdain for the surface world. He didn't care about the people above, assuming most of them were raiders. Admittedly, he wasn't far from the truth. It seemed more people had succumbed to cruelty and wickedness rather than kindness and compassion. Piper always told him that he was a one-of-a-kind relic from a long-forgotten era. Maybe that was why Nate was so determined to fix the Wasteland. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he'd seen the good still growing within the recesses of the world. With the right care and guidance, it could surface fully once more. He just needed to convince Shaun of that. With their technology, the Institute could help usher in that new era.
Shaun proved to be stubborn to change his view on the world, but that didn't surprise Nate. Shaun was his and Nora's son after all. They were stubborn people, and so just like Shaun refused to change his viewpoint, Nate refused to give up on convincing him to change.
So, together with his friends from across the Commonwealth, Nate set off on this new chapter of their adventure with a plan. They would help the Commonwealth grow and rebuild into a better place. They didn't expect the plan to crumble so quickly.
Nate never planned on being such an important piece to each big player in the Commonwealth, and yet he found himself at a crossroad that would have him choose a side, once and for all. The three factions, The Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad, and The Institute were inching closer and closer to all-out war with one another. For Nate, it brought back feelings from before the war. Over the course of a few months, at least that's what it felt like to Nate, he'd gone from living in one perpetual state of almost-war, to watching that powder keg ignite and destroy everything around it, just so that he could wake up in a new world and see it happen all over again. He didn't want to choose. Choosing meant betraying people he'd grown to care for, people he'd fought alongside. He didn't want to alienate so many important people in his life, so he stalled. He stalled hard and to his great luck, he managed to buy himself some time. A few days. It wasn't much, but, as Piper informed him, it was more than anyone else could have gotten. No one else had earned so much respect in each of the bickering factions.
He knew how she'd want him to side in all of this, and she knew that he knew. They talked it over for a while until Piper concluded that it was his choice to make. She would support him no matter what. She trusted him. She squeezed his hand before leaving, and as Nate watched her go, he realized he never expected to get so lucky as to find someone like her in this world. Yes, he still loved Nora. He missed her every single day of his life, and he would for every day that he still breathed, but she was gone. She'd been killed a year ago, to him anyway, and as much as it hurt to do so, he knew he'd have to move on at some point. He could almost hear Nora telling him to go be happy. To go be with Piper. While he wanted to, he wasn't there just yet. But maybe someday….
As the sun began to set on Sanctuary, and a decision to Nate's problem had not appeared, he decided to go for a walk. With Dogmeat at his side, he wandered the forest around Sanctuary. He never expected to find two neatly dressed men. In an instant, Nate knew something was up. These men weren't from the Wasteland, their clothes were too clean for that. They reminded him of the days before the bombs. He drew his weapon and aimed. Instead of launching into battle, the men raised their hands. They had no weapons, and their eyes held no ill intent. What finally got Nate to calm down, was Dogmeat. The German Shepard had a sixth sense for danger. He'd let out a growl the moment he thought something was up. That didn't happen here. Instead, the pooch's head tilted sideways as he studied the newcomers. A moment later, he trotted over to them and allowed his head to be pet and that favored spot behind his ears to be scratched.
And that was how the unexpected conversation began.
The three men and the dog sat around an easily lit campfire and talked. Well, Nate did most of the talking. His company seemed very interested in his story. Surprisingly, Nate didn't feel all that weird about sharing so much with these strangers. Yes, he had an overly friendly demeanor for the Wasteland, but as the conversation continued, he realized they did too. He felt a connection with them. They reminded him of a time when he didn't have to worry that someone might jump him with some makeshift weapon.
At this point, Nate figured he had learned everything there was to learn about the wasteland. After all he'd been through, nothing could catch him off guard now. He informed his new friends of this. They smirked, not in a threatening way, but a friendly one. They leaned forward, and bet him a hundred caps that he was wrong.
He never expected to learn he was a video game character and that by knowing that fact, he could forge his own path and find a different solution to his problems, one not 'scripted' into the coding of his world.