16. Little Girl Blue

It's time you knew

All you can ever count on

Are the raindrops

That fall on little girl blue

The Vault was supposed to be there. Vault 112. The Vault of Stanislaus Braun and the next waypoint in her quest to find her father. The memory of her vault's walls, gray and cold and metal, unfeeling, played on repeat in her mind as B stood in the light of the setting sun. One hand was raised to try to minimize the glare as she studied the small building crouching relatively unharmed in the desolation surrounding it and the rusted remains of a Red Rocket station to the right of it.

She knew what a garage was supposed to be only from holotapes. Words above the blocked off entrance read "Smith Caseys" but she didn't know what a Smith Caseys was supposed to be. Above those words stood a broken, painted board, an advertisement of some sort for a car something that she could barely read but didn't understand. It frustrated her, knowing that there was mechanical knowledge there that she didn't have and might not ever know.

She eyed the rusted car skeletons in front of the garage, picking her nails anxiously. Once she got her father back and everything settled down, she wanted to try her hand at rebuilding one of those cars. The prospect thrilled her as much as going down into another vault scared her.

Rivet City had been bad enough. An actual vault? If it wasn't as warm as it was, B knew that she would have broken out into a cold sweat, heart thumping quickly in her chest. Vaults were unknown. She knew hers, but she also knew that everyone she'd met out here had only a vague idea of what they were. Their existence wasn't so much a secret as their contents were. And most of the vaults she knew were empty of their Vaulties.

She'd never heard of this one. She could be walking into another group of people who had no idea they could live out on the surface world or the Vault could have died from a no longer viable population.

Her thoughts went back to the people she'd left behind. Their numbers were too low to sustain much longer. There were too few of them left, unrelated, that could still reproduce. With her gone, even if she wasn't supposed to have been there in the first place, their chances were dropping with every second that passed.

The Overseer had known that and yet she had still been driven out. He didn't make any sense. Even if her father had opened the vault doors, if she'd stayed, her Wasteland genes should have been invaluable to try to keep the Vault going. And if she…

It hurt to think of herself just as her uterus, but the Overseer should have overlooked her past for the good of the Vault like he had always said. Her entire life, every other sentence out of his mouth had been about the good of the Vault. Anger began to burn in her gut before fear began to override it. She could be walking into a breeding program.

Maybe that's what had caught her father. He was still reasonably young and clearly could...have kids, judging by her own existence.

Her lip curled in disgust as she thought about her dad having sex. Ew. No. Just no. Ew. It was bad enough when she'd figured out how babies were made with the subsequent two and two making four. Or one and one making three, as it were.

She winced, remembering the insanity of having sex with Leo and considering the possibilities of being put into a breeding program. Scarring, of course. But it wasn't like... She shuddered, heart pounding hard suddenly. Something just wasn't right with the world when she feared rape in a vault more than she did out of it where the worst of humanity was supposed to be.

Her hand went up to her breast to gauge its sensitivity through the hardened leather over her shirt. There didn't seem to be a change. Yet. B sighed. If she was actually...well, it wasn't like she could get anymore that way. If she wasn't, then death in childbirth was probably the best thing she had to look forward to.

She shook her head. No. It was stupid to think that way. If she got dragged into some sort of breeding program, she wouldn't be alone. Her father would be there. Between the two of them, they'd be able to figure out a way to escape. She wasn't the same girl who'd left 101. Her scars proved that. She'd killed to defend her own life for months now and she hadn't taken the same oath as her doctor father.

No child of Leo's would be raised in a box in the ground. If she had to break the vault to get back out, she would, and she figured it would be easier to break two-hundred-year-old machinery than repair it.

She looked down at the dog sitting at her side and her heart ached.

She knelt to talk to him, scratching his neck fur and trying to stave off the loneliness and fear threatening to choke her. "Okay, Dogmeat. I'm going in here and I might not be back right away. I don't know how much of this you understand." B paused, swallowing back tears and fear and a whole mess of emotions that she couldn't, wouldn't, deal with right now. Dogmeat whined, bumping his nose against her cheek. "I want to take you with me. You're my best friend, boy. Best of all the good boys." Choking on a sob, she lunged forward to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his fur. "But I can't," she said, voice muffled by his fur. "I don't know what I'll find down there and I don't want anyone to hurt you."

An idea popped into her head and she made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "Damn it." She shook her head. There was one person that she felt like she could trust with Dogmeat, and the fact that he was a raider just added to the insanity that was her life. "I really hope you're as smart as I think you are."

She pulled away from him, feeling tears drip down her cheeks and a small part of her winced at the waste of water. "Go back to Megaton, Dogmeat. Find, damn it, find Nip. The raider? The one that liked you."

It took everything in B to let go of the dog and rise to her feet. And she walked into the garage and shut the door firmly behind her. She could hear Dogmeat immediately start to whine and scratch at the door. "No, Dogmeat. Go to Megaton. Find Nip."

He barked at her, scratching more fiercely at the door.

"Please, Dogmeat," she whispered, the sound catching as she fought against her tears. The door remained closed. She slid down it, feeling her heart break. A nearby skittering had her head lifting and grabbing for her gun. The radroaches appeared, attracted by the noise.

B shot and killed all three in quick succession, ears ringing from the sound in close quarters. Outside, the noise had stopped. Or maybe she just couldn't hear anything. She supposed it didn't really matter. Still, she forced herself to stand and start investigating, starting with an intact computer sitting on the front desk thing. Whoever had last accessed it, probably her father, hadn't bothered to lock it or sign out.

She took in a shivering breath and set to work, forcing herself to tuck Dogmeat away into the back of her heart so that she could actually work. She could work with boxes. It helped. Boxes always helped when she had something to work on.

Most of the files were about the garage business. They didn't make sense, not to her, anyway. Maybe for someone who understood how cars worked.

She lifted her head, eyeing a rusted motorcycle sitting in the corner. "People want to survive when they have something to live for." She didn't necessarily care about Project Purity. Her mother had and she'd died. Her father had and he'd run from it.

She hummed speculatively as she turned her attention back to the computer, letting the puzzle go on a backburner. She was stalling. She knew she was.

Within a minute, she'd found what she was looking for, hidden under some encryption that she broke through without too much difficulty. Her eyebrows lifted curiously as she began to read. The vault wasn't in the garage somewhere, like her father had thought. The vault was under the garage. She slowed down to read the entries carefully, frowning. Stanislaus Braun had gone into this vault before the bombs ever fell. But that...they…

It didn't make any sense. Something wasn't right. The vaults were opened, populated and sealed when the bombs fell. She knew the history of the vaults. Every resident had to sit through that stupid vid every Founder's Day. The bombs fell on October 23rd, 2077, and those selected entered their vaults. The cream of humanity. But Braun had gone into this vault before the bombs fell, not in response to them falling.

"What?" She leaned back, frowning. She felt her world shifting out from underneath her. Again. But this time, it was much bigger than her own insignificant speck walking around on the surface of the planet. The Overseer had never been a model of authority for her. But she knew that she was still conditioned to see the old-world government as the pinnacle of authority.

These entries made it sound like they knew. They all knew what was on the horizon with enough foresight or foreknowledge to get Braun into the Vault 112 before the bombs actually fell. Well, no. Obviously there was some foresight there given that the vaults were constructed in the first place. She'd seen the still-standing boards advertising the vaults, had read the barely legible acceptance letters in Springville.

"Holy shit," she breathed. Her jaw dropped open. Her hand leapt for her Pip-Boy and quickly flipped to the other radio station, the one for the Enclave and whoever this President Eden guy was.

There was a slight burst of static as the signal was picked up before she could hear the same overly patriotic music that played every Founder's Day and every Fourth of July in the vault. She sat down on the filthy floor, adjusting her weapons and other things out of the way.

And she waited. At the end of the song, she leaned forward, focused intently on what she was hearing and not seeing the floor in front of her. Then she was listening to what could have been the voice of this man who claimed he was the president of the United States, two hundred years after it fell. As she listened, cold and dread crept up her spine to grip the back of her neck.

Let's talk about government, shall we? Or, more specifically, YOUR government, dear America - the Enclave. Just who is the Enclave? Why, now, that's simple. The Enclave is you, America. The Enclave is your sister, your aunt, your friend, your-

B turned off the radio, breathing shallowly. Vault-Tec was tied up with the Enclave somehow. She didn't know how or why or when or how. She didn't even really know for sure but she felt it deep in her gut and her gut had yet to be wrong. There was a connection there. She straightened up, putting the computer back into sleep.

Whatever was waiting for her in 112 wasn't going to be like 101. And even if it was, she'd crossed this hellscape three times trying to find him. She'd survived being shot and stabbed and bitten and stung and irradiated. She would survive 112.

AN: I am going to be entirely honest. You can thank Sunday's episode of Game of Thrones for this chapter. I couldn't write what I was supposed to be writing due to the emotional trauma/stress and I needed some catharsis and control over redemption arcs which take five seasons to do and then are not negated in a single episode. So here it is. Have a chapter. I'm going to go back to screaming into the void.

Chapter title and lyrics from "Little Girl Blue" by Nina Simone (1958).