Something for Myself
Nate had once told her that war never changes.
Perhaps it was so, Nora was no soldier and had no objection to the claim. War might not change, but Nora had found herself in a position to see exactly how war could change the world. She could look out from the hill where the vault entrance plunged deep into the earth, straight beneath her feet, gaze out in any direction at all, and could behold the change that the ravages of war had blessed over the land. She had no bearing, no understanding, of how much time had really passed since she had watched nuclear flame erupt over the horizon. Atomic destruction sending hot genocide flashing across the expanse, whipping through her hair. One big, final bright light as her reality began that dark descent.
When she had ascended from her maze of the preserved dead, over two hundred years later, reborn into a new world as helpless as she had been born into the old, it was Codsworth who informed the madam how long it was that she had been locked beneath the ground. It was Codsworth who kept her alive in those first, initial days.
After the nauseating escape from her cryogenic crypt, Nora had been too shocked, too devastated, to formulate any plans on how to continue living. She wasn't made of the grit to simply shrug aside all her loss, all her sense of utter abandonment. She'd spent the first half of her first day in the old-new world huddled in one of the forgotten Vault-Tec trailers. Unknown to the sole escapee, the metal heaps had withstood the last two hundred years, rusting and warping beneath the irradiated sky. Nora had quietly slipped inside one and curled herself up into a corner of the dirty floor. Nate was dead. Shaun was gone. The bombs had dropped, and she didn't understand how a person could simply close their eyes one moment, open them again, and the world as it had once been was no longer there. It was dizzying.
It was the thought of Nate now dead, and Shaun spirited away, that eventually drove Nora from her catatonic shock and helplessness. Gazing into her palm at the two tiny bands of gold catching the dejected light from the off-color sky, Nora had had her first lucid thought since her escape from Vault 111. She'd made a promise, a promise that she would get back what had been stolen from her; stolen from her husband. She'd get help, and she'd find their son. She'd find justice for Nate. Nora's first brave step towards this promise was making her way back down the little dirt pathway to Sanctuary Hills. Nora had to get home, had to get herself out of the suffocating hold Vault-Tec still held over her. She had a stomach churning compulsion to undress, to change. A compulsion to rid herself of the vault suit that clung to her like a death shroud, like dead skin. Once she'd shed herself of the vault's tainted reminder, she'd be able to contact whatever authorities were in charge now that the war had finally hit the homeland, and she'd be able to begin making good on her promise.
Nora pocketed their wedding bands. In her last goodbye, she'd taken both rings. They hadn't stolen every last piece from her. She'd kept something for herself. Picking her way back down the trail they had previously taken, Nora had to stop, halfway back to the Hills, to wretch into a bush. Whether the after effects of the cryogenic pod or the upset over the tragedy she'd risen from, She couldn't say what had left her more nauseated. She'd spat out a few times, face twisting at the sour tinge, and into Sanctuary she emerged.
It was nothing of the home Nora had once known. Where green lawns had once spread immaculately under an autumn sun, gleaming cars once adorned the fronts of residences, and houses had stood proudly erect, bright paint welcoming in friendly shades, there was now a graveyard to these memories. It had taken Nora a few minutes of silent appraisal to adjust to this new view unfolding out on either side of her. This was war. This is what war could do. Nate had always told her about the ugliness of warfare, but what a tragically vivid appreciation she was suddenly able to have for it, standing there, amidst the wreckage of what had once been beautiful.
Nora had the presence of mind to be grateful, however. The bombs could have dropped a lot closer to home, she had reasoned. The warheads could have leveled out Sanctuary and every neighborhood around for miles. How would she have found help to locate Shaun then?
The only help she had succeeded in finding, at that time, had been Codsworth.
The ever-faithful Mister Handy had been Nora's first contact in the new world, and the first one to explain the gravity of the reality she had awoken to. Two centuries beneath the world, left sleeping like some forgotten relic, and up above life had spun on. How could a regular human being simply close their eyes one moment, open them again, and the world as it had once been was over and done with two hundred years ago? The magnitude of the situation had crushed her. What had felt to her like a moment in the vault had been a lifetime twice lived. Nate had been dead for two centuries. They had kidnapped Shaun, and Nora had no knowing of when they had they done it. Had it been the day before? Had it been a year ago? A hundred years ago? Was their son even still alive? It was suffocating, and as the Mister Handy attempted to be of good use to his lady of the once-house, and helpfully explain to her the current environment above ground, the further Nora slipped away into the abyss with each thing she learned.
A day turned into three days, three into six, and on the seventh day, Nora ran out of food. Codsworth had turned to pillaging through homes in order to keep his mistress fed. To the robotic butler's great dismay, he'd watched the lady of the house slip into a listless state of utter indifference. Indifferent to her needs, and indifferent to the dangers of the wasteland. He'd warned her, so very duteously, in regards to the threats of the land. The feral packs of vicious dogs that might wander through, sniffing for scraps. Groups of violent men that may sweep into an old neighborhood, looking for anything worth the salvage. The beastly creatures that now roamed the barren landscape, that she had to be wary of. Codsworth just couldn't appreciate the lack of interest the ma'am had in mustering forth some kind of defense. When she had failed to even show the basic interest of providing for herself, Codsworth had faithfully picked up his old role of assisting the madam with her needs. He'd dig through half-destroyed pantries and fish out a two hundred year old box of sugar bombs, spend the next hour or two convincing the mistress to eat it. He mustered up the task of protecting the ma'am, defending her gallantly against the fearsome bloatfly or two that would hover into their neighborhood.
Despite his best efforts, however, Codsworth found himself primarily distracted by a growing sense of inadequacy. Like a plant that just wouldn't take to a new pot, the General Atomics robot could not compute why the madam was not springing back to vitality now that she was returned home.
Codsworth had endured long decades of isolation and abandonment, and for the most part he could say, with some pride, that he had managed to keep himself from utter disrepair. He hadn't exactly fallen apart. He liked to believe that unlike some other Mister Handy models, he'd been made within the good pedigree parameters of true manufacturer satisfaction. As for the cognitive anguish of having nothing but an abandoned home to attend to, Codsworth had done his best to keep his focus on other more material matters. Matters like the constant war against mold setting into the damp walls after another rainfall. Battling the rust and warp of metal frames, bloating wood puffing up and splitting open. His tireless and thankless crusade against the devastation wrought over the kitchen linoleum.
When the ma'am had suddenly materialized from the dust and dirt of the neighborhood, so suddenly there as the family had so suddenly gone the day the air sirens began, the overwhelming sense of everything over the past two centuries nearly overrode the Mister Handy's functional capabilities. The robotic butler had done his best to hold himself together, reassured that with the mistress back, things were bound to improve. Only they hadn't. No progress had been made in the week that passed, and Codsworth was growing keenly suspicious that there was some human element he was simply failing to grasp.
Two days ago the Mister Handy had found it necessary to travel out beyond Sanctuary in order to scavenge food goods to bring back to the madam. He'd had to warn off some lone dog sniffing around the neighboring Red Rocket, but he'd found no hostiles and two cans of cram for his efforts. Yesterday he'd found it necessary to brave the ruins of old Concord. Codsworth had cautiously raided a couple collapsing homesteads for water and edibles, and had silently appraised a firefight eruption two streets away from an inconspicuous alley. The shootout had been short lived, but both parties had sustained casualties. The Mister Handy was well-educated in raiders, and raiders were most obviously one side to the confrontation. The other appeared just another wandering group of scavengers or weary settlers, but Codsworth hadn't risked making contact to verify. Not even after the raiders had retreated and the settlers had collected their fallen comrade did the Handy approach. He'd long ago learned that keeping to himself was the best prevention for catching bullets. Humans were remarkably eager to fire upon their own kind in the post-war world. The chances of attack only increased the less human one looked. A day later, however, studying his madam as she listlessly shuffled through her broken down home, dark hair a stark contrast to the lack of color over her face and against her cream dress, Codsworth reasoned that perhaps human contact was what Nora was in need of. She'd always had the sir and baby Shaun before. The Mister Handy decided it was worth the risk if the ma'am could be revived by the human element that he himself couldn't provide for her.
That evening, out of dinner and options, Codsworth brought up Concord to Nora, and the potential group of settlers he had descried in the ruins of the city.