Thanks for the new favs, new readers!


They woke up close to noon the next day, Dogmeat first and the other two soon after. After eating heavily, they walked back down to the main area, Cort pausing to press her face against the Tranquility Lounger holding James for a moment before moving to the unoccupied one. Charon scowled at her as she crawled up into the reclined seat, repeating the same query he had given her several times since waking.

"I don't fucking like this. Why can't we figure out a way for me to follow you?" Cort glanced over at him as she started punching buttons, reading the instructional labels around her.

"Because there's no way you can. This is the only working empty one, and you don't have one of these." She held up her Pip-Boy and wiggled it, then returned to what she was doing. Cort was trying extremely hard not to think about how much she didn't want to leave Charon, even if she technically wasn't going anywhere. Waking up with his arm wrapped around her she had been calm and happy, both emotions dashed a second later when she remembered why she was lying on a Vault room floor, breathing in the tinny stale air. They had been rapidly replaced by feelings of guilt and confusion over her father and herself, for being happy when he was stuck in a simulation going through God only knew what, and because she didn't know how to handle or face what had happened with the ghoul. She was also extremely worried about going into the simulation herself. If her father hadn't come out yet, there was a good chance that he couldn't, and if she couldn't get him or herself out, there was no way Charon would be able to release either of them.

"I don't fucking like it." Looking over, Cort snapped, hovering on the verge of jumping back out to him.

"Well you just have to fucking deal with it. If I don't come out, take care of Dogmeat. I don't know how long this will take, so use your best judgement on how long to wait for me." Quickly triggering the dome to close over her before he could get another word out, she sat back and looked ahead as the overhead terminal descended, antennas extending around her face. Charon slapped his hand against the pod, yelling.

"Cort!" Her eyes flickered to his for a split second before they rolled entirely back into her head, the whites shining disturbingly at him before they closed. Resisting the urge to break the glass and haul her out, Charon backed up and settled into a familiar standing position he had perfected over decades of practice. "I'm fucking waiting until you fucking come out." Dogmeat whuffed from beside him and sat down, eyes fixed on his world.


Everything was white. Cort was reminded of her first few seconds outside of Vault 101 before insipid, cheerful music started up in her head and her vision resolved into a small park surrounded by a circular road and houses. It was also completely devoid of all colour. She stared, slack-jawed. "Oh my God. I'm trapped in Leave it to fucking Beaver." Looking around, she saw a balding man in pre-war clothing walking towards her. New horror dawned on her when she realized that he was either growing bigger as he came up to her, or she had shrunk. Tilting her head down, she noted much smaller hands, much smaller everything, and a little dress she wouldn't have been caught dead in even if she had been given one when she was originally this size. Alarmingly, her Pip-Boy was also missing, making her feel uncomfortably exposed. "What the fuck? I'm a Goddamned munchkin! Oh, Jesus creeping Christ." Cort reached up to pinch her nose, somehow more disturbed by the missing break line than she was by everything else.

"Hey now sport, that's not very good language! Your parents are liable to wash your mouth out with soap if you go on like that!" Having another surreal moment when it appeared that Moira had started speaking out of the man's mouth, she grudgingly tilted her head up towards him.

"That would only work if I had parents right now. Speaking of! Have you seen my father, Mister...?"

"Neusbaum, George Neusbaum, and it's nice to see you've at least got manners! Say, you should go talk to Betty. She's waiting for you over at the playground. Have fun, sport!"

Cort stood stock still and watched him continue around the sidewalk, moving only her eyes as she did it, then bemusedly walked to the crosswalk and looked both ways. If I need to talk to Betty, I'll go talk to Betty. Maybe whoever the hell frigging Betty is knows where Dad is at. Walking across the street towards the playground, a dog that looked like Dogmeat turned around and started barking at her rapidly. Huh. Must pick up cues from people's own memories, clever. He's missing his bandanna, though. Walking over as the animal replaced the barks with whines, she reached out and scratched around his ears. "What's the matter boy, huh? What's going to upset a virtual dog, an imaginary cat?" She turned around when another obnoxiously chipper voice piped up from behind her.

"Oh hi there! Someone new to play with, what good luck I have lately!" Cort stared at her, one eyebrow cocked. It was another little girl in a similar dress to her own, with what she thought was blonde hair. Closing her eyes momentarily and wishing for things in Technicolor, she listened to the kid continue. "I was just starting to get bored, we're going to have so much fun together."

Opening her eyes and digging her hand farther into the dog's fur, she replied. "So you're Betty then, I take it?"

"Yup! I live here on Tranquility Lane. Want to play a game with me?"

Thinning her lips, Cort glared at her. I want to play punch you in the Goddamned head. "No, thank you, I'd really like to know what's going on and where my father is, if you know."

"Oh gee I don't know, what's he like?" Betty had a supercilious smile on her face that wouldn't fool anyone with half a brain, and Cort happened to have retained all of hers, albeit with some newly crossed wiring.

"Look kiddo, I know he's in here. Inside this simulation, in Vault 112." Starting to get her back up, she watched Betty's smile become vicious.

"Oh, wow, that man that came here earlier is your Daddy? And you're in here looking for him? Oh this is going to be so much fun, too much fun! We're going to play my game right now!"

Ire completely raised, Cort planted her feet, resisting the urge to stomp one in a hissy fit. "I told you no. No games. You tell me where my father is now, you little bastard."

"Oh don't be like that, that's not a good way to start! I said we're going to play a game, so that's what we're going to do. Now. Or you'll never see your Daddy again or get out of here." Cort glowered and said nothing. "Good girl! It's a really easy game, you just have to make Timmy Neusbaum cry, for starters. There's lots of ways, have fun! He's right over there at his lemonade stand!"

She swallowed and stared at Betty. "For starters?"

"Oh yes, I've got all sorts of ideas planned. It's going to be a very long, super fun game! After that you can break up the Rockwell's marriage! Then there's all kinds of other stuff." Cort's heart dropped as Betty clapped and bounced. The Robobrain had said she had arrived over 200 years late, and the other people in the pods had clearly been here since the beginning of the simulation, considering the wasted state their bodies had been in. Spending another few centuries running around in this monochromatic hellhole was not at the top of her apocalyptic to-do list, by a long shot. She let go of the dog and started walking out of the park, looking around as Betty chirped up behind her again. "Oooh and why don't you take the doggy for company! He can watch everything you do while you play with me. I made him especially just for you!"

"Sure. Here, boy." Cort weakly called to the dog and rested her arm on his neck as he came up to her, still whining. She walked back across the street with it, tugging gently on one of his ears and absently falling into reassuring habits. "Shush honey, Momma's thinking. You know, you really do look just like my dog." Leaning against one of the picket fences, she looked around and kept talking to him. "I'm not going to play along with whatever that little bitch wants me to do. The way those people's vital signs were pinging off the chart, there's no way it's all unicorn farts and rainbows in here like it looks. Having to make some little kid cry and break up a marriage just proves it." Watching a woman with dark hair and an indeterminately coloured dress pass her on a seemingly aimless loop, she called out, wishing to try an experiment. "Hey lady!"

"Well hello dear, did you just move here? I'm Janet Rockwell!" Cort suppressed a growl when the woman had to lean down to speak with her.

"So you know that you're currently roaming around inside some crazy simulation right? None of this stuff around you is real."

The woman laughed at her bemusedly before walking on. "Oh, you're such a kidder. To much time in those comic books young lady!"

Cort yelled after her, exasperated. "Too much time in a Vault!" She was nearly bowled over a second later as a much older woman grabbed onto her. Yelping, she wrapped an arm around the dog tightly and looked up at the crazed senior.

"You, you don't belong here! You're not supposed to be here! None of this is real, it needs to end, we're living in hell! So much suffering!"

"Ouch! That really hurts!" The words sinking in as the dog snarled at the woman, Cort shook her arm and tried to detach the painful grip as she spoke. "You know it's all fake? Do you know where my Dad is?" The woman continued on, not hearing her as the dog barked.

"It has to end but we're not in charge, he's in charge, and he won't let us wake up!"

Stupidly, Cort blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "My Dad?" She shushed the dog as it barked again, louder.

"No! Betty. At least he calls himself Betty now. All he is underneath is pure rotting evil. Braun can change his face all he likes, but I know, I always know. Bastard thinks he's a god because he created this place, but I know he still uses the Failsafe Terminal. I know it." She whipped her head around, looking at the other residents with wide eyes before looking back at Cort. "He'll send one of the others after me soon if I don't stop talking to you, tell them I need my medicine or to lay down. But I don't. Please, I'm begging you, find the terminal. It's in the abandoned house, somewhere." She jerked up, letting go of Cort abruptly. "Oh hello Mister Foster, how are you? No, I'm fine, just going to go inside out of the sun for a while." She flashed one terrified look back over her shoulder before walking off.

"Okay well that conversation went somewhere weird." Cort pinched her nose again, squeezing her eyes shut. "I want Dad back, I want Dogmeat back, I want Charon back, I want colour back and would someone please turn off that FUCKING MUSIC?" Slumping to the ground as the dog whuffed disapprovingly, she yanked her dress down over her knees and hitched out a sob. She reached up as the dog changed to a whine, stroking his head. "I would also like the two feet and change Braun's simulation chopped off of me. And pants. I want pants. And my Pip-Boy. And my repeater." Leaning against the animal as it sat beside her, she sighed and rearranged her thoughts.

Cort stared across the road, drawing a mental bead on Betty-no, Braun- as he watered the flowers. If the unstable old woman had been telling the truth, Cort had something she could get a handle on. Terminals were something she could do. Pushing herself up and yanking the hated dress back down over her rear, she started searching the houses. Some were empty, but most had more terminally deluded residents in them. She paused in her circuit next to the boy Braun had wanted her to torture, looking for direction and figuring that at least appearing like she was playing along was a good idea.

"Hi, Timmy."

"Hi! Hey, you've got Betty's dog!"

"Betty's dog?" Cort was puzzled. The simulation looked like her dog; Braun had made him specifically for her.

"Yeah, she just got it a few weeks ago! She won't let me play with him though, she's really mean." Getting a suspicious feeling, Cort shrewdly looked around. There weren't any other animals visible in the simulation with them. Quietly counting the number of occupied pods and the number of living creatures she had encountered inside the simulation in her head, she swore and asked Timmy another question, working on a hunch.

"Fuck. So, uh, what's Betty's dog's name?" Timmy glanced up from stirring his pitcher of lemonade, goggling for a moment.

"Wow, don't you get spanked for using the F-word?"

"I'm really too big for that, honestly. Tiny parents. Almost non-existent. Possibly without hands at the moment. The dog's name?"

"Oh! His name is Doc."

The other shoe dropped for Cort at his reply, a sinking feeling attached to it. "Doc?" Oh for fuuuhudge sakes." She rapidly transferred the profanity into something innocuous, wincing as she turned to face the animal glaring at her. "Sorry, Dad."


Leave it to Beaver is an early 50s program, and considering how goofy media culture is in the game, I can easily see that show existing in some capacity in the Fallout World's past. Plus, really fun line to write. ;)