Sitting in a makeshift cell in Rivet City, stripped of all but the clothes on my back and a busted-up Pip-Boy, was not how I had planned to spend my weekend. Still, it could be worse. I had a room, with walls and an actual bed, as opposed to a mat on a hard floor in the common room. They brought me food every day, which was more than I had been getting before being arrested. The guards, though not great for friendly conversation, were at least capable of stringing together coherent sentences. The room itself was nice enough; it had obviously been used for storage before, but the pre-War filing cabinets had been pushed out of the way to make room for a bare bed, a table and chair, and room to walk. It's a low bar, but you don't get high standards while living with the Raiders. Compared to that, jail was very nice. I probably would've enjoyed it, were it not for the barred door, the 24-hour guards, and the fact that I couldn't leave. The uncountable hours of boredom and captivity, though preferable to fighting with Raiders for an extra scrap of food, were starting to take their toll on me. I'd run out of games to play, songs to sing, things to inspect, and walking laps around the room was starting to lose its appeal.
I walked across the room to the dusty, cracked window overlooking the river. The view wasn't as scenic as it must have been once. The river oozed so much radiation that you could practically see it. Every so often, a Mirelurk would emerge, ready to kill and eat the first thing unlucky enough to cross its path. Past the river laid the crumbling remains of the city, full of a million and one things that could kill me in a heartbeat. With the Super Mutants, the Brotherhood, and the multitude of Raiders who must have realized by now that I wasn't coming back, my little jail cell suddenly felt a lot cozier.
When I first left home, I never imagined that this was how my grand adventure would end up. In hindsight, it was a miracle I survived this long. My prior experience in Wasteland wandering included listening to Herbert Dashwood reruns on the radio and following my dad to the end of our burned-out street to trade with caravan drivers. But, the promise of an exciting world filled with riches and escapades lured me away from the safety of my family and into the biggest mess of my life.
In an attempt to take my mind off of my recent failures, I broke my gaze away from the window and walked to the door. "Hey, is there any chance I could get something to read? I'm going stir crazy in here," I asked the guard posted outside.
"Funny, I didn't know Raiders could read," he said back.
Something about being called a Raider struck a nerve. "I've told you guys a million times, I'm not a Raider," I said firmly.
"Oh, really," he said, "because you sure looked like one, sneaking around the marketplace in the middle of the night with oddly colored hair, strung out on God knows what."
"Do I still look like a Raider to you? A tiny girl with no weapons, no combat training, locked in a cell? Real threatening, right?"
"You'd still look like a Raider if you hadn't cut your hair, washed your filthy face, and sobered up," he spat. He wasn't wrong. When I first got to Rivet City, I was strung out on every kind of chem in Evergreen Mills. I hadn't washed in days, and to top it off, my hair was bright blue from about halfway down. A girl I'd met with the Raiders convinced me I needed to dye it if I wanted to fit in. So, without giving it much thought, I let her do it. One of the first things I did when I got arrested was find a pair of scissors and cut off all the blue, swearing to never go back to that godforsaken camp.
"Whatever," I said, "I didn't even take anything."
"Are you saying you would've just walked away empty handed if we hadn't caught you?" the guard asked. I didn't answer. At the moment when they had caught me, I was coming down from a bad trip for the first time in days and stuck deciding between two terrifying decisions. I could either steal as much as I could get my hands on and pass my initiation to join the Raiders, or grab as many supplies as I could carry and try to make it on my own. If I had made up my mind sooner, I might not be in this mess.
I could tell I was getting nowhere with him, so I turned my back and walked away from the door. "I, uh… I'll ask around and see if we have any books," the guard said in a softer voice.
"Yeah, whatever" I mumbled as I walked back to my bed. There was nothing left to do but go to sleep, so that's what I did.
...
In my dream, I'm back at home, back when we first got there. It's an old, 2-story pre-War house nestled in a little neighborhood, one of the only ones left standing on the street. I must be six- or seven-years old, running around the yard, pretending to be an adventurer like Herbert "Daring" Dashwood. I climb a dead, blackened tree with my teddy bear, who is serving the role of Argyle, to escape from an imaginary horde of Super Mutants. As I'm about to escape in a vertibird, my mother comes through the front door out into the yard. She looks young, with blonde hair the same as mine, and the same crystal blue eyes as my little sister. She looks at me with a kind smile that radiates warmth. "Ana, dear, it's time to come inside," she calls as she turns to go back in.
I jump down from my scorched tree and run to the door, still escaping from the Super Mutants that only I could see. As I pass by the window, I can see my mother and father inside; Mom setting up for dinner, and Dad playing with my sister, still a baby. When I reach the door, however, something is holding it shut. I push a little harder until it's just opened enough for me to fit through. The large bookshelf from our front room is blocking the door, and my family is nowhere to be found. The contents of the bookshelf are strewn across the floor, along with broken dishes and bloody stains. The windows are broken, and everything I see is decorated with bullet holes. Chairs and heavy furniture stand in the way at the top of the stairs, blocking me from checking the upper level of the house. The dining room table is turned over in the doorway of the kitchen, serving as a makeshift barricade. I look over it and see feral ghouls, rabid dogs, and all sorts of other atrocities destroying what was once my kitchen. "Stop it!" I yell, but they act like I'm not even there.
"What do you care?" a dog asks, "you left."
"Ana!" a staticky voice calls out, "Ana, help!"
I recognize it as my sister's. I rush to the source of the noise, which turns out to be my radio, lying on its side by the couch.
"Mary? What's wrong? What happened?" I ask in a panic.
"You left us, Ana," my father's voice says coldly, "you weren't here."
"Where are you?" I ask, confused at his hostility. Why would he be mad? They were fine when I left. Not at first, but they came around. "I… I'll come help."
"Why should we believe you?" my mother's voice calls out, "why would you help us?"
"Because you're my family," I say, my voice cracking. "I love you. I want to save you."
"No, you don't," Mary says harshly, "why would you? You left. You don't care what happens to us. You're just a selfish runaway."
...
"That's not true!" I cried as I woke up, alone in a jail cell on the other side of the Wasteland.