AN: This is my first fic in a very long time. I wrote this in 2017. Based on my playthrough of Fallout 3 and the character I used.
They came to a stop for the night, Sentinel Sarah Lyons of Lyon's Pride let her laser rifle lax, hanging low in resting position as she did a few paced laps around the makeshift campsite they would settle for the night. The night air was crisp and cold, tinged with radiation and smoke from ashy ruins all around, Sarah vigilantly watched her surroundings with alertness and open ears, and when enough time passed without incident, she looked down as her clunky heavy structured metal Power Armor boots hit the sandy hard ground of barren, cracked and dehydrated Wasteland. She never took her finger off the trigger, lightly leaving it perched there, it was practically indented into her finger tip since youth.
She startled at the presence of the wandering vault dweller as he began to ignite a small campfire in their clearing. He laid out bedrolls by some molten logs and silently went about his night duties with the mysterious and wordless way he had. Sarah had to reflect on earlier that day after their big defeat of the Enclave's base in Adam's Airforce Base, when she had picked up the lone wanderer after he had infiltrated and pulled fire on the base, hurrying him into the BoS Vertibird.
She was still pale from weeks of the radiation and treatment, however she had pulled through just as the Courier had, and was already feeling better after time in the infirmary of the Citadel. She had felt something, like the adrenaline she was used to, when they touched down and located him, there was a spike in her adrenaline as soon as she touched ground and approached him as he stared around the airbase in a stupor from his strenuous mission, and when she glimpsed the glint of clean-cut smooth wave bleach blond gold-shavings-like covered head in a mountain of glowing and black Tesla Armor he had no doubt salvaged off a downed Enclave soldier. She thought to herself, "good", he had barely survived in his taped together combat armor before, so she was pleased to see he had ditched it for stronger fortified armor. He was alive.
His expressionless face lit up through the ashened smudges on his exposed skin, his bright electric blue eyes shining, when he spun around when she spoke to him, "Surprised to see me?" She had asked, trying not to show any excitement, and maintaining the leaderly soldier mannerism she was used to. He grinned, for the first time she had seen him do since she had met him now so long ago at GNR. Trying to bridle the adrenaline from seeing him and winning this battle, she quickly and gruffly ushered him into the Vertibird, "hurry, get in, before the missiles go off."
As they sat in the dim, clean and safe little space on the aircraft, she was consumed with thoughts, reflections, and exhaustion. She looked anywhere but at the silent young man sitting across from her, twiddling with her gun and yawning absent-mindedly as she waited for the pilots to land them at the Citadel.
Upon landing in the courtyard, her father, Elder Lyons greeted the young vault dweller and congratulated him, thanking him for his services. Sarah herself spoke to him, admitting she thought he was another trashy waster when he stumbled upon them fighting super mutants at GNR, but was glad to see she was wrong, and momentarily mused on what could've been had they had time to be friends if circumstances weren't so different. She walked away, ready to go back to her world in the Citadel, to shed her armor and rest after the mission.
Her ears perked as she walked almost out of earshot when she heard the quiet boy speak to her father, he said, "I'd like permission to fight along your daughter's side, sir."
Forest began wrapping his assault rifle in tape.
As if a thought came suddenly to her, she asked him, breaking the silence, "You never stated your name, soldier."
He smiled to the side, "I'm Forest. From Vault 101." Sarah rested her back against a log, taking her gloves off, "That's an odd name. So you lived in those underground vaults your whole life did you."
He nodded, "Yeah, a lot's happened since then. And Forest, like, the trees covered lands my dad used to tell me about. There were plenty of them pre-war. Before the nuclear war wiped them out. All green."
She nodded back, "I know what forests are."