Chapter Text
Riley was not a bit surprised when she couldn’t fall asleep that night. Finding out you had been cryogenically frozen for over 200 years and were now faced with living in a world you knew nothing about was enough to keep anyone awake. Add to that the fact she was lying in the dilapidated remains of the house she had shared with her new-and-now-dead husband, and she started to question if she would ever sleep again.
The day the bombs fell, she and Becan had been excitedly preparing for their first Halloween as a married couple. They had been spreading fake spider webs around the guest room when Codsworth, their Mr. Handy utility robot who was practically a member of the family, had rushed in exclaiming they needed to see the news. Within minutes chaos erupted in their small neighborhood and they joined the stream of people making their way to the nearby Vault-Tec emergency shelter. As the plume of a nearby nuclear explosion filled the sky, they sank down into their new safe haven.
Shock did not have time to subside into suspicion before the lucky few who made it inside were ushered into cryogenic sleep pods masquerading as decontamination units. Riley could still recall Becan’s bright green eyes and reassuring smile as he sat enclosed in the pod across from her, surrounded by silence, cold overtaking them until there was nothingness.
She awoke to new confusion – her body was stiff and breathing labored, alarms blared, lights flashed. Her frantic hands fumbled to open Becan’s pod, revealing his frozen, lifeless form. The frost covering the remaining pods answered the question she didn’t dare ask – something terrible had happened here. She was the sole survivor.
Riley crumpled.
After some time, she wasn’t sure how long, she found her way back to the surface, to her neighborhood, to her home. It was like entering a new world; one of turmoil and destruction.
To her astonishment, Codsworth had survived, and he greeted her with enthusiasm. She sat on what remained of her front porch while he attempted to explain what had happened: October 23, 2077, the day she and Becan had entered the vault, was the day of the Great War. Two hours of global nuclear attacks had left most of the earth barren, and in the 210 years since then, most of the Boston commonwealth had transformed into a dangerous, radioactive wasteland. Nobody had been to the cul-de-sac in years.
Riley tried to pay attention as Codsworth rambled on, but, finding it too much to comprehend, found herself fixated on a particularly deep crack in the sidewalk. When night had fallen, he had insisted she go inside and rest, that she ‘must be so happy to finally be home,’ and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him no.
Hours went by with nothing but the quiet hum of motors breaking the silence every 30 minutes or so as Codsworth patrolled the empty neighborhood. Eventually the quiet became overwhelming and Riley could not stand being still nor in that place any longer. She listened for Codsworth’s next pass then crept out through the back door to wander in the opposite direction.
Her feet moved aimlessly, finding a path behind the broken homes that belonged to long-gone neighbors. After a short time she found herself standing at the old bridge that led away toward Concord. It was not safe to leave, not at that time of night, with the threat of unknown dangers she was in no way prepared to face. Feeling equally unprepared to face her past again, and unsure of where else she would go, she settled for lying on the grass behind the large Sanctuary Hills sign. The irony of her home’s name was not lost on her.
Flat on her back, arms and legs spread haphazardly, her eyes traced the sky. As her mind quieted, she started to notice just how many stars she could see. There had never been this many visible before, and, among the waste and uncertainty around her, they were beautiful.
And the words were suddenly on her lips, “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do. Yeah, they were all yellow…”
She softly sang to herself until the weight of the day pulled her into unconsciousness.
Lyrics by Coldplay – “Yellow”