Chapter Text
“Easy there, honey. You look like you took quite a spill.”
Nate blinked, feeling the world swim blurrily back into place around him. The last thing he remembered was an old Corvega taking one stray bullet too many in a gunfight with some raiders and exploding in a plume of radioactive smoke and scrap, the shockwave from the decrepit car’s detonation picking him up like a loose leaf and slamming him against a nearby wall, at which point he’d clearly blacked out. He didn’t recognise the voice he’d heard as he regained consciousness, but through his disorientation he thought the woman looking down at him with concern looked oddly familiar. The soft lines of her jaw, the chin-length dark hair, the slight dusting of freckles across her cheeks, the shape of her eyes… it was almost like he was looking at Nora again.
His Nora.
How could that be?
“Nora?” he mumbled through unresponsive lips. “I thought you died…” Shakily he raised a blood-streaked hand to try to cup the woman’s cheek in his palm, before she drew backwards in surprise, pushing his hand back towards his chest.
“Hold your horses there, big guy,” she said. “I think you’re a little confused. Just take a deep breath and we can try introductions again once you know where you are.”
Nate nodded weakly, feeling his temples throb painfully as he did so. The woman, whoever she was, sat by him cross-legged as he lay prone on the ground, trying to scrape his muddled thoughts together. After a few minutes he felt his equilibrium beginning to return and he gazed up at his saviour, and saw that Nora’s visage had faded away to reveal a dark-haired woman wearing an oddly out-of-place newsboy hat and red leather coat. In the band of her hat was an almost comical paper note which had the word “Press” written on it, making Nate wonder what kind of market the wasteland actually had for newspapers.
“Hey,” the woman said as he sat up, grunting as the sore spots in his side protested at the sudden movement. “You feeling a little better now?”
“Not really,” Nate replied, rubbing his blood-encrusted scalp and grimacing as a twinge of pain sparked in his neck, “but I think I’ll live.” He struggled to his feet in order to make his way over towards his pack, which had been tossed a dozen metres away by the force of the explosion, but his legs failed him and he sank to one knee.
The mystery woman raised an eyebrow, before she pushed herself up and walked over to where Nate’s pack had fallen, then picked it up and handed it back to him as he sat back on the ground, feeling his head slowly start putting itself in order. “You sure about that, Blue?”
“Why are you calling me that?” Nate asked, a little confused.
“You’re a Vault-dweller,” the woman said. She gestured towards him with one small gloved finger. “The blue jumpsuit, the Pip-Boy and the whole ‘fish out of water’ look are a real giveaway, you know.” A smile flickered across her face for a moment before she stuck out a hand. “Piper Wright, head writer and editor at Publick Occurrences, the Commonwealth’s best newspaper. No story too big, no stone left unturned.”
Still slightly bewildered, Nate shook her hand weakly. “Nate Dawson, retired marine. No car left unexploded.”
Piper laughed. “I noticed that. Blow up cars often, do you?”
“Just on days ending in Y,” Nate said, rubbing his eyes and trying to blink away the last blotches of colour from his vision. “If I’d known they’d be that easy to destroy I would have stayed in the vault.”
“Why did you leave, then?” Piper asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Nate said with a small shrug, before he drew a small can of purified water out of his pack and took a long sip from it.
“Try me,” Piper retorted, before her expression softened a little. “Trust me, Blue, I’ve seen more than my fair share of crazy stuff out here.” She drew up the sleeve of her coat to show him what looked like surgical scars carved into her forearm. “See these? I got them while I was chasing a lead on a den of super mutants, and one of the big green assholes broke my arm. Doctor Sun in Diamond City pinned my wrist back together then put my arm in a cast for a month.” She rolled her sleeve back down again, and laced her fingers together in her lap. “So come on – I showed you my scars, now you have to tell me your story.”
Nate took another sip of water before he remembered his manners and offered another can to Piper, who simply shook her head and reached into her coat pocket to retrieve a bottle of Nuka-Cola instead. “Well, okay,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll want to print this.”
“I think I can decide what my own paper does and doesn’t print, Mr Judgey,” Piper said, swigging a mouthful of cola from her bottle. “So tell me, what gives?”
“The vault I was in,” Nate began, “was a cryogenics facility. The bombs dropped and we all ran to the vault to get away. They froze us about five minutes after we got inside it. I only thawed out a little while ago.”
“Wait,” Piper said, confusion flashing across her face, “are you saying you were alive when the bombs dropped? Before the war?”
“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me,” Nate replied.
“I didn’t say that,” Piper retorted. “Like I said, it’s not as weird as you might think. There are stranger things than walking pre-war relics in this world. So what happened next?”
“I saw my wife die,” Nate said, wiping at the corner of his eye with a callused thumb. “Some people came into the vault and took my son Shaun. One of them… he killed Nora for trying to stop him, then they put me back into deep freeze. They called me ‘the backup’.” He finished the last of the water from the can in his hand and then put the empty container back into his pack. If he had learned anything in his time in the Commonwealth so far, it was not to let anything go to waste unless absolutely necessary. “So now I’m out here, looking for my boy. It’s been months and I still have no real leads.” He felt tears beginning to bead at the corners of his eyes again at the mention of Shaun, and once more he rubbed them away quickly. “I did run into some survivors up in Concord I thought might be able to help me, but the guy in charge wanted me to lead some kind of civilian militia so I told them all to shove it. I’m not a leader, I’m just a grunt.”
“A… what?”
Nate sighed in frustration. Pre-war jargon was obviously not on the curriculum of whatever kind of educational system still existed these days. “A soldier. One of the guys that governments put out there to catch bullets with their face. Lowest of the low.” He paused. “I know it sounds stupid, okay? It’s just what we called each other.”
“Hey, I’m not going to criticise,” Piper said, holding her hands up. “You pre-war folks probably had your reasons for stuff like that. Maybe you can tell me more about the old world when we get where we’re going.”
“’Where we’re going’? Who’s we?” Nate asked, curiously.
Piper rolled her eyes. “Come on, Blue, you’re the scoop of the century! You think I’m just going to let you wander off into the sunset and miss out on what you do next?” She paused. “Besides, you really got the stuffing knocked out of you and I want to make sure you’re okay, so I’m going to take you to Diamond City, and Doctor Sun can treat you if you need it – I can pay the bill if you don’t have any caps on you.”
“You’d do that for someone you only just met?”
“What can I say? I’m a giver,” Piper chuckled, playfully bumping his shoulder with her fist. “Let’s go get you fixed up, shall we?”
The trek through the ruined streets was a relatively short one, only interrupted a couple of times by packs of hungry wild dogs or irritating oversized insects, but it still made Nate’s bones ache. Maybe he needed this rest more than he knew. When they reached their destination, he had to do a double-take as he realised Diamond City was actually just the old Fenway Park stadium, its huge, heavy entranceway gate resolutely slammed closed. It almost felt like he had come home.
Almost.
Piper strode up to the speaker at the side of the gate and said “Hey Danny? Danny, can you let me in, please? It’s Piper.”
A reedy, scrawny-sounding voice crackled through on the other end of the intercom. “Sorry, Miss Piper, I can’t do that. Mayor McDonough doesn’t want you back in here. He –”
Piper’s eyes blazed with anger suddenly. “Damn it, Danny, you can’t do this to me! I live here, remember?”
“I know, Miss Piper, but the mayor, he’s really mad about that story you wrote –”
“Come on, Danny! I’m standing right out in the open here, for crying out loud!” Piper cried. “I bet the mayor would love it if I died out here, wouldn’t he? No more scary reporter hanging around anymore, right?” She clicked the off-button on the intercom button for a moment, her cheeks going beet-red with anger before she looked at Nate and tapped her chin thoughtfully. Then she snapped her fingers, her eyes lighting up. “Hold on, Blue, I got an idea. Play along, okay?” She pushed the intercom button again and said “Danny, I swear if you don’t let me in this instant, I’m gonna – oh, hey, you. What’s that? You’re a trader just up from Quincy?” She quickly beckoned him over and gestured for him to speak into the intercom, so he stepped up to it uncertainly.
“Yes, yes I am,” he said, trying to conceal any nervousness in his voice. “I have enough supplies for the whole month, but if you don’t let me in they’re all gonna go to waste.” Off to one side Piper gave him a wide-eyed smile and a double thumbs-up for carrying on her little charade, and then he continued “Of course if you don’t want them I’m sure I could sell them in Goodneighbor…”
At that moment the gears of the massive gate began groaning as they heaved the huge metal structure upwards, signalling that Piper’s ridiculously-transparent con had miraculously paid off. Behind the gate they found a rotund, middle-aged man in a patched tweed suit and battered hat standing with his hands clenched into fists, yelling at who Nate supposed had to be Danny, a gangly-looking guy in what seemed to be an umpire’s uniform.
Baseball body armour? Sure, why not? Nate thought. He’d seen far more eccentric forms of personal protection since he had been thawed out, so it didn’t really register anymore.
The older man sent the gangly youth scurrying back to the ticket booth with a couple of harsh words before he rounded on Piper, jabbing his pudgy finger in her face. “You! I thought I told you to stay away from Diamond City, you devious, rabble-rousing –”
“Ah, shove it up your ass, McDonough, I’m not in the mood,” Piper snapped, raising her middle finger at him as she crooked her arm through Nate’s elbow and dragged him past the mayor, who was left to silently fume as the object of his ire left him alone.
Nate hoped he wouldn’t take out too much of his anger on that poor guy in the ticket booth.
When the two of them entered the stadium proper, Nate couldn’t believe what he saw. His favourite ballpark was unrecognisable. Neon signs were everywhere and what had once been the pitch was covered in ramshackle huts made largely of wood and corrugated iron, with some fancier, more ornate constructions occupying the higher levels of the seating. He guessed that the difference in the quality of the dwellings meant there was some kind of clear class divide here.
The more things change...
Before he could dwell on that thought in any more depth, though, he noticed Piper breaking away from him and heading towards a young girl, perhaps in her early teens, who was standing on an upturned box and yelling something about… synths? He’d heard vague whispers of those in the time he had spent wandering the wasteland, but nothing really conclusive. He made a mental note to ask Piper about it later, since she seemed to have her finger firmly on the pulse of this brave new world. For now, though, he simply followed her into the bustling marketplace in what was left of yet another of his childhood landmarks.
“Hey, kiddo,” Piper said to the little girl. “How are the paper sales going?”
“Same as always,” the girl said with a shrug. “Big rush in the morning and then nothing in the afternoon.”
Piper sighed, before she gestured to Nate. “Nat, this is Nate. Nate, Nat.”
“A Vault-dweller?” Nat said, deigning not to speak to Nate and instead focusing completely on Piper. “Doesn’t look like much to me. Why are you bringing him here?”
“Because he’s not just any Vault-dweller,” Piper said, jerking her thumb back at him. “This guy is from before the war!”
Nat burst out laughing. “Good joke, sis,” she said after she had composed herself. “Why are you really bringing him here?”
“Because I’m telling the truth,” Nate said, extending a hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Nat.”
“Cram it, mister,” Nat snorted, contemptuously slapping his hand away. “You might have fooled my sister, but you don’t fool me. If you hurt her I’ll kill you.” She hopped off the box and stalked off inside the shack behind her, leaving a stack of unsold papers lying on the ground and Nate feeling very confused.
“Sorry about that,” Piper said sheepishly. “Nat doesn’t trust new people easily. She’ll come around if you wait long enough, I promise.” She smoothed out her coat and then gestured behind Nate to a man in a dirty white lab coat. “That’s Doctor Sun. Let’s get you checked out, and then we can go grab a drink, okay?”
A few swabs and bandages later, Nate followed Piper into what she called the Dugout Inn. She led him towards the bar, laying a handful of caps on its sticky surface. “Two vodka-and-Nuka-Colas, please, Vadim,” she said to the grinning barkeep. “Make it quick, we’ve had a rough day.”
“Of course, Miss Piper!” Vadim replied, his smile never leaving his face. “I will have drink ready in a flash!” His thick Russian accent took Nate by surprise, prompting him to wonder if people could still travel here from overseas – there was no way an accent like that could have been passed down for two hundred years without becoming diluted to the point of being almost unrecognisable, after all. Of course, if people really could still travel here, that begged the further question of why they would actually want to, unless the rest of the world was somehow even worse.
His head hurt at that notion, so he shuffled it to the back of his mind deliberately and tried not to dwell on it. Instead, he simply leaned on the bar and took in his surroundings. As he looked around at the mould crusting in the corners of the ceiling, the chipped paintwork, and the random assortment of scruffy, threadbare furniture, one thought supplanted everything else.
“What,” he began, not realising he was speaking out loud, “a fucking dump.”
“Hey!” Piper retorted, smacking his arm with the back of her hand and breaking his reverie. “This is my favourite bar, Blue. At least get to know it better before you call it a dump, okay?” She winked as she handed him his half of her order. “I’m kidding, Blue. I know it’s a dump.” She gestured to the mass of people in the wider area of the bar. “They know it’s a dump. Hell, even Vadim knows it’s a dump… but it’s our dump, you know? Diamond City’s finest moonshine on tap and as much Nuka-Cola as you can drink. What more could a girl ask for?” She raised her glass. “Join me in a toast to Diamond City’s favourite craphole?”
Nate couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Sure,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. “To Diamond City’s favourite craphole. Long may it stand.”
“That’s the spirit, Blue,” Piper said. “We’ll make a Diamond City boy out of you yet.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nate replied. “I don’t want to be tied down anywhere for too long. My son is out there, and I have to find him.”
“Of course,” Piper said, suddenly seeming a little downcast before her eyes lit up with inspiration. “You know, if you’re looking for any help with that, my friend Nick is a detective. He could probably hook us up with some leads. We could use all the help we can get.”
“Again with the ‘we’?” Nate said, slugging back a mouthful of his drink. “I’m not a charity case, Piper.”
“Didn’t say you were, Blue. I just –”
“You just think I’m the story of the century,” Nate snapped. “I’m not your big scoop either.” Swallowing another mouthful he moved the empty glass away and pushed himself upright off the bar. “I’m going to find somewhere to sleep.”
“Okay,” Piper said, her expression turning downcast again. “I have a sofa spare if you need it –”
“Somewhere that isn’t near you,” Nate said with a scowl. “Thanks for the drink.” He turned towards Vadim. “Hey… Vadim, is it? You got any rooms for rent?”
“One room for rent, yes,” Vadim said, pointing towards a man sat on a chair in front of a doorway off the side of the bar. “See Yefim. He will give you key. No room service, though!” As soon as he had the key, Nate took to his room, leaving Piper alone in the middle of the bar.
Nate stared at the ceiling in the pitch-black of his room, which was lit only by the display on his Pip-Boy. Even though it was three in the morning and he was exhausted from the day’s events, Nate couldn’t get his mind to shut down. He had tried counting sheep, he had tried listing names of weapons in alphabetical order, and he had tried to slow his breathing… in fact, he had tried anything that he had heard would induce sleep, and nothing had worked, and the worst thing was he knew exactly why. The guilt at the way he had treated Piper, who had been nothing but kind to him even though she’d gained nothing, was gnawing at his conscience. He resolved to make it up to her… somehow.
He owed her that much, at least. He just hoped she would forgive him.