Rumors Of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated {Whumptober oo9}
Day 9!
Prompts: Presumed dead | (blind) rage | tears
It took her the better half of a month to get home.
One fearful night spent easing herself from the train yard terminal, the roof creaking at every movement she made, and another army crawling on her belly out of the trainyard itself.
The day she spent under the building’s foundation, too tired to continue but too anxious to rest, was the longest day of her life. She didn’t dare make a sound, taking shallow breaths as she waited. Watching raiders mill about, learning their patterns. All this while only several feet from the pile of bodies decomposing in the sun.
She had to crawl past the pile that night, feeling eyes against her skull as she went. Sightless eyes, like stars in the sky, watching her every move. She didn’t stop crawling till the trainyard was just a dot in the distance, wouldn’t even turn her pip-boy screen on to check the map.
Crazy Wolfgang found her, a mile or so outside of Springvale. The otherwise chatty merchant was stunned into silence as she emerged over the horizon, head down and limping. Talk was small and far between as he escorted her the rest of the way to Megaton.
“Honest, didn’t expect to run into you out here,” He had commented, a hesitance unbefitting of the charismatic, if not eccentric, trader, “Or at all.”
She didn’t answer. Too focused on watching her bare feet scrape against the cracked asphalt, mourning the absence of her red high-top sneakers in silence. She tapped the empty bottle of water rhythmically against her leg as she went.
He cast a worried look her way but didn’t press her silence. It was clear as crystal that something had happened. Something awful.
As the caravanner and wanderer approached the gates to Megaton, something caught her eye. Among the debris and trash that littered the outskirts of Megaton laid a familiar pile of scrap.
She slowed to a stop, following the trail of junk with wide eyes. Pieces of scrapped Giddy Up Buttercup parts, some old motorcycle engines, miscellaneous scrap, and repurposed snack boxes that she knew housed intricate bits of computer parts. The bent visage of a very specific Vault Tec Bobblehead confirmed it.
This was her junk.
What the hell was it doing here?
Crazy Wolfgang said something, but the thumping in her ears tuned him out as she shook. Palms aching as she dug her nails deep into the flesh there. The lone wanderer stormed past, eyes watery and focused, through Megaton’s straining gates.
It was like she wore blinders, ducking through the gate before it was fully opened, feet pounding against the dirt with purpose. She shoved past gawking residences before she caught the cowboy hat in the distance.
“Simms!”
Her voice was still foreign to her ears. Husky and gruff, barely quenched from the scavenged bottle of dirty water she’d found earlier.
The sheriff jumped, wheeling around to face the lone wanderer. Her chest puffed exhausted, labored breaths rendering her speechless as she stood before him.
Her vault suit was on the bomb.
Why was her vault suit hanging from the damn bomb?
She tasted blood again, cutting her still tender tongue up against her chipped teeth as she seethed. Was this an eviction? Was she robbed? Why would they throw all her shit out while she was away? It was only a month!
After all the shit she’s put up with, everything she’s done to help, was it not good enough for them? Were they so ready to get rid of her once the opportunity showed itself?
“You’re gonna get us all killed!”
That woman’s voice rang in her ears, deafening as that dead woman’s words shook her to the core. She tasted blood and saw red.
Suddenly she was back in the Vault, alarms blaring rendering her deft and blind as she struggled to evade guards, residents and radroaches alike. Over the alarms she can make out the words that they had screeched at her as she sobs, a lost little girl looking for daddy.
“Useless!”
“Worthless!”
“This is all your fault!”
She should have just died then. The overseer should have killed her. The raiders should have killed her. The fall should have killed her. She should be rotting away with those other women in the tower or joining them in an unmarked grave.
She was barely nineteen.
It wasn’t fair.
She felt hot tears leak from her eyes, bringing her back to the present as she hummed with insecurities and fury. Unaware of the internal struggle, Simms was rendered mute, stunned into silence at the sight before him.
“Praise Atom! Our heroine lives!” Confessor Cromwell cried from his place behind Sheriff Simms. As he raised to join the pair, she noticed flowers and candles littered the ground near his feet. Offerings of scrap and caps, parchment notes, nuka cola bottles housing flowers.
They held a service for her.
The angry tears subsided. Her knuckles cracking as her hands twitched into fists at her side. Her lip quivered, tears slowing to a stop as she takes in the scene. Knees buckling, Simms barely catching her before she thumped to the ground. Like dead weight, her body couldn’t stay up any longer.
She kneeled before the bomb, Simms comforting her and Confessor Cromwell praising her safe return as she wept.
They thought she was dead.