Total Atomic Annihilation of the Heart

The wasteland is full of characters, and now she was one of them.

The pre-war woman frozen in time. A Vault-Tec experiment spared from the bombs.

The atomic bombs.

Waking up to the nuclear fallout two hundred and ten years later had been… a process. Nora did not thaw from cryostasis so much as she tore her way back into existence after watching her young son taken by a strange man and people in hazmat suits. All from the frosty prison of her cryopod. It was like waking to a horrible nightmare, only to go back under.

Her only saving grace was the dreams…

And him.

At first, she believed she was dead, unburdening herself to a lone angel of retribution. Names were irrelevant, as was social convention, as they spoke like old friends. Stuck in a strange, hazy purgatory, he came and went, but his steady, unmovable presence stayed with her. He reminded her of her late husband at times, but his vocabulary differed. Even as a soldier, Nate had been easy-going, but this man had the stereotypical rigid mannerisms of one.

He was even there after Shaun was taken, helping to pick up the pieces of her emotional wreckage. When they reassembled her like a Mr. Gutsy, things between them changed. Deep conversations became mission briefs, all strategy and logic. He helped forge her into a weapon, one ready to do what it takes to find her son.

And like a prayer answered, her frozen coffin spat her out.

Nails scraping against steel and frost, lungs burning with old recycled air, she clawed out of the underground grave of Vault 111 into a world gone rabid.

“Hit the ground running, and don’t stop, not until you’ve won. Not until you’ve found him,” was the last time she heard her angel’s voice, for the dreams stopped. Only the memory of her bond with this mysterious man was left.

“You’re stubborn, and it’ll get you killed. Be adaptable.” His words, however, were etched in her brain. Nora could hear him guiding her through the unforgiving wasteland like an internal compass.

The hope of finding her son was the only thing keeping her going. He was the last living remnant of her old life, carrying a piece of Nate with him. Had Nate not died in the war before the bombs, maybe things would’ve been different.

Worse, her traitorous mind supplied. Things only tended to get worse in the future.

“Don’t stop,” his deep, brassy voice nudged, as she trudged through blood and radiation-cooked creatures to find Shaun.

Now, six months later, apparently that meant fixing the world’s problems. What’s one overly complicated problem without a hobby? Having not just survived her trial by fire, the people call her ‘The General.’

General of the Minutemen.

Defender of the people of the Commonwealth. Deliverer of purified water. Executioner of raiders. She answers distress calls like a lighthouse answers ships, steady and unblinking, for it’s easier to be a symbol than a mother without a child.

Dogmeat trotted ahead of her through the cracked streets of Cambridge, nose low, tail stiff. She’d learn to read the German Shepard’s small signs while wandering, following the angle of his ears for sounds or differentiating his growls. His loyal presence was a boon, considering most wastelanders were out to gut and rob you.

The town loomed over her in skeletons of brick and rebar, the wind whistling through broken windows like a whisper, like a warning. A flicker ripples through her mind: The husk of a bus tipped on its side with a pink rag fluttering out of a closed window; The pharmacy sign hangs by one chain, rattling despite the rust caked on it; A crow scavenging for food hops around to caw at her intrusion on its hunting ground.

Nora slows, and her pulse stutters because she has walked this street before. Not in this life, but in her cryo dreams, where the air never tasted like iron.

Six months, and not once had she dreamt of him. Not even Nate visited, seemingly silent as the grave. She made good friends, sure, but they didn’t fill the ache in her chest.

When she trips on the cracked pavement, Dogmeat whines and tilts his head in question.

“Sorry, boy,” she mutters, adjusting the 10mm pistol strapped on her thigh, then brushes herself off. The air held the chill of a Massachusetts March day. Beneath her General’s navy longcoat was her vault suit. The synthetic material was designed to protect against low amounts of radiation while living underground.

Just as she straightens, a crackle splits the air, accompanied by a voice, distorted by static and urgency, bursts through her Pip Boy radio:

“Message repeating. This is Scribe Haylen of the Brotherhood of Steel, Recon Team Gladus, requesting immediate assistance. Cambridge Police Station is under heavy feral attack. Immediate assistance required.”

Her stomach drops, as if she has missed a step in the dark.

The Brotherhood here in Cambridge?

She’d heard of them, but as far as she was told, they simply ran small salvage missions for forgotten technology in the Commonwealth.

Dogmeat barks, already sprinting toward the source of gunfire echoing down the block. Nora runs after him, before she can think better of it, boots pounding pavement that has not known mercy in centuries.

As she rounds the corner, the scene detonates into chaos.

Feral ghouls swarm the police station barricades, their bodies a grotesque parody of humanity. Rotting fingers claw against sandbags. Snarls and sickly gurgles rip through the air. Laser fire streaks red and violent from the building as what must be the recon team is outnumbered and surrounded. One member is on the ground, limbs seemingly useless, while another tries to get them to safety.

And there, standing like a monument in the storm, is a figure clad in Brotherhood power armor.

Heavy steel plates gleam defiantly beneath layers of dust and blood. The insignia of a sword, wings, and gears are painted bright red on the chestplate. Even beneath the massive weight, the soldier moves with brutal precision, each shot calculated, each step deliberate. The ghouls break against him like waves against an unforgiving cliff.

Nora’s breath catches.

She’s seen that silhouette before—not clearly, never clearly. Only a hazy shape against a horizon of ash, blotting out the light. For a moment, her mind feels like it’s splitting apart, unable to sort reality from her cyro dilirium.

The trance she’s fallen into morphs into concentration when one of the feral raisins stumbles with quick steps toward her. Her blonde hair too bright in this world of decay, like a provocation. Nora’s quick draw puts it down immediately, dividing the ghouls’ attention.

She and Dogmeat fall into rhythm. Fire. Reload. Fire. Dogmeat lunges, dragging one ghoul down by the arm while Nora swings the baseball bat off her back into its skull. They repeat this dance of death over and over, as wave after wave rushes them. The air fills with the stink of blood and scorched flesh as streaks of red lasers flank her.

It is over in minutes, but Nora’s lungs don’t know that. The last ghoul collapses at the foot of the steps in a heap of rags and bones. Silence creeps back in, thin and cautious as they listen for stragglers.

Satisfied they’d taken out the herd, Nora takes a knee and brushes off her loyal companion. Happy he’s in one piece, she adjusts his star-spangled bandanna and light armor while he licks her face adamantly.

“Oh! Dogmeat, you know how your breath reeks after having ghouls in your mouth!” He placed a paw on her shoulder, bearing down, making her huff in thinly veiled frustration. “I swear you do this on purpose—!”

A throat clears off to her right, as the man in power armor watches them. Her eyes turn wide as she straightens before the towering figure. Up close, the armor is scarred, dented, and loved, humming with contained strength.

“Thank you for your assistance, civilian,” he says, voice inhumanly deep and amplified. “Now, state your business.” As was the way of the wasteland, trust runs in short supply, and tempers even shorter. What she wouldn’t give for some of that pre-war politeness.

Holstering her weapons, her hands came to rest on her hips. If this guy really wanted to kill her, her gun wouldn’t make a difference, not when he was in power armor. “We were nearby and heard your distress call,” waving her Pip Boy back and forth between them, “and answered it. Ghouls don’t care who you are or your politics. They’ll kill you anyway.”

“True. You seem able to handle yourself well enough. Not many civilians are willing to aid strangers in the Commonwealth. Who are you?”

For a moment, her eyes gazed down the alley of the police station, his question sitting heavy on her shoulders. She had answered that question so many times in the last few months. When asked, she’d decided to live in the moment, not the past.

“I’m Nora Hale, with your friendly Commonwealth Minutemen.” She tapped two fingers on the tip of her worn tricorner hat, an easy smile gracing her lips.

A rough voice from behind him chimed in as he leaned hard on the wall for support, “Should’ve known that from the costume.” The slight edge to the wounded man’s voice clued her into some disapproval.

Manners, seriously!

Nora leaned around the mass of metal blocking her view, quickly sizing him up. “And orange isn’t in season, pal,” she bit back undaunted. “Come back in October.”

“Enough!” Reaching up, the man in power armor unlocks the helmet, lifting it free.

Time fractures and the world narrows to the space between them.

Thick, black hair, damp with sweat, appears after he pushes back the hood of his flight suit. A strong, stubbled jaw, darkened by dust and dirt, was set tight, ticking with irritation. Dark mocha eyes that once looked at her across a world that had not yet burned stared back at her…

…But he looked at her like she was a stranger.

“Haylen, get Rhys inside,” he barked over his shoulder before turning back to Nora. “I’m Paladin Danse,” he says formally, “Brotherhood of Steel.”

Nora forgets how to breathe.

The sound of his voice hits her like a memory detonating. Not with those particular words or filtered through metal. She knows the cadence and gravity beneath it. The rare softness when he spoke of duty, as if it was both shield and burden, as she told him about running from the bombs and then being awoken to see her family ripped apart. He told her she was stronger than she knew, that she’d endure…

Now, those same lips form clipped syllables like she is a variable to assess.

Danse continues, every word precise, filed down to regulation. “If you’re as ‘friendly’ as you claim, my team and I could use more assistance if you’re willing. Our communications array was damaged in a radstorm. There is a nearby place where we believe we can find a deep-range transmitter, but with my team down, I could use an extra gun. Would you be willing to accompany me, soldier?”

Nora looks down at Dogmeat, considering. He always seemed to understand more than any dog should, perking up as if to urge her on.

As if she has a choice.

What was she going to do? Go back to Sanctuary like he didn’t exist a few miles away?

Here stands a man she’d pour out her soul to, who’d walked her through the grieving process, first of her world, then of her family, using his own experiences. At least now she knew why he spoke about disastrous skirmishes, and he having known great loss as well.

“You don’t remember,” she hears herself say, the words slipping past her guard before she can stop them.

Danse’s eyes sharpen, suspicion replacing irritation. “Remember what?”

Everything.

The nights suspended in frost. The conversations that felt more real than her waking life. The way he had steadied her when the cold of the pod felt like a coffin.

A beat of silence stretches between them, thin as a tripwire. Danse studies her the way a soldier studies a map, searching for advantageous terrain or weakness.

“I do not forget allies. Or enemies. You are not among either, if that’s you’re meaning,” he says evenly. The distance in his tone is surgical and absolute.

She swallows it down even as it guts her.

Nora Hale, former Boston lawyer, builds arguments from ash. She chooses her words like ammunition, but standing in front of him, her composure fractures.

“I…” Her voice falters, and she hates that it does, because she has known him in ways he cannot fathom. Known the doubt he hides behind doctrine. Known the loneliness in the spaces between his convictions. Loved a man who spoke to her without armor, rank, or pretense.

And he stands before her now, wrapped in steel and suspicion. Behind him, the Brotherhood flag snaps in the wind like a warning.

Nora feels the past and present collide inside her ribs. If she pushes, she risks sounding unhinged. If she stays silent, she loses him all over again.

Two hundred years of dreaming.

Two hundred years of believing it meant something.

Danse’s gaze does not soften. “Hale,” he says, her name sounding like a courtesy extended to a foreign power, “state your intentions.”

Intentions.

She came to Cambridge to answer the call. She did not come prepared to face the man who carried her through the dark.

Dogmeat presses against her leg, sensing the tremor she refuses to show.

Nora lifts her chin, heart splintering behind a lawyer’s poise, and realizes with dawning horror that finding Shaun may not be the only thing at stake anymore. Because if this man does not remember her, then everything she endured in that frozen coffin was nothing more than a beautiful, impossible lie.

“Don’t stop.”

She chooses the only course she’s known since emerging from the vault.

“Ready when you are, Paladin.”