Chapter Text
Cold. So fucking cold. Would it kill Vault-Tec to put heaters in these stupid decontamination pods?
With numb fingers, Willow wiped the glass window of her pod to see Nate, holding their beautiful baby boy. He smiled at her, pressing his hand to the glass of his own pod, his gold wedding band twinkling despite the dull fluorescent lights. She did the same, smiling back and wondering how long this decontamination business would take so she could hold her family again. From her right, she heard footsteps, but she couldn’t see much out the window other than Nate and Shaun in the pod right in front of her. Must be coming to let us into the vault, she thought to herself. She was wrong.
Instead, she got to witness some asshole shoot her poor Nate point-blank, while a different asshole in a hazmat suit grabbed her baby. The asshole with the gun sauntered up to her pod. All she could do was scream and beat her fists bloody against the glass. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be—
“At least we still have the backup,” he said calmly, in a smooth baritone that didn’t match his cold eyes and haggard complexion. The predominant scar down the left side of his face twitched with what may have been amusement, if not for the sneer marking the rest of his features. Willow pressed her face to the glass, staring the bastard down until he turned and walked back the way he came. What the fuck was he talking about? Backup what? Where are they taking Shaun?
She could do nothing but seethe in her fury, until she started to feel cold again. Shit.
Cold first.
Then tired.
Then finally, dark.
***
When she woke up the second time, it was to her pod hissing open. She was still chilled to the bone but eager to escape her icy prison. Her legs hadn’t quite caught up yet, and she fell forward. A wave of nausea slammed into her, and she proceeded to throw up the beautiful breakfast Codsworth had made for her earlier that morning, before the bombs— Don’t think about the bombs —before she entered the vault. If she thought too hard about why she was here, she’d lose it, and she refused to lose it until she figured out where those assholes went with her baby.
Recovering relatively quickly, she scrambled up and desperately jabbed at the buttons on Nate’s pod, exhaling with relief when his door finally hissed open. She caught him as his frozen corpse slid out, and sank back down to the ground with him in her arms, not caring if she sat right in the mess she’d just made. God only knows how long she stayed like that, sobbing and clinging to Nate’s thawing body until she ran out of tears.
“I’m gonna get them, Nathan,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “I’m gonna find those bastards and kill ‘em, and then I’m gonna get Shaun back.”
She leaned in and kissed the cold lips of her dead husband, then slipped the wedding ring off of his finger and stuck it in the pocket of her ridiculous skin-tight blue vault suit.
At least it has pockets!
She barked out a short hysterical laugh before stopping herself. She didn’t have time for that shit. She could fall apart and go crazy once she figured out what the fuck was going on.
It was at this moment she noticed the other pods and their respective occupants. All of the doors had released, but none of them climbed out like she had. They were all still, as silent as her poor Nate. The whole place was eerily quiet now that the sounds of her grief had ebbed. She also realized she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Vault-Tec staff since she fell out of her pod. That seemed odd, considering they were everywhere when they came in, with their little lab coats and clipboards and friendly smiles.
“This ain’t good,” she said aloud to herself, picking herself up off the floor. “I gotta get the fuck out of here,” she said, trying to gather her wits. With that, she took off in the direction that she came in, not looking back at any of the frozen husks lining her path out of the underground tomb.