Chapter Text
“…. Vault residents must evacuate immediately…”
All sense in the world had vanished. The hatch to the cryopod hissed—it sounded angry to be releasing her, freeing from her icy prison—And opened, leaving her nothing to lean her limp body against. Seconds later she collapsed to the floor in a heap of heavy limbs, but the pain of her shoulder colliding with the metal floor barely registered. The world spun sickeningly. She tried to push herself up, arms shaking violently, but only managed to rise a few inches and then collapsed once more, gasping for air.
The fog of a long, deep sleep began to lift from her mind. She wished it would have stayed, kept the memories behind a hazy curtain of numbness and apathy. Sol remembered, and fuck, did she want to forget. A lump rose in her throat, stinging heat blurred her eyes, and grief stole her breath.
“Nate…” She whispered, voice breaking sharply. Sol raised her head to stare at the pod in front of her. There was blood spattered all around the inside, frozen black and sticking to her husband’s face. And clothes. And—
God, it was all over him. The first sob broke from her throat, leaving her feeling raw and aching. There was a tightness in her chest that only grew tighter by the second. He was—They were—All they’d had in the world. Each other, just the two of them against everything else. And when two had become three, it was as if life had finally given her what she wanted.
It was her fault. She’d wanted more. She should have been happy with that she had, how could she been so greedy—
Sol was crying in earnest now, tears washing away what remained of the old world on her face. She would do anything to escape this feeling, this horrible fucking feeling that settled in the center of her chest like a lead weight. It felt as though nothing would ever be right again, like she would never be able to stand and walk without remembering those moments.
A ragged gasp passed her lips as she recalled the gunshot, a terrible crack that filled that air. She keened when she remembered, distinctly, the sound of his last breath. It had happened at the exact moment his head crashed back against the pod’s interior. Sol had raged at the man with the gun, fists pounding on the glass until—
“Nate!” She shrieked, slamming her fists against the glass one final time. Already bruises bloomed on her hands, but she paid no mind. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blood. It was red. So red, red, red—She was going to be sick, all over the glass porthole of the pod. It wasn’t real, wasn’t happening—If only she could just wake up!
His voice sounded like he drank whiskey and glass, followed by a cigarette, for breakfast. It crawled across her skin and she’d never hated a person more in her life than she hated this man right now. But she’d also never felt more sure of anything in her life either. Sol was going to kill this man, watch his red, red, red blood run away, and then—
Shaun.
The heat of her rage faded quickly and the cold grip of fear spread down her spine, panic rising in throat. Sol could feel her heartbeat, racing, hammering, in every part on her body and she broke out in a cold sweat, pressing close to the hatch when she noticed the woman in the hazmat suit.
The woman with Shaun. The woman walking away. She could do nothing but watch in utter horror as her child was stolen. Suddenly the mechanical voice of the pod was speaking again, and she was panicking for an entirely different reason. The countdown began—
5…
Sol threw herself back against the padded rear of the pod, hands flying to brace herself on the closing walls. This wasn’t happening again—
4…
She looked around frantically for something, anything, that would stop the onset of sleep. There had to be a button, an emergency release!
3…
“No, no, no—“ She whispered, voice cracking, “Goddamnit, open!” She screeched, as though it follow her commands and swing open, open like her husband’s pod, open like his head—
2…
Sol screwed her eyes shut and grit her teeth, waiting for what she knew would come. The pod hissed ominously and the air felt thicker, cooler, and she felt… Hazy. It was almost a comfort. The building pain in her heart had eased, for a moment, then—
1…
… She knew only darkness….
Sol wrenched herself from the memories, trying to keep herself from drowning in that pool of grief. She didn’t know how long she laid on the floor, letting the ice on her vault suit melt and soak the material. Sirens blared and that damn voice kept telling her to leave, to go. The image of her son flashed in her mind and it was enough to liven her limbs.
Shakily, she pushed herself upright. Then Sol braced herself on her Nate’s tomb to pull herself up, nearly losing herself once more when she spotted his face. With tears falling anew, she uncertainly reached for the glass of his pod, but stopped short. If she touched the glass, it made all of this real. And if all of this was real…
Sol placed her hand hesitantly on the glass and sobbed when she made contact, “Oh God, Nate—“ She whispered, searching his features for any sigh of life. There was nothing. There was so much blood inside, so, so much—He was dead. Sol knew that, she knew that when that monster fired his gun. But this made it real. She stood there for several moments before she found the courage to lift the switch to his pod. It hissed—she was starting to hate that fucking sound—and opened upward.
When she turned back to face him, she half-expected him to hop out, proclaiming, “Oh man, that guy has terrible aim, babe. I mean, I was right there! How’d he miss?” Sol laughed despite herself, shaking her head.
“Oh, but darling, he didn’t, did he?” She questioned his corpse, face scrunching up into an expression of pain. Sol felt another wave of tears hit her but she blinked them away. There would be time to grieve later, after she found Shaun. Nate was leaned to one side of the pod, his blue vault suit more of a purple now and covered in ice. It clung to his lashes and stuck to his hair. From his left hand she could see his wedding ring. That lump returned when she caught the glinting of it in the artificial light. She’d spent weeks thinking of the words to etch into the band before they’d married.
Carefully, like touching him would still somehow hurt him, even now, she reached for his hand. Nate was cold and his limbs stiff. The usual rich brown of his skin was ashen and gray. The features she held so dear were gaunt and it was just thin skin stretched across bone, “I’m so sorry—It, it should have been me, Nate, “ She closed her eyes, “I wish it was me—“ Regret filled her the moment she said it.
How could she say that? Nate would have wanted to her to live, to survive, and most of all, he would have wanted her to find Shaun, “… But you’d wish it was you, if you were here, wouldn’t you?” Maybe it made her crazy, but it was a comfort to talk to him, one last time. He’d been her best friend and confidant for more than a decade, her husband for half of that time, and she didn’t know how to be herself without him, “I’ll find him, Nate. I promise. I’ll find him and I’ll make that son-of-a-bitch regret ever thinking we were easy targets.” It was still ‘we’. Deep down, she was sure it would always be ‘we’.
As she looked toward the exit, her gaze was again drawn by his ring. Gently, she slid it off his finger and curled her fingers around it in her left palm. It clinked softly against the metal of her own ring. Sol offered him one last tearful glance, sent him a silent goodbye and a prayer to a God she didn’t believe in anymore, and turned toward the flashing-light adorned door.
What awaited her outside of this pit was unknown, but it couldn’t have been any worse than staying in this graveyard.