Chapter Text
The first solid memory of his old life Vin has is this: gentle hands against his skin, a washcloth soothing over a scraped knee, a soft voice cooing “It’s okay hun, just a scratch, see?”
The first experience with this new world, the first that isn’t the haze of panic and grief, it too is gentle hands against his skin, a concerned voice asking, “ Hey man, are you okay?”.
Everything before that is fragmented, distilled by pain, terror, a thousand unnamable emotions clouding his thoughts through those awful hours. He distantly recalls being cold, chilled to the bone, lying shaking on the floor of that vault, that tomb , thinking this is a dream .
Like if he pinches himself hard enough, he’ll wake up. Or at least the shoe will fall. Instead, time skips, skips, skittering along through his mind, until he was suddenly, inexplicably, here.
Ex-soldier of the US Army, honourably discharged at the ripe old age of 26 years, 8 months and 13 days, now turned house-husband: Vincent Samuel Pruitt blinks blearily into existence.
The hand pats gently at his cheek - “ Come on, nice and slow” - a soft rhythm which increases gradually in tempo until Vin was left with little choice but to ease his eyes open and face the onslaught. It’s….bright.
“Where am I?” High and frightened - was that really him? He’s aware of the stink of vomit and sweat, something else in the air that isn’t quite right - like the smell of ozone but magnified; but mainly of the familiar heavy weight pushing down on him. Burnt out power armour, pressed tightly down on him. For a brief second, Vin’s back in Anchorage - crushed , can’t move, everything hurts. I want my mom! Then, he returns to himself.
Mostly, Vin was aware of the tremors coursing through his limbs, that overwhelming fear forming a tight knot at the back of his throat that he can't swallow. And vomit, again. It really is overpowering. One side of his face is wet. He hopes it isn't what he thinks it is.
Someone proffers a hand: “Hey, thanks for that. You really got us out of a tight spot back there.” The sun was behind the stranger, but Vin could make out buckles, a hat, a coat that looked like something out of an independence reenactment. He’s confused again, for a moment. A dream, a dream, it’s all a dream.
Probably that guy from earlier - Garvey, he’d said his name was. What was it they called themselves - the Minutemen ? God… Vin’s half mad with grief and and the other half mad with shock, but he’s still enough sense left to think - really? Of all the things to survive, the fucking cosplay society is apparently alive and well. Is this - is this seriously Concord? Was that really Sanctuary back there? Codsworth - or at least a robot that alleged he was Codsworth - had been there. But that didn’t mean anything…right? A dream, a dream: it’s all a crazy nightmare. Any second now, he’s going to wake up.
“Where am I?” Vin finally asks, because it was the least threatening and the least demanding of all his questions.
Garvey only laughs. There’s no condescension in it, only genuine mirth. “Vaultie, huh? Welcome to the Commonwealth!”
⚛~⚛~⚛
Sometimes, Vin would close his eyes and imagine. Maybe, if he was feeling particularly nostalgic, back to before: that picket fence life where things were good. Dappled sunlight on the porch, the smell of roast chicken, Naomi’s smile through the window as she sat by the phone, earnestly reassuring one of her clients that everything was going exactly to plan. The radio chatters - perky adverts for cars and casinos, for new drinks, for everything you need to live the perfect American dream! Before the kid, after the army - that short in-between when everything had been right .
Sometimes, it’s just an alternate future - one where he and Naomi walk out of that vault with Shaun and all the others and it’s America not as they knew it but different, better . Those ones are worse. He only really thinks about that when he’s in the mood to hurt.
But then Vin opens his eyes and it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
He blinks, stretching himself free of the moth-eaten blankets he'd bundled himself in; sweeps a hand across his eyes as if that would somehow remove the grout and dust and sheer exhaustion driven into his features. His body aches with a need , currently gentle but soon to grow if left unanswered. She’s a hungry beast, his little vice. The sort of thing he never should have fed but it came about accidentally and he always swore he’d get off it but then never quite followed through. Sometimes it’s the only thing getting him through.
Vin lay still for a moment, listening to it murmur. Then desire overwhelms him and he's forced into action.
Fingers shake. The syringe wobbles in his grip; the tourniquet avoids his attempts to knot it. Like his own tools are rejecting his attempts. But he needs this. He needs this . The plunger depresses as he shudders, once, relaxing as it finally hits his bloodstream. Crackle, spark: little lightning storms embedded in his flesh and in his bones, powering him onwards. If it’s the rads or the drugs, he can never be sure.
Maybe both. All Vin knows is, the radiation affects him more than most.
Brief bright lights that electrify him and leave him stretched thin, vibrating with an energy that almost consumes him. Slow, melodious hums along the fibres of his muscles; sensations washing over him in a gradual tide until he’s shuddering and undone, a stranger in his own body, just as it’s becoming a stranger to him. Dull flashes bursting, bubble-like, bringing with it pleasant numbness. When he’s on it, the world flows smoothly, softening even the worst blows it deals so that it feels like he can actually beat the weight of all that came. When he isn’t, it’s sharp. Quick brutal punches. Hard. Pulling teeth.
Vin still, obviously, remembers when this was frowned upon, actively punished. He’s probably one of the few who still does - the ghouls recall only flashes - but hell, to him, that time might as well have been yesterday. Weeks, months ago, it was yesterday . He remembers whispers in the ranks about psycho, about the ones who’d been on it too long and too often. Remembers the one time he got his hands on it and was sick, feverish, on his bunk for days. It was the one, and only, time he’d spoken back to the brass: never again .
How things change.
Now it's Med-x, when he can get his hands on it; whatever he can find when he can't. The last vestiges of the dose dance across his skin and fade into his nerves: pop, pop. The room takes on that pleasant haze he's grown so fond of and everything is suddenly so much more tolerable.
Vin scrunches his eyes and groans against the light hitting his brow. He’s in a bed - who’s, he doesn’t know - there’s a thin blanket draped over him, a distinct absence of warmth by his side if there ever was any there to begin with. He's cold again, always cold. But he's alone. That’s….good, he supposes. Maybe, he’s in his own bed. Does he even have a bed anymore? He rolls over, and back into reality.
And oh yeah, the sun is an assault . Like someone’s taking a knife and twisting it through his brain matter - has that actually happened? He can’t remember; probably not. Even in this time of miracles, Vin’s pretty certain you can’t come back from that sort of thing. If it has happened and he’s dead, then heaven’s far from what he envisioned. It smells, for starters, of mould and mildew, thick dust, that strange metallic tang that earns him wary looks whenever he brings it up. The air doesn't taste as fresh as it used to: none of these wasteland folk understand - they don’t know what it was like Before, they only know the After - this dark polluted dystopia his own generation created.
Well, some of the ghouls express a tentative understanding but Vin thinks they’re humouring him. Then was so long ago for them. We’re the same, they tell him in their harsh cheese grater voices. We’re relics these whippersnappers have no love for. Except they’re not the same, hence why he’s here right now, in an unknown bed in an unknown place, the remnants of his high still abuzz in his veins; and they’re more or less functioning fine. They've lived through everything and then some to get here; and he blinked and bam. If they’re relics then he’s a fucking museum spectacle: ‘Life Before the War - Yesterday’s Man’. It’s a limited edition exhibit.
Fucking hell, when did the sun get so high? Everything sways as Vin sits up, snaps back into focus disorientingly fast. He feels sick; there's an itch again that the last remainder of MedX still clinging on within his system just can’t quite reach.
Okay, okay . Focus, Vin. You need to focus ! He tips back his head and just breathes for a few beats, lets the rush of air carry off the final fizzles. He needs clarity once more, as much as he hates it.
Eh, where was he again? Figuring that out should probably be his first priority. Can’t have another repeat of the last incident - ghouls and blood, and stumbling back into Sanctuary in the wee hours of the morning, wide eyed and trembling without any clue of what had happened. Preston’s face when he asked what had happened with the settlement and Vin hadn't been able to answer because it was gone, all gone, again! He blinks vision back into existence. Gradually, colour by colour, the setting resolves and he frowns: wooden walls, leaves and debris, broken furniture. Nowhere recognisable, nowhere memorable. Just a slew of long forgotten rubbish and drug paraphernalia: some junkie’s den he’s crawled into and holed up in for the night. Where’s his - ah, it’s there: a looming hulk of metal stuffed in the corner, a foreboding sentinel. His armour’s a bit dented in places: nothing too serious, though he should probably give it a once over, check for weak points, that sort of thing. He’s learnt his lessons many times over now.
“You are your armour soldier! When you’re in that armour, it is your second skin; you treat it as if it is a part of you!”
He - should be concerned the flashbacks are becoming more frequent. Probably a symptom of something or other. Or maybe it’s just normal. Brain readjusting to the time shift by hauling up long forgotten junk and tossing it front of mind. Fuck, Vin doesn’t know; he’s not a bleeding doctor. What he does know, is his armour.
It needs a retouch on the paint: the black scratched away in places to reveal the rust underneath: little patches of bronze and copper glinting in the hazy sun. He reaches out and runs his fingers along a set of gouges in the steel: uniform in size, deep enough that he's probably going to have to replace the chest piece. A deathclaw took him by surprise, during a fight at Lynn Woods. Someone - a raider? Deacon? - had set off the siren in the tower, drawing the monster into the fray. The battle sings through his memory in a melody of senses - the blue-purple haze of jet colouring his vision whilst psycho sung in his veins, the rapid chitter of his gun and the hiss of hydraulics from his suit. A roar - he’s flying; the suit cushions his fall as he hits the ground hard and a reptilian face screams at him! It’s the most alive he’s felt! Deacon had been there, too, perched behind a wall firing blindly into the ‘claw’s back as Vin shoots point blank into its chest. The beast falls, a crushing weight across his chest; Deacon is cursing and tugging at the corpse, trying to heave it away, and all Vin can do is laugh: a madman in a tin can cackling like he's got nothing to lose. Because, honestly, fucking giant lizard monsters? Can you get worse than that?
God, when had that been? A few days; a few weeks? All he knows is that Deacon left soon after, citing some minor trouble back at HQ. Maybe there was trouble; maybe it was just bullshit as Vin had thought and then called out. Deacon wasn’t exactly subtle in his hatred of Vin’s habits: sometimes vocally, often just through eyes on the back of his head as he injected, or an aborted movement, as if to stop him. Likely he’s scurrying back to deliver info to Dez on how Vin’s a security risk, how they couldn’t trust him and would have to take him out before he took them. It wouldn’t be long; agents would be on the way already.
No! That was the paranoia talking again; he couldn’t let it…
Deacon had left. That was all that mattered. Vin forces the treacherous thoughts back into their box and stands.