Survivor's Guilt (Fallout New Vegas Fanfiction)

Chapter One

"Hush little baby, don't say a word. Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing, momma's gonna buy you a diamond ring..."

Sandra stroked her sleeping daughter's hair as she sang, sitting on the end of the bed. The little girl was lying under a ragged blue blanket, which rose and fell slightly as she breathed. Her long blonde locks lay like a pool of sunshine on her stained gray pillow as she held her teddy bear Hope in her arms.

Sandra glanced over at her son Zackary, who was reading a book by the light of the fire they always lit in a certain metal bucket. Her other son Peter was sleeping on one of the three mattresses the family owned, down on the floor.

The bucket's flames flickered and danced, filling the shack with patterns of light and dark. Sandra paused in the song for a second to take a deep breath. The tepid, dusty air of the shack chilled her lungs, and she coughed a little before singing again.

"...And if that billy goat don't pull, Momma's gonna buy you a cart and bull..."

Sandra peered more closely at her daughter's face, realizing she was now deep in sleep. She kissed the little girl on the cheek, pulled the blankets up to her chin and slid off the bed to the bucket of flaming wood that acted as their hearth.

"Mom, can we go to Novac tomorrow?" Zackary asked, looking up from his book. Sandra started warming her hands over the fire and sighed.

"You ask that all the time, Zack. You know the rule: we don't leave the ranch unless it's for supplies."

Zack groaned.

"Come on, Zacky. You're fifteen now, you understand why." She glanced over at her son, who was brushing a strand of black hair off his forehead and looking resentful.

"Zack, answer me. Why don't we leave the ranch?"

The boy groaned again. "Because the wasteland is a dangerous place and Wolfhorn Ranch is the safest place for us," he recited in a mocking, irritated tone.

Sandra rolled her eyes - Zack could and would kick up a fuss about anything, he'd been that way his whole life. "It's for your -"

"My own good, yeah," Zack interrupted sourly. "Never getting to see the world outside this stupid fucking farm, that has to be good for me."

"Don't swear, it's disgusting."

"Oh, are you afraid our neighbours will hear me?" Zack retorted snarkily, then walked over to a mattress on the shed's floor and threw a threadbare brown blanket over himself.

Sandra gazed at him with a mixture of annoyance and pity. Her daughter, Deborah, was still too young at eight years old to be very frustrated with hardly ever leaving the ranch. Peter, the middle child at twelve, had just started rebelling, but Zack had been at it for years. He clearly hated being stuck in the same spot for so long, and Sandra felt for him, but she couldn't risk letting her precious children wander off into the wasteland.

Not after what happened to Archer.

Her throat choked up with emotion and she dug her chewed fingernails into her calloused palms, willing that thought away. It was one that always came to her in the deep, dark hours of the night, when the shack was quiet.

I can't think about that. I have to stay strong for my children. They're all I have left.