Fallout: Born Unto Trouble

12. Rebirth

"Has she woken up yet?" She heard Butch's voice in the distance. He sounded... Worried? No, that's impossible. Butch was never worried about anything.

Stacy was quiet. Gloria wanted to talk to her, but she also wanted to dream. Thinking about her good memories was comforting. It was nice when they passed through her mind; usually it was bad memories, though.

If this was heaven, then it fucking sucked. It was easy to delve into repressed memories, both good and bad, and come back to absolute blackness, where only voices and machines and footsteps could be heard.

She hoped this was at least purgatory. It's not as bad as she thought it would be.

It's not; only a long-awaited sleep. It seems most heroines sleep before their rebirth, like the circle of life.

But Gloria didn't expect to wake up. She didn't expect to be alive.

It wasn't like she was going to heaven. Almost everything she did warranted her arrival in Hell; sure, she'd done some good things, but not enough for forgiveness.

But mostly, she was a little disappointed to see she wasn't in Heaven. She was in the Citadel clinic.

Elder Lyons explained to her what happened: She miraculously survived the radiation from the Purifier and it knocked both her and Sentinel Lyons unconscious. Two weeks have passed, and she's finally awake.

And, Gloria couldn't live without having to do something for somebody. She had to destroy the remaining Enclave.

It wasn't too hard. Liberty Prime, the giant overly-patriotic robot, was destroyed though. But hey, she got to ride a metro bus.

She felt a certain satisfaction to see the rest of the Enclave blow up in some building at a base.

~~~

She felt truly alive when she dragged Butch and Stacy back onto the Vertibird the Brotherhood stole from the Enclave and, and they stole it again.

She had no idea how to fly it, but somehow she managed to get it to go up and away in a different direction, away from the Citadel. Butch complained about the wind messing up his hair and Stacy was waving to the Brotherhood from the doorway as they took off. Gloria was screaming and laughing at the same time as they almost crashed into the Washington Monument, but Stacy hit something and they barely missed it.

She waved back to Megaton, Vault 101, Girdershade, the settlements they passed over, knowing they'll never see them again. None of them seemed to mind.

They were somewhere in New Mexico when they crash landed.

The three Vault rejects expected the desert to be hot, even in January. But nope, it was freezing.

It wasn't too hard finding food. Since Gloria was a bit of a hoarder, they had plenty of canned beans and potato chips. Water, on the other hand, was a rarity.

The only water Gloria had was dirty water, and she forgot to pack her Food Purifier with her. There was only so much RadAway and punga fruit for them, when radiation sickness became a problem.

Stacy was the first to get sick. It was surprising. She was the most physically fit out of the three, and she was the first one to double over and throw up. It reminded Gloria of herself.

Stacy managed. They only had to stop every once in a while to let her rest.

Gloria finally sat her down (after giving herself a shot of Med-X to stop the shakes and the cravings) and diagnosed her with Advanced Radiation Poisoning.