Hiding In The Green: A Fallout 4 Story

Prologue: Narrative Causality

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Once upon a time, in the year 2077, there was a couple who had a baby son named Shaun who they loved very much, but something terrible happened. Their world ended, and they were forced to take shelter in a vault deep underground, where they were put into an enchanted sleep in chambers of ice...

Sorry, wrong story.

They were put into a cryogenic state of suspended animation by people who were, sad to say, not very nice. They might have slept there until the cryogenic suspension failed, except that they were woken up by people who were even less nice than the people who had put them to sleep. Those people stole the baby and killed the parent who was holding him while the other parent watched.

Then the head killer of those people turned to look at the surviving parent, and, contrary to orders, obeyed his instincts and killed that one too.

Yes, you read that right. Both parents died.

This sent a terrible shockwave through the space-time continuum, because in all the other versions of this story, one of the parents survived and set out on a mission to get their baby back. Along the way, they did some amazing things, made new friends, and changed their world forever. Whether they changed it for the better or made it worse is a matter of opinion. The point is, they changed the world.

And they did find their son, although it didn't turn out the way they imagined. They also realized that although they mourned the spouse they lost, the companion who fought by their side and shared their sorrow and joy had slowly become more than just a friend, and there was still a chance at happiness.

Okay, sometimes they discovered it took more than one companion to properly console them, but that's their business.

The point is, the death of the second parent left a vacuum in the world, in the lives they would have affected. And as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. At that point, narrative causality stepped in, and found someone who was, well, close enough.

This is that story. The story of that someone.