Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

Shards of a Bottle

AN: If this chapter appears to take a moral stance on anything, keep in mind who's narrating it. (Except infidelity. I'm with Butch on that one.)

-

Vault 101, June 21, 2271.

-

Father's Day was Butch DeLoria's busiest day of the year.

Butch didn't know who his father was, and his mother had never bothered to narrow it down for him. But they were all crammed in a tin can with no entrance or exit, so that left fewer than a hundred candidates of the right age. Even less than that, if he discounted the ones who looked nothing like him. Still, that was a lot of guys to despise at once.

Add to that every snot-nosed kid around him who had the nerve to try and celebrate, it was a lot of hate for one thirteen-year-old to handle.

It helped to know that Mom hated the guy too. Maybe the feeling was mutual, because he'd never stepped up to announce himself. Given the small number of potential culprits, Butch was always on alert for clues, and the fact that none were ever forthcoming made it feel like the whole vault was in conspiracy against him. He didn't trust anyone who wasn't his age, and he didn't like anyone but the Snakes. (He might have gotten along okay with Susie Mack, who hadn't yet shown signs of her family's habitual narciness, but Wally said he wasn't allowed to.)

Sometimes, he wanted to wring this vault's scrawny little neck until it told him what everyone else took for granted. And today, that was what he intended to do.

On his Pip-Boy, Butch had made a list of every lowlife who could have participated in his mom's bad decisions fourteen years ago, ranked from most to least ideal. The Overseer was at the very bottom of the list, not because he beat on his kid or anything, but because Butch didn't want to share a category with Amata the Vault Princess.

There was nothing else to do about it — Butch was just going to have to walk up and ask them. He figured he could get about halfway down the list before somebody stopped him. On a Sunday, almost everyone would be in their apartments. It was just a matter of asking, direct and polite, no fru-fru stuff. Like a kid a guy could be proud of.

The first stop was the clinic, which meant he needed an excuse. The Doc was a busy man, and Butch had to find some way to warrant his attention long enough to ask. The problem was that Butch rarely warranted anyone's attention unless he was getting in trouble. So he had to get injured, enough that it couldn't be fixed at home with a splash of vodka and some bandages.

Staring at the list, he flicked his switchblade open and closed. It was the obvious solution, but it risked raising too much suspicion. His eyes cast around the apartment for something that wouldn't hurt too bad.

They landed on a broken bottle tossed into a corner beside the couch. Not what he'd had in mind, but nobody would think twice about the drunk's kid falling on glass. If he did this right, it would bleed a lot but not need stitches, which, as far as Butch DeLoria was concerned, made for the perfect injury.

-

Butch miscalculated.

He knew glass cuts bled, of course, but he hadn't thought there'd be so much, enough to turn most of his sleeve a deep purple. Ellen rushed her son to the clinic in a panic, smoothing his hair and muttering pet names the whole way. He hadn't meant to freak her out like that.

He sat down heavily in the waiting room, faintly dizzy. Jonas Palmer came out to calm Mom and stop the bleeding, which was all wrong because he wasn't on the list, and where was Doctor Lawrence, anyway? Butch shook his head wildly, trying to get the ringing out of his ears.