Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 1: Back To Reality

The Commonwealth air hit her face like a slap as the teleportation cast her back without ceremony. Her guts trembled in the aftershock, eyes taking a moment to refocus on reality. She was back in reality, the wastes of mankind's apocalypse, weeping from the skies with radioactive crackles of static.

She tilted her head back and let the rain spit on her face, sighing, hoping that somehow it would rinse her of her turmoil. Distant thunder droned on the wind and reminded her that nothing was peaceful here for long. But at least out here, it was all real; harsh and miserable, but real. Down there, the Institute was all just an illusion, a plastic cap one glued over their decayed tooth to pretend the problem wasn't there. Oh, Shaun, her Shaun...

Sucking in a shaky breath, the woman peered around quickly and then consulted her Pip-Boy. She had teleported herself back just outside Diamond City to pick up some supplies, and probably mull over a drink or few. She didn't talk to anyone, or even make eye contact, letting her drenched hair shield her face in a black curtain. People took notice due to her orange Brotherhood uniform, probably all wondering what business she had in the city, but they were easy to ignore due to both the storm in the sky, and in her head.

Eventually, she found herself in the Dugout Inn, murmuring an order of whiskey.

"Kelly Harper! Anything for my long lost Soviet spy!" Vadim Bobrov blared in his accented, hearty way. She only twitched a smile at him. She didn't really think of herself as Russian, despite the origin of her name. Her mother had immigrated, and she had grown up an American. She supposed Vadim was right about her being a spy, though. Working undercover as a triple agent, playing all the angles, except she really had no idea who she was playing anymore.

"Everything alright, friend?" Vadim asked in a more subdued manner as he handed her a bottle.

"Yeah," she droned out. "Fine." Wandering over to a secluded corner, she flopped into a couch and nursed the bottle, dully listening to Travis' newfound voice on the radio, something about raiders gaining a foothold somewhere. Same old.

Once the whiskey had left her company, the warmth of it lingering in her chest couldn't sate her loneliness for long. The Jet weighed heavy in her belt pocket, and without knowing how, she was in the bathroom, inhaling that heavenly dose and staring at the shattered reflection of herself through the mirror. Through the distortion, she couldn't recognize herself, a haggard, withered echo of what she once was. Dark hair limp and without it's former lustre. Eyes of deep blue that she once flaunted, now bloodshot and drowned in dark circles. Lips chapped and sore. Nose peeling from sunburn. All on a gaunt face clad in dull, dry skin, but at least that skin had gathered a nice tan from all the days in the sun. Kelly sighed and just sat on the bathroom floor, revelling in the bliss of Jet.

Walking back to Sanctuary from Diamond City with a belly full of whiskey, hauling a backpack full of food, water, and ammunition, was what a certain Paladin would call 'tactically irresponsible,' but he could shove it up his ass to accompany that stick. She lost track of how many hours she walked for, boots slipping through mud on multiple occasions, unaided by a drunken spatial awareness that eventually had her twist an ankle, curse loudly in anger, and draw the attention of a pack of feral ghouls.

Once her combat shotgun finished having a private word with them, she figured her Paladin was probably right, after all. Kelly limped the rest of the way home with a thumping headache, the green haze of the storm seeming to turn into a blur that threatened to dredge up bile from that whiskey.

"There she is!" Kelly couldn't discern who that was as she realized her feet were stumbling through the centre of Sanctuary.

"Well, well. Look who returns." That was Deacon, she would recognize that dodgy charm anywhere. Looking up, she caught sight of him through the darkness, approaching with an easy smile, sunglasses on even at night. "Need a hand, there?"