Chapter Text
There were strings connecting everyone; some to just one person, some to multiple. Some were platonic, some were romantic.
Sometimes the people found each other, sometimes they settled with what they had instead of what they could have, sometimes peoples’ strings broke.
And some people, some people didn’t have a string at all.
There were plenty of reasons, of course; whoever it was attached to hadn’t been born yet, or didn’t exist at all, or maybe they just weren’t tied to fate like everyone else- some people were just that unlucky, to be forgotten in Fate’s big plan.
Nora had never had a string, but she’d always been able to see everyone else’s. The curse of being untethered, she supposed.
Always outside of Fate’s plan, always able to see everyone else’s story; an outsider looking in on the grand scheme.
It had bothered her as a kid; she was forced to hide her ability, either for fear of teasing, or of being pestered by kids to tell them if their soulmate was their crush, but as she grew she learned not to care so much. She figured she might get a string later; it was rare but not completely unheard of. That was what her mom used to assure her, when Nora still said she didn’t have a string, but by the time she turned twenty, Nora decided it was best not to hold on to that idea-- there was no way she was going to be the forty year-old cougar going after a person twenty years her younger, soulmate or not. So, she started dating; people with strings, people with no strings, people with broken strings.
Nothing lasted long; she’d feel bad for dating someone with a soulmate, as most people had, and everyone else just fell through.
She thought she’d found her ‘good-enough’ with Nate, a man with a broken sting and someone willing to love her despite what she was missing.
She was happy in her marriage and with her baby; whatever she felt about not having a stupid red string attached to her hand could be eclipsed by what she felt when she thought about her happy home, and she could be good with that. She thought she could be good with carving her place in the world.
Everything was good, finally.
Until the bombs dropped, and she was sealed away in that godforsaken vault-
Frozen like some kind of science project or TV dinner.
She thought Nate getting shot and Shaun being stolen was just some horrible dream at first, a nightmare that she could wake up from, until she actually did wake up, and everything was wrong.
She almost didn’t believe it at first, when she tumbled out of the cryopod and tried to catch her breath. Nora couldn’t get out fast enough, having just enough sense to take Nate’s wedding ring-- a perfect twin to her own simple gold band, --before tears started obscuring her vision.
It was a blur between waking up and escaping the Vault; the giant cockroaches and the skeletons of scientists flashed through her mind even as she tried to shove them away.
She didn’t need to think, she needed to run.
The scraping of gears as a platform slowly brought her to the surface served as a white noise to help her block everything out, if only for a little.
A gulp of fresh air only helped stem the steady flow of tears until she saw what the outside world looked like-- the yellowed landscape stole the breath from her as readily as it had given it.
A sob escaped her before she could catch it, and she soon gave up trying to stop at all
Between trying to process what she had just been through, what she was seeing in front of her, and dry heaving into the nearest bush, she took no notice of the thin red line tied around her pinky.
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Deacon didn’t care much for the soulmate business.
He’d had his fair share and more of heartbreak related to the stupid little string on his left hand, and the concept of some outside being playing with his life and deciding there was ONE perfect person for him left a bad taste in his mouth.
Could also be the cigarettes, though. He could never tell.
It was only by sheer luck that Deacon had been near Vault 111, passing the hills by Sanctuary. It had been a complete roundabout way of getting to where he was going, a route that he couldn’t justify other than sometimes the urge to take the scenic route of the Wasteland struck him.
The vibration of the Vault opening could be felt for miles, surely, and through his scope, he could get a good look at who-- or what, --was leaving.
He wasn’t expecting a woman. For some reason he’d had his imaginary caps on it being a mutant of some sort, that would’ve made sense with what, admittedly little, he knew about vaults and their inhabitants, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to collapse the moment she saw the surface. Sure, the Wasteland was pretty ugly, but it had to be better than the sterile white he’d seen in other vaults, right?
He watched her for a moment, watched her cry so hard she threw up, unaware anyone was around her at all, though he wasn’t sure she’d know if he was there even if he were jumping up and down and yelling. She seemed pretty consumed by whatever grief she was dealing with-- maybe they kicked her out, that was usually why only one vaultie would leave, other than of their own volition, and if Deacon had to guess, it definitely wasn’t the second option.
He stayed longer than he’d meant to, long enough to watch her slowly get a grip on herself and make her way down the hill towards the empty houses that made up Sanctuary Hills.
Vaulties didn’t tend to last long out here, so he didn’t put much thought on her retreating form, pulling away from the sight on his gun to resume his trek; the chance of seeing her again was slim-- it was hard for a Wastelander to make it out there, much less some soft vault-dweller.
It was the same reason he didn’t put much thought into the red string he glimpsed; no, it would do him little good to dwell, he decided.
Deacon didn’t care much for the soulmate business, not anymore.
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