Chapter Text
Amata’s sure she knows exactly how many tons the door to Vault 101 weighs. She’s probably been told a dozen times by her father, seen it as a bonus question on pop quizzes for years… But as it rolls and scrapes itself open once more, dwarfing the two women standing in front of it, all she can think of are the hundreds of unsaid words tangled in her throat, begging to be let out.
I never wanted this to happen.
I miss you.
“Amata,” Rose murmurs, barely audible over the screech of steel against steel. “It doesn’t have to be like this --”
“I’m sorry.”
I love you.
She doesn’t cry -- she’s the Overseer now, for God’s sake -- but as Rose disappears beyond that door, it takes every ounce of strength she has to keep her composure until she can lock herself in her quarters.
It was like seeing a ghost. Rose was… Recognizable, but Amata could see what the wasteland had done to her. Her dark skin had been weathered by the sun and scarred by -- well, she didn’t know. Thinking about it made her stomach twist. Her once long braids had been buzzed down to the barest hint of curls, and Amata can still feel how strongly she’d wanted to reach out and touch them.
Now she never will.
The first time they kissed, they were fourteen. They’d had a class on the importance of reproduction within the vault, and Rose had protested all the way through. It just wasn’t sustainable, she’d said. We’ll all be inbred before you know it.
What if some of us don’t want to get married?
Butch called her a dyke in the hallway and they’d both left with bloody noses. Amata was there to patch her up without the good doctor finding out, and to listen to her angered rants. Rose always did speak before she thought things through.
So what if I don’t like guys?
It all happened so fast from there. Amata’d been taken aback at first, Rose sniffling and sobbing even through her anger. Rose’s hands, soft in Amata’s.
Her lips softer.
After that they tiptoed around everyone - peers and adults alike - to keep things under wraps. For all that the both of them were made fun of for being “daddy’s girls”, neither of their fathers heard a word of any of it. Rose dismantled more than a few security cameras to make sure of that and took care of a few more with her BB gun.
Rose always had so many hopeful ideas - that they could open the vault and make peace with the people of the wasteland (if any existed), work with them. If that happened, they wouldn’t need to get married, need to have children to keep the vault going. They could be together. For real. Without hiding.
Amata didn’t like to talk about that. It was unrealistic. Best not to get their hopes up for something that would never happen.
Amata couldn’t just leave.
Rose had begged her to when she fled the vault. Begged her to come with her. Begged her to do anything but stand by and let her father be the tyrant he was.
All she could do was let her leave and pray that the wastes would treat her better than it did in her nightmares. Each night she saw Rose torn to pieces, or sick from radiation poisoning, or little more than bones, and there was nothing she could do to soothe her fears.
Rose was gone. There was no knowing where she was, whether she was alive or another victim of the harsh outside world.
Remembering it all has Amata hunched over on her bed with her head in her hands.
This is for the good of the vault, she reasons. It can open, but Rose has to stay away. To keep the peace in a peaceless vault.
She’s lived without her once. She can do it again.
But god, oh god, she hates herself for it.