New story! Exciting isn't it? What we have here should be about 10 chapters. It's part of my larger Fallout series that begins in "Shattered Illusions". "The Unspoken" fills in a little what happens in DC after the Lone Wanderer leaves, it also gives some crucial back story for upcoming parts of my Fallout series, AND it serves to introduce a new OC of mine. A new OC who may or may not stumble into Fallout 4 once I finish the thing. But I ramble. Please, read and enjoy, it's lovely to have you all here.

The history of the world is never spoken. The rocks and stones have no mouths to speak. They cannot tell a listener what has transpired. But all the same they carry the story of everything that's transpired around them. The signs of history are written in the dirt, but are unintelligible to the common man. They are mere vagaries, hinted at, but never fully understood. Vagaries written in the sand and grit of the world, swept away by the wind before they can be read.

The history of the Capital Wasteland is written like this. In bombed out buildings, in rusted out cars, and the skeletons of the dead. They all have a story they're yearning to tell, but alas they cannot. Instead they are forced to exist, always remembering. Remembering with no one to share their memories with. Remembered in the radioactive dirt of the Wasteland. Scuffed under boot, stained with blood, and thrown into the air to be carried across the desert.

The history in the dirt, flying from one locale to the next, witnessing more and more to add to its silent archive. The downtrodden and beaten slaves of Paradise Falls, the bloodthirsty raiders of Evergreen Mills, the elites of Tenpenny Tower. All fall under the silent scrutiny of the world. All their secrets and hidden horrors observed and yet immediately concealed. The world will always know even as its inhabitants continue on blissfully unaware.

The dirt remembers.

The dirt remembers as one small bare foot after the other leaves bloody footprints across the desert as its owner resolutely marches onwards. Never looking back, never wanting to look back. One foot after the other across the desert.

The same dirt is lifted by the breeze and thrown in flurries into the eyes of a sniper. A sniper perched on a battered lawn chair atop a mighty wall. A mighty wall scoured and scratched by the wind and the dust. The radioactive grit is thrown into his eyes and he is forced to squint even as he wants to open his eyes wider as motion out in the wide expanse of the desert catches his eyes.

"The hell is that?" Stockholm muttered.

The ever vigilant watchman of Megaton scrubbed at his eyes with a dirty gloved hand, but the dirt was everywhere even in his tower.

"Son of a bitch," he grumbled, trying to clear his vision. He blinked furiously, wetting his suddenly dry eyeballs and pressed the scope of his rifle to his face. The world jumped forward as his view was magnified. But the dust was ever present. Something was stumbling around in the dim, half-light of dusk, but he couldn't tell what. The damnable dirt was being whipped about by the wind and he couldn't get a bead on the figure walking towards the gates.

Stockholm knew his mandate. Protect the city. Dangers were kept afar and never allowed closer than his range of fire. Raiders and slavers were put down from half a mile away. But…

He had no way of knowing who this was and he wasn't going to chance a lethal shot if someone might be innocent. Just one figure out in a dust storm? Could be some junky raider high out of his mind. It could be a feral ghoul limping its irradiated corpse towards its next meal. Or it could be someone who he'd regret putting a bullet in. Someone who would make him regret putting a bullet in them. And he wasn't going to risk that ever again.

She'd made him pay plenty the first time.

But she was long gone.

Stockholm lifted himself from his chair, tearing his eyes away from the figure who was steadily growing closer to the city. He crossed to the back of his tower so he could lean over the railing and look into the town below.

"Lucas," he hollered down at the top of a cowboy hat wearing head. "LUCAS!"

Lucas Simms, sheriff and mayor-when-necessary of Megaton squinted up at him, one hand shading his dark brow.

"I got something you need to see, sheriff."

Simms nodded, his expression grim. No one took the safety of Megaton more seriously than its sheriff. Even if the sheriff couldn't exactly predict how those he let in his gates would turn out. But his success rate was high. Only a few outstanding cases existed.

But they were long gone. She was long gone.

Simms hustled over to the ladder leading the way up the wall to a series of catwalks that connected to Stockholm's tower. As he climbed he felt the wind scratch at his face and the dust tangle into his beard. Generally the sniper was a lone wolf, needing no input from him. The only time he hesitated was whenever she came to town.

But it couldn't be her. She was long gone.

Nimbly crossing the catwalk, always minding were his feet went as the wind sought to unsteady him, Simms pulled himself up to Stockholm's perch. The sniper glanced over his shoulder at him before returning his eye to his scope.

"What d'you got for me, Stockholm?" Simms' deep voice growled. The wind picked up again, snapping his duster around. He pulled it tighter around himself in a vain attempt to keep the dirt out.

Stockholm pursed his lips uncertainly. "I… am not sure."

"You're not sure?' Simms asked, irritated that he might have made the climb up for a false alarm.

Stockholm pulled his face away from his rifle to give Simms a wounded look. "Lucas, come on, there's a storm out there. Not the best line of sight."

"But you see something?"

Stockholm hesitated and put his eye back to his scope. "I… do. But I'm not sure what… or who."

Simms sighed deeply and relaxed his posture, a little of the tension bleeding from his system. "It's not her, Stockholm."

"But it could-"

"It's not her," Simms repeated, overriding the sniper's objection. "She left. She ain't coming back."

"But-" Stockholm tried again, trying to get his words out before Simms shut him down.

"It's. Not. Her," Simms said firmly, brooking no argument. "She left. For good. Decided those creeps in Tenpenny Tower were more to her liking. She finally found her own kind." Simms stared Stockholm in the eyes for a few seconds, daring him to try and argue once more. The sniper tried to hold his gaze, but folded and returned to looking through the scope on his rifle. Simms snorted and stood to get up and start the long climb back down. As he turned to go he commented, "You know if you'd done your job properly the first time, we wouldn't even be having this conversation."

Simms nearly stumbled as his wrist was caught and he was pulled back around to face Stockholm. The sniper was glaring at him.

"I have never shot someone who didn't deserve it," Stockholm said. "Never." His grip tightened on Simms' arm. "Until her. I put a bullet in her on your orders despite my gut telling me not to. I nearly put her down. I made the wrong shot and I will never forget it." He released Simms' arm and held his hand up. A pale white scar ran along the top of his trigger finger, the knotted tissue raised starkly against the sniper's tanned skin.

Snorting Simms straightened up. "Like she didn't deserve to be shot." Stockholm gave him a dirty look. A look the sheriff returned with vehemence. "Well, it's not like she didn't come to deserve it over time," he barked.

"Maybe she wouldn't have left us if I hadn't put a Megaton .308 in her chest!"

Simms threw his hands in the air and shouted at Stockholm, "For fuck's sake, Stockholm, did you call me up here just to act as a confessional? She's not out there, it ain't her. Because she ain't never coming back!"

"Then who the fuck is stumbling around out there in the dark, Lucas!?" Stockholm shouted back, thrusting his rifle into the sheriff's hands. Simms ground his teeth together and glared at Stockholm for a few seconds before he raised the rifle to his shoulder and peered into the scope. "That's the world I get to see out there," Stockholm ranted, as he waited for the sheriff to zero in on the figure out in the storm. "That's all I get to see and I have to make a decision. I have to play god for this town. So how's it feel, huh?" he asked. "It crystal clear for you?"

"My god…" Simms murmured, pulling his eye away from the scope.

Stockholm crossed his arms smugly. "That's what I thought. You can't tell. You can't tell, you couldn't tell, you can never tell, and you still had me shoot her." He was knocked back in surprise as Simms thrust the rifle into his arms.

"No, you idiot," Simms shouted as he darted back across the catwalk and slung his body around the ladder. He looked at Stockholm, "There's a kid out there." Before the sniper could reply, the sheriff was sliding down the ladder to the ground, yelling, "Weld! Steel! Get that gate open!" as he went.

Sheriff Lucas Simms hit the ground just as his Protectron deputies activated the motors to pull the gates open. Lucas could hear the hubbub this caused as the town reacted to the gate opening this late at night, not to mention during a sandstorm.

Simms coughed and covered his mouth as the full force of the gale nearly bowled him over. Out of the corner of his eye he could make out Mickey. The hobo had pulled himself into a crevasse along the wall and wrapped a sheet of cardboard around himself.

But the water beggar didn't rate his attention as he ran forwards into the storm. The Wasteland was no place for a child, especially during a storm. He couldn't in good conscience leave them out here.

The small shadowy voice in the back of his mind chose to remind him that his conscience had let someone else into his town before. His conscience had made him open the doors and give shelter to one of the most dangerous people in the Wasteland. His conscience had made him welcome a living weapon into his home.

But this wouldn't be like that.

Because she was long gone. And she wasn't coming back.

Lucas shook those thoughts away as he tried to focus into the storm. The sand scratched at his face as he squinted. Just there. He could barely make them out. He adjusted course and made his way towards the small figure.

And there she was.

This tiny, quivering little figure, holding herself as if she was about to fall apart. Clad in nothing, but rags and a long, striped scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, the girl looked up it him, eyes unwavering, before collapsing into his arms.

Simms wrapped his duster around the girl and looked around into the storm. There was nobody else. No one else out there, but the dirt. And no clue as to where the girl had come from other than the bloody track she'd left in the dirt.

But the wind was already wiping them away.

Simms pulled her to his chest and started back to Megaton.

Who was she? Where had she come from?

As Simms hid his face from the storm and shielded the girl with his body, the world was silent asides the howling of the wind.

No one to tell him the answers to his questions.

There were no words there.

Only the silent stories in the earth.

Only the earth knew. Only the earth remembered.

Only it knew where the girl had come from.

And only it knew what had happened there.