Standard Fare: I don't own the rights to any of the characters or locations in Fallout 3. If I did I would be sleeping on a large pile of money surrounded by many beautiful men, instead of on a rumpled bed with a badly behaved cat.
Overall story rated M for language and naughty content.

-This is my first upload to FF and I'm pretty excited to be working on it, as I am still madly in love with FO3. More chapters will follow as I complete them. Thanks for reading, here's hoping you enjoy it!-

Chapter One
Missing Pieces

One thing I never lost, no matter how old I got, was this: I was always stunned by meanness. From the time I was five and heard Wally Mack's father tell my father that my mother had done the right thing by dying, right up to half an hour ago when Trinnie had called me a bitch for not buying her a drink. And by this point in my life I'd seen enough meanness that I should have been immune to it.

When I was maybe eight years old I caught Butch DeLoria stealing a box of paperclips out of my father's desk in the Vault's clinic. By that age I knew enough to mostly stay away from Butch. He'd never warmed to my attempts at friendship (I'd once tried unsuccessfully to share a half-eaten sandwich I'd found in my school desk) and he never seemed to want to play with the rest of us. He usually hung out with Wally Mack and Paul Hannon and while Paul was okay Wally was a total jerk. And yeah, over a decade later I'm still using the phrase 'total jerk' to describe him. I guess sometimes you don't get past those childhood labels.

So yeah, the paperclips. I knew he wasn't borrowing them. When people borrowed stuff from my dad they smiled at me and said hello and went straight for what they needed, but Butch didn't know I was there and he was definitely not smiling. He was also definitely not supposed to be in my dad's desk because I knew my dad didn't like Butch one bit.

"What are you doing?" I asked, coming out from behind the spare gurney I'd been playing around. He stood so fast he scraped his forehead on the edge of the drawer. I saw a small box in his hand that he quickly stuck behind his back.

"Nothin', dirt brain. Why are you sneaking around like a ... dirty spying sneak?" Butch's repertoire of put-downs got much more comprehensive when he grew up.

"I'm not sneaking! This is my dad's clinic and he said I can play in his office while he looks at patients." I edged closer to the desk, curiosity warring with caution. "Why are you taking those?"

"Because." That one defiant word spoke volumes about the kid.

"But they're not yours. They're my dad's."

"I know that, doofus. What are you gonna do about it?"

I hadn't really thought that far ahead. Action wasn't my strong suit even back then. Dad always said I could talk the devil into setting himself on fire, and then talk God into putting him out again. It was true that I could talk my way out of just about any situation... with the unalterable exception of Mr. Brotch's surprise tests.

"If you need paperclips I bet my dad would let you have them. He's the nicest man in the whole Vault." If Butch got caught stealing he would get in trouble. I didn't like trouble, not even for people I didn't get along with. And he was one kid who didn't need any more of that in his life. If I could just get him to do the right thing this once...

Instead he made a nasty face. "My daddy's the nicest man in the whole Vault. You're such a little baby. Why don't you go cry to your daddy, crybaby?"

I goggled at him. "Why are you being so mean?"

"Why are you being so mean?"

I goggled at him some more but kept my mouth shut. This was one of those traps that every kid knew was inescapable once you'd fallen into it. The first person to start repeating what the other said in a smarmy voice usually won. The longer I stood there staring at him the redder his face got and finally he broke.

"I hate you."

"No you don't."

"What? Yeah I do!"

"You couldn't hate me. I never did anything bad to you and you can only hate people who did something bad to you."

This logic was infallible as only an eight year old's can be and I wore it like the mantle of a queen. But our subject, far from being grateful for our wisdom, chose instead to assault our person with a flying box of paperclips.

I felt a little like crying as he ran out of the clinic, bothered on a deeply personal level that somebody could not like me. Even somebody as bratty and illogical as Butch DeLoria.

And now twelve years later, cleaning the largest of the three focusing lenses of my laser rifle at an out of the way table outside Gary's Galley in Rivet City, I was still faintly bothered by it. And I knew why I was suddenly thinking about it now, of all times.

Six days ago I had rescued everyone in Vault 101 from civil war, and to thank me for my efforts I'd been told to leave and never come back.

That also bothered me on a deeply personal level. I might have been kind of a sensitive girl, but that betrayal would've hurt anyone.

You saved us, Amata had said, her eyes shining with tears and something else. But you can't stay here. You only saved us from problems that you and your father caused. Deep in my heart I knew this to be bullshit, a cop-out, stupidly untrue. My palm itched with the desire to slap the sanctimonious shades of her father, the Overseer, right off her face. Six days later and still fuming, wondering what I could have said or done differently so that the huge door of Vault 101 might not have sealed me outside for good.

It wasn't that I wanted to go back and live there again. I couldn't possibly even if I'd wanted to. But if Amata wanted to start connecting with the outside world, trading, hunting, exploring, then they needed the help of somebody who'd done it. Somebody who spoke their language and also spoke the language of the Wastes. That somebody was me, dammit, and instead of taking the hand I'd offered them, they spit on it and slammed the door in my face. The Muddy Rudder. That's where I should be sitting right now, face down in a puddle of irradiated vodka. But the Muddy Rudder was Trinnie's haunt and I didn't really feel like being anywhere near her because she'd called me a bitch and I wasn't and dammit Kate, you're whining again.

People were mean. That was just the way things were. It didn't have to be that way but it was and that was that. I wasn't mean. But a lot of raiders and slavers and assorted Wasteland assholes were dead and I wasn't, which meant that being mean didn't put you on top of the food chain by default. This, however, was cold comfort for somebody whose father... whose precious, beloved father...

I missed him bitterly. Meanness had a way of striking down those who didn't believe in it, and dad had been sure that his vision would protect him until he could see it through to completion. After all, who could possibly want to stand in the way of free, clean water for the whole Capital Wasteland?

Fucking Enclave. A little too viciously, I slammed the focusing lens back into place and began screwing the housing plates back on.

I miss Butch.

A tiny screw dropped from my fingers and rolled down between two floor plates where it was likely to remain forever. Just as Butch was likely to remain down in Vault 101 forever. Now that the door had been shut again and Amata was busy restoring order I had a hard time believing they would ever open again. After enough time had passed and things calmed down, it would be let's not ruin things by opening that door back up. I fished a spare screw out of a pocket. Amata had been my best friend for a lot of years but I knew she was her father's daughter. She could talk about trading and forging new relationships all she wanted, but at heart she liked order and stability. I could easily see her forgetting her promise to open the Vault up once the aftermath of the crisis had settled. Rocking the boat was not her way.

Not like it was Butch's.

God dammit. Another screw consigned to the void. I bit my lower lip fiercely and concentrated on the second last tiny screw I owned, knowing I would have to hit up Seagrave in the morning to see if he had any. If not I would have to hope Flak had a busted old laser rifle that didn't cost too much so I could strip it for parts. It was almost impossible to find pieces that small amongst general junk.

Good thing Butch misplaced that switchblade of his.

My hand was shaking on the final turn of the screwdriver and I hastily rolled and stowed my tools. Without a backward glance I fled the Marketplace and slipped into my hotel room where I could weep for a while over echoes of my father, and echoes of the boy whose missing switchblade lived on in the BB gun stowed beneath my bed in Megaton.