So before this starts I will say this will be a low-effort fanfic, slow updates and sloppy writing. I'm only doing this because I'm bored but otherwise enjoy it.
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Okay, so no idea how the fuck this happened. One moment I'm downing a coffee before my graveyard shift at Tesco, next I'm suddenly a mother fucking mutt in what I think is an old rundown petrol station?
How the hell does this even happen? Everything smells terrible and I swear I can hear gunfire and explosions in the distance.
I try to stand up—more like flop awkwardly—and my legs feel weird, twitchy. Not the hangover kind of weird, more like I'm learning to walk all over again. Great, just fucking great.
I take a shaky sniff around. There's the unmistakable stench of burnt rubber mixed with something foul, like rotten meat left out too long.
I take a few awkward steps, trying to get used to my new legs while taking in more of my surroundings. It looks hella familiar, but my mind's drawing a blank.
There's a fucked road and old, rusty 80s-looking cars. All the plants are orange or brown, no leaves on the trees—pretty sure that means they're dead.
I mean, I've got a few choices I can make here, but fuck me, what the hell am I supposed to do? The road leads downhill to where the gunfire is. I doubt there's much I can do inside the rundown building.
I might as well just head up the road. Not like I can just wait here for something to happen, so I do just that.
It doesn't take me long to be stopped in my tracks. In front of me is a partially broken wooden bridge, a dead guy, and a dead, hairless, deformed dog with a tyre iron jammed into its side.
But the main thing that has me reeling is the sign: Sanctuary Hills.
That gives me a dead giveaway as to where I am—and means I was just at the Red Rocket Truck Stop.
Oh fuck.
So… does that mean I'm like Dogmeat or something?
I'm so going to fucking die…
You know what? Fuck it, we ball. I move my way around the dead guy and dog and head towards Sanctuary Hills.
Who knows? Might run into the main character—whoever he or she may be. Whatever the case, might be able to talk to Codsworth… or not. I am a dog now.
Trotting through Sanctuary is weird. It feels like a movie set—none of this even feels real. These houses must have been an absolute nightmare to keep warm in the winter. Metal isn't exactly what I'd say makes good walls for a house.
I veer off the main path and poke my head into one of the houses that isn't completely caved in. The roof's still hanging on—barely—and the door's off its hinges, so I just trot right in.
The inside's just as depressing as the outside. Dust, shattered glass, mouldy old furniture. But what really gets me is the walls. I stop and stare for a moment, just… baffled.
There's no insulation. Like, at all. Just paint, wallpaper, and some thin-ass wooden panels in a few rooms trying to pretend they're doing something. That's it. No foam, no batting. Nothing.
Sure, there are radiators—but I'm guessing with these metal walls and drafty windows, they'd be about as useful as a lighter in a snowstorm. These people must've frozen their tits off every winter. And for what? The aesthetic? Some retro-futuristic nightmare with chrome kitchen counters and not a single properly sealed window?
What the fuck am I even doing?
I leave the rundown house and continue up the road, where I can see a floating… thing.
It looks like someone strapped a blowtorch a claw machine claw and a buzzsaw to a floating metal beach ball and called it a day. Its round body's covered in grime and rust, Three spindly arms twitch and bob as it hovers, emitting a low hum, like a really pissed-off kettle.
In its three eye things is a camera lens, glowing faintly, and it's just… wandering around the cul-de-sac like it's still got chores to do, muttering to itself in a painfully chipper voice.
Oh god. That's Codsworth, isn't it?
Well, this could go a few ways.
One: he's polite and takes me in. Offers me some rust-flavored kibble and a spot next to the busted radiator. Very posh, very British, very Downton Abbey but make it nuclear.
Or two: he flips out and tries to chase me off like some mangy stray.
Honestly? It's a coin toss.
He spots me. Stops mid-hover. That camera eye of his zooms in with a little mechanical whirr, and I swear I feel scanned. Not metaphorically—like literally, scanned. I resist the urge to bark something profane.
"Hmm… a canine?" he mutters, tilting slightly to one side. "Fascinating. You're not one of the local wild mongrels, are you?"
I don't move. Just keep standing there like an idiot, hoping he's in a generous mood.
Codsworth floats a bit closer. Buzzsaw arm clicks open. Not threatening exactly, but not comforting either.
"Well, you don't appear rabid. No drooling, no foaming at the mouth… though your hygiene could use a tune-up, dear boy."
Okay. Not ideal, but still better than him screaming "EXTERMINATE" and turning me into a scorch mark on the pavement.
He makes a little humming noise, like he's genuinely thinking it over.
"I suppose there's no harm in allowing you to stay nearby… provided you refrain from chewing the furniture."
Cool. So I've been unofficially adopted by a glorified blender with abandonment issues.
Progress?
I guess I can just wait here 'til the main character makes an appearance. I mean, it shouldn't be long—I don't think.
That's how games work, right?
Just gotta wait for the Chosen One™ to roll in with a pip-boy, a dead spouse complex, and a blank-slate personality. Maybe they'll be nice. Maybe they'll shoot me on sight. Who knows? Either way, I'm apparently the dog in this messed-up story now.
I plop down near the curb in front of a collapsed garage, tail flicking idly against the cracked concrete. Codsworth keeps muttering to himself nearby—something about wax polish and the state of the shrubbery—as if the world didn't end 200 years ago.
The wind whistles through empty houses. Distant gunfire pops off again, somewhere way down the road. The sky's got that washed-out, radioactive beige look to it.
So I wait.
And for the first time in my life—or afterlife, or reincarnation, or whatever the hell this is—I feel weirdly… calm.
I could just stay here. Let Sanctuary become the thriving little hovel it's supposed to be in the future. Garden plots, turrets, people who definitely didn't go to architecture school building weird tower-shack hybrids. Let the main character go do their thing—fight mutants, shout at Kellogg, whatever.
I don't have to follow them. This isn't a game now.
I'm just a dog.
I'm not running into oncoming gunfire. I'm not biting super mutants. I'm not sniffing out landmines while someone in a vault suit yells "Good boy!" like that makes it okay. Screw that.
…
I mean, it's probably not impossible for me to get a body again, right?
Like, the Memory Den is a thing. Synths are a thing. People probably get their minds put in robot bodies all the time here. Hell, pretty sure Nick Valentine's walking proof of that. Don't really remember his story.
All I'd need is… I don't know. A genius, some expensive tech, a miracle, and maybe someone not completely insane and able to understand a dog.
Easy.
Right?
Ah, fuck it. I'm going to sleep.
All of this has left me mentally exhausted. Existential crises hit different when you've got paws and a tail. So I curl up in a patch of dead grass near the sidewalk, the scent of rust and old concrete in my nose, and try to let sleep take me into dreamland.
If I'm lucky, I'll wake up back in my flat. If not… well, maybe I'll dream of radiators and central heating.