Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Her hands didn’t shake around the grip anymore. It was a meatier gun than the pilfered 10mm; her very own cowboy revolver. The perfectly aimed .45-70 turned the super mutant’s head to mush before the Ghoul had even turned around to see it approaching him. Lucy stared, eyes narrowing at the flashing red light on the mutant’s chest. Blink, blink, red light; faster, faster.

The Ghoul faced her now. He said something, but she only saw his lips move, only the vague impression of his drawl above the ringing of gunfire in her ears. Then it was his body, colliding with hers, sending them both sprawling to the ground where he landed on top of her.

Heavy weight and the scent of leather and gunpowder. Warmth, so much warmth. He let her head jolt off the ground painfully, but huddled over her after with his hands clamped tight to her ears. 

The explosive went off soon after, the jarring noise of it muffled by his precaution. 

Debris rained down as she stared up at him; her heart rate finally caught up to the danger and threatened to beat out of her chest cavity and into his. Treacherous organ. The rough leather of his gloves dropped away from her ears, but he didn’t move off her, choosing instead to express his annoyance at close range. 

“You purposely tryin’ to make keeping you alive fucking difficult on me, Vaultie?”

“No, I—“ His eyes pinned her as surely as his body did. Lucy couldn’t help staring at them; hazel and green eyes flash an entrancing kaleidoscope, framed by the surprise of his stubbornly thick eyelashes, present despite the lack of other hair on his head. He still had eyelashes. She blinked a few more times as the rest of the ringing died out and looked at him, up close for the very first time since their scuffle before the Super Duper Mart. She stared at him a lot, too much probably, but this was far closer, and she found her gaze roving over his face, taking in the strange burnt texture of his skin, along his cheekbones and jawline, his chapped lips, like hers, marred lips, hiding a pink tongue. Lucy forced her eyes up to his when her stomach flipped. “I couldn’t hear.”

His head had tipped the way it so often did, sometime during her examination. She was belatedly surprised he’d let her look for so long. He looked as perplexed as she felt. They stared at each other. Dilated pupils. Strange animals. Anticipation itched at Lucy’s fingertips where they twitched against the lapels of his coat. He hauled her up to her feet by her wrist and made her pick through the pulpy mess that remained of the super mutants for ammo. 

Consciousness swam out of her reach time and again, and cold, bright light pressing insistently against her eyelids, like her own vault's medical rooms. Her entire body, limbs, muscles, down to the very cells that gave her form felt heavy and sodden. She could smell the familiar, sterile scent of a vault medical room. Lucy rolled back and forth through a hazy twilight of not-awake and dreams, nightmares, flashes of a frantic firefight, of her side pressed to a musty leather duster, of a weathered hand with her own finger on it grabbing and pulling her own, only to lose its grip. 

The Ghoul. They’d been separated just outside the New Vegas strip. She’d been electrocuted with an arc gun, jolted into utter helpless paralysis, and he’d been— her mind swirled and wheeled away from it. She wasn’t sure. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t, theorize the worst. 

The only to measure the passage of time was by the dosages of the sedatives they gave her. Lucy could be crawling on hands and knees through the cloud of cotton that shrouded her mind to wakefulness, could gain ground in the battle against her heavy eyelids, only to hear soft voices murmuring, and shuffling, then feel the irrepressible tide pull her back under.

In her brief flashes of near-consciousness she tried to ponder it out. Was it three times now she’d almost managed to open her eyes? Four? At six to eight hours a dose her captors had taken a day from her. More, if they didn’t care about the potential negative side effects of giving her doses too large for her. 

This repeated another two cycles. Lucy worried, when she could, through the jello of her thoughts; mostly about the Ghoul, which was silly, she knew. He was resilient, capable. He knew what he was doing. She was the human being kept in a drugged sleep that would barely make him drowsy. But she kept seeing it— the look on his face. The way his eyes had widened in their hollows and the setting sun behind her had colored the hazel-green to gold, his mouth parted in a snarl, and his grip hard on her forearm but not hard enough.

What had they done to him? 

Finally, finally, they allowed Lucy to wake up. The effort felt monumental, worse than any leg of their great trek through the Mojave, than any mountain, than any fight. She shoved through, fought and whimpered, and eventually forced her crusty eyes open to the blinding sterility of, yes, a near replica of her own vault’s compact medical bay. This one was bigger, but that was where the differences ended, in every other way the room was identical, the same shape, the same cots and even the same cheery poster of a cartoon Vault Boy grinning despite the cast on his arm. 

A beautiful woman with dark brown skin and perfectly coiffed rich black curls smiled down at her. If it weren't for the complete absence of warmth, it very well could have been the nicest expression anyone except Max had offered Lucy since venturing from 33.

As it stood, her stomach turned. Once, waking up in a vault would have been a blessing. After her brief stint in 4, Lucy knew better. “It’s good to see you’re awake, Miss MacLean. Your father’s worried himself sick waiting for you," the woman started, "the doctors convinced him to go get some food before our big meeting this evening, but we’ve already sent for him. He should have just enough time to say hello before we need to leave.”

“My dad…?” Luc rasped, her mouth feeling fuzzy and dry, drawing a grimace. When she tried to touch her throat, she found both her hands strapped down to the medical cot, one with an IV trailing from one. The blurry edges of panic tried to push through the flood of sedatives, but she couldn’t quite get there.  

“Oh, let’s get you a little water, dear.” The woman tipped a glass up to Lucy’s mouth. The hard-won skills she had developed in the wasteland screamed at her to absolutely not take water from a stranger without checking it, but now that her attention had been brought to it, Lucy was parched and, well, she thought to herself, they already had her hooked to the IV. They could do anything they wanted to her. She opened her mouth to sip at the slow trickle of water as the woman tilted the glass for her and went on speaking. “I’m Barb. Our vault doesn’t have a traditional overseer in the sense you’re familiar with, but I’ve been chosen to help you get up and accustomed to living here. Alongside your father, of course, but he’s still adjusting himself. I’m helping him, too”

It was too much for Lucy's woozy head. She wanted her stability; she wanted the worry to stop. She wanted the tenuous peace she found at the side of the gruff growling cowboy that had seen her through the hell of the desert. Insane, that in under three weeks she should go from trying to escape him and find her father to the very opposite. “Where is he?”

“The doctors have already sent a message, your dad should be here any minute.”

“No, not him, my… the cowboy.” Lucy clarified.

The woman’s lips twisted with something vaguely resembling concerning, “I’m sorry, who?”

“The man I was with before, he wears this cowboy hat, and a long duster, he carries a Mule’s Leg, he’s— um, he's a ghoul…?”

She would have relaxed at the understanding she saw flashing behind those cool dark eyes's if Barb hadn't pat Lucy's hand gently with a look of soft compassion on her face. “I see, the one who took you. You’re safe from him down here, I promise.”

“No, I—“ Lucy struggled to run the mental calculations past the sluggishness induced by the sedatives. Her father was here. He was free to walk about. Barb seemed to have some level of authority, or maybe expertise, and she was helping her father. She said Lucy would be living here. What had her dad told these people about what happened at the observatory? If he was on the same side as them and he was aware she’d nearly been about to kill him, they shouldn’t be treating her kindly. Kindly besides the brief jaunt of medically induced coma, that was. So maybe he’d lied. To protect her? And she better do her best to not contradict any of whatever it was he’d said, or things could get a lot worse than they were already looking. She slowly forced her mouth shut, then forced her head to nod next, feeling wooden from more than the after effects of the drugs. “Thank you, Barb. I think I’m still waking up… why did they have me under? Was I hurt? Did he— hurt me?”

“Our staff finds it easier to acclimate and decontaminate any newcomers with them sedated. It’s a delicate ecosystem down here," Barb explained gently, "we wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself in a panic. You did have some scrapes, a graze from a bullet, a broken wrist, and several bruised ribs, I believe. All healed up now. Rest assured, your father had to undergo the very same process when we rescued him, as well. And, speaking of, there you are.” Barb stood gracefully and pivoted away. Lucy hadn’t even heard the door over the rush of blood in her ears, but her eyes snapped in the same direction to watch her father enter the room. 

Oh, how it hurt. She sucked in a gasping breath, hands jerking weakly towards her chest only to be jarred to a stop by the restraints. Lucy had known it wouldn’t be easy. She knew that conceptualizing wasteland justice for her father for his crimes would be far different than being faced with it and pulling the trigger. She hadn’t been fast enough at the observatory, and now she was forced to wonder if she ever would be capable of pulling that trigger, even as the different animal the wastes had transformed her into. Maybe. Maybe. 

Her dad looked frantic. His eyes were wide over a tight smile she’d never seen until Moldaver barged into their lives. The intent look he gave her immediately upon spotting her had the obvious quality of trying to convey something non verbally. No shoot, dad, she’d already figured it out. Her eyebrows quirked up slightly, but she didn’t have to fake the well of tears that pricked at the corners of her eyes. He was at her side in a flash, and Barb backed away respectfully but kept watching with a cool intent air. Lucy felt so examined. 

“Lucy, honey, you’re safe, it’s over.” He rest a hand on hers, and she flinched when it nudged the IV line penetrating into the soft underside of her arm. He didn’t seem to notice. The pain was small compared to others she’d had in the wasteland; she chose to ignore it. 

“Hi, dad.” She said quietly, hoping her hesitation could be explained away as residual grogginess from the drugs. “Where… are we?”

“This is Vault Zero,” Barb cut in with another bland smile, “welcome.”

“It’s safe here, like home.” Hank pressed earnestly. 

Lucy reigned in the sardonic look she wanted to level at him. Sardonic, she mused; she hadn’t had one of those looks before. Maybe it looked like Norm’s. Everyone was saying safe an awful lot. “Why?”

“It’s a good vault, a special one. Very safe.” Right. There was that word, yet again, tumbling from his lips as if repeating it would make it true. “You’ll see, in time. But for now, we need you to rest up, alright?”

“We’ll have questions for you, too," Barb interjected again, "once you’re better acclimated, we can collaborate on finding solutions to the new obstacles that have risen as of late." Lucy nodded, shaky, as she listened to the beautiful, cold woman, "I think you’ll be a wonderful addition to the synergy of the team here. You have a very exciting future upcoming, Miss MacLean.”

Had Lucy talked like that, at first? About conflict resolution and synergy and other pretty words from handbooks that would get you shot in the wasteland? “My future, here?" She asked, her mind instantly latching onto that last statement as she turned back to Hank, "Dad, what about Norm?”

He started to answer, lips parting around something, only to be cut off. “We have the meeting upcoming, Henry.” Barb shot her father that smile, the one that didn’t reach her eyes.  “There will be time to find our mutually beneficial solutions later.”

Henry...

You want another autograph, young Henry?

Hank MacLean’s gaze darted back to Lucy where she shifted uncomfortably. “You’ll be safe here." That darn word again, "you’ll be happy here, I promise you, Lucy…." He turned back to Barb then, "will she be staying another night in medical?”

“No, I believe they’re all done seeing to her. I’ve sent for my husband— he can help her to her room after the doctors clear her. She’ll be perfectly fine with him. Perfectly happy, I bet.” The smile Barb shot at Lucy looked the closest to genuine any had yet, and it was worryingly sharp and calculating. 

“Of course, of course. I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow, princess. I love you.” Her father smiled as he swooped down to press a kiss to her forehead. She could see the scar on his cheek where the Ghoul shot him. He’d purposely missed the killing shot, the she’d been aiming for, so that they could track him… here? Was this the final destination? Where was the Ghoul? Was his family here? Lucy released a shuddering breath and forced a smile at Hank. Kicking and screaming now when she wasn’t sure she even had the strength to walk would do little good. She needed to survey the situation. Most dire of all, she needed to get her hands on a pip-boy, and she doubted that would happen if she was uncooperative. 

“Thanks, dad.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’m glad to see you.”

That seemed to be enough, for the moment, and the pair left her to be fussed over by the doctors. 

Lucy faced an awful information void, one that she didn’t even know the full consequences of falling into. She’d known enough, from seeing her mom, to know what Moldaver said was true. The Ghoul had dropped ominous hints about Vault-tec’s actions before the war, and eventually sketched out a rough picture for her while they trekked hundreds of miles of sand. Her dad had worked for his ex-wife, who he’d divorced after learning that Vault-tec was at the very least complicit in pushing the war forward and at worst— they’d planned to drop the bombs themselves. Who knew if they actually had. Information on that last day, those last two fateful hours of civilization, was sparse. He didn’t like speaking about the ex. Getting him to talk about before the war was worse than pulling teeth from corpses to sell for spare caps. He wouldn’t speak on the autograph statement either, and he wouldn’t elaborate any further on the family he was hunting for. He felt strangely familiar to Lucy, there was something in the shape of him, his face, but nothing ever confirmed; he simply wouldn't.

And somehow she’d gotten attached anyway. Just two weeks, if you started counting at the observatory, hardly any longer if you started with Filly. A little kindness. A few moments where she thought she saw something there beneath the persona of him. He’d been… different, after the observatory. After he watched her as her world crumbled. Not completely changed, not nice, no, but different. The tenor of how he treated her changed, if not the roughness. It made sense in hindsight, once he told her what his wife had done. The horrible parallel there echoed truth to the haunting statement of them being the same. A resonance shuddered between them even when they managed whole days without speaking. Two of a kind. She watched, and learned, and they spoke quietly when they bed down for the cold desert nights and her hatred gradually gained new flavors. Intrigue? Dependence? Craving? She felt attached, no matter which aspects she highlighted or how she twisted it around in her head. 

Attached enough to now have her heart in spiky pinpricks as she worried about where he’d ended up after the fight. Did they have him here, captive? Did they— kill him? She couldn’t read Barb well enough to parse out the hidden meaning behind safe from him. People kept saying the word safe like she hadn’t known of three vaults now to be infiltrated. Three for four, and she didn’t even know if she could count 31 to that number since whatever went on in there allowed people from before the war to be alive and well. Lucy decided Barb would have said if they’d killed the Ghoul, because that would be the ultimate reassurance and she seemed like a no nonsense lady and because Lucy could do absolutely nothing about helping him until she helped herself so she may as well try not to worry, even though she knew a corner of her brain would be dedicated to doing so no matter what she told herself. 

She weathered the bustle of doctors in a daze as they took their last readings of her vitals and rad levels, testing her reflexes and the stability of her healed right wrist. It did ache, vaguely, and feel weaker, especially considering it was her dominant hand, but she had no memory of it breaking. They fed her some clear broth that she dutifully sucked down, but by now she was used to the dull pang of hunger in her stomach, and it didn’t bother her so much besides knowing it would make it tough to walk whenever they did release her. They helped her stand, watched her walk a few paces. Lucy was so much stronger now than she ever had been, even despite being so active in the vault, and she’d acquired a rangy dexterity. She could push through injuries and heat and hunger and dehydration and the nauseous edges of radiation poisoning. She could push through this, too. Eventually, they had her change into a vault suit that had her wincing as she pulled it on, having grown used to the natural rough spun fabrics of the wastes, and let her out the door. 

Lucy hadn’t had the mental capacity to process Barb’s other odd statement, that she’d not only be perfectly fine, but perfectly happy with her husband as her escort. She’d worried about whether she’d truly be left alone, of course, if they’d lock her in, if ‘rooms’ was secretly a code word for ‘prison cell’, but the specifics of the husband hadn’t seemed worth considering. Yet another corporate vault employee ready to lie to her, no doubt. Her progress out the room was slow and wavering, having denied the offer of a wheelchair. Lucy needed to rebuild her strength back as fast as possible. When she pushed past the familiar pneumatic hiss of the door opening, she spotted him, presumably, a head dipped with a high forehead and hair not quite as dark as hers, speckled with grey. He was glancing down at the pip-boy on his own wrist, but looked up with a lopsided smile as he heard her. 

There, in color, and so much more handsome than the small greyscale televisions in the vault could ever hope to accurately render, stood Cooper Howard. 

The floor tilted out beneath Lucy. 

Chapter Text

The Ghoul had to help her peel her shirt off before settling behind her. They were both lucky it had a wide neckline, because she’d throw a fit before she let him cut it off her since that was a waste of all the effort she’d put in for it, and he had been fuming the entire time it’d taken them to flee to this shack that he’d deemed safe enough to stop in. And that was a volatile combination between them.

Eight days ago, having him behind her with a needle in hand would be unimaginable.

Things changed fast when forced to.

“Aren’t you inventive.” He muttered darkly as he took in the situation. Fabric rustling, then when he put a firm hand on her shoulder, his gloves were off. His thumb brushed along her collarbone like this, the narrow strap of her bra the only sliver impediment between all the ridges and whorls of his rough palm and her bare skin and was she really going to be surprised by how very warm he was every single time he touched her? Apparently so, and it was a good thing that momentarily distracted her thoughts, because he didn’t wait or give any warning before brutally tearing the length of duct tape she’d used to temporarily staunch the vicious knife wound gashing across her mid back. Ah— the hand he placed on her shoulder was to hold her down when she jolted. Lucy choked off her own shout, remembering his chiding about noises at night, and grit it down into a low whine instead, teeth clenched hard enough to strain her jaw. Her fingers fisted spasmodically at the fabric of her pants.

The Ghoul at least waited until her breathing evened before moving on with the process, even though she could feel the blood flowing down her back again. He touched the band of her bra. “This is gonna have to go, too. You might wanna…”

Huh. Lucy had little patience for modesty, especially out here where wandering too far out of sight to change could mean running into a cluster of radscorpions all on your own, but the odd gallantry of the warning had her bringing up her hands to hold the front in place when he- one handed!!! what!!- undid the clasp. She blushed, which was ridiculous on many counts varying from ‘you are actively bleeding and need that blood in more important places’ to ‘remember that time he kidnapped you?’ and she only hoped he was paying more attention to the wound near the middle of her back than the shade of her neck. Even the sting of the perennial rotgut being used to sterilize the gash couldn’t distract her from the tizzy her mind made about being nearly topless in front of him. And then came the first prick of the needle.

She’d seen, very recently in fact, how strong and vicious he could be, but his hands surprised her in their neat precision. It felt good, in a way. Warm skin on aching muscles and a hurt designed to heal. The silence as he worked was almost companionable. She sighed, and some of the near-permanent tension she carried oozed out of her shoulders. The new, precious fear she carried in her chest since receiving said stab wound burned and screamed, but she tried to ignore it.

“That other one’s nasty. Who else gotcha?”

“Hmm?”

“On your stomach.” His breath huffed against her shoulder.

“Oh. My husband.” The stitching stopped. “He’s— I got accepted to get a husband, a breeder, from another vault, but, um, at some point, raiders had gotten in. They came over instead. They attacked after we… consummated.”

He growled. Like, actually. From the stomach. Lucy froze. Oh.

“He waited to try to kill you until after he’d fucked you.” It wasn’t a question. It was flat and dangerous. It was the low tone he spoke to someone he was about to mangle. It was also notably reduced of his usual whiskey-cowboy drawl. That had happened a few times now. In her mind she kept a list, which seemed obsessive even to her, but she ticked down it on their long quiet walks, trying to hold the tenor of his voice in her memory as accurately as possible. When he’d asked her father where his family was. When she’d stumbled out of the room she received the very wound he now stitched. To Dogmeat, deep into the hours of one of his watches when Lucy had briefly arisen back to a hazy wakefulness.

Lucy twined her fingers in her lap. She tried to shrug, then winced when it pulled at the wound. The Ghoul smoothed a thumb along her skin below the gash. He pet Dogmeat in the same absent way sometimes. She’d watch as he set his hand on her head and run that thumb back and forth behind her ear. The dog adored him; she’d trot over at his whistle even if Lucy was actively feeding her scraps of meat. It made her impossibly jealous.

And. He had a point. It had occurred to Lucy, obviously, but it wasn’t one of the thoughts she let circle her mind. Why not attack immediately? Because he saw an opportunity to use her. To satisfy his own pleasure before killing her. “He better be fuckin’ dead.”

The threat of violence, in this instance… was comforting. He wanted to hurt someone else for hurting her and instead of it feeling awful, it felt warm. That was bad. Probably. Of her to think. “Yep. I cut him up pretty badly with some glass, but it was my dad that killed him later. Drowned in a pickle barrel.”

“So young Henry’s done one thing good in his life.” The drawl was back. His thumb stopped moving. The sharp prick of a needle burrowed into her skin. She pressed her tongue hard against the back of her front teeth and didn’t move or make a sound. “Two, I s’pose. Good job, little killer. Sounds like you survived one hell of a honeymoon.”

A realization followed the floor falling out from beneath her. He was terribly familiar. And not from the movies. From the long walk here. That resemblance could have been the confirmation she’d been questing for, except for the fact it made no sense in itself. Like twisting a knife wound, Lucy’s world reoriented around a horrifying slew of new, even more unbelievable questions the man triggered.

Hazy with low blood pressure, the remaining cocktail of drugs, and the weakness of no solid food in who knew how long, Lucy MacLean crumpled to the floor. Or, she would have, if the impossible man hadn’t darted forward to catch her like a fainting maiden in one of his films.

His eyes, his eyes, his pale hazel eyes framed by thick, dark lashes looked down at her with concern. Lucy had agonized over eyelashes night after night. It had been bizarre enough a thought in the first place, that the should-be centuries dead actor had become the hard and violent bounty hunter that accompanied her through the wastes, that alternately tortured her and saved her life, that mocked her and offered the barest glimpses of humanity. But she’d seen stranger in her time above ground, and knowing he’d been alive before the bombs, with what he’d said to her father, it had seemed… almost believable.

Now, though, this man here, he was irrefutable evidence that she’d been wrong in her vague suspicions. It didn’t feel right. But, Occam’s Razor— if Cooper Howard was here in front of her, holding her, unblemished and whole, then certainly her haphazard guess had been wrong. Even if she’d felt nearly sure about it. There simply wasn’t a better explanation.

Besides, the eyes. They weren’t quite right. Too light.

So, no, due to many points, starting with it being a thoroughly unhinged theory in the first place and ending with the man above her.

Silly Lucy, grasping at any straw of familiarity in the big scary wasteland.

It sure wasn’t fair, the universe throwing this many paradigm shifting revelations at her. The Ghoul would scoff at the notion of fair. And now she had to wonder all over again who he was underneath the duster and bravado and why he went around quoting Cooper Howard movies and talking like a villain from the very same schlocky westerns.

“I’ve gotta say, the swooning fans do wasn’t usually so literal, darling. You alright, need me to bring you back on in there so they can look after you?”

Lucy blinked and forced herself to refocus. The edges of an accent, a smidge milder than it was in the movies which was a whole league milder than the Ghoul’s, but the voice beneath it so very familiar. Smooth skin, paler than she’d imagined from the movies, but she supposed he was confined to a vault now, not riding horses on open ranges and filming long days under the sun… she shook her head. “No, no… I just— I didn’t expect to see you. Barb said her husband and I didn’t think, well.”

He was so close. He’d done her a good deed, stopped her from cracking her head open on the hard floor, but he still had her cradled in his arms, draped over his lap where he kneeled. Movie poster-pretty, if she was the plucky daughter of the mayor post heroic rescue by his sheriff. His thumb rubbed back and forth along her shoulder blade as he cracked a smile. “You thought Barb would be married to some sophisticated egghead scientist, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t really think about what her husband would be like at all.” It came out flat through her unease, but honest.

He surprised her and laughed, a real hearty one. She felt the way his chest rumbled against her. “Guess you do got a lot else on your mind. Your father’s a real fan, told me you are, too.”

You want another autograph, young Henry?

She had to swallow down the rising panic. This was all very wrong. “Um, we watched a lot of your movies in the vault.”

His eyes narrowed at her, but there was a teasing gentleness there. “That’s not the glowing praise he showered.”

“I do like them!” And once she started, the word vomit spilled out. “Really, they’re so very special to me, and even more special to my dad— I’ve seen them all dozens and dozens of times over. I have so many cherished memories of our family nights watching your movies.” And now that her opinion of her father was irrevocably tainted, was the joy of those memories ruined as well? Soured, certainly, at the very least. She kept talking rather than let her mind spiral into that. “I even wrote a few of my school reports on the ethical decisions portrayed in them, ethics is my specialty, so I watched those extra… I always thought you were talented! And handsome, very handsome. That sheriff from Valley of the Gun was basically my first crush, well, not basically, actually.” Was she still talking? Geez Louise. “But, um, especially as I got older I just, I wanted to spend more time reading and watching new things than ones I’d already seen.”

He looked at her. He really looked, with a small smile forming at the corners of his mouth. “Honestly?” The glance was conspiratorial, “Me too. The reading. Not the crush, though I am flattered.”

The laugh Lucy shuddered out felt breathless and shaky, and his lips quirked up further. Handsome, that was for sure. They shared a long look.

“Um, sir, could you please…?” Lucy shifted to telegraph her desire to get back to standing. Things were too thoroughly uncanny this close to him. Her brain could rationalize her suspicions about the Ghoul as a flight of desperate fancy, but her instincts rebelled anyhow, said that the man holding her wasn’t right. She tried to find a logical reasoning behind it, maybe everyone felt this way meeting movie stars, something about the discrepancy between artificial renderings on a screen versus the three dimensional reality of a person? That had to be it, certainly. And she was panicking, overall, in a place she hadn’t meant to be in, separated from her chosen traveling partner and her dog. Of course she was unsettled. It would be weird if she wasn’t.

“Of course, my apologies, Miss MacLean. If it’s alright, I’ll stick close, though. Don’t want to watch you topple over, just in case. I’d rather not your dad and Barb gang up on me for failing something as simple as walking you home.” He stood slowly and helped her up as he did, only releasing his light grip on her arm when she was fully on her feet.

“Sure, thank you.” She tested out shifting her weight from foot to foot. “You can call me Lucy. Please.”

“Then you’ll have to call me Cooper, I insist.” He offered his elbow to her, and after a moment of hesitation, Lucy accepted. He kept her tucked against his side, and for all she should be trying on her own to get her strength back, the steadiness of him was reassuring. Guilty, but reassuring. The layout of the vault wasn’t at all similar to her own despite the components being of the same sturdy utilitarian design. It threw her. That uncanny feeling of things not being quite right only grew as he led her down corridor after corridor, and she did her best to keep track, really, but it was difficult so soon after waking and with her mind reeling from… everything. “Bet you’re glad to be safe again.”

Safe, safe, safe. No. She wasn’t. Her skin buzzed with worry, for her own situation and wherever the Ghoul was. This was not safe. This was very far from safe. At least she’d had someone to learn about the dangers of the wasteland from; here it really was all up to her. “Mhm!”

Lucy felt his eyes on her, and she peeked through her bangs to confirm it. He didn’t look away, kept examining her as they walked. He knew the vault well, taking turns through the spiraling maze without looking. “You’re, ah, not much of an actress yourself, no offense, Lucy.”

That startled a chuckle out of her, and she cut her eyes away as a warm blush crept up her neck. “It’s a lot to take in.” She finally said, aiming for diplomatic and believable.

“I wasn’t too fond of the idea of living in a vault, myself. Everyone thought you’d be happy to get back to it, though.”

“I am, I…” An outright lie, that one, and she could tell that he could tell by the same look in his eyes. “I guess being able to see the sky grew on me.” Her focus drifted from him to the metal ceiling above them, then she shrugged. “And it’s new here. This isn’t like 33, like home, at all.”

“Well, speakin’ of.” They’d reached a more familiar looking residential hallway, and he gestured at a door. It already had her name plastered on it. “This one’s you. I reckon they’ll be getting you a pip-boy tomorrow, but until then, I’ve got the code, and your daddy does too, I think.”

Lucy felt more like an echo than ever, a ghost inhabiting her own body as Cooper led her in. Her movements were wooden and stiff, and it only took two steps before he seemed to notice that her stability had gotten worse instead of better and veered to deposit her on the couch. Lucy sunk down, boneless, trying to fight off the screaming edges of panic. The inside of her brain sounded like television static. Well, at least that meant the sedatives were wearing off!

He was looking at her again, with a concerned furrow between his eyebrows and his head cocked to the side just so. The mannerism made her nauseous. She couldn’t stop staring at him. “The apartment should be stocked already. I could stick around and cook something for dinner if you’re hungry, I’m not half bad at it.”

The last thing her rolling stomach wanted was food, but she knew now not to deny any opportunities to eat. That was in the top ten of wasteland rules. She had to blink a few times to try and reset herself before she could speak. “Um, gee, that’s a kind offer, you don’t have somewhere else to be right now?”

“Barb and your dad’ll be stuck at that meeting for a while, if history shows. I can message my daughter and let her know, she’ll understand, and she’s well old enough to fend for herself and appreciate the time alone.”

“Well, if it’s not an inconvenience…”

“It’s not.” He gave her that winning lopsided smile again. It made her heart flutter weakly; she’d conjured so many teenage fantasies pretending it was directed at her and now it was and she could only imagine how a similar uneven smile looked, meaner and on radiation-burned skin. “Honest.”

“Okie-dokie.”

His smile went symmetrical as it pulled more genuine, and he nodded and pat her shoulder before moving around the couch into the kitchen. Lucy felt drained and awful and terrified, but she twisted and leaned against the back of the couch to watch him poke through the cabinets and begin gathering ingredients and cookware. He really did look like he knew what he was doing. When he turned back towards her, he didn’t seem to mind that he'd caught her staring. “Also honestly, I’d feel bad leaving you by yourself like this, don’t sit right with me.”

“That’s sweet.” She mumbled, barely loud enough to carry. He shrugged, and glanced down at his feet before making another split second of eye contact with her then getting back to work.

She zoned out as he cooked, watching him while she turned over and over all the strangeness in her mind. When her and the Ghoul had been in the wastes walking, she’d started piecing things together in a picture that almost made shreds of sense, and now all of that had crumbled. Her guess had been categorically insane, sure, but there’d been solid evidence for it. And now it had been dashed, because chems and radiation might be able to make someone live far longer than they were supposed to, but it didn’t make identical clones sprout out of adult men. Lucy sighed, and let her head rest against the back cushion, and tracked fudging Cooper Howard as he clicked the stove on, setting a pot to boil and tilting a glob of margarine around a shallow pan. It felt like a bizarre fever dream. Even teenaged Lucy deep in the throes of her lust for him hadn’t ever fantasized something this domestic. He chopped efficiently, handy and sure with the knife, and then the apartment filled with the scent of cooking meat.

He finished the meal soon enough, and began setting the table. Lucy eyed it, the same model as in every vault home, and images of being atop Monty on it, of being thrown against the oven, of being pinned to the countertop and choked all flickered through her brain. Her head shook tremulously, no, no. “Let’s just, can we eat over here, please?”

The surprise flickered visibly over Cooper’s face for only a moment before he was giving her another small smile. “Of course. I wouldn’t make you walk even more after all that.”

He brought both plates around to set on the coffee table, then looped back around to bring her a glass of water. Lucy started with that, draining it in a fervor before bringing the plate of food onto her lap. It was sautéed Cram with a side of InstaMash and canned peas. She’d had the same easy dinner a million times over in 33. She blinked at it. Not human jerky, not roasted rad-bug of scorpion or roach or ant variety, not something advertised as iguana that she sure gosh hoped actually was iguana. Just heavily processed meat, dried synthetic potatoes, and peas preserved centuries ago. Lucy pushed it around the plate with her fork, feeling that now-familiar despair of unfairness aching in her soul.

He seemed to take that hesitation as a comment on his cooking rather than the moral quandary of eating what passed for real food but wasn’t actually properly real while hundreds of people above ate bugs and even less desirable victuals because he spoke up after clearing his throat, and she could hear the chagrin in his voice. “I’m more creative when I’ve got the ingredients to be. I used to make fantastic beef Wellington. Mac’n’cheese from scratch, too, not the BlamCo horseshit.”

Lucy scooped up some of the mashed potatoes and peas and shoveled the mush into her mouth. She chewed slowly and deliberately despite its softness. It’d be a big inconvenience to start puking. “It’s good, really.” Another measured bite. “You cooked a lot before the bombs?”

“Oh yeah. Barb worked late, usually, and it’s not as if I was always off filming, so it usually ended up being me and Janey for dinner.”

“Janey, your daughter?”

“That’s her.” An adoring smile touched his face, the love there was clear as day. It made Lucy smile too, despite everything else; he was so utterly charismatic. The pride and happiness leaked off him and infected the air. “She’s the greatest joy in the world.”

“It’s good you’re all together. How, how are you all here, together, now, if you were alive then?”

“This vault has a staggered cryogenics program, they’ll probably tell you all about it tomorrow. Basically, we hustled on over when the bombs started dropping, they turned us to frozen dinners, then woke us all up when the time was right.”

“What was it like? The day it happened, the bombs, I mean?” That was decidedly not dinner conversation, but Lucy couldn’t help herself.

“God, I hardly remember.” He… hardly remembered the day the world ended? Lucy frowned down at her plate, stabbed some Cram cubes to stuff into her mouth and gave it something better to do than try to hide her confusion. “Let’s see, Janey and I were out at a… costume party, a birthday, for one of her friends. They’d turned off the television and radio, so the only warning we got was watching the first go off in the distance, musta been Pasadena, if they meant to hit the rocket lab. Got on the horse, got to the rendezvous, met with Barb, and that was that.”

Lucy felt herself scowling at her plate again, at the matter-of-factness in his voice, and didn’t dare look up, afraid he’d see it. Were horses usual things to bring to birthday parties? “It must have been scary.”

“It was. I was just happy to have my family at my side and Vault-Tec supporting us.”

Her stomach turned. She made herself continue eating. She kept a tight grip on her fork and mechanically finished her food in silence. It wasn’t until she’d set the plate back on the coffee table that he spoke again. “So Lucy, you got a vendetta against kitchens?”

That made her look back up. He was giving her another of those long looks. His stupid pretty eyes, with the slight crease on his forehead where his eyebrows pulled together. When he looked at her, he was really looking. And Lucy had only gotten used to that with one other person. Her own eyes widened. “What?”

“You were glaring at it, earlier. Unless that was directed at me, which, hell, I’d understand but I’d love a reason so I can apologize.” He seemed sincere about that, too, under the teasing lightness of it.

“Oh, it’s—“ The explanation soured in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’d rather not talk about it, Cooper. Maybe later.”

Chapter Text

It didn’t take very long before her dreams featured him. Not even a full week, as a matter of fact. Which— there was probably a lot, psychologically speaking, that she could try and pin that on. High levels of stress, the tangling of fear and excitement, the long days that droned on between them and no one else but Dogmeat. She didn’t want to examine it any closer than that. If it was an unspecified need, that would track fine with any one of those theories, but it wasn’t.

It was his hands rough on her skin, spinning her around, tugging her, putting her where he wanted. Those hands, leather gloves still on, punishing grip beneath, leveraging her by the hips as he shoved her full of his cock and making her head fall back with a wail. Her legs tangled with the frayed edges of his duster when she wrapped them around his waist, the soft skin of her inner thighs rubbing against his vest, and he was fully clothed still, while she was naked, naked and spread for his taking on a concrete floor, on a table, on the desert sand, anywhere they stopped her mind conjured him laying a claim to her.

He held her life in his grip, her body, her trust, heck, even her darn finger on his hand. He made her look at him when he slowed, chin pinned in his hand and her whole universe became his hazel eyes framed thick lashes and his heavy breathing and the embarrassingly wet sound of him rocking into her deep and punishing.

That’s it, that’s it, just like that, feels so good, please, mister, please, let me—

Lucy woke with a moan that choked into a gasp. Her skin was warm for the frigid air of the desert night, feeling far too tight all over her body. “Fudge, fudge.” There was no deniability there, her breathing short like she’d run a mile. Her head whipped to where the Ghoul had set up his own bedroll across from the entrance, terrified she’d find him there and more terrified that she wanted him to be.

Empty.

Dogmeat was gone, too, and real terror started to mount, before she heard a playful yip from outside followed by a low laugh.

“You’re not him, but you are a clever one, girl,” his voice was soft, but clear through the broken window of the truck stop they’d set up camp in. It felt strange hearing his voice without what she privately thought of as his ‘villain drawl’. “Go on then, have your snack,” he continued, “You earned it, did a great job, getting that nasty roach before it could get to us.” The now-familiar squelch of Dogmeat breaking past a carapace and tearing into the meat of her late night snack. “Yeah, you’re a lot less picky ‘bout what you’ll eat than my other girl, ain’t ya?”

Oh.

Well, if she was alone… unsure how long the rare solitude would last, Lucy shoved her hand down her linen pants and past what had been her last clean pair of panties that were now damp with need, then rolled on her stomach. Already so worked up from her dream, she immediately thrust two fingers into herself and inched her ass into the air so she could angle the meat of her palm against her clit, stifling a groan as her cunt opened almost too easily to herself. She could try to pretend the strange necrotic finger was his as she rocked against her hand, but knew vividly how much smaller hers were. Lucy squirmed her other hand up the length of herself to grope her breast harshly, he’d be mean about it, wouldn’t he? Then brushing up against her throat, oh! That was a dirty thought to come back to, then covering her own mouth, he’d warn her to be quiet, they couldn’t go alerting the whole wasteland that he had his pretty vaultie writhing on his cock, now could they? She’d have to behave and be quiet for once in her damned life even as he forced her open and made space for himself in her body.

Her eyes fluttered shut as she let the fantasy run away from her, for the first time indulging in the secret dark parts of her that weren’t horrified by his violence, that saw something different and deeper there and wanted him to take her apart just as much as she wanted to tear into him and find an understanding. She pictured his face close to hers again, his ruined lips to her chapped ones, that pink tongue pressing open her mouth while he hitched an elbow underneath her knee to angle her perfectly, chasing his pleasure but twisting that same hand to press down hard on her clit, thumb rubbing in frantic circles, demanding her to come for him, to let go, to let him feel that pretty cunt of hers spasm around him before he filled her up—

Glass crunched. Lucy’s eyes shot open, and met his immediately, drawn like magnets, where he stood in the open doorway, already several paces in and staring at her darkly. She ground her teeth around another desperate moan as her orgasm tore through her from the intensity of his gaze, and her hips fell to one side, revealing her hand trapped between her thighs to him and his eyes darted down, sending her heart stammering over again.

His eyes flicked back to hers, her face, where she was breathing through parted lips and too stunned and wrung out to move, and then he collected himself and fixed her with a mean sneer. “Dreamin’ ‘bout your tin can prince, Vaultie?”

“No. Far from it.” She said honestly. Whatever he read there painted a brief glance of open shock on his face, but she pulled her hand from her pants, the movement drawing his eye again, and rolled to face away from him, too scared and too interested in whatever she might see on his face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more discreet. That was rude. Good night, mister Ghoul, sir.”

God, she wished she knew his name. Though she doubted it would do anything to dull the intensity of this strange desire.

Lucy woke on the couch with a blanket draped over her and a pillow from the bed clutched in her arms. Neither had been there when she’d fallen asleep during her quiet post-dinner discussion with Cooper fudging Howard. It seemed unbelievable she could be tired after such a long period of enforced unconsciousness, but she remembered enough from health sciences courses to know it wasn’t exactly the same sort of sleep. She yawned, blinking blearily as she surveyed the main room and found it the same as any other vault residence. With little else to do, she indulged in a long, hot shower in an attempt to scour away any traces of the wastes. She’d already been cleaned sometime before waking in the medical bay, which she shuddered to consider, but it was nice to scrub down with a loofah herself.

Her skin was tinged pink and tender over the slight tan she’d developed on the surface and the bathroom mirror had steamed up by the time she turned off the shower. The feeling of being a ghost haunting the remnants of her own past life rushed back with a vengeance as she smeared away the fog to get a look at herself. Lucy hadn’t seen herself in a while in a real mirror, only glanced at passing reflections in dirty windows and silty waters. She didn’t look the same as when she’d left her vault. The bags beneath her eyes had grown more pronounced with malnutrition and sleeplessness; her bottom lip had split and continually cracked from dehydration; the bruise on her left cheekbone from the raider kidnapping incident was in the sickly yellow stage of healing. And then there was the scar on her stomach. The muscles in her arms looked more prominent, but she could also see the outlines of her ribs. Lucy didn’t look the same, but her surroundings in this vault home were the exact same, down to the precise shade of robin’s egg blue accent coloring on the decor.

Everything stung with familiarity. The smooth laminate of the bathroom counter may well have been barbed wire with how it pricked unforgiving at her heart. She drifted over to the bedroom with its un-slept in bed, and sighed before fetching the pillow and blanket from the living area to make the bed, the same way she had every morning of her living memory. Surveying the kitchen revealed that Cooper had cleaned up after his cooking before leaving, which registered with a small warmth of gratitude. Out of minor chores, Lucy reluctantly pulled on a vault suit and fixed her hair only a few minutes before a notifying chime came from the door.

Alright. Here we go.

It was her father, wearing that same tightness on his face as yesterday. “Hi, Princess.”

“Hi, dad.” Lucy didn’t move forward for a hug. Hank didn’t either. Finally, he sighed, and gestured for her to step out of the doorway. When he tried to put a steadying hand in the middle of her back, Lucy walked faster despite not knowing where they were going.

“Lucy—”

She rounded on him. Her hands curled to fists at her sides. “Henry.”

“We’ll be having breakfast with Barb in one of the conference rooms. I need you to…”

Lie? She didn’t say it aloud, but she gave him a sharp glance. “I understand,” not all of it, but enough. Enough to admit she needed to go along with whatever story he’d spun for now, at least until she could come up with a plan of her own.

“Be polite. Be a good girl. Listen. Think,” he pressed with a pained look, “We’re in a very fortunate position to have ended up here in the good graces of Vault-Tec. Please. I know— you went through a lot, out there, Lucy, but don’t act rashly. You’ll understand more as you get settled.”

That was rich, coming from a man that dropped a nuclear weapon because his wife left him. Don’t act rashly, he said, sure. Lucy rolled her eyes. “I told you, dad, I understand. I’m not stupid. Once she mentioned you I realized that you’d—“

“No, no, I know you’re not. You were always such a clever girl. Remember to listen. And be polite and— think about what you say. Always. Remember what I said before we saw Midsummer’s, why your brother got relocated out of the sanitation department.”

The prompting was so totally random that Lucy had to wrack her brain for what he referred to. That was… he had said it was impolite to criticize a performance while they were still somewhere one of the actors might hear. He had told her and Norm that when Mr. Johnson directed a production of Midsummer’s Night Dream staged on the vault’s municipal multi-purpose lawn outside the cornfields. Norm hadn’t listened and complained of Mrs. Tillbury’s butchering of iambic pentameter as they walked out, which the very next day earned him an abysmal performance review from Mr. Tillbury, his boss at the time, leading to his third job assignment switch. Lucy had offered only praise until they were ensconced back in their own home, then delved into a discussion on the various… creative adjustments the production had made to the text. Her father commended her for her discretion. Usually she wasn’t so apt at keeping her thoughts to herself, but it made sense when being polite about a topic as personal as art.

She stared at him for a long beat as she tried to sort through the implications of that particular reminder. Were they… being listened to? Even now? Whatever they said could eventually get them a poor performance review and subsequently fired?! That threw a creepy wrinkle into things. Finally, she nodded. “I will. Lead the way?”

Growing up, her father had always seemed so strong and stalwart, but now? Now he looked old. Stress and exhaustion lined the outer corners of his mouth and eyes; his skin was pale in a more severe way than the lack of sun a vault typically stamped on a person’s pallor. Even the lighting in the vault seemed synthetic now. The cool-white fluorescents doused everything less saturated compared to the warmth of sun and fire above ground. She missed the feeling of turning her face to the sun as it rose after a chilly night. The temperature control didn’t feel as vibrant, and she knew it would never satisfy her again, even despite its comparative comfort. As they walked, he seemed to collect himself, to the point of giving her a bright smile that would have been believable if she hadn’t been raised by him before stopping them outside one of a dozen identical looking doors. Once, it would have made her proud to see the similarities in how they could both persevere and feign positivity. Now it left her feeling bitter.

“Oh, hello!” She followed the direction of her father’s greeting to an elderly woman, in her sixties perhaps, wearing a crisp white lab coat approaching them from the other direction of the hallway. “As you know, this is my daughter, Lucy. Lucy, this is Dr. Madison Li. Ah, will you be joining us?”

“It’s a pleasure, Lucy.” The woman offered the pleasantry with a polite smile as her eyes tracked to Lucy with something like… pity? It was examining, with a sharp intelligence, but not devoid of compassion. Lucy shifted uncomfortably as she was studied until Dr. Li turned her attention back to Hank. “As for the meeting, yes. Mrs. Howard requested my presence, considering the circumstances.”

The circumstances— was Lucy ‘the circumstances’? She spoke up, “I apologize, Dr. Li, I don’t really remember anyone I met when I woke up yesterday. I was pretty groggy.”

“I am not a medical doctor. I was not part of the team seeing to your recovery.” She assured her. Lucy offered a flickery smile as she dissected that.

Oookay, she thought. Hm. Lucy being ‘the circumstances’ made sense if Dr. Li was the one handling her care, but her relevance for the meeting made less obvious sense if she wasn’t. Unfortunately, the train of thought basically ended there. Maybe Dr. Li was this vault’s surface expert? She laughed nervously. “That’s good, I’d have felt really awful if I met you yesterday and forgot already! What sort of doctor are you, then? Are you from before the war, too? I don’t really imagine there’s a lot of PhD granting programs around still…”

“My daughter’s a friendly one, isn’t she? We should all be heading in, Lucy.” Her father placed a hand on her back to nudge her in the direction of the door, and despite the sharp observation of Dr. Li, she couldn’t help her flinch.

Barb already sat in the meeting room, along with a generous spread of breakfast foods on the table. She finished tapping something out on her pip-boy before looking up with a polite smile. “Good morning, MacLeans. Dr. Li.”

“Good morning!” she and her dad responded in perfect unison, and Lucy kept the smile plastered on her face even when she felt a part of her shrivel inside. Cooper’s comment about her not being much of an actress lingered heavily on her mind, and she struggled to keep herself focused on pulling up genuine feelings of gratitude as opposed to outright lying. Maybe that would ring more true? She continued, “It’s been incredible to sleep without worrying, and, holy moly, to take a hot shower! Thank you!”

“I’m thrilled to hear you’re settling in so well, Lucy,” Barb replied warmly, “That’s a relief, your father’s been very worried about the mental state you’d be in upon your arrival.”

Lucy met Hank’s eyes briefly, and then she leaned forward to start gathering food onto a plate, figuring she might as well indulge while it was available to try to replenish any lost weight. It could also be a nice distraction— after all, a mouth full of pancakes was a good reason not to respond to a difficult question immediately.

“After seeing the state she was in at the observatory,” he spoke as he began preparing his own plate. His time in the wasteland had done him no kindness either; Lucy saw the hollowness to his cheeks. He must have learned, like her, to eat whenever possible. “after watching her be taken by that— that monster… I’m so grateful we were able to rescue her.” Right. He was laying it on thick, but she’d already known that was the byline. Clearly the lack of acting ability was a family trait. How the fudge was he intending on explaining leaving her behind if he thought he was watching her be kidnapped? He’d been wearing power armor for gosh sake!

“It all happened so fast… I was thrilled to finally see dad, but then everything went so crazy.” Two truths. She would stick to the truth. Mostly. That seemed safest. Dr. Li hummed thoughtfully. She’d only put a single piece of toast on her own plate and methodically spread margarine on with a scraping of a butter knife.

Knives, Lucy noted. She needed to see what knives were in her kitchen.

“And how did you get there?” Barb drew Lucy’s attention away from her scheming.

“I walked, alone.”

“Resilient girl,” the woman noted carefully, “All that way, by yourself?”

“Um,” her dad had no real reason to tell them about Max, either, because the only interaction they'd had involved Lucy’s anger. She hedged in that direction, hoping her gut was right, “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Barb latched onto that, her eyes narrowing a fraction.

“The man, the—“ her eyes darted to her father. His expression didn’t change, “The monster. The observatory wasn’t the first time we met. He held me captive for a few days before. He hurt me.” Truth again, “He must have been following me.” That was speculation, but a logical one, “I don’t know how he figured out we were all at the observatory otherwise.”

Hank jumped in, and Lucy found herself grateful for it, “He shot me,” a pointed gesture at the scar in his cheek, “That violent, despicable creature hurt my daughter and shot me. I’m lucky he missed and didn’t do more damage than he did!”

Lucy merely nodded, unable to trust her voice as she thought of the people she’d killed with that monster, of the things she’d imagined him doing to her, of the way she watched his hands and his mouth, the way it was his voice in her dreams and the impossible, peculiar bond that led to him rescuing her, that had him begrudgingly agreeing when she insisted they rescue that town, that had him holding her arm in a vice grip as these very people tried to take her away from him— his coat around her shoulders, her finger on his hand. Her voice was empty when she spoke, in a way that could hopefully be blamed on the trauma, “A monster.”

“He dragged her away as I was getting in the power armor, and with the Brotherhood contingent arriving… I didn’t think I could go after them and successfully fulfill my obligation to Vault-Tec.”

Ah. A corporate coward, even in his embellished retelling.

“The Brotherhood is ruthless in their pursuit of their targets. I doubt they’d have let any of you leave had they caught up to you.” Dr. Li spoke up, in a grave voice weighted heavily with history before crunching into her toast.

“You’ve had run-ins with them?” Lucy couldn’t help herself from asking, “Recently? Are they—“

“I don’t think that is relevant to the topic at hand. Let’s keep this meeting focused.” Barb interrupted and looked between Lucy and Hank, an unreadable expression on her passive, pretty face. “Now, do you know why he took you, Lucy?”

Her dad had maybe recognized him. Her dad had not relayed that to Barb. Nor had he relayed the question about his family. Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know, maybe he thought he could trade me back to you for more caps than… than just selling me to anyone else,” she proposed carefully, “That’s how, that’s how he got rid of me in the first place. He sold me.” She let her eyes well with tears as she pressed at the seam between her skin and the necrotic finger, “He kept my wrists tied up and wouldn’t give me water…”

“Poor dear,” Barb offered sympathetically, “Luckily, the doctors said you weren’t in too bad of shape despite it. Minorly dehydrated, but nothing we wouldn’t expect from the desert.”

Fuck, fuck! She cast around for a distraction, “Do you know how, why, there’s some people like that? Is it the radiation?”

“Several different triggering stimuli have been documented. It is difficult to know which specifically afflicted an individual without their corroboration. Anecdotal data does suggest most changed due to radiation exposure,” Dr. Li provided.

Barb jumped back in, “The existence of those creatures is one of Vault-Tec’s many research interests on the surface. Ghouls, as they usually call them, are not my specific department’s concern, but they are on our radar. That one, now, in particular.”

“Oh, so he…?” Lucy started, but couldn’t finish, unwilling to ask the rest of the question.

“Rest assured, Lucy, we are doing our utmost to capture him and determine his motives,” the woman assured her with a tight smile, “Our resources on the surface are somewhat strained. This whole incident has revealed a need for restructuring. In the meantime, this vault is exceedingly well hidden, with the top security available.” Lucy tried not to relax with relief. They hadn’t gotten him yet. That didn’t mean she should dream about him rescuing her, no, he’d done it once, but— that was a debt, repaid, he’d said, her life for the vials she’d once given him, and massacring a party of raiders was different than storming a vault. Unless he thought this one had answers, then maybe, maybe… Her head snapped up when Barb continued, “You should eat up, we all want you to get your strength back. Henry regaled us all with your many physical accomplishments back home. We don’t have such activities here, but it would be a shame for you to lose your hard won skills.”

Rather than count her blessings, Lucy sniffled, nodded, and started shoveling pancakes into her mouth. They used the same powdered mix for the batter as they did in thirty-three, she could tell, right down to the same glob of margarine on top. Barb waited until she’d nearly finished off her pancakes to continue; Lucy was getting very tired of people watching her eat. “At some point in all of this chaos, Henry relinquished the codes to our proprietary cold fusion device?”

“I told him to, I begged him,” Lucy admitted, staring down at her plate, “I thought it was the only way that woman would let us go.” They needed to keep the topic away from Shady Sands at all costs. Lucy pushed the rest of her food around on her plate then started shoving the preserved breakfast meat into her mouth.

“Upper management, me included, are very disappointed with that decision. That was Vault-Tec’s intellectual property and now it’s in the hands of dangerous individuals.”

Lucy swallowed around her mouthful, and dipped her head, “The Brotherhood,” The city lights had flickered back off only hours into her and the Ghoul’s hike through the hills. She didn’t know what they’d done with the device. Her dad made a distasteful noise under his breath and scraped his fork along his plate.

“They are not to be trusted with advanced technology.” The doctor confirmed, “They have a poor track record sharing what they get their hands on with the people.”

“Indeed,” Barb managed to make taking a bite of her own breakfast look elegant, and chewed carefully before continuing, “I know there were extenuating circumstances, but that can’t be an excuse for bad decision making from one of our trusted employees and there will be consequences.”

In Lucy’s peripheral, Hank flinched at the thinly veiled reprimand.

What was she implying? There hadn’t really been punishment in thirty-three, but now Lucy understood just how bad things could get, especially with Vault-Tec involved. She scrambled to try and assuage the situation, “It was all my fault. She was threatening me, my dad… he’d managed not to give it to her until I showed up. They didn’t even have the device until I brought it,” The words spilled from her mouth too quickly, “I didn’t know what it was, I hope Vault-Tec doesn’t—“

Barb cut her off. “Vault-Tec would never do any harm or disservice to its customers, and especially not its loyal family of employees,” her tone was probably meant to be reassuring, but the edge and fact that it sounded like she was quoting some handbook made it anything but, “Rest assured, despite your father’s indiscretion, you’re both perfectly welcome here. Him and I will be working extensively on his professional improvement plan regarding his future employment within the company.”

“And I will fulfill that! To the utmost of my capability, this has been a true learning experience.” Her dad scrambled. She watched a bead of sweat trickle down from behind his ear.

Lucy shouldn’t care what they did with her dad; she should be okay with him answering for any of his crimes, but a lack of protectiveness over intellectual property paled compared to Shady Sands. Did Barb know about that? Or had he acted unilaterally? “Oh, that’s, I’m glad. Growing up he taught me a lot about— leadership skills. And appreciating Vault-Tec for all the opportunities they’d given us.”

“We do have many more things to cover,” Barb said then with another corporate perfect smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “but I don’t want to overwhelm you, Lucy. What do you say, we pencil these morning check-ins down on the schedule and cover a little bit of your journey at a time? We can keep it very casual, and low pressure.”

That was a clear dismissal that gave no room for Lucy to argue, but she smiled and nodded her agreement anyway. “I think that sounds perfect.”

“Good, good. You know you’ll be needing this to get around.” The pip-boy that Barb procured and handed over the table was like hers, sleek and shiny.

It was more minimalist, with a slightly better resolution on the screen, and in a pretty silver instead of standard issue grey. Lucy marveled at it as she eagerly strapped it to her wrist, but found it didn’t offer the same comfort as her original one. The slick metallic interior and reduced weight felt more like a handcuff than the leather-lined inside of her old one. “It’s beautiful, thank you.” She said, finally. “It’s a lot… slicker! Than ours.”

“They were a pet project of mine.” Dr. Li spoke up. She looked bored with the proceedings, having nothing left but crust and crumbs on her plate. “My previous employer’s aesthetic sense was far less nostalgic than Vault-Tec’s. I found the old design cumbersome and improved upon it in my spare time.”

Before Lucy could ask about her previous employer, and certainly have that go unanswered as well, Barb took the conversation back under her reign. “Yes, Dr. Li’s had a hand in updating many of our systems. Anyhow, I thought we could have Cooper show you around a bit more?”

“Oh, really?” That genuinely surprised her; Lucy assumed it would be a one-off occasion, “I feel bad monopolizing him so much. I’m sorry I kept him during dinner last night.” The meeting was coming to an end, and Lucy felt like she’d learned absolutely nothing useful, not even what Dr. Li’s presence was for or what role Barb played in all of this.

Barb waved a dismissive hand. “I was tied up until late anyhow, didn’t even notice. His particular talents aren’t required for the function of the vault, and he likes to keep busy. Believe me, you’ll be doing us all a favor by keeping him occupied,” She smiled broadly as she spoke, “It’ll be good for you to have a friend here, Lucy.”

“Isn’t that incredible, Lucy?” Her father’s rictus smile reminded her more of corpses whose pockets she’d rifled through in the wasteland than the man that raised her. “You get to spend time with the real Cooper Howard! In the flesh!”

While she had little hope for finding an ally, especially in a man married to someone so high up in Vault-Tec’s chain of command, Lucy mustered up her very best smile anyway, “… Okie dokie!”

Chapter Text

Lucy tried her very best to tamp down the look on her face. She really did. After all, this was a blessing! This really was a whole lot of meat! So what if the Ghoul had had to methodically carve away the unnaturally large scorpion’s stinger and venom glands before he started cracking open its carapace with a series of unpleasant crackles and squelches to reveal the meat inside? So what if it was a bug? Better than eating human! And plenty of cultures ate bugs even before the bombs. And lobsters were basically sea scorpions and those had shifted in the cultural opinion from prison food to a delicacy in the 20th century! She plastered a smile on her lips and planned to keep it there until her insides agreed with the notion.

Their second day on the road together and… well, it was going— fine. Perfectly fine! In some ways better than expected given the revolver he’d handed her yesterday and the surprisingly non-aggressive interactions they’d had thus far. She wouldn’t call them nice, polite, interactions that would earn someone a good grade in deportment classes, no, but there’d been no outright violence between the two of them, which was a sure improvement upon their first venture together.

“The fuck is that look on your face for?”

The plastic bucket she sat on made a weird grinding-squeaking noise against the concrete floor as she jolted both physically and mentally out of her thoughts, head snapping towards the traveling companion she’d been contemplating. “Oh! I’m— excited! To try this? Scorpions are closely related to lobster, which were considered gourmet before the bombs. Soooo even though it attacked us and we had to kill it and we’re in the wasteland, it’s like we’re eating something fancy! Sort of.”

“Ain’t makin’ a damn lobster thermidor here.” He huffed, but it wasn’t as terribly gruff as he could be. Almost amused, even, if she thought of it optimistically, which she chose to.

Lucy propped her elbows on her knees, chin in hands. “What’s a lobster thermidor?”

“Fancy old world shit. We’d need, uh, wine, eggs, Gruyère, better fuckin’ stove than this.” He gestured vaguely at the fire. Lucy’d been pleased as punch when her guess that the structure they camped in would be suitable to have a temporary fire in had been confirmed by him. Progress! Learning!

“What’s Gruyère?”

His lips pulled into that mean, lopsided smirk. The flickering of the fire danced light along his face, highlighting every crag and scar and unnatural hollow. The play of shadow and warmth as his face moved through various expressions was memorizing. “Y’hit your limit on pre-war questions, sweetie.”

She ignored that, “You cooked fancy things?”

He gestured at her menacingly with a floppy radscorpion leg, “Now what’d I just say?”

Lucy pressed, “Well, were you any good at it?”

That made him snort, which really was impressive given the lack of nose. Lucy grinned. He shook his head dismissively, and returned to shelling and she returned to watching the assured movements of his hands as he twisted and snapped at each of the joints to pry open the segments of radscorpion until all the pockets of meat had been opened. He’d kept his gloves on while cracking through the exoskeleton, but once finished with that step, he tugged both off and relented in answering a question. “Gruyère’s a kinda cheese.”

“Hey!” Lucy shot up straight on her bucket, then leaned forward with narrowed eyes. “What’s that?!”

“You mean to say they didn’t have cheese in the—“ He turned to her, affronted, then raised his eyebrow-less browline when he saw how she’d doubled over her lap in an effort to get a closer look.

“No, not cheese, I know what cheese is, like in BlamCo,” Her own hand waved around wildly, then pointed at his right. “I meant on your hand!!”

The Ghoul’s grin went wicked as he followed her eyeline. “That processed horseshit’s nothing like real cheese. And this here? These are called fingers, Vaultie.” He wiggled all ten of them towards her face.

Lucy stared at where the one pale trigger finger contrasted against his charred skin. “That one, though. I’ve seen you shoot since, so I thought it’d… grown back? But that’s not… it doesn’t match.” Like her own hand except in reverse. They were a chiral pair. Non-superimposable mirror images. Photo negatives.

“Nah, not grown, sewed this one on myself.” He watched her intently, and she knew he was expecting a reaction even before he continued. “It’s a donation from a pretty little vaultie.”

Oh.

“It’s—“ Her knees hit the ground with a sharp pain and a puff of dirt when Lucy lunged forward to kneeling and caught his hand in both of hers, pulling it close to her face for inspection. He actually let her, but the leering look on his face hadn’t gone away. “It’s mine!?”

“Think it’s mine now, dontcha?” He twitched it again. “See? Part and parcel.”

Her scientific curiosity warred with her… offense? Was she offended? That he carried a piece of her wherever he went, that he used it to commit violence on the wasteland like he had against her? She brushed her necrotic trigger finger over the seam between his skin and hers, ran it up to touch the callous she’d gained from all her hours writing on chalkboards. “You can move it… Can you feel with it?”

He shifted. She hadn’t thought she could make him uncomfortable, but there was a low note in his voice when he responded, “Better’n with some other parts of me. Fresher nerves and all.”

“That’s— fascinating.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “You’re fascinating.”

He blinked, apparently… taken aback? Surprised? Lucy had yet to feel like she was accurately reading him. Then he scowled, and yanked his hand from her. “Yeah, well, I’m no science experiment for you.”

After shaking her off, he withdrew, not only physically, but he grew quiet, and looked at her less often as he resumed cooking the scorpion. Lucy righted her bucket seat but sat cross legged on the ground in front of it and preoccupied herself by laying out everything she’d scavenged that day in neat lines on the dusty concrete floor. She methodically sealed any exposed copper in the wires she’d gathered with electrical tape, then twined them up in a protective bundle. The phenomenally not-rusty forceps she’d snagged at a mostly ransacked clinic that morning went into the little first aid kit she’d been building, joining the other medical odds and ends she’d found, including one very precious Stim-Pak. It wasn’t a great stock, but it was better than nothing.

“Vaultie.” He grumbled for her attention and received it instantly, along with her scowl.

Deciding to make him wait for it, she pointedly turned her attention back to repacking her bag just as she liked it before addressing him in return. “Don’t call me that. I have a name.”

“Still in that suit of yours, aren’t ya?”

“I’m not defined by my clothes.” Lucy stood and brushed the dirt off the backs of her thighs and rear so she could sit back down on her bucket. Of course, that was dirty too, and no amount of wiping would fix it. Folding her hands into her lap, she wished, for the millionth time, for clean running water. “That’s extremely reductive. I have a name, just like you do, even though you’ve thus far refused to tell me.”

“Everyone just calls me The Ghoul. That Ghoul. Fuckin’ Ghoul,” he shot her a lazy smirk, “Motherfucker, too, from one particularly naughty dweller.”

She ignored the latter part of his statement, “I don’t want to call you ‘The Ghoul’. For one, you’re obviously not the only one, and secondly, the term itself feels… rude.”

“And it’d fuckin’ kill you to be a little rude, yeah, yeah. Guess you’ll have to keep on calling me mister or sir like you’ve been,” That smirk turned undeniably lascivious, making Lucy sit up straighter, “Hardly mind those coming from a pretty little thing like you. Make me feel mighty important.”

Again, he forced her to ignore what he’d said; it set her insides squirming, which she knew was his goal, so she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “I could make something up for you if you won’t tell me?”

The faux-flirtatious manner dropped in an instant. “Oh no, y’ain’t doin’ that. Try makin’ up a name for me and you’ll lose more’n a finger, sweetheart.”

“It’s not fair. You know my name,” And, if she was already complaining, she may as well continue, “You know my dad, which you still haven’t really entirely explained, by the way…”

His focus turned back to the food on the fire dismissively, and he removed the final few pieces of meat, each still in half their exoskeletons by tugging them closer with a bent out of shape hanger until they were far enough from the flames to be grabbed. The cooked meat didn’t smell so bad, actually. Her stomach grumbled. “Told ya already, he worked for my wife.”

“That doesn’t explain why you asked if he wanted your autograph, though!” That had been conveniently missing from the overview he’d given her yesterday, “Were you important? Like some kind of politician?”

He barked a laugh, “Sure, imagine me in charge of the whole damn country.”

“I’d rather not.” Lucy began to quote her own beginning lesson on leadership. “A leader should be selfless and not use violence as their first means of conflict resolution.”

“Leader like that mighta worked way back when, but that world’s dead now’n so is whoever I was.”

That was… a very sad thought. And untrue! There were remnants of that old world, always strewn about them. There were the vaults. There was her. No wonder he hated her, if he was so eager to leave it all behind, dead and buried. “So you’re really not going to tell me?”

“Anyone I was afore the bombs’s long gone, sweetie. Whatever name I had’s not mine no more. I’d much prefer to keep it that aways and you’ll stop askin’ if y’know what’s good fer ya.”

“I mean, I obviously don’t! Look where I am!” Lucy waved her arms around to draw attention to the run down garage they made camp in, to her suit, to the fact she was on the surface at all and with him.

That drew something like a real laugh from him. He always seemed to be laughing at her, “Yeah, you’re a strange one, that’s for sure. C’mon, food’s done. Dig in and eat as much as you can get down, this shit don’t keep.”

Cooper waited outside in the hall again, her very own vault chaperone. It occurred to her a little belatedly that he was probably reporting back to Barb on Lucy’s behavior, so she vowed to herself to keep conscious of that.

“Howdy, Lucy.” He tipped his head like he was wearing a cowboy hat. Her mind filled the image in. It was way too early in the day to dissect the squirming that made her feel. “Thought I’d show you the library today, since I don’t think I could tempt you much with a western marathon.”

Lucy chuckled, eyes dropping with a soft embarrassment that she’d admitted that to the starring man himself. “If you did want to, I could probably quote every line by heart. Wait— library?” Not ‘media records room’ or ‘reading room’ which thirty three had, “Like, with print books?”

“Exactly like.” Judging by that smile twisting around his lips, he either found her reaction amusing, or also held a deep love for literature.

“Oh! Well— go! Go! Lead the way!” Lucy gestured wildly at him and he laughed, leading the way as she’d requested. “Print books!”

“Guessing those weren’t in abundance in your vault?”

“We did have some, especially classics, anything taught in school, but not enough to qualify as a library, really. Most of our media was holo-copies you had to download to your pip-boy.” A wave of nausea and unsteadiness took her, and he offered her his elbow again when she wavered in her steps; Lucy took it without thinking. He sure was a gentleman! The touch surged gratitude in her, but a not insignificant amount of guilt along with it. The Ghoul and her… they’d settled into something easier than it had been at the start, sure, and they brushed along each other occasionally, sat next to each other, even sparred on one very memorable and deeply embarrassing occasion, but it’s not like he was handing out the casual affectionate touches she’d been accustomed to all her life. And that made a hole in her, one she hadn’t quite realized beneath all the other turmoil, but felt settled now. “My dad and I had a book club, and for the authentic feeling we tried to stick to things we had print versions of… we were on War and Peace. Again. The edges were fraying pretty badly.”

“We are asleep until we fall in love.”

Lucy blushed at hearing the quote in his voice, sternly reminded herself he was spying on her for his wife, then shook her head. “It’s pretty, but I think that’s devaluing the wide range of human experience outside of romantic connection.”

“Probably. Still, though, it’s a hell of a thing. You ever been in love?” He’d twisted to ask it, eyes on hers, and her heart nearly stopped.

She thought, unbidden, of nights beneath stars and a leather duster over her shoulders, of finding herself leaning against a warm, solid figure and arguing in quiet mumbles and the strange intensity that had taken root in her heart. Except it wasn’t at all the softness that she’d imagined love to be. It wasn’t like anything else at all. Lucy shook her head. “No, I haven’t. Have you— that’s, sorry, that’s a really silly question, you’re married.”

“Barb and Janey are my whole world.” Except right now that utterly charming, uneven little smile of his was focused on Lucy alone, and it burned hot jealousy. Oh, to have someone adore her like that. Oh, to have that smile from the one she did and shouldn’t want. He squeezed his hand over hers tightly for a brief moment, then gestured ahead of them past the doorway he’d just triggered open, to the genuine library before them, with shelves and shelves and aisles and aisles of books and Lucy gasped and all thoughts of the wrongness plaguing her took a lower priority than rifling through them. The room was well-lit and clean, organized into a beautiful Dewey decimal system on pristine white bookshelves that gleamed under the perfectly even fluorescent lighting.

Letting go of Cooper, she rushed ahead to run her fingers along spines, reading titles familiar to her, titles she’d read reference to, countless more titles she’d never heard of. Without asking, she started to tuck a few from that middle category under her arm— Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bloody Chamber, Grendel. Her main goal had to be collecting information and getting out, but she could skim through them, couldn’t she? One couldn’t always be engaging in subterfuge, she imagined. When Cooper appeared beside her and offered his hand out, Lucy grinned and gave the books to him, so she could add more to the growing collection. He scanned through them, shot her a smirk. “Someone’s a naughty little revisionist.”

She couldn’t help the returning smile that his sparked, “I’ve learned it’s healthy to get an alternative perspective.” It was hard to make herself look away from him, but she did, then darted toward the sign she spotted.

“You’re wandering on out of the fun stuff.” Cooper called after her as she stopped in the nonfiction section and started skimming through there as well, eventually yanking out a copy of an old T-45 manual that she’d read the electronic version of over and over. The diagrams were rendered much clearer in print, she saw, as she flipped through.

“I like reading technical manuals.” Lucy admitted with a one-shouldered shrug.

The look he gave her was bemused, and something else that made her feel itchy, “You sure are full of surprises, aren’t you, Luce?”

Her breath stalled. “It’s all useful information. Surprisingly helpful out there, actually.”

“Go on, then, tell me how a centuries out of date manual helped you.” Cooper looked genuinely interested, which did wonders for making the fact he’d phrased it as a command seem charming and playful as opposed to annoying.

“Oh, well, I came across a Knight in a T-60 who’s fusion core had been stolen. I used the emergency manual release I’d learned about to help him get free! Lucky thing, too, because I passed out right after and he hooked me up to a RadAway drip that I really needed,” She explained, only belatedly remembering she had avoided mentioning knowing anyone from the Brotherhood to Barb. Shoot.

“Sweet girl,” He hummed, and hearing such praise coming from that man in that drawl made her stomach squirm over itself in a backflip. She needed a new topic, fast, or her legs would give out.

“Um, I meant to ask— what does Dr. Li do, anyway?” Cooper’s eyebrows arched at the sudden segue, so Lucy continued, “She was at the meeting this morning, but I didn’t get to learn what her job here is… just that she’s not a medical doctor and has really strong opinions about the Brotherhood, which, well, seems inevitable given their presence and the lack of other noteworthy unified factions around.”

“Huh.” He scratched his chin, “I think she's the head of Development.”

“Development?” Lucy felt her nose scrunch up with curiosity, “Development of what?”

“Y’know, I don’t rightly know. Must be something confidential I’m not privy to,” Cooper ran the hand from his chin up along his cheek and through his hair.

Lucy was proud of herself for not getting too distracted. Her face scrunched up with surprise, “Barb doesn’t tell you?”

“Her work’s the most important thing to her,” He seemed taken aback she’d even suggest betraying corporate confidentiality to a spouse, “Besides Janey. And I don’t care to hear the details, it’d all go right over my head.” That same chagrined look as when he thought she disapproved of his cooking made an appearance.

“A person with a true understanding of their work could explain it even to a layperson. We have guest speakers from different vault functions come speak to the children and they can explain anything from the generator mechanisms to the hydroponics!” Her hands waved around a bit in illustration of the wide variety, and she spotted the books she’d handed to him, the ones he’d recognized the themes of, “And you’re well-read! I would think your comprehension would be more than sufficient if she cared to share.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up, “Ain’t that a nice thing to say to a cowboy. No, Lucy, I’m not much more useful than a screen door on a submarine down here.”

He was obviously trying to be humorous about it with that very evocative turn of phrase, but Lucy persisted with sincerity, “You shouldn’t consider yourself useless just because you’re not scientifically inclined. We all have our own proficiencies and areas they can be applied to in any environment.”

That seemed to make him stop and consider her appreciatively. Lucy remembered what Barb had said, about his talents not being needed here and having little to keep him occupied. That must be awful, to be deprived of any opportunities for self fulfillment. It was good he was so devoted to his family, but people needed multiple avenues of enrichment. It wasn’t healthy to exist as an extension of someone else; that was why Vault-Tec recommended cultivating a wide range of hobbies in the vault in addition to building strong familial and community ties. Far be it from her to trust their recommendations anymore, but the psychology she’d studied backed it up. “So,” she continued, shifting under his observation, “What are your areas? What do you like to do, what are you passionate about, what do you like to learn, Cooper?”

“Well, I do have some first hand knowledge of my own with them suits.” He leaned an elbow against a shelf near her. She had to stop herself from skimming her eyes along the long line his body made like that. “In fact, I got a secret you wouldn’t find in one of those manuals.”

“Oh! Really?” She sounded too breathless for the moment.

A corner of his mouth pulled up. “I’d trade it to you.”

She gasped, put a hand on her heart in mock surprise. “You’re bargaining!”

His hazel eyes were all taunting mischief. “Maybe so.”

“For what?” She played along.

“The kitchen vendetta story.” He looked down her in the same way she’d had to force herself not to look him over moments ago. “That is, unless you genuinely don’t want to talk about it. In that case you could tell me something about your journey here. I’m sure we could negotiate terms.”

Lucy drew back, the eyes she’d narrowed as they teased widening to genuine consideration. How badly did she want to know his little secret? How badly did she want to know what he was playing at here? “Okay… it’s not pretty. Or a story for a library.”

“I’ll throw in making you lunch to sweeten the deal.”

“Well, in that case, you’ve got it, Mr. Howard.”

His smile lingered before he seemed to realize something, “Ah, let’s get these checked out.”

Cooper led her deeper through the rows and rows of sterile white shelves to the front desk, where Lucy finally got a look at a vault resident not directly involved in her care or interrogation. It was a woman, slightly older than her, with pale brunette hair that hung loose around a classically pretty face. “Hello, Mr. Howard,” she greeted with a polite smile before turning to Lucy, “And Miss MacLean.”

“Oh!” Lucy chuckled nervously. Apparently, it wouldn’t stop being jarring when people already knew about her. “Hi! Um…”

“Felicity,” Cooper supplied helpfully.

“Felicity! This is a beautiful library. And it’s so nice that a vault like this one with such a…” Okay, anyone at all had yet to tell Lucy why this vault was so different from her home besides Cooper’s mention of the staggered cryo program and whatever it was Dr. Li researched. Lucy pivoted tracks, “The vault I’m from didn’t, that is, have a real library or a librarian. It’s incredible!”

“Isn’t it?” The polite smile remained perfectly fixed on her face. She reminded Lucy of a perpetually happy mother from one of those classic sitcoms where she put up with her husband and kids’ shenanigans with supernatural good-graces. Cooper deposited the books he’d carried for Lucy onto the counter and she followed suit for Felicity to check them out. The librarian took the first book from the stack, The Bloody Chamber, and nodded, “A fantastic choice.”

“You’ve read it?” Lucy perked up. She loved talking books. Hence the book club.

“I’ve read many of the books in this library, including all of these.” Felicity responded serenely as she scanned each of the novels and typed into her terminal with the smooth ease of someone extremely familiar with their task, “That’s one of my favorites.”

That was a good sign! “What did you like about it?”

Her head tipped, a brief glint in her pretty pale blue eyes. “It has such lovely prose.”

Lucy blinked. “Okay! Well, maybe I can come back after I’ve finished and we can discuss it more? Are there any themes I should look out for, or,” Lucy’s enthusiasm slowed as Felicity continued fixing her with the same exact expression, “No, it’s best I go in without expectations and pick. Right.”

“Yes, I do think so.”

“But I can still come back and we can chat? Maybe?” The complete lack of reciprocal input made Lucy feel like she’d done something terribly wrong, but she couldn’t tell what.

“Maybe.” With a last bland smile, Felicity arranged the books in a neat pile that Cooper scooped up in his arms. “I hope you enjoy your reading and have a pleasant day.”

They left with the books, and Lucy forced herself to keep better track of the route back to the residential hall rather than ponder the odd librarian— maybe she was shy?— and got to use her own, fresh pip-boy to open the door. She wondered what happened to the old one from thirty three, along with everything else she’d had on her person. Her fancy sniper rifle. Her knife. Her whetstone. Cooper handed her the books, and she settled on the couch again. Even though she knew she’d inevitably end up watching him, she opened Wide Sargasso Sea and marveled at the crisp pages and the soft, vanilla scent radiating off the paper. He appeared to lean over shoulder, took a deep breath. She could feel the subtle heat radiating from his cheek onto hers. Lucy froze. “Ah, new book smell. You must be the very first to get at that one.”

“Guess I’m the only one that’s Jane Eyre obsessed enough to start reading derivatives down here.” She smoothed her fingers over the crisp paper, so much different from the care worn books in thirty three.

“Not only,” He stood back to his full height, propping a hip against the side of the couch. “Y’know, Jane Eyre’d be a funny choice for you if I didn’t know you were a teacher. Now, between my sheriff and Mr. Rochester I gotta wonder what sorta taste in men you’ve got cookin’ in that head of yours.”

“So you’ve read it, are you going to start quoting Brontë, too?” She teased, to distract from the way his observation made her cheeks burn, “Is your soul about to address my soul?”

“Maybe. Those eyes of yours are fae enough to do the trick.” Her mouth opened, closed. She nodded, those eyes of hers wide and fixed on him. “How about sandwiches?”

Lucy nodded again, silent because she was unsure how her voice would sound. She felt lost. Or, rather, she felt she knew enough of what was going on, but couldn’t understand why. Would he really be flirting with her? Right under his wife’s nose? Why? They didn’t even know each other. It was too surreal. She was jumping to conclusions, surely. He was just very nice and charismatic and she had a wild imagination and an old crush, that was it. He’d made a lucrative career around being magnetic, after all, every bit of him full of charming confidence and sexually attractive ease. This was just him being himself and her unfairly reading into it because of her previous fascination. It was unkind to project her own need for comfort onto a man that was simply helping her at the behest of his wife.

As she’d predicted, Lucy only got a few pages into the novel about poor Antoinette before her eyes inevitably wandered to Cooper where his back was turned to her as he whisked something with efficient movements. The vault suit showed off his shoulders nicely, down to the narrow line of his hips, but looked somehow off anyhow, like her brain refused to process the sight of him in color and without that fringed shirt on. Lucy tried to reconcile the last few days, heck, the last weeks, into something resembling a believable reality while she watched him cook and move comfortably about her kitchen until he was again bringing her a plate of food on the couch, and she'd come up short in creating a logical through-line to her life. He’d done something to the thin strips of tatoes that made them less odious than usual, and Lucy wolfed them and the sandwich down in short order. Unsurprising, how weeks without consistent food followed by a medically induced coma of indeterminate length could make a girl hungry. She licked remnants of salt and grease off her fingers, all manners forgotten in the bliss, when he brought the bargain back up. “I’m flattered you think the food turned out that good— that mean I earn the story?”

Lucy hollowed her cheeks around her replacement trigger finger in her mouth as she glanced up, catching his eyes on her and immediately flushing thanks to him. She withdrew her finger slowly, watched him watching her, then tangled both hands in the napkin on her lap. “Sorry,” Her voice sounded awkward even to her, “Electrolytes are a vital micronutrient, and I’m— definitely malnourished.”

He’d tipped his pointer finger to his cheek as he waited, and rubbed his hand now against his chin, fingers straying dangerously near his own mouth. Dangerous to her, at least. He had very nice hands. “There’s a story there, too, your finger. Never seen one look so bad off and still work, and I saw my fair share of frostbite in Anchorage.”

“It’s not frostbite. It’s not even actually mine. But, it was a pretty clean cut, so…” She thought of her own finger on the Ghoul’s hand, of the Super Duper Mart, and decided she definitely didn’t want to talk about that, “I was married.”

His head tipped at the segue, but he didn’t interrupt. “I imagine the cryogenics here makes the considerations different, but we had an exchange between our three vaults to help upkeep genetic diversity. I couldn’t find a suitable marriage partner I wasn’t related to in thirty three, so I applied, and I was accepted to get a husband from thirty two. But, um, so, raiders had gotten into thirty two and they were the ones that got the invitation.” Cooper made a small choked noise of worry. Her eyes tracked to the table; she could feel his remain on her face. “I had intercourse with my husband on that table. Then when they all attacked, he threw me against the oven and tried to choke me to death on the counter. And since all the vault appliances look the same… I’d rather not be in there. For the time being. It’s not so strong an aversion that I…” She wasn’t planning on staying. Did it matter? “I’ll be fine soon. It’s just odd to see it again after being out of the vault.”

“Fuck, that’s… I wouldn’t’ve pried if I’d known it was something that bad, Luce.” She couldn’t look at him. It was altogether too much on its own to hear the sorrowful note in his voice, let alone see his face.

“It’s… it didn’t actually bother me so badly in the moment. That he’d used me. I was so scared and focused on trying to survive, then I was worried about dad, then I was in the wasteland, and, well, it wasn’t really until…” Until the Ghoul had growled about it that she’d really reflected on the horror done to her. Her fingers twined and untwined in her lap. And then she stripped off the arms of her vault suit, claustrophobic in it enough in the first place and now far too stifled, and yanked it down to her hips so she could lift her tank top enough to show the scar. “Anyway. He stabbed me.”

She heard Cooper cuss under his breath, felt the shift in the couch as he leaned forward. Lucy tipped her head up towards the ceiling. She didn’t want to see the expression on his face. But she could feel his eyes on her. The muscles of her stomach jumped beneath his observation. The air shifted as he withdrew. “You deserve… so much more. Shoulda had a wedding with a man that loved you, a wedding you’d been waiting for and got to plan yourself, not for some damn genetic exchange shit. He better be fuckin’ dead.”

The phrasing made her light headed with instant nausea. Lucy ground her teeth together so hard it made her jaw click. She couldn’t string together anything to say; her head swam with uncanny familiarity. It couldn’t have been the exact same phrase. It couldn’t have. She misremembered. That was it; that was all it was. A failure of memory. A projection. The human mind was a fallible, fragile thing prone to making connections where there was none; the brain naturally sought out patterns as part of its evolution. There was even a term for the phenomenon— apophenia: the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.

“No one’s gonna make you do anything like that here. You’re not some fuckin’ brood mare.” His voice drew her back to reality; the sheer sincerity and fervor in it made her shudder.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Lucy nodded, forging forward with a thought she’d yet to voice aloud. The Ghoul would’ve simply encouraged the foul idea because he already had a biased enough opinion of her father. “I can’t help thinking… I think my dad knew something was wrong, the whole time. But he just. Let it all proceed. He seemed so strange and I thought it was because of the marriage and me moving out, but, no. He knew something was wrong. And he didn’t even investigate.”

“If I thought Janey was in that sort of danger…” His voice had gone dangerous, and rough, and that made Lucy look down to him. One of his legs touched hers, and he had an arm braced against the back of the couch near her head, and his face— it was a too-familiar expression on his face, if she stripped it, and she had to stop thinking about that, but when he spoke his drawl had gone a smidge deeper and she wondered how much a failure of memory could rewrite. “I’d never let that rest. I’d raise hell for her. Your daddy failed you and I can’t even imagine sittin’ by and letting that horseshit happen. Always thought he was spineless, but that…” He seemed to bite himself off with an odd twitch. “Better. You deserve better.”

Lucy tugged down the hem of her tank top with a shiver. “Better husband, better dad. At least I have a good brother. And—“ The Ghoul, which she very well couldn’t say. She redirected, “Now you. A new friend.”

He gave her a lingering look that made her itchy under her skin. “Guess it does explain why Barb thought you two seemed tense around each other.”

Worry like ice shot down her chest. “Excuse me?”

“Ah, she mentioned it yesterday. That it wasn’t as happy a reunion as she expected when you woke up. But I understand why, if you’re still grappling with that…”

“Oh— that’s it. Yep.”

“And you left to rescue him anyway.” Not trusting her voice, Lucy nodded. His eyes roved her face. “Hell of a woman… Lucy, I know he feels bad about, well, I hadn’t heard about the wedding, but he was torn up about not being able to save you from that monster at the observatory.”

It felt like being punched in the gut. And she had a real life metric for that feeling now thanks to the raider gang her and that monster had run into. “Oh.”

“You were the first thing he asked about.”

“Feeling bad about it doesn’t fix it. He let it, all of it, happen.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Cooper shook his head, and his eyes probed again into hers. Her real anger had leaked out, but he’d given her a plausible deniability for not wanting to be around Hank. The conversation had turned out more in her favor than she could’ve expected, even if it left her grappling with a dozen new other factoids. She just hoped he believed that was the whole of it.

Lucy licked her lips and tried to shift things around. “So— what was your secret?”

“Ah, I served in the marines, I was stationed at Anchorage during the start of the war, and them T-45’s? This wouldn’t be in the manual, but there’s a welding defect in the chest plate. They get popped right there with some armor-piercing ammo or a big caliber bullet, and it’s all over for the soldier inside. Damn shame. Heard tell that West-tech knew all along and never fixed it… I’m just glad to know Vault-Tec’d never do such a harm or disservice to its customers.”

Lucy couldn’t breathe.

Cold steel banded around her chest and squeezed her lungs shut, diminished breathing to a strangled gasp and filled her veins with a screaming fear. Why? Why was this vague dread so much worse than any of the life or death scenarios she’d been put to in the wastes? The creeping poison of doubt and paranoia insinuated itself into her very cells and attempted to push any rationality, any hope, out of her. Lucy swallowed around the constricting in her ribs, ground her teeth, clenched her fists, and the room was spinning, and she couldn’t gasp down any air, and then he had one of her hands in his, the right one, with its clean knife-seam and necrotic trigger finger. He firmly unfolded her fingers and pressed hard with his knuckles into her palm and she gasped, all her focus narrowing to that point of pressure. “Take a slow breath there, Lu. There we go, nice and easy.”

Staring at him, his eyes, she copied the rise and fall of his chest for how long, she didn’t know. He held her hand until her heart didn’t feel like an imploding star any longer, crushed to an all-consuming density, a black hole of the unknown. The room slowly righted itself around the fixed point of her hand in both of his.

Lucy snatched it back. “I’m sorry, Cooper, I’m— worn out. Being out for so long really sapped my endurance. I’ll… see you round?”

He considered her a moment longer before answering, “I reckon you will, considering I’m meant to be the one showing you around.”

“Oh. I thought Barb said she’d…”

“She’s, um, much too busy for that, in reality. So you get me. I know that’s less exciting for an intelligent girl like you.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s… oh, fudge, I’m sorry.” Her world had a way of coming apart at the seams. The flat lighting of the vault rendered his handsome face without shadow and hyper real with its picture perfect concern. She’d seen him make that face at damsels in movies; she felt about as real as a set backdrop that moment. Her inner ears wouldn’t give up on the dizziness even with her breath back, and she was so very tired. How did she keep ending up so tired? “I can’t, I can’t think right now.”

He shook his head slowly. His eyes bored into her with a reassuring steadiness. “I was a soldier, like I said. I know it’s… it’s not easy, comin’ back from combat like that, like you have. Isn’t as simple as everyone’d prefer to have it.” She could only stare at him, feeling the helpless prickling of tears at the corners of her eyes. “I’d stay, if you wanted. But that’s not what you said you did. You can call, if there’s anything you need. Or y’want me back for company. It’s nice to have a new audience for recipes. Honest. Gives poor Janey a break from the tiresome dad jokes.”

She managed a weak chuckle and nod. When he stood and walked out, he touched her shoulder briefly in passing, and then he was gone. Her heart ran a panicked staccato as she watched him leave her rooms. The uncanniness she’d first felt had crept into every aspect of every hour here, and the panic she tried to compartmentalize only grew in scope. She read through a few more pages of Wide Sargasso Sea to briefly distract herself before switching to Bloody Chamber, frowning at the crisp noise it made as she opened it.

Then she opened Grendel. Then it was the last few books she’d grabbed all in quick succession.

Every single one she opened had the very same perfectly pristine pages and new book smell.

Chapter Text

Her back burned when she woke up. Added on top of the pain of the stab wound and stitches was the uncanny itching feeling of her skin growing back too fast, as triggered by the Stim-Pak. They’d need to find another. Lucy would have preferred it be saved, but, well, she hadn’t been in much shape to fight when the Ghoul had stabbed her with it. She didn’t even argue after, merely stumbled over to her blanket here, wormed out of her already unclasped bra and curled up.

Hyper aware of her wounds and the now-constant aches caused by days spent walking and nights spent sleeping on the ground, Lucy carefully unfolded herself from the large rectangle of tattered wool she used as both bed and blanket these days, gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t make any unintended noises. She’d slept on her stomach with her neck at an awkward angle, head pillowed on her arms, and she didn’t think she’d slept very long, at that. Her elbows hurt in the strangest ways, but it wasn’t yet light out. The cold air nipped at her bare skin when she sat up and the blanket pooled around her lap, but it was a relief against the pain. The closest thing to an ice pack she’d be getting out here. Sleeping topless was hardly high on the list of things she wanted to do considering how chilly it got at night, but they were at least indoors, and she hadn’t wanted to do anything at all after escaping the raiders except pass out. Dogmeat had curled up next to her, and Lucy placed a hand on the sleeping dog’s side, idly scratching and feeling the wonder of the living, breathing creature she never would have met had she stayed in a vault.

Her eyes scanned around the garage from her little shielded corner between a filing cabinet and large toolbox until she found the Ghoul again, then bit at her bottom lip as she tried to figure out what he was doing through the near complete darkness. The most pressing, distracting facet of it was that not only were his duster and vest off, but his shirt as well. She tried her very best to ignore that particular curiosity for the larger picture. He was faced toward her, staring intently at a shard of mirror in one hand, and reaching over his back with the other. His eyes squinted as he angled the shard this way and that— ah, she understood now— trying to catch the angle in the mostly-shattered mirror behind him so he could see his own back. A single candle on the table near him served as his only allowance for light.

“Do you need help?” She asked, voice rough from sleep and the exertion of the day prior, and, as an afterthought, flicked on her pip-boy light.

For all that he constantly barked at her to keep vigilant, she’d apparently sat up quietly enough to avoid his notice. The glass in his hand dropped and shattered with abrupt musicality, causing Dogmeat to jolt to wakefulness, and that same hand was on his gun before his eyes found hers and he realized it was just her. A brief anger passed over his face but dissipated when, even in the low light, she watched his eyes drop to her exposed breasts before he twisted entirely away from her to face the wall. “Jesus fucking Christ, Vaultie, put your damn top on before we get raiders tryna sell you to a cat house.”

Okay, Geez Louise, she didn’t think she was that marred by the wasteland and horrendous to look at yet. With a scoff, and then a wince as twisting made her wound hurt more, she grabbed her shirt and pulled it up over her head. Realizing it was simply her humans being weird, yet again, Dogmeat gave a low boof and settled herself back on the ground, head on her paws. Lucy scratched behind her ears for her trouble and attentiveness. “Okie dokie, mister, I’m decent for public viewing.”

His huff said something along the lines of thinking she never was, without quite saying it out loud. He did turn back to her, though, but kept his eyes staunchly at face level. It would have been sweet, in a weird, old-fashioned way, if he hadn’t acted like seeing her shirtless was the worst thing in the world. Cultures had differing opinions on partial nudity, but she’d have thought the wasteland, having dispensed with many other niceties, wouldn’t be one to take issue with exposed skin. “Now, I done had it well in hand before you popped up like a damn jack in the box.”

It didn’t look like he had, and she didn’t know what a jack in the box was, but she held her tongue, only offered again, “Can I help?”

“Ain’t nothing that can’t be done later, especially now’s you broke my mirror,” He hedged.

She stopped phrasing it as a question and said sharply, “Let me help.” Before he could shoot her down again, Lucy was standing, stepping carefully over Dogmeat, and walking towards him, her boots crunching on the broken glass until she stood in front of him. He squinted at the bright light of her pip-boy drawing closer, so she toggled it back off and let her eyes adjust before continuing.

“I… I let you help me. I let you sit behind me and stitch me up even though you cut a part of me off like two weeks ago! And I’m grateful to have you to show me things and help me.“ He was looking at her like she was a maniac still, so Lucy straightened up, shoulders back, chin tipped higher. “We’re partners. It’s better for both of us in the long run if you trust me with this, and I promise I’ll do a good job. Let me help you, please, sir?”

“Fuckin’— fine. Nosy ass little filly…” He grumbled to himself and offered up what he’d been holding in the hand twisted behind his back. A pair of pliers. Lucy absentmindedly took them, but closer now, she couldn’t help herself. Her eyes dipped down along his chest in fascination, taking in the drawn way the scarred skin clung tight to his lean muscular form and the patches that looked suspiciously like they lacked skin at all. The flicker of the candle lit him sideways, in a way that made shadows play in every divot caused by well-defined muscle, and colored his already reddish skin with vibrant warm tones. At the top of his chest, she could see an exposed ridge of clavicle where the thin skin of his collarbone had worn away, and presumably never healed. Lucy stared at the flash of white bone, transfixed by the smoothness, the thought of what it might feel like beneath her fingertip, if he let her, to touch an inner part of him… “Thought you wanted to help,” his voice was brutally sharp, “Or d’ya just wanna gawk at the horror?”

Her eyes snapped back up, widening as they met his. He’d already done so much for her this last day alone. And she was being incredibly rude in exchange. A shameful blush worked its way up her face. “No, I— no! Not a horror. Very much not… horror. You have a nice— um, everything. Pecs— Oh golly, shh, I’m still waking up.” Lucy fumbled, then gestured wildly with both the pliers and her free hand, “What were you doing?! I’m helping!”

He gave her that perplexed look for a very squirming and uncomfortable and excessively long moment, then shook his head. “Tryna pull out a bullet. One of’em fucks was shooting fifty cals, shell got lodged in my shoulder. Musta ricocheted off something else first, otherwise it’d’ve gone straight on through me.”

“Oh, of course. That must be uncomfortable!” She made a face as she realized how much of an understatement that was, and he grunted. Lucy busied herself circling around to his back, happy to get away from that discerning gaze of his. The problem was easy to spot— the huge bullet was lodged at an angle beneath his scapula. No wonder he had a hard time getting it, as twisting would’ve changed the angle as his spine and shoulders flexed. “I see it.”

He grunted. Lucy took the candle in her free hand to examine the situation closer. It was a marvel; striated lines of his trapezius latticed over the .50 caliber where it jutted out towards his spine. Glints of the metal remained visible beneath the spiderweb of muscle fibers, and even with her rudimentary anatomical knowledge, Lucy could see how that would severely disturb the function of his arm if they let it grow any further. “Holy moly, some muscle has grown over it.”

She pictured similar muscle fibers binding her finger to his hand. He could move it, could feel with it, so not only stitches bound them, but muscles, nerves, capillaries. How interesting it would have been– to see pieces of him growing out to meet the part of her he’d stolen. Lucy prodded at the skin surrounding the wound, and moved closer with the candle to see the jump of his musculature beneath the scarred skin. She observed it from a few different angles, wondering if it had penetrated deep enough to be affecting his rhomboid major as well.

“Chickening out?” He interrupted. The sneer was clear in his voice and she felt an instant fizz of surliness in response. Of course, he made her argue to help him in the first place then rushed her with it.

“No. I’m making a plan. I think the process will go more smoothly if I sever the muscle first,” she suggested, “That way it’s a clean pull instead of trying to twist it out.”

“Be my guest.” He shifted, and she watched in rapt fascination as the visible muscles contracted and expanded. “But do it fast, girl. I can still feel that shit.”

She wanted to question further down that line, but didn’t comment. Maybe he’d be in a better mood for sating her curiosity after.

“Alright.” Lucy put the candle down so she could unsheathe the hunting knife holstered at her thigh, and sterilize it with the bottle of clear liquor left on the table from her own earlier first aid. She wasn’t sure if he could get infections like that, but it was best to be safe. She did the pliers, too, in case he hadn’t, then held the knife in one hand and the pliers in the other so she could be quick.

“Okie dokie, on three. One, tw—“ using the trick the vault doctor used to give kids their vaccinations, Lucy cut early, running the sharp of the knife straight along what was protruding of the bullet, then moving in with the pliers to yank it out in one sharp tug. The Ghoul stayed completely silent, but she could see the way he was tense all over.

He healed fast, obviously, but she wanted to make sure it healed correctly, and the supplies were already out, so Lucy took the needle and thread and started in on joining the clean edges of the wound.

“Ain’t gotta do that,” he piped up. “It’ll sort itself out.”

“I’m fast,” she assured him, “And there’s no harm in making sure it heals optimally for best possible musculoskeletal function.”

For a while he was silent as she stitched, an inverse of how they’d sat before her nap. Then he spoke up, thoughtful. “Didn’t think you’d know how to do that.”

“Everyone in the vault learns basic first aid. I learned more and spent extra time on it since I was working with kids.” It hadn’t ever been necessary, thankfully. Well– until it had been, for herself. “I ended up stapling my knife wound, though, the one on my stomach. I was in a rush.”

“Huh.” Lucy could imagine the faintest edges of admiration in that single word, so she did. It stoked a warmth in her stomach as she finished off the last stitch and resterilized the wound over again. “You’re a lot tougher’n you look, darlin’.”

“I know.” She did. There wasn’t any denying it at this point; she’d come further than either of them expected her to. Or maybe not— he’d seen something in her, on that long walk of theirs. He’d deemed her a little killer before she’d ever even known the spark of it existed in herself. It had been shameful, at first, until she realized what he really meant, even if he didn’t realize it himself, was that she was a survivor. That was how she chose to interpret it. She could be a survivor and do hard things and still help others. Her fingers came to rest below his scapula, allowing herself the briefest exploration of the texture of his burned skin. “But you already did, too.”

“Yeah. S’pose I did.”

“Could I— if I wanted to go back to thirty-three. Would that be possible?” Lucy broached at the end of the next breakfast meeting. She figured it was unfair to continuously think of them as having kidnapped her when as far as they were aware they’d rescued her, so her status as to whether she was free to leave if she pleased mattered semantically. Of course, she hadn’t been free to leave thirty three, either, but, well—

“You’d want to leave your father?” Barb asked with a sharp surprise and single eyebrow raised in judgment.

Lucy flushed. Her voice took on a desperate plea without her permission. “I miss my brother! And my friends, my students, my home… Dad could come back with me, couldn’t he?”

“I apologize for any inconvenience, but for the foreseeable future you’ll both be staying here, Miss MacLean.” Barb said dismissively, her smile all perfectly calibrated politeness. Lucy saw Dr. Li’s eyes flick to Barb and her eyebrows lower; she saw her father sink down into his seat. “And now, I think you should be running along. We wouldn’t want Cooper worrying.”

With that refusal, Lucy stood, her eyes never leaving Barb’s as the metal legs of the chair slid smoothly along the linoleum flooring. She jerked her head in a single, sharp nod, and left the conference room to find the far friendlier face of Cooper waiting for her. He looked her over, took in her expression, and the corner of his mouth ticked up in a small, sympathetic pull.

Kidnapped, then. She had, in fact, been kidnapped.

No one exited the meeting room after her in the minute it took for Lucy to collect herself from the anger of being denied a way out, so she could only assume they were debriefing about her. More of their secrets. “Does it bother you?” She questioned, “Being left out like this?”

He looked surprised, like it hadn’t even occurred to him to be annoyed about it in the first place. “Doesn’t seem like anything bothersome to me.”

She felt her face scrunch, but didn’t argue with that. His tour today started in a meandering path from medical, where she’d obviously already been, to the hydroponics garden where food was grown, and finally the main cafeteria area, for those not wanting to cook their own meals or eat with a larger group than a vault dwelling could accommodate. Her home had one, too, but in thirty three it would have been bustling around this time, when everyone was starting their day. Here, there were a few scattered individuals, and a few pairs, and that was all. It was more people than she’d seen thus far, though, and Lucy stepped forward to start introducing herself, only to feel the gentle tug of fingers twining with her own. Anything more sudden and she’d have jumped, startled into a fighting response, but Cooper’s hand was cool and strong against her own as he slowed her to a stop. He’d caught her effortlessly, but his gaze was focused down on his pip-boy. Lucy peeked, only getting a glance at the time display, then he was inclining his head. “This way.”

“What?” She followed, trying not to mourn the steadiness of his hand on hers when he dropped it, “I should start meeting people, it’s only polite.”

“We’ll loop on back around. C’mon.” Considering she’d get utterly lost without him, Lucy didn’t have much of a choice, but the shift in his attitude sparked her curiosity.

The continued lack of other residents gave the long, clean white hallways with their pervasive shadowless fluorescent lighting an eerie empty feeling; their two sets of footsteps punctuated sharply with little else to dull the echo. The unrelenting brightness was starting to hurt her eyes. She felt a headache brewing just behind them and at her temples. She missed the gentle shift of the sun setting on the desert; the unbelievable array of purples and oranges erupting on the horizon to paint wispy clouds as day bled away into velvet night. Not only did her head hurt– Lucy was getting tired again. Her own pip-boy told her it hadn’t even been a full hour yet since the end of the hour-long breakfast meeting, which they started promptly at seven in the morning. She stifled a yawn with grit teeth and hoped this tour led somewhere interesting enough to wake her up. Lucy wasn’t usually like this; she took pride in her high energy and morning-person productivity. It unnerved her to be so tired.

Cooper led her to one junction of featureless halls that at first glance looked no more or less conspicuous than the rest of them, but he took her elbow to pull her to a gentle stop before she could actually walk down it. “Ah, we can’t go down this way.”

You’re the one that led us here. Her mouth opened then closed around the thought, and Lucy instead immediately did her utmost to memorize exactly where they were, blinking rapidly around the heaviness in her eyelids. This vault was maze-like in its labyrinthine complexity, all white and featureless. Maintenance access points, though, lent more insight to the needs of each wing of a vault, and Lucy knew them very well. She could see the overhead vents in the ceiling and the pinprick screw holes towards the bottoms of the walls that indicated more cooling systems and electrical panels than the other hallways had had. The hum of airflow moved around them and rustled her hair even when they stood still. The vault drew lots of power over here, whatever it was they were doing. Expecting no useful answer, she asked anyway. “Why not?”

“Off limits,” he answered with a finality that Lucy did not heed.

“Why?” She kept her voice low, and flipped her hand to squeeze his forearm to get him to look at her. She wanted to see it in his eyes. The lie, the truth, whichever it was. “Where does it lead? Is that Development?”

It was his free hand resting on top of hers, holding her frozen with a squeeze. It was a quiet earnestness in his pretty eyes, but… Guilt, also. It was pleading.

“Wait, please, Lucy,” He glanced at his pip-boy again, this time her eyes followed. At precisely 8:55 AM, the echoing hallway was punctuated with a new set of footsteps. Lucy’s confused eyes darted up to Cooper’s, only to find him already looking at the approaching figure of Dr. Li with an amiable grin. The woman slowed in her approach, a look of surprise forming on the aged planes of her face.

Lucy quickly banished her own shock to smile. “Headed to work, Dr. Li?”

The Doctor looked at their joined arms before looking intently at Cooper, then finally addressing Lucy. “Indeed. I prefer to start lab operations earlier, but as Mrs. Howard requested my help, that can’t be helped.”

“Oh, are you just now leaving the meeting?” She asked, trying to stay casual. Dr. Li nodded coolly. That at least confirmed the suspicion of them talking about her after she left. Luckily, her retelling of her first few days in the wastes hadn’t needed much editorializing. Though in her rendition, Dr. Wilzig’s Filly contact had no particular affiliation with any of the stalls and died in the subsequent shootout. Lucy didn’t want any bad news heading Ma June’s way because of her. She was going to have to start pre-planning her edits from the observatory and onwards so she didn’t get caught up on any details. “What is your specialty, exactly? I didn’t catch it earlier.”

Lucy felt Cooper squeeze her arm- in encouragement, or warning, she didn’t know- before dropping it, and she saw Dr. Li note it as well before she answered. “I’ve worked on a variety of scientific pursuits. My initial interest was mass scale water purification projects, though my studies have since diverged.”

“Wow! There’s not much more important to the wasteland than clean drinking water!” Clean water, reliable power, these were the things people needed, and things that one faction or another seemed begrudging to share.

“I believe most would agree with you, Miss MacLean.” While she had been mostly quiet during their earlier meeting, she seemed slightly more inclined to share now. “That project is long in the past now, unfortunately, and across the country.”

“Across the country?” The journey had been bad enough for her and the Ghoul, and they were two good shots in relatively good health, even taking into account his irradiated state, which probably served as a boon more than a hindrance. She couldn’t imagine the elderly woman in front of her managing even that, let alone the length of the continent. “Gee, that walk must have been awful!”

“Not walking. There are still… alternative means of travel available to certain groups.”

“Like the Brotherhood? They have military Vertibirds.” Lucy watched the anger flash across Dr. Li’s face with a smothered satisfaction. She’d hoped mentioning them would trigger more honesty, given how she’d reacted to their involvement the previous day.

“Not like the Brotherhood. It was them that destroyed my last place of work and drove me here.” The Brotherhood hoarded technology; Dr. Li was a scientist with a myriad of research projects that had been working for someone with enough resources to move her across the country. Someone that the Brotherhood felt the need to destroy. Okay, okay, all information was good information, even if Lucy couldn’t immediately see how it fit together with this vault.

Cooper spoke up, “That was right after Janey and me were woke up, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Madison nodded.

“How long ago was that?” Lucy questioned. She was looking back and forth between Cooper and Dr. Li now, so she saw the moment that a vague blankness caught his face seconds before he shook his head.

“Y’know, I can’t quite recall.” His tone went odd, disconcerting, and it was a horrifying thought, to not have track of the years. She decided right then that she believed him, that she would believe him, now and in the past and in the future, when he said he didn’t know things. It clearly bothered him as much as it bothered her. The both of them were being kept in the dark. Worse, maybe, he hadn’t been able to clearly remember the day of the great war, either. What had the cryo sleep done to him? Why did it seem to affect him so much more than Mrs. Howard or her father? Maybe she simply hadn’t been asking them the right questions.

Dr. Li supplied a real answer. “Nearly nine years.”

“Oh. Wow.” She breathed out, trying to focus through the spinning of her mind. Lucy had so many questions she couldn’t sort which should be at the top of the list. Dr. Li still hasn’t explained what her current project was, what she’d been doing before here, where she fit in with Mrs. Howard’s concern about Lucy… but what was the polite, non-suspicious way to learn all that? Lucy fell back on Vault-Tec approved small talk prompts from the introductory relationship handbook. “Has your work gone well in that time?”

The woman’s focus lingered on Cooper for a long moment before she answered Lucy. “It has. Less smoothly than I’d like, but it’s to be expected considering the loss of resources in the transfer. Now, I must be getting to work. I hope the rest of your tour goes well.” She wasn’t the sort to offer a polite smile as a goodbye, merely turned and strode away into the hallway Cooper had stopped them from going down.

After watching Dr. Li disappear in the distance, Lucy turned to Cooper with a smug grin. She hadn’t learned a lot, but one thing had been all but confirmed. “Development.”

He smiled, broad and sincere, which she wouldn’t have expected if she’d sussed out something he didn’t want her to know. It had all been purposeful, him showing her this, the timing of it. ”S’pose so.”

Cooper gestured in the opposite direction, still looking at her in that pleased way. It made her feel… conspiratorial. Dangerous, in a place like this. She felt happily renewed, though, like this kernel of information he’d given her justified her desire to trust him.

As he promised, they looped back to the cafeteria. At this point, it had cleared out entirely. Everyone must have already started work by now. From what she knew of home, the shifts didn’t all begin and end at the same time, but there were generally periods of time where everyone was either working, in classes, or sleeping if they were on the emergency night maintenance crew. Seeing as it was empty and she couldn’t achieve her initial goal of introductions, she nodded when he offered to take her up to a path overlooking an atrium. The stairs made her thighs and chest burn, which indicated dismaying things about her cardiovascular state, and Lucy yawned again when they reached the top, but she was eager to see the view when they got there, and eagerly leaned against a railing to peer down.

Real grass made up the central area, but under the lights and after seeing so much muted desert vegetation, the bright green of it looked like an artificial abstraction, more like a crayon’s imagining of green grass than anything real. A winding stream cut a diagonal across, its origin a small waterfall emerging from a wall, and its end beneath a boulder. The water sparkled, vivid in its blue with crests of white where the waterfall agitated it and the overhead lights reflected. Lucy had never seen such a clean stream above ground. There was a walking trail that crossed over the water, with a neat little footbridge that looked like something out of an illustrated fairytale book. A community space like this in thirty three would be alive with movement and friendly chatter. A single figure walked about, tending to the flowering bushes scattered tastefully around the atrium. Lucy looked down at her warped reflection in the shiny metal of the railing, then at Cooper’s beside her. “It’s so empty here. I keep expecting more people.”

She heard his vault suit rustle as he shifted beside her, “Critical staff and their families only, as I understand it.”

Critical staff only, which apparently included a librarian. And the gardener beneath them. Curiouser and curiouser. She kept her head down so he wouldn’t see the way that thought made her mouth tick. “Something you said earlier— Barb was already awake when you and Janey were thawed out?”

“That’s right. Gettin’ our place settled and the like, I imagine.”

She hummed, filing that knowledge away. “It makes sense, I guess, since she’s the one that actually works for them.”

“S’pose so. Don’t actually know how long that gap was.” Something in his tone made her look up. That same strangeness was in his face as when he’d asked her to wait earlier, something desperate and nearly guilty buried in hazel eyes. It struck her mute. He kept his eyes fixed on her widening ones, and she jolted when she felt the barest brush of skin against her pinky where she had the railing in a death grip. His own little finger, pressed along hers in the faintest of touches.

It took her a moment to find her voice against the intensity of him. “Cooper… what does she do here?”

“Well…” He straightened up, tugged at the waist of the vault suit that looked so wrong on him. Though, what she expected instead, a cowboy costume, was even more ridiculous a thought. The pleading vanished from his face, and he was all casual and congenial again. Lucy couldn’t snap back as easily. “Hope you’ll forgive me for not goin’ more in depth. It’s not really my place to be explaining, but, uh, Barb’s head of customer acquisition strategies.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Her voice pitched higher with frustration, confusion, and a tinge of mania from the ludicrous idea of acquiring customers in the nuclear wasteland.

A furrow had drawn between his brows, the corners of his eyes crinkling. There were other wrinkles, along his high forehead, around his mouth. She wondered idly how old he was, minus the cryo years. His mouth opened, but after glancing down at the single person in the atrium, he closed it again. Cooper shook his head. “Nothing you need to be worried about, Lu. We’re all here to collaborate on mutually beneficial solutions.”

Greatest actor of his generation and even he couldn’t make the corporate drivel sound believable. It sounded better coming from Barb— wait. Had it come from Barb? Had she said the exact same thing? In the med bay? Lucy wracked her memory, but she’d been so disoriented, so full of sedatives and so confused. And the other thing, the line about Vault-Tec not doing a disservice to its customers… they’d given Lucy that one twice in one day, Barb over breakfast then again from Cooper after lunch, that one she was sure about. Quoting the mission statement once or twice was one thing, but… Her pulse started to go haywire. Lucy whirled away to stalk down the nearest hallway as Cooper called after her. “Hey, c’mon, you need to get some rest.”

“No, no, I need to walk.” She twisted to speak over her shoulder at him, but didn’t stop. “I walked two hundred and seventy miles to get here through an irradiated desert with minimal supplies, not being able to spend the morning walking around a temperature controlled vault is pathetic.”

He didn’t argue with that, but approached. “Let me tag along, so you don’t get lost.”

“I’m sorry—“ Lucy paused mid-step as he caught up to her, scrunching her face and squeezing her hands into fists as she realized she was venting her frustration unfairly. He was trying to help her, or she thought he was; he didn’t deserve her ire.

Cooper only shook his head. “I understand, it’s…”

Lucy waited, but whatever he meant to say seemed to die on his lips. She sighed, then eventually said, quietly, “There’s something not right.”

He looked at her like there was more he wanted to say. It was more subtle than her father’s attempts, but she thought maybe, maybe, there was something he was trying to convey nonverbally. All that charisma boiled down to a single, long look and shaken up in a cocktail of her own adolescent nostalgia and displaced feelings? Dangerous. He was dangerous to her, in a far different way than the Ghoul was. Or maybe too much the same.

But he stayed silent. Maybe it was all wishful thinking, conjured up by her desperate need for one single person not beholden to Vault-Tec’s ideals. She should know better, by now, but floundering alone and trapped was a terrifying thing, and he’d been so very kind in so many other ways. He’d shown her where the Development department was located, and she’d decided to believe him then. She wanted to believe him. He frustrated and fascinated her in equal turns, a feeling she’d gotten all too used to in the journey here. Lucy shook her head, and started walking aimlessly down the hall she’d chosen.

The vault was much bigger than thirty three, but the continued lack of populace made things eerie. Her thoughts turned in circles and circles. The problem here was less obvious than in four. There, it had been her preconceived notion of fearing the mutated inhabitants that pushed her to make false assumptions, and she didn’t want to repeat that lest she end up flinging acid in another innocent’s face.

All the clues here were so much more subtle, though, that she couldn’t even tell what they pointed to. Or if they even existed. The list she made mentally of warning signs came up short and perplexing: they occasionally used the same business jargon verbatim, her father looked worried out of his mind about lying, they were maybe being listened to, they wouldn’t let her be alone. All of those could be attributed to an abundance of caution regarding the surely traumatized woman they believed they’d rescued from the wastes along with a dedicated work ethic that she would once have admired. But Cooper… he was trying to tell her something, too, and was either afraid of being overheard, or his loyalty was uncertain, both of which sparked their own series of questions. And then there was the matter of his flirtation with her, which felt important even though she could probably chalk it up to him being a sleazebag Hollywood actor. Or, worse, her mind desperately conjuring signs out of nothing to comfort herself amidst the confusion.

She trailed the same route through the vault twice, to really commit it to memory, especially that hallway Dr. Li had disappeared down in particular, and by the end of another two hours her strength flagged disastrously and Cooper caught her by the elbow when she wobbled dangerously in her steps. He caught her, tucked his arm around her waist, murmuring reassurances that she rejected.

“No, no, I need to do it myself.” He was surprisingly strong, and a jolt of fear zinged through when she instinctively tried to extricate herself and couldn’t, before reminding herself he was only helping. She didn’t struggle further, but shook her head. “I need to build back my strength.”

“You’re not gonna do yourself many favors trying to like this. We don’t want you getting hurt all over again.” His tone stayed light, gently teasing, but veered more serious. “Let me help you, Lucy, please.”

“… Alright. But let me lead the way back.” She muttered, as a test to her memory, and he nodded, even when she turned down the wrong hall and had to trace back twice. Her eyes burned with the bright white sameness of it all. Identical clean hallway after identical clean hallway, connected in perfect right angles and interspersed with metal vault doors. It was so very narrow compared to the wide openness of the desert, of the way the sky had stretched infinitely above her. The vault itself wanted to press in and suffocate her. But Lucy was canny enough, persistent enough, and she eventually got them back to her door, which she leaned against with a heavy sigh and closed eyes.

He stayed quiet until she could no longer hear her heartbeat in her ears.

“I’d, ah, understand if you didn’t want to…” She opened her eyes. “But I was meant to invite you to dinner at Barb and I’s this Friday, at 7.”

An oozing dread wormed its way around her stomach. That hadn’t even been in her top one hundred questions to ask. “What… day is it, right now?”

“Monday. Your dad’ll be there. And Janey. So, I couldn’t come over and cook for you since I’ll be stuck there.”

“Oh… okay, um.” When did cooking for her become a foregone conclusion? Lucy briefly pressed her fingers to her temples. “Nope. I’ll be there. That’ll be. Nice. Super duper nice and so fun!” She tried to smile.

He chuckled without any real humor behind it. “My starting tip for acting is leaning into the facets of truth.”

“I’m trying.” She grit out.

The small smile he shot her was sympathetic. “I know. Give it another shot.”

“Dinner will be interesting.” Lucy tried again, this time without bothering to try for a smile.

“There you go. We’d make you a starlet in no time. Someone’ll probably be by with a getup for you. Barb likes these to be formal, I think she misses the big cocktail parties we used to throw.”

“Oh.” That sounded… glamorous. And so far from reality anywhere, even in her vault they didn’t have cocktail parties. It was hard to imagine that much opulence still existing. Just an echo of the past. Something reluctant in his tone made her ask, “Do you?”

“Ah… truth was? I hated them.” He shook his head slowly, “The lengths I’m willing to go to for her never cease to amaze me.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Yeah.” His eyebrows scrunched up, sending crinkles along his eyes and forehead. Cooper hadn’t proven himself to be a man to use one word when five or ten would do better, and Lucy shot him a concerned look, prepared to probe about it, however rude that may be to dig into the state of his marriage. But he tipped his head and walked away before she could question what the heck that meant.

Gosh. She really, really hated it here.

Worn out from the walk, Lucy snacked on dry sugar bombs straight from the box and clicked through intranet tabs and the preloaded documents on her new Pip-Boy. There was nothing interesting at all. It was all vague Vault-Tec mission statements and protocols she could’ve read in thirty three. She’d need a hardwired terminal to get better access into the system, and who knew how much time she’d need to do that. Certainly more than she ever got unsupervised. Norm could do it. How would Norm do it…? Puzzling over that, Lucy slipped into a fitful nap. The hours slipped away, only for hunger to wake her, and she scrounged leftovers from the food Cooper had cooked the night before, eating them standing at the counter rather than the table. She managed the beginnings of a data mining code on her pip-boy, but only for two hours before the fog of fatigue crept back to her weary mind.

Lucy slept through the night, and then it was another breakfast meeting, another brief tour, another afternoon alternated dozing and chatting idly with Cooper. He was all she had resembling an ally, and still she was learning nothing, fearing everything unsaid, squirreling away what wakeful hours she had alone to work on her pip-boy.

Days passed.

She slept too often, and her worry became a toxic, sick thing, burrowed in her veins.

Chapter Text

The rule was, unless they had four full walls, there’d be no fire. Unfortunately, a week and a half into their journey they were roughing it deep in the Mojave off the long 15, and so after finishing her cold can of Pork’n’Beans, Lucy sat shivering on a smooth rock. The temperature dropped perilously after the sunset, everything going near immediately from scorching hot to freezing, and the chill leached into every surface, including her makeshift seat. It made her butt feel like it was about to freeze right off and the two day old stitched and Stim-pak’ed wound on her back throbbed. The Ghoul even made her dim the light on her pip-boy, and the ‘no radio when it’s dark out’ rule had been established their very first night. Despite it all, despite everything from the pain in her feet to the chill down to her bones and the heartache of her dad’s betrayal— Lucy… wasn’t upset.

No, the complete lack of artificial light revealed something glorious. Her head tipped back to the velvet dark of the sky and she counted pinpricks of light with a small smile on her face. There were constellations she’d only read about, more there than had even been in her books and astronomy classes, and no projector could ever capture this level of grandeur. The first leg of her journey had been too full of terror for her to look up and appreciate this, and the first few nights spent voluntarily with her new companion she had been on her newfound guard, but now, knowing the scariest thing in the wastes kept watch over her and Dogmeat cozy at her feet, Lucy finally had a moment to appreciate the stars.

It was dizzying. They stretched from horizon to horizon, with a large, dense swathe in the middle like spilled milk. She could identify Orion, with the vibrant belt star of Betelgeuse, and the Big Dipper, but every other place she looked was so littered with excess stars that she couldn’t even begin naming the constellations they comprised.

“The stars’re better now.” Her breath caught slightly as he settled beside her, but she didn’t look away from the panorama. Only shifted, feeling the brush of his knee against hers. She’d worried that after what she’d said the day before he’d be weird around her. As he probably had a right to be. Lucy’s experience in that particular arena was sheltered and specific to the way things worked in the vault and that was apparently not how things worked here. He’d said to forget it, and he seemed to, which, well, hurt her ego. Yet another addition to the tangled snarl of emotions dedicated to him that buried in her chest.

“Really?” Despite being separated by her poncho, clothes, his own overcoat, and who knew how many layers he wore, Lucy felt an arcing electricity running up and down her skin where his own was so near.

“Light pollution fucked that for us. Could still see the Milky Way way out on the range, but ‘specially in the city, you couldn’t see jackshit less you drove out to Joshua Tree.”

Things were quiet for another long moment. Desert bugs hummed in the distance. They must be the normal sized kind, or Dogmeat would be up and hunting. “There are more than there were in the diagrams in the books.”

“And how’s it measure up? Versus the books?”

Lucy glanced away from the stars to him, dreamy smile on her face. He didn’t smile back, but under the glowing starlight she could imagine a rare softness on his craggy face. “It’s so much more beautiful than I could’ve ever imagined.”

A chilly breeze blew over camp and her shivering renewed, teeth chattering with the sudden decrease in temperature.

“Christ, woman, yer gonna bring every deathclaw in a ten mile radius out to us with that racket.”

Lucy huffed. “Well, I’m sorry I’m not nuclear-heated or covered in fur like my traveling companions.”

“What happened to that damn ratty-ass blanket of yours?”

“Dogmeat’s using it.” She gestured down at her feet where their dog burrowed into her blanket, “I can’t take it from her, that’d be rude!”

He stared at her for a beat then grumbled something under his breath, and Lucy resolutely crossed her arms and tried to will away the cold with the power of her mind, but then his duster was being draped over her shoulders and, holy moly, it was blessedly warm. He ran hot, as she noted whenever they ended up close, and the thick leather of the duster held it well, tattered though it was. The warmth of his body and the scent of it washed over her, all worn leather and gunpowder and a tang of whisky and chems. A grateful moan escaped her before she could stifle it, but Lucy was too busy luxuriating in the pleasure of not freezing her butt off to be embarrassed. She snatched the lapels and tugged it tight around herself, retreating into it like a mirelurk into its shell. “Mmm, thank you, mister Ghoul.”

It took him a second to respond, and he shook his head dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. Can’t let you get frostbite and make a habit of losing fingers. Need our resident Annie Oakley able to shoot for herself.”

She resisted the urge to point out that her finger had been taken, not lost, in favor of pulling at a different thread that was sure to annoy him. “I’d be better able to express my gratitude if I had an actual name to call you, you know. Sir.”

“Keep wishing on that one, sweetheart, you ain’t getting shit from me and we sure as hell ain’t having this argument another damn time.”

Lucy wouldn’t stop pestering him until he told her, so they most certainly would be having that argument another time, but for tonight, she turned a different track. “Do you actually like being called that? Ghoul? Even nicknames should be something you enjoy. For example I prefer the one you just used for me. Far more than Vaultie, especially, and I’m happy that it has been somewhat phased out of usage in recent days.”

It thrilled her when she caught him off guard. It sent a warm thrum running through her blood when he tilted his head like that, when his eyes ran over her face, when he seemed wholly focused on her. Lucy liked that she could see the way he wanted to study her; it made her feel better about wanting to study him. “You’re telling me you actually like it when I call you sweetheart?”

She’d startled some of the drawl right out of him. Lucy grinned, knowing she looked impolitely smug and not remotely caring. “Yes. I know it’s meant with condescension, I do, it’s just…” A wave of her hand over him. “It fits your whole thing.”

His shoulder bumped against hers. “And’re you gonna enlighten me on what my ‘whole thing’ is?”

Lucy bumped him back. “You know. The— ‘villain from a cowboy movie’ thing.”

“Don’t know what you’re on about, Vaultie.” He leaned back and crossed his arms, which made her want to chase.

“Oh, come on, you talk exactly like some bandit king that’s kidnapped the mayor’s daughter for a ransom of gold bars.” She also wanted to touch him again. She wanted to poke and prod physically as she did with her words. But she kept her cold fingers to herself. “And you used Vaultie again just then purposefully to antagonize me! You enjoy being contrary.”

“Y’wanna get tied up to some train tracks? This is how ya get tied up to some train tracks.” The corner of his mouth pulled up lopsided, so she knew the threat was empty. And that emboldened her enough to lean forward into the warmth of his side as she laughed. Worry flit through her mind about his potential reaction, but Lucy didn’t think anyone would ever say that she wasn’t persistent.

“Well, that’s not exactly the way I imagined you having your wicked way with me,” she insinuated with a heavy-lidded look, but couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are there even any running trains anymore? That would be a useful piece of infrastructure to rebuild first, actually.”

He blinked a few times. She’d gotten him again, though this time without quite meaning to. It seemed to take him a beat to decide how to proceed, and when he did, it was with all the intimidating gravitas he put on for raiders. “My wicked way? Innocent little miss Lucy MacLean, you surprise me.”

“Really? Still?” She wanted to pop the showman persona, “I thought you were catching on, but you must be slowing down in your old age.”

He shook his head slowly with a dangerous glint in his eyes. Once it would have made her shrink back, at least internally. Nowadays she yearned for it. “Oh, you are playing with fire, babygirl.”

That lit its own fire. It took her a second to find her breath, even through her annoyance. “No. We don’t light a fire unless we have four full walls.” She gave in to the urge and poked his side, “An evil bandit taught me that.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and used it to tug her harshly towards him. The looming didn’t have the same effect it once did, especially not with them both sitting. Especially not when she wanted him to pull her more to close the last gap between them, so she could straddle onto his lap… “I should gag you.”

“Dogmeat’s not as good a conversationalist as me.” She challenged, a slow grin coming to her face. This wasn’t something that would be categorized as flirting in any movie or novel she’d read. But this world, the stars spread above them, the mutated animals, the man in front of her— this was entirely different from those stories, too. Under the heat of his gaze, wrapped in the warmth of his duster, Lucy forgot all about the cold rock against her bottom, about the dangers lurking deeper into the desert, about anything but him.

“And bless her for it, she ain’t near as annoying.” He released her wrist then, to her disappointment. When she didn’t move backward, though, he didn’t recreate the distance either, so she counted that as something like a win. “Don’t think I could deal with two prissy girls yapping at me day and night.”

Lucy cocked her head, “Too much for the old man to deal with?”

He barked out a laugh, “Yer an insolent fucking thing tonight. I oughtta make you scared of me again.”

She found that… far hotter than she should have. Gosh. That would be something to analyze later. “Oh, but you like having someone like me to talk to.”

He shook his head, but he looked at her, he really looked at her, with stars reflected in his hazel eyes, and Lucy felt a warmth creep up her skin. “Maybe so.”

The Ghoul stood suddenly, stalking away, and the intensity of the moment popped like a soap bubble, leaving her to wonder if she’d fabricated the tension there. It was so gosh darn difficult reading him! Did he think of their back and forth as a flirting game, like she’d started to? Or did she genuinely bother him, enough that his threats were real, even when he laughed along with her and smiled? But then why did he put up with her? Leverage? Collateral? Lucy planted her palms on the rock she sat on, grounding herself with the feeling of the chill and grit, the reality of the wastes. Things were much too dangerous for her to even entertain worrying about matters like this. He turned back to her, and at this distance even the starlight and full moon couldn’t help her read him. “Git to sleep. Gotta long day tomorrow.”

A chime at the door interrupted her unavoidable afternoon nap. Instead of the days of recovery improving her lingering fatigue, it only felt like it was getting worse for Lucy. The weakness in her muscles couldn’t improve with her sleeping so frequently, and a haziness lurked at the edges of her consciousness, not dissimilar to the difficulty she’d had when suffering from radiation poisoning, though that obviously wasn’t a concern in the vaults. It was worrying enough that returning to the medical bay seemed like a possible good choice, but– she couldn’t trust them. She couldn’t. She didn’t know what they’d do to her.

The person at the door was a nondescript man she hadn’t met. Pale skin, pale blonde hair, and his eyes were such a pale blue they had almost a silvery quality where the fluorescent lights hit them. He handed her a garment bag, running goosebumps up her skin where his cold fingers brushed hers, and then was striding away. She withdrew into her room with a shudder to unzip the bag, technically still having not actually met him and chastising herself for not being friendlier in her groggy post-nap state.

Inside the bag was teal, and lots of it. The taffeta of the dress felt crisp beneath her hands, unlike the soft fabric of the only other dress she had worn, her wedding dress. This one… may have even been entirely unworn, she pondered, as she slipped it out, holding it up to the light and admiring the sheen to the teal fabric and the A-line cut bolstered by a tulle petticoat. It was perfectly pre-war fashionable, something she might have glimpsed in a decaying magazine scavenged on her and the Ghoul’s long walk. Extraordinarily impractical for the wasteland.

The hanger beneath the dress held undergarments: a full coordinating set of a strapless corselet, panties, suspender belt and stockings all in a beautiful pale ivory. It was… another odd thing to add to her list, though upon examination the shape of the standard Vault-Tec bra would absolutely peak out from the dress’ lowish square neckline and thin straps. So a useful thing, albeit odd, if one was concerned about fashionability when only three other people would be seeing it. Lucy dressed dutifully, trying to arrange her hair and makeup in the same fashion as Steph had for her wedding, but not doing quite as well at it as her best friend had.

If they were always listening, were they watching, too? Lucy tried not to think of it. Modesty was neither a huge thing in the vault nor in the wastes. Cameras in her room were more a concern for when she started properly plotting her escape than her naked form.

Ten minutes before seven there was another chime, and it was her dad at the door this time. The look on his face when he saw her in the dress would have been heartbreaking, if he hadn’t already betrayed her, her mom, their vault, an entire city, the world, and she weren’t past the end of her metaphorical rope as far as he was concerned. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks,” she bit out. “It’s a pretty dress. You must have seen a lot in this style before the war. When you’re from. Not that you ever mentioned it my entire life.”

Surely that was a non-incriminating statement? It meant he’d followed Vault-Tec’s rules to the letter. Even with his own daughter. “Lucy…” And now she’d get more of their manifesto. “My role as Overseer required me to integrate with the community. As well as have a perspective of the world that they couldn’t.”

“You lied to everyone. To me. My whole life—“

“Lucy. Not now.”

Lucy didn’t take his arm when he held it out to her, and he resigned himself to it and led the way to the Howard’s.

He hadn’t even tried to see her one on one since that first morning. Parts of her were equally bitter and grateful about it; she didn’t think she could stomach a full conversation with him without saying things she shouldn’t. Not out loud, not here. They walked in a tense silence through winding residential halls until he finally slowed before one labeled as The Howard’s.

One last question, that she couldn’t keep in, one asked in a quiet murmur. “How did you know him?

He looked comically surprised. “Who?”

“You know.“

“I don’t.” He rushed to continue when she felt her face go irate. “I don’t know him, princess. I was surprised, that’s all.”

He knew your name! She wanted to shriek, but there was no plausible deniability to explain that one away. The question had been vague enough to get away with, she thought, but any further details wouldn’t stand to questioning should someone overhear. She narrowed her eyes to show her displeasure at his blatant lie before pivoting to press the alert button for the door.

A teenager opened it. Her and Lucy were the same height, and she had a halo of tight curls cascading around a face rounded with youth. Soft eyes regarded her with wariness even as the girl smiled the same Vault-Tec approved corporate smile that Lucy mustered. She didn’t even look at Hank, “You must be Lucy.”

“That’s me! And you’re Janey? It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you from your father.” The smile on Janey’s face went wider. Forced.

“He does like to talk a lot.” She said with an exasperated breathy little laugh.

“Are my ears burning?” Cooper made his presence known with an arm slung casually over Janey’s shoulder and a kiss pressed to the curls atop her head. The girl straightened up almost imperceptibly.

“Only good things.” Lucy reassured the both of them, unable to help her smile in response to the crooked one on his face.

“Well, c’mon in, no sense dawdling in the hall, now is there? Hey, Henry, how ya doin’?” He greeted her dad with a firm handshake, then directed a smile just for Lucy, giving her shoulder a brief squeeze. His fingers were firm and cool where they touched her skin over the dress. “Lu, always a pleasure.”

It had more sincerity than the idle nicety he’d directed at her father. For one who apparently didn’t like parties, he sure was getting off to a genial start as host. He wore a dark blue dress shirt and black trousers, though the shirt had a few buttons at the top undone and the sleeves rolled up. Lucy forced herself not to look at the skin that revealed. Her own skirt swished distractingly around her knees every step she took and she envied the more casual wool skirt and sweater combination Janey sported. Especially the flat shoes.

Where the rooms Lucy had been assigned mirrored the ones in her home vault and the ones she’d seen in four, the Howard’s home was different in design: larger and with decorative touches that Lucy knew weren’t standard issue vault decor. The familiar tones of a Bing Crosby record lilted from deeper in the home. It really was a weird little recreation of a pre-war soirée for the five of them. Just like the ones Lucy watched intently on the same small monochrome television in thirty three that she’d watched Cooper Howard on.

“Welcome to our home.” Barb emerged from a back room wearing a dress similar in cut to Lucy’s except in a crimson shade that complimented her perfectly, and came to a stop a foot to the side of Cooper. It made a stark picture, with his arm still around Janey, the girl’s head tilted with familiarity into the crook of his shoulder and an invisible barrier separating Barb from them. “Can I offer you some wine? Any of them would be delicious– all our bottles are at least two hundred years vintage.”

Hank laughed heartily, falsely, and Lucy smiled politely; she didn’t know what that had to do with the quality of wine, but it seemed in poor taste. Barb regaled the provenance and terroir of the wine bottle she opened, words which meant nothing to Lucy, and poured glasses for the three of them while Janey darted into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Nuka-Cola. Everytime Lucy glanced at the girl, she was already looking at her in keen observation.

“Cheers to the MacLeans joining us, and a wonderful new chapter for Vault-Tec.” Barb announced, holding her glass out, and Lucy knew enough to echo the word, and tap her glass to the others before taking a small taste.

“Come so far, huh, Henry?” Coop asked after taking a sip of his wine, “Bet you didn’t expect to have the same boss two centuries later.” His smirk shifted to Lucy, “Back in the day, I didn’t even like taking this kid’s phone calls, and now look at him. All grown up with a grown up daughter of his own.”

Hell, this kid used to pick up my wife’s dry cleaning.

“Wait, you knew each other before?” Barb had said she was helping her father acclimate, and she knew Barb was high in the chain of command, but it had never been mentioned that they’d already worked together in the past. That he’d worked for her. “You were, she was your boss then, too?”

Her dad met her eyes, smiling. It would tell her more if it hadn’t been the same exact tight smile he’d been wearing the entire time here. And Lucy no longer trusted her judgment in reading him. How could she? Her own judgment had proven disastrously fallible where he was concerned. Twenty-six years spent believing him a paragon of goodness, and two weeks knowing the truth. “Mrs. Howard was the boss of quite a few people. And I worked in several departments under a myriad of various team leads in my career.”

Occam’s razor, she repeated to herself as she took a lengthy sip of wine with a shaky hand, Occam’s razor, apophenia, cognitive biases, human pattern seeking, a need for control and certainty. But there’s always someone behind the wheel… A man could not be in two places at once. It was as simple as that, no matter how many similarities her brain wanted to conjure. Vault-Tec had been an enormous corporation; her father had at least a decade to work for many people, to pick up many people’s dry cleaning, before the bombs dropped. She hummed, hoping it sounded reasonably interested, then pivoted subjects. “Janey, what are you studying in school?

“I have a private teacher. I learn… a lot of different things.” She explained with a bored shrug.

“Oh, that’s— attentive.” Cooper had said she had friends, hadn't he? “But, there are others your age around, right? Peer groups are very important to youth development.”

“There are,” Janey said noncommittally, “But everyone’s boring here.”

“Janey.” Barb warned, tapping a finger along her wine glass.

Her daughter was already forging onto a new topic, leaning forward with a fervent spark in her eyes. “What was it like? Outside?“

“Janey, this is a difficult topic for Lucy, she had a very bad experience up there—“

“It’s fine, Mrs. Howard.” Lucy reassured with a jerk of her head before answering, “Parts of it were very scary, and strange. But the stars and the sunsets… I miss those.”

“Were there still animals?“ Janey pressed, looking sad and desperate; Lucy automatically wanted to comfort her.

“Oh, plenty! Some of them, um, they were different from how I’d imagined and there were new ones, too. We had—“ There was no we, not in the new narrative. Only her and her tormentor. “There was a dog. He had a dog. I mean, he said she wasn’t his, but, well. She was his.”

“He?“ Shoot. Probably shouldn’t have gone in that direction at all.

“A very bad man took Lucy,” Barb explained, as if to a much younger child.

“A monster,” Her father apparently couldn’t help but interject.

“You were held captive? By a monster?” Janey looked skeptical. Lucy would have, once, too. It was a vault dweller’s burden to simultaneously think things on the surface couldn’t possibly be that bad, and also that it needed to be saved and fixed by Vault-Tec’s glorious purpose.

“He was human, he…” Lucy shook her head. Don’t be fond. Be factual. “He had radiation burns, some facial disfigurement. He did look different from most people, but he was human.”

Those beautiful dark curls shifted around her face as she tipped her head. “Like the Phantom of the Opera?”

Lucy felt herself make a face. She found herself looking, inexplicably, to Cooper for help and he spoke up for the first time in a few minutes, with that considering look on his features. ”We had a dog, do you remember, Janey?“

“Roosevelt.” Her voice had gone quiet. The girl’s eyes flicked briefly to her mother before returning to Lucy. “I don’t remember a lot, from before here. I remember Roosevelt. I wish—“

“More than half your life has been here. That’s perfectly understandable.” Barb said, reaching across Cooper to take her daughter’s shoulders. He took a half step back. The love she held for Janey was so vivid that it made Lucy’s heart ache for her own mother— and what she’d done to her. This was the warmest Lucy had ever seen Barb and it made her seem less remote and untouchable. “This is home, now. And for the future. Right, dear?” The call to her husband contrasted the bubble of space he’d given her and his daughter.

“God willing and the creek don’t rise.” The turn of phrase made Lucy chuckle despite the buzz of her own anxiety and weariness. He pronounced creek like one would speak of a crick in their neck.

Barb arched an eyebrow. “And what is that in proper English?”

A long beat passed before he answered. “That’s a— yes, it is, sweetheart.” The endearment carried a warm sincerity, exactly as Lucy would imagine any devoted husband addressing his wife.

His comedic timing made Lucy outright laugh then, quickly hiding it behind her glass when Barb looked less amused. Barb adjusted her daughter’s hair and the collar of her sweater before smoothing down her arms and smiling, turning to her husband. “Are we ready for dinner?”

“Just about.” He jostled Janey gently by the shoulder, making her smile and roll her eyes, then departed to the kitchen. Despite the love in his voice, he hadn’t touched Barb once. Not in the same easy, casual way he helped Lucy around the vault, or the loving, affectionate way he interacted with Janey now. And she hadn’t touched him. The genuine care Janey received from her was absent when she spoke to her husband.

Hank said something to Barb about KPIs and metrics so Lucy took a step away to idly look at some of the decorations about the dwelling. She considered following Cooper to the kitchen, but didn’t want to be impolite, especially when she saw Janey approaching. “You can ask me whatever you’d like about the surface,” Lucy assured with a sincere smile. “I really don’t mind. It was scary, and shocking, but I— I don’t regret leaving to see it all. To experience it. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, having lived out there before everything and now being locked away from it…”

The girl looked at her for a long moment. She had thick eyelashes surrounding pretty hazel eyes that leaned more green-brown than her father’s. “Can I visit you? After this, but soon, just us?”

Whatever Lucy had been expecting, it wasn’t that. She nodded, “Of course. Anytime, I don’t have much going on here. No job, after all! We have a standing meeting in the mornings, then your dad and I usually take a little walk. Aaaand that’s all!” It was jarring, to say it out loud, when her life before had been so full of activity, and that note of anxiety snuck its way into her voice. She’d never been so idle in her life; it didn’t suit her temperament or the years of learning that a good member of vault society was a productive member.

Janey had inherited her mother’s sharp calculating gaze and she turned it to Lucy in full force. “You can ask me things, too. That’s fair.”

“Oh, well,” She weighed the objective risk of the million questions on her tongue, and started with something innocuous. “I was wondering— Cooper said you had a horse? In general, but also specifically that it was with you at a birthday party, that last day? I’ve read about birthday traditions, and obviously in the vault we didn’t have any animals so a horse certainly couldn’t be involved no matter what, but, horse? Was that normal?”

“We had Sugarfoot because dad was working.“ Her voice was matter of fact, though a slight scrunch at her eyebrows said she hadn’t expected that to be Lucy’s first question. “He was doing tricks and stuff. We didn’t even really know the family. They were kind of mean.”

Lucy swallowed. Her fingers twitched tighter around the delicate stem of her wine glass. The stories didn’t match. She knew that. It wasn’t so long ago that she could blame this on a lapse in her own memory. Days ago, he had told her it was a party for one of Janey’s friends. Janey said they didn’t know them. She’d been quite young at the time, yes, but the discrepancy screamed to Lucy. As if sensing the track of her thoughts, Janey spoke again, voice quiet but not a whisper, with a hint of lilting innocence that didn’t quite match the perceptive look on her face. “Did dad say something different?”

That was… oh, gosh, Lucy hated feeling like she was reading into things too deeply, even though she knew, she knew, she had to, especially here. Her head jerked in a shaky nod, but Cooper’s voice forestalled any further questioning, “Dinner bell’s a ringin’!”

The both of them snapped around. With a last shared glance, Janey walked away. They all settled around the table; Lucy took another healthy sip of the red wine as Cooper served plates.

“Careful with that, princess.” Her father warned her, as if just then cluing in to the existence of the almost-empty wine glass in her hand before turning to their dining companions. “She’s never had alcohol. Our vault wasn’t as well-stocked as this one is.”

Lucy glared at her dad, then finished the rest of the glass out of sheer spite. Thankfully, he was incorrect, as she’d tried the clear rotgut liquor the Ghoul carried for internal and external medication, as he called it, on more than one instance, and had been sipping at the wine since Barb handed it to her for the cheers. The wine was… better. Much better, really, than the liquor. Still not what she’d call good, but newfound pettiness controlled her now, and she swore to herself she’d finish a second, though she knew scientifically speaking that taxing her body with a toxin wouldn’t help the ongoing fatigue issue.

“Think I’d rather perish in the nuclear horror show than be pent up in a box with no booze.” Joked Cooper with a huff as he settled into his seat. His own second drink was in a triangular shaped glass, clear liquid with ice and a toothpick with small green fruits on it.

“Coop.” Barb chastised, and his mouth snapped closed. Dutiful husband, Lucy thought. He quirked his eyebrows up in her direction, a wry twist to his lips as he worked one of the green fruits off the toothpick and popped it into his mouth before licking the residual alcohol off his fingers. She watched too closely. She needed to stop watching him. Especially while everyone else seemed to be watching her.

“We’ve got steak, the approximation of a vault Bearnaise, and previously canned green beans.” He announced with spread arms and a grin, and Lucy finally glanced down at the plate. It was pretty. He had a way of making even vault food pretty. His charisma and artistry oozed into everything he did. Lucy watched how her father and then Coop cut into their own steaks before she started. She had Brahmin kebabs in a settlement once, but never a real steak that wasn’t pre-frozen Salisbury, and picking it up to gnaw on like she would have in the wasteland didn’t seem like the right route. She remembered Cooper saying he was more creative when he had the ingredients to be, and she pondered the difference between the familiar food available in her pre-stocked apartment versus the meal they had now. Every new bit of information made it clear how high in the hierarchy Barb was. High enough for luxuries.

“Delicious, honey.” Barb said after taking a dainty bite, which triggered a round of murmured compliments from the rest of the guests including Lucy, though she hadn’t even stuck her fork in her mouth yet. Cooper smirked at her knowingly from across the table, so she tucked into the meal. It was— really very good. Truly. “So, how have you been finding yourself lately, Lucy?”

Start with the truth! “The library is incredible. Even our digital archive in thirty three wasn’t as big. I’ve been able to pick up a few books I’d always wondered about but we didn’t have copies of…”

“That’s lovely. We’re so happy to welcome you and I hope you take full advantage of the opportunity.”

The dinner chatter was not comfortable in the way it would have been when visiting or hosting in thirty three. Lucy had too much awareness of the stilted wrongness, she couldn’t speak directly to her dad for fear of snapping, and Barb’s cold, corporate smoothness grated on her. She focused on eating, and listening, and making sure to drink water in addition to her wine. The one hangover she’d experienced was more than enough for one lifetime, and it seemed a shame to end up dehydrated when she finally had access to clean water again. Despite the effects of the alcohol, as the dinner went on Lucy felt more alert than she had in days. And without the shackles of fatigue, the simmering anger rose up to fight with the appearance of subtle curiosity she’d been trying to cultivate. “Mrs. Howard, how long have you been working with Dr. Li?”

“Oh, a dozen years or so.” Lucy stopped herself from glancing at Cooper, but only barely. While she worked, on who knew what, Barb had left her family asleep for three years. Or so.

“It must be a really important project to warrant such a big vault. The power requirements alone are staggering.” She commented, popping a last bite of steak into her mouth and watching Barb as she chewed.

“All of Vault-Tec’s endeavors are important.” Hank interjected.

“It is.” Her trademarked perfect smile, “We’re hoping to change the face of the wasteland as everyone knows it.”

“How so?” Lucy pressed, however ill-advised.

“The employees here are working diligently on customer management strategies to gain public buy-in ahead of a seamless reintroduction for Vault-Tec to the robust post-nuclear consumer sphere.” It was incredible how professionally straight faced and sincere Barb could look while saying absolutely nothing of value.

“But it’s— it feels a bit empty? It’s hard to believe there’s enough people here to really accomplish something like that, unless they’re all hiding from me.” Lucy laughed, to try and play it off as a joke despite the exponentially increasing edge of hysteria under her tone. Her thumb played along the smooth handle of the steak knife in her hand, “This place is huge and there’s basically no one here compared to home, right, dad?”

Barb didn’t let Hank answer. “Well, this particular vault has a much different purpose than your home vault did, hence the different facilities. Every component of a business sector is equally important, though necessarily not the same, considering the wide range of synergistic solutions Vault-Tec is pursuing.”

Something inside Lucy, fueled by fear and wine then triggered by synergistic solutions, bubbled over. Her voice came out too loud when she spoke, “And I still don’t know what that is! No one will tell me what we’re doing here or what this vault is for, and good golly, is it sure getting frustrating! You’re all loving keeping me in suspense, aren’t you? Maybe I’m the experiment! Again!”

Her father winced. Janey shrunk down into her seat. Barb’s gaze was sharp, always, and she kept her eyes on Lucy until the last moment as she leaned over to whisper something to Cooper. His eyes flicked briefly from where they lingered on Lucy to his wife, then back to her, and Lucy ducked her head at being caught watching their married business. In her peripheral, he stood, and stalked away from the table with his own empty glass. No one spoke. Her heart raced and her palms grew sweaty around the utensils she held. They clattered loudly when she dropped them to the table.

The record clicked to an end. Static buzzed in the oppressive silence.

“I’ll get it!” Lucy volunteered, standing before anyone even agreed. After what she’d said, the very last place she wanted to be was stuck at the table with Barb and her father and Janey with her observant eyes. With a plastered on wide smile, she rounded the same corner Cooper had towards where the music had been originating from and found her way to a record player stationed near a beautiful, definitely not vault-issue bar cart. He shook a silvery canister and observed her sidealong.

With a shaky exhale, Lucy leaned her hands onto the sideboard and ducked her head, feeling the false expression of cheer crumble off her face. It was hard to measure her breaths evenly, and even with her eyes shut, the room swayed gently side to side. She felt horribly like she might cry. After a moment, a strong hand landed between her shoulder blades and rubbed a small, soothing circle there against the taffeta. Finally, she managed to shove everything into the little compartmentalized box in her brain that she’d been vainly trying to hoard all of her fears in (right next to the one regarding the state of the world, by the one worried about the Ghoul, about Dogmeat, about Maximus, about her brother, about herself, her recent sleep habits, about the Ghoul and Dogmeat, about Dogmeat and the Ghoul, and so on) and lifted her head up.

The hand shifted from her back to pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The tips of his finger glanced along her cheek; his skin felt cool against the flush of her own.

“There you are, you’re alright, aren’t you?” Cooper said in a quiet tone. She nodded a confirmation. The words were out. Either they’d brush her off, or they wouldn’t. She could deal with either option, though the first gave her more time. “We’ll need to keep working on your subtlety.”

His hand stayed near her face. He brushed more substantially along her cheekbone. She wanted to chase it, like Dogmeat butting her head up for pets. “Not my strong suit.” She admitted, her own voice going low. Alcohol, whether wine or indiscriminate clear liquor, had a strange way of making things fuzzy and overly warm when men looked at her, Lucy discovered. She swallowed, shook her head to clear it, “The music.”

Cooper nodded, and Lucy reluctantly crouched down to flick through the record sleeves and grabbed one at random. The Ink Spots. Sure. Her dress fluttered around her knees as she stood.

“You look beautiful, by the way.” His voice stayed soft. His wife and daughter weren’t even separated from them by a door. Lucy shot a startled look at him, though the compliment slid burning hot and queasy down her stomach like a swig of liquor.

“Thank you.”

He took the lid off the silver canister and poured it into the same triangular glass. It was him she watched and not the drink, but he caught her attentiveness. “Wanna try?”

“Oh, sure!”

“Vodka martini, extra dirty.” She felt herself flush as he pressed the glass to her lips for the way he drawled out extra dirty, but took the offered sip. Still better than the liquor the Ghoul carried; not as tolerably sweet as the wine.

Lucy shrugged, to convey her judgment, and pointed at the little fruit adornments. “What are those?”

“Olives. Here.” She lifted a hand to take the toothpick, but he’d taken one of the fruit straight from the open jar on the bar cart and held it up to her mouth. Surprised, she opened for him, and he slipped it in, letting his fingers skim along her lips. She wanted to strangle him. And then she made a face, because when she bit down it was all salt and vinegar and it didn’t taste bad, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t what she expected, though maybe she should have given the flavor profile of the drink it accompanied.

He chuckled at her, and licked his own fingers again. Lucy’s core burned. “Get on out there for dessert, sweetness. I’ll be right behind you.” His hand scraped over the smooth taffeta covering her lower back as he ushered her off.

What the fudge.

The last week he’d been what she’d call flirtatious, yes, but not in a way she could categorize as outright inappropriate. It mostly fell under friendly banter, something she could dismiss as his natural magnetism and charisma, and every one of his touches had been to help her, whether walking or through her brief panic. This— touching her lips, calling her beautiful, an endearment, was an escalation so fast and so unexpected it sent her head spinning, like standing up too suddenly on an empty stomach.

She downed the rest of her wine after sitting, let Barb refill it and thanked her with a genuine enough smile. No one mentioned her outburst. It may as well not have happened, except for the fleeting glances she could feel Janey giving her. The dessert Coop brought out was chocolate cake, not of a jello variety, and she picked at it while downing the rest of her third glass. She didn’t speak again, instead listened to the conversation between her father and Barb, and the intermittent quips between Cooper and his daughter. He made her giggle, every now and then, a bright punctuation of laughter that made Lucy feel a smidge more at ease. Janey was a new piece of the puzzle, seemingly as unsettled as Lucy felt but sticking by her parents. Or maybe that’s simply how she was. Hank and Barb were talking about using the rest of the night to finish up his P.I.P and, oh, maybe even begin step one, that would look ambitious…

She didn’t know dinner party etiquette, but took Cooper clearing away the dessert plates as a good enough sign to leave as any. Lucy swayed when she stood, feeling awfully light-headed. Oh, Geez Louise.

“Lucy, you are in no state to walk yourself home.” Hank started standing, and Lucy absolutely knew she didn’t want to be cornered by him like this.

“It sounds like you have more work to talk through, dad.” She was proud of how even keel she ended up sounding.

“I’ll walk her home, Hank.” Cooper offered, standing himself and placing his napkin down on the table. “Not a trouble.”

“Perfect.” Barb smiled with her lips pressed to her wine glass. “Janey? I think it’s about your bedtime.” The girl’s eyes darted again between Lucy and Cooper, then she was off, and Cooper was bringing Lucy’s arm to tuck into his elbow as had become alarmingly familiar over the last few days and he was pulling her away from the table even as her and Barb continued their impromptu staring contest. “Have a nice night, Lucy. Don't hurry back, Coop. Henry and I do have quite a bit to discuss.”

The whirl that all gave her was worse than the tipsiness from the wine, which itself muddied with the rapid staccato of her heart as they walked. Weird! All weird!! She wished it was weird in a normal, expected way, like cults stripping naked and chanting or mutants, but it wasn’t, it was only a step off benign, and if she’d been transplanted here just a month ago, Lucy wouldn’t have felt a single thing was wrong. She exhaled in a huff, and looked up at the smooth vault ceiling. At least that was the same, even if it wasn’t what she truly wanted.

“I miss the sky, too.” Cooper Howard said, reminding her whose graces it was she was depending on not to get lost. “Out on the range where I grew up, you could still see the Milky Way. In the city, you couldn’t see jackshit thanks to the damn light pollution.”

Chapter Text

“I am not going to use my rifle as a bat! I’m good out to a thousand meters with it, I’m not about to bend the barrel!” Lucy gaped, holding the strap of the rifle protectively to her chest. He wouldn’t ruin a precious resource like that, and he wasn’t actually suggesting she ’might as well fucking hit them with it’, she didn’t think, but he’d been in a fouler mood than usual in the couple of days since the incident with the raiders.

“Well, it didn’t do you no fucking good when they were right on top of you, did it? Not worth shit if you’re not actually picking them off at a thousand meters.” He growled.

“You didn’t see them either!” Lucy protested with a wild wave of her arms.

That made him angrier. “Don’t gotta remind me” he spat, literally, into the dirt. She watched the muscles work in his throat guiltily before her eyes snapped back up to where his remained on her. “Point fucking being— it’s not gonna happen again. Don’t care what I gotta show ya, how long it takes, yer gonna prove to me you stand a fighting chance.”

“Alright, okay!” He could be as pushy as she could be when he set his mind to it, so Lucy gave in. This was, for the most part, still his show to run, after all. She was the tagalong, the weak link, the leverage, at best.

“Dogmeat, hun, don’t mind us.” At her name, the dog perked up, then settled back down with the instruction and strip of jerky he tossed at her. She seemed to understand most directives quite well, which Lucy didn’t exactly know for sure was common for dogs or not. She carefully removed her sniper and set it beside the rest of her things, then turned to face the Ghoul and began shifting foot to foot, raising her hands into the stance she’d been taught in her martial arts lessons. He appraised her from head to toe. “Y’won’t get good warning if it’s for real.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know, thank you very much for reminding me. I’d already completely forgotten about the knife wound in my back.”

“We ain’t letting you get fucking grabbed again, alright?” His voice neared a growl, “Don’t got time for delays like that shit.”

Lucy hummed, feeling bitey when she replied with his own lesson: “Golden rule.”

“Yeah, think we’ve had enough bullshit distracting us already, sweetheart.” He did not, in fact, end up giving her good warning. Lucy was fast enough on her feet to dart half a step backwards when he lunged at her, but not fast enough to escape the bear hug grapple he caught her in. He lingered long enough to make the point, strong arms caging her to him, then retreated just as fast. Her entire body went warm. “Yer done, they gotcha. Again.”

“I don’t think—“ a single grapple was not a bout ending maneuver in any standard fighting ruleset, she’d begun to argue, but he moved again before she got it out. Lucy ducked this time, anticipating the way he slung his arms wide to catch her, and rolling away from him at an angle to pop up to her feet behind him. He swung a wild punch that she dodged, steps light as she danced backwards, then shot a kick that clipped his knee. She saw his lips twitch, but he kept advancing.

“Might make a normal fella pause. What’re you gonna do if it’s me?” It wouldn’t be, she didn’t say. Not anymore, enough had happened. He’d be by her side, or gone entirely, but not fighting against her.

This time when he caught her around the waist and lifted, she was ready to drive her elbows down at his back, aiming for vertebrae, until he dropped her again. She smacked him across the face in a move that left her hand stinging and spun away to take in her surroundings before facing him again.

A flash of brown in her scan indicated he was backing her towards the rotted wood of the shed they’d chosen to bunk down in; her retreat was running out of room. Lucy realized that a significant portion of the fight depended on their environment in a way that practice fights in the vault didn’t. She’d gotten a taste of it with Monty, the way they’d grappled over table and counters, but in the wastes there was more to contend with than just environmental obstacles.

Her mind worked as surely as her body. A flush had crawled up her chest to her cheeks, and Lucy disciplined herself to suck in even breaths. Closer now, he forced her into another diving roll to escape his lunge, but after that there was no room for retreat. The Ghoul pressed her up against the outer wall of the shed. Lucy pressed the knife she’d grabbed from her boot as she rolled against his throat. His yellowed teeth flashed in a grin. “That’s a good girl.”

Oh. Gosh. She was too busy smiling like a dope and warring with the butterflies in her chest cavity to fight off him prying the knife out from her hand and sticking it into the soft wood by her head. He jerked his head as he released her, and Lucy obediently swiveled around him so they could start up again.

They traded glancing blows back and forth. He was tempering his shots to a degree, probably not wanting to waste another Stim-pak on her, and fighting in a different style than his usual smooth movements. He emulated a brute relying on strength, untrained and confident like the raiders they encountered. Lucy marveled at his ability to embody a physicality so different from his own, how easily he slipped into the role like the one he’d plastered on for strangers and threats, one she’d slowly been allowed to see beneath and beyond. Lucy was grinning outright now even when she caught a blow to the outside of her arm that would surely bruise. She’d always loved the exertion of her physical ed courses in the vault, and this— this buzzed with an electric energy. Even the angry tension had bled off the Ghoul, and he looked, in his quiet way, maybe as amused as she was.

She was having fun. It was startling to realize, and her foot caught a rock on her next step backwards. All the air left her in a huff as she landed flat on her back in the dirt. Great.

The Ghoul chuckled, surely amused at not even having to be the one to knock her down, and took the opportunity presented to come to his knees above her. His went for her throat, warm leather on thin flesh, but it was a mistake since it left her hands free to wrangle at his right elbow as she tangled her right leg with his left. Lucy bucked her hips at the same time as she pushed hard off the ground with her free leg, upsetting his balance.

“The fuck—“ His exclamation ended in a huff as she rolled atop him. Pure heat ate his expression, and with a growl, he sat up and reached for her. Lucy took his wrist and bailed all her weight sideways onto the ground, and thanked her well-trained flexibility for allowing her to get a leg around his shoulder so she could maneuver him into an arm bar. His throat jumped under her calf when he chuckled. “You really are somethin’ else. Ain’t too bad, sweetie.”

Her body hummed with pride. Lucy knew how to leverage physics and biomechanics to her advantage, but sometimes there was no counter for raw strength, especially when she didn’t actually want to hurt him despite having seen his healing abilities up close. Either way, he had enough weight and muscle on her to stagger upwards to kneeling despite the way she wrenched at his arm, and soon she was nearly upside down and forced to give up her grapple to roll away. He caught her by the ankle and dragged her back even when she clipped his forehead with her wildly kicking free leg and she heard a quiet utterance of pain below the scuffle. This time, the Ghoul pinned her more securely with both her wrists in one of his large hands, the other below her chin, and his knees braced on either side of her hips. No amount of her kicking could get her legs anywhere useful.

The wound had sealed thanks to the Stim-Pak, but she doubted any trustworthy medical professional would be telling her to wrestle less than forty eight hours after having her back slashed open. The pressure of him forcing her to the ground against the tender line was bracing. A skittering of sensation-driven goosebumps raced down her arms and a whimper escaped her. She bit off any further distressed moans, but their eyes locked and she saw how his hazel looked when swallowed by dilating pupils.

He loomed over her, and Lucy’s breaths came in ragged from more than the exertion. Sluggish blood welled at the gash her boot had left in his forehead. She knew how that blood tasted. For a moment she had a vivid vision of him dipping down to kiss her. What would the rest of him taste like? The words were out of her mouth before she could properly consider them. “Do you want to have sex?”

The Ghoul jolted off her like she’d spontaneously combusted into flames. His jaw worked open and shut a few times and now he was the one retreating from her. “If this is your weird Vaultie way of apologizing for starin’ last night, I don’t fucking want it.”

“What?” Lucy snapped up to sitting, feeling her face crumple. “No, no! This is a genuine, one-hundred percent, real, sexual proposal stemming from my sexual attraction to you.“

“Me.” He huffed a bitter laugh, set his hat to rights from where it’d become off kilter during their fight. He angled it so the sun behind him enshrouded his face. “Sure. There are— there’re some real things wrong with you.”

“Is that…”

“Ain’t happening, Vaultie.” His voice was rougher than the ground had been against her back.

Oh. Gosh. She was crushed. Her ego was destroyed. She wanted to cry a little bit? Rejection had never stung like that when it came to her previous casual proposals. She’d met Maximus’ rejection with a shrug and blithe smile that was one hundred percent genuine, but right now it felt like a weight crushed into her diaphragm and wanted to crawl up out of her chest. This was not, absolutely not, definitely not, could not be at all related to the— the odd thing she’d momentarily thought when the Ghoul was pulling her from that raider base. No, that was a fleeting silliness driven by the adrenaline of the fight and relief of his rescue and surprise that he’d gone through the trouble. Right now was an emotional reaction spurred by sexual frustration and weeks of unusually high stress. That was all. “I’m sorry, I—

“Forget it, Luce.” The shortening of her name sent shivers down her skin. He’d turned away from her. He cut a stunning silhouette against the sunset.

“But I—“

“I said, forget it.”

Lucy’s mind threatened to unravel.

The long white hallways of the vault undulated like a sidewinding snake, and she had to cling to the very man who’d sent her into a tailspin to stay upright. Her blood throbbed at her temples and she squeezed her eyes shut hard, trusting Cooper implicitly, as she tried to fight through the fog. She’d felt so much clearer at dinner— of course she’d gone and ruined it by drinking too fast. It was fine. It would be fine. As her body digested the food and metabolized the alcohol, she would feel better. It just took time. With a huff, Lucy opened her eyes and forced herself to think, and walk, in as straight a line as possible.

She’d studied enough psychology, though mostly childhood development, through her training to become a teacher that she knew without a doubt that memory was a fallible, fickle thing. Witness statements like detectives saving dames in old pulp movies relied on were nearly useless in reality; the chemical cocktail that stressful situations soaked the brain in only worsened the effect. Humans evolved as pattern-seeking creatures for survival purposes, and now their brains were hard wired to find those patterns even where none existed, and they were highly suggestible to false memories at the slightest prodding. It was why people saw faces in toast; it was why conspiracy theories ran rampant in the old world.

It made sense, that in this unsustainably traumatic situation, her brain would crave the familiarity of a protective figure. She felt so sure that Cooper said some of the very same things the Ghoul had, and it was that exact certainty that made her mistrustful of the notion. A deeply logical part of her knew that certainty of memory was simply not a real thing, and furthermore asked— to what end? Why would it matter if they had similar cadences, a similarly accented voice? The Ghoul was out there, body scarred by radiation and psyche twisted by two centuries of survival. Cooper Howard was in here, untouched and pristinely preserved through those years by cryogenics. Never the twain shall meet.

Lucy walked silently beside Cooper, unable to stop the screaming part of her mind that compared every minutiae of him with the Ghoul as it fought with the logic that questioned why it would mean anything at all. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything, not within the bounds of belief.

But, a traitorous corner of her brain whispered, this world is a far stranger place than she could have ever imagined from her vault.

No. Optimistic naïveté had only hurt her in the wasteland. It would do her no good here, especially when she couldn’t even properly form an idea as to what it was she itched to be optimistic for. Body shifting aliens? Clones? Ridiculous, and far more trouble than the practical explanation that said her mind was reading too deeply into things in the search for comfort.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Lucy said quietly. Cooper had borne her silence with grace, and she’d been so absorbed in her thoughts that she didn’t notice he’d covered the hand she had hooked through his elbow with his own and was rubbing idle circles on the back of her wrist with his thumb until he stopped when she spoke up.

His gaze hot on her face made her glance over to see the mingling curiosity and amusement in his expression. He was so much more handsome in person than he had any right to be. “You see a ghost, Lu?”

Yes.

You.

Lucy shook her head. It dislodged the same stray piece of hair he’d tucked behind her ear earlier. “It’s… things are so strange. My mind is buzzing all the time trying to process it and it’s— it’s exhausting.” A pause. A quiet honesty shaken loose by the blurry edges of drunkenness, of exhaustion and stress. “I feel like I’m falling apart.”

“What’s it you’re finding strange?” He asked, genuine concern in those hazel eyes.

“I…” Lucy crumbled. The things she felt she shouldn’t say seemed less important than being open with the one person by her side. “I feel like I know you.”

An unutterably lovely softness crept over his face. “I feel like I know you, too. I don’t think it’s so strange. Some people, they just fit good together, and it’s a lucky thing to come across one.”

A flush of heat shot through her as her brain short circuited. A weird, strangled giggle escaped her and she stammered when she spoke. “I— that’s, I—“

He squeezed her hand reassuringly, “You’re all het up over adjusting to being here, sure, but it sounds to me like you need to take your mind off things rather than pacing a hole in the floor about them.”

“I’m not very good at that.” Lucy muttered, “Big ole worry-wart, that’s me!”

“Well,” He smiled unevenly, “I’m willin’ to lend a helping hand in that department.”

“O— oh?” Lucy triggered her door open with the ease of a true born vault dweller, never taking her eyes off him. “How so?”

“I gotta few ideas…” With that, he tugged her inside, and she had nothing to say in return because the second the pneumatic door of her apartment exhaled to a close behind them, Cooper whirled Lucy around and pressed her to the metal. He swallowed the sound of surprise she made with his own lips on hers. A guilty part of her expected leather and gunsmoke when he kissed her. That sunken part craved the taste of rotgut and chems and the feeling of rough skin. Instead— he was perfect. He crowded close and kissed her senseless. The stubble on his chin and cheeks scratched at her face but otherwise he was so soft, gentle fingers cupping her waist, soft lips devouring hers. Her head spun with the wine and the taste of the dirty martini on his lips as he licked into her mouth and he was warm versus the cold of the metal door but he wasn’t warm enough and it was all wrong, all wrong—

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time before Lucy came enough to her senses to shove him off her with a gasp. It dropped her a few inches down to the ground since she’d wrapped a knee around his hip like she was preparing to climb him. “What…” She had to blink a few times. His spit slick lips were distracting and he was awfully close. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, thought that’d be obvious.” He pulled that lopsided smirk, but a tight wariness had taken root in his eyes. He touched her cheek. The scared, isolated part of her that had been growing exponentially since waking up here screamed for the comfort of it.

But Lucy was stronger than that part. Lucy studied ethics. This was not ethical. “I— you’re married!”

His shoulders drooped. “Oh, darlin’, Barb doesn’t mind.”

She pressed, gently, at his chest, and he acquiesced in taking a step back. “Your wife? Doesn’t mind?! What the fudge!”

Before he could answer, a message notification beeped at both their pip-boys at the same time. From Barb to the both of them, the same message, one line: Have fun. (:

With a shriek, Lucy wrenched the pip-boy off her wrist, then attacked Coop’s, flinging them both across the room to thunk into the kitchen. He let her. “Are they listening? Always?!”

“They? Listening? Lucy…” The intensity of the genuine concern cresting over his face made her stomach drop. He thought she was crazy.

Maybe she was crazy.

“There’s something wrong here! Can’t you feel it? Don’t you understand?” She’d lost control of the volume of her voice.

“Lucy, you’ve been through hell. You’re stressed, you’re paranoid.” He closed the gap to catch her, and ran his hands down her arms. “There’s nothing wrong with any of it. She knows you’re morally upright, a good girl, probably figured you’d need to hear it from her to believe I’m not some fucking scumbag stepping out.”

Her mind grappled with it all, “But, marital fidelity!?” She ended up saying, though considering all the rest of the situation, that was the most mundane of her concerns.

“Believe me,” Cooper shook his head slowly, “She doesn’t want any kinda perfect fidelity.”

Lucy spluttered. Fine. Alternative marriage arrangements could exist with the consent of both parties so long as no children arise from the union. That didn’t explain anything else.

“There’s something wrong… it’s not right here!” She insisted, squirming when he tugged her closer, but not nearly hard enough to free herself. He tucked her against him, pet her hair with gentle fingers.

“Hey, shh… after combat… it’s hard for the brain to adjust to not being in danger. You been rewired to pick up on every single thing, ‘cause it was keeping you alive.” His heart beat steady beneath her ear. “But you’re safe now, babygirl. Don’t gotta worry about no one listening, or creeping in the shadows to attack you… I know. Psych told me the same damn thing after I got back from Alaska. I know.”

“It’s not right.” She whispered, wrinkling his shirt beneath her desperate grip. Everything felt slowed and intensified all at once; the urgency prickled at her skin in bursts of flame. He had to understand. He had to. “This vault isn’t right.”

“Tell me why you think that.” He pulled back only enough to put a gentle hand beneath her chin and tilt her face up to look at him. “We’ll talk it through and see if we can’t make some sense of it, how’s that?”

“It’s—“ Her mind spun, drunkenly trying to organize the worries she’d felt hard-pressed to justify even when sober. It all sounded silly. Her list. What proof did she have that they were listening? Just her father’s odd behavior, and he’d been on a downward spiral balancing his own set of lies. That they didn’t leave her alone? Lucy wouldn’t leave her alone either if she thought what they thought! And they had. She’d napped, spent her nights alone, she was just too darn tired all the time now to make use of it. Barb being weird? It sounded like she was just a wild control freak and workaholic, which was saying something coming from Lucy, but that didn’t mean she was malicious, besides the whole working for Vault-Tec aspect. Lucy couldn’t trust anything here, she knew that, but did that necessarily mean they were out to get her specifically? They could intend well for her while still destroying the world, case in point being her father. Finally, her brain stuck to the one thing it kept pivoting around. “Sometimes I think I know you. Sometimes I think you say things like him, but—“

His thumb stroked along her jaw as his eyebrows furrowed. “Like who?”

“Him. The Ghoul.”

That made him withdraw. He looked devastated; she hated that she’d put that sadness into his eyes. “I remind you of him? The one that hurt you?”

“He didn’t.” Two words, out her mouth before she could reign it back. “I mean, he did, he did at first, but, fuck—“

“Lucy—“

She cut him off before he could make further note of her unraveling lies. Her hand fluttered up to cover the one he had on her face. She didn’t want him to withdraw anymore, but she needed him to understand. “The stars, we talked about the stars! He said that the light pollution fucked it, that you had to drive to someplace called Joshua Tree to see them.”

“Well… it’s true.” His thumb resumed its gentle stroking, “Haven’t been up to see them lately myself obviously, but back before, couldn’t hardly see a thing unless you left the city. Everyone that’d been around then’d know it.”

She shook her head, and pressed his hand harder against her face, “The—you both said Monty, my husband, that he better be dead!”

The hurt on his face, she’d done that to him. The confusion, the disbelief she dragged him into. “Don’t think that’s such a strange thing to wish on someone that’d hurt you like that.”

“In the exact same phrase!” Lucy felt a pathetic, hopeless prickling at her eyes. The room swayed and dipped like she once imagined it would be like to stand on a boat. “The same way!”

“What’re you trying to say?” Lucy didn’t know. I thought he was you. I don’t know who either of you are now. Then again, did I ever? She shook her head mutely. Cooper cupped her face in both hands now. It made her feel very small. It made her feel like everything inside her and the world around her were much too big, “It doesn’t seem like anything to me. Look, you’re smart. You’re really damn smart. But people ain’t exactly built to remember every damn word of every interaction. Are they?”

“No.” She mumbled. Her next blink spilled a few tears down her cheeks that he swiped away oh so gently. He held her with unbelievable tenderness. Shouldn’t that be evidence enough that they weren’t the same man? Cooper made her heart ache, but he’d never hurt her, couldn’t fathom such a thing.

“Does it scare you— do I scare you ‘cause he scares you?” He was so very earnest that it lodged in her throat.

“No! No…. You don’t scare me at all.” Too much the opposite; just the same. “But it’s uncanny. You’re so much the same and so different, like a warped up mirror.”

“I’m not a mirror, Lucy. I’m just me.” He kissed her forehead and held her there, quiet. Lucy had no more words to summon, no more fight left in her. Nothing made sense. Her reality rendered down to shreds in the face of clear logic. “Lemme get you some water.”

Lucy groaned. She didn’t know what to think. He was right about the similarities. Everything could be explained away so easily. She didn’t think she was wrong about the rest of the vault being odd; she didn’t think she was imagining things. But she was weak, so weak, and tired, and she wanted. Her mind had been a paranoid, twitching whirlwind since waking up here that craved the balm of creature comfort. She burned already: Lucy was flushed and warm with drunkenness and pent up emotion, and she wished that heat came from anywhere else.

So Lucy grabbed his wrists before he could get her that water and this time she surged up for the kiss. And she wasn’t nice about it. She sucked hard at his bottom lip, bit down, brought her hands up to drag her nails along the back of his neck, clutching closer and closer. He responded, at first, groaning into her mouth and his hands slipping back into her hair, and then it was his turn to withdraw. He protested, but it was breathless. “Hey, hey, you’re upset. We’ve got all the time in the world. I wanna talk it out with you, make sure you’re really alright.”

“Cooper.” She ground out, knowing there was something wild in her eyes, “I’m done talking about it. Fuck me. Take my mind off of it. Please.”

And that was enough. His head tipped in one stuttering moment of consideration, then he was on her again, an indelicate and vital kiss, so much more desperate than anything her and Chet ever shared, or her and Monty. This was a psychological transference in the highest degree, muddied with fear and fresh fondness. Lucy let him tip her back against the couch and crouch over her to run his hands up her stockinged legs under the tulle until he came to the line where silk gave way to bare skin. She wrenched her head back, but he merely transferred the sucking kisses to her neck. “Did you— were you the one that picked out my clothes?”

“Barb did.” The press of his lips to her skin muffled his voice.

“Oh. Oh.” It was hard to add that to her list of weirdnesses when he was skimming fingers over the tops of her thighs, when he was nipping at her pulse point and making her jolt. “I should have thanked her.”

They both laughed, the edge of hysteria dominating in hers. When he lifted his head to look at her, Lucy put a hand on his cheek and skimmed fingers over the stubble there, along his smooth cheekbone, to the lines at the corners of his eyes. They really weren’t at all near the same shade as the Ghoul’s. They were so much lighter. Hazel, also, but they pulled pale blue towards the irises. They’d make a pretty show in the sunlight. All silver and gold. She slipped her hand to the back of his neck to pull him up for a kiss.

The kiss slipped slower and tender, and he ran his hand along the skin of her inner thighs, her hips, the boning and fabric covering the lower part of her stomach above the waist of the panties, higher, until the tight bodice of the dress stopped his hand from moving up her ribs to her breasts. His hands were colder than her skin, and his slow exploration of her made her overheated and impatient.

“Gorgeous as this color is on you, I think I’d much prefer you bare. And not havin’ to swim through this shit to get to the prize.” He punctuated it with a squeeze of the taffeta and tulle layers and Lucy giggled breathlessly, nodding, and a moment of awkward arranging followed so she could stand.

She twisted for the zipper, but he was there already, pulling it down much slower than she would have and pressing kisses to the top of her spine. “I could’ve done this much faster.”

“Nah. I’m treating you right, like you deserve.” He’d unzipped enough to push the shoulders of the bodice off her, for his hands to snake around to her front and grope the tops of her tits over the rigid corselette.

Her heart stuttered. She let her head tip back against his shoulder, twisted so her lips brushed his neck. “Better than my husband did?”

“Better’n everyone did, better’n anyone has.” He sounded like he meant it, and she sighed, pressing the line of her body to his and hearing the crinkle of tulle against his dress pants. “That’s right, you’ll take it real sweet, won’t you, baby? You'll make pretty little noises when I fill you up, have you begging on my cock.”

Oh. He was taking his job of distracting her very seriously. No one had ever talked to her like that. Sure, she’d imagined it, but she could never convince Chet to and he probably wouldn’t do well anyways, wouldn’t have this whisky drawl rough in her ear and sliding down her spine in shivery anticipation. Lucy canted her hips back, trying to grind against him only to be impeded by fluff and suddenly she despised the dress. “Rip it.” Screw the vault, screw the play acting soirées like Vault-Tec hadn’t wanted to end the world themselves, screw Barb being so darn ominous. “Rip the dress off me.”

He chuckled, the note of surprise evident but amused, “Yeah?”

“Do it.” The shredding noise of the fabric tearing felt so gratifying on its own that Lucy moaned as the cool circulating air hit her upper back and thighs. He dropped the remains of the dress in a graceless tangle around her feet and took her by the hips and pressed against her and this time she could feel the hardness of him through his suit pants and her shift and, yep, okie dokie, that sure would successfully take her mind off things! “Oh, gosh.”

He sure chuckled at her a lot. Like— no, mind off of him! Lucy pivoted and did a little hop-sidestep-high-kick to fling the dress away. It clattered against something, the noise of a few objects falling to the floor, and that vaguely satisfied her in the same way the tearing of the fabric had. Instead of pondering how surprisingly gratifying destroying Vault-Tec property turned out to be, she dropped the shift from her shoulders and kicked it away as well before flinging her arms around his neck and pulling him back to her. He wasn’t so tall that kissing him hurt her neck with them both standing, but tall enough to make her feel nice and cradled, especially when he hitched his hands under her rear and picked her up so she could wrap both her legs now around his hips and arch into him. He kept one hand kneading at her ass while the other worked one handed at the hook and eye pairs keeping the corselet fastened shut until it came undone, wrenched it free from the simple clasps tethering it to the stockings, and was tossed the way of the dress.

Cooper tipped her back onto the couch and seemed determined to cover every inch of her with his mouth. He left wet kisses down the flat of her sternum, sucked a nipple into his mouth to her shuddering moan. His tongue flicked along the bud and then licked the surprisingly sensitive outer swell of her breast. When Lucy squeaked, he focused his efforts there, biting what surely would leave a mark and making her squirm desperately. She was taking shuddering breaths by the time he moved on, pressing a kiss to her stomach, her hipbone, lower, lower, and—

“Oh,” Lucy watched him retreat down her body with a furrow between her brows.

Cooper glanced up at her mournful little exclamation with surprise, then put a finger on the lower lip she’d pushed out in a pout. Lucy couldn’t help but dart her tongue at it to watch the way his eyes flickered. “If you’re not a fan of this particular—“

“No, no! It’s only, if you do that, you can’t keep talking to me.”

“Does sorta necessitate my mouth being otherwise occupied. That a problem?” Said mouth pulled slowly into a smugly teasing smile.

“I like how you’re talking to me. It’s very arousing. I’ve fantasized about it thinking it would be nice but never experienced it, and, wow, it is!” The words rushed out without her permission. The outpouring of emotion earlier and her loose tongue now were glaring clues that the wine was still very much present in her system, but she wanted to not care.

That time he snorted, but the glint in his eyes didn’t make her feel self-conscious. It was warm. Fond, even. Which was yet another silly thing to think about during an explicitly sex-only rendezvous with a man she’d known for about a week. “Well, I’ll try and ensure you like this at least as much, and if it’s not doin’ it for you, it ain’t like I’m going far.”

Lucy giggled. The push and pull of playfulness and teasing felt natural. She could focus exclusively on him and the feelings he ignited in her body and shove all the fear from her mind. If she was lucky, they could burn it with the heat between their bodies. “You could rip the panties too.”

The view of him smirking up at her from between her legs was very nice. “Bossy little thing, aren’t you?”

“Is that bad?” Lucy asked with a croon.

“Hell no. But nothin’ wrong with being bad, either.” As if to emphasize that, he ripped the thin fabric of her underwear as requested and she shuddered, far too happy about frivolous property destruction. Lucy of a month ago would have said there was never a good reason to destroy perfectly good clothes; Lucy of now seemed to be developing a sexual complex for ruining Vault-Tec’s products in any way possible.

He ran a knuckle teasingly along the seam of her, dipping just deep enough to feel her need. “Look at that, gorgeous pussy and so wet for me already. You been waiting for this, haven’t you?”

She made a strangled sort of noise, then tried to salvage it. “See, it’s, it’s nice. The talking. Your talking. Your voice, oh gosh. I don’t wanna think— about anything. Nothing but you. Please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” With a wink, he dove in. He knew what he was doing, that was for darn sure. The first kisses he pressed were to the insides of her thighs, and they stayed there until she whined low in her throat and tangled both hands in his hair to try and tug him nearer where she needed. She felt the brief huff of his laugh, and then his mouth was on her, two fingers spreading the lips of her cunt so he could attack her throbbing clit with his flattened tongue. Lucy almost jerked away at the suddenness, but he’d slung his other arm over her hips and levered her down. He forced her unmoving while he devoured her, taking her apart in a steady, unhurried pace. The strength in that motion alone had her dripping.

She’d been taut like a bowstring of nerves for weeks now, but he allowed her no room to think of anything except the attention he lavished on her, and he learned her, an efficient student in focusing on the places and intensity of suction that made her thighs tremble where they braced around him, heels digging into his back to press closer, closer. He worshiped her with his mouth like he wanted to devour her, like he wanted to take her apart at a molecular level and she wanted, needed him to. She needed to not be who she was, where she was, worried incessantly about what was and was not.

“Cooper, Cooper, mmm, oh gosh, oh—“ Lucy lost track of anything leaving her mouth, just tangled her fingers in his soft hair and keened. “Please, I’m almost—“

“C’mon, baby, let go for me.“ As sad as it was for his tongue to leave her for even a second, he had such a lovely voice. He traced a finger around her aching entrance. Her hips bucked, or tried to, chasing the sensation, wanting more, but he held her down, and after tightening her thighs, futilely trying to draw him closer, she forced herself to still. “That’s it, relax and I’ll make you feel good, have you screamin’. Make you forget your own damn name.”

A thick finger slipped into her then, eased by the glide of her own want, and it wasn’t enough, not nearly, but it felt so good combined with the hard press of his tongue against her clit, and when he added a second and started thrusting in time, Lucy felt the rush of sensation take her. She choked off a shout that died into a whimper with grit teeth as the pulsing shockwaves trembled through her. He worked her through it, slowing to just shy of too much, then easing off when she made a noise. Opening her eyes gave Lucy the teenage fantasy sight of Cooper Howard between her thighs, her wetness on his lips that curved into his lopsided little smile. “Oh. Gosh.” Her head fell back onto the arm of the couch. She felt more than heard his chuckle, then his shifting as he came to lean above her.

Taking his sweet time, Cooper touched her lips with the same fingers he’d just had inside her. Her mouth opened instinctively, tongue darting out to sample the musky taste. He watched, rapt, pupils blown, and stroked along the middle of her tongue before withdrawing and using those fingers to take her chin in his hand, making very intent eye contact with her. “Gonna wanna hear you when you come for me next time.” Wide eyed, she only nodded her agreement. “Now—“

Lucy mustered up all her energy to push him backwards to sitting and clambered onto his lap, “Inside, I want to feel you inside me.”

He chuckled. “Much obliged, Lu. Ain’t a hardship at all.”

She laughed breathlessly with him and sunk forward into a deliciously gooey long kiss and rocked against him before realizing he was still completely dressed and she was getting the front of his suit pants wet. “Oh, wait. Clothes. You shouldn’t have those.”

He played up the glance down himself, like he was also only just noticing, though things undoubtedly could not be comfortable with that belt on considering the hardness she felt beneath her. “Huh, wouldya look at that.”

That made her laugh again, but she didn’t want to get off of him, instead for the moment working at undoing the buttons of his shirt. Luckily, he’d done some of the job for her even before dinner. “You missed a few of these. It was distracting.”

“You were distracting.” He kissed her neck.

“Who even dresses like this for polite dinner?” She wondered aloud, smoothing hands along the expanse of muscular chest as she revealed it. Gosh, muscles. He was so lean and smooth.

Lucy did not think of bare glimpses of exposed clavicle bone.

“You basically weren’t wearing a shirt.” Lucy continued, and he nipped at her pulse point to make her squirm. Eventually, she ran out of buttons and with a grumble, had to slip off of him; but the buzzy anticipatory pleasure of watching him strip his pants and boxers wasn’t so bad after all. And to see— “Ohhh. Oh. Holy moly.”

He laughed at her while taking his stupidly gorgeous, large and erect cock in hand to stroke. She leaned forward. “I wanna taste—“

Cooper made a vaguely strangled noise, but manhandled her so he could take a seat on the couch, then maneuver her on her knees atop him. She was practically squirming already. “As much as I’d also like that, I made a commitment to distract you and I’m takin’ it seriously.”

“And make me forget my name.“ He held her hips, but Lucy took the initiative to skim fingers along said stupidly gorgeous, large and erect cock and nudge it toward just the right spot for her to grind down against him.

His head tipped back with a groan. She watched his throat work as she shivered, licking her lips. “High expectations.”

“You’re the one that said it.” Lucy ducked forward to mouth at the curve of his jaw. “So are you going to?”

“I’ll sure try my damnedest.”

There was something…. Something she was forgetting. There was a reason she hadn’t done this until Monty. “Oh, shoot, do you have a—“

“Got that, uh, taken care of. Barb only ever wanted one and I didn’t want her to be worryin’ bout it.”

“Oh. Okie dokie!” With that, the fingers that had previously only skimmed took a firmer grip on him to slowly guide the way into her. His hands flexed at her hips, fingers indenting into soft flesh as she ducked her forehead to rest against his and let her eyes flutter shut. It felt so good. Each inch of him stretched her, stoked the throbbing need that pounded at her nerves. She was so full, so in her own body, so happily floating on the waves of wine and orgasm. With his cock fully seated in her, Lucy hummed a noise of pleasure and rocked her hips without rising up so she could grind against his pelvis. “Ohh, that’s so good, Cooper.”

He licked the skin of her neck, catching the sweat gathering and making her shudder. “Fuck, dripping wet, just for me.”

An experimental lift and drop forced him so deep in her that Lucy thought she might choke on it, but also instantly revealed the toll the medical coma and last week of idleness had on her. She wasn’t sure how many of those her thighs could manage. She’d been— on the gymnastics team! A fencer! She walked two hundred and seventy miles through a hostile desert to get here! It was such a stunning revelation in its simplicity that it made her breath hitch, reopening the floodgates she’d shoved her fear behind. The tears shuddered forth renewed and she blinked them down her cheeks in a sudden silence punctuated only by her distressed breathing.

His hands immediately went to her face so he could look her in the eye. “Lu? Lucy! Are you okay? You wanna stop?”

“No!” She wailed, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing closer. “It’s just— I just wanna, I wanna bounce on your cock but my stinking thighs are all weak!”

The choking noise he made would probably be funny in hindsight. As it was, her panic only leveled when he held her tight and bucked up into her. The breath of his soft chuckle brushed through her hair. “Hey, it’s alright, ain’t a problem, I got you, sweetheart.”

He stood, still inside her, changing the angle and depth so thoroughly that Lucy squeaked as she instinctively tangled her shaky legs around his hips. She was about to inform him this only made things more difficult, but then he walked to press her against a wall and she no longer cared if she looked like an illustration of a damp koala clinging to a sexy tree because gosh.

“How bout you just hang on for the ride, that alright?”

“Mm, mhm!” With her enthusiastic consent and his grip firm on her bottom, Cooper thrust up into her, letting gravity and his own legs do the work as the wall supported her. There was an experimental beat before he hooked an elbow under her knee to draw her leg up higher and, holy moly, he was going to tear her in half like this. “Ohh, oh yeah, okay, yep, fuck me, please, please fuck me!!”

He didn’t need more urging. Her frantic motions encouraged him to establish a punishing pace straightaway, and she was practically bouncing, just like she wanted, his thick cock splitting her open and rubbing deliciously inside her. He’d found a beautiful angle for hitting her sensitive front wall and his rhythm was darn near mechanical with how perfect it was. There was no awkward stuttering, slowing or adjusting, just letting him work her into a frenzy.

Lucy clawed a hand at his shoulder, nails digging hard into his skin, but she wasn’t contributing to keeping herself up so much as holding on for dear life as he fucked the thought out of her. Her other hand braced wildly behind her, first bent above her head, then out to her side where she inadvertently sent a Vault-Tec standard decorative art piece clattering to the ground. She moaned louder. Everything blurred into heat and sensation, and if cognizant enough to supply an answer, she’d have said the moment could not get anymore scorching hot.

She’d be wrong, because he scooped the hand she’d dug into his shoulder along with the flailing one into his own and pinned her wrists above her head against the wall. Trapped, in the loosest sense, helpless but to take the way he fucked into her. Lucy couldn’t even properly appreciate how strong he was because her eyes were rolling back into her head and she couldn’t do anything but ride and enjoy the breathless words he poured into her ear. “So fucking— beautiful, yeah, baby, you gonna come for me? Gonna let me hear how fucking gorgeous you sound when you come on my cock?”

Lucy hadn’t not been making noise, but his urging had her breaking from moans into a verbal incoherency, “Yes, please, harder, hard, and deep, yes, juuust like that, feels so good, don’t stop, please—“

It was less a scream of his name and more a drawn out wail, but semantics hardly mattered when she was coming so forcefully that everything blurred around the edges and drowned out in light bright pleasure. Her body wasn’t her own, pulsing around the feeling of him finishing inside her and sending wave after wave of tingling sensation to her fingers and toes. Her mind wasn’t much better off, thoughts droned out in a low buzz of satisfaction. Lucy drifted, feeling remarkably safe and steady in his arms, until she slowly floated back to earth, feeling so desperately over sensitive that she somehow wanted to crawl out of her own skin and melt into him eternally at the same time. Eventually, she blinked open her eyes and lifted her head from his shoulder to look at Cooper.

“There you are, baby, you remember your name?”

“Mm. Lucy. Goosey.”

“Well fuck, guess I gotta give it another go sometime.”

She sucked in a surprised laugh. Given all other circumstances, she’d gladly lose her mind to him as opposed to the other threats to her sanity.

She ended up clean and in the bed, with her last vestige of clothing, the stockings, finally removed, though Lucy couldn’t possibly enumerate the steps that had gotten her there. Orgasms pulled forcefully out of her, she’d been fucked into a boneless, sated mess. Her overactive mind slowed. It was the most relaxed she’d felt since before applying for the marriage exchange. Everything in her life since then had been ever-present tingling nerves, but now, for a brief period of bliss, her body and mind quieted.

Lucy laid with her face on Cooper’s bare chest, her right hand tangled with his left where he held it above them and twisted it this way and that, examining the seam of skin between her hand and the necrotic finger. He rubbed his thumb along the divide. “Not frostbite.” He recalled, to her answering affirmative hum, “What, then?”

“I bit off the Ghoul’s so he cut mine to make it even.” Lucy yawned, “I got the new one a few minutes later from a Mr. Handy that was trying to steal my organs.”

Cooper sounded much more present in the moment than she did, and highly skeptical. “He cut your finger off but he don’t scare you no more.”

“Well… not anymore, no. Things changed.” At the observatory. Lucy could pinpoint the exact moment that the world had rearranged itself to put them in the same corner.

He asked the obvious. “Why lie?”

“My father… I realized he was lying. I needed to figure it all out before I contradicted that.”

“Wait, lying about what?”

“Me being taken away by the Ghoul. My dad left me.” The words dropped from her tongue like wasteland sand through her fingers. “Because I— I was going to shoot him.” Lucy had become a pressure cooker of a girl, fueled and heated by paranoia and uncertainty, and now, tired and drunk and fucked out, things were slipping from her control. Her voice dropped to a throaty whisper. “I followed him here so we could kill him.”

Cooper went utterly still beneath her. “Lucy—“

“He killed my mom.” She whispered, desperate to prove it to him, desperately for him to know. Lucy shifted up to look him in the eyes. “It was Vault-Tec.”

His face twisted in confusion, “What’s that? What was?”

She sucked in a breath. Then said it the same way it had been told to her. “They wanted to drop the bombs themselves.”

Cooper’s face went very blank. He shook his head. “That… can’t be right.”

“It is.” Her nails dug little half moons into his chest.

He was still shaking his head. “How’d you know?”

“The Ghoul said— he told me.” She pressed her nose to his shoulder, whispered the secret into his skin, “And I trust him.”

But that wouldn’t be enough for someone who hadn’t met him, someone who still had all the reason to believe him to be a monster. Surely Cooper had noticed, though, all the strangeness here? He knew something was off, he had to, he’d shown her Development on purpose—

“Have you ever questioned the… nature of what they do here?” Cooper said nothing, only held her tighter to himself. When he didn’t speak up, she decided to worry about whether he believed her later. That was right. She could make a plan. She could show him the truth, he could help her… one last attempt. Withdrawing her head to the pillow beside his, she stole his move and tilted his chin towards her. Her eyes were wide as she fixed him with a pleading look. “Believe me. Please.”

He stared at her for a long moment. She couldn’t read him. Eventually, he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, then ran those fingers down her cheek. Cooper sighed, but looked indecisive. “I don’t know, Lu. It’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“What if I could prove it? If I can find the answers and show you.” It was what she’d come here for, and she needed to be taking advantage of the fact that she was inside without anyone shooting at her. If she could win Cooper to her side at the same time…

“Then we’d be having a different discussion.” He said it almost dismissively, but she didn’t think he was, not with the way he looked at her like she maybe did hold the secrets he’d never even considered existed. “Go to sleep, hun. You look tired.”

Satisfied enough with that, and bone tired, Lucy slipped away into the first sleep since arriving here that felt earned. She dreamed that night of Cooper, of the Ghoul, of touch and truth and trust. Of captivity. She dreamt of the Ghoul rescuing her from the raider camp, except this time she was still caged when he found her, and when she blinked it was Cooper who stood on the other side of the bars coming to be her savior. Then it was him on the ground, chained in the cage instead of her, and her fingers shook as she picked the lock.

Wakefulness shuddered to her in fits, and she felt as near to drowning as she had in the lake they’d found on that last day of their travels. Spluttering and overwhelmed in a panic that she only knew one way to chase away. Lucy straddled Cooper and rode him until her thighs burned and her atrophied muscles gave up on her, until he rolled her to her back and wrenched another two orgasms from her before spilling onto her stomach.

She couldn’t find the words to speak outside soft hums and nods, even when he led her to the shower to clean them both off and she redressed in her slip, recovered from where it had landed atop the television, unable to imagine dressing in a vault suit. He didn’t say anything about what she’d said the night before. Not a word.

Cooper stayed to make her breakfast. That was somehow more guilty than the intercourse. Scrambled reconstituted eggs with fried cram cubes Instead of eating, Lucy pushed the scramble around her plate, plagued by the edges of her paranoia pushing back in. She didn’t ask about the standard breakfast meeting, and soon enough it occurred to her that it was a Saturday. How odd. The days of the week hadn’t mattered in the wastes, and there wouldn’t be room for rest even on a weekend.

Lucy wondered about the emotional ramifications of relieving sexual tension with a person she would be barred from having a full relationship with due to legality as opposed to genetics. Her and Chet never would have gone anywhere, so she simply did not become attached in that way. He, obviously, had failed to do so, but Lucy was practical. Alternative marriage arrangements between consenting parties aside, sleeping with a married man was not practical beyond temporary relief and companionship. If that was all it was, maybe it would be okay. Except for how she liked being by his side, except for how she liked talking with him, and maybe trusted him, and maybe relied on him far too much to help her sort through the looming chaos of it all.

“Not hungry?” He looked worried.

“No, I had plenty last night.” She offered a smile, trying to express that she meant it genuinely, “Dinner was really delicious, by the way. I should’ve said earlier.”

“Thanks,” That chagrined look from when he thought she didn’t want to eat the food he’d prepared made a reappearance, “I gotta confess— got a little distracted and burnt the one meant for you. Ended up swapping your plate and mine, hope it wasn’t too rare for your taste, I mighta over corrected in the wrong direction.”

“Oh,” Lucy managed a half-hearted laugh, “I’ve eaten… things I would not have previously called edible, I don’t think I would have noticed if it was or wasn’t. I have no baseline for comparison, but it was yummy!”

He kissed her goodbye with a charming smile. It wasn’t until he left and the lingering sleep and post-orgasmic haze faded that Lucy realized she’d made a series of very grave mistakes.

Chapter Text

It only took four days in the Mojave before she admitted that, yes, staying in the vault suit was a bad idea. Not only did it mark her as an easy target, though she wasn’t, not anymore and especially not with the Ghoul and Dogmeat beside her, but it was hot and stifling and the synthetic fabric clung onto sweat and odor like that was its vault assigned job and it wanted high marks on its performance review. She’d never noticed, with a rotating cycle of them and practically unlimited washing machine access, but now, being in the same one for days on end and getting it covered in gore and sweat and mysterious bug innards? Now, it was bad. Lucy was fairly certain she smelled worse than both the dog and the cowboy, which was saying something. “Sir? Where could I, um, acquire new clothing?”

“Easiest option’s strippin’ something mostly intact offa corpse.” The Ghoul chuckled low at the noise she made following that suggestion. “We’re comin’ up on a settlement. Could buy yerself something.” He tilted his head back towards her so she could see the edge of his smirk. “If’n you got the caps, that is.”

“The new currency?” That much she’d gleaned already. They used the pre-war money she recognized from movies as kindling. “How would I get them?”

“Pretty girl like you?” He put on the purposefully leering swagger he liked when he wanted to make her uncomfortable, “I gotta few ideas, ones that’d also keep you from yappin’…”

“While I am not wholly opposed to offering sexual favors for money and have gotten very good recipient reviews on my fellatio,” The Ghoul’s steps faltered before picking back up faster. The interruption and change in the rhythmic pattern of his spurs emphasized his stutter in motion. Lucy had to jog a few steps to keep her standard place six feet behind him, but she counted it as a win and smiled to herself. “I would prefer to start with less intimate services for the sake of my oral hygiene.”

He huffed, but said nothing else in the rest of the walk to the settlement, leaving her to figure out how to find a job all on her own. No problem! Lucy took in the ramshackle town ringed by train cars before marching over to the same guard that had let them in with a lazy flick of his remarkably inventive pipe rifle. The spurs of the Ghoul followed behind her.

“Hi! Hello! I’m looking to earn caps— I can fix things. Generators, water pumps, terminals.” She declared, felt critical hazel eyes on the side of her face. “Is there anything that needs fixing in town? I’ll happily trade for water, food, or new clothes if you don’t have caps on hand.”

“That true?” He directed the question at the Ghoul, which was very demeaning and dismissive and Lucy opened her mouth up to protest when he continued. “Your… girly good at repairin’ shit?”

“She can handle a pipe or two.” He drawled out, making the man laugh and a blush creep up her neck. Lucy meant to set the record straight, really, but then she felt the possessive pressure of a leather gloved hand at her hip any protest died in her throat. Were they leaning into the assumption? He must have a reason to do so, if they were. She… trusted that. Him. Enough to stay silent, for now.

“Check in with the bar down the way, think they were havin’ trouble with their still.” The guard jerked his head deeper into town. The Ghoul lurked behind her to her like a shadow and Dogmeat bounded around their feet as they followed the direction down the main path.

“Don’t look so sour, Vaultie.” He said over her shoulder. “They think you’re mine and no one’ll be inclined to fuck with you.”

Lucy made a face around the weird shiver that phrase sent down her spine. It was another of those things he surely only partially meant, like calling her sweetheart. Someone messing with her would inevitably cause delays, though only should he choose to intervene. Truthfully— Lucy wasn’t sure if he’d go through the trouble or not. The ounce of prevention must seem worth the theoretical pound of cure for now.

They walked the rest of the way in silence until reaching the saloon. The bartender was a ghoul, more on the Roger side of decay than Lucy’s companion, that greeted them and introduced herself as Samantha with a soft-spoken manner and perked up at Lucy’s offer to take a look at their still in exchange for caps. Seemingly satisfied with the arrangement, the Ghoul tipped his hat at her.

“Gon’ go get some other shit. Meetcha back here round sunset.” Dogmeat trotted after him, which gave the Ghoul pause. After a moment of consideration, he whistled and pointed at Lucy, and the dog switched directions to instead sit by her. Oh. She’d barely had time to register the surprising squirming nervousness at being alone for the first time in days before he’d taken care of it. She nodded at him, face open in a curious look, and then he was gone.

“Alright, Dogmeat,” A quick tour down the hall found Lucy squatted down by the still with several problems jumping out at her immediately, “Let’s earn some caps!”

The billowy pants she picked out at the adjacent general store two hours later were linen, with deep pockets, and had the fun benefit of looking like a skirt when she stood still, which was really a benefit only in that it allowed her to pretend she looked like a brave frontier woman, especially in combination with the shawl she purchased to cover her hair and the wide collared shirt.

A precious few of her remaining caps were traded right back to Samantha for a lukewarm Nuka Cola (she did not ask how old it was) and a skewer of grilled meat (she did not ask what animal of origin it was). Lucy sat enjoying her meal, sharing some of the meat with Dogmeat, hoping she wasn’t abetting the dog engage in canine-cannibalism, and savored the feeling of being inside and relatively safe. That feeling, as so often was in the wastes, didn’t last very long.

The feeling of being watched pressed at the edges of her awareness, and Lucy tried to subtly look around at the other patrons. More had filtered in the later in the day it got. Most seemed to be scavengers and hard scrabble ranchers, but the one she caught studying her, a large red headed man, was different. His protective leathers and the spiked metal haphazardly covering various bits of his muscular body stood out amongst the shabby beiges and browns and homespun fabrics of the rest of the saloon’s clientele. It screamed raider, even to her untrained eye, but none of the other patrons were giving him strange looks, and surely even in the wasteland people didn’t start fights in otherwise sedate saloons? When their eyes met, Lucy offered a friendly smile before turning back to her meal.

Maybe he was curious! Lucy didn’t have the suit on to mark her as distinctive anymore, but he could have seen her around town before she’d changed. She refused to worry about it, until the sound of heavy footsteps approaching preceded the man sitting down on the barstool beside her. Okay, some worry. Not too much, given the locale and Dogmeat at her feet and the .45-70 tucked at her hip. She smiled, again, and didn’t even flinch with unease when his returning smile revealed both missing and rotted teeth. After all, when there wasn’t enough water for drinking, using some for hygiene probably seemed excessive. Didn’t that prove she was becoming well adjusted to the wasteland? The Ghoul should see her now! Conversing with a local! Well– “Hi! I’m Lucy.”

“Lyle.” He seemed remarkably pleasant, despite her initial snap judgment. The drawl in his voice wasn’t as whisky-smooth as the Ghoul’s, but he wasn’t looking at her like she was meat, or a threat, and the smile lingered. “Heard you’re the one that don’ fixed the, uh, whatcha…”

“The still!” Lucy perked up even further, eager to share helpful knowledge, “We didn’t have any like it back home, but it functions identically to a simple water purification distiller like we learned about in our survival guides. Not as efficient as a reverse osmosis filtration system, but far easier to assemble with found parts. There were a few simple fixes to be made with the fittings on the joints and the angle of the collection reservoir relative to the boiling chamber. Anyway, it’s back in business now!”

His focus sharpened on her while she spoke, and Lucy felt proud that he actually seemed impressed. “Wow, didn’t think you could be smarter than you are pretty lookin’.”

Okay, so maybe there was a smidge of objectification. Still, that was overall a compliment, she was fairly sure. “Oh! How– sweet! Thank you?”

They made somewhat stilted conversation with Lucy avoiding any identifying information about where they were headed and what they sought, until she heard the distinctive jingle of the Ghoul’s spurs come through the door. Immediately turning away from Lyle, Lucy hopped down to her feet and spun with arms spread wide, weirdly eager to show off her new-to-her clothes.

He looked at Lyle first. He looked at Lyle, only, actually, in that sharp and discerning way that he sized up the rare stranger they passed in the wastes. Lucy hastened to start introductions.

“Oh! This is Lyle. Lyle, this is…” Her arm waved in the direction of the Ghoul and she gave him a teasing look. “Well, he said he’d cut off a piece of me if I made up a name for him, and I don’t know his real one, so I can’t do a real introduction.”

Now neither of them looked at her, locked in a stare off. “No worries miss, I think I know about this one.”

Dogmeat nudged up against the side of her thigh, perhaps sensing the increase in tension. Lucy automatically pet the top of her head, “You know each other?”

“We don’t.” The Ghoul continued eyeing him up, then seemed to make a decision and jerked his head. “Scram.”

A terse moment passed and then Lyle was ambling away with a far more relaxed smile than people threatened by the Ghoul usually had. Lucy pursed her lips and waved. “Goodbye! It was nice to meet you!”

“We ain’t here to make friends, Vaultie.” He chided her while watching the large man’s back as he walked back to his own table.

“I know. I was just being nice. There’s plenty of people here, I have my gun, and Dogmeat. I was safe. I’m not totally hopeless at adjusting.” Her arms crossed in front of her chest as she defended herself, but she knew that was a closed off gesture that didn’t contribute positively to an open discussion, so she forced herself to relax them, and again struck up the pose to show off her outfit. “I even changed clothes!”

He finally looked at her. His gaze skipped down from her eyes to the collarbones exposed by the wide neck of her blouse, to where it tucked into the belted waist of her billowy pants. He let out a low whistle between his teeth. “Wouldya look at that, she ain’t a walking billboard no more.”

Lucy swiveled her hips side to side. “I look like Andrea King in A Man and his Dog!”

That made him pause. She wondered if he didn’t get the reference despite his definitely having seen Man from Deadhorse. Finally, he ducked his head in a nod. “S’pose you do.”

“I thought I’d be sadder about finally changing. Giving up that last bit of familiarity.” Lucy admitted before smiling. “But it feels good to be out of their clothes and choose for myself.”

“Would you two like a room for the night?” Samantha asked in her low, rasping alto.

The Ghoul spared her a quick glance before returning his focus to Lucy. “Nah, we best be on our way.”

His eyes lingered on her, and the corner of his ragged lips twitched into a barely-there smile as he gestured her out the door. He brushed his gloved hand against her hip in that same possessive gesture as they made their way out of town.

Lucy drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her shins, and tried not to scream. She managed to not scream for five full minutes of mindless panic, then stood woodenly, fetched her Pip-Boy, and worked on finishing the data mining program. The fervor of dread itched on her skin and twitched through her fingers. She made more typos in her code than she ever had in her entire life before now, but she doggedly fixed and iterated and reiterated until she’d finished.

When she was as certain as she could be that the script would work, she sent an invitation over the internal vault communication system that was quickly accepted. Lucy splashed water on her face, cleaned the glass from the fallen picture frame off the floor, reluctantly changed into a vault suit, and stared at the kitchen with its shiny metallic array of state of the art Handy Helper Arms and its lovely mid century appliances. She hadn’t experimented with the arms, all her meals being boxed or prepared for her, and in her observation of him, Cooper preferred doing his chopping on his own. She’d really only seen them working in movies since thirty three didn’t have them; maybe she should set aside some time to see if any useful mechanics could be salvaged out of them.

Then again, after her experience in the Super Duper, Lucy didn’t particularly want to be that close to knife-wielding Mr. Handy arms, disembodied or not. She decided against a snack. Though her stomach complained at the breakfast she hadn’t eaten, she didn’t feel like going through the trouble. Or having sugar bombs on an otherwise empty stomach. Yuck. She did, however, venture into the kitchen to tuck a knife in the inside lining of her suit’s waistband.

The door alerted. Janey was here.

It was more and less awkward than she anticipated. Janey gave her that perfectly trained smile and Lucy responded in kind, but once they ran out of the standard niceties of greetings and were both sitting on the couch, they stared at each other in silence.

”I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said— about your dad’s and yours stories of the last day being different.” Lucy said finally, figuring she should just jump on in. There was something in the expression on Janey’s face. Enough for Lucy to risk pressing. Lucy leaned close, wide and intent. She needed to know, she needed to find someone to ally with. “Do you know? What’s going on here?”

“Of course I do. My mom helps observe and manage the network of other vaults and above ground operations to ensure Vault-tec’s projects proceed smoothly.” Janey’s voice had a smile; her face didn’t. Her and Lucy shared a long look before her eyes trailed deliberately from her own Pip-Boy to Lucy’s. She tapped her ear.

Oh. Fudge.

Fudge!

A riot of worms writhed in her stomach as cold pinpricks of dread skated over her skin. Her instinct had been right. They were being listened to. And Cooper had dismissed it. He’d dismissed it, and he’d had sex with her and distracted her from her suspicions. If one worry was correct, how many of the others were? Lucy pressed a hand hard to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. She allowed herself ten heartbeat’s worth of terror before forcibly doing everything she could to yank herself back together.

Okay, okay, okay! She could manage this. Norm would manage better, but it was just her. Just her. Lucy swallowed, then nodded frantically and stood.

“That’s wonderful. Vault-tec’s always been a shining example. I owe them my life, my happy childhood... Do you want tea, coffee, sugar bombs?” Lucy stood and walked as quietly as possible to the radio. “I think I mentioned last night, I’m a teacher. I taught history in the vault, I’d really like to hear more about your schooling here.” Her voice pitched unnaturally high and she made a rolling gesture with her finger before prying open the bottom cover of the radio with her fingernail. Janey nodded, curls bouncing around her young face, and she started on at length about her management training and private tutoring while Lucy worked at dismantling and rewiring and poking at the radio and connecting it to her Pip-Boy. Her hands shook so badly she almost dropped both. It took longer than she’d have wanted to figure out how to get what she planned to work, but Janey played along, and kept talking with Lucy’s input limited to hums and murmurs of agreement every now and then.

Eventually, she flipped a switch on the radio and both girls winced as a piercing noise shrieked through the room. After hastily fiddling with the knobs, it settled to a low drone with the soaring tones of Nat King Cole’s Orange Colored Sky playing over. Janey handed her own Pip-Boy over when Lucy gestured for it, and the rewiring on that one went quicker now that she had the practice. She set them both on the coffee table. “Okie dokie… I think that should work. Of course, we won’t know entirely for sure until— oh my gosh!”

Janey started sobbing.

Lucy darted over without hesitation. She sat on the couch beside the girl, putting an arm around her shoulder and drawing her close, other hand pressing to her temple. Janey leaned against her with a great, shuddering gasp.

“Take your time, take your time…” Suddenly deeply grateful for all her time teaching that gave her experience comforting kids, and feeling like she’d stepped into something much more unstable than she’d expected, Lucy simply sat with Janey, hugging her and making comforting noises. The song trailed to a bittersweet end, and Civilization featuring the Andrews Sisters came and went with a dissonant cheerfulness before she spoke again.

“I know there’s— there’s a lot wrong here, but I won’t know exactly unless you tell me. And, once you tell me, I— we can… we’ll try and fix things.” She finished lamely. Fixing things was an easier proposition when her student’s problems revolved around poor grades, unsavory volunteer shifts, or hormonally fueled teenage interpersonal disputes as opposed to… whatever this was. Worldwide and centuries old schemes by evil corporations intent on rebuilding the world as they liked.

“It’s crazy. You’ll think I’m crazy.“ She sniffled, ducking her head away from Lucy. “My mom always says I dreamt it all.”

Her heart broke. “I don’t think so. I have an open mind. I’ve been through— a lot, recently, too. I’ve seen plenty of crazy things for myself. I won’t think you are.”

“It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense.” Janey echoed the worries that rattled around Lucy’s own mind.

“I’ve thought… the exact same thing since I’ve been here. Can I tell you something? Janey?“ Withdrawing so she could look her in the eyes, Lucy gently brushed off the tears tracking down Janey’s face, cupping her cheeks for a moment in soft reassurance. She stared at her for a long moment, well aware she was about to do what had been done to her, and without the benefit of first hand evidence. What else could she do, at this point? “Vault-tec is not good.” She paused, to see how Janey reacted, and when she didn’t immediately protest as Lucy once would have, she continued. “I learned that while I was out there. I learned it myself, and from different people, different groups. I saw it. Vault-tec will use people, hurt them, experiment on them… I grew up in a vault, too, and it was hard for me to accept because they were all I knew. And that makes sense, to have those feelings. But I’ve seen enough to know it’s true. So… now that you know that, does it still seem crazy? Do you think you can share?”

Janey shrugged wordlessly, shaking her head, but Lucy could see how near breaking she was. “Please? Tell me, and we’ll figure it out together.”

“He— he isn’t, he’s not— he’s not my dad.” Janey’s voice cracked on the last word.

Lucy’s blood ran cold. A beat passed.

Teacher instinct stepped back into control to cover the lack of any other ideas. Her voice came out slowly. “What do you mean by that, Janey?”

“It’s not him!” The girl wailed, and Lucy readied herself for giving another song’s worth of gentle comfort. She recognized she might be bursting at the seams with needing to learn, but this was Janey’s life, and it may very well have been the first time she felt safe enough to say this out loud.

“Okay, like I said, just, take your time.” It took another stretch for her to cry herself out, but Lucy understood that was sometimes all that could be done. It was hard enough being a teenager in a vault, let alone this one. As she sat holding Janey, her mind filtered back to the drunken thoughts she’d shunted out of believability. Alien shape-shifters, clones, it was like something out of those pulp sci fi radio shows Norman enjoyed. It all seemed like fiction, so what was the truth?

“I remember—“ Janey’s voice was weak, quiet, and stuffy with tears when she spoke up again. It was a good sign, she hoped, that Lucy hadn’t had to do more prodding. “The day it happened. They took me, took me from him. From his arms. Everyone was shouting. They left him out there!” Her words disintegrated into a heartbreaking sputter. “When I woke up I was still crying and, and, screaming, and the last thing I remembered was that big door closing and he was outside but then… He was right there. In the pod next to me. He acted like none of it happened. But I saw. I remember.”

Lucy felt frozen, unable to say anything but what she’d needed to hear since waking. “I believe you.”

Her heart ached for Janey, and how obvious it was she’d been holding this in, wanting to share, and feeling the pressure building for years and years. Lucy couldn’t blame anyone for being quick to trust a comforting figure in an otherwise hopeless situation. When you were desperate and only one person seemed sane and willing to help it was easy to justify sharing secrets you maybe shouldn’t. But Lucy was different, she would help.

With the floodgates open, Janey kept bursting with new reiterations, her voice wobbling and overwrought. “My mom she— she said I don’t remember right, I must be imagining it, it’s only nightmares, but I— I know. I saw the bombs. We rode away on Sugarfoot. They left them both out there and she says it never happened! She makes me feel crazy!”

Lucy felt herself spiraling from a week of the treatment. She couldn’t imagine her whole life spent in such a cruel suspension. “You’re not crazy. You’re a smart girl, to notice all this. To trust yourself. You have to trust yourself.”

“It’s so stupid.” Her head dropped again.

“No, it’s not.” Lucy leveled her with a serious look, “I believe you. I do. Memory is… when I was little, my mom took me out of the vault. I remembered it, too, like you, but my dad always talked about how no one had ever left, how my mom had died in a crop blight… eventually I stopped believing myself. But I was right, and he wanted me to not remember.”

Janey’s eyes were red and watery and wide with shock and kindred betrayal when she met Lucy’s. “Why would they do that to us?”

“Control.” She said softly, hating it. “They needed us to believe so they could control us. How old were you?”

“Seven.” Janey withdrew back into the cushions, bringing her hands up to fidget.

“That’s plenty old enough to trust yourself about something so important. I was much littler.” Lucy didn’t know for sure, besides vague recollections of Norm being small enough to be held instead of playing with her, which meant younger than five or so.

“I don’t even know… it doesn’t make sense. Who would he be instead?” The girl’s brow furrowed with a confusion that mimicked her father’s.

Lucy shook her head. She didn’t know, but she could be logical and reasonable about it, even if at first brush it seemed preposterous. “I know they lie. I know they are hugely unethical. You had no reason to think they would lie, but you saw it. And, taking what we both know… it makes at least enough sense to investigate. If it is nothing… well, I don’t think it is, but if it was, then they’d have nothing to be hiding from us, right?”

“I know it’s not him. It’s not.” Janey insisted.

If he wasn’t really Cooper Howard, and the real one had been left outside while the bombs dropped, then maybe… maybe—

Lucy killed the steam on that train of thought before it could wreck.

She forced a slow exhale. “Have you talked with him about this?”

“I tried. A few times. When I was little. I stopped because mom always talked to me after.” The dark tone to Janey’s voice told Lucy plenty about Barb directing that corporate calm logic into manipulating her own daughter. “He tells her everything.”

Her mistakes from the previous night writhed in her guts.

“I told him too much. Last night, when he…” Both of them blushed, and Lucy processed that Janey was old enough to intuit what that implied, and that despite the question of his identity, he’d raised her as a father. “Ohhh my gosh I’m so sorry! Geez Louise, you must think I’m awful, some sort of jealous homewrecker, that’s not—“

Janey had squeezed her eyes shut, made a face like she ate something sour, but shook her head. “They’re divorced.”

“What? He told me, he said she knew and didn’t care, but—“

“No, before. My real dad. They were divorced. Divorced. I remember my dad’s new house, the way my room looked in it, going back and forth between them. The new jobs he got. Dad won’t talk about it. If I try to mention any of it, he shuts up. It’s like he can’t talk about it.”

“I noticed that, too. That… look in his eyes. Like he’s gone.”

“It’s scary.” Janey sounded painfully young and scared, but shook her head and diverged, “I don’t think she likes him much now anyways.” Lucy had noticed that, but stayed quiet, seeing more words on the tip of Janey’s tongue. “When I was little they were so in love. I think it’s part of why I remember the divorce so clearly. Everything changed so much, so fast. All of a sudden they hated each other.”

At least Lucy didn’t have to feel guilty about that aspect.

“Nothing feels real here.” Their eyes met as Lucy nodded in agreement, and she knew then they were in it together. She couldn’t rely on Janey in the same way she would an adult ally, and in fact now felt responsible for saving her, but the sheer relief of having a person acknowledge and corroborate all she’d seen changed everything. It was amazing how much more confident she felt knowing it wasn’t her that was slipping. With reality on steady ground, she could be proactive. “Lucy. What’s it like out there?”

She wouldn’t lie to her. Enough people had lied to both of them. “It’s… dangerous. Really dangerous. And scary, often. The people are rougher than in vaults. But it’s real and it’s beautiful and it’s so wide with possibilities.” Lucy leaned back, and gathered her hair up into a ponytail. “It wasn’t what I hoped it would be. But maybe it could be, someday, and helping it, helping the people, get to that point is so much more worthwhile than being trapped.”

“I want to go. I can’t be here. I can’t.” Wide hazel eyes pleaded, and Lucy’s heart tore in sympathy as Janey’s smaller, softer hand found hers.

There was never any possibility of Lucy refusing to help her.

“Of course.” Lucy held her hand tight. “I need to leave, too. There’s someone I need to find and things I need to do.” Even if this was the final meet your makers destination, she couldn’t do it properly alone. Even if she didn’t suspect she was now on a time limit due to what she’d said last night, she knew mining information and returning to the Ghoul with it all wouldn’t be enough for him. He needed to know it for himself as much as she did. And… she needed to know he was alive, needed to solve the mystery of him as much as the mystery of Vault-tec.

“It’s not safe out there.” Lucy reiterated, one last time. “Before I left, I thought I understood that. I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t. Are you sure you want to come with me?”

It was a life-changing, potentially life-ending, harrowing decision that no teenager should ever have to make. There was a sturdy resolve on Janey’s face, though, and Lucy knew she couldn’t steal this decision from her, couldn’t force her to stay in a place where she knew she was being lied to and manipulated, no matter what consequences followed. The choice was Janey’s. She nodded. Her voice came out firmer than it had all day, even more confident than any words she spoke the evening before. “I am. I do.”

“Then we’ll get out of here.” Lucy covered their twined hands with her free one. “I promise.”

She saw something like hope spark in those eyes; it made her look drastically different from the detached bored girl from the dinner party or the one that had cried in her arms. It was the most positive sign of life she’d seen from Janey yet and she felt a surge of affection.

After a moment of the vow hanging in the air, Janey scrunched her face up, “Um— how?”

The shreds of a plan had been building. The first step was information. “I need a hardwire, into a terminal. Preferably someone with good clearance, that would make things faster. I’ve been working on a program, but, well, this isn’t my specialty.”

“There’s my mom’s office.”

“When would we know she’s not there? And it has to be when we can distract your— when we can keep Cooper distracted? I think he’s…” My minder? My spy? “Meant to keep an eye on me for them.”

Janey blinked a few times, looking suddenly startled. “Now, actually.” Lucy’s eyebrows rose, “They have a lunch date every Saturday.”

Lucy tried her darndest to stifle a visibly visceral reaction to the thought of him leaving her own rooms after thoroughly ravishing her to have a date with his wife. She swallowed. “How much longer do we have?”

Janey’s eyes flicked to the clock, “Maybe an hour?”

“That’ll have to work.” Brushing her hands down the horrid synthetic fabric of the vault suit covering her thighs, Lucy stood.

No lunch for them, then. That was fine. Lucy felt sharper, more like her Wasteland self, with that edge of hunger in her gut. Two missed meals was nothing.

Even though there’d be no hiding the redness of her eyes, she urged Janey to the bathroom to freshen up before they set off, and obsessively ran through her code another two times while she waited.

And then they were off, maneuvering the snakelike and barren hallways of vault 0.

This could be a very bad idea. Was it possible that Janey would lure her into doing something that would give the people here an excuse to take Lucy into more serious custody? The last time she’d snuck into a forbidden area in a vault, she’d been summarily kicked out, but here they could put her in a detention room, confine her to her apartment, or any number of things. They could have done that already, she supposed, there was no need to go through the charade, but…

She didn’t know who to trust. She couldn’t fathom trusting any of them. Janey was so sincere, so genuinely distressed that Lucy wanted to, with all her heart. She did already. But— she’d wanted to trust Cooper, too, and knew she’d made a mistake being so open the previous night.

None of it mattered. She needed to make forward progress and taking a risk felt better than waiting for the consequences of last night to catch up to her.

“I’ll… wait?” Janey asked when she finally stopped them in front of a door labeled with her mother’s name.

“I guess send me a message if…” Without the radio hookup, their Pip-Boys weren’t safe, “If you’re not feeling well enough to see me.” She finished lamely. Gosh, she should have watched more spy movies instead of the westerns. Maybe then she’d have a clue what she was doing in all these sneaky situations she found herself in.

The manual locks that served as a fail safe for power loss on the interior vault doors had always been easier to pick than plugging in and hacking for her, so Lucy went at it with two distorted hair pins and soon enough it was popping open and she slid in and closed the door behind her as silently as possible.

It was like stepping through a television screen in the same way it had been to enter the Howard’s vault residence. Traces of the standard Vault-Tec interior design aesthetic remained, but much of the office was done in warm tones and plush fabrics, the deep brown wood of the desk in the center backed by the coordinating tufted leather chair, and it didn’t remind her nearly as much of her father’s overseer office as she had anticipated. Lucy crept over carefully, and knelt on the floor beside the terminal. It seemed wrong somehow to sit in the big chair. Plus, the less signs of her being there, the better.

Trying to actually think as little as possible to keep the panic at bay, Lucy plugged into the terminal and started through the process of eliminating key characters and breaking through the first layer of password security. The system got terrifyingly close to locking her out, but her last try resulted in a success. She let out a relieved breath when the interface opened to her and her data mine program started without a hitch. Now, to cross her fingers that she didn’t need to do any on the fly troubleshooting in her script and watch it do its job.

Of course, there was no sense sitting idle while she waited.

Lucy tabbed through external communications logs; they were the easiest to access by nature of having to connect to outside servers, and her previous hacking granted enough access to view them while her program iterated on the more difficult securities. Any information going fully out or into the vault had to be interesting, after all.

Vault 0: Echo

A specific sub-label for the vault beyond its number had distressing implications, but Lucy needed speed, not to contemplate. Collating all the information into something understandable would come later. The sheer number of communication logs listed before her was daunting, so she clicked on the first name she recognized. It was dated nine years back.

Barbara Howard > Madison Li.

ML: The Director’s mother has allied herself with the Brotherhood. We don’t have much time left.

BH: If you utilize the molecular relay to funnel the requisite equipment for mass manufacturing of the product here, Vault-Tec would be more than happy to welcome you as part of the team.

That wasn’t supremely helpful, though the Brotherhood mention confirmed that Dr. Li’s previous employer had been destroyed by them. They must do all their correspondence in person, now, or over a different subset of the network. Internal communications would be more secure than external anyway, as evidenced by Lucy’s own easy incursion. She tabbed rapidly over pages towards the beginning of their log, which spanned three years, stopping when she saw an attachment.

DOSSIER: C-Howard.

BH: Will that be possible for your team?

ML: The Director made something of a similar request and we were able to fulfill it to a satisfactory degree. The majority of the personalities are bespoke, but replication of existing parties is possible, with adequate resources.

ML: We have more than enough archival data to copy the physical form, but you must understand that an adult lifespan worth of memories is a complex undertaking and true fidelity is highly unlikely.

BH: The one person we need to simulate fidelity for is only seven, Dr. Li. I doubt she’ll notice any idiosyncrasies that can’t be attributed to the new environment.

BH: After all, if she can’t tell, does it matter?

ML: I’ll schedule the relay to bring you both here and complete the hippocampus scans necessary for building the personality template.

BH: That will be possible while she’s in cryogenic sleep?

ML: Of course. We find it easier, as well, when the consciousness isn’t attempting to make sense of the procedure. She won’t remember anything.

Mass manufacturing of the product. Bespoke personalities. Replication of existing parties. Memories. Copy of the physical form. Idiosyncrasies. Personality template.

Lucy was smart. She was clever. She was well-versed in both science and science fiction. Her mind spun to impossible conclusions. The data, the words, they stared back at her disbelieving face. Seven years old— that could easily mean Janey. They’d scanned her hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, while she was asleep, so they could achieve… fidelity? In a replication of an adult’s memory. A memory of an adult. Ohhhh Geez. Oh Geez. Louise. Oh fuck. Her vision blurred over the next lines.

BH: How is it controlled?

ML: We establish core motivations and friend or foe protocol in the base programming for the majority of them as we find that a strict governor limits creativity in the field. They are, however, easy enough to apply. We will enable voice commands tied to your vocal signature for ease of use.

BH: Perfect. That includes using it for combat? Or menial tasks?

ML: I assure you, the processors are capable of handling complex tasks as well as simple ones. All synths are loaded with a variety of skills, it is simply a matter of triggering their ability to access them.

Synths.

Her Pip-Boy pinged. The data mine was complete. Lucy unplugged the line and stood on trembling legs. Her confused panic was so complete and overwhelming that the tips of her fingers and toes were beginning to tingle unpleasantly. Keeping her movements small and precise, Lucy left the office.

“Lucy?“ Janey got one look at her face before looping their arms together. Lucy tried not to lean too much on the younger woman, but her mind was a blur of foreboding possibilities. The bright whiteness of the hallways all around her ran into each other, and the nauseating twists and turns exacerbated the strange feeling of disorientation. Yet again, her world being knocked off its axis. Yet again, Vault-tec creating horrors beyond previous belief. What did it mean to simulate a person, and then control them? Surely, with complex understanding, with personalities and memories, that was a cruel captivity. That was imprisonment, without even a safe haven of the mind. That was unimaginable slavery.

“Oh, Dr. Li, hi!” Janey’s voice in surprised greeting made Lucy blink and focus on the figure in front of her. Of course. The Golden Rule. How well could she fight right now, if she needed to? Lucy’s right hand clenched into a tight fist, slick with nervous sweat, but she didn’t move for the knife in her waistband. It would be easier if they could get out without that sort of escalation. Janey kept speaking. Her voice was casual, but a slight pout in the tone fit the words she spoke perfectly. She was a good actress. Like her father. “Lucy and I were taking a walk, but she’s not feeling well.”

“I see.” Madison and Lucy made eye contact. A prolonged beat where Lucy’s stomach threatened to empty itself of bile passed before the doctor turned back to Janey. “Your mother is looking for you.”

“Oh.” Janey couldn’t hide the worry in that. No matter how good an actress she was, she was still a child in distress.

“Lucy, you’ll have to continue your walk home alone.” Dr. Li’s stern voice left no room for argument.

Unsure of what else to do, and not wanting to be forced into a trip to medical, she nodded. Lucy turned to Janey and squeezed her arm in what she hoped was comfort. “We’ll still hang out later. I promise. Maybe we can go to the library when I feel better.”

Despite the widening of her eyes, the fear that Lucy could see creeping in the edges there, Janey kept the rest of her face placid, and nodded. Their arms came untangled slowly. Dr. Li watched them. “Janey, you should let your mother know she should send someone to check on Miss MacLean. I’ve work to see to in the labs.”

Her heart hammered traitorously the entire rest of the walk back to her apartment. She kept expecting to be tackled, attacked out of nowhere, her Pip-Boy wrenched off her arm and Lucy confined to a cell, never to escape or solve this mystery. It took all her self control to keep herself walking at a normal pace, and to smile in greeting at the few other dwellers she passed. Every time she did she wondered what secrets they withheld from her. She wondered what they were. When she got to her rooms, the door handle slipped at first beneath her sweaty palm before she was finally able to slip in, take a gasping breath and slide to the floor against the wall. Lucy rest her forehead in her hands until her heart rate settled enough, then, feeling wooden, she mechanically opened her Pip-Boy and tabbed to the first file available, a video dated only a few days before.

It played in minuscule, grainy and monochrome.

In it, Barb stood perfectly poised in posture with a clipboard in hand in front of a seated Cooper in his vault suit. She stated the date to the camera, then pivoted to face him. “And how has your day been, my dear husband?”

“More exciting than usual, that’s for sure. Took Lucy on down to the library, you shoulda seen the way those eyes of hers lit up.” A smile flicked over his face as he leaned back casually, arm draped over the back of the chair. “We ate lunch, then I went home to Janey, helped her with some homework.”

“Fascinating.” Her voice was uninterested. Then it was commanding. “Analysis mode.” His posture jerked like a puppet from casual to rigid. It was unnatural to watch, even on the pixelated view of her Pip-boy. “Tell me about Lucy.”

His answer was strange. He sounded almost like he was in a daze, but his voice was smooth and even. If she hadn’t seen the change in physicality, she wasn’t sure if she’d guess something had shifted. “Smart, well-read, witty. Kind. She’s doubtful about living here and your intentions, but trying to hide it. She’s lied at least once regarding her association with the Brotherhood of Steel.”

Lucy felt her heart plucked clean out of her chest. When he spoke, there weren’t any traces at all of his accent.

“There’s something wild in her eyes. I don’t like seeing how scared she is.” There was warmth in the way he spoke of her. That remained even when his accent didn’t. “Why is she so scared? We need to help her— I’m worried about her.”

Barb’s lips pursed. “Alright, lose the emotional affect. I don’t want to hear it.” Miniature Cooper’s face went empty. “What was it she lied about?”

“She claimed to you she journeyed alone beside the primary target.” No accent. No warmth. Nothing. The phrase primary target sent a thrill of worry through her. “In the library she told me some of her time was spent with a Brotherhood Knight she assisted.”

A lie she’d doubled down on. In her entire retelling she hadn’t mentioned Max once, wanting to keep him safe.

Barb sighed and wrote a note down on her clipboard. “I suppose that’s something. Keep prying. Find out what those two are hiding from us. This is a nice opportunity to prove how useful you synths are and perhaps make a case for more resources to be allotted to Echo, but if you can’t get something useful from her soon we’ll resort to more traditional methods.“

He said nothing.

“Your goal remains the same. I don’t care how you do it. Get close to her, keep her pliable with the sedatives. She’s young. She had a crush on you. If you have to fuck her to keep her distracted, go ahead. Maybe she’ll pillow talk about something worthwhile.”

If there was more to the video, she didn’t hear it. Lucy made it to the bathroom in time to throw up into the toilet.

Did he remember? Did he know? Had he used her with full knowledge of what he was doing or was he being as thoroughly used as she was? He didn’t seem aware in whatever state Barb had put him in… which meant her part in it…

Her gasping breaths couldn’t keep up with the rampaging pace of her heartbeat, and Lucy could feel the decrease in her blood oxygen make her head spin. Hyperventilating. She was hyperventilating. She needed—

More information. It didn’t matter how much it felt like twisting the knife.

Her hands fumbled with the Pip-Boy as she opened an array of documents. The answer came fast, too, in a simple two-word phrase scattered everywhere in the documents she skimmed through:

Synthetic humanoids.

Her eyes skipped over manufacturing details, material costs, distribution numbers and locations, survival rates.

Vault-Tec was building people.

No, the corporate jargon Barb spewed finally coalesced into a twisted sense— Vault-Tec was building customers.

If they were virtually indistinguishable from humans, if they believed they were human, and Vault-Tec was flooding the wasteland with people they could program to behave in particular ways, people that they could control even more thoroughly than their systematically bred vault dwellers…

They knew her and her father were lying. They hadn’t even begun actually trying to get the truth from them. They were toying with her. Functionally, they were using her for free product testing. What could the synths do, what could they achieve, who could they manipulate into what, without raising suspicion who could Vault-tec successfully replace—

Lucy stared at herself in the mirror.

The pervasive fear took on a glossy new dimension. How long had she been asleep in the medical center? They could run the hippocampus scans while someone was unconscious. That had been mentioned.

Her huge light brown eyes with a manic look. The softness to her cheeks that had been carved sharper by her time in the wasteland. The smattering of freckles she’d never had before.

Was she herself?

How would she know?

Lucy looked down at her hands, her fingers, at the necrotic trigger finger replacing her own. She traced the seam, and thought of her original finger, somewhere, attached to her someone. She worried for him, even as her own situation grew ever more fraught.

An alert at the door broke her reverie.

At first she jumped out of her skin and shoved her hand down the front of her suit to grab the knife, then she remembered Janey was supposed to send someone to check in on her. No doubt it was her new shadow.

Feeling wobbly, Lucy made her way over and checked the viewport to see Cooper standing there, head dipped low. Yep. Okay. Okay! Okie dokie! She could feign being normal, despite knowing he wasn’t… he wasn’t… normal! She could be normal! Totally normal! With a sharp exhale, she triggered the door open.

“Hi, Coop.” Lucy couldn’t even pretend at the sort of smile she’d have given him this morning. Whatever facsimile of one she’d managed slipped off her face anyway when he looked at her. “… Cooper?”

There was nothing behind his eyes.

Lucy didn’t have time to close the door before he lunged for her.

Chapter Text

He didn’t have time for this shit.

He shoulda killed that raider on the spot, so what if they never let him back into the shit town. Sure, he hadn’t caused no outright trouble at the time, and scuttled off without complaint, but Cooper shouldn’t’ve let him live with the way he’d been eying Lucy like she was some kinda golden goose. Shoulda seen it coming. A pretty girl was a valuable enough thing given the wrong clientele, but one as obviously blisteringly smart and full of technical know-how as Lucy was? Valuable enough to risk his bad side despite having heard of him, apparently. Valuable enough to spend three days tracking them slow enough neither he nor Dogmeat noticed, and valuable enough to wait patient till they’d briefly separated to search an abandoned settlement to grab her.

Patient, a little more deliberate, slightly smarter than some of their counterparts, sure, but they was still fucking raiders, and he’d been dealing with their ilk a long, long time now. The trail wasn’t hard to find, and he could pursue prey more relentlessly than any human.

He wished it had taken longer for him to come to the decision, so he might at least claim some fucking dignity regarding the girl, but it hadn’t. He’d known, even before Dogmeat circled the location of the scuffle then whined and pawed at his leg, that he’d be going after her, no matter how many fuckers he had to kill. Cooper huffed out hard through his gaping nose hole as he rounded up on the ramshackle lot he’d tracked the raider party to. Some kinda old industrial plant, complete with crumbling smokestacks and monolithic steel parts that this world and its people no longer had the infrastructure to build.

It was systematic; it was second-nature. He circled a wide loop around the perimeter and took out the unlucky sonsabitches on guard duty with quick cracks of the Mare’s Leg. He knew something was up when the gunshots didn’t draw out reinforcements.

After the Super Duper, he shouldn’t have been surprised, but she managed it anyhow.

The inside of the plant had the standard touches of raider ’decoration’— misspelled boasts and foul language in makeshift paint along the walls, tactically useless structures of barbed wire and spikes, a lingering smell of gunpowder and refuse.

It was also dead quiet. Not that he’d ever been in one during normal operations, but based on their other behaviors, he’d always presumed that these places’d be hotbeds of brawling and shouting, of bustling activity to keep whatever their crime enterprise of choice was running. The wide warehouse floor finally offered illumination as to the circumstances. It was done up with cots and ratty couches, appearing to be some sort of common area, and it featured a semi-circle of corpses ringed in a wide arc around two still smoking machine gun turrets that guarded a set of double doors, firing dry now and performing a staccato duet of clicking. They swiveled and clicked ineffectually in his direction when he entered their sensor range. The turrets were painted up in their colors and covered with their barbed wire, but a quick glance at the bodies and shells indicated the raiders’d all been taken out by them. Heh. Little terminal nerd. She’d mentioned off hand when hacking them into a bunker a few days previous that she probably could do such a thing, but it sure was something to see its aftermath. He stepped over the bodies by the double doors— probably came running at the gunfire and found out what was what in a rather sudden way— to push through them.

The hallways spiraled inwards, and here was the chaotic panic he’d been expecting: the straggling raiders wondering what the fuck was going on and somehow having just enough brain cells left to wait to investigate when none of their buddies returned. They recognized him as an outsider, snarled and fought, but he gunned them down with single-minded expediency.

Luckily, he’d been in a decent number of places like this over the years, and it wasn’t too tricky to wind his way to the most central, and thus most secure rooms, even when being harried by idiots. Sounds of a scuffle, then a familiar shriek, sent him running and bursting through a heavy door into the kinda informal office that sites like these had, with a large meeting table shoved into the corner and scattered notes and boxes stacked atop. His brain didn’t quite pick all that up, though, too focused on the scrabble on the floor.

There was blood everywhere. It painted the concrete fresh and glistening, and he saw long dark hair, the flash of a necrotic gray finger clawing into the eyeball of a hulking man, a peak of a slender shoulder and delicate collarbone writhing against the floor.

He saw red. It was the easiest, most thoughtless thing to pitch forward and yank the man bodily off her, and shove him forward till his back hit a wall with a sharp crunch. The fucker twitched and spat like a caught animal under Cooper’s grip, hitting him with meaty fists, but he only had eyes for Lucy. The sudden absence of an opponent caught her off guard; her hands were raised in claws and her face twisted in a fearful snarl that slowly melted away as her eyes darted about the room and landed on him. She stared, owl-like, a slow dawning comprehension in those big eyes. Eventually she blinked, then sniffled. Lucy struggled up to sitting and looked away as she began to scooch herself from where she’d been forced prone.

He went on ahead and took it as tacit permission.

With a vicious jerk, he reeled Lyle back and slammed him hard against the wall again, raining drywall dust around them where it cracked. The struggling lost some of its fervor. The side of his face Lucy had gouged at leaked blood, thickened with a clear jelly-fluid that oozed from the popped eyeball. It was an oddly satisfying sight, considering he never shoulda directed it towards Lucy in the first place. He leaned in real close. “You said you hearda me?”

The fella couldn’t muster up a response beyond a whimper.

“Well, then you oughtta heard by now I don’t take too kind to being fucked with. N’this?” He took his chin in his hand and twisted his head with punishing strength so the man looked at Lucy, heedlessly of any muscle damage it may have caused. He wouldn’t be feeling any neck cricks much longer. A bloody trail had formed on the floor where Lucy made her way to an open shelving unit full of odds and ends. “This looks like you fuckin’ with what’s me and mine, don’t it?”

He groaned.

“I said, don’t it?” Cooper jostled him hard.

“I—“ It was more of a tight gurgle than a proper word.

“On second thought, I don’t give a shit what hare-brained scheme you had cookin’. You done got yourself in enough trouble as is.”

The distinctive sound of a length of duct tape being unspooled scritched in the corner. Worry made Cooper glance over to see what Lucy was up to, and Lyle took the opportunity to try and pull one over on him. His plan didn’t get far. Holding him against the wall by his throat with one hand, Cooper used his other to snatch his wrist and bend it backward till it snapped. He savored the sound of the man’s scream. Next would be the elbow.

“Don’t.” Lucy staggered to his side. Her delicate, bloodied hand came to rest on his elbow. He couldn’t feel it through his layers, he really couldn’t, but the touch burned. He tensed further. It’d been a long damn time since someone’d tried anything like that. “Please.”

A beat of taut consideration passed between them.

“Well, alrighty, sweetheart.” He turned a rictus grin to his prey. “The lady thinks you’ve had enough.” He said, and then snapped Lyle’s neck.

He saw her wince from the corner of his eye, but she said nothing, only limped away to a desk. He couldn’t stifle the rough intake of breath when he saw her turned around. The entire back of her shirt clung bloody to her skin, with a ragged slash diagonal across the middle, revealing a mess of blood, skin and the dull gray sheen of duct tape. Her shoulders hunched as her name involuntarily fell from his lips. “Luce.”

She shook her head in a small movement. Her hair was sodden at the ends from the blood. She typed quickly at a terminal, then stood and jerked her head towards a door on the opposite end of the room from where he’d entered. “We have to get the others.”

“The—“ She was already walking. Cooper gave the rest of the area a quick glance before they left. A sole chair sat in the center with a coil of ropes at its feet. Peering in one of the boxes revealed an assortment of chems, dried foods, and ammo, but the papers he skimmed over held more references to acquiring and transporting ‘workers’, than to the other goods they traded in. And then he was following Lucy deeper in.

A large wire tool crib long since looted of its old contents now served as a makeshift cage for three harried women that looked relieved to see Lucy and then remarkably less relieved when they spotted him behind her. One shrieked and all of them shrunk away. Lucy shook her head in quiet dismissal, and began picking the padlock tethering the door shut. Almost immediately after that, both of the pins she used for lock picking scattered onto the floor, dropped from her shaky, blood-slick hands, “Shoot.”

When she stooped to pick up the first of them, she pitched forward and landed on hands and knees with a groan. Goddamnit. Cooper hoisted her under the armpits to lift her up and settle her against a workbench, pausing to make sure she wasn’t going to keel over before making his way back to the tool crib.

“Step back.” He told the women, even though they were already clustered in the farthest corner, and shot through the lock. The shell clinked to the ground a moment before the heavier thud of the padlock did. He pushed the door open with a rusty whine then took a few steps back to Lucy’s side so’s they’d hopefully feel safer. She took his place with some clumsy steps forward. Goddamnit. Again. He’d put her there leaning to take some of the weight off her feet so she wouldn’t run out of strength so fast, and there she was, immediately jumping back into action.

“Are you all, are you all okay to get home? We can go with you, until you’re somewhere safe…” Lucy offered for the both of them, despite swaying on her feet from her own exertion.

Sweet girl. Too, too sweet of a girl. He couldn’t stand it.

The one that answered was eying him warily. “We’re fine.” Her jaw grit. There were dark circles under her eyes and a hungry gauntness unusual even for the wastes, but she didn’t have the angry red circles round her wrists that Lucy did. None of the others did, either. It musta just been the Vaultie causing enough trouble to warrant it. He remembered the chair in the room before and the rope beneath it, dots connecting hazily. “Thank you.”

Cooper turned partially away and made a show of crouching down and busying himself petting Dogmeat and brushing some of the bigger bits of human gore off her muzzle. He watched them scurry out in his peripheral vision and waited until their footsteps faded into the distance before he stood and faced Lucy. She was leaning heavily against the wall of the tool crib, eyes already on him in that unsettling way of hers. The girl sure liked staring. At him, at least.

He whistled through his teeth. “Someone here’s done a mighty fine cleanup job.”

She blinked a few times, and a furrow bunched between her eyebrows. She worried at her bottom lips for a moment like she was working through a puzzle as she examined him. He did not quite like being the subject of such focus.

“You hurt?” He gestured towards his own back to try and divert her attention.

“It’s fine for now.” Lucy said dismissively. His distraction tactic hadn’t worked. The intensity of her gaze actually increased after his question. “You… came here? To save me?”

Her eyes were wide with a painfully beautiful gratitude he hadn’t earned; she looked like the more genuine, more real, more achingly sincere, version of a movie damsel he’d have once acted opposite. He chased the notion away. This was no set. This was not scripted. He was not a hero, nor did he play one. That world was gone.

“Wasn’t gonna leave ya.” A smile bloomed across her worn face. Gorgeous, blazing California sunshine personified in a weary and blood-covered woman that continuously surprised him. How could she exist? Hadn’t he seen enough of the world to not be thrown so off-kilter by one singular vault dweller? She looked at him too brightly; she had too much faith that he hadn’t somehow crushed out. Was that part of the problem? He’d started them off with cruelty to teach her something, and now every time he did something a smidge less deranged, she would stare over like he’d hung the stars. He didn’t deserve any of that. He shifted foot to foot. He cleared his throat. “Couldn’t have them thinking they could pull one over on me. Shit like that ain’t good for the reputation.”

Her face scrunched up. Her eyes dropped to her feet. Cooper felt more appropriately like the piece of shit he was. He jerked his head to the exit. “C’mon. We gotta git in case they got any raiding parties headin’ back.”

Lucy nodded, but didn’t move. She sucked in a deep breath. Then she took a step forward, then another, then stumbled on the third. Cooper darted forward to grab her before she hit the ground.

She groaned when he lifted her arm to wrap it over his shoulder and secured his own around her waist, but walked alongside him without further complaint. Her steps were heavy in the salvaged boots she wore. “There you go, atta girl. That’s right.” Her eyes remained down. Her face had none of its usual animation. He sighed internally. His natural bastard urge to drive her away and grind her down warred with the worrisome desire to take the haunted look off her face. “Proved yourself a real cowpoke today, didn’t you.”

Those huge eyes of hers were glassy, but he could see her fighting the haze of pain with everything she had when she lifted her head to look at him. “Cowpoke?”

“Think you’ve earned the title.” He nodded, “You know what they say— us cowpokes, we take it as it comes. I’d say you took it damn well, all things considered.”

“Who’s they?” She looked doubtful, like she often did with his scattered pre-war mentions. “Who actually says that?”

He navigated them out the maze of the industrial plant as quickly as he could without hurting her. “Well— s’pose it’s just me nowadays sayin’ so.”

”Us cowpokes, we take it as it comes.” She seemed to enjoy the phrase, saying it slow and deliberate-like twice over before a quiet laugh left her. The weakness of it worried him, but he knew it was good she was talking coherently at all. Whatever wound had covered her back in blood, whatever she’d insisted was fine hadn’t gone deep enough to puncture a lung, or send her into shock. She shivered when they breached out into the chill night through an emergency exit, and he felt it everywhere the line of her body touched his. “Taking it as it coooomes? Bet we do.”

The candid sexuality that occasionally left her mouth never ceased to catch him off guard, and he cussed with a strangled chuckle, shaking his head. “Get your head outta the gutter, sweetie.”

“Mm, not in the gutter.” Her chin tipped back so she could face the sky, and the weight she leaned on him increased until he practically dragged her. Her boots dug uneven tracks in the loose dirt. “With you, in the stars. The dreams.”

“Alright, up you git.” It’d be just their luck if she twisted an ankle stumbling along like this, and slowed them even further. With a huff, he stooped enough to sweep his free arm under her knees and heft her up into a bridal carry. Lucy tried to stifle the whimper of pain the swift adjustment caused, but said nothing. He was careful to hold her high enough on the back that it didn’t touch her injury. 

She blinked up at him, bright star and moonlight making the wonderment visible in the milk chocolate of her doe eyes. It made him uncomfortable, what he could so easily imagine seeing in those eyes. He hated it. Two damn centuries alone and now a vicious little heart of gold Vaultie was making him wanna storm in for heroic rescues and fuss over ways to brighten her up when she got too sullen. A small smile twisted up her face. Pretty even in this state, with a viciously green-black bruise forming along her cheekbone, a split lip, and spatters of her own and others blood painting her pale skin. Maybe even more so, an awful thing for such a ruin of an old man to be thinking. “Thank you. For coming to get me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Y’better not make me do it again.”

He ended up in a fucking sewer. He woke slowly. His blood boiled as his fingers twitched futilely at the decaying concrete beneath him, the pervasive scent of old shit and trash cloying his head. It had been a while since he’d gotten injured enough in a fight for the weird fuzziness of rapid healing to conk him out for this long. Then again, he’d had a good three decades or so taken outta any fights at all. The memories of this particular altercation slipped back to him reluctantly, and he growled low in his throat. The growl dissolved to a hacking fit.

He’d do more raging, but he’d been shot several times over, and that made it difficult to muster up the energy.

The ballistic fiber in his gloves had stopped the shot he’d taken to his right hand from blowing off any other fingers, but the small bones inside were surely mangled, judging from the way he couldn’t quite manipulate his fingers accurately or without hot pinpricks of pain. That wasn’t his main concern, though it’d make shooting a bitch till it healed up. A few other nicks here and there from small caliber guns, a crack to his jaw, and the strange sluggish beat of a drug he didn’t recognize doing its damnedest to knock him out and failing. Worst of it was the jagged hole that ravaged the left side of his chest. It made his already encumbered breathing a desperate wheeze, and the first thing he did after figuring out how to move was yank up his inhaler for a hit. The chems rushing into his blood stream in a satisfying buzz, but it only took a fraction of the edge off.

It was bad. Real bad. Bad enough to knock him out for who the hell knew how long he’d been laying here, and gory enough to make them presume him dead for just long enough to let him slip away, to worm to the open storm drain like a fucking piece of trash in the wash.

He’d done it on instinct. A foul two centuries worth of self-preservation, fuck the costs, he had a daughter to find, an ex to punish, a company to bring down. The collateral didn’t matter, nothing mattered but his own shoddy semblance of survival. The opportunity, all the combatants focusing on Lucy when they knocked him down for the count, revealed itself, and he took it, greedy with both hands. He hadn’t predicted that his motor function would be so badly fucked that he couldn’t control his tumble down the drain, or stop himself from being dragged away in the current of muck. He was surprised he eventually got himself out onto a ledge as opposed to dying drowning unconscious in literal shit, which woulda been a fitting death, all things considered.

He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Or— he hadn’t been. That was the problem. The core of himself learned to solve one problem on impulse, and that was his own life and nothing else. For all her weirdness and eccentricities and goody two-shoes earnestness, she’d cemented herself to him, but even that wasn’t enough to override how rotten he was deep down. The push had come to shove, and Cooper’d saved himself first. He shoulda watched out for her. He shoulda clawed and fought even from the ground if he had to, not stopped till they succeeded in putting him down for good. It was uncanny, how clear that was right now. Hours ago he’d let it happen; he knew, thanks to the viciousness of the dread and hatred he felt for himself, that he wouldn’t ever let it go like that again. If he even had the opportunity…

The feeling of her thin wrist crumpling under the force of his grip on her, the feeling of that not being enough, of her slipping from him—

They took her. They took her alive, unconscious and restrained, but alive. These weren’t some shitty raiders looking to trade in her flesh or her technical skill, or both, this was a coordinated team of clean, well-fed soldiers wielding pristine weaponry, which only left a few options. He hadn’t seen the Brotherhood’s logo on anyone, they didn’t seem scrappy enough to be NCR, and they lacked the facade of tacky old-world gangster vibes that House’s people tended to have. Coulda been Enclave, sure, but he had a gut feeling that he trusted.

Vault-Tek. Fucking Vault-Tek. How many times could the same damn people ruin his life?

A wooziness washed over his thoughts. His body needed the energy to repair the gaping wound in his chest, and while he’d had the wherewithal to drag himself to consciousness this once, he knew he didn’t have long. Cooper inched himself into an alcove made from the brick wall crumbling to pieces, and stacked just enough of the rubble in front of him to obscure his body from immediate view, then promptly passed the fuck back out.

He didn’t like looking at the way his wounds healed. With the exception of occasionally staring at the purloined trigger finger and the perfectly natural-unnatural way it fused to his wretched hand, he didn’t like looking at himself at all. Didn’t mean he could ignore it, cause he could feel it when he woke back up, itching and wrong and pieces of him missing and new connections firing. Truth was, he didn’t know why he seemed to regenerate most flesh wounds when some ghouls lost pieces and functions permanently, and that was another thing he tried hard not to think about or test, lest it vanish when he most needed it. This period of wakefulness he stabbed in their last Stim-Pak to speed things up, forced some jerky down his throat, and drank water before slipping back away.

So that was that, for a bit. He slept like the corpse he functionally was, which at least relieved him from the horror of nightmares or worrying about the girls he’d lost. Maybe Vault-Tek’s mystery drug was to thank. Not enough to put him out, but enough to soften the world around its ragged edges. The next time he woke he managed to hoist himself to standing, and limped along tracing the walls until he found a service ladder that dumped him back onto the outer streets of the town once-called Paradise.

Even before the war it’d been a joke.

He worked his way carefully, too slowly, back to the sight of the attack, an alert eye out and looping himself up to a good vantage to observe instead of approaching.

They’d cleared the bodies. He could pick out the evidence of the scuffle, probably only cause he’d been there himself, but the intersection looked no more or less different than all the other bombed out and heat-worn streets. With a pang of worry he’d been suppressing, and some old world knowledge, he gingerly took off his filthy coat and mustered up the breath to whistle. He kept his hand on his revolver, though after his little tumble it probably needed a good cleaning before it’d fire again. When his next whistle didn’t draw anything that needed shooting, he sat to eat again.

So whatever surveillance Vault-Tek had on the area didn’t include audio. Or they’d tagged onto her Pip-Boy? He didn’t know near enough to make an educated guess, but he was wary of approaching any closer less it was cameras. He needed to stay close, though, in case.

He ate. He tried not to think about Roosevelt. He whistled a few more times. He tried not to think about Janey. He tried not think about Lucy. He could sit in a state of suspended animation and try not to feel his own skin regrowing unnaturally, bones attempting to align themselves beneath the surface. And Lucy, and Lucy, and the way she’d stitched him up all neat despite him not needing it, and the way she stared at him with those doe eyes, and the way she kept surprising him. She needed to surprise him again, now, pop out of some bush with a laugh and prattle on about how she’d hacked their systems and run and returned to the scene of the crime because it was how best to find him. He imagined a mirage of her, but it wasn’t quite accurate. His brain couldn’t summon up enough life to even pretend she was near.

Cooper watched the sun lurch forward in a turn, pitching the landscape into darkness, with spare lights from the direction of the strip. It wasn’t as he remembered it, from the last time he’d been through, not even the first time, twenty-one on leave… There were less lights. Shit’d obviously happened while he’d been underground, world kept turning and all, but it both bothered him and didn’t that New Vegas had apparently had a hell of a time. It was the way of things. Ain’t nothing was permanent.

He was steeling himself to get up and actually do a damn thing, when what he’d staunchly refused to acknowledge he was waiting for happened. The tip-tap of claws on the remaining rubble of asphalt and panting breath of a dog jogged on up. Dogmeat crashed into his side with a concerned whine, tail low, and Cooper let out a breath and hooked his arm over her head, drawing her close and lavishing her in scratches. “Yeah, you knew I weren’t too far off, didn’t ya?”

She ducked her head, pawing now at his thigh and staring up in the same plaintive, too-intelligent way she had the last time they’d lost Lucy. “I know, I know.” Another whine, and she nosed at him insistently until he lumbered up to standing. “Hold your fuckin’ horses, we’ll get her. Just gotta… figure out how.”

‘Course, he had the same problem as he’d had the last two hundred damn years. Vault-Tek was both a corporation dedicated to its secrecy, and one that, as it turned out, was entirely fucking inept. Things that coulda been leads with any sanely organized business dead-ended with communication failures and reporting structures so convoluted that most people didn’t even know what they were meant to be communicating or to who. He could interrogate a dozen former vault dwellers, banished overseers, read every document he could find above ground in former Vault-Tek offices and still have no clue who their higher ups were or what their purpose was, either due to do purposeful obfuscation or pitiful mismanagement. Some folks, back when, said not to blame on maliciousness what could be caused by incompetence, but as far as he saw it, and he’d seen a damn lot, Vault-Tek had both in abundance.

Now that they had two of his, though— the hell they had comin’ down to rain on them increased tenfold. Hank. He was the original lead; he was still it. Into the city proper, then.

It took a century for him to gain a hard-earned lick of sense for dealing with the wasteland; it took about a month for him to lose it again over Lucy MacLean.

Chapter Text

“We’re burnin’ precious daylight here, sweetheart.” The Ghoul had taken up his wide cowboy stance beside her: one hand on his hip, and the other idly holding the Mare’s Leg. Lucy kept looking at him in the corner of her eye and watching the way the dry wind fluttered the tattered edges of his duster.

“It has to have all this security for a reason. I want to know what’s inside.” Her eyes scanned down through the nonsensical characters and she tapped out another key string. “And it’s secure, I’ll be able to lock it after us, so we can spend the night here.”

He grumbled in a way that told her he didn’t want to agree out loud, but agreed nonetheless. Lucy smiled to herself. Finally, she managed the passcode, and shimmied a little celebratory dance when the interface beeped out its familiar log-in tune. It only took a few quick clicks after that to open the thick steel door of the squat concrete building, and she turned to him with a grin. He was already looking at her. Lucy extended her arm towards the door. “After you, mister.”

He shook his head, but she heard him huff a laugh. They entered with both their guns drawn. She’d gotten decent at clearing buildings, and they’d managed to create an efficient little routine with him going left, her right, and Dogmeat down the center. It was empty besides a few radroaches, and exceedingly dusty inside. Most of the central room was dominated by an intricate console system, confirming what the antennae outside had indicated: some kind of military communications post. There was a side room with two bunks and two skeletons that made her heart lurch sadly, a utilitarian bathroom, and a supply room. They both immediately began searching once they knew it was secure, and he gestured her towards a large gun locker in the back of the supply room. Lucy nodded, extricated her bobby pins, and got to work.

It went faster than the computer, though she could still feel his eyes on her back every now and then. But she didn’t snap any of her pins, and popped the lock open in under five minutes, so she counted it as a success. It held standard issue military guns, ammo, and accoutrements, and in the center, a beautiful sniper. The rifle was in startlingly good condition. It could have been plucked straight from the vault. Lucy ran her fingers reverently over the long barrel, snatched the suppressor from a top shelf, checked the safety, then slung it next to her pack and started collecting all the corresponding ammo.

“You know how to handle that thing well enough to bother lugging it around, sweetie?” The skepticism in his voice scratched at her skin.

“Of course I do. As a matter of fact, I earned top marks in riflery in the vault.” She stood up straighter.

He looked her over lazily. “Now’s that so?”

“I think I can handle a big gun like this much better than you’d expect.”

He pulled a lopsided smirk. “Oh, she’s cocky ‘bout her experience.”

“I’ll admit I’ve never had my hands on one quite this long,” Lucy laid it on thick, and smiled cheekily at the amusement settling on his face. “But I’m a quick study! I’ll make it work.”

“Didn’t think they’d encourage you to play around with such serious weaponry down there.”

“Nope, I practiced all the time. Alone, with instructors… all the time. Extensively. It’s an important skill for the preservation of American values.” He huffed out something like a laugh, shook his head, and Lucy grinned near manically. Finding rhythms of near-flirtatious banter with him felt dangerous, that was for certain, but it was also one of the little amusements up here that she’d learned to cling to. Not for any sense of normality, not really, but something pleasant nonetheless.

He made her prove it. Outside, he lined up cans and small empty boxes at various distances and heights then ambled back to her. Lucy watched the swaggering way he walked backlit by the sun, picturing the dramatic movie scene it would make until he was back at her side. Lucy hefted up the sniper to brace against her shoulder, exhaled, and sighted the first of her targets. Her first shot went high, and she could feel his judgmental eyes on her, but after adjusting the scope, she hit the can dead center, then all the rest in short order. It truly was a bigger rifle than she’d ever handled, and the reverberations of each shot echoed bone-deep. But this was a science, and while she may not have the skills of her father... well, she’d made it this far.

Her companion might make fun of her for her insistence on proper ear protection, but she didn’t fancy being deafened by long-term exposure to shooting a fifty caliber rifle. Slipping the ear coverings down around her neck, Lucy turned to beam at him, unable to help the swell of pride.

The Ghoul whistled. “Damn. You sure are full of surprises, ain’t ya, Luce?”

Lucy felt like she was glowing.

“Now you’ve got that, if we ever run into any more of’em tin soldiers, you’re gonna wanna aim right dead center in the chest plate, just below where they put the logo. There’s a fault in the welding there, it’ll knock’em right on their asses. Gotta have the right kinda ammo for it, and those fifties’ll do just fine.”

That sure was useful. And solved a little mystery about how he’d got to the top of Griffith even after all the Brotherhood flowed in. “How do you know?”

He gave her a dismissive glance. “Learn a lot of things out in the wasteland.”

Lucy put her hands on her hips. “I highly doubt you learned anything that specific by happenstance. The sheer number of Brotherhood you’d have to fight to first discover then verify that information isn’t logical with post-war production means.”

“I got contacts. Someone coulda told me.” The way he straightened up defensively was all that made her keep pressing. He liked pushing her buttons; she’d grown to enjoy pushing him right back. And there were so very many mysteries she faced. An answer or two would be nice, if she could wheedle it out of him.

“Sure. But that information is valuable. That information could be regime toppling, in the right hands. Is anyone actually kind or collaborative enough to share that? Even for a mountain of caps?”

They stared each other down. She leaned towards him. He seemed to chew over it, then spat in the dirt which always triggered a bizarre squirming in Lucy’s stomach. “Wore a T-45 in Anchorage. Saw a lotta soldiers die to that defect’n fucking west-tech knew and didn’t do a goddamn thing.”

Her hands shot to cover her mouth. He was a soldier! He’d been on the Alaskan front! “Holy moly!”

“Y’gotta know, sweetheart, them companies’ll do anything at all to keep their bottom line where they want it.”

Any further pestering regarding the topic was shunted aside in favor of him making her use her new gun to shoot down dinner.

Her history on the vault’s wrestling team and the Ghoul’s insistence on nightly sparring after the raider incident saved her. Instinct jolted her sideways before she could even think, and that split second afforded Lucy enough time to roll away from Cooper’s lightning quick grab. It felt like sheer luck— especially when it was only his moment of reorienting before snapping back into action that allowed her to get more distance between them, clambering backwards over the couch and thanking her lifelong familiarity with vault living room layouts.

It was all she could do to stay away from him. His eyes struck her more than the insistent fear of being captured, for that was undoubtedly his intent considering he hadn’t outright shot her when the door opened. No, they wanted her alive to move on to the more traditional methods of interrogation that Barb spoke of, and did… something to Cooper to make him be the one to do it. His eyes. His pretty hazel eyes with the frustratingly dark lashes. There was nothing there. Not a single spark of recognition, not that warm charisma he carried himself with. It made her insides shiver and quake with cold dread, but her mind fuzzed it over in its frantic need to focus on survival.

It was odd: how much easier this was. Violence was violence and often unnecessary and she abhorred it, that had never changed despite her experiences in the wastes, but… it was actionable. It was something. A fight, with her body and mind working in tandem felt better on her system than her mind whirling with nowhere to go as it had this last week. More familiar.

Then again, she was weaker than she’d been in her home vault, and no doubt slower, and, in a sickeningly clear hindsight, knew she had been drugged repeatedly over the last week. She stumbled over her own feet as she retreated, flailing hands wildly to regain balance before tumbling completely onto her behind. Lucy scrambled to try and crawl away, but there was nowhere to go before he caught up to her.

As her wedding night had proved, vault quarters were no good for combat.

He snatched her by the hair, which had her swallowing in a gasp of pain, and levered her back up to her feet, with Lucy too afraid of straining her own neck to fight back. Her hands shot up to grapple around his wrist and decrease the force directly off her neck, but he was horrifyingly strong and she had no chance of pulling him off.

“Cooper… Cooper, please, you don’t have to do this.” The rough pull at the scalp had tears springing to her eyes. She scrambled alongside him with half-bent legs. Her thighs burned with the strain. The soreness from the night previous didn’t help. “We’ll— we’ll figure something out, I—“

He said nothing. He continued to say nothing. Lucy continued her futile pleading as one hand dropped off his wrist to scrabble at her waist. “Cooper, I thought you didn’t want to hurt me, I thought—“

What had she thought? Everything here in this vault had been a blur, and she felt sick and twisted even trying to recollect on it. The wasteland’s lessons hammered through her head: keep moving, keep moving, stay alive, don’t linger don’t dwell don’t regret don’t hesitate don’t—

Lucy stabbed the butcher knife she’d tucked into her waistband up through his wrist.

He didn’t make a sound, but his fingers spasmed and loosened enough for her to yank hard and roll away, leaving some hair with him. She staggered to standing. Cooper pivoted to face her.

Nothing on his face. Nothing at all. No words, no reaction to the blood dripping from his hand to the floor.

“What have they done to you?” She’d bought herself time, but she still had nowhere to go. Circle around him, manage to get out of this suite, and then what? How to get to Janey, how to get out with him on her tail, how?! Her mind was working too much and not at all, and everything stuttered and stopped and floated in horror around him. “Please. There has to be some of you left in there. It’s me, Lucy— I don’t think you want this.”

If her sense of narrative justice had naively hoped that would mean anything at all, it was dashed. Not a flicker of emotion passed over his face.

He knew he had her. He advanced on her until her hips hit the counter with the same slow, methodical movements of Snip-Snip advancing on her to steal her organs. It was inefficient to waste energy on haste when all computational odds said your prey had no quarter, no fight left, no chance, nothing at all.

But fuck that.

Reaching wildly behind her until her hand closed around metal, Lucy swung the Handy Helper Arm equipped with a chef’s knife through Cooper’s palm, twisting and driving down and down until it stabbed through him and into the Formica of the counter, then flipped the switch to engage the safety locking mechanism that kept the contraption unmoving.

He jerked, and she flinched at the grating sound of metal against metal. It sent shuddering goosebumps over her skin. He didn’t cry out. His face showed no reflection of pain, not even frustration. Only that blankness he’d pursued her with for the last heart-wrenching minute. Tears tracked down her own face, and a wordless noise of anguish tore from her throat. He tried to grab for her with his free hand, and she scrambled back, leaning against the counter for support. Once out of his range, and seeing that he couldn’t free himself, she exhaled a shaky breath.

Lucy almost didn’t dare to look past the well of blood that his hand now was, but she did, transfixed, and below the surface of his skin she saw the glint of metallic bones. Her stomach heaved futilely. Easy, irrevocable proof.

She didn’t think this would hold for long. Lucy stumbled back a few steps, stopping only when the overturned table hit the backs of her legs. She sucked in a sharp breath then started in at her Pip-Boy, to reverse and resume the video she’d just been playing.

Vocal commands from Barb Howard.

Analysis mode.

His struggle died instantly. Unnaturally fast, Cooper froze.

Her heart pounded uncomfortably in her ears. She stood there in quiet disbelief for a single moment before action kicked back in. No time to waste. Wary that he might snap and attack again, Lucy edged closer and closer then unlatched and snagged his Pip-Boy as quickly as possible before retreating. From that, she typed out a hopefully convincing message and resigned herself to wait.

The next few minutes were worse than her walk back from Barb’s office. Had that really been less than two hours ago? One, even? She hadn’t been able to read the documents she’d scraped for very long, and the whole day so far had been a whirlwind. She’d woken up in Cooper’s arms this morning. And now she had him stabbed into her kitchen counter because apparently he was a robot.

She busied herself from considering all that too much by shoving resources into a standard Vault-Tec branded backpack from the closet. The first time she left a vault, she hadn’t truly had an idea of what she’d be facing, and now that she did, her packing list changed accordingly. It was the entire bathroom medical kit, extra underwear, and solid soap. The thought to grab the most nutrient dense foods from the kitchen passed through her mind, but she didn’t know what was tainted or how, and she was wary to get any closer to the uncannily frozen Cooper where he was pinned like a bug specimen. He wasn’t even breathing.

Finally, when she’d packed as thoroughly as she could manage, and stood staring at Cooper‘s uncannily frozen form, a chime rang at the door. She positioned herself carefully before opening it.

“I am very, very sorry to resort to this—“ Lucy started off as she, as gently as possible, took Dr. Li’s upper arm in one hand and levered the knife at her with the other. “But I need you to fix him.“

“He’s in analysis mode.” Madison said with a strange note in her voice, a few moments later as she surveyed the scene. Lucy didn’t have much experience taking and threatening hostages, but this hadn’t actually been too difficult. “You’ve incapacitated him and instead of leaving immediately, you summoned me.”

It wasn’t tonally a question, but Lucy answered anyway. “Yes…?”

Those discerning eyes turned to hers. A fine spray of crow’s feet branched through her nearly translucent skin to meld into the array of other wrinkles. Her bicep felt so delicate under Lucy’s hand; she hadn’t quite ever considered how old she was, and felt even more awful for wrangling her like this. “You stayed in the room with a synth programmed to capture you.”

Synth. There was that word again. Dr. Li was definitely leading, but Lucy wasn’t quite sure where. She felt her face screw up in confusion. “Because I— I need you to help him.”

“Define help.“ The scientist seemed remarkably calm. Lucy hadn’t been this relaxed and analytical when she had been taken hostage. Not any of the multiple times she’d been taken hostage! This lady was crazy!

“Make him… not like this? Make it so they can’t control him, just, you need to set him free. He didn’t even recognize me and that’s wrong, you can’t do that to a person. You can’t.”

The penetrating gaze bore deep into her. It made Lucy antsy, but shook none of her resolve. “You know now he isn’t a person.”

She shook her head. “He is. It doesn’t matter how he was made. It’s wrong.”

Dr. Li hummed contemplatively, and Lucy lifted her knife again in a weak threat display to try and hurry things along from this line of questioning. “Very well.”

All the air left Lucy’s lungs. Then ducked right back in. “Wait, what?! Really?”

“Does that answer disappoint you?”

“No! No, definitely not, I’m really not actually sure how to escalate from this level of threat and I would feel really bad even considering torturing an elderly intellectual, and—“ She shook her head and tried to recenter. “I didn’t expect it to be that easy. They don’t, you’re not…” Not loyal, not a corporate lackey, not sticking to the company line in the face of moral depravity like her father. Like Barb. “You’re not like some of the vault-tek people I’ve met.”

“They have resources I need for my studies and I’m an asset to them. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.” She explained that quite calmly with a shrug, as if moral bankruptcy wasn’t such a bad thing if it meant you had access to scientific tools.

Lucy’s outrage fluttered up, “You’re helping them do awful things!”

“I’ve lived a long time, Miss MacLean. I’ve allied with many factions. My goal remains the same: to impart some good on this world. I’ve become accustomed to making sacrifices to ensure I have the resources to do so.”

“But that makes you complicit!”

“So be it.” Li drifted further into the room and Lucy followed, hand still on her frail bicep and knife up, though she didn’t much feel in charge of this situation anymore. “I’m an old woman now. I’ve no specific love for Vault-Tec. I only wish to continue my studies. I aligned myself with the Brotherhood to provide clean water to the Capitol wasteland, the Institute to develop nutrient dense crops and robotics advancements, and now Vault-Tek. One is as much the same as another.”

Lucy shook her head helplessly. That tired dread seeped through her veins. She hated the cold practicality of the wasteland as much as she was coming to understand it. Her voice was weak when she spoke. “Sit. Please.”

Lin acquiesced without complaint. Lucy lifted the knife again when she lifted her Pip-boy, but peering over her shoulder showed she was accessing code documents, not the internal messaging system.

“This is the code to permanently disable his governor. It’s tailored specifically for him.” Li paused, and met Lucy’s eyes with a keen look. “But I suppose it could be iterated upon to release any others.”

“Put it on this tape.” Lucy said as she handed it over. The crash of adrenaline was already seeping through her veins. She was exhausted, but there wasn’t yet an end in sight. This vault was even less safe than it had been just the night before.

“I assume you would also torture me until I give up the codes to disable the tracker in your Pip-Boy, as well?”

“I— yes?” Her voice was getting a little squeaky with disbelief. The lack of moral fortitude! Lucy couldn’t tell if that was better or worse than the people that were properly deluded into believing Vault-Tek, as she’d once been. Not knowing was one thing, knowing and believing another, but knowing and not believing and continuing on with them anyways? The sheer ruthlessness required…

“Then I’ll be giving that to you also.”

Lucy blinked. Nodded. “Ooookie dokie. Okay. Yes.”

With the final click of ejection, Li extracted the tape and handed it to Lucy. “And now what?”

“Um…” Hostage-taking sure had a lot of logistics. “I’m going to take your Pip-boy,” The doctor began unstrapping it, “And lock you in the bedroom?”

“Very well.”

Seriously— what the fudge?!

Deeply aware of the time limitations and not willing to fall to useless panicking, Lucy did as she said she would, all while letting the tape download to the hard drive of her own Pip-boy. Backups. Very important. A jammed in screwdriver to pry open the bedroom door control panel and a few redirected wires later, and Dr. Li was effectively trapped.

Then it was time.

Cooper hadn’t moved an inch.

Was he still conscious? Screaming and unable to move? Or was he as good as dead like this?

Lucy shuddered, scooching forward a few steps at a time until again assured that he wouldn’t suddenly move and attack. Then she ran the code.

It played as an audio file, a series of chirps and blips at various pitches and lengths, some even she couldn’t hear and knew would send Dogmeat into a tizzy. There was no rhythm or pattern to any of it all, but she knew he was keyed to audio commands, so the method of transmission made sense. Sweat dripped down her back in anxious trails. Her fingers felt empty and shaky.

First, life flickered back into his eyes.

Then, horror.

The moral implications of what she’d just done to him hadn’t factored into the life or death struggle. She’d been so preoccupied with returning him to his usual state that she didn’t have time to consider that… she’d destroyed his entire outlook on reality. What Lucy had revealed to this man was infinitely worse than the destruction of her own life. This was his reality, his consciousness, crumbling to pieces.

“Cooper?” She asked finally.