Chapter Text
They found the town in a worse state than the last time the Ghoul had visited. Crime and violence had seeped into the town leaving the smell of blood everywhere around them, he grinned at the realization. The Ghoul only met selfish rather than judgmental eyes, he enjoyed it unlike when all the cheerful family folk who lived there decades prior and now. Ironically the only cheerful person left in the town was the one he brought with him.
Lucy found the town’s remodeling of the old homes to be charming and wandered without a second thought. Infatuated with one of the colonial houses, she noted that the door on it wasn’t the expected kind. It was the type you swung open when entering a saloon, the type she only ever saw in the movies. The Ghoul noticed where her eyes lingered and figured it would be easier to talk with her if he could get a few drinks in him.
The Ghoul sighed as he swung the doors open and for a split second, Lucy could’ve sworn the radiated corpse looked exactly like Cooper Howard. The confidence he exuded, the familiarity of walking into a place like this, and that little gleam of trouble in his eyes. It was almost as if Cooper had jumped right out of the screen and now stood in front of her. His behavior was exact to a scene in one of Howard’s films that Lucy must have seen a thousand times. But she shook her head, laughing at her silly thoughts. She knew better than that and rationalized that she must be seeing the Ghoul as Cooper because of his cowboy Wasteland attitude and from having worked with Howard in the past as he said he had. Turning away from him to look around the Saloon she found it was exactly like the ones she used to see in her dreams.
While Lucy fangirled over being inside a real saloon the Ghoul pulled out a generous amount of caps from his pocket and dropped them onto the counter, “Bowl of water for the dog, and some of the sh*ttiest or best moonshine you got for me and the lady.”
“Moonshine? Not whiskey or-”
The Ghoul gave her a funny look as the bartender walked off, “How you’d know about whiskey?”
“Cooper-”
“Cooper Howard films got it” The moonshine couldn’t have been placed in front of him at a better time. He took a swing to loosen up and a familiar burn flowed down his throat, meaning they got a big bottle of the sh*tty stuff. This was gonna get fun real fast, “You know what moonshine is sweetheart?”
Lucy shook her head as she began to pour herself a glass full, the Ghoul thought about stopping her but knew whatever was going to happen would be a lot funnier if she was piss drunk. So he grinned with his yellowed teeth and took another sip of his drink, “It’s homemade alcohol. Surprised no one was making it in yer’ vault since they banned well- everything there”
She twirled the cup, still not committing to a taste, “Well they used to. I remember it being an issue for a while…but when my dad became Overseer he cracked down on it and got rid of almost everything people needed to make this stuff…I just figured in a bar people wouldn’t drink this, they’d have the real stuff. The pre-war stuff like in the movies”
The ghoul laughed softly at her nativity, “Honey it’s been centuries since the war. Real alcohol was the first resource to run out. Ain’t nobody who wants to survive an atomic dessert without being drunk. Now would you just give it er try?”
Lucy smiled at him, she couldn’t help it. There was an embarrassed blush on her face from not thinking before asking. Plus the way he corrected her gently instead of insulting her didn’t go unnoticed. Taking a deep breath and then a giant chug. Her big brown eyes widened with horror as a burning sensation ran down her throat, and whatever she didn’t swallow she began to cough out. The ghoul’s gentleness immediately faded as he howled with laughter, “Atta girl! Just wait till you get to try the good stuff”
The brunette was split between hacking and laughing so she ended up doing a bit of both before calming down, “If I didn’t have more self-control I’d be throwing a lot of choice words your way.”
“Unfortunately for you darlin’, that is exactly my goal for tonight”
Rolling her eyes and committing to much smaller sips of her drink Lucy sarcastically laughed back at him. She glanced at Dogmeat to make sure she was alright and found the pup curled around her bar stool as she napped with an already half-empty water bowl. Lucy looked her companion right in the eyes, “I hope that’s what you look like by the end of tonight”
As he laughed once more Lucy realized she had heard his voice before, “I should’ve had you get out of that Vault suit sooner. You're less stuck up without it, it’s freeing this sarcasm of yours.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve always been sarcastic and humourous!”
“Ah there you go immediately goin back to talkin’ like a vaultie”
He was unsure of how many times the young woman had rolled her eyes at him just today but he was sure it was in the double digits. He stared into her eyes as he took another chug of his drink just to show off that he could, “Now you do remember the story we're here for, right?
She nodded and took a large sip of her moonshine, only to immediately wish she hadn’t. Her face was flushed as she replied, “You really want to hear about my wedding?”
“It’s today's headline, darlin”
She took a deep breath and listened to the bar’s radio, making sure she spoke loud enough for the Ghoul to hear but quiet enough for her voice to be drowned out by the music and prevent anyone else from listening. With the guaranteed privacy, Lucy spared no detail of her wedding day, “I participated in an occurring trade between my Vault, 33 and the other, 32. We trade people so that there’s new genetic material and resources. I offered myself to marry someone from 32 because…”
He could see the hesitance in her face, a twinge of shame, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to sweetheart. This ain’t the vault, you can keep your secrets.”
She nodded and continued where she found it easiest, “I was in my new room with Monty when the attacks started. We didn’t know…that Moldaver’s raiders had taken over Vault 32 till it was too late and a lot of my friends were dead. As for me and Monty, he attacked me once I realized what was happening. I- I was still in my dress and veil when he stabbed me”
Lucy could feel the sting of the blade Monty plunged into her and the one in her heart that she felt when she watched the man she had just married try to kill her, “I knew I had to get away from him so I slammed a blender against his head…his face was…all sorts of gore. The blender cut his skin so deep that just his jaw was hanging, I was at the alter with that man not even a few hours earlier.”
Drinking the moonshine in her cup didn’t burn for once, “I went out and killed who else I could. Monty wasn’t even dead, he caught me in another chokehold I couldn’t escape from before my dad beat him with a shovel and drowned him in a jar of pickles. Once he was dead my dad and I both went after Moldaver and that’s how I ended up here.”
The Ghoul could picture the entire moment. He could see Lucy and her big brown eyes looking at her husband adoringly a few minutes before he stabbed her. Although his image of Monty was unclear the gore wasn’t. He was unfamiliar with the man's face but understood how his jaw hung by strands of skin and mussel. He’d shot a thousand men who looked the same way on their end. While he drank, the Ghoul concluded something never to be said out loud, he genuinely felt bad for Lucy. She was played for a fool and it wasn’t even the fault of her naivety, it all went back to her father’s sh*t choices.
She drank her cup empty and her head began to feel fuzzy, “You know what the worst part is? The thing that makes me the most sad isn’t even all the people who died. It’s the fact that my wedding dress got ruined. People dying is normal in the Vault, it happens often, but getting married? That was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I was wearing the dress that every girl in my Vault had, the dress my mother wore when she married my father, the one my grandmother wore! And now that white gown is going to be stained with my blood and my people’s blood for all eternity.”
“It’ll be alright, your folk could probably make do with just their vault suits,” The Ghoul spoke in an odd sarcastic comforting way, but the look of disgust Lucy sent his way told him that was not at all what she wanted to hear.
“It’s not about not having clothes! It’s about losing something sentimental, something that can't be replaced-”
“Like towns? People? Cities? Things your daddy blew up?” He didn’t know why he got so angry with her. He understood what she meant and where she was coming from but he couldn’t just…let her know that. Getting along with her all the time meant they were friends and he couldn’t have that.
She jumped out of her seat, and her empty glass shattered on the floor causing Dogmeat to awake in haste. Her big brown eyes were filled with terror and tears, “God! Why are you bringing that up? Do you think I don’t feel terrible about all of that? I feel like in some way everyone who died, everything that happened, is my fault. I haven’t gotten a second of sleep since we left the observatory! When I close my eyes I see the bombs, I see my father, and I feel Monty’s hands against my throat. I carry the burden of my father's sins because he has no humanity to do it himself. I don’t need you to pile whatever two hundred years’ worth of hate you have onto me too”
He scoffed at her and watched as she stormed out of the bar. Dogmeat, of course, followed her lead. With Lucy not around to scold his manners the Ghoul took a drink from the big bottle of moonshine till it burned his throat and he began to cough. He cursed her through wheezy breaths while he took a hit of Jet. He f*cking hated her company, instead of only carrying about himself he had to worry about her and the dog too. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, two weeks ago he had sold that girl for drugs and now he was going to apologize for hurting her feelings. What the f*ck was wrong with him! When did he start acting like his old self again? Why did he care about someone else other than himself?
In times like this, where he could feel his humanity returning, the Ghoul would drink himself half to death. But as he reached for the bottle, he imagined Lucy’s eyes filled with hurt and tears staring at him after he was crude. He groaned and stuffed the moonshine into his satchel before chasing after her.
