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Once, shortly after the bombs fell Cooper saw a priest whose eyes had been burnt out–flies had gotten in the sockets and maggots were slowly eating him away on the corner of the street.
The priest's mind had gone. In his madness he screamed “This Heaven. We are in Heaven. Rejoice.” The only way he could cope with the horror of what had happened was to live in a dream world.
Cooper had felt relieved when moments later someone shot the priest, right in the middle of the forehead. It was an act of mercy on the killer's part. Whether that had been their intention he didn't know and hadn't stopped to find out.
He thinks about that priest when Lucy whispers in the darkness about killing her mother. She did a good thing. A merciful thing. Not that she was ready to accept that yet.
Ghoul bodies are hanging from a rusty old crane, crows peck at that scarred flesh. Being a Ghoul was their only crime. Lucy still can't or won't comprehend killing based on what someone is, rather than the things they have done.
He doesn't have the time or patience to explain it. Humans have always found a reason to be bigoted. In their own twisted minds the reasons are justified.
“We ain't got all day to stand around here looking at the dead, move along now.”
Cooper knows she doesn't understand his coldness to death or even his lack of reaction to people like him being killed. But if he sat around crying over every death, every person wanting Ghouls dead he'd flood the world with his tears.
“This old fashioned time telling device still works,” Lucy says with a chirpy smile as they scavenge around like wild dogs through the building.
“It's a watch. Surely you had watches in the vault,” Cooper quizzes, Dogmeat wagging her tail at his side.
“Yeah but they didn't look like this. And my description was still accurate.”
He can't argue with that, but he really wants to.
The meat tastes like a cross between salmon and beef. He's eaten worse, much worse.
Lucy chews on and scrunches up her nose in disgust every time she forces herself to swallow. She doesn't complain verbally though.
“Tomorrow, we should come to a small town. They ain't Ghoul friendly. Now I can go in all guns blazing or you can go in and trade, if you are up to it.”
Lucy looks affronted that he could suggest she couldn't do such a simple thing. “It will be easy-peasy.”
Lucy has a temper. Cooper has known from the moment she bit his finger clean off. Behind that sunshine personality is darkness. One that scares her. When she comes back from town with supplies covered in blood that isn't her own he isn't shocked.
“Golden Rule, they tried to kill me. I had no choice,” Lucy says with a shrug as wipes blood from her cheek with his finger and then licks the blood clean from it. “I got some fox jerky, water and some mutfruit. I don't think anyone followed me back here.”
“If they have, I am sure we can handle them, little killer.”
Cooper had been on a flight from Vegas to New York when he met Barb. Sometimes he curses the day she was seated next to him and others he was grateful because together they had Janey.
Sometimes, he wants to tell Lucy about his daughter. The most precious thing to him. Even now, everywhere he goes he searches for her. But he's forgotten how to be vulnerable so he doesn't speak of the daughter he cannot find.
Janey would have liked Lucy. This is he sure about. He hopes one day he gets to put that theory to the test.
An artist once built this marble pretentious sphere. It had survived two hundred plus years. Nukes, bad weather, even a car once rammed into it. It takes Lucy ten minutes and thirty three seconds to shatter it. Because she's smart and creative, sunshine and destructive.
She stands there with a shit eating grin when she's proven right and Vault-Tec had hidden weapons in it. It makes sense they would use art to disguise a bunch of weapons, it was very them.
“In school we learnt that Vault-Tec hid stuff on the surface to help our desdc
Cooper can not pinpoint the moment he and Lucy became comfortable around one another. The fact she sits unashamed nude in his presence in a bath of hot water while he sows back together bits of cut flesh without a second anymore makes him feel something that he can't put his finger on.
“I was right to use the caps for this room and bath,” Lucy tells him, looking relaxed as the dirt of the wasteland leaves her skins.
“Still think it was a mistake trading half our weapons for caps and food.” Cooper doesn't blink as he focuses on the nasty gash on his arm. “But they were your haul.”
“We had more weapons than we could carry, they were slowing us down. It was the logical choice and you know it.”
He does but that doesn't mean he has to like it or agree with it. She's adapting out here nicely. Once she had gotten rid of that stupid suit no one could guess anymore that she was vault dweller once. Cooper is proud that he has helped make her into a fledgling wastelander.
Lucy's head rests on his shoulder, he could move her. Doesn't know why he hasn't. He's been much too lenient and relaxed around her lately. It should worry him, it doesn't. The fact it doesn't disturbs him slightly.
He's seen many men and ghouls get themselves killed over getting too comfortable with a pretty face.
Dogmeat lays by the door on guard, ready to alert them at the first sign of trouble. Not that he isn't alert and ready to spring into action if need be anyway.