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Prompt: Hunger
Just because Lucy had to work with the Ghoul, whose name she knew and refused to use because he’d never introduced himself and if he wasn’t going to be polite, neither was she, didn’t mean that she had to speak to him. She had Max to talk to, after all. And Thaddeus. They made a strange pair, the four of them…five, if you counted the dog, but they all shared a common goal and so they would work together. She’d agreed to the proposal when Max had made it because it made sense. Travel the wastes together and find the Enclave, then bring them down. There were others working towards the same goal, she knew. Super Mutants, Max had told her. And other ghouls. All they needed to do was find the place. Then they could let the others know and the real fight would begin.
She hadn’t been thrilled about the idea of traveling with him again, but they had a larger goal and so, she had told herself, she would put her grudge aside. That didn’t mean she’d speak to him any more than necessary. From the first day, when he’d spotted her in that yellow dress and he’d gotten that look on his face…surprise and relief and…hunger, she’d kept any conversation to a minimum. Some days, good morning were the only words they exchanged, and only those because Lucy absolutely refused to give up on all courtesy.
On that first day, when she’d thrown her arms around Max and had studiously refused to look at the Ghoul, he’d squeezed her hard and cupped her face in his hands and he’d kissed her, and she’d told herself she liked it. She’d told herself that the way she was feeling was normal. That she was overwhelmed and exhausted and dressed in strange, inappropriate clothes for the wasteland. That Max’s arms around her were nice. Comforting. Wanted.
Thaddeus had hugged her too, quick and awkward and she hadn’t been able to help her smile.
“It’s…uh…good to see you again. Nice dress!”
“Thank you,” she’d laughed. “It’s good to see you too.” She hadn’t greeted the Ghoul, but she had glanced in his direction. “They’re not there. Your family. The pods are empty.” And she hadn’t said another word to him for a while…not when Max had explained the plan or when they’d gone back to the Strip to find her a new set of clothes. Not her Vault Suit. She never wanted to wear a Vault Suit again. But she also hadn’t thought it would be a good idea to wear a yellow dress while traveling through the wasteland.
And the Ghoul had been the only with any caps.
He hadn’t even made her ask…had handed her a little sack, not meeting her eyes. “We’ll be heading out tomorrow. Go ahead and find some clothes.”
“Thank you.” She hadn’t met his eyes when she’d said it either, but she’d meant the words. So he was a traitor. So he wasn’t her friend. That didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate his generosity. “I’ll pay you back.”
He hadn’t argued, but he hadn’t looked like he would accept any future reimbursement. Because he was guilty, she’d wondered? It didn’t matter…he wasn’t her friend. He’d proven that time and time again. He’d just needed some bait. Just like with the big fish thing. He’d sold her, just like with the grocery store drug dealer people, trading her for something he needed. And every kind thing she’d thought he’d done for her, making sure she had enough food and saving her from that cross, all of it had been because she’d been his bargaining chip. Something for him to trade away.
She’d bought comfortable clothes…jeans and a long sleeved shirt, just like she’d seen in picture books growing up. Long socks and boots. Even an extra outfit. Another backpack. A first aid kit. A canteen. And into the backpack, she’d dropped her PipBoy, not able to stand the sight of it anymore. And when she’d stepped out of the store, she’d felt Max’s eyes on her, and the Ghoul’s too. But she’d pretended not to notice.
They’d slept at the Atomic Wrangler again, all of them in their own rooms. An extravagance, but she would have refused to share a room with the Ghoul and she’d doubted he would want to share a room with Thaddeus. Or maybe he would…they were both mutants of some kind, after all. That’s what Thaddeus said.
That night, she’d stepped out of her hotel room and had made her way down to the lobby, unable to sleep. Unable to get her mind to quiet down and forget the sight of her father, dead on the floor. Unable to forget the empty pods with the names of the Ghoul’s wife and daughter. Unable to forget the scissors in her hand or the little mind control device in his or the knowledge that it was him or her, and that she’d chosen herself.
Did that make her selfish, she’d wondered. Or did that mean she was finally that new animal Dr. Wilzig had spoken about.
The Ghoul had been in the casino downstairs, sitting at the bar, a drink in hand. He’d turned the moment Lucy had spotted him, those dark eyes on hers. And she’d known that she could sit next to him and maybe, just maybe, he’d talk to her. Maybe they could find a way to move forward. Maybe they could be something to each other again.
Instead, Lucy had turned and walked back to her room.
Walking for miles at a time wasn’t new to her…she liked to think she’d gotten used to it while she’d been traveling with the Ghoul. By the end she’d learned to ration her food and drink only when necessary and preserve energy by keeping conversion to a minimum while they walked through the hottest part of the day. But it felt hotter now, somehow. Maybe her lost Vault Suit had been doing something to help regulate her temperature, but she told herself she didn’t care…that she’d rather suffer than wear one again.
She walked by Max’s side most of the time, smiling along with his occasional conversation attempts and trying to look exhausted and hungry than she was. They’d had some canned food, but now they had to hunt for just about everything, cooking over fires and making do with what they had, even if she so desperately didn’t want to be near anything hot during the day. And in the evenings, when it was so cold her teeth chattered, she thought that she might just jump into the fire and let it consume her, only the fire was only lit for as long as they needed to cook and then put out so they were harder to track.
After all, they’d managed to get on the wrong side of the Brotherhood, Vault Tec, and most likely the Enclave too.
The Ghoul did most of the leading, and Max and Thaddeus seemed fine with that…seemed to trust him. Thaddeus chatted amicably with him as they walked, blithely going on about shit farms and the Brotherhood barracks and the Power Armor, and the Ghoul put up with it. He might have liked it…he sure talked to him more than he’d ever talked to Lucy. And that was fine. They were traveling companions and nothing else.
As soon as this was over, she’d either be dead or she’d never see him again.
He led them towards a shell of a house in what had apparently once been a subdivision, only most of the houses had collapsed. There was one still standing, though, a two story brick house with a couple of mostly intact windows and a missing front door. They all drew their weapons, Lucy with a hand that shook, and of course Max noticed.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“Fine,” she promised, even if her head had been spinning all day and her stomach had stopped growling and had started whimpering, and she felt so hungry she was nauseous. Her legs threatened to fold with every step and sometimes she thought about letting them.
The Ghoul glanced back and she avoided his gaze.
They swept the house and chose their corners in a big room upstairs. Max and Thaddeus sat together, talking in hushed voices, and Lucy picked a spot a few feet away, lowering herself to the filthy floor and wondering when that had stopped mattering to her. It had been a while since they’d found anything but bugs to eat, but Lucy refused to complain. Not when Max and Thaddeus and probably even the Ghoul were probably hungry too. She closed her eyes, wondering if that might make the room stop spinning, but it just made it worse, so she opened them again and tried not to think about the last real meal she’d eaten.
Max moved to her side while the Ghoul moved around downstairs, and Thaddeus got up and headed down the stairs, apparently off to join him.
“Hey,” he murmured, sitting with his back to the wall.
“Hi.”
“I uh…I wanted to ask you something.”
A strange feeling took root in her stomach, but she was so tired…her arms felt too weak to lift, her head throbbing. “Okay.”
“Did I ever tell you about my friend Dane?”
“Oh…um…I’m not sure. Maybe?”
“Well, they’re in the Brotherhood too. We kind of grew up together…” He went on, telling her all about this person he’d known for so long and cared about so much, and she felt herself start to smile. He told her about how Dane had helped him escape…how they’d kept the kids safe. “And I know…I mean…I don’t really know how to talk about this,” he offered with an almost shy laugh.
“It’s okay,” she told him softly, taking his hand and feeling her eyes get hot because every emotion felt stronger for some reason.
“I just didn’t want you to think…I mean…we kissed and I…I do like you. So much…”
“It’s okay,” she told him again, squeezing his hand and leaning in to kiss his cheek. “You’re a good friend, Max. Do you know where they are?”
He let out a breath and smiled that brilliant, handsome grin of his. “They left the Brotherhood when I did but…I’m not sure. I want to find them, though. I have to.”
“I’ll help you,” she told him, pulling her hand away lest he misunderstand her.
“I know we talked about living in a Vault.”
She let out a tired laugh, closing her eyes and dropping her head against the wall again. “I think we were both different people then.”
“Yeah…I guess we were.”
Despite her exhaustion and despite the hunger that the handful of radroach meat she’d eaten for dinner hadn’t done much to satiate, Lucy couldn’t sleep that night. She lay in her corner, staring out the window and listening to the soft, steady breaths of the others, and she tossed and turned, the ache in her stomach so all consuming she doubted she’d be able to rest any time soon. So she got up, ignoring the dog who lifted her head to watch and made her way as quietly as possible down the stairs. She didn’t know why…maybe she could shoot and eat something. Maybe she could walk laps around the house until she tired herself out.
But she only made it to what had once been a kitchen before the world tilted and her legs folded and this time she couldn’t fight it, the dark room going gray at the corners.
“Dang it…” She pressed a hand to the wall and stared at the table with two broken chairs on either side and wondered if she could make her way over. Lucy closed her eyes and leaned her head on the wall. She just needed to breathe. She needed to do this. She could do it.
And then a muzzle was right in her face, a warm tongue darting out to lick her face and jerking her back into wakefulness. Had she fallen asleep? She blinked at the dog, realizing her knees were folded under her and her side was slumped against the wall where her hand had been. Lucy thought about bringing a hand up to push the dog away and decided she didn’t care, even when she whined and wiggled her way under her arm.
Then the jingling of the spurs and the creak of joints as the Ghoul crouched down in front of her, not touching her, but closer than he’d been in a while. Before, she wouldn’t have minded. Heck, she might have liked it. She might have been happy to know that he was starting to come around on her…that they might be able to be friends or…or maybe something else.
Now, though, she didn’t feel anything, just warm tears running down her cheeks and the ever present ache in her stomach.
The Ghoul was quiet for a moment…it was almost like the Legion camp when he’d put an arm around her, lifting her to her feet and balancing her against his side. That was the closest she’d ever been to him, stumbling along with her body pressed to his. When he spoke, he sounded almost resigned, sure she would tell him to go away. Or ‘fuck off’ as he’d put it. “Need a hand?”
Instead, she nodded, and, to his credit, he wasted no time in taking her hand, pulling her to her feet and leading her to a chair just like he’d done before. And she’d been touched back then, in that hotel room. She’d thought maybe it was a turning point, him with his hand on her back being so kind when she’d been sick. Maybe, she’d thought, she’d finally gotten on his good side. Teeth clenched together, she closed her eyes and dropped her head onto her outstretched arm, half lying on the table.
“You gonna sleep there?”
She lifted a shoulder in a miserable shrug.
“You sick?”
“I’m so hungry,” she told him, another tear falling, and he paused, the silence heavy in the air.
He walked away, jingling boots, and she wiped a hand over her cheek, closing her eyes again and letting the tears fall until she was half dozing. She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered telling him. She doubted he had any food stocked away.
A hand on her shoulder woke her some time later, withdrawing the second she opened her eyes, and she blinked into the darkness, watching the Ghoul place something in front of her. A plate, maybe scavenged from the kitchen. And on it…
She was eating almost before she knew what she was doing, the smell of the food apparently sending a signal directly to her subconscious brain as she bit into some kind of meat. He’d cooked it, obviously, and cubed it up too, like you might for a toddler…or someone without a fork.
“Not too fast or you’ll throw it all up,” he told her, taking a seat in one of the other chairs.
She tried to listen, forcing herself to chew and swallow every bite, then take a full breath before her next.
“We’re gonna have to hunt more…”
She pushed the plate towards him without thinking, offering to share more out of habit than the kindness of her heart.
He just stared at the plate for long enough that she almost took it back, but then he picked up a piece and popped it into his mouth.
“Thank you,” she told him before taking another piece. And she thought about asking why exactly he needed her alive now..how he was planning on betraying her this time. But he’d gone out and killed something and cleaned it and cooked it for her, so that seemed ungrateful, circumstances notwithstanding.
He nodded.
And then he sat there while she ate, and she didn’t mind, not really.
“You could have told your boyfriend you were this hungry. I’m sure he would have done something.”
She shook her head, not wanting him to misunderstand this for some reason. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
His brows lifted. “You got another name for it down in the Vaults? Because he sure looked like your boyfriend when you kissed him.”
If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he sounded upset about that. “We were glad to see each other.”
“Oh yeah?”
Lucy rolled her eyes, not pointing out that he’d kissed her. “He’s already in a relationship. Or…he wants to be. With someone he grew up with. They helped him escape the Brotherhood.”
“Ah…” He nodded to himself, taking another piece of meat when she offered it. After a moment of silence, he clasped his hands on the table and looked her right in the face, seeming to come to some kind of decision. “I shouldn’t have done it, Lucy.”
She felt her eyes go wide, lips parting in a little ‘o’ of surprise before she could even try to keep her emotions from her face.
“I didn’t want to. And I hated myself for it. Still do.”
“I thought that was the plan the whole time,” she muttered, staring down at the plate instead of looking at him.
“It was an idea. At first,” he allowed. “I’ve been wastelanding for 200 years. Alone. I sure as hell didn’t intend on us being friends. I just figured I’d bring you along and see if anything came of it…if I could…”
“Use me as bait?”
Silence. Then, “yeah. But then…I didn’t want to do it,” he told her, slow like he had to pry every word loose. “I wasn’t always a fucking monster, Lucy. But to keep myself alive out here…” When she glanced up, he was shaking his head. “I started caring about you. And I tried to tell myself I didn’t but…I was lying to myself, sweetheart. I was coming to find you with those two,” He jerked his chin at the ceiling. “Figures you saved yourself before I could get there.” The Ghoul sat back in his chair and sighed. “I’m sorry. I never should have trusted your piece of shit Daddy to hold up his end of any kind of bargain, and I shouldn’t have given you to him.”
Lucy closed her eyes, tears warm on her face, and he reached out a gloved hand, resting it on top of hers over the table.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he told her again.
She wiped a tear away and nodded, something inside of her releasing…something she hadn’t even known was there. “I’m not sorry I punched you. But I’m sorry you got impaled.”
His eyes widened and he barked out a laugh, surprising her enough that she jumped. “Well, I guess I can’t argue I didn’t deserve it. Where’d you find a Power Fist anyway? I sure as hell didn’t give you enough caps for that and Addictol.” He’d relaxed too, shoulders coming down, lips turned up in an easy smile that she had a hard time looking at directly for some reason.
Lucy felt herself blush as she lowered her eyes. “Um…actually…the Addictol was too expensive. They raised the price. So…I…I snuck into the shop and stole it. And…well, I saw the Power Fist thing and I thought it could be useful. Like to fight those Death things. Death Claws. So I put that in my bag too. And the shopkeeper guy almost caught me but then I saw a person in a barrel and I realized that was the shopkeeper and the man who I think killed him was taking over the shop and he knew that I knew so he was going to kill me and I meant to just maim him but I panicked and I shot him. In the head. And he died.”
When he was quiet, she chanced a look at him only to find him wide-eyed and obviously amused. “Goddamn, sweetheart. I leave you alone for five minutes and you rob a store and kill a guy.”
She crossed her arms. “I needed the Addictol.”
“Yeah…”
Sighing, she dropped her head back into her hands. “I know! I know it was bad! I just…I just did it and…”
And she’d been planning to talk to him about it. She’d even planned on giving him his caps back. But she’d never gotten the chance.
“Well, if he killed the guy and put him in a barrel, I guess he deserved to get robbed,” he offered, patting her arm. “And I’ll forgive the impaling, but let’s not do it again?”
Her lips twitched into a smile and she nodded. “Deal.”
“Alright. How about we try to get some sleep before the sun comes up?”
She nodded, finishing the late bite and then taking the hand he offered, pausing when he did, his eyes intent on hers. And for a moment, she just stood there, feeling both full and lighter than she had in so long. Hesitantly, she rested her forehead on his shoulder, and he moved immediately, wrapping his arms around her in a hug as she gripped the back of his duster and breathed him in, closing her eyes when he rested his cheek on her head. Now this was the closest she’d ever been to him. She liked it. And it wasn’t like everything was fixed but it was better, and she finally felt like she could breathe again.
“I’ll help you find your wife,” she told him. “And your daughter.”
“Ex wife,” he corrected, and she pulled away just enough to look at him.
“Ex?”
“Yeah. We were divorced before the bombs,” he explained.
“Oh…”
“No divorce in the Vaults?” he asked, still so close she could smell the warm, leathery smell of his duster.
“Well…it wasn’t really socially acceptable. Only in extreme circumstances.”
“I found out my wife was talking about starting a nuclear war. So I figured that was extreme enough.”
Lucy nodded, wondering if she ought to tell him what it was she knew.
“You saw the pods?”
She nodded again.
“So you know their names?”
“Barb and Janey.” In the dim light, she thought she saw him flinch a little at their names and wondered how long it had been since he’d heard them. Since he’d allowed himself to say them.
“Yeah…and the last name?”
“Howard.”
“Your daddy was a big fan of mine back in the day,” he offered.
“So was I.”
His brows raised.
“In the Vault. He had most of your collection. Well, he didn’t have Gun. And A Man From Calabasas was starting to skip when we tried watching it by the time I was nine or ten, so I don’t know how it ends.”
The Ghoul watched her, so close he was practically towering over her, but she didn’t mind. “So you know.”
“My dad told me when he showed me the pods.” She shrugged. “But you never introduced yourself so…I didn’t know if you wanted…” Lucy trailed off when he took the slightest step back, just enough that he could hold out a hand to her.
She took it.
“Cooper Howard,” he told her softly, so much emotion in those two words. When she looked up at him, her eyes meeting the ones she’d seen in so many movies, she realized he wasn’t the Ghoul. Not really. Not in the way she’d thought.
“Lucy MacLean,” she offered with a smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m a big fan, Mr. Howard.”
And when he smiled back, it was like she could see him clearly for the first time. “I’m a fan of yours too, Ms. MacLean.”