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They sit on the steps of the Lucky 38 and don't say anything. There's a breeze blowing, ruffling Lucy's hair, the edges of her yellow dress, the trash lining the street. She's speckled with blood and her lip is quivering, and Max wants to hold her, make her feel better, but he looks out in the direction they delivered her father to a hotel and knows he can't.
This wasn't how he expected to find her, but he guesses nothing has been how he expected. Not since he was a kid. Not since -
Lucy takes a shuddering breath and hangs her head, fingers twisting in the skirt of her dress. There's blood all over the top, red harsh against yellow even in the fading light of the sunset. Cleaner than her vault suit still, but not clean enough. Nothing stays clean out here for long, not matter how much as he wishes she would.
“Why did you leave?” The question has been on his tongue since he woke up to her gone. He's not judging, not really, but part of him hopes the answer is someone took her, not because she wanted to.
“He told me he'd help me find my dad,” she says as she fiddles with the cuff on her arm. Max doesn't have to ask who he was. “He said… he said I'd find out what was going on.”
“Did you?”
She looks at him then, her eyes big and sad. Her hair is stuck all over her face, but she flinches when he reaches out to brush it away, and he stops with his hand hovering between them. She crumples, taking it between both of hers and putting it to her chest. He feels blood on yellow. He doesn't know how to help her. He doesn't know if he can.
Her voice breaks when she says: “I don't know. My dad - he - I don't know. He said things… it was all a lie. The vaults, my mom, all of it.”
She's mentioned her mom before, but not in detail. It seems like a shorter answer than the vaults, but maybe a more painful one. “What happened to her?”
“She found out,” Lucy says. “About everything. She took us to Shady Sands. And then my dad took us back.”
She doesn't have to say anything else. Max tenses, hand still on her chest, and Lucy clutches at him, eyes shining.
“Max, I'm sorry,” she's pleading. “I didn't - he - we -”
“It's not your fault,” he says, voice as hollow as he feels. He knows it's not and he doesn’t blame her, but he can't -
He looks out across the street, all the fight drained from him. He remembers his mom, the tears in her eyes as she smiled and told him it was okay. He remembers his dad hugging him, his last words burned into his brain. He remembers crying, begging them to make it stop and hearing them cry back. He remembers it and he doesn’t want to.
He wants to kill Hank MacLean.
“Maybe it is,” Lucy says. “Maybe all of this was our fault. If my mom hadn't left, if I hadn't gone with her, maybe…”
“You were a kid.” I was a kid. “It's your dad's fault.”
“Maybe all of this is.” It's like something has broken inside her, the words rushing out with nothing to stop them. “When she took my dad, he picked me over everyone else. And then I came up here, and I tried, and I think everything I've done has just made it all worse and I can't, I don't, I don't know what to do.”
A tear falls and she brushes it away, only for more to follow. Max takes his hand back and wipes them away with his thumb, cupping her cheek, and this time she leans in, not away, holding him against her.
“You can't be doing any worse than I have,” he tries, which makes her laugh a little, even though she clearly doesn't feel it.
Lucy looks like she wants to say something, her mouth opening and closing, but nothing comes out. She shakes her head. Her shoulders start trembling, bare and prickled as the temperature drops. Max shuffles closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her to his chest, and she clutches his dirty shirt and sobs. He tries to remember what his parents did when he was a kid, when he skinned his knee or had a nightmare. He remembers his dad singing made-up songs and poking his stomach. He remembers his mom kissing his head. He remembers the woman on the street he always passed on his way home, clicking her tongue at his bruises and ushering him off with a pat on the cheek. His eyes burn with tears he hasn't let fall in years.
His chest shudders against Lucy's cheek as he cradles her face and cries. He wants to go home. He wants to go home, and he wants to take her with him. Her and Thaddeus and Dane - Max hasn't let himself think about Dane since he and Thaddeus ditched the Brotherhood. They're survivors, but they keep trading one war for another, and he's so afraid that the next time he sees them, if ever, it will be another body he could have saved. He wonders if he just left his best friend to die.
He tucks his face into Lucy's hair and fists a hand into the back of her dress. She's yellow like the sun, and even like this he feels warm next to her. He holds her while she cries and he cries too, until his head hurts and his cheeks are sticky and there's nothing else left in him to give.
“‘m sorry,” Lucy says, tucking her fingers between his palm and her face.
He's not really sure what she's apologizing for, but he says “it's okay” anyway. She pulls away until she can look at him searchingly with red-rimmed eyes. She chews her lip and sighs.
“My dad doesn't know who I am anymore.” Her voice is frail. “I don't think I do either.”
“I do,” Max tells her. He holds her face in his hands. “You're Lucy. You're my friend.”
Lucy smiles, wobbly but genuine. “Thank you, Max. I think… I think you're the best person I've ever met.”
Max hears his dad, then. You'll be a good man. Maybe if Lucy thinks so, he's made it.
“I wish you could have met my parents.”
“I wish you could have met my mom. And my brother.”
She falls back against him, and he wraps his arms around her and leans back until he's laying on the stairs, digging uncomfortably into his back. He hurts all over and his head feels foggy, pain and exhaustion and fear slamming into him all at once. But he holds her as she props herself up on her elbow beside him, and she smiles again, small but real, and he can't help but lean up and kiss her, her nose, her cheeks, her lips salty under his. Lucy touches his face, her fingers light as they skim over his burning scratches. She kisses him back until she's no longer shaking, and then she lays beside him, head back on his chest, and Max pets her hair and looks up at the star-speckled sky.
She is the sun, he decides. His sun. Yellow and bright and kind.
Maybe he can be hers too.