Chapter Text
The vaultie's been quiet since the observatory. It ain't somethin' he'd usually complain about - he's not really one for conversation - but it's startin' to grate on him. Quiet ain't really somethin' he associates with Lucy MacLean. And sure, she's certainly got a lot to think about after findin' out just what sorta monster her daddy is, but she's barely uttered a word in their nearly two day trek (not even to ask to rest, and he knows she needs it - he just isn't gonna hand her somethin' she can demand for herself). It's pissin' him off for reasons he can't explain. He chalks it up to it her just bein' her; she's the kinda person who'll always piss him off.
If that ain't enough (and it comfortably is), she's hijacked the dog.
Traitor, he thinks, glancin' back at the mutt and the vaultie both. Who pulled you outta that box, huh?
But Dogmeat just keeps trotting faithfully by Lucy's side.
Roosevelt would never.
It ain't like he doesn't have things to think about himself, of course. For the first time in over two hundred years, he's actually made a single, very real step towards findin' his family. He truly wishes he didn't need ol' Henry MacLean, woulda taken great satisfaction in blowin' his head to chunks, but the memory of his bullet slicin' open that well-preserved face will do for now.
He's not about to dwell on what'll happen when he finds his family, though, because it ain't a when, it's most definitely an if. Who knows what coulda happened between the bombs droppin' and now. He'd dropped Janey off at that shelter with Barb and let himself be herded away as they entered, but just because he last saw his little girl at the door of a vault (screamin', cryin', reachin' for him) doesn't mean she stayed there; doesn't mean she survived.
So there's no thinkin' about it. He'll just follow his stuck pig and take it as it comes. Like he always does.
...
God damn it, how can a silence be so god damn loud?
He's willin' to let the vaultie's idleness slide this close to Hollywood (at least, he ain't about to start a real fight over it), and if she wants to think too much and talk too little, it ain't his business. But they're comin' up on the real wastes now, brown and gray and cracked, the earth baked to shit, the air unforgiving and the wildlife more aggressive than even the stuff in the city. He's already imagining radscorpions and deathclaws and knowin' their combined luck, they'll run into 'em both sooner or later, and she needs to have her head screwed on right if she wants to survive.
"You still with me, vaultie?" he drawls, lettin' his voice carry back to her.
No reply. She ain't listenin', still lost in her own head. It ruffles his feathers a mite bit, he'll admit.
"Desert heat gettin' to you already sweetheart?" he asks, a bit sharper. "We ain't even got started."
"I heard you," she says, but there's nothin' really there. A response for the sake of gettin' him off her back. He works his jaw, annoyed at the dismissal.
"Really?" he asks mockingly, glancin' over his shoulder. "'Cause I reckon you're still back at that observatory. Now what is daddy's little girl thinkin' so damn hard about over there?"
The glare she shoots at him might just be the most poisonous one yet, even worse'n that time he stood over her as she caved to those animal instincts o' hers and scarfed down irradiated water. Finally, a sign o' life.
"As if you really care," she says.
"O' course not," he replies. "But we got a long road ahead of us; a road that'll be a helluva lot shorter if you ain't keepin' in the here and now."
"Is that you telling me that you don't think you're good enough to protect both of us?" she asks. "It's admirable, being able to admit to something like that. I wasn't expecting that sort of humility from you."
It's a pathetic attempt to get under his wrinkled, irradiated skin, and he smirks. He looks back over his shoulder at her, eyeing her slyly.
"You tellin' me you trust me, vaultie? You tellin' me if push comes to shove, you think I'll save you and not myself?"
Her eyes meet his and they're blazin'; there's a fire there that sends needles down his spine and makes his stomach clench in hunger. He's all but salivatin' when she replies:
"No." It's even, and sure, and disappointed. "No, I don't think you will."
His smirk widens as he looks ahead again, the sky turnin' dark all across the horizon.
"Right answer, vaultie. Seems she can be taught."
Though the silence falls again, it's strangely charged, and it's gratifyin' to feel her eyes burnin' the back of his neck.
That's a bit more like it, he thinks. Welcome back, killer.
"My dad used to pick up your wife's dry-cleaning," she says coolly and it's ice slippin' down his spine now. Oh she would not dare.
"Be careful, sweetheart," he says lowly. He slows his pace and he can hear her steps falter behind him. "That is not a line o' questionin' you wanna go down."
"Oh so when you want to talk it's fine, but I say one single thing about about - "
"Shh!"
"No, I won't - mpff!"
He turns sharply and grabs her around the jaw, silencing her immediately. She looks a split second from tryin'a bite him again, grabs at his wrist and glares, but that's her first reaction, the instinctive one, before she realises he ain't exactly preoccupied with her. He tilts his head, listening intently with his ruined ears. He was sure he'd heard somethin' that sounded suspiciously like...
And there it is again - voices. There's no tradin' posts or settlements in this area, so it's probably fuckin' raiders. Immediately he looks around for shelter. If they can pass by 'em without causin' a ruckus, that'd be ideal. Last thing he needs is for little Lucy to be gettin' banged up before she has to.
There's an old Red Rocket gas station just off the road that he drags her into to wait. She hisses protests the entire way and tries to wrench her arm from his grip, but she has a habit of wanderin' off, and he ain't gettin' side-tracked this soon. She stays with him.
The raiders come into sight before long, laughing and jeerin' as raiders do, dressed in their usual mismatched collections of stolen armour.
Thou shalt get side-tracked by bullshit every goddamn time.
Those remembered words strike him like a lightnin' bolt. Cooper hated that goddamn golden rule, wishes he'd been makin' it up, but he's had over two hundred years to develop a grudging acceptance of it. That don't mean it ain't frustrating as fuck.
The raiders have a prisoner. It's a woman, nearin' forty by the looks o' things, her dark hair full of desert dust, skin sun-tanned, wearin' a bandana 'round her neck. Her hands are bound in front of her with the end of the rope bein' held by one of the raiders, leadin' her along like a dog on a leash. She certainly don't look much like a prisoner though, not with her head still held high and her eyes fixed so doggedly on her captors. She's pretty banged up, bruises risin' all over and blood still leakin' from a cut on her lip, but he's seen worse. If he was those raiders, he'd be a bit more watchful, 'cause she's got a look he knows well, a look of a woman who's just waitin' for their first fuck-up to make an escape.
And really, this ain't his problem, this ain't his bullshit -
But he already knows what's gonna happen even before Lucy rounds on him.
"No," he says immediately.
"We have to help her!"
"An' just why have we gotta do that, vaultie?" he says.
She glares at him again. That hateful scowl is really startin' to look at home on her face, he thinks. It suits her.
"Because of the - "
"If you even think about mentionin' that goddamn golden rule o' yours, I promise Miss MacLean, I will gag you and put a leash back 'round your neck, y'hear?"
She flushes angrily, but there's a stubborn look in her eye he's unfortunately gettin' well acquainted with.
"You asked me along for a reason," she says. "And I don't know what that is, but I can only assume it's because you think you can use me. Well, I'm going out there, and I'm going to help her. And if you try and stop me, I'm going to scream and let them know that we're here, and then you'll have to kill them anyway. And if you let me go alone, I'll probably get killed, and you won't be able to use me anymore."
He raises an eyebrowless brow and she falters a little.
"Except for food, of course," she stammers. "But you could eat anyone. I'm probably more use to you alive, and if you really wanted food, then there's raiders right there. So, I'm gonna go."
She still looks at him like she's waitin' for permission but even so, he's reluctantly impressed.
But if she pulls this shit again, he vows to himself, he don't care how useful she has the potential to be, he'll rip her throat out and make her into jerky.
He growls, low and feral, before he's leanin' around the doorway and takin' a shot. There's only a dozen or so raiders, and between him and the vaultie and the dog (mostly him and the dog), they'll cut through 'em no problem.
There's a moment of confusion as the raiders figure out where the sudden attack is comin' from. By the time they do, there's already another two down.
It's insultingly easy. He gets shots off in quick succession, each of them easily findin' their target, and bodies drop to the highway one after the other. Lucy, he's suddenly learnin', is a much better shot than he'd have ever given her credit for, and there's somethin' about the steady way she holds that pistol as she fires clear and deliberate kill-shots at the raiders that has him feelin' a certain kinda way.
Only, it ain't just him, Lucy, and the dog; the prisoner is not lookin' this particular gift horse in the mouth. She's grabbed up one of the raider's rifles and while she can't aim or fire it properly with her hands bound like that, she's certainly dedicated to causin' her captors problems. She grabs the rifle by the barrel and swings hard at the head of the raider nearest to her; even over the ruckus o' the fight, he can hear that skull crack.
It's quick and it's bloody and it's over before it can really get started. The air rings with silence the way it always does, and blood seeps sluggishly out of broken bodies, creepin' into cracks in the tarmac to be sucked up greedily by the dry and dusty earth.
Lucy hurries past him and before he can even tell her to wait just a god damn minute, the prisoner is untied.
"Well, thank you for that," says the woman, flexing her hands as circulation returns to her fingers. She watches them like any wastelander who's ever been on the receivin' end of a good deed: she's waitin' for the catch. It's him she's watchin', most specifically. Her eyes are all wariness and suspicion and wastelander cunning. She doesn't trust or like him anymore'n he does her. But then her eyes drift back to the vaultie and that godawful blue and yellow suit, and he reckons that suit is the only reason she's doubtin' her first instinct.
"I'm Lucy," says the vaultie. It's a little gratifyin' to see she ain't all sunshine and rainbows like she'd been when she'd first strode into Filly. Still friendly, still way too friendly, in a way that makes him want to take a chunk outta her on his darker days, but there's a non-zero amount of wariness in her now, a watchfulness in those big ol' eyes o' hers that's satisfyin'. It won't be long at all before she's indistinguishable from any other wastelander crawlin' around on the surface o' this blighted planet.
She's omitted the use of her last name too, he notices. Seems even she's smart enough - knowing what she does now - to know that usin' her daddy's name ain't the way to people's hearts.
"Nora," says the woman. She stretches her arms up high, showin' off her sinewy body, hardened and trained by years in the wastes. "M'name's Nora."
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Nora," says Lucy, and Nora eyes her oddly as she drops her arms back down. He can't blame her; that kinda politeness is a thing of the very distant past. "Are you okay?"
"Oh peachy keen, honey, peachy fucking keen," says Nora. But she makes a mistake then, because she looks at Lucy right in those pretty brown eyes and they get to her, he can see the exact moment it happens. She sighs. "I'm fine. Few bruises, few cuts; nothing a couple of days won't fix. I'm grateful for the hand."
She kneels down next to the body of a raider and grabs up the sniper rifle he'd had slung over his back. Cooper tenses automatically, though he's been playin' the survival game for so long there's no outward sign of it. Still, the newcomer, Nora, must feel somethin' (instincts are a thing everyone up here knows to listen to), because her head snaps up and she looks right at him, then at the gun he's still not holstered.
"Easy there, cowboy," she says, and there's a little rasp in her voice that makes her sound like she should be croonin' in some smoke-filled bar in the '20s, "I'm not about to pull anything on the ones who just saved my ass. Unless you're planning on trying to collect for that service?"
Cooper smirks.
"Not today," he says.
"I'll take what I can get," she replies.
It might be the easiest truce he's called in the wasteland in a good fifty years. Nora seems pretty content to go around and pilfer back the gear that was pilfered from her. He holsters his gun and starts diggin' into coats and pockets and kickin' at boots just in case there's some caps jinglin' in one. Caps, meds, ammo, food - whatever helps him last another day. He still watches Nora, though, just out the corner of his eye as she gathers up a sleek lookin' knife, a pistol, a couple of grenades, and god help him she even snags a gaudy lookin' tricorn hat off of one of them and settles it on her own head with a dark glare at the corpse she's just finished robbing.
Lucy's set out to helpin', which is surprisin' if he's bein' honest. As unused to violence and bloodshed and thievery as she is, he'd have thought she'd have put up some sort of fuss. But no, all she does is sigh and look miserably resigned before she starts pickin' apart her own raider. She's a pragmatic one, he's thought so ever since he found that doctor down one head and had to re-evaluate just how far this vault-dweller would go to see her trials through to their end. She's the sorta girl who'll run when she has the chance, and bite a man's finger off when she can't. He shoulda given her some more credit.
"So where were they taking you?" Lucy asks Nora, breakin' up the silence that's fallen over their vulturine ritual.
"Couldn't tell you," Nora shrugs. "Probably home base, wherever that is for them."
"But what did they want with you?"
Nora chuckles a little bit incredulously and looks up from her maraudin'.
"They're raiders, honey, could be any number of things. Sex, food, organs, slavery, who knows." But the newcomer looks at Lucy then, looks a bit too hard, and his teeth are grindin' when she raises an eyebrow. "You're a vault-dweller, aren't you? That suit isn't stolen?"
"No," says Lucy indignantly, but then sighs. "Yes, I'm a vault-dweller." So much less chipper than her announcement those handful of weeks ago. His little vaultie is learnin'.
"Huh," is all Nora offers. "How long have you been topside?"
"Three weeks, give or take," says Lucy, and then she startles because, "Hey, is that a - "
But it clearly is a, as Nora has just fished a functionin' Pip-Boy off a raider.
"Sure looks it," she says, and fits it quickly on her wrist. "You've already got one, finders keepers."
Cooper snorts and digs around in the inside pocket of a raider's coat. He comes up empty of bullets, but there's a folded up piece of paper that he takes curiously. It's torn and ragged and barely holdin' its shit together, but the words on it are pretty clear.
"Ah shit," he mutters.
Be on the lookout for a ghoul, a vault-dweller, and a dog travelling together.
Ghoul: Dead or Alive. Dog: Dead or Alive. Vault-Dweller: Alive.
There's a hefty reward on offer, one that'd have him takin' it in a heartbeat if the bounty didn't also include him.
Nora sidles up, entirely too comfortable gettin' into his space to read the bounty over his shoulder. She seems to have even less survival instincts than fuckin' Lucy, 'cause she completely ignores the growl at the back o' his throat, doesn't so much as look at him funny.
"Huh," she says again, and then smirks, like somethin' about this is real funny, like she's tellin' herself some private joke. "Sounds like someone got themselves in a world of trouble."