Chapter Text
In my solitude you haunt me
With reveries of days gone by
In my solitude you taunt me
With memories that never die
~Billie Holiday – Solitude
Goddammit, if this wasn't yet another day in the Wasteland. It was though. It fucking was.
The Wasteland offers promises. Promises to make sure you would want to stay alive for one more day. It shows you a sunset so beautiful you’re grateful to be alive for one bleeding second, feeding you just enough hope to keep you moving. But it’s a lie. It’s nothing but hollow words and poisoned dreams. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s exactly why when Hank MacLean told him about a miraculous cure, Cooper knew it sounded too good to be true. Hell, there was no way that that could be true.
"Keep my daughter safe, bring her to me, and I’ll give you your life back.”
Those were Hank’s exact words when they spoke for the first time in two hundred fucking years. Of course, the message had come through the mouth of some chip-engineered, drug-addicted Wastelander, but the words were his. Lucy and he had been trekking through the Wasteland, not far from the Flea Soup shop, when the twitchy, wide-grinning stranger approached him. Lucy had gone ahead to find a spot to pee in peace, leaving The Ghoul by himself—the perfect moment for Hank’s lackey to move in. Alone.
The Ghoul had been on a journey to find his wife and child for two centuries, only for one motherfucker to swoop in and offer his past life on a silver platter—as if it were just another Tuesday for both of them. It wouldn’t be, though, and Cooper knew it. But that didn't mean he wouldn't take the bait.
Hank spoke vaguely—and suspiciously—of a curing agent that would bring Cooper’s dormant cells back to life, purging the irradiated ones and halting the mutations still eating him from the inside. He claimed the drug was powerful enough to reverse his "burn victim" look to an extent; hell, maybe he'd even grow back a nose better than the original! Damned if it was true, damned if it was a lie, but what kind of man would he be if he didn’t at least give it a shot?
The girl had practically thrown herself into his arms—figuratively speaking, anyway. Their paths had crossed; she thought she could trust him, he showed her she couldn’t, and now they were walking this new trail together. Hank reaching out to offer him his humanity back wasn't on his 2296 bingo card, but here he was, bringing this innocent little thing to her father just like she’d wanted—but with an agenda of his own. Who could blame him for wanting his family and his Hollywood looks back? Nobody, I’ll tell you that.
But oh boy, how things went south. So much had happened up until that moment that even his ghoul-self was starting to wonder how the hell both he and the girl were still breathing. She was a trouble magnet, no doubt about it, constantly sticking her nose where it didn't belong—and those self-righteous "heroic" acts of hers were the cherry on top. She was insufferable, but he needed her alive, so keeping her from getting killed had become his number-one priority.
He’d managed that much so far, at least, but not before getting shot at by the very girl he was trying to protect, then getting sidetracked for a little "chat" with Mr. House. But all of that—every bit of it—had led him right here.
Lucy was struggling, fighting her father as he tried to jam a chip into her head. Cooper didn’t exactly know what the tech was for even though he has seen it three times by now and knew it was up to no good, but the scene was clear enough anyways: nothing happening was consensual on Lucy’s part. Hence he took out the guy in the white shirt first. Then, he looked at Lucy in that ridiculously bright yellow dress and put a bullet into Hank, just a few millimeters below his ass.
“If it was up to me, it wouldn’t be your ass bleeding out all over the floor. But it ain’t up to me,” he said as he kept looking at Lucy, not once breaking eye contact to look over at Hank’s whimpering body even though he was directly addressing the man. He slid his gun over to Lucy; she picked it up, stared at the cold steel, then looked at her father.
Their family reunion bullshit could wait—Cooper had business with this man. "Well, she’s here safe and sound, ain’t she, Mr. MacLean? I kept my goddamn promise. Now you keep yours." His thick Southern drawl sharpened, the gravel in his voice more pronounced as his temper flared.
Hank let out a laugh, but the vibration caught the bullet in his ass, turning the chuckle into a pained groan. "The cure... I know there’s one out there. Heard it over the Enclave radios... I hacked into their frequency. As for your family, well... they aren’t here. Their pods were empty when I arrived."
The Ghoul’s stare turned into something sinister. He didn’t know which part to be more furious at, his family’s empty pods or the cure being pushed even further out of his goddamn reach. “The fuck you mean you don’t know where they are? You said you did!”
Hank rolled his eyes. “Oh boo hoo I lied, sue me!”
With a predatory snap, The Ghoul lunged, hauling Hank up by the shoulders—only for Lucy to level the gun he’d just given her right at his chest.
Cooper looked at her with genuine disbelief. "Really? You’re still protecting him? Even after everything he’s put you through?"
“I’ll bring him to justice! He needs to be judged for everything he’s done!” screamed Lucy, a few tears finally escaped, tracking through the dirt on her cheeks as she looked between her father—hardly even recognizing the man anymore—and The Ghoul who had saved her life yet again. Lucy knew he pitied her and that pissed her off even more. Was she supposed to be grateful? The bastard had cut off her finger, for crying out loud. She was done being the "nice one" in this… what was this indeed… oh yes, partnership. “Go find your family or that cure or whatever! I’m handling my father on my own.”
“You’re dumber than you look if you think for a second he’ll go willingly—” Cooper’s words were cut short as Hank lunged for the chip device, snatching it off the iron rail with a swift move. Without a second thought, he slammed it into the back of his neck and triggered the injection. The man didn't hesitate, and for a heartbeat, both Cooper and Lucy stood frozen, watching him in complete and utter disbelief.
And that was that. The man didn’t even remember who he was, let alone his own daughter. It was classic—so on point for a member of upper management to just escape. Let everyone else live with the sins you’ve committed. Run away from your own problems and leave the survivors behind to choke on the wreckage. Hank found the exit door to the havoc he had caused and threw it open, escaping reality the second he had the chance because why wouldn’t he. It was either that, or die at the hands of his own daughter—or maybe at the hands of the Ghoul. Neither seemed like good options at that moment.
As Lucy sat next to her father on the staircase in front of the Lucky 38, she saw Maximus approaching from afar. They hugged and spoke briefly before heading inside the Lucky 38 to check it out. Neither of them noticed the glitch on the big screen behind them as they held hands, thinking they could face the world's problems together, one day at a time.
Deep down, Lucy knew that wasn't a likely outcome. She had heard stories of the Enclave while traveling with The Ghoul, which piqued her interest far more than the idea of joining the NCR alongside Maximus, to be honest. She wondered what all the fuss about the "cure" was and decided to go ask the only person who might have the answers. She had never truly realized it—or perhaps she just wasn’t ready to admit it to herself—but she actually liked being on foot, traveling from one place to another. Maybe it was because she was searching for a place on this earth to call her own. A place where she would finally, truly belong. Vault 33 wasn’t her home anymore. Nowhere was. Everything was a lie… everything.
She excused herself, asking Maximus to look after her father for a little while as she checked her Pip-Boy, trying to figure out where The Ghoul might have gone. Without much of a clue, she started running toward the North Gate of The Strip, praying for luck to be on her side.
The Ghoul, she thought. He hadn't even been decent enough to give her his name so she could address him properly. She knew nothing about him, though she remembered her father mentioning the name "Cooper" over dinner at the hidden Management Vault inside Lucky 38 during her time with him. Lucy didn't know if that was the same man, and she hadn't asked at the time. Her father hadn't offered an explanation, either. She had been left in the dark so often that she felt like everything she’d done was in vain. Bring justice, don’t forget the Golden Rule... blah, blah, blah. What had any of that gained her? A big fat nothing.
Cooper was indeed heading northeast, choosing the north exit of The Strip for a more direct path. He knew the trek to Colorado to find his wife and daughter wouldn't be easy. The walk from Las Vegas—or New Vegas, as everyone called it nowadays—would take at least a month of continuous movement. Even with the "perks" of being a ghoul, he still had to sleep, take his vials to keep the feral hunger at bay, and occasionally find water. Factoring in the brutal terrain, he knew he needed to prepare for the long haul ahead.
“Hey! Hey, wait!”
Behind him, he heard the high-pitched call of the only nuisance in his life. Damn, he thought, that girl is a good tracker. He stopped so abruptly that Lucy didn’t have time to catch herself. Her face collided with his back with a loud thud, and her feet staggered as she tripped forward—only to feel The Ghoul’s arm snake around her waist to steady her. Her wide, shocked hazel eyes stared into his soulless ones for several heartbeats before he finally let go.
Lucy let out a long breath and smiled up at him. “Oh, sorry! But... thank you!” she said with her usual enthusiasm, acting as if her father hadn't just been wiped of his memories of her only a half-hour ago.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing running after me, Vaultie?” The Ghoul asked, once again turning away from her, his voice heavy with weariness. She was way too lively for his liking. Always had been. The Wasteland does that to you after you've spent two hundred goddamn years surviving on irradiated water and poisonous gecko meat.
“I thought… You know, my father mentioned a cure? What exactly is it for? And can you—maybe, possibly—take that chip out of his head? I really need him to remember,” Lucy exclaimed. She sounded a bit too enthusiastic, but her demeanor and her eyes gave it all away—she was scared as hell. She was scared, lonely, and exhausted. Maximus, The Ghoul, her father… all these people were technically by her side, yet she was the loneliest person in the world. She realized then that she could only trust herself, and no one else, ever again. But she wanted to. She wanted to be able to trust. She wanted to find her brother, Norm. She had promised him she’d come back. She wondered how he was doing—or if he was even still alive. But that was a worry for another day. Today, her priority was trying to fix her broken father.
The Ghoul chuckled. “You’re lucky I stopped him from injecting that into your head, sweetheart. Don’t go trying to get it out of him. At least he won’t be a threat to anyone like this.”
Lucy stared at him, her expression hardening with stubbornness. “Please? If you do that, I’ll help you find this cure. I have resources. I have my Pip-Boy. I can blow people's brains out, I can skin animals… I’m the whole package, believe me! Well, you already know that, I guess, but…”
“You’re nothing but a nuisance, girl. You talk damn too much for my liking.”
The frown on Lucy’s face deepened. “He’s all I have left,” she said, her voice finally shaking. “I mean, I have a brother named Norm, but I don’t even know if he’s alive! I need to go back to Vault 33, and I need to bring my father with me. I need your help.”
The Ghoul let out a long, heavy sigh. “I can find the cure on my own, and I’m going to Colorado to find my wife and daughter. Our paths split here, darlin’. We don’t need each other no more.”
Once again, their stares were locked in a contest to see who would blink first. Neither broke, but finally, eventually, Lucy decided to put two and two together. She remembered her dinner with her father in the Management Vault—eating mashed potatoes as if they were having dinner like the good old days—when he had muttered something under his breath along the lines of, “Glad Cooper got you to me safely, that incompetent douchebag.” She hadn't thought much of it then; she’d been confused, but the conversation moved on and she had forgotten all about it. Now, the memory resurfaced. At this point, her desperation to hold onto something—anything—was far greater than her will to live.
"Cooper," she uttered under her breath—half-addressing him, half-convincing herself.
The name hung in the dry desert air like a low-hanging fog. The Ghoul didn't move. He didn't even twitch, but the silence that followed was different—it was heavy, pressurized. He stood with his back to her, his long coat casting a harsh shadow over the cracked pavement.
"My father... he mentioned that name to me last night," Lucy continued, her voice gaining a tiny bit of ground now that she had his undivided attention. "He said something about a 'Cooper' bringing me to him. But you brought me to him. So... was that you? Was that your name before... all this?" she asked as she moved her hand towards the land around them, showing him the destroyed desert below them.
The Ghoul finally turned, but the movement wasn't quick or violent. It was slow, like an old machine groaning back to life. He looked at her, and for a second, the "soulless" quality of his eyes seemed to flicker. "That name's buried under two centuries of dirt and radiation, Vaultie," he rasped, his voice lower than usual. "And you'd be wise not to go digging it up."
Lucy didn't flinch. "I'm not digging. I'm just asking. Because if you were that man, then you knew him. You knew my father before he became... whatever he is now. And if you knew him, then you know he wasn't always a monster. There has to be a way to bring him back and maybe, just maybe, you would be willing to help me remove that chip from his head."
The Ghoul let out a short, dry bark of a laugh that sounded more like a cough. "Your father was a monster the day he signed those papers, darlin'. He just didn't have the face to match it yet. Now he does." He adjusted the strap of his rifle, his jaw tight. "You want to find the cure? Fine. You want to follow me to Colorado and likely die in a ditch? That's your business. But don't go calling me by a dead man's name again. You got that?"
Her eyes gleamed with a mix of joy and terror. She told him to wait for five minutes; he replied with a gravelly, “I ain’t waitin' for nobody,” but she didn't care. She ran back and told Maximus everything—that she had to find her brother, that she had to find this "cure." Maximus warned her that The Ghoul hadn't even explained what the cure was actually for, but Lucy was past the point of caring. In her mind, the deal was simple: she would help The Ghoul find whatever he was looking for, and he would help her remove the chip from her father’s neck. He had never actually said he knew how to do it—Lucy just assumed he would. But even if he couldn’t, he would keep her company on the long trek back to Vault 33. If anything dangerous was lying in wait, he would be there to protect her. It was a good deal. In reality, they were both chasing empty dreams, but dreams were the only thing keeping them human in a world that wanted them to be anything but.
Lucy was back at the north gate in under ten minutes, half expecting to see The Ghoul gone. But he was standing right where she had left him, hands in his pockets, eyes looking directly at her running body towards him. She had ditched that hideous dress for a new get-up—likely something she’d gotten from the NCR. It looked like an old soldier’s uniform, and for the first time since meeting her, Cooper realized she wasn't a Vault-dweller anymore. This girl was finally, unfortunately, a Wastelander. Everything she’d been taught in those sterile halls had vanished the moment she stepped foot on the outside. It was sad to see, really. It reminded him of his own first days on the surface, back when he was still trying to fight the outrageous levels of radiation he’d been exposed to. He felt a deep, hollow sadness within his chest, but his face remained a mask. Not a single trace of it broke through to his expression because he would rather be caught dead than sentimental.
“’Bout damn time, Vaultie. What you say? Ready to leave your daddy behind for a change instead of looking for him?”
“Yes, please, lead the way,” came the happy reply, The Ghoul looked at her face for a long, silent moment before they both turned onto the road ahead.
“You know, I like that name, Cooper—”
The Ghoul immediately cut her off. “This is gonna be a quiet walk for a few hours, sweetheart, don’t even think about conversing with me.”
Lucy frowned. “Okie dokie,” she said, looking out at the horizon.
It was going to be a long journey…