Chapter Text
For the next four hours, Lucy sits in near silence as she painstakingly copies down all the notes and recipes from the dog-eared book Cooper found on Kanin’s body into her Pipboy. Line by line. Word by word. Mechanical. Methodical. Mindless.
Not a single thing sticks.
Her eyes glaze over as she goes through the recipes for Jet and Fury and Psycho. Pages and pages worth of chems and hallucinogens and stims- even a couple of notes about new Rad-Away variants he was working on before his untimely and apparently quite messy death.
Lucy copies it all down turn by turn of her pip-boy dial.
Click.
Click-Click.
Click.
She couldn’t recall a single detail of any of the recipes if anyone were to ask. Doesn’t even know what page she’s on, if she’s honest.
There will be time to study it later, she knows, but-- she can’t focus. She can’t focus and that makes her upset because if she’s upset about that than she’s not thinking about the other thing that’s making her upset, except she is thinking about that and--! She can’t be pregnant.
She just-- she can’t be.
Cooper can’t get her pregnant and if he can’t and she is, that means it’s Monty’s and she- she can’t. She can’t.
She can’t have Monty’s baby. She can’t have anyone's baby, but especially not his. A raider. A would-be husband.
A murderer.
She almost scoffs, barely catching it before it escapes her. It’s sharp and bitter in her throat, even as she swallows it down, shaking her head.
As if it being Cooper’s would be any better. Sure, he’s not a raider- but he’s also not her husband. And he’s a murderer, too! And a cannibal! She’s seen what he’s capable of- was on the receiving end of it for a week as he dragged her across the desert with no shoe and no finger.
She’s watched him kill in cold blood. Watched him lick wounds and tear into corpses without so much as a twitch.
Who’s to say he wouldn’t eat the baby once it was born?
Who’s to say he’d even let it get that far?
Lucy’s teeth grind, and she very firmly stops that thought as soon as it manifests. Crushes it like a bug under her heel.
Because that’s what she wants, isn’t it? For it to be gone?
Maybe-- maybe if she tells Cooper, he might be able to help. He’s been around a long time. Surely he knows some old-world trick, some wasteland fix. He’d have to know of some way to…
She glances at him through the corner of her eye.
He’s sitting by the grimy window, shotgun in hand as he turns it over and over beneath the dying light of early evening. The sun is deep in its descent, light barely even a hint on the horizon now, but he inspects the weapon anyway.
No doubt he can see everything in perfect detail, even with Lucy having commandeered their only lamp for her own endeavours for the night. He looks over the metal like he’s not just spent as long as Lucy has on her Pip-Boy cleaning the damn thing- polishing out rust and debris until it gleams even in the dark.
Almost immediately, that small, stupid flicker of hope shrives away in her chest.
She can’t tell him.
How can she? He’s just as likely to kill her as he is to rid her of the problem she’s almost positive has taken root in her belly.
Why bother trying to solve a problem when you can just eliminate the source?
Cut the rope, rather than untie the knot.
Her father thought the same. That’s what he did when he killed her mother. When he turned a bomb on Shady Sands and burned the city to ash.
Lucy would like to think Cooper is better than that, but.. he’s a murderer, too. Maybe he hasn’t bombed a city, but he’s left plenty of bodies behind in his wake. She doesn’t know the number. She’s not sure he does, either.
And just because they’re sleeping together doesn’t mean he won’t turn on her some day, too- she’s not any safer with him just because they share a bed. Physical intimacy doesn’t equate to love.
And even if it did, how can she believe that would stop him either? It didn’t stop her father. Her parents were married, had children together. They danced and laughed and loved. They were happy, from what Lucy remembers.
And her father still murdered her mother. His wife. The woman who carried and birthed his children.
Lucy is none of those things to Cooper.
Hell, he's not even really Cooper, is he? That’s just the name she gave him because he wouldn’t give her his own.
He’s not Cooper Howard, and she’s not his wife. And the thing growing inside her- if it's growing inside her… that isn’t his either.
She’s nothing to him.
“You got a face like a stunned mole rat, girl,” his voice cuts through her thoughts like a bullet through wood- sudden, sharp, and splintering.
Lucy flinches, blinking as she snaps her gaze up and away from the gun in Cooper’s hands to meet his eyes.
“What?”
Cooper tilts his head and waves the gun toward her with infuriating casualness, and for all his skills with the thing, he really does have terrible trigger discipline. Her rifle instructor would have had her hide if she tried anything like that. One slip and someone could end up dead.
Not that Cooper cares about that.
“The fuck got you so pissy?”
Oh.
Her expression, if possible, darkens further.
“Nothing,” she mutters, dropping her attention back to the notebook in her lap. The recipe she’s on is one she’s not had the displeasure of having seen in action yet- something called Ultra Jet. It promises lightning fast reflexes and double the energy.
Lucy’s pretty sure it’s just cocaine.
“I’m just hungry.”
She’s not. Not even a little bit, actually, but..
“Well, the fuck you waitin’ for?” Cooper says slowly, like she’s an idiot. “Go eat. I ain’t stoppin’ you.”
You know what?
“Fine.”
If he’s startled by the sudden turn of her tone, he doesn’t show it. He just watches as she tosses the notebook down on the bed beside her and stands, storming from the room without so much as a backwards glance.
She gets as far as the hallway before his voice calls her back.
“Might wanna grab your caps, sweetie.”
Ugh!!!
Dinner is another bland affair. The same soup of wilted vegetables and tough meat with no seasoning, bread right on the cusp of molding and hard enough that it could be used as a weapon if push comes to shove.
Lucy eats downstairs at the bar, forcing herself to chew through the bread until her jaw aches just so she doesn’t smuggle it back upstairs and beat Cooper to death with it.
The food sits heavy in her stomach, but it's nowhere near as heavy as today's realisation.
The greasy soup reflects her face back at her in glistening patches as she stares listlessly into the bowl, spoon half submerged. Her hair is limp and dry, eyes heavy. Her skin is sallow, grey where it isn’t burned.
She looks like a ghost.
A tired one.
“Damn, new girl, what got your goat?”
The voice startles her.
A man- a stranger- slides into the bench across from her with a bottle of something in his hand, a grin on his cracked lips.
He’s around her age, maybe a little older, with a patchy beard and only one eye. A raider, probably, given his getup of leather and metal.
Lucy can’t even muster up her Vault-Tec Manners enough to smile at him. She just stares silently for all of a moment, before returning her attention to her soup.
It’s near empty now, but a few pieces of gristle stare back at her through the grime. Last night she had passed it on to Dogmeat, but Dogmeat is still upstairs with Not Cooper.
Eating it herself isn’t exactly palatable but neither is wasting food.
“Oi, I asked you a question,” the man taps the bottom of his bottle against her bowl, jiggling the greasy goo inside. “You good?”
When Lucy looks up at him this time, her eyes are narrowed.
“Don’t touch my dinner.”
“Ohh, touchy,” he holds his hands up in mock surrender, grin still intact. Lucy doesn’t like it- it’s almost as greasy as her dinner. “Come on, sweetie, give us a smile, yeah?”
Sweetie.
“Do not call me that,” she says, “I’m not your sweetie.”
He chuckles like her ire is cute.
Lucy wants to throw her bowl in his face.
“Well, why don’t you give me your name, then?” he says, leaning in closer, “I’m Chance.”
The Chance of Lucy not throwing her bowl in his face doesn’t improve just because he has a name.
“I don’t care.”
She’s being rude. She’s being aggressively rude, but-- god! Who cares? Now is not the time. What about this moment made him think she was interested in his company? What part of a woman sitting alone in a dirty bar, hunched over and glaring down at her terrible meal makes him think ‘golly, she must really need a big strong man to come and annoy her. That’ll make her smile!’
Lucy is starting to really dislike men.
“Odd name.”
Forget the bowl.
Lucy unsheathes the knife at her belt, bringing it up to the table. She doesn’t brandish it at him, doesn’t even point it at him, but the sight of it paired with the dead-eyed stare she pins him with should be enough to get the point across.
But it’s not.
“I got caps.”
She’s really starting to dislike men.
“Then there are plenty of lovely girls around that will be happy to take you up on your offer,” her fingers twitch around the hilt of her blade, tightening to keep from throwing the damn thing at him and taking out his other eye. “I am not one of them.”
Her stomach turns- not from nerves but revulsion. She’s already most likely pregnant and if by some cosmic mercy she isn’t, the last thing she needs is another raider trying to succeed where Monty failed.
Chance doesn’t seem to get that. Whether or not that’s due to stupidity or simply not caring is yet to be seen.
Lucy is leaning toward the former.
He leers at her, sucking his teeth.
“Sure I can’t persuade you?”
“I said no,” her tone is deadly calm. Inside her, she rails. “If you don’t leave me alone, I will consider myself fully justified in using lethal force.”
The words are cold- spoken like they come from someone else's tongue.
Is this really what she's become? Threatening death over a conversation?
But this isn’t a conversation, is it. This is a warning. One that Chance finally hears when she takes her knife and slams it down into the table, blade first. The hand he’d been creeping toward her stutters and freezes, fingers barely an inch from it.
“Alright, alright,” he stands, grin a little tighter now, “Didn’t mean no harm.”
Everyone means harm out here. It's the only thing they know.
Lucy watches him limp away to the next unsuspecting girl- this time one that may entertain his flirtation- and sighs. She glances back at the bowl for all of a second before pushing it away, stomach turning.
She wasn’t hungry in the first place, but now her appetite is well and truly gone.
By the time she returns to their shared room, night has fallen over Death’s Door like a shroud.
Cooper’s taken over the bed by the time she wanders in- arms and ankles crossed, shoes still on, hat over his face. He’s asleep as far as she can tell, but she knows better than to trust it. Not when it comes to him.
The near constant smog outside has cleared just enough to bare a single cold ray of moonlight through the window, and Lucy hesitates in the doorway, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Just last night they shared that bed- cuddled, even, if she were being generous with the term. Not soft, but at least warm.
Tonight she feels as cold as the moonlight.
With a sigh and a shake of her head, Lucy creeps inside, heading for the tiny bedside table where the notebook rests.
Cooper’s hand snaps out like a snake as she reaches for it, coiling around her wrist like an iron cuff.
“The fuck you think you’re doin’?”
His voice cuts through the quiet like a knife. Not asleep. Not surprised.
Just waiting.
Lucy doesn’t flinch. Violence is second nature to people up here, and if her show downstairs is any indication, she’s quickly becoming accustomed to it.
“Going to see Penny,” she mumbles into the dark, barely above a whisper. “I’ll be back later.”
He scoffs- disbelieving if not uninterested. Maybe even a little bitter.
“Mm,” His grip tightens for all of a heartbeat, bone grinding against bone, “Don’t think I won’t leave without you if you ain’t.”
Yeah.
Somehow she doesn’t doubt that.
Lucy pulls her arm free, the ghost of his fingers still imprinted on her skin. Another bruise left by his hands. Another brand.
She doesn’t look back as she leaves the room, and she doesn’t need to.
She knows he won’t either.