Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I have never advocated war except as means of peace, so seek peace, but prepare for war. Because war... War never changes. War is like winter and winter is coming…"

— Ulysses S. Grant

Vault 36, New California
September 19^th, 2281

The words appeared on Lucy's terminal screen, white text against black background, blinking cursor waiting for more.

Chapter One: The Philosophy of Conflict

She hesitated, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Outside her door, Vault 36 hummed with its usual evening rhythm—the distant clatter of the cafeteria closing for the night, the hydraulic hiss of corridor doors, the ever-present thrum of the air recyclers. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. The mechanical lullaby of underground life. Lucy was supposed to be writing her thesis on pre-war corporate governance structures. Overseer Jude Heartfilia—her father—had assigned it personally, part of her grooming to eventually assume vault leadership. "Understanding how Vault-Tec's executive framework functioned is essential to maintaining our society," he'd said. But corporate governance felt hollow tonight. Meaningless. Instead, she found herself writing something else entirely. A novel, perhaps. Or maybe just thoughts that needed escape from her head.

She began typing:

"War. War never changes."

I found this phrase in one of the pre-war archives today—tucked into a historical analysis of twentieth-century conflicts. The author claimed it was a pre-war proverb, though I suspect they coined it themselves and wanted the weight of antiquity behind it. But true or not, ancient or modern, the phrase won't leave me alone.

Father always says that humanity's great flaw was forgetting. That the Great War happened because people couldn't remember what war truly cost. The nuclear fire was collective amnesia made manifest. We forgot, and so we repeated. We repeated, and so we died. But I'm starting to wonder if that's wrong.

What if war never changes because we never change? What if it's not about forgetting at all?

The Romans fought over land and resources. The Americans and Chinese fought over oil and uranium. Strip away the technology, the flags, the ideologies we drape over violence like silk over steel, and you find the same thing: humans wanting what others have, willing to kill to take it. War doesn't change. War CAN'T change. Because war isn't some external force—it's us. It's human nature crystallized into action.

I was reading about the surface today. The monitoring stations show... something. Settlements, maybe. Heat signatures that could be towns. Father spent hours staring at those blurry readings, cross-referencing radiation levels and movement patterns. He seemed excited. "They're rebuilding," he said. "Humanity's resilient."

But all I could think about was the history books. Rome fell, and warlords carved up the empire. The Qing Dynasty collapsed, and China fractured into warlord states. Every civilization that falls leaves the same aftermath: people gathering into groups, drawing lines, deciding who belongs and who doesn't.

The monitoring stations can't tell us much—just that there are survivors, that they're organized somehow. But I'd bet anything they're already fighting over whatever's left. Different flags, same war. That's what always happens. Father thinks I'm cynical. Maybe I am. Or maybe I just read too much history.

Lucy paused, reading what she'd written. It was darker than her usual work, more cynical. Father wouldn't approve. He believed in progress, in humanity's capacity to learn and evolve. It was why he'd accepted the Overseer position—to preserve knowledge, to ensure the next generation had the wisdom to avoid past mistakes. But Lucy had read the histories. Every generation thought they were wiser than the last. Every generation thought their war would be the final war, the one that would finally settle things. Every generation was wrong.

She started typing again:

I wonder sometimes what the people before the bombs were thinking in those final moments. Did they realize? Did they understand that all their accumulated knowledge, all their philosophy and science and art, hadn't changed the fundamental equation? We can split atoms and cure diseases and reach for the stars. We can build wonders and preserve beauty and teach ethics to our children. But we still go to war over the same things our cave-dwelling ancestors fought over: food, territory, fear of the other.

War never changes because—

Lucy stopped. Her fingers rested on the keys, but the sentence wouldn't complete itself. Because why? Because we're fundamentally violent? Because peace is an illusion? Because every attempt to break the cycle just becomes another turn of it? She stared at the unfinished thought, the blinking cursor mocking her with its patient rhythm.

War never changes because—

The answer felt important, like understanding it might unlock something fundamental about human nature, about the wasteland beyond the vault walls, about why her father spent so many late nights studying surface settlements through monitoring stations. But she didn't know how to finish it. Not yet. Lucy sighed and saved the document for later. Whatever this was—novel, journal, philosophical rambling—it could wait. She had more immediate concerns.

She logged off from her personal terminal, the pre-war computer screen fading to black. Her father had given her this terminal three years ago, when she was sixteen, after she'd scored the highest marks in Vault 36's history on the G.O.A.T.—the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test. She smiled at the memory. Staying up until midnight for weeks, preparing for that exam. Reading every science book Mr. Bero, the vault's teacher, could bring her. Locking herself in the vault library with Loke, her childhood friend, researching pre-war knowledge for hours while he inevitably fell asleep surrounded by books, his soft snoring echoing between the shelves. The G.O.A.T. was supposed to determine everyone's position in the vault—their role in maintaining their underground society. At sixteen, every vault dweller took it. For most, it meant assignment to maintenance, or food production, or education.

For Lucy, it had meant something else entirely.

Overseer.

The same position as her father. The test had assigned her the vault's highest responsibility based on her scores, her knowledge, her leadership potential. Her father had been so proud. "You'll lead this vault one day, Lucy," he'd said, placing the terminal in her quarters himself. "You'll preserve what we've built here. You'll keep everyone safe." She'd believed him then. Believed in the future he described, believed in the vault's mission, believed she was ready for that responsibility. Now, staring at her dark terminal screen, Lucy wondered if that future would ever come. Wondered if she even wanted it to. The unfinished sentence lingered in her mind.

War never changes because—

Outside, Vault 36 hummed its eternal rhythm, unchanged and unchanging and Lucy sat in the darkness of her quarters, surrounded by pre-war knowledge and unanswered questions, not knowing that her carefully planned future would shatter like glass. Not knowing that the wasteland would teach her how to finish that sentence. Not knowing that war's unchanging nature would become far more than philosophical curiosity.

A soft chime cut through the silence.

Lucy's eyes shifted to her left wrist, where the Pip-Boy's green glow had flared to life. The device sat heavy and familiar against her skin—bulky pre-war technology that had outlasted the civilization that created it. Every vault dweller received one on their tenth birthday, a rite of passage as certain as the vault door closing each night. She could still see that day if she closed her eyes. Her father's careful hands fastening the too-large device around her small wrist, the metal cool against her skin. Her mother standing behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder, both of them wearing that particular expression of parental pride—the kind reserved for watching your child take another step toward adulthood.

"Now you're officially part of Vault 36," her father had said. Nine years ago. A lifetime. Back when Mother was still alive, when Father still smiled easily, when the future felt certain as clockwork.

The notification blinked:

You have 1 new message.

Lucy tapped the mail icon—muscle memory, the same motion she'd made thousands of times. The sender's name appeared in that distinctive green text.

Loke.

A quiet laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. Who else would message her at this hour? Who else knew she'd be awake, thoughts too tangled for sleep, probably staring at a terminal screen in the dark?

She opened the message.

Three words, simple and expected:

Are you asleep?

The question hung there on the glowing screen, illuminating the darkness of her quarters like a small green star. Lucy's fingers found the Pip-Boy's small keyboard, muscle memory guiding each keystroke in the dim light.

Not yet. Still working on Father's assignment.

A lie, technically. The corporate governance thesis sat barely touched on her terminal, abandoned in favor of philosophical musings about war and human nature. But some truths were easier left unsaid.

She hit send and leaned back in her chair, waiting. The air recyclers hummed their constant rhythm. Somewhere down the corridor, a door hissed open and closed—someone else awake in Vault 36's artificial night.

Loke's reply came quickly, the Pip-Boy chiming again.

At half past eleven? You're going to burn out those pretty eyes. Doesn't the Overseer have rules about sleep schedules?

Lucy could practically hear the concern beneath his teasing words. Loke knew her father's policies about proper rest—had witnessed enough of her late-night scoldings to know exactly how the Overseer felt about his daughter's nocturnal reading habits. How many times had they been caught in the library after hours, surrounded by books neither of them were supposed to be reading? Too many to count. Her fingers moved across the keys.

Writer's block. Got distracted.

She glanced at her dark terminal screen, at the unfinished sentence still waiting there in the shadows. War never changes because—

Because what? The answer felt just out of reach, like trying to remember a dream upon waking. Three dots appeared on her Pip-Boy screen, disappeared, appeared again. Loke typing, deleting, typing again. Finally, his message materialized.

Haha, of course you did. Want to take a walk? Change of scenery might help.

Lucy stared at the words. A walk? At this hour? Through Vault 36's corridors when everyone else was asleep, when the only sounds were mechanical heartbeats and the echo of their own footsteps?

Her first instinct was refusal. Walking the vault at half past eleven was asking for trouble—asking for questions, asking for one of her father's disappointed lectures about responsibility and the proper example an Overseer's daughter should set.

Are you serious? Father would have both our heads. Besides, I'm almost done.

Another lie. She wasn't even close to done. The thesis remained unwritten, the novel unfinished, the sentence incomplete.

But Loke's response came with his characteristic persistence.

If your old man catches us, we'll say you needed help with research. Library access for your project. He can't argue with academic dedication, right?

Lucy paused, fingers hovering over the keys. The four walls of her quarters suddenly felt closer than they had moments before. The recycled air tasted stale in her lungs. The terminal screen sat dark and silent, offering no answers, no inspiration, just her own reflection staring back from black glass. Maybe Loke was right. Maybe she needed to move, to breathe, to see something other than the same desk, the same walls, the same blinking cursor waiting for words she couldn't find. The unfinished sentence mocked her. War never changes because—

Because she was stuck, paralyzed by her own thoughts, trapped in circular philosophy that led nowhere. Lucy's fingers found the keys.

Ten minutes. Cafeteria. Don't be late.

She sent the message before she could reconsider, before the rational part of her mind could list all the reasons this was a terrible idea. The Pip-Boy's screen confirmed delivery, then faded to standby.

Lucy stood, her chair scraping softly against the metal floor. Her muscles protested—stiff from too long sitting, too many hours hunched over screens and scattered papers. She stretched, feeling vertebrae pop, circulation returning to cramped limbs. The documents on her desk lay in organized chaos—research notes for the thesis she wasn't writing, fragments of the novel she couldn't finish, printouts of pre-war philosophy that raised more questions than answers. She gathered them with careful hands, stacking pages into a semblance of order. The thesis could wait. The novel could wait. The unfinished sentence about war and human nature could wait. Right now, she needed to move.

Lucy pulled her vault jumpsuit jacket from where it hung on her chair—standard issue blue and yellow, the number 36 emblazoned on the back. The fabric was soft from years of wear, familiar as her own skin. She shrugged it on, the weight settling comfortably on her shoulders. One last glance at her quarters. The terminal screen sat dark and silent, its secrets locked away until she returned. The bed remained unmade—she hadn't planned on sleeping anyway. Everything else was in its place, ordered and controlled, just as an Overseer's daughter's room should be.

But Lucy had never been particularly good at doing what she should. She moved to the door, which slid open with its usual hydraulic hiss—a sound so familiar she barely heard it anymore. The corridor beyond stretched empty in both directions, lit by the soft emergency lighting that never quite reached true brightness. Night shift in Vault 36 meant skeletal staffing—just essential personnel keeping the life support systems running, the doors sealed, the future preserved. Lucy stepped into the corridor, and the door whispered shut behind her.

The cafeteria was two corridors away, a five-minute walk at most. But she took her time, letting her footsteps echo against metal walls, listening to the vault's mechanical breathing—the hum of air recyclers, the distant thrum of the water purification system, the occasional hiss of pressure valves equalizing. These were the sounds of safety. Of certainty. Of a world that never changed, never faltered, never failed. At least, that's what they were supposed to be. Lucy turned the corner and saw the cafeteria entrance ahead—a wide archway leading to the communal space where vault dwellers gathered for meals, for meetings, for the small moments of connection that made underground life bearable. And leaning against the archway, arms crossed, patient as stone, was Loke.

He straightened when he saw her, a familiar smile crossing his face even in the dim light. Twenty-two years old, vault-born like her, wearing his own blue and yellow jumpsuit with the casual confidence of someone who'd never known anything else. Her childhood friend. Her library companion. The one person in Vault 36 who understood her restlessness without judgment.

"Knew you'd come," he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper in the sleeping vault.

Lucy shook her head, but she was smiling despite herself. "Ten minutes," she reminded him. "That's all."

"Ten minutes," he agreed, pushing off from the wall. "Just a walk. Clear your head. Then back to your assignment."

They both knew it was a lie. But some lies were necessary. Some lies were the only thing that made the truth bearable. Together, they walked into the cafeteria's darkness, leaving the corridor lights behind, moving deeper into Vault 36's sleeping heart. And somewhere in Lucy's quarters, on a dark terminal screen, an unfinished sentence waited.

War never changes because—

The answer would come. Just not tonight.

They walked through Vault 36's quiet corridors side by side, their footsteps echoing softly against metal walls. The same corridors Lucy had known her entire life—every rivet, every scuff mark, every section of flooring worn smooth by two centuries of footsteps. She knew these halls like she knew her own heartbeat. This corridor, where she used to greet vault dwellers on her way to class, learning their names and faces like her father taught her—A good Overseer knows everyone. That junction ahead, where she'd gotten into a fight with Brandish when she was seven, defending Loke from the vault bully's taunts. She remembered Security Chief Aqua pulling them apart, the disappointed look on her father's face when he'd scolded her later. Heartfilias don't resort to violence, Lucy. We lead by example.

Around the next corner, the freezer door where Loke had gotten locked in during hide-and-seek. She'd been too scared to tell anyone at first, afraid they'd all get in trouble. It had been Aed, the vault cook, who'd heard Loke's muffled shouting and freed him, blue-lipped and shivering. They'd never played hide-and-seek quite the same way after that. Every corridor held a memory. Every turn, a piece of her life. Lucy found herself smiling at memories only she could see, walking through her own history like a museum of moments preserved in metal and concrete. Childhood carved into the vault's bones, unchanging as everything else underground.

"Hey..." Loke's voice was soft, careful not to shatter whatever reverie she'd fallen into.

"How's your thesis coming?" Reality crashed back. The smile faded from Lucy's lips like frost in sunlight.

"Nowhere," she said, and the word tasted like defeat. "Still absolutely nowhere."

They walked a few more steps in silence, their footsteps marking time against the corridor floor. Lucy could feel Loke's concern even without looking at him—nineteen years of friendship taught you to read silences as clearly as words.

"You've been working on it for weeks," he said finally.

"I know."

"Your father—"

"Wants me to understand how Vault-Tec operated." Lucy's frustration broke through her carefully maintained composure. "Corporate structures, executive hierarchies, pre-war business models. But Loke, the Overseer's job is protecting people. Making sure everyone's healthy and safe and the vault keeps running. What does any of that corporate history matter?"

Loke was quiet, and Lucy knew that silence. He was thinking, choosing his words with the same care he used when shelving books in the library—precise placement, everything in its proper order.

Finally: "Maybe your father wants you to walk the path he walked. Not just reach the same destination—follow the same journey. Understand things the way he does."

The words settled over Lucy like a weight.

She slowed her steps, processing. "You think he's trying to make me into him?"

"I think," Loke said carefully, "he wants you to see what he sees. Know what he knows. Maybe he believes understanding Vault-Tec means understanding our purpose here. Why we exist. What we're supposed to preserve."

Lucy absorbed this, her footsteps slowing further until they were barely moving through the corridor. "And if I don't want to see things his way?"

Loke didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was gentle, almost apologetic. "I don't know if that's an option for you, Lucy. Not when you're the Overseer's daughter."

The truth of it sat between them, heavy and undeniable.

Lucy looked down the corridor stretching ahead—the same corridor she'd walked a thousand times, would walk a thousand more. The same walls, the same lights, the same recycled air. Everything the same, always the same, forever the same.

Unchanged and unchanging. Just like Father wanted her to be.

War never changes, whispered the unfinished sentence in her mind.

Maybe nothing did.

The weight of expectations pressed down on her shoulders—invisible but real, heavy as the earth and steel separating them from the surface. Nineteen years of being the Overseer's daughter, of meeting expectations, of walking predetermined paths. And now this thesis, this corporate governance assignment that felt less like education and more like indoctrination. Follow his footsteps. See what he sees. Become what he became. But what if she didn't want to? What if the path laid out for her felt like a cage, even if that cage was lined with privilege and position? Lucy stopped walking entirely. Loke stopped with her, turning to face her in the dim corridor lighting.

"Sometimes," Lucy said quietly, "I wonder if he even wants a daughter. Or if he just wants a successor."

The words hung in the air between them, raw and honest in a way she rarely allowed herself to be. Even with Loke. Even with someone who'd known her since childhood.

Loke's expression softened. "Lucy..."

"No, it's—" She shook her head. "Sorry. That was unfair. He's my father. He loves me. I know that."

But knowing something and feeling it weren't always the same thing. Especially not in the six months since Mother died, since Father had buried himself in work and expectations and plans for Lucy's future. Since warmth had been replaced by duty, and conversations had become lessons, and every interaction felt like preparation for a role she wasn't sure she wanted to play. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, silent except for the vault's mechanical breathing. Lucy looked at Loke, at her oldest friend standing patient in the dim light, and felt a sudden gratitude for his presence. For someone who knew her as Lucy, not as the Overseer's daughter. Not as a future leader or a successor or a legacy to be shaped. They stood there a moment longer, two young people in the middle of an empty corridor, surrounded by metal and memories and the weight of futures not yet decided.

Lucy broke the silence first, her voice barely above a whisper. "Sometimes I wonder what it's like up there."

Loke turned to look at her, confusion crossing his features. "Up where?"

"The surface." Lucy's eyes lifted toward the ceiling, as if she could see through tons of earth and steel to the world beyond. "The wasteland. Whatever's left of the old world."

Loke's expression shifted immediately—concern replacing confusion. "Lucy—"

"I know what you're going to say," she cut him off gently. "That it's dangerous. That the radiation would kill me. That there's nothing up there but death and raiders and monsters." She paused, then added quietly, "That's what all the educational materials say, anyway."

"Because it's true," Loke said, and there was an edge to his voice she rarely heard. Real worry. "The surface isn't some adventure, Lucy. It's not like the books in the library. People die up there. Every day. From things we don't even have names for down here."

Lucy turned to face him fully, and in the dim corridor lighting, her expression was somewhere between wistful and determined. "But people live up there too, don't they? The monitoring stations show settlements. Communities. Father's been tracking them for months—years, maybe. Trade routes, governments forming, civilization rebuilding from the ashes."

"Civilization?" Loke shook his head. "You're talking about scattered survivors fighting over irradiated water and pre-war scraps."

"Maybe." Lucy's voice was soft but insistent. "But they're out there, Loke. Living. Moving. Changing. While we're down here, in these same corridors, breathing the same recycled air, following the same rules, living the same lives our grandparents lived two centuries ago."

The words hung between them, dangerous in their honesty.

Loke stepped closer, lowering his voice even though they were alone. "What are you saying? That you want to go up there?"

Did she? Lucy hadn't really articulated it before, even to herself. But now, standing in these unchanging corridors, the thought crystallized into something solid. Something real.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe I'm just tired of everything being so... predetermined. So safe. So controlled." She gestured at the walls around them. "We know everything down here, Loke. Every corridor, every person, every day exactly like the last. There are no surprises. No discoveries. Nothing new."

"That's the point," Loke said, and his concern was deepening into something close to fear. "That's what keeps us alive. Vault 36 is stable because nothing changes. Because we follow the rules and stay underground where it's safe."

"Safe," Lucy echoed, and the word tasted hollow. "Is that all we are? Safe and static and waiting for... what? The surface to magically become habitable again? That could take another two hundred years. Another thousand. Are we just supposed to stay down here forever, preserving pre-war knowledge nobody will ever use?"

Loke was quiet for a long moment, studying her face. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured. "This isn't really about the surface, is it? This is about your father. About the thesis. About becoming Overseer."

Lucy wanted to deny it, but the truth settled heavy in her chest. "Maybe it's about all of it. Maybe I'm just realizing that the path laid out for me—Overseer-in-training, successor to the legacy, guardian of Vault 36—maybe that's not what I want."

"And you think going to the surface would be better?" Loke's concern sharpened into something almost harsh. "Lucy, you've never been outside these walls. You don't know what it's like up there. The vault educational materials aren't exaggerating—radiation sickness, contaminated water, failed crops, raiders, mutated creatures. People up there live maybe forty years if they're lucky. Down here, we live eighty, ninety, healthy years. That's not imprisonment, that's survival."

"It's both," Lucy said quietly. "Can't it be both?"

Loke ran a hand through his hair, frustration and worry warring on his face. "You're the Overseer's daughter, Lucy. You can't just—you can't leave. The vault needs you. Your father needs you. I—" He stopped himself.

Lucy heard what he didn't say. Felt the weight of it between them.

"I'm not saying I'm going to run away tomorrow," she said, trying to ease the tension. "I'm just... thinking out loud. Wondering what else is out there. If there's more to life than these corridors and corporate governance theses and becoming exactly who everyone expects me to be."

Loke's expression softened slightly, but the worry remained. "Promise me you won't do anything reckless. Please, Lucy. The surface isn't some romantic escape. It's real danger. Real death. Whatever's wrong down here, at least you're alive to fix it."

Lucy looked at her oldest friend—at the genuine fear in his eyes, the protective instinct that had been there since they were children playing hide-and-seek. He'd always tried to keep her safe. Even from herself.

"I promise," she said finally. "No reckless decisions."

It wasn't a lie, exactly. Just... incomplete.

Because Lucy didn't know yet what she would do. Didn't know if these thoughts about the surface idle fantasy or something were deeper, something that would eventually demand action.

All she knew was that something inside her was changing. Some certainty cracking. Some wall beginning to crumble.

War never changes, whispered her unfinished sentence.

But maybe she could.

Loke seemed to sense there was more she wasn't saying, but he didn't push. Instead, he glanced at his own Pip-Boy. "It's getting late. We should probably head back before someone notices we're wandering around at midnight."

Lucy nodded, grateful for the reprieve. "Yeah. Ten minutes turned into twenty."

"Thirty, actually," Loke corrected with a small smile. "You always lose track of time when you're thinking."

They started walking back toward her quarters, their footsteps echoing in the familiar corridors. But something had shifted between them—some understanding that the future Lucy had always assumed was no longer quite as certain. The vault hummed around them, unchanged. But Lucy walked through it differently now, carrying thoughts of sunlight and wasteland and a world beyond these metal walls that she'd never seen but suddenly, desperately wanted to know. Even if Loke was right about the danger. Even if it was reckless. Even if everything she'd been taught said staying underground was the only rational choice. Some part of her—small but growing—whispered that safety wasn't enough. That survival wasn't the same as living. That maybe, just maybe, the unchanging vault was the real cage. And Lucy was beginning to realize she'd spent nineteen years accepting bars she never questioned.

Until now.

September became October in the vault's timeless rhythm.

Twenty-nine days marked only by calendar readouts on terminal screens. No seasons underground. No changing light. Just the same recycled air, the same mechanical pulse, the same corridor walls Lucy had memorized since childhood. But Father was changing. Lucy finished her thesis on corporate governance. Father read it—three hours with his office door sealed, terminal glow visible beneath the gap. When he finally called her in, he nodded once. "Well-reasoned. You understand the framework." He assigned the next project without meeting her eyes.

The days blurred after that. Same corridors. Same faces. Same cafeteria meals at the same designated times. Pages in a book she'd read too many times, words she could recite without thinking. But Father was different now. Lucy noticed it in increments. Small changes that accumulated into something undeniable. The way he'd stand at the monitoring station for hours, shoulders tense, one hand pressed flat against the screen as if he could push through the glass to whatever lay beyond. Cross-referencing data she didn't understand—radiation patterns, heat signatures, movement vectors across the surface.

The late nights. His office door sealed more often than not, light bleeding from beneath in a thin gold line. She'd pass by at midnight, at two in the morning, and still see that glow. Still hear the soft click of keys, the occasional frustrated exhale. The distraction. She'd speak to him—report on vault education initiatives, ask about supply requisitions, mention the librarian's request for new archive access—and he'd look at her like she was speaking a foreign language. His eyes would focus somewhere past her shoulder, somewhere above, somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't underground.

"Father?" Early October. Lucy found him hunched over his desk, surrounded by papers that shouldn't exist in a vault. Surface maps. Topographical surveys. Settlement projections. His terminal displayed a document with words she shouldn't have been able to see from the doorway.

Platinum Chip. Robert House. New Vegas. Delivery route analysis.

He looked up. For just a moment—less than a second, barely a heartbeat—she saw something raw in his expression. Fear. Or determination. Or both. Then it was gone, replaced by the Overseer's careful neutrality.

"Is everything alright?" Lucy asked, though she already knew the answer.

"Everything's fine." His hand moved to minimize the document, casual, practiced. "Just research. Vault matters."

Lucy looked at the maps still visible on his desk. At the surface locations circled in red. At the notes in his handwriting—courier networks, package tracking, October 19th? Vault matters didn't require surface maps. Vault matters didn't demand notations about something called "the Platinum Chip" and locations that existed only in the wasteland—places with names like "the Mojave Desert" and "New Vegas." Vault matters kept you underground, kept you safe, kept you focused on the two hundred souls living in these finite corridors. Whatever Father was researching, it wasn't vault matters. Lucy wanted to ask. The question sat on her tongue, heavy and sharp. What are you looking for? Why the surface? What's the Platinum Chip? Are you planning to leave?

But the Overseer's daughter didn't question the Overseer. Even when that Overseer was her father. Even when she watched him slipping away into something she couldn't understand, piece by piece, late night by late night, distracted conversation by distracted conversation. Even when she saw the obsession building like pressure in a sealed container, waiting for release. She left his office without asking. The door hissed shut behind her. And Lucy stood in the corridor, surrounded by the vault's eternal mechanical breathing, and wondered how long until Father disappeared completely. The unfinished sentence from her novel haunted her those weeks. She'd pull up the document late at night, stare at those words, try to force meaning from the empty space after them.

War never changes because—

The cursor blinked. Patient. Mocking. Waiting for an answer she didn't have. She still didn't know how to finish it. But watching Father obsess over surface maps, over something called a Platinum Chip, over wasteland locations that shouldn't matter to anyone underground— Lucy was starting to suspect the answer was simpler than she'd thought.

War never changes because we can't help ourselves.

Because even when we know better, we walk toward it anyway.

Because knowledge isn't enough to stop us from repeating the same mistakes.

Because—

The sentence still wouldn't finish. Not yet. Not until she understood what Father was walking toward. Not until she understood why the wasteland was calling him, despite everything he'd taught her about staying safe underground. October deepened. Father withdrew further. The maps multiplied. The late nights extended. And Lucy watched, helpless, as the vault's Overseer—her father—prepared for something he wouldn't name. Something that would leave Vault 36 without its leader. Something that would leave Lucy without her father. She just didn't know it yet.

October 18th, 2281
3:47 AM

The alarm shattered Lucy's sleep like glass.

She jerked awake, disoriented, the vault's emergency siren screaming through the walls—a sound she'd only heard in drills, never real, never at three in the morning when the vault should be sleeping. Her Pip-Boy flared to life automatically, emergency protocols engaging.

VAULT-WIDE ALERT
ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO STATIONS
OVERSEER AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED

Lucy was moving before conscious thought caught up, pulling on her jumpsuit, stumbling into the corridor. Other doors were opening, vault dwellers emerging confused and frightened. The emergency lighting bathed everything in harsh red.

"What's happening?" someone shouted.

"Is it a breach?"

"The reactor—"

"Everyone calm down!" Security Chief Aqua's voice cut through the chaos, amplified by the PA system. "There is no breach. No reactor failure. Everyone return to quarters immediately. This is not a drill. Return to quarters and await further instruction."

But Lucy was already running. Running toward the Overseer's office. Running toward her father. The corridors blurred past—the same corridors where she'd walked with Loke a month ago, where she'd dreamed of the surface, where she'd wondered what lay beyond these walls. She rounded the corner to the administrative section and stopped. The Overseer's office door stood open. Inside, Deputy Overseer Chen stood at Father's desk, surrounded by security personnel, his face grave in the emergency lighting. And Loke was there too, still in sleep clothes, looking stricken.

"Lucy—" Loke started, but Chen cut him off.

"Miss Heartfilia." Chen's voice was formal, careful. "I'm sorry. There's no easy way to say this."

Lucy's world narrowed to a single point. To the empty chair behind Father's desk. To the terminal still glowing with the last searches he'd made. To the vault door access logs displayed on the wall monitor.

"Your father," Chen said quietly, "Overseer Jude Heartfilia, has left Vault 36."

The words didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense.

"Left?" Lucy heard her own voice, distant and hollow. "What do you mean, left?"

"At approximately 0200 hours, the Overseer accessed the vault door using his override codes. He exited into the wasteland. Alone. He sealed the door behind him and revoked his own access credentials from the external terminal."

Lucy stared at Chen, at the security officers, at Loke's stricken face, trying to process information that refused to process. Father had left. He had walked out of Vault 36 into the irradiated wasteland. He had abandoned the vault. Abandoned his position.

"Why?"

The word broke on the way out. Fractured into pieces Lucy couldn't reassemble.

Chen's hand moved—gesture toward the terminal, careful, like approaching something wounded. "He left instructions. A message for the vault."

A pause. Weight behind it.

"And a personal log. For you."

Lucy's body moved before her mind caught up. Feet carrying her across the office—Father's office—while her thoughts lagged somewhere behind, still processing the impossible.

Left. Abandoned. Gone.

Her fingers found the terminal controls. Muscle memory. She'd used this terminal a dozen times, standing beside Father while he worked, learning the Overseer's systems, preparing for the role she'd never wanted but always expected. The screen glowed green in the emergency lighting's red wash.

OVERSEER'S LOG - FINAL ENTRY
October 18, 2281 - 02:00

Two hours ago. While Lucy slept, Father had written this. Had coded his final words into the vault's permanent record. Had walked to the door and left. She started reading. The words appeared in Father's voice—formal, measured, the tone he used for official communications. But Lucy knew him well enough to hear what lived beneath the careful phrasing.

To the citizens of Vault 36:

By the time you read this, I will have departed for the surface.

Her vision blurred. She blinked. The text sharpened.

This decision was not made lightly, and I understand it may seem like abandonment. It is not.

Loke's presence somewhere behind her. His breathing too loud in the sudden quiet. Or maybe that was her own breathing, ragged and harsh.

For months, I have been investigating surface activities related to Vault-Tec's final project—something called the Platinum Chip.

The Platinum Chip. The words she'd seen on his maps, in his notes, displayed on monitoring stations during those late nights when he thought no one was watching.

This technology, if weaponized or misused, could threaten not just our vault but any hope of humanity's future.

Lucy's fingers pressed against the desk edge. Metal bit into her palms.

I cannot explain everything here. I can only say that some things are worth risking one life to protect many.

One life.

His life.

Traded for—what? A theory? Surface rumors? Information gleaned from monitoring stations that showed nothing but blurred heat signatures and speculation?

Deputy Overseer Chen will assume command. Follow his leadership as you followed mine. Vault 36 will endure.

The vault would endure. But what about her?

To my daughter Lucy:

Lucy's breath stopped. The formal tone dropped away. What followed was just Father. Just the man who'd raised her, taught her, groomed her for leadership while grief over Mother's death slowly hollowed him out.

I'm sorry.

Three words that changed nothing. Fixed nothing. Explained nothing.

I'm sorry I couldn't explain. I'm sorry I had to leave. I'm sorry for the burden this places on you.

The screen's glow made her eyes ache. Or maybe those were tears. Lucy couldn't tell anymore.

But I need you to understand—some knowledge is dangerous. Some truths can't be shared until they're fully understood.

Understanding. Always understanding. Father's answer to everything—understand the framework, understand the history, understand Vault-Tec's purpose. But he'd never let her understand this.

The wasteland holds answers about our past, about Vault-Tec's true purpose, about what we were really meant to preserve.

You asked me once why you needed to understand corporate governance to be Overseer.

She had. Weeks ago. Frustrated with the assignment, with the endless study of pre-war business structures that seemed irrelevant to keeping vault dwellers alive.

The answer is this: Vault-Tec was never just a company. And Vault 36 was never just a shelter.

Lucy's hand found the chair back. Gripped it. The office tilted slightly, or maybe that was just her equilibrium failing.

We were an experiment. We are still an experiment.

We were an experiment.

The words sat there on the screen, glowing green, impossible to unsee.

Everything she'd believed about Vault 36—about safety, about preservation, about humanity's future waiting underground until the surface healed—

An experiment.

And I need to know why.

Of course he did. Father always needed to know. Facts and frameworks and understanding. Even if understanding meant abandoning his daughter, his vault, everything he'd sworn to protect.

Don't follow me. Stay safe. Lead the vault when the time comes.

Don't follow. As if that would stop her. As if she could read these words—experiment, answers, the wasteland holds truths—and just accept his absence. Accept the not-knowing. Accept being left behind.

But if you must follow—

Lucy's heart hammered against her ribs.

—if that restless spirit I've watched growing in you demands answers—

He'd seen it. The late-night walks with Loke. The questions about the surface. The barely-concealed longing for something beyond these corridors.

He'd known, and he'd left anyway.

—then follow the Platinum Chip. Follow the trail to a place called Goodsprings, then New Vegas.

Goodsprings. The name from his maps. Circled in red.

Follow carefully.

Two words that meant: The wasteland will kill you if you're not careful. I know this. I'm asking you to risk it anyway.

I love you, Lucy. Always.

—Overseer Jude Heartfilia

The message ended. Lucy stared at the screen until the words lost meaning. Until they were just shapes, green light on black glass, pixels arranged into patterns that had torn her world apart.

We were an experiment.

Don't follow me.

But if you must follow—

Behind her, Chen was speaking. Something about the vault council, emergency sessions, addressing the population, ensuring stability. Words that meant nothing. Father was gone and he'd left her a map. "The vault council has convened an emergency session. We'll need to address the population, ensure stability. Miss Heartfilia, I know this is difficult, but—"

"I'm going after him."

The words came out clear and certain, cutting through Chen's bureaucratic concerns like a knife. Silence fell in the office.

"Lucy—" Loke started.

"I'm going after him," she repeated, turning to face them. "He's out there. Alone. Investigating something dangerous enough that he left everything behind. I'm not letting him face that by himself."

Chen's expression hardened. "Miss Heartfilia, I understand your emotional state, but that's impossible. You've never been outside the vault. The surface is—"

"Dangerous. Deadly. Irradiated. I know." Lucy's voice was steel. "I've heard the lectures. Read the materials. Spent nineteen years being told the wasteland would kill me in a hundred different ways."

"Because it's true," Chen insisted.

"My father thought whatever's out there was worth the risk." Lucy looked at the terminal, at her father's final message. "If it was important enough for him, it's important enough for me."

"The vault needs you here," Chen said. "You're the Overseer's daughter. His heir. The people will look to you for—"

"The people will look to you, Deputy Overseer Chen." Lucy's words were formal, final. "You're in command now. Father said so himself. I'm just... his daughter. And daughters follow their fathers when they need them."

Loke stepped forward, his face a mixture of fear and resignation. "Lucy, please. Think about this. One month ago you were wondering what the surface was like. Now you're talking about actually going out there?"

Lucy met his eyes, seeing the same protective instinct that had been there since childhood. The same fear of losing her. But also seeing understanding. Because Loke knew her. Knew that once she decided something, once that determination set in, nothing would stop her.

"One month ago," Lucy said quietly, "I was wondering. Now I know. My father is out there. And I'm not going to sit underground safe and static while he faces whatever he found alone."

War never changes because we never change, whispered her unfinished sentence.

But maybe it was time to change. To choose action over safety. To choose answers over comfort. To choose the wasteland over the cage. Even if it killed her.

"I'll need supplies," Lucy said, turning to Chen. "Pip-Boy fully updated, weapons, ammunition, water, radiation protection. Whatever Father took with him. And access to the vault door."

Chen stared at her, clearly torn between authority and compassion. "I can't authorize this. I can't just let the Overseer's daughter walk into the wasteland to die."

"You can't stop me either." Lucy's voice softened slightly. "Please, Chen. My father left because he believed something out there mattered more than his own safety. I need to find out what. I need to find him."

A long silent has passed. Finally, Chen sighed—the sound of a man accepting the inevitable. "Your father would kill me if he knew I was letting you do this."

"My father isn't here."

"No." Chen's expression was grim. "He's not."

He moved to the terminal, fingers typing override codes. "You have six hours to prepare. I'll authorize supply requisition and door access for 1000 hours. After that..." He looked at her. "After that, you're on your own."

"I know."

"The wasteland isn't like the books, Lucy. It's not an adventure. It's survival, minute by minute, against everything trying to kill you."

"I know," she said again.

Chen nodded slowly. "Then, May the God help you, Lucy."

He left, taking the security officers with him, leaving Lucy and Loke alone in the Overseer's office—in her father's office—surrounded by abandoned research and unanswered questions. Loke was the first to break the silence.

"You're really doing this." It wasn't a question.

"I'm really doing this," Lucy confirmed.

Loke's jaw tightened. She saw the war happening behind his eyes—fear, frustration, protective instinct battling against the knowledge that he couldn't stop her.

"Then let me come with you." The words hung in the air between them.

Lucy's heart clenched. Part of her—the terrified part, the part that didn't want to face the wasteland alone—wanted to say yes. Wanted to accept his protection, his companionship, his presence in the hell she was about to walk into. But she couldn't.

"No," she said quietly.

"Lucy—"

"No, Loke." Her voice was gentle but absolute. "I can't let you do that."

"You can't let me?" Anger crept into his voice—anger born of fear and helplessness. "I'm not asking permission. I'm telling you I'm coming."

"And I'm telling you you're not." Lucy met his eyes, holding his gaze even as her own vision blurred with unshed tears. "This is my father. My choice. My risk."

"You've never been outside the vault!" Loke's composure cracked. "You don't know how to survive out there! The radiation, the creatures, the raiders—Lucy, you'll die alone in the wasteland, and I'll never even know what happened to you!"

"Maybe." The admission tasted like ash. "Maybe I will die out there. But if I do, at least it'll be my choice. My consequence. I won't drag you down with me."

Loke ran his hands through his hair, frustration and desperation warring on his face. "Is that what you think? That you'd be dragging me down? Lucy, I want to help you. I want to keep you safe. I—" He stopped himself, but the unspoken words hung between them anyway.

Lucy's heart broke a little more.

"I know," she said softly. "I know, Loke. But that's exactly why you can't come. Because you'd try to keep me safe, and in the wasteland, that might get you killed. You'd sacrifice yourself for me without hesitation, and I can't... I can't carry that."

"So instead I'm supposed to stay here?" His voice cracked. "Safe in the vault while you walk into hell? Just wait and wonder if you're alive or dead?"

"Yes." Lucy stepped closer, placing a hand on his arm. "Because the vault needs people like you. People who care. People who'll help Chen keep everyone together while the Overseer is gone. Both Overseers."

"The vault has plenty of people. It doesn't have plenty of you."

"Then it'll have to make do." Lucy tried to smile, but it came out wrong. "Loke, please. Don't make this harder than it already is. Don't make me worry about you out there on top of everything else."

Loke stared at her, and she watched the fight drain out of him—watched him accept what he'd probably known from the moment she declared she was leaving. That Lucy Anna Heartfilia, once decided, was immovable.

"You're going no matter what I say," he said finally, defeat heavy in his voice.

"Yes."

"Even if I beg you to stay?"

"Even then."

A long, painful silence.

"I hate this," Loke whispered. "I hate every part of this."

"I know." Lucy's voice broke. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." He pulled her into a sudden, fierce hug—the kind of embrace that said everything words couldn't. Goodbye. Be safe. Come back. I love you, even if I can never say it. Lucy hugged him back just as tightly, memorizing the moment. The warmth. The safety. The last connection to her old life before she walked into something new and terrifying. When they pulled apart, Loke's eyes were red, though no tears had fallen.

"Six hours," he said roughly. "I'll help you prepare. Make sure you have everything you need. Food, water, medicine, weapons. Everything."

"Loke—"

"If you won't let me come with you," he cut her off, "then at least let me do this. Let me help you survive out there."

Lucy nodded, not trusting her voice.

"And Lucy?" Loke's expression was serious, almost grim. "Promise me something."

"What?"

"Promise me you'll come back. Even if you don't find him. Even if it's hopeless. Promise me you won't just die out there alone because you think it's noble or necessary or whatever philosophical reason you'll come up with."

Lucy wanted to promise. Wanted to give him that certainty. But she'd already told him too many lies tonight.

"I promise I'll try," she said instead. "That's all I can promise."

Loke's jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Then I guess that'll have to be enough."

Six hours later.

Lucy stood before the vault door, dressed for a wasteland she'd only read about.

The armored vault jumpsuit felt strange—heavier than her normal one, reinforced with protective plating across chest and shoulders. Still the familiar blue and yellow with Vault 36's number emblazoned on the back, but modified for surface survival. It wouldn't stop much, but it was better than nothing. Her hand rested on the 10mm pistol holstered at her hip—standard Vault 36 security issue. She'd carried it for weeks now, ever since Chen approved her departure preparations.

"Breathe. Squeeze, don't pull. Follow through."

Security Chief Aqua's voice echoed in her memory. After the fight with Brandish when Lucy was seven, Father had insisted she learn proper self-defense. Aqua had taught her hand-to-hand basics first, then firearms when she turned sixteen—standard protocol for the Overseer's daughter. Lucy had been a natural shot. Something about the precision, the mathematics of trajectory and breathing and trigger control, had clicked immediately in her analytical mind. Aqua had seemed genuinely surprised.

"Good grouping, Heartfilia. Most vault dwellers couldn't hit a radroach at ten paces. You could take down a deathclaw if you kept your nerve."

Lucy had laughed at the time. Deathclaws were theoretical threats from educational materials, not real concerns for underground dwellers. Now, standing at the vault door with the wasteland stretching beyond, Aqua's training felt less like academic exercise and more like the only thing that might keep her alive. She'd never shot anything living. Never shot at anything that could shoot back. But she knew how to shoot. That would have to be enough.

Her backpack held everything Loke and the supply officer could scrounge from vault stores: fifty rounds of 10mm ammunition (not enough, never enough), three stimpaks (precious medical supplies), RadAway and Rad-X (radiation treatment she prayed she wouldn't need), water purification tablets, a week's worth of emergency rations, bedroll, basic tools, rope, and her personal items—a photograph of her parents, Father's partial notes, her journal. The essentials of wasteland survival, according to two-hundred-year-old educational materials. Whether those materials were accurate, she'd find out soon enough.

Deputy Overseer Chen stood at the vault controls, face grave. A small crowd had gathered—vault dwellers who'd heard the Overseer's daughter was leaving, come to witness or protest or simply say goodbye. Loke stood closest, his expression carefully neutral, though his clenched fists betrayed him. Security Chief Aqua stood beside him, arms crossed, looking like she wanted to physically drag Lucy back to the firing range for more training. "Six weeks of practice doesn't make you a wasteland survivor, Heartfilia."

"No," Lucy agreed. "But it's better than nothing."

Aqua's jaw tightened. "Keep your shots center mass. Don't try to be fancy. And if something's charging you—"

"Empty the magazine and pray," Lucy finished. They'd drilled that scenario a dozen times.

Aqua nodded, something like grudging approval in her expression. "You listened, at least. That might keep you breathing."

"Miss Heartfilia," Chen said formally, pulling their attention to the moment at hand. "Final chance to reconsider. You have basic supplies and training, but the wasteland requires more than either. It requires experience you don't have."

"I know," Lucy said, adjusting the unfamiliar weight of the pistol at her hip. "But my father went out there with the same limitations. If he could manage, so can I."

I hope, she added silently.

Chen didn't look convinced, but he nodded. "Your Pip-Boy has the coordinates to Goodsprings. Twelve miles northeast. Follow the broken highway markers when you can find them. Avoid the main roads—raiders patrol them. Stay in cover when possible. Conserve your ammunition. And if you encounter—"

"I know the protocols, Chen." Lucy's voice was gentler than her words. "I memorized every wasteland survival guide in the vault library."

"Reading about survival and surviving are different things."

"Then I guess I'll learn the difference."

Chen's expression was pained, but he moved to the control panel. "The door will seal behind you. Your Pip-Boy has external access codes if you return. But Lucy..." He hesitated. "The wasteland changes people. If you do come back, you might not be the same person leaving now."

"I know," Lucy said.

She didn't know. Couldn't know. But the words felt right.

One last look at the faces gathered to see her off. At Chen's grave concern. At Aqua's stern professionalism masking worry. At Loke's stricken expression, his desperate attempt to look brave.

Their eyes met, and Lucy saw everything he couldn't say. Don't go. Don't leave me. Don't die out there alone. Come back. Please come back.

"Take care of them," Lucy said quietly, meaning the vault, meaning everyone, meaning please don't fall apart while I'm gone.

"You take care of yourself," Loke replied, voice rough, meaning please don't die. Please prove me wrong about everything.

Lucy nodded, throat too tight for words. She turned toward the vault door. Toward the tunnel beyond. Toward everything she'd only imagined in the dark hours before sleep. Chen's fingers moved across the control panel. Authorization codes entered with deliberate precision. Security overrides. The vault's final permission to let her go. Nothing happened for three seconds. Then the door shuddered. A sound Lucy felt in her chest before she heard it—metal groaning, protesting, something massive waking from centuries of sleep. Ancient gears engaging deep within the vault's skeleton. The first time in her lifetime the door had opened for departure. Not for supply deliveries. Not for emergencies.

For leaving.

Locks disengaged with percussive clangs that echoed down empty corridors behind her. Each one a finality. Each one a seal breaking. Hydraulics hissed—the sound of something dying or being born. Lucy couldn't tell which. The massive circular door didn't open so much as unseal. Two hundred tons of steel and concrete rolling aside on tracks worn smooth by disuse, revealing the tunnel beyond with ponderous inevitability. Darkness first. The tunnel stretched into shadow—the space between vault and wasteland, between everything known and everything feared. Then, at the tunnel's distant end, a square of light. Not vault fluorescents humming their eternal note. Not emergency reds painting everything in warning.

Sunlight.

Real sunlight.

Lucy had never seen real sunlight before. Behind her, someone was crying. Soft, broken sounds that might have been prayers or simply grief. Whispered words she couldn't distinguish. Loke's breathing—ragged, harsh, fighting for control. Lucy didn't look back. Couldn't look back. Because if she did—if she saw their faces, saw Loke's expression, saw the vault's familiar lighting one more time—she might not be able to turn away again. Her boots found the tunnel floor. First step. The echo was different here—sharper, more hollow. Metal walls giving back the sound of her departure.

Second step. Third.

The tunnel stretched ahead like a throat. Like the barrel of a gun. Like the only path forward when every instinct screamed to retreat. Each step took her farther from everything she'd known. From climate-controlled corridors and recycled air and walls that defined the edges of existence. From Loke and Chen and Aqua and everyone who'd ever known her name. From safety.

The light grew brighter. The air changed. Lucy tasted it before she understood what she was tasting—something different hitting her lungs, making her breath catch. No longer filtered through processors and scrubbers. No longer recycled through two hundred years of careful preservation. Wild Wasteland air. It tasted of dust. Of heat. Of minerals and ancient decay and something else entirely. Something she had no name for because she'd never experienced it. Freedom, maybe. Or danger. Probably both. Her boots found different ground now—not smooth metal but something rough. Grit. Actual earth compacted and strange under her soles. The tunnel's end rushed toward her, or she rushed toward it. Light swallowing the darkness. Lucy stopped at the threshold. Before her, the world opened like a wound.

Vast.

The word wasn't enough. Nothing in the vault had prepared her for this. The desert stretched out in every direction—not to walls, not to corners, but to a horizon so distant it looked like the edge of imagination. Red earth and brown stone and patches of gold where dead vegetation clung to existence. Rock formations jutting from the ground like broken bones. And space. Empty space. Endless space. The kind of distance that had no meaning in the vault, where every room had dimensions, every corridor had an end point you could see. This had no end point. The sky— Lucy's head tilted back before she meant it to. Blue. Impossibly, violently blue. Not the pale simulation of vault ceiling panels but something deeper, richer, stretching up and up and up until it hurt to look at. No walls. No ceiling. Just infinity above her, infinite as the desert below. And the sun. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them. The brightness remained, burning white-gold overhead, hot on her face in a way vault lighting never achieved. Real heat. Surface heat. The kind that baked earth and bleached bones and turned skin red if you weren't careful.

She was standing in sunlight. The realization hit her like a physical blow.

All those educational materials—grainy footage of desert landscapes, monitoring station readouts showing heat signatures and radiation levels, philosophical musings about humanity's fall and the wasteland's brutality. None of it had been real to her. Not really. Just abstract concepts. Numbers and images and theories. This was real. Real earth under her boots—uneven, loose, nothing like metal flooring that never shifted. Real sky above her—endless and indifferent and utterly without boundaries. Real sun burning down on her skin, already making her vault-pale arms prickle with unfamiliar sensation. Real danger in every direction she couldn't see yet. Lucy's breath came short. The space pressed in—no, not pressed in, opened out. Too much space. Too much light. Too much everything after nineteen years of measured corridors and controlled environments.

War never changes, whispered her unfinished sentence.

But maybe I can.

Behind her, the vault door began to close. The grinding returned. Gears reversing. Hydraulics pulling the massive door back into position—sealing Vault 36 once more, this time with Lucy on the wrong side of it. She didn't turn around. Didn't watch her last connection to the underground world disappear. Just took one step forward. Boots crunching against wasteland earth—a sound she'd never heard before, never imagined she'd hear. Dirt and rock and two hundred years of nuclear dust compressing under her weight. Another step. Away from the tunnel. Away from the vault. Away from everything she'd ever been. Into the wasteland. Into the Mojave Desert that had killed thousands, tens of thousands, that turned humans into statistics and survival into a daily miracle. Into war that never changed, to find the father who'd walked this same threshold and left her behind. The vault door sealed shut. A sound like finality given physical form. Metal on metal, locks engaging, the universe closing a chapter with percussive authority.

Silence followed.

Not vault silence—the kind filled with mechanical breathing, distant footsteps, the hum of life support systems. This was empty silence. Desert silence. The kind where sound died before it traveled, swallowed by endless space and heat shimmer and distance. Lucy was alone. Completely, utterly alone. In the Mojave Desert. October 2281. With nothing but fifty rounds of ammunition, basic supplies, shooting skills tested only on range targets, and a father's cryptic message leading her toward coordinates she'd never seen. Her hand found the Pip-Boy automatically. The screen glowed green—artificial light in natural day, looking wrong somehow, too bright and too dim at the same time.

Goodsprings: 15 miles NE

Fifteen miles.

Lucy had never walked Fifteen miles in her life. Had never walked outside climate-controlled corridors, never navigated by anything except corridor signs and section numbers, never felt real heat or real cold for more than simulation exercises. But she'd walk them now. Her pack shifted as she adjusted the straps—heavier than she'd expected, or maybe gravity felt different out here without vault walls to contain it. The weight of survival pressing down on her shoulders. Water. Food. Medicine. The essentials that would keep her alive or fail to. The 10mm pistol sat against her hip. Lucy's hand found it reflexively, checking. Safety off. Round chambered. Ready to fire at whatever the wasteland threw at her.

"Center mass, Heartfilia. Don't miss. Can't afford to miss."

Aqua's voice in her memory. Hours on the range. Breathing exercises. Trigger discipline. Everything she'd need to shoot something that wasn't a paper target.

She wouldn't miss. She couldn't miss. Lucy started walking. Northeast. Toward Goodsprings. Toward her father's trail.

Her boots found uncertain rhythm on uneven ground—stumbling at first, adjusting to earth that shifted under her weight, to surfaces that weren't perfectly level. The sun beat down on her head, her shoulders, her back. Heat seeping through the armored jumpsuit like it was trying to get inside her. The desert stretched ahead. Endless red earth and distant rock formations and nothing alive as far as she could see. Just wasteland. Just the kind of environment that killed vault dwellers in educational material warnings. It stretched before her—vast, indifferent, ancient. Red earth and dead sky and distance that had no mercy. Ready to kill her with heat or radiation or creatures she'd only read about. Ready to let her live if she was strong enough, smart enough, lucky enough. The wasteland didn't care which, yet she walked anyway.

One step. Then another. Boots finding rhythm on foreign ground. Northeast toward Goodsprings. Toward her father's trail. Toward answers that might not exist. The sun climbed higher. The vault door was gone behind her—sealed, invisible, might as well have never existed. Just desert now. Just Lucy and twelve miles of wasteland and the choice she'd made.

War never changes because we never change, whispered her unfinished sentence. But Lucy Anna Heartfilia was changing with every step. Every meter of distance from the vault. Every second under real sunlight. The wasteland stretched endlessly ahead, and she walked into it.

Alone…

Next Chapter: Ain't That a Kick in the Head

The Map of Mojave Wasteland: The main setting of the story

Chapter's name song: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles, 1967

Chapter Text

"War. War never changes. But men do, through the roads they walk."

— Ulysses

Mojave Express, the Hub, New California
October 8^th, 2281

The radio crackled to life as Natsu pushed through the door.

"It's me again, Mr. New Vegas, reminding you that you're nobody 'til somebody loves you. And that somebody is me. I love you."

The Mojave Express office in The Hub looked like every other Express outpost Natsu had worked from—cramped, dusty, smelling of old paper and gun oil. The clerk behind the counter looked up from his terminal, face weathered by too many years watching couriers leave and not all of them come back.

"Dragneel. Didn't expect you back so soon."

"Job's done." Natsu dropped the sealed package on the counter—some merchant's urgent delivery that had attracted raiders outside Dayglow. Three dead. Natsu alive. Package intact. The usual. The clerk counted out caps without inspecting the package. Trust built over years of completed deliveries. "Got another one if you're interested. High-value item."

Natsu pocketed the caps. "How high?"

"High enough that someone else already turned it down." The clerk pulled out a different contract, wax-sealed with the Mojave Express priority mark. "Platinum chip. Needs delivery to Mr. House at the Lucky 38 in New Vegas."

"Someone turned down a House job?" That didn't happen. House paid well, and his deliveries were usually straightforward—get the package to the Strip, hand it over, collect payment. No complications.

"Another courier. Was next in rotation, took one look at the contract, saw your name on the secondary list..." The clerk shrugged. "Said the job wasn't meant for him. Said it was meant for you. Wouldn't explain further. Just walked out."

Strange. But couriers were strange. Wasteland did that to people.

"What's the pay?"

The clerk slid the contract across. Natsu looked at the number and paused. That much for a delivery to Vegas? Something was off. Jobs didn't pay that well unless they were dangerous, illegal, or both. But House wasn't known for setting up his couriers. And the route was simple northeast through the Mojave, past Goodsprings, straight to New Vegas. Three days if he pushed it. Four if he was careful.

Igneel's voice echoed in his memory: "Your word is everything. You deliver the package, no matter what."

Natsu took the contract.

"When do I pick up the package?"

The clerk reached under the counter, producing a small case—pre-war design, sealed, heavier than it looked. "Now. Chip's already secured. House wants it delivered within the week, but knowing your record, you'll have it there in three days."

"Two if the roads are clear."

"Roads are never clear." The clerk logged the contract in his terminal. "Watch yourself out there, Dragneel. Don't know why the other courier refused, but... something about this job feels off."

"Off how?"

The clerk's expression was unreadable. "Can't say. Just be careful."

Natsu secured the case in his courier bag. "Always am."

He walked out into The Hub's afternoon heat, Mr. New Vegas still playing over someone's radio down the street.

"—and remember, the weather today: sunny, clear skies, with a chance of nuclear fallout—"

Natsu ignored it. The Mojave stretched northeast, and New Vegas waited three days ahead. He started walking. Three days later, he'd be in a grave with a bullet in his head. But right now, the job seemed simple. Just another delivery.

The Mojave stretched between The Hub and New Vegas like every other courier run Natsu had made—endless sand, scattered ruins, and the constant calculation of threat versus time. Day one was Highway 127, broken asphalt baking under October sun. The road cut northeast through what used to be civilization, back when roads meant something other than navigation markers between dangers. Natsu kept pace—not fast enough to attract attention, not slow enough to look like easy prey. The platinum chip case sat heavy in his courier bag, worth more caps than he'd seen in six months. He passed a caravan heading south around midday. Five brahmin, four guards, a merchant who eyed Natsu's Mojave Express insignia with the recognition couriers earned through reputation.

"Dragneel," the merchant called. "Heading to Vegas?"

Natsu slowed but didn't stop. Time was caps, and caps were survival. "Yeah."

"Word of advice—Legion's been active near Nipton. Saw smoke yesterday, lots of it. Might want to swing west, take the long route through Primm."

Nipton. That was two days northeast, well off Natsu's route. "Noted. You see any movement between here and Goodsprings?"

"Goodsprings?" The merchant frowned. "Why you going through Goodsprings? That's—"

"Shortest route." Natsu adjusted his bag. The case pressed against his side, constant reminder of the job. "Roads clear that way?"

"Clear enough. Powder Gangers been quiet lately. NCR pushed them back toward the prison." The merchant spat into the sand. "But clear don't mean safe. Never does."

"Never does," Natsu agreed.

He kept walking. By evening, the Highway 127 junction appeared—cracked sign pointing northwest toward Shady Sands, northeast toward Primm and Vegas, and a barely visible third option: an old service road cutting through the hills toward Goodsprings. The service road saved a day. Maybe more. Natsu took it. Day two was hills and broken country, the kind of terrain that hid dangers until you were on top of them. Natsu moved careful, rifle ready, eyes scanning ridgelines for movement. Nothing. Just wind and heat and the occasional radscorpion that learned quickly why couriers carried weapons.

He stopped at an abandoned gas station around noon—roof mostly intact, enough shade to make the heat bearable for twenty minutes. The Sunset Sarsaparilla machine outside still stood, rusted and empty, pre-war advertisement promising refreshment that didn't exist anymore. Natsu ate trail rations, drank warm water, checked the case. Still sealed. Still secure. A gecko watched him from thirty yards out, head tilted, considering whether the human was food or threat. Natsu stared back until it skittered away into the rocks.

Smart gecko.

He was moving again within the hour. The service road wound through hills that broke sight lines and made every turn a potential ambush point. But this was the Mojave—everything was a potential ambush point. You learned to read terrain, to feel when something was wrong, to trust the instinct that kept you breathing. Nothing felt wrong yet. That should have been his first warning. By evening, he saw Goodsprings in the distance—small settlement, maybe a dozen buildings, the kind of place that survived by being too small to matter. Courier safe houses dotted the Mojave, and Goodsprings had one. Natsu had used it before, months back. A bed. A meal. Maybe information about the road ahead.

But the sun was still up, and Vegas was close now. One more day, maybe less. He kept walking, skirting the settlement's edge. The road curved north, past an old cemetery on a hill—pre-war graves, most of the markers worn smooth by two centuries of wind and sand. Quiet place. Peaceful, if you believed in peace. Natsu didn't slow. He'd camp past the cemetery, in the rocks where high ground gave advantage and sight lines covered approaches. Standard courier protocol—never sleep in the open, never camp without exits, never assume safe. The sun was setting when he noticed them. Three figures on the ridge above the cemetery. Silhouettes against orange sky, too deliberate in their positioning to be casual travelers. Natsu's hand moved to his rifle, casual, not aggressive. Just ready. The figures didn't move. Didn't call out. Just watched. Wrong. This was wrong.

Every instinct Igneel had trained into him screamed wrong, but Natsu kept walking. Turning back meant showing fear. Showing fear meant looking like prey. And prey got hunted. He'd walk past them. Through them if necessary. The platinum chip wasn't worth dying for, but running wasn't worth living with. The cemetery path was the only route unless he wanted to backtrack hours through the hills. Natsu took it, rifle held ready but not raised. Professional. Controlled. The figures on the ridge moved, descending toward the path. Natsu counted. Three. No, four—one more behind the first graves, barely visible in the failing light. Four on one. Bad odds, but not impossible. Depended on weapons, training, intent.

His mind calculated distances, cover points, escape routes. The rocks to the left—thirty feet, good cover. The ridge behind—higher ground if he could reach it. The settlement—too far, and running toward civilians meant bringing trouble to them. The lead figure stepped into the path ahead. Checkered suit, slicked hair, holding a pistol that caught the last of the sunlight. Pre-war gun. Clean. Expensive.

The man smiled. "Evening, friend. That's far enough."

Natsu stopped. Twenty feet between them. Enough distance to react, not enough to avoid a bullet if it came to shooting.

"Not looking for trouble," Natsu said. Standard line. Defuse or assess.

"Neither am I." The suited man's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Just looking for a package. Platinum chip. Word is you're carrying it." Information leak. Someone at the Express? Or House's people? Didn't matter now.

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"No?" The man gestured casually. The other three moved in—two from the sides, one from behind. Great Khans, by their leather and tribal markings. Hired muscle.

The one on the left was broad-shouldered, face scarred, metal studs in his jacket catching moonlight. The one on the right looked nervous, younger, hand too tight on his rifle. The third—directly behind Natsu now—was massive, dark-haired, moving with the confidence of someone who'd done this before.

"Easy does it," the suited man continued, voice smooth as his appearance. "You're a courier. Professional, right? So let's handle this professionally. The chip. Hand it over, and you walk away. Simple transaction."

Natsu's options narrowed. Four on one with surprise lost was suicide. But the chip—

"Can't do that," Natsu said. "Job's not finished."

The suited man's smile thinned. "Job's finished when I say it is. See, I'm the one holding the cards here."

"Benny," the mohawk Khan said—nervous energy in his voice. "This don't feel right. We're just supposed to take the package, yeah? Not—"

"Jessup." Benny's tone didn't change, but something sharp entered it. "We've been over this. The package, the courier—package deal. Can't have loose ends."

Jessup shifted uncomfortably. "Still don't sit right. He's just doing his job. We take the chip, let him go—"

"And he reports back to House, describes me, describes you three, and we've got problems." Benny's smile returned, colder now. "No loose ends, Jessup. That was the deal."

The dark-skinned Khan—McMurphy, probably—said nothing. Just kept his rifle trained on Natsu.

The one behind Natsu spoke, voice rough and low. "Get on with it. Standing here talking wastes time."

Benny nodded. "Gajeel's right. Let's wrap this up." He looked at Natsu. "Last chance, courier. The chip. Now."

Igneel's voice echoed: "Your word is everything. Deliver the package, no matter what."

But Igneel also taught: "Dead couriers deliver nothing. Know when you're beat."

Natsu's hand moved toward his courier bag—slow, deliberate, no sudden moves. "In the bag. I'll get it."

"Smart." Benny's gun didn't waver. "Slow."

Natsu's fingers found the strap. His mind raced through possibilities. Give up the chip, hope they let him walk—unlikely. Try to fight—suicide. Stall, look for an opening. Gajeel moved faster than someone that size should. Boot to the back of Natsu's knee, sending him down hard before the thought finished forming. The rifle scattered across stone. Hands grabbed him—rough, professional—forcing him to his knees. The courier bag was torn away.

"There we go," Benny said, retrieving the platinum chip case from the bag. He held it up to the moonlight, examining it like a prize. "Wasn't so hard, was it?"

Natsu struggled. Gajeel's hand clamped on his shoulder—iron grip, immovable.

"Let him up," Benny ordered.

The hands released. Natsu stayed on his knees, breathing hard, calculating. Four guns on him. No weapon. No cover. No options. Benny crouched, meeting Natsu's eyes. The smile was gone now. Just cold assessment.

"You know," Benny said conversationally, "in another life, I'd probably like you. Professional. Committed to the job even when it's gonna kill you. I respect that, I really do." He stood, producing the pistol again—chrome catching moonlight.

"But business is business, and I can't have you walking back to House with a description of my face." Benny checked the chamber. Loaded. "So here's how this plays out. I get the chip. I get to New Vegas. I get what I've been working toward for months. And you..."

He aimed.

"You get a shallow grave and a headstone nobody's gonna read."

"Benny—" Jessup started.

"Shut up, Jessup." Benny's voice was flat. Final.

Natsu looked up at the barrel. At the suited man holding it. At the Great Khans standing witness—Jessup uncomfortable, McMurphy impassive, Gajeel waiting like this was just another job.

"You got a name, courier?" Benny asked. "Professional courtesy. Like to know who I'm putting down."

"Dragneel," Natsu said. His voice was steady despite everything. "Natsu Dragneel."

"Natsu Dragneel." Benny nodded once. "I'll remember it. For about five minutes."

The gun steadied. Natsu stared down the barrel. Chrome catching moonlight. Nine-millimeter. Maria—the name surfaced again, useless courier knowledge in his final seconds.

"Sorry you got caught up in this, Natsu. Really am."

Benny's voice came from somewhere distant. Like Natsu was already leaving, already gone, and the words were just echoes chasing him into nothing.

"But you know how it is in the wasteland—"

The hammer drew back.

Click.

Metal on metal. Precise. Mechanical. The sound of finality. Jessup turned his head. Couldn't watch. Didn't stop it but couldn't watch. McMurphy's expression never changed. He'd seen this before. Would see it again. Another body. Another job. Gajeel stood silent as stone. Waiting for it to be over. Natsu's heart hammered against his ribs—desperate, animal rhythm that didn't understand what his mind already knew. This was it. This was the end. No escape. No miracle. No—

"—the game was rigged from the start."

Benny's finger tightened. The trigger moved. Everything slowed. Not like the holotapes showed it—no dramatic stretched time, no life flashing before eyes. Just the sudden, horrible clarity that came when the brain understood death was here, now, inevitable. Natsu saw the muzzle flash. White light blooming in darkness. Felt the impact before he heard the sound—

Crack.

The world tilted. Sky and earth switched places. His body hit the ground but he didn't feel it. Didn't feel anything except wet heat spreading across his face and the strange, distant sensation of wrong, everything wrong, something fundamental breaking inside his skull—

Red.

Then black.

Then—

Nothing.

The Darkness.

Not sleep. Not unconsciousness. Not even pain. Just absence.

The kind of nothing that didn't have thoughts or awareness or time. The kind of nothing that didn't know it was nothing. Natsu Dragneel stopped. His heart kept beating—three seconds, four, five—wasteland stubbornness, the body refusing what the brain already knew. Then that stopped too. In the cemetery above Goodsprings, under October stars, a courier lay dead with a bullet in his head and a platinum chip gone from his bag. The Great Khans were already walking away. Benny pocketed the chip, dusted off his suit, and didn't look back. Another job done. Another loose end tied. The wasteland would bury the body, and no one would remember the name. But something. Deep in cells that shouldn't work, in blood that shouldn't flow, in a body that shouldn't breathe. Something refused. No name for it. No explanation. Just the body's impossible insistence: Not yet. Not like this. In the darkness, a heartbeat stuttered. Stopped. Beat once. Again. Lungs pulled air through a throat that should be still. The wound—fatal, absolute—began closing. Wrong, damaged, scarred, but closing. Alive. Impossibly, inexplicably alive.

The Great Khans didn't see it. They were already gone, caps richer, conscience lighter or heavier depending on the man. Benny didn't see it. He was walking toward New Vegas with a stolen chip and a clean conscience that came from never looking back. No one saw Natsu Dragneel's chest rise. No one saw the blood slow. No one saw the wasteland's greatest impossible truth: Sometimes, against all logic, against all odds, against death itself. You don't die. You just don't. And the wasteland has to live with that.

Goodsprings Cemetery, Goodsprings, Nevada
October 11^th  2281

Night fell over Goodsprings Cemetery.

The October wind picked up, carrying desert cold down from the hills, whispering through graves that had stood silent for two centuries. Most of the markers were worn smooth—names erased by time, identities forgotten, just stone monuments to people the wasteland had swallowed. One grave was fresh. Dirt still loose. Rocks piled hastily. The kind of burial you did when you wanted something hidden fast, not honored. The wind shifted. A new sound joined it—mechanical whirring, the distinct hum of servos and a monowheel motor cutting through the quiet. Light swept across the cemetery, harsh and artificial, painting shadows across the graves. A Securitron rolled between the headstones.

Its display showed a cowboy face—clean-shaven, wide friendly smile, the kind of folksy pre-war friendliness that hadn't existed in two hundred years. The robot's single wheel navigated the uneven ground with practiced ease, sensors sweeping across the cemetery like it was searching for something. It stopped at the fresh grave. The display flickered—cowboy face replaced briefly by diagnostic readouts, scanning mode, data streaming across the screen faster than human eyes could follow. Then the face returned.

"Well now," the robot said to no one, voice cheerful and wrong in the cemetery silence. "That's peculiar."

Its manipulator arms extended, servos whining. It began digging—efficient, mechanical, dirt flying aside in precise movements. No hesitation. No concern for disturbing the dead. The grave was shallow. Whoever buried the body hadn't cared about doing it right. Metal fingers found fabric. A courier bag, torn. Then a shoulder. An arm. The Securitron pulled. The body emerged from the earth like resurrection—dirt-covered, bloodstained, a hole in the forehead that should mean death without question. The robot's sensors focused on the wound. On the chest. The display flickered again. More diagnostics. Readings that shouldn't be possible.

"Well I'll be," Victor said. "You're still kicking."

The chest rose. Barely. A breath so shallow it might have been imagination. But the sensors didn't imagine. They measured. Calculated. Confirmed.

Alive.

Impossibly, inexplicably alive. Victor's manipulators shifted, carefully lifting the body—gentle despite the machine strength, handling the broken courier like something valuable that might shatter with rough treatment.

"Let's get you to the doc," Victor said, beginning to roll back down the hill, the body cradled in metal arms. "Friend, you look like you could use more than a sarsaparilla. You look like you could use a miracle."

The cowboy face on the display smiled wider. "Lucky for you, miracles are my specialty."

The cowboy face on the display remained cheerful, programmed warmth in a cold machine. The Securitron rolled into the darkness, carrying its impossible cargo toward Goodsprings, toward Doc Mitchell's house, toward questions no one could answer. Behind it, the empty grave sat open to the October sky. And the wasteland, which had seen every impossible thing in two hundred years, added one more to its collection:

A courier who wouldn't die.

Even when he should.

Goodsprings, Nevada
October 19^th, 2281

Darkness.

Then not-darkness. Something else. Something that wasn't death but wasn't consciousness either. Awareness came in fragments. Sound first. Distant. Muffled. Like listening underwater—voices that had shape but no meaning, words that dissolved before they could form thoughts.

"—vitals holding—"

"—eight days, never seen—"

"—should be dead—"

Dead.

The word stuck. Held weight when others didn't.

Dead.

Was he?

Sensation returned next. Not pain yet, just... presence. The feeling of existing in a body again. Heavy. Wrong. Like wearing someone else's skin. Something touched his wrist. Cool. Checking.

"Pulse is stronger."

The voice was clearer now. Old. Male. Calm in the way doctors learned to be calm when nothing made sense. Natsu tried to move. Couldn't. His body didn't respond, didn't acknowledge the command. Just lay there, heavy and useless. Panic should have come. Didn't. Just... nothing. Empty space where fear should live.

"Easy now. Don't try to move yet."

Light bled through his eyelids. Red at first, then orange, then something brighter. His eyes were closed but light was seeping in, insisting he wake up, insisting he come back. Come back from where? Memory surfaced like drowning in reverse—

Checkered suit.

Chrome gun.

"The game was rigged from the start."

Gunshot.

Natsu's eyes opened. Too bright. Everything too bright, too sharp, too there after the nothing. He tried to focus but the world was just shapes and light and... A face. Old, weathered, concern etched into lines that had seen too much wasteland living.

"You're awake," the man said. "How about that."

Natsu's mouth moved. No sound came out. Just dry clicking, throat too damaged or too unused or both.

"Don't try to talk yet." The old man—doctor, had to be doctor—moved away, returning with a cup. "Here. Small sips."

Water touched Natsu's lips. He drank without thinking, body taking over where mind couldn't. The water burned going down, but it was something real, something that proved he was alive.

Alive.

How?

The doctor—Doc something, name wouldn't come—pulled the cup away after three swallows. "That's enough for now. More will make you sick." Natsu's vision cleared slowly. A room. Simple. Medical equipment—pre-war, some of it, scavenged and maintained. Clean sheets beneath him. Bandages on his head, tight and uncomfortable.

His head.

The gun.

The bullet.

His hand moved—sluggish, clumsy—rising to touch his forehead. Fingers found gauze. Beneath that, raised skin. A wound. But he was touching it. He was alive to touch it.

"Woah, easy there, easy," the doctor said, guiding his hand down. "You've been out cold for eight days now. Why don't you just relax a second, get your bearings?"

Eight days. The number sat in Natsu's mind, refusing to make sense. He'd been shot in the head. Eight days ago. And he was alive.

"How—" His voice cracked, barely recognizable. "How am I—"

"Alive?" The doctor's expression was something between amazement and confusion. "Honest answer? I don't know. By all rights, you should be dead. The bullet went through your skull. Frontal lobe damage, tissue destruction, the kind of wound that doesn't leave survivors."

He gestured to Natsu's head.

"But here you are. Breathing. Awake. Talking." A pause. "Well, trying to talk."

Natsu stared at him. The information wouldn't process. Couldn't process. Shot in the head. Should be dead. Not dead.

"Victor found you," the doctor continued, moving to check equipment Natsu couldn't identify. "Dug you out of a grave up at the cemetery. Brought you here more dead than alive. I've been a doctor forty years, son. Seen everything the wasteland can throw at a human body. Never seen anything like you."

Grave. They'd buried him. Benny shot him, took the chip, and buried him. Rage ignited—sudden, white-hot, burning through the confusion and weakness. Not the controlled anger of a professional. Something primal. Visceral. Benny. The checkered suit bastard shot him in the head and left him in a grave. Natsu tried to sit up. His body refused, muscles too weak, coordination too damaged. He made it inches before collapsing back.

"Whoa, easy!" The doctor's hands pushed him down, gentle but firm. "You just woke up from a coma. You're not going anywhere yet."

"Benny—" Natsu forced the word out. "The man who—where—"

"Gone." The doctor's voice was matter-of-fact. "Whoever shot you took what they wanted and left. You've been unconscious since Victor brought you in. Eight days."

Eight days. Benny had eight days' head start. The rage burned hotter, but Natsu's body wouldn't cooperate. Couldn't stand. Couldn't fight. Could barely talk.

"You need rest," the doctor said, checking the bandages on Natsu's head. "Your brain's been through trauma. The fact that you're conscious is miracle enough. Don't push it."

"Need—" Natsu's breathing was too fast, too shallow. "Need to—"

"You need to heal." The doctor's tone left no room for argument. "I'm Doc Mitchell, by the way. This is Goodsprings. You're safe here. For now, that's all you need to know."

Safe. Natsu wasn't safe. Not while Benny was out there with the platinum chip, living, breathing, probably laughing about the courier he'd killed. Except he hadn't killed him. Somehow, impossibly, Natsu had survived. And that meant. That meant Benny made a mistake. Left him alive. Left a witness. Left someone who'd hunt him down and return the favor. Natsu's hand clenched into a fist—weak, shaking, but a fist nonetheless.

Doc Mitchell noticed. "You're thinking about revenge."

Not a question. Statement.

"Can see it in your eyes," the doctor continued. "Same look every wasteland survivor gets when someone takes something from them. Word of advice? Revenge can wait until you can stand without falling over."

Natsu's jaw tightened. "How long?"

"Until you can walk? Few days, maybe. Until you can fight? Week or two if you're lucky." Doc Mitchell's expression was grave. "Until you can take on whoever did this? That depends on how fast you heal. And son, you're healing faster than you should, but you're still human. Mostly."

Mostly.

The word hung there.

"What does that mean?" Natsu's voice was steadier now, anger providing strength weakness couldn't.

Doc Mitchell hesitated. "Means I've seen a lot of impossible things in this wasteland. You surviving a headshot? That's up there with the strangest. Your body's healing in ways I can't explain. Tissue regeneration beyond normal human capability. It's like..." He trailed off.

"Like what?"

"Like something in you won't let you die." Doc Mitchell shook his head. "I'm a doctor, not a scientist. Can't explain it. Just telling you what I'm seeing."

Something in him. Something that kept him breathing when he should have stopped. Natsu didn't understand it. Didn't want to understand it right now. Right now, he just wanted to stand. To walk. To hunt. To find the man in the checkered suit and repay the bullet.

"Rest," Doc Mitchell said again, moving toward the door. "I'll check on you in a few hours. Try not to die while I'm gone. You've already done that once this week."

The door closed. Natsu lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the bandages on his head and the impossible reality of being alive.  Eight days. Benny had eight days. But time didn't matter. Natsu would find him. However long it took. Whatever it cost. The wasteland had tried to bury him. It failed. And now the courier who wouldn't die had a name to hunt, a face to remember, and a bullet to return. Benny made his last mistake in Goodsprings Cemetery. He left Natsu Dragneel alive.

Hours passed.

Natsu drifted between consciousness and something like sleep—not restful, just his body shutting down to heal, to process the impossible fact of being alive. When Doc Mitchell returned, afternoon light was streaming through the window.

"Let's see how you're doing," the doctor said, setting down a medical bag. "Sit up if you can."

Natsu pushed himself upright. Slower than he wanted, but he managed it without collapsing. Progress. Doc Mitchell moved through the examination with practiced efficiency—checking Natsu's pupils, testing reflexes, unwrapping the head bandage to inspect the wound.

"Remarkable," he muttered, more to himself than Natsu. "The tissue regeneration... this should take weeks to heal this much. You've done it in hours."

"Is that a problem?" Natsu's voice was stronger now, the earlier rasp fading.

"Problem? No. Just... unusual." Doc Mitchell rewrapped the bandage, tighter this time. "You've got some permanent scarring. The bullet damaged neural pathways that'll never fully repair. You might experience headaches, some memory issues, coordination problems."

"But I can walk?"

"You can walk." Doc Mitchell stepped back. "Whether you should is another question."

Natsu swung his legs off the bed. The room tilted slightly, but he pushed through it, feet finding the floor. Cold against his bare skin. He was wearing a patient gown—thin, threadbare, the kind of thing that existed in medical facilities because it was practical, not comfortable. He stood. His legs held. Shaky, weak, but holding.

"You're determined, I'll give you that." Doc Mitchell moved to a cabinet, pulling out a bundle of items. "Your gear. What was left of it, anyway. Whoever shot you took your courier bag and anything valuable, but they left your clothes and personal effects."

He laid them on the bed: leather armor, worn but functional. A shirt, pants. Boots with soles that had walked a thousand miles. And a .45 pistol—Natsu's backup piece, the one he kept hidden, the one Benny's people hadn't found. Natsu reached for the clothes. His hands were steadier now, anger providing coordination weakness couldn't

“There’s something else,” Doc Mitchell said, moving to a cabinet and retrieving a device from inside. “You’re going to need this if you plan on navigating the Mojave.”

He held out a Pip-Boy—older model, well-maintained, the kind that had seen years of use but still functioned perfectly.“That’s yours,” Natsu said, recognizing it from when Doc had been checking his vitals earlier.

“Was mine,” Doc Mitchell corrected. “Vault 21 issue, back when I still lived underground. Don’t need it anymore—been in Goodsprings long enough that I know every rock and cactus by heart. But you? You’re going out there hunting someone. You’ll need the navigation, the mapping, the vital monitoring.” He pressed it into Natsu’s hands.

“Can’t pay you for it,” Natsu said. Everything of value he’d owned was either stolen or buried.

“Didn’t ask you to.” Doc Mitchell’s expression was firm. “Call it payment for the entertainment. Not every day I get to patch up someone who survived a headshot. Figure keeping you alive long enough to get your revenge is worth one old Pip-Boy.”

Natsu strapped it to his left wrist. The familiar weight settled there, screen flickering to life with soft green glow.

VITALS: STABLE

RADIATION: MINIMAL

LOCATION: GOODSPRINGS, MOJAVE WASTELAND

The mapping function loaded—Goodsprings in the center, the Mojave stretching in all directions, locations marked from Doc’s years of wandering before he settled here.

“There was a note in what was left of your bag too,” Doc Mitchell continued, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. “Delivery receipt. Says the package was headed for Mr. House at the Lucky 38. That still mean anything to you?”

Natsu nodded. "The job. Before—" He gestured to his head.

"Thought so." Doc Mitchell handed him the note. "Don't know if it helps, but figured you'd want it. Proof of what you were doing, if nothing else."

Natsu unfolded the paper. Mojave Express letterhead, official contract language, his signature at the bottom.

MOJAVE EXPRESS DELIVERY ORDER 6 OF 6

INSTRUCTIONS
Deliver the package at the north entrance to the Vegas Strip, by way of Freeside. An agent of the recipient will meet you at the checkpoint, take possession of the package, and pay for the delivery. Bring the payment to Johnson Nash at the Mojave Express agency in Primm.

Bonus on completion: 250 caps.

MANIFEST
This package contains: One (1) Oversized Poker Chip, composed of Platinum

CONTRACT PENALTIES
You are an authorized agent of the Mojave Express Package until delivery is complete and payment has been processed, contractually obligated to complete this transaction and materially responsible for any malfeasance or loss. Failure to deliver to the proper recipient may result in forfeiture of your advance and bonus, criminal charges, and/or pursuit by mercenary reclamation teams. The Mojave Express is not responsible for any injury or loss of life you experience as a result of said reclamation efforts.

Natsu read it twice. Delivery order six of six. He was the sixth courier assigned to this job. The platinum chip—right there in the manifest. Official documentation of what Benny had stolen, what he'd killed for. And that last paragraph.

"The Mojave Express is not responsible for any injury or loss of life..."

He'd signed this. Accepted the contract. Taken the job knowing the risks. Just hadn't expected the risk to be a bullet in the head from the client's competition.

"Mercenary reclamation teams," Natsu muttered. The contract language for hired killers who hunted down couriers who failed deliveries. Standard wasteland business practice.

"You worried about that?" Doc Mitchell asked.

"No." Natsu folded the contract, tucking it into his armor. "I'm worried about the son of a bitch who stole the package."

Because Benny might have the chip, might have gotten away clean, might think he'd won. But the contract was still active. Natsu was still the authorized courier. And delivery wasn't complete until the package reached Mr. House. Which meant this wasn't over. Not the job. Not the hunt. Not until Natsu put that platinum chip in House's hands personally—and put a bullet in Benny's head professionally. He'd never forget that contract. Order six of six. The job that should have been routine. The delivery that ended in a grave. The package he'd get back. No matter what it cost.

"You planning to finish that delivery?" Doc Mitchell's tone was neutral, but his eyes were sharp.

"Planning to find the man who stole it."

"Figured as much." The doctor moved toward the door, then paused. "Word of advice before you go hunting—talk to Lisanna. Strauss girl. She's been asking about you since Victor brought you in. Smart kid, knows the area, knows the people. If anyone's heard anything about strangers passing through with valuable cargo, it'd be her."

"Where do I find her?"

"Usually around the saloon or helping her sister. Can't miss her—young, silver hair, talks more than she should." Doc Mitchell opened the door. "And Dragneel? You might want to put on pants before you go looking. Goodsprings is friendly, but not that friendly."

The doctor left. Natsu looked down at the patient gown, then at the clothes on the bed. Right. Pants first. Revenge second. He dressed slowly, body remembering how to move even if it protested every motion. The leather armor fit like it always had—worn in the right places, reinforced in others, the kind of gear that kept you alive through wasteland travel. The pistol went in its holster. The Pip-Boy glowed softly on his wrist. He caught his reflection in the room's small mirror and stopped. The face staring back was his—dark eyes, familiar features, the perpetual scowl that came from years of courier work.

But the forehead. The scar was visible even through the bandage—raised, angry, a permanent reminder that someone had put a bullet through his skull and he'd survived anyway. Natsu touched it. Felt the damaged tissue beneath gauze. He should be dead. Doc Mitchell said so. The wound said so. Every law of medicine and biology said so. But he was standing here, dressed, armed, and ready to hunt. Something in him had refused to die. He didn't understand it. Didn't need to. Right now, all that mattered was finding Benny. Finding the platinum chip. And making sure the man in the checkered suit regretted leaving him alive. Natsu checked the pistol—loaded, functional—and headed for the door.

Outside, Goodsprings waited. Somewhere beyond it, Benny was walking around free, thinking he'd gotten away with murder. He was wrong. The wasteland had tried to bury Natsu Dragneel. It failed. And now the dead man was walking. With a name to find and a bullet to return. The door opened. Afternoon light hit Natsu like a physical thing—bright, harsh, the kind of October sun that baked the Mojave into submission. He squinted, letting his eyes adjust, one hand instinctively moving to shade his face. Goodsprings spread before him. Small. Maybe a dozen buildings total, clustered around a main road that probably had a name once but now was just "the road." Pre-war construction, some of it—walls still standing after two centuries, roofs patched with scavenged metal and optimism. The kind of settlement that survived by being too small to raid, too useful to destroy, too stubborn to abandon.

People moved between buildings. Not many—population couldn't be more than fifteen, twenty at most. Wastelanders, all of them. The kind who'd chosen this life or had it chosen for them, making do with what the Mojave allowed. A few looked his way. Curious glances, nothing hostile. Word probably spread fast in a town this size—the courier Victor dug up, the man who survived a headshot, Doc Mitchell's impossible patient. Natsu ignored the stares. He had a name to find. The Prospector Saloon sat at the settlement's center—biggest building, two stories, the kind of place that served as bar, restaurant, community center, and gossip hub all at once. Perfect place to start asking questions.

Natsu's legs held as he walked, though each step was a negotiation between will and weakness. His body protested—muscles that had been still for eight days, coordination that wasn't quite right, balance that required conscious thought. He pushed through it. Pain meant alive. Weakness meant healing. And both meant he was walking when he should be rotting in a grave. The saloon's doors were already open, propped against the heat. Inside, the temperature dropped slightly—thick walls, shade, the blessing of pre-war construction that understood insulation.

A woman stood behind the bar. Silver hair, kind face, the sort of person who'd seen enough wasteland cruelty to value gentleness when she found it. She looked up when Natsu entered, expression shifting from neutral to concerned.

"You're awake," she said. Not a question. "Doc said you might be, but I didn't believe him. No one survives what you did."

"I did."

"So I see." She studied him—the bandage, the scar visible beneath it, the way he moved like gravity was just a suggestion his body was still learning to follow. "I'm Mirajane. Mirajane Strauss. I run this place."

Natsu nodded. "Doc said your sister might have information. Lisanna."

"Information about what?"

"The people who shot me. Strangers passing through. Anyone who looked like they were carrying something valuable."

Mirajane's expression tightened. "Lisanna's out back with supplies. I'll get her." She paused. "You planning revenge?"

"Planning to finish my job."

"Same thing, way you're looking at it." Mirajane moved toward a back door. "Try not to bleed on anything while I'm gone. Doc just patched you up. Be a shame to undo his work before you even leave town."

She disappeared through the door. Natsu stood in the empty saloon, breathing easier now that he wasn't walking. The Pip-Boy on his wrist showed his vitals—heart rate elevated, blood pressure higher than it should be, the body's stress response to being upright and functional.

RECOMMENDATION: REST

He dismissed the warning. Rest was for later. After Benny. After the chip. After the debt was paid. Voices outside—Mirajane's calm tone, another voice younger, excited. The back door opened and two women entered. Mirajane, and behind her—

A girl. Young, maybe early twenties. Silver hair pulled back, wearing practical wasteland gear that had seen work but not war. Her blue eyes were bright with curiosity that hadn't been beaten out of her yet.

"You're him," she said immediately, crossing the distance between them in quick steps. "The courier everyone's talking about. The one who got shot and didn't die. That's—that's incredible! I mean, I'm sorry you got shot, that's awful, but the fact that you're walking around is—"

"Sister," Mirajane cut in. "Breathe."

Lisanna stopped, took an exaggerated breath, then smiled. "Right. Sorry. I talk too much when I'm excited. It's a problem."

"Doc Mitchell said you might know something," Natsu said. "About strangers. People passing through with valuable cargo."

Lisanna's excitement dimmed slightly, replaced by thinking. "When?"

"Eight days ago. October eleventh. Evening, probably around sunset."

"That's when they brought you in," Lisanna said. "Victor carried you down from the cemetery. You were... well, you looked dead. Everyone thought you were dead."

"I'm not."

"Clearly." She tapped her chin, thinking. "October eleventh. Evening. I was helping with the brahmin, but I saw some people heading north earlier that day. Maybe afternoon? Four of them. Three looked like Great Khans—tribal gear, that whole aesthetic. The fourth was..." She trailed off.

"Different?" Natsu prompted.

"Yeah. Dressed nice. Too nice for the wasteland. Checkered suit, hair slicked back, carrying himself like he owned the place. Had a gun—chrome, expensive-looking. Pre-war, maybe."

Benny. Natsu's fists clenched. "Which way did they go?"

"North eventually," Lisanna said. "But not right away."

Mirajane's expression darkened. "They came here first. The next day—October twelfth. Walked into my saloon like they owned the place."

Natsu turned to her. "What happened?"

"They wanted to celebrate, apparently." Mirajane's voice was tight with controlled anger. "The suit and his Khans. Ordered drinks, got loud, got disruptive. I don't mind people having a good time, but they were making other customers uncomfortable. Aggressive. Mean-drunk even though they'd barely had two rounds."

"You threw them out," Natsu guessed.

"Made them pay their bill first, then threw them out." Mirajane's jaw tightened. "The big one—dark-haired Khan, muscles like a brahmin—he 'accidentally' knocked my radio off the bar on his way out. Smashed it to pieces. Revenge for bruising his ego, I guess."

Lisanna added, "They were laughing about it as they left. The suit especially. Said something about 'one last stop before Vegas,' then they split up. The Khans went east toward their territory. The suit went north alone."

"One last stop?" Natsu pulled out the delivery contract, scanning the instructions again.

Bring the payment to Johnson Nash at the Mojave Express agency in Primm.

Primm. Johnson Nash—the Mojave Express agent who processed contracts on this end of the route. If Benny's people had mentioned a stop, and Nash was connected to the delivery...

"I need to get to Primm," Natsu said. "Nash is the Express agent there. If the Khans mentioned picking up payment or checking in, he might know something. Or he might be part of it."

Either way, Primm had answers. Natsu looked at Lisanna. "What's the route from here?"

"South along the main highway," Lisanna said, pointing. "Follow the road toward the California border. Primm's right on it—can't miss the place, there's a big pre-war roller coaster you can see for miles. Four, maybe five hours on foot."

She hesitated. "Problem is, the highway goes right past the NCR Correctional Facility. Powder Gangers control it now—prison riot, they took over about six months back. They've been raiding travelers on that stretch."

"How bad?"

"Bad enough that most caravans avoid it. They see a lone courier..." She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

Natsu folded his arms. "I'll manage."

"In your condition?" Mirajane's voice was flat. "You can barely stand for ten minutes. Those Gangers will tear you apart."

"Then I'll be careful."

"Careful won't be enough." Mirajane moved closer. "Look, I get it. You want answers. But walking into Powder Ganger territory right now is suicide. Wait one day. Let your body heal. Then go to Primm."

Natsu wanted to argue. Every second was another second Benny had. But Mirajane was right. He could walk, but fighting was out of the question. And the road to Primm clearly wasn't safe.

"One day," Natsu conceded. "Then Primm. Then I get answers."

Mirajane nodded, satisfied. "Good. Now—"

The saloon doors burst open. A figure stood in the doorway. Blonde hair. Vault jumpsuit marked with the number 36. Face sunburned, lips cracked, swaying like standing was the last thing keeping her conscious. A vault dweller. In Goodsprings. Alone. The girl's eyes swept the saloon interior—desperate, searching, like she was looking for something or someone who wasn't there. Her mouth moved. Words came out, barely audible.

"Father... Goodsprings... have to find..." Then her legs gave out. She collapsed forward, hitting the saloon floor hard.

Silence. Then movement—Mirajane rushing from behind the bar, Lisanna right behind her, both converging on the fallen girl.

"Elfman!" Mirajane shouted toward the back. "Get Doc Mitchell! Now!"

Natsu stood frozen in the doorway, watching. Vault dweller. Alone. Stumbling into Goodsprings half-dead from exposure, talking about finding someone. He should leave. Should start for Primm tomorrow, get answers from Nash, then hunt Benny while the trail was still warm. Should walk away because this wasn't his problem, wasn't his concern, wasn't anything to do with the platinum chip or the bullet scar on his forehead. But he didn't move. Couldn't move. Because something about the way she'd stumbled in—desperate, determined, refusing to quit even when her body was shutting down. It reminded him of himself. Of waking up in a grave and deciding death wasn't good enough. Of walking when he should be still. Of hunting when he should be healing.

Mirajane was checking the girl's pulse, Lisanna grabbing water, both of them working with practiced efficiency that came from living in the wasteland where this wasn't unusual.

"She's alive," Mirajane called. "Dehydrated, heat exhaustion, but alive. Elfman, where's Doc?!"

"Coming!" A voice from outside—male, deep, worried.

Natsu looked at the unconscious vault dweller, then south toward Primm, then back. Nash could wait one more day. Benny had eight days' head start already. One more wouldn't matter. Would it? His hand unclenched from the pistol grip.

"How bad?" he asked, moving closer despite himself.

Mirajane looked up. "Bad enough. She walked here from somewhere—probably far, judging by the condition. Vault dwellers don't know wasteland survival. She's lucky she made it at all."

"Lucky," Natsu repeated. Or stubborn. Or desperate enough that luck didn't matter. Doc Mitchell burst through the door, medical bag in hand, taking in the scene with practiced assessment.

"Again?" He glared at no one in particular. "What is it with October and people refusing to die properly?" He knelt beside the girl, checking vitals. "Vault 36. Haven't seen one of them topside in... ever, actually. What's she doing here?"

"Looking for someone," Lisanna said. "Her father, I think. That's what she said before she passed out."

Doc Mitchell worked quickly—checking pupils, pulse, breathing. "She'll live. Needs fluids, rest, probably a lecture about wasteland survival. Get her to my house. Same room the courier just vacated."

Mirajane and Elfman—a scarred large man who'd appeared from somewhere—carefully lifted the girl. Natsu watched them carry her toward Doc's house. Vault dweller. Searching for her father. Walked into Goodsprings and collapsed. Not his problem. Except. He looked south again. Toward Primm. Toward Nash and answers. Then back at Doc's house, where they were carrying an unconscious girl who'd probably die if she tried to continue her search alone. Natsu's jaw tightened. "Fuck it."

Mirajane glanced back. "Something wrong?"

"Yeah." Natsu gestured toward Doc's house. "I'm not leaving yet."

"Because of her?"

"Because she's gonna get herself killed," Natsu said. "And I know what that's like."

Mirajane's expression softened. "So you'll wait? Until she wakes up?"

"Until I know she's not gonna die in the desert alone." Natsu moved back toward the saloon. "Then I go to Primm. Then I hunt."

"That might take a day or two."

"Then Nash gets a day or two to sweat." Natsu's hand found the bullet scar on his forehead. "And Benny gets that much longer thinking I'm dead. Won't change the ending."

He walked back into the Prospector Saloon, finding a chair, sitting heavily. Waiting. For a vault dweller he didn't know. For a girl searching for her father in a wasteland that would kill her. For someone who reminded him that sometimes, survival meant more than just breathing. Sometimes it meant someone giving a damn. The way Victor had given a damn enough to dig up a grave. The way Doc Mitchell had given a damn enough to patch up someone who should be dead. The way Natsu was giving a damn right now, even though every instinct screamed to hunt, to move, to get answers and revenge. He'd wait.

One day. Maybe two. Long enough to make sure the vault dweller didn't die. Then Primm. Then Benny. The wasteland had tried to bury Natsu Dragneel. It failed. And maybe—just maybe—he could make sure it failed with her too.

Next Chapter: Jingle Jangle Jingle

The picture of Doc Mitchell house and Goodsprings.

Chapter's name song: Ain't That a Kick in the Head by Dean Martin, 1960

Chapter Text

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Doc Mitchell's House, Goodsprings, Nevada

October 19th, 2281

Pain came first.

Not the sharp, immediate kind—something duller, deeper. Full-body ache that suggested Lucy had done something profoundly stupid to herself and her body was filing an official complaint. She tried to inventory: head pounding, mouth tasting like sun-baked metal, skin tight and hot, muscles screaming. Everything hurt. Everything. Memory surfaced in fragments. Walking. Endless walking. Sun. Heat. Goodsprings ahead. Father. Had to find Father. Had to—

The darkness had swallowed the rest. Lucy's eyes opened slowly, fighting against lids that felt glued shut. Too bright. She squeezed them closed again, then tried once more. Shapes resolved gradually—wooden ceiling, pre-war construction, medical equipment on shelves. Not the vault. Definitely not the vault. A face appeared above her. Old, weathered, concerned. Balding gray hair, the kind of lines that came from decades of wasteland living.

"You're awake," the man said, tone caught between relief and amazement. "How about that."

Lucy's thoughts struggled to organize themselves into something coherent. Where was she? This wasn't her quarters. Wasn't the vault infirmary. The walls were wood, not metal. Natural light came through a window—actual sunlight, not fluorescent tubes.

"Where... am... I?" Lucy asked, her voice cracking on each word. Her throat felt like someone had taken sandpaper to it.

The realization hit like cold water.

"Father!" She tried to sit up fast—too fast. The room tilted sideways, gravity becoming a suggestion her body couldn't follow. Her vision blurred, darkening at the edges.

Strong hands caught her shoulders, easing her back down with practiced gentleness.

"Woah, easy there, easy." The old man's voice was calm, the kind of calm that came from dealing with panicked patients regularly. "You've been out cold for a couple of hours now. Why don't you just relax a second, get your bearings?"

Lucy wanted to argue. Wanted to push past him, get up, keep moving. Father was out here somewhere. She'd walked all this way to find him. She couldn't stop now. But her body had other ideas. The moment she tried to resist the doctor's gentle pressure, her muscles simply gave up. No strength left. Nothing to push with. She sagged back against the pillow, breathing hard from the minimal exertion.

"That's it," the doctor said, releasing her shoulders once he was sure she wasn't going to try standing again. "Just breathe. You're safe."

Safe. The word felt foreign. Lucy hadn't felt safe since the vault door sealed behind her. Maybe before that—maybe she hadn't felt truly safe since Father's message, since learning Vault 36 was an experiment, since everything certain became uncertain.

"Where am I?" Lucy tried again, forcing her voice to work despite her throat's protests. "What happened?"

"You're in Goodsprings," the doctor said, moving to a nearby table and returning with a cup of water. "Small settlement in the Mojave. You walked into the Prospector Saloon around midday, asked about someone—your father, I think—then collapsed. Heat exhaustion, severe dehydration, blistered feet that probably should've stopped you miles back."

He held the cup to her lips, tilting it carefully. "Small sips. Your body needs to remember how to process water."

The water touched Lucy's tongue and she nearly sobbed with relief. Cool, clean, the most beautiful thing she'd ever tasted. She wanted to grab the cup and drain it, but the doctor controlled the flow—measured, careful, infuriatingly slow.

"That's enough for now," he said after three small sips, pulling the cup away despite her small noise of protest. "Too much too fast will make you sick. We'll try more in a few minutes."

Lucy's mind was clearing, the water helping despite the minimal amount. She focused on the doctor's face—kind eyes, professional demeanor, the bearing of someone who'd seen everything the wasteland could throw at human bodies and still tried to fix them anyway.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Doc Mitchell. I'm the doctor here—only doctor, really. Goodsprings is small, but we take care of our own." He set the cup aside, then pulled up a chair, sitting at her bedside like he had all the time in the world. "Now, how about you tell me your name?"

"Lucy." The answer came automatically. Then, because vault training insisted on proper introductions even when you were lying half-dead in a stranger's house: "Lucy Heartfilia. Vault 36."

Doc Mitchell's eyebrows rose slightly. "Vault 36? That's... haven't seen a vault dweller from there in, well, ever actually. Didn't even know your vault was occupied." He studied her jumpsuit—blue and yellow, the number 36 emblazoned on the back. "What's a vault dweller doing walking alone through the Mojave? That's not exactly tourist country."

"My father." Lucy's hands clenched in the bedsheets. "Overseer Jude Heartfilia. He left the vault ten days ago. I'm following him. He came through here—Goodsprings. His notes mentioned this place. I need to find him."

The desperation leaked into her voice despite her attempt at control. Ten days. Father had ten days' head start, and she'd just lost hours—how many hours?—unconscious in this bed.

Doc Mitchell's expression shifted—concern deepening into something else. Recognition, maybe. "Ten days ago," he repeated slowly. "Around October eighth or ninth?"

"October eighteenth," Lucy corrected. "He left early morning. I followed the same day."

"And you walked from your vault to here in..." Doc Mitchell calculated. "Less than two days? Lucy, where exactly is Vault 36?"

"Kingston Ranch," The words came automatically, coordinates she'd memorized from the Pip-Boy. "Fifteen miles southwest of here. The monitoring stations showed Goodsprings as the nearest settlement."

Fifteen miles. Said out loud like that, it didn't sound like much. Just a number. But Lucy's feet—throbbing, burning, wrapped in something soft that was probably bandages—told a different story.

"Fifteen miles in less than two days." Doc Mitchell shook his head slowly. "Most experienced wastelanders would take that trip in stages, rest between, know when to stop. You just... walked straight through?"

"I had to." Lucy's voice was quiet but firm. "Father's out here somewhere. Every hour I waste is another hour he's ahead of me. I can't—I can't lose his trail."

Doc Mitchell was silent for a long moment, studying her with an expression Lucy couldn't quite read. Finally, he sighed.

"Miss Heartfilia, I understand you're worried about your father. But you nearly killed yourself getting here. Your feet are torn up, you were severely dehydrated, and you have the beginning stages of heat stroke. Another few hours in that sun without water?" He didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.

Lucy looked away, shame burning through the exhaustion. She'd trained for this. Had read the survival guides, memorized the protocols, prepared as much as the vault's resources allowed. And she'd still collapsed within two days. Father had made this same journey. Had he struggled like this? Or had he been better prepared, more capable, stronger than his daughter who'd followed him into hell?

"Did he come through here?" Lucy asked quietly. "My father. Did anyone see him?"

Doc Mitchell hesitated. "I don't know. I wasn't asking many questions ten days ago—had my hands full with another patient. But the Strauss sisters might know something. They run the saloon, hear most of the settlement gossip. If a stranger passed through asking questions or looking for supplies, they'd probably remember."

Hope flared in Lucy's chest despite the exhaustion. "Can I talk to them? Now?"

"You can try sitting up first," Doc Mitchell said dryly. "Then we'll work on standing. Then maybe, if you don't collapse again, we'll talk about walking to the saloon."

Lucy wanted to protest. Wanted to insist she was fine, she could walk, she needed to keep moving.

But her body's rebellion at the simple attempt to sit up earlier had proven otherwise. She was trapped here, in this bed, useless and weak while Father's trail grew colder by the hour.

"Speaking of patients," Doc Mitchell continued, standing and moving to check something on a nearby shelf, "you're not the only person who woke up today asking questions about someone missing."

Lucy's attention sharpened despite her exhaustion. "What?"

"Another courier. Young man, got shot in the head about a week and a half ago. Should've died—by all medical logic, he absolutely should've died. But he woke up this morning, first words out of his mouth were asking about the people who attacked him." Doc Mitchell returned with what looked like medical supplies. "Determined type. Reminds me of you, actually. Both too stubborn to die properly."

A courier. Shot in the head. Asking questions.

"Is he..." Lucy's mind struggled through the fog of exhaustion. "Is he still here? In Goodsprings?"

"Last I saw, he was at the Prospector Saloon. Probably still there—he was in about as much shape to travel as you are. Which is to say, terrible." Doc Mitchell began unwrapping the bandages on Lucy's feet, his touch professional but gentle. "This is going to hurt. Fair warning."

He wasn't wrong. The moment air hit Lucy's exposed feet, pain flared hot and sharp. She bit down on a gasp, fingers clenching in the bedsheets.

"Blisters ruptured, kept walking anyway," Doc Mitchell observed, his tone somewhere between impressed and exasperated. "Vault dweller determination, or vault dweller stupidity. Haven't decided which."

"Both," Lucy managed through gritted teeth.

Doc Mitchell's mouth twitched—almost a smile. "Honest answer. I appreciate that." He worked efficiently, cleaning the wounds with something that stung, then applying fresh bandages. "You'll heal. Feet are resilient, and you're young. But you need rest. Real rest, not 'collapse from exhaustion' rest."

Lucy watched him work, her mind churning despite her body's insistence on shutting down. A courier asking questions. About people who attacked him. Was that connected to Father somehow? Or just another wasteland story—violence and survival, the kind of thing that happened every day out here? The coincidence felt too specific to ignore. Both of them waking the same day, both asking questions, both searching for something or someone.

"What was he looking for?" Lucy asked. "The courier. Did he say?"

"Someone who shot him and stole what he was carrying. A package, I gather. High-value delivery that went wrong." Doc Mitchell finished wrapping Lucy's left foot, then moved to the right. "The Strauss sisters might know more. He was talking to them before you arrived."

Before she arrived and collapsed in front of everyone. Lucy's face burned with embarrassment at the memory—fragmentary as it was. She'd made it all the way to Goodsprings, had been so close to asking questions, finding leads, getting answers about Father. And she'd fallen apart at the finish line.

"How long until I can walk?" Lucy asked.

"Tomorrow, maybe. If you rest, drink water, eat something, and don't try to be a hero." Doc Mitchell tied off the bandage and sat back, studying his work. "Day after tomorrow, you should be steady enough to move around without collapsing. After that..." He shrugged. "Depends on where you're planning to go next."

Tomorrow. An entire day lost. But Lucy's body was already agreeing with the doctor's assessment—trying to stand now would end the same way it had earlier. Dizzy, weak, useless. She needed rest. Hated that she needed rest, but the truth was undeniable.

"Okay," Lucy said quietly. "Tomorrow. I'll rest until tomorrow."

Doc Mitchell looked surprised, like he'd expected more argument. "Good. Smart decision." He stood, moving toward the door. "I'll have the older Strauss sister bring you some food. Light stuff, nothing heavy. And more water. You'll drink it slowly, understand? No gulping."

Lucy nodded.

Doc Mitchell paused at the door, hand on the frame. "Your father. You said he's the Overseer of Vault 36?"

"Was," Lucy corrected softly. "Deputy Overseer Chen has command now. Father abandoned his position when he left."

"And you followed him anyway." Doc Mitchell's expression was unreadable. "That's either very loyal or very foolish."

"Both," Lucy said again.

This time, Doc Mitchell actually smiled. "You'll fit right in out here, Miss Heartfilia. The wasteland has no shortage of loyal fools." He stepped through the door, then added over his shoulder, "Get some rest. Whatever you're chasing, it'll still be there tomorrow."

The door closed softly. Lucy lay in the quiet, staring at the wooden ceiling, her thoughts already racing despite her body's exhaustion. Father. The courier. Questions. Missing people. High-value deliveries. Goodsprings as a crossroads where stories intersected. She closed her eyes, intending to rest for just a moment. To organize her thoughts before the Strauss sisters arrived with food. To plan her next moves.

But exhaustion had other ideas. Within seconds, Lucy was falling—not into sleep exactly, but into memory. Back to the moment that started everything. Back to the vault door opening. Back to the first step into sunlight.

Back to the beginning of the longest walk of her life.

Vault 36 Entrance, Kingston Ranch, New California
October 18th, 2281

The vault door sealed behind her with a sound like finality made physical—metal grinding against metal, locks engaging deep within reinforced steel, the mechanical certainty of separation. Lucy stood at the tunnel's mouth, one step from the threshold between everything she'd known and everything she'd feared. She took that step. Sunlight hit her like a wall. Not the gentle simulation of vault panels or the measured brightness of emergency lighting. This was raw, unfiltered, the kind of light that existed because a star was burning ninety-three million miles away and nothing stood between that star and her face.

Lucy's eyes squeezed shut involuntarily, tears forming behind closed lids. Too bright. Everything too bright. She stood there, blinking, letting her pupils adjust to illumination they'd never experienced, waiting for the burning sensation to fade to something manageable. When she opened her eyes again, the world existed.

All of it.

The desert stretched in every direction—not to walls, not to corners, but to a horizon so distant it looked like the edge of reality itself. Red earth and brown stone and patches of dead vegetation clinging to existence in defiance of every natural law. Rock formations jutted from the ground like broken bones, casting shadows that moved as the sun traced its arc across that impossible sky.

The sky.

Lucy's head tilted back before she meant it to, drawn by the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing. Blue. Violently, impossibly blue. Not the pale suggestion of vault ceiling panels but something deeper, richer, stretching up and up and up until it hurt to comprehend. No walls. No ceiling. No boundaries.

Just infinity.

Space.

The concept hit her with physical force. In the vault, every room had dimensions. Every corridor had an endpoint you could see. The farthest you could look was maybe two hundred feet before a wall or turn interrupted your sight line. Here, she could see miles. Ten miles, twenty, more—distance that had no meaning in underground life, where everything was measured in sections and levels and the space between door and door. Her breath came short. The openness pressed in—no, not pressed in, opened out. Too much space. Too much light. Too much everything after nineteen years of measured corridors and controlled environments. Lucy's hand found the tunnel wall behind her, steadying herself against stone that was real and solid and there. Grounding. The Pip-Boy on her wrist glowed softly—familiar green text in overwhelming newness.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN ACTIVE
Temperature: 94°F
Radiation: 0.02 RAD/s (Negligible)
Time: 10:47 AM
Goodsprings: 15 miles NE

Fifteen miles.

Lucy looked northeast, where the Pip-Boy's navigation marker pointed. Somewhere in that direction, past red earth and rock formations and distance she couldn't properly judge, was Goodsprings. And somewhere beyond that, Father.

Focus, Heartfilia.

The thought cut through sensory overload with the precision of vault training. Lucy had spent weeks preparing for this moment—reading survival guides, memorizing protocols, training with Security Chief Aqua. Information existed for situations like this. She just needed to access it.

Assess your situation. Inventory your resources. Plan your route.

Lucy's analytical mind engaged, grateful for familiar structure amid overwhelming chaos. She turned away from the vista—looking at that much space made her dizzy—and focused on immediate, manageable details. Inventory first. She unslung her backpack, setting it at her feet. Her hands moved through contents she'd packed and repacked a dozen times: fifty rounds of 10mm ammunition in two boxes, three stimpaks in protective foam, RadAway and Rad-X in their sealed containers, water purification tablets, one week of emergency rations (compressed, unappetizing, but calorie-dense), bedroll, basic tools, rope, and her personal items—photograph, journal, Father's partial notes.

The 10mm pistol sat in its holster at her hip. Lucy's hand found it reflexively, checking. Safety on. Magazine loaded. Round chambered. Ready to fire if needed.

"Breathe. Squeeze, don't pull. Follow through."

Aqua's voice in her memory. Hours on the range. Paper targets that didn't shoot back. Training she hoped desperately she wouldn't need. Water next. Lucy pulled out her canteen—standard vault issue, holding roughly two liters. She'd filled it completely before departure. She unscrewed the cap, took a measured sip. Warm already, despite being in the tunnel shade moments ago. The heat out here was different from vault temperature control. This was real heat, the kind that radiated from earth and stone and hung in the air like presence.

The survival guides had been specific: one liter per day minimum in desert conditions, more if physically active. She had two liters. Fifteen miles to Goodsprings. Lucy did the math automatically. Fifteen miles. Average walking speed: three miles per hour on level ground. But this wasn't level ground—the terrain between here and Goodsprings was broken, uneven, requiring careful navigation. Call it two miles per hour to be safe. That meant seven to eight hours of walking.

One liter for the journey. One liter reserve. Tight, but manageable if she was careful.

She checked the Pip-Boy again.

Current Time: 10:52 AM
Sunset: 6:43 PM

Seven hours and fifty-one minutes of daylight remaining. Plenty of time to reach Goodsprings before dark, assuming she didn't encounter delays.

Assuming.

Lucy's hand tightened on the canteen. So many assumptions in that calculation. Assuming the terrain was navigable. Assuming she didn't get lost. Assuming nothing attacked her. Assuming her vault-soft body could handle eight hours of desert walking without breaking down. Assuming Father's trail was still warm after ten days.

The thought drove through uncertainty like a spike. Father had walked this same route—or something close to it. Had stood in this same overwhelming space, had felt this same sun, had made these same calculations. And he'd made it. He'd reached Goodsprings, then continued north toward whatever "The Strip" and the Platinum Chip meant. If he could do it, so could she. Lucy repacked her supplies with careful hands, making sure everything was secure and accessible. The backpack settled on her shoulders—heavy, but she'd walked with it through vault corridors for weeks, building up tolerance. Her feet found uncertain rhythm on wasteland earth.

One step. Then another.

Northeast. Toward Goodsprings. Toward answers.

The desert stretched before her, and Lucy walked into it.

The terrain was worse than she'd expected.

In the vault, walking meant smooth metal floors, predictable surfaces, corridors designed for efficient movement. Here, every step was negotiation. Loose sand that shifted under her boots. Rocks hidden beneath surface dust that turned ankles if she wasn't careful. Uneven ground that required constant attention, constant adjustment. Lucy's eyes fixed on her feet, watching each placement, trying to find stable ground. The Pip-Boy's navigation marker pointed northeast, but "northeast" in wasteland terms meant picking a path through obstacles, not following a straight line. A wash cut across her route—dried riverbed, probably decades since water flowed here. Lucy stopped at its edge, assessing. Ten feet deep, steep sides, loose rock that would slide under her weight.

She could try climbing down and back up. Or she could follow the wash until it shallowed out, then cross. The second option added distance but reduced risk of falling.

"Risk management is essential to survival. Never take unnecessary chances when safer alternatives exist."

Another vault survival guide quote, rising from memory. Lucy turned east, following the wash line. It took fifteen minutes to find a crossable point—a place where erosion had created a gentler slope. She scrambled down carefully, boots sliding on loose gravel, then climbed the opposite side. When she reached the top, breathing harder than she'd expected from such minimal exertion, Lucy checked the Pip-Boy.

Goodsprings: 14.7 miles NE
Time: 11:24 AM

Thirty-two minutes. Three-tenths of a mile. At this rate, she'd be walking for sixteen hours, not eight. Lucy's jaw tightened. She needed to move faster. Needed to find more direct routes, take calculated risks, stop being so careful.

Father wouldn't have been this slow. He'd been Overseer—used to making hard decisions quickly, accepting necessary risks, pushing through obstacles. She was his daughter. She had his intelligence, his training, his determination. She could do this.

Lucy adjusted her pack straps and picked up the pace. The sun climbed higher, heat intensifying with each passing minute. By noon, sweat was soaking through her vault jumpsuit, making the reinforced fabric cling uncomfortably. She stopped long enough to drink—measured sip, not enough to satisfy but enough to keep functioning—then kept moving. The landscape repeated itself endlessly. Red earth, brown rock, dead vegetation. Occasionally a lizard would skitter away from her approach, or a bird would circle overhead—actual wildlife, not the carefully maintained species in vault hydroponics. Once, she saw something larger moving in the distance—four-legged, too far away to identify. She froze, hand moving to her pistol, but the creature disappeared behind rocks without approaching.

Everything out here wanted to kill you. The educational materials had been clear about that. Radscorpions, geckos, cazadores, deathclaws—names that meant nothing in the vault but everything in the wasteland. Lucy had no idea what that distant creature was. Didn't want to find out. She gave the area wide berth and kept walking.

By 1 PM, her feet were starting to hurt. Not badly yet—just the beginning awareness of blisters forming where boot met skin, friction from hours of walking on uneven ground. Lucy ignored it. Blisters were manageable. Pain meant alive. Discomfort meant progress.

The memory surfaced unbidden:

Father's office. Two months ago. Lucy standing before his desk while he studied surface monitoring data.

"The wasteland will test you," Father had said without looking up. "Every step. Every decision. It doesn't care about your intentions or your education. It only cares if you're strong enough."

"I'm strong enough, father," Lucy had replied. Confident. Certain.

Father had finally looked at her then—really looked, with an expression she couldn't read. "I hope so, Lucy. I really do."

Lucy pushed the memory away. She'd find out if she was strong enough. She was finding out right now, with every painful step, every minute under this brutal sun, every mile between her and the vault she'd left behind.

The Pip-Boy showed 12.3 miles remaining. She'd covered less than three miles in more than two hours. Not good enough. Not nearly good enough.

But ahead—maybe two miles distant—she could see something different. A cluster of structures? Hard to tell through heat shimmer, but it looked like buildings. A waypoint. Possibly Sandy Valley, if her map reading was correct.

Civilization. Or what passed for it in the wasteland.

Lucy's pace quickened despite her feet's protests. If Sandy Valley had people, they might have information. Might have seen Father pass through. Might have water she could purchase, supplies she could trade for. Might have answers.

The sun beat down mercilessly as she walked toward those distant structures, leaving the vault farther behind with every step, carrying nothing but determination and the desperate hope that Father's trail wasn't already cold.

Sandy Valley, Nevada

October 18th, 2281

The structures resolved as Lucy approached—not a town exactly, more like a trading post. Four buildings clustered around what might have once been a gas station, pre-war construction half-collapsed and rebuilt with scavenged materials. A brahmin pen held three of the two-headed beasts, their dual heads chewing cud in the afternoon heat.

A faded sign read: SANDY VALLEY - TRADERS WELCOME

Lucy slowed, suddenly aware of how she must look. Vault jumpsuit marking her as an outsider, face flushed with heat, movements stiff from hours of walking. Every wasteland survival guide had warned about first impressions—how strangers were assessed in seconds, judged as threat or prey or potential trade partner.

She checked her pistol reflexively. Still holstered. Safety on. Non-threatening posture.

"You represent Vault 36 in everything you do," Father's voice echoed. "Diplomacy begins with presentation."

Lucy straightened her shoulders despite exhaustion, lifted her chin, and walked into Sandy Valley with as much confidence as she could manufacture.

A man sat outside the largest structure—middle-aged, weathered, wearing leather armor that had seen better decades. He looked up as Lucy approached, eyes narrowing in assessment. His hand didn't move toward the rifle leaning against his chair, but Lucy noticed it was within easy reach.

"Vault dweller," he said. Not a question. Statement of fact.

"Yes." Lucy stopped at a respectful distance. Close enough to talk, far enough to not threaten. "Lucy Heartfilia. Vault 36."

"Marcus Webb. I run this place." His eyes tracked over her—taking in the armored jumpsuit, the backpack, the holstered pistol, the Pip-Boy. "Long way from any vault I know. You lost?"

"Looking for someone. My father. He passed through here about ten days ago—October eighth or ninth. Heading northeast toward Goodsprings, maybe New Vegas beyond that."

Marcus's expression didn't change. "Lot of people pass through heading northeast. What's he look like?"

Lucy pulled the photograph from her pocket—her parents, taken years ago when Mother was still alive. She pointed to Father. "Jude Heartfilia. Late forties, graying hair, probably wearing vault gear like mine. He's—" She hesitated. "He's the Overseer. Was the Overseer."

"Overseer walked out of his vault?" Marcus's eyebrows rose slightly. "That's unusual."

"He was investigating something. Project Dragneel, the Platinum Chip—I don't know what they mean, but his notes mentioned them. And Goodsprings. He was definitely heading for Goodsprings."

Marcus studied the photograph, then Lucy's face, making some internal calculation. Finally, he nodded slowly.

"Might've seen him. Ten days ago, you said? Yeah. Man fitting that description came through, traded for supplies and information. Didn't say much, kept to himself. Asked about routes north, settlements between here and Vegas." He handed back the photograph. "Didn't mention he was Overseer of anything. Just said he was a courier."

A courier. Father had disguised his identity. Smart—being Overseer made you notable, and notable got you noticed. But why lie about being a courier specifically?

"Did he say where he was going? What he was looking for?"

"Goodsprings, like you said. Beyond that..." Marcus shrugged. "Didn't ask. Not my business what people are chasing. You want the same? Supplies and information?"

Lucy nodded. "What do you have?"

Marcus gestured toward his building. "Water, food, basic supplies. Nothing fancy. This isn't the Strip. As for information—I can tell you the route to Goodsprings, what to avoid, where to find shelter if you need it. Costs caps or trade goods."

Lucy's hand moved to her pack. She had caps—vault currency she'd exchanged before leaving, though she wasn't sure of wasteland exchange rates. "How much?"

"Depends what you need. But first—" Marcus stood, his full height impressive even with the slouch of wasteland living. "You planning to walk to Goodsprings today?"

"Yes."

"It's 2 PM. Goodsprings is twelve miles from here, and you're already moving like your feet hurt. You're not gonna make it before dark."

"I have to try." Lucy's voice was firm despite exhaustion. "Every day I lose is another day my father's ahead of me."

Marcus studied her with an expression somewhere between respect and pity. "Your father had wasteland experience, I'm guessing. You don't. There's a difference between determination and suicide."

"I'm aware of the risks."

"Are you?" Marcus's tone sharpened. "Night in the Mojave isn't like day. Temperature drops forty degrees. Creatures that hide during sun come out hunting. You can't see terrain, can't navigate by landmarks, can't spot dangers until they're on top of you." He paused. "Your father knew that. Spent the night here, left at dawn. Smart man."

Father had stayed. Had rested. Had been smart about survival instead of pushing recklessly forward. But Father wasn't running out of time. Wasn't chasing a trail that grew colder by the hour. Wasn't desperate to prove he could do this, could survive out here, could be more than the sheltered vault dweller everyone assumed she was.

"I can't stop," Lucy said quietly. "I appreciate the advice, but I need to keep moving."

Marcus sighed—the sound of someone who'd given this warning before and been ignored. "All right. Your funeral. Let's see what you need."

The trading took twenty minutes. Lucy exchanged caps for information—detailed route instructions, locations of landmarks, areas to avoid—and traded two emergency rations for a bottle of purified water. Marcus threw in some advice about night travel that Lucy pretended to listen to while her mind was already ahead, calculating distances and time. Twelve miles. If she pushed hard, maintained three miles per hour despite darkening terrain, she could make Goodsprings by eight PM. Before full darkness. Before the worst of night dangers. It was possible. Difficult, painful, maybe foolish. But possible.

"One more thing," Marcus said as Lucy shouldered her pack. "You know how to use that pistol?"

"Vault security training. I can shoot."

"Shooting targets isn't the same as shooting things that shoot back. Or things that run at you with claws and teeth." Marcus's expression was serious. "You see a gecko out there—lizard thing, usually green or brown, size of a large dog—don't engage unless you have to. They're not aggressive unless threatened, but they're fast and their bite is nasty. Back away slowly, let it lose interest."

"Geckos." Lucy filed the information. "What else should I watch for?"

"Radscorpions if you're unlucky. Cazadores if you're very unlucky, but they mostly stick to caves this time of year." Marcus rattled off creatures like he was reciting a grocery list. "Coyotes sometimes, but they're skittish. Raiders if you're on main roads, which you won't be if you follow my route. And—" He paused. "If you see a deathclaw, pray it doesn't see you. Then run. Don't fight. Don't be brave. Just run."

"Deathclaw," Lucy repeated, remembering Aqua's joking comment about taking one down. Suddenly it didn't seem like a joke.

"You won't see one," Marcus assured her. "They're rare this far south. Just... general wasteland wisdom. Big thing with claws that can gut you in seconds? Run."

Lucy nodded. "Thank you. For everything."

"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when you make it to Goodsprings alive." Marcus returned to his chair. "And if you see your father—tell him Marcus says he owes me for supplies. I gave him a discount thinking he'd come back this way."

"I will."

Lucy left Sandy Valley behind, following Marcus's route instructions northeast. The sun had shifted westward, afternoon heat beginning its slow decline toward evening. Her feet hurt worse now—blisters definitely forming, maybe some already ruptured. But she'd made it to Sandy Valley. Had found proof Father came this way. Had gotten information and supplies. Progress. Real, measurable progress. The terrain shifted as she walked, rock formations growing taller, providing occasional shade that Lucy gratefully used for brief rest stops. The Pip-Boy counted down distance: 11.8 miles. 11.3 miles. 10.9 miles.

Each tenth of a mile felt like victory.

At 4:30 PM, Lucy saw movement ahead. She froze, hand instinctively moving toward her pistol. Fifty yards distant, something emerged from behind rocks—low to the ground, moving with predatory purpose.

Green-scaled. Four-legged. Size of a large dog, just like Marcus described.

Gecko.

Lucy's heart hammered against her ribs. Her first mutated creature. Real, alive, dangerous. Not a picture in an educational holotape or a theoretical threat in survival guides.

Actual danger. The gecko's head swiveled toward her—triangular, with eyes that caught afternoon light wrong. Its tongue flicked out, tasting air. Testing for threat or prey. Lucy's training surfaced automatically. Safety off. Weapon ready. Center mass. Breathe. Squeeze, don't pull. Her hand was on the pistol grip before conscious thought caught up. Then stopped.

"Don't engage unless you have to. Back away slowly."

Marcus's advice. Combined with something deeper—Lucy's own nature. The Good Natured trait that vault psychologists had identified in her G.O.A.T. results, the tendency toward non-violent solutions, the preference for diplomacy over destruction. She didn't have to fight this gecko. It wasn't attacking. Just... existing. Hunting its own prey, living its own life in this harsh wasteland.

Could she even kill it if she tried? She'd never shot anything alive. Had no idea if her vault-trained marksmanship would translate to a moving target that might charge her. And gunshots would attract attention—other creatures, possibly people. More risks. More dangers. More problems. Lucy took a slow step backward. Then another. Her hand stayed on the pistol but didn't draw. The gecko watched her, head tilting, calculating. Three seconds. Five. Ten. Then it lost interest, turning away to investigate something in the rocks. Not prey. Not threat. Just another wasteland creature going about its business.

Lucy released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her hand trembled slightly as it left the pistol grip—adrenaline, fear, relief mixing into shaky aftermath. First encounter. First choice. She'd chosen avoidance over violence. Father would've probably shot it. Eliminated the threat, taken no chances. That was Overseer thinking—neutralize dangers to protect yourself and others. But Lucy wasn't Overseer. Wasn't sure she ever wanted to be. She gave the area wide berth and kept walking, checking over her shoulder every few minutes until the gecko was long out of sight. The sun continued its descent. 5:00 PM became 6:00 PM. Lucy's feet were screaming now—sharp, hot pain with every step, the kind that meant tissue damage, blisters ruptured and raw. She'd stopped checking distance obsessively, focusing instead on just moving forward. One step. Then another. Then another.

At 6:30 PM, the desert transformed.

Lucy crested a small rise and stopped, breath catching despite exhaustion. The sun was setting. She'd seen sunsets in vault educational materials—photographs and video footage of pre-war skies painted in colors. But those were flat, lifeless, captured light on screens that couldn't possibly convey reality.

This was real.

The western horizon blazed gold and orange and red—colors so vivid they seemed impossible, like someone had set fire to the sky itself and was watching it burn. The clouds caught that light, transforming into purple and pink and shades Lucy had no names for. The desert reflected it all, red earth turning to copper and gold, shadows stretching long and dramatic across the landscape.

Beautiful.

Despite everything—the pain, the exhaustion, the fear—it was beautiful. Lucy stood there, backpack cutting into her shoulders, feet bleeding inside her boots, body begging for rest, and watched the wasteland sky paint itself in glory. This was what Father had seen. What he'd walked toward. What he'd chosen over the vault's eternal artificial lighting. And for just a moment, Lucy understood. Not his reasons for leaving. Not his obsession with the Platinum Chip or Project Dragneel. But his need to see this. To experience real world instead of controlled simulation. To feel wonder again. The moment passed. The sun continued its descent. And Lucy was left with reality: 8.2 miles still to go, darkness approaching fast, and a decision to make.

She could stop here. Find shelter in the rocks, rest her feet, wait for morning. The smart choice. The safe choice. The choice Father had made at Sandy Valley. Or she could keep walking. Push through the night. Accept the risks Marcus warned about. Make those final eight miles in darkness and arrive at Goodsprings exhausted but there, ready to ask questions at first light.

Lucy looked at the Pip-Boy. 6:43 PM. Sunset in 3 minutes.

Then northeast, toward Goodsprings. Toward Father's trail. Toward answers that couldn't wait another day. She adjusted her pack, ignored her feet's protests, and kept walking. The sun disappeared below the horizon. Twilight descended. And Lucy Heartfilia walked into the night, making the choice that would nearly kill her. Behind her, the last light painted the sky in colors she'd remember for the rest of her life—beautiful and terrible and real.

Everything she'd left the vault to find.

8:00 PM

Darkness fell like a curtain dropping.

Lucy had expected gradual transition—twilight fading slowly into night, her eyes adjusting naturally. Instead, the sun disappeared and the desert simply became dark. Not vault darkness, where emergency lighting always provided some visibility. Not even the darkness of her quarters with the lights off, where the Pip-Boy's glow was enough. This was absence. Complete, absolute absence of light. She stopped walking, momentarily blind. Her hand found the Pip-Boy, and the screen's green glow became her only reference point in the void. She tapped the light function—a weak beam that penetrated maybe ten feet ahead, illuminating a small circle of red earth and rock.

Beyond that circle: nothing.

Goodsprings: 8.2 miles NE
Temperature: 71°F
Time: 8:04 PM

Eight miles. Four hours at two miles per hour. She could make Goodsprings by midnight if she maintained pace. Lucy started walking again, slower now, using the Pip-Boy's light to check each step. The temperature had dropped—not dramatically yet, but noticeably. The desert heat that had oppressed her all day was draining away, replaced by something cooler. Almost pleasant. Her feet disagreed about pleasant. Each step sent sharp pain up her legs—blisters fully ruptured now, raw flesh rubbing against boot interior. Lucy's jaw clenched against the sensation. Pain was temporary. Stopping was failure. She could do this. Father had walked this same darkness. She would too.

The night made sounds. Not silence—Lucy had expected silence, the kind that existed in sealed vault corridors during third shift. But the desert was alive at night. Things rustled in the darkness beyond her light. Chirping insects. Distant animal calls she couldn't identify. Wind moving through rocks with sounds like whispers. Lucy's hand stayed near her pistol. Ready. Watching shadows at the edge of her light circle, looking for movement that meant danger.

Nothing emerged. Just sounds. Just darkness. Just Lucy walking alone through a world she couldn't see.

She could do this.

10:00 PM

Cold. Lucy hadn't expected cold. The vault maintained constant temperature—68 degrees Fahrenheit, optimal for human comfort and equipment operation. The desert had been hot, oppressively so, and her body had adjusted its expectations accordingly. Now the temperature was dropping fast, and she was shivering.

Temperature: 58°F

Her vault jumpsuit wasn't designed for cold. The armored version provided protection, not insulation. Lucy pulled her arms close to her body, trying to conserve heat while walking, but it wasn't enough. The cold seeped through fabric, settled into muscles already exhausted, made everything harder. Her feet had gone from sharp pain to something worse—a grinding, burning sensation that suggested serious damage. Lucy's medical training supplied unwelcome information: ruptured blisters, exposed dermis, possible infection risk if not treated soon. She needed to stop, clean the wounds, apply proper bandaging.

She kept walking.

Goodsprings: 6.1 miles NE

Two miles in two hours. Slower than planned, but progress. Real progress. Father's trail was ahead, and she was closing distance despite the darkness, despite the cold, despite feet that were leaving bloody prints she couldn't see. Something moved in the darkness to her left. She froze, hand flying to her pistol. The Pip-Boy's light swept across rocks—nothing. Just shadows. Just wind moving dead brush.

Her heart hammered anyway. Adrenaline flooded her system, chasing away cold for precious seconds. Every wasteland survival guide had warned about night predators. Creatures that hunted in darkness, using heat signatures or sound to locate prey. Was something hunting her right now? Watching from beyond her tiny circle of light, waiting for the right moment? Her breathing came faster. She forced it to slow, forced rationality through fear. If something was hunting her, panicking wouldn't help. Moving would. Reaching Goodsprings would. Getting out of the open would. She started walking again, checking over her shoulder every few steps. The darkness pressed closer now, like it was following. Like it had weight and intention.

Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe Marcus had been right—night travel was suicide for inexperienced vault dwellers. Maybe she should find shelter, wait for dawn, arrive rested and rational instead of exhausted and paranoid. But stopping meant losing time. Meant Father's trail growing colder. Meant admitting she wasn't strong enough. She kept walking.

12:00 AM

She couldn't remember the last time she'd drunk water. The thought surfaced through exhaustion with the slow certainty of something important she'd forgotten. Water. She needed water. When had she last—

Two hours ago? Three? At Sandy Valley, definitely. But since then? Her canteen was in her pack. Reaching it meant stopping, unshoulder the pack, finding the canteen in darkness, drinking. Thirty seconds, maybe a minute. She kept walking instead. She'd drink at Goodsprings. When she arrived. Soon.

Goodsprings: 4.8 miles NE
Temperature: 52°F

Four point eight miles. Less than five. She was close. So close. Her feet had transcended pain into something else—a distant, disconnected sensation that her brain registered but didn't quite process. Like the nerves were screaming but the signal was getting lost somewhere between foot and consciousness. Medical term for that. Shock, maybe. Or just exhaustion overriding everything. Her hands were shaking. Tremors she couldn't control, whether from cold or dehydration or simple fatigue. The Pip-Boy's light wobbled, making shadows dance across rocks.

The shadows looked like people. Lucy stopped, staring. A figure stood thirty feet ahead—dark silhouette against darker background, just outside her light's reach. Watching her.

"Hello?" Her voice cracked. Too quiet. She tried again. "Is someone there?"

The figure didn't respond. Didn't move.

Lucy's hand found her pistol, drew it with fingers that barely cooperated. "I'm armed. Identify yourself."

Silence.

She took a step forward, light sweeping ahead. The figure resolved into a rock formation—just stone, worn by wind into roughly humanoid shape. No person. No threat. Just her exhausted mind creating patterns in darkness. Lucy holstered the pistol with shaking hands. Not real. She knew it wasn't real. Her brain was just—

"Lucy."

She spun. Another figure behind her, closer this time. Female silhouette, familiar somehow.

"Lucy, sweetheart."

That voice. Lucy's breath stopped.

"Mom?"

The figure didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because Mother was dead. Had been dead nine years. This wasn't real, wasn't possible, was just exhaustion and darkness playing tricks. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. Counted to five. Opened them. The figure was gone. Just darkness and rocks and the cold desert night that didn't care about her breaking mind.

"Not real," Lucy whispered to herself. "Not real. Got to keep moving."

She walked forward, leaving the hallucination behind. But Mother's voice echoed anyway, memory mixing with present until Lucy couldn't tell the difference.

"Where are you going, Lucy?"

"Goodsprings. Finding Father."

"He left you."

"He needs me."

"You're going to die out here."

"I'm not. I'm fine. I'm—"

Lucy's foot caught on a rock. She stumbled, barely caught herself before falling. Pain flared through her feet—sharp, immediate, cutting through the fog. Real. That was real. She kept walking. Had to keep walking. Goodsprings ahead. Father ahead. Answers ahead. Just keep walking.

2:00 AM

Lucy had fallen twice in the last hour. No. Three times? The memory was hazy. Once definitely—she remembered the impact, hands scraping rock, the moment of disorientation. The other times blurred together with all the other moments of darkness and pain and cold that had become her entire existence.

Goodsprings: 2.9 miles NE
Temperature: 47°F

Two point nine miles. Less than three. She could see that number decreasing with each check, proof she was still moving, still making progress. But the numbers felt abstract now. Distant. Like they belonged to someone else's journey. Her legs were moving on autopilot, body continuing what mind had stopped directing hours ago. One step. Then another. Then another. A rhythm she'd lost conscious control of. She should stop. The thought surfaced with crystal clarity through exhaustion. She should find shelter, rest, treat her feet, drink water, wait for dawn. Marcus had been right. Father had been right. Everyone who'd told her night travel was suicide had been right.

But stopping meant—what did it mean? She couldn't remember. Couldn't hold the thought long enough to examine it. Father. Something about Father. She was looking for him. Had to find him. Couldn't stop until—

A sound cut through her thoughts. Close. Too close. Footsteps. Not hers—something else, pacing her in the darkness. Matching her rhythm. Four-legged, maybe. Claws clicking on stone. She stopped. The footsteps stopped. She started walking. The footsteps started. Panic cut through exhaustion like electricity. Something was following her. Hunting her. Waiting for her to weaken enough, slow enough, become prey instead of threat. Her hand fumbled for her pistol. Her fingers were so cold, so numb, they barely gripped the handle. She managed to draw it anyway, safety off, chamber a round with shaking hands.

"Stay back!" Her voice was raw, desperate. "I'll shoot!"

The footsteps stopped.

Silence.

Five seconds. Ten. Thirty.

Nothing.

Lucy kept the pistol raised, light sweeping across darkness, looking for whatever was out there. Radscorpion? Gecko? Something worse? The darkness gave no answers. Eventually, her arms couldn't hold the pistol up anymore. She lowered it, holstered it, kept walking. If something was following, it was patient. Waiting. She couldn't wait. Had to reach Goodsprings before whatever was hunting her decided to strike. Her Pip-Boy's light caught something ahead—movement in the darkness.

A person.

Definitely a person this time, not rocks or hallucination. Young man, vault jumpsuit, standing directly in her path. Watching her with concerned eyes.

"Loke?" Lucy's voice broke on his name. "Loke, what are you—you can't be here. You stayed in the vault. You—"

"You need to rest, Lucy." Loke's voice was exactly as she remembered—gentle, worried, protective. "You're going to kill yourself. Please. Just stop."

"I can't stop. Father—"

"Your father abandoned you!" Loke's expression shifted, anger mixing with concern. "He left you behind and you're killing yourself chasing him. This is insane, Lucy. You know that, right? This is insane."

Tears blurred Lucy's vision. "He needs me. I have to—"

"He doesn't need you. He left you." Loke stepped closer. "Come on. We'll find shelter. Rest. Tomorrow we'll go back to the vault together. Where it's safe. Where you belong."

Lucy wanted to listen. Wanted to stop, rest, let Loke take care of her like he always had. She was so tired. So cold. So hurt.

But.

"You're not real," Lucy whispered.

Loke's expression didn't change. "Lucy—"

"You're not real. You're in Vault 36. I'm hallucinating because I'm dehydrated and exhausted and my brain is shutting down." She took a shaking breath. "You're not real."

Loke faded. Just dissolved into darkness like he'd never been there. Because he hadn't been. She stood alone in the cold desert night, crying without enough moisture left in her body for actual tears. Not real. None of it was real. Mother's voice, Loke's concern, the footsteps—just her mind breaking under strain. She had to reach Goodsprings. Had to get out of this darkness before her mind broke completely. She checked the Pip-Boy with hands that barely functioned.

Goodsprings: 2.1 miles NE

Two miles. Two miles left.

She started walking.

4:00 AM

Time had stopped meaning anything. Lucy walked through darkness that might have lasted minutes or hours or days. The Pip-Boy told her it was 4:00 AM, but that was just numbers. Abstract. Meaningless. She was walking. That was all. Had always been walking. Would always be walking. Through darkness and cold and pain that had become her entire universe.

Goodsprings: 0.8 miles NE

Less than a mile. The number registered somewhere distant. Important, maybe. She was close to something. What was she close to?

Father. Looking for Father.

No. Goodsprings. She was walking to Goodsprings.

Why?

She couldn't remember. The reason existed somewhere in the fog that had replaced her thoughts, but she couldn't reach it. Didn't matter. She was walking. That was enough. Her feet weren't feet anymore. Just sources of pain attached to legs that moved mechanically, carrying her forward through no conscious effort. Her body had taken over completely, continuing the journey her mind had abandoned hours ago. Cold. So cold. The desert night had stolen every degree of warmth from her body, left her shivering so hard her muscles screamed. But she couldn't stop shivering. Body's desperate attempt to generate heat, medical knowledge supplied from somewhere. Hypothermia response.

Was she dying?

The thought drifted past without urgency. Maybe. Probably. She'd read the signs—dehydration, exhaustion, exposure. Her body was shutting down systematically, prioritizing vital functions, abandoning everything else. Soon her legs would stop moving. She'd collapse. The darkness would take her. Father would never know she'd tried. That thought hurt worse than her feet. Worse than the cold. Worse than anything physical. Father would keep walking north, chasing his conspiracy, never knowing his daughter had followed. Had tried to find him. Had died trying. Her hand found the Pip-Boy.

Goodsprings: 0.4 miles NE

Point four miles. Less than half a mile.

So close. She'd walked—how far? Fifteen miles. More. Through heat and darkness and pain and madness. Fifteen miles and she was less than half a mile from the end. She couldn't stop now. Wouldn't stop now. She forced awareness back into her body, forced consciousness into legs that were moving without direction. Forced will into flesh that wanted to quit.

"Not yet," she whispered to herself. To the darkness. To her body's shutdown. "Not yet. Almost there. Just—almost—"

Her voice broke. But her legs kept moving.

One step.

Then another.

Then another. Through darkness that was finally, finally beginning to lighten at the edges. Dawn approaching. Night ending. She'd made it through the night. Now she just had to make it the last quarter mile.

6:00 AM

Light bled into the eastern sky like a wound opening. Lucy saw it through eyes that barely focused, mind that barely processed. Dawn. Real dawn. The first dawn of her life that wasn't simulation or monitoring station footage. Beautiful, probably. She couldn't quite appreciate it. Could only recognize that darkness was ending, that she could see more than ten feet now, that the world was resolving into shapes and colors again.

And ahead—

Buildings. Lucy stopped, swaying. Tried to focus. Structures. Real structures. Maybe a dozen of them clustered together. Settlement size.

Goodsprings.

She'd made it.

Goodsprings: 0.1 miles NE
Time: 6:23 AM

Point one miles. Tenth of a mile. Five hundred feet. Her legs started moving again without her telling them to. Muscle memory. Autopilot. Carrying her those final five hundred feet through morning light that hurt her eyes, across ground that seemed to shift under her boots, toward buildings that wavered like mirages. People appeared. Blurry figures moving between structures. Early risers. Settlement waking up. Lucy tried to call out. Her throat wouldn't work. Too dry. Too damaged. Just a croak that went nowhere. She kept walking. Closer. The buildings became real—wood and corrugated metal, pre-war construction maintained and repaired. A sign:

PROSPECTOR SALOON.

That was important. Why was that important? Father. Ask about Father. That was why she was here. Lucy reached the saloon steps. Her legs wobbled. She caught herself on the railing—wood rough under her palm, real and solid and there. Almost done. Just inside. Ask questions. Find Father's trail. Then she could rest. Lucy pushed through the door. Faces turned toward her. Figures at the bar. A woman with white hair. Another woman, younger, silver hair. Someone else—salmon-haired man sitting alone. Lucy's vision was narrowing, darkening at the edges. Her mouth moved. Words came out, though she couldn't hear them.

"Father... Goodsprings... have to find..."                                     

The floor tilted. Then rushed up to meet her. Lucy felt the impact distantly—something hard against her cheek, voices shouting, hands reaching. Then nothing. Just darkness again. But this time, the darkness was different. This time, it felt like relief.

The sun had barely cleared the horizon when the first settlers noticed her. A figure stumbling down the main road into Goodsprings—vault jumpsuit unmistakable even at distance, blue and yellow standing out against red desert earth. Moving wrong. Too slow, too unsteady, like each step was a negotiation her body was losing. Word spread quickly in settlements this small. By the time the vault dweller reached the settlement proper, half of Goodsprings' twenty residents were watching from windows and doorways, wondering what brought someone from underground into the Mojave alone.

Wondering if she'd survive the morning.

Mirajane Strauss was wiping down the bar when Lisanna called from the window.

"Sis? You should see this."

Something in her sister's tone made Mirajane set down the rag immediately. Lisanna didn't worry easily—wasteland living had taught her when to be concerned and when to let things pass. If she was calling attention to something, it mattered. Mirajane crossed to the window and looked out.

Her breath caught. A girl. Young—maybe nineteen, twenty at most. Vault dweller by the jumpsuit, number 36 emblazoned on the back. Stumbling toward the saloon with movements that screamed distress to anyone who knew the signs. And she knew the signs.

"Oh, honey," she whispered.

The girl's face was burned raw from sun exposure, lips cracked and bleeding. Her gait was wrong—favoring both feet badly, like every step caused agony. She swayed with each movement, barely catching herself, determination the only thing keeping her upright. Mirajane had seen this before. Heat exhaustion. Severe dehydration. Someone who'd pushed their body past every reasonable limit and was now paying the price.

"Lisanna," Mirajane said, voice sharp with command. "Get Doc Mitchell. Now. Don't argue, just run."

"But—"

"Now!"

Lisanna bolted for the back door without further question. Mirajane moved toward the saloon entrance, watching the vault dweller climb the steps with agonizing slowness. Each step took visible effort. The girl caught herself on the railing, grip white-knuckled. Mirajane reached the door just as it opened. The vault dweller stood in the doorway, swaying. Up close, she looked worse—eyes unfocused, skin pale beneath the sunburn, breathing too shallow and too fast. Shock, maybe. Or the beginning stages of complete physical breakdown. The girl's mouth moved. Words came out, barely audible.

"Father... Goodsprings... have to find..."

Mirajane stepped forward, hands rising in the universal gesture of calm. "Easy, sweetheart. You're safe now. Let's get you—"

The girl's eyes rolled back. Mirajane lunged, catching her before she hit the floor—barely. The vault dweller was deadweight, consciousness gone completely, body finally surrendering to exhaustion it couldn't fight anymore.

"Elfman!" Mirajane shouted toward the back room. "I need help!"

Her brother appeared instantly, taking in the scene. Together they lowered the unconscious girl to the floor—gently, carefully, like she was made of glass that might shatter with rough handling. Mirajane knelt beside her, fingers finding her pulse. Rapid, thready, but there. Still alive. For now.

"What happened to her?" Elfman asked, horror in his voice.

"Walked through the desert alone." Mirajane's hands moved efficiently, checking for obvious injuries. "Vault dweller. Probably never set foot outside before yesterday. Look at her feet."

The boots had darkened around the soles—not dirt, Mirajane realized. Blood. The girl had walked until her feet were literally bleeding, then kept walking anyway.

"Why would anyone—" Elfman started.

"She said something about her father." Mirajane looked at the girl's face—young, vulnerable, marked by determination that had nearly killed her. "She's searching for someone."

Just like the courier Victor had dug up last week. Just like the dark-haired young man sitting at the bar right now, asking questions about people who'd shot him. Goodsprings had become a crossroads for lost souls searching for answers. Mirajane's maternal instincts—honed by years of caring for her siblings, for travelers, for anyone who stumbled into her saloon needing help—kicked into overdrive. This girl was someone's daughter. Someone's child who'd walked into hell looking for her father. She wouldn't die here. Not if Mirajane had anything to say about it.

"Get water," she ordered Elfman. "Clean water, not the stuff from the tap. And blankets. She's going into shock."

Elfman moved. Mirajane stayed kneeling, one hand on the girl's shoulder—grounding, present, a promise that she wasn't alone anymore.

"You made it, honey," Mirajane said softly, though the girl couldn't hear. "You made it to Goodsprings. Whatever you're looking for, we'll help you find it. But first, we need to keep you alive."

Behind her, someone else approached. Mirajane didn't look up, focused entirely on her patient. But she heard him speak—the courier with the bullet scar, the young man who'd been asking questions all morning.

"Is she—" His voice was rough, concerned. "Did she make it?"

"Barely," Mirajane said. "Doc Mitchell's on his way. She'll live, if we're lucky."

A pause. Then: "She was looking for someone. Her father."

Mirajane finally looked up at him. Natsu Dragneel, Doc had called him. The courier who wouldn't die. His expression was complicated—recognition, concern, something else she couldn't quite name.

"Another searcher," he said quietly. "Just like me."

Natsu had been nursing the same glass of water for an hour, listening to Lisanna Strauss explain the geography between Goodsprings and New Vegas, when the girl stumbled in. Vault dweller. That registered first—the jumpsuit unmistakable, Vault 36 clearly visible. Young, maybe Lucy's age. Moving like every step was torture. Natsu's hand had instinctively moved toward his pistol before his brain caught up. Not a threat. Just someone in distress. The girl swayed in the doorway, eyes unfocused, trying to speak. Natsu heard fragments:

"Father... Goodsprings... have to find..."

Then she collapsed. Mirajane moved faster than Natsu expected, catching the girl before she hit the floor. Elfman appeared from somewhere, helping lower her down gently. Organized chaos—the kind that came from people who'd dealt with emergencies before. Natsu stood, approaching despite himself. He should stay back, let them handle it. Wasn't his problem. He had his own concerns—finding Benny, recovering the platinum chip, finishing the job. But he didn't walk away.

Something about the way the girl had stumbled in, desperate and determined, speaking through obvious exhaustion about finding someone—

It was too familiar. He had done the same thing days ago. Woke up with a bullet in his head, immediately started asking questions about the people who shot him, refused to rest properly because every second wasted was another second Benny got away. Doc Mitchell had called him stubborn. Reckless. Too determined to die properly. This girl had the same look. Same desperate determination. Same refusal to quit even when her body gave out.

"Is she—" Natsu started, then stopped. What was he asking? If she was alive? Obviously. If she'd make it? How would they know yet?

"Did she make it?" he finished instead.

Mirajane looked up from where she knelt. "Barely. Doc Mitchell's on his way. She'll live, if we're lucky."

Natsu stared at the unconscious vault dweller. Her boots were stained dark—blood, he realized. She'd walked until her feet were destroyed, then kept walking. For what? To get here? To find—

"She was looking for someone," Natsu said, the words coming out before he thought about them. "Her father."

Mirajane's expression shifted—recognition, sympathy. "Another searcher. Just like you."

Another searcher. Just like him.

Natsu looked at the girl's face—sunburned, dehydrated, marked by the same kind of desperate determination that had driven him from Doc Mitchell's house to this saloon despite orders to rest. Searching for someone she'd lost. Walking into danger because the alternative was giving up. Eight days ago, Natsu had been in a grave with a bullet in his head. Someone had cared enough to dig him up. Doc Mitchell had cared enough to patch him up. These people—strangers in a settlement he'd passed through dozens of times on courier runs—had saved his life.

Now here was someone else, another person who'd pushed too far and collapsed. Another person searching for answers in a wasteland that didn't give them freely. He thought about his plan. Leave Goodsprings tomorrow, head to Primm, track down Johnson Nash and get information about Benny. Simple. Direct. The kind of plan that made sense when all you cared about was revenge and finishing the job.

But.

"How long until she wakes up?" Natsu asked.

Mirajane glanced at him, surprised by the question. "Doc will know better, but—day or two? Maybe more. She's in bad shape. Body needs time to recover from whatever she put it through."

A day or two. That was time Natsu didn't have. Time Benny was using to get farther away, to hide the trail, to make recovery harder. He should leave. Should stick to the plan. Should focus on his own mission and let this vault dweller deal with her own problems when she woke up. He looked at her again. Young, alone, searching for her father in a world she clearly wasn't prepared for. If she woke up and immediately tried to continue her search—which, based on everything Natsu was seeing, she absolutely would—she'd probably die. The wasteland didn't give second chances. She'd barely survived getting here. Pushing further without experience, without preparation, without someone to keep her alive?

Suicide.

"Don't leave people behind. That's what everyone else does to me."

Natsu's own words, echoing back. The promise he'd made to himself after Igneel disappeared, after Zeref abandoned him, after everyone he'd ever trusted had left. He didn't leave people behind.

And this girl—vault dweller, naive, completely unprepared—she reminded him of himself. Not in capability or experience, but in that desperate determination. That refusal to quit even when quitting was the smart choice. Someone had saved him. Maybe he could save her.

Or at least keep her alive long enough to learn how to save herself. Natsu's jaw tightened. He knew what he was about to do. Knew it was stupid, knew it delayed his hunt, knew Igneel would probably call it sentimental foolishness. But Igneel had also taught him: "The wasteland makes you hard. Don't let it make you heartless."

"I'll wait," Natsu said.

Mirajane looked up sharply. "What?"

"For her to wake up." Natsu gestured at the unconscious vault dweller. "I'll wait. Someone should—" He struggled for words that didn't sound weak. "Someone should make sure she doesn't get herself killed the second she's conscious."

Mirajane's expression softened. Understanding, maybe. Or approval. "Doc mentioned you were planning to head to Primm tomorrow."

"Plans change." Natsu forced a shrug, trying to make it seem less significant than it felt. "Nash can wait another day or two. Not like Benny's trail is getting any warmer anyway."

That wasn't entirely true. Every day mattered. Every hour Benny had to cover his tracks, to hide, to prepare defenses. But some things mattered more than revenge. Like making sure another desperate searcher didn't die alone in the desert.

"That's kind of you," Mirajane said quietly.

"Not kind," Natsu corrected. "Practical. She's obviously determined to keep searching. Someone needs to teach her how to not die doing it."

Mirajane smiled—the kind of smile that said she saw through his deflection but wasn't going to call him on it. "Of course. Practical."

The door burst open. Doc Mitchell entered, medical bag in hand, Lisanna right behind him. The doctor took one look at the scene and immediately knelt beside the unconscious girl.

"Vault dweller?" he asked, already checking her pulse.

"Vault 36," Mirajane confirmed. "Walked in asking about her father, then collapsed. Been out for—" she checked the clock "—four minutes now."

Doc Mitchell worked quickly, efficiently, hands moving through checks Natsu recognized from his own recent experience. Pulse, breathing, pupil response, skin temperature.

"Severe dehydration, heat exhaustion, probably hasn't slept in over twenty-four hours," Doc muttered. "What is it with October and people trying to die in my settlement?" He looked at Mirajane. "Help me get her to my house. Same room Mr. Dragneel just vacated."

"I'll carry her," Elfman offered immediately.

Together, they lifted the vault dweller—carefully, gently, like she was made of glass. Natsu stepped back, giving them room, watching as they carried her toward the door. Just before they left, Doc Mitchell glanced back at him.

"You staying, Dragneel?"

Natsu nodded. "For now."

"Good." Doc's expression was unreadable. "Someone should be around when she wakes up. She's going to have questions. And she's going to try to leave immediately, regardless of medical advice. Might need someone to talk sense into her."

"I'm not good at talking sense into people."

"No," Doc agreed. "But you're good at being too stubborn to die. Maybe that's what she needs to see."

They left, carrying the vault dweller toward treatment and rest she'd probably resist the moment she was conscious.

Natsu stayed in the saloon, settling back into his chair. Lisanna brought him fresh water without asking. The morning sun climbed higher through the windows. One day. Two days. However long it took for the vault dweller to wake up and for Natsu to make sure she wasn't going to immediately kill herself. Then Primm. Then Benny. Then the platinum chip. The hunt could wait. Because someone had waited for him. Someone had cared enough to dig up a grave and save a courier who should've been dead. Maybe the wasteland didn't have to be all violence and revenge and death. Maybe sometimes, you could choose to wait.

Doc Mitchell's House, Goodsprings, Nevada
October 19th, 2281

Lucy Heartfilia had walked fifteen miles through desert heat and night cold, had hallucinated her dead mother and her best friend, had pushed her body past every rational limit, had refused to stop until she reached Goodsprings and found her father's trail. She made it. Stumbled into the Prospector Saloon asking about him, managed three words before her body—having carried her as far as humanly possible—finally surrendered. She didn't feel the impact. Didn't hear Mirajane's shout or Elfman's response. Didn't know about the courier with the bullet scar who decided to wait for her, who saw himself in her desperate determination. She just fell. And the darkness that had been chasing her for twelve hours finally caught up. But this time, the darkness was different. This time, people were there to catch her. This time, she wasn't alone.

Lucy opened her eyes to evening light. The flashback released her slowly, memory fading back into present. Not the desperate dawn stumble into Goodsprings, but hours later. Safe. Inside. Alive. She lay still, reorienting herself. Doc Mitchell's house. The same bed she'd woken in earlier—was it earlier today? Time felt slippery, unreliable. The room was darker now, sunset colors bleeding through the window. October evening settling over the Mojave. Her body catalogued damages systematically: feet bandaged and throbbing, muscles aching from overuse, throat still raw despite the water Doc had given her. But alive. Functional. Healing.

She'd made it. Against every reasonable expectation, against Marcus's warnings, against her own body's protests—she'd walked fifteen miles through desert and darkness and reached Goodsprings alive. The accomplishment felt hollow somehow. Pyrrhic victory. Yes, she'd arrived. But at what cost? She'd lost an entire day unconscious. Father's trail was now eleven days cold instead of ten. And she'd nearly died getting here.

Would Father be proud or disappointed?

Lucy didn't know. Couldn't know. That was the problem—she'd left the vault to find him, to understand why he'd abandoned everything, to hear answers from his own mouth. But all she had were questions that multiplied with every step.

Why the Platinum Chip? Why Project Dragneel? Why leave her behind?

Why did she keep following him despite everything?

The door opened softly. Doc Mitchell entered, carrying a tray—food this time, something that smelled like actual cooking rather than emergency rations.

"You're awake again," he observed, setting the tray on a nearby table. "How about that. Twice in one day. You're breaking records."

"What time is it?" Lucy's voice was stronger now, the earlier rasp fading.

"Little past seven-thirty. Evening. You slept through most of the afternoon." Doc Mitchell moved to check her bandages—professional, efficient. "Which is exactly what you needed. Your body's had a rough thirty hours."

Thirty hours. That's how long her journey had taken, start to finish. Lucy tried to process that. Thirty hours that felt like years, that had changed everything about how she understood the world.

"The Strauss sisters stopped by around noon," Doc continued, unwrapping her foot bandages to inspect the damage. "Mirajane wanted to check on you, make sure you were still breathing. She's the one who caught you when you collapsed—maternal instinct, that woman."

Lucy remembered fragments. White hair. Kind face. Strong hands catching her before the floor did.

"I should thank her."

"You should rest more," Doc corrected. "But yes, tomorrow you can thank her. Tonight, you're eating this soup, drinking water, and staying in that bed." He rewrapped her feet with fresh bandages. "The blisters are healing. You'll be able to walk tomorrow, though it'll hurt. Day after tomorrow, you should be steady enough to actually go somewhere without collapsing."

Tomorrow. Lucy's jaw tightened. Another day lost. But arguing seemed pointless—her body had proven it couldn't be pushed further. She needed healing time whether she wanted it or not.

"You mentioned someone else," Lucy said, memory surfacing. "Earlier. Another courier. Who woke up asking questions."

Doc Mitchell nodded, settling into the bedside chair. "Natsu Dragneel. Young man, maybe mid-twenties. Got shot in the head about ten days ago—October eleventh, to be specific. Should've been dead. Victor dug him out of a grave up at the cemetery, brought him here more dead than alive. He woke up this morning."

October eleventh. Lucy's mind calculated automatically. That was three days after Father left the vault. Father had been through Goodsprings on October eighth or ninth, according to Marcus. This courier had been shot two or three days later.

"He's still here?" Lucy asked. "In Goodsprings?"

"At the Prospector Saloon, last I saw. Talking to Lisanna—that's Mirajane's younger sister—about routes north, people passing through, anything that might help him track down whoever shot him." Doc Mitchell's expression was complicated. "He was planning to leave for Primm tomorrow. Had a whole revenge plan worked out, consequences be damned. But..."

He trailed off.

"But?" Lucy prompted.

"But you collapsed in front of him. And something about that—about watching another desperate searcher nearly die—made him decide to wait." Doc Mitchell shrugged. "Said someone should make sure you didn't get yourself killed the second you were conscious. Which, knowing your type, is probably accurate."

Lucy absorbed this information slowly. The courier—Natsu—had delayed his own hunt to wait for her. A stranger. Someone who had his own mission, his own revenge, his own reasons to keep moving. He'd chosen to wait anyway.

"Why?" The question came out before Lucy could stop it.

Doc Mitchell smiled slightly. "You'd have to ask him. But if I had to guess? He sees himself in you. Both searching for someone. Both too stubborn to quit even when quitting is smart. Both willing to die for answers." He paused. "Though in his case, he actually did die. Technically. For about eight days."

Shot in the head. Buried alive. Survived anyway. Lucy tried to imagine that kind of trauma, that kind of impossible recovery. Her fifteen-mile walk suddenly seemed less impressive by comparison.

"You should meet him," Doc said, standing. "Tomorrow, when you're steadier. He's asking the same questions you are—about people passing through Goodsprings, routes north, suspicious activity. Might have information that helps you. And you might have information that helps him."

Two searchers. Two people asking questions in a small settlement where everyone knew everyone's business.

Maybe they could help each other.

"Tomorrow," Lucy agreed quietly.

Doc Mitchell moved toward the door, then paused. "Your father. Jude Heartfilia, you said?"

Lucy nodded.

"The Strauss sisters might know something. Mirajane especially—she sees everyone who comes through, hears all the gossip. If your father traded for supplies or asked questions, she'd remember." Doc's expression was sympathetic. "Can't promise the answers will be what you want to hear. But they'll be honest."

"That's all I need," Lucy said. "Honest answers."

Even if those answers hurt. Even if they confirmed her worst fears about why Father left. Truth was better than uncertainty. Doc Mitchell left, closing the door softly behind him. Lucy was alone again with her thoughts, the evening light fading toward night through the window. She reached for the soup—simple, probably brahmin meat and vegetables, but it smelled better than anything from vault hydroponics. Real food. Wasteland food. Prepared by people who'd never seen a vault but knew how to survive out here. She ate slowly, letting warmth spread through her body, thinking about tomorrow.

Tomorrow, she'd meet the courier who'd waited for her. Tomorrow, she'd talk to the Strauss sisters and learn what they knew about Father. Tomorrow, she'd take the next steps on this journey that had nearly killed her already. But tonight, she was alive. In Goodsprings. One step closer to understanding. Her eyes drifted to her pack in the corner—supplies, ammunition, photograph. The picture of Father and Mother, taken when life was simpler and she'd believed in certainty.

"Some knowledge is dangerous. Some truths can't be shared until they're fully understood."

Father's words from his message. Lucy understood them better now, after walking through darkness and pain to reach this point. Some truths were earned. Some answers required suffering to comprehend. She was earning them. Step by painful step.

Outside, full darkness fell over Goodsprings. The settlement quieted for the night—voices fading, lights dimming in windows, the Mojave settling into the cold silence Lucy had walked through hours before. But this time, she was inside. Safe. Protected by walls and people who'd caught her when she fell.

This time, the darkness couldn't touch her.

She finished the soup, set the bowl aside, and lay back against the pillow. Exhaustion pulled at her immediately—her body demanding the rest it had been denied for thirty brutal hours. She let her eyes close. And immediately, she dreamed.

Father stood in his office, back turned, studying monitoring station data. The vault hummed around them with its familiar mechanical breathing. Everything as it had been before he left.

"Father?" Lucy's voice, younger somehow. Uncertain.

He didn't turn. Just kept studying the screens—surface heat signatures, radiation readings, settlement patterns.

"The wasteland holds answers," he said, though his lips didn't move. His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "About our past. About Vault-Tec's true purpose. About what we were really meant to preserve."

"Then why didn't you take me with you?" Lucy stepped closer, but the distance between them never changed. "Why leave me behind?"

"Because some paths have to be walked alone." Father's hand touched the screen, fingers tracing surface topology. "Because I couldn't risk you. Because I'm protecting you."

"I don't need protection. I need answers."

"You're getting them." Finally, Father turned. But his face was wrong—features blurred, indistinct, like she couldn't quite remember what he looked like. "You're following. Just like I knew you would. Just like I hoped you wouldn't."

The office dissolved. They stood in desert now, endless red earth and impossible sky. Father was walking away—north, toward something Lucy couldn't see. She tried to follow, but her feet wouldn't move. Stuck. Trapped.

"Don't leave me again," Lucy called. "Please. Just—wait. Tell me why. Tell me what you're searching for."

Father kept walking. His voice drifted back, carried by wasteland wind:

"You'll understand when you find me. If you find me. If the wasteland doesn't take you first."

He disappeared into heat shimmer and distance.

Lucy stood alone in the desert, surrounded by emptiness, calling his name to sky that didn't answer.

Lucy woke with tears on her face. Just a dream. Just her exhausted mind processing trauma and fear and desperation. Father wasn't actually in the desert. Wasn't actually talking to her. Was just a memory her brain had conjured from grief and determination. But the feeling lingered—the helplessness of watching him walk away, unable to follow, unable to stop him.

I'll find you, Lucy thought into the darkness. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care what it costs. I'll find you, and you'll explain everything. The vault. The experiment. The Platinum Chip. Why you left me.

You'll explain it all.

Outside, Goodsprings slept. Inside, Lucy Heartfilia lay awake, feet bandaged and body healing, mind already planning tomorrow's questions.

The hunt wasn't over. It had barely begun. But she'd made it to Goodsprings alive. That was something. That was progress. And tomorrow, she'd meet the courier who'd waited for her. Two searchers in the wasteland. Maybe together, they'd find what they were looking for. Maybe together, they'd survive. Lucy closed her eyes again, and this time, sleep came without dreams. Just darkness. Just rest. Just the quiet certainty that morning would come, and with it, answers.

Or at least the next step toward them.

Next Chapter: Paint it Black

Chapter's name song: [I Got Spurs That] Jingle, Jangle, Jingle by Kay Kyser, 1942