Chapter Text
He always figured if Janey had kids he would stick around to look after them. If she died without any, then, well, he would kill himself.
Lucy complicated that plan.
He and vault girl have been acquainted seventy-three years now, been sharing a house and bed the last forty-eight, but it still took about two decades to get in the habit of calling her his wife.
‘My wife said you’d be in town all week. My wife told me you’re the man to talk to. Sorry, can’t help, my wife needs me back at the house.’
It’s just semantic. California has done well for itself, but it will be a while yet before they have an up and running marriage registry. But for all intents and purposes, Lucy Howard (she started using his name without permission) is his wife. Yet he never refers to Barb as his late wife, which confuses the odd passerby unfamiliar with his story. While wandering the wasteland he got accustomed to thinking of Barb in the present tense, and he’s too old to train himself out of it.
Lucy had a first as well. She and armor boy got hitched so fast he figured there had to be a baby on the way. But no, young people just trust like that. They did alright for themselves though. Hit the lottery as far as wasteland marriages go. Their joint earnestness could have powered a small city. Both adored Janey, and gabbed non-stop about plans for their own.
He’s not sure if they had trouble with it, or simply put it off because they couldn’t stop playing heroes. They never settled in one place for long. Running to and fro across the wasteland, as far east as Nebraska and south as Texas. They sent messages over the radio whenever they could get a signal: happy birthdays, travel updates, complaints about whatever. Janey would chat with them into the early morning, the massive headset reminding him of old dental headgear. Those were good years—the very best. For him, at least.
Janey adjusted better than Barb. Kids have soft brains and short memories, but Barb struggled to find satisfaction in the condition of the world, even if she could see evidence of its improvement, drop by drop. She struggled to give him grace for the person he had become. She fell in love with him because he was soft and kind, and now he was neither.
It took time—for them both—to accept that things would never be the same as before. The beautiful life that was stolen from them, and the human race at large, they had to leave it beneath the sand. Once they allowed themselves that grief, it became easier to find contentment in what they had. Barb said there was relief in making it to the other side. The world ended, yet here they were. There’s peace in outliving mankind’s greatest fear.
Then vault girl and armor boy went and got themselves nuked.
It wasn’t their fault. It was nobody’s fault, never is. The NCR found an undetonated warhead buried in downtown Fresno. A lemon dropped during the great war. Lucy and Max were part of the escort team. They carted it deep into the desert to a pre-war lab that still had the equipment for disarming that shit without getting your hands dirty. Everyone was way too confident in too many things.
Lucy made it, Max did not.
The blast hit her from the right. She lost an eye, an ear, and three fingers—almost lost the hand. Once he heard news of the accident, he rode east to bring her home. When he walked into the medical tent half her body was black. She healed though, faster than any human should have. The pain and grief fucked with her head, and she remained in denial up until she started snarling. He shoved his inhaler into her mouth, and after she was dosed and settled, she began to cry, because what else was there to do?
He brought her home with him, and the next day he went to the morgue and found a young woman who had died in childbirth that morning. Her husband was nice enough to donate a few pieces for a good cause. Back in the day he wouldn’t have bothered asking. He brought the bits home, stitched on the ear and fingers, and popped a radiant blue eye into her empty socket. She lost that ugly loaner finger in the blast, and he considered giving back the one he stole almost ten years prior, but she didn’t ask, so he didn’t offer. The mismatched eyes suit her though—adds character.
All in all, she got out of it alright. Sure, the side quarter of her head will never grown hair again, but if it weren’t for the missing nose she could pass as just a rough burn victim. And vials these days are cheap and plenty thanks to the centralized lab. So long as she can avoid getting lost in the desert, she should manage fine, although she does have a habit of getting herself captured, or better put, walking directly into cages.
She stayed with them a year. She grieved, did a shit ton of watercolors, learned to ride a horse, baked enough bread to feed an army, then decided to hit the road again. Joining the NCR was never her intent, but they roped her in with grand visions of the future and fancy dehydrated ration packs. So she left, but always made an effort to make it back for Christmas.
Before heading out, she donated some tissue to the lab that’d been cranking out vials. Talked him into giving some skin as well. For centuries folks had been wondering if ghouls are immortal, and he’s the only one who’s survived long enough to prove they are not. Under a microscope his tissue is only regenerating at about half the pace of Lucy’s. That didn’t come as a surprise. He can feel it, especially in the little things. Simple cuts now take minutes to heal instead of seconds. But beyond that, he can feel it deeper, on an animal level, like a lump of iron strapped around his soul.
Nobody can say how long he’s got left, or what death will even look like in his state. Closest approximation is something like lobsters. Eventually they get too big and tired to molt, and once they stop shedding, rot inside their shells on the ocean floor. He likes to think Lucy will pity kill him if it comes to that, but all in all, the news itself brought relief. There is an end to all this. A nebulous day when he will finally be allowed to rest. If only the process could have better matched his needs.
When Barb got sick, Lucy stuck around. Helped with chores, ran errands, and generally kept things running while he sat around as a useless heap, immobile under the weight of what was happening. Barb knew Lucy would be his second. If she had said so out loud he would have denied it, but it was obvious. So obvious Lucy even asked Barb if she would like her to leave, but she said no. He gets the sense the two of them had a lot of conversations in those later days that he was never privy to. Like parents strategizing how to handle a kid once the family dog passed.
All those years on the road with nothing to occupy his head, he obsessed on how he would protect Barb and Janey outside the safety of a vault. Where in America could the three of them possibly hide to eke out a safe, lonely life? He thought all about the weapons he would stash, the traps he would set. In the end all his planning was for nothing; he never dedicated a second to steeling himself against time.
Barb left him slowly, then in an instant. He went to the kitchen to make her some coffee, and when he returned, she was gone, so fast she probably didn’t realize it was happening. If she did, he hopes she wasn’t scared. That she didn’t reach out for him, or try calling his name. He dipped his thumb in the coffee and ran it over her lips, just in case she had enough sense left to know he was there. Lucy found them hours later. He wanted to hold her until the last of her warmth was gone.
Lucy stayed a while after, but the itch had long since returned. There was too much out there; too much to rebuild; too much of America left to see. And she asked if he would like to come with her. At first he gave a hard no because of Janey, but over the weeks he dwelt on it some more. Janey was just past thirty and had a wife of her own. She was busy, and happy, and while the two of them were still thick as thieves, it didn’t make much sense hanging around with nothing to do except wait for his kid to stop by for coffee. So he followed Lucy back into the wasteland, where they snipped and snapped like old times.
Had it not been Lucy, it would have been no one. His time with the girls had spoiled him, and loneliness came on harder than it used to. He put up a front at first. Resisted the inevitable because it just seemed too damn predictable. They slept in the same tent because it was practical; they shared dishes so there would be less to wash; they split cigarettes because that’s just economical. He figured by the time they kissed it would hardly feel romantic, but of course she’d never stand for that.
When he finally gave permission she came at him like a sandstorm, bits and pieces everywhere, wedging herself between his teeth. She coaxed him into things only young people are supposed to do. It caught him off guard how well they fit. Not just two widows settling out of convenience, but a pair of friends who had loved each other a long time, and now got the chance to love each other as something else. He hates to think she may have been waiting for him. Probably was, but she’d never admit to it.
The first time they slept together in the biblical sense, it was on a narrow cot in a shack on the perimeter of an NCR compound. The bed was so slim they probably would have wound up having sex anyway just by shifting wrong in the night. Afterwards, he ran his thumb along the ridges of her cheek, and in the flicker of the gas lamp, felt certain that she was the most beautiful woman in the world—a claim he could only make on a technicality since Barb had already left it.
Lucy kept the blue eye he procured for her years ago. After this long she easily could have replaced it with a better match, but she liked it; said it added a pop of color to her palette. It’s a marvel how she’s still got show-tune levels of sincerity shining in those eyes; the wasteland no match against her child-like whimsy. It’s like there’s a freshwater spring buried amongst her insides, forever keeping her veins sweet and light. She kept her promise to a T: On the outside, she wound up looking exactly like him, but beneath all that, kept her spirit clean.
So they had their adventures. He wrote telegrams, talked with Janey over the radio, and they came home, sometimes for years at a time. Lucy loved Janey not quite as a daughter and not quite as a sister, but a medium that reaped the benefits of both. Janey started referring to Lucy as her step-mom long before he ever called her his wife. Janey and hers never had kids. Never expressed an interest, which is just as well. Why introduce that hardship into an already hard life? And when Janey’s hair was more white than brown, they decided to put their wayfaring on hold.
Near the end he began to regret spending so much time away, but he knows that even if he’d stayed, it never would have been enough. He had more time with Janey than he ever could have hoped. With a father and grandfather both dead before fifty, he figured he would be lucky to get twenty good years with her, instead he got almost eighty. He knew her from beginning ‘til end, like a beautiful book read cover to cover.
She felt guilty for leaving, but her wife had already gone, and she was ready, even if he wasn’t. She was tired, and unlike him, she could just close her eyes and not wake up. He tried that, so, so many times. She fell asleep against him just like when she was a child, and right then, more than ever before, he wished he had died when the bombs first fell. Three hundred years of fatherhood, and he felt it all vanish in a sigh.
Barb he could make peace with. In every marriage you understand that one of you will have to leave first. But when you have your first child at forty-three, the idea of outliving them is so horrifying you don’t even allow yourself to ponder it. Had he known when he cradled her in that hospital room that he would be present for her first and last breath. The hope that sustained him for two centuries, only to one day fall asleep and wake in a world without her. He selfishly took her from that vault, restarted the timer, and felt the final ticks.
If Lucy were not in the picture he would have put a bullet in his head, and kept pulling the trigger until one of them finished the job. He resented her for it. That loving her forced him to continue living without his daughter. He resented her even as he clung to her night after night, sobbing against skin just like his own. “My baby is dead,” he cried. “My only baby.”
A year passed, and he cried less, but still felt no desire to leave. No desire to vacate the place where he, Barb, and Janey made a home for themselves. Then another year, and still, there was not a spark of wanderlust left in his heart. He kept expecting Lucy to leave. Not definitively, but he figured she must have been sick and tired of carrying his grief, and ready to resume her work in the wastes. But she stayed. Not only that, she thrived.
Unlike him, she’s always been good at keeping herself busy. When they first settled back in California thirteen years ago she started teaching. Long nights sat at their kitchen table grading spelling tests and math equations. Since Janey’s death she has kept that up, but now she’s helping out on city projects, coordinating library intakes, and seems to have her hands in just about everything. There’s not a soul in town or miles outside that doesn’t know her by name. Now she’s talking about running for mayor of all things. Regionally, he has been delegated to the role of ‘Lucy Howard’s husband,’ and that suits him fine.
He’s glad she’s found purpose, even if daily life ain’t as exciting as it used to be. He’s not sure how many more adventures he has left to give her. He’s walked every inch of the west ten times over, and now he’s exhausted at the thought of wandering more than ten miles beyond his front door. So he manages the orchard, minds the horses, and helps with shit around town when they need him. But truthfully, he’s bored out of his damn mind, and when he gets bored, he gets sentimental. Their last dog died a year before Janey, and he’s still not ready for another. He’s tired of outliving everything. Tired of being the last man standing.