Pieces of Oneself
Morning came a bit too early for Lucy’s taste, she felt warm and cozy and had no desire to get up. Her mind was hazy, but after a minute she came to understand why she felt so warm and cozy. Cooper wasn’t lying when he said cuddling as somehow, all three of them were cuddled up together. Sev had an arm and leg over Lucy, Cooper had pushed himself against Sev, his arm draped over Sev and partially on Lucy. Lucy herself was turned around and tucked against Sev’s chest. She felt herself fluster, moving slightly. This slight movement was enough to wake up Sev, who’s movement also woke up Cooper.
“Now ain’t we snug,” Cooper said, looking at the two women who were intertwined with each other.
“Oh hush Coop, you’re gonna embarrass her,” Sev spoke, gently rubbing the very much already embarrassed Lucy’s hair.
“Too late,” Lucy muttered. Her ears felt like they were on fire. She didn’t really get why she was so nervous. Sure, two women could have sex in the vault, but marriage was strictly between couples who could reproduce, so why was she so flustered around someone of her own gender and not just in a sexual way?
They all untangled quickly, each of them stretching in some way before moving on with the day, each silently deciding to wait a bit to start planning. Each of them moved through their morning routines on their own, no words being shared beyond a greeting.
~~~~~
As the afternoon rolled around, they all gathered to start planning how to safely get into the Strip. “Look, I know someone who can help, but you can’t shoot him on sight,” Sev spoke slightly worriedly “and Dogmeat has to stay up here”.
Lucy wondered why Sev would be worried about either her or Cooper shooting her friend, well she understood why she would warn Cooper, but Lucy didn’t give off killer energy right? I mean, she had killed before, but she didn’t think that she seemed like someone who jumps to violence immediately. Also maybe this person was scared of dogs considering how Sev didn’t want Dogmeat there.
“As long as he doesn’t shoot first honey,” Cooper spoke, patting the top of Dogmeat’s head.
Sev nodded, walking away from the group while asking them to follow. As Sev walked down the basement steps, Lucy and Cooper’s thoughts were surprisingly similar, ‘god she’s got hips’.
The basement was oddly not dark, Lucy had noticed the multiple large solar panels outside, now Lucy could see why. At least a dozen terminals were on, but not active. All of them had multiple logs, but none of them were open. The terminals had wires connecting them to a big screen sitting on a desk displaying a smiling face. The smile rivaled Lucy’s, and she couldn’t tell if it bothered or not.
“What the hell?” Cooper voiced and Lucy couldn’t help but agree. Lucy had seen a lot of tech, but nothing this extensive.
“Meet Yes Man, the brain behind Six’s original Vegas takeover,” Sev explained, walking closer to the large screen.
“Well hi Miss Seven! How can I help,” Yes Man spoke enthusiastically. While he was programmed to do whatever was asked of him, he did prefer working with Six and Seven over Benny. Benny didn’t ever listen to his advice the way Yes Man said to, namely to put a bullet between Six’s eyes rather than the side of his head.
“Hey Yes, look we want to get back into the Lucky 38 and reclaim New Vegas. Do you still have access to House’s dialog scripts?” Sev asked, leaning on the desk.
“I can pull up the recent transcripts, check terminal 4a,” Yes Man responded.
Sev rushed over to that terminal, “what’s your dad’s name?” Sev questioned.
“Hank”
“Henry”
Cooper and Lucy looked at each other before Sev just checked both. Hank pulled up some interesting dialog. “Looks like one Hank MacLean was let in the Lucky 38 two weeks ago. That your guy?” Sev asked, looking back at the two behind her that were both way too distracted looking at each other.
“That’d be him,” Cooper answered, leaning a bit closer to the terminal.
“Looks like New Vegas is set to capture or kill you Lucy, at your dads request,” Sev said, looking at Lucy with a bit of pity. She got lucky with Six taking her in, the fate of young orphaned girls in the Mojave was not a good one.
“No, that can’t be right,” Lucy muttered, slotting her head between Sev and Cooper’s head. Lucy knew by now that her dad wasn’t a great guy and that he had killed her mom, but she didn’t think that he’d kill her too. She felt her eyes water, during this trip she knew that Cooper was going to kill her dad, she had accepted that. Yet she didn’t imagine that her dad’s love and care was so conditional.
Cooper noticed her distress, placing a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t like women crying, at least when he wasn’t the cause of it. Lucy reached up, grabbing his hands, just desperate for any type of comfort.
Sev moved away from the terminal, going over to speak to Yes Man and giving Lucy a minute to look through the dialog transcripts herself. “So we can’t go safely to the Strip, now I have an idea and I wanna know what you think,” Sev spoke to Yes Man.
“Well that’s not normally my job, but I can’t say no,” Yes Man responded.
“We get a lot of the locals on our side, we make them stop going to New Vegas and to just gamble in Primm, then send a courier with a letter about our terms to meet,” Sev explained.
“Oh boy! How do you plan to get people on your side?” Yes Man asked, her plan being more similar to his than he expected.
“Well Six did a bunch of tasks for them, I figured we can do that,” Sev explained, a little less sure of herself.
“Hmmm, you can do that, but I predict that it would take a year to get enough on your side to be noticeable.” Yes Man excitedly responded.
“We don’t have a year, any suggestions?” Sev spoke, racking her head for any ideas.
“Boy do I! Caps could make even the most rigid House supporters sway a bit, so I bet a bunch of Caps would make that process go much quicker!” Yes Man answered, proud of his idea.
Sev took a second to think about how to get a lot of caps. Her first was chems, but if she started slinging chems most towns would not be happy with her. Then it hit her, “Sarsaparilla, we make Sunset Sarsaparilla.”
Cooper looked at her confused, pausing his trying to calm down Lucy, “honey, you can’t really make prewar food now.”
Sev smiled a bit, “I got the recipe, and 40 of the 50 needed star bottle caps. But let's not talk about that right now, we got a bit of time to get our bearings.”
Lucy was thankful for that, maybe taking a break would let her calm down. Since she left the vault, she felt like a soda bottle being shaken up a whole bunch, and now she felt like she was gonna explode.
“Lucy, I got a hair brush upstairs if you want to use it,” Sev offered, knowing that sometimes the repetitive action can calm someone down.
“I would like that, where is it?” Lucy asked, just wanting something a bit distracting. Her hair was also knotted from travelling and could use a good brushing.
Sev led Lucy back to her bedroom, Cooper following behind while Dogmeat happily walked next to him after having to be left upstairs. Lucy sat on the bed while Sev passed her the brush.
Cooper propped himself up on the wall, looking at her. The ghoul wasn’t known for his empathy, in fact he was known for the opposite by most, but he couldn’t help but feel bad for the women he had been travelling with. He knew what it was like to be blindsided by a loved one, he knew it stung like a bitch.
Lucy shakily took the brush and pulled it through her hair. Her breath became more and more labored as she fought back tears. Her whole life had crumbled and blown up around her in such a short time. She could bring herself to brush her hair anymore, so the brush laid next to her abandoned as the tears finally rolled down her face.
Cooper was honestly impressed, he expected the vaultie to have broken down much earlier than she did after learning what she did, when he learned about Barb was actually working for, he felt like a mess. His wife's betrayal led to his ghoulification, his alcoholism, and the quest he was now on to find any hint on where Janey is.
Sev moved to Lucy, taking her brush back, scooting behind Lucy and picking up where she left off. When Sev lost Six, she was mainly isolated, sure some of Six’s friends stopped by, but none that were there when she was picking up the pieces of herself.
If Sev could stop one more person from crying alone like she did, she would do what it took to make sure that didn’t happen.
“Was your dad a good person?” Lucy questioned as she had calmed down a bit.
“Well that depends, do you mean Six, or do you mean my birth parents?” Sev spoke, still brushing Lucy’s hair as it was rare to see such nice hair in person.
“Six ain’t your daddy? Ya look just like ‘im” Cooper cut in, not knowing that.
Sev kept a small smile on her face, “my birth parents were fiends, they weren’t good people, they died when I was 11, but I didn’t mourn much. Six found me when I was 12 and took me in, gave me a new name, and taught me some nice behaviors. Six was good to his core, and that’s what killed him,” Sev calmly explained.
“How did being good get him killed?” Lucy questioned, less focused on her own crying now.
Sev decided to humor her, seeing as it was calming Lucy down and that Cooper seemed vaguely interested, “He was too much of a pacifist, sure he would kill, but he was a bit of a bleeding heart. He decided to spare House, and House didn’t show the same mercy. Listen Lucy, you can be the best person in the world, but someone will always be willing to kill you for something big or small.”
Dogmeat wandered over to Lucy, plopping her head on Lucy’s lap as Lucy ran her hand over her head. “This place is so different from the vault, I don’t know if I like it,” Lucy muttered.
“But yur free,” Cooper said, his own hatred of Vault-Tec swaying his opinion.
“Everything in the vault was decided for you; where you worked, where you slept, when you ate, and who you married. Out here, everything is in my hands,” Lucy responded. It was a huge change for her, it was all so new and so frightening and enthralling all in one.
“It’s a big change, but it’s worth it. Now you get to choose how you want to live. It’s scary and it’s not easy, but it’s a chance. And hey, if you really hate it, then you likely could get back in your vault as long as you didn’t burn them,” Sev explained a lot more elegantly than Cooper did. Sev, like her adopted father, had a way with words. Cooper was sure she could talk the robes off a nun if she wanted to. It was scarily impressive, and Cooper hoped that some of those more wasteland sweet talking skills would rub off on Lucy to erase some of those Vault-Tec conflict management tactics.
“I have to go back, I have to see Norm, maybe get him to leave the vault. My brother, my friends are all living a lie that they don’t even know. I’d be like Vault-Tec if I didn’t at least tell them,” Lucy concluded, while her morality had been shaken some, it didn’t erase all of them.
“You’ll get used to the wastes vaultie, just gonna take a bit,” Cooper chimed back in after listening in for a while.
Lucy fell quiet, before asking if she could just go to sleep early. Sev and Cooper agreed, taking Dogmeat out of the room to go outside so Lucy could get good sleep.
~~~~~
The evening had rolled around, Lucy was still sleeping, a bit worrying but not a real concern yet. The girl needed to rest, travelling the desert when you haven’t before is hard and she was under a lot of stress. This left Cooper and Sev alone, eating a small meal.
“Did you find anything new about Janey?” Sev questioned, knowing better than to bring up a private topic around Lucy.
The ghoul let out a breath, not one to typically talk about his family. The only reason Sev knew was because he had asked Six while she was nearby. “Got a potential lead in Henry, gotta make him talk before I give ‘im his daily dose of lead,” Cooper spoke, covering up his own hurt with anger.
“Well, if you need someone to knock some heads together, I’m there if you want,” Sev spoke carefully, knowing about Cooper’s anger.
Cooper pushed air out of his nasal cavity. Since travelling with Lucy, he had been quietly working on managing his anger, knowing that if he was nicer to her she’d be a hell of a lot more likely to not step in when he got his hands on Henry. “Thanks honey, I’ll keep that in mind,” Cooper finally responded.
Sev smiled at the man who had changed a decent amount since she had last seen him. She leaned over, kissing his cheek, before heading to the bedroom to sleep.
Cooper followed soon after, needing to use one of his vials before doing so.