Chapter Text
MacCready - Post-War Wastelands - December 16, 2283
There’s one thing every low-life scoundrel of the Wastelands can agree on. Nothing stinks quite like the irradiated blood of feral ghouls.
A young man scrunches his nose in disgust as he observes the gooey blood on his forearms. He tries smearing it onto the ends of his tan coat, but the congealed mess clings to his arms. Feral blood dries slower than a smooth-skin human’s too. He hadn’t dropped any ferals since the small pack at the entrance of the subway a few hours ago, but the gooey blood was still wet and stinking.
Accepting that he’d be covered in the nasty stuff until they get back to the surface, the young man lets his bloody arms hang loosely at his sides and he continues walking through the long-abandoned subway. He absently kicks some rusted cans from his path, sending an an echo against the rounded walls of the subway. The woman behind him to jumps at the noise and the infant boy in her arms begins a harsh cry. The woman whines, irritated, and stomps toward the young man, practically shoving the baby into his feral-blood-gummed arms.
The young father says nothing in response and cradles the infant against his chest with one arm, slipping the straps of his pack and rifle off the opposite shoulder to rest them on the ground. He kneels as he does so, talking quietly to console the infant––but it’s no use. The baby is hungry and exhausted and the young father is even more so.
The woman slumps against the dirty subway wall; she looks like a child on the verge of a tantrum. She rubs her sore eyes with sweaty, shaky palms.
The couple appears aged by malnourishment and abuse, but certain features reveal their true youth. The fair-haired young man has a boyish––yet gaunt––face, lightly dusted with freckles, and a wispy shadow of pubescent facial hair shadows his developing jawline. The young woman’s face is round with a youthful fullness that the Wastelands leaches from the face of any adults over twenty. These two are only about seventeen or eighteen.
The baby is less than two, probably just now eating solid food. Children grow up fast in the Wastelands––they have no choice.
Despite the hunger and exhaustion shared between them, the young father finally manages to calm the infant’s crying spell. As he stands, turning slowly in circles, rocking the baby, the the young father feels a cool breeze drift across his face. It has been a cold night throughout the subway, but he hadn’t felt fresh wind move through until now.
He squints and notices moonlight glowing through the top of a staircase at the end of the tunnel.
The young father speaks to the woman without facing her, “We’re near the exit. I guess I cleared all the ferals out, so we can rest here tonight.”
The woman lets her hands fall from the ritualistic rubbing of her eyes, but she makes no other response.
She is angry with him and he knows that he deserves it. He’s trying his damn best to keep them safe, but he still deserves it. He shrugs, feeling nothing in response to her silent treatment He has been angry with her for months; it was about time he’d done something stupid to even the playing field. A gnarly lie may have been a little uncalled for, but…she’s always known he is a dishonest asshole anyway.
Her irritation doesn't bother him. There isn’t much that can bother him since leaving Little Lamplight––the only place that made any sort of since out here. Nothing makes sense anymore, the young man thinks, You just roll with the punches.
Still rocking the baby, the young father observes the remnants of a campfire and a mattress on the dirty subway floor. Judging by the rust on the cans and the puff of dust from the tattered mattress when he nudges it with his foot, this little camp has been long deserted.
A wave of hunger pains makes the young father’s eyes well up and his sore arms throb with the baby’s limp wight. Exhaustion inhibits everyone differently in the Wastelands. In the young father’s case, exhaustion ebbs every emotion but anger and disappointment. Needless to say, he’s really not a comforting pillar for the distraught. These days, the baby is the only thing keeping him from singing a whisky lullaby and kissing this broken world goodbye.
He examines some cold ash in a half-assed fire pit a few feet from the mattress. It’d been cold underground all day, but the temperature drop tells him that it’s going to be an even colder night. Plus, if there are any more feral squatters hiding in the subway, a fire might deter them. He pokes at old char in the pit; it is cold and has hardened over time; it won’t burn well. He has to find something for tinder.
The young father walks over to the woman slumped against the wall and gently places the infant in her lap.
He checks his pocket for matches.
Luck.
Still a full box.
He uses one to light a cigarette, and takes a quick draw, unsatisfied.
“There’s an old mattress…” he says flatly, gesturing to the tattered dusty lump on the ground, “you and Duncan can sleep there. I’m going to find something to get a fire going.”
The woman fiddles with the babe’s swaddling, attempting to hide the involuntary shakes in her hands. The young father notices them anyway.
As usual, she seems on the verge of tears.
Again. The young man thought. She’s going to cry at me again.
The Wasteland breaks everyone in their own due time. Her number just came up early. She and the young man had packed up and left the safety of Little Lamplight at sixteen. The Wasteland has been snapping at their heels ever sense. It wasn’t long after the brith of Duncan that the Wasteland finally got to her––broke her…The young man thinks back, struggling to pinpoint exactly what did her in, but hunger and exhaustion hazes his memory.
When she speaks, her voice is tight, “We have been walking for three days, Rob. Do you even know where the Commonwealth starts?” she whines.
He sighs, “The Wasteland is huge, Lucy. I know that the Commonwealth is north and that we’ve been heading north. We’ll get there eventually.”
Robert watches tears develop over the redness in her eyes. He is shamefully unmoved by her pain.
Lucy’s tears gain enough mass to begin rolling down her cheeks. Robert knows what is coming. He is too hungry and too tired to handle another crying spell from both the woman and the baby, so he unzips his pack and retrieves a mostly-empty bottle labeled MED-X.
Lucy gawks at the bottle with greedy eyes.
“There’re only three hits left––four if you ration it––we won’t have enough to hold you over for the whole trip…but your shakes are getting worse,” he speaks with a clinical tone, digging through his bag for a syringe. He hates feeding her sick habit, but with no Addictol, no Caps, and no stamina to fight the withdrawals…Robert draws a dose through a dirty needle and Lucy rolls up her torn sleeve.
Robert winces as she reveals the track marks on her arm.
“Damn, Luce, you know I fucking hate this habit, right?” he complains as he takes the baby and hands her the dosed syringe.
She closes her eyes and releases a heavy sigh when the Med-X hits a vein. Robert can feel the memory of the woman he once loved fade with every fix.
After a moment, Lucy opens her eyes slowly and looks at Robert. Her eyes are big, brown, and still wet from tears that haven’t dried since they left the Capitol Wasteland three days ago. Even after the drug-fix, Robert can see the anger behind her big brown eyes. He still knows that he deserves it. Even though he’s trying his damn best. He knows.
But Robert doesn’t know which angry Lucy he likes better: the one shaking weakly from withdrawals or the one high and numb as a kite on Med-X.
Lucy stares absently into Robert’s blue eyes, which stare back.
She blinks slowly and takes a shaky breath.
Here it comes, thinks Robert, reminding himself that he is trying his damn best, but he still deserves it.
When Lucy finally speaks, her tone is drug-slurred-poison; “Well, sorry to disappoint you, Prince Charming. I didn’t realize an honest junkie like myself was so far beneath a heartless, greedy, lying Mercenary.” Her eyes haven’t even started drying from earlier, yet they are flooding again with salty tears. She is starting to feel the sedation effects of Med-X by the time she slobbers out another string of angry banter, “How could you lie to us? I am your wife, asshole. Duncan is our baby. You think this––being a sad, dependent junkie––was my choice? I didn’t choose this, Rob––I chose you…you were my hero––you were going to keep us safe from all this––“ Lucy flails her hands to emphasize the filth around them, “I trusted you once.
But you’re not him anymore.”
She spits the last part at him; he tries to absorb her words––to let them hurt, but she isn’t that same anymore either. He feels nothing for this broken, slobbering woman on the floor of a Wasteland subway. Her words do not hurt him and they cannot add fullness to his empty stomach.
Lucy cries loudly now, her words are forced, sloppy, and fractured.
“We were supposed to b-be…heroes. You–you promised we would h-help people. Why did you lie––when did you break?”
Robert doesn’t know what to say.
I don’t know when… he thinks, but I do know, I deserve it, Lucy.
He feels silent tears roll from his own eyes. But he isn’t sad.
He cries because she is right and he is angry, and because he, Lucy, and every other godforsaken soul in the Wasteland deserves it. He stares blankly at his slobbering wife.
I deserve it, Lucy…and you deserve it…we broke.
Robert feels…so tired.
He hears himself speak involuntarily, his voice nothing more than a crackling squeak, “When did the world break…?”
Lucy’s cries soften as the Med-X eases her into sedation. She falls asleep against the subway wall.
Robert never builds that fire.
He collapses on the old tattered mattress with Duncan in his feral-blood caked arms and sleeps harder than he ever will again.