Lily

A/N: I just don't know where all this shit comes from anymore. I stopped asking why, really.

The lights were all out, so he couldn't see her – actually, he almost walked on her. "Guh! Who the fuck is that and why are you on the goddamn floor?" he whispered, glancing nervously in the direction of Colin's door.

The sound of someone sniffling, that clogged, watery telltale noise of crying. "I'm sorry, Gob." the red-head murmured. "It's Lily."

"What are you crying for, girl?" If Colin caught them, they were toast. He reached for a cloth on the bar and guestimated the location of her cheeks. His hand brushed something warm and soft before he pulled away. He held back a groan. Well, shit. It was a long time since he'd touched one of those. "And why the hell are you in the back of bar naked?"

She hiccupped out a few more tears. "I had to ask Colin about where to find my dad…"

"Yeah…" Just when he though his opinion of Colin couldn't get any lower, it started to sink again.

"He said it was gonna cost me." she mumbled, taking the bar towel he handed her to cover herself as Gob lit the little lanterns.

"Oh, Jesus Christ." Fuck, he should've just told her, beating or no. Fuck Colin Moriarty.

"He asked if I was a virgin." she said, blushing now that Gob had a full view of all the goods Moriarty had carelessly sampled less than hour ago. "I told him I was and he said that was what I was going to pay him with. Amata said it's not so bad and it was just a little thing…"

Yeah, he thought, innocence is just a little thing. And one tiny piece of information had cost her the only true thing that separated her from any other Wasteland woman. He'd always liked Lily and he couldn't help what came out of his mouth, even though he wished he could take it back as soon as he said it. "Did he, ah, make it good?"

She shook her head as more tears came and buried her face in her hands. "I took a double dose of jet and I still couldn't make it through that without crying. God, Gob, that's the single most awful thing that's ever happened to me – including being chased out of the Vault!"

Gob wanted to grab the rusted knife under the counter and hack at Moriarty's neck until his head fell off. To be honest, he'd always had a crush on Lily, almost ever since she walked into the bar. She'd been coming the past few nights, too, trying to coax Colin into telling her where James went. "C'mon." he said gruffly, grabbed the tattered sheet off his own bed and wrapping it around her. "You need to see Doc Church."

There was a trickle of blood dripping down her pale thighs and he couldn't stand to see it anymore.

He had to leave her with Doc Church, as much as he hated to, so he could clean the blood off the floor. One day, he was going to put a bullet through Colin Moriarty's skull. And hell if he wouldn't enjoy that. Hand the keys to the fucking bar to Nova and let her have the whole piss-stinking filthy shack. At least she wouldn't have to fuck her customers anymore – not unless she wanted to. Gob growled under his breath and scrubbed at the droplets harder. "Fuck Moriarty."

To be honest, she'd always had a bit of a crush on Gob. She didn't know why – it made her wonder if maybe she wasn't a little messed up in the head at first. The man looked like Death. Literally. On the other hand, he was sweeter than sugar.

She already experienced the oh-so-tender-touch of a man with looks. Colin might actually be good looking – if he weren't a dickhead. She would be tickled pink if she never had to see the man again.

In fact, in her experience, ghouls were often much nicer than humans anyway. Even Ahzrukhal was nicer than Moriarty – and Ahzrukhal didn't have to work at the dark, seedy attitude like Moriarty.

Still, it felt wrong at first to find herself drawn to Gob. Like her instincts were misfiring or damaged. After much more world experience, she realized that never happened. In the Wastes, she had to depend on those same instincts for survival. Since she was still alive, then clearly was nothing wrong with them.

When Moriarty took her to bed, that was the first and only time she ever ignored them. Every thread of her soul told her that it was a bad idea. That Moriarty was a creep and a cheat. But she missed her father and she deliberately allowed those emotions of desperation and loneliness to cloud her good judgment.

So what if she was allowing her own hesitation and fear of rejection to close of her instincts concerning sweet, harmless Gob?

And in the back of her mind, Lily knew that Gob being a ghoul wasn't what made her shy away. It was that he had seen her in the worst moment of her entire life, her lowest point.

Ah, no, she reminded herself. Gob seeing her at her lowest point would be if he'd walked in on Moriarty with his dick inside her – an unimpressive prick, at that, but one that he used with enough force for her to need six stitches later.

For a long time, she didn't have the courage to go back, but she thought that time had allowed her to grow up a little.

Twelve months. Almost twelve months.

Lily hadn't come back to the saloon in nearly an entire year.

Every time the thought entered his mind, he wanted to go out back and plant his foot in Moriarty's ass.

She did talk to him though, in an offhand, unorthodox way. Throughout the year, messengers would come up to the saloon with letter for him – most of them written on the back of food boxes, like sugar bombs and fancy lady snack cakes. She would tell him how she was doing, where she was going next, and what she had already done. GNR made news announcements about her, of course, but it wasn't the same as a real letter from her.

After disarming the bomb in Megaton in July, Lily went to Galaxy News Radio and helped Three Dog fix the signal so he would tell her where her father had gone. She suffered from a broken collarbone given to her by a Super Mutant in the Mall and had to retreat to the Underworld for a week. There, she sweet talked Ahzrukhal into giving her Charon's contract for a thousand caps.

He grew close to her from those letters. He answered them, too. Acknowledged her fears and tried to soothe her worries when he could.

In September, she found her father, but James was tragically killed only a few weeks later. She was determined to finish the project he started, though. The mission took her to a town inhabited entirely by children in mid October, where she found an alternative entrance into Vault 87, looking for something called a 'G.E.C.K.'

The things inside that place… Lily wrote. They are more horrible than anything anyone could imagine. I know that you and most other ghouls feel that what have become is the worst possible fate for you, but…the things inside that place still make me wake up screaming at night. To think that a human could do that to another human being…If hell were a place, it would be inside that Vault – inside all Vaults. I try to forget what I've seen, but sometimes it's so hard…

She eventually finished Project Purity's mission with Fawkes and Charon's help in early winter.

The rest of the winter was mostly spent wandering around, helping Moira write this survival guidebook for the Wastes. Sometimes the work was interesting. Mostly it was just dangerous – and, at times, suicidal. They got it finished by late March, though, and Lily went back to aimless wandering. She went up to Big Town and rescued a pair of inhabitants from Super Mutants. In the Underworld, she found a merc leader names Reilly whose men had to be saved from the top of the Statesmen Hotel. After that, she headed up to Paradise Falls where she, according to Three Dog, set the slaves in their pens free and burned the whole town to ashes, which wrapped up May.

June had come and now she was back in Megaton. Her last message was from a courier three days ago telling him that she would see him before the week was out. Expect a visit from me, my dear friend.

Christ, he loved that girl.

He could admit it, in the dark bar at four in the morning, in his own bed.

He could admit that he wasn't just angry with Moriarty for misusing and basically raping Lily. He was insanely jealous because Colin had gotten to do what he wanted to – and hadn't even done it well. And for a long time, he thought that Moriarty's stupidity would keep him from ever seeing Lily again. Now it seemed like she'd found the courage to face this place again. He could hardly wait for her return.

It was a slow day, occasionally filled with Nova's chatter or Moriarty's grumbling. A lazy, boring sort of day that made him hate this bar, this bar's owner, this town, and this whole damn Wasteland.

And then…

…and then, she walked into the saloon, all red-gold hair and blue eyes and long legs. She had really nice tits, too (he accidentally fondled them, so he knew exactly how nice they were) but strangely enough, it was her legs he found himself fantasizing about most. Sliding his hand between those soft thighs, having her muscled golden calves wrapped around his waist.

He smiled at her widely, drinking in the sight of her.

She walked – no, no – strutted up to the bar, pushed Jericho out of his chair, and plopped herself on the stool directly in front of him. Her smile was a bleeding summer sunset, slow dripping honey, snow melting on the tongue, lace and velvet on naked skin. All those wicked and sensually innocent things that meant nothing. On Lily though, with her sapphire eyes glittering just that way, it implied everything.

If he still had skin on his cheeks, they would be burning, and her mouth curved upward as if she knew exactly what he was thinking now –exactly what he'd been thinking about those long, long legs at night.

"Hi, stranger." she said in a husky voice, eyelids lowering over her smoky baby blues. She flicked a smiled in Nova's direction, tossed her a leather pouch that jingled, and in that same sex-on-the-brain voice, she said "I'm going to borrow your bartender for an hour or two. He's not going to be back anytime soon. Send Moriarty my, ah, apologies."

"Lily-" he muttered as she kissed him right outside the door.

The smoldering in her eyes built itself into a blaze as hot as her hair. "We'll talk…well, after I'm done…"

He blinked. "Done?"

That devastating smile again that melted his insides. She led his hand down soft curves and underneath dark leather and he couldn't believe she was doing this in public – couldn't believe she was doing this with him. "Yeah." She grinned. "Not till I'm done."