The first time Amelia met Hancock, she was careening through the doors to Goodneighbor, screaming something about 'big green men' and 'fuckin' nukes!'. Her dark hair was in two wild tangles that could barely qualify as braids anymore, and her face was so impossibly pale. Most of the people who were standing around in the square didn't even think to help her, they seemed so in awe of the sight of her there, heaving her small, battered body through the doors and bleeding all over the place. They had heard her coming before she even came through, and Hancock had come out to see what was going on, grumbling something about being 'interrupted', Fahrenheit smirking at his heel, gun drawn.
As soon as Amelia saw him, she seemed to think him some sort of twisted savior, her eyes wide and swimming with tears at the sight of him. She had fallen forward, landed almost as if to grovel at his feet, and then puked directly onto his boots.
"OhmyGodI'msosorry," she said breathlessly, turning her face up to stare at him. He was far too taken aback by her skin, nearly glowing in the sun it was so bright and pure, to even notice the bile on his shoes. She had freckles all over her face and the darkest eyes on someone who wasn't a ghoul that he'd ever seen. And behind all the fear and shock, she looked… sorrowful. He didn't quite know what he was looking at, and it took him a long while to come to. Fahrenheit nudged him with her shoulder and he started, stepped back from the girl.
"Uh," he began, his voice wavering. He was still feeling hazy from a hit of Jet taken not 15 seconds earlier and mused for a moment that this whole thing might even be a hallucination. "It's fine." His usual assuredness had returned a little, and he bent to hold his hand out to her. She stared at it uncertainly before reaching to take it, so gently it was startling. No one in this world was so soft, even other smoothskins. It was like she had fallen from the sky, straight from another world.
He lifted her gingerly to standing and placed a hand against her back to steady her. She was wearing filthy leathers and some pilfered shoulder pads and it just looked… off. He thought to himself that she'd look more normal in a vault suit.
Still looking dazed, she turned to meet his eye. Some color had begun to return to her cheeks. "Sorry," she rasped, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. She grinned. "Got absolutely wrecked by some weird… big… things, over there. Mutants? Or something." She gestured vaguely to the entrance, her expression twisting into disgust. She then lifted her arm in example: it was bleeding so heavily through a huge gash in her leathers that he couldn't see a wound. Fahrenheit stirred from behind him and sidled forward, peering down at the smoothskin's arm, suddenly interested.
"Yikes," she murmured, a gloved hand fluttering near Amelia's arm. "We need to get you into the State House." She glanced up to Hancock briefly, as if she needed the approval, but he waved her off absently.
"Of course," he said. His hand fell away from the girl. "Go… go get Amari, I'll get the girl up there, get some drugs in her." He grinned despite himself.
"Careful not to put your hands anywhere they shouldn't be," Fahrenheit muttered gruffly before darting away. He frowned after her, at the tinkling laugh that she had left behind. Troublemaker.
"Um," the girl said from beside him, and he turned to look at her. She stood there, smiling sheepishly, and nodded toward the State House. "I can walk. Is that… the place?" Hancock felt very stupid for keeping her out here so long.
"Yeah," he said. He cleared his throat. "Sorry about this strange introduction to our little hamlet." She began slowly across the square, her eyes twitching every step or so from pain. The curious crowds were beginning to disperse, except for Daisy, who stood watching from her shop, arms crossed. He looked down to the girl's legs and saw that, beneath the rolled-up cuffs of her pants, they were pretty bruised up too. He hurried to catch up to her, his hand gravitating toward her back again. "You can walk, my ass."
The girl smiled, looking at him sideways. Her eyes narrowed, the color catching in the sunlight just enough to make Hancock hesitate. They looked like pools of cold Nuka-Cola and he thought, wildly, that he wanted to drink them up. "I'm tough," she said. She pushed open the door with her shoulder and shuffled inside, Hancock reaching to hold it open the rest of the way for her. "Wow," she murmured as soon as they came in, head slowly tilting to follow the spiral staircase upward. "Fancy place for a fancy dude, huh?" She was looking at him again, but Hancock was trying to get her to safety and it was far too distracting to try to pay attention to her.
"Sure is," he said, his tone almost boastful enough to make up for his careless bumbling in the square earlier. He nudged her toward the staircase and up she went, pretty quick. He was impressed. Her hand trailed along the railing as she went, fingers just barely touching the polished mahogany. It was like watching a princess ascend delicately into heaven.
Once they made it up, her awe seemed to double. She looked around, eyes bouncing from room to room. He watched her amusedly. "Room's through there," he said, pointing toward his space. The bed was right in the center and, lavish and huge and decorated as it was, he felt almost embarrassed for her to see it, even to have to lie in it. It seemed… perverse. But he guided her over anyway and she, with a groan, willingly flopped backward onto it, holding her arm aloft so as to not stain the sheets. Thoughtful.
"You okay with Med-X? Jet?" he asked, settling in a chair beside her and reaching to pull open the drawer to his nightstand. He was sifting around inside, looking for the proper drugs in all of the other drugs, when she sat up, fast. He shifted his gaze to look at her.
"Jet? That shit used to be sort of illegal," she said. Then, she laughed. It was so light, but it had an almost manic edge to it. "Not that it stopped me back in the day." She met his eye again, boldly, and grinned.
"Back…?" His jaw went slack. Suddenly, it made sense, the way she looked. Like she had stepped right out of a billboard ad from 200 years ago. No fuckin' way. "You can't be pre-war?" He searched her shining eyes, hand submerged and forgotten in the contents of the nightstand drawer.
"I guess that's what you'd call it," she said, leaning back onto her uninjured arm. Her small frame eased effortlessly backward, her movements languid and careful. No wonder she'd survived long enough out of a vault to get here; everything she did, even something so trivial as laying back on the bed, seemed calculated, measured. "Anyway, hit me with it, my whole body is killing me right now." She fell back onto the bed again, sprawled out, and shut her eyes. "I would love to be high right now. Would've helped me loads in that fight." She scoffed.
Hancock sat perplexed for a very long minute until his eyes caught onto her bloody arm again, and then he was digging back through his stash and unearthing an inhaler and some Med-X. He scooted over to her in his chair and tapped her knee with one finger. She stirred and sat up. The smile was gone, replaced with teeth bared in pain. "Shot me a couple times with a… shotgun, I think," she said distantly, reaching to take the Jet from his outstretched hand. "It was close, way too close." She brought it to her lips and took three practiced, quick huffs, then set it down on the bed beside her. Hancock blinked, Med-X limp in one hand. She tilted her head, tired eyes meeting his. "What's your name, Mr. Revolutionary?"
He leaned forward, reaching for her good arm, and she stretched out to give it to him. He found her veins immediately, popping blue and lush through her nearly translucent inner elbow. He resisted the urge to say 'wow' aloud. "Hancock," he said instead. "I'm the Mayor here." It was an introduction devoid of its usual theatrics, but he didn't mind it. He pushed the needle in and she hissed, turning her head away. He looked up, eyes concerned, but she shook her head.
"Just… a little scared of needles," she breathed. She released a big sigh and turned back to look at him. "Hancock, though?" Her eyes flashed. "So, you're a patriot, huh?" She gave him a lopsided smile, tossed one of her loose braids over her shoulder as if she had a habit of doing so.
"Could say that," he said, leaning back in his chair. He kicked his boots off and nudged them away from the bed. She followed their trajectory and, when he looked back toward her, she was laughing softly behind her hand. "What?"
"Just funny, that I retched all over your shoes soon as I got here," she said, her voice tinged with embarrassed amusement. "I did that on my first day of high school, too, but then, I hadn't been shot or beaten half to death. Sometimes my nerves would just get to me."
Hancock arched an eyebrow at her. "High school?"
She nodded, her long braids bobbing with the motion. "Yeah, like… I don't know, it's school. Went there to learn stuff, like math. You guys don't have that here huh?" She wrinkled up her nose and looked over his shoulder to stare out the window. "I've been out of that cryo-whatever for a month, you'd think it's been two days with the way I'm acting all shell-shocked." She sighed, eyes falling to her lap. Before he could question what the hell she meant by 'cryo-whatever', she said, "I should tell you my name—it's Amelia."
He was about to open his mouth, say some bullshit line like 'beautiful name for a beautiful girl', when Amari and Fahrenheit came bounding up the stairs, Fahrenheit leading the way with a box of stimpaks in her arms and a panicked expression on her usually impassive face. Hancock furrowed his brow at her and reluctantly pushed his chair away from the bed to let them in closer.
"You are beaten to shit!" Fahrenheit exclaimed immediately, squatting down to get a bewildered look at Amelia's exposed calves. "You can't have gotten all of this today, kid." Hancock watched curiously as Amelia flushed and looked away over Fahrenheit's shoulder, toward him. He felt for a moment as if they were sharing a secret, but then she turned away again.
"Fine, I'm scared of doctors, alright? Haven't seen one since…" she paused, eyes darting around, away from anyone's face. "…in a while."
Amari tutted from next to Fahrenheit, brandishing a Super Stimpak that had even Hancock staring with his mouth agape. "You're gonna use one of them things on her?" he exclaimed, standing from his chair. "How the fuck you even get your hands on that? Think you can fetch some Daytripper for me, while you're at it?" He, despite himself, glanced over to Amelia, and saw that she looked utterly mortified, her eyes focused on the Stimpak and its attached leather belt.
Amari heaved a sigh and fixed him with a look of pure exasperation and disdain. "Look, John, I'd rather not be here all day."
He held his hands up, mouth tightening into a humorless grimace. "Sorry, sister, carry on. Won't bother ya' anymore."
Amari, to Amelia's visible relief, set the Super Stimpak down on the bed and kneeled to examine her arm with gloved hands instead. She tilted her head, wiping away some of the congealed blood, then leaned away. "Brought it just in case, considering Fahrenheit here came in screaming about a girl beaten half to death, but it's through-and-through. Nothing broken, either," she mumbled, reaching into her lab coat and extracting a normal Stimpak. She uncapped it and, before Amelia could protest, plunged it directly into her arm.
Hancock had never seen anyone react so violently to a simple Stimpak before. Amelia shrieked so loudly a raven that had been sitting out on the window sill flew away screaming. She clapped a hand to her mouth, looking desperately away from her arm. She squirmed underneath the needle, little whimpers still escaping around her palm. Her gaze settled determinedly on the Vaultboy bobblehead that sat on Hancock's nightstand, like she was trying to ground herself. He watched her as tears formed in her eyes and spilled down onto her cheeks. Fahrenheit stood up, looked down at her, then back at him. She squinted her eyes as if saying what the fuck? but he shook his head.
Amari extracted the Stimpak once it had drained, stood up, and cracked her neck, looking entirely disinterested in the whole ordeal. "I'll be going. She should be fine but needs to rest for a few days. I imagine you're capable of taking care of her, John?" She was looking at him all disapproving again and he nodded, if anything just to spite her.
"You're free to go," he said, saluting her off and smiling cockily. He would have seen her out if it hadn't been for the whispers he heard behind him (and how fast she left the room, descending the stairs so quickly that he couldn't have possibly caught her). When he turned, Fahrenheit sat beside Amelia on the bed, her arm around her. He'd never seen his gal so ready to comfort someone else before, but, then he saw Amelia's face. She was pale again, pale as ever, and she looked even sicker than before.
"You're alright," Fahrenheit was whispering, smoothing back stray locks of hair from Amelia's forehead. "You're okay."
Hancock felt a little like he was intruding, and slowly sidled out of the room, shutting the doors gently behind him. He turned and stood there, bracing himself against the doors, and stared up at the ceiling. What a fuckin' day.
Amelia sat on the edge of the bed, her hands resting on her knees, and took another huff of Jet. The cold inhaler felt so familiar and strange on her lips, something from the old world intertwining with the new. She gazed around the room slowly, absorbing the torn pinup posters hanging on the walls, the clutter on the nightstand, the bookshelf with more novels shoved into it than she'd seen throughout her entire journey. She felt like she was in a dream, like this whole world and all of its people were a dream, and any moment now, she'd awaken, snuggled into her clean bed, the sounds of her baby nephew cooing softly in the night putting her right back to sleep.
She knew she must be dreaming, because who in their right mind dressed like famed American patriot John Hancock, swaggered underneath an absurd tricorn hat, welcomed a screaming girl into his town with a warmth she thought had died with the bombs? The moment she'd crashed through the gates and spotted him coming toward her, it was like seeing a picture out of one of her old history textbooks. He'd reminded her so much of being home, away from this wasteland; a man torn from a past that she recognized, had learned about. A constant, carried through to the end of the world.
The door creaked open and she jerked out of her sleepy reverie to see Hancock peeking his face into the room. She smiled.
"Come to check up on me?" she asked. Her speech was slow, eyelids heavy. She lifted her bandaged arm up and smiled at him. "Doesn't hurt anymore."
Hancock stepped gingerly in through the crack in the door and shut it tightly behind him. He looked so strange wearing his big red coat in a bedroom so real and cluttered. Like hers had been, before. "Yeah, after that Stimpak thing, wasn't sure you'd make it," he said with a chuckle, crossing the room to sit next to her. He looked unsure of himself as he did it, she noticed. Even past ruined skin and a missing nose, she could read someone so easily. "You know, you really oughta lay down and rest."
"I'm doing okay," she insisted, despite the ache in her shoulders. She couldn't handle any more needles today. Her eyes found the bookshelf in the corner again, and she turned to face him fully. "How did you get so many books?" she asked. The question had a wistful edge to it that she cursed. She didn't want to be sad here, in this dream. She didn't want it to be a nightmare. "I've only seen a few in the time I've been here, and they were all… destroyed."
A look of surprise stole across Hancock's face before it was replaced with something else, something tender. He reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking away. "Collected 'em over the years. I'd sneak into libraries as a kid," he said, his eyes resting fondly on the bookshelf. "Before the super mutants got to 'em, there was a lot of stuff in there."
"I…" She paused, feeling stupid, but he was looking at her again. "I used to be a librarian," she admitted. "You know, before all this shit." If she hadn't been slowed by the Jet high, she might have choked on her words a little, a sob may have escaped from her lips, but everything felt so delayed and muffled, like she was speaking through honey. She didn't want it to end, this numbness.
"Librarian, huh?" Hancock laughed, popped something into his mouth. She glanced over at him questioningly. "Orange Mentats," he explained, producing a small tin from inside his coat. He flipped the lid open and held it out to her. Against her better judgment, she took one.
"I used to take these before tests," she said, placing it deftly onto her tongue and biting down. The chalky flavor set in, despite the artificial taste, and her expression soured. "God, don't taste any better, do they?" She glanced up and he was already looking at her, his smile bemused.
"I'm used to it, smoothskin, but that's because I eat 'em like candy," he said, tossing another tablet into his mouth in example.
Amelia raised her eyebrows at him. "Smoothskin, huh?"
"Yeah, that's what we call you humans."
"And you're not a human?" Amelia frowned at him, but he shrugged, unbothered.
"No, I'm a ghoul."
She knitted her brows together, her eyes searching his face. "But you were a human? So surely that means you still are."
Hancock shook his head, a small laugh gracing his ravaged lips. "Semantics," he said, waving a hand at her. "Sure, I used to be human, but now I ain't. I can basically live forever, I can suck up radiated water like juice. You can't do that, can you?" He was staring at her then, waiting for her to say something, but the mix of Jet and Mentats was starting to stir up the thoughts in her brain. She saw something in his eyes again, that weird sincerity and warmth, but it was overt this time, she could see it, concretely. It startled her.
"You think I'm different," she found herself saying through the haze. The words surprised her. "I came out of a vault, and you don't understand it." He looked caught, his usually lethargic body stiffening under the weight of her eyes. She sighed and found the bookshelf again, scanning the fading spines and recognizing so many of the titles. She could almost feel them underneath her fingers as she tucked them one by one into their shelves. "I'm not different," she said at last. "We're not different."
Hancock shifted to lay back on his elbows. "Damn, sister, you sure ripped me a new one. Remind me never to offer you Mentats again."
"Remind me never to take them again if you do," she said. She sucked her teeth and looked over at him. She felt he had not stopped looking at her since she'd arrived. "I probably should rest though, I have… things to get back to." An unpleasant thought crossed her mind. The rough voice of a stranger, a gunshot ringing through time. She shook her head, shook it out of her. "Thanks for drugging me up." She smiled, and it felt real. Everything around her felt real, somehow. It couldn't be a dream. There's no way she could have thought this all up by herself.
Hancock shifted and stood from the bed, turned to look down at her. "Get some rest, then, Sunshine," he said.
Amelia watched him saunter out and shut the door behind him, watched long after he'd gone. Weird guy. But she could get used to him.