And here's that Gob one I wanted to write. I took what we know about Gob - the fact that he lived in Underworld, that he was captured by slavers, that Moriarty is a massive dick and says he can repay the debt... And I ran with it. Changed some tiny, tiny things that could be considered canon, but didn't really elaborate, because I suspect that this will end up being multi-chaptered, just like Thankless Job. I tried to keep him sort of timid and, well... Gob, but give him a bit more depth, and I sincerely hope I've accomplished that, because, well... It absolutely broke my heart to write parts of this, and I hope that means I did it well.
If you'd like to see more of this story, please leave a review, because otherwise, I will not add to it - just because I suspect it will be multi-chaptered does not mean that I will make it so with absolutely no feedback. For now, this will be listed as 'complete'.
This will be continued, folks! It'll be a while before I ever get chapters up - see the most recent chapter of Thankless Job for the reason. I do have the beginnings of another chapter for both of them, so it may be sooner than expected.
Maybe I should cry for help
Maybe I should kill myself
William Reynolds. He's always had a family, and he's always been sweet. When he was a child, he didn't have the heart to turn a single person or thing away, no matter what. It resulted in a rather large group of strays being taken into his home, despite parental protests: eight dogs and six cats from the time he is eight to the time he turns sixteen. Sixteen's the year he starts paying attention, real attention, to women, and he figures an insane amount of pets in his home will make him seem less like he's sensitive and more like he's crazy, because he doesn't have many friends, but tons of pets. It's a year before he manages to rope himself a girlfriend; A sweet little redhead with more brains than looks. He's with her for a year and a half, two awkward teenagers unsure of love is, but who use the word often. They're both too nervous to ever go farther than kissing and a bit of awkward, over-the-clothes groping. They only break things off because she's moving from where they are, in California, pre-NCR, all the way to New Orleans, Louisiana. They promise to keep in touch. They don't, though it's not for lack of trying on his part.
He's barely finishes high school - pulls through by the skin of his teeth. He's smart, but he doesn't apply himself; His work ethic's pretty shoddy. After a few good words put in by his father, he manages to land a job at the local garage by the time he turns nineteen. Working with cars and bikes and shit like that, it's something he's good at, but not something he enjoys - he'd prefer to be doing something he enjoys, like writing or drawing, but he's not particularly good at either of those things. At least being a mechanic will provide him with a steady job until his hands start shaking or his vision goes, and that's more than most people can say about their career choice. The garage isn't a big business - just a little family-owned place - and it doesn't have a lot of employees, but it gets a lot of business, and with nothing to spend his money on since he still lives at home, he saves up money at an alarming rate. He works there all of two years before he manages to save up enough cash to afford his own apartment and a car, not that he has to use the car often. The garage is only a block away, and it's generally pretty warm in southern California; He only ever has to use the car for grocery shopping and the occasional date.
He's technically twenty-four by the time he loses his virginity, all fumbling hands and shaky kisses. It's some nameless blonde from the nearest bar, and he really hadn't been planning on this, but he was drunk, so drunk and she was pretty and kind and she kept saying she wanted him. All the alcohol in his system, it didn't take much convincing - she probably could have pushed him up against the bar and blown him and he wouldn't have even registered that they were in public. When he wakes up at four in the afternoon, he's a little bit disappointed she's gone, because it's his birthday and he doesn't want to be lonely, and honestly, he'd probably cry if the pillow beside him didn't smell like her perfume, some raspberry-vanilla something. Unsurprisingly, after that, it takes him six months to convince himself to on a single date, more than a little bit crushed that his first time, he'd woken up alone. At twenty-five, he has his first steady girlfriend in six and a half years, and she's nothing like the last one. She's tall and slim and beautiful, all legs, brunette - and appearances are deceiving, because she's quite intelligent and she swears like a sailor. He likes that.
He also likes that she stands up for him, even though he thinks it should be the other way around. But he's too timid, and too kind, and he just can't bring himself to say something that may hurt someone else, further proof that they're incredibly different. Sometimes, she calls him 'Gob' or 'Gobtholomew'; She says it's ironic because he's one of the quietest people she knows, and 'Gob' just sounds like a nickname for someone who doesn't know when to stop talking. Like her. God, did he ever love her. Loved the way her bright green eyes lit up when she saw him, or when he got her a present, 'just because'; Loved the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed or smiled. He knows she has a temper, a foul one - he's watched her berate people for asking why she's with someone so introverted, seen her throw a mean right hook if someone speaks ill of him or her family or anything. But he loves her, flaws and all, and she feels the same. They've been together for four years when he proposes; Diamond set in white gold, simple, simple ring. And the woman cries, she actually cries as she says yes and embraces him in a crowded restaurant. And all he can do is shout, "I love Fiona Nash!" They marry that fall, and he spends so much time just calling her Missus Reynolds because he loves hearing it.
Three days past his thirty-second birthday, the bombs fall. The whole city is in complete disrepair, scattered corpses with burned flesh and scorch-marks on the pavement. He's mostly safe because he was downstairs at the garage, getting more motor oil; He's got a gash on his arm, and he thinks he might have a couple of broken ribs, but he's fine otherwise. A knot of horror deep in the pit of his stomach, he runs home, fast as he can, and a strangled sob tears from his throat when he sees the state of the apartment building. Fiona had stayed home that day and - Oh god. He digs through rubble for forty-five minutes before he finds her, and he just wants to lay down and die when he does. God, she's still alive, but there's burns covering the whole right side of her body and her right arm is sticking out at an odd angle and she's whimpering in pain. When he finally managed to move her, he nearly drops her - there's a large shard of glass sticking out from between her third and fourth ribs just left of her spine, and it's probably punctured a lung, maybe grazed her heart. "Will. Will, baby." It all but breaks his heart to hear her speak - her voice comes out nothing but a wheezy whisper and he knows she's fading fast. "I love you so much, Will. I always will. Promise me you won't dwell, okay?"
He wants to argue, tell her she'll be fine and she'll survive and they'll be happy, so happy. "I love you, too. I love you, you can't leave me. Can't leave me alone. Please, no, I love you." The longer he sits here, the more he can feel the radiation permeate his skin, but he can't tell if it's that or the situation making him feel sick to his stomach.
"Hush, hush, Gob. You know I'm not going to ma-ake it. Ju-hust hold m-me."
It's not long before she passes - ten minutes, maybe - and all he can do is sit there and cry, and murmur "No, don't leave me, don't leave me, I love you. Love you so much, need you, please, no." For a few minutes, his just stays there, sobs interspersed with deep, heaving breaths, before he stares up at the sky. "Why? Why her? She's all I got!" He pauses, frowns, the tears start again. "All I had."
It takes him two weeks to go anywhere. He just keeps going back to his old, ruined apartment building like it's going to change something. The last time he visits, he manages to pry her wedding ring from her finger and thread it onto an old chain and drop it around his neck. Because he's been wearing the same clothes for two damn weeks, he finds the nearest store that's still in tact and breaks in and gets everything he can - a duffel bag that he stuffs with as much food and clothing that he can fit in it, and changes in the middle of the store before running out. He doesn't know where he's headed, all he knows is that he's painfully alone and still grieving, and that his ribs have probably healed in odd ways. He walks for a week, sleeping when he needs it, eating as little as possible, when he's done, he's just reached the border of Utah.
When he's done walking, he's managed to reach Ohio, and it's been at least a month and a half. Still alone, still mourning but no longer crying, he sets up camp in an abandoned house and manages to jerry-rig the shower, and good lord, is it ever great to be clean again. He curls up on the bed, in the bedroom just off the bathroom, and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. It's two in the morning when he wakes, according to his wristwatch, and his stomach is growling rather loudly. He digs a can of Cram from his duffel bag and pries it open, pulling out hunks and practically inhaling them without cooking any of it. He doesn't even care that it tastes less than stellar - it's sustenance, and that's what matters.
Nine years later, as he moves through Virginia, he runs into two women - Carol and Greta - with skin peeling and thick red muscle visible in some places. Carol immediately treats him as a son, but it's obvious that Greta isn't fond of him; She doesn't bother to hide her irritation at his questions about their condition. Carol is calm, explains that it's because of the radiation, says they're turning into something called ghouls - and that he is too, if the massive patch of visible muscle tissue on his neck is an indicator. He grimaces, slaps a hand over the patch in question. Well, that explains that, then.
They stay in Virginia for a couple of years, and by the time they start heading for the National Museum of National History, for Underworld, Carol's skin is mostly gone and Greta looks pretty much the same. Gob, he figures he's pretty lucky, because even though his own most ravaged portion is his face, he's still got plenty of skin for the time being. That probably won't last long, everything irradiated all to shit like it is - his skin will probably be flaking off like he has a fucking sunburn, instead of a massive influx of radiation to his system. He still wears Fiona's ring at his neck, because he's always going to love her and she's the only fucking person who would still love him, looking like this, like he's slowly becoming a fucking corpse. It's not fair that he had to lose her and turn into this, this, monster. It's not fair at all.
In 2261, he leaves Underworld with so much hope. He bids Carol and Greta goodbye, promises to write and visit whenever he can. And then, right around the damn corner, they nab him - a group of slavers who figure that since he already looks like hell, they can use him as a punching bag, and they proceed to do just that all the way to Paradise Falls, where they keep him in a pen for a year. After that, they start dragging him around, trying to pawn him off on someone, anyone and he's willing to bet that it's because they're tired of the smell of dried leather and copper. The only person willing to buy him off the slavers is some Irishman who calls himself Moriarty, living in a town called Megaton. The man tells him that he'll be able to work off what it cost to buy him - the equivalent of six hundred caps, all traded in liquor - if he works at his saloon for a while. What he fails to mention that he'll charge for food and boarding and any-fucking-thing else, and Gob spends the next eleven years miserable and beaten and so lonely.
A woman named Nova rolls into town in 2273, and he doesn't love her, or even particularly like her, because she's manipulative and comes off as a whore, but when she gets roped into staying here to be the in-house prostitute, it at least means he'll be less lonely. She's pretty in an unconventional sort of way, he'll give her that - it's the kind of thing smoothskin men fight for out here, a pretty woman. But she's bitchy and tries to put on a facade of toughness and he knows he should feel sorry for her, but he doesn't - whine all she wants about Moriarty being a drunken asshole, she still wasn't the one being beaten over every little thing. He was under appreciated and abused, and the only light at the end of the tunnel was that if he went now, he'd be with Fiona. He'd never been a religious guy, but it helped to think of it like that.
Four years pass achingly slowly, and all he can think is that he should be finished paying off his debt to Moriarty. When he brings it up at the end of the day, all it earns him is a punch in the jaw and solid kick in the gut that leaves him gasping for air. Nova does nothing to help him, just comforts him when he mentions the pain later, and even that is… Well, she hardly does that, only lightly patting his clothed shoulder.
This place was going to be the death of him.