"Lilah! Have you seen that case of berry mentats around? I need them!", Hancock shouted as he wandered around the Old Statehouse. He didn't know it, but she was on the second floor, sitting on a couch, with a small handful of about three mentats in her hand.
"Up here, honey!", Lilah called back, nonchalantly. She popped a mentat into her mouth and pushed it to her cheek, and sucked the flavor out.
She liked the berry flavored mentats the best. They were another little thing that reminded her of home. While she could never figure out what the flavoring was really like, she also thought that they tasted like classic mulberries. The mutated ones here (or at least, they seemed to be mulberries…) weren't exactly the same taste, and the fact that they seemed to always over-ripen and split before she got them didn't help.
But these were always the perfect, almost fresh taste of mulberries. She imagined her hands and clothes being stained purple… Being a little girl and filling the skirt of her dress with them… She got lost in the reminiscence time and time again, and only came to when she heard a soft, disheartened 'awww…' from the doorway.
She looked up with three mentats in hand, and one in her cheek. Hancock looked like the baby who's candy got stolen. Well, technically, he was.
She smiled sheepishly.
"Uh… Sorry. Were these not meant for sharing? Oh. I see your name on the bottom now… You uh… You probably should've put that on the top…", she said pouring the remaining mentats back into the box and closing it.
Hancock stood in the doorway with a look that made her wonder if she really did have berry juice on her face.
"I um, I only ate one", she continued, shifting the mentat from one side of her mouth to the other.
Hancock cautiously took the mentat case out of her hand.
"Uh… You okay? You look like you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar", Hancock asked with concern.
"Technically, I did."
"No, I mean- They're just mentats. It's not like I'd get mad at you or something!", he says with a chuckle.
Lilah looked down at her hand and laughs a little too, realizing there is no purple stain on her hand.
She laughs–but then she sighs. A distant look formed in her eyes, and she looked like she was replaying a pleasant yet sad memory in her head; which wasn't an uncommon occurrence for them.
"Did you used to eat mentats with your family or something?", Hancock jokes, sitting down next to her.
She rolled her eyes and smiled as she playfully shoved him.
"Actually, I'm thinking even further back. Hard to believe, but I wasn't always a straight-bangin' badass. I used to be a little girl.", she started.
"Aaand now my boner is ruined forever."
"C'mon man."
"Sorry. That was too much. I guess i'm trying a little too hard… I just don't like it when you get this way. It starts out nice and happy, and then you get really upset and gloom around for a day or two."
"… Yeah. I'm sorry too.", Lilah said as she went in to hug him.
"Easy there, mopey."
Lilah perked up, still holding his hands.
"But this is a good memory, through and through! Both my parents AND my sister were dead before the bombs fell, so it's okay!"
Hancock stared at her blankly.
"I'm not even going to try to understand that line of reasoning."
Lilah giggled.
"Take a mentat, and put it on your tongue–now just taste it. What's that like to you?", she instructed him as she put a berry mentat in his hand.
He sucked on it for a moment and considers.
"I dunno. Vaguely berry-ish, I guess?"
"To me, it tastes like home. Home home. Would it shock you to know I didn't always live in Boston?"
"Noooo!", Hancock said with a look of horror on his face, bringing a hand up to look like he's gasping.
Lilah stuck her tongue out.
"I used to live in the State of Indiana. That'd be, uh… a couple hundred miles down. We lived in a rural area, and there were tons of these trees-though they were called bushes-with berries on them that tasted just like these. I used to go with my sister and eat so many of them that we couldn't eat dinner when we were called in for the night.", she said with a hint of wistfullness.
"That sounds nice."
"It was. We moved up to Boston for my dad's job when I was about 10, but… The mulberries didn't taste the same. These… these are just about dead on. It's nice to be reminded sometimes. Not always, but in this case… I'm just… It's nice."
Hancock put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, a glowing smile shining down on her.
"Tell me more."