Lord a'mighty. I've been working on this chapter for ages, and I just... It was just not coming out as I would like. Hopefully, the next chapter will be a little less... I'm not even sure what the word I want to use is, honestly. Something about this story, as compared to Thankless Job, just isn't adding up for me, and I'm not sure what that something is. Feel free to throw suggestions at me.
Lucky I'm in love with my best friend
Lucky to have been where I have been
She doesn't remember it the next day. Her mind is a painful, painful haze when she wakes, confused, to find herself sprawled out on the couch downstairs. Aside from the dull throbbing at the base of her skull, there was also a tingling, pins-and-needles feeling in her right arm that suggested she had been sleeping with it pinned beneath her at some point not long ago. Every shift of her body resulted in another twinge of pain in her head, vision blurring and flashing red. Her mouth is dry and tastes sort of like she'd decide it would be grand old idea to lick the ashtray sitting on the table outside shortly after brushing her teeth with water from the puddle around the bomb. "Fucking Christ, ouch." She hasn't even managed to pry her eyes open again; She probably forgot to turn off the lights before dropping dead on the couch. The light will only intensify the ache in her head, and she knows it. "Fuck."
"I do wish you wouldn't swear, Joss Lynn." Letting out a high-pitched shriek, she jolts into a sitting position, eyes wide, something she quickly realizes is a mistake. With a groan, she carefully spreads herself over the couch and throws an arm over her eyes; There wasn't exactly an abundance of pain pills out here, she wasn't going to be up any time soon. "And that is why you shouldn't drink, sweetheart." The fact that every thing hurts is the only thing the keeps her from slapping at her father as he presses a bottle of purified water into her hands. "Drink this," he continues, only after she sits up just enough to start sipping at the water, "and we can get some InstaMash in you, when you feel up to it."
Making a rather wide array of gagging noises, she shook her head. "InstaMash, whatever the hell it's supposed to be, is fucking gross." She knows she can't really afford to be picky about her diet in the wasteland if she ever wants to eat, but InstaMash is, and always would be, a last resort. It was light enough that she could always keep a couple of boxes on her when traveling, which made it convenient, but definitely didn't make it taste any better. It was like dirt and water and paste, mashed together into something resembling food, and wholly unpleasant. Or maybe that was just her; She had always lacked the strong stomach required for certain foods. At sixteen, when Jonas had tried to help her father make some elaborate dinner as a celebration for her not getting garbage burner on the G.O.A.T., she'd nearly lost her lunch - how those two had managed to find canned green beans, she didn't want to know. "Don't scold me. Please. I am twenty years old, and you walked away from any right to do that when you walked away from the vault without telling me, okay?" She kept telling him that, but he really didn't seem to be getting it, and she doesn't understand why. It's not a difficult concept to grasp; He's really very lucky she's even speaking to him, let alone allowing him to stay in her home and planning on helping him complete Project Purity. "I'm not a baby, Dad! I'm a grown woman! I'm not your little girl any more."
"Sweetheart, you'll always be my little girl." She's fighting to avoid a replay of last night, now; She doesn't want to storm out of here again, and she certainly doesn't want to spend her entire day drunk. It's only - she hazards a glance at her Pip-boy, frowning at the clock - ten in the morning, anyways; Drinking shouldn't start until at least noon. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she manages to force herself into a sitting position, face buried in her hands when her head protests. "I know you aren't happy with my decisions, and I know you think I've forfeited my position as your father, but that doesn't change anything. "I love you, and I'll alwa-"
"Just stop!" she winces, at both the harshness and the volume of her voice. "I don't want to talk about it anymore, shut up. My head hurts and I'm frustrated and everything is so goddamn confusing and having to deal with all of this is not helping at all!" And here, she'd been hoping to keep this all buried until a more appropriate time; There would have been a lot of passive aggressive comments between now and then, but she was going to keep it in, just like she'd done in the vault. Just shut her mouth and glared and rolled her eyes and occasionally offered a little snippet of sarcasm. Here, there's no overseer to crack down on her, nobody to enforce good behaviour (well, the regulators did that, but somehow, it was significantly less threatening to be chased down by someone in wide open spaces); Just her conscience and her own sense of morality. Her moral compass wasn't exactly... Well, it wasn't always pointing north, but you did what you had to when in survival situations and she had long since made peace with that. There was still a vague sense of guilt, it was just overshadowed by the need to thrive, and, as of late, return to Gob. Poor, sweet, mistreated Gob, who was nothing but wonderful and kind, even to those who didn't deserve it in the slightest (which was more than she could say for herself). It was sort of funny, how different they were, but how well they got along. Logic dictated that, out of everyone in town, she should probably be the most timid around him, having lived in a vault... But that was obviously not the case. Being timid around ghouls probably would have been better in the long run; At least, it would have been for the inhabitants of Tenpenny Tower (aside from Daring, who she'd come to look at as sort of surrogate grandfather after speaking to him only once).
"Hey, Gob." He's expecting her to speak - he's not expecting her to sound so tired. Even when she looks like she hasn't slept in weeks, months, she still sounds bright and happy when she speaks to him; This time... It's strange and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like seeing her tired and upset; Doesn't like it when she doesn't brighten up upon seeing him like she usually does. "We're leavin' today. Figured I'd stop in and say goodbye, pick up some stimpaks." It's obvious, to him, that she doesn't really want to go; It's there in the tone of her voice, the fact that she just wants to do anything but this. At this point, he has no clue what to say to her, how to comfort her or anything... And it's not like he can go with her. Moriarty would kill him, and probably send the Talons after her... Assuming they weren't already after her, that is. "How many stimpaks're in stock?"
Gob just stares at her for a few moments, blinking, before he ducks beneath the counter to rifle through the stock. As on most occasions, he finds only eight stimpaks, which he carefully gathers and lays out on the counter before Joss. "Eight, smoothskin." When the girl cracks a smile, he nearly grins. He watches as she carefully counts out the caps she owes - two hundred and sixteen or something like it, thanks to her discount - but frowns when she keeps counting, all the way up to two hundred and forty. "Smoothskin, you kno-"
"Gob, hush." she tells him, effectively cutting him off. The fact that she's not all jokes and warm smiles right now is unnerving. "I don't know when I'll be back, and I don't want to come back and find out Moriarty beat you because of the discount, okay? I want you nice and safe when I get back. If you're not... I don't know what I'm going to do, but it's not going to be good. You're..." When she goes silent, he expects her to continue after a few moments; Instead, she digs a lunchbox out of her pack and carefully lays the stimpaks inside. With the box returned to her pack, he watches the vault girl roll her shoulders, and he finds himself feeling about as uncomfortable as she looks. "Just... Be careful while I'm gone, all right? I know there's only so much you can do, because Moriarty's an asshole, just... I'm going to try and figure out how to get you out of here, while I'm gone, okay?"
Something like four months pass and Gob has pretty much given up hope on Joss ever coming back. Roughly nine days ago, Three Dog announced the death of the girl's father - no mention of the wanderer herself, aside from a brief 'Wow, must suck to find your dad and then have him die' sort of comment. He's pretty much assumed that, if she heard that, she just gave up; She's not weak, but... Well, most people would give up if they heard that or something like it. Those updates had been all that kept him going and now, with no reason to look forward to another day, he just wants to weep. But with a skill born out of years of complete suppression of feelings, he bites down on his tongue and continues scrubbing at a glass with a frown. He's happy that Billy Creel is the only one in at this point - Nova hasn't even come downstairs, Moriarty's outside, and it's somewhere around noon. There's a good hour before anyone else even thinks of getting a jump start on their alcoholism; He's thankful for that. Billy's at least quiet, and when he does talk, he's polite and babbling stories about Maggie, which isn't so bad. He's only ever actually seen the kid once, but it's good that she's doing well enough that Billy is actually able to speak about her endlessly. Before he has a chance to ask, the ghoul cracks open another Nuka-Cola and sets it before him.
"How. Many. Caps?" he can hear vaguely through the door, someone's voice rough and irritated and obviously feminine. Of its own accord, one eyebrow raises, and when he looks at Billy, he looks just as confused. The metal has muffled the voice just enough that it's not particularly recognizable, just something sort of familiar, but out of reach in his memory. "Just answer the question, you rotten Irish bastard!" At this, Gob sees Billy stand, ready to head towards the door if more shouting occurs. That's when the door swings open and Moriarty trudges in, followed by a rather disgruntled loo- Joss. The lone wanderer doesn't spare anyone a passing glance as she follows Moriarty to the back room, glaring. When the door swings closed, Gob can hear the pair arguing - all he consistently catches is 'caps'. A rather large part of him isn't even worried about that - he's worried about Joss. From what he saw, she looked awful; Blue-black smeared around her eyes, probably from lack of sleep, a multitude of new scars, bruises, cuts. He doesn't know what she's spent the last nine days doing, but he isn't sure he wants to. If it's resulted in her coming back looking like she's gone through a damn food processor, it can't be anything good. He's sure she'll tell him eventually anyways; He doesn't think she's kept much, if anything, from him. "Deal."
When the door opens, Joss is giving him a tired grin, and Moriarty can be heard counting caps in the background. "Oh, Gob." Instead of answering straight away, he just blinks at her, mildly confused. "Guess what?"
"What."
The girl doesn't look like she's capable of actually looking happy at the moment, but she's pretty damn close. Instead of answering his question (a question that she had, essentially, prompted), she just launches into speech again. "Do you have anything here? Y'know, clothes or belongings or anything?" Why the hell could she possibly need to know that? is his initial thought. "C'mon, Gob, this is an important question!" Eventually, he nods. There's not much - maybe two other shirts and one pair of pants, and that's it, really. "Go get all of it." Okay, that's just asking for Moriarty to kick his ass, but the Irishman isn't in the room, so he cautiously makes his way towards the stairs. "Go on." Joss orders when he hesitates at the foot of the stairs. When he returns a few minutes later, his meager belongings shoved into a tattered suitcase, the wanderer takes his spare hand and tugs him towards the door. He isn't sure what's going on, and he's really too stunned to fight it. As soon as they're standing in front of the saloon, the sky wide and clear and tinged with greenish grey, his hand is released, and suddenly, Joss is in front of him. "Guess who just bought your freedom?"
He gapes at her, drops his suitcase, makes no move to pick it up or anything. "I- You- What? How- Why did you..." Words have never been his strong suit, but they've completely deserted him this time around. He's free? Free to come and go as he pleases, inside, outside, town to town? For a moment, he's thrilled, his heart is racing; Freedom is what he's been hoping for, dreaming about, for the past fifteen years, and now he has it. Freedom is sweet and overwhelming and a multitude of other things, but then he realizes... He has no home, and most people aren't quick to take in ghouls - and no way is he going to do make it to Underworld on his own. It's been years since he's taken part in any sort of combat, and even then, he wasn't exactly what one would call 'proficient' with anything other than a cheap nine millimeter pistol. Panic pools in his stomach, overtakes the happiness and squashes it down, crushes it and distorts it. "I don't have-"
"I know." When he shoots her a puzzled look, he finds her holding his suitcase and smiling at him, and despite how absolutely exhausted she seems, Gob thinks she is beautiful and he offers a tentative smile of his own. "Figured you could stay with me a while. 'til I figure out where I'm goin' from here." Part of him feels like he's taking advantage - this wonderful, kind, beautiful girl just spent who knows how much and is now offering him a place to stay... But she seems adamant, dragging him along by the hand when he hesitates.
Maybe life was going to get a little better.
If there's anyone she'd trust in her home, it's Gob. He'd been hesitant, when she'd offered him a place to stay, but she'd sent a courier and had Moira bring over an extra bed while she was gone, set up downstairs. He didn't need to know that part; She'd just brush it off and make it seem like there'd always been two beds. "Home, sweet home." The next few minutes were spent puttering about, pointing out where things were kept; The tour ended with her motioning to the lockers in the corner. "You can go through those, if you'd like. Find yourself some clothes, since... I don't think you have much." She felt awful, pointing that out - but a single suitcase, and the fact that she was fairly certain he'd been wearing the same clothes just about every single time she'd gone into the saloon... Well, if he had more clothing, it was obviously just duplicates of the same damn outfit.
"How much did you have to pay Moriarty?"
Despite herself, she grins at the question. "Twenty-five thousand." It had been a pain in the ass to make at first, but after she'd stumbled upon the national guard depot, she'd managed to scavenge enough to pay Moriarty and have something like fifteen thousand caps left over; More than enough to handle whatever traveling needed to be done in the near future, along with food and anything else they needed for the time being. Besides, twenty-five thousand caps wasn't a lot, in the grand scheme of things. She'd be able to earn that and more over the course of her life, and she was considered that, even if she couldn't, it wouldn't matter; It was for someone she loved. Maybe that was cheesy or weird or stupid, to throw away that much money on one person, but didn't give a damn. "Don't you dare try and pay me back. You don't owe me anything, Gob. You didn't ask me to do this; I did it because I wanted to. I'm pretty sure we've been through the fact that you're my best friend." When he opens his mouth to argue, she rolls her eyes, stifles a yawn and motions towards the bed. "You'll sleep there. I'm tired, I'm not going to argue about you paying me back. Just relax, alright, Gob?"