Summary: Hank MacLean isn't the only ghost that the Ghoul speaks with before he leaves the Observatory, vault-dweller in tow. (Aka, that scene combined with Moldaver's death. Because I really wanted to see how she would have interacted with Cooper if she'd met him one last time).
And Now You're Lit Up by the City | Slow Down, Old World
He watches the man flee with a little huff, lets his gun-arm slump to his side. Hank MacLean will run, but there's not been a man that the Ghoul's not caught before. Be it a few days or a few months, he'll catch him. Hell, maybe he'll finally get his answers before the year's end.
But he's never been lucky. If he was, then perhaps he wouldn't have married the woman who destroyed the world in its entirety.
His eyes track the suit of armor as it grows smaller, watches it vanish amongst the buildings once it lands, headed west. Even if the coward changes course, the Ghoul's got the dog waiting for him down by one of the city cemeteries. And Dogmeat's proven herself a skilled tracker thus far. Her nose is almost as good as his eyes. They'll make an excellent team in the near future, assuming he actually makes the rendezvous;
The fighting doesn't sound quite as violent as it had before, power armor clunking louder than the screams. It's going to be over, soon. He needs to get moving.
He half-turns and finds his gaze falling to the vault dweller and her unconscious- possibly dead- knight. Her begging is pathetic, most of what he's seen of her has been, but he has garnered a bit of respect for her. The girl can be vicious when she needs to be. There's some fighting spirit in her that she'd already had when she came to the Wasteland. She could be useful outside of her familial relations.
Would it be worth it, though?
He runs the question through his head, glancing back out over the eerily silent battleground, at the clouds above. Could Lucy MacLean really survive this sort of life? With fiends and radstorms at every turn? Or would he spend half their time hauling her along over his shoulders, trying to keep her alive?
Well. Wouldn't hurt to offer, anyway.
But there's a bustling behind him, back through the doorway he'd come from just a couple minutes ago. His gun-arm shoots back up as she whirls around, ever-wary.
It takes him a moment to realize that there's only one set of footsteps, and it still doesn't really hit until he sees the lone figure come staggering inside, one hand pressed firmly into her side. Lee Moldaver limps over to the computer- the last light in a darkening room- and slams her hand down on a button.
The Ghoul steps further back into the room and tilts his head. "What's the point? You've lost, woman. That ain't gonna sit there more than a pretty minute b'fore they take it."
She turns towards him, scrutinizes him for a moment before the recognition sets in. How she sees his former self- because it is that kind of recognition, the all-too-knowing kind (though he'd be surprised if she's not heard of his bounty-hunting reputation)- past the radiation scars, he doesn't know. She looks a hell of a lot more like her former self than he does. "Why, Mr. Howard, you know this was my life's work. I think a dying woman's earned the right to see it come to fruition, however briefly."
His eyes flick down to the wound on her abdomen, and he finds himself frowning a little as he tucks away his revolver. "Well, if one of us fuck-overs gets to die happy, who am I to deny 'em such a thing? I may be a pessimist, but I ain't cruel."
And Lee Moldaver smiles- something genuine- and it hurts to look at. "If it weren't for you clearing out the lobby, I never would have made it back up here. So, thank you."
"You saw that?" He asks, surprised.
"It was like a scene right out of one of your movies," she returns, and he has to fight back a delighted little grin.
He shrugs instead, aiming for modesty. "I've always been an efficient man. That's one thing time won't ever change."
"Yes," she agrees, a little breathless as the cold fusion activates, a beautiful ripple of blue pulsing away from the tube beside the computer, "That reputation precedes you as well." She turns, then, stiffly walking towards an outward-facing seat beside a chained feral on the other side of the table, sitting down oh-so-carefully.
She takes the skeleton's hand in hers and says, "We did it, Rose," and the Ghoul can't help but feel he's intruding.
And then the feral ghoul's head explodes into a splattering of mostly tissue and a little blood.
He tracks the shot back to the now-silent Lucy MacLean, where she's given up on rousing her knight, and wonders if that ghoul had to do with whatever earth-shaking revelation her daddy had brought down on her before he'd arrived. She doesn't shake much when she lowers the gun, looking a bit surprised in her pensiveness when she catches him watching.
How much of the conversation had she actually heard?
He offers a nod of approval anyway, because she looks like she could use a bit of moral support right about now. And then he watches from behind as millions of little lights flicker on before them, the city coming to life for the first time since the bombs fell. Even a part of his hardened heart stutters at the sight.
There's an unmistakable gasp of joy from the table, and the Ghoul decides that Moldaver's earned her victory. He may have never completely agreed with her methods, but she's always been one of the Wasteland's lesser evils. It feels nice, seeing her win. He truly will be sorry when the power flicks back out in half an hour's time.
"What do you think the Brotherhood will do with infinite power?" She's on one of her rhetorics again. "Maybe you can stop them. Maybe you can't. Maybe you won't even try." She pauses, then, musing quietly in her final moments. "But I like to think you would. The great Cooper Howard never liked dictatorship. I don't imagine you'd let them continue without a fight."
"I got enough on my plate right now," is all he says in return. An actor can't shoot a starring role in two movies at the same fucking time. "That's too big a side-project for me. One man can only make a difference if it's for the wrong cause."
Because the biggest difference he'd ever made was convincing people to invest in Vault-Tec. And look where that's gotten any of them. Dead, ghoulified- long fucking gone. He'd helped ruin the world himself.
He's no better than them, not really.
"You and I both know that's not true…" And then she's gone, voice trailing off for the last time in a firm murmur of belief in who she thinks he is.
The Ghoul doesn't have the energy to be insulted by the assumption. He merely stares at Moldaver's slumped body and lets his shoulders drop as the last light seeps out of the sky. The vault-dweller's eyes burn into his back.
They need to leave.
"War never changes," he finally tells her, not moving away from the horizon. "You look out at this Wasteland, looks like chaos. But there's always somebody behind the wheel. And that's who I want to talk to." Turns his head. "That's where your daddy is headed."
"But you let him go," she bites out at long last, voice a string of emotions.
It doesn't phase him. "Well, it's easier to track a stuck pig than to ask it where it's off to." Fuck, he thinks, she's got a lot to learn. The Ghoul turns the rest of the way around, so she can see his seriousness with his proposal. "You want to know how I know your daddy, don't you? Let's just say that everything about your whole little world was decided over two-hundred years ago."
She's quiet. She's fucking quiet. Whatever Henry had said to her, it must've really been something.
"Now, you can stay here with him," he gestures toward the knight, "but when his tin can soldier friends take this place- and they have pretty much taken this place- they will kill you and everybody here-" He can hear their vertibirds now, hovering around their mother ship, circling like vultures,
"Or you could come meet your makers."
And he turns back to watch them start their descent, all at once, as if having waited for the order. It's a sight both fascinating and intimidating, and the Ghoul hasn't felt truly intimidated in a damn long time.
He gives her a few long seconds to process his words, to weigh her options. Because after how she'd spared his life back at the 'Mart, she deserves a little bit of generosity. But even so, he's got no time to spare. Whatever she decides- whether that be suicide by the Brotherhood or a goose chase across the Wastelands with him- he's leaving. Lucy MacLean never was his responsibility.
Click.
She's cocked the gun she'd dropped earlier.
Whether she's just priming it for later or she's aiming it at him, he doesn't know. His bones are rigid, waiting, wondering if she's going to pull the trigger and blow his brains out like the other ghoul's.
A beat passes. Two. There's the distinct sound of metal on leather as she holsters the weapon.
That's that, then.
"You comin'?" Cooper Howard asks.