The man who used to be Cooper Howard prepared carefully for the first time he would see his daughter Janey in two hundred and twenty years, and that began by dismantling the persona of the Ghoul. Walking it back, becoming Cooper Howard again.
In the marketplace, he found a decent tan suit in his size, a shirt that was a little too big, a necktie he would have rejected before. Then it was an inn which still had working plumbing, where he showered and slept and showered again, rubbing moisturizer into all his exposed skin in the hopes of making himself look less like that last convenience store hot dog left on the roller grill at the end of the night.
"You look great," Lucy told him when he eventually emerged from his room the next morning. "In this world, any girl would be proud to have you as her father. And she'd be able to be proud because she'd still be alive."
"That's the problem. She's a Vaultie, like you were. About your age now, too, or so her mother tells me. An' given that Barb's been raising her, I don't think that's gonna change."
Barb, tightlipped, furious and barely able to look at him, had told him Janey was now nineteen, and that she went by 'Janine' these days, that the cryosleep had wiped out the last few days of her memories of the world before. That while Janine knew about ghouls, she had never seen pictures or met one, and not to blame her for any adverse reaction.
He'd promised he wouldn't.
Lucy shrugged. "Well, you never know. After you stopped trying to kill me or sell me for parts, you were exactly the kind of mentor I needed."
"Aah, stop that," he told her.
"It's true, though. And she is your daughter. She loves you. And if she is like me, then it may take a while, but it will be all right," Lucy said, airily, as though it were a fact like gravity. "You sure you don't want me to come with you?"
"Thanks for the offer, but no. I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea." There was a mirror on the wall in the hallway with only a couple of fracture lines. He checked his teeth. Several sessions of vigorous brushing had lightened them by a couple of shades of yellow. It would have to do, unless he was prepared to brush them with Abraxo.
"What, that you and I—?" She looked bewildered.
"I know, I know. Even though it's none of their business, I don't want Janey thinking either, 'My dad's a huge pervert' or 'My dad has another daughter', when she meets me. Oh, I almost forgot." Going back into his room, he took off the suit jacket, buckled a concealed holster around his body, slid a pistol into it, and put the jacket back on.
Watching him from the open door, Lucy commented, "I was wondering if you were going armed."
"Don't matter where," he said. "Remember that. Watch Dogmeat while I'm gone."
"I will," Lucy promised.
And so he went to meet his daughter, down in the depths of the Vault. The room he was shown into was clean and well lit and smelled good. He hated it.
He'd taken a dose of serum before he went, but opted not to huff any Jet. Instead he took a heavy dose of Calmex, so he could seem…more normal. Less full of manic energy and violence.
However, the Janine he met, clean and smooth-skinned, all grown up and startlingly lovely in a bright, fresh Vault suit… did not remind him at all of Lucy, or of Janey as she was, or of anyone but Barb. Not in how she looked, but how she acted, all poised and defensive under the surface.
She was a little better at concealing her distaste for him, though. She was polite, and laughed when she should and got teary-eyed, but damn it, he was an actor and he could spot it when someone was putting it on.
He almost thought she was someone Barb had found to impersonate Janey, but then he looked at her face and saw his mother's eyebrows and his grandmother's chin, the familiar flecks of color in her eyes, and knew that at least this was his daughter.
Cooper Howard reached out and took his daughter's left hand. The Pip-Boy on her wrist scraped against the table. "You used to have a little round scar, right here." he said, tapping the spot on her forefinger.
"Oh, I got rid of that ages ago," she said, only just managing not to snatch her hand back. "But you got the hand wrong. It was on my right hand."
"So it was," he smiled. "Bet you don't remember how you got it."
"Of course I do," Janine said, mock-offended and pouting. "It was just before Christmas of 2076. We were walking down the street to get ice cream, and a speeder peeled out of a parking lot right in front of us. His tire kicked up some gravel or maybe it was a little piece of broken glass, and it flew up and hit my finger."
He tightened his grip on her hand. "Yes and no. That was the story we told your mother when she came home. What actually happened was that Roosevelt rolled in something smelly, like dogs will, and the two of us had to give him a bath. He didn't care for that, and in his excitement, he bit you.
"Now I knew your mother didn't love Roosevelt the way you and I did, so we made up a little white lie to tell her. I had to explain what a white lie was, and you were very excited that we had a little secret that saved Roosevelt from being on her naughty list right before Christmas. The real Janey would have known that."
Janine tried to wrench her hand back. "I am the real Janey! The only Janey! I mean, I'm Janine. Let go of me, you ugly freak!"
He ignored her. "So, Barb," he spoke right into the Pip-Boy. "since you figured turn-about was fair play, why don't you come on in and tell me what's really going on?"
A/N: Trying out a possible story. Your response will mean a lot to me.
BTW, did you know that if you go to Etsy and search for "Fallout TV", on the first page or two of results, there is a candle with a very interesting name?