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Gob/FLW
Date: 2012-04-25 03:49 am (UTC)Gob is the benevolent owner of Megaton's saloon, Moriarty the crotchety barkeeper, etc. FLW is unaware of the difference between the outside world and the vault, and initially dislikes Gob because Moriarty has lied and said that he is a slave, in hopes that the FLW would kill Gob and he could take over the business.
The rest is up to the author.
Skinless 1a/?
Date: 2012-05-02 10:10 pm (UTC)Characters: F!LW, Gob, Moriarty, Nova, Moira
Relationship: het
Trying a new style with this, so let me know if it sucks. Shaping up to be long no matter what I do, but still deciding whether to keep it small scale and domestic or wasteland-wide. It's up to you anons!
-
The first thing I'm learning is that the world outside the vault is pretty much a wasteland. And that's exactly what my Pip-Boy says it is, updated after two hundred years of being underground, mapping out the way the world's changed. It's telling me (at least, I'm pretty sure it's telling me) that the weird, metal dome I can see in the mid-distance is some kind of settlement. So, yeah, I'm gonna strike out for that.
This is crazy. This is totally, totally crazy.
I've got no idea how I'm keeping calm right now. There is blood on me. I can feel it in my fucking shoes. There's some on my cheek, I'm sure of it, but I can't make myself wipe it off. I can't make myself touch it. I beat someone to death today - someone I probably would have got to known, as I got older, someone who probably had a family. I took my baseball bat - my fucking baseball bat, the one Dad and Jonah taught me how to use when I was six and I've kept safe ever since - to bash someone's brains in. I felt his armour splinter and his skull give way and oh God why am I thinking about it I'm going to vomit.
Ugh.
Okay, I'm shaking now. Shit. Okay, stop it, keep it together. Don't be that guy who keels over five feet out of the vault, c'mon.
I keep thinking about throwing the baseball bat away. I can't. It's blood stained and battered and I can't, because what if something happens to me out here? I don't know what...monsters could be out here. I don't know how to defend myself, and right now, my baseball bat of death feels a lot sturdier in my hands than a gun I don't know how to shoot.
Alright, I'm going to keep going. I could probably move faster if I put the bat away but fuck that noise. I can see miles in every direction, but there are rocks and hollows and anything could pop up at any minute and I cannot express the extent to which I'm not okay with that. I could probably also make better time if I didn't keep stopping every few seconds because of the noises out here. It's quiet, but there's these sounds that...I don't know. And then there's the lack of sounds. No machines. No pipes. I don't like it. This isn't home.
But I guess the vault isn't anymore, either.
Suddenly, the jumpsuit I'm wearing feels like a relic of a childhood I've just outgrown.
It takes a while, but I get there. I move carefully round the outside until I find what looks like a way in. A robot chirps at me - LOUDLY. I don't know what I say to it. I don't know if I say anything. The doors are big and heavy and it hits me that I'm going to have to butch up, massively, if I'm going to survive for ten minutes out here.
What hits me first is the smell. It smells of people, all pressed together in one small space, in a way the vault never did. You could smell that kind of thing at parties, and at assemblies, but here it's magnified a hundredfold, and this is every day, this is life, this closeness and craziness, and how the hell am I going to survive out here? The structure of the place is intense, and that's what I notice next. It's like nothing I've ever seen, in a book or out of it. The whole town - city? - is cobbled together out of metal and scrap, and it hits me that this is what people can achieve. More than vaults, more than learning, they can achieve survival.
And that's what my life is gonna have to be now. Survival.
I notice all of a sudden, now I'm done staring at the place, that someone is closing in on me. He's big, broad shouldered, and he lifts the brim of his hat and says, "Welcome to Megaton!"
And I pass out, because he doesn't have a face.
*
Skinless 1b/?
Date: 2012-05-02 10:15 pm (UTC)But when I say this guy doesn't have a face, I mean, like, he doesn't have a face. I can see his eyes and he seems to have...an eyelid and no, there's no nose and I can see the muscles in his jaw moving as he smiles at me. Like, I can see them tense and tighten because there is no skin covering them. I have no idea what I've walked into here. I have no idea if this is okay. I realise, for the first time, that I could have just walked into a settlement of cannibals here and not realised it at all.
I take a shaky breath, and sit up.
He looks friendly, does the faceless man. He's got a duster on and a big star pinned to his jacket, the kind that they wore in the Old West to mark out the Sheriff. He's smiling, and he's holding his hands up, and I guess if he wanted to eat me or kill me he would have done it when I was unconscious, instead of putting me to bed and sitting patiently waiting for me to wake up.
I exhale, and think maybe I'm ready to deal with this.
"I just got out of a vault," is what my brain decides to run with as an opener. My voice is somewhere between crackly and squeaky, and I touch my throat. I hadn't realised how thirsty I was.
The faceless guy's smile stays in place. "Figured as much," he says, with a meaningful glance at my jumpsuit. "I'm guessing that's why you seem so shocked right now. Can't imagine they have many ghouls down in those places."
"Ghoul?" Even as I say it, I figure out it's the name for whatever this man is. But the name and the person before me don't connect up, so I let him keep smiling understandingly, and carry on.
"I'm Lucas Simms," he says. "Let me tell you a little bit about the Capitol Wasteland."
*
Alright then.
So, ghouls.
Huh.
Who’d have thunk?
*
Oh wow okay that water is really irradiated. Blegh. Ugh.
God, this is really...the world. This is America, isn’t it?
This is what’s left.
*
I never realised...I never thought...
Life in the vault – the whole vault itself – it’s just been...my whole life. Manufactured, structured. And out here, there’s dirt and sky and night time and sunlight and everyone looks so thin.
And these guys...
These are the ones the radiation helps.
What’s it like out there?
*
Okay, okay, so call me sheltered, but it’s a lot to take in, you know? Lucas is gone and I’m pretty beat. My Pip-Boy’s telling me it’s only something like 2pm outside but it feels like I’ve been awake all night. I guess, not counting my prima donna fainting spell, I kinda have. Since Amata woke me up, things have been...
Yeah.
I’m just sitting here looking at my hands. I know what ghouls are, now, and I know how many of them there are. I keep wondering if, you know, if that’s going to be. In a month. In a year. If my skin’s gonna come off and my hair’s gonna fall out and...am I going to ghoulify?
Look, call me a bigot, whatever (yeah, Lucas explained that little unsavoury part of the wastes, too) but I don’t want to...change like that. I like my skin. I’ve had it all my life. It’s this crazy shit spinning through my head, because every time I think how much I don’t want to start turning into a ghoul, I start thinking about how probably Lucas didn’t exactly have his heart set on it, either. Or anyone.
He told me he had always wanted a kid. A son. Ghouls are infertile.
He told me he would have named him Hardin.
This is a pretty shitty world, and I don’t know why I think I expected anything different.
That’s the thing, I guess. I didn’t expect anything.
I never expected to have to find out.
*
Skinless 1c/?
Date: 2012-05-02 10:18 pm (UTC)...I don’t have any money. Great.
Well, opportunities don’t come to those who sit on their asses and contemplate the theory of going outside. I get up, head outside, and pretty much head butt the chest of a man coming in the opposite direction.
I blurt out “ow!” because apparently I’m a precious little cherub who can’t take a bump to the head in stoic silence. The guy steps back a little, his hands coming up to steady my shoulders. I don’t know if I see his face or his hands, first, but it’s enough – this guy has skin. He’s human. He’s like me.
“Careful there, lass,” he says, his words rolling out in a pleasant accent I’ve never heard. “Don’t want to wind up knocking yourself out again!”
Oh so apparently news travels fast in Megaton. But I like that he says knock yourself out like I didn’t just swoon into the radioactive dust. It means either Lucas is telling the story that way to save me face (good) or this guy is pleasant enough to overlook that and treat me like I’m not a freak (still good).
“I’m Carla,” I say, sticking out my hand. “I just got out of a vault.”
I decide right then that until I find my feet, that’s going to be my standard greeting. Let people know what kind of idiot they’re up against.
The guy takes my hand. He’s big, broad. Looks older than my dad, with a white beard and his hair all slicked-back. His grip’s firm and reassuring, and he smiles. “Colin. I work at the saloon.” He gestures vaguely behind him, and I nod enthusiastically. Colin. Human. Good.
“Thought I’d come by and see how you were doing,” he continues. He leans forward conspiratorially, and adds, “thought ya might like to see a familiar face, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” I say, with no little relief. I’m so glad. Him saying that, it kind of makes me feel less...weird? I mean, about not being totally...comfortable with the idea of ghouls. Yet. “Yeah. I walked into Mr Simms and just...” I wave my hand ineffectually. He gets it, I’m sure.
His smile widens. He’s friendly, he’s nice. And something about his accent is just really comforting. I keep getting the weirdest feeling I’ve heard it before, too, like when I was a kid. Maybe on an old holotape or something. His grip on my hand changes and he holds it like he’s guiding me, and says, “Fancy letting an old man like me show you round the place?”
“Sure,” I say. Lucas had offered, but amidst the whole ‘most of humanity are now skinless mutants who live for centuries and treat irradiated ponds like hot tubs’ speech I guess the idea kind of got buried. Colin releases my hand and leads my outside and away from the barracks, into the afternoon light of Megaton.
My second look at the city is even more impressive than the first. Now that I can see how different things are, the idea of this place being built from nothing is even more incredible. Colin begins to point out the sights, and that’s when I notice the bomb.
Skinless 1d/?
Date: 2012-05-02 10:20 pm (UTC)“That’s a bomb,” I croak, eventually. “Is it...active?” He nods. I feel sick.
“Keeps us safe,” Colin says. I’m about to tell him I’m really not seeing it, but he carries on. “Not many people out to raid you when there’s that sitting in the middle of your yard.”
“Yeah, they’ll just sit back and let the bomb do its work!”
I must be getting a bit loud, because Colin tugs my sleeve and begins to mutter into my ear. It sound like nonsense at first, but then I realise that he’s serious about there being a cult in town that worships the bomb. It starts to make more sense to me when I realise that, oh, wait, this town is filled with people for whom radiation is a pleasant glow. As long as it doesn’t explode...
Yeah, I don’t really feel better.
But Colin is already pulling me on, pointing out houses and waving at people he seems to know. Most of them are ghouls. In the whole tour, I see two, maybe three human being. The rest of the town has changed. By the time we stop outside the saloon, I’ve seen more internal anatomy than I thought I’d ever see short of taking up my dad’s work, and learnt that if I need caps “Moira pays fair” but will “probably send me to a gruesome and untimely death”. I’ve also learnt “never ask Nathan to tell you more about the Enclave”, but that was a lesson taught the hard way.
“And here we are,” Colin says, running the last two words together, like 'wehar'. “Home sweet home.”
“You live here as well?” I ask him.
Something in his face turns a little bitter. “Where else?” he asks. Yeah, there’s definitely something angry and cold in his tone.
“What do you mean –“
He cuts me off. “I’ll take you in to meet the boss and a few of the locals. Just...don’t piss him off, okay? He seems friendly, but...” He puts a hand on my shoulder, heavy with warning. “Just trust me okay, lass?”
I nod. “I won’t piss your boss off, Colin," I promise.
He grins. “Good girl. Shall we?”
And with that, he pushes the door to the saloon open.
Re: Skinless 1d/?
Date: 2012-05-02 10:36 pm (UTC)Re: Skinless 1d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-03 12:37 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 1d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-04 05:34 am (UTC) - Expanda!a
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-06 10:53 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 1d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-04 07:01 am (UTC) - Expanda!a
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-06 10:54 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 1d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-05 08:11 pm (UTC) - Expanda!a
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-06 10:55 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 1d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-06 07:55 am (UTC) - Expanda!a
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-06 10:52 pm (UTC) - ExpandSkinless 2a/?
Date: 2012-05-08 01:16 pm (UTC)But it is, now, and I’m not fucking ready for that, okay?
The bar seems, like, maybe half full? It’s mostly ghouls, but I can pick out a couple of people who seem pretty intact. There’s a guy loitering near the bar, and a blonde sitting by the stairs. Oh, and there’s another guy, sitting in the shadows and not looking at all ominous. After that? It’s me, and Colin.
A ghoul peels itself away from the counter and saunters forward. I don’t know if it’s the walk, the way the few remaining strings of red hair fall or the breasts, but I know it’s a woman. When she talks, her voice rasps a little differently to Lucas’.
“Colin,” she says, sinking into a hip. “Where’ve you been? We’re getting busier.”
Colin flashes her a smile. “Just meeting the new girl, Nova, dear. Thought she’d like to visit us here.”
He gestures towards me, and I raise a hand awkwardly. “Hi,” I say.
The woman – Nova – tilts her head and regards me critically. I’m about to decide whether to start feeling annoyed or nervous when she smiles, a twisted, mostly lipless thing. She holds out a hand and I take it without hesitation. The last thing I want is for these guys to realise how unsettled I am by all this shit. There is nothing in my last nineteen years I can reach for to help me deal with this place.
Nova’s grip doesn’t feel as slimy or squishy as I thought. Her hand is rough, and the texture of muscle is weird as fuck under my hand, but it’s not bad. That, right there, takes a little of the panic out of me. It’s like shaking hands with Stanley, only...more. Everything out here is more.
“She’s new to the wastes,” says Colin, and I wonder briefly if he wants to make that more cryptic. Nova casts an eye over my jumpsuit.
“You don’t say?” Her rasp is dry, but friendly. She drags me forward, away from Colin (who’s already started feeling like my only lifeline here) and up to the bar. “I’ll get you a drink, on me. Gob, slide me a couple of Nukas, we’ve got a new smoothskin.”
Someone straightens up from behind the bar. The guy, who I assume is Gob, who I assume is Moriarty’s boss, looks even more incomplete than the other ghouls I’ve seen here. Something about his bearing and the look in his cloudy eyes strikes me as different, too. He looks more...in command. He looks older. He’s holding two bottles of Nuka Cola, which he sets down and cracks open. He passes one to Nova and slides the other one in front of me before speaking.
“Sit down, smoothskin. Let’s you and me get to know one another.”
I take a seat at the bar, obediently. I can’t shake the feeling that this guy has some kind of seniority here, so I figure it’s a good idea to sit and listen. I feel someone draw up behind me, and look round to see Colin at my shoulder. He looks guarded, uncertain. When he sees him, Gob’s face hardens.
“Moriarty. Toilet needs cleaning, isn’t that your job?”
Something closes off behind Colin’s eyes. “Yes, boss,” he says, and yeah, there’s definitely resentment in his voice.
Something’s going on here, but I haven’t the faintest idea what questions to start asking, or to who.
“He, uh, he brought me here,” I say, hoping maybe it will excuse his absence. If Gob is as much of a hardass as Colin said, I don’t want his goodwill coming crashing down on his head. “He was showing me around the town.”
“Yeah, I bet he was.” Gob casts a look after Colin as he disappears into a room behind the bar, and for a second, something very ugly flashes in his eyes.
Skinless 2b/?
Date: 2012-05-08 01:23 pm (UTC)Gob leans on the bar, smiling, that glint of ugliness gone. “Yeah, everyone I ever met out of a Vault had some story about leaving. Some fairytale of what they expected to find out here. What about you, kid?”
“I...didn’t really get much of a choice in the matter,” I begin. “I woke up – got woken up – really early this morning by my friend, and then Vault security was after me, and then –“ I break off. I remember the feeling of the bat in my hands; the wood, the weight, the way you have to swing it different when you’re hitting down, and I remember not stopping. I really, really remember not stopping. “I killed O’Brian. With a bat. And I got out of there. Amata – my friend – she said it was because of my dad. That the Vault wasn’t supposed to be opened, but my dad had opened it, that he’d gone –“
I can’t make it any further. It hits me, all of a sudden, how homeless and aimless and orphaned I suddenly am. I went to sleep safe, figuring what happened today was going to be the same as any other day, and now...
Gob is frowning at me. “Your dad left the Vault last night? What is he, tall guy, greying hair, lab coat?”
I feel my jaw drop. “Yes. Yes! That’s him. Did you see him? Is he here? What happened? Why did he leave?” I launch forward, grabbing Gob’s wrists. “Where’s my dad? Tell me!”
Gob raises what’s left of his eyebrows and slips his hands away from me. I feel Nova’s hand on my back, guiding me down into my seat. I try to relax. Shouting at these guys is not going to help anyone.
But the suddenness of it, of my realisation that I’m not completely cut off out here, is incredible. Dad. I can find him. I can make things right.
“Please,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “Please, Gob, Nova. He’s the last thing I’ve got left.”
“He came through here,” Gob confirms, and my heart gets knocked up to somewhere in the region of my throat. “He was here last night, stayed just a couple of hours. He only came into the Saloon for a few minutes, just to ask if we had any Stimpacks. I sold him the ones we had in, and he left.”
“Do you know where he went? Did he say what he was doing?”
Gob shook his head. “It must have been after midnight. Bet most people didn’t even see him. He asked where else was open, and I told him, maybe the Brass Lantern, but he said he’d been there.” He sighs, scratches his neck. He looks honestly remorseful when he says, “I’m sorry. He only stuck in my mind ‘cause we don’t get many smoothskins around. If I’d known he’d drag his kid out here after him, I’d have tried to make him stick around.”
I can feel myself visibly sag. “So you...you’ve got no idea where he went?”
“I’m sorry, kid.”
I drop my head into my hands. For a second, I thought I’d had something. A plan. A chance. How the fuck am I going to survive out here, what am I going to do?
“Wait, hang on. Didn’t Moira stay open late last night?”
I sit up. Nova is frowing, pressing a hand to her head like she’s trying to remember something. “Gob. Is it tonight or was it yesterday? She got some...samples, something, I don’t know, she said she was going to work through the night so if we needed anything...”
Gob snaps his fingers. “You know, she did. He mighta gone there. That’s it, then, kid, you wanna check with Moira.”
“Moira?”
Nova stands up. “She works at Craterside Supply, just round the corner. I’ll take you there now, okay? We can see if she met your old man.”
I get to my feet, nodding. “Yeah. That would be – that’s great. Thank you so much.”
Gob picks up the untouched Nuka Colas and gives Nova a half critical, half amused look. “I’ll just hang onto these, then.”
She laughs, and grabs the sleeve of my Vault suit. I’m already getting okay with the touching, I notice. “Thanks, Gob. C’mon, kid – hey, what’s your name?”
“It’s Carla,” I say, as she hauls me towards the door. “I’m Carla.”
*
Skinless 2c/?
Date: 2012-05-08 01:27 pm (UTC)Moira (who is, surprise surprise, a ghoul) emerges from someplace around the back, and smiles the widest I think I’ve seen anyone ever smile. Her accent’s weird, not weird like Colin’s, but weird, as she blurts out a string of ‘hellos’ and rushes forward.
She grabs my hand. Nova squeezes my shoulder reassuringly and I figure this is normal behaviour for Moira. She studies my hands and while she does, I study her. She still has most of her hair, and her skin isn’t as badly peeled off as Nova’s, and nowhere near as badly as Gob’s. Maybe...maybe it affects people differently? It doesn’t affect everyone, I know that much, but...
There is so much more to know here before I even start feeling comfortable with it.
Moira’s eyes reach my face and she lets out a little yelp of recognition. “Oh! Are you James’ little girl?”
I practically yank my hands out of hers in shock. “Yes! James, my dad, was he here? Do you know him?”
“He came in last night!” she tells me chirpily. “I sold him a few supplies and he asked a few questions. Said he noticed there were a whole lot more ghouls out here than he remembered! I guess things change in twenty years, huh?”
I blink a couple of times, like that’s going to clear up my ears or something. But I can’t be hearing this right. “No, you must have got him wrong. He’s never been out here before.”
Moira looks confused. “I don’t know about that. He seemed to know his way around things out here, wasn’t shocked to see the state of us here or anything. He remembered Mr Moriarty back from before things started changing, and –“
“Wait.” I hold up my hand, my mind reeling. Dad left the Vault? Dad knew Colin? Why hadn’t he, why hadn’t Gob -? “Slow down, Moira. My dad – he knew Colin? Colin Moriarty, right?”
She nods. “Yup, that’s who brought him in here to see me. I sold him some supplies, filled him in on what the traders told me about some of the settlements nearby.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Please, please let him have said where he was going.
“I think he was going up to Galaxy News Radio. It’s in DC, though, and I did worry about him getting there safely. He told me he’d be fine, though, seemed awful sure about it so I just left him to go on his way!”
I’m out the door before Nova can stop me. Maybe I’m being rude, maybe I’m losing my mind, but I don’t care. The saloon’s not far, and I’m up the ramps and inside before she can catch up with me. Colin is by the back wall, and Gob’s behind the wall.
“You spoke to my father? You knew him?”
Colin looks up as I get close, looking surprised. “Your father?” His face is blank, and then, suddenly, lights up with realisation. “James? James is your father?”
“Someone else was here from the Vault and you didn’t think to tell me?” I can hear my voice rising in pitch, and feel myself losing it. I feel betrayed. I’ve got no idea why I’m latching onto this so strongly – maybe because he’s human, maybe because he was kind – but I feel sick and angry and stupid. “You knew him?”
“Hey, calm down,” Gob says, and I feel his hands on my shoulders. I shrug him off sharply. Calm down? In the last twelve hours, I’ve been abandoned by my father, become a murderer, lost the only place I’ve ever called home, found myself in a town full of zombies and been hit in the face with what is starting to feel like a really unpleasant truth. Calm is just about the last fucking thing I’m feeling. I wheel on him.
Skinless 2d/?
Date: 2012-05-08 01:32 pm (UTC)Gob holds up his palms. “No. What the fuck, no. We told you what we knew, Nova and me. But kid, calm down, or –“
“Stop telling me to calm down!” I shove him away, so very aware of how much of a tantrum I’m throwing right now, but not caring. Everyone is staring at me, the whole bar, a dozen pairs of cloudy eyes and how dare they, how dare anyone in this town of freaks stare at me and judge me and treat me like an idiot, it’s not my fault, I never chose my life –
My feet are working of my own accord, and when my head clears from the rage building up in my brain, I’m glad of it. I’m running, and before I know it, I’m at the doors. I get through as quick as possible, out into the wastes, and I run, and I run, and I run.
Twenty years ago? That would mean I wasn’t born in the Vault. That it wasn’t home. That he lied my whole life. What about my mother? Is she even dead?
He left. Like hell he thought I’d be safe, how could he leave me there, with people who tried to kill me?! He told me nothing about what it’s like out here, never had the balls to own up to whatever it is that’s the truth of this whole pile of shit, and now, now...
I don’t know where I’m going. It’s stupid, suicidal. But I’m angry, I’ve spent so many years angry and penned in with nowhere to go, and now it feels like every atom of rage is pouring out of me, thundering into the ruins under my feet. Every time Butch and his cronies made fun of me, every time I felt left out or odd or broken, every rule, every refusal, every wall of my tiny little fake world – everything is just crashing, crashing, crashing.
I run and run until I can’t breathe anymore, and then I collapse, in the shell of an old house, and I just cry.
Skinless 3a/?
Date: 2012-05-16 12:53 pm (UTC)*
I wake up in darkness. The first thing that hits me is that I don’t remember falling asleep, and the second thing is that falling asleep was probably a terrible, awful idea. I’ve got no idea where I am, no idea how far or in which direction I ran, I can’t see for shit, I’m thirsty as hell, and there are noises coming from all around.
I’m an idiot. I’m a fucking, stupid, shitty idiot. What the fuck did I think I was doing, running off into the middle of nowhere? Jesus, I deserve whatever’s coming to me, now, I’ve acted like a total brat and this is where it’s gotten me.
My mouth is dry, my legs and arms are killing me, and my back feels like someone’s been kicking it all day. It occurs to me how fucking lucky I am to have woken up at all. I don’t know what’s out here, but I know it’s not good.
I look at my Pip-Boy, and I’m both gratified and a little unhappy to see I didn’t make it very far away from Megaton. I felt like I’d been running for hours, but the town seems pretty close. I zoom in, trying to get a better approximation of where I’ve ended up. My mouth is as dry as the dust I’m sat on, and I suddenly realise how much light my Pip-Boy is giving off. I turn the light off, and tuck it against my chest.
The clock told me it was a little after midnight. There’s hours to go before dawn, and if I don’t know what I’m doing out here in daylight, I’m dead meat at night. This was a stupid, stupid, stupid idea.
I’m going to die out here tonight, not twenty four hours out of the Vault.
Fuck.
Fuck everything.
I curl up into myself, drawing up as close to the broken-down wall as I can. There’s a little shelter here, at least, and it must be worth something because I’m not dead yet.
My stomach growls, loudly. Shit. I haven’t eaten since dinner last night. I was way too confused, in Megaton, to even think about it. And now, now...
I put my head between my hands. I’d cry, if I felt like there was any water left in me to spare, but I bite my lip to keep the noises in.
I’ll wait for morning. That’s my best chance. If I’m not dead by then...
*
Shit. I fell asleep again. My head is spinning and my tongue is like sandpaper. I’m shivering – crap, I’m freezing. Somewhere along the way, I’ve ripped the left arm of my jumpsuit to shreds. I can see dried blood on my skin. I feel so out of myself all I can think of is maybe if I licked it up, it might give me some energy. Be like food. But I can’t bring myself to twist my head down.
I chance a look at my Pip-Boy.
It hasn’t even been an hour.
*
I keep dropping off and I’m starting to wonder if it’s too soon to die of exhaustion. The idea of just curling up here, letting everything go, makes me sick, but it just seems so easy. The world, the future, stretches out like...like...
*
I jolt awake to the sound of gunshots and crashing. I cry out, and I’m so lucky because my throat’s so dry and I don’t make any noise, can’t do something stupid like draw attention to myself.
I’ve never heard a gunshot before, not a real one, but there’s no way this sound could be anything else. There’s the distant sound of cheering, except, shit, it isn’t so distant. It’s getting closer. I shrink back into my corner. I can hear clicking, scuttling, and I think bug. It sounds huge. It sounds close. Oh my God, I think I can smell –
Suddenly, it’s in view. It’s this giant, shining thing, with claw and a stinger and oh God, it looks like a scorpion, but it’s so big. I mean, I mean –
It scuttles away, a bullet twanging into the concrete next to it, feet away from me, and this time, my scream hits the air.
The scorpion notices me. The guys with guns start making new noises, and I know that they’ve noticed me, too. Adrenaline floods me, and even though it’s stupid, even though it’s insane, even though those people out there have guns, I’ve only got one choice left.
Run.
Skinless 3b/?
Date: 2012-05-16 12:57 pm (UTC)I’m going to die.
I’m up, I’m up. The first shot at me misses, goes so wide I can’t help but think it was supposed to. A sick, dark feeling settles in my stomach and it hits me that death isn’t the worst thing that could be about to happen to me.
This time, pure fear and adrenaline get my legs working. I’m clumsy as shit, blundering out into the open like all I want to do is end myself, but I’m going forward, forward, and that’s good. The scorpion is behind me, latching on to this new unarmed target. Shoot at that thing, I pray desperately. Shoot at that thing.
A bullet catches me in the leg and I go down. I scream, my vision going white. I have never felt this much pain. It’s like burning, like tearing, and I can feeling the hot and metal of a bullet wedged in there, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, and my vision clears and all I can see is pincers and carapace and –
More bullets, and I don’t think I’ve stopped screaming yet. The scorpion slumps. Shit, shit, stop making noise, get up, come on, Carla, come on.
I stagger up, but there’s no way my leg is taking me anywhere. I collapse back down in agony as soon as I try to put any weight on it, and in moments, they’re on me. There’s three of them, all wearing masks or bandanas. I can’t make out their faces, but their hands, their hands I recognise. They’re ghouls.
One of them rasps dryly; something like a laugh comes out. I feel sick and scared and dizzy and I can fucking feel the blood leaking out of me. My brain feels like it can’t decide whether or not to give up or hold on – I’m shitting myself at the thought of passing out, not being able to fight back, but fuck, what can I do?
Oblivion – unconsciousness – it might be better...
Someone grabs my shoulder, dragging me. I cry out as they pull, hard, and I feel something click and crack. Something hits me around my face.
“Shut up, bitch!” someone hisses. Another voice laughs. The guy holding my shoulder pulls me again. I choke on something – words, air, dust, I don’t know – and go limp, dropping onto the dust and rubble as he drops me.
I see a foot coming towards my face, and –
*
I am sick. I am shaking.
I can’t feel the whole left side of my body. My lips are cracking. My throat is dry and tight.
It’s dark and I can’t see much. I can feel that I am tied, bound. Every piece of feels empty and strung out and scared.
Someone notices I’m awake. A face drifts in front of me. It occurs to me how low my tolerance for pain is, and I kind of wish I would just die.
The guy is smiling toothily, and then he slaps me. That jolts me, just enough, into working out what’s going on.
There are three of them. They have guns. They’re wearing leather – metal? – some kind of armour, spiky, heavy duty. All ghouls. They look cruel. They are laughing. I think it’s at me.
“Ready for some fun, smoothskin?” growls the guy in front of me. My whole world suddenly focuses in on him – his smell, his face, the glint of the knife in his hand.
I think I’m all out of pain to feel, and then the knife digs into my cheek.
I’m screaming again when he says something about taking off my face and bringing me down a peg or two. I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything about the fire of the line being drawn down my face.
I close my eyes, my throat is raw. I don’t see it when it happens.
Skinless 3c/?
Date: 2012-05-16 01:00 pm (UTC)The newcomer closes in on me. I don’t know whether to beg or offer thanks, I don’t know if this is going to be any better. My stomach goes tight and he draws a syringe, stabs it into me.
My vision swims, and I know I’m going out again.
*
I regain consciousness for what will, I hope, be at least a slightly longer period this time, and find myself in a bed. This is a definite improvement. I’m not tied up, and I feel...better? Not great - shit, I feel so far from fucking great right now – but better. I don’t...I don’t think I’m bleeding, or dead, and right now that seems pretty fucking incredible.
I’m inside a house, by the looks of it, in a bedroom. There’s a ghoul by the window, and he turns round when he hears me moving. Relief hits me hard when I recognise him.
“Gob!”
“Good, you’re awake.” He sounds almost as relieved as I do. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that, kid?”
I agree with him completely. “Yes. Yes. Oh my God, Gob, thank you, was that you? In the – in the place, with the people -?”
He moves over and motions me back into bed. He pulls up a chair and passes me a bottle of water. “Drink this, before you keel over. Yeah, that was me. You know what those guys were going to do to you, smoothskin?”
My hand flies up to the cut on my cheek, which I immediately regret. It hurts like a bitch, but at least it’s not bleeding. “They were going to cut me up. Cut my face off.”
Gob laughs. It sounds like gravel, and it's bitter, but it’s not cruel, not frightening, like the other ghouls’ had been. “They were gonna do worse to you than that, kid. It’s a war out there.”
I tighten my grip on my water. It was something I’d tried not to let cross my mind while I was out there, but shit...
I unscrew the top of the bottle. “Where are we?”
“Near Andale,” he says, as I drink. The water goes down without touching the sides. It’s the best goddamn thing I’ve ever tasted. “And we’re not gonna be getting any closer. The people there are...well, I’ll tell you some other time. Didn’t think you’d make it this far.”
I set the (empty) bottle down, and check my Pip-Boy, frowning. I am...a lot further south that I remember being. Like, a hell of a lot. I show Gob my Pip-Boy, and point at a spot much closer to Megaton. “That’s where I got to. When the...when they...”
“Raiders,” he tells me. “Can you scroll down a bit?”
I do, and he points at the screen. “That’s where I caught up with you. Fairfax. Fucking hive of them. If I hadn’t had a couple of Stealth Boys Moira gave me, we both would’ve been toast. This was the closest safe place I knew to take you. Well. Safe as this part of the wastes gets, I suppose.”
I struggle to sit up. Gob makes a sceptical ‘take it easy’ face, but I make it. “You came after me? Why?”
The look turns from sceptical to disbelieving. “You think we’d have let you run out there to die?”
“I...I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know any of you. I just – I blew up, I guess.” I shake my head in disbelief. “I don’t know what happened to me. I’m not normally...”
Gob puts his hand, gently, on my shoulder. Luckily, it’s not the one that fucker had been yanking on. “You’re not normally chucked out of your home into the Wasteland, either. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Yeah, exactly. Think I want the gruesome death of a nineteen year old Vault kid on my hands just because we didn’t catch you before you ran out the door?” He shakes his head. “No thanks.”
“But...you don’t know me.”
He sits back. “It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened to a kid out here. There’s not a lot of goodwill going round, either. Figured you could use a break.”
Skinless 3d/?
Date: 2012-05-16 01:02 pm (UTC)“Soon as you’re patched up enough, we’re taking you back to
Megaton. I think you’ve done enough adventuring for now.”
I feel like an idiot, but a relieved, safe, alive idiot. I couldn’t ask for much more.
“Thank you,” I tell him again, earnestly. “Thank you.”
Gob shrugs. He puts another bottle of water and a can of something called Pork n Beans on the table next to me. “I’m going downstairs to keep watch. Eat that, drink that, rest up.”
He stands up, casting a shadow across me. It occurs to me that no one’s really saved my life before. Life-saving seems to be a thing that generally goes on out here, and now everything I do, every day I make it, it’s all going to be down to him.
I’ve got no idea how you even start repaying a debt like that.
He heads downstairs, leaving the door to my room ajar. The food isn’t bad, and the water’s still a relief. I’m hungry even after I finish, but I’ve got a feeling that’s going to be the standard state of affairs for quite a while. I’m calmer, now, and even though I ache all over it’s the kind of dull ache that tells me I’m already starting to heal.
I hear a low, happy bark from downstairs, and Gob’s gravelly voice making ‘hush’ noises. I guess the ‘we’ he mentioned involved a dog – or whatever counts as dogs out here. Even in the middle of nowhere, fucked up and bed-bound, I can’t help but be a little excited. I’ve always wanted a pet, and dogs...well. They’re frankly the fucking best.
I feel tired, but I’m unwilling to go straight back to sleep. I feel like I’ve got to make sense of everything that’s just happened, or I’m going to go crazy. So I just sit here, staring at my hands like I expect to see them suddenly sprout wings or something. I think about Megaton, and Gob, and the raiders. I think about what Fairfax and Andale might be like. I think about Amata and everyone in the vault. I think about my dad.
I’m not sure at what point I start crying again. It kind of hits me out of nowhere and suddenly I feel suffocated, drowning, trapped, because I don’t belong here and this is the world now, and what the hell am I supposed to do?
It gets dark. The room gets colder and I’m still crying. I’m shaking, I’m sobbing, and everything is turning over and over in my head –
After a while, I hiccup and stop crying. I don’t know what, but something has changed. I poke around my brain, looking for the sense of despair I’d just been feeling, the desperation. It isn’t there.
What is there, though, is a cold, empty feeling of desolation. Under the desolation, though, is something else, something hard and shining and defiant. I’ve never thought of myself as strong, and if you’d explained this situation to me a month ago I’d have assured you that I’d go to pieces and never pull myself together. But now, out here, in the dust and the dark with the taste of old, old meat in the back of my throat...
I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to go to pieces. I don’t want to keep crying, and faltering, and flipping out. I don’t want to need rescuing.
I want to survive.
It seems like the simplest, most primal thing in the world, so that’s what I decide to do.
*
Re: Skinless 3d/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-23 12:40 am (UTC) - ExpandSkinless 3e/?
Date: 2012-05-16 01:05 pm (UTC)“Yeah, sure you are, smoothskin. Maybe we’ll go take on the raiders left at Fairfax, huh, on our way. I bet the hole in your leg would love that."
“Don’t treat me like a kid,” I say, and yeah, I guess I’m kind of pouty about it.
He gives me a critical look. “Stop acting like one, then.”
Breakfast is potato chips and whisky. I pass on the whisky, and Gob shrugs in a way that suggests it’s my loss.
“I really do feel like I’m ready to get up, though,” I insist.
He rolls his eyes. “Kid – Carla, right? – you’re on three different drugs right now. You’ll be lucky if you don’t float away.”
“There’s gotta be something I can do.” I feel useless like this, sitting around, recuperating. I feel guilty for how boring this must be for Gob.
He frowns, like he’s considering something. “Few molerats nearby,” he says, at length. “Guess I can teach you how to catch lunch.”
I nod eagerly. I’m not entirely sure what a molerat is, but I’ve already decided I definitely want to learn how to kill it. Anything, anything to make me a little less pathetic than I am now. Next time raiders corner me in an abandoned house, I want to be able to strike back. I want to be able to defend myself. I want to kill them.
The thought shocks me as soon as it comes into my head. O’Brian’s bloody face flashes behind my eyes, and I feel a sudden lurch of sickness. Then I think of the raiders. I touch the scar on my cheek. It is raw under my fingers, and I don’t have time to be a kid anymore.
“That sounds great,” I say, pushing back the thin sheet on the bed.
My jumpsuit is a shredded, filthy mess. I look at it in dismay, and Gob laughs.
“Don’t worry, I picked something up while you were asleep. It’s old, won’t protect you much, but you’ll be much less of a target without a giant 101 on your back.”
He tosses me a pile of leather and cloth from the bag at his feet. It’s clunky, and smells of old sweat, but seems infinitely more durable and practical than my vault suit. I glance at Gob, and hesitate. After a second, he catches on.
“Oh, right. Guess you’re used to a little privacy where you come from.”
He steps outside the door, taking the whisky with him. I struggle out of my mangled suit and into the makeshift armour, a little perturbed at the idea that privacy while changing is now apparently quaint. I pick up my jumpsuit, and run my hands over the thin material.
I don’t know why, but out of nowhere it feels like taking this thing off...it feels like it’s been a long time coming.
I smooth it out on the bed, looking at its creases, its tears. There’s a stain on the back of one leg that precedes my swift and deadly exit from the vault. It’s ink. It’s been there for years. This was the first suit I grabbed when Amata woke me up, and it’s the oldest one I’ve got that still fits. I fold it carefully, reverently, and hold it to my chest. When I put it down, I feel like maybe, maybe, I’m ready to make a go of things.
“Decent yet, smoothskin?”
“Yeah. Yeah, come back in. Sorry.”
Gob closes the door behind him, and eyes my neatly folded jumpsuit.
“There’s space in the bag if you want to bring it home with us, kid.”
“Yeah, pleas,” I say, and pass it to him. He put it away and looks me in the eye.
“Come on then,” he says, sighing, resigned, but there’s a grin behind it. I like Gob, I decide. Life-saving and everything aside, I like him. “Let’s introduce you to the local wildlife.”
Re: Skinless 3e/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-19 09:49 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 3e/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-20 09:11 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 3e/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-21 04:01 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: Skinless 3e/?
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2012-05-22 05:23 am (UTC) - ExpandSkinless 4a/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:15 pm (UTC)-
I hate mole rats.
I hate them. I hate their disgusting, bulging bodies; I hate their stupid teeth; I hate their pathetic, beady little eyes. I hate the godawful noises they make and I hate their freakish feet. As long as I live, I shall never meet a thing I hate as much as mole rats.
The first time I caught sight of one, I was repelled by the idea that Gob expected me to eat these things. It was unbelievable. He held my elbows as I clutched at a pistol, tried to angle me right as the hideous, snuffling thing got nearer, but I couldn’t bring myself to aim right. If I killed it, I’d have to eat it.
Four more appeared as the first one approached, and Gob stepped back. He had a rifle in his hands, ready to clear the floor if he needed to. I levelled the gun uncertainly at the first rat, and the shot went wide.
It must have spooked it, though, because it started up with this revolting squealing and launched itself at me.
Until that moment, I had never been trapped under fifty-plus kilograms of stinking, irradiated, pink beast-flesh. Until that moment, I had never had the rotten breath of an abomination hot in my face as its creepy, angular teeth sought for purchase on my jacket. Until that moment, I had never made the decision to beat something to death with my bare hands.
I don’t know what it was that made me snap. Maybe it was the indignity. Maybe it was Gob, leaning casually to the side, like he knew this was no problem, like he could fix this no matter how bad it got. Maybe it was the idea that this thing – our lunch – was trying to make me lunch, and damn well might if I didn’t have company. I don’t know. But it gave me strength I had never had before, and I shoved it off me. I punched it in the face. I punched it in the head. I punched it in its stunted ears and misshapen mouth and stupid nose. I punched it and punched it and it squealed and writhed and then its skull gave way and I was up to my wrists in brain matter.
I had registered shots going off but hadn’t really thought much of it. The next thing I knew was Gob pulling me off, laughing, telling me it was over.
I am sat at a little fire outside the house we’re shacking up in. I am cooking the bastard rat’s meat on the little fire. I’m not disgusted by this meat anymore. I killed it. I took my dinner from my enemy’s cold, dead body, after I punched it to death. If these steaks take like vomit, I am still going to eat every bite and fucking savour it.
“Tonight I dine upon my fallen foe,” I tell him seriously, turning the spit of meat in the fire. He cracks a smile. A ghoul’s smile is a strange thing – twisted and flaking and mostly lipless – but on Gob, it’s friendly. Maybe I’m starting to get more used to things out here. I don’t really have a choice, so I sure hope so.
“You put on quite a show, smoothskin,” Gob says, through his cracked smile. “Never expected a fresh vaultie to put her fist through a skull.”
I laugh, and shake my head. Hell, I didn’t expect that, either. “I don’t know where the strength came from,” I admit.
“Maybe we can bulk you up. Get you punching like that all the time. If your track record with guns is anything to go by...”
I shoot him a fake-dark look. “Hey, barman, I’ve never even held a gun before today. I think I did damn well, considering.”
“This barman saved your ass,” he snorts. “You should have seen yourself, limping around out there, trying to work out how to fire the thing.”
“I got shot in the leg! You expect me to be running marathons?”
It’s nice, this easiness. Joking around, campfire cooking. It could almost be something out of a book, except in all the books I’ve ever read a guy who looked like Gob wouldn’t be sitting around swapping stories with the heroine. He’d be trying to eat her.
Skinless 4b/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:19 pm (UTC)I toss a dented tin at his head. I expect him to duck, but he catches it. “Careful,” he warns. “You take me out in a fit of teenage rage, who’s going to get you out of the back of beyond?”
“Maybe I’ll get myself out of here.” I’m posturing, but it’s fun. “Punch out anyone who tries to take me on.” I flex my non-existent muscles, and he laughs his raspy laugh.
“Oh yeah, definitely. I’d fucking love to see that, kid.”
The afternoon is cool and lazy, and the warmth from the fire is pleasant. Gob pulls the spit off the fire and examines the steaks. I guess they’re done, because he spears the spit into the ground beside him, leaving the meat to cool.
“How hungry are you?”
“Very,” I tell him. “Killing is hungry work.”
He gives me a wry little grin again. “You’re getting full of yourself.”
“Pfft.” It’s all bluster, and we both know it. But I think maybe I needed this, after everything – to kind of feel like I had some power back in my own hands. That I’m not completely useless.
“You’re learning to fire that pistol after lunch, though,” he says sternly. “I’m not heading north until you can shoot straight and walk without limping.”
He hands me a stimpack along with my steak, and I strap it into my leg. I can feel the relief almost immediately. The bullet wound hasn’t been hurting too bad, and the bullet itself came out yesterday, but there’s a dull ache that I haven’t been able to shift, and a weakness in my leg. I’m hoping a couple more doses will sort me out properly, maybe some Med-X on the road.
The mole rat meat is tough, leathery, and really weirdly fragrant. There’s an undercurrent of sourness, like perfume being used to cover up turned milk. But it’s meaty and most of the taste is charred away, and I killed it. Gob wrapped the choicest cuts from the other rats up to have later, or take with us. A girl could really get into this eat-what-you-kill kind of thing.
My hands are greasy when I finish. It’s a weird sort of thrill, having killed something, cooked its meat, and then ripped it apart with your bear hands and eaten it. It’s...well, it’s making me think more about what survival really means. About what matters out here, and the kind of skills I’m going to need. It makes me wonder about dad.
“I miss him,” I say, before I realise I’m voicing my thoughts out loud. Gob gives me a strange look over the remains of his meat.
“Your father.” It isn’t a question.
I nod, looking down at my hands. “Moira said...she made it sound like...” I’ve been trying not to think about it. I mean seriously, since leaving Megaton I’ve had other stuff on my mind. But it’s been there, lingering in the back of my mind. “My dad...she made it sound like he wasn’t always from the Vault.”
Gob watches me with milky eyes. He’s quiet for a few moments before he says, “Maybe he wasn’t.”
“That means maybe I wasn’t.”
“Then maybe you weren’t.”
It sounds so simple coming from his lips, but it isn’t. It isn’t. It makes everything a lie.
“Why didn’t Colin tell me?” I ask, more to myself than anyone else, so I’m surprised when Gob responds.
“Because Colin Moriarty is a piece of shit.”
I look up, surprised. The same dark look from the bar is back on his face, and for an instant, he looks terrifying. I don’t understand. “Colin was nice to me,” I say, suddenly aware of how weak the words sound. “He helped me. He looked after me...”
“If he was good to you,” Gob says, with thunder in his eyes, “you can guarantee he saw something for himself in it.”
I want to ask him why he keeps Colin around, then, or what it is that makes him come over so angry at the mention of him, but I get the feeling that it’s a conversation for another day. Or never, maybe.
Skinless 4c/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:26 pm (UTC)Gob dismisses the apology with a wave of his scarred and skinless hand. “Just take my word for it, kid. Don’t trust Colin Moriarty. I’d sooner see you try to bed a deathclaw.”
I don’t know what a deathclaw is, but I decide then and there I never want to find out.
My leg feels stronger when I rip the empty stimpack away. I stand up, testing it. It still shakes a bit if I put my weight on it too suddenly, but I pace around the fire, trying it out, and I can walk okay.
“Don’t push it,” Gob says. His voice is low and growling, more guarded than usual. “You’re going to need all the strength you’ve got back for the trek back.”
I nod and settle down, sitting next to Gob by the fire. It flickers weirdly in the early afternoon light. So much is grey out here. I look sideways at him. His jaw is tight, the mottled remnants of skin pulled taut.
“Do you want to head back out?” I ask, a little timidly. He turns a little and notices me watching him, and he visibly starts to relax.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s get back out there.” Gob pulls out the pistol I’d been attempting to use earlier and hands it to me. It’s heavy in my hands, heavy in a way a baseball bat isn’t. One side of it is warm where it’s been pressed against his hip.
He gets up and offers me his hand. I take it, feeling the difference between us as he helps me to my feet. I drop my weight onto my leg wrong and stumble a bit, my foot twisting underneath. Gob steers me upright by my elbow, rolling his eyes. A little of his good humour is returning.
“Jeez. I give you about a week out here smoothskin, I swear to God.”
I grin up at him sheepishly. “I’ll try to save my strength,” I promise.
“You better. Hell if I’m dragging my ass around the wastes just for you to drop dead the second my back’s turned."
*
Shooting doesn’t come easy. It doesn’t seem so impossible, now I’m not aiming at a weaving, hideous target screeching its way towards me, but it’s still not easy. Gob told me I’m shooting with a 9mm, and he said it sounding kind of exasperated so I guess this is supposed to be a pretty straightforward gun. But I can’t get used to feeling the recoil after I pull the trigger, and it’s loud, and sometimes that makes me shriek a little.
“I’ve seen kids shoot straighter than you,” Gob says wryly from behind me.
I scowl at him over my shoulder. So far, I’ve hit one of the ten targets he set up, and it hadn’t been the target I’d been aiming at. I know I am not good at this. I don’t need a snarky ghoul who’s probably been shooting longer than I’ve been alive quipping over my shoulder I mean I swear to God. This is hard, and I don’t like it, and every echoing, terrible shot is reminding me over and over again that this is the world I’m now, and it’s shoot or die.
I hate it.
“Maybe we should just load you up with a BB gun,” Gob says.
I turn to him in surprise. “Would that work? I can shoot a BB gun.”
His expression freezes into one of bewilderment, and then he bursts out laughing. Oh. It was a joke. I almost throw the pistol at him, but then I kind of realise that’s a massively bad idea and really dangerous and it would be so great not to be stuck out here on my own again. I’m hot and sticky and scared of the sounds the gun makes, and Gob is laughing at how pathetic I am.
The brightness of the sunlight and the sound of the gun and Gob’s incessant jibes are starting to get to my head. My ears are pounding and my vision’s swimming and maybe I should sit down. My thoughts are all running together, ugh. I put my non-gun hand on my forehead, shielding my eyes from the light. Shit, I’m not used to this. Stupid fucking Vault fluorescent lights making me think I knew what bright was. I hadn’t even seen bright.
Skinless 4d/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:33 pm (UTC)“I can stand straight,” I protest, and even as I’m saying the words I’m kind of wondering why I’m so insistent. I punched a mole rat to death this morning, which I don’t think is bad for a beginner with a busted leg, and I don’t really liked being treated like this fragile little thing. He’s not angry, he’s exasperated. He can’t get over how weak and terrible and useless I am.
“You’ve over-exerted yourself,” Gob insists, lifting one of my arms around his shoulders and tugging me to lean my weight on him. He’s warm, warmer than anybody I know. Maybe it’s a ghoul thing?
“You’re warm,” I tell him.
“You’re delirious,” he says.
Now, I really bristle at that. I’m not fucking delirious; I know what’s going on. Most people don’t burn up a temperature that high and fuck, I’ve probably got a bit of a fever going on right now so if I think he’s warm then he’s warm, okay? “Hey, listen,” I say, trying to push myself away from him to give him a good glare. “I’m not spinning out, alright? I get that I’m a fucking liability out here, but it would be nice if you could treat me like a person instead of shitty little doll you’ve got to drag around.”
Gob barks out a laugh that sounds oddly unpleasant for him. “Treat you like a person? Trust me, smoothskin, I’m treating you better than your kind ever treated me before –“
I push away from him, properly angry now. “My kind? What the fuck? You remember I’m just out of a Vault, right? I hadn’t even seen one of you before and I think I’m handling it pretty well, thank you, considering my whole world view’s just been –“
Gob freezes before he speaks. I can feel his grip on my shoulders tighten into ice.
“Oh, one of us, huh? Because we’re a different species or something, is that it? Ghouls are just you with a skin condition, Vaultie!” Gob steps back, fists clenched, and I realise too late that I’ve stumbled into something that is way, way bigger than just me and him. His voice and turned into something icy and blazing all at once. “And we’re supposed to be grateful – I’m supposed to be grateful that you stumbled out of your crappy little whole in the ground and deigned to accept us as living, breathing people?”
I’m in too deep to stop myself, though. I’ve always had a temper, always known it’s got me into trouble, but still – “Yeah, you’re a great bunch of guys, the last bunch of ghouls I ran into shot me, tried to rape –“
“That’s what the wasteland does to people, you idiot!” Gob throws his arms wide, motioning at the expanse of rubble and dirt and decay around us. “People out here die. They kill each other. They fuck each other’s shit up and it’s mostly just because they can! And can you imagine, can you even wrap your sheltered, teenage brain around the idea of what it’s like to be a ghoul in all that? To be a fucking untouchable in a world with no law? You think we get rights? Anti-discrimination laws? Or do you think we become target practice for any asshole with a gun?”
He is breathing hard and he steps forward now, closer, and there is a kind of pain behind his eyes that I am never going to know. “And now, things are changing. People are changing. Most of the smoothskins are ghoulifying and do you know what? They’re blaming us. So there’s a war on, kid, between old ghouls and new ghouls, only there are a lot who can’t tell who’s who, so everybody’s fair game. Do you understand that? You’re bitching me out about taking care of you, trying to stop you dropping dead in the dust, when if I hadn’t learned the stuff I know I probably would have been tortured to death by now?”
Skinless 4e/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:37 pm (UTC)It brings me back to the night they shot me and I go limp and stiff in his hands. My mind is blank with a sudden fear and something, something must have shown on my face because the anger’s seeping out of Gob’s. He steps back, lets me go, looks sick. Something wet on my arm. I’m bleeding. He stares at me in horror.
Self-preservation kicks in, even though rationally, I know I’m in no danger. I stumble back, turn, run, and Gob is shouting after me but I don’t think he’s following, and in my ears there’s just the echo of bullets and the grinding gears of Vault doors being opened and this high, white, piercing noise. My leg hurts badly and I realise it’s because I’ve taken the stairs two at a time; I’m back in my little room and I slam the door, lean against it, cry. I cry because I’m an idiot and because of everything that’s happened to Gob and because of the wasteland and because of my dad and because nothing, nothing, nothing is ever going to be alright again.
*
I stay in the room for the rest of the day. I don’t hear anyone moving downstairs. I’m hungry, but I’m frightened, too, and I feel safer up here, with the door closed, with a view from the window. The food’s downstairs, just downstairs, but I’m too chickenshit to even crack the door. I watch the sun setting through my broken little window, and crawl into bed.
I feel awful. I’m even hungrier, and I curl round myself in the dark and cold. The sweat’s dried onto me and there’s dust everywhere and I feel dirty, which wouldn’t be so bad except the dust makes me feel sick and I’m already queasy from not eating and for all I know Gob’s gone, and I’m alone out here, and I’m going to die in this room in ripped clothes with an empty stomach. I feel weak because I wrecked myself with hysterical crying, and I’m never going to see my dad again.
And I probably wasn’t even born in Vault 101.
Somewhere between all my self pity and exhaustion, I feel myself falling asleep. I breathe out, and just...let myself...
*
I jolt awake terrified because it’s and something’s moving downstairs and if it comes upstairs I’m probably going to die, but what if it’s Gob, I mean it’s probably Gob, but what if it’s not and is there a weapon here, there’s a broken lamp, I can hit with that but it’ll be no good against guns an my limbs are light and my head is spinning and I think I’m choking my throat is closing up and my heart is going to explode and it’s dark and I don’t know where I am and what if it is Gob and what if Gob wants me dead and I can’t see and I can’t breathe and
*
I haven’t had a panic attack since I was nine.
I have no idea what brought it on. Maybe it was the suddenness of the fear on top of the exhaustion. Maybe this attack has been coming for a while. Sometimes, I guess, it just happens. I am thinking straighter now, even if I am still shaking and my arms aren’t doing quite what I want and Gob has got his arms around me. What happened earlier was terrible and awful and we’re probably going to have to talk about it but he’s making shushing noises and patting my bag. It’s good to be held and I tell myself to just listen to his shushes and focus on that and breathe slower.
Skinless 4f/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:43 pm (UTC)My head is still reeling from way too much oxygen, and I hiccup, jolting in Gob’s arms. He shushes me again and I think he has as much experience comforting hysterical girls as I have with guns. But I realise I’m clinging to him, because he’s familiar and he’s on my side, and I’m still so out of my depth here. I want to go home, I want to go home.
The panic comes back, a new wave. I start hyperventilating again and I can feel Gob tense up, feel him have no clue what he’s supposed to do because people just deal with shit out here, they don’t get panicked about it, don’t start to breathe too fast, don’t flip out over noises and they don’t freak out all the time and they can shoot and they don’t try to alienate the only person who give a shit and they don’t deliberately starve themselves and they’re not stupid little girls who don’t know what’s going on and
“Stop it,” Gob says, and I think he’s angry and also sad and also uncertain and scared and sorry and it’s a lot of emotions and I can’t really handle that right now because who is this guy anyway. Who even is he?
I shake and breathe and Gob keeps saying stop it, stop it, but it’s not like a command, it’s a plea, a suggestion. And I don’t know because at first I want to hit him and say it’s not helping, but then suddenly, it is. Suddenly, it’s not about my panic attack.
Stop it.
Stop pitying yourself.
Stop it.
Stop blaming yourself, hating yourself, stop dwelling on everything
you’re not.
Stop it.
Stop thinking about how you can’t go home all the time.
Stop it.
Stop trying to be something you’re not – you’re not a hero, you’re not superwoman, you don’t know how to shoot, stop thinking that sort of thing will just happen. Stop thinking that because you can’t do it now, you’ll never do it.
Stop it.
Stop giving up.
By the time the panic passes, I am empty. Every last emotion has gone from me and I am calm in a way that isn’t right. But my head is clear and I realise for the first time that I shouldn’t be scared. The situation I am in is bad but I have a guide, a friend, someone to help me. And I’ve got someone else out here, my dad. I can find him. I can have a purpose.
Gob leaves abruptly. Part of me wonders if I should worry, if he’s upset. I can’t bring myself to stress about it though. I tell myself he’ll be back. I am calm in a way that isn’t right. I am fine to be here alone. If death comes, it comes.
This feeling will pass, and I think I’ll miss it when it does.
*
The feeling doesn’t pass. I wake up in the early morning light and I am at peace. I am worried, and scared, and hungry, and a whole lot of other things, but it’s like – it’s like they don’t permeate. They can’t get through. I feel them academically, intelligently, but they don’t reach down and twist my gut, make me sick. Except the hunger, I guess. I shift in bed, and Gob comes in so quickly he must have been waiting outside the door.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello.”
Things are a world different today than they were yesterday but nothing’s changed, so how do you go about saying that?
We both try to talk at the same time, and then we both stop. He holds out a chipped bowl of Mac’N’Cheese. It’s warm and heavy and good. My stomach rumbles. Gob sits down on the bed.
“I shouldn’t have hurt you. I scared you,” he begin.
“I shouldn’t have acted like an entitled little bitch,” I counter.
“I should have remembered you didn’t know about stuff out here.”
“I shouldn’t have acted like you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry I flipped out.”
“I’m sorry I panicked all over you.”
I am sorry he didn’t grow up safe in a Vault like me, and he’s sorry that the world he’s lived in has to be my world, too. I’m sorry I can’t understand him, and he’s sorry he can’t understand me. We don’t say that though.
Skinless 4g/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:47 pm (UTC)“Only if I can help cook dinner and lunch,” I barter. Gob concedes on that point. Bed is boring as hell, even with my newfound zen sense of peace.
Gob’s looking at me kind of oddly, like he can tell something’s different. I want to say something significant, something profound. I want to encapsulate his pain; I want to express my willingness to change; I want to tell him about the calm and the peace and this sense of silver determination that’s settling in my stomach.
There aren’t words for it, and I don’t know how to make my eyes say it for me.
“Thank you,” is all I can tell him. I hope it’s enough.
He confuses the hell out of me when he says, “Thank you,” back, and even more when he leans over and kisses me, just above the eye.
*
Dinner is mole rat, beans, and some kind of flat bread Gob seems to have spent most of the afternoon making. He folds the bread round the meat and beans, and hands it to me. The pot is full even after he’s served himself one, and I know I won’t be going hungry tonight. The meat’s as tough as I remember, but good. The beans and bread block out most of the off-milk flavour.
“Thanks,” I say eagerly, as he hands it to me, and that reminds me of the morning, and then I don’t really know what to do.
People don’t have huge fights and panic attacks and then kiss each other on the eye, I mean, what is that.
The sunset is lame tonight; just a darkening of the sky. The firelight sits between us, and I try to stop myself looking at Gob’s face illuminated, try to stop wondering what he looked like before he was a ghoul. What’s left of his hair is a pleasant kind of sandy colour, and he moves his hands deftly, precisely, in control of whatever he’s doing. But the set of his shoulders, the line of his neck – it reminds me of how my dad used to look whenever stuff was getting too much for him. It’s not the look the Overseer had, like he knew that the power was his and he was fine with it. Gob, like my dad, has the reluctant kind of bearing of a man who’s had to take charge when all he really wants to do is hold somebody’s hand and dream about the future.
Something doesn’t feel right about comparing Gob to my dad, though.
“We could get you a Power Fist,” Gob says, suddenly. “You seem to throw a pretty good punch. Train you up, build your strength, get you a glove with some weight behind it. You could look for a shooter to travel with, pair up for distance fights.”
“A Power Fist?” I ask, curious.
Gob holds up a clenched fist and gestures round it, indicating a large glove or something. “Yeah. These big, metal things, kind of like the Pip Boy you’ve got. Except not. They’re costly, but traders come through Megaton all the time and we give them a good deal on stuff, so we can probably find you one.” He thrusts his fist forward, and grins. It makes him look very young, and I realise he might have been my age when he started going ghoul, maybe just a bit older. Just a kid, like me. That might be the only human face he can remember having.
Skinless 4h/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:55 pm (UTC)Gob blinks a little at the sudden change of topic. But after a moment’s pause, he says, “Fifty-eight, I think.” Unbidden, he adds, “I was twenty-four when I started changing,” like he knew what I was thinking.
Fifty-eight’s pretty old, but twenty-four’s not. What stops when you change? What does it do to the body, to the brain? I have a hundred questions that had never occurred to me when I was frightened and repulsed.
But I’m neither of those anymore. I’m not unsettled by the scars and shapes of Gob’s face and arms now. It doesn’t make him a monster. It makes him a victim.
Except, everything is changing. More people are ghoulifying; something’s happening. And if what Gob said is true, the new and old are at war. Fifty-eight, and he’s already one of the old.
“Are you the oldest one in Megaton?” I ask.
He nods, shrugs, shakes his head. “No. Yes. I’ve been a ghoul longest. Moriarty’s older than me, Jericho, Lucas might be. Lucas was one of the first to turn of the new crowd. I met him when he was changing, fifteen years ago. That was when I left home – a place called Underworld, it was the original ghoul city out here. I was barely out the gates when these raiders attacked.” He laughs, shakes his head. Looks young again. He smiles up at me, bashful, and I can’t stop thinking twenty-four. “Fuck, I was green back then, kid. Worse shot than you. That would’ve been it for me – death or slavery, I reckon. Except Lucas came along. He shot ‘em down, looked after me. After a few days, he showed me where the skin was coming off his arm. Said he was frightened. Imagine it. He’s this big guy, sheriff’s coat like he’s some old cowboy, riding in like the goddamned cavalry and he’s telling me he’s frightened.
“He took me with him, back to Megaton. God, he was just a fucking kid then. Maybe I was, too. But it was happening all over. People were starting to flake, lose their hair, they were changing. It was like a fucking epidemic. People were terrified. A lot of ghouls...” He trails off for a second, blinking. I feel like he’s been waiting to tell this story for a long time. “A lot of ghouls were rounded up, killed. People thought it was contagious all of a sudden. Idiots. It was caused by something, that’s sure as the bombs fell, but it wasn’t us. Didn’t make a damned bit of difference.
“Can’t say why or exactly when it started happening, but after a while people started pouring into Megaton. New ghouls, you know? It was a town, a safe one, and between Lucas and me it was good for ghouls, old and new. We didn’t let anyone in who looked like they were gonna start trouble. We’ve never shut our doors to smoothskins, but a lot still feel uncomfortable round us. They don’t show up much, and when they do, they don’t stay for long. We’d made it a haven, and a lot of people, they didn’t like it. But the bomb means we don’t get attacked. People are scared shitless they’ll set it off – or we will, like we’ve got some big secret about it no one else knows. It isn’t safety, but it’s close. And it’s home.”
Skinless 4i/?
Date: 2012-07-14 06:59 pm (UTC)I have my dad, I tell myself. But there’s something else, too. Something about the injustice of all this, something about the way Gob described what happened fifteen years ago, something about it is boiling in my gut. I feel angry, I feel curious – I feel like there are answers and a solution out there, and I have this deep, incomprehensible feeling that I can find it, if I ask the right questions, if I look in the right places, if I try hard enough.
I look at Gob through the firelight again, and realise I haven’t said anything. He is framed in smoke and flame and more than thirty years of skinlessness, and he has been a part of building something, and now he is a part of keeping it alive. And he left that, walked away from his home, to look for me. To keep me safe.
It means something.
“Where do I fit into all this?” I ask, quietly. Why is he telling me his history? Why did he come after me? Why did he let me get him so angry, when I’m just this idiot kid? Why did he kiss me above the eye like it was something tender and significant, like I was something tender and significant? Why does he care?
Gob looks at me intently across the fire. “Before I came after you, Moira went to get Lucas. He came to the saloon and he told me about you. About your dad.”
My heart stops a little. “My dad?”
“Lucas didn’t say much. He said he was ‘important’. That if James had left the Vault, we had to find him. He could help. He’d work out what was happening, with us, with the ghouls.”
“You said you came after me ‘cause I was nineteen, a kid.” There’s this weird, cold feeling in my stomach. “That’s not it, though, is it? You came after me because of my dad.”
It’s always because of my dad.
Gob gives me a very hard look, and I realise I said that last bit out loud. When he speaks, he speaks slowly, like he’s choosing his words carefully, like there’s something at stake. “I didn’t come after you just because you were a kid,” he admits. “But it wasn’t your dad. I was set to go before Lucas came to see me. You want to know why?”
I nod.
He gives me this wry, sad smile, and he looks old this time, only there’s a still a bit of the young man there. It gives this weird sense that’s he’s looking back at himself, and his eyes are a very bright blue, brighter in the firelight. “Your eyes.” He laughs. “Can you imagine it? There was this look in your eyes like you were a dog that was about to die, but that wasn’t everything. You looked like –“ He pauses again, and rubs the back of his neck. “You made me think of me, the first time I left Underworld. Only I’d been older then, even if I was still a kid in all the ways that mattered. You were like me, only you were younger, you had even less of a clue than I did, and –“
I think he’s broken off for good this time. He looks embarrassed all of a sudden, shy, and he won’t move the hand from the back of his neck. For a second, his shoulders hunch in, and I see an image of a very different man. Then he straightens out again, and laughs.
Skinless 4j/?
Date: 2012-07-14 07:05 pm (UTC)“You were,” I say, before I can stop myself. Apparently my brain has decided to work again, only it’s decided it’s only going to work in bad holofilm lines. “You saved me. That makes you a hero to me.”
Oh God, I am thirteen.
Gob grins like between us, we’ve got the funniest joke in the world, but only the pair of us are in on it. “Who knows, smoothskin. The hero, the beautiful girl. Maybe we’re in a story book. A really shitty one, with radiation and no castles.”
I laugh, and smile at him, but something has changed. We are closer. I don’t look at his scars in fear now, and Gob thinks I am beautiful. He saved me, and I am completely fascinated by his story and his past and the young-old conflict that’s warring on his face and in his eyes.
“Maybe we’ll save the world,” I tease, and Gob raises his eyebrows.
”I like the sound of that,” he chuckles.
Honestly? I do, too.
-
Hurray, extra long chapter! Just a few notes on this one:
- Gob's age. I've always thought of Gob as quite young (I usually pitch him between forty and fifty in my head) but I added a few years to make the story work. I know some people think of him as old, like Pre-War old, so I hope you guys are okay with younger!Gob
- the plot is beginning to rear it's head! There will be plot, I don't know how far it will go, this could end being an epic trilogy of stories idk.
- Carla, here, in all her mood-swingy glory. I want to apologise if either her or Gob feel forced or ooc. I wanted this to be the big 'turning point' chapter for Carla, where she gets over her self-pity, so she had to wallow a little. I'm also shaping her to be an Unarmed character, can you tell?
- I hope the oncoming romance doesn't feel too rushed. I'm torn between 'let it develop' and 'come on the prompt was for romance' so guys I hope this is okay.
Mods, would it be okay if Lucas Simms was added to the character tags for this? I've decided he will be important xD Thank you very much!
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