The Ghoul hit the ground with a grunt that would've killed a normal man.
The rusted pole he'd landed on had pierced clean through his side, and for a few long minutes, he just hung there like some kind of macabre scarecrow, watching the dust settle across the Wasteland horizon.
Lucy MacLean was gone. Back to her vault, where she belonged. Safe, probably. That's what he told himself as he finally wrenched himself free, his coat tearing with a sound like old paper. The wound would heal—it always did—but something else ached that wouldn't seal up so easy.
He'd done the right thing. He knew that. Didn't make it feel any better.
The Ghoul limped toward the remnants of an old gas station, his boots crunching on broken glass and two-hundred-year-old bones. The sun was setting, painting the toxic sky in shades of bruised purple and angry orange. Beautiful, in its own fucked-up way.
"You look like radroach shit."
He didn't turn around. Didn't need to. "Thought I told you to wait in Goodsprings."
Myla stepped into view, her scavenged leather jacket covered in fresh dust from the road. She was maybe twenty-five, with dark eyes that had seen too much too young and a stubborn set to her jaw that reminded him of someone he used to know. Someone from before.
"Yeah, well, I don't take orders real good." She tilted her head, studying the hole in his side. "That gonna heal, or should I get the duct tape?"
"I'll live." He finally looked at her. "What're you doing here, kid?"
"Following you." She said it simple, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You've been weird since you sent that vault girl packing. All quiet and broody. Well, more than usual."
The Ghoul turned away, settling himself on a chunk of concrete that might've been a wall once. "Ain't nothing to worry about."
"Bullshit." Myla sat down beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. "You did the right thing, you know. She needed to go home."
"I know."
"So why do you look like you just shot your own dog?"He was quiet for a long moment. The wind picked up, carrying the scent of radiation and decay—the Wasteland's perfume. "You ever do something you know is right, but it still makes you feel like the bad guy?"
Myla was quiet too, her fingers tracing patterns in the dust at her feet. "Every damn day," she said finally. "That's just survival out here."
"Survival." The Ghoul tasted the word like spoiled meat. "Yeah."
They sat in silence as the sky darkened. Somewhere in the distance, something howled—deathclaw, maybe, or just the wind playing tricks. The Ghoul felt the weight of two hundred years pressing down on his shoulders, every choice, every compromise, every person he'd left behind.
"Alright," Myla said, standing up suddenly. "This is getting pathetic. Get up."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Up." She grabbed his arm and tugged, surprisingly strong for someone so slight. "I'm not watching you have a pity party all night. We've got enough misery in the Wasteland without you adding to it."
The Ghoul stayed seated, one eyebrow raised. "And what exactly do you think you're gonna do about it?"
Myla grinned—that wild, reckless grin that always meant trouble. "I'm gonna cheer your sorry ass up. The old-fashioned way."
Before he could ask what that meant, she'd pulled out her Pip-Boy (one that she found along the way) and started scrolling through its ancient music files. Most of them were corrupted, crackling snippets of a world that didn't exist anymore. But she found what she was looking for, and suddenly music was pouring out into the wasteland—something upbeat and poppy, so jarringly cheerful it felt like an insult to the apocalypse.
"Oh, hell no—"
But Myla was already moving, dancing with abandon in the ruins of the gas station. She wasn't good at it—her movements were choppy and uncoordinated—but she didn't care. She spun and swayed, singing along to words about feeling good and moving to the rhythm, her voice off-key but enthusiastic.
"Kid, this is ridiculous—"
"Damn right it is!" She grabbed his hands, trying to pull him up. "That's the point! Come on, old man. When's the last time you did something ridiculous just because?"
"2052," he said flatly.
She laughed—a real laugh, bright and clear. "Then you're way overdue."
The Ghoul looked at her, this young woman who'd attached herself to him like a barnacle two years ago and refused to let go no matter how hard he tried to shake her loose. Who'd learned to shoot by watching him, who could read the Wasteland like a book because he'd taught her, who looked at his radiation-ravaged face and saw something worth sticking around for.Who was dancing in the ruins of the world, trying to make him smile.
"You're insane," he said, but he was standing now, and maybe—just maybe—the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
"Runs in the family," she shot back, and they both knew she meant it. Not blood family—those were long gone, for both of them. But the family you chose, the family you built in the ashes.
She spun again, her arms wide, and he found himself swaying slightly to the music despite himself. It was absurd. It was pointless. Out here, where every day was a fight for survival, where trust was a luxury and kindness could get you killed, dancing to pre-war pop music was the stupidest thing they could possibly be doing.
But Myla was right. He'd done the right thing with Lucy. And maybe doing the right thing was supposed to hurt sometimes. Maybe that's how you knew it mattered.
The song played on, and Myla kept dancing, and the Ghoul—Cooper Howard, who'd been a movie star and a soldier and a survivor and a monster—watched her with something that might've been fondness.
"You're gonna attract every raider within ten miles," he said.
"Let 'em come," Myla said, breathless and grinning. "You'll shoot 'em, and I'll keep dancing."
"Damn right I will."The music swelled, and despite everything—the pain, the guilt, the weight of centuries—the Ghoul felt something loosen in his chest. Just a little. Just enough.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
Myla stopped dancing, her expression softening. "Anytime, old man." She held out her hand. "Now come on. One dance. Then we can go back to being miserable survivors."
He looked at her hand for a long moment. Then, with a sigh that might've been a laugh, he took it.
They danced in the ruins as the stars came out, two souls who'd found each other in the Wasteland's endless dark. And for just a few minutes, the world was a little less broken.
Later, as they sat sharing a can of two-hundred-year-old Cram, Myla leaned against his shoulder."You did good," she said. "Sending her back. She wasn't meant for this."
The Ghoul looked out at the Wasteland, at the poisoned earth and twisted sky. "No one is."
"We are." She said it with certainty, with pride even. "We're meant for exactly this."
He thought about Lucy MacLean, probably safe in her vault by now. He thought about Myla, who'd chosen this life, chosen him. He thought about all the years stretching behind him and all the years still to come, endless as the desert.
"Yeah," he said finally. "I guess we are."
The wind picked up again, and somewhere in the distance, something screamed. But here, in this moment, they were okay.
There’s something so poetic and heartbreaking about Mary not wanting to hurt her mother. It’s not out of pity or wanting to ease the strain of the divorce it’s just purely a daughter’s love for her mother who’s always been there. Her mother who has never tried to make Mary feel outcasted or othered or unloved.
Even when Mary KNOWS that something is wrong in her bones, she cannot force herself to do anything but trail after her mother and try and make her proud even if what she’s doing could get her hurt. She loves her mom. And it sucks that the last she saw of her was her mother trying to kill her.
Mary, you will always be famous, my little dart frog
