Vaultoween #4: Caps
"The 'Commonwealth Savings Bank of MacCready' started out as a crappy joke. I was going to make it worth my while, looking after the Sole Survivor of one-eleven's stuff, since he made me carry a ton of it. The original plan was to skim off a small percentage, you know, stuff he'd never miss. A gold flip-lighter here, a syringe of psycho there. Stuff he had several of or never used.
As we travelled together I started feeling the weight of the junk I'd forgotten to hand back at settlements. Eventually I handed it all back, piecemeal, without ever having made any caps for myself off of it. How could I do that to Vin? Somehow I even parted with the entire tin of two-hundred that he'd hired me with and I felt all the richer for it.
Since then, we've made caps hand-over-fist. It wasn't until after the deathclaw-ate-my-foot incident, after the big galoot finally asked me to marry him, after Duncan turned sixteen (and didn't get booted out of the place he grew up in) that Vin suggested I open up that Savings and Loan I'd always joked about. I know he was trying to get me to take it easy but Dunc jumped on the idea and we ended up creating the first one in Sanctuary.
Vin told me what banks used to be like and neither of us wanted the new people's caps stashes to take advantage of anyone. No, this was a service. Of course we got paid but it was whatever people could afford to give. The richest clients also support the Minutemen of Steel and the Neighborhood Watches that are in every large settlement now. We're both really proud of Duncan, he volunteers as a Watchman two days out of seven.
Piper still calls Vin and me 'Bottle and Cappy'. We all have enough caps for a safer, comfortable life. That's all we ever wanted for Duncan and Shaun."