Chapter Text
Robert Joseph MacCready made his way from his homestead outside of the Capital Wasteland to some nowhere bar in a nowhere town in the Boston Commonwealth. With nothing on him except some water, stims, his rifle, and the clothes on his back, he wasn’t looking for anything new. In fact, all he wished to do was return to normal.
It was the type of weight that would put wrinkles on your face and grey your hair. It was an unbearable feeling of emptiness when you knew you had to eat-- to have. It was a contradictory weight that made him want to spring up and run away with his tail tucked between his legs. It was pure, unadulterated grief; MacCready felt it in full.
When MacCready left Little Lamplight at the age he thought made him wisest, it was more out of obligation than want. Out into the unforgiving brutalism of Washington D.C., ravaged by petty squabbles reflected 200 years post-war, MacCready had no choice but to brave the wastes and carve his name into it. Any ego or hubris that he had held as Little Lamplight’s mayor had crumbled and been stomped over by his heavy boots when he left, and he never had a moment to try and pick up the pieces before his ears were ringing with echoes of gunfire or battle cries.
Truth be told, his bravado was thin.
It didn’t repair itself when he met Lucy, either. Some girl-next-door-type name and a pretty smile were all it took for MacCready to wring himself out in front of her. He was the girl he would see in the comic books he read, always the damsel for a man to come and save her and reinforce his hero complex.
But MacCready was a boy. And he didn’t really have any space in his head for a hero complex. Most days he wanted a hug, himself.
And Lucy was good at that, too. Forever soft and yielding in his memory, Lucy loved and wanted to be loved.
When he told her he was a soldier, he couldn’t tell who he hated more. He, for lying to her so willingly and without cause, or her, for being so head-over-heels with the idea of him being a soldier. It didn’t matter much, he would tell himself. It’s already done. No need to break her heart now. And that’s how it was for several months of casual companionship, until she surprised him with a small carved toy soldier. When he accepted it, painfully smiling, it was more of an obligation than a want.
He married her, as a want rather than an obligation-- he made that much clear. Lucy would always suggest that he’d be a better man without having to protect her, and that she was strong enough on her own, but MacCready knew he loved her and would rather give himself a lobotomy via .308 round than leave her due to her stubbornness. At least they had that much common.
His mind certainly didn’t change when Lucy got pregnant. They knew they were younger-- only around 18 or 19-- but God he had never wanted anything more than to brave such a strange new life with her by his side. Duncan was born several months later in the semi-sterile Rivet City clinic. He was beautiful, Lucy was beautiful, and MacCready felt like a fraud, but they were happy.
Living in the shadow of Private Robert MacCready was the regular for the hired gun. Sometimes he’d leave to splatter some poor sap's blood across the pavement for a couple caps, stay out and sit on top of a skyscraper for some time, come up with a story of his military escapades, and then return to Lucy. Sometimes he’d leave just to put some distance between them, to try and convince himself to get up and leave with an apology note for being so dishonest, and then he’d come back with a smile on his face and dinner for the 3 of them.
It eventually became 2.
Duncan, babbling and helpless as he was, was swaddled and held in Lucy’s arms just seconds before she was ripped apart in a parking garage by a bunch of ugly fucking ghouls. MacCready never knew what triggered it exactly; maybe they had made a sound, or the fire or the scent of food must’ve set those damned things off. But Lucy was gone. It was short, far from sweet, and left MacCready cradling a rifle in one arm and an infant in another. The dichotomy surely confused the people around him.
Without skipping over too many milestones, MacCready managed to beg an old friend of his to let him stay on his homestead outside of D.C.. Although in truth, his friend would never shut the door on a crying toddler and his single father. MacCready repaid him every day by tending to the ranch-- feeding the brahmin, tending to the garden, and defending the place from any ill-meaning assholes looking for their own personal palace. He was never asked to, and he never asked for any pay. He just couldn’t bring himself to take without giving.
When he left the Capital Wasteland and headed Northeast, it was out of obligation rather than want. Duncan had grown into an adorable little kid-- spry and full of energy. But something, somehow, had gotten into his system.
One day, Duncan started sleeping in later. The next day, he was coughing. Then hacking. By the end of a two-week period, Duncan was sporting blue boils on his body and couldn’t even raise his head to greet his father when he came to check on him.
He knew his time must’ve been up. MacCready could tell that years of lying, cheating, stealing, and killing were catching up to him with a Devil’s sprint. He would pray to whoever would listen; he hoped Lucy would hear and that Duncan would not.
After some time spent caring tentatively to the boy a door down from his own, MacCready’s friend returned from a short trip with a man he didn’t know. He looked rough and dejected. He looked like him.
He told stories of his friend-- his partner-- who had come down with a virtually identical illness; they called it the Blue Flu. His friend, from Point Lookout, had heard about the illness when scavenging through some disaster-relief tents. Somewhere, up North, there was an experimental cure. But before the two could even make the trip, he stopped walking and never started up again. Stricken with urgency and his chronic grief, MacCready practically begged for more information. He wrote down a location and terminal password on a piece of paper and MacCready stuffed it into his pocket like some prized jewels.
MacCready left the next week, spending his last night reading to Duncan and writing a will. He’d try to make it as quick as possible.
“As quick as possible” turned to “at all deliberate speed,” which then became “whenever walking into Med-Tek doesn’t make me wretch with fear and whenever I can get the caps to hire some help.” He knew he was pathetic, but a part of MacCready feared going back; he could return empty-handed and watch his son struggle, or he’d return was the cure just a day too late. It was not a set of poisons he felt like perusing.
At 21, MacCready started running with the Gunners of the Boston Commonwealth to make some caps. He made them, alright.
Maybe it was when they started taking potshots at Minutemen. Maybe it was when he started seeing something familiar in the eyes of the innocent families he slaughtered. Or maybe it was when they wanted to tattoo his blood type on his forehead, who knows. All he could stand to remember without hanging his head in shame was that he left in some big blowout argument with his Commanding Officers. They threatened to kill him then and there, but let him walk when he offered it with open arms. Guess they thought he was crazy, he didn’t know.
He drifted between settlements, then. Nobody really felt comfortable with him lingering. It’s not like he had “HIRED GUN” written all over him, but the rifle strung over his back, quick eyes, and silence told most people all that they needed to know. He wasn’t exactly driven out of Diamond City, but he’d be lying if he said he felt welcome there. The pinpricks of brutal judgment followed him and he felt his heart weighed against feathers from all walks of life.
Over the radio was how he heard about Goodneighbor officially. He knew of it from Gunner gossip and the likes, but nobody really expanded upon it; it was very low-context in nature. So, when he heard Magnolia sing over the radio about her friendly little corner in the city, MacCready figured he’d give it all another try.
Walking through the gates wasn’t so easy, however. The whole place was crawling with ghouls, mongrels, super mutants, and worst of all: Gunners. When he managed to slip by with little trouble, he was greeted by some asshole hassling him about some kind of stupid toll-- what a great start. Finn recognized his place soon enough when a man started barking at him to quit his bullshit. Mayor John Hancock, dressed in his comically-campy outfit, waved away the trouble and stuck out a hand to MacCready, forever willing to put himself to work.
After Hancock had him take out some packs of ferals nearby, MacCready was rewarded with free range of the V.I.P. lounge of the Third Rail to advertise his work. Caps came in, jobs were done, and MacCready was standing face to face with his former brothers in arms, Winlock and Barnes.
In this nowhere bar in a nowhere town, MacCready yet again found himself harassed and attacked, and completely unaware of the presence of a single girl standing yards away, ready to make some changes to the whole game.