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She didn't put it together right away. To be honest, that wasn't much of a surprise. She had been through an awful lot over the past...however long it had been, and it had left her with even more on her mind. But the thing was, from the moment they first met, she and the ghoul, there had been this...bizarre itch at the back of her mind. The man stood out in her memory, even before she had the misfortune of falling into his hands. Afterward, he had given her more than enough reason to remember their encounter—he had proven himself uniquely horrible, perhaps the worst individual she had yet encountered out here on the surface. Perhaps only the organ traders had been worse, doing what they did for a living, and the encounter with their robot had been absolutely terrifying (though, of course, meeting all of those had been his fault anyway). She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt in that regard—that losing his medicine might have driven him to measures he may not otherwise have taken—but considering every other experience of him, it seemed...unlikely.
Still, she wasn't quite sure that was the reason that, even once she had finally escaped his company, she had such a difficult time getting him out of her mind.
It wasn't until two days after they left the observatory that the pieces finally came together.
She had been thinking about her dad at the time—which wasn't a surprise, after everything. It was hard for her to think of very much else at the moment. But it was the first time she had let herself think about her memories of him from when she was a girl—to think of him as the man she had believed him to be. She had so many memories of their time together—time spent getting closer to him, after her mom had died. It was hard not to think of how much time they had spent together, just the two of them...
(It was strange, holding those memories up to the light, now. Would it have been better, maybe, to leave them be? Was it better to avoid them, to not let them be tainted and poisoned by what she had learned? Or was there something else, something important she might still uncover if she started searching them, now, for cracks?)
They had set up camp for the night, in the remains of an old drive-in. The cars had provided enough cover for them to risk a brief fire, just long enough to roast the abdomen of one of those giant roaches—which she had swiftly thought better of complaining about, considering what else she had seen him eat. But now the fire had been quenched dark, and he slept—or rested—sitting up on a mouldering bench seat hauled out of the corpse of a rusting Corvega. Her bedroll was laid out on the asphalt, just close enough to the dying embers to catch some of the remaining heat. And she had been unable to sleep—not an uncommon problem, it was turning out—and had instead watched the stars and let her mind wander. And something about lying there, in the dark, with the ghoul's breaths whistling as he slept...
She had wound up thinking about her dad. Thinking about a night when she must have still been really little when they had spent a night together out in the living room of their home in the Vault. He had pushed the furniture up against the wall to clear a space, and they had put down blankets on the floor, and they laid down to watch some of his old films together, pretending that they were camping out on the range in the Old West...
And something about that memory must have found it's echo in the present, in turn, because she found herself thinking about the ghoul instead. Whatever it was, it called to her mind a handful of...odd, but fleeting moments where she had felt something that was almost like deja vu. Hearing his drawl as he called out the other wastelanders in Filly. The stance he held, when he aimed his gun. The shape of his silhouette from behind, cast against the rising sun as they traveled east, and the matching shadow of Dogmeat trotting at his side. Something about the words he had spoken to her father, that night in the observatory...
Feo, fuerte, y formal...
And then, very suddenly, it had clicked for her just why that had sounded so familiar.
"Oh- Holey moley."
Which...she was quick to realize it was probably a mistake, just blurting it out like that. A bad idea, from the speed at which he was on his feet, gun drawn and scanning the darkness.
"What is it?" he asked, alert.
"I-"
"Speak up," he said, growing impatient.
She couldn't see much of him in the dark, just his shadow where he blocked the stars, but the sharpness in his posture from those first moments of alarm had softened slightly—as much as any part of him could be said to soften—and now that he was no longer braced for a threat, he was beginning to sound annoyed.
"S-sorry, it's nothing," she excused quickly, only for him to cock his head skeptically.
"Sounded like nothing."
"It's stupid," she insisted.
"At this point, I'm sure it is, but on the off-chance it's stupid enough to get us killed-"
"Are you Cooper Howard?"
The way that he froze, taut and almost breathless, she wasn't sure whether it was a blessing or not that she couldn't see the expression on his face. And then...
"Go to sleep," he said.
"Wait, really?"
He didn't respond, sitting back down.
"Oh, wow. That's- Wow. I- I grew up watching your movies in the Vault-"
"Now why don't that fuckin' surprise me," he muttered. "Young Henry always was a bit of a fanboy."
And that, admittedly, shut her up for a few moments. Though only for a few, because now her thoughts were whirling...
"It's just- That's crazy. My brother dressed up as you for Halloween one year for trick or treating."
"Ain't that swell."
"And I- Oh God. When I was just growing up and got old enough to, you know, I used to-"
"I did not need to fucking know that."
"I mean-"
"No," he said sharply. "Just- Stop talking, or I'm going to consider the merits of you making the rest of this trek without a tongue. Better meat than a fucking radroach, that's for damned sure..."
Taking his hint—or, you know, threat—to heart, she lay back down. And, honestly, she tried to get it off her mind. But...after her fourth or fifth attempt at banishing it all from her thoughts, after her third or fourth attempt to let it rest, she let out a sigh.
"Oh, for fucks sake," he said. "What?"
"I just-"
"You just what."
"I always thought you seemed so...noble."
In the long and lingering silence that loomed, Lucy heard the creaking of the weathered movie screen as it shuddered and shook with the wind. She heard the shriek of some unknown animal, hunting, in pain, or possibly dying. She heard the faint, distant cadence of gunfire from the large camp they had avoided earlier that day. She heard Dogmeat, sleeping, twitching her paws as she dreamt. And then she heard his sigh.
"Yeah, well," he tipped his hat back down over his eyes. "Wasteland's just full of liars, now, ain't it?"