#abodeer

🪦 The apocalypse was no place for a child. You either grew up quick, or you died. Those were the rules.

🪦maybe thats why they were so strange. A little oddity wandering around, carrying a plush with them that nobody else could identify.

🪦they looked human, at first. They weren't a ghoul, at least, not fully. Something was amiss but nobody would be able to tell you what. The child wouldnt either.

🪦Wandering the wasteland in search of their Morher who had left them at an old gas station.

🪦It was the early days of the wasteland. When people still sought to hang onto the last vestiges of civilization.

🪦When people still clung to the fake title of America.

🪦Cooper Howard was tired. Beginning to feel the effects of radiation, and slowly turning into a ghoul. Searching for his family, who (for all he knew) were dead.

🪦so imagine his surprise, when he saw a little girl running around the wreckage of a city, calling out for their Mother. Not panicked, just very loudly announcing their presence to a VERY NOT FRIENDLY WASTELAND.

"Mom!" Their squeaky voice called out, a single fang poking out, even when the child's mouth was closed.

Cooper stared, for he was confused. In a situation like this. A child would cower, why wouldnt they. They would quietly cry, and most children were dead. Those who weren't suffered fates some would argue were worse than the sweet relief of nullification.

And here this child was, yelling for their Mother like they were lost in a shopping mall.

How peculiar

🪦Cooper, not yet completely hardened by the wastelands, but still his usual self, saunters up to the child. Unable to shake the voice in his brain, unable to shake the pleasent image of Janey in the child's place.

🪦After Cooper asks them a few questions. He leaves.

🪦and they follow.

🪦and follow.

🪦and follow.

🪦Cooper gets sick of the shtick really quickly. But quickly realizes the child isnt... normal.

🪦they weren't transforming into a ghoul, but they also weren't completely human.

🪦sipping irradiated water easily, eating a whole radroach for the fun of it. I mean really, they bit off its head!

🪦he might not endorse the small child following him.

🪦but he also doesn't shove them away.

After all. It's just them in the wreckage of the world.

A/N: probably ooc, mb. We dont really know how Coop was at the very beginning of the wasteland. I like to imagine he was jaded by the pre war shenanigans, but still not nearly as hardened as he ends up being in the main plot.