Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of Fallout Ficlets
Stats:
Published:
2025-04-27
Words:
1,819
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
23
Kudos:
33
Bookmarks:
4
Hits:
244

Torque Wrench

Summary:

Lucy turned off her head-torch with shaking hands, placing herself into the mercy of the darkness. Made herself small, tightened the knot of her sleeves around her waist, and palmed the torque wrench like it was salvation.

Maybe it was.

She shouldn’t have come down here alone.
-------
Part of my ongoing Fallout Ficlet series, let's all pretend together that this is ficlet length.

Notes:

No prompt or requester for this one, I just had a scene really clearly in my mind and thought it'd be cool to write it as a ficlet! It then ended up almost 2k, so maybe it's more of a one-shot, oh well, hopefully you'll all forgive me.

If you're new here, welcome! Lovely to meet you, I'm doing these as a fun little ficlet series, mostly based on prompts, so hmu if you have any ideas - I'll put my tumblr link at the end, or feel free to use the comments section <3

I'm not going to be locking my fics, so guests, you're still welcome here, but let's all hope together that the scalping ends, because that was pretty heartbreaking the other day

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

It was the snuffling in the dark that gave away the truth of the situation. 

Why the power had gone off.

What, or who, depending on your personal philosophy, had thrown the settlement, five stories above, into the depths of night.

Lucy turned off her head-torch with shaking hands, placing herself into the mercy of the darkness. Made herself small, tightened the knot of her sleeves around her waist, and palmed the torque wrench like it was salvation.

Maybe it was.

She shouldn’t have come down here alone.

He’d tried to talk her out of it, The Ghoul, but she’d laughed him off for the nervousness . 

For worrying.

Had kissed him on the cheek as a thank-you, not daring to assume he’d want her lips on his. They’d had a share of looks, but… until he told her, expressly, she wouldn’t assume.

The older man who’d asked them for help assured the two of them that the generators were just old, after all, that they conked out a year or so back too, and that it was just unfortunate that they’d temporarily lost their engineer to a run-down caravan encampment to the North, in exchange for medicines and purified water.

She’d nodded, glad to see such… neighbourliness out in this strange, savage world. 

Turning off the light had been the wrong idea. She’d been able to see the shadow of one before, hunched over in the distance to her left - damaged hands turned spindly and reaching by the angle of the light, but now?

Now she only had her ears, and the only thing Lucy felt like she could hear was her own blood, pounding with a kind of primal panic, coded into her bones. 

How many were down here, heading for her? She’d fixed the generator easily, it was a basic model, after all, but how much noise had she made? Innocently banging away, unscrewing and replacing belts, torquing bolts and humming to herself…

She might as well have rung the dinner bell.

She had a gun, one the Ghoul had given her a while back, but… but she couldn’t see in the dark, couldn’t see how many there were, and the moment she put the head-torch back on she knew it would just draw them in further. Just-

Oh god, one was close. She could smell it, she realised, dust and decay and endless, choking exhalations through mouths that barely closed anymore. The Ghoul made her watch them, from his binoculars, explained how to tell what kind they were, how… far gone they were. 

From the wheezing, the noise alone, she could tell this ghoul had been… lost… for some time. 

She pulled her feet in as close as she could get them, wrapping her arms around her legs until she was so tight against the generator it hurt. 

Where had she come in? She’d barely been paying attention, too busy mulling over The Ghoul’s concern, wondering what it meant. 

It meant he knew this world better than she did. It meant he didn’t want to lose his collateral. It meant she should have listened…

The door wasn’t far.

…neither was the sound of shuffling, though.

They tend to travel in packs, fuck knows why. One Ghoul, you’ll be fine, Vaultie. Two or three, just keep moving and shooting. Once you’re looking at a pack, though…

Was this a pack, or just a couple? Just one stumbling Ghoul, mind lost to hunger and time? 

How had they even managed to get in here?

She abandoned the toolbag and tucked the wrench into her waistband, not wanting to leave it behind. Tentatively, Lucy crept from her hiding spot, keeping low to the ground, hands and knees in the dirt, breath held til it burned. There were two generators, and a panel between them, and she knew she’d been able to see the control panel pretty soon after she’d made it in. She just needed to turn the switch on, and make it to the door. 

She could do this. 

She moved slowly, so slowly, undershirt pulled up to cover her mouth, too scared that they’d hear her breathing. Right hand, left knee, left hand, right knee. Beneath her, she could feel the enormous rubber-wrapped cables that led to the usually thundering beasts, and tried to make her way over them as much as possible, to-

A body hit the floor beside her, and Lucy fought to contain her terrified scream, clasping a hand over her mouth. She’d felt the cables, but-

The toolbox. 

It’d tripped over the toolbox, the absurdly heavy one they’d sent her down with. She didn’t dare move, just paused, frozen as she desperately listened for any sign of movement, of life.

As she tried to figure out how close it was. 

Had it left, or did it linger? Was it on its feet, peering down at her, waiting to attack? 

She crept forward, terrified, and paused, realising she couldn’t hear its breathing anymore. 

Couldn’t hear the rattle of lungs, barely functional. 

Couldn’t hear the dryness of its mouth, the wheeze of it.

Had the fall… taken it out? 

The generator was still on her right, and she needed to move around it, but…

She needed to know. Felt frozen by the uncertainty, by her own fear, by…

She lifted a single, shaking hand towards the headtorch, the other pulling the wrench from its tucked position.

And turned it back on. 

The sudden light felt blinding, compared to that impossible dark, but as her eyes blinked through the pain of it she realised that the ghoul's face was close enough to her own that the scream she released was primal, unstoppable.

It lunged. 

The Ghoul - her ghoul - had described them as mindless, relentless, but this one had held its breath . It’d crept so, impossibly close, and as she swung the heavy wrench towards its taut, wiry body, she realised if she’d ignored that terrified instinct in the dark then she wouldn’t have even seen it coming. 

It would have been on her, teeth and talons, and she’d have died, alone and scared in the dark.

Too deep below ground for anyone to hear her scream.

The wrench connected, and Lucy didn’t check to see the state of her attacker before scrambling to her feet, turning a full 180 to run for the console. She just had to turn the thing on and run. She’d done it a thousand times, during those weekly generator checks, she could do this in her sleep, she-

There were eyes, in the darkness. 

Reflective, glassy, and aimed towards her. 

How many… This was more than a pack, surely, this was…

She didn’t want to take her eyes off those eyes, but regardless of whether she ran for the console or the door, she had to move. She swallowed, stuck for a brief second between fight and flight.

She raced towards the console.

She’d made it this far, and she wasn’t going to leave a community in need. There were families above, innocent children that needed pure water, light, the safety of their turrets. 

None of which worked without power.

She ran for the console, almost slipping in her haste. Two levers, one on each side; then a glance back at those eyes, those glowing, reflective entities; closer than before. A red button, blinking into…

Why wasn’t it blinking into life? Why wasn’t…

The override. This wasn’t a test but a true system failure, and she keyed in the manual override, a curse burning her tongue as fear-damned hands almost got it wrong. She hit the levers again, pulling them down and then up, listening with a muted sigh of relief as the machine began slowly whirring into life. 

She turned, screaming again and swinging the heavy, solid wrench as she realised they’d begun to move, that they were on her, close enough to touch. The wrench connected, knocking one down, then another, her arms burning with the strain of it. She kicked out, kicked down, pulled her gun and considered firing, but she had no idea what these pipes were for, whether it would pierce one and remove their water, their…

She shot at one at her feet, knowing that at least was safe, and turned back to the console, feeling terrified tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

Hands, claws, something grabbed at her back; at exposed skin and once-white cotton, and she threw back her elbow in response. It stumbled, and she desperately lurched forward, grunting at the pain of its nails in her exposed flesh, but the light was on.

She slammed her palm onto the glowing red button, and twisted around, bringing the wrench down hard on the ghoul that was finding its balance again, behind her; hating the satisfaction in her gut as its weak, aged skull gave way.

She could see the door. 

There were ghouls in the way, so many ghouls , but she just had to make it. 

She closed the plastic cover without looking, reaching her hand behind her, and blinked as the rigged lights above her turned on, bulbs hanging from the steel beams. 

…they seemed disoriented too.

Was that why they hadn’t run immediately, when she’d turned to face them?

She didn’t have time to think. Eyes watering from the brightness, she ran, swinging the wrench at any who came close, darting around boxes and climbing over what looked like cages to try and avoid the throng of enemies. Still they reached for her, ran at her, nails and teeth; knocking her against the pipes, the wall, bodily throwing themselves into her path.

She slammed and slammed the wrench into them, again and again and pulled herself ever forwards, desperate to get away, to get to safety, to get back to her friends. 

She yanked the door open and finally shot her gun - close range, taking two, three ghouls down as she slid herself through, fastening it tight behind her. 

She turned, swaying on her feet, and all but dragged her bleeding, bruised body back up the metal, echoey staircase. Higher, higher, til she was back on ground level, til she stepped into a room where the settlement leader was playing caravan with Her Ghoul, who looked at her wide-eyed when he realised what a state she was in. 

She was filthy, bloodstained, and her top had been torn by the things. The wrench hung limply from her left hand, and her gun from her right, but she stared the settlement leader down with a look she hoped read as angry. 

Betrayed. 

Because she’d seen what those Ghouls were wearing. She’d seen the makeshift uniforms the settlers wore, the sprayed logo on their jackets, their trousers. 

The same ones the Ghouls had, downstairs. 

Had their engineer really just nipped across to another settlement, or was he down there, lingering - a predator in the dark?

“Your generators are back on.”

 

Notes:

Hope you enjoyed! If you'd like to see what I'm working on, or just say hi, or as I said before, drop in a drabble prompt, here's my tumblr .

Also, if you are new here and like my writing style, thank you so much <3 If you head over to my page, this I think might be my 17th or 18th fallout tv/ghoulcy fic now so there's a pretty big back catalogue hahahaha

Series this work belongs to: