Easy Peasy, lemon squeezy!
Wanted interactions: Fallout characters set in the show and occasional, selectively, Fallout 3-4 characters (see my rules).
Open to ship with: Lee Moldaver & chemistry-based (bisexual) but keeping in mind she's 45 and not looking at people who are a lot younger than her. Not shipping her with Hank even if I believe she was in love with him before.
fc: Elle Vertes (iconless)
Trigger warnings: written gore, the general violence you find in Fallout. Whatever you'd call the fact that she's a ghoul and her body is decaying slowly (untagged, I wouldn't know what to tag it or when).
Temporary drafts to be fixed and made prettier later:
After Hank took the kids away, Rose spent the next six months plotting how to break into the Vault, take them, and save everyone else with Moldaver and her people.
Then Hank bombs Shady Sands, on a day in which Moldaver is not home.
Why am I giving them six extra months after Lucy and Norm were taken back, with the excuse that Hank needed time to make it happen? To give Moldaver time to actually fall in love with Rose in a way that canonically leads her to spend twenty years with ghoul!Rose tied to the chair. Lucy couldn't have been there for months if she's meant to forget it and only remember the sun. So when we see the flashback is kinda love at first-sight but not love yet.
After the bomb she's almost fully gone, but the same creepy guy with the meds that turn Thaddeus into a Ghoul offers them a 'fix it' vial. It "heals" Rose, in the sense that while she's still a ghoul she returns to her original human appearance, wounds cured, skin restored except for her arm, but the psychological impact took away her memories. She did see the way she looked, remembers being feral, and it's burned into her brain.
Moldaver tells her about their love, which makes Rose remember those months, but no amount of telling can remind her of Lucy and Norm, she needs to see them. Not remembering them directly and being a ghoul with no chances at a normal life, she starts having less incentive to go get her daughter and son, because what can she offer them? Hank sends them a message soon after, that he'd kill their kids before letting them be destroyed by life on the surface (he's bluffing, but would you not buy it from the guy who dropped another bomb?) and that seals the deal. Memories of life at the Vault come back later, but mostly pre-kids.
canon divergence for Lucys and people in general who reached the Observatory: Moldaver wouldn't obviously have Rose there at the dining table, she'd tell Lucy that her father dropped the bomb, turned her mother into a ghoul, and Rose left due to the heartbreak because Hank threatened to kill her and Norm if she tried to come back and take them away (cue Hank saying he had to do to protect them from a woman who had already taken them on the surface, he did the right thing!).
appearance:
Rose's right side of the body starts turning ghoul-like as years pass, now it involves her entire left arm, part of her upper chest and neck, which she always covers so she can "pass" and so that she doesn't have to see it (it doesn't bother her to see other ghouls, it's just her own body, which she remembers to be so much worse pre-vial). Every time she ends up nearly feral due to the lack of vials, more of her body 'dies'.
She doesn't age besides the 'decay' bit, but she's 40+ by now. She wears cute things and strategically hides all the ghoul-looking parts.
personality:
She's STILL hanging onto her old personality as a spiteful 'fuck you' to Hank and what he did to her, is still optimistic and still tries to help people (like Lucy would) and can be passive-aggressive, sarcastic and hold a grudge (like Norm), smart, curious, impossibly so. But also extremely insecure due to the whole ghoul thing. Her kids both took after her, but she's more than the mix of them just like they are their own persons. She definitely kills people as needed, it's just that if she can cook for them and be cute she'd rather pick that option. She's scared of her own violence, she's seen the way she's meant to become (the ghoul we saw in canon) and acting like a feral one doesn't make her feel great.
fighting:
Definitely has the Black Widow fighting down (in the most Marvel sense), and regular non-automatic guns are her secondary weapon.
Shipping:
she's bi, she was IN love with Hank until he showed his true colors, fell for Moldaver who was always honest to her. But for potential shipping purposes, we'll say that unless you write a Moldaver and you want to ship it, in which case they are absolutely married or exes in love, her Ghoulness got too much in the way because of her insecurities, as well as the baggage of missing her children, and she and Moldaver parted ways amicably if with a lot of pain. She's probably in her mid-fourties, keep that in mind too.
now:
Part of her is waiting for her kids, sure they'll figure out something is wrong and come out of the Vault too. She's in contact with Moldaver in any case, and with more people all over the Wasteland, so she can be told if they show up. Currently though, she works as a bounty hunter, but in a weirdly nice way? But because she kinda sucks at it since she doesn't want to capture people unless they are bad, mostly she gives a hand in one of Vegas' kitchen, and that gets her a lot of caps because people love her food SO MUCH that it's just convenient to let her do her thing.
Added: May 7th 2024