#Bill Calhoun who is basically an oc at this point my beloved

[antxnous]

I’m sad and having Bill Calhoun thoughts so I’m dumping hcs and more basura here. this is so fucking long hi

Prefacing this by saying I know I’m in the minority but “we were all young then” translates to “nowhere near the age I am now” when Joshua says it (TO ME!!!), so a 27 year old would be “young” in his crispy eyeballs.

I imagine Bill’s been on expeditions before, this one was probably the furthest he’s gone from California but he’s no stranger to roughing it out and doing outreaching and accompanying others for support. I love the idea that he was more in a teaching position than anything else and pairing him with Edward made sense to maintain the inexperienced/experienced balance (and this is Edward hc territory but in my brain his name was tossed around in less than favourable ways and Bill was thought to pacify his rowdiness).

I rlly don’t usually think this hard into one-off characters but the idea he has a fiancée who is also a teacher of some sorts… rlly driving home his eventual irritation and aggravation with Edward basically keeping him hostage while he starts up the Legion… he’s got ppl back home and he tries to remind Edward that he does too (and I think it works for a bit, but Ed is WHIPPED by his own grandeur and jotch).

Bill and Ed met for the first time, had dinner at Bill’s place and Ed brought his mom. All was fine. Bill’s fiancée hating the idea he’s going to more or less be responsible for a temperamental 20 year old, Bill’s like whatever. We all were 20. Wasteland sucks.

They get along really well the entire trip over. Ed is excited to do some ethnography and when he gets a little colonial-y, Bill always puts him in his place. Bill teaching Ed a few medical things along the way and listening the Ed rant about his anthro interests (Roman Empire……)

Ed kinda getting the father figure treatment…. Projecting it onto Bill. Late night talks about his insecurities with his single mother, dead father, his schooling… where the future is taking him. Ed’s afraid of it all but Bill reassured him it’s just his twenties talking.

Bill’s a smoker, kind of a habit. Brought loose tobacco with him and rolls his own cigs if he can help it. Sometimes lets Ed smoke.

Now…I’m part of the group that thinks they stumbled across Josh in Utah bc idk. I liek it. I’ve got my own hcs for the meeting but this AINT ABT THAT!! Bill finds Josh, brings him to camp, and he’s the nicest person Joshua has ever met. The rest of the trip Bill has to act as advisor, mediator, and caretaker for those two… pulling them apart when they get violent, shutting down their arguments before it gets to that point… stitching them both up.

Bill obviously knows how to defend himself, but once Joshua gets added to the camp, he takes the backseat when it comes to hunting and exploring and shit. Camp cook, does their laundry, sometimes scouts. Doing his own independent research on making herbal remedies with the shit out in Utah/Arizona. Starts making healing powder. He trusts them to get their work done and if they fight, they’ll both crawl back to the same place at night anyway.

Bill leaving them to suck off each others insecurities in loneliness and personal affairs, letting them toss back dangerous hypotheticals and philosophies makes them less dependent on him. He’s inadvertently edged these two together in a way that becomes inseparable. They start speaking in languages he doesn’t understand and he brushes it off because… it’s youth. Whatever. They’re getting along.

Bill keeping a diary just like Ed, but his is more personal and less ethnographic. Writing to his fiancée in the margins about the way things are going… the longer the trip the more he missed CA.

When they get taken by the Blackfoot, Bill’s collected demeanour finally cracks when he’s constantly fighting with Edward to maintain some humanity when he starts suggesting slaughter. Looking to Joshua, who until recently had been a breath of fresh air for Bill when it came to temperament and impulse…. Finding a blank, maybe even excited, look staring back at him because Joshua is already sold on Edward’s new philosophy. Now Bill’s become the loner.

They keep him around to fix them up, to heal their new troops… those two get to share a tent and Bill is forced to sleep in the tent with his patients. Watching as Edward demands Bill put energy into saving fit males over “the unfit”. Wondering what happened to the eager anthropologist he left the Boneyard with.

He tries to argue with Joshua, maybe he could convince Edward to see reason. Joshua laughing at his pleading and insulting him, threatening to kill him if he keeps being a nuisance… now he’s wondering what happened to the reserved boy he rescued from the side of the river.

Bill’s become the Legion’s first slave in an unspoken agreement, and when Edward orders Joshua to kill him before he can run away back to the NCR, Joshua does it, solidifying himself as the Legion’s second.

so you’ll never see Bill again, but Edward (and to some extent, Joshua) can’t shake him. he isn’t sure what to do with his corpse because disposing of it like a tribals would be wrong — Bill was more than that. So his sun bleached skull greets visitors to the Grand Canyon and his rib cage sits in Flagstaff and his clothes sit in Edward’s trunk, and Joshua wears his snakeskin belt and the legion uses HIS version of healing powder and—

biwwiam calhoun… :3