#not to sound like a boomer but fuck if we could just slow the goddamn hell down

[bumblydumbly]

having fomo in todays society is so fuckin exhausting when every trend is a tiktok mayfly and you just aren’t chronically on there

[ma-sulevin]

Okay, this one’s rough again, but there’s sunshine on the horizon. A day late due to the move, but we should be on our regular schedule until the end.

Pairing: Sharky Boshaw/Female Deputy Rating: E Warnings: Canon-typical violence, but nothing particularly explicit I don’t think Word Count: 5656, chapter nine of fourteen (I think).

Read it on AO3 instead and say nice things.

---

It takes Mattie a few minutes to remember where she is when she finally opens her eyes again. She remembers being at the Wolf’s Den — no, she was at the Grandview, with Sharky and Jess and Boomer, and they rescued Briggs, and…

Oh.

She rolls onto her side, muscles protesting the action, and waits for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of Jacob’s compound. There’s hardly any moonlight illuminating the cages, and it takes several minutes before she thinks she can see Jacob’s music box sitting right at the edge of the cage, within reach if she could just get over there to grab it.

Can she?

She tries, she really does, pushing herself up onto hands and knees and reaching through the bars, fingers spread and grasping, and she nearly makes it before a heavy booted foot comes out of nowhere and smashes her hand into the gravel.

She doesn’t scream, won’t give Jacob that satisfaction, but tears well in her eyes as the sting of breaking bones makes its way to her brain. That she can’t help, and she can’t help the way she cradles her hand to her chest as she glares up at him.

The fucker is smirking at her.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be outta here soon enough.”

Jesus fuck, she hates him.

“I hate you,” she says, as though she’s a child and he’s one of her brothers playing a mean prank.

His smirk grows briefly into a smile, but he doesn’t say anything in response. His expression is schooled as he scoops the box up and toys with the winding mechanism, threat clear and unspoken before he opens his mouth.

“Did you think you were free?” He winds the box with practiced motions, looking down at it before he glances sideways at her. “Your little buddy? Went to a whole lotta trouble for nothing. But that’s okay. He knows better now.” He finishes winding the box and turns to her fully, standing over her with all of his imposing form carefully calculated to keep her afraid.

She’s not afraid. She’s angry.

She is Wrath.

“I told you you’re not a hero. You are a tool. Now, you know your purpose. You’ve known it from the beginning.” 

He smiles at her as he opens the box, like he’s happy with her, like he’s pleased. The music plays and pain lances through her head, like the worst headache she’s ever gotten, like the migraines her daddy used to get that he said felt like someone was squeezing his head in a vice and trying to put an icepick in through his eyeball at the same time.

She wants to go forward and rip the music box out of his hands for good, but she falls back instead, and the icky familiar darkness of one of Jacob’s trials overwhelms her.

As soon as she gets out of this, she’s murdering Jacob. She doesn’t care what else happens.

---

The first few areas of the trial are the same, comforting almost.

It’s like Staci said. One two three, one two three, onetwothree, ONETWOTHREE. 

It’s not hard to make the Whitetails fall in front of her. One shot does it, every time. She can hear a clock ticking, she can hear that song, she can hear Jacob crooning in her ear about how good she is, how good she’s doing, how strong she is.

“Good job,” he says as she darts forward to snap the neck of a nameless Whitetail who had been hiding behind the counter in the bunker kitchen. “Cull the herd.”

That militia member was weak, hiding like that, like a little boy who should still be at home with his parents.

He should be at home with his parents, but he isn’t. He’s with Eli, with the Whitetails, because he’s trying to fight back against Jacob. Jacob’s men probably killed his parents, and now she’s killed him.

She stops and stares at him, at his lifeless brown eyes, slack jaw, neck bent at an unnatural angle, legs folded under him where she dropped him. He’s just a baby, a teenager, and she killed him and, just for a moment, let Jacob make her feel good about it.

“Watch your time!” Jacob doesn’t sound proud anymore. He sounds annoyed, put out, like his prize wolf suddenly stopped doing its job and needs to be put down.

She snaps back to attention, pulling her pistol free of its holster and moving deeper into the bunker, following the hallways that she’s come to know so well. Her feet don’t make noise against the concrete like they do when she’s really there; she can’t hear the ordinary chatter of a small bunker filled with people.

All she can hear is the song.

She finishes clearing most of the bunker and comes around the last corner, ready to finish this and move on to killing Jacob, when… she stops.

Eli is there, his compound bow in his hands, his eyes open in shock.

“No, don’t shoot!” 

It’s his voice, it’s his voice, is she here? Is she here? 

The other men she fought didn’t speak back to her.

Time slows; she doesn’t. She raises her pistol and aims, then lowers it again.

She can’t do this.

She can’t.

The bunker goes black, and Jacob’s voice speaks directly in her ear.

“Try again.”

She can’t.

She has to.

She has to.

---

Jacob’s getting impatient. She can hear it in his voice, how his compliments have become terse and far between, how his commands to move faster and to do better are spoken lower and lower until he’s growling.

She doesn’t want to try harder. She doesn’t want to do better, to kill faster, to push down that sense of remorse that tells her this isn’t fucking worth it.

Eli’s at the end of this, and she can bring herself to kill enough people to get to kill him too.

She makes stupid mistakes, she moves too slow, she lets the wolves get her and shotgun shells find her and, once, that same teenage boy smash her head into the bunker’s floor.

It takes five tries before Jacob finds the right button to push to spur her forward.

“You know, Peaches was so goddamn sure you’d be the one to bring us down. He risked his life for you, and for what? You can’t even pass the last trial, and he’s learning his lesson without food or water.”

Mattie bares her teeth to nothing, angry, goddamn fucking furious at the idea of Staci punished for what he did to help her. Where is he being held without food and fucking water? She’s only been free of Jacob’s clutches for a few days — is it three? Or four? She may still have time to get Staci before he dies of thirst. Jacob said he is learning his lesson, not that he learned his lesson. Maybe… 

Maybe…

The trial starts again and she kills the two men in the first room without a thought, senseless murders that make her feel nothing. 

She feels nothing but rage, and that rage pushes her through the trials like nothing else has. 

One two three, one two three, onetwothree.

Train, hunt, kill.

Sacrifice.

“No, don’t shoot!”

She doesn’t hesitate before she shoots Eli, ready to get out of this training exercise and go back to the Wolf’s Dean. 

The second her bullet hits Eli’s flesh, time slows down again. Jacob’s in front of her, smiling, singing, pushing the barrel of her gun down to the floor. He keeps a hand on it so that when she jerks it up to shoot him too, it doesn’t move.

“Hey, only you could have gotten this close,” he says, a stupid grin on his stupid face. She feels a surge of pride that she pushes down, refuses to let show on her face, as he explains he’s done with her now, that she’s served her purpose, that she’s passed her test.

“But now you’re alone,” he says, his smile growing. She tries to, but she can’t move, physically pinned in place. “And you’re weak. And we know what happens to the weak.”

Yeah. They get culled. But she’s not as weak as he thinks. The secret weapon that’s been refusing to let her die, that power that’s been on her side, is going to carry her through this. She just has to trust in it.

“I’ll be outside waiting for you,” he says, and then he walks off, humming that song, and she watches him go and imagines tearing out his throat.

When he disappears and time speeds up again, she’s still in the Wolf’s Den, still standing in front of Eli, a gun that isn’t hers still in her hands.

Eli is on the floor, motionless, blood pooling under his lifeless body. It wells and runs, following the slight natural slope to the bunker floor, running toward the lowest point in the room.

Wheaty is screaming at her, a gun in his hand, the barrel against her forehead. She doesn’t fight it because why would she? He can’t hurt her. If he does, she deserves it. She doesn’t care that the safety’s off, that his finger is on the trigger, that even if he doesn’t mean to shoot her he still might just by accident.

She’s been shot in the head before. As far as ways to die go, it isn’t so bad. The black white black turns it into a headache, turns it into a distant memory, and honestly? That emptiness sounds nice right now.

She’d rather be in that nothingness than here, watching Wheaty’s eyes well with tears, listening to him starting to wail about Eli.

Tammy saves her life, but it’s only a practical move. She doesn’t really want Mattie to stay alive — she wants Mattie to kill Jacob.

Mattie wants to kill Jacob too. 

This she can do.

She’s numb, nauseated, angry, trembling when she walks out of the bunker back into what should be the fresh air of the Whitetail mountains. Instead, she finds herself swimming through layers of bliss as Only You blasts over speakers set up all around her.

Jacob knew where the Wolf’s Den was.

He always knew.

He wanted Eli dead in the way that would cause the most damage possible. The deputy, the savior of Hope County, murdering the leader of the Whitetail Militia in cold blood? How can the resistance survive something like that? Its top member turning on one of its leaders?

Mattie destroys the first wolf beacon without a problem, but when four wolves run at her at once she panics. She drops her gun and swings her fists instead, as though her bare knuckles will do anything against claws and teeth… and finds they disappear as soon as she touches them, products of the bliss and her own terrified mind.

She thinks she sees Jacob as she walks to the next beacon, and fury overrides common sense as she jumps for him. She snaps his neck in the most satisfying moment of her life, and there’s a brief second where she holds him lifeless in her arms before he disappears too.

“Son of a bitch .”

She hears his voice after that, or she thinks she does, his words mingling with the song coming through the speakers. Is he sitting nearby, amused as his game, celebrating his victory by playing with her until she wears herself out running around and dodging imaginary enemies? 

“The Whitetails are nothing without Eli. You are nothing without Eli.”

She’s throwing herself at the figments of her imagination like a housefly banging its body uselessly against a closed window, doomed to run out of energy and die on the windowsill, buggy feet up in the air, wings locked behind it.

“Don’t you find it ironic how everyone you help winds up worse off? Eli, Pratt… Tragedy just follows you. If you really wanted to keep people safe, be a hero, you’d just… off yourself. Safer for everyone that way.”

She laughs at that, unhinged, all teeth and wild eyes and bared fingernails. That was never an option, and if he knew her psyche as well as he thought he did, he’d understand that. 

She’s fought through too much to let a bunch of fuckheads like the Seeds bring her down now when her life was finally starting to work out.

She’d rather murder them all and mount their heads in front of the Spread Eagle than give up like that.

It takes a few minutes after the last wolf beacon is destroyed for her head to clear, for the beauty of the mountains to come back. She’s panting, sweating, her shirt soaked through from how much energy she exerted fighting absolutely nothing.

The remains of the beacon are still there, though, and at least she didn’t imagine that. There are some supplies still there, half-empty crates left behind by peggies who were too busy to fight her. She scavenges bullets and a water bottle that someone had started drinking from and then abandoned, and germs are so far from her mind that she doesn’t even think about it before opening the bottle and drinking the last few ounces down in one long pull.

The next peggie that gets close to her gets his neck snapped. He’s real, solid under her fingers, not like any of the apparitions that she put down. His body falls heavy to the dirt, his head cracking against a boulder as an insult to injury — or injury to insult?

This is all a fucking disgrace.

There’s a laser sight on the rock next to her, and she ducks, throwing herself to the dirt like she wouldn’t come back if she happened to get shot between the eyes. Jacob’s voice crackles over the radio, telling everyone her location.

It’s time to put down his prize fighter.

She’s going to put him down first.

She creeps from rocky outcropping to rocky outcropping, avoiding Jacob’s sniper rifle and heading inexorably closer to the hill he’s set himself up on. She puts down his wolves — big and white and scary but emaciated and weak from whatever hell he puts himself through — and she puts down his men with equal dispassion, 

She’s nearly to the base of the mountain when a peggie distracts her enough for Jacob to get a shot in. She sees the laser sight against the peggie before it disappears, but the peggie’s hands are on her and she can’t move before Jacob takes his shot.

Black. White. Red. Black. White.

It hurts. Oh god, it hurts.

Please let this be the last time.

I can’t fucking do this again. I can’t.

What do I have to do to make this stop?

Tell me and I’ll do it.

Black. White. Red.

You can do better. You can do better.

White.

The remains of the beacon are still there, next to her again. There are some supplies still there too, the half-empty crates left behind by peggies holding the same bullets and half-drunk water bottles. She scavenges what she needs again before opening the bottle and drinking the last few ounces down in one long pull.

The next peggie that gets close to her gets his neck snapped.

She doesn’t stop to think about how real he is, or how it feels to take a human life with her bare hands, or how if she has to go through the black white black again she might literally go crazy if she hasn’t already. She just fights, she just pushes forward.

She just survives.

Jacob loses sight of her when she gets close enough to his hill, and she climbs up the back of it without worrying about falling to her death.

Really, what’s the point in that fear now? She’ll just wake up and climb up it again.

He’s facing away from her when she gets on top, and she shoots him in his gun arm without waiting.

He drops his gun, turns to her with a pained laugh.

He doesn’t look afraid. He looks like she feels: resigned.

“My brother saw all this coming. I don’t know if he talks to God… that doesn’t matter. He was right. Humanity is once again in crisis.”

She shoots him again, this time in the stomach. He pushes his good hand against the wound and laughs again, blood staining his lips as he half-sits, half-collapses.

“You did everything he said you would do. And you didn’t even know it. You had no fucking clue.” His breaths sound wet, forced in and out of his lungs by sheer force of will, a sheer refusal to die so strong it rivals her own. 

She puts her gun away, pulls out her knife, twirls it around her fingers.

“Guess you’re Strong after all,” he says, and smiles at her with blood-stained teeth like it’s a compliment.

“And you’re Weak. You know what happens to the Weak, right?” She throws his words back at him as she approaches him slowly, still playing with the blade, trying to decide if she should put him out of his misery or watch him slowly bleed out.

He blinks up at her, blue eyes reflecting the sky back at her. He doesn’t stop smiling.

“When you told John that you’re a god,” he asks, voice rough enough to make her feel just a little smug, “what did you mean? It drove him crazy, right up until the end. Wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop talking about it.”

Mattie stands just in front of him and pushes the tip of her knife under his chin. She presses up, tilting his head back, and he moves with her, unwilling despite what he said about being a sacrifice to put himself in too much danger. 

“I meant what I said. I am a fucking god. I can’t be killed. I died just trying to get up here, you know. You shot me in the fucking head. But I’m Stronger than that — I won’t stay dead. That’s my secret. You’re all going to lose, because you’re not meant to win. I am.”

Jacob sighs, makes a thoughtful noise like a grumble from deep within his chest.

She moves her knife from his chin to his ear, catches the tip of the knife under the cartilage at the top. “You know, before I killed John, I managed to shoot him right here. I was aiming for his head, of course, but this is where the bullet grazed him.”

A sharp movement and the knife slices through his ear. He doesn’t flinch, even when blood slowly wells and then starts to drip, the dark red disappearing into the orange of his beard.

“Now you match. Tell him I’ll see him when I finally make it to hell.”

Jacob gives her one last smile before she slips her blade into his neck, tearing out his throat and putting him out of his misery.

Putting them both out of their misery.

She’s covered in his blood, sprayed with it nearly from head to toe, and she calmly leans to the side and throws up that half-bottle of water she drank a few minutes ago.

She spits and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before she staggers a few steps away and sits in the sparse, dry grass.

She props her elbows on her knees and stares at the sky, watching a single fluffy cloud drift across her field of vision.

Tammy’s voice crackles over the radio, tinny and staticky, and Mattie pulls the little box closer to her ear so she can listen better. “Deputy, I don’t know if ‘thank you’ is the right thing to say, but… Well, Eli's death won’t be in vain now. I’m sorry about what happened. Truly, you ain’t the only one to blame.” Mattie gasps as her tears come, pouring over her cheeks and dripping off her chin. “Now ain’t the time to mourn or point fingers. That Deputy Pratt of yours and a whole bunch of our Whitetails are wasting away in Jacob’s armory. Get moving. We’re counting on you.”

Maybe if she just sits here this will all be over.

Maybe if she just… gives up, she can stop fighting.

Maybe if she just sits here long enough, Eli will climb back up from the floor of the bunker, find himself alive and confused, and everyone will forget what happened. She can carry the guilt inside of her, but she’ll be the only one who knows.

None of the peggies she’s ever killed have come back. John hasn’t come back. Jacob won’t come back.

Eli… why would Eli come back?

She gives herself exactly sixty seconds to feel bad for herself before she’s back on her feet and heading back to Jacob’s body. She pulls his weapons from him, checks their quality and modifications, replaces her older weapons with his bright red ones.

She killed him.

She deserves this.

She slips the key over his head without breaking the cord, puts it on around her neck and lets it rest heavy against her chest.

Jude is waiting for her when she gets to the bottom of the hill nearest the bunker. She stops and stares at him, a good ten feet between them, silence stretching even deeper as she waits to see what he’ll do.

“You heard Tammy,” he tells her, then reaches to pick something up off the ground by his feet. It’s a single bulletproof vest, about her size, and he holds it out to her. “I’m coming with you.”

It’s not a question, it’s a statement. He’s coming with her whether she wants him to or not, so she heaves a sigh and nods and rubs at her tired eyes. “Let’s go get him.”

They drive over to Jacob’s armory together, Mattie in the passenger seat, Jacob’s key clutched in her shaking hands. The silence hangs heavy between them, dread and anticipation coiling in their hearts.

Staci’s life hangs in the balance, and the only thing between her and him is however many times she has to die to pull him out of there.

She can do this.

Jude parks down the road from the armory, just veers over into the dirt and stops the car. A heartbeat of silence passes between them before Mattie draws in a deep breath.

“You done this before? Something this big, I mean?”

She turns toward Jude, watches as his fingers tighten and relax around the steering wheel, his knuckles blanching and then turning red again. “Did two tours in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. Thought those days were behind me when my contract was up, but…” He makes an annoyed noise by sucking on his teeth, eyes glued to the road right where it curves. “But, uh, no, not since all this shit started up. Any tips?”

He looks at her then, eyes tired and skin under them dark. He hasn’t been sleeping, probably hasn’t been since this whole thing started. 

She knows at least some of how that feels.

“Stay low when we first approach, scope them out to see what they’re doing. Jacob’s men are better trained than John’s, but they still aren’t professionals. They tend to be easy to pick off if you can be quiet enough. I have the key, so as long as we can get through the courtyard, we can get inside.”

Jude’s nodding, staring out the windshield again.

“There will probably be fewer guards inside, but we’ll have to be quiet to figure out where they’re keeping prisoners. We have to get everyone out, not just Staci.”

“Jacob almost never took prisoners to his bunker, not according to our intel,” Jude says. “He preferred to keep them at the Grandview or at the Veteran’s Center.”

“Good. That’ll make things easier. Once we get the bunker taken care of, we can go back for the Grandview. Sound like a plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They hop out of the car and make their way over to the armory’s driveway, crouch low in the grass to stare. Jude uses the scope on his sniper rifle while Mattie sits cross-legged next to him with her binoculars in her hands and her elbows on the boulder that’s providing them with half cover.

“Where’d you learn to do all this, anyway?” She flinches at the sudden sound of his voice, but he’s quiet enough. “You serve too?”

She laughs, a short, bitter sound. “Oh, I learned on the job, pal. The threat of getting confessed was enough to light a fire under my ass.”

He makes a considering noise. “Staci always said you were tougher than you looked.”

Mattie smiles at this, but turns her full focus back to the job at hand. There are only five peggies she can see guarding the entrance, but that seems too few. John had at least a dozen outside of his, but maybe he was more scared of her than Jacob was.

“Okay, see who you can pick off from here. I’m moving a little closer.”

She does just that, leaving him behind. She hears the quiet report of his rifle, the bullet as silent as it possibly can be, but she doesn’t hear the sound of a peggie being hit. More importantly, she doesn’t hear the sound of an alert going up.

She sneaks in a little closer, climbs up around the side of the armory to take out one of the men she saw through her binoculars. He looks surprised, in the moments before his death, and she’s not sure if it’s because of who she is or because he wasn’t expecting to have his neck broke period, but either way, she savors the look on his face right when he realizes what’s happening.

What does that mean about her? What is Hope County turning her into?

She pushes down the little voice in her head that says monster, monster and keeps her head down as she looks for the next peggie to nab. She’s pretty sure she can trust Jude not to shoot her on accident, but… 

This is faster.

She manages to take down a second peggie before the commotion starts up closer to the entrance, screams that let her know Jude’s been spotted.

She heads that way at a sprint, standing tall, leaping over low crates instead of taking the time to go around them. She’s pretty sure Jude will come back too if Sharky and Boomer will, but if she can get to him in time to take him into the bunker with her…

The butt of a peggie rifle stops her in her tracks as it slams into her middle. It knocks the wind out of her, all the breath rushing out of her lungs as her diaphragm seizes. She falls on her ass, kicks her feet out on pure instinct and blind fury, and the peggie falls across from her.

He drops his gun, and they stare at each other, all wide eyes and anger, from her, and confusion, from him.

Exactly three seconds pass before she’s able to draw in a breath and launch herself forward. The peggie throws his hands up to stop her but she’s spent too much time fighting for her life for him to be able to stop her now. She gets her hands on his face and slams his head onto the pavement, then slams it again, then slams it a final time as his body goes still underneath her.

Her hands are sticky when she pulls them away, dark red and viscous, and she wipes them on the front of his sweater before she climbs to her feet.

The driveway in front of the armory is deadly silent. She can’t hear any more peggies coming, but she can’t hear Jude either. She stretches out her fingers, picks up her gun, takes another minute to look around for Jude, just in case.

When he doesn’t stand up or call out for her, she heaves a heavy sigh.

If he’s not waiting for her when she gets Staci out of here, she’s going to fucking kill him again.

---

There aren’t as many people hanging out in Jacob’s bunker as there were in John’s. It’s easier for her to sneak into each room, quietly snap a neck or two, and then sneak back out. She doesn’t even have to use her pistol until she finds two peggies trying to put out a grease fire in the kitchen. While she kills the first peggie, the second one catches his sleeve on fire.

She puts the fire out by dumping the entire contents of an industrial-sized box of salt on his corpse before she moves on. She’s going to have to come back out of the bunker the same way, probably, and this isn’t something she wants to smell on her way out.

Staci doesn’t need to see it either.

There are more peggies on the lower level, and these seem to know she’s here. She ducks behind some crates and makes one start to laugh; he calls out a taunting, “You scared, little girl?” as he comes around to find her.

She shoots him between the eyes and doesn’t feel bad about it.

She finds the control room empty, the override key still stuck in the console. If she hadn’t probably already killed the person who left it here, they’d be in a world of trouble. As it is…

She turns it, overriding the pressure locked doors so she can get down to where Staci’s being held. She turns to leave the room when she sees Staci on a little TV in the corner, and she gets right up to it before she realizes this one isn’t a live feed.

It’s some kind of interrogation, playing on a loop. She can hear Staci’s pleading voice, Jacob’s cruel one telling Staci he’s the worst kind of person, a traitor, a Judas, and she smashes the closest TV to her with the butt of the same rifle she took from Jacob.

A twist of fate she’s remarkably proud of.

She can see Staci still sitting on other monitors, head back, eyes closed, chest moving shallowly. He’s still alive, for now, but she has to get to him before anyone else does.

She has to go down another level and kill a few more peggies to find him, but she does find him, tied to a chair and surrounded by monitors playing his punishment over and over and over. A pipe is leaking behind him and water’s covering the floor up to her ankles, and she’s never been so happy to see another person as long as she’s been alive.

She checks his pulse first, her blood-stained fingers pressing against the underside of his neck to make sure he’s still with her.

He startles at her touch, muscles jumping, and then gives her the most beautiful smile she’s ever seen. “Rook? Are you real?”

She rests her hands on his chest as the full force of her relief washes over her. “Yeah, honey, I’m real. Let me get you free, hang on.”

She slices through the bands of duct tape holding him to the chair, and Staci pushes himself up so fast that his legs buckle under him and he falls through Mattie’s reaching arms into the gathered water.

She tries to help him stand back up, but he pulls away and stands under his own power. He stumbles again, catches himself, turns to look at her with something like pride shining out of his eyes.

Then… the expression falls.

“He said that I was weak. That I deserved this. Maybe he was right…” Staci turns more to survey his prison, the room that was meant to be his tomb. “Maybe I deserved it.” He starts to move again, limping as his legs keep threatening to give out, probably still asleep from sitting in one position for who knows how long, grabbing for a sledgehammer leftover from who knows what. “Maybe I did. Maybe I did, maybe I did!”

He finally lifts the sledgehammer and swings it as hard as he can, smashing through the nearby console until it starts to spark. He doesn’t look at Mattie as he turns to look for something, doesn’t look at her as he drags the sledgehammer through the water to break the latch on a lockbox.

He pulls a rifle out, holding it with hands too reverent for her comfort, and then finally he looks at her.

“They made me strong. And now, they’re weak. And the weak… must be culled.” 

He nods, confident, and Mattie has a fraction of a second to clap her hands over her ears before he raises the rifle and opens fire. She can hear him screaming over the rapid fire, and she digs her fingernails into her scalp to distract herself. A bullet ricochets off the wall and slices across her wrist.

She closes her eyes against the pain and the blood and the noise.

She doesn’t realize she’s openly crying until the noises stop and warm hands are pulling hers from her ears. She opens her eyes and has to blink to clear her vision, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she meets Staci’s gaze. He looks… she’s not sure, exhausted and hurt and apologetic and then impatient as she takes short, gasping breaths to calm herself down.

He wipes his thumbs across her cheeks, too rough to be really comforting, then he checks where her arm is still bleeding. His touch is rough her too, pressing into the shallow wound to test it.

An alarm blares, and he meets her eyes again.

“We gotta go.”

She allows herself enough time to take another deep breath, and then she nods.

Staci’s safe.

It’s time to go.

[danetobelieve]

Don’t Be So Shellfish || Deirdre and Winston

Midday jogs weren’t Deirdre’s first idea for a fun day, her first idea involved a glass of wine and watching the guy down the street have a stroke. But she was growing too comfortable, too drawn to the macabre--having conversations she shouldn’t, sticking around in places she really couldn’t be seen. In the end, a jog to clear her mind and pick up a few fresh bones was a better idea. It wasn’t her first idea for a fun day, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t make it fun. Jogging down some street she hadn’t bothered to double check the name of ( being new to White Crest, she probably should have been more careful, but Deirdre was nothing if not confident ) she spotted a car pulled over to the side. And really, car was putting it generously. It looked more like a piece of metal begging to explode at some point. If she could scream for cars, she figured she probably would have for the poor thing. “Let it die,” she commented with a laugh, jogging up to the kid she presumed to be the owner, “that thing looks like crumpled piece of paper had sex with roll of aluminum foil and then got ran over by a bigger, nicer looking, car. Let it die, kid. Call a cab.”

As they felt the wheel begin to have it’s tell tale shake, Winston couldn’t help but swear multiple times. As the sentence got on in length it became more and more colourful with each passing moment. Pulling over to the side of the road, Winston’s car filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber. The 90s buick that they were still driving almost 30 years later had definitely seen better days, but Winston wasn’t about to let it go to car purgatory, aka, the scrap yard, without a fight. Pulling it over to the side of the road, they stepped out of their car and popped the hood. What happened next was annoying. A snide comment from an unnecessarily good looking jogger didn’t help their confidence. “H-hey!” they stammered, “This at least looks like a piece of scrap aluminum foil had sex with another piece of aluminum foil and then was run over by another car.” They weren’t in denial about the fact that they didn’t have the coolest car ever. 

“No, it looks like a bunch of nicer cars got together and tried to think of what the ugliest car would look like and then created yours in a dark pit somewhere in Kansas, which is where I imagine all the darkest pits to be.” Deirdre leaned over, trying to peer into the hood as though she knew anything about cars, as though she even planned to help. She didn’t feel bad for them, there had to be a point when you accepted that a piece-of-junk car was exactly that, a piece of junk. Humans always did try to hold onto things that should have died long ago--like mom jeans. This was, however, very amusing to watch. If only she had popcorn in the pockets of her jacket instead of bones. “Oh! You should try poking the engine, maybe that’ll work. Oh, I know, take the gasoline out and drink it. I hear it has magical properties.” She snickered, her laughter only cutting short at the sound of sharp crunching in the woods beyond them. Well, that was probably fine; things crunched in woods. Things crunched all the time. She could crunch this kid if she wanted to. “So I’m assuming you don’t plan on letting it go?”  

“Well, it’s still an achievement to have a car from the darkest pits of Kansas,” Winston replied with a shrug, they dealt with internet trolls on a daily basis and they’d worked in Took’s General Store for enough years to know when someone was just being mean for the sake of it. “I hate to break it to you,” Winston said as they popped the hood on their apparently frankenstein-esque car and was met with a face full of acrid smoke, coughing they fanned their hand in front of their face before replying, “but teasing someone half your age doesn’t make you cooler. Besides, you’re what, 50?”  They were on the way to the mechanic but it was pretty clear to Winston that they didn’t need to worry too much, there car just appeared to have overheated. They weren’t a mechanic, but they understood the rough theory. “I think it just over heated, should be fine soon.”

“You really think I look 50?” Deirdre perked up, a smile of pride on her face. Vaguely, she did understand that to humans, that was supposed to be an insult. However, years of insecurity wrought from being the youngest in her family made her blind to the actual meaning. She hummed as she watched the kid work, caught up in her own head. “Hm, don’t overheated cars explode?” Feeling a rare sense of pity surge in her, she began to reach for her phone to call before the crunching grew louder. “Do you hear that?” Through the trees, as if spurred by dramatic timing, a claw came down and raked the edge of the kid’s car, another claw poised at the ready as the creature moved into the light. “I’ve always liked lobster.” And the creature was as lobster-like as they came, but large. Far too large; roughly the size of the mangled car. There was a joke to be made about pincher and crusher claws here, but Deirdre couldn’t think of it. The creature’s antennae twitched. Deirdre couldn't figure out where its eyes were, her own lost in staring at parts of dark carapace that surrounded a monstrous body. But she guessed it was looking at them. “Hm, are you feeling hungry now, or is that just me?” She turned to the kid as the creature snipped a claw--the pincher--in the air, “oh and you probably want to get that thing running now.”

“Maybe 45 at a push,” Winston shrugged, “you’re definitely just old.” They had promised themselves they’d stop calling people boomers. It was cliche and beneath them. But they were really having to take some time to restrain themselves here. “Do they?” Winston asked with a shrug, “I certainly hope not.” They shrugged and moved away from their car, pulling a bottle of water from their car they took a drink of the water but didn’t offer Deirdre any. Pausing, they were about to ask her what she was talking about when they saw a claw scratch down the side of their car. Sparks flew from the hard shell of the claw as it made contact with the metal of the car. “Is that … is that …?” Winston suddenly forgot anything funny they had ever had to say. “Is that a fucking giant lobster? What the actual fuck is wrong with this town? Why the fuck does weird shit like this happen all the goddamn time? For one day, I just want to drive around without some weird shit happening…” they trailed off as the Lobster started to move their way. “I am not hungry, and what gave it away that running would be a good idea?” they asked as they began sprinting away for the third time this week.

“Why, thank you!” Deirdre beamed, it wasn’t a compliment she expected to get from the poor car owner, but it was one she’d take. Perhaps it was their compliment that put her in a good mood, or perhaps the simple sight of watching their car fight them at every step, but she found herself at least a little inclined to help. Of course, there was a giant lobster that had different plans for them. “Now, I think it adds character to an otherwise dreary town,” she commented, running alongside the kid with ease. She was thankful, then, that she was already in her jogging gear. “This is interesting,” she spoke between the sound of her sneakers hitting the pavement, “I don’t think lobsters like eating people. I imagine that clams and crabs taste better than we do.” But this was also a giant lobster, and maybe that meant something different. She glanced behind them, the lobster scuttering behind them on its legs, claws snapping. The knowledge neither of them were going to die kept her calm, though a lackadaisical outlook might have contributed to that too. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about giant lobsters, would you?”

Bewildered, Winston looked at her confused. “You’re welcome? I guess?” Winston wasn’t really thinking about the compliments that they were or weren’t giving to complete strangers who had more or less bullied them for their own misfortune. They could already feel their chest get slightly tight from all of the exertion, but they weren’t about to slow down. Not when there was something with giant claws that had left massive claw marks in their car! “Character is a good lobster roll from a good pop up food stand on a wharf, character is a quirky bar with fishing nets strung up to the ceiling overlooking the ocean! Character is not a giant lobster trying to cut me and my car in half with it’s claws!?” How was this woman keeping up with them with such ease? Was she even breaking a sweat? How did her hair stay so perfectly in a pony tail? Winston imagined that in comparison they must have looked like a sweaty mess. Not to mention that they were sure their heart would leap out of their chest at any moment. “Terrifying is more the word I would use to describe this,” Winston retorted as they vaulted a rock that someone had carelessly left outside in their way and kept running the best they could, though they could feel themselves slowing down.” Looking at this weirdo in disbelief, Winston honestly felt their jaw slacken slightly. “Are you … why are you complete… you’re insane? Right? Of course I don’t know ANYTHING about GIANT LOBSTERS! I DIDN’T KNOW THEY EXISTED UNTIL A MINUTE AGO YOU PSYCHOPATH!?!?!”

The stranger’s bewilderment was amusing. So much so that Deirdre laughed, and then felt compelled to introduce herself in the midst of their yelling. “I’m Deridre,” she said matter-of-factly. Watching sweat drip down their face and listen to the panic in their voice suddenly made a jog she didn’t want to take all the more worthwhile. She continued running with practiced ease, the lack of terror making it easier to control her breathing with each step. “I don’t know, the lobster is kind of cute. You’re kind of cute,” if they weren’t running, she would have reached over and pinched their cheek. Humans could be so cute when they were worried; if only they knew they weren’t going to die. She could have told them, but if they had trouble processing a large lobster, she didn’t think they’d take the knowledge of her precognition any better. “No need to yell,” she hopped over pieces of rock and the odd strewn branch dexterously, “there are such a thing as people who know about creatures that are more than---are you getting tired already?” She blinked at them, “I--we haven’t even been running for more than a couple of minutes. Maybe if you stopped yelling, you’d have more stamina. Look, repeat after me; breathe in, breathe out--” she glanced behind her, then forward again, “breathe in, don’t think about how the lobster is snipping its claws, breathe out, don’t worry about how it’s right on your heels, breathe in---” one of the bones in her pocket tumbled out, clattering to the asphalt and rolling away behind them. “--try not to think about that either.”

“Deirdre?” Winston asked, suddenly convinced that they didn’t have the most interesting first name in a conversation for once, “I’m Winston.” Looking at them with a mixture of disbelief and horror, Winston shook their head. “Now is not the time to tell me I’m cute! Now is the time to suggest some clever way out of this as you’re obviously being smug and superior as if you knew that giant lobsters were a thing.” Which seemed a touch strange. Winston honestly wasn’t sure that they weren’t having a nervous breakdown and imagining all of this, what with the week that they were having. They reached up and wiped the sweat from their brow before reaching into their jeans and fishing out their inhaler. Shaking it haphazardly as they run, they struggled to bring it up to their lips and managed to inhale most of a spray of ventolin. “Listen, I know you think you’re really funny, but I’m asthamatic, so it isn’t just like I’m unfit or anything,” which was true, but entirely besides the point, “if this were gym class I’d have a note excusing me for a break should I need one.” Perhaps if they hadn’t taken so many breaks during gym they’d have managed to avoid this problem. “Why are you not terrified that this thing is trying to kill us?” They had been running along the coast, and as the path turned away from the path, they found themselves heading towards a small hill. Winston wasn’t stupid, high ground would be good. They weren’t sure why, but Obi-Wan hadn’t screamed about it and then cut his old padawan in half without some kind of advantage.

“Nice to meet you, Winston. You seem a little panicked for your age. You’ll get wrinkly young like that,” she trailed off, “oh, I didn’t know about giant lobsters specifically but there might as well be giant lobsters, yeah?” Deirdre glanced behind her again, for a moment, the creature paused to look over the bone--clearly more interested in that than the two of them. It was a moment she used to look around them. Between Winston’s inhaler and the coastline, it didn’t seem like there was any place they could really run. Until the hill drew into sight and an idea sprouted in Deirdre’s head. “If a giant lobster is what kills me, then I deserve to die. But it won’t and you know why?” Because she was a banshee that could sense that sort of thing. “Because I’m too pretty to be killed by something as ugly as that and you’re not going to die either and you know why?” Because she was a banshee that could sense that sort of thing. “Because you’re going to climb up that hill there and I’m going to throw my bones in the water.” And she meant that literally as she pulled out the bones she’d spent all morning collecting, trying to grip them in her hands as they ran and the lobster sped up. “I feel like we’re really bonding here, Winston.” She began throwing bones as hard as she could while flat terrain turned upward, and a hill held under their feet. As she suspected, the lobster was far more interested in what she was throwing than chasing after the two of them, but she kept running and throwing. 

“It might be nicer to meet you, Deirdre, if it were under different circumstances, although I've got to be honest that the lack of wrinkles I have aren’t really what concerns me, I am more concerned with the possibility of premature decapitation,” Winston really wasn’t having a good week, or maybe it was a good month now. This year had already turned weird. “Why?” Winston asked perplexed with how pleased Deirdre seemed with this situation. Honestly in all of the panic they hadn’t even noticed the bone falling out, but they weren’t stupid and they were able to realise where it had come from. But they were clearly distracted and Winston took the opportunity to take another long puff of their inhaler and do their best to get their breath back while still trying to keep a good distance between them.  “I appreciate your candid point of view, but why do you have bon-” pausing, Winston looked at her and shook their head, “I’m not even going to bother to ask why you have a pocket full of bones, and whilst I don’t doubt that this will definitely work out perfectly, I’m going to need to get up that hill as fast as possible, so by all means try and distract this giant invertebrate. “This is weird, I wasn’t expecting to bond with someone over … well this. But I guess I’ve got to say thanks, y’know, for saving my life and shit.” Pausing for a second, Winston began the arduous climb up the hill. “You seem way to at ease with all of this…” they said, using the bottom of their t-shirt to wipe sweat away as the giant lobster headed in the opposite direction. 

Bones. Deirdre liked bones. She had less bones now. Humans. Deirdre didn’t like humans. Yet she was down some bones and up a human. The trade off didn’t seem right. She glanced at Winston, sweaty and foolishly grateful for a life she didn’t save. “I’ve seen worse things than a giant mutated lobster...my neighbor has a very ugly house, for example.” She paused, mulling the situation over. The lobster had gone after the bones, and then faded out of sight somewhere. Now it was someone else’s problem. The kid though, frazzled and out of breath, was somehow hers. Humans weren’t supposed to be her problem but...well, she wasn’t completely heartless. “Come on, sweaty child, I’ll buy you some lunch.”

“How do you equate a giant mutated lobster with a very … ugly … house?” Winston couldn’t deal with this Deirdre person. She was wacky off the charts, carrying bones around in her pocket and apparently completely unconcerned that there was a very real possibility that they lived in a world which had things in it that would be more or less constantly trying to kill them. “How is an ugly house worse then a lobster?” These were questions that Winston heavily doubted they would get answers for. Wiping more sweat from their brow with the bottom of their t-shirt, Winston adjusted their glasses as they began to catch their now ragged breath. “I … well I guess I wouldn’t say no to lunch, but you do realise I’m like in my twenties right, maybe where you come from that is a child’s age but here I’ve legally been able to drink since I was 21….” somehow, something told them that it didn’t matter. 

[asthora]

The Last Dance, Pt. 2

The Courier brings Benny back to Vegas.  He can’t tell if it’s a mistake or if she’s just playing more games.  Part 2 to my Benny x Courier saga.  Read part one here.

The Courier is playing tricks on him.

She’s got a heart blacker than an abandoned vault.  She never planned on letting him walk free, just thought it would be fun and games to see him skip off into the sunset only to reel him back in, her executioner’s axe sharpened.

“This isn’t what you think,” she tells him.  “Believe it or not.”

Yeah, like he’s going to let her fool him again.

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes anymore, baby.  You’re here to kill me.”

Benny had been gone for almost two weeks, hadn’t even gotten the chance to leave the Mojave, when the Courier’s little NCR sniper appeared out of goddamn nowhere.  Benny was just enjoying himself a smoke at the 188 when the beret grabbed his arm, turned him in the direction of New Vegas, and with a gruff let’s go, led him to his final resting place.

“Did I not scram fast enough, pussycat?  Was I too slow?  A man’s got to take his time when he’s deciding the fate of his future.”

“No, I’m glad you didn’t leave the Mojave.  Made you easy to find.”

Oh, of course.  Her hounds only run so far from the horses.  If he had skedaddled sooner, right now he could be enjoying himself a hooker in New Reno or nursing himself a whiskey neat in some slummy bar.

“Well I’m glad I could convenience  you, baby.”

“Yeah, yeah.  You aim to please.  I’ve heard it all before, Benny.  Now it’s time for you to shut up and let me do the talking.”

Benny zips his lips and throws away the key.  She rolls her eyes.  The Courier leans back, her chair balancing on two legs, with her feet propped up on a card table.  Her scarred hands rest on her toned stomach.  Outside the tent, Benny can hear the sounds of the Mormon Fort --  babies crying, some grunts, coughing, the final scream of a dying junkie.  He winces.  Now he remembers why he made it a rule to never set foot in this place.  Benny doesn’t like to be reminded of mortality.  

“I’m not going to kill you,” she says.  “I promise.”

“Really?”

“Really.  Cross my heart and hope to fucking die.”

He smirks. “Well, now I’m convinced.”

News flash, he isn’t.  He’s got a right to be cautious of this broad but there’s something about this whole situation that makes him wonder if she’s telling the truth.

“If I decided that killing you was what I wanted to do, do you think you’d be alive right now?  Do you think I would waste any more of my time looking at your face?”

“Ouch, baby, you know my face is the finest thing for miles.”

So she isn’t planning to kill him, there’s a reason the Courier dragged him back kicking and screaming to New Vegas.  But why aren’t they partying it up in the Lucky 38’s revolting cocktail lounge?  He’s standing in front of the Mojave’s most powerful woman, yet she isn’t ruling from her castle.  Why would a queen stalk in the slums?

C’mon, think like a big-leaguer Benny-boy.

Perhaps it’s because the Mormon Fort is discreet.  Maybe, what she has to say doesn’t need the eyes and ears of certain people.  In this neck of the woods, those certain people can only be the Vegas elite.  The Families.   Freeside ain’t Vegas proper so the Families don’t tend to pay attention to the slums, a mistake he didn’t make.  Instead their feelers extend from New Vegas, skip over Freeside, and tumble out in the desert, gently probing the uncivilized world for anything that might benefit their empires.  If she wants to be invisible this is the perfect place to do it.  Not only is it free of Family spies, she’s got some aces protection.  The Courier just doesn’t stop making friends.  On his way in he spotted a few leather clad Kings milling about the perimeter and he swears he saw a Boomer vault suit sitting pretty as you please at the front gate.  

But there are bigger questions to be asking here, like why is the Courier so desperate to get away from the Families?  What does she want to keep hidden?  And most importantly, if she doesn’t plan to kill him, why is he here?

Or maybe he’s got it all wrong.  Maybe he’s thinking about this too closely.  Nah, no way.  He and the courier are the same in many ways.  She wouldn’t say it  but he ain’t afraid to admit that they are a couple of crafty scheming fucks.

“You’re hard to get rid of, Benny.  Did you know that?” She asks, picking at her bleeding cuticles.  She’s got hands like a desert scaver.

“A man once told me that before I stuck a knife in his neck.”

The Courier laughs, a flat dry laugh that makes his stomach lurch.  She looks at him and cracks a smile.

“Swank told me about that.  Your old chief, Bingo.  He wanted to keep wandering but you said no sir.  You told him the future was behind a gate, not out there,” she points to the desert.  “So you killed him and brought your people to a new eden.”

“We could sit here recalling history, baby but that won’t lead us to anywhere that we don’t already know.”  He says, his voice tight.

“I disagree,” the Courier slams her chair into the dirt and leans forward.  “Get on your knees.”

Benny’s jaw tightens.   Oh how he’d love to watch her bleed like he did with Bingo.  But his hands are tied, literally, and he’s at the mercy of this woman perhaps for the rest of his short life.  Benny gets on his knees.

“Happy?”

“I just want to remind you that we aren’t equals.  I’m about to propose something to you that might send your ego flying to the stars, so I gotta make sure all my bases are checked.”

A proposal?  What kind of proposal?  What can this bitch offer him that she hasn’t already?   His freedom was the only thing he could ask for, his life.  The only thing left to dangle in front of him is...no.  No fucking way.  Vegas is all that’s left, the only thing he wants more than life but, the Courier is far from a fool.  She wouldn’t hand over her newly won town for all the caps in the wasteland, so what is this?

“What I’m about to say stays in this tent.  It doesn’t leave your mouth.  I don’t want you even thinking about it.  Do you understand?”

“I’m understanding that you have something real secret that you shouldn’t be saying.  I’ll keep it under wraps, pussycat.  Now spill the beans.”  He says.

The Courier’s blue eyes close, then open, then close, and finally open again.  She looks pained, like whatever she’s about to say, she doesn’t want to say it.

“We’re going to make a deal.  I’m going to let you come back to Vegas and take up the mantle of head of the Chairman.  In return, you’re going to be my little lapdog.”

Is he hearing her right?  Did she really just offer him a doorway back into Vegas?  He’s so caught up in the thought of walking the halls of The Tops again that he almost misses the word lapdog.  Almost.  

He narrows his eyes.  “What do you mean by lapdog, baby?  You realize this puppy ain’t into being leashed, right?”

“Well if you want to be more than one of the common folk you’re going to have to embrace the leash and be a good boy.”

Benny spits in the dirt.  This ain’t right.  This ain’t humane.  That doesn’t mean he ain’t interested.

“Tell me why I should do this.”

She rubs her hands together and smiles.  “Because you aren’t going to settle for the wasteland and I need a inside man who can tell me everything that the Families do.  I’m not going to make the same mistake House did, I’m going to watch the power players and make sure they stay in their lanes.  I’m not letting what you did happen again.”

Oh this broad is clever!  She deserves this town better than anyone.  She knows what to do, how to treat her fickle town, how to make sure it stays in her hands.  Her judgement is impeccable.  Who better than him to spy on the Omertas and the White Gloves?  Once upon a time this was his town, and he knew how it rolled.  Benny knew every shred of gossip, every rumor, every word that came out of the mouth of the big players.  He knew when every little lord and lady fucked, slept, ate, shit, and schemed.  That kind of knowledge could quell a revolution, a fight the Courier doesn’t want happening again.  Funny to think that he once thought she wasn’t a threat.

But there are problems with this plan.  No doubt his boys know that he betrayed him.  They won’t welcome him home, no siree, and the rest of the Strip?  Well, he’s no better than a White Glove frozen dinner.

“I like your ambition but you’re missing something important.”  He says.

“Like what?”

“Swank isn’t going to let me come waltzing through those doors.  He’ll splatter my brains across the carpet as soon as he sees me.”

“Why?  He doesn’t know anything.”

What?

The Courier’s lips turn up in an amused smile.  “All Swank and the rest of Vegas knows is that some fuck shot me in the head and I took over Vegas.  I didn’t tell them that it was their boss who set my rampage in motion.”

He can’t believe this.  It’s like the bitch had this all planned out from the start.  Maybe she did, he tells himself.  She’s smart enough.

“Swank told me you often disappear for days at a time, weeks even.  All you have to do is walk back in, say you had business somewhere in the Mojave, and then it’s back to business as usual.”  

She makes it sound so easy and really, it is.  Benny is good at lying and Swank is good at believing him.  What Swank accepts, the rest of his pack with accept, and so will Vegas.  There’s a sick feeling in his gut though.  All the lies, they’re piling up.  It isn’t right to lie to your second, but Benny has been doing it for years.  He’s neck deep.  This’ll be the last lie, he thinks, then things will return to normal.  

The Courier is right, he doesn’t want to be a wastelander again.  He’s had a taste of civility and now he doesn’t think he can truly step away.  He just ain’t too keen on being a slave.

“So I get my little slice of heaven back and in return, I give you information.  Correct?” He asks.

The Courier swings her legs off the table and leans forward.  She’s so close to him.  It reminds him of two weeks ago when he was at the mercy of her blade.

“Well, that and a few other things.  You’ll do exactly as I say.  If I say jump, you say how high.  If I ask you to swim in a sea of radiation, you better be running for your swim trunks-”

“So I’m your little bitch” he interrupts.  “I get it.”

She cocks her head to the side, her jaw working furiously.  “No, you don’t.  Don’t interrupt.  You’ll spy for me and you’ll pretend like you’re just one of the boys, like you and me have never had any ties.  If I ask you to accompany me somewhere, you’ll do it.  The Tops is your kingdom, you can run it how you like, but you won’t tell me how to run Vegas, and you won’t try to run it for yourself.”

She drives a hard bargain.  Benny licks his lips and shifts on his knees, which are now aching so badly his legs have started to shake.  The way he sees it, he doesn’t have a choice.  She’ll just kick him to the curb if he says no.  There is no better way back into Vegas, there is no other option.  He’ll play his part.  For a bit.

“Fine,” he spits.  “You win.  I’ll come back.  I’ll play your game by the rules if it gets me back into my casino.”

The Courier leans back and smiles brightly.  “Perfect!”

“Who would’ve thought I’d become business partners with the broad who I put in the ground?”

“And who would have thought that broad would be pulling the strings?”  She smirks.  “Now get up.”

He stands slowly.  The Courier takes a knife from her boot and cuts the ropes around his wrists.  He’s still got scars from the Legion’s bindings.  He looks up from his hands at the courier.  She’s a good head shorter than his six feet.  This is the first time they’ve been side by side not as enemies, but as allies.  She stares up at him with cold, blue eyes.

“Arcade!” She shouts.

“Yeah?”  

Benny turns.  A Follower doctor with blonde hair and thick rimmed glasses peeks around the tent flap.

“Do you have any clothes Benny can borrow?  I don’t need him walking back into The Tops looking like he’s been dragged through the dirt.”

Arcade laughs humorlessly.  “I’m sure I have something.  Want me to make him bathe, too?  I can smell him from here.”

“That would be great.  Thanks, Arcade.”

“I aim to please.  Follow me, asshole.”  

“You’ve got lovely friends.”  Benny growls, backing away from the Courier.  She crosses her arms and sticks her hip out.

“Yeah.  I’ve got the best of the best.  Even the most disgusting now.”

Benny follows Arcade, but before he pushes the dirty cloth aside, he hesitates.  For the first time he realizes he doesn’t even know this bitch’s name.  It’s just always been the Courier or pussycat or baby.  He turns around and she raises an eyebrow.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve been so caught up in hating you babydoll, that I don’t even know your name.”

Her smirk falters then shifts into a wide smile.  

“My name is Indigo Blue.  Call me Indy.”