Work Text:
It was surprising. Wait, shit, surprising is an understatement. It was…
Cal frowned and put his pencil down. On the other end of the couch, Arcade was reading a thick book that didn’t even have the good grace to include pictures, making it completely useless as far as Cal was concerned. Carelessly interrupting his husband’s reading, Cal asked, “I need another word for surprising. Like, really, really surprising.”
Arcade arched a cornsilk brow, “For what?”
“For my story! You think people wouldn’t be interested in Hero of the Mojave: The Story of the Courier?”
The doctor sighed and marked his page, setting his book aside. And he had been so looking forward to a quiet afternoon of complex medical theories…
“Will there be pictures?” he mocked, sitting forward.
“Hell yes, there will be pictures,” Cal answered indignantly. He held up the dog-eared, water-damaged notebook that he’d recently found in a long forgotten schoolhouse. The page that faced Arcade had a drawing that was only marginally more detailed than stick figures. “See? This is me getting shot in the head,” Cal said. “Now all I need is a word to describe getting ambushed, dragged to a cemetery, and then shot in the head.”
“Frightening?”
“If I want to sound like a wimp, maybe. No, something manly.”
“Distressing, startling, alarming…”
“I’ll just use pants-shitting,” Cal announced, scribbling the words down.
Arcade rolled his eyes, “But is the world ready for your brilliance, you literary genius, you.” Sometimes Cal’s childishness exasperated him, but then he reminded himself that he was married a man who technically had brain-damage. (Though, to hear Gin tell it, he had always been this way.)
“Not just me,” Cal corrected, “Everyone’s agreed to write their own endings.” He flipped to the back of the book and ripped out a page, handing it and an extra pencil to Arcade, “Want to start yours now?”
Arcade frowned, “What do you want me to write about?”
“Whatever you want. Just what you’ve done since Hoover Dam.” That said, Cal went back to drawing and describing his amazing feats in what was surely exaggerated detail.
Arcade looked down at the lined paper thoughtfully. What he’d done since Hoover Dam? A lot of things; nothing. It had been ten years, for goodness sake! The blond glanced at Cal, who was engrossed in his self-indulgent memoir, and stifled a groan. Arcade was not Arcade’s favorite topic. He folded his still blank paper into a square and tucked it into his pocket with the stubby pencil, then stood and made his way for the elevator. Maybe if he sought the council of someone more levelheaded than Cal, he’d be able to come up with something worth writing.
--
Arcade weaved his way through the Ultra-Luxe’s casino, not pausing in his brisk walk to Veronica’s suite. The Ultra-Luxe was not the place Arcade would have guessed Veronica would end up when he’d met her, all brown robes and punch-happy, but some time with her had made it clear that the Brotherhood scribe longed for a life of beauty and sophistication. The night before they’d gone to Hoover Dam to face down both the Legion and the NCR, they’d all sat around and talked and joked and set goals for the future.
“If I live through this,” Veronica had said, “I’m going to wear a dress every day.”
Arcade hadn’t seen Veronica every day for the previous ten years, but on the occasions that he did see her, she was always dressed to the nines, her short hair grown to her shoulders and curled elegantly. This was how she looked when she opened the door and beamed when she found him standing on the other side.
“Arcade! What’s up?” she chirped, standing aside and letting him enter.
“This might sound like a strange question, but did Cal ask you to write your own epilogue for his autobiography?”
“Yeah,” she answered, settling into one of the pristine armchairs in her sitting area. “It was kind of a weird request, but I figured I had a few minutes, so why not?”
“What did you write?”
Veronica reached into the single drawer in the table between their chairs, pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Want to read it? He asked me to hold onto it until he was finished with his part.”
Arcade took the slip from her hand and unfolded it, skimming over her neat handwriting quickly.
After Caesar’s Legion and the NCR were defeated at Hoover Dam, Veronica really started looking at her life. She’d already chosen to leave the Brotherhood of Steel, so that road was closed to her, which was good, because she might have gone back to them out of habit or fear of an uncertain future, otherwise.
No, instead she locked her pneumatic gauntlet away, and spent almost all of her caps on seven dresses and a suite at the Ultra-Luxe. It was a little boring at first, but once she got used to it, she grew to like the peace and relative safety of the Strip. And a few years later, she met and fell in love with a woman whose fashion sense was almost as good as Veronica’s own. They’re currently living happily ever after.
Arcade set the paper aside and hummed thoughtfully.
“Did that help you at all?” she asked.
“A little. I’m going to need to think on it.” He stood nodded to her, “Thanks. It was nice seeing you.”
“Always a pleasure,” she smiled back. “You know you guys can visit any time.”
Arcade saw himself out, back through the Ultra-Luxe casino, and finally into the open air of the Strip. Veronica had helped him get an idea of what sort of tone Cal was probably going for, but he’d need more time to decide what parts of his life over the course of the last ten years were the most important.
He looked across the road and saw The Tops, deciding that it would be his next stop.
The Tops was as busy as ever. Not particularly crowded, but there was a seemingly endless din of patrons chatting and slot machines dinging and cards being shuffled. As he’d done at the Ultra-Luxe, Arcade passed through on his way to Gin’s suite, undistracted by the lights and sounds. When he knocked on her door, he heard a muffled, “It’s open!” in response and took it upon himself to go inside. He briefly marveled at how safe she must have felt in the hotel to just leave her door unlocked like that. Then again, surrounded by Chairmen like she was, she was probably safer than most Vault-dwellers (never mind that this might have been a bad analogy, considering the fates of a lot of the Vaults he’d come across).
He followed splashing noises through the living area and into the bathroom, where Gin was kneeling at the tub in which her two daughters seemed to be playing rather than bathing. Her hair was scraped back into a messy bun as it usually was when he saw her these days, since she didn’t have a lot of time to manage the unruly locks ever since her eldest had been born four years prior.
“Uncle Arcade!” shrieked the little girls excitedly.
Gin looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “Oh, it’s you. I was expecting Swank or one of the other Chairmen,” she admitted. “Otherwise I’d have gotten up and greeted you properly.”
“Too late now, I’m already offended.”
She laughed, and he realized that he had missed the sound. “You can’t give offense, you can only take it,” she retorted, parodying a haughty head-toss as she turned back to the little girls in the tub. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Arcade put the lid down on the toilet and took a seat. “I was wondering about your part of Cal’s book,” he cut right to the chase.
“What about—Gabby, stop trying to drown your sister!—what about it?”
He shrugged, “Any tips for a fellow author?”
“Oh,” she drew the word out knowingly. “The mysterious Arcade Gannon is having trouble talking about himself.”
“When you spend your childhood running from the sins of your father, it’s hard to turn that state of mind off.”
“Well, it’s not like you’re required to advertise all your darkest secrets,” she pointed out. “Just say what you’ve done with the last ten years of your life.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got your marriage and your children, your civic work in Freeside, and even what you do around here,” he swept a hand vaguely around the bathroom, but she knew he meant the entire hotel. “I try to find cheaper, alternative ways to make stimpaks and fixer.”
She snorted, “You seem to forget that you were standing next to me through every one of those meetings with the Kings and the Republic refugees when we worked out that truce. Or the fact that you do more for the Lucky 38 than I have ever done for The Tops. Or that you keep Gale in line and direct him in managing an army of killer robots.” She looked at him sternly but lovingly, not unlike his own mother had done when he was still a child. “The glamorous world of parenting aside,” she said, “there’s nothing I’ve done that you haven’t—though there’s plenty you do that I don’t.”
Arcade set his mouth in a firm line but couldn’t match the stubbornness in her gaze. Relenting, he sighed, “If you say so.”
“I do. Now hand me those towels, these little geckos need to get out of the water before they turn into prunes.”
Arcade did as he was told, and then hovered near the door awkwardly. “Did he ask you to keep hold of your epilogue, too?”
Gin nodded, “It’s tucked into the front cover of Little Women.”
He left Gin and her sopping daughters in the bathroom and went to the shelf where Gin kept her personal collection of pre-war books. After a brief search, he found the title she’d named and opened it to reveal a sheet of paper covered with her annoyingly tiny scrawl.
With the Legion pushed back East and the NCR sent back West, Gin returned to New Vegas and began working with The King and his gang in the hopes that those NCR citizens to remain in Freeside would be safe from persecution. She also suggested allowing the NCR to keep their embassy on the Strip, which Republic officials refused out of spite, and any attempts to negotiate a peaceful alliance with the Republic have been met with silence.
Though Gin had initially had feelings for Boone, she soon came to realize that he would need time before the loss of his wife no longer haunted him, and that she simply wasn’t willing to put her life on hold while she waited for that day. She soon began a romantic relationship with the head Chairman, Benny, whom she married three years later. Benny and Gin have two daughters, Gabrielle and Dorothy, with no plans to have a third child.
Arcade snorted, and replaced the paper and book the way he’d found them. Gin’s epilogue was exactly as forthright and uncomplicated as he’d imagined it would be. So very Gin.
“Uncle Arcade!” shouted Gabby, now dressed in shorts and a tank top as she attached herself to his leg. “Come see the new dollies Daddy got for me!”
“Me too,” protested Dot around the thumb in her mouth, tottering after her sister to cling to Arcade’s other leg.
The doctor sighed, seeing no way out without hurting the girls’ feelings. “Okay,” he surrendered, “let’s see those dollies.”
--
Arcade stumbled out of The Tops an hour later, grateful to leave the screaming nightmare dimension that Gin’s children dragged with them wherever they went. Not for the first time was he glad that he and Cal couldn’t conceive. Then again, at his age, he was almost old enough to be a grandparent.
The word put Lily into his head, and he looked to the western sky. She’d left not long after Hoover Dam, and none of them had seen her since. He wondered if she’d managed to reconnect with her past, or if she even remembered the motley group that she’d traversed the Mojave with for those months before the battle. Or, perhaps—and he felt guilty as the thought occurred to him—she’d perished out West to a gang of raiders or a platoon of overenthusiastic NCR soldiers.
Whether to distance or to death, Lily was lost to them. Arcade didn’t suppose she’d have offered much insight if he were able to go to her with his problem, anyway. But there might have been another person with the age and wisdom he needed.
Raul still lived in that little shack outside of Vegas. When he’d been offered a suite of his own at the Lucky 38, he’d declined and returned to the rickety building. He didn’t visit them in New Vegas often, claiming that traveling was getting harder on his joints, but Arcade suspected he had other reasons to isolate himself. Though, admittedly, no idea what those reasons were.
Usually, Arcade wouldn’t have ventured outside the walls of New Vegas alone, but with the Securitrons patrolling the immediate area for the last ten years, things had gotten exponentially safer. Raiders simply weren’t the problem they used to be. Plus, Raul’s shack wasn’t that far away, and Arcade had his plasma pistol with him. As if to emphasize his point, he passed three soldier-faced Securitrons on his way there. They each greeted him by name and then continued along on their designated patrols.
The shack’s door barely hung on its hinges, and Arcade was surprised a stiff breeze hadn’t detached the rotting wood long ago. Still, he respected Raul’s privacy and knocked sharply on the corrugated metal beside the door. The sound echoed harshly, and Arcade flinched.
The door cracked open two inches, and Raul’s milky-white eye peered out from the gap. When he recognized Arcade, he opened the door completely. “Yeah?” he asked.
“Well, hello to you, too,” Arcade answered, though the retort had no heat. “Can I come in for a few minutes?”
Raul shrugged his creaking shoulders and led Arcade into the small space, sitting at his workbench where it appeared he’d been prior to Arcade’s arrival. The blond stood awkwardly in front of Raul until the ghoul gestured to an overturned crate in the corner. Arcade took the hint and dragged it closer before perching on the little wooden box, his knees bent nearly to his shoulders.
“Did Cal say anything to you about a book he’s writing?”
Raul nodded, “He came by a few weeks ago, asked me for a contribution to the ending.”
“What did you write?”
“I didn’t,” Raul answered, holding his hand up. “These old fingers aren’t what they used to be, and holding a pencil is too hard with my arthritis. Sorry if you came all the way here to collect.”
Arcade frowned, “I was just looking for advice on my part. I already went to Gin, but her opinion was that I should just write anything so long as it’s true.”
“Then do what she says. She’s smart.” He hesitated, then asked, “How is she? I haven’t seen her since the baby.”
“Tired,” described the woman he’d just been to visit. “She’s got her hands full, and she’s looking… old—for thirty-four.” For a split second, an expression crossed Raul’s face that gave Arcade the impression that he’d hit on something sensitive. “But she’s still as tenacious as she ever was. It’s nice to see that settling down and becoming a mother hasn’t dulled her fire any.”
Raul nodded silently, a far-off look on his ragged face.
“I guess I’ll get out of your way, then,” Arcade muttered, standing. “It was nice seeing you.”
Raul reached into his toolbox and pulled out a grease-stained piece of paper, folded into thirds. He held it out to Arcade without looking at the doctor. “I know he said he’d come to pick it up when he was ready, but you might want to just take it now,” he said. “As for my advice, stop looking for some awe-inspiring achievement and just write it the way you want to be remembered when you’re gone.”
Arcade didn’t say anything as he took the paper and vacated the ghoul’s humble home. He waited to read it until he’d reached the old Crimson Caravan compound, where he leaned against the sun-warmed stone wall and unfolded Raul’s paper. The rough chicken-scratch of someone who hadn’t had the occasion to practice penmanship in a very long time stared back at him, but Arcade was able to read it with only a little trouble every now and then.
Raul had been convinced before the battle at Hoover Dam that taking up his guns and fighting for a cause, to make even one little piece of land a better place, was the most noble thing he could do. He fought in the name of Rafaela, hoping to atone for not being there to protect her that day all those years ago, but when the battle was over, there was no one left to fight in Rafaela’s name. Once again, Raul put his guns away and tried to reconcile himself to the idea that he was simply getting old. This reality was easy for him to accept, and he was at peace.
It didn’t take long for Raul to recognize something that he couldn’t accept as easily, though—his friends, the people who had become family to him, were all aging faster than him. In his life, all his loved ones had been killed by desperados, so it hadn’t occurred to him before that he might have to watch the people he cared about wither away and die of old age.
These days, Raul isolates himself in his shack, too cowardly to face spending the rest of his friends’ lives with them, knowing the unavoidable end.
Arcade swallowed hard, commiseration sitting weightily on his chest, though the blond couldn’t deny an undercurrent of frustration. Raul detached from them, hoping to save himself the pain of burying them, rather than staying close and enjoying the time they all had left together to the fullest. It seemed selfish to Arcade, and would probably only lead to Raul having profound regrets after they were all gone.
He pushed off the wall and continued on his way, pausing when he realized where he was. He looked up at the sign which had once read, ‘Crimson Caravan,’ but had been replaced with another caravan company’s logo a little over a year after the battle at Hoover Dam.
Arcade knew that the caravan’s owner was probably busy, or else halfway into a bottle of whiskey (or maybe even both). Either way, he was confident she could make time for him.
Not much had changed about the place since Crimson Caravans had become Cassidy Caravans. The Brahmin were still penned off to one side, with the bunk house and the main office situated on the other. A few of the caravaneers recognized Arcade’s face; many did not, and he realized it had been a shamefully long time since he’d been to visit Cass. Sure, she made her way onto the strip every now and then, but it didn’t seem fair that she always had to make the effort to seek the rest of them out.
He made a beeline for the main office and stepped into the only-minutely-cooler-than-outside building. At her desk, hunched over a stack of missives with a half empty bottle of whiskey on the side (he’d called it!), Cass didn’t bother to look up at her visitor.
Arcade cleared his throat, “Hello.”
Cass blinked, startled by his voice, and finally pulled her attention from her work. Her smile was wide and rowdy, as if it hadn’t been nearly a decade since she’d given up her hard-living ways. “Arcade! What brings you out here?”
He smiled despite himself. Obviously, she held no hard feelings about being left alone out here. “Has Cal been to see you recently?” he asked.
“The book thing, huh?”
“Did everyone know besides me?” he sighed. Really, how long had Cal been planning this out without Arcade—who lived with him, mind you—noticing? What else might Cal have been doing right under his nose? He looked up to find Cass looking slightly bewildered, as if his silence had implied to her that his question hadn’t been rhetorical. “Yes, uh, anyway,” he went on awkwardly. “Are you finished with yours?”
Cass shrugged, “Gonna admit, I didn’t try too hard. But you’re welcome to it.”
“I’m not actually here to collect,” Arcade clarified. “I just need a little help figuring out what I’m going to put in mine.”
She dug her rumpled paper out of her desk drawer and handed it to him, “Knock yourself out.”
Arcade nodded appreciatively and paced over to sit in one of the chairs at the far end of the office. He bit the inside of his cheek to resist correcting some of Cass’ grammar, and managed to read silently.
The danger was fun, but Cass was ready to put it behind her. After all the stuff they went thru, Hoover Dam seemed like as good as any place for it all to come to a head. She didn’t think she’d survive it, but when it was over she wasn’t sore to find that she did.
After that, she wandered and drank and shot stuff. It was a nice change, not being trapped by her caravan papers, and not having any destination in mind. But even that got boring after a while, so she went back to Vegas, where Cal signed Crimson Caravans over to her, since it was part his fault she’d sold her caravan to them to begin with. Cass changed the name to Cassidy Caravans, and the rest is history.
Arcade returned the paper to her wordlessly, though she must have read amusement on his face.
“I ain’t got the same way with words that some do, but I think it about covers it,” she said, trying not to sound defensive.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Arcade insisted. “I’m not laughing at you; I just think it’s funny what you chose to skip.”
She huffed, face flushed, “My sex life ain’t anybody’s business.”
Arcade was quick to agree, if only to avoid drawing any more of her ire out of her. Perhaps she’d had more whiskey than the one bottle he’d been witness to. “I’ll let you get back to your work,” he said quickly. “Bye, Cass.” He closed the door behind him and left the compound behind.
Arcade entered Freeside and sighed. His visit with Cass had gone pleasantly enough, considering the two of them had never been the best of friends to begin with, but he still had no idea what he wanted to say. Cheerful optimism like Veronica; clear and concise facts like Gin; an exceptionally condensed account like Cass; or a morose look at an uncertain future like Raul?
He stared down the road, his thoughts muddled, and his gaze landed on the Atomic Wrangler.
There was one person left to ask.
The Wrangler was as it always was: loud, smoky and crowded. The bouncer beside the door when Arcade entered wasn’t Boone, so he was probably up in his room, sleeping until his shift started later that evening. Arcade went to the stairs, though he had no idea what he was expecting. Boone was even less articulate than Cass, for pity’s sake. His epilogue would probably just read, ‘We won. What else matters?’
Regardless of his misgivings, Arcade found himself at Boone’s door, and before he could consider that maybe waking the ex-recon sniper was more than a little rude, he was knocking. The silence that followed gave Arcade hope that Boone hadn’t heard the door, but a few seconds later, Boone was leaning on the doorframe, regarding him coolly.
“Hi,” Arcade greeted him meekly. “Sorry to bother you. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Sure,” Boone stepped out of the way and held the door for the doctor. “Come on in.”
Arcade nodded his head in thanks and took the invitation. The room, which had at one point been Caleb McCaffery’s, was almost exactly as it had been when Francine had gifted it to Cal all those years ago. Boone had put a two-person dining table and chairs in the corner at some point, but had otherwise left everything as is—not that Arcade was all that surprised; he didn’t exactly take Boone for an interior design enthusiast.
Boone took a set at the added table and gestured to the empty chair across from him. “What can I do for you?”
Arcade sat and folded his hands on the table, “It’s nothing serious. I was just wondering about Cal’s, er, writing project.”
The corner of Boone’s lip quirked in one of only a handful of smiles that Arcade had seen from the reserved man, “Yeah, that was a weird visit, even from him. What about it?”
“Have you done yours yet?”
Boone nodded, “Nothing fancy. It was sort of like debriefing.”
“Just the facts, then?”
“What else is there?”
Arcade snorted amusedly. Boone and Gin, he thought, birds of a feather. It’s a wonder they couldn’t make it work. “May I read it?” he asked at last.
“Don’t see why not,” Boone shrugged. He walked to the other side of the room and came back with a single sheet of paper, more than half of it left blank.
Arcade took it with a grateful dip on his head, wasting no time before he began reading.
Boone wasn’t completely happy with Calhoun for driving out the NCR along with the Legion. When the NCR left the Mojave, Boone thought about going with them back to California, but he knew he didn’t belong there anymore. He didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
All he was good for was shooting and fighting. He stayed in Freeside, worked security for the Followers for a few months, then security with Cassidy Caravans for a few years before he got sick of the traveling and decided to take a job at the Atomic Wrangler.
Arcade laid the paper on the table and returned his focus to Boone, who had retrieved two beers and placed one in front of Arcade. “So,” he said slowly, drawing out the word as he uncapped his room-temperature beer and took a sip. “I notice you didn’t say anything about…”
“My love life is my business, Gannon,” Boone asserted.
Arcade hid a grin behind the lip of his bottle. Déjà vu, he thought drolly. “That may be, but you could at least bring us up to speed on Carla,” he said more seriously. “Since that was sort of a big deal for you back then.”
“She’s still dead. There’s nothing to say about it.” Boone ran a hand over his shaved head in agitation and then sighed in resignation, “Look, it’s gotten easier over the years, but it’s just something that’s always going to sting a little. I’ve missed chances because of the guilt, but I’m not letting it hold me back anymore.”
Arcade studied the scratched surface of the table, scrutinizing a particularly deep gouge. “I can see why you wouldn’t include something like that,” he murmured. “It’s… I appreciate you trusting me with this.” He took a breath and stood, feeling oddly stiff. A glance at the clock showed that he’d been sitting with Boone for the past thirty minutes, which was quite the feat. Even five years ago, there was no way a person could get Boone to talk for half an hour.
“I should get going before Cal scrambles the Securitrons to search for me.”
Boone snorted, “He would, too.”
“Thanks for humoring me,” Arcade went on. “I’m probably overthinking this whole thing.”
“It’s what you do, overthink. No wrong answer, and that scares you.”
Arcade hesitated at Boone’s door, hand hovering over the knob. “What?”
Boone rolled his shoulders nonchalantly, “No margins, no boundaries. You’re not hesitating because you don’t know what he wants, you’re scared because he doesn’t care what it is so long as it’s honest. You can’t just guess at what he wants to hear, so you’re freezing up.”
Arcade frowned. Maybe Boone wasn’t as dense as he seemed, maybe he was denser. Regardless, Arcade knew he was right. This whole thing was shaping up to be more of a headache than it was worth. He sighed, turning back to Boone, “Look, I’ve been to visit everyone. Veronica seems to be the only one who can admit that she loves someone without treating it like it’s a curse, which is the exact opposite of how Raul sees it. Gin spits out facts like a robot, and you and Cass omit your relationship altogether.”
Boone watched him calmly, “That’s us. What about you?”
“I love Cal, okay? Is it always easy? No, but that’s part of what’s great about it. I love my life and my work and my family—even Gin’s hellspawn children. I love my friends, and I miss you guys when I don’t see you. Some days, I miss slogging back and forth across the Mojave, doing seemingly every errand for everybody in New Vegas, just because it was tedious and awful and sometimes even fun. I’m proud of everything we did, and everything we’ve done since.” Arcade ended his outburst, panting as he came back to himself.
Through it all, Boone had watched him impassively, and Arcade was suddenly hyperaware of where he was and how loudly he must have been shouting. Luckily, the slot machines downstairs had probably kept his voice from traveling too far.
“Sounds like you have the makings of an ending there.”
“Yeah,” Arcade muttered, embarrassed. “Thanks for… letting me yell at you, I guess.”
“Call it even from that time I accidentally punched you.”
Arcade rubbed his jaw at the memory, “Yeah, I can do that.” He wasn’t completely sure why, but he was already feeling a lot better, and he smiled despite himself. “I’m going to get going before the casinos get busy. See you later, Boone.” At the sniper’s nod of acknowledgment, Arcade turned and left, breathing a weary sigh when he’d finally gotten back out onto the street.
No use putting it off any longer.
--
Arcade settled himself at his desk and retrieved the folded paper and the stubby pencil from his pocket. With a deep breath, he put lead to paper.
Arcade hadn’t been at the battle of Hoover Dam. Secretly, he hadn’t really wanted to be, for fear of seeing his loved ones die, so when Cal had asked that he stay behind just in case they failed and the Legion marched on New Vegas, Arcade had been glad to jump at the perfect excuse to stay out of the battle. He’d been so preoccupied with this turn of events that he hadn’t realized that Cal had only asked him to stay behind to protect him.
Miraculously, they all come back alive. Cal had been shot, but a few bullets had never been able to keep him down for long. Everyone else had scrapes and bruises, but not much in the way of permanent damage. Physically, anyway. Veronica’s power armor had malfunctioned due to a lucky hit from a legionnaire’s throwing spear, and she’d been trapped inside, immobile and blind and barely able to breathe, for nearly an hour until Raul was finally able to get the helmet to release. She had nightmares for a long time after that, and to this day, she panics when in dark, enclosed spaces.
Cal had offered to let everyone keep living in the Lucky 38, but one by one, they’d all eventually moved out and on with their lives. The exception was Arcade, whom Cal invited to move up to the penthouse with him. It was one of the biggest steps Arcade had taken in any relationship, but he trusted Cal, and though those first few weeks were tumultuous as they attempted to settle into cohabitation without anyone else to act as a buffer between them or distract them from each other’s less flattering habits, they eventually found a pattern that worked for them. Granted, that pattern didn’t include admitting they loved each other until roughly a year later, but what’s a year when you have a lifetime?
Arcade did very little after that. To ask Gin, he assisted her with negotiations between NCR expats and the Kings, but he’d be more inclined to describe it as, “stood behind Gin while she flirted with The King until he’d agreed to terms a little less severe than: ‘Californians leave or die.’” What Arcade actually did was return to his research at Old Mormon Fort, where he eventually did manage to make something akin to stimpacks out of plants native to the Mojave. (It involves refining and distilling healing powder. Not as strong as real stimpacks, but considerably less finite.) Creating fixer has proven to be a greater challenge.
Arcade often thinks back to his time travelling at Cal’s side while he set to work attempting to put right everything that was wrong with Vegas. At the time, he never thought he’d miss all the running from deathclaws and cazadors and fire geckos, but sometimes he does. For all the uncertainty of whether they’d die out there, there was a simplicity to it, and a sense that they were doing something worthwhile with whatever was left of their lives. Then again, back then it felt like there wasn’t much time left in their lives, either. But ten years later, they’re all still alive, and all still younger than they thought they’d be in their thirties and forties.
It turns out, ten years is way shorter than any of them anticipated, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.