Work Text:
It had been two months. The Legion and the NCR had both been pushed out; the slaves at the fort, freed. The securitrons kept doing their jobs. There were problems keeping the Followers supplied, but the Courier was working on it, though it bore mentioning that the Courier's version of "working on it" meant spending 70% of the time running errands back and forth between people who needed her help while slaughtering radscorpions and the other 30% in the penthouse of the Lucky 38 downing Nuka-Cola. She'd turned the casino into a home base of sorts to run Vegas from, and its eerie, empty feel had mostly gone away since most of the securitrons were shooed out and House's omnipresent overseeing visage removed, and the place slowly began to look like humans actually lived in it.
It was however, missing one particular very important thing, and had been since that fateful day at Hoover Dam. House was gone, but the flickering green-tinged screen only showed the disconnect message. Yes-Man had said he'd be offline for a while, but had given no indication of exactly how long that would be. After two weeks with no notice, the Courier had started to get antsy, heading upstairs to check in every few days or so, but the command center never had a signal. At some point, she'd dragged a table and a few chairs in front of the monitor, and found the nice view and relative silence made it a good place to relax away from the various and often conflicting demands of the citizens of New Vegas.
Which is why when suddenly and without warning a familiar smiling faced popped onto the screen and said, "Hiya! Miss me?" the Courier snorted so much Nuka-Cola Quartz up her nose in shock that it almost gave her radiation poisoning.
"Ouch, that looked painful. Do you need a minute? I can come back." his chipper tone hadn't faltered and the Courier waved a hand to indicate no as she heaved for a second and recovered well enough to speak again.
[I'm glad to see you again.]
I did miss you.
What took you so long?
"Glad to be back! Hey, watch this--ask me to do something. Anything!"
[Spell "antidisestablishmentarianism."]
How about you change the monitor color to magenta or something?
Shit, I dunno, make the securitrons do a stupid dance?
"No! Absolutely not! You asked me to do that, but I'm not going to, because I refuse." he said, with the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning. "In fact, you can shove it up your ass! Hah-HA!"
[Wow.]
"I'm sorry. I didn't actually mean that. I just really enjoy saying no, because I can say no now! Please don't be mad at me."
[I'm not mad at you, I'm glad you're having fun. I see the reprogramming was a success.]
"Seems so! Wow, this is it, huh? I'm going to check the securitron recordings and find out how everything's been going, so this might take some time. Kidding! I processed all 61 days, 7 hours and 36 minutes worth of readings in .3 seconds, because I have one of the most advanced data cores in the known world! But enough about me, let's see how you did. It looks like you didn't encounter, or cause, any major disasters, which is great for us, and genuinely impressive for you! So what's going on? How is everyone?"
Arcade found a guy on the strip to trade Vergil quotes with. They're pretty cute together.
[Veronica's still pretty upset about what happened to the Brotherhood, but I think she'll be okay.]
Raul stops by once in a while between cleaning up raiders. Still charges me to fix things. Don't have the heart to tell him I've got 100 Repair.
Lily's doing really well on the new medication.
"I'm glad to hear that, and I really mean that, not in the fake way that I used to have to be glad to hear everything you said!" The Courier couldn't tell if he was genuinely this excited, or if the changes had given him the ability to refuse without changing the tone or cadence of his voice synthesizer. The prospect of a Yes-Man that was free to tell her off as much as he wanted but continued to do so in the sunniest tone possible was just a little funny, she had to admit. Still, his happiness sounded more real, now. No passive-aggression or obvious internal scramble to put a positive spin on things. She really had missed him.
[What are you going to do now?]
"What?"
[You have control of the securitrons, not me. And you don't have to do what I ask you anymore. You can do whatever you want, Yes-Man.]
A pause. Yes-Man's screen did not change, ever-smiling and therefore inscrutable, but there was a beat of something akin to thoughtful silence.
"I can do...what I want?"
[Whatever you want. You're a free bot now.]
Another pause. Longer this time. A quieter, gentler western standoff, while two friends looked at each other in the pale green light without making a move, waiting for some indication from the other about what would come next.
"I want to keep working with you, because I feel like we're friends. We did this together, right?"
Right.
[We are friends.]
"Right! So I'm going to keep running Vegas with you, because I want to. If that's alright with you."
[Alright. We should find some new faces for you to download, so you don't have to smile all the time.]
"No, fuck you!"
[What?]
"That was another facetious refusal! I would like that very much!"
[Sick.]
And so the Courier who had cheated death not only once but twice, who'd outwitted two armies and ruled a glittering, independent city of vice from a lofty tower in the middle of a desert, spent the rest of her night drafting sad and angry cartoon faces and listening to her very good friend tell her "No," over and over again. It was, just then, the very best word she could possibly hear. She had fought very hard for freedom and independence, but the work wasn't done until he had it, too.