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It was revenge that brought him and the Courier together. She flew through Novac like an unexpected sand storm, and had hunted him down at his perch in the middle of the night just because Manny had mentioned him. And then offered to help him find who had sold out his wife.
She hadn’t called him crazy, or paranoid. Just offered to help with a resolute look of understanding. He had agreed, because who else would help? The people who wouldn’t believe that his wife had been taken, that called him crazy, and said he was in denial?No. It was easier to trust a complete stranger, than anyone in that godforsaken town.
She took a few days, doing her investigation. But three nights later, he saw two figures outside the Dino statue. One in a red beret, and he took aim. She came up a few minutes later, legers in hand showing the proof that Jeannie May had sold his wife and their unborn child, anger and disgust plain as day on her face. It was then that she offered to let him come with her. She’d get a traveling companion and someone to help with her own revenge, and he’d get out of Novac. And if they happened to wipe out some of the Legion along the way? Well, it seemed like a nice bonus to both of them. Boone didn’t even really need to think about it, agreeing fairly quickly, if only so he could wipe out as many assholes in sports gear as he could.
Maybe he should have realized just what he was getting himself into when they stopped to help the Mc-Brides out with their invisible brahmin attacker (and who knew super mutants had such an issue with brahmin), but it wasn’t until they were standing side by side, watching ghouls fly away in rockets, that it hit him that he was probably traveling with the nosiest person in all of the Mojave. He just knew they were going to be inserting themselves wherever she deemed fit, whether or not they were wanted. After all, wasn’t it her sticking her nose into other people’s business that even led to them meeting in the first place?
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He was right, and he had never quite been so upset about being right before. The Courier (he still didn’t know her real name, but neither did she apparently) was more nosy than anyone he had ever met, and he used to work with people whose job was to know other people’s business. Don’t get him wrong, she was respectful while pushing boundaries, and unless it was some low life, or information she desperately needed, she always backed down when she was told to. He knew, she always stopped probing him when he told her to, and wouldn’t ask again until he himself brought it up.
Unfortunately, at least if you asked him it was unfortunate, her questions often led to people asking for help. Currently, they were trekking through a cave on request of some local town.
Now, a normal cave wouldn’t be so bad, they were usually pretty cool, which was always a nice balm from the hot Mojave sun. And so long as they weren’t irradiated, the pools inside them were a good place to refill their canteens, or take turns washing themselves and their clothes. But this cave? This cave was awful.
With bright green sludge dripping from the roof and down the walls, and intermittent pools of the same neon putrid sludge. They were currently trudging through a hip deep pool of the stuff, trying to find some gremlin or ghoul that had been terrorizing the locals with its constant wailing and casual theft. No one could quite agree what the thing looked like, some said it looked undead, with almost translucent skin. Others said it was some kind of being made of mud and the, almost certainly, radiated goo of the cave. The only thing truly agreed upon about it, was its fiery red mane, and its overall unpleasantness.
"Next time you decide to go trudging through a cave and want to bring me along. Please don't."
She snorted and looked over her shoulder at him, a sardonic smile, or maybe a cringe, on her face. "Trust me Boone, I don't particularly want to be doing this either. I've had enough trudging through caves to last me two lifetimes." Her face scrunched up at this and she paused, seeming to wonder how she seemed to know this about herself.
He also couldn't help but wonder. She didn't really talk about it, but he knew she had been the Courier talked about over the radio, the way she flinched every time she heard Mr. New Vegas talk about it was certainly telling enough. And the way she didn’t even know the simplest things about herself, was as telling as it was depressing.
"Uh.. Anyway, the town offered a pretty nice reward for finding and taking care of this thing. And we desperately need the caps."
He couldn't really argue that, after a few weeks of traveling together they had decided to just pool most of their caps together. And while that meant they could better afford new weapons, repairs, and ammo, It also meant money could run out quickly. He didn’t necessarily enjoy being part of the “fix it” team of the Mojave, but needs must.
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It was as they were dragging eachother out of one of the caves' many pools, after hours of searching, that they finally heard something from the thing they were after. The sign of life came as an eerie high pitched hum. It put Boone on edge immediately, not many creatures were able to make sounds like that, and the way it reverberated around the caverns almost made it seem like whatever this thing was, was in multiple places at once.
The courier seemed just as alert as him, though she stood frozen in place, back as stiff and solid as the stone around them, her eyes darted around the large space they had found themselves in. The longer she stood in place, the deeper the crease between her brows became, and her eyes slowed to stare at one spot on the wall. They stood there like that for a while, the only noise the almost ghostly humming, him making sure nothing would come and attack them, and the courier a far away look in her eyes as she stared at nothing.
It was just as he was getting truly worried about her, thinking maybe they really shouldn’t have trekked through the glowing sludge, that she lowly began to hum along a few pitches lower than the hum that was still in the air. As the light seemed to come back into her eyes, her humming grew in volume. The higher pitched hum cut off, and after a moment's pause he could hear something scurrying towards them from a shootoff passage. He quickly prepped his rifle, aiming down the tunnel, cursing under his breath.
The courier was obviously in no condition to fight right now, he’d been with her long enough to know her episodes like this took a little while to recover from as her memories settled. And while, yes, he was creeped out by her apparently knowing the same tune as the thing they were hunting, he was currently more concerned about them getting out of this situation alive. They could discuss it later.
Boone was just starting to make out the silhouette that was coming towards them, when a hand on his rifle distracted him.
The Courier had also turned toward the tunnel, her eyes were scanning the darkness. Her humming slowed to a stop just as the thing…a person stepped out into the dim light of the pip boy on the Courier's arm.
It really was a person, the same fiery red hair as described by the settlement goers, and covered head to toe in glowing mud. He could barely make out a feminine curve under the lab coat she wore, as weighed down as it was with cave fungus growing from the pockets. But, she was a human, and she didn’t have a weapon aimed at them, so Boone lowered his.
This newcomer and the Courier stood staring at each other for a moment before the redhead took in a shaky breath, and then softer than a whisper. “Kitty?”
He wasn’t sure if the sound the Courier.. Kitty?, let out was a laugh or a sob, and she was leaping forward to hug the other girl before he could turn to check. Between all the tears and the snot rolling down both girls' faces, he could just barely make out the smiles each wore.
It was Kitty who pulled back first, gently taking the redhead's face into her hands. “I remember now,” she said, taking a pause to catch her breath, she continued smiling even as she began crying again. “I left you here to work on your book while I delivered that damn chip… and you waited. You waited for me to come back. I’ve been gone for months… but you never left.”
The redhead pulls away a bit, letting Kitty’s hands fall to her shoulders as she digs through her pockets. “Well, I mean, I’ve had to leave a few times for supplies, but look Kit!” The girl pulls a rock from somewhere out of the fungus growing in her pocket, and shoves it under Kit’s nose. “Do you know what this is!! I was right!! It looks just like an intermediate andesite, but it’s ACTUALLY a rhyolitic combination. The black is actually small shards of obsidian, mixed in with your traditional rhyolite! It means that this cave started out millions of years ago cooling underground before the volcano erupted!”
And she continued on, barely stopping for breath as she continued detailing things about rocks of all things. Boone’s head was beginning to throb.
This psycho spoke so loudly without stopping for breath, and half the time she didn’t even seem to be speaking english. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Kit(ty?) took another rock that had been shoved into her hands, dutifully examining it until it was snatched away again.
He wasn’t sure if she was actually understanding what was being spoken at her, but she was nodding along and at least pretending like she did, so she had to get points for that at least. Even if her taste in friends left something to be desired. At least he thought they were friends?
They certainly knew each other, well enough that the cave gremlin’s humming had brought back memories for Kit.
Which was also rather surprising, he’d seen her have her episodes. She had them, not frequently, but often enough that he knew what they looked like, and he knew she needed to rest for a while after having one. Which suddenly brought him back to now, Kit had just had a memory episode, followed by quite a bit of crying. And instead of resting, she was standing there, being lectured by some wannabe mad scientist. He went to take a step forward, to pull her away, and try to make her rest for a while, when the fungus-infected, rock-obsessed redhead grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a bit. Suddenly he wanted to shoot her again.
“It’s crazy Kit! And it’s all featured in the book! I can’t wait for you to read it!! Also, Kitty, did you say you remembered me now?? Are you saying you forgot me here? I wasn’t even expecting you for another couple of weeks at least. Traveling to the strip takes forever, so this is totally an unexpected surprise. Also..” she pauses briefly to give Boone a suspicious stare from where he was hovering behind his brunette companion. “Did you know that you have a mole-rat man following after you? I think he wants your hair.”
Kit…Kitty–he wasn’t sure at this point but he thought he was just going to stick to Kit for he wasn’t sure he had it in him to call her Kitty– let out a screeching laugh at this, and slapped her hands over her mouth before spinning around to look at him with wide mirthful eyes. And now he didn’t know if he wanted to shoot this crazy woman, or thank her, because in all the time he had been traveling with Kit, he had rarely seen her smile.. And even with her hands covering half of her face, she had lit up so fully, he wanted to see it more. But just as quickly as she had turned to him, she was turning away and swatting lightly at her friend.
“He’s not a Mole-man Zara, he’s my, uh… well he’s my friend. We’re traveling and taking revenge together.” And while Boone thought it was a bit of a short explanation for their situation, it wasn’t a lie, and it summed it up pretty well.
It was as Kit was opening her mouth to say something else that she dangerously pitched to the side. Hand coming up to clutch at her head. In an instant he was between her and the ground, clutching her close to his chest. He knew there was no way she could have recovered from an episode that quickly. It usually took her hours, if not days sometimes, to get through the debilitating migraines that her returning memories brought on. Zara was practically on top of him in the second it took to lower his companion safely to the ground, her sharp nails digging into his shoulder, and she began to shriek.
“Did you do something to her?! Have you been hurting her?! Why did she just suddenly collapse?! Answer me!”
Boone glared up at the red headed banshee, not appreciating her insinuations or her screeching. He carefully lowered Kit’s head down, and tried to cover her ears before he spoke, hoping not to add to whatever further head pains she was dealing with now that her friend had just been screaming almost directly into both of their ears.
“I don’t know what kind of information you’ve been getting while in this God forsaken cave, if any. But Kit was the courier found in Goodsprings, the one that was shot in the head.” Zara released his shoulder at this, a look of horror on her face as she collapsed next to him on the ground; he could feel where her nails had been digging into his skin through his shirt, and he was almost certain he could feel where he already had some blood soaking into his shirt where she had broken through the top few layers of his skin.
As they both stared down at the brunette whose face was currently scrunched up in pain and turned into the fabric on his shin, he couldn’t help but feel a bit vindictive towards the blue eyed woman sitting in front of him. “She doesn’t really talk about it, but every once in a while she has these.. Episodes are what she calls them. Where she very suddenly has memories come back, they normally lead to pretty bad headaches for her. Usually it only takes a few hours for her to recover if the episode is small enough, sometimes it takes a day or two until she’s no longer feeling the effects. But she’s never had one like this before.” Boone looks up at Zara again “And she’s certainly never been shook or screeched at after one either.”
A look of offense crossed Zara’s face, although it was quickly followed by a look of devastation, and perhaps a bit of rage. “Do you know who shot her? And how did she recover from that? A bullet to the head should have killed her.”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I know she’s been trying to hunt him down, but her best description is a man in a checkered suit. Apparently he also stole what she was transporting to the strip. If she remembered anything else about him she hasn’t told me.” They sat in silence for a few moments as she processed, both of them staring down at Kit who had managed to enter a fitful sleep. “As for her recovery, she won’t say much about it, and I haven’t really pried. All I know is that she was fixed up by a doctor in Goodsprings, and she didn’t stick around there for very long after that. Not that I blame her, I can’t imagine that the few memories she had at that point would have been very good ones.”
The silence that followed was almost suffocating, the only thing to break it was the occasional splat of the cave sludge hitting the ground. Eventually Zara stood from where she had been crouching next to him, and turned towards the tunnel that led to the exit. “We need to get Kitty out of here, and somewhere that she can safely recover from this… episode.” She turned to look at him, where he was still sitting slightly hunched over Kit. “Once she’s recovered we can worry about exactly how she survived, and who did this to her... Is there somewhere safe we can go? Preferably with easy access to supplies?”
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They were heading back to Novac, and Boone wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He had been hoping he would never have to set foot in the settlement again. But it was the best place for them to go to rest and recuperate for now. He still had his old room, given to him as payment for his role as a sniper for the small town. And Kit had managed to get herself a free room somehow. (He was still a bit foggy on the details of how exactly she managed that, and she wasn’t the most forthcoming with the information.) Normally he would have been able to talk Kit into just spending the night out in the Mojave, or just shelling out the caps for a room somewhere else. (or in some instances even just bunking down in one of the old abandoned buildings that were found everywhere in the wastes. Though too often that meant having to clear the place of other squatters first.) But Kit was still suffering the side effects of her last episode, and they had Zara traveling with them now. They needed somewhere that they knew they wouldn’t be attacked at so Kit could fully recover. And they didn’t currently have the caps to stay somewhere else, and still have space for all three of them. So Novac it was.
Kit hadn’t made him come back here since he left. She made trips here and there for some small supplies, and to check in on the people living there. But she had always told him he could just wait outside the town for her, and she never took long enough inside for it to be an issue. And now he was going back. Zara would be staying in Kit's room with her, making sure she was alright, (she had refused the thought of him staying on the couch, demanding she would be enough to make sure her friend was recovering just fine.) and he would be in his old room.
He watched as the Dino statue slowly came into view over the horizon, if he looked hard enough he could barely see the glint of Manny’s rifle through the teeth, watching out for any danger coming towards the settlement. His eyes shifted to the two girls walking in front of him, Kit's arm thrown over her friend's shoulder for support as they trudged along the path, kicking up clouds of dust with every step they took. The trepidation in his gut grew stronger, and he began to slow down. He wasn’t ready for this, he couldn’t see Manny again, not after everything that had been said between them. And He sure as shit didn't want to sleep in his old room. Had he even bothered to clean up before he left to wander the Mojave? He thought of the cigarettes and the booze bottles he had to have left laying around, how stale would the air be when he opened the door? Or with how long he had been gone, would the stench of spilled alcohol be all there was at this point? He didn’t notice he had slowed to a stop, or that Kit had been calling for his attention. But suddenly, instead of the silhouette of Novac, all he could see was her concerned face in front of his, the dark shadows under her brown eyes seemed to be accentuated this close up to her, and he was suddenly reminded of exactly why they were making this trip. Kit needed somewhere safe to recover, somewhere they had easy access to supplies, and somewhere she didn’t have to constantly be looking over her shoulder to make sure she was safe.
Boone took a deep breath, glanced past his worried companion to Dinky towering in the not so distance, and steeled himself before he looked back at Kit and nodded at her. She raised her eyebrows at him, as if asking him if he was sure he was alright. He simply wrapped his arm around her back, and began leading her back towards where Zara was waiting for them to catch back up.
He wasn’t alone anymore, he may be staying in his old room and he may have to see Manny again, but that didn’t mean he would be facing his demons completely by himself. Maybe he could trust her to help with this piece of himself, as she had trusted him. As they walked up to the gate of Novac, Kit’s head resting on his shoulder as she limped along, he couldn’t help but think maybe he could trust her with all of himself.