Chapter Text
Dust whirls up and settles tiredly on cactus stems and aloe leaves. A lonely man presses onwards, his stride still angry even though his mind is aimless. Wandering to get away, never to return. His red beret bulges in the pocket of his cargo pants, the pit in his stomach is growing deeper, the chasm in his heart spans entire worlds. Dirty. Sweaty. Sick. The only thing that accompanies him is the reliable thump of his rifle hitting his back as he marches. A one-man-army still roaming, miles away from the front. In the distance, smoke swells and dwindles, curls before the starry sky. He’s too far east for that to be a good sign.
Elsewhere, a doctor’s coat flaps as a rare gust of wind picks up the sorrows of the world and scatters them in the stars. Arcade Gannon’s grip is tight on his dread, swirling his disgust around in his mind like wine. Six’s confession circles through his thoughts like the nightcrawlers in their cages in the Thorn. Wild, feral animals forced into captivity. Made to shed their precious, sizzling blood. The love placed at his feet is tainted, smelling sickly-sweet of death. Naive, he’d been. Hoping for something better than what the world has proven time and time again it has in store for him.
Dry desert air fills his lungs, the chill of the night bites through his doctor’s coat. He used to feel like a fraud, putting it on. Right now he mostly feels misshapen. As if his body is shifting beneath the once-white fabric. As if his nausea is manifesting, somehow. Spearing right through him. Turning the ugly inside-out. He feels too recognisable, too real. As if his form has taken too much shape, as if he is squirming beneath a spotlight. Oh, what he’d do to be nothing again.
Arcade’s heart is beating in a violent rhythm still, his feet take him further than he ever wanted. Wild brahmins charr their hooves in the distance. If a cazador were to venture a little too close… he doesn’t think his gun could save him anymore. A worrying thing. He’s gotten far too used to having two competent snipers at his side.
This night is neverending. Guilt stretches it thin and long and unforgiving. No longer is this just about clearing his head. Blisters form in quiet suffering with the self-satisfied knowledge that the last shoe cobbler left Freeside years ago with a caravan heading further east. This memory will make itself hurt, one way or the other.
It’s only when the orange light of a house fire heralds the morning sun, Arcade feels the eternal engine in himself sputtering, slowing down. The resolute motion of his body settles down to the twinkle of a burning star on the gentle waves of Lake Mead. A blinding disco ball, flattened on the plain. Arcade comes here occasionally, when his life feels disjointed. His feet know the path well. Too well, one could argue.
It’s relieving to find the shack on the shore looking exactly as he’d left it. Rotten wood from the humidity, tiny windows barred with sheets of steel. Here’s to hoping the interior has fared just as well. Gentle gurgling accompanies Arcade’s descent down the hillside; the noise of a body of water pretending to sleep. Out here, you cannot trust the ground that you walk on.
Steps as light as a middle aged man’s with a twinge in his knees, Arcade circles in on the shack. Frustration simmers low in his belly. He feels stupid, crouch-walking toward a place he’d consider home on days worse than this. But even in the faded pink light of the morning the shadows are long.
The wind has died down. Side pressed against the shack, Arcade shields his eyes with his hand to scan the other side of the shore. The ripples on the lake’s surface are racing each other with surprising speed.
It stands to question whether this ever was about walking it off. With every further step, Craig Boone feels nausea curl a little tighter in his stomach. This wound of his seems never-healing. More accurately; the entire world seems hell-bent on tearing it open again. The long, spindly finges of dread reach out of the shadows, a cruel embrace. Closing in around his chest, squeezing between each individual rib, a daunting pressure. Even out here he feels caged in. Nowhere in the world is empty enough.
The trail of smoke that cuts the sky in half is growing near. It’s fuel for the fire burning in Boone’s heavy heart. To announce your presence here is to ask for a death sentence. Or to be cockily comfortable legion scum. Carla’s face melts into the field of his vision. A pathetic splatter of blood. The thumps of his feet on the earth grow faster still. He has found himself someone to kill.
Boone is half blind with the sunglasses on. Just one rock in his path and he stumbles, only the forceful weight of his gait saves him from eating shit. A quiet groan of pain. Still, he refuses to take them off. It’s dark in his heart and in the dingy morning light that tries and fails to reach him. The hillsides stand firm between him and the blooming day. It’s easy to believe there is no future for him left if not even light wants to touch him.
First cautious, then bolder Arcade picks at the thin door to the shack to peek inside. He had oiled the hinges the last time he was here and it seems that it's held up - they’re blissfully quiet as they open to the deep, dusty void of the interior. The watery gurgle from the lake is steadily joined by cricket song, buzzing distantly in Arcade’s ears. His eyes adjust to the guts of the thing – brittle boards joined together by rust. Inside, it’s all quiet. Dirty mattress, cabinet. Shattered lightbulb, battered shelves. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. Furniture takes its place like actors in a play of Arcade’s memories. Relieved, his back straightens.
Outside, unguarded, the water bubbles and chokes on itself.
Hiding in canyons is Khan-shit. That thought whips sharp and dissatisfied through Boone’s mind as he crawls up an incline, digging his fingernails into red soil. He curls his lip at himself, at the drill sergeant that still lives in his brain after all this time.
Fucking whatever. There are worse things to be embarrassed about. Boone’s bicep flexes painfully as he pulls himself upwards, an ache that evolves until it twitches through his nerves from his wrist to his shoulder blades. Like the fact that he let himself be distracted from the promise he made. The utter desolation that he burns to sow.
Almost there. The last patch is steep and rocky. A ragged piece of geology spikes into the soldier’s side, finding his left kidney more reliably than the medic back at his former camp. Beneath that bitter realisation is the dispiriting pain that it causes. Boone has enough of the bruises. Enough stories to tell for a lifetime too, though he never will.
The strength of the bear hasn’t left him yet. Boone pulls himself upward on the final stretch of the rock formation and lands heavily on the plateau that it peaks at. Without anything left to hide it, the morning sun flashes a cruel grimace that reflects professionally in Boone’s sunglasses. Its beams are pale and glittering. They reach so far that Boone’s already sweaty body can feel them too. The whisper of warmth, the promise of a devastating mid-day heat. The groan that escapes his mouth is near-silent, but packed tight with exhaustion.
The fresh day rolls over the hills, furrow in the earth after furrow in the earth. Smoke still curls, though thin and wispy now – the night shift is over. Boone watches warily as men in red football gear stiffly change places with others, who quietly yawn into their fists. The camp is small in comparison to the other holes Boone has seen these roaches crawl out of. His jaw is set while his gaze pierces into the blood red banners with the golden bull that lay scattered near a tent. Not put up yet. Lazy or on purpose? It’s not mysterious enough to drown out Boone’s bloodlust.
With the conviction of a god, Boone manoeuvres his sniper rifle from over his shoulder into his calloused hands. The sun can’t deter him, nor can their humanity. The former already beats down on the shackles of their slaves at the Fort, the latter was burned out of their lean bodies long ago. He takes his First Recon beret out of his pocket, feels the senseless pride wash over him, becoming who he used to be. He will stain this fabric with legion blood, take it from Six, make it his again. It fits his head well.
Boone sets his sights on the first man standing guard. He’s grown but his body isn’t, as if he’d been starved as a child. The legion gear hangs off his body awkwardly, there are lashes crossing meanly over his chest. Nonetheless, he stands tall and surefooted. From personal experience, Boone knows this posturing will wear thin in a few months. He adjusts his position, laying flat to avoid being seen. Or today.
One by one, Boone finds their ashen faces. Stalwart young men with twitching hands and empty eyes. Boone watches them, compulsively. Drawing this out to torture himself. Even in their own camp they snap at each other's bellies, masking their anger with tired grins. Chewing on xander root. Is this even living? It’s an earnest question, and yet a question Boone doesn’t want an answer to. His hands are sweaty. Angrily, he wipes them on his pants.
Five lives down there. Five murderers, five souls exchanged for the promise of supremacy. Squinting down his sights again. Heavy rifle, feather light in his arms. One for my baby. But one isn’t enough. Five to go.
Aim and shoot. One pale head explodes in red. Resting by the fire. One stiff second, then the body slumps backwards. Unthinking, with the ease of a man who could proudly call himself NCR’s best, Boone finds the next. This one’s meticulously shaving off the hair threatening to curl on his head. He can barely put down the sharpened shell in his palm before he, too, shatters to pieces.
Now is when the camp starts buzzing, cazador-fury in frantic eyes. Still as a bolder, Boone feels the sun burn down his skin. Golden gleam on red beret. Shifty bodies, hard to catch. Two jump into hiding, the last one beelines for their stash of guns.
Another well-aimed shot whizzes through the air and the latter chokes as his lungs are punctured. Boone feels his own constrict, gaze glued briefly to the scene, unprofessionally. A distraction he cannot afford.
That very second, sand shoots up in front of Boone, a gunshot rings out. A bullet is lodged into the rock just an inch from Boone’s hand. He surges backwards as fast as he can, jamming the butt of his rifle into his guts uncomfortably. His mouth twists in displeasure. One of the guards must’ve still had his gun ready before Boone attacked. It’s not ideal, but nothing is lost yet. Boone coerces his lungs back into submission, breathing shallowly at his view of the sky.
Back on his stomach he goes. Laser-focused Boone tries to make out the legionaries’ forms behind their make-shift tents, his brows furrowed in concentration.
The world is quiet for a shivering moment, the sun is burning like a forest fire. Or why else is Boone sweating this much? Briefly, his eyes twitch. All these sleepless nights have chosen an unfortunate time to have caught up with him.
A shadow moves in the corner of his vision and Boone whirls his rifle in its direction with what he knows is perfect precision. But the shadow is gone again, and the guard, the first one, the kid with the scars, he’s faster than Boone would’ve given him credit for. The barrel of a gun whips around the corner of a tent and this time, he doesn’t miss. A flash of pain explodes in Boone’s shoulder, his eyes roll back into their sockets and he gags on pure instinct, disgust at the feeling of lead boring itself into his flesh. Fuck, that hurts.
Another gunshot sounds out clear as a bell. It hits the rock before him and the hill begins to crumble, sand flies off into the air. Boone can’t wrangle his rifle back into a good position. His elbow tries to prop him up but all his weight resting on a single point is the straw that breaks the camel's back. The plateau cracks viciously beneath him. Boone barely has the chance to curl up before he falls, face first, down the slope of the hill. His guts are doing sommersaults, the world is spinning before him. The ache that perforates his body is replaced by a tingling all over. Fear he has never known before rushes through his bloodstream like a freight train. His eyes press shut right before he hits the ground.
The plasma gunshot flies through the air in wild abandon. Arcade has fired before thinking and he hates himself for it. The lakelurk surprised him from behind, the insistent gurgling becoming a groan of ear-splitting volume, and the speed at which Arcade swirled around left him reeling. Almost human eyeballs stare from this chitin shell, folds of skin-like texture litter this beast for no apparent purpose, a bodyhorror amalgamation of limbs. When Arcade first read the sacred copy of Frankenstein one of the Follower’s librarians kept well restored and hidden away, he’d imagined the monster a lot like this. Features unwilling to collaborate with each other, burned into his memory. Uncanny valley face set upon a giant’s torso and sagging skin. Its claws gleam in the sun as its wrinkled arm stretches out, checking for damage that isn’t there. Arcade’s shot has missed.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Arcade aims again, watching with terrifying clarity of mind as the fleshy green fish lips part and a sonic pulse wave materialises in time with a deafening shriek. It crashes past Arcade’s ear with a sound not unlike a collapsing building. Disoriented, the doctor stumbles sideways, desperately holding a hand over his ringing ear. His eyes try and fail to stay open as the lakelurk begins sprinting toward him.
Capillaries burst as Boone’s stout body hits the rocky earth. A lightning strike of pain pierces through the side that took the hit – he’s lucky he managed to keep his injured shoulder out of the way. Struck by terror, he forces open his eyes, even though they deperately want to squeeze shut. The sun bursts like a flashbang across his field of vision, he’s lost his sunglasses on the way down. Reeling, he’s reeling, his lungs are crying from the impact, crushed tight between his ribs. He can’t breathe, he realises with impending doom, the wheezy sound out of his open mouth won’t cease.
There, there’s movement again. Boone’s muscles contract and it feels like they’re cramping, but it gets him somewhere nonetheless. Burning alive, he manages to grab his rifle and roll onto his stomach in one sweeping motion. When one of the last two legionairies surges into his field of vision, Boone hurls the barrel of his gun against the man’s kneecaps. A shout of pain accompanies buckling legs and a collapsing body. Again, and again, and Boone’s arms are shaking with the effort of it, but he’s not the only one kept going by ruthless adrenaline. The legionairy goes down hissing and spitting and digging his hands into Boone’s throat while Boone moves to bash his head in instead.
If breathing was difficult before, it is downright impossible now. Boone can’t even gasp, only gurgle, his face turns a deathly pale as he swings and swings with muscles erupting in pain. A fire is spreading over his body like a fever. There’s scuttling around, the sound of someone desperately reloading.
With a new kick into Boone’s survival instincts, he breaks what is left of the legionary’s nose. Again and again until even the twitching stops. Panting like a dog, Boone throws off the hands that cut off his airflow. Tears of pain run down his face, his vision is blurry and burning with sand.
The tingling of his body eagerly takes the chance to become a storm, a trembling that overtakes him. His eyes flutter shut, then open, then shut again. He groans, strangled, because he needs an outlet for this world-ending feeling. He knows that it’s coming. When he opens his eyes, the sun comes to blind him with its streams of gold. He knows that it’s coming. A silhouette passes through the light and stops right before him. He knows that it’s coming. The stance of a legate. He knows that it’s coming. A gun is raised to his head.
Boone’s hands tighten on his rifle. Anticipating. But instead of shooting, the kid with the scars kicks the weapon out of Boone’s reddened palms.
“And who the fuck are you?”
His eyes are bloodshot, but the gun looks like a toy, wielded so casually between his fingers. Through tired eyes Boone watches the display, breathing shallowly. The legionary is shaking like a leaf. He plants his boot nice and heavy in the pit of Boone’s stomach. The soldier's jaw cracks as he supresses the cry that wants to echo out of his stinging mouth.
“What’d you kill him for? Huh? Why’d you fucking do it?”
Sand between his teeth, Boone wheezes painful breaths into his aching lungs. He doesn’t know which of the four others the kid is talking about. The manic lilt to his voice is as disconcerting as it’s distant. A threat booming deep in Boone’s mind, though his ears hear only static.
“Huh? Answer me, degenerate!” To underline his words, the kid sends a foot flying into Boone’s bruised rib cage. He curls into himself instinctually, a curse dies on his tongue.
The kid swallows painfully. This is not something he wants to allow himself to feel. Boone can see in real time how the kid chokes down his misery, chokes down the deaths of his comrades and squeezes the memory of them in the darkest crevice of his mind. Wrath replaces all other emotions in him.
“What’d they give you this fancy beret for, huh? NCR scum? What’d they send you for? My amusement?”
Shame stings deep in Boone’s bones. The same feeling he got whenever young soldiers looked up at him wide-eyed when Six and him passed by an NCR squad. He’s not been acting on the NCR’s authority for a long time. And when he still did… He doesn’t want to think about it. It’s just that he’s not worth the pride they feel.
“Can’t even speak, degenerate?” The legionary spits. “They’re breeding you wrong out here.”
It’s a well-rehearsed script he’s running. Burned into his brain. A crooked grin etches into his face as if a knife had carved it. It probably has.
“Don’t worry, though. Caesar is coming. He’ll fuck your wives and daughters to make your bloodline something worth keeping around.”
Boone feels bile rise in his throat. Carla’s lifeless body haunts him. The child they could’ve had. The ache in his shoulder is throbbing now, unforgiving and eternal.
“Speaking from experience?”, he asks, so quiet that it is nearly inaudible. His voice is rough. It’s the first time he’s spoken in hours.
The kid’s eyes narrow. “Proud of it, even.”
He delivers another devastating kick into Boone’s side, and this time the groan is unsuppressable. Pain sparks through his flesh like electricity.
“Nothing a degenerate like you would understand.”
The hate in him is towering over all his senses, a tidal wave. Boone can understand that part at least. Losing someone is not new to him. Keeping company with the person who hurt you. Forgetting yourself in all the pain.
The kid pauses for effect. The power he feels must sate his starving body. Cockily he steps over Boone’s legs as if he was part of the scenery, then lowers his head.
“I will look into your eyes as I kill you.”
Up close Boone can see how badly the lashes on the legionary’s chest have healed. Bumpy, tinged an angry red. Boone’s own wound aches. He’s pathetically sentimental of how there was someone to stitch him up without question.
“Caesar will reward my strength as the last survivor.”
Boone is tensing every muscle in his body. Closer still. The kid’s eyes are speckled green. There is an eternity of misery swirling in them.
“I will avenge-”
Boone surges upwards with his last strength, crashing his own head into the kid. The impact pierces through his skull like a super sledge, but more importantly, it sends the kid flying backwards, and the gun clattering to his feet. Boone stumbles forward, lunging for it just in time for the legionary to make it up his feet again.
Boone's right leg crumbles underneath him and he nearly crashes into the nearby tents. Barely, he keeps his balance. The barrel of the gun is still pointing to his own body, but before he can turn it around the legionary is on him, fingers like vices around the metal. He’s not faring much better, tilting to the side in an attempt to rediscover his center of gravity, but his grip is strong.
They wrangle with the gun like dogs. Boone feels the twinge in his jaw as he bites down and crushes his teeth against one another. His shoulder is screaming for rest. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see how the blood is running down his arm by now, staining his shirt a deep red.
A second. Only a second his hand slips. The legionary gets his finger on the trigger and Boone isn’t there to stop him.
Only a second and it’s pulled.
The world slows down. A shot rings out. Boone is staring into the legionary’s eyes. Quiet disbelief is painted over both of their expressions. Vibrant panic pierces Boone’s chest as warmth erupts at his hip. There, the blood is spreading. His knees buckle.
The kid’s gaze hardens again as pride curls heavily in his chest. His hands loosen around the weapon.
It’s the last chance Boone is getting. Desperately, he wrangles the gun out of the legionary’s palms and bashes his face in. Again and again. Bloody nose, hands held up in an attempt to stop the onslaught. Boone can’t recall where the screaming begins and where it stops. His body is made of it. The metal is warm from his enemy’s grip on it. There is a fire that burns in the holes that he’s torn.
It seems it only takes a second. One moment the legionary is standing, the next his legs give out and he crumbles painfully on the red Mojave soil. Breathing, heavy breathing, Boone stares down at him. Disbelief still cradles his mind. This time, it’s enough to drown the bloodlust.
In a strange sort of haze he checks the kid’s pulse. Here and now, he really does look like a kid. The tense confidence has melted off him. Not the faint racing of his heart, though. Uncertain, Boone lets his wrist drop onto the ground again. He feels a strange sort of kinship with him. A bitter, bitter pity.
Almost drunk off the pain, he limps through the meagre camp. His lungs flutter painfully in chest. Thankfully they’ve got some bandages lying around. That, and several flasks of bitter drink. Boone downs one immediately. It’s a nasty concoction. The vomit comes up and sloshes around in his mouth for a few, terrible seconds, before he just about manages to choke it down again. It doesn’t help with the pain as much as it distracts him from it. Just enough to wrap his wounds. He can’t stay here long.
Picking up his rifle and throwing it over his shoulder again feels natural at least, though folding his body doesn’t. The ache spears through him ruthlessly. How he hasn’t cracked a tooth by now is beyond him.
Once more, he stares at the legionary baking in the rising sun. In the back of his mind, something whispers You took his friend. Instead of doing him in, Boone drags the kid into the shadow of a tent, limping like an oldtimer. It’s pathetic, this mercy. The blood and the sweat compete at staining his shirt.
Delirious, he stumbles in the first direction that calls to him.