I haven't finished the game's storyline, so no spoilers, please.
First fic in a long time, be kind, if you will.
-----
Springvale was quiet. Not that that was anything too surprising, but it was a small comfort for the solitary man, as he picked his way delicately through the rubble of his old house. He was slight of body, no older than thirty, but due to his many years traversing the Wasteland having taken their toll on him, he looked at least a decade older. He removed his helmet, revealing short-cropped brown hair, and an insignia tattooed on the back of his neck. Dual inverted scimitars, positioned to resemble a pair of scissors, inked forever on his body. There were only three other people in the world that understood the true meaning behind it.
A shame, then, that all three, him included, so desperately wanted to kill one another.
The tattoo was not so different from the twin swords that were strapped to his back, although the man preferred to use the pistol at his side first if he could. He wasn't a big fan of long range, forgoing any heavy weaponry for additional speed, allowing him to quickly close any sizeable distance before an opponent could use the gap to his advantage.
A quick glance around the oh-so-familiar Wasteland told him that he was definitely alone. Not even a solitary bloatfly entered his vision. An involuntary sigh of relief left his lips as he shifted a particularly large wooden crossbeam that had fallen from the destroyed roof.
Looking beneath it, he could see that it covered his old bed from when he was just a child.
A brief wave of nostalgia rolled across him at the sight of his former place of rest, memories of fire, blood, anguish, death, blotting out the good times that he knew existed. He forced the thoughts from his mind, saving the anger for a time when he could use it to aid his cause.
Some thoughts were generally best left alone, especially when it involved the deaths of loved ones.
He was surprised that the bed had held up over all these years, even more so that the mattress and sheets still remained on top of the metal frame. With a wry smile, he mused over how it was a surprise that the frame itself hadn't been scavenged already. With a final glance to check that he was definitely alone, he slid underneath the bed.
Crawling through an inch-thick layer of dust, he quickly spotted the mark he had carved into the wall underneath the bed seven years prior to his current visit. He now considered himself a little devoid of imagination at the time, as he remembered cutting the wood out with his knife. The twin scimitars in the pine wall gazed out at him, previously a symbol of power for him, now just a haunting reminder of the past.
A keen mind would have had had a hard time spotting the importance of the mark, but such a task is made a lot easier when you were the one who put it there in the first place. With another grim smile, the man punched the floorboard directly beneath the mark, and wasn't surprised when his hand kept going through the weak balsa wood replacement, shaped to resemble the sturdier planks beside it. Feeling about beneath, he quickly came across what he was looking for, and pulled the metal lunch box out of the recently created hole.
The man emerged from under the bed, coughing and wheezing due to the dust. He placed it on the soiled mattress, removing a small key from one of the many pockets inside his coat. Inserting it into the reinforced padlock, he gave it a quick turn and was relieved to hear the 'click' as the lock opened. Smiling at his fortune, he opened the box and checked to make sure that the important contents were still inside.
And then he slumped over beside it as the 10mm bullet passed straight through his unprotected head.
-----
Daelan looked over at the recently deceased man, his silenced pistol resting comfortable in his hand. He had to give credit to the guy, it hadn't been easy getting this close to his overly cautious target.
Then again, after having spent so long tracking him down, he wasn't going to fail at this late stage.
"Well, I suppose this is what you get when you try to fuck with the wrong people, my good man", he said to himself, as always trying to justify his actions. Stepping into the ruined room, for he had taken the shot from a gap in the dilapidated wall, Daelan stood up next to the man, lying face down on the bed, blood slowly seeping into the mattress, staining it further.
Daelan had taken considerable caution in making sure that his shot missed the tattoo on the back of his target's neck, and he bent down over the dead man, knife in hand. A quick cut, and the skin with the insignia emblazoned on it came away in his hand. He dried it off, and placed in a sealed bag. Lifting up the lunchbox, contents inside, he stepped out of the house, adjusted his hat, and strolled out into the Wasteland.
He took several steps forward, then paused. Turning round, he went back inside the house.
A few moments later, he emerged again, this time with a small, recently acquired leather square in his hand.
Morally, Daelan objected strongly to being a hitman, hardly believing that in this ruined world, people still wanted others dead.
Fiscally though, he needed the caps.