#
Crimson is crying. There are tears rolling thick, hot down her cheeks, but she does not sob or moan. Crimson doesn't really know why she is crying, she just is. And there is no time to vocally lament about anything, because Crimson is also jogging and she has already been told to keep as quiet as she can.
It is dark out, Crimson thinks as she runs and cries, and it is very cold. She is only wearing her old pink dancing dress, and it is doing nothing to stave off the chill in the night. There are no stars or moon either to light the darkness. There is only heavy blackness and the faint sounds of many feet trudging and crunching over the dust of the desert wasteland. Crimson can still feel, as she bends her knees up to run, the weighty hem of her dress. It is still wet, and now cold, with blood. But the blood is not Crimson's, she remembers. No, her dress is wetted with Clover's blood and Eulogy's. Crimson knows too why her hands and knees feel sticky. It was from kneeling in all the blood.
Crimson feels her face squinch up. She is about to sob or snivel while she sees the dead, staring faces of her familiars floating about in her mind, but all she manages to vocalize is a small sniffle which she quickly chokes off back into silence. Crimson lets herself frown deeply, but she closes her mouth tight. She does feel something welling up inside of her, but the calloused hand that is squeezing and leading helps her a little. Crimson lets her fingers press hard against the stranger's hand.
Crimson cries, but she is relieved of a sort when the hand she grasps, squeezes gently back. Crimson keeps running and she obediently keeps as hushed as she can.
#
Crimson is awake. But her mind is not. Her whole body is stinging sore, even her eyes which seem swollen. She is laying on something hard and there is no pillow underneath her pounding head. She can smell herself instantly too, an odour of sweat and blood and a little sickness of sorts. Crimson does not remember or care where she is, until she sees close beside her a familiar crouching figure.
It is the stranger, Crimson realizes, and she is smiling faintly, sympathetically. Crimson blinks at the stranger. She remembers now. She thinks about how it is funny that she knows what the stranger's hand in her own feels like. But then, the stranger opens her mouth and Crimson is instinctually ready to listen or obey.
"Are you okay?" the stranger asks in a quiet whisper. Her voice is unassuming and gentle, but Crimson knows there is a pointedness that hides behind the softness. She knows, because she heard it before.
Crimson blinks twice at the stranger. "Yeah," she replies simply, whispering in kind. The feeling in Crimson was somewhat forgotten while she slept, but it was trying to well back up now. Crimson felt her stomach churn. She stopped an image, a thought from forming by pinching her nails into the yielding flesh of her thighs. Crimson realizes at that, that she is only wearing underwear beneath the itchy blanket covering her.
"Good," the stranger whispers with a nod.
Crimson studies the stranger and she continues to dig her nails into her thighs. The stranger looks young. Her hair is bluish black, long and wild. Crimson understands why the stranger wears a bandana now. There is a thick and very big, crescent-moon scar marring the stranger's temple hairline. No hair grows in the scar-tissue, which is whitish and pink looking. The stranger has intelligent blue eyes and a few brown freckles dotting her pale skin. Crimson looks at what the stranger is showing her.
A syringe. Crimson looks at the stranger's face. The stranger raises one dark brow. "Med-X," the stranger whispers, "One dose only and just to help you sleep. The icebox is downstairs, bathroom too. If you're sick or need help I have a guy, Wadsworth, who'll be around."
Crimson nods. As the stranger hands out the small syringe, Crimson detaches her fingers from her leg and compliantly takes the medicine away. Crimson is not sure if she'll need the Med-X or not. She does know though, that she instinctively wants to use the medicine, but only just because the stranger implied so. Crimson looks at the stranger again. She is staring. Crimson looks away and keeps her eyes on the ceiling. The ceiling does not look safe or durable. Crimson can see the sky outside through some holes. She can see the sun is soon to rise from the dull pinkish hue peeking through.
"I don't remember coming in here," Crimson mumbles to her own surprise.
"A lot happened," the stranger whispers.
Crimson's stomach flops, she feels like she wants to cry. "Where are you going?" she asks instead.
"Little Lamplight," the stranger answers, "Gonna make sure all those kids get home safe." Crimson hears the stranger move, because her clothes rustle and the metal floor squeaks a little. "If you have somewhere to go," the stranger utters, "then go ahead and go to it, alright? But if you need to rest up, you can stay here."
Crimson decides to look back at the stranger. "Thank you," she mumbles. Crimson wonders why the stranger is doing all of this. It could give her a bad name in the wasteland. But Crimson decides she doesn't care about that, she is just grateful to have something to sleep on later. And grateful to just be somewhere.
"There's another guy downstairs," the stranger rasps calmly, "Bronson. The guy's a drunk, not going anywhere. So don't be alarmed if you see him around the house, alright?"
Crimson nods. She does not care who else is in the stranger's house. Crimson watches as the stranger smiles. She wonders how the stranger can grin so easily, so well. Crimson wants the stranger to stay. If only just for her distracting calm voice and face.
"I'm going now," the stranger whispers, "Try not to steal anything valuable, huh? Or Wadsworth'll open up on you."
Crimson knows the stranger spoke as nicely as she could. She respects the threat, knowing it wouldn't be spoken idly. Crimson has already seen how the stranger works. She means what she says. A rule from her is good as fresh water. Crimson stops her thoughts as the stranger slowly gets up.
"What's your name?" Crimson inquires.
The stranger smiles. "Sidonie," she answers.
The stranger, Sidonie, finally turns and stalks away, righting an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Crimson stares as Sidonie goes. She is wearing a blue, armoured jumpsuit today. There are yellow numbers on it. Crimson mouths the number to herself.
"101," she whispers.
Crimson blinks at her rescuer's gradually retreating form. She remembers hearing many recent GNR news updates back in the Pad. She recalls the man Three Dog devotedly shouting about a girl from Vault 101. Crimson decides it all makes sense. And she understands now why the stranger came to Paradise Falls wearing combat armour and not her vault suit. It would have been a death-sentence.
The Ranger of the Wastes. That's what Three Dog called her. Crimson was surprised. She knew now that the stranger, Sidonie, was only 18.
#
Crimson is not sleeping. She did not take the Med-X. The holes in the roof say it is late afternoon. Crimson had lain for hours on the hard couch upstairs, wondering beneath the itchy blanket at how her head felt like a kind of chasm. Its swallowing feel scared Crimson. Because it felt like something bad could happen to her, inside. And the welling feeling started to come back. That's when Crimson got up. She is downstairs now. She is in her underwear, standing alone by the broken yellow refrigerator, holding something dirty and dingy and long in her hands.
It is her pink dancing dress. She found it by accident. Crimson thinks the stranger must have been the one who threw it in the garbage can. She stares at the dress. It is caked in dry, black blood. Blood from the ruined heads of people she used to know. People who had been killed and were dead now. People she used to hate and love at the same time. Crimson's stomach turns. She notices that the dress stinks. It is stinking. This frightens her but she cannot stop looking at the dress. It smells of things that want to bring back all the memories inside of her head. Crimson knows that she hates the dress, but it is still hers. It meant something, she was sure it did once. But the familiar smell is making her uncomfortable. It is different now somehow. And she feels sickness churning in her stomach. She knows something bad is happening.
Crimson is remembering things because of the smell of her dress. Her eyes are starting to feel very hot and watery about it. Her heart is starting to thump beneath her bra and there is the hard pain inside her stomach. Crimson is getting more and more troubled, but she is also getting stuck on the remembrance that seems unimportant and small, but really it is not. Not to her. Crimson wishes her brain would shut off, or explode, but it does not seem to budge. The dress' stink is not letting her. Not now, not today, probably not anymore she thinks. And Crimson is very scared as her eyes begin to drip.
She is squeezing at the pink dancing dress in her hands. She smells the old smell coming off of it. It makes the pain in her stomach worse, and Crimson starts to feel panic as her senses drown her in the remembrance of the odour on the dress. She can't move. And her mind is stuck. Because of the dress. It smells like the Daddy, like Eulogy Jones and his house. It smells like simple neglect and sex and booze. But there are other smells that go with it. There is that smell that pretends it doesn't exist. But to Crimson it's just as pungent as a cadaver left in the sun. The smell she knows, and it is terrifying. It is blood, old and messy and too much that got cleaned away. It is spit that tastes like alcohol and bad words. It is sour urine and shit that only happened from scared strangers once in a blue moon. It is the sweat of fear. Salty and bitter and the sticky sweet emissions that come from bad men after. That faint smell, Crimson thinks, is feverishly scrubbed and covered up. It's bad deeds and Jetter-secrets. Hiding behind the cigarette smoke and prostitute's perfume. And it was all over her dress. Her hands and her skin and her unwashed body.
Crimson's eyes are closed. She is squeezing them tightly shut. But the tears still creep out in warm fleeting beads. She wonders how she could not have noticed the smell so much before, when she had been swathed in it, covered in it every single day. She wonders if the stranger had smelled it on her. And Crimson wonders what she thought of it. Crimson knows the smell is still on her, she feels sick about it. Because it was never her smell. But it became hers and she knows it.
Crimson is holding the dress. She is crying soundlessly in the kitchen, even as the door of the stranger's house opens wide. Crimson does not care though; she does not open her swelling, hot eyes as the drunk man comes slowly stepping over to her. Crimson is cringing and crying and naked, but she is numb and careless as the drunk man places a dirty, hot hand on her shoulder from behind.
"Hey," he rasps sloppily. "Er you okay?"
Crimson hears herself sniffle wetly. She means nothing by it, but she moves her shoulder away from the man's touch. Behind Crimson, the man, the drunk that the stranger called Bronson, goes quiet. He sways and stares at Crimson uncertainly for a moment, then he talks to her again. "Did," he whispers hopefully, "Did jyoo get Med-X too?" he asks.
Crimson wipes at the dribbles under her nose and eyes. She nods. She swallows down the sick and the yells trying to get up her throat.
"Did jyoo…use it?" Bronson asks messily.
Crimson scowls. She snivels helplessly, sadly, then turns to face Bronson. The dress, she thinks, its smell is still in her hands. Its stink and memory is still inside her heart, her mind. Crimson thinks the stink will fill the whole room. And Crimson frowns confusedly, hopelessly at Bronson. She does not understand him. But she knows too that she really does understand him. She understands him and the people like him, because she is one of them. She is broken too. And she hates the idea of it for the both of them.
But Crimson only turns away her crying eyes. She tells Bronson the Med-X is upstairs on the floor. She holds back from calling him names to his face. But only because before, he'd asked her first if she was okay and he didn't touch at her when she moved away.
As Bronson goes upstairs, Crimson lets herself sob, because no one told her to be quiet. And everything seems so wrong. And she does not know if anything can ever be fixed. Crimson sobs jaggedly as she turns, and she looks back at the old silver garbage can by the icebox. Crimson does not want to do it for some reason. She's not sure if she even can. But she thinks the stranger, Sidonie, may have been right to throw away her dancing dress.
#
It is one day later. And the young stranger, Sidonie, is returning to her house late in the night. Out of the deep and cold desert darkness surrounding Megaton, she steps quietly into the warm confines of her rickety house. The flimsy front door squeaks a little on its rusty hinges as it is closed and then re-locked. And Sidonie sighs because she is tired and hungry and very glad to be home.
Sidonie loves children. She loves Little Lamplight because of the children. She thinks they are cute and tough and imaginative. But she also thinks being called a 'Mungo' all day does get tiring. Still, that does not stop Sidonie from reminding herself that she must settle down some day, and have one or three of her own some time.
Sidonie throws her heavy knapsack onto the old, green couch in the living room. And then she places her weapons and heavy trench-coat inside of a dilapidated locker for safekeeping. As Sidonie bends to wearily unlace her heavy, travel-dusted boots, Wadsworth comes hovering quietly down the stairs to meet her.
"Good evening, Madam!" he trills.
Sidonie takes off one boot and drops it on the floor. "Hey, Wadsworth," she acknowledges quietly. Then, feeling curious, she adds, "Is anyone still here?"
Wadsworth's orange and glowing ocular swivels at his master's query. "Only the woman named, Crimson," he replies. "She is sleeping upstairs. I…" he murmurs uncertainly, "…managed to slip a sedative into her into her drinking water today. She seemed…erm, unstable, Madam, and in need of sleep."
Sidonie tosses her other boot onto the floor too, then stalks off into the kitchen in worn out sock-feet. "Where's the other guy?" she calls. "Bronson?"
Wadsworth follows Sidonie into the kitchen, hovering swiftly about on his thrusters. "I believe he has not left Moriarty's Saloon since you left, Madam," he answers.
Sidonie has opened the icebox. She is bending into it as she fishes out a half-eaten Fancy Lad cake and a bottle of unopened water. "He didn't steal anything did he?" Sidonie asks suspiciously as she closes the refrigerator.
Wadsworth spins on his humming thrusters as Sidonie passes him by, thirstily tipping her head back to drink in gulps of her water. "No," he replies staunchly, "Oh, no, Madam. I don't believe he had the stomach to test out my artillery. He decided to pawn the Med-X you gave to himself and Miss Crimson, instead." Wadsworth sighs with his artificial voice. "Too bad, that. I did so wish at least one of them would steal something. I have not used these firearms in ages…"
Sidonie's brow is cocked as she munches on a corner of her chocolaty Fancy Lad cake. She turns to look at Wadsworth. "He took Crimson's medicine?" she asks.
Wadsworth's parts spin and wheel. "Yes, Madam," he states. "I was upstairs in the study, covertly eavesdropping. But I heard that she did give Mister Bronson the medicine willingly. No trouble, really."
Sidonie cannot help but shake her head. "Jesus," she whispers, laughing disapprovingly before putting the rest of her cake into her mouth. "Wadsworth," she muffles through her mouthful, "Thank you for watching the joint." Sidonie smiles then with Fancy Lad cake crumbs all over her face. She does not know just how '18' she looks, and neither does Wadsworth. "Means a lot to me that I can leave you here with the place all filled up with shifties, you know?"
Wadsworth bobs a little. "I understand, Madam," he replies cordially. "Of course, you are welcome." Sidonie smiles happily at Wadsworth. And Wadsworth watches his young master as she abruptly goes off and steps up the metal stairs in her padding sock-feet.
It is very quiet upstairs, Sidonie finds. And as she walks over the slightly squeaking floor, Sidonie peers over at the figure lying on her couch. Attached to a battery, there is a small camp-light on the floor by the couch. That was not there when Sidonie left. Sidonie's dark brows furrow as she wonders what Crimson has been through while she was gone. Sidonie feels, in her heart, very sorry for Crimson. But she is also hopeful about Crimson too. Because, she thinks, really, back at Paradise Falls, Crimson had taken her chance to save herself. Even if she still didn't know it now, she had. And Sidonie respected this and hoped in it for Crimson's sake. Because it meant there might be a little, almost forgotten place in Crimson, that still wanted to survive and live.
Sidonie is standing near the couch now. She looks down at Crimson while she sleeps. She is both endeared and saddened that Crimson needs a light to sleep with. Then Sidonie thinks that she really is acting like a 'Mungo' again, looking at a scared little kid, and wanting to help somehow. But it is true in a way, she thinks, and understandable. And then Sidonie smiles, suddenly distracted, when she notices that Crimson has cut and coloured her hair. It is no longer brown and crowned with devilish little points. Instead, Crimson's hair is uniformly shaved, and coloured a bright and clean platinum hue that makes Crimson's dark skin look all the more beautiful and fresher. Sidonie smiles, because the change is good and it is already a step, she knows.
But Sidonie's smile does go lopsided and she sighs as she looks at Crimson's eyes. They are very red and very puffy and even as she sleeps, Sidonie can see the sorrowed look hiding on Crimson's very pretty, but very sad face. Sidonie is sad and sorry for Crimson, but still hopeful. Crimson's hair is different, she is not wearing that gross pink dress, but instead a pair of pyjamas, she did not use the Med-X like Sidonie had thought she would, and Crimson is still alive. Sidonie thinks this a lot for Crimson to have done, it means a lot of progress in its own way, and Sidonie feels really, really glad that she didn't have to kill Crimson like everyone else in Paradise Falls.
As Crimson shifts on the couch, and opens her eyes to peek about. Sidonie sees Crimson grow instantly tense and frightened upon noticing someone standing near. Sidonie slowly crouches down though and quiets Crimson with a happy and soft smile. "Hi," she whispers.
Crimson stares blinkingly for a moment. And Sidonie is surprised when tears well up thickly in Crimson's sad eyes. Sidonie, feeling like a big, caring 'Mungo', quickly kneels in a little nearer to the couch. "I like your hair," Sidonie says. "It looks good."
Crimson sighs brokenly, sounding as though hearing Sidonie's calming, sure voice is somehow relieving to her. As Crimson stretches out her hand, Sidonie amiably takes it into her own and gives a little squeeze. Sidonie watches as tears start to fall silently down Crimson's cheeks. Sidonie doesn't exactly know why Crimson is crying, but she doesn't need to know either, she feels.
"You threw out my dress, right?" Crimson asks very quietly.
Sidonie can tell Crimson is trying to be quiet for some reason, and she furrows her black brows while she nods. "I did," she replies plainly. Sidonie is not afraid to say that she did. And she does not, and certainly did not, regret this.
Crimson bites at her lips for a moment. Then she clasps at Sidonie's hand. "I…" she whispers, "Thanks."
Then Sidonie grows worried as Crimson snorts helplessly, miserably, and begins to cry a little harder. Sidonie, with wide blue eyes, curls Crimson into her arms and pats at her shuddering back.
"What do I smell like?" Crimson whispers, sounding very terrified.
Sidonie frowns confusedly. But she takes in a breath while she hugs at poor, crying Crimson. "You smell clean," she says truthfully, though she wonders of course, what it was all supposed to mean. "Like the soap in my bathroom."
Crimson instantly sobs hard against Sidonie, sounding almost very thoroughly relieved in a way. And at a loss, Sidonie simply strokes her hands over Crimson's back, and she holds onto her tightly.
"It's alright," she whispers oddly to weeping Crimson, with chocolaty cake crumbs still dappling her young, smiling face. "You smell good," she says, "You smell good."