Author's Note: I'm really excited to be here to post my first Fallout fanfiction. It's a slight AU but follows a majority of the events of Fallout: New Vegas. The title is based on the song King and Lionheart by Of Monsters and Men whose meaning will be revealed as I post. Enjoy!
King and Lionheart
Prologue
Lux Fontaine. 'The last thing you never see' fit her more than those dumb finks with the red berets. It was a wonder he didn't hear her name before because as Benny headed back to the great lights of New Vegas and his posh suite atop the Tops she was cutting a swathe across the Mojave. Looking for him.
Her name, her image, it had become a beacon of hope for the simpletons of the Wastes because her trail was not covered in needlessly shed blood but carefully calculated kills filled with mercy or vengeance who couldn't serve it themselves.
So, to say it was a surprise when she didn't shoot him dead the moment she saw him was a great understatement. When he took her up to his room he hadn't been able to help himself but when they lay curled in the aftermath the great effect seemed to hit him. He had shot this woman. Left her for dead when in the Wastes making it without Khans and a big fink like him tracking you down was a miracle in itself. He understood this well.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as red flooded his mind, thick and warm against his fingers, flooding his throat until he had to gasp breaths. He just willed her revenge to come quickly. But as he awaited his end with an acceptance that failed to surprise Benny after everything that occurred these past months he slipped into oblivion, his eyes closing and his hands falling limp to welcome his arms over his eyes.
Sleep muddled his mind and he muttered, "Hold me will ya? I swear you wore me out," underneath his breath and found that he roused the next morning.
And she was curled against him.
And it's the worst punishment of any kind and he flees. It's the only thing he knows now. He writes her a note after looking at her sleeping form, curled bare in the sheets of his bed because maybe if he came back in one piece then he could figure her out.
And with that promise sitting on his bedside dresser, hastily scrawled on a cocktail napkin he sets off with Maria in the Wastes again.
And now he's at her mercy again, the strong, rough ropes cutting into his wrists as he hears her put a bullet through Caesar's head when he proposes her a deal. Benny doesn't have time to hear the leader's last words in the midst of screaming and shouts, guns erupting in frantic fire or precision that would rival the most experienced NCR sniper and the thick smell of gun powder.
She stumbles in, bloody but with the same unreadable expression on her face as the last time he saw her except harder, colder and that's when he realizes how innocent she looks in the memory. Asleep and not the vigilant defender of the Mojave. She's just a woman. And that's what confuses him.
She speaks to the tall, brooding man to her side as her dog comes in, panting and it's jowl riddled with gore and vibrant fresh blood but Benny's ears are still ringing from what he assumed was a grenade to hear what they're saying. The man gives her a look but unsheathes a knife from her belt and comes behind Benny.
What he thinks will cut his throat, cuts through his bindings and the blood painfully begins to flood back into his hands. He rubs is hands, not trying any smooth words because he doesn't know what would work on her.
The shot doesn't come, neither does a knife nor a hand.
He looks up and what happens next sets his mind for a violent turn.
She's outstretching her hand to him.
And that's when he gives up trying to figure this woman out.