Standard disclaimer: None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bethesda Game Studios. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.
Author's note: Not much to say about this one either. Sort of a collection of random scenes that kept bumping up against each other until I stapled them into a fic. Actually, I don't really find Boone that interesting, but he's a really good fit for the way I'm developing Samara this game. I think it's fairly obvious that Boone is bad news in this story; despite his crush on Boone, Arcade is smart enough to see that, and to see that he and Samara probably aren't going to be good for one another.
I swear, the next Fallout: New Vegas fic I write will have a happy, helpful Samara, not a cold, killing-obsessed vengeful one. Okay, I don't know what that fic's going to be yet but I know that that side of her really does exist and I do want to find a way to bring it out. Unfortunately, nothing I've run across in Fallout: New Vegas so far has activated my fanfic brain like Fallout 3 did, but it will happen, I 'm sure.
"Have you ever been in love?"
Startled, Arcade looked up from the Combat Armor he was repairing. The lights were dimmed throughout the Lucky 38's Presidential Suite; their companions had all turned in hours ago. ED-E bobbed through the air restlessly from room to room, and Rex lay curled up in a ball on one of the rugs, his paws twitching as he dreamed. Only he and Samara still sat up, in the lavish yet somehow oppressive surroundings.
Samara sat across from him on the floor, working on her suit of massive Powered Armor. As useful as those things were, they required near-constant maintenance to keep in working order: one reason why Arcade was content to forgo them and stick to his simple, non-mechanized Combat Armor. The other reason was that he didn't want anyone getting curious about where he'd picked up Powered Armor training. She had lifted her pale eyes from her work and was watching him with a strange expression. He shifted uncomfortably. "I beg your pardon?" he asked her.
"Have you ever been in love?" As he stared at her, she clarified, "You know, real love. The kind they show on the holotapes, with birds singing and the earth moving and all that. Have you ever been in love?"
Arcade was startled into a half-laugh. Have I been— Why on earth is she asking this? He could think of a dozen reasons, none of them good. He should have evaded or denied the question, but it was late, he was tired, and in a strangely melancholy and depressed frame of mind. Somehow, he found himself answering. "I honestly don't know."
At her questioning look, he gave another half-laugh. It trailed off into a sigh and he rubbed at the back of his neck ruefully. "I've never had much luck with love. I suppose you could call me 'one who loved not wisely, but too well.' I just, I don't know. Somehow, I never could seem to get the whole 'relationship' thing to work out. Partly because I…I guess I have this tendency to fall for men who are unattainable in some way." He thought of Boone's smooth, almost liquid grace, his silent, murderous beauty. He'd been blindsided by a terrible crush on the man shortly after Samara had brought him in, and the knowledge that Boone was not only straight, but rendered near-psychopathic by the death of his wife, hadn't done a damn thing to allay it. Being around him in the close confines of the Lucky 38 was torture, and he was silently thankful that Samara seemed to prefer traveling with Boone over just about anyone else. In any case, they didn't spend a lot of time together. "Who knows why," he continued. "Maybe it has something to do with my father. If that's not too Freudian for you." Also, he reflected, because it's difficult to have a real relationship with someone when there are large swathes of your past that you can't talk about. Samara was staring at him with no trace of understanding on her face. He wondered if she'd ever even heard of Freud before. "Why are you asking me this, anyway?"
He waited with some trepidation, but Samara didn't answer right away. Instead she lowered her eyes, considering. When she spoke, her words were a surprise. "I've been thinking about it and…I don't think I've ever been in love. Not once. Not like it is in the vids, anyway. I don't know if I even can be in love like that."
The stony coldness on her face had slipped, and she looked so distressed that Arcade hurried to reassure her. "Well…you can't remember anything about your life, can you? So it's not surprising that you wouldn't be able to remember—"
"Yes, but I think I would remember that. The feeling, even if not the person. I don't see how you could—how you could just forget a thing like that." Frustration filled her voice. Suddenly, she slammed one fist into the floor. "I don't get it! I remember so many things—I know how to load and aim and fire, where to shoot a radscorpion or a giant ant—I know how to use barrel cactus fruit to purify water, how to make Mother Darkness and Tremble—I know where to look to find Xander Root and White Horse Nettle; I know how to stalk and kill legionaries, and that you can tell if a village is occupied by looking for smoke trails—I know all these things, but why can't I remember?"
Her voice rose to a cry. Arcade glanced back at the door to the bedroom behind him, afraid she would wake one of the sleepers, but no sounds came. He frowned in thought. After a moment, he dared to venture, "Have you ever considered that maybe your memory loss is not traumatic in origin?"
She looked confused. "I don't understand what you mean."
He hesitated. "Have you ever heard of the term 'fugue state?'"
She considered again, then shook her head. "I don't think so."
Arcade sat back, leaning against the wall behind him. "A fugue state," he recited, "is an extremely rare psychological phenomenon characterized by complete amnesia for personal information such as name or life history. The term 'fugue' is from the Latin for 'flight,' and a fugue state is usually marked by assumption of a new identity and unplanned travel or wandering."
"Heh. 'Unplanned wandering' is a pretty good description of what we were doing till we ended up here, isn't it?" Arcade had to agree she had a point there. Samara's eyes were thoughtful. "What causes it?"
He stretched his legs out in front of him. "A fugue state is usually a psychological response to some sort of overwhelmingly traumatic experience."
"Like being shot in the head, damn right." Samara's face took on that unsettling, granite caliber again.
"Maybe." Arcade hesitated. "Somehow that doesn't seem exactly right to me though. Usually the precipitating factor for a fugue state has to do with the sudden appearance or reappearance of a stressful element from the person's past, such that the sufferer is driven to flee to avoid facing it." He paused. "I don't suppose you can think of anything stressful about Benny, can you? Or the Great Khans, maybe?"
Samara shook her head in some irritation. "I told you, I can't remember anything. How could I remember that?"
"Hm. Good point."
There was silence for a moment. Arcade tried to go back to working on his armor, but felt an uncomfortable sensation and looked up to see Samara staring at him again. "What?"
"I think…." She paused. "I think I could have loved you," she said quietly. "Or someone like you in any case…someone intelligent, educated, funny—"
Arcade wet his lips. "Oh, well, I wouldn't say—" he began uncomfortably.
"But I don't." She spoke the words with such certainty that he relaxed. "I could have, but I don't. I wonder what that means?"
"Maybe it means you don't go for gay men," he responded flatly. "Maybe men aren't what you need at all. Have you thought about Veronica?"
She shook her head. "No. Women aren't right. Even if I don't remember, I can still tell that. What does it mean?" She raised one hand to her forehead and an expression of terrible strain crossed her face. She looked almost as if she were being torn in half. Abruptly, she stood up, and dropped her armor. "I'm going to bed," she announced, and stalked off, looking as if she were thinking hard.
Alone, Arcade felt himself relax. Being hit on by straight women was always awkward, but Samara…. The prospect of being intimate with her was not just unappealing; it actually sent cold chills down his spine. She's just so angry, all the time…. Of course, Boone was angry too, he reflected; but with Boone, the sense of anger, the danger that lurked in his eyes was somehow intoxicating. With Samara, it made his skin crawl.
Not that there's realistically a prospect of a relationship with either of them. Arcade sighed, staring down at his combat armor. Goddamn it, Gannon, when are you ever going to learn?
He fiddled with the disjointed pieces for a moment longer, then at last pushed them back. All right, that's enough brooding for one night. Time to go to bed.
Going to bed, of course, presented knotty problems of its own. There were three beds in the entire suite. Samara had claimed one, and left her six companions to figure out sleeping arrangements on their own. Raul, the ghoul mechanic she had rescued from Black Mountain, didn't seem to sleep much, however, and the Nightkin Lily didn't sleep at all, at least, not that he'd seen. Arcade actually suspected, though he had never said it, that her—its?—lack of sleep contributed to her mental instability. That left four people for two beds. Bunking with Boone, of course, was out of the question, and besides, he didn't seem to sleep much either. Veronica would have been the obvious choice, except for the fact that she liked to sleep in full Power Armor.
"How can you do that?" he'd asked her once, watching as she prepared to bed down. The bedstead creaked ominously under her titanic weight, and for a moment he'd feared that bed, girl and all would go crashing to the floor. The pre-war frame held, however, despite further groaning and squeaking.
"Hey—when the Brotherhood used to go on patrol, we'd be in these suits literally for weeks at a time. Sleeping was the leastof what we had to do in these things," she'd said with a mischievous grin.
He'd held up his hands. "Please don't go any further with that anecdote." She'd burst out laughing, leaving Arcade shaking his head. In any case, there was no way he would share a bed with her under those circumstances—it would be downright dangerous to do so. That left Cass, which had its own disadvantages. As he crawled in with her, the snoring former caravan leader put an arm around him and drew him close. He elbowed her, grimacing. His elbow made contact with something soft, and he heard her snores abruptly break off.
"Get off me, Cass," he said sharply. "I'm trying to sleep here."
"Sorry, Gannon. You're just too damn cute," she said, but she rolled back to her side of the bed. Gannon closed his eyes, trying to shut his ears against her snores. At last, he managed to succeed.
Samara was gone when he woke up the next morning, and she had taken Raul and ED-E with her, leaving her remaining companions to wander around the suite, occupying themselves as best they could. Cass grabbed herself a bottle of whiskey and sacked out on the couch in the game room, looking as happy as a pig in mud; Veronica joined her on the couch, and the two of them passed the bottle back and forth, laughing to each other.
"When you finally do get that dress," he heard Cass tell her, "I'll show you how to put up your hair to go with it, too. How's that?"
"How does a tough cowgirl like you even know how to do stuff with hair?" Veronica asked. Cass laughed.
"Let's just say, I have many skills."
Lily went to the kitchen and began to make a batch of cookies; soon, the scent of cookies began to fill the entire apartment. Watching the huge Nightkin bent tamely over the stove was amusing in itself, but Arcade tended to give her a wide berth; he knew that she could be unstable, particularly when "Leo" was talking to her. Boone sat on the edge of the bed, disassembling and cleaning his sniper rifle, his face set in lines of granite. Arcade thought rather wistfully about going to sit near him, took one look at his stony expression, and sensibly decided to retreat to the other end of the suite.
As he was retreating, Boone turned and looked right at him. "Wait."
Helplessly, Arcade came to a halt. "Yes?"
Boone removed his sunglasses and stared at him. The touch of his eyes made Arcade shiver. He had eyes like a snake, icy and unblinking. "You've been skulking around me for weeks, doctor. I'm sick of it. If you've got something to say, then say it."
Arcade's mouth went dry. "I…uh…I…" He bit down, hard, on his first three desperate responses. "I just, uh—" He cleared his throat. "I w-was wondering if… If you w-would like to talk."
He hung there, feeling the blood rush to his face and cursing his pale complexion. Boone stared at him for a long moment.
"No." He turned back to his rifle.
Leave. Just leave, Gannon. Get out of here. His feet seemed to be affixed to the floor. "You know, uh, I h-have some experience in dealing with mental trauma." Shut up, he snarled at himself helplessly. Shut up, shut up, shut up— "If you, um, I could, that is—"
Boone glanced toward him again with those icy eyes. "Are you trying to figure me out?"
Arcade couldn't speak. He stood there dumbly.
"Don't." The word fell, unassailable, into the silence. "Someone like you could never understand someone like me. You're a doctor. You save lives." Boone snapped the bolt back on his rifle. If possible, those uncompromising eyes grew even harder. "I take them." He swung the end of his rifle barrel in Arcade's direction. "Now get out of here. And don't come skulking around me again."
Cursing himself, Arcade fled.
Arcade spent the rest of the day moping around the suite, doing his best to avoid Boone and treating himself to an extended wallow in self-pity. Well, I've humiliated myself before, and this probably won't be the last time, he tried to tell himself philosophically. Sic vita est. Somehow that didn't help much though.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Samara came back, with Raul in tow. He first knew that she was back when he heard the elevator door slide open and heavy footsteps echo throughout the suite. He emerged from the kitchen, where he had been nibbling on Lily's cookies and moping, and started to call out to her, only to see her back disappear through the door into her bedroom. ED-E bobbed after her. Cass and Veronica came from the game room, and Cass called, "Samara? Samar—"
Her words were cut off by the sound of the armor cupboard crashing open as Samara began to stow the things she had picked up on this latest trip. There were only the sounds of armor being tossed into the locker; Samara herself was ominously silent.
Cass and Veronica exchanged glances. Lily had stepped out of the kitchen and hovered, huge, in the doorframe; Boone stood in the door to the team's bedroom, his face rocklike behind his sunglasses. Arcade studied Raul's decayed features. He had never been much good at reading ghouls, but something about the expression in those filmy eyes sent a chill down Arcade's spine.
It was left to Lily to ask the obvious question. "Is something wrong with my little angel?" Another time, hearing those gentle words in that rough, growling voice would have been amusing.
The armor cupboard banged closed and Arcade heard the weapons locker crash open. Raul shifted uneasily. "You might want to steer clear of the boss for a while, okay? She's—in kinda a mood right now. I don't know that I blame her all that much, but…." He trailed off.
"What happened?" Veronica demanded.
"It's—aw, Jesus, I dunno if I should get into it. It's—God. Let's just say—"
"Raul!" Samara shouted from the other room. "Get in here! I need to unload your stuff!"
"I gotta go. Tell you later," the ghoul said, and made his escape. In his wake, the rest of Samara's companions stared at each other. Veronica directed an anxious glance toward Samara's room, and Cass took a gulp from her ever-present whiskey bottle. Lily began to mutter to herself—or was it to Leo?—and reached one hand back to grasp the hilt of her Vertibird sword. Boone simply stood in the doorframe, his sniper rifle held at an angle, looking toward Samara's room. The cold certainty in his eyes chilled Arcade's blood.
The details of what had happened on the mission came out slowly, over the course of the rest of the afternoon; Veronica and Cass, working together, pried them out of a very reluctant Raul, for Samara herself would not speak about it. When they were all put together, the picture they created was horrifying.
It had all started when Samara and Raul had made a return visit to Novac. They'd stopped off to visit Ranger Andy, a retired NCR ranger living in the area. Arcade had never met him himself, but he'd heard Samara talk about him and he knew she respected the old Ranger a great deal. When they'd visited him, however, Ranger Andy had seemed distracted, as if he'd had something else on his mind. After questioning, he'd finally told them that he'd been in contact with Ranger Station Charlie, up the road from Novac, but that about a week ago it had suddenly stopped answering his calls. Samara had volunteered to check on the radio station for him. But when they'd gone up the road, they'd found the reason the station had been silent: the Legion had hit the place. The place was a wreck. Bodies of NCR Rangers had been sprawled on the floor among puddles of blood. Some of them had been booby trapped with frag mines or shotguns. No one was left.
"God," Cass muttered. She took another gulp from her whiskey bottle. Boone said nothing, but simply listened, stonefaced. Veronica was frowning.
"Sounds bad, but—I don't understand why she's like this. I saw her after Nipton, and—"
"Naw. It's worse than that." The old ghoul shifted his feet and swallowed. "I don't know if I should say—"
"Goddamn it, spill it, Raul!" Cass demanded.
Raul lowered his eyes, an expression of strain coming over his face. He'd glanced over toward the doorway where Samara was, then sighed. "Okay. See, that wasn't the end of it. The Decanus in charge of the legion troops—he left a holotape behind, taunting us, like. And on it, he said…." Raul broke off. He swallowed again. "Aw, God. He said….that they'd taken one of the women alive."
Boone turned away and cursed through his teeth, savage and explosive. Veronica and Cass both burst into angry cries. For his part, Arcade felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Possibilities thronged his mind, so horrific he couldn't bear to think about them. "Christ," he heard himself say through numb lips.
Raul revealed that he and Samara had left the station immediately, searching for any traces of the departed Legion patrol. Realistically they'd known there was almost no chance of finding them—the trail was over a week old by now—but they'd had to try. They'd searched all up and down the surrounding hills, and had come across several units of Legion troops, but they'd never found any trace of the captured female Ranger. Finally, Samara had been forced to admit defeat.
"You just gave up?" Veronica exclaimed furiously. "How could you just walk away from—"
"Look, the trail was cold, all right?" Raul defended himself. "It had happened over a week ago—they could have been anywhere by then! It…it was probably too late anyway." But he averted his filmy eyes as he said that. "Anyway, the boss…yeah. Might be a good idea to stay out of her way. Just for the rest of the day. She's—she took it pretty hard."
Arcade felt sick. Behind him, he heard Veronica and Cass continue to protest, loudly and explosively. But it was Boone his eyes were drawn to. The sniper's hand was clenched on the stock of his rifle, and his face was cold as stone.
"[click] This is a message to the NCR from the Legion.
"We're coming. Run, and we'll catch you. Hide, and we'll find you. No matter what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
Jesus, Arcade thought to himself.
"[click] This is a message to the NCR from the Legion.
"We're coming. Run and we'll catch you. Hide, and we'll find you. No matter what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
It was getting on toward evening. The Presidential Suite of the Lucky 38 had no windows, so he had to check his chronometer in order to tell the time. Not that it mattered. Arcade had always thought the maroon of the walls and carpeting seemed dark and oppressive, and never more so than now.
"[click] Run, and we'll catch you. Hide, and we'll find you. No matter what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
The mood in the suite was heavy and on edge. Cass and Veronica were both too angry for words; Veronica had actually left the suite in search of the hotel's gym so she could do some heavy-duty punching, while Cass had paced from room to room for a time, muttering curses, then had grabbed some whiskey out of the fridge and settled in to drink with a vengeance. Raul was keeping a low profile. Only Boone seemed calm, but Arcade could sense a smoldering rage behind his sunglasses, and his gaze kept straying toward Samara.
"[click] We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
Samara had been uncommunicative all afternoon, wrapped in a cold silence. Now, she sat slumped on the sofa in the game room, her eyes distant and brooding. She had not bothered to take off her Powered Armor. In one hand, she held the holotape she had taken from the ruins of Ranger Station Charlie. Her thumb moved on the play button.
"[click] -what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
The gloating relish in the legionary's voice made Arcade's skin crawl. It scraped along his nerves like broken glass. He felt filthy just hearing it, and he cringed every time Samara rewound the tape, as if at the cut of a lash. Instead of blunting the edges, the constant repetition only made it even more unendurable. He wanted to shout at Samara to stop, but somehow he didn't dare.
"[click] This is a message to the NCR from the Legion.
"We're coming. Run, and we'll catch you. Hide, and we'll find you. No matter what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive. [/click]"
She's not even drinking, Arcade thought. He would have preferred that—would have preferred a drunken, raging Samara to the one who sat silently on the couch, simply playing the holotape over and over. He could have dealt with that. It wouldn't have been pleasant, but he could have dealt with it. Now…
And every time she ran the tape through again, her eyes grew bleaker.
"[click] -oing to die. We took one of the women…alive.[/click]"
The air was filled with a looming, thunderous sense of menace. It flickered around Samara, almost visible, like distant heat lightning. Arcade realized the hair on his forearms was standing on end, and he rubbed himself briskly. He swallowed, hearing a dry, clicking sound in his throat. Something's got to give. Something's got to—
Boone lounged in a chair in the far corner, where the shadows were darkest, ostensibly engrossed in cleaning his sniper rifle. Despite that, there was a coiled watchfulness in his posture.
"[click]This is a message to the NCR from the Legion.
"We're coming for you. Run, and we'll catch you. Hide, and we'll find you. No matter what you do, you're all going to die. We took one of the women…alive.[/click]"
"Boone."
The word shattered the silence in the Presidential Suite like a boulder thrown through glass. Arcade actually jumped. The former NCR sniper straightened immediately.
"Is it time?"
Samara looked over at him, and the NCR sniper lowered his sunglasses to meet her gaze. Her pale eyes had gone almost white. A strange light seemed to be coming from them, a light the likes of which Arcade had never seen before, one that chilled his blood and turned his heart to ice in his chest. When her eyes met Boone's stony gaze, that light seemed to jump from her to him. A tremendous force leapt between the two of them, and the air burned. Arcade had never felt anything like it before in his entire life. The raw power of it made him shrink. He cowered back into the wall behind him with his heart racing, and hoped desperately that neither of them noticed him.
Samara surged to her feet. Her Trail Carbine and her Multiplas Rifle were leaning against the wall beside the couch, and she claimed them in a single motion.
"Let's go kill some Legion."
The words were a growl. Boone stood as well, hefting his sniper rifle.
"I'm with you," he said, quietly savage.
Together, the two of them strode toward the elevator. As they stepped into the open car and the doors rolled shut behind them, Arcade could only be thankful to the bottom of his heart that he was not going with them.
Samara and Boone were gone that evening, and the next. The atmosphere in the suite was tense and uneasy all the following day. Lily baked, largely oblivious to everything; there were times, Arcade reflected, that a loose grip on reality came in very handy. Cass and Veronica were both furious that Samara had chosen Boone to go with her and not one of them, and were not shy in letting their feelings be known. Arcade kept a low profile. In the afternoon, probably more out of nervous energy than anything else, Veronica and Cass joined forces to gang up on Raul, who had once expressed the opinion that Legion rule had actually been an improvement for his original home of Arizona. The old ghoul, looking very troubled, had at first attempted a half-hearted defense of his statement, but had been forced to give way before the two women's vehement outrage. Finally he had been reduced to protesting weakly, "Well, I'm not sayin they were perfect, by any means. I wasn't sayin they were anything other than bastards. Just…compared to what it was like before—"
It wasn't until late afternoon the third day that the chime of the elevator in the Lucky 38 heralded Samara's and Boone's return. The two of them stepped out of the elevator together, Samara first and Boone in her wake. Veronica and Cass immediately both accosted Samara.
"Why didn't you tell us you were going? I would have gone with you—"
"If any Legion scum needed any punching done, you should have brought me along—"
Lily had come out from the kitchen. "Aw, there's my little darling," she said. "I was so worried about you! You know that Leo doesn't like you going out alone. You should have brought Grandma with you—"
"All right, that's enough, everyone!" Samara shouted, above the babble. The stony coldness in her eyes was gone—the coldness that had so disturbed Arcade—but her expression was still grim. "I need your help. There's lots of loot down in the lobby and we're going to need hands to bring it back up to the suite. Let's go, guys."
As the companions filed into the elevator, to go down to the lobby, Arcade found himself face-to-face with Boone. He wet his lips nervously. "Did—did you find her?" he asked, not knowing what to say but wanting to say something. "That captured Ranger?"
Boone turned those unblinking eyes on him. "Not that kind of mission," he said. "It was like Raul said—the trail's cold by now. That wasn't the point." He jerked his head at the elevator car. "There's stuff to carry up. Get down there."
Intimidated, Arcade turned away. But as he stepped into the elevator, he caught sight of the old ghoul over Boone's shoulder. Raul made eye contact with him, then looked away, shaking his head. But he thought he saw an expression of pity on the ghoul's decayed features.
It took several trips for the companions to transport Samara's and Boone's pile of material up from the lobby to the armor and weapons lockers in the Lucky 38; Arcade was amazed that the two of them had managed to carry it all back. There were full sets of Legion armor and weaponry, Legion equipment such as healing powder, and piles of Legion denarii and even a handful of aurei. When Arcade stopped to consider it, he realized the implications of the mountainous stash of supplies were sobering indeed. She and Boone could have come by the material by simply hitting a Legion supply dump, Arcade supposed.
But somehow, I don't think so. He looked at the grim cast of Samara's and Boone's features, and a creeping chill settled in his chest.
What did it mean that Samara could … could do something like that? What did it mean that Boone could? Who are these people?
Arcade was no stranger to violence. The Followers of the Apocalypse might be pacifist in orientation as a group, but that didn't mean all their members were; and Arcade had walked the Mojave long enough to know that some people simply needed to be shot in the head. There was a reason why he carried the Plasma Defender at his side, the one that his mother had passed on to him, that had been his father's weapon. The Mojave Wastes, he sometimes thought, were the place where idealism went to die. But this….
Veronica and Cass, he noticed, also had caught the implications, and they had no problem with it. The grim satisfaction in the two women's faces was troubling to him on several levels, some of which he couldn't even name. Well, what else did you want them to do? he tried arguing with himself. He knew what kind of scum the Legion were; everyone in the Mojave did. In his experience, just about all of the Legion soldiers were fanatically dedicated to the Legion and to Caesar, and even the very few that weren't had thoroughly internalized the Legion's utterly repugnant attitudes. Vile was too soft a term for them. They were, quite simply put, a danger to just about every form of sentient life in the wastes.
Still….
He tried to push the whole matter out of his head as he went about the rest of the day, shooting some pool with Cass in the game room, or working on repairing his armor. But his mind kept returning to it, working at the problem throughout the day. Later that evening, somewhat at loose ends, he found himself helping Lily to wind up all her yarn—she had picked up several skeins of yarn somewhere and a pair of knitting needles, and had promised sweaters for everyone. Lily noticed his abstraction and commented on it.
"Oh, darling, are you worried about what Samara and Boone did?"
Arcade looked up, startled, from the skein of yarn he'd been holding—a bright green color that he hoped wasn't destined for him. Lily had lowered her sunglasses and was regarding him.
"I don't know," he confessed only. "It seems…rather excessive."
Lily studied him a moment longer. There was an unaccustomed shrewdness in those eyes, a clarity that he hadn't noticed in her before. Maybe she's not as out of it as we all think.
"Don't you worry your little head about it, dear," she told him. "Grandma knows all about those Legion boys. They're very bad men. Whenever Leo sees them, he tells me I should chop them, yes indeed! Nice boys and girls like all of you shouldn't have anything to do with them anyway. Now, dearie," she told him, "why don't you run along and ask Samara what color she would like her sweater to be? There's a good boy."
Arcade hesitated, holding the yarn a moment longer, then shrugged. "Sure, why not," he said, tossing the tangled skein aside.
A quick check revealed that Samara wasn't in the game room, or the guest bedroom. The door to her room was closed, and after a token rap, Arcade started to push it open. "Samara, I—"
He stopped.
The door was open only a crack, but it was enough to allow him to see inside. Samara was in there, but she wasn't alone. Boone was with her. The two of them were sitting on the edge of her vast king-size bed, very close together and clearly deep in conversation.
"—I didn't understand," Samara was saying quietly. "I thought at first that it meant…something else. But now I get it. You treated her like a soldier on the battlefield."
"Yeah." Boone shifted, and dropped his eyes. Arcade realized that he was seeing Boone vulnerable, for the first time since he had known the man. He knew, intellectually, that he should withdraw and allow the couple their privacy, but the sight was mesmerizing: Arcade couldn't bring himself to look away. He stood transfixed, filling his eyes with the other man. "I'd done the same for NCR troopers in the exact same situation. Hell, it was my job. It was what NCR snipers were supposed to do. Standard procedure. How could I do it for them and not for the woman I—" He broke off, turning his face to the wall. One fist clenched. Arcade saw the muscles in Boone's throat work as he swallowed, and his own stomach knotted with yearning.
"You did the right thing." The coldness had slipped back into Samara's eyes; her face was granite. "You weren't to blame, Boone. They were. And together—" She reached out and took his hard fist in her hands, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles showed white. "We'll make them pay. I swear it."
Boone's throat rippled again. He kept his face to the wall. "They can't pay any more than I'm already paying." His voice was strangely muffled.
"They can. And they will." Her words were iron-hard. "Boone, don't you see? You're the only one that gets it. That gets just how evil they are, gets it enough to really hate them. Arcade, Raul—they don't really understand. Even Cass and Veronica don't really get it—not like you, anyway. They don't know how to hate. Don't you see? Boone, you don't need to die for your sins—you need to live for theirs."
Samara's voice shook. Now Boone looked back at her, and there was something—a strange stillness about his face—that Arcade had never seen there before. This was not the cold façade of the killer; this was an openness that made his heart ache. Boone's eyes clung to Samara's. "Wh…what?" he asked softly.
Samara's fingers clasped Boone's fist more tightly still, and Arcade's own hands hurt in sympathy. "Kill Legion with me, Boone." Her voice throbbed with a savage, wild intensity. That frightening white light was back in her eyes. "I need you to kill Legion with me."
Boone stared at her. His hands opened in her grip, his fingers slowly curling around her own. Their faces were inches apart. Samara started to lean forward, almost imperceptibly—then suddenly Boone's arms went around her, and the two of them were locked, lip-to-lip, in a passionate embrace.
Arcade turned away, easing the door closed behind him. Lily's question could wait.
After what he had seen, the idea of going back to Lily, sitting there and holding that skein of yarn and listening to her irrelevant chatter, was suddenly unbearable. He could have turned in—it was definitely past his bedtime, as he saw from his wrist chronometer—but instead he wandered back into the game room, where he got a bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla from the vending machine. Cass had scrounged a dart board a week or so ago, hanging it against the wall opposite the door. Arcade gathered the darts and threw them at the board listlessly for a while, his guts a stew of conflicting emotions: he felt hurt, miffed, and oh yes—jealous, jealous, jealous.
She said she thought she could have loved someone like me. Guess she was wrong on that. He hadn't wanted her attentions, but still… And then…Boone. He kept seeing the two of them embracing over and over again, and that image was followed by others: Samara touching Boone, her hands sliding over his body, her fingers on his—
He cursed viciously and flung another dart. It missed the board completely and stuck, quivering, in the wall. Get real, Gannon. You had no chance with him anyway and you know it. Somehow, telling himself that didn't help.
Would you even have wanted him anyway if you could have had him? a small voice whispered.
Arcade went still. New images filled his mind: not of Samara and Boone entwined this time, but of the ice in his eyes, the way it reflected in Samara's. The crackling force that had leapt between them when she had summoned him to go out, so strong that it was almost visible in the air.
Kill Legion with me, Boone. I need you to kill Legion with me.
All traces of jealousy vanished before that memory, as a shiver went down his spine. What kind of man sees that as romantic foreplay?
Someone who was far, far more trouble than any sane person would want, that was who.
Slowly, he crossed the room to the dartboard and began to gather the darts, rolling them between his fingers. It's for the best this way. Best to stay away from him. This will not end well.
He laid the darts back in their box and stepped out of the game room. The door to Samara's room was still closed; Arcade gave it a quick glance, then crossed the lobby to the guest room. Boone's bed was empty, as he had expected. Once again, he crawled in with Cass. This time the caravaneer continued her snoring, undisturbed. Arcade lay next to her, staring into the darkness, for a long time.
Samara and Boone lay beside each other in her vast double bed, tangled in silken sheets. Boone's arm fit comfortably around Samara's body, and her fingers wandered through his hair, teasing and tugging. He shifted against her.
"What'll we do when we run out of Legion?"
"The great thing about the Wastes is, there's no shortage of monsters." Samara paused. "I hear there's something brewing back East, maybe moving out this way soon. From what I've been hearing, it's pretty nasty. Involves what's left of the Enclave. Speaking of monsters." Her jaw set, and that stony look slipped back into her eyes.
"Fine by me." Boone's arm tightened around her. He rolled toward her and they kissed; her hand strayed down and made him almost yelp. He startled himself with a laugh; startled himself more when he realized he had almost forgotten what laughter felt like. It's been so long…. Then Samara drew him to her again, and thought fled.
In the next room, Arcade tossed uneasily in his sleep.
Finis.