The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street.
I've been looking for my baby
And I've been wondering where can she be
Grace wasn't overly pleased with her hunt but with the dead coyote over her shoulder and a bag full of plants that wouldn't kill them, they would eat well tonight. She stepped into her father's shop, sharp grey eyes running over the five customers and appraising them quickly.
None of them required another glance.
"Da, I'll have supper ready in a couple hours. Let the caravans know?" Her lilting accent, the stubbornness of their family made obvious, cut through the sounds of the radio and the murmurs of the customers.
"Put it on and come help me. Your cousin should be back soon. She can tend the meal." Owen O'Malley didn't look to where she stood, auburn head bent behind the counter as he searched for something.
Grace shrugged and walked through the store to the back door. She set her bag down next to a large, broken section of concrete, pulling a hunting knife from her belt afterwards. It didn't take long to skin and gut the coyote; she'd been hunting since she was old enough to hold a gun and her father had taught her how to survive on her own despite the protestations of her mother. It took even less time to hack the meat into chunks.
Finished, she threw the bucket of innards and wastes to the trio of hounds her father kept. They fell on the meal with barks and growls. She stood, lifting the bucket of meat and strode over to where the cooking pot sat braced over the firepit. She set the bucket down. Pumping water took little effort, the strong muscles in her arms and back bunching and uncoiling.
She didn't have the skill of her mother or even her cousin when it came to cooking but most caravaneers didn't care too much about the taste as long as the meal was hot. Still, as she prepared the stew, she kept one ear out for her cousin's return.
When the dogs finished eating, they circled around her. The biggest one, a bitch named Rubble who was half coyote herself, rested her head on Grace's foot. "You know better than to beg," she muttered, giving the dogs a barely heated glare. Rubble whined, looking up at her. "I'm not going to."
She stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon, feeling the tingle up her spine that usually preceded danger. Grace put the lid on the pot and shooed the dogs away. One of the male dogs inched forward to sniff the pit and Rubble snapped and growled at him, forcing him away.
"Grace, can you come here?"
It took her eyes a second to adjust to the much darker interior of her shop but she knew it better than she knew the back of her hand. "What, Da?" She stuck her head out of the back room and blinked a couple of times.
"Has Margaret come back yet?"
"If she has, I haven't seen her."
"Supper?"
"Cooking. Do you need help?"
"If you want."
Grace smiled. "'Course." Owen answered her with a smile of his own but it wasn't hard to see the strain pinching the corners of his alert hazel eyes. She didn't say that Margaret would be okay; the longer she was gone, the lower the chance that she'd come back. They both knew it.
That was the law of the desert.
So she helped out for a couple of hours, checking on the stew and stirring it occasionally. But the muscles in her jaw grew tighter and tighter until she snapped at a customer for taking too long to make his decision.
"Grace!" Owen growled at his daughter, voice booming from his chest.
Her hands gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles creaking and going white. She bowed her head, shaggy reddish brown hair falling into her face.
"Go."
She lifted her head, her eyes meeting his. "Where?"
"To trade with Foxtrot."
She nodded shortly, reaching behind the bar to retrieve her da's favorite rifle. "I'll be back with her."
Ranger Station Foxtrot wasn't too far from their shop and comprised a lot of their customers. More importantly, any travelers that got lost trying to get to the newly open New Vegas going along 95 from the north were redirected to the O'Malley General Store and any that didn't, often stopped there anyway because it was on the way. They'd chosen the site because it was far enough away from the Colorado that the odds of encountering the Legion again was low and also had a high probability for a decent amount of traffic.
Her da had spent years as a courier for the Mojave Express and wasn't easily rattled. What the Legion did to her ma changed them both.
And now, loping across the darkening desert with the rifle slung across her back and her heart thumping in her throat, Grace found herself praying that Margaret was alright. She hadn't prayed in years, not since her ma… Fear pricked along her nerves though she knew in the back of her head that the Legion hadn't made it across the Colorado, fear and a touch of the vicious temper her father's family was known for. She wrangled both like a mad brahmin, wrestling them under control.
Margaret would be fine. She had to be.
Grace knew with the sudden inspiration of a thunderbolt that something was dreadfully wrong when she got closer to Foxtrot and picked the lingering smell of gunpowder in the cooling desert air. She picked up her pace until she was flat out running across the rock and sand of the Mojave and the broken bits of road marring the landscape.
There were no Rangers out front guarding the station but this close, the sharp, metallic smell of blood hung in the air, mixing with the gunpowder. "What's the story?" Even to her own ears, she sounded shriller than usual. A ranger came out of one of the tents, armor beat up and bullet marks marring the green. She didn't remember his name, had never had much to do with the rangers. She only knew that he was one of the newer ones recently sent there. "Story?"
He lifted both hands as he moved toward her and her eyes zeroed in on the burn across his left palm, like he'd grabbed the barrel of a recently fired rifle. "Miss, this is a ranger-"
"Do I look like I give a damn? Where is Ranger Mendez?" she spat back at him, bristling. She kept her hand off her own rifle but her hand itched for it all the same.
"He's in the medical tent. What-?"
Grace didn't let him finish, brushing past him and knocking her shoulder into his. She threw the flap open to be greeted by the smell of blood and death. For a moment, she was fifteen again and seeing what was left of her ma. Then she blinked, back in the present. And she wished she wasn't.
Margaret lay on one of the cots, eyes closed. Grace had seen enough dead bodies in her life to know, even without the numerous bullet holes in her cousin's torso, staining the fabric around them. Her eyes burned but no tears fell.
"O'Malley. Grace. I'm-" She dragged her eyes to Ranger Mendez, lying in the cot next to her cousin. He'd had his armor removed, bare chest bandaged and a dark spot still seeping through. Agony shone on his face, even more visible by the tear tracks.
"You were supposed to protect her," she gritted out through clenched teeth, accent thickening.
He flinched. "I tried," Mendez said. "They ambushed us when we were coming back from, it doesn't matter. I failed."
"What happened?"
"A pack of raiders thought they could take us out. I swear, if I'd known what was going to happen, I would have sent her back so she could be safe. I'm not… I can't…" The man broke down, grief clearly overwhelming him. Her grey eyes remained fixed on him, ignoring the other wounded soldiers in the tent and deliberately keeping them from turning to her cousin's body. Despite the anger burning in her heart, she actually felt pity for the man who had asked Margaret to marry him.
She closed her eyes. "We'll discuss this later. Right now, I need to go get Da."
Grace left the tent, the heartbroken keens of the man who would have been kin echoing in her ears.
AN: If you're interested at all in my Fallout 3 fic, Crazy He Calls Me, I'd lost the notebook that I'd written the story in. I found it recently. So that'll be updated soon.
This one is a prologue to New Vegas. Grace has not been shot in the head yet and she isn't a courier yet. Title and lyrics are from The Sky is Crying by Elmore James.
Let me know what you think. Pretty please?