Edit 8/22/14

Mint tried to ignore the familiar throbbing in her head. Between the bullet and the constant battle with dehydration, the outlook was not so hot. It was difficult to believe that she had spent her entire life in the Mojave; she didn't feel like she was built for this unrelenting punishment.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Veronica was sitting by the campfire tinkering with ED-E in her lap. If she wasn't sure the robot was deactivated, Mint would of thought she could hear the thing purr with contentment.

"I don't have a choice." Mint looked north, toward the Strip. The lights twinkled in the distance against the dense blanket of dark sky. The world always seemed so dark after the blinding sand of the day. Tomorrow they would reach Freeside and start prowling for a way in. They were two intelligent, industrious young women, they'd find a way.

Mint's mind was still a mess. Her memories felt like currents. One minute she was sure she knew who she was and the next it all seemed far away. Like maybe it had all been in a movie she was mistaking for her her own life. The reels had gotten spliced together all wrong.

ED-E whirled back to life as Veronica clicked it back on and took up guard position. It would diligently alert them to any trouble during the night. It was a real luxury to not have to sleep in shifts. They made better time during the day because of the robot, even if it was a finicky thing that had a bad habit of seeking out trouble instead of merely warning them to its presence.

"He might know who I am. Like really know. I have so many memories of him. I don't know, it's so hard to tell."

When Mint first woke up in Doc Mitchell's home, she seemed to have a host of memories revolving around the man in the checkered coat. The plainest was the shot to the head, but others seemed equally vivid. None were nearly as disturbing as her murder and most seemed simple, kind, and affectionate. She remembered walking alongside him, her hands shoved in her trouser pockets. He wasn't wearing the coat, they were both rougher, covered in dirt and dust. She was a child, maybe fourteen, and he couldn't have been older than twenty. He told her how he was going to make things right, that he was going to lead them to find a way to keep the tribe safe, even if it meant going against Bingo.

She didn't know who Bingo was and at the time she couldn't remember the name of this man she had so many memories of. She knew now that he was Benny. He was Benny and she was Mint and she was sure that on her seventeenth birthday he had kissed her. Her palms were sweaty even though the room had been cool.

Maybe they hadn't been her memories at all. There wasn't one to explain how she ended up face-first in a grave.

Veronica snuffed out the campfire with sand and offered her hand to help Mint to her feet. The shack they had commandeered had a door but no latch. The sun had set long enough ago that the inside was no longer sweltering. They had unrolled their sleeping bags before eating dinner and Mint was thankful that she didn't have to go through the effort now. As hard as it was to stay awake, sleep seemed equally daunting.

Mint always seemed to wake earlier than Veronica. V claimed that her internal clock was completely fucked from living in a hole in the ground. She was never quite sure which way round was dawn. Mint rummaged through her pack and took two Mentats. They would help her headache, at least for a bit.

"Aww, you really are my favorite junkie." Veronica was stretching like a cat. Her fists nearly bumped into the wall of the shack as she extended her body lewdly. A hint of her stomach was exposed between her shorts and cotton shirt. Mint certainly wasn't immune to the scribe's charms but she couldn't risk fucking this up, not when they were so close getting her sorted out.

Veronica talked about nothing at all while they got dressed and packed up the few possessions they had strewed around. ED-E seemed happy to see them alive and well. It buzzed merrily around Mint's head as they set off. The two women split a box of Sugar Bombs as they walked, eager to make as much progress as possible before the sun and the heat made walking unbearable. Mint would have sworn that she dreamt about apples and carrots and baked bread, anything but this irradiated shit.

Really she had dreamt about herself as a dirty-faced child. She was learning to fire a rifle and she was terrible at it. The kickback was too much for her light frame and the bullets never seemed to go where she intended. Her instructor was a big brute of a woman with little patience. It was hard to imagine how a person got that big when there never seemed to be enough food around. Maybe the woman with hands like dinner plates had eaten it all and that's why the children went hungry. They sucked the marrow out of molerat bones and proclaimed it a feast.

"I've been thinking about what you said earlier..." Veronica started. They were holding hands now. Mint wasn't sure for how long. Both their hands were sweaty, but they held on. "That the memories don't seem like your own. Do you think someone could have planted them?"

Mint shook her head, violently curly tufts of dark brown hair falling in front of her eyes. She broke contact with Veronica and tied her hair back again. "I mean, I don't think so. Can people even do that?"

"I heard about this doctor, a neurosurgeon I think. Ex-Enclave. The Brotherhood were trying to keep track of him. Precautionary measures, you know? He's been around the Mojave for awhile now, at least we think. They lost track of him after HELIOS." Veronica's pronouns always shifted when she spoke of the Brotherhood, 'we,' 'them,' 'us,' 'it.' It was terrifying neither of them knew where they stood in the world.

"If they're not my memories I've got nothing at all." Mint had been searching desperately for confirmation. She realized that the only hope she had was Benny confirming the memories already in her mind. But if they weren't hers, there was nothing left for her to fall back on.

She had a memory of ED-E, all in pieces on the counter of the Mojave Express office in Primm. Upon arriving at the overrun town after her 'accident' she sneaked into the little run-down shop and found it exactly as she remembered. Barring the door with a chair, a weak attempt to keep the convicts out, she set to work reviving the robot and after three quarters of an hour it came to life.

But that didn't make sense, did it? How did a tribal girl know how to rewire an Enclave bot? It had come so naturally.

They reached Freeside in the early evening. Still plenty of time to find lodging, hopefully a bath, and set to work finding a way into the Strip. They'd spend the night in Freeside and hopefully storm the Tops first thing in the morning.

Once inside the gate, Veronica went to work trying to make herself less conspicuous. The scribe was particularly cautious about her identity being discovered, though she had been open and friendly with Mint right from the start. Mint didn't know much about the Brotherhood. She had, however, heard enough mumblings when their name was mentioned to assume that Veronica wasn't being all that paranoid in her rituals. She stashed away her power fist and laser pistol in exchange for a set of brass knuckles and a pristine 10mm.

They wandered through the streets without much of a sense of urgency. Half a dozen caps "donated" to one of the kids running about got them the information that they should look for a room at the Wrangler and someone named "the King" was the person to see in regards to getting into the Strip.

Mint twirled her baseball bat around like it was a marching band baton. She had seen a holotape once, she thought, and went on to imitate the elaborate patterns the smiling, fresh-faced girls had executed so perfectly. Where had she seen the holotape?

They made it to a corner building labeled, helpfully "The King's School of Impersonation." Excellent.

The King was polite and well-spoken. The same couldn't be said for Pacer, a plain looking man with too much brashness and too little sense, who had demanded 50 caps for an audience with the King.

But like everyone else the King wanted a favor for a favor and Mint felt like they just didn't have the time. Still, they parted on good terms. The King put his hand on Veronica's arm before the left and asked her to come see him again. They could barely contain their laughter until they were out the door.

"So how do you suppose we're going to get past those Securitrons. I mean, we watched them toast the refugee earlier."

"They're just robots, right?" Mint looked up at ED-E, the mystery that it was. "You and I, we know robots."

"That's true. But if it's as simple as knowing robots, you'd think that someone else would have figured them out already."

Mint shrugged, "Maybe they have. How would we know?"

"You sure are a weird one, Miss Mint." Veronica messed with her hair under the confines of her hood.

"Yes," she rolled her eyes, "I'm the weird one in this duo."

ED-E buzzed.

"Trio." Mint popped a Mentat. This would be her last before bed, she swore.

Mint woke before Veronica, again. Her arm was draped over the scribe's torso. They were huddled together in the narrow bed at the Atomic Wrangler that they had shared. It was time to get going.

Even though she had showered the night before, Mint made her way to the bathroom again, one, well, maybe two tasks had hand. The water was cool and pure and she let it run into her mouth, spitting it out when her mouth felt full and repeating the process. She wasn't built for the Mojave.

She closed her eyes and ran through another memory. She was laying on her back, the plush camel colored carpet of Benny's suite soft against her back. She was twenty and in a purple dress. No one had even seen a purple dress before. New Vegas was full of things that none of them had seen before and even months on they were all discovering odds and ends that made their new home seem very strange indeed.

Benny came in, not expecting her and plopped down on the floor right next to her. He had gotten paler, even over a few short months. They were all getting less sun. Her skin was still caramel. He sat next to her and counted the freckles on her face until she felt utterly self-conscious.

She was twenty-two now. Something must have happened in the intervening years. But it wasn't there. She did have a memory from twenty-one, but Benny wasn't in it. There was a tall blonde man with glasses. He punched her in the arm and she tackled him to the ground in retaliation. His white coat got covered in dust but they both smiled through it. The memory was fond but it was also wrong. She was wearing clean, pressed slacks and a shirt with buttons. All her memories of the tribe were in boys cast-offs. All her memories of the Tops were dresses or nothing at all. This one she was sharp, professional. When the blonde smiled at her she felt the same way as when Benny kissed the side of her mouth at first, but it was followed by a dull ache. All of Benny's memories were searing. What had happened between twenty and twenty-one?