Tags: F!Courier, Gen, mildly angsty.
AN: Written for the Fallout Kink Meme Nuclear Winter Wonderland prompt.
Summary: The Courier marks the winter solstice.
Out of the Dark
She took a deep breath of the cool air, and gazed upon the rapidly darkening waters of the Colorado River. The sun had been setting over the Mojave earlier and earlier lately, and today it had set the earliest of all. Canyon Wren knew what that had meant - the dark and cold of the winter was about to pass.
Her people, to the north, had marked it each year. They had sung of the returning sun and built massive fires as celebration, before snuffing each and every one for the entirety of the long night. In the past, she had thought it uncivilized, and dismissed it as superstitious tribal nonsense. When she had relocated the tribe to Hopeville, it had been one of the things she had decreed was in the past, when attempting to establish a return to the Old World. Now, they were gone (by her hand, however unintentionally, the darkest recesses of her mind called, like the echo of a wrath in the night), and she found herself longing for the bonfires and singing of her true home and history.
She had left the Lucky 38 when the short days began and hadn't returned since. Sure, they were probably worried about her, but it wasn't the same to mark the days there. In Vegas, the lights pierced the sanctity of the night, detracted from the beauty and serenity of the transition from the darkness of the old to the hopeful light of the future with it's artificial neon glory and bustle of human life being lived to it's most decadent. Out here, on the banks of the Colorado River, she could feel the bite of the cold, the weight of the dark, and the power of the silence that the shortest day had to offer.
The Courier had considered a trip to Zion, perhaps to see if the Sorrows marked their year as well, but had remembered bitterly the stories of the Father in the Cave and what she had learned of him. They would be singing his praises, and she would have to once again hold her tongue about the true nature of their God. Worse, perhaps, was the concept that she would not hear songs or see fires to the long dead man, but instead would hear Joshua or Daniel speak of their New Caaninite God, who made her incredibly uncomfortable. The long speeches, the talk of wrath and fire coupled with the promise of forgiveness and life, it seemed a terrible dichotomy that made her as confused as it made some of the Sorrows she had spoken to about it.
But the light and dark, warmth and cold of the year, that she understood. So she had decided against the visit, and instead had wandered until the waters separating the Mojave from the Legion. She squinted her eyes and tried to see the other side for some sort of life, wondering if the Legion knew of the passing of the dark. They had been quiet in the recent days. Perhaps, they had their own vision of what the short, dark, cold days meant and that was the reason for their widely noted absence in the desert as of late. More likely, she had decided however, was that they were still scrambling to pick up the pieces of their shattered world at Dry Wells, where she had broken the back of the Bull and earned the name the Scourge of the East. Maybe they had at one point even noted the days, but were simply too busy with the destruction to notice.
The sun begun to fade behind her and she turned west, towards the NCR to catch the last of it's dying glow. She knew what the people of the NCR were doing right now, because Cass had drug everyone out of the Lucky 38 shortly before the Courier had left them and demanded they go to Jacobstown and cut down one of the large pine trees that grew in the mountains surrounding it. It had seemed ridiculous to drag a whole tree across the Mojave and stick it in their home to watch it die slowly, but even Boone had been excited about it in his own stoic way, so perhaps there was something to it. They had been putting a selection of trinkets on it with Lily fussing over what should be put at the top when she had left, and she had been asked about what she wanted as a gift on her way out. The Courier had waved it off with a hurried laugh and said she'd think about it, and had disappeared into the desert.
Her heart and mind had grown darker in the days since returning from the Divide, and learning the truth. Her past had whispered in the back of her conciousness from the moment she had awoken in Goodsprings, but now, after learning it, she had been like one of Mr. Houses robots, carrying out it's needed routine with no real feeling but a pretty good re-creation of one. She wondered if her friends even suspected.
The sun dipped below the mountains and the longest, darkest night had arrived. Here, on the sandy shore, she would wait out the hours alone, in peace and memory and solace, and when the morning broke perhaps she too, like the dawning sun, would find her way out of the dark.