Saint Patrick's Day was a long time ago, but it doesn't stop me from posting something I was too lazy to finish sooner. Enjoy!
Patron Saint of Drunkards
Dean Domino was not very fond of St. Patrick's Day. He did not like the crowds of drunken morons all bedecked in green that filled the streets and the bars from opening until the wee hours of the morning. He had never been happy with the holiday, though it took a particularly disturbing experience with a drunken Danny Parker to convince him that celebration of St. Patrick's Day had no merit at all.
No one in the Wastes knew anything about Saint Patrick, but they did understand the tradition of drinking. Some of them thought the man was a distributor of alcohol before the war, God bless their ignorant little hearts. Not that Dean remembered what exactly Saint Patrick was famous for. After two hundred years in the Sierra Madre Casino, many things had ceased to matter at all, and that included stupid holidays where mediocre jazz musicians drank in excess and threw up in a parking lot.
On this particular St. Patrick's Day, Dean got drunk. Excessively, roaring drunk. It was a grim celebration of the fact that he was finally free of the Madre and the Cloud. The date was merely an extra excuse to waste his caps on bottom-shelf alcohol. He'd walked into the Atomic Wrangler at nine in the morning, purchased seven bottles of whiskey, two bottles of vodka, and what the locals called an "Atomic Cocktail," and then gone back home to his three-room apartment in the relatively safe part of Freeside with a Securitron trailing him like a forlorn guard dog. The Courier took good care of friends.
Ghoul physiology may have given him a long life and radiation immunity, but all drinks and chems affected him less than they used to. Dean was halfway through the fourth bottle before he began to feel a buzz. After that, the alcohol hit him all at once, like a wave crashing down on him and leaving him half-drowned by his own greediness.
Ghosts whispered in the walls. He knew they were there. Usually he could suppress them, but when he drank, he lost every bit of his self-control. He didn't scream and rage, or overturn tables, or end up in strange women's beds. Not that he actually could. Ghouls were not the most popular of beings in the Mojave. No, when he drank too much, he merely began to remember, and hallucinate.
Dean had gone mad in the Sierra Madre. Quietly, politely, blissfully mad. After decades of not hearing another human voice except his own, surrounded by monsters, breathing in poison, he had become gently dislodged from reality, and was now floating away on a cloud of false Pre-War fame, tarnished dreams, old rage, and memories he thought he'd crushed. His mind simply took a powder one morning. His perception was sharp, and his cunning unchanged, but he heard the voices from his past, like old friends whispering in his ears. Thank God that only happened when he drank.
In the days following the bombs, Dean had been drunk almost every day. He drank to deal with the terror of being left alone, and his rage at being balked. How dare the end of the world interfere with his schemes! So he drank, and drank, and drank. Rising from his bed early in the morning, he would smoke a cigarette and chase it with as much whiskey as he could consume, then pass out again. Thus, the cycle would repeat, on and on, world without end. And every day, Vera and Sinclair would talk to him.
Eventually Dean had decided that the drinking needed to end. It took an incredible amount of self-control to admit it to himself, but he was nothing if not persistent. His Sierra Madre chips were running out faster than his stockpile of alcohol, and his forays outside of his suite had become dangerous. The walkways and halls were thick with Ghost People and the Cloud. He couldn't risk the time wasted grubbing about in fountains to locate more chips.
The cigarettes stayed though. After two hundred years, that was one habit he just couldn't shake.
Tonight he didn't need to worry about anything. With a Securitron outside his door, just a flight of stairs away, he was safe from all threats except the ones in his head. No one could protect him from those.
The Ghost People prowled just beyond the pool of light cast by the one working lamp in his living room, hissing in the shadows and glaring at him with luminous, hateful green eyes. Dean ignored them quite well. They were harmless, really. They couldn't hurt him. He knew that much. He was still rational, thank you very much.
Sinclair was sitting on the coffee table, a charred corpse with half his face melted away. Dean didn't exactly know Sinclair's fate, and when he appeared, his form always changed. Sometimes he appeared intact, dressed in a sleek gray suit. Other times he was on fire. Once he had even shown up as a Ghoul, his voice reduced to a raspy whisper, his remaining hair sticking up straight and sparse like dead grass. Frederick, or Freddy as Dean had affectionately called him, merely grumbled about his undignified and untimely end. He didn't scream or accuse Dean, because he was an extension of Dean's personality and memory. Dean did not blame himself, and therefore, neither did Sinclair. Dean believed that in order to make an omelet, one had to break a few locks and steal a few bars of gold.
On St. Patrick's Day Vera Keyes appeared to him. Dean had never seen her before in his hallucinations. After the bombs, he'd attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to forget her face. Her fate was the one he actually regretted. He'd been fond of Vera, to a degree. Maybe even loved her a little. She appeared in her beautiful red-and-black Gala dress, an outfit purchased by Sinclair, custom-tailored for his beloved. Her cool eyes were huge and solemn in her pale, ghostly face.
"Hello, Dean," she said. Her voice filled the room, rippling like hypnotic music.
He shivered. The drink in his hand rattled briefly, spilling mellow golden drops onto his pants. "Hello, Vera!" he slurred jauntily. "How're you?"
A small smile spread slowly across Vera's full lips. "Long time, no see, Dean," she said. She cast a glance around the room. "I love your new suite."
Dean chuckled. "Thank you, darling," he replied. He set the whiskey bottle on the table and knocked back another shot. The heat raced down his throat and bloomed in his stomach. "I find it to be quite … luxurious."
She offered him an ice-thin smile and said nothing. There was silence except for the hissing of Ghost People and Sinclair's bad-tempered grumbling. Dean waited patiently for her to speak. Frankly he didn't care if she never said a thing. It was lovely to just watch her, her perfect form swaying slightly from side to side, the folds of her dress moving along with her, clinging to her in all the right places as though it, too, wished to embrace her. Dean smiled inwardly. Oh, he had it bad. Two hundred years dead and she could still make an old man's heart throb.
"How are you doing, Vera dear?" he asked her. The words came out properly sardonic.
"You said that already," she replied without looking at him. Her attention seemed entirely focused on Sinclair sitting on the coffee table, muttering to himself like a madman, burning a hole in the carpet with an intense, dead man's gaze. She observed him with an almost clinical detachment, the way Dean had wished she'd thought of that fool before their scheme started to unravel.
Dean held his peace and waited as the minutes stretched out. The buzz was draining away, and his patience along with it. Finally he could wait no longer. "What do you want, Vera?" he demanded.
"Just to chat," she said mildly. "It's been a long time, Dean. Perhaps I was hoping you had …" she glanced up and down his slumped form, "changed."
"Well, Vera, I have changed."
"Location only," retorted the woman. Dean was slightly shocked. In life Vera Keyes had been a timid, weak-willed woman easily swayed by a bit of simple blackmail. In death she had grown a steel spine. He wondered briefly what part of his personality this Vera had been birthed from. "You're still the same manipulative snake hiding behind two-hundred-dollar glasses and a snazzy suit."
"You wound me, darling," he quipped.
Vera smirked. "Dean, you wound yourself. If not for your damned pride and your insatiable greed, you wouldn't be in this position."
Dean laughed. "What position, darling? I'm still alive, and you are dead. As is your little pet, here." He gestured to Sinclair, who spat a curse at him and wandered off down the stairs.
"Ah, living," said Vera, waving an absent hand. "What's living if you're as filled with regret as you are? You're not living, Dean, you're existing."
"That's enough for me," said Dean happily. He uncorked the Atomic Cocktail and drained half the small bottle in a single gulp. Maybe it was enough to knock smoothskins on their arses, but not Dean Domino. He waggled a finger at Vera reprovingly. It was a mercy he could see her at all. "And what are you, anyway? My fairy godmother?"
"Conscience, actually," said Vera. She sat on the coffee table Sinclair had just vacated. Dean heard banging from the floor below, and suspected that Sinclair had fallen down the stairs. Oh well, good riddance. His muttering could be annoying.
Dean gave Vera his iciest smile. It trembled on his lipless mouth but held. "I still have a conscience after all these years?" he drawled.
"Laugh all you like, but it won't make things any better for you."
"What exactly do I regret?" he demanded. "The only thing I regret is losing that gold."
"Well, you're hallucinating Freddy and me, so perhaps that's a start. I'm you, remember? You tell me what you regret."
He regretted everything, actually. In the depths of his heart he knew that remorse overruled his satisfaction at having outlived the people he so despised. Or perhaps he felt regret because he was too intoxicated and because Vera's ghost had invaded his apartment. If only the Securitron downstairs could see them, too, and remove them forcibly from the premises. He didn't want to be reminded of his sins. Using Vera like a piece of trash, stabbing Frederick in the back … even things he'd done before the Madre. The blackmail, the files of information compiled about Hollywood stars carefully acquired and stored away. All the lies he had told in the name of personal achievement and comfort. It was though he had consumed liquid melancholy instead of booze.
Why did the old ghosts have to come back to him now, of all times? Just when he thought he had let go of the life he once lived. He had wanted to begin again in New Vegas, to shed the scandals and regain the title "King of Swing." He was a singer without an orchestra, but he needed no one else to steal the spotlight. As much as he wanted to move on, his mind kept circling back to the Madre, alighting on the memories and that blood-deep rage that had rankled within him for the past two centuries.
"You can try to let go all you want," said Vera, accurately reading his thoughts, "but you'll never succeed, Dean. Unless you make peace with yourself and address that regret."
Dean rubbed the space where the bridge of his nose had once been. "Can I apologize to you?" he asked, almost meekly.
Vera sighed. "Dean, I'm a hallucination brought on by too much alcohol. You're not really apologizing to Vera Keyes, remember. You're apologizing to yourself. Perhaps to your true self. Anything you say matters only to you, and I can't tell if it will bring you reconciliation."
With downcast eyes Dean considered his whiskey glass. He sloshed the amber liquid around in lazy circles, staring into the depths as though he could lose himself in it, drown himself in it. He didn't want to apologize to Vera. It hadn't been his fault, dammit. Vera was a junkie, a damned junkie and a run-of-the-mill singer to boot, a woman with small-time talent and a halfway-decent body.
"I'm sorry, Vera." Were these words really coming out of his mouth? Was he even in his right mind now? Did he think that by apologizing he could somehow make the Ghost People go away? And what an empty apology he had made! How stupid and foolish and pathetic! Begging forgiveness from an empty shell, a projection from the bottom of the yawning chasm in his mind where the insanity lingered and festered! What kind of fool was he?!
"Vera, I'm sorry." The words trembled. Vera's image doubled, trebled. Were there tears in his eyes? Tears?! How undignified! How pathetic! How womanly! He dabbed underneath his sunglasses with his sleeve. "Just go away, Vera."
Yes, that was it. Go away. He didn't want her to watch him grovel and blubber. He was a grown man, not a child. His stiff, unbending pride rejected the very thought of abandoning his decorum. Once gentleman, always a gentleman, and no nuclear bombs would ever change that.
Vera smiled. Oh, God, she was so beautiful when she smiled. "That's as close to an apology as I think I'll get for the night," she said, patting his cheek. He swore for a second he felt warmth against his ruined flesh. An insubstantial thumb wiped one hot tear away. "You need to come to terms with what you've done somehow, Dean. You can't keep denying it forever. There's pain inside of you, and I'm tired of feeling it. Watching you suffer has become most depressing." She stood up. "Frederick and I are dead, Dean. We're dead and that's all we are. Danny Parker's dead too. We're all dead, but you're alive. Try living, would you?"
And then she was gone. Dean sat stunned in the dim room with only the twinkling bottles for company. The Ghost People had vanished along with Vera. Dean listened hard for Sinclair's muttering. Silence.
Dean slowly lowered his face into his trembling hands. He sat that way for a very long time.
Eventually he roused himself. The buzz he so cherished had begun to fade, leaving only nausea and a deep, aching emptiness. If Danny were here, he thought, he'd have to hold my hair. He touched his bald head, bemused. Or not.
Staggering slightly, Dean crawled down the stairs and out the door. The Securitron snapped to attention. "What can I do for you, Mister Domino?" it asked in its tinny, authoritative voice.
Dean hooked his thumbs into his belt. He was swaying slightly on his feet, but as long as he leaned against the wall, he was safe. "That depends," he murmured. "Can you bring the Courier here? I think we need to have a little chat."
It was time to move on.
I'm not late at all what are you talking about.
I originally planned this out to be a lot more interesting, but I fell asleep and when I woke up all my plans were gone. So this is sort of a pathetic attempt to recapture the mood.
Leave a review if you like.