Author's Note: Welcome to Collateral Damage: A Fallout New Vegas Fanfic! I have been trying to write this fic for a long time and have numerous discarded tries littering my desktop. This decided to pop out of my head while I was taking a break from my Dragon Age: Origins fic, and is apparently much darker than I originally intended it to be. The rating will probably be upped to M at some point for violence, adult situations and drug use. I am shooting for 7 (lucky 7) chapters. I hope you enjoy! Please review if you have the time and inclination.
Discliamer: If I owned the fallout franchise, I'd have a lot more money than I do now. But I don't. This is written for fun and I don't make any kind of cash payout. sigh.
Colatteral Damage
Chapter 1:
The lip of the gun kissed my forehead. This wasn't how I pictured this, exactly, but it was a relief to know Boone would be doing it. No matter how angry he might be at whomever was on the other side of that barrel, Boone dealt in clean kills. One bullet and I'd be done, for good this time. It would be unfair to my intuition to say that I hadn't seen this coming. Fuck, It'd happened once already. Destiny, fate or something like the fucked up bullshit the so-called gypsies were trying to sell several hundred feet below us in New Vegas. There was a shuffle behind him, resistance to the idea of blowing my head to kingdom come. Neither of us paid that no mind. These things always happen too fast to stop anyways. This here was between the four of us: Me, Boone, the gun and the bullet. Still, as I glanced up at him, fury etched in that usually impassive face, I had to ask. Maybe it wasn't too smart considering all he'd been through and the position I was in, but it would be kinder to let curiosity kill this cat. Curiosity was how I ended up with the gun in my face in the first place.
"You gonna pull that trigger, Boone? You gonna end me face to face like this? Seems mighty personal for a sniper. Distance. Isn't that what the stuffed shirts in the NCR teach you?"
He said nothing, did nothing, and I was getting tired of waiting.
"You know what?" I picked up Maria on the floor beside me. "Maybe I'll do you a favor."
I expected him to fire then, or hell, any fucking time in between, but he didn't. All he did was watch. He watched as a wrapped my lips around the barrel; pulled Maria into my mouth, tasting gunpowder and grease.
His eyebrows went up. His hold on the gun wavered.
But he watched me pull the trigger anyway.
Some months ealier...
He didn't understand why Manny hadn't just shot him. He was a sniper, in a snipers nest. His job was to shoot enemies that got too near, not capture a fucking legion fumentarii and drag him into the heart of fucking Novac. He'd only gone off shift a few hours ago. Manny was grinning like a fool. The man, boy really, had been stripped of his helmet, wrap and sunglasses. Christ, the kid couldn't be more than 17. What did Manny expect him to do except kill him? He'd gladly shoot dead any legionnaire Manny put in front of him, but torture? Pointless. Legion never talked anyways.
A demure knock on the door stopped whatever they had been planning to do.
"Expecting someone else?" He asked.
Fine by him. He was off the clock, and if Manny wasn't going to let him shoot the guy, there was nothing for him to do here. He cracked the door open, expecting Andy or Doc Ada, but was greeted by an unfamiliar face. A woman with so much dirt and dust covering her that he could barely tell that much.
"'scuse me. I believe you boys have something of mine in there." Her voice was low and tired and sounded very much like how Boone felt. He made to close door, only to find a shotgun barrel stopping him.
"Listen, that's my slug you have in that boy's leg. I've been chasing that damn fumentarii all fucking night. So you'll understand if I'll want to kick up a ruckus about two small town boys killing my quarry before I get a chance to ask him my questions."
A bounty hunter? The NCR didn't have a bounty on anyone in the legion as far as he knew, and what kind of bounty hunter wanted to ask questions?
She lowered her weapon. "I understand if you aren't keen on trusting a girl straight out of the wastes. But this is important. I'm sure you both have guns in there; you have my permission to shoot me if I cause you any trouble."
What kind of person give someone permission to kill them? Still, this was Manny's mess. Let him sort it out. He almost smiled at the way Manny's eyes peeled open when he let her in. For her part, she didn't even spare him a glance, just walked on by and sat in the chair in front of the boy.
There was no flicker of recognition, no waver in countenance as she sat down. Boone's hands were on the door, but he didn't move. He couldn't stop watching her.
"Look, I know what you want, and lucky for you I've been through this song and dance too much lately to try to persuade you otherwise, so I'm willing to give it to you. There's a catch though." She looked down at her gun thoughtfully before looking back up at him. "I have a few of questions. Aww now, don't be like that." She'd apparently seen some change Boone missed. Even Manny was silent. "It's not about troop movements or how to get into The Fort or any of that crap. That don't do me a lick of good. This is about you and me. I have three questions. You answer them proper, I give you what you want. Deal?"
She didn't stop to let anyone contradict her.
"You scouting Novac or me?" He said nothing. "Okay, let's put it in terms that you tiny legion brain can understand. Answer yes or no. Were you following me?"
Boone was about to tell her it was a waste of time, when to everyone's surprise the boy let out a low "Yes."
"Did he tell you to follow me?"
Who was he, exactly?
"Yes."
"Shit." the woman muttered. She ran her hand through her dirty hair.
"The other one, the one I shot dead. Was he it? Were you two it?"
"Yes."
"Then the other four were for Novac. Where are they, then? Where is the rest of the scum hiding out?"
"You said thre-"
"Oh, we know you'll talk already, whore. Now we're negotiating price. This one's it. Cross my heart."
She made a motion over her chest.
"The other side of the green lizard, by the rocks. They'll come out after nightfall."
"I believe you. You've done good, kid." Before either man could stop her, she fired the shotgun point blank in his face. The chair flew backwards and headless body flopped forward against the floor, oozing blood. "Whoa! What the-" Manny shouted inadvertently, mouth opening and closing rapidly in shock. Boone didn't know what to say. He seen it before, and this was a legion bastard. There was nothing to say.
"I'm sorry," she shrugged, "We had a deal, and I'm one of those god awful honest sorts. But that information was what you were after, right? Hate to think I'd let you boys down." There was no answer from either of them. She frowned. The knitting of her forehead making her eyebrows visible against the dirt.
"We done here?" Her finger was still sitting pretty on the trigger of her gun. It was then Boone realized he and Manny were blocking the only exit. Manny still seemed to have problems recovering his mental faculties. She had shocked the shit out of a hardened solider who had the balls to grow up in North Vegas and not die. That was an achievement.
He looked at her a little longer, but there was still nothing remarkable. Her hair and face we the same color, the dusty brown and tan of the waste. Not a military marking or tribe symbol on her.
A regular wanderer.
The part of him that had served the NCR didn't quite believe that. But he wasn't a solider anymore. And there wasn't anything wrong with shooting Legion Manny had been too stupid to kill.
"Yeah, we're done."
He didn't stop to worry about her as they both walked out and he turned his back on the makeshift prison. He was tired, and had lost too much sleep to this already. By the evening, she had disappeared.
Ranger Andy and his friends up at Charlie had managed to find someone to act the info she had squeezed from the legionnaire, which turned out to be good, surprisingly. He had almost forgotten about her completely, consumed with his own 'project', when she showed up again out of the blue a week later, accidently bumping into him as he went on shift. It was the shotgun he recognized first, a unique mark on the barrel caught his eye as she said, "Sorry, Boone" sheepishly. As if she'd known him all her life. He stopped at the stairs of Dinky and watched her as she chatted up Andy in front of his bunglow. Taking his time, he looked at her, really looked. Even clean, there were no markings that revealed her loyalty to anyone, although she spoke to Ranger Andy like he was an old friend. Clean, her hair was blond and she was wearing doctors fatigues rather than the leather duster she was wearing when they met. He also noticed that she was what some would consider pretty. Didn't hold a candle to his Carla, but all the same. He was so busy studying her that he didn't see Manny coming down the stairs.
"Boone, man, what you looking at?" He laughed, following his line of sight. "Oh! Phade's back! Phade!" Boone looked up at Manny as he waved, they were practically chest to chest. Manny seemed to notice a second later, backing up to give Boone space suddenly, cheeks looking suspiciously sunburned. He shouldered past him, but her voice followed him into Dinky.
"Manny! Hey, I took care of your problem! We have a deal, or what?"
It was a quiet night a couple of days later when Boone found himself thinking about her. She seemed to be sticking around this time. He heard of her exploits each time he walked into Jeannie May's for dinner; she drove off the Nightkin who were harassing the McBrides. found the butchered remains of Andy's Charlie friends left by the Leigon and managed to track them for three days,eliminating a legion slave camp along the way, but couldn't find the lone female survivor. According to Jeannie May, the 'poor dear' was taking it pretty hard. Charlie gave Boone pause. How could the legion attack Charlie without the boys there see it coming? It was a highly defensible point. It pointed to somebody leaking information, in his mind. Add that with Carla, and it had to be someone in Novac.
There was movement on the horizon. He followed it with his scope. Legion? Or oversized Radscorpion?
He never thought focus could be a bad thing, but he was wholly unprepared for the hand on his shoulder.
"Boone?"
He started forward, almost dropping his rifle off Dinky. "Goddammit. Don't sneak up on people like that!" He turned around to look at her. The woman stared back unrepentantly, bringing a cigarette to her lips and letting out a stream of smoke. "What do you want?" he grumbled. She smiled sheepishly.
"Honestly? I wanted to see what it looked like from the top of Dinky. Heard so much about it from Manny." She raised an eyebrow, and took another drag on the cigarette. "You expecting visitors?"
"Maybe I am," he growled, "but not you." He looked at her, thought for a second. "Maybe I should have been expecting you all along."
If she got his meaning, she didn't show it, if anything she looked confused, but she didn't move to leave.
"Why are you here?" He asked tiredly.
"Just meeting new people." She answered, sending out another stream of smoke.
"I think you should leave."
She cracked a smile, not really the appropriate response. "Hey now, you talk to all your friends this way?"
"I don't have any friends around here."
"I'm not from 'around here.'" She turned to leave as her comment sunk in.
"No. No, you're not, are you? Don't go just yet."
Her defenses were up, he could tell by the way she went still. Almost like she was measuring a shot.
"Now why would you want that?"
"I need someone I can trust. You're a stranger, that's a start."
He told her, the woman who seemed to enjoy breaking Legion just to kill them, everything and asked his favor. She took her sweet time about answering, and though he had no right to be, he was impatient. She done every other goddamned thing she'd been asked. Considering what she must have had to do to clear out all those ghouls in the old factory, this would be easy.
"What about your wife? I could try-"
"My wife's dead. I want the son of a bitch who sold her."
She spat on her cigarette, before pitching it off Dinky into the night below.
"Give me a day. You'll have your slaver by nightfall tomorrow."
Boone ought to have felt relief, but there was just tension, coiled tightly in his chest. He handed her his beret and told her what to do. She listened to it all mutely and stared intently on the symbol on the felt as she held it in her hands.
"I know this symbol. I know this." Her voice suddenly got small. "What is it?"
"NCR First Recon." he said as he turned his back on her.
Why wasn't she leaving? Didn't she have a job to do?
"We shouldn't be seen together until it's done." He prompted. He had the feeling she was ignoring him as she walked out, fingering the symbol on his beret.
When Boone walked down in to the early morning, several hours later. He found her chatting up Jeannie May. She didn't acknowledge him when he walked by, though Jeannie may called out something about breakfast. She taken to trying to take care of him in Carla's place. He didn't need it and didn't want it. Sleep was all he wanted and needed, and to shoot the damn bastard who'd enslaved his wife.
A sniper on edge is normally a bad thing and Boone was already unfocused. Why had she given him a damn timeline? And where the fuck was she?
Out of the corner of his field of vision he noticed somebody. Two somebodies. Two women walking out in front of the dinosaur. He could barely make out that they were talking to each other when he saw a flash of red. His beret. He moved and even he couldn't believe how fast he went. So fast that if you blinked you would have missed it by a mile.
The body falling to the ground reminded abruptly him of the legion boy, head clean gone, and he had a sudden urge to find the rest of the legion stalking Novac and complete the set. He smiled grimly. Maybe he would. The small red dot bellow was tilted back. She was looking up at him, before moving back into the town and to his doorstep.
She handed back the beret.
That's it then. How did you know?
"Jeannie May's story didn't add up's all, I did some digging and found this."
Jeannie May? That was Jeannie May?
She handed him a folded piece of paper. "Bill of sale."
He stared. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's like them to keep paperwork."
He held out a small sack of caps, which she ignored. After a few moments, he put them away.
She pulled out an ancient pack of cigarettes, took out one and lit up
"What will you do now?" She asked around the streams of smoke.
He hadn't actually gotten that far.
"I don't know. I don't see any point in staying. Don't see much point in anything right now, except killing legionnaires. Maybe I'll wander. Like you."
"Good luck with that." She turned to go but stopped, tossing down her cigarette and stamping it out.
"You know, you could always take a walk with me. We wouldn't be coming back here anytime soon, I have some unfinished business of my own to take care of."
"You don't want to do that."
"Oh? And here I thought snipers worked in teams."
He surprised both of them when he chuckled. "Yeah, working on your own, you're a lot less...effective. I've been there before and paid for it." He shouldered his rifle and made for the door. Getting out of Novac wouldn't make anything better, but that didn't mean he couldn't leave all the same.
"Fine, let's get out of here..."
She nodded, shouldering her pack. He realized with some surprise that she had meant to leave town the moment she completed the task. He was grateful. It turned out Carla had the right of it after all. The less time they spent in this hell hole, the better. Still, he thought she deserved a warning.
"... But this isn't going to end well."