A fresh burn across her cheek, Miriam shot out the last working speaker before she turned off the alarm system entirely. Finally, the collar around her neck stopped beeping and she had a moment to sit down and rub the back of her head, still throbbing from the noise. Dean wouldn't be going anywhere without her noticing – he wasn't one for jumping even short distances.
"Christ!"
Dean didn't even crack open the door, and so after a while Miriam realized she would have to do it herself. She stood up, still rubbing her head, and poked her head through the opening. Her Pip Boy started grumbling through sentences without her meaning to trigger it, but eventually she flipped on the volume just enough for a curious "Dean?" to come through.
"All right, you're resourceful. I'll give you that," the ghoul said from atop the stairs. "It's going to take a lot more than juggling keys and shooting speakers to stop me. As I see it? All I need to do is kill you, then make a run for the exit. You do the same, you'll be clawing at the lock until your head blows off. So maybe you and I should have a little chat – just like we did when you first waltzed into town."
Her Pip Boy had already begun to whirr with her thoughts – she couldn't reconcile between her immediate what the fuck Dean let's go and her more lucid that means you have the key and she had to fiddle with her Pip Boy to get the sound she wanted. "Come on, Dean, let's get out of here already."
"No, not with you," he said disdainfully.
Miriam groaned, flapping her arms in frustration. "Fuck you Dean they shot me in the fucking face. I wanna go home."
"Don't act stupid, I know you're not an idiot," he snapped, thumbing at his pistol. When she didn't mirror him he paused, but he didn't stop shouting at her. "I've spent two hundred years planning this heist and I'm not about to let some mute pup muss it up."
"Then you do it – you're not choking on your own blood every time you pass a window," her Pip Boy blared. Her heart raced. Dean wouldn't really try to kill her, would he? She had been skating by without fighting and she wasn't sure how well she would fare in a fight. Dean had spent the past few years fending off ghost people with explosives and skirting them to get to his stashes whereas Miriam had only spent the past few months rerouting gas and triggering small explosions and fires to keep the ghosts at bay.
"First thing's first. Hand over your weapons or I'll shoot you."
"Stop being stupid," her Pip Boy whirred as she set her pistol on the stair in front of her and stepped back. Dean stooped to pick it up and she stepped further towards the exit before she saw the key dangling from Dean's belt loop. "Greedy fucker asshole."
He sneered. "You're the one who came along thinking you could just rewrite the script to suit you. Well this isn't your performance, honey, it's mine. I've spent over two hundred years planning this heist, and I won't be upstaged by an understudy."
"Upthaged by an unde'thudy," she voiced, testing the phrase, clicking her fingers as she echoed him. "Up-thaged by an unde'thudy up-thaged by an unde'thudy."
Her Pip Boy joined in, "Upstaged by an understudy upstaged by an under—"
"Will you stop that?"
Her Pip Boy continued a few more times before eventually switching to a quiet, "what's an understudy" and beeping as she flicked off the hands free communicator.
"Backup."
She took a step back, realized he was trying to answer her question, and typed, "Why's it called an understudy?"
"An actor, who backs up another actor if the first can't make it," Dean answered irately. "It doesn't matter. I'm the main event, you're not."
She started to type again, pausing halfway through to reconsider. Then she typed, "You really want to kill me?"
"Only if you get in my way again. And I don't trust you not to become a liability."
Miriam couldn't think of a response, so instead she flipped to her audio notes and played the tape she had found in Dean's dressing room. Pretty as a picture. She could snap her fingers to it – she could snap her fingers to almost anything Dean said. Pretty as a picture, upstaged by an understudy, clever words and phrases which she could rock to while speaking. They were easier to say than the kinds of things she usually entered into her Pip Boy.
"So you went into my safe, huh?"
She typed, "I didn't know it was yours until I found this."
He clucked his tongue and reached around her, not quite touching her. "Come on then, let's have a seat."
She walked a few paces to Vera's dressing room and settled down onto the couch, shifting away when Dean sat beside her. Now he wasn't even pretending not to threaten her – he pointed her own pistol at her. She flipped her hands-free communicator back on so he wouldn't be threatened by any attempts to speak.
"That's mine," it blared. She scrunched her nose – the jury-rigged communicator she'd made in the Sierra Madre wasn't nearly as good as the one Raul had helped her build. She couldn't get any filters on this one, and wouldn't be able to until she got back to the Lucky 38. "Obvious. Old communicator's better – better sensory, neuro-communicative device, confirmation required, no cloud gunk."
A good smack would set the thing off, she thought, but she was trying very hard, "Stupid thing, gonna get shot."
"Why don't you calm down while I explain exactly how this curtain is going to fall," Dean said smoothly, flashing a rotten grin. "You're going to establish a comlink for me, let Elijah think he's speaking to you while I'm down in the vault."
Her Pip Boy began to whirr directions and she quickly cut the volume.
"Just so," he said, reaching and turning up the volume for her.