A/N: Hello! If this fic seems familiar to you, that's because it's an older one of mine that I've just rewritten, and I hope you enjoy it! It'll be a bit heavy on medical procedure, injury/illness description, and blood and the like, so be warned. Updates on Wednesdays.
He doesn't like it. Not at all.
It's one thing to be caught off-guard by trouble while they're minding their own business as they walk along the cracked roads of the highways. It's a whole different thing to go straight-up looking for trouble.
But there's a bounty to be collected, an insane Fiend to be dealt with, and most importantly, caps to be made. Arcade knows that those are all things that the Courier practically lives for, and over the short time that he's spent travelling with her, he's grown to accept it.
It certainly doesn't mean that he has to like it, however. And he takes full advantage of that liberty by telling the Courier so, over and over again, as he, Cass, Boone, and the Courier make their way to Cook-Cook's camp in the night.
You're going to get hurt, he tells her.
The Fiends are unpredictable, he warns.
You never know what they'll throw at you, and you'll pay for it, he insists.
As luck would have it, that last one ends up being a little more literal than he expected it to.
As the bounty of the day, Cook-Cook is their primary target. Arcade isn't one for bounty work in the slightest, but he's heard about Cook-Cook's tendencies and since the Courier is set on collecting that bounty, Arcade has no choice but to tag along. The last thing he wants is for the Courier to get seriously maimed, and unfortunately for him, the dangerous nature of the work she does is just filled with chances for injury.
Arcade considers it both a blessing and a curse that he's decided to join on this particular bounty when Cook-Cook whips out a fucking flamethrower.
Despite the threat of immediate incineration, Cook-Cook is surprisingly easy to take care of when the small group falls into coordination. Boone manages to take him out with a few well-placed shots – none of which aimed at the head, which the sniper grumbles under his breath about – as the other three defend him from the onslaught of Fiends, who seem to become even more crazed the moment they realize Cook-Cook is already dead.
After no small amount of running, hiding, and careful (and not-so-careful) shots, they're able to slowly pick off the rest of the enraged Fiends one by one. In the end, the whole encounter could have gone significantly worse, all things considered.
The Courier lowers her rifle and listens for any more sounds coming from the broken concrete structure, only to be met with the quiet of the night and the crickets that regain the courage to begin chirping again. She starts moving in towards the structure, sifting through the scattered bodied to find the one with a price on its head. Arcade knows the ugliness that's going to go down once she finds her mark; she performs the post-mortem decapitations with a surprising amount of ease, which makes Arcade… nervous, for reasons he really doesn't want to stop to dwell upon.
There's a sudden flash of movement from behind a concrete wall, followed by what can only be described as a shrill battle cry. Boone calls something out to the Courier, but the Fiend is quicker, hurling an object at the Courier before any of them can do anything about it.
It nails her right in the head – with surprisingly good aim, Arcade thinks – with an ugly thunk of a sound that he can hear even from his distant position, and the Courier promptly crumples to the dirt.
The Courier groans and makes one, two, three attempts to open her eyes. Third time's the charm, but she hisses when she's instantly blinded by a bright light that swarms her vision. She squeezes her eyes shut again, annoyed at the white spots that dance over the backs of her eyelids. A loud ringing vibrates high-pitched all around her, something that she attempts to silence by pressing against her ears with her hands, but her attempted movements are too heavy and sluggish and by the time her hands have reached her head, the ringing subsides. She lets out another groan when she feels her head start to throb with dull and painful waves that she's too familiar with.
"…okay?" She hears faint voices over the low ringing, along with boots crunching against dirt and gravel. Arcade or Boone, running closer, her mind supplies. She remembers that Cass had been standing with her. From behind the shroud of her eyelids she sees a shadow block the light that shines through. She decides to be brave – just one more time – and takes another try at opening her eyes. It still hurts, though not as much, and when her pupils finally adjust to a decent level she's able to make out the slightly blurred image of Cass' face hovering over her, haloed by the flickering streetlight that her head is thankfully in the way of. The Courier still has to squint to see comfortably (and it's barely even that), but it's more bearable.
"Yeah, she's fine," Cass calls over her shoulder. She gives the Courier a crooked smile. "How ya doin', kiddo?"
"Nnh."
"Yep," Cass says with an unperturbed sigh, "that's about what I expected."
And then suddenly Arcade's face enters her field of vision, brow furrowed in heavy worry. The Courier does no more that blink at him.
"Can you talk?" he asks immediately. She feels like she can, but really can't be bothered to summon the brainpower it would require to try.
So she settles for another short, "Nnh."
"I need more than that."
The pulsing in her head amps up gradually, a steady and painful throb that she's sure is beating in time with her heart. She lets out a long, low groan and rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes.
"Wh'appen?" she grunts, and even she is a bit surprised at the way her words slur almost indistinguishably together.
"You were hit in the head with a brick," Arcade tells her bluntly.
"I guess one guy was just too busy getting doped up to notice that there was a fight going on and realized he was late to the party," Cass adds.
"Boone's checking the perimeter now," Arcade looks away, scanning the area around them that the Courier can't see or be bothered to see, "but I think we're in the clear. For real, this time."
"You know, now that I know it didn't crack your skull open and kill you, it was kinds funny to see," Cass adds, ignoring the sharp look that Arcade shoots her.
Arcade kneels down onto the ground, bringing his face closer and making it more clear for the Courier to see. He really doesn't look very happy, she notes.
"Alright, I'm going to need you to try to follow my finger with your eyes," he instructs gently, in what the Courier has dubbed to be his serious-toned doctor voice. He holds up his index finger in front of her face and slowly begins to move it around her field of vision. Frowning, the Courier tries to watch it as it moves to the best of her ability, but sometimes it just feels like it's moving so fast and it's just so hard for her to keep up. She reaches a breaking point when all of the eye movement only serves to make her sickeningly dizzy, and she simply gives a whine of defeat and closes her eyes.
Arcade makes a disgruntled noise and stands.
"Do you think you can stand on your own?"
She makes them wait for a moment until she can gather her focus and then finally gives it a try, moving and flexing her muscles until she's relatively confident of her control over them. Sitting up isn't the hard part, though, as she quickly realizes; as soon as she's up, another more intense wave of dizziness and nausea sweeps over her, to the point where she considers flopping back to the safety that is laying on the ground. Instead, she attempts to push through it, holding her hand out in a silent request for help. Cass grips her by the arm.
The older woman tugs her up too strong and too fast, and Arcade makes a series of noises that are probably words of objection, but the Courier can't quite make heads or tails of what words the sounds are supposed to be. It's all such a jumbled mess. The ringing returns, as loud as ever, and she finds that she really can't see straight.
"Can you focus on me?" the Courier hears Arcade say, though not until a few moments of mental repetition and deciphering on her end. She turns to face where his voice is coming from, but even when she stops, the world just keeps spinning. She feels herself swaying; either that or the earth itself is shaking beneath her. When it feels like her saliva is fluctuating rapidly between being warm and cool, she knows that her nausea has spiked again. She tries to will the feeling away.
"S'mthins wrung w'th me," she manages to slur out in a garbled voice before collapsing onto her hands and knees at Arcade's feet. The jarring motion brings the nausea to a peak, and she can't hear much of anything around her anymore aside from the harsh and fast pounding of her heart in her ears.
"Well, I think that just about settles it," the doctor sighs. "You're probably concussed."
There's an awful retching noise from below him in response, one that all of them are all-too familiar with in their own special ways, but Arcade isn't able to move in time from the splash zone. He shuts his eyes in reluctant acceptance as he feels something splatter against his boots. Cass snickers and tries to pass it off at coughing before she kneels down to hold the Courier's hair back from her face and give the younger woman soft sounds of reassurance.
"And you just threw up on my shoes." Arcade doesn't even want to think about the mess that covers his feet. "Great."