Way Back Home: You Saw Me Standing Alone

Notes: I want to give a special shoutout to Mercenary_bunnies for all the help you've given me in formulating this. For giving me the idea and impetus to write this to reading bits and pieces before I do anything concrete with them to being an amazing sounding board and conceptualizer, I think I owe you a giant thank you. I'm really enjoying writing this and it's been a new and wonderful experience to have a collaborator to call me out when I'm going to make a stupid narrative decision and cheer me on when things are going right. THANK YOU.


Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Mierda.

Honey stomped an anxious tattoo on the pavement; her left boot was starting to fall apart, the sole flapping at her toes and creating a third beat with every other step. She frowned down at it, but there was no time to stop, not now, not now that she'd completely fucked everything up. The gate swam up ahead of her, the parts of the metal that weren't rusted winking in the sunlight. She reached one tanned hand up to her temple, under the side of her sunglasses, and rubbed the pink scar tissue there gently; it did nothing to alleviate the headache she felt building there, the one she'd been fighting with Med-X and homebrew tequila as far back as she could remember.

So, you know, about six weeks or so. Before that everything was loud and harsh and blurry, a string of nonsense she couldn't parse.

The man in the black suit, the one from Nipton, passed through the gate ahead of her. In her pocket, the pendant he'd given her was heavy and cool, the chill of it seeping through the thin fabric and creating a cold spot on her thigh. She eyed the Securitron at the gate nervously and pulled her cowboy hat lower over her face, over her scars. She wondered if it was going to hold her up, then felt stupid when it let her through, as she should have known it would. Mr. House might know Benny got away, but he wouldn't have any way of knowing she didn't get the chip.

Even he wasn't that powerful...was he?

Freeside felt safer, somehow, despite her brain working overtime to soothe her; with the Lucky 38 behind her, she slowed her pace a little and tried to consider her options.

Fuck. She knew better than to trust that chingón Benny, and not just because he shot her in the head and left her buried in the pinche desert. There was something else going on there, something deeper, something more -

If she could only remember.

Honey passed the Old Mormon Fort and thought for a moment about stopping in to say goodbye to Julie and Arcade, to buy some supplies, and then reconsidered. If they saw her, they'd ask where she was going. Julie might want something in particular, and then if anyone came asking about her, they'd know right where to point them. On the other hand, maybe Julie would send her somewhere and she could go the opposite way, so anyone who came after her would be send on a wild goose chase?

Before she could decide, her feet carried her past and the fort was gone, the ruling made through her own uncertainty. Making decisions was so hard these days, so taxing and confusing with her head a swirling mess of fragmented memories and distant pictures that couldn't possibly be from her life. The other woman, the one she'd been before - reliving her life was like a nightmare. Honey found herself wondering often if there was any way how the two of them were connected besides their shared body; she wondered if she had always been inside, screaming to get out.

It was all dim but for the flashes of things she wished would stay forgotten. She'd gotten one when Benny ran his hand up her thigh, the shiver unspooling a recollection of his fingers on her under the card table, of his hot breath on her ear as he whispered something nasty to her. The sound of Jeannie May Crawford's blood spattering her cheek when the bullet passed through her brain brought back the sound of screaming and the metallic scent of slaughter, like old world pennies under her tongue. Mercedes - the woman she'd been before she woke up in Doc Mitchell's little clinic - was alien to her, and terrifying.

Passing through Freeside's gate and into outer Vegas, Honey shook her head, as if the motion would clear her thoughts, would somehow help the memories - well, she wasn't sure what she wanted from them. If they clarified then she'd have to deal with them, with the reality of who she used to be. And if they didn't...maybe she wouldn't. At least, until she ran into someone else who'd known her before, someone she'd hurt.

Honey realized with a start that she'd left without Cass. She stopped, a trickle of sweat making its way between her shoulder blades, and thought for a moment about going back to the Lucky 38 to get her. She didn't know where she was going but then again there was a bar full of whiskey. Maybe Cass would still be there when she returned.

If she returned. If the desert didn't chew her up and spit her out, if the Legion didn't get tired of waiting for her and come after her, if there wasn't the rumble of securitrons to escort her back to the Lucky 38 to explain herself -

She couldn't even finish the thought without breaking out into a chill. The thought of Mr. House finding out she hadn't gotten the chip was enough to cover her arms in goosebumps and send her feet scurrying north. Away, away, away, her brain chattered as her feet slapped the pavement, the city receding behind her. Run away.


Sometimes Nicole reminded John of a newborn baby. The girl didn't seem to know so many basic things, it was a miracle - or maybe a tragedy - that she'd survived as long as she had. They hadn't been on the road three days when the caravan was hit by a pack of sorely over-confident raiders. Half of them had run off before Jack even had a chance to properly stop his cart, and the ones that the rest of them dropped were so skinny that John thought they'd likely have starved before the end of winter anyway.

It was cold on the road; as they passed through the mountains and the ruins of picturesque small towns advertising maple syrup and harvest festivals, John felt eyes on the back of his neck, though they rarely saw people. Maybe he was just losing it.

In the evenings he tried to teach Nicole to shoot using a pitiful excuse for a pipe pistol that he'd taken from the corpse of one of the raiders outside Albany. She had good form but was slow to aim; he kept reminding himself that she was still new, still learning, but inside he felt impatient. All she seemed to want to do, now that she'd lost interest in trying to repay him in some unwanted way, was moon after one of the other guards. The other guard was everything John wasn't - big, burly, with shoulders like he'd only ever seen one time before, on an old pre-war plate from Greece that he'd seen in a museum. This guy was known only as Bruiser, which John found amusing and alarming in turns. If he hadn't started to feel so damn fatherly and responsible for the girl, he would've taken her interest in a guy so different from him hurtful; instead he found himself wondering aimlessly if Bruiser was good enough for her.

They were near signs for Buffalo when the snow started falling. It wasn't as if John had never seen snow before - there had been a few inches that fell in Boston some ten years ago or so - but still. Still, it was thrilling; inside he felt a reckless giddiness rising up from his gut.

From the way the others reacted, this wasn't unusual; apparently they made this trip every couple years or so and snow around the Great Lakes, as Blackbird called them, was normal, even expected.

"It's the Glowing Sea," she'd said to John when he asked her about it. "Boston is so close to it, and after the nuclear winter ended, there was too much carbon dioxide in the air, and now the climate is too warm. It should start normalizing over the next few decades, though. Maybe our grandchildren will have summers and winters like they did before the bombs."

He'd looked at her, wondering if the hit of Jet he'd taken before she'd come around the wagon was laced with something unexpected, and all he could croak out was a strangled-sounding, "What?"

Blackbird had looked him over carefully, toes to the top of his head, and then given a small, resigned nod as if she understood something. Rolling her eyes and turning away from him, she just said, "Read a fucking book, John."

They hunkered down for four days, taking shelter from the snow in an old library that Blackbird and Jack had stayed in before. John did read some books while they were there, when it wasn't his watch, and he wasn't sleeping or working with Nicole. He walked back to the history section with a pillow and a can of water and pulled some items from his pockets. Med-X was difficult to administer, but it had the benefit of making him sink into a puddle on the floor where he could read slowly, letting the facts wash over him.

Back in the stacks, he made himself a nest with the pillow and a blanket, then wrapped a rubber strap around his bicep. His practiced fingers flicked at his elbow, searching through a constellation of scars and track marks for a good vein. He finally found one that wasn't too bad on the bone of his wrist, so he moved the tourniquet down and prepped his syringe with one hand while making fists with the prone hand.

One careful shot later and he could feel his veins going cold, icy fingers tracing their way through his arteries, tangling and weaving into his heart, into his brain. For a moment, he wondered if maybe he'd taken too much, but then he was drowning in blackness, his fingers releasing the rubber tourniquet as he drifted down.


Zion. The name of the canyon sounded familiar, but like everything else, Honey had no idea why. The call had come through on her Pip-Boy and before she could debate the virtues or the risks of joining the Happy Trails Caravan, her feet were marching her north, towards the signal.

Run away, run away, run away.

All she could think about was putting as much distance between herself and the securitrons and the Legion's mongrels as possible. When she closed her eyes, destruction danced behind her lids: blood spattered on rusted blue metal, the whir of a machine gun, the solid thunk of a nail hammering into bone and flesh and wood.

For most of the journey to Zion, she brought up the rear, Lucky in one hand, combat knife in the other. Before they'd left, she'd taken a hit of Med-X; the headache had finally receded, though she could still feel its grubby little fingers probing for weakness in the scar that traveled from her right temple. When they stopped for the night near the Valley of Fire, she found her appetite was scarce, even when Stella brought her a slab of fried gecko. The smell of roasted meat turned her stomach, and she thanked the other woman with a queasy smile on her face.

After the sun fell, she wandered up a small hill, looking down on the crimson stones, their color muted under the half-full moon. Behind her, the campfire flickered on the other caravaners huddled in their blankets. She was supposed to be keeping watch, but on a clear night like this, she could see anything coming from miles. Of all the things she'd lost when Benny the cabrón had shot her, she was lucky her vision hadn't been one of them. She sat gingerly on a large pink rock, admiring the orange swirls, and tried to think.

Run away, run away.

Jed made Zion sound like paradise. Apparently they'd continue north after that, head up to New Canaan, to try trading with the Mormons. Utah - something about it tugged at her memory but every time she tried to track it down, it slipped away.

With a sigh, she pulled the small steel flask from her belt and took a long drink. The tequila burned; homebrew was always harsher than she would have liked, but she didn't stay still long enough to age it the way she should. Her mamá had always said good tequila should taste like honey and the sun.

Her mamá? The thought stopped her and she tried to focus, and she could hear the sound of a woman laughing kindly, the scent of mesquite in her hair. She tried to imagine her mother's face, to bring forth eyes, or a smile, but all she could find was the glint of gold around her neck, a crucifix glimmering in the sun. Then it was gone, the memory of the memory fading like a dream upon waking.

The crucifix. Honey reached a hand into her shirt and pulled out the gold chain that rested between her breasts. The crucifix hung there, shimmering in the starlight and warm from her skin. She studied it, at the beatific smile of the man affixed to the cross. Something about it was important; her mamá had saved it for so long because she loved it, she loved him. Honey ran her fingers over the warm gold, scratching lightly at one of the man's tiny hands to remove a flake of rust-red blood.

The blood made her think of the other talisman she carried, and she dropped the necklace back inside her clothes where it could rest near her heart, and this time she drew the pendant Vulpes had given her from her hip pocket. The leather necklace caught in her fingers, and she inspected the large, flat coin-like item carefully, studying the cool silvery disc. Vulpes had said it would give her safe passage - or as safe as she could be in the Mojave - to Fortification Hill, to see Caesar. He'd said Caesar wanted to see her, though he'd been vague about why.

She took another sip of tequila and shivered in the dark. The desert was cooling rapidly; soon she would need to get her own blanket and go to bed, where she would undoubtedly toss and turn with nightmares of places and people she couldn't remember.


Each city they passed made John more curious. Jack's geiger counter seemed to chip less as they traveled farther from the coast. The caravan stayed on major highways, bypassing the signs to Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit. They camped at night in old fuel stations, or in roadside motels. Each morning when he woke it was a little warmer; spring was finally coming. The mountains were far behind them now, though there was a sickening green glow in the distance, beyond the massive lake. Blackbird said it was the ruins of Detroit, a manufacturing city before the war and now nothing more than ghouls and radiation that extended halfway across the lake.

It made him shiver to think of it.

I-90 was an easy road, broad and flat with few impediments. Even when there were cars in the road, most of them stopped at strange angles and between lanes, there were few enough of them to easily maneuver the brahmin and their wagons around. They were somewhere near the Indiana state line when there was the sound of growling in the distance and the brahmin's ears all went up. The last beast, the one tethered to the back of the second wagon, stopped still in the road, then began trying to turn its head, bucking at the line, stomping its hooves and groaning in a way John had never heard before.

He turned towards the sounds of growling, his heart rising into his throat.

A deathclaw. Massive, green and brown and leathery, stomping one massive foot into the road so hard that the car to their left jumped a little on what remained of its tires. Then, from behind a car, another one. A third, slipping down the slope to their right. He stopped counting at the fifth, but more were still appearing, and he felt Nicole shake against his arm. His hands were steady, though, and when Jack bellowed at him to get the grenades from the battered yellow box behind him, he didn't hesitate.

The pin slid out easily, and he threw the first one in a high, perfect arc over his head, keeping his eyes on it as it bounced across the ground, landing under an old seafoam green Corvega towards the middle of the pack. He put one hand on Nicole's shoulder, pushing her down, and for a moment he heard Myrtle's voice in his ears again, her wails of fear and anguish as the suicider advanced on him. There was a flash, and a scream, and he dropped his head before the car blew, deafening them all.


The canyon was long and narrow with impossibly sheer walls. After a surprisingly wet winter, the floor of the valley was green with small plants working their way up through the gritty soil. Honey looked over it, her eyes aching behind her sunglasses from the brightness of the sun above. The sky was blue, bluer than she'd thought it could be, and for a fleeting moment she thought maybe - maybe - this was home. Maybe she could just stay here, could leave the caravan and find an old building for a home and just -

Fuck it. Let Vegas sort itself out; let all the assholes down there burn the place to the ground. She'd found paradise here, in the sound of the breeze blowing through the small, hunched trees. The headache pulsed behind her eyes, and she tried not to think of the memory that had come back just this morning, of the smell of the cemetery around her and the rage she'd felt looking up at Benny in that stupid fucking jacket. The apology lurking in his dark eyes, the way her hair had felt, sticky with blood on one side where the first shot had gone wide, barely grazing her.

Then there'd been the thunderclap of the second shot, the way his eyes had widened as he saw the pain on her face, and the feeling of hands on her back and her ass, shoving her roughly into the hole they'd dug for her. She hadn't heard the dirt piled atop her but had felt it; she'd tried screaming but all she could get out were muffled choking sobs through the gag - and then blackness.

Jed looked at her and she realized she was smiling, looking at the unspoiled perfection before her. The oranges and greens of the canyon were luminous, almost too bright, and she took a deep breath, trying to ignore the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

"You okay there?"

She nodded, the smile so broad it was almost painful. "Sí - I mean, yes. It's just -" But the words wouldn't come in either language. Jed just nodded and pointed towards the rickety bridge on their right, his expression making it clear that he knew how she felt. Honey turned to follow him when the first shot rang out, loud and unexpected, and behind her, Ricky dropped suddenly, bonelessly, into a pile of dying flesh.

Jed drew his weapon and Stella was already firing at the strangely-dressed men before them. Honey pulled the trail carbine from her back, took careful aim at the pale leg of the one on the left. She pulled the trigger, despite the distracting strangled scream from her right as Stella collapsed over the edge of the canyon, clutching her stomach.

The tribal went down much the way Stella had, grabbing at the remains of his left leg and dropping into the abyss below. Honey aimed again, breathed in, and her bullet caught the other tribal in the face, just under one eye. He fell backwards, throat gurgling, and she stepped forward slowly, her feet tentative on the rickety wooden bridge. When she'd crossed, the man had stopped making noise, but his good eye tracked her.

Honey stood over him, head tilted. She pulled off her sunglasses and hooked them on the front of her leather armor and met his eye; the other one was gone, replaced by a gaping hole that wept blood, and inside she fancied she could see the pale yellow of bone. His remaining eye was dark brown, as deep and unreadable as Benny's had been. Her skull ached as if her brain was pulsing inside it.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" The man below her made a groaning kind of assent, deep in his throat, and it occurred to her that if she didn't do anything he'd probably choke to death on his own blood. She turned and looked back at the bodies across the bridge, at the red blood growing under Jed's kind face. Alone again; somehow she always ended up alone. Squinting in the sunlight and trying not to wince at the pain of turning her head, she looked back down at the tribal man and cocked her gun.

"Let me help you with that."

And she fired.