Boone got up to stretch his legs. ED-E whirred around the room carelessly. The sniper had completely forgotten about the bot hovering around. It hadn't made a single chirp or whistle since the tape began to play. The tape sounded like it had clicked to a stop. The silence intensified. The darkness was all encompassing.
"Why did she leave you here then?" Boone questioned the ED-E with a raised eyebrow.
ED-E spun around and bobbed side to side. It let out a stream of woeful cheeps and lowered till it was nearly on the bed. Boone picked up the Pip-Boy and saw the streaming data cross the screen.
"She didn't want you to be alone," ED-E answered. "She told me about Navarro. She didn't want me to be alone."
"Then why didn't she take you with?" Boone asked flatly. He let out a sigh of frustration and slammed his beret on the desk. Lucky knew he couldn't stand it. He also knew that Lucky was deeply attached to the bot.
ED-E never answered just sagged with a depressing sway.
Something had happened while on the road just before the Second Battle. She never spoke of where she went or what she'd done. She just said it was a trip she had to take alone, even though he, Cass, Lily and Veronica had all wanted to go with her. She was adamant about not allowing it. She came back with a thick layer of Mojave dust on her. This was no different from any other excursion but the air – the smell – was different. Her split lip and her arm in a sling were proof enough that she had been in a fight. She carried herself differently. She looked almost defeated when she stepped off the elevator.
Her eyes fell upon him first. Over the rims of her thick black glasses, she stared at him, motionless. Her face was blank. It was like she had died in the Wasteland alone. ED-E buzzed passed and stopped when it noticed her standing there. It shook with excitement – if that was even possible – and played its silly little song. The corner of her lip curled slightly and her eyes glassed over.
She pulled the brim of her hat down so Boone couldn't see her expression anymore and exited the elevator. Lucky stopped between the two of them and nodded in silence for the eyebot to follow. It was like he didn't exist to her then. Boone went to ask what had happened, but she slammed the door behind her and the sound of the lock turning was near deafening.
The sound of Lucky clearing her throat drew Boone's attention to the Pip-Boy once again. He looked at the time at the top of the screen and realized that he had plenty of time before he left for his trip.
"So, Novac: the town of little consequence with about as much intrigue as the Strip was my next stop," Lucky snorted with amusement.
He remembered the first time he saw Lucky. He had just come from the gift shop at the end of his shift. He saw her standing in the middle of the lot speaking with the daytime sniper, Manny. He couldn't see her face – except her mouth - beyond the wide brim of the cowboy hat. Thick leather armor covered her small frame. (Looking back on it now, he realized that it formed to her body in the all the right places.) A large revolver was strapped to her thigh.
He didn't hear what they were speaking about, nor did he care. He didn't give two shits about anything involving Manny. He only glared at his former friend and kept walking.
"I remember when I saw you the first time. You looked so angry, so lost," Lucky said. Her voice was emotionless. There was nothing to go on, not even the trance-like tone she had when she was recalling memories. "I watched you pass-by and at the time, I thought you were shooting the death glare at me. That's when I called ED-E. I didn't want trouble. And I didn't know if you were a possible threat." Her voice got lower and quieter. "It's not easy to trust people when you still feel like you're still straddling the grave."
"A possible threat? Me?" he questioned amused by the accusation.
"Lucky for me, the only threat you posed to me was being a pain in my ass," she chortled.
There was sincerity in her voice and it wasn't often he heard a genuine laugh come from her. He didn't mind if it came at his expense.
"I was a pain in your ass? Do you realize how much of a pain in my ass psychologically, physically, and emotionally you are?" Boone argued with a wry smile.
His smile faded when he realized that he was sharing the rare moment of relaxation with a recording and not the real woman.
He leaned back in the chair, propped his feet on the desk, and closed his eyes.
He recollected walking to his door and hearing a shrill whistle. It distracted him enough that he turned and saw ED-E fly around the corner of the building. It stopped just behind her and shook violently with excitement. His first thought of the silly bot was that it was nothing but a flying scrapyard.
His hand fell to the doorknob and his gut filled with dread. Part of him didn't want to enter the apartment where his wife once was. It was too painful a reminder of his failure, yet, it was just another in a string of mishaps he'd been involved with. Carla just happened to be the price he paid for his fuck- ups. All he had to greet him then were the numerous empty bottles of whiskey scattered on the floor, an empty bed, a 10 mm on the chair, and blood: her blood.
He stared at the mysterious woman – Lucky - and saw her gloved fingers tapping on her folded arms. She nodded a couple of times to what Manny was saying and looked past the daytime sniper briefly. Boone could feel their eyes lock on each other. Before he could look away, she had beat him to it.
He gripped the knob tightly and shoved the door open. He slammed the door closed and leaned up against it. Something stirred in him. The way she looked at him had terrified him. It was like she was reading his whole history on his face. Maybe, that's why she looked away so fast, he thought with a heavy sigh.
To this day, Boone didn't know what she had seen in him.
Lucky didn't distract him from his routine, though. He was curious, sure, but not enough to deviate from the personal hell he was living in. When Manny stopped to tell him that he'd sent someone to fix the ghoul problem at the Repconn Test Site, he was unfazed. He didn't care. Even when he heard gunshots coming from that very direction during his shift, the onus wasn't on him to take responsibility for some girl, some woman wanting to play mercenary.
"I needed the information on my target," Lucky sulked. "Manny wouldn't give it to me until I did what he wanted." She let out a sigh and softly chuckled to herself. "It sounds so whorish when I say it that way."
"Seems to be the only way you got anything you needed," Boone grumbled, never opening his eyes.
But is it what you really needed, he thought to himself.
He didn't see her for about three days after that. On the fourth night, while on duty, he heard the strangest noise. It sounded like thunder, but the skies were clear. He looked in the direction he heard the raucous from and looked through his binoculars. He saw bright, flashing lights that nearly blinded him. He turned away from the sight at a loss as to what he saw.
He returned his thoughts to the glowing lights – fire light – from nearby Nelson. He knew the Legion had taken the NCR encampment in past couple of weeks, but was helpless to do anything about it. While – to him – Novac was of little consequence to the Legion, he knew that eventually they would set their sights on it. What happened to Carla was proof of that idea already.
"I saw you standing there with your back to me. I don't think you even realized I was there. I looked down to the ground to check on ED-E, but I was truly at a loss as to how to deal with you," Lucky mentioned. "I looked toward what you were looking at, still not knowing how I should approach you. In fact, I almost did an about face and left. I did the most natural thing for me to do in that situation. I -"
"You lit a cigarette and chuckled nervously," Boone said in sync with her. "You know I almost shot you?"
"If I wasn't so tired at that point, you might have scared the shit out of me," Lucky snickered.
"I'm sorry I pulled a gun at you and pointed it in your face," he mumbled under his breath.
He nodded to himself in agreement. She had looked exhausted when he looked her over. She wasn't wearing the cowboy hat now. The Pip-Boy she wore on her wrist cast an eery green light in the mouth of the dinosaur. She barely looked old enough to be walking around on her own, much less carry a heavy sidearm. The thick black-rimmed glasses didn't help to change her youthfulness either.
"You questioned me, which I thought was reasonable, to be sure. The 'why' of everything seems to be the most in demand question between us. The response I got to our meetings 'why' was a little off putting." Lucky admitted. He heard the tinkle of ice in a glass and then it be set down again. He poured another glass of whiskey and began to drink. "Looking back on it my first thought was: you were an asshole."
Her words were like a sock to the gut and he spit the whiskey out in shock. He coughed violently and looked at the picture from the Hoover Dam again. The corner of his mouth twitched. It amazed him how much her opinion of him had changed since then. He didn't know what he had done to change her mind, but on some level he was glad and a little saddened at the same time.
"You told me to leave and I was more than happy to obliged," Lucky stated with a sigh. "I was too tired to deal with anyone's bullshit at that moment. I thought it was a mistake to be there. I was going to leave when Manny's shift started. I had already lost days' time in my pursuit."
She had turned his back to him. She didn't even seem annoyed by him. He felt guilty about his tone, about nearly blowing her brains out into the back of Dinky the Dino's throat. He heard the click of the doorknob and he put his hand on her arm and told her to wait.
"You know I almost shot you when you did that?" Lucky queried with a snort.
He nodded, recounting that her hand was on her six shooter. But she had stopped and she didn't resist. She just looked over her shoulder at him. He apologized to her and let her decide what she was going to do.
"You needed something. Everyone needed something," she growled coldly. "I was at least willing to listen to your proposition. You needed someone to do your leg work."
"I didn't trust anyone because of what happened to Carla. You know that. You weren't here when it happened," he explained.
"When you said that the Legion had taken your wife, I sympathized. But because of my run-ins with them, I honestly didn't want to get involved. However, something about the look in your eye made me change my mind," Lucky said as the familiar clicking of the lighter started. "I thought maybe you wanted information to get her back, but... you were so insistent she was dead already. I almost wanted to slap you. If my father had made that determination without the facts then where would I be now?" She gasped. "Nevermind. Forget I said anything."
"Lucky?" Boone asked, his voice insistent on her continuing her thought. "Say it."
"I decided to do it for you because I know both sides of that line," she continued with a soft voice.
That was why she nodded slowly and he handed her his beret. He didn't know if he had felt a sense of relief in that moment or the near helpless look she had on her face had pushed him over the edge, but she said nothing and left quickly. He hoped he could trust her. He didn't have anyone else left in the world that he could. He just wanted the person who took his wife and made him do the unthinkable.
