Chapter 4: Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Disclaimer: All people, places, things, and other nouns that are not of my own creation belong to Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment. None of the songs are mine, either.

"Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not." – Thomas Hardy, "Far From the Madding Crowd"

"-And then I woke up this morning, and boom!" Raul sighed, finishing up the tale of Consuela's disappearance as Boone looked on wordlessly, "She was gone. She left the shittiest note ever, too."

"Can I see it? Did it say anything important?" asked Boone, already in detective mode.

"Just some shit about how sorry she was," Raul said, shaking his head, "If you ask me, she was just covering her ass. She pulls shit like that sometimes."

Boone said nothing, only shooting a look towards Raul before ascending the stairs to where Raul had pointed. His trained eyes scanned the shop, and he felt a twinge of remorse for being gone so long. He probably should have been looking after the girl. She was a hell of a shot with her fancy energy weapons, and she could negotiate herself out of the craziest situations, but she was the type that needed backup. Raul had done an okay job, but as far as he was concerned, the results still hadn't been pretty. He felt responsible for her, oddly.

As he reached her room, he was hit with how messy the girl had been. He remembered all the Legion camps they'd trashed together, even one of the vaults they'd stumbled across. Vault 34, was it? It was there that he'd gotten his second favorite gun, the All-American. He was still partial to his Sniper Rifle, but there were always those times when he ran out of .308 ammo. He took a step into the room and immediately spotted the note lying where Raul had left it. He read it quickly. It was as he had feared. He never should have left.

He heard Raul follow him up the stairs, and, after sparing one last glance at the bedroom (he felt an odd twinge as he spotted a dark stain on her covers from what he supposed to be her signature puddle of drool), he turned to face the older man. Boone said nothing, waiting for the ghoul to do something.

"I didn't know she wanted to find them that badly," Raul admitted, his gravelly voice sounding even more raw as he spoke, "I thought she had been happy here."

Boone believed him. Though gruff and sometimes a bit too snarky for his own good, the ghoul had lived enough to see what happened when you wrong the people you love the most. Boone had been there, too, though he had a feeling that 200 years of living with himself would be an even bigger challenge. At least he had death to look forward to.

"She probably was, otherwise she would have left earlier on," Boone said, attempting to comfort him. Raul nodded, even though Boone was sure that he didn't actually believe him. He'd tried, though. Shrugging, Boone walked into the kitchen and assessed what they would need to bring for the journey.

"Any hints as to where she could have gone to look?" he asked. He was all business, raiding the pantry and refrigerators as if he were looking for loot in an enemy stronghold. It was go time.

"We saw an article about this town with some pretty bad gang fights the other day. Some of the people found dead had tattoos like the one she has on the back of her neck. They said it was to the southeast, I think," Raul recited, beginning to make food for the road. Like Consuela, he kept his pack ready to go for occasions just like this one.

"This town got a name?" Boone asked tensely, beginning to tire of the interrogation. They were supposed to be helping each other, goddamn it. He felt like he was pulling teeth. Whatever that meant. The sniper had never been one for analogies.

Before Raul could say anything, however, he was interrupted by none other than Rose of Sharon Cassidy herself. Holding a bag of goodies over her shoulder and clutching another full of Boone's pay in her other, she looked very confused at the scene before her. Raul and Boone exchanged a look.

"I got it," Raul sighed. He proceeded to tell a very confused Cass about Consuela's departure. She had taken a seat at the small table, expression getting more grim with every twist to the Courier's tale. When Raul finished, she looked like she was at someone's funeral.

"Poor kid," she sighed, "She's always had terrible luck. I need a smoke. Hey, do you keep any whiskey in the joint?"

Raul rolled his eyes, but decided to oblige her. He'd probably need her help to make sure his little girl was okay. She took the bottle from him with a nod of thanks, then took a long swig. Raul snorted and went back to making his travel food. That girl gave Consuela a run for her money when it came to table manners. He wasn't much for pomp and circumstance (didn't graduate from high school, heh), but he usually ate using forks and knives and things like that. Cass and Consuela made do without most of the time, though. It was quite a sight, watching the two women stuff their faces like there was no tomorrow, which was likely more times than he wanted to admit. Boone usually watched in silence, as was his way, but every once in a while, Raul swore that he cracked a smile. A really small one that disappeared quickly, but a smile nonetheless.

They finished packing around dinnertime, so Raul made dinner. Afterwards, he offered to let them stay the night. Cass declined, saying that she had business at the bar (Raul thought he knew why, if he knew anything about how much of an "eager" woman Cass was), but Boone agreed. They didn't have a couch, so he ended up bunking in Consuela's room. Though Raul had offered to switch rooms just in case the thought of sleeping in a woman's room weirded him out too much (he could never tell with Boone), he had said that he would manage.

Boone took a while to get comfortable since he was longer than the bed. He didn't fancy sleeping on his side, either, so he let his be-socked feet dangle off into the thin stream of cool air issuing from the small fan that sat on Consuela's surprisingly well-organized desk. He couldn't sleep. There was too much to process, but he felt like he couldn't think with so much humidity crushing in on him. Not to mention her smell.

It was kind of weird that he remembered how Consuela smelled, considering that they never got too close. But he realized that it had followed him around for a long time, even after he had left with Cass. Maybe it was because she had offered to wash his clothes for him, since he was no good at it. Probably something in the detergent. That was it! She smelled like Abraxo. Case closed.

Boone wiggled his toes and took a sip of the last beer from his pack, pleased with his deductive abilities. Something still wasn't right, though. He knew what Abraxo smelled like, after so many times of accidentally looting some. There was something else. Maybe it was the ghoul smell? Boone had nothing against Raul or his kind, but they had a distinct odor. It was sweet at first, but underneath that thin layer there was an abyss of decay. You got used to it after working with them for a while, but it took some getting used to. He decided that it might be a bit of the ghoul smell. There was still something off, though. Maybe it was…

Suddenly, Boone's eyes shot open, and he ripped off his sunglasses to look for the stain he had seen earlier. Though he was tempted to just write it off as drool and trying not to think of anywhere else him mind was trying to take him, he decided to sniff it.

"What am I doing?" he muttered, grimacing at his own inquisitiveness, "I know mom always used to call me her stupidest kid, but goddamn I was born without a brain."

He decided to go for it anyways. It was oil. Motor oil. Boone sighed, replaced his sunglasses, and went back to reclining best he could. Soon, his breathing returned to normal. The sun finally set, and he heard Raul turn off his light. Soon, his breathing slowed and his rattling snores echoed throughout the small building. Boone sat impassively, though he began to feel nostalgic for a simpler time.

Though he thought of it as a simpler time, his childhood wasn't all that simple. His father, an NCR soldier, had died in combat shortly after his tenth birthday. Since his mother was busy looking after the new baby, he'd had to put the hunting rifle his father had been teaching him how to shoot to use pretty quickly. He'd done alright by his mother, though, and when he failed, there had always been helpful neighbors. The NCR had done right by them.

Boone eventually drifted off, thinking of the old days and breathing in the weird mix of Abraxo, rotting flesh, and motor oil. As he slept, a true smile graced his face for the first time in a long time. It was truly a sight to behold, but no one saw it in the darkness of the Mojave, and so it was lost to time.

In the morning, Cass showed up just long enough to say that she wasn't coming with. She dropped off Boone's (generous) pay and left, cradling her head like a newborn. Boone had suspected that something like that would happen. He bore the news stoically, unlike Raul. The old ghoul finished their packing using the most colorful use of both Spanish and English that Boone had heard since he had stopped talking to Manny. They set off before nine without a backwards glance.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert, Consuela's crusted eyes slid open, a silent scream dying on her lips as she realized that she was back in the world of the living. A rag slid off of her forehead and into her lap. Someone had changed her clothes for her. She scanned the small room, assessing her situation and wondering where her pack had gotten off to. Her eyes finally came to rest on the glass of water sitting on the bedside table, and she greedily snatched it up, gulping it down like a dying man. She looked up to see a woman standing at the end of her bed. Oddly enough, she wasn't surprised by the fact that she was there, but by the fact that she knew who the strange woman was.

"How are you feeling, cariña?" the woman asked, walking forward to stroke her hair soothingly. Consuelo felt like she was suffocating.

"Mom?"

A/N:

OH YEAH CLIFFIE! Anyways, I love writing Boone (as you may be able to tell uehuehue), and I want to do more from his POV. So get ready for some serious Boone-time pretty soon. ^^ Thank you for your continued support, you butts!

-Miriflowers