A/N: I decided to do something different with this chapter and switch to Boone's perspective part of the way through. I know this messes with the continuity of the thing, but have to ride these inspiration waves when they hit, ya know? I hope you enjoy! Thank you for reading :)
"The doctors said it will be fine," Boone told Lucielle, his voice empty of emotion. Lucy wondered how he could manage to stay so calm. She had been there when his leg was riddled with bullet holes at close-range, watched as he collapsed from the pain. She herself dragged his half-conscious body to the Old Mormon Fort from the dank streets of Freeside. If it had been much further, he would have died from blood loss. The Boone that had charged blindly into a Legion camp and lived would have bled out in a gutter from some petty thug "bodyguard." He should have been angry. He should have been angry with her.
Lucy knew it was her fault. A simple request from The King turned all wrong. Hire Orris, he had said. Discover why he gets so much business, he had said. But she could not find a reason. Orris seemed legitimate to her. She should have known better. She should have seen through him before he and his thugs turned their guns on her and Boone.
"Are you ill?" Boone asked, and Lucy's gaze snapped from Boone's bandaged calf to his face.
"What?" she asked quickly. Her face flushed a little before she regained herself, as she was embarrassed to have been caught staring at his wounds. She didn't want him to know what she had been thinking.
"Your hands are shaking," he said.
Her gaze fell downward to her lap where her hands were twitching ever so slightly. She had not even noticed, though she knew she soon would. The twitching was just the first of many withdrawal symptoms.
She stood abruptly, nearly knocking over her wooden chair in the process. She needed a fix - fast. But not here. Not in front of Boone. "I have to go somewhere," she announced, and turned.
"Lucy," he called after her, and she paused.
She asked him for weeks to use the nickname instead of her real name, Lucielle, and even though he used it quite regularly now, it still surprised her to hear. She glanced over her shoulder at him and found him staring at her. She had a small moment of panic where she thought Boone might know just where she was actually headed, but she contained that fear. She was always very careful around him.
"Stay here," he told her.
"Boone," she breathed, the name escaping her lips in startled reaction. She blinked, knowing she must have imagined his words. Boone wouldn't ask her to stay. But even if he did, it didn't matter. She was not an asset in this condition. She needed to be helpful, and to be helpful, she needed to be smarter. And that meant Mentats.
"I have to," she told him sadly, and with a sliver of regret hanging over her heart, she walked away.
He didn't know why he followed her. Boone knew he was one of the very last people in the wasteland who should judge another for their vices. And he never gave a damn before how people wanted to waste their lives. But Lucy… This was not how it was suppose to be.
She was the strong one; he was the broken one.
He wasn't going to watch her fall.
"Lucy," he said from behind her.
She jumped, and boxes of Mentats clattered to the sidewalk. He counted seven distinct thuds of cardboard. That meant all drugs and no Fixers, and that meant she had no intention of quitting.
She glanced over her shoulder once, quickly, but did not turn to face him. Immediately she crouched and scrambled to gather her dropped goods. Her hands were visibly struggling to clutch around the boxes, her fingers shaking. Her addiction was worse than he originally thought.
He took an unsteady step toward her, wishing that his leg was not in a cast so that he could kick the Mentats away. Perhaps stomp them into the ground.
"Why are you out here? Your leg, you need… I need…" she said, her voice weaker than he liked. Usually she would challenge him and scold him. She'd demand he take better care of himself.
He ignored her ramblings. "What are you doing?" he said finally, straining to pull the irritation from his voice. She was supposed to be the strong one. She was supposed to keep him from falling, not the other way around. Hell, his leg did hurt, but what was he suppose to do? Just pretend not to notice that she was becoming a shell of what she once was?
"I just need to be smarter. The fire in Vault 22… that King taking my money… those terminals I just can't understand…" She glanced back at him, at his wounded leg. "Orris," she added with disgust. "If I was smarter, I could… make better decisions. I could… find the right words." She took a long, loud, and uneven breath. "The pills… They help."
"You don't need them," he told her with a small shrug. He did not understand her concern. Sure, her decisions were never the most obvious or the most rational, but they got the job done. There were many more intelligent people who achieved far less. He paused briefly, considering telling her that, but then grunted instead. She knew that already, he decided.
A box in her hand, she began fiddling with the opening.
"This has nothing to do with confidence, Boone," she said sharply as she struggled with the cardboard, and he frowned. She had only ever showed endless patience with him before. He did not care for this new addicted self of hers. "It has everything to do with necessity… and usefulness …and, and… Why won't this box open already?" She snarled at the box in her frustration, and made a motion to throw it – but didn't.
A small voice ticked within Boone, told him to walk away. Lucy was gone. He needed to go back to being alone, to kill Legion, to… die. It didn't matter what was said before. It didn't matter that she had convinced him to keep fighting to live to do more. Nor did it matter that she had taken him to Bitter Springs when he had asked, or that she had followed him to keep him alive when he expected to die.
"I wasn't going to let you die," she had told him then. None of that mattered.
Yet even as he told himself that nothing she had said or done before mattered, he knew everything still meant a hell of a lot.
He took two limping steps and ripped the Mentats from her hand. He pitched them over his shoulder, then grabbed Lucy's wrist before she could reach for more off the ground.
"Boone?" she said softly, confusion shining in her blue eyes. She didn't understand what he was doing or why he was doing it. That made two of them.
"We're going back to the Old Mormon Fort," he said firmly.
"But-"
"Now."
She stuck her chin up a little in defiance, and he resisted a smirk. There was the Lucy he had come to know. Though all thoughts of amusement diminished when she reached for her pocket. He remembered the metal case of Mentats she kept there.
He took her hand into his to stop her. And that's when the world stopped. This feeling of another's hand was so alien and yet so familiar. He couldn't remember the last time he had reached for the touch of a woman. He didn't want to think about the last time. That was a lifetime ago. He was a different person then, a better one.
"Boone," came Lucy's soft voice, seeping into his thoughts to pull him to the present. She did that when he started to lose himself in the past. She always stopped him from going too far into insanity. He was starting to realize how much he relied on her.
Her free hand found his shoulder. He could feel her fingers shaking, even through his clothing. The withdrawal was hitting her hard; she looked like she could barely stand. Her face showed little evidence of pain however, as she watched him with her wide blue eyes. She couldn't tell if he was back from the past yet, he realized. She was waiting for him to react, perhaps to pull away as he did that night in Vault 22 when he almost…
His frown was heavy as he remembered the near kiss, where his lips just barely brushed over hers. Guilt swelled deep within him. He was thinking of his wife, Carla, when he had leaned in, but before the end, he had recognized Lucy. He had wanted to kiss his courier companion, and that thought haunted him.
"We should get you back," she said. A line formed between her brow in worry. "You lost too much blood."
Part of Boone wanted to laugh bitterly at the situation. He had come here wanting to help Lucy, and she was the one helping him instead. Even with half of her functions crippled from withdrawal, she was still the stronger one.
He hated himself because he still wanted to kiss her. He valued the strength in her, and the pride. She threatened to bring something out in him that he had buried long ago. He didn't deserve that, not after the things he had done.
He remembered Carla in a swarm of Legion. He had leveled his gun. What if it were to happen to Lucy? Could he take another shot?
"Boone," Lucy said, gripping his shoulder. Her eyes were wide; she looked frightened. Had he scared her? "Boone."
He swallowed hard, and again built walls around the things better left forgotten. If only he could forget.
"I want you to get help for your addiction," Boone said at last, and Lucy looked relieved at his words.
"I will. I promise," Lucy told him. He stared at her for a long moment, looking for signs of insincerity, but he found none. "Just don't frighten me like that again," she added with a loud exhale.
"I'll try," he promised back.
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