"Not sure I'll be back this way again. I just wanted to stop by. To say goodbye. And… yeah." Megan scuffed at the dry dirt with her boots, noticing that six months - had it really been that long already? - had been enough time for the tough desert grasses to reclaim the ground where Raul's body lay. It had even overgrown the rocks that Boone had placed over the grave against the coyotes' predations. She had made the ghoul's abandoned ranch an obligatory stop on her half-hearted "farewell tour" of the Mojave, but now that she was here, she didn't know what to say or do.
"I wanted to put up some sort of marker," she told the lonely spot, trying to believe that he was, in some sense, there to talk to. "But since neither me nor Lily can write, the best I could do was to etch an 'R' into that rock over there. We both think it's 'A' that comes next, but don't know how to finish it. I'm sorry. You deserved better. A lotta people did."
She sat on the edge and let the tears fall. They blurred and doubled her vision, making it seem like there wasn't just one grave, but many. There might as well be, she thought. Almost everyone I've broken bread with is either dead or hates me now. Boone had ended up in the NCR cemetery by the sharecroppers' farm; the Followers had made Johnson's body disappear before Colonel Moore could seize it as evidence; Novac… well, Novac was a graveyard in its own right. All of these fell on her, followed her around wherever she went.
She tried again to talk to the air, willing herself to believe that he could hear. "Got no one to speak Spanish with anymore. I needed you around to keep that part of me alive. Voy a olvidarlo."
Driven by a longing for happier times, she and Lily had travelled all the way down to Primm two days prior. It was a long walk, but not terribly dangerous these days. Not now that the caravans were running consistently, no longer threatened by Powder Gangers, deathclaws, or Legion. She had hoped to visit the Nashes, to eat some of Ruby's cooking, and see if the couple needed anything. She hadn't even gotten two words out of her mouth before the old woman slammed the door on her, face twisted with fear and fury.
After that, Megan had lost the assurance of a warm welcome anywhere. Approached each new situation with more humility, hat in hand, working with the theory that If she kept her expectations low, she wouldn't be disappointed. This resolve hadn't made things easier in Goodsprings, however. Raul was the last on her list, and for that she was grateful. He would never hurt her; more to the point, he was beyond her ability to hurt.
"You never cared about my mistakes. You judged me by who I was becoming, not who I had been. And you still didn't think too badly of me. Thank you for that." She sniffed and wiped her eyes, accidentally smearing the lenses of her new glasses in the process. She still wasn't used to wearing them.
Thanks to a late birthday present - a precious gift coordinated for her by Arcade through a shamefaced Julie Farkas - she could see pretty well now, with the lenses compensating for her poor left-side vision and improving the right as well. In the words of the itinerant optometrist who had assessed her, it was "as close to twenty-twenty" as she was going to get. She couldn't complain. For the first time in her memory, she had depth perception. Two eyes that worked together. Whether it would eventually improve her shooting remained to be seen; old habits die hard, and she was so used to shooting one-eyed that she still hadn't gotten into the habit of using her new abilities to her advantage.
Leaving her empty goodbyes behind her, she clambered down the steep ridge on her descent from the gravesite. This simple act gave her another reason to be grateful, even if she couldn't appreciate it right now - her body didn't hurt, or at least no more than it should after a couple of days of hard travel. Physically, she was in the best shape she'd been in for a long time. An experimental spin through Vera Keyes' personal Auto-Doc back at the Sierra Madre had done more to resolve the long-term effects of injury than months of natural healing had. If only Freeside's doctors could take possession of that tech… but no. The Sierra Madre was closed for business.
As a joke, their first week back, Megan had thanked Veronica for taking her on such a rejuvenating holiday. She hadn't been entirely insincere - the trip had done her good - but Veronica had taken it badly, just as she took everything else badly these days. Perhaps she had thought that the comment was entirely sarcastic. While the former scribe was satisfied - for now - to work with Ignacio Rivas and his team as they prepared to leave for the Divide, she felt no particular obligation to be pleasant, least of all to Megan. For the most part, except for lending a hand in gathering supplies (protective gear, food, and medicine), Megan avoided the endless planning. She - much more than Arcade, or even Veronica - was an outsider among them, uncultured, unlettered, and strange. They might be travelling the same road for the time being, for the sake of safety and convenience, but she wouldn't ever be one of them. She hadn't even learned their names yet.
They left the ranch in the early afternoon, not wanting to spend another night in a musty a shack that looked much the worse for being so long uninhabited. As they drew near to the city, Megan dismissed Lily north to Westside with a word of thanks. Mutants were not a common enough sight in Freeside to risk bringing her there. Besides, Megan had a stop that she wanted to make on her own: the New Vegas Clinic. It was late, and she hoped to find it empty. Sure enough, there were no patients waiting in the lobby, but there wasn't a doctor either.
"She's back there." The guard glanced up at her and jerked his head toward the door, before going back to his magazine.
Megan walked slowly down the hallway, dragging her feet now that she was here. She didn't know what she wanted from Dr. Usanagi. A sympathetic ear, she supposed - someone who was detached enough to give good advice. Someone who could help her take the alienation she felt and put it into a form she could handle. Even with the wedge driven between him and the Followers, Arcade still thought highly of the woman. Megan hadn't yet gotten a chance to thank her for trying to protect her from the NCR soldiers who'd taken her into custody. That was reason enough to visit unannounced, she decided.
The doctor's office was empty, but she could hear noises coming from the meeting room next door. Forgetting to knock, she pushed the door open and stopped, confused. There were a lot of people in there. A lot of women, seated on chairs, stools, and crates. One of them - a hard-faced woman with a necklace of scar tissue, as if someone had once tried to garrote her and failed - had been speaking, but fell silent at the intrusion.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know it was group night," she said stupidly. Megan couldn't remember what night that usually fell on, or what day of the week it was anyway. "I'll go."
If Dr. Usanagi was surprised, she did a good job of hiding it. The small woman smiled and beckoned her in from across the room. "You're welcome to stay if you want, Megan. Go on, Lydia."
Megan wavered, but ended up slipping into a spot in the corner near the door, glad to have the chance to sit down. She noticed Betsy frowning at her from her position on the other side, and flinched. Though they had been friendly before, she didn't know how favorably disposed the sniper would be to her, after everything that had happened. She refused to meet the soldier's eyes and focused on listening instead.
Lydia went on talking, but it wasn't about her own story. "I don't think she should be here. What does she know about what we go through every day? It's not like people like her get knocked around by their pimps or raped by their husbands. And that woman in particular is trouble. She's not someone we want here."
Two others - dark-haired girls who had to have been sisters - got up furtively to leave, shooting scared looks in her direction. Painfully conscious of being unwelcome, Megan reached the door ahead of them, making them shrink back into the crowd.
Disgusted and tired, she mumbled to the room, "Never mind. I just wanted a place to get warm. Carry on, all. I'm leaving."
A few people - the doctor among them - called out after her, but she didn't stop. The cold outside hit her like a slap in the face. It stung to be shunned in a place she thought she'd be welcome - for the third time this week, too. Living in the standoffish, live-and-let-live haven of Westside, she had forgotten that everybody else had longer memories. That no one had really accepted the verdict handed down by the NCR, not even the NCR.
"You reap what you sow, I guess." Hadn't Doc said more or less the same thing? That encounter had been the worst so far. The Goodsprings doctor had been neutral - or so she had thought. Someone who'd known her from the beginning. She'd gone in armed with a smile and a dead gecko, thinking that everything could be the way it was before, if only for a few hours. She'd been wrong.
Walking north from Primm and her failed attempt to visit the Nashes, determinedly thinking of nothing at all while Lily prattled on about her grandchildren, occupied the entire afternoon. It took her longer than expected to run down a gecko near Goodsprings, and longer still to divest it of its organs and blood. It was almost dark before she knocked on Doc Mitchell's door, all alone now. She waited impatiently, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, swinging her offering in one hand. She imagined him standing, popping his back, and shuffling slowly to the front of the house. When he finally opened the door to her, she had her smile and her greeting ready.
"Hiya! Dinner? For old time's sake?" It had been almost a year since she and Boone had come through Goodsprings for the last time, and she had no idea what her one-time savior thought about her now. They'd been close once - that is, until Arcade's arrival had given her an escape from the tiny town. Everything that had followed from that departure had seemed out of her control, a landslide growing from inconsequential beginnings. There was a chasm between her and the old man now, and she wanted his permission to cross it, if only for a short time. "Please," she said, much more quietly. "I've come a long way."
Doc Mitchell stood in silence for a long time, jaw clenched and lips pursed as he assessed her. Without any spoken acknowledgement, he stepped back and turned away to allow her entrance into the house. She followed him, noticing that his limp had gotten worse since she'd seen him last.
"Make sure the door latches behind you," he said by way of greeting. Some essential quality was missing from his voice. The warmth she had expected - had hoped for - was gone. Still, she allowed herself to hope that he'd hear her out.
Doc's house - the first home she'd ever known - had become small, dark, and depressing in her absence. Megan struggled to find something positive to say. "So y'all came through the Legion advance okay? I noticed the town's still standing."
"We're fine," he said shortly. "Rangers gave us plenty of warning. E'rybody retreated to those coyote caves in the hills. Easy Pete died while we were camping out in there, but I think it was mostly just his time."
"I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I haven't come by sooner to check on the place. I've been… busy. A lot of fighting. I kind of lived a soldier's life for a while - or maybe a mercenary's life would be more accurate." She laughed weakly. "Anyway, it was all a lot more violent than what goes on here."
"So I've heard." He lowered himself into a kitchen chair with a groan. "I've heard a lot of things, actually. Heard you died, heard you got thrown into prison, heard you flew away on a vertibird, never to be seen from again. Rumors abound with you. Care to tell me what's true?"
"Well," she began, setting the gecko in the sink and prepared to cut some nice flank from its sides. "I tried to run, but didn't make it. I didn't stay in prison. And I obviously didn't die. No thanks to Colonel Moore and her men."
"Last time I heard your name, some NCR thugs were beating down my door for medical evidence. For your trial. Wanted me to sign an affidavit that you were compos mentis and all that crap. Wanted to know if your brain injury was as bad as you claimed. Pretty shocking to learn that I'd aided and abetted a war criminal. Guess I should count myself lucky that they didn't take me in too."
There. It was out in the open now. "You had no way of knowing who I was. Back then, neither did I. You were just doing what you were supposed to - saving someone's life. I appreciated it. I still do." Her hands were shaking and she accidentally cut her thumb with the knife. Pressing it to the corner of her dirty bandana to stop the bleeding, she turned to meet his eyes. "Even if you had known, you wouldn't have let me die... right?" Her voice squeaked involuntarily on this last word, tiny and scared. Just like a child's. She hated how much was hanging on his answers.
His reply came quick, uncharacteristically harsh. "Maybe not. But I wouldn't have given you house room for four months neither."
Now that his feelings were out in the open, Megan found that she had preferred not knowing. She tried to continue as if it didn't matter, calm and matter-of-fact. "Fair enough. If it helps - at all - I think I'm a different person now than I was before. I don't have much to compare myself with. A few anecdotes, dreams, fragmented memories is all I have to go on. As far as I'm concerned, that other girl was a stranger who probably deserved to get shot in the head."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid." He cleared his throat. "You travelling alone?"
"Not quite. I left my companion - a friendly mutant - back at the trailer by the springs. For her safety, mostly." It wasn't just that. Lily made almost every situation more awkward. Making the decision to leave her behind with a campfire and her own gecko had been an easy one.
"Where's that soldier you were with before? Where's Dr. Gannon? Couldn't they handle the new you?"
"Arcade and I are fine. He's in Vegas right now, working with some old friends." She ducked her head. "Boone… is dead. Someone with a vendetta against me killed him last summer. We weren't always on good terms, but it wasn't because of my past. He only ever had one enemy, and it wasn't the Enclave."
He sighed. "Sorry to hear about the boy. He should've stayed clear of you. And as for Gannon, I'm surprised a Followers doctor could look the other way about that sort of thing. He always seemed like such a principled fellow."
"It's complicated," she said, as she turned back to the meat, needing something to occupy her hands with. "Led to some problems at first, but we figured it out in the end."
"Just leave it," he snapped. Controlling himself with an effort, he said in a relatively level, "I've already eaten, and gecko meat gives me indigestion anyway. This - all of it - isn't something a peace offering can smooth over. Why did you come back here?"
"I wanted to know if I still had a friend here," she said in a small voice. "I wanted to say goodbye."
"You're going somewhere?" he asked blankly, ignoring her first statement altogether.
"West. East. Anywhere but here. My life has been on a downhill course for most of the last year and a half. I wanna try something new."
"Tryin' something new's what got you into trouble. You should have never left. If you had stayed… maybe the NCR could have done the dirty work without you. Maybe you'd still be you." There was a new note in his voice - it almost sounded like grief - and for a moment Megan hoped that he was softening toward her. But it wasn't meant to be.
They talked - or tried to talk - for another half-hour, going around in circles about what she'd done or hadn't done. When they ran out of words, having gotten nowhere, he stood up and showed Megan and her half-skinned gecko the door. His anger had eventually faded away, but the coldness remained. If he'd missed her - and she suspected he had - it wasn't enough to counter the judgment in the months since the trial.
Left alone in the dark, Megan didn't even try to go to the saloon. She could do without Trudy and Sunny giving her the same treatment, and would almost inevitably end up drinking, breaking things, or both. Anyway, Lily was waiting, she knew. Lily would never stop accepting her, no matter what she did. It was a little scary, having that kind of unconditional love to depend on, but she needed it right now.
Not until an hour or two later, while "Grandma" Lily was painting her nails by firelight and describing the correct way to make sourdough biscuits, did Megan realize that she was still wearing Doc Mitchell's Pip-Boy. He hadn't mentioned it, and she had worn it so long that she'd forgotten about it once being his. Should she give it back to him?
No, she decided, hardening her heart against this impulse. She needed it more than he ever would. And it had been a gift. A reminder of better times. She'd wear it to the ends of the earth. With gratitude.
After nightfall, the walk from the New Vegas Clinic to Freeside's East Gate was a somewhat treacherous one for a solitary female. Bitterness over rejection left Megan no room for fear however, and when she heard quick footsteps behind her, she had her pistol drawn and aimed before they could close on her.
Sunglasses floated in the darkness. A familiar voice called out. "Don't shoot! Friendly!"
"Oh. Hello Betsy." Megan stopped and sighed, holstering her weapon. "If you're going to kill me, do it clean. If you're going to yell at me, just… don't. I know I'm a terrible person. I know I'm to blame for Boone's death. I don't need another person telling me I'm scum."
"Wasn't gonna do either. The doc asked me to run you down to make sure you were okay. You came by for a reason, right?" A brief pause, and she added, "Don't let Lydia and the others get you down. They gave me grief at the beginning, too. They thought a soldier shouldn't have the same problem that they do. And you… you're complicated. Doesn't mean they should treat you like crap."
"It's fine. I'm used to it. I only went because I wanted to talk through some things with Dr. Usanagi. And say goodbye. Arcade and I are leaving soon to kill Ulysses. We're not planning to come back here."
The sniper fell into step beside her. "Boone's killer? You're finally going to take care of that? Some of us in First Recon have been wondering if we need to take leave and go take care of that ourselves. He was one of ours."
"I'll do it," Megan said firmly. "I swear. Y'all don't have to worry about it."
"Yeah? How? The guy was smart, powerful, and sneaky, to strike so close to McCarran. Are you going to call up a bunch of your buddies in power-armor?"
"That was a one-time thing. I don't have that kind of power at my beck and call. Besides, two of them died in the last run. I do have a secret weapon, though. And help. We'll do it. I'll do it." She was thoroughly tired of talking and thinking about this. Wanted to get on with it, and soon.
Betsy didn't look convinced. "You'd better. Where are you going to start?"
"The Divide. Hopeville. The frumentarius practically laid out the welcoming mat. He wants a one-on-one meeting. Shouldn't be hard to find him."
Betsy let out a whuff of surprise. "Sounds like an obvious trap. That place swallows up men regardless of allegiance. Eats them alive. He's waiting for you there?"
"Apparently."
Betsy stopped in front of the East Gate and Megan stopped as well. "Guess I'll go back. 'Sposed to make sure the Freeside girls get back safely. Gonna give some of those bitches an earful, though. I'm going to tell the guys all about your target, you know. They think we've waited long enough."
Megan sighed. More people interested in the Divide. "I hope you'll give me more time. Still, if you do come, please watch who you shoot. I'm not going to be there alone. And be careful."
Walking onto the Strip was always a surreal moment; leaving Freeside behind for the glittery spectacle of the casinos was like stepping into an entirely different world. Most of them still operated the way they had before - except for the Omertas, who had sold out their fellows to the Legion and been punished severely for it - taking advantage of the security systems laid in place by House and now operated by the Followers. The Families and the Followers were certainly strange bedfellows, and Megan wondered dimly how all that was working now. Not my problem, she reminded herself.
On a superficial level, the Strip looked much the same as it had when Mr. House was in control. She ignored the revelers, the hawkers of merriment, and the drunks, making a beeline for the quiet side of things: Michael Angelo's workshop. The headquarters of the upcoming expedition. For most of the last few weeks, it had been hers and Arcade's home, with occasional respites back in Westside.
She met another Securitron at the door, allowing it to scan her face, and let herself inside. She avoided the sound of avid conversation, turning off instead to the darkened wing turned temporarily into sleeping quarters for the various people Ignacio had hired. She wasn't stealthy enough to evade Arcade, however. He caught up with her just as she was turning into bed. She tried to feign slumber - she didn't want to talk to him right now and was afraid of what might come out. He wasn't fooled, though.
"I didn't expect you back until tomorrow. It went that bad, huh?"
She talked to the ceiling, eyes shut tight. "Yeah. You were right. As usual."
"Want to talk about it?"
The question - the one that might unseat everything - came out before she could stop it. "I just have one question: why do you give me a pass for the whole Enclave thing? Everybody else I know is ready to throw the book at me."
"I'm just a forgiving person," he said breezily, then became more serious. "Look, my mother never really renounced what Richardson did. Or what he tried to do. Ever. My father - and Daisy and Kreger and the rest - were knowingly complicit in atrocities. They did things I can't imagine any incarnation of you doing on your worst day. Despite all that, knowing someone - loving them - covers up a great multitude of sins."
She tried to smile, but her face crumpled at the memory. "I thought Doc Mitchell knew me too. And I was, like, one-hundred-percent squishy niceness back then."
He sighed and sat down against the wall, resigned to another long conversation. "You ended up going to Goodsprings after all?"
"Yeah. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but still… it wasn't the kind of closure I had hoped for."
He was sympathetic. "I'm sorry. It's probably hard for him to reconcile who he thought you were with who you are now. He may think you deceived him, somehow. That you were putting on some kind of act from the beginning."
She clenched her teeth. This was the moment. "Arcade, what would you say if I told you that I recognized your name the first time we met?"
"Uh… that you didn't." Flat contradiction, mingled with confusion.
"Hear me out. If I close my eyes and concentrate on a certain memory, I'm somewhere I've never been. There's snow under my feet and it's crunchy. It's cold, but I don't really feel it because I'm in power armor. I'm on guard duty." What she didn't mention was the worst part of this almost-memory: the loneliness she'd felt there, the knowledge that she should have been somewhere else.
"What does this have to do with…" he began, before switching tacks. "Where?"
"In a city with a lot of tall buildings. The courtyard is small - just forty steps on each of four sides. I make a circuit every ten minutes, then come back to the door I'm guarding. I wait there for a count of sixty, until my joints start to stiffen up. Then I go around again. While I wait, I read this… inscription in front of me. It's written on an ugly, blocklike memorial. On it, it says…"
"Megan…" he interrupted again, sounding completely lost.
She talked over him resolutely. "Across the top, it says 'our fallen heroes in the fight against the Brotherhood of Steel.' Midway down a list of names, there's 'First Lieutenant Israel Gannon, April…' uh, 'April something, 2047.' I apparently spent so much time at that post, staring at that stupid marker, that even now the names come through. In alphabetical order, there was Sergeant Oscar Anselmo-"
Arcade stopped her there, sharp and sad. "Spare me the recitation. My father died on the twenty-first of April. Passover. He didn't get back in time for the dinner… and then he didn't come home at all. I was four going on five. Johnson probably told you and you forgot. Why dredge this up?"
"No. He didn't tell me. At the end, Johnson couldn't remember his own birthdate to save his life, let alone other details. I'm telling you that some part of me knew who you were the moment you introduced yourself. I'm telling you that you have just as much right as Doc Mitchell to feel like I've been deceiving you. And I wanted to come clean, because you deserve to know."
He slumped back against the wall, crossing his arms in front of himself, an unreadable expression on his face. "How long have you been sitting on this?"
She picked at a loose thread on her blanket. "Since May. After I got shot in Freeside, I dreamed for a long time. Benny - that Chairman who shot me, whom I killed - showed me things. A lot of 'em seem true now that I've had the chance to sift through them."
"You and your dreams." He said this with airy contempt, but she could tell she'd shaken him a little. "Did 'Benny' have any other earth-shattering intelligence to impart?"
"There is one thing he said that I still can't make sense of. Can't remember the details of, either. He said that the Legion never would have mustered a second bid on the Mojave if it weren't for me."
"That's just ridiculous. Your oxygen-starved brain might have retrieved some real information in extremis - I'm not convinced that's what actually happened, mind you - but you've always tried to shoulder more than your share of guilt. The Legion rose again on a complex set of conditions, not because of the peregrinations of one person-"
"Hopeville," she said, suddenly remembering. "He mentioned Hopeville. Until two years ago, the Divide was a trade route, right? A lifeline to the NCR. It was a severe blow for them to lose it. It hurt their ability to do more than just hold the Dam."
"Yes," he said cautiously. "When I first came out here with the Followers, years ago, that's the road we took. It wasn't much - a few farms is all I remember - but it was a lot more direct than the I-15. That would be one of those conditions I mentioned, albeit an important one."
"So maybe I blew it up. Or the Enclave did. Same difference, right?" She threw out this damning possibility with wild abandon, not really thinking it was true - It couldn't be true; if it was, how could anybody cope with that that? - but wanting Arcade to try to convince her it wasn't possible. Sure enough, he obliged.
"Don't say that. It's not a joking matter. Putting aside the how, why would they even do that?"
She rolled her eyes. She wasn't a fan of willfully-stupid Arcade."To destabilize the NCR. To test their control over the weapons systems at Ashton missile base. I don't know. You had to have considered it before," she continued raggedly. "You have a known Enclave presence, weapons of mass destruction, and human misery. Doesn't that add up to you?"
"All of Ignacio's models… all remotely-available evidence… still point to a natural disaster combined with two-hundred-year-old missile storage. But say they did have a role in it. Where'd they go then? Your brothers-in-arms. If they brought it down on their own heads somehow, why weren't you standing next to them? To me, that speaks to a choice that you made. Perhaps precipitated by a crisis, perhaps not. Some decision of yours made you into a hapless courier who got landed with House's package. I consider you a defector, and that's a good thing in my book. You left before you had to." It was a passionate speech by his standards, defending her from her own accusations, and Megan appreciated it, even though she had yet another bombshell to drop.
In for a penny, in for a pound. God, I wish I was drunk. "That's another thing. I'm not a courier. I'm pretty sure I killed a courier and appropriated her number. And Ulysses knows that. Hell, maybe that's why he's so pissed at me. Because I murdered someone important to him."
But Arcade didn't take this information the way she expected him to. Instead, he shook his head, a skeptical smile on his face. "Did 'Benny' tell you that?"
"No, I told you that, in the Penthouse of the Lucky 38, right after I used your Enclave associations to blackmail you into helping me rule Vegas. And threatened to sic Boone on you if you refused. He was fiercely loyal to me in this… vision."
Arcade actually laughed, though there was an uneasy sound to it. "That's quite a dream. I can almost imagine it."
"Are you mad?"
"That you blackmailed me in an imaginary alternate universe? No, I can forgive you for that. Easily. Ignosco tibi. There! It's done. Stop worrying. Go to sleep."
"No," she said slowly. "That my subconscious has been running a long-con with you as the mark. It's done a good job. You eventually gave me everything I could possibly want - armor, contacts, information, medical care. 'Cause you're too nice and I'm apparently a much better actress than I thought I was."
"That's not the way it was. You can't retroactively assign yourself ulterior motives." He leaned his head back to rest on the wall, and Megan saw for the first time how tired he looked, and felt a new flush of shame for unloading on him. "Look, forget motivation for now. That's not a productive train of thought with you, you're so… internally divided. You mostly act in a way that an impartial observer would interpret as innocent. Stupid and self-destructive sometimes, but more or less virtuous. I would tell you if you weren't. Your life's not an elaborate lie. If it was, I wouldn't have thrown in my lot with you."
"How are people treating you, Arcade?" He stared at her, taken aback by the abrupt change of subject. She clarified the question, "I mean, have you experienced any recent personal or social fallout from all of the… um, rumors, floating about?"
"Well… since you ask, yes. Most of the apprentices going on the trip are terrified of me. It makes for a very strange team dynamic. I don't even know who's telling them - they're all new arrivals since my time at the Fort - but it's an open secret among the Followers." He trailed off gloomily, before continuing on a lighter note. "It's not all bad. Gloria Van Graff has always treated me like scum. But yesterday, when I went to stock on ammo, she was positively obsequious. Offered me a hefty discount on a plasma caster, even."
Megan laughed at this, thinking of the cutthroat businesswoman courting Arcade's respect. "She thinks you might be in a position to deliver them an energy-weapons contract."
Arcade's smile faded. "Yes. Though if that has occurred to her, it does concern me that the Brotherhood or the NCR might be thinking along the same lines, despite the former's current distractions and the latter's failure to condemn you. We need to get out of here."
"Two more days. Less than that now. The morning after tomorrow."
"It can't come soon enough."
