They walked into the concourse in silence. Lucky held her arm to her face to shield it or to blot the blood dripping from her nose. She didn't look at Boone, her gun still in her hand as they walked into the main body of the airport. A young woman was sitting on a bench near the door crying. Lucky didn't have the curiosity or gumption to ask what was wrong, she just looked around.
She pulled her arm from her face and Boone finally saw blood dripping down her chin. She glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye and mumbled obscenities under her breathe. Boone brushed away a few strands of black hair that had stuck her face and Lucky flinched. He didn't know how she had gotten hurt, nor did he remember the exact events that led up to her bleeding all over the concourse. He just remembered getting hit and her looming over him.
"Are you alright?" he asked. Lucky stuck up a finger to stop his questioning. With her eyes glazing over, she ran to a nearby trash can. He stood there as she bent over and began spitting furiously into it. She wretched and gagged and after she had paused long enough to gasp for breath, he came up to her. He was about to place his hand on her back when he saw that she was tapping the barrel of her gun to her thigh. "Another headache?"
Lucky shook her head and spit again.
"I'm fine," she answered with a wavering voice.
"Let me look," Boone insisted. He put his hands on her shoulders and carefully began to turn her towards him. Her arm shot back up to her face and she shook her head. "Please?"
"Are you a doctor?" her muffled voice asked. Her large eyes were bloodshot and watering as she looked at him. She looked like a child staring at him, nearly weak and afraid. Pain was apparent; along with the small spatters of blood that had dotted her cheeks like freckles from her coughing. "I can deal with it myself."
"Are you okay?" the woman on the bench questioned.
"He needs a doctor," Lucky replied and pointed at Boone.
"It's not that bad. It looks almost like a shaving cut," he remarked. "You're the one that's bleeding everywhere."
"No I'm not," Lucky argued. "I've swallowed most of it."
Boone felt his stomach wrench. That was a disgusting admission. She just stared at him.
"If I may," the woman interrupted. "The doctor is just over there." She pointed to the left of the mess area. "I hope you feel better, ma'am."
Lucky nodded and started in the direction of the clinic with Boone trailing behind her. He kept looking at the gun in her hand and then to the small trail of blood drops she was creating. She walked behind the screen and cleared her throat. A gray-haired man was sitting on a bench with his back to them.
"Doc, I've got a guy here with a small neck injury," she said. "It's small, but I'd like it -" The doctor turned toward her and she came to a dead stop. She took a step backward and bumped into Boone.
"What's wrong?" he whispered in her ear.
She didn't move. Her whole body became ridged. It was like she was incapable of doing anything. The doctor got up and looked closer at the two of them. He set down a clipboard on the bench and waved Lucky over.
"No, not me, him. I can take care of myself," Lucky growled. The doctor came up to her and gently pulled her arm away. He recoiled at the sight and it was an interesting enough response that even Boone – against his own better judgment – went around her so he could see what had happened. He sharply inhaled at the amount of blood that had caked around her face, but Lucky seemed like it didn't bother her. "Hi, Doctor Kemp," she murmured softly.
"I thought it was you," Doctor Kemp stated with relief. "How have you been?"
Kemp led her to a gurney and patted for her to hop up on it. She looked at Boone with an unfamiliar softness. It was like she had regressed ten years. She seemed smaller, more helpless, than when she had left the interrogation room. Kemp looked down and saw the gun in her hand and frowned.
"Do you want me to take that?" Boone asked, extending his hand.
Lucky's hand tightened around the grip, like a mother holding her child's hand.
"No. It'll be alright," the doctor insisted. "Come on now, let's get you cleaned up."
Lucky sat on the gurney and Doc Kemp went to a supply cabinet and began to rummage around.
Boone examined his friend. Her head hung, blood dripped on to her gloves. Her gun sat beside her within arms reach. Her ankles swung slowly back and forth. He came to her and placed his hands to either of her legs and sighed.
"Were you really concerned?" she asked without looking up at him. She blew a bloody droplet from her upper lip. "About the chip."
He slumped slightly and shook his head. He didn't know how he felt. Sure, the damn thing nearly got her killed once and there were many people who would love to get their dirty hands on it; she would have been collateral damage, like before.
"I was being straight up with you," he replied. "That thing is dangerous."
"What isn't anymore?" she queried back. She pulled her glasses from her face and squinted at him. "I'm dangerous. You're dangerous. That's dangerous," she remarked, pointing to her gun. She shuddered softly and began twisting her fingers anxiously. "I'm sorry about cutting you."
"Yeah about that. What happened? How did you end up like this?" he asked. He placed a hand on hers and squeezed.
"It's a-a-a long story. I don't ask you about your wife or anything right?" she spat.
"No, you haven't," he answered.
"It's not my place to ask," she stated. "If I was really that interested I would."
Boone took off his beret and scratched his head. He leaned his back against the gurney and saw the doctor nosing around in a cupboard.
"What do you want to know?" he queried as he folded his arms.
"I said I wasn't that interested," she snapped loudly. Doc Kemp turned at the commotion and shook his head. He turned and had a large tray with gauze and water and rubber gloves. "I just want the day to be over with."
"Alright," Kemp said as he pulled a stool over and sat. "You're going to need to move."
Boone stepped to the side and made his way to a bench. He watched as the doctor donned his gloves and proceeded to pour water onto a pad of gauze and began washing away the drying blood from her face. He knew they were talking by how Lucky was nodding her head. A couple of times she would answer with a small glance in his direction, but that was about it. She didn't smile, or laugh, just seemed distant as the man continued to work.
Kemp stood and pushed the tray aside and Lucky pulled her gloves off. The doctor examined them. He turned each over one by one and smiled. She put her gloves back on and he handed her a bottle of water. She placed it to her lips and swished it around. She leaned over a small pan and spat pink water into it. Doc patted her knee and then made his way to Boone.
"Alright, come over here," he ordered with a wave.
"Did she say what happened?" Boone asked as he continued to watch Lucky wash her mouth out.
"She did," he looked back at Lucky as well for an instant and then at Boone. His eyebrows furrowed as he pulled out a second set of latex gloves. "She said it was her fault."
"She said that?" he questioned.
"There's blood on the cylinder of that gun," Kemp explained as he turned Boone's head away from him. "She looks like she'd been pistol whipped." The doctor glared at him accusingly. A coarse gauze pad soaked in alcohol ran down his throat. "She also said you took her gun and she hit you."
"She did and pulled a knife," Boone admitted. The doc's hands left the side of his face and returned to normal. The doctor was watching Lucky again. She was getting off the gurney and adjusting her bloody jacket. Her hands scrounged around her pockets and came to her breast pocket. Her fingers snuck inside and pulled out a cigarette. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her lighter. "I've never seen anyone act like that before."
"I'm surprised she even said that much," Kemp replied with a frown. He shook his head as Lucky lit her smoke and walked around the medical area. "When she came in she wouldn't or couldn't talk. Beside the fact that she was nearly dead she just was a traumatized child."
"That's nothing new," Boone grumbled.
Doctor Kemp shot him a look and threw the gauze on the gurney. He snatched a clean one and doused it in water. He began cleaning the blood and alcohol away and frowned.
"No. She had lost a lot of blood. When her father brought her in, she looked like someone had run her through a meat grinder. Cuts, compound fractures and every time she moved she made the problem worse. It took four men to hold her down just so I could sedate her," the doctor explained. "Back then, we didn't have the facilities to handle that kind of trauma. I had at first told her father that she probably wasn't going to survive the night, but he wouldn't give up.
It was several hours of cleaning just to see where the wounds began and she ended." Boone closed his eyes and shook his head. "The things we discovered after we got her stabilized..." he paused and shuddered. His eyes teared up slightly as he remembered back to that time. "It might have been a mercy to just let her die and no one that was there that night was ever same."
Lucky walked up to the two men and examined them briefly.
"I'm going to see the Colonel. I'll be back," she said.
"Don't worry about him. He'll be with you shortly," Kemp stated. Lucky nodded and headed back to the terminal. The doctor returned his attention to Boone. "We had to put her in a medically induced coma that didn't completely work while her bones were set. She would scream about dogs in her sleep. She would just yell that Papa was going to get her and he was going to kill her and feed her dad to the dogs. That girl was damaged. She wouldn't even let her father touch her."
"She said something about dogs today when she attacked me," Boone admitted.
"I'm not surprised. But even those utterances were far and few between and only when she slept. When she was awake, she never spoke. She was almost catatonic. Weeks of silence accompanied with the thousand yard stare just made life even more unbearable for her father," Kemp said with a melancholic tone.
"She stayed here for a couple of months out of the eyes of the soldiers that were starting to come in. The biggest breakthrough for both of us came when we allowed her to walk around outside. As long as she wasn't underfoot, we figured the sunlight would do her good.
She saw a small squad of soldiers that were getting settled in. She still had braces on her legs and she still had enough gauze and bandages to make her look like one of those mummies out of the old Pre-War horror movies. Her father was never more than a couple of feet away from her at all times. He just watched her stare at the recruits.
When you measured the size of her then to what the average thirteen old was, she looked stunted. Probably from the continuous breaks and malnutrition she'd received."
"I walked up to him, nervous, obviously after what had happened to me, drawing attention to myself in fear of retribution would have been the last thing on my mind," Lucky said. "Something about him just made me feel warm, safe. He was youthful and laughed, strong. Even though his eyes said something else, like hesitation and anticipation. Kind of like my dad. I pulled on his jacket and first he didn't respond. I didn't know if he noticed me and it had taken a lot of energy just to do it once.
It wasn't until one of the other guys in the unit pointed me out. He drew the attention of the others and they all just kind of stared, like I was some freak that had escaped its cage. Even through their ignorance, they have no idea how correct they were in that matter. The recruit turned and looked at me. He didn't make a face, he just looked down at me, maybe he was a little worried about my condition. I don't know; I'm not a mind reader.
He looked me in the eye. It was the first time someone had done that since Papa. But there wasn't a vacant, heartlessness there. It was softer, like I didn't have to be scared of them.
"What is it, kid?" the soldier asked. He smiled gently at her, but didn't look away. It was like he wasn't disgusted by the dirty bandages or blackened whites.
"You look lost," Lucky muttered.
The soldier just looked at her, confused by what she had uttered. She looked away from him when another soldier came up from behind the first.
"Jesus Christ, man, what happened to her?" the second asked more with amusement than concern. "Did you find yourself a girlfriend already? Damn, I am envious of your way with women. You've even got little girls walking up to you to talk."
"Can it!" the first snapped. He folded his arms and thought for a moment.
"He almost seemed embarrassed then. He could have told me to leave and I would have. I wasn't normal anymore. I was just a beat up person with no identity," Lucky stated.
"Hey, Vargas, do we still have any of those teddy bears we give to the kids in the settlements?" the soldier asked.
Vargas nodded and went into the tent. Lucky was apprehensive about the noise the recruit was making. She looked up at the soldier watching her and he smiled sweetly. It was strange; like he could see through the bandages and bruises to the girl that was under there. Vargas returned with a small teddy bear. It had a red bow around its neck and the cute little smile plastered across his face. He handed it to the soldier and shook his head in amusement.
The soldier bent down to her eye level and frowned. It wasn't against her, but what had been caused to her. He held up the teddy bear and Lucky stared at it. She didn't know what to do; she hadn't been offered anything in years without being punished for someone's entertainment. Her fingers twitched nervously as she reached out for it. Her eyes kept darting between the bear and the man, waiting for him to punish her for even considering taking it. She looked to the man standing behind her like she didn't know what to do.
"It's alright, honey," a man off to the side stated.
Lucky stared at the bear and felt hot tears start to fall. The soldier went to wipe them away and she became rigid. The soldier looked at the man briefly, likely questioning what had caused her hypervigilance. He hushed her gently and placed the teddy to her chest, making it seem like it was giving her a hug. She put her arms around it and he noticed her wincing in pain.
"Are you going to keep the bad men away?" she asked.
"I'm going to try my damnedest," he answered. He let out a sigh and stood. Her eyes followed his every movement. "I'm sure just like your father over there, we're going to make sure the bad men can't get to people like you anymore." He looked at Vargas over his shoulder and shook his head. "You just protect that bear for me, okay?"
Lucky nodded and toddled back to her father, who seemed elated by her speaking for the first time.
"I hadn't said anything to anyone in almost four years. I wasn't allowed to. The first person I open up to wasn't my father, but a person I knew had to go. The rest of his group was already gearing up. Vargas had his rifle and was getting ready to hand another to the soldier," Lucky told her friend.
"You ready to go, Boone?" Vargas asked as the soldier took his weapon.
Boone looked at the little girl and smiled.
"Yeah, I'll be right there," he replied.
Boone didn't realize that he'd been staring at the pictures laid out on the desk. It was like a natural progression and decimation of a person's life – her life. The once vibrant – possibly bubbly – youth; grinning with her two front teeth missing. Beautiful, innocent, happy.
"Ogden. Ogden?" Boone questioned.
He didn't or couldn't remember where that was. Why would a desert ranger go up that way? Sure, he'd heard of the place, but that was where New Canaan was. He'd only heard about them briefly while he was in the military. They were insular, good fighters, but strange. Not like other Wasteland cults, but highly religious. At least, that's what Lucky had told him after she'd come back from Utah.
He looked at the bandaged little girl looking at the soldier and barely remembered a little girl like that. She was eerie, withdrawn. Every movement he made, she scrutinized. The girl's father looked shocked and relieved when she'd spoke. Why couldn't he remember the little girl as well as Lucky could? So many different situations had clouded his memory till there was nothing but bloodied gauze and large, vacant child eyes staring up at him.
Lucky had given him the same look before. It tugged at him, made him hate himself for forgetting. Made him loathe time. It was one of the turning points in his life that made him know that he was working to improve the lot of the Mojave. She was a catalyst, this was what he was working for. His eyes drifted up to the teddy bear and his heart broke.
"Do you get it now?" Lucky asked. "Do you get why I did what I had to for you? Because you didn't see some broken girl who'd been terrorized. My own dad didn't want to look at me because of his shame. He was supportive, but distant. Just keeping me at arm's reach.
The teddy bear. The photo. All were the things that kept me going after I killed my father. I didn't think I'd see you again. With the Legion around life expectancy is pretty short for NCR."
Boone turned from the Pip-Boy. He didn't know. She didn't tell him. He had no idea why she was telling him all of this now. It didn't matter, he was leaving; their adventures were over. Even she had said that after they got back to the 38. Adventures? The way she had said it was like she was trying to put distance between the two of them.
He agreed. She had helped him with Carla, but they both knew that he was still coming to terms with her death. Lucky told him that he was married to the city now, as if it was some joke. Of course he wasn't going to leave the place where he was the happiest, where the moments of Carla still lingered in the every fluorescent light bulb. He wasn't going to stray far from it. Like he should have for Carla.
He found himself unknowingly breathing. His heart felt like it was going to burst from his chest. He picked up the photo of the Dam and shook his head. They were together, always together, except when they weren't. She always had her reasons for not bringing him, but for the most part they were inseparable. He liked it, he felt like he was useful. He was protective of his friend and she was to him. Maybe their reasoning were different, but the same message was emoted. They cared, but couldn't do anything about it. He was grieving, she was incapable. At times, he found himself looking down at her, more worried about her well-being than for his own. At others, he was comparing Lucky to Carla. It almost seemed involuntary. You spend enough time with someone and the thoughts do tend to pop up.
"So, yeah, Abby, was me. I took the name Lucky after Dad died. It seemed almost fitting and woefully ironic. Everyone has told me I should be dead, whether it's from my doctor, or others I've met in passing it always seemed to be the same. 'You should be dead.' And it's ironic in the sense that I've been shot, stabbed, raped, hung, strangled, beaten, and lost every important father figure I've had is Mojave dust," Lucky stated. "And no matter how many times you told me you were chasing down death, I wasn't going to let you die, not at Bitter Springs and not at the Fort. You had to live so the memories of your wife and child could live. If I'd have died, little to nothing would have changed. You just wouldn't know about me, what I've done.
I figured it was time to let someone know in case..."