The book, less easily digested than all those layers of cloying cake, seeped into her dreams as she cradled herself in Graverobber's strong arms. Anne-Marie often dreamed in outrageously manic color and sound when she dreamed at all; this dream was a scroll of text, and when she woke up in the middle of the night she was mumbling as if reading. He drooled in his sleep, the paint faded and smeared around his mouth and chin from kissing her mouth and up twixt her thighs: a birthday present, he'd grinned wolfish at her. The words flooded up with senses, his tongue, his spit and her spit, frosting kisses.
It had been a hell of a birthday.
Morning brought hangovers for her friends and hot breakfast for her. The others couldn't stand the smells of peppery eggs and fried spam, protested when she shoveled the food into her mouth in several large bites and then burped their way. Shilo grumbled into one of the last slices of cake, now stale and dry, her head in her hand, while Butch kneaded a knot on her shoulder.
"She's alright?" Graverobber asked, donning sunglasses indoors when the blinking lights made him wince and moan. "You don't need a doc, do you, kid?"
"Pulled it sleeping on a cot," Shilo sighed. "Who knew you could get used to lying on the ground?" The boys clucked sympathetically while Anne-Marie suckled at a cold cola. Everything reminded her of fucking, such as her mouth wrapped around the lips of a sweating bottle, such as the thought of the warm ground under her back, such as Graverobber's knee tickling hers when he shifted on the barstool. None of those thoughts were specific about partner in the fantasy. She'd still take Butch in a heartbeat.
"Anne-Marie?" repeated Graverobber, jostling her from her fugue like a breeze. "You in there?"
"What? Me? Yeah?" she said, shaking her head. "Sorry, I just need the caffeine to kick in."
"I said, Anne-Marie, you ready to head out?" He looked half-way between amused and annoyed.
She nodded, shouldered her backpack, and helped the others get their gear together and pack it all on. The place had earned a generous tip, handfuls of caps pooled by the party from their individual collections. They left it in a clean mug with a hand-written thank you note, signed by the Lone Wanderer, as if autographs were worth anything like days of old. She didn't feel like saying goodbye to anyone, so she didn't, trusting to chance that she'd see Rivet City again.
An hour out from the craft, Graverobber held up his hand to stop them. A figure approached them, her hands held aloft in supplication. "Hold on, ladies and gent," he purred, "We have a Largo vixen to take care of." They all readied their weapons, and by the time the woman was close enough to see they were ready for her. "Why, Amber Sweet," he said, identifying her for Anne-Marie and Butch, who were in the dark to her appearance. They would later learn that appearance had been ever-changing, leaving it a mystery to how he had picked her out.
Amber Sweet wore a white coat, starched and bleached and cut to fit her perky frame, her hair dyed pink and cut in a garish asymmetrical bob. She smiled at Graverobber through black lips and opened her arms to him. "My old baby," she said. "So glad you made it."
When he didn't accept her invitation to embrace, her smile faded but still she held out her arms, and Anne-Marie thought of the crucifixion, a necklace she had left in her bedside drawer in Vault 101. "What do you want, Sweet?" he asked, voice etched with ire. "Talk fast. Your family's the reason we're in this predicament, wandering the world."
"Wasteland life suits you. Suits you, too, Shilo," Amber sniffed. "It's nice to see you making your way in the world, outside of daddy's clutches. That's all I want. You've killed my whole family. I'm not the idiot everyone thought I was; when they disappeared I knew it had to be you. It was, wasn't it?" There was desperation in her throat, in the huff of her chest. Anne-Marie wanted to step in with some caustic remark or a bat to one of her legs, but this wasn't her fight, if it was a fight at all. Except she had killed one of Amber's horrible brothers.
Shilo cut her eyes to her, pursed her lips, and took the fall for her. "Yes, I killed them. They tried to kill us first."
"Shi, you heard my father. We could've been sisters. You can't blame me for my older brothers being monsters." Still Amber brought her fingers up to smudge tears from the corners of her eyes. "Give me a chance for closure. Let me come with you."
"Fuck that," Graverobber growled. He grabbed Shilo's wrist. "Come on, kid, let's get out of here. We don't need this harpy manipulating us."
"Manipulating you?" Sweet laughed. "I've been completely honest with you. I gave you sex. I gave you love. I gave everyone everything they ever wanted from me. All I want is this one thing I want: the truth."
Shilo hung her head, deep in thought. In the space when no one spoke and she considered, they heard a roar and the shuffle of large paws on dry earth, a sound that Anne-Marie knew well from her travels alone: a Yao-Guai, its territory disturbed and cubs endangered. Before they could fire off a single shot, Amber whistled and moved toward it, her hand held high in strange salute. The Yao-Guai continued to charge and Amber did not hesitate, her whistle too soft and pitched to detect unless she watched her lips, her hand steady in the face of a certain chomp.
They met a little less than halfway between. The Yao-Guai halted and slowed, stared into her blue eyes, and tilted its head down into her palm. No one moved a muscle, staring dumbfounded as Amber Sweet massaged its nose and crooned, "Good lamb. Good lamb."
Its posture slumped down and it dragged its tongue up along her cheek. Satisfied that her weird hypnosis had worked, Amber turned around with a smile. "Neat, aren't I? I picked that up my first month out here. While I'm with you, animals won't harm you. I can teach all of you how."
In the end, it was decided to be safer to take her with them than to leave her behind. This animal whispering could be an asset, like Anne-Marie's affinity for disarming explosives and Shilo's lock-picking, Graverobber's pick-pocketing and Butch's computer savvy. The pampered heiress seemed to have vanished. What remained was well-dressed, too, but she got down in the dirt and blood to fight and wander that first day. Shilo walked beside her as a guard, her sniper rifle carefully shouldered and her peripheral vision trained on her not-sister.
"What do you know about the Enclave?" Shilo asked carefully, figuring the others weren't listening. They tended towards exasperation when she brought up the holotape.
Puzzled, she said, "Didn't the Lone Wanderer take them out? They were the big bad guys keeping tabs on everyone, and she was the mighty warrior who swooped in and ended their reign of terror with a push of a button. At least, that's what I gathered from the radio. Sound familiar?" She tilted her head. "I thought she was, you know, alone. You seem to be a... pack."
"We're a family," she snapped. "And, yes, that's what we all thought about the Enclave. I have one reason to believe there's something more to the story. It concerns you, too."
"Me?" Amber's butterfly wing lashes fluttered. "Do tell. Perhaps I can shed some light."
Shilo slid the holotape into a player she kept on her hip, a fairly new addition, and hit play. The tape chewed itself, and then the agonizing voice that made her want to cry: "Shilo. My God, Shilo. I hope you're okay and this gets to you. Listen to me. I know you're with good people, I know I told you to change the world, but listen! Stay away from the Enclave and from its GeneCo division. I love you."
Amber sniffed derisively. "GeneCo is dead, Wallace. So is the Enclave. Someone with the right technology is fucking with you because you're famous." When Shilo showed her surprise, Amber's eyebrows jumped up and she nodded slowly. "Oh yeah. You picked a celebrity for a mother bear and it infected you. How about that."
"I never wanted to... But that's not true. As a kid, I wanted to be famous. Even a year or so ago, I wanted people to scream my name." She shook her head. "Stupid girl."
"Nah, it's normal. I had that wish too. You know what people did for all my work? They laughed at me. So here I am, slumming it and kind of loving it." Sweet snorted and tossed her hair. "You and I are more alike than you could ever imagine. Just don't imagine too hard."
"Oh, trust me, I won't." As they walked, she felt Amber Sweet's cool gaze on her. "What is it?" she finally asked.
"Graverobber. You're sleeping with him, aren't you?" she simpered, fetching a cigarette and fitting it to her pout. The lighter snicked life into her smoke. "If not, you should be. He's packing."
Shilo scoffed and did not correct her, or dignify it with a response. She didn't feel safe sleeping with the youngest Largo in their camp but couldn't puzzle out a way around it. Butch wrapped his arms around her and she rested her hand close to Graverobber's hair while the Lone Wanderer slept away from the fire, her back to everyone. It was nothing personal, everyone knew. As much as she loved them, their leader needed the night to be a lonely thing. That night was cold and they huddled, shivering, under coats as they slept to the sound of the breeze stirring through dust.
For hours, that was their only surroundings, the breeze and ash and empty plains, strategic traps in a circle to keep the monsters out. Shilo's eyes flickered once or twice in the night, to be sure everyone was still there, that Amber Sweet had not stolen away her friends the way Rotti Largo had stolen her from her mother's tomb. For hours, there was nothing wrong. And then it ended.
Raiders came shrieking in the night, and Amber's sugary whistles and calls would do nothing against them. Shilo, Butch, and Anne-Marie jerked awake and reached for their weapons, but Graverobber was ready. He had a sixth sense when it came to danger. "Get behind me!" he yelled, emptying his pack, digging through it. "Where the fuck are our Nuka grenades?"
"They're all gone, fucker," Anne-Marie howled, running forward with a steel bat she'd picked up in Rivet City. She christened it with blood and bone when she bashed it into a man's face, crushing his jaw, the crunch of teeth reverberating up through her arm, bringing her joy. With another swing she opened his skull. Spinning and counting told her there were five raiders left, and that Amber Sweet was ducking, covering her head with a shielded arm. In the next moment she faded and vanished altogether. Twat could have told them she had a Stealth Boy; for some reason they hadn't frisked her or even taken inventory when she started up with them.
"Amber!" Shilo yelled, somersaulting behind Butch to grab up her gun, drop the safety, and shoot one coming at them through the eye. Then she looked around and saw another person missing in the fray, a splash of red left behind where he'd been digging through his pack. The messenger bag laid not ten feet away, still empty, its entrails scattered and its owner missing. Her heart throbbed and her eyes pulsed with something like crying as she screamed, "Graverobber! This isn't funny!"
"Not now, Shilo," Butch said, pulling her out of the way so he could throw his toothpick with one thrust deep in the gut of a raider. Shilo tumbled to her knees, clutching her gun to her breast, and shot up, catching another raider in the throat. She steadied herself and aimed again, taking out the final enemy of the wave. Butch punched up, his fist and arm profusely bloody from the maniac dying on top of his knife, and grunted as he let them fall in a slump of dead flesh on the dirt. He nudged them with the toe of his boot to be sure they were gone.
"Graverobber!" Shilo plead, looking around. The air in front of her wavered, and Amber reappeared. She looked around, hands on her hips, clearly impressed. "Amber, Graverobber's gone!"
"The raiders took him, I'm sure," she said, bending to check the pulse on a girl with a mohawk.
"Fucking damn it to shit!" Shilo burst, tears streaming down. "We could have left one alive. We have to save him. Anne-Marie, what do we do?"
Shaking gristle off her bat, the Lone Wanderer waved off to the side, where the attack had come from; a trail of blood drops followed. It was clear he had been injured when carried off. Only his discovery could tell them how badly he had been injured- or if he would survive. Amber didn't want to give up her Stealth Boy, only ceding it when Anne-Marie pushed her over and got her in a headlock, pulling her hair. Shilo could admit, if only to herself, it pleased her to see Amber Sweet get her ass handed to her after skipping out on the fight. The defeated Amber held aloft her right arm and Shilo took the Stealth Boy, clamping it around her fishnet clad left arm.
"I'll be back in less than the three hours it'll take for the effects to wear off," she told them, and took a swig of water. She'd changed into Anne-Marie's spare vault suit, hiking up the pant legs. Though it was a tad long for her petite body, the pants would be easier to sneak in than her little sheath and cocktail dresses.
"Be careful, babydoll. I don't know what I'd do without you," Butch said, and she could tell that he truly meant it. She grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and vaulted herself up on her toes to kiss him hard on the mouth. He asked, "Does that mean you promise to come back in one piece?"
"I promise to do my best. Keep Anne-Marie safe. Oh, and if Amber tries to disappear again, you have my permission to hit a girl," Shilo said. She gave Anne-Marie a one-armed hug, shouldered her weapon, stuffed a box of lockpicks in her pocket, and headed off along the blood trail.
The smell hit her first. Nothing terrible, the smoke of campfire and tobacco. Friendly smells did not mean a friendly welcoming, so she turned on the stealth field and watched her feet and shadow vanish. Raiders, roasting weenies around their fire, discarded inhalers and syringes littering the ground... but no Graverobber. The blood was less in the camp, but she followed it steadfastly, her breaths as soft and quiet as she could manage them while her belly flopped around. At last, after a good ten minutes searching a decently sized but messy encampment, she found him guarded and hanging upside-down by his ankles from a pole. She sneaked up on the raider standing guard and snapped his neck so quickly he had no time to alert the rest. Then, looking around to see no one had been alerted to her presence and under the cover of night, she took on visibility again and pressed a finger to Graverobber's black lips.
"Quiet," she murmured, and felt his head for injury, winding her fingers through the coils of his shoulder-length hair. Finding no wound, she instead felt the drip, drip, drip of blood on her shoulder and looked up to see the tendon on his ankle had been sliced. "Oh, fuck."
"Fuck's right," he sighed, licking his lips. "This seem familiar to you, kid?"
"Not funny," she said, still stroking his head and looking into his cobalt blue eyes, willing herself not to cry. This was no time to cry. She cried anyways, wrapped her hand in his hair, and pressed her lips to his. They kissed for what felt like a long time, lips sliding together with the rhythm of those who kiss often, tasting salt and iron and the sweet softness of his tongue. When they came apart, he handed her something from his coat, nearly whacking her in the head with it. A Zydrate extractor. "I... didn't know you still had this," she blubbered.
"Use it on that stiff, then inject the Z into me once you untie me. With a little help from the glow, I'll be able to get back to camp," he said, giving instruction in the rumble that had never affected her before then. As it was, her legs threatened to give out with every syllable. She accepted the extractor and knelt over the corpse.
She'd killed. Moments before, even. Yet, her grip on the plunger was weak and sweaty, her thoughts full of her mother. "I... I can't," she whispered.
"Yes, you can. You're not that seventeen year old shut-in anymore, Shilo."
"Then what am I?" she demanded, her voice quiet and fierce in insistence.
"You're the woman I love," he said, his voice cracking. "And you're the woman who's going to save my life, and then I'm going to save yours, over and over, as long as it takes until we're safe."
Suffice it to say that she summoned the courage to plunge the needle up the dead fucker's nostril and extract his Zydrate, the glow filling the body of the vial. She fiddled with the extractor, swapped out the needle for a clean one from her paltry medical kit, amazed at her new calm. She believed every word he had said, with no qualms. It took a moment to help him down, another moment to inject him with the Zydrate in a vein along his wrist. He sighed, kneading his ankle, and she injected him again, this time with Med-X. Lovingly, she wrapped an ace bandage around the formerly injured, now healing area, and secured it with a bobby pin. He showed his love in his eyes. She showed it in her hands. Shilo smoothed sweat off his face.
"Here," she said, and secured the Stealth Boy around his wrist, activating it. "I walk softer than you do."
"And the Lone Wanderer carries a big stick," he joked, but she could no longer see where the voice was coming from. Silently, she rose, and in silence she followed an invisible warmth back home.
It made all the sense in the world. He had always been there. They had what she and Butch never did: comfort, ease. There was no confusion in her mind as to who she loved, and she couldn't wait to tell those who mattered and lasted in this world. The only question remaining was how to do it without hurting her sister. This was no girlish dream. This was real. Her lips still tingled.
When they made it back to camp, Butch was in distress, tearing at his hair. Anne-Marie and Amber Sweet were conspicuously missing.
"That got-danged goodie two shoes! I told her not to go!" Butch swore. "I had to wait here for you two bozos, she said she had to keep an eye on Amber Sweet and dragged her off with her!"
"Butch, honey, what are you talking about?" Shilo asked, quickly gathering up Graverobber's things to hand back to him. Aside from those few possessions, a few cans of food and a pair of sunglasses, the rest of their camp was picked up and all apart, the bodies of the dead cast off to the side.
"The Lone Wanderer- Anne-Marie, she saw one of those Enclave eyebots and said she'd find your dad for you. She said she'd help you. I told her she was being an idiot, but did she listen to me?" He hacked and spat on the ground, then muttered, "She never listens to me."
"So she... followed an eyebot? You two both have Pip-Boys, I assume you can track her," Shilo said.
"Yeah, sure, it's no problem. You know I'm a genius with tech," he couldn't help bragging, rubbing his fist on his breast. Then he examined his Pip-Boy, adjusting things she didn't understand until he proclaimed he'd found her. "Oh, she ain't far from here, assuming she's still wearing her Pip-Boy. Far as I know, she never takes that puppy off."
"Butch... it's a big watch, not a puppy," Shilo corrected him.
The three of them trekked Northeast three miles, slower with Graverobber dazed by the Zydrate haze. He even leaned on Butch once during a pause for breath; he even failed to shoot a radscorpion, and Shilo had to dispatch it before it could inflict its sting on any of them. Butch offered, and she accepted, a high five. Without Anne-Marie, the landscape was a touch bloodless, no curdling shrieks in their ears in fights, no noogies or punches to the shoulders, no sardonic advice. Then again, it was a short distance compared to their year and some weeks spent in their tetrad, their love quadrangle, their jigsaw puzzle of a family. Shilo was grateful for all of it. Whatever happened after that night, she would never forget the feeling she felt then of being complete, of finding a missing piece. The people on tv were not quite the way she and her daddy were, but she and her friends were so much more than even actors could portray.
She was more grateful when she found the Lone Wanderer passed out outside of a large cave. Passed out, but unharmed save for a small bump on her head, she discovered upon sprinting to her side and checking her pulse, her eyes. Shilo waited for the boys to run up to her side before gently shaking her awake and dripping water from her canteen onto her dry lips. Anne-Marie came to with a cough and looked around, bewildered. "What? Where'd it go?" she slurred, holding her temples and slurping up water that had pooled in her mouth.
Shilo shrugged. "Come on, let me help you up," she said, hoping it wasn't guilt that compelled her to offer her a hand up.
Too dazed to be suspicious, her sister took her hand and they stumbled to their feet. The four of them examined the cave. Butch swore he could hear the thrum of electronics from within, though that claim was uncorroborated by the rest of the party. Either Amber had knocked out Anne-Marie and gone in alone, or she had been taken by the same bad guy that could get one over on the Wasteland's messiah. Neither option left much hope for optimism. Still they pressed on, figuring they had nothing to lose and only answers to gain from their trek.
Within the cave, they heard Amber's voice: "Graverobber, help me! Oh God! I'll do anything, please, don't-!" Her words were cut off by a crescendo of a wail.
Graverobber swore, echoing against the walls of the cave, and broke into a run on his bad leg, the other two following as best they could against his long legs. The cave winded downhill and spat out down a drop into a beautiful, white-as-marble facility with shining floors and metallic walls. They did not have much time to look around when Amber Sweet herself cleared her throat, catching their attention.
The trio turned to face her, standing on a platform against a wall of monitors and machines. She was perfectly safe and unharmed, standing beside Nathan Wallace.
"Shilo, run, get out!" he shouted, too late, for Amber pulled a gun from her hip and trained it on his head. In a swift movement that Graverobber knew too well, she kicked his legs out from under him so he crashed to his knees.
Shilo took a step forward, and before Amber could cock the gun, he grabbed her arm and yanked her to stand still at his side. No one dared to move, not even the former Repo Man.
"Nathan's work has been instrumental in carrying on the work of the late, great President Eden and my father. Bet you didn't know Daddy was employed by the Enclave, did you, Graverobber? But I don't need him anymore. I have something better." Amber snorted and giggled. "You pathetic cunts fell right into my trap. I didn't even need to send my brothers, though thank you for dispatching of them, I suppose. Pavi was always handsy." A cloud passed over her face. "Any last words, Papa Wallace, before I put a bullet in your gray head?"
He hesitated, slumped and pale from months underground, face lined and puffy from sleepless nights and days in agony. "Shilo, I... I'm so proud of you. You're a survivor. No, more than that- you spread good. You spread hope. I'm so sorry, it's my fault you're here."
"Daddy," Shilo sighed. Graverobber was worried from her sudden frailty that she would lose consciousness. "I love you."
"Are you kidding me?" Amber said, lowering her gun, looking between them. "Your dad is helping me, Shilo, and this is the same man who poisoned you! You're even stupider than I thought. But you love him. Fine." She pointed her gun at the Lone Wanderer. "I'll let Daddy go if the Lone Wanderer takes his place. After all the trouble you've caused for the Enclave, and for messing up my hair, it's only fitting, don't you think?"
"No!" Shilo cried. "You can't have her."
"Yeah," Butch sneered, stepping up, not flinching when Amber Sweet swung her gun arm to point the nose at his head. "You'll have to go through me."
"And me," Graverobber said.
Anne-Marie stood stock still, the blood in her meat red and flushed to the surface, making her especially beautiful. A broad smile slowly spread across her lips and stayed there.
"You? You don't care about anyone!" Amber huffed.
Taking the opportunity of her distraction, Nathan took his chance, knocking the gun out of her hand, pinning her to the ground, picking up her gun, and placing it to her temple with his knee to her throat.
"I've been a prisoner of your family for too long," Nathan said, gritting his teeth, his eyes red on the edges, creases in his brow canyon deep. "You will not have my daughter. You will not have me."
"Daddy, stop!" Shilo burst out, running to him. She tugged on his sleeve. "Come on. I have a better idea." When he stilled, turning his head to look at her, she bent and unwound his stiff fingers from around the gun, then stood and shot out the computer systems and monitors, one by one, until the place whirred and wound down to silence and darkness. "It's over, Dad. It's over."
Shilo and Nathan Wallace, Butch DeLoria, Graverobber, and Anne-Marie Nunez went back to Rivet City with more questions than answers, questions that Amber Sweet refused to solve, as she bit a cyanide capsule hidden in her back teeth when they tried to take her out to interrogate. Shilo covered her body with a thin layer of sand, the best grave they wanted for someone like her. Shilo spent hours talking to Nathan, though he was tight-lipped about his year in captivity. He wanted to know about her life. He wanted to know about her friends, if they were worthy.
Anne-Marie told them her plan, and if they didn't fully understand it, they at least supported it. Per her request, Shilo was the only one who went with her back towards Megaton, to the Holy Light Monastery.
"Is this because things aren't working out with Graverobber? With Butch?" Shilo was anxious to know, blinking tears off her lashes and onto her lips. "Is it something I did?"
"No, no. Our time together has been... transformative. But I don't want to fall in love and walk off into the sunset with someone. I just want to walk off into the sunset alone." She squeezed Shilo's hands and then embraced her. "You will always be my sister." Then she left Shilo standing on the road and went to activate the radiation traps while Shilo sank to her knees and covered her eyes with her hands, unwilling to witness the wave of heat ripple over the Lone Wanderer, who had spent so long fighting herself to find herself.
Shilo stayed with her for the next week, watching and taking careful notes as Anne-Marie's skin sloughed off, as the hair that she frequently chopped at fell off her scalp for good, as her nose and ears and lips turned black and then vacated her portrait. Shilo would go on to make copies of her study on the ghoul transformation and give a copy to every doctor she came in contact with.
Heather was surprised to find visitors waiting to come into the Hideaway almost as soon as she turned on the lights to the place. She buzzed them in and hugged her friends of lo these many many months: Shilo and her cute – but not as great as Sven!- boyfriends, Graverobber and Butch. Shilo had been in frequently as of late for those pee sticks otherwise known as pregnancy tests, until a trip to the attached clinic proved her suspicions and lightened her burdens: she was infertile.
Butch shot Heather a wink and a snap of his fingers, then tossed her a bag of bottlecaps so he could rummage through her vintage clothes. Shilo placed a fedora on his head. "Don't you look lovely," she crooned, and kissed him.
When she had the chance, Heather pulled her aside. "So... two men," she said. "How did you manage that? I've got my hands full with one!"
"I love them both, and they love me," Shilo gushed, her cheeks pink and shiny. "Graverobber is like... coming home. And Butch is like an adventure. It's not like I have sex with both of them at the same time."
Heather sighed wistfully. If only she could have two men at the same time.
In a quiet building on the coast, in a seaside town that had been well fortified against natural and man-made attacks by its wise founder, a clinic stood. This was no medical clinic, no place to treat burns or bullet wounds or illness. This was a place that mended the mind. The mayor of this town lived and worked here.
Her name was Anne-Marie Nunez, the most beloved ghoul for a hundred miles around. She offered to sit and talk with those who suffered from nightmares, flashbacks, shakes, and the blues. She asked only for donations to better the town in return. If they wanted to make her smile, they would give her a book she hadn't yet read. Her home was filled with books. When she read, she sat alone in her bedroom, a broad smile slowly spreading across her lips and staying there.