Way Back Home: Sunshine Enough to Spread
Notes: Sorry for the delay. This was a very difficult chapter.
Honey ran through the complex of ruins that made up Cook-Cook's camp, panting and dizzy from the motion. She heard screaming, the sounds of a scuffle, and rounded the corner to find John on the ground, bent over the girl's body, weeping into the wisps of her hair. A pool of blood formed beneath the corpse, sluggish and dark where it stained the knees of John's pants. She stood over him, trying to make out the words he was saying, but all she could get was "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over like a mantra, or a prayer.
She spent a couple hours gathering the bodies and building a pyre on the concrete pad of one of the buildings; John, sniffling and broken, sat in the corner where two busted walls came together. His eyes glowed red but he didn't cry again; instead he went to get the girl's body. From the way he lifted her, it was clear she didn't weigh much. Watching him, Honey could feel a palpable ache in her chest, a yearning that made her want to weep.
They set fire to the corpses with Cook-Cook's flamer. Honey stood next to John and slipped one of her hands into his; his skin was rough and calloused, and the squeeze he gave her was desperate. Her heart broke for him then, for the beautiful mess of a man standing next to her who she'd never seen do less than the right thing.
He doesn't deserve this.
Ain't none of us deserve half the shit the Mojave brings down on us, pussycat. You didn't deserve to get shot in the head, and you know I've never felt right about that.
You deserve every pinche thing the Legion's done to you. More, even. But John -
You goin' soft on him, baby?
Maybe. Doesn't matter, though. He's got Arcade and I – well, I've got to deal with you and the montón de mierda you left me with.
When the fire was starting to go down and the grotesque scent of charred flesh spread across the Mojave, she clapped John on the back. The look he gave her with distant, cold; Honey flinched despite herself.
"We should get going," she said softly, gesturing to the darkness sweeping in around them from the east. "The night predators will be here soon, with the smell of the meat and all." She tried to make her tone as soft as possible, to apologize for the abruptness of it all, even though she knew she couldn't fix any of it.
John didn't speak; he nodded, grabbed his bag and his shotgun, and started walking as if he couldn't get away fast enough. Honey scrambled to follow him, for once in the rear. They walked all night, Honey chasing John and pulling him behind cover when they approached the ruins of South Vegas. She didn't know where he thought he was going, but he was marching there as if driven, taking them straight through Fiend territory without a backwards glance. When bullets started flying, he whipped his shotgun off his back and began firing rapidly, reloading inhumanly fast. The look on his face never changed, the lines of it etched deeply into the skin, and his eyes remained dark, unreadable.
Dawn was pushing back the night when she saw the 188 Trading Post ahead. Honey jogged forward, her head and feet screaming with exhaustion, and tugged gently at John's sleeve. He turned on her with the same incredible speed, the large combat knife in his hand driving towards her face.
She didn't flinch, she didn't dodge; some part of Honey found she wanted the knife to keep going, to feel the blade slice through the skin of her cheek. He stopped with the blade less than an inch from her chin, a flicker of recognition going through his dead eyes. John stuffed it back in his boot and looked at her stiffly.
"We should stop here," Honey said, gesturing to the small encampment on the overpass. John didn't nod, didn't really acknowledge her at all, just turned and headed that way, dropping into one of the stools at the lunch counter. From this distance and with her heart in her throat she couldn't hear the interaction between him and the girl behind the bar, but the bottle of brown liquid she handed him made it clear what was happening.
Honey didn't blame him.
She shuffled slowly down the hill and around the overpass to the shade created underneath. It'd be good to rest here for the day before heading on to Lake Mead.
It wasn't long before she had the bedrolls spread, a can of Cram open, and a syringe of the mystery drug from the research hospital waiting. The pain in her head was always worse in the sun, so she'd strung up some threadbare old sheets to create a privacy screen, and then she sat down, her bones aching inside her skin and teeth practically chattering with the icepick pain behind her eye.
John came sliding down the hill; she could see him in the gap where two sheets didn't quite meet, the puffs of desert sand rising up around him and a half-empty bottle clutched in his hand. He staggered over to her, brushing aside the tattered fabric of their makeshift tent, and Honey had the dizzying impression of a meadow parting, the riotous color of the flower print blanket whipping about. He took another step and collapsed next to her with a clatter, the bottle landing in her lap. He smelled of sweat and booze, and the combination with her fatigue made Honey dizzy.
"Fancy a drink?" The laugh he gave her was agonizingly bitter. Honey shook her head and gestured to the syringe before taking another unappetizing bite of cold Cram. It sat like tongue in her mouth, and she had a distinct memory of eating the same thing as a child after she'd fled the Legion but before she made it to New Canaan. The memory soured it still more, and she set aside the can with a frown, forcing herself to swallow the cold, congealed ham paste parts in her mouth.
"I probably shouldn't," she told John as he offered her the bottle again, and he shrugged, taking a long pull from it before setting it back down on the dusty pavement.
"Can't let it go to waste," he said, picking up the Cram and finishing it in two massive bites. She turned away, unable to watch him, and wrapped a length of surgical tubing around her arm. It was getting harder and harder to find a good vein, but she was able to pick out one on her hand, and she cleaned it carefully with the bottle of vodka she kept just for this purpose. When her skin was as sterile as it could be in the wasteland, she tried to unwrap the plastic around the syringe but found her fingers shaking, her head pounding so hard in the morning heat that she couldn't get her body to cooperate.
"Here, sister." John's voice tickled her ear, rough and gentle at once, and he nimbly plucked the syringe from her hand. Honey wondered for a moment if he should be handling this – she'd seen how much he had to drink – but then the wrapper was off and he was holding her hand in his. The needle was in, and then she was gone, down the black pit so deep she could barely feel the press of his lips to her forehead as he laid her down.
He was in the library again, lying on the floor between the stacks, his head resting on his jacket, a book on his chest. He must have fallen asleep. Outside it was so quiet he could hear the snow falling; inside he could see icicles formed from the balcony overlooking the main library floor and his breath came in white puffs of fog.
The book – a heavy historical tome about the Founding Fathers – was so heavy he almost couldn't breathe. It was dark in the stacks, and the half-fallen shelves around him made mountainous shapes, or perhaps they were monstrous? The words seems to drift around him, teasing. The book pressed down on him, forcing him to the floor; he struggled beneath it, trying to free himself, but it weighed more with every passing moment. He sank further into the floor, the carpet enveloping him in the smell of mildew and rot.
He blinked and when he opened his eyes, Nicole sat atop the book, scrawny and pale, hair yellow in the dim light. Her eyes were wild, filmed white like a corpse's, and her skin was patchy, peeling. Her arms, track-marked and almost nothing but bone, stretched over her head in a facsimile of sensuality that turned his stomach.
"What's the matter, John? Don't like what you see?" He realized she was naked, her chest so shrunken and narrow it made him think of a ghoul, those beautiful breasts he'd ogled months ago withered to nothing but tight little nipples. The book weighed a thousand pounds or more, all of it dead weight; his gut twisted and his balls retreated as he thought of the way he'd looked at her, the way he'd thought of her. She leaned over the edge of the book, her hands like talons, the fingernails chipped and filthy. She smelled of flame, of roasting meat.
"Why don't you give me a kiss?"
Her mouth on his was dry as ashes, cold and unresponsive. Her tongue was clammy and cool; it made him think of dead fish floating in the Charles after a radstorm. The book pressed down, the weight of it so oppressive his ribs cracked, and her mouth moved against his, a moan coming out of her as her teeth scraped against his lips –
John awoke with a start, or maybe only back to his senses; there was the sound of a fire crackling somewhere off behind him, and the woman against him wasn't Nicole, wasn't dead and decaying but was Honey, half-asleep and tangled against him. He sat up, his heart hammering like a drum, and panted. He had an erection; it ached inside his pants, and he thought for a moment of Honey's warmth, there beside him. It'd be so easy and she certainly seemed willing, but – Arcade.
John closed his eyes against the flickering of the fire against the fabric walls of their little place and willed his breathing to slow. One breath. Two. A third.
Arcade's hands, with their long fingers tangled in his curls, cool skin and knobby knuckles. The pad of fat over the muscle on his thighs. The way his eyes looked in the morning, so green and unfocused before he put his glasses on.
John could feel his heart slowing, and there was a strong hand on his shoulder, then another, and together Honey's fingers began working out the knots in his shoulders.
He thought of Arcade's smell, that unique blend of antiseptic and cactus flowers, and the way he leaned down so they could kiss, his shoulders curling and his nose bumping John's cheek. The feeling of his stubble and lips brushing against John's neck.
He leaned into Honey's hands, and for the first time in three days – had it been three days? Could it have been longer? – John could feel some of the tension drift out of him. His eyes were closed, but he could still see the orange of the fire dancing under his eyelids. There was the smell of woodsmoke, and he could feel the weight of the chems he'd taken dragging down his limbs. He couldn't remember anything since he bought that bottle from the girl at the Trading Post – there was a yawning gap of blackness where the last week should be, and he found he was scared to approach it too closely.
Who knew what horror, what embarrassment, lurked down there. It was safer to skate around the edge of that black hole, to pretend nothing could have happened.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Honey's voice was low, and John felt a twitch inside at the silk and whiskey tone. Her hands kept moving, gentle but firm, down his spine to work the muscles at his lower back.
"No," he shook his head. All at once he could smell the scent of decay, sweet and pungent, as it slid under his tongue and worked its way through his skin. Honey's hands pushed him into the book, and his ribs crushed together, grinding into a powder.
John's eyes flew open, and he darted up, away from her, panting and wild. Just a dream. It was just a dream.
"I think perhaps you took too many chems," it was Honey's voice he heard, but when she touched him her skin felt cold and clammy, dead and peeling. John blinked and then order was restored, at least for now: her skin was warm again and it was Honey's bright eyes watching him. He tried to remember what he's taken, but there was the darkness again. Psycho? Jet? Maybe he'd mixed the two with whatever her painkiller was, and the bottle of whiskey that lay empty on the ground next to his foot?
It was her eyes that steadied him; where Nicole's had been blue and wide as the sky, Honey's were intense, like Nuka Quantum on an overcast day. He looked into them, and she looked back at him, and then he fell forward, into her arms. His mouth moved against her collarbone, and Honey let out a small laugh, her strong hands on his shoulders pushing him back.
He was stronger than her, though, and the Psycho gave John a strength he never had on his own. Her neck was a tan column of soft skin, and he kissed his way up her throat to nibble at her earlobe. She was saying something – it sounded like stop, or maybe no – but her hips moved against his, a single circular motion that sent stars shooting inside his head. Her hands pushed again on his shoulders, and he took her wrists in one hand and forced them over her head, driving her to the floor of the makeshift tent. Honey was gasping in his mouth, and she'd stopped speaking English now; he could only understand every third word. Whatever she was saying, the tone was clear.
Then, as he tugged down her pants to rub at the sensitive nub below, the fog cleared long enough for him to understand her question.
"What about Arcade?"
"He's not here," John groaned, and lowered his mouth to Honey's nipple as everything faded out again.
On the sixth day after they arrived at the 188, Honey found herself frustrated. John seemed to be getting worse instead of better; he spent his days in the tent she'd made below, coming out at sunrise and sunset for around an hour to complain of the merciless heat. He'd bought out nearly the whole supply of liquor the small shop had and drunk most of it in no time, and that was on top of the chems. Most of the time he was nonsensical, ranting about the girl – Nicole, Honey knew now – or some ghouls. Sometimes he apologized to a woman named Myrtle; other times he spoke other names, or none at all. The only constants were that he said he was sorry - again and again – and he kept shoveling more chems and booze into his mouth, refusing to sleep.
She sat on the top of the overpass on the crumbling jersey barrier, smoking a stale cigarette – as if there were any other kind – and watching the sun go down. Soon enough John would come up and start his evening routine, hassling the soldiers and flirting with the bartender's daughter. For now, though, all was quiet except for the sound of a nightstalker howling and rattling in the distance.
It had been two days since it happened, since they fucked on the dirty pavement of their makeshift tent, and Honey still hadn't figured out how she felt about it. When she thought about it, her skin grew hot all over, though she couldn't tell if it was embarrassment or longing that did it. She'd said no, she'd told him to stop, but that hadn't been for her. No, the traitorous part of her that had wanted him inside her hadn't cared what he and Arcade would make of it when he came out of his chem-haze.
She'd taken advantage of him, her loneliness leading her around by her cunt.
Honey ashed her cigarette and glared at the ground. There was the prickle of tears in her eyelashes, and when she looked up again the vibrant tangerine sun was too bright, too vivid.
"Rough day?" The voice came from over her shoulder, and Honey turned. There stood the girl who kept passing through here, eyes wide with concern, and Honey wiped her eyes hurriedly.
"I guess you could say that," she said, watching as the young woman came and sat next to her on the low wall, facing the east so they could see each other's faces. The woman looked at her steadily, kindly, and Honey realized she was waiting for her to speak. She took a steadying drag of her cigarette and tried.
"A friend of mine – he lost someone recently, and he hasn't been the same. I haven't…I haven't known what to do for him and I think I ruined everything." The tears welled over before she could stop them, and before she knew what was happening, the girl had pulled Honey into a gentle hug. Her arms wrapped around, one hand patting her back gently; she was warm in the quickly-cooling evening air.
It reminded Honey of her mamá; even the smell of the girl - roughspun fabric and sarsaparilla - was familiar, comforting. Honey leaned into her, this sad-eyed woman she didn't know, and let out a deep sigh.
"I'm sure he knows you care about him," the woman said, the fabric of her shoulder scratching Honey's cheek. Her hand traced small circles between Honey's shoulder blades, and the sigh she let out seemed to go on for an hour. She thought again of John's mouth against her throat, of the look in Arcade's eyes when the two of them looked at each other, and then the tears came out in earnest. She wept for a year, for a century, hot salty tears soaking the girl's shoulder. The force of it made her head spin, made the pain in her temple pulse angrily, but she couldn't stop. She cried for poor, stupid Mercedes who just wanted to fuck her boyfriend and get high; she cried for Benny, who thought he could outsmart House and the Legion and was only clever enough to get caught. She cried for John, who thought he was doing the right thing and instead brought an immature little girl out here to get killed. She cried for Nicole, who was too dumb to figure out what a good thing she'd had, and she cried for Arcade - sweet, trusting Arcade - who would just get his heart broken.
At long last, she found she was shuddering but there were no tears left; with the well run dry it seemed like she could finally get a handle on the choking sobs that made her gasp. Red-faced and embarrassed, she pulled back, wiping her nose with one hand and plucking apologetically at the other woman's soggy shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she tried, but the girl cut her off.
"Don't worry about it. We all need a good cry sometimes." She grinned puckishly and presented Honey with a small hand to shake. "I'm Veronica."
Honey blinked and took Veronica's hand. It was calloused but the skin was soft, and the kindness of the gesture made her want to start crying again. It seemed more than she deserved. "Honey."
One of Veronica's thick eyebrows went up in an arch, and for a moment Honey thought the other woman was going to flirt with her. Instead, though, she just smiled – her teeth were so white, so pretty – and said, "That's an unusual name."
Honey laughed, a stuttering, sad little thing, but it did make her feel a little better. She nodded.
"Thank you, Veronica," she said, looking back up into the girl's eyes. She couldn't be more than twenty-two; she looked too sweet and green to be out here by herself, but the thick pads of her fingers seemed to tell another story.
"Of course. I see a damsel in distress – or, well, in depression anyway, and I have to do what I can to help."
There was the sound of feet making their way up the hill behind her, and Honey glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, there came John, sloppy with liquor and chems, the gleam of a combat knife in his hand. Before she could wonder what he was going to do with it, he stuffed it back into his boot and sashayed over to the bar, where he perched on a stool like an oversized, drunken bird, back overly straight and elbows on the bar. He rested his chin on his fists, and even from here, Honey could see he was begging the barkeep to sell him something more.
She knew how he felt; the temptation to drown herself was overwhelming, but she still had things to go.
I'm countin' on you, babydoll. Don't let the Ben-man down, you dig?
"Veronica," she said slowly, an idea taking shape. "You looking for any work?"
There was a sardonic laugh in the girl's sweet voice, and Honey knew then that she could handle herself. "What kind? I kind of have some of my own responsibilities." At the bar, John was laughing, a fresh bottle of something brown in front of him, and dancing a knife between the fingers of his other hand. He saw her looking at him and winked, and Honey felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.
Honey looked back at Veronica, eyes wide, the picture of innocence. "Baby-sitting."
The new girl – Vanessa? Victoria? – was nice enough, and she had a sense of humor, but she wouldn't hold him the way Honey did when the shakes set in, and when he pulled out another inhaler of Ultra, Violetta frowned. John gave her a slow, lascivious wink and clamped the inhaler between his lips. There was a rush as the Jet hit him, bowling him over and making his insides sizzle, then everything slowed down. He opened his eyes – if his eyes were open he wouldn't see Nicole, wouldn't hear the bang of Myrtle and her cat blowing up again – and Veronica was giving him an annoyed look.
"Where's Honey?" His words didn't sound right, and he knew he'd already asked the question more than once – Velveeta had told him that more than once already – but he'd forgotten what the girl in the blanket told him before. She sighed tiredly, and John felt a flicker of sympathy for her. It couldn't be easy, he thought, taking care of a guy so scared of his own demons that he kept forcing chems through his system in an insane attempt to stay awake.
If he didn't sleep, Nicole wouldn't come for him, wouldn't pull him down into the deep blackness where her ghost lingered now. He didn't need to think about the way Honey kept fleeing from him since the night he'd forced himself on her, or the thorny question of how he could have done that to someone he had sworn to protect.
The more shit he shoveled into his body, the less likely he'd be to wake up tomorrow, and something about that felt safe, like relief. Maybe he should have worried about that impulse, but he was used to it; it had always been there and if the reckless voice that told him more, more, more spoke louder these days, John was still inclined to indulge it.
"I told you, she had some things to do," Valentina said, catching him before he could fall down the embankment. Honey left some hours ago, although he wasn't really sure how long it had been – when you were awake this long, time began to lose all meaning. "She'll be back soon." There was something almost soothing in the girl's voice, and John felt an impulse to be a bit kinder to her. He really shouldn't be giving her so much shit, he thought, then stumbled again. It was dark in the desert, even with the glow of Vegas to the north.
"She loves him, you know," he said, sitting abruptly on the low boulder that tripped him. Here was as good a place as any for a smoke, he decided, pulling the ragged pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He fumbled through the pack and pulled one out. Trying to light it was another issue entirely; John couldn't seem to hold his head still enough to line the flare of the lighter up with the tip of the cigarette, and finally Valencia sighed in exasperation and sat down next to him, snatching the lighter from his hand and helping him. He threw her – or at least one of her – a wink and took a long drag.
"Thanks there, sister." He eyed her carefully, trying to ascertain what she'd look like out of the ragged brown sack she wore. He squinted a bit in the dark to try to figure out which of the three versions of her sitting beside him was real, and gave her The Look. "Don't suppose you wanna…?"
Valeria – fuck, what is her name? – laughed. It wasn't a very friendly laugh, though it was genuine. "You can barely walk. I don't think now's the time for that kind of thing."
"Aww, come on," he drawled, taking another drag off his cigarette and watching the stars blink above them. "If you're worried about me keepin' it up after all this, believe me, that ain't a problem."
Vanna gave a giggle that went straight to his dick. John felt it twitch, and when she leaned forward and put her arm on his shoulder he felt a shiver of excitement go through him. Yes, yes, yes, this'll help me forget, this was the distraction I need.
"No offense, buddy, but you're not exactly my type."
"Who're you kiddin'? I'm everyone's type."
Velma – was that it? No, that couldn't be right – laughed again, and John began to get the distinct impression that she was laughing at him, that this wasn't panning out the way he'd hoped.
"I like my lovers a little more…female," Veronica said. Finally, finally, the light went on for him.
"Oh, I see," he said, leaning back against the rock. That made sense; it would certainly explain the outfit. He nodded. Still, though – it wouldn't hurt to ask. He lowered his chin and gave her the most dashing smile he could manage through the haze of chems and liquor. "You sure you don't want to try driving stick just once, make sure you're right? It's not without its charms."
The force of her fist in his chest knocked John off the rock and onto the ground. John hit the ground hard enough that a rush of air came out of him at the impact, and his ass hurt where it'd met hard-packed dirt. Looking to his left, he was relieved he hadn't fallen into the cactus growing there.
"Guess not," he said, and Viola's lips twitched up into a smile. She bent over, took his hands in hers, and helped him to standing. John brushed his pants off, located his cigarette, and sat back down next to her on the large gray boulder. In the distance, the lights of Vegas seemed to dance between green and blue, flickers of red and purple and white.
"Who does she love?" Viviana – nope, that was definitely wrong – asked him. John couldn't remember who or what he was talking about, and he looked at her blankly. The girl began again, supplying: "Before you hit on me – which, what the hell, man? – you said 'She loves him, you know.' What does that mean?"
John tried to remember. He'd been thinking about fucking a girl – the memory of Honey's skin, tan and supple under his fingers rushed up at him. Honey. Honey loved that guy, the one in the checkered suit, the one the Legion had.
"Honey. She loves the guy that shot her in the head." He didn't know why he felt like it was so important to tell Victoria this. Victoria? That sounded right; that had to be it.
The girl in the hood fixed him with a doubtful expression. "Uh…who would love someone that did something like that?"
John rolled his eyes. "Honey, obviously," he told her, trying to puff on his cigarette and discovering it had burned down to the filter. He tossed the butt away and thought about getting another but navigating his pocket and the intricacies of the pack was just too daunting. "His name was Benny, and he had, you know, plans. For Vegas. So Yes Man told her to meet up with the, I don't know, Brothership of Lead or something?"
Next to him, Valencia had gone very still. "Do you mean the Brotherhood of Steel?"
That was it! And it was Veronica – he had it now! Veronica. John nodded, emphatic. He wanted to tell her that he had finally figured out her name, but it seemed to rude to admit he'd forgotten it, so he didn't.
"What…what does she want with the Brotherhood?"
He decided to go for it, to have another cigarette, and so John was digging through his pocket again looking for the pack when he realized Veronica had been asking him a question. He lifted his head, embarrassed.
"What'd you say?"
"I asked," Veronica said, sounding a little miffed, "What she wants with the Brotherhood of Steel."
John waved his hands vaguely, trying to think of the right words. It seemed important to this gal to know, and he wanted to get it right. Veronica snatched the lighter from his hand again, flipped it open, and lit his cigarette. John inhaled slowly, then exhaled the smoke even more slowly. Something about the action steadied him, or maybe the chems were starting to wear off, because when he looked at Veronica again, it seemed like he saw her more clearly for the first time. He saw the tense crease at the corner of her mouth when she asked about the Brotherhood, saw the way all the muscles in her body were tight as a spring.
"She's asking for their help," he said, a grin working its way across his face. "She's going to take back Vegas, and she's gonna need firepower. Would you…happen to know where we could find them?"
Veronica had the good sense to look surprised before she smirked at him. "You know what? I just might."