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4. Why does the document editor always over-count my wordcount by several hundred words? IDGI
They were in the Sorrows camp before they realised it, almost stumbling over sleeping bodies in the cold, wet night.
The Sorrows' eyes gleamed in the light from the Courier's pip-boy, cold and scared and huddled together in the blackness. They hadn't lit fires or even built shelters to protect themselves from the rain, just walked until they couldn't any more, and stopped there. The murmuring voices grew louder and louder as they walked further into the camp.
"Joshua?" A man pushed through the tribals into the circle of light. "Is that - is it really you?"
"Daniel," he acknowledged. "I'm glad you're safe. Are the others..."
"They're here," said Daniel, still incredulous. "Everyone's here. I don't know if we could have kept going much longer, but... What's left of us are here." He looked over to Raul and the Courier. "Is it... over?"
Graham cast a contemplative look in their direction. "It seems so."
"What did you do?" Daniel asked hesitantly.
Graham paused. "What was... necessary."
The Courier could barely meet Daniel's questioning eyes. "Are you okay to come back with us?" she asked instead. "We have food, and medicine and everything back at our camp. I mean, I've got a bunch of stimpaks and a whole lot of insta-mash, for some reason, on me at the moment, but... you guys look like you need some proper food." She handed over what she had awkwardly. "You're going to be safe, now," she said, more to fill the gaping silence than anything. "I think."
"Thank you," he said, still looking at her in confusion. "I'd like to- to speak with you later. If you have the time."
"Sure," she said. "When things are settled more."
She watched the camp as word that the White Legs were gone slowly spread, people's faces lighting up with shock and amazement as the whispered messages were passed from person to person, tribal and New Canaanite alike.
"I think we're done here, boss," said Raul. "Unless you want to bask in the adoration of the tribespeople a little more. You like that sort of thing, right?"
She mustered the energy for a half-hearted glare. "Okay," she said. "At least we can fucking start some fires now. Cook some food. Warm up. Maybe make better shelters from the rain."
"Whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Raul. "It's still a decent walk back to the camp. And then another four days until we get back to Zion. And then a week, almost, until we get back to the Mojave."
"My legs are aching already," she said. "Let's head back."
The valley of the Sorrows was starting to return to normal, Daniel assured her. Children ran across terrifyingly shaky bridges, the tribespeople were bringing in fresh food and plant life. A tiny tame gecko was snapping at fish in the water.
"Have you found God yourself?" asked Daniel.
She smiled bitterly. "I found God in the police station in the Sierra Madre," she said. "And he was not at all happy about it."
"I don't think-" Daniel began.
She held up a hand, but her smile softened. "I'm sorry," she said. "Thank you, but, uh, someone had a saying for me, back before things really... happened in the Mojave. They said 'no gods, no masters'. And I've tried to stick to it."
He fell silent. "Who gave that phrase to you?" he asked, eventually.
She rolled her eyes. "A fucking asshole of a robot who got way too fucking self important and downloaded a fucking 'entitled douche' module from motherfucking House's backups," she snapped. She took a breath and let it out again. "Sorry."
He held up his hands. "It's not for me to judge," he said, with a faint smile. "It sounds as if your life in the Mojave troubles you."
She looked up at him warily. "It... has it's frustrating moments," she admitted. "Are you going to try and Jesus me?"
He laughed. "Stealth is not a preferred method of conversion to the Lord," he said. "But He can be a great source of comfort in times of hardship. Why don't you take this?" He held out a book.
"Not really much of a reader," she said, but she took it gingerly.
"Thank you," he said. "Again. The Sorrows are home, and safe, and... unharmed. You've done them a great service."
"Are they going to be safe here?" she asked. "What if other tribes come along wanting their land?"
Daniel smiled sadly. "We'll deal with that if and when it comes up," he said. "But there aren't many other tribes competing for space in this area at the moment."
"What about the rest of the New Canaanites?" she asked.
"They, too, are safe," he said. "Thanks to you and your friends. We will take up what we have managed to save and build our city anew."
"Good," she said. It felt inadequate. "If New Vegas can assist... please, feel free to ask for anything."
"Thank you," he said, regarding her curiously.
"Strong trading partners benefit everyone," she said, rolling her eyes. "And seriously, we have shitloads of money. Shitloads. No matter what that fucking robot says."
His curious gaze deepened into a frown.
"It's probably not worth an explanation," said the Courier apologetically. "Just... take care of yourselves. And the Sorrows, and the Dead Horses."
He nodded solemnly. "We will."
The Courier sat out onan outcropping overlooking the canyon. She sat close to the dropoff but was not quite daring enough to dangle her feet over the edge. The valley dropped away in rich red columns below her, life springing from every surface. It was so far away from the lifeless, dry heat of the Mojave she almost didn't want to go back.
She heard footsteps, slow and measured, come up behind her, and she half turned her head, more to acknowledge the presence of the other person than to see who they were.
'I expect I should thank you," said Joshua Graham. His voice made the hair on the back of her neck rise.
She let the sentence hang in the air, a half-smile on her face. "Don't feel like you haveto extend yourself," she said, finally.
"This would not have been possible without you," he said, stiffly. "A lot of people would have died."
"Seriously," she said. "Don't worry about it."
"I think-" he paused. "That by different means we approach the same goal."
"What goal would that be?"
"To prevent the pride of man from growing too great and destroying himself."
She looked up at him. "New Vegas is a monument to man's excesses," she said, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I don't think we're so similar."
"You seek to guide as much as I do," he countered. "You do not seek the accumulation of power. You seek to... protect."
"How do you figure that?" she asked, faint smile still on her face.
"By talking to your friends," he said. "They speak of you highly."
"A lot of my friends," she said, "are my friends because I've helped them get revenge on people. Not all of them, admittedly. But funny how that works out."
"The desire for vengeance is one of man's more popular weaknesses."
She chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. "Can you go back?" she said. "To being... a guide? A missionary? A teacher, to these tribes?"
He shrugged. "A man may be many things. A monster to his enemies. A devoted father to his children. A protector of his charges."
"He asked you something," she said, cautiously. "Didn't he? Before you shot him."
His blue eyes were piercing as he stared at her. "Salt-Upon-Wounds asked for mercy," he said quietly. "And I told him that I would show him the mercy that he had shown to my people."
The Courier narrowed her eyes. "Good," she said. "We don't need monsters like that ruling the wasteland."
"Just monsters like you or me?" he asked dryly.
"Still not sure about you." She grinned. "Don't make me come back here to sort you out."
He looked at her silently.
She turned to look back out over the river, the water sparkling in the afternoon light. Dead Horses were catching fish in the pools below them. "You like being out here? Away from civilisation?"
"I am beginning to think," he said. "That maybe this is a more fitting place for one such as myself. Moreso than what these people call the civilised lands would be."
She frowned. "For their protection or yours?"
"For either," he said. "For both. I am hardly ignorant of what I was. What I am."
She stood. "If someone hurt any of the people I love," she said quietly. "I would fucking destroy them."
He folded his arms and watched her, eyes clear and deep and burning.
"So hold on to that gun of yours" she said. "I think maybe one day I might have some use for someone like you."
"I'll do what I can," he said.
"Can't ask any more than that."
She heard his footsteps retreating, back to the cave. She looked over to her left, where a single white handprint had been pressed into the rock above an ancient, half-rotted duffel bag. She smiled sadly. "Just you and me now," she said, to the cave-dweller. "I'll track you down."
Raul followed the Courier across the river, cold and strong, that ran around their legs. Cass was back at camp, packing up the last few things that they'd need to take on the long road back to New Vegas.
"I think you've got a problem," he said.
"Fuck off," said the Courier. "I do not."
"It's an obsession," he said. "It's compulsive."
"It's not-" she stopped where she was in the river, hand on her hip and fish navigating around her ankles. "Well okay, it kind of is."
"You just can't stop yourself."
"I just want to know," she snapped. "If he fucking killed himself. Okay?"
Raul held up his hands in mock-surrender. "You're the boss."
"Fuck you. I saw one near here, I think-" she checked her pip-boy. "Yeah, just kind of up this way."
The white handprints along the cliff face looked like a flock of birds leaping into flight. The Courier clenched her fists.
The cave dipped down slowly, lit by pools of soft pink light from the cave mushrooms. She strode on, impatiently, but was yanked back by the collar of her armour just as the tunnel began to widen into a cavern. Raul pulled her down to the cave floor, and stretched an arm over her shoulder, pointing.
There was a spore plant, waving gently as if it were in the breeze. It raised its jaws, seeming to taste the air, fleshy stem twisting and turning. The Courier sighed, once again missing the sheer stopping power of the holo-rifle, and aimed her rifle. It took three bullets to sever the stem completely, and another three for each of the two other plants in the cave.
The beartraps hidden under dead dry branches or among the foliage of the cave were almost old-hat by this stage. A glint of metal here, a rusted metal tooth poking through there. She triggered them calmly and carefully, if a little impatiently.
The cavern's inhabitant had built a platform to keep the bed and living area off the cold stone floor. The Courier sat down at the computer and hit the login button. Raul came up to stand beside her, reading over her shoulder.
"He was here al-" she cleared her throat against the sob that was threatening to break through. "Almost fifty years. Longer than he was alive before - before the bombs fell. He just kept going. Though he didn't want to. I don't know if... if I understand?" she looked up at Raul.
"He kept going because it was the only thing he knew how to do," Raul said gruffly. "Are you happy now? No skeleton. He didn't die in here."
She looked away. One of the lines from his journal entries stuck in her head, somehow. Thoughts of the beloved dead before dying. He'd lost everyone he ever cared about, in global tragedies; tiny, local tragedies; mindless, stupid, hateful tragedies. Beloved dead. Trying to hold them close while the years between them slowly drifted further apart.
"So where did he die?" she asked quietly, almost petulantly.
Raul shrugged. "He's seventy. Eaten by lizards? Fell off a cliff? Maybe the Principal-" he gestured towards the terminal- "showed up and killed him?"
The Courier stared up at him balefully. "What's a principal?"
He sighed, seeming to lose some of his momentum. "They're the head of a school. You don't have them any more."
"She shrugged.
"Back then-" Raul began uncertainly, "things were different. Everything you knew was gone... everything that seemed permanent had been destroyed. No one really thought about things, you just... tried to keep going. To find something normal in the ruins of the old world. To survive. That was what was important."
She looked back down at the platform the man had built. "Okay," she said quietly. "Let's just go."
"I'm sorry if you wanted a happier ending," said Raul as they left.
"Should be used to it by now," muttered the Courier. Beloved dead.
The sun was almost setting when they re-emerged into the light. Zion spread out below them, scarlet and gold in the dying light.
"Home, then," said the Courier, gazing out over it.
"In the morning," said Raul. "You need to catch up on your beauty sleep."
She snorted. "You're an asshole," she said, and started down the hill back to the camp.
The morning was clear and calm. Mist rose off the water as the small group stood outside the cave entrance. Follows-Chalk was with them, again, just to lead them out of the valley, and the four of them followed the scout as he led them up towards the mountains.
Follows-Chalk was excitable and talkative, and finally couldn't hold back any longer. "Do you think I could come to the civilised lands?"
The Courier grinned. "Sure thing! Show up in Vegas any time you like, I'll set you up with a room and some starter caps."
"And travel with a caravan," Cass said. "Safer."
"Will you come back to see us?"
Cass grinned. "Yeah. When I get the time. I get kind of busy, but I'll come back when the New Canaanites rebuild their city. To say hi."
The Courier smiled privately at Cass and Follows-Chalk. Fond memories of being stuck in a hole for weeks. Near an archway of red rock, she caught sight of a bundle of bones and rags, and she wandered off the path towards it. "Just be a second," she called to the others.
"You can't walk past a single thing without looting it," Cass said, rolling her eyes.
"See?" said Raul. "You've got a problem."
"Fuck of," said the Courier, laughing. "If I just ignored everything like you seem happy to do I wouldn't have any fucking stuff." She crouched next to the bones. "You think I fucking pay for ammo?"
"Not like you can't afford to," said Cass.
"This is how rich people stay rich," said the Courier, opening the tattered bag. "Stealing things from dead people." She threw a grin over her shoulder as she started going through its contents. "Rifle!" she exclaimed, holding it up. She pointed at Cass. "See, it's people like you, ignoring stuff like this, that means all this good stuff is still out there."
Raul lifted it from her hands gently. "I think the sights might be off a little," he said, squinting down the barrel. "Could probably fix that up for you."
"Thanks," she smiled, still going through the bag. She took out some stimpaks, a couple of boxes of ammo, ignored the cigarettes, and then, finally, her hand closed on a holotape. She frowned at it for a second, then slotted it into her pip-boy.
And stared.
"What's wrong?" asked Cass.
"It's the guy," she said, waving a hand distractedly. "The guy. Randall... Clark?"
"You okay?" Cass was looking at her dubiously.
The Courier looked up. "Yeah, I'm... it's okay. I mean, it's been two hundred years, I knew he wasn't..." She finished with a shrug.
She touched a pile of the small delicate bones of one of his hands carefully. "Hey," she breathed, then stopped, feeling almost foolish. She barely noticed Raul as he lifted her arm high enough for him to read the holotape on her pip-boy screen. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Sorry for what his life had been, sorry that every time he had a glimpse of happiness it had been taken away. Well. Almost.
"The kids became the Sorrows?" Raul asked quietly.
"I guess that's how tribes start," she said quietly.
"Life goes on," he said.
She nodded, wordlessly. Clark had carried his loved ones with him until he could no longer. The beloved dead. It was all he could do for them. She stood up, dusted herself off, and started to follow the others.
Raul and the Courier were the last two left awake over the fire. Raul was on watch, technically, and the Courier couldn't sleep. It seemed like the world outside the glowing circle of the fire was huge and dark and hateful.
"Do you lose a lot of people?" she asked. "Being alive for so long."
He gave her a tired smile. "Feels like it, sometimes. There's never enough time... with the people you love. With some, it's almost as if - if their life has passed in days." He shrugged, uncomfortable. "You see a lot of things, but... it seems like you lose a lot more. You get used to it, though." He smiled. "You don't think you'll get used to it. But you do."
The Courier poked at the fire with a twig. "What are you going to do once we get back?" she asked.
"I don't know. Probably not much call for an old man like me in a city like yours."
"Fuck off," she said. "Stop doing that, I'm sick of telling you off for it."
He waved a hand at her, dismissive.
"Seriously," she said. "You're a fucking badass. It's not like you're dead weight out here. I'm more dead weight than you."
"It's not that," he said. "It's... the world. It's different to the one I grew up in. I don't really see a place for myself in your "New Vegas". I'm just - just an old man in a world that's moved on."
"So it's like an age thing?" she asked. "Because this guy-" she held up her pip-boy- "was like fucking seventy and still trying to - to help, where he could. Even though everyone he loved was dead, he just... kept going. Killing the plant people. Helping the kids to survive. And - fuck, Joshua-fucking-Graham got thrown off a cliff and now apparently divides his time between helping the tribes to survive and administering horrifying fucking executions. So, you know. You do what you can," she finished. "I'm pretty sure you told me that, actually."
He shook his head. "I used to have a store," he said, slowly. "Repairing things. Handyman stuff."
She smiled. "I can help you get set up if you're serious."
He laughed quietly. "I don't need your help, boss, I've been around a lot longer than you have. But - thanks. For offering."
She gave him a weak smile and returned to her sleeping bag. As she stared up at the brilliant starlit sky, she thought once more of the beloved dead. Charlotte, and Alex, and Sylvie, and the baby that didn't quite make it. And now Clark, as well. She'd carry all of them around with her, just as he'd had to. And she'd hold on to them almost as tightly as she held onto the people she loved today.