It's Letting Go

Chapter Twenty Five: It's Letting Go

Outside of the vault's secured chamber, the fight between Elijah and the green eyed figure was raging on as Tonya came back out to the platform. However, unlike when she and her whole team had faced off with it, the old man was doing remarkably well. Ducking and weaving around its knife attacks with perfect skill, he struck the figure with his baton again and again, each hit driving the pursuer back across the platform.

None of these hits was doing any actual damage to its body, but each hit forced the figure just a little closer to the edge, where nothing but a pit full of the red cloud awaited it. The figure grabbed onto his throat with both hands, but the old man put the baton diagonally between its arms, and twisted hard enough to break himself free. Whack! Whack! A hit to the arm, a hit to the leg, there was just no stopping Elijah as he drove the figure all the way to the very edge, before spinning around and slamming his heel right into its chest.

With a final gurgling sound, the green eyed figure was knocked over the edge, quickly vanishing into the red smoke, and allowing the old man to breathe heavily for a minute or two in order to catch his breath. As far as the Courier was concerned, no one deserved to be trapped forever inside of Sinclair's pre-war trap, so she was walking over to tell Elijah about what she had discovered… only to have his eyes narrow when they saw the open vault door.

"Elijah, we need to get out of here." She began as he approached. "This place isn't…

Quickly unslinging his rifle, Tonya's words became an outcry of pain when he slammed the stock into her stomach hard enough to make her cough as she fell to her hands and knees. She hadn't even finished reacting to the first hit, when his foot came up into her stomach, lifting her whole body an inch off the platform to where she crashed onto her side… before throwing up from the hit.

"Just couldn't resist the vault, could you?" He asked, striking her in the side of the head with the stock when she tried to sit up. "Well, I already told you that the Sierra Madre is mine, you little bitch. Mine!"

Making one more attempt to get up, the Courier was stopped when the old man's foot connected with her cheek hard enough to make her vision go white for a second, and when it cleared she was on her back… while Elijah was walking through the door into the vault's secured chamber. Tonya had never been hit by anyone as hard as that before, and she was still trying to get up to her hands and knees, when the vault door suddenly slammed shut. The locks all clicked into place, and a set of heavy shutters came down over the windows.

"You can't be serious!" The old man could be heard yelling from inside. "Fortunato… what? No! No, this won't happen! This can't happen!"

A slight flash of light could be seen from between the shutters, probably Elijah firing his rifle at the door, but there was no effect. Again and again the flash of light, but from what Sinclair's message said to Vera, there was no way out… someone had been trapped in there by his own greed after all… it just hadn't been Dean Domino. So this was the result of both of their scheming, though… all those lives lost trying to break in… all those years wasted for absolutely nothing.

"Tonya!" The old man screamed, pounding on the window from inside. "Tonya, open the door! Tonya!"

"You brought this on yourself, Elijah!" She called back, struggling to get to her feet. "You and Dean… this is what you killed all those people for, isn't it?! This is why Dog and Christine are dead, you son of a bitch! Well, enjoy the Sierra Madre in all its glory… it's all yours!"

The old man continued to scream as she walked away, putting in the password at the elevator, and then sighing with relief when she could no longer hear him once the doors closed. A moment later the elevator started going back up to the suites, but as the Courier tried to catch her breath, a dull, stabbing pain began to creep up across the front of her head, and her hand was shaking a little when she tried to touch her forehead. Dizziness now, was she tired? Was she dehydrated? Good thing there were supplies left upstairs.

When the elevator finally stopped, Tonya felt a rush of relief when the doors opened, but more dizziness washed over her, and now everything was getting brighter, regardless of the dim lighting both from the fixtures and from the sun outside. There was water and food stocked inside the suite, and she hadn't been able to eat earlier at the restaurant, so she took some water and a thing of Cram, quickly swallowing down both… but it wasn't helping.

"A nap." She groaned, looking at the large bed, while trying to ignore Vera's skeleton sitting in the chair nearby. "Yeah… need some sleep."

The bed was big and comfortable, and the Courier must have fallen asleep, because the sky was dark outside the windows, while it only felt like she had blinked. The pain stabbing through her head was even worse now, and Tonya was getting the shakes… feeling cold. Cold, so cold… wrapping herself up in the blanket didn't help, and she was starting to get sick to her stomach again… but then she saw an intact syringe of Med-X on the floor.

Without even realizing what she was doing, the Courier picked up the syringe and stabbed it into her leg, allowing her to gasp with relief as the pain started to lessen. The numbness was spreading through her body, while at the same time the dizziness, shakes, and nausea retreated, as did the feeling of being cold… leaving her to just sit there for a while… before burying her face in her hands as she started to cry.

She had become addicted to Med-X just like Vera, that was the only explanation… she was a junkie just like Dean said she would be… and she missed Christine. This place really was cursed, Tonya thought, wiping her eyes on her arm… the Sierra Madre didn't bring anything but death and suffering, and… she needed to get out of there. As soon as the numbness started to wear off, she got to her feet, leaving the room, and heading back down the corridor toward the elevator that would take her back down to the lobby… and from there to the casino's exit.

Without really knowing where she was, Tonya needed to stop for supplies, mostly from the theater so that she could have more suitable traveling clothes, food, water… and then she saw Vera's Med-X box on the floor underneath the sofa in her dressing room. The Courier didn't want to take them, she wanted to be away from that awful chem for good, but if the withdrawals came on while she was out in the wastes… there was no choice but to take the whole box with her when she left the theater.

Dog and Dean had both been incinerated, by the explosion and Elijah's strange rifle respectively, but the scarred woman was still there on the floor, right where Dean had left her. There was no way that she could take the body with her when she left, so Tonya carried her friend back down to the restaurant, where a stream of fire was still coming out of an exposed gas pipe, now that the water and red cloud had drained away. It wasn't much of a cremation; wrapping her in a table cloth and placing her in the path of the flames… but it felt better than just leaving her to rot on the floor.

"I'm sorry this had to happen to you, Christine." The Courier said, wiping more tears as the body burned. "I would have liked to be holding your hand when we left this place."

The main doors were no longer locked since the Gala event was over, and without a bomb collar around her neck, there was nothing to stop Tonya from walking back down the cobblestone streets, past the fountain where the hologram of Vera Keyes stood silently, and through the exit gate on the far side. There was a long walk ahead of her, at least until being able to figure out how to get back to NCR territory, but as the cobblestone streets turned into the rock and clay of the Mojave, the Courier took one last look at the Sierra Madre… before leaving it behind forever.

You've heard stories of the Sierra Madre Casino, we all have… the legend, the curses. Some foolishness about it lying in the middle of a city of the dead… a city of ghosts, buried beneath a blood red cloud. A bright, shining monument, luring treasure hunters to their doom… an illusion that you can begin again… change your fortunes. Finding it, though, that's not the hard part…

It's letting go…