Author's note: This is a dialogue-heavy bridge chapter with an unusual dream sequence, no action, and a lot of angst. That ticks all of my boxes, but may not suit everybody.
For the record, Arcade is officially wrong on at least three points in quick succession (you'll know the place when you see it). I'm not about to throw out a ton of canon for his intellectual comfort. Let's not tell him yet, though - he's having a bad week.
One more chapter to go and then I can mark this "Complete." It will almost certainly be very long, and may take a few weeks, as I haven't actually written much of it yet. Who knows, though - I've been pretty productive lately.
Thanks for reading this far.
"Oh no… that doesn't look good."
After a brief foray into nothingness, Megan found herself standing in the middle of the street in front of the Old Mormon Fort, watching uncomfortably as a small cadre of Followers doctors clustered around the body (her body, she corrected uneasily), handing things to Arcade, who jammed in three… four… no, five stimpaks into the wound even as one of his colleagues assisted. It didn't look so bad at the front, just a tiny hole in the nasty shirt she'd worn for days, but the the glimpse she'd caught of the back was awful - a massive hole ringed with torn muscles, bone, and cartilage. She hoped she'd still have some blood left when they were done.
Something worrisome struck her then and she stepped up behind her friend, noting happily that at least nothing hurt anymore, and tapped him on the shoulder. She didn't want to distract him or be a bother, but felt like she should say something. "Hey, Arcade, I thought using that many stimpaks at once was a bad idea? Can't it, like, put the patient in a coma? Or kill them? I'm not telling you how to do your job or anything, but I do have a vested interest in how this goes."
He ignored her entirely, and stood back as two others brought a stretcher over and started toward the Strip. Colonel Moore said something that Megan couldn't make out, to which Arcade responded with a level of vehemence unusual for him. She actually backed off, but gave an order to four troopers to follow the doctors. In the meantime, Boone had wandered away and was almost out of sight in the distance; she tried to walk over to him, but found it impossible to get too far from her body. Megan shrugged and was beginning to follow the others, when the last person she expected appeared out of nowhere beside her. "Hey baby. You've got some sure-fire luck, you know that? What happened here?"
Benny. Checkered suit unstained with blood. As smooth and suave as he'd been the one and only time they'd met, up in his room at the Tops. Right before she'd killed him. She glanced at him warily, but without much fear. What could he do to her now? "For all that my luck stinks, I think I have more than you. Some zonked-out soldier shot me while I was surrendering, but I'm pretty sure it was an accident." She felt a steady, compulsive tug and started walking in the direction that they'd carried her. "I'll be alright, though. There were literally a dozen capable doctors on hand. There's no better place in the world to get shot. The most important thing is that we won the day."
He strolled along with her, still trying to get a rise out of her. "'We' won? NCR won, more like. What kinda future does that spell for Vegas?" He snorted and shook his head. "Baby, you left a lot of blood on the ground back there. I wouldn't give you good odds. Or what do you think is happening right now?"
"I'm having a near-death experience," she said confidently. "Emphasis on 'near.' Arcade talked about it once. The brain sometimes responds to trauma with a lot of happy chemicals that help relax the victim. I'm tripping, and it feels so much nicer than the last time I almost died. You, though, you're just a figment of my imagination, and not a particularly welcome one. You can leave now, or I'll find a way to kill you again."
"Nah. You can't kill me. I'm your guide. You didn't let me talk much last time, so I'd like to get a word in now. Show you the error of your ways."
"If I have to have a dead companion, I'd rather it be Raul. Or literally anyone else. I don't really know anything about you." For a split-second, the man's visage seemed to ripple, with Raul's cloudy blue eyes taking over Benny's dark ones, but then the ghoul was gone and it was all Benny again, all empty eyes and false smile.
"Nice try, pussycat, but you're stuck with me. We're going to the Lucky 38 - you know, the fortress that woulda been mine to control? That you gave to a bunch of eggheads? That one."
She sighed. "My subconscious hates me. That's a well-established fact." She started trotting after the retreating palanquin, bound for the gate to the Strip "I don't need a guide. I know the way."
Inside the casino-turned-hospital on the Strip, she looked on with dismay, wondering if this was going to be it for her after all . "Aw, shit. Ow," she flinched sympathetically as if she could feel the needle that someone had just jammed into her chest. "Hey, dead guy - if I die on that table, will I just fade out here too?"
"I don't know." Benny had caught up, somehow without a single hair out of place or a drop of sweat on his clothes, and spared only a glance to the resuscitative efforts taking place across the room before striding directly to the elevator. "Do you believe in an afterlife?"
"Would it make a difference if I did?"
"No. You might feel less afraid in the meantime, though. Forget that action over there. You gotta come with me now. Might not be much time."
"I want to stay and watch." Arcade had stepped back helplessly, letting a fresh doctor take his place performing CPR - a practice that never seemed to presage a good outcome in the world of post-apocalyptic medicine. Megan moved until she stood beside him and tried to take his hand to reassure him, whispering, "I'm here. It's okay." He couldn't feel, see, or hear her, but she heard him sigh with relief when someone announced that they'd gotten a pulse.
The former Chairman was still waiting impatiently by the elevator. "You're alive. Happy? Come on up. There are some things you need to see."
Megan had only seen House's penthouse once, through the shimmer of a stealth boy, when she'd slipped up the maintenance stairs and past the massive screen, intending to assassinate the man himself. She'd followed Yes Man's instructions to a 't,' and had still almost died when she'd failed to account for the last securitron, the one standing guard beside the cryogenics pod itself. A hastily thrown pulse grenade had taken care of it, but had also shorted out House's life support, killing him almost instantly and depriving her of the opportunity for a final chat with the ancient technology magnate.
Now, led by a shoddy imitation of Benny - someone she'd only spoken to once, for scarcely a minute, and now recalled only as a loud suit tied together by cliches - she saw the room again, now subtly shifting under scrutiny: one moment empty, screens blank and dark, the next moment crawling with generic, faceless Followers in white coats. Her memory was struggling to render details, and the little things - colors, brightness, furniture, background - wavered and changed, melting into new things in corner of her eye. Through the massive windows - a breathtaking, 360 degree view of Vegas - she could see the aftereffects of the battle in the damaged structures and greasy fires that still burned in the distance, all lit up by the gentle rays of the rising sun.
"This is a dream," she said out loud, taking up a perch on the balcony overlooking the control room. Benny stood just behind her, as unobtrusive as possible, a smooth-faced mouthpiece for her buried self.
"Yes, it is. Pay attention. You shot me before I could tell my own truth, and now I get to tell you yours."
A new scene took over. The Followers disappeared, replaced by a solitary figure with long brown hair, slouched over in the biggest chair and languidly watching a hundred screens, the viewpoint of every securitron currently under the mainframe's control, Yes Man's visage beaming down on them. Megan hopped down from the balcony and approached the figure cautiously. The stranger swiveled abruptly in her chair, and Megan gasped. Brown eyes - clearer, harder than her own, but familiar all the same - stared straight through her. It was her, but all the same, it wasn't: this person had fewer scars, more muscle, and a confident, steady air unmarked by trauma. She wore a clean, crisp shirt - shockingly white in a world of dingy, dirty clothes - along with jeans that looked freshly pressed and brand-new. Beside this person, Megan felt grungy and weak, a filthy, broken version of what she could have been. Envy and grief twisted her stomach, but she kept studying the other self, searching for something, some clue as to the kind of person she was. As she contemplated this better version of herself, noting that the one scar that really mattered was gone altogether and with it the root of most of her weaknesses, the other woman spoke up in a commanding voice, with a tiny thread of nervousness that Megan only noticed because she recognized her own tells, "Is he here, Boone? Let him in, please. Keep a bead on him. I'm not at all sure how he'll respond. This could go a couple of different ways. Only shoot if you have to, though. I need him."
Megan looked up. Sure enough, Boone stood watchfully above, equipped with a beret, sunglasses, rifle, and generic, high-quality combat armor. He entered a code into the security box, and the doors to the elevator slid open, revealing an unsmiling Arcade, lab coat splattered with blood and grime, and slightly singed on the bottom.
"Thank you for accepting my invitation, Dr. Gannon. Finally."
He pushed his glasses up and narrowed his eyes at her. "As if you gave me a choice in the matter, Courier. Your robots dragged me away from my patients. I'd like to go back now."
She waved a hand airily, gesturing to a chair. He descended the stairs, but remained standing. "This won't take long. And I gave you ample opportunity to come voluntarily, you know. I need your help, and I need it soon. We've been overdue for a talk for a long time."
"I don't know why you would think that I would want anything to do with your authoritarian regime. Your methods are brutal. I heard what you did to the Brotherhood of Steel. To the supermutants on Black Mountain. To the Khans. To the White Glove Society. To General Oliver, for God's sake. Am I supposed to be courteous to a mass murderer? You appall me. I don't even want to get into what you did with Helios One."
"Those were all necessary casualties of an independent Vegas. Actual or potential enemies. And are you really going to tell me that you of all people shed a tear over the Brotherhood, Dr. Gannon? Or a bunch of muties?" Megan knew her own voice well enough to know that this doppelganger was being knowingly nasty, flaunting an as-yet-hidden ace in the hole. Arcade must have heard it as well, because he stiffened on the spot, hand dipping briefly to the pistol on his belt, before letting it relax to his side.
"My personal feelings on them don't matter. You massacre people at the drop of a hat. I seriously don't even want to stand here talking to you."
Not-Megan went on as if she hadn't heard. "The reason I brought you here today is that I wanted to invite you to join my team as my advisor. You're right about one thing: violence is not a good long-term solution for a stable society. I need a well-educated person, someone who understands government, economics, and organization. I need your help."
Arcade tilted his head back, rubbing his chin. "Hm… let me think… no. No, thank you very much. May I go now?"
The woman cocked her head as if to say You can't be serious. "You don't want to influence my decisions? I thought this was the kind of opportunity you people live for. A chance to shape the future of the Mojave in a real way. I'm a twenty-one-year-old with a resume that's limited to soldiering and vault-dwelling. Do you really not want to temper and improve my approach to running this city?"
He hesitated for a brief moment, but shook his head firmly. "I'll pass. You're no better than House in my book. I don't want to be your powerless foil while you roll over people."
Not-Megan stood up and began to pace up and down in front of Yes Man's screen. "I didn't want to have to do this at the beginning, but you've forced me to take a more direct approach. To be succinct: I know what you are. I know where you came from, Dr. Gannon. Can I call you Arcade?"
"No." His face had gone paler than usual, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "How could you know anything? You've only been in the Mojave for a short time… there's no way you could know."
"I've known it - or least had a good guess - since the moment you introduced yourself at the clinic, a year ago this month. The plasma defender and your overall oddness helped. Your reaction just now is all the confirmation I needed." She smiled again, watching his movements very carefully now, tension in every line of her body. She appeared unarmed, but Megan could tell by the way she carried herself that she was prepared for a fight. "I saw your family name on a war memorial back in Chicago, when we were wintering there on our way out west. Gannon. I have a good memory for things like that. I had the most boring guard duty you can imagine, and nothing to read but that damned stele in the courtyard engraved with the names of 'our fallen heroes in the fight against the Brotherhood of Steel.' Israel Gannon was one of the names on there. Even now, I could list most of the others for you. It was a long winter."
He muttered wonderingly, backing away slightly, "You were half out of your mind when we met, bleeding to death from your shootout with that casino boss. I didn't think that you knew which way was up, let alone that you were actively scheming about something like this. I saved your life, and this is how you repay me?"
She absently rolled her shoulder, rubbing a sore spot from an old wound. "I appreciated your help then, and I'm asking for it again now. And yes, I'm always observant for little things like that. Things that might help me later. Do you deny your association with-"
"No," he interjected hastily, not wanting her to say the word. "But, see here… if what you're saying is true, then you're guilty of the same thing as I am. Worse, really, for it being quite recent. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses."
"There's that. However..." She walked over to the window and looked out, continuing in an, apologetic tone, "Well, see, my house is a castle and can take a few stones. Can yours, Dr. Gannon?" His silence was answer enough, and she went on briskly, turning back to him, "So, I'd like to work something mutually agreeable out with you. You agree to come talk to me - just two hours or so each day - and I'll leave you alone to do your work the rest of the time. Furthermore, I'll be a good patron to the Followers. I sincerely like their moxy. Resources, safety, facilities - your people can have what they need to operate in Freeside. Your leader, Farkas, is more than willing to play ball. She's already been very helpful with tech support. I'd like to continue that partnership." She sat down and leaned back, hands behind her head. "You don't have to be my friend, Dr. Gannon. I don't expect that at all. I just need someone I can talk to." She jerked her head in the direction of the sniper, still in position on the balcony. "Boone's a great listener - I've got no secrets at all from him - but he's a brick wall, not a sounding board."
Arcade was plainly still trying to catch up with the unexpected collapse of his guarded self. "When we first met - when you were completely addled by med-x and blood loss - you talked about guilt. About something terrible you had done. You asked how you could earn absolution. I told you-"
She sighed loudly, interrupting him. "And that right there is why I don't use drugs or alcohol. They make me talk too much to the wrong people. Anyway… right. You suggested that I dedicate my life to protecting peace. I took that to heart, and that's a big reason why I sought you out specifically. Because that's what I've begun to do here. By beating back the Legion and destroying others who might do us harm, I've made civilization possible in the Mojave."
Arcade's response to this extraordinary claim was mirthless laughter. "You had a funny way of carrying out that admonition. But fine. Tell me what you've done that you feel guilty about - if you know my pale little secret, then I deserve to know your darker ones - and I'll consider letting you blackmail me. Either that, or I'll just kill you, and rid the world of your twisted good intentions."
"If you try that, please believe me that Boone will kill you," she said idly, unperturbed by the threat. "But fine. I'll tell you the beginning now. Enough for you to make an informed decision between compliance and suicide. In the words of Adolf Eichmann, meine Schuld ist mein Gehorsam. I was only following orders." She pronounced the foreign phrase very slowly and haltingly, her darting eyes and restlessly-moving hands betraying more of an internal struggle than her petulant, flippant tone would suggest. "You think someone my age gets to call the shots in a military operation? It wasn't my plan. I was only along for the trip in the first place because President Eden thought our team might need someone who spoke Spanish. If you ask me, his intelligence on the demographics of the southwest is a couple of centuries out of date-"
Arcade interrupted this digression, bursting out into real anger now. "'Following orders'? That defense didn't work at Nuremberg - or, in Eichmann's case, in Jerusalem - and it won't work with me. What did you do?"
She dropped her eyes, avoiding his, and muttered her answer so quietly that Megan - an unseen ghost in their midst - had to creep closer to hear. "At the command of my superior officer, I waylaid and killed a courier who kind of looked like me. Stole her identity papers. Collected and carried a techy sort of package south from Navarro. What happened next was out of my hands. I didn't mean to. And that's all I want to say right now."
"What a surprise. This story starts with murder." His voice was thick with sarcasm and disgust. The real Megan, who'd been taking all of this in with horrified fascination, recoiled from the look on his face. He hated this version of her - and, if her suspicions were correct, this was an accurate picture of who she'd been before the brain damage. The truth - and his reaction to it - devastated her to the core.
Not-Megan, on the other hand, became defensive and irritable. "Look, Gannon. I can't change the past. If I could take it back, I would. But if I can be a force for good now, then I will. And I want you to help me do that. You're smart. You understand how complex things work together and can help me anticipate problems before they happen. Plus, we share a secret. That makes us family, sort of."
He flinched at this reminder, but didn't try to deny it. He stood with his arms crossed, glaring at her for a long time, before coming to a decision. "Fine. I'll advise you. Evenings are my free time, and I guess I'll give them up to try to prevent the harm you'll continue to cause otherwise. One question, though: where did you learn Spanish? German? Our people never had much time for such impractical pursuits, unless they've changed significantly in their eastern exile."
"No, you're right, that was from before. My vault was all about studying the humanities. Serious books, books on language, philosophy, and history, books that had been banned before the war... we read them all. I was an abysmal student, though - worst in my family, worst in my year. I only liked fiction. My teachers despaired of me, said I'd never amount to anything." Her eyes were faraway now, as remembering something painful. "Not that all that study did the others much good in the end." She broke off and resumed with forced cheerfulness, "Well, that's that, then. I'll expect you tomorrow evening, Dr. Gannon. Thank you for seeing reason. I hoped you would."
The scene closed, lights dimming. Not-Megan was gone, Arcade was gone, Boone was gone. Benny walked over from where he'd been standing invisibly in the corner. "What did you learn from that, Courier?"
Megan spoke slowly, still processing the information. "Most of that was stuff I already knew, or at least half-knew. If all that was true, though… then I'm not really a courier at all."
He had pulled out a file and was cleaning his beautifully-manicured nails. "Don't sell yourself short, doll. You carried the two packages that really mattered. The Platinum Chip. The tech from Navarro."
"Yeah, what was that all about?"
"The full answer is still locked up in the vault of your past. Even you won't tell yourself. You'll have to find someone else to tell you. Or, you could go on ignoring it altogether. You have that choice." He paused. "Would you like to see some other might-have-beens? I've got a whole slew of them to play back."
Suddenly very tired and resigned to whatever might come, Megan sat down on the cold floor, pulling a blanket - where had that come from? - to herself and wrapping it around her. "Sure, Benny. Let's see how else this could have gone down."
And so he showed her.
Hours or days passed as she watched a panoply of characters parade across the stage of House's control room. She watched herself bend the knee to House, banter with Yes Man, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Benny above a city on fire. Sometimes the array of computers were swarming with Followers, sometimes with NCR officers and scientists, and sometimes with Brotherhood scribes. One time, she saw herself addressing the Enclave Remnants in view of Mr. House; another time, there were only Legion to be seen, smashing the terminals with reckless abandon. Boone was often there, but not always. Lily, Raul, Veronica, Arcade, ED, Rex, along with other people she couldn't name, each took their places at her side before each faded away in turn. At some point, when all of this grew monotonous, she closed her eyes and curled up on the tile. She could hear voices - distant, indistinct murmurs, and felt pain for the first time since she'd woken up into the dreamworld, distant and abstract, but still present. She wondered if she was still alive downstairs, or if she had drifted into a purgatory of her own making.
Benny nudged her shoulder with one shiny Oxford. "Look. There's just one more. It's an important one."
She obliged, sitting up with an effort and shaking the cobwebs away. The room was empty except for House's projected face and a handful of securitrons. Beyond the windows, the city appeared to be as it always had been. There was no smoke, no destruction to be seen at all.
"Is this before the battle?" she asked sleepily.
"No. This is a version of the present in which there was no battle. The Legion never had the resources or the opportunity to even attempt a second move on the Dam, let alone penetrate to Vegas."
She yawned. "What was different about it this time?"
"You were never born. Or, at least," he amended, "you never came west. The supply line through Hopeville stands. The NCR had the resources it needed to attack as well as defend. In the end, the Legion was contained to northern Arizona, a mere shadow of Caesar's grand aspirations."
"Huh. Good. Can I sleep now?"
Benny sighed and relented, fading away into darkness. "Fine. Just… try to remember this when you wake up. If you wake up."
Megan was back downstairs, without any memory of climbing back into the elevator. She'd been blinking at the ceiling of the Lucky 38 for a long time before she realized what it was, and longer still before her mind moved from "I'm awake" to "therefore I should do something." Nothing hurt - it was as if she didn't even have a body to hurt anymore - but talking, moving, or even keeping her eyes open seemed too hard, and she soon went back to sleep, a dreamless stretch this time, waking up in the near-dark to find the numbness replaced by a deep ache. She could hear people snoring around her and guessed that it was nighttime now. Wow, I slept all day, she marveled, realizing for the first time how incredibly thirsty she was. She didn't want to bother anybody and started to sit up to look around for a bottle or a pitcher or something. This was a mistake. After only the slightest effort, the dull pain became a fire, choking her next breath, and even when she settled back it stayed, like a red-hot pool spreading out, paralyzing her. Not daring to move, keeping her breath to shallow little gasps, she lay completely still, tears trickling unheeded down her face. If she could have filled her lungs, she would have screamed, but as it was she could only moan. Though quiet, it was enough to draw someone's attention.
"You're awake. That's good… that's really good. I was afraid… oh, never mind. Try to breathe normally, okay?"
She moved her eyes. That white shape, distorted through the tears, that was Arcade. He'd help her, unless he was still mad at her. But no, he probably still would. "Hurts."
A pause. "I'll give you a little more med-x. I have to be careful with the dosage. Don't move. It's okay."
He must have done just that, because it got a little easier to breathe even as her thoughts got more muddled and dreamlike. She could let her body relax, at least the parts that weren't close to the fire that stabbed through her. "'M sorry." For forcing you to help me.
"For what?"
Was he being stupid? "You know."
"I don't. But it doesn't matter. Be calm. Don't talk."
Not inclined to listen, her brain and her mouth worked hard to get a whole sentence out. The most important question that she could think of. "Is this the best timeline?"
He was confused. Dismissive. "What does that even mean? Things could be better, sure, but this is what we've got. Let's face it together." Speaking quietly and calmly, he told her what the bullet had done to her with characteristic directness. "...and if your liver keeps on doing its job and your body stays on top of infection, then you'll eventually recover."
She gave up on trying to express herself and let the fragments of the dream slip through her fingers. Arcade wasn't mad. He didn't know. She trusted him to take care of her, regardless of what she'd done. That was the kind of person he was.
Arcade Gannon was well-accustomed to death. He'd had to be. Scarcely a week had passed in the past twenty years in which some patient under his care hadn't died despite his best efforts. It was normal. Expected. Not pleasant, no, but something one had to inure themselves to in order to survive. Emotional distance made it easier - indeed, he was so good at avoiding interpersonal entanglements, that he hadn't had to lose someone that he cared about on a deep level since his mother's death, so many years before. In the past week, however, he'd seen the passing of two of his oldest acquaintances: first Moreno, who'd been a longstanding fixture in his life, if not an actual friend, and then Johnson, the day after the final showdown in Freeside. The latter had slipped away in the night, with little fuss, and without ever fully regaining consciousness; Arcade had been awake at the time, as he had been for what felt like days (was days, in fact, not counting short naps in a chair), but not paying close attention to that side of the room, caught up trying to save his other friend's life. He felt bad for letting Johnson die alone, but didn't yet have the head-space to grieve. This was relegated to the future, along with every other concern. A lifelong planner, his brain was refusing to consider new contingencies at this juncture; as of the present moment, he had no idea what he would do if Megan died. Somehow, his vague intentions of opening his own practice in Westside had lost most of its shine; perhaps he would go further afield. He would think about that later.
She had one good day after waking - happy and alert despite the heavy medication - and he allowed himself to hope. The stimpaks could continue what the Auto-Doc had begun, and the antibiotics might be enough to stave off infection. He relaxed, slightly, and enjoyed the opportunity to talk with her, even if her preferred choice of topics was consistently a bit silly. Silly was alright. It reminded him of better times, before they'd gotten directly involved in a war. He'd been the one to read her all that science fiction, after all; he supposed he deserved this conversation and others like it.
"So, are you saying that you don't think that intelligent alien life exists, period, or that you just don't think they've visited earth?"
"I actually think the first is highly probable. The galaxy is huge. The second is much less so. If there is another sentient race out there, and if they are somehow capable of interstellar travel, I think we'll be ships passing in the dark. Chances are very good that anyone who thinks of visiting us will miss the geologically brief window of our existence. There's also a good chance that another sentient species would follow a similar trajectory to ours - flame out and kill themselves off before getting close to advanced space travel. There's just no evidence that extraterrestrials have ever had anything to do with us. And who can blame them, right?"
"Well, I think I saw a spaceship in the desert once. It was a blinky, spinny light. Really pretty." She smiled. "Before you ask: yes, I was incandescently high. But I still saw what I saw."
He tried not to sound too condescending in his reply. "If you saw anything - and that's a big 'if' - it was probably a pre-war satellite. There's still a few of them up there. Solar power will keep them in a stable orbit semi-indefinitely. There's always a naturalistic answer to something that doesn't line up with your expectations for reality, if you just look for it."
She raised her eyebrows at this. "Don't you believe in anything, Arcade? Ghosts?"
That was an easy one. "Nope."
"Cthonic monsters?"
How does she know that word? "No. Just people and mutated animals. Aren't those bad enough?"
"Psychic powers? There's a boy over under the bridge by the 188 that can tell you your fortune. He's pretty convincing, too. He told me things about myself that I wouldn't expect him to know."
"Well, you're famous, so knowing things about you is nothing special. Most hucksters are pretty convincing. Nothing I've seen or heard or read has convinced that that's possible. The future doesn't have objective existence until time actually advances to that point. There is no legitimate arcane epistemology, only people who are more intuitive than others, who grasp whole truths from partial evidence." He frowned slightly at her, wondering where she was going with all this. "I'm a thoroughgoing empiricist, Megan. You should have figured that out by now."
She sighed, resting a hand briefly on the bandages that swathed her torso. "Ow. I do know that. I'm just, like, grasping at straws. I'm afraid I'm going to die and I want there to be something else. Heaven. Hell. A pleasant, warm light. Anything. I'm scared of nothingness."
Of course that's what she's doing, you fucking moron, he thought miserably, backtracking unconvincingly. "I'm sorry. I could be wrong about anything and everything. I… would you like me to find someone who actually believes in... things for you to talk to? I know a couple." He caught himself short. "Not that you're going to die. Not for a good many years, anyway."
"No. I want to talk to you. But you don't have to pretend for me. I wouldn't expect you to. You're so consistently you. On that note, give it to me straight: am I going to die?"
He couldn't give a lie to a direct question. "I don't know, but I hope not."
Another day passed and hope began to die. Her temperature crept up, a half-degree at a time, and her skin, along with the whites of her eyes, had gone a faint, sickly yellow. She still wanted to talk, though her discourse made less sense as time went on, as she rambled on and on about a subject that seemed to be haunting her: how she could have lived the past year differently.
"D'you know what I realized when I was asleep, Arcade?" This came after hours of silence and semi-consciousness. He had been almost asleep in his spot and jerked his head up when she spoke.
"What?"
"I could've been queen of Vegas, could have held off the whole Legion army, if I'd just taken what Yes Man offered. I could have ruled this town, protected the whole region, and left the Followers out of it." Her eyes were glassy, and her words came out in a breathless rush. Breathing was difficult for her - the bullet had done some serious damage to her ribs - and she had trouble getting the air to talk, and continually exhausted herself trying. Not that it stopped her.
"Hmm. That's a frightening thought. No offense, but you're not dictator material."
"In this scenario, I would have appointed you as my chief advisor on day one."
He pretended to consider this hypothetical job offer. "I would have said no. I have no desire to rule this city by proxy."
"Oh, sure you do. You love to meddle. And would you really have left me to my own devices? That seems irresponsible. Who knows what kinds of shenanigans I'd get up to without your moral direction. I think you would have come. If not," here her cracked voice became sly and teasing, "I would have had my securitrons bring you in to make you help me."
"Then my first moral direction would be that it is bad to imprison people against their will."
"Ah, but I would have reserved the right to selectively ignore you. What else is new, right?" She tried to roll over to look at him directly and grimaced. "I wouldn't really do that to you. Not in a million years. I'm sorry I ever considered it. Please forgive me, Arcade."
"I forgive you," he said automatically, conceding that this wasn't worth arguing about. "And maybe I would have helped you after all. You make a good point." He touched her forehead gently. Dry and hot. It had now been a week since the Legion defeat, and the Followers had run out of IV fluids for all but the most extreme cases, which Megan's was not judged to be, since she could technically take fluids orally. It had become difficult to keep her hydrated, especially once infection had set in. Lucidity came and went; when she was awake, she talked in feverish spurts that only occasionally made sense. The rest of the time, she was alternately scared, confused, or simply listless. "Time to drink some water."
She turned her head away. "My throat hurts."
"It'll hurt more if I have to put a tube down your esophagus. Drink."
After long minutes of coaxing, the fluid was gone, and with it the antibiotic. He prayed it would stay down this time, and was relieved when she fell into a peaceful sleep. Arcade sat back in his chair and tucked his chin to his chest, hoping to catch forty winks himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt rested. Before he could drift off again, a voice he'd grown to hate jarred him to alertness.
"Can she be moved yet?" Moore's snappish voice made Megan frown and shift in her sleep, and Arcade whispered fiercely in return.
"Absolutely not. Go away. You and your people have done enough."
"Oh, I'd actually like to talk with you, if you don't mind." It wasn't really a request. "We can go over here so we don't wake your friend. She's not going anywhere."
With a backwards glance at Megan, absurdly worried that a team of soldiers might come rushing in to carry her away, Arcade followed Moore to the former casino's bar, which the Followers had turned into a kitchen-slash-laboratory for the field hospital.
"So," she began softly. "Arcade Gannon. Doctor, researcher, known homosexual… and what else?" He didn't answer. "What's your interest with that person over there? Why help her so damn much? We've done some digging, talked to witnesses, and have come to the conclusion that she wouldn't have survived the last year without you."
He rubbed his eyes with one hand, trying to formulate a response that wouldn't incriminate either Megan or himself. "Compassion. Hope. Love. I wouldn't expect you to understand. I wanted to help her become something more than a victim perpetually lashing out. Help her redeem herself from the things she's done, and recover from the things that have been done to her. That's all."
Moore leaned forward, greedy eyes intent on his face. "What has she done?"
"I don't know if you've noticed, but she has killed a lot of people. To collect bounties, to enact revenge, and as a part of war. What makes it worse is that she enjoys it sometimes. In my arrogance, I thought that I could play Pygmalion and make her into an image of what I thought she should be… for her own good, of course. I can't say I totally succeeded in that aim. She's her own person. Sometimes that's actually a good thing, though."
She'd tuned him out halfway through this self-directed reproof, and was sitting back, disappointed, lip curled up in derision. "You've killed a few people yourself, Dr. Gannon, unless I'm much mistaken. Or wasn't that you taking potshots at Lanius right before the securitrons finished him off?" Her eyes narrowed. "Speaking of that day, do you mind if I ask what kind of gun you were using?"
There was no reason to lie more than was necessary. "It's a plasma defender. I picked it up from a junk shop in the Boneyard years ago and repaired it. I use it in self-defense, and - in that case - I was using it in defense of Freeside's people." He closed his eyes again. God, he was tired. "I'm in no mood for conversation with you, Colonel, so unless there's something important you wanted to demand…"
"Where did she get the power armor?"
He'd been expecting this question, but it still put him into panic mode for some reason.. "I don't know - she just showed up with it one day. Probably found it somewhere. You would not believe the places she goes - if I never see the inside of another vault in my life, I'll die happy." He was babbling. He stopped himself and swallowed. "This whole discussion is academic. Whatever you want with her, she's probably going to die before you can do it." He hadn't said this out loud before, but had seen the writing on the wall with the first signs of sepsis. If it hadn't been for her occasional rallying moments and flashes of clarity, he would have already considered administering a fatal overdose as a last misericordia, to save her from the long, painful death to come. He might still do that, but only as a last resort, when hope was entirely gone.
Moore frowned, looking over at the still form on on the bed across the room. "Is there anything that can be done?"
Arcade wanted to shout at her, but kept his voice level in response, "More IV fluids and antibiotics than we have to give her. Then… maybe… there'd be a fifty-fifty chance." That might have been optimistic, but he clung to hope. He cursed himself for not thinking to ask the NCR before now; he hadn't realized how committed Moore might be to her plan. If she wanted to drop a fortune on drugs, he wouldn't stand in her way.
"I'll have supplies sent over with Kemp. He'll be making his own report, just in case you're lying to me about her condition. I know you're lying to me about some things. Maybe everything. I'm going to find out in the end, I assure you."
He didn't trust himself to respond, but nodded curtly and returned to his vigil.
Dr. Kemp came and went, leaving a veritable treasure-trove of antibiotics behind, some unfamiliar to him, and so strong that Arcade wasn't at all sure about using them on such a compromised system. The NCR doctor concurred with his colleague's fears, but pointed out that they had nothing to lose by trying it. If he knew what Moore intended to gain by this generous act of goodwill, he didn't betray any sign of it, but expressed genuine concern and sympathy for the Courier, who had once been a well-known face at McCarran.
To his amazement, these medicines worked - or at least deferred the progression to septic shock and organ failure - and the saline and glucose kept her stable. By now, though, she had burned through what reserves her body had left, stealing what little body fat remained and leaving her too exhausted to talk. When she slept - which was often - he slept too, finally catching up on all of the missed hours. When she woke, he read aloud to her from a book he'd promised to find, and had finally succeeded in borrowing from one of the newly-arrived doctors: The Hobbit. She smiled at the right parts and occasionally offered one-word commentaries; frequently, he'd look up from a long, interesting passage to find her asleep, and would resign himself to re-reading it on the next session. He wasn't sure how much she would remember of the story if she survived, but he intended to make this time as pleasant as possible. Sometimes, he'd discuss the content for both of them, raising and answering questions about the book's historical context, the world-building that Tolkien had indulged himself so much with, and asking hypothetical questions of the sort that he knew she would like.
"What character do I identify with? Oh, Elrond, I suppose. Healer and half-breed. Pretty extraordinary backstory, too, if I recall correctly. How about you?" He paused for an answer he didn't really expect. Her eyes had been half-closed for about ten minutes now.
"Gollum," she whispered.
Pleased that she was paying attention, but puzzled by the answer, he countered cheerfully. "That's a strange response. He's not a good character, you know. Why not Gandalf? He's a bit of a chaotic trouble-maker too, at least in this book. Gollum's… gray at best, in a series that's mostly about black and white morality."
"I'm not good."
Was that despair? "Yes, you are." She shook her head, eyes now fully closed. He didn't try to argue the point, but let her sleep. He wondered what she'd think about the rest of Gollum's character arc, providing she ever got a chance to hear it - the rest of the trilogy lay with their untouched travelling gear, still safely stored (he assumed) at Judah's house in Westside. He would have gone to grab the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, as they were almost done with the light-hearted prequel, but he was afraid to leave her for very long. As it turned out, a few days later, he had been right to be afraid.
He was only gone for a short time. Maybe an hour. She'd finally taken a turn for the better - fever down, redness receding from her wound, back to taking oral fluids again - and he felt confident enough to step away to take care of some basic hygiene. The Lucky 38 had showers and by then he needed one badly. He tapped Dr. Usanagi, one of the few Followers not treating him like a leper by that point, to keep an eye on her and went upstairs, feeling dull and weary, but fairly unworried for the first time in a week.
When he returned to the lobby, her bed was empty. The IV, the catheter, the extra medication were all gone as well. And there were soldiers by the door, speaking with Julie Farkas, who had never before set foot in the casino as far as Arcade knew, preferring to keep to her post at the Fort. He made a beeline for this group, even as the Asian doctor moved to intercept him, apprehension apparent on her face.
"Move, Toshiko. What happened? You were supposed to watch her, to send someone to get me if anything happened." Arcade tried to push by her, but she moved and he had to stop or risk knocking the small woman over.
"I'm sorry. It happened too quickly. Julie told them that she was stable enough to be transported and that colonel lady put her under arrest." She grabbed his arm, in a futile attempt to hold him back. "I tried, Arcade, believe me, but they had a lot of people. I think they were waiting for you to leave to make their move." He wanted to yell at her, but then he spotted a bruise on her cheek that hadn't been there before, and redirected his anger instead.
The soldiers turned and left at his approach, and Julie squared her shoulders to meet him, crossing her arms in front of her, plainly afraid but trying not to show it.
"You. You sold her down the river. Judas. Pilate. Caiaphas." Why am I stuck on the New Testament? "Treacherous quisling. How could you?" All of his wit and verbal acumen had fled and he could only sputter insults.
"She's been under arrest since she arrived here, Arcade," the Followers leader answered, voice trembling only a little. "I told them the truth, that she'd survive a transfer to McCarran. Or did you think you'd be allowed to sit and read to her until she was well, and then the two of you would walk off into the sunset?" She was shaking her head now. "You're pretty far gone if you didn't see this coming. And I'm sorry, but I wasn't going to risk our arrangement with the NCR over one dubious person, however helpful they've been to us."
He stood there, stunned. "What arrangement?" His tongue felt stupid and heavy in his mouth, like someone had just hit him over the head with a brick.
Julie gave him a sad smile. "It's an… internal matter. Another part of my burden to bear. And I'm sorry for this too, but you need to go now, as you are no longer one of us." She lowered her voice so that only he could hear. "I haven't told them anything about you. I won't. If you start exercising a little caution, you might stay clear of it. Go live your life."
He stared back for a long moment, then threw his lab coat at the floor by her feet and stormed out, stammering out one last, angry imprecation as he left. Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris!*
"I don't understand Latin," she answered automatically, but he had already gone. She stood frozen for a second after he'd slammed the door behind him, before stooping to pick up the abandoned coat and looking around, shamefaced, at those who had witnessed this exchange. As if suddenly aware of their silent judgment, she snapped out at them, "Oh, move on people. It's finished. There's nothing else to see here. Get back to your work."
* "If Caesar were alive, you'd be chained to an oar."
