Chapter Twenty-Nine: Good Girl
Sunshine has never been strong. Her skills all lay with the power of her mind. She could talk anyone into almost anything, hack any terminal or treat any sort of wound. But when it came to besting others in a show of strength and endurance, she always came up lacking. She had heart, Butch once said in an almost affectionate way, but heart didn't mean very much when she ended up getting a bloody nose for it.
Clover may as well be Hercules compared to her. She drags her away with little effort, despite how hard Sunshine fights. She leads her down uneven stairs to a dark and desolate room. The only light is sunlight streaming in faintly from a slender window high in the ceiling. The room had been some sort of pre-war basement repurposed into a post-war torture house. Clover giggles, pushing her down to the ground.
"Let's see," she says, tapping her chin. "I usually have to soften people up. You're already pretty soft to begin with." Sunshine bares her teeth in a scowl the way she learned from Charon, but Clover only laughs. "Soft, pretty and fierce." She kneels over Sunshine, sitting down on her stomach. Sunshine rolls and bucks, but Clover keeps her in place with her legs. She twirls a syringe in her hand playfully and grabs Sunshine's wrist, dragging the needle across her skin. Sunshine stiffens.
"You know what this is, don't you?" Clover asks, almost gleefully. "You like to play doctor, right? This is a girl's best friend right here."
"Don't," Sunshine pleads, the word turning into a hiss as Clover sinks the needle into a vein.
"Don't worry, sugar," she says, her voice becoming distorted like Sunshine is hearing her underwater. "The Med-X will make it easier." Sunshine tries to focus on Clover's face but she keeps fading in and out of her vision. Clover laughs, tugging the girl's hair.
"Is the Med-X affecting you already? Don't have a lot of tolerance, do you?"
"Fuck you," Sunshine slurs.
"Oh-ho, you get a little feisty when you get high. I'm liking you more and more." She slaps Sunshine across the face. "Now, repeat after me: I will love my master. I will listen to every command he gives, no matter how small." Sunshine keeps her mouth shut tightly.
"You're gonna fight, huh? They all fight, in the beginning. Even me. But soon, I'll have you begging for your master. It's gonna be a mercy when he finally shows up." Sunshine spits in Clover's face, and she just continues to smile that same sort of mad smile. She grabs Sunshine by the hair and drags her up. Sunshine swings at her, but over-shoots her blow and only ends up grazing Clover's cheek. She stumbles past her and falls against the wall.
"You should quit while you're ahead," Clover taunts, moving close to her. How did she get so quick? Her hand flies out to catch her by the throat and she pins Sunshine against the wall. "You're only embarrassing yourself, sugar." Sunshine growls, kicking her foot out wildly. It makes contact with Clover's knee and she yelps.
"Ouch. Lucky shot." Her hand grasps the zipper of her jumpsuit and yanks it down. Sunshine bites back a yell and her hands move to Clover's shoulders to push her away. She strips the Vault suit from her with ease, nuzzling her skin in a morbidly affectionate way.
"You're from a vault, aren't you?" she breaths. "So pure and healthy. Not a scratch on you, like a brand new China doll. Tasty looking like a fresh cup of coffee with cream." Her fingers ghost down Sunshine's stomach. "I'm almost sorry I have to break you in. But then I think of how my body looks like a fucking roadmap and the feeling goes away."
"Do your worst," Sunshine snarls as Clover closes the manacles over her wrists. The other woman chuckles, moving to a table with a variety of rusted and painful looking weapons.
"Oh, don't worry, sugar-I'm going to," Clover promises, picking up a scalpel and eyeing it in the faint sunlight.
Sunshine's screams echo off the walls, overshadowed only by Clover's laughter.
Clover unlocks the manacles sometime later-had it been hours? Days? Sunshine vaguely recalls Clover taking breaks, leaving her chained to the wall. The first few times, she had struggled against her bonds after the other woman left, trying to find some way to unlock her manacles. As time went on and Clover cut her up and beat her more, working her 'magic' on her, she had simply taken Clover's absence as a blessing, hanging there and hoping the other woman would leave her there to die.
Sunshine crumples to the ground, ignoring the burn in her throat and the ache in her stomach. Dirt from the concrete floor gets into her wounds, causing them to sting, and that seems minor in comparison to the rest of the pain she feels. All she can focus on are the seemingly million cuts and bruises that cover her form. She is sure that she doesn't have any skin anymore, only bare muscle and exposed nerve endings. All she can see when she looks down at herself is red.
"You lasted longer than I was expecting," Clover pants. "I'm feeling worn out!" She kneels down and runs her hand down Sunshine's thigh. She croaks out a dry sob, tears having long since run dry.
"Aww, does that hurt, baby?" Clover sighs, running her hand up her body to her face, the one area she had kept from the knife. She runs her thumb across Sunshine's swollen lip. "I have just the thing for the pain, sugar."
"No," Sunshine groans. "No more Med-X." She is finally getting her thoughts in order from the jumbled mess they were, finally getting herself back. Clover ignores her weak protests and injects another dose in the crook of her arm. She brushes hair stuck to Sunshine's forehead behind her ear.
"Now, what did we learn?" Clover asks, affecting a gentle tone, as if she were talking to a child.
"'I-I will love my master'," Sunshine whispers. "I will do every little thing he wants, no matter how small." Clover beams almost proudly.
"Good girl!"
"Goddamn it, Clover!" a harsh and booming voice rings out from the top of the stairs. Clover's demeanor changes almost instantly. She whimpers, flying away from Sunshine and into a corner of the room. Sunshine watches a huge, featureless shadow make its way down the stairs, thundering step by thundering step. Eulogy Jones flitters in and out of focus, like static from a decaying holotape.
"Goddamn it," he swears again, kneeling down beside Sunshine. She whimpers as he grabs her chin. "I thought I told you not to go overboard!"
"It's not as bad as it s-seems, daddy," Clover says shakily. "It's just all the b-blood. Clean her off and you'll see it's not so bad!" He looks over at Sunshine again, swearing.
"Burke is going to have a shitfit," he says, shaking his head.
"B-Burke?" Sunshine says, a crazed laugh bubbling up in her dry throat. "That asshole. I knew it." Sunshine fades in and out as Eulogy storms to Clover. She ignores the terrified scream the other woman emits and the harsh slapping sounds that precede it. Eulogy drags Clover up the stairs by the hair, crunching the empty syringes of Med-X underneath his deathclaw skinned boots.
Sunshine tries to curl into herself, willing the Med-X out of her system. It changes the burning fire left by Clover's torture into a dull ache but at the cost of her mental faculties. The shadows in the room seem to dance around her and Sunshine hallucinates that they are demons wearing pinstriped suits and black fedoras, and tattered pink dresses, taunting her to call them master and calling her sugar in return. She covers her head to block out the words and the screaming that all seems to blend together into one terrible symphony.
She hears soft footsteps echo down the stairs as the faint sunlight starts to dance through the thin window at the top of the room. The footsteps avoid the broken syringes and it sounds like it has more than two feet. The figure lets out a sharp breath when it reaches the bottom. A shadow leans over her and begins to clean her wounds. The skin on the hands is rough but the touch is gentle. Sunshine can't open her eyelids more than a thin slit because she is trying to keep the monsters away, but she sees patches of broken skin and smooth muscle.
"Charon?" she murmurs. "Charon, I'm so glad you're here."
They had been watching the compound, waiting for the right opening. As much as Charon wanted to storm the gates, that has been out of the question. He always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, but with Sunshine safe and sound back in Megaton first. Charon looks through the binoculars at the door to Paradise Falls, gritting his teeth. He had just seen that asshole Burke enter the compound. Now he knows who ordered Sunshine's capture.
He'd save him for last.
"Do you hear that?" James' asks, motioning toward the compound. Charon shakes his head. He can't really hear much else besides his ragged breathing. "There is screaming and gunshots. It sounds like a riot." James stands, petting Dogmeat as he readies his gun. He walks over to Charon, taking the binoculars from him. James scales up the broken pillar of the overpass to get a better view. He hangs over the side, moving his gaze away from the door to look over into the inside of the compound. "We should have an opening to sneak in undetected."
"'Bout damned time," Charon says, grabbing his assault rifle. "I was getting sick of doing nothing but waiting with my thumb up my ass." James' nods, climbing back down to the ground.
"Knowing our girl, she's probably the one stirring up trouble."
"Jesus," a voice breathes, and it is quiet and feminine. "That monster really went to town on you." Sunshine groans as a cold rag begins to wash over her wounds.
"Hurts," she says, opening her eyes a little wider.
"I know it does. Just bear with me, kid," the woman says. Crimson grimaces as she cleans the wounds with as light of a touch as she can manage. Most of the blood has dried and the wounds scabbed over, so she has to apply pressure to scrub Sunshine's skin clean.
"No Med-X," Sunshine murmurs. Crimson nods.
"No Med-X," she promises, continuing to clean. Sunshine hisses at the contact but is relieved when she can see her skin, even though it is littered with cuts and bruises. Clover hadn't skinned her alive.
Sunshine found herself grateful for small favors.
Screaming and gunshots filter into the room. Crimson bites her lip and reaches over to turn on Sunshine's Pip-boy radio. 'Butcher Pete' does little to cover the obvious sounds of battle.
"How long has this been going on?" Sunshine asks, finding the strength to push herself up on shaky arms. Sunshine feels Crimson inject something into the muscle next to one of the worse wounds on her leg and she stiffens.
"Just a stim," Crimson says, holding the empty package up for her to see. "I broke into Eulogy's private stash." The wound begins to knit together painfully as Crimson wraps gauze around it. Sunshine can feel the medicine working its way through her bloodstream, helping to close the wound and clear her head.
"The fighting," Sunshine demands. "How long?"
"Not very," Crimson answers, twisting open a bottle of precious, purified water and handing it to Sunshine. "And, with the way these things usually go, it won't last. This is the first riot in a while. I guess you can do a hell of a lot when you aren't dying from infection. Here, take these." She hands her two large, white pills.
"Penicillin," Sunshine says, examining them. "But I used all of these."
"Like I said, I broke into Eulogy's private stash. He keeps the best care for himself and gives us scraps," she says bitterly. It is then that Sunshine notices the cane lying next to them. Crimson hands her a box of Salisbury steak and she smiles sadly before accepting it. She rips open the box and pulls out the hunk of rubbery meat, taking a bite of it. She doesn't think she's ever tasted anything so good.
"Your new master is here," Crimson says. "When the riot ends, he's going to take you out of here. If you're lucky, maybe he'll treat you nice."
"I'm not going with him," Sunshine says through a mouthful of food. "I'll set off my collar first." Crimson tugs at the collar on her neck balefully.
"I'd say that you don't mean it, but something tells me you do," Crimson says. "I wish I did. Wish I was brave enough." Sunshine shakes her head.
"You don't have to be," she says. "Here, turn around." Crimson obliges, and Sunshine pops open the control panel. She is able to make sense of everything with her head finally clear from the Med-X. She checks and double checks the wires before tugging them out of their sockets. The light on Crimson's collar goes off and the faint electric hum of the explosive goes blessedly silent. Crimson's hand goes up to touch the now dead and rapidly cooling collar.
"You," she says softly. "You turned it off?"
"I have kind of a knack for this sort of thing," she says with a smile
"I'm free," Crimson says, her voice trembling. "I haven't been free in so long."
"It's the least I can do, for the kindness you've shown me," Sunshine says gently. She stretches her legs out, careful not to reopen any of her wounds. She pushes herself up, standing to her feet slowly. She feels weak and pain wracks her body as she moves to the table where her Vault suit lies crumpled among the various knives. She hisses through clenched teeth as she pulls it on and the fabric rubs against her bandages which in turn rub against her wounds. She turns to see Crimson, cane gripped tightly in hand, pulling herself to her feet.
"Come on. Let's get out of here."
Sunshine noooooo, I'm so sorry. D:
Oh my God, you guys. I have something I really need to get off my chest as I'm nearing 20,000 hits.
I never expected this. Not in a million years.
This started off as something fun, something that I never really planned on finishing or going anywhere meaningful with. Now, I'm almost to chapter 30 and I'm only half-way through what I have planned. XD This has grown ridiculously epic in scope and I want to thank everyone who has reviewed or favorited or story alerted or read. You guys have kept this going and it is awesome to know that I can write something you enjoy. The amount of feedback from you all has been humbling. I'd like to thank in particular my reviewers Shadowknight1121, Shortninja, SwankDoll, TheLionTree, Cressida Isodle, function, mupp3tbab3h (Emma), Tom-Ato13, BlackCatNeko999, FloridaMagpie, versperaxx, JadeObession, WhoAmI, Winged'Pollution, Marskatr, AeliaDouglass, BeGodlyBeLynn, Angel of Desires69, SarahInTheSky, silverdragon0315 Prinzessin Mia, calynn jiana, Pyrogasmic, condor1942, Irish Neko, DreamHunter4, Rosethorn, Har Har, Redglade, Big Sister K,and Recon 11.
All of you have been with me from the damn near the beginning of this monster. You make my day, every single one of you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much it means to me to hear what you have to say.
/end before I write myself to tears.
