Mojave Wasteland
September 26th, 6:23 am
2267
It had taken a while to fall asleep, but it was worthwhile. The rest, Damon could see, had given his mind everything it needed to come to terms with what had happened the day before in a much, much more resilient way. He wasn't about to deny the worst of it, but some of the other smaller tempests that had resulted from it were now so very transparent. One in particular, or perhaps the only one, was the fight he had with Pat the night before. After considering that the differences between him and her were insignificant blots of sand that could so easily be swept away by a wayward sweep of his hand as opposed to the more real, more palpable truth that Andre was dead, to which he could do nothing to brush away, he found it easier to feel easier towards her. Even if she had made him feel emasculated.
He rose slowly from his bed and tossed his sheets aside, admittedly longing for the warmth of Pat's body next to him, and moved on to what was next. He hadn't received word from Salmons after debriefing the mission, and he figured it was because he believed he needed some time to rest. Still, sitting back in his home and sleeping the day away was the last thing he wanted to do. There was always the hydroelectric plant to tend to, and it brought forth the most comforting ease when the thought that all he had to do today was ensure that it was still running. For the first time since leaving Ranger Center, he felt like a genuine coward.
Did Rem feel that way at any point in time? Did he wake up some mornings finding comfort in the idea that all he had to do that day was walk around patrolling the town? Did Salmons? Did Mortekai? Sydney? Dominguez and Andre before they died? His rumination continued even until he was standing in front of the sink of his bathroom, his hands resting flatly on the yellowing porcelain, avoiding eye contact with himself through the cracked dirty mirror in front of him.
Maybe this wasn't his calling. Perhaps his purpose was the hydroelectric plant, and teaching people how to construct or repair technologies of the past in order to improve their quality of lives. It still stung, the idea of it, but he was starting to wonder if it took a greater amount of courage to forge ahead as a soldier or if it took more courage to admit to himself, and to everyone else, that he wasn't cut out to be considered a combatant first and an engineer second.
Damon carried that thought process through his bath, through the time he spent dressing in his home, and all the way to the hydroelectric plant in the distance. There were two guards awaiting there, both armed with scoped assault rifles that made their surveillance duties easier. One of them belonged to Gunner's group. He was a man in his early thirties with a hardened, sharp gaze to make up most of his expression. He appeared to be wearing a vest made out of tire thread, tied to his back and his chest with golden ropes.
The other man standing next to him had been a Littlefield denizen since before Damon's arrival. He was younger, perhaps in his mid to late twenties. His long red hair was picked up by the wind, and his green eyes were much gentler than his counter part's. He had scars, however. Some on his bare arms and one on the side of his cheek, likely earned after unwittingly dodging a bullet.
Whereas the High Towner only offered up a firm nod, the red head turned around and stepped off his high perch, approaching Damon. He wore black combat armor. That alone was a statement. Though Damon hadn't spent very much time in the presence of wastelanders like these, he had already learned that valuable possessions were very rare, and they usually entailed both luck and skill.
"Hey, we haven't met before. I'm Verest," he declared.
Verest's cheerful approach and greeting failed to pierce through the dim mien with which Damon was determined to carry himself with that day. Perhaps it was because in being approached like this again, by a friendly individual who very likely was going to be interested in learning from him, reminded him of Jeremy. He briefly pictured his funeral, his friends and family wailing and lamenting his death before they buried him.
"Damon," he answered, reaching up after Verest offered his hand, and shook it.
"Nothing to report. We've been checking the trash rack. The river's been nice to us, I guess."
It didn't show, but Verest was actually regretful of the fact that he hadn't so much as had to pick an empty Nuka Cola bottle off the rack that protected the hydroelectric plant's head.
Guard duty was among the most tedious things to do. Verest had learned this over a lengthy period of time being engaged in the protection of whichever home he inhabited at the time. Having a gun in his hand and looking dangerous for all intruders was just a way of life for him. It got to the point he sometimes wished something would actually happen. Not anything severe, of course, but perhaps a radscorpion skittering in his direction to both keep himself awake, and to have a story to deliberate with his fellow guard. Or to worry if whether there might be a nest nearby in need of extermination.
Damon simply nodded.
"Good," he uttered, and stepped by.
Disappointed, Verest's eyes dimmed. Another thing he had learned after spending most of his life guarding something or someone was that usually, he was viewed as little more than a hired hand, and some folks didn't deem him worthy of conversation. Had this been an earlier time, he may have begrudged Damon for it. Now, he simply accepted it as a notion as unavoidable as the sun scorching this Mojave sand he was standing on, and moved along, himself.
By the time Damon was inside the wooden dwelling constructed around the hydroelectric plant, Verest was back on his perch, standing next to the living statue named Harry, who wasn't, by any stretch, inclined to shed light on any of his drunken escapades as a younger lad for his partner's amusement.
Truly, truly unfortunate.
With a breath, Verest returned to his duties as a watch guard and cursed inwardly. He couldn't wait for his shift to end. Liz, the woman taking care of her younger brother in Littlefield, had started to liven his hopes. She had been intent on being an ice queen, and he understood that it was because she was in no hurry to meet a man who might come between her and her brother's relationship. Recently, however, since life in Littlefield now boasted amenities unlike in many other locations nearby, that exterior seemed to have softened. He thought she might be ready to celebrate more like an adult, and thinking about being the man she did it with, he admitted to himself, sounded like the most appealing thing to have crossed his way in a long time.
Damon was removing some of the batteries from their charger cables when Verest's voice called to him.
"Friendly incoming, sir!"
Suddenly, Damon felt at ease. It must be Pat, he thought, and the prospect of talking things out with her with a clearer head uplifted him. With everything else in shambles, it was easy for him to find motivation towards the act of reaching out for at least a miniscule amount of stability. Feeling like he would have Pat sleeping beside him again tonight was perhaps the easiest way to achieve it.
He stepped out carrying two car batteries, one in each hand, and did the best he could to appear as casual as possible, averted to making it clear that he was expecting her in any way. He didn't even turn in the direction of the visitor until after he had set the batteries down beside five others that were fully charged and ready for use, but it wasn't Pat's face he found, it was one of Gunner's men. One he had met before.
"Welcome."
After patting the dust away from his hands and settling them to his sides, Damon faced Nate completely and inquired, "What can I do for you?"
Nate stopped merely a few feet away from the well educated Desert Ranger and canted his head to the left. In the instance between taking a breath to speak and actually talking, a bevy of considerations that would never course through a harmless man's head crossed him. Whereas any passive individual may be interested in little more than a greeting, or an introduction, Nate was interested in all the little bits of characterization from which Damon was composed.
What kind of man was he?
What mattered to him most?
Before this meeting even occurred, he thought he had the answer firmly in his grasp without having to utter a word to him. Pat, the ugly bald woman who carried around a plasma weapon, shared a bed with him. That hadn't been the case tonight, however, and Nate found that he had to reassess his stance towards the Corporal and uncover if his feelings towards her lingered, or if not.
"I've . . . lived in the wasteland my whole life, and I've never seen anything like this."
Gesturing out towards the town, Nate's tanned facial features, clouded momentarily by the thick hair of his Native American ancestry, offered up a very rare, but warm, smile. "My people, they've never been so happy. Our children play. They sing songs from those . . . musicals they've seen on the television, and I'd like to thank you face to face."
It was simple when he thought back on it, and sadly so, but Nate had found throughout his work as a Frumentarii that flattery could take a man a long way. Ego was such a rampant disease, present in every man outside of Caesar's Legion that he had met. One prime example was Gunner, the old fool. Recalling the time they encountered one another made him laugh sometimes when he was alone in his room, remembering that their partnership had started with little more than a few words that complimented his prowess as a leader.
Gunner, with his ego stroked and feeling ascertained, was quickly prepared to introduce Nate to the rest of his group to everyone else as proof of his undoubted greatness as a leader, and absorbed the Frumentarii into his circle so fast Nate had to wrestle with himself not to compromise the town and enslave its people within two days of his infiltration. Though some nights, he fantasized about seeing Gunner's head on a pike just outside of High Town, he didn't disobey the almighty Caesar, and was glad to know that his patience would soon pay off.
After all, Gunner was one of the many individuals who would never see the light of day after the Legion's assault on Littlefield.
Meanwhile, Damon's shoulders relaxed. Despite his predisposition to remain sour in the direction of everything that approached him, Nate's sincere display of appreciation and the appeasing maturity behind him was disarming enough.
"Thanks," he gave in, turning around to retrieve more batteries.
While the Desert Ranger stepped inside and could be heard disconnecting wires, Nate dissected the response and was immediately able to extract the uneasiness of his quarry. He had heard word of Andre's death, something that brought to him the sweetest sense of victory that he had experienced in years, and thought that this particular victory of the Legion's may be partly responsible for it, along with the unseen woes of he and his wretched concubine's.
Damon emerged again and found Nate just standing there, glancing towards the town with a distant smile. After seeing that it simply didn't stop, he laughed softly and shook his head, drawing the mature Native American's attention. Nate looked upon Damon and tilted his eyes towards the ground and, from Damon's perspective, took the time to compose himself.
"Do you have any children?"
Nate cleared his throat, the question and the ideals that surfaced in his mind from it flashing by. He did have children, but they weren't anywhere nearby, and he hadn't seen their faces in years. They were in Flagstaff. As for the children who had come to Littlefield among High Town's people, he could only feel disgust towards them. Denizens of the wasteland wondered why their lives were so fragile, so easily taken from them, and all of the answers stood just before them as real as their reflections in the mirror. They ignored it because they didn't have the strength to let go of the old world values that dictated children should live care free lives however possible.
Every hour these children spent running around the town chasing each other in frantic games of tag was another hour wasted not hardening themselves to the same degree as the wasteland around them.
"No," he answered softly. "My children have left the wasteland behind."
Briefly, a distant longing inhabited his expression and he looked skywards. Sometimes, Nate actually felt the pain of his lies somewhere inside. He had a picture with him, something he had found years ago, of a woman and two children. The mother spent a time as one of their slaves in Flagstaff until her son was old enough to free her of her torture and, in the process, ascend into his position as a Legionary. Her daughter had birthed two children, last he remembered, but out here, outside of Flagstaff, they were his supposed family, and he used their picture to convey what that family he had lost was supposed to look like.
They had been his lost relatives long enough for him to have dreamt with them before.
Damon, for a second, was uncertain of what to say.
"Sorry to hear that," he answered, regret dimming his tone.
He nearly asked what had happened to them, but he thought better than to pry into the man's past and force him to relive whatever experience made him turn his eyes to the sky as if he wished he might find the faces of his children in the clouds. The Frumentarii, on the other hand, had already been prepared to offer the story after a long sequence of thought. He hadn't forgotten a single detail of that lie because it was an integral piece of his lethal facade.
Instead, Damon's answer prompted a gentle shake of his head, and a few reassuring words, "I've made my peace with it. I shall see them again one day. Until then, there are other children just like them in need of security."
Nate's resolution to protect other children to make up for his loss resounded deep in Damon's chest as if an explosion had rattled him, and from the gesture, he gathered at least some tiny form of strength with which to support himself.
"Indeed," he encouraged, before turning around with a much livelier energy about him. "So, how are you enjoying those amenities?"
"They've made my days brighter, Ranger," Nate answered, not a single word uttered without a reason.
Rem entered his home and, unsurprisingly, found Maggie sitting in the middle of a bundle of computer junk. The only alien notion of the scene was that this time, her hands were unmoving, and she appeared to be lost in thought. She turned to glance at him and sighed, exasperated, moments before she furrowed her brows and cursed, "Fuck."
Hanging his duster on the coat rack, Rem asked what was wrong. The question only served to stoke the flames of her silent fury, and she responded loudly, "I can't put together not even one fucking terminal that works."
It didn't take Rem long to consider what may need to be done.
"Well . . . I think Captain Salmons finds yer Protectrons important, and might let me go look around for some more computers."
Just then, he remembered seeing a Poseidon Energy refueling station on their way here from Bunkerville. It would have been a good place to look if they weren't normally boiling with radiation. What more, Mortekai and Andre were gone. But maybe there was somewhere else. Briefly, he considered asking for permission to go survey the mall. It would give him an opportunity to search their two missing rangers and possibly locate a functional terminal for Maggie to use.
She sat there in silence after Rem made the proposition. He gathered she may have been more frustrated with herself than the parts themselves.
"It's awright, Maggie."
The girl's entire body responded to his words, and her voice was aggressive.
"No, someone fucking died for these Protectrons. I said I could get them up and running, and I don't want someone else to have to die to get the parts for a running computer."
In some ways, she was beginning to resent Rem for bringing her here. Being with the Khans, she never made claims like this. They were never under so much pressure they had to scavenge for robots and hope that she might be able to make something out of them. Now? She saw that the people in Littlefield needed help, and after Rem piled her mother's expectations on her shoulders, she made the mistake of buying into it.
Now she was forced to feel responsible, forced to feel like something had to come out of her request for these bulky robots.
Grunting loudly, she leaned in and covered her face with both her hands, her eyes peering between some of her fingers. Then, angrily, she straightened and stood onto the flats of her bare feet, "It's utter bullshit that I can't find a working terminal when I actually need it. I'm going to sleep."
After momentarily gauging her, weighing the differences between the younger girl he met in Brownsburough and the girl he knew now, Rem encouraged, "Yeah . . . git some sleep. Git back at it later wit' a clearer head, Maggie."
She closed the door behind her and Rem eventually found Pat lying on the couch, her eyes barely open, but watching him nonetheless. A smile crossed her lips.
"What?"
Pat could see it plain as day the difficulties Rem might encounter if he were interested in Maggie, which she already suspected he was. She had been told Maggie was a raider, and that meant she had been influenced by people who weren't necessarily rougher than Rem was, but definitely not as big on those encouraging platitudes that were inherent to him as a result of his good character. Maggie didn't want a man who would coddle her whenever she was angry.
Thankfully, Rem didn't go so far with the gesture. She would have been embarrassed for him had he offered food, a drink, or anything superfluous.
It wasn't hopeless, however, she thought. Pat herself believed she was similar to Maggie in some ways. They were both meaner than most. Maggie internally so, and Pat externally.
As a rare compliment, Rem had convinced her he was genuinely an honorable person, and so far, he hadn't uttered a word to Damon about what happened in Pahrump. That . . . she cherished. Truly, deeply cherished.
Suffice to say, knowing that he would never betray her and would risk his life for her without a second thought, and that he would always fight for what was right, charmed her. That in mind, she understood that even if there wasn't any immediate attraction on Maggie's end, it very likely wouldn't be long before he saved her life or treated her better than anyone ever had, and the right conditions for a change of heart might be met.
Just like it had for her.
"Nothing," she responded before turning around, her back facing him now.
Then, the door to Maggie's room swept open and she stormed right back out.
"Got an idea," she declared firmly. "If I can't get these fuckers up and running, there's something else I can do."
"Here we go," Pat quipped passively, snuggling into her blanket just a little further, a smile on her face.
"What?" Rem inquired.
She moved towards the Protectrons and shoved one to the floor. It fell in a pathetic heap, and she found pleasure in the sight of it. Their bipedal design hardly promoted any real, dangerous mobility and balance for such a construct.
"Let's be honest, Protectrons are like, I don't know, the pansies of the robot world."
Rem stood there, at a distance, and interjected, "Well, Legionaries might have trouble with 'em. Some of 'em, at least. They don't all carry them lances, right? The ones that don't will be stuck tryin' to kill the thangs with normal spears."
"Please. Those guys are smart. All they need to do is get close enough and shove it to the floor. Smash its head with a rock, dig around inside, and pull out some components. Done and done."
She was kneeling in front of the dropped Protectron and was already inside its shell, searching for the parts specifically she believed may still be useful.
"So what then?" Rem asked.
"The Protectron model of robot was less about like . . . firepower and more about telling others what's going on. They were supposed to alert other Protectrons in the area and the police, which means these pieces of junk have signal emitters and receivers. I saw that happening in every movie I ever saw them in."
Both Rem and Pat gave that final statement the attention it deserved. Movies? Pat wondered if she meant the ones now being played in town, but Rem's home didn't even have a functional television in it. Rem, on the other hand, was immediately aware of what she was referencing, and he was also able to understand the message she was attempting to get across, but did nothing other than watch her gritty little hands digging at the robot.
She grunted and contorted her countenance before she gave up and reached for a pair of needle nosed pliers, her bare hands no longer enough. Regardless of how well aware she was of the way this specific tool could strip down bolts and make them more difficult to deal with, she put it to hard labor. Meanwhile, Rem began to feel impatient, and nearly inquired further until she found the concentration to talk and work at the same time.
"They also have some pretty serious sensor arrays. We can hide some of those around the town and when something comes uninvited, it'll send us a signal to let us know. Give us pinpoint locations, too. Saw that in movies as well."
Rem's facial expression focused. It didn't take very long at all for him to put together what he would use it for.
"That sounds great, Maggie. Captain Salmons an' I got just the thang for yer little idea there."
Her curiosity piqued, she turned her attention away from the dissected Protectron in front of her and glanced his way. Seeing that he had already reached the door and was putting his brimmed hat back on, she asked where he was going, and he replied smugly, "Yer sensor 'rrays might help us trap a lil rat, that's all. But first, I gotta go and do what I can to keep it feelin' good 'bout scurryin' around some more. Don't tell no-one."
After stepping out the door, he headed straight back for Salmons' office to let him know the meeting was a bad idea. The eyes of the town folk were a formidable defense, undoubtedly so, but there was something much more lethal and, in a way, succinct about Maggie's method. They could deploy a bevy of unbiased eyes all throughout town that nobody would know about except people they trusted.
His trip led him to stand in front of Salmons' desk. It was starting to feel like this was a regular occurrence. Even Salmons' placid, attentive expression felt a little too adherent to the norm.
Rem explained everything, to which Salmons' entire disposition flashed dimly. He even sat up in his chair just a little straighter than before, and leaned in.
"Only problem is . . . if we just catch whoever it is, it wont matter unless we catch him doing something implicating. If he's one of Gunner's boys, we can't just yank him away and execute him just because he was snooping around the junkyard."
"We gotta pick the right time, sir."
Salmons nodded slowly, and after ruminating a plan as deeply as he could, he took their plan and put real intent into it, "We'll watch him; document the locations he visits, and what his visits there might mean. The right time to nail the son of a bitch will unveil itself."
"Yes sir."
September 26th, 11:47 am
There was a knock at the door and Pat, having been awake by then but still lying silently in bed, staring at the ceiling, smoothly turned her head in the direction the sounds came from. With nearly labored effort, she stood from her couch and began approaching the door, wearing nothing but her underwear and a tank top.
"Who is it?"
"Damon."
Immediately, her chest tingled, and thoughts from last night made a splash after re-entering the atmosphere of her psyche. She remembered lying awake for over an hour last night after Maggie finally succumbed to her exhaustion and went to sleep, convincing herself that her relationship with him had all been little more than a way to fool herself into believing things weren't as bad as they really were.
Still, she opened the door and looked straight for his eyes. In response, he met her gaze and then looked down to her bare legs.
"There's . . . uh," she stuttered, the look in his eye more than indicative enough of what he might be thinking. "Rem has the hots for the other girl . . . so . . . "
Damon's eyes hadn't been sharp since the moment he got there. In fact, when Pat opened the door, there was a very passive expression to greet her, as if he was ready to be as understanding as was necessary.
And after her dialogue?
The most amused smile crossed his lips, and laughter followed.
Pat canted her head and, as a result of his laughter, narrowed her eyes and paid close, but gentle, attention.
"What?" she asked firmly.
"It's just," Damon began, settling down enough to speak coherently. "You're . . . so blunt. Direct. It's an intrinsic quality of yours that stands out to me."
"Small words, please," she urged, staring at him, her expression full of rigid expectation.
The smile on his lips only grew larger.
"What I'm saying is that being blunt is a natural . . . thing . . . to you as a person."
He struggled to use the word thing instead of characteristic in the hopes of not using words she didn't understand again.
"You grew up in this . . . gritty environment, and it makes you blunt. Makes you direct . . . "
Pat, at this point, was dissecting every single one of his facial expressions. Firstly, that smile, and the dimples that formed on the corners of his lips, but lastly, she noted the way his voice trailed off at the end of his last statement.
". . . and I like that so much about you. That's what draws me to you. How different you are."
Her eyes softened.
"Maybe I'm too different."
He lost the smile.
"No, you're perfect as you are."
Pat released a heavy breath and shook her head, "No, I'm not."
She felt the regret boiling inside her, rising to flood her throat and threatening to escape through her tear ducts and through her mouth in the form of muffled sobs.
"We're so different," she forced out her words, angry and suddenly full of sorrow over how eagerly she chased the opportunity to end their relationship in a way that didn't involve admitting that a baby that wasn't his grew in her stomach.
"We'll work them out," Damon pushed forward, his hand instinctively raising to keep her from shutting the door on him. In the same stride, he put himself so close to her he had to look straight down to find her gaze, and watched as she turned away, refusing to return the gesture.
"We can work them out. I realized that we're always so ready to take offense at something the other says, and we both need to understand that- "
"It can't be fixed. The sex . . . isn't what I'm used to. I'm sorry."
Damon stood there, watching her, utterly shocked, searching her face for clues that might ascertain whether she was being truthful or not, and before he could say anything at all, she turned her shoulder to him and nudged him away, and then shut the door.
While Pat pressed her back against the door, Damon stood there, his eyes aligned with the barrier between them but never, at all, taking the grain and the peeled paint into account. He was lost in thought, bouncing from one point of view to the other. Eventually, he briefly considered flinging curse words her way through the door in his own defense.
Instead, he shifted his weight onto the other foot and eased away from the door, turning from it, brimming with a fervent desire to get away from it entirely but as he stepped into the cracked cement pathways that weaved through the town, tainted with sand, he wondered.
He needed to talk to Rem.
Rem stepped out of Salmon's office and immediately turned left, headed in the direction of his home when a voice called to him from behind.
"Hey, wait a sec."
Turning around, he found Damon leaning up against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and he couldn't help but consider how there was something very odd about the notion. For a second, he felt as though he was being hunted down.
"What's goin' on, Damon?"
Damon had reason to pause as well. He saw that, throughout the time that he had kept his eyes off of Rem, he had already become the other Desert Ranger speaking to Salmons the most. The thought that there weren't very many Rangers left anymore anyway briefly crossed his mind, but he set it aside in favor of something else that was troubling him.
"I have a question to ask . . . about Pat."
The understanding that Pat wasn't sleeping in Damon's house anymore immediately surfaced as an integral piece of context for this conversation, and so by the time Rem fully turned his body to the corporal, he was being pulled two different ways.
Firstly, he looked straight into Damon's eyes and wondered if he was too detached from the mission at hand, and should be grounded. The idea that he was busy with the captain devising ways to ensure the safety of the town while the corporal floated around trying to ensure his love life was in tact scratched a microscopic flake from the rock that symbolized his composure.
Secondly, and this occurred as immediately as the first sensation, his inherent cordiality made him feel more inclined to simply answer and help however he could.
Damon was largely unaware of the way his priorities incurred on Rem, so he continued without actually receiving permission to.
"She broke up with me . . . and," he paused to reconsider. The reason he was here, talking to Rem now, was that he had decided the reason she gave him was a lie. It had to be, he thought, because he remembered the things they made each other say the first time they lay in bed. Still, he had to keep considering it over and over again.
". . . and she gave me a totally bogus reason. I . . . I think it has to be something else. Something she's not telling me."
"Sounds like somethin' you should talk to her about."
"So you don't know anything?"
By the time that last question reached Rem's ears, he was already turning away, "Nope."
The first step that he would have taken in the opposite direction stopped then. It didn't dawn on him until then what the implication was, what it must have meant if Pat was giving Damon false reasons as to why they should no longer be in a relationship.
Damon's eyes, thoroughly prepared to absorb every minute nuance in Rem's demeanor, picked up the pause.
"Remember something?"
Rem's reply came more fluidly than he thought it would. Perhaps it was because the second he recognized the possibility that Pat may now be aware that she was carrying a child in her belly, there was something else entirely, a detached train of thought, perhaps, that he was seamlessly able to graft on top of the thought process taking place before.
His desire to level the corporal was the perfect scapegoat. He even began with an exasperated breath.
"Just . . . ever vigilant, corporal."
Damon sneered the second he heard Rem's parting words. The general knowledge that the term was often used to tell soldiers with wandering thoughts to focus on the task at hand wasn't lost on him.
"What the fuck's crawled up your ass?"
The outburst came with much more fluidity than it ever had. Before, the disdain he had towards Rem and the nuances that accompanied his status as a deployed Ranger only manifested in internal dialogue, or simple thought and nothing more.
"Just because you're talking to Salmons a lot doesn't make you anything more than the rest of us."
From the very start, Rem had been prepared to walk away without responding to any barrage of insults the corporal may fling his way, but those specific three words at the very end of his statement were like droplets of moisture squeezed fresh from a lime into a gaping wound.
"Rest of us?" Rem swept his right arm outward as he turned again, "Rest of us, corporal? See that's the god damn problem. There ain't no damn rest of us no more, Damon, and you're too damn busy worryin' about sleepin' alone at night to even realize it."
"Where's Sydney?"
Rem's eyes sharpened, "She's gone, Damon. She took off."
"She deserted?" Damon asked, bewildered.
"Naw, she went after Mortekai. We're guessin' he would want to go see Bolders, and she musta followed him there. We ain't heard anythang from 'em, an' the captain aint willin' to send another Ranger out after 'em."
Damon took a pause to consider it all, and then shrugged his shoulders, "Not my fault nobody tells me anything."
"The captain guessed you needed some time to get yourself together after what happened at the mall; figured you'd come to him when you was ready to get back at it again, but that aint your primary concern. You had a fight wit' Pat instead and came to me about that as opposed to askin' me about the town status."
Rem could see as Damon's psyche froze in place, giving itself the room to see the truth in what he was being told.
"When you're ready to get back to doin' what you can to help, go see the captain. It might just be the three of us now. We're droppin' like flies, but the town needs us."
That Rem walked away actually made it much easier on him. Damon had no need to make any assurances to him, wasn't forced to pledge that it wouldn't happen again. Instead, it was as simple as understanding that he had been wrong to put so much focus on his love life and internally ascertain to himself that he would shift his mentality.
Still, he had no intention of leaving things with Pat where they were now.