i. when the moon comes over the mountain
in which nobody is brave enough to tell you charisma is a dump stat

You walk in through the open doors of the Lucky 38, limping, your aches vibrating through every bone in your body, and you say:

"Well hey, fellas. I'm back."

The hubbub dies in an instant. You wonder what you look like to all these people. Like hell, probably. Worn-out, weather-beaten, covered in new scars, hair shaved and growing back as awkward grey fuzz. Like a woman who's seen far too much recent hand-to-hand combat for someone trudging gamely through her fifties in the Mojave wasteland. So yes: you look like hell. And – you realise, as Veronica bears down on you with a face like a deathclaw who's just realised you're holding her egg – like a woman who's about to get told off in full view of all her colleagues.

"What the hell," she says, her voice breaking over you like a bucket of ice water. It's all you can do not to shiver; you love to be proved right, but somehow she manages to take the joy out of it.

"Jesus," you say. "You step out for five minutes and everyone starts giving you the third degree."

"Five minutes? Try five months."

God, she makes it so easy. The jokes practically write themselves.

"Hey, you kids been coordinatin'? Arcade said the same thing."

"I'm serious."

She stands there, glaring at you. She's pretty good at it, though she's got the advantage of youth and good rest: all tall and glowery with her arms folded, while you're over here leaning on an old roulette table trying not to keel over. Usually, the former casino floor is a hive of activity, papers and arguments flying across the tables as the Council of the Mojave Union goes about the messy business of keeping the most fractious community in the wasteland running; right now, though, everyone is dead silent. Dozens and dozens of pairs of eyes, all watching their asshole chair get chewed out.

Ugh. Okay. You are definitely gonna have to sit down.

"Okay," you say, easing yourself stiffly down onto the nearest bar stool. "Look. I was away slightly longer than I anticipated―"

"You're telling me."

"―but I did have a good reason."

You take off your aviators and look up at her. Although that's selling it short; this is the Look, the old Vegas stare, the one you've heard they say you gave Lanius when you talked him into retreat, right before you smiled and plugged the slaving bastard in the back of the neck. (That's not quite how it went down, but you let them think it is. Look, you have a community to run. And besides, you did just admit you were an asshole.)

Veronica looks back, unimpressed. Figures. It's kinda hard to intimidate someone who's seen you being throttled by a super mutant before.

"I was followin' a trail," you say. "Two of 'em. Tip from a friend." You don't tell her his name. You never have, and you suppose you probably never will. There are some things that nobody needs to know about you. "All the way through the Big Empty to the Sierra Madre."

Veronica's eyes widen. Beyond her, you can see the waves of consternation passing through the motley selection of Followers, Families reps and Freesiders who make up your council. These are big names you're dropping – mythical, even. Haunted by old America and the sins it left behind. They aren't places that people go. Or at the very least, not places from which they return.

But then, you aren't a person, are you?

It's good to have an audience again. You can feel yourself shifting in your seat, moving your back and shoulders into a position. In this moment, you are every mysterious stranger in every dive bar from here to New Reno, dusty and wind-blown, with a story to tell to anyone who'll stand you a drink. And you are back in your element.

"Got a little caught up in some business along the way," you go on, laying your hat on the bar. "Need to talk to you about that, actually. Arcade and Julie too, scrape together some Followers who can make somethin' of what I've found. But back to my point." A smile. It's the only thing about you that's better than when you set out: the fancy auto-doc in the Big Empty replaced your missing teeth and filled a bunch of others. Your signature grin, back and better than ever. "I followed those trails all the way to the end. And I found some people."

You let the smile fade and your shoulders straighten out. You look Veronica dead in the eye.

"I found Elijah, Veronica. And I found Christine."

You've known Veronica four years now. You met in the brutal part of 2281, the year you decapitated three states and pulled the Mojave Union out of your hat; you fought through half the vaults in Nevada together, stood side by side on Hoover Dam, and when the dust settled, you couldn't think of anyone better to help pick up the pieces. People like her, people who can see beyond caps or dogma to the bigger picture, are hard to come by out here. Besides, it pays to have someone in your administration who knows the Brotherhood.

So you're close, is the thing. You trust her, and you like to think she trusts you, too. And yet, in all that time, and despite the fact that she's told you all the parts of her life story – she's never once uttered the name of the woman she loved.

Not till now.

The two of you sit alone in the cocktail lounge of the Lucky 38, right at the top of the spire, with the shades pulled down a little to fend off the fierce Mojave sun. It was always your favourite room in the casino. Light and bright and airy, with a view of Vegas to die for. The city sprawling on all sides, cupped in the vast blue palm of the sky.

Veronica looks out with you, silent. It's fine. You're home again now; you have all the time in the world.

"I thought," she begins, then breaks off, shakes her head. "I don't even know what I thought." She turns to face you. "You're sure?"

"Yeah." You smile sadly, squeeze her shoulder. It's all unfeigned. Looking at her now, after the nightmare of the Empty and the Madre, you think you couldn't love her more if she really was your daughter. "Elijah … well, you told me what he was like. He ain't changed, sweetheart. Or if he has, he's got worse."

Veronica's face darkens. You can't blame her. Elijah was like a grandfather to her, right up until he wasn't any more. Until the day he proved that all that really mattered to him was finding an old world gun big enough to blow the whole Mojave's head off, and the Brotherhood were just a means to his end.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks, after a moment. "When you set out? I would have come, you know I would."

"I didn't know for sure," you tell her. "And it's been what, ten years? More? Would've been cruel, openin' that wound again without knowin' if there was anythin' at the end of the trail."

"I," she begins, then seems to think better of it, the fight withering and pulling back out of her face. "I guess … I guess you're right." Pause. "Thank you," she says. "That was kind of you."

You shrug.

"'S what I do, sweetheart. Shall I go on?"

"Yeah."

"All right. So Elijah, he went to the Big Empty. Lookin' for superweapons, I think. But the Brotherhood had heard about his crimes by that point. Sent an enforcer after him."

She catches your meaning right away. You can see it in the shock on her face.

"But … but she left the Brotherhood. When her parents tried to split us up."

"Not exactly." You hesitate. This is the hardest part. You thought it over so many times, on the long journey home, but you never quite managed to decide how you were going to say it. "It … was Elijah, Veronica. Christine wasn't running from her parents. He didn't wanna share you, so he forced her transfer to the Circle of Steel and cooked up the cover story. I guess maybe that's why they sent her. They knew she hated him. Wouldn't give up."

Veronica makes a small involuntary noise that you both pretend didn't happen. You wait, giving her space as the heartbreak spreads slowly across her face – and then, at last, she sighs.

"God." She takes a sip of her drink. "I really thought she got out. I thought – even if she couldn't stay, she was free to move on. Find someone else. But I should've known better. Not like I could get out, either, till – well, till you." She waves the glass at you. In thanks or just as punctuation, take your pick. "Go on."

"She caught up with him in the Big Empty." You can see it now: the pre-war internment camp, its inhabitants long since ghoulified. They couldn't leave. Trapped in there by the bombs locked around their necks. Two hundred goddamn years, sitting in that cage while the Think Tank ripped the crater apart around them. "He was experimentin' with bomb collars. Saw the reflection on her scope, drove his subjects at her and detonated the collars. Escaped."

"Oh my god." Veronica closes her eyes for a moment. "He really … he would." She sighs. "And Christine?"

"Med bots dragged her away. She …" Was experimented on, until Ulysses dragged her away to his little nest. Something involving electrodes, something vicious enough to strip out her ability to read. But maybe that's news for later. "Lived," you finish. "Followed Elijah to the Sierra Madre, where she got locked in an auto-doc till I let her out. We got to talkin', and the whole story came out."

She smiles weakly.

"You do have a way of making people tell you their life stories."

"Kinda just happened. Was a stressful situation." Your turn to sigh now. That's a big understatement, even for you. "Elijah had been camped out at the Madre for a few years. Catchin' people who came near. Puttin' bomb collars on them, trying to use 'em to crack the casino open and weaponise it. There's this poison fog, they call it the Cloud, and these security holograms …" You shake your head. "He got Christine, and he got me too, which was his mistake. Cracked the vault and let his greed do the rest. He walked in, I walked out and locked the door. Ain't the kinda lock that's ever openin' again."

Veronica breathes out. Slow. Careful. Like she's not sure her lungs can take it.

"He's gone, then," she says. "Forever."

Except for his ghost. The frequency Elijah used to broadcast instructions to the speakers in the collars is still active; you had his voice in your ears every step of the way back from the Madre to the Sink, where you finally found the tools to cut the thing off without detonating it. Begging and pleading and cursing your name to the grave, just like all his test subjects used to do to him. Eventually the signal started looping, and maybe that was worse.

Veronica doesn't need to know any of that, though. This is your sin, and your cross alone to bear.

"One way or another," you say, which is mostly true if you think about it.

Her face is very still. Too still, really.

"It doesn't matter," she says, though you're not sure she's talking to you. "He died when we all retreated to Hidden Valley. I didn't expect to see him again. No one did."

She looks very young all of a sudden. And you know, you know, that all the people you affectionately refer to as your kids are grown-ass adults, that Veronica will be thirty-one this year, but she still looks so young. And so you set down your beer, and you put your arm around her shoulders.

"I know, sweetheart. I know."

She sniffs, rubs her eyes quickly with the heel of her hand.

"Mm," she says, pulling away again. "And, uh … I'm guessing Christine …"

"She's a stubborn motherfucker," you say flatly. "I can see why you like her. I told her, Veronica's with the Followers now, no Brotherhood around to tell her who she can and can't see, and she said, I gotta watch the Madre. Make sure nobody ever lets the poison out the way Elijah wanted to."

"She said that?"

You flutter a hand, light, dismissive.

"I may be paraphrasin'. But she was bein' real noble and tragic, and I told her that noble, tragic people don't get to come home and get railed by hot scientists―"

"Oh my god, you didn't―"

"―and she said, I have a duty, and I said, yeah, to Veronica, and she said, it's ancient history, we've both moved on, and I said, you're gonna have to try harder than that to lie to me." You scowl at her. You are irrepressible. It's important to the idea of you that you be irrepressible. "What? You sayin' you ain't a hot scientist?"

"That is not even close to the part of that sentence I have an issue with," she says. "C'mon."

She's smiling, though, so you think it's okay.

"I have like a thousand questions," she says, picking up her drink again. "But I gotta be honest, after all you just said … there's one I need to get out there right away."

Of course. You only play with stacked decks; you knew before you sat down how the cards were going to fall.

"Shoot."

Veronica drains her glass in one and smacks it down on the polished tabletop.

"How do we get to the Sierra Madre?"

You will take her there. But you just got back, and the Madre and the Empty kicked the shit out of you, and Vegas has been swirling drunkenly along without you for five months. You've got some stuff to take care of first.

So: a bath. A good long hot one, in which you boil down all the aches the wasteland has inflicted upon you into a soft pale slime that pools at the base of your chest, and then let them drain away with the water when you're done. You emerge revived, clean, new. Ready to put yourself back together and get to work.

As you rise from the tub, you catch your eye in the mirror across the room. Pause. Lean on the sink, tilting your head this way and that to see the edges of the surgery scars peeping out from beneath your newly regrown hair. Pale canals in your brown skin.

"Kept my promise," you say, flicking open your razor. "Well, a bath rather than a shower. But like you asked."

Your brain doesn't say anything, of course. It hasn't since the auto-doc stuck it back in and made the two of you one again. But that last conversation you had with each other left you acutely aware of the value of a little common courtesy.

It helps to cling to these things. To the lightness, to the distance that turns tragedy into comedy. You will never forget what happened to you in the Big Empty, or to Christine, or to any of the lost souls you encountered there. But you are you, and the day you acknowledge that you're human is the day you cease to exist.

"No problem," you tell your brain. "Now hold still while I get this shit off the both of us."

When you were young, in those dim and distant years before Caesar's boys came, you wore your hair long and braided, in the fashion of the assholes that made you. After you fled west to New Reno, you got carried away with your freedom and cut it all off before realising your mistake and sheepishly growing it out again. Now – well, now you're fifty-three and grey as an old ghoul, and as far as you're concerned, the auto-doc had the right idea when it shaved your head to crack it open and suck your brain out.

Besides, you reflect, as the hair falls like dirty snow from your scalp and jaw. You're never going to learn to like these scars unless you flaunt them.

"First of all, I'd like to welcome back the official chair of the council. Our courier, Sixes."

There's a joke in this, somewhere deep beneath the surface where even you know better than to search for too long. Veronica calls you Sixes because of your tattoo, and most of the council have followed suit, not knowing your name, nor that the one man in the wasteland who does will never use it.

A thought for another time. You aim your smile down the table at the faces that turn towards you, dazzle them with your charm. They look glad to see you, though not as half as glad as you feel to see them. Julie and Arcade from the Followers, of course, next to a securitron currently streaming Yes Man. The King from Freeside, along with Francine, the owner of the sole brain cell the Garret twins have between them. Clayton and his crew from Westside. Even the damn Family reps; you never thought you'd be happy to see Marjorie, but there's a first time for everything.

"Thanks, Veronica," you say, half-raising a hand in greeting. "Good to be home. And to see that Vegas ain't burned down without me."

"It's good to see you too," says Arcade. "I trust you're going to tell us where you managed to find a dentist in the Mojave?"

You wink. It is dashing and ebullient, as it always is. Nobody will ever know what the price of these teeth was.

"A lady's gotta have her secrets," you tell him. "Look, I got a lot to tell y'all, but I wanna know how we're doin' first."

He rolls his eyes, but he's smiling, of course.

"All right, all right. Veronica?"

"Sure," she says, flipping through her notebook. "Okay. I can give you facts and figures later―"

"I wish that you wouldn't."

"―I will give you facts and figures later," she continues, raising her eyebrows at you, "but we're ticking over. A couple of months ago, we got some more of those raiders – you know, all the guys the 80s chased out from upstate? – but nothing the militia couldn't handle. Tourism's holding steady."

"With the Ultra-Luxe ahead of all the rest, of course," adds Marjorie, unable to resist taking a dig at the other casinos.

"Sure, baby, you tell yourself that," says Swank, with a lazy grin that makes her curl her lip in disgust. "Everyone knows we're the tops."

"Everyone except my accounting subroutines," puts in Yes Man cheerfully, pissing them both off at once. "The Ultra-Luxe is the clear leader for this quarte―"

"Thanks for that one, sweetheart," you say. As fun as an argument would be, you really don't want this meeting to go on any longer than necessary. You have a very important appointment with the presidential suite and about thirteen solid hours of sleep; the only reason you're doing this first is because you won't be able to fall asleep until you know what state Vegas has got itself into in your absence. "Movin' right along, how's our development project goin'?"

"Slowly," admits Veronica. "We're still putting the word out, you know, New Vegas is willing to pay a premium for any and all medical and education professionals, but there's still this idea that the Mojave isn't safe. People kinda like the idea of the frontier, especially with a council stipend, but not if they have to leave the protection of the NCR."

Fair enough. You do what you can to keep the Mojave stable – securitrons and militia groups, radio stations and a few ex-rangers who figured they'd stick with the desert over Oliver – but it's nothing like having the massive resources of the fat old bear over the border.

"Well, I guess I can't blame 'em for that," you say, with a sigh. "Power? Water?"

"Exports are going strong. Emily Ortal, from the Followers―"

"Yeah, I know her. Good with machines."

"Of course you know her," she mutters, just loud enough for you to hear. "Anyway, yeah, she's been working with Yes Man to try and get the old H&H factory up and running, but that's been slow going."

"The place is really, really broken," says Yes Man confidingly, leaning in and cupping a claw to his screen as if to shield a mouth he doesn't have. "But Mr House had all kinds of information on it! I'm confident we can have it operational again!"

"And I share in that confidence," you say, with a smile. "See? You barely even needed me."

Glances are exchanged, up and down the table. You could map allegiances this way: Julie looks at Arcade, the King at Clayton, Swank at Carlitos, Marjorie at Francine. It makes your heart swell a little in your chest. Half these people didn't know each other before you formed this council, and the other half hated each other's guts; now here they all are, barely even aware that they've ended up forming alliances.

Looks like they're figuring out which of them is going to contradict you. And, judging by the look on Carlitos' face …

"Hey, I'm gonna give it to you straight," he says. "We could've fuckin' used you, courier."

You've always admired this about him. After you broke the Omertas and relaunched Gomorrah as the Pyramid, you put him and Joana in charge; that kind of gift would turn a lesser man into a sycophant and toady. But your instincts were right: the kid has principles, and if he thinks you're wrong, he'll tell you.

"Not sure I'd have put it quite like that," says the King, raising one impeccable eyebrow. "But I gotta agree. There ain't a lotta people who can make all these boys and girls play nice, y'hear? We got work to do, and you make it go smoother."

You consider. Joke, or not? No: this one's serious. If Vegas can't last without you, it can't last at all.

"Look," you say. "I know I was gone a little longer than I said, but―"

"Yeah, and where were you?" asks Carlitos. "Five months? What the fuck is that about?"

"I'll get to that, I just―"

"Actually, Sixes, we'd really appreciate it if you got to it now."

Julie this time, and that silences you. There aren't a lot of people who can do that, but Julie … well, put it this way: other than Veronica, she's about the only person you'd trust to chair the council in your place. There are a lot of Followers with good ideas, but not so many who can be persuaded to temper them with pragmatism.

"Five months is a long time," she says, in that particular voice she has, so maddeningly reasonable. "The Mojave still isn't completely stable, and your presence helps a lot in keeping things running. We weren't prepared for you to be gone so long."

Well. Faced with that, what can you say? You sigh and sit up straighter, massaging your head with one hand. Giving yourself a moment. And then, as you knew you would, you give in.

"I didn't expect to be away that long myself," you explain. "I was followin' up on some information I was given. Personal business relatin' to Ms Santangelo." You nod at her, watch her flush slightly as faces turn in her direction. "My journey took me to the Big Empty, and then on to the Sierra Madre, as I'm sure everyone knows by now. Sure you don't need tellin' how dangerous they are. Got myself into some, ah, tricky situations."

You indicate your new scars. You noticed people staring earlier, but it's best to be clear. They're the lever you need to move these people where you want them.

"I am not takin' questions about it at this time," you say, voice quiet, serious. "I hope you can respect that. But I will say, it's true that the Big Empty is a pre-war research facility, it's true it's still runnin', and it's true that I am now the owner and manager of the entire complex."

God, but you just live for expressions like these. The shock, the awe, the are-you-fucking-kidding-me; it almost makes everything the brains did worth it.

Almost.

"Whole place is off-limits," you continue. "The situation over there's delicate, and I don't know that I can guarantee the safety of anyone crossin' the boundary fence." Pause. Give the words weight, the way only you can. "I only know four people who've escaped it, and you're lookin' at one of 'em. And believe me, fellas, I didn't get off lightly."

You smile. It's not your nice smile. This is the one that Oliver saw as you pulled out the terms of his surrender, and you can see the chill it casts cutting through the omnipresent heat to touch the spines of everyone present.

Hold the moment. Lean into it, make them afraid. Make sure that nobody is ever brave enough to go throwing their lives away in the Empty. And then―

"But I'm back now," you say, letting your smile loosen and the tension leave your shoulders. "And I'm plannin' on bringin' the goods back with me. Two things to start, but I've got the staff workin' on a few more. Number one: food. There's machines there can render vegetable matter down into gloop and reform it into any plants you want."

Jaws, meet tabletop. But you're nowhere near done yet.

"I'm expectin' an industrial version ready by the end of the year," you continue. "Once we get it up and runnin', that's our supply issues over. We can grow cactuses and grass and turn it into maize, get food on tables and think about somethin' more than just survival."

If you listened hard, you think you might be able to hear Arcade's mind being blown. When you first met him, he joked that he was trying to figure out a way to make stimpaks out of barrel cactuses. Now – well, now it isn't so much of a joke any more, and if his eyes bulge out much more he's going to have to pick them up off the floor.

Wait till he hears about the Madre vending machines. But you're going to sit on that one a while longer, have the Think Tank develop it a bit further. The world isn't ready for matter recombination just yet.

"Number two," you say, before anyone has had a chance to recover, "there's a robot factory, and they got blueprints for pretty much everythin'. While we're workin' on the steelworks and H&H, we can get new securitrons shipped in from the Empty, keep the militia stocked."

You direct that last part at Yes Man. Security is his brief; with the securitron radio network and the Lucky 38's supercomputer at his disposal, there's no one better placed to coordinate the militia across the Mojave.

"Also found a kinda Handy I never seen before, medical sorta thing, called Mister Orderly. Got six of 'em scheduled for delivery on the 5th. I want 'em thoroughly tested under Followers supervision, but I figure if we can't get doctors, we'll just have to make our own."

You lean back, look at the startled faces. And then, just as it looks like Veronica might have something to say in response, you add:

"One last thing. Sorry, I was lyin' when I said two." You reach below the table and bring out the bag you've carried with you since the Madre. Let it fall to the tabletop with a thump, pulling open the neck to show the warm yellow gleam within. "Got a little somethin' to donate to the teachin' fund," you announce, easing the gold bars out into view. "Let's see what kinda teacher don't want a slice of this."

The council stare, silent. Utterly speechless. And you breathe in their awe, the corners of your lips turning irresistibly upwards, and the broken things in your chest at last begin to tremble slowly back to life.

It's like music. That's the only way you can think of to describe it. You find your rhythm, you let your instincts take over. You keep improvising, keep bringing the bow back and forth across the strings, and when you open your eyes you see everyone else grinning, nodding, tapping their feet. And as long as you don't stop playing, you can keep the rhythm going, keep everyone dancing to your tune. Keep the council playing nice. Keep New Vegas stable. Keep the Mojave – your beautiful, brutal, fucked-up Mojave – keep the Mojave alive, just one more day.

There's a price. There's always a price. But you'll pay your heart, your soul and every last scrap of humanity you have to keep the song going a little longer.

You dream, as every night, of the Empty and the Madre – of sawblades buzzing in your skull, Elijah's rambling over the radio, Klein's pompous monologuing. Scorpions with lasers and ghosts with knives. When you wake, your neck itches with the phantom pressure of a bomb collar and you have to get out of your bedroom right away, before it blows your head to bits along its fault lines. You pull on a shirt, brew a pot of coffee, and head outside to catch your breath.

The morning air is sweet and delicious, so you light a cigarette to poison it to your liking and take your cup of coffee down the Strip to Freeside, where it's still dark and quiet, the sun glowing softly over the edge of the junk wall to the east. There's a spot you like, a little way up New Vegas Boulevard near the Kings base, where an enterprising woman like yourself can climb up a pile of rubble to the hidden upper floor of an abandoned building with a killer view across the ruins to Lake Mead.

You make the climb, unfold the old lawn chair you brought here when you first found the place, and settle down to watch the night bleed slowly from the sky.

It's so good to be home. You never really knew how much this was home until now. For so many years, you said you came from Reno; you said it so much that you half believed it, thought you could picture the face of your long-suffering father and the smile of the older sister who practically raised you. When you talked about it, you felt your face shift into a fond, nostalgic kind of look, all by itself. Then came that job and the long walk to Vegas, further east than you'd dared go since you fled Arizona as a kid – and just like that, you realised how shallow the Reno lie was. Vegas was home before you'd ever even set foot on the Strip.

A strained grunt reaches your ears, and you hide a smile in a sip of your coffee. Poor kid. He always did struggle to keep up on the road. Still, it's kind of him to come. You figured he would – your secret hideaway is not really so very secret, not to those who know you well enough – but you appreciate him making the effort.

For a couple of minutes you sit and smoke, pretending not to notice his awkward attempts at climbing up the rubble, and then at the sound of his voice you turn in your seat as if you just noticed him.

"Ah, caffeine and cigarettes," says Arcade. "The most balanced of breakfasts."

You wink, lift your mug in an ironic salute.

"You know me, sweetheart. I'm verrry health-conscious."

Arcade wrinkles his nose.

"Is that the garbage that you call coffee?"

"It is coffee."

"It's ground coyote tobacco and honey mesquite," he says. "It's what we in the medical business call 'a hot mess'."

"Hey, how 'bout that? That's what my mom used to call me, too."

He sighs and takes a seat on the other chair.

"I don't suppose you have another cup?"

"Never leave home without one."

You turn the other mug the right way up and pour out the other half of the pot. He takes a sip, grimaces, and then takes another.

"That truly is vile," he says.

"Just keep drinking. You'll learn to like it."

"I'm sure I'd acquire a taste for deathclaw feet if that was all I had to eat, but that doesn't mean I should."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it," you advise. "You marinade one of those till the hide softens, slow-cook it …" You kiss your fingertips and open your hand. "Rotisserie heaven, sweetheart."

Arcade rolls his eyes.

"Remind me never to attend one of your dinner parties."

"Mighty presumptuous of you to assume you'd be invited."

A little hiss of laughter escapes him at that: you win this round, it seems. Clearly you've still got it.

"I'm, uh … glad you can still do this," he says, a touch awkwardly. His gaze is still fixed on the horizon, a faint blush rising in his cheeks. "When you said … well, uh, I was worried."

Under any other circumstances, you might say, aw, Dr Gannon, I knew there was a heart somewhere underneath that lab coat of yours. But things are a little too far gone for that.

"I'm glad too," you tell him, flicking your cigarette away and lighting another. "I couldn't, for a while. But I'm home, you know?"

He considers this for a moment. You've always liked that about him. Real thoughtful, when the situation demands.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess I do."

The two of you sit there for a while, drinking your coffee. Bit by bit, the light spreads above your heads, wiping away the stars with a dishrag soaked in sky.

Arcade wants to ask you about it. You can feel the questions humming inside him, friendly concern and scientific curiosity and medical fascination all demanding to know about what happened to you and the treasure you found. He just respects you too much to actually ask, after that display in the boardroom the other day.

"I will tell you," you assure him. "When I'm ready."

He nods, meets your eye briefly.

"I don't doubt it."

Another pause. A train chugs slowly west out of the rail yard near Lake Mead, and three black silhouettes flap heavily up into the air as it nears. Too big for crows. Zopilotes, maybe. They swarmed here after the battle and some stuck around to feed on Vegas trash. Everyone says they're ugly, but people talk all kinds of shit. Your favourite bird, hands down.

"So," says Arcade. "How did you kill Caesar?"

You almost choke on your cigarette. That's a question you haven't been asked in a while. Back in 2281, you got it every other day, so much so that it became a game: every time someone asked, you made up a new, even more implausible answer. Arcade asked you about fifteen times, just to see if he could find the limits of your imagination, but he never did. You won every round.

And right now … well, right now you could just kiss Arcade, because there is nothing you'd like more after the last five months than to do something as light and pointless as play a game.

"Well, sweetheart," you say, finishing your coffee to give yourself time to think, "to appreciate this, you gotta understand that the guards at the Fort took away my guns, chems and alcohol when they let me in. But I managed to smuggle in a little flask of whisky in my boot."

"Of course," he says. "It would take more than a ruthlessly efficient military autocracy to come between you and your hooch, huh."

"Aw, Dr Gannon, you know me so well." You give him a quick flutter of your eyelashes and manage to make him smile. "Well, I got to doin' a few favours for Caesar, you know, sortin' out a few issues he had here and there. Nothin' that I figured would win him the battle, but things that would make him think I wanted him to. He's openin' up to me a little, y'know? He tells me about Hegel and Romans and shit like that, how he unified the East."

"A modern-day Kurtz in the Arizona heart of darkness, you could say."

"Absolutely," you agree, although you have no idea what he's talking about. "Anyway, on my next trip back to Vegas, I stop in with the Followers and ask about Hegel. Get some further readin', too. Now, next time I'm at the Fort, I'm talkin' Caesar's language, all dialectics and synthesis, and he's fuckin' excited to have someone who knows it, but he's terrified that his boys are gonna learn that he learned all this outta books and not from the gods like he said. So we go to his private quarters, just the two of us, and we―"

"This is just the same way you killed Benny," protests Arcade, but you bat his objections aside with an imperious wave of your cigarette.

"Wait, wait. So we're talkin', right, and I offer him a drink, and by that point he's loosened up just enough to say sure. I get out my whisky and pour a couple of glasses, and I drink mine first to prove it ain't poisoned – only polite – and then he drinks his and he swells up like a bloatfly and dies."

You sit back in your chair, toss him a look. Arcade just scowls.

"The glass," he says. "You poisoned the glass?"

You beam at him.

"Scariest drink I ever took," you say. "I was eighty per cent sure I knew which was the safe one. But twenty per cent is kind of a lot, when you think about it."

"Tch." He shakes his head, but he's smiling. "Well, I know that one can't be true. Even you aren't that stupid."

"Hey, you never know. Maybe I got hidden shallows."

"Don't you mean hidden depths?"

"God no, I'm too dumb for depths."

He chuckles.

"On that we are in complete and total agreement," he says. "I, uh … I better get back to the Fort. My shift starts soon. But … I'm glad to see you're all right."

"Always am when you're around, sweetheart. Thanks for the company."

You watch him make his careful way down the pile of rubble, then turn back to the view, to the sky and lake and the lazy plume of smoke over Camp Golf.

You think you feel a little better now, but honestly you don't know how you could possibly tell.

The days pass just like they always do, each sunset a promise, each sunrise its fulfilment. You make your rounds: Freeside, Outer Vegas, the Strip. You remember all the faces and almost all the names, and where you forget you bluff with such an easy confidence that nobody can tell. Little things. Pick up ED-E from the Freeside school where their recordings are put to use and take them for a tune-up; have a quiet word with Yes Man and get the securitrons to ship the crashed Big Empty drone to your safehouse; make the journey down to Lake Mead and check the hiding spot for a message from Boone. (Two notes, one recent. You wish he'd contact you more often, just so you know he hasn't run off to Arizona on a suicidal revenge quest, but you're aware that you're being hypocritical here.)

Bigger things too. The NCR ambassador needs to be managed, for one. The Chairmen whacked someone the White Gloves didn't want whacked. The Boomers need to be tactfully reminded that militia patrols are not acceptable targets for artillery practice. Nothing you can't handle, just a little bullying and sweet-talking and good old-fashioned assholery.

You get used to the way people's eyes now move up when they see you, from your face to your new haircut and the scars it shows. You carry your gun, but you don't draw it, not even when some young idiot tries to jump you in the new housing developments down in the South Vegas ruins. (He just needs money that badly. In the end, he leaves with a job as a council runner and tears on his cheeks.) You even pick up your violin again, for the first time since you left the Madre, and you write a new song that you actually kind of like.

And then one night you start awake and lift your head into the numinous non-place of the hours before sunrise. You head over to the window, still humming something you heard in the dream, and part the curtains to see a pair of securitrons scooting down the Strip towards a fight outside the Pyramid. Snatches of music on the wind with the smell of smoke and avarice. Above it all sits the moon, like someone nailed your platinum chip to the sky; and suddenly you know, with a chilly shock that hits you like two bullets to the forehead, that it's time.

You take a breath. Stretch out your hands before you: all your fingers, present and accounted for. You are here. You are the courier. You are ready.

Down one floor. Along the corridor. Five quick knocks on the door of suite seven: shave and a haircut.

Veronica answers already wearing her old travelling gear from her scribe days, her beloved power fist gleaming on her arm.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"Yeah," you say.

Neither of you say anything else. You take the elevator down to the darkened casino floor and slink off down the Strip, unnoticed in the wash of neon and desert moonlight. By the time the sun rises, Vegas has shrunk to a glittering smudge behind you.

Veronica looks at you. And for the first time all night, she smiles.

"Let's go make trouble," she says, just like old times, and you laugh, and you say:

"You know what, sweetheart? Let's."