There's a smell of autumn on the breeze, tree's going bare in preparation of the cold, leaves scattered by the wind onto the road in front of the Sanctuary Hills bungalow house. Squared hedges stretch from the door to the master bedroom window, flowers trimmed down under the living room window for the fall, and a polished black car sits in the driveway reflecting the morning sun, the scene is completed by a white picket fence lining each end of the backyard like the perfection of a suburban dream. From the road, it fills Carolyn's view and encapsulates her senses, the sounds around her hum pleasantly, getting louder and louder as she stares in warm hearted awe until the feeling of safety and adoration is suddenly replaced by recollection and fear. The birds in the forest lose their tune, their songs begin to scream, the wind billows and howls in her ears, slapping hair against her cheeks like razor sharp whips. The warm fall orange doorway opens with a snap of wood to reveal the darkness inside; the shadows are coiling, squirming like an eel. It begins to magnify and pull her into the doorway as the sounds around her twist into a low throaty moan of agony, the sound increasing steadily into unbearable pain.
Kill you, the voice growls, kill you, kill you, I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you.
Covering her ears does nothing; the sound is inside her head, erupting like a bright yellow flash of an electrical explosion. She shuts her eyes against the brunt of the shadows, she doesn't want to see what's inside, but the moment she does, everything goes silent.
When she opens her eyes wide in alarm, she's staring at the rusted wall of the office overlooking the factory floor of the Corvega Assembly Plant. She'd curled against it to ease the pain in her head and at some point had fallen asleep, though she can't recollect ever closing her eyes long enough to do so. It wasn't restful, if anything, she feels ill from having slept at all. In some of her basic first aid training, in university and high school, if someone suffered a mild or severely concussion, that person should remain conscious to avoid the risk of a coma.
...And she managed to doze off anyways. At least it doesn't seem to be as severe as she initially considered, though it would be a convenient explanation for the gap in her memory.
Carefully she tests it, thinking back before she'd fallen asleep, when she'd witness the spat between the two raiders... Gristle, that's what he called the man who carried her here and Jared must be the one that's in charge, the one with the white face paint.
With a shift, reawakening all of her aches and pains, Carolyn pulls herself away from the wall; her forehead and cheek bones now stone cold from resting against the steel. Her head had been aching terribly even before she had started to cry, and had apparently found the cool relief soothing enough to doze off to. However, now her body is cold to the bone and her left arm from shoulder to fingers is completely numb, at least her headache has reduced into a dull hum and she can think properly.
She considers rolling over and sliding her way onto the mattress on the other side of the wall to try and get rest while everything in the assembly plant is quiet. Conserving her strength to wait for an opportunity to get away should be her priority, but Jared's threat still rings clear in her mind. He was clear that it wouldn't be in her best interest to make a move to do anything but sit still and wait for... whatever it was that they intend to do to her.
Before falling asleep, after her hot tears and choking sobs threatened to break through her terrified silence, she'd been pressing her sweaty and throbbing forehead against the steel wall trying to ease the ache. Concentrating on not crying hard enough to snuff her nose and cut off her air supply, she'd begun to listen. Like a calming trance to distract her, she could hear voices in the assembly plant over the hum of overhead machinery, the vibrations of the floor under her as something larger powered the lights and defences in the plant.
Something had arrived; she could tell by the way Jared had left with haste, leaving only one man behind to keep an eye on her. The sharp silvery flick of a knife echoed in the space, like he'd been idly picking his nails, carving something, or simply reminding her that she shouldn't try anything stupid. She only tried to steady her racing heartbeat as it ticked on like a clock; she'd counted each second in her mind, recalling counting to twenty two minutes since Jared had left.
Now, she's not sure, turning her head to where the Raider had settled down, his arms are crossed and he's leaning against the frame of the doorway. He's wearing a kind of burlap sack over his head with a mass of breathing tubes, the eyes cut open like the tiny piercing beads of corn field scarecrow. It's splattered brown with what could either be mud, oil, or dried blood. She can tell by the light muffled snore that he's asleep, napping in the quiet like she had, though now she wishes sincerely she hadn't, now she has no idea how much time has passed, she may have lost her opportunity to escape.
Suddenly from across the floor of the plant, she hears the slam of a door that jerks the snoozing raider awake, Carolyn immediately feigns her own unconsciousness, tucking her head down against the floor as her heart begins to thunder. Another set of footfalls stop about midway to the platform, the raider turns on his chair with a noisy groan of wood, and in her view he peaks over through the window over Jared's computer terminal and nods soundlessly to whoever had entered.
He clears his throat, and after standing, he takes a moment to stretch his nap from his muscles, something Carolyn immediately envies. The second he turns to approach her, she shuts her eyes, and he takes the half dozen steps it takes to cross the room and stand over her in a loom of shadow.
"Hey," He kicks her on the rear, not quite gently enough to be a nudge, but hard enough to wake her had she been asleep in the first place, "Let's go, bitch."
Carolyn pretends to rouse, turning over to look up at him as he crouches down and pulls a large hunting knife from the holster on his thigh, the one he'd been using before, and grabs her bound legs by her ankle, yanking them straight so he can slice the wadded duct tape and tear it noisily from her vault suit, freeing her legs one restraint at a time until all three lengths sit wadded on the floor next to her. Before a coherent thought formulates, echoing any kind of retaliation against the only person standing between her and a possible escape, he grabs her knee and folds her legs over to pin her in place. The blade of his knife flashes silver and settles down onto the meat of her thigh.
"You try anything stupid," He hisses, "And I'll show you all the ways you can hurt a fucker without killin' 'em."
Carolyn winces, emitting an alarmed muffled cry as the tip of his blade sinks half an inch into her leg. Her response only seems to delight him; a deep cackle reverberates in his throat from behind the horrifying mask. He pulls the blade back and Carolyn bites her tongue as hard as she can to stop any other pained cries. The thought of being at this man's disposal, or anyone like him, curls her stomach into horror and disgust. All the new horrifying scenarios begin to flood in; she may just find out why she's here after all.
The raider pockets the blade again with a swipe of vinyl fabric, and reaches down to grab her arm. He pulls her straight up to her feet and she stumbles on her numbed and aching legs without a chance to stretch or brace herself. He shoves her forward with his elbow on her back, his hand in a vice grip around her upper arm.
They cross the metal platform and into the second overlooking office that she'd barely gotten a glimpse of before, a square of desks littered with vials and open bags of noxious smelling ingredients, a chemistry station set up in the corner, and heaps of paper and metal piled on the floor. She kicks a bolt and some screws across the ground as she focuses on trying not to fall flat on her face, her legs can barely keep up to the raider's hastened pace. She needs to do something, she needs to think, she can use her legs now, there's only one man, if she doesn't try something now, there may not be a better time.
On the platform towards the staircase leading to the factory floor, a gap sits where the walkway would normally continue across; the toes of Carolyn's boot come inches from it, easily over a ten foot drop, her stomach clenches and flips from the vertigo. There's an old pre-war forklift machine sitting just under them, its lift hovering inches above the ground at rest, dormant and rusted solid. At her side the man reaches over and pounds his fist onto a tall box with a red button, there's a jolt of gears underfoot and the bottom layer of metal begins to extend and close the gap. However, it stops only a handful of inches forward.
He turns back and hits the button a second time, only to lock it down and cause the grinding of metal to rumble through the grates, "Argh," he growls, "Piece of shit."
Carolyn's breathing is rapid, her nose flaring and burning to keep up with her panic, the man lets go of her forearm and steps over to slam the meat of his fist into the box of the mechanism. The pounding of her blood deafens her, her eyes blurring with tears, think, just calm down and think, there has to be a way out of this, something.
... Val.
What would Val do?
A sudden rush of comfort envelops her; she blinks through the tears and then shuts her eyes for a second to think of her old friend. In Boston, before the war, she'd worked a case with him back before Nate had come home from his time in the field, before she'd taken maternity leave from her job. Val demonstrated on more than one occasion that he was tough, smart, willing to do just about anything for the right cause, he'd jump into fire to save someone. If anyone knew what to do now, it would be Val. If he were here right now, what would he tell her to do?
Get away. He would tell her that she needs to get away, whatever it takes, start running; don't stop, not for anything, not until she's somewhere safe, somewhere she knows it's safe.
He would also give her hell for getting into this situation, during escape and probably after.
If he...
God, If he knew... if he knew she was in trouble, there would be nothing anyone could do or say to stop him from coming after her, he'd jump straight into the fire to save her too, he'd find her, take her home, stay with her until he knew for certain she was okay, even then he'd probably stay longer.
Her heart begins to twist, aching with grief, but she chokes it down. There's no point in opening wounds, no point in hoping he would come out of the woodwork and save her, because he's gone, just like everyone else, and she can't afford to think about it, not while she's in danger, she needs to concentrate.
When she opens her eyes again, she's staring down across the end of the assembly floor, darkness with a few overhead lights illuminating downward to silhouette a door near the end with a bright red neon sign sitting over the frame. From here, without her glasses, she can't make out the letters, but the universal appearance and the memories of her middle school field trip makes the emergency exit door as bright as the sun.
Carolyn goes rigid at the sight. Her body jerks as the sound of the extending bridge hums to life with a final slam of the Raider's fist, he emits a semi-victorious grunt. Val's voice suddenly echoes in her head to snap her out of her sudden fear, get outta there, sweetheart!
She doesn't think, she doesn't consider what could happen if she didn't heed to their threats, she just angles her shoulder down and throws all of her weight against the square of the raider's back. He isn't expecting all of his balance and stature to be thrown out from his center of mass, he emits a startled yelp, his boots scraping on the slick metal as he scrambles for footing, his arms shooting out for the railing as his twists in the air, an instinct to save himself from plummeting, but his fingers grasp inches too late. The impact of his body landing spine-length onto the narrow support wall of the forklift ten feet below stops his sudden alarmed scream the second it crawls out from his throat; an empty throaty gasp takes its place as the contact forces all the air from his lungs, his head cocked back to reveal the grimy skin of his neck.
Carolyn hovers, several degrees too far to regain her own balance, so distracted by the sight of his body contorting from the fall that she doesn't realize she's falling too until the rush of air pulls her hair from her cheeks and she gasps with the instinct to scream. She lands directly on top of him before any sound comes out; the weight of her entire body slamming into him all at once collapses his ribs and snaps the vertebra in his neck with a dull grinding pop.
Thrown off by the momentum of the fall, she bounces and rolls like a pinwheel onto the ground, barely missing the forks of the lift as her leg extends and crumples sideways from her deadfall weight. She rolls once and then comes to a heaping stop on her back, her elbows grinding and on fire.
With a hoarse gasp, she curls into a ball on her side, her body pulsing with pain as she tries to breathe though compression in her chest. Her head is pounding again, swelling behind her eyes and sending bright white stars spinning through her vision. The stench of oil and gasoline assaults her senses; cool, like alcohol, it plasters her hair against her neck and face, the iridescent sheen visible from the reflection of lights over the factory floor. She quickly twists and sits herself up, using the wall at her side to ease weight back onto her legs. It takes her a moment to shake off the sudden dizziness that races up into her head, almost throwing her back to her hind, before she turns her head and see's the twisted body of the raider.
Carolyn feels her horror rise in her stomach; she curls back down on her feet with a heave, coughing as bile begins to rise in her throat, trying to escape through the length of duct tape. His neck, twisted into an unnatural shape, curls his head around and lays his visible gaze right at her. The holes of his mask, torn open by the fall, expose both of his wide and reddened eyes, bulging from his skull and leaking tears of blood into the burlap, hiding the rest of his horror struck grin from view.
SLAM.
Carolyn jerks up in alarm; from across the assembly floor she hears the same sound of a metal door slamming, another set of footfalls begins to approach the catwalk, calling out to the Raider now lying dead out of immediate view, "Hey, Rus!" He yells, "Hurry the fuck up, Jared's balls are in a twist!"
As the man approaches the staircase, Carolyn scrambles around the opposite side of the forklift, keeping low as he ascends and then crosses the extended bridge which had completed the walkway. Carolyn eases back around the forklift as he disappears into the cover of the first overhead office, and then takes a breath to steel her nerves.
Okay.
Carolyn breaks from the cover of the forklift with a leap and sprints for the emergency exit door. Her heart is pounding so fast she can't hear her own footfalls, she doesn't look back to see if she was spotted, she doesn't consider it, she only spins on her heel to grip the handle with her right hand. Twisting the door open, she pulls herself into the next room with a scramble.
When she turns, she sets her eyes on another door at the end of a short, stunted hallway. Crossed over from corner to corner on the upper half of the frame are two large chains. Carolyn mutters something under her heavy pants not quite committed to a desperate curse. She races forward, turning to let her hand grip the handle and yank on it, and it opens inwards only a few inches before clattering against the chains. Pulling back, she immediately sees that both ends of each chain hook into loops to keep them in place, making an entrance from outside impossible, yet from the inside she could easily pull them for their rungs and escape. However, even as she fumbles with both sides to clear the door for a swift exit, her relief is hesitant.
When the door opens, the sudden assault by the glare of broad sunlight is blinding, the stagnant heat envelopes her and sprinkles goosebumps across her skin as she steps out into the full brunt and closes the door behind her. It's then she realizes how cold she really is and it takes the open sky to make her fully aware of it.
Blinking, focusing her gaze on the path ahead of her, she sees a slight decline of what was a gravel road sloping down towards two large vehicles parked against a rusty fence, it turns down to the left somewhere towards the main road, and it appears open and clear of Raiders; she crouches low and presses against the three foot brick foundation along the pathway, caught between wanting to sprint to the nearest exit and trying to keep a level head to stay out of sight until it's all clear.
Only a few steps away from an old and very large fitted piece of factory piping, she spots a Raider standing at the top of the descending driveway funnelling between two sides of concrete foundation holding the outside boardwalks and pillars of the factory. She stumbles, trying to come to a stop and backtrack because he hasn't seen her yet, but without her arms to off-set her momentum she trips and the foot of her boot catches the torn metal lip of the enormous pipe. She tumbles noisily into the downward scoop in a heap.
"The fuck was that?" The raider asks aloud, and Carolyn freezes, even as her body curls into an uncomfortable and unnatural shape against the coil of the metal.
Another raider calls back from somewhere farther away, elevated, and possibly on one of the metal catwalks she'd seen, "Hey, shut up."
"You shut up," He snaps, "I heard something."
"Both o' you, shut up," A third voice calls, somewhere between the two, "We're supposed to be keepin' an eye on these assholes; you want me to tell Jared you're both fuckin' around?"
"Yeah, I'd like to see you try."
"Whatever."
Carolyn listens for any indication that any of them intend to investigate, but it just gets quiet again. She rolls to her knees, grinding the bone of her right elbow against the metal, she shuffles forward where the pipe evens out and peers around only to spot the closest raider as he's lighting up a cigarette. Another man is standing on the end of the concrete foundation near the steep ledge, and she peers up to see the third walking up a set of catwalk stairs two stories above on the right side.
If she's quiet, and none of them decide to turn around, she can get to the fence.
Gently, she eases herself out of the pipe and crouches low to next to the wall, her legs brushing thin grass growing up through the gravel under her boots as she jerks her attention between the raider keeping an eye on the descending driveway and the path before her.
Two shipment trucks sit parked, immobile and rusted, beside the orange and twisted chain link fence. Carefully stepping until she's out of view, she shoots back up to her feet and races down the length, searching for a gap to squeeze through, and finds a curled tear she's able to kick open and squeeze through. Her chest and back catch on the loose wire, tearing small holes in her suit, though she's hardly coherent enough to care. The high of her escape is starting to overwhelm her, she may start laughing, or crying the minute she's out.
On the other side of the fence, she begins descending the sharp incline of the grassy hill, leading to a shorter stone fence she could easily climb over, her foot slips out from under her on a patch of mud still wet from the previous storm. With a sharp muffled yelp, she slides and then begins to roll, the mud and grass smearing up her legs, patching to her suit in clumps until she finally comes to a stop, her back slams up against the cobblestone fence. With a groan, both shoulders and elbows burning, she pulls her knees under her and leans against the rock for support, she suddenly feels so exhausted, but she needs to keep going.
Suddenly, she hears the clacking of approaching footsteps, her head jerks up in alarm to see a man in a blue and black pinstripe suit, the shadow of his hat shrouding the details of his face. Carolyn shoots up from her knees and stumbles back, looking over her shoulder for a place to go, but the only direction that isn't forward is the steep hill she just floundered down.
As she steps back, her heel smacks against a line of bricks that had crumbled from the main foundation of the brick fence, she lands hard on her tail bone and pain shoots up her back. The man approaches slowly, immediately holding up both of his hands, palms facing her passively to show her he doesn't mean her any harm, his skin looks horribly burned and disfigured as he does, as though he'd been caught in a fire and seared, "Whoa there, sweet cheeks, calm down."
Carolyn stops, her heart thundering, his voice is unbelievably rough and gritty, like a several decade smoker. It doesn't calm her, in fact it does the very opposite. She pushes herself backwards until her back hits the corner bend of the fence, and she lifts her leg to kick up at him as he closes in.
"Alright, alright, Jesus," He jerks back from a kick aimed at his stomach, and then grabs her knee to lean down and reach out with his hand, "At least let me get that shit off."
He grips the corner of the tape on her face and tears it off with a sharp yank. She immediately gasps from the sting, her lips and mouth coated with a horrid mixture of bile, spit, and adhesive that she wouldn't dare swallow. She coughs, spitting the sharp and bitter taste from her mouth and wiping her face on the shoulder of her suit. The fresh mud smears across her mouth, the earth tasting infinitely better.
"Who are you?" Her throat aches with her demand, raspy and unfamiliar like she hasn't heard it in forever, "What do you want? Are you with those raiders?"
"Hey now, don't you worry about a thing," He crouches next to her and reaches out to grab her chin, gently turning her gaze to meet his face, but all Carolyn can see from behind the shadows is a mask of seared dark red skin. A face that has been torn and melted by the sun, a black triangular hole sits open where his nose is supposed to be, and his eyes... two pools of ink with nothing but the circle of white around his pupil, "It'll be over real soon, sweetheart."
Carolyn opens her mouth to gasp in horror, but he grabs her face with such sudden force that it's strained and choked right out of her, his opposite hand comes up with a flash of silver and plunges a long needle straight into her neck, a cool liquid rapidly floods under her skin and down her neck like ice cold fingers, her chest goes numb as her heartbeat slows. The sudden intoxicating relief of all her aches and pains overwhelms her and she lets out a light moan of surprise right before falling limp into the arms of her assailant.
He leans down and hoists her over his shoulder, standing up with a long note of exhaustion before he turns back to walk around the east end of Corvega with her dangling over him. Her vision contorts with dizziness the minute she's upside down and loses sight of where she's going, her entire body spins as though he were twisting on heel in a single continuous pirouette; vertigo wraps her head like a scarf.
"Man, I'll tell ya," He mutters aloud, but it sounds like an echo of a voice underwater, "These raiders ain't shit if they can't keep track of one b...itch..."
The last few words of his sentence fade softly, her view turns into black clouds, head swelling ripe with haze. Against her will, her eyes flutter close; pictures begin to flicker across her mind's eye, small colourful snapshots of her bright suburban home, a repetition of her nightmare quickly diminishing and twisting into a time lapse of neglect and overgrowth. The colors strip and peel, fading into a visage of washed greys. The windows, crackled with a growing mass of spider web, fractures showering glass onto the ground, the door hangs loose as the metal corrodes and rusts into a dark scarlet red, like the edges of a bandage soaking up blood. The wind picks up and begins to howl, the same throaty moan of agony rises from a low whistle into an unbearable wail that erupts from inside of her head, passing the hands clamping to her ears, and her view magnifies back into the open door to once again see the unnatural black shapes manifesting within, pulling her towards the malicious ichors inside.
No! She can feel her throat burn with a scream, no, no, No, NO, NO!
Suddenly it all comes to a stop, she can feel her feet landing and stumbling back on the stone steps before the archway, everything inside suddenly fading back into a low light silhouette of the remains of her kitchen. She feels so cold all of the sudden, exhausted like she hasn't slept a wink, like her entire mind is buzzing with insomniac retaliation. Why is she standing in the doorway of her old house?
Turning back towards the yellow house across the way, she immediately spots a misshapen Mr. Handy bot floating in the center of the road. His center optical is a gnarled mass of broken metal, his right optic lens shattered, and one of his arms is torn clean away halfway down the length. Even in the faded light, the damage is immediately distinctive. Amongst the damage, his rocket hitches, igniting the rest of the extent of his deformity, his rounded bodily core looks completely mangled, as if a claw tore through the rusty metal plating. A small bullet hole sits just off the center of his right side the size of a bottle cap, on the opposite end, there's a large exit wound splitting the metal open like a bloomed flower, wires, black oil and coolant drip down onto his flame thrower armature and to the ground.
"...Codsworth?" Carolyn asks cautiously.
"Oh... oh dear... are you alright, mum?" His tone is languid, drained as if exhausted; he looks like he shouldn't be able to function at all, let alone speak.
Before she can answer, a man steps out from behind him, appearing seemingly from out of nowhere, she recognizes it as Don. He'd been asleep, did they wake him up?
He approaches the base of the stairs, coming into view from the shadows without any indication of injury but... there's a large red gash sitting on his lower lip that's bleeding quite badly, running a line of blood down his neck and into the collar of his vault suit. On his arm is a bullet wound that looks like it just skimmed and tore the outside muscle, but on his chest, there's a red bloom, a gaping wound that sits between his pectorals to reveal a hollow core of where his heart should be.
"What did you see?" His face is lined with concern, his tone pressing with immediacy as he spits blood with every syllable, splattering the ground inches from her feet, "Who was shooting at you?!"
Carolyn stumbles back, reaching up to cover her mouth with a gasp of shock, but her hand feels alarmingly unfamiliar, large and calloused with the smell of sweat and hot filthy skin. She goes to pull back, but she's suddenly gripping the forearm of someone else, someone who's pressing their hand over her mouth. She tries to jerk her opposite arm up, but it sits secured around to the small of her back by another foreign grasp, she can feel the looming heat of another body at her back as a voice creeps into her ear with a hot breath.
"Gotcha bitch."
Everything around her suddenly goes white, the scene erupting with another flash of recollection and she finds herself landing in the middle of an open concept gym... one that appears to be pre-war and suddenly very familiar to her... A room with black padded mats and weight gear, bright open windows that cast in the afternoon sun on the opposite wall lined with dumbbells of different weight smells of sweat and the artificial leather of boxing gear. There's a group of men and women standing in a crowd wearing matching uniforms dampened dark with sweat. They're encircling two men dressed in full sparring gear who take turns lunging violent punches and kicks at each other.
Most of the faces are visible, but she can't seem to place any of them as people she knows. There must be another reason that she's here.
"Don't tell me you're here to get in on the action..."
She turns, startled, as the voice of a man interrupts her thoughts. She immediately recognizes the familiar face of a man standing half a foot taller than her with black eyes and hair, his tanned skin moist and glistening with sweat that plasters a few of his dark locks to his forehead. He's wearing a dark grey sleeveless shirt with the initials B.P.D. over his left side and black shorts, the same uniform as the rest of the people here.
That's right; she came here to see him.
Carolyn reaches up and brushes the hair off of his brow as he smiles down at her, "You look like you could use a shower," She comments, turning back to view the match, "What's going on?"
"They've been at each other's throat for days, made work tense as hell, so the lot of 'em started betting on who would knock the other down first, they decided to make an event out of it," He then adds, "Don't tell the captain."
She chuckles, "I wouldn't dream of it."
"Good," He reaches down and taps her arm, "Come 'ere."
Carolyn turns and watches him walk into the center of one of the match rings with a white boarder about five meters across and a solid circle in the middle. The group is using the next one across. When he turns back to look at her from inside the circle he puts his hands on his hips and smirks, amused, "What're looking all suspicious for, I just want to show you something."
She tilts her head doubtfully, "What?"
"Well, I can't do it while you're over there, come on." He motions her forward.
She rolls her eyes and reluctantly joins him in the ring, her shoes sinking an inch or so into the mats as she walks, she feels like she's walking in the snow with her work shoes on. She stands opposite of him in the ring as though she were his sparring partner, she certainly hopes this isn't the case, she's wearing a suit.
He takes a moment to look her up and down sceptically, "Okay, first off, you gotta lose the heels."
Carolyn sighs and slips out of her white two inch wedges, walking them over to one of the benches outside of the ring, "Heels lost."
"And the jacket," He calls at her while she's there, "that won't work either."
She hums affirmatively, and takes off her grey suit jacket, folding it once over her forearm and then leaving it next to her shoes, "Anything else?"
"Well, you're still not exactly dressed for a fight, but hey, it'll work," He motions to the floor in front of him, "Stand right about here."
Carolyn slowly takes her place in the ring, her shoulders tense, arms flat at her side. He just raises his brow as he waits for her to get into place, finally he walks over and presses a hand to her back, guiding her forward, "Relax, sweetheart, I'm not going to hit you, look, here's the deal, you're a physically weak young woman-"
"Hey!"
"...and it would do you some good to know some basic self-defence moves," He continues, "We have officers here as short as you that can take down a guy like the Captain without a scratch, so you don't have to worry about not being able to-"
"Val," She looks up at him as he takes his place in the ring in front of her, "Why is this coming up now, what's going on?"
"It's nothing, not really," He starts, and then glances off hesitantly, "Well... I hadn't thought much of it until yesterday, but the local high school brought in a class of teenage girls, they were telling us how their... young male friends didn't know how to keep their hands to themselves, so we taught them a few moves that could floor a john twice their weight, break a wrist, or a nose, nothing lethal, but it would get the point across."
"You're worried my husband is suddenly going to lose his understanding of the word no?"
"No, I'm worried that you might get hurt or robbed by gun point just by going home after a long day's work," He retorts, "As your friend, who also happens to be a cop, it's my responsibility to make sure you know the basics at least, if not I might as well be the one mugging you."
Carolyn stares up at him, he seems to be really serious about this. While she will admit that she lacks enough upper body strength to harbour aid from her neighbour to open pickle jars, she will argue that she never goes walking in alley ways at night, or anything that would prompt a gun point mugging.
Well there's no real reason to say no to free lessons, and... He is being mindful of her safety, "Alright..." She sighs, "Let's do it. Just try not to ruin my blouse, okay?"
The fond memory suddenly fades back into a blur of sudden adrenaline; she becomes immediately aware of her situation, she was escaping from these men, she was trying to get away and then someone came up from behind her, grabbed her, planning to do god knows what to her. She can't let that happen.
Her assailant pulls her backwards towards the doorway of her house where she'd seen that black oily expanse. Panicked, she twists back as a reaction and shoves the bend of her elbow right into his diaphragm, striking the soft belly just under the rim of his orange coloured armour. He lets out a pained and startled exhale, curling inward and allowing her to grab his forearm for momentum to aim for the center of his face with the back of her head. The impact is solid and it rattles her brain, momentarily stunning her, but she recovers quick enough to pull herself from the man's sudden slacked grip on her face.
She curls herself around to face him, unable to run with his vice grip still on her wrist, his eyes are starred and dizzy, blood running in two streams from his nose, but he has enough instinct to make sure he doesn't let her go, even as she swings her leg up and nails her shin between his legs. He howls in shock, his entire body contorting inwards as he staggers and loses footing on the edge of the half foot tall cemented staircase. He doesn't let her go, even as he's falling, she's pulled along like a rag doll, landing on top of him in a heap as they splatter into the grass and mud a few feet from the browned and dead hedges.
Flush with terror, Carolyn wriggles away from him, rolling onto the ground trying to pry free as she meets the face of her attacker, his eyes wide and furious behind a mask of dirt, oil and blood, his colourless Mohawk soaked and askew with grime. He snarls, enraged, and reaches out to take hold of her once more. An overpowering urge to flee suddenly floods through her, she pulls herself back, kicking his arms and hands away with an abrupt ferocity, animalistic desperation. Her kicks are a flurry, aiming for his chest and then nailing him in the chin. His jaw slams closed with a snap of teeth and he finally loosens his grip on her wrist. The second she pulls herself free and scrambles to her feet, however, she doesn't turn and run as fast as she can, but finds herself standing in place staring at the full form of the man as he lays stunned. It triggers an immediate recollection of why she'd been running, where she was running from, and what she saw that made her think running was her only other option.
She turns and peers over her shoulder to where Don and Codsworth had been standing, instead of seeing them upright with what appeared to be fatal injuries; she see's both of their crumpled bodies laying the road. Carolyn was witness to the injuries they suffered, she watched them die right in front of her, and they're dead because of this man and the raiders that he was leading.
It's all because they wanted her...
Carolyn's chest curls, twisting into a ball of sorrow and guilt so heavy she feels as though she cannot breathe, oh god, they're both dead because of him, how could someone be capable of so much evil?
She turns back to the man, tears pooling in her eyes, "How could you do this?"
He doesn't respond, instead his eyes begin to clear and he moves to sit up with a malicious sneer, Carolyn lifts her boot and stomps down on the collar of his chest armour with an unfamiliar force she didn't know she was capable of, it shoves him down and back into the mud.
"Answer me!" She cries, "How could you do something like this?!"
The man doesn't answer once again, Carolyn feels her blood begin to boil, her jaw tensing with frustration and rage. Her second kick aims for his head, and connects with a dizzying power that shutters in her thighs, squashing his cranium into the mud and planting it still. An act challenging an answer, demanding he speak up to justify his actions, to explain to her that what he had done was because of something he felt was necessary, that he hadn't done it as an act of malevolence. It's what she wanted to hear, but she knew that even if he explained himself away, she'd hate him all the same. It's something she knows even as her boot comes down a third time, aiming for the temple of his skull, the impact crunching and caving the bone underneath with a shutter, the man emits a choked gasp, his eyes bulging with shock. She emits a furious cry as her heel comes down a final time and bursts the skull open in an explosion of red and black, grey matter and blood splattering onto the grass and the mud, up her leg and chest, and even the siding of the house.
Panting heavily, her entire body trembles from head to toe, her boot sitting idle in a crater of thick oozing gore, she stares down at the entire length of her attacker's body as the limbs twitch with the final spasms of dying muscles. Her eyes suddenly blur and she can feel tears running down her face, effortless like a leaking faucet, tied to nothing but the shock and adrenaline of what she just did. Her pants turn into gasps and then into sobs, her head hangs, hands balled into tight white knuckled fists.
Under her boot, something catches her eye and she blinks through the tears, a chunk of scalp and skull not yet soaked completely in blood. There's hair that, in the low light, looks very similar to the color of her attackers Mohawk, only now it has a sudden color she didn't seen before, it's blonde.
Startled, she looks over to his body to see that it too has changed from what she had initially seen, the shape of him isn't as large as she thought it was; in fact now it's totally different, it's no longer even male. It's the body of a soft figured woman wearing a pastel coloured dress that barely looks to be any color at all, but something deep in her mind, the sudden fear that percolates in her chest, tells her that it's her favourite shade of pink. The woman's hands are gripping the dirt like white bracken claws, stained with mud so dark in contrast it looks like ink, yet peeking through on the ring finger of her right is the glimmer of a yellow gold wedding band.
All of her grief goes stone cold.
Slowly, she raises her boot to see the muck of the shattered cranium decorated with more of the long bloodied locks, sticking to the bottom of her sole in long mucousy tendrils as she steps back, stunned with the confliction of horror and incomprehension, knowing that her mind is piecing together the impossible. Even so, she jerks back in horror at the realization that she didn't kill the man who attacked her in her desperate escape from the raiders, but somehow she killed herself. The woman she recognized as she looked in the mirror the morning of the bomb drop, the one who'd had such hope for her family recovering the last two years since Nate had come home from war. The one who had given her baby to her husband without knowing it would have been the last time he held him close. Everything she had been and anything she could have been, a future she would never know, gone in a frenzied rage that she herself inflicted.
All that's left is a contorted body that lies empty in the mud. She can even make out the faded discoloration of missing skin pigments that lay in cloud shaped patches all over her skin, something that had worried her for years and years, something she remembered being so important to cover up, meaningless.
When she opens her mouth to scream, it's not one of fear or horror, it's one of such twisted agony and grief that any other sound she could have made would have been inadequate. It shatters the horrifying vision into pieces, broken like a mirror and she's suddenly in a free fall.
In a burst of violent consciousness, turning her stomach, her body thrashes back into consciousness with a massive hypnic jerk, her body reacting to the dreamscape fall instinctually. Emitting startled gasps in lieu of being unable to scream through her dry and torn throat, she's suddenly upright somewhere completely unfamiliar to her. It's dark, blurry, she can't see properly without her glasses, especially not in the dark, but she can tell she's no longer in the Corvega office.
However... it's calm.
There's no rumbling of distant underground vibrations, or the hum of machinery, no sounds around her but the violent pounding of her heart in her ears and the sound of her distressed breathing. Suddenly she forgets the fear of not knowing where she is, or how she could possibly find her way out because it's so quiet and the relief of silence overwhelms every nerve in her body and relaxes her shoulders.
"Uh, 'scuse me."
Carolyn jumps three inches off the ground with a startled shriek that rips the silence louder than the voice that just spoke up not inches behind her, she twists and throws herself into the corner next to her feet with her arms wrapping over her head like a terrified child, "No!" She cries, "No, God, please, no!"
"Hey, hey, calm down," He urges gently, "I'm not going to hurt you, alright? But you're gonna want to keep it down, if they know you're awake, they'll come lookin' to collect."
Carolyn freezes, certain that she's suffering from either a continuation of a severe overdose of some kind of drug, or that her injuries are severe enough to insight hallucinations, because the voice speaking to her sounds so familiar that there's no way it could be real.
Slowly, hesitantly, she lowers her arms to see the man the voice belongs to, almost too afraid to find out. Her chest twists with a furious concoction of hope, fear, and relief as she turns her head to look at him, meeting a pair of glowing yellow eyes peering at her through a grey shadowed face, she opens her mouth to speak, but her voice is trembling.
"...Val?"