"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." - Norman Cousins
Boone awakens sluggishly, entire body in pain. His head, in particular, feels like it's burning. He opens his eyes, looks at a crackling fire so close to his face his eyebrows are probably singed and his nose ready to blister.
He pulls back suddenly but bundled from the neck down in what seems to be both bedrolls, his rolling attempt is weak. Momentum works against him and he slowly rolls back to his original position, much to his frustration. A part of his body touches into the small fire pit and begins smoldering.
"Shit, Boone-!"
There's scrambling and the slip of boot-on-dirt followed by another soft curse as he is tugged back, the scent of the moldy sleeping bag burning in the night air. A few slaps on the scorched bedroll and he's surprised by his groan of pain.
"Sorry, sorry, but it's better than you burnin' alive," the Courier says, grunting as she pulls him away from the fire and over to a safer distance on the loose dirt. "How're you feeling?"
"Like shit." He tries to take in his surroundings, blinking watery eyes. "What happened?"
"Cazadores. One flew up behind us before ED-E vaporized it. Little 'bot turned it to ash, but not before you were stung." Six touches a cold hand to his forehead before reaching in her pack, popping a can of purified water open. She helps him take a few swigs and he swishes the water in his mouth, spits out the first mouthful and swallows the rest eagerly. Until she pulls it away with a warning. "A little at a time, bud. You'll be sick all over, otherwise, and you already went through all our antivenom."
He's exhausted but lifts a brow anyway. "What?"
"You spit up the first batch and knocked two other bottles right outta my hands. Had to roll you up before you gave me a black eye," she chuckles, getting up and drifting over to the small pot he just noticed she had over the fire. She gives it a stir, the smell coming out of it even worse than the burnt bedroll. "But I'm making something just as good."
He closes his eyes, ready to fall into unconsciousness again. "What's that?"
"The way to end the Mighty Legate Lanius." She says his name in a lower octave, mocking, but when he opens his eyes, hers are hard copper, like the pennies scavers still managed to find before they were melted. He watches as she dips her large combat knife into the pot, the viscous liquid gleaming before the venom hardens, coating the jagged blade.
He wakes several times during the long night to find her doing it over and over again until his dreams are of Six stabbing her many blades into the weak points of the Legate's heavy armor. It warms him even as he shivers as the poison leaves him.
12.31.2282
The woman dies in the span of thirty-two seconds, one hand gripping the microphone of a recorder and the other at her throat, grasping feebly at the syringe in her neck. A large clock, some wooden prewar antiquity that sits in her office, ticks loudly while he keeps count subconsciously. Her body spasms and she cries out, raw and agonized as she sees him. It grates on him, on every single nerve ending.
Poison; it's a painful way to go and not Boone's preferred method. It was messy and long and it smacked of something far more personal than what he chooses to do.
Her eyes are dilated an indeterminate color as she convulses, and they remain frozen on his as he puts a bullet in her forehead, the suppressor muting the shot. It silences the strangled sounds escaping her and she soon grows still, slumping in her chair.
She was sitting at her desk when he found her, would have updated her ledger for another quarter-hour if left to her own devices. The window behind her is ajar and the house remains silent, the staff allowed to leave early to celebrate the New Year. She had included her personal guard in that decision, sparing them her fate. It would be commendable, had she known what he'd been hired to do here.
But it would seem his employer wasn't the only one with their sights on Anna Bishop. And something about this whole scene settles like rusted scrap within him, the edges jagged.
He pulls the syringe from her neck, spots the bruising beneath it. The area is large and the purple very dark, nearly black where the needle had been stuck deeply. More force than a quick prick had been behind it. He pockets his empty bullet casing but wraps the syringe with careful hands and hesitates only a moment more before ejecting the holotape from the recorder and taking it as well. Slipping out of the estate as silently as he had come in, he escapes through the hall and out the window.
The cooling night outside is as disgusting now as it was when he was a kid, the atmosphere of The Hub thick and unpleasant. A greasy film seems to lay on everything and its suffocating, his chest tight as the old memory strikes him almost physically.
Feeling eyes on him, he focuses on getting out without meeting anyone. He hugs the walls until he reaches the gate then picks up his stride. With some momentum, he pulls himself over the stone enclosure surrounding the property and drops down onto the other side, soundless in a darkened alley. He peers out, ears perked and then blends into the desolate streets of the Heights, heading towards the brightness a few blocks down to leave the residential area behind.
If the Wrights or the Mordinos were behind this, they wouldn't just be inviting Bishop retaliation. Whichever Family it was, they weren't afraid to step on the Van Graff's toes to get what they wanted. The Salvatores weren't even on his radar, their hold in New Reno nowhere near the strength of the other Families.
Unless the Bishops had angered the Underground? Anna Bishop was a Hub native, had married into the Bishop family in her teens. She was living in The Hub instead of Reno because the Bishops were divorced in all but name and paperwork. They had been for a few years already. Her death could have been ordered by someone that had nothing to do with Reno's power grab.
Music was bleeding in from Downtown and he reaches the main street, the lights blinding and welcome, raucous laughter and blaring music surrounding him. The song is feverish, something with horns and a tempo that begs for shaking hips and light feet.
Boone shrugs tense shoulders as he walks. The job had been the usual - a hit, no witnesses. His pristine record had nearly gotten ruined by Anna Bishop, aged 42, who died on New Year's Eve after being poisoned by an unknown. He had finished a job begun by someone else.
He ducks into a small bar on a side street and orders a scotch, contemplating its murky depths for a moment before he downs it and orders another. The caravan he had signed up with for his cover wasn't going to head out until tomorrow so he makes the best of his situation as his mind races.
It takes the water caravan four days to reach Junktown and when they do, Boone breaks away the first chance he gets. He heads to a tavern near the entrance, the sign hanging above so sun-bleached it's unreadable but for the faint cartoon of a pig in mud.
He wonders if he recognizes what it is only because he'd seen it over a decade and a half ago before it had become so faded.
Inside, he doesn't see the face he's seeking so he leaves a message at the bar before he heads to a table in the shadowed corner with his pack of cigarettes. He sits with his back to the wall as Nina Simone croons in the background.
"Whiskey. Two please."
The waitress rolls her eyes at him as she drops an ashtray on the table and leaves. If he's lucky, she'll bring him something that wasn't cut with turpentine.
The smell in Junktown is worse than The Hub, car grease and corroded metal hovering amongst the garbage and piss. But Boone remembers Junktown under slightly better circumstances than The Hub. Even the Boneyard ranks higher on his list with Dayglow at the very top.
Boone takes a deep drag of his cigarette and lets his mind wander to thoughts of rough hands burned with radiation and a grin that could blind with its brilliance. He's always wondered about Lupe, of her whereabouts since they left Dayglow behind. His reverie is interrupted when he hears an official announcement on the radio, names catching his attention.
"- official resignation. I repeat: today saw a shift in the Republic's military command, with President Kimball finally accepting General Lee Oliver's official resignation. The move has been a long time coming, many would say, as what has been termed 'Kimball's War' in the Mojave -"
Heh. So House had been fucking right.
He's reaching for another cigarette when a shadow blocks his light, a bald man, built like a freight-train with a curving scar marring one side of his face staring down at him.
"Mike," Boone greets solemnly, lighting up and inhaling heavily. He gestures to the empty seat across from him.
But Mike doesn't sit. He continues glowering and it's enough to make a normal man sweat.
"You trying to call more attention to us?" Boone finally mutters, giving the older man a skeptical look.
Mike sits at this, slowly, as if the decision were all his. He doesn't take the drink Boone pushes to his side of the table and remains silent as he continues scowling.
He had always been a man of few words and Boone waits patiently as he sucks on his cigarette.
"You shouldn't abuse your lungs like that, kid."
Boone nearly chuckles, settles for a small huff of amusement as he stubs his cigarette out. "You sound like Beth."
Mike grunts but brings his glass of rotgut closer, doesn't sip yet. "I almost didn't recognize you."
Boone scratches at his chin hairs, weeks of being on the road giving way to a full beard by now. "Haven't been home in a while."
"It's not what I meant." Mike finally takes a drink, grimacing as it goes down. "We got your letter when you got married. But we didn't hear anything after that."
"Carla died," he says tonelessly and Mike's mouth tightens, turns down at the corners. Boone gives a brief shake of his head as he lifts his own glass. "It's been years already."
Mike continues studying him with eyes sharp enough to catch everything still. Boone guessed he was pushing sixty already, but being bald as he was it was hard to tell sometimes.
"Did you go see Beth already?"
"No."
Mike settles more comfortably into his seat. "Alright Craig, I'll bite. Why are you here? It's business if you came to me before your sister."
Boone is glad to get to the meat of this. "You know anything about poisons?"
"Not me personally, but someone." He frowns and there's an edge in his voice now. "What kind of trouble are you getting into?"
"Think you can find out what this one is?"
Boone hands him the wrapped syringe after a quick glance at his surroundings. No one here gave a shit, too busy in their own misery to look up from their drinks. He pauses as he notices one man missing an arm at the table to his left. He's wearing an old NCR uniform and when Boone takes a closer look, he sees that the ones parked at the bar are the same. NCR veterans all around.
Mike continues frowning but slips it into his pocket. "How do I get a hold of you if I find something out?"
"You don't." Boone stands, sets some caps on the table. "I'll come back. Are you still staying in the same place?"
"No. We're about a mile out of here."
"I'll find you, then."
"You should really see your sister."
Boone merely stares at him for a moment before he nods. But as he walks out of the tavern, he knows as well as Mike probably does that he didn't plan to.