Boone watched Lucky come out of the tent and pull her set of gloves off and wipe the sweat from her brow. She'd spent most of her morning and afternoon again tending to the wounded, even if one of those ended up being by her own doing. She didn't look at him even though he was in the next tent speaking with the site commander. He'd spent his time in limbo trying to cool her temper from what Lucky had done.
Yes, Lucky knew about the laws regarding prisoners of war. No, she didn't care. He didn't think she was a citizen of the NCR. She was just there, a courier facing her demons. Not even exorcizing them, just taking them on to suit her needs.
He heard her call ED-E over and speak to him in a hushed tone. She wrung her fingers intensely. Her eyes fell to her hands as she spoke. A slight grimace crossed her face as she returned her gaze to the bot floating in front of her. It let out several squawks and then zoomed away.
"What do you think they were talking about?" Arcade asked from behind Boone, startling the soldier into nearly striking the man.
"Jesus! I don't know," Boone snapped. "Why don't you go ask her."
He shot the researcher an angry glare and then returned to the groans of the people in the nearby tent. He didn't see Lucky anymore and assumed she'd went to check on her patients. He grabbed his pack and with a final vacant stare toward Arcade started for the med tent. Just before he could move the flap, Lieutenant Markland came out with a small smile on his face.
"Hey, could you do me a favor?" he asked with sincerity seeped in exhaustion.
"Is Lucky in there?" Boone asked without giving him an answer. He didn't want to play the assignment game the way Lucky had. He wasn't a messenger and he just wanted to get back to the 38 and away from this place. He'd had it here, Lucky had proved to him that maybe it wasn't his time yet and that he could pay for his transgressions with time – not time he necessarily wanted, but time nonetheless - and that only barely took the sting off his anger. Lt. Markland stared at him with a curious expression and then shook his head. "What's wrong?"
"She left already. I wanted you to tell her thanks for the help," Markland replied with a prominent frown.
"She left? Did she say where she was going?" Boone questioned rapidly.
"South. She said she had some unfinished business she needed to attend to," Markland answered with a sharp nod back in the direction of Camp Golf. "She didn't leave long ago, you should be able to catch up to her."
Boone didn't know what to do, and knew as soon as he was on the move Arcade wouldn't be far behind. He didn't know why he had to run after her, she'd spent a good part of her life walking the roads by herself, she was a big girl, could handle herself. Every damned cliched line trickled into his mind as he darted down the hill towards the wreckage of the recreational park. A little behind him he could hear Arcade calling for him and asking the same questions: where was he going, where was Lucky?
He didn't answer he just kept walking till he saw her small frame going over the rise and around a dune. He darted past the dead Deathclaw, well aware that the others were definitely in the vicinity still, and finally caught her scent just up ahead.
When he ran up behind her, he grabbed her arm and spun her around. Arcade came up to them out of breathe and wheezing. Boone didn't know what to do. He was angry, worried, an amalgam of feelings he wished were suppressed. His fingers dug into her arms as she started to struggle. He shook her, first in frustration then in fear of what could have happened.
"Unfinished business?!" he yelled with a ferocious rage that he hadn't felt since Carla's death.
"Hey!" Arcade yelled. "That's enough!"
"What the hell were you thinking?! You can't just walk around the Mojave like there is nothing going on! People die out here! Where in the hell do you think you were going?!" Boone interrogated so firmly that Lucky's glasses fell from her face to the ground.
"South," she murmured through held back tears.
He looked her in the eye and saw the glistening of the dawning moon in those restrained droplets. She looked scared, traumatized, wild, unleashed, wounded. His breathing was ragged, he was overcome and defeated. He didn't know what came over him. He shook his head, trying to break the hold his emotions had over him.
"I'm sorry," he uttered. He knelt down and picked up her glasses. As he came up again, he saw her hands – naked with out their leather sheathes – and stared at the cruel scars across the tops of her hands. He tried to not notice the raised lines that had turned once delicate flesh to a tapestry of scales of delineating lines. "Uh, here." He placed the glasses in her hand and let the obvious course of action take course. He knew he couldn't hide that he knew; she was standing right in front of him, probably watching his every action since he'd lashed out at her.
Lucky remained silent and placed her glasses on. She let out a sigh and did an about face and kept walking. The small flash of a flame and the pungent smell of tobacco smoke wafted in the late evening air.
Boone followed silently, all the while, feeling Arcade glaring at him. He didn't know what had gotten in to him. Maybe it was the stress of Bitter Springs, or the little girl dying, or how Lucky reacted to the whole situation.
"Lucky!" he finally called.
His friend stopped and glanced sadly over her shoulder at him. He ran towards her and stopped when he saw she was gloving her hands again.
"You don't have to come, you know," she muttered. She turned her gaze towards the south and kept walking.
"Where are you going?" Boone pressed with a gentler tone.
"I already told you: South," she snapped.
"What's so important?" he eked out before pausing. He knew what was south: a whole hell of a lot of nothing. Besides, Novac, Nelson, and Searchlight – which were all either bordering or in Legion territory, there really was nothing there.
"I – There's someone I've got to speak with," Lucky replied. Her tone was numb, nearing a trance-like state.
"The only thing down there is Caesar's Legion and Cottonwood. You know they patrol that area like a mother lion," he interjected with a scowl. He took a deep breath and held it as his mind flooded with possibilities. "You're not taking that Chip to Caesar, are you?"
Lucky didn't reply, she just kept walking. Boone wanted to grab her and stop her. She couldn't be allowed to take that to his enemy. He'd kill her if he had to stop her. She checked her Pip-Boy and adjusted her pack on her shoulder.
"You really think that low of me, huh?" Lucky growled as she walked. "No, I'm not going to give Caesar the Chip. I'm fixing a problem."
"You're going to get yourself killed," Boone warned, trying to keep his pace with his smaller counterpart.
"Not if I kill them first," she retorted.
"What's going on?" Vegas is that way," Arcade interrupted with a sharp nod towards the glowing lights of the city.
"She's going to Cottonwood Cove... apparently," Boone answered with a harsh sigh.
"Are you insane?! Nothing good could come from this," Arcade chimed. He folded his arms and looked over his thick, black glasses.
"Sic semper evollo mortem tyrannis," Lucky muttered with a sneer. "I'm cashing in my chips and calling in my debts. I've got to start to set this right. For me, for Craig, Carla, Clara, everyone. I can't keep running from the monster looming across the river."
"What did she say?" Boone asked from the corner of his mouth. Arcade's mouth dropped in shock. His eyes blinked several times as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He shook his head and the once nonchalant man actually looked like he was going to lose it at just the thought. "What is it?"
"She's going to..." Arcade stuttered.
"Kill Caesar, yeah," Lucky finished.
"That's stupid, it's tantamount to suicide," Arcade glared at her.
"You don't have to agree. Fuck, you don't even have to go. Eventually, he's going to come and he'll have... Lanius with him. You don't want those two together, get rid of the leader and with luck the organization will fall apart," Lucky stated with a spin on her heels. "Regardless, Lanius will be here, I want him off his game." Her voice dropped till it was barely audible and she continued to walk.
"I'm not going to let you do this alone," Boone said as he followed. He heard Arcade sigh and begin to trudge with them. "I have a score to settle."
"You know we'll probably die doing this," Lucky remarked giving him a soft look.
"It's what I should have done when Carla was taken in the first place," he answered back. "We're going to get the son of a bitch."
"I still think this is a bad idea," Arcade said to their backs sullenly.
They left the glitz of the city lights and hit the hard, broken roads towards Cottonwood Cove. Boone could only watch the gears turn in his friend's head. She didn't speak anymore; her pace was fast, a look of complete lack of care, insanity, reckless abandon. She wasn't going to take it anymore, but it wasn't just the vengeance she was feeding in him that had him following like a dog on a leash, it was how she'd worded her argument: she was doing it for him and Carla, their baby. It had less to do with her than what she had let on. She was falling apart before his eyes.
He didn't know how much she was willing to risk to save him from himself, save the Mojave. Maybe it had nothing to do with any of that and she had completely lost her mind.
"It was then when we'd made it to the outskirts of the Cove that I knew what my father felt when he made his suicide run after what had happened to me. You don't care about yourself or anyone. They don't matter, you don't matter. All your ideals go out the window and you feel like the monster you are trying to fight.
I wanted to destroy them. Put fear in them; the way they had done to so many others. I wanted my taste of the sadism that made them work so proficiently. I wanted to something, anything at that point. No matter what emotions I had shown, it didn't compare to what was roiling under the surface, and they almost seemed counter to what I was showing.
I didn't think about you or your life or the promise I'd made to myself regarding your life. You were inexplicably tied to mine and for the first time, I didn't care whether I'd lived or died. I was going to take as many of the bastards as I could before I drew my last breath.
I didn't think of the consequences. I nearly got you guys killed, because of a bloodlust that only you would understand."