I decided that there ought to be at least one case where the courier makes the wrong decision for someone's happiness.

Unfortunately, Veronica is the target today.

Followers' Outpost

Meda opened the door. The scent of copper hit them like a metaphysical fist, making the courier pause with one foot in the room. Veronica pushed past her, wide-eyed and staring. So much blood…No, those poor patients… There were bodies everywhere. And there was even a little pile of ash on the floor where someone must have been standing when a laser rifle hit them. Doctor Alvarez…

"Oh no. No-no-no-no-no-no… This can't be happening." Veronica whispered. But denial didn't make it go away. It never did.

What she wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry for a while. Maybe she would, later, but there was no way this was all an accident. Somehow, this had to be her fault. Hadn't Meda said yesterday that nothing every really happened at the Followers' outpost? Well, now it had and Veronica was sure it was her fault. It had to be!

Meda looked to the right and pulled out a weapon that looked like a miniature chainsaw, but in the shape of a knife. "I don't suppose you just happened to come along after Fiends attacked, did you?"

Veronica forced herself out of her internalized hell and looked up.

There, standing over the bodies of the patients and doctors in the next room, was a Brotherhood paladin. Meda stood in front of him, between him and Veronica, with that weird weapon at her side. But the armored man simply looked over the courier's head and said, "Sharing knowledge with an outsider organization. I knew Veronica couldn't be trusted."

No, no, no, no, please—!

"We tracked your movements a long way. But it was worth it to catch her in the act." The man's laser rifle was pointed at Meda's stomach. "Passing Brotherhood secrets to outsiders is the lowest form of treason. What have you got to say for yourself?"

It's my fault! It's my fault they all died! Veronica stared at the man, wishing to say something—a scream, a denial, anything—but the words got all jumbled up before they reached her lips and her mouth wouldn't work. Why couldn't she say anything?

"She hasn't shared any secrets. You don't have any proof otherwise." Meda protested.

"She has made her intentions plain. We will not risk any further damage," the paladin replied.

"Cute." Meda said waspishly, blithely ignoring the laser rifle. "And I'm sure your precious Codex isn't going to protect you after you massacred my family—particularly when I decide to return the favor. The Followers might be pacifists. I'm not."

Wait, she wasn't—no! She wasn't going to hurt them!

She was. The lead paladin got to say, "In the name of the Elder, I hereby sentence you to dea—urk!" and only got that far because he was taller than the courier. She needed to reach up to bury the chain-knife in the joint between his armor and helmet and rev it up.

Veronica decided then and there that she had to fight. Maybe the Brotherhood wanted her dead. Maybe it was just these four. But the courier had at least tried to help her teach the Brotherhood that maybe huddling in the dark wasn't a good idea, had suggested helping the Followers in the first place, and seemed really happy about Veronica getting a chance to use her knowledge for other people's sake.

She was in full T-51b power armor because Meda had jury-rigged together the suits of fallen paladins, arguing that the dead had a responsibility to their living relatives as much as the reverse was true, and she had a ballistic fist bought from the Crimson Caravan Company. Meda was unarmored, as usual, since they hadn't expected trouble like this.

Veronica brought her right fist—the one with the Paladin Toaster—up and cracked the paladin with the gatling laser in the face. The shockwave rattled up her arm and his helmet crumpled under the blow.

It almost wasn't fair. In close quarters, no one could dodge anything. This was bad news for Meda, the sole unarmored combatant in the entire room. But because she inevitably knocked their weapons away when she was going in for the kill, it was difficult to aim long energy rifles in such a small area. Their real threat was Veronica, who had been allowed to keep the Paladin Toaster glove and now was using it to devastating effect. The blows hurt, yes, but not physically in Veronica's case. Her heart was breaking.

It broke again and again as she kept killing. At this rate there wasn't going to be anything left to break.

Meda gave an angry hiss of pain as a laser rifle shot sliced through her clothes to her stomach and burned, but she still got the chain-knife into the gap between the helmet and shoulder armor again. Then the chain-knife made a noise like a revving motor and there was blood everywhere. And then there were no more paladins to fight.

Veronica sank to her knees, tears running down her face. Meda collapsed on top of a dead paladin, clutching her stomach and swearing under her breath.

"God, I did this. This is my fault. Why didn't I see this coming?" Veronica murmured. "Of course they'd track me. Of course they'd assume the worst. Sure, I left them. But that didn't mean I'd ever be free of them." She ran a gloved hand over her face. Her voice cracked. "I should've known I was beaten before I began. I just…I had to try, you know?"

"You didn't control the people who did this." Meda replied harshly, digging through her pockets for some kind of medication.

"No…I don't, do I? If I did, none of this would have happened." Veronica shook her head, her eyes downcast.

Meda rolled up her left sleeve, found a vein, and injected a syringe of Med-X into it. She sighed with relief. Then she staggered to her feet—Med-X wasn't terribly dependable if you wanted to be lucid after using it—and walked over to where Veronica was sitting. "Veronica, listen to me. This was not, is not, and can't ever be your fault." She held out a hand.

"It doesn't make anyone less dead." Veronica replied, standing up with the courier's help.

"No, but that's not the point." Meda said, wincing a little as she walked around the building's bare rooms. Med-X dulled pain, but laser burns were nasty things. "The point is that it was their decision to come here and kill the Followers. And those kinds of choices are what define somebody more than anything else. They were murderers, so we killed them. End of story."

"…Yeah, I guess." Veronica said quietly.

Meda looked at her, biting her lip, and finally seemed to come to a decision. She fished around in one of her jacket pockets and handed Veronica a slightly flat box. No, a holotape. There was a label made of tape that had "For Veronica" written on the front. "Here, take this."

"For me? You shouldn't have." Veronica joked weakly, looking down at the disk. It just wasn't in her to try for comedy yet.

"I didn't." Meda said, frowning a little. "You told me once that Elder Elijah was like a father to you. I met him."

"What?" Veronica squeaked. "You did? Where? Oh my God, I mean…I thought… I don't even know what I thought might have happened to him." The courier's expression brought her back down to earth. "But…you don't have a 'this is good news' expression on your face."

"It didn't go well." Meda said. Her eyes were even darker than usual. "In the end, it was me or him, or my friends, and I couldn't abandon them or anyone here in the Mojave. I wasn't even sure it was the same Elijah until we found that terminal in Novac."

"You killed him?" Veronica hadn't expected that. She didn't want to think that the courier would have killed an old man in cold blood. Maybe it didn't sound like it…but Elijah had been her mentor. Almost family. And it hurt.

"I did." Meda admitted. Her face was rigid. "But I brought that back after I found it. Didn't know it was for you for sure, but I've never met any other Veronicas in the Brotherhood of Steel." She sighed. "Try unlocking it."

"…It doesn't matter." Veronica said finally. "He died when we all retreated to Hidden Valley. I didn't expect to see him again. No one did." Maybe, there was a chance… "Did he say anything when you met him? Anything…anything at all?" About me?

Meda nodded at the tape. "That has everything, I think." She was holding back. Veronica knew it and Meda knew that she knew as much. But with Elijah's last words in her hands, she could let that go.

Veronica decided to watch the holotape. Meda wordlessly began dragging bodies away to be buried. She wasn't that big, and it would take forever and she'd probably pull something, but she waved off Veronica's offer of help and that, it seemed, was that.

It was nearly an hour before Veronica had worked her way through the rambling last words of her mentor and finally had something to say. It took a while to make her mouth work when the words kept getting caught in her throat, but that was fine. The courier just kept digging until she had enough sorted out.

"That was…that was hard to watch." Veronica said when the Meda started to break ground for the third grave. She wasn't digging all that fast.

"Did it make any sense?" Meda asked, pausing to rub her eyes with a dusty sleeve.

"The parts I understood? Doesn't matter. Past all the garbage, all it amounted to was goodbye." Veronica explained, smiling faintly. Yes, her life was hell. Yes, sometimes things just seemed to pile up around her and sometimes she didn't know what to do. And, that, like a lot of things lately, was painful but…

Meda gave her a funny look.

"Sorry…feel a bit out of it. Head's spinning a bit." Veronica said. Then, because she'd been playing with the holotape a bit, she got an idea. "Oh. Oh!" Her smile was back, but a little wider now. "I think he left me a gift. Maybe I can use it better than he did."

"One last thing." Meda said, standing up straight. She linked her hands together and stretched them over her head. "Did you know a paladin named Christine Royce?"

For the love of God, was there no end to the horrible revelations the courier had for everyone she met? Veronica froze, waiting for the bad news.

But Meda looked curious, not like she expected to be punched halfway to the Strip. So Veronica took a gamble. "Yeah. She was…the one, you know? Is she alive?"

"Yep. Jaded, bald, and a little sad, but she was okay last I saw her. She even has her own nightkin to look after." Meda replied. Her smile wasn't very strong, but it was there. "After the Dam, and whatever follows, I'll see if I can't get her to come back."

"I…thank you." Veronica said in a strangled voice—it was all she could say. How did Meda know so many people she loved? And even if Elijah hadn't…whatever it was that could have gotten him out alive, Christine would listen to the courier and it'd all be okay, right? "But…why?"

Meda's smile was a little sad. "I know you might not feel the same way, but you're kinda like a little sister to me. So I have to do what I can to make my meimei happy."

Apparently, in leaving the Brotherhood, Veronica had found a new family. Even if it was just the crazy courier for now. And even if sometimes this new sister did things that hurt Veronica without realizing. But that wasn't…it wasn't so bad, right? She still had a chance to be happy. With Christine? Just a chance, but better than nothing.

If she thought about it long and hard, and had some time. Maybe then it would be okay.