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There was nothing but the wind chimes in her head. As she wandered, she wasn't sure if there was anything except those jangling chords behind her eyes, and wondered if they had stolen her name, since she couldn't find it. She had stopped at some point to reload and put away the pistol she was carrying after a massive fly had attacked her and there had been nothing left to do but throw it at it after a series of frustrating clicks. She had knocked it out of the air with her baseball bat and pummeled it into bits with her fists once it was on the ground. After that there was the river.

It came up to her hips, and it washed some of the stickiness away from her legs. Closing her eyes she went face down and under, floating in the soothing cold. Opening her mouth she let the foulness rinse out and move away, down towards the bottom. The clicking noise caressing against her waterlogged eardrums got her attention. She was supposed to pay attention to this noise, it was a good noise, cutting through her fogginess. It was enough to get her up and moving towards the far bank and out again. After that there was the monster.

It sliced into the top of her right arm with a giant claw. The goosebumps on that side went away immediately in a flood of warmth and a fresh red smell. It was nicer than the old red smell, but this was supposed to be an inside of her smell, so she danced with the monster and fired into its little face and circled and backed away and fired and watched it fall before it could open her up any more. Digging chunks out of the holes she ate until she forgot why she was there, then went back to going away. After that there was the long walk and the dawn.

She had probably gotten lucky there hadn't been more to bother her. At this point she smelled like three kinds of death and reeked of Mirelurk spoor, which probably kept the smaller creatures away. Trudging upwards, quietly fleeing from the noise in her head, she instinctively made for a massive enclosure filled with the hulks of dead cars. Whatever that was it was crowded, and close. It had corridors, and metal, and was closer to home and not wide and open and horrifying like everything else was. Passing in among them she felt soothed, and waited for the colours on the walls to change to grey and see familiar faces around the corners, until a hole in the path sent her sprawling into the dust and shattered the dream.

"Whhyyyy...whhhyyyy...why am I out heeere...Daddy..." Cort pulled herself up and wailed. "What did I do for this, what did I do, what did I do?" Every heave of air in brought out a new level of hysteria and recriminations for herself. Hurt from being left behind, guilt from having killed people and eating sludge from people she hadn't, self-loathing for being left behind and incapable of coping. Hitching in her breath in a line of whimpers, Cort got herself under control and pulled out her gun, aiming it at her head and laughing. "Daddy, I'm tired." She smiled, pushed off her helmet and pulled the trigger.


Jonesy wasn't sticking around, oh no, no and no. Able might have thought it was a fantastic idea to chase that scavenger in here, all alone and with a nice bag that just had to have something good in it. There was only one of him and a pack of them. What Able had ignored however, had completely fucking overlooked, was the motherfucking dog.

"That's not a dog, that's a fucking furry midget deathclaw!" Jonesy gasped out as he pelted through the stacks. The scavenger had been easy, only taking out one of them and crippling another before going down. The dog had wiped the rest of them out in a flat minute, not even slowing when Bells had managed to shoot it in the side. After Able had lost his windpipe right after Bells lost her face, Jonesy bolted like fuck, to hell with making some caps.

He could hear the bastard behind him, practically snarling up his ass. Jonesy whipped around corners, kicking off walls, trying desperately to remember how the hell he had gotten in here. Tearing around the edge of a junked bus, he ran straight into a figure sitting on the ground and went flying with the impact, a boom going off behind him as he landed. Did I hit the ground that hard? was the last thought that reeled through his head before he felt the teeth on the back of his neck and everything sank away into the dark.


"FUCK! By fucking dose! You broke by fucking DOSE!" Cort had one hand clumsily clutched to her face and and the other clapped over what remained of her left ear. She looked up to see what asshole had run her over, debating if she was pissed about the nose or pissed that she had failed to shoot herself, and goggled. The raider who had ran into her was currently being decapitated by a black and grey sheepdog. She had a brief moment to think she had pissed herself and to realize it was the blood from her nose pooling into her crotch before the animal turned back and carefully walked up to her, sniffing intently.

"Dice doggy, dat's what you say, right? Good boy. Don't eat be." The dog laid down, licking the blood off its face, and whined. Cort eyed him and decided to risk moving around. If the dog finished her off, she'd just be where she had been planning to go anyway, and she was sick of talking like she had something rammed in her sinuses. It hurt. She was now noticing a lot of other hurts, particularly her back and right arm. And what the hell, having company that slaughtered raiders was nice. "Good boy. Wanna come?" The dog whined again and started following as she staggered up and started looking for a scrap of mirror big enough to see her face in.

She found one two rows over and sat down in front of it after cleaning it off in a puddle, then hauled rags out of her sack. "Oh God, dis is going to suck." Cort put a rag in her mouth, placed both hands on the side of her nose and jerked. "AAAHAHAAHOwwwww!" Scrunching her eyes shut she cupped her hands under the new freshet of blood and took the rag from her mouth and placed it under her nose. "I can't even commit suicide right! This fucking sucks! Everything sucks!" A furry head came up under Cort's arm and snuggled. Looking down, she sighed. Not quite everything, I suppose.


The sun was well up by the time Cort had herself squared away. Running through most of her Stimpaks and some Med-X, she had reduced everything to a mild throb with the exception of her nose and left ear, which now lacked a lobe and part of the attached cartilage. Her right arm would scar like a bastard across the top, but wallowing in a glowing puddle had taken care of most of the serious damage(that had cost her a Rad-Away but was probably worth it), and she was fairly certain after peering into the mirror for a while that all her nose would have was a white line across the bridge. The puddle had also helped that start to knit, if not dulled the roar it was kicking up. The ear was a write-off she couldn't improve, aside from keeping it clean. Halfway through the morning she had noticed the dog bleeding and dug a bullet out from between his ribs and slammed one of the remaining Stimpaks into the tissue. The dog didn't seem to like them any better, they itched like bugs had crawled under your skin, but he tolerated it and licked her hand, and ate the tidbits she gave him from a can of Cram opened for dinner.

"A dog, out here. I always wanted one of you. The best stories in my books always had dogs. You've got pretty eyes too, one blue and one brown. Where's your master though, faithful dog needs..." Cort tilted her head down briefly. "his master." The dog whined and started walking down one of the footpaths and around the corner. "Hey, wait up!" She half jogged after him and came out into a larger clearing next to a wall, where a pile of bodies was strewn around. The dog was lying on top of one of them, still whining.

"Oh. I see. So that's why you were chasing that other guy down so, um, enthusiastically." Cort kneeled beside the body and started looking through the pockets. She fished out a bag with "Dogmeat" scrawled on the side, filled with dried bits of what she presumed to be different kinds of flesh for treats. "So you're Dogmeat?"

A bark in return.

"And you're all alone. I'm all alone too."

Another bark.

"Would you like to come with me? Then neither of us has to be lonely. I promise I won't check out while you're around, either." Dogmeat crawled over into her lap, gave her another series of long, industrious sniffs, and sighed. Cort thought a moment, then reached over and pulled a faded red bandanna off the corpse's neck, tying it loosely around Dogmeat's. "Here. You should have something from your Dad too." She gently rolled him off her lap and stood up. "Now why don't you help Momma see if these assholes have anything useful or tasty before we get out of this shitpile and back home." Dogmeat barked and grinned up at her, panting.