Elias had pulled himself up off the floor of the bathroom and rinsed his mouth out. He leaned forward against the sink and looked into the mirror, staring into the reflection of his cold dead eyes. He closed them and bowed his head, drowning out any thoughts that were screaming inside his head. It was only when he did that, that he heard the music from downstairs.
He raised his head and opened his eyes, trying to catch the tune. But it was all to muffled for him to make any of it out. The only way he'd know, is if he did what he had planned on doing all along. He got dressed in his clothes from this morning, then exited his room and descended the stairs.
Elias was quiet and careful, turning his head to the left and walking in that direction as well. Allison was in the kitchen, her hips gently swaying to the music as she sang along with the lyrics. She seemed to be preparing something at the counter, but Elias couldn't see what. He could smell the food, though. Something cooking in the oven, without a doubt.
"Why does the sun go on shinning?" Allison sang along with the lyrics, her voice actually smoother and more comforting then one would expect. He was taken back by it, and found himself enjoying it. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, watching and listening. "And why does the sea rush to shore? Don't they know, it's the end of the world? 'Cause you don't love me anymore. Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above? Don't they know, it's the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love..."
She turned around to the table, but instead found a smirking Elias leaned in the doorway. She shrieked in surprise and jumped backwards, slamming into the counter and nearly hopping up on it. Elias cracked a grin and chuckled, causing her to chuckle along as she placed a hand over her racing heart. "You scared me!" she proclaimed the obvious, moving back towards the table.
He let his grin diminish back into a smirk. "Sorry. I was gonna say something, but...I couldn't stop listening to your voice." He uncrossed his arms and walked forward, laying his hands on the back of a chair and leaning forward on it, looking on at her.
"I'm sure it was so awful they could hear it at the gates." She remarked and walked over to her fridge. She pulled out two beers, then closed the door with her hip.
Elias reached out and took one from her, twisting off the cap and quickly taking a sip of it. "Not at all." he growled after the drink. "It's a lot better then I could ever sing."
She raised a brow and smirked, leaning back against the counter. "You sing?" Her tone was inquisitive, surprised and curious all at once as she took a quick sip of her beer.
Elias chuckled with another smirk and bowed his head. He shook it and looked back up at her. "No. At-least, not well."
"We seem to say that about ourselves a lot." She remarked. "I grew up listening to old love songs like that one. I practically know them by heart, as sad as that is."
Elias shook his head in protest. "No, not at all. I...lived in a very rural part of New Mexico. We didn't even get local radio reception, and any visitors that far out were just people lookin' to kill us and take what we had. If I wanted music, I had to make it up. Or ask the old man if he knew of any." He took a another, longer drink of his beer.
Alison nodded. "So that's the old man you mention now and again." Elias nodded once, causing her to wonder if he had something against him. Then she wondered what Elias' father was like in the first place. He had to be something special to raise such a gifted son. But, she knew if she asked him, he'd probably clam up and never talk about it again. So she moved on to the next best thing. "So, did papa Booker know any songs?"
He gave a small smirk and stood up, staring at the oven. "He knew a few." He replied dismissively, taking another drink of his beer. He pointed down at the stove and asked; "What's in there?"
She looked at the oven and inhaled deeply, holding the breath with parted lips. She looked back at Elias as he looked at her. "Rad-roach." She said with a nervous smile.
He huffed out a chuckle. "Delicious."
"Don't worry," she said in a drawn out tone that caught his attention. "I got it seasoned to where you couldn't tell if you were eating back-woods BBQ or at the Ultra-Luxe in New Vegas."
Elias wrinkled his brow as he pulled out a chair and took a seat, kicking one leg up onto the chair beside him, fingers tapping at the glass of the beer in his lap. "The way you talk...have you been to these places?"
She gave a disappointed and dismissive smirk, then leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. "I've been to New Vegas, and I've been into the edge of the Dead Barrens. Louisiana, I mean."
"You've been around." Elias stated and leaned forward a little bit, taking interest.
She shrugged it off casually. "New Vegas was with a caravan, all I did was get blasted drunk and lost half my caps. And...you ever been to Louisiana?" she asked with a nervous look on her face.
Elias paused, an uneasy feeling settling into his chest as he thought back. "Yes..." he simply mumbled, his eyes drifting off to stare into space.
"Then you know what it's like..." she replied in a hushed tone. "After seeing four deserts and a swamp, I was very content to settle down here."
Elias nodded and leaned back in the chair, looking over at the oven. "You don't sound like you're from the Lone star Wasteland." he turned his head back towards her.
She took a long drink of her beer then sat it back down on the counter. "Oklahoma, actually. I couldn't wait to get out of that place...too many ghosts. Then I saw a lot of the Wasteland and I just...lost interest."
Elias nodded, hearing the egg timer by the stove go off. He didn't look at it, but Allison did. She got up and went over to it, silencing it, then putting on a pair of oven mitts and reached into the stove, taking the pan out and laying it on the stove-top. You could hear the meat sizzling inside of it.
"So," Allison said with a type of caution in her voice, instantly telling Elias that she was going to ask something personal. She turned around and faced him, staring into his eyes. "tell me some about your travels."
Elias stared back for a minuet then shook his head in a definitive 'no' and took a drink of his beer. "Oh, come on." She replied, walking forward pulling out a chair. She took a seat in-front of him, and he tried not to look back into her eyes, but failed. They gazed back into hers as she spoke again. "You're The Lone-star Ranger. I'm sure you've got plenty of tails to tell."
He swallowed hard, his heart suddenly racing and rising to his throat. He briefly looked away, then shook his head as he reached out and laid his beer on the table. "None worth telling." he simply replied, and in a low tone.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "They tell stories about you all over the Lone-Star Wasteland. " She said looking at him, her arms crossed below her chest. He glanced at her then looked away again, head bowing slightly. "They can't all be made up. And even if they were, surely something exciting has happened to you."
"Exciting?" He mumbled, his brow wrinkling slightly. Is that what the waste's saw him as? An adventurous children's tale? Some misguided story of heroism and valor? "My life has not been 'exciting' my any stretch of the means."
She tilted her head lightly, not being able to see his expression. "Then what has it been?"
He paused, sudden burst images flash though his mind. Gunfights, bar fights, blood. It soaked the dirt. An the sound of gun-casings hitting the ground. If there was mystery, it was in pain. If there was intrigue, it was why there was blood on him. If there was a story to be told, it was a cautionary tale of loss, and pain. "Hell..." he mumbled his reply to her.
She paused, staring at him and feeling a source of deep rooted pain radiating off of him. She wasn't sure if she should touch it, but she had to try. Try to make it better. "Surely...there's been some good-"
"If there was, it's dead." he cut her off in a stern and low voice. "If there was, it's long dead. Along with anything else that ever brought me any sort of relief or hope. Because this world we live in, this wonderful wasteland those fuckin' idiots outside talk about me roaming when I was younger, is hell."
"I'm not a knight in shinning armor, saving the lost and giving hope to the hopeless. I'm a man, who's been torn, twisted, crushed and brutalized from the horrors that I tried to keep away from everyone else."
He paused, looking at the table but not at Allison. He didn't want to see her expression, or her the sorrow or anger from his voice. He wished the topic had never been brought up. But just like everything else, there was no taking it back. So he turned his head and looked away, a strong look of remorse mixed with anger in his eyes. "But who gives a shit? Let's forget that he's human, take his pain and polish it all nice and shiny so it can be told like some fuckin' fairy-tale around the campfire."
There was another brief pause before Elias heard anything at all. "I get it." Allison replied very evenly and understandingly. "People painted you up to be something you're not, and it upsets you to hear stories about your pain changed to fit some moral code."
He couldn't believe it. Someone had finally got what he'd felt and thought for so many years, even before he disappeared. He turned his head and looked at her, his brow still wrinkled and eyes still dark. "But it's impossible to tell what's sacred ground if I don't know what is, Elias. Some of the things you say are like...mysteries. Names with no idea who's the face behind them, events with no real clarification. I want to get to know you, but I'm scared of hitting on something painful."
He turned his head then reached out and grabbed the beer off the table. He brought the glass bottle to his lips and took a drink of it, then sat it back down. "I've lost a lot of things, and a lot of people. And as much as I want it to, the past cannot remain buried."
"Because you can't run from it." She shot back just as quick, leaning forward on the table afterwords. "It's inked into your skin, and no matter how hard you scrub at it, the ink just won't wash away. If you don't want to talk about it, then don't. But eventually, the weight of your past? It's gonna crush you. And no matter how strong you are, you won't survive that. You'll need to unload, and someone will need to help you."
She stood up and turned around, heading back over towards the stove. She pulled the top of the pan and let the smell of garlic and herbs fill the room. Elias breathed it in deep, then let it out in a slow and steady pace. There was silence in the room, and Elias didn't like it. "Will the circle be unbroken." He mumbled, causing her to pause. "The song, the one that the old man used to sing. It was 'Will the circle be unbroken.' He taught me to sing it too, but I haven't in...a very long time."
She turned her head and looked back at him, seeing that he was somberly looking off into the distance. "When was the last time you sang it?" she asked, turning her body and leaning against the counter.
He looked over at her and gave it some thought. "I sang it...six or seven years ago. To my daughter, on her Birthday."
Alison's expression suddenly flattened, and a sense of dread settled into her heart as it sank. She feared to know what happened to her, and dared not ask. Though she wanted to. She wanted to know more, but her heart demanded that she didn't ask. Only one question left her lips. "What's her name?"
He sat there, twisting the bottle of half drank beer on his leg. "Jennifer." He stated, his breath catching as it left his lungs. He hadn't said that name out-loud in so long. "Her name was Jennifer. But I ca...I called her Jenny." His eyes teared, and Alison witnessed one roll down his cheek just before he raised the beer and took another drink of it. He laid the bottle back on his leg and sat silently for a minuet. After that minuet passed, he drew in a shaky breath.
Her heart sank further for him, and her stomach tightened as she could see the pain in his teary eyes. She had to do something, do anything, to make him feel anything other then the pain he felt now. The one thing that occurred to her was; compatibility. "My moms name was Janet." she suddenly said.
"She, uh...She was a rough woman to know, and an even rougher woman to love. Daddy wasn't there, so it was me and her. And she could have very well not been there either. She was the town lay, and a chem-addict. She'd do anything to get her next fix. And she did do anything. When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, she tried whoring me out too. Said it was my 'Womanly duty to get by any way I could.'" Alison scoffed and shook her head.
"I met a boy, Chris. He was Mr. tall dark and handsome. Some gallant knight to come and swoop me off my feat. And swoop he did...I ran away from home before mom could have anyone touch me. He carried me off into the sunset, and we left Oklahoma together. Ended up Kansas, and settled down for a while. Then...mama's habits caught up with me I guess."
Elias looked over at her, some what surprised. She closed her eyes and shook her head, opening them once she was done. "Druggy, not a whore. I never cheated on my husband, but...she sure did on me."
"You saw what that poison does." Elias replied, looking at her. "Why would you even think about touching it?"
She sighed. "I ask myself that question every day. I can blame Chris for getting me hooked on it, but in realty I don't rightfully know. But I did, and it was long and bad time in my life from there on."
"How long were you together?" Elias asked, seeing her posture slump.
She chuckled. "Five years. Our third year there is when I met Carter. We hit it off pretty quickly. Chris didn't like him though, and got defensive whenever Carter called him a bigot."
Elias huffed out a breath and finished off his beer, sitting it on the table beside him. "Sounds like a real stand-up kinda guy."
Her hand slid down to her stomach and rested over her scar as her eyes stared off into space. Elias noticed, but tried not to stare or linger on it too much. She finally took a deep breath and grabbed the pot off the stove, bringing it over to the table and laying it in the center. She laid her hands on the table and looked at him, then said something that surprised him. "You're nothing like him."
Was that what her silence was? He considered this when she turned away and retrieved two dull colored glass plates from a counter, and two sets of silverware. Was she once worried that Elias, for whatever reason, was like Chris? Or would become like him? He didn't know. But he found a new question in all of this, as she laid another beer on the table for him, then took a seat at the other end of the table.
Why was he, a stranger and a murderer, being compared to Alison's former husband?
Another day, and just more questions. But even after Elias' depressing thoughts earlier, and having awoke from the nightmare that was his past, he felt more relaxed being around her. Knowing she was more accepting then he first had thought.
She cut him a piece of the radroach and laid it on his plate, then did the same for hers. She bowed her head and began grace. This act caused Elias to stop from cutting in his slice. He didn't bow his head or close his eyes. It was alien to him, he didn't know how. He still felt forsaken by god, whatever faith he had abandoned somewhere out in the desert. But this was her house, and she had prepared this meal. So he stopped. "Thanks." he thought to himself, acting as his silent prayer. He waited until she was done, then dug into the meal.
This felt strange, but right. Being here, and dinning with her. For the first time in perhaps his whole life, he felt as if maybe he did belong here. He took a drink of his beer, and complimented the meal with a genuine smile.
But what is it to belong? To truly belong? He didn't know. But maybe he'd find out.