Back to Freeside.

She opened her arms, and the small figure jumped onto her torso, ready to play. But the Courier was too tired for games.  She kept her eyes closed, and opted for a hug.  The boy was not one for hugs, as no five-year-old boy was.  He pushed away, getting uncomfortably close to her reposed face.
"Wake up!"
"I'm too tired......"
"You've got to wake up!"
"We can play some other time, Liam.  Your mother will be--"
"Please, please..."  Never was there such urgency in a young child's voice. Desperation, even.  The Courier's eyes snapped open, ready to console him.  

As her eyes intook the scene, the boy vanished, nowhere to be seen.  His small visage disappeared amid the strange blue-black surrounding her.  A golden coin floated strangely in front of her face.  With a gasp, she choked, and then kicked.  She wasn't suspended in air.  She was underwater.  The Courier could still hear the shrill voice.  Wake up! it sounded.  WAKE UP!

She listened, frantically scratching her way up.  The sun was far away, but she desperately climbed the agonizingly slow river, wondering why her left shoulder was so stiff.  The blond head broke the surface of the water, and she realized she was moving, swiftly.  The river was smooth, though.  The Courier lifted one arm to swim toward shore, then winced at the severe pain.  Grasping her shoulder with her right hand, she looked down at the wound.  The red face mask was soaked, crimson staining her entire shoulder.  Using only her right arm, the girl steered herself near the bank, the only sound in her ringing ears now the rushing of the Colorado.

Now her hands gripped gravel, and she pulled herself out of the water.  The Legion outfit she wore was impossibly heavy when wet; no wonder she had eventually sank.  Still coughing, and shaking her head, her weak elbows didn't hold her up when she moved forward on her hands and knees.  Collapsing onto the bank, the Courier looked rougher than she ever had.   Still-coagulating blood was on her temple, and had ran all down the front of her face, staining her teeth. Compliments of a legion machete.  

Her shoulder was another story; meaty, swollen, in tremendous pain.  The girl lay on her stomach, trying to breathe normally.  How long had she been floating down the river?  Faintly, she remembered the night before.  Now the sun was high.  Still on her stomach, she tilted the pip-boy to her line of vision.  11am.  The Courier sighed and rolled over onto her back.  

She had nothing right now, other than the silenced pistol she'd walked into the Fort with.  All her food and traveling weapons were back at the campfire, which thanks to her not-so-covert kidnapping, would be trolling with Legion mongrels.  She was starving, and her shoulder could really go for the numbing effect of a stimpak.  The Courier mustered all her strength and rolled over onto her back.

There was nothing to do for the shoulder but let it heal.  The bullet had passed through cleanly, leaving a gaping wound.  Soaking for hours in water didn't really help the pain at all, but it had stopped actively bleeding, so there was simply nothing for it.  It crippled her, pain shooting even at the slightest move.  The girl's hair was for once, completely down.  Unpinned, it reached past her shoulders, fanning out along the warm, smooth, river rocks.

She could have laid there for the rest of the afternoon, but the Courier slowly, painfully sat upright.  The water lapped around her ankles, and she pulled them underneath her with huge effort.  Every muscle begging for repose, she bent forward and viewed her reflection in the crystal blue.

Her eyes were swollen, her face caked with blood.  It was drying rapidly thanks to the sun's dry heat.  Even her normally golden hair was stained, matted.  But  amid the pain and despite the fact that she was going into shock and her entire body was trembling, the girl cupped her hands in a most disciplined way, still sitting on her haunches, and dipped her blood crusted hands into the water, bringing it to her mouth.

What had almost choked her to death minutes ago was now the giver of life, and although she was so dehydrated that she wanted to stick her head in the river and gulp, she forced herself to take these shaky handfuls of water one by one.  The trembling didn't cease, and what little water her slender hands could hold was sloshing out, allowing her the most pitiful of sips.  

After she had drank, the Courier slowly and painfully washed her hands in the water, scrubbing what blood she could off.  Then she used her stained hands to slowly pry a torn piece of the Legion's under-uniform off, dip it in the water, and pat her swollen face.  She didn't really want to touch the wound on her head.  Once she found a doctor, he or she could deal with that.  Head injuries were out of the Courier's league.   Leaving the rag by the riverside, the Courier did one last thing before departing.  Praying that she hadn't lost it in the events of the past half-day, she reached her shaking hand into the breast pocket of the armor.

"The last thing you never see," she read slowly.  The Courier closed her eyes.  This way, it was easier than ever for her to relive the moment she touched Boone's face while blinded.  The sorrow etched onto his brow, the regret that seemed to tremble underneath his very skin.  It wasn't how she wanted to remember him.  She wanted to remember someone brave and intelligent, with unmatched scoped skill.  A companion and a friend.  But the reality was that Boone was a detached, lost, wretched soul, and now that she understood that, she missed him more than she ever thought she would.

Alone, the Courier cursed her shaking hands, and firmly put the beret on her head, wincing as her split-open injury still sent courses of pain storming throughout her body.  Tears sprang to her forest greens at the sensation, but she situated the hat anyway, tucking her hair haphazardly under it.  Then the woman in the Legion uniform and the NCR beret put her palms before her on the rocky ground.  Her bottom half felt like jelly, but she brought them up underneath her, unfolding her slender legs and planting her feet on the ground.

You will always be alone. It sounded taunting. I will make sure of that.  The Courier inhaled angrily now.  She didn't know where the voice originated from.  It wasn't hers.  Yet it came from inside her.  A distant memory perhaps.  

If I am alone, then I have nothing to lose.  She pushed upward, gritting her teeth at the impossible pain it stressed on her shoulder, but not crying out.  Slowly she rose from a kneeled position to a standing one, lifting her torso and once again arising.  At nearly 5'11'', the Courier looked weathered, beaten, tired, but still as formidable as she ever did.  Staring up at the ravine before her, she set her jaw and began the long, long hike upward.


___________________________________________________________________________


She was sleeping like a rock, a comatose sleep, near death.  Come to think of it, she hadn't sleep this deeply since being back at Doc Mitchell's after the Benny incident.   Actually, she hadn't bedded down to go to sleep.  She had collapsed in her tracks.  Now she restlessly shifted, her head lolling on the rock it had hit when she passed out.  The Courier had trekked countless miles, still so far away from Vegas it seemed like an eternity.  

The festering face mask was tenderly removed from her shoulder.  It was replaced with clean white bandage.  She didn't feel the injection going into her arm, but somewhere far away, she heard a voice.  In her sleep, she murmured, "Boone?.........."  There was no answer of course.  Boone was gone.

"Liam?............" Who was Liam?

Then a sharp noise sounded. A bark.  "Rex.........." she sighed wistfully, and fell comatose once more.



___________________________________________________________________________


"Man, there you are. I got so many questions for you I don't even know where to start."

The Courier lifted herself, but the black-haired man put a hand on her chest.  "Whoa there, take it easy.  I think you got bump number two on your head. Or maybe three or four.  I ain't a doctor."

One face she didn't expect to see so soon: the handsome, amiable King sat by her bed.  Upon further realization, she saw she was in HIS bed, the ridiculous heart-shaped mattress spanning out all around her.  The King was in a chair.  At his side was Rex.

"You!" she said in a surprised voice. The King motioned carelessly.  

"Me? Let's talk about you.  My dog shows up, barking his head off, I can tell somethin's wrong.  I send two of my men out, figurin' he's dug up a gold mine or somethin, and he leads them to a remote part of the Mojave that I still ain't located on a map, where you're there, out cold.  And in that getup.  Now what in blazes is going on, exactly?"

The Courier lay back down, feeling nauseated.  Oh god, she'd barely gotten on the King's good side.  She didn't want to throw up in his bed.  

"I was....I got caught up on the wrong end of the Fort."

"The Fort?! You gotta be kiddin' me.  That place is so far away from here. No way you could make it from there in the time you left ol Rexy boy with me.  Where's that NCR fella you were travelin' with?  What the hell happened?"

She was silent.  What was she supposed to say?  "I snuck into the Legion's base after being invited in there, upgrading the Securitron army, and crucifying my murderer, then went back in to save him and almost died. Oh and my sniper left me because I wanted to talk to his hated enemy and the group who sold his wife into slavery."  Probably not.  

The King was a decent man, and nodded after a few seconds of silence.  "All right I get it, the stranger's business is the stranger's business. I honestly don't know how the hell you do half the shit you do, lady," and admiration hinted in his voice, "but at least now you're fixed up and ready to go.  I don't have any work for you at this precise moment, but I'm hopin' my fellas rescuin' you leaves you owin' us one.  In this day and age, who knows what's bound to happen."

"The Kings will always have my support," she responded back from where she lay, eyes trained on the ceiling.  

The King stood, nodded his head, and winked flirtatiously at the Courier.  "Music to my ears.  Now, I got some affairs to take care of.  Enjoy the bed.  I'll see you later," and with a final wink, he exited.  The girl curled up, wincing at the dull pain in her shoulder, and whispered, "Liam," before dozing off, hoping she could will his presence to her in a dream.  Who was the boy?  Not her son, she was certain.   

How does it feel to be so alone? the malicious voice echoed.