Post-Dinner Drama.

Shouts echoed around Boone as he passed through the corridor toward the penthouse's staircase entrance.  Normally, his youngest daughter would've already said goodnight and headed toward her own suite, but he happened to be dragging said youngest daughter by the arm.  

"Why won't you just tell me what's going on?! I know Josiah is with the Legion!! I'm not stupid, I know he wants something from us, he's been trying to contact us and you keep throwing letters away! What were you and Ben talking about at dinner--LET GO OF MEEEE!"

Boone shoved her up the stairs and closed the door.  His eyes seemed to penetrate his sunglasses as he glared.  The blond girl kicked the door behind him and then stormed off toward one of the bedrooms in the vast penthouse.  "I'm not Rapunzel and you can't keep me locked up forever!! Locked up in this STUPID city in this STUPID tower when Dolly AND Josiah get to run all over the desert!!! And Ben--"

"Ben is an ADULT," Boone yelled after her, hearing something crash as she smashed it.  "So is Dolly."  He tossed off his sunglasses; they hit a nearby bureau and he snarled when a picture fell forward, hitting the edge of the old wood and smashing facedown on the floor.  Instead of picking it up, he pounded his fist down on the tabletop and the other pictures shook.

She emerged from the nearby room at the sound, brown eyes blazing and streaked with tears, light blond hair tousled and messy.  "I HATE you!" she declared as teenagers throughout history declared, and the last thing Boone saw was the tremble of her lip before she slammed the bedroom door shut.  

Boone angrily kicked the fallen picture; it skidded across the polished floor to rest against a nearby chair leg.  The broken glass frame failed to hide a black and white photograph of a hesitant and very charismatic smile.  Realizing which picture had fallen,  the sniper slowly crossed the length of the floor and plucked up the recycled frame.

Few, very few pictures hung in the Lucky 38 were of Andy alone.  She much preferred taking pictures to being in them, and her family and children had still images littered around the entire casino.  But this was one exception; she leaned comfortably against the large terminal were Mr. House's artificial intelligence was located; even after the incident at Big Mountain his AI had activated and remained a source of confidence for the courier, until her parting days.  

Boone stared at the picture, scratched by broken glass, for a long time.  His daughter's sobs eventually died down, the lights from the Lucky 38 turned on automatically, and he still stared, finally shaking his head slowly and walking back to the bureau.  He put the busted picture frame back in its place, then sadly opened the top drawer of the cabinet instead.  A full stash of red letters were in the drawer.  Boone ignored them and the seal of the Bull that adorned them all.  He placed the photo face down and shoved the drawer shut.

After more time had passed and Andy's smiling face and slouched shoulders had left his mind, Boone sat on one of the spotless mid-century style couches and withdrew the most recent, crushed letter from his jacket pocket. The letter he'd thrown the Courier in the trash over.  Despite the fact that the penthouse was quiet and undisturbed, Boone glanced warily over to the large terminal that once homed Robert House's computational matrix of a mind.  He almost feared the once-dictator would rise to technological life again and order a frontal attack on the newly re-formed Legion.  

Something Andy would've probably supported, despite the fact that the rebel movement was headed by her son.

Boone read the letter, already knowing what it had to say.  


Father--

The Legion grows daily.  The work done in the past, the efforts for Hoover Dam, will be reconstructed.  You know this.  We all know this.  We know that we will triumph, because your weapon, your courier, your leader, is now gone.

I do not pretend to know why Mother left us.  Despite the praise she receives from these degenerates, she is selfish.  I am not being selfish.  I am trying to bring peace to this world in the only way I know how.  

There is no reason for you to fight me.  It's foolish to ban me from entering the city as I have spies in it anyway.  I request what Dolly took.  I request what mother foolishly left behind.   I require these things, and if I don't get them, you will pay, mark my words.

I know how to hurt you.  Don't make me.

--Josiah</i>