(Sequel to this. I wrote the good end, how about the bad one? Just Butch for this post, I'll see when I can get around to writing the rest. Enjoy)
Content Warning: Alcoholism
[Fo3] Companions React to Lone confessing before activating the purifier [Butch ver.]
Pounding. The immovable glass wall met his fists with resistance. But he could barely feel it, barely feel the raw scratchiness clawing its way into his throat while he screamed, barely feel the pulsing pain in his hands as he beat them against the near transparent barrier, not while in his hysterics.
"You can't do that! You don't get to do that!"
"Come back- Get back here and come back, we weren't finished!" His hands finally yield their barrage against the door as adrenaline trades it place for exhaustion, his body forced to slouch and the cold surface against his sweat drenched forehead as he leans against it will be the closest thing to solace he'll get as he watches you input the code to finish the job.
But the only voice to reply to his calls was the Paladin behind him trying to pry and coax him away from the scene. Those words didn't matter, though. They weren't the honey sweet words of mutual affection muttered from him to you- and you to him with flushed faces, the same words that had so stubbornly invaded his mind and brought both frustrating and delightful fantasies at every chance. They weren't your soft laughs filled with agreement to his declarations that the two of you would tear up the wasteland together and never part, that together you would make not only the best duo to exist but the fiercest force to be reckoned with.
They were words of attempted assurance, but Butch didn't feel any assured, couldn't even pay them any mind when the sight of you collapsing and the muffled thud that followed took over his sights. Even the final scream he let out in response felt muted with how zerod in on you he was. You were gone. Gone. The only one who was by his side after the vault went to shit. His partner-in-crime, and you could've been... partners.
Butch couldn't bare lingering on that thought. Couldn't think clearly, couldn't breathe, couldn't see clearly. If you hadn't been so foolish to chose the moment right before you died to tell him, and if he hadn't been so stupid and just told you about the butterflies and yearning pressure in his chest you caused him earlier.
None of it mattered now. No amount of berating would fulfill his hopes to see you smiling at him again.
He was all alone again. And he never would have expected that thought to bring him to his knees the way it did.
Pounding. Persistent pounding. But not of the noise that had been mixed with desperate yells that day. A feeling. His head was pounding, and he discouraged against any thoughts of wishing that he could barely feel it. Anything to drown out the empty yet so despiar-filled feelings that had burrowed itself into him. Any distractions to make up for the lack of your company by his side.
He couldn't stop himself from wondering. Why? Why did you have to go and do that? You could've left it unsaid, you know. Could've left him debating if you ever felt the same when you were alive. It wouldn't have ached as much. Hurt still, sure, but maybe then he would've been left with enough stability to get up and move on.
But maybe he didn't deserve that. Maybe he deserved this. Treating you and Amanda that way when you were young. Always making some snide remark, always going out of his way to collide his shoulder into yours when passing by down the halls, or cornering either of you with his gang with threats of an altercation. He was an asshole, a juvenile prick. And you were too good for him. That's something he always felt deep down inside but would never confront. But it was true. And maybe that's why fate so bitterly turned out this way.
The day your life was lost was the day a numbness washed through him and tried to bury the grief that'd leave him immobile on the floor crying his heart out for months otherwise. He had trudged back to Rivet City to drown it out further at the bar. Forget for as long as possible anything that had to do with you or him. But he wasn't spared that.
"They can't be gone. They can't be. Not them, not someone as unstoppable as them. They have to be.."
None paid attention to the drunken mumbling of the lone tunnel snake. Not as he rocked in his seat, an unconscious attempt to soothe himself.
"They can't be. You have to come back Lone. Please."
Maybe one day he'll get himself together. Leave his place at the bar stool and travel into the wastes again. Maybe to pick up where his companion had left off.
"Come back to me? Back to the Tunnel Snakes?"
Or maybe this will be how he wastes away. Their sacrificial feat being celebrated by many being what causes him to crumble and rot away in some water hole.
"I know I was an ass to you, but.. I can make it better. I can do better. I could be a great boyfriend if you just..."
Maybe some will say it serves him right, say its a lesson to not take what you have left with prickly and uncaring fronts. The only one who was left to stick around, to patch up his wounds when his initial inexperience led to rookie recklessness in a proper scuffle, to care- in the words he would've used; 'the only person who gives a damn about me'. That person is gone, and a chance to meet someone like them again will never cross his path.
