#treadthebear

She’d spent maybe an hour in New Vegas tops. Enough time to hear out the plan, to learn about House’s ace in the hole. From there it had been the final march to the place that decided it all. Six found herself impatient through it. Enough people had died. Enough things has been left up in the air for too long. They were so close to the end, and she was ready no matter what happened. She carefully snuck through the hailing of bullets, through the sounds of the vertibird and bomber plane flying overhead. Legion and NCR were falling in equal measure around her as she snuck between blockades and falling bodies. She just had to get to the Legion camp across the Dam, and that was far easier said than done.

But she did it, and it wasn’t by her own gumption and impatience alone. Though they both did wonders, first against the new Caesar as she stood with him at his camp and they surveyed the battle below him. His assumption she was here to retreat came and went, signed with a promise of his return as Legion soldiers pulled back to return Eastwards. One problem done. One more to go.

Oliver was trickier. Her fear came from something else as Securitrons poured out of the underground bunker. This standoff lasted longer, words not enough, but the entourage certainly helped. Her heart wasn’t into it by the end, more curious about the help from above that had been keeping her safe since she’d noticed it on the way to the Legate’s Camp. The fighting was over. Both the Bear and the Bull had been tamed.

Six knew there’d be time for her to shake off her jitters soon enough. It wasn’t until she saw Boone again, still alive and safe and perfectly untouched that she allowed herself to start that process. Slightly trembling hands rubbed themselves on the hips of her vault suit like it’d dry off the nervous sweat. Then she hugged him. Upset as she had been knowing he’d come anyway, it didn’t matter anymore. Her heart was pounding.

Roxy hadn’t expected to stay in Novac for as long as she had.  Honestly in normal situation the twins would have been likely long gone, moving on to wherever the wind took them.  But Aiden was still needed here and she was hardly going to leave anywhere without him.  

However it generally left her at loose ends.  She was far more useful on a battlefront than in aiding in any medical capacity.  She didn’t have the patience to deal with patients.  And going out on her own was generally a good way to get herself killed.  

“ well, that was fuckin’ tedious. ”

she was almost covered head to toe in gore, at least four severed legion ears grasped in her hands as she strings them up on a long strip of twine ( several other ears in various states of decay already on the string ). 

Getting in wasn’t a problem, really, not with a First Recon and the woman who was with him. They had, after all, saved President Kimball’s life, and that absolved Six of most of their suspicions regarding all the work that she’d allegedly been doing for the proprietor of the Strip. A quick excuse to check out the El Dorado Electrical Substation wasn’t hard to come up with -- them doing a favor for General Lee Oliver, for example.

No real way for the soldiers who let them in to realize it was a lie until it was too late; even with Six’s work untangling their trails of misinformation, getting news from station to station to base was something the NCR were not particularly adept at.

She didn’t like the lie, but it was necessary -- the Hoover Dam’s power was important to have. All it took was slipping the Platinum Chip into the main terminal when no one was looking. With that done, no one would be the wiser. The Strip and Freeside would have the power it needed in the event of the NCR puling the plug at Poseidon Energy.

With that done, Six offered a small and private smile to Boone. One that didn’t seem all too happy, but more than anything, it was relieved that the work was done. Everything seemed to be on pins and needles. War was coming. She’d never seen one, and that thought alone made her nervous. Troops were being moved to the front lines. The Legion seemed ready at any point to finally charge the Dam.

At least, in all the worry, she and Boone were good. The air was clear, the slate clean, and their friendship strong. She was opening her mouth to say something when it sounded as if guns were being shot. That stopped her short.

Probably just fire ants getting too close, she wanted to suggest, but something in her heart didn’t want to risk it. Instead she pulled out Lucky and nodded -- a way to say silently that they should get up there even if she didn’t want to. That was the same part of her that knew it wasn’t fire ants, and didn’t have to see them to know what the real threat was.

The Legion was here, and a sizeable battalion of them, too. She’d thought the group of assassins had been a lot, and she’d known their numbers eclipsed the NCR’s by at least three times as many, but this?

It took a bit of time that first night to calm down. Six spent most of the time between cooking them a meal and listening for the ghouls overhead. What time wasn’t spent there was sitting close to Boone, listening to him breathe and, when he let her, putting her head against his chest to listen for his heartbeat.

It was too exhausting to speak. The weight of all they’d been through in such a short amount of time was too much. She kept up watch while she took a drip to combat the poison in her system. She took a few more short trips up and through Searchlight when the need came in the daytime, and prayed to nothing in particular that Boone’d be awake to respond when she knocked upon her return. It was to her relief that he always did.

He was getting color back slowly. His back wasn’t as raw as it had been. Eventually he could sit up without as big a grimace. He wasn’t as cold or as clammy. He could even stand and walk a bit with a little help. It seemed a good time to move him somewhere better than a basement in the middle of irradiated nowhere. Besides, Six was running out of RadAway.

Avoiding ghouls best they could, they pushed to Highway 95 for the signs towards Novac. They took it slow and easy, careful to look for red and gold in the distance. It never came. What did was that beautiful green dinosaur, past Clark Field. Seeing it all like this felt nostalgic, like there was no guarantee there’d ever have been this chance to see it again.

Has your life taken a turn? Do troubles beset you? Has fortune left you behind?

Though she’d have to be careful for a long while yet, concussions being what they were, she was more or less back to normal and had gotten the clean bill of health from Julie Farkas. It was nothing new -- a punch or two or ten to the head was close enough to being shot twice.

This felt different, though, because try as she wanted to Six couldn’t seem to forget this one. She felt the way her finger did on the trigger, the slight recoil that sent her shoulder back. She felt the weight of Veronica on her and the sound of her voice. She’d partied across the Strip like a misbehaving child like it’d help her cope, her own little fuck you! to Robert Edwin House as she did it all on his cap. She even had a new tattoo she didn’t remember getting, but she was too busy remembering things that she didn’t want to. Half the time she was conscious Six was still too drunk to remember she had even gone to get it in the first place. It was this need to stay drunk that drove her to the cocktail lounge, effectively chasing Cass back down to the casino floor to enjoy her drinks so Six could take control of the private bar. Maybe under other circumstances she’d have relished in the company, but it was clear to pretty much everyone that Six needed to be alone.

Come to a place where wealth, excitement, and intrigue await around every corner.

So alone she was, on another bottle of something that she didn’t bother pouring drinks from, opting to instead drink from it until it was bone dry. It had been a day ago -- maybe two, or maybe none at all, but there had been some kind of strange frequency that seemed to be persisting. Six had never changed her radio from Radio New Vegas before, always opting to listening to the dreamy voice that promised her a love that didn’t exist. The last time he’d done so she’d angrily knocked at the dial. Instead of it being the off switch, it was the tuner. She’d been drunk then, and she was drunk now as she adjusted what radio antennae she could and futzed with the signal strength that the Lucky 38 had to offer.

If Mr. House didn’t care he could tell her, and since he wasn’t talking to her he could kiss her butt. Only he wouldn’t -- employer-employee relationships didn’t work that way. 

She’d never heard of it before. In her drunken stupor it sounded like the most perfect place from the one or two words that managed to break through the static. Begin again. Let go. It had turned into a fixation at this point -- a desperation to finally get it strong enough to make out the words, and now there it was: The Sierra Madre.

If it was real, if it was still on the map, then she’d have to find it, somehow. She just didn’t know where to start. That would come later, though. After she heard it all. Maybe it would leave her a clue.

So if life's worries have weighed you down... if you need an escape from your troubles... or if you just need an opportunity to begin again, join us. Let go and leave the world behind at the Sierra Madre grand opening, this October. We'll be waiting.

The sound of the elevator opening had her turning the dial quick to the Mojave Music Radio station, one without much pizazz, but a favorite among some Ranger outposts. The Sierra Madre was her little secret. She rubbed her mouth and smoothed her hair like it would make her look any more sober.

“Vic?” Six asked, slowly making her way across the other side of the bar counter by sitting atop it to climb over. A tiny "shit, fuck!" followed, and she was, for a moment, turned upside down, unsure of where to look. The floor hurt bad. When had that happened? The thing that got her to remember her priorities was the sound of footsteps and not an engine whirring.

The first time she saw herself after her stupid attempt for closure at the Sierra Madre was on her way down to her suite. The windows in the elevator provided a sort of mirror, dimmed and not very clear, but she didn’t think that really would have made any kind of difference.

She looked like a mess. Courier Six wouldn’t have even recognized herself if not for the familiar scar that tore across her forehead. Hair so dirty and matted that she would have thought she were a brunette who had just rolled out of bed. Her face was dirty, makeup from before she left residual on her cheeks. The white jumpsuit, the painted X across the back, covered in blood and char and poison that lingered in the air. She couldn’t tell what were bags from days without sleep and what was smudged off mascara and the shadow she’d brush there. She couldn’t bother to smile, and didn’t think she had in years.

But she hadn’t been gone that long, had she?

Six dug through the measly possessions she had to find one of the many ‘martinis’ she had left. It was a sludge, one strange and gritty and the way it slid down her throat made her feel a little bit better. At the very least, it helped her find the strength and gumption to step out of the elevators to trudge to her room. Her throat hurt.

“Well howdy there, parder,” Victor spoke, and Six didn’t say a thing. All she could manage was a look in his direction. She kept on walking to the double doors of her suite to shove her way inside.

“Well...” he replied, “I’ll leave you to it then. So long!”

The days where she remembered things were a double edged sword. It felt like growing pains all over, revisiting past emotions like they were happening again for the very first time in rapid succession and with little time to process one memory after another as faded fragments and disjointed pictures began to connect. Mentally, it was exhausting. Usually it resulted in a night of troubled sleep.

It was these nights Six made sure to have work at the ready, idle small things that didn’t take much thought. Sometimes it was just the voice of Mr. New Vegas to keep her company until she lulled to uncomfortable sleep. Tonight, however, it wasn’t falling asleep that was the hard part -- a long day in the sun had her ready for unconsciousness as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Tonight, it was nightmares. It was the dark, it was Benny. It was the weight of dirt burying her alive and swallowing her whole. She couldn’t move, struggling against the weight of something holding her down as she thrashed desperately to stop herself from being buried alive. She couldn’t see their faces, but somehow she knew her parents were the ones holding the shovels.

I’m not dead, I’m not --