Chapter Text
Who the hell was this girl? He didn’t quite know why he was travelling with her. He owed her he supposed, for or bringing the person responsible for the Legion taking Carla. She’d also promised him they’d go after the Legion and he wants to take as many of those bastards down before he goes. She told him about some people being enslaved and taken north of Nipton. She said she hadn’t wanted to attack by herself. He wasn’t sure if that was true or if she just didn’t want him to immediately regret joining her. She either wanted insurance for his partnership or she really would take time out of her journey to go back and save a bunch of criminals.
She was so strange. Told him her name was Six and when he’d asked if that was her real name she’d laughed and said no. He didn’t press, and she talked enough that he was sure if she wanted to tell him she would. She told him every other thought in her head. She must not be from around here, she had no idea what was going on in the Wasteland or even back west. She was almost like a child, trying to learn everything she could and it was all sparkly and new. They hadn’t been walking long when the questions started to become about him.
“How do you feel about Manny?” She asked suddenly.
“He was a good spotter.”
“Weren’t you also friends?” Her voice was earnest.
“Yeah. We were.”
“Not anymore?”
“No.”
“Ugh, you’re not giving me much here, soldier boy.”
“Do you always talk this much?” He muttered.
“Do you always talk this little?”She snapped back.
He didn’t respond to that and proved the point and it was blissfully quiet for two minutes. That was apparently two minutes too long for her.
“...You ever take the beret off?”
Goddammit. “No.”
He didn’t want to talk, he wanted to kill legion soldiers. While she agreed, her mind appeared to be elsewhere. She looked at him frequently, scrutinising him, like she was trying to figure him out. It made him uneasy, no one had looked him in the eye in Novac and it pissed him off then, but this might be worse.
“Were you at Bitter Springs with First Recon?”
He grimaced. Where had she even heard about that? She was asking who President Kimbal was 10 minutes ago Fucking, Manny.
“I was in a lot of places with First Recon. I don’t really remember.”
“You must’ve been at Bitter Springs. What happened there?”
“That part of my life is over now. So is this discussion,” he said with finality.
She did not take the hint,“Okay, well then why don’t you tell me about your wife?”
Christ what was wrong with this woman? He was making it clear he didn’t want to talk about this shit and she wasn’t taking the hint.
“Carla’s dead. That’s all you need to know.”
She sighed in frustration. “Alright fine Have it your way”
With the two of them and her weird robot, it wasn’t too difficult to take out the legion camp. They weren’t expecting anyone to come after convicts and they got the jump on them. It was easy for him and for her. She may have known nothing about the world but she knew how to shoot. And somehow she knew how to fight in a way that complimented his own style. She would call out the location of enemies in a sing-song voice while dashing through the camp and he would easily pick them off. She was exceedingly quick on her feet and none of them had a chance of grabbing her.
“Bang, bang, bang!” She called out and unloaded the rest of her clip into the last standing legionaries. He wondered if she was insane, it was a possibility he wouldn’t discount just yet.
“Loot the bodies, Boone. I’ll get untie the Powder Gangers”
That’s what he found the most strange. The little girl asking him about his hat was gone. Now she was giving him orders in a tone eerily similar to his former commanding officer. He obeyed, it was comfortable, and he was the one following her, she was calling the shots as far as he was concerned. The men didn’t even thank them before sprinting away into the wastes. Six stuffed her pack with the water and ammo they found, at least that’s one less Legion party out there.
“Pisses me off that Legion slavers can just operate on NCR turf like that. If we hadn't caught up to them they'd probably have had a clear path to the river. No one to stop them. There should be patrols. Checkpoints. We got greedy, overstretched. Now our own territory isn't secure.” If only the NCR wasn’t so arrogant. Things could have been different. People could have been saved, things wouldn’t have ended the way they did...
She cocked her head to the side. “Are you going to tell me what happened at Bitter Springs now?”
Dammit, he’d hope she would let that go. “We won.” He told her.
“That’s it? You won?”
“Look, we've done some travelling together, but we're not exactly comrades-in-arms. I'm not ready to swap war stories.”
The look on her face almost made him feel bad. “I’ve seen my share of terrible things.” Her voice was quiet. “You can talk to me about it.”
“Maybe some other time,” he said, hoping that would sate her for the time being.
Manny had asked her to clear the Repconn Test Sight. It took her three times as long because she decided she wasn’t shooting at anything that wasn’t already trying to rip her face off. It was a bit odd, she offered to help every person she spoke to. He had no problem with Ghouls but Nightkin were crazy. He’d seen the damage they could do, but he didn’t argue when she told him to stay upstairs, she would come back once she realised how strong they were.
But she didn’t, well she wasn’t the first one to come through the door anyway. Fist, a ghoul, decked out in armour and then a stampede of nightkin, all who ran by him without a single glance. Finally, Six, with a smile on her face. And of course that wasn’t the end of it, the Ghouls sent them on a couple more fetch quests that brought them to Old Lady Gibson’s scrap yard.
“Hello! How are you today?” Six asked cheerfully.
“Well hi there!” Greeted the old woman. “How can I help you?”
“I was wondering do you have any thrust control modules from REPCONN in stock?”
She nodded. “ As it so happens, I do have some thrust modules, but they're expensive. 500 caps worth of expensive.”
Six didn’t flinch. “But you're going to cut the price to 250 because I'm just that charming, right?” She grinned.
“Ha! Yes, you are quite the smoothtalker. What the hell - 250 it is.”
Six beamed and handed over the caps. She certainly didn’t seem to have a difficult time getting her way, which probably explained her frustration when he didn’t answer her questions.
“My mom always said it never hurts to ask,” she said brightly as they walked back to Repconn. Then her smile faded.“Or…I imagine she did, sounds like something a mother would say.”
“Did you not know your mother?” He asked.
She looked at him surprised, “A question! For me? You’re so sweet.” He rolled his eyes and she laughed. “I don’t know, I might have. I...don’t remember anything before the night I got shot in the head.”
“You were shot in the head?” he asked incredulously, “You never mentioned that.”
“Well, now you’ve learned a lesson, sometimes conversation leads to interesting stories.” She really was quite annoying.. “It happened two weeks ago about,. I was shot in the head by this guy… Benny. Him and a few Khans ambushed me, stole the chip I was supposed to deliver, and-” she mimed shooting a gun. “Bang.”
God, how the hell had she survived getting shot in the head? He noticed her hair for the first time and the way she had styled it to cover the top right side of her head. She wasn’t smiling anymore, her face was set in anger, words spilled out of her mouth touched with poison.
“Guess it didn’t take.” She said bitterly and then she clenched her fists. “And if the game was rigged from the start, it wasn’t against me! I’ll show him how to make sure someones dead, how it feels to be surrounded by darkness, choking on dirt, while your head is exploding with pain. I’ll take his life away!”
He didn’t know what to say, he was seeing a glimpse of a different courier.Angry and a bit unhinged with manic, unfocused eyes. But it was gone quickly, and her breathing steadied. She looked almost embarrassed and put on an uneasy smile.
“We all have our things, don’t we?”
“Yeah.” She was right about that at least.
“Go on ahead, I’ll meet you back in Novac. I’m gonna take the long way, clear my head.”
He nodded. He could understand that, not that she had shown him quite the same courtesy. It was different though. He knew what was causing the pain, he knew why, she didn’t have any idea. She didn’t know who she was and for that, he would give her the benefit of the doubt when it came to her decisions, for now.
He hated Novac. It was a big part of the reason he had decided to go with Six. Ever since Carla...every minute here was suffocating. He hoped they would just be staying here for one more night, that was all he could tolerate right now. He made his way to his old room, he hadn’t been gone long and everything was where he left it.
He kicked off his boots and poured himself the little whiskey that was left in the bottle on the bedside table. His mind turned to Six again, he liked how she treated him like a person. Her endless curiosity was annoying but it was better than the people who were walking on eggshells around him. It was like they were terrified that if they said the name ‘Carla’ he would shoot them then and there...Six didn’t act like that at least.
He had finished the whiskey and was considering opening another bottle when there was a knock on the door. As expected, Six was behind it, she looked much better, like she had forgotten all her troubles or even that they didn’t exist at all.
“Hey! Just wanted to let you know I’m back, I got a room upstairs. I talked to Manny and he told me Benny and the Khan’s went to Boulder City. Will you be good to leave in the morning?” She asked awkwardly.
He knew what she meant, was he still good to travel with her.
“Yeah.” It was an easy answer. He wasn’t staying here and she had proven herself to be a very competent partner. It also helped that she shot legionnaires on sight. And there was something else, like he was meant to go with her, but he didn’t give that feeling much thought.
She brightened immediately “Great! See you in the morning then, sleep well!”
He nodded and she smiled before skipping away. He closed the door and frowned. Strange.