Fallout: Born Unto Trouble

23. Dream

Elizabeth could see light in the distance. Not the lights of New Vegas, but something else. Brighter. Cleaner. Something more pure.

It was calling to her. It spoke to her without using words, without a mouth to speak from. A single, solid entity emerged and held out its hand for Elizabeth to take. She wanted to take its hand but she felt like she shouldn't. Not yet. Not yet.

It tried to grab her by her hair, her clothes, anything as she turned around and ran the other way.

She woke up in a state of panic. She never felt her heart beat so fast in her entire life. She looked around, confused, scared, and her eyes settled on the old wooden door in front of her. She sat up and winced at a sharp, stabbing pain in her side, and stood up, slowly, holding onto the bed post for balance, holding onto anything to help her stay standing, to not fall down.

She reached the door and almost fell over after opening it, if it wasn't for a pair of arms breaking her fall.

"Hey, hey it's okay," Veronica hefted her up, as gently as she could, onto the couch. Elizabeth was still a little out of it, and was mumbling incoherent sentences, which confused the duo of wayfarers.

"I thought I was dead," Elizabeth rasped out, licking her dry lips, and smiling with a tired look upon her face. She certainly looked like she hadn't slept in about three days, and with all the dried blood caked on her skin, she was a little worse for wear.

Boone and Veronica made do with what they were able to do for her, since Arcade wasn't around and Elizabeth was delirious, and neither of them knew anything about medicine other than "stick a Stimpack in it and hope for the best".

They were pretty damned lucky that Elizabeth was in cahoots with the Followers of the Apocalypse, and good 'ole Julie Farkas gave her a key to the safehouse on the way to Vault 22. The unlucky part about this whole fiasco were the Legionaries. As it turns out, liberating Nelson from the Legion wasn't something that they liked, but the NCR troops at Forlorn Hope sure thought Elizabeth was a Godsend.

In fact, the entire damn NCR thought Elizabeth was a saint. It started with her work at HELIOS One (which also made Arcade happy that she sent power to Freeside and Westside), and then helping that comm officer in Forlorn Hope (which did end up a huge mess since the comm officer at Camp Golf was sabotaging reports and then ended up killing himself, which Elizabeth blamed herself for).

And if the NCR wasn't enough, she seemed to irradiate holiness and positivity, even in times like this, helping Freeside like it was her life's purpose and donating precious chems to the Followers (which did land them a safe place to stay).

Both Boone and Veronica had to agree that the girl earned the few nicknames given her: Ranger of the Wastes, Desert Avenger, Vegas Crusader, among other names. The girl was a saint, through and through.

But, here they are now: the outlaw, the scribe (ex-scribe now; they visited Hidden Valley and things didn't turn out like Veronica planned), and the courier, all cooped up in an old building in the middle of nowhere that smelled like mildew despite the dry weather. The Follower that had shacked up in here mysteriously disappeared, though

It was cozy, but it definitely wasn't somewhere they would like to shack up for the rest of their lives.

Elizabeth was bleeding again, and luckily, she was conscious enough to guide Veronica through cleaning and stitching up a wound. And, Veronica would say, it was good practice for all of them. Boone rolled his eyes and told Veronica to concentrate, and Elizabeth grunted in pain whenever the scribe would even touch her.

When Veronica finished stitching up the wound, she helped Elizabeth sit up and drink some water, then something to eat, and some more pain killers.