Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 4 Part 2

Patience stared at the Pip-Boy on her arm, open mouthed. She then turned that stare towards Valrie as the older woman scrambled over a loose piece of battered freeway concrete.

"That was me!" Patience picked her way over the rubble, jumping with little effort from stone to stone. "The man on the radio. He was talking about me, wasn't he?"

"I reckon so." Valrie didn't look around, shrugging as she moved.

"But, how does he know about me?" Her rifle whipped around, without her even thinking about it, pointing at some falling rubble. A loose, imbalanced piece of concrete had caused the rock fall, and she relaxed again.

"I might have radioed something in. In passing." Stopping at the top of a mound of rubble, Valrie adjusted her helmet, staring ahead. "We don't get much news around here. I figured people should know what you did for Sierra."

"I don't know how I feel about that." Joining Valrie at the peak of the rubble, she looked towards the collection of buildings the older woman had called the Fairfax Ruins. "I'm not a hero. I just want answers. I'm not here to be anyone's savior."

"Try telling Sierra that." Valrie turned to Patience, looking her dead in the eyes. "Sure as I'm stood here, that girl would have suffered, maybe even got killed, if it weren't for you. You didn't think about it, you just jumped in and killed fuckers that needed killing. Now if that don't make you a Big Damned Hero, I don't know what does."

Valrie jumped down, spry for an older woman, and continued heading towards Fairfax. Patience waited a second, thinking about what Valrie had said. She had jumped in, without the slightest thought, to help the Nuka-Cola obsessed Sierra. She wondered if that was a throwback to who she had previously been before losing her memory?

She had an idea about some things. She seemed to know her way around weapons. Had definite skills when it came to stealth and hand-to-hand combat. She didn't feel like a soldier, though, when instinct took over, she acted like one. She didn't think of herself as a hero, couldn't think that. As far as she felt concerned, she only wanted to stay alive, find out who she was and where she came from.

Valrie had turned southwards, continuing to follow the derelict freeway, but moving them away from where she had said they were heading.

"You're going the wrong way." Patience used her rifle to point across the land towards the ruins. "It's quicker across than turning south."

"I'm going the wrong way? Well, I'll be good god damned! Let's bow to your superior wisdom, shall we, missy?" Valrie snapped around, stomping back towards Patience. "So's I don't happen to know that there's a big ass pool of radiation that way? I don't know about no big packs of dogs just waiting to rip some dumb fucker's face off? I mean, you know so fucking much, you go right ahead, but don't come to me begging for Rad-Away when you're fucking hair's falling out and you start becoming all ghoul-ified, or wanting me to find you a new fucking face 'cos some dog's done run off with it between its fucking teeth! Go on. I ain't stopping you."

Patience backed away from the ferocious outburst. She'd seen Valrie annoyed, at Wintergreen, for instance, but this was out-and-out anger. Something must have triggered it and Patience felt certain there was more to it than the suggestion to head across the land. There was something there, deep in the eyes of Valrie as she stood there staring at Patience, daring her to question her choice again. Patience didn't want to push the matter. Not right now.

"So, south, then?" She nodded in the southerly direction.

"Well. All-fucking-right." Valrie made a dramatic meal of brushing down her coat and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. "Let's get going."