Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 15 Part 1

Patience awoke as the Brotherhood night patrol returned, falling onto their cots fully clothed and exhausted. She suspected that they would have slept in their power armour if they could. Valrie and Gia remained fast asleep in their cots, Valrie curled into a fetal ball, mumbling in her sleep, and Gia, all arms and legs, stretched out with her covers dripping down to the floor.

She wandered down to the canteen, still in her underclothes, barefooted and grabbed herself a mug of something hot and brown that could have been coffee, if coffee tasted like machine oil. Ignoring her own grimace at the taste, she continued her wanderings, passing by the aid station, where several of the Brotherhood soldiers still received medical attention from the battle the day before.

Finding the armoury, she located her Chinese assault rifle and a maintenance kit and began to break the weapon down. She checked, cleaned and oiled everything, testing the spring for tension, checking the rifling of the barrel, before putting it all back together again and testing the action. She did the same for her sidearm. She began to sharpen the knife she had taken from the raider, back at Girdershade, when she felt a tap on her arm.

"They'll already have done all that. SOP, even for 'guests' weapons." Vincent looked worn out as he reached over for his own rifle. "But I get it. You check your weapon yourself, only you're to blame if it fails."

"'They'?" Patience spat on the whetstone and began circling the blade. "Seems like 'they' is you, too. You kept that quiet, 'Brother' Vincent."

Vincent dropped his eyes as he began breaking down his rifle. His movements came across as precisely practiced. Every step of the maintenance as if he had performed it a million times, yet even in that, Patience knew on an instinctive level that she was better than him, which caused her to wonder about her hidden past once more.

"I can't talk about it. It's classified." He blew into the barrel and looked through it. "All I can say is that it's for the good of the whole of the Capital Wasteland. I'm not the bad guy, here."

"Seems to me you're deep undercover. It's something to do with Moriarty and I'd bet good money it's to do with the information he wants from Vault-Tec HQ." She continued sharpening the knife, slow, circular sweeps shaving the blade razor sharp. "I looked into that man's eyes. I know the kind of creature he is. Before he took you on, you had to prove yourself."

"It's not like that." Vincent paused putting his rifle back together, leaning on the workshop counter. "Sometimes you have to ..."

"Sometimes you have to kill someone to prove yourself?" She glanced up and saw an almost pleading expression on his face. "Because I'm pretty fucking certain that's the kind of man Moriarty is. You may be doing something good, Vincent, but I'm also pretty fucking certain you'll do anything to keep that cover, including killing me, Valrie, Gia, for that monster. My warning still stands. Anything happens to Valrie, or me, or Gia, and I'll kill you before you even think about blinking."

Patience looked down at her handiwork. All her weapons looked almost new, laid out in precise positions, ready to take up again. She didn't look at Vincent as she left and he didn't try to stop her. She was glad of that. Being part of the Brotherhood of Steel didn't make her trust him any more than she already did.

She was certain he thought he was doing the right thing. That there had to be a good reason for him working for Moriarty, but it changed nothing. It didn't make finding out about her past any easier. It didn't make her stop checking every single person she passed and mentally targeting all their weak points. Or stop her from thinking Vincent couldn't be trusted. It only meant that she had two reasons not to trust him.

Finding herself back at the canteen, she refilled her mug of faux-ffee, turned and bumped into Valrie. Patience always found it strange to see Valrie without that football helmet, hair all knotted and clumped, grey seeping into the fiery red. It seemed odd. Valrie looked her up and down, shaking her head.