Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

The Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen

AN: Hi, guys. I don't know if anyone is reading this for the plot, but I took a break from the flashback narratives to write this. The holdup on those is because my editor actually wrote the next chapter, and I've been finding it strangely difficult to edit another person's work to fit in with my authorship style. Anyway, I'm uploading my chapters to fanfiction.net, and I decided I needed a chapter set between "Arise, Let Us Go Hence" and "Mercury's Messenger,"so this is it.
Thinly-veiled adult themes in this chapter, as well as DLC spoilers.
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The Tops, May 2283.
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Sierra sat cradled comfortably in Sage's arms. Named for the city in which the Courier had found her, the acoustic guitar still played like she hadn't been marinating in a cloud of toxic fumes for two hundred years. Sage could barely play, but Tommy Torini asked her over anyway, just for the celebrity of the thing.

Sage had asked Tommy not to advertise that she'd be there, but the Aces had drawn an unusually dense crowd tonight. Someone must have let the word out. Her time onstage had come and gone, just as stilted and bland as she'd expected, and now she sat in the front row enjoying the rest of the night's entertainment. Music wasn't one of Sage's talents, but charm was, and she used her charisma to turn her mistakes into their own form of entertainment. It seemed to her like a classless form of theatre, but Tommy asked her back every so often, and she did the same act with the same results.

The woman onstage now was called Angelface, so named because of the makeup she'd somehow managed to procure for stage performances. It was a pre-war oddity, and she piled it on thicker than Sage assumed had been customary (Veronica would know). Her voice was so thick and syrupy that every change in note sounded like a hiccup. Sage knew she was one of the Chairmen; she'd heard her swear in some extinct tribal dialect when her high heels faltered.

It was important to get out on the town sometimes. CEO, president, empress — she didn't know what she was to these people, but everyone constantly wanted her attention. She missed the days before the Dam, when she'd had time for endless side projects, limitless visits to the needy Wasteland. Now it was all she could do to keep just the Strip happy. Arcade lectured her on delegation, but the prospect of not knowing everything that was going on made her spine tingle in its cybernetic sheath.

Angelface blew kisses at her song's end, then sauntered down the stage's steps toward her seat. Heads moved in whispered conversation in the front table. Then Hadrian got up to perform.

Sage considered stepping out; she was a favorite target of the old comedian, and she didn't want the crowd to see her flush. Some days, it was just too much effort to smile and fire back.

The ghoul took center stage, and Sage realized, too late, the bowtie and sunglasses, the ancient suit, the cocky smile that wasn't just an act. Her heart hammered hard enough that she imagined she could feel the synthetics clicking together. He couldn't be here.

Dean Domino. The survivor. The thief.

His voice was still beautiful, even after such a long period of mutation and disuse. It wasn't exactly news to her, but the crowd was impressed that a ghoul could sing so well. Sage had heard him the night of the Gala — that haunting concert for one — and soon after, she had found out far more than she'd ever wanted to know about the man.

Not that she'd ever trusted him. Every syllable from his rich baritone brought greed, envy, and spite into the atmosphere. In the Sierra Madre, she had known true evil. She'd seen every filthy lust in the heart of man — and woman — for power, vengeance, knowledge, food, beauty, pride, control. Gold. She'd known, in the lowest depths of her mind, that everyone she'd met had been entirely willing to kill her, stopped only by the belief that she might be useful to them.