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The Wastelander laughs as she launches the mini-nuke at the behemoth, a lazy, lobbed arc from the Fat Man she took from the deceased Reddin. The old Codex whispers around Sarah’s ears, runs a ragged tongue down the back of her neck— technology is to be preserved, kept safe from the hands of the tech-illiterate Wastelanders who will only use it to destroy what few pockets of civilization remain— and the Wasteland girl’s face is writ in blood and ash, a rust-red spray across her cheek. Her ragged leathers look as if their previous owner died in them. Probably did; battlefield spoils, after all.
The Wastelander’s dog yaps at her heels, but not half as feral as she— that raider haircut and dazzling white teeth, turned to a cracked-glass smile that she beams at Sarah, the world recast in flame and shadow, sending orange lights dancing in her eyes. Hellfire, a new apocalypse. “Got any more toys like this?” she cackles. She’s shattered edges and asphalt, grit wound in every inch of her. Teeth too clean and even to have always been a scavver, though. But wherever she came from— sheltered Vaultie or settlement princess— she’s pure Wasteland now.
Sarah snorts. “Hardly.” Considers asking for the weapon back, since it was Pride property to begin with— but they’re out of ammo, and it might make a better gesture of goodwill instead. “Keep it, if you can find the nukes for it.”
The girl laughs again, snapping her teeth. A click of bone, her eyes obsidian-sharp. She loots the mutant corpses with ruthless efficiency while Sarah checks her wounded.
The girl has business with Three Dog, or so she says— and Sarah doesn’t care, not really, as long as she doesn’t kill the Brotherhood’s number one PR representative. The guards let her pass, and Sarah settles down in one of the radio station’s free mattresses. Not that the mattress makes a difference, really. The Pride is used to sleeping in their power armor, and nothing feels more naked than being stripped of that protective shell.
The girl startles her awake, tapping her boots on the ground. A sharp strike, heel-toe, deliberate aggravation. Before Sarah can reprimand her, the girl flourishes two tattered comics, dropping them to the pillow.
“Grognak. My fave. Figured you could use a smile,” the girl rattles off like a machine gun, a whirring turret as she bounces on her heels, jabs her hands in her pockets. A faint whiff of unwashed leather and bubblegum as she rocks forward, back. Snaps the gum against the roof of her mouth.
Sarah runs her tongue over her teeth, mouth sticky with sleep. “My thanks, but really, it’s unnecessary—” and she means to give the comics back, since she’s hardly a child anymore, but the girl interrupts her with a snort.
“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s unnecessary.” She curls her lips, baring her teeth. “Tough shit. Maybe I just wanna see you smile.” And with that she turns, gives an odd half-skip over the threshold and then out of the room, leaving Sarah with the comics she couldn’t refuse.
. . .
Sarah reads the dog-eared comics over and over, turning the pages as slowly as she can. Afraid any uneven crinkle might be the last thing to destroy these relics of the prewar age, the bursting primary colors and the cheap paper gone yellow with age. They smell dry and faintly sour, and Sarah likes to rest her cheek against the cover, close her eyes and imagine what it must have been like to be surrounded by books in that bygone era…
But now the only places that might even come close are the Scribes’ own archives and the remnants of the Arlington Library. It prickles her chest, sets tiny hooks in her heart. A taut-wire pull of regret, longing. All the things that might have been.
So Sarah gives the comics to Arthur, ruffles his hair and tells him to take good care of them. He’ll love them, he already loves them— clutches them to his heart, hands shaking and smiling broad as the sunrise. And with the comics out of her possession, it makes it easier to forget the grungy Wastelander.
At least until the Wastelander shows up at the Citadel even grimier and dirtier than before. Now wearing black combat armor and stinking of fetid sewers and seared plasma. Still that godawful hair, uneven patches of stubble on her scalp and those two long strands plastered to her cheeks with sweat and mud. A nasty, old-metal smell that Sarah suspects is blood. Mostly not her own, since she still grins that awful shattered smile that cracks her face into lines, valleys, deep creases edging her mouth and white teeth that could devour worlds.
Dr Li talks to Sarah’s father and Rothchild about the disastrous rout from the Purifier, the return of the Enclave. Old dreams and projects, long thought to be dust. Shattered porcelain fragments and once-priceless detritus.
But Kate— Kate, that grimy Wastelander with the Vault-raised teeth, who hauls around a Chinese assault rifle and keeps brass knuckles up her sleeve— wears shadows on her skin. She’s living her father’s dream, or so they say. Throwing herself into his fight, his war, his footsteps. She looks nothing like a scientist, just grumbles and fiddles with her Pip-Boy while Li and Rothchild discuss schematics, then slips away. Always where she shouldn’t be, poking in the Pride’s barracks and wandering through the labs, the archives, drifting. Her footsteps echoing down the halls, crashing off the walls. Far too loud for someone not in power armor, but she expands herself, presence beyond her skin. Blithely, dangerously unconcerned, like a spark floating on the breeze. Could flare up any time, set the world burning.
(But Sarah finds her, is drawn to her. Like a soft ribbon around her wrist, pulling. Like a wire cage around her heart, squeezing.)
“Hey. You like snack cakes? Nuka?” Kate asks, teeth bared like a challenge.
Sarah shakes her head, resists the disgusted grimace that’s her first response. If this is the start of some uneasy truce, some gossamer cat’s-cradle of understanding, Sarah doesn’t want to jeopardize it. “Not snack cakes, but I like Nuka.” She finds the centuries-old cakes too soft and blandly sweet. The powdered sugar lingers metallic on her lips, after. At least Nuka’s fizz fools her into thinking it’s fresh.
Kate grins, reckless. Tosses the bottle at Sarah in an underhanded lob, and Sarah catches out of startled reflex, imagining the mess of glass shards and the sticky sugar residue on her power armor. The glass clinks against her gauntlet, flips, and she manages to roll it into her palm.
“Ha. Thought you wouldn’t catch it, there,” Kate snickers. Gleeful, eyes lit with humor that might be akin to malice. If Sarah didn’t know better, she wouldn’t know Kate’s father died in front of her, that this raider-girl spent nineteen years underground and never knew the green-hiss tingle of radiation. Never did more than fire potshots at roaches until a few short months ago, never fired anything more powerful than a rickety BB gun.
But Sarah does know better so she bites her tongue. Leans against the wall, pops the cap off her soda and flips it to Kate. Kate squirrels it away in a pocket, grunting something that might be “thanks.”
Sarah sips her cola slow, lets the acid-sweetness linger on her teeth. “So. What’s the plan?” The bubbles fizz off the tip of her tongue, tastes like circuitry.
“Big shot like you don’t know what comes next?” Kate flings, blunt and brutal. Head-on collision.
“I know what they want,” Sarah says carefully. Too long spent as Lyons’ daughter to forget the weight of those words, the scales of power and intent. An uneasy balance, leaves an oil-slick chill on each syllable. “But that’s not the same as what you’ll do.”
Kate barks laughter, ripping into a battered pack of snack cakes with her teeth. A white puff of sugar falls from her mouth as she tears in, a glob of cream landing on her chin. She chews, jaws open and just enough grace to cover her mouth as she speaks. “They want me to finish Dad’s project. Rah-rah, clean water, rah-rah.” She snorts. Her eyes narrow, lean and dangerous. “Forget altruism. I wanna do it just so those Enclave bastards can’t. If I get that goddamn GECK, will the Brotherhood be able to retake and defend the purifier?”
“We’ll take them,” Sarah says. Firm, decisive. Voice like steel, betraying no weakness. Only hard-etched truths.
Kate gulps her snack cake, smiles sticky-sweet with crumbs still on her lips. “Good. Dunno ‘bout your tin-can armor and the big boss, but for you? I’ll get the GECK. I’ll even wrap it up in a pretty pink ribbon.”
. . .
No GECK and no pretty pink ribbons, but the next time Kate swings by the Citadel she brings a bouquet.
“Prewar flowers!” Kate chirps, false-bright and high-pitched. More like a hawk’s cry than a songbird, but she rattles her bouquet until Sarah has no choice but to accept.
“They’re—” grey, black, not real, “—different,” Sarah finishes, awkwardly holding a sheaf of paper flowers as a teenage girl grins up at her, as if she has a dozen secrets tucked behind her teeth and is bursting with the chance to spill even one.
“Yeah, folded ‘em up from old newspapers. Still prewar, still flowers,” Kate says smugly. “And you don’t have to water them!”
Sarah smiles slow, feels the rust flaking from the corners of her mouth. Takes a tentative sniff— old paper, sour ink. Settles something in her stomach, pulse slowing to something approaching normal. “And how did your vault-hunting go?”
Kate flops her hand in the air, rolling her eyes. “Same old, same old. Gross. Scary. Weird. Lot of shitty experiments.” Dark clouds passing, lips twisted in a scowl. “Still looking for that GECK. Gonna bring it back.”
And the Pride could help, could canvas the vaults, provide fire support and back up— but it was decided that a lone wanderer would evade detection more easily than a fully armored squad, so Kate’s been sent alone.
(‘It was decided’ makes an easy shorthand, a way to ignore who was deciding, who was sending a teenager on a mission that would make grown Paladins quake.)
“Of course. You promised a ribbon on it,” Sarah says.
. . .
That’s a lie, of course.
The next time they meet, the Enclave already took the GECK and Kate is a hissing fury, eyes rimmed red and one hand twisted into the collar of her shirt, as if she could climb inside her own skin, claw herself apart.
“I even got your pretty ribbon— blue, not pink, so sorry— but that Autumn bastard got the GECK. And I’m gonna tear him apart!” Kate roars, spinning and punching the empty space. Knuckles kissing air, the cool wind of it inches from Sarah’s arm.
Sarah stands her ground. “This is your fight too. Join us? We’ll consider you a member of the Pride, in good standing.”
“You join me,” Kate hisses, voice crackling like dead fires, eyes dark as burnt coals. “Was my fight before it was ever yours, robot-girl.” She smells like sour musk, sharp with rage.
And she’s young—though a nagging voice that sounds suspiciously like Cross reminds Sarah that Kate’s older than Sarah when Sarah first set foot in the field— but she carries that fury in her. Nature red in tooth and claw. A volcano in slow seethe.
So they march on the purifier, Kate’s rifle cracking thunder amidst the hiss and sizzle of energy and plasma, gunpowder laid beneath the whiff of ozone. Bitter on the tongue, hellacious on the ear. They take the bridge, the walks, enter the rotunda itself where Kate shoots Autumn before he even opens his mouth. She spits on his corpse for good measure, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
But things never break that easy or clean, and Dr Li’s voice comes through the intercom. A choice to be made. One life to be sacrificed on the altar of good intentions.
(Sarah sees their lives in checks and balances— two women still climbing out of their father’s footsteps.)
Kate makes the decision for both of them, yanks at Sarah’s chestplate and half-climbs, half-tugs her into an awkward mash of lips and teeth. A clatter as her buckles collide with Sarah’s armor, a fierce tangle of limbs and desperation. The kiss is sweet and metallic, an iron tang as Kate pulls back. Bold, brave, chin jutting and shoulders squared.
“Well. Shit. Comics and paper flowers and ribbons never made a difference, so here goes.” Kate breathes deep, spits her words like a death-rattle, like blood hacked from her lungs. “Live long, live happy, grow old, you got my blessing, tough shit, yadda yadda, be brave.”
And like that, Kate breaks away. Snaps the threads around Sarah’s spine, all the invisible ties she hadn’t known. The things that kept them together, gone, severed as Kate steps back into the rotunda and the glass slides shut and she steps up to the control panel and Sarah can’t avert her eyes, can’t turn away, because some acts need to be witnessed, remembered, emblazoned on the heart as Kate smiles up, white teeth gleaming and mouthing words without breath, either love you or maybe fuck you, either possibility equally valid because it’s Kate—
Radiation floods the chamber, Geiger counter ticking up, up, up, a whining fury that drums into white noise and Sarah loses the world in brilliance.