Chapter 9: Escape – Part 2

"A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward."

― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

It should have been simple. Their plan had been pretty straightforward. Get the vent open, go through the vents, get out, go. The vent came open after Boone finally found a crowbar tucked underneath a pile of scrap. They made sure the guards hadn't heard, then they set out. Boone insisted he go first to make sure the way was clear. They were almost out when everything went to hell. One of the parts of the vent was unstable after hundreds of years (go figure), so when Boone had tried crawling through it, he fell.

Panicking, Ana crawled to the edge, stage whispering down to try to get some response. The sniper was silent and unmoving. She panicked and jumped after him, managing not to land on him but injuring her legs in the process. She was temporarily blinded by the pain, cussing silently in the darkness. After a few seconds, she managed to drag herself over to him to place a hand on his heart. He seemed to be alive, but his breathing was shallow. She suspected that he had cracked a few ribs on impact since he hadn't been ready to brace himself.

Blindly, she looked around, trying to look for something helpful. She found a working flashlight a desk only a few feet away, and after she dragged herself back, Boone had lost all the color in his face. Ana's eyes widened, and she frantically looked around, finally realizing that they had landed in the clinic. Instantly, she began dragging herself to the locked cabinet to her left. After reaching it, she put the flashlight in her teeth and wrestled to get the bobby pins out of her shoe. She muffled a scream of pain as she accidentally twisted her foot at a bad angle and she couldn't help the tear that slid down her face.

Ana only took a minute to wrestle with the lock, breaking two of the three bobby pins in her hurry. Still, she managed to salvage a doctor's bag and a super stimpak. She crawled back to Boone and instantly strapped on the stimpak, ignoring his pained groan when the needle went in. She pushed in the plunger, trying to be gentle. She regretted not listening to Arcade more. The pompous bastard knew more than she would ever guess about medicine, and right about now she could fucking use it.

Next, she went for the doctor's bag, pulling out bandages and going to work. It took her longer than it would have taken if Arcade had done it, but she finished eventually. She even found some purified water in a crate to her side that she had glossed over earlier, and she poured a little into Boone's mouth, hoping to wake him. He coughed a little before swallowing, opening his eyes slowly. Ana let out a breath.

"Thought I lost you there for a second," she admitted, placing a hand over his heart absentmindedly. Boone, still blearily taking in the situation, managed to look even more confused.

"What the hell? What-" he started, but then seemed to remember the past hour or so. He paused, letting out a long breath and grimacing through the pain he felt in his barely-mended ribs. Ana looked away, feeling like she was intruding almost.

"You fix me up?" he asked after a second, narrowing his eyes at her not unkindly. She nodded, slowly meeting his eyes again. He smiled. It was a rare sight, if she was being completely honest. Although she liked to think that Boone was getting better sometimes when she thought about him back in the show in New Vegas, he seemed the same. Calmer, maybe. Less ready to walk out into the desert one day and never come back.

"Thank you."

"You look better without sunglasses," Ana said, getting up.

She finished gathering up the last supplies they needed, being mindful of what her family needed to survive until they scavenged more. It felt shitty, standing there and calmly stuffing things that could save one of her siblings' lives into a satchel. But it was all she could do.

Boone was on his feet in a few minutes, and they set off down the corridors, following a route that Ana kept remembering as they followed, which was kind of cool but kind of terrifying all at once. Boone hadn't said much of anything. She still hadn't figured out if that was a good or bad thing or if he was just really tired from having broken a few ribs or what. She couldn't really concentrate on much other than not dying at that moment, though, so she figured she was doing pretty good.

Suddenly, Boone threw out an arm and blocked her from progressing. She threw him a disgruntled look, but he just held up a finger to her lips and nodded to the far right. Sure enough, he had noticed the distant light spilling out from the crack in the door. Shaking her head, she returned to advancing, this time more slowly and deliberately, her back hugging the wall.

She managed to take a peek inside unnoticed and caught sight of her sister hunched over a beer, swirling it around in the dingy bottle without any energy. Her brother sat off to the side, dozing off in the bottom bunk of the bed in the corner. Her eyes fell on the quilt she had slept on whenever she escaped her father's camp long enough to stay, and she would have been lost to her own memory had Boone not placed a hand on her shoulder, anchoring her to the present. She nodded stiffly, and they crept back into the shadows and off into the night.

Raul was waiting for them outside the compound about half a mile off in an abandoned radio station. When Ana and Boone finally climbed their way up to the little nest he had made for himself, Ana made some smart remark about how funny it was that she kept meeting in places like that. He only chastised her a little bit before drawing her into a hug.

Meanwhile, Boone stood off to one side, staring down the horizon like he could see the future in the setting sun. He was really just trying to give them some privacy. She was almost thankful. Something felt off to her though. Ever since she left the shop, she realized how much she really missed adventuring. Holed up in that grease trap, all she ever did was nothing. Day in, day out. That didn't sit too well with her, since she was the type of person who always needed something to do.

Ana still loved Raul too much to just let go and wander again, though. She felt like she was caught in an infinite loop of indecision, and she hated it. Gray areas had never been her thing.

"Let's get some sleep before we set off in the morning," Boone said, finally breaking up the casual banter between ghoul and daughter. Ana scoffed.

"Yes mom," she said, bowing exaggeratedly. He stared her down, but she still didn't have the decency to look ashamed.

"I'll take first watch," he said, turning back to the murky horizon, "You two need some rest if we want to make any decent headway tomorrow."

"Says the man who almost broke his fucking back this morning," Ana grumbled, but knew him well enough to not really argue. Raul looked at her questioningly, but she waved it off, opting to search the file cabinets in the corner for something to sleep on. Finding a relatively coushy carton of cigarettes for a pillow and a stray jacket for a blanket, she curled up in the corner, eyes trained on Boone's back as she fell asleep. Idly, she wondered if they would ever go adventuring again, even though what they used to do was more like hunting. Her eyes shut as she imagined it, and she lost herself to sleep.

Boone and the Courier, who still went by Consuela at the time, sat across the campfire from one another. She was fiddling with her Pip Boy, quietly enthralled with something she had found on their journey. Some bit of information, maybe a journal. She always read the journals. Even that one time she had found a journal of that bastard who had sold out Nipton. She read it all. Boone had watched her face, how her eyebrows had furrowed together and her shoulders had tensed and how her hands shook with suppressed rage.

It occurred to Boone not for the first time that at least in some faculty of the word, he was in love with the courier. It didn't quite sit right with him, though, so he kept minding his own business with an almost obsessive determination. It wasn't right. He knew it wasn't. Carla and the baby were gone, but it still didn't make it right. It drove him up the fucking wall. That's why he was always so tense around her. One time she's actually worked up the nerve to ask him why he was so high strung, and he'd caught himself right before he snapped at her. Taking it out on her wasn't right either.

The whole situation confused him, especially after Bitter Springs. The way she had talked him down set his head back on straight. He slept easier after that. That didn't mean he was any closer to figuring out what was going on in his own head. See, he knew he was never a smart man, but he still thought that he could figure out a little of what was going on up there. He needed a chance to figure himself out.

He figured that as soon as he had paid off at least a major portion of his personal debt to her by standing with the NCR at the Dam, that he would figure it out or that she would make a move, but nothing had happened. He had hopped aboard the fastest way out of New Vegas that he could without looking too much like he was running away with his tail between his legs.

It would be a lie to say that he'd realized that it was a mistake immediately. If anyone asked, he'd probably even deny that it was a mistake to their faces. Still, he slowly came to the realization after a good few months that he'd fucked up again. The way she had looked after the battle was the way he had felt. He should have stayed and tried to do right by her. Not that he honestly thought anything could be really right after the shit he'd done. But he could have made it better.

Boone awoke to the barrel of a gun in his face.

Wow that was kind of super rambly and probably littered with holes and parts that didn't make sense, but I think it was pretty decent considering I'm taking my first exams on Monday which sucks. Also in case you didn't understand the last part, Boone fell asleep on watch. Probably all the painkillers. See you guys soon, I think I'm going to finish this up relatively soon. Also thank you so much for actually keeping with this even though I'm trash at updating lmao. See you soon!

-Miriflowers