He couldn't say if it was the kind of thing that kicked you in the head all of a sudden or slowly blossomed somewhere amidst the long process of acquaintanceship and familiarity, let alone which of these was his case. He liked to think there must have been an exact moment, a point of no return, when he'd taken the plunge into love (if that was what he could really call it), but the thing about plunges was that they were supposed to be sudden enough you should really notice them, and the thing about points of no return was that by their very nature you couldn't backtrack through them, making the process of identifying where they had lain in your path just another sort of maddening futility. Maybe knowing where and when he'd become hopelessly fucked would have made him feel better about it. Or maybe it would have made him feel worse.
Maybe there were multiple points along the way that he should have noticed, each one marking a milestone in his steady descent into a new kind of personal hell but going completely unnoticed while he was caught up staring at the scenery. Point number one, in that case, was probably defusing the conflict between the Kings and the NCR. Home for the admirably ambitious courier was surprisingly humble: Novac. So she really had little enough reason to be too concerned with the state of Freeside and the Strip, and all the petty squabbling therein. She should have been concerned with the bigger problem of the oncoming battle for Hoover Dam, and so should everyone else. She was concerned about that, but with so many bigger fights to win for that cause she should have had little interest in dealing with the short-sighted idiocy of meager factions fighting like fickle birds over stale crumbs with a hawk circling overhead picking oblivious targets at its leisure.
"Nostrum inimicum inimicus noster," he'd said to her with a sigh, reflecting on an old nugget of wisdom the Freesiders apparently weren't privy to, shaking his head as they jogged toward the train station to save both hot-blooded Kieran and hot-headed Pacer from themselves and each other. She'd shared the sigh, nodding sagely, but the small smile on her lips was as affectionate as an exhausted mother's.
She did care, about the whole and the parts that constituted it, and while the Followers fought an uphill battle dealing with the small stuff, she alone accomplished more than they ever dreamed even when she was spreading herself so thin dealing with that and more. Hell, she even found time to do half of their work for them.
Point number two might have been atop the tower at Helios One, staring across the horizon over the control panels and weighing her options. He would have loved to see the power diverted to the poor sections, to the Followers and their cause. He told her as much, and watched her falter, considering it. It would have been incredibly altruistic, just as diverting all the power to the NCR - despite it all, possibly the best hope New Vegas had against the Legion - would have been poignant. It would also have been handy to just get Archimedes II up and running, especially with the C-Finder sitting ominously in her pack. He had no doubt she intended to run head-long into the battle when it happened and try to deal with the Legate herself, and these days he had little trouble believing she could. With all the power of the sun itself on her side, that fight could be decided in five seconds flat.
But she hadn't given in to his ill-advised altruism, or the NCR's pressuring, or Archimedes' powerful temptation. "Redundancy," she'd told him wisely, making him feel like the short-sighted fool, and the pang in his chest as Helios One hummed to life, the one he'd mistaken at the time for disappointment sans resentment that he hadn't gotten his way might have been in fact the first warning sign that her way was already leading him into this emotional deathtrap.
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timeasmymeasure
An Exercise in Futility, 2/?
Date: 2012-06-15 01:08 am (UTC)Maybe there were multiple points along the way that he should have noticed, each one marking a milestone in his steady descent into a new kind of personal hell but going completely unnoticed while he was caught up staring at the scenery. Point number one, in that case, was probably defusing the conflict between the Kings and the NCR. Home for the admirably ambitious courier was surprisingly humble: Novac. So she really had little enough reason to be too concerned with the state of Freeside and the Strip, and all the petty squabbling therein. She should have been concerned with the bigger problem of the oncoming battle for Hoover Dam, and so should everyone else. She was concerned about that, but with so many bigger fights to win for that cause she should have had little interest in dealing with the short-sighted idiocy of meager factions fighting like fickle birds over stale crumbs with a hawk circling overhead picking oblivious targets at its leisure.
"Nostrum inimicum inimicus noster," he'd said to her with a sigh, reflecting on an old nugget of wisdom the Freesiders apparently weren't privy to, shaking his head as they jogged toward the train station to save both hot-blooded Kieran and hot-headed Pacer from themselves and each other. She'd shared the sigh, nodding sagely, but the small smile on her lips was as affectionate as an exhausted mother's.
She did care, about the whole and the parts that constituted it, and while the Followers fought an uphill battle dealing with the small stuff, she alone accomplished more than they ever dreamed even when she was spreading herself so thin dealing with that and more. Hell, she even found time to do half of their work for them.
Point number two might have been atop the tower at Helios One, staring across the horizon over the control panels and weighing her options. He would have loved to see the power diverted to the poor sections, to the Followers and their cause. He told her as much, and watched her falter, considering it. It would have been incredibly altruistic, just as diverting all the power to the NCR - despite it all, possibly the best hope New Vegas had against the Legion - would have been poignant. It would also have been handy to just get Archimedes II up and running, especially with the C-Finder sitting ominously in her pack. He had no doubt she intended to run head-long into the battle when it happened and try to deal with the Legate herself, and these days he had little trouble believing she could. With all the power of the sun itself on her side, that fight could be decided in five seconds flat.
But she hadn't given in to his ill-advised altruism, or the NCR's pressuring, or Archimedes' powerful temptation. "Redundancy," she'd told him wisely, making him feel like the short-sighted fool, and the pang in his chest as Helios One hummed to life, the one he'd mistaken at the time for disappointment sans resentment that he hadn't gotten his way might have been in fact the first warning sign that her way was already leading him into this emotional deathtrap.