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Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6a/?
Date: 2014-09-08 09:32 pm (UTC)>>>Freeside, October 22, 2282<<<
After having avoided her the last few days there was no avoiding Julie that morning when Arcade left his quarters in the tower where she had used to live before her marriage. She strode purposefully into his direction, and with as bright a smile as he could muster, Arcade walked up to meet her.
“Coffee?”, Julie asked, but despite her light, conversational tone, Arcade noticed the worry in her eyes. He simply nodded and once the two had equipped themselves with a brew, they retreated into Julie’s office.
Julie stared into her cup for a while. “What’s this I heard about Tara having Coccidioidomycosis?
Arcade looked up. “Do you doubt my medical diagnosis?” It sounded a little too sharp, even for his own ears, and Julie narrowed her eyes.
“Arcade, I…” Julie clutched her cup and after a long moment of silence, she put her cup down and sought Arcade’s eyes. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Arcade stared into his cup for a long while. Finally, and with a sigh, he said: Julie… I need your help. Please, could you accompany me to the Lucky38?”
Julie frowned. “Arcade, what’s the matter? I’ve never seen you so worried…”
“Please?”
“Of course I’ll double check your diagnosis, but… I mean, valley fever is hardly a lethal disease.”
“No. No it isn’t… and that’s not the point.”
“But…”
“Please.” And in a whisper, he added: “Not here.”
Julie’s increasing confusion and worry were clearly visible on her face, but she finished her coffee nonetheless and reached for her doctor’s bag. “I’m ready.”
Neither she nor Arcade spoke a single word on their way across the Strip towards the Lucky 38, and Arcade refused to meet her eyes as they stood side by side in the elevator.
The elevator doors opened with a cheerful ding, and the moment the two doctors stepped into the suite, Vincent addressed Arcade in a low voice. “How far are we?”
Arcade shook his head. “Not very far, I’m afraid. Dylan is on his way to Primm.”
Vincent gave Julie a nod, who in turn looked utterly confused back and forth between the two men. Then she shook her head. “What is going on here? And where is Tara?”
Vincent extended an arm towards the kitchen. “Let us sit down.”
After settling down in the kitchen with some more coffee Arcade had brewed, Julie looked at Arcade again. “Where is Tara?” her voice had an edge to it, and meeting her gaze, Arcade shifted in his seat.
“I guess I won’t have to tell you to keep this to yourself”, he finally said. “When Vincent had a look at Cobra’s body he… he said the man had been killed by a Legion throwing spear.”
Julie paled and in a seemingly unconscious gesture, laid one hand on the small bulge of her belly as if meaning to protect the unborn child from such bad and dangerous news. “But… the Legion? Here? Didn’t Tara say there were no survivors?”
“No survivors of Caesar’s army”, Vincent said. “Back in the Legion’s capital city Caesar’s son is still alive.”
Julie flinched as if someone had slapped her. “Caesar had a son?”
“Not many people here know”, Vincent said slowly. “Maybe no one, maybe a few of the former slaves. In any case, after the defeat of Hoover Dam, no one believed the remnants of the Legion to be a threat anymore.”
“Which obviously was wrong”, Julie gave back in a toneless voice.
“Sadly, yes.”
“But…” Julie looked at Arcade and then at Vincent. “Where is…” And then she broke off, her face white as a sheet. “Oh god no… please tell me…”
Arcade put a hand on hers. “We all must keep our nerves now, Julie. I’m sorry I had to burden you with this, but I need your help in covering up her disappearance. Otherwise I would have spared you this.”
Julie swallowed, closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “So Tara has been kidnapped by the Legion?”
“We can only assume it. Vincent is sure of it, and he has plans for going after her, We’re… that is, Vincent, Dylan and me, we are working on getting everything together that he’ll need.”
Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6b/?
Date: 2014-09-08 09:34 pm (UTC)“The platinum chip is safe”, Arcade interrupted her. “Tara must have taken it off when she was attacked, and by sheer luck Vincent found it when he had a look around the spot where Cobra died. The chip is safe, Julie. I know where it is. And...”
Julie gave him a long, scrutinizing look and shook her head. “Don’t worry. If you tell me it’s safe, I’d rather not know. The fewer people know the better.”
Arcade smiled, casting a quick glance at Vincent. His face was impassive, but he seemed to incline his head the tiniest bit. Then he addressed Julie again. “Our main concern is now to keep the people calm. Thus the illness, and thus you being involved. It would be natural that the doctors of Freeside would do everything to see her up and about again as fast as possible, no?”
With a silent nod, Julie stared into her cup. “Do you believe it? About the Legion, I mean. Not that I’m saying Vince is lying, but he might be mistaken.”
“I asked him the very same thing”, Arcade gave back. “All he said was to remember who he had been and what his past contained, and to ask myself that question again. I guess he has a point. If he recognises a wound as having been caused by a throwing spear, then that’s most likely what caused it. And honestly, I don’t really want to allow us the hope that it was only some wasteland raiders using looted legion gear.”
“I kind of wish he would be wrong, though.”
Arcade shrugged. “Try to look at it this way: if he’s right, then that’s not pleasant but he’s got a chance of finding her. Because if he’s wrong, then no one, not you, not me, not Vincent, has a single, flipping clue as to where she might be or who could have something to do with her disappearance”
Putting her cup down with a wordless sigh, Julie nodded. “You’re right, of course. I’d just have liked to think the Legion was history.”
“And I am sure the Legion, as we remember it, is. There can’t be that much left, not enough to attack us, anyway. That’s why they tried this, I suppose. But they don’t know about our secret weapon.”
“Secret weapon?” A puzzled frown appeared on Julie’s face. “What secret weapon do we have against the Legion?”
Arcade looked at Vincent again and smiled, a narrow, but undeniably amused and slightly cocky smile. “Vincent.”
x-x-x-x-x-x
>>>The Strip, October 23, 2282<<<
Arcade had just been about to hit the sack when someone had knocked on his door.
That someone had been Dylan, having just returned from his trip to Primm, and now he was sitting on a bar stool in the Gomorrah sipping a fancy drink with a paper umbrella in it.
“It’s not bad, actually”, he had to admit. “What was it called again?”
The bartender leaned forward with a smile. “That’s a Happy Threesome, Sir.”
Dylan gave his drink a distrustful stare. “What’s it made of?”
“Banana yucca schnapps”, the bartender replied while he poured whiskey and maize beer into a mixer. “Barrel cactus liqueur and agave juice.” He then proceeded to add sunset sarsaparilla and prickly pear juice to the mixture.
“A bit sweet for my taste”, Dylan said, but finished his glass with a shrug.
Arcade savoured his a little longer. “Most cocktails are on the sweet side”, he said and picked the umbrella out of the empty glass which he then placed coyly between his teeth.
“The sweetness is mostly due to the liqueur”, the bartender said in a friendly voice and poured the mixture into a high, narrow glass. “If Sir would like something less sweet and more tart?” He offered Dylan the glass.
“And what’s that?” Dylan eyed the mixture.
“A Slippery Dick, Sir.”
Arcade tried to suppress the snort building up in his throat, with meagre success as they had already sampled several other drinks. The umbrella fell and rolled under the bar. “I’ll have one, too!”, he said cheerfully and the bartender proceeded to mix another one.
“There you go, Sir.”
Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6c/?
Date: 2014-09-08 09:34 pm (UTC)“What was that awful thing we had before?”, Arcade asked and to his dismay discovered that his voice was already slightly slurry.
Dylan wrinkled his forehead and pointed at a picture of a glass filled with three liquids in three different colours, skilfully poured in layers. “That one.”
Arcade adjusted his glasses. “Are you sure?”
“No.”
Both men chuckled.
“Excuse me”, Arcade said to the bartender. “Can you remember what drink we had before the... ehm.. the...” His face lit up. “Before the Happy Threesome?”
The bartender smiled and pointed at a picture. “A Brahmin Headbutt, Sir.”
“Uh, that one was awfully sweet”, Arcade said.”I very much hope you don’t have to work morning shift because that stuff screams hangover.”
Dylan looked thoughtful at his almost empty glass and shrugged. “No. Lucky me.” Then he drained it and said: “Gimme one that’s not sweet, goddammnit.”
“With pleasure, Sir.” The bartender sedulously set about mixing another cocktail.
Arcade and Dylan watched the stage for a moment. The act was a female pole dancer, and a lot of men at the tables in front of the stage wolf-whistled and threw caps at her. And while Arcade was unable to see anything erotic and sexy in her dance, he could admire the athletic performance. Yet both men had little interest in what was happening on stage.
“Here you are, Sir”, the bartender said behind them and they turned around to see what was in store for Dylan.
“I’ll have a cold beer”, Arcade said, having made his own, unpleasant experiences with the Brimstone’s selection of cocktails; very instructive experiences. At least he now knew that it was a bad idea to sample more than three different kinds of cocktails.
Dylan took a healthy sip of his glass, giving the fruit chopped into very small bits no further notice. His face immediately turned a very dark shade of chestnut.
“Holy shit!”, he gasped and coughing, slammed the glass onto the bar. “What the everliving fuck is that?!”
“Whiskey, barrel cactus juice and finely chopped chillies”, the bartender replied. “We call it the Legendary Cazadore.”
Dylan gave him a bloodshot stare out of watering eyes. “You could have warned me.”
“I apologize, Sir”, the bartender replied smoothly, and Arcade gave up trying not to chuckle.
“Come on, Dylan, at least it wasn’t sweet!”
Dylan grunted, but a small, sheepish grin appeared on his lips. The droplets of sweat on his temples slowly began to dry again, too.
The music fell silent, the pole dancer left the stage, and a man with a microphone announced that shortly, the New Vegas Fallen Angels would be performing. It seemed as if that announcement was transmitted via loudspeakers in the entire Gomorrah, because moments after that announcement, people, that is, men, began to file into the Brimstone Bar.
“Who are the New Vegas Fallen Angels?”, Arcade asked the friendly barkeeper.
“Seriously?” The young man lifted his eyebrows. “You’ve never heard of them?”
“I’ve heard of them, but only the name.”
“Oh well, Sir, you’re in for a treat. These girls are the best strippers between here and Washington D.C.”
Arcade let his eyes sweep over the gathering crowd. Already there were no more seating places at the tables.
“Would you like another beer, Sir?”
“No, thank you, not at the moment.”
He looked at Dylan, but strangely enough, he seemed pretty much unimpressed. “How about some air?”, he asked Arcade. “It’s getting pretty stuffy in here.”
“Sure”, Arcade gave back, and they made their way through the thickening crowd towards the doors leading into the courtyard.
Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/?
Date: 2014-09-08 09:35 pm (UTC)“You’re not so keen on seeing the best strippers between here and D.C.?”, Arcade asked after a moment.
“Nah.” Dylan lit himself a smoke. “You’ve seen one stripper, you’ve seen them all.”
Arcade tried to think of something smart to say, but Dylan had finished lighting his smoke and forestalled him. “Besides”, he said, in a low voice despite them being alone, “...how are we supposed to make people think we’re an item if we spend the rest of the nights staring at bobbing tits?”
“That is a point I am unable to contradict”, Arcade said slowly. He felt disinclined to admit to himself the pang of disappointment he felt; had he really allowed himself to believe Dylan shared his sexual alignment?
“Dylan leaned a little closer after exhaling a cloud of steam “We’re almost set now”, he whispered. “They had a complete set in Primm, well, almost complete. They were happy enough to sell it for the new Freeside School, but they had no helmet.”
“Too bad”, Arcade gave back, likewise whispering. “What now?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” Dylan took another drag of his smoke.
Arcade thought for a moment. “I guess I’ll have to talk to Vincent again, ask him where the Legion had hideouts, stashes, the like. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow. Then come and see me at lunchtime. I’ve got afternoon shift tomorrow, we could have a coffee in the canteen before I have to start working.”
“Done”, Dylan said.
Both men sat silent for a while, both lost in thought and more than a little drunk, but both savouring the peace and quiet of the empty courtyard.
When the show ended about an hour later and the patrons of the Gomorrah began to spread out over the whole place again and being as it was past midnight, they called it a day.
After finally sinking into his bed Arcade needed a long time to fall asleep, and when he did, he dreamt of dark-skinned hands roaming across white skin.
x-x-x-x-x-x
Re: Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/?
Date: 2014-09-09 11:56 pm (UTC)So glad that Arcade was finally able to tell Julie what's going on; the poor dear needs some help shouldering that load. Also, I really hope that things pan out between him and Dylan b/c damn do I ship that. Hard.
I shall
slap at the refresh button with my gold chainsawait the next installment with baited breath.~BA!Anon
Re: Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/?
Date: 2014-09-10 06:04 am (UTC)-Fish!Anon, eager as ever for the next installment
Re: Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/? A!A Here
Date: 2014-09-10 06:39 am (UTC)I understand where you're coming from regarding the skin colour issue, and don't worry, I am not going to exotify anything. I was just using a picture painted in words to illustrate Arcade's growing feelings.
A!Anon, supporter of equality in all departments.
Re: Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/? A!A Here
Date: 2014-09-10 08:38 am (UTC)Re: Turn Wounds into Wisdom 6d/?
Date: 2014-09-11 12:31 am (UTC)- Thirsty!Anon, living up to the name