![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
falloutkinkmeme_backupWelcome to the Fallout Kink Meme, Part IV! Please assume the position.
- Fallout Kink Meme posting guidelines
- Read something? Love something? No matter how old the story is, please let our amazing authors and artists know that you enjoyed their work with a nice comment, and share the love by recommending your favorite fills!
Courier Redemption fic + Time Travel
Date: 2011-12-24 05:47 am (UTC)The point is that the courier only now realizes that he really ought to have been paying more attention to everyone/thing around him and would really like to atone for it all.
So the Big Empty's final project obliges him by chucking him back in time to about eighteen months before he originally was shot in the head.
Courier's gender? Either, despite the constant use of the male pronoun. Pairings? Any. Last Companion Standing? Any. Order of/range of screwups? Any. Starting point? Run with it. Is there a risk of a paradox? Up to you.
I'd just like to see a courier who made some really bad decisions and has a second chance to do it right.
Betty and Me 1a/?
Date: 2012-07-02 12:26 pm (UTC)A!A promises that that's the last Quantum Leap reference, but makes no such promise about Back to the Future, Futurama, Peggy Sue Got Married, Being Erica, etc...
Character tags: F!Courier, Muggy, Boone, Vulpes Inculta
-----------
The ten steps from the door of The Sink to her bed was the longest walk of Elizabeth's life. She dumped her pack beside the Central Intelligence Unit, ignoring his polite greeting. She left a trail of clothes in her wake, caked with the dust of the Divide. Stripping did nothing to relieve the smell of blood and sweat and smoke. Maybe it was all in her head.
She tumbled face first onto the bed, a foot short of her head actually hitting the pillow. She lay there for a moment, her face mashed against the blanket, trying to gather up strength to shift her position.
The switch silently turned out the light, and she passed out.
She woke up with cold metal nudging against her palm. She wriggled her fingers, thinking it was Rex. But the shape was all wrong. She opened her eyes, and saw Muggy staring up at her.
“I don't have any coffee cups.” She winced, every word like a cheese grater in her throat.
“I know.” Muggy packed a paragraph's worth of frustration and accusation into the final word.
She rolled over and was asleep again in seconds.
He was still there when she floated back to consciousness a second time. “There's a coffee cup outside on the balcony. I can smell it.”
She stared back at him blankly. She was so thirsty she could cry, but visiting the sink would involve getting out of the bed, and she had decided to never do that ever again.
“If you opened the door, I could go get it. The coffee cup. Outside the door.”
She wriggled further up the bed, settling her head between the two pillows.
“Its right there. Right. There.”
By the end of the second day she couldn't sleep any more. She stared up at the ceiling, willing herself to drift away again.
The bed shook as Muggy flung himself against it in frustration.
“I know how you feel,” he told her on the morning of the third day.
“I promise you, you don't.” Her skin felt papery when she pressed her palms over her eyes. She would need to get up soon, unless she wanted to die of dehydration.
“I do. I felt exactly this way on the day I surveyed the Sink and realised there were no more cups left to conquer.”
“This goes a bit beyond running out of coffee cups,” she said, her voice flat.
“Well I'm sorry that I wasn't programmed to have normal priorities. It felt like the end of the world to me. I was so devastated I even tried finding Dr Klein's time machine to go back to before I cleaned all the coffee cups. So I could clean them again.”
Elizabeth sat up for the first time in days.
“But when I got there... it was on top of a stepladder.”
Betty and Me 1b/?
Date: 2012-07-02 12:27 pm (UTC)Every ounce of strength left in her body evaporated, and she found herself on her butt in the dirt. She hadn't really expected it to work. She thought it was just as likely that rather than flinging her back in time, the upgraded Transportalponder would rip her apart atom by atom.
Maybe that was what she had wanted.
With a shaking hand, she raised it again. A second chance was a miracle, but a second chance with prep time would be even better. She pulled the trigger, and was rewarded with a loud pop and then a very final hiss.
Still. October 11 left time enough to set things right, if she moved fast. Maybe even time enough to save Nipton, and Ranger Station Charlie. Maybe even time enough to...
The useless Transportalponder clattered to the ground, and she ran like the entire Legion was at her heels.
She tried not to think about herself as she sprinted along the cracked and uneven roadway. But no matter how hard she tried, the thought kept creeping in. Where was she, right now? Was she mirroring her strides on some other roadway, the Platinum chip tucked safely in her shoulder bag? At this very moment was she talking to the charming man in the checkered coat, oblivious to the accomplices creeping up behind her? Was she lying on her stomach listening to the hiss of a shovel moving briskly through earth?
The other her was fine. Victor was coming.
But still, she wondered.
The sight of Dinky the Dinosaur looming on the horizon had always given her a warm fuzzy feeling. But on this particular night she would have whooped aloud, if she had any breath left in her lungs. She slowed to a trot, and then stopped, realising for the first time that she didn't actually have a plan. She didn't think that Boone would appreciate having a wild eyed madwoman bang on his door in the middle of the night, babbling about slavers.
She could just kill Jeannie May, of course. But that wouldn't stop anything if she had already contacted the Legion.
She could stand guard over the room. Wait in the shadows until they arrived, and introduce them to Archie.
Something clattered behind her, and she turned just in time to see Craig Boone collapse in the middle of the road.
Betty and Me 1c/?
Date: 2012-07-02 12:29 pm (UTC)The apples were part of her now, but also in her hands. What would happen if she ate them again? If someone else ate them? A chill crawled down her spine, and she shoved them into the safe.
“Carla?” Boone mumbled, sitting up in the bed.
“No,” she replied, though she could see from his face that he already knew that. “I'm sorry. I-” she wanted to tell him that she had tried, that if only she had booked her one-way ticket for twelve fucking hours earlier everything would have been alright, but he didn't deserve to have her open that can of worms. “I'm sorry.”
He didn't answer her for a long time, preferring to stare up at the water stained ceiling. “This isn't our- my room.”
“We're in my room. I wasn't sure what state yours would be in.”
“Its fine. They were very neat.” He dropped his head into one hand. She gripped the edge of the dresser, physically restraining herself from reaching out to touch his face. He didn't like to be touched at the best of times, let alone by strangers. But it had been more than a year since the last time she had heard his voice, screaming obscenities at her and Veronica's retreating backs.
After several minutes, he took a deep breath and raised his head again. “What's a First Recon soldier doing out this way?”
Shit. She touched the hem of the beret. She had vowed never to take it off again, since she always felt like she fought better with it on. It felt like more of her shots found their targets. Like they were less likely to go wide and instead hit the only eyebot who could prevent a second nuclear holocaust from hitting the Mojave. But it may have been wiser to leave it in her pack until after Boone had given it to her.
“I'm just a courier. This was a gift from a friend.”
“Must be some friend.”
“I couldn't begin to tell you.”
The room was turning a dingy grey as the sun came up. She glanced out the window, realising that the other her was in the ground by now. She pushed the thought down, needing to focus. She hadn’t saved Carla, could never have saved Carla, but she had brought Boone inside. He had told her once, in the first time line, that he spent that first night unconscious on the road. That meant that things could be changed, and she had a lot to do.
“I need to go. Will you be ok?”
He stared at her like that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard.
Betty and Me 2a/?
Date: 2012-07-02 12:33 pm (UTC)She couldn’t have asked for a more perfect scenario. But the moment Vulpes Inculta mounted the steps and shouted for silence, her heart began to thunder. She breathed out slowly, begging herself for calm detachment.
She’d briefly considered bringing Red Glare instead, to add some fireworks to their little stage show. But even the people of Nipton would have looked askance at someone toting a rocket launcher down Main Street. Not to mention the issues created by an eight yard splash radius.
Ultimately, no matter how many shiny new toys she found, she always came back to Archie. She pressed her lips against the warming metal for luck, then settled him against her shoulder. Inculta was pacing below, in and out of her scope.
He had quite good projection. She wondered if he had practiced the speech, pacing his tent and howling at imaginary profligates.
Finally he was still, snapping his feet together and pointing an accusing finger at the crowd. That he’d definitely rehearsed. She had a mental flash of Legion recruits lined up on stage in the Fort, Inculta drilling them on their step ball change. Jazz hands for the big finale. She crammed the heel of her hand into her mouth to muffle a hysteria-tinged giggle. There was no time to go into a melt down, not with him in her scope.
She breathed out slowly as she pulled the trigger, and for a moment she and Inculta were the only people in the world.
And if he hadn’t stepped forward to bellow the last word of his speech, she would have been the only one left.
The bullet sent a tuft of dog fur flying into the air as it whizzed harmlessly past him and into the neck of the Legionary beside him. She decided to award herself half a point for that at least, even if Inculta had flung himself to safety behind the pyre.
Betty and Me 2b/?
Date: 2012-07-02 12:34 pm (UTC)Her third bullet seemed to snap the crowd out of their terrified stupor. The Powder Gangers made it to their feet first. You couldn’t survive in the NCRCF unless you got used to fighting amidst chaos and under sniper fire. When the last remaining Legionary disappeared under a wave of blue, she turned her attention from the steps, trying to find Inculta.
He was a blip on the hillside. She fired at him once, but it was purely on principle.
She shuffled backwards out of her nest and slung Archie onto her back. Mayor Steyn was screaming below. There was nothing she could do about that- if the crowd wanted their revenge on him, she couldn’t fight them all. She rolled the tension out of her shoulders and winced as her neck cracked. She was going to pay for the hours she spent lying in wait.
She crouched by the edge of the roof, waiting for them to calm down. For a moment, everything was still. The people of Nipton stared at each other, sharing expressions of wonder that they were free and alive. She allowed herself one smug grin.
Then one of the Powder Gangers knelt down and wrenched a hunting rifle out of a dead Legionary’s hand. His voice was hoarse as he swung it around to point at the nearest NCR soldier, but his tone of accusation was clear. Half the crowd screamed in agreement, the other half in outrage. Few were able to lay hands on weapons, but that made little difference with the ample supply of broken bottles and bricks littering the street.
Elizabeth took exit number three. By the time her feet hit the dirt, she could smell smoke.
She didn’t make a conscious decision of where to run to. She simply put her head down and left Nipton behind her, loping along until her lungs burned and her legs were jelly. When she came to a stop, she was completely unsurprised to find herself under a single tree, the lights of the Followers Outpost glowing in the distance. It was the stupidest place she could have come to- in the opposite direction from her intended next destination, and through acres of hostile territory.
But she wasn’t surprised. She would always end up here. She sat at the base of the tree, and skimmed her fingers across the hard, unbroken earth. “I went back in time,” she said to the dirt, and finally let out the hysterical laugh she had been holding in for days.
Re: Betty and Me 2b/?
Date: 2012-07-09 03:20 pm (UTC)Re: Betty and Me 2b/?
Date: 2012-07-29 09:39 am (UTC)Re: Betty and Me 2b/?
Date: 2012-12-04 09:56 am (UTC)