![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Welcome 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!
Stronger than death itself 4c/?
Date: 2012-05-10 03:31 pm (UTC)It wasn’t before she looked up to see the two mercs’ faces blur that she heard the choked sobs and realised that she had spoken her thoughts out loud; and overcome by terror and grief she felt her last strength leave her.
Her knees buckled under her, and as one of the mercs caught her arms to prevent her from hitting the ground she fell against him, shaken by helpless sobs as if caught and rattled in a giant fist.
Feeling the man stiffen she realised what was happening and tried to fight for strength and composure, fight down the tears and sobs. “Sorry... oh god, I’m...” She weakly attempted to push herself away from him again, ashamed, no, mortified for some reason that these men should see her like this.
After a second, however, she felt the merc clumsily put an arm around her and pat her back.
“It’s all right girl”, he said in a low voice, it was not the ginger one called Steve, but the other, the taller, broader one whose name she didn’t know yet. “Maybe it’s better if you just get it all out.”
Too spent by so many tears and too worn out by so recent, raw grief she was unable to refuse the luxury of being offered a shoulder to cry on. She dropped her head against his chest and wept, for how long, she had no idea. In the end her tears ran dry, her breathing calmed, and as a strange, heavy numbness spread out inside her when she realised that he was still holding her, and that his arms around her had their own calming effect on her. He felt solid as a rock and his smell, sweat, leather, gunpowder and cigarette smoke, together with the strength of his arms gave her a strange feeling of security she had never known in her life.
But even as she wondered how she could feel like this about a complete stranger she didn’t even know the name of, she recoiled with the realisation of what she was doing. She pushed herself away from him and this time he let go, his face unreadable as she looked up at him.
“Sorry”, she muttered again. “Sorry for bawling like that. I’ll... Thanks.”
“No need to apologize.” His voice was dark and low, but somehow gentle. “At least that’s given to you. Would be terrible if there was no one willing to give a few tears for those who passed away.”
Wiping her eyes again Amanda shrugged, wondering briefly what had made him leave his home behind and embrace the long road, the harsh and difficult life of a mercenary. “They’re my parents.”
“Exactly.” With that, he turned away and lit another smoke that he had between his lips all the time.
Harkness came back before she could think of another reply. “I found you a place to stay, Miss Amanda. Please follow me, I’ll see you there.”
Amanda nodded and bent down to pick up her crate, but the merc called Steve was faster. He shouldered it in a quick move. “Here, let me.”
With a shy and embarrassed nod of her head, Amanda clenched her hand firmly around the keys and followed the security chief who had given the wiry man a nod of approval and thanks.
The place Harkness had found was hardly more than a broom cupboard, a small and narrow cell, but it had a cot, a small shelf in a corner and a door you could lock.
“It’s not much, but it’s private”, the chief said as the merc dropped the crate off in a corner, and handed her the key. “Here.”
“Thank you”, Amanda said again. “I still don’t know... You really don’t have to do this.”
“Trust me”, Harkness said after a firm look into her eyes that made a small feeling of unease creep down her spine. “I do.” With that he gave her a nod and left her to stare at his retreating back in puzzlement.
Stronger than death itself 4d/?
Date: 2012-05-10 03:33 pm (UTC)“Well, I’ll be seeing you, kid.” He shrugged and gave her a nod. “I’m not going to cant and give you shit about how life goes on and so forth. But it’s your life now. Don’t wait for it to happen on its own.”
Amanda nodded and watched him go, too, a strange, nervous glow in her stomach. Then she softly closed the door behind her, locked it, and collapsed onto the cot.
Her dreams were full of nightmares, shots, screams and howls rang through the air smelling of blood, guts and death. The pictures in her mind were chaotic and unsorted, mixing the death of her parents with the one of her brother that happened two years ago, and other, stranger pictures her tired, exhausted and shaken mind conjured up in a way that is only possible in dreams. She was constantly fighting for her life, running away, fighting creatures and people in dark and frightening places, seeing smouldering fires emitting acidic smokes that choked her and burned her lungs, and suddenly, only a heavy, moist and all-encompassing darkness. Cold and suffocating, growing heavier by the second, making it impossible to breathe.
And she realised she was buried alive. It was the cold earth of the grave engulfing her, and she could feel and hear them throw shovel by shovel of earth onto her body. She tried to scream at them to stop, that she was still alive, but her mouth filled with cold, crumbling earth and no sound emerged. She tried to scream, but the earth crumbled down her throat into her lungs...
And she shot upright with a hoarse and choked scream of terror. “I’m alive! Oh god, I’m still alive!”
With her breathing only slowly calming down, the taste of earth still on her tongue, she fell back onto the cot. She was drenched in sweat and shaking all over, so cold that she couldn’t remember ever having frozen that much. With aching limbs she crawled from the cot, dug into her bag and wrapped herself in the blanket she kept there. It didn’t help against the cold, but it gave her a slight feeling of security to be covered. Her eyes fell shut again a few moments later.
Her dreams, as she remembered them when she awoke again, had been vivid and strange, but not as frightening. She had just been running, running to get somewhere, and even as she knew she was too late, she kept running. As dreams are wont to do when running into that particular direction, a thousand things happened that delayed her further: She dropped things, lost her shoe, took a wrong turn, and in the end, she suddenly ended up being naked as a jaybird locked up in a dark and windowless room.
And then she heard her brother’s voice. “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s all right.” Her brother had always been there. He had always protected her. Had kept her safe. Had smuggled her out of camp at night to take her into town and to the bar if there had been one. He had facilitated her first experiences with alcohol and the opposite gender, and he had always, always only done her good. It felt so good having him back, and since he was her brother, she wasn’t ashamed any more at being naked. His embrace was warm and comforting, and his smell of sweat, leather and smoke reassuring and calming.
But only after waking up did she remember that her brother James hadn’t smoked and had never once smelled of cigarettes.