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Re: Five Times Boone's Brawled With Charlie: No Vacancy 2/?
Date: 2012-09-30 10:18 am (UTC)He puts his own combat knife away. "Get. Out."
Charlie keeps staring at the doorway where his radio sits spitting static instead of the station it's been carefully left on for months, and he clenches his hands up into fists. Not even two weeks on the road with her and she had vanished, the person who had a plan, who was supposed to help set him on his last path to redemption, a path with a point, a direction, a purpose. Not even a stinking month and he was back in this hellish limbo of a room, tied to it like a Brahmin waiting for slaughter and she's the first person in this room since she was taken, and the smell of her, the rotten smell of her, some dry chemical bitterness that clings to the back of his nose is eating away the last sweet traces of lilies.
"Get out now."
Charlie jerks, still not moving, still not looking him in the face like everyone else in this shitty little town, and his temper goes even higher.
"GET THE FUCK OUT!"
She starts edging towards the window instead of the door, still refusing to meet his eyes again, and Boone snaps. It's the only time in his life he'll get the drop on Charlie in a close-quarters fight.
He slams into her so hard her hat flies clean off, preceding them out the door like a frisbee. It's a good six feet before they both crash down again, Charlie twisting and shrieking as they tumble up with his busted radio, a high, wild sound of panic that doesn't stop until she grabs it up and brings it down with a crash on his head.
His bell rung like it's Easter Sunday, Boone gets in two or three more half-hearted punches before he's airborne, one arm jammed up behind his back. Ranger Andy is jerking him around like a ragdoll.
"Son, just what the hell do you think you're doing to this lady? Look at her! Knocked the wind and the inside of her mouth just about clean out!"
Boone jerks his head down as far as he's able. Charlie's crumpled up in the dirt coughing her guts out, her ragged braid dark against the shock of her paled skin. The anger in him runs out slightly, replaced by puzzlement. However hard he was hitting her, however berserk he was while he did it, he knows it wasn't that hard.
"Ranger, no. S'my fault. W-wo-ho-" She whoops and shudders, and just about flings the next words out into the dirt between her hands, a spray of red going with them. "Wokehimouttanightmare. Bad nightmare. Bad. Bitter S-ss-sp-"
She doesn't get the last word out, but it's still magic enough to make Andy let him go. He doesn't say anything, which Boone is beyond grateful for; the old ranger just nods his head once and helps him move Charlie over to the shade of the motel's overhang.
Boone can still remember enough about caring for someone else to pretend like he does and takes a short trip in and out of his room, coming back with a bottle of water and a handkerchief which he hands off to Charlie. He can't bring himself to do more, but what little he's done is enough to placate the old Ranger. Andy nods again as he gives his parting words, keeping one hell of a weather eye on Boone.
"Not that it's any of my business, but it's nice to see you moving on a bit. Be careful now."
Charlie's face goes comically blank as he limps off.
Boone stands there for a while with much the same expression on his own, dealing with a few latent surges of anger and mortification, wishing she had never come back, wishing she had never left him, wishing that he just had his damn beret and glasses to hide behind. He leans down towards his doorway and snatches up her hat instead, holding it out as he straightens. Charlie stares up at him warily for a moment, the bottle and cloth still clutched in her other hand, then slowly pulls his spare beret from one of her voluminous pockets.
Boone shakes his head. "That one's yours. You ditched."
She tucks the beret away again and fumbles her hat back on. "Didn't mean to."
"What happened."
Re: Five Times Boone's Brawled With Charlie: No Vacancy 3/?
Date: 2012-09-30 10:24 am (UTC)Boone eyes her, then sits down alongside and turns his attention to the Pip-Boy, briefly poking at a few buttons until he's figured the simple little computer out. He plays the recordings, flips through the terminal entries it collected, the instructions that were programmed into it, his eyebrows occasionally ticcing up a fraction. Charlie watches him read with a sad, wistful longing that he pretends not to notice. Finishing up after a number of minutes, he puts the screen back to where she had it in the first place and straightens up.
"Explain things well enough?"
The information on her Pip-Boy did explain enough, but not everything. Not why she's furtively edged at least half a foot closer to him in the last five minutes. "Yeah. Elijah sounds like a real sonofabitch."
"Well, now he's a real fucking dead sonofa-" Charlie starts coughing again, a dry, barking hack, and the bitter chemical smell coming off her increases to an alarming degree. Boone patiently waits for the fit to stop, talking over it when it doesn't.
"Need to get you to a doctor."
"Only one I know-" She shudders in a deeper breath and pays for it. Boone waits a little while longer. "Gods damn it. Only one I know close by is in Goodsprings."
"Richards?"
"Didn't ask. Forlorn Hope's got enough problems without me adding to the load." Charlie crumples into herself and closes her eyes. Her lids are almost purplish, and the dark circles beneath them are so big the combination makes her face look like a skull. "I just bought up all the Buffout he could sell me and came straight here."
"Have any left?"
"Nuh-uh."
"When's the last time you slept?"
"Does being gassed the previous week count?" Her head droops lower, and she shudders, inching even closer. "If you slept outside, you'd never get up again, and inside, I just couldn't. I didn't dare. The fucking place might've moved me again if I did."
"Shit." Boone thinks for a moment. Ada Straus is in town, so buying more pills will be easy, but he might as well finish beating Charlie to death as bring her to that quack for actual doctoring. With how sick she is, the result would be the same. Trying with another NCR medic wouldn't work either. He got a good look at the stats screen on her Pip-Boy while he was flipping around, and while the extent of his medical knowlege pretty much consists of being able to tell his own ass from his elbows, that's enough for him to know that the condition she's in is a bad one. A strapped army doc could probably do nothing more than what she's done herself.
Goodsprings is also out. 164 and the I-15 are too much of a mess, and the overland route is a rocky snarl of terrain and living nastiness that Charlie would have no chance of getting through. That leaves only one place to go. "There's Followers outside of Vegas. We'll head there."
"Let's get one to go then. We've both still got work to do." She doesn't move to get up, and stays quiet long enough for him to wonder if she's nodded off. "Boone?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you look for me?"
He's fairly insulted until he recalls that he neither asked for help nor told anyone where he was going before leaving Forlorn Hope to try and pick up a trail he now knows didn't exist. "Yeah."
"Oh. Good." Charlie tilts her head all the way down, until her hat brim hides every scrap of her face. "I'm sorry about your radio."
Boone sighs. "Just drink your damn water, Charlie."
Re: Five Times Boone's Brawled With Charlie: No Vacancy 3/3
Date: 2012-09-30 10:26 am (UTC)Re: Five Times Boone's Brawled With Charlie: No Vacancy 3/?
Date: 2012-10-01 04:49 pm (UTC)Re: Five Times Boone's Brawled With Charlie: No Vacancy 3/?
Date: 2012-10-04 08:15 pm (UTC)