New Vegas: Sheason's Story

Chapter 94: Karma

"Uh V?" Veronica was advancing on me, Oh, Baby! held in hand and a look of absolute murder in her face. I started backing up as quickly as I could. "What's going on?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emily duck back into my room and out of sight... and out of Veronica's way.

"I trusted you..." V growled through gritted teeth. "I can't believe I ever trusted you, you lying sack of shit!"

"What are you-" I backed into the wall, and was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of bowel clenching terror. Veronica rushed forward, murder in her eyes, and her super sledge raised high over her head.

I didn't have time to think, I just reacted. I ducked down as low as I could, kicked off the back wall, and just barely managed to roll out of the way just in time. The sound the super sledge made when it hit the wall was massive; it sounded more like a bomb going off than a hammer hitting a wall. Large chunks of plaster rained down on me like lumps of hail.

I pushed off the ground to get back upright and hopped back several feet, to try and put some distance between myself and Veronica. She pulled Oh, Baby! out of the wall, and the hole it left behind was absolutely massive. Hell, it was still crumbling slightly. Several of the now broken wires on the inside were shooting sparks in every direction.

"Whoa!" I yelled, holding my hands up both as an attempt at a disarming gesture, and to get in a defensive stance as quickly as possible. "V! What the fuck is going on?!" A cloud of dust from the crumbling wall billowed all around her, and she dragged the super sledge against the ground as she advanced on me again, threatening to rip up the carpet.

"When were you going to tell me?" She snarled. I kept backing up. "Were you just waiting until I was well and truly broken, you son of a bitch?"

"... tell you?" My blood ran cold. I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I didn't have time to focus. The super sledge was coming at me again. I leapt backward, the massive hammer missing my chest by inches.

"CASS!" She bellowed as she swung again, this time bringing it down like she was chopping firewood. The hammer hit the floor near my feet, shaking everything - including my teeth. "You fucked Cass! Behind my back!" She brought the hammer up and around, swinging it down diagonally, aiming for my collarbone. "She was the one good thing I had left, and you just couldn't let me have that, could you?! You just had to take her away from me!"

I never thought about it before, but that hammer must be really heavy with how much she was forced to telegraph her blows. Because of that, I managed to dodge the swing with barely inches to spare - and rushed forward to try and grab the hammer. I had to get that hammer out of her grip. If she hit me with that damn thing just once, it would turn me to paste.

"V, calm down!" I yelled, doing my best to hold onto the hammer. "I can explain, just -"

And then she head-butted me.

"EXPLAIN?!" I heard her bellow, even over the ringing in my ears from the heavy blow to my skull. "Fuck you! You can't explain this away!" Before I got a chance to open my eyes to check if I could even see straight, I felt my feet leave the ground. "I saw everything! Every video in House's files of you two! Don't even try and deny it, you piece of shit!"

I couldn't keep hold of the super sledge, and suddenly found myself sailing through the air at a great speed... right up to the moment when my back smashed into the wall. I'm sure that if it wasn't for the armor I was wearing - and the fact that I'd been catapulted almost directly into the hole she'd made earlier - that my spine would've shattered.

Of course, when I opened my eyes, the situation was still completely awful. I had a split second view of Veronica before she tackled me through the wall. The already weakened partition was scattered like leaves in the wind, and the two of us went careening through a hail of rubble, plaster, wood, and sparks. Pieces of shrapnel tore at me, and I felt the sting as a few pieces of shrapnel sliced at my face.

We crashed into the dining room, and then somersaulted into the table. In the confusion of so many moving parts flying through the air, I'd managed to bring one of my feet up under her, and I kicked against her abdomen as hard as I could. It wasn't much, but it bought me a little time. Enough to roll away, get back on my feet, and attempt to put some distance between us.

"Veronica!" I yelled over the sounds of the crumbling wall. She shook her head, kneeling amidst a pile of rubble and surrounded by a haze of dust. "It's not a denial! Just let me -"

"No!" She yelled, getting back on her feet. I looked around, trying to find something I could use as a weapon. I had plenty of guns and explosives on me, but I needed something that wouldn't be lethal. "You just couldn't let me have that one speck of happiness, could you? Could you!?" She raised her hammer again, readying to strike. "You took her away from me, just like how you took Elijah from me! And -"

She brought her hammer down, but it was stopped mid-swing - and mid-sentence - by the chair I'd picked up. I'd grabbed the back of it while she'd been talking, and shoved the chair legs up against the hammer's grip, right near her hands, keeping her from moving it any closer to me.

"Don't you try and blame me for Elijah!" I yelled, pushing up against her with all my might; it wasn't really doing much, but I had to try. "He was a genocidal madman! I had to stop him before it was too late!"

"I don't believe you!" She yelled back, clearly winning in this game of rock vs. hard place. I had to change tactics.

"Helios One!" I yelled back. I shifted my stance, and used her own strength (and the leverage offered by the chair) to wrench the hammer out of her hands. "He knew about the ARCHIMEDES weapon!" Before she could respond, I brought the chair back around, bashing it into the side of her head. "And the Red Cloud in the Madre! That's why he was there! He wanted to weaponize it!" I swung the chair again, trying to keep the pressure on before she could attack again, and ended up smashing it to pieces over her head. "He wanted to kill EVERYONE in the wasteland! Starting with the Brotherhood!"

I was going to try and hit her again with what was left of the chair, but she rallied enough to punch me straight in the middle of my chest with her power fist. Because of the Gun Runner armor, it knocked the wind out of me (to say the least) and I didn't know which way was up. All I did know was that I was flying through the air, yet again, and that when I hit the back wall, I definitely heard something crack. I'm not entirely certain if it was the armor, the wall I'd hit, or one of my ribs.

"Oh, that's rich," Veronica's power fist let out of a burst of steam, and she kicked a few pieces of splintered and broken chair out of her way. "Elijah wanting to kill the Brotherhood... like the way you killed those Paladins?" Her power fist reset with a heavy clunk.

"It was either that, or it was let Cutter's team kill us!" I braced myself against the back wall, slipping silently into VATS to help aid my reflexes. "And remind me - who beat Cutter to death in a burning building again? Oh, THAT'S right..."

"But you knew!" She yelled, readying her fists. "You knew that if I left the Brotherhood, they'd come after me! That's why you convinced me to leave, isn't it? The perfect excuse for slaughter! Just one more thing you could take away from me!" In a flash, she was leaping through the air, fist ready for the punching.

"V, listen to yourself!" I sidestepped her blow - thanks almost entirely to the focus of VATS - and deflected her arm so she ended up punching the back wall instead of me. The wall cracked and buckled at the strike. "This is crazy!" I grabbed at her hood, yanking it with all my strength, and pulling it over her eyes. I could have tried attacking her while she was distracted by the tangled mess of burlap obscuring her vision, but instead I just backed away as she fumbled.

"Crazy?" She muttered, grunting as she grabbed at the hood. "Like Elijah? Is that how you justified it?" As I kept backing up, I realized she wasn't just removing the hood - she was ripping her whole robe off. "Or was it just something fun that you knew would break me? Something else to do to me once the thrill of fucking Cass wore off?!"

Veronica tossed aside her robe, and for the first time I got a good look at the armor she wore underneath it. It was a mixture of metal plates, wires snaking around her limbs, and some kind of form-fitting bodysuit. It was obviously highly advanced - so advanced, that I couldn't figure out how it was actually powered. I didn't see any pistons or hydraulics. And that's when I realized: the 'bodysuit' under the metal plates was actually made of hundreds of cables, creating a sort of high-tech musculature that moved when she moved, the same way you'd expect muscles to.

It suddenly made a lot of sense why she kept it covered underneath the robe all the time, now I was looking at it. In any other situation, her getup would've been highly distracting for everyone involved, and more than that... it was very conspicuous. Especially the three large, extremely visible Brotherhood sigils painted on the metal bits of her armor.

"Veronica..." I said, trying not to gulp audibly. "You're my friend! We can talk about this! I don't want to fight you..."

I was stalling obviously but that's because I was weighing my options in my head. Veronica is one of the deadliest people that I've ever met in hand-to-hand combat, sure, but I had enough weapons on me to level the Strip if I wanted to. Granted, the grenades probably would be a bad idea in such close quarters, but if it really was going to come down to a simple choice of me or her... then I was going to chose me. I'd gone through too much to get killed now... But at the same time, I still didn't want to fight her. I didn't want to be forced to kill her just to save my own skin. I really didn't want to have to make that choice.

"Too fucking bad!" She yelled back. I just sighed.

"Suit yourself."

Veronica started running but not toward me. A quick glance showed me that she was heading directly for the discarded Oh, Baby! laying on the ground. I started running at the same time. She may have been faster, but I was a lot closer and, more important, it wasn't the super sledge I was aiming for. By the time she dove for the weapon on the ground, I'd reached my target: the fridge it was laying next to. I grabbed at the back edge, and pulled out and down with all my might, ripping it away from the wall and bringing it hurtling down on top of Veronica with a thundering crash.

I kept hold of the top of the fridge and slammed it down against her with all my might, again and again, to try and ensure that she stayed down. But it didn't work. I was midway through my assault with the damn thing when the fridge pushed back, knocking me completely off balance. It was so surprising, that it sent my ass sailing to the ground. The next thing I knew, the fridge was looming over me. Veronica had grabbed hold of it, rather than the super sledge, and was lifting the fucking thing over her head like a sack of potatoes.

Okay, that plan backfired.

I didn't have time to marvel or gawk at the absurdity, because she was making her intentions abundantly clear. So, I did the only thing I could think of or, at least, the only thing I thought might buy me some time.

I bolted. I pushed off against the ground with all my might and leapt toward the broken pieces of wood that used to be the dinner table. It wasn't much, but the pile of kindling was the only kind of cover I had at the moment. I knew exactly when the fridge came down, even though I didn't bother looking back as I leapt: the whole room heaved and shook like it had been hit with an earthquake... and then it just kept shaking.

Eventually, I looked back over the table just in time to see Veronica standing on top of the fridge. The damn thing was buried halfway through the floor, sticking out at an angle. Veronica's hair, which had been held in a bun at the start of the fight, was starting to unravel into a tangled mess around her face. All around us, I could hear groans and creaking floorboards. The floor was going to collapse at any moment, I just knew it.

Veronica launched herself off the top of the fridge, leaping at me fist-first. I only half a split-second to act: I kicked the largest piece of table - an end piece with two legs still intact - up into the air between us, grabbed one of the legs, and rushed to meet her with my improvised shield. Her power fist hit the corner I wasn't holding onto (thankfully), smashing it into splinters. The two of us spun in midair from the momentum of the impact, and because she refused to let up (and I refused to let go), we both lost our balance, falling backwards onto the fridge.

And that's when the floor gave way completely.

It was like something out of one of my nightmares. The whole world seemed to collapse with the floor as the two of us tumbled amidst a storm of rubble and noise.

In the confusion, I kicked off against the table, and tried to roll out of the way of the incoming hail of debris. All it did was put my head in the way of a chunk of falling floor... ceiling... whatever.

I tried to shake away the double vision from the impact. The rubble was still coming down, pieces of plaster and dust hanging in the air like the snow on top of Mount Charleston. Sparks rained down on the twisted and mangled fridge in front of me... and in that pile of rubble was Veronica.

She knocked an absolutely massive chunk of ceiling off her, looking a little worse for wear - she was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, and her long hair was almost completely unraveled now - and kicked a piece of fridge door out of her way as she advanced. She had a clear shot at me.

I slipped into VATS again, ducking under the swing just in time; her power fist hit the nearby cabinet, and blasted it to pieces. The wood rained down on me, and grabbed the nearest thing I could find to use as a weapon: a broken plate sitting on the counter. In a single move, I snatched it up as quick as I could, and chucked it with all my might at her face. The ceramic plate broke against her unarmored head with a satisfying smash, breaking into shards that flew in every direction. More important than anything else, it was enough to stagger her backward, and give me a moment's respite from the constant onslaught.

So I kept going.

I grabbed a nearby bowl - SMASH! I grabbed a drinking glass - SMASH! I grabbed another plate - SMASH! The air was full of as much flying pieces of dinnerware as it was full of chunks of ceiling, and it was only at the end there that she managed to bring an arm up to try and block the strike. She was staggered backward, surely, but not out...

Finally, I grabbed something that might actually finish the job: lying on the cook top and surrounded by splintered wood and plaster was a cast iron skillet.

I grabbed the heavy black-iron pot by the handle, and swung it with all my might at -

CLANG!

The skillet was stopped mid-swing by Veronica catching it with her power fist. She snarled at me, bleeding from a second cut on her forehead, and tightened her grip around the edge of the pot. Her power fist let out a burst of steam, there was a horrible groaning noise, and the skillet started to bend back toward me underneath her grip.

I was so horrified at the implication that I didn't realize that she was taking that moment to punch me across the side of my face with a left hook until after it had already happened.

I saw stars. I felt her grab the back of my head to push me down, and then felt a sharp pain in my gut - probably one of her armored knees hitting me armored midsection. I heard another crack and - yep. That one was almost certainly a broken rib. Oh yeah, that's... fuck. That's painful.

She threw me through the air, and I felt my back smash into another wall, or a door, or... something. Turns out, it was a door, but I didn't know that at the time. Whatever, point is, my insides were really feeling the strain of this constant pummeling, and I wasn't going to get a reprieve. My vision cleared just as Veronica's boot came straight at my chest.

I went sailing through the air again, tumbling head-over-heels, and surrounded by the pieces of door I'd been kicked through. My face started scraping against the floor, and I eventually came to a stop, collapsing face-down in a pile of splintered wood.

"Uhhnngh..." I couldn't manage any words. I tried to pick myself up, but I was too distracted by the ringing in my ear. And then, I found myself being lifted up into the air anyway... and as soon as I was clear of the broken pieces on the floor, I just kept going. Veronica had grabbed hold of me, and was lifting me upside down over her head.

I had to think fast - not easy, when it feels like your brain is made of scrambled eggs. I looked down, forcing my head and vision to clear - there! Veronica's hair! That was my opening! I summoned every last ounce of strength I could muster, planted my feet as firmly as I could against the ceiling, grabbed hold of Veronica's hair, and kicked off. The two of us went crashing onto the ground. Of course, since she'd gone down face-first, and I'd kept myself on top (forcing my elbow onto the back of her head as we went down), I'd say that she got the worst of it.

I got up off her - slowly, but steadily - while she lay there, facedown on the ground. I had to end this now. I wasn't going to survive much more of this, I was sure of it. I reached into my duster and pulled the MP5 out of it's sling under my arm, pulling back the charging handle. It echoed with a click in my still ringing ears. I was seeing red, and I honestly couldn't tell: was this a psychological 'seeing red' or was my vision getting cloudy from all the blood in my eyes?

I didn't have time to get an answer. Just as I leveled the MP5 to take my shot, a titanic grip latched onto my ankle and yanked. I flew backward, the submachine gun discharging wildly into the ceiling before clattering away out of my grip. I landed on my back with a heavy thud and a sharp pain in the back of my head.

The ringing in my ears just got worse. I was starting to see double - which meant that I saw two Veronica's standing over me. I had to guess which one was the real one, and rolled out of the way as quick as I could. I must have picked the right one, because the floor shook from her power fist smashing into the ground instead of me.

It took almost all of my strength not to simply keel over right then and there, but I wasn't done yet. I forced my vision to clear as I grabbed one of the knives on my boot and pushed off against the floor with my free hand to get back on my feet. The two Veronica's merged into one long enough for me to sidestep her next swing. The power fist passed so close to my face, I could feel the rush of displaced wind - and then I grabbed her outstretched arm, locking her elbow under my armpit. Before she could yank herself free, I plunged the knife as hard as I could into the top of the power fist.

The world spun when she yanked herself free, but the sounds I was hearing - belching steam, grinding metal, sparks flying - let me know that had done the trick.

"Hmmph," Veronica snorted when I finally came to a stop, collapsing against the back wall. She was standing a good four of five paces away from me, examining the power fist belching sparks and steam everywhere. She didn't seem too bothered by the knife embedded in it; she just undid a pair of latches on the side and let the metal gauntlet fall to the floor with a heavy thud. Her hand looked fine.

I barely had time to bring my hands up to defend myself before Veronica came at me again. I was really slowing down now, and my insides were so battered that I felt on the brink of projectile vomit. Veronica just wouldn't let up. For every blow I managed to deflect or dodge through sheer dumb luck, another got through: a crack on the jaw, a jab to my side where the armor was weakest, another blow to the head...

I threw one last punch, and she caught the fist mid-swing and held it there with a grip like a vice. As I tried to hit her with the one hand, I'd been reaching behind me with the other, and pulled That Gun from its holster. I tried to bring it to bear, but I was just moving way too slow. By the time I pulled the trigger, she'd already forced it to fire away from her and up into the ceiling.

I struggled against her grip, but it was no good. She was way too strong, and I couldn't break free. While That Gun was pointed away from her, she forced her thumb over my trigger finger, forcing it to fire away from her again and again, until finally... click. She wrenched the gun sideways out of my hand, cracking me along the side of the head with the barrel.

The next thing I knew, Veronica had grabbed me by my collar and threw me to the ground. I managed to retain enough of my faculties on the way down to reach for Roscoe on my hip. I felt a pair of hands wrap tightly around my neck like a vice as I pulled Roscoe from his holster. Veronica was looking down at me through a tangled mess of twisted, matted, hair. Her bloody face was contorted in a look of pure hatred, tinged with red (or was that the blood in my eyes?), and she was so focused on squeezing the life out of me that she either didn't notice - or didn't care - that I'd pressed Roscoe's barrel up under her chin and thumbed back the hammer.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. I could barely see. All I could do was think, and all I could think, pressing the gun barrel up under her chin, my finger on the trigger, was Please... Veronica, please... stop. Don't make me pull the trigger. Don't make me kill you...

There was a brilliant flash and a terrible bang.

But it didn't come from Roscoe.

My senses were worse than useless. What little sight I had left when Veronica tried to choke me had been taken away by the blinding flash, and my ears were filled with nothing but a terrible, awful high-pitched ringing. Somebody had popped a flashbang, I was sure of it. With my senses completely destroyed, it was the ONLY thing I was sure of.

I was vaguely aware of Veronica's hands leaving my throat... and then, someone grabbed Roscoe out of my hand and picked me up off the floor. A hand grabbed me, shoving me against a wall and holding me there. I managed to shake my head and blinked several times to try and work out the blindness and the deafness.

When my sight finally returned, I found myself staring down the barrel of a very familiar shotgun pointed directly at my face.

"Back with us?" The ringing in my ears started to subside enough that a voice managed to slip through. "Good. Now, what the FUCK is going on here?!"

Both the voice and the shotgun pointed at my face belonged to Cass. She was holding me up against the wall, and now that I could see again, I realized she was kitted out in her Gun Runner armor - everything except the helmet.

I didn't say anything at first. At that point, I wasn't sure I could respond. My windpipe still felt crushed from moments earlier. Cass looked back and forth between myself and Veronica. V was on the other side of the room, down on her knees with her hands behind her back... because Boone, Arcade, and Raul were all three holding her down. But only just barely. Even disoriented as I was, I could tell that the three of them were struggling to keep her held down. Like Cass, all three of them were all wearing their respective combat gear.

"Well?" Cass spoke up again. "Either of you gonna try and explain this fucking un-Godly mess?" As if to punctuate her thought, another piece of ceiling crumbled down loudly from the other room.

"She... she started it..." I finally managed to cough out weakly.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO STARTED IT!" Cass bellowed, getting right in my face and showering me with spittle. I was suddenly reminded of myself, when I had to break up Veronica and Arcade's fight when he found out about her Brotherhood connection.

"When were you going to tell me?" Veronica spoke up, drawing Cass' attention away from me. "Were you ever going to tell me that you cheated on me?" Veronica's voice was loud, but it wavered and cracked slightly. Comprehension flashed across Cass' face, and she looked back and forth between the two of us before finally burying her face in her hand. As a consequence, she let me go... and I slumped against the wall and down onto the floor in an exhausted, bloody heap. I didn't realize she'd been holding me up.

"THAT'S what this is about? You two are fighting over me?! You FUCKING MORONS!"

"But he -" I didn't hear what Veronica was going to try and say, because Cass cut her off with more yelling worthy of a drill sergeant.

"No, shut up! You don't get any more of your crazy time, because you gotta get some fucking things straight! Yeah, Sheason and I banged, I admit. And I should've told you, sure. That was a shitty thing for the two of us to do to you, fair enough. But let's ignore for a minute that it only happened the one time, and he and I were so smashed that neither of us knew which way was up. You wanna know the truth of it? I was the one who came onto him." The look of hatred on Veronica's face evaporated into thin air instantly.

"Y-you?" she asked weakly. "But..."

"Yeah," Cass said, walking over to Veronica and standing tall over her. "Me. And you know what else? Every time I've tried since, he has been the one to stop us. Why do you think he convinced me to stop drinking? I'm fuckin' horny when I get shitfaced! You know that! You want to blame anyone, fucking blame me. Does this mean you're gonna try and kill me now?" Veronica didn't say anything. She looked too stunned to speak. Boone, Arcade, and Raul all looked nervously at one another. Finding out these kinds of details was making them uncomfortable, and really? Who can blame them.

"Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. And another thing. Since I guess we're airing all our fuckin' dirty laundry in public now, then you ought to know that I never agreed to be exclusive when we started this thing. You were the one who assumed that, and if you fucking knew ANYTHING about me AT ALL, then you would've known straight off that kinda shit isn't gonna work with me!"

"B-but..." Veronica staring, wide-eyed, at nothing. She didn't seem capable of thought, much less speech.

"And YOU," Cass turned and advanced on me. "What the fuck, man! This little adolescent piss-up of your has... I mean... fucking... LOOK!" She gestured to the still crumbling carnage all around us. "You were inches away from putting a bullet in her brain! Seriously - what the fuck!"

"She 'as gonna..." I was having enormous trouble speaking. "Issat'r die..." Cass just shook her head.

"And those were your only two options? Fight or die? What happened to the Sheason who could always find a way out, hmm? The man who could get out of the most sticky fucking situations by fucking using his fucking brain and finding a fucking way out? I mean, what was it you've said before? Pulling off the impossible is what you do? Where the fuck is THAT guy?" Cass sighed. "You know, I expected better. From both of you. You're both acting like Goddamned children. So stop fighting, get yourselves cleaned up, and fucking GROW UP. I'm fucking sick of this."

Veronica and I sat there on the floor across from each other, just... staring. She didn't have murder in her eyes anymore. She wasn't struggling against the three men holding her down. Instead, she looked... broken. Cass shook her head again.

"The two of you are just... so... disappointing."

Despite the many injuries wracking my body with agonizing pain, those words of hers stung the most.

"So," Arcade said, pressing an antiseptic-soaked piece of gauze against my face; I winced involuntarily. "It seems Veronica wasn't the only one keeping secrets."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I did the same thing I told you guys not to..." I winced again. "Go ahead, laugh it up."

"Oh, it's not a laughing matter, I'm well aware of that." Arcade leaned me back, and swabbed a bruise on my chest with alcohol before sticking me with a Med-X syringe. He seemed to only be vaguely paying attention to the conversation.

"You know why I didn't tell her? Because I knew this kind of shit would happe- AGH!" For some reason, Arcade taking the syringe out hurt more than when he put it in.

"Yes, she is a rather passionate girl, isn't she." Arcade was looking down at his watch as he spoke. "Ruled by her emotions... doesn't take being lied to at all well. But, I suppose, that's one of the biggest problems with women. Too many wayward emotions. One of the many reasons I prefer the company of men. You're rather lucky."

"How's that?" I asked, confused by the abrupt shift in tone. Arcade didn't respond at first. He took out a stimpack, and injected me in roughly the same place as the Med-X.

"Your rib only has a hairline fracture, it's not completely broken. If you hadn't been wearing that armor, I fear it would have snapped completely and punctured your lung." Arcade looked up at me over his glasses. "Again. The stimpack should knit the bone shortly, so you don't need to be rushed to surgery. The bruising is probably going to remain for a while, though."

"Yeah, lucky me..." Arcade handed me an ice pack, and I held it against my forehead as he attended another one of my various wounds. "Alright, so... since this has proven the dangers of keeping secrets, you gonna tell me who you worked for before the Followers?" I pulled the cold pack away from my skull and looked at it; a red splotch was staining the cloth where it had been white before. I put it back against my head with a grimace.

"Yes," Arcade said simply. "But not now. And not here. After seeing what Veronica did to you, I don't think it's a good idea to say it aloud with her even in the same building."

"Wait, what?" I asked. Arcade looked back up at me and shrugged.

"Truth be told," he grabbed another stimpack. "I still think you did the right thing, trying to hide that from her. Even now. I mean, I absolutely understand why you kept it from her. You wanted to spare her any heartbreak, and that's very admirable. It's just too bad that it was dumb luck she found out."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't agree with him. Not now. I should have told her. Cass and I both should've told her, straight away. We should have acted like adults about the whole thing - all three of us - and talked to one another, try to work out everything that way. But instead, we kept secrets like a pack of four year olds and the whole thing blew up.

"Why are you patching me up, anyway?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "Shouldn't you be looking after Veronica?"

"Boone is taking care of her," Arcade said. "Her injuries aren't nearly as severe as yours. She only requires basic triage, so Boone can handle it."

"Not as..." I blinked several times. "I didn't think I was... am I really that bad?" Arcade paused in his work, looking at me like I'd gone insane.

"Take a look for yourself." He reached onto his medical cart and pulled out a small mirror holding it in front of - HOLY SHIT!

Okay... yeah... that's a lot worse than I thought. I thought it was pretty bad, but... fuck.

A little over an hour later, I was back on my feet. I was still sore as hell, but I was as mended as I was going to get. I'd put my armor back on after Arcade finished, and went to the floor below the suite to collect all my discarded weapons. I stepped out of the elevator, and immediately saw Veronica down here, obviously doing the same thing. We just looked at each other. Neither of us said anything... and then the two of us moved on.

After I'd collected everything from the rubble of the destroyed rooms, I went straight to the garage. I was tired, I was sore, and I really didn't want to talk to anyone. I was halfway to my car when a voice called out after me.

"Sheason!" Cass yelled, her voice and footsteps echoing against the concrete of the Lucky 38's underground car park. "The fuck do you think you're going?"

"Out," I said. It felt more like a grunt than a word.

"Wh - you're leaving?" Cass finally caught up to me, grabbing me by the shoulder and forcing me to turn and face her. "You're not even gonna try and work this out - like what you tell all of US to do whenever WE all get into stupid arguments?"

"I just..." I shifted uncomfortably, refusing to look at her. "I need some time to think. Time to be alone." I adjusted my sunglasses as I talked. It may have been pitch black outside, but the sunglasses and Shelby's cowboy hat perched on top of my head were enough to disguise my head injuries - like the massive shiner around my left eye. Besides, I already had my eyes set to nightvision anyway, so it's not like I couldn't see. I turned on my heel and started walking to my car again.

"Okay, so... you're leaving. Fine. Are you coming back?" Cass asked, following me. I opened the door on my Corvega, hung my head, and sighed.

"I... uh... maybe. I dunno," I muttered under my breath. The sound still echoed like I'd yelled it.

"That's it then?" Cass asked, incredulously. "After all that. Everything you've said. Everything you've done. Everything we've all been through. One fucking fight, and you're just going to up and LEAVE?"

"I'll be back," I said in a tone of voice I wasn't sure even I believed. "Just... don't know when." I got in the drivers seat, starting up my car with a rumble; Cass just stood there, staring at me, slowly shaking her head.

"You are such a fucking hypocrite."

I couldn't argue with her, even if I wanted to.