Now I'm Learning to Love the Wasteland

Wilde

Remington’s news hit my heart with a hammer’s wallop, and shocked me so that I stopped midair with my bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla and couldn’t take another sip. I set the bottle down on the exposed concrete floor with a slow hand, resolute to stop quaking and crying so.

“I know it’s a lot to hear after… everything.” Remington stroked at his beard in concentration, “But I figured it was better than not knowing at all.”

“I really appreciate it.” The far off sound of my voice surprised me, but I kept on, “Where was my father last?”

“Smith Casey’s Garage. It’s a pre-war car shop, a ways west of Evergreen Mills.”

“Okay… Okay.” I sighed to cool my nerves, unable to stop myself from moving too fast to get up. Dogmeat pulled at my jumpsuit to counteract my failing balance.

Remington offered one more song before I left, which I took just to work up my willpower. And another. And another. Dogmeat sat on my feet and slept until we all lost the passing of time. It was better than succumbing to binge drinking, I supposed. HIs last song was a punchy tune, more energetic and without words. Just what I needed. When he offered again, it was apparent the poor man just wanted to play for an audience. I assured him I’d taken enough of his time while gathering up my rifle and pack.

“Well, alright. But before you head there, I’d advise you on gettin’ that jumpsuit of yours fixed up. Been through enough fights to know it never pays to go out there unrepaired.”

I paused atop the steps leading up and out of the cellar. Something told me he had more to say, and it seemed I was correct.

“Oh, and Wilde?”

“Yes, Remington?” The man was blushing now as he looked at my face.

“I’d ‘precciate if you and your Dad checked in when you reunite…. Er, just for my peace of mind, that is. Make sure ya’ll are alright. I’ll be here. Sorry I kept you a couple days… Time goes faster when I’m sitting.”

“Of course.” I promised. One had to laugh at his funny way of phrasing. The Cowboy followed Dogmeat and me out into the day’s sun. I thanked him again as Dogmeat sniffed his hand goodbye. I had the strangest feeling as I walked towards Megaton nearby. Like the distrust I’d felt upon meeting him, inversed: Remington was not of this world. However he’d found his way to the D.C. Wastes, I was certain of one thing now: I was glad we’d met.

The Cowboy looked as though he wanted to say more–begging for encores till the very end–opening and closing his mouth as he fussed with his hat. He stopped himself and settled on a nod and a tip of the hat as he withdrew down into his hideaway.

I shrugged and carried on, whistling to Dogmeat so she kept pace. I felt more clear headed now than I had in days, though I doubted I would ever truly be rid of my heartache. My hand still reached for the empty place under my jumpsuit, where Charon’s contract once rested. I could only harden myself to a cutting’s edge. Megaton was less than a mile away, and there were many miles to go before my quest was finished.

Charon

I didn’t stop running. There was a strange new symphony in my heart pushing me to fly down the stairs into the tunnels of Museum Station. It swelled and I sprinted (as best as a guy in ripped leather pants could, anyway) until I came to a sudden stop halfway into a pack of pacing ghouls. They were agitated, growling at me, but not attacking. Something had stirred them. One look down into the dirt and the trash revealed the answer: A motorcycle had come through the tunnels, not long ago.

The irony that Sally Hatchet, and now that Cowboy both had a hand in saving me was not beyond me. I laughed–at the fact that I was trying to run all the home on a sprinter’s endurance; at the fact that the last people I’d expected to save me did. That I had my memories intact, that I'd lived to tell them without going feral. It was a full, conquering sort of laugh. A crazy, loud thing. It agitated the other ghouls in the tunnels even further. So much so they hissed. I could only shout another laugh back, swelled on adrenaline before I wondered if, in fact, I was going crazy.

I had to stop and catch my breath following the tracks to Marigold station. Lightheaded and wheezing. This was the moment my late father’s advice reached me: I had to stop smoking. And I’ll tell you the secret to quitting anything: Settle it in your mind that it’s already been done. I wasn’t quitting, I had quit. I hadn’t smoked in, what? Three days? More? However long I was out didn’t matter now, it was all in the past.

I paced myself the rest of the way forward. The motorcycle tracks in the dirt and refuse gave way to the hard tile of Marigold’s subway station. Grayditch was just outside. Megaton. She’d probably gone to Megaton. And if she was gone, I could at least get word of where she went next. When I rattled the gate to the outside world open, the sky was covered in a blanket of thick clouds, so gray you couldn’t tell what time it was. I sniffed the air with what was left of my nostrils. A rarer than rare thing hung in the air surrounding D.C.’s Capital Wastes: rain.

There was a sour looking, tall old trader passing through Grayditch’s deadened streets, and he spoke up to greet me, echoing my thoughts:

“These parts haven’t seen rain in thirty-some years, I s’pose.” I nodded in response, asking him what he had for sale. I traded the last pack of cigarettes in my leather jacket for a new pair of pants, grateful we were similar in stature. The cigarettes were practically ruined from my dance with electrocution, but the trader assured me he could salvage anything. I went to change in an abandoned shack. And, as a thank you, offered the old man my ruined pants.

“They’ll make good strips of armor.” The trader nodded. “You wanna offload that old jacket? That ancient gun, too?” He pointed, “Just got back from Rivet City. Got lots of caps to burn.”

It took me a good moment to recognize that he was still talking to me. I’d grown too used to people ending conversation with me out of fear. I growled a no, a little embarrassed. Those things were far too important. The gun was mine. Always would be. And Wilde had borrowed the jacket so many times that I couldn’t bear to part with it–the jacket was now a piece of her, and thereby even more a part of me.

The old trader and I exchanged our goodbyes, him already ripping into the guts of my cigs to pack away what tobacco was left into a sturdy pipe. I couldn’t help but strut off into the direction of the Super-Duper Mart. Quivering like a freed marionette and rubbing the butt of my shotgun in anticipation with the clouds.

Wilde

Megaton’s gates scraped open with the same bite, but the town felt different. Emptier. And it wasn’t just my state of emotions influencing that feeling. There was a smell I’d never encountered before hanging in the darkening sky, and the sloping entrance into town was quiet. Only a few denizens lingered at the noodle bar, frowning and looking up. The only activity seemed to come from Gob’s Saloon up the catwalks. I knew I’d have to tell Gob I’d seen his adopted mother Carol, but I wasn’t ready to face any crowds just yet.

My first stop was Moira. My gear and my head were in worsening shape and it seemed the natural place to go. Her demeanor, however grating to some, always cheered me. I already knew she was hiding out in Megaton’s only storefront, Craterside Supply.

Dogmeat didn’t want to go in. She never liked the smell of the place. I let her linger outside on the ramparts. When I opened the shop’s door I thought my Pipboy’s clock must be off and the town’s secret genius must be asleep. Her security guard gave me a curt nod, shouting for her. We’d done this dance before.

Moira came coughing out of a backroom of her workshop, smoke dissipating behind her in little wisps. She pulled a large pair of protective goggles down from her face and left them dandling around her neck. She smoothed back her auburn hair and squinted her green eyes at me before exclaiming in recognition.

“Wilde! Oh! My just-so-super assistant!” Moira Brown swept some of the grime from her handyman’s jumpsuit in a manic fashion before hustling to formally greet me behind the shop’s counter. In the one spot with good lighting, I could see now she’d been tinkering with intensity.

“I hope I didn’t drag you away from some pressing work.” I bowed my head a little and searched around with my eyes, hopeful I hadn’t distracted her from anything especially flammable, either.

“Oh, don’t worry!” Moira assured me in her trademark too-saccharine tone, “All the gunpowders and caustic liquids are tucked in for the night!” But even her eyes looked speckled with worry for a moment, “What can I do for you?”

“You’re sure it’s alright that I pull you away from your experiment?” I wanted to confirm. As a fellow researcher and a longwhile friend of Ms. Brown, I knew it was for the better if I made sure she was really, really done.

“Sure as a can of peaches!” Moira wiped her hands against each other aggressively to punctuate, “Seriously, co-author, what’s up?”

I took a seat on a stool in front of her, giggling for a moment at the soot rimmed around her softened eyes. “It’s a long story…” I sighed. But Moira insisted I tell it all over a glass of water, anyway.

Charon

It was stupid to come here. Was it stupid to come here? No, no. It was where I wanted to go. Where I figured she’d be. The strangest sensation gnawed at me by the time I made it to Megaton, stranger even than the driving desire and rollercoaster of emotions. It was odd and empty. Just like the town. Lightheaded and uniquely angry with it. Something I hadn’t felt since…. Since… before my Vault, even.

My stomach groaned audibly in the musicless, personless silence of the evening. The cause… Was it nerves, withdrawal, exercise (?)–was impossible to pin down. But I recognized the effect now.

I was hungry.

I growled, annoyed by the budding physical demands of my body, but obliged to follow the call of being more human. It was my first instinct to head to the noodle stand right at the bottom of the hill, but there was no one there. Only a lone, bone white sheet of paper hanging above the openair stand indicated what had everybody running off:

CLOSED. ON ACCOUNT OF THE SKY. sorry. :(

I let out a short snort of a laugh. Nothing helping these folks. I wouldn’t eat the last Fancylad in my leather jacket unless the world really was about to end again. And it wasn’t, popular opinion be damned. I’d have to ditch the grubstand and head on over to the Saloon.

Halfway up the ramparts, in the light leaking out of Gob’s Saloon I spied a familiar profile sniffing around.

“Dogmeat.” I offered my hand to sniff. The pup wagged her tail and buried the side of her face into my leg, pawing at me out of excitement. I beamed even through the exhaustion of hunger pangs. It was joyous seeing her, it was even more comforting to know Wilde must’ve been nearby.

“Charon! Charon you impossible beast! Get in here!” My head snapped up to hone in on the bar. A tiny, bearable disappointment. It wasn’t Wilde. It was Gob, calling me inside. The desire to see the only other Ghoul who’d really gotten out of Underworld was stronger than my distaste for the crowd. I gave Dogmeat a goodbye pat on the head and pushed through to the interior of the Saloon, easy when you were large and leering. Still, the whole ordeal made me sweat. Everyone who wasn’t in their house was here. I couldn’t help but stare around, hoping I could spot that familiar halo of light on wavy blonde hair.

Gob wouldn’t give me more than a moment, however. He made a grand show of dispersing some patrons so I had a spot to sit, right in front of him.

“C’mere, c’mere. Business has been booming since you knocked that Cowboy out in here. I really owe you, man. What can I get you? HEY! DO YOU GUYS WANNA MEET–”

“Don’t.” I raised a palm to stop him, hoping an added dose of manners would ease his fear that I would choose violence here again. “Please. I don’t do that. Anymore.”

If I was capable of blushing, I would have. I smiled a quick, embarrassed smile. Most of all with shame for that old mistake.

A pause. It was still hard to ask for anything in this newfound soul I was wading through, but I forced it out. “You got food? I’ll buy anything. I’m starving.”

“It’s on the house.” Gob was jumping up and down with excitement, feeding off the energy of his customers hiding me, as he grabbed a cold Nuka Cola from a vending machine. He opened the bottle with a satisfying pop. “This is the only working machine in town. Maybe even this side of the Potomac. Wilde donated it.”

“She in here?” I had to lean in to hear him, much less talk to him.

“I dunno.” Gob shrugged. “Her dog’s outside, I assume she’s around.” He confirmed my knowledge. “You still working with her?”

That was a good question. The contract sat in my breast pocket now, but how long could I sustain sanity that way? I’d never tried. Like the cigarette smoke floating thick over my head from the sardine-packed smooths around me, this was new territory, a fresh fight. I realized the process would have its pitfalls. The need to be controlled by habit would remain. Like the light of the mezzers or the squeeze of death; terrifying and absolute.

Gob set a plate of food before me. I shoved my worries to the side. Today’s special was some ancient dough with slices of cram and punga fruit baked into the crust. My predisposition for sweet things found its sickening sugar flavor pleasing. I savored that feeling, deciding the pains of becoming more of my own person would be paid off by moments like these.

“You know, your cooking’s gotten a lot better.” I had to yell louder to Gob against the raucous laughter from the group behind me.

“Oh, fuck off.” Gob shouted, smiled and shook his green head. “You been to Underworld at all lately? Be nice to know how my Mom’s doing.”

I remembered seeing Carol in my second (and hopefully last) rage-walk out of the Ghoul City’s doors. I still didn’t regret any of the leaving. Why anyone would wanna keep me down there after so many years of rotting away there like a doll on a shelf was beyond the pale. I tore off another piece of my meal, hoping Gob didn’t see the anger twitching in my jaw as I chewed.

Trying to be kind. Trying. I cleared my throat, taking care to finish chewing, “She’s well, as far as I know.”

“That’s good.” Gob stiffened. I think he could tell something had gone down, back in his hometown.. What a pain. Wilde made it seem so easy.

I would attempt to clear it up, “Look, G, if you’re worried I hurt anyone…”

I don’t do that. Anymore. For now.

“I’m not! I’m not.” Gob swiped some crumbs and ash off the counter around me, “I know you didn’t have it good there. I shouldn’t press you. I’ll ask Wilde if she comes ‘round. And I can see the look on your face, okay? She really hasn’t come by yet.”

I nodded at him. My throat getting dry and thick with nerves, a cathedral in my chest. My brain just a small and fragile moth bumbling through it.

The woman Gob was sweet on made her way behind the counter at that moment. She lifted a tray of dirtied dishes over him with a practiced hand. The way his head craned to watch her as she disappeared into an adjoining room inspired me to ask for advice.

Clearing my throat a second time felt like it took a century, “How’s uh… how’s Norah?”

“Nova.” Gob’s eyes flickered with annoyance, still lingering on the place she disappeared into.

“Yeah. How’s that?” Christ. Could I be any worse at this?

Gob shouted out two beer orders before leveling his own scarred face with mine, “What do you mean, “How’s that?” You feeling okay, guy?”

I wasn’t. Everytime Wilde came to mind I felt sick and jolted awake in a way I never thought possible. I pushed my plate away, rubbed at my ruined temples and took a long sigh,

“Let’s just say… I’ve got my own Nova.” That was the only way I could express the feeling to him. The rush of looking at Wilde’s face full of stars, the closeness holding onto her in that Life Preservation pod, all the desperate and dangerous twists of our adventures. And I dreaded seeing her again. Because I needed to tell her. And I didn’t even know where to start.

“Well, I dunno why you’re talking to the likes of me…”

Because I looked at him and saw myself. The intensity in my eyes pressed him to go on. A bashful, wide smile crossed his green face. He shook it away and lowered his tone as much as possible,

“We’ve talked, but Nova just wants time to herself, yeah? I’m respecting that.”

I, on the other hand, expected utter rejection. Gob popped the top of another bottle of Nuka to replace my first one. I watched the smoky fizz rise into the air for a moment, “...I’m too old and too ugly. I just need to tell her.”

“Wilde’s a grown woman. Don’t be so damn shallow with yourself. After you tell her, what then?”

“Hang on… I didn’t say..”

“I could see it since the day both of you walked in here together. C’mon.”

I rolled my eyes before taking a slow sip of my drink. No matter. The jig was up, “Well… if she doesn’t want me to help her find her Dad, I suppose I’ll go looking for the old Vault I came from. Make some peace with it.”

“If you need a hand with that, don’t come bothering me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Gob toasted the emptied Nuka-Cola bottle with my second before tossing it into the trash.

Wilde

I found Dogmeat restless and sniffing outside of Gob’s Saloon. The faithful pup barked and pranced on her feet, spinning in a circle the closer I stepped.

“You ready to take a break, girl?” She stood her ground when I passed the packed doorway of the Saloon. She sniffed the air and whined a response. I huffed, exhausted.

“C’mon, girl. We need a rest.” She followed after the third whistle, but not without sulking. Moira had insisted I head to my Megaton home and draw a hot bath after our visit. And golly, did I need one. There would be time to visit the Saloon while I was getting my Vault suit repaired.

“Just hoping to get some of those jerky bits Gob likes to sneak you, huh?” I gave my dog a consolatory pat on the head. On the way down a ramp I swore I could hear Charon laughing in the distance. I really am delirious, I thought.

Charon

When I finally managed to cut through the swath of people to exit Gob’s place, the air was damp and crackling with the threat of something long dormant, long forgotten.

(rain. It’s finally here)

I blinked up at the sky: darkened with slate colored clouds and heavy in every direction. I climbed down the slight dip in the ramp to the little square building in the corner facing the saloon on catwalk. A warm glow of light shown in the one tiny square in the door and the sliver of bedroom window: Wilde was, miraculously, home.

My heart beat like a drum in the heat of a groove, my lungs drew in all the air they could muster. I was even too nervous to scowl at Gob’s final bit of useless advice–”just talk. I don’t know”–the adrenaline confounding me into just a determined nod and a gulping throat. I looked to the sky. A small break in the clouds, a window of stars. I remembered the Museum of Technology and felt breathless again. Megaton seemed even quieter now that I’d left the bar. The only noise down the dusty steep hill through the center of town were the pair of lonely brahmin chewing bits of dry grass near the local Doc’s. Even the local mad prophet of Atom was tucked away into bed.

The throng in the bar was waking up, stepping out onto the ramparts like a curious ameoba. “Oohing” and “Awwing” and singing drunkenly at the little raindrops that began decorating them.
Ringa-round the rosies
Break his nose an’ mosey
A tissue, a tissue
We all fall–

Peals of thunder in the distance echoed through the Wasteland. Small beads of darkness plinked on the steel beneath my steps and against the leather of my jacket. The whole city seemed to creak with tension and sigh in release at once.

The downpour opened up just as I raised my hand to knock on the Lone Wanderer’s door. The Ink Spots were playing airy and warm from the jukebox inside. Ugly grey gave way to golden, soft light bathing me and there she was: eyes tired and red suddenly alight, scrubbed face glowing even in the gloom of the fresh storm. Misty clouds of her breath floating into Megaton’s cold open air.

I was more of a wretch by comparison, no doubt: frightful eyes staring with that bleak intensity under the curtain of water pouring down my traveled face. Looking at her, I froze. I’d lost all words. Such a small time away from her had felt like weeks. Millenia, even. The urge to simply sweep her up into an embrace was strong, eaten by fear. Of what? Reaction. Repulsion. Irrational, to be sure. Wilde and I had shared canteens and tubwater. Snack cakes and sleeping space.

And now… Now I was a schoolboy dumb in the downpour. What a fool I was, coming here like this. Barrows, the bastard. He was right. I was too unstable.

Wilde’s shocked gaze lingered on my hand—clenching and unclenching with want. Then her eyes traveled back up to my own. Not afraid. She’d never been afraid of me.

I broke the silence, my voice soft and nervous:

“I’m still here. Waiting for you.”

Wilde searched me with a smile and raised her hand out to me in disbelief. All the questions in her face: Why I’d come back, Why I damn near killed myself at Evergreen Mills, Why the contract wasn’t the thing keeping me here, Why I’d told her to talk to Ahzrukhal at all; didn’t need answering. The answer was as simple as the crossword puzzle I remembered, from all those years ago.

(2- 1- 6)

The light in her face, the silent language we shared when our eyes met made all the nerves and shame in me wash away, and I found the courage to press my palm flat against her own. Wilde took her time threading her fingers through mine and stroking my thumb in the rain. She closed the small gap we shared, and the laugh that bubbled up between us melded into a kiss. A strong, all-encompassing thing that we didn’t break there in the downpour and held onto even as Wilde pulled me inside.