Chapter 112: A Chance of Friendship

Chapter 112: A Chance of Friendship

My original plan seemed simple enough. Get Veronica back to the Lucky 38, and into her room so I could 'prepare the ground,' so to speak, with Cass. That way, I could make sure that the three of us would have plenty of time to get settled, and we could work out the tangled myriad of issues in a clam, sensible, dignified manner. Like adults. So when the elevator doors opened, and both Veronica and myself were face to face with Cass, I mentally ran through every single conceivable curse that I knew.

No plan survives first contact after all.

At first, nobody said anything as Veronica and I stepped out of the elevator. The three of us just seemed to stare at each other, in a rather quiet, non-violent Mexican standoff. The tension was practically thick enough to taste.

"H-hello, V," Cass said with a subtle nod, breaking the tension. "Nice to see you and Shea not tryin' to kill each other..." Veronica smiled unconvincingly, fiddling with the edges of her hood.

"Don't worry," Veronica said softly. "I am over that phase. Trust me, you don't have to worry." I knew exactly what she was trying to do here. She hadn't said a single word the entire trip up - completely silent since the 188. And now that we were here, she was smiling, trying to brush off the fight from a week and a half ago with a half-hearted joke. Deflecting. Hoping that if she put on a brave face and a happy mask like she always seemed to do, the problems would just go away.

Credit where it's due, at least: she's consistent.

"So..." Cass shoved her hands in her pockets. "What's the deal?" She hesitantly looked back and forth between the two of us. "Things between you two good now?"

"Yes," Veronica said without hesitation.

"No," I said at the same time. Veronica looked over at me cautiously, and Cass just looked nervous. So I elaborated: "I hate to just come out and say it, Veronica, but... we're not all mates now and all forgotten that we tried to kill each other. I mean, I'm glad that you agreed to come back, that's certainly a step in the right direction. But we still need to talk about things and clear the air - at the very least - to make sure this kind of shit doesn't happen again." As I spoke, Cass and Veronica alternated between looking at me and each other. "All three of us need to talk about this. So... if anyone has any suggestions for how we should start, I'm all ears."

There was another long stretch of silence. I looked to Cass, who looked over at Veronica, who looked back over at me. And then, Cass decided to break the stalemate in the most inappropriate way possible.

"Threesome?" she asked hopefully with a smile and open arms. I buried my face in my hand. One step forward, five steps back...

"I - I don't..." Veronica went bright red. She shook her head quickly. "Yeah, that's not... I don't think... that's not gonna work. Just... no." She turned to me, and added rather quickly: "Uh, no offense." She gestured at my nether-regions, and shook her head. "I'm sure it's fine, don't get me wrong. But I'm not interested... in any penis... ever."

"Cass, this is the real world, not a trashy romance novel," I said, trying my damndest not to laugh at Veronica's attempt to reassure me. It was surprisingly difficult, given that 'penis' is one of those inherently funny words. "A three-way wouldn't actually solve anything." Cass just shrugged.

"It was an idea. Probably for the best, anyway. Not in the mood for a threesome..." She scratched the back of her head, knocking her hat down over her face. She added under her breath: "... today."

"Cass, is it possible for you to be serious for five seconds?" I asked. She tipped her hat back, and shot me a look.

"I was just tryin' to lighten the mood, you morose motherfucker," She grumbled. "I mean, you roll up in here all serious like you are and -"

"Guys!" Veronica interrupted. "I know what you're trying to do, and I can make this easy for everyone: I promise that I'm not gonna fly off the handle like I did ever again. I was dealing with a lot of stress and I... I just..." She stumbled over her words, and gripped both sides of her hood, pulling it down over her face slightly. "I know it's not an excuse, and I should've talked to... I'm sorry. You guys have fun... with..." Veronica shook her head, and ran out of the hall.

"V, wait!" Cass called out, but Veronica had already disappeared into the kitchen. "Aw, fuck..." Cass hit her forehead with the heel of her palm; the sound echoed through the hall with a resounding smack. "We scared her off, didn't we?"

"What do you mean, we?" I asked. "You're the one who spooked her suggesting a threesome!" Cass clutched at the back of her head, and let out a frustrated growl.

"Fuck... I never wanted things to get so fucked up with her an' me, you know?" Her hat fell down over her face, and when she looked up at me, she looked through one of the cutouts in the brim. "I mean... I still care about her! I still like her! I just can't... I can't give her what she wants. Not what she really wants, anyhow. She wants a girlfriend, and I... I just wanted to have some fun! And then things got so fuckin' complicated! All these stupid fuckin' emotions are just so... fuckin' stupid!"

"Maybe you shouldn't be telling me this," I leaned against the wall behind me. "Maybe you should tell Veronica."

"I already did." Cass said firmly. "That's exactly what I told her when... when I... broke up... with... her." Cass sighed and smacked her forehead again. "Fuck."

Veronica hadn't gone far. When I found her, she was standing in the kitchen, with her back to the door. I hesitantly crept into the room, and quickly realized: she was staring at the massive hole in the floor - or, rather, what used to be the hole the two of us had crashed through during our fight. It had been hastily patched up with sheets of metal... and it was quite a lot bigger than I remembered. It's entirely possible we'd done more damage to the Lucky 38 than we did to each other.

"Ahem," I coughed to try and get her attention. Veronica looked over her shoulder at me... and then turned back to the patched hole. "Look, V... I'm sorry about that. I was kinda hoping Cass would have a bit more sense than to-"

"Forget about it," Veronica cut me off, continuing to look at the patched hole. "Let's just... let's just take all this as read, for the moment. I won't... I don't wanna..." She paused, clearly struggling for words. "This is all too much for me right now. I promise that I won't start anything else. And we can talk about this later, but just... not... not right now."

"Alright," I nodded slowly. "I'm sorry for being so pushy about this, V. I just wanted to take care of it as quickly as possible, so we can all get back to being friends again."

"No, I get it," Veronica said, mirroring my nod. "And I appreciate you're trying so hard, but just... not now." Veronica gulped audibly, and turned to face me; her expression was set in stone. It reminded me a bit of how Boone normally looked. "There was something I wanted to talk to you about, actually. Something I can wrap my head around. Something I can talk about to help me focus properly."

"Okay," I said with a nod, folding my arms across my chest. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I was thinking we could talk about our fight the other day."

It was like the bottom of my brains had fallen out, and then gone straight through the bottom of my feet. I hadn't gotten that sinking feeling in my stomach, so... violence was probably not imminent. If anything, I was more confused than anything else. I worked my mouth up and down for several seconds, trying to force my mouth to catch up to my brain, but no sound emerged for a while.

"Why?" I eventually squeaked out. Veronica suddenly looked very tired.

"They teach us a lot of things in the Brotherhood. A history of the world before the bombs. Maintenance of old world technology. How to fight... but they don't teach us how to deal with..." She gestured to the space around her and shook her head. "You don't bring up personal problems to other members. Any other members. 'They're your problems, deal with them yourself. Suck it up.' I heard that a lot." Veronica inhaled sharply through her nose. "So, whenever I needed a good distraction, I'd go to one of the 'Applied Violence' courses. Thinking about fighting is straightforward. It's uncomplicated. It's something I can use to clear my head."

"Okay," I nodded, still a bit wary of where this was going. "So... what about the fight did you want to talk about?"

"You... uh... you held your own against me a lot better than I was expecting," Veronica answered. I narrowed my eyes, and raised an eyebrow, as even more confusion took root in my skull.

"Held my own?" I asked, a bit perplexed. "Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I'm pretty sure you handed me my ass on a silver platter." An image flashed in my head of my bloody and bruised face, reflected at me from Arcade's mirror. A small smile appeared at the edges of Veronica's mouth, and she shook her head.

"Shea, no offense, but if I had really kicked your ass, you would've been dead by the first swing. Not only that, but..." Veronica scratched at the back of her head, shifting her hood down over her face slightly. "Well, you did a lot more damage to me than I admitted to Arcade after the fight. You cracked a few of my ribs... broke most of the bones in my right hand when you stabbed me through the power fist... and... well, I was concussed pretty badly. It was a solid two days before I could see straight again."

"Oh, shit!" I grimaced, taking a step back. "Dude, I'm... shit, I'm sorry, I didn't realize-" Veronica just waved it off.

"Don't worry about it. We were trying to kill each other anyway. Besides, I got all fixed up when I went to see the Followers at the Mormon Fort. The point is, I didn't think you'd be able to put up the fight you did, and I was wrong. And... it got me curious about something."

"Where are you going with this?" I finally worked up the gumption to ask.

"Where I'm going is this: you've never had any formal hand-to-hand combat training, have you?" Veronica asked. I thought about that for a minute, trying to figure out exactly what she meant by 'formal' training.

"I was a member of a fight club just outside Sac Town for a few months about... what, six years ago? Maybe? I can't really remember. Does that count?" Veronica hid beneath her hood, and it was hilariously apparent that she was trying not to laugh.

"No, but it makes sense. Your fighting technique is unrefined and practically nonexistent, but you have a lot of raw, natural ability. You're effective in a scrap, but sloppy, like a bar room brawler. I think that with a bit of tuition, you can become a force to be reckoned with."

"That's why most of the music left in the wasteland from before the war is actually from before the 1960's. Not much of anything else was allowed."Veronica sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's not like the original bans were logical, anyway. Joe McCarthy didn't like it, and when he was elected President, that was enough to get it banned. And then, after Nixon's fifth term, nobody even bothered to challenge it anymore..."

"Hang on," I scratched my beard. "How do you know all this?"

"There were a bunch of ancient news articles in several scrapbooks in the bunker. Every day, I'd go down to that bunker, put on one of the LP's in the collection, and read whatever I could find down there." Veronica shrugged. "The thing I could never understand was how this guy, whoever he was..." She trailed off, shook her head, and continued. "You asked about where I found this collection? I never figured out how he found any of these old records, much less how he kept the location of the bunker safe and hidden..."

"Actually," I coughed. "I was talking about your knowledge of the world before the bombs. I mean... all I've ever known about the US Presidents was that there were some. Never bothered to find out any of their names."

"Oh!" Veronica laughed, sitting up in her seat. "Oh, well, that's easy. The Brotherhood keeps surprisingly detailed records of the world - or, you know, at least the United States - from before the end. Scribes like me are nothing if not good record keepers." I nodded.

"So, what happened to the bunker where you found all this?" I asked. Veronica shrugged.

"Still there. Hopefully," Veronica leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. "When I knew that I was going to leave California, I made one last trip. I grabbed my favorite records, put them in the box, grabbed one of the Stratocasters hanging on the wall, and locked the place up behind me one last time. With luck, nobody else has found it... it would be a shame if that collection was ruined..."

I sat back, just listening to the music filling the room.

"There must be some kind of way out of here,"

Said the joker to the thief,

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.

Business men - they drink my wine

Plowmen dig my earth

None will level on the line

Nobody of it is worth."

"It certainly would be..." I said softly.

The two of us sat there for a while, just listening to record after record. Eventually, however, we got back to talking about fighting. It was still a bit surprising to me that she could talk about the two of us trying to kill each other so casually, but... if she was truly serious about offering to train me, who was I to say no? If nothing else, it would give us a chance to use the gym on the 2nd floor.

Once we'd worked out the details of how the training was going to go, that's when things got really interesting. Because that's when I asked Veronica if she'd be alright playing some of this music for other people.

"Sure, why not?"

And that was it. About an hour later, it was like everyone had gravitated to the revolving restaurant near the top of the 38. Myself, Cass, Veronica, Boone, Arcade, April, Emily, ED-E buzzing around the ceiling... I'd even popped over to Freeside earlier, and convinced Raul to come back. At least until this completely unplanned-for party was over.

This... was good. Everyone was having fun. Veronica and I had even figured out how to connect her turntable into the restaurant speaker system, so music that had been forgotten by the world at large for hundreds of years was filling the air. I wasn't entirely certain exactly how all of this had happened... but now that it was, I wasn't going to question it.

By the midpoint of the night, I was content to just watch everything unfold from the sidelines. That's why I was sitting in one of the booths at the edge of the slowly revolving floor, and had my feet propped up on the table. Just... relaxing.

"So..." Cass snuck up from somewhere, and slid into the seat beside me. "Are things cool between you two now?" I thought long and hard before I gave her an answer... but it didn't do me any good.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Maybe. I'm hopeful. And I believe her when she says she won't fly off the handle again..."

"I can hear that 'but' in your voice," Cass said, leaning back into the seat, and smiled broadly. "It's a huge but."

"I just want to help her be legitimately happy, and not just putting on a mask, pretending to be happy, you know? She's my friend."

"Yeah..." Cass sighed. "Mine too."

"We really fucked her over," I said. "And she doesn't want to talk about it, just because it's easier to hide behind a smile."

"Yeah..." Cass rubbed her face and threw her head against the back of the booth seat, knocking her hat off her head. "Fuck, I could use a drink..."

"Here," I reached into the cooler near my feet, and pulled out a pair of beers. "Go on, I'm not made of stone." Cass just stopped and stared, looking at me questioningly.

"Uh... wasn't I supposed to not drink any more?"

"You know, I never told you to stop drinking completely. I just wanted you to cut back, because too much of anything is a problem. And besides, I was talking about liquor. This is just beer. So long as you don't go overboard and have, like, 20, I think you'll be fine."

Dead silence.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Cass said, setting the beer bottle on the table and turning in her seat to face me. "But isn't beer considered alcohol?"

"Not in Russia," I stated matter-of-factly. "Anything with less than 10% ABV is considered a soft drink over there."

Again, dead silence.

"How..." Cass finally spoke up, blinking at me. "How do you... is that true?"

"It's what Sasha told me, at least," I said with a smile. Cass furrowed her brow.

"Sasha? Who's Sasha?"

"What, I didn't tell you about Sasha?" I laughed. "Oh, Sasha's great fun. I found him in the Big Empty. He's just a brain in a jar, fitted into the side of a huge minigun, but he was originally a dog from Russia. He told me a lot about his home before he was put in the gun. Plus, he's pretty funny. Got a great sense of humor, you'd like him." Cass stared at me quizzically, obviously having a bit of trouble processing this information.

"Is it bad that I can't tell if you're fuckin' with me or not?"

"Eh," I just shrugged.