Chapter Text
Penny
I was halfway between New Reno and Goodsprings when the drug people began to take hold. I noticed them gathering from all sides on the dusky horizon, running from any direction I swiveled–skittish as geckos. One of them threw a stick of dynamite, throwing me off my bike. Senses rattled, I hopped from my shit ass vehicle to find cover. Great Khans, they called themselves.
I don’t know how the bastards brained me, but they did. When I finally came to, it was on some rise, New Vegas a clear 30 miles out in the cool night–a sore thumb of light and sin searing the Mojave landscape. I winced at my gloved hands, blinking the heavy, dull pain in the back of my head away.
The Bastard was obviously a bastard–I didn’t need to know anything about him to know that. What gave him away most wasn’t his greasy, dirty hair, or his sleazy, smarmy smile. His beady little bike-salesman eyes… No, it was his ugly, no good checkered suit.
I was too bleary to speak, too exhausted to register the funny little poker chip in his hand, so, unfortunately, I had to listen to him speak:
“You made your last delivery, kid. Sorry you got caught up in this gig. From where you’re sitting, this must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is… The game was rigged from the start.”
The fink who claimed he wasn’t such pulled out a silent, silver pistol from his breast pocket. The dull pain in my head disappeared, replaced by something searing, something white-lit, something bleeding down the back of my neck.
–
When I turned my head, a dull throb came with it. A dirty, humble ceiling fan made its slow rounds above me. In spite of registering the squeak of a modest bed below me, the room spun, more violent and in-and-out than the ceiling fan could ever dream of mustering.
“You’re awake. How about that.”
The kind voice of an elderly man, not far away. I blinked, blinked again. I dragged myself up to sitting, my mouth dry and heavy with a metallic taste.
“Whoa now, easy.” The old man came into view–plainly dressed in a farmhand’s garb. He reached a concerned arm out, bidding me to steady myself.
“You been out cold for a couple of days, now. Just relax a spell….”
I stared at him, wonderless, empty. It felt like starting over. Like all I had was broken picture of a shithead in a suit and…
“Let’s see what the damage is. How about your name? Can you tell me your name?”
“Penny.” I said blankly. I had that, at least.
“Well. Huh. Can’t say it’s what I’d have picked for you, but if that’s your name, that’s your name.”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that? My tongue felt too heavy to speak, anyways.
“I’m Doc Mitchell.” The old man cleared his throat, rolling back in his tiny chair to a dusty desk, grabbing up an old mirror. “Now… I hope you don’t mind, but I had to go rooting around in your noggin to get all the bits of lead out.”
He held the mirror out to me. I took it, surprised my limbs were working at all. My face, black and oval and soft despite the hard look in my brown eyes, stared back. The jagged stitching on the side of my head thumped with a phantom presence. Other than that, every part of me seemed intact.
“I take pride in my needlework.” He said wryly. “How’d I do?”
"Well, I still got a face." I handed the mirror back.
The room spun in fractals when he helped me out of bed. He had me walk, slowly, across the woodworn space to some silly little amusement game.
“Just testing your reflexes…” He smirked, “Good to see that bullet didn’t affect your charm, none.”
He led me to an old fashioned living room, empty and cold. He ran me through some questions, held up some useless pictures, just to see if all my “faculties were in order.”
“Alright… that’s all she wrote… Come with me. I’ll see you out.”
I was glad to get off the moldy couch. I followed the little man down a long, dirty hallway, scratching my tight-coiled hair and hissing when I grazed the stitches on the side of my right temple. I wondered if I was just imaging all the Doc’s empty frames on the wall. Before he stopped at his front door, one of the little fixtures fell crooked from their nailed in spot.
“Here. These are yours. All you had on you when you was brought in.” And he took up a ragged bundle by the door, shift into my arms. I looked down at a scoped .44 magnum, my heart welling with a sense of pride.
He handed me something else, too.
“If you’re goin’ back out there, you’d better take one of these.”
The heavy wrist machine seemed… familiar. I had seen it before. It was icy cold against my skin.
“They call it a “Pip Boy”.” The Doc helped me set it on my wrist. “I grew up in one of them vaults before the war…We all got one. Ain’t much use to me now, but you might need it.”
He handed me a blue leather jumpsuit. His final parting charity.
“I know what it’s like, having something taken from you…” He sighed, “You should put this on. Don’t want the locals picking on you. Was my wife’s.”
As much as I didn’t want something of his dead woman’s, it was certainly cleaner than the filthy, bloody coveralls that were cradling my gun. I went and changed in a spare bathroom he offered.
“She hardly wore it after we left the Vault, I promise.”
“Thanks for patching me up, Doc.” I croaked.
“Don’t mention it…. It’s what I’m here for.” He opened the door for me, hot, dry air from the outside blasting in. “Talk to Sunny Smiles ‘fore you leave town. She’s likely at the Saloon. Lots a folks there willing to help a traveler out.”
“Oh, and talk to that metal feller…. Victor. He’s the one that pulled you out of that grave and brought you to my doorstep.”
I swept out onto the doorstep, counting the bullets that jangled in my old pockets, squinting to get my bearings.
“Ya’ll come back. I’ll fix you up if you get hurt or hit with the rad shakes. Try not to get killed anymore, you hear?”
And, clearly not in the mood or practice of being very social, Doc Mitchell softly shut his door.
The sun hit my eyes as mean as a rocket. I stood still, adjusting to an old flag waving in the abrasive winds and the flitter of a small bird, disturbed in her nest on the deck. I moved like a doe deer down the cracked road of the dusty little town I found myself in--something wounded, half-remembering and only fairly aware they were very, very far from home.