Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[Obuzeti]

Moray considers, looking at the Vault. For all the legend carries all over the Wasteland, there's not a lot to the treasure, and not a lot they can carry back out. It's here, but effectively impossible to carry out - testament to the weight of its own folly.

He looks at the gold.

He looks at Kara.

. . .

Moray picks up one of the poker chips, and sticks it behind Kara's ear. "Done packing," he says, simply, and starts heading for the staircase back up to the Executive Suites. "Come on. Let's go pick up Vanessa."

There's a moment where he pauses and considers. "Though - this whole mess started when Devon wanted to send us out here to pick over some space-ass vending machine. I don't much care to carry one back with us, or waste time taking it apart - but maybe we mail one of these to Big Wig. Let him know he can come pick this stuff up whenever he wants, in the Vault."

He nods his head back at the console. "Maybe tell him the recipe's in Sinclair's Personal Accounts, or something."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

All her compressed energy, the remnants of the anxiety Kara hadn’t allowed herself to really feel during the encounter slows for a moment as he tucks that chip behind her ear, the mouthy merc suddenly still. Against the scarlet tresses, it stands out easy, even compliments.

Her lips curve into one of those genuine little smiles of hers, fond warmth in the clear blue depths of her eyes. Jonah Moray was sweeter than she would have ever guessed. Than anybody could have guessed.

She swoops into a jaunty step alongside him as they exited the disappointing vault, the myth that had drawn so many adventurers and would be treasure seekers to their demises. She didn’t intend on ever coming back herself, that was for damned sure.

“That would be some hilarious karmic comeuppance.” Kara’s deeply amused by the thought. “We’ll see how it shakes out, big guy.”

She dips to scoop up her poor charred and half armless jacket, shaking it out before slinging it over the crook of her elbow, giving a considering look to the big ass gun with it’s melted, still cooling damage.

“She was a classy dame.” Kara says consolingly, not even grinning or teasing. “I’m sorry for your loss.” She tips it over with one gloved, delicate index finger. “Hey, maybe I can fix it!” All the gun parts and projects he'd seen in her vault, the chainsaw monstrosity in the small bunker-Kara had odd hobbies. She hauls it up herself, requiring both hands AND practically her arms, damn thing was so unwieldy.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray glances over, and takes a single look at the gun. The action has fused together in a slagged mess, the barrel is a welded rod for about nine inches, and the box receiver took a shot dead on and has mostly evaporated by now, along with most of the ammunition. There's no fixing that thing in the same way a Stimpack doesn't fix decapitation.

He hefts a sigh, and the gun, at the same time, taking it off Kara's arms and back around his shoulder, then gestures onwards. "We can give it an honorable burial, at least," Moray grumbles, and then moves onwards. He's already tired of this entire fucking place. What a waste of a good gun.

~*~

The elevator reaches top floor without any mutual mauling this time, and the duo pour out into the executive suite. Moray nods to Vanessa as the other woman speeds by on her way to her friend, and settles in one of the big chairs with a grunt. There's a selection of alcohol on a nearby setting-table, and he takes one bottle of bourbon, cracks it open, and promptly starts disinfecting his own burns with it. Doing that with raw alcohol cannot be fun whatsoever, but his face doesn't so much as scrunch up. Mostly, he looks impatient.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Oh, no-you both look terrible.” Vanessa’s fussing almost immediately, her graceful hands pressed over her mouth.

“Should see the other guys! One’s like, barbeque soup and-” Kara cuts off mid sentence, half remembering who she’s talking to. Vibrant blue eyes shift to her paled companion, an amused smirk and cocky straightening of her spine.

“I mean-we all had a very nice talk and played cards.”

“The walls shook.”

“I had a very good hand.” Kara bullshits cheerily as she approaches Vanessa’s collar, popping the unlocked mechanism and tossing it into the elevator. Vanessa gratefully rubbed at her throat and collar bone, still eyeing Kara. “Your clothes are half burned off.”

Kara looks down at herself as if she hadn’t realized that. “...huh.” She thoughtfully sticks her hand into the side of the vault suit, not quite touching her narrow waist or flat abdomen, just seemingly musing over the open nature of the thing.

“Man...the sun took me forever, too.” Maybe she’ll just cut it off and slap it on one of her other ones. Such a waste of a perfectly good vault suit too...oh well.

She shrugged, cutting a length of her rope down to fashion a makeshift, waist high belt to keep the suit from gaping entirely too much on the side, pulling on her one armed jacket and just now noticing what Moray’s up to.

“I have some burn gel.” Kara says with raised eyebrows, pretend offended. “No sense wasting good juice.” She withdraws a threadbare pouch of burlap and tosses it at him after a moment-it’s a crummy first aid kit of sorts. There were cartoon character band aids inside, among other things.

Kara injected a second stimpack, not wanting those glossy burns to scar before giving the room’s lipstick graffiti a final glance. Almost absently, she snags a bottle of scotch, takes a swig of that before losing interest, a familiar tug of finality on the front of her charred jacket as she looks at her two companions. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

~*~

Kara randomly remembered she wanted a ghost lady, spent a good fifteen minutes on the casino floor removing an emitter from the its podium, swapping the smashed one for it from her backpack.

“Oh yeah-what do you want us to do with Dean, Ness? He’s still in that auto doc.”

Vanessa frowned, considering. “...we’ll just leave him there, I think. He...he left me inside for a long time.”

“Yeah, fuck him-I’d just want to shoot him anyway, stealing your voice like that.” Kara agrees, absently playing one of the chips from her pocket into a slot machine. She pulled the handle-and stepped back when the machine went haywire, loudly blaring music and shining lights as Kara-because of course-won a jackpot.

Her grin was the unbearable kind, again.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray considers what everyone else isn't thinking about - that the Auto-Doc's set on a loop, and without anyone in the Sierra to pull him out, and with his unusual ghoul physiology, Dean will be cut, stitched, and savaged by that machine for probably another two hundred years. Unable to call for help, unable to die on his own, since like a good doctor, the Auto-Doc will respond to any immediate physical needs.

He takes a swig of the bourbon.

It's pretty good.

~*~

They set up camp outside, reunited with Lucky and Hrolf. The big mongrel sniffs their party and wrinkles his nose, curling up a little farther away from their group than he usually does. Kara's over at the campfire weaving wild tales for Vanessa, who's both thrilled to be on the safe way home and a little star struck with her personal hero. Moray sits and listens, and considers the new direction of his life.

It was a little easier to figure out with the Sierra mountain hanging over their heads, but now he has to contend with the realization that he's somehow tossed his hand in with Kara's for the long term - she's much further under his skin, under his defenses, than anyone ever has. It's hard to keep his head from turning just to keep her in sight, less for the flickering play of light on her red hair than for the reassurance she's safe and still here. It's been, perhaps, two weeks since everything switched on itself, and he's still not sure what to make of it.

Not to mention, there's a new tension between them. It's not funny tension, like when he occasionally tries to provoke people into drawing on him. It's - awareness.

Used to the silences of his own head, Moray barely notices the conversation in the background trailing off.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

From that first manic, sudden conspiracy to help the Khan escape Tenderheart, Kara had made a pastime of shocking the gullible woman with her usual band of bullshit artistry, finding great amusement in how genuine the other woman’s reactions were, how far she could push a story before, eventually, she’d start to see that little hint of doubt in the woman’s dark eyes. It was hilarious, really, and always came waaaaay later than it ought to. There was an innocence to Vanessa the world hadn’t managed to trample on, and maybe that’s why she’d helped her that first time, then been willing to go back to Sierra Madre to extract her from a lousy fate if she could-and kill the fuckers responsible if she was a day late and a dollar short.

Kara didn’t do sack clothes and ashes. But Vanessa being dragged into awful because of her just...that hadn’t been any good. She wouldn’t admit to a conscience at gunpoint, but sometimes it reared up here and there, had her doing things that weren’t funny and weren’t convenient. And honestly, if it hadn’t been for Moray, this example would have probably gotten her killed.

She absently thinks about what he said, about the chains. How he seemed to see through her bullshit, some fucking how, got all philosophical on it. Kara’s not used to thinking too hard about herself. Surviving was hard enough sometimes, and when it wasn’t, she was busy entertaining herself. Maybe that made her shallow, but she’s just trying to live a fun life in the aftermath of a shitty one. Enjoy the best score she’d ever made-her own freedom.

She should be a lot sleepier than she is, but Kara’s still kinda wired-fucking around with some sort of twig house her hands had been building while her mind carried itself in circles.

“So if he hadn’t been a robot, you coulda really taken his arms off?” What? Where the hell had that question come from?

The merc was serious though, finishing her ‘house’ with a little twig chimney-and now trying to knock it down by flicking pebbles at it. Their third wheel was zonked out, buried under Kara’s jacket. She probably hadn’t slept very solidly in a long while, stuck in that place.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray considers.

"I've pulled a man's arm off before, but never like that," he admits. "You usually have to break it a few times, strain and stress the muscles and ligaments holding it together. After that you can sort of twist it off, but most people won't hold still that long."

A beat. He thinks about it. His lips turn down. "Was a dead body, anyways. Couldn't get the Pip-Boy off, so I just took the whole deal and left with that instead."

Less gruesome, but an unnecessary detail. He hadn't really liked the idea of what Kara's face would have looked like, without that extra information. Moray shifts and leans back against his pack behind him, slouching comfortably into it. "What now? You've got your girl back. Go back to the Strip, fleece some Kings of their caps?"

He can't do that forever, is what he doesn't say. Doesn't even really know if she still wants him along, now that he's served his use. Their relationship - whatever the fuck it is - is based on the absence of words, and the immediacy of touch. She speaks lies, and he speaks death; incompatible languages. There has to be some common humanity between them, but fuck if he knows how to look for that.

They're just both searching for freedom, but - having obtained it, now what?

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

That was suddenly a lot less cool than she had briefly imagined-and then he adds that the person in question hadn’t still been alive. Whew, that’s better-and maybe kind of funny, the image of carrying around a whole arm like that, snrk.

"What now? You've got your girl back. Go back to the Strip, fleece some Kings of their caps?"

“If I feel like it, sure.” Kara’s twig house finally knocks in, a smirk curving her lips. She scatters the remains of the little house and then leans back on her hands, vibrant eyes shifting to him in the firelight. He’d gone to Sierra Madre with her, and it’d cost him caps and equipment to get...nothing, really. She hadn’t considered what came after-not yet, why would she have? She didn’t like to get too ahead of herself, after all.

“In the immediate, take Vanessa home and...maybe talk to Papa Khan.” A frown, and then a bit of honesty in her flippancy. “Seeing that Karl asshat there, brown nosing and lying about how Caesar does business-didn’t like that.” She’s not sure what she can really do, and she doesn’t often wade into fucking politics of all the damned things-but she’s set to do something, dammit. What would have been the point of bringing Vanessa home AGAIN if all it would mean in a few months was slavery? Hot damn.

She drops the subject.

“Beyond that, not like I got a five year plan.” She smirks. “I roam all over the Mojave, ya know? Exploring, odd jobs, sometimes making a nuisance of myself-you know what I do. Can’t be gettin’ bored.” Out for adventure and forgotten treasures, the exploration of nooks and crannies and what others thought were myths, playing pranks and cracking jokes and just jumping from impulse to impulse as it suited her, getting her kicks in as she always had-ever since escaping.

None of his professionalism and targeted death whirlwinds. No roots, ‘cept the Vault project and a genuine appreciation of the Mojave itself.

And then Kara considers Jonah Moray a moment, her tongue briefly between her teeth. Jonah of the whale, secret philosopher, son of a Regulator out East. Fighter of robots and hunter of deathclaws, able to clear a whole house of gangers in minutes. They operate pretty damned differently, were good in separate spheres and situations. He killed things and she talked to things, as he had said.

Kara doesn’t want him to go. Or at least, part ways and be entirely separate. Like anything else she doesn’t question the whys of what she wants-she just goes after it. The merc’s thoughtful, considering expression shifts as she sits up straight, criss crossing her legs and resting her hands loosely on her knees a moment. About to open negotiations it almost looked like. She knows a bit better than to wax too much poetry, however.

“You know...my adventures can be pretty lucrative, sometimes.” The redhead says casually. He’d seen how she’d negotiated extra pay, snagged ‘compensation’ for shit that hadn’t cost them anything. She hadn’t left him to his lonesome with the Slaver Scribe or the Terminator, not that he wouldn’t have triumphed, but…

“I’m not always crawling into places you wouldn’t fit. Maybe, you know, we might partner up sometimes, some jobs.”

He has to like her. That kiss had been crazy charged and more than she’d offered with her teasing one. He admitted to thinking she looked good, AND she’d let her pin the bird pin on him. She’d stopped antagonizing him so much-though maybe part of that had to do with lack of time and opportunity, hell if she knows.

The cuddling. She’s never deigned to fucking cuddle before, the hell-but it’d been nice. He’d been surprisingly nice to cuddle.

And suddenly in spite of all her cocky everything, Kara's not so sure she can pull this heist off. The hell did she really know, she's flat footed crazy and everybody knows it.

Kara’s negotiating face slips as her heart rate picks up a little, large blue eyes and her pretty face open and genuine.

“Maybe we just hang out sometimes, when we want.” Whenever he wanted, maybe.

Her eyes narrow a fraction, trying to figure how she ended up on this side of the fence, all of a sudden. Moray's hard to read, and that doesn't help-but she's PRETTY sure she's got this pegged, if she wants-it's just weird to want. Bah, too much thinking again.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray - releases a breath, at the casual suggestion, more of that razor tension draining out of him. He thinks about all the things he could say - quick-witted, sarcastic, charming, all the tools Kara uses every day to get what she wants from the people she buzzes past in a heartbeat, no more attention paid to them than what the starlet passes over.

He doesn't want that.

So instead, he comes up off the ground, grabs his satchel, and dusts himself off - looks over at Vanessa, warily - then ambles over to beside where Kara's sitting. The big man plonks himself down beside her. The satchel goes back behind him. Then he reclines back, exactly as he had been, but now right beside Kara, instead of opposite her around the campfire.

"I'll stay," Moray says. His hand twitches. He wants to make some declaration - a handshake or a fist bump, or put his arm around her, or cut himself and offer a blood oath - something. The last person he was this intertwined with he cut the throat of. He feels hollow, and at the same time, that awareness is something he hasn't had in years. At least now he can sense it.

None of these things feel right. He doesn't know what's right.

Out of ideas, but knowing he wants to try, Moray offers Kara his hand.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He gets up and drops his pack beside her, settles back down against it as stoic as he ever was, eyes on the flames of the fire, silent a moment as he leans back again.

"I'll stay."

Kara nods, more than a little relieved somehow-and waits for some sort of condition, something he wants. She doesn’t say anything. Nothing clever comes to mind, nothing flippant even in reflex or self defense despite all the soft she’s feeling. Soft is what gets you dead, she knows that. Knifed or something-you didn’t give people things to use against you. You shouldn’t care, cause caring sets you up for being sorry, later.

He offers his hand, and a very faint bit of color comes to her face as she looks at it, delicate fingers poised a moment-before she took it, threading her fingers through his larger ones, one of those small, genuine smiles curving her lips. She really had been set to knife that robot in retaliation, mad as hell at it for shooting him in the first place, having tried it’s damndest to kill him. She didn’t get legit angry very often, certainly not homicidal as fuck angry, not like that.

“I ain’t much for permanence.” Kara’s voice is very soft. It’s the one that never lies, was genuine. “But you, Jonah-” She casts around a moment, oddly and briefly unsure, hesitant. That quiet again. Then she shrugs, cause fuck, she doesn’t know-and lifts that arm to cuddle into his side. Her blush is a little brighter, and her expression stubborn.

She doesn’t want to get teased or say something stupid, dammit. He’s the only thing around that’s ever made her tongue tied.

 

[Obuzeti]

Kara slides under his arm in a reassuring echo of their decision, same as before. Her body, small and warm, fits into his side comfortably. Hearing her stumble on her words is just as affirming, the both of them blindly groping into new territory. The dearth of trust behind both of them stretches for decades. It's time for a change.

Jonah's arm slides down the fire-haired woman's back to cup at the top of her hip, warm against the parting of her shirt and her leggings. Then he pulls and lifts, gently scooping her up into his lap. The fabric of their clothing is stiff and rigid with fog freak blood, and he can feel pointy bits poking into him from the dozens of gadgets and tools she's got stored everywhere, like him. That hair gets in his face immediately, and he noses it out of the way.

"Sorry," he says, quietly. His face and Kara's are only a couple inches away at this point. "Didn't want to get a crick in my neck."

Jonah leans forward and brushes his lips against Kara's. It's again different - gentle, exploratory, only a second or two of tingly contact before he draws back for a moment, and dips back in; more a series of fluttery kisses than a sustained liplock. One of his big, broad hands has settled on her opposite hip, and the other rises to brush along Kara's face, hesitating in the air a little - that, or Moray's forgetting what he should be doing with it while he's kissing Kara.

Every brush of contact puts a little fog in his head, and a warm foaming in his chest that feels like a lamp in the night - warm, and impossible to ignore.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Pulled into his lap like that, it’s impossible not to be intimately aware of just how much smaller she was than him-he’s just big, big and really fucking solid-and yet so damned gentle despite all the violence and havoc he was often wreaking elsewhere.

He touches her face and it just-Kara’s used to being lusted over, but Jonah made her feel less objectified and more special.

Which was really dumb but can’t help but find it genuine, his affection adorable. She’s twisted her torso to be facing him, and they’re both probably scary as hell looking and definitely in need of clean clothes and showers-but she half doesn’t care, not for the softness of his kisses.

Kara’s left hand is on his shoulder, the right smoothing up over his jaw and face, moving just over his ear in a soft caress before she peppers kisses along the opposite side-his cheek bone, his jaw, his cheek-and then his mouth again. It’s the most affection she’s ever shown anybody. It’s the only affection she’s ever shown anybody-she just follows the impulse to the conclusion naturally, in tune with that part of herself, if hesitant to be vulnerable.

But it’s like the cuddling...she wants to hold him, she wants to kiss him, she wants to show him that affection because...because he deserved it, because maybe he needed it, and it’s far out of her normal range but she doesn’t even mind because he, at least, wasn’t going to laugh at her. He’s just as careful as she is-maybe it’s new to him, too-she's pretty sure it is.

 

[Obuzeti]

Kara's touch, and her lips, sweep over Moray's skin and beneath it like clean water, like washing grit crusted onto his soul. It isn't the hazy flush of uncontrollable lust he's heard described by every thug in the Wastes. No, they're so perfectly aware, and gentle, and soft, that the armor is crumbling within him and shaping into something new. The rusty walls are collapsing.

His lips touch over hers one more time, and he draws back, forehead resting against Kara's, as he breathes in this serenity. It feels like everything he's ever wanted pales in comparison to the soft light of this single moment.

"This is what I want," he says, low, barely breathed. "This. You. They can't come apart."

Jonah leans back against his satchel, and his free hand reaches up to lace fingers with hers, the other still seated comfortably around her waist. His cheek brushes against her forehead, unable to resist and pull away from Kara's gravity - bent by the pull of the warmth of her body. His lips still burn, and there's an unfamiliar trembling at the deepest core of him; the emotional intensity dizzying after a cold and self-denying lifestyle. He can't take it all in at once. It feels like he might fly apart.

Instead, he refuses to let her go, and settles in more comfortably for the night. "We'll talk after our extra is gone," he says, still just a bare movement of his lips. "I - have some things stashed, around the Mojave. I'll probably move a few in."

There it is.

Fortunes joined.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

If she was someone else, that might’ve made her cry. How had they gotten here? Why’d she spend so much time antagonizing him? She hadn’t known what was under there, and that she was getting to see it even a little... It’s important. So little mattered to her other than her freedom, the ability to self determine her fate as far as she could until either one of her adventures ended bad or someone finally got provoked enough to off her. She’s inherently lucky and she’s cocky about it, but everyone had to cash in their chips at some point, Kara knows. She’s comfortable with that, happy. She’s gotten what she wanted out of life, and through it all-was very cheerfully certain how little any of it fucking mattered anyway.

But now here she is being told she’s wanted, the warmth and fuzziness reflected right back at her. Maybe they knew better, but they knew better together, and...they would see each other through.

“You got it, big guy.” Her heart beats, but the pace is steady and strong rather than rabbit fast, the quiet calm tingling in her fingers and chest, her soul. This was good. This was a good thing. A very good thing.

Those large blue eyes are focused and warm, a care and attention she just flat didn’t display anywhere else. Kara was flighty, notoriously ADD addled-but he had the whole of it. She wants this too. The red head bows her head and curls up a little, leaning against his chest with a content sigh. “And Hrolf.” Kara adds, her lips curled into an amused smile. She’s going to get to pet that dog.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray hums, content, his arms secure around Kara, her body light and warm atop of his. The comparisons, the counts of times this hasn't happened, they fall away. All is now. "He's been following me around for a year, girl," he says, and turns his head to nuzzle into that bright hair he's never been able to ignore. "You'll have to work at it."

But who knows? So far, only good things have come of it.

"Sleep," he says to Kara, and it does something in his chest - hot and tight, the only thing in himself he'd have ever called beautiful - to watch her eyes flutter closed. The sensation of trust humbles him, and Jonah curls around this tiny woman, and surrenders himself to her just as completely.

~*~

The Khans still look shitty by the time he and Kara make it over there, but with every mile put between their group and the Sierra, Vanessa grows more vivacious and more talkative, the shadow of her time there passing off her shoulders like a cloudy day. She's clearly a tough woman to shake something like that, and in that resolution Moray can see why Kara thought this one was something to go back for.

It's strange, respecting someone for things aside from job performance and self-disgust.

The most confusing turn was Vanessa falling in love with her new voice, and trying to sing everything, first as a joke and secondly to tease Kara. The singer's throat it had been taken from had a low vibrato that Moray could see shaking men in their boots from the huskiness of it. Unfortunately, she didn't know any good lyrics to go with that voice, and had made jokes out of it.

"Prairie rat, molerat, ca-za-dor . . . " Vanessa sings, apparently some Khan kid's rhyme to memorize what laid out in the Mojave. "Lake - lurk, night - stalk, mantis! Death - claw, -"

"Please stop," Moray drones, without turning around. The Khan encampment finally slips into view, after a solid hour of Vanessa singing literally everything that goes through her brain. It had ceased being amusing. "We're there. Go away now."

The irritability is a little faked, and Kara can probably tell. The hard lines and rigid friction is gone from his body. He moves smooth, and the veiled contempt in his stare has been reduced to passivity. Most of all, he can't really stop touching Kara whenever the occasional opportunity arises: passing her things, helping her up a rise, bumping shoulders on the trail. He doesn't push, but even the brush of her skin is something that tangibly lightens his world for a time.

He can't even be upset about it.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Ooooh, maybe do the one about the sand again.” Kara teases them both in one stroke, infinitely amused as ever. She’s in a good mood. She’s usually in a good mood, but this was somehow more companionable-more smiles and less smirks. She’s particularly amused because earlier in the morning she had reverse pickpocketed Vanessa. Undetected by the Khan, she’d tucked a neatly pinned sheath of prewar dollars into the woman’s pants pocket. You couldn’t return from the Sierra empty handed, after all.

Billy. They had said her brother had gone out after Vanessa with a couple of Khans...she hopes he hadn’t gotten himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of again. That was someone who just never seemed to catch a break-but hopefully her luck held, and he’d be as alive as his sister was.

Kara was rocking the one sleeved jacket as if it was the season’s hottest item-better than having her whole side exposed all over the place, at the moment-cocky stance returning as they sailed into the place in triumph. Billy -was- alive, and the two siblings were, once again, reunited.

Kara made a crack and coughed pointedly, and Billy paid up. Fair wages for hard work-all of thirty caps. Meh, it was just for show anyway. She didn’t work for free, after all…

Unlike last time though, there’s no offers of a party and a drunken dance around the fire-there weren’t as many Khans around. Matter of fact, those that were seemed downright tense and sullen, just not with them.

Hm.

Regis catches them on their way back down the slope, hailing the pair with a wave. “Kara. I see you’ve brought Vanessa back to us again.”

“Yep. Found her mostly good as new for her brother and already got paid, ‘less you’re offering us something on top of that.” She’s not serious, and winks at him. “Everybody’s kinda down seeming though.”

Regis nods. “Karl’s removal,” He begins gravely. “Has caused some trouble, as well as news of what Caesar’s Legion is like. Papa Khan is no tyrant...he listens to his advisors, but the burden of leadership is upon him. Jack and Diane, Melissa have all withdrawn support for our alliance with Caesar.”

“Makes sense. He’s not kind on the ladies.” Kara says casually, watching him. This was the in she was looking for, pretty sure. “What about you?”

Regis considers a moment. “The NCR made a mistake...but I do not think it intentional. I think we need to put the past behind us and stride forward. If we help them, perhaps we would be better off.”

“Ah.”

“Papa Khan would never support this, however.”

“Maybe I could go talk to him some. Me and Moray.” Not that Moray was going to do much talking, she knows. She just doesn’t want one of the Khans starting something with him-that’s what had happened with her and while it got her accepted ‘round the place, she can’t imagine Moray’s brand of winning would please anybody.

“He might appreciate that. You exposed Karl. He has talked about this at length.”

“Eh, Karl exposed Karl. Asshats gonna asshat.”

Regis doesn’t seem to know how to take that statement, just nods.

To the Long House, then.

“Lookit me-” Kara mutters to her taller companion. “I’m wading into politics.” She grins, but really-that’s crazy.

Papa Khan’s sitting in his usual place. His eyes shift from the untouched foodstuffs before him and focus on Kara and Moray, an incline of his head to each. “Vanessa?”

“We found her no problem.” Kara quips, once again dragging a chair in front of the table he sat at, plopping down in it backwards. “She’s celebrating with Billy now.”

The man nods. “Thank you, Kara Walker, Moray.” Silence.

“Regis says you’re reconsidering your alliance with Caesar.” Kara prods, plowing ahead.

“I have heard things from my most trusted Khans...and the falseness of his emissary, you saw this.” He considers the petite mercenary. “You knew of it.”

“Had a feeling.” Kara says evasively, still feeling him out.

“I want to leave a legacy of greatness when I die, Kara Walker. My tribe deserves better than this, cowering in a canyon and living on scraps. Perhaps with Caesar-”

“The Legion’s bad news, Papa.” Kara’s dropped all pretense now. The doubt is there, she moves to widen it. “I’ve heard the stories from the tribals who’ve escaped their decimations and shit-I’ve been through their lands. Moray knows ‘em for what they are too.”

She turns her head to look at him, then back to Papa.

“They’ll enslave your people, not lift them up.”

“If I do not join with Caesar’s Legion, where will I find my tribe’s lost glory? With the NCR, as Regis suggests? They killed our people. Women and children-slaughtered them like dogs.”

“You don’t need either one of these guys Papa. You’re playing the Mojave game and trying to pick a side when both have got their sins-past and future ones to come. The hell do you care about the Dam? It’s not your fight.” Kara’s not as empty headed as she pretends-she knows people. She knows how they tick, how to get them to see what she wants them to. “The Khans are living on ghost stories of better times-forget them. Claim your own glory, and leave both Caesar and the NCR to rot.”

“A destiny unburdened by the past.”

“Exactly.” Kara sits back, grins. Something else comes to mind, something Moray had said and had resonated. “And then you die with your people free of these chains.”

Papa Khan rose to stand. “Yes. I will lead us away from this conflict, break this alliance. You are welcome wherever we set up camp, Kara. You are one of us. You are a Khan.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray makes but a single interjection in the entire conversation Kara has with the Khans.

"The Legion has subsumed eighty-six tribes in their expansion to the Colorado river," he says, empty of inflection. "Now they all answer to the name legionaire and nothing else. I passed over their land on my way here, to the Mojave. There are no flags and no farms, no homes and families. Caesar burned them all. If you bend the Khan's knee to him, it will not be the Khans who rise back up. It will be slaves, in red."

~*~

The return to the Vault is a decent clip, but Moray makes a brief side foray to pick up a pair of backpacks and a footlocker hidden inside a barrel marked 'radioactive material', down a disused sewage grate, past a dead mirelurk nest and a pair of mines. He stores the containers atop Lucky's back, and whatever Kara's provocations and insinuations, answers nothing about whatever may be in there.

The Vault door closes behind them - Lucky outside grazing on a weed patch, Hrolf padding inside along them - and Moray sets down the collection with a groan, and pops the first backpack open, pulling out (what else) a series of guns and gun parts. He sits down immediately and begins taking apart his trusty shotgun, oiling and cleaning it of the residue that had collected inside after the clinging fog of Sierra Madre.

"Probably want to do this with your piece soon as possible too, that shit looked corrosive," Moray directs. "You like that - whatever it's called, right?"

The footlocker is books. He'd had a collection of them, from a full King James Bible, to the Study of Thought, a compilation of essays from some fool named C.S. Lewis his father had liked, and a couple he'd squirreled away, the most dog-eared and worn of which are Pathology and Deviance, and The Evil That Men Do, both comprehensive novels and studies of the unsocialized mind. Particularly, that of the killer's.

The other backpack, he knows, is his father's badge, and those of the Regulator team he'd killed, along with his father's coat. There's an old, beaten revolver in there, still gleaming after years in storage. There's a pair of dice with no faces, and a book with blank pages, bound in pale leather. There's a china mask, white and featureless. There is a knife, nondescript, but stained dark on the blade.

Moray pushes away the thoughts and glances up at Kara with a raised eyebrow. "Well. What now?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara tosses the rope toy she’d made-now very chewed on and fraying-to Hrolf soon as the lights came on, just about. She’s still pleased as pie he liked it.

Now she gets to see what he’s got packed up in there-she’s beyond curious. She had joked and prodded on the way but he’d kept mum. Her guesses had been ridiculous and silly the whole time.

Aaaaand it’s gun parts. It’s probably all gun parts. Kara huffs a laugh.

“Lil Devil.” Kara provides happily, drawing and considering the modified handgun. He’s right-she should take care of it, it was a nice piece. Down right professional looking-which was more than she can say for anything else she’s ever owned. “Small but packs a punch. And with the barrel change, just plumb unique, ‘swhy I looked at it in the first place.”

And then Kara blinks as she realizes something. “...you know I fired it exactly once that whole time? And it was wide, damned mutant was slamming me around. Got more use outta my knife than I did my shiny new gun. Poor thing must feel neglected.”

The footlocker turns out to have books. That actually doesn’t surprise her-might’ve last month, but not now. He clearly picked up smarts from somewhere, all that philosophy and stuff. “I learned to read startin’ with terminals.” Kara’s at his elbow, curiously peering into the footlocker. “Something to make myself useful since I was too small to be any good at fighting, that age.” She’d needed to be useful, and hacking was something not everybody could do. On top of being small enough to squeeze through places the others couldn’t, of course.

“Then when I’d find books, I’d take 'em back, try to puzzle them out when folks weren't around. Took a while, but eventually I got pretty good at it.” A bit of a grin. “Spelling’s mostly terrible still, though. And I can’t write for shit.”

Had his dad taught him to read? His mom maybe? Had there been some kinda school? She’s explored a few old world schools before. Kara has no idea what growing up in any kind of actual civilization was like, honestly. She doesn't ask though. Still light on the questions despite her burning curiosity.

“You can make room anywhere you want.” She says as she places a little stack of Sierra Madre chips just so on the shelf with the Death Claw horn, one leaning against it, a few flat. She’s pleased with the display. “Make yourself at home!”

"Well. What now?"

“Showers. We’re a mess.” The red head shrugs out of her one armed jacket and holds it up, considering it. Given some of the things she normally was wearing, there’s sure to be some plan in mind-come to think of it, did Kara own any clothing she hadn’t altered in some way? Her eyes flick to him before stubbornly hugging her jacket tight. “Hey, this baby is lucky. It ain’t going nowhere, I’m going to fix it.”

The vault suit was a total wash, but she’ll cut out the sun at least, once it was free of red fog grime. That’d been hard work. Under it, she’s gross-it’s no wonder a shower was first on her mind. That was one of the prime benefits of the her little hideaway-clean, hot water whenever she fancied it, which was often. It beat cold baths-Kara liked to be clean. She likes to smell nice, and not just for what it adds to her negotiation skills. Bathing was a luxury she had spoiled herself on soon as she had any kind of money, matter of fact. So the facilities here saved her caps, a solid investment if there ever was one.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray gives Kara a fish eye. "I don't know why your first response, when something bigger and uglier than you shows up, is to go swing at it with something instead of shooting it. Did you name your bat? That would make sense, at least."

He pulls the wreckage of the LMG around from its shoulder satchel and sets it on a bench at the side, then sets the locker of books under it, claiming that particular bit of furniture for his own stuff. Then he dumps off the remains of the fatigue with a roll of his shoulders, grimacing at it. Despite his best efforts, the thing was a done deal: burned through on the chest and arm, soaked with greenish ichor, and charred all over from the explosion. Its heat retention was shot, and the bulletproof lining had been ruptured.

"Salvage the jacket if you can, but this thing is shot," Moray acknowledges, and tosses it down, left in his undershirt and shorts. He nods to Kara and then rises to make for the shower. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to wash this crud off. I still have some Dean on me."

The showers are a fucking blessing, after everything. He strips and slides into the stall with a sigh, letting the water run down over him, as he leans his head against the tiled wall and soaks the heat in.

Home. He has a home again. And Kara.

Things are better than they've ever been.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Well I try to talk at it first, actually.” Kara says with a smirk. “That one’s McSluggo.” The bad didn’t have a name but she christens it on the fly anyway, infinitely amused. “The one I didn’t take is Henry.” She’s ridiculous.

He strips down out of his ruined fatigues and Kara distracts herself-but when his back is turned she absolutely gives him a study. The broad shoulders and muscled back, his powerful legs and sculpted ass-yeah. He’s a man alright. And some kind of specimen of it, too.

For a minute, Kara considers joining him, make some pilthy joke about conserving water, her usual banter. The idea is appealing...but no, that’s too easy. Maybe it’s better to let him have his privacy. Didn’t feel quite right, jumping so far ahead. This wasn’t like before, rolling somebody out of amusement.

Besides. She really needs a shower-the stimpack had done it’s work but she wants to scrub off the burned skin and dried sweat, the ick that had been the ever present fog. It’d been a few days at this point-the need to be clean surpassed any thought of entertainment for now.

~*~

The LMG was flipped over, Kara having looked it over so she could ruminate on what she could do with it. It was the only thing disturbed though-she had respected his privacy. (No small amount of effort for the ever curious mercenary.)

Kara had unpacked and repacked her bag with the usual load out, had a swig or two of celebratory whiskey as she turned the emitter in her hands, set it on the pool table until she could decide where to put the ghost starlet (maybe right at the entrance? Next a coat rack or something, that’d be kind of funny) laid out a neat folded pile of clothes to change into, and was currently working on that jacket of hers, a little messy box of sewing supplies open on a shelf and Kara armed with a seam ripper, going to town removing what was left of the charred sleeve. She thinks she’s going to replace both arms, maybe with blue denim to contrast with the dark, maybe something to match the dark brown, reddish leather she’d sewn on either side of the zipper some time ago. Or maybe she’d replace that too, to match the sleeves.

The possibilities were endless! It’s a great opportunity.

Her back is to him when he returns, removing the last few stitches attaching the sleeve. “Good shower?” She inquires as before, idle. She set down her tool and gave the jacket turned vest a glance. Nah, she needs the sleeves. They made sleight of hand WAY easier. She studies the rusty shoulder pauldron and the pins and doodads attached beneath it-the noticeable place where the shield shaped bird pin had been removed. She likes the shape. She's not sure why.

Kara slung her jacket over one of her crazy projects on the functional side of her shelves and turned around to snag her folded clothes from the back of the couch. "My turn!"

~*~

Kara was a fan of very long showers, it turned out. When she returns her pale skin was practically gleaming, a fluff to her scented, shiny red hair from drying. She's wearing casual duds-another white brief undershirt and a pair of beige cargo pants with clear oil stain splotches-one drawn on into the shape of a smiley face on her front right hip. They had the loose pocket on the side of each shapely thigh, the material tightened in each calf to easily slide into boots. They didn't look like Kara's normal spunky outfits-more practical, something she probably worked in given the he oil stains.

"Human again." She asserts with a sigh.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray hums in acknowledgement. Lil' Devil is in his component pieces before him, stripped down and oiled to a gleam as he works the caustic, clinging film of the Sierra out of its innards. "Took a look at the LMG; it's sunk," he says, brief. "Action and receiver are inoperable, barrel's fused, rifling's melted. Whole thing is a wash. Asshole robot had good aim."

The memory of that thing's freakish control leaves him a little cold. In a straight up fight, that thing would have taken him apart in a heartbeat - its shots were perfectly on target, its durability was ridiculous, and it had moved faster and with more dexterity than anything living Moray had witnessed. If it had just kept its distance and plugged him with that pistol instead of trying to grapple, it might have killed him anyways.

Lucky. The corners of his lips turn down. His continued companionship of Kara will not be decided by this, whatever her talents. Jonah chooses this.

Lil' Devil snaps together in his hands, spins once on his finger, and he holds it out butt first to Kara. "Let me see that jacket. I know a little about discrete armorsmithing."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“You can probably do that in the dark, huh?” Kara’s watching his reassembly with curious interest, accepting her newly cleaned gun happily. “Thanks! Looks just as sparkling new as it did in its case.”

Vivid blue eyes flicker to him a moment, studying.

“Well...alright. Just don’t turn it upside down or anything, lotta stuff in there.” She retrieved the worn article, brought it over to him as she plopped onto the couch next to him. Kara didn’t own a lot of things that mattered, that she’d be sad to lose. Like she’d said, she didn’t do permanence.

It’d certainly seen a lot of action. It was a cropped women’s jacket two sizes too large for Kara, made out of a dark denim that had seen better days. The wear spots on the back were a perfect outline of the merc’s shoulder blades from where she’d clearly crawled and sidled through some very tight spaces, and at some point she’d stitched leather on either side of the zipper, another obvious wear spot half in that and half in the denim over the heart-a rectangular piece of slightly curved metal, no doubt Kara’s version of ‘armor’. The fur collar was dusty and about as worn out as the rest of it-but it was still a durable piece of trade mark clothing. The small, rusty metal pauldron on the right shoulder looked like it’d give you tetanus if you cut yourself on it-and then of course were all her pins and buttons beneath it, pre war slogans and various symbols, ancient medals-from all over the country, it half looked like.

The inside of the jacket was lined with pockets on either breast and the small of her back. There’s various small tools for lock picking and working on terminals and other electronics, bubble gum, mentats, cards, a switchblade with a pearl handle-just all KINDS of various items and objects for the woman to whip out and utilize at the drop of a hat. A metal ring to hold and conceal a grenade in the curve of her waist was on one interior strap too.

It wasn’t just a jacket, it was Kara’s apparent travel toolbox.

“My tattoo and this jacket came with me all the way from the Capital Wasteland.” She says, stretching. “It’s almost as lucky as I am, if you can believe that.”

 

[Obuzeti]

"Don't need to," Moray says, and opens up the sleeves to reveal the warp threads underneath the denim proper. With a needle he works thread in under those, sliding it in through the base material to create an additional parallel stitch. He sets to this process patiently - it looks like it'll take a while, but be sturdy. "Going to add ballistic patches along the outer elbow, forearm, and backhand. You get in close a lot; if you end up having to use your arms to block, I'd prefer they stay attached in the process."

The ballistic patches are already laid out beside him, rescued from a pocket of his fatigues: it looks like tough deathclaw leather, studded on the outside with inset metal rivets to break a blade's edge. The thread holding the patch in place is looped about the rivet in what probably was an hour's worth of work, but it made it basically impossible to tear off.

The dark, reptilian skin heavily contrasts with the faded denim, giving it a wild look that'll probably be right at home on Kara. Moray pauses and considers briefly, tapping his needle on the jacket. "I still have some deathclaw bits saddled up on Lucky," he says after a moment. "You want me to lock in a pair of clawtips on the patch that goes on your backhand? They'll extend maybe half an inch past your knuckles. Give you a nasty punch."

Deathclaw is just such a nice material to work with. He admits now, with some amusement, that he hadn't been too upset to hit that nest. Killing 'Claws is old hat to him, and a fresh supply of their leather and bones always comes in useful.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara listens as he talks, his expertise feeding into her endless curiosity-and the thought going into his work flattering, nice.

“I do like having two arms.” Kara says with a smirk, her legs tucking up under her and an elbow resting on the back cushion, a hand supporting her head as she watches him work, sitting sideways on the couch to do so. It’s an odd thing, watching him work at that. Comfortable, quiet. Relaxing.

She has to admit to it looking pretty badass, too.

“Oof, that sounds nasty.” Kara says, curling her small left fist and considering it with a grin. “That’d turn my mean left hook into a God damned travesty-I prefer to talk my way out of things, but sometimes it’s a fist fight. I approve.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray gives the slightest flick of an eye, like an eyeroll if it was lazy. "I approve of you having two arms as well," he replies. "You'd look pretty fucking lopsided, otherwise. Give me a couple hours, I'll tune this up. Knuckles will probably take another day, I have to fashion the inserts and fix them so that they don't fall out the first time you deck something. First rule of modification: make sure it stays on."

He looks content, surprisingly enough. Not to the same serene reach as he gets when they're intimate, but the calmness of a man at his craft.

"Used to do this a lot," he says, after a minute or two of quiet. "Ran crafts and repair for the Regulator crew my father ran with. It's how I earned my keep. Never really stopped; no one out this way knows how to graft or splice worth a damn, so I do it myself."

His lips quirk, truly amused. "Look at us. Regulator's kid shacking up with a Raider kid. Bring out the pitchforks."