Chapter Text
Arcade Gannon heard a lot of rumors while working at the Old Mormon Fort. It wasn’t that he was seeking them out or anything, but while silently hunched over his microscope there wasn’t much to do other than listen to the idle chatter outside his tent. He disregarded most of the gossip he heard and the whispers about a courier stirring up trouble down south were no different. A Powder Ganger who was dragged in ranted and raved about a “grim reaper” in the form of a courier who’d torn through their whole base. The man was high as a kite and Arcade wouldn’t have been surprised if the whole thing was a chem induced hallucination.
That was, until he overheard someone telling Julie about worrying news coming out of Novac. Said the proprietor of the motel had been shot in the dead of night. No witnesses, but the last time anyone saw her alive she was with a stranger identifying himself only as “Courier Six”. He was gone by morning.
Maybe he was the same courier the Powder Ganger had been on about, then again, maybe not. It didn’t make much difference to Arcade unless he made a move against the Followers or Freeside. No, he would mind his own business as he had always done.
Several days passed, give or take, and Arcade swore he could feel his brain slowly turning to mush inside his skull. Experiment number ‘I stopped counting two years ago’ could, shockingly, be marked down as a failure of pathetic proportions. He sighed and tossed the microscope slide onto the other end of his desk with the rest. Movement in his periphery catching his attention, he swallowed a startled squeak as he turned to the stranger standing halfway inside of his tent, haloed by the soft sunlight streaming in from behind him.
“I… uh… hi,” Arcade greeted after a beat of silence, the intruder eyeing him over curiously. He cleared his throat. “If you're looking for medical help, try the other doctors. I'm just a researcher. Not even a particularly good one.”
The stranger blinked at him before quickly shaking his head. “I- uh. No, sorry. I already saw the lady with th-the… the,” he waved a hand over his hair and pointed upward with increasing frustration.
“Mohawk?” Arcade ventured, quickly met with a relieved nod. “That would be Julie Farkas, for future reference.”
“Ok.”
Another moment lapsed. Arcade tapped a finger against his leg absently in a bid to avoid shifting uncomfortably as the stranger silently watched him. His small, scrawny figure was hidden under the well worn jean jacket that hung from his rawbone frame and a mess of loose, dark curls that stuck out in every direction. The Mojave Express patch sewn onto his lapel was the only identifying marker he could make out.
Strange. The Fort had seen more couriers that month than in the entirety of the previous calendar year.
Arcade broke the silence, “So is there anything I can help you with or were you just here for my riveting company?”
“I was just, uh, looking around. What k-kind of re-research do you do?” Despite the stutter, he didn’t read as nervous, posture stiff and confident, if not contagiously awkward.
Arcade gestured vaguely towards the potted desert flora lining his desk. “Oh, you know. Finding alternative treatments for common illnesses and injuries. Stimpaks out of barrel cacti and other fantastic improbabilities. As far as fruitless wastes of time go, it's quite noble in its aims.”
The courier cocked an eyebrow. “You study plants?”
“Well, I’m no botanist, but one day we’ll run out of hospitals to loot and we’ll be stuck with the brunt of producing new medical supplies. While I genuinely doubt that the future of medicine lies in miraculously heretofore undiscovered properties of agave and mesquite, hope springs eternal.”
He attempted to catch the courier’s eyes but, never looking Arcade fully in the face, his gaze wandered over the table and the canvas behind him. The unsettling sensation of being watched far too closely still danced along the back of Arcade’s neck.
“Then why not…” the annoyed huff the courier let out mimicked the same frustration as earlier, once again searching for a word and eventually settling on, “P-patch people up like the others?”
Arcade resisted the urge to sigh at the question. While he was being discomfitingly nosy, it was also the first time in a while that Arcade had had the chance to socialize with someone who wasn’t with the Followers. Not to mention he had been approximately five seconds away from throwing his microscope across the tent in frustration when he had been interrupted, so he was glad for the distraction.
“Not all Followers are ‘people persons’. Besides, someone needs to do research. I have no problem with Julie sticking me back here.”
He probably should have stopped talking there, but words kept falling out of his mouth of their own volition. “Out of sight, out of mind. There are worse things one can be, though I do admit, it is a bit boring. Though it has a noble goal, I don't think this research will yield much fruit. No pun intended.”
He was still talking. Why was he still talking? “I'm fine doing research back here, even if it is boring... and pointless... and a complete waste of time.”
The courier gave him a confused look and Arcade was painfully aware that the conversation had turned more into him rambling than anything else.
He sighed at himself. “Don't mind me. I'm just voicing my thoughts so they don't burrow out of my skull in a fit of abject despondency.”
The breath of laughter he received in response eased the quickly rising tension in his shoulders, if barely; it was the only acknowledgement he was given.
After several seconds, he concluded, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really should be getting back to my work.”
The courier looked him over again as if sizing him up and took a step forward. “The work you’ve been bitching about? I mean. Y-y-you could come with me instead.”
That was not an offer he would have anticipated in a million years. Most people would consider a boring, middle aged doctor to be among the last of their choices for a traveling companion— with good reason.
He scoffed. “No offense intended, but why should I go anywhere with you?”
The courier thought for a moment, clearly wracking his brain for an acceptable answer. The avalanche of words that followed were so jumbled that Arcade could barely discern any of it. “Well…this place- I-I don’t know the- th-there’s a lot- it’s complicated and. You’re smart. I want to h-hel-help the Followers and…”
Arcade silently cursed his soft spot for stupid men. He knew this was a bad idea, he had research to do. Boring, soul-sucking research with no end in sight. Staring at the same four walls of his tent for the foreseeable future, making no tangible progress. Damn it.
“Hmm… wow. You sound like you really do need some help. Look, I can help you out, but you can't do anything stu-” he cut himself off. “I mean, you can't... help bad people, who want to hurt the locals in Freeside. If you do, I'll leave. Does that make sense?”
The courier beamed before abruptly wiping the smile from his face as if he had forgotten himself. The blank mask he replaced it with was nearly impenetrable, his voice mirroring it. “Of course. The- uh- J… Julie gave me a list of ch-chores to do here in Freeside. W-we can start there.”
Arcade smiled and nodded, admittedly relieved to hear that Julie had offered a guiding hand at the very least. “Sounds like a plan. Let me pack a bag and wrap up a few loose ends and I’ll meet you at the gate, alright?”
Turning on his heel as if he was a soldier being dismissed, the courier disappeared into the courtyard.
With one sparsely packed messenger bag and a hushed goodbye to his greenery, Arcade tracked Julie down to a staff tent, clearing his throat in the doorway.
“Oh, Arcade.” Julie glanced down at his bag and raised an eyebrow. “Are you going somewhere?”
Shifting from one foot to the other, he nodded shortly. “Yes, that’s the plan. I figure Freeside could use some hands-on assistance. I’ll be in the area if there are any research related emergencies you need me for,” he quipped, eliciting a small huff of laughter.
He had anticipated some light pushback to his departure, but Julie merely tilted her head ever so slightly. “Are you following after that courier, then?”
It was unclear if she had seen him enter Arcade’s tent or if it was her inexplicable way of reading people. He had a suspicion it was the latter.
“Is that a problem?”
She didn’t miss a beat, shaking her head and waving a hand dismissively. “No, not at all. Just promise me you’ll be careful, both of you. The last thing we need is more preventable injuries eating up our supplies.”
“I’ll try, but no guarantees.”
Rolling her eyes, she all but herded him out the door. Without further ceremony, he crossed the yard and yanked open the creaking wooden gate separating the Followers from the crumbling, dilapidated structures that made up Freeside.
Freed from the shoddy lighting of his tent, he could make out the courier’s features clearly, overgrown hair falling away from his face as he looked up at Arcade from where he leaned stiffly against the large sign marking the entrance. His skin glowed a warm mid-brown in the blinding daylight, prominent nose balanced by big, dark eyes that remained bright despite the sleeplessness etched beneath them and the disgruntled near-misery his expression rested on.
“Are you alright?”
The courier tilted his head. “More than.”
Without anything to go on aside from his gut feeling, Arcade accepted the answer easily.
“Oh! Before I forget, I-I-I don’t think I caught your name.”
Arcade hadn’t realized they’d not gotten a proper introduction. Had he really just agreed to follow this stranger without even knowing his name?
“Arcade Gannon. Doctor, technically, but I’m not much for titles.”
The courier didn’t offer a hand, but he nodded, murmuring to himself, Arcade before returning, “Cour- Courier Six. Or… that’s the title. You can call me Sol.”
“Soul?”
He nodded, but pointed up towards the midday sun. “Sol.”
Arcade’s heart skipped a beat as his brain preemptively jumped to the Latin term for ‘sun’. He quickly reeled it in, walking himself back to the more obvious connection to the Spanish language. That translation was far more likely and far less concerning.
What wasn’t as quickly or reassuringly explained away was the familiar, unique title Sol had offered.
“Wait wait wait. I’m starting to remember hearing some rumors about you and a murder down in Novac? And something about a mass grave at the NCRCF. None of them favorable, if that wasn’t obvious.”
If the accusations caught Sol off guard, he didn’t show it, but his reply was quiet. “She sold s-s-someone into slavery to the Legion.” He sounded distant, a report of events rather than a defense of his own innocence. “Th-the Powder Gangers were going to raid Goodsprings.”
Arcade stared at him. “She as in Jeannie May Crawford?”
“Yeah.”
Jeannie May had always been overly polite and cordial with him on the occasions he visited Daisy, perhaps on the nosey side, but non-threatening all the same. Arcade swallowed the disgust that coiled up in him with the news. There was always the chance that Sol was lying, but…
“I trust your solution to every problem isn’t murder?”
He didn’t like the beat that passed before Sol shook his head fervently. “No. I promise.” The fiery conviction in his tone wouldn’t be enough to keep knowledge of his former problem-solving from gnawing at the pacifist side of Arcade’s brain, but he could hardly claim himself a saint. To have clean hands in The Wastes either meant you were extremely privileged, extremely rich, or soon to be extremely unlucky. He could offer Sol the benefit of the doubt.
“If you say so. What’s first on the list?”
“List?”
Arcade had never been accused of having a photographic memory himself, but he was beginning to notice a pattern with Sol.
“You said Julie-”
“Oh! Uh…” Sol quickly buried his nose in the Pip-Boy on his wrist, mouthing something to himself for nearly a minute before tentatively saying, “Bill… R?”
“Ah, she probably wanted you to talk to Bill Ronte about getting treatment. Last I heard, he was staying near the Atomic Wrangler. I could show you the way, if you want, give you the grand tour of the remnants of Freeside’s derelict infrastructure. Free of charge, even.”
Sol laughed. “Cool. I-I think I left my c-caps in my other bag, so…”
Easily mirroring his brief smile, Arcade gestured for Sol to follow as he set off down the road.
He was really doing this, huh? He was going to accompany this dubiously reputable stranger off on a half-cocked mission to do god knows what. He was pretty sure that this would either be the worst decision of his life or the best. Only one way to find out. Fortis fortuna adiuvat, after all.