Benny frowned at the glittering trinket the merchant held out to him. "Have anything fancier? Shinier?"

Beside him, Tony sighed loudly. "Boss, you could signal vertibirds down with that thing. Ain't it enough?"

Benny ignored him. "Got anything like that? I need this to say..." He trailed off. When he was sweet talking his pussycat, the patter just rolled off a silver tongue. Trying to articulate actual emotions to someone who wasn't his Honor, now, that was tough.

The merchant grinned at him, but her eyes were wistful. "It needs to say, 'My man thinks I'm the best woman in the world.'"

Benny smiled back. "The only woman in the world." Tony sighed again, even more loudly this time. Benny ignored him again.

The woman helping him didn't notice or chose to ignore Tony as well, simply placing the bit of jewelry aside and turning to the safe in the wall. The protectrons at the door perked up and focused on them, but Benny had no intention of busting the place up. No, he was strictly legit now, had been since he got back from Legion captivity. His baby was legit, or at least mostly, as far as they knew; the least, the very least, he could do for her was try to live up to her own standards...to her name, for chrissakes.

And try to shower her with gifts that expressed how he felt about her. Which was kind of impossible.

The woman turned back around, holding up a ring with a small jewel that glittered in the beam of sunlight through the window and cast tiny rainbows across the counter. The jewel might be small, but the light casting through it was showy, over the top for the wasteland. So in Benny's opinion it was perfect.

He didn't bother asking the price. This was for his baby; price was irrelevant. He paid what she asked without question and slipped the carefully wrapped bundle into his pocket. Tony sighed again but held his tongue- until they left the store.

"Why you spendin' such a fortune on that dame, Boss? That bitch is colder than a lakelurk's balls."

Benny laughed at the boy's scowl, which only made the kid redden and scowl all the more. Tony had resented Honor from the moment she'd broken his nose and knocked him on his ass in front of Swank, Louie, and about two dozen gamblers. Benny recalled the moment with a lot more fondness than Tony did; the kid had been put on duty at reception, responsible for frisking incomers for weapons, and he'd let someone through with a sawed-off. Honor had spotted the fink, thrown him out bodily herself, and rounded on Tony. Amid much swearing and shouting ("You stupid little son of a bitch! Do you have any idea who your chief is now? How many people want to kill him to take over the Strip?") Honor had, at some point during her tirade, decked the kid and sent him sprawling, nose and ego in equal pain. Benny knew some of the other Chairmen had distrusted Honor, that they saw her at best as a suspect outsider and at worst as an opportunist, but that little incident put their minds at ease. She was on the Chairmen's side, on Benny's side, and no one else's.

Of course, Tony still resented her, especially since the other guys wouldn't let him live it down.

They returned to the Tops. Still the Tops, and still his. His honey baby had taken care of Mr. House, rescued him from those Legion bastards, then tracked him down again to hand Vegas over to him, just like that. Hadn't wanted to run anything, she'd said. Done with being important. Done with being a target. Thought there was no one else capable and visionary enough to run the Strip but he. He grinned at the memory.

They stepped through the doors and into a firefight.

Swank and the others had abandoned the front desk; a suited body lay behind it but Benny didn't have a chance to check who it was. He and Tony flung themselves behind the planter behind the desk. Benny already had Maria drawn before he peered around the corner.

Lots of shouting, lots of gunfire, all of it centered around the tables between the front desk and the elevators. Three, four guys, looked like, spraying bullets out of odd-looking rifles. He'd worry about how they snuck them in later- right now he was far more concerned about his sweet pussycat who was, naturally, right in the thick of things.

The thugs had surprised her- had surprised everyone, obviously- as she wasn't wearing her armor. Instead she wore one of Benny's shirts, buttoned crookedly in three places, with her tummy, silken lingerie, and long legs bared. She held one of her favorite rifles and hammered away at the nearest thug. Other Chairmen exchanged shots with the other three, and the customers all seemed to have escaped or found shelter deeper inside the casino. Her bullets weren't making a dent in her target's armor, though, making Benny wonder what good he thought he was going to do with a pistol, and then she got a head shot that sent the back of the goon's skull flying. Benny grinned. One more for my baby. He waited until the thug with the best line of sight for him was distracted, then stepped out of cover and took aim.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another man, a fifth player, a pipe or club in his hand, and he was behind Honor. No one else seemed to notice him, dealing as they were with the shouting lunatics in front of them. Benny felt like he'd taken a dose of turbo that slowed the world down around him, but took him with it. He changed his aim, but too, too slow; something tugged hard at his arm, causing his shot to go wild. In the same split second Tony dropped to the floor beside him with a hole in his chest, and the fifth man brought the club down hard on the back of Honor's skull. She fell to the carpet and didn't move.

He bolted for her, suddenly unaware of the bullets flying around his head, and dropped to his knees at her side. "Pussycat, honey baby, wake up, talk to me, look at me-" All the while he gathered her in his arms, cradling her head against his chest with one hand and clenching her body against himself with the other. "Not now, not already, not like this..." He petted her face, watched for her eyes to flutter open, growing more panicked by the moment when they didn't. He became vaguely aware of people standing around him, but he couldn't stop to care whether they were the thugs or his own men. "Baby, baby, please. Open your eyes. For me. Please."

The rest of the world finally began to register as a rough shake of his shoulder. "Boss. Boss."

He spared a glance upward to see Swank and the others hovering over him. "We lost two of our boys...is she still breathing?"

Benny nodded. He wouldn't speak and risk there being a quaver in his voice; he was showing enough weakness, enough vulnerability, as it was. Swank turned to one of the others. "Get a doc, now. Fast."

Benny stayed in the floor, cradling Honor like a baby, unaware that he'd been shot himself until someone insisted that the Followers doctor look at his arm, too- the bullet that threw off his shot. The next hours he passed in a bewildered fog as the doc checked Honor over and they put her to bed. A few words floated through his haze, words already too painfully familiar, like "previous insult" and "head injury" and "brain damage." There was nothing more they could do. He sat by their bed, watching Honor not move, his elbow propped on the bedstand and cheek propped in his hand as the doctor dug into the meat of his upper arm with a pair of forceps to retrieve the slug sans med-x or stimpaks- all they'd had, he insisted go to her, for all the good it did. He watched her not move until his blood loss finally put him in the floor for Swank to find hours later.

He regained consciousness some time early the next morning. He'd been lain in bed next to her. Her hair splayed over the pillow, and he trailed his fingers through it. "Pussycat. I've been waiting for you to leave me for being a bastard. For hurting you." He caressed her cheek with his fingertips. She might as well have been a porcelain doll for the reaction he got. "And you've left me like this instead. Pussycat. What'm I supposed to do now?"