(A/N: It's the start of a new year, so you get a chapter in which our dumb!Courier spazzes out a little. You are welcome. Once again, thank you to my readers! I have quite a few chapters that are mostly done/outlined to the point they could be ready for posting soon, and from here on out things will start to pick up even more (it just takes a while…this is a really long fic). I also started a new job, and my internet has been pretty bad (read: none), so updating and beta-ing have been rather difficult, as has reviewing for those that have left me reviews. So if I haven't gotten right back to you with a review from something else, I will soon!)

V. Walkin' After Midnight

The air was starting to become chillier as the three made their way up the cracked remnants of Highway 157, eventually hitting patchy spots of snow amid the dusty, rolling hills. Rex bounded on ahead, chomping up mouthfuls of the cool ice crystals before burying his face in the frosty spots and rolling around. The Courier laughed, eventually chucking a snowball at Arcade before stopping, frozen, in the shadow of the most beautiful sight she could remember since losing her past.

"Oh my gosh," she whispered, looking up. "What is that amazing thing? It's so familiar and yet-"

Arcade glanced around them both, then down at Rex. The cyberdog stopped rolling and sneezed, tilting his head to the side; so Arcade looked back at the Courier and shrugged.

"What, uh, are you talking about?"

"That THING," the Courier cried, running happily toward a twenty-odd foot evergreen.

"A pine tree?"

Arcade furrowed his brow as the Courier danced happily around it, singing some sort of stupid song along with her Pip-Boy's radio, making him question the validity of her earlier 'lack of true brain damage' statement.

"So, um...uh, girl-with-no-name? That's just a pine tree. They grow all over the place up here."

"But not in the desert!" she said. "I don't remember ever seeing one before…or maybe I have and they make me happy! I don't know!"

"Well," Arcade said, leaving her to dance around the tree, "if it makes you happy, I won't argue with that. Come find me whenever you're ready to participate in an adult conversation, okay?"

"Wait," she cried, turning off her radio and racing across the dirty snow toward his retreating back. "Wait, wait, wait! Come back! I didn't mean to act stupid I just-"

"Acted stupid?"

The Courier sighed. "I suppose so. I just…that tree…?"

"It's okay." Arcade patted her on the shoulder. "Just try to remember that most people try not to freak out over ordinary things like trees, eh? I know you've lost a lot of memories, but attracting attention is not something I try to do very often, and you probably shouldn't either."

"I think," the Courier said, twisting to look back at the tree among a grove of smaller ones. "I think it really did remind me of something…something good."

"Something like home?"

The Courier moved to keep pace with him, watching Rex burrowing his muzzle into another snowdrift.

"Maybe."

.o.O.o.

The Courier looked down at her Pip-Boy's readout and sighed.

"Time?" Arcade asked, glancing over her shoulder.

"Midnight," she said, looking up into the starry expanse above. "We're almost there, right?"

"I actually see the gate," Arcade replied. "So that would be a fair assumption."

The Courier peered into the cold, foggy air that slipped down from the cap of the crater, channeled through a wall of sharpened sticks and funneled down the roadway. Up ahead the lights of a mansion-sized building flickered at her, and before it, large shapes moved in the lantern light. She almost hesitated, thinking of deathclaws, but Arcade put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Though your caution is commendable, as those are super mutants; they're friendly ones, last I checked. Remember I told you I've been here before?"

"I-," she said, hesitating and trying to choose her words carefully. "You may have proved okay at patching up a few broken things in my body, but, um, trusting you? Not entirely going to happen. I still barely know you."

"Very well," Arcade replied. He shrugged his pack up higher onto his right shoulder and headed off toward the crude fence, waving at the mutant guarding the gate. He was almost within shouting distance when something moved in the darkness beside him. In the next heartbeat the Courier's repeater was resting smoothly within her hands, aimed at the shadows, before Arcade could even turn.

"Not a wise move," she growled into the darkness.

The figure slipped into the moonlight, hands raised. Rex growled and turned around beside her, eyeing another two shadows quietly threading their way to her back. Arcade twisted slowly in the moonlight, looking the man up and down that stood before him.

"Easy, easy there, both of you. We don't have no problems and we aren't looking for trouble."

"Then what are you doing out here in the dark?" Arcade eased his hand to his plasma defender.

"A job," said one of the men Rex was growling at. "It's the muties we're after. Dunno why you'd want to come up this way, but I'd suggest you turn back before they get mad in the ensuing firefight and think you're easy prey. Hell, neither of ya is wearing any armor."

The Courier frowned at the man in front of her that seemed to be the leader. "What would you want with a bunch of super mutants that are just living on a mountain?"

"Well," he said, "it's like this. I'm a mercenary, and some of the higher ups in the NCR think that super mutants have been killing bighorners and raiding crops in the valley. Now, it may not be this group, but hey, not for me to decide or complain over. I'm here to do a job, get in, get paid. Perhaps Lady Karma will smile on me and my associates and some of the muties we kill today will be the ones responsible. But, either way, paycheck's a paycheck."

"You do realize," Arcade said, "that there's more mutants inside that fence then you could possibly have ammo for? If you had any small nuclear warheads in your arsenal, I'd say sure, you might stand a chance. But looks to me, sir, like all you have is a rifle and your boys over there don't look much better outfitted with a couple of plasma-based weapons. Plasma's slow. Have you ever tried to shoot down a charging mutant with plasma?"

"If I don't blow your head off first," the Courier added.

"I could take you, girlie," said one of the other mercenaries, raising his rifle.

She laughed. "Ya? Your leader would still be dead and my dog's aching to get real familiar with your throat. Think you could take us both?"

"All that aside," Arcade said, staring into the leader's face, hands out placatingly. "There isn't enough money in the universe that can be worth whatever some NCR bastard is offering you for this. He hadn't the guts to come all the way out here himself, so he had to hire some mercs he knew wouldn't survive just to make a scene. See where I'm going? Now if you want to be NCR's little martyrs, then go ahead, I won't stop you, and I'll even call off the PMS Avenger over there and her mongrel. But you'll still be dead. Mutants don't forget, or forgive."

The mercenary with his gun aimed at the Courier dropped the barrel and retreated a few steps, shaking his head. "Hey man, I didn't come all the way out here to be no bitch for the NCR. I got a family to feed. What you pullin' at, Nolan?"

Nolan, the leader, glanced over his shoulder then back at Arcade.

"Eh, I'm not pulling anything and you know it! We all have families Santigo, shut your mouth. How do we know this jackass is even telling the truth?"

"Why else would I be walking directly toward an entire town of super mutants?" Arcade answered.

Nolan looked over Arcade's shoulder toward the distant lights, then back at the other's face. Then his mouth set into a grim line and he shook his head as well.

"Fair enough. But I'm still owed half the caps. That mutant watching us at the gate looks threatened enough that he's been watching us for half the evening. If you guys know so much about him, why don't you ask him for a little bit of pay for our trouble, eh?"

"More like you owe me caps for wasting my time," the Courier said. "Seriously?"

"Oh just come on boss," the other merc said, shouldering his plasma rifle. "Let's go get a gecko for dinner and call it a night. Wife's been hounding me lately anyway about comin' back all banged up. She'll like that I didn't this time."

Nolan glanced at the mutant guarding the gate, then back at the girl with her rifle still raised. "Very well. But tell those muties they should watch their backs. Someone in the NCR ranks is definitely gunning for them."

Arcade let out an audible sigh when all three mercenaries were out of earshot, then turned toward the Courier. She was reholstering her rifle and patting Rex on his braincase softly.

"Well, Girl Friday, that went better than expected. Even if I did think for a moment there you were going to get us all killed."

"It's called bluffing," the Courier replied, "it's worked before."

"Then you must be lucky or-"

"Lucky or what?"

Arcade turned away again, starting back toward their destination.

"Lucky or something," he finally said. "Definitely fortunata uel aliquid."

When they reached the gate, the super mutant watching them ambled up, frowning as he glanced over their heads at the distant dots of the mercenaries heading out across the hillside. After several long moments of watching to be sure that they really were leaving, he glanced down at the two humans with a wry smile.

"Thank you for that and welcome back," he said, nodding to Arcade. "And welcome to you, human girl, you just saved us some trouble. Now, I do not know if you have related the rules, Arcade, to your companion. Therefore forgive me if I'm repeating anything."

The super mutant's eyes shifted to the Courier, and she realized that his face was surprisingly more mobile than that of the only other super mutant she knew, making her wonder if Mean Sonofabitch was actually abnormal.

"So," he continued, "welcome, as I said, to Jacobstown. I'm Marcus, and you will get along fine here if you remember not to stare at the nightkin. We'd prefer peace. And if you're NCR, please keep it to yourself."

"Marcus?" she said softly, her eyes drifting toward three other super mutants speaking to one another beside what appeared to be a small lake. One of them was talking animatedly, his hands moving, while his face remained strangely immobile, locked into a perpetual snarl. So, her mind concluded, Marcus is the abnormal one?

He snorted. "Yes, I'm Marcus, a first generation super mutant. When the Master's army disbanded, I kept the name and journeyed inland, looking for a place for myself. Along the way I met others like me, others who didn't quite know where they fit in."

"Others like-"

The Courier looked up at Marcus and realized that he was smiling at her ruefully, recognizing the awestruck and slightly frightened look in her eyes for what it truly was. He grunted, glancing in the direction of her gaze as she sized up a few more of the wandering mutants, realizing they were far more of a challenge in battle than she could take on if the need arose, and then sweeping his gaze back over to her face.

"Yes," he said, "many of the mutants here are first gens, like me, although we do accept anyone else who wishes for peace. Even the nightkin are welcome-"

"Night…kin?"

Marcus crossed his arms, not in aggression, but as if he were trying to determine what she was thinking about underneath the apparent confusion.

"They were the Master's elite band of assassins," Arcade answered, nudging her with an elbow. "Their skin is tinted blue from stealth field technology usage. Just don't stare at them. Make sense?"

The Courier shook her head, trying hard to focus, and then nodded. She was cold and all these monstrous creatures were frightening her. Sure, she could think her way out of a situation well enough, but this was starting to feel-

"Woman?" Marcus said, a slight tinge of worry lacing his voice.

"Where are you from?" the Courier asked, finally realizing her voice had returned and with it a sensation of something not unlike remembrance. "Sorry. Marcus…sounds familiar."

"Hmh," Marcus said, laughing, "it may well be that you've heard of me. I've traveled many miles in my lifetime. Walked the Wasteland with a tribal from Arroyo once, ran a town, nuked an oil rig-"

Arroyo. Inside of the Courier's mind, the tiny feeling of recognition flared into a solid warm strand of absolute awareness. Me…Arroyo…something about Arroyo and the radishes and the clay pots and all of these things are-

Instead she only said, "Where is Arroyo?"

Marcus shrugged, changing topics deftly. "Northwest of here, in a place the Commonwealth once called Oregon. Heard some call it New Arroyo now, though it's still the same hill of dust and trees it always was. Though to hear that tribal talk of it, made it out to be a mecca unlike any other. I suppose it's probably grown now, that was years ago."

"Are you okay?" Arcade was peering down at her, lifting his glasses off of his eyes to get a better look at her face. She was visibly shaking.

"Yes," the Courier said. "I-I just thought I remembered something…thought something…I'm confused now…I think?"

"That appears to happen rather regularly with you," Marcus said. He then caught himself, looking slightly ashamed. "I mean, not to be rude. It almost looked to me as if you'd seen something of great importance to you vanish right before your eyes. And then such a look crossed your face again."

"I think it would be best if we went to see Doctor Henry as soon as we can?" Arcade said, waving a hand toward Rex. "We traveled from New Vegas to get repairs for this cyberdog, and hopefully at least a bed for the night? This isn't the Emerald City, I know; but hell, we're still seeking the wizard of neuroscience for a brain and even Dorothy was given a place to rest when she reached her destination."

Marcus smirked, the expression radiating into his eyes.

"You speak quite a bit of truth for being little more than a kid, come along then."

"Kid?" Arcade replied. "I'm in my thirties or don't you-"

Marcus waved him away, then started his stilted, slow progression toward the doors of the huge building before them, gesturing in the same moment for them to follow.

"Pre-war ski lodge," he explained as the Courier's eyes traveled up its sides, her steps slowing. "Few mutantfolk here use it very often. We prefer the various outer shacks, or to sleep under the stars. Our hides are tough enough the cold rarely makes it through. Now Doctor-"

To their left Marcus crossed in front of the gate to a well-sized bighorner pen. Several of the giant sheep eyed them carefully in the moonlight, their soft, golden eyes holding interest and an inquisitiveness that recent domesticity had not yet bred out. The Courier was watching a lamb nuzzling beneath its mother's belly, when a large azure palm reached gently to the baby's side and guided it to the teat it was clumsily seeking. Then an equally blue-shaded mutant face, harshness broken only by a pair of dark shades and a hole-strewn sun bonnet, poked up over the withers at the mother sheep's shoulder blades, and stared right at her.

"Why hello Jimmy dear!" the nightkin said.

The Courier gave the mutant one look and stopped dead in her tracks. She stared for a moment, saw the blue skin, and remembered in some little part of herself that she wasn't supposed to be staring. She tried to turn away, yelped, ran toward Marcus, then stopped, realizing this wasn't providing any additional safety either.

"Jimmy?" she replied, looking at the ground.

"Oh little Jimmy!" The nightkin left the bighorners and stepped heavily over the fence. "Come here so grandma can have a look at how much you've grown!"

"Lily," Marcus said gently, turning to face them. "These are our new guests. You might remember Arcade? Well this is his new friend-"

"The Courier," the Courier supplied, backing away slowly. "I don't know who Jimmy is but-"

"Aww Jimmy?" Lily said, shoulders slumping. "Don't you want a kiss from grandma? Grandma hasn't seen you since you were only this-"

The nightkin held out a huge palm by one leg of her denim overalls, and the Courier was caught between a strange mix of fascination, shame, and fear. She realized Arcade was still somewhere behind her, and Rex was panting against her knees again, but her whole world was focused on a thing that once again, she just couldn't explain. Marcus shook his head, mouthing 'no', and Lily sighed, retreating to the bighorner pen, leaving him to explain.

"The prolonged Stealth Boy usage in nightkin altered substantially their perception of reality, a factor the Master never intended. Many of them are actually badly schizophrenic, or worse, unreachable in their delusions. Lily…we think she might be remembering who she was once, back when she was human, perhaps? But even I'm not completely sure. She tends to the bighorners, does a wonderful job at it too. Obviously she's taken a liking to you, Courier."

The Courier did not miss the little bit of humor sneaking its way into his deep voice.

Arcade crooked an arm around her shoulders and guided her back along with them. "Just what you needed, your very own family reunion, Jimmy. I think such an occasion might call for me to bring cake."

"Oh shut up," the Courier said. "Or I'll start calling you 'Cade. Permanently."

.o.O.o.

Doctor Henry was working by lamplight when Marcus lead them into his study, a large room located to the right of the main foyer. A female ghoul asleep at a desk opposite him, head pressed into her paperwork, one arm thrown over her face, was snoring as Henry wrote rapidly and tersely in the glowing orb of light between them.

"Henry?" Marcus tried to announce as quietly as possible.

The ghoul jumped, her eyes opening and blinking for a second before she turned sleepily toward them. Henry looked up from his work for a moment, then nodded and returned to the computer printouts spread in clusters across the desk and overflowing the sides onto his knees.

"Hello," the ghoul said, smiling. She yawned, stretching and then got up to greet them. "Arcade, are you going to introduce the new girl? I didn't realize you had a woman in your life."

Her smile became a small bit of an impish smirk, and then she turned kind eyes toward the Courier.

"I'd shake your hand, but sometimes I know humans don't like to touch ghouls so maybe I should just tell you my name-?"

The Courier stuck out her right hand, figuring that all the ghouls she'd known had been pretty decent human beings, despite the continued hatred inflicted upon them by the unaltered human populace. It isn't like ghoulification is catchable, she reasoned, so why avoid them?

The ghoul woman reached out and took her hand delicately at first, as if imprisoning her fingers like a fragile blossom. Her flesh was warm against the Courier's colder palm, and though ragged and callused, it still bore the feel of living tissue. Then the Courier closed her own fingers, and they shared a firm handshake.

"I'm Calamity," the ghoul looked down into her. "And my boss over there, that's the doctor himself, the one I'm sure you came to see. Trouble is, I believe he's still in the middle of a breakthrough so if you wouldn't mind spending the night-?"

Half an hour later, the Courier snuggled into another bed, cloistered in a room that felt cool and damp and strangely silent. Rex slept beside her, half hidden under her nest of blankets. She poked at his nose and thought for a moment of Arcade, sleeping in another room across the hall. She would have to ask him in the morning how he knew Henry, or of this place, at all.

(Endnote: Thank you to RogueShadow1281 for the fav. and the follow, and also to all of my other readers, continuing and new! Once again, kudos to Bishie Huntress, for answering some interesting grammatical questions when we should have been sleeping. And on an aside, the Fallout wiki officially states that Lily will call your courier 'Jimmy' if they are a boy. Both times my girl!Courier met her, she was officially dubbed 'Jimmy' for the rest of the game, proving the wiki is either wrong, or Lily just can't recognize a pink dress when she sees one. Either way, judging by her psychosis, I let it pass. At least she didn't try to eat my courier, I guess. Gotta be happy with the little things, you know?)