4: Getting to Know You

"Why do you hate the Enclave so much?" That was something that Courier had been curious about from the get-go. Faith had made it quite clear she held a grudge -if that was the right word for it- against the military organization, the 'would be' remnants of the former United States of America.

"Have you MET them? What's not to hate?" Faith snorted into her plate, raising her eyes up to the other woman. Courier had been with Luke, who had definitely been Enclave.

"I was here when they started coming into the Mojave, I was a Desert Ranger back then, with my brother." She said quietly, slowly. She didn't like talking about that, about Phil, about any of it. Who she had been then and who she was now were two painfully different women. "We were an independent organization based out of Reno, we were here when both the NCR and the Enclave came."

"Mmm, no, the Enclave WAS here then." Faith said, shaking her head.

"How the fuck would you know? You'd of been living in a vault then."

"Because I've spent most of my time out of the vault fucking them up, it's why I came here actually. Well, one of the reasons." At the 'go on' look from Courier, Faith sighed and poked at her food. "The Enclave began before the bombs fell, and afterwards, they kept their asses on an oil rig, waiting and acquiring resources. When they started venturing back onto soil, they started in California, established their bases there… their goal was to 'take back' the United States. Of course, they got to see the super mutants and the ghouls, so they had to go, they were abominations."

"Well, on that, I agree with them. Mostly. Not all ghouls are feral."

"And not all mutants are dangerous imbeciles." Faith countered, Fawkes and Lily coming to mind. She felt something clench in her chest at the thought of the Nightkin who had taken her in as a 'grandbaby', remembering her dying at the Dam. Kane had dived over and down into the Colorado after her. Mark had been taken over by Luke. None of them had likely lived, yet here she was, about to venture into another Hell zone just to find out for sure. Courier seemed to think her evil 'Taker was still alive, and that gave Faith hope that maybe her husband was as well. After everything they had gone through since coming to this cursed desert, the strain between them, only to lose him… no, she had to be sure. "The um, purge, eventually moved to include the human survivors, the new generations, under the premise that they were unclean because they had been born into the radiation."

The implication of that hit Courier promptly and her eyes widened. No wonder… no wonder those bastards hadn't been discriminating about who they killed. Everyone outside the Enclave was a mutant to them. It explained a lot about 'Taker actually. Her lips pursed in a scowl. "Okay… so once on-shore, they got their start here then."

"Yes, and eventually, they got their asses handed to them here by both the Brotherhood and the NCR." Which she imagined Courier had been a part of. "Whatever is left here, I intended on stomping out."

Courier considered all of that, remembering when Steve Austin had promoted her to leader of the Desert Rangers, which had been immediately merged with the NCR Rangers. "I get that they're evil scumbags, but you're issues with them seem personal."

"That's because a colonel made it personal."

"A colonel?"

Colonel Steve Austin. She had met him on her trip to a vault, looking for the G.E.C.K.. She had been attacked by a yao guai, a mutated type of bear, and he had been there. He had been there when she was stuck in a vault simulation. He had found her in another vault beneath Little Lamplighter and taken her back to the Enclave base at Raven Rock. He had been there at the Jefferson Memorial. He had been there when she had infiltrated Adam's Air Force base and the Enclave's mobile crawler. That man had helped shaped her life outside of the vault and who she was today. She had never hated someone the way she hated him. "He was second in command, to the computer… the computer was a type of artificial intelligence, and supposedly, the president of the United States." John Henry Eden, she could recall hearing the Enclave's radio station, and the supposed President recounting his childhood in beautiful Kentucky. What a load of bullshit.

"That is… fucked up."

"Slightly," Faith agreed dryly. "But, it was the Colonel who was the real… bad guy." That sounded so cliche, the bad guy. But he had been bad, he had been downright evil. She remembered the last time she had seen him. He had nursed her back to health just so he could beat her ass all over again. She had ran from him, inputting the code into their targeting system, intent on killing off the Enclave, him and herself with it. Shaking her head, she took a deep breath. "He wasn't from D.C., he said he came from the west… but he seemed to bleed Enclave."

"He came from the west? Like here?" Courier bit down her next set of questions when Faith gave her an exasperated look. Making another 'go on' gesture, she began shelving her questions, focusing on what she was being told. It took her quite a bit to realize that Faith had started the same name over throughout the story.

Steve Austin.

The idea of her Steve Austin, the man who had led the Desert Rangers, who had been married to a living angel, joining the Enclave and being as evil as Faith described him made something in her cringe. The man had stood against everything the Enclave was for, it made no sense. "Was… was he bald?" She asked quietly. "With blue eyes?"

"He did." Before becoming half-cyborg after he had gotten his ass handed to him at the Purifier. Honestly, Faith had thought him dead, she had shot him at pretty close range. She took in the way Courier's face seemed to sink in on itself, finally getting it just as her stomach plummeted. "You're Brooks, aren't you?" She whispered, remembering Austin telling her she reminded him of some kid back west named Brooks.

"I was."