What exactly used to be here if the Old World maps already called it Dead Mountains?

The question hung itself in the forefront of Declan's mind, sending the panic of his current situation backward — but he was already on autopilot, diving behind an outcropping for cover, ignoring the stitch in his side and the rent flesh down his arm. What could have been here? Breathing hard, he readied his rifle and peered around the rocks.

Deathclaws? There was no way they inhabited this place two hundred years ago. Al was already taking aim herself, scratched up and sweaty but a safer length away. Where did Deathclaws come from? The one threatening them was picking itself up with a snarl.

There was Aggie sprinting as fast as her long legs could manage. Even at this distance, he could see her bruised eyes were wild. Declan didn't know too much about Old World fauna. The Deathclaw starting after her didn't resemble a bird, or a turtle. He took aim, breathing deep to override the pain in his wounded arm. Aggie leapt to the side just as Al started shooting.

The Deathclaw roared, distracted now, twisting to find the new threat. Was it part dinosaur? Could the scientists even do that? Al started running. Dinosaur. That didn't sound right.

Declan pulled the trigger. Al hadn't yet diverged, but she was the weakest runner among them — and that was without the weeping claw marks in her leg. Some strays punched the ground close enough to send dirt up her legs and a scowl in his direction. The Deathclaw had seen him, though, so there was no time to communicate.

He scrambled up and started running. It was fast. What animals were fast like this before the bombs?

He saw Aggie climbing a tree and veered away to give her time. He could feel the ground rumble; didn't dare glance back. His throat felt raw. He was picturing turtles again. He concentrated on pumping his legs harder.

A crack split the air. The Deathclaw's steps stuttered. Al yelled "Take cover!" and Declan changed direction again, throwing himself by a boulder, crawling away as he stayed low. Behind him, Al's grenade exploded in a cacophony of rock and dirt and Deathclaw.

He could glance back now. The Deathclaw was a writhing mass of limbs, sans one leg. Declan hauled himself up and readied his rifle. A quick inventory of his friends saw Al coming up with caution from one side and Aggie from the other, both ready to fire. He positioned himself to better sight the Deathclaw's face; its mangled eye.

Declan shot first.

Once the bloody, leathery mass was truly still, the three of them let their shoulders sag with the weight of their wounds and breathed out hard. Aggie ran a filthy hand through her filthy hair, shoving it back and away from her face, before stalking over to the overlook they'd first sought out and squinting through already swollen eyes. Al scrubbed her own hand over her face, smearing it with grime. She looked first at the gashes in her leg, then frowned at Declan, who hocked out a glob of blood and spit.

"Pretty trigger happy there, bud."

He gave her a grimace that didn't have the spirit to be a grin. "Sorry."

"Guys," Aggie hissed, backing away from the edge. "I don't think we're getting this guy anytime soon."

Al shared a look with Declan before they both walked over to Aggie, to the cliff.

Below and before them, a valley in the Old World's Dead Mountains was hosting a colony of Deathclaws, each brandishing their teeth and claws — but not at each other. It seemed the uncountable crowd of them were sniffing, and searching, and slowly making their way out.

Up.

And down in the midst of it all stood a man, still and ignored, staring directly at the trio.

The three only glanced at each other for a moment before they took off running.

RADIO STAR

E01: Easy Living

They were some years settled in Nevada now, just south of the 163 and just west of Hiko Springs. Butch, he cut hair for soldiers, civvies, tourists, and the stray defecting roamin' Roman. The big guy did odd jobs on the odd occasion, but mostly tended to their modest farm. Won that one in a game of Caravan thanks to a whole lot of liquor, a whole lot of luck, and a whole lot of strategically pointed guns and knives. There were some beer and blood stains on the deed, but hey, you didn't make it this far by not very aggressively collecting on your bets. They were both done with taking shit, and taking orders, and the Nosebleed would have rolled over in that daily-polished memorial to think of it.

(Nosebleed would have loved the West.)

But idyll was never to last in the Wasteland. One day, while Charon was tilling the soil and Butch was mending his old jacket, the ghoul stiffened; there was a figure in the distance, heading toward them from the East.

Arizona. Legion territory and growing; though the Dam had been taken and Caesar dead, the Legion had spent the last fifteen years replenishing its number and strength — aided in no small part by the disgruntled and disillusioned. The NCR had been supplanted by their prized mercenary as the head of New Vegas, and he wasn't one to care what flag you flew or banner you marched under, so long as his interests reigned supreme. Butch and Charon, sight-seers, remained carefully neutral, out from under that wretched thumb.

The figure approached, and so as Charon walked past him into the house, Butch tracked the ghoul inside — "You think it's as bad as all that?"

"It's Legion," came as a grunt, and Charon re-emerged with his trusty shotgun.

Butch shrugged and resumed his work, shifting his actual toothpick to the other side of his mouth. "Maybe they're looking for a slave." But his ears were pricked.

The figure was a girl in white, caked in dust and mud, barefoot and empty handed. They did not react as she approached, almost disbelieving. They both shared the strange feeling that she was something unreal, not of this plane; a ghost. Not that they believed in ghosts.

She staggered forward, hair wild and filthy about her face, eyes bright, mouth curled. She gasped, "please —", and it was a harsh and grating noise, and she collapsed in the half-tilled soil of their modest farm.

‖ ► If you leave me here... there will be nothing for you to return to. ►

Butch mocked Charon for looking like a decrepit old nun in a convent, but the ghoul remained silent while he worked on wiping down the girl's extremities with a wet rag, revealing brown skin bearing nothing more than the general wear and tear that comes from wandering the desert. Her shift was grimy, weathered, but had no stain of blood or other indicator of injury. Her head he'd started with, in hopes of rousing her, but she'd remained unconscious.

She was breathing deeply. Could she be so lucky to be simply exhausted?

Dishes clinking and cupboards clattering and the tinny, staticky warbling of some long-dead crooner filtered out from the kitchen. Charon wrung out the rag and rose, taking it and his bowl of murky water away. When he entered, Butch didn't turn from his whisking, wires skrit-scratching against batter and ceramic, yet the cigarette between his lips bobbed; a momentary tension.

Charon dumped the water down the sink and settled the bowl next to it. He started on rinsing out the rag. He was very good at staying silent, better than the kid had been, and certainly better than Butch was, though Butch had admittedly improved with age. Still, whatever he was working on was well whisked by this point, likely with a touch more ash than he'd intended, given the remainder of the cigarette Butch had yet to stop sucking down and tap off into the sink.

Of the two of them in the kitchen, it was the radio that broke first. Really, it had been at least a little bit broken for maybe a few years before they got to it, but the baleful strains of Peggy Lee slipped suddenly and fully into white noise. Butch grunted, dropping the whisk into the bowl, and leaned over the counter to smack the little box. The static stuttered, then persisted.

"We ain't no charity," he said to it. Charon hung the rag on a cupboard knob and started on cleaning out the bowl he'd used. Butch turned to him, annoyed. "How many times we gotta go over this?"

Charon met his eyes. "You tell me."

Butch spluttered, then glared, plucking the cigarette out of his mouth to jab it around for emphasis. "I am trying to be retired," he grit out, "but your bony, thousand-year-old ass keeps taking on these causes like your contract's buried out in D.C. with Charlie's rotting bones and bleeding heart ghost."

Charon only stared. Butch heard him anyway and scowled.

"We don't know what she's carrying or who's followin'. Yeah, someone's on her tail — you know just as well as I do that slavers don't just send their pretty young things on their merry barefoot way. I ain't getting mixed up in that. Especially not now."

He flicked the stub of his cigarette into the sink and went back to whisking, shoulders bunched up and head shaking. Charon folded his arms. The radio continued to sputter static. A moment passed before Butch turned back, now using the dripping whisk as punctuation.

"It's different this time, alright? This ain't some snot-nosed brat running home to mommy and daddy because the big leagues were too scary, or — or some jaded old fuck wantin' a trim before his new life in California. This is a runaway slave and I'll be damned if I let this place turn into some underground railroad. This is my retirement farm."

"Our farm." Some gravitas in the gravel of Charon's voice.

"Oh my God, whatever." Butch plunked the whisk into the bowl and the bowl onto the counter in a huff. "She can't stay here. I'm kickin' her out yesterday."

He turned away again, clanking in a cupboard for a frying pan, rummaging around for wherever they threw the lard last. Charon glanced over at the doorway, then back at Butch; shiny little white hairs peeked out from the black at his coiffured temple, faint steps of crows' feet at the corners of his eyes. Brown skin like the girl's, scarred up here and there but whole and clean.

"She's a kid."

Butch dripped a tiny dot of batter into the pan and watched for the bubbles in the melted lard; the sizzle faded into the static.

"Yeah, well, slaves like you, kids like me… they don't always make it."

Charon's eyes narrowed, and the radio started blaring let's go sunning, it's so good for you clear as day. His focus snapped to the doorway again, just before the girl appeared, a spectre in the frame. She opened her mouth, closed it, tried again; her brow furrowed. She clutched at her collarbone.

"There're clean clothes in the bathroom," Butch said, pointing. "A shower, too." He waited until the girl nodded and left before pursing his lips and going back to the stove and static. Charon considered him. The moment passed and Charon took a bottle of sarsaparilla from the fridge to sit with him at the table.

"Bleeding heart," Charon muttered alongside the hiss of the bottle opening.

"They're your clothes," Butch snarked back.

‖ » There's nothing in life but you. ►

"It was your idea," Al groused, narrowing her eyes. She was crowded around her bottle at the bar, hunched over in some mixture of fatigue and frustration. Aggie glared right back, leaning in a languid stretch away from the bar, fingers playing along her own beverage. The swelling around her eyes had mostly gone down, but they were ringed with purple and black.

"It wasn't a bad idea," Declan said, sitting between them. He had to pause to stop himself from scratching at the bandages on his arm. "But maybe it wasn't a complete idea."

"It was the best idea," Aggie declared. She downed the rest of her beer and waited for the bartender to look over so she could motion for another. "Now we have a leg up on everyone else with this list, because we know what we're up against."

Al made a noise of disgust. "We only have a leg up 'cause anyone else who tried must have lost both of theirs."

She looked around. The bartender was at the far end, topping off a dark-haired man with glassy eyes; behind them, a couple was sitting at a table, listening intently to a program and quick to fiddle with the radio if it started acting up. It was still kind of early, with the sun having hardly set, and certainly none of the current patrons were paying their cluster any heed, but, still — Al leaned closer toward her companions and lowered her voice.

"How is knowing what we're up against any help? There's no way we could take on that many Deathclaws… and who knows what else that guy is capable of?"

"We're not going after him again," Aggie explained. "At least, not yet. We're going to go after one of the others on the list first, maybe more, and then we can use the bounties towards serious firepower. If we want to."

"We could get cannon fodder, too," Declan helpfully supplied. The other two scoffed at him. "What? It's not like I said bait."

"Maybe a merc or two," Aggie conceded, "but any more and that's just us getting less of the pot."

"What if this guy's the best guy on the list?" Al looked around again, furtive. "What if everyone else is worse?"

Aggie pulled back, incredulous. "What could be worse?"

"I don't know — a Cazador master?"

"Hey, Billy. Billy!" the man at the other end of the bar groused suddenly, drawing their attention along with the bartender's. He jabbed a thumb behind him, his body swaying perilously with its momentum. "Your radio's a piece of shit."

The bartender glared. "You here for booze or what?"

"Nah, Billy. I'm just sayin'. Mine back home, that one's a piece of shit too. Y'know how you fix a piece of shit?" He leaned forward for dramatic effect, presumably, but the drama was shot by the way he had to steady himself on the bar before he smashed his face into it. Still, he stared hard at the bartender until Billy waved him on. "You get yourself a ghost, Billy."

Billy sighed heavily. Declan exchanged an amused look with Al. The drunk man started shaking his head and waving his hands through the air.

"Hand to God, Billy. Bill. Little ghost girl wandered onto the farm today — from the East — and fixed the piece of shit brand new. Just talked with it or somethin'. All we had to do was feed her."

"I think you're done for the night, Butch."

"Wha —? Billy. Don't do me like that…"

Al gestured over at the lush with her bottle. "You know what? I wanna be that drunk right now."

Declan laughed and went for a swig himself, but paused with the tip of his bottle on his lip when he caught sight of Aggie's knit brow and set jaw. "What is it?"

"What if he's telling the truth?"

Al scowled. "What, that if you feed a ghost it will fix your radio?"

"No," Aggie said. She started bobbing her foot. "Didn't you hear him? She talked a radio into working?"

"Yeah, I managed to get that through his slurring and total lack of volume control." Al rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Come on, babe. Wouldn't you have called someone mind-controlling Deathclaws ridiculous?" At Al's silence, Aggie turned to Declan. "Isn't this just the sort of weird shit that would be on the same list as Stier?"

Declan mulled it over a sip of beer. "You're not wrong…"

"Then let's talk to the guy. Should we do the sibling thing?"

Al groaned at that. "That never works. We all look nothing alike."

"Alright, alright — sad little Declan? The sob stories usually work on the drunks."

"I'm tired of being sad," Declan groused. "Why don't we do the reward shpiel? He looks like a money man."

"Aw, look at him, Dex. He's sloppy and worked up. The sympathy play is a sure thing," Aggie said, slapping him on the back with a grin. "And you're so good at it."

Declan's brows knit and he rubbed his temple. "Alright. Fine."

Al gave him a thumbs up. "You got this, Dex."

With somewhat genuine despondency, Declan got to his feet and approached the drunk man, half-settling on the stool next to him. The man — Butch — eyed him through such a squint that Declan wasn't entirely confident he could see anything at all. "Hey… Heard you talking 'bout a ghost girl."

Butch snorted. "So what?"

"I — well, my wife, she went missing a few weeks ago, and that girl you mentioned sounded a lot like —"

"Buzz off," he snapped, baring his teeth. "I ain't fallin' for that shit."

Declan kept politely silent at that, but he wasn't in the mood to try and correct course. Ignoring that Aggie and Al were listening intently, he leaned against the bar and switched gears. "Alright, I'll cut to the chase — your friend fits the profile of a fat bounty I'm tracking, and if you make this easy for me then it'd only be fair to cut you in, yeah?"

"Grow up." Butch rolled his eyes and turned away — right to where Aggie was waiting, posed against the bar. He startled upon seeing her face, but she smiled sweetly, sidling up to his side.

"Howdy, Mister. Excuse my friend here — he's had kind of a rough go of things lately. Lost his wife to slavers and, well, when he hears about someone like a wanderer from the East…"

"This ain't no slaver," Butch slurred, shaking his head carefully.

"Didn't sound like one," Al agreed, edging out Declan to press herself up against Butch's other side. "Sounded like a cause, to be honest."

"Our friend, he cares about causes. And maybe if he can get a win, the guilt might stop eating him alive, y'know?" Aggie hung herself on Butch's shoulder and flicked her eyes over at Declan; Butch's followed with some effort.

Declan sighed, and didn't need to try too hard to look uncomfortable. "I just want to help."

There was a look on the other man's face that made him appear suddenly, completely sober — something keen and focused that looked totally foreign on the stranger, but then he looked away before Declan really understood what he'd seen.

"You ladies really know just what to say to a guy," Butch mumbled. He wrapped his arms around them. "Billy! How 'bout another round over here?"

‖ « Twenty men had tried to take him, twenty men had made a slip... ►

The night wasn't really going how Butch was hoping, which he felt was pretty unfair given how he'd been able to do a Good Thing and solve their Big Problem without even trying much.

Sure, Charon probably didn't agree with his solution — the ghoul had been steaming mad when Butch got home, three shiny new friends in tow, but, hell, the guy got mad over everything. He went and holed up in the room they'd let the girl crash in — like someone might kidnap her, or something — like that'd be a problem — and Butch figured he'd be less cranky in the morning.

The trio from the bar seemed like good folk. It didn't escape his notice that the man — Declan — had been nursing the one beer while the women got just as smashed as Butch was, so when the ladies regrettably seemed more interested in each other than they were in Butch, he sat the younger man at the kitchen table with two mostly clean glasses and one half-full bottle of whiskey, poured them each a finger, and held his drink aloft.

Declan clinked his glass and they took their shots together. Sneaky folk would have tried to get out of it. Pleased with his excellent judgement, Butch poured them both another serving.

"Hey, old man!" Aggie called from the living room, where they'd left her cuddling with You-Can-Call-Me-Al. "Let Charon out!"

Al said something they couldn't quite make out, and Declan smiled to himself as they dissolved into giggles, shaking his head.

"I don't lock him up or anything," Butch grumbled. "Ain't they ever seen a ghoul before?"

"There was an old one back in our hometown," Declan said. "A repairman. Aggie had a huge crush on him growing up because, rumour had it, he secretly used to be a wicked gunslinger."

Butch peered at him incredulously. "She's got a weird type."

"Yup." Declan drained his glass at Butch's behest, then sat back and looked around. "That your piece of shit radio?"

Butch hummed, replenishing the other man's drink. "The one and only."

"And the mysterious radio whisperer is sleeping."

"You wanna take a peek with the ol' guard dog sittin' vigil? Be my guest. Your funeral." Declan gave him a lopsided little smile at that, and Butch eyed him with a frown. "Hey. Why're your ladies all banged up?"

The younger man instantly made a face. "There's a lot wrong with that. But they just weren't fast enough."

As he sniggered to himself, clearly feeling the warmth of the liquor, Butch himself felt frozen. Was Charon right, and this wasn't the solution it had seemed? He cleared his throat, his brows a hard line. "Y'know, my ma, she used to get involved with some real lowlifes… Used to." He paused. "You a lowlife, kid?"

Declan shook his head. "Not making fun of them. Could've easily been me. Deathclaws are quick." Butch stared, a little stunned at the misunderstanding and turn of conversation. Declan obliviously splashed more liquor into each of their glasses, frowned, then looked back up at Butch. "Do you know what they used to be?"

"What're you people doing," Butch asked, words flopping out like batter off a spoon, "hanging around Deathclaws?"

"We're — we help people," Declan said, brows furrowed, but Butch was already beyond convincing. The only people who needed help involving Deathclaws in these parts were folks seeking out powdered claw or strips of demon jerky to help them keep their dicks hard. Coupled with Declan's clumsy proposition in the bar and the way they'd ganged up on him after, Butch was completely regretting the miserable truth rearing its ugly mug: Charon and his uglier mug were right.

"You don't help anyone but yourselves," Butch sneered, slamming his hands on the table as he stood up, seething at how he'd been suckered by the ghost of someone very dear and very dead — I just want to help — in a self-serving stranger. "And there ain't no way I'm letting that little slave girl walk outta here with a bunch of shady bounty hunting fucks so they can cash in on handing her back to her master."

Declan eyed him warily but remained seated, and held his hand carefully out over the table. "Whoa, wait a sec, we're not —"

"I don't wanna hear it." Butch snatched his glass up and tossed back the remainder. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he used his other one to jab a finger at Declan.. "You and yours can sleep it off — I hear the ladies snoring already — but in the morning, you're gone."

He plunked the glass back onto the table and walked off, steadfastly ignoring anything Declan tried saying in response. He was going to hit the sack and snooze away the unsettling feeling of being wrong. With any luck, by the time he woke up, the strangers would have made themselves scarce, and he'd never have to admit any of it to Charon.

‖ ► It's easy to live, when you're in love… ►

Declan wasn't sure how things had gone sour so quickly, but the alcohol was hitting and he could feel how much longer it was taking him to process things. Something about leaving Aggie and Al to the Deathclaws didn't rub Butch the right way? No, something clued him into their bounty hunting…

He rubbed at his temple. He never liked the feel of a fumble, and the buzz was compounding that — his thoughts were melting into each other, his neck felt the strain of the weight of his skull, and his bladder was becoming alarmingly adamant for his attention.

One problem at a time, he supposed.

He got up and walked into the living room, where Aggie and Al were indeed snoring in turn, a tangle of limbs. Declan tossed something soft and warm over them — it might have been a rug — before making his way outside to find somewhere to piss.

There was a song on the wind, faint, and familiar enough that it rode along with the sheer bliss of finally relieving himself, and he thought to follow the sound after he'd done his pants back up. It brought him to a window on the side of the house, slightly open; probably the girl or the ghoul, or even Butch, listening to the radio. The reception was pretty shit, but through the crackling of the airwaves, he could clearly hear the melody — a sweet, slow tune his dad liked to turn up whenever he caught it playing.

Declan sat on the ground, settling against the wall under the window, and listened, catching scraps of memory caught on the notes: the warmth of the sun, his dad's booming voice singing along; Bea, before; Aggie yelling and Al laughing…

As he dozed off, Charon was sitting with his back to him on the other side of the wall, wide awake and staring at the girl on the bed. She was singing — in her sleep — with a voice that seemed to struggle with itself, clipping in and out and full of static, like it was coming from a radio.

■.