Chapter Text
Pain blooms wildly on Shauna’s right temple the second she regains consciousness. It overwhelms her so completely that she has to fight to pry open her eyes.
She apprehensively reaches her hand to the side of her head to assess the damage. Her vision’s blurry, but she’s met with the sight of dirty, bloodied fingertips when she brings them up to her eyes. She figures she has a serious concussion, the world is spinning, and she can’t get her bearings.
She lets out a low groan at the throbbing pain beating into her skull. She figured whoever hit her must’ve done it with a fucking sledgehammer.
She sits herself up with extreme effort off the hard metal floor she’d been lying on. The bars of her iron cage suddenly materialize around her. The rancid stench of her cage fills her nose and makes her gag.
Through her bars, she can see Jackie slouched over in the corner, in a separate cage, completely knocked out.
“Jackie! Jack—” She whisper-shouts, straining her fists against the cuffs. She needed to wake up, now!
Obnoxious snoring knocks her out of her Jackie-focused haze. A singular guard was napping only a few feet away, obviously unconcerned with his prisoners. Beer bottles were scattered on the desk in front of him, and she could see their bags tucked under his metal chair.
Shauna took a moment to fantasize about how exactly she’d like to kill her jailor. It couldn’t be too violent, for Jackie’s sake, and it couldn’t be too loud so as not to alert other guards. She was going to teach him a goddamned lesson, regardless.
“I’m up,” Jackie groans, pushing herself up from her fetal position on the floor. She wasn’t too worse for wear, no bloodstains, just covered in dirt and sporting serious bedhead.
“Shhh— Jackie listen,” Shauna reached her hand around to the inside of her jumpsuit. Thankfully, the idiots who captured them hadn’t thought to search their clothes. Her makeshift shank from the vault was still digging into her back from inside her pocket. “I’m going to get us out of here, but I need you to not freak out.”
“Wha— What do you mean not freak out? We’re locked in iron cages, and you look half-dead, Shauna!” Jackie’s whispering morphed into borderline yelling. Luckily, the man’s breathing pattern wasn’t interrupted, for now.
Shauna had already begun picking the lock with her knife, fiddling with it to try to perfectly time her position. It was easy enough to pick, not exactly Vault-Tec quality. She slowly inched through the cage door, squeaking hinges threatening to give her away. She quietly crouched forward, so as not to alert the sleeping figure in front of her. Her task was too important to focus on calming Jackie down.
The man’s snoring was unbearably loud, and her head was already beating like a drum. Shauna decided not to waste any time and efficiently sliced his throat open from side to side. His eyes shot open before he died, clutching his gurgling neck before slumping onto the floor.
“Oh fuck…” She heard Jackie quietly complain from her jail cell. She wasn’t ready to acknowledge that her best friend just watched her take a man’s life. She wouldn’t ever be ready to acknowledge the fact that she liked that Jackie was watching her.
She really didn’t have time to consider the implications of physical arousal and actual murder.
“Just shut up for a second, Jackie!” She urgently rifled through their bags and found exactly what she’d been looking for, the Psycho syringe.
Distant laughter and yelling could suddenly be heard through the hallway. Her heart rate was through the roof. Shauna snapped her head around to the noise, hair standing on end. Shauna knew exactly what she had to do.
“Listen, I need you to stay exactly where you are.” Shauna steps quietly towards Jackie’s cell with raised hands.
“What? Don’t play games right now, let me the hell out of here! They’ll kill you, Shauna!” She looked pitiful right now, clutching the bars of her cell with white knuckles. She looked so scared for her that Shauna had to turn around to rip her eyes away from her quivering lip.
As a rule, vault dwellers only took psychoactive substances when absolutely needed. Medicine was a commodity that had to be shared amongst everyone, including drugs, so Shauna really had no experience with them. However, when you see a mysterious syringe coveted by wastelanders who bite, claw, and scratch to survive, you figure it's probably useful.
“I’m going to get us out of here.” Shauna ignored her protests and stabbed the Psycho right into the side of her neck. Immediately, adrenaline and bloodlust filtered through her body. All of her senses were heightened, her veins pulsed against her skin, and she could only think about wrapping her bare hands around those bastards in the room over. It was the most intoxicating feeling she’d ever experienced. A groan leaves her lips before she can even think to hold it back.
Shauna clenched her fists and wandered into the next room, ignoring Jackie’s calls from her jail cell. She was going to kill everyone there if it was the last thing she did.
The hallway was poorly lit and smelled like the same filth from her jail cell. Crouching around the corner and surveying the room, she counted three men gathered around a small table playing cards. They were all donned in nasty leather gear and were in various states of disarray. Her anger was increased tenfold at the sight of them, and she stabbed the closest man to her through his back, piercing his heart.
“What the fuck!” One of the raisers cried, finally noticing Shauna’s silent entrance. The two men jumped from their seated positions and scrambled for weapons. They were obviously intoxicated, tripping and falling over themselves. A wild grin grew across her features; this was going to be much easier than she thought.
Her hands shook as she dislodged her knife from the man’s chest. His blood dripped down her hands onto her forearms, and she cracked her neck from side to side. The feeling was glorious; she never wanted it to end. Her heart stuttered in her chest as she ran to the next raider, still looking for his weapon.
In a blind rage, she incapacitates him completely. His body falls with an audible thunk against the concrete floor.
The last man standing was clearly the ring leader, donning gold jewelry and a spike collar. He had successfully found some sort of pipe wrench to use against her.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Shauna asked, genuinely confused. The Psycho pulsing in her veins was pushing her to just take this guy out of his misery. She paid no mind to the fact that he towered over her by more than a foot.
“You bitch!” The man hastily swung the wrench, missing Shauna by a mile. The smile on her face was so wide that it was starting to strain her cheeks. These guys were actually idiots! If everyone in the wasteland were this easy to kill, she was sure that she and Jackie would make it through these two weeks like a breeze.
Shauna uses his momentum against him, and he trips and falls into her waiting blade. It pierces straight through his eye, which Shauna thought was a vast improvement to his current look.
She took the lives of these men with such ease that she was sure she deserved a reward. She remembered something was waiting for her in the other room…
“Shauna… Shauna!” Jackie cried from her cell. Shauna finally got the wherewithal to walk back to her cage and fiddle with her lock.
Jackie looked just as frantic as before, still clutching the bars of her cell like she could pry them apart with sheer willpower.
“I took care of them.” Her hands shook as she found the cell key and struggled with the lock. They didn’t look like her hands at all, dark and covered in blood.
“I know, Shauna. I fucking heard them croak from over here. Are you okay? Did you get them all?”
The Psycho was dwindling, but still felt thick in her veins. She wanted to tear someone apart. “Yeah, fuck...”
The adrenaline pumping through her veins was too euphoric. She would kill those men all over again if it meant getting the feeling of protecting Jackie from harm. She secretly hoped they had their own stash of Psycho that she could take from.
“You did good,” Shauna sighed at her words, and worked on the lock of her cage. “You were so, so good.” She finally gets the cage door open and is met with a hard punch on her shoulder. The drugs made the impact feel like a soft flick, but she was startled nonetheless.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again! Do you understand me? I can’t believe you would just-just leave me in the cage while you go and murder a bunch of kidnappers! Do you know how stupid that was? We’re supposed to be a team, Shauna. And you can’t just stab drugs into your neck!” Jackie’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and her eyebrows scrunched so hard that Shauna was afraid they’d get stuck like that. “And don’t you ever tell me to shut up again.”
She punctuated her final statement with an unexpected grip on Shauna’s jaw. She wasn’t playing around.
Most of her speech went in one ear and out the other. Shauna could only think about how badly she wanted to push Jackie against that desk and give her something to be really upset about. A sharp palm on the bare of her ass cheek would get her right into shape. She should be grateful that Shauna used the Psycho !
“Yeah…” The only thing she gathered from that lecture was that she needed to take ten steps away from Jackie so she didn’t wrench her panties to the floor and have her way with her.
Jackie didn’t respond; she just huffed and tried to drop her hand from Shauna’s face, but found her wrist caught in a tight grip.
“Hey, what are you…” Her thought tumbles into silence as Shauna, in her drug-fueled haze, licks from the base of Jackie’s palm to the tips of her fingers, and then tilts her head back and groans. If she couldn’t have Jackie how she wanted her, this would have to suffice.
Jackie’s startled whimper brought her back to reality, where she stood mortified with Jackie’s wrist still clenched in her fist.
“Um,” she said before she could process what the hell she just did. She dropped the arm and stepped backwards until her back hit the metal wall a couple of feet away. The drugs, her fantasies, and her reality were blending together. The slipping mess she felt between her thighs was a dangerous reminder of how turned on she was.
“Jackie—” “Shauna—” They both spoke at the same time, tumbling over each other’s words.
Before she could dig herself into a deeper hole, Shauna shook her head and raised a hand to silence her. This conversation couldn’t happen while she was still picturing ripping off her best friend’s clothes and pushing her up against the wall.
“I’ll be right back.” Shauna hastily exited and sped through the room with the bodies of the men she just massacred. She haphazardly picked up a rusted machete lying on the table. Those dumbasses could’ve killed her the second she walked in. Maybe Jackie was right for being upset at her…
Shauna carelessly rifled through a couple of bags scattered around the room. They hit the jackpot with chems; these guys seemed to be abusing every drug that ever existed. Half of the chems she hadn’t even heard of before. She wasn’t planning on testing her luck with other drugs, but she did pocket a few more Psychos for the road. Better to be overprepared than underprepared, right?
She wandered around some more until she found a set of poorly lit stairs and climbed them until she was met with a door to the wasteland. It was still dark outside, but daybreak was fast-approaching. They’d been knocked-out all night, who knows what those raiders were planning to do with them. Their camp outside was littered with pulse mines and heads mounted on wooden stakes. The sight was a welcome distraction from whatever the hell just went on in that stinky basement.
Cold air filtered through her lungs, and her headache subsided substantially. She took the opportunity to pierce herself with a stimpack, and her head wound began to close. After another deep breath, her senses returned to her completely, and the weight of what she’d just done sat heavily on her shoulders.
She scared the shit out of Jackie, took hard drugs, killed four men, and then possibly ruined their friendship forever.
Her back slid down the side of the wall as she clutched her head in her hands. Too bad there wasn’t a stimpack that could cure mental anguish. Before she could dig herself into an even deeper hole of despair and regret, Jackie appeared outside the door and took a seat next to her, back in her Vault-Tec jumpsuit. She wasn’t as close to her as normal, leaving a couple of inches of space between. Shauna wasn’t sure if she was grateful or spiteful at the distance.
“Are you okay?” Jackie’s hand fell on her back and began rubbing it in small circles. Shauna didn’t have the strength to look her in the eyes, so she kept them trained on the ground before her. “Say something, Shauna.”
“I’m sorry,” Shauna blurts out, raising her head from between her legs. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have gone on my own, but I had to do it to keep you safe. Don’t you understand that if I let you out, they could’ve gotten their hands on you? Even if I gave you the choice, you would’ve wanted me to go anyway.”
“Do you hear yourself right now?” Jackie’s hand on her back pulls to a stop as she offendedly pulls it back into herself. “Do you really think that I’d want you to sacrifice yourself for my safety? I keep telling you that we’re a team, Shauna. I don’t know where you got this idea that you’re some sort of post-apocalyptic Mother Theresa, but you’re not. I never asked you to do any of that!” Jackie stands up from the wall and stands in front of Shauna’s seated form, so she has to look up at her.
“You scared me, Shauna. If something happened to you, I-I couldn’t handle it.” Her voice wavers with tears, and Shauna slowly rises to her feet. “You have to understand that.”
She doesn’t respond immediately; she just wipes Jackie’s tear-streaked cheeks with her thumbs as she cradles her face. She had always been a pretty crier, teardrops collected on her long eyelashes and gathered in her hazel eyes. If she knew this was the reaction she would get from her, she never would’ve left her locked in the cell.
She took a moment to consider if Jackie had been the one to leave her alone and take on those bastards alone, how scared and helpless she probably felt just waiting in limbo. In her heart, she knew from the beginning that Jackie wouldn’t have wanted her to go alone, she just wanted something else to hold against her. She knew she was a shitty best friend.
Shauna still cradles her head in between her palms as she stares at her pouty face. “You’re right, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, Jax. I promise.” She made sure Jackie knew she meant it this time.
“I’m always right.” Jackie finally cracks a small smile, which sends Shauna’s heart back into overdrive. “Now about that hand thing…”
Shauna drops her hands from the sides of Jackie’s face to cover her own in shame.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Please save me the embarrassment,” Shauna murmurs into her palms.
“No, no, don’t be embarrassed. I mean, I’m flattered, if anything.” Jackie laughs and pries Shauna’s hands from her face, so she’s forced to look in her eyes. Her smile was so wide that she was obviously getting a thrill out of getting under her skin. "Some drug you took, huh?”
She knew her face had to be a million shades of red; she couldn’t handle being teased like this for much longer, especially with Jackie so close to her face, still restraining her wrists. It reminded her of the original situation and the little whimper she released afterwards.
The thought emboldened her suddenly that Jackie hadn’t exactly protested earlier…
“I guess I just wanted a taste,” Shauna tests the waters, confidence building at Jackie’s dumbstruck reaction. She clearly didn’t expect her to double down. Shauna’s cheeks were still blazing, but she couldn’t stop the smile growing on her face. The scales were being tipped in her favor all of a sudden. She could turn this back around on her!
Silence fills the space between them, the tension building to a fever pitch. Shauna was about to laugh it off to alleviate the intense energy, until—
“And, how did I taste, Shipman?” Her raspy voice sent what could only be described as a jolt of electricity straight to her core. She intended to throw Jackie off her game, not to throw her whole world off its axis.
“Um,” Shauna quickly scrambled for an answer, “...salty. You tasted salty.”
Displeasure was reflected in Jackie’s expression at her unenthused response. With an eyeroll, Jackie dropped Shauna’s wrists and turned away from her. Her shoulders heaved with the deep inhale she took after moving out of her personal space.
“Alright, let’s hit the road.” So they were ignoring it, then. All the better for Shauna, if she could wipe her lame response from her mind, she would. “We should take some of their armor, we’re sticking out like sore thumbs in these jumpsuits.”
Together, they searched through the raiders' belongings. Both of them were able to secure new outfits that were covered in dirt and blood, perfect for blending in with wastelanders. If only they lost a couple of teeth, then they’d really fit in with the rest.
“How do I look?” Shauna’s eyes hungrily took in Jackie’s new outfit. Her jumpsuit had been traded in for a tight, dirty long-sleeved shirt that sat under various pieces of spiked leather armor. Her pants were a few sizes too large, resting low on her hips and revealing a thin sliver of skin under her navel. The bandolier was snug to her chest, and her combat boots were the cherry on top; she looked rugged and sexy in a way Shauna had never seen before.
“Like you’d hold me up on the side of the road, outlaw.” Shauna punctuated her statement with some finger guns. She looked down at her own outfit, heavy cage armor fashioned from metal pipes and chains. Being up close and personal with her new machete called for solid protection. “What about me?”
The way Jackie slowly scanned her body made her feel high again, unable to control her wandering mind. She knew she looked intimidating; no one else would pin them as easy targets with her layers of rusted metal and spikes.
“Perfect. You’ll fit right in,” Jackie says, arming herself with her 10mm and a pair of brass knuckles.
The pair finished gathering various supplies and slipped out of the raider camp. The sky was bright, and they could see Dark Water waiting for them in the distance. The detour hadn’t set them off course entirely; they could make it there by the end of the day.
With their pinkie fingers intertwined, they headed off to Dark Water once again. This time, they would find out what was waiting for them behind those walls.