arboreal_priestess | From the Causeway to Washington DC, Thursday Afternoon

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From the Causeway to Washington DC, Thursday Afternoon

This was not the first time on Fandom that Verity had been glad her apartment could double as an armory, but it might have been the most acute. This week had been ridiculous, from fighting off a radroach invasion in their kitchen to the heart attack that had been discovering that the colony of Aeslin mice had been replaced by a colony of Aeslin mole-rats.

Nightmare fuel was walking into a room of giant mole-rats and hearing them talk to you, in case anybody needed a shot of that real quick. (Nobody needed a shot of that. Nobody.)

They also ate a lot more than Aeslin mice normally did and even though they supplemented their diet by eating pretty much any other creature they could find, the food levels in the Kincaid-Price household had gone from 'dangerously low' to 'practically non-existant' over night.

Which was why Liam and Verity had decided to strap on pretty much every single weapon they owned and head into the Wasteland to scavenge the remains of D.C. Supposedly, that was where the best remaining supplies were located.

Supposedly, that was where the most dangerous predators in the Wasteland were located, too. And most of them walked on two legs.

That was a problem they'd deal with when they got to it.

"All right," Verity said, securing another rusty container of bobby pins and her spare screwdriver. "We ready to head out?"

[Open to anyone who wants to join Liam and Verity on a scavenging expedition. Be prepared to self-NPC!]

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"Stay low?" Verity asked, checking to see whether this was Liam setting up an ambush or keeping them hidden.

Liam nodded. Stay low, hopefully let them pass without incident. Save their energy and ammunition for when they'd really need it.

Never pass up a chance to be lazy, as Francis Brown used to say, because those times are rare and precious indeed.

Verity slid under the burned out car, trading ease of movement with more concealment and a better vantage point. Her hand stuck out the other side, the better to signal Liam with.

Five fingers flashed, then five more, and five more. Four-to-one odds, which were generally shit, even if these guys weren't particularly skilled. She didn't even bother trying to pass along how many weapons she was counting on them as they came into view. Each person had at least two, maybe even three.

Yeah, it was hard to get an exact headcount when you were working from a flash of precognition, so Liam appreciated the numbers.

This was one of those times when actual telepathy would be useful. As it was, she'd just have to trust that he saw her signals.

It was times like this where Verity regretted that Sarah wasn't a fighter. Cuckoo powers would be so handy.

...But there was a reason Sarah didn't fight and it wasn't just because of what happened against the Covenant. It was really easy to go from 'Cuckoo powers would be so handy in this situation' to 'Cuckoo powers would be so handy in all situations.' And, honestly, that was how you got cuckoos in the first place.

The raiders seemed to be heading off to the southwest, away from their little group. Verity drew an arrow in the sand, showing their direction.

Good, because as little as she wanted to fight them, she less wanted them to start heading towards the Causeway.

Yeah, if they'd been headed towards the causeway, then their little group would've essentially been obligated to take them out. Which Liam didn't necessarily have a problem with, if it needed to be done. But it would cut their trip short for sure.

So they'd wait a bit longer, until the raiders were well out of earshot, and then start moving again.

The next time Verity's fingers moved, it was to take his hand. She was plenty used to lying in wait for things and was taking the opportunity to half-doze in the heat, her nose and mouth protected by a balaclava.

Holding his hand was just a bonus.

Liam's fingers curled around hers, thumb rubbing gently across her knuckles. The physical contact meant he could also make use of that not-quite-telepathy of his to send her a current of gentle amusement. Of course she'd find a way for them to steal a moment, even in a situation like this.

You had to learn to take the moments when they came, no matter how fleeting. Sometimes they were the only moments they had.

It took a quarter hour for the raiders to make their way across and another ten before Verity was comfortable sliding out from under the car. "We should be good," she said.

"All right," Liam said, some (though not all, obviously) of the tension leaving his frame once Verity was back out from under the car. "We're gonna have to pick up the pace a bit to make up for lost time."

"Damn, there go all my hopes for sightseeing," she quipped, dusting the radioactive dirt off of her. Shit, she was going to need to down, like, a box of RadAway when they got back.

"You know, eventually I'm gonna get you to a version of DC we can go sightseeing in," Liam mused.

"Well, we missed the perfect opportunity last week," Verity teased. "We could have taken a boat. Docked it at the top of the Washington Monument and looked down at the whole Mall beneath however many feet of water that was."

She didn't mention the visit to Street, of course. They hadn't played tourist for a very different reason then.

Yeah, no. Liam was relatively open about the fact that he was "presumed dead" in his own reality and that he preferred to avoid going back there, so mentioning that he had would just invite the possibility of questions he didn't want to answer.

"Boat tours do have a certain romance to them," Liam mused. "But still. I'd prefer something a little less damp. Or irradiated."

"You're opening us right up to the possibility that the next spot, everything's just gonna be on fire, you know that, right?" Verity asked, hand over her eyes while she scanned the horizon, noting everything that moved. "We wake up Monday and it's just all fire, everywhere."

“That happens, and I’m going to be the one asking if we can move to Michigan for a while,” Liam said without hesitation. Look, he had burned alive inside a volcano, he was absolutely allowed to be a little twitchy at the idea of spending a week surrounded by fire. Yeah, it had been a situation he’d gone in to willingly (... sort of), but that didn’t mean it had been fun.

Yeah, Verity was pretty sure the part where he'd been burned alive inside a volcano had been conspicuously absent from his explanations of his death.

"Maybe we'll go somewhere made of massages and chocolate instead," Verity suggested. "Just to keep us guessing."

Talking about the fact that he'd died and come back was simple. Talking about the hows and wherefores of the whole experience was harder.

"That would be nice," Liam said with a wistful sigh. And it wasn't like the island hadn't gone nice places during its previous jaunts, so it wasn't like that was out of the question? ~~Except for how the semi-regular invasions strangely never involved AUs full of massages and chocolate. But it's not like they had any idea that's what the island was up to this time around.~~

Yeah, that wasn't something that she'd press for details on, either.

"All right, we'll start campaigning to go somewhere comfortable, where everything turned to pillows and blankets, and tango shoes."

"There are plenty of things about you that I should find terrifying, and yet it's the fact that you associate 'tango shoes' with the word 'comfortable' that really does it," Liam said, shaking his head.

Verity stuck her tongue out at him. Flung a knife at a mole-rat creeping in through the underbrush. Stole a kiss while fetching her knife back.

"They're emotionally comfortable," she explained. "Put me into tango shoes and I can conquer the world."

“I don’t doubt it,” Liam grinned back at her. “I would still twist an ankle within five minutes if I tried to wear them. Assuming we could find a pair that would fit me.”

"They're actually a lot more comfortable than most of my other shoes," Verity admitted. "Ballroom shoes have to be flexible and easy to dance in, after all. My stilettos require no such standards."

"That makes sense," Liam admitted.

... He'd still probably have trouble walking in them without falling over, he figured.

Verity would just point out that Siobhan had almost certainly worn heels in her life and he could just draw on that, silly Liam.

"Course it does," Verity pointed out. "I'm an expert in bullets and ballroom, horrors and heels."

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