#On the off chance someone befriends me they always gradually drift off after a month or two

[playercharacter1]

I said that I’d wait to try the DLCs before working out how much of them I want to incorporate into the gameverse tale, and having played Dead Money I’m now inclined to think I want to incorporate more or less the whole thing - because it gives me a really handy post-game hook. Almost certainly messes with the canon timeline a bit, but I’m not out to write a novel any time soon so I’m handwaving it in the name of fun.

As noted, Larkin gets drawn into the Dead Money mess around the age of 23, spends a week or so suffering, and gets out with...maybe one gold bar, which allows for a comfortable few months in recompense. (A spending splurge that means she recovers well from her time amidst the Cloud, with a healthy portion left over as savings to be squirrelled away for emergencies.) She parts with Christine on loosely friendly terms; they didn’t know each other long enough or under relaxed enough circumstances to bond in any great depth, but after dragging someone’s dying ass up a staircase and collaborating on a murder plot with them, it’s only natural to hope their future endeavours go well.

At age 25-26, nine-ish months of game plot occur. Blah blah etc, Larkin eventually deposes House and establishes herself as a significant power in Vegas, with Veronica and Yes Man helping her out. The first six months that follow are barely bridled chaos, and even after that there is a hell of a lot to deal with; there are plenty of people who respect Larkin for being The Courier who pushed the NCR and Legion out, but no small number resent her for upending the status quo so dramatically (and nearly plunging the city into complete economic disaster in the process). There are of course also the handful who simply see her as easier pickings than the elusive House ever was.

And Larkin’s certainly more exposed than House, because she still insists on striking her deals and seeing things carried out in person. There’s a danger to it, but there’s equal danger in sitting too far out of the action; she knows how easy it to have vital information hidden or misconstrued by those with an agenda. It’s around this period that she upgrades her look a bit from the grubby wastelander half-angling to be underestimated. Still goes armed and armoured (because there’s presenting a confident image and then there’s asking to be stabbed), but it’s less of a chunky / patchwork mess, and more...something like the assassin suit in style, I suppose? A sleeker, meaner Larkin, balancing practicality against image, her background and experiences against life as a permanent part of the Strip.

Two-ish years after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, Larkin’s progressed from significant power to dominant power, generally recognised as the head of what loose hierarchy exists, and had a few close calls. A wary eye is still kept on all horizons, with rumours out of both east and west speaking not of war, not yet, but enough hostility to settle uncomfortably between her shoulder-blades. She has alliances, but people are fickle; she has the Securitrons, but they’re known and familiar and far from invulnerable, and their numbers have been whittled down over the years. As she lounges at the top of the Lucky 38, she finds her thoughts drifting back to a misadventure from her youth and the unique tech she’d witnessed there.

At age 28, Larkin returns to the Sierra Madre with Veronica in tow - a Veronica who’s older and tireder and still trying to do what’s right. The former scribe has been loyal, has been valuable, and has been growing ever uneasier with her friend / sometimes lover and all that’s been done in the name of staying safe or making improvements or it’s not like this is how I want to play it, V, but it’s how it has to happen. After being cast aside by her old family, however, she can’t make herself abandon what small measure of it she has here. 

She’s taken completely by surprise by the face who greets them at the gates.

Larkin has long since guessed that Christine’s Elijah and Veronica’s Elijah are likely one and the same, and Veronica’s presence is at least partly grease on the wheels: Look at this! Old friends, all three of us. Who’d have thought? It works, too; nobody’s throwing themselves into anyone’s arms, but beneath the bewilderment and disbelief there’s real relief at finding out they’re both alive, and the faintest echoes of an old tenderness, a young love cut short but never forgotten. As for Larkin, well, Christine’s memories of Larkin are of a resourceful and reliable ally, and in the wild weirdness of the moment Veronica’s doubts are submerged again as they laugh together and shake heads over how they’ve all changed and oh, god, it’s really Christine? It makes for a warm welcome.

The good feeling lasts maybe a day or two as the warden shows them about and ample tales are traded. Then, on the second night, Larkin casually comes out and says that she’s here for the tech - for the holograms predominantly, but she’s not averse to the other bits and pieces that make the Sierra Madre such a fortress. She’s not after Elijah’s dream of hunching like a mad vulture over a dead zone, but the holograms alone would vastly improve her security.

Christine says no.

More than that, Veronica says no. She, more than Christine, knows what Larkin’s not saying, knows what kind of edge she’s seeking, has watched her walking slowly but steadily down a path that is becoming harder and harder to condone. And now - away from Vegas, away from the politicking and the danger and the Hard Choices That Must Be Made - she finds herself appealing to the young woman she befriended in the first place. Is this really necessary? Heck, do we even need to go back? It was just...it was so nice travelling out here, just the two of them (and a Securitron) like the old days, and Christine’s presence is reminding her of a time she was truly happy, which makes it easier to recognise that she’s not anymore. That she hasn’t been for a long time now.

Veronica’s reluctance only firms Christine’s stance that what’s in the Sierra Madre should stay in the Sierra Madre; likewise, Christine being present means Larkin can’t resort to her usual manipulative tactics to talk Veronica around from her misgivings. It means a long conversation that gets just close enough to ugly for Christine to grow wary - before Larkin finally smiles, holds up her hands, and says alright, very well, the point has been made. Can’t blame her for trying. Have you gotten much news from the south in your six years of solitude? Ah, well...

(And Veronica thinks, later, she should have known that moment for what it was, but she never really thought she’d end up on the other side of it.)

By the time they all part for bed, things aren’t quite as comfortable as they were before the disagreement, but Larkin waves off Veronica’s attempt to talk privately, claiming weariness and no hard feelings. Veronica hesitates, looks down the hallway a long moment before turning in...and then wakes during the night to find Larkin has attempted to lock both she and Christine in their rooms in order to take the tech by force.

What commences is three-ish days of cat-and-mousing in the deadly playground that is the Sierra Madre; no bomb collars this time at least, but an infinitely more personal fight. The longer it goes, the less Larkin holds back, and the ruthless resourcefulness that saw her turn the tables on Elijah has only been honed further since they last met. She is The Courier-

But Christine is the Warden. She has spent those same six years guarding this territory. She knows it inside and out, she taught Larkin half her skills with computers; the Cloud barely scathes her lungs, and the Ghost People shy away from her and those she protects. Eventually, with Veronica’s aid, she ends the bitter struggle over the Sierra Madre’s treasures by taking it out of the equation altogether - they rig a bomb that triggers a chemical reaction and ignites the Cloud like a funeral pyre that will burn for nearly a decade.

All three make it out before it goes; as deeply distressed as Veronica is by Larkin’s actions, as brutal a confirmation this has been that the woman she liked and loved (as a friend and, in a few precious moments, a little like something more) has gradually become no better than House, no better than Elijah - she doesn’t want her dead. She makes sure her old friend has a fair chance to escape.

Veronica and Christine flee together. Nothing has quite been rekindled between them yet; it’s been such a long time, and so much has happened. They’re quiet and hurting, leaving more things burning in Sierra Madre’s fires than tech and treasures. There’s a strange sense of lightness though, the slow awareness of freedom - from Christine’s vigil over the city of the dead, to Veronica’s dogged loyalty to a cause she’d long lost heart in - and for once the future is a total, enticing mystery.

Larkin limps back alone to New Vegas, humiliated and hating. To have lost a fight she started is a grievous blow to her pride, and the paranoiac edge that can in some ways be traced to the her first encounter with the Sierra Madre is now spiralling after the second - it doesn’t help that both Christine and Veronica are ex-Brotherhood, a group that Larkin has developed an increasingly personal grudge against. She genuinely believes that the fight isn’t finished here, that they’ll return all high and mighty to deny her Vegas as well, and even if they don’t someone else fucking will, there’s always someone who wants what she has.

She might not be wrong.

She will be ready.