@doctortothedead
Ambushed.
Ambushed in his own bunker. At night, no less. It astounded him how a group of raiders could take down the defenses he installed over time to ensure his own peace of mind and comfort—turrets, Gatling traps, and one lone protectron he managed to scrap and salvage. It naturally hadn’t been an easy task for the raiders, Danse noted on his way out; there were casualties, not just his own security. If not for his training—or his memories, whichever it was—he might not have been the one to walk away. He did sorely miss his T-60 power armor fiercely, however. A near-gut shot was just as dangerous to a synth as it was to a human, and he only had one stimpak left to help staunch the free bleeding. Danse needed a doctor, immediately.
Upon waking up to the sound of bullets, lasers, and explosions, Danse had only but a few minutes to grab his gear and prepare for the onslaught that came through his door. His bed took the brunt of the damage, but one of the raiders had a flame thrower and that put him at a severe disadvantage. Despite the armor he had acquired over scavenging (it felt like a fall from grace—at one time having everything provided for him to returning to picking things from dead bodies and junk piles), it didn’t do much for the burns he sustained on his arms, or the bullet the slipped right below his chest piece and tore through his side. Pure adrenaline kept him going, as it was now.
Danse left his bunker a smoking mess (to return to or not, he’d decide later), with one bag slung over his less-injured shoulder, and laser rifle in hands, he made the most direct route to the nearest settlement there was bound to be a traveling doctor or medical station set up. The pain was a cold numbness now, that ached once in a while as he walked. That also might have been the blood cooling on his clothes and coagulating into a sticky mess. Danse hadn’t even noticed the blood the oozed slowly from a cut above his brow, until it dripped into his eye. It both surprised and stung him. He didn’t exactly have time to stop and really clean it out, so he rubbed it away to the best of his ability and kept walking. Well. Limping.
She had thankfully made it to a tight-knit settlement made up of a handful of hard-working people. The skepticism in their eyes was evident upon her arrival--much like it always was, however Eli too put in her fair share of work other than offering the services she had. Admittedly, they were few and far between--a fraction of the knowledge she actually kept if only to keep herself safe in the savagery that the wasteland emitted--but they were appreciative. In time they too began to trust, often coming to her in the weeks that she spent in their presence, fixing wounds sustained from skirmishing against raiders and vermin alike. So it was no real surprise to hear her name screeched in two familiar syllables from behind the collapsing greenhouse where the youngest of the settlement’s residents stood guard.
‘E--Eli!’ He hollered, nearly falling over his own feet as if they were too slow in comparison to the pace his body expected him to keep. An arm snapped back frantically towards the encampment’s edge, his eyes wide as his chest heaved. She blinked once as if to show attentiveness to the child’s anxiousness, eyes flickering towards the direction in which he gestured. Though it was as he caught his breath and began to speak again that the attention of the rest of those who resided there was drawn, now settling upon the scenario unfolding.
‘Someone’s coming! H--He’s injured!’ He stammered, reaching out to grab her hand, yanking her forward heroically. She was dubious. There was something unsettling about the abruptness of the stranger’s arrival, but she was realist. She would not assume one’s intents or purposes before she could assess the situation for herself. And so she found herself upon a poorly-made barrack, staring out unto a withered landscape painted with dead trees as the child’s hands released hers, pointing into the distance before his shrill outcry pierced through the air again.
‘There! Do you see him! Look, Eli, look!’ And find him she did, fumbling and limping through the woody landscape, struggling from whatever conflict he had endured--that much was evident even from a distance. With careful steps she moved, an instinctive nature to soothe and mend superseding even her own means of survival. She stepped around the barbed wire that lined the lifted deck she was led unto, trodding down the slope as the child remained behind, now flanked by various others who stood armed and ready at the hill’s peak.
“Here,” she offered readily, extending a hand without so much as asking for his name, let alone how he was or what happened. His condition was evident, and she wasn’t about to have him exert more energy than he needed to. What mattered was repairing the damage that had been done. Pushing the tense and nervous spirits of the people at her back out of her mind, she approached carefully--as one would a wounded animal, uncertain of their feral and mistrusting nature.
“Let me help you.”
