The Cracked Glass. How many times he'd come and drink in here. Drink, sit, laugh. With friends. Now, the only friend left seemed to be Ramirez, and this batshit insane harpie of a woman who he could never tell would turn around and stab someone or something else of that like. He had his bottle of whiskey, which was obviously dutifully bought by Zelzibel and thoroughly checked that it wasn't pissed in when she handed it to him. Piss was not a good mixer for anything. And he thought that today deserved only the best of drinks. 

"Happy birthday." He muttered to himself as he pulled a mouthful from the bottle and took it down. Happy birthday indeed.

Zelzibel was currently riding on three shots of whiskey and one injection of psycho. She was staring the bartender, dead in the eyes. Zel said, "I'm going to fuck the shit out of you."

The bartender, a 30ish year old man named David, glanced over to Redding. "She gonna be a problem?" He looked back at Zel, considering. She looked fucked up. He shook his head, "Redding, if I were to take her up on that offer and not saying I'm considering it, I mean, if you two are hitting the sack I ain't going to get between you and your girl, but, I mean. Is she one of those tie you to the bed and take all your caps types?" He looked to Zel and said "No offense." without actually meaning it.

"The first time I saw Zel naked was when she'd tied a man up and stabbed him. It wasn't even for caps." He took another drink, looking back at the table, "Fucking her will be a tremendous loss to me, David, truly. But I will get the bar." He raised his bottle in mock-toast with a half-assed smile at the last part. David seemed to be considering further, even so, and finally nodded. Redding had never led him astray.

"If you keep harassing the patrons, they're going to throw us out." He said to Zel, still looking at the table.

Zel smacked two clenched fists in the table, "I'm not leaving this bar until I have all my desires and dreams fulfilled! Every single one, even that one where I'm you!" She pointed at Redding. Her hand trembled, then she fell facefirst on the table, sobbing. "I just want to fuck someones brains out until we both died of exhaustion! Why can't I do anything right!"

David was  not quite sure if that's the kind of thing you should be consoling, so he kept a neutral stance, ready to reach out and console but not appearing to go either way.

"You finally open up to me and that's your life's biggest regret?" Redding asked, frowning. "I mean, over a certain age and not having fucked at least once is... I mean, it's not desirable."

He shrugged taking another drink from the bottle. He wouldn't be ready to leave here until he couldn't, so to speak. He threw his head back, eyes closed, a whispered 'fuck' escaping him. Exposing his throat to Zel held a certain primeval sense of danger the first time he'd met her, though the surety he had that she'd take the first opportunity to kill him had been waning. Waning, but still there, just not enough of it for him to care anymore. "You ever had a kid?" He asked.

"Not that I can remember. I had this doll once, but then I lost her and I still haven't found her to this day. Do you have her?" Zel remembered this doll. Button eyes, sew lines around each face of its body. Button eyes, black as the dark. Button eyes, always watching. Button eyes.
"Is it like having a doll? Do you loose them suddenly, with no warning? Do you dream about them?"

Redding looked up at her and there was a spark of anger that didn't catch any kindling. He closed his mouth after the sudden urge to tell her to just shut back up had fizzled away. He just took another drink and sighed, "Sure."

He decided to change the subject, "Where the hell does a person like you even come from?" 

Zel chippered up out of nowhere, "Vault 232! You know, the best one. I'm sure you've heard of it."

Redding just shook his head, "No." After a moment of imagining what kind of vault would have someone like Zel in it, he didn't want to anymore, but there was a nagging curiosity of the type where you want to peer into the dark corners, "Is everyone like you in that vault?"

"Well there's the dead people, also the Overseers who stop us when one of us does something they don't like. They're a bunch of communists! They shouldn't be able to tell a group of people what they can or can't do, they should let us vote!"

"I don't know if I want to live in a world where someone like you could help decide on important things. Let alone at least a hundred of you. I deal with shitheads, dope fiends and killers every day. Thinking what they'd get up to if the notion of banding together ever crossed their minds..." Redding shook his head. "The world would turn to shit. Even more than it is now. You ever spent time in a raider gang? That kind of talk gets you knifed in your sleep. Knew a man named Gruff Jon Holly when I ran with one, fucking NCR was breathing down our necks for miles after we robbed a Gun Runner caravan after they limped away from a deathclaw den." He remembered those days without much fondness for them, "Talk spread about the boys, saying we should just offer over my goddamn brother. I was never on good terms with the slimy fuck, but family's family. I had to dissect Gruff. Tied him to an old wooden pole on the side of the road and left his guts at his feet. NCR wasn't too keen on following us after. We hit Fernley and I'd had enough of that gang politics shit."

He took another drink, then another, and after some careful thought, another. He'd puked outside of the bar in Fernley, snuck away to puke after he did that to Jon too. Jon was an okay guy, until he said the wrong thing.

"Wow!" Zelzibel exclaimed. "That's awful!" then she had the thought that Redding might do that to her. Images of her setting Redding on fire, then herself, then the bar, then the world flashed through her mind. "You're not going to do that to me are you?!" she clutched at Reddings arm, her grip was stronger than intended, "I like my guts! They let me pee out the radiation when I take rad-away!" Though she knew she didn't pee in bathrooms often, that was the easiest area for someone to come in and stab you. What would you do, with your pants down?

This gave Zelzibel a wise thought, "You should never have your pants down!" Without context, this made less sense than she thought it would.

"Just, you know, just keep making drugs. I got out of the raiding business because I didn't like gutting people. Easier to just flash a gun and let them come around on their own. Most people do." He set the bottle down, now feeling sufficiently slow and hazy. Zel's grip on him was odd, and this might have been the whiskey talking, but the touch of a female felt good. Even this one, and even if it wasn't sexual in any way. Then he looked into her eyes, deep, and saw nothing but pits of madness and remembered just who he was sitting next to. "Let go of my arm, please."

Zel reluctantly let go of Reddings arm, settling on gripping her knees tightly. "Once this guy beat me with a sock. Not just a sock, a sock with a fusion pack in it. It hurt. He'd find me when I was alone and exposed and do the same or worse. So one day, I found him, alone, his pants down. I punched him in the face, shoved his head in the toilet, and cut his back open with a razor blade. Then I shoved his head in the toilet.  Then I kept doing it. Then I kept doing it. Then I kept doing it. Then he died." 

She looked over to Redding, eyes wide, "Sometimes, I wonder if he was the one who did that to me. Except for the dying part. Have you ever been drowned, Red? The worst part is you can't stop breathing. Your body forces you to. You have no control. Then it hurts. Your body betrays you. Why won't it stop, why won't it? Then, you black out. Nothing. Have you ever felt nothing, Red?"

Redding met Zel's gaze and heard the words. As she said them, he lived them, almost. Being beaten, a woman like her. As crazy as she was, she was also a person. And it made him at least a small bit sad to know she was as small and helpless and as much of a blank slate as his daughter was at one time. He grieved a little bit for the little girl that Zel used to be. And her tale was a testament to the fact that even the smallest dog will bite the biggest man if the beatings go on long enough. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be the same man. Given enough beatings, all men start to look the same. 

He wondered what this world would've turned his daughter into, what his world would. Given enough thinking, he didn't like the answers, "Maybe." He said, about feeling nothing, "Once." Holding a limp bundle in his hands, so small. Then he remembered waking up with the same blank slate of memory a toddler has before achieving their first moment of true consciousness, except he was a young man with a needle in his arm in a place he didn't recognize.

"That is god-fucking-awful, by the way. Are there any sort of memories that could even just be construed as happy rattling around that head of yours?" He asked, brow furrowed.

"Oh yeah! One time, when mom was alive, she played checkers with me. We played for hours, days, without sleep. Then, I beat her when she passed out and allowed me to check her double stacked piece with mine. She woke up and cooked us both a breakfast because we hadn't eaten in days."

"Huh." Redding just shook his head, pursing his lips before sighing and trying to remember his mother and if there were any memories of her he hadn't visited in a while, "What the fuck had to happen to us, Zel?"

At every turn, just when he was about to tug some thread of sympathy for the woman before him, she always seemed to find a way to cut that thread before it came out and hold a lighter to it. Except this time. He blew out an exasperated breath, his cheeks puffing out with it and stood, holding himself upright with a hand on the table. He found his ground and took his first step, then his second, third. Finally, he was just about to push open the swinging doors of the bar when looking over the top of them brought him a view of none other than Fimion walking towards the door with the most self-satisfied grin on his face. Which was never a good thing to see. "Fucking Fimion..."