The sky was heavily overcast. Dark and brooding clouds covered the sky as far as the eye could see.

Pinkie couldn’t help but wonder if the weather was somehow reflecting her mood.

She was standing on the highest point in Rivet City, leaning on the railings of a little observation deck that afforded what should have been a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape. The devastated ruins of D.C spread out below her as far as the eye could see. Rubble-choked streets ran between skeletal buildings, the battered old aircraft carrier that was Rivet City towering above it all.

To Pinkie, it just looked like a desolate hell-hole. The shattered remains of a broken world.

Peeking over the edge of the railings, she could just make out the line of the Potomac River directly below. What the girls’ first assumed to be an ocean harbor had actually turned out to be just a filthy, polluted river that wound it’s way through the old capital city.

Pinkie sighed and looked away from the water. Ever since the mad scramble to get Sunset to Rivet City she’d felt… off. Not herself. As if a dark cloud had ensconced itself in her mind, dampening her thoughts and smothering any little spark of happiness she felt before it could properly shine.

Ever since the rush to the city. Ever since she’d killed those ghouls.

Pinkie nearly jumped out of her skin as the door opened behind her.

She whipped her head around just as a lined old man shuffled through the door and onto the deck. He was almost entirely bald, with only wisps of black hair and a bushy black beard framing his heavily wrinkled face. He closed the door quietly, then gave a start as he spotted Pinkie, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s okay. I was just… thinking, I guess,” Pinkie replied, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

“I understand. Well, I don’t want to bother you. I’ll… uh… I’ll just go.”

“You don’t have to. There’s more than enough room up here for two of us,” Pinkie said quickly as he turned to leave, “I’m Pinkie Pie. What’s your name?”

“Me? I’m Mister Lopez,” Lopez hesitated for a moment, then glanced over at her, “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You won’t be,” Pinkie replied quietly, “Actually, I could probably use the company.”

Lopez sighed and shook his head, “I’m sorry, but I’m not really any good at conversation these days.”

Pinkie smiled sadly, recognizing the haunted look in his eyes, “That’s okay. Sometimes it’s nice just to share some quiet time.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Lopez turned from the door and wandered over to Pinkie’s side, the two of them leaning on the railings and looking out over the ruins.

The pair stayed that way for some time, silently watching the world go by. At one point Pinkie spotted a small group of people emerging onto Rivet City’s boarding platform far below. Dressed entirely in black, she couldn’t help but wonder if they were connected with the thugs that had accosted the Rainbooms down in the metro system. One of them seemed to be having a heated exchange over the intercom with the city’s security guards who, for whatever reason, weren’t extending the bridge to allow the group entry.

Eventually the group gave up and turned to leave, making some very rude gestures to the security team guarding the bridge controls as they went. Pinkie slowly let out a breath she hardly realized she’d been holding as the last of the people disappeared from view. She wasn’t really sure why but she was glad that, whoever those people were, they weren’t allowed in Rivet City.

“So… I… uh…”

Pinkie looked up to see Lopez glancing at her, “What’s up?”

Lopez shifted uncomfortably, “Is it true what people are saying, that you girls are from another world?” His eye’s widened slightly as Pinkie nodded, “Wow, that sure is something.”

“Yeah, yeah it is,” Pinkie muttered, turning her head away.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to upset you.” Lopez said nervously.

“No it-it’s okay. It’s just…” Pinkie hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. “It’s hard, you know?”

Lopez sighed heavily, “Yeah. I know.”

Something about his tone sent a shiver down Pinkie’s spine. Glancing sidelong at him, she saw shame, regret and self-loathing clouding his features.

It was an expression that Pinkie recognized instantly. One she’d worn herself more than once over the last week. She shivered again as she came to a dark conclusion.

“You didn’t come up here just to admire the view, did you?”

Lopez’ eyes darted around nervously as he tried to stammer out a reply, but a glance at the look on Pinkie’s face had him closing his mouth. With a sigh he turned and looked over the railings, staring into the murky waters below.

“I come up here every day,” Lopez’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. He jerked his head towards a section of the deck where the railings had been broken off, “I stand over there and see if I can work up the nerve to…”

“… to jump,” Pinkie finished softly. Lopez just nodded.

The two fell silent after that. There was a low groan of metal from the ship, as if Rivet City itself was picking up on their somber mood.

“A couple of days ago, I thought about jumping too.”

Lopez whipped his head around, stunned by Pinkie’s frank admission.

Pinkie took a deep breath to steady herself before explaining, “Ever since we left the vault, we’ve had to fight. Random nutcases, angry crab monsters, raiders, those I could deal with. Even when it came to the super mutants and I had to kill something myself I-I could handle that. I didn’t like it… but I could handle it.” Pinkie swallowed reflexively, “But then we found those ghouls.”

Lopez was listening intently, hanging on every word.

“I felt kinda bad when I killed the super mutant but… it was a monster, and it was trying to kill my friends. It had to be done. The little groups of feral ghouls we fought afterwards? That was harder.”

Tears were streaming down Pinkie’s face as she spoke. Each memory was more painful than the last, but she didn’t think she could stop talking even if she wanted to.

“It’s not right. Those ghouls they… they used to be people. Just ordinary people. What’s happened to them isn’t their fault, they can’t control themselves… and I killed them anyway…”

Lopez clasped her shoulder and spoke softly, trying to reassure her, “Hey, it’s alright. Those feral ghouls… there’s nothing you can do for them.”

Pinkie just nodded, “I know. I know that there’s no cure, that the best we can do is put them out of their misery. That’s what I kept telling myself. That’s how I managed to keep moving forward, fighting when I had to, to protect my friends. But when we ran into the horde…”

She shivered and drew her arms around herself, “There were so many of them. So many people who had suffered, who were still suffering. Every time I killed one of them… it felt like I was losing a little piece of myself. Then after all of that there were the issues with Sunset’s surgery and… and then she didn’t wake up I just… it was just too much.”

Pinkie drew in a shuddering breath, trying to keep her emotions in check as she haltingly explained everything that had happened since.

At first, she’d struggled to keep up a positive front for the sake of the others. Each of them had been dealing with what had happened in their own way and Pinkie was adamant that she wouldn’t be an additional burden on them. She’d done everything she could think of to try and keep everyone’s spirits up, to keep them from dropping into despair, but the strain of keeping up the façade had been more than she could handle.

Overhearing the doctors talking, suggesting that Sunset might never wake up, had been the last straw.

Barely a few minutes after hearing that, Pinkie was up on the observation deck.

Family, friends and bringing joy to others. Those were the three main things that she lived for.

Coming to this world had ripped her from her family. Her closest friends were suffering or on the brink of death. And ever since the slaughter of those ghouls, some of them had been small enough that they might have been children when they changed, joy was something Pinkie no longer believed she could feel, or even deserved to feel.

Standing right on the very edge of the deck, where the railings were missing, there had been nothing between Pinkie and the drop. All it would have taken was a slight shift in her balance and she would have fallen, smashing into one of the lower decks or dashing herself on the rocks rising up from the depths of the river below.

How long she’d been balancing there for, teetering on the edge and wondering whether or not to take that final step, Pinkie honestly couldn’t say. In the end, it was only the thought of her friends that had pulled her back from the brink. They were suffering enough as it was, no matter how hard things were, she couldn’t bring herself to torture them in that way.

When she finally stepped back from the edge, Pinkie had made a rather startling discovery. She’d been so preoccupied with her dark thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the door opening behind her and someone else joining her on the deck.

Thankfully Rainbow Dash hadn’t been angry. Shocked and upset, but not angry. Once she’d realized what Pinkie was up to she’d stood back and waited silently, letting her come to her own decision. Rainbow had ponied up of course, there was no way in heck she would have actually let Pinkie kill herself, but she’d trusted her to make the right decision.

Then dragged her into a hug the second Pinkie’d realized she wasn’t alone.

That was when the façade had finally shattered, Rainbow holding Pinkie tightly as she broke down completely. Once she’d cried herself out, Rainbow brought Pinkie back downstairs and gathered the others.

That hadn’t been a fun conversation, but there was no denying that it had been necessary and, to some extent, cathartic. That was when they had all decided, as a group, that no matter how bad everyone felt or how bleak things looked, they all had to talk to each other. It was the only way they were going to all make it home alive.

Lopez listened patiently as Pinkie spoke, letting her get everything off her chest. She wasn’t even sure why she was telling all of this to a complete stranger. Even Sunset hadn’t heard it all yet, though admittedly she’d only woken up a few hours ago.

Eventually the story drew to a close. Pinkie sniffed and gently brushed away the tears she’d shed. She didn’t exactly feel better as such, but she did feel a little relieved. A little less bottled up. It had definitely been easier talking about it the second time around, especially to a man who was as patient and kind a listener as Lopez, one who understood all too well how she felt.

“I was a trader once, out there in the wastes.”

Pinkie looked up at Lopez. He smiled sadly at her then cast his gaze out over the ruined landscape, speaking softly.

“Ten years ago me and my wife tried to make the trek here with our son. We’d saved up enough caps over the years that we could live quite comfortably here for a while, until I found work. The plan was that I’d either open up a stall in the marketplace or just join the security folks, if they’d have me.”

Lopez’s face brightened as he reminisced, “My wife was a character, let me tell you. Witty, bright as a button and with a tongue sharper than anyone I’d ever met. Heh, my little boy was just as bad. Couldn’t take my eyes off him without him getting into some sort of mischief.”

Pinkie got a horrible sinking feeling as she heard Lopez say ‘was’. Indeed the twinkle in his eyes died and his whole body slumped as he continued, “We were almost here. We traveled carefully, avoiding all of the places we knew that super mutants liked to camp, but it wasn’t enough.”

Lopez nodded to a street corner down in the city below, “We were ambushed by raiders, right down by there. I managed to drive them off, but not before they…”

Pinkie slipped an arm around his shoulder as his throat bobbed.

“They died in my arms.”

“I’m sorry.” Pinkie whispered.

Lopez passed a hand over his face, taking a few breaths to calm himself, “Once… once I’d buried them, I came here. I knew they would have wanted me to go on but… I didn’t know what to do. I tried to make myself useful, but I’d lost everything I could really trade with, and I didn’t have the stomach for fighting anymore. Not after that. I’ve been alone here ever since. Just taking up space and getting in the way.”

Pinkie rested her head on his shoulder, “You’re a lot braver than I am.”

Lopez scoffed lightly at that, “If I was a brave man, I’d have thrown myself off this deck a long time ago.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Pinkie replied, “If it wasn’t for my friends I would have given up on that day, I couldn’t face doing this alone. But you… you’ve found the strength to face that burden every single day for the last ten years. I can’t even imagine how hard that’s been for you.”

Lopez’s breathed turned haggard, tears rolling out from under his hand and dripping off his chin.

“But you’re not alone anymore, and you’re absolutely not useless or a waste of space. I Pinkie Promise.”

“I am, I rea-”

“You’re not,” Pinkie urged, gently but firmly, “You’ve lived in the Capital Wasteland for a long time, right?”

Lopez nodded, “All my life.”

“And you used to be a trader?”

Another nod.

Pinkie’s lips curved into a small smile, “Then I bet you’ve got lots of stories about things you’ve seen, and a lot you could teach someone who’s new to the wastes. I sure wish I had a good friend who could tell me stories like that, and teach me everything they knew about living out here.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze for emphasis.

Lopez chuckled softly, pulling his hand away from his face. His eyes were red and there were wet tracks running through the dust on his wrinkled face, but there was a little spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he arrived on the deck, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Pinkie replied, smiling up at him, “But why don’t we start with where you were born?”

Lopez wiped his face and smiled back at her, “You ever heard of a town called Canterbury Commons?”

---

Unnoticed by either of the two on the observation deck a lone figure lurked in the shadows, watching the two as they talked.

Fluttershy hadn’t intended to spy on them.

She’d only come up to the observation deck in the first place to make sure that Pinkie was okay, but after hearing what they were talking about, she couldn’t help but listen. She felt bad enough leaving Pinkie on her own after recent events, even when the alone time was requested, there was no way she was going to leave two people with suicidal tendencies unsupervised in such a precarious position.

Fluttershy still felt terrible for doing it.

She’d barely managed to stifle her sobs as she listened to Pinkie and Lopez, her heart breaking at the thought of the pain and suffering they were going through, but she forced herself to be quiet.

Peeking through the slightly-open door again though, Fluttershy knew she’d made the right choice in not interrupting them.

Pinkie’s hair, while still largely straight and flat, was starting to curl slightly at the tips.

She’s got a long way to go, but Pinkie’s taken a few steps in the right direction today. Hopefully she can help Mister Lopez on the road to recovery too.

Smiling slightly, Fluttershy turned and started down the stairs, leaving the two to their healing.

Next Chapter: Chapter 27 - Rivet City Estimated time remaining: 42 Hours, 3 Minutes