Chapter Text
Something was off.
He couldn't, in all honesty, say that anything was wrong. But the picture before him felt askew somehow, as if all the details were being obscured in one place and exaggerated in others. It left him feeling strangely dazed but fixated nonetheless.
Everything about her was out of place. She was far too clean. The pink of her dress, untattered and unstained, stood in stark contrast to the dark streets and rubble surrounding her. Even the way her blonde curls fell against the bench she was resting on seemed too perfect, actually, to be real.
He would have thought she was just some corpse that someone had left on the street to be found in the morning if it weren't for the slight movements she made while she slept. How long she had been there was hard to pinpoint. The Jet canisters now littering his desk had muddled his sense of time. He could have been watching her for all of ten minutes, but it felt like it had been hours.
The thought gnawing at him, in the very back of his conscience, was that he had no idea how long she had been here. Not just outside, asleep on the bench, but in town. He liked to think he was pretty on top of welcoming any newcomers, so she must not have been here long.
But why outside? Why would she choose to sleep out in the open, not visibly armed? The Rexford had plenty of vacancies and was far safer. And how was she so pristine?
His head swirled with questions as the chems started working their way out of his system. It was the middle of the night. This strange woman was dead asleep. He heaves a deep sigh, drumming his fingers lightly on the armrest of his chair. Is he willing to wake her to give her a proper welcome and maybe get some answers?
On the other hand, how willing is he to wait until morning only to find pieces of her spread across the pavement?
Fuck it.
Popping a couple of Mentats in his mouth, he stands and swings his coat around his shoulders. If not to get answers, he’ll wake her just to make sure she doesn't stay quite so vulnerable. Better to risk spooking her a little than regret it in the morning.