And watching lovers part, I feel you smiling
What glass splinters lie so deep in your mind
To tear out from your eyes with a word to stiffen brooding lies
But I'll only watch you leave me further behind
-The Chauffer by the Deftones
Hello everyone. Very recently, I started writing a story that looked at the Legion from a lighter perspective. While I do enjoy writing it, I think that the fact remains that the Legion IS dark and IS, in essence, a corrupt society. This story will explore the conversion of the Mojave's inhabitants into Legionaries and slaves, focusing primarily on a character that was the Courier's lover.
Please leave me your thoughts. I always find that my darker writing tends to be a little more fleshed out. Extensive editing is underway for both this story and Juno Lucina. Fresh updates may not be seen for another week or so.
Freeside's pleasant scene of broken streets, drugged out citizens, and hungry, starving children, was marred by the sea of crimson red uniforms. They came in groups of twenty. Each band of Legionaries that entered the Vegas area struck cords of unrest and fear into the hearts of Freeside's populous. Among these fearful souls was Alice Glass, caretaker of Freeside's orphan population. Up until that day, she ran a home for them to stay in. She fed them, clothed them, and watched over them without a cap's charge. Alice made enough money off of her medical expertise to pay for them, and the occasional help from her dear lover lightened the burden.
Alice used to be safe. She used to be protected by the Kings, the Followers, and the Courier, but not anymore.
The day had long gone dark, and Alice sat at her window, staring out in a silent vigil over the children she had spent the better part of her life working to save. She could see the shadows of Legionaries moving all about, heard the screams of her neighbors as women and children were taken away from good husbands and lovers. She heard the men threatening those that stole their loved ones away. She heard gunfire, saw muzzle flashes so bright and shocking outside that she had more than once dropped the drape over her window, trying her best to hide herself.
All around her, little ones cried and wept in fear. They wanted her to tell them that it would be okay, but she could not bare to lie to them. She knew that they would not be spared. Even if she tried to hide them, each and every child would eventually be found, enslaved or forced into training to become the men that had torn them away from home. Each girl would face a life that would make their current one look like some sort of heaven. They would go hungry. They would be raped, molested, worked until they passed out. Alice knew she faced this life too, and the terror pumped through her veins like a drug, heightening her senses and alerting her to the horrors occurring outside her very door.
The door had been locked since she first heard about the NCR's loss at Hoover Dam. The windows had been barred by the Kings when they found out the Legion was coming. They did their best to protect her and the kids like always, and now, there was little they could do. Even now, The King's men were fighting in the streets, dying bloody, horrific deaths for something they knew they could not secure, but they fought anyway. Alice covered her mouth, trying not to join the little girls who lay on the floor, motionless if not for their frightened sobs. The boys sat with their backs against the wall, staring at the door and soaking in all of the terrible sounds.
If she were a praying woman, she might have said a few words to God to try and protect the little ones that sat all around her in fear.
Then, the knocks came.
"In the name of Caesar, open this door!"
Alice stood, and the children immediately went scrambling and screaming into the back of the house. They did not know the meaning of the word subtlety, but at least they knew to be frightened. Their screams of terror served only to alert the Legionaries outside, and they began to bang on the door a little harder.
"Do you hear us over your screaming worms, profligate? The time has come to submit to Caesar's will!"
At the time, Alice refused. She did not open the door. In fact, she did not even move from where she stood in the middle of her little living room, frozen in shock and terror and prayer. She wanted Nicolas, the man she thought she loved. He would save her. He always saved her. When the Kings could not, the Courier would save her.
When the door would not immediately yield, other Legionaries began to assault the windows, breaking the glass and attempting to pull off the bars that had been set to try and keep them out. The glass flew into the air, hitting Alice even as she turned her face away, guarding her identity from the flying debris of the Legion's assault on her home. She had enough fear in her blood to run now, taking off for the back of the house and ushering the children into the basement.
"Go, go! Hurry. Run and hide!" She urged them, pushing each and every child forward and toward their uncertain fates.
If Nicolas could not save them, she would try her damnedest.
Just as she closed the door, she heard the loud, unmistakable sound of the door cracking off of its hinges, the miserable sound of soldiers marching into her home. She stood in the doorway of her kitchen, terrified. She knew her destiny; slavery would be the only way out of her home alive. She was not ready to submit just yet.
Adrenaline moved her into the kitchen, and she scooped up a butcher knife so quickly that she had enough time to react to the first Legionary that attempted to seize her. She swung the enormous, sharp knife in the air and cut through his armor, blood squirting out of a wound she had created. The Legionary let out a blood curdling scream, causing his fellows to jump to action and Alice to battle.
Before the night was over, Alice Glass had killed two Legionaries. Their blood had dried on her flesh by daybreak.
The night gave birth to the dawn, and with it a Freeside covered in the red sea of blood and the crimson flags of Caesar's Legion. Alice had enough time to adjust to her old surroundings, tainted with the disease of violence unlike any that had covered those streets before. What she had seen was war, and it appeared that war never changed.
She sat now in a row with some of Freeside's other women, on her knees and refusing to look at the Legionaries that had taken them. Like so many others around her, she wanted to pretend that this was not happening. Her eventual enslavement could not be real. Nicolas, the Courier, would save her like he always did. As much as she tried to convince herself that he would, she did not feel safe. Whatever protection he had once granted her felt like a dream.
Other women were weeping, begging for mercy for themselves or their children. The gathered Legionaries could only laugh in response, call them weak. Alice would not cry. She would not beg for mercy. After so many years in the Mojave, she knew better than that. She had not come from the Strip, like some of the women kneeling on the broken streets of Freeside with her. She did not know the comfort of mercy. She only knew the hot, harsh winds of the Mojave blowing through the streets and stoking a fire inside of her she knew to be survival.
Deep down, she knew each and every one of them would be broken like the walls, streets, windows and signs all around them. These women would still be a perfect reflection of Freeside, a load of worthless trash and garbage stomped on by people who thought they were better than them. She cursed her luck, whatever god had delivered her to the hands of the Legion. Maybe there existed some god that would show her mercy.
"As promised, Courier, you may choose which woman you wish for yourself, should you be staying with the Legion," an older, rugged voice spoke not far away.
Alice's interest perked. She hoped, longed for the sight of Nicolas coming to save her, but would she really be safe? Would he protect her from the other men, shelter her from the horrible truth of what it meant to be a woman under Caesar's Legion? Did she really have the guts to abandon all of these other women to that horrible fate? The more she milled over these questions, searching for signs of the man who had kept her warm whenever he could, she felt more and more that the answer was no.
In the sea of crimson dressed men, she could see four others moving through and steadily approaching the women.
"There's one girl that I'm looking for, Caesar. Black hair, green eyes, real skinny and frail thing. Pale too. Did your Legionaries find a girl like that?" She heard the Courier speak, and her heart sank with every word.
Frail? Was she frail? Was there anything frail about a woman who cared for seven abandoned children day in and day out, working her own hands to the bone for a bunch of snot nosed brats who did not even appreciate her? Her temper flared, and she looked in the direction of Nicolas' voice.
"You must be talking about the orphanage woman. She killed two men before they finally caught her. Not so frail, apparently," a smooth, snake-like voice reported to the source of her interest.
The gathered Legionaries parted as a new group came along, respect evident in the ways. Among them was the Courier, standing tall and proud in his power armor. He seemed the perfect picture of strength, if not for the man just beside him who stood just as tall and bulky, but without the armor. She assumed this was the terrible Legate Lanius, and she hoped never to fall under his gaze again. An older man joined them too, a little shorter than the Legate but the picture of the Legion's standards. She knew this to be Caesar. She had heard of him before.
Lurking just behind the group was one more man, lanky compared to the men he stood with. His short cut black hair and pale skin just helped him stand out, and he had eyes like a hawk. Or a fox. Alice did not know which at the time, but she would find out in the future. Those intriguing eyes stared right at her, full of thought and wonder and desire. What he desired, she could not be sure, for his eyes did not scan her body with a lust she had become accustomed to in Freeside. He looked at her as a prize, a challenge, and my god, did that frighten her.
Nicolas scanned the group of women, some of them weeping louder now and begging for his protection. Alice felt appalled to see him barely swayed by their pleas. Had he been so corrupted since he was shot in the head that he forgot all semblance of what was good? His eyes fell on her, and their gazes met. The Courier stepped away from the small group of men and toward her with urgency in his step. The power armor did not seem to weigh him down, and he arrived before her so swiftly that she began to understand why he was feared throughout the Mojave. He towered over everyone, and he moved with the agility of a snake.
"Alice." "Nick."
He kneeled before her and reached out, cupping her cheek in his gloved hand. The dried blood on her face crinkled off at the slightest touch, and he looked at her with a measure of surprise. Nicolas had never seen her like this, covered in blood, beaten, defeated. Even in this earliest stage of her new life, she must have looked like an empty shell of the woman she used to be.
His touch had never revolted her before, but it did now. All of her realizations and fears played games in her stomach, caused her flesh to crawl. She would not have him anymore. He had made this happen. He had fought on behalf of the Legion and betrayed the entire desert to their destructive, hypocritical hands. He had indirectly killed and enslaved all of the people she had ever known. She could not suffer the thought that his hands, the hands that had killed and killed in the name of Caesar's Legion, would ever touch her body ever again. She would not let him.
"I can't believe you," she said.
And it was true. She could not believe him. The man she had loved would never have supported an army of men hell bent on enslaving everything in the Mojave.
"I did what was best, my dear," he tried to rationalize with her.
Everyone was looking at them, waiting for her to go with him or for him to shun her, to beat her and throw her down. She could hear their whispers, their judgmental and hungry words echoing in the crowd like a chant. Nicolas clearly fell under the scrutiny of his Legionary peers. Even if he did mean to protect her, she knew that if they stayed, he would just fall more and more into their tiny world of masculinity and she would be cast aside. She measured what would be more painful, living a life with him that would steadily decrease into servitude, or to be thrown into servitude to a man she had never met.
"What was best? Every girl here is going to be a slave. The Kings are going to fight them, you know that. They're all going to die. Good, honest men that did everything they could for me and the kids are going to die because you did what you thought was best…." Her voice cracked.
Tears threatened her eyes, but she told herself she would not cry. She would not cry for him or any other Legionary dog.
"They have a choice to become Legionaries, Alice. It's a good, honest life. They'll be put to much better use than wasting away in that trash heap of a building."
"They aren't going to take it, Nick! Some of them are already dead because they knew what this was about! All they ever preached was freedom! Becoming a Legionary is not freedom! This isn't freedom," Alice yelled at him now.
"Hold your tongue, profligate whore," the Legate's deep voice scolded," the Courier has chosen you to be his bride, and you will obey."
"…I will obey? I would rather live a thousand years a slave to the Legion than see your face ever again, Nicolas," Alice spat at him, venomous and full of a woman's scorn.
Nicolas' face became a mess of emotions she could not decipher. She saw pain. She saw anger, frustration, sadness, but she knew him. She knew what would win. He would be angry, either at her or at himself. In that respect, she did not know what would win out. Nicolas never berated himself for his mistakes; she prayed he would after that morning.
"…So be it," The Legate spoke again.
The tall, threatening man turned his back on her, holding his hand out to one of the Legionaries who held one of the explosive collars in his hands. Lanius took the collar from him with one forceful tug and he approached Alice, every muscle quaking in his movements with the power she feared. He stood like a great tower over her, his gaze borrowing into her with judgment and power. She dared not look at him. She knew what waited her.
Some of the girls called at her to run, but Alice did not run. She had asked for this. She deserved this. She dropped her head, and did not look at the Legate eve as she felt metal close around her neck. She felt freedom fly out of her body, like a soul exiting a hollow corpse. Or perhaps it was the air, forced from her with a loaded kick to the stomach from the Legate.
As much as she wanted and tried to scream, not a sound came from her mouth. There was nothing there to help her do so. Alice crumbled like broken glass, slumping forward and heaving as she tried to breathe. It hurt, but she wanted Nicolas to see what he had done. Maybe when he saw her enslaved, broken down by this world of men, he would realize his mistake.
In front of her, Nicolas remained kneeling. He looked down at her, as if assessing what had transpired before him. With shaking hands, he reached out to pet her hair one final time, and just like that, she heard and felt him move away. Their wordless parting had been witnessed by all, and they had seen the glass shattered.
"Collar them all, and take them to Gomorrah. The men will have their choice of the spoils."
"Oh god!" "No, Please! No!" "Have mercy, please! You can't do this to us!"
The pleas and cries of fear reached a deafening peak as several of the Legionary men came forward. All around her, Alice could hear other women crying, trying to run. In the distance, she heard shots. She knew that some of them had gotten too far away and had been killed for their insolence. Even as she struggled for breath, she did not struggle with her fate.
The glass had been broken. It had been enslaved, to be shaped and molded into a new piece. Its new master would mold her to perfection and shape her in a way that only he could.