A/N: Hello, hello. It's been a while. I want to give thanks for everyone's patience as I continue to work on the sequel to Long Road to Ruin. I know I said I would be posting months ago, but life has tried to abscond with me. Plus, the sequel has turned into a bigger, more intricate story than I originally anticipated? Not sure how that happened, but here we are.
This oneshot was inspired by a prompt that I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago. I can't find it to give credit where it's due, but it's out there somewhere.
PS - I know the second section doesn't fit with the canon timeline. But, I mean...work with me.
It's heavier than he thought. The donkey foal that Shelby has been carrying for the last half mile is almost half his size at twelve years old. He wishes he could have just left it down by the riverbank, where it began to narrow into a creek. He thinks wolves or some other nighttime predator would have taken care of it, but he knows Rett would never forgive him.
She named this one Gus despite cautions from her father not to do so. It's been sick from the hour of its birth, something wrong that Shelby doesn't quite understand. This afternoon it had collapsed, flopping into the mud and making the most god-awful of noises. His heart breaks for the tiny animal, its life a constant uphill battle just to be. It doesn't change the fact that Gus is heavy and Shelby is going to miss dinner if he doesn't hurry, though.
Depositing the donkey into the barn, he rushes home, says the fastest prayers of his young life, and tells his father about the development between bites of corn chowder and biscuits. He doesn't notice the way both of his parents pause to exchange a knowing look. It's his little sister kicking him under the table that has stolen his attention away from that clue.
After helping his mother clear the table, his father leads him out to the barn. The older man seems tense and a bit forlorn as they approach the stall and all of Shelby's wonderings are answered when a pistol appears in those large, worn hands. He knows all the men in their village take turns putting down sick or dying livestock, but he thought it would be a few more years before he had to step up.
Walking to Rett's house afterwards is worse than sparing Gus from further misery. "You put the donkey down, son, so it's your responsibility to tell her," his father had said. Shelby kicks a pebble aside and thinks of how unfair it is. Rett's one of his best friends and even though she annoys him beyond belief a lot of times, he doesn't want to make her cry. Yet no matter which way he spins it, he can't figure out a way to not tell her.
Mrs. Woodhull opens the door before he's ready and the panic leaves him standing before her slack-jawed. She must have known, though, must have been told by his own mother, because she gives him a simple nod before calling for Rett. She comes bouncing to the door seconds later, none the wiser.
Shelby takes her around to the garden behind her house, prolonging the inevitable while she chatters on about...whatever it is she's going on about. He isn't listening. Not really.
"Shelby? You okay?"
Her brows have knit together and he knows he's been caught. What's he supposed to say now? "Hey Rett, I killed that cute baby donkey you named. Put a .22 right between his eyes." No. He's got a mean streak, the same as any other boy his age, but that's too much for him.
He looks at her and notices for the first time that her hair is in twin braids, coming down behind her ears and resting on her chest. Something about it makes him think of his grandmother. It's a small comfort, but not enough.
"I had to put Gus down." It tumbles right out of his mouth before he's got anything put together at all.
Her face crumples as the news sets in. "What?"
Shelby stumbles his way through the last few hours, from Gus's strange facial expressions, to his collapse, and stops short of his father handing him the pistol. He explains to her, just as had been explained to him, that the foal was not going to get better. That it wasn't okay to make Gus suffer.
Rett's arms wrap around his neck at lightning speed and he's startled when she begins to sob into his ear. Anything more than an apology tastes stupid on his tongue now, so Shelby holds her and rubs her back, like his mother does when he's upset. It's well past sunset by the time she finishes crying and heads to bed. He's left to stare at the stars and try to breath through the piece of his childhood he thinks he might have lost today.
/
It's heavier than he thought. Of course, it's been quite some time since Vulpes has helped erect a cross and perhaps his calculations are a bit skewed. He believes this will be the last straw, though, the punishment that will sound the death knell for the Twisted Hairs' resistance.
Gazing down the stretch of Interstate 40 that wanders east, he takes in the sight. Crosses are being constructed, disappearing into the horizon as they stagger down both sides of the highway. He's ordered it this way so that passersby can go no more than fifty feet without having the wrath of the Legion impressed upon them. He can imagine the giddy thrill that will take over his Lord's face when he's greeted by the display in the morning. It's been months since the Battle of Hoover Dam and Caesar is in dire need of a victory.
It's mid-afternoon and with the Arizona heat bearing down on him, Vulpes strolls down the road a ways before taking a seat, leaning back against the base of the cross. This one, the first to greet anyone leaving NCR territory, has an excellent view of the Colorado. It's a pity the woman hanging above him doesn't provide any shade.
He rests for a while, enjoying the way the light shimmers across the river and wonders what lurks beneath its surface. Will it be safe for a late evening swim? That was something he had enjoyed in his youth, but has rarely been able to partake in over the last five, going on six years. He decides he'll test the waters before the sun goes down. He'll need to bathe away the sweat and blood that's littering his skin before Caesar arrives anyway.
Above him a low, broken groan slips out of the woman. He cranes his neck to look at her and though he's not surprised, he's still left uncomfortable at the sight of her cognac eyes glaring at him. He's one of the least-trusted men in the Legion, but he can't recall the last time someone had as much obvious hatred for him as this tribal does.
He studies her, taking in the knots and occasional beads in her hair. He's spent enough time around the Twisted Hairs to have learned what each adornment signifies. She's a healer, of great esteem in her community. Her husband is one of the chief's lieutenants. She has three children, though one has already died.
"Ul-" she tries.
Vulpes cocks a brow, curious as to what she's attempting to convey. He imagines that it is difficult to speak at all when in the midst of suffocating. She pushes her heels against the shaft in an effort to lift her body. It's enough to gain a full breath of air and Vulpes finds himself impressed. She is a stronger woman than most.
"Find my son." Her voice is a whispered rasp, just loud enough to be heard over the din of hammers and cries of pain in the distance.
He doesn't bother to get up, instead settling his head against the wood. "And what would you have me do with him?"
"Confess."
Vulpes barks out a laugh. He's had many requests from the dying, but none so ridiculous. "Oh?"
"Ulys-" The woman heaves herself up again. "-ses."
Fuck. He's just killed the mother of one of his frumentarii, failing to recognize their shared facial structure in all of the chaos. It would be an error to take her down now, though. The others could not see him showing favoritism, and, in his defense, she had take out a number of recruits in the last few days. That could not go unpunished.
He must be advertising his thoughts because her spiteful glare twists into a bitter, vicious smile. He knows she would laugh at him if she could.
"I'm sorry," Vulpes says, and he means it.
Her smile cracks wider for a moment before it withers and fades. He's learned over the years that it takes an abundance of energy to hate and she's already running out of that. Three centuries of troops have been throwing up crosses for the last few hours, hers the first among them. Most last a day or two before expiring, but she has gouges scattered across her body from their early morning clash. She'll be lucky to survive the night.
"Is he your only son?"
At her nodding, the weight of her life settles into his chest. Since he was dragged out of Utah, Vulpes has managed to put enough callouses on his heart that the suffering of others means nothing to him. It's a survival mechanism, he's sure, and one that has thus far served him well. It's moments like these, though, when he can feel those thick spots being scraped down, that he worries. The toll of everything he's done, every sin he's committed, would cripple him if he allowed it, and he refuses to let his life amount to nothing.
"Was he always such a serious pain in the ass?"
She wheezes out a near-chuckle and his lip quirks. He owes this woman nothing at all, but a nagging sensation from the dusty corners of his heart tells him to stay put.
"You did well," Vulpes says. He watches a melancholy smile take root before his gaze turns back to the river. A few more hours now and it'll be time to bathe.
By the time he rises to inspect the safety of the waters, she's gone.
/
It's heavier than he thought. This little boy wrapped up tight in a blanket, his eyes only now beginning to flutter. Eight pounds of undeserved, all-is-right-in-the-world peacefulness held snug in his arms, and Shelby doesn't know how he hasn't collapsed to his knees holding the child.
His son.
It's the heaviest eight pounds he's ever held in his life.
He runs his thumb along the little boy's cheek, beside himself at how soft the skin is. A yawn escapes the newborn, barely an hour old and what an hour it has been. Shelby's entire world has shifted under his feet for the fourth time in his life inside those sixty minutes, but this is one of the good shifts.
He marvels for a moment over all of those about-faces, those pivotal transitions that have landed him here. Jordan at the center of each of them, three of them revolving entirely around her. She's a force of nature in his life, always upending his notions of the future and melding herself into them in ways that are irrevocable. Standing there now, he can't say he would change any of those critical junctures. Not even the one that destroyed him.
The first time Jordan changed his life, he was eighteen years old and angry as all hell at her boyfriend. The idiot had bullied her, trying to force her into something she wasn't ready for. Looking back, he knows that he had always loved her and had been falling in love with her over that previous year. When he found her in tears and heard what the bastard had done, he tore through their village searching for him. It wasn't until Shelby was done beating the shit out of him that he calmed down enough to hear what his rage was telling him. She was his by nightfall the next day and he didn't look back after that.
The second time was the day the Legion came, tearing apart everything he'd ever known with a vicious precision. When he saw one of the pastor's daughters make a run for hills with a slave collar wrapped around her neck, and the way her head disappeared into a cloud of pink mist and bone fragments, he had almost vomited. He fought so hard to keep Jordan from that fate, from the kind of people who wouldn't think twice about doing that to her, that he ended up as one of Caesar's many slaves for the next ten years. At the time he wondered if it was worth it, to have gotten himself in such a mess if she only ended up dead anyway. Now, though, he would gladly take the ten years as a tool of genocide and espionage rather than ending up on a burn pile.
The third time the rug was pulled from under him, was the moment Jordan removed her helmet inside Caesar's tent at Fortification Hill. To this day he is thankful for his poker face, because he could not believe the ghost grinning in front of him. He is still amazed by her, by everything about her. He's yet to understand why he fought against her for so long, clinging to the Legion until it was almost too late, but thank the heavens he surrendered to her when he did. Thank anything and everything that he defected to her miniscule side of the war, because he wouldn't be where he was today otherwise.
This fourth, and no doubt not the last, time his life shifted was an hour ago, when Jordan's cries of pain were at last brought to a halt by the shrill sound of life filling new lungs. He had been well aware of this impending change, though. When Jordan had come to him a week after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, their new nation yet to even have a name or an idea of itself, and told him she was pregnant he had not reacted well. All he could think of was the previously-pride-inducing fact that the love of his life had taken on and defeated Lanius, the Monster of the East, in single combat, now all while carrying his child. He could have lost her and he could not wrap his mind around the idea of learning from Julie afterwards that she had been pregnant, or perhaps never having gotten to learn that at all if the war had not turned in their favor that day.
One of the worst arguments they'd ever had came out of her reveal and it took Arcade sitting down next to him at the bar in The Tops for him to get his shit straight. Jordan could not have known at the dam. Of course she couldn't have, it was too early. She had only learned that morning that she was going to be a mother. He had been a royal ass. Still could be.
But he's too transfixed by the little boy in his arms to even figure out how to be an ass this day. Dean, his name chosen weeks ago to honor his own father, has been graced with his mother's nose and ears. His tiny bowed lips are a near-mirror image of Shelby's, but his eyes? Only Jordan has-
Another round of fluttering and at last Dean opens his eyes to stare at his father. Shelby gasps at the sight, his son's eyes a perfect reflection of his own. Julie had warned them that whatever coloring their child had in these early months might change, but Shelby knows that his son will always have those same glacial blue eyes.
A sniffle breaks through his bubble of heaven and with great pain Shelby tears his eyes away from Dean. Mere feet away, Jordan lays watching them in her hospital bed. Her face sunken with exhaustion and her hair matted with sweat, but he doesn't know if she has ever looked more beautiful to him. At her smile and soft giggle he realizes that tears had begun to leave tracks down his cheeks. He could not care less about them.
Looking back at the swaddled baby in his arms, he catches sight of the scars littering his own skin. Shelby knows he has no right to bring something so innocent and breathtaking into this world. None at all. He spent ten years murdering the sons and daughters of blameless families, taking what was left and feeding it into Caesar's machine. Ten years of mutilating the bodies of the dead, propping them up as warnings to those who would not yield to his master. He was the monster of countless people's lives and wholly undeserving of this heart-shattering happiness that Jordan has given him.
He makes a silent promise then, kissing his son's forehead as he drifts off to sleep. Gone are the aimless months of not knowing what to do other than prepare for the abstract-made-flesh and follow Jordan's Twenty Year Plan. He knows now. He is going to spend the rest of his life building this country into his wife's vision. He is going to leave his son with a greater legacy than that of the Desert Fox, the monster who gutted every family he touched. He will leave his son something to be proud of, something that won't feel so inescapably heavy.
He is going to leave his son a future.
A/N: Let me know what you think! And feel free to follow me on tumblr (same name) to get updates and whatnot. I've been working on mood boards for my characters when time allows, and plan to post a few of them soon.