Rebba liked courier work; it was days alone in the quiet, crisp air of the desert. She could think easier in the buzzing still. She travelled under moon and sun and felt the wind against her skin and for the first time in years, the atmosphere did not carry the stench of blood and smoke and rot in its inconstant hold.
She'd become extremely independent over the course of her delivery work. The ancient dusts had soaked into her soul, and she drifted with a purpose and duty in mind. The Express gave her something to do, and when conflict had come to the Mojave for the hundredth time, she'd followed the baying hound of war into the thick of it.
A kindly, elderly couple had been the ones to find her stumbling in a broken madness in the desert. Hardly out of her teens, then, body sick with infection, stomach aching for something to eat that wasn't raw and foreign or the slop she'd been served in another life. Her head beyond the height of clouds, she hardly remembered even coming into their care.
They'd become a home that she could follow like a starving jackal that had been fed scraps at their fire; they always travelled despite their aching joints, and Rebba had always been amiable enough to spending her days and nights making sure nothing nefarious even came within a hundred feet of them. They were caravaners, and Micah always made sure to save her a place at their fire for two made three, and Frida always made sure that her empty belly was full. She'd grown pudgy and happy under their care.
It was another time she could count as a blessing.
Another thing Benny had taken from her. She didn't know or couldn't remember what happened to her old friends who taught her how to live again. She would hope later that, if they did die, they died peacefully.
For now, Rebba was a simple courier with an emptied head, nervous heart, and whirlwind conscience. A troubled past nipped at her heels and the howling calls of adrenaline high hounds sent her heart racing in the night.
Rebba spent a lot of time in bars. Not drinking, but sitting, waiting. Time passed, but she couldn't feel it. She didn't exist between jobs. She couldn't afford a fucking ticket to march her ass guns-a-blazin' into the streets of the Strip. Mercenary work took precious time and Courier work, even more as she'd found out from a sheepish Mr. Nash.
He'd thought she'd been dead, and he wasn't entirely wrong, whoever she'd been before was a separate person from who she was now thanks to the gruesome bullet wounds to her eye and temple.
A whiff of something like ammonia wafted under her nose as one of the bouncers threw a rowdy customer out. Ugh. Maybe she could take a break from her vegetation and actually hunt down jobs for caps. It'd be a nice change of pace; she was tired of the clinking glass and brawls in pubs. Even more so of the Atomic Wrangler's atmosphere. One could only enjoy their steak so much when the room next to yours sounded like a fucking orgy. It was always the same thing again and again and again.
The skin of her back pulled as she reached down to the stained carpet for the strap of her bag. There was no hesitation or cringe when she felt the stretching sensation. It was just another familiarity; something she felt at every minor strain of her muscles or stretch of her limbs. She ignored it now, as natural as breathing, even liking the prickling pain when the thick valleys pulled and twisted across her musculature.
Whoever gave her then would face a punishment ten times what they did unto her. The thick ropes of scarring around the circumference of her neck would be her constant reminder of a collar. The burns, of a punishment worse than death, the scars of humiliation. What did she feel humiliation for? It didn't seem to matter in the face of revenge.
The Mojave was beginning to swallow up her worries. Her cares.
She didn't feel much anymore.
Stepping out of the bar, courier bag slung over her broadened shoulders, she let herself breathe air that was not stale. Bars always had the stench of stale piss and that horrible wheat water everyone seemed to be so fond of. But the desert? Lord above...
The giant woman took a deep breathe, hobo fires and burning food smells carrying on the gentle winds.
She could taste it on her tongue.
The giant woman made her way out of Freeside and into the wastes again, a tenseness falling from her that she hasn't realized had been there.
She'd make that two thousand caps and then some so she could off the bastard who stole her head. She could taste his blood on her tongue about as well as she could smell the burning barrel fires.
There was a scream off somewhere to her right, she immediately turn and began to jog into that general direction.
Tonight was going to be fun.