Vulpes and Six didn't talk as they picked their way through the woods. Shortly after sunset, he'd insisted that they set up a camp for the night; the tree cover was very thick, and what little moonlight shone through wasn't enough to keep them from tripping over branches and rocks. She'd begun to argue with him, but stopped when they almost fell into a nest of night stalkers. Luckily, that had ended up working out well. Unluckily, it led to another opportunity for him to criticize her cooking.
"So this is what we in civilized society refer to as 'dinner'," Vulpes said patronizingly. "You may notice that it was cooked on something called a fire, which can be used to make meat edible as well as the things you tend to use it for, such as burning down tents and blowing up trains. The meat is held over the fire until it turns pink or brown, not dropped in the ashes until it gets black and crispy, or completely forgotten about on a kitchen counter and left raw while the chef goes and reads in the bathtub instead. It does not come out of a box, nor is it eaten in bed, where one can get crumbs everywhere and annoy the actual owner of said bed when he comes home from a long day at work."
"I really loathe you," Six said. "Is this all because I called you a tribal savage?"
"Consider it a teachable moment." Vulpes handed her one of the night stalker legs he had roasted. "These actually aren't bad. A little gamey, maybe, but it's nice to eat something that was trying to kill us. It tastes like victory."
At moments like this, she could see the framework of the man he might have been, intelligent, quick-witted, charming, full of intellectual curiosity. But things had gone horribly wrong somewhere along the line. She wondered what had happened that had twisted him into what he was, that turned him into a devil made flesh. Was it the Legion's ideology that changed men into monsters, led them to enjoy raping and torturing and tormenting their victims, or was it something that had been there all along? Or maybe, said a treacherous voice in her head, it's the job. The one that you're doing yourself nowadays. She remembered her sense of glee as she slit that centurion's throat in his own tent, how proud she'd been when she blew up the train hours ago, and how much time she spent fantasizing about the slow deaths she could inflict on Vulpes and Lucius and Caesar himself. Where is the line?
"Something on your mind?" he asked. "You're not eating."
Suddenly, she had to find out. "If I asked you a question, could I get an honest answer?"
"That depends. Is the question going to be something along the lines of 'so where are all your troops planning on heading'? If so, I wouldn't bother."
"No, not that. Just … I want to know some things, and I don't want to hear sarcasm, or manipulation, or games. I just want a real conversation."
"Hmm. Can I do the same, then?"
She wasn't expecting that. "Do what?"
"Ask you questions and get honest answers. I'm not tired yet, and we don't exactly have much of an agenda until the sun comes up. It could be interesting. You go first."
"Okay." Six couldn't just jump into the heavy stuff. 'What the fuck is wrong with you' would probably not be well-received. "Why are you scared of the woods?"
"I'm not scared of the woods, but I'll admit I don't like it. I'm used to being in deserts, where I can see for miles, even in moonlight, and I never have to worry about anyone suddenly dropping on me from above with a knife. It requires another dimension of awareness, and I find it disconcerting."
"That makes sense," she said. "Your turn now."
"How did you decide your loyalties at Hoover Dam? Why didn't you side with us, or the NCR?"
"I thought I already answered that question a long time ago," she snapped. "It didn't end well."
"No, I asked whether you regretted it," he said. "But you never told me why you did what you did."
She thought for a moment. "Well, Mr. House was an abomination. He should have died centuries ago, and he did nothing for Vegas other than keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The NCR … maybe I knew deep down that they couldn't be trusted. They talked a good game, but they never did anything that didn't somehow benefit themselves. They kept expanding their territory and getting into war after war, just like every other empire. And they never treated me with respect. They just assumed I was going to work for them because they were the lesser evil. At least Caesar talked to me like I was a human being, not just a chess piece. And he had valid points. The Mojave was corrupt as all hell, and the NCR wasn't going to make anything better for anyone but the NCR."
"So why didn't you fight for us, then?" Was he really that clueless?
"Because the Legion is fucking evil, that's why!" He raised his eyebrows at her sudden anger. "I might not have known how bad you guys really were then, but I knew it was nothing I wanted any part of. What do you think I heard about the Legion before I went to the Fort? I stumbled out of Goodsprings, still recovering after being shot in the head, and wandered into a burning town with people dying up on crosses, heads on spikes, like some sort of nightmare. And then I saw you, acting like there was absolutely nothing that could possibly be wrong with the situation, wearing that stupid fucking dog hat and yammering about 'sending a message.' The first friend I made, the only person I was ever sure would follow me to hell and back, the one you killed, shot his own wife so she wouldn't be one of the Legion's slaves. Nipton and Searchlight and Nelson and Cottonwood Cove, fucking Ranger Station Charlie, I saw all of that before I even went to Vegas!"
He gave her a moment to collect herself before speaking. "Then why did you even come to the Fort?"
"Because I make very poor decisions," Six said drily. "And I was curious. I wanted to see what Caesar had to say to me that was so important that he had to say it in person. Plus, Cass made me promise to scout out weak points so we could come back later and level the place. Here's my question. What would have happened if I did side with you?"
"The same thing that eventually happened, slightly earlier. We would have taken the Dam, then Vegas."
"I know that," she said, exasperated. "I mean, what would have happened to me? And my friends?"
"Who knows? Maybe you would have become a slave anyway, and your friends would have been killed. Maybe that sniper you try so hard to avoid talking about would have shot you for your betrayal. Maybe you all would have gotten a nice house in Flagstaff and a squad of cabana boys to serve you. I didn't bother to think about it, since I knew you weren't going to help us from the beginning."
"How did you know that?" she asked, trying to keep thoughts of Boone out of her head.
"For the same reason you knew you were never going to help us," he said smugly. "Nipton. You were about three seconds away from attacking all of us with nothing but a cheap rifle and a baseball bat. I doubled back and watched while you shot those degenerates in the head to put them out of their misery, and then you immediately went east, wiped out all of my recruits and freed those we took as slaves. You went from zero to mass murder in about an hour. It's too bad that you saw that incident before I was able to talk you into supporting the Legion's more noble goals. You would have been an incredible ally. That desire for revenge, that sense of justice, harnessed properly and directed at our enemies? You could have been the first frumentaria. I'd have trained you myself. You would have been devastating. With your pull in the Mojave, you'd have been able to take out half of the NCR leadership before they realized anything was wrong. Such a pity that you make very poor decisions."
Now that's a surprise … and not one that eases my conscience about the path that I'm on right now. "Really? A profligate woman as one of your spies? I'm sure that would have gone over well with the rest of the legionaries."
"Tough shit for them, then. I'm not some brain-dead recruit who thinks that women are less intelligent than men. You're smarter than ninety percent of my men, and more ruthless than at least half. You'd be sipping margaritas on the beach right now, instead of stumbling through a night stalker-infested forest at gunpoint, and Kimball's head would be on a spike next to Caesar's throne. Too bad you like to pretend that your moral standards are somehow superior to ours."
She paused. "That almost sounded like a compliment."
"It almost was," Vulpes said. "My turn. Why aren't you scared of me anymore?"
"What? Are you worried you're going to lose your bad reputation? I can assure you that you're still the worst human being that I've ever met."
"I'd hope so, otherwise I'd be seriously concerned about the sort of people you've been spending time with lately," he said. "And no, you're not actually afraid of me, not like you used to be. We're sitting here having a normal conversation, like normal people who aren't plotting to kill each other. You barely even flinched when I told you about my plans for you earlier."
"I'm not dumb. I know the consequences if the Legion wins, because I've been there already. There's no reason for me to fear you because you can't do anything worse than the things you've already done."
"Want to bet?" Six rolled her eyes at him. "Thanks for proving my point. A year ago you would have been trying not to cry after a comment like that. You were almost broken, did you know that? I saw it in your eyes the morning your friends freed you. It would have taken just a few more weeks, and you would have been calling me 'master' and polishing my armor in the mornings."
"And was that really what you had hoped for?" she snarled, letting her temper get the better of her, stepping towards him. He was right about her almost breaking, but he didn't have to know that she knew. "For someone who spent so much time talking about obedience and respect when we were in front of Caesar, you sure fucking got off on it when I argued and fought and swore at you. What do you want from me,anyway? Because I'm never going to be a compliant little slave. I'll fight you forever."
"That's exactly what I want," he hissed, getting in her face. "I want you to hate me, to desire me, to be as obsessed with me as I am with you. I want to hear you struggle against your chains and curse me to your last breath, and then I want to fuck you into the mattress until you scream for me to stop, and then scream for more. I want you to be collared by my side when I take the throne as the next Caesar, to bear my children, and to never, ever forget that you're mine and I own you."
Six stumbled backwards, debating the merits of just running off into the woods. Without a weapon or supplies, she'd be easy prey for wild animals, but at the moment that seemed to be a better option. He smiled coldly. "You wanted honest answers. I suppose I was wrong. You are still afraid of me."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" It had taken a while, and had led to a conversation that she was going to try to never think about again, but she'd finally gotten to the question she'd wanted to ask all along. "What happened to you that made you like this? You know that rape and torture and slavery are wrong, and you do them anyway! Is it something about being in the Legion? How can you justify -"
Vulpes cut her off. "I don't justify anything that I do. That's nothing but weakness. Of course I know that those things are wrong. I do them anyway simply because I enjoy doing them. That's all there is to it. I'm a bad person who likes to do bad things, Courier, and I always have been. You want to blame the Legion for the person I became? The only thing the Legion has done is give me the power and the means to satisfy my desires. So don't try to look for any deeper meaning or sob stories to explain away my actions. I know you try to see the good in everyone, but you'll get nowhere looking for it in me."
For the first time that night, Six knew he was lying to her. There was something more there, something deeper, something that had led them into this spiral of mutual obsession, him with her and her with revenge. If he just wanted someone to hurt, there were plenty of easier options. And if he had no humanity in him at all, he wouldn't have clung to her so desperately whenever he slept, as if she was the only thing anchoring him from falling into a nightmare. Something happened to him, probably a long time ago. But after what he said before, I don't particularly care to find out what it is.
"I'm tired of this," she said abruptly. "I'm going to bed. I presume you mined the area around the camp, so you can get some rest yourself. I'd like this journey to be over as soon as humanly possible."
