"If you had to do everything over again, would you do it differently?" Vulpes said.
"What?" Six asked blearily. Vulpes had gotten back from what he had only referred to as "stuff" in the middle of the night after being gone for five days, in a worryingly good mood, and he had definitely wanted to make up for lost time. Now it was long past midnight, and she was trying to get some rest before work in the morning. This was not the time for vague questions. "Everything? Like life?"
"Not life. The choices you've made, not supporting us or the NCR or House. Would you do it the same way, if you could relive it?"
"I kind of feel like you're setting me up for a wrong answer so you can punish me, but I'm too tired to know which answer is the wrong one," she said bitterly. "So why don't we just assume I said the wrong thing and you get on with whatever you had planned anyway?"
"Mmm, you got sarcastic while I was away. Must be that influence of that deviant you were staying with. I kind of like it. And there's no wrong answer. I legitimately want to know."
She sighed and sat up. "Well, knowing what happened in the end, yeah, I would have picked a different side, and you know perfectly well what that would have been. But with the information I had at the time, I still think we made the right choice."
He frowned. "You can't just divorce your actions from the consequences. If you'd made the 'right choice', you would have been happy with the outcome."
"People can't always know how things are going to turn out."
"I make it my business to know all the possible results of the things I do," he said smugly.
"Good for you, then," she said, rolling her eyes. She was toeing the line, but it was late and she was cranky. "I thought there was no wrong answer."
"It's not a wrong answer, it's incorrect reasoning."
"Okay," she groaned. Why is this conversation even happening? "Is this something we can talk about at a later time? Any time other than now? Or the consequences of this action are going to involve me falling asleep and drooling into an open wound tomorrow."
"So insolent. I should do something about that. Well, actually, now that you're up ..." He pushed her over to her back and brushed his lips against hers, his hand drifting between her legs.
"Again? Can't we go back to the question that I didn't understand? I need to sleep."
"You can sleep in tomorrow. You're not going to the clinic. We have something else to do. A lesson."
"What?"
"You'll know it when it happens." She didn't like the sound of that.
As it turned out, she was right to be concerned. They got up around eleven and he walked her out to the center of the Strip. To her left, she saw Lucius approaching them, accompanied by Arcade, who seemed equally confused as to what they were doing there. This can't be anything good.
Vulpes circled around behind her. He wrapped his arm around her waist and grabbed her chin, tilting her head up to a prisoner on a cross. "Do you like it? I did it for you."
Her heart stopped as she caught the crucified man's eyes, then started again at a double pace. Boone.
To her side, she heard a low, ragged groan as Arcade sank to his knees.
"Boone," she whispered. "How did you ..."
"He wasn't exactly difficult to find, seeing as he's been taking out our legionaries at the Fort for the past few weeks," said Vulpes, conversationally. "He's good at hiding, though. It took us a little bit to get him mad enough to slip up. I found that detailing the fun I've been having with you here over the past several months was sufficient to get him to come at me with a knife. Not a bad melee fighter, but obviously, I was better."
She was too horrified to move. I usually wake up from this dream by now. Why aren't I waking up?
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Boone," she gasped. "I didn't, I never wanted this."
Vulpes pulled her tighter against him and her skin crawled. "But as we were discussing last night, actions have consequences. You chose to try to be independent and ended up a slave. He chose to kill our men and wound up crucified, as is right." You motherfucker. I bet he was already up here on the cross when you started that conversation. No wrong answer? They were all wrong.
"Let him down. Please. Please." She usually hated begging, but this was no time for pride. "I'll do anything, absolutely anything, just please God let him down let him down let him down!" She was screaming by the end of it. She heard Arcade praying in Latin from the ground near her and Lucius laughing at him.
He chuckled in her ear. "Oh, I don't think so. What kind of lesson would that be? He's been condemned to death for his choices. And I can make you do anything I want anyway, so that's not much of a benefit. Plus, he's been up there all night. As I'm sure your doctor friend has already figured out, even if we were to cut him down, he'd be dead in a matter of hours. You do have one option, though," he said, sliding a gun into her hand. She stared at it as if it were an alien object.
"One bullet. Make it count. I'm sure he would have done the same for you, but, well … he wasn't here, was he?" Boone winced. "Unfortunately for you." You bastard, he's already dying. Do you have to rub salt in the wound?
Vulpes let her go and took a step back. She walked up to Boone, the gun still feeling like a foreign intruder in her hand.
"Boone, I can't ..." she whispered, her voice cracking. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
Boone tried to meet her gaze. His breath was coming in pants, and blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. He could only get out a few words at a time. "Forgive me. Couldn't save you. End it."
Tears welling up in her eyes, she stepped back and aimed the gun at Boone's head. The only right thing to do was to kill him and end his suffering. But the tiny part of her that tended to make bad decisions in situations like this was screaming at her, and she could barely hear anything over the rushing in her head. She briefly considered shooting herself. A quick look at Arcade, sobbing on his knees, made her rule out that idea. But if she shot Boone, that's what she'd dream about every night, forever. She would become a different person, and she might never come back.
Instead, she spun around and shot Vulpes in the chest.
Everything hurt again, and she couldn't move. Her head was pounding and she tasted blood in her mouth. She tried to open her eyes, blinked a few times, then focused in on Arcade's face, leaning over her prone body.
"What … what happened?"
"You shot Vulpes. Good shot, too. Too bad he has decent armor; it hit a metal plate and deflected. Then you tried to shoot Boone, and yourself, and then you ran around screaming and trying to club everyone to death with the gun while Vulpes and Lucius wrestled it out of your hands. Vulpes ended up having to knock you unconscious with a shovel, and then made me sedate you. You've been out for a few hours."
"Boone."
"He's dead. I hit him with a Med-X overdose while you were on your rampage. He was gone in minutes. No pain. I promise."
She lowered her head. "Guess we're next up on the crosses then."
"Doesn't seem like it. Caesar heard the commotion and called them in for a meeting after they'd got you down, and I dragged us close enough to overhear. It's not like it was particularly difficult, they were all yelling loudly enough. Lucius wanted you crucified for breaking his ribs, Vulpes wanted to handle it himself, and Caesar told them both that they were idiots for giving a violent crazy woman who's tried to kill them repeatedly a gun in the first place and that they'd deserved what injuries they'd gotten. Then he told them to work out your punishment between themselves and stop arguing or he'd make them fight it out in the arena."
"And you're not being punished for ... helping Boone?" she asked quietly.
"Lucius and Vulpes were too busy fighting you to see what I did. I'm pretty sure Caesar saw, but he just told me 'I admire your loyalty to your friends' as I was trying to calm you down. Strange man." He shrugged. "I suppose I could be, later, but I doubt it."
"Great," she sighed, trying to sit up, ignoring the ringing in her head. She got dizzy in seconds and laid back down on the exam table. "Arcade?"
"Yeah, Six?"
"Remember how you told me to tell you if I ever needed an end to things? It might be time." She didn't know what sort of punishment they'd dream up for her, but she was sure it would be too much. Seeing Boone had left her hollow inside, and it would only take one push for her to crumble to dust.
She could see tears sparkling in his eyes. "I'm so sorry," he said quietly. "I can't. I don't have enough. I used up most of my spare chems on Boone, making sure it was quick for him, and then I just had enough to sedate you. I could request more but they'll know what I'm trying to do. God, Six, I'm sorry."
Six let out a breath that she'd been holding. She hadn't realize how much she'd counted on that safety net until it was ripped away from her. "No. I'm the one who should be sorry. I did this to myself. And to you and Boone and all the others. I should have just taken the shot. I'm an idiot. I just thought ... I didn't want things to be on their terms, I didn't want to have his blood on my hands and make Vulpes feel like he'd fucking won. He's already taken everything else. I couldn't give him this."
"We could still do it. I'll put you out again, cover your mouth and nose, then cut my wrists before they get here. It won't be foolproof but it should work."
"No," she said. Somehow the idea had passed as quickly as it had arrived, and she had recalled something important. "Forget it. Veronica and Cass, remember? And Lily. Gotta keep them safe. God knows we're running out of friends."
He let out a choked sob. "You have that right."
"I'm so tired. My head hurts."
"I think you have a concussion. Want to go back to sleep for a while?"
"Please." She felt the pinch of the needle in the crook of her elbow, but tried to stay with it for a few moments longer. "Arcade. I love you. None of this is your fault."
"Keep saying it and someday I'll believe you."
When she woke up, she felt lighter than air, even though she could tell she was hanging from something by her arms. She tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly and couldn't support her for more than a few seconds. She heard laughter, voices, but couldn't focus enough to identify them. She opened her eyes and only saw gray and sparkles. Her eyelashes brushed against something. A blindfold? She wanted to laugh with everyone but couldn't figure out what was so funny.
A wasp stung her on her wrist, then on her arm. The part of her that was still rational knew there were no wasps, but she didn't care, she was happy now. Hands were touching her all over. She tried to lean into them but was pushed back. The hands turned harsh, pinching and slapping her, and she cried out but only heard more laughter. Then there was pain, a lot of it. She felt as if she was being torn in two from inside, and she struggled, but didn't seem to be able to move at all, as if she were a butterfly pinned down in a notebook. The hands pulled her hair and bruised her lips and squeezed her breasts and bit into her throat. She screamed and screamed and all there was was the laughter and the hands and the agony, until she felt teeth and things went dark again.
The next time she awoke, she knew who she was and where she was, although her head still swum strangely and everything was aching. Of course it's that fucking deadbolted room. What sort of apartment comes with a torture chamber? Oh, right, White Glove Society. Goddamned cannibals. I'd kill them all again if I could. Vulpes sat in a chair across from her, glaring as she wriggled in her chains, trying to take pressure off her shoulders. She managed to get up on her toes and caught his eyes. He answered her question before she even asked.
"You were disobedient. Lucius wanted you dead. I managed to convince him otherwise, for a price." He glanced at the bloodstains on her thighs, drawing her eyes downward. "Everyone gets their pound of flesh in the end. But we had fun. Didn't you?"
"Not particularly," she croaked. She hadn't used her voice in ages, other than to scream, and her throat felt raw and burned. "Can you let me down?"
"Not yet. That was Lucius's punishment. Mine is yet to come."
"I can't wait," she bit out.
He smiled coldly. "Still joking. What exactly do I have to do to get you to break, darling?" She cringed. He knew she hated when he called her that - she much preferred slave or whore, more honest terms for their arrangement. So he tended to reserve it for when he was seriously angry.
"I thought you didn't want to break your toys. If you figure it out, let me know. We can end this dance."
"Are you asking what I think you're asking? In that case, no. You don't get off that easy. And I generally don't have much use for broken playthings, but I think that you're going to be an exception. You should shatter quite beautifully, and then I can piece you together again, more to my liking."
"You're going to be waiting a while for that to happen," she hissed.
"Don't worry. We have all the time in the world. But I need to get back to work, so ..." He stood up and headed towards the metal door. "Try not to destroy anything until I return tonight."
He flipped the light and shut the door, leaving her hanging in the darkness. For once, she was at a loss for anything to say.