Following

Julia didn't know why the goddess had sent her here, to this place they called a division. To this place they called a place of hope. It was part of the Goddess' mystics, her undefinable knowledge that had her give Julia the task to cross the mojave into the Divide. She had simply claimed it was a place "of great importance." A place where the future of the wasteland was to be shaped. Julia supposed that was reason enough to send agents there.

The Goddess had sent Julia in particular, though. She had said it was because the Divide was a place "of great importance" not just for the wasteland, but for Julia as well. She didn't know what that meant then, the ominous implications ringing in her ears traveling through some of the worst communities she'd ever seen, and she didn't know what it meant now, as she was delicately fiddling with her revolver.

It was a work of beauty, an 1851 Colt Navy Cartridge Conversion with a custom cylinder and silver snake grips. A work of art. She hadn't used it since she crossed the Colorado. She'd wrapped in a piece of cloth and secreted it on her person. She'd decided it was more prudent to not carry a weapon in the Mojave, and she'd been right. When she came to the Divide and met the Followers at Hopeville she'd hidden the cloth bundle with her revolver in a rocky outcropping.

Coming to Hopeville had been a revelation. It was the first time she'd ever met the New California Republic, and she was awed. She didn't like the NCR any more than she liked any other wasteland army, but she appreciated their power. She knew the Legion was some sick joke, men playing dress-up to bully and terrorize tribes, but the NCR was an honest-to-God nation. A unified peoples who weren't just playing dress-up, who had a government and laws. The NCR made the legion look like children.

Even still Julia probably had less love for the NCR than she had for the Legion. With children there was some call for pity, to pity their innocence, to pity their lack of understanding about their actions and the world around them. The Legion was pathetic. The NCR didn't have that excuse. These weren't children without any awareness. They were adults in a savage world, people with responsibilities, and it was obvious they weren't fulfilling these responsibilities. The Legion crawled over the weak, scrambling desperately to get ahead. The NCR stood tall on the weak and powerless, grinding them into the dirt when they could help them up. Just a bunch of rich fucks comfortable in seclusion from a terrible world. Hopeville was the first place Julia saw fat people.

Yet she found some people, a group of people who she could relate to, people whom she could not dismiss as exploiters or thugs. The Followers of the Apocalypse reminded her of a tribe, but a tribe united not for survival or strength, a tribe united by the desire to above all help. Help those in need, help the weak and the desperate and the sickly. The Followers were what she wished the NCR were, privileged people using their privilege to help, not being content and complacent. Her first assumption was that no-one could be that benevolent. A life in the Arizona wastes had led her to believe that human nature precluded charity and kindness. She believed that there was sinister motivation behind the Follower's actions. It was a natural response, up until then the Goddess and her daughters were the most benevolent and charitable community she'd ever encountered. Everyone expected something, nobody did anything for nothing, did something just because it was the right thing to do. Yet a week went by and before long Julia felt the creeping innocence and optimism she believed she had left behind a long time ago.

What at first was just a place to sleep became a home, and she offered to help the Followers. Amelia, a tall woman with an unusual haircut accepted her happily, even before Julia told her she had medical training. Julia half expected Amelia to disregard her, to assume that her 'medical training' was tribal bullshit, rituals passed down from generation to generation and which made a lot of noise but were about as healing as a jab with a sharp stick. In truth, Julia had learned a lot of garbage from the tribe's herbalist, salves which just infected wounds and showy prayers intended to cure serious illnesses. Julia had improved upon her tribe's overall health with her own personal efforts (which included something as simple as cleaning her medical tools), but her medical knowledge had become quite extensive since then, supplemented with help from Circle of Steel medical training and the knowledge of the Goddess Hecate, which surpassed even the pre-war military the Circle learned from. She couldn't tell Amelia about the Goddess, but she could demonstrate her knowledge and to her surprise Amelia let her. Amelia wasn't condescending, she wasn't humoring Julia, she actually listened and treated her with respect. Julia tossed around a few advanced medical terms and described some procedures step-by-step, she talked with confidence and Amelia put her to work right away. Her implicit faith in Julia was so overwhelming and new that Julia cried after her first day, wept joyfully in private.

Julia found new reasons to be proud every day. Once, a prospector offered to give her a small fortune for saving her sister's life, and she turned it down without a second thought, telling the woman to give it to Amelia and the Followers, or failing that to give it to someone who needed it. She wore her Follower's coat as a badge of honor. She made friends with the other Followers, she started a relationship with a gentle man who had been born into wealth and had decided to help people.

It wasn't until the ghoul, until she once again felt the visceral thrill of murder that she realized she was still missing something. That for all the good she had done it wasn't enough.

She had treated Eddie Wong personally, a month or so before she shot him in the head with Jacob's gun. All her life she had felt a certain kind of hatred for ghouls. She just didn't like them, their flaky skin or their raspy voices. She felt a resentment, she sometimes felt like they were more suited to the wasteland, that this was their time and place and she was an outsider in the world of the ghouls. Eddie had not helped her resentment. In fact, he had bragged about how well-adapted he was to surviving in harsh environments. Obviously he was insecure, not just because ghouls frequently were prejudiced against even in Hopeville, but because he was being treated by a pretty girl. He was trying to impress her, and she noticed, but he still agitated her own insecurities. She gave him aid with the same passion she put into all her work, though, because she was a fanatical Follower and firmly believed in helping for the sake of helping.

Then nearly a month later she had to shoot him in the face. In one instant she discovered the limits of the Followers, she discovered her own limits. She couldn't help Eddie Wong with kindness and care. The Followers had taken a stupid risk to try and help him as such.

She wondered if Eddie had ever been worth helping, but ultimately she decided he had been. The event only strengthened her resolve, but she realized that she needed to move on. She started scavenging parts from the auto-docs which littered the Divide, figuring out how they worked when even the NCR didn't. She began to borrow liberally from the medical supplies of all Divide dwellers. She retrieved her gun.

Her last act in the Divide was a seduction. She romanced a female NCR guard, one of the elites in riot armor. She fucked her, then slit her throat in the night. Stole her armor, stole everything from the NCR military hospital and left. Julia loved the Followers of the Apocalypse, but she wasn't a follower. Julia was a leader.