Hecate
Julia drifted for awhile, and eventually made her way east into Arizona. It didn't take long for her to become disillusioned with the Legion. She interacted with them sparingly, but often enough to realize smug and sinister weren't merely the least appealing traits of Vulpes Inculta but rather the behavior carried out by Caesar's men like an unspoken mission statement. Condescension and overt sexual aggression seemed to be as important and commonplace among them as their armor and Bull standard. It didn't take much interaction with the people subjected but not enslaved to Caesar for implications to become outright accusations and (even worse) actual personal stories of rape at the hands of Legionaries. Men warned her, women spoke of assaults the same way they discussed radiation, or inclement weather.
Her worst fears were confirmed. She hadn't delivered her people to absolution, dragged them however kicking and screaming into a brighter future, but merely exchanged their iniquity for a stranger's, subjecting them to a culture just as if not more repressive and patriarchal. In her rush to improve the fortunes of her family, in her childish impertinence, she miscalculated, and it was more luck than her inveterate paranoia that she wasn't subject to more consequences than guilt so tremendous it made her shake. All the doubts and fears she'd been too late in developing were realized. Worst of all, her grandfather was proven right. She really didn't understand the world.
The weight of the revelation was crushing. It felt like she was being pressed to death, the method of execution practiced by the Twisted Hairs when they sentenced one of their own. Fortunately, she was in perfect company. The women who'd been victimized by the Legion gave her strength. Their courage and resilience in the face of great tragedy was inspiring. They taught her if not how to cope with personal trauma then how to move past it. In the wasteland people either accepted their pain and carried on, or they died. It was a tough lesson to learn, but more valuable than all the target practice in the world.
Dark Mother kept moving. She started to run the night of the betrayal and she didn't stop until she collapsed. She fled north, not compelled towards anything but driven away with wild animal panic. She slept a half hour at a time, drank from stagnant puddles, and ate very little. In all her thirty years she had never once left Dry Wells, and now that she found herself in the wider world, she was outmatched and struggling. Everything frightened her, from the looming cliffs to the desolate plains. None of it felt like home, and nowhere felt safe. More than any other time in her life she understood what it felt like to be prey.
She managed to traverse a great distance before she collapsed. For five hundred miles she fled, the whole time seeing the coyote that spoke like a man right on her heels. Occasionally she spotted coyotes in the distance and assumed they were tracking her, as though the whole species was in conspiracy against her, trailing her, waiting to pounce and tear into her with ravenous fangs. More frequently as the days passed and insomnia took firmer hold she was startled by her own shadow, assuming it was the man with the head of a coyote come to drag her back to Dry Wells to watch children be murdered again and again. She started to see her shadow even at night, in the full moonlight. The only time she wasn't completely terrified was the night of the new moon, when everything was so dark she couldn't tell when her eyes were opened or closed. That was the only time she felt even close to safe, confident that if she was blind then so were the coyotes.
She didn't remember falling or blacking out. She could barely remember anything when she came to. She awoke in a sterile metal room. Somewhere music was playing, unlike any she ever heard before or after. Something smelled wrong, and it took her a minute to realize what was wrong was that the room had absolutely no smell at all, that all she could smell was her own sweaty, dirty body. More than anything else that put her on edge. The fact that the spartan, unfamiliar cell had no smell seemed to her a gravely ill omen.
Besides herself the room contained only a shelf for the thin foam mattress she woke up on, a metal bowl on top of a waist-high column, and wider, silver cylinder which was topped with another bowl that had strange meat in it. She assumed the meat was there for her to eat, as she did feel hungry, but when she reached out to grab the meat her hands were stopped by a glass dome.
"Glad to see you're awake!" the dome chirped and lights lit up all over its body. Dark Mother stumbled backwards onto the shelf in surprise, "I didn't mean to startle you!"
It had a woman's voice, but tinny and distant like wherever the woman was speaking from was thousands of miles away, maybe in a different land entirely. Dark Mother goggled in awe at the strange trash can with a woman's voice, then hesitantly asked, "Where... where am I?"
"Oh, I'll tell you in time!" the woman sounded cheerful and excited, which helped put Dark Mother at ease, "First, tell me all about yourself! It's been a very long time since I've had any visitors. Why, now that I think about it, I may have never had a visitor here ever!"
As the woman continued to speak Dark Mother warily noted the tinge of hysteria in her distant voice, hidden beneath the cheer. She didn't respond to the woman's vague prompt, and the cylinder made an odd clicking noise like it was trying to think, then said, "Oh, but where are my manners. My name is Diana. Diana... uh... Diana!" she stumbled, "And what may I ask is your name?"
"I... I don't..." Dark Mother shook her head and struggled to find her words again.
"Oh well, it doesn't matter!" Diana decided brightly, "I think I'll call you..." the robot made the strange clicking noise again, this time in three quick successions, "Hecate!"
"Hecate, yes, Hecate, that seems perfectly appropriate don't you think?"
"Why?" asked the newly-christened Hecate. Diana didn't seem to understand what she was asking at first, and there was a pregnant pause as she thought over Hecate's question.
"Ah!" Diana finally understood, "Well, Diana is a goddess, the goddess of the moon specifically, the full moon even more specifically. Meanwhile, Hecate is a goddess herself, but of the new moon. It only makes sense that my compatriot here is named after me, seeing as we are two birds-of-a-feather, as it were," the robo-brain made a severely unnerving noise, like shattering glass or squealing gears. Hecate winced and Diana carried on, " Also you are a negro, of course, whereas I was white, Celtic white even. So you see, it works on more than one level. We truly do compliment each other, Hecate."
"I am not a god," Hecate didn't understand.
"Of course you are," the goddess flippantly asserted, "you are the dark mother, mistress of black magic!" she made the horrible crackling noise again, "Oh, it's so nice to have you here! I have been alone for too long!"
"Where am I?" Hecate asked again.
"Oh but you are in the Nursery dear!" said the goddess, "Only the most wonderful place in all of these-former-United-States. It's quite an honor, I can assure you," the cylinder tilted forward, either in humility or conspiracy. Hecate certainly felt like she was being inducted to something new and strange, but she had yet to decide whether that was good or not. Diana read her face.
"... Forgive me; I must be confusing you to no end. I've been alone for centuries and I find myself babbling now that I have someone to talk to. Come. Let me show you my world and we will talk and get to know one another. There is much that we can learn from each other," she said and a panel of wall slid open, ushering Hecate and Diana's robot into a long corridor. The robo-brain waited for the Hecate to go first, then quietly wheeled behind her as Diana pontificated about the origins of the Nursery.
"... so then Poseidon sued, naturally, but because every little thing was classified by the Enclave as a government secret of highest priority they couldn't get their hands on any blueprints more developed than whatever Greenway drew on a napkin when he was still with them, and thus they were utterly and completely unable to prove the geothermal plant used any of their patents, even though, obviously, it did," she prattled absentmindedly. She didn't realize Hecate was staring out the windows of the control facility in stunned silence. In front of her was such a lush, green garden that she couldn't believe it existed. She rubbed her eyes, pinched her skin, and yet it remained, verdant and bountiful. Birds flitted from branch to branch, the source of the strange music serenading her when she awoke. She finally understood why it was such an honor to be allowed access.
"You know how to grow this?" Hecate interrupted the goddess's babbling. The robo-brain clicked a couple times in deliberation.
"Yes, yes I can. And I can show you how to, too," she said.
The goddess lived in the Nursery for weeks under the goddess's tutelage. She learned biology, ecology, and genetics, not just the cutting-edge research from before the war but new discoveries Diana made in her centuries of solitude. Dark Mother was never considered intelligent among the Twisted Hairs, but Diana found the goddess a quick study, and eager to learn. Hecate surprised even herself at how quickly she understood what she was taught. For a long time she had been in a fog, unable to think clearly. When her belly was full of pre-war Nursery fruit and she no longer handled heady powders she was much more alert and aware. Alert and aware enough to start planning her revenge. Of particular interest to her was genetics. It started when Diana taught her about horse breeding and dog breeding.
"Could you breed a person like a horse?" she innocently asked. Diana took a moment to consider her question, her hundred unblinking eyes attempted to pierce into her guest's soul. In her past life Diana was never good at reading people. Even though when she was made into the Nursery's computer her vision had become nauseatingly sharp, it couldn't help her understand people any better.
"Well..." she started hesitantly, "I mean, you aren't necessarily looking for the same qualities in a person that you would in a horse..."
"But you could identify specific characteristics or genetic markers in people and breed them with other people carrying those same markers, in the hope that they will birth a new person with those characteristics," Hecate extrapolated, "Like cancer resistance! We have genes identified that resist cancer."
"Yes, yes I'm sure you could do that," Diana agreed, "But you'd have to map out everyone's genome to identify what traits you want to continue," the Mr. Handy she was speaking through rotated its arms in agitation as she thought, "I suppose the machines here could do that easily enough... But even if you attempted to breed people there's no guarantee that their offspring would have the traits you bred for. And, naturally, what are 'good' genes is rather subjective. Still, it might work..."
The Mr. Handy scratched its 'chin' in a mock gesture of thoughtfulness. In the gardens birds chirped, and a dark seed was planted. The goddess brushed the ethically-difficult question aside and continued teaching, but the idea of breeding humans like stock was never again far from her student's mind.
The goddess Diana assumed she was teaching the goddess Hecate to go out and spread life. Much like the Twin Mothers Hecate was another means to return the world to the way it was, to create gardens and fields of fresh food. To plant trees again. What she couldn't possibly understand, no matter how often she spoke of it, was that Hecate's idea of the world the way it was differed greatly from her vision. To Hecate, the way things were was much more recent, much more brutal, and tinged by more loss than Diana assumed. After all, in relation to the entire world, what was a single tribe to the goddess of the full moon? Although superficially the women were the same, much like their namesakes they were actually complete opposites.
When Diana felt that her guest was educated enough to spread her message of life, she told Hecate of a place where she could begin sowing the seeds of rebirth. Before the war the Enclave wasn't as invested in the Nursery as they were in the vaults, but a project as immense and expensive as the Nursery couldn't get funding unless it was in some way appealing to the shadow government. Although Greenway Hydroponics was kept in the dark about any Enclave involvement through the EPA, once Diana was surgically linked to the Nursery's computers their encrypted spyware was simple to crack. From there it was simply a trip through DARPANET to the next-closest Enclave facility, which at the time was a top-secret chemical storage bunker in Utah. Before the war she didn't find anything interesting about the place, and as long as the Enclave left her alone she was content to leave them alone; but now, with the arrival of her new friend, she realized just how valuable the bunker was.
"Pesticides, fertilizer, phosphorus, plus the world's last great supply of helium, it's got everything a growing plant needs and then some!" the goddess said after telling her about the bunker, "The only thing to watch out for are the weapons," she added in an uncommonly serious tone.
"Weapons?" the goddess asked.
"Yes, agent orange, mustard gas, FEV precursor that'll cause your eyes to pop out of their sockets and dance like marionette strings!" she made the screeching, grinding noise again, then clarified, "It's a general storage facility for chemicals, which means it's a repository for war crimes as much as it is for miracle-gro. Naturally, some of the containers might have lost their integrity so be careful on level six, but you shouldn't need to go all the way down there, and anything else that's dispersed ought to be inert by now."
Hecate was overwhelmed by the goddess's benevolence. When it was time for her to leave Diana gifted her with a small team of Nursery robots, for protection and to assist her in turning the bunker into a new Eden. She was also gifted with a GECK, a supply of seeds, and some of the Nursery's replacement parts for building a gene mapper (at her request).
"Oh, you must come and visit me again sometime! I do so love hearing all about your life in the wider world, it is so fascinating!" Diana bid her farewell, full of pride and sorrow.
"Naturally," Hecate smiled at her benefactor and friend, and the goddesses parted with love. Diana never realized she never disabused Hecate of the notion that they were both goddesses. It never occurred to her that the belief might be dangerous.
Of the three women who escaped the betrayal at Dry Wells, Athena had the most difficulty adjusting. She wasn't as scared as the future goddess, but she wasn't as confident and capable as the future high priestess of Hecate. In the years since her husband died she'd left her survival skills to stagnate and wither. For the first time in a long time she was responsible for her own food, and more often than not she went without.
With no skills to fall back on she took to prostituting herself, to merchants and other tribals, but never to the Legion. It wasn't happy work, but it kept her fed. She made friends with a few other 'wasteland whores' as they called themselves, and spent months following caravan trails with them as a ragtag troupe. With her laser pistol she was the best equipped to protect them all, and soon negotiated herself into a position as pimp more than prostitute. Although to her it was less demeaning, it still wasn't a prosperous life, and so when a mysterious, face-painted stranger approached the group proselytizing for the goddess Hecate, she eagerly converted.
In the early days without a dedicated core of Sibyls the goddess was much more involved with the day-to-day of Ouroboros, and recognized Athena. They embraced, and wept for their lost people. Rather than inspire disbelief in the goddess, Athena only loved Hecate more. Their shared history didn't provide Athena with any preferential treatment, though, and soon Hecate retreated into her completed temple. Though Athena never forgot exactly who the Daughters worshiped, they never crossed paths again.
When an agent of the goddess came to convert Julia, she was working with the Circle of Steel in Arizona. Hecate, receiving curious reports of a tribal girl collaborating with the Brotherhood, sought her out specifically. Julia, attempting to atone and just generally disgusted with the Legion, had been selling Legion information to Circle knights and coordinating ambushes, so much so that they trusted her enough to allow her access to Maxson Bunker. While Hecate learned old-world science from the goddess, Julia learned it from scribes, mostly medicine but history, too. She made more friends, and didn't want for anything.
Hecate felt the Circle of Steel was a threat to her growing power, though. At her personal direction, Julia collapsed the bunker and killed everyone inside. By her reasoning, the Brotherhood of Steel was the past. Hecate and her Daughters were the future.