iv. roll me through the gates of hell
in which you wring blood from a stone

She's back. And this time, she's brought an army.

You suppose you expected this, really. She's got lives in her, crowded thick like grains of Mojave sand. If the Divide couldn't winnow them from her, you doubt that the Empty or the Madre could do it, either.

You're going to have to answer for everything now. That's fine. A man like you, what you might call a historian – he keeps his answers close to hand. You'll stand by what you've done.

For now, though, you need to make ready. If she's coming, she's coming for you, and you're not fool enough to take that lightly. You lower your binoculars, watching her caravan of wastelanders and police robots dwindle into dark flecks and clouds of dust, and turn to the west. They're mounted, but you know this terrain better than anyone. You should be back at your post long before they reach Hopeville.

Back, and ready to give Courier Six the welcome she deserves.

There are no safe routes, not in the Divide. Only less dangerous ones. The courier killed many, many marked men on her journey to the missile silo, and an entire hive of tunnellers, but even thinned by her impossible hand, the threats of the Divide are not to be underestimated. Radiation. Deathclaws. Other things that had no name before you found them.

But you – you are a courier, even now. It's in your nature to find the roads, to wear a path into the wasteland with the back and forth of boots and parcels. You walk the hidden ways, skirting the Courier's Mile and the ruined barracks of the Hopeville military base. The marked men are starting to move back in, but you keep your distance, pick off stragglers with staff and submachine gun. (Mercy killings. Their bare life is hardly life at all.)

You steal through the collapsed overpass – silent and empty now; the tunnellers haven't dared return here since the courier turned it into a grave for twenty-four of their best – and out onto the High Road, where the old world yawns at your feet. Ancient highway like a bridge to heaven, stretching up over miles and miles of devastated city blocks and prowling deathclaws.

Right at the top. That's the place, where old buildings have slipped to form an uneven archway that vaults the High Road like the triumphal arch Caesar raised over the gates of Phoenix. A hundred feet above the highway, itself a hundred up: from the hideaway at the top, you can see clear to the hazy end of the world. The great grey body of America, staked out in the sun like a runaway slave on a cross.

You watched the courier from here once, keeping tabs on her as she walked the Divide. You remember seeing her emerging from the tunnel, breathing hard, fumbling bullets back into her gun and muttering to that machine of hers. After your conversation – you brought a machine of your own, a device to broadcast to the courier's robot – you watched her find the camp of the marked men that once stood in the shadow of this crow's nest. Four hardened soldiers with heavy weapons, guns meant to take down power armour and deathclaws, and she killed them all in minutes. Five bullets, three blasts from the machine's laser, one grenade improvised from a microfusion cell. Their healing powers did nothing to save them.

You knew then that if she made it to the end of the Divide and chose to fight, you wouldn't be able to kill her. Not that it mattered. You would gladly have died for your cause. You almost did.

Cast it aside; that story's done. All played out, right down to the flags. Now all that's left is to sit up here in the window and keep your binoculars trained on the tunnel mouth. Watching. Waiting for your reckoning to arrive.

There. Riding up the High Road out of the tunnel mouth on the back of a hardy-looking grey, thickset and overmuscled like all its mutant breed. You've never seen her on horseback before, but she rides well, as she does everything well.

She's alone. Expecting you, probably. This is one of the places where you find her, on those occasions she makes the pilgrimage northwest to the nation she killed. Couriers should meet on the roads they make; these things matter to you.

Her head moves swiftly, taking in ground and sky, cataloguing potential threats. Fighter's instinct. One of the reasons you thought she was a Legion spy at first; she moves like an easterner, with feeling for the terrain. You make no attempt to conceal yourself, and a moment later she raises a hand in greeting, urging her horse on towards you.

Breathe in. And out. The hate comes, but you are its master now, and you can let it go again. Courier Six is dangerous, careless, a firebrand too dazzled by her own brilliance to notice the trail of burned things she leaves in her wake – but there's something salvageable in her, some potential for life as well as death.

If there wasn't, you wouldn't be trying to kill her.

"Must be somethin' in the water," she says, climbing up the wreckage to your perch. "These days it seems like everyone makes me clamber round the rooftops like a Dayglow bat before they'll talk to me."

You're already tired, listening to her. If you live to be her age, you imagine yourself burnt out, a cindered husk of a man with old stories swirling around your hollow insides, but she seems to get more and more dynamic with every passing year. As if, like Lanius, she grows to fit the story of herself.

"You're back," you say. "Come home again."

"Sure, sure." She steps lightly across a spar of crumbling concrete, ignoring the hundred-foot drop on either side, and sits down heavily at your side. The campsite up here is small – a few long-emptied crates, a bedroll, a dormant fire – but there's room for two, if you're careful. "Oof. Too old for this shit." She reaches for her canteen, takes the measured drink of a woman used to desert travel. "Ah. Better. Okay, how you doin', Ulysses?"

You shake your head.

"Not my question to answer," you reply. "I should be the one asking you."

Short bark of laughter.

"So you did know," she says, grinning her sharp, unpleasant grin. "Course you did. Why would you not, huh?"

She takes off her hat. Her hair wasn't long, last you saw her, but now it's gone altogether, replaced by a network of pale lines scored into her scalp.

They caught her, then. You had considered the possibility, though in your heart you felt sure that she of all people would be able to evade them. They caught her, and somehow she escaped again.

Her grin broadens at the look in your eyes.

"Take more than a bunch of old world ghosts to put me down," she tells you, replacing her hat. "They work for me now. Put those minds of theirs to good use. And I – I kept goin', just like I'm sure you meant me to."

You nod slowly, trying to decide if you're shocked. In the end, you decide not: it's what she does, isn't it? Can't bear to be bested. Anyone who tries to cage her ends up under her heel. Caesar learned that the hard way – and House, and Oliver, and Benny. Countless others too small for history to take note.

"And what did you find there?"

She gives you a hard look that suggests your question might have crossed a line.

"Christine," she says. "I found Christine. She's … safe now. Be along soon, in fact." She waves a hand at the tunnel mouth, far below. "Doesn't know you're here. I figured I could surprise her."

"You assume I have anything to say to her."

She snorts.

"Give it a rest, Ulysses. You know what she's like about debts. Let the poor girl have her moment."

Throwing your tapes back at you, just like before. You sigh and turn away, returning your attention to the High Road and the shattered city below. Time to change the subject.

"Not sure why she's here at all," you tell her. "You always came alone. Now you've returned with an army."

"Oh. Yeah, that." She clicks her tongue. "Well, you told me the tunnellers were comin' to the Mojave, so I'm here to make sure they don't. You must've noticed, they run away when you hurt 'em. Haven't come back to where I killed 'em either, even four years later." She gets to her feet, leans on the wall next to you. You feel her attention, though you still don't face her. "They get scared," she says. "So I'll show 'em fear. Kill their queens, collapse their tunnels. Teach 'em to be scared of the surface, just long enough to give the Mojave time to prepare. And when they come, we'll be ready."

Of course: it always comes back to the Mojave in the end. She'll commit any crime you can name for her little patch of dirt. Avoiding the mistakes she made with her other home, maybe, though she still claims she doesn't remember all that. Too many hard roads walked over the last thirty years for any one to stick in her head. You can believe that. Could even put it aside, for the sake of what she might achieve.

You're not going to make it easy for her, though.

"House would be proud," you say coldly. "You and your machines, cleansing the wastes."

"Fuck off," she retorts, scowling. "You and me both know, the second the council retires the securitrons, the Bear's comin' back to rub its balls all over our city. I don't like it either, but they gotta stay till we have other options." She breaks eye contact, rummaging through her pockets for cigarettes and lighter with quick, irritated movements. "Thought we were past snipin' at each other at this point."

You barely spare her a glance. She can complain all she likes; you need to hear the why of things, to hold her actions to the flame. See which remain and which burn away like the chemical fumes over the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

"Not yet," you say. "You're too dangerous to let be."

She opens her mouth as if to argue, then breaks off, busies herself with her cigarette.

"Yeah," she says, after a couple of puffs. "Yeah, I hear you."

Doesn't sound like her. Slower than normal. Heavier. Like when a bighorner just escapes the hounds, so exhausted from the chase it can barely lift its horns.

Good. It's her only chance.

No, let's be honest: it's yours.

"Seems it's your turn for answers," you say. "Don't think you came to me for another history lesson."

For a second, you think she might be about to punch you, but the next instant all the fury has melted away and left her a tired old woman. It's startling. You don't think of her as a person who ages, and yet here's the proof: look at her now and you know that one day, even Courier Six will die.

"No," she says, in a soft voice without any hint of the usual fire. "No, I …" She waves a hand in search of words, the tip of her cigarette describing an uncertain red circle. "We have some things to discuss, Ulysses. 'Cause you, you knew what you were doin' when you told me about Christine, and you sent me to the fuckin' Sierra Madre."

You've died twice, a rare thing for a man not yet forty. The first time at Dry Wells – an old camp of your people, the Twisted Hairs, where you met the Legion to celebrate your joint conquest of Arizona, and where they thanked you by enslaving your people and crucifying those who resisted along Interstate 40. You bent your head a broken man and raised it as the property of Caesar.

The second was in the Divide, a little town that sprang up along the courier trails. A place that could have been home, until the courier delivered a package from Navarro that screamed loud enough to rouse America from its slumber – to activate the missiles buried in their silos, sending old world ghosts of fire and thunder roaring through the city streets. One woman, killing a fledgling nation with her carelessness.

It taught you a lesson you never wanted to learn. So you brought her back here, sent her a cryptic radio message. Knowing that she could never leave any road unwalked, any hints uninvestigated. Lured her through the Divide so she could see what she'd done, and used her to wake America again, send missiles at NCR. Open the way for the Legion to break her precious Vegas.

She followed you all the way to the end, just as you knew she would, and she threw your own words back at you, scavenged from the diaries you lost in the Divide: Zion and the Big Empty, communities and gods, the weight of history. Proof that she might one day walk the Mojave into life. Create a nation to replace the one she killed.

She broke you without firing a shot. Stopped your missiles through the kindness she showed the robot. Walked back to the Mojave with nothing but bruises, ready to sew herself a flag for her back the same as yours.

You watched her go, your heart and soul crumbling to ash like the Divide as it burned, and you knew that none of it meant a thing.

Because she's Courier Six. She doesn't know failure, reaches every new town at the end of a trail of blood and spent cartridges, and whatever she learned from you in the Divide, she'd forget it all the instant she found a new job, a new town, new lights shining on the horizon like the glittering snake eyes of Vegas.

You face each other across the tenuous concrete floor, two couriers at the peak of the world. Through the gaps between your feet, you can see a zopilote circling slowly, on the lookout for irradiated carrion; above you, the sky is as blank and white as the snowfall on the Rockies.

"I did," you say. "Something in you needs an answer, I'll give it. Not sure you're here for more words from me, though."

The courier looks at you, utterly expressionless. It might be the first time in all her life that she chose silence over speaking.

If that's what she wants, you can do it. You stand there too, staring into the polished mirrors of her sunglasses like you could drill straight through them into the mind beneath. You've seen her eyes once, when she took off her glasses to see you better in the gloom of the missile silo at the heart of the Divide. They were so dark they looked black; you couldn't help but think it fitting.

The moments pass like birds flying south for the winter. And then, like before, she sighs and takes off her sunglasses.

"When I came here," she says. "The first time, I mean, when you sent the message. You told me you knew I'd come, 'cause it ain't in me to let go."

You nod. It's true. That's why you said it.

"And when I got to the Madre, that's what the lady on the radio said too. 'Begin again, let go'."

She doesn't seem to have noticed, but her hand has gone to her neck, scratching a phantom itch. You've seen that gesture before, in slaves just uncollared. From the raw skin on her throat, she's been doing it a while.

Now you understand why the courier won't tell you what happened. Maybe it was Elijah, if he survived the Sierra Madre long enough to meet her; maybe there are just more horrors under that red cloud than you know. You didn't get close enough to find out.

Still. You have to admit, she must care for that Veronica woman a great deal to go through that on her behalf.

"All of us there, we had to let go of somethin' if we wanted to walk away again. Our obsessions. Dog was hungry, God needed control, Dean had all this hate, this greed …" She shakes her head. "And that ain't even mentionin' Elijah. But there was Christine, too. Obsessed with him. She couldn't let go. Not even at the end."

"And you?"

She starts at the sound of your voice, as if she'd forgotten you were here. Lost inside her history.

"Me?" she says. "Me, I … I think you know what I learned. I think that's why you told me Christine went to the Big Empty. I found your nest – and your tapes. You left those for me, didn't you? Knew I'd find 'em, like I found your logs in the Divide. You knew I'd figure out she went on to the Madre, and you knew I'd follow. 'Cause it ain't in me to let go."

You incline your head. It's true. Someone like her, who sees the whole world as a map to be filled out, point by point – she's easy to predict.

"No," you reply. "It isn't."

Another silence. Her cigarette burns out unnoticed between her fingers, still hanging at her side.

"I can't tell you the last time I left a job unfinished," she says. "I'd gone to the Empty for this, got all my organs ripped out, my horse butchered by robots, walked to the Madre and – and everything that happened there … and I let go. 'Cause if I hadn't, Christine and me would be dead right now. Or fillin' out a pair of hazmat suits, whatever it is happens to the people the Madre eats."

You wait. She needs to see this through before you comment on it.

"And I got back, and everyone was mad. And they were right. We're buildin' somethin', somethin' a little less evil, somethin' about people, not caps or kings, and …" Her face twitches suddenly with a fury that you've never seen there before. "And I skipped out on it for five months 'cause I couldn't leave well enough alone. Just like last time, when I ran off to guard caravans in Utah, like – well, the Mojave needed me, they needed me, everyone – and even then it didn't take, can you believe it? I thought I could keep right on being some courier walk-the-wasteland fuck."

That sneer, that venom – you're familiar with the anger she performs, but this is something else. Something real.

"And Veronica," she growls. "The way she looked at me when she heard, and that poor girl trapped in her obsession in that casin―"

She stops dead, about to say more than she intended. Looks at her cigarette as if she doesn't remember lighting it, then flicks it away out of the window.

"Well, anyway. Came to a decision." She runs her tongue nervously over her lips, takes a deep breath. Like a woman about to walk out to the headsman's block. "I can't do this no more."

She's been talking to somewhere past your shoulder for the past few minutes, but now she meets your eye. Cold. Determined. Afraid.

"I'm gonna destroy more than just the Divide if I carry on like this," she tells you. "And that's why Courier Six needs to die."

You could weep, if you were a weeping man. But you've shed your tears for Dry Wells, and since then your spring's run dry. If you could, though. If you could, you think you might now.

How long has it been? The better part of a decade now. Hunting the courier, following her trails around NCR, from town to town, solving problems with bullets and words. Figuring out a way to teach her what kind of monster she was.

The Sierra Madre was the last arrow in your quiver, after the platinum chip and the Divide both failed so spectacularly. You weren't even sure how to lure her there; it was a surprise to you when you mentioned a woman hunting an exiled Brotherhood elder and she started asking questions. Didn't know she was so loyal to the people she collects, that someone like her was capable of that kind of devotion.

You know now – heard her call them her kids, felt the love in her voice. The Twisted Hairs in you says that that's the only family a self-mutilated wretch like her could find; the Legion in you says it's more than any profligate deserves. The man in you tries to rise above these things, but it's hard to be anything other than the sum of one's history.

Still. If she's willing to try, then so are you. And you've been standing here staring for long enough.

"Didn't come here asking my permission," you tell her. "Don't know what you think you owe me, but …"

"Cut the shit," she says, a flash of irritation crossing her brow. "You been tryin' to kill me ever since you knew me, Ulysses. You're damn near an expert in it. And I … well, if we're bein' honest, I need your help."

"My help?" You fold your arms, shift your weight to your back foot. Didn't mean to – the courier latches onto these things, scenting weakness like Denver hounds – but even you can't always control yourself. "What could you want with my help?"

Her eyebrow twitches upward into an arch, but whatever acid remark is brewing in her, she holds it back.

"The man whose name you took," she says. "The American. You said he weren't made for peace. Won the war, but couldn't handle what came after."

You cock your head on one side, curious.

"You listened. Didn't think you had it in you."

She smiles ruefully.

"You and me both," she replies, taking a step towards you. "I'm what the kids call a real dumb bitch. But I figured it out in the end. I'm real good at bein' the courier, ain't I? Been doin' it all my life. I see somethin' in the distance, I gotta go there. Pull it apart, rip all the secrets out, solve the problems."

Another step forwards. You force yourself to stay where you are, to not step back.

"Brought that to the Mojave. Worked real good, right up till I found myself a family and a city. And that means …"

"… nobody needs the courier any more."

"No," she says. "They don't. Sometimes they think they do, but the truth is, if the Mojave can't survive without me, it's gonna fall to NCR the day I die." Her eyes are like the tunnels under the Divide, full of horrors. "I ain't no Tandi, kid, and I sure as shit ain't House or Caesar. I just wanna help my community help itself. Can't be solvin' all their problems for 'em forever." She sighs. "But I can't keep runnin' off after shiny things, either. They need me there to look at, till they realise they can do it for themselves. And my kids, they … well, if I keep on wanderin', one day there won't be people waitin' for me when I come home."

A long silence. You watch her closely, but you can't see any deceit in her. None of the usual bluff or bluster.

"If you believe in something enough," you tell her, "you have to be willing to let it burn, lest it claim you."

Last time you said that, she told you to quit talking in riddles. This time, she just sighs.

"Yeah," she replies. "Was a good story. Brought the whole Mojave to the negotiatin' table. But I'm too old to be a story any more." She holds out a hand. "So. Will you help me stop?"

You hold the moment high above your heads, showing her the size of it, the weight. Making sure she can feel what it is that's happening.

She does feel it. It's written in her expression, in the way she stands.

So. What will you say to her, courier?

You pause. Unhitch your breathing mask, show her your face for the first time.

"What would you have me do?" you ask, and the gratitude in her eyes is like nothing you've ever seen.

The courier – that's still who she is, for now – told her companions she was scouting ahead. Left instructions with Christine and Veronica to come after her if she wasn't back in an hour. And when they come, when they find the two of you here …

"… you just have to say my name," she says. "You know it, right? Not the fake ones I put on the Mojave Express manifests, the – the one I told you in the silo. I can't do it myself, can't – I don't know how to say it, can't break the illusion, maybe. What kinda friend is it who don't tell you her name? Actually," she adds, holding up a hand, "don't answer that, I really don't need another allegory right now. Just, uh … you know my name, right? You can say it?"

You give her your best incredulous look. This is … something, even by her standards.

"You need me to introduce you to your own people?"

She winces.

"Believe me, I know how dumb it makes me look, and I'm less self-aware than a woman who's had a conversation with her own disembodied brain has any right to be. But, uh, yeah. That's about the size of it."

"If it puts a stop to you―"

"Jesus, I hope so―"

"Let me finish."

She nods, claps one hand over her mouth and gestures for you to continue with the other.

"If it puts a stop to you," you repeat, "I will call you by your name." You pause, just long enough for her to take her hand off her mouth, then go on: "On one condition."

"Name it."

No hesitation. Good. It's what the world deserves of her.

"I know who Courier Six is," you tell her. "Saw her walk the West, the Mojave. Don't know the woman behind her, or what I'd unleash by resurrecting her. Divide's proof enough that acting without thinking leads nowhere good."

The courier chuckles.

"Who are you, that do not know your history, huh?"

You pointedly do not react. That memory – the gods of the Big Empty, cruel and capricious as the gods who tried your namesake's namesake – is not one you care to joke about. You nearly died. Coming away with the answers you got was almost worse.

"Jesus, and I thought Christine was a tough crowd." She sits, back braced against the crumbling concrete. Her movements are quick, annoyed. "Fine, then. Siddown and listen."

You sit, on the other side of the burnt-out campfire. Nothing behind you except a hundred-foot drop down to the courier's horse.

"You were about a third right, thinkin' I was a Legion spy," she says, lighting herself another cigarette. "I'm from Colorado. Came west 'cause of the Legion, but fleein', not spyin'. Mom was a caravan guard, Dad was from one of those little villages out there. One-night stand when her caravan stopped to trade. She came back when I was born and left me with him; I ran off after her when I was sixteen. Never did find her, but I found Phoenix. Ran with a gang called the Lucky Sixes, got a new name – my real name, the one you know. Cool tattoo, as well. 'S all that's left of 'em now, poor kids."

She lifts her head, blows a plume of smoke away into the sky.

"We used to do this dumb shit – you ever crushed up mentats and dissolved 'em in vodka? Well, I have, and I won fifty caps for drinkin' the whole thing without throwin' up or passin' out. 'S called a grey nosebleed, 'cause everyone had a friend of a friend who'd done it and had his brain come outta his nose."

She laughs to herself, mellow with memory.

"Those were the salad days. Terrific boyfriend. He had money, which was good 'cause my girlfriend had expensive tastes. All in fun, you know? We were kids, havin' a good time with knives and chems. And then … then we started hearin' about a fella name of Caesar, what had an army in need of a city."

No good humour now; there's a shadow on her face that you know only too well. You can almost taste the memory of genocide in her voice: another history, cut down by the gladius and left to rot by the side of the road. The thought leaves you breathless, even furious; you don't understand how someone can live through the Legion's conquest and come away so careless. After Dry Wells, you saw meaning everywhere. Couldn't look at someone without wondering what community it was that Caesar had cut away from them; couldn't look at a town without seeing America sleeping beneath it. And yet somehow this woman walked away from that and became Courier Six.

"Well, I knew what happened to the girls like me when the Legion came," she goes on, catching your eye. "We keep our ears to the ground and our friends close. Call it a survival instinct. This world wants us dead same as it did before the bombs fell."

You know that much. Anything that doesn't fit into the Legion must be hammered into shape until it either concedes or dies, whichever comes first. You've seen it. Sometimes you still do, when you think too much of your past.

"So me and my friends, we was some of the first outta town, back when everyone else was still sayin' that it was all a big fuss over nothin'. Went west. Some of us wound up in New Reno, which is a shithole but a real fun one for the kinda girl who plays with knives and thinks a grey nosebleed sounds like a good Saturday night, and that's where I got my courier job. Got the travel bug after the big trip west, see. Though I never dared go east again till I got offered double commission to take a novelty poker chip to Vegas."

She takes her cigarette from her mouth and holds it out over the abyss, tapping away the ash on the wind.

"You know the rest. I was an asshole kid who grew up into an asshole woman who got a job as an asshole courier and fell in love with an asshole city. Ain't the best story in the world, but it's mine."

It is. And there is one question that you have to ask.

"What village?"

She nods like she was expecting that.

"Would you believe me if I said Twin Mothers?"

You snort. The Twin Mothers: maybe the gentlest society in the east, prey to every passing beast and raider. Matriarchal, spiritual, unskilled at war. Soft target for the Legion, who enslaved them and took their powerful medicines to the battlefield. Nothing at all like Courier Six.

"Not sure I would, no."

She cackles, slaps her knee.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't a good Twin Mother. I mean, they're good people, but they got real strong ideas about what a man is, what a woman is. Part of why I left, so I could go off and be a girl. I mean, that and the fact the matriarch walked in on me gettin' railed by her son." She shakes her head. "Times like that, you test just how pacifist people really are, huh."

"Were."

Her smile fades, and you feel the cold fever of guilt brush lightly across your face. She does feel it, then. As you feel the weight of being the last Twisted Hair to carry the braids.

"Yeah," she says sadly. "Guess Caesar figured we were weak."

"You were," you tell her, because it's true, and because you know it will hurt her.

She sighs.

"Yeah," she agrees, the heaviness in her voice sinking you deeper into your bleak satisfaction. "We were."

A pause. The shame comes and goes again, like a bird flying in at one window and out at the other.

"Still brew bitter drink on the trail, though," she adds. "Give thanks to Diana for the broc and xander like my dad taught me, even though I ain't believed since Phoenix." She pauses for a moment, making a thoughtful movement of her head. "Might start again. Been thinkin' about faith a lot since the Madre."

"You, a religious woman?"

"Why do people keep sayin' that?" she asks, jabbing her cigarette at you. "I swear, y'all think I'm some kinda godless narcissist."

"I wonder why."

Might be a joke in someone else's mouth. In yours, it just sounds bitter. The courier takes it all the same, though – pulls a face, waves your words aside in a waft of pale smoke.

"Hmm," she says, rummaging in one of her many pouches. "Hey, uh … I always got the impression you weren't a drinkin' man, but I feel like the occasion might … well, you want some of this?"

You hesitate. Long years with the Legion have blunted your appetite for alcohol; ordinarily you wouldn't. And yet …

"All right," you say, holding out a hand. "For the east. What's left of it."

She laughs, surprised, and slops something foul-smelling into a pair of tin cups.

"Well, okay then. Here you are."

You take it, enjoying the spatter of stray drops on your hand, and raise your cup.

"To the Twin Mothers," you tell her, and make her grin again, broad and vicious as a nightstalker.

"To the Twisted Hairs," she says, clinking her cup against yours, and you both drink. Tastes just the same as the wasteland tequila your uncle used to brew, long ago in another life when you still had an uncle. "Ahh, that's the stuff." She smacks her lips, gives you a wry look. "Hey, would your dad be as mad about that toast as mine would?"

Maybe it's the moonshine. Maybe it's the fact that you're about to hammer the last few nails into Courier Six's coffin. Maybe – well, you could trace the maybes for years, hunt the why of it the rest of your life. But for whatever reason, and against every instinct in your body, you actually smile.

"Can't imagine any Twisted Hair would have a kind word to say about you sophists up on your cliffs."

And just for a second, the look on her face shocks the hate clean out of your heart.

Those Brotherhood women the courier calls her kids are along soon enough, riding up the slope from the collapsed overpass tunnel with the stiff discomfort of people unused to horseback. Christine has a huge scoped engine on her back that looks half rifle, half grenade launcher; the other, Veronica, has tied her power fist to her saddle and carries a carbine with obvious reluctance. You like her a little more for that. No one deserves death from a distance.

"Well, now the party's started," the courier says, knocking back the last of her liquor and leaning out over the edge. "Hey girls, up here! What took you so long?"

Veronica shades her eyes, peers up.

"Sixes?"

"Yeah!"

"What the hell are you doing up there?"

"Well, if you come on up, maybe I'll tell you!" The courier tosses you a glance over her shoulder. "Tch. The hell do they even teach these kids in scribe school?"

You keep your face motionless. It's been many years since you were last part of a family dispute. You aren't sure you can change that now, even if you wanted to. Life makes more sense for you viewed from a distance – observed, studied, not lived.

"Who are you talking to?" yells Veronica.

"Oh, for the love of― I really got no idea how to make this any clearer, sweetheart. Get. Your ass. Up here already!" She pulls her head back in the window, rolling her eyes, then remembers something and sticks it back out again. "Oh, and that means you too, Christine!" She settles back into her seat with a sigh; below, the Brotherhood women ride into the shadow of the arch, out of sight. "Jesus, kids these days. Y'know, back in my day, people showed their elders some respect." A pause. "I mean, I didn't, but people did."

She probably wants you to laugh, but if she thinks she can stretch whatever tenuous rapport you have to cover that, she's mistaken. You just give her a cold look over your cup.

"Okay, okay, I can take a damn hint."

Clanking and grunting from the collapsed gantry that acts as a ladder. You turn, and there they are. First Veronica, then … then Christine Royce.

She recognises you immediately. You see the shock in her eyes, the gape of her scarred mouth. Those are new: badly-healed lines at the edges of her lips, down her throat. The Madre wasn't any kinder to her than the Empty, it seems. Obsession always has its price.

"You," she says, reaching for the wall as if to steady herself. "I didn't ever think I'd …"

Different voice. Sounds like the woman on the Sierra Madre broadcast – but damaged, hoarse. Who did that to her? Why?

You won't ask. These answers – not yours to know.

"Wasn't expecting to see you here, either," you reply. "Good that you made it. I wouldn't wish the Madre on anyone."

Her face darkens, and for a moment you think she might ask why you didn't stop her going, but of course you both know the answer to that. She was chasing her own Courier Six, and you couldn't stand in her way.

"Yeah, well," she mutters. She looks like there are more words in her, but they don't make it out. In the Empty, when she was recovering in your hideout, she'd debate ethics with you all night; somehow, you can't imagine her doing the same now. Whatever she found in the Madre, it hasn't let go of her yet.

Veronica, watching her with furrowed brow, touches her arm; Christine pulls away sharply, violently – and a second later turns back again to take her hand, twisting her face into an uncomfortable smile of apology.

It seems well received. Veronica squeezes her hand gently and smiles back, though the effect is somewhat undercut by the hard look she throws at you a second later.

"Okay, so who the hell are you, exactly?" she asks. "'Cause I'm starting to get really sick of being the one guest at the party who doesn't know the host."

You glance at the courier, currently watching this little drama with an air of maternal benevolence. She doesn't seem interested in intervening.

"I'm known as Ulysses," you say, which is true enough; you had a name when you were Twisted Hairs, were given another when you were Legion, but here, to Courier Six and her makeshift family, you are Ulysses. "I'm a courier. Have some … history, with your friend. And with your …" Hard to tell what they are. Friends? Lovers? "With Christine."

"Ulysses pulled me out of the lab in the Big Empty," says Christine, before Veronica has a chance to ask. "I thought I was―" She cuts herself off, eye darting over to the courier, to her fellow victim. "Wait, so she – Wild Card's the courier you were chasing? Is that it?"

Wild Card. She accumulates these names, moss on the rolling stone of her legend. It's past time it came to a halt, but you'll pick your moment, make it count.

"That I am," says the courier. "Ulysses found me a long time ago. He's been hangin' out here in the Divide ever since. Point of fact, it was you who gave me the tip-off about Christine, ain't that right?"

"Wait, really?" Veronica's attention snaps back to you, the wary energy around her changing in an instant. "You did that?"

You hesitate. This is a very intense sort of scrutiny you're under, after four years speaking to no one but the courier. And, well, you have a feeling that Veronica would not take kindly to the revelation that you did it to teach her friend a lesson.

"Yeah." The courier, stepping in to shield you? You're beginning to suspect that she actually likes you, despite everything. Or perhaps because of it. "Ulysses is a real prince."

"Oh." Veronica lifts an eyebrow. "I, uh … well. In that case, Ulysses, I'm glad to meet you. And thanks. Seriously. Like a whole lot." She forces a smile. "I'm Veronica. I used to have a really good joke about living in a hole in the ground, but sadly I now live in a luxurious Vegas apartment."

You aren't a stupid man. But you have to admit, you have absolutely no idea what she's talking about.

"Right," you say, trying to think of something to say. "It's good to meet you. Was curious about the courier's family."

She isn't expecting that; you startle her into smiling for real.

"Hah. Well. Uh … yeah, I guess that's what I am. What we are." Her hand finds Christine's again. White knuckles, both of them: these two are much more desperate than either of them want you to know. "It's good to know a friend of Sixes. And of Christine."

Christine doesn't look convinced.

"Didn't think you were friends," she says. "You seemed―" Her voice dissolves into thick, wet coughs that shake her whole body and leave her leaning on Veronica's arm. "Ugh," she spits, annoyed at her own weakness. "Seemed like – ehagh – you two hated each other."

"Never said I didn't hate her," you reply, acting quickly before the courier can rattle off some absurd claim about being best friends since childhood. "She's more dangerous than Caesar."

Something flashes between the two Brotherhood women, so quick even you barely catch it.

"Kai-zar, huh," says Veronica, mimicking your Latinate pronunciation. "What are you, Legion?"

You let your distaste show in the jut of your chin, the flare of your nostrils.

"Didn't weep for him when your friend cut his throat, if that's what you're worried about."

"Cut his throat?" Veronica glances at the courier. "Huh. Haven't heard that version yet."

"Well," says the courier, her eyes lighting up, "lemme tell you …"

You catch her eye and she trails off, scowling.

"What?" she asks.

"Think we've heard that one before."

"What d'you― oh."

The silence stretches out, turning hard and leathery as a dead lakelurk in the sun. Christine takes a step back, a wary gleam in her eye like a wild mustang ready to bolt; Veronica moves slightly in front of her, one hand set protectively on her back.

"It's fine, sweetheart," says the courier quietly. "We're all good here." She sighs and gets up, pacing restlessly from campfire to window to empty crates and back again. "I got that Lucullus fella to take me there, same as usual," she says, fidgeting with her empty cup. "Shot him and the other guards on the gate the second I got off the boat. Then I flicked on a Stealth Boy I found at the old REPCONN test site and hoofed it up to Caesar's tent before anyone could raise the alarm."

She puts down the cup and pulls a knife from her boot – an ancient, shoddy-looking thing, its handle long ago broken and bound back together.

"Managed to slip in behind someone else while I was still invisible," she goes on. "Then I got up behind Caesar and cut his throat with this shitty knife my dad gave me when I was fourteen."

Now she's leaning against the window, one hand braced on the frame and the other turning the knife this way and that, the warped blade flicking the flat Divide light across the concrete. You can see it. That tent. The smell of heat, of sweat and dogs and many men in close proximity. The mighty Caesar on his throne. And the Twin Mothers, of all people, planting their steel in his throat.

You almost wish you'd been there.

"After that, I figured, hell, Vulpy Culty or whatever his name is, the guy who wears a dog as a hat, he's right there too, so I shot him. And that guy Lucius. And at that point there weren't any reason not to kill everyone else in there too. After that, I just had to get out. Which …" She bobs her head from side to side, grimacing. "Well, it's like I always say, you can't make an omelette without breakin' a few ribs. Got through a lotta bitter drink on my way to Doc Usanagi's."

Veronica and Christine exchange a look.

"That sounds weirdly like … the truth," says Veronica slowly. "I remember that. Usanagi called Arcade and he took me over. You looked like a picture out of a medical textbook. Like, Usanagi brought her students in and told them to take a good look, because it's not every day you get to see the spleen in its natural habitat. But you wouldn't tell us what had happened." She glowers suspiciously. "Who are you and what have you done with the real Sixes?"

"Well, pardon me for bein' honest," mutters the courier. "Ain't that what family's all about?"

Christine coughs, instantly capturing all of Veronica's attention. She's like a hummingbird around a bush in bloom, flitting constantly between a dozen different touches: elbow, back, hand, shoulder. Christine takes it well. Has trouble acknowledging it, but you can see the longing in her eyes.

"Not sure anyone here has ever seen a healthy family except in pictures," she says, with an unexpected dry wit that almost startles you into smiling, before you catch yourself.

"Yeah, well, I … actually, fair point." The courier sighs. "Tryin' to make one, though. Should be honest with all you kids."

She should. But you never thought she would – or even that she could.

"Yes," you say. "It's good to hear the how of it."

Her mouth twitches.

"Figure you'd appreciate that. Even if you still ain't figured out possessive apostrophes just yet."

Well, you weren't expecting her to stop being rude. But at least she's learned to tell the truth.

You cast your eye over the campsite: courier, Veronica, Christine. The three of them have collected in a knot together at the other end of the room, though you can't really say how they ended up there. Like some force has drawn the three of them together, invisible and ineluctable as the pull of the earth on falling leaves.

It's time. You can almost hear the crackling of the funeral pyre.

"Yes," you say. "Didn't expect honesty from you. Glad to receive it, Sin."

And the Divide falls as silent as it did the day after the missiles buried it in ash.

"What?" Christine scowls, pins you with her flat, icy stare. "What was that?"

You look at Courier Six. But the woman who responds is Sin Mothers.

"That's me," she says, in a slow, tentative voice. The faintest trace of an accent to her words. One you haven't heard in a very, very long time. "That's … my name." She looks up, a smile touching her eyes. "That's my name!"

"Your name," repeats Veronica. "Your name is …"

"Sin. Sin Mothers. Don't tell me I never told you."

"Of course you didn't tell us," croaks Christine. "You never tell anyone."

"Sweetheart, c'mon. Would I lie to you?"

"Constantly."

"Wow." Sin turns to you, hands spread. "You see what I have to put up with?"

You raise your cup to your lips and keep silent. You didn't survive the Divide to fall victim to some petty argument.

"Hey. Sixes – Sin, whatever―"

"You can call me Sixes if you like. Or Wild Card, whatever. Love me a good nickname. Reminds me of my gang days."

"Your―? No, wait, don't distract me." Veronica takes a breath. "What I mean is … why are we really here?"

"We're really here to drive out the tunnellers. But …" Sin shrugs. "I figure, I been a courier long enough."

Veronica stares at her for a moment. You stare too, trying to find what it is she sees or thinks she sees in Sin's face, and then look away sharply as she pulls her into a tight embrace.

"Aw," you hear Sin mutter, mock-embarrassed. "Sweetheart."

"Shut up, Sixes."

"All right."

It only lasts a few seconds, but it feels like forever. You're not good at touch, not even seeing it. Been the better part of a decade since you so much as felt a hand on yours.

"Swear you didn't used to be this mushy," says Christine dryly.

"It's called character development," retorts Veronica, pulling away. "Besides, I know you want a hug too."

Christine starts coughing again, which strikes you as extremely convenient; Veronica rolls her eyes and pats her on the back.

"Smooth, Chris. Real smooth."

Look at Sin: proud as a mother nightstalker crouched over her brood. Even you have to admit, she wears this well – and it's that, more than anything, that makes you realise it's over. Clean kill. You struck the first blow out of hate, but these two will finish her off with love.

And that means there's nothing here for you any more.

"I'm keeping you from your work," you say, finishing your drink and holding out the empty cup for Sin to take. "Your people will be worried."

"Kickin' us out so soon?" she asks, wiping the cups down on her sleeve and tucking them back into her pouch. "Well, I guess you're probably sick of me by now, huh." She hesitates. "Uh … look, I know you hate Vegas, but it ain't the only town in the Mojave. And, well, I feel like it'd be ungrateful of me if I didn't remind you there's a world outside this irradiated hellhole."

You snort. She just can't help herself, can she?

"I'm not coming with you, Sin. Not even for the east."

She sighs.

"Yeah, I figured. But I had to try." She holds out a hand. "See you next time, then. Remind me to bring my violin, I got a new song I think you'll like."

You won't. If she comes back again, she won't find you. Your obligations to her are discharged; now, you belong solely to the Divide, to this place you killed for the third time.

"All right," you lie, shaking her hand. "Next time."

If she sees through you, she doesn't say anything. But she doesn't smile, either, which you'll take gladly.

"Nice meeting you," says Veronica, waving awkwardly. "Uh, thanks again."

"Yeah." Christine nods. "Thanks."

She holds your eye for longer than you'd like, but you make sure not to look away. You have to respect her, as someone who's walked the same path as you.

They go. Sin first, swinging easily down the collapsed gantry like someone who's been climbing since she was a child, then Veronica, with the graceless movements of a woman more at home below ground than high above it. Then – but no. Christine is still here, still looking at you.

"Thought you'd squared your debt," you say. "Something else you need?"

Veronica's head reappears over the lip of the way down to the road.

"Chris?"

"Just a second, Ronnie." She has a hardness about her face that doesn't go away, but when she looks at Veronica, it turns as soft as you've ever seen it. "Need a word with Ulysses."

"O … kay. I'll let Sixes know."

She smiles, an unasked question caged behind her lips. Christine makes an attempt at smiling back as she watches her withdraw.

"Never seen two people try as hard as you," you say, although it isn't really your business.

"We have to," says Christine, still looking at the spot where Veronica was. "It's been nearly fourteen years." She turns to you. "When I'm with her and Wild Card, I believe we can do it."

You raise an eyebrow. You're beginning to suspect that her desire to see Elijah dead had less to do with the Brotherhood's mission than she claimed back in the Empty.

"You've changed since last we spoke."

"Sierra Madre," she says, which you agree is an explanation all on its own. "You … didn't send Wild Card there to save me, did you?"

Direct. Very direct. You don't want to insult her by denying it.

"No," you admit. "I didn't."

She nods. You don't detect any anger, which is more worrying than if you did.

"Thought so," she says. "So you sent her to learn how to be …" She thinks for a moment, then frowns and waves a hand. "Doesn't matter. You know. Not like she is."

"Yes."

She nods again. Then she takes a sharp step forward and punches you in the face.

It's a solid hit; you see stars for a second, stumbling back and cracking your head against the crumbling wall. Through the flashes, you see Christine's face, blurry, motionless.

"You're lucky you saved my life, or I'd push you right out that window," she says, voice dangerously calm. "Don't know what this feud's really all about, but you didn't have the right to do that. Not to anyone. Not to her."

You grunt, straightening up and gently feeling at the tender flesh around your eye. Already tightening.

"You don't know who she," you begin, letting your anger seep coldly into your voice – but unlike Sin, Christine has no interest in hearing you out.

"I know who she is," she says. "I know she's kind enough to come to the Sierra Madre twice, just for me. I know she threw herself at four paladins in power armour because they came for Ronnie. And I―"

The cough returns suddenly, like a string of grenades going off inside her. You could take the opportunity to reply, but you can't: twice? She went twice? The paladins you can believe, but – the Sierra Madre? Twice? Even Sin wouldn't do that.

Unless she really loved someone, perhaps.

"And I – ugh – know obsession too," she wheezes, gesturing at herself, her heaving chest. "I – ehagh – this fucking cough, my broken voice, busted head, that's because I couldn't let go. And you …" She clears her throat, spits red out of the window into the white Divide air. "You're too smart to be kidding yourself about what you're doing here."

A pause. You aren't quite sure how to respond to that. Sin's accused you of hypocrisy before, but she'll say anything, do anything, to bully her way through a situation. Christine, though …

"Another thing I know about Wild Card," she tells you. "She knows when to walk away."

You stare, vision narrowing as your eye starts to swell, but you can't find a single word with which to respond. Sin? Sin knows how to walk away? What is she―?

"You were good to me," she says. Leaning in close, her hands tight bundles of bone and taut skin. "And Wild Card― and Sin likes you. So I figure I – ehagh – owe it to you to tell you to get over yourself. That's all."

She leaves then, without saying goodbye or waiting for an answer. You stand there for a moment, lost in the turning of your thoughts, and then you come back to yourself and cross to the window, from where you see her and the others riding back down the High Road towards their army.

Just before the ramp down to the tunnel mouth, Sin reins in her horse, turns to raise a hand in farewell. Your own hand rises by itself, almost without you realising – and then she and her family are gone, back into the shadows beneath the collapsed overpass.

Beneath your feet, that circling zopilote cries out, slow and mournful. It tilts a wing and soars out from beneath the arch, heading east towards the canyon pass, towards Vegas and the bloodstained wall across the Colorado. Towards the communities of the Mojave and the union they're building. Towards Sin and her home.

You think about her, going twice to the Madre. You think about Christine punching you, about Veronica holding her hand. You think about the last Twin Mother stabbing Caesar in the neck and stumbling away full of bullets and smashed cartilage.

You close your eyes. Breathe in the bitter Divide air.

A dead society yet lives, in a piece of steel, in a matriarch and the daughters she's found. Lesson in that, maybe. The Twin Mothers always were about lessons.

You open your eyes and pick up your staff, strap your mask back into place around your head. You take one last look at the ruins around you, at the debris heaped over the sleeping body of America – and then you climb down from the arch and begin to walk.

Hard to say where exactly you're going. But you're sure you'll know it when you arrive.