Two Months Later
The next time she saw him, it was somewhat of a deliberate accident. She was in Novac in search of a man called Benny who had taken something worth pursuing. It wasn't really the details that mattered as much as the history he'd found out, history she'd rather be kept quiet. The man in question, Benny, a name that was just sounds to her, seemed like the type to talk.
This Novac man, rude and callous as he was, was huffing across the courtyard, the sun at his side, casting a beautiful light against what she now could capably recognize was a toned chest and well-established arms. He was a built man, no doubt about it. And it looked like he was built for a reason the way his eyes scanned the horizon.
It made her a little frightened, especially when she found herself walking right into him without realizing it.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she began before perking up to see who it was.
Him.
Boone? She thought that was the name.
He recognized her too.
His eyes pinched from beyond the veil of his sunglasses, and she hurt with remembering.
It felt like a long time between then and now. She was still listless. Lost. But the despondency had washed out with the dirt on her clothes, and Good Springs had offered her a chance at a new beginning, even if it had also been an end.
She noticed his eyes flitting to the obvious scar on her left temple, and she found her palm brushing her hair in front of it to take his eyes away.
He noticed this too. Sharp man, Boone.
"What are you doing here?" he asked waspishly.
"I've left and come back," she replied to his question formally.
Her mouth became taut with the obvious lilt of her accent. Her words just didn't sound like his, and his words made her think of how far out of her depth she really was. For the latest time in a series of countless times, she ached for the tongue of her settlement back home, even as she knew she would likely never hear it again.
"Why are you here now?" he pressed.
She cleared her throat, considering how to respond.
"Because I'm tired and I need a place to rest," she replied calmly, offering him a polite, if weary, smile.
Her patience was different now than what it had been two months prior. By her own admission, this was because her tipping point had long since come and gone. Everything else now was just fuel to the fire. She didn't know when it would come, but it would.
Rudeness simply didn't help matters.
It fed the explosions of futures coming.
"We don't need your kind here," he barked at her dismissively.
He made to walk by her, and she laughed under her breath. This caused him to freeze.
"Sorry – did I say something funny?" he asked louder, causing a few people walking around them to gaze lingeringly.
She did not turn back to face him. This was too much respect, and he deserved none.
"I do not answer to you, NCR," she shot back at him. "I have saved this settlement from annihilation. Would you deny me a place to rest after that?"
It was true. She'd gone into that reactor and gone after more than her fair share of ghouls. Unsettling, to say the least, but there was money in bravery, and she was nothing if not tenacious.
He just snorted.
"Besides," she quipped, amusement playing on her lips, "what does 'my kind' do to offend you so much? Did you have family murdered by vicious tribesmen?"
She glanced over her shoulders. The tightening of the jaw at the mention of his family didn't escape her either.
He had lost somebody. She felt her heart breaking for him, and her amusement scurried. She more than most knew better than to joke about family.
To this, these revelations aside, he had nothing to say.
"It doesn't have to be like this, you know," she advised him, coolly now.
She heard him stop.
"My name is Ren Ju Li," she told him calmly. "I do not expect to learn yours."
He huffed off.
And when she couldn't sleep at night, she thought of him, tossing and turning in her bed. He was the first person to challenge her and look at her. There were raiders and bandits, sure, but they were akin to animals in their ability to contemplate right and wrong. All others had, for the most part, been up to this point very civil beyond Boone.
But he also seemed to see through her in a way that was both terrifying and exhilarating. By the same token, she seemed to look into his eyes and see him. He carried a great pain, and pain drew her to people. She was an empath. It could not be helped.
She wanted to see him.
Manny had told her he was the night watch at the sniper post. She decided to go see him. She'd be gone in the morning anyway, so it wouldn't matter when she was brushed away.
Cautiously, as she'd learned was right, her foot falls became silent as she ascended the stairs to the tower. She hovered at the door a few moments, imagining with each passing moment that he might burst through the door and swear at her.
So, deciding it was better to catch someone without pants on than be caught with one's own pants down, she opened the door.
"Goddamn it!" a loud expletive thundered out of the nest of the dinosaur's mouth.
She shut the door behind her and he stood tall. He'd been prone.
"Don't sneak up on me like that," he ordered, glancing reluctantly at her when he recognized who it was. "What do you want?"
"Your name."
"Boone. Craig Boone."
That was all she was going to get. There was about thirty seconds of shifting and dancing on the balls of feet until he lost it.
"Look, what do you want? I've got a job to do."
"We both know that doesn't mean much," she offered plainly.
His brow furrowed from behind his sunglasses, which he still wore in the pitch of night.
The corner of her mouth tilted upwards even as his scowl became more pronounced.
"I don't need a lecture, warden," he snapped aggressively. "We met one time and it was a...bad night."
He glanced over his shoulder into the abyss of the Mojave behind him.
"Expecting visitors?" she questioned, crossing her arms.
"Yeah, I guess maybe I am."
He turned back to her and there was a moment in which he surveyed her. His eyes moved down her figure, lingering for a moment on her chest, which caused her to squeeze her arms more tightly around her in discomfort. But he did not seem lecherous or even devious. If the behavior was done, it was unconscious, and he looked further down her legs and back up to her eyes.
Whatever test she'd just been forced to endure, she'd passed, even if it was obvious she'd been found wanting in some areas by the look of distaste in his eyes.
"Not like you," he finally stated. "Maybe it should've been you I was expecting all along."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Why are you really here?" he asked her knowingly.
"What do you mean?" she replied.
"You show up twice, up at night both times, this time with a scar on your forehead and a limp in your step. Whatever trouble is following you, the people don't need it here."
"How I conduct myself is none of your business," she defended confidently. "Besides, I intend to leave tomorrow. This area isn't entirely friendly."
"I don't have friends here," he breathed.
There it was. The anguish, the distress.
"I'm not from here," she offered as bait.
"No," he mused, bringing his right hand to his chin.
He rubbed the stubble there with a heavy sigh.
"Maybe you shouldn't go," he said. "Not just yet."
She narrowed her eyes. She could recognize a cry for help when there was one. And something about his just seemed so personal.
"Why is that?"
"I need someone I can trust," he rushed out. "You're a stranger. That's a start."
The weight of pain she felt with those last two sentences nearly crippled her. She knew how that felt.
She knew this man, even if he didn't know it yet.
She'd been through the same kind of tragedy she had.
Ju just wondered who it was he'd lost.
It didn't take long.
"My wife was taken from our home by Legion slavers one night while I was on watch," he admitted in a rush.
And the pain in that statement told her everything.
She opened her mouth to say something but found she didn't know what to say. She knew how the Legion treated women, especially those that had been purchased. Property, that's all women were.
Boone cut her off before she started.
"They knew when to come and what route to take, and they only took Carla," he continued caustically.
Her hand flew to her chest as the oxygen left her lungs. The cruelty of such an implication did not escape her.
"You think somebody…?"
"Someone set it up!" he seethed loudly, as if her horror was vindication of his hatred – and rightly so.
Tears welled in her eyes at the thought.
If Carla, his wife, had been sold, she would have been the only loose end to tie up here. No need to waste time on a bunch of other nobodies.
Ju wondered where Carla was now. Ju hoped Carla had had a good doctor, like Ju had been to so many who were taken by the poisonous Legion. Someone kind and compassionate, someone who was willing to take a few punches for the sake of a few extra seconds of rest for the downtrodden.
The thought of her treatment made Ju think this was treachery of the highest degree.
"Who could have done such a thing?" she asked him. "Can we get her back? I'll go with you."
There was a sneer on his face now as he abruptly turned away from her. That layer of pain was back. And it was mind-altering.
"My wife's dead," he ground out harshly.
The wind whipped her hair as what little control left of her faculties left deserted her, and her knees began to shake with fury on his behalf. All offenses on his part were forgiven. He was her fellow in this, in his loathing of the regime that had destroyed her entire life. They were the reason for her guilt and also for her listlessness. They were the reason she wandered.
"You want to get at the son of a bitch who sold her," she offered him bluntly, her voice raw with something that betrayed an emotion dangerously close to understanding.
Boone flipped around.
"How did you know?"
"What other possible end could you have with the Legion?"
The familiar distrust flared in his eyes before it died again in the face of his lust for revenge.
It was a quest she could honor.
She agreed to bring the man out in front of the nest while he was on duty. She had a feeling this would end badly, but who was she to judge?
Right before she left, she turned around. He spoke as if he knew of Carla's death, but if she'd been stolen, there was no real way for him to be sure. She asked how he knew.
And he just said,
"She's dead."
And that was that.