She snooped because that was what she'd grown up doing and what the Legion had driven her to do. Room after room was searched as days passed with no word between them, just significant conspiratorial glances and solemn nods.
A respect had cropped up around this task, and while he obviously still had a lot of latent issues, he was less vile than he had been. Because now he had a story. That was what was important, really. Stories. His was that of a loving marriage. One woman, a local who'd been there for a long time, even had a picture of the two of them. Carla was astoundingly beautiful, not just in body but in her face as well. She had dark hair like mine, but she wore the dresses Ju had always admired from the outside looking in. Ju always wanted to try them on, knowing that doing so would probably just make her look like a child playing dress up.
Not Carla.
Carla had curly hair that billowed in waves over her shoulders, a large chest and wide hips. Her waist was skinny, at least, but the curves that met it were amazing, to be envied by the wee little people who existed in real life. Carla was something else. Completely unlike Ju, Ju found herself thinking.
A beautiful woman, even if her eyes had a glint of the pretentious. The other town's folk didn't seem to like Carla, and her picture seemed to show this. In fact, nobody Ju spoke to had anything good to say about the woman. Carla was miserable. Mean. She hated Novac and everything in it. She looked down her nose at everybody. She got along with Boone, but that was about it. She'd wanted to drag him away from here, bring him to New Vegas where she thought it was "safe." She changed Boone. Made him uptight. They could be heard arguing into the night just before her untimely disappearance.
Nobody had expected Carla's death, it seemed, in a way that was odd. She was gone one day, and nobody was the wiser. That day, Boone had left. Three days later, he had returned, empty-handed, tired and with that famous scowl he now seemed to have plastered to his features. They'd asked what happened, and he'd just said, "Carla is gone."
The story broke her heart.
Ju found herself disliking the town's people the more they spoke of her because it was obvious they didn't care at all that Carla was dead. They thought it perfectly reasonable to speak ill of the woman, despite her passing. Ju looked down at the picture of Carla and Boone. Carla was alive here, and she was Boone's, whether their marriage had been floundering or not, whether the woman was a piece of work or not. Carla was a woman, a living, breathing woman that somebody loved.
This seemed to be beyond the comprehension of Novac, but not beyond Ju.
Ju marveled at the smile on his face, at the not quite possessive but protective wraparound of his arm on the beautiful woman's waist. His smile betrayed some element of surprise, something akin to giddiness. He couldn't believe his luck, it seemed, just as the town's folk seemed to believe. He was smitten with her, or at least that was what the picture betrayed.
Ju envied him his happiness, and mourned with him for its loss, despite the fact that the other people in the town obviously wanted Ju to judge her according to their own opinions.
After the local had retreated back to her bed for the night, an older woman with a kind enough smile, Ju had snuck into the room and stolen the picture, careful not to fold it or to disturb it in any way. Boone would like to have the picture, Ju was sure.
It was the fourth day that Ju found the bill of sale. She was sick immediately after reading it. Physically sick. She ran outside, making it as far as the gate before vomiting onto the ground. Her knees shook and she found her eyes blurring with tears.
She wouldn't have believed it, had the evidence not been so irrevocably there. Had the meticulous nature of the thing been so real and life-like that she was sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was a true bill of sale. A real document, signed by a one M. Scribonius Libo Drusus and his et al.
She didn't know how long of a time passed before she began to run. She didn't bother to clean her mess up, not that anybody was out to stop her. There'd just been a sandstorm. She was the only one crazy enough to go out into it, eyes wet with tears, desperate to run as far away from that terrible document as she could.
She reached a small source of water. It was slimy, just like all water was, but water was water and that was what she needed. She didn't drink it, but she dipped her head in, wrenching the bun from her hair and breathing heavily, wondering when the seizing of her chest would stop. Her heart raced, and she said a prayer to Carla and her unborn "fetus."
The word sickened her. Fetus. So impersonal. So unreal.
When she returned, she didn't know how to keep her composure. She didn't know if she'd be able to. But she saw him, Boone, as he emerged from his home. Their eyes met and he surveyed her silently. She saw the minutest flinch of his eyes as he looked her over, and that was when he knew.
They both did.
The time had come, and she knew it didn't matter whether or not she could keep her composure. She just knew that she had to.
Ju went to the woman. Spoke to her. Jeanie May – who was, all in all, perfectly civil. Sickeningly civil, in fact. Not sinister, not outwardly devious. Ju wanted to spit on her, but she couldn't. Not yet. This was Boone's trial, not hers, and he would never forgive her if she took this from him, as much as she might want to. And Boone's opinion suddenly mattered.
Jeanie May's life wasn't hers to take. It was his battle, and all she could do was look in as she watched in horror the events that were to unfold in the closing hours of this fourth day.
Jeanie May wandered out in front of Ju, and she could tell from the older woman's eyes that Jeanie May was a little nervous. Guilty conscience.
Didn't matter to Ju. Not one bit. She almost wished that it did. She remembered this hate like it was a sickness, and it rotted her insides in a way that was rapid and complete and agonizing. Every few seconds, a pang of anguish so intense would overcome her, and she was sure that this was the end. That she would die.
But she didn't die. Her legs and feet like lead, she moved slowly, not bothering to hasten to the woman.
The older woman turned to face her when they reached the rock.
"Okay, here we are," the woman said to Ju.
Ju scowled, feeling her hands reach into her back pocket to withdraw Boone's beret. Ju became acutely aware of the roughness of its material, of its worn nature, of the pride it had bestowed upon its wearer. She flattened it out of respect for the NCR and for him and for Carla, hating the woman as she fastened the hat on her head. It was a symbol of everything the Legion hated, of everything that Ju wasn't, noble, good, strong, steadfast. Despite the fact that the NCR hadn't been fast enough or good enough or willing enough to save her village, Ju knew that the idea of the NCR was something worthy of pride. She felt it as the beret fell over her forehead.
"What are you doing?" the woman asked, eyes flitting up to the beret on my head.
"I will pray that we learn forgiveness, woman," Ju spat.
And then, the woman simply wasn't there anymore.
Like Jeanie May had never been.
Numbly, Ju stood for a few moments, staring into space forlornly. She contemplated the morality of what she'd just done, but wondered if it was even possible for anybody to be saved anymore. It felt like the answer was no.
Unconsciously, she turned her eyes up to the man, feeling lost and vulnerable all at once, eyes searching blindly into the darkness. She was sure his scope was focused motionlessly on her face. Maybe he was going to kill her. End it here. That would have been okay. An acceptable final act, considering her last six months prior to this event.
But he didn't. Maybe he was the honorable sort. Or maybe he could see that this was personal for her. It probably wasn't a good idea that she'd been involved with it in the first place. But any barb against the Legion made her feel better, even if caprice took hold of her now.
What did it matter that the bitch was dead? Those they'd all lost would not return, and there could never be justice. Justice was an imaginary thing.
It was a lesson hard learned, one she thought she'd accepted a long time ago.
But it was obvious that the freezing cold blood that coursed through her was from this sadness, this ache, that just wouldn't go away, and Ju wondered if that would ever pass. If vengeance made it easier.
She would have to ask him, one day, if they ever met again after this. If he would give her the answer. If it gets easier. If it gets better.
Maybe it could wait. She just wanted to get out of Novac. Immediately.
Her feet trudging, she made her way listlessly back to the dinosaur, wondering as she wandered, step after step, finally reaching the door. She stood, motionless, wishing that she would cry to get the ugly inside of her out of her body. Ju wanted to flush it out, somehow.
Boone opened it before she could commit to these tears.
She saw his face was pale. His knees buckled and his hands trembled. There were tears in his eyes that she pretended not to notice, and he half turned back from her to allow her room to enter as they both stepped out into the wild darkness. She didn't like being so close to him, but it was clear neither of them really wanted the proximity. It was just easier to talk in a space that was private.
"That's it then," he muttered shakily.
He exhaled. It, too, betrayed his vulnerability.
"How did you know?" he asked her, a hint of desperation in his voice.
There was a glimmer of hope in it that Ju was wrong. That this was a mistake, that he'd committed a murder due to his being misinformed. He wanted her to take responsibility for it, and she would, if that was what he needed. Lives like Jeanie May's were acceptable blemishes on her soul's permanent record, she thought.
But she had to give him the option to do the right thing.
Wordlessly, she reached into her pocket with ginger hands, producing the bill of sale that made her feel so sick to her stomach she wanted to just get it out of her – the memory of it appalling. Ju would do anything to forget that this had happened. She wished that she had ever been born if only it meant that these acts of vengeance were no longer necessary and that the Legion was eradicated like it had never been.
Ju motioned for him to take it when he did not, and he did so, hesitantly at first and then he clutched it, like a vice, fingers crinkling into the paper shakily.
His stoic face was placid against the onslaught of what I was sure was the most painful set of words he would ever read.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," he snapped. "It'd be like them to keep paperwork."
She said nothing still, knowing too well that this was so.
Disgusted, Boone tore the paper to bits, grunting as he thrust the bits into the windy air outside of the dinosaur's mouth.
She didn't know how long they stood before he seemed to remember himself, yanking her back to the present also.
"Here," he said, reaching down to a box.
He opened it and threw a rustic bag of caps at her.
"A hundred. This is all I can give."
He didn't thank her. She was glad.
Ju just scowled, turning her nose up at the money.
"I don't want your money," she snapped, a little more angrily than she ought to.
He looked surprised, like she'd slapped him. It looked like he would almost insist when he just shrugged, replacing the caps back where they had been.
"I think our dealings are done here then," he said dismissively.
But he didn't move. It was clear he wanted to know what she wanted. She didn't even know.
This was the part she knew well. The feeling of being lost.
"What happens for you now?" she asked him tentatively.
They didn't know each other, not really, and Ju wasn't sure if she had the right to ask this question.
But he didn't seem to mind. In fact, they seemed to be of one mind that they were in this thing – whatever it was – together now, and a few more spare moments of companionable silence between them would not be moments that were wasted.
"I don't know," he breathed heavily after a while. "I won't be staying, I know that. Don't see much point in anything right now, except hunting legionaries."
She felt emboldened by the gentleness in his voice, and for some reason she didn't want him to be alone.
"Come with me," she offered. "Let's go after the Legion together."
He knitted his brow. He didn't sound surprised. He'd already considered this.
"I thought you were after Benny."
"You remembered."
"You told me. Why would I forget?"
There was silence.
"You don't want to do that," he finally snapped with some degree of finality. "Be with me, I mean. I'm…not right."
He was self-conscious.
Sympathy was pungent and sweet. She just gave him a reserved smile.
"I understand," was all she said.
They met eyes. He believed her.
"In any event, I thought snipers worked in teams," she stated. "What will you do alone that you cannot do with me?"
A rueful smile played on his face now.
"Hm. Yeah. Working on your own, you're a lot less effective, that's for sure. I've been there and paid for it."
But, contrary to his words, he sighed, standing, grabbing a few bags from the box at his feet and stuffing it into his pack at the far end of the loft, like he'd been waiting for days for this chance. He probably had been.
"This isn't gonna end well," he warned.
She was already moving down the stairs, feeling underprepared now that he had a bag.
"Never does," was all she said to him.
With that, they were off into the night, going so far that they didn't rest until the sun was highest in the sky the following day. But that was okay. Because they were away, and that was all that finally mattered.