Ju had forsaken the company of others since she'd found herself destitute, just days before she'd first met Boone underneath that dinosaur, and it had not taken an entire day of walking with Boone to figure out that adjusting to the company of others again would be somewhat problematic.
Ju was accustomed to her own routine. She wandered until noon on most days, carrying only a single gun and a small knapsack for her own trinkets and food. At noon, she would break her trek to eat. She ate as much of a well-balanced diet as she could to normalize her own system: proteins, carbohydrates, and iron all to bring about the return of the physical processes she'd lost while she was with the Legion. She then forced herself to drink a liter of water so her body could digest the various medicines she'd begun to dose herself with. Then, she'd continue to walk until about an hour before sundown, at which point she had her PIP Boy set to sound off. From there, she'd find shelter, build a fire, and eat her diet once again. When that was finished, she'd remove her necklace from her neck and pray to the owner of the necklace.
That would often go on until she was half-asleep, and when Ju finally realized this she would commit to the thing, curling up into a ball beside the dying embers of a long since dwindled fire, sleeping only because exhaustion called for her.
Things were different now.
Ju didn't want Boone to know about her physical deficiencies because that would require her to explain them. There was no way to do that without mentioning the Legion, which was a topic Ju was sure wouldn't go over well, no matter the reason she had been with them. Boone was clearly in a volatile place. Far be it from her to set him off.
Ju also didn't want Boone to realize she was dosing herself with various medicines to help her to normalize. Ju was no junkie, no addict. All the medicines she prescribed herself by scrounging here and there or by buying off wandering merchants were legitimate. As benign as antibiotics. They wouldn't really do anything, but, again, if he saw her taking them, she knew he would be suspicious. She didn't want to set him off, and she knew he would be on high alert because of his own evident weakness with narcotics.
So, she hid her condition, her diet, instead opting to cook foods she knew would have more taste but less obvious benefits than her previous diet. She could no longer function on the same time scheme, as it seemed he had difficulty sleeping. They would walk well into the night, on some nights, and the fire they made was never big enough because Boone said it was dangerous to make it burn too brightly.
Ju honestly didn't give a damn, but he'd kind of taken up the role of begrudging caretaker, so she didn't want to drive him away by complaining that the shivering she experienced at night was no longer due to sadness but now also due to sheer physical cold.
Boone pretended not to notice, opting instead to scowl into the distance as he offered to take the first watch, as he did every night.
She sometimes tried to speak to him after this, but it was difficult, she soon discovered.
There wasn't much to say that she felt like talking about. Ju was comfortable in obscurity. And besides, words were hard. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk. She just wasn't sure how, like it was a skill she'd forgotten.
Ju was sure that this was some type of brain injury. The headaches kept her from truly forgetting the fact that she'd survived an execution, but the difficulties with communicating were also hard.
It worried her.
She hoped it would come back with time and thought of her mother, what her mother might say to help her along.
She'd probably gasp at the thought of being executed and cover her mouth in shock, unable to believe that a person could survive that kind of trial. Her mother had been part of the small group that had been Ju's village for her whole life. It wasn't her mother's fault that she didn't know the world, but it made Ju sad as she realized that she had no idea what her mother would say in the way of advice. She almost felt like she would be a stranger to her mother. Her mother wouldn't recognize her, wouldn't like her, wouldn't even look at her.
It hurt somehow.
These dangerous thoughts were hovering around her on their fourth night, and Boone, who seemed to possess a skill that allowed him to both stare at her and somehow never quite look at her, called her on it, asked her why it was she clung to the necklace around her neck.
Ju felt her mouth tighten at the personal question.
She had not invited him to do so, but she figured in this she could be mostly honest.
"I was thinking of my mother," she confided in him.
"That hers?" he asked, nodding to it.
"No," Ju answered vaguely. "It doesn't belong to anybody."
"And yet you wear it around everywhere?"
She did not need to speak to answer this question.
Boone obviously noticed Ju's long bouts of silence, but he didn't say anything about it – probably because he seemed to prefer it that way. That was what made these kinds of conversations both easier and more difficult.
"Why are you watching me?" he asked her after a while, as if the question had been stewing.
"I want to make sure you are not a drug addict," she replied flatly.
"Gee, thanks," he deadpanned, though he didn't look or sound surprised. "I could say the same of you. What do I know about you, really? Besides the fact that you're obviously Chinese and you have a series of suicidal tendencies that'll bite you in the ass one of these days?"
"I am twenty three," she told him. "You may add that to your collection of knowledge of my person."
Boone shot around to look at her at this.
"Twenty three?" he repeated dumbly. "No way you're twenty three."
"Why not?" she replied calmly.
"Because you're…you just sound older."
"How old are you?" she asked.
There was a long pause, so long it seemed as if he'd completely ignored the question.
"Twenty nine," he finally admitted, like it was a deep, dark secret.
"See?" she asked him, curling her knees to her chest to stay warm. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
He didn't reply.
Such was the case for the next few nights. They'd exchange what was moderately polite conversation before he'd lose interest in her and she would pretend to fall asleep.
On the seventh night, Boone began to drink. These would be the nights that he'd finally open his mouth to talk with that wonderful American accent she sometimes wished she had. Ju just wished that the accent was lilted with a hint of gentleness or kindness instead of malice and disdain.
Despite being so tight lipped, he certainly had a lot of questions for her – and not a lot of patience when she resisted his attempts to rip her open. Whenever they did speak, the discussion often deteriorated into something far less civil than she'd like. Then, abruptly, it would end with him yielding in that way of his that communicated only exhaustion and irritation rather than a true concession, and she'd find herself feeling foolish and lost and small.
She didn't like it.
And so, on this latest night, she was not surprised when he went into his now customary roast of questions, all of which she knew she would dodge carefully and masterfully. It had taken years of practice, but she was good with words when they did manage to find their way to her mouth.
It was just getting them out that was the problem.
"Chinese," he said, his way of addressing her.
A sour tightness in her mouth greeted the address. She did not turn to look at him, hands tucked behind her head, eyes staring up almost forlornly at the stars.
"Who's Benny and why is he after you?" Boone asked.
"I didn't say he was after me," she said slowly.
"Okay, who is he?"
"I don't know," she replied as honestly as she could.
She really didn't. She'd learned he was going through Nipton to get to Novac, but that was as far as she'd gotten. Last time she was in Nipton, she'd been told to return in a few days when their scout had returned from his trek to McCarran.
She'd already informed Boone of this information with as much brevity as could be allowed on the first day of their travels together.
"Why'd he shoot you?" Boone eventually asked after a long silence.
She sighed heavily, feeling a little irritated with his tone.
"Maybe because I'm Chinese," she quipped dryly.
"Look, I'm being serious," he answered, a little too loudly.
"Aren't you always?"
It had been days of travelling and Boone hadn't seemed to smile yet. Not that she did either, it was just a downer to be around somebody so like her. Ju found she felt sad all the time now. Maybe it was because she was constantly reminded of reality. At least alone she could recede into some ether and fantasize about the reality she wanted.
Still, she enjoyed having a human standing beside her. It beat the company of her own memories.
But only because they weren't hers.
"If you don't want to talk, just say so," he snapped testily after another awkward pause.
"I don't mind…talking, I just don't like when you call me Chinese," she stated in reply.
The despondency bit at her, as it so often did, making her bolder than she wanted to be.
"What?" Boone asked.
Like he was dumbfounded.
She snorted.
"If you're open for requests, don't call me 'Chinese.' I have a name, which I've told to you."
"I can't say it," he defended dismissively, not a shred of regret or apology in his voice. "Besides, your name just sounds like noise to me. Just sounds. No offense."
"That's how I feel about your name, and yet I don't call you 'whitey' or 'Caucasian.' Would that be better?"
He scowled, and it was clear to her she'd made him angry.
They were both tired. Somehow, sleeping with somebody next to them made both of them restless. It had been lonely living for so long that being around others made it hard to rest, made it hard to trust that they wouldn't stab backs or slit throats.
"Just call me Ju," she mollified, dumbing down the inflection of her name as best she could. "Juli is an English name, too, right? Or Ren. You could at least try."
"How many names do you have?" he asked, clearly annoyed.
She sighed.
"I have two. Ren is my last name. Juli is my first."
"But you say it opposite," he argued, narrowing his eyes.
"Yes, my last name comes first."
He trained his eyes on her from across the fire evenly.
"Is that some Chinese thing?"
Again, a sigh. Every time he accused her of something, it always went back to that.
"I guess so," she finally admitted. "It's a Chinese thing. Or just a name thing in general. Whatever."
He was quiet for a while. Then, he said,
"Look, I know I'm not…good at this. I'm not trying to offend you."
And she was pacified. She began again, gentler this time.
"I took up work as a Courier a while back after I got out of…after I was held captive for a while. That's when I met Benny. That's when he hit me in the head and dragged me to a hill to die just outside of Goodsprings."
Boone was silent.
"Why'd he shoot you?"
"I had something he wanted."
"And what did he want?"
"A chip," she offered uselessly. "Don't know why."
"And who were you before all that?"
She narrowed her eyes at the stars.
"Ren Juli," she replied blandly.
He snorted.
"I mean, you must have done something really stupid to get on somebody's bad side like that. You run with a gang?"
"No," she half-lied, wondering if he would consider the Legion a "gang." "I didn't run with anybody. Not on purpose. Not by choice."
"What's that supposed to mean? Somebody force you?"
She was silent.
He perked up at this, sitting off his roll to stare at her from across the fire. His mouth was serious, but it was his eyes that told the stories. She thought that was why he covered them with sunglasses. Easier that way.
"Who had you?" he asked cautiously, dread clearly lacing his voice.
But she found she didn't want to answer this question. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Maybe nobody would ever have to know that she'd been captured by the Legion and forced to serve them under penalty of death.
"I lost track after I changed hands enough times," Ju offered.
It was a lie. A total lie. She was meticulous with knowing her owner, especially after she was abandoned to her fate. She found the people who stayed alive the longest in the Legion were those who felt compelled to keep their heads down and their eyes up, their ears open.
"How could you lose track?"
"Apparently, everybody has something against the Chinese," she replied with tenuous wavering in her voice, a quivering in the back of her throat making speech difficult. "Guess we're not all that bad at medicine though. And…" She sighed heavily. "A slew of other things I'd rather not go into right now. Everybody always wanted something from me, so I've been spread pretty thin the last few years."
"You were a slave?" he whispered.
She scrunched up her face.
He seemed to understand she didn't want to talk about it, and he didn't bring it – or the fact that she was Chinese – up ever again.
Adjusting to traveling with somebody was difficult. He'd done it before, but that was a long time ago. Before Manny. Before Carla. Before Novac. It felt like a different life. Not only that, he wasn't sure how to travel with a woman. He'd never had to do that before. He'd travelled with Carla only once, and that was with a caravan to reach Novac – and by then the two of them had already been married. Even then, he'd been with Manny too, and they'd been in a larger group. Carla and Boone had never camped out, not like this. This felt military and professional and hard.
And that was great.
He had a purpose, even if the adjustments were small.
He had to excuse himself to take care of his faculties. He had to watch her to make sure she wasn't trying anything, though in the week or two they'd been together she'd been nothing but deliberate and honest. He appreciated that about her. No surprises. Except, maybe, when she'd stand up to change her clothes. He had to avert his eyes when she removed her clothing, which was never brazen and always reserved, the way she did it, but it always, always surprised him. Boone would always feel the need to look away, so he would, ignoring the weak feeling he got with the momentary flashes of skin.
That was the only thing he didn't particularly like. Being around a woman again made him feel sick to his stomach. It had been almost a year since Carla had died, and he still wasn't quite sure how to handle himself after she was gone. He wasn't above human attraction. Plenty of strange and exotic women who passed through Novac had drawn his eyes, even if he'd pretended they hadn't. Ju was a little different, a kindred spirit, but still inconveniently a woman.
Boone had to share their weight, his and Ju's. They filled up their packs with food supplies and water more quickly than Boone would have thought.
But, things fell back into place like they'd never left. He could wake with the sun, sleep when he was told, lie quietly on the ground, find cover, make shelter, that kind of thing. He had missed being a Ranger more than he'd thought.
Though, when they smelled the smoke that billowed up in the distance, he felt something that his life in the Rangers would have never allowed or condoned.
Because Boone knew it wasn't the smell of wood. When they moved in to get a closer look, white precipitation, close to snow but with none of the cold, a dusty, lingering substance, he was filled with dread at the way she would behave, the way she would react.
Because he already knew the precipitation wasn't snow.
Certainly not snow.
He was worried she might cry. That she'd pout or panic. He wondered if he should just firmly suggest that they leave. He wondered if she'd been serious about taking on the Legion, if she really, truly, understood what that meant. Not very many people knew what it meant to fight, and all they'd been doing was heading south along a rail line to reach Nipton where she had a contact who knew Benny. She might not even be able to hold a gun or have very much endurance. She seemed small. Very small.
He did think it was her Chinese roots that gave her the slight figure, but he knew she wouldn't appreciate the correlation.
Needless to say, Boone was ready to go in. Ready to die. What was left?
Nothing worth saving. He wandered around for the ghosts of reasons now, and he'd forgotten why he even bothered. Somehow, Ju had been the push he needed to commit to doing the thing, to getting out to face the glorious and wild death that awaited him. She had a look that told him she was as ready to die as he was, and it broke him as much as it goaded him to take his chance. He ached to know about her, he'd come to realize, and that only reinforced his drive to dive in headfirst towards what Boone knew would be their inevitable end. Boone wanted to get rid of her. She'd grown to infect his insides with her very presence. It wasn't even an affection building between them, but Boone didn't want companionship. He didn't want anybody.
The sky grew darker and an overcast shadow drew lazily over the sky to fit the mood. An eerie wind disturbed her loose hair, which billowed in the wind past his face. It smelled faintly of flowers.
Irrelevant.
Boone glanced at her, unsure of how to proceed. He wanted to give her that out, to make sure she was sure about what he meant when he said he was hunting Legionaries. They deserved no mercy, and if she stood in his way, neither did she. He at least hoped she wouldn't try to stop him because he'd come to not entirely hate being around her, which was a big deal.
But her jaw had become firm in a way he'd never seen it before, her eyes steely, watery, but not out of sadness. She was frightening, suddenly. A great and terrible beauty, standing atop a hill, staring downwards towards the south, eyes full of knowledge that chipped away at a person. Like an angel of death, watching and waiting for her chance to take that which had been snatched from her.
"Should we go?" he found himself asking – for her benefit instead of hers.
Part of him hoped she'd leave. The shred of desire to live inside of him begged her to bring them to another destination because wherever this was certainly was going to weigh on them both. Part of him also wanted her to go because he knew this would be personal for him. Personal for them both. He didn't want her to see him this way, wild with inhuman rage, slaughtering others because of a bloodlust he knew could never be sated.
But the larger part of him begged for her to keep moving. He wanted an audience. His hatred, his rage, demanded it, consequences be damned. Boone had nothing to lose, not even her. If she saw, and she didn't like it, she would leave.
One less pest to deal with.
The thought of dismantling the regime that had ruined his life brought him a pleasure very near perverse, his heart pounding, his blood racing, a maniacal glint in his eyes.
"No," was her firm reply, much to Boone's surprise. "We're doing this."
An inhuman gleam alit his face as they planned the attack.
She was to go in, he assume a perch higher up. He was to cover her, and offer her covering fire if she needed it.
She would.
But Boone didn't question her. Somehow, she had the authority in her voice of a military officer. She commanded the respect of a superior, demonstrated with her tone the experience of several lifetimes. He knew he'd have to ask her about it if they made it through this, which was a big "if." But he did know one thing.
This girl had the same kind of penetrating hatred he did.
It hurt, somehow.
They separated and she turned back, just once, her now frighteningly serious eyes trained on him. It seemed like she was surveying him for something, and he felt very near naked at the clearness in her watery eyes.
"I'm trusting you with this," she whispered.
And that was when Boone realized.
She was frightened. He would leave her. He would shoot her in the back. He would let them have her. He would make a mistake, hit her instead.
This was his first test.
Boone watched her for a few moments before he nodded solemnly. Words weren't his strength, but he knew when to recognize a giant leap of faith when there was one.
Words would not do justice to the fact that he was grateful for this chance.
"I've got you," he told her seriously.
She turned her back on him.
"I certainly hope so, or the Legion most definitely will."
He didn't realize what she'd said until she was already halfway down the first hill. When he did, it made him sick.
Ju knew about the Legion. Ju knew what they did, how they did it. Ju didn't just talk.
She knew. The girl actually knew.
Boone realized all at once that he just really didn't want to know. But he did know one thing: it would be best just to leave her alone.