Author's Note: Sorry for the long delay. Lots happening! I won't give up on this. I've just had no time. For sure, I'm graduating in May, so after that I'll have WAY more time. It's also a little short, but it's what I have right now. Figured something was better than nothing! Reviews are appreciated.
As the man named Boxcars was being treated in the room to their left by the last dredges of their reserve medical supplies, Boone and Juli sat in what seemed to be impenetrable silence. She was still angry with him, but one word from him of apology, she knew, would silence her forever. The anger came from a far off place, and, in its wake, a hole remained where she knew she would need to plug a leak to make sure it didn't grow larger.
Numbly, she stared ahead, ever aware that his eyes were on her from his far corner of the room. She did not wish to speak, but, again, somehow it was that he wanted to speak with her. This hurt, and she found herself clutching her necklace with all her might, speaking to the family she would never see again. Part of her recognized that they probably couldn't hear her, while the other part of her knew that if they did they would be listening, wherever they were.
Praying silently, her hands shook as she stared ahead, exhausted with the events of the day. When Boone finally did speak up, it wasn't to apologize but to coax her to sleep, and she bristled at this, his first attempt to talk to her again.
"You should try to sleep," he told her quietly.
She shivered.
"I'm cold," she informed him bluntly.
"We've been over this," he ground out, though not as harshly as before. "Fires attract other people. Other people are bad."
"A fire has been burning here for days, and no one has come," she shot back. "I am cold, and it would not harm anyone."
"I'm just trying to look out for you, alright?"
"Fine," she spat, "but then do not ask me to go to sleep just because you don't want to talk to me."
He sat up at this.
"Hey, I wasn't trying to -!"
"Oh, I know what you were trying to do," was her icy reply. "And I appreciate the thought" – sounding not at all appreciative – "but, if such is your desire to make sure that I never get a good night's sleep because you decided that you didn't want to by making sure you stay cold, do not tell me to go to sleep! I cannot sleep if it is cold!"
He was silent for a moment. And then another. And then another, until, finally, Ju thought perhaps he'd ignored her retort altogether. Then, he moved his hands to the ground to stand up. He retreated out of the room and did not return for several long minutes.
Then, when he did, he had kindling in his hands, brush and old, singed wood from the remains of the town. Wordlessly, Boone set out making a fire. In short order, a fire burned brightly between them at the center of the room, smoke billowing out of the hole that had been blown open in years that had long since come and gone.
She appreciated the fire and thanked the man for it. Boone just grunted, turning his face to stare up at the sky far above them. He looked like he wanted to say something, so Ju waited, ever patient, for the ironically curious man to speak. She managed to glance at him sidelong, and she found her face coloring as her eyes met the length of his curves, of which there were many. His arms were full, almost plump, as his closely cropped head rolled from side to side as she saw him wonder how to phrase the question of his choosing.
"Boxcars," the man muttered to her.
Like it was a question.
The English language was thoroughly nuanced, but Juli was now well enough versed in its intricacies to recognize that this was his introduction of an idea that would lead to, perhaps, and implied question. Though, to her discredit, despite the fact that she was aware of these linguistic gradations, the implied question was always the facet of the language that betrayed her fundamental insecurity with English.
"I do not understand," she told the man.
"He called you a 'chink,'" Boone told her quietly, like it was a secret he didn't want her to know.
Juli wasn't sure how to respond to this, but she was aware of the slight pinching in her stomach at the sound of the degrading slang term out of this man's mouth. Where once it had been an innocuous predictalism, now it was something that rubbed under her skin just a little too rough.
Probably because he called her "Chinese" all the time.
Finally, Ju cleared her throat, hoping her accent didn't bleed through as it often did.
"So?"
"So…doesn't that bother you?" Boone pressed, fidgeting where he was on the ground, staring endlessly up at the sky.
"Of course it does," she told the man, trying to keep the arrogant haughtiness out of her voice.
After all, every word Boxcars had thrown at her had been first uttered by this man, her strange and grumpy companion.
She told him this as best as she could, feeling like her tongue bumbled the tones necessary to convey the words respectfully and kindly. Her heart raced as she finished, and Boone was silent. Her fingers felt cold, and Ju became aware of the uncomfortable and inconvenient truth that Boone meant something personally to her.
Like a little piece of family already.
But he likely didn't feel the same. After all, Ju was slow to trust but quick to talk. She liked talking. Somehow, it felt like a siphon of the hurt inside, and if she opened the valve now and then, the pipe wouldn't burst. It was scary to talk to him, but she liked doing it.
He was quiet – and only asked questions when he wanted to know the answers.
Which meant he listened.
So it was that Ju wondered if he heard the barely constrained hurt that laced her voice as she told him that this was the kind of treatment she received everywhere and that, despite it being predictable, very little made it easier, especially considering the fact that there were so few Chinese left out here in this desert.
"Sorry," he finally mumbled, bringing his hands behind his head.
She saw him tense across the room almost imperceptibly as he stiffened to listen for her reply.
Grinning reluctantly, she nodded.
"Okay," was all she said.
"No, really, I'm sorry," he croaked, clearly out of his element. "For everything."
She rolled over, and, for the first time since they'd begun to sleep together, she turned her back on him, bringing her hands lazily under her head as a pillow.
"I know," she whispered.
And that was enough.
Boone heard the way Boxcars spoke to his little Chinese girl. He called her "chink." Rage boiled in him as he approached the building. He heard the man leap out to attack her and Boone had rushed in only to find the sickening sight of the man's crippling injuries. Ever the altruist, Ju offered him all of the supplies in exchange for information. The man obliged – barely. He seemed to be scared out of his wits of Ren, who he called the "grim reaper."
Apparently, she was more of a big deal than he thought.
It made him feel uncomfortable. He wanted to know her, better and harder than any Powder Ganger should. In a bizarre kind of way, totally platonic, he began to feel jealousy curl his fingernails as he wondered what else others knew about her that he didn't.
He'd have to change it. Have to ask her things. It was only fair.
She seemed a little lost too. He wasn't much good at being good to people anymore, he thought, with good reason. What was the point? He'd be dead soon, anyway, and that would be fitting judgment.
But Ju seemed genuinely good. And when Boone thought good he meant good. Pure. Sweet. Little.
Almost innocent, Boone would have said, had she not been totally and absolutely capable in the fight they'd had. She couldn't be completely unblemished. That was why she'd signed up with him – or he with her.
In any event, the man's attitude rubbed at Boone, and more than once, Ju had to walk him out of the room to get him to calm down so that she could have a conversation with the man. She was so dismissive and passive about the man's behavior, it infuriated him.
He heard the way the word "chink" fell from the man's mouth, and Boone felt sick at the nearly imperceptible wince of the blink in her powerful eyes. Dark and thin as they were, they betrayed an awful lot to him – more than she probably thought that they did.
He'd called her that. It was a moment of weakness, of petty disrespect. A bad dream, waking from a nightmare that made him wish he could die. It was an excuse, but not a good one.
He apologized that night, knowing he'd never call her a slur again.
Ren would simply have to do for now.
The following day – and those that followed – Ju sensed that, as with all things, time made everything better. They began to meander south now due to a shortage of supplies. She was sure that wherever Benny was going that she would be able to catch up to him, so the urgency she had had before Nipton had faded somewhat in the face of a more immediate threat: starvation and dehydration.
So it was that they trudged tiredly to the Mojave Outpost, on Boone's recommendation. She'd never been there, but she would have been lying if she said she wasn't a little curious about the two giant statues that stood resolutely at the topmost hill before the gated entrance. It only seemed fitting that the outpost marked the beginning of sparse discussion between the two of them, then. As the outpost marked the unification of two disparate political entities, so too did it mark the beginning of a tenuous, if increasingly civil – and perhaps even friendly – relation between Ju and Boone, Ju thought.
He spoke little of his marriage or his past or his military career. He was eager to share other things though. His favorite color was brown, he liked Mexican food – spicy with lots of peppers. She was jealous at the way he spoke of his mother-in-law's cooking. That was, of course, before they'd moved further west, and he and his wife hadn't seen them since. They didn't know she was dead, Boone thought, because he'd tried to contact them with no success.
Conversations usually dwindled after that.
He asked her the same questions back, simple enough but glorious in their respect of her nature as an individual. These were the questions she hadn't been asked, truly asked, since she was a child, and it sort of brought out an excitement in her that was difficult to mask.
She liked wontons. Boone had never heard of them, which was, all things considered, a travesty. Ju admitted that she'd never even heard of refried beans before her twentieth birthday, though, and, for the first time ever, the two of them were laughing into a fire that burned brightly every night now.
They reached the settlement, and there was a comfort in reentering the stream of existence with other people. Ju and Boone would have to wait three days for the shipment of supplies from the caravan to arrive, but that was okay. They bought a room – could only afford one between them – and went about wandering the town.
The two of them met eyes briefly only once to form an unspoken agreement that while in town the two could do as they pleased. Almost as if the two were on leave from a business arrangement, Boone disappeared to drink, most likely, as his backside was frequently greeted by the inside of the pub's door, and Ju passed the time walking around the camp.
Her mother always told her that it was common courtesy to make yourself known to every person in the room. This wasn't a room, necessarily, but it was small enough to feel like she ought to know the people who were caring for her and her friend.
Her first day was spent this way, but the second was spent eyeing the children here. There were three children – all Spanish speaking. Mariela, seven, Martin, nine, and Alex, four. They played "futbol," a game her village had called "zu-qio." Soccer, she thought, was what the English people called it.
Early in the afternoon, the children were taking a rest out of the hot desert heat and made their way over to the shade in which Ju sat. It didn't take any time at all for the four to become fast friends. The remainder of the afternoon was spent entertaining them with her language, her voice, with her uncanny ability to make the ball go from her foot to her back without having it touch her hands. Like a skill she'd never forgotten, soccer came right back to her – and to her feet, which were all too willing to bounce the ball around again from foot to foot, toe to toe.
The children laughed eagerly, as if appreciative for the attention. As the desert sun began to set, she made her way out with them into the dirt, sliding and tackling and giggling like a child, feeling younger than she had in a very long time. She took turns being on teams, and, in fact, got her own set of rules. Whoever passed to her would, by proxy, make her be on their team – unless the ball was intercepted by one of the small children.
Which it often was. She made sure of it so as not to lose their interest.
Feeling joyful, Ju twirled the kids in the air affectionately when they scored, cheered with them when goals were made, and giggled along with them as her heart lightened in the happiness of children's laughter.
"Ju!" a familiar voice called.
Breathlessly, Ju flipped around to see Boone glowering at her from the porch of the bar he'd spent the whole day in. Her smile faded as she jogged over to him, excusing the kids, despite their vehement protests to the contrary.
"Having fun?" he asked, a little petulantly.
She felt sour at his tone instantly. She was allowed to have fun, and this was a much healthier outlet of releasing her stress than drowning in alcohol. She said so.
"Cool it," he told her, rolling his eyes. "I was just making a comment."
"Okay, what do you want?" she wondered.
"Caravan's early," he announced. "We'll be gathering supplies this evening."
Her smile faded as she glanced back at the children, who had all gathered to giggle and watch her talk to the "scary man who never smiled," they called him. A dim smile lit on her face at that.
"Okay, let me just wrap up with this and I'll be right over," she told him.
"They're just kids, Ren, let them go."
She bristled at this, perhaps given her rocky history with children. Every child deserved a chance to play, especially with an adult who cared about them. They deserved the same respects as an adult – even more than most.
"I said I'll be right over," she snapped, "now don't push it, Boone, alright?"
He eyed her silently before letting her go back to bid the children goodbye for the day. They moaned and "aw'd," but Boone's scowl was impervious to such things. So, she retreated back with him to gather food and supplies, which they packed into their room.
It was late, Ju realized, and her legs were sore from the exercise.
She laughed in her throat as she closed the door.
"I had a good day," she declared.
"I can see that," was his reply, unchanged and sour as ever.
It had its intended effect.
"Whatever," she snapped, rolling her eyes. "I get to have fun too. This is just how I do it."
"You think I was having fun?" he snapped back. "Drinking with strangers I don't give a shit about?"
This kind of announcement shocked her, but she guessed a day's worth of drinking would hammer the drunkenness into a person.
"Were you not having fun?"
"No, I would rather have been drinking with you!"
"Well, I didn't want to drink," Ju dismissed.
"No, you'd rather play with children."
She paused now.
He'd wanted her to be there with him. In there, facing his demons.
She felt frightened, but was determined not to show it.
"I'm sorry…" she told him sincerely, doubting he'd remember it or the original argument in the morning anyway. "If you'd told me, I would have stayed."
"Why do you have to be told?" he snapped. "Didn't you want me to go with you?"
"Yes, but not every second of every day."
"To hang out with children."
"What's wrong with children?" she grilled, testily now. "I happen to like children."
His anger receded instantly, a surefire sign of hammered-ness.
"You're good with them," he admitted. "And soccer" – ah, she was right – "I was watching you."
"Why didn't you come out?" she asked.
He shrugged non-committaly.
"Didn't know if you'd want it."
She peered at him for a long moment before he flopped on the large bed.
"Wish I could do that like you do," he whispered into the air. "Have fun like that."
"You should try it sometime," she teased. "Though, it might wipe that scowl off your face and then where would we be?"
He grumbled with laughter, but she heard the sleep in his throat.
"Let's just go to sleep," she offered.
"Will you go with me tomorrow?" he asked her.
His eyes, so eager, so vulnerable, betrayed a need she, again, was frightened to address.
"Sure…" she agreed. "Tomorrow, we'll go drinking."