After Nelson, they headed north and met a woman who wore a ridiculous gray hood, which shrouded her face as the sun was at its highest peak in the sky. The angular shadows cast upon her face made the beautiful, sharp angles of her face accentuated, and Juli admired the woman immediately, especially with the confidence she exuded. Without hesitating, the mysterious woman walked straight up to the two of them together. Juli experienced a moment of panic, in fact, taken by the notion that she really ought to flee rather than talk to somebody for a long enough period to allow somebody to identify either of them.
But Juli hesitated too long.
"Hey!" the new lady said jovially.
Juli was almost taken aback and, in a moment of social anxiety, hesitated again. Nobody spoke to her autonomously. Nobody. Everybody looked at Boone and his red "beret." And if anybody did look at her, it was usually because they wanted her to do some task or to fight some animal or raider or other. Either that or breasts had something to do with it.
No, this young woman just seemed to want to talk to her. In the Legion, this was a terrible exercise in waiting to get slapped by a man twice Juli's size, and the instinct reared it's ugly head now. Juli shuddered as the impulse came and went in the span of a few moments. And still, the beautiful woman just smiled with white teeth that appeared very straight and raised her eyebrows not unkindly when Juli didn't speak for painful, lingering moments.
"You okay?" the woman asked, her mouth ticking downwards just a tad.
Juli found herself reluctant to speak to the woman so as not to reveal her own accent, but at the same time, Juli now felt as if she had no choice. Boone certainly wasn't going to help. In fact, every time she glanced at those terribly intimidating "aviator" glasses, his mouth was set into that line of his that she was beginning to recognize meant that he was hiding a reluctant grin.
Her turmoil was amusing him, though she knew him well enough at this point, she thought, to know that his intentions were never malicious. No, Boone's fuse was long, but the resulting explosion was loud and deadly. Her infection had taught them both that, and the two of them had been careful about it since.
But it made her relax a little, that tense line of a smile-not-smile.
If his fuse wasn't even close to being lit now, Juli felt a little bit better. It meant he didn't feel in danger. He was at least a little at peace next to her. His smile actually warmed her up a bit, and maybe it shouldn't have because ultimately he was laughing at her, but she was glad he was able to smile, even if he fought it.
The thought made her feel strong. Healing was possible, and so was talking to strangers.
"I'm okay," Juli finally affirmed, glancing back at Boone again.
At this, he nodded his leave to them both, flitting a pointer finger to her elbow to get her attention. As she looked at him again, in a way that was almost asking for permission, he gestured with his chin with a gruff kind of sound towards the 188 Outpost bar. Wordlessly, they exchanged a conversation about how Juli was exasperated with this, but ultimately powerless to stop him, and Boone indicated to her non-verbally that he really just didn't give a damn. Juli thought it was better just not to push it. And so, her eyes lingered at the bar where he was quickly and predictably perched on a tall, rickety-looking stool, his back to her.
"Your friend certainly doesn't waste any time, does he?" the woman chirruped, smiling conspiratorially.
The smile endeared the woman to Juli.
"No, he does not," Juli agreed.
She actually laughed.
Her chest loosened, her lungs expanded, and Juli felt how long it was since she'd actually done that. What the woman said wasn't funny, but her demeanor helped Juli to relax.
"He your master or something?" the woman probed after a few moments cautiously.
Out of the corner of her eye, Juli noticed Boone's back lengthen towards the sky, where she knew his tight shirt would accentuate his ridiculously stellar physique. Juli would have stopped to admire it, as she'd taken to doing more and more lately, if the question the woman was asking was not so insensitive and offensive.
"I have no master, stranger!" Juli spat coldly. "Do you think this because I am dark and he is white?"
The woman raised her pale, smooth-looking hands innocently, her eyebrows shooting up with obvious guilt.
"No, no, no! Nothing like that! I'm sorry! Hey...hey!"
Juli had turned her scowl on the horizon, and the woman reached forward gently to tug at Juli's sleeve, an affectionate gesture of a child in wanting.
"Come on, I really am sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. The thought honestly hadn't crossed my mind. I was just trying to make a joke, in poor taste, I guess. You know...'cuz you looked back at him to answer me."
Juli mulled all of this over and decided to accept the explanation, as it seemed honest enough.
"There just aren't many friendly faces nowadays," Juli explained, looking back to the new woman. "And you can imagine that many people treat me different because of the way that I...look. And the way I sound."
The young woman's toothy smile seemed to widen genuinely, and Juli marveled at it, how real it was. Not one of those fake polite smiles people threw at one another. No, this thing was genuine. This girl was sincere.
Which felt meaningful to Juli. All evil, bad, strange, stressful thoughts abandoned Juli's mind, and Juli was once again back to admiring the young woman.
"You can never have enough friendly faces," the girl agreed, and this time Juli saw the young woman's eyes flit to the scar on her forehead near her temple.
All at once, the warmth that had been budding died inside of Juli as new self-conscious distress came into play, and the woman's smile faded slightly. The change made Juli sad.
"You look like you've traveled a long way down some bad roads," the young woman muttered probingly. "A long way. Where'd you come from?"
Something about the woman's kind voice made Juli really want to confide in the woman.
"The scar is from Goodsprings," Juli answered, and her answer, much to Juli's surprise, seemed to please the woman.
"An honest answer, I guess, but where are you from. We, uh...don't see many people who...look like you. If I know what I mean. This direction."
This woman's cautious treatment of race, as well as the earnestness of her earlier explanation, was the most sensitive she'd experienced since she'd left the Legion, and it made Juli like the young woman even more.
"I had a village once," Juli admitted, for the first time out loud. "Ansun Qianyi."
Like she'd never stopped saying it, her mouth made the sounds again, her tongue and throat constricting to indicate the appropriate tones for the traditional words. She hadn't said it in so long that a terrible aching now gripped her, a sensation of awful loneliness, pain, and solitude, and the rapidity of the changes this conversation were instilling in her was very nearly upsetting.
Out of the corner of her eye, Juli noted that Boone's back had straightened at her use of her native tongue, and she had the sneaking suspicion that he heard her. For some reason, she felt self conscious all over again, like it was easier to explain to a stranger she'd never see again than with the partner who still evaded even the simplest and most benign of questions.
The woman's eyes brightened in contrast to her depression. Juli's use of her native tongue seemed to please the new woman, who beamed ever wider.
"Ooh, Chinese!" the young woman said. "That's great! What's that name mean?"
Juli thought about it. And thought.
"It is just a name," Juli dismissed, "but...I guess...it means Peaceful Walking Village. I think."
This pleased the woman, and now Boone was entirely still. She wished that he would move away and stop listening to her conversation. Or, at the very least, she wished that he would be better at pretending that he wasn't.
"I've never heard of it. Is it far away?"
"It's all gone," Juli admitted, feeling the familiar pain tighten every muscle in her body.
"That sounds like quite the story," the woman said seriously. "Care to tell it?"
Juli's heart began to race.
"Not a story worth telling," Juli lied.
It probably was to somebody, but she wasn't ready yet, even if this woman did give Juli a pretty positive vibe.
The woman didn't miss a beat.
"Well, welcome, anyway!"
Juli smiled.
"Thank you," Juli answered politely.
"I'm Veronica," the woman told her conspiratorially. "I live in a hole in the ground."
For some reason, this struck Juli as awfully funny, who smirked at the comment and had to resist the strange bubbles of laughter that were threatening to come up out of her lungs.
Juli and Veronica continued to chat idly for a few minutes, and the woman was surprisingly forward with her homefront information. She lived in a hole, her whole family was there, and Veronica alone was the person who came out of the hole to find food and supplies. At first, Juli was determined that this woman was making fun of her, but then Veronica leaned forward. Her hood moved back on her forehead slightly, revealing a flawless forehead that looked too clean to be possible.
"Can I ask you something on the level?"
"I don't know what that means, but sure," Juli replied.
Almost too casually, the woman looked down at her own nails. They were, naturally, perfectly pristine. For the hundredth time in as many days, Juli felt inferior in her posture, her figure, her cleanliness. All these people were out here getting by a whole lot better than she was. When was she going to catch up?
"So listen," Veronica said. "I had a run-in with this group calling themselves the Brotherhood of Steel."
Juli's pulse quickened with familiarity, but not out of distress in as much as it was, perhaps, dismay. It served as a reminder to a long-since stolen time in Juli's life. Her village had had many run-ins with that group. Often, her father and her father's mother, who'd been healers for their village, mended wounds for the bands of metallic soldiers who traipsed through the desert with callous disregard for the suffering of others. Often as a child, Juli wondered why they were so determined not to help anybody else, interact with anybody, but would take all the help offered to them for food, medicine, and water - all of which, of course, despite her behind-closed-doors protests, her village gave freely.
All in all, Juli knew of them, admired their work ethic, but in many ways found them to be lacking.
Regardless, Juli hadn't thought of them in many years, and she couldn't ignore the tightness in her belly as she could see, clear as day, her father and grandmother poring over a handsome, injured young man. They'd rejuvenated him from near death, and Juli and the young man had become friends. Naturally, her father had sent Juli in to entice the man to talk to them all. 'You're so good with people,' her father would say. 'Go fill his brain with knowledge and be his teacher for a change.'
Though Juli was sure she hadn't taught anybody much, she did remember the genuine lightness of his smile, how handsome his blonde hair was, the wonderful angle of his cheekbones. He was Juli's person before Juli had ever had a person, or history, or pain in her life.
They'd kissed the night he left, her first. She was seventeen years old.
"Pretty strange bunch," Veronica continued, unceremoniously yanking Juli back to the present so painfully that Juli just blinked.
"I'm sorry - what?" Juli asked, dazed.
"Do you know anything about them?" Veronica asked, glancing sidelong at Juli.
Boone's voice was over her shoulder.
"They're enemies of the NCR," he growled, making her jump.
She sidestepped, allowing him leeway in the conversation, which he took.
"If you know where they are, girl, you better turn them in."
Veronica didn't miss a beat.
"Well, I guess we all know where you stand on the issue."
"There is no issue. You're either NCR or you're an enemy in enemy territory. So which is it?"
Veronica glanced at Juli, who was still dazed by the clearness of the memories she'd long suppressed. Veronica's face looked almost crestfallen, and she crossed her arms as she peered over at Juli.
"Do you agree?"
"I don't know," Juli offered.
Boone and Veronica ticked upwards both at this.
"You don't?" they both asked at the same time.
Boone was more pissed about this than Veronica seemed pleased, which was saying something.
"What's there to know, Warden?" Boone whispered through clenched teeth. "The Brotherhood are warmongers."
"History might say the same of the NCR, you know," Veronica chimed in.
"Then history can blow me," Boone shot back at her.
Ren had heard Boone say this before. She still wasn't quite sure what it meant, but she knew it meant that it meant something bad.
Then, to Ren, Boone said,
"I've got a man here who says he'll spot us a room for the night. We better follow him before he thinks better of it. And before this...dissenter starts giving you ideas."
Boone began to tug at her elbow, and she bent down to pick up her bag stiffly, still clearly in a daze. She saw him glance at her for an extended moment before tugging more insistently, at which point Ren relented and went with him. Finally, Juli glanced back at the woman and forced a smile she could tell fooled nobody.
"I don't hate the Brotherhood," Juli said, "but I do think individual people determine a group, not the group as a whole."
With that, Veronica smiled more gently, as if pleased with the final answer.
As Juli turned away, Veronica flitted her hand out to meet Juli's. Juli glanced back at Boone, who was now most likely out of earshot.
"Hey..." Veronica whispered.
"Yeah?" Juli replied.
"You know what Warden means, right?"
A sad smile was on her face now, and Juli's smile faltered a little in confusion.
It was what Boone always called her. Her little nickname. Juli liked the way the word sounded when it fell off his tongue, and her confidence grew as she stood taller to explain.
"Warden...I think it means friend, like sister or brother."
Veronica's brow crinkled with some indiscernible emotion.
"That's not what it means, friend," Veronica said to her with some kind of terrible knowledge.
Like she was delivering a bad message.
Juli's heart began to race.
"If...it doesn't mean that, what does it mean?"
Juli searched the woman's face for any sign of subterfuge. There seemed to be none.
Then, as honestly as she could, with patience and a lack of judgment that Juli found to be refreshing, Veronica explained what the word Warden meant. Juli left the conversation feeling hot tears burning in her eyelids, feeling grateful to the woman but more disappointed than anything else.
Boone felt itchy for a few reasons. First, he could only find a room with one bed, and that meant he'd have to sleep next to Juli again. Not that he didn't enjoy it. He did. Too much. Which brought up all kinds of messy feelings. So, with dread, he stepped over the threshold of the room with her in tow, trying desperately to resist the pull of the pleasant sensations that came with being near a sleeping woman. Second, Juli was quiet. Too quiet. Awfully quiet. Uncharacteristically, Juli didn't thank their host, nor did she ask him much about anything as he led her in her blindness through to their situation for the night. He was acutely aware of her lack of twittering about like a bird, and now he just stared at her quietly, drinking deeply from the beer their host had left with them. Third, and this was the absolute worst reason, a filthy, Brotherhood loving stranger now knew something about Juli that he hadn't before.
And this made him awfully salty.
Maybe it was the beer Boone drowned in almost instantly. Or the exhaustion that came with struggling to sleep next to his Chinese Warden. Or the distress that when Juli was upset, he couldn't feel normal. For the life of him, Boone couldn't put his finger on the pulse of the problem, but he knew it was unpleasant by the way his muscles contracted and relaxed, by the shivers that crawled up and down his abdomen unnaturally every time he glanced at her. A throbbing hum of rage burst behind his eyes to bleed very inwardly, and in the long, thick moments after they just sat on the bed beside each other, both off the end, he was in agony.
Almost in a way that was pathetic, pleading, Boone suddenly desperately wanted to say her name. Out loud, not just in his head. He wanted to say it to her, for her to turn to look at him and confide in him like she just had this pretender woman. Boone felt a painful stab of long-since familiar loneliness, but it came from a much closer place now. Boone was reminded that the two of them were partners, not friends, by his own choices. That he'd asked her to remain silent and not ask questions, and God bless her, she did just what he asked her to do.
Or told. He'd ordered her to do that part.
For the first time, especially as he stared with bizarrely twisted longing at her angular cheekbone, Boone felt some measure of regret about that. Possessive jealousy was a bitch, and it hadn't hit him in a long time. For all her numerous flaws, Juli had done right by him. He owed her, and in a way that kind of made her his. Juli felt like she was his. She belonged to him. Not in an ownership kind of way. But she had a special, undeniable kinship with him that made him feel in a very strange way closer to her than he believed anybody else could be.
But that led him to a new line of thinking. What did he know about Juli? She didn't want to talk - right? She didn't want it just like he didn't want it - right? But if that was true, then he was confused that she had seen fit to open up to her a stranger in minutes when it had taken her weeks to really tell him anything about her.
The irrational, petulant jealousy curled in his stomach as he thought about the injustice of it. She'd given that information so freely that it hurt his feelings a bit.
Dammit, when had he become such a pussy? His fingers tensed around the beer, and he looked over at her.
Now, her eyes downcast, unseeing, were set on the floor in front of the bed. Her arms were taut against the frame, her posture rigid as he saw her memories run away from her face in increasing waves of disconcerting pain. Her placid eyes never moved, but he'd learned when she was in pain by now. He could see it in her eyes, in the little facial ticks she thought nobody could see. But he could. Because they shared a kinship.
He had that at least.
But it wasn't enough. None of it was enough.
He was so angry that she'd divulged of her own memories so freely to somebody that wasn't him. Which was so fucked up because he was afraid to know. That, of course, meant the whole world had to stop and wait for him to feel ready, if he ever felt ready, to talk to her about hard things, and they couldn't cut in line like Veronica.
Boone seethed silently into his beer.
Why did he want to ask about all this now? Why did it get under his skin that this woman could make Juli open up in a way that he never could?
It wasn't like he could reciprocate.
Maybe she just didn't like him. Then, terrible doubt. Thoughts flew into his head at the speed of a bullet then. Maybe she was getting tired of this arrangement. Maybe she was tired of his bullshit. Maybe she was still angry about the infection. She'd never demanded an apology, though she was most certainly due one, and she'd been nothing but gracious to his face.
But maybe it was an act. She'd leave him, like everyone did. Everybody else.
Maybe it was because, all in all, he wanted to have one small, glorious thing. She was a stranger to this land - an anonymous nobody like him that could coast through life unrecognized. Juli had no roots. She had no family. Nothing at all but him. In a perverse way, that filled him pride.
Until it didn't. Until he remembered that she did, indeed, have a life before him. The two of them could pretend all they wanted, but it was a lie.
Remembering that their shared lie was still a lie was just so depressing.
And what was strange: the worse he felt about all this, the more he wanted to say her name out loud. To comfort her. Worst of all, to ask her about it. For her to open up to him. He even opened his mouth a few times to articulate this, but somehow the sounds wouldn't come, his muscles wouldn't budge. He didn't feel ready, but she didn't let him suffer long.
Without moving an inch besides her mouth, she whispered, quite coldly,
"Why do you look at me?"
He didn't know. So he made something up.
"You like the Brotherhood of Steel?" Boone asked.
"I didn't say that," she said monotonously.
"You didn't deny it either."
She finally sighed exasperatedly, throwing her arms over her head as she laid back. Her torso elongated in this position, and his eyes were drawn to the curve of her waist absentmindedly as she moved her forearms to cover her eyes. His eyes moved next to the small bulges of her breasts, and he squeezed the beer bottle to squeeze away the sensation of wanting to touch boobs.
Her voice ripped away the attraction.
"I do not need to deny it," she said. "I have little opinion about it."
"Didn't seem that way."
She groaned tiredly.
"Why do you always accuse me of something? We will not always agree on everything!"
He realized this was true, and was surprised when he realized in the same moment that they mostly had up to this point.
"You're just acting a little...strange. A little off, maybe. I can't have that."
"Oh - you're inconvenienced by me? What a surprise!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Boone snapped.
"It's always all about you, isn't it?" she accused.
Boone tried to calm her down.
"Come on - I'm just trying to look out for you. Don't be like that. You're acting kind of messed up."
"I am?" she asked accusatorially.
Boone narrowed his eyes. His patience was at its limit.
"Yeah, what's that supposed to mean?"
"You are the one staring at me. Listening to my conversations."
"I always do that, and you know it."
"You could not do that for once. Have your own conversations."
The jab was unfair, and it made him bristle.
"With who? Strangers? Why would I waste my time with them?"
Dammit, he was accusing her! She was just acting like such a bitch.
"Why wouldn't you?" she parried.
"They're not the ones who are going to come find me if I'm bleeding out in a ditch, Warden," Boone snapped, rolling his eyes.
Then, he snorted into his dwindling reserves of alcohol.
"Not that you are either, I guess. I don't know why I bother."
This was the wrong thing to say. He felt the conversation shift immediately.
"You don't think I'd come save you?" she snapped at him with visceral rage.
"I don't know," he replied defensively. "Would you? You seem determined to get away from me every chance you get."
"I spend every night with you," the woman spat angrily. "And every day."
"Then why do you tell literally everybody else little fun tidbits about your past and not me, huh? It's getting a little old."
"That's an awful high horse you're standing on," Juli replied, an unusually charming and witty idiomatic phrase for her to use given her language barrier. "You don't tell me anything. So why should you expect anything different from me?"
Ouch, if he didn't sense resentment there. All at once, the tables turned again. Boone felt a little winded.
"I don't know," he dismissed, shrugging and feigning casualness. "We're different."
Juli snorted with bitterness that surprised him.
"We're not different," she said.
This grated at him. She was leaps and bounds better than he was.
"Yes, we are."
"No, we're not," she fought back.
"Yes, we are, Warden, and I don't want to hear you saying that again! Alright?"
There was a moment in which Juli just sat there, teetering a little, rocking just slightly. If Boone didn't know any better, or if he were a smarter man, he would have left well enough alone. But that angry thrumming was deafening in his ear space now, and he couldn't stand it as she snapped.
"You are not my father - or my master. So why don't you just get the hell off my back?"
"Maybe you act like you need a father or a master every now and then," he spat out harshly. "Try acting less dumb sometimes. It might work in your favor."
For a moment, it looked like she might fight him. And then,
"Fine. Just...leave me alone," Juli finally relented, rolling over so that her back was to him.
This surrender terrified Boone. His heart began to race.
Juli didn't relent.
"Just tell me. What's your problem?" he asked angrily. "Where is this coming from?"
Then he winced. Everything he said did sound like an accusation.
"I don't want to talk about it with you," she finally said, the bluntest thing she'd ever said to him.
"Oh, but that woman - you could tell her, huh?" Boone shot back.
Juli was silent. Again, against her normal character.
His heart raced faster. What was she hiding? Why was she hiding it? Juli was going to leave. Worse. Juli was planning something with that woman. They must have met before.
Anger came now, and Boone forced her to face him by the crook in her arm. He yanked her around and she protested angrily, if wordlessly, by yanking her arm out of his hand. She sat up in one swift motion, closing the proximity between them to mere inches. The tension became palpable almost immediately, and Boone's heart raced faster. All at once, his anger was shrouded by something else, but he couldn't figure out what it was. He just knew that words wouldn't work anymore, couldn't work anymore, when she was that close.
So he stood up. His knees shook pitifully. He didn't know why. The scent of flowers in her hair lingered in the air around his nose.
Irrelevant now.
"You're keeping something from me," he accused, his back to her. "What is it? Spit it out."
Juli didn't seem to move because the room was still.
"You know that woman, don't you?" Boone accused the wall. "You're going to ask to go with her, aren't you? Admit it!"
She sighed and avoided his eye contact.
"I would be admitting to a lie."
"Then what's your problem?" he asked a little louder.
The two of them did have privacy, so they could afford to yell a little.
"You're just angry that I wanted to talk to her and not you!" Juli shouted suddenly.
Boone flipped around because, man, if that wasn't close to the mark. He squeezed his fists. He wouldn't be mocked for this.
"Shut up!" he shouted back.
"Why?" Juli asked, standing too. "Because I told her about my big, bad village? Because I spoke in Chinese? I know that bothers you so much!"
Boone saw something in her eyes that stayed his tongue, some pain that he'd only glimpsed before just now dangling by a mere thread tethering it to sanity. Her mask would fall off soon, and it hurt Boone's heart to see her lower lip trembling like that.
Something about her village pinched a nerve.
"Maybe if you would ask me questions, I might actually know what to say! But you don't ask! You never ask! You don't care!"
"That's not true at all!" Boone protested, and was surprised to learn instantly that the words weren't lies.
He did care. A lot, actually.
Fuck.
How did that happen? And when?
But he'd be damned before he'd admit it.
"You don't ask how I'm doing," Juli accused. "Not like that woman. You don't care if I'm hurting or where I'm from!"
It wasn't true. None of it was true. Boone's heart hurt as he realized now that the defensive mask she'd had was shattered on the floor. He was terrified to pick it up and put it back on her face, wasn't sure how to get her to realize that he did want to talk - desperately. But he wasn't ready.
His resistance and hesitation was taxing on her. He could see it now plainly on her face.
He might not be ready to talk.
But she might have been.
"Why are you talking like this?" Boone challenged, a little lost himself. "All I did was ask why it was easier for you to talk to a stranger than to me, that's all!"
Again, he rolled his eyes cruelly.
"Excuse me, if I take that a little personally."
His flippancy pissed her off.
"Maybe I just don't want to talk to you!" she nearly shouted at him.
A punch to the gut.
What was he doing wrong here?
"Why?" Boone ground out finally.
"Because..."
She clearly didn't have an answer she liked.
"Because why, Ren?" he snapped.
"She told me what Warden means!"
This surprised him. Boone's heart raced faster as he saw pain flash across her face vividly. Tears began to well in her eyes.
"It means prison keeper!" Juli shouted at him. "You are prisoner to me!"
Boone didn't know what to say.
She tried to turn away. He tried to stop her.
"Don't fucking touch me!" she shouted, yanking away with much more fear than Boone was comfortable with.
His eyes flitted down to his hands like they were covered in blood.
What was wrong with him?
"We can't talk about this right now," Boone suddenly realized, too late.
"Because you are afraid?" she mocked.
The jibe was too malicious not to cause him to lose his temper.
"Fine! You want me to talk?" Boone shouted.
He grabbed her now and threw her towards the bed, though not hard enough to hurt, and he kneeled before her, got in her face. She resisted, but he just hissed,
"No, shut up!"
"Craig, you -!"
"My family brought me up north of here! We're from a settlement out of the Mojave, but we grew up with the NCR before raiders came and killed off people a few too many times! My mom and dad got scared, so we packed up and moved to New Vegas. For all the good that did me."
"Boone, you -"
"-and I got to be free there!" he rushed over her loudly. "And I made my own decisions! With Manny, I made my own decisions! With Carla, I made my own decisions! But with you..."
He made a noise of disgust.
"I've got to wait for you to think about it all the time, figure out some new and imaginative way to make me feel uncomfortable!"
That was unfair. It wasn't her fault that he was sexually attracted to women again. She'd just woken it up, made him remember the motions. Not her fault.
But he didn't care.
"Because you must really like for me to feel uncomfortable!" he berated.
"You're uncomfortable?" she repeated incredulously.
"Of course I am!"
"Why?" she cried out.
"Because I'm used to having a family, a unit, a wife - and I've got you."
Juli looked disarmed. Her eyes widened, and tears began to spill out. But he didn't care.
"So excuse me if I'm pissed that I've got to be the slave of some Chinese girl who wants to order me around all the time! Not that I can understand what you're saying half of the time, even if I did want to listen!"
Boone didn't want to see her cry, so he looked away from her now. He began to hurt in his stomach. He didn't understand why. They'd yelled a few times like this, but it was growing increasingly painful and was hitting just a little too close to home.
The rage blinded him. He felt like he couldn't breathe. Somehow, it was all her fault. All of it was her fault.
"So, since we're talking, where is your family, Ren?"
Juli opened her mouth but no sounds came out. She looked stunned.
"Come on! Where is it?"
Juli's eyes spilled tears like a faucet now. Boone would be lying if he said it didn't please the shit out of him to get her to cry like that.
And it disgusted him just a little bit too.
"Why did your village get destroyed? Huh? What does that have to do with the Brotherhood of Steel?"
His questions were growing into shouts. She winced.
"Stop it," she whispered.
"No, come on! You wanted me to ask, so I'm asking! Where's your family, Ren? We both know they're not in those stupid little figurines you carry around. Or are you really that senile? At least I know my wife is dead. But you..."
Her eyes flashed to his now, full of tears and hurt such as he'd never seen so plainly on her face.
"Where's your village?"
She didn't answer, and it made him so mad.
"WHERE?!"
"It's gone!" she shrieked, covering her face.
Boone sat back on his heels. Like a fog lifted, like the answer provided the drug that he wanted - needed - the anger went away. In its place was nothing but emptiness. Self-loathing. Terrible guilt.
The conversation replayed in his head and he suddenly felt like a small child in front of her.
Oh, God, the things he'd said about her family...
And I've got you...
Boone knew better than the throw around family like a ragdoll in casual conversation. He took family seriously, and she'd never mocked his, though he was sure she'd probably heard an ear full about what a piece of work Carla was. Still, Juli never pried. Never judged. She sat quietly, staring at him, wanting to help and needing it without telling him.
He saw it now. Everything she was represented a cry for help. Why didn't it occur to him?
Juli began to rock. He saw by the tension in her mouth that she was fighting back sobs, and Boone reached for her.
She could have done this to him. A long time ago. She could have demanded answers, scared it out of him, cornered him like a monster did in the middle of the night and pounced on him. But she didn't.
Why had he?
Because, in the ways that mattered, Juli and Boone were different.
"They burned it to the ground, okay?" she croaked. "They burned them all."
Boone's eyes now saw her shoes. He was scum. Her tears were rapid as they dripped like acid onto his hands. He wanted her to stop, but he didn't deserve to ask her to. He was afraid to know all of this. It was too real. All of it was too real. Juli wasn't one of those people that had bad things happen to them. She was happy. She smiled - she sang and laughed. She greeted everybody with a cool, collected smile, and she was never unfriendly.
Juli wasn't this person. She wasn't this person sitting over him.
Or was she?
Was she and he'd just made a point not to see it?
A sob escaped her mouth, and Boone's fingers flitted to her calf pleadingly for her to stop. He couldn't look at her, but that didn't stop his ears.
"I'm afraid to talk about it still..." she admitted brokenly.
He didn't want her to explain, suddenly. It was too close to home. Tears welled in his eyes as empathy began to drown him.
"No, Ren, you don't have to -"
"I'm afraid to talk about it because talking about it makes it real! And I don't want it to be real! All of it! I just want it to go away! It just hurts so bad still!" she sobbed, beginning to rock above him. "And I know that it hurts! And I just want to go home, and I can't go home because home isn't real anymore!"
"Juli," he finally breathed, his fingers clinging by their tips to her calf, afraid to move any closer. "You don't need to -"
"I can't tell you because you know me," she said simply.
The hurt in her voice was palpable, and Boone clenched his eyes shut as a gnashing monster tore through his insides.
"But you don't, not really. And if you did..."
His fingers moved to cup her calf now, and he leaned forward, perched to hear her every word.
"You wouldn't want me anymore. Nobody would."
Somewhere distantly, very distantly, he was proud to admit, red alarm bells went off.
But right now, all he heard was her pain. His guilt. Two silent, dissonant hums in the air.
"You don't know that," he growled out under his breath.
She heaved a sob loudly, cutting through the silence between them, and Boone's fingers tensed.
"I think I do," she said to him. "And then you'd leave me and I'd be all alone again. Homeless and lost. You already want to..."
She sobbed into her hands.
"I don't want to be your prison keeper!" she cried out in anguish, her mouth contorting on either side of her face to expand her cheeks from the pain. "I don't want to be that person!"
"Then what do you want?" he asked, so quietly he could barely hear it.
"To be your friend!" she bleated out pitifully.
Boone was moved by how closely this reflected himself. He felt tears as he finally placed the beer down to cup her other leg as well. He wanted to hold her, he realized. Hold her like he had when she was sick.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to her.
He'd never said it. Not like this.
And he still couldn't look at her. He was a coward.
"I shouldn't have pushed you," he said next.
She obviously barely heard him, lost in her own sorrow that she was deaf to his pleas.
"You don't even want to be my friend..."
Boone was a fish out of water. He didn't know what he wanted any more than he knew what the meaning of life was. He was totally lost.
But he did want her to keep wanting to be his friend. He liked that somebody could want that of him. That somebody could smile at him like she did every morning.
That could see past the fact that he'd never deserve her as long as he continued to lash out and wallow in self pity like a child.
"What do you need?" he asked her, his lips and mouth moving of their own accord.
There was a long pause in which she just sobbed. So long, in fact, he thought maybe she'd just ignored him altogether. Then, quietly, so quietly he could barely hear her, she whispered,
"A hug."
He stiffened.
"I'm not a - I wouldn't be good at that," he offered uselessly, feeling as small as he'd ever felt.
"I don't care," she replied desperately.
So, stiffly, he made to sit next to her and then, with tension in his arms he couldn't shake at her proximity, he willingly brought his arms around her lithe torso as she melted into his chest to cry some more. He couldn't relax, couldn't possibly relax, but he felt her tears slow as she pushed further and further into his chest, her indelicate persistence endearing. Finally, as her body was nearly completely in his lap, she stopped crying, exhaustion obviously bettering her, and he felt her grow heavy in his arms.
"I'm going to put you down now," he whispered to her.
"Mhmm," was all she said, not opening her eyes.
He placed her down but then as he moved away she rolled over as if wide awake.
"Wait. Where are you going?"
"I'm just going to sit up right here," he explained stiffly.
No, he just had to be away from her for a little while. Having a small little thing like a woman in his arms again was difficult, and he felt awful about what he'd said. Instant regret was becoming a theme of their relationship.
She eventually moved back to go to sleep, and he waited for her breathing to calm and settle. It would occasionally catch in little hiccups, and finally he turned to look at her. The moonlight through the top bit of the door spilled onto a corner of her face, and it looked like porcelain.
"I do want to be your friend," he admitted to the sleeping room.
His heart pounded in his rib cage as the admission seeped into the air.
"I don't think you're bad. I actually enjoy being around you. Too much."
His heart beat so loudly now he was sure it would wake her up. His palms were sweaty. He felt a little dizzy.
"None of this is your fault," he told her, wishing he could reach over and brush her hair with his hands. "None of this is on you."
What a pathetic coward he was, apologizing to her when she was asleep.
"I'm so sorry, Juli," he whispered.
Suddenly, her finger tips flitted out to meet his. She mumbled something sleepily. He didn't catch it, but he felt weak in the knees? Had she heard?
"What?" he whispered.
Juli sniffled, smiled with closed eyes, turned to him and whispered,
"I know."
And, like all the others time before, it, too, was enough.