Boone didn't care for Veronica, but he was too terrified to lose Juli to protest. Which pissed Boone the fuck off. Since when had she been like that? Since when had she mattered? Had anything mattered? Nothing really mattered, of course, not really. He knew it. She knew it. But the fact that his insides twisted and curled when his unconscious mind summoned up that image of Juli's lips contorting widely to fight back a sob made Boone angry. At Juli. But worse, Boone felt an aching in him that stemmed from deep inside of his abdomen and reached like stretched toffee all the way up into his throat, the tensile strength of it tugging at his voice box.
Which didn't make any sense.
Nothing made any sense anymore, and Boone was beginning to lose sleep and miss it now. He'd been sleeping, which was a thing he'd forgotten his body liked to do. Like sex. God, Boone wanted sex again. He was horny as a bitch in heat but he wasn't about to let Juli know that. Not anybody he knew. He shouldn't have sex yet, should he? Carla was only dead a year. A year and some. He had to honor what they had. What they'd stopped having, in all honesty, right before she was taken. Not right before. About a month before. Carla was "too busy" for sex. With what, he didn't know, but when he got back from an admin tour for the military, a separation of a few months, she'd rejected nearly outright.
Boone ground his teeth as his insides darted around inside of him like frogs. Why was he thinking about sex? He should be mad about other things. He was so angry he could spit. Veronica was a traitor. A liar and a cheat. Any Brotherhood sympathizer was. But he was too terrified of having Ren cry like that ever again that he kept his God-awful mouth shut. His own fears made him feel sheepish and vulnerable, but for once that didn't create multitudes of anger in its place. Now instead there was just fear - and pain. He hadn't slept at all last night. He couldn't. He thought about what it would be like to go on without her now. For the first time since he'd joined her.
Unbearable.
Unliveable.
Impossible.
With Veronica though?
Possible.
When Juli went to go collect some supplies from a caravan to "leave them to settle their differences," Boone didn't have time to remain quiet. He had to make this interloper see that this wasn't just some free ride - that their thing was a thing now (whatever that meant) and that Veronica needed to leave it be or it would shatter into a million pieces.
"Look, Brotherhood," Boone spat as soon as he was sure Juli was out of earshot. "I don't know what game you're trying to pull, but this shit stinks. What's your deal? Smells like fucking bullshit to me."
"She told me you had quite a mouth," Veronica replied, almost sounding unfazed.
She looked over her fingernails, which she'd been surveying, as if bored.
"What business is it of yours who I go with and when?" Veronica asked her, though she sounded amused.
"Because Juli is my partner," Boone ground out before he could even think. "Got it?"
Whew, if that didn't sound possessive then Boone wasn't sure what did. For the first time in all the time that Boone had been with his Chinese friend, he felt pride at his ebbing attachment to her. Theirs had quickly become a symbiotic relationship. He liked it. He knew it. She knew it. Just like everything. He wondered if she liked it, and Boone flirted with admitting that he was too insecure to wonder that right now.
Because this beautiful woman with an easy smile and a voice that made him want to grind his teeth was now standing between the two of them. If her easy smiles and beautiful hair wasn't a red flag, Boone didn't know what was. Nobody just wanted to tag along for funsies. Nobody did. There was always a catch, and Boone wasn't about to let either of them get caught in the middle of Veronica's bullshit.
Or end up at the shit end of one of those fucked up gang raider cult rituals people sometimes whispered about.
Who knew who anybody was anymore?
"You're awfully protective of her," Veronica quipped into the silence after a while, sounding very amused now. "I thought you didn't like her much."
"Why do you say that?"
"You don't speak very nicely to her," was Veronica's reply, her smile fading a tad.
Boone's whole world stopped. His mind went to the night before. His abdomen clenched.
"What do you know about it?" Boone asked her.
"You call her Warden, NCR," Veronica replied exasperatedly. "How much more obvious could you get? I mean - come on. The girl is obviously hurting. You could cut her some slack."
"And what do you know about that either? You don't even know her!"
Veronica shrugged.
"I make it my job to learn people, NCR," she said. "Even small-minded people like you. I'm sure I'll know more about her in one week than you have this whole time you've been with her. What's it been now? Three months? Four?"
"Four, thank you very much! Not that it's any of your goddamned business."
"Funny, because she's making it my business."
Boone waited too long to deliver an appropriate "fuck you" when she sighed exasperatedly.
"Look, I honestly don't have an agenda," Veronica admitted, looking into his eyes. "I'm just trying to help."
"What makes you think you can help her?"
"She's hurting, and she needs a friend. Maybe I see a lot of myself in that. Maybe I see a lot of you in that."
"Don't act like you know me," Boone shot back.
"Fine," Veronica said, shrugging again. "I won't. But I could help you too, you know."
Boone reacted harshly.
"I'm not some fucking charity case, alright? Juli and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement, and that has nothing to do with you."
"So that's what they're calling friends these days?"
"And I didn't ask her for help! She offered me a job! I took it. End of story."
"Come on, NCR," Veronica offered. "I see the way you look at her. It's okay."
Boone's heart became flighty instantly. His head swam. His heart began to swell with some unspoken passionate something that he felt overwhelmed by it. His hands found his beret, which he straightened on his head.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Boone told her.
Because I don't know what you're talking about, a little voice chimed in from the back of his head.
Or maybe he was too anxious to know what she was talking about.
Surely, Veronica was just picking up on Boone's lusting after Juli. But Boone couldn't have her. He wouldn't allow it. He'd have to be better.
"You don't know what you're talking about..." Boone repeated, feeling less sure, and more panicky, by the second.
"Sure I do," Veronica said, pretending, Boone surmised now, that she didn't pick up on the fact that she'd triggered a full blown panic attack at the casual supposition. "You want to know more. About her. About what she's about. I can give you more."
Boone stiffened.
"You'd betray her trust?" he accused.
Goddammit, if that didn't make him angry. Which was so frustrating because Boone wanted to fucking know. He wanted to know everything. The truth that danced around behind Juli's eyes almost hauntingly. A slow dance, rhythmic and ritualistic, sad. A death march.
She looked like his eyes did in the mirror as they stared back at him. That was what drew him to Juli.
Juli had Boone's eyes.
And she called him Craig. He kind of liked that. Nobody did anymore.
And her hair smelled like cactus flowers.
Boone growled, clenching his fists in frustration.
Irrelevant! he chided himself for thinking, and as he turned away from Veronica, she said,
"No, of course I wouldn't betray her trust. I just think she needs a friend who isn't following her around by his dick."
This riled Boone.
"Look, bitch, you've got it all wrong, alright? Our - this thing whatever it is...it isn't like that!"
"Tell me how it is then."
"None of your goddamned business," Boone repeated.
"Fine," Veronica replied. "But I think you just need to go a little easier on her. And on me. I genuinely just want to see how this goes. If it doesn't work out, I'll call it quits. Just doesn't hurt to travel in packs."
"It does if you're expecting a knife in your back."
"You think I'm going to do that to you? Why would I ruin my knives with stains of your blood?"
"Why would you do anything?"
Veronica just smiled mysteriously.
"Touche, NCR, touche."
Boone never missed an opportunity to get Juli alone, but not for attention, no. At first, it was for advice that she didn't ask for. Then, as the weeks drew closer to her worst, most hated day of the year, Juli began to withdraw. This would be the first time in three years that she would have to suffer through this day, and its dreaded build up, with other people, let alone those she dared foster as friends.
Juli resented Boone for existing lately, but only because his existence was part of hers. And hers rapidly grew into being unbearable as the day grew closer and closer. Boone, of course, saw this grumpy, snappy shift as uncharacteristic from her chirrupy, cheerful self. She no longer twittered about. Slowly, with almost measurable solemnity, Juli's features darkened, her mouth closed, her sleep left her.
The curse that would never, ever leave took her quietly as it did every year, and it hugged her from behind like a malicious spirit that even her prayers could not drive away. In fact, in these times, like she always did, like a horrible death that called for rebirth, Juli's faithful prayers to her deceased family members faded in those times, and she withdrew even from the spiritual realm, her imaginary friends and ideas, deteriorating quickly into a husk of what she once was.
So, today, Boone's presence was anathema to her. His beautiful eyes? Revolting. His concerned mouth, set in a line? Vitriolic.
"You have something to say," Juli announced coldly one day when Boone had "offered" to help her collect firewood.
"How did you know?" he asked right away.
"I can tell," she said.
She just barely restrained the "Because I know you" answer that she wanted to say, but somehow Juli suspected that this was the wrong thing.
"I..." he began, but he floundered.
Juli waited with numb anticipation slanted only slightly towards anger, looked down at her feet. They'd set their packs down a ways back, and her figure felt light for the first time in a long time. Even though she wasn't light. Juli was getting fat! Though, probably not fat. Curvier than she had been. Maybe her hormones were in check. What did it matter? It had been years and the pain lingered. A wound without a scar, pain without a source, bleeding without a vein. An unstoppable agony.
And it was coming, the bad day.
"I want you to know that I've got your back, you know," he finally said.
Juli forced out a laugh. This seemed to perturb him, and she was annoyed that he could tell that she was out of it.
"I know," she finally managed.
The two of them walked on in stiff silence, but she noticed that his hands, empty of firewood, were clenching and unclenching. That was not it.
"What is it?" she asked him without looking at him.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked her.
She laughed, bitterly this time.
"No," was all she said.
He nodded, but she could feel from his body language that this was not good enough. Almost like the revving of an engine, she heard his restraint snap away as his hands, with surprising gentleness, met her shoulders to turn her to him.
She threw up her hands to flick off his own.
"Get off of me!"
"You're out of it," he said, his way of asking a question.
"So what?" she snapped.
"So what?" he repeated. "So I want to know why, and I want to know if you're okay."
"Of course I am not okay," she replied. "But I have never been okay, so what does it matter to you?"
His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed angrily.
"All I did was ask if you wanted to talk."
"Why would I want to talk about it?" she hissed. "You would not understand."
This was the wrong thing to say.
"Oh yeah? Fucking try me, princess!" he shot back loudly. "I probably understand a lot more than you think!"
Juli's grimace came full circle.
"I do not think you would," she said genuinely, pain seeping into her voice, but she'd done it.
She'd made him mad, and his short temper went off.
"But Veronica, huh?" Boone snapped. "I bet you can tell her, can't you?"
"She is a woman, and this is a woman's issue," Juli replied nebulously.
"Ooh, yeah," Boone mocked. "Women. So tough. Never took you to be one of those man-hating whores just looking to use em and lose em."
This was too far.
"I'm sorry," she said back, not at all sorry, "have we fucked? I must have missed that. Maybe it was just so unimpressive the memory of your small dick slipped out of my mind."
Boone's eyes, obscured by his glasses, must have flashed with danger now.
"Watch it!" he warned.
"Why?" she snapped, rising to his challenge willfully. "Last time I hear, whores must have sex with men to be whores. And I have spent every day and every night with you since we have been together, and I have not had sex."
"Can't imagine why," Boone shot at her nastily, crossing her arms.
"Do not talk to me like that, like I am unappealing!" Juli shouted at him suddenly, his barb hurting in a very small, very weak, very malnourished place that was without shield right now. "Do not treat me like garbage because I am not comfortable to disclose information with you! I am sick of you whining about what I do all the time! Veronica is here! So leave it! Or don't! But stop picking at me all the time! Stop it!"
Juli covered her ears for a moment before realizing this made her look weak, and she withdrew her hands, only to realize by the slackness in his jaw that it was too late. Her involuntary withdrawal, a symptom of social panic and anxiety, had worn as his frequently unkind temper.
"I'm sorry," he admitted, flicking his hand out to touch her arm. "You're right. I'm sorry. I just..."
Juli didn't want to wait.
"What?"
"I just want to make sure you're okay," he told her.
"Why?" she countered with hostility.
Boone was obviously annoyed by her tone.
"Why? We travel together, we're partners!"
"Is that what we are now? Because last time I checked you were bitching about saving my ass all the time."
"Well, I do. Should I pretend like I don't?"
"That's not the point!"
"Then what is the point? All I did was ask a simple question!"
"Oh yeah? Ready to talk about your wife, Boone?"
She was pushing him. He stood taller, his chest puffed up.
"Don't go there, Juli, I wasn't trying to make it about that."
"You were trying to get me to tell you why I'm fucked up without telling me why you are!" she accused.
"You know why I'm-"
"Do I?"
"My wife is dead!" he hissed at her.
"So is my family!"
"But I'm out here to get revenge! Why are you out here?"
"Maybe I am too!"
"You're - you just can't be!" he protested. "It just doesn't make any sense!"
The two of them were close now, but a twig snapped around a large boulder they were walking beside, and Boone had his gun out in an instant. The two dropped the issue instantly. Juli's heart beat loudly as she allowed him to take point as they slowly stepped towards whatever had caused the sound. She cursed herself for leaving the guns back at the camp, but the sidearm was better than nothing after all.
The two listened. Long and hard. A whimpering sound, almost, a bleating. It took a split second, a split second too long, but she recognized what it was. And when she did her heart stopped, her stomach twisted, her chest heaved and then contracted, her throat swelled.
It was child, a child crying.
Juli rushed around Boone. He grabbed at her wrist but she flicked him off, feeling angry and worked up.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered, and then, as if on cue...
Crying. No, more than that. Keening. Desperate wailing, hysterical and afraid. A child.
Juli sprinted towards the sound, feeling her heart beat loudly. The malnourished thing that Boone shifted off the surface twitched in pain at the sound, and Juli's stomach clenched as she rounded a corner to find a hole, deep, maybe fifteen feet deep, like that of a well. It came up on her so fast, that Juli nearly fell into it, and she called down to the child in the pitch black.
"I'm coming!"
Boone's voice was far off. Her heart raced, blood was in her ears. Juli couldn't see, couldn't breathe, she just knew that that kid had to get out of that hole.
"Ren, don't!"
His voice was sharp and afraid, a sign of danger, but Juli didn't care. She dropped to her stomach and she realized she was crying. Something wasn't right, and her heart knew it even if her brain didn't.
"I'm gonna get you out of there," Juli whispered, and she dropped to her knees to lay onto the ground to try to reach with her hands. At the last second, only too late, Juli heard the ticking, the high pitch ringing of rapidly increasing intervals.
A mine.
Arms came around her at the last second as an explosion brought fire and heat to her arms and ears.
But Boone's maneuver had been fast, and complete. The two were entangled completely, and he leaned up in a way that indicated that by some miracle that both of them were alright. His hands roved all over her to see if she was hurt, but Juli shoved him off unthankfully, almost angrily, scrambling upwards to get back to the hole.
There was ringing now, dust and ringing. A small hole in the sand was left by the explosion where debris of the wooden trap left by the child was scattered in small pieces no larger than an inch now. The hole was nowhere, and so was the child.
A uniform, red and shined and clean, stepped out into the chaos now, but Juli's faculties hadn't recovered from the explosion. Numbly, dully, Juli realized that a Legion soldier was walking out into the clearing, speaking Latin to her as if announcing the procession of a king, the look on his face smug, self-satisfied, as if to say, "now, I hope you've learned your lesson." It didn't register fully until, rushing from her right, a mass of muscle and bone collided with the armored soldier.
Legion.
A Legion pig.
That was when his words rushed into her ears, as did all the other noises of the world, including those of the struggle of an unarmed Boone alongside an armed Legion swordsman.
Screaming out in rage, Juli flew forward into the fray, grabbing one of the man's loose arms, but her hands, in contrast to Boone's, were calculated, and she had a knife. With nearly effortless calculation, her rage and adrenaline pulsing into her, Juli's knife was stripped from its sheath hidden in her boot, and the small shiv was between her fingers as it made rapid entry into the soldier's fleshy, exposed side.
Boone sat back as the man's energy sapped after that, and Juli shoved the knife in harder, grunting with the effort, sprawled on top of him hatefully as tears flowed through her eyes.
"Bitch..." the soldier seethed.
And Juli shoved the knife out and shoved it back in again, crying out in rage. She twisted it in her hands as they soaked in blood.
The man smiled then, blood between his teeth, as he spat in her face. She heard Boone rush forward at this, but Juli couldn't take it anymore.
Tearing the knife out of his side, she sliced the straps keeping his armor together, removed it from his abdomen, and brought her knife with a sickening squelch sound down into his stomach and gut. She screamed in his face like an animal, baring her teeth, as she did it again.
And again.
And again.
Until she counted seven times, and then something inside of her snapped.
As if burned, her hands tore free of their tool of death deep inside of the soldier's abdomen and, with shaking limbs, she shot back from the man.
Directly into Boone's arms.
She shook. Hard. So hard her weakness made her feel sick, and she couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. She might have admitted it because Boone took her cheeks in his hands and spoke to her in such soft, compassionate, regretful tones that she couldn't bear it.
"Did you hear?" she asked hysterically.
Her voice was loud, but she had to be that way. The child's cries of panicked terror echoed in her ears, somehow louder now in death, eerie in their absence, than they could have ever been in life.
"Juli, breathe," Boone ordered mechanically. "Look at me, Juli, look into my eyes."
He released her for a moment and his eyes were suddenly in view, but Juli barely saw them. She couldn't see anything. She swore she was dying. She had to be. This wasn't real life.
"Did you hear what he was saying?" she asked again, her voice squeaking. "Did you hear what he said?"
Her hands made contact with his wrists, a small, meaningless comfort to her inconsolable grief, and she latched onto him as a tether to realness as insanity took hold. She'd long since begun crying, but sobs heaved now. Deep, heaving, cleansing sobs, and her eyes clenched closed.
"Legion sordes filiorum non loco habent," she repeated. "I've heard that before. I know what that means."
Juli couldn't swallow. Couldn't breathe. It was a wonder she could even talk.
"I know what that means," she repeated over and over again, her mantra. "I know what that means."
Finally, Boone whispered,
"What does that mean?"
A single sob, and her last hopes of keeping it together melted away.
"Children of the filth have no place in the Legion," she admitted, sobbing.
And, with that, Juli wept.
She hadn't spoken in more than a week, and Boone couldn't sleep with watching her. She barely ate, she didn't seem to sleep. Juli's wonderful eyes were bloodshot.
God, he brought it out.
The rage. Her visceral cries of rage.
That knife, again and again and again.
It was that view of her from Nipton through the sniper lens, up close and personal, real as rain, hatred as pure and potent as poison.
He should have stopped it, should have stopped her.
He told Veronica what happened, and the two of them were careful around Juli now. Like a fragile doll made of glass, Boone saw her near breaking, and he hated it.
He wept too. For that kid they'd used to lure them in. But worse.
"I've heard this before."
That one sentence.
He couldn't stop crying because it was all but confirmed. Juli knew pain. She knew loss and pain. Her village was gone, and it had all been because of the fucking Legion pigs.
Juli was too good to hurt like he did, and her pain's confirmation was sickeningly real to him.
Because he'd heard it before too.
Today was a bad day. It was always going to be a bad day, and the week before it and the week after it were always going to be bad weeks. In fact, the bad could get so bad that it often made the possibility of things ever being good again seem utterly and ridiculously impossible. Cruel in its mounting offense, the despair and anguish of this bad day came from a distance, lurking maliciously, but it was a quiet, immovable, uncontrollable thing. It crept up, and nothing could stop it, for time was its harbinger.
Which meant today, especially, today in particular, was a bad day. When the day turned to night, the minutes seeping through time slower and more painfully than sap, the fire crackled and burned brightly. Juli, normally so averse to the guilty pleasures of human sin, needed something good to drown out the sounds. Something that made her feel good, something safe and happy. Her customary "no," which had been expected, was not what she said when Boone offered her some of his liquor stash.
"No" was not in the cards today. She had no energy to resist the burning temptation of the questions behind Boone's eyes, the want of her to give in to the drink and just devolve into something they both weren't ready to do sober.
Not today.
She tilted the neck back and drank deeply, managing two swallow-fulls before Boone finally brought his hands up to stop her, at which point she sputtered and coughed as the burning alcohol wreaked havoc down her throat and into her stomach. Tears trailed down the corners of her eyes in rejection of the sudden intake, but Juli didn't care. She glanced at him wildly, almost pleadingly, feeling her heart beating loudly, before she tilted it back to drink again.
"Alright, that's enough," he said to her strangely, repeating the same action.
This time he took the bottle. She had no energy to resist.
"Says who?" she croaked, trying to grab it back, some of her first words in nearly two weeks.
She felt the alcohol immediately in the back of her neck, and a laugh, not felt but physically needed, escaped her mouth as she leaned over Boone's lap to reach for it. He resisted her by withdrawing, putting his hands on her shoulder to stop her compromising position over his chest, and she finally sighed, relenting. The woody smell of his soap faded as she leaned back to sit beside him. Their thighs touched, as did their arms, but she didn't move.
It didn't escape her notice that Boone and Veronica exchanged a significant glance from across the edges of their camp and over the fire.
"Alright, I'll pace myself," she promised, putting her hand out. "I can do that. Just give it back."
"You drinking?" Boone asked her hesitantly.
She could see worry in his eyes. His glasses were gone, and it was off-putting to her, but her offer of goodwill and shared debauchery, she could see, was too much for him to want to really resist.
He worried about her. She knew it, could see it plainly on his face now, but she didn't care. Couldn't care. Not right then.
"Yeah," Juli said, "Veronica can take the watch, right?"
Again, Boone glanced at Veronica. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Veronica shrug - but when Juli looked at her, Veronica just peered back, obvious worry lines creasing her eyebrows, before walking away. Veronica preferred, it seemed, to sleep in solitude, and to maintain the perimeter in solitude as well.
"What?" Juli snapped, yanking the now loose bottle out of Boone's hands. "I'm allowed to have fun!"
"You're just...acting a little strangely," Veronica offered up as her footsteps faded away.
Juli took a long, hard swig of alcohol.
"You okay?" Veronica called.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Juli shot back, wiping her mouth, her eyes a hard, challenging line on Boone's.
He didn't seem to know what to do.
She handed the canteen back to Boone, who took a swig himself, eyeing her all the while. She watched a sliver of what she thought was whiskey - but really, she was so inexperienced, what did she know what it was? - trail down the corner of his mouth. Juli watched it with fascination, admiring the line it cast in the light of the fire on his jaw. He seemed uncomfortable that she was looking at him so intensely, but equally uncomfortable that she was this close.
"What's going on?" Boone whispered to her, maybe in an effort to protect her secrets, his mouth so close she could smell the heavy drink on his mouth. "Talk to me, Juli. I know that something's going on."
She put her hand on his knee.
"I just want to have fun," she replied, and dammit if that didn't sound like the most seductive thing that she'd ever said.
She felt Boone's legs stiffen up, his back tick upwards, as her hand inched up his thigh to hover just above his knee. Her hand ached to move higher, but Veronica was there.
Boone removed her hand by force, to breathe, almost to himself,
"Come on, Juli," but she felt him shaking, saw him look at anything but her, which was unusual for him.
Worry flitted in and out of her consciousness, but the drink was really hitting her now, and she laughed as he squirmed next to her.
Boone wouldn't have it. He stood, throwing up his free hand and paced away a few steps. She heard him inhale and exhale heavily a few times, as if nervous, before turning back to her. She just stared up at him, blinking at him seductively as she drunkenly reached out her hand for him to help her up. He obeyed silently, bringing her to a standing position, but she stumbled a bit.
Like always, Juli felt the twinge in her pelvis as her muscles stretched uncomfortably, and the laughter building in her chest died. She met eyes with Boone for a split second, a moment of panic, before asking, tears in her voice, for the drink again. All at once, she was upset, but she couldn't give in to it. Today was a bad day, and if she couldn't beat it she would bypass it with drinking herself into hell.
Boone noticed, which was the worst part. Boone knew. The conversation shifted now into something hard and painful, and Ren could hardly stand it as he just looked at her.
"Ren..." he mouthed, but she yanked the drink out of his loose hand now.
"Give me that," she ordered, and now she heard the tears in her voice fighting to come out.
They could only be stopped by ever more alcohol.
He stopped her again, and his face was gentle, his grasp soft. A flare of annoyance shot through her as she looked at him, but the swig had done its trick. The push she needed to force the mask back on.
And just like that, the mood was back. The playful, flirty drunk that she always wished she was in real life. She giggled as she handed the canteen back to him, and still he eyed her strangely, like he knew too. Like he could hear that her laughter was forced and see that her leer was insincere.
But beyond that, something wicked danced in his eyes that he was finally getting his chance to fucking know her - because really that was what he wanted.
She knew he'd been trying to get her drunk for months now just for that reason.
"What are we drinking to?" he asked her, taking a swig.
He handed it off.
"Forgetting," she said this time, and she took a big gulp.
The two of them laughed, but she could see his heart wasn't in it. From the nearby bush, Veronica emerged. She was talking mostly to Boone, but her tone seemed laden with meaning in some indiscernible way.
"I think, maybe, you two ought to get more firewood before I go too far," she said significantly to Boone. "We're out and it'll go out soon enough."
Juli smiled drunkenly before leaning forward to stumble into step beside Boone, whose fingers she interlocked with her own before walking away with him.
Good. She wanted to be alone with him. She was attracted to him, dammit. And she wasn't exactly ugly. Well. He'd mentioned she was a few times. Was she? She was repugnant on the inside, sure, but that wasn't her fault. Was it? And Boone didn't know that. He couldn't. Could he? But would he care? He might. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he lied, thought she was beautiful and then was a big jerk. Yes, she had a big scar on her forehead now, but that was okay. Enough alcohol made anybody look handsome. Or beautiful.
Despair at the contrary made Juli feel nauseous.
Or maybe the excessive consumption of copious amounts of liquor.
"You two are up to something," Juli slurred to Boone once the two of them were alone.
Her fingers felt right in his fingers. Why didn't they hold hands more often? Again, worry that he wasn't okay with this flitted in and out, but she rejected it. He got to feel better at her expense every single night. Now it was her turn.
"What do you think that is?" Boone asked her carefully, as if talking to a child.
A thought occurred to her. It made her equal parts disappointed and giddy.
"You and Veronica are together!" she realized, her eyes widening.
Boone's upper lip curled up, and he slid his fingers out of hers in what seemed like anger. Visible disgust permeated his voice as he snapped,
"No, Ren, we're not."
Juli felt foolish, suddenly, some of the effects of her pleasant stupor wearing off in favor of the vicious reality of his temper. And then, all at once, she remembered the past month and how unpleasant he had made it for her. At first, he'd resisted complaining about Veronica, but now it was all her fault that Veronica was here. Worse, after that incident and the murdering of the Legion pig, Veronica and he seemed to share in secret conversations late at night when Juli went away on watch or when they thought she was asleep, and they always stopped abruptly when she made her status known to them. She could never hear, but she ached to know about it.
It hurt.
Craig was her friend, wasn't he? And if they were enough together to talk for that long that Craig was okay with it, why did he have to push Juli around all the time? He even pushed her this morning, on the morning she'd known it was going to be a bad day, despite the fact that she could see behind his eyes when they graced her with their presence that he knew she was hurting. His taciturn expressions, his gruff reprimands, his cruel jabs at her evaluation of character.
She glanced at him sidelong. He had such nice eyes, those eyes that made her heart skip a beat, and she saw his mouth was set in a line, avoiding her gaze. They were taking turns doing that tonight, it seemed.
He always carried an expression on his face that made her want to ask him if he was okay, but she'd learned early on to restrain those kinds of shallow questions. Plus, today she just didn't have the energy to care about how he felt. It was going to be hard enough for her as it was. It always was.
And she secretly wanted him to ask her the same question.
"Why are you so grumpy all the time?" she asked him drunkenly. "Come on. We're drinking together. What you wanted. We're having fun."
Even to her own ears, Juli heard the attempt to bring a smile to his face jarring. Her voice sounded nearly ragged, fake, and he finally stopped walking.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked her impatiently, sounding irritated. "This is not what I meant, and you know it. What is going on?"
Juli again laughed drunkenly, this time leaning into him. She felt the hurt inside building now, the raggedness in her breathing becoming aggressive and painful. The hurt was beginning to take over, but she couldn't face it. Couldn't do it. Not yet. She wasn't ready, but she never was.
Fuck. She needed more drink.
"Boone, I need the canteen," she nearly begged.
"No, you don't," he replied dismissively, holding it away from her as she reached past him.
"I thought you wanted to drink together."
"Yeah, but not drown together," he snapped sullenly.
"Oh," she bristled momentarily, "so you only want me to drink when it's all about you?"
"No, I just want you to relax," he offered, a peace offering.
His voice was patient, gentle, a voice he only used towards her, and only when they were alone. She must have sounded drunker than she felt because he sounded uncharacteristically gentle and soft. It wore her down.
"I am relaxed," she told him, staving off the panic in her chest and throat that somehow wouldn't be silenced.
She took a step forward, put her hand on his chest. He didn't flick her off, and she smiled at him alluringly.
Sex it was.
"I can be relaxed," she offered to him, closing the space between them.
Juli felt cheap, but she didn't care. She brought her other hand to his chest and ran her fingers down his front. He halfheartedly flicked her hands off, but, undeterred, she brought them right back up, where they stayed unchallenged. Deliciously pleased, or at least pretending at it, Juli leaned in closer, smelled his breath on her mouth. He was stiff now, but she felt him shake under her hands. His eyes made a hard line on something below her gaze, her mouth, she hoped, as she leaned in. Closer. Closer.
"Juli," he snapped at her, scowling. "Are you kidding me?"
His tone did it, that's what it was. Every time he said anything that challenged her today, even a little bit, it was unbearable. She cringed as he looked down at her now like the insect she knew he must have thought she was, and Juli felt smaller than a gnat.
"Craig, I -"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he asked her louder, taking a step back.
"No, Craig," she pleaded, desperate to regain the connection, the closeness of taking it all away...
But it was gone. Boone was pissed now, and he took a step back further now, his lip upturned in visible disgust.
So Juli was a monster.
"So that's what you thought I meant?" he nearly shouted at her. "Are you fucking serious? You think I wanted to fuck you all this time?"
He looked as if he'd been slapped hard, and his mouth was agape.
Worse, he sounded personally horrified by the prospect, and Juli was ashamed. She was all those things the voices screamed about. Those voices, who'd receded with Boone, came roaring back, demanding to be heard in her ears. The voices of the lost, mocking her, laughing at her, screaming at her.
She was ugly.
She was pathetic.
She was worthless.
"Come on, Craig," she said to him, stepping forward, "just give me the bottle back, and I can -"
"Forget the fucking drink!" he shouted, hurling the bottle into the darkness.
Boone put his forehead in his hands, wiping it as if wishing he could clear away the memories. New tears started now for Juli, and it all came toppling down. It was time. The hurt was here, it was all here. Another year come and gone, and it was too much. She couldn't do it. Not in front of him. Not like this.
"Come on," she whispered, stepping into his breathing space again. "Just let me, just -"
"Juli, no!" he said to her, though his voice was different now. "What is wrong with you?"
There it was. The kicker. The triggering event.
And the despair clicked. The mounting hurt, rage, hopeless agony, that had been brewing in her gut had to escape now, and the drunk felt like it had gone away. The simpering creature of blubbering tears went away too, and her temper began to flare as the despair cleared away all other emotions. A forced reset of what had to be done every year washed over her, and rage rose in its place in one immediate swoop at his inability, unwillingness, or blindness to her pain in lieu of his own.
Well it was fucking her turn, dammit.
And she was going to make him see if he wouldn't.
"Come on, Boone," she said, coldly now, not moving away. "Don't tell me you don't want this."
He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Her tone had shifted, and he was thrown.
"What is wrong with you?" he asked fearfully, eyes low but peering at her all the same.
"Don't you want to make me feel better?" she spat petulantly.
Rage coursed through her in an instant, spreading like fire, and she shoved him back.
"Don't you want me to drink with you? Huh? Compromise myself? That's what you want, isn't it? To take advantage of me? Trick me into divulging my deepest, darkest secrets?"
He struggled to string words together. It wasn't a denial.
"It's my eyes, isn't it?" she accused. "My shifty, secretive eyes - lots of secrets back there, you told me once."
She snorted bitterly, pointing to her temple where her scar was. Juli's lip upturned into a scowl.
"You just want to get in there," she snapped, thrusting the finger into her skin. "That's all you care about is knowing me."
"Of course I do," he finally sputtered out. "But I don't want you to compromise who you are, or...we're friends, Juli. Not - not like that. I just...I...not like this. This is insulting, and you know it."
"Why?" she spat petulantly. "Because I needed a drink more than you did for once? Because I'm ugly? Hideous? Because I'm disgusting?"
She shoved him again, hard, and it knocked the wind from him as she heard him breathed the word, his voice tight,
"No, Juli..."
He moved to comfort her, contradict her, but not enough. She shoved him again, and he stumbled a bit. But he didn't fight back. Juli grunted with the effort as she tried a third time, but he grabbed her wrists now.
Still, he didn't fight back.
It made her so angry!
"Don't - don't touch me!"
She threw herself backwards, and now she felt the lack of coordination acutely.
Boone didn't say anything now. Just looked at her, and it pissed her off.
"What?" she shouted, gesturing wildly, as if his eyes were attacking her more than his hands ever could. "What? What do you fucking want, huh? Isn't this what you fucking wanted? To get in here? To know me?"
His eyes were clear and unmoving, and she couldn't take it.
"You follow me around all day, just - just bitching about how every choice I make is a bad one! And then at night you watch me like I'm some kind of fool, like I'm a circus animal! And then you talk about me and to me like I'm a filthy whore!"
"I don't think you're a -"
"SHUT UP!" she shouted at him.
Tears now soaked her face. She couldn't stop them.
Her screams echoed in the little clearing, which was otherwise silent.
"You treat me like garbage and then you try every night to take advantage of my pain to satisfy some sickness inside of you that doesn't let you think or sit still around a silent campfire! So don't tell me that this isn't what you wanted!"
She held her hands out.
"WELL, HERE I AM! THE CHINESE FREAK! YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW? HUH? WANT TO KNOW WHY I'M SO FUCKED UP?"
Boone didn't move, but she saw him shake and she didn't care. Her own faculties were in shambles, and sobs now interrupted nearly every other word.
"YOU CAN'T EVEN DENY IT!" she shrieked, laughing with hysterical bitterness. "YOU CAN'T EVEN LET YOUR OWN PAIN GO FOR TWO FUCKING SECONDS TO LISTEN TO ME. TO WATCH ME. TO KNOW ME!"
"I want to know you," he admitted out in a tearful whisper, body still as stone, his voice small.
"Really?" she seethed, her voice lowering now with dangerous rage. "Do you? Do you really think that? Because every time you look at me, all I see is, 'where's my next meal?' You don't give a shit about me. You never have!"
Boone's face fell now, and for the first time pain came across his face, raw and glorious. His jaw slackened then tightened in intervals, his eyes widened, his chest heaved, and she didn't even fucking care.
"I am a distraction!" she snapped at him. "I am your distraction so that you don't have to think about your miserable life! Well, it is my turn to hurt! Mine! You don't get to have today! Today is my time to hurt, and I won't allow your selfish, pathetic attitude take that from me!"
His pain magnified with every word, and she was glad. She wanted him to get mad. She wanted him to rage, to throw something again, to shove her. Juli needed to fight somebody, but he just stood there, menacing in his silent compassion, in the understanding in his eyes.
Moans of pain and sorrow sounded with every desperate exhale, and Juli's rage, adrenaline filled as it was, began to wear at her. Her tears became more pronounced now, and she was furious with him.
It was all because of him.
"SAY SOMETHING!" she shrieked.
He was quiet for a few long moments. His face had taken on a sheen of calm now as her tears grew in magnitude, and his discomfort had relaxed in favor of something much more possessive and protective. Still, he just watched her as he whispered,
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
...because whatever it is, I'll say it, she heard without him offering.
It was too much.
Juli leaned over onto her knees, her bad day reaching a peak, as her hand clasped at her necklace, which she tore from her neck in rage. She wished it would all just go away, that she could just forget it all. But she couldn't. It would never go away. It would always be inside of her, this hate, this hurting, and every year for the rest of her life it was going to hurt like this.
It didn't seem worth it.
"Juli..." he whispered to her and Juli's sobs became real.
So real.
She couldn't help it anymore.
She couldn't hide it.
What was the point anymore?
"I had a baby," she admitted.
A scandalous admission, which stopped the world.
Juli finally couldn't take it anymore. She clenched her eyes shut tightly, wrapped her arms around her waist and keened desperately to the night air. The world didn't care about this, her baby. The world didn't care that the baby was gone. The world didn't care that her use of the past tense verb was all that mattered now.
The world didn't care, but it also no longer moved. Time waited, as it always did every year, waiting for this single, bleak, blackened emission into the air to gestate.
Juli couldn't breathe. It was all back again, all of the hurting. She put her hands to her pelvis and howled.
"I had a baby!" she sobbed again.
The hurt became too real, and it had to get out. She had to get it out. She couldn't breathe. Her pulse stopped. Her head spun. Juli fought for air, but it wouldn't come. It just wouldn't come. The world was cold.
Until it wasn't.
For the first time since the black had come into her life, the world wasn't cold for this rite of passage, and Juli's howls were muffled by a chest and by arms that clung to her desperately.
"He left me and I lost my baby!" she howled, muffled, into his chest. "He left us and they came! They came and they - and they -"
But she couldn't, wouldn't, speak the words, their memories too painful that nothing else existed but for the pain. It mounted again, this despair, and Juli's loss felt so real again, like it did every year, that she couldn't remember what it was like to feel happy.
"Why did that happen?" she shouted. "Why did he do that? Why did he do that to me? To our baby? Why did he leave us to die?"
The warm struggled with the cold, but it became a tight thing, an immutable thing.
"What did I do?"
That became her new mantra.
"What did I do?"
"Nothing," he finally whispered, his hands running down her hair furiously, almost like he took more comfort in doing it than she did in having it done. "Nothing at all, Juli, don't - don't..."
But she would never know what she shouldn't do because he tugged her into him ferociously, clinging to her with forceful abandon that quelled any resistance that may have, and didn't, exist inside of her.
Juli clung to him, sobs of pain coursing through her like it was something she needed to pass out of her, and his arms delivered her from that place as she continued to ask him questions that nobody could answer - but he did.
"Why did he leave me?" she whispered in sobs so strong they overpowered her.
"Because he's a piece of shit," Boone told her hair.
"Why did this happen to me?"
"Because the world is shit, and it doesn't deserve you."
"Why did I let it happen?"
"Don't..." he warned again. "You didn't do anything wrong."
How loyal, how good he was to not know the story and to know that this was the right thing to say.
Like the words were a shot of medicine, the world remembered that time was a thing, and everything sped back up. Juli sat back - when did they end up huddled on the ground like this? - and just stared at him, into those wonderful eyes. The manic shot of reality that came at the end of her depression was exhilarating and terrifying.
But his eyes.
They were good.
And they were there.
So it could not be all lost. Craig was there.
His pain was written plainly on his face, and she saw tears running down the sides of his cheeks. Apology, understanding, rage, and comfort embodied perfectly in a glance, Boone's hands never left her body, face, or hands, whether they slide down her hair, wipe her tears, stroke down the side of her throat, her back. She saw in his face what she didn't want him to say.
"It's not okay," she warned him through hiccuping expulsions of stray pain.
He nodded solemnly.
"No, it isn't," he whispered to her. "But I'm here."
She devolved again, and he pulled her close, closer than they had ever been.
"And I'm sorry," she heard him choke out. "If I had even - even for a second - thought...if I..."
He couldn't finish, but ended up clutching her harder.
"I understand," he finally told her, a horrible admission. "I understand now."
"I know," she said to him.
It wasn't enough.
But it was something.