Veronica and Usanagi barely gave her a passing glance as they continued to discuss in hushed whispers the amount of chems Juli would be receiving.
None, if Juli had a say.
She didn't.
This had long since given birth to all kinds of nasty feelings, most revolving around bitterness and resentment.
"I'm just trying to help," Veronica informed her when she caught Juli's cold, even gaze.
"I did not ask for help," Juli reminded Veronica for what felt like the millionth time.
Veronica winced, but Juli sunk further into her pillow, turned her head away, despite the painful stretching it caused further down her spine.
Nobody cared what the patient had to say about it, oh no, least of all her so-called "friends."
Juli had asked for a gun right off the bat, and was refused one. She'd asked for a knife, and was refused that too. So Juli had stolen a scalpel on the evening of the second day and she'd been thumbing the rough, grid-like edges of it since, waiting for an opening, her chance to escape. Her grip had begun to tire out her right wrist, but she wasn't about to let it go.
She was too weak to walk, but that didn't mean she wouldn't slice open any man or woman who tried to get too close with a knife or needle without her permission.
And so they ran their tests while Juli slept.
By the third day, Usanagi's inspection of her huddled pounds of flesh identified all kinds of abnormalities: a brain injury from Benny's killing blow, signs of malnourishment and physical abuse, scars that were suspiciously straight, thick and patterned, fraying near the ends, along her back quite separate from the grazing blow of a death claw.
She'd only been whipped three times, but she'd never forget the sensation.
Every time the doctor found something, she waltzed in as if this were some great big, exciting secret to gossip about, informing Juli what, of course, Juli already knew. It was like being tied down and forced to watch every bad, hard thing in your life paraded about like a dirty hooker for the naked, gawking enjoyment of a stranger, which made Juli feel more and more like a freakish animal being caged up on display by the hour.
Juli's distress had grown in her chest to such a degree that it became difficult to breathe, difficult to see. Juli began to fade away from reality every time the doctor shuffled in to disclose even more information. Something close to resigned despondency took over after that, causing a listless agonizing numbness to prevent her from really caring too much whether or not she was polite anymore.
Only one thing resonated in the echo chamber behind her eyes and between her ears, and that was that Juli was very much out of her head.
In the meantime, Juli was surrounded by people who could do whatever they wanted with her, all in the name of helping Juli, but conveniently with or without her permission.
Usanagi told her that morphine would help.
Morphine didn't make the hurt less, or the lines straight, the colors clear. Everything would still be blurry with or without chems, whether she was in them or coming out of them. It would always be a little blurry for Juli, and at the end of the day, the hurt was still hurt. Morphine just helped to determine how much it matter right this second.
Stupid woman, Juli stewed over and over again to herself, the rarest glimpses of anything beyond platitudinous daydreaming expressing as rage.
The doctor persevered, even though it became quite obvious to Usanagi and her staff that Juli fully expected someone to strike out at her at any moment. What did they expect? Juli was a trapped animal who would turn vicious at the earliest possible moment if the opportunity to free herself arose.
They couldn't be this naive.
What did they know?
Then again, what did Juli?
In the drug-induced stupor that followed every injection, Juli found herself wondering if she was the one that didn't know anything - or anyone.
After all, she'd been reasonably certain that Boone had been the hand that had held her in her sleep, and now he was nowhere to be found.
Juli had been presumptuous, perhaps. Generous. Maybe it had been Veronica. Or maybe it had been the doctor.
Maybe it was all just a hallucination.
Maybe she'd always really been alone and Boone didn't care about her the way she thought he did. They weren't friends. He'd said it over and over. He'd been very clear about it. He'd even called her Warden. He wasn't nice to her, not always.
But she'd thought what they'd had was special. She didn't think she'd be cooped up in a hospital bed for days on end with fewer visitors than she could count on one hand, especially because she'd helped so many people since she'd come-to in Good Springs. Juli had thought - hoped, maybe - that she wouldn't have to go back to aimless wandering, being nobody, having nothing, knowing no one.
But so it was.
By the fourth day, Juli accepted that she had been born again out of ashes and dust alone once, and she might as well die again the same way.
It was okay not to be okay. She'd been homeless, destitute, without family or friends. She could do it all and more. She could beat this.
She would beat this.
With or without the pretenders who claimed to stand by her.
It hurt though.
And even though she didn't dare formulate the words together, even in her head, Juli always woke up with tears on her cheeks and an aching in her throat that just wouldn't quite go away when she looked around and saw the shadow of loneliness breathe in all the air when she would realize that she was completely and utterly alone.
The warm, moist fullness of Boone's mouth came to Juli in a half-dream without warning as vividly as if he'd woken her up with it.
And while she was very prepared to wish away the reality that it really was just a dream, Juli could tell by the vividness of his smells, by the pinching in her stomach, by the cold sweat on the nape of her neck, and by the flighty, almost bird-like sensation of something inside of her bipping about, that the dreamlike encounter of his lips on hers was as real as day.
Before she could even think out the words: "I kissed Boone," Juli cried. Not just cried, but ugly-cried. Heaving, breathless sobs wracked her body, which, all in all, was very problematic for her health. But, like the lancing of an infection, the numbness flushed out too. It left a swollen hole inside of her in its wake, and Juli was left to contemplate in silence the pitiful thing she had done to her closest friend.
She had kissed Craig Boone.
Regret and shame washed over her again and again at the choice that wasn't really a choice. She'd been on chems. It wasn't her fault. They were both tired.
All valid reasons...that sounded awfully like excuses.
In the hours that followed, Juli found herself dwelling a lot on Carla.
Juli knew he missed that woman, knew how badly he hurt knowing that she was gone forever. Juli knew that her best living friend would go back in a heartbeat to change whatever had happened between them, and she was sure he would choose to be with her over Juli ever single time.
And still, knowing that, Juli kissed him.
It wasn't like her. She knew herself, knew what she wanted and who she deserved.
Or she said she did.
Juli was to be second to nobody, her mother had always told her. As a wife or a lover or a friend, she was first or she was nothing. Juli had to look out for Juli, or nobody else would. Doing so would encourage others to do so, and it was a belief that had gotten her very far in life.
So for Juli to have kissed her friend anyway was borderline absurd. She found herself wondering over and over again how it had gotten to that point, and, to be honest, at least the way she remembered it, the kiss had been completely unintentional. Like a knee jerk response to physical trauma, the kiss had been Juli's body acting out an impulse that required comfort. It had neither been impeded by, nor did it require, any higher cognitive thought. It just...was.
And as a result she'd betrayed the trust and most sacred, honored boundaries of her closest and most intimate friend.
The two of them had never crossed that line. There were a lot of lines that were crossed over the weeks and months, but physical boundaries were...different.
Hard.
It was what had made Juli so comfortable around him.
She could be a person who just was with him, which meant she didn't have to be a woman or a lover or a partner, but a friend. An individual who could exist without a name, which came without pressure, a person who would care if he died, who would be missed by him if she did. Their...whatever they had...was never addressed, but it had never needed to be. They just were. Titles were ridiculous and scary, and the furthest it went was friendship. Friendship was easy. A friend protected you, had your back. It didn't need to go deeper than that. That didn't mean it didn't, sometimes, but mostly it was just a connection that fostered efficiency and survivability.
That had become comfortable, and that made the work "friendship" particularly okay. After all he'd done to draw her out of that wounded shell of hers, after all the times he'd kept her from wandering into the desert without a canteen of water just to die, she knew she owed him a debt of gratitude that she could never begin to repay.
So friendship was a violation of her pact not to codify anything that she was perfectly willing and capable of tolerating and accepting. It hadn't been that way at first, but she wanted him to be okay.
He wanted her to be okay.
It wasn't enough, but it was something.
In the end, her physical impulses, which had forced her eyes to linger on his shirtless chest, compelled her to notice the sheen of sweat on his toned forearms, and ripped her attention from literally anything else to force her to gawk nakedly at the acute, rhythmic bobbing of his Adam's apple as he chugged whatever liquor he had in his canteen that day, it never outweighed her primary need to remain physically and emotionally detached from anybody and everybody else.
Until now.
Juli panicked at first, but that faded because he was not here and she could not take it back.
Next, Juli mourned, not because she was just now awoken to how real her physical desires were, but because of the death she must surely have caused to the stability of their past relationship. The two of them, for better or worse, could never go back, not really, not in the same way. She had let him trip through that door Juli had vowed would remain closed forevermore, and it felt like a betrayal not just to herself, but to everybody who had died in her life because of her misplaced trust.
She'd made a mistake, and the door was one-way. It had no handle on one side, and Boone was on that side. This new thing, whatever it was, was uncertain - but it was also permanent. She could never get him back out through that door, and he might never look at her the same way again. She had exposed him just as thoroughly as his hands had exposed her by ripping off her clothes. He was stunted, like her, but he was also a gritty, hardened man who didn't like feeling small or helpless.
Neither of them wanted to bond or share stories or heal. They just wanted to be, whatever that meant. They would be together until the other one cared enough to nudge the conversation forward, in so doing chipping off a tiny sliver of ice from the other's heart. It came with a good old thrashing, but all in all, it was a careful ritual, a dance, honest but self-limited, willfully and knowingly cautious.
And it was healing in its own way.
She'd never just ignored what he might want before, had never touched him so freely, because Juli herself was not one to be touched without permission. Juli, of all people, had to fight to hide her skittish nature, something she was sure Boone could relate to or at the very least notice based on how carefully he had been with touching her. Something always itched inside of Juli now when she was forced to hug even her friends, so for Juli to reach out to touch his face, to bring her mouth to his mouth, without his permission, without even being fully aware of the motion herself...
What a fucking idiot, she could hear him grumbling to her.
Juli stifled choked sobs that didn't go away for many sleepless hours, and she was kept awake by the last and most devastating truth underneath it all.
Juli was afraid.
Juli's kiss was a goodbye.
She hadn't meant for it to touch his mouth. It was an act of comfort, but Boone had turned his head at the last second. He didn't need to keep doing it, but he did.
Scary.
Juli thought her friend was handsome, and her body had betrayed her when she'd least expected it.
Terrifying.
Boone cared enough about her to cry.
Boone had cried for her.
It all led to one painfully obvious and ridiculously pathetic conclusion:
At that moment, right when her lips had met his, Juli had been ready to die.
The kiss wasn't a gesture, not really, that was survivor's rationalizing. Juli's kiss was a death sentence, her own. She had decided for them both what she was going to do, and it didn't matter to her how hard he had worked to get to her or why he had come back. What mattered in that exact moment was that Juli didn't care, and that meant she was ready and willing to do whatever she wanted, whatever it took, really, until the sweet kiss of death came to take her away.
The thought was frighteningly clear, and she remembered the sensation with almost surreal acuity.
And that entire sequence of emotions shook Juli down to her very core.
Why? her grandmother asked.
Because she was ready. Not just ready.
Juli wanted to go.
Why? her father asked.
Then, it hit her. Like another dream within a dream, the truth came stumbling out through the thicket of her scatterbrained thoughts, and Juli forced herself to remember what she'd seen right before he'd climbed up into that tower through the hatch.
Her mama.
Her mama, who looked younger than Juli ever remembered her. Her mama who was holding her grandson, Juli's child, in her arms. Her infant baby boy, who kicked and bobbed in his Nai-nai's arms, sputtered and bubbled out joy in the form of laughter as he flailed, helpless to express his excitement at the vision of his mother. Her boy, who moved as if he recognized her, as if he greeted her after a long absence, as if he missed her. Her boy, who had only really known her for a much shorter time than he had been gone, who she had never been able to really look at and name without some insurmountable emptiness to blossom inside of her.
Now, here, looking at him in this eternity, Juli saw her son, and the familiar aching that she had never gotten to name him rose and fell.
Wuyou, she'd thought for him once. One who doesn't worry.
That was what she wanted for him.
Li-ge.
The goodbye.
But the familiar sadness that came with these thoughts was no longer her concern in that lapse in time and space. The baby boy's pure, concentrated love was infectious and absolute and obvious, which was given away by the big smile on his face and the snorting, gurgling squeals of anticipation at his mother's presence.
Her mama had looked up at her, sun glowing against her hair in the fields where their crops grew, green against browns of all kinds.
For the briefest of moments, Juli had felt so incandescently, so utterly, intensely, breathlessly happy that she knew she wouldn't give up that vision of her mom and her boy for the world, let alone for a kiss from a man who had, up to that point, only looked on her huddled Asian form with mild interest. If she had to die to stay there, that was what Juli had planned to do.
Boone had forced her to breathe, wouldn't take no for an answer.
But that was complicated.
There was relief.
Juli wouldn't have been able to turn away from them without his help. She'd been ready to go, ready to turn her back on him, a rare, but critical, moment of disloyal selfishness. It had been such an overwhelming mixture of relief and anguish, disappointment and guilt.
Then she cried again, not because of her loss, but that she could now never take back the moment of weakness, something Boone would surely always know, something that she normally never let anyone else see.
What came next was irrational and quiet, at first, so crazy and so emotionally charged that she hardly dared verbalize it. But as time passed, which of course it did, Juli found herself turning to face the truth that had come from all of these mental wanderings, the culmination of all that had happened between the two of them boiling into a singular, wrathful admission that would turn her skin inside out with rage.
Boone had ripped them away from her.
It was his fault that she woke up in a hospital bed, alone, miserable, in pain, weak, helpless, sick, tired.
She had been so close. Just so fucking close.
And then he had to go and save her goddamn life.
Three days after that, Boone hadn't come.
Veronica came and went all the time, avoiding the topic of Boone. Juli asked without asking, of course, where he was, but Veronica dodged, and Juli snapped. Juli then suggested that Veronica perhaps shouldn't return until she had figured out whose side she was on.
Veronica, of course, didn't rise to that challenge, but she had done as Juli requested and taken the day off from visiting the following day.
Bitch.
Gannon, at least, had routinely come to visit a few times a day every day since she'd woken. He played at being scandalized when Juli filled him in on the latest thing Veronica had said, and scoffed exaggeratedly when she mentioned that Boone hadn't yet arrived. Strangely, none of the sarcastic wit seemed mean-spirited. It was all fair, all loving, all gentleness and acceptance. This grated at Juli sometimes, cooled her rage at other times. What was more, he had either the good sense or the audacity to be immune to her poor mood - Juli still couldn't figure out which of the two seemed more appropriate. It varied from moment to moment.
"Still on with this 'E tu, Brute?' nonsense, are we?" Gannon asked one morning, strolling into her hospital room, his smile disarming with its ease.
His clean face was handsome and she liked the color of his hair. His hair was also curly, which she liked, and she liked the man's glasses.
Damn, she just liked the guy.
Plus, he smelled clean, which was a nice change from smelling like dirt, blood, and sweat.
Juli smiled reluctantly, despite herself, and twisted her legs to dangle off the bed into a sitting position.
She'd been given the go-ahead to walk a little. If they gave her an inch, she'd take a mile.
"Careful," Arcade warned, rushing to her side.
He offered her a hand, which she took to help her steady herself.
His palms were soft.
"Should you be sitting up?" he asked her.
"I can," Juli protested.
"Well, I know you can, Captain Obvious, I'm asking if you should."
"Why not?"
"Well, your laceration could open, for one thing, and I -"
"I know how to bleed."
Gannon twisted his face up at her, scrunching his nose to hide a smile.
"You put that on your resume?" he joked.
Juli didn't understand the joke, but she hissed, flitted his mothering hands off her arms.
"I mean I know I am okay now. I'm getting better."
Like always, her English faltered more with people she didn't know as well, and her anxiety about this peaked a little as she wondered what it actually meant that she'd originally said.
Irritated her.
He just sat in the faded red arm chair across from her bed, which wheezed as he leaned back, hands behind his head like he owned the place.
"You know Latin?" she asked him, realizing his first question.
She ticked up with curiosity. Her back stretched and complained, but she was tired of resting.
"Some," he answered. "Nothing you can't pick up from libraries, books, old holovids, that kind of thing. Not from the Legion, if that's what you're asking."
It was.
"Do you know Latin?" he countered after a silence.
"Yes," she told him, but her voice was cool and even.
"Where'd you learn it? Not from our friends across the river, I hope?"
Juli just grimaced, didn't answer.
"Ah, I see," he answered. "Let's not talk about it then."
All she said was,
"Okay."
"Where's your family?" Gannon asked. "I'm sure they'll want to know where you are."
"Do not have one."
He almost missed a beat.
Almost.
"That's one way to travel."
"It is no reason to travel," she corrected.
"Then why are you wandering all over God's once-green Earth?"
"To find someone."
She told him the story. It was short answers, at first, but long ranting sentences after she got going. Gannon listened, nodded, pursed his lips at the painful parts, smirked at the funnier parts.
"How did you meet your handsome NCR friend then?"
"He's not my friend!" she hissed at him, narrowing her eyes.
The familiar snake of rage began to uncoil in her stomach.
The asshole didn't even care about her. And if he did, he should have come.
He should have come...
It echoed in her head.
He should have been here by now...
He didn't care...
He should have come, should have asked, should have checked.
Sadness, now.
Hurt.
All the emotions banged around inside of her head, clanging around each time they made contact, spilling out of her like a mess.
Juli hung her head, avoided Gannon's perceptive gaze.
"Don't you miss him?" Gannon probed knowingly.
This was a trap.
"No," Juli lied instantly.
"You did ask for him to save you. You seemed close."
"He is very skilled," Juli dismissed, trying to shrug, wincing.
"All I meant was to ask if you were still angry with the guy. I guess I don't get it. Did I miss something? He did save your life."
"He's already saved my life many times."
"Doesn't that count for something?"
"Why are you lecturing me?" Juli snapped. "If he wants to talk, he'll come."
"So if he doesn't show up -"
"Then he don't want to talk to me," was Juli's reply.
Gannon chuckled.
"That simple for you, huh?"
"That simple," was her affirmation.
"I guess this just feels a bit more complicated than that," Gannon offered.
"It doesn't matter. We're not friends."
"He was pretty upset when he got to Sloan, Juli," he admonished gently.
"If he was my friend, he would come."
Juli slouched, feeling weakness not all from an injury. The endurance of her anger was reaching a peak. It was waning now, fading into a petulant bitterness that she usually tried so hard to avoid.
"I woke up all by myself," she whispered.
"You can't expect them to sit around and wait for you all day long. That was just bad luck. Veronica came right away."
"I hate medicine," Juli admitted, a fact neither Veronica nor Boone actually knew.
But Gannon had that way about him. She wanted to confide in him. He would challenge, not judge, see all sides.
It was a good quality to have.
Still. Sounded silly out loud.
"Why is that?" he asked, eyes clear and even as he sat forward.
Juli narrowed her eyes, crossed her arms, peered at him suspiciously.
"They must have told you."
Arcade just shrugged, laughed a little, blinking.
"Told me what?"
"About my..."
She stared.
"They didn't tell you?"
"I don't think so."
Juli's stomach clenched.
"I had a baby," Juli offered.
How many times would she need to explain this?
She did note with bizarre pride that her voice only wavered a little bit.
"I don't anymore," she offered when Gannon didn't speak, avoiding eye contact.
Her hands found her lower abdomen like they always did.
Sometimes, she could still feel the kicking.
She still saw that smile on his face from that dream...
"I didn't know that," Arcade whispered, his tone turning unusually grave and sincere, totally lacking its usual playful tick. "I'm sorry."
"Me too," Juli replied, her voice tight.
They sat together in silence.
"I thought they would be scared too," Juli finally admitted, tears reaching her voice.
"They were scared. We all were. You flatlined, Juli."
She'd learned this on the second day when she'd bitten Veronica's head off. The doctor had come in, explained the whole situation.
Didn't matter.
They couldn't handle it.
If you loved someone, you made yourself handle it.
Anything else was a slap in the face.
She hadn't asked for this.
"I would stay for them," she voiced, her tone harsh, her gaze distant.
"Ah, I know," Arcade told her, "but you are a rare and beautiful gem that shines in the darkness. All they do is follow your light around. Maybe cut them some slack."
His description of her flushed her cheeks, and she became aware of how the loose gown they'd given her clung to the awkward angles of her waist in all the wrong ways. She certainly didn't feel like a gem.
"I've heard Boone say he's worried about you to Veronica."
"Coward!" Juli hissed.
Gannon didn't agree, nor did he disagree.
It riled her up.
"Maybe all he has are words right now," the man finally offered. "Some people react badly to losing someone they love. He seems like the kind of guy who'd get lost in his own head with all the mazes he's drawn for himself."
"What do you mean?"
"The guy's all turned around. I've seen it a hundred times. I'm no psychologist, but I know when a man is hurting well enough to understand why he can't pluck up the courage to talk to a woman he cares about."
"It is not like that," Juli defended as innocuously as she could, her gaze stony on her lap.
"I didn't say it was. All I'm saying is, if you like someone enough, whether they're friends, partners, or sisters, it can be scary when you almost lose them. People react differently to that fear. Some people run away."
"And leave their friends behind?"
She had shouted it and the anger permeated the air, made it feel stale.
"Well," Arcade eventually managed after a lingering silence, patting his knees before making to stand. "I guess I'll leave you to brood then. Shall I deliver any messages to our ill-fated companion for you? We do see him around. I know you won't ask, but he's been in and out of either the whore houses or the bars around Freeside."
This felt like a punch to the gut, a nail in the coffin, the breaking of the seal. Gannon obviously hadn't intended to hurt her with this information. The way he delivered it was so casual, as if they were all just pals, as if it didn't matter, as if this somehow made his behavior okay.
But he'd kissed her back, dammit!
Whore houses.
Made Juli feel pinched. She'd opened the floodgates, and it was all so confusing now. He had the nerve to kiss her back after she'd politely asked him to let her die, and now he was flinging himself at everybody except for her.
Which was unacceptable.
He'd made this decision.
He deserved to suffer the consequences.
Juli had to be second to nobody or she was nothing.
Tears pricked her eyes as she clenched them tightly.
"I have message," Juli announced.
Gannon's laughter was soft and abruptly cut off, his tell that she'd misspoken.
Stupid English.
"You tell Boone he has small dick and to take his balls out of his purse if he ever wants to come talk to me again!"
Juli was pleased with the euphemisms. She'd heard Veronica say it once, and the image made her laugh then as much as it helped her to smirk now. Gannon just laughed, blinking back his surprise.
"Just like that?" he asked. "And you're not gonna give me a table to duck behind either? My, my, what a selfish girl you are. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Tell him he is ugly, too."
"Oh, I could tell him that, but we'd both know that's not true."
Juli clenched her jaw, forced her eyes to remain placid, stared at the wall.
We kissed, she thought, half her brain desperately screaming at her to confide it in him, the other half screaming at her to stop thinking about it.
No, her brain admonished in her mother's voice. I kissed him.
What's the difference? she heard her father's voice ask.
Boone likes pretty women, Juli answered them both.
Her father didn't answer that.
It brought out the side of her that wished she was beautiful.
Juli hated that about Boone.
"You okay, boss?" Gannon asked. "You're kind of far away."
"Just tell him he's a jerk and I hate him and his mama is ugly too and he has a stupid face."
Gannon laughed again, moved over her.
"I think you've had too much med-x today, my friend, maybe you should just go back to sleep."
Heeding his advice, Juli once more returned to that cursed bed, alone, and pretended.
Still, when a week had gone by and still she had not seen him, Juli was beginning to prime herself to leave him behind, to forget about him, to soothe her wounded pride with self-love that only she and the voice of her mother and father could provide. When she left the hospital, she'd go find Benny on her own, fight the Legion all by herself.
The doctor strolled in, and the interruption into her hopeful planning pinched Juli's temper until it cut off circulation to reason.
"What is it?" Juli nearly yelled at the doctor. "You look at me out of the corner of your eye like I'm poison! What?"
The doctor peered at her in a way that reminded her of her mother. So even, almost pensive.
"I have some news," the doctor offered - just vaguely enough to catch her attention.
"No more news," Juli ordered, something she hadn't needed to say in two days.
"I think you'll want to hear this news. We ran some blood work and performed a few scans of your internal organs yesterday afternoon while you were sleeping."
Juli's heart pounded. She felt as if she had been stripped naked, and though she was able to hobble around on stiff, sore legs, her movements crooked and disjointed, the duress caused her limbs to feel weak.
"You had no right to do that!" Juli shouted.
The exertion caused her lungs to expand, and her muscles stretched out with warning, but Juli didn't care.
"I do not think you need to do this for a scratch! I am healing! You said I am healing!"
"It was much more than a scratch, Ms. Ren," Usanagi shot back. "I needed to run more tests to see if you had developed an infection!"
"Then you are a very bad doctor!"
"On the contrary," Usanagi replied, her voice still too-sweet and calm, "I am a very good doctor."
She reached behind her and pulled out a pip-boy, where she began scrolling, as if looking off her notes.
"You suffered pelvic and uterine trauma consistent with a miscarriage. I can tell you that with almost one hundred percent certainty. Do you deny it?"
Juli's face grew hot as she hunched inwards, as the familiar pain ran its course through her system. She felt limp and saggy there, slouching.
There was no protection against the truth when the doctor had already seen the evidence.
"I ran some blood work and noticed your numbers were off, so I kept digging. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Then, as if realizing she was being harsh, Usanagi amended,
"I didn't mean to pry."
Juli hung her head, but her insides clenched now with curiosity. Usanagi had resources Juli simply didn't have, and now there was opportunity and motive for answers. The woman and all of her underlings had already proven that they meant no harm. There was no longer any use hiding her dark secret or denying its existence.
"Did you find something?" Juli asked, feeling light headed and out of breath.
"Are you menstruating?" Usanagi asked, the question so blunt that it took her by surprise.
Juli clenched her eyes shut, didn't move a muscle. It was answer enough.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," Usanagi whispered, approaching the bed.
"Is this forever?" Juli's mouth asked of its own accord.
A question that had been haunting her ever since.
"What do you mean?" the doctor asked.
"I have not been right since he died. I wondered if maybe I am broken now and will never have babies."
"Do you want to have babies?"
Juli's insides squirmed at this line of questioning, but the doctor had been good to her. There was also a certain anonymity that could be maintained between the two of them that made Juli feel safe to disclose it. She didn't need to advertise it to her friends, but that didn't mean that doctors couldn't know about it. Like an ugly disease.
Usanagi reached out and took Juli's hand. Juli looked up at the woman, who looked older up close. The crinkles by her eyes gave away the genuine care in her smile, and Juli felt loved all over again, felt known and understood, which was was a big deal.
It was overwhelming.
Something tight inside of her loosened at the hope in the woman's eyes.
"I can prescribe you some medicines to jolt your system back into-"
The door suddenly slammed open, and Juli's eyes shot up to see sunglasses and a scowl burst through the door. Boone was wearing clean clothing now, a brown jacket overtop a white shirt with loose fitting jeans full of pockets and free of holes. His face was clean too, but his jaw had a developing shadow on it. His hair, too, was much longer than it had been the last time she saw him. It curled tightly at the top in what looked like thick waves.
She realized he wasn't wearing his beret, but that he had it in his hands. Something about this seemed off-puttingly chivalrous, which put all her senses on high-alert.
Her mind flitted back to his lips on her lips.
But the smell of alcohol came after him, and Juli's face twisted into a scowl.
Too late.
He wasn't there the day after she woke up, or the day after that. He wasn't there at all. This wasn't about their reunion, or some foolish, romantic, fleeting mistake she had made in front of him.
He didn't care. He'd left her. He didn't give a shit about what he'd taken away from her. He didn't give a shit about her. He didn't give a shit about anybody. She'd asked Veronica to find him when Juli was up in that tower, and he'd taken three entire days to even return.
Probably plowing women then, too, the fuckbag.
Somehow it hurt that Juli wasn't his favorite girl. In her heart, she'd always kind of hoped she would be. Not romantically, but as friends, almost like someone felt with their sister, their cousin, maybe their daughter. He was her favorite guy.
But fuckbags didn't have favorite girls, maybe.
That word, too, she'd learned from Veronica. A leer, nasty and bitter, twisted her mouth into a snarl as she downcast her eyes to her lap.
Usanagi stiffened, obviously unsure whether to flee or stand her ground on Juli's behalf.
It was the most loyalty she'd been shown in a week, and it made Juli love the woman for it.
"It's alright," Juli informed the woman from the side of her mouth in Chinese, reaching out to squeeze her fingers.
"Is that him?" Usanagi asked back, eyes never leaving Boone.
"It is," she said.
Usanagi squeezed back.
"You okay?" Usanagi asked, this time in English.
"I'll be fine, promise."
Juli managed a smile up at the doctor, a real one, who seemed mollified by its existence.
"I guess I'll...leave you two alone then."
Not a moment had passed after the door snapped shut behind the doctor before Boone reached behind him, fingers moving slowly, to turn the lock with a "click," sealing the door. He scowled over at her with an expression very much like hatred twisting his lips. It was always how he looked when he spoke of the Legion.
Juli's heart began to pound. Despite her rage, the expression hurt her.
The look of his mouth seemed wild, animated and fiery in a way they never had before. Unpredictable.
Frightening.
She wanted to say she trusted him, but he'd done a lot to unpack that trust in the last few days.
Not only was she not his favorite girl, but she also clearly wasn't even really his girl at all. He hadn't shown at all during her trial. And friends didn't look at friends the way he was looking at her. For once, she was glad he wore those stupid sunglasses to hide his otherwise fairly expressive brow.
The realization hurt her even more.
Hiding.
Did one stupid kiss mean that much to him? If anything, she would have expected him to be more understanding of it. She'd seen his desperation before to get out of here, to go be with the ones he loved.
Seemed kind of one sided that he got to be pissy about her wanting to do the same.
"What were you two talking about?" Boone slurred, gesturing over his shoulder to the doctor. "You didn't need to stop on my account."
Juli's heart pounded.
She still didn't feel well, and the shock of the previous conversation had woken up the adrenaline in her system. For the first time since she'd woken up in the hospital, she actually would have rather talked about Usanagi's news than talk with Boone, and it was with no small measure of disappointment that her first opportunity to learn more about her body, really get an update on it, was interrupted by the whims of a drunk man.
Now that he was here, all the stewing resentment bubbled over into implacable fury.
"Sure I did," she told the wall across from the foot of her bed, unable to look at him.
"Why is that?" he asked from her left.
"My body and what is wrong with it is none of your business."
"I think I've earned the right to make it my business," he shot back, obviously testy, ready for a fight.
"Have you?" she asked, maintaining a gentle tone. "Why is that?"
"I just saved your life!"
"You didn't just do anything unless we are counting the nearest hookers this side of Freeside."
Boone's fists squeezed at his sides. For the first time, she sensed hesitation.
"That bother you?" he provoked like an outburst, like it took courage to ask.
"Why should it?" Juli replied, her voice as calm as his was animated. "I'm only your partner and friend who almost died. Why should it bother me?"
Dammit, the bitterness was palpable.
He didn't answer.
"You have saved me before," she told the wall like it was a mirror.
"Not like this, I haven't! This is different, and you know it!"
"Oh? Why?"
She had angled away from him and was sitting on the edge of the bed, seething. There was a throbbing, pulsing, living silence between them that sucked the air out of the room.
"LOOK AT ME!" he finally roared, making her wince.
Slowly, Juli turned her head up to meet his gaze from behind his glasses, staring up at her own hunched image in the reflection. She looked ugly and greasy, tired and wilting.
She didn't speak, just waited for the explosion as it was building before it erupted.
"Fuck you!" he finally yelled. "You know how many hours I stayed up, shooting those damned things down? How many bullets I used? Bullets aren't cheap!"
"Then I will pay you," was Juli's cold reply.
"I don't want your fucking money!"
"Then what do you want?"
He avoided her gaze now. The calmer she was, the angrier he became.
"Why are you even here now?" she pressed.
"Don't talk to me like I'm some stranger!" he seethed.
"Is that not what you are?"
"Fuck you!" he yelled again.
"I suppose somebody has to," she replied, her demeanor unchanged, despite the dying flower inside of her that she could almost see rotting away. "Though, obviously, not you."
"And there it is. The petty jealousy of other women speweth forth. You might as well be a ball and chain."
"Other women?" Juli scoffed. "I do not need to remind you that you are not my husband, Boone. I am not your wife. You do not owe me anything."
"Then why bring it up?" he mocked.
"I suppose to remind myself as well as you. We have made no pact. You are not prisoner to me."
"Then why are you being such a fucking bitch about this?"
"About what?"
"Why are you talking to me like this?"
Juli blinked slowly, her face cool and collected, despite the excited pounding of her heart in her rib cage.
"How should I talk to you?" she inquired.
"I don't know! Maybe like I just saved your life? Maybe like that matters?"
"Should I thank you?"
Boone nearly stumbled across the room, loomed over her.
She recoiled, averted her gaze. Now that he was in front of her, all the hurt was in her face, staring back at her through those sunglasses, and she didn't want him to see it as much as she couldn't bear to watch it.
"Maybe you should thank me. You want to know what I was doing when Veronica came looking for me? Want to know what I gave up to come back to save your sorry ass - again?"
"Not in the slightest," she lied, looking down at her lap, her hands, the far wall, anything but him.
He grabbed her roughly, forced her to turn towards him. It hurt. Juli cried out, an honest warning, but Boone didn't back down. She looked into the shaded eyes that were now close enough to just barely see, tried to ignore the hurt that was mounting inside of her that was blossoming on her face.
"I was fucking a girl where I was!" he cried out, releasing her as if the words burned his palms.
The admission took her a moment to unpack, but she was a master of disguise. This level of honesty between them was new and untravelled, which meant in some ways they would be like strangers all over again. So, she had to think about it, wonder at it, to buy herself some time. He didn't just say this to hurt her feelings. He didn't just ignore her for a week after spending countless hours shooting down deathclaws, and he didn't just admit things like this that were so deeply personal without a reason.
He wanted her to get angry. He wanted her to punish him.
He wanted her to make him feel bad.
He felt guilty. Maybe he wanted her to be jealous.
But why?
Didn't matter, she concluded.
The last thing she wanted to do at the end of this long week was to give him what he wanted, even if it was exactly what she wanted to do.
"I was fucking her," he plowed on, out of breath, sputtering, as if in pain, "and when Veronica found me she was giving me head."
Juli didn't know what this meant, but if she had to guess it had something to do with mouths. She'd have to ask Veronica.
"And I came back just for you and now you're acting like a total bitch."
Juli let the words sit in the air for as long as the bastard deserved. He writhed in agony about it, but she wanted him to rot in that shit he'd just taken all over her feelings.
"You're a mean drunk, sometimes," she forced herself to tell him lightly.
"And you're a bitch."
"And you are being disrespectful."
But it was like he could barely hear her, like the wind was being sucked from his lungs the more he spoke, like he was possessed by this something else that neither of them could stop.
"I can't believe I came back for this," he drawled. "I have needs, you know. I want things too. I have a life outside of you! You don't just get to order me around like you own me!"
"I don't own you," she affirmed, the notion off-putting, which she was sure he knew. "I have ordered nothing from you."
"Then why aren't you talking to me?"
Again she paused, feeling the shield up now that only came with the acutest of emotional pain. Juli brought a pensive finger to her chin, tapped it thoughtfully. He was reaching these conclusions all on his own, and Juli hadn't said a damn thing about it.
"I can't talk to you if you aren't here, NCR," she told him.
The title had slipped out, honestly, out of hurt more than as a purposeful jab, but he reacted to it like it was one anyway.
"Maybe you could use my fucking name."
She shrugged.
"In my tongue, your name is so hard to say. Just...sounds."
Deja vu. They were going backwards.
"Call me something else then!" Boone nearly begged, though he grunted right after because of the supplication that was so clear in his voice for her to just look at him.
"What should I call you?"
"I don't know! Boone or - or Eli. My middle name is Eli!"
"Why do you need this so much?" she asked.
He stopped pacing, snatched at her shoulder again.
"You know what? You left me!" he accused. "You don't get to be mad at me! I waited for six weeks for you to come find me, and all I got was Veronica!"
"I don't know if you noticed, but I was dying in a radio tower."
"That's beside the point! You left me, and I waited! I thought you'd be right back! We had a good thing going - didn't we?"
All at once, the conversation shifted. The question, the uncertainty in his voice, seemed to have slipped out, and it pained her. Juli clenched her eyes shut tight, still didn't want him to see her like this.
"I didn't mean to leave you," she admitted.
"But you did! I thought we were partners!"
"We were."
He made a bitter sound at the operative verb.
"Oh? But we're not now?"
"Partners check on each other," Juli reminded him.
The hurt was becoming a problem. The anger had waned and now here, with him, hearing him say these terrible things, Juli was quickly finding it difficult to hide how distraught all of this made her.
He hadn't checked on her one time.
No matter how you spun that, it didn't look good for him.
He made an "ugh" kind of sound.
"You left me," he barreled on, "and I came back and then - and then up there in that tower, you...we..."
He sputtered off, like it was too painful to put into words, like he'd gotten just too close to the dangerous animal lurking in the corner.
"You're being such a bitch!" he shot at her, not acknowledging the statement. "You ruined everything!"
Juli scoffed, forced herself not to wince as she moved to stand. He was crowding her breathing room by looking so distressed where she could see, and she needed to breathe or she would pass out. She limped to the foot of the bed, held onto the foot of it. Despite it all, it was so nice to stand.
"You're a bitch," he muttered again to himself.
It was like he'd rubbed her with sandpaper one too many times.
With this one last swipe, Juli was now bleeding.
"I am?" she snapped at him, her first sign of open derision as she turned back to face him.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he snapped, ready for it.
"I died in surgery, Craig," she announced.
Disarmed, Boone opened his mouth, sputtered. Finally, she saw the pain in his mouth, in the upward ticking of the corners of his mouth, of the scrunching of his cheeks near his eyes behind those glasses where he physically recoiled in pain.
He was so upset about it.
Seeing it upset her because it meant he knew better and ran away anyway.
Left her behind to deal with it herself.
"You didn't care?" she croaked, her voice high.
Still, he didn't seem to know how to make words.
"You didn't wonder if I was scared?"
"Veronica was supposed to-"
"Well, she wasn't," Juli told him loudly, throwing up her arms before letting them fall back down again. "She wasn't. Nobody was here when I woke up."
Boone hesitated now. Her voice had pitched up at the claim, and the hurt had been released into the air. He saw it, heard it, felt it, and like a ghost it passed through them over and over, making them both tremble.
He didn't answer, but instead forked his free fingers through his hair, exhaled.
"You're just angry with me because I kissed you," she dismissed matter-of-factly, wanting to just get it out of the way. "I believe that is why you've been avoiding me - because you don't know how to handle it."
A long moment passed, so long and so silent, save for their heavy breathing, that Juli almost thought maybe he hadn't heard.
"Yeah," he finally managed, his voice tight.
It all clicked into place. Juli felt sick to her stomach, in no small part due to the fact that he sounded so disappointed and so disgusted.
"I meant to comfort you," she told him, though it sounded like a lie even before it left her mouth.
"No, you gave up on me!" he roared, the accusation raw in his voice. "That's what that was! You wanted to leave after everything I did to get to you!"
Juli couldn't deny it.
"Yes," she affirmed, nodding, her expression plain.
He stumbled back, as if her agreement were as frightening as a roar from a yao guai.
"And then you died and I'm supposed to be okay with that?"
"I did not choose to die."
"You called me back just for you to die, which makes you just such a fucking - such a..."
He sputtered, his voice breaking in a way she had never heard it before.
"...fucking bitch..." he finally managed, his voice breathy and unsteady.
She couldn't take it anymore.
Juli hobbled forward one step, reached back, and tried to hit him. He grabbed her forearm, but his grip shook.
He was trembling.
She'd never felt him tremble, not like this.
"Why?" was all he asked, not letting go.
He held her arm up in mid-air.
"Why what?" she hissed.
"Why did you do that up there?"
"You don't care," she denied, avoiding his gaze.
"Tell me I don't fucking care," he dared through gritted teeth, full of more rage and tension and promise than anything else he'd ever said to her had.
He squeezed her arm.
"Say it again!" he repeated.
"Fine," she answered back, squaring her shoulders, willing the promise his words brought away. "You don't care! Not about me! Not about that kiss! Not about anything!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah!" Juli shouted in his face. "You don't care about anything anymore! That's why you fuck girls, isn't it? To fill the void and make the hole smaller?"
She laughed bitterly. She didn't know if the words made sense in English, but he seemed to get her meaning by the way he sucked in a breath.
"The hole doesn't get smaller!" she raged, looking up into his sunglasses. "It gets bigger and bigger! You should go away!"
"Not before you answer my question! Why did you do that?"
He just breathed, still held her forearm.
"To make you stop."
"Which would have killed you!"
"I didn't want to cause you pain."
"And you going away would have spared me that, huh?" he breathed out. "You think I'm that robotic?"
"Yes!" she growled out. "Because a robot doesn't care if their friend dies and you don't care!"
"What are you talking about?" he breathed, tone changed.
Tears of loss made lines down her face as she tried to conjure up their images, once so clear and crisp, now barely vapors in her mind.
"You left me!" she shrieked, trying hard to wrangle her forearm from his firm grip. "I needed you this week and you let me be here by myself! Why did you save me if you were just going to go back to being alone?"
"Juli, I was scared, I-"
"Didn't you think I was scared?" she cried out, fighting harder.
"You're not afraid of anything!" he shouted back.
"I am afraid!"
"Not of dying, obviously! You were just gonna leave me behind!"
"I was going home, and you took that from me, you idiot!" she screamed out, finally yanking her arm from his now loosened grasp.
"What are you even talking about?" he shouted.
The small noises she made now were almost embarrassing, the sounds of a hunted animal now caught, begging for the sweet release of death.
"I saw my family!" she cried out. "I was going to be with them! I saw them and you took them away! You took them from me!"
"What, was I supposed to let you die?"
Walked out so plainly, Juli heard how silly all this rage was, all at once.
Made her angrier.
She wanted him gone.
"Don't judge me."
"Why shouldn't I?"
"I remember the way you said her name in your sleep," she breathed back, closer than ever. "You wanted what I wanted that first night I found you. Don't pretend."
"It was different then!" he yelled back, and all at once it was escalating again.
"How is it different?"
"I have you now! It's different!"
"You don't have anybody!"
"Yes, I do! We are friends, Juli! That's what we are! And you and I are both going to have to deal with that and what that means!"
"Really? And what do you think that means?" Juli sniffled back, crossing her arms.
"It means you can't just go throwing yourself out the window anymore! Don't push me away - not now!"
"So I'm supposed to prefer you to what I had before? At least my mama loved me! My baby loved me! My family took care of me! What did you do this week? So you saved me - so what? Obviously it caused you some significant hardship."
Boone scoffed now.
"You know I would have come back either way."
"No, I don't," she admitted, eyeing him evenly. "I don't think you thought of me one time while we weren't together.
Again, that grimace.
"The kiss was an accident," she offered up.
He flinched. She refused to acknowledge it.
"I did not mean it the way you think I did."
Like he was hanging on her every word, he rushed out,
"What do you mean?"
"You were tired. I was tired. There was stress. I had med-x in my system. I wanted to die. You wanted me to stay. That's all it was. Adrenaline makes people do...strange things."
He didn't say a word, so Juli would keep going.
"I do not care that you are with women," Juli lied, the falsest, most bald faced lie she'd ever told.
"That so?" was all he said, but the accusation in his voice had died, replaced by terrible knowledge and understanding, making his voice soft and gentle.
He knew she was lying.
He opened his mouth again, but she plowed on.
"I do care that you didn't visit me."
Now his mouth twitched, his fists formed into balls.
"I think...maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I shouldn't have kissed you. You think I want you, but I'm not ready to want anybody, and you're not ready to be wanted, not like you thought I did."
She let out a huge breath of air, hung her head.
"Are you?"
He didn't answer, but she saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.
"That's okay," she comforted, trying to smile. "I don't mean it the way you think. It was a mistake."
Tears were coming out of her eyes now.
Boone swallowed again, clenched his jaw.
"And I know I am not beautiful," like Carla, her mind provided, refusing to look at him.
It didn't need to be said.
The sadness erupted and so did the waterworks.
Dammit, she hated that her mind always did that. She had nothing to do with Carla, and the damage that woman did to the way Juli thought about herself...
Juli just looked away. He just stood there, didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry," she told him. "Sorry for how that made you feel. It wasn't on purpose."
"That so?" he asked again.
He sounded angry with something else now, but she couldn't tell who he was angry with anymore.
Juli hung her head.
"What do you even want?" she whispered.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you didn't come to see me at all these last few days and now you're here, drunk and angry, yelling at me. You didn't come to tell me you fucked a girl. Why are you even here? If we were friends, you would have been there for me."
"Maybe..." she heard him say, but he trailed off. "A little gratitude?"
He didn't sound sure.
"Fine," Juli managed, forcing a smile onto her face that she directed up at him. "Thank you for saving my life. Now get out."
Boone sneered, crossed his arms. She looked up at his face, which seemed to catch him off guard. His arms fell to his sides and she saw him clench his fists, his jaw, swallow.
"I knew we weren't really friends," he snapped at her. "I just went out on a limb and you shot me down!"
"You did not want to be friends," she reminded him, not looking away.
He did, began pacing in front of her. She heard his breathlessness, but all of it seemed stale, none of this real.
"You're drunk," she shot at him bitterly. "Go home."
Juli gingerly leaned back.
"Why did you kiss me?"
Finally, bitter laughter bubbled out of Juli.
"Do you want an anatomy lesson?"
"What the fuck does that even mean?"
"Why does anybody kiss anybody?" she asked. "I find you very handsome."
He stopped pacing, flipped to her, as if to ask, "Really?"
"Is that so surprising?" she pressed, feigning confidence.
"Well...yeah..." he admitted awkwardly.
"Why did you kiss me back?"
He wasn't ready to answer that question.
"Come on, Boone. We're adults. You have no obligations to me," she told him calmly. "I was overcome and it pushed you too far that day. I'm -"
But before she could say she was sorry, he was shouting,
"No, you have to be angry!"
Slowly, Juli closed her eyes, prepared herself. The anxiety in his voice was telling. She didn't speak, wouldn't interrupt. Anyone who had something like that to say would hurt whoever the words were for.
"I was with someone," he admitted in a rush, a little too loudly. "When Veronica found me. Did you hear that part?"
He wanted her to say something.
"A woman, I mean," he elaborated.
Juli's eyes clenched slightly, her brow furrowing. She felt like she was being slowly sliced in half.
"I was guarding their camp, and she came onto me. I was drunk and..."
A different kind of tightness developed in her belly now, and she didn't trust herself to speak. He sounded like he was begging now.
"I didn't want to be found, and I thought you'd abandoned me. You almost died because I was with some girl. You died because I -"
His voice broke.
Juli turned her head away from him now, the rest of her body limp as he approached the foot of the bed. Still, she said nothing.
"Aren't you mad?" he finally whispered.
"I don't care," was all Juli managed.
It wasn't what she'd meant to say. It wasn't what she'd expected him to admit, not to her, and it certainly wasn't what she'd imagined he'd be hiding from her.
She felt his presence linger.
"I kissed you in the tower while you bled out," he told her. "You were drugged, and I took that from you to keep you with me."
"It doesn't matter," she told him, waving him away. "I started it."
"Don't you care?" he croaked.
"Of course," Juli replied honestly. "But you say these things now to hurt me, not because they are true."
"Then why aren't you hurting?"
"Because I know I am not beautiful," was her reply, "and what you do with women is not up to me."
The silence was intense.
"God-fucking-dammit..." he breathed after a while, putting his hands through his hair again as he let out a shaky breath.
"Do you want me to be angry?"
"That kiss messed me up, Ren!" he snarled back.
"Tell me why."
"Because I haven't felt anything in so long, and I...I didn't want that with you."
Juli shifted, which he took to be hurt.
She was glad because it did hurt.
"No - dammit! Not like that! I just...I told you I was fucked up, and I meant it! I don't want - don't want anything! It has nothing to do with you."
"You just spent a week having intercourse with strangers," Juli reminded him, her abdomen tight with disappointment that she tried desperately to keep from her voice.
"That's different. Sex is a...need. Kissing is...different."
"Intimate," Juli agreed, hanging her head.
"Yeah..."
Another silence.
"The last time you were kissed was Carla, wasn't it?" Juli asked.
He glanced at her, his mouth long and wide. Normally, he brushed her off, but this nonverbal confirmation urged her forward.
"I'm sure that didn't feel good," Juli told him. "I apologize. I really do. It won't happen again."
He shifted on his feet.
"The last time you kissed somebody..."
It was a question.
"The father of my child," Juli replied.
Boone straightened up like a board.
"We shouldn't talk about this yet," he voiced, his mouth each of their thoughts.
"Yes," she said, "I need to rest."
He turned on his heel, reached the door, stopped with his hand on the knob, his back to her.
"I'm sorry," he told her. "I should have been here and I wasn't."
She couldn't forgive him. Things were different now, certainly different before. He'd called her a friend, forced her to practically admit it, cornered her like he always did.
"Let's talk about it later."
She saw his shoulders hunch. It wasn't an acceptance of that apology. Wasn't what he wanted.
"If you're still around."
He paused a moment longer before unlocking the door and sauntering back out, and finally, Juli was able to let a breath of stale air out of her lungs.