Weary Toting Such A Load
In the shadow of a sideways skyscraper stuck in a cliff's edge, a woman sewed by firelight.
At her feet, just in front of the collection of old magazines and rotting fragments of power lines that formed her kindling, were the remains of professionally-made body armor, stamped with the fourteen-starred American flag. The woman in the black cowboy hat was busy sewing the back plating into the trenchcoat laid across her thighs, a cigarette clenched between her teeth, an old locker on its side beneath her.
She heard crumbling earth, and panicked, looking upward - but the skyscraper was not threatening to fall. She spotted dust rolling off the edge of the cliff just off to the side, and put down her needle and thread to pull the revolver from the holster on her belt. Pale blue eyes scanned the area around her.
"Show yourself."
"Boo." She turned the gun behind her and stuck it up against the chin of the person who'd spoken into her ear.
"Down there, girl," the gravelly voice said gently, a hand gingerly touching the barrel and lowering it. "You know me."
"You could've announced yourself." She lowered her weapon. "Get around so I can see you, I don't want to fuck this up."
Her visitor circled around to the other side of the campfire and sat crossed-legged on the ground, carefully arranging his sleeveless duster's tail to avoid sitting on it. Brown eyes stared through the carefully knotted locks of his hair, directly into those of the woman. "Did you really think you could make it through the Divide without me noticing you?" he asked through the mask that covered his mouth and nose.
"I'd hoped."
"Your friends are looking for you, Courier. They remember the last time you disappeared, but this time seems a bit more permanent, no?"
"Are you working to some kind of point, Ulysses?" the Courier asked, holstering her weapon and returning to her task.
"You can't just walk away from them."
"I can and I have. I'm my own person and I don't have to answer to them." The Courier looked down at her work very intently.
"Sneaking off in the middle of the night and telling them that this was something you had to do on your own might have been acceptable a month ago. Not now. Not after riling up the Bear and planning your campaign. Not after setting a date. You're abandoning them. Happen to recall what happened last time you jump-started and then abandoned a community?" Ulysses pointed up at the skyscraper.
The Courier held up her coat and looked over her work, then leaned down to pick up a shoulder pad and began work with that. It wasn't until halfway through that Ulysses spoke again.
"Nothing to say?"
"It's different this time."
"Explain how."
"This was always about me and my vengeance. Bringing other people into it would do more harm than good. The Legion will destroy itself without my help, but I need to see it done."
"So all that talk of the civilizing touch of the Bear, was that just fluff and nonsense, then? Wouldn't bringing your pet cause along help the people you're trying to save?"
"Who said I was saving anyone?"
"You did. You refused to bomb the Legion because of all the innocents you would kill, all the slaves and subjects that deserve better. And now it's just about vengeance?"
In and out went the needle, carefully tying the fabric clasps that once held the armor together into the coat. The cigarette continued to burn idly, without the slightest attempt at inhalation.
"Courier."
"What do you want from me?"
"I want you to go back and get your friends together. They want to support you, and you're just leaving them in the dust. You don't get to come into someone's life and change it the way you do and then just up and vanish. That's why you walked the Divide, why I called you here. Your actions have consequences, Courier, and you don't get to pretend that you're powerless any longer. Not after what you've done."
"I won't let them get hurt for nothing."
"You don't have the right to decide that, or to go back on your word. They choose to follow you, to risk their lives for you, to be your friends and companions. Taking off now, that's just leaving them lost, without a leader. You think Kimball can lead an eastward campaign?"
"He wouldn't-"
"He'll have to now. The army's been gearing up for this, Courier. You've hyped it up and promised it for a solid month. You think that they're just going to forget all your fire, your passion? Take responsibility, Courier, and lead them to victory. If you don't, they'll all die for your sins."
The Courier finished off the shoulder pad and looked up at Ulysses. "So, what? You want me to take my friends on a suicide mission? To watch people I care about die?"
"It's their choice, and they want to help you like you helped them. And even if you do return, and even if they don't die, they won't be your friends anymore."
"I'll have saved their lives-"
"If what I'm saying doesn't come true. Don't give this up, Courier."
The Courier sighed and took a drag off her cigarette, then tossed it into the fire. She slowly exhaled a smoke ring, closing her eyes.
After her breath was spent, she looked down at Ulysses, a cold glare. "And what makes you care so much? What makes you, the man who nearly nuked the Mojave, worthy of giving advice on friends?"
Ulysses stroked one of his braids. "Have you forgotten?"
"Forgotten what?"
"What I left behind in the Divide. What you found here, what you studied and used against me, what you used to make me understand." Ulysses reached into his duster and pulled a small device from the inside pocket, and pressed the arrow button on its face.
"The White Legs... meant to show respect, bribe me for Caesar's favor, echoing mannerisms and words ... Showed them tech caches, taught them the workings of chamber and powder, spoke of Caesar's pride in those that used such things ... lies. And ... and then ... they tried to honor me - not the Legion. They brought me before the campfire one night, showed me how they changed themselves, how they wore their hair now. It was like my entire dead tribe in the firelight, teeth grinning red in the dark - eager corpses, blood-covered ghosts. They ... had taken my braids, the way of the Twisted Hairs, as if it showed they were like me, of me ... while every knot in their braids spoke of raping, violence - and ignorance of what the knots meant. They thought to show respect ... defiled it. Lost myself in trying to read the braids they wore, when I remembered they had put no meaning in it. They had no history of what it meant. They didn't even know the insult in the twists, knots ... and Dry Wells came running back, the White Legs circled like that ... It was like looking at the dead of my tribe, reborn as ghosts - hateful, hungry, bowing to Caesar. Another history ... gone, carried by me alone."
The playback stopped with a click. Ulysses put the recorder back in his pocket. He looked up at the Courier.
"You've built something beautiful, a camaraderie, a shared history, a group of people who will support each other and you until the ends of the earth. A chance to make a history. I had that, once. It was stolen from me. You're voluntarily leaving it behind? You're turning your back on that? I can't stand to see such waste, Courier Six. Not again."
The Courier put her head in her hands.
"All right," she whispered. "You're right. You're completely right."
The distant pops of automatic rifle fire echoed through the canyon, and Ulysses turned his head. "Good. Because it sounds like someone's finding their way to you." He stood up. "I don't think they need to see me."
"Did you know about this before you came here?"
"I was too busy tracking you down. If I'd known someone was stupid enough to enter the Divide, I'd have turned them away. I'd better get back to my vigil. You take care of whatever fool search party they sent out for you."
Ulysses stood up.
"Going to spend the rest of your days watching over the Divide?" the Courier asked.
"Maybe. But if you hammer that Bear into something worthwhile...well, once a courier, always a courier, right?"
"Once a courier, now a general, for me."
"Poor turn of phrase, but you get the idea." Ulysses walked off for the cliff, and found a broken-off pipe. He began to scale the cliff, and the Courier bid him farewell with a tip of her hat.
The Courier picked up the remaining shoulder pad and renewed her work as the sky began to lighten. She'd just finished the final stitch when she heard someone calling her name.
"Cynthia? Cynthia, you piece of shit, I know you're out there!" echoed off the canyon walls, and the Courier smiled to herself. "Hey, you're not Cynthia, fuck off!" followed, along with a gunshot. As the sun finally poked over the walls of the canyon and shone pink light upon the ruin of the Divide, the Courier saw a ragged cowboy hat pop up over the wall of a sideways building half-lodged in the ground, followed by a familiar face.
"There you are! I fucking called it!" cried the cowgirl, hoisting herself up onto the building's remains.
"And how'd you do that?" the Courier asked.
"I lived near the Divide for way too long, remember? I went out to hunt game for the rangers one night, and the little fucker ran across the wreckage that leads into this shithole. I remembered that 'courier six' shit." She jumped down from the building and took hold of the assault carbine slung across her back.
"And why didn't you work this out last time I disappeared?"
"Because back then you weren't the Queen of the God-Damned Mojave and you weren't running away from your own shit. Speaking of which-" -She released the safety - "Why! The! Fuck! Would! You! Do! That!" she screamed, punctuating each word with a bullet aimed in the Courier's general direction. Cynthia raised her arms, as though this would help, and flinched at each shot. Once the gunfire had died down, Cynthia lowered her arms and glared.
"Cass, what the fuck."
"I'm fucking pissed off is what the fuck!" Cass shouted, steadying her rifle at the Courier. "You don't get to do that shit, you hear me? Not anymore!"
"Cass, it's okay, really."
"No it fu-"
"I met a friend here. He talked me out of it."
Cass looked dumbfounded. "Huh?"
Cynthia smiled. "I'm going back."
"Bu-but-I just fuckin'-you seen those little trogs round here? Could take a leg off ya - did I just waste my fuckin' time?"
"A little bit, yeah."
"Fuck me, I had this whole grand speech to- hey, waitaminute. Since when can other people convince you to do anything? Isn't that, like, your thing?" Cass slung the rifle across her back and walked closer to the dying fire.
"You haven't met him."
"Huh." Cass took a seat next to the courier and unscrewed her hip flask, taking a swig. "Well, shit."
"Something you wanted to say?"
"Well, don't pull this shit again, you got that? I was worried sick about you. No note, no goodbye - I thought someone'd kidnapped you or something at first, 'till I realized all the supplies were gone."
"Sorry."
"It was shitty."
"Yeah."
Cass took another swig.
"You do know that we're gonna have to walk back out of here," Cynthia said.
"You're here, I'll make it. We going soon? And what've you done to your coat?"
Cynthia stood up and pulled on her trenchcoat, feeling the added weight.
"Oh, man, you look like a badass. More than usual, I mean," Cass said. Cynthia reached down and picked up her duffel bag and the massive rifle that lay on top of it, slinging both across her shoulders.
"Let's get back to the Mojave."
"Kay. I'll catch up with you."
Cynthia began to walk away, then heard a muttered "Oh, fuck it," from behind her. As she turned to ask, "Fuck wha-" she suddenly found herself in the arms of an inebriated cowgirl.
"Don't ever do that again," Cass said quietly into her shoulder. "You're all I've got, you hear?"
Cynthia returned the embrace. "Don't you worry."
They broke the embrace, but Cass took the Courier's hand and didn't let go as they walked back through the Divide, back to the Mojave and The Courier's responsibilities.