The smell of sweet dust and the desert night turned sour with rot the closer they got to Nipton. They had seen the smoke from the Mojave Outpost, but apparently the NCR soldiers there held out some hope it hadn't been razed to rubble. Why else would they ask her to trek all the way down here if they didn't think she could dig out survivors? They couldn't honestly expect things to be alright.
Plumes of black smog had been ribboning over the town for days. It was obvious what happened.
Even in the dark of night, live embers smoldered in the ruins of houses, almost enough to light their way as they walked. Rex growled hazardously, slowing to a soft padding pace alongside Cato as she made her way down the debris strewn street. His ears flattened, and Cato pressed the back of her hand against her nose to try and block the scent of decay. It was an all too familiar smell, and she knew what it meant even before she saw the light from a fire pooling around a corner, falling on the row of crucified men. Some dead, some dying, all lazily nailed to crosses by their hands and feet, skin splitting with blisters and red from the heat of the Mojave sun baking them where they hang.
Her back against the wall of a mostly intact general store, she slid along it's length, carefully peeking around the corner to the fires erected on either side of the Nipton town hall. Men in dented armor of hard plastic sat on the steps, laughing to each other in an uproar. It was a congregation of goggles and scarves and feathered helmets, each less differentiable than the last, but she knew their ranks and some of their names. A decanus, a handful of recruits, veteran legionary scattered among their numbers, and the solitary coyote helmet of a frumentarii. That one she definitely knew. The boy from the Fort with the sad eyes.
She stepped out, saddling her shotgun on her hip. Rex knew this meant no fight, and tipped his head at her in confusion, ears flipping back up. She was already at the center of the street by the time they noticed her, standing between two crucified men. One croaked something to her, but she knew there was nothing she could do for him.
Coyote was the first to step forward and regard her, after muttering to the others.
"You there! Come closer!" She obeyed without a word, the frumentarii walking to meet her in the middle. In the dark, it was impossible to see his eyes behind the tinted goggles. She still felt them flicker across her face, and saw the hard edge of his mouth. He was considering something. There was a moment he didn't speak.
"I've been waiting for days for some profligate to come through and stumble upon all this. I was going to tell you to spread word of the Legion's triumph over the whores of this city," he said, crossing his arms. "I get the feeling you don't need me to tell you such things."
The fire at their side swept towards him, and for a moment she could see his eyes staring half-lidded at her from behind the wall of tinted plastic.
"Hello, Julia. My, you've grown."
No one called her that. Julia was Julius Caesar's daughter, and as Cato's Mother had told her at a young age, when she demanded she change her name, Julia died millennia ago. No matter how much Edward Sallow wanted to recreate the past, it would never change the fact that the real Julius Caesar drowned in his own blood, the real Julia Caesar had died in childbirth, and both of their bones were long ago reduced to ash, their legacies reserved for books that barely survived the bombs which no one has read for centuries. Cato the Younger was dead as well, but her Mother took perverse pleasure in renaming her daughter after a man who so despised Caesar, he ripped out his own bowels rather than live in a world where the tyrant sustained power. It was a dark joke Cato carried throughout her life, but her Mother had a dark sense of humor like that, and there were worse names she could have chosen.
She stared back at the frumentarii, shifting her weight to one hip.
"My name isn't Julia."
"Yes, I wondered if your whore mother would keep calling you that."
Her brows twitched.
"Don't call her that."
"That would be 'former whore' now, wouldn't it? I suspect she's not the prize she once was."
His voice was as spiritless and cold as it had always been, that was one thing about Vulpes Inculta that never changed, even through the years that Cato had been away from the Legion. He tapped his temple. "How is she, by the way? Caesar has been offering quite a hefty bounty on her head for many years, it would be a pity if she died before anyone could collect."
"Sorry to disappoint you then. She passed away last summer." A lie, Miriam lived somewhat happily in a somewhat cozy farmhouse in a secluded part of the desert with a prized goat, a few Brahmin, and an ugly cat.
Vulpes swallowed it never the less.
"Hm. Shame." He paused.
"Your Father has been looking for you as well."
Her fingers twisted against the butt of her gun. She expected that much. Of course her doting Father wanted to find his child, his only child that survived infancy or was birthed by a free woman, the only child that swallowed his lies about the atrocities the Legion committed. Cato felt her jaw tighten.
"I'll give you ten seconds to get out of here, Vulpes. You and your gaggle of freaks have gotten your jollies, there's no one left to burn, and all the ones you've crucified will be dead by morning. There's nothing for your here. I'll...tell the NCR what happened here. But not because you asked me to. They need to know." She shouldered her weapon at head level with the frumentarii, her emerald eyes hard as stone. "If you don't leave, I'll just tell them raiders sacked the place. They may not believe me, but I'll make sure some doped up Fiends get the credit for your work here."
"Making threats to a 'gaggle' of well armed men twice your size. You really have grown, little bird." The pet name was like nails raking on her spine. And in truth, she was as tall as any of the men there. "Pray tell, why would you be so generous as to allow us to live?"
"It's a one time thing, foxy," she muttered, "For whatever love I used to have for Caesar. He'd be just torn up if I put down his favorite lap dog."
Rex growled at the first recruit to go anywhere near his weapon. She stared down Vulpes, knowing her eyes were locked with his even if his were hidden. She couldn't take them all at once, but she could try, and she would give ten times what she would take. Vulpes just needed to weigh his losses against his pride. Either way, she knew he would never attack the daughter of his commander, no matter the annoyance it caused him to let her go unharmed.
"Very well," he sighed after considering her for a few seconds, hooking a thumb into his belt, "Our orders were not to pick petty squabbles with profligates. Ensure word spreads about what happened here, and our work will be done. We will return to the Fort." He flashed her a toxic smirk. "I'll say hello to Caesar for you."
She cocked the gun with a violent snap of her arm, returning it to rest at his forehead.
"Go. And don't say a word about me to him." She knew this was a futile request, but couldn't stand to send him off without it. She needed to tell him something, if only to feel like she had some control over what he told her Father.
Vulpes gave her that collected look of seething hatred as he walked past her, waving away the barrel of her shotgun as though swatting at an annoying fly, and his men fell into formation behind him. She trained her weapon on their backs the entire way, never letting her stern look falter, allowing Rex to growl to his heart's content and snap at their shadows. She remained frozen, finger on the trigger. Until they melted into the shadows where the fire they had started gave no light.
Cato let out the breath she had been holding long after they were out of sight.
For years, she was able to avoid most of the legionary that knew her face. She'd run across some, the only one worth note being Joshua Graham, and he hadn't recognized her. Then again, she didn't really recognize him either through the bandages.
Back then, she was just another of Caesar's children running around the Fort, though she had been the only one in finer clothes than rags or recruit's armor. Very few would know her face if they saw her. But of course, her legendary streak of bad luck continued by running her into one of a handful of men that could see past her age back to the little girl from Caesar's tent.
Rex gave her a solemn aroo? as she sank to the steps of the town hall, burying her fingers in her hair, subconsciously flitting over the bullet scars in her head. Maybe if she ran, she could catch up to Vulpes and stop him before the word reached her Father that she was still in the Mojave. Maybe she could get Boone, they could track the group before they made it back the Fort, pick them off from a distance. He wouldn't ask questions if it meant he got to kill Legion. She wouldn't have to tell him why Vulpes couldn't be allowed to make it back, the fact he wore the red of the Legion would be enough for the sniper.
She glanced up at the shadows of crucifixes, shuddering in the uneven light of the fire and throwing rigid tentacles across the cracked pavement.
Was is it so wrong the sight made her nostalgic?
She wanted to be angered by it, to swear vengeance for the men on them and make Caesar pay for every single one. But her earliest memories were of standing under the great wooden crosses in his arms, and she could never eradicate the ache for home she felt when she saw their shadows on the sands. Just like she couldn't help the little voice in the back of her head that told her to let Vulpes go, let him tell Daddy where she was, and let him come and take her home.
It would always be her home. That was something she could never shake.
Miriam could tell her the awful truths about what they did, but she could never rewrite her earliest memories of a kind face smiling at her under a gold and crimson bull.