The Tops.
The noise of weathered cards hitting tables and ancient slot machines cranking and pouring caps gave her a headache the instant Cato entered the casino for the first time, and it was no better on the way out. It didn't help that the second time she was constantly wiping away the blood pouring down into her ears where a bullet from one of Benny's hitmen had bitten into the flesh near her temple, leaving her sense of hearing almost non-existent for a few minutes. That would make this the second time that son of a bitch tried to shoot her in the head, and she was getting sick of it by now. She drew back her hand to look at the red slicking her fingertips and sticking clumps of hair together.
"One trick pony if ever I've seen one," she muttered to herself.
And after she'd gone out of her way to offer her forgiveness. She came into the casino with the intention of getting answers for what he'd done, and she got them, more or less. But now she was beginning to think he had the same plan if she forgave him as he did if she had sought vengeance, which was to try and kill her again. Only this time he didn't have the guts to do it himself. She wasn't sure which she found more insulting; the fact he planned on murdering her even after she gave her word she wouldn't hurt him, or that he didn't think she was worthy of getting shot by him personally again. Both stung equally, she decided on the elevator ride down. The head wound stung worse.
Cato sighed as she came to the ground floor.
"Sure know how to make a girl feel worthless, Benny boy. Ya' just shoot me and boot me." Fool me once, etc. etc.
She found Boone nursing a bottle of scotch and failings resplendently at the blackjack tables, and took him by the arm as she stormed out. She felt his eyes on her behind his sunglasses while they walked. Or she walked, half-dragging him behind her.
"Your head's bleeding," he commented plainly.
Cato grunted. Boone didn't press.
It was an unspoken agreement between the two that little and less would be said if either gave a brusque noise like that, the two having a mutual understanding of each other and the need for silence at times. She didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't push, and vice versa. It was a blissful arrangement born when both realized how little the other liked talking.
They burst back onto the Strip, Boone finishing off his drink and chucking it carelessly away, and Cato looked around to see now no sign remained of the greasy head of black hair she searched for. Nor the tacky suit. Nor the stupid fucking handsome face. With a violent raking of her hand through her hair, she released the sniper and stomped into the street, black curls bouncing when she swung her head back and forth looking for him. He didn't appear of course, and she spat disgruntled curses as she wheeled back over to the NCR sniper.
"Son of a bitch...Come on, he can't have gotten far."
Boone stopped her with a tug on the wrist. She riveted on him, about to growl angrily, when his fingers brushed back her hair over the wound in her head. He retrieved a bottle of water- the good stuff too, none of that irradiated green stuff- and handed it off to her.
"They've still got our weapons," he pointed out.
Right. They confiscated their weapons when they arrived, all but the ones she'd hidden in her boots of course, but the larger of their weapons remained at the front desk. Cato heaved a sigh and waited impatiently while Boone reentered the casino to recover them. Normally he would have avoided speaking to anyone on his own. She was thankful he didn't make her go back inside.
While she awaited him, she tended to the clipping wound in her temple. On the exact opposite side of the pale scar from the first time Benny shot her, she noted with a mixture of spite and amusement at the symmetry. She set a small compact mirror on a chest high wall, pouring a sparing little water into her palm, then pressing the bottom of her hand to her head to let it trickle down into the wound and wash away the blood caking her face. The green in her eyes had turned red where vessels had broken from the shockwave of the shot and pooled blood into her cornea as well as the whites of her eyes, and under the layer of warm stickiness coating her head, there was already an ugly bruise flaring down around the left side of her face. She certainly wasn't going to win any beauty pageants anytime soon.
After slipping the needle of a Stimpak into the flesh just on the edge of the wound and injecting herself, the gauge attached to the syringe hissing softly as she did so, she haphazardly stitched it together in a matter of minutes, as she was accustomed at this point to working quickly, then applied a small square of gauze. Red quickly bled through the white after no more than a few seconds of resting against the bullet graze like ink seeping into paper. Still, it staunched the bleeding for now.
Her self-treatment went largely unnoticed, you could see people tending bullet holes in their bodies on every corner in Freeside, and for all it's flashing lights and bright colors, the Strip was much the same. She was almost surprised when a figure in a dusty suit bothered to pay attention and approached her.
"Nasty looking injury. Shame it should mar such a handsome face."
Cato's hands stilled in the middle of brushing over the fresh gauze. The familiar voice made her stomach turn.
"If you don't get out of here within the next five seconds, Vulpes," she hissed, stubbornly refusing to look up from the mirror, "You're ending up a stain on the pavement."
He leaned against a pillar beside her, arms crossed.
"Such a harsh welcoming, sweet Julia. Even when I come with gifts."
"Unless the gift is Caesar's head bound up in ribbon, I don't want anything from you." Her gaze darted to the reflection of the Tops' door, silently praying Boone didn't choose this moment to emerge.
"I've got something far better," he replied. His voice was thick and sickly sweet as ever, like honeysuckle and arsenic. And he was dangling something, Cato realized, something shiny that caught the light and sparked in her peripheral. Despite her insistence on ignoring him, the object was shining directly into her eyes and making it difficult to focus on anything else. Wincing, she glanced at him, trying to look at him without actually seeing him.
He held the leather cord of a necklace for her to see, the symbol of the bull she knew and loved so well dancing in silver on the face of a coin, dented around the edges, it's hooves dashing a phrase in Latin.
"So the men recognize you again."
Cato pushed back her mess of hair, cursing herself for the tingling sense of rightness when she looked on the familiar bull. She hoped to distance herself from the irritatingly collected soldier, but this was difficult when every muscle ached to reach out and take the memory of home. She knew she would regret it if she didn't accept it. She would regret it more if she did. Sensing her apprehension with the gift, Vulpes made the decision for her, moving to her back to pull the coin over her head and rest at the base of her slender throat. A part of her wanted to drive a knife in between his ribs for the gesture. Why she didn't do just that, even she didn't know.
"Consider what I've said," he offered, "We all miss you so terribly, sweet Julia."
She met his words with stony silence, holding a breath tightly at the bottom of her lungs until the frumentarii had turned and left, and for a moment longer after that. Only when Boone reappeared a minute later, arm full of ammunition, rifles, and an ill maintained sword or two, did she finally release the tension in her chest.
The coin kissed her skin in a terrifyingly sweet way when she stuffed the prize into her shirt and out of sight, turning to the sniper to collect her weapons.
He couldn't know what had just transpired and she couldn't tell him. Boone would never understand her reasons for taking the token of Caesar's love, nor would he stand for her to accept his invitation. He was single minded when it came to his conviction of hating the Legion. He had every right to. Boone's was one more horror story in the Mojave that showed just what her former family was capable of. She looked up at the hard edges of his face and the set of his jaw and reminded herself that the men who now called to her had stolen the one thing he cared for, forced him to do something horrible in the name of mercy, that they were to blame for his misfortune and heartache.
But the weight of the coin laying against her chest was a strange euphoria, and it was hard to see past it to the cloying familiarity calling to her to remember the lessons Miriam, and indeed the entirety of the Mojave, had taught her.
Home called to her in that little silver coin.