"Of course it won't be fine," Daniel glowered, his face tight with frustration. "Can't you see now that he's practically building an army? Just like he used to when he strayed from The Lord and brought misery to everyone?"
"It's for a good reason this time."
"Do you really think he didn't believe that back then?"
"Yes I do. But that was when he strayed from your god, serving Caesar. Now he's back to serving your lord again."
"You think this—no, of course you do. Typical gentile."
"Look. Even if I agreed to your idea, you think we're gonna evacuate in peace without White Legs trying to put a nail in our coffin? You should realize by now. They're more than your typical raiders."
"Me and Joshua and the Dead Horses can protect everybody just fine. We don't need to involve the Sorrows at all."
"Daniel." She turned to him. "You've seen how White Legs attack. Your own tribe was decimated in front of you, remember? Thanks to some of your people's ability to defend themselves, some of you could survive. White Legs won't stop. Not until New Canaanites and everyone involved with them, meaning your new families in Zion, are all gone. What Caesar wants, Caesar gets. Don't be naive, don't be all sanctimonious."
"...I still think this was a bad idea. I feel like we've done something really wrong."
"If you insist on believing that, you might have turned a blind eye on how many Dead Horses and Sorrows found injured lately. Or almost died."
"It never comes to your mind that it may be due to Joshua's and your arrangements?"
"Good grief, Daniel. These attacks have happened since The Sorrows and the Dead Horses were still scouting! White Legs will stop at nothing. And if I remember correctly from your stories, you want to make things right because New Canaanites—you— interfered with The Sorrows. Well this is how!"
Daniel paced around before stopping at the sight of The Sorrows sparring. "I still can't believe we're building an army out of an innocent tribe. Why not just Dead Horses? Why them too?"
"I get why you're so upset." He scoffed. "Hear me out. I know finding innocence in the wasteland is something rare and worth preserving, especially the kind of innocence that reminds you a lot of New Canaan and its people. And given the fact that you've managed to make them somewhat believe in your god, I understand why you think this is such a drawback." She heard him sigh. "Trust me. I've learned to always find non-violent ways first but it's not rare for me to resort to brutality when needed. Fighting back is good this time, Daniel."
He shook his head, she didn't know if it was out of disagreement or denial.
Both of them watched how Joshua trained the two tribes. Hanlon said he wasn't a good strategist, but at least he taught them all how to fight well. She had seen firsthand how he took down four White Legs and their mongrels all by himself. If these tribesmen knew how to engage in combat half as good as him, they wouldn't need to worry about staying alive.
It occurred to her that she might be witnessing a glimpse of the past: how Joshua used to prepare the Legion, or tribes that were absorbed in it.
"What was he like before venturing out to the Grand Canyon? Was he intense like this?" she asked Daniel.
"He's always had fervour for God and preserving New Canaan, but we all do. I didn't know what happened—we went through the same training, and I didn't see that kind of ferocity in him, none at all. Everybody liked him." He took his hat off and fiddled with it. "We were outraged and ashamed hearing that he became one of the key people who brought back all that barbaric savagery."
She hummed. "I heard your people welcomed him back despite all that."
"Wasn't always that way." He shifted his weight and looked away. She thought that he probably was one of the last ones who forgave Joshua. "But God teaches us to be compassionate and forgiving. Besides, Joshua proved himself helpful as the time passed."
"You don't have to sugarcoat it. I understand if you were late to forgive him. Not all of us are gifted with the ability to absolve wrongdoings without going through some struggles first."
Daniel glanced at her, lips parted slightly, as though weighing her words. "Huh... didn't expect that from you. Wisdom, I guess."
"You mean coming from a gentile like me?"
A shout pulled their attention. Joshua stood in front of some of the Sorrows. He pointed his fingers at one place, then another, then them. His voice high, speaking at a volume enough to threat people.
"Training became punishing." His words echoed in her head.
She watched the situation, her eyes tracking each movement. Daniel mirrored her, tension easing as the situation stayed relatively calm. But a nagging thought lingered in her mind—was Joshua slipping back into his old ways?
"Correction for insulting the Lord... Give me a break." He walked towards his camp before turning to her. "You have a hold on Joshua. Make use of it."
She sneered. "I don't. Nobody has a hold on Joshua."
"Yeah, but nobody can make him listen the way you do."
"You think too much of me."
"Look, I know you two have shared evenings together. Word is, you've gotten close to him that he's willing to listen to your stories. You don't know how many times he ignored us these days if we wanted to talk about anything outside The Scripture, God, White Legs, training, guns, scavenging, surviving. In fact, you two have been a conversation topic for the Sorrows here. They said both of you are 'so attentive to one another.'"
"Oh for Long Dick Johnson's sake." Her face and ears turned red in an instant. She dipped her hat down.
"I don't know, or care whatever happens between you two, but I can tell your thoughts mean something to him. I trust you not to let his former nature make a return."
In the small hours of the morning, she heard him wake the tribesmen up, putting them to their paces. Then, he told them to exercise in the late morning, and by noon, they all needed to spar and then train with their firearms, gauntlets, and clubs before letting them take a short break.
Even tribesmen whom he considered unfit to fight, who would be foragers, scouts, or helpers, received the same training. He stressed that White Legs, Yao Guai, giant mantis, and other malicious creatures could attack anytime, anywhere. Everybody must know how to survive, unarmed or armed. All of them always trudged back to the camps staggering and groaning, giving each other temporary remedies for pain, and they would always fell in deep sleep not long after they ate.
"You know, maybe you should give them a little break." She said, after reporting her progress.
"Is there a particular reason as to why you're telling me to do my job?"
"We're just—Daniel and I are just being careful so that your ways won't slowly evolve to ex-legate's ways, Joshua."
He shot her a cold stare petrifying her. She misspoke and she knew it.
"Mind your business somewhere else, Courier Six." He glared. "And I don't need your regular, voluntary reports if they're insignificant. Leave."
Her heart wanted to leap out. She hoped he didn't notice her heavy breathing. She walked away shortly.
During these times, he stayed up until late at night to plan the next day drills and contemplate the roles that the tribesmen would take. She always found him at the same spot, reading his papers, sometimes scratching and rewriting, and reading again. His sunken eyes disturbed her and she noticed the adding knots to secure his bandages around his body. She had offered him some food and even told him she had made a cup of black coffee for him. But the food and drink always ended up cold.
"Hey," she brought two bowls of coyote stew—the tribesmen hunted nearly a pack of them earlier and they had a feast outside Angel Cave—probably in the Sorrows' camp too. She placed a bowl on his table, careful to not let anything spill. "We've put mesquite beans, chunks of xander root, and finely chopped cave fungus here. Probably enough to make one's stomach full until tomorrow noon."
Again, he thanked her and said he would eat it later.
"You've been telling me that, and the others. But you never eat anything we give you."
"I eat when I'm hungry. And hunger doesn't come often, not in these days." He replied, eyes still fixed on his books and papers. She persisted that he needed to eat, and he shook his head.
"You don't eat enough and you never rest." She didn't get anything out of him. "I'll sit by the workbench and wait for you."
He took a deep breath and turned to her. Serious. "As I said. I'll eat when I'm hungry. If you're worried about me wasting food, I won't. Go and eat with the others." He went back to his writings.
"Joshua—"
He slammed his pencil down onto the table. "Do tell me, Courier. Which part of my words you didn't understand? I am not hungry. I'll eat when I am. I am not."
She went outside Angel Cave with a solemn face and settled herself between the feasting tribesmen. Through Follows-Chalk, she asked how they were doing, and they told her what she had heard before: that this hunt and feast were celebratory, after all the days they had to exert themselves on, that in spite of the fatigue, they were glad Joshua was willing to help them become stronger and more capable of defending and protecting their kin.
"I guess you had no luck?" Follows-Chalk asked when the group conversation was over, half-teasing.
"No. And he lashed out at me."
"You're not the first person he yelled at. But I know how you feel."
Follows-Chalk wasn't a mere junior scout any more and his name changed although she still called him the same; he'd climbed up quite high in the status, due to his ability to understand Joshua and his preparedness to follow his war chief's lead. Of course, she was proud of him, but the real reason why she was glad of this young tribal's achievement was because she could ask him to keep an eye on Joshua without getting caught.
"Will you make sure he eats his food for me? For the fiftieth time this time, maybe?" She asked, inattentively nibbling on an uncut chunk of the springy part of cave fungus.
"And for the fiftieth time this time maybe, I will try." He patted her shoulder. She smiled despite not being comforted by his kind gesture.
Weeks later, she took a short rest before she went on to assist the scouts, help maintain firearms, and try making improvised mine and grenade that the tribesmen could craft and use, yet again, since Joshua wanted to test it fast and didn't give her a chance to tinker with them further. In times like these, she wished Arcade had been there. She had been in the game long enough to hack through some of the toughest pre-war terminals alone, but fixing pre-war stuff that involves wires and small components didn't fall on her list of talents.
Resting her bag aside, she took out some cactus fruit and snacked on them. From afar, she watched Joshua drilling the tribesmen in what she thought a rather advanced agility course.
She noticed the physical changes in the men and women of the Dead Horses and the Sorrows who were now shaped to be adept in combat; they all had become muscular and well-defined, more agile, and more vigilant. White Legs' armament, along with Ulysses' wretched training, might still overpower them, but with this, they could fight them back and have more chance to succeed.
This was a challenge to them. It wasn't rare to see how they kept repeating the course from the very start. Joshua had set up an intricate training course, and some of the tribesmen would also assist him by jumping on them or throwing some small pebbles or sticks at them, emulating how White Legs would try to attack them.
One of the Sorrows had a real hard time, repeating from the start too frequently and she could see exhaustion creeping in the seemingly middle-aged man. Joshua, who'd been berating and shouting at the tribesmen, began to focus on this particular man only. There would be times when he would yell at the man in nose touch range, and that man would still fail and start all over again. The cycle didn't end and Joshua's frustration kicked in.
There was a splash and she shot her eyes at the source of the sound. The unavailing tribesman fell and panted; he waned visibly. Joshua walked measuredly towards him. She thought it was just going to be another rebuking but she jumped and flew to where they were when Joshua hit the man and yanked his necklace.
"Stop, Joshua!" Daniel screamed from a distance as he hurried to the Sorrows man.
He roared at the tribesman in the language of the Sorrows. "Joshua, stop it!" Daniel's voice cracked, panic rising in his throat. Daniel's shouts didn't interrupt him. His lifted his fist to throw another punch. "Joshua!" She dashed through the knee-length water and tried pulling him away from the man. He stood unmoved.
"Stay out of this, Gentile!" He snarled, looking down on her. He turned back to the tribesman who threw his arms over his head, pleading. It didn't deter him. Joshua railed at the poor man once more, snatched his necklace loose and began flailing.
Daniel ran tried to break them apart, helping her fruitless attempt to stop the raging man. "Joshua! Stop it! You're gonna kill him!" Alix screamed.
Joshua kept going, not giving a damn about any other people he hurt.
"Joshua! You're— Ah!" Something from his direction struck her brow bone. Warm drips of blood came out from it and she tore up from the pain. "Enough!" In the scuffle, she managed to take his gun, let herself go, and shot Joshua in the leg just to graze him. That seemed to work; he stopped and snapped his head to her. "Look at this! Take a real good look at your pistol. The light shines in darkness!" She shoved his gun in his face. "If your pain, your bandage, and this gun are your reminders to not fall again, they didn't work. They don't work. At all!"
"Now you see why I dislike the idea of fighting back." Daniel got up. Catching his breath, he turned to Joshua. "This is what I'm talking about Joshua, what I worry about, what I said about violence never leaving you deep down and the repercussions of that same violence! Look around you. They have fear written in their faces. Doesn't that at least remind you of something from back in the days?"
She walked towards Daniel and tossed the pistol into the water. "No more. We need to cool our heads. All of us." She patted Daniel's shoulders, prompting him to walk away before asking to tell the tribesmen that the training was over and they all should get some rest. When she turned around for the last time, everybody left, and Joshua stood alone.
She stared at Randall's terminal in his long-abandoned Stone Bones camp, thinking if she should start writing journals like he did especially in the times when she couldn't bring herself to talk to anybody.
Sitting back, she came to a decision that it would be pointless; she could always tell her friends about Zion when she returned to the Mojave. She crept to get a can of pork n' beans and a box of potato crisps she'd found in one of the Ranger Substations some time ago—which perplexed her; how all kinds of rats or small insects hadn't touched them at all.
It had been some days that she secluded herself in this cave camp every night; she didn't sleep in either the Sorrows or the Dead Horses' camp. She only went there when it was time to help the tribesmen, creeping out of the cave, crouching low to become one with the thickets, scoping with her rifle often to avoid the sight of any tribesmen. Whenever the night fell and everybody at the camp was asleep, she'd excuse herself and made her journey back to her base alone.
One evening, she had helped the Dead Horses with food and was about to sit down to drink her home-brewed sarsaparilla when a woman tried to give her four freshly roasted gecko kebabs on a hand-sewn banana yucca leaf plate. She shook her head and waved her bottle, but the woman did it again. The woman then said "Joshua Graham." She looked for Follows-Chalk and tried to make her understand that she didn't want to do it, but he wasn't around and she knew that the woman wouldn't stop. She gave a flat smile to the woman and relented.
When she quietly climbed up the cave to where Joshua might be, she heard clanking, clicking, and rattling of pistols. It had been a while since she had heard it last.
He sat on his perch, tending the pistols. Her heart skipped a beat; it felt like the first time she saw him in this cave. And just like how it was before, she couldn't bring herself to move or speak to him.
After more than twenty minded pistols she realized the food was getting cold, pushing her to gather willpower to speak. "Joshua, a woman—" She cut herself off as he snapped his head toward her, eyes wide. She cleared her throat. "Sorry to bother you, but a woman asked me to bring these to you." She started to walk to the workbench. "I'll put them here like usual."
"Alix," he called, when she started climbing down. Her heart throbbed. "Could you come here?"
She didn't anticipate the kind tone in his voice. She walked and slowed her pace when she saw him coming down. When he stood in front of her, she stopped altogether, frozen in place when he came closer. "I must apologize to you," he said. She couldn't bring herself to talk. "Forgive me," he went on, breaking the silence.
"In my rage, I didn't realize what I had done to you. It was difficult seeing your face when you stopped me. It upsets me now more when..." He stopped as he hovered his hand on the bruise around her eye and brow bone. She quietly replied that she had received worse and healing powder had been effective.
"No... I regret that day and the days when I treated you unfairly."
She remembered about the poor tribesman that got a lot more beating than her. "It's not me you should be apologizing to, it's the Sorrows man you lashed out on, and maybe his family."
"Yes. I have. To Daniel too. I haven't seen you around lately so I haven't had the chance." He told her to sit down, but she, still unsure about him, declined. He nodded and went on, "You were right. I let myself be absorbed into becoming who I once was. I don't regret making this decision and I was glad that we share the same view on White Legs." He paused. "But I regret hurting you. I could have avoided this all if I hadn't been too stubborn."
She rubbed her thumb against her knuckles and averted her gaze.
"All I'm asking is forgiveness, Alix. I've prayed and I continue to pray that I can learn from my mistake and make it up to you." He said, reaching for the side of her head.
At his touch, she stiffened and she knew that colour seeped its way to her cheeks, perhaps her entire face. Her eyes began to well up; any more from him and the well would break. In her mind, she begged him to stop and to her relief, he stepped back.
"Thank you for the food." His eyes softened, his cheeks slightly rose. "Do you want to join me?"
She told him that she had eaten and that she needed to find more components to make efficient traps and perfect the framework for the tribesmen. He told her to be careful and that she should go back here for dinner.
"Will I see you around?" He asked, just before she left. She replied that she would always be around anyway. "I meant to ask if I'll see you all the time, like before."
"I don't..." A thought came to her head she mustered up courage. "If... asking you for one more favor means I'll see you more often, will you do it?" She watched him, holding her breath. After a moment, he nodded.
"You've seen that the injured has doubled lately? Does that require me to have a day off?"
She scoffed slowly, feeling defeated when she thought she could at last reason with him. Alas, she couldn't come up with an argument. As she turned around and started to climb down, she heard his call.
"Sorry. I did imply I was going to do it. Fighting White Legs needs more strategizing from me now and it's necessary that I carefully plan different sets of manoeuvres."
Shrugging, she told him she understood.
"Let me finish," he said. "I could make time for a little vacation, but not the whole day. Can you plan something? If I have nothing new to do I'd be here doing these things."
She tried to think of something that wouldn't be too uncomfortable to do together.
"Well alright, uh... I... I ate a good sum of pre-war food. And... I don't have any RadAway left... so I'm planning to make some cave fungus stew." She shifted weights. "Wanna join me?"
She could see his cheekbones rising, and his gaze gentle, the way it was when they first met, unlike that of a few weeks ago.
"I'd be happy to join you."
"Okay, uh... why don't we go to the Welcome Booth next two evenings?" She smiled.
She started to scrounge around any pre-war places in Zion to find the right materials. Damned yao guai cave can wait, she thought. She focused on being immaculate in her new task that she got ambushed by White Legs a couple of times while rummaging—which she luckily survived without major injuries.
Some of the tribesmen, Follows-Chalk one of them, wondered about her hoard of armour and clothing but she refused to tell. For two days, she stayed up until dawn in the Dead Horses camp, working by herself when it's not her turn to keep watch.
"Okay." She said, spreading out the patchwork, makeshift waders she had been working on. She went to the nearby river and tested it. She thought, not too shabby—should be enough.
With a wide smile, she dashed to the Angel Cave. He was nowhere to be found at first, but she then found him at the clifftop, talking to some of the tribesmen.
"Try it." She asked him when he went inside the cave. "I only remembered halfway through that I don't know your size, so I hope it fits," she said. He hung it and only looked at it, then turned to her. "I'm not that good at sewing, but this is the best I could do."
"I assume this is for later?"
She nodded. "I don't want to see you suffer just for me, like before."
"You're very kind, Alix, thank you. But I have to try it later." She replied that it was nothing. "It's a shame I don't get to strip my clothes and change my bandage in front of you like before," he said as he walked back to the clifftop.
Not sure what to make of what she had heard, she simply chuckled. Though right after, she pulled her hat down, turned heel, and scurried outside.