He had walked up behind her then as she sat in the yard, not entirely quiet. And she did not look back over her shoulder at him, did not pay any mind. She was too caught up within herself, too caught up in death—or at least, the prospect of it---she supposed. An errant and very wicked thought hit her, a bullet between the eyes so to speak. 

Jotaro sat beside her and she asked, rather far away and jaded, “Who’d be the first of us to go, do you think?” Their shoulders brushed together as he only shrugged. Was looking out at the yard along with her and Claudia wondered if he had been committing it to memory, if he thought he would ever see it again. It did not seem likely that he would. “If Dio’s as big and bad as Joseph says, then it just kind of makes sense. That we won’t all make it back, you know?”

For a moment, she could only listen to the wind, to his breathing. Claudia turned her head and looked to him. He tried so desperately to keep an air of composure, to be aloof—to be a dick, really. Still, at the prospect of death, Jotaro breathed funny. It stopped short at his chest, lungs seizing and made for a sputtering, labored gust of air while he tried to breathe through his nose. In the waning haze of the evening, he looked so much like the boy he was in truth. His size, the way he carried himself, made it so easy to forget that. That he was just a kid, not much younger than Claudia—only a year or so if she had to guess. And maybe that meant she was still a kid too to someone somewhere, though she hadn’t felt that way in a painfully long time. Watching him, she thought that he might cry. 

But he didn’t cry. Only looked back at her and she caught a glint of something, not wholly unlike fear but still too different to call it so, in the green of his eyes. “It won’t be me.”

“You sound so sure.”

“Can’t die ’til I see this through.”

“That’s kind of sweet.” And she meant it. 

His jaw tensed, that awful breathing in full force, “Fuck you.” The words made her seethe in an absurd surge of emotion she could not predict, made her want to bite like the angry caged animal she knew for a fact she was. 

“Fuck you too. I hope it is you.”

“Early start?”

She shrugs, “Might as well be.”

“What’d you take, Xixi?”

“Doesn’t matter.” 

“Yes, it does.”

“You know, you can go if this is what we’re gonna do all day.”

Charlie sighs, a little defeated. Turns away and unlocks the car. “Just get in.”

“Love you.”

“Xixi”

“I love you.” It takes the place of an apology in her mouth. She’s never been able to say sorry—to say it and really mean it—now is no exception. 

Charlie glances back but doesn’t meet her eyes, “Yeah, love you too. Get in, you need to sleep. You look like shit.” 

“How sweet.” She rolls her eyes, pushes up off the car. 

A fast driver is something that Charlie is not—that she so desperately in this moment wishes he was. Xixi sniffs, feels a warm trickle start and leans her head back against the headrest. Hopes this bleed is better than the last. 

She’s not sure what time it is anymore, even with the sun beaming down into her eyes, time is all a haze, a concept more than a fact. Her bangs tickle her lashes. She’ll have to trim them soon, she thinks. Charlie slows down at a yellow light even though he had more than enough time to speed past. Xixi sighs, pinches her nose as the trickle begins to descend. “Slower than my fuckin’ grandma.”

“At least I have a license.”

“Careful.”

He glares at her, forthright. Contempt under all that love. It makes her sick, or maybe it’s the booze. “You go away for another year, I’m not—I won’t sit here and wait for you.”

Xixi laughs, all wrong and nasally from the grip of her fingers on her nostrils, bites back “Yeah you will.” So quickly and with such certainty that it shocks her surely as much as it shocks him. “My bad.” The light turns green, Charlie stays unmoving, his hand on the wheel not so much as twitching. 

When Boone’s recognition failed them, Six got in close. Yeah, she had to get in real close. Kiss close. Saw, almost in real-time, how their eyes sank into the sockets, muddy and glazed over, the way their lips curled up past their white gums. They looked nothing like people then, just corpses. Bodies unlike whatever descriptions she had on that ledger. 

They spent two and a half weeks identifying bodies in that heat. Six had thought it the worst, then—that nothing could be worse. But Flagstaff is burning. A hellish, sweltering heat; one that’s sizzling the skin off her nose and cheeks as they walk. She doesn’t remember ever seeing Boone this red, not even back then at the dam, in that putrid heat. Hell, he’s almost the color of his beret, which he’d shed completely two days ago; snatched it off his head in a fit of frustration and hasn’t looked at it since. It’s odd, she thinks, to see him without it—a rare thing, to be sure. Rarer now that his hair is starting to grow back in. Darker than Six ever thought it would be. She had never pegged Boone for a brunette but it suits him, she thinks. Suits him better than the meticulous shaving of his head ever did. 

She takes a switchblade to her shirt just outside of town proper. They’re holed up in an old auto shop, Boone with his shirt pulled up halfway, back flat against the cool concrete, his head resting on his pack. Six has her back to him, shuffles as best as she can away from the fabric of her shirt while still being in it. The dull blade doesn’t cut through the seam quite like how she thought it would in her mind’s eye, but this was to be expected. Things never go quite how she imagined them. She’s holding the switchblade like she’s gearing up to stab herself in the shoulder, right where her socket is. She drags the blade down harder than she should; the resistance of the seam gives way and it cuts through the rest of the fabric like water. From seam to hem in what feels like a fraction of a second. Cuts through her like water, too, as the tip of it pierces her skin on the way down. Six hisses sharp through her teeth, hears the shuffling of Boone behind her. He’s half sat up when she looks back. 

“The hell are you doing?”

Six rolls her eyes, looks at him over her shoulder. “It’s too hot. I’m cutting the sleeves off.”

“You’re gonna kill yourself with that thing.”

“It’s a little-“ she sighs, “I nicked myself, is all. I’m fine, it’s fine.”

Switching the blade to her other hand, she reaches into the shirt now, touching her fingertips to the long line she carved into her side. It isn’t quite bloody, not quite just a simple scratch either. Burning wherever she touches it, she can feel drops of blood fighting their way out through the open skin. Not deep at all, she thinks and sighs almost contentedly. They wouldn’t have had anything to patch it up regardless. Six jumps in her skin a little when she feels his warmth beside her—was too caught up in the warmth of her blood spilling from her side to notice him making his way towards her. He’s looking down at her, craning his head, trying to get a good look at what she’s done to herself through the fabric. She feels a sudden need to shrink away under his gaze though she can’t quite remember ever feeling that at all. Not with Boone, at least. He reaches over to take the switchblade from her limp hold and starts carefully at the fabric. Short, measured slashes with the blade before he can get it even with her original incision. He takes the blade in his mouth then, ripping the rest of the fabric off in one swift movement. It jolts her, maybe a little more than he’d intended, because there’s a bit of fear that washes over his face. Like he’s scared he hurt her. The hole on this side, her right side, is bigger than she wanted it to be. She can see him sizing it up as he moves to the front of her.

“You want it to match?”

Six shrugs, “I’m not signing up for any fashion shows, I don’t think it matters.”

“What do you know about fashion shows?” He teases as he starts in on the other side. Six snorts and shakes her head. Fights the urge to shove him now that he’s holding a blade so close to her skin. 

“Fuck off.”

Things have been easier the further they’ve slipped into Arizona. They’ve fallen into old routines, memory flooding their muscles again like it never left; shirking around Legionnaires, taking them out, it feels like they’re a team again, like they’re whole again.

“Hey,” she starts absentmindedly, and Boone hums in response. “You ever dream?”

He almost sounds like he wants to laugh, “Do I dream?” 

“Yeah, asshole, do you dream?”

“Guess I do, yeah,” Six sees him shrug out of the corner of her eye. Can’t really bring herself to look at him and doesn’t know why. “About bad shit, mostly—but, I mean, who doesn’t. Sometimes-“ he stops so suddenly, word and movement altogether, that Six thinks he’s up and died. She can look to him now, almost wishes she couldn’t, and stares into his eyes. Tries to guess what he’ll say next—tries to build herself up for whatever devastation she’s bound to hear. “Sometimes it’s just Carla. Before all the shit, you know. Back at the strip when we met and she’s just talking and talking. And everything feels okay for a while.”

Six smiles a little at that, nods her head and ignores the inexplicable heaviness settling in her chest. She wants to be happy about the fact that Boone can still think of Carla fondly and not have it tainted by what happened. Sort of is happy about it but that heaviness throws her off.

“Sometimes, it’s you, though.” And that throws her off too. 

“Really?” he nods, “And what all do I get up to in these dreams of yours?”

Boone shrugs, rips off the final piece of fabric and tosses Six’s switchblade to the side. She swears he’s smiling—no—smirking, almost, as he does it. “What do you dream about?”

It’s her turn to shrug, unsure of just how much she wants to tell him. How far she wants to let him into the visions tormenting her. “I don’t know. Storms.”

“Storms?”

“Yeah, like, tornadoes, thunder. Shit like that.” 

He sits back, a genuine, soft curiosity in his voice. Seeing this tenderness in him, it makes her skin crawl. Doesn’t expect it from Boone of all people. “Why dream about storms?” 

“Why dream about me?” She’s teasing in her tone, albeit a little prickly. Six has a feeling his answer is the same as hers. Has a feeling that he, too, just doesn’t know.

They aren’t as easily recognized this far east and it’s a little disorienting for Six, seeing Legion walking around and not immediately going for their guns. Not immediately being attacked like they were just a few miles away from Yuma. It makes them all the more uneasy, like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are endless tributes to Caesar, odes to his glory. Six wonders who the next one will be—it would have been Lanius, no doubt, but she took care of him long ago. Maybe the next one will just be some nobody from Flagstaff and she can nip it in the bud on her way out. But nothing in the wasteland is ever that easy, she thinks. 

Flagstaff is not quite like the fort, would feel like a normal settlement if not for the heavy Legion presence. It’s easy for Six to let her shoulders to loosen here, to forget. But, without fail, she catches sight of a Legionnaire out of the corner of her eye. And for a second she sees him, risen from the grave and wonders if he’s come back for her. She tenses again and Boone looks at her sidelong. Maybe it is a bit of sickening irony that he looks through the cut sleeves of her shirt—sees more of her skin than he knows he ought. The slight pallor of what she hides from the sun, the way her skin wraps and suctions itself around her ribs. The way he can see, through the gaps in the fabric, the side of her breast— His neck goes taut and feels like it knots, like he’s pulled a muscle from tightening his jaw for too long. She catches him as he flinches at the sudden pain. The hell was that? she mouths. He doesn’t look her in the eye. Boone always looks her in the eye.

What gets her is that the people here smile. Kind, empty half-smiles but they extend such a politeness that Six never thought possible of a Legion settlement. She looks around as they come to the center of Flagstaff. Takes not of the lack of women and feels like throwing up at the relief that courses through her. Relief that, at least on that, the Legion never changes. At least with that, she always has a reason—Boone too. Six brushes her shoulder against his, lets the skin of her arm rest against him and the overwhelming, sunbaked warmth sink into her flesh.

Only one place in Flagstaff will let them rent a room for dirt cheap. A small, dingy thing—used to be a bar, according to the old man running the place. He hasn’t sold any actual alcohol in years, not since before the Legion took over. Not since he could stand up straight, either, Six thinks. He’s perpetually hunched, always looking like it hurts to stare right ahead. 

“Know if there’s any work around here?” Six asks, looking past the man and instead toward a pack of cigarettes badly hidden on a shelf behind him. She hasn’t had a smoke in a week and it’s killing her. 

The man shrugs as best as he can, “There’s work everywhere. We got a board—center of town, you can’t miss it.” And he’s right, you can’t. It was the first thing Six had been drawn to but a cursory glance had Boone dragging her away from it. Too many Legion postings, she supposes, and they’re not that desperate for caps just yet.

“Yeah, no, I saw it. Just wondering if you know about anything worthwhile.”

“Depends on how desperate you are, sweetheart.”

“Not desperate at all.” Boone cuts in, arms crossed on the bar top, still sticky from the ghost of liquor spilled decades ago.

“We’re just trying to get by, maybe do some good while we’re at it. That’s all.”

“Is it, really?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

When he breathes in deep through his nose, Six can almost hear the crackle of his old, worn lungs. It hurts her to watch him breathe, almost as much as the pain beginning to radiate from behind her eye. 

“If you’re looking to be a couple of do-gooders, you could always look into those girls, the ones that went missing a few months back. Legion’s been doing jack shit about it.”

“Missing, huh? What do you think happened to them?”

He gets in close, lowers his voice to a whisper. “Look around, sweetheart. You know. We all do.”

“And you’re, what, counting on a couple of strangers to take care of it ‘stead of doing it yourself?”

“We tried but you know we can only get so far without staring trouble. We can only hope they went quickly, now. Last one that went missing was a trader’s daughter. Poor bastard’s been running all across Flagstaff for weeks asking about her. The way I see it, he needs to accept it for what it is and hope they killed her right away rather than-“ he falters by the end of it, doesn’t quite have it in it to finish his sentence. To say the word. 

Six does, though. “Rape her.” 

“That’s right.”

She feels a sickness rip through her that she can’t quite describe. Slides off the barstool with unease as she fishes through her pocket. Ten caps. “For the room,” she mumbles out, taking the key when he slides it across the bar top. 

“It’s four more for a loosie, if you’re interested.” Six stares at him, mouth agape in near disgust. 

“Always looking to an extra cap, aren’t you?”

“It’s the way of the world, sweetheart.”

Only candles light their way as they descend to the bar’s basement. A narrow hallway with three doors made into a makeshift motel of sorts. The stabbing pain behind Six’s eye eases up in the gentle warmth of the candle light. She fumbles trying to fit the key into the lock, never quite lining it up right. It gets bad like this, sometimes. Her hands too slow to catch up to what her brain wants them to do. She tries again, and again as her face grows hotter with embarrassment. Can feel Boone’s eyes at the back of her head watching her struggle. Resigned, she hands him the key and tries to swallow the overwhelming fear that she will get worse. Get worse and lose her mind before she can ever really get it back. Boone opens the door in the fraction of the time one attempt took her. Before he steps through, he stops to look at her—looks at her like he’s sorry. Six scoffs and pushes past him into the room. 

For once, it’s Boone that sleeps while Six lays awake—a strange deviation from their routine they’ve kept up for what feels like a year now. And it has, in fact, been a year. More than that, if the math she’s doing in her head is close to right. She stares at her hands, thinking about all the times they’ve failed her, how they could again. Her lip trembles as she imagines her mind filing her soon, too. She deeply dreads losing her mind before getting to Tulsa. Before getting the chance to find out who she really is. She wonders if when—because it feels inevitable now- she loses it, loses it all, it’ll be like that inky blackness she existed in back at Doc Mitchell’s for weeks. It was sort of nice, then. No thoughts, no worries, just the dark enveloping her entire existence. Boone’s rhythmic breathing pulls her from that train of thought. She doesn’t know what she’d do if she was suddenly unable to hear it. She almost reaches to touch him—stops herself halfway. Brings her hand back and starts to pick her lips bloody in the dark. 

Ammo is tunning low and it’s making Boone itch to get the hell out of dodge. They’ve been walking Flagstaff up and down for the better part of the morning, searching for some travel-weary trader to take advantage of. And to their credit, they find him, sat on an old milk crate in the shade, head in his hands with his brahmin huffing beside him.  “Excuse me!” Boone watches from a few feet back, nearly in awe at how easily Six can turn the charm up when she wants to. “So sorry to bother you, but my partner and I, we’re in the need of some items. Ammunition, water, you know, the basics.”

The trader tilts his head up towards her, a lazy half-smile on his face and Six plays him like a fiddle. Lowballs him into oblivion, really, flashing that million dollar smile. All teeth, phony but so frustratingly charming. It works, too; Six manages to score them bullets, water, hell, even a stimpack for less than 40 caps. As the trader makes to sit back down on his crate, Six turns back to Boone. She looks proud, smiles with her lips pressed together—it meets her eyes. Boone can’t help the way the side of his mouth quirks up into a grin. Feels proud of her, too.

They’re scavenging for scraps on the edges of Flagstaff. Looking for things to sell, trade. It feels like they’ve passed by the same building a million times. It’s an old looking thing, even by pre-war standards. Like it was built to be ancient. They haven’t gone in—have felt a push away from the place rather than a pull. Six stops just short of the curb in front of the house. Feels a sort of Deja Vu. Can remember, with certainty, opening the door. Sees in her minds eye, the wallpaper of the foyer peeling down towards them. Can hear their footsteps echo off the walls that have been rotting away for centuries. Up the stairs, she somehow knows, there’s a single room. A bed with a rusting frame at the center of it. She sees Boone walk over to the window, set his rifle down against the sill. She’s seen this before—swears she’s seen this before. Or maybe she’s dreamed it. Wind blows through the moth eaten curtains in this strange memory. Six feels an itch at the side of her face and scratches it a little too hard. Nicks herself with her own nails. Boone looks at her and for a moment, Six thinks he’s about to tell her that he’s been here too.

She begins to hear the start of a song in the back of her mind. It blends in with all the droning, with the freight train winds that are always flooding her ears in the most silent of moments. Six starts to think that, maybe, these are the sounds of home—or at the very least, what home used to mean to her. She wonders in earnest if when they reach Tulsa, she’ll feel a sudden clarity. If she’ll get back what she’s lost all at once. It tugs at her heart, the song. “Nearer”, it drags, the voice of a woman in her head sings it slow like honey. A voice different to the one of her own mind. A voice that makes her eyes burn when she fixates on it. An errant thought crosses her mind and Six wonders if she has ever had a mother.

Flagstaff is different at night. Colder—so much colder. Dark, too. The lack of light casts dark shadows on the faces of whatever few souls lurk on the streets at night. Makes it look like their faces are void of eyes and, in turn, souls. They don’t smile anymore, Six can’t tell if they even look at her. She starts to scratch at her face again, picks at the fresh, newly formed scab and doesn’t wince as she peels it off of her face. Six keeps walking, keeps bleeding. She holds onto the scab, keeps it tucked away the long nail of her middle finger. The board in the center of town calls to her. They really are desperate now—have jack shit to sell. Six looks back at Boone, feels a wet trickle down her cheek, sees the confusion he wears so freely in his gaze as it sets on the blood. He’s closer than she thought. She jerks her head to the job board, “We can’t be picky. Not here.” He seems to understand now. Before she turns, she swears she sees his hand come up out of the corner of her eye. Anything that’s worthwhile caps-wise is posted by the Legion and Six can feel the disapproval brewing within Boone as he reads over her shoulder. Her back is touching his chest. There is one job, though, hidden under a mountain of fliers for shitty little fetch jobs and pest control work. A missing girl, the trader’s daughter—the same girl the man from the bar was talking about, she realizes. And the name on the flier, Jeremiah, strikes her too. Places the name onto the trader from earlier today, the one she’d played mercilessly. He has to have been here for longer than the few weeks they’d previously been told, given the aged look of the paper. Waiting. Hoping that his daughter would come back to him. 

Six rips the flier off of the board and feels Boone’s hand on her shoulder not half a second later. 

“We should think about this.”

“What is there to think about? She’s missing, we have the time to look into it.”

“I just don’t know if there’s anything worth looking into. The guy said it’s been weeks.”

“Would you-“  she can feel the words weigh heavy on her tongue like a knife custom made to dig into Boone’s ribs and twist. The exhaustion and heat are setting into her bones. She doesn’t want to do this here. “Just let me sleep on it, yeah?”

Back at the bar, the man is gone. Everyone is gone. “Guess we missed the rapture,” Six muses, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She looks to Boone, half expecting a smile from him. Instead, he looks at her like he has no fucking clue what she’s talking about.

At their door, she stops him from unlocking the door. Gestures for the key. She wants to do this herself. Wants to open the door herself. Boone hands her the key, takes a step back. With a vice grip on the rusted key, Six fits it into the lock. Turns it.

Boone’s back faces her and she isn’t sure how much time has passed. It feels like hours and minutes all at once. She thinks about the girl, about how the man so confidently said her father should hope she was killed rather than raped. Six presses her hand flat against Boone’s back and wonders if he thought the same about Carla—thought the same about her when she had her little stint with the Legion. He flinches and Six knows better than to ask the words that catch in her throat. She holds the fabric of his shirt in a vice grip, shuffles so close to him that she might as well be under his back. Six says nothing as she sincerely hopes he never thought about her that way. Knows she can’t offer him the comfort of telling him that none of it happened. Maybe this is her way of saving him from the truth. 

“We’re gonna find that girl,” she whispers. 

The truth of the matter is, Daya always thought she’d have more fight left in her when the Empire caught up. An ever-present, inevitable when following behind her every step. Waiting, biding its time, a hair’s breadth away from consequence, like she always does. So incredibly fucking stupid.

She can taste blood in her teeth. Runs her tongue across the inside of her lip, now split open something awful. Reminds her of licking a copper coin as a child, the sting of her tongue up against it leaves involuntary tears welling in her eyes. Despite the twinge of pain, she remains listless. A fawn with an arrow through the neck wouldn’t be this pliant, this resigned. She should thrash about, keep the fight going but the thought itself exhausts her. And though her heart cannot bring itself to beat any slower than the incessant drumming pace it is taking on now when she thinks about it, Daya imagines that her time at the gallows will be fleeting. There one second, gone the next. What's a moment of fear to an eternity of nothing at all.

It almost makes her laugh, the cynic she’s become in her final hours, minutes, really, when the wagon stops short. A sudden jerk that leaves her wincing. Her pointed ears twitch, straining against the sound of the breeze. 

An armored step falls heavy onto the dirt road—she imagines one of the Crownsguard in her mind’s eye. Wishes that she hadn’t been too distracted by her newfound nihilism to listen in on the quiet droning of their conversation as they cart her off to her death. There’s a grunt, the clinking of a belt unbuckling. She tenses. Recognizes the Crownsguard that speaks as the one who’d bent her wrist as far back as it would go and then some. Gruff and all too loud for how far he actually is from the wagon, he calls out, “Watch her. Need to take a piss.” to the other. 

“Just hold it, we’re nearly there!” the other one—who was more boy than man if her memory serves her—sounds like a tantrum-bound child. Daya nearly rolls her eyes. 

He sounds miles away when she hears the larger one next. Knows he’s really not all that far. “You try holding it since this morning. 

The boy scoffs, mutters quietly to himself. “No one asked you to. Dick.” It’s so quiet, Daya wonders if he’s scared his companion will hear.

A pang of something adjacent to hope resonates within her chest. Almost as if on their own, her wrists find it in themselves to twist despite the pain. She feels suffocated, her breaths ragged as she bites down on her lip. As she tastes more blood. Remembers a trick from an old friend, one of the gnarlier ones that makes her stomach turn in all the wrong ways. Daya sucks in a breath, holds it, as she tries with all the strength she can muster to pull her hand—the one already half-numb, almost foreign to her own body—through the cuff. With eyes screwed shut, she focuses the pressure on her thumb joint. Knows that if she breaks it, she has a chance. She stifles a whimper as she works against every instinct protecting her from herself. 

A sickening crack, a severance so violent that it makes her vision go white when those eyes of hers shoot open, sounds out in the quiet of the clearing. There’s a clammy cold-sweat that emerges at the back of her neck and lower back, a haziness like swimming in molasses fills her head. Daya breathes, or tries her best to breathe, through the agony. Watches the tree-line at the edge of her periphery. Asks it for guidance in her mind, for strength. Damn near prays to it. 

Finding more give between her mangled hand and the iron encasing it, she rolls slightly to one side. Looks as best she can over her shoulder at the boy who sits staring ahead, none the wiser. Laying flat again, dark curls crushed against the splitting, half rotted wood of the wagon, she gears up to pull once more. It would only take one good try. Just one and she’s free. 

She’s halfway out of the cuff when she hears the screech. A gravelly, shrill sort of thing that makes her swear she’s gone deaf. Clumsily, Daya sits up, watches intently in the direction of the scream, glances to the side to see the boy staring cluelessly at the treeline. They look at each other, brows furrowed, then back at the trees. 

The other Crownsguard emerges holding a tiny creature by the back of its cloak, little legs flailing in the air, a litany of curses falling from its mouth. It almost looks like a child to her. She winces as it is thrown into the wagon with her, body bouncing off ever so slightly on impact. It’s only now that she sees the green fingers, the overgrown and bandaged ears. A goblin. Daya watches it—her?---fumble about, hands grasping for the half porcelain doll mask at her feet. Unsure of what to do, she nudges it towards her fellow prisoner with the toe of her boot. The goblin whimpers, dry, cracked lips twisting further into a frown. She looks at her with those impossibly large, yellow eyes. Daya can’t remember the last time she was face to face with a goblin like this, if at all. 

The goblin rises to make a break for it but the larger Crownsguard is quicker. Shoves her back with very little force and Daya almost feels bad for the way her head cracks against the wood. He turns to the boy. “Fucking thing tried to take my gold!”

“What is it?” he asks with such a childlike wonder in his voice. How old could this kid possibly be?  

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a goblin before, boy.”

A little ashamed, fingers brushing against the hilt of his shortsword, “I haven’t, no.”

He searches around his belt and Daya watches him pull out a pair of cuffs small enough to fit the goblin’s tiny wrists. She’s still got her head in her hands, groaning, when Daya spares her a glance. The cuffs are tossed at the boy and he fumbles to catch them. “Now you have. Get it tied up and quick. Other one’s got to hang before morning.” It’s only now that his attention is back on Daya. He scans her with his eyes, a real blink and you’ll miss it thing. She glares at him through her lashes, curls falling wildly over her face. There’s a twitch in his jaw. He climbs into the wagon as the boy wrestles with the goblin to get her cuffed. Reaches for his belt again and comes away with a dagger. One of hers that they’d taken along with her gold and every other thing she had to her name in that sad little bag. The pommel smashes against her temple, a dense sounding collision of metal and skin, even the bone underneath, it feels like. 

Daya allows herself to fall back, the little bit of fight that had surged within her gone as soon as it came. Can feel the goblin at her feet, tied and whipping around. Cursing the Crownsguard, their mothers, the Gods. Hell, even her. With bloodstained teeth, she smiles wryly. Manages to chuckle a little.

Before morning, they said. She wonders if she’ll get to see the sun before she goes. 

“Hey,” the horses trot across cobble now. Proper paved roads and she can see at the edges of her vision small, humble homes. This isn’t a town. Hardly a village. There’s no Law-Master here, certainly not a High Richter. They’re putting her down quietly, she thinks. Cowards. “Hey!” A little boot kicks at the meat of her thigh, right where a nasty bruise had already been forming. Instinctually, Daya flinches away from it. Raises her head just slightly to see the goblin staring back at her. The night’s turning to dawn now, she can discern the exact shade of green of her skin, almost the same as the color of her own long-sleeved button up that hangs ill fittingly off her frame, can see every crack and speck of dirt on that porcelain mask of hers. 

Daya doesn’t bother to whisper. “What,” comes out prickly, bitchy. To think this goblin might be the last real person she speaks to.

“Shh! They’ll hear!” 

“They sure will.” 

“Listen,”

“No.”

“Just listen.” Daya sighs, actually does listen because she’s in no position to choose her company now. Beggars, choosers, all that. The goblin shrinks herself down more than Daya thought was possible, a little conspiratorial edge to her voice, “I think we could work something out.” 

Daya snorts, “Oh, yeah?” She props herself up as best as she can, smiles amused despite the pain of her lip splitting from the inside. Bringing her voice down to that same shady little whisper, she leans closer to the goblin just barely. “Then please, enlighten me, oh wise goblin, miss.” That earns her another kick. She doesn’t flinch this time, knows she deserved it. Her thumb is absolutely killing her. Won’t have to worry about that for much longer, though. 

“I’m serious! We could get out of here. Both of us.”

“Why not just make a break for it yourself?”

“Need the muscle.”

“My hand is broken.”

“And?”

“Listen,” she takes in a breath, ribs expanding under bruised skin and the too-tight bodice under the shirt that’s bunching up under her now. The collar cutting of it into her throat ever so slightly. “There is no fucking way the two of us are going to make it past them. Absolutely none.” Daya almost lays back down, starts to shuffle back into the only position that’s sort of comfortable before she stops. “No, you know what? Even if we did make it, there would just be more Crownsguard to string us up. It would take a miracle—I’d owe you for life if we made it out. And I mean actually out. Not gonna happen.”

When she breathes, it hurts. Even through all the drugs they’ve pumped into her bloodstream, she feels it. She’s not entirely sure what’s wrong, hasn’t ever felt a pain like this before. One that a cocktail of pharmaceuticals couldn’t fully tame. She’s fucked up good and still, it hurts. Her throat is bone dry. Rough and when she tries to swallow, the muscles of it constrict in on themselves with a friction that would make her cry out if she wasn’t higher than a kite. Still beats all the tubes the medics forced down it. 

Eden cracks her eyes open, just the tiniest bit to get a glimpse through the darkness of her lashes. There’s a ghost at the foot of her bed. An angel to her. She still remembers his hands and the pressure of them against her seeping wound. Remembers Johnny falling to his knees but she wasn’t looking at him then. No, she was looking at Simon. Staring into his eyes with what little strength she had because, in the moment, she wouldn’t have minded if they were the last thing she ever saw. In her mind’s eye, she gets a flash of him laying her down on the tile once she’d gone blank behind the eyes. Can still feel the first compression against her chest. The first crack, then nothing. Total oblivion. No light, no angelic choir—no angels, period, save for him, of course. She’d lost him when she went unconscious under the thick, heavy blanket of almost-death. It’s a feeling she’s felt before. It takes her back to the bathroom at home, all the way in Los Angeles. That brief abyss. And it was peaceful, she supposes. As peaceful as bleeding out or overdosing can be. There’s a feeling spawning now, as she looks at him. The feeling of a thought being right on the brink of fruition but you cannot, for the life of you, get it out. 

Genesis. That’s what this is—what this all reminds her of. The beginning of everything, in a biblical sense. When God created the Heavens and Earth, said “let there be light”. When He created Man, Adam, so soul-crushingly alone in the paradise of Eden. And Eden, her own name feeling ironic now, remembers reading that passage and feeling bad for him. Pity at his loneliness despite her lack of faith. But it didn;t last long, for out of a fraction of his rib, Eve was born. She wonders how many pieces her ribs might have split into—supposes that’s what has to be wrong because there’s nothing else—and silently contemplates what may be born from them.

Is Simon God or is he Eve in this drug induced analogy? Is she Adam—is this sterile room Eden? She’s got the fractures for it. More than enough if the ache is any indication. Maybe Simon could be both. After all, the connection between Adam and Eve is something akin to worship. He betrayed everything for the love he had for her, such a blind, unwavering trust. One she knows deep in her bones. If that isn’t the biggest act of worship, then what is? Eden worships him by that definition. Often silent and entirely self contained, but she worships him. Can’t tell if she’s waxing poetic now or finally going mad. Definitely a little bit of both. She resents her parents for sending her to Catholic school in her early years. Eden shouldn’t be thinking this way, not about her lieutenant. But she has been, for much longer than she’s been high and still, she blames it on the drugs.

He catches her gaze. The jig is up—can’t play dead anymore. Her ribs are in pieces and he’s to blame. She fucking adores him right now. Her heart swells in her chest—purely metaphorical, though, She knows that if it did truly swell, it would impale itself on the sharp, jagged edges of the fractures and bleed.

Staring back at her is a confirmation email for a flight. Scheduled a week from now and, god, she can’t remember booking that business class seat for the life of her—can practically hear her wallet crying from wherever in the room she’d thrown it. Juno needs; needs to get answers out of Ron, to get up off this floor, needs to not puke all over herself when she does.

Needs to call Isaac.

She coughs and sniffles, rolls over onto her stomach and stares down at the screen. Flips around the display absentmindedly, staring even harder at the four hundred messages vying for her attention. Hasn’t ever been all that good of a texter—is by far a much better talker. Isaac’s messages are down in the darkest depths of her inbox, ignored just as well as his calls. But she finds them easily enough, like they’d been calling for her and, really, they have. Her thumbs move independently of her with minds of their own as they tap against the keyboard. Juno gets as far as a “Hey” before the display dims and her ringtone makes her wince. 

Fucking Ronnie.

“He’s a no-good bastard,” Is what Ralph says when Juno asks him about Ronnie. And she laughs because she doesn’t really know what to say to that—knows that Fish would’ve pushed back on it; any decent interviewer would have pushed back on it, but she leaves it. Lets it hang in the air and become the truth between them.

Juno knows the basics about Ron. How he was a broke kid from Tennessee that hitchhiked his way to Los Angeles on a whim because, really, what else was there to do in the 80s, that LA had been, for all intents and purposes, the only home he ever claimed. Hours and hours of scrubbing through old interviews told her as much. Fish’s research had been incomprehensible at best; Juno had to start from scratch once she decided to pick this mess back up. 

Ron had only left Los Angeles once in his career—in his entire life since first settling there, actually—only to be seen an odd handful of times by Merced locals and that alone is working Juno’s brain a little too hard for her liking. She sighs, needs some color to all this.

“That no-good bastard was your friend for twenty years,” Juno leans back, “has to be more to it than that, right?”

“Sure. There’s more—just don’t know what all you wanna hear.”

Juno shrugs, “Give me what you got.” 

“Kid, you might have all the time in the world but I don’t. Not for what I’ve got”

“Fine. Just before Merced, then.”

“Shit, I dunno. Ron never talked much about anything at the end. Just drank—it was sad to see but, shit, I was drinking like hell too, what was I supposed to do, you know? Bought a house though—yeah, he bought a house. Up there, up in Merced.”

“That far from LA?”

“LA was a shitshow for him back in the day, Junie. Real fucking shitshow.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

She’s taking off his mic, real gentle because she cannot afford to buy another one, when he drops a bomb on her. A bomb in the form of a question, “You talk to any of his kids yet?” all casual like. As if she knew Ron even had kids. And maybe he can see it on her face because his brows pinch together and he cocks his head. “Aw shit you didn’t know, did you?” Juno shakes her head. “Yeah, no, he’s got a whole mess of ‘em. That’s why LA was hell.” 

Scrambling for her pen, Juno leaves the mic hanging from his collar. Sits on his kitchen table like her mother never taught her any manners—she did, for the record, but Juno really can’t give a fuck about manners when she’s hit with a bombshell like this. 

“Talk,”

He’s chuckling, “There’s that backbone.”

“Ralph, talk.”

“Look, I don’t know anything about any of them except for his son. The youngest kid. I looked out for him when Ron fucked off to the end of the Earth. Picked up the slack where he couldn’t—or where he just didn’t feel like it. He’s a good kid. Still talk to him. Name’s Isaac.” 

She’s staring at her notes in awe. Real, genuine, fucking gobsmacked awe. Wonders how many people know this because even Fish, in all his senseless ramblings where he ran her through his notes again and again, he never mentioned children. Juno’s skin is singing. She can hear her heart in her ears.

Ralph smiles, stands. Rips the mic off with such violence that it makes Juno flinch as he hands it to her. He’s done and she knows better than to overstay her welcome. He sees her to the door, only a few steps off from where they were sitting. Holds it open for her and Juno makes an offhand remark of how gentlemanly he is, which gets a full belly laugh. 

With only a step outside the trailer, he stops her. 

“Careful if you’re gonna sniff around Isaac’s life. He’s fine, nice kid, but his momma’s a different story.”

“Is this grown man’s momma gonna be a problem for me?”

Ralph shrugs, “She was a real bitch when I knew her. Terrorized Ron ‘til the day he left.” 

It takes everything in her to not burst out laughing as Ron wipes out on his skateboard. He’s lost his touch and badly so. Fish’d be sad about it, she bets. Feels sad, too, just looking at him—too old and ruined to be doing any of this anymore.

“You sure you won all those competitions fair and square, old man?”

“Fuck you.” He’s at the top of the bowl again now. 

As he goes down, she hollers out. “I’m just saying, I’ve seen better.” And smack goes Ron against the concrete. Juno can’t help it, she laughs. Loud and raucous and infuriating. Barely has time to dodge Ron’s skateboard as it comes flying towards her. Juno whistles, “Could’ve played baseball with an arm like that.” 

“Fuck off. Fucking bumpkin.”

“Shit, I’m not the one from Gatlinburg.”

“Like Houston’s any better.”

“It is, actually.” The edges of his board scrape against the concrete as he picks it up, sits beside her with his legs splayed out ahead of him. “By, like, a landslide.”

“Too big of a city, Houston. Too much shit.”

“Dude, you lived in LA for a million years—by choice. We’re in London, don’t give me that shit.” She feels her accent come on thick when she says London. Feels it more keenly whenever she speaks to Ron. Southern solidarity, she supposes.

“LA was different. Different time, different place.”

“Not that different, you’re just trying to, I don’t know, be weird. Fake deep. You can just not like Houston. I’m not gonna kill you for it.”

“Wouldn’t put your stubborn ass past it.”

“Think I’m done being stubborn. Hasn’t gotten me shit but made me broke and exhausted.”

“That mean you’re finally gonna leave me alone?”

Juno glances at him sidelong, a little mischief in her eye. “If I take it easy on you now, who else’ll make you miserable?”

“Life already fucks me hard enough, Juno.”

She looks him up and down, an eyebrow raised, “Clearly.” And it fucks her pretty hard too—unrelentingly so. She’s felt it in her bones for a while now, felt it really seeping in and eroding her down to nothing. Juno doesn’t feel like a person as she looks to Ron now, just sort of like a shell. Sighing, she drags her nails along the outside of her bare thighs, stops short of the frayed hem of her shorts. There’s an itch—a desire for movement. Action. A little punishment, too. 

Juno brushes a strand of blue behind her ear, reaches over Ronnie to grab for his board. He wrenches as far away from her as possible, like the act of being this close to her is deeply disgusting to him and she can’t exactly fault him for it. Feels pretty gross being so close to him too and the constantly underlying smell of liquor and sour skin makes her almost want to gag. It isn’t so much of a stink as it is the signature scent of poor decisions and old age. Smells like fear to Juno; she drags the board and her body away from Ron. Stands suddenly and has to stop as her vision becomes speckled with stars. 

She hasn’t skated in years. The thought crosses her mind as she positions herself at the lip of the concrete bowl, ready to descend. Her heart pounds with that anticipation of the fall—of coming up on the other side and feeling the wind cut across her skin. Fish had taught her, all those years ago, how to stand on a board to begin with. Juno carries the confidence he’d instilled in her as she descends. 

And busts her ass. 

Palms first, then chin, she skids across the concrete to the soundtrack of Ronnie’s laughter. It’s only fair, she knows, but it fills her with a childish sort of rage. Her knees don’t come away from it unscathed either—burnt from the friction and skinned but not at all bleeding like her palms. Juno wipes her chin with the back of her hand, flinches. It comes away wet with blood. She sits back on her heels, looks up at the wide, fuckass smile on Ron’s face. Rolls her eyes. 

She’s vetting the frozen peas. Squishing the packages around, back and forth across her burned palms, chasing relief. Her chin is radiating in pain. She looks over her shoulder, bringing the frozen peas up to her chin. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots someone. Brings the package down swiftly like she’s been caught doing something wrong. Ron’s somewhere far away on the other side of the store, probably vetting cheap liquor like she is these peas. She works her jaw and reaches for a second bag of peas to chuck in the mini fridge back in her room. 

The line at checkout is agonizingly long and the frozen peas in her hand are numbing the tips of her fingers. Juno sort of likes the feeling, that numbness after the burning cold pain subsides. It’s comforting, warm, almost in a way that doesn’t make sense except for in the abstract way that it comes to her. Her knees burn and she smells something familiar, something that makes her whip her head around. Reminds her of the bar, of that cologne. Juno searches for him with her eyes, without admitting it to herself. Ron, beside her, looks down and watches her scan the store. He taps her wrist with his knuckle.

“Forget something?”

She’s pulled from a fog, from that numb, impossible warmth she feels in her fingertips only all over. Juno blinks back a barrage of thoughts, none of them making much sense, all of them to do with that scent. “No,” she looks up at Ron. “My knees hurt like hell.”

“Did it to yourself.”

If she could kick a rock, she would. “Sure did.”

Ron gets a strange look on his face, all those tattoos wrinkling up under folds of aged, weather worn skin. He pats his pockets; the ones on his jeans first, then his jacket. Gets a little panicky, wild behind the eyes. “Hold on, kid. Be right back.” And he’s off. Leaves Juno with her mouth open, ready to speak but with no one to speak to. 

There’s a lump in her throat when he happens upon her. He—Gaz, all smiles and charm. And that goddamn cologne that she can’t take her mind off of. She feels it again, that itch for punishment. Closes her hand tighter around the peas, feels the sting of the cold penetrating her numb fingers by force. 

“Look who it is,” he really does have a nice smile, she thinks. Good teeth, none of that veneer shit she’s been seeing everywhere now. Teeth that suit him, belong to him. “Didn’t think I’d ever get to see you again. Where’s your friend?”

“What, my buddy with the right hook? He’s fine, here somewhere, I think. Puked all over my shirt last night, that was fun.”

“Poor Lindsay.”

She snorts, “Yeah, poor Lindsay.”

Gaz reaches for her hand. Takes the peas out of it and gives her palm a look. It’s stopped bleeding, much like her chin which he takes note of too. Concern washes over his face, his whole demeanor. The smile never fades but there’s something else behind it now—nothing like the joy of seeing her from before. A strange sort of alarm to it.

“I fell,” It sounds like a lie, all prickled edge, even though she knows it isn’t. The line moves up. “Please don’t let me get on a skateboard again. Ever.”

He chuckles, a little far away. Lost in thought. “Wouldn’t ever dream of it.”

Juno revels in the warmth of her hand in his. So comforting after the biting cold of the frozen peas. She’d missed him—really, earnestly missed someone she only met the night before. It makes her want to crawl outside her skin. She swallows a lump in her throat, the ticket in her name still front and center in her mind. A late Saturday night departure. Juno wrenches her hand away.

“D’you—well, I don’t know, you might be busy but, wanna go out? Sit down somewhere, eat?”

“Are you asking me on a date, Juno?”

She shrugs, “Maybe. Only if you’re free.”

“Yeah, I’m free. I, uh, I’m on leave for a little bit. Have all the time in the world.” His sentence almost feels like it stops short, a sort of wishful thinking within her has her wanting it to end with two spare words: for you. But she doesn’t get that. Decides she might as well be content with the bone he’s throwing her—Lord knows she’s making a fool of herself now. 

“Leave?” Juno doesn’t like how taken aback she sounds, “Are you–”

“Military, yeah.”

“Oh, that makes way too much sense.”

“Almost cliche, isn’t it.”

She laughs, “Just a little bit.” Her phone buzzes in her back pocket, she feels a half-epiphany. “Shit, actually, wanna give me your number?” He nods, looks almost as giddy as she feels. Unlocking her phone, it’s still on her messages. She hasn’t opened it since this morning when she laid on the bathroom floor. Since she drafted that dry, simple hey. On impulse, she hits send—feels a rush that makes her sick. Hands her phone to Gaz. Gets a little twitchy as he makes a contact for himself. 

Gaz can see it, that twitchy, sick feeling in her. Reads her like a book and it all makes sense now. Makes sense that he’s military, can see through her so easily. He’s probably not even trying. 

“You alright?”

All she can manage is a strained smile. Juno imagines that it looks all wrong, like an uncanny puppet. She glances to her side, just for half a second. Sees Ron. What she’s done sets in. She takes her phone, steps back from Gaz. 

“Yeah! Yeah, no, I’m all good. I’ll call you!”

She leaves them both in the store. Leaves her peas, too, in Gaz’s hands.

She’s rotting on Ron’s couch while he’s making drinks in the kitchen. Drinks plural because Isaac responded to her hours ago and she dreads having to follow through. She looks at Ronnie. He has no idea that his son is just a phone call away from reuniting with him. Juno doesn’t even know if she wants it to happen. She grazes the tip of her tongue with her teeth, so keenly feels guilt running through her veins. Isaac is dying for this, absolutely dying to meet his dad. Juno has a sort of pity for him—tells herself that she’s protecting this man so many years her senior because she has no idea how Ron feels about him, feels about all his kids. Hasn’t been able to pry that out of him. Bad journalism, she supposes. 

They do this often; sitting together on the couch, day drinking and numbing their minds with senseless television. It's the only time they’re at peace. A stalemate. They don’t ever talk when they do this but Juno can’t help it. Words are clawing their way out from inside her throat, weighing down her tongue. He sits beside her with an exaggerated, old man groan. Hands her the drink, sort of warm and the smell of it nauseating her. Ron isn’t capable of not making a strong drink. It isn’t in his skillset. 

“You miss your family, Ron?”

“What the fuck?”

“Like, your mom and stuff. I know you have a sister.” Knows a lot more than that. It takes him a while to speak. So long, Juno wonders if she’s gone deaf. But she hasn’t. Can still hear the tv and his labored breaths beside her. So she looks at him right in his eyes. “So—do you?”

I inched close to him. Watched his ears twitch and his tongue roll out of his mouth as he began to pant. “Oh, Judge. You’ve done it this time. You have really done it.” I whispered, kneeling before him against my better judgement. His snout was covered in blood, I tried wiping it with the bottom of my nightgown but it was no use. It had set in, red and ugly on his graying snout. Jane kept trying to talk, or breathe. I’m not really sure but I didn’t pay her any mind. I should have.

Instead, I took Judge by the collar and led him to the stream. Dipped his paws in the water and ran my hands over them. Held them tight with every pass, tainting the stream—my stream—with murder. Someone would have heard Jane scream, would see Judge. Really, I was only buying time with him. As I scratched behind his ears, it almost seemed like it set into him what he had done. He looked behind my shoulder, then at me and whimpered, tail between his legs like he was expecting Daddy to come by with a switch and get him right across his back. But I wouldn’t hit him for this—there wasn’t any use, he didn’t have long anyway. I think we both knew.