#puck writes

He keeps his gun trained on the princess, because he’s not an idiot, and makes his way down to the ground—

And then an SUV arrives, and barrels directly into the Captain.

Luche runs, the Ring in his pocket, a temptation all on its own. But he has his orders, and the knowledge that the Oracle did try to tempt him with it.

Escaping Insomnia is ugly, especially when the giant daemons are airdropped in. Their only purpose is destruction, spitefully razing the city that held itself safe behind an impenetrable magical Wall while leaving the rest of the country to hang.

Luche regrets only the tiny bodies he spies now and then. But it isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before.

Eventually he finds the Imperial checkpoint, but he remains under cover. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust them, but it’s exactly that he doesn’t trust them. They don’t know he has what they want.

The sun rises, and the comm in his ear comes alive.

“Lazarus,” says the Captain, and Luche only barely stops himself from slumping in relief. He hadn’t been too worried that Ulric might do something even more monumentally stupid than his usual heroic antics, but it was still nice to hear Drautos’ voice.

“Sir,” he reports, keeping the relief buried, along with the exhaustion.

He doesn’t notice how strange Captain Drautos sounds.

“Good,” the Captain says. “Where are you?”

“The North Gate. There’s an Imperial checkpoint there now.”

“Head to the docks,” his Captain orders. “I’ll meet you there.”

The comm clicks offline, leaving only the faint beep that means it’ll need to be charged soon.

Seeing the bodies is somehow worse, in the daylight.

Luche picks his way to the docks with care, and spies Drautos waiting for him. He lets himself smile, almost thinks he means the smile.

“Sir!” He walks quickly to the Captain, trying to banish sleep as he does. “Is it over?”

One large hand curves around the back of Luche’s neck, drawing him to Drautos’ side. “Yes, Luche,” says Drautos, looking down at him.

And then he slides a kukri between Luche’s ribs, holding him close as he gasps and jerks in pain.

Hope wants to hate him.

Joshua Graham, that is; his status as a former legionnaire does not sit well with her, not so soon after freeing her sister from slavery.  With the way Anita still struggles to look people in the eye or so much as speak her opinion, Hope’s opinion of Caesar’s Legion has fallen lower than ever.  And she knows that Joshua Graham – the Burned Man, the legend – used to be the Malpais Legate, used to stand for everything she’s come to loathe.

But she can’t hate him.

When he asks for her name, instead of giving a brusque Six or just call me Courier, she stands to her full height and spits out every syllable of the name her parents gave her.  She doesn’t know why; she feels compelled to do so by something in his blue gaze.

“Tuwiyah Hope Chavez,” she says, and then, “The tribe who raised me call me Hope.”

“But your parents named you Tuwiyah?” he asks, and Hope nods.  The Burned Man smiles.  “It means earth, does it not?  Do you mind if I use your given name, Tuwiyah?”

She doesn’t understand how he knows what her name means, or why he’s so polite, but she nods again. With that, the conversation turns to how he would like to help her leave, but he needs her help – and if that help were for any reason other than helping the Dead Horses, she likes to think that she’d refuse.  But she remembers tales of the White Legs, distant as they were to the Boot Riders, and she knows that they and their storm drums are dangerous foes – so she agrees to help.

(She’d be lying if she didn’t say that his being a man of God helped sway her decision; Benny’s mama taught her scraps of scripture and reminded her to pray to the Lord every night, and she’s held onto that faith through the years.)

--

O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed…

It’s incredible, Hope thinks as Joshua recites the psalm, how quickly her view of him has changed. Where she was once wary she is now reverent; Joshua speaks the word of God as if it were simple knowledge, and not something divine.  He speaks of revenge – happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hath served us – and makes it seem holy.

“Do you know what it means?” he asks her, and there’s a fire in his eyes.

“You want to destroy the White Legs,” Hope says.  She’s not educated, not the way her brother is, but she’s clever.  She knows what he wants – and she can’t say that she doesn’t agree.  “I want to help.”

Joshua gives her a measured look, nods, and walks past, leaving her alone and knee deep in the waters of Zion.

--

“Joshua wants to fight because the White Legs stoked the naked flame inside him,” Daniel says. “You, you see the light, but do not yet feel the heat.”

Hope bristles at that, at the insinuation that she knows nothing of vengeance, nothing of the fires inside people – at the insinuation that she does not possess fire herself. But Daniel continues, ignorant of or ignoring the way she narrows her eyes.

“I can pray that you never will, Hope, but it isn’t up to me, and it isn’t up to God.  It’s up to Joshua.”

“Joshua is a righteous man,” Hope retorts, and she knows her tone is defensive.  She doesn’t care; Daniel doesn’t understand.  He doesn’t see that with people like the White Legs, there is no running.  The tribe will pursue the Sorrows and Dead Horses wherever they go, because it isn’t the land that they’re after.  Caesar has told them to prove themselves, and the only way to do that is with blood.  If Hope doesn’t aid Joshua in fighting the White Legs, the White Legs will kill them all.

“He doesn’t just want to fight the White Legs,” Daniel forges on, heedless of her protest, “He wants to annihilate them.”

“If we don’t annihilate them,” Hope snaps, hand twitching, “They’ll annihilate us.  I know their kind.  There is no hope for peace.”

Daniel sighs.  “I pray that you’ll come to see my way, Hope.”

But she’s already storming away.

--

She finds him sitting by a fire in the Sorrows’ camp, one leg bent to support a worn Bible as he reads from it.  The sun is just beginning to set, casting the canyon into shadow.  Hope is tired from her day, but she can’t help the smile which spreads across her face at the sight of him, his one hand pressed against the dirt for support, his blue eyes intent on the words before him – words she suspects he knows by heart.

“Joshua.”

He casts his gaze upward to her face, and there is something soft there, more hearth fire than inferno. After a moment he moves to stand, but she sits beside him instead, tossing off her heavy wool poncho and setting it on a nearby long.

“Tuwiyah,” he acknowledges, his voice measured.  “Was today fruitful?”

She is still not used to hearing her birth name; she has been Hope for so long that to be something else – someone else – to him feels strange.  The Boot Riders discarded her given name after her parents gave her away because to them she was not the ground; to them she was new blood, their chance for a healthier generation.  A hope that they would continue.

“I collapsed a cave full of Yao Guai,” she remarks.  “Daniel seems very thankful.”  It comes out bitter, but she’s too tired to hide the vitriol in her words.  

Joshua must hear it, because he asks: “Have you had any luck in convincing him to fight?”

She shakes her head. “He thinks fighting is an act of senseless violence, and that I’m too enamored by your legend to disagree with anything you say.”

Joshua arches an eyebrow – or, at least she thinks he does, it’s hard to tell with the bandages.  “He said that?”

“More or less,” she shrugs. “I’m too tired to fight with him more tonight.”

He chuckles, low and warm. Not for the first time, Hope struggles to reconcile the man before her with what she has seen of legionnaires. She knows that Joshua was once the worst of Caesar’s men, but now that she knows his story, now that she knows him, she sees only a repentant man of God – albeit one unafraid to bloody his hands.

It is one thing to forgive a slap to the cheek, he’d said to her, but an insult to the Lord – it demands retribution.

The memory of the words nearly sends a shiver through her; it’s the sort of thrill she always feels when he speaks of his plans, of Purpose and Vengeance and all of those things that have taken on such importance in her mind that they are more beings than simple ideas.

“You should rest,” he suggests.  “Our work is not done.”

“No,” she agrees, “It isn’t.”  But she doesn’t move, just stares into the fire.  “Joshua – ”

“Yes?”

She wants to set her hand atop his bandaged one, wants to wrap his fingers around his, wants wants wants in a way that feels wild and inexplicable – but she doesn’t do anything.

“Will you read to me?” she asks instead.  Her voice sounds hesitant and she hates it, hates this frailty he tugs from her, hates it almost as much as she loves the way he talks of God.  She is something else around him, not a farmer’s daughter or a Boot Rider or a Chairman but something refined, glorious.  Hesitant words are spoken with the fine grammar taught to her by House’s books and Joshua’s example and she wonders, briefly, if Benny would even recognize who she has become in the waters of Zion.

That, of course, makes her think of how she last saw him, bound and on his knees in Caesar’s tent, waiting for her to kill him or save him, waiting for her to build his legacy of a free Vegas.  Instead she’d come here, to Zion, searching for the correct path to take; and instead of that she’s found Joshua, and the Dead Horses, and something of a rebirth.

And with that she casts thoughts of Benny from her head, because he has no place in this moment.

If Joshua is surprised by her request, he doesn’t show it – merely nods.  Hope shifts in her seat on the ground.

“May I rest my head in your lap?”

Another nod, more hesitant this time, and slowly she lowers herself to the dry earth, turning to her side and laying her head on his thigh.  As he speaks, she looks up at him, tracing the outlines of his bandages with her eyes and watching the way the firelight contours his face.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion…”

Hope loves this psalm, but she shakes her head.  “Something happier?” she requests, then, “Please.  I have had enough of revenge for one day.”

There’s a pause which she half-expects to end in a lecture, but instead it’s just Joshua paging through the scripture until he begins to read once more.  “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.”

The soothing cadence of his voice lulls her into near-sleep; her eyelids grow heavy.

“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”

Hope’s eyes fall closed and she feels a gentle weight upon her head; Joshua’s fingers card through her dark hair as he continues to read, but she is already asleep.

--

It is over.

Salt-Upon-Wounds lives, saved by Hope’s sudden burst of bravery which prompted her to recognize that Joshua’s anger was something unrighteous – the same bravery which allowed her to speak to him, get through the fire which was consuming him.

They retreat to the Dead Horses’ camp together, him carrying her in his arms.  She hurt her ankle in a bad fall – nothing she won’t recover from, but because she continued to use it after injuring it, she can’t put any weight on it.  Joshua seems physically unhurt, though she knows him well enough by now to see that he is suffering in a different way.  While she is treated for her wounds – nothing major besides the ankle, as Joshua’s request for her to stay behind him saved her life in more than one firefight – the Dead Horses name her a member of the tribe.  They call her Touches-Flames, and when she is well enough to stand on her injured leg without worry of making it worse, she receives a tattoo which marks her as one of theirs.  It decorates her shoulder blade, stylized flames surrounding clasped hands – one bandaged, and one not.  Joshua’s eyes crinkle when he sees it, though whether in amusement or displeasure she is not immediately sure.

Her question is answered later, as her new tribe celebrates their victory with dancing and singing – both hymns that recalls from her childhood and songs in their own languages. The hymns are Joshua’s doing, no doubt, but all of the songs are sung with the same infectious joy. Follows-Chalk pulls her into the dances, teaching her the steps as somebody beats a rhythm on a drum and they all sing this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine –

Hope ends up leading them in When the Saints Go Marching In, and the response she gets is so overwhelming that next thing she knows, she’s got a guitar in her hands and she’s singing La Llorona.  And even though no one understands the words, more than one person is crying.

Finally, she retreats to the edge of the festivities, where Joshua sits and watches from just outside the firelight.  What little light reaches him sets his blue eyes glittering, makes them the color of Zion’s waters.  Hope can’t stop smiling as she sits beside him, close enough that they nearly touch.

“You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Joshua says.  He sounds amused.

“They call me Touches-Flames,” she tells him.  His eyes crinkle, and this time she’s pretty sure he’s smiling at her.

“So I heard.  Your tattoo is… unique.  They think highly of you, Tuwiyah.”

Said tattoo is uncovered, still too sore to put fabric over.  “They seem to think we are more than we are.”

His hand drops to her leg, resting on her thigh.  Her heart pounds in her chest; she shivers at his touch.  He isn’t saying anything, but he looks at her with brilliant eyes and suddenly every line and wall she though existed between them is wiped away, leaving her reeling with the possibilities of what might be.  Suddenly, she has no idea what they are to each other. Friends? Something less? Something more?

She hesitates, then, so quiet only he will have a chance to hear her, she asks: “What are we, Joshua?”

She knows what he is to her; not an angel but a man, imperfect and broken but still righteous, still a man of God, still everything her abuela had said salvation would be.  He isn’t Benny, is both better and worse than the man she loved since he dragged their tribe to Vegas; Joshua has none of the ambition that led to a bullet in Hope’s skull, but he’s ex-legion, the feared Malpais Legate, and he’s full of fire.  A monster, people call him.

Joshua’s not a monster. He’s a man.

He has burned for his sins, and now she burns for him; if he asked her to, she would be his right hand, his blade, the one to wreak his vengeance upon all who have wronged them. And that scares her; she was so very close to letting him kill Salt-Upon-Wounds.  Still she struggles to see past the way her heart has painted him. Still she struggles to see that he is not a messiah, not something divine; she struggles to remember the wrath which lives in his heart.

“What do you want us to be?” He asks.

What does she want? More than she should; more than she thinks he’s willing to give her.  Hope takes his hand, bringing it up to her lips and pressing a reverent kiss to his knuckles, the softest touch of her mouth against his bandages, and she confesses.

“I want to be yours.” Her voice is thick; it feels as though she is laying her soul bare.  Saying I love you to Benny was never like this. “However you’ll have me, whether friend or follower or…” she swallows, squeezes her eyes shut against the intensity of his blue gaze.  “…or lover.” She opens her eyes, doesn’t flinch away from how he stares, even though it feels like he’s burning through her. “Yours,” she repeats.  “I want them to know that I am yours.”

He frees his hand and brushes his burned fingertips across her shoulder; as he catches her tattoo with his touch she hisses out a breath, pain flaring across her skin.  She doesn’t dislike the way it feels.  “They seem to know already,” he remarks. Joshua’s voice is low and heady, accented by a chuckle that makes warmth curl within her.  Fingers slide up to her neck, shifting the soft hairs that cling to the nape, and he moves so that he sits behind her.  Hope is still, barely breathing, waiting for his next move; there is a rustle of bandages and then rough lips brush her skin.  The contact has her sighing, the gentle touch – so surprising from him – thrilling her.  He wants this; he wants her.

Oh, she has been wanted before, of course, but this is different.  Joshua is not some Freeside thug with eyes only for her curves, not some caravaner taken by her charm and her pretty eyes; he is not Benny, who has known her for ages and yet continues not to really know her at all.  He is not some simple fling; there is something holy about his mouth on her neck, the way her pulse picks up and the way she gasps when his teethe graze her just so.

“Joshua,” she breathes, carefully turning to face him, “Please.”

He has removed the bottom half of his bandages, revealing the way the fire marred his face, but she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t really care. “Kiss me,” she requests, though it sounds more like a question than an order.

In the end, he does much more than just kiss her.

--

But all things must come to an end.  When the celebration is over, Hope knows that she must go back to the Mojave, back to House and Caesar and the NCR.  She has a job to do, the fate of a city to decide.

When she leaves Zion, it feels final, like God is telling her she won’t be back.

--

Four months later, she’s back in Zion.

“You’re back,” says Joshua when she walks into the Dead Horses’ camp.  He sounds mildly surprised, but she can see in the widening of his blue eyes that he’s more shocked than he lets on.  “I didn’t expect to see you again, or at least not so soon.  Why have you returned?”

Hope doesn’t say anything, just pulls off her poncho to reveal the way her dingy tank top has stretched to accommodate the swell in her abdomen.  Joshua’s eyes widen further.

“Oh.” He stands, reaches out one bandaged hand towards her.  Hope steps forward, dropping the poncho and brushing her fingertips against his. “Is it mine?”

She attempts to stifle a snort, but doesn’t quite succeed.  “There’s about an equal chance it being you or Benny.”

Joshua drops his hand; it hovers near her stomach, like he wants to touch but doesn’t know if he’s allowed.  “You slept with the man who shot you in the head?”

He doesn’t sound exasperated, like Arcade or her brother did when they discovered the choice she’d made that night.  Just… curious.  It’s refreshing.  Hope shrugs.

“Bad decisions, I guess.” Then, after a pause: “You can touch me, Joshua.”

With her permission, he rests his palm against her stomach.  His eyes are focused there instead of her face, and there’s something almost gentle in what little she can see of his expression.  “You have interesting choices in lovers, Tuwiyah.”

That does get a laugh out of her, a brief bark of a thing. “You can see my dilemma.  I’m not sure which of you is the worse option to have as a father.”

Especially since she’s running a city, now; she has an independence to maintain, and tying herself to Benny or Joshua may make her appear weak.  Vegas comes first, or at least it always has before now – but this child she’s carrying deserves to know who its father is.  Or, as the case would appear to be, possible fathers.

“If you were looking for my opinion, Tuwiyah, I am the worse option.  No child deserves the shame that my legacy will carry.”

“Mm, and an overly ambitious murderer is better?”

Joshua chuckles.  “I see your point.”

The stand in silence for a moment, Hope’s chin tilted up just a little to look into his blue eyes. “Joshua,” she says finally, his name almost a sigh, “Will you come back with me?”

He removes his hand from her stomach.  “If Caesar finds out I’ve set foot in the Mojave, he will send assassins after me.”

“Caesar is dead.”

Joshua blinks at her. “He is?”

Hope nods.  “I put a bullet through his skull with the .45 you gave me, and stabbed him for good measure.”

“How strange,” Joshua murmurs.  “Even after all he has done… to know that he is gone is hard for me to understand.”

She knows that they were friends, once, or maybe something more, but she’s never questioned it before, and she doesn’t now.  “Joshua, please,” she says.  “If this child is yours, it deserves to know you.  And if it isn’t… I want it to know you, anyway.  Will you come to Vegas with me, or not?”

There’s a long pause. Finally, Joshua nods.

--