The legate looked at his decanus, who drew his sword in obedience. The hiss of metal on leather wrenched a few scattered cries and pleas from the people in front of him. The legionaries fanned out among the crowd, blocking both exits to the saloon.

“Please, nobody knows - “

“Quiet,” his decanus barked at the old man who’d spoken. The commotion caused a few other murmured protests to float up, more sounds of shifting among the crowd. “You shelter these vermin. Feed them. Protect them.”

"Would any of them die for you?" The second decanus spat. A group of women backpedaled, trying to move away from his wrath.

"Excuse me, Legate." A legionary spoke up.

The legate turned around. One of his footsoldiers had a dark-haired girl in simple farming clothes by her slender forearm, dragging her to the front of the room before the watchful eyes of the contubernium and the crowd.

He had them follow to a secluded table in the corner. The legionary pulled the girl along, and she silently obeyed. The other men made a wall between them and the patrons, somewhat blocking the view of the legate and his informant.

He settled down at the table, unhurried, as if the lives of dozens of people were not hanging in the balance right now. The girl's gaze was nailed to the table top. He wasn’t surprised someone came forward. Panicked and trembling, they would always point the finger if it meant saving their own skin. He flattened his hands on the table without even sparing a glance up at the betrayer.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“Sara.”

HIs thoughts briefly turned back to a woman he’d known in his youth - another Sara, a member of their original expedition. She was a Follower, one of Edward’s peers from the Boneyard. The last time he saw her was when they all split up at a fork in the trail. The rest of the Followers went east. He and Edward walked toward their fates in Arizona.

He looked up at the informant. Her head was tilted down in fear and submission. Tears were starting to spring up, luminescent in her dark brown eyes.

"Where is the courier?"

"I don't - I don't want no one to get in any trouble."

She was young and timid, but he had no pity for her. These crises of conscience were routine and uninspiring. No amount of sniffling could make this go any faster.

"I won't - "

"There's a cave to the west," she blurted. "People say they hide there."

He glanced at the decanus, who produced a piece of paper and a pen and laid it firmly on the table in front of her. She watched, weary and drained, as if she were suffering physical pain.

Hesitant - but of course, willing, these profligates always were, in the end - she picked up the pen and scrawled down the location, condeming the outlaws to their demise.

I got tagged by @her-satanic-majesty to post a wip - here's something from a fnv one-shot i've been working on in bits and pieces.

“So,” Arcade said. “Did you find the place you were looking for? With the caravan?”

The courier's gaze didn’t move from the road ahead of them.

“Not really.”

“Oh. That’s…unfortunate.” Help, he silently flailed, but he received no other inspiration than the sensation of the sun searing his scalp. He adjusted his scarf, dabbed at the beads of sweat rolling down his neck, and went back in for attempt-at-friendly-small-talk number two. “So what happened? You were gone for a long time.”

“The weather got bad.” She squinted at the mile marker sign next to the road, then looked down at her notes, clearly much more absorbed in the trail than in this conversation. Not that he could especially blame her for that.

Their footsteps sounded much louder in the empty canyon. A vulture swooped overhead, gliding in low, lazy circles against the offensively blue sky. He swore he could actually hear the sun beating down on the rocks, a steady sizzle and hum of heat that vibrated through the air.

“I saw snow.” Her voice was quiet, like she'd been lost in thought. She said the words like an offering, and he took them, gratefully.

“Oh? Really? Wow.” He grimaced, realizing he was affecting the same tone he used when he explained to anxious children that this tetanus vaccine would only be a little pinch, they'd barely feel it, he promised. The kids usually ended up crying violently anyway. He cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen snow in forever. It never stuck around long, but we'd see it fall - “ He broke off. “When I was growing up. Not in the Mojave, because it doesn’t snow here. Well, believe it or not, the first year I came to Vegas, we did have some fall in the mountains around the city. The locals told me not to get used to it, though."

Bring it back around, Arcade, grab the lexical reins here -

“You know, your aphasia seems to be improving. A least, compared to what I remember before you left.”

She didn't stop walking entirely, but she actually, physically flinched. And stared up at him like he’d taken the laser pistol off his hip and shot a puppy right in front of her.

Or shot her twitchy eyebot, deviously bobbing at pace slightly ahead of them. He couldn't forget about the third member of this merry little band. Not for the first time today, he regretted that the Khans held so much animosity toward the NCR - the California dogs, as he'd heard them spit. Were it not for the history of wartime human rights violations, Boone tagging along on this trip instead of Arcade would have been better for probably everyone involved. Six looked back down at her Pip-Boy and fiddled with the dials. The relief he felt washing over him as the radio began playing could have doused this desert into full bloom.

The night carried in a cold breeze, and Six was grateful for the lined field jacket she had to shiver into - drab green, NCR standard-issue, a little longer and thicker than the Mojave campaign jackets. It used to belong to Boone, until he’d heaped it into her arms one day on a jaunt back to his motel room in Novac.

His back was turned, and she took the opportunity to examine the faded patches on the shoulder. Oregon Campaign - from the border wars back in the sixties, if she remembered right.

“This wasn’t yours,” she said. 

“Was my father’s.” He tossed the answer over his shoulder as he bent down to rearrange the contents of his duffel. She glanced back down at the jacket. It was the first time he'd ever mentioned his dad. His tone was clipped. The jacket lining was soft against her fingertips. Felt like real wool.

“Well. If it’s a family thing, I don’t want to keep it - “ 

tagged by the wonderful @juniper-tree! Thank you! Here’s a quick draft from my Outer Worlds fic where the captain gets busted for her terrible taste in reading material.

“No, Captain, you’re kidding. You actually read this stuff?” A salacious grin curled across Nyoka’s face as she flipped through the pages of the pulpy paperback, and Juno felt every last remnant of her dignity evaporating through her ears.

The crewmembers always made comments about the intensity of her reading habits, but Juno made sure none of them knew what all those books stacked up in her room were about, exactly. She even slid them under her bed when she was gone to prevent anyone from snooping around. Max went on and on about how pleasant it was to have a fellow intellectual on board. Sure, Vicar, if egregious violence and sweaty romances counted as scholarly pursuits.

“No, no, no.” Juno straightened up. “I - I collect them to make some extra scratch. They sell well.”

Nyoka was still staring, that smile only increasing in intensity.

“Fine,” she mumbled. “Yeah. I like them.”

“Me too!” Nyoka’s face lit up in an un-self-conscious delight that confused Juno and made her heart rise up three inches in her chest at the same time. “Oh, we barely get any of the new releases on Monarch, ‘cause of the blockade and all - “ She flipped the book around, squinting at the back cover. “Does this one have anything good in it?”

“Like what?”

“Blood, guts, betrayal.” Her eyebrows raised. “Maybe even some naughty bits?”

“Yes.” Juno blinked, barely even believing this was happening. “There’s, uh - there’s a fight scene in that one, and the tactics seemed quite authentic. There’s a pike battle in the middle - so realistic. I practically felt like I was there. When he talks about the way that guy’s head crunched - ”

“I’m taking it.” She clasped the book to her chest. “That all right?”

“Of course. Let me know what you think.” Juno cleared her throat. “And keep it as long as you want. There’s no rush.”

“Well, you know where I live.” Nyoka gave a crystalline laugh over her shoulder as she trailed back to her quarters.

“I do,” Juno called behind her. Oh, she certainly did. Up the stairs, third room to the left, with the door that screeched a little when it closed. It wasn’t like she’d been thinking about how close she was nearly every night she’d gone to sleep in her own room, staring at the stars drifting past her window.

At home, whenever the smog was thin, they’d looked like the barest pinpoints of light piercing through the night. Out here they glowed bright and powerful in swirling symphonies of color and infernos of heat. This world was lucid, and as she waved down the hall after Nyoka and flicked off the light, Juno felt like it belonged to her a little, just as much as it belonged to everyone else.

“I mean, it’s a canid-eat-canid world out there,” Juno said, taking another swig from the plastic bottle. “Fuck ‘em.” 

“No, it ain’t.” 

By now, Juno was used to all of their voices, and no longer jumped at the reminder that there was another human in such close proximity to her. When she was crouched down squinting at some sparking regulator box or wiring behind the control panel, she could usually tell who was speaking to her without glancing up - Parvati sitting down at her side to lend a more skilled hand; or Felix badgering her with wild accusations about Max eating his leftovers out of the fridge. But that voice cracked her certainty. It took her a moment to reconfigure her surroundings - it belonged to Nyoka, the guide, who was currently standing across the kitchen with her arms folded, staring at her with the intention of neither confrontation nor apology. 

“Sorry?” 

“I said it ain’t.” Nyoka leaned back against the counter. “Canids don’t eat each other, even when there’s no prey. And - “ Her voice rose a little in excitement. “And they’ve even been known to reform their packs if they get separated. They meet up with other lost individuals, and pretty soon, their pheromones adjust. They’re cooperative hunters, Captain.” 

“Well - “ Juno faltered. “It’s a figure of speech, isn’t it?” 

Nyoka shrugged. 

except it’s late (early?), tagged a while ago by @juniper-tree ! Thank you so much. 

Here’s a little bit from an Outer Worlds fic I started working on about 45 minutes ago. I have a few New Vegas things on the backburner right now but earlier I was thinking “I love Nyoka, somebody should write a fic about her...wait...I’m somebody.”

“Captain Alex Hawthorne. Pleased to meet you.” Juno gave her best captainly smile that she’d been practicing in the mirror of her quarters, genteel and confident, and offered her hand out to the teetering hunter, who had one knee precariously perched on a stool and one elbow leaning against the wooden bar.

“Oh, like hell you are,” the woman slurred, looking her up and down with a wary squinted eye, as if she might bite like one of those angry raptidons she’d ended up skinning, judging by that handmade coat she wore. 

For having recently committed a messy little string of identity fraud, theft, and general criminal misrepresentation, nobody had called Juno’s bluff thus far. Not even Max, and shit, he’d been to prison.  

So this hunter was sharp. Even four double shots of rum deep, with the world comfortably blurred around her, she saw something that didn’t add up about the person standing in front of her. Her intellect was quick and unpretentious - an outdoorsman’s perception, plain old common sense married to decisive and undeniable efficacy. 

The beleaguered stool shrieked as gravity and alcohol wrought their ultimate conclusion: the woman toppled and lost her balance, barely catching herself against the bar in a flurry of hands and knees. Well, maybe make that five shots deep. But Juno needed people who knew their asses from their elbows, and as adorable as Felix was, he didn’t always quite make the grade.

I was tagged by the wonderful @juniper-tree ! Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Here’s an excerpt from the as-yet-unnamed Christine/Veronica fic that may or may not ever see the light of day, but hey, at least it’s here.

Christine walked into the room about ready to gut someone with the ballpoint pen waiting on the table, and she left a member of the Circle of Steel, promoted to the rank of knight. They’d move her around, they promised. She’d float from chapter to chapter, righting wrongs, keeping the Brotherhood in line.

Most importantly, she never had to go back to Hidden Valley. She never wanted to see those people again. Confronting them would be acknowledging that they had any hand whatsoever in shaping her life. Finding the silver lining meant digging through the shit. Wiping the slate clean was easier.

She wished her wounds had been salved with something better.

But alas, she found herself right in the midst of Internal Affairs. Pruning the rogue elements was how they described it in the training lectures. And truthfully, she was very good at her job, but the fact that she'd mended her broken heart in Brotherhood bureaucracy stung. All that residual anger broiling in her gut, and she sat down and filled out a form and signed a dotted line. It was banal. She wanted the monsters they slayed to be huge and dramatic and mythical. Fighting petty dragons made them petty knights.