Chapter Text
Prologue
7:45 AM
Location: Overlooking Hoover Dam
“Now, that ain’t right.”
“What! What,” the older woman practically rips the binoculars out of her ghoul husband’s hands. She’s quick to fit them over her eyes, glancing in the direction that her husband originally was looking at. She swallows once, and then chuckles nervously. There’s an edge of franticness in her words. Humor is void in the moment, but pure horror tightens in her throat. Saliva coats her throat, and it gives her an edge of wanting to vomit. “Now, that is a shame, honey. A damn shame. That really throws a wrench in our trading route.”
The older woman lowers the binoculars, and it hangs almost limp in her grasp. Her other hand is almost desperate to give her some grounding in the world, some sense of belonging and safety in this bygone and scarred earth. She doesn’t realize that she’s practically grasping at her husband’s duster sleeve. Her fingers curl in out of desperation. Fingernails biting into tough fabric.
Their view of Hoover Dam is obstructed by the steady march of red. The flutter of fire-scorched banners almost blot out the eerie skies. It’s silent, but from their perch the wild winds roar into their ears. The golden bull is ready to trample on the throats of thousands. There’s no fight, not yet, but the promise of domination is enough to send anyone into a panic. The Legion is sending the NCR a message.
“I gotta -,” the woman coughs, struggling to bring forth her words. “I wanna write our little girl, Soda. She…she.” The older woman paces over to their caravan. She practically claws up the side of the wagon once her boot hooks into the spoke of the wheel. She tosses the binoculars into the back of the wagon, grabbing at her luggage.
“Dolly, baby, now don’t go frettin’. What’s that gonna do for you?” Sodapop raises his voice, but then he dials it back once he sees his wife flinch at his tone. Dolly has always been a sensitive woman, especially when it came to the nature of their wayward daughter.
“Soda, you know I cannot help it,” Dolly pleads, and he can already hear the emotion in her throat. The shake in her hands once she finally manages to find a pen and paper to write their daughter. He knows his wife is about to cry. “She needs to come home at this point. I cannot stand it anymore! What? You think I wanna hear another lighthearted jab from Mr. New Vegas, about some girl who was shot in the head again? Our Girl! Sodapop, our baby?!”
What is there to say about notorious Courier Six? There are stories, of course. But what could one possibly say about a woman who willingly throws herself into the wars of men? She’s that joker in a deck of cards. Patron Saint of switchblades and gambling. Lovely Death.
“Unfortunaly, Dolly, our baby ain’t our little baby no more,” Sodapop smiles, but there is no typical mirth found on his lips. He knows the gravity of the situation. It keeps him awake most nights, thinking about his daughter conniving with factions. Especially with men like Mr. House who points his finger and she is all too eager to go. As long as she gets something in return.
All Sodapop can think about is his little baby girl, fresh, new, in his arms before he was a ghoul. Before his daughter understood the evils of the world and how to manipulate the masses for profit.
“We can write to her, darlin’, but I don’t think it’ll make her pack up anytime soon. Once we finish out our trade route, I promise to head to the closest Mojave Express.”
“She’ll always be our baby,” Dolly’s fist pounds down on the edge of the wagon, angry at her husband’s deflection. She cuts him with a rueful look, fist still clenched, and for a moment that old ghoul thinks he’s staring back at his daughter. It leaves him awestruck for a moment. Still, he gives another low chuckle.
“I know, darlin’. I’m sorry. I’m bein’ insensitive again. How ‘bout you forgive a stupid fool like me?” Soda eases his wife off the side of their wagon. He tilts his hat up with his thumb and then grasps the sides of her arms once her boots make contact with the earth. He attempts to soothe her worries, but there's almost no point because he’s also just as terrified. Still, he gives her a soft kiss on the forehead.
“It’s not fair, Soda.” Those haunting gray eyes bore into his vastly dark stare. For a moment, he forgets that he’s a ghoul staring back at his distraught, smooth skinned wife. Something human eats away at his heart, and his own shoulders sag at that feeling.
“I know, darlin’. I know. You’re right. It ain’t fair.”
“And I’m so scared.”
“I know,” Sodapop repeats, sighing, still holding onto his wife. “I am, too. How ‘bout we write our baby, yea?”
3:02 AM
Location: Outskirts of Red Rock Canyon
Death sits upon her perch under a blanket of dead stars, watching oblivion swallow the earth and descend them into a timeless night. She listens out for the ominous buzzing of her eyebot hovering overhead, analyzing, clicking. He beeps, and she’s quick to reply to him. A nonsense language that she and the eyebot can only engage in.
“It is late, ED-E, but I just cannot manage myself to sleep,” Six mumbles into her warmed brew of chicory. The Mojave’s nights can be as bitterly cold as its brutally hot days. Her hands curl in on the warmth of her tin cup, taking slow sips so that she doesn’t burn the skin on the inside of her mouth. Her sniper lays across her boots, easy access for her to reach down for it and draw it if the need arises. But the night proves to be fruitless, and that’s how she likes it.
Six’s expression remains blank, licking over her dry lips once she pulls the mouth of her cup away from her. ED-E endlessly buzzes and beeps, hovering close with concern over his master, wanting to drown out the silence with conversation. She’s always slow to reply to her companion, always slow to smile back once he starts sounding desperate.
“I don’t know, ED-E,” Six shrugs, “I kinda thought it felt like a nice night. Sure, it's kinda cold, but it's the type of cold that feels good, ya know? Kinda sad I gotta waste it by sleepin’.” Six then smiles, when ED-E shoots back that he doesn’t understand her, nor would he ever understand her.
Her bonfire burns bright, rivaling thousands of bygone stars lost in the black sea of the sky. Embers ascend into bleak oblivion, and she watches every single one. Her face feels warm, and she hunkers down deeper into herself, deeper into her duster. She feels at peace, unknown to the follies of the world and the claws and bullets that wish to peirce her throat.
“I outta write to my parents sometime, ED-E,” Six mindlessly muttered, and she had no idea why in that moment she thought about her mother and father. Perhaps the loneliness of the night had her yearning for her youth again. Back when she was a little girl running the highway routes with her parents, sleeping between the two of them when they would set camp for the night. Safe amongst the decay of rotting buildings and withered vegetation that would curl over bricks. “It’s been a hot minute since I heard from my folks. I bet they’d like to hear from me again.”
Before ED-E can reply to her, a single gunshot rips Six from her simple memories, thrusting her back into the chaos of the world. The shot tears against the silence of the night, and it has Six almost scrambling to get up. She grabs at her gun, quickly snuffing the flames of her bonfire out with her boot dragging across the sands and kicking it out. ED-E is a little louder in his chirps, assuring Six that the shot wasn’t at her, but at someone in the distance.
She retires her warm drink at her boots. Standing with given height, she levels the scope of her rifle in the direction the shot came from. There, she catches the vision of dancing torches in the hands of heavily armoured men. Three legionaries, surrounding a small trading family. The trader's brahmin lays dead, still hooked to the tongue of the wagon. Six is sure it was that bullet that killed their cattle.
Six sighs when she takes value from the traders. A father, a mother, and two young boys. Typically, she ignores random squabbles when it comes to the wastes. There was no sense in sticking out your own neck for others. It’s cutthroat, but that’s unfortunately the way of the wastes. Still, she watches the two boys crowd around their mother, clinging desperately to her threadbare clothes.
The sight causes something in Six’s chest to clench. Empathy. And that was a rare feeling, indeed. Perhaps growing up as a traders’ daughter slighted her rationality, but it had Six dragging her boots in that direction.
She grabs at her helmet, hooking it over her head, and sealing the mask at her throat with a hiss of escaping air. The haunted moon in the sky illuminates the red tint of her lens.
Six’s fingers curl dangerously over her steel, boots stealthy sliding down the shift of sands. She sticks close to the shadow, close to the lands – instructing ED-E to hold position and wait for her signal. She tramples over desolation and old roots, hiding in the brush of thin vines and old vegetation that curled up like angry hands. She lives by tactic and karma, schooling her breath not to escape her distorted respirator from her gasmask.
The burning lens of her mask dims the closer she gets, finding better range for the possibility of killing one of the three legionnaires; but the numbers don't look good for her: three men and one woman with too much pride is a recipe for disaster. She can hear the sickening cackle, the honeyed words of promise in domination from one of the men. One of the legionaries touches the father’s shoulder, suggestive and evil. Hands that didn’t belong, and the image makes Six's finger itch to pull her lucky trigger.
Her hands hesitate, cocking her gun back, finding comfort in the solid coil of old machinery; she has a clear headshot in sight. She swallows her anxiety down, finding renewed revolting determination to fulfill her promise to her father. She wouldn’t be caught. She would always return home once she’s settled that gnawing hunger of greed that sits heavy in her gut.
Fate, however, had a different motive for her tonight; just when she’s about to unleash her justified execution, one of the caravaners’ sons calls out to the Legion men and warns them about her looming figure in the distance.
“There’s someone there! Look, look!”
Six is flabbergasted in the face of youthful betrayal, jolting and bringing the scope of her sniper up. She takes a shot and manages to kill one of the men before their hasty hunt and her unnerving retreat. Her boots sink into the earth when her body begins to turn away to make her run. She stumbles, but she doesn’t fall.
Six’s boots kick up dirt, and she’s screaming at ED-E to retreat but he doesn’t listen to her. He chooses not to listen to her desperate plea to get away. His little victory tune haunts the flats of the wastes as he comes barreling in her direction, cut short by a few popping of gunshots. Her voice dies with his song.
ED-E’s servos fry before her and he comes crashing into the earth so far out of her reach. She doesn’t hear the thump of his spherical body, not while her will to live comes rushing through her ears.
The rescue was a setup. She knew she should have never stuck her neck out for strangers. She damned herself for a moment of kindness. Altruism that still clung to her bones even when she thought she'd rid herself of it. The legion had somehow been tipped off on her in the area, and somehow they knew she would extend her hand out to this caravan family.
The area was damned, the game is rigged, and a sea of red emerges like the dead from the sands. Six believes in a fight in the face of defeat. She proves so by the precautious slide of her hunters blade that slips from her duster sleeve, throwing her long-distance gun to the ground and retrieving her shotgun by the holster that's strapped to her thigh.
The weapons are knocked from her hands by a lone lasso, then more ropes follow, bringing Death to the shores of Hell – forcing her to look up at Hell’s Gates, harbored in the eyes of cold blue hidden by the dark glare of protective goggles: Malpais Legate. She struggles against her bindings, fist bone-pale under her dark glove with the call of war. She’s seething to that familiar song of revenge coursing through her veins. The ropes are pulled taut, and the Legionaries surround her by grabbing at her arms, legs and shoulders.
The vision of the Legate’s face is hidden by the weight of his helmet decorated with feathers, the mask that covers his hard jaw and goggles to protect his eyes from passing sandstorms. He brings his goggles down to catch a better glance of her. His face is set in a grimace, but there’s something else hidden there and Six is having a hard time pinpointing what exactly he was expressing to her. She’s only ever seen him level her with that glance once, but that was so long ago.
It’s a look of want. But what exactly does he want? It almost seems so foreign on his features, unlike the men who would typically try to appeal to her in the seediest joints.
It’s eerie, and it almost frightens her. But that’s an emotion she struggles to swallow, biting back her horror with a fabricated smile. She wants to appear like she doesn’t care when she actually very much cares about what's about to happen to her.
She catches his fingers twitching at his side, taking note of him like he was any other gambler she’d find in a casino. Someone who was sure they were about to strike it rich. She studies his mannerisms in a fraction of a second: the way his jaw sets, the squaring of his shoulders, and slight twitch of his hands. Everything means something even when it appears that it didn’t.
Oh. How awful.
“We’ve finally caught you, Courier,” the Legate speaks over her, looming over her with that terrible expression. “I have to admit, I’m surprised.”
“So you have. Hey, so, I’m just as surprised,” Six gives him a subtle laugh and a shrug, almost just as amazed as the Legate is at that moment. It almost sounds like two friends catching up with each other after falling out of a loop. His words are so simple that she doesn’t realize that it cuts her deep. They’ve been at this chase for a long time now. Neither one of them wants to admit that it’s been exhausting. “That, uh, those feathers new? Looks good.”
“Yes,” and that’s all he offers her as a response. Perhaps he thinks he owes her as much for what they’re life is about to look like in the foreseeable future.
The Legate nods to one of his legionaries, giving silent permission for one of them to step forward and begin to remove the gas mask and helmet from her person. The mask hisses once fingers begin their work, and Six takes a gasp of fresh air. She didn’t realize how wound up she was, how shallow her breathing has become under stress. Her red hair is plastered to her forehead and neck with sweat. Adrenaline still pumps through her veins.
It doesn’t end with her helmet, this is only the beginning to stripping her identity. The men maneuver around her, gripping any weapons that she had strapped down. Once they remove the outer wear of her weapons, they begin to peel her clothing off her body. Her duster, shaken, pockets turned out to reveal more weaponry: a hunter blade, a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and a single dose of jet for fun, really.
The soldiers unlace and remove her boots, finding a spare pistol slipped into the side of her boot. One soldier peels the soles out of her boots to find a hidden blade and a few lock picks stowed away for safe keeping. Then they slide her jeans and underwear down her legs. They removed her shirt, but found no bra because, honestly, Courier Six never bothered with them.
She lays there stark naked under the Mojave moon, surrounded by men who want nothing more than to destroy her and her wayward nature. A dreadful situation she’s fallen into.
The soldiers are so thorough, rummaging through all her worldly possessions by dumping out her bag onto the ground. They kick around her belongings with the side of their boots first before they decide to reach down with their hands. The Legate turns over her duster, fingers lingering over bullet holes and fire torched seams. Dust rolls off the fabric when he turns the duster over and over in his hands.
“I know it sounds funny, but this ain’t my first time being tied up with a group of men around me.” Six clicks her tongue at that, enjoying the way that the Legate regards her. His fingers stall for a moment as he thumbs over the worn duster in his hands. While it sounds perversely spoken aloud, she merely reflected on the time Benny and a couple of Great Khan lackeys tied her up and shot through her skull for the platinum chip. Still, Six hummed, “Though, I still had more clothes on at that time than I do now.”
“Now, Legate, don’t think of me like that. I’m still a woman with morals,” her hollow point smile irritates him. She was picking him apart. She was already fully naked, and wanted to make him out the biggest fool amongst his men. She willed her legs to relax under the clutches of strange men holding her down with strange, dirty hands, slightly parting her legs out. And for some reason, the men in charge of restraining her lower half allowed some leeway. Perhaps they were curious about the notorious Courier Six.
Men truly are dogs.
"If you keep lookin’ on my person, I’m sure you’ll find another pistol on me. Maybe a switchblade. Who knows? I’m hopin’ you’re gentle.”
She laughs then. Terrible and dark. Just barely a whisper. Her objective nature will be the death of her, and she can’t decide if she’s afraid to die or not.
She’s openly mocking him. She had nothing to lose at that moment. And she fully chose to mock him as her last act. An act of pure defiance. Unfortunately for Six, the Legate is up for the challenge. However, at the moment, he’s not about to show her. Certainly not with company. He was a private man, after all.
Just then, and without any sign of it, the Legate finds himself angry at his soldiers who held her legs down. Mindlessly hating the way their fingers curled into her inner thigh and gripped at her flesh. It didn’t mean anything, and he can hardly explain it once his attention is brought somewhere else.
“My Legate, here.” One Legionnaire retorts, thumbing through the photographs before he hands them over to his superior. “Possible associates to Courier Six.”
“Good. Though I’m sure Vulpus is always two steps ahead when it comes to knowing who our Courier panders to.”
The Legate takes them and glances through the small stack. Courier Six is friends with interesting characters: a sniper by the detail of his beret hat, a nightkin in an apron and a sunning hat, a weathered ghoul brandishing a pistol in one hand a beer in the other, a follower of the apocalypse all too keen to get away from the person taking the photo, a scribe of the brotherhood smiling so bright that her eyes squinted almost shut, and a redheaded woman bent over hugging a familiar robotic dog, clearly intoxicated. He’s seen them all in passing. Noticing how different they appeared to be when they’re not in a heated standoff against his men.
The last of the photos catches his attention. A young couple. A woman with blonde hair, and a man leaned over her with his arm wrapped around her: rough looking, tattooed completely from the neck down, head shaved close to bald. The next photo is the same couple with a baby in the man’s arms and his wife hugging onto his arm for dear life, clearly so happy. The last appears more recent with Courier Six standing between them. The blonde woman is older, and the man went through the grueling change of ghoulification. The woman is kissing the side of Six’s face with such force that she’s pushed against the man on her opposite side who also looks like he’s in mid try to kiss Six’s other cheek. And Six looks so desperately, sickenly happy that it gives the Legate pause.
“Malpais Legate, her possessions and her robot have been seized. What are your next orders?” The soldier's boots clicked, a firm fist balled and held over his heart. The man looks proud, too proud with how their operation panned out. Six carefully watches the Legate and he gives her a moment's glance, still holding her small stack of keepsakes.
“She’s property to Ceasar’s Legion now. We will take her with us.”
That statement finally gets a reaction out of Courier Six; all her early confidence rushes out of her the moment the Legate verifies that she was truly captured and they were not going to give her any sort of mercy like a bullet in the skull. She refused to be under any Legion man, refused to bow and wait for orders from men who could easily rob from her.
“You’re a goddamn abomination,” Six reels, voice powerful; her feminine voice has the men around her laughing then, mocking her for gender and stature. They promised to degrade her and use her in the worst of ways. She wouldn’t face death. Not yet. No. What she had coming would be worse than death. “You’re a fuckin’ dog, Legate. I should have killed you the moment you stepped on the Strip. What was I thinkin’?!”
The Legate ignores her threats. War is war, after all. Rape and torture is just a byproduct used in war. It came with the territory. All vile individuals revert to animalistic ethics, wanting to turn one over and having them submit to their invasion.
After the Legate reads her transgressions, he goes quiet and his dogs follow; with well-placed fear, Six observes the party around her: the decoy caravan family, the soldiers and the Legate. With shuttering anxiety, she can’t help the loathful, mirthless chuckle that escapes her lips before a butt of a stranger’s rifle knocks her out cold.