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Courier Six, in many ways, was as much a mirror to Joshua Graham as a foil.
She’d heard the history at Camp Golf, heard whispered rumors of the Burned Man throughout the Mojave until the myth was a man standing before her: Caesar’s once-right-hand—the Malpais Legate—a man cast through the flames who crawled up from death’s maw to be born anew.
She’d heard that song and dance before, and wasn’t it appropriate that someone who snubbed death, possibly the only other person who knew that painful intimacy of its suffocating embrace, the only other person she felt she could relate to, happened to be ex-Legion. It struck a fire in her heart and it burned from her throat to her toes.
She was far from perfect herself—may well have been just as evil, at a time—yet the burning hatred she felt for him the moment their eyes met couldn’t be stilled.
Once, she believed no amount of retribution or redemption could erase the wickedness of Caesar’s Army. That they deserved no pity through their pain—deserved it, even, until it drove them to death, until they burned, for all they’d taken, all they’d stolen, all they’d ravaged.
Then, came two shots to the skull. A shallow grave. A platinum chip.
A burning desire for revenge that ended up washed out and left as nothing but hollow ash in her heart.
But not as regret.
It was forgiveness that cooled the flames and laid them to rest. It was mercy, however foolish, that stilled the pistol in her hand when it was aimed true for the back of Benny’s head.
Benny, that poor, stupid son-of-a-dog, who’d had the right intentions but went about it all wrong. Benny, that poor, stupid bastard who got himself captured by Caesar and ended up a corpse in the Legion camp, unable to run far or fast enough with the guards coming down on him.
She gave him his chance, and it was fair. Unlike the potshots he’d taken at her that one, dark night backlit by New Vegas so long ago.
If Joshua Graham had still been part of the Legion, much less one of its roots, though withered, she would have struck him down.
But all she could see now was a man atoning for his past mistakes. And as much as she hated it, hated him, she couldn’t raise her gun.
They led different lives. They walked different paths.
Yet, those paths both bore the blood of hundreds and met here.
It meant something. So she stayed, tried to soothe that scorching hatred, and lent her aid to Zion.
She didn’t understand those pretty words he spoke.
Old World religion was something lost on her, and the only contact she’d ever had with it was the Virgin Mary on Benny’s gilded pistol before it was washed in blood. After his death, she’d looked up the symbol in some tattered, half-burnt yellowed books—what survived of an art collection—and read a faded paragraph on “Catholicism.” It wasn’t the way of the New Canaanites, Joshua said, though she had to wonder just how many branches of worshipping a higher force there could be.
Even as her hatred simmered like hot coals, the flames having receded, if only a little, she was never openly hostile—and in return, he tolerated her critique.
Despite how often he recited his scriptures, how he so desperately tried to appear a saint, he was not a man at peace. He was a man in pain.
“Pain you’ve caused yourself,” she was never too kind to remind him as she offered clean bandages and chems from a foraging run, though he turned down the latter.
It was never a dig at his past—only a strict reminder in present, where he continued to move as a man who hadn’t suffered severe burns, whose skin wasn’t seared and scabbed over and never to heal fully, whose scarred skin didn’t split open when he thoughtlessly reached too quickly for another semi-automatic to inspect. It was a wonder his joints hadn’t grown stiff from healed and unhealed skin constantly tearing itself apart and sewing itself back together.
“Let me know if you ever need help.”
Out of obligation, with secondhand medical experience picked up mostly from Arcade during their travels, she always offered to help him change his bandages, knowing it was no small task for him alone, wondering if perhaps the Dead Horses skilled in medicine or even just one with a gentle touch ever helped, but he refused every time.
“It’s something I have to do myself,” he said. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Courier.”
Does it hurt, she’d been tempted to ask, if only to hear the words from his mouth. To hear him admit it, acknowledge it, to appease that vindictive meanness in her heart. Does it hurt? It had to hurt. Not the burns themselves, no—the nerve-endings had been long since killed. Numbed. But the burns weren’t even, going by the way he moved, and the remaining tissue that could still feel was constantly subjected to torture. He skillfully hid his suffering, but it never didn’t hurt, she was sure. And coupled with that…
He was still in pain over his past self.
If she’d ever felt pity for him, it was then.
The Dead Horses loved Joshua Graham—blindly. They didn’t see his ghosts or the darkness of his past. They didn’t see the heartlessness she could feel.
He wanted to slaughter the White Legs. Completely.
It was something she could agree with—they were little better than Caesar’s men, or lawless raiders of the Wastes. Destroyers.
But leading the Dead Horses and the Sorrows into battle with their blind faith was something she, like Daniel, could not abide.
…Letting his revenge, his hatred, raze them all to the ground was something she could not abide.
“I don’t know if this is in that book of yours, but…I’ve heard anger…hatred…can consume you. If you aren’t careful, it burns beyond your control.” She didn’t know if her words would reach him. If they would change anything.
“I have already burned, Courier. For far too long.”
He was a man whose ways ran too deep to be changed.
The Three Marys never should have happened.
“Stay your hand,” she begged, knowing it would end this way. Knowing so many would die—knowing Joshua would refuse to hear Daniel’s plea and wage a war. Knowing he would aim to cut off the enemy’s head, but not like this.
Not like this.
She couldn’t see his face—only his eyes, those eyes that burned—but she knew it wore the same expression she had once known, when revenge was within her reach. That anger—bloodthirsty and righteous in its necessity, believing that someone had to die. Had to, or this would never end.
But not like this.
Not with Salt-Upon-Wounds groveling in defeat among his fallen men with a gun at his head in some sick mimicry of a Legion slaughter, like a legate dealing out the lottery. Like Benny, fleeing from her and being none the wiser when she could have taken the shot and wouldn’t have missed. When that praetorian guard struck him from behind and split his skull. Not like this.
“Stay your hand,” she said again, the rain from above hiding her tears. Dousing that fire that once burned so bright.
It was enough.
The pain was enough.
The war was enough.
Everything was enough.
It could end, here.
If not, it would go on and on and on and burn and consume until nothing remained.
The leader begged—oh, he begged—and she was no bleeding heart, but his words pulled her sympathy nonetheless. It wasn’t for him. It wasn’t for the White Legs. It wasn’t even for the Dead Horses, or Daniel.
It was for Joshua Graham. The Burned Man. The Malpais Legate. All the same, in this moment, indistinguishable, the dead self right alongside the living.
If he did this—if he succumbed to the fires of the past and let them rage—if he became that man, again, after so much…
Her hand strayed to the pistol at her hip and she took it in hand, aiming at the wet ground between them.
“It’s enough. You’ve won.”
Benny got his.
Salt-Upon-Wounds would as well, without his bullet.
“There’s no justifying anything that’s already been done. There’s only moving on and making up for it, no matter how long it takes. If you do this, you can’t take it back. Ever. If you do this, you’ll never stop, and you’ll spend your life making amends.”
No matter what she said, the fire in his eyes continued to burn and his sights never left his enemy.
She raised her pistol.
He aimed.
One shot fired.
He was always a quick draw, even with his burns, but the Wastes had made her faster, and one body fell.
In a way, it felt right. Like revenge, a long-time coming, had finally made its way home.
Maybe letting Benny go had been a mistake.
Maybe the fires were meant to burn.
“It’s over.” She holstered her pistol, spared a second glance at the dead leader’s corpse, but never looked at Joshua Graham again. Couldn’t, because there was no way this outcome could be considered a success.
He was a man whose ways ran too deep to be changed.
So she changed herself.