20: Make Him Feel It, Babe

Across the red fog sea, the ghosts of the Sierra Madre flicker back to life. On the rooftop terrace, sparks flicker from the frayed wires onto the torn-up tiles. Green eyes flicker back and forth between the Legion's fox and the Republic's mutt. Uncertainty as far as the eye can see, all caught in suspended animation. Coiling like a spring in the depths of his stomach. Ghosts and sparks and eyes altogether. Until they cannot be contained. Until truth flickers out of a liar's mouth.

"Someone needs to stay," Vulpes says because someone needs to say it and someone needs to stay. "That is the scheme. Like the mutant and the machine. There is the machine," he nods to the wires. "Who will be the—"

"Leave him." Boone's voice is gruff and rough, the grate of gravel beneath the turn of a wheel. "Leave him, Stella. He's sneaky. He's smart."

"I'm flattered," says Vulpes because somehow he is.

"Shut up." He turns back to Stella. "He can probably turn fucking invisible. They won't see him so they won't stab him." He smiles: a mouthful of crooked teeth and crooked satisfaction. "Best man for the job."

See me and stab me. Yes, I suppose you would prefer to reserve that particular pleasure for yourself. But Vulpes decides not to speak his mind. He decides to speak Stella's mind for her. If he knows it. He depends upon the likelihood that she might not know it herself. "Invisible," he repeated instead. "You may be overestimating my abilities."

"Shut up. He's selfish," Boone adds another questionable virtue to Vulpes' qualifications. "Can't trust him to watch your back out there. But you can trust him to watch his own. To be selfish enough to save himself."

"I never would have guessed that you admire me so," replies Vulpes with poisonous courtesy. "But aren't you forgetting the nature of the game?" He rests one finger against the cool metal at his throat. "Saving myself saves us all. Selfishness made selfless. Saving you saves me too. Sparing me," he offers a falsely sympathetic smile, "spares you too."

"Shut. Up." The words hiss out between teeth clenched as tightly as Hoover Dam. Boone zooms back in on Stella. Vulpes fancies that he can see the soldier's pupils expand like a shutter scope. "Come on, Stella. Leave him."

"Stop." Stella holds up a hand. Vulpes can see the calluses scattered across the pads of her fingers. The blisters on her palm threatening to burst. She has made her decision and he will remain. It is not hard to accept his fate. He has done it before.

But then she turns to Vulpes. She lowers her hand. He thinks he sees it tremble. Flicker. Her eyes focus on him and for one heady moment he thinks he sees her pupils dilate until the darkness swallows up the radioactive green. It is the fog. The fog changes everything.

Vulpes does not imagine what comes next. He does not imagine it when her lips part and she says, "Your turn."

"No." The word comes out like the grunt after a gut punch. Can't tell if he's the one who's hitting or being hit. Hit hard enough and he'll end up bruised and bloody either way. "He doesn't get a turn."

"You took yours," Stella says, patient, reasonable, as if this isn't betrayal compounded upon betrayal, debtor's interest growing all the time.

"Doesn't mean he gets one."

He shouldn't. He doesn't count. He's baggage. Deadweight. They'd cut him loose if they could. Toss his body over the side of the boat. But they can't. So they won't. But they would if they could. Boone believes that. Gotta believe that. Because the snake's already speaking and he's making it all sound all so reasonable. Believable.

"Snipers need their nests," he's hissing, and Boone thinks that cazadores need their nests too. "Is this not as good a roost as any?"

Any. Many. So many. Suddenly, he's back on the bitter ridge, high above the bitter canyon. Sun in his eyes, so he puts on his shades and never wants to take them off again. Next, he's back in Novac's excuse for a watchtower, stars twinkling through teeth. Shades still on, but all the better. The beast's gonna snap his jaw shut and swallow him up eventually. Doesn't want to know when it's coming.

It's coming faster and faster all the time. Just waiting for that snap-crunch-swallow.

"We did well together, did we not?" The Legion's fox lifts an eyebrow. "Creeping through the city. Slipping past the creatures that would stalk us instead. You like to hide in plain sight." Smiles at her, slippery and secret, makes Boone's skin want to slither right off his bones. "So do I. We do not all have your toy soldier's talents for keeping our bloodshed at a safe distance. We cannot stave off our enemies at a thousand paces, you and I. So we must keep such matters close. Personal."

Not supposed to make it personal. Maybe that's where everything took a turn for the wrong, for the worse, for the worst. Can't take it personally when a so-called ally turns on him. But when a friend, when a something more turns their back, turns and runs, turns and stabs, that's the snap-crunch-swallow.

"Your toy soldier has been trained to obey orders," he keeps going, going, going, and Boone's waiting for Stella to tell him to stop but she doesn't. "Tell him to jump, and he will. Tell him to shoot, and he will. Tell him to stay, and he will. But I am accustomed to issuing such orders, operating on my own terms. Should you tell me to stay," he offers a little smile as if he can't help it, can't help himself, can't help his evil, "are you quite certain that you will find me where you left me?"

"You're telling me to let you watch my back," says Stella, "because I shouldn't trust you," and Boone thinks, Yes.

"I am telling you that because you should not trust me," answers the spy, like pink syrup behind a bar gone bad, "you should keep me close," and Boone thinks, No.

"But the choice is yours," the Legion shit keeps going, going, going, smiling, smiling, smiling, lying, lying, lying. "Who stays. Who goes. The choice, Stella, is yours."

The choice, it seems, is hers. Who stays. Who goes. Who leaves. Who gets left. Stella leaves everyone eventually. For as long as she can remember. The leaving is chronic. A habit she can't shake. An addiction she can't kick. She knows she can do it. She's done it before. The leaving doesn't frighten her. She can do that in her sleep. In their sleep. There's only one person who's left her before she left him. And he didn't get very far.

Neither the sniper or the spy let Stella get very far either. But the point isn't for her to run so far that they can't find her. The point is to run so far so many times that they get sick of following her. Until then, she'll run, but not too far. She'll run, but not too fast. Except now she can't run at all. They're all yoked together by the throat. Who stays. Who goes. Who leaves. Who gets left. It doesn't matter. They're lashed together and thrown overboard into a poisonous red sea that no one, no god or dog, can part. So there's really no choice at all.

But the sky's turning dark like old blood and now everything looks like a scab she wants to scratch. Because there's that same old itch crawling inside her skull, prickling up her scalp, buzzing in her ears, getting louder and louder all the time. And then she's looking for those things, those appealing things, that might brazen away the blaze, curb the impulse, at least for a time. But there aren't any decent candidates within reach. There's only worse and worst, and Stella doesn't even know which is which anymore. Maybe that's the worst. Because in this world there's plenty of competition for that title all the time, and Stella can't help but suspect that she's in the lead. No surprise there. She's running far and she's running fast. But, right now, she's so tired that she doesn't think she can run at all.

Sure, they're waiting. Sure, they want to know. But Stella decides that she doesn't have to fucking tell them anything. Not yet. No: she's gonna make them hold fast and hunker down, hold their posts, hold all their stupid anger and their stupid smarts and their stupid feelings in check. They're gonna close the doors and they're gonna close the curtains and they're gonna close their fucking mouths and Stella's gonna close her eyes, break down the buildings, and build that beach around her. Sweep in the phantom surf and the ghost sand. Get higher and higher all the time. If New Vegas is burning, she can't see it from her beach. Even if the flames reach the shore, she'll just stand knee deep in the water and let the heat warm her back.

Run far. Run fast.

And then she wants someone else to feel it too. She wants someone else's skull to itch, someone else's balance to wobble, someone else to sweat, someone else to feel worse so she can feel better than they do. And she knows she's got her easy mark, her simpatico sounding board, always game for a guilt trip. So Stella decides that she wants to know-

"How did you know?"

She asks him when sundown's darkening the splintered shutters. She asks him when they can hear the grate of wood against tiles as their sadistic stowaway pushes a broken bookcase up against the top of the stairs on the other side of the pockmarked plaster wall. She asks him when they should be alone, but they're never alone, not really, not when she doesn't know how-

"How did you know?"

Boone's cracking open a can of Cram with a dull knife. She thinks she sees the tarnished blade slip, but the aluminum seal pops up like a sharp sliver of a moon. "Know what?" he asks but he says it slow, too slow, like she's about to pop open his seal and look at all his ancient, salted secrets. "Know what, Stella?"

"You know what," she says because he does. He has to. Their entire relationship, working and otherwise, dates back to a red beret, a shot in the dark, and a death that happened before they even met. If it happened. Because he's only ever told her-

"I know, Stella," he says but he says it fast, too fast, like the seal's sliced across her palm and blood's running thin and fast. It's not enough. "I just know." Still not enough. He's not feeling it, not feeling it, she's gotta make him feel it-

"You gotta make 'em feel it, babe."

No. No. No. Go. Go. Go. Far. Fast.

"Tell me now." The demand erupts from her throat, hot and sour like bile. "Tell me how you know, Boone. Tell me."

He's not gonna tell her. His hand spasms, his eyes glass over, his shoulders strain his jumpsuit's fabric when he hunches forward and hold, but he's not gonna tell her. Doesn't really matter. She knew when she asked that he wouldn't answer. But now her skull is silent, her balance is steady, her palms are dry. She feels better because now he feels worse. She made him feel it, babe.

But she realizes that the groan of the bookcase is gone and the world is still and she should've known better than to trust that anything's private here. Because Stella's second stalker-shadow's slipping back through the doorway and the sight of Caesar's eyes and ears stitches her lips back together.

She wonders what he heard. She wonders what he'll do with it. What he'll do to them. What he'll do to her. What she'll do to him. She wonders what she's gotta do to make him feel it, babe.