Chapter Text
The dress feels wrong.
Katie knows it before Siri finishes fastening the last hook at the back of her neck. It sits differently on her now. The waist is higher than it was a month ago, gathered with a sash that Siri has adjusted twice already, and her breasts strain against the fabric in a way that makes her aware of every seam. Her body has not returned to its previous shape. It still aches that leaks and aches, and doesn’t belong to her anymore but the baby in his crib.
"It will do," Siri says, stepping back.
Katie looks at herself in the long mirror that hangs beside the wardrobe. Red dress. Clean hair that has brushed until it shines, the black of it catching the light from the bedroom window. The collar at her throat, flashing his golden emblem, is warm from her skin. She looks like the Legate's wife again, not the new mother that she feels.
In his crib, James is dozing. She’s loathed to wake him just for Caesar’s sake but has no other choice. Caesar does not follow the schedule of a baby.
Katie picks him up, hushing him with the press of her lips against his crown. James stirs, his face creasing, one fist pulling free of the blanket to press against his own cheek. His hair is dark and fine, softer than she’d ever imagined. His mouth moves in sleep, practising something. She watches it and feels the pull behind her breastbone that has not let up since the moment Alexandria placed him on her chest.
Joshua appears at the doorway, armour clean and leather freshly oiled. He’s even used his thinning stash of saddle soap on the creases. Her sense of smell has been acute since James was born. "Are you ready?"
"No," Katie replies flatly, settling James into her arms. He has blessedly gone back to sleep.
Joshua inclines his head. "Once Caesar is satisfied, you may return home."
“Good. I don’t want to be there long. James has a routine,” she states, crossing over the bedroom floor to join him. “We’re not fucking it up for Caesar.”
“Nor should you,” he says, his hand touching the small of her back as she passes him. It's a brief press of his palm and fingers, entirely domestic, but still she feels the heat of his hand like a brand.
Together, they leave the suite and walk down the corridor to the elevator. His stride is shortened. She has noticed this before, how he adjusts his pace when she is beside him, the Legate's stride contracting to match his wife’s.
They reach the elevator. Joshua presses the call button and the machinery groans to life somewhere in the building’s core, cables and counterweights shifting in the shaft like the digestive sounds of an old animal.
It arrives quickly, as expected. House was not a man who waited often. The doors open. Joshua steps in first, checks the interior with a glance that takes less than a second and covers every corner.
Then he holds the door for her. Katie steps through. The elevator smells of old brass polish, must and machine oil. The doors shut behind Joahua and the begins to rise.
Katie holds James against her chest with both arms, the bundle of him surprisingly heavy for six pounds. His head rests in the crook of her elbow, his body along her forearm, and the heat of him seeps through the linen swaddling and into the skin beneath her dress.
The floor counter ticks upward. Katie watches it and counts her breaths. She has done this before; in worse places, in worse situations, the old trick she learned from her father in the vault and refined on her own in the wasteland when she needed to steady her hands enough to reload.
In through the nose, hold for four, out through the mouth. It has kept her alive through raider ambushes and radiation storms and that tense moment in Benny's suite at the Tops when she was not sure whether he was going to kiss her or shoot her.
It is not working now.
Her breath keeps snagging. The count keeps breaking. She holds for four and finds herself holding for six, then eight, then releasing in a shudder she cannot control.
At her side, Joshua stands still as if he were carved from granite. He is not looking at the counter. He is looking at her hands where they hold the baby, checking the grip, the angle, the security of it. It is the kind of assessment she’s seen him perform on structural fortifications. It would almost be absurd if she did not understand, with the new animal instinct, that he is doing exactly what she is doing. He is making sure the child is safe.
Then his eyes lift, and he looks at her face, and something in his own expression shifts, minutely.
“Breathe, wife, slowly,” Joshua says very quietly. It’s not his usual command, but an instruction he is offering because she seems, at this moment, to have forgotten how.
She breathes, slowing her count. There’s still a metal taste in her mouth. Her stomach is still churns. But the tremor in her fingers eases by a degree, and the wave of nausea does not return.
"He told you the name already," Katie asks, although she knows the answer already. However, talking will distract her from shaking in her thighs, and the fact that her son will shortly be handed to a man she tried to destroy.
"Yes. Marcus."
“Marcus?”
"After Mars."
She looks down at James, at the sleeping face that is still only the face of a chubby, new born. He does not look a god of war. "His name is James," she says quietly.
"His name is whatever we are in a position to call him,” Joshua replies bluntly.
The elevator chimes and the doors slide open with a hiss. Two Praetorians snap to attention. Their eyes go to Joshua first, then to Katie, then to the bundle in her arms. She sees the shift, the change in their stance in knowing that they will one day swear fealty to the week old baby in her arms.
"Ave, Legatus. He is expecting you," one of them says.
Caesar's penthouse is warm. The afternoon light pours through the long windows and turns the dust in the air to gold. The bull banners hang motionless in the still heat. The room smells of leather and tobacco and the faint sweetness of Sunset Sarsaparilla, and under it, the particular scent of a man who has lived in this space long enough to have changed the air with his own chemistry.
Caesar is standing. He is not at the window this time. He is in the centre of the room, near the long table, and he is waiting.
And he has dressed for the occasion. Not in battle dress, not in the casual tunics she has seen him wear in private audiences. He is wearing the formal regalia, the crimson cloak over one shoulder, the feathered collar around his neck. The gold sigil of his station gleams on his chest.
His eyes find Katie and hold. Then they drop to the baby. His whole face changes.
It is not the normal, shit eating grin he wears. Not the broad, calculated delight she has seen him deploy in front of officers and centurions. It is frighteningly genuine. "Don’t linger there like a bad smell," Caesar says. “Come in.”
Katie does not move immediately. She stands at the top of the short staircase that descends into the main room and holds her son. Her pulse presses high in her throat, and she’s suddenly more frightened than she’s ever been during the captivity. She is going to place her child in the hands of the man who owns them both. She is going to have to watch Caesar hold her baby and not try and take his eyes out for it.
Joshua's hand finds the small of her back again, but the touch is a little firmer this time, a little more insistent.
She descends the stairs. The tile is shiny under her feet, the old pre-War quality that still looks good hundred of years later. House had good taste. Caesar kept because what was good for the goose was good for the gander.
She crosses the room and stops at the correct distance. Not too close. Not too far.
"Caesar," Katie says. Her voice is steady. She has tried hard to make it steady.
Caesar does not look at her. He is looking at James. At the dark hair, the closed eyes, the small mouth, at the tiny fingers curled into a fist against her chest.
"So this is him," Caesar says.
"This is him."
"Give him to me. Let’s get a look at the little bastard."
Katie's arms tighten for a moment. It is involuntary, the reflex of a body that knows that the safest place for him is against her chest.
Caesar seems to notice her reluctance. “You can have the kid back afterwards, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Her breath loosens. That is what she’s worried about. “You guys have a bad habit of taking what isn’t yours,” she comments, but she eases her grip and steps forward. She transfers James into Caesar's waiting hands, feels something internal tearing, like a stitch pulled too soon.
Caesar takes the baby. His hands are large and rough, boy's head cradled in one broad palm. He knows how to do this. That registers somewhere in Katie's mind and sits there, uncomfortable and prickly.
He knows how to hold a baby.
James stirs at the transfer. His eyes open, unfocused, blinking against the warm light of the penthouse. He does not cry. He looks up at the face above him with the solemn, intense incomprehension that suddenly reminds her so much of Joshua’s stare.
Caesar stares back at him.
The room goes very quiet. Joshua has stopped at the base of the stairs. The Praetorians at the door have not moved. Nobody moves.
Caesar's thumb traces the line of the baby's forehead. It is a surprisingly delicate gesture from a hand that has signed death warrants and execution orders and documents that have reshaped the political geography of the western wastelands
"He has your mouth," Caesar says to Katie without looking up.
"So I'm told."
"And your hair. Your father's hair."
The mention of her father catches her off guard. She had not expected Caesar to know what colour her father’s hair was. But of course he knows. Caesar has a file on her. Caesar has a file on everyone. He probably knows the colour of her father's eyes, how he took his coffee and the exact date her father walked into the irradiated chamber at the Jefferson Memorial and did not walk out.
"Yes," she says.
"Good stock, your father." Caesar comments. She does not react to it, and it still lands in her stomach like a stone dropped into water.
James makes a sound. A small, questioning noise, not distress, not hunger, just the sound a new-born makes when the world has shifted unexpectedly from their mother. His fist opens and closes against Caesar's thumb.
He laughs.
It is not the public laugh, not the performance. It is a sound she has never heard from him before, short and surprised. As if the baby has done something Caesar did not predict. He so rarely encounters things he did not predict that the experience delights him.
"Strong grip," he says. "That's Joshua’s blood in him."
Behind her, Joshua says nothing. Katie does not turn around. She does not need to see his face to know what is on it.
Caesar carries James to the window. He moves carefully, his stride shortened, the rhythm of his walk altered by the weight in his arms. He stands where the light so the sun catches the boy's face. James squints and makes a disgruntled little snort.
"Marcus," he states
The name makes Katie burn, like brand pressed into skin. Her baby’s name is James.
"Marcus," Caesar says again. “The god of war who split your mother open at the moment of victory so you could arrive in blood and triumph." He looks down at the baby with an expression that is, for one unguarded moment, something very close to tenderness. "Yes, that’s your name from now on."
He then turns back to her. "You have given me exactly what I asked for," Caesar states. "I want you to know that. Whatever our history. Whatever you think of me. You have done this and I will not forget it."
"I didn't do it for you," Katie says.
Caesar smiles. It is the smile of a man who has heard the answer he expected and is pleased with its predictability. "No," he says. "You did it to keep yourself from getting mounted by Lanius. I know. I was counting on it."
Katie frowns at the vulgarity, even if it is true. “Ugh, thanks for that image my lord.”
Joshua speaks from behind her. "Caesar."
"Don't get your armour in a twist, Joshua. I’m merely stating a fact." Caesar carries James back toward them, his stride easy now, the baby settled against his chest with a familiarity that makes Katie's skin prickle. "Sit down. Both of you. We need to discuss the introduction."
They sit in his longue area; Joshua and Katie on one couch, Caesar and Caesar does not return the baby. He holds James in the crook of his right arm arm while he pours Sunset Sarsaparilla with his left, a feat of coordination that is almost impressive.
Katie watches her son in Caesar's arms and does not ask for him back. She wants to, wants to snatch him back. The wanting is a physical pain behind her breastbone, a hormonal imperative that makes her palms itch and her jaw tighten. But she does not ask, because asking would reveal how much it upsets her. She cannot let Caesar have that sort of power over her.
"The Legion knows about the birth," Caesar says, settling into the chair opposite them. "Obviously. Half of them were in the arena when it happened. The story is already spreading and, credit to my propagandists and Frumentarii, it's spreading well. Mars opened her at the moment of victory. The heir arrived in blood and triumph. The Legate's son. The Legion's son. But there’s more still to do to ensure his rule will never be questioned."
Katie presses her teeth against her tongue for a moment, grounding herself with the sharp bite before answering. “More? What more could you possibly want from us?”
Caesar tilts the tumbler. "In the old Rome, Heirs were presented directly to the legions and the senate. It establish legitimacy and ensure a smooth transition of power. I want to do the same.”
“How?” Katie asks.
He clicks his tongue at her. “I expected a vault dweller to know her history better, kid. I’m talking about a presentation.”
Joshua leans forward, his elbows on his thighs. "A presentation?" he repeats
"A presentation." Caesar nods. "Formal. Public. At Camp McCarran, where every man in red from here can see him." He looks at Katie. "With his mother."
She keeps her face still. "When?"
"Four days. That gives us time to assemble the garrison. I want every centurion on the Strip present. I want the decanii. I want the Praetorian guard in formation. I want Lanius there."
Katie feels Joshua go rigid beside her, a tension that communicates through the cushion of the chair and into her hip where they are almost touching. "Lanius," Joshua repeats, frowning.
"Lanius." Caesar's eyes are bright and hard and completely aware of what he has just done. "He fought at the Dam. He commands a chunk of the Legion's field strength. If I exclude him from the presentation of the heir, I insult him publicly. I’m not ready to insult him publicly because I still need him. So he stands in the front row and he watches and he sees the child that another man put in the woman he wanted, and he rages about it. He rages then takes it out on my enemies." Caesar takes a drink. "That is the point, Joshua. That is the entire fucking point."
The logic is impeccable. She’s almost impressed.
"You want him humiliated," Katie says.
“Yes, only because he will fight harder for it," Caesar corrects. "Lanius is a weapon. Weapons need maintenance."
He looks down at James, who has begun to stir in his arms. “Four days," Caesar states firmly. "You will receive the protocol. You will wear what I send. The boy will be in Legion red and gold."
Caesar shifts her son slightly, adjusting his hold as the baby's mouth begins to work, the searching reflex that means he will need feeding soon. "You’ll stand beside Joshua. You’ll hold the kid. I will speak. I’ll take the him from you and present him to the Legion by name. Then I will return him and that’s the end of it."
"And what do I do during this?" Katie asks. "Stand there and look pleased about it?"
"You stand there and look like a mother," Caesar replies cheerfully. "Which, as it happens, you are. So it should not require much effort."
“Great, can’t fucking wait,” she says drily, ignoring the withering look that Joshua gives.
Caesar sets his tumbler down, watching her with an expression she cannot quite read, something beneath the satisfaction and the political calculation.
"One more thing," he says. "Before you go."
Katie waits. James wriggles in Caesar’s arms, making small sounds of discomfort that mean he will need feeding soon. She needs to be out of this room before the fussing becomes a wail and Caesar loses patience.
"The mother of the heir is owed something," Caesar continues. “Before the great war, monarchs would reward the women who gave them male heirs. And since my Legion is greater than any fucking kingdom, I would do the same. I will grant you one favour.”
He looks at her directly. "Ask me for something, kid. One thing. Within reason. So don't ask for the keys to the city back or your NCR friends pardoned. But ask me for something real and I'll see it done."
Well.
She hadn’t been expecting that.
Katie sits there. Her mind is, for once, completely empty.
“A favour?”
He holds up a single finger. “Yeah one favour, so make it count”
She wets her lips. She should have an answer ready. She has spent months cataloguing the things she needs, the things Alexandria needs, the things the women in the slave district need. She has a list, an actual list, written on a scrap of paper that she means to give Joshua.
But in the warm penthouse with Caesar's eyes on her, none of it surfaces. What remains is a white static of too many possibilities collapsing into each other.
Katie glances at Joshua helplessly, strangely looking for guidance. But his face remains neutral and controlled.
“I...I don't know yet," she admits after a few long moments.
Caesar raises an eyebrow. "You don't know?”
"No."
He studies her for a moment, then chuckles. "Most people in your position would have an answer before I finished the sentence. Half my centurions would trip over themselves to ask for land or rank or a woman." He shakes his head. "But you don't know. You actually don't know?"
"I want to think about it," Katie replies. "If you're offering me one thing, I want to make sure it's the right thing."
Caesar's expression shifts, something almost like approval underneath the amusement. "Smart, kid. Smart" he says. "You don’t waste your shot." He waves a hand toward the door. "You have until the presentation. Come to me with your answer after I hold your son up in front of the Legion, and I will have it done."
He stands and comes around the table to deposit James back into her arms. Katie instinctively draws her son away from him. She doesn’t like how he’s looking at both of them.
The change in position is enough to disturb James. He scrunches up his face, drawing his knees towards his belly beneath the blanket, and lets out a wavering little whine of disappointment.
“Shh, it’s alright,” Katie murmurs, gently patting his back. “I know. We’ll go home soon.”
James’s small works instinctively against the fabric over her shoulder, turning from side to side as though searching for milk even in his sleep. One tiny fist escapes the blanket, opening and closing in slow, uncertain movements.
"Four days," Caesar says again. "Wear what I send. Be ready at noon. Both of you."
“Your will, my hand,” Joshua replies at her side.
Satisfied, Caesar sinks back into the chair opposite again, reaching for his tumbler. “Good. Now escort your wife and son back to their quarters, then return here.”
Joshua inclines his head. His hand finds the small of Katie's back, the same position as before, light and directive. Katie turns with him toward the short staircase that leads up to the penthouse doors.
The stairs are harder going up. Her body reminds her with every step, the stitches pulling, the deep ache in her pelvis that Alexandria told her would ease in a few weeks. She holds James tighter against her shoulder and feels Joshua's hand adjust its position as she climbs, moving from the small of her back to her elbow to steady her.
Behind them, she can hear Caesar settling deeper into his chair, the creak of leather and the clink of the tumbler against the table. He has already moved on. The audience is a closed file. He is thinking about the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing after that. Caesar’s mind does not idle.
At the top of the stairs, the Praetorian at the door presses the call button for the elevator without being asked. Katie steps inside, followed by Joshua. Then the doors slide shut with a hiss and the elevator descends.Katie holds James against her chest and feels the machine lower them back into the building, away from the penthouse, away from the light and the banners and the smell of sunset sarsaparilla.
In her arms, James starts to wriggle again, making small grunting sounds building in frequency. His mouth searches the shoulder of her dress, leaving wet rings in the fabric.
Joshua stands beside her silently. His reflection is visible in the marred brass of the elevator doors, armour and sharp jaw. His eyes, however, watch his son.
"He was gentle with him," Katie states, her hand resting on James’s back. “I...wasn’t expecting that.”
Joshua does not answer immediately. The elevator passes a floor, the machinery humming around them.
"Caesar is gentle with things he considers his," Joshua says.
"And what does he consider this?" She looks down at the baby. At the dark hair and the closed eyes and the mouth that has her shape.
"The future," Joshua says. "He considers him the future."
James snuffles again and turns his head. His nose bumps clumsily against her jaw, a blunt, seeking motion, and his mouth opens against the underside of her chin and closes on nothing and opens again. He makes a sound of mild bewilderment at finding skin where milk should be.
“Wrong spot,” she says, kissing his hair. He smells faintly sweet, like cazador honeyed milk.
James grunts again, unconvinced, and pushes his face harder into her neck. His whole body curls tighter against her chest; his knees drawing up, coming a dense comma against her heartbeat.
Joshua’s hand moves. It comes up slowly from his side to brush the curve of James's foot where it presses against her ribs. James's toes curl in response, a reflex, automatic, the grip of a creature that does not know what a father is but knows the feel of a familiar fingers.
Joshua's keeps the point of contact of contact. His face does not change but it watches Katie’s in the reflection.
She’s hopelessly charmed by them both.
The elevator suddenly opens onto their floor. The corridor is quiet. The Praetorian on duty strikes his armour in salute.
Joshua walks her to their door but does not come inside. "I need to go back up," he says. "Caesar wants to discuss the arrangements for the presentation. Security. Formations."
Katie nods. She does not ask him to stay. She has learned her marriage well enough to know which departures are negotiable and which are not.
"Go," she says.
He looks at her. At James on her shoulder. At the door behind her, which leads to the rooms where their life happens in the spaces between his duties. His hand comes up, briefly, and touches the back of James's head the way Caesar did an hour ago, only lighter. As if he is afraid the weight of his hand might leave a mark.
Then he turns and walks back toward the elevator, and Katie watches the corridor swallow him, and goes inside.
The suite is quiet.
Siri is somewhere in the kitchen. Katie can hear the small domestic sounds of water being poured, a pot being moved. The light from windows glows, warm and thick, and the air smells of clean linen and the faintly sweet scent of the balm Alexandria left for her stitches.
Katie carries James through to the bedroom. The air is cooler here and the light is gentler. Immediately, James to fuss against her chest with increasing urgency.
"I know," she says. "I know. I'm here."
She sits on the edge of the bed and works the hooks at the back of her neck with one hand, the other arm holding James steady. The dress loosens. She pulls the fabric down from her shoulder and her breast. The air hits her skin and she can feel how full she is, how badly she aches for a relief from the pressure.
James finds her before she is fully ready for him. His mouth opens against her skin, searching, snuffling, rooting for her.
Then, he latches. The pull is immediate, a deep drawing sensation that begins at the nipple and radiates backward through the breast and into her chest wall. Its not painful anymore, not since the first days, when process was cracked skin and Katie biting down on the inside of her cheek while Alexandria adjusted her hold.
Now, her body has learned the shape of his mouth. His mouth has learned the shape of her. The fit is better now.
She watches him feed. His eyes are closed. His jaw works in the steady. His hand rests against the warm skin of her chest, fingers splayed
The letdown hits and her other breast responds, the fabric of her dress darkening where the milk soaks through. She does not care. There is no one here to see it. There is no audience. There is only the bedroom light softening the edges of the afternoon until Caesar's penthouse feels distant.
But she can still see his hands on James. Caesar's hands, large and certain. The way he held her son like something he intended to keep.
She pushes the thought down. James is here. James is hers. James is content. James is feeding, his body solid against her.
He feeds for a long time. Longer than usual. Perhaps he is hungry from the disruption of the afternoon, the transfer between arms, the unfamiliar smells of the penthouse. She strokes his soft hair until he finished, until his jaw slows and his mouth softens and he releases her with the small, wet sound
Katie lifts him to her shoulder. Pats his back. Waits.
The burp comes, surprisingly loud, as if it had come from his very feet. James sags against her with the boneless satisfaction, his small body heavy with milk and his breath wet against her neck.
She does not put him in the crib. Instead, she lowers herself onto the bed, slowly then arranges herself on her side with James in the curve of her arm.
His feet are bare. She had not noticed that his blanket has come loose at the bottom until now, and there they are, tiny and exposed.
She touches one with her fingertip. The skin is impossibly soft, creased at the sole. His toenails are almost translucent, the size of seed pearls.
Katie cups his foot. It fits entirely inside the seam of her palm. She could close her hand over it and it would disappear. "Look at you," she says softly. “Just so damn cute I can’t even stand it.”
His hands are the same. She has studied them before, in the Old Mormon Fort, in the wagon, in the small hours when he wakes for a feeding.
But she studies them again now because they are different today. His fingers are longer than they were three days ago. She is certain of it, the way she is certain that the sky is blue.
Katie holds his hand and measures his fingers against her own. His knuckles are dimpled. His wrists are creased with fat he did not have at birth, new weight settling into his body from the milk he pulls from her every two hours. His forearms are smooth and pale and unmarked, and she looks at them and thinks about bandages for just a moment.
His face has changed too. The swollen redness of birth has resolved into something recognisably human, the features separating out into shapes she can read. Her mouth. Joshua's brow, or what might become Joshua's brow, the bones still buried under infant softness. Black hair, fluffy and feathery, that will eventually need cutting. His eyes, when they open, are the cloudy blue-grey that all newborns have; the colour not yet decided, not yet claimed by either parent.
He is bigger. She is definitely imagining it. Seven days and he is already different from the creature that came out of her.
"You're going to be tall," she tells him. She does not know where the conviction comes from, but her father was. And his own father stands tall and broad shouldered, a testament to his healthy New Canaanite upbringing.
James yawns. It is a full-body motion, his mouth opening improbably wide, his arms stretching out from his sides, his fingers splaying and then curling back. His tongue is small and pink and wet. The yawn ends and he blinks and his eyes find her face, or the blur of it, and he goes still.
He is looking at her, making sense of her shape. Katie watches him looking at her and feels the pull of invisible thread again that has not stopped tugging since the moment he was born. The tug that tells her to agree to anything, to do anything to keep him safe and in her arms.
And then she thinks nothing at all, because the exhaustion of the day descends on her all at once, the audience and the penthouse and the name and the boon and the sight of Caesar's hands on her son
She loses her eyes with James warm next to her and falls asleep in the yellow light.
Katie wakes to the sound of Siri's hands.
Not her voice, though she can hear that too, but her hands. She can hear the soft rustle of cloth being folded, the soft shush of fabric being drawn across skin.
She sits up slowly. The light in the bedroom has changed. The gold has drained from the room, replaced by the blue-grey of early evening. The room is dimmer, cooler, the temperature dropping as the desert gives back the day's heat. Someone has drawn the curtain partway across the window. The clock on the wall says she has slept for two hours.
Siri is at the foot of the bed.
She has James on the folded blanket there, his body wiggling, and she is changing him. Her movements are deft and unhurried. She has removed the soiled cloth and set it aside in the basin she keeps for this purpose, and she is cleaning him with a damp rag, working the creases of his thighs and the soft places behind his knees with the attention of someone who understands that these small folds of skin are where irritation begins if not kept clean.
James is awake. He is looking up at Siri, his small, pudgy fists raised on either side of his head, his fat little legs kicking gently against her hands.
Siri is talking to him.
This is the thing that catches Katie's breath. Siri is talking to him in a low, steady murmur that is not quite language and not quite song. Perhaps it’s something from before, from whoever Siri was before the Legion took her.
Katie sits still, watching Siri fold the fresh cloth into the shape Alexandria taught them both and lift James's hips with one hand and slide the cloth under with the other. She fastens it, all in a single continuous motion that makes it look easy, which Katie knows it is not.
"There," Siri says to James, her voice dropping into that soothing hum again. "There. Better now."
"You're good at that," Katie says.
Siri looks up, appearing startled by her. "Apologies Domina, you needed sleep," she says. "He woke and I didn't want to disturb you."
Katie’s touched by her quiet consideration. “Thank you."
“It is no trouble at all Domina,” She says as she carries James around the end of the bed and deposits James into Katie's arms with the smooth handoff they have perfected over the last week.
James settles against Katie's chest with a small snorting noise, his eyes begin to close again.
"He was wet," Siri say. “Not hungry. He should sleep for another hour if you're lucky."
"Sit down for a minute, please" Katie ask.
Siri sits at the edge of the bed without hesitation. They are past that, have been passed that for months now. She folds her hands in her lap. Her fingers are red from the washing, the skin rough at the knuckles. The sigil on her tunic catches the last of the light from the window.
They sit together in the quiet. James breathes against Katie's chest. The Lucky 38 hums its low mechanical hum around them. Somewhere below, the Strip is beginning its evening noise, the sounds of an occupied city performing normalcy.
"Siri," Katie says.
"Domina."
"You held me together. During the birth. You know that, don't you? And I don’t think I ever thanked you properly for it.”
Siri does not answer immediately. Her hands move in her lap, a small restless motion that Katie recognises as discomfort with a compliment she does not believe she is permitted to accept.
"There is no need to thank me. I did my work," Siri says.
"You did more than your work. You held my hand for twelve hours. You let me scream into your shoulder. You talked me through the worst pain of my life and you did it without flinching, and when it was over you cleaned me up and helped get me home." Katie pauses. "That is not your work. That is something else."
Siri's mouth twitches at the corner, as if her lips had forgotten how to form smiles. "You are kind to say so, Domina."
"I'm not being kind. I'm telling you what happened."
Siri looks at her. In the dim room, her eyes are dark and steady and very tired. Siri sleeps when Katie is sleeping and James is sleeping and the suite is quiet and there is nothing left to attend to. Which means Siri sleeps almost never.
"I am glad I was there," Siri says, and the words are careful, chosen, but beneath them is fondness. "I would not have wanted you to do that alone."
It is the most personal thing Siri has ever said to her. It is also, Katie understands, a risk. In the Legion, a slave who expresses preferences about her assignment is a slave who has forgotten her place. A slave who tells her mistress what she would or would not have wanted is a slave who has confused proximity with equality, a taboo notion in the Legion.
Siri knows this and has said it anyway.
Katie looks at this woman, at the red hands and the sigil on her sleeve and the tenderness she showed a baby that is not hers but cares for anyway.
“I just...wanted to say thank you. I didn’t say it at the time, and I want to say it now.”
Siri bows her head. Her hair has grown since she’d been made a permanent member of the Legate’s household. It’s been allowed to grow out into tight, dark coils that James finds endlessly fascinating. “It is my duty Domina. I am honoured to serve.”
Katie stills for a moment, feeling a weight drop through her chest and settle in the dark pit of her stomach.
Absurdly, some part of her had forgotten that Siri is a slave. The same baffling part of her that forgets she’s a captive.Siri cannot leave. Siri cannot choose to be elsewhere. Siri cannot wake up tomorrow and decide she would like a different life, because Siri is property, entered into a ledger. She belongs to the household of the Malpais Legate and will continue to belong to it until she is transferred or dies or the Legion falls, whichever comes first.
The woman who held her through the worst night of her life is a woman who does not own her own name.
Katie's arms tighten around James. He stirs and settles, blissful in his sleep.
"You should eat something," Siri says, beginning to stand. "I can bring it here. You don't need to get up."
"Wait."
Siri stops, as if commanded by the Malpais Legate himself. “Domina?”
Katie thinks about the boon. Three days. One thing. Within reason.
She thinks about the list in her head, the things she has catalogued over months. Antiseptic for Alexandria. Better food for the slave quarter. Another Medicus. Shorter shifts for tower workers
But this.
If she asked Caesar to free Siri, what would he do?
She considers all the angles. Caesar would see it as sentiment, which he despises. He would see it as weakness, which he exploits. He would ask her why, of all the things she could request, she is spending her single boon on a slave. She would have to answer that question in a way that doesn’t make her vulnerable or Siri a target.
But she also sees the other thing. The thing Caesar would not say aloud but would spin behind his eyes. The Courier, the mother of the heir, asking for the freedom of a single woman. Caesar would like the story it tells. That even in the Legion, that the woman who bore Marcus asked not for jewellery or privilege but for the liberty of the woman who helped bring him into the world.
But would he grant it?
Katie does not know, the uncertainty feels tight around her – like a belt notched three holes too tight.
"Siri," she starts.
"Yes, Domina."
But she does not say it. Not yet, not until she has asked Caesar himself.
"Nothing," she says. "Just. Thank you. And dinner sounds like a good idea.”
Siri nods. “Of course Domina. I shall have a meal prepared,” she replies and exits the bedroom.
Katie waits for a in the darkening room with her son against her chest. She turns the idea over and over in her mind, like an old coin she can’t determine the value of.
Four days days. One boon. Within reason. Was freeing a slave within reason?
She closes her eyes and listens to James breathe and thinks about what it would mean to give that back to Siri
The room is fifteen feet underground and smells like ozone, mildew and the rust of old pipes.
There is a table. On the table there is a map. The map is covered in marks, red pins and pencil lines and small notations in handwriting that belongs to four different people, none of whom agree on anything except the objective. The pins cluster around the Strip, marking targets of value. The pencil lines trace supply routes, patrol schedules, sightlines, chokepoints. A coffee mug sits on the corner of Freeside, its ring stain bleeding into the grid.
Boone is leaning over the table.
He has been at the table for six hours. He has been at a table like this, at some table or another, in some room or another, for the better part of a year. The locations change. The maps are redrawn when they move. The coffee is always bad. The objective does not change.
He is thinner than he was at the Dam. His jaw is harder, the lines around his eyes deeper, the crew cut growing out into something he does not bother to fix. The First Recon beret is on the table beside the map, faded and sweat-stained.
Arcade is beside him, reading from a sheaf of papers that were smuggled out of McCarran two weeks ago in the false bottom of a medical supply crate. Patrol rotations. Officer assignments. He pushes his glasses up his thin nose and mutter something in Latin that Boone doesn’t understand.
ED-E hovers above Arcade's left shoulder, close enough that the faint ozone crackle of its propulsion adds a second layer to the room's electrical smell. It bobs gently, its sensor light cycling through its idle pattern, and every thirty seconds it drifts an inch closer to the papers Arcade is reading as though it, too, is trying to parse Legion patrol schedules. Arcade waves a hand at it without looking up, the absent, practised gesture of a man shooing a fly he has shooed ten thousand times. ED-E retreats half a foot, beeps once in a tone that manages to sound affronted, and drifts back into position within fifteen seconds. They have been doing this for months.
At a work bench nearby, Cass is cleaning a rifle. Her hands shake. They always shake these days, since she went cold turkey. She has not spoken in twenty minutes, which is unusual for Cass and which means she is either thinking or angry. Boone finds its often the latter these days.
Raul is next to her, soldering something. A radio component, probably. He is the reason they have communications at all, the reason the network of informants that feeds this room with intelligence can get their reports to a receiver that actually works. His hands are steady despite the age in them, and he hums while he works, an old local tune predates the war by a century or more.
Beyond the table, in the back half of the room where the bunker widens into what was once a storage bay, three NCR soldiers sit on crates and bedrolls. Two of them are playing cards by the light of a battery lantern, the third cleaning a service rifle. Their uniforms are faded, the bear insignia on their shoulders worn to ghosts. They are not part of the planning. They are part of the small garrison that rotates through the safe house on two-week shifts, providing security and supply runs and the particular morale that comes from knowing the Republic has not entirely abandoned the people of New Vegas. They glance up when voices rise at the table and look away again. They have learned that the companions’s business is their own.
The heavy latch above them suddenly opens. Boone’s hand instinctively finds the spare pistol on the
Veronica scales down the ladder, taking two rungs at a time. There is something in her face tonight that Boone has not seen in a long time, something that makes him look up from the map before she speaks.
"Word from inside," she says.
The room goes still. Cass's hands stop on the cleaning rod. Arcade sets down the papers. Raul's soldering iron hovers above the circuit board, a thin thread of smoke curling upward.
Boone waits.
"She had the baby," Veronica says. "A boy. A week ago. Both of them alive."
She says it simply but her eyes are bright and her hands are not quite steady. Boone can see the effort it costs her to keep her voice level.
The room absorbs the information.
Boone looks at the map again. At the cluster of red pins around the Lucky 38. At the pencil lines that trace the routes he has drawn and redrawn, the approaches he has calculated and recalculated, the scenarios he has run through his head at three in the morning when he cannot sleep and the ceiling feels like a coffin lid.
A boy.
He thinks about Carla. The thought enters his mind the way it always does, without permission, a blade he has learned to hold without cutting himself. Carla in the sun in Novac. Carla's hand on her belly. Carla's face when she told him, and the size of the feeling that opened inside him, bigger than anything he had words for.
He puts the thought down before it swallows him whole. He couldn’t save Carla, but maybe he could save Katie.
"The source is reliable?" he asks.
"One of the household runners," Veronica says. "Same channel as the pregnancy confirmation. The info is good.”
"Does it say anything about her condition?" he asks. "Is she hurt?"
"No injuries reported. Least physical ones." Veronica sits down on the crate by the door, the one they use as a chair because they don’t have enough chairs. "But it's secondhand, Boone. The runner doesn't have direct access. They're getting it from someone in the kitchens."
“Someone should tell Lily,” Cass says. She has not looked up from the rifle. Her voice is carefully flat, the tone she uses when she is managing something she does not want the room to see. “She’ll want to know.”
“Lily’s still out?” Veronica asks.
“Hunting. Took the north ridge at sundown. She should be back within the hour.” Cass slots the bolt carrier into place with a hard click. “She’s been asking every day where her baby is.”
Boone thinks of Lily, who carried Katie on her shoulder once when a cazador sting dropped her. In all the months since the Dam, hasn’t stopped referring to Katie as one of her grandchildren. “I’ll tell her," Boone replies. "When she gets back."
He pulls the map toward him. The pins shift, the pencil lines blur and sharpen as the lamp flickers. He picks up the pencil and taps it against the edge of the table.
"The birth changes the timeline," he says. "She can't move fast with a newborn. She can't run. She can't fight, not for weeks. That means the extraction window just got narrower and the logistics got harder."
"Or wider," Arcade says. "Depending on how you look at it. Caesar will probably want a presentation, maybe a military tour like they did in Rome for new heirs. It might give us more opportunities for a crash and grab.”
Boone glances at him. “You think he’ll have one?”
Arcade nods. “He will. It will legitimise the child’s claim as the heir to the Legion.”
Security is going to be a ball ache though," Cass says. "You think Caesar's going to take his little heir across the Mojave without an army?."
"He would do that, even without a baby,” Veronica comments.
"So, it needs to be a quick and quiet operation," she replies. "Find out when they're marching, head them off. Then sneak in and grab Katie during the night."
"And her son?"
Boone frowns. "Can't take them both. It's too risky. They might not even be together anymore."
Veronica looks aghast. "We can't just leave him behind Boone, that isn't right."
"Nothing about this is right," he replies. "Katie might not even have the kid with her anymore."
Arcade removes his glasses and cleans them on his shirt. "I hate to have to play devils advocate, but we need to be realistic here."
Boone didn't like it when Arcade started a sentence like that. Usually he ended up being right. "Realistic?"
"Yes. If Katie has been allowed to keep her son with her, then she'll do everything to protect him. We all know what she's like."
"What are you driving at?"
"I mean she might not want to put him in any danger. And trying to escape the Legion is pretty dangerous."
Silence.
They have not discussed this directly before. The possibility that Katie might not want to be rescued. No one wants to talk about it.
"She'll leave," Boone states firmly. "I know she will."
He does not know if this is true. He says it because the alternative is to stop, and stopping is not something he is capable of. He has been incapable of it since Bitter Springs. Since Carla. Since the day Katie climbed into his life in Novac.
"There's also the matter of the dad - the Malpais Legate. He won't just let her go quietly," Cass points out. "He'd probably rather kill her than let her escape."
Boone feels his fingers itch at the mention of Joshua Graham. "If that happens, I'll handle him."
He turns to the ghoul. "Raul," he says. "How long until the secondary transmitter is operational"
Raul does not look up from the circuit board. "Two days, boss. Maybe three. The capacitor I need is not easy to find in this part of the world, but I have a lead on a trader coming through Primm."
"Get it done. We need a second comm channel before we move to the next phase." Boone looks at Veronica. "Can you get another message to the household runner? I want confirmation on the Praetorian rotation post-birth. Numbers, shift changes, anything that's different from the last report."
"I can try. The channel is slow. It could take a week."
"That's fine. We're not moving any time soon." He looks at the map again. At the Lucky 38. At the tower that used to belong to House and now belongs to Caesar. That contains a woman and a child and a man with bandaged forearms who Boone intends to address personally when the time comes.
Arcade picks up his papers. Raul bends back to the soldering iron. Veronica stays on the crate by the door, her legs drawn up, her chin on her knees, thinking about a baby in a tower she cannot reach.
Boone puts his pencil to the map and draws a new line. The ventilation hums around him. The weary NCR soldiers deal another hand in the back of the room. Somewhere on the north ridge, Lily is making her way home with something heavy over her shoulder and a question she will ask before she sets it down.
Fifteen feet below the desert, in a bunker with no windows and one latch, people who love Katie sit with a map and the necessary conviction that they are going to bring her home.