At the End of the Road

Chapter 3

"Look, all I'm sayin' is," Jane argued as she held a pair of sizzling gecko kabobs over the campfire. "NCR's got its problems, true, but at least they got some good bits. If you took the bad outta the Legion, there'd be nothing left. Least NCR's tryin' to not be awful."

Ulysses, sitting beside her, frowned. Well, she thought he frowned, at least, judging by the knitting of his brows.

"Said before, trying doesn't hold much weight with me. Bull knows what it is, doesn't deceive itself. Bear hides the rot behind speeches and bureaucracy, pretends not to see the infection as it spreads."

"Oh, and that's better, is it?" She arched an eyebrow at him. "Better to be a total asshole than a bit of an asshole, so long as you're honest about it? Sorry, my man, it might sound good in philosophy an' all, but here in the real world, real people gotta deal with the real consequences of real assholes."

She'd been in and out of the Divide the past couple months, running errands for the NCR, the Followers, the Brotherhood. Seemed like everyone had a task for the courier who, in Veronica's words, "did the NCR's job for them, and kicked Legion butt while doing it." And with House's death, the new treaties, and the NCR takeover, there was plenty of work needed doing. Amidst all of the chaos, though, there was one regular delivery route from which she would never stray: a parcel of food, books, and medical supplies to that lonely cliff above Hopeville, and the man who waited there.

She found she thought about him a lot, when she was away.

Ulysses shook his head.

"Not my meaning. NCR follows symbols it doesn't understand, copies all the mistakes of the Old World without thought. Rotting from the inside, will collapse in on itself in time; won't need Bull's help with that. Won't matter being nicer, if it can't survive."

Jane peered at him, eyes narrowed doubtfully, as she turned the skewers. The smell of cooking meat made her mouth water.

"Maybe so, but for somethin' as bad as the Legion, endurin' ain't a good thing. 'Sides, you said yourself Legion would never last anyway, once it ran out of things to conquer."

"Why I left," Ulysses replied tersely. "Could have been the empire Caesar wanted, had more foresight. Knew war, skilled at it. Fell upon the tribes like a terror. Twisted Hairs were warriors-" Jane detected a note of pride in his voice as she listened in rapt attention. It was rare for Ulysses to say much about his people before the Legion, and she couldn't deny that she was damn curious. "-Wore our victories in our hair. But Legion was brutal, efficient, warfare of a kind tribes had never seen before. Still... Bull wouldn't survive peace. Too good at making men hungry for war, sooner turn on itself than settle down. Caesar could take his empire, but never keep it."

"That's what you said about your namesake, right?" Her tone was conversational. "This Grant feller, you said he was never made for peace."

"I... Did say that." He responded slowly, cautiously. His shoulders tensed; a slight movement, but with Ulysses, slight movements were all you got to read. She lifted her head, peered at him curiously.

"That why you chose the name? Think you're the same way?" Ulysses didn't respond for some time. The silence stretched between them, stiff and awkward, not like the usual comfortable silences they shared. Jane inwardly cursed herself, realising she must have overstepped that strange, ever-shifting boundary that seemed to exist between them.