Another Unoriginal Oneshot Book

East and West

AN: This chapter was a DOOZY - almost twice as long as my previous longest chapter. There are Legion-flavored adult themes, particularly in the flashbacks at the very beginning. Also, SPOILERS for pretty much all of New Vegas and its DLCs.

Arizona, September 2283.

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Juno felt like a prop in her own story. Captured, bought, and inherited at the whims of others. And it was... fine. She managed. The human mind adapts to its circumstances, and Juno was no exception. But some periods were more bearable than others.

Juno had been in the Legion for two years when she lost her best friend. It was a horrible time. She feared for Gabriel, but she almost feared for Joshua more. She feared the hardness in his eyes when he ordered Cassius's execution. She feared his silence, and the set of his jaw. Most of all, she feared the loss of his conscience — his growing obedience to Caesar. He was done rationalizing. He became the monster he had always feared himself to be.

He was still good to her. Caesar was, too, in a way. Juno was NCR-educated, so he automatically liked her more than pretty much any of his legionaries. (Juno wondered why he'd burnt all those books if he liked education so much.) He told her his thoughts and feelings, and he usually let her get away with mouthing off to him.

Caesar never followed through on his plans to have her bear children. He didn't want her, but he didn't want anyone else to have her either. He didn't exactly leave her alone, but he wasn't the pervert she'd have thought just by looking at him. It would have been far worse with another master. She got used to life by his side, passed between two households like the child of divorced parents. She began to love her life again.

The holding pattern continued. The war raged ever onward. The Legion grew.

Then, one day, it overextended itself. The words "Boulder City" still sent a chill down her spine, even years later.

Joshua had been angry when Gabriel was lost. But she was never afraid of him, only for him. But Caesar... everyone was afraid of Caesar the day the news from the Dam reached Flagstaff.

Caesar locked her in his room so she couldn't warn Joshua when he arrived. But she heard the sounds of the Praetorian guard seizing him through the walls. The entire army was marched out to the lip of the Grand Canyon, where... where it happened.

He didn't beg, or scream, or even struggle very much. It was dead silent, so surreal that Juno half-convinced herself her brain was playing a prank on her. She felt his agony, though. All the way down.

She knew there was something she could have said to make it all better, to remind Caesar of thirty years of friendship, something brave and eloquent and everything she wasn't. But even when she played it back in her head, tried to go about it differently, her words fell on deaf ears. She had lost her father, then Gabriel, then Joshua and even Rex. And then she was alone, with Caesar.

But really, just alone. Caesar sent the new legate — Lanius — on campaigns against the tribes, and parked himself at the western front. Juno stayed in Flagstaff. It was there she heard about her master's death.

The strange thing was, she grieved him. He was all she'd had left. He had made her his own, and was forever rooted in her mind. He was an evil, evil man, but charming. Whip smart. Very persuasive. Dead and gone.

Her time with Lanius was short. He spent almost all that time away on campaign, so she was of no use to him. She mostly hung out with his dozen other slaves. Within the year, Lanius was dead as well. But she didn't come out of it without... scars.

Lucius was as unprepared for the throne as he was to inherit thirteen slaves. He was happily married to his wife, so the human transplants were largely ignored by their master. He expected them to be producing children, but but with much bigger things on his mind, he put his wife in charge of household affairs. After thousands of casuaties in war, the Legion had a surplus of women. They were rarely bothered.