There is sand under the remnants of his skin and there is sweat clinging to him, a sheen across his body, under his clothes. There is dirt in every crease and fold of the battered joke of his jacket and it has been a long, long day.
For Raul Tejada, it has been a long year.
He’s already a dozen lifetimes past where he figured he’d end up, and the blistering Mojave sun is less forgiving these days than it’s ever been before. It’s his age, he thinks, and age isn’t just about how old your body gets and whether your eyes are still good and how fast you can run. Age comes to you in weariness, in days after days after days, in an endlessness and a scope of infinity laid out behind you. It comes to you in dreams about stuff that happened a hundred, two hundred years ago; when you look down at your hands and see skin that hasn’t been there for longer than anyone around you has been alive.
He is old and he is tired and there isn’t much left in the world he’s interested in and the Mojave isn’t what it used to be. The redhead sitting at the bar a few seats down from him is giving him eyes, and it’s a minute or two before he recognises her. It’s harder these days, keeping memories straight. God, it has been a long, long life.
Rose of Sharon Cassidy has let her hair grow out. It flicks at her shoulders, unruly and curled by dirt and grease and desert air. Her hat still shades her eyes and her necklace still hangs against her chest. Her skin is still smooth and whisky is still her drink, and she looks older.
Everyone is older these days, and age doesn’t have much to do with it.
The first thing she says to him is, “It’s been a long, hard war for our old friend, hasn’t it?”
He waves to the bartender, getting them both another drink, and says, “It’s been a long, hard war for all of us, senorita.” He switches to whisky in her honour, and Cass raises a bottle to both of their health. They were there at Hoover Dam and they saw this new era rung in, and they are among the precious few who can lay claim to such a glory. There are battle scars on both of them from these past five years, across their bodies and scored deep into their souls. It’s not the world they fought for, and though they know the hero they followed is busting their ass keeping shit together, it isn’t enough.
The Legion approaches; the NCR falters. New Vegas is this lonely beacon in the middle of a tempest, the eye of some wild and vicious storm brewing around them. But one day the storm will shift, and the eye will move, and havoc and chaos will be come again. “What have you been up to?”
“The usual. Killing bad guys. Protecting traders. Making a living wherever there’s a living to be made. Fixing shit up. Getting by.” It’s the same for both of them. The same endless plain stretches off in every direction outside, and the sky is too high above for either of them to reach for. He remembers better days and Cass does too, but not the same days he does. It’s a lonely life, and he tells her that, a lonely life when the places you called home and the things that tied you to this old land are gone and no one remembers them. Cass listens to him talk with a frown, like the words he’s saying don’t mean anything to her, can’t mean anything to her, and before he knows it, he’s telling her about his childhood.
“Horses,” he says, doodling in the dust on the bar. “You could ride ‘em. Ain’t nothing like them around now. Ain’t nothing like a lot of stuff from back then.”
But Tomorrow - Raul + Cass 1/2
There is sand under the remnants of his skin and there is sweat clinging to him, a sheen across his body, under his clothes. There is dirt in every crease and fold of the battered joke of his jacket and it has been a long, long day.
For Raul Tejada, it has been a long year.
He’s already a dozen lifetimes past where he figured he’d end up, and the blistering Mojave sun is less forgiving these days than it’s ever been before. It’s his age, he thinks, and age isn’t just about how old your body gets and whether your eyes are still good and how fast you can run. Age comes to you in weariness, in days after days after days, in an endlessness and a scope of infinity laid out behind you. It comes to you in dreams about stuff that happened a hundred, two hundred years ago; when you look down at your hands and see skin that hasn’t been there for longer than anyone around you has been alive.
He is old and he is tired and there isn’t much left in the world he’s interested in and the Mojave isn’t what it used to be.
The redhead sitting at the bar a few seats down from him is giving him eyes, and it’s a minute or two before he recognises her. It’s harder these days, keeping memories straight. God, it has been a long, long life.
Rose of Sharon Cassidy has let her hair grow out. It flicks at her shoulders, unruly and curled by dirt and grease and desert air. Her hat still shades her eyes and her necklace still hangs against her chest. Her skin is still smooth and whisky is still her drink, and she looks older.
Everyone is older these days, and age doesn’t have much to do with it.
The first thing she says to him is, “It’s been a long, hard war for our old friend, hasn’t it?”
He waves to the bartender, getting them both another drink, and says, “It’s been a long, hard war for all of us, senorita.”
He switches to whisky in her honour, and Cass raises a bottle to both of their health. They were there at Hoover Dam and they saw this new era rung in, and they are among the precious few who can lay claim to such a glory. There are battle scars on both of them from these past five years, across their bodies and scored deep into their souls. It’s not the world they fought for, and though they know the hero they followed is busting their ass keeping shit together, it isn’t enough.
The Legion approaches; the NCR falters. New Vegas is this lonely beacon in the middle of a tempest, the eye of some wild and vicious storm brewing around them. But one day the storm will shift, and the eye will move, and havoc and chaos will be come again.
“What have you been up to?”
“The usual. Killing bad guys. Protecting traders. Making a living wherever there’s a living to be made. Fixing shit up. Getting by.”
It’s the same for both of them. The same endless plain stretches off in every direction outside, and the sky is too high above for either of them to reach for. He remembers better days and Cass does too, but not the same days he does. It’s a lonely life, and he tells her that, a lonely life when the places you called home and the things that tied you to this old land are gone and no one remembers them. Cass listens to him talk with a frown, like the words he’s saying don’t mean anything to her, can’t mean anything to her, and before he knows it, he’s telling her about his childhood.
“Horses,” he says, doodling in the dust on the bar. “You could ride ‘em. Ain’t nothing like them around now. Ain’t nothing like a lot of stuff from back then.”