Chapter Text
Frankie Verona, January 2282
After eight long months, today is finally the day. Sitting on her patch-covered bed—passed down four, maybe five, generations—Frankie listens to her radio, staring in anticipation at the empty bed on the other side of the room. At eighteen, she has the wiry, sun-browned build of someone who’d spent her life hauling ashwine barrels and tending irradiated grapevines under the relentless southern California sun. Her warm chestnut hair is pulled back in its usual practical braid, and her hands—calloused from years of vineyard work, still smelling faintly of fermented fruit—absently touch the small wooden pendant at her neck. Romeo carved the grape cluster for her years ago, back when things were simpler.
Through the radio’s harsh static, a message comes through:
“You’re listening to Yeshua Radio, giving you the hottest headlines with a half-life south of The Hub... we’ve got something real nice for you today. With the dam cleared of those losing Legionnaires about a month ago, wiped off the concrete thanks to our friends and family in the Republic, there’s been word that the Baja battalion that came through Ourside on their way up to support their army in the Mojave? They’re making their return trip and bringing your loved ones with them. We’re talking returns throughout the Long 15; from Lakebarrow all the way down through Hushvalley, riding to that there Tableview, just in the east of Dayglow heading back to Baja. So those down in Vinegate? Get your barrels of ashwine out and aerated; you’re going to have quite the company soon, pun intended. This has been Happy Jarupa for Yeshua Radio, reporting the news... and now, a bit of Dean Domino on this celebratory occasion!”
She’d been hearing rumors, short radio transmissions and letters, messages from the Mojave front, and she’d pinpointed this day as the day she’d be reunited with her sister, Ela. The two were always so close, their parents having died young in a raid back before Vinegate was fortified—guarded only by short wooden walls and a skeleton crew of chronically drunk NCR guards. Despite their inebriation, and with a bit of townie assistance, the small outpost managed to beat back the incursion, living to tell the tale and demand more support from Shady Sands. This outcome led to Vinegate growing into the premier New California Republic caravan outpost between Dayglow and The Boneyard, a vital stop on the Long 15.
Unfortunately, Ela and Frankie were left orphans at just ten and seven years old respectively, taken in by Romeo and Jules, an older ghoul couple who worked the vineyards and had lost a pair of twins to a radmonsoon about a century ago. Their grace inspired Frankie to remain loyal to Vinegate, vowing to protect the growing outpost and support the NCR troopers stationed there as best she could. Ela, on the other hand, grew disillusioned with the quiet of Ourside, concerned about the dangers facing the Republic. It was only a matter of time and necessity before the threats from Sac-Town, the Mojave, and Baja arrived in their city-state, inspiring Ela to enlist at seventeen.
Frankie has read every letter dozens of times, tracing the words with her finger until the paper softened at the creases. Ela’s accounts had been brief but remarkably vivid—the training in Baja, the long march north back up through the corridor (visiting her little sister on the way), her first glimpse of the Colorado River. You wouldn’t believe how big it is, Frankie. Makes the ashwine runs look like a puddle. There’d been less detail as the months wore on, the letters growing shorter, sometimes just a few lines to confirm she was alive. But that was understandable; Ela was busy holding the line, defending the Republic against Caesar’s Legion. Fighting so places like Vinegate could sleep safe.
Now she’s coming home a hero. Frankie spent the morning cleaning their shared room, airing out Ela’s musty blankets, placing a bottle of Mandragora Zinfandel, their adoptive father’s best ashwine, on the table between the beds. She even traded two weeks’ wages for a small tin of preserved peaches—pre-war stock from a Dayglow salvager—that Ela used to love as a kid. Everything has to be perfect for the homecoming.
The celebration in the Staging Ground, Vinegate’s main square, is already underway by the time Frankie arrives, drawn by the sounds of an old guitar and off-key singing. She’d changed into her better flannel shirt—still patched and faded, but cleaner—with her usual canvas pants and scuffed boots. Her lightweight duster, stained purple at the hems from years of crushing grapes, hangs open in the warm afternoon air. The old courtyard, where stagecoaches once turned around two centuries before the bombs fell, is packed with people. Merchants have broken out their victory flags, that two-headed bear snapping in the dry wind above the weathered stone walls of the old Welty Hotel. Someone has strung a banner reading “WELCOME HOME DEFENDERS OF THE DAM” across the iron archway leading to Front Street, the paint still tacky to the touch. Barrels of ashwine stand open near the communal pump, dusty cups passing freely among the crowd.
The NCR ranger station, built into the sturdiest surviving walls of the Welty Hotel, has its shutters thrown open, providing a view for rangers in their dusters to lean out and watch the festivities. Above them, the Republic’s flag hangs limp in the still air, mounted on the guard tower that overlooks the southern Rancho Pass approach.
“Frankie!” Ol’ Jaro waves her over from near the hitching rails, where a cluster of brahmin wait patiently, their handlers already deep in their drinks. His weathered face splits in a gap-toothed grin. He was one of the drunken troopers who’d helped save the town all those years ago, retired now but still wearing his duster. “Your sister’s in that convoy, yeah? Must be proud.”
“I am,” Frankie says, her hazel eyes bright with anticipation. “She’s been gone so long, any longer and I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to recognize her when she returns. Her more recent letters had me a bit worried.”
“She’ll have stories, that’s for sure. Heard they pushed the Legion all the way back across the river. Not a single profligate left standing on our side.” He raises his dripping cup. “To the Republic!”
“To the Republic,” Frankie echoes, taking a sip. At her age, growing up on the Verona Winery, she’s been drinking ashwine for years now. It burns going down, tasting of old grapes and irradiated soil. She moves toward the center of the courtyard, scanning the northern road where it winds down from the pass, waiting for the first sign of dust on the horizon.
It’s nearly dusk when the convoy finally appears, a long line of brahmin carts and weary soldiers trudging south through the gap between the guard towers. The celebration kicks into higher gear, people pressing forward past the old pump and through the archway to catch sight of loved ones. Frankie stands on her toes, searching the crowd of dusty NCR uniforms and ranger dusters.
And then she sees her.
Ela looks like a completely different person from the restless young girl who’d marched north eight months earlier. The war has stripped away all softness. She’s noticeably thinner, almost gaunt, her once-athletic frame now sharp angles and taut sinew beneath sun-cracked, dust-streaked skin. Her face is harder, older, with new lines etched at the corners of her eyes and bracketing her mouth, giving her the weary, prematurely aged look common to Mojave veterans. Her dark brown hair has been hacked short and uneven, probably with a combat knife between patrols, falling just above her shoulders in choppy, sweat-matted layers that spill out from beneath her NCR helmet, flowing in the dusty breeze as she removes it and holds it in her hand.
Her eyes, once lively and quick like Frankie’s, are now a flat, guarded gray-green, shadowed underneath and slow to focus. They seem to look through people rather than at them. She wears the standard-issue tan fatigues and light combat armor of an NCR trooper: reinforced canvas pants tucked into scuffed combat boots, a tan long-sleeved shirt under a basic chestplate and shoulder pauldrons of mismatched metal and leather. The uniform is battle-scarred and sun-bleached, torn in places, with dark scorch marks from energy weapons streaking across the chest and arms. Hasty field repairs with duct tape and scrap thread are visible everywhere. Her service rifle is slung low and casual over one shoulder like an extension of her body, and a battered canteen, near-empty Rad-X bottle, and spare magazines clink softly against her belt alongside her sheathed combat knife.
The whole regalia is coated in layers of pale Long 15 dust and red Mojave grit that no quick rinse in Vinegate’s pump could fully remove. She walks with the mechanical gait of someone who’s marched too many miles and slept too few nights—shoulders slightly hunched, head on a slow swivel, every motion deliberate and energy-conserving.
When Ela’s eyes find Frankie in the crowd, there’s a flicker of something—recognition, maybe relief—but it vanishes almost immediately behind a blank expression that Frankie doesn’t recognize at all.
“Elbow!” Frankie pushes through the crowd, throwing her arms around her sister.
Ela stiffens, hearing her childhood nickname. Years ago, when Romeo first left the sisters to tend the warehouse on their own for a week, a hole sprang a leak from one of the ashwine barrels. Panicking—and with no help from Frankie—Ela plugged the hole with her elbow, yelling at her younger sister to find something to cork the barrel. While frustrating in the moment, the girls had a great laugh about it and told their father the story when he returned from his trade trip to Dayglow. Romeo almost fell out of his chair, letting out a gravelly cackle so hard that ashwine came up and out of the rotted hole that was once his nose. From that day on, he and their adoptive mother Jules referred to Ela affectionately as “Elbow.”
Seeing her sister, Ela’s arms come up slowly, woodenly, to return Frankie’s embrace. Up close, Frankie can smell cordite, sun-baked canvas, and the faint metallic tang of old blood that never quite washes out. “Hey, Frankie.”
“I can’t believe you’re finally home! I’ve been counting the days and... are you okay? You’re so thin.”
“I’m fine.” Ela’s voice is flat, distant. She pulls back from the hug, her eyes scanning the celebration with something that looks almost like distaste. “It’s loud here.”
“It’s a party! Everyone’s so happy you’re all back, we’ve been waiting! I got peaches, Elbow. Remember those? And Dad cracked open the good ashwine, the batch from two seasons ago—”
“That’s nice.” Ela adjusts the strap of her rifle, not meeting Frankie’s eyes. Around them, other reunions are louder, more joyful. Tears and laughter and questions shouted over the music. Ela just stands there, observing everything and yet nothing, like she’s still somewhere else entirely.
“Ela?” Frankie’s excitement falters, her bright hazel eyes wincing with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. We won, right? That’s all that matters.” Ela finally looks at her sister, and Frankie sees something in her eyes that makes her stomach clench, something hollow and tired and old. “Can we just go home? I need to sleep.”
As they walk back through the celebration, past the stone walls where a faded “BUTTERFIELD OVERLAND MAIL” sign is still barely visible beneath layers of grime and bullet scars, Frankie tries to fill the silence with questions about the journey, the dam, the other soldiers. Ela’s answers come in fragments, single words when possible. Yes. No. Fine. Don’t remember.
When they reach their room, Ela stops in the doorway, staring at the cleaned bed, the ashwine bottle, the tin of peaches set out like an offering. For a moment, something breaks in her expression—grief, maybe, or regret—before the blankness returns.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” she says quietly.
“I wanted to. You’re home, we should celebrate!”
Ela places her rifle against the wall and sits heavily on her bed, the springs creaking lightly under her weight. She looks at the bottle of Mandragora for a long moment, then at Frankie. “I watched people die fighting over a canteen of irradiated water, Frankie. We’re celebrating with barrels of it outside.”
Frankie doesn’t know what to say to that. She sits on her own bed, the patch-covered quilt suddenly feeling childish under her hands. Across the small room, her sister might as well be back in the Mojave Wasteland for all the distance between them. The warm, approachable girl who’d spent the day preparing for a hero’s welcome feels small and foolish now.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Frankie says finally.
Ela nods, lying back on her bed and staring at the ceiling. “Yeah. Me too.”
But Frankie can tell she doesn’t mean it, and worse, she doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between the sister who left and the stranger who returned. Outside, the celebration continues, voices rising in another toast to victory. Inside, the silence between them feels heavier than those eight months of waiting had been.