Jules: Meta

sure do love those walls of text doncha

General personality
Jules takes offers of help as someone else perceiving her as weak and incapable, and that's like the last thing she wants people to think of her. Someone trying to help her reads to her as that person saying they're better than she is because they aren't in her place, and they're offering because it makes /them/ feel good. In large part it's her pride getting in the way.

Jules is always gonna have trouble talking about the Legion to an extent but in particular she doesn't know how to explain it to her daughter-- Natalia has /no/ concept of someone like Caesar and like, relatively speaking she's had this really normal, ideal childhood. After TNG though she'd be able to understand, not completely but more, and she and her mother would have a long, long talk about everything...Jules is also never going to be great at articulating her feelings but Natalia would get it.

Pre-Courier shit
Jules is so, so fascinated by tech and robots and science; she wants to know exactly how it all works and tinker with it and take it apart just to put it back together. She used to be really good at it before she got shot and was actually trying to repair ED-E when she got the Platinum Chip job. When she made it back to Primm she found it again and tried to do something with it but she couldn’t remember how or that she’d even worked on it before.

She's afraid of feral ghouls, especially the glowing ones. She also has a serious fear of being abandoned (she’s bad at making friends ANYWAY so she usually doesn’t bother?).

When she was living on her own in Nipton Jules had a horrible jet addiction on top of everything, but she was rescued when she was 22 by some Followers of the Apocalypse. a group of them were avoiding deathclaws by passing through Nipton on their way to Freeside; one of them is of course Arcade. Jules recognizes the symbol on their coats and in a moment of clarity she grabs Arcade by the hand and begs him for help. The Followers stop and look at her: she’s a sorry sight standing in front of them, tiny (especially next to Arcade) and shaking, with poorly concealed bruises and a long scar on her stomach, eyes bloodshot and wide with fear as she’s begging please, take her with them, she doesn’t want to die here.

After what feels like an eternity to her one of them says yes, they’ll help her; they’re doctors it’s their job. While the rest of the Followers continue on to try and avoid drawing suspicion, Arcade and a female Follower go back the other way with Jules, towards Primm; the woman says she knows an old couple in town that’ll rent them their spare room so they don’t have to hole up at the Bison Steve (Arcade goes along to help but also because Jules won’t let go of his arm). As soon as they make it to town and lock the door to their room Jules collapses in tears, thanking them over and over, sobbing uncontrollably while Arcade gets her started with some Fixer. When she’s coherent again she kind of explains her situation and how she got to that point– but she’s not going back, ever, she swears; they saved her life and she’s not going to waste this second chance (L O L)

They stay with her for a little over a week before they have to leave, but they introduce her to Johnson and Ruby Nash and help her get settled and started with the Mojave Express before moving on to Freeside. She doesn’t want them to go, obviously, but she gets that they have to, and they tell her to contact Followers at the outpost or the Old Mormon Fort if she ever needs anything. She probably says she’ll never forget what they did for her as they’re heading out WELL GUESS WHAT JULES.

After she left Nipton and started working for the Mojave Express she started seeing someone regularly, not just a fling, as part of a “time to get my life back on track and the first step in that is establishing normal human relationships” thing. She can’t remember his name but she’s pretty sure it started with a C (Christopher? Carlos? Charlie?) (it's Chavez, and that's actually his last name but it's what everyone calls him) and he was a caravaner she’d tag along with occasionally when crossing territory too fraught with raiders or wildlife to go alone. He was a lot more serious about their relationship than her; he knew she was from Nipton but she never told him about her chem addiction or her, uh, previous employment. After a few months he told her he loved her and she was like “………………..OKAY GREAT” and just…didn’t come back from that day’s courier rounds. She knows it was an asshole move, kind of regrets it because he was a decent person and deserved better, and since she got shot/got better she’s had brief, fleeting thoughts about trying to find him again and apologize but she can’t remember anything about him so….honestly though she’s not so secretly relieved she won’t have to deal with that can of worms.

Most of the things she can’t remember due to being shot are in that chunk of time between leaving Nipton and starting with the Mojave Express and the Platinum Chip job. It’s all just kind of a blur, like she has very vague memories of some things but a lot of it’s just gone. She’s missing a good bit from her childhood too except the really vivid things like the satellite crash at the Mojave Drive-In.

Jules has a long scar curving across her stomach; it's from a stab wound she got in a knife fight when she was 18, she's pretty sure. After she's shot she can't remember exactly what happened, but she does remember she almost died-- and that she killed the man who attacked her. She likes to make up stories about it to deflect questions she can't answer; on different occasions it's been a swipe from a deathclaw, a surgery she had to perform on herself, an Auto-Doc gone rogue, a tragic and improbable kitchen accident, a SAW-type scenario where she had to retrieve the key to a bomb collar from her own abdomen, yet another form of torture at the Sierra Madre...

She's really self-conscious about how spotty her memory is. When she wakes up in Goodsprings she remembers her name's Julia McAllister and that she's from Nipton, but not much else. Pieces come back while she's recovering, like her courier job, her mother, bits of her childhood and of course getting kidnapped and shot in the head. More come back when she sees the smoke rising up from Nipton and goes to investigate; they're a little blurred but she can remember her years working before she made it out of town, though she doesn't remember how or who helped her. She remembers that Chavez...exists, and that she spent some time with him (and figures she probably slept with him at some point) but nothing else; in fact she doesn't even remember his whole name, only that it starts with a C.

Part of her memory problems comes from being shot, while part comes from her substance abuse when she was younger. As she falls back into her old habits later on she starts having these problems again. There's a lot of times, both before she arrives in New Zion and after she's been living there for a bit, that she doubts her own memory thanks to drugs/head trauma/Vulpes' previous gaslighting.

Vulpes nastiness
When Jules arrives at the fort and pledges herself to the Legion, Caesar asks for her name and when she gives it Vulpes instantly recognizes it– but from where? He knows her face, of course; they met in Nipton and again on the Strip but he never got her name (because he never asked for it). It’s not until later– not much later, but later nonetheless– that he puts it together. The two of them are on assignment and confronted by three NCR rangers, telling Jules she’s been noticed and that she needs to clean up her act Or Else. Jules being Jules, she doesn’t take this well and gets into a screaming match with the lead ranger, who’s incredibly disciplined and won’t shoot her, no matter how many threats Jules makes, because she only had orders to warn her, not to kill her (yet).

Vulpes keeps his distance but can hear everything, including Jules’ accusations that the NCR left Nipton– her exact words, “left us in Nipton”– to die at the hands of raiders and the mayor’s avarice. That’s when he puts it together: she wasn’t just passing through Nipton when they met, she’s from there, and he realizes why her name was familiar, she was one of the girls mentioned in the mayor’s journals (which of course he read) (out loud) (to expose Steyn’s greed in front of the entire town) (not that they weren’t already aware).

After she’s done threatening the rangers (rangers!!!! what the hell Jules!!!) they move on and he confronts her about it: why didn’t she tell him she was from Nipton? Of all people he would have been the most interested to know. She’s getting a bad feeling about where this is headed, but so far he hasn’t been openly nasty with her, so she says he hasn’t asked; how was she supposed to know he would’ve been interested? He says she could have mentioned it when they first met, but he understands how it might not have been the first thing on her mind…Nipton must have held some terrible memories for her; how cathartic to see it burned to the ground after she surely must have spent countless nights dreaming of doing the same. At least when she wasn’t in a chem-induced stupor.

Vulpes lets that hang for a moment as he watches the realization that He Knows start to dawn on her face, then continues. He has to admit, he’s a little surprised she actually left town and tried/is trying to better herself; women in her profession aren’t exactly known for their good judgment. Hesitant, she tries to joke that she didn’t know mailmen had a reputation of making bad choices, but he shakes his head and says they both know he wasn’t talking about her courier work. A smile slowly cracks his face and Jules pales, realizing that not only does He Know, but He Knows Everything.

She tries to defend herself: she was desperate, she didn’t have a choice, but that was years ago and she’s not like that now, she’s better, she’s reformed, she’ll make a good legionary she swears. Vulpes shakes his head again– a legionary? No, she won’t be a good legionary, but she’s certainly welcome to try, even with that past hanging over her head…but don’t worry, he says as he puts a hand on her shoulder. Caesar will never know. It’ll be their secret.

After a few assignments together Vulpes has a pretty good bead on Jules and is starting to test his boundaries and see what makes her tic (read: like, everything). One mission has them accompanied by a recruit who, when they’re stopped for a moment one day, starts very loudly and very frequently wondering why Caesar needs a woman to do his work, and soon Jules snaps and starts tearing into him: Caesar hired her because she’s beyond capable, why, with her accomplishments she’s worth a dozen recruits! She’s slaughtered how many NCR soldiers, razed how many camps– why, the very first thing she did for the Legion was destroy Camp Forlorn Hope and she has Dead Sea’s own machete to prove it!

And this is where Vulpes interjects. No, Courier, don’t you remember? There was a decanus and a whole contubernium storming Forlorn Hope and she happened to tag along. He should know. He was there. Jules furiously denies it; she knows she did it herself, she remembers cutting rangers’ throats, using officers as shields against their comrades, the adrenaline rush during her attack and the high of victory when it was done. Vulpes scoffs– she may have been high but it certainly wasn’t on victory. He’s seen the syringes she keeps in her messenger bag.

They’re just stimpaks, Jules protests, but Vulpes cuts her off. He knows what stimpaks look like and those are not it. He snatches the bag away from her and dumps it out on the ground; amidst the junk food and keys and caps and loose bullets for the 9mm she never uses are several empty syringes, to Jules’ surprise, and none of them used in homemade stimpaks. That’s not right, she always throws away the used stims and she never picks up empty syringes because she doesn’t know how to make her own. How did they get there…?

Vulpes scoffs. He shouldn’t be surprised she doesn’t remember; that’s what tends to happen when someone uses as many illicit substances as she does. But Jules keeps insisting this can’t be right, she doesn’t use drugs, not anymore, maybe one shot of psycho or Med-X before she stormed Forlorn Hope but she never, she would never go back down that path. Not with how far she fell before, certainly not with how much the Legion disapproves. These syringes aren’t hers. Vulpes says no, they are, he’s watched her shoot up multiple times but never said anything because he knows she wouldn’t have listened anyway. She never listens. Typical of California’s profligates, as usual. What should he have expected?

As Vulpes and the recruit start preparing to move out again Jules gathers her things from the ground, rolling the empty syringes in her fingers…she only used jet before; she would have gone back to that if she started using chems seriously again…right? She vaguely remembers using some psycho and Med-X before Forlorn Hope, but did she really use enough to make her forget what happened entirely? The jet blurred her memories of Nipton, helped by the bullet to her brain, so, she supposes, it’s possible Vulpes is right…how could she let herself do this? From that point on she doesn’t even pick up chems to sell later and severely cuts her stimpak use. She can’t let Vulpes have any semblance of leverage on her. At least not any more than he already has.

Jules comes storming into Caesar’s tent one time, Vulpes trailing lazily behind her. His interest piqued, Caesar asks her if she’s completed her latest assignment, and she says yes, HELIOS One is taken care of, but more importantly Vulpes is ACTIVELY tarnishing her name among the other legionaries and telling her she wasn’t part of her OWN accomplishments. First Forlorn Hope, then McCarran, he even lied to her about what happened in the Brotherhood’s bunker when she destroyed it. She /knows/ what she did: /she’s/ responsible for the slaughter at McCarran, /she/ destroyed Forlorn Hope alone, /she/ blew up the bunker and she saw Vulpes at least unconscious or at worst /dead/ as she was sneaking out with a stealth boy. She may have been shot in the head but she knows what she saw.

Vulpes laughs, as much as he laughs, and says she clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Obviously he’s not dead; she must have been hallucinating thanks to…that head shot, of course. Perhaps the stealth boy was having adverse effects on her as well. Jules insists, though, she’s clearly wrong about Vulpes being dead, but she remembers the other things clear as day.

They start to get into an argument but Caesar cuts them off. He doesn’t have /time/ to deal with this. Nor does he want to. To Jules he says he’s read Vulpes’ reports on their assignments and that ultimately what matters is that it got /done./ When the Legion takes New Vegas, she’ll be properly rewarded, but for now there are more pressing matters at hand. Has she contacted Cato Hostilius about Camp Golf yet?

Reluctantly, Jules says no, she hasn’t, and Caesar suggests she do that. As she’s leaving to head out Caesar waves Vulpes aside and tells him to keep a closer eye on her. She’s clearly more erratic than they bargained for, and while he’s sure she’s completely on their side, she needs to be /watched./ Especially if she’s using chems behind his back like Vulpes has said.

Meanwhile Jules is seriously wondering if she’s even remembering what’s happened correctly…clearly she was wrong about Vulpes dying, is she wrong about other things? It’s not like she doesn’t have a track record of hallucinating, given how she saw Joshua Graham in Zion half the time and other things she’s thought she’s seen in the wasteland. She doesn’t know which is worse, the idea that she’s losing her mind or the idea of letting Caesar down because of it.

Unwavering dedication (Julia?? why???)
When she was kidnapped and taken to the Sierra Madre Jules thought that Caesar was told what happened to her and had sent scouts out to look for her. This idea brought her a not insignificant amount of comfort when she was hiding in an abandoned villa, hysterically sobbing and trapped inside with ghosts’ glowing green eyes peering through the windows. She thought this was confirmed, that Caesar had been looking for her, when she saw Vulpes waiting for her in the bunker when she made it back; she must be really special to have the spymaster sent after her. Vulpes was actually just chilling in the bunker for a few days while she was gone because he didn’t want to have to explain to Caesar why he’d let the Courier wander into such an obvious trap. Caesar never knew she was gone.

Shortly after starting work with the Legion Jules began to see Caesar as a father figure and accidentally referred to him as her dad in conversation with Vulpes. She also regularly refers to the Fort as “home,” i.e., after she returns from Zion Canyon she apologizes for taking so long to come home, she never expected the caravan trip to take so long. Jules’ mom died of a brain tumor, symptoms Jules recognizes seven years later in Caesar, to her absolute horror. She doesn’t remember Arcade helping her escape Nipton, but when she sees him at the Old Mormon Fort again and he recognizes her she plays along and fakes like she knows who he is and says hey, I could use your help again with something else…that something is brain surgery on Caesar. She knows what she’s doing with Arcade is wrong but she can’t let Caesar die, she can’t lose another parental figure.

While Jules was committing all these atrocities she wasn't even thinking about the damage she was doing, or in the case of her attacks on the NCR she didn't care; all she was thinking about was how pleased Caesar would be with her and how handsomely she'd be rewarded. Towards the end after she'd entirely drank the koolaid she was convinced she was doing the right thing and helping bring law and order to the wasteland…this was at the peak of her viewing Caesar as a father figure, too; she'd often imagine marching back to Fortification Hill with Lanius after winning Hoover Dam, and dropping General Oliver's head at Caesar's feet as he told her he was proud of her and what she'd done.

Later when she's confiding in Joshua, she asks him if he ever felt proud of all the horrible things he did in Caesar's name and how he reconciled with that...they've both tried to atone for their sins and live righteously as much as they possibly can, she says, and they're both horrified at what they did in the past, but...are they still bad people for having been proud at all?

Crucifixion
At first she’d think Caesar was joking when he said “execute her” (he does have that pitch black sense of humor doesn’t he? she thinks) but when it became clear how serious he was she’d be begging for his forgiveness, offering to give him anything, to do anything he wanted as she started shaking and her eyes filled with tears, completely dissolving in minutes. he would ignore her entirely and walk away, telling his praetorians to take her away– and specifically telling Vulpes to “deal with her as he saw fit.” as Vulpes hates Jules with an unmatched passion, this would be the best day of his life. he’d have her marched from the steps of the Lucky 38 through the streets of Vegas and Freeside, loudly proclaiming her sins to everyone and drawing a crowd to watch her sobbing uncontrollably as she’s dragged to her death. they stop on the south side of Vegas where Vulpes personally lashes her to a cross and leaves her with one last devastating insult. he’d be the last person she ever saw and the last person to see her alive, a fact which would drive her crazy even as she’s dying.

Clarification: Jules would be begging Caesar for mercy. not Vulpes. by the time Vulpes gets around to her she’s hysterical but she would never, never beg him for anything. she wouldn’t lower herself to that. he probably, surreptitiously, offered to let her go (with a catch…always a catch) and she turned him down. less a verbal “no” and more a furious glare as she’s crying and trying to pull herself together.

She doesn’t necessarily blame Caesar for what he did to her so much as she blames herself for falling for it. She knew what he did to Graham and to the Twisted Hairs and to everyone he came in contact with but she thought she was different, that she was special. Even on the cross Vulpes strung her up on she never accepted she was going to die; she thought they’d come back for her and cut her down when she’d learned her lesson.

Post-IASITM
Jules has nightmares about the nukes in the Divide. She has nightmares about lots of things but these are the most recent addition. In them, she’s in Ulysses’ temple again, listening to Ulysses himself say he knows her decision has haunted her, he’s not surprised to find her here again trying to change what’s past. But, he continues as the countdown timer starts beeping, she has a second chance. She can undo what she’s done and save countless lives, if she just stops that timer. She rushes to the control panel and starts working furiously as the timer speeds up, but all the solutions she /knows/ should work don’t, and when she finally cracks open the control console its insides are completely foreign to her, like she’s never seen wiring or circuitry before. She can’t figure out how to stop the countdown in time and the nukes are fired at California, and when she leaves the temple in tears she steps out into an irradiated hellhole. As she wanders around, crying and shaking and gasping for breath, her Pip-Boy’s shrieking Geiger counter attracts first one, then another, then more and more feral ghouls until she can’t fend them off anymore and they drag her down. She wakes up in a cold sweat just before they kill her every time and she’s never able to get back to sleep.

After killing Caesar and starting the downfall of the Legion she spends a few days in Goodsprings just catching her breath after the others go their own ways, Miri back to Vegas, Lex to Mexico, Graham to Utah, etc, before heading out to Big MT; she's got the Transportalponder so she doesn't have to go all the way back to the satellite at the Mojave Drive-In. Too close to Nipton, she doesn't need to go back, any unfinished business she might have had she took care of when The Gang passed through earlier. When she first arrives and gets set up in the Sink again she's so excited-- she's finally got a chance to pursue Science like she's always wanted, she can work on getting her tech skills back without anyone (coughvulpescough) looking over her shoulder and judging her mistakes, there's all these resources for her to use, it's incredible. And since she's endeared herself to the Think Tank there's not much for her to worry about with them with regards to, you know, her vital organs, in fact they can help her with her research and experiments and vice versa. Best of all? No political conflicts or power struggles to get involved with at Big MT. Sure there's abominations of science at every turn, but to Jules, that's nothing-- she's already been to Hell and back with what she's had to deal with with the Legion, mutants are easy.

So for probably about the first month it's going really well, she's getting better at working with tech again, she's learning a surprising amount from the Think Tank, when she can get them to stop arguing and make sense, and she's successfully avoiding thinking about what she did! she is Totally Fine!!! she's not lonely at all, she's getting by and doing GREAT!

She's had zero contact with the outside world since she left Goodsprings; the only people (people?) she's had to socialize with is the Think Tank and Mobius. not exactly ideal but at least they're not asking her hard questions like basically anyone in the Mojave would. also they're not trying to kill her, like basically anyone in the Mojave would. She's essentially been left alone and as has been well established this should never happen ever.

About a month in she starts getting frustrated with the Think Tank and towards the end of July she finally snaps at them, they're driving her INSANE. more, the isolation is driving her insane and she knows it's bad for her, but she doesn't want to face the music waiting for her in the Mojave. She's in a foul mood for days and none of the doctors even notice she's in a mood until she starts tearing into them and when one of them has the NERVE to ask her "is something wrong?" she storms out and fumes on her bed before finally making up her mind to leave. She's going to actually go insane if she has to deal with them anymore, and, well...she has to try and make up for what she did somehow; holing up in Big MT isn't going to help her there. She's awfully curious about how things have gone in Vegas too, what with the No Contact With The Outside World thing. She misses the Mojave, she really does.

When Jules first gets to New Zion she's...really hesitant to get involved with Lex's family. She kind of thinks Lex is doing this just because she feels bad for her and it'll make HER feel better, not necessarily out of any fondness for Jules herself. She doesn't think she deserves it, especially not any affection from the kids...for a while she's waiting for the other shoe to drop; there HAS to be a catch. If having /friends/ is foreign to her having /family/ is even more so.

Hell Spiral
Re: Jules living with her guilt, a lot of it is her blaming herself, which I mean, to an extent she's not wrong, she literally pushed the button to launch the nukes, she set off the self destruct sequence for the Brotherhood bunker, she personally slaughtered countless NCR soldiers so yeah, that's directly her fault, but for a long time it's hard for her to process how much Caesar was manipulating her into doing those things. Almost more than the guilt she feels for causing so much death and suffering is the guilt for how /proud/ she felt for doing so. How much she smiled at the sight of the NCR garrison at HELIOS One destroyed by Archimedes II, how she beamed when Caesar was pleased with what she'd done; even the moral twinge at selling Arcade into slavery was lessened by Caesar's thanks for saving his life. It felt so good to be part of something bigger, that she thought was right, and to have someone who trusted and, in her view, believed in her to complete those tasks, but once she realizes how majorly she fucked up by joining the Legion she's /horrified/ at herself for ever feeling that way. She can't believe she was so weak, so desperate that she let herself be that easily fooled...but at the same time, she can. After all, just look at what she did to herself after her mother died; she's not a strong person. What outcome did she expect?

As cathartic as killing Caesar is, it doesn't erase her guilt, which is why she runs off to Big MT again, an attempt to escape what she's done and, hopefully, to forget. Even if it takes another lobotomy she doesn't want to think about what she's done...of course they don't lobotomize her again, but she'd able to distract herself by practicing her tech skills night and day until she's back at her pre-Benny levels of expertise and then surpassing it. She'd often stay up until ungodly hours at her workbench, assembling and disassembling weapons and machinery until she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer and passed out next to her tools. Partly because she was so eager to relearn what she'd lost, partly to avoid nightmares for as long as she could.

Vulpes tells Jules over and over she deserves to be dead and she doesn't necessarily disagree. She has to atone for what she's done, so she works in Vegas and New Zion trying to help the people there instead of hiding at Big MT forever, but she knows it's not enough and never will be. A few good deeds can't redeem her but she has to /try;/ she doesn't know what else to do. If she'd stayed in Vegas instead of going to New Zion the Hell Spiral probably wouldn't have happened, at least not to the extent it does, because of the lack of influence from Vulpes. He can read her like a book and knows exactly how to set her off.

Jules wouldn't have been well off if she'd stayed in Vegas, she'd still have to deal with the constant reminder of what she'd done in the forms of all the NCR refugees and her own boss, but no, she wouldn't have Hell Spiraled if Vulpes didn't set her off. He probably starts right when she arrives; at the first family dinner Lex has Jules over for he's there but doesn't speak to her beyond an icy greeting until much later, when Lex is putting the kids to bed and Graham is preparing some tea for the four of them, leaving Vulpes and Jules alone in their living room. After a few moments of tense silence he speaks up, his voice quiet and measured, and tells her there's no use in stating how they both obviously feel about this /situation,/ but since his cousin is so determined to have both of them in her life they'll have to live with each other, won't they. So it'd really benefit her to be /civil/ towards him, if she's even capable of doing so. Jules answers sure, she can be /civil,/ as long as HE'S /civil,/ but she doesn't have to be happy about it. Vulpes assures her, oh, she won't be. He'll personally make sure of that. Before either of them can say any more Graham brings in the tea, shortly followed by Lex.

He probably keeps getting to her in moments like that, quick but relentless bursts of reminding her of what she did and mocking her for trying to make up for it. The worst comes when she's doing some upgrades for the library...it's nonstop degradation from Vulpes, whispered insults in passing as he mills about reshelving books, reminders of how she should and deserves to be /dead/ and how futile her search for redemption is when they're both working late, telling her she should just leave and crawl back to Vegas, that cesspool where she belongs, before she damages his nieces and nephews any further. She does her best to ignore him and not give him the reaction he's looking for but she still hears every word he says and internalizes it. One night she can't take any more and snaps at him, slapping his face and threatening to tell Lex what he's doing unless he leaves her alone. He very coolly responds that she can certainly do that, please, inform his cousin if she thinks it'll help. Just keep in mind, courier, that he still has one last bombshell to drop. Jules doesn't tell Lex.

She’s still not great at hiding her emotions, though, and if Lex noticed how visibly uncomfortable she was around Vulpes and asked her about it, Jules would just say it's still lingering apprehension from all those years ago. She only tells Graham about it after the morning he comes to check on her and she mistakes him for Lex.

With how much she blames herself for everything, the overwhelming guilt and shame and pain, how relentlessly Vulpes is going at her, I...don't think it'd be a stretch to say Jules gets suicidal. Vulpes reminds her over and over that she should have died on that cross and she doesn't disagree. Once she has to face what she did she thinks she /really/ should have died when Benny shot her; it would have spared countless lives and prevented so much pain. I think I mentioned before that down the line she asks Joshua, like...what's the point. They can't fix what they've done, they can't even START to make up for it. She knows multiple people who'd be glad to see her dead for her crimes, and she can't live with this massive weight on her shoulders, so...why bother. She can’t reconcile with this. And if she's dead she can't cause any more suffering.

Hearing how Caesar did exactly the same thing to Graham as he did to her would comfort her a little bit; she thought she uniquely fucked up on this but it wasn't her, it was Caesar, so she's not alone. Someone understands what happened. As much trouble as she has with apologies and thanks and things other than like tearing into a childhood menace while kicking the shit out of him it'd be a relief for her to have someone to talk with who knew what she meant without her having to be overly articulate. Lex is her closest friend but Jules wouldn't think she could understand how easy it was to fall into Caesar's trap, not just for someone like Jules but someone like Lex's own husband as well.

When Vulpes tells Lex about the nukes and she goes off on Jules and in turn Jules tells Chavez before he can hear it from /anyone else/ and he's at a loss for what to do, Jules genuinely thinks she's losing everything. Her friend has cut her off not only from herself but from the family, which means no Graham either; her almost-fiancé couldn't even say anything to her, not that he had much of a chance before Lex stormed in and dragged her off on that world-saving mission; when the council finds out she'll be out of a job in a heartbeat and they'll surely alert Vegas...

Relationship with Javier Chavez
Jules and Chavez get into a lot of arguments when she’s in Vegas for Lex, the first one being the day after she arrives and starts that non-fight with Kent. she shows up at Chavez’s office late that morning, still pissed and a little hungover, and without even looking up from his paperwork he says he heard she spent the night in the drunk tank for starting a fight with one of Vegas’ top lawmen…when she doesn’t answer he says he can’t really say he’s surprised. Goes on, he knows she’s not happy about this and frankly neither is he, but they both know this deal is too good to abandon so they have to be /professional/ and work together to get it done. Then they can go their separate ways and move on with their lives despite what Lexington’s trying to do. Jules is as belligerent as you’d expect

She starts inspecting his caravans and she’s pretty impressed but won’t say much beyond confirming they look good and that they should easily make the trip to New Zion and back, which is what he expected because of course his caravans are in good condition, of course they’d be able to make it. When she starts inspecting the tech he’s wanting to trade she asks him all sorts of questions about it, including some she figures he wouldn’t know the answer to, but he does and answers in exactly as much detail as she wanted.

At some point he shows her some energy weapons he got to trade, says they’re supposedly from the Big Empty and asks her, since she’s more familiar with energy weapons than he is and since she’s actually been to the Big Empty, what a fair price would be. She picks up a gun, looks it over, weighs it in her hands, fiddles with it a little and then says “nothing, they’re worthless.” He bristles at this because /how could they be worthless/ but also if they are that means he got scammed; how could he let himself get scammed?! She very calmly and quickly pulls out her tools and takes the gun apart on his desk to show him the inner workings of it– it looks just like any other plasma rifle, and she says that’s a problem. She explains how guns from Big MT have unique circuitry to increase the power in microfusion cells that, while incredibly effective, is almost impossible to replicate without the tech at the labs, and that you couldn’t get that kind of power from the wiring in this gun. She thinks /maybe/ the Gun Runners could do it but it’s not likely. You can tell the difference by the gun’s weight and how pulling the trigger feels, she adds, even when it’s not loaded it feels different. While she’s talking she reassembles the gun and hands it back to him, asking if the trader he got it from is still in town and if so he should get his money back. It’s okay, she says, he didn’t know what to look for in these guns; next time she goes to Big MT she’ll bring him back a legit one to compare so he doesn’t get scammed again

He asks her advice on the caravan’s contents too, like what would go over well in New Zion, how he should price things, etc. He gives her a crash course in economics but she doesn’t find it as interesting as straight up Science lol

One day Jules walks in nursing a black eye and Chavez asks her if she got in a bar fight with another ex-centurion and she says no…she was heading back to her room at the Lucky 38 after work last night and saw a trader talking to one of the girls outside Gomorrah with a couple buddies backing him up. her expression made it clear she was uncomfortable, so Jules kept an eye on her, but when the man hit her on the face she bolted over in a fury and shoved him away; how DARE he raise a hand to hurt this woman?! The trader and his friends turned his attention to Jules and got in a good blow to her face before she kicked his ass and the securitrons broke up the fight before it could get any worse. She kind of pauses as she finishes telling Chavez about it, and quietly adds that she remembers being in the same situation in Nipton and how much she wished someone would step in on her behalf, so she feels like she has to do something now that she actually can. Graham is a big influence on her, too, and his interventions with her give her the guts to step up; she has to make him proud.

Later Jules repairs a couple eyebots for him, says they’re good for extra security and soon every caravan from Chavez’s company has at least one eyebot traveling with it.

It’s shortly after this that Chavez realizes oh /fuck,/ he still has feelings for her. So he steels himself and invites her over to his apartment one day, says it has to have been a while since she’s had /real/ food what with her culinary skills; he’ll cook something for them and they can finally start negotiating that contract AND ALSO they Need To Talk but also, business first, you know. She definitely knows what’s up when he asks her, he’s starting to blush, but she agrees anyway.

So there they are in his apartment, going over the details of the contract, but she can tell he’s SUPER distracted and calls him out on it. He says no, they need to finish the contract first but she insists and he finally confesses: he thought he had moved on and gotten over her, but he hadn’t– he still has feelings for her, and they’re distracting him from his work so he needed to tell her, and they HAVE to finally put some closure on what happened between them all those years ago.

Jules is not happy. She thought this was over and done with when they parted ways after Flagstaff. They ALREADY sorted this out, and the conclusion was that they were on speaking terms but didn’t want to see each other again, right?! He still thinks he’s in LOVE with her?! They knew each other for just shy of a YEAR, weren’t even sleeping together for half of that! How could he know he LOVED her– they were Friends With Benefits at BEST.

Chavez shakes his head, says somehow he KNEW she’d say something like that. She’s so STUBBORN and CYNICAL; not everything HAS to have a catch!! He admits that /maybe/ she was right, /maybe/ he was too quick to rush into it but he STILL CARES about her. Can’t she see that?!

It devolves into another arguments, with Jules calling him an immature hopeless romantic and Chavez firing back that pessimism =/= maturity, and that even if he’s wrong about his OWN FEELINGS, he still cared about her on some level and when he made that known she threw him aside like he was nothing to her, nothing! She says he WASN’T nothing to her, she didn’t want to leave him, but before she can go any further he cuts her off with a THEN WHY.

Jules can’t bring herself to answer him. He’s waiting, they never answered /this/ before Flagstaff so clearly they /did/ have something else to talk about. She finally squeaks out “I don’t know, Chavez,” and he sighs, exasperated. This is why he didn’t want to work with her. She’s stubborn and she can’t admit she made a mistake; he can’t believe after all she’s been through she STILL won’t admit when she’s wrong.

Jules starts to object but she knows he’s right. She doesn’t want to admit that either so instead she starts fuming. She doesn’t know /why/ Lexington thought this was a good idea, CLEARLY it’s backfired. But what she /does/ know is that once this deal is done, THEY are done– they will never (she steps closer, close enough to jab his chest with her finger) EVER be on good terms again

[Sunny title card] Jules Sleeps With Her Ex

The next few days are awkward to say the least. But they finally decide, you know, they really do need to talk about this, for real this time. Jules apologizes for starting the fight, for treating him so badly before– she has an answer by the way, she says, she left because she was catching feelings for him, too, and it scared her, it scared her so much…running away was the only thing she could think to do. Chavez admits again he probably rushed into thinking they were more than they actually were, says they should have communicated better and she agrees. He does care about her, though, so much, and if she feels the same way, he wants to try again– a real relationship this time, see where it goes…and she says yeah. Yeah, she’d like that. Let’s see what happens.

Chavez kind of acts as a voice of reason for Jules, like with Vulpes’ relentless tearing into her and her tendency to get caught up in his words, Chavez is there to remind her that not /everyone/ is Vulpes, and if anything is true it’s that Vulpes lies, which she knows of course but it’s hard to remember when Vulpes is backing up what she already thinks. Her first instinct is to go 0 to 100 in no time flat and Chavez helps temper that.

Ironically her disappearance all those years ago ended up being good for him; it helped him toughen up and grow more of a spine. He was, what, 23 when they met and still very excitable and easily impressed and not as level as he should have been if he wanted the caravan to survive in the Mojave. While he’d done well in the territory already covered by the caravan, essentially starting from the ground up was brand new for him but he was confident/cocky enough that he could pull it off to give it a shot. He was just starting the family business’s expansion when he met Jules and while he knew there was competition he was unprepared for how /tough/ the Crimson Caravan would be and how tight their hold on the area was. With Jules’ disappearance he grew thicker skin and channeled the pain he was feeling into his business venture, into being the best damn businessman he could be.

Jules is bringing a LOT more baggage to the relationship than Chavez is and he knows it. He realizes it’s hard for her to talk about what she’s done so he doesn’t pry; he usually waits until she brings it up. When Vulpes starts trying to fuck with them though and brings up her past there’s a couple things that Chavez wants to confirm or deny as soon as possible with her so it doesn’t hang over their heads.

Most often he just listens to her when she needs to get something off her chest. It all comes out in bits and pieces and sometimes he has to clarify the timeline but mostly he just lets her talk. He’ll ask her if she wants his advice because he doesn’t want to just throw it at her and risk sounding condescending, and she usually accepts just to have another view besides Graham’s.

Chavez has seen some shit that’s really stuck with him from his resistance work and probably had a few close calls with the Legion that for the most part he wasn’t allowed to talk about with his family. But he knows it’s nothing compared to what Jules has been through so he doesn’t tell her about it, he doesn’t want to like…invalidate her. She gets it out of him though and when she does she’s like “oh my god?? why didn’t you tell me?? if there’s one thing I’ve learned here it’s that keeping this shit bottled up is a Bad Idea”. As a whole though his coping skills are much better than hers but still. There’s some images that haunt him.

Jules still has Relationship Issues and even though she does love Chavez, and would marry him, and will finally admit it out loud, no matter how many times he brings up the idea of marriage she can’t commit to it. She starts doubting herself, doubting him, worrying constantly that something will go Wrong and ruin everything they have. But FINALLY, 14 years after they first met, she stops having cold feet and says “yes.” The wedding’s a huge deal, I mean huge. They work together with his family’s caravan company when she’s not busy with engineering projects.

At first Jules hesitates to introduce Chavez as “my husband, Javier.” the words feel strange in her mouth, just as the ring feels strange on her finger. Chavez, on the other hand, is so enthusiastic and excited and proud to finally be able to call her “my wife, Julia” and he takes most every chance to do so. When she grows accustomed to her new status she takes the same pride in it. Their daughter, Natalia, is born in October 2293.

On a day to day basis they’re very much a team; they split everything pretty equally from basic household tasks to taking care of Natalia when she’s born. He gets her involved in the caravan business too, gives her a crash course in economics and she picks it up pretty quickly, and he’ll ask her advice on certain decisions he has to make for the company since she knows New Zion and to an extent New Vegas better than he does. The exception to their shared duties is cooking; Jules’ idea of an acceptable meal is like. Whatever she can get out of a can that’s not too irradiated. She hates cooking and just wants it to be done with as quickly as possible but Chavez enjoys it and is pretty decent at it. He’s memorized a lot of his family’s old recipes and likes to share them with Jules. Introduce her to REAL food lmao.

Once she’s really comfortable with him she starts using his actual first name with him in public and when referring to him in conversation. This is in large part due to visits with his family where she can’t just say “Chavez” without a dozen people lifting their heads. In private she calls him Javy.

They share a love of B-grade/schlock movies; obviously she’s more into scifi while he leans towards horror. His favorites are the Universal monster movies like Creature From The Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein etc. When she finds out he’s somehow missed out on War of the Worlds she’s HORRIFIED and takes it on herself to remedy the situation. They end up making their way through all the old movies based on H.G. Wells works and get into a minor spat about which is better, Invisible Man or War of the Worlds.

They have similar enough senses of humor that Chavez gets Jules to laugh pretty regularly, though hers has more pitch black and mean-spirited streaks. Lmao they’re watching The Mummy one night and he can tell Jules is feeling kind of down so he just kind of nudges her and says “you didn’t tell me Graham was a movie star” or some other joke like that

He knows she can’t speak a word of Spanish, and he knows how deep her trust issues run, so he makes sure his conversations with family members around her are in English so she can understand and knows he’s not like. shittalking her to his family. He does start teaching her some Spanish though and by the time their wedding rolls around she knows enough to hold short conversations with his family and say her vows in Spanish. She’s not terribly comfortable speaking it because her accent/lack of proficiency is VERY obvious but she does try, even though it sounds and feels awkward rolling off her tongue. She loves how it sounds when Chavez uses it though; she’s asked him on multiple occasions to read her books in Spanish. For Christmas one year he tracks down and gives her a Spanish copy of War of the Worlds and she’s so proud of herself when she finally makes her way through it.

Chavez is a big fan of dramatic romantic gestures but Jules is…not. They probably argue about that early on, she doesn’t want to draw that much attention to herself but he doesn’t know why she’s so embarrassed; is she /ashamed/ of him? They reach a compromise later though; she accepts that sappy romantic gestures are going to happen but he tones it down a LOT. When he proposes to her it’s very low-key; they’re probably just out on a walk or something.

Secretly she really does love things like him dragging her outside to look at the night sky and picnics up in the hills around New Zion and him literally sweeping her off her feet at their wedding but honestly…she’s just happy spending time with him. She feels safe around him, not that she needs physical protection which both of them know very well, but he’s not going to manipulate her, he has no ulterior motives; he just genuinely cares for her and wants the best for her.

There’s a couple times, a few months after Natalia’s born, when Jules comes home from work and finds Chavez dozing with the baby asleep on his chest, but he wakes up as she comes in and curls up beside him; he puts his arm around her and holds her close while she rubs Natalia’s back and it just…hits her that this is all /real,/ it’s /happening,/ she has a husband and extended family on both sides who love and support her and a daughter and she has a job she enjoys and a comfortable, safe place to live and she’s /happy,/ and it’s kind of overwhelming and it makes her cry a little bit.

At some point Jules fixes up an old Polaroid-type camera and just goes /nuts/ taking pictures of everything: landscapes, signs she thinks are hilarious, unflattering closeups of Vulpes and SO MANY selfies. She’d be huge on Instagram and I think I’ve made an example Instagram page for her when she’s in the Legion. The last picture she takes before her crucifixion is a victory selfie in the immediate aftermath of Hoover Dam, exhausted and bloody but grinning ear to ear in front of the Legion’s banner.

Then she doesn’t take any pictures for /months/ after she’s rescued, mostly because she doesn’t have a camera but also because she’s Pissed. When she does get a new camera, the first thing she takes a picture of is Lex and Vulpes reading their grandfather’s Book of Mormon and looking at family photos when they’re stopped to rest one day. She keeps taking more and more pictures and puts them in scrapbooks she keeps in her apartment in Vegas and later her house in New Zion.

ANYWAYS all this was to say that, y'all know that picture of Oscar Isaac in a beanie eating Cheetos with a pair of chopsticks? That’s definitely almost exactly a picture Jules takes of Chavez. It ends up being her favorite, like out of all the nice pictures of the two of them from their wedding and that she’s taken on the road, that dumb one she took in their kitchen one day is the one that ends up framed in her workshop.