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celticrobin-blog · 29 days ago

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Best Served Cold

Vulpes Inculta x female!reader

Warnings: slavery mention, allusions to SA

Previous Chapter. Next Chapter.

The rest of the palace you had not seen yet, in your imprisonment and seclusion to healing in Kateri’s makeshift medical centre.

You were escorted through lengthy halls of marble columns, statues of muses and golden bulls on red banners.

What had become of you?

The soldier’s boots thumped with haste through the halls, while Kateri huffed and panted while she was being dragged.

You swallowed, your throat dry with nerves, Caesar must have known, he must have, and now both you and Kateri would be punished for your treachery, for pulling a veil off the truth over his weathered eyes.

You feared for Arcade, you feared you would live to see them both on the cross, your companions in suffering.

Your future flashed before you, just as the men’s torches flashed and flickered orange in the cool night.

What would be your sordid fate?

Breeding stock still, despite the Fox’s warnings?

It was a poisoned rock for your future, the type you tried to avoid in your old life.

But, mercifully, perhaps in your status as the Caesarissa’s weakened babe born a touch too early, Caesar will simply kill you, keeping up the ruse that she died with her babe.

You hoped it would be quick, not long and drawn out, like the fate you gave the man you shot in the Wastes weeks ago.

Vulpes, he looked at you as he led his small force, as if he knew what you were thinking. You burned under the pale azure of his gaze, but yet you glared back in your possible near-death.

“Almost there my dear, aren’t you excited to meet your real father?”

“Real dad’s dead,” you spat, gruff.

A swipe to the back of the head by legionary was your prize again.

That was when… Vulpes halted.

And did the unthinkable.

He struck his own man with the back of his hand so hard blood trickled from his split lip, his helmet came off and clattered to the ground.

“That is the blood of Mars you struck, not some Wasteland peasant.”

The soldier stood burning flush as Vulpes glared.

“Pick up your helmet,” he gestured with a flick of his head. “You're being dealt with later.”

“You struck his blood,” you thought, bitterly. Your ribs still ached dully, albeit a ghost of what the pain used to be.

Perhaps it was an act, the men around him at the time thought he thought you were a man, and thus would not treat you with a silken glove.

Hypocrite, enigma of a man, duplicitous foul rapid fennec, you still felt his blows.

Yet.

He read you poetry when you crossed the gate, carried you when you fainted in his arms, as though the cage transformed and purified you of your wastrel ways, you were no longer the profligate Courier Six in his eyes, perhaps.

Did the spirit of Courier Six die like the ashes upon the pyre that poor boy was thrust upon, did his ill feeling and ferocity die with it?

This was Vulpes with ‘his’ women, his things he found pretty. The night on the cliff when he struck you so, that was the Desert Fox with his foes.

But what one were you at present?

Gordian Knot. You tugged at it and it got tighter.

You were too tired for this riddle of a man.

You continued on until you reached a towering wooden door, Vulpes nodded to the guards, standing stiff as the statues in the garden

At once, they heaved the doors of the chamber open.

You had found Caesar slouching on a wooden chair in casual red robes, his eyes were watery, bleary with sleep. His knees were apart and he looked at you as you entered through his brows. He lazily played with the rim of a glass on the table beside him.

Only candles lit the room, flickering a stark penumbra, stretching tall shadows on the white columns around him.

It was fitted with a thick feather bed on top of a platform with red silk sheets, much more ornate than his humbler lodgings back at the Fort.

The auto-dock stood beside it.

“Lord Caesar,” the Desert Fox bowed low, his white-gold hair falling in their cherubic waves. He kissed the large ruby on his finger while genuflecting before him.

A dying god that smelt of decay, whatever ate at him was doing so rapidly. He looked even worse, white-grey with the remainder of his hair having completely fallen out.

He snapped his gnarled aged fingers and out shoved was Arcade. You gasped, stopping yourself from running to him. He was untouched, blissfully.

For now.

He was brought before him and shoved down next to Kateri, eerily silent.

In his decay, his popping bones, hoisting himself up with a bullheaded walking stick, Caesar lumbered before you.

His lined gaunt face as twisted with intrigue as he neared you. A his ringed hand clasped your face and twisted it from side to side.

You heard Kateri pant with fear, in the corner of her eye, you saw her tense while he grabbed you her gapped white teeth bore tight as his grip tight, squeezing your cheeks against your clenched teeth.

He brought his own visage closer to your own, broad and wrinkled. You met his glare.

Raising a grey brow, he huffed a laugh and let your face go.

Breathing heavily, he limped back to his chair, hoisting himself back onto the cushions as he laughed.

The room was a fresh cut meat still tense with the life it was sliced from, his laugh, the final death made it loose and soft.

Waving a hand, all but Vulpes, Kateri and Arcade left the room. Whipping your head around frantically they filed out the grand door.

The silence was broken by Caesar with another laugh and a slap to his thinning thigh.

After this fit he coughed violently, then straightened himself up into a casual slouch.

“You know,” he wiped a tear. “When Vulpes told me that some crossdresser with a stupid fucking name might be one of my daughters, I honestly didn't believe him.”

Your eyes widened, you shot a look to a smirking Vulpes, looking like a cat that got the canary.

“you knew everythin’? Even when I met ya at the Fort?” Your voice was shaky, your tiredness wore you down like sandpaper to skin and bone.

“Thanks to the woman, I now know. Your chattiness really is a benefit to me.”

You thought back to the little boy in the garden. Eyes and ears this place has, even more so now compared to when Mr. House ran the show.

He gestured to Vulpes, who bowed once more.

“Can you understand why she had done so much to us, killed do many of us? She is the blood of Mars.”

“Yes, my Lord. A worthy foe for a woman.”

You swallow your insults.

“Grab the doctor.”

Before you could protest, he descended upon Arcade. He was defeated and gripped by the shoulder, Vulpes put his ripper to his throat.

“You know this witch’s signs, talk.”

Arcade is a bloated purse of caps waiting to spill, but from the duplicitous pain in those azure eyes, you knew he didn’t want to spill your ill-kept ‘secret’.

“Go on, the woman can’t say shit. I made sure of that when she let the mother die. Go on, tell the class, doctor.”

Your heart thumped in your chest.

“No.” You stood.

Caesar arched a brow and his thin lips twisted with further interest.

“Oh, ‘no’?”

You took a breath, a deep one to settle yourself.

“It’s my story,” you were firm yet in your fear. “I’ll tell it.”

Caesar nods, nonchalant, with a wave of his hand Arcade was free and gasping. Quick and graceful, Vulpes sheathed his ripper.

“Tell your story, girl. Or I’ll have the doctor hanged with the woman.”

And spilled it, all of your story, the truth of it. About Peeler, your kidnapping, you being shot in the head. About why you worked for Mr House. The Sierra Madre and the Big Empty.

You neglected to mention where you were going, and where your friends are of course, can’t have ‘father dearest’ finding more leverage to use against you, you only said you feared them dead.

“And now,” you felt exhausted with the night’s events, like fourteen in one, “I’m told I’m your kid.”

“An interesting tale,” he rubbed his lightly stubbled chin.

“So,” you felt cheeky in your budding question. “I told my story, what did ya spin for your people after Courier Six ‘died’. Why am I still alive?”

You likely killed many of his rotten sons while out in the Wastes, they were not heirs it seemed but cannon fodder, more soldiers to be ground up and eaten by the Legion war machine.

He laughed again.

“Curious, just like her,” he smiled, almost nostalgic.

“After Courier Six ‘died’, I told them that there was a lovely young woman who was saved from the clutches of the Omerta, one so lovely she would be left alone from any man’s touch in my Legion. Since the Omerta’s supposedly beat and starved you for not submitting to their degenerate ways, you were left to heal under the care of the woman.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. What nonsense he spun, a spider of malintent with poison dripping from the web.

“They believed it? Surely I still look like Courier Six?”

“No,” he leaned back in his chair, huffing in pain. “You really don’t. They thought you a man, apart from Vulpes, he is the only one who knows the truth about you. Your time in the cell has left you smaller, you’re a plain as day woman now with that lovely long hair.”

You felt your skin prickle and shuffled under his hard eyes.

“And what if no-one believes it?”

“This is my Legion, they are men who would sprint into Orcus out of loyalty to me. They will trust anything I say.”

“Son of Mars,” you muttered, spitefully.

He stood with his cane pumping on the ground.

“Yes, I am. And you are my blood, it does not suit me to murder my own kin, especially when…” He paused for a moment, a flash of the man rather than the monster in his face. “That is obviously why you live.”

You glared. And pondered.

You weren’t alive out of the goodness of his shriveled heart, no. You are to be used, wedded perhaps? You hoped not.

Caesar huffed and laid back in a cushioned wooden chair. Looking you up and down, he ordered you to rise.

“I accept you, my daughter, but some treachery must be dealt with. Vulpes, teach the healer woman a lesson.”

Kateri gasped as Vulpes faithfully unsheathed his ripper again.

You had to think fast, you shot a glance to Arcade who panicked and voiced his protest as well.

He always said you had a way with words, that you could convince the Legate himself to not assault the Dam. You looked to him, and nodded.

“Wait! Don’t.”

Vulpes already grasped her inky black hair in his fist.

You loathed to use the word.

“Father, please.”

A raise of a hand, and the beast was put back in the cage for now. He waited for your explanation with a face of flint.

“Two skilled doctors are better than one, right? Let her continue her work, ya got daughters and wives. Better her look after them than just one man right? Without her, you wouldn’t know that I was your kid.”

He stroked his chin again, looking Kateri up and down, her chest fluttered, her hair was wild from being un-handed.

You looked to his frame again, how frail he was, how his weathered dry face creased with pain with every movement.

“Please, have mercy, we’re just women after all.” You pleaded, making yourself sound as pathetic as possible.

“I can’t be everywhere at once, Lord Caesar,” you knew Arcade hated saying that.

“It would be best to leave her unharmed, in case one of the harem gets sick, it’s a different environment out here in the Mojave compared to Flagstaff, poor Domina Flavia just recovered from a fever because of it.”

Caesar hummed again.

“She is a skilled healer, saved a son who was born blue and cold, fine.” He pointed at her, she was still sunk to the ground, her linen white dress fanning around her on the whiter marble floor.

“My daughter’s soft heart has saved you, woman. Get out of my sight, return to your herbs.”

Kateri, with that, bowed low, walking with an increased rushed pace until the door behind her closed softly. Vulpes looked at you, he looked impressed.

Why did that make you happy?

“Praetorian,” Caesar called in a hoarse voice.

With that they flooded back in, marching, their boots like trampled gravel with the sound.

Standing again, pointing at you with a jewelled finger.

“This mysterious woman, I declare her to the Found One, she is the Domina Marcia, delivered to us from the clutches of degenerates.”

Standing tall, you turn to find, a sight you never thought you would see.

Legion soldiers bowing to you. And in his icy eyes, Vulpes grinned as he fell to one knee.

You were pulled away from Arcade and Kateri once again, and a gilded cage would be your fate.

You were escorted by Vulpes along lengthy halls to the Feminae Caesaris. The sky loomed black over as you were rushed.

“Right this way. Principissa,” he said.

The title. You assumed it was, it made you feel even more trapped. A peacock with its foot trapped in a golden snare.

They stopped by a smaller door, smaller than Caesar’s own chambers.

As they stopped by it, you when to open the door. A large hand thumped above the door.

“Wow, real tough guy,” you thought

“We shall not shame your honour by entering your chambers, eyes and ears everywhere.”

Opening the door for you passed him, you could not stand to even look at him.

But then, with soft grasp he kisses your hand.

At the end of your fingers was the Sun, his face.

“Bona nox,” he hummed. “Carissima principissa.”

With that, you were alone again.

The room was spacious, a house in itself, columns lined the walls, as did banners of the bull. In the center against a hall, a red bed with drapes surrounding it, you even had your own balcony.

“Prettier than the last cage, but that ain’t hard,” you thought.

You approached the bed, and ran your fingers along the sheets, it was water, softer than anything you ever wore. A marble bath was placed near the balcony behind a screen.

You had a view like this one once long ago, when Mr House ruled Vegas, nothing could compare to sitting at the floor of the Penthouse and just looking at the twinkling lights below.

He would let you sometimes, you got the impression he was endeared to your awe of it all.

You missed it, strangely despite your bitter firing.

You looked over New Vegas, how it had changed so.

The streets were swallowed by limestone and cobbles, it was like you were frozen and went a hundred years into the future, or over a thousand into the past.

Torches twinkled in the night, in the apartments which you loomed over, Old Mormon fort was black as tar, no light whatsoever.

You sighed.

Your fault.

You rubbed the sleep from you tired eyes and you eyed the bed.

You pulled back the curtains and fall it clothes and all.

You thought of the chaos of the night, how mere hours ago you were conversing with Kateri. Your sudden promotion to trapped Legion princess.

Kateri. You had to get her out too, but how?

You pulled the silk around you and stared at the canopy until sleep took you.

“Domina mea, domina mea.”

The voice was feminine, soft, gentle and whispered.You opened your heavy eyes, how long had you slept?

“Salve domina,” the girl who had awoken you must have been a few years younger than you, she was sweet looking, round faced with short auburn hair, white skin tinged beige by the sun with a smattering of freckles. She dressed simply in white linen albeit with a hold collar.

You pulled yourself up, suddenly your second cage had three other women in it including the auburn haired handmaiden who woke you so softly.

One walked in with pots and glass bottles of scented oils on a tray with scissors and light thread, while another brought in a crimson gown.

“What’re y’all doin’ here?” You yawned.

“We’re here to help you bathe” she smiled, but it did not meet her eyes.

Bath, you liked to be clean, even out in the Wastes, you would test the water first to see if it was radioactive, then take a quick plunge.

To your dismay often you could only do it every three days or so.

The bath near the balcony steamed as one of the women, stout with grey haired and dressed in the same linen poured in rose water with the petals and all.

“I can wash myself…” You felt vulnerable all of a sudden.

“We have been ordered by the Mater to tend to your every need domina mea,” she protested.

A plump woman came up to you, she was light haired and round of face with weathered eyes. She too had the gold collar.

“You mustn’t sully yourself by doing that work domina mea,” the older woman said as she aided you out of bed. “All the daughters are tended to by the slaves.”

Slaves.

They were owned by someone wealthy, to even have gold collars. By Caesar no doubt.

Now you were like them, and Boone would be spinning in his non-grave.

You were a liberator once, you would have brought these women once-upon-a-time ago to Old Mormon Fort after striking the chains off of them.

Now, they stripped you of your linen garment and led you to a bath.

Your flesh pricked in the air, and you shuffled, affronted to be nude before these strangers.

“You’re just so beautiful domina mea,” said the youngest of the three. “You really do have a god’s blood.”

It was false praise, an agave nectar in place of wild honey.

Behind those eyes was a girl whose spirit was broken, she was saying all the right things to survive, to not stoke the Blood of Mars’ anger.

You didn’t say anything, you were clasping onto a fraying string from a branch overlooking a ravine.

Every minute you spent in captivity the string plinked and unravelled.

You were not yet eaten up, you think, a candle in mass not yet snuffed out.

You merely looked on. They applied a sweet smelling oil to your skin, letting it soften, like venison left to season overnight, one of the older women fetched her strigil and began to scrape it off.

You were grave silent, as silent as your own grave now. A lone wanderer in your thoughts you took yourself elsewheres.

If Caesar willed it for you to be a caged unicorn, you would melt away the foul gold with a blow torch to get out of here. But how?

You were severed from Kateri and Arcade, to get back in their presence would mean playing their little court game.

But your fate was of bullets and sand; of shooting a man dead before he can do the same to you, what knew you of this world was only what Vulpes told you.

In your ultimate bold escape, would you stage a revolt like in the pre-war banned books Arcade read? Lead the subjugated to rebellion like Boudica for revenge of her defiled daughters and sack New Rome as a raging Celtic queen?

You pictured your victory, holding Caesar down and cutting his head off with a gladius while Kateri held a sack open to catch it.

Maybe you could let Kateri do it herself, if anyone had his life to take, it would be her more so than you, though Boone remained festering wounds.

“Nice shooting.”

All these dwellings were what fed you with glee. You would chew on it like taffy and savour it.

But you were nowhere near that stage in your play. You had to figure out how to get back in touch with Kateri and Arcade, play the part as pliant princess, and steal away to New Canaan a thief in the night.

“All done my lady, your bath awaits,” said the one with the grey hair.

“O-oh.” You were pulled from your dreaming. “Thank you.”

You never saw water so clear and shimmering, the enslaved women had poured sweet oils into the round marble bath. You were loathed to admit it, but the place was stunning.

You were high above the city, no-one could see you but you could see them, ants on the white streets as fluttering silk banners of that gaudy bloody bull fluttered in the morning sun, another sprinkled rose petals and lavender into the water.

“It is ready my lady. I pray it is to your liking.”

You dipped a toe into the steaming water, disturbing a floating rose petals, you felt flush and you sunk into the tub up to your neck.

“Fuck his hospitality, but man… this feels good,” you couldn’t help the thought. The closest thing you felt to this before was when Mr. House permitted you to shower.

It was heavenly, your hair hung with droplets by your neck. You sank into it, submerging your head in baptism.

From the rippled water below, you saw the older enslaved woman appear. You slowly emerged.

“I think I must be done now…” You said, eyeing the pitcher in her hands.

“Not just yet Domina, Mater Juno has ordered that you be spotless for your meeting with Caesar today.”

“Meeting with Caesar? What more could that bald asshole want?”

Pouring out a sweet floral oil into her hands, she began to massage your scalp. While the others shaved and plucked away every hair on your body, she dunked your head gently and washed your boyish hair.

Playing with a short strand, she sighs.

“Poor thing, domina, what did they do to your hair?”

“Cut it myself to look like a man,” you would have said that aloud a few months ago. But not now. You were water poured from a tea pot to a cup, you must morph yourself into what you needed to be in this world you found yourself.

“I… uh…” You pondered. “I didn’t want those… profligates… to touch me, I thought if I cut my hair like a boy’s they would leave me alone.”

She ‘awwed’ in sympathy, buying your nonsense. She began to scrub your scalp with soap, then after rinsing, trimmed it to something neater.

You got out and were rubbed down; you felt like a new woman, carved from marble and sanded away by sculptors. They ruffled your hair with a soft towel until it was damp, allowing it to dry further in the sun.

The middle aged blonde woman approached you with a garment of crimson silk draped in her arms.

“A gift from your father, Domina.”

You felt silk before you came here, Mr. House insisted you wear it when you ‘seduced’ Benny, but this felt like water in your fingers, fine as a mutant-spider’s golden web.

It draped against your figure too well, like it was made for you specifically, and suddenly you shivered with how well it was tailored. The implications of it all.

They further cinched the waist in with beads of gold, allowing the top to drape. The claps in the shoulders were fastened with gold peacock feather buckles and a snake bangle was secured to your arm.

“You certainly look like a New Roman lady now Domina,” said the youngest girl, smiling softly.

They hung more gold from your ears and collapsed a ruby choker around your throat.

You knew these women hated you, hated that you would remain unmolested for now in Legion claws, that they quite literally slaved away for you. And you didn’t blame them for their hate, if you were in that position, you would hate you too.

Every time you moved you glittered and with sibilant sighs of precious metal chasing with each other.

The eldest woman presented you with a box.

“Another, a gift, from Domine Inculta.”

Opening it revealed a… necklace? It was delicate and gold with tiny rubies on it, it was like a net of sorts.

If you wore it, you would be wearing another shackle, like the one around your throat which was slightly too tight.

“But I already have a necklace.”

“No my lady,” she places it on you. “On your head like this.”

You couldn’t believe it when you looked in the mirror. There was no ghost of Courier Six in the Legion lady before, it was though ‘he’ really did die upon the pyre like some offering to Mars.

If Peeler saw you, he would not recognise his own daughter. If Boone did? Oh Boone, what would he do if he saw you through his scope crowned with Inculta’s gold and choked by Caesar’s red rubies, mercifully shoot you perhaps, like you both agreed.

“Is everything to your liking, Domina Marcia?”

You simply nodded still in shock.

“Y-yeah, thank you."

A knock at the door distracted you from your shock and a maid tapped over to the

There had been a knock at the door not long after your… makeover. One of the maids answered and bowed low with her gaze averted to the tiles below.

At the door you saw him, just him, Vulpes Inculta. He wore his Legion armour with a crimson cloak draped over his shoulder, he took up the door frame like a tumour down an oesophagus.

He was meekly greeted by the maid.

“I am here for Domina Marcia, Caesar seeks her presence,” he was matter-off-fact, his face was grim when regarding her, as if she was nothing, a spec of dust on a book long unread.

Your heart thumped still, you thought your nerves would have calmed by now; you would rather a gun fight to whatever on earth you have been thrown into now.

You breathed deep to steady yourself, just like how Arcade once told you, and approached him wrapped in silence.

Vulpes was golden in the morning light, he took your hand and kissed it. Pluto embracing Proserpina as she enters the underworld again in October, looking down at you, he offers you his steady strong arm, honed by years of strict training.

“Shall we, domina,” he coated the title with honey.

You take it reluctantly.

“Smug asshole, I’ll gladly kill you before I get out of here.”

“How is life befitting your station, princess?”

You would prefer if he called you profligate.

“Fine.”

He arched a brow while you strolled along the hurried halls, weathered slaves bowed low while you both walked past, while soldiers saluted Inculta.

“I do miss your fire my dear,” he whispered for only you to hear. “Forgive me for your time in the cage, though you could have ended your internment much earlier…”

You thought back to the emerald that clinked into your cell.

“...But you didn’t, so forgive my lack of sympathy for you.”

“Yet here I am. Draped in silk anyway.”

He raised a brown brow, looking down at you.

“There she is,” he smirked. “I thought you were snuffed out on the pyre.”

“Why are you takin’ me to Caesar?” You demanded ignoring his sentiments.

He looked forward and patted your softened hand laid on his arm.

“Why wouldn’t a father wish to see his darling daughter, one so graciously saved from the cruel clutches of the Omertas?”

“Because,” you hissed low, just for his ears. “We both know I ain’t like the other daughters, I’m a damn prisoner here. Thanks to you.”

Suddenly you are pulled behind a column and a statue, he wore the shadows as did you, and he put his face close to yours. The grey shadows of the morning accentuated his crooked broken nose and lit his blue eyes into deep pale pools.

“Consider this, columba,” he started, barely above a whisper. “If you behave, you are safe here. Remember what I said before you were left in the cell.”

“By you,” you bit.

“Remember,” he stroked up your arm, sinking to your height in a gesture of warmness , it tingled, warm, you hated that feeling, but you could help but feel it around him.

You did remember. Lanius or him. Vulcan’s hammer to the back of your tender neck, or a silver arrow, graceful and sleek through your pretty red heart.

Either method, either man, your fate would be the same. A pliant little wife made to have their children.

One however would blind you for certain, mount you like a bull and leave you bruised and broken, even beaten if you bore him daughters for future Legates rather than sons.

But how would the man before you fare for a husband?

You reluctantly met his beautiful eyes. The scoundrel wears a pleasing face, the will o’ the wisp is a pretty thing that nevertheless leads you to doom.

“Lanius or you.” You were blunt. “Those’re my options, not like I have a choice.” You huffed and turned away.

The thought had been knocking around your scared head for some time.

“You haven’t picked a bride yet.”

He touched your face as though he were handling a glass doll, and turned it to face him, no-one could see you in this angle, it was likely he knew every one in this place even before Caesar invaded. Your green eyes widened, your mouth agape in a girlish gasp.

You could feel his breath on your lips, he chewed mint not tobacco like other men in the Mojave, you could smell it even when it wasn’t there.

The other cradled your face, and you, mighty Waste Warrior, ex-bane of the Legion, did nothing. Only waited for the kiss he was bound to give you.

“Haven’t I?” He answered, you knew what he meant.

You heard that people closed their eyes when they kissed, but yours were wide open, frozen in place, confused, torn between melting into this embrace or slapping his stupid handsome face.

His lips found your forehead, just at your itching scar at your hairline.

“Come along princess,” his voice was low. “Your Lord father awaits."

Linking onto you again he swept you away. And you burned with shame, of almost submitting.

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