How The Courier felt after Kiddo's birth
The fire is low. Wasteland nights were not as quiet as they used to be anymore. Not since a week ago.
The Courier sits on a flat stretch of red rock, knees pulled up, elbows resting on them. The baby is wrapped tight in a worn blanket at her side. Not cradled or held, but laying on the cold ground, tossing and turning as she whined.
Joshua Graham stands a few feet away, hands folded behind his back, watching the horizon the way he always does, like he’s expecting judgment to rise with the sun.
“She doesn’t have a name,” he says finally, not looking at her.
The Courier snorts softly, no humor in it.
“She does,” she replies. “Kiddo.”
Joshua keeps his gaze on the sky. “That is not a name.”
She shrugs. “It’s what he used to call me.”
There’s a long silence. Wind drags over sand and ash, the baby whimpering and cooing softly to fill what sound was missing.
“She cries,” the Courier says after a moment. “And I just… sit there.”
Joshua’s gaze finally shifts then, slow and measuring.
“I feed her. I change her. I make sure she doesn’t die.” Her voice stays level, almost cynical. “But when she cries, I don’t feel anything. No panic. No ache. No…” She gestures vaguely at her chest. “…whatever it’s supposed to be.”
They don’t have a word for it out here. They barely have clean water. The feeling was empty and something she couldn't identify.
“She smells like milk and dust and him,” she continues. “And I keep thinking —”
She grimaces, pinching the bridge of her nose and rubbing.
“I keep thinking he did this on purpose..and how stupid I was to let him.”
“He helped bring a girl into a world ruled by men.” Her voice hardens. “Men like Caesar. Like House. Like him. Men who carve their names into everything and call it order.”
The baby shifts. A small, restless sound.
The Courier doesn’t pick her up.
“And worse,” she adds quietly, “he brought someone into this world who will never know what it’s like to be truly and fully loved.”
The statement finally pulls Joshua’s attention fully onto her.
“Why do you believe that?”
She laughs. The sound was sharp and ugly.
“Because look at her.” She gestures toward the bundled infant. “Look where she is. Look who her parents are.”
Her eyes flick toward Joshua now, defiant. Daring him to contradict her.
“I can’t even name her,” she says. “I look at her and all I see is leverage. A weakness. A bargaining chip someone’s going to use. Maybe him. Maybe Caesar. Maybe...me.”
The last word comes out quieter than she meant it to.
Joshua steps closer. Not too close. It was like crowding a wounded animal, something he knew better not to do.
“You think love is a guarantee,” he says. “Something owed.”
She shakes her head. “No. I think it’s something I don’t have in me.”
The confession sits between them, raw.
“I thought when she was born…” The Courier swallows. “I thought something would change. That I’d feel claimed. Like I belonged to something.”
Her eyes drop to the baby.
“I just felt tired. And angry.”
Joshua studies her for a long time. His voice, when it comes, is low and steady.
“Anger is not the absence of love.”
“It is often the shadow of it,” he continues. “You are angry because you see the dangers she will face. Because you know this world. Because you understand men like her father.”
The word "father" is deliberate. A dad would be someone loving and present.
“You would not be angry,” he says, “if you did not already fear for her.”
The Courier purses her lips and shakes her head.
“I don’t want her to be small,” she mutters. “I don’t want her to learn how to make herself agreeable. I don’t want her to think survival means smiling at the right men.”
Joshua nods once. “Then teach her otherwise.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t get it. He brought her into a world where being a girl is already a disadvantage. And he did it without thinking about what that means.”
Her voice just barely cracks.
“And he’ll never love her the way she deserves. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t even know how to love himself without turning it into a deal.”
The statement twisted itself from the Courier's stomach to her throat. She knew how true it was. Anyone who knew Benny would agree.
"And it's just my luck that she survived the full pregnancy."
Joshua crouches finally, lowering himself so he’s level with her instead of looming over her.
“Perhaps,” he says carefully, “you are not grieving the child’s lack of love.”
“Perhaps you are grieving your own.”
The baby begins to fuss in earnest now. They were small, insistent cries. Thin but stubborn.
The Courier stares at her like she’s facing down an enemy she doesn’t understand.
“You do not feel what you expected,” Joshua says. “it is a human feeling...it does not mean you are incapable.”
“She is alive because of you,” he continues. “She is warm because of you. She is fed because of you. Those are acts of love, whether you feel them yet or not.”
As the crying grows louder,
The Courier exhales sharply, frustrated.
“Pick her up,” Joshua says, a command that made the Courier's chest tighten with guilt.
After a moment, she does so awkwardly, like she’s holding something fragile but foreign.
Kiddo’s crying stutters when she’s lifted, quieting but not fully stopping. The tiny fist curls into the fabric of the Courier’s shirt.
“She’s going to grow up hard,” she whispers.
Joshua’s voice is steady as stone.
“Then she will survive.”The Courier looks down at the baby’s scrunched, furious little face, her tiny fists balling up in protest.
“She deserves better than survival.”
Joshua meets her eyes, then to Kiddo's.
The fire pops. The wind shifts.
The Courier didn't speak.
And Kiddo, unnamed, still, and fragile, breathes steadily against her chest.
