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“Maybe it’s better I don’t rem-ber everything.” Boone doesn’t verbally respond to that, only looking over. Marshal knows he wants clarification. “If everything’s hazy, if I don’t know what happened, then the nightmares are just noises, instead of images. It’s safer.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I don’t like what we’ve found, though.” A year’s enslavement, pieces of a rabid man with sharp teeth that match the ring of dark tooth marks on his shoulder. A name that matches the brand on his back that is still visible under a burn scar.
“You’ll have nightmares either way. Might as well remember everything, it’ll make fixing things easier.” Marshal knows he’s talking about them both. He doesn’t push or demand Boone explain himself.
“I wish I could remember my mama more.”
“What do you remember?” He asks, because he knows Marshal needs to tell someone. Telling someone makes things real, and he knows how much he needs this woman to be real.
“She’s not very tall, not when I think of her, and she’s… not cold, more like she’s dry. Like she used to be softer. I can’t remember what made her that way. But it feels good when I think about her. I think she loved me.”
That’s the core narrative of the entity shaped like Marshal’s mother. A woman hardened by the wasteland, who still managed to raise a gentle child with none of her harshness.
There were others, faces and names he can’t put together, someone with a metal arm that he knows is a cousin, and two others with the same eyes he has. He says he’s the eldest sibling at one point, while he’s elbow deep in the inner workings of a broken robot.
“Three cacti on the hill.” A saguaro and a barrel cactus are etched on his hip in black ink.
Arcade is in the back of the Old Mormon Fort doing his work, looking over the scrawled-out notes and half-finished diagrams Marshal gave him of potential options for medicinal plants, when someone knocks on the metal tent pole. He looks up at Marshal with a raised eyebrow,
“Since when do you knock to get my—“ the man in front of him looks similar, but at the same time, “—sorry, thought you were someone else.”
“Who’d you think I was?” His voice is low and his smile is mostly teeth, but it’s somehow not threatening. If Arcade were younger, he knows he’d be trying to flirt back.
“Nobody important, why are you back here?” The man hasn’t blinked at all.
“Looking for someone, you’re the last lead we’ve got for now.”
“Oh good, it’s not like I’m busy.”
“This’ll take five minutes, I swear.” He steps into the tent, uncaring of personal space as he sits on the table. When Arcade’s frown grows stronger, he’s met with a sly grin and hooded eyes. The man tilts his head, blowing a bit of his long dark hair out of his face. It immediately falls back into place across his nose and he sighs.
Up close Arcade can take a good look at the stranger— and he doesn’t mind, manners aside he’s not bad to look at— and again he’s struck with how similar he and Marshal look. Same eyes—
“You looking for Marshal?” Same eyes same movements same skin—
“Who? No, the guy we’re looking for’s name’s Hector. Hector Marshal Cigarra—“ there’s a moment in the silence after he cuts himself off that Arcade wants to tell him to either break eye contact or leave, and then the man’s face lights up. “Where is he? He’s alive right? I’m assuming yeah since you didn’t sound like he’s dead,” he has to be related. There’s no way he isn’t related. And he’s still rambling.
Arcade raises a hand and the man shuts up, once again staring at him like he’s trying to pull answers out of his brain.
“Unless something happened in the last six hours, no, he’s alive.”
“You know where he is?” If he’s still in the city, he’d be helping the King, or working on the water pumps. The man seems delighted at that answer.
They find him cleaning up an intact building, preparing it for people to move in off the streets. Marshal stares at them, silent and wide-eyed, as they notice him. No one speaks for a moment, watching the other, figuring out if this is real.
“Luis? Regina?” he asks softly. Their names are something he instinctively knows, something the bullet didn’t manage to take.
“Hector.” Regina says. It echoes in his mind, something familiar, something correct slotting into place. He is Hector, he has two siblings, they are triplets, they are family, they are family—
He runs towards them, screaming their names. They run towards him, howling a response. They do not stop, they do not slow, they collide hard but remain standing, they are crying. They hold onto each other, as pieces finally take their place in this strange puzzle.
“Hector—” He knows his name. He was Hector, he was Marshal, his names have switched now though, and they understand. Names are gifts, and gifts can be outgrown. “—Marshal.”
Three sets of grey eyes stare out at the world, dredging up its secrets. Three cacti on the hill watch this glowing city. Three people stand before the strange team Marshal’s found.
"They're triplets." Boone mutters. "Of course they are." Arcade snorts.