A/N: (title from Battle Scars by Paradise Fears)

Note that this story contains canon-typical violence and life endangerment and a brief scene of sexual harassment.

This picks up immediately after the whole drama with Bart wanting Suzie to smile because Bart didn't kill her, etc, and the first line is verbatim from the show. After that, it's all me! Enjoy!

"Well, so, do you wanna come with me and be best friends?" the dirt-covered woman asked hopefully, looking down at the grimacing Suzie.

Suzie bit down on her instinctive no and thought about it. She still didn't know what was going on with the man in the white suit. If she stayed, he might send more goons after her. On the other hand, this smudgy woman had just killed several men. She would have no qualms killing Suzie if she refused to join her in her car. Suzie thought about waking up in an empty bed because Bob was still drinking, or waking up next to a comatose Bob who hadn't kissed her in years. She thought about Scott yelling at her. She looked up at the smudgy woman, whose lip was starting to quiver. Despite the obvious answer, Suzie suddenly felt that this woman was the least horrible of all the choices that lay ahead of her.

"Yes," Suzie said. "Yes, I'll come with you." She wondered if this was the first sign of her insanity or if she'd gone insane years ago.

At first, Suzie's fear had kept her wide-awake and sitting poker straight next to the smudgy woman. But it had been a day full of surprises, and the smudgy woman, Bart, had put the gun down by her feet. Suzie dropped off into a fitful sleep. She woke up a few hours later to the sound of Bart singing along to the Beatles in fits and starts as she remembered the words. Suzie couldn't quite decide to sing along, but she felt like she could put down her guard slightly. She ran one hand through her hair, flattened by her nap against the window.

"You're awake," Bart rasped, looking over at Suzie.

"Yes," Suzie ventured, unsure how to respond. "Where…where are we going?"

"To find Ken! You're sure you don't know him? He's wearing a purple hotel uniform."

"I don't know anyone named Ken. But there's more than one Ken in the world."

"There is?" Bart exclaimed, turning to look at her again. "How do you tell them apart?"

Suzie pinched her inner arm to make sure she was awake. "Well, they all look different. And they have different last names." She had spoken with the sort of tone she would use with a small child, but thought better of it and cleared her throat awkwardly. "Where is Ken?"

"Last names," Bart marveled quietly. She added, "I don't know where Ken is. That's why I'm looking for him."

Oh right. Just what I need, rambling all over the country with this crazy woman who almost killed me! Suzie's inner voice shrilled. "Do you think we could…look for Ken in the morning?" Suzie suggested.

"Yeah, okay," Bart said, shrugging. She pulled the car into a hotel parking lot.

After Bart had paid with a massive ball of bills and they'd gotten settled into their one hotel room (something Suzie was nervous about, since Bart could still kill her), Suzie took stock of her situation. She was alone with a killer. She had her phone and purse, but no phone charger. She didn't have her cane. She only had one outfit, and it was covered in dirt. She couldn't control very much about this situation, but she could wash her clothes, so she'd start there while she tried to work out a plan.

She watched Bart flick through channels on the television. Her instinct would be to ask if Bart minded if Suzie monopolized the bathroom for a while, but on second thoughts, Suzie didn't owe Bart anything. She took slow steps towards the bathroom, careful of her bad leg.

"Look! The people in the TV are making food!" Bart said, pointing. She grinned at Suzie. "I haven't had food since yesterday."

Suzie had thought her maternal instinct was long gone, but it reared its head deep down in her chest. "You should eat." Come to think of it, she hadn't eaten in a while either. She pulled out her wallet. $22 in small bills. Maybe Bart would foot the bill. "Do you feel like eating?"

"Yes," Bart decided. "I like Chinese food."

"Chinese food is good," Suzie said, and they went out to the parking lot together.

Dinner was odd. While Suzie hadn't eaten at a proper restaurant in years, she'd never seen anyone with table manners as bad as Bart's. Within five minutes Bart was covered in sweet and sour sauce. Still, Suzie supposed this was better than nothing.

"Pass the rice?" Bart asked, breaking the silence. Suzie handed her the bowl and watched as Bart scooped a portion of rice onto her plate with her hand.

"What will you do if you don't find Ken?"

Bart shrugged, not looking up from her chicken. "I'll find him. The universe will help me."

"What?"

"The universe does stuff for me," Bart rasped. She picked up a chopstick and stabbed it into her arm. Suzie flinched, but when she opened her eyes again, Bart's arm was unharmed and she was back to shoveling rice into her mouth. Suzie rubbed her eyes and looked again. It wasn't the strangest thing she'd witnessed in the past day or so, but…

"Did you just stab your arm?"

"Yeah." Bart shrugged again. "'s always been like that. 'Cept after I met Dirk Gently." She looked up at Suzie, who noticed that Bart's eyes were suddenly filled with terror. "I met Dirk Gently and then I got hurt!"

"What happened?"

"This nasty lady stabbed me!" Bart gripped the edge of the table with both hands. "I thought I was s'posed to kill Dirk Gently, 'cause I'd heard his name in my dream, but I tried to kill him and the lady stabbed my leg and there was blood everywhere!"

Suzie couldn't process all of that at once. She shook her head. "And before that you didn't get hurt. Ever."

"Nope."

"Why did you think you were supposed to kill this guy?"

"'s what I do. I kill people." Bart picked up another piece of chicken and spoke through a hearty bite. "I feel like I'm s'posed to kill people, and I do, and it's right."

"Who is Dirk Gently?"

Bart frowned. "He's like me. I don't know why I would have killed him. Maybe the universe meant something else…" She took a long drink of soda and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

"He also kills people?"

"I don't know." Bart shrugged. "I don't want to talk about him."

"Right." Suzie lapsed into silence as she finished her dish. None of this made any sense. At least Bart didn't seem like she wanted to kill Suzie anymore.

Suzie locked herself into the bathroom after dinner. She wrapped herself in a towel and began scrubbing her clothes in the bathtub. Her bad leg ached in the cold from the tiles, but it only took five minutes to clean her clothes and hang them up to dry. She wasn't sure she wanted to leave the bathroom in only a towel, but it wasn't as though there was anything interesting to do in there. She knotted the towel more securely and stepped out into the room.

Bart was curled up on one of the beds watching some movie Suzie didn't recognize. She looked up when Suzie came into the room. "Are the people stuck in the box?"

"No. They're…" Suzie wasn't sure how to explain television. "Someone recorded them with a video camera. And turned that recording into a movie." Suzie looked Bart over. "When was the last time you cleaned your hair?"

Bart cocked her head and considered that. "When I stayed in the hotel with Ken. Before he went missing. Few weeks maybe."

Suzie discovered that she was only surprised it hadn't been longer, judging by the state of Bart's mass of hair. "You should clean it."

"Okay. Can I drink the stuff in the bottle here or is it all gross?"

Suzie frowned. "Shampoo? No…you can't drink shampoo. Have you drunk it before?"

"I tried it in the hotel with Ken. It had food on the bottle." Bart shrugged. She disappeared into the bathroom. Suzie heard the water turn on, then Bart making little noises like an animal faced with something it didn't quite like. A few minutes later Bart re-emerged dressed in the same dirty clothes she had been wearing before. She was almost unrecognizable without the dirt on her face. Her hair was still matted, though.

"Why not clean your clothes?" Suzie suggested.

"How?"

"I can do them for you," Suzie said, surprising even herself. "But next time we should stop by a Laundromat."

"What's a Laundromat?"

"It's got lots of washers and dryers for your clothes." Suzie took in Bart's neutral look. Bart reached for the hem of her shirt. "Wait, don't—"

It was too late. Bart had already stripped off her clothes and handed them to Suzie. She reflexively held the clothes up in front of her eyes to avoid looking at Bart, though she regretted it instantly. The clothes smelled like old blood. Suzie stepped to the right and walked around where she thought Bart was until she got to the bathroom. She held the clothes under the tap in the tub and turned on the water. Suzie's throat tightened as she watched the dirty water swirl down the drain. It ran brown and red for a long time.

When she'd washed out Bart's clothes, Suzie got the idea to use the hairdryer provided by the hotel to speed up the drying process. "Here's your towel," Suzie said, tossing it out the bathroom door. "Would you come in here and help me dry the clothes?"

"Okay," came Bart's croaky voice, and her head appeared around the door frame. "What do I do?"

"Hold the clothes, please."

Bart obediently held the clothes up as Suzie ran the hair dryer over them. The drying clothes smelled like clean(ish) cotton, which reminded her of hanging her laundry out on the clothesline with her mom when she was a kid. Kids at school bullied her for the way her line-dried clothes looked. She started taking her clothes to the laundromat as soon as she started making babysitting money.

When they were dry, both women got dressed and sat on the beds. Suzie pulled in a long, even breath and looked at Bart across the space between their beds. She was sitting quietly, arms around her knees, watching an ad about a kitchen multitool. With her hair wet and scraggly around her neck and her chin on her knees, she looked vulnerable and childlike. Suzie realized that she had no idea how old Bart was or how much she'd been through, and here they were, sharing a hotel room. Suzie, former prom queen, and Bart, current murderer. Suzie looked down at her phone. She had about twenty percent battery left. Was it worth it to buy a new charger? Was she going to keep traveling with Bart? She shook her head, turned her phone off, and buried it at the bottom of her purse. She'd think about it in the morning.

"Can you turn the light off?" Suzie asked Bart, getting in her bed and pulling the covers up around her neck.

"Okay," Bart said. She got off the bed, flicked off the light switch, got back in bed. "'Night, Suzie."

"Goodnight, Bart."