Standard disclaimer: None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Bethesda Game Studios. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.

Author's note: Second to last of my stories involving Samara. There will be one more story with her to come; then I'll be working on a big crossover between Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas that will involve my Lone Wanderer, Samantha. If I ever get that finished, maybe I'll do one more about Samara sometime, but that's far in the future.

Jessie, paint your pictures
About how it's gonna be
By now I should know better
Your dreams are never free
But tell me all about our
Little trailer by the sea
Jessie, you could always
Sell any dream to me ...

- "Jessie," Joshua Kadison

The sky was darkening to cerulean over Freeside, from its normal dusty, dingy blue; the first stars were beginning to sparkle in the air. Arcade could see Venus shining low on the horizon as he glanced out the open flap of his work tent, taking note of how the shadows were creeping across the courtyard of the Old Mormon Fort. The sounds of the Followers' outpost drifted to his ears: Julie Farkas giving orders to a group of new trainees; the groans of junkies in detox; the sharp sounds of Beatrix's voice raised in mocking laughter from where the old, sardonic ghoul sat as guard.

Arcade rubbed his eyes in the yellow glare of light from the camp lantern at his battered table. A dull pain was driving its way into his temples. Eye strain, he diagnosed, and looked away into the far corner of his tent for a few moments, willing the ache to subside. When he looked back, the stack of patient files in front of him had not gotten any smaller, unfortunately. He checked his chronometer and saw that it was already seven o'clock. And I still have over a dozen case histories to go through before bed tonight. Dammit ...

His back hurt; he had been sitting most of the day and the chair, scrounged from some Old World building somewhere, wasn't exactly ergonomic. Arcade stretched, trying to relieve the pain, and then picked up the files, leafing through them. He was trying to decide how many he really needed to do tonight and if any of them could be put off until the next day-what Julie would want to see from him at their morning conference-when a sound intruded into his consciousness: a clanking, whining sound that still was, after all this time, as familiar to him as his own name. A bulky shadow fell across the door of his tent.

It can't be ...

He looked up from his work at once, and yes, there she was.

"Samara?"

[*]

She nodded in response to his greeting.

"Arcade," she replied, and then stood there, waiting. Her huge, Power Armored frame filled the space inside his tent flap, hovering awkwardly, looking almost out of place in such peaceful surroundings.

Arcade had seen Samara around Freeside in the four or five years since their mission to the Divide together; in that Power Armor, she was hard to miss. He knew their falling-out - if that's what it was - had caused some speculation among the other Followers; he'd heard rumors about it, each one wilder than the last, none of which were true and none of which he bothered to correct. Samara still delivered chems to Julie Farkas occasionally, and now and then Julie would ask her for a favor: either to do something the Followers were not equipped to do, like cleaning out a nest of Fire Ants that was threatening one of their outposts, or sometimes to intercede with the NCR for them now that the NCR had control of New Vegas. Samara would always agree to the former, Arcade knew; she would very rarely agree to the latter, in fact almost never. Once, when she was balking, Julie had asked Arcade if he would talk to Samara for her; Arcade had refused.

"I can't," he'd told her.

"But this could really help - "

"I know, but I just - can't. It's - personal. I - " He'd bitten his lip and looked away uncomfortably from Julie's probing gaze. In some way he couldn't quite put his finger on, Julie's request had felt almost sleazy to him. I don't want to be used like that and I don't want Samara to be used like that either, no matter how good the cause, he'd wanted to say. In the end, Julie had simply nodded and let the matter drop, for which he was grateful.

He'd spoken to Samara a few times - though not much beyond simple greetings, to which she had given distant and impersonal responses, as if they were strangers. If he tried to press beyond trivialities, looking for something, he didn't know what - forgiveness, perhaps, or absolution - she would abruptly end the conversation and walk away. Sometimes, when he caught her off guard, he saw something very like hurt in her face. That hurt always made his own chest ache. Eventually, he'd just stopped trying to approach her.

Once, her fortuitous intervention had saved him from a gang of street toughs who thought a lone Followers doctor would be an easy target to hit up for some chems - and who hadn't been deterred by his reply that he was not carrying any. He had backed up, reaching for his Plasma Defender, then gone cold with fear as he realized he'd left his weapon back in the Fort. The leader had been moving in with baseball bat raised when she'd suddenly collapsed, revealing Samara's looming armored form behind her, face granite, eyes stone white. When it was over and those who had not fled had been converted to piles of ash, Arcade spoke. "Samara - "

She simply looked at him with those pale eyes. She said nothing, but something about her expression made him feel about two feet tall. "Samara, I - "

But she had turned away without a word.

And now here she was.

Samara ...

Her face seemed thinner than he remembered: still deeply tanned, her pale eyes more distant, giving the impression that even when she was looking right at him, she was looking through him. Her reddish brown hair was shorter than it had been; he guessed she must have recently gotten it cut. There was a shallow, healing graze along one cheekbone. Her Power Armor was a bit more battered than he remembered it; there were a few new scorch marks that hadn't been there before.

He was surprised to find how much the sight of her brightened his spirits. A strange thrill sparkled along his nerves. She came to me. She sought me out, he thought, meaninglessly. A sudden, mercifully brief urge filled him to get up from his chair and embrace her.

"It's been a long time. What are you doing here?" he asked her instead. "Here - would you care to sit down?" He gestured toward the other chair on the opposite side of his old card table.

Samara shifted from foot to foot, glancing at the chair uncertainly. "I can't," she demurred, indicating her armor.

"Sure you can. Those Old World chairs are stronger than they look. Go ahead," he urged her. After a moment, she acquiesced, gingerly lowering her huge bulk into the chair. It creaked under her, but held.

"Would you like something to drink? I'm sure I could find something in the locker - the results of one of my less successful experiments, perhaps, if you're feeling adventurous."

"No." She shook her head. "No, I can't stay long."

"Sure? All right then ... " He studied her. "To what do I owe the honor? After all, it's not every day the NCR's greatest hero drops by," he added with a touch of irony.

A grimace crossed her face. "Don't call me that."

"What, a hero? Well, it's true, isn't it?" he needled her.

It was. The NCR had held a victory ceremony after the second Battle of Hoover Dam; both Samara and Boone had been in attendance, if not as the guests of honor, then at the very least among the honored elite. There had been intense debate among the Followers about whether to send representatives, given that the Followers' official position had been to support an independent New Vegas; eventually, however, they decided to send a token delegation. Arcade had volunteered as one of the members. He had taken his place among the audience of thousands - and who knows how many more listening over the radio - and observed Samara and Boone standing side-by-side up on the dais in the bright Mojave sunshine, both of them looking intensely uncomfortable and as if they wished they were anywhere else. Samara had been wearing a suit of pre-war businesswear, while Boone had actually managed to dig up an NCR full-dress uniform from somewhere for the occasion; he'd been so achingly handsome that Arcade had had to avert his eyes. They'd stood together while President Kimball hung their medals around their necks: Samara had received the NCR's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor-only awarded to six other people in the history of the republic, with most of the rest receiving theirs posthumously. Usually, the decoration was reserved exclusively for military personnel, but Samara had been such a hero by then that they'd given her an honorary commission specifically so they could award her the medal. Boone, meanwhile, had received the republic's second-highest honor, the Distinguished Service Cross. His old First Recon buddies had been in the crowd, Arcade remembered, and they had cheered wildly at seeing one of their own so honored.

Now Samara shook her head. "I don't care if it's true or not. I get enough of that everywhere I go. I'm sick of it. I don't need to hear it from you as well." She shifted restlessly. Arcade frowned.

"Well, I'm sorry, Samara," he said.

She nodded. There was an awkward silence.

"So what did bring you here, then?" he asked at last. "Something I can do for you?" The thought crossed his mind that he couldn't imagine anything he could do to help Samara.

She shifted again. "It's been a while," was all she said, and looked away.

All right... He considered. "How is everyone? The rest of the suite? I haven't really talked to them since ... " He trailed off. Since I left.

Samara shrugged. "They're okay, I guess. I haven't talked to them much either." At his questioning look, she explained, "Everyone is sort of splitting up now. I guess with the Legion defeated, people are kind of going back to their old lives."

Arcade nodded slowly; that Samara's suite had broken up was common Freeside knowledge.

"Cass went first," she was continuing. "She said she was going to try and start her caravan back up now that the Legion was gone; I don't know if she did it though. Then Veronica went, back to the Brotherhood. You know they have a truce with the NCR now. She's doing something for them, I think, but I'm not sure what. Raul and Lily went too. And Boone ... " She trailed off, hissing between her teeth in exasperation.

"What about Boone?" Arcade probed.

"It wasn't working out. We were just fighting too much. I threw him out." Almost literally, if what I heard was true, Arcade mused; he'd heard through the grapevine that they'd separated, and that it had been ugly. "He said he was thinking about trying to rejoin his unit. I don't know if he did though, and honestly, I don't care." She grimaced in annoyance.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

She fixed him with a look. "No, you're not," she said flatly.

Arcade felt himself flush; he knew exactly what she meant. "Believe it or not, it's true, Samara," he said with difficulty.

Samara held that look on him for another moment or two, then hissed through her teeth again and glanced away. There was another awkward silence. From outside came more sounds: someone's voice raised in a question and Julie Farkas's flat, declarative answer; the rattle of the metal cord that held the Followers' flag aloft chiming softly against the flagpole.

"What have you been up to?" Samara asked at last.

"Oh, you know, same old, same old. An experiment or two here; treating a junkie or two there. The fun just never stops around here, Freeside being what it is." He gave a rueful laugh that trailed off into a sigh, and rubbed at his temples. "Frankly...well, never mind."

"What?"

"Frankly, I ... I don't know if we're doing any good at all anymore."

It had slipped out without his meaning to say it; he glanced quickly toward Samara to see how she would react. Samara's brows contracted over her pale eyes.

"You don't?" she asked him, in that strangely ingenuous way she had.

Arcade exhaled slowly, shaking his head. "No." He glanced at her sidelong again and was obscurely relieved to see no hint of condemnation in her face; she simply watched, with that look of puzzled concern.

It was enough. Somehow, he found himself confessing to her the thoughts that had been circling in his head for months ... thoughts that he did not know how to share with other Followers.

"I don't know. It just seems like ... like nothing we're working on ever really gets solved." He gave vent to a huge, frustrated sigh, running one hand through his hair. "For every junkie that leaves here clean, two more come in here all messed up, and half of those are return visitors we've already treated at least once. We've been working on diseases like the rot and the wasting since we've been here, and it doesn't seem like we've even made a dent. And yeah, it's great that Julie's got a school established, and some of the kids even attend for a while, but most of them drift away after a few months. I don't think we've had more than half a dozen kids complete even the primary course while I've been here. I have to admit, I'm experiencing an entirely new level of sympathy for Sisyphus."

Samara's frown deepened. "What's Sisyphus?"

"Forget it. Not important." He sighed again. "You know, I pushed you so hard to support an independent New Vegas and now - I'm not sure why I even bothered."

"No?" Samara asked.

Arcade shook his head. "Looking back on it now, I don't think it would have changed a damned thing. Freeside's always going to be Freeside, no matter what flag is flying over it." He paused. "You know, I've never been the NCR's biggest fan, but I will say this for them: they've been pouring resources into the place. Of course they're doing it for their own ends, but it is helping. Sometimes it feels like they've managed to do more for the population in the past couple years than we've done all the time I've been here. They've got soup kitchens, clean water, they're trying to get the old sanitation system working again - I've actually had three kids tell me in the past couple months that they're planning on joining the NCR troopers when they're old enough. One of them even said she's going to try out for the Rangers."

"Is that good?" Samara asked.

Arcade shrugged cynically. "Well, given that Freeside offers a full slate of career paths such as junkie, prostitute, dealer, pimp, or gang member, I have to say it's one of the better options around here. At least it's room and board with some chance for advancement and even a semblance of a retirement plan."

He waited for Samara to try and argue with him, but she only nodded, her face shadowed.

"What do the rest of the Followers think?"

He shrugged again. "Who knows? I haven't asked them. Honestly, though, I doubt most of them would agree with me. They're all as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I was when I first got here."

Samara's frown deepened. She shifted a bit.

"What?" he asked her.

She tilted her head and looked at him. "Nothing. It's just ... you didn't use to be like this."

"Yeah ... " The word drew itself out into a sigh. "Who knows. Maybe I'm just jaded." Burned out, more likely, whispered a voice in the back of his mind; he squashed it. "Never mind. Ex abundantia cordis, and all that." He paused. "What about you, Samara, quid agis?" At her blank look, he asked, "How's the Legion-hunting going?"

She twitched her shoulders awkwardly. "All right. Not too many left around here. They're falling apart, just like you always said they would. And what's left, the NCR troops are taking care of. They're good."

"Well, that's one blessing at least."

"Yeah. I guess." She shifted her weight in the chair, one foot beating time against the rungs underneath her.

Once more there was a pause. Arcade reflected this was one of the more strained conversations he'd had in a while. Even on her good days, he mused, Samara was never what you would call a sparkling conversationalist. Something hung in the air, something he could not name; he could see it in Samara's restlessness, in the way her gaze roamed around the confines of the tent.

"Samara-?" he prodded her.

She exhaled, short and sharp. "I'm going away."

Another one of her trips. Arcade wasn't sure why she was telling him now, when she had never bothered to share the information with the suite back when they had all been together, but he couldn't say he was surprised to hear it. He raised one brow. "Dare I ask where, or should I just wait till you return with more outlandish weapons and artifacts?"

She shook her head. Her distant eyes looked past him. "No. Not like that. I mean, I'm leaving the Mojave. I think for good this time. I'm not coming back. Not ever."

The words hung there; Arcade bit his lip. A strange sensation filled him: a sort of hollow emptiness. The light from the lantern seemed dimmer; his surroundings flat and colorless. "Oh," he said, to say something.

"Yeah." Samara tossed her head restlessly, like a Brahmin flicking away flies. "It's just getting too crowded around here, with all the NCR settlers coming in the last couple years. Too many people." She grimaced. "Everyone knows who I am. Sometimes it feels like I can't step outside the Lucky 38 anymore without having everyone on the street stare and whisper. And that's even leaving aside people like Crocker and McNamara and ... " She faltered a moment. " ... and everyone asking me to do favors for them all the time." Arcade guessed she had been going to add Julie Farkas's name to the list but had restrained herself out of deference to him. "It feels like I can't breathe around here anymore. I'm leaving."

"Oh," Arcade repeated. That hollow sensation was still there, weighing him down. He swallowed for some reason. "Where - where will you go?"

Those huge pauldrons rose in a shrug. "Somewhere nobody's ever heard of me. I'm thinking East, probably. I'll just keep going until all of this - " she waved one hand " - is far behind. No Courier, no NCR, no New Vegas." She gave something that was almost - but not quite - a laugh. "Maybe I'll keep on until I reach the old Capital. It's supposed to be out East somewhere, isn't it?" He nodded. "It's as good a destination as any."

"What if there are still Legion forces out there somewhere?

"Then I'll kill them when I find them. Killing Legion isn't hard. I've done it before, I can do it again."

She shrugged again, matter-of-factly. Arcade had to admit, she had a point. He exhaled slowly, searching for something appropriate to say. Absurdly, Don't go rose to his lips; he bit it back.

"When ... when will you leave?" he tried.

"Tomorrow, I'm hoping. At any rate, sometime in the next few days. I - " She grimaced again. "I can't stand this place much longer. It makes my skin crawl."

"Are you going to tell anyone you're going?" At her curious look, he clarified, "Like, Crocker, or Chief Hanlon, or Colonel Hsu, or - "

She shook her head slowly. "No. I don't want anyone coming after me. I just want to be left alone - to drop off the radar and disappear."

"Oh," Arcade repeated again, inanely. He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging the hollow place inside him, still searching for words. None came. Samara's distant eyes moved past him, past the walls of the tent, the walls of Freeside, looking at something only she could see. Outside the sky had deepened almost to black; the yellow glow of klieg lights had come on. There was another silence, punctuated by the sounds of Freeside, drifting on the warm night wind.

"Come with me."

Samara's words struck him like a bolt from an energy weapon, sending a bright flare sparkling along his nerves and spine.

"Wh - what?"

"Come with me." Somehow her pale eyes had focused and were boring into his own. She leaned forward, taking his hands in hers, crushing them; Arcade barely felt it. The intensity was almost overwhelming. "You. Come East with me. Away. Away from Freeside, away from everything. Tomorrow - maybe tonight. Now. Let's go, together."

It was not a question. If her phrasing had left any doubt, those ice-blue eyes, the grip on his hands removed it. She had issued a command, and it was all he could do to bite back the words that rose automatically to his lips: Yes, I will, Samara.

But Arcade had spent a lifetime restraining his first impulses; he swallowed the words back, though he did not remove his hands from hers. "You - you want me to come with you?" he temporized. "But - but why?"

"You're my friend."

"I'm - your friend? But - " To call her gaze "piercing" would have been an understatement. Arcade stammered, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. "But what about, about the others? Veronica - Cass - even Boone, if you asked him, he - "

She shook her head, short and sharp; those eyes never left his face. "Cass - won't come. Veronica's tied to the Brotherhood by bonds of steel; she'll never leave. And Boone - " She scowled. "Forget it. You. I want you,Arcade. Come with me."

"Samara - "

"Come with me. It'll be just like it was in the old days, before any of this ever happened: no NCR, no Legion, no Freeside, no New Vegas. Just the road ahead and the sky above us, for as far as we can see in any direction. We'll just keep on going, for as long as there's roads, until we reach the end of the world. Come with me," she repeated.

She was gripping his hands so tightly her knuckles shone white, but Arcade barely felt it. Something in him was responding to her invitation: a wild romantic streak that sang to him of open skies, untamed wilderness, adventure, danger, discovery. A bright vista opened up before his mind's eye: himself and Samara, out on the road together, underneath a cloudless sky of unbroken, perfect blue, the crumbling pavement stretching out endlessly across the vast plain to the horizon. He could feel the fresh wind brushing his face, see tufts of brittle grass waving in the breeze; no sounds but the sounds of their footsteps, leading them onward forever ...

With a convulsive gasp, he jerked away from her, breaking the contact between them, turning away from the piercing stare of her eyes. He drew a long, steadying breath, shaken by the intensity of her demands. His hands were throbbing; he curled them loosely into fists. "I can't."

Glancing back at her, he saw her brows contract. There was something like hurt in her face. "What do you mean, you can't?"

He gave a shaky sigh, still struggling to calm himself. When he spoke, his voice was slightly unsteady. "Samara ... I - I have a life here. I have responsibilities. I made a commitment to the Followers - that's not something I can just, just discard on a whim - "

Her scowl blackened. "You said yourself you didn't think the Followers were doing any good here - "

"I don't know. I don't know. I - " He ran one hand through his hair, fighting for composure. Her gaze seemed to be boring into his soul. "Look, Samara, I'm over forty now. I'm - I'm past that stage in my life. Adventuring is a young person's game anyway - "

"Age isn't stopping Raul," she said, her eyes glinting. "Or Beatrix."

"They're ghouls. Ghouls are functionally immortal. Age doesn't take the same toll on them as it does on smoothskins."

Samara stared at him for a long moment, then snorted in disgust. "I thought so. Despite everything you always said, you'd rather be safe than free."

That stung; Arcade folded his arms across his chest. "Safety and freedom have different meanings to people at different stages of life."

Samara growled. "Goddammit, Arcade! I'm offering you the East here - don't you want it? Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't want to go," she said with sudden intensity. "Tell me you don't dream at night of taking up your weapon and striking out on the road again. Like it used to be. Don't you want to? To feel alive again?"

That wild yearning filled him, snatching his breath from his lungs; bright visions of the open road danced before his eyes. He swallowed. "I want to," he admitted quietly, seeing the surge of triumph in Samara's eyes. "You're right. I - I can't lie to you, Samara. I want to go, very badly ... " He paused, taking another, steadying breath. "But trying to relive the glory days never works. You can't turn back time. All you can do is - is go forward."

Her eyes narrowed, and she started to say something, but Arcade cut her off. "Look at the people we fought with, Samara," he said roughly. "Have you kept track of them at all? Because the Followers hear things. Cass - she hardly ever gets all the way out of the bottle anymore; at this rate, she's on track to wind up just another Freeside burnout. Veronica - never did manage to fully reconcile with the Brotherhood; she spends most of her time away, barely managing to get back once a year or so. Boone - well, I guess you'd know more about Boone than I would," he challenged her, and had the satisfaction of seeing her drop her eyes. "Is he undamaged?" She looked away. "Well? Is he?"

She tossed her head again, as if to throw off his objections. "You're not Boone. I'm not Cass. Come with me, Arcade. Come with me. Say you will. Say it. Say it, Arcade. Say you'll come with me, to the end of the world."

She had recaptured his hands in that viselike grip. Her eyes seared him, stripping from him time and place and context; all that was left was her tremendous will, bearing down on his own, crushing from him the words she wanted to hear -

"Samara, back off!" It was almost a shout; Arcade was startled at his own vehemence.

Samara drew back a little, her face going granite. There was silence for a time, while Arcade struggled to get his breathing under control, to calm himself.

At last she snarled. "Fine. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else. I should have known you would let me down."

She could not have hurt him more if she had struck him. The words went into Arcade's heart like a knife - the words, and the raw pain he could see hiding beneath her stony façade. He swallowed, hard. "Samara, that's unfair," he said when he could speak. "What you're asking is completely - "

She shook her head. "I don't care. It doesn't matter. You let me down, that's all. There's nothing more to say."

"There certainly is! Look, Samara, don't you see that you're being - "

"It doesn't matter," she repeated. She rose to her feet suddenly, and he thought he saw her lips tremble; her pale eyes were too bright. "I'm going," she said. "Tomorrow morning. Come to the Lucky 38 before then if you change your mind." She paused. "But I won't be expecting you."

With a violent wrench, she turned on her heel and stepped back out into the night.

"Samara - Samara, listen -" he called after her desperately.

She paused for a moment, but it was only to put her helmet on; then her armor whined as she disappeared into the shadows. Arcade stared after her, filled with a sudden, bereft desolation. His guts were churning; a sick heaviness hung over him, and a wild impulse possessed him to burst into tears. Shaking, he buried his face in his hands, drawing long, even breaths, fighting for control. After a long moment, he succeeded

The case reports he had been working on lay before him on his card table, in the light from his camp lantern. Somehow they seemed completely, utterly meaningless. He couldn't even remember what he had been doing with them before Samara came in. His surroundings seemed like something out of a dream: the tent, the rickety cots, the bent shelving unit against the far wall. None of it made any sort of visual sense. He felt completely disconnected from everything, as if he had lost the context that would allow him to fit his surroundings into some sort of recognizable frame.

Samara, was all he could think. Samara ...

I should have known you would let me down.

He switched off the camp lantern with a convulsive snap. Reeling a little, he started up from his chair, and half-lurched, half-stumbled his way over to one of the cots. He collapsed onto it. The images she had conjured - images of vast sky, open roads, endless spaces - shone brightly before his inner eye, so much more real than the cramped little tent, the squalid, mundane conditions of the Old Mormon Fort around him.

"I should have gone with her," he said aloud, staring upward into the darkness.

Not too late, a small voice whispered within him.

Arcade pulled off his glasses and put one arm over his eyes. Thin trails of moisture trickled down the sides of his face. He lay on the cot, unmoving. The sounds of Freeside came to him: arguing voices, dogs barking, laughter. Far off, a solitary gunshot sounded, drifting to his ears on the night wind.

I'll never see her again, he thought.

He was wrong.

Finis.