Author's Note: So either my chapters come out effortlessly in one night, or it's a struggle to write three paragraphs in two. Consistency, wherefore art thou? Also, I edited the last chapter a wee bit. Wasn't completely satisfied with the fight scene with the nightkin so it got tweaked a little. Nobody has to go back and read it. The changes are admittedly minor and hey, same results either way: dead mutant.

Thanks as always for reading! Review? Yes? No? Okay. I still love you.


"Why can't this wait until morning?" Veronica complained behind her. "Haven't we done enough for one night?"

"This is the only time Jeannie May's not in her office. Might as well get it out of the way first," Riley huffed out a breath as she fiddled with the lock on the door in front of her. The lock was simple, but she hadn't touched her lock picking tools in over a year, it was only natural to take a little time getting back in the swing of things. However, she was rusty and had broken three bobby pins already, and she couldn't really blame adrenaline for it either. That had already faded by now, but she still felt wired, on edge, and she had a good idea as to why. Their conversation with Boone was still fresh in her mind.

She had offered him a debt. Not that she expected him to take her up on it, but she felt obligated to him, and as the day had gone on she had to admit to some sort of guilt over the whole fiasco from the night before. After all, she should have known she was entering a sniper nest, given her own background, so she should have known better than to not announce herself.

It didn't make his attack on her any less stupid, but at least she could share some of the blame.

So a debt owed. He didn't seem particularly thrilled with their visit, but she was beginning to think that maybe stoically annoyed was just his default personality. He had shut her down immediately after she offered, mentioning something about having enough debts to worry about. It all sounded very cryptically morbid, to be honest, but when they turned to leave, he stopped them. His tremulous 'wait', the vulnerability in his voice on that single word was all it took for her to stand there and listen to his request.

"I mean, yeah, I get it," Veronica went on. "Handsome man, sad story. Any regular girl would cry buckets and swoon right into his arms. But you looked pissed."

"Just so happens that forced slavery strikes a bit of a nerve with me. Can you move to the side, please?" Riley looked up at her. "You're in my moonlight."

Veronica obliged, shifting only slightly to the left while she babbled on. "And I don't claim to know you all that well. I mean, I've known you less than 48 hours, but I pride myself on being able to read people. It's all in the eyes, you know? So here I thought I had a pretty good lock on you and then he brings up this sob story that he can't even prove aside from an 'I just know, okay?' I thought you were going to tell him where to go and how to get there because he's basically asking you to help him kill somebody in this town. Not sure if you got that part, by the way. The whole... death bit, and all. And you being ex-military! I figured maybe that would be, you know, easy to justify morally with a big fat 'no' but it seems like you're right on board with the whole thing and I admit, I'm confused as to why."

Riley sighed and lowered her hands, exasperated. "Do you ever shut up?"

"Only when it rains," came the nonchalant reply.

"We owe him," Riley lifted her tools and started working at the lock again. "Yeah, maybe the entire story is a load of shit, but that doesn't mean we can't look into it, right? If we find nothing, nobody's dying. Simple as that."

"And if we do find something?"

"Then somebody's going to find a lot in common very suddenly with that nightkin," she snarled.

"There's that anger again. Are you taking this whole thing personally?"

Riley ignored her, instead focusing on the lock. Her last few turns had yielded a good amount, so she knew she was close. She adjusted the bobby pin a fraction and twisted the screwdriver, smiling as she heard the telltale click of success. "There we go. Still got it," she stood up proudly, tucking her tools back into her belt.

"And where did you learn to pick locks?" Veronica demanded as she followed Riley inside. "Don't tell me that's taught in the army." She closed the door behind them.

"It is and it isn't. Okay," she flicked on her Pip-Boy light and surveyed the darkened room. "You start with the filing cabinets, I'll check the desk area."

"Uh, hello? I don't have a Pip-Boy light. Kinda hard to check for incriminating evidence if I can't see what I'm looking at."

Riley rolled her eyes and flipped on the room's light switch. Veronica grinned and they separated. Riley moved over to the front desk area, opening the register first. Inside was a whopping thirteen caps. She wondered where her hundred caps for the room had gone while she poked around the shelves below. She was amused to find a stockpile of the lunches Boone claimed to never accept. Guess he was telling the truth, there, she thought. Could he be telling the truth about his wife?

"So what did you mean by 'it is and it isn't'?" Veronica asked, pulling out random cabinet drawers and yanking out folders. Riley heard the pop and fizz of a soda being opened and looked over to see Veronica chugging back on a Nuka-Cola.

"What? It was in the drawer."

"Hardly incriminating evidence," she scolded lightly. She bent back down to the lower shelves, pocketing a few bobby pins and caps that were littered around.

"As for your question... in basic training, if you wanted to get laid you had to break into a closet or somewhere the MP's couldn't find you. You learned pretty quickly."

Veronica choked on her drink. "And uh, how good are you at lock picking again?"

Riley lifted her head to glare at Veronica over the counter. "Good enough."

"Okay," came the reply. It sounded suspiciously like it was hiding concealed laughter.

There was nothing she could use against Jeannie May on the shelves. She sighed and looked around, shifting her weight so that she was resting on one knee. Her knee struck metal and she glanced down. There was a safe on the floor, and a quick tug on the handle revealed that the lock was engaged. Riley frowned at it, wondering what exactly Jeannie May had that was valuable enough to require safekeeping. She wasn't exactly rolling in the caps, from what Riley had seen. She pulled out her tools and set to work.

"There's nothing in these," Veronica declared sometime later. "It's all old world paperwork and paperweights and broken cameras." She joined Riley behind the counter and crouched down beside her. "Find anything?"

Riley was silent, staring at the slip of paper in her hand. She read it over for the fifth time, desperately wishing the words would change on the paper so it wouldn't be true. Jeannie May? How... why? Why would anyone-

"Riley?" Veronica touched her gently on the shoulder and she jumped, twisting in a panic. Her eyes were wide and she realized they probably looked like she was crying. Veronica frowned.

"You okay?"

She shook her head, handing Veronica the slip of paper. She slammed the safe shut and pushed herself to her feet while she read it.

"Oh my- oh my god," the Scribe lifted her eyes to meet Riley's, expression sad and bewildered and pitying. "And she was pregnant, too."

The girl was naked up on the podium, crying and pretty and pregnant...

Riley blinked.

No. No. They weren't the same. And it wasn't fair to try and draw parallels between them either. Focus. She pushed the thought away, forcing herself to remember that Boone needed her to do something.

"What now?" Veronica asked quietly. Her previous chattiness was gone.

"You go out by the nightkin," Riley said flatly. "I'm going to bring Jeannie May out and we'll get this done," she took a deep breath. Then another. Veronica gave her a strange look and she shook her head.

"I'm fine. Let's get this done."


She didn't bother knocking. Jeannie May had lost all privileges when it came to secure doors, as far as Riley was concerned. She threw that door open and waltzed in as if she owned the place, using her Pip-Boy light to guide her to the bedroom.

Jeannie May was sleeping soundly in her bed. Riley stared down at her, furious that someone who had sold a pregnant women into slavery and ruined a man's life could sleep so easily, without a care in the world.

She shook the old woman roughly, trying to keep the anger out of her voice as she called her name. "Jeannie May, wake up!"

"Wha-?"

She shook her again. "Wake up! This is important!"

"What's wrong? Why are you in my house?" Annoyance was creeping into Jeannie May's voice and Riley sucked in a breath to avoid snapping at her.

"Get up!" She hissed. "You have to see this!"

"Alright, alright!" She got up, waving Riley away from her while she got her shoes on. Riley stood by impatiently, arms crossed. Once she was actually up, she moved to get a jacket and Riley all but hauled the old woman out the front door before she could reach her wardrobe, uncaring that she was still half asleep, ignoring her feeble protests while she dragged her through the street. She could see Veronica fidgeting by the nightkin in the distance and pointed so Jeannie would stop complaining.

"There, by the dinosaur."

"What- I still need my glasses. I can't see whatever it is-"

"Almost there." She picked up her pace and Jeannie struggled not to fall, her elbow still firmly in Riley's grasp. At the nightkin, she released her, nodding to Veronica to stand back.

"What- is that a-?" the old woman crouched low, squinting at the dead mutant.

"Nightkin," Veronica nodded. "It was what was killing the brahmin, under a stealth boy." She spared Riley a glance as if to say 'hurry it up' and she took another step back. Jeannie May circled the nightkin, distracted.

"Well I'll be!" She declared. She rambled off a few questions that Veronica answered vaguely, her voice on edge.

Riley looked up, easily spotting Boone leaning casually out of the dinosaur's mouth, watching them. She reached to her belt, pulling the First Recon beret from where she had tucked it away earlier. Her hands closed around the familiar cloth as she raised it to her head, eyes still on Boone. He raised his rifle and she imagined his scope focusing on her face, looking for confirmation. She nodded once, hard, and let the beret fall into place.

For the second time that night, something fell to her feet without a head.


Boone was strangely calm while he waited for Riley to come up and explain her findings. He didn't know what he expected to feel. Relief, maybe. A sense of completion? Joy? But instead he felt nothing, and it didn't really bother him.

Maybe he was in shock?

Quick glances over the side of his post every now and then showed Veronica hauling Jeannie May's body to the far side of the bridge. The raider he'd killed the night Riley had surprised him still lay there, sprawled out in a pool of dried blood. He'd shot her in the neck and she had bled out quickly while he watched through his scope.

He kept an eye on the distance for threats while Veronica worked, quickly stripping Jeannie May of her clothes and swapping them for the raider's. It wasn't what he would have done. He would have simply left her by the nightkin and blamed the dead mutant.

The soft knock on the door signalled Riley's arrival, and he turned to face her while she quietly stepped out into the night. She was covered in blood – some from the nightkin, most of it from Jeannie – and still had his beret on her head.

"That was quick," he noted. "I hope you have the evidence to back this up or you and I are going to have a problem."

She said nothing, merely holding out a slip of worn paper that looked like it had been handled a hundred times. He took it, and under the light of her Pip-Boy, read the receipt for how much his wife and unborn child had sold for.

His jaw clenched as he realized Jeannie May had been holding onto this, needing it to collect the extra five hundred caps once his child was born. He wondered if she had been confused when months passed and nobody showed up, if she felt cheated out of money she probably felt was owed to her.

Suddenly he felt a certain bitter comfort in blowing Jeannie May's head off.

"Good enough evidence?" She asked quietly. He nodded, crumpling the paper in his hand.

"What are you going to do now?"

He stared at her. "I don't know. But I'm not staying here, that's for damn sure. Figure I'll just wander around killing as many Legionnaires as I can before the inevitable."

He watched her process that, the frown of concern, followed by the gnawing of her lip while she considered something. He waited for her to speak, since she appeared to be working up to something, but she stayed quiet for quite a while. He was about to just say his goodbye and leave, when she seemed to make up her mind.

"Come with us," she blurted. His eyes narrowed.

"I don't think so. That's not a good idea."

"The hell it's not," she replied. "You want to kill Legion, great. But alone your kill count is going to be pretty damn dismal before you end up on a cross."

He felt his back rise up at the implied insult, that he couldn't handle himself or that he was no match for the Legion. He snatched his beret off her head, placing it deftly back on his own. She stared at it, silent, while he glared at her and willed her to go away so he could finish his shift in silence.

"When the Legion captured me," she said slowly, "they took my gear. Made me wear a slave collar and a poor excuse of a rag for clothing." She wasn't looking at him anymore. Even in the darkness he could feel the shift in her stance, the change in her voice. The life had gone out of her and he said nothing, curious because escaped slaves were few and far between.

"They put my partner up on the cross," she went on. "Made me watch while he died. Punished him more if I didn't." Her mouth set into a hard line as she finally turned her gaze back to his. "Snipers work in pairs, Boone. We can kill more Legion if we work together. Alone, you're not going to last long. That's experience talking."

He frowned. "You're-?"

"First Recon," she nodded. "Bravo Team. Formerly."

He looked her over. "I don't see a rifle."

She sighed, shaking a hand through her hair as if this was not something she wanted to talk about. "That is a long story. Short version? My guns were stolen from me. I got ambushed walking the roads a few days ago. Alone." Her pointed gaze did not go unnoticed.

She had a valid argument, he admitted. Working alone was a good way to get yourself killed. From what she said, she also had no love for the Legion either. In fact, she seemed to have just as much reason to hate them as he did. That was a working relationship he could get behind. Motive that was simple, understandable, and mutual.

"Fine," he said. "This isn't going to end well but if you're willing, I am." He held out his hand and she took it. They shook firmly. She smiled at him, then. Surprise and pride flashed across her face, pleased she'd convinced him, maybe.

"Good. Great." She said, and turned to leave. "We're leaving in the morning."