"Cait! Cait, wake up. Please wake up."

A soft voice, a gentle one. With a heavy French accent Cait no longer thought of as annoying.

"Come, no need for shaking. I have perfect hangover cure."

Another voice, this one deeper, more jovial.

"Vladim," yet another voice intoned, "this lady is not hungover."

"Cait! Please, what is wrong with her?"

"What do you mean is not hungover? Is passed out on bathroom floor! That is hungover if ever I see it, Yefim."

"There is blood crusted around lips, Vladim. Even our moonshine is not that bad."

A beat of dead silence.

"I - get ze doctor. Please! Cait! Cait!"

"Vladim, go wake Doctor Sun. Hurry."

"Fine. I still think we can fix with cold bucket of water."

Cait floated just below the surface of consciousness, feeling like she was drowning every moment, unable to breathe. Voices drifted to her slowly, muffled, and she tried to follow them out. Vladim's loud, boisterous insistences on a cold-water wakeup. Yefim's quiet concern. Curie's rising tone of panic. They tried to lead her to the surface. But she kept getting lost under the water, twisting ever deeper into it, the shadows at the edges of her vision blackening until they took on a tint of red.

A pain on the inside of her arm. The breaking of skin, something sliding its way between her muscles. Not an unfamiliar sensation. A needle.

Gravity shifted, the world turned upside down. She was no longer sinking, but falling towards the surface, like the sea was the sky and the endless expanse of space was below her. She didn't want to fall into it. To fall through the bottom of the surface, fall forever. She fought to swim up, back towards the black depths of the water, even as she choked on it, but she wasn't strong enough. She broke the surface, choking, gasping.

"Shh, Cait," someone said, holding her back gently as she tried to shoot straight up. "Don't try to move yet."

Cait's vision cleared, the shadows creeping back to the edges of her vision rather than front and center of it. The sweat that drenched her made her wonder if she had only been imagining drowning, or if in some strange way, she really had just fallen out of an ocean in the sky.

"Doctor Sun?" she asked, making out the hazy basic shapes and colours of his form. The black, plain hair, his wide-set cheekbones.

His strict lips twitched.

"You said my name correctly," he said. As though he were touched by it.

People had such a low standard for kindness, really.

"Fixer didn't work, Doc," she said.

Doctor Sun deflated, gave a grim nod.

"I'm afraid..." he started.

"I know," Cait said, cutting him off. It looked like it would hurt him to say it. "I already know."

He seemed to grapple with himself for a moment. Cait didn't know what for. For some new solution, one that didn't exist? For the right words to say? They didn't exist either. Cait had learned that, again, and again, and again. She closed her eyes, imagining the inky black depths of the ocean. It hadn't felt irradiated, the way the ocean really was, or full of the dead things always washing up onto shore. It had just felt empty, colourless, emotionless. That's what she needed now. She'd been seeing colour too long.

"I wish there were something I could do," Doctor Sun whispered.

Cait hadn't been expecting that. Hadn't expected him to give a shite. She cocked one eye open, examining him with whatever energy she had left. Artificial energy, running through her veins from where he'd slipped a needle under her skin.

"There is somethin' you can do," she said.

His brow furrowed, and she nodded her jaw over at the door.

"What'd that bloke in the basement use t'off himself? Crocker?"

"Radscorpion venom," Doctor Sun said, and after a moment, he was digging around in his bag, pulling out a smaller satchel from within. He turned it over in his hands. "From what I can tell. Think there's a few other ingredients in these. Antifreeze. Abraxo. There was a whole drawer of them in that cellar, when I searched it. I keep trying to figure out..."

"Figure out what?"

"...if it was painful."

"Didn't look painful," she said. "Crocker just looked - tired."

His gaze clouded over for a moment, but he shook himself out of it, looking back at her.

"You say there's something I can do for you?"

Cait nodded. Shut her eyes again.

"It's Curie," Cait said. "I think she's had enough o' this shite. I think I have, too. And I don't want her t'come back in here an' - an' guilt me inta bein' alive." Cait opened her eyes, stared the doctor right in the face. He had such nice brown eyes. He'd never made eye contact with her for long enough for her to notice. "I'm tired, Sun. I've gotten me hopes up an' been let down so many times. I don't got another one left in me."

Doctor Sun seized up, hands tightening around the satchel of needles.

"You're not saying - "

"Think of it as a mercy. Think of it as whatever you need to thinkve it as. Just - I'm so tired."

Doctor Sun looked away for a moment, eyes fixing on a blank point on the wall. Cait knew that trick. Forcing tears back into your eyes. Cait liked to think she was better at it, because when Doctor Sun turned back, his eyes were still shining just enough to know.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think I have that in me either. Maybe that makes me just another bastard."

"Just give 'em to me, then," Cait said. "I think I can do it, now. I know how t'work a needle."

Doctor Sun nodded, slowly. His hands shook around the bag, a cheap canvas thing made out of an old pre-war potato sack. Cait held out her hand, and he started to hand it over. Stopped.

"What if," he started.

"Ain't no 'what if' Doc."

He shook his head.

"You saved my life today," he said. "Have you heard of Vault 95?"

"Curie saved your life, not me. Don't try and pull that."

But he was already pulling his hand back, bringing the satchel back in closer to his chest. Cait could have throttled him, thought about mustering the energy to take it from him herself.

"Some Gunners came through last week, and one of them was talking about a machine in Vault 95 that could clean the blood. He was trying to get me to lower my prices for addictol. Cait, if we could clean your blood - "

"I've just told you how tired I am, and you're tryin' to get me to spend the last of me energy on a rumour from some Gunner trash anglin' for a discount?"

"It's worth a - "

"I've heard of Vault 95, Doctor Sun. It was too dangerous then an' it's too damn difficult now."

His voice lowered.

"You're right," he said. "It was Curie who saved my life today. And I know how she's going to look at me if I hand you these needles and then walk out there and tell her - "

"Fuck," Cait said, cutting him off. A rush of anger stirred her enough to start seeing colour again. The chipped green paint of the bathroom stalls, the tarnished yellow of the wall and floor tile. "Fuck you. Don't you come in here an' guilt me for her."

"Why is it guilt you feel? I'm telling you someone loves you."

"Why wouldn't that make me feel guilty?!" Cait shut her eyes again. The energy, the anger, the colour, left her as quickly as it had come. "Please, Doc. I don't beg often. Just - please."

The doctor sighed. There was a shaking to it, like he might cry, but was just too tired to. Cait knew that kind of sigh. After a long silence, a long waiting, where Cait almost thought she might fall asleep, a rough stretch of canvas brushed her leg. She forced her heavy eyelids back open, watched Sun place the bag next to her and hold onto it for a long moment before finally letting go.

"Thanks, doc," Cait said, pulling the bag open and digging out a needle.

She held it up to the shitty fluorescent bathroom lights, examining it. It wasn't much different from a Psycho needle. The colour was darker, the substance maybe a bit less smooth. She pressed the handle down, tapped it, to get the air bubbles out, as though that mattered. A force of habit.

"You don't have t'be here," she said.

"I have to tell Curie," he said. "When it's done."

She smiled.

"One last guilt trip?"

"I'm telling you one last time," Doctor Sun said, "that you're loved."

Cait breathed in a slow breath, and traced her hand down a familiar vein. Thumbed the handle. In the next room over, a new song started to play on Vladim's radio.

Like an earthquake, starting to roll

I felt my world shake, out of control

Like a world war starting to brew

Baby, it's just you.

And she couldn't help but remember that night in the Third Rail, Curie and her newfound legs dancing to the music. Bringing her onto the dance floor to dance along, too. The twists, the laughter.

Like a cyclone, wild and extreme

I got my mind blown, stalking your dreams

Waking up without a clue

Cause baby, it's just you.

You leave me breathless, weak in the knees

I'm feeling reckless, pardon me please

The fallout's blowing through

But baby, it's just you.

Cait remembered getting more into it than she had expected, wanting to show off, wanting to impress her. Remembered how quickly Curie had figured out her moves, and been spinning her, when Cait had expected to be doing the spinning. How they had ended in a dip - with Curie dipping Cait.

Help me, help me, rescue my heart

Save me, save me, from falling apart

Take me, take me, baby I'm sure

You've got the power, you've got the cure.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't goddamned fair. The needle dropped from Cait's fingers, clattered onto the ground. She didn't feel tired anymore. She felt deeply, irreparably broken. Like the colours weren't ever going to leave her, but they weren't ever going to be right, either.

"I'm just another bastard, too, Sun," Cait said. "Fine. Tell Curie about Vault 95. And tell Vladim to turn of that damn radio."

Curie had agreed to help, of course, agreed before anyone had even asked. Doctor Sun had barely finished explaining about Vault 95 and Curie was already arranging things. A Brahmin, for Cait to ride on, since she wouldn't be able to walk. Supplies for the journey. How to keep Cait alive long enough to reach the place. Psycho, Doctor Sun had told her, in small doses. They'd discussed dosages in medical terms Cait didn't understand.

Vladim never did turn off his radio.

She remembered the first time she'd ever seen the ocean.

She'd grown up in a trailer park, half lived-in, half empty. Some nights her parents had chained her up outside the trailer like a dog, other nights they'd relied upon her fear of starvation to keep her close by. Fear of the unknown. And then it had hit her all at once, when she'd been sold, unknown thing after unknown thing after terrible unknown thing. And one of those unknown things had been the ocean.

When she'd first seen it, it was after she'd been sold for the fourth time. She'd been sold back and forth a lot at first, because no one had much use for her. She hadn't known how to read, how to write, how to cook or even communicate very well. She'd been half feral, a dog her parents had raised masquerading as human enough to sell. She'd learned writing, and reading, and cooking, but not well enough for anyone's satisfaction. They'd get frustrated with her, and sell her off again, to someone else who was passing through too quickly to know better.

The merchant who'd bought her this time made camp on the beach, waiting for a boat to take them across the sound. The beach was filled with the washed-up carcases of blubbery sea creatures who couldn't handle the irradiated water, their skin raised and bloodied with boils and mutations, picked at daily by birds. The sand itself seemed to have a slight static to it, leftover radiation from the water which soaked it at high tide. Cait, at nineteen, had looked out over that horizon and thought to herself that nothing could be more endless and unknowable than the ocean.

She'd changed her mind not long after. After all, there wasn't much to know about the ocean, besides that ugly dead things washed up on its shores. The ocean was not so special in that regard.

Cait awoke from her dreaming about the ocean to the feeling of a needle sliding under her skin. Her eyes flickered open, half-afraid to. But deep blue eyes met hers.

"Cait?" a soft voice asked. "You are awake?"

A hand, Cait thought, was laid so delicately along her jaw. But she couldn't be sure.

"How long?" Cait asked, her mouth dry like cotton. How long have I been asleep?

"A day," Curie told her. "Almost. We are halfway there. Hold on, just a little longer, yes?"

The drugs were entering her system, now, and she was parched for them. She felt them spread through her like the warmth from a hot drink on a cool day, and some stray lyrics found their way into her head, lyrics about earthquakes and trains and a heart that wasn't broken yet, a heart that only needed saving.

She was trying to say something. Something about the journey, she thought. Maybe she had been trying to thank someone. But she couldn't even remember who she'd been talking to.

"When I'm gone," she said instead, "put me in the ocean. I think I'd like it there."

She remembered the first time a needle had sunk under her skin, that thin line of metal parting between folds so small she couldn't even see them. She'd known it would hurt, but she hadn't expected the way it would hurt. She'd been stabbed before, slapped, hit, broken. Her skin had been ripped and it had been burned and it had been bruised. But this small parting - it wasn't the worst pain, by far. It was very bearable. But it was surprising, after being so experienced with pain, to find a new breed of it. The subtle, dull way the metal reminded her it was beneath her skin.

Carrick had smiled at her, a facade of reassurance, as if her start had been one of pain.

"Shh," he'd told her. "Just relax. Sooner or later, the chems make the pain go away."

She'd nodded, not contradicting him. Not bothering to tell him she wasn't in pain. He'd leaned in, making the extra effort to catch her eye. She looked away. Eye contact wasn't usually wise, but this one - he kept trying to push her. Like he was trying to get her caught doing something wrong. She'd thought that maybe he wanted the excuse to beat her.

"You don't talk much, do you?" he'd asked.

She hadn't, back then. Only when she was spoken to. God, she'd been weak back then, and so fucking afraid. All the time, afraid of everyone, of everything, from the ocean to some goddamned eye contact.

"I'm sorry," she'd said. It was usually a wise idea to apologize.

Carrick had run his thumb along the outer edge of the collar around her throat while Cait struggled with the first surge of the Psycho. He'd hummed as she'd clenched her fists, bit her lip until it bled.

"I don't like my slaves already broken," he'd told her. "I like to break them myself."

"I'm sorry," she'd said again, trembling. Waiting to be hit. But no hit came.

"That's okay," he'd said, surprising her. And then, "I think you're faking it," he'd whispered, almost conspiratorially.

Faking what? But she hadn't asked.

"I think," Carrick had said, his orange hair falling into his face as he leaned forward, "you're not as submissive as you pretend to be. No one can be, with a collar on them like that. No," he'd said. "I think you're waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

The words had slipped out unbidden, bitter and jaded. What the hell could she be waiting for? What other god-awful, miserable thing could happen to her in her life that would make her finish with being afraid? She hadn't been able to stand up to her parents. She hadn't been able to stand up to any of the people who had owned her - even the worst of them, the ones who had hurt her in ways that played themselves out again and again every night when she tried to get whatever sleep had been allotted to her. What the fuck other thing could happen that would change this?

"You'll see," Carrick had said. "You'll see."

Cait thought the sound of gunfire was distant, but slowly she began to realize that it was just her own fractured consciousness diluting the sound. There was a battle going on, probably not more than a few feet from her. She heard Curie huffing, shouting, and though from the end of a tunnel. The distinctive sound of her laser rifle, firing, again and again and again. She heard these things, but she couldn't open her eyes to see them. She couldn't find her eyes to open them, couldn't locate the part of her brain that would tell her body to move, her hands to clutch her shotgun and help. She couldn't help. She couldn't help anybody, couldn't defend Curie.

Somewhere in the mess of sound making its way to her, the horrible, twisted bleat of a brahmin in pain reached her, drowned out the other sounds. And then that sound, too, drowned itself out. She was fading even further, losing any grasp on consciousness the gunfire might have momentarily drawn her to. She fought to keep it, fought to stay, fought to find her fingers and her legs and her goddamned shotgun. To find anything.

Twenty-four thousand, five hundred, and forty-seven. It was the only concrete thing she could manage to find. A number, floating around in her head for no reason. She had twenty-four thousand, five hundred, and forty-seven freckles. Someone had told her that once.

Unconsciousness claimed her slowly like the rising tide of the endless ocean.

Carrick had bought her, and entered her in the pit fights.

Everyone else had called him crazy for doing it. Cait, they'd said, was too small, weak, malnourished, damaged. They said the pits would eat her alive. Cait had been afraid of that, too, terrified she'd die. She'd begged not to be sold.

"I know a dog with bite when I see one," Carrick had said, and thrown down five hundred caps for her.

He'd hopped her up on Psycho and thrown her into the ring. She'd lost her first fight, and then her second, and then her third, and her fourth, and her fifth. Beaten nearly within an inch of her life every time, by slaves that were as pumped full of chems as she was. And every single fight, Carrick would sit in the audience and watch, grinning. Waiting.

Her sixth fight, her opponent had gotten his fingers under her collar, and had pinned her to the side of the cage by her neck. She'd dangled there, her legs kicking out, trying to push him off of her to no avail. She waited for the announcer to call the match, as her vision blackened and blurred. But no call came. From the crowd, she heard the spectators calling for blood.

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

She'd thought of the ocean, and all the mangled corpses that washed up out of it. The ocean was endless, and uncaring, and empty. It was an oblivion. She felt headed for oblivion herself, her lungs burning in their strangulation. And then Cait had looked up.

There was no such oblivion on the face of her opponent. His face was masked with a sick pleasure, a relief. She was going to die, and not him. And he was going to enjoy killing her. Holding her aloft, watching the light drain from her eyes, watching oblivion claim her. His fingers dug in deeper to the skin of her neck under her collar. He'd leaned in, cocky, to drink in the fear in her eyes.

She saw the fear in his eyes, the moment the fear left her own. In that moment, she'd twisted forward, into his grip, hard enough to bruise her battered throat and cut off the last of her air. It didn't matter. She was close enough. She bit into the skin of his cheek, bit down to the bone, and tore his flesh away with her teeth.

He'd dropped her, screaming, but she hadn't hesitated. Hadn't even taken a moment to regain her breathing, to spit his skin out of her mouth, before her fists were flying, pounding, tearing into him. She'd broken her knuckles on his face, mixed her blood with his, crunched bones under her blows.

The Psycho found itself in her. The colours around her righted themselves, everything seemed to suddenly make sense. The fear, the pounding of her heart, it found a target that wasn't her for once. Violence. She wasn't afraid anymore. All that fear, she threw it onto her opponent on the ground, fistfull after fistfull of it, crashing and crashing and crashing into his skull and shattering it and spraying brain across the ground and into her eyes and mouth and hair and hitting him still, more, more, harder, harder. Her shoulders heaved, her breathing settled into a kind of roar in her ears.

The announcer took her fist, held it aloft, shouted her victory. The crowd was screaming, much of it in anger, losing money on their bets against her. But she was no longer afraid of their anger. In the crowd, she met Carrick's eyes, and did not look away. He was grinning ear to ear.

In that moment, she wanted nothing more than for Carrick to be the one whose brains she beat into the dirt.

Beneath her feet, a bloody slave collar was slid off of what was left of her opponent's neck, to be used on someone else.

A needle slid under her skin, again, that dull throbbing feeling of metal, and she didn't know if she was dreaming or not. She wanted the ocean. She wanted oblivion. She wanted to lose herself in the beating in of a skull.

But this time, the needle stayed under longer. She felt a full dose enter her system. She found the part of her brain that controlled her body, her eyes, her fingers, her legs. She forced her eyelids open. Licked her lips.

Curie was kneeling over her. Her hair was dirty and mussed, and a streak of either blood or dirt or both was dried into her jawline. They were on the dirt of a hill, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon, a radiation storm blowing in from the Glowing Sea.

"Why..." Cait started, her voice dry and cracked. "Why am I more awake, this time?"

She'd felt Curie giving her these small doses of Psycho meant to keep her alive, but each time, it had been like a small taste of consciousness. But this was a full wake up. A hungover wakeup, sure, after only thirty minutes sleep, but a wakeup nonetheless.

"I gave you a higher dosage," Curie replied. "I know I vill not be able to clear Vault 95 on my own. I had to take ze risk."

Cait sat up, slowly. Her muscles felt sore, tight, unused. Like her sinew had been unwound and then wound back together all wrong.

"Clear?" she asked. "Who's in it? Raiders?"

Curie shook her head.

"I could handle raiders, I think. But Gunners are far more well-armed."

Cait held her head in her hands.

"Shite," she said. "Gunners. Are you sure you want t'do this? There ain't no shame in turnin' back now."

"Zey are not so formidable," Curie said. "First zere is trash, zen zere is Gunners. Remember?"

Cait smiled for a moment, despite herself. It faded quickly.

"I'm bein' serious, Curie."

"I said I vould always be there for you," Curie whispered. "I did mean it."

"We said a lot've other things, too."

Cait was thinking of all the bad things. All of the horrible, hateful words she had ever said to Curie.

Tin can. Trash can. Saw-hands Sally.

I'm not a fucking robot, Curie!

All of humanity's caught asshole, Curie! And no amount of kindness is gonna fix that! Welcome to bein' human, Curie - This is what humanity looks like!

"And I still 'ave many things I wish to say to you yet," Curie said.

Cait nodded, and found her way to her feet, unsteady. Held out her hand for her shotgun, which Curie had strapped onto her back. Now that she was standing, she could see a rise just a bit to the east, which looked like it had a structure built into it. Vault 95.

"Alright," Cait said. "Together?"

"Together," Curie nodded. "Zat way, neither one of us need be invincible."

The word invincible rang around in her head.

Cait looked over at the hill that must be Vault 95, and realized that she had never lost that fear of everyone and everything, that her violence had never cured her of it. That she didn't know how not to be afraid.

Curie was looking in the same direction she was, and her fear matched her own. A hand found its way into Cait's, interlocked their fingers together, squeezed. And Cait decided she didn't need to know how not to be afraid.

Their hands dropped, readied themselves on their weapons, and they stepped towards the vault together.