A fist grabbed Curie by the collar and slammed her into the nearest wall. She gasped as the wind was knocked out of her lungs and her vision blurred. Lily's scarred face was only inches away from her, her eyes blazing with anger.

"You drugged me!" She growled, slamming her into the wall again before releasing her collar. Curie slid slowly to the ground as Lily paced furiously in front of her.

"I'm sorry." Curie panted, focusing on Lily's blood-spattered boots. "I should have asked for consent."

Lily paused to glare at Curie's bowed head.

"What did you inject me with?"

"A-A small dose of modified Med-X. It's an anesthetic." Curie gasped, in between deep, calming breaths.

Lily's eyes narrowed.

"A what?"

"An anesthetic. I feared the operation would be very painful for you."

"Operation?"

"I had to remove a bullet in your lower back." Curie explained. "It was causing you a great deal of pain."

A bullet. That would explain it. Lily's scowl softened somewhat.

"You could have told me." she muttered, her arms crossed in disapproval. A small lump of guilt had settled in her chest, where it promptly began gnawing away at her anger. She knew firsthand how bad bullet wounds could get, if left untreated. It was a miracle she'd lasted this long, and there was little doubt in her mind that Curie's 'operation' might have just saved her life.

But if she apologized now, she'd have to admit she was in Curie's debt.

"I'm sorry." Came the submissive response.

She really isn't going to make this easy, is she?

Just a touch of fire in Curie's eyes would have been enough to satisfy Lily's conscience that this was a battle of two wills, a fight not a slaughter.

Instead, Lily just felt like a bully, cowing this helpless woman into submission. A woman that had saved Lily's life even after she put a gun to her head.

The guilt was swelling, erasing what little resistance Lily's stubborn pride managed to put up. There was a difference between being stubborn and being an ingrate.

"I-" Lily paused, struggling to come up with the right words.

"Thank you."

Curie knew enough about human behavior to recognize a poor apology when she heard one.

"You are very welcome." Curie said graciously.

For a moment, the two women embraced the silence. Lily fidgeted with her weapon while Curie paid close attention to her fingers.

Curl. Uncurl. Clench. Unclench. It was the little things about her body that surprised her the most. The tiny tremors running through her fingers. The bright, pink skin growing redder with ever curl. The unexpected pain she felt when her fingernails dug too deep into her palm.

"Ahem."

Curie looked up to see Lily watching her, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Exercises." She explained briefly. Lily nodded.

"Is that a Vault thing?"

"I don't think so. Although sometimes I see people do this." Curie curled her fingers into a tight ball. "When they are angry. Or sad."

"Right. That is a thing people do." Lily ran a frustrated hand through her hair. "So, I guess you're heading back to your vault? Which one was it again?"

"Oh no! I would very much like to stay away from there." Curie looked up at her hopefully. "If that is possible?"

Why are you asking me? Lily wanted to yell. She wanted to grab the woman by the shoulders and shake her until she started acting like a normal person. It pissed her off that she couldn't get a solid read on the petite woman who'd saved her life twice in one day.

What sort of twisted Vault experiment could have left her like this?

"So where are you headed?"

"Fort Independence." Curie declared brightly, her smile curling downwards at the look on Lily's face. "The Castle?"

"The Castle?" Clearly this woman hadn't heard the big news. "The Castle was overrun by Mirelurks a long time ago."

A flash of panic crossed Curie's face, her steel-gray eyes widening in horror. Before Lily could react, Curie leapt to her feet, wasting only a second to brush her legs before scurrying into the kitchen.

"That's horrible! We must go there at once!" She cried from behind a counter-top, her voice rising over a great clattering of pots and pans.

"It happened a long time ago." Lily repeated, watching in awe as Curie struggled to fit two metal soup bowls into her backpack. "There's really no point in going there now."

"Ah but we must try!" Curie insisted, yanking the backpack over her head. Lily suppressed the urge to laugh as Curie scooped up her weapon.

"Lily, will you assist me?" she asked, her face the picture of determination.

"Listen to me." Lily spoke slowly and carefully. "It's too dangerous to go to the Castle now. Not to mention, you and I have no clue where it is, and you clearly have no idea what you're doing."

Curie's shoulders slumped and the backpack dropped to the couch.

"Perhaps I am being a little…hasty?"

"Yes! Exactly!" She wasn't hopeless after all! "First, we need to figure out where we are." Lily pointed repeatedly at the ground. "And where we need to go." She gestured towards the open door.

"A most logical course of action!" Curie nodded her approval. "Now where are we?"

"I don't know."

Curie's face fell.

"And where do you need to go?"

"Federal Ration Stockpile." Lily replied instantly. Home.

"And where is that?" Curie asked, genuinely interested. She'd left behind a lot of her database when she'd shifted into her synth body, including her extensive maps of Pre-War Boston.

Silence. Lily frowned; her brow furrowed in deep thought.

Ten seconds passed, and she hadn't moved an inch. Twenty seconds.

Curie slowly reached out to tap her leg when the redhead suddenly shifted, pointing straight towards the open doorway.

"Somewhere to the North." She muttered. Curie opened her mouth to speak, but Lily interrupted her.

"No, no. North is this way." she corrected hastily, turning ninety degrees to the left.

Hopefully the glaring sunlight was enough to cover her reddening cheeks.

"What about the Castle? Which way is that?" Lily asked quickly.

Now it was Curie's turn to furrow her brow as she processed. It took her less time, but in the end she looked equally as confused when she pointed vaguely towards the East.

"That way?"

Lily smirked, but she was more relieved than amused. Atleast they were both equally lost.

"Looks like you don't know where you're going either." She snipped, trying to sound confident. Curie nodded vigorously, and Lily found it hard to meet her eyes. How could a grown woman look so lost?

"We should wait here." Curie suggested. "Surely a patrol will come to investigate this battle?"

Lily was already shaking her head.

"Right now, you can't smell those ghouls because of all the smoke. But in a few hours, this whole place will stink worse than a Molerat den.'

"We can tolerate a little bad smell, can we not?"

"Sure. But that stench is going to attract every hungry creature in a mile radius by the afternoon. Deathclaws, Yao-Guai and even other packs of ghouls are gonna come here looking for a free lunch." Lily shrugged. "And I don't want to be here when they do."

Curie shuddered, a sudden, involuntary reaction that made her whole body shake. It would have been exciting, exhilarating even, if it didn't come along with that most hated of emotions, fear.

She also wasn't very keen on meeting more feral ghouls.

"But where will we go?"

"From what I can tell, we're somewhere South of the Charles. If we go far enough North, we should hit the river eventually."

We. We? We! Red mocked, her voice thick with disgust. Congratulations on finding the only person in the Commonwealth weaker than you.

"I could use someone to watch my back." Lily admitted, fiddling nervously with her revolver. "And you won't last out here on your own."

"Of course!" Curie exclaimed quickly, beaming with excitement as she struggled with her backpack straps. "I would be honored to travel with you."

The odds were pretty good that atleast one of them wasn't even going to make it to the river. The effects of a good night's sleep were already starting to wear off, and Lily could sense the incoming flood of pain that threatened to overwhelm her senses. Red's voice still echoed inside her head, chipping away at what little was left of her self-esteem.

"Ah, before we go, Lily, I seem to be a little stuck." Curie admitted sheepishly. Her arms were pinned tightly to her sides by her backpack, which she'd somehow managed to put on sideways. As she struggled helplessly, the two soup bowls she'd inexplicable stuffed into her pack seized their chance at freedom, clattering to the floor with a deafening crash that left her ears ringing.

They were going to fucking die.