James stoked the fire with a stick as Marie sat in a log across from him. He glanced at her every now and then but said nothing. In the meantime, Marie played with her Squirrel On a Stick over the flames of the pit. But she clearly had no appetite, as it had charred and was dissolving slowly over the flames and the night wind.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. James looked out and found no clouds.

"Storm's headed our way." James grumbled. He glanced back at Marie, she had put down the stick and was now staring at her boots. The flames licked them and danced around them, but she didn't move. She was almost as still as a rock. James sighed.

"I told you I didn't want to talk about it." He said as he tossed the stick into the flames and shifted a piece of firewood closer. "Now you know everything." He looked back at her, but as usual, she hadn't moved. "Feel better now that you know?" he asked. Nothing.

James stood and stretched, his leather jacket squeaking from the effort. He relaxed and looked out at the water as waves shoved against the beach and withered back to sea. The moon reflected brilliantly off the surface as a cool breeze swept past.

"I missed nights like this." James said absent-mindedly. "Back when little else mattered past survival, this was me every night." He talked as he paced back to the fire and tossed in the piece of firewood.

"Sure it made me a target for the raider gangs, but I didn't mind them." James said and glanced over to his holster carrying James Sr's M1911 pistol. "They'd never met a guy like me before." He said darkly before looking back at Marie, who was still transfixed by the flames licking her boots.

"Will you please say something?" James pleaded. Marie carefully looked up at James and still said nothing. He sighed and nodded before throwing off his jacket. "I guess I deserve that. I wouldn't know what to say to me if I was in your position." He carefully folded the jacket and placed it gently on the log beside Marie.

"I don't think even me back when people called me a hero would know what to say." James said bitterly.

"It's not that I don't see you as a hero anymore." Marie said softly. James turned back swiftly.

"What did you say?" he asked softly.

"I mean, it's not like I'm disappointed of you or scared of you or anything like that." she said once more. James scratched the back of his head in confusion.

"Uh, alright." He began thinking of a joke to lighten the mood.

"But it's more like, you had to do everything I feared that you needed to." she said. James was lost. He sat on the log, with the jacket between the two.

"What do you mean?" he asked gently, leaning in for an answer. Marie was now staring at the flames again, as if waiting for some movie or image to play in the dancing flames.

"My dad always said you were the hero the city needed." Marie said. "Whenever he tucked me in, he'd always tell me to give thanks to God for giving our city its Dark Knight."

"Dark Knight?" James asked. "What else did he say? I was a vampire?" Marie smiled but her eyes remained serious. Tired, even.

"I guess he meant that you were the Pitt's knight in shining armor." Marie began. "But you had to sacrifice a part of yourself to save the rest of us." James still was lost.

"And what part was that?" James asked. Marie frowned and shrugged.

"I'm not really sure." She said. "I only remember him talking about how our knight had to travel to Hell to smite the Devil."

"Wow, now I'm a Devilslayer." James said. "That's cool."

"But in doing so, he could never leave Hell again." she said. James sat still. Marie stared into his eyes. "You had to do bad things to keep my father's city safe." James shook his head.

"No, I did it to help everyone." James said.

"Don't lie to me," she said putting her hand on his, reaching over the jacket. "You did it to keep me safe." James again struggled to find the right words. "Don't fight it. I already know. The things Ashur asked you to do. I already know all of it." James took his hand away.

"How?" he asked. Marie scratched her arm as she looked away, stalling as she too searched for the right words. "How." James demanded.

"Danse makes us learn it at Sigma Academy." She admitted. "He says it's a vital part of our history in the Sins of Man course to know that we never repeat our mistakes again."

"I thought you said that the History of the Lone Wanderer was blank." James said. "There's nothing on me!" James said, thinking hard about any mistake he could have made all those years ago.

"That's why it's in the Sins of Man class." Marie said casually. "Danse's course is an elective where we travel to various settlements and talk to the people. They tell their stories and we file reports on it. But if we have questions, we report to Danse."

"Why does Danse run this class?" James asked. Marie shrugged.

"He says he once made the mistake of never talking to locals in the places he traveled through." She said. "So he sees this as his way to compensate for years of negligence. There's quite a few Brotherhood soldiers that accompany us."

"So all you know are the stories?" James said. Marie nodded. "Until I told everything." She nodded once more. James sighed and placed his hands on his legs, where he too watched the fire. He tossed in another piece of wood and stared into the flickering flames. He ran his hands through his hair as screams long silenced rang in his ears. The screamed grew louder and louder until a hand was placed on his shoulder. James looked up to find Marie standing over him.

"It's ok." She said. "Those actions were the fault of my father. Not yours."

"But I still did them." James said painfully. "All those people…" he said as the screams faded away.

"On my father's hands. You were simply the instrument to his reign of terror." She said.

"What?" James asked, confused. "Did you say-"

"James, I renounced Ashur as my father years ago." she said quietly.

"Why?" James asked. "Your father loved you!"

"And he built a city of slaves to protect me." She muttered, spitting disgust and hate in each word. "Protecting me on the backs of the helpless. What a legacy he left."

"He abandoned it and replaced it with a new, fair system!" James protested.

"With your help." Marie refuted. "He implemented a system of your design. He couldn't do it on his own."

"But he's your father…."

"He's dead to me."

"He died protecting you!"

"He died protecting his city." she spat. The flames exploded, likely hitting an air pocket within the piece James put in minutes ago. She glared at the flames. As if watching it would remind of her of the city on fire that James took her away from.

"He loved you." James whispered.

"But I don't love him." She returned. James's mind couldn't help but return to the Jefferson Memorial. A green sheet of glass sealed between him and his father. A gloved hand on the glass.

"Run." James looked at the fire.

"Fathers do things that their children don't like." James reconciled. Marie remained transfixed by the before her. "Sit down, Marie." She obeyed and looked back at him. James held his father's pistol tightly in his hand. He stared at it and remembered his father handing him the pistol on his 19th birthday.

"You'll need it more that I do, son." he had said. Little did James know that this would preface his father's escape to the wasteland and the beginning of every event that led to this moment.

"My father, wasn't so different from yours, Marie." He said softly, rubbing his left index finger against an engraving his father had made onto the wooden grip.

"That's not what I learned, James." Marie said, annoyed. "Your father was a good man. Too good for this world."

"And that's why I have to tell you about the worst thing he ever did to me." James returned. Marie cocked an eyebrow at James direction.

"Let me tell about the day everything changed."