A/N: Hey there! Holy shit, I hadn't realised that nine months has gone by since I last updated the story. Cheesus Crust. Sorry about that. Life is a bitch and kept getting in the way.

Anyways, here's chapter 5. Not too much action, but EXPLOSIONS. DRUGS. WEAK-ASS PUNCHES THROWN. Hopefully you enjoy it. I thought about skipping the explosion scene altogether after the last chapter but nah.

I think there are a few spelling errors in this, so if you find them, PLEASE let me know! I am a grammar Nazi and won't be able to sleep at night until this thing is perfect. This goes for all future chapters as well.

Review if you liked it! Or didn't like it. Just let me know what you think!

Enjoy!


Chapter 5: Are All the Chapters Plays on 'Daye'?

Part One: In Which The Story Goes Back To Cait's POV and Daye's Being an Asshole But Really, What Else is New?

Cait was fuckin' bored.

Life in the Combat Zone wasn't exciting, really – actually, it was the same shit almost every day – but at least there was always something to do. If she wasn't bashing in the ugly face of some raider in the Pit, then she could usually be found playing cards with Roach, even though the bastard always cheated, or arm wrestling some fuckin' knob for a few caps, or coming up with new and colourful curse words and ways to make fun of Tommy's fat ass. Sometimes she'd try her hand in the kitchen, maybe make something that at least looked edible and actually contained meat from an animal she'd heard of before, or she might make her way up onto the roof, and talk and get drunk and watch the sun set over the dead city with Tags, the little scrawny raider kid. Sometimes she'd fuck him up there, on the roof, or it might be someone else passing through town, a drifter with a shifty look and few words, on his way to some other place.

Even if all that failed to interest her, she'd slink away to her dingy little side room and jam a tube of Psycho in her arm and forget. Forget her parents, what they did to her. Forget her slavers, what they did to her. Forget what she did to all them. Forget her shitty life and her shitty job and every little shitty thing about it all. Riding on a high was always better that remembering that shit.

They were all dead now though. Her parents. Her slavers. Roach. Tags. All of them. Honestly she didn't care.

But anyway. Enough pity. Cait always hated pity.

But she hated being bored even more.

"Fuck! Fucking fuck fuck!"

She smirked, chewing at her filthy fingernails absentmindedly, leaning back in the rusted old desk chair like she owned the fucking place. "What's got yer panties all in a wad, buttercup?"

Had Cait only just met the guy, or come across him in some creepy back alleyway, she would've been dead fucking certain he'd blow some buckshot in her face and send her skull scattering to the four winds in a red, chunky mist. As it was, she hadn't just met him. She knew he was more bark than bite, really. Not much more, though. Only a little. And it was a dangerous line to walk, betting on whether he'd actually do it. But Cait liked danger. She was a pit fighter, after all. Risk came with the job.

"Shut the fuck up," Daye growled dangerously low, squinting at the cracked old computer screen, at the fuzzy black and green text. He tapped away at the keyboard, the two-hundred year old piece of junk so crusted over with dust that only half the keys worked, and every time he tapped them they clicked angrily, sticking. "Gah! Piece of shit," he snarled, slapping the side of the monitor a few times, causing the screen to flicker angrily.

"Ya know, you should try sweet-talkin' it. Take it out to dinner, maybe. I know from experience ya don't get any closer to shaggin' by givin' a lady a shiner."

"You're so fucking funny, Red. Seriously. I think my funny bone just jizzed itself."

He sighed, leaning back in his own desk chair, the old thing squeaking and groaning in protest. He wasn't fat by a long shot, not like Tommy anyway, but still, he was tall and well-built and even industrial-strength office chairs have a shelf life. And it definitely wasn't two-hundred years.

He swivelled his chair round to face her, rubbing at his eyes tiredly, angrily. "Find anything?"

"Nothin'."

"Did you check the labs again?"

"Yeah."

"The barracks?"

"Yeah, I did."

"How about –"

"I checked out everythin' again, Daye. Twice."

He set his jaw and blew out a rush of frustrated air through his nostrils. "There's nothing. Nothing. Not a note or a letter or a file or a recording. Not one goddamn lead. Nothing's encrypted, or protected, or hidden away. There's fucking nothing!" he growled, slamming his fist on the keyboard, making Cait jump a little. "Not a single fucking shred of anything suggesting that the asshole even exists. Nothing!"

"Ya sure he does?"

Daye couldn't have thrown knives wrapped in barbed wire laced with cyanide shot out of a rocket launcher sharper than the daggers he was hurling with his eyes. "Yes, Red. I am sure Marowski exists."

"Well, have ya ever actually seen him?"

He didn't even answer her. Just kept tossing blades her way.

She shrugged. "I'm just tryin' ta help. Fuck. Maybe you should take a breather before ya pass out, old man."

"Alright," he growled, taking off his baseball cap and running a hand through his sweaty hair in an irritated sort of way. "There's a fucking ton of shit wrong with what you just said. First – I'm not an old man. I'm thirty-one, thank you very fucking much, not that much older than you. Second – I don't need a breather. I'm healthy as a fucking horse. Three – "

"The fuck's a horse?"

He frowned. "It's an animal. Like a cow, but bigger. And you can ride it."

"The fuck's a cow?"

Cait thought his head was going to burst. That would've been fuckin' funny.

"It's a brahmin," he seethed.

"Alright, alright, Jesus fuck me. Was only askin'."

"Well, don't. It's annoying."

"Whatever. Three?"

"Yeah, and three – you're not helping. At all."

Cait bristled. "Excuse me? I just ravaged this entire fuckin' fishpacking place for ya – twice – and you have the fuckin' gall to tell me I ain't helpin'?"

"Well, not right now you aren't. You're just sitting there saying stupid shit and irritating the fuck out of me."

"Well, I'm fuckin' bored Daye! I thought this was gonna be fun!"

"Who told you it was going to be fun?"

"You did!"

"Really. No shit."

"You were all like oh hehe, looky here Red, let's kill Trish and raid The Boss's chem lab and steal all his shit and guess what? Just for shits and giggles let's blow it all up! Woohoo!"

Daye tried – and failed pretty spectacularly – not to smirk. He put the baseball cap back on his head and leaned back even further in his chair. "That's the worst fucking impression of me I've ever had the grand misfortune to witness."

"All I've done is sit here for twelve fuckin' hours and watch ya jack off that fuckin' computer to death. I didn't even get ta kill anybody."

"I'm pretty sure it's been, what, maybe forty-five minutes? Tops? And yeah, you did. The scientists – well, chem-makers, I guess. Remember?"

"You killed 'em, ya fuckin' asshole!"

He blinked, eyes skittering across the room to where a headless dude in a white (well, red and white, now) lab coat lay slumped against the wall, greyish brain matter and chunks of skull and blood smeared across it like some sicko five-year-old's finger painting. "Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess I did."

"Who woulda thought blowin' up a chem lab would be so goddamned boring. This whole trip's been a fuckin' shitshow."

"You know what's being a fucking shitshow? You. Right now."

Cait's eyes narrowed. "The fuck's that mean?"

"It means get off my back and go do something useful, Red," he said, swivelling back around to face the computer. "Go move the crates outside or something. Just get out. Away from me. I've got shit to do."

She should've just grabbed the crusty old keyboard and smacked him over his stupid fucking head. Save herself a lot of trouble.

"Yer bein' a right dick, ya know that?"

"Tell me something I don't know."

Honestly, Cait didn't give a fuck. Not even one. Definitely not enough to come up with a snarky little retort or anything.

It smelled weird in here. Like antiseptic, and beach water, and burning hair. The low lighting was fucking with her eyes, too. She wanted to leave, but she wasn't moving for nothin'. Fuck him. If he wanted the crates moved so badly, he could do it his fucking self.

She glared at his back a few moments longer, wishing she had the power to spontaneously combust people with her mind.

Daye sighed. Pinched the bridge of his nose. Sighed again. Then, without warning, he stood up, growled like a pissed-off yao guai, picked up the computer monitor and threw it against the wall, over by the headless scientist.

Cait hardly flinched. She expected that, honestly.

"Motherfucking waste of my goddamned time," he hissed, rummaging around in the endless pockets of his ratty old jacket. Cait watched him pull not one, not two, not even fucking three, but four sticks of dynamite from that nasty-ass jacket, and then a little radio with a bent antenna, and some wires or something, setting them down by the keyboard. Honestly, it was like that jacket was the entrance to an infinite portal of never-ending useless shit.

"The fuck you doin' with all that?"

He unwrapped the bundle of wire carefully. "You'll see. Now. I've got shit to do. So go."

"Fine, fine, I'm goin'," she grumbled, pushing herself up from the desk chair and out past the fucked-up monitor and Headless McFuckFace, PhD.

"Hey, listen," Daye said, making her pause in the doorway. "Get the crates at least half a click away from here. Up on that hill, maybe. I'll meet you there when I'm done."

"All the crates?"

"All of them."

"Daye, there's gotta be, like, a hundred of the fuckers. They look heavy."

"You'll manage."

"How long you gonna be?"

"Jesus Christ, I don't know. A little while."

"That's helpful."

Daye put some wire between his teeth, jamming one end into the back of the radio someplace. "The fuck you standing around for?" he growled, voice muffled by the wire. "Get those crates outside. They're not going to move themselves."

"Yes, mum," she grumbled, leaving him to the cramped little office and that old piece of shit tech and his weird little bomb secrets that she didn't give a flying fuck about.

Honestly, though, she wasn't even that miffed. He'd been a right dick the last couple of hours, ever since they'd cleared the fishpacking plant, every room, right down to the cellar, and had found no sign of Marowski. Which wasn't a big deal – you couldn't expect the guy to hang around the old factory for long. He probably only made token visits to the place, really.

But what was a big deal was the complete and total lack of evidence. There was nothing. Not a single lead on The Boss. Not a note, or a file, or a recording. No papers. No journals. Not a single fucking shred of anything that the asshole even exists, as Daye had put it. Hours of searching filing cabinets, of scanning computers, of flipping through desks and books and the pockets of dead chem-makers.

Nothing.

Really, she didn't even care that much. At all. Actually, she thought it best to just take whatever chems they could grab and haul ass. Something seemed fishy about it all – and not just the fact it smelled like two-hundred-year-old crusty ghoul vag in here. Marowski wasn't here. And there was nothin' about him here, either. Which either meant he knew about Daye coming or… something.

Fuck, she wasn't no private eye, alright?

But I am going to gouge Daye's fuckin' eyes right out his fucked-up face, alright, she thought, hauling the first of many crates to the top of the hill Daye mentioned.

Part Two: Where The Story Really Begins and Daye Blows Up Half the Commonwealth

Fourteen. Fourteen big yellow peeling crates with a red fish stamped on the side. Eighteen smaller metal crates with padlocks on them, all riddled with holes from Daye's shotgun blasting the damn things off. Eleven gross-ass yellow sacks jammed full with all the random chems not in a box – and where the hell did those bags come from? Actually, she'd rather not know. Half a dozen ammo crates because hey, you can never have too much ammo (actually you can, after you've already hauled up enough drugs to kill a behemoth, bring it back to life, and then kill it again). Cait had no idea where the fuck they were going to put all this shit, or even more importantly, how the fuck they were going to move it again.

She sighed, legs and arms aching, and leaned against a yellow crate, squinting against the bright midday sun. She lit a Lucky Strike and blew it out, shivering a bit in the cool salty breeze blowing in off the water.

All in all, a decent catch for half a day's work.

Alright, she wasn't gonna lie – it was a pretty fuckin' spectacular catch. Even splitting everything 70/30 with Daye, she'd have enough caps from this raid to eat fresh brahmin steaks until she got twice as fat as Tommy. She'd never go hungry again. No more goddamned Fancy Lads shit-cakes. She could buy some new pants, seeing as she only had the two pairs and they were both crusty with blood and full of bullet holes. Buy a whole new outfit, actually, and get a new jacket, and new boots, ones that actually fit and didn't have holes worn through them. Get a good gunsmith to fix up her trusty double-barrel. And maybe finally, finally get some goddamn decent armour on her ass, even though the scarred bastard inside the fishpacking plant promised her some. She was gonna need it, being around Daye.

But… did she need to be around him anymore? With this haul, she could survive on her own now. For a long time. She could leave him, slip away after they pawned off the last of these chems. Go someplace, start new. Forget everything in the past – it was all behind her now. Daye had told her she can leave whenever she wanted – said he didn't care about slavery, didn't care where she went. The possibilities were endless, and it was almost exhilarating to have a choice, and a means to do it – things she'd never had before.

Get out of downtown, leave the dusty crumbling streets behind. Leave Boston and all its buildings, all its statues, its monuments to a past hard-fought but long forgotten. Maybe she'd even leave the Commonwealth, the whole east coast. She'd heard from a drifter in the Combat Zone that way out west somewhere was safe, now, out at the other side of the ocean. California, she thought it was called. Government runnin' things and all. A decent society, almost like the one that blew up when the world died. It would be a long walk across nothing but sand and waste, but at the end would be a new life. A fresh start. She could do that. She could leave everything here behind. Wouldn't hurt her none. Nothing and no one was holding her back.

so why don't I?

Wasn't the first time she asked herself that. Probably wouldn't be the last.

She liked to think it was because she was lazy and would never muster up the gumption to actually leave the goddamn Commonwealth. She told herself she was bad at navigation and would probably end up at the north pole or something. Or she'd run out of food and die all alone out in the desert, utterly forgotten, food for vultures and wolves. But that wasn't it.

it's Daye.

Dude was a right fucking asshole, no doubt about that. Known him for a full five days. Hated him for a full five days. He'd got her shot, almost dead, starving, no armour, in deep shit with Chuckles and Trish and Marowski and who the fuck else knows in such a short amount of time. But…

But.

Alright, you better keep your ears wide open and your fucking mouth shut because Cait will say this once and you'll never ever hear her say it again, dipshit.

She actually sort of liked him.

Eugh. Like was a dangerous word. Meant you knew the person, relied on them, trusted them even. And Cait trusted no one. Always got her hurt, in the end. Her. Not the other person.

He was infuriating, and an asshole, and way too high to function half the time, and he needed, needed to take a goddamn bath soon, and she really hated his gross infinity-jacket, but he had given her a chance. Saved her life. Trusted her enough not to shoot him in the back, or push him off the ledge of a really high building. More than anyone had ever done for her. Ever.

He was bold. He was sleazy. He was fucking insane. He gave no shits. He had no one else. He wasn't lost – not fully, but he was always walking, and always searching. For someone, or something, or someplace. And he hadn't found it yet.

As much as she hated to admit it, she saw a lot of herself in him.

Fuck, what was with all the bullshit reflections lately?

Cait chewed the side of her mouth, Lucky Strike dangling between her fingers, thinking.

It was past noon by now, the hot sun glinting off the ocean and all the bits of trash floating in it. The fishpacking plant, an old grey metal thing maybe three or four stories tall, sat right on the edge of the water, the shoreline eroded after hundreds of years, down the hill a ways, at least half a click away, like Daye had told her. The rusted fence twisted around it, tufts of high yellow grass hiding chunks of metal and rubbish scattered around the building. A few wrinkled ghoul corpses, all missing their heads (bastard, wouldn't even let Cait take one out) added a lovely finishing touch to the scene.

Despite the decay and rust, the scene was sort of… pretty. Peaceful. Not very assuming. All alone and quiet, except for the sound of the wind rushing through the tall grass below, and off the old freeway towering above. Smelled better out here, too, like ocean salt and seaweed. Cait wondered what it was like here two hundred years ago, before the world died and everyone died along with it. The sounds of industry, of cars speeding along a highway, of boats in the harbour, of bells and steam on the docks… she'd never heard them before. Never would. And yet she almost could, sitting here now.

Some time later, Daye walked out the front door of the fishpacking plant casually, a dark little pinprick that slowly gained clarity as he made his way up the hill, huffing and puffing sort of embarrassingly.

Cait grinned wickedly at him, flicking her cigarette into the grass. "Took yer sweet-ass time, asshole. Finished with your super-secret bomb project?"

"Yeah," he wheezed, clutching at his side, using a crate for support. "Yeah. Done. Place is rigged. Ready to blow."

"Lord Louise, Daye, you sound like Tommy back at the Pit. Bastard couldn't take a shit without passing out."

"What do you want from me? I'm high as a fucking kite right now, and I haven't eaten anything since Home Plate. Even then it was just rubber and ass," he smirked.

Right. Her stomach growled viciously in agreement.

"High on what?" she asked.

"High on life, Cait. High on fucking life."

He laughed – cackled more like – at his own stupid joke, the sound sort of… nice, to Cait's ears. It was a real laugh. Not one infused with adrenaline in the heat of combat. Sure, it might be tainted with whatever the fuck he'd gotten high with, but still…

It made her smile. A tiny little bit.

Well, at least he wasn't in a computer-tossing mood anymore. That was always a good thing.

"Yer an idiot, ya know that?"

"Thanks. Feel so loved. Knew I could count on you."

"Yeah, I got yer fuckin' back. Right. So what's yer plan? We blowin' this place up, then?"

Daye's wheezing died down to low chuckles, and he wiped a hand across his face as if to clear his mind. "Right, yeah. Fuck. Blowing this place up. Right out the fucking water, I think."

"K."

"Yeah. Even though… it's not technically in the water…"

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

He paused a moment, frowning at the building down below. Then he turned to her, all serious-like, his eyes red and puffy from his high. "Should we wait? I think we should wait. I mean, the place is pretty much teetering on the edge now anyway, and I think if we give it a bit more time it might actually fall into the water. Then we can really blow it out of the water. Doesn't that sound cool? So much better? We blew that fishpacking plant right out the fucking water! Fuck you, Trish! And you too, Marowski! Fucking asshole, wasn't even here. Well, guess what? Neither is your fucking chem lab 'cause me and my friend here blew it out the fucking water! Haha! Hey! What do you think? Hey? Cait?"

"Fuck this," she groaned, rummaging around one of the sacks for the first drug she grabbed hold of. "I can't deal with you. I'm gettin' high too." She pulled out some Jet and yanked the cap off and sucked it in, the taste sort of chemical-like but cool, crisp, like mint. But stronger.

Anyway, it did the job. The world slowed down and everything became so fucking bright and loud. The sun on the water looked like a million little pieces of glass on fire, tiny blazing pinpricks of light. The wind roared through the grasses now, and Cait would swear to fuck she could make out every fucking pore on the rotted-out skin of the headless ghouls down by the plant, baking in the blistering sun.

Jet speeds up your mind. Feels like it's slowing down the world. The high only lasts a few minutes but it feels like years.

Daye turned slowly and smirked at her, his green eyes sparkling in mirth from his own high, his short hair ruffling in the wind, his face half an angry red blemish that would never go away mixed with the sort of plastic-like glossiness you get from old scars, and the other half…

Wow. She could see it now. See past the ugly, the deformed, the nasty old burn wound. See the man he was before whatever did that to him happened, before the fire melted away almost half his face and turned him into what he was.

Daye was fucking hot.

His scarred smile was a bizarre blend of badass fucked-uppery and really good-looking. A bad guy sort of good-looking. Like a roguish smuggler hitman swashbuckling bandit. Or something.

Which Cait fucking loved.

Sent a sharp jolt of… something through her, looking at him with new eyes.

"Daye?" she breathed, unable to stop her stupid fucking mouth from motoring on without her goddamned permission.

"Yeah?"

Oh fuck.

"This is only because I'm high as fuck right now, and I'm delirious 'cause I'm starvin' and probably still haven't gained back all me blood from the Super Duper Mart, but anyways, yer a right prick and yer face is twelve different sorts of fucked, but yer sort of sexy. For an asshole."

His smirk was the utter definition of smug, and it pulled at the burn scar, puckering it in weird places, making his one eye not quite open all the way. "Red," he tutted. "Only sort of sexy? I think I'm downright gorgeous."

Good job, motor-mouth. Ya done dug yourself a deep hole now.

"Hey, watch yerself, bud. Yer head gets any bigger you might have trouble keepin' it up."

"Cait, I don't have trouble keeping anything up, let me tell you. I'll have to show you sometime."

Cait punched his arm pretty goddamned hard but not hard enough.

"Ow! What the fuck, Red?"

"You over-confident son of a bitch."

"Works, though," he grinned, rubbing where she punched him.

"Does it?"

"I don't know. Is it?"

Cait blinked. His voice had gone low, deep, sultry even, like he was talkin' up some goddamned whore at the Third Rail hoping to get a handie in between jobs.

Was he…?

"Are – are you flirtin' with me for real, Mr. Daye?" she gawped, not even bothering to hide her disbelief.

"Daye. Just Daye. And no. Yes. No," he floundered, clearly at a loss for words. "Uh… wait – which would make you less angry?"

Cait's eyes narrowed. "What do you think?"

"Hey," he said, crossing his arms defensively. "You were the one who called me sexy first. You flirted with me. This is all on you."

"I was simply makin' an astute observation."

That was something Tommy had said once back in the arena to some pickled raider bent on getting' his money back from betting on the wrong fighter in the Pit. Cait had no idea what the fuck it meant but she thought it fit the current conversation. She hoped it fucking fit.

"I'm a guy, Red," he went on. "You can't do something like that and then just –" he paused, snapping his fingers in front of her, " – expect me to forget about it. Just like that."

Cait's eyes narrowed even more till she could barely see the bastard. He was lookin' her up and down – pretty subtly, especially for how incredibly high he was flying – but she could tell. Raiders used to do it all the fuckin' time back at the Combat Zone. Eyes skimming over her face, across her chest, down to her ass. Flitting over her, lingering in places.

"Yer picturin' me naked right now, aren't ya?"

"No," he snapped, blinking at her. "Hm. I'm getting the idea that no would make you less angry, right?"

"Nate."

"Alright, fine, yeah," he admitted, not ashamed even a fucking ounce. "I was picturing you naked. Don't tell me you haven't done the same to me."

Cait swallowed. "I haven't."

Oh, she fucking had.

"Mhm, right, sure. I've seen you sneaking glances at me, don't lie."

"When in bloody fuck am I gonna sneak a glance at ya? You've been wearin' that horrid fuckin' jacket since ya stepped into the Combat Zone," she hissed. "Doesn't exactly leave room for the imagination. For all I know yer a goddamned synth down there with a robot dick and human-like face."

"A sexy face, according to you."

Cait sighed, too fucking stoned to deal with him and his smug-ass attitude anymore. The sun was beating down on her and she was gonna be burnt to a crisp if she didn't find some shade real soon. And she was pretty sure her stomach might start eating itself if she didn't put some food in it to shut it up. "Fine," she huffed. "If it'll shut ya the fuck up then yeah. I said it. Yer kinda sexy. But yer also an asshole. One minus one is still zero."

"And one divided by zero is undefined."

"Divide by – the fuck you on about?"

"Never mind. Point still stands. I'm sexy."

"And an asshole."

"A sexy motherfucker."

"A goddamned asshole."

Daye's smile was downright predatory. "That too. Since we're being so honest with each other, I have something to tell you. You're a bitch."

"Ouch."

"And still a firecrotch, so still not sexy. Passable, maybe. Sexy, no."

"Double ouch."

"You'll live."

"I don't think I will. You've killed all me confidence."

"Like you had any to begin with."

"Three ouches."

"It's triple ouch."

"Fuck you."

"You sure, Cait? I mean, we hardly know each other, sweetie, but –"

"Just blow this fuckin' place up already, dipshit," she growled.

Daye smirked dangerously, playing around with his Pip-Boy, flicking through radio channels.

Ohhh, I'm mighty mighty fine, and I'm young and I'm in my prime!

"Fine, fine, alright. Whatever you say, darling."

Click. A radio station change.

Maybe… you'll think of me…

"You call me darlin' or sweetie one more time and I'll blow yer fuckin' –"

Click.

I don't want to set the world on fire…

What happened next was always difficult for Cait to explain to people, in the years following this insane fucked-up adventure she and Daye had at the fishpacking plant in the beginning of their time together. The way it was told always differed – sometimes there'd be more focus on the shitshow of a spectacle itself, or perhaps she'd tell it in a way that showcased just how unquestionably mad Daye actually was. From time to time she liked to mention the stupid banter and flirting they did, the first little inklings of what would grow between them. Other times it was left out. The best way, Cait thought, of explaining what the actual fuck happened that day went something like this:

One time a man came into the Combat Zone from down south somewhere. Nice enough fellow, clean cut, smelled better than half the rabble in the place. Cait fucked him on the roof one night, and afterward they lay looking up at the stars – something that didn't happen too often, from all the radiation still plaguing the world – right before dawn. The pinkish light was just beginning to crest out over the harbour, cold, new, not even reflecting off the water yet and the stars were still there, and in that exact moment it seemed like the world held its breath, waiting on edge, frozen, hesitant, caught between two happenings: the ending of night and the coming of day. Cait lost track of time, staring out at the world, at the stars and galaxies above, and for just a moment nothing in her life mattered except those stars and the man beside her. She forgot his name, of course, but she never forgot his face and the way it looked in the dusty pink light of the impending dawn.

Whichever way she told it, the kernel of the story always stayed the same: Daye blew up the fishpacking plant and it's really what launched them into everything that happened afterward.

Like the dawn on the roof of the Combat Zone, the Jet in Cait's veins made everything last longer, feel frozen in place, and as the fishpacking plant exploded in front of her eyes, she was rewarded (or cursed, never really figured that one out) with the entirety of the brilliant unbelievably fantastical performance in ultra-slow motion.

There was an infinitesimal moment, a tiny sliver of time between the blast itself and the indescribable sound where everything was very bright and almost peacefully silent, and Cait could do nothing but stare, wide-eyed and opened-mouthed like some sort of retarded kid, at the plant as it seemed to suck all the air inside through its broken windows, and then punch it back out to violently shatter like brittle ice.

The windows were first, and the metal came next.

The walls of the plant simply bloomed outward and onward like a fucking gigantic flower would in the spring, except this flower was pissed as hell and would chew you up and spit you back out and not even realise you were there in the first place.

After the metal came the sound.

The sound. The noise itself was simply inexpressible, indescribable, beyond any sort of depiction. It was as if the earth itself had opened up, the rock splitting and tearing and groaning under unfathomable weight and stress, collapsing in on itself, roiling and churning over and over and over in profound piercing agony. Groaning metal, shattering glass, ripping stone.

"Fuckin' – oh fuck! Fuck me!" Cait wailed, hands clamped over her ears as the sound finally registered itself in her utterly dumbstruck brain.

The windows, and the sheet metal, and the sound, and now the colossal chunks of steel machinery and industrial doors and splintering beams of wood and shingles and slabs of concrete the size of cars were simply too much, too loud, too bright, but yet so unbelievably impossible to turn away from. She stood there, staring, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe, wanting to run away and yet wanting to stay and watch – caught between two happenings.

Then an honest-to-fucking-goodness fucking giant-ass mushroom cloud bloomed.

Black, sooty smoke mixed violently with blazing red flames and they ate away at each other, fuel for the other, growing, climbing, expanding ever upward into the sky in a brilliant display of badassery and a hard punch of sweltering air and an absolutely terrifying realisation: that this is the last thing so many people saw before the world ended all that time ago.

Cait was never, in all the rest of her shitty days on this fuckin' dead-ass planet whizzing through space a million miles an hour, going to take Jet ever ever again. Never.

The blast shook everything round them; the crates, the dirt, even the very air trembled violently, vibrating her lungs with each breath she sucked in through her nostrils. She could hear and see and feel small bits and larger blocks of brick and metal and rock and glass and debris as they pinged off the crates, thudded into the earth, sloshed into the filthy harbour below.

I just want to start… a flame in your heart…

"HAHAHA!"

Cait turned and looked at Daye.

The tinny trumpet and slow singing from his Pip-Boy radio was both wildly out of place and oddly complimentary to the mad smile on his scarred face, absurdly free of fear but full of frenzied glee. The flux of baking air rustled his hair and clothes, and a fine layer of red dirt and soot was already clinging to his sweaty face.

In my heart I have but one desire…

"WOOO! Oh my fucking god! Can you believe it? Fucking beautiful!" he howled over the roar of the fire, the explosion, pure unaltered delight etched deep into the lines on his face, and Cait could not resist the small smile that wormed its way onto her own.

Her partner (well, temporary employer or fuckin' whatever) was one mad sonofabitch. Cait liked to think she was pretty fucked-up herself, and anything she hadn't been through, said, or done, she'd seen someone else do it. In the Pit, maybe, or during her slave years. But Daye. Fucking Daye. This Daye guy just kept blowin' everything right out the fuckin' water. Fucking literally.

"Cait, look!" he shrieked, eyes bright with livid elation, and it was so hard to turn away from him, from his infectious exhilaration, because she almost enjoyed watching him more than the explosion itself.

But she managed to tear her eyes from his face and back to the fishpacking pl-

Oh.

"Jesus fuckin' H.C. Christ," she breathed, almost unable to believe her eyes.

It was fuckin' gone.

Where the rusty metal factory used to be, there was now a massive black, hissing crater, all smouldering wood and liquefied rock. Piles of scorched brick and twisted metal lay burning, melting, charred beyond recognition. The yellowed grass tufts were burning like little beacons all around, and nearly half the building seemed to have been ripped off and slammed into the harbour, making unpleasant hisses and pops as great swelling pillars of salty steam billowed into the dry air. The mushroom had eaten away at itself completely, leaving massive black plumes of foul-smelling smoke curling up into the sky, and out flat across the water, and southward over the dusty plains.

Every soul within a hundred clicks of this place that had a set of eyes and ears would know about this.

"It's something, eh, Red?" he smirked, still high on blowing shit up and whatever he was actually high on.

Cait blinked, rubbing the soot and ash from her eyes, from her sweat-slicked skin. "It's… somethin' all right. How –?"

"Ham radio. Linked it with my Pip-Boy. Wired the dynamite up to the shortwave radio I had and calibrated it to the same frequency. Tuned into the same station. Ka-fucking-boom."

"Ka-fuckin'-boom is right."

And that one is you… no other will do…

Cait laughed. A wild, free laugh, one that carried out over the hissing crater, and past the waterfront, and out onto the ocean, and maybe even beyond that. And Daye laughed with her.

Maybe it was the Jet. Maybe it was the loss of blood, or the hunger, or the Psycho withdrawal. Maybe it was the fucking factory she just watched explode right in front of her eyes. Maybe it was all of those, and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was Daye.

She looked at him again, still chuckling to herself, delirious and giddy and exhausted all wrapped up in one package that was Cait.

"Daye."

"Yeah."

"Yer gonna get me fuckin' killed one of these days."

"Probably."

"And you know what? I'm so okay with that."

He smiled back.