It was almost noon when Johanna decided she would gather the courage to explore the training yard alone, for no other reason than to escape the Prydwen for a couple of hours. Anything had to be better than spending another whole day following the same schedule she had been on for weeks. At this point she could walk the Prydwen blindfolded and still accomplish all of her duties.

There were others in the training yard, but the shooting range was empty, other than one timid Initiate at the nearby reloading bench. Jo would have preferred to run the makeshift obstacle course, but she wouldn't have dared. The bright red hair of the tallest figure was hard to mistake and Johanna was instantly set on guard. Across the yard, some of the Initiates were watching Alan Murdoch and his gang running drills, so she slipped her backpack off her shoulders and claimed the closest table for her use, watching Murdoch out of the corner of her eye until he was completely behind her. He hadn't noticed her, but she knew it was only a matter of time. Vault blue was hard to miss. And then she would be subject to another of his ravings, probably the worst yet since there were absolutely no authority figures in the yard.

It might have been easier to go back to the Prydwen, but Johanna couldn't stand the idea of returning to her floating prison yet.

Really, she had been meaning to do this for weeks. She hadn't tested her salvaged hunting rifle yet and she had ammo to spare after her scavenging trips with Paladin Danse so it made perfect sense to kill some time at the firing range. She set her backpack on the table and began rummaging through pockets to find her .38 rounds, forgetting where she had put them. Her fingers brushed the medication given to her by Elder Maxson and she paused before continuing the search.

It was amazing what effects radiation could have on the human body. It wasn't until after the shot of Rad Away that Johanna realized how sick she had been. She was happy to be able to eat food and keep it down, but overjoyed that she felt strength in her body, once more. She felt good today. Taking the proper amounts of anti-radiation drugs had been enough to keep Jo from losing her breakfast and her lunch and she felt like a fool. After weeks of suffering, her cure was a single dose of Rad Away and then two Rad-X tablets before meals. It still made her feel nauseous if she thought too much about what she was eating, so Johanna tried to eat her portion of meat quickly and not to look at it too closely. She would get no fresh fruits or vegetables here, as the Hydroponics Lab had supplied to the vault. Ingesting irradiated food was a necessity and, most of the time, disgusting. Though, that irritation was minor compared to the cost of the medication she needed. Staying supplied would pose a problem, as she had realized before when she tried to purchase them. One bottle would last only five days if she ate three times a day. Elder Maxson would spend a fortune just to keep her from starving to death until she developed a tolerance for the radiation. Assuming she ever did.

Johanna wasn't quite sure what she thought of the Elder after last night. Her previous idea of him seemed impossible now. She figured he had been made hard and unfeeling as a child solider. Saw things in black and white. During her time on the Prydwen she had heard him spread furious messages of hate for synths and rally his followers into a frenzy. It wasn't uncommon for the new initiates to brag about how willingly they would follow Maxson to the gates of Hell. The Knights loved to tell stories of their Elder's heroic deeds, such as the legendary fight with a beast called a Deathclaw, when he received the ragged scar across his brow. Every member of the Brotherhood was ready to go to war, without question. Though she had never once seen Elder Maxson join his men in any of the common areas, or interact with them in any way other than occasional rallies, they adored their brute leader. While she was still unconvinced, she had to admit that last night it had seemed as if he were sincerely concerned about her. This type of empathetic behavior wasn't something she would have expected from him, based off what she had seen.

The memory was dream-like now, when Johanna tried to recall it. She had sat with Arthur in silence on the deck. She had called him Arthur, spoke with him as an equal. He watched the water below while she mostly watched him, trying to imagine what troubles possessed the young leader and what was really going on in that mind of his? It wasn't until shortly after she began to shiver from the unforgiving winds that he suggested they go back inside, but she couldn't tell if it was for her benefit or not. Those eyes certainly gave nothing away. Jo followed Arthur Maxson from the deck into his quarters, a very short walk since his rooms were just inside the command deck. She watched his calm features, rather than his hands as they readied the needle, let him hold her elbow in his hand and inject her with a measured dose of Rad Away. She shivered, maybe from the medicine, though she suspected it was his warm hands on her freezing skin. The needle he had used was wide and it left a small bruise on the bend of her arm. At the time, she hadn't noticed the needle. Honestly, it was only the instant relief of her nausea that stole her attention from his eyes. He must have noticed her surprise because he didn't ask if she felt the effects, and he remained silent as he pressed the bottle of Rad-X into her hands. No words passed between them from the time they left the deck until Johanna said goodnight and the Elder responded with a curt nod of his head, stoic as always.

Thinking of last night left her stomach slightly upset, maybe because it sounded more like a dream than reality and left her confused. She couldn't rightly believe that Elder Maxson had been so gentle and kind to her. And why? Why would he care for her personally? Why not send her to Cade? But the medication was in her bag, the small bruise from the needle was dark against her pale skin and she vividly remembered the shiver from his touch. It occured to her then that Elder Maxson might be a completely different person than Arthur Maxson. Elder Maxson, he was a pretentious jerk. But, Arthur... Johanna hadn't made up her mind yet.

She wondered how often he sat on the deck at night, unable to sleep.

Would he be there tonight?

Even if she found him, what would she say?

Thanks for treating me like a human being.

In reality, that's all he had done. It didn't make them friends and it certainly didn't mean that Arthur Maxson wanted a destitute vault dweller following him around.

Johanna sighed and finished loading her weapon at the bench. She settled her attention on the target. It was a simple design, a short post at the end of the range with a platform. Someone had changed out the targets already, setting up a mostly intact street sign. Whoever had painted the bullseye on it had not let it dry flat, red streaks ran down the sign in several places. She guessed it was only forty yards away, an easy shot. The idea didn't bother her since she wasn't practiced with firearms. And even by Wasteland standards, the gun in her hands was clearly ancient and poorly cared for, despite all the time she had spent cleaning it. This would be her first time firing it.

Privacy would have been nice, she thought and gritted her teeth as the red haired figure in the distance finally noticed her. He was too far away for Johanna to see his eyes, but when another Knight pushed him to get his attention, she knew that she had his full attention. She watched Alan Murdoch push his friend back, so hard that the other man fell in the dirt, and she turned her full attention back to the shooting range quickly. She didn't have to look, she knew his eyes were on her. She felt his gaze and it made her skin crawl.

His interest in her was a little frightening. He hated her, obviously, but it was more than that. She was sure she recognized the look in his eyes when she caught him staring. It reminded her of how the boys in her vault used to look at Leila, who was arguably the most attractive girl of their generation. Jo had never been on the receiving end of one of those looks before, and now that she was, she was horrified. She had never envied the beautiful girls. The older boys often looked at them like they were a battle to conquer. Leila wasn't the first instance of rape among test subjects, a few of the girls revealed bruises in private places while they dressed, sometimes blood on their underpants or black eyes. Johanna had become so familiar with her fellow dwellers over the years that it was easy to tell when something was different with them, even if they weren't friends. She didn't comfort them. They wouldn't have liked it. She never realized how lucky she was to have escaped male attention until Jo found Leila in the girls bathroom one night. She would never forget the dead look in her eyes as she washed the blood from her thighs and threw her ruined underpants away. It had taken a lot of courage for Johanna to ask the girl if she was okay, and to this day she wished she hadn't.

"I'm just great," she had laughed, but her eyes were still dark. She looked crazy, standing there with no pants on, no emotion on her face. "Jacob's cock is huge." And she had flipped her long brown hair over her shoulder and left proudly, as if there wasn't a fresh line of blood running down her thigh. It was about two months later that Leila was hospitalized with influenza. They received the news of her death shortly after. Nobody questioned it out loud, but at least some of them were too smart to believe the story. Johanna wondered if any of them knew she was killed for becoming pregnant. Jacob had to have known, if he took the time to consider it. Just because he excelled in physical testing didn't mean he was stupid.

It was based off her own conclusions that Jo decided lust was completely nonsensical. The very idea of losing control to hormones would have been laughable, had she not seen the consequences for herself.

She saw Leila's lifeless eyes and she raised her rifle to the target, turned the safety off.

Those little drops of blood on the bathroom floor, in sharp contrast to the surgical cleanliness of the vault.

Her sights were lined up, but she couldn't banish the image from her head.

And then listening to the poor girl trying to vomit quietly in the bathroom every morning.

If only Johanna had devoted her time to combat training. Then... well, she wanted to believe she would have done something. If she had only been a little stronger, a little braver.

Almost as an after thought, Johanna squeezed the trigger of her rifle.

The sign was unmoving, but all she could concentrate on was how much the red paint of the bullseye looked like blood.

She muttered a curse as she realized she had missed the target completely.

It was only as she pulled the trigger again that she realized her shoulder was not sore from firing the rifle. Had there been any recoil? Had the primer even gone off?

Several things happened at once. Johanna heard an explosion, unlike any gun she had ever heard. She was given no time to react before her wrist jerked violently and the stock of the rifle slammed forcefully into her face. She watched as her broken hand let the gun fall to the ground.

Stupid! The word repeated itself inside her head, even as her eyes teared up and obscured her vision. She hadn't checked the barrel for a dud round. Hadn't even noticed that the round hadn't been ejected. If she died, Johanna thought she deserved it for her stupidity.

Her first thought when she re-acclaimed her vision was that the rifle was mostly whole. It had only cracked along the barrel, so she probably wouldn't have to worry about shrapnel. The shock of the moment was quickly fading and her injuries were becoming noticeable. She touched her working fingers to her face and brought them away covered in blood. It was hardly life threatening. The pain blossomed across the entire left side of her face, but radiated from the impact point on her cheek. The bone had probably been fractured. The skin had been broken badly and she knew she would need stitches.

When she tried to look at her wrist, black spots danced in front of her and she thought she might throw up.

A concussion.

And her wrist was so badly damaged that she might have thrown up anyways.

Johanna had never claimed to have a tolerance for pain.

"Why the fuck would you even try to fire this piece of shit?"

She could have expected it. Of all people, Alan Murdoch had arrived, just in time to make a bad situation even worse. He kicked the rifle with force that surprised Johanna and she froze and took in his expression. He actually looked angry, and his eyes were on her. She only barely registered fear in her swimming mind, couldn't summon the energy to flee if she had wanted to.

"Just a misfire," Johanna lied, knowing she would take the truth to her grave.

She remembered how Danse had scoffed when she picked up that rifle. She would never tell him what happened, not in a million years.

"You could have fucking killed someone."

"I'm sorry. Excuse me, I think I should go back to the Prydwen." She eyed her backpack for a moment, before taking in a deep inhale and moving to gather her things. "I'll just get my bag first." The blood was starting to run down her chin and streak down her neck in thick lines.

His laughter sounded wrong. It was full of contempt, not amusement. "Oh. Do you think so?"

She ignored him and clumsily used her left hand to pack loose rounds back into her backpack. Her head was throbbing in pain and she thought that she might throw up again.

"Hey," she frowned weakly as Murdoch picked up her bag and slipped it over one shoulder. That wasn't right. He wouldn't offer to help her.

"Get moving," he snapped his fingers and pointed in the direction of a vertibird.

"I don't want your help," she hissed, feeling brave as she began her futile attempts to pull her bag off of his shoulder. He only allowed this for a few seconds before he pushed her back and Johanna nearly tripped to the ground. "Hey!"

"And I don't want to be questioned for letting a dumbass scribe bleed to death in the training yard. So fucking move."

When she righted herself again, Johanna considered this. That made sense. He wasn't here to help. Maybe she couldn't trust him, but she thought she could trust his sense of self preservation.

Johanna relaxed and took a tentative step towards the vertibird.

"My rifle-"

"For fuck's sake, just walk!"

After several doses of painkillers, Johanna finally felt relaxed enough to forget the pain, to rest in a state of half conciousness, and she decided she liked the feeling.

A voice, only vaguely familiar, called from the blurry shadows, asking her to sleep, telling her she needed to rest.

It was only the voice that brought her back from the brink of a deep sleep.

The lighting was minimal, leaving dark shadows in the corners. Johanna didn't know if they were real or a side effect of her injury. She was very tired, but it seemed ridiculous to give up such a calm and happy mood for a few hours of sleep.

There were no worries. None at all. And even if the doctor, Knight Cade, if she remembered correctly, was growling whiile he tossed his medical supplies around, Jo found that it didn't bother her.

She let him stitch her cheek while she tried to understand why her mind was so blank.

By the time he started to work on her hand, Jo still hadn't managed any cohesive thoughts.

It's the drugs, she realized. No racing thoughts. No unintentional observations. The suffocation on her anxiety was completely gone.

"What did you give me?" Her voice was stronger than she had thought, but she still had to try focus her blurry eyes on the doctor.

"Med-X. Calm-X. You can sleep if you like." It sounded more like a command than a suggestion and and Jo thought that she might have screamed if she'd been able to feel upset.

"No, you don't understand! I've never been so happy." If he heard her, he paid her no mind. She fell quiet again, focused on the slow rhythm by which Cade threaded the large needle through her torn skin. "It's beautiful," she heard herself say, holding herself back from reaching out to touch the stitching. She felt nothing, not even the needle and she had the strongest feeling of being completely dissociated from her body. As if she were watching from the corner, rather than being the one in the hospital bed.

It's the drugs.