"Ouch!" Bonnie sat back on her heels, sticking her finger in her mouth. She glared at the prickly pear she'd been picking the fruits from, her mouth pursed. "Stupid cactus."

"Mind youself, Bonnie," her father said, lifting his hat up off his brow. "Everything in the desert bites."

"I know," she said, and went back to work. She looked out over the field, rows of cacti and people tending it. Her mother waved a gloved hand at her. She waved back.

"Angus," someone called out. Her father looked up, then stood and brushed the dirt off his pants. He walked off.

Bonnie kept picking the fruits, singing a little song to herself and making a game of it. She stuffed as many fruits into the basket as she could without crushing them. It soon became full, and she carried it to the drop cart.

"Hey, Jacki," she called up to the driver, sitting on the cart with a rifle in her hands. Jacki grunted. "Have you seen my dad?"

Jacki motioned off to the tents where the migrant workers slept. "Was talkin' to Boss," she said.

Bonnie thanked her, and walked off towards the tents. When she got close, she could hear arguing. Dad must have lost the job again. She stood still as a stone, and listened.

"I doubt you, I really do," said Boss. "Using an assumed name to get work is deceitful."

"I never said my last name," her father answered. "If you fire me, you lose three workers."

"Don't even try that. All three of you are gone as soon as you step out of this tent, or I'll have the boys chase you out."

Bonnie chewed on a thumbnail. It was like this everywhere they went. She didn't know much about it. She'd heard people talk about accountability, whatever that was, and responsibility, and making amends. Her father never said a word about it. Her mother would press her lips together and pointedly ignore any questioning.

She heard "NCR" too. She knew that one. That was the New California Republic, and they were members of it. At least, she thought they were, because she'd talked with other kids at the camps and found that sometimes it was best not to say what you were. A few of the kids had been beaten up for proudly mentioning that their parents served in the military.

She slowly moved back to the rows of cactus, dangling her basket by two fingers and swinging it lazily in a circle. Ever since she could remember, they had moved north and south, working the migrant camps that were left available to them. About once a year, someone would realize who her dad was and they were no longer welcome in that camp.

She wondered how long it would be before they had no jobs left.

"Hey, Bonnie," another worker yelled. "Run a message up to Boss. There's some fire ants up behind those rocks there," he said, pointing.

She jogged off, the basket left spinning in the dust. Gunshots echoed in the distance, and the sharp crack of the repeaters moved her to faster speed.

"Boss!" she yelled out. "Ants!"

And a rippling pain through her hip and up her side made her collapse onto the ground, at the opening of the tent. She looked up before she passed out to see an angry face and a raised rifle, aimed at her.

"Bonnie hasn't been the same since she got shot," she heard her mother say.

"We can't afford to move again," Angus said. "We'll just have to find a doctor out here to help her."

"In Northstar?" Her mother scoffed. "Are you kidding?"

"Well, what do you think we can do, Mamie?" Angus threw his hands up.

Bonnie shuffled out the door, silently. She pushed the door to the tiny shack shut and walked out to a pile of cars that served as the gate to the community, favoring her bad leg. Her parents had fought continuously since they'd left the last migrant camp, and settled in Northstar. She hated it. She wished they would stop, and everyone would go back to who they were.

Her father slammed the door to the shack and then stopped. He came up to the car gate and smiled a friendly smile. "Hey, pretty girl," he said, sitting on the edge of the gate.

"Are you done fighting?" she asked.

"I don't know," her father said, pensively. "Mama is pretty angry."

"Why did you leave the NCR?"

He didn't answer for a while. Then he laughed, helplessly. "I used to be a pretty important person, back in the day. People are often picky about who's in charge of stuff. They picked someone else because I wasn't doing what they wanted."

"They make you leave?" Bonnie asked, crumbling a bit of dirt in her palm.

"No... Well, when you were born, there was a lot of arguing going on, and your mama and I decided to go on our own." He leaned backward onto the cars. "It was easy to see that people didn't like me anymore."

"Does mama want you to go back?" She nudged a rock with her foot.

"Mama wants you to be safe," he answered. "If it means you get better, I might have to."

"Then she should stop fighting with you," Bonnie said.

Angus laughed, then, and she couldn't help but join in. He always had the most infectious booming laugh. "Oh!" she stopped and looked up to the sky. "Snow!"

They sat and watched the snow, until it was too cold to stay out any longer, and Bonnie felt a little better for having talked with her father.

He was leaving, now. They had discussed it and argued a little more, and a few weeks later they were all moving west to better-controlled NCR territory. Angus had re-enlisted and was starting over, and they'd been offered a starter home somewhere in California. He explained to her that when people wanted to make an area more inhabitable, they had to send pioneers out to live there for a while.

She liked that. She liked to think that they were explorers, brave souls scouting the land and making it good. She was excited about this change.

Three years later, he was dead.

They said he'd died as a martyr. To protect his fellows he had given himself up to the enemy, to the Legion. That he'd been crucified and died an agonizing death.

Mamie and Bonnie left the new house and Mamie moved in with a relative in Carson City. When she was fifteen, Mamie had met someone else, and when she was sixteen, Mamie had remarried.

Bonnie was gone the moment her mother told her about it. She didn't care anymore. She went around the migrant camps, working for her living as best she knew how. It was steady work, and she was treated fairly. When she was twenty she moved further south than she had been before and came across the Mojave Express. She signed on as a courier and began a regular mail route along the mountains.

She spent most of that time alone, well-hidden in the nooks and crannies south of New Vegas. She'd never actually been there. She stayed as far away from the big cities as she could.

Until she picked up the delivery to the Strip.

It wasn't a big delivery. Just some chip made of a very hard metal and larger than it ought to have been. She shrugged, pocketed the thing, and made her way north from Primm to the next town along, Goodsprings. A job was a job.

Close to Goodsprings, she came across Powder Gangers who were causing trouble. Quickly, she shunted off into the mountains, picking her way through the brush. At some point she jumped down from a ledge and the ground exploded under her feet. She was knocked unconscious.

She woke to being shot in the head.

The first thing she noticed was being carried. Someone was holding her, carrying her roughly over a hazy blur of sand and rock.

There was the pain, but she paid it no mind. It was so much she couldn't even feel it anymore.

Pain always goes away. She remembered her mother telling her that, when her father had died.

Shock, then, and she could remember everything. Everything from her early childhood to Benny and the Khans, the Fiends, the Legionaries.

She vomited. It was bloody.

Whirling past her was a sea of white sky and brown dirt.

"It's snowing," she mumbled. Her tongue didn't feel right, like it was too big for her mouth. She shivered in the heat.

"Stay alive!" she was ordered.

"But," she started to say, and trailed off. There isn't much choice.

Her head was squeezed against a soft shirt. Mom, she thought. Have I blamed you this whole time? For nothing?

She vomited again.

And went back to that time in her memories when she was a happy child with a happy mother and father, picking cactus fruit for money.

Her head pounded.

"Who's going to pay for this?" someone asked.

"House will," Boone said.

"Are you sure that―"

"He will. Fucking bill him and get on with it!"

"We aren't really equipped for this level of traum―"

A scuffle. Thuds landed.

"She helped you when you needed it," Boone muttered, under his breath.

When she finally opened her eyes and could see clearly, she saw fluorescent lighting and heard an unearthly silence. She looked to her sides and realized she was in some kind of doctor's office, or at least, an operating room. There was a tray full of equipment nearby, but she couldn't tell where she was, exactly.

She stared at the ceiling for a long time. There was a lot to think about, now that her memories had returned. She was alive. So was Boone, or at least, she thought she had heard him talking. He got out alive, at least, she told herself. And that was comforting, because she was blaming herself for everything.

Pain was becoming intense. One arm was in a splint, bandages were rampant over her extremities and stomach. She didn't know how long she'd been in this place.

She turned her head and noticed there was an IV bag hanging nearby, but no lines in her arms or anywhere. Maybe that's why I'm in pain.

Curiously, her head didn't hurt. She was conscious, unafraid, and had a clarity of thought that she hadn't enjoyed since before she got shot in the head. A person in NCR uniform came into the room and she was instantly aware that something, something important, was going on.

He sat in a chair next to her bed. "I am Colonel James Hsu," he introduced himself. "We haven't actually met before, but you were doing jobs for Major Dhatri at McCarran? That is where I am stationed."

She nodded.

"There has been an inquiry into your situation," he said, "but so far, it's come up blank. I have a few questions to ask you, if that's fine by you."

She nodded again.

"The shack where you were found seems to have been a cap counterfeiting operation. Were you aware of that?"

"No."

"Well, thankfully, it appears to be out of commission." He paused, took a breath and exhaled. "I am glad you survived this ordeal," he said. "The men responsible are gone, however. It's likely we won't find them."

"I figured that," she muttered. Even if they managed to get back into the Fort and weren't punished for breaking rank―which she highly doubted―they would be two faces in a sea of many.

"Now, onto other things," Hsu said. "Craig Boone tells us that you were given a Mark of Caesar by Vulpes Inculta, on the Strip. It was recovered with your belongings."

"Craig?" she whispered. She laughed in her head.

"He found you," Hsu nodded. "If he hadn't brought you back to the Vegas area, we may have lost a valuable opportunity."

She stopping laughing. "What?" she asked.

"I don't have the authority to compel you, since you're a private citizen. But the mark only extends to you, and we'd like you to reconnoiter the Fort."

She turned her head away from him and looked at the far wall. Is it my father's blood in me, that makes me into a martyr for the NCR? She'd survived death twice, after all.

"Angus McCrae," she said, when she turned back to face him.

"I've heard that name," Hsu said. "He died a hero."

"My father," she said.

He looked appropriately concerned, and respectfully said, "No one is asking you to undertake a suicide mission. Certainly, your visit to the Fort would be dangerous. All I'd like to know is an estimated amount of troops and any unusual weaponry on the hill. Caesar may open up to you, if he thinks you are worth speaking to in person."

"No guarantees," she echoed what Boone had said. She wondered how many days ago that was, now.

"I can't assume that your visit will go smoothly, anymore than you can," he agreed.

"When do I get out of here?"

"I'll let you speak to the doctor about that," he said. "If you'll excuse me?"

He left and she sighed. Probably a looooong time before I see daylight again, she thought. And I still have to worry about Boone. He'd shoot someone before I could even open my mouth. She smiled at the thought. Wouldn't blame him. But I can't have him shooting people, if I want to get that chip back.

She slept, for a while. She woke, terrified and hyperventilating, more than once. It took her a while to calm down enough to sleep again. She knew it was the Med-X; it had always made her paranoid. The torture-she blocked it away. She'd deal with that later.

The pain came and went. She slept through a lot of it, people coming and going, until she managed to catch one of the staff and demand they remove her from the pain medicine. A curious eye was on her, but they did take her off the Med-X.

She slept clearly for the first time in ages, then. When she woke, Boone was sitting in the chair next to the bed.

"Boone!" she said, surprised and happy. I didn't think he'd still be around.

He shot her a sharp glance, then folded his hands in front of his face, pressing them into his nose. Aww, what the hell, she thought. He's gonna chew me out now?

"Thank you," she finally said, trying to get the first words.

He just shook his head slowly. "You... you need to learn to scream. Or something."

She nodded. "Absolutely," she agreed. I feel like the bad guy, she thought. I am the bad guy, aren't I? I got him stuck in a stupid shack and then I died.

A few minutes of silence passed and she was stuck thinking to herself, an agonizing litany of her stupidity and irresponsibility.

"They're dead, you know."

She blinked. "Who?"

He sat back in the chair. "The Legionaries."

"How―"

With a smug look on his face, he said, "Can't run far if you can't move your legs."

"Okay," she said. I don't know how to take that. Thanks, I guess.

"I heard that Colonel Hsu came to speak with you," he said. "Asked about the mark."

She let out a deep breath. "Wants me to see how many of them are at the Fort. I didn't say yes."

"Here," he said, changing the subject. "I brought this." He pulled out a Stimpak. "You want me to...?"

"Please," she answered. The needle was sharp, but it made her sigh in relief when it kicked in.

He stood, and was going to leave. "Wait," she said. "Bonnie."

He turned slightly, and she saw he was confused.

"My name. You can call me Bonnie, Craig."

And he smiled at that, for some reason, then left her to sleep again.