For the first time in several weeks, Bonnie stepped out of the Lucky 38 into the warm air of the Strip. The same old stink of unwashed bodies, rotting trash and sex. It was the best air she'd breathed in a long time.

She came to a stop before they left Freeside, and turned to consult Boone.

"I keep hearing talk about a place called Bitter Springs," she said. "I hear you were there."

"I don't want to talk about it," he said.

"Fair enough. But, if we travel there, no bad memories are going to pop up?"

He didn't answer. She nodded to herself. "We'll work on that." She led the way out of Vegas.

It felt good to be back in the desert, even if she didn't feel confident about her plans. The familiar sand under her feet, the hot air in her lungs, the broken bits of asphalt lying around. She felt at home again, alive in the sunlight.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek. Part of the reason she'd chosen to travel to Bitter Springs had been because she had to go past the cap counterfeiting shack. If things went well, she could face her demons, and Boone his. She wasn't looking forward to either event.

He must realize what this means, she thought. They were well on their way toward the shack where he'd been trapped. She kept her eyes peeled.

When they had reached the area, she noticed immediately how he'd gotten out of the shack. The door and frame were distorted, pushed outward from the metal walls. The door was hanging by one hinge. She glanced at Boone, wondering what he was thinking.

He didn't bother to look.

Her heart beat hard in her chest as she walked the same route the Legionaries had taken, remembering her silent pleas. They sneaked past some deathclaws without problem but when they came to the junction of the road and rail, she pointed out a gaggle of them roaming the train yard. "We have to follow the road," she said.

"Yeah, I see them." He looked up at the road, then shot her a critical glance. "You sure about this?"

No, not really, she thought, but said, "It's either sneak back through the ones we left behind, or march on."

They followed the road, northeast into the mountains. The alluvium began to change into larger chunks of red rock and vegetation. Bonnie grew increasingly nervous as they approached the cap counterfeiting shack. Her feet felt as heavy as lead, and she slowed to stop nearing it.

It's just a place in the world, she told herself. Bad things happen to people everywhere in the Mojave. Just because it happened to me, doesn't make me special.

Boone pushed her shoulders. "No wimping out now," he said.

She couldn't reply, her mind was seized with the pain and agony it had been to be strapped to that table. She felt her feet moving, and automatically walked forward past the building. Then she dropped to her knees and cried silently.

This didn't last very long―Boone had her by her arm and was pulling her away from the from, towards a large rock. "I'm―I'm okay," she muttered. "You can let go." She hiccuped.

"Quiet," he said. "Listen."

She turned an ear to the air. A soft chittering and the rustling of wings met her senses. "No," she half-whispered, half-moaned.

"They're all over the road," he muttered, pulling her further behind the rock. "Probably a nest nearby."

Of all the creatures in the desert that they could have run into, they just had to find cazadores. Fuck, fuck, fuck! she thought. I have no antivenom, I barely have enough ammo to take down one cazador, never mind a whole nest.

The bad memories crystallized and were hidden in the back of her mind. She scanned the area and pointed up to a jutting shelf of rock. "There," she whispered.

They climbed up to the rock and Boone surveyed the lay of the land with his scope. Bonnie pulled out her pistol but put it away, and decided to give her cowboy repeater a chance. She looked it over and sighed. "I won't be able to do much damage until they are closer," she said quietly.

"Keep an eye out and cover me," he said, lining up a shot.

She crouched down, and watched the fast-moving insects scuttle around the desert floor.

The first shot went wide, but hit a cazador in the wing. It flipped through the air, then began to wobble up the hill towards the source of the shot. Boone grunted in satisfaction and began to shoot the rest of them, aiming for the wings.

Bonnie aimed and took down the crippled ones that were coming up the hill. She ran out of ammo just before the last one made it to her.

"Craig―" She moved back on the rock, brushing past him. She looked for her pistol, her fingers not working. "Craig!"

A heavy boot came down on the cazador, pinning it to the ground. The hunting rifle swung around and went right to its head―if those enormous red eyes head any semblance of a mind, she'd never know―and it exploded into a yellow, sticky mess.

The cazador writhed under his boot, spastic in death throes. Boone swore and jerked his foot back.

"Is that all of them?" she asked, poking a head up over the rock.

"Only saw five," he said. He stomped his foot onto the ground and tried to scrape off the cazador guts.

She kept looking over the rock and didn't see anything. "Alright, I guess we keep on."

After a minute or two, though, she noticed Boone looked tired, his movements sluggish. "Let's take a break," she announced, and they detoured down towards the lake.

"Wanna stop here?" she asked, gesturing to a shack along the lake. "We don't need to, but it couldn't hurt to look around."

"Yeah, whatever," he muttered.

She wondered what was on his mind. Down by the lake, she hummed a tune to herself, smiling when they opened the door to the shack and heard Mojave Music Radio playing "Big Iron." She recalled a saloon she'd visited years ago, of the same name.

Boone checked the door, then pulled the only chair in the room over to sit in front of it with his rifle laid across his lap. Bonnie half-hummed, half-sang as the song finished playing on the radio. She scrounged through the containers she could find, pulling out a handful of 5.56mm ammo and some shotgun shells she had no use for. "Not much," she said.

Looking at the meal on the table, she crinkled her nose at the layer of irradiated dust on it. "Guess it's gecko jerky again." When she'd quit looking, she sat on the bed in the corner, and coughed as a blanket of dust rose up to envelope her. "I think I'm getting spoiled by the Lucky 38."

He was quiet. She sighed to herself. Maybe he was thinking about Bitter Springs, or maybe he was just on point today. She wished he would talk to her.

She laid back on the bed, stretching out, trying to relax. She knew she hadn't had to be lonely her entire life. Before her father died, the children at the migrant camps kept her company; after his death, the teenagers of Carson City had been her compatriots in minor crime and shenanigans. In her travels she had been all over Nevada and some parts of Utah, and she knew just how easy it was to find some willing soul wanting for attention. Usually that meant stiff drinks at a bar, drunken joking, and a half-asleep attempt at sex. It'd been enjoyable, she figured.

She didn't expect that from Boone. It was nice to travel with someone who was a stick in the mud. He was so unlike all the other people she'd ever traveled with. And that is the reason I want to prove to him that I'm not an idiot.

...She'd never traveled with someone she wanted to impress, before.

Glancing over, she noticed his head was drooping. She got up off the bed, and went to him. "Hey, maybe you should take a nap," she said.

"It'll wear off," he mumbled, his head jerking back up.

She noticed he was sweating, and his skin looked pale. "You look sick. Did you get stung?" she asked, touching his shoulder.

He moved away in the chair. "It'll wear off," he repeated, talking through his teeth.

"No, you need to let me look at it. We should at least see if we can get the venom out," she said, and rummaged through her haversack for bandages. "And then you need to sleep off the rest. You could die." She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him, but he didn't budge.

"Come on, Craig," she said.

A minute passed. "If that's your thing," he said, and slowly rolled up the hem of his pants above his calf.

Bonnie crouched down and set the bandages to the side, looking at the affected area. The sting was above his foot where he'd stepped on the cazador, a dark purple puncture wound encircled by a reddened area of skin about the size of her hand. She winced, and gingerly touched the red area.

A bit of whitish fluid oozed out of the wound. She coughed, trying to cover up her gagging. With a steady hand, she squeezed the skin and pushed out as much of the excess fluid as she could. She cleaned it with an antiseptic and bandaged it as carefully as she could, then pulled his pants leg down.

He'd been still the whole time, and she found that he'd nodded off halfway through. "Craig?" she asked, softly. He didn't move. "Hey," she shook his shoulder, then hesitating, removed his sunglasses.

When she realized he wasn't going to move, she pulled out a Stimpak and passed it from one hand to the other. She didn't want to jab him. But her arm was still weak, and he looked heavy. There was no way she could get him into the bed alone.

She had an idea. She steadied him with her bad arm and tilted the chair back, dragging it backwards. It was slow going, but she got him to the bed, then tilted it again and adjusted as needed to put him on the mattress. She put the chair back by the table.

She rubbed her arm. "I'm getting better," she told herself. But the pain reminded her of the break, which set off a long trip into the darker parts of her mind. She turned up the radio on the shelf and tried to keep herself from thinking too much.

Two hours later, she was belting out "Let's Ride into the Sunset Together" and dancing about the shack when Boone woke up.

"What the hell, Bonnie," he said, raising his voice over hers and the radio.

She jumped in surprise, and turned down the radio, sheepishly.

"Does everything in the wasteland know we're here?" he growled.

"Sorry," she whispered. She moved to the chair and sat down, hanging her head. She felt like a chastised child.

Boone picked up his rifle from the table and inspected it. Slinging it across his back, he came up behind her and pushed the back her head down until she was looking straight up at him. She sniffled and blinked back tears, staring up at his muddy eyes.

"I'm getting really good at making you cry," he said.

She was surprised. "What?"

He moved away. "Where are my sunglasses?"

She wasn't sure what to make of his behavior, but he definitely seemed in better spirits. "Here," she said, handing them back to him.

"Get on with it," he motioned to the bed.

"What?" she asked again, but he didn't respond, just pushed her out of the chair. He sat down and she shook her head. "I guess we ought to sleep around the same time, huh," she muttered to herself.

She laid down and tried to sleep. There was a faint smell coming from the bed, and she realized it was him. How can a guy who only bathes once a week smell... nice? she asked herself, amused.

Don't act like a fool, some little voice in her head said. You can't afford to get attached. No falling in love.

Drowsily, she asked herself, who said anything about love? I just thought he smells nice.

Yeah, right. You thought more than that.

I'm not having an argument with myself about this, she thought. He cares more about his hat than I do my own skin.

Then don't argue. Just listen.

She yawned, and for a moment she wondered what her brain knew that she wasn't catching onto. Oh well, I guess I'll figure it out in due time, she thought.

You're doomed, Bonnie McCrae.

"First," Boone said, "you need more ammo."

"That's a no-brainer." She put the shotgun shells on the table.

"You," he looked at her pointedly, "also need to learn to shoot better."

"Hey!"

"We will overlook that, for now. ...Are we still going to Bitter Springs?"

Chewing on a piece of jerky, she stopped mid-bite. "Doan shee why not," she mumbled around it.

He was quiet. She was patient. I would love some way of speeding up this part, though.

"What did you hear about it?" he asked.

Bonnie swallowed and pushed her thoughts into a more coherent order. "Major Dhatri said that there was bad intel, and it caused the deaths of young and old Great Khans," she remembered. "Rather than the actual soldiers that were supposed to be there."

He clenched his jaw. She finished eating her jerky.

"Women, kids, elderly. Wounded too," he said, stiffly. "We radioed to confirm or orders. Shoot until we were out of ammo."

She bit her lip, hard. "You were there, then," was all she managed to say.

"Yes."

"And you did?"

"...Yes."

She sighed. He'd been through a hell of a lot in his short time on this world. "Do you want to go?"

"I don't know what I'm hoping to find there."

"Maybe you can make up for your mistakes." He didn't answer. "I'm going outside for a minute, I'll let you think about it," she said, and discreetly left the shack. She didn't go far, just around the corner.

Bonnie looked out over the lake and enjoyed the sparkling sunshine, thinking about her father. He must have had his fair share of action. She wondered just how often the NCR misjudged actions like Bitter Springs.

Twenty minutes passed. When the door opened, Boone approached her. "Hey. I thought some more about what you said. I think maybe you're right."

"So you do want to go?"

"Maybe I should."

With a flick, she pushed her hair out of her eyes and walked off to the northeast. There were more cazadores, but they were few and far in-between. Her makeshift pistol was earning its worth every time she fired it. She felt better about everything in general.

They walked up the highway past a collection of mired buses and trailers. Her Pip-Boy registered it as Bitter Springs Recreation Area. She noticed the marker for Bitter Springs up into the mountains, and moved up the hill toward it.

The camp was mostly tents, and pieces of buses and cars pushed together to make shabby housing. Refugees hobbled around the place. One of them muttered something about her traveling with a fucking murderer. It's like peeling an onion with him, she thought, but took her First Recon beret off, in respect to the refugees. She had no right to claim affiliation.

The first thing she did was make her presence known to the C.O., offering any help she could give. Captain Gilles directed her to Dr. Markland, and she promptly went to the medical tent.

She couldn't bring him the books that he wanted, but she did have the doctor's bags he needed. She told him she'd keep an eye out for the books.

Boone parked himself behind her and didn't speak. She wondered what he was thinking about. They scoured the mountains, looking for supply caches that Gilles said were missing from the camp. The very last one, she nearly stepped into a bear trap, and there was a Great Khan inside the cave, but he was killed when he saw Boone and started shooting.

She wished it didn't have to happen that way. Even if the Khans who helped Benny were only in it for the money, the ones at Bitter Springs were only victims of circumstance.

After returning with the supplies, she and Boone looked around the canyons a little more. They came from the right side of the camp, looking out, into a little graveyard. He made some remark she didn't catch, and she stopped for a moment to reflect.

He told her about the canyon, then, about how the people had come through it in droves, and they'd shot them. Canyon 37. Showed her where he'd stood.

"I'd like to stay here for the night. Think some things over," he ended.

"Yes," she agreed. "You do what you need to do."