One.

Two three four...

I stop, taking a deep breath.

"Don't puss out now."

I grit my teeth. Five six five four three...

"Fuck!" I groan as the blade buries its point deep into my middle knuckle. "Fucking fuck fuck shit fuck cunt!"

Moriarty's Saloon explodes in laughter as the settlers and wasters circling the table throw down caps, some making bigger bets, others pulling out. Jericho chuckles to himself, swigging his stale vodka. "Not bad, kid. Most don't make it to three on their first go."

Gob looks at me sympathetically and pulls out a surprisingly clean rag from under the bar counter. I wrap it around my finger, trying to staunch the blood, but the slice was deep. Five finger fillet... is not my game.

Jericho finishes off his drink, and bringing the dirty glass down on the table hard, picks up his bayonet. "Watch 'n learn," he says coolly, and the blade becomes a blur.

It's another hot day. Days are always hot in the wasteland, hot and dry, but there was something about that day. It felt...

"... 'S a bad day, cowboy."

I blinked. Ashecroft leaned her elbows against the wooden fence, chin resting on her hands as she looked over the wide, empty desert stretching in front of us. I hadn't noticed her approach- and she was only a few inches away from me. I wondered how long she had been there... and just how dull my senses were getting. Maybe Jericho and Jim had made my life worse than hell, but at least they had kept me in top shape.

I shook my head. Never think positively of Jim. Not of that motherfucking bastard of a bitch. No, just- I erased the thought as soon as it came.

"Y'dun think so?"

"What? Uh, no, I... yeah. Feels bad. Wrong somehow." I shifted my elbows on the fence, feeling the splinters dig into my dry skin through my duster. "Like a day you realize something you've been meaning to realize for a long time, and it's too late. Heavy."

Ashecroft looked at me thoughtfully from under the brim of her hat. "There been'a lotta 'too lates' fer ya?"

An uncomfortably warm breeze picked up, sand and dust swirling around our boots. I shrugged. "I guess. I'll probably know sooner or later."

"Yeah."

I liked Ashecroft. There was something in the way she simply gave a damn sparked hope that there were decent human beings still out there. Probably weren't enough to balance out all the sick fucks, and I probably wasn't helping out the 'sane' side of the balance, but...

Ashecroft reached behind her studded old belt, pulling out Jim's Colt M1911 and its spare magazine. She held them out toward me, her fingers opening up like a flower.

"I don't want it."

She put her head to the side, puzzled. "Say what?"

"I don't... want it," I whispered, my voice feeling thick. For the fifteen days living with Ashecroft, I had managed to push away all the shit- sweating in some slavers' barbed-wire cage, those kids in the Trough who were butchered by Talon Company, the gray-eyed girl throwing her life away, and Jericho- God dammit, Jericho- "I... can't."

"'S yers-"

I fought the urge to throw up. "No, it's not. It belongs to a raping murdering enslaving asshole, and now he's dead. Now it's no one's."

Ashecroft blew out a long breath, clamping down on a gnaw-marked cigarette she pulled out of her duster pocket. We just stared out into the distance, watching the swollen sunset just begin to touch the sand, and then-

"'Ow ya gonna live, cowboy?" She asked softly. "'Ow ya gonna survive? Hurts, but 's th' only w-"

"I don't know. I don't know." I pulled back from the fence, staring at everything and nothing, my eyesight full of greens and purples and oranges from staring at he sun too long. "I just don't know. You can do this- you can kill, steal, what the fuck ever- but I can't. I can't. I- I- I-"

I reached for my knife, wanting to bury it into my hand, to shock myself out of this weakness. But of course, it was gone, sheathe in all. With a wild, throat-tearing scream of frustration, I slammed my fists hard against the fence, again and again until my hands were bloody with splinters. Breathing hard, gripping the lintel until my knuckles were bloodless, I turned to Ashecroft, feeling my face twisted into a deranged snarl. "My entire life- my entire fucking life- I was taught, brainwashed that none of this was real! Nineteen years, that fucking hole in the ground was all I knew! And now- and now- that's all gone, everything I understood-"

Ashecroft reached up, put a hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away, clawing at my throat where that collar had noosed me for so long. I could still feel it. "I abandoned everything! My only friends, safety- to chase after my dad, and who the fuck knows where he is now? It doesn't even matter anymore! He's probably dead!"

There. I said it. And once I did, all my rage, all that blame I had built up inside me- towards Amata, towards the Overseer, towards my dad, towards Jericho- bled right out of me, blowing away like ash on the evening breeze. I took a deep, shaky breath, and screamed again- not out of anger. Out of hopelessness. The ringing death cry of a civilized human being.

The Brahmin brayed in anxiety, shuffling farther away from us. Ashecroft said nothing, just stared at me intently with those edged eyes. I put my back against the fence, sliding to the ground, sweaty face buried in my hands. In all the time I was in the wasteland, on the surface- I had never wanted to die more than at that moment.

She cocked the pistol and laid it at my feet. I listened to her spurred footsteps fade into the distance, the creaky door to her shack close. The Brahmin nosed at some tufts of bone-dry crabgrass.

We are killing you.

You got me, I thought to myself as I raised the gun to my head. You got me.

The barrel felt cool against my temple, the weight of the pistol just right. The grip, somehow, formed to my hand perfectly.

You killed me.

I pulled the trigger, and the world disappeared with a savage roar.

The roar of blood thumping away in my ears.

I opened my eyes. The evening seemed brighter, somehow.

I looked at the gun in my hands. I cocked the slide, and a .45 ACP round loaded itself into the chamber.

She... palmed the bullet.

The M1911 felt so heavy in my hands, then. It felt like sand falling from through my calloused fingers, settling into the dust.

My eyes felt a hotness behind them. I grit my teeth, pressing my hands into my face, and cried. Sobbed like a little bitch.

And I knew, just knew- Ashecroft was watching from the window. I felt so ashamed at the thought.