It didn't go far. I ducked behind the sandbags, flinching as the blast showered us with sand and fragments of rock and shrapnel.

"That was fuckin' pathetic." And really, it was- I had practiced throwing roundish rocks for days, now. Jericho dropped another grenade into my hand. RGD-5, Soviet was the model- he had quizzed me enough on weapon terminology in a month to cover my entire education back in the Vault under with Mr. Brotch.

"We didn't have a lot of space, underground. For throwing things." It was true. By the time I was sixteen, I could touch the ceiling of most rooms by jumping.

"Less excuses. More throwing."

And again, I lobbed that little party favor of destruction. Again, it only went... far enough to still feel the shockwave shudder through the earth. Disappointment settled in my belly- one grenade was usually enough to buy a day's worth of rations. That Jericho was letting me train with the real thing was kind of an honor, and I hated letting him down. Anyone would. Not like I looked forward to living on vodka and cigarette butts for the next week, either.

I sighed, held out my hand, and waited for the next live grenade. Instead, Jericho grabbed my wrist and twisted it painfully towards me. I yelped, nearly biting off my own hand, it was so close to my face.

"Concentrate," he hissed. "Take everything you hate, you fear, you want to be gone- and crush it. Crush it until it's fucking nothing, until it's less than nothing. Like it wants to escape through your fingers, but you won't let it. Until it never moves again. Then throw it the fuck away."

My hand involuntarily began to curl into a fist. A series of images flashed across my mind- the Overseer, my father, Amata, Butch, the reflection of myself in the bathroom mirror, rage, rage, rage- all those thoughts I had crowded back into the back of my skull.

The next grenade fucking sailed.

I didn't go the saloon often. It smelled... odd. Cigarette smoke and sweat and and Moriarty and cheap booze and sex with dust in all the wrong cracks.

That, and after I made an ass of myself trying to keep Jericho from fucking Nova, my pride had something to do with it, too. How was I supposed to know that wastelanders had evolved to be immune to venereal diseases? Christ.

One evening Jericho stumbled into his shack, where I had been studying a tattered issue of Guns & Ammo. I had started cataloging bullet calibers and gun types into my Pip-Boy- probably the most use I had made of that chunk of plastic since I left the Vault. Looking up from the faded pages as he stripped off his holster and chest rig, hanging his guns on the wall- he never left the shack without them, even if he was taking a piss- I finally dared myself to ask a question that had been curdling in my head for weeks now.

"Jericho?" A grunt in response. So far, so good. "So, uh... where did you, you know... come from?"

"Saloon." He belched, and the air of the shack became suddenly bitter. "Gonna give me a time out, Mr. Dry-Dick?"

Ha ha. That was a new one. But despite that his blood was probably fifty percent vodka, I knew that Jericho was dodging the question. Crafty bastard, but not crafty enough for me. "You know what I mean."

He gave me a long, hard look as he collapsed onto his rotten couch, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. The springs whined under his weight. "No, you don't know what you mean." I opened my mouth, but he cut right on ahead. "Where are you from, kid?"

"Vault 10-"

"Wrong. You're from Megaton."

"No, I-"

"Kid, I had sort of expected you to have figured this one out, so that means one of the two people in this house is really fucking stupid. And I don't think it's me."

I crossed my arms. "You really think-"

"Where I was a fuckin' day ago doesn't matter. You don't measure lives by years in the wasteland, kid. It goes by hours. Now that you've crawled out of your hole, you're no different. The name of your fucking hole doesn't matter to the local raider or pack of hounds. Or me."

My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw began to hurt.

"No comeback? And it's what you do best. I'm disappointed."

That was it. I stormed out of the shack, not even blinking at the frigid night air. My anger kept me warm.

Why was it that Jericho became so damn... right when he was drunk? I stalked up and down the catwalks of Megaton until I was at the highest point, and I could gaze out across the wasteland for miles. But as I squinted, I couldn't exactly figure out what direction Vault 101 was in- maybe it was just the moonlight.

God fucking dammit.

I shuffled from one foot to the other. He just stood there. I looked over, and cleared my dry throat.

"Nice weather we're having."

"Temperature: 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind speed: two knots per hour."

Well that's certainly... informative. "Uh huh. So... what's it like, being the deputy?"

"I am programmed to fully enjoy dispensing justice and maintaining order. Therefore; yes."

"Sure, sure. Can I see your hat?"

"That is a restricted action. Do not touch my hat."

"Right. Sorry."

"Well, if it ain't the talk of the fuckin' town."

I lifted my head from the bar counter as Jericho took a stool next to me, barking at Gob for a shot of a vodka. God, I was tired. After that entire bomb mess with Burke, no one would shut up about how I was a hero and all that shit. Gob offered me free drinks for the night, Nova a victory fuck (which I politely declined), and Moira gave me the offer of being the co-author of her new book, some kind of survival guide- I'd probably regret that one later.

"Had a way to blow us all to high hell, and didn't even tell me." He almost sounded hurt. Almost.

I grunted, laying my head back on my arms. Whiskey and I didn't get along. "I've spent weeks trying to disarm it. Like I'd let all that go to waste."

Jericho chuckled, downing his vodka in single gulp. "Would've been a sweet deal. A top suite at Tenpenny Tower, the wreckage of Megaton to be looted, less competition out there in the waste."

"You almost sound like you would've done it, were you in my place."

"Maybe I would've." Another shot of vodka. "Maybe."

The cold feeling in my stomach told me he wasn't entirely kidding.

Less than a mile outside Megaton, there's an oddly flat stretch of plain. All across it are scattered all matter of markers- some simple, plain bits of wood or metal, some elaborately carved into crosses or likenesses. Every time Jericho and I passed, I could help but marvel at it.

"Fuck's wrong with you? Never seen a boneyard befo-" He caught himself. "Oh. Yeah. Guess you haven't."

"I've seen slides of them," I snapped defensively. Well... not really. Just the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington.

He snorted. "Half of these graves don't even have any bones in 'em. Most just disappear in the waste- that's the way raiders do it." Jericho seemed thoughtful for a moment, that wrinkled brow furrowed. "Unless you're a real asshole, and they just eat you."

"Charming. Pleasant to know even raiders have respect for the dead," I said dryly. One of the tombstones had been carved into the figure of an angel- or had tried to be. Maybe it was weathered or the sculptor had never seen an angel before, 'cause it looked like a demon straight out of Hell. "Never had anything like that in the Vault."

"So what'd ya do? Toss 'em out the hatch?"

"No, no. Whenever someone died, we melted them down in acid and then purified their liquids for use as water."

Jericho looked at me blankly.

"What?"

"I didn't say anythin'."

Something had happened to the atmosphere, after the bombs dropped. It was... thinner, somehow. Or warped. Or had holes in it. I wasn't exactly sure how, but the books of nuclear physics, godless Communists, nuclear winters and mutually assured destruction I dug up on our travels seemed to explain as much. In a way, I wasn't surprised- in all the pictures of the moon I had seen back in the Vault, it had always looked... serene, moonlight a soft glow. But in reality, on the surface, when it was full- it was like a second sun, but bathing the world in a sickly blue light, painful to look at.

I hated that moon.

In Jericho's shack, I would often lay awake at night. Not from the cold, or the hunger, or Jericho's hellish snoring- but the howling. Every full moon, those hounds would come together and wail- and listening to it made me feel like I was dying, the whole world just slowly darkening around me.

His new name... Graves. Kind of nice, in a way. Better than his old one.