A/N: I hesitated for a long time about whether or not to write the following scene. At least don't hate me until we've got through chapter 39.

Chapter 38

A little while later, Xen followed Charon up a ladder and into weak starlight.

"It's still night," she said as she looked around. Buildings hunkered in the distance. In every other direction was the same brushy, rocky plain that made up most of the Capital Wasteland. Only a little green now showed here and there.

"Well, we weren't down there that long," said Bell. "Probably not even two hours, counting when you stopped to clean up." Charon, now scanning their environment in an entirely bored way that brought a lump to Xen's throat, seemed to have no comment. He left the shotgun in its harness.

"It seems like longer," Xen said to Bell. It was a tremendous relief to be at least mostly clean, even if she'd had to do it at the sink in a sad little kitchenette they'd found on the way out. "Is that Old Olney over there?"

"Has to be," said Bell. "Looks like a lot of the power station was underground."

"It must have been," Xen said. She looked around, feeling suddenly helpless. Asking information of Changeling had been like reading it off a screen. There was no real interaction to it. "Do you know which way is South?"

"That way," Bell said, pointing.

"All right," Xen said. "Let's go."

"We probably shouldn't go too far tonight," Bell said as they started off. "You'll both have to take it slow for a couple of days. At least until we know Charon doesn't have any emboli that the stimpak didn't get."

"Any what?" Xen said, feeling the ground start to slide under her feet. "No, don't answer that, I know what an embolism is. Is it very likely?"

"Not very," said Bell. "The stim probably took care of anything like that. With an injury that severe, though, I don't mind telling you I'll be happy if we run into more stims or a radiation source soon."

"Insufficent data error," Xen said. "I mean, when you say not very - "

"I calc'd the probability at between one and five percent," said Bell. She shrugged apologetically. "Can't be more exact than that without better imaging than I've got. I can't see through bodies except thermally."

"Can you figure out where we are versus the ship crash site?" Xen asked. "Triangulate between that, where we are now and Old Olney?"

"Sure, if you want," Bell said. "That's going to take us out of our way, though. And you'd be smart not to go home by the exact route you took getting out here. Especially if we're hoping to pick up any stims on the way."

"I agree," said Charon.

"But if he does have an embolism, by the time there are symptoms we won't be able to save him," Xen said. "Not out here."

"That's right," Bell said, not mincing words.

"We don't have to take the same route home," Xen said. "I agree with that. But if we don't, we'll run into more things Charon has to kill. If something attacks us, and he starts spontaneously hemorrhaging - "

"Then I can probably take care of whatever-it-is," Bell said. "But I agree that we don't want that to happen."

Charon did not respond to this. He stood looking around them, entirely as if the discussion had nothing to do with him.

"Back to the crash site, then," Xen said.

"That way," said Bell, and pointed. Xen started off into the waning night with the other two close by.

For the next long while, she concentrated on walking, holding onto the straps of her knapsack. Her leg muscles burned. The stimpaks had healed her, but they couldn't give back the physical resources she'd burnt up tonight. She had drunk water, but the thought of eating still made her want to throw up. That was all right. As long as she was tired and sore and worried about Charon, she wouldn't have to think about anything else.

Dawn had come and gone when they reached the camp site they had used before. Bell unslung the bound net from her shoulder with no sign that the weight had bothered her. It was bright enough that Xen had to close her inner lids behind her goggles. She curled up among the tree roots with her blanket, using the knapsack as a pillow.

"Go sleep in the irradiated zone," she said to Charon. "Take some food with you."

"I will obey," said Charon, but he seemed to hesitate, looking at both of them.

"I'll watch her," Bell said. She dug a couple of packages out of the cargo net and held them out to him. "I don't sleep."

Charon took the packages and walked away into the trees. Xen shut her outer lids, pulled the blanket over her head, and waited for sleep.

Black thought ambushed her instead.

As if for the first time, she seemed to see herself from a distance. The Doctors had never meant for her to be born. And if they had, they'd never meant for her to survive; and their failure to carry through with that resolution had cost, in effect, both their lives.

The first time she'd met other humans after that, some of them had died, too. Masterson had been spared only as an accessory to her own survival.

The next new encounter after that had been Underworld. Only Ahzrukhal had died there, but that was where she'd acquired Charon, her own personal assassin. And oh, he had killed a lot of people in the process of preserving her. People, and more than people: Raiders, and mole rats, and super mutants, and yao guai, and mercenaries, and deathclaws. Because if you wanted to keep someone alive who was meant to be dead, whose very body and brain were meant to rest in a field station for all eternity, you had to make sacrifices. Lots of them.

To Xen's exhaustion-addled and chemically imbalanced mind, the A3 seemed to have appeared like an avenging angel, perhaps the only being who could have ended this endless slaughter. And, when it seemed Charon would not be able to stop him, there was Bell.

And with Bell there, Charon had nearly become a sacrifice himself.

I left the Lab looking for my purpose, Xen thought. Well, now I know what it is. My purpose is to get other people killed.

It has to stop.

She shook off the morbid near-hallucination, but that last thought lingered.

It has to stop.

What, after all, was the point of going on? She had found what she set out to find, and it had brought her nothing. There was no neat label on her third contributor's ship saying this is who you are and here is what you should do. She had found nothing that could justify her existence as anything other than an unpleasant accident, an experiment left to run long past its point of termination. Her refusal to accept that had led them to Old Olney, to horrible danger for all of them and – for Changeling – to death.

No. Charon was right about that, Xen thought. The A3 would have found us if we weren't in Old Olney. He could have found us anywhere. Bell said so.

Nonetheless, she could not shake off the feeling of added weight, of bleak, sustained heaviness.

It has to stop.

It was no use saying the two bots needed her back at the Lab. They had probably started a clone already. Bunni would be depressed now that she was gone and Tori, whose very existence was defined by a need to fix things, would want to fix that, too. With a new baby to take care of, a Robobrain's memory wouldn't weigh on her too heavily. And Tori was incapable of any kind of melancholy at all.

Bell didn't need her any more, now that her programming had settled down. Bell, luckiest of all beings, probably wouldn't need anybody ever again. And without Xen, Charon's contract would default back to the person in nearest proximity, and he could hardly do better than Bell. There was nothing in the contract about whether or not its holder needed a bodyguard. There would be no more scrambling around in the dark waiting to be shot or stabbed, no more running ahead to try and kill things before they got a chance to kill Xen. She could arguably leave him safer than he had ever been in his life.

This seemed like such a perfect place for it all to end, here at the destination she'd planned for so long. Xen began to revolve ways and means. She would never be able to use the .22; Bell would stop her. She might manage to inflict some sort of injury on herself, and let her own fast-flowing blood work it out for her, but she had worked at avoiding that for so many years that the thought made her queasy.

There was the radiation. Down by the crash site, it was more than lethal. It would leave no marks and she wouldn't have to do anything, not a thing at all.

Yes, that might work.

And if it didn't, there were the goggles. It was full daylight now. She'd already gotten rid of Charon, and Bell, thank whatever God existed (Xen had serious doubts on this point), was susceptible to completely human means of persuasion.

This decided, Xen pulled down the blanket and stood up. Bell, sitting on the log Charon had dragged here not so long ago, looked at her curiously.

"I can't sleep," Xen said. "I'm going to go look at the crash site one more time."

"Okay," said Bell. "Here, let me find the Rad-X." She reached for the bundle and began to dig through it.

"Bell," Xen said. "Do you mind if I go by myself? Charon will have cleared out anything dangerous. I know it sounds odd, but I'd kind of like to say goodbye."

"But you might fall or something," Bell said.

"I'll call for help if that happens," Xen said. She smiled tiredly. "I do have some sense of self-preservation. And I may never get this chance again."

"Well, if you really want to," Bell said uncertainly. "But not for very long, okay?" She handed Xen a pill. "You want some water?"

"Please," said Xen. She accepted a water bottle, tossed back the pill, and hid it under her tongue as she took a swallow. She handed the bottle back to Bell and turned back toward the crash site.

"Be careful," said Bell behind her.

"Thank you, Bell," said Xen, though this necessitated transferring the pill to the space between her cheek and gum. She waited until she was out of sight of the camp to spit it out.

She knew when she reached the outer edge of the irradiated zone. Her skin tingled as if a breeze had blown across the tiny hairs. She wondered if it was normal to feel that, or if it was some part of the sad mixture of her genes. With her inner lids closed in the brightening sun, she could not see the purple tinge that gamma should lend to objects around her.