It had been two days since Savannah had followed The Courier north from New Vegas, and the grief had yet to even begin to numb. Even having been so far from home for so long, New Canaan was more precious to her than anywhere else in the world, its people even moreso. A part of her wished that she could share in Lucy's wrathful attitude, but Savannah's spirit was stronger than her hatred, she would not succumb to such a mistake.

She had spoken to Lucy very little since they had departed from Freeside, no doubt an attempt by her guide to offer her a chance to collect her thoughts and grieve properly, which was appreciated. There were, however, certain questions that Savannah needed to have answered. What happened at Zion? Were her people safe? And so she had asked.

The tale that was recited to her by Lucy was one of a hellish war in a holy place, where the blood of the faithless and faithful alike had run like rivers through the sacred stone of Zion. The White Legs had intended to bring fire and brimstone to the two tribes of Zion, the Sorrows and the Dead Horses, and had invoked a response they most certainly had not bargained for.

Lucy, together with Joshua Graham and a select few brave warriors, had waged a devastating guerilla war against the White Legs, slaughtering their warriors and disrupting their plans. Then, with the full might of the Sorrows and Dead Horses at their backs, they stormed the White Legs camp at the Three Marys and cut them down to the last man. Among the White Legs dead was their Chieftain, a barbaric man named Salt-Upon-Wounds. He was slain in a vicious final confrontation, falling at the hands of Lucy no less.

As tall a tale as it admittedly was, Savannah didn't doubt a word of Lucy's claims, although she deeply wished that she did. She took no comfort in vengeance of any kind, justice was the jurisdiction of the Lord, not men, and it would certainly not be delivered through wrathful violence. To hear of such devastation would have been enough to break her heart, had it not already been shattered with the sacking of New Canaan.

Disturbingly, Lucy recounted her tales of combat with a degree of pride and a smile on her face. Admittedly, Savannah had already been a bit wary of the near-mythical Courier even before she had met her. Anybody who could kill both Caesar and Legate Lanius, largely by themselves, was clearly somebody who had an awful lot of skill in battle. But Lucy, this nigh-mythical woman called "The Courier" had supposedly killed an awful lot more people than "just" the two Leaders of the Legion, leaving Savannah very wary of her traveling companion.

The fact that Lucy had also chosen to back Joshua's plan of going on the offensive, rather than Daniel's plan of evacuating Zion, also put a bit of doubt in Savannah's heart. Lucy had justified her decision by claiming that the White Legs would've simply followed the Dead Horses and Sorrows, not to mention the survivors from New Canaan, wherever they went. Savannah, however, wasn't quite so convinced of that possibility.

But amongst the tales of bloody battles and grievous injury, Lucy spoke of other, far more pleasant topics. She had made some friends amongst the tribals, a scout from the Dead Horses named Follows Chalk and a midwife from the Sorrows known as Waking Cloud. There was also apparently a companion that she'd brought along to Zion along with the Happy Trails Caravan, a traveling historian named Kyle. He'd been unable to participate in the final battle at the Three Marys due to an injury, so he'd been working as a Doctor for the wounded.

She spoke of them all fondly, recalled their humorous comments and impressive feats alike, and it was something that Savannah found deeply reassuring. She had already recognized that there was more than wrath to Lucy back in the Old Mormon Fort, where she had been offered comfort and companionship in one of her darkest moments. No sociopath would have offered such a gesture, nor offered to accompany her on a lengthy, dangerous trip home, especially with no promise of a reward.

In general, Lucy had already proven herself to be a complicated, downright unusual woman. Perhaps the first example was during the first night that they had made camp, Lucy had graciously offered to keep first watch, only to keep watch for the entire night… and then proceed to march throughout the whole of the present day, even outpacing Savannah at points. At no point did Lucy show a speck of exhaustion, in spite of having been awake for at the minimum forty hours straight.

It was as they made camp again and sat around a small campfire to heat their meals that Savannah's curiosity finally won out. Grief could wait, there were some things that she simply needed to know.

However, unexpectedly, Lucy beat her to the punch. "Why do you wear a cross around your neck?"

Savannah briefly blinked, somewhat taken aback by the question. It was the first that Lucy had asked her in two days, and it seemed like something that Lucy really should've known, given how much time she had apparently spent around New Canaanites. "...It's the symbol of my people's faith."

Lucy nodded. "But why a cross? I've only really seen the Legion torture people with those. Is there a story behind it?"

Savannah's heart sank straight through her stomach as her blood ran cold, not with anger or fear, but simple sadness. I suppose it's not a surprise. Caesar's Legion is so much larger than our faith, the cross is probably more of a symbol of fear now than it's ever been, to so many people…

She took a moment to swallow her newly-crushed nerves and answered, for all her anguish, it was her duty to spread the word of God to those who were curious. "It represents the cross that our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, suffered and died upon. God sent him down to Earth a long time ago to bear the burden of our sins, and in doing so, saved our souls. What Caesar's Legion uses as a weapon of terror is in reality the icon of salvation, for all of us."

Lucy, quite reassuringly, was very clearly listening intently. Her words and tone, however, betrayed a quiet anger. "I suppose that's just another thing that they've taken from us, isn't it?"

For all the sadness and anguish that Savannah had felt over the last few days, there was no hesitation or wavering in her answer. "No, it is not. The Legion will fall, as all sinful tyrants inevitably do."

Lucy smiled at her words. "I appreciate the optimism-"

Lucy stopped speaking and, in the blink of an eye, had her repeater rifle raised and ready to fire at something that she must have heard. She moved so quickly that Savannah barely even registered that there might have been danger by the time that Lucy lowered her rifle. "Gecko, sorry."

Savannah tracked Lucy's gaze and, sure enough, there was something moving further down the trail… perhaps a hundred meters away. It was little more than a speck to her, so quite how Lucy, somebody who apparently needed glasses to see properly, had noticed it was quite the mystery. "I appreciate the caution."

The curiosity quickly shifted its focus, however, as Savannah got a better look at the rifle in Lucy's hands. It was a model that Savannah had seen before, but this one had something that made it distinct, a decoration on the stock that looked almost tribal, made from beads and simple rope. "Your rifle, where did you get it?"

"The Gun Runners. One of their traders had it, they didn't know where it came from either. Only two things that they knew were that it was a very valuable weapon, and that it had a name, Medicine Stick. It set me back a lot of caps, but I don't regret a thing, this rifle is second to none." Lucy explained. "Why? Did you want to have a look at it?"

Savannah smiled, the fact that Lucy was willing to hand over what was seemingly her only weapon to her was a great demonstration of trust. "Let me have a look. My tribe may take too much pride in its mechanical talents, but in truth, we are intrigued by the workings of a fine firearm."

Lucy obliged and handed over the weapon, and the first thing that stood out in Savannah's mind was the weight. It was somewhat heavier than she had expected, and in absolutely immaculate condition. The wood was treated and every visible bit of metal had clearly been coated in some kind of protective coating. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been a polish, as there was very little reflection from the campfire, but Savannah figured that had probably been intentionally done to reduce the glare of the sun, and therefore the chances of being detected by an enemy.

The name itself held some interesting implications as well, Medicine Stick. Some of the tribes that she had visited in the past had performed rituals, intending to send the spirits of the dead onwards to a "spirit realm," and they had employed the use of tools that they had called "medicine sticks." Of course, those tools were not rifles, but Savannah supposed there was a cruel joke to be made about a gun being a swift way to remove a spirit from the Earth, a joke that she personally did not find funny.

Shouldering the weapon and aiming it at the ground for safety, Savannah placed her hand in the lever and looked to Lucy for permission, before racking it. The action was totally flawless and smooth as anything that Savannah had ever used before. What really stood out to her, however, was the round that emerged from the ejection port.

45/70 was a caliber that Savannah had worked with before, large and powerful, but marred by poor performance at longer ranges and vicious recoil. It was amongst the largest rounds that could be realistically fit in a repeater. The bullet itself was very interesting as well, a seemingly typical Semiwadcutter round, but with a small dark blue core.

"This is a very impressive weapon, I can see why you value it so greatly." Savannah said, reloading the singular bullet and handing it back over.

Lucy smiled with pride. "It's not my only gun, hell, it's not even really my most powerful one, but it is my favorite."

Savannah had mixed feelings about what Lucy had to say, but it did open up a good avenue for her to start getting answers to some of the things that were on her mind. "Someone with the power you hold could probably change more lives with your words than your guns."

Or end them. Savannah thought, before swiftly banishing the pessimistic thought.

"I would certainly hope so." Lucy answered, much to Savannah's surprise. "Don't get me wrong, I'll put a bastard down if I have too, but it's not really something that a good person enjoys doing, you know? Joshua told me he views it like a chore when it's done righteously, I think he's kind of right. I'd much prefer to solve things through negotiation but… well, that's not realistic a lot of the time."

Savannah concealed her frown beneath clasped hands over her mouth. Again, she was left with mixed feelings, although they certainly weighed more heavily on the negative side. She'd personally met quite a few people who had claimed to kill only in defense of themselves and others, and many of them had ended up as petty tyrants or raiders. Lucy's endorsement of Joshua's comment was also a major red flag… although she didn't exactly sound too enthusiastic when she'd said it.

Being silent, however, would get her no closer to understanding her traveling companion. "Have you ever managed to do that, negotiate?"

"Sure. I helped solve a hostage crisis between the NCR and the Great Khans at Boulder City. Everybody walked out of that one alive." Lucy said, putting Savannah's heart at ease for just a moment. "Although…"

The two of them sat in tense silence for a while, before Savannah realized that Lucy was going to need a bit of encouragement. "Something happened, didn't it?"

Lucy nodded. "A good long while after that, I killed the Great Khans, including the ones from Boulder City."

"What? You… killed them?" Savannah asked, her mind stuck somewhere between being bewildered and horrified. "All of them? By yourself?"

Lucy's expression was all that Savannah needed to see to know that she was telling the truth, and there wasn't even a glimmer of shame amongst her eyes, which instead flickered with the reflection of the campfire. "They were peddling chems and arms to the Fiends, and innocent people were dying every day, because of them. What choice did I have?"

"What choice-" Savannah stammered, caught so off-guard that she raised her voice. She paused, took several deep breaths, and calmly started over. "What do you mean? I can hardly envision such an… extermination, as being something that you were forced into!"

Lucy paused, although Savannah got the feeling that she wasn't contemplating regret. "If you're left with a choice between saving good innocent people and sparing a bunch of monsters, then you do not have a choice at all. If you were called upon to solve that crisis, what would you have done?"

Savannah briefly gave it some thought, but even without most of the details of the situation, she knew what she would've tried. "I would have tried to negotiate, and see if I could convince the Khans to change their ways."

Lucy shook her head in dismay. "And you would've gotten yourself killed trying. The Khans were never going to change, never! Their whole war with the NCR started over them raiding settlements and killing innocent people!"

Savannah, however, had noticed a gap in Lucy's thinking. "Then why did you negotiate with them in Boulder City?"

Lucy momentarily recoiled, but caught herself quickly. "That's… that's different. Those Khans had their backs to a wall, and I was able to talk them into a deal that left them with their lives. What you're proposing is to try and tell the Khans to change everything about who they are, they would be far too proud to accept it."

"How do you know? Did you try?" Savannah asked. Lucy's change in tone made it very clear that she had been hit with a thought that she had not considered. "If the Great Khans were willing to swallow their pride at Boulder City in exchange for their lives, who's to say they wouldn't have done the same thing the second time?"

Lucy was silent for a moment, but eventually found her footing. "I understand where you're coming from, I do, but the people involved here were different. Papa Khan is- was, an incredibly stubborn man, he would never have even entertained the idea of a deal with the NCR."

Savannah narrowed her eyes at the mention of the second mention of the NCR. "Was that who told you to kill the Great Khans, the NCR? Were they not content with the women and children that they butchered at Bitter Springs-"

"Stop!" Lucy all but snarled as she unexpectedly cut Savannah off. "What the hell do you know about Bitter Springs?! Do you think that the NCR just marched up there and killed those people for fun, like the Legion would?! My-"

Savannah watched with wide eyes as Lucy seemed to recognize that perhaps she'd gone too far, and steadily forced herself to speak more slowly, concisely, and rationally.

"The people in Red Rock Canyon were not refugees, they were not civilians and Doctors, they were killers. They peddled chems and guns to the Fiends for crying out loud, who raped, tortured, and murdered people beyond count, and the Great Khans weren't much better. Do you honestly think, even for a moment, they'd be willing to stop doing that, all for the sake of the country that they literally lived for nothing but to spite?"

Savannah remained silent, much as she didn't want to admit it, she had to admit that any negotiation efforts were, in all likelihood, doomed. There was nothing that could really be done to smooth things over between the NCR and the Great Khans after the Bitter Springs Massacre, that did not excuse Lucy for not even trying to reach a peaceful solution.

There was, ultimately, one question above all of the others that she wanted to ask. "Do you feel any remorse for them? The Khans?"

Lucy paused, clearly thinking it over, hesitating. That alone was a bad sign, made worse by her answer. "Not really. The innocents at Bitter Springs, certainly, but not for the ones that I killed. I don't much care who they really were, only that they were going to hurt good people."

For each question that Lucy asked, it seemed like it raised two more for Savannah. "And how do you know that you haven't hurt good people, with the people that you've killed?"

Lucy did not hesitate with her answer. "I never pull the trigger without a good reason."

"And who decides what's a good reason?" Savannah asked.

"I do." Lucy swiftly answered. "Everybody has to decide for themselves whether or not they've got a good reason to kill another person, and if I didn't have the nerve to make that call, I would be dead, and a lot of good people would be too. You wouldn't be carrying that rifle if you didn't agree."

A chill ran down Savannah's spine, the weight of the Garand on her back suddenly feeling quite a bit heavier. Her immediate instinct was to refute Lucy's point but… was she wrong?

Lucy didn't wait for the thoughts in Savannah's mind to slow before she continued. "And that's not something to be ashamed of either, without the freedom to choose, we'd all be slaves."

Savannah couldn't help but flinch at that word, and Lucy unfortunately noticed, but thankfully didn't press the issue, and stopped talking.

It took a moment for Savannah to decide whether or not she wanted to keep the conversation going, but eventually decided that it was probably best if they both got some rest. She also had a few things to think about. "I'll take the first watch, you should get some sleep."

Lucy raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure? I'm not very tired."

Bewilderment briefly took hold of Savannah. "How? You marched all day today, and yesterday, and didn't even get any sleep. How are you anything other than exhausted?"

Lucy seemed to mull over the answer in her head a little, and for a moment Savannah briefly speculated if perhaps Lucy had been doing chems behind her back, but Lucy's actual answer was an even greater surprise. "I have… some cybernetics. I don't really get tired anymore, I'm stronger, I'm faster, I don't need to eat that much… that kind of thing."

Lucy trailed off, and to Savannah's surprise, genuinely seemed a little bit uncomfortable. Then again, having machines replace parts of your body was probably a rather disquieting thing to have happen. It wasn't something that Savannah had really given much thought to, as beyond some simple prosthetics and medical implants that the Followers of the Apocalypse used, she knew very little about cybernetics.

Naturally, Savannah had all sorts of new questions, but recognized that now probably wasn't the best time to ask a lot of them. Instead, she limited it to the important part. "How often do you need to sleep?"

Lucy briefly thought about it, which again caught Savannah somewhat off-guard, since it seemed like the kind of question that should be fairly easy to answer. "...I usually do it once a week, but I can go for about a month before I start having problems."

A month? Savannah thought, unsure of whether to be impressed or horrified. Her medical training suggested that an ordinary human would be dead at least three times over by that point. "...Where exactly did you get these cybernetics?"

Again, Lucy seemed to think very hard about her answer, but this time was different. There was a tension on her face, but it was swiftly concealed. "From the Followers of the Apocalypse, mostly. There's this lady, Doctor Usanagi, down at the New Vegas Medical Clinic, she sells a lot of implants."

She's lying. Savannah recognized, admittedly a bit surprised. She was a naturally perceptive person, especially when it came to other people, and this was the first time that she had noticed where Lucy had openly lied to her. It was possible, although unlikely, that Lucy had done it before and she just hadn't noticed, since apparently Lucy was a very skilled liar. She was, however, not skilled enough.

A small part of her considered confronting Lucy over it, but between their prior debate, the still unresolved tension in the air, and her own growing exhaustion, Savannah decided to take up Lucy on her offer. "Very well, in that case, I will let you take the first watch. If you decide that you want to sleep, wake me up and I can take over for as long as you need."

Lucy nodded. "Sounds good. Sleep well, Savannah."

Savannah climbed into her bedroll and did her best to quiet her mind from thinking about their conversation, but ultimately it was a very difficult thing to do. She still didn't know what to make of Lucy, who was now looking more and more like just another thug, but-

Savannah's eyes briefly peaked open with a thought. But, if she said she didn't have any regrets for the people that she killed… Why did she hesitate?

Lucy must've noticed her stirring. "Something wrong?"

"...Just some stray thoughts." Savannah answered in a half-truth. She detested lying, but in her mind, this was more a way of postponing the conversation to such a time as it would be better to have.

The realization helped put her at ease, inspiring a bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, Lucy actually did have a good heart under all of that bloodshed.