With Samantha's help, Murphy spent the rest of the night treating the three injured individuals in the group. After a thorough examination of Jeanette, he determined that one more day spent in the rad-room would have her healed back to normal without the use of a stimpak, so in her case, he decided to forego them; there was no need to subject her to that much trauma. Jeanette happily bedded down in the radiation, confident that in a day or two, she would be able to walk again.

After Jeanette was safely out of the way, Murphy turned his attention to the injured Enclave soldier. Sean had been quiet and compliant since hearing the news that his patrol had been killed by Samantha and the Raiders under Crystal; there was a shattered, lost look in his blue eyes that Murphy had seen before. It suggested to him that the kid was in shock. That alone made him feel better about treating the kid. He knew his duty as a doctor was to treat all patients as they came to him, but in the back of his mind, he'd been dwelling on what would happen once Sean was healed. Would he have a completely healthy Enclave soldier on his hands, complete with the Enclave's known hostility toward ghouls?

"Don't worry," Samantha had told him. "I'm staying the night, and I'll be leaving Butch here in the morning. If Sean starts getting out of hand, Butch will be there to help."

Murphy had nodded, thinking that that was great for now, but he'd still have to deal with Sean after Samantha had taken her crew and gone on her merry way. Still, Sean's new attitude suggested he'd at least be easier to handle now. Samantha, who Murphy had determined had more stimpaks than God, had given him two: one to use on Sean's injured knee, and the other on his shoulder. Working under Murphy's direction, Charon and Butch had stationed themselves at Sean's head and feet, and had held him still as Murphy had precisely applied the two stimpaks—so. The former Enclave soldier had convulsed violently at the shock of the near-instant healing, but had managed not to cry out; Murphy had again been, unwillingly, impressed by such stoicism. At his signal, Charon and Butch had released him. Sean had rolled his shoulder and bent his knee carefully.

"That's it?" he'd asked, looking up at Murphy uncertainly, through the mask of cuts on his face; there was nothing to be done for those. Murphy had nodded. "I'm all healed?"

"More or less," Murphy had warned him. "You will need to be very careful with those limbs for a while yet. Ideally your arm should be in a sling for at least two weeks, and you should use a crutch on the side of your leg as well."

The kid bent his leg. "My leg feels…stiff," he'd said, flexing the limb. "It doesn't want to bend."

"I'm afraid there's some residual damage," Murphy had told him. "It may improve or clear up in a few weeks, but you may simply be stuck with a stiff leg."

The kid bit his lip, flexing his limb again, and lapsed into silence. He sat, huddled on the mattress, as Murphy carefully rebandaged his arm and formed a makeshift sling for it; then wrapped his knee in a new brace and laid a crutch near him—one of Jeanette's crutches; she wouldn't be needing them any more after the next morning. The lost, shattered look was still in the kid's eyes. Murphy straightened at last. "That's all I can do for you right now," he told Sean quietly. "I'll leave you some Med-X in case you have any pain during the day. You should also take half a Buff-out every day for as long as the brace and the sling are on; I'll see if I can't get some out of Samantha. For now, just try and get some sleep."

As he rose to his feet, Sean started to reach out as if to clutch at him; his pale blue eyes beseeching. Murphy halted, waiting for the kid to say something, but Sean dropped his gaze and seemed to draw into himself, staring down at the stained mattress and wrapping his good arm around his body. Murphy waited to see if the kid was going to say anything else, but, he was silent; at last, the ghoul left him there, closing the door behind him.

Bright was not in the outer apartment; Murphy wandered out into the hall looking for her, past the two dark and cold fire barrels. The dirty hall outside was empty; for the first time in a while, as he looked around, the dirt and clutter of the place grated on him. I've got to clean this up, he thought to himself.

Barrett wouldn't have noticed, the thought came unbidden. For the first time, that didn't seem to matter. The pain the thought of Barrett called up in him was a distant echo of what it once had been. Perhaps, he mused, he too was healing.

He checked the side rooms that opened off the main passageway—in the prewar days, when the subway had still been in use, the rooms had been restrooms, though now they were as dirty and cluttered as the rest of the station. Bright was in neither of them. With some trepidation, therefore, he approached the metal gates that closed the mouth of the subway. He could see the light of early morning drifting down through the gates and realized at last that the dawn was breaking.

When he swung the gates open and stepped outside, he saw Bright, sitting above him at the top of the steps, with her back braced against one of the side walls. She was rendered in silhouette by the early morning sunshine, gazing out across the Wastes. As she heard his approach, she put her hand to the sawed-off shotgun at her waist, then released it when she saw who it was.

"Whadda you want?" she asked, her battered face contorting in a scowl.

"I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay," Murphy replied cautiously. He took a seat against the opposite wall, a few steps below her.

Bright snorted. "Yeah. I'm doin great." Her fingers twined with each other. She went back to looking out across the empty Wasteland. There was silence for a bit.

"Seen that DeLoria kid around?"

The question startled Murphy. He had seen neither Butch nor Samantha for a while; though he suspected he knew where they were. Or at least, what they're doing, he thought with a trace of amusement. Still, that wasn't his to tell. "I can't say that I have," he answered.

Bright grunted. "I talked to him a bit. That Enclave kid, whatsisname, Sean—been tellin 'im stuff. 'Parently if he goes back to the Enclave he's gonna be in big trouble."

"Really," Murphy said, frowning. "What for?"

One shoulder went up in a shrug. "I guess 'cause his whole gang got killed and he wasn't there to get killed with em. If he comes back now the Enclave guys are probly gonna shoot im f'r—what did Butch call it—'desertion.' Guess that means runnin away or somethin." She glanced over at Murphy. "What are ya gonna do with him and Jeanette?"

What, indeed. Murphy sighed. And what business is it of yours, anyway? he wondered. Somehow he found himself telling her just the same. "Jeanette asked me if she could stay here for a while, and I agreed," he explained. "Ultimately she wants to try and make it to Underworld, but she wants to rest and regain her strength first. She's…had a rough time," he said bleakly, thinking of the fate of ghouls he knew who had gone under the Enclave's knives. Bright simply nodded. "As for Sean…" He sighed again. "Enclave or no, Sean's in no condition to go anywhere just yet. He's had a couple of stimpaks, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable releasing him for at least a month or two. He still needs to be under observation to make sure there's no long-term damage."

Bright ignored the shot at her, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. "That Enclave kid's gonna be trouble," she prophesied. Murphy agreed silently.

"So I guess you're going to be going back to your gang now," he said dourly. "If you-"

He broke off in surprise as Bright's face darkened. "Nope," she said shortly.

"Why not?"

She shifted restlessly. "I can't go back. Crystal kicked me out."

"Oh," Murphy said in surprise.

"Yeah. She tol' me about it when we was talkin out in the hall earlier. She said that if she let me stay in, she'd hafta be watchin her back all the time. She drew her fuckin piece on me," Bright said angrily. "Fuckin said that what she really oughtta do was kill me. An I thought her an me was friends." Bright's voice quivered. "Well, maybe I don't wanna be in her fuckin gang no more, that bitch ever think of that? Fuckin Crystal. She thinks she's so much j-just 'cause…." She trailed off, turning her face away from him.

Murphy sat there, uncertain what to say. Bright huddled on the steps above him, looking as lost and desolate as Sean had earlier down in the depths of the station. "Could you find some other gang to go to?" he asked at last.

Bright's arms tightened around her knees. "Chains already rolled up all the gangs around here. I'd hafta go back to the D.C. ruins or maybe out to Evergreen Mills, and I heard that armor chick fuckin cleared all the raiders outta that place already. Anyway I don't wanna go back to D.C." She swallowed hard. "I d-don't wanna be in no Raiders no more, Murphy," she confessed in a rush. "Bein a Raider sucks. It s-sucks." He could see her eyes glistening.

"I know, Bright," he said quietly.

"It sucks. It all sucks. The f-fightin, the chems, gettin beat up on all the time, havin ta fuck guys you don't want to just cause they're in the gang, and th-then havin to—" She broke off with a breathless gasp. "It's what you k-keep sayin, Murphy. It—it shouldn't be like this. It sh-shouldn't—" Tears were cutting tracks down the dirt on her cheeks. She turned away from him again and buried her face against her arms.

Murphy studied her for a long moment, hearing what she couldn't bring herself to say. The thought of the amount of pain she'd endured in her short lifetime staggered him. He wondered how she'd dealt with all of that without losing her mind. Finally he asked her, "Have you ever heard of Little Lamplight, Bright?"

"Nuh-uh." The words were muffled against her arms.

Murphy stretched his feet out against the opposite wall. "It's a place out in the Western Wastes," he began. "Samantha told me about it—"

"Th-the armor chick?"

"Yeah. The armor chick," he confirmed. One pale eye peeked out from over top of Bright's filthy arms. "She said it's right near Vault 87, if you've ever heard of it. That's the Vault where all the supermutants come from."

"Is it?" She had raised her head and was listening now.

"Yeah." Murphy went on to speak of what Samantha had told him, his voice quiet in the early morning stillness. He told Bright of the city of children, living deep underground, out of sight in the caverns adjoining the Vault; he spoke of how the settlement had begun, as a group of schoolchildren trapped on a field trip when the bombs had dropped, how the teachers with the group had perished one by one in attempts to contact the outside, until only the children had been left. He could see that the words "field trip," "schoolchildren" and "teachers" meant nothing to her; but still she listened, childlike herself in the naïve attention she gave him. He spoke of how, over time, the children who had survived had formed a community among themselves, complete with mayors, doctors, farmers; how when each generation of children reached adulthood they were sent out across the Wastes to Bigtown, to keep the community within a manageable size. He told of the scav teams the children sent out, ranging far and wide in search of food, weapons and other materials to bring back to the settlement in order to keep the community going; her face grew very still as he spoke of how, when the far-ranging scav teams encountered a lost child, they would bring that child back with them as well, enfolding the child within the community, to live and thrive and grow to adulthood, safely underground, protected from the dangers of the Wastes above. He had no idea if Little Lamplight's scav teams ever made it this far east, but he said nothing of that; instead, he simply went on describing the settlement as Samantha had told it to him. Bright listened to all of it, a desperate yearning on her face. And when he had finally finished telling all that Samantha had told him, he reached out and, greatly daring, put one hand on her arm.

"How about you stay here for a while, Bright?" he asked her gently. "Just till you figure out where you're going next. I—I can't stay here by myself anyway," he added quietly. "I could use a protector. How about it, Bright?" he repeated. "What do you say?"

Bright swallowed, and put her hand over his. She did not speak an answer, but then, she did not need to; Murphy understood what she wished to communicate just fine. The rising morning sun reflected streaks of light off tracks of tears on her cheeks, and she squeezed his hand tightly without saying a word.

Finis.