I woke up more comfortable than I had been in a long time. The girl in my arms felt like she belonged there; pressed against my chest, her hair spread out and her face in the crook of my neck.

My eyes shot open and I pulled away quickly.

Mama woke up just as quickly and before I had time to process it, she had reached out and hit me in the throat. I fell off of the side of the bed clutching my neck, coughing. She hits hard.

Her face appeared over the side of the bed before she climbed down onto the floor next to me.

“I’m sorry, Poison,” she said raspily, “I wake up like that if you scare me.”

I continued coughing, my eyes watering and my throat raw. Mama sat next to me and watched me with tired eyes.

“Move your hand,” she said before reaching out to tilt my head back.

I smacked her hand away from me and she frowned.

“Well I didn’t crush your windpipe, you’ll be fine,” she said flatly before standing up.

I watched her slip her shorts on and pull her boots onto her feet, her mask and gun weren’t far behind. Her hand was on the doorknob when I stopped her.

“Wait,” I choked out.

She looked back at me over her shoulder, her expression unreadable.

I rubbed my neck before pushing myself up off of the floor, “I have to clean your wounds or Fun Ghoul will kill both of us.”

She removed her hand and sat back on the bed with a sigh before falling backwards onto the mattress. I approached her with Fun Ghoul’s supplies from last night and sat on the bed next to her. Her hands pulled her shirt up far enough for me to easily clean the wound on her side. We were both silent as I worked.

“You know everyone’s worried about you, right?” I asked.

She didn’t answer and just stared up at the ceiling with her hands clenching her shirt. I didn’t know if it was pain or anger, and I didn’t really care to ask.

“Doctor D. wants you to stay here…so does Show Pony, at least until you’re okay to be on your own again. They’re afraid of what’s going to happen if you don’t give yourself some down time,” I finished cleaning the wound on her side and looked up to find she was looking at me now.

“Did they really say that?” she asked.

I nodded and motioned for her to sit up. She did so with some difficulty but slapped my hands away when I tried to help her up. She turned away from me and lifted her shirt one-handed to expose her shoulder.

“I have to get Grace to New Haven,” she said suddenly.

I stopped what I was doing to look at the side of her face.

“We can take you both up there-” I started but she cut me off before I could go any farther.

“That’s not happening, and you know it,” she said harshly.

I kept my mouth shut but pressed harder on her shoulder and she pulled away from me with a hiss of pain. Her shirt – or I should say my shirt – fell back into it’s rightful place as she stared me down. I could feel that she wanted to hit me and honestly I thought she was going to, but instead she walked out of the room quickly.

I gathered Fun Ghoul’s things and put them back on my desk before following her out into the so-called living room.

Mama was sitting next to Grace in a booth, listening intently to whatever the girl was saying. Show Pony and Jet Star were sitting with them, eating whatever it was they had managed to find in the almost barren kitchen. I approached the booth and cleared my throat. Mama turned to look at me with a glare that could have killed me.

“Scoot over,” was all I said before sitting on the edge of the seat next to her.

She scoffed at me but made room anyway. Jet Star raised an eyebrow at me over Show Pony as he leaned forward to pass his food to Mama.

“Thanks, sugar,” she said sweetly to him before digging in.

Jet Star leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms; his harsh stare was trained on Mama Murder now.

“How old are you, anyway?” he suddenly blurted out.

Mama swallowed what she was chewing and raised an eyebrow at him, “That was…subtle?”

Jet Star kept his stare on her, “If I meant for it to be subtle, you would know.”

Mama glanced at Show Pony who shrugged, and then back to Jet Star, “I’m about twenty-one…I stopped keeping track of my birthdays a long time ago.”

Jet Star’s eyes widened and he looked at me quickly, my own eyes were just as wide as I turned to Mama.

“Twenty-one?” I asked.

She nodded and handed Grace what was left of the food in her hand, “Eat up, sweet pea.”

Grace smiled widely at her and then happily munched on the food in front of her.

Mama looked back up to see Jet Star and I staring at her oddly.

“What?” she demanded.

Jet Star shook his head, “You’re saying you were fifteen when this all started?” he questioned incredulously.

She nodded her head again, “Yes, and?” she turned to look at me when Jet Star didn’t say anything more.

“We were just your age now when this all started and it was hard enough, you were just…a kid. I’m surprised you made it, honestly,” I said quietly.

Mama looked down at the table in front of her, “Yeah, well you learn quick or die in this desert and I wasn’t about to give up,” she said just as quietly.

Show Pony reached a long arm across the table to touch her clenched fist. Mama smiled at him and pulled her hand from the table to place in her lap. Jet Star made eye contact with me and I shrugged.

Mama straightened up all of the sudden and the look of sadness was completely gone from her face, “Do you think I could get a shower?” she asked me.

I looked down at her blood caked skin and smiled kindly, “Let me show you where the bathroom is.”

I stood from the booth and Mama reached over to mess with Grace’s hair before following me into the back and to the shower.

“There should still be some soap in there,” I said as she brushed past me in the doorway.

She nodded and looked at herself in the mirror before grimacing,

“Fuck’s sake, you could’ve told me I look like shit,” she laughed.

I shrugged, “You don’t look like shit,” I said truthfully.

Mama looked over at me leaning in the doorway with a look of disbelief on her face, “Right, totally look like a picture of health.”

We were both awkwardly silent for a few moments as we stared each other down.

“Can you-uh, help me?” she asked uncomfortably.

I raised an eyebrow at her and she grimaced in response.

“It was a stretch getting dressed myself this morning, I could feel my stiches straining and I’m pretty sure if I fuck myself up again Fun Ghoul is gonna-“

I held my hands up and laughed, “Yeah, I understand. He can be scary when he wants to. Especially if we drag him out of bed again.”

She smiled gratefully and motioned for me to shut the door. I did so and she leaned behind the grimy shower curtain to turn the water on.

“There’s only about three minutes of hot water per shower,” I said while watching her test the temperature.

She shrugged and turned back to me, “I haven’t had a hot shower since I was sixteen.”

She took her holster and her mask off and placed them where they wouldn’t get wet. I approached her awkwardly and stood in front of her. She looked at me with a smirk.

“Are you nervous or something?” she asked.

I scowled at her and she laughed before raising her arms as high as she could without hurting herself. I carefully peeled my shirt off of her and put it on the counter behind me. I turned back around to find her unbuttoning her shorts to carefully push them down her legs. I leaned down to pull her boots off while she used the towel rack behind her for balance. I placed her shorts and her boots on the counter behind me as well.

“Do you have a hair brush?” she asked casually like she stood topless in front of strangers every day.

I cleared my throat and tried to keep my eyes above her chest while handing her the almost broken hairbrush from the counter. I watched as she quickly detangled her mess of hair and leaned past me to put it back where I found it.

Mama stepped closer to the shower before reaching down to pull her underwear off. I looked away mostly to be polite, but partly because I was already struggling with my will power not to jump her bones as it was. Even if we didn’t get along very well, I am still a man.

After she pulled the curtain closed I took a seat on the closed toilet.

“Can you hand me my straight razor in my shorts pocket?” she asked sweetly.

I picked up her shorts from the counter and looked through some pockets to find a very shiny old-fashioned straight razor.

“Why the fuck do you have one of these?” I asked as I handed it to her around the curtain.

She laughed, “Well for necessary reasons, of course. But it also comes in handy for those things I could never give up doing from the Pre, like shaving my legs.”

I nodded my head; that explained why her legs were like silk after all this time in the desert.

She sang quietly to herself and I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. Her voice was nice when she wasn’t yelling at you.

“Where were you when all of this started?” she asked softly.

I kept my eyes closed as memories bombarded me.

“You mean when the fires started, or when BLI/nd took over?”

“When BLI/nd came in,” she answered.

“We were all squatting at a friend’s house that wasn’t destroyed when some Dracs burst in the door…our friend Bob was shot right in the head before any of us had a chance to move…” I cleared my throat before continuing, “The rest of us got out with the car and we headed straight out into the zones where the pirate radio station was broadcasting that there was a safe house.”

I opened my eyes when she shut the water off, handing her a towel around the curtain, which she took with a “thank you.”

Mama opened the curtain and stepped out of the tub before sitting back down on the edge of it to look at me.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

I looked at her for a moment before she reached over to turn the water back on and plugged the tub.

“What’re you doing?” I asked curiously.

She looked back up at me before turning back to check the water level on the tub, “I’m gonna wash my clothes, I think…I do it every once in a while to feel a little more human,” she finished with a smile.

“Do you want me to wash anything of yours?”

I shook my head and she shrugged before standing to grab her clothing from the counter.

“Would you mind getting my shirt from your room? I don’t think I’ll be able to get all the blood out of it, but at least it’s mine.”

I nodded and stood to make my way out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I went down the long hallway and into my room to search around for her shirt. When I found it, I walked back into the hallway almost running straight into Kobra Kid.

“Shit Mikey, you fucking scared me,” I laughed.

Mikey rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked down at the shirt in my hand, “Woah, did Frank end up getting the bleeding to stop?”

I looked down at the shirt and back up to my brother, “Oh, yeah. She’s just washing her clothes in the bathroom so I came to get this out of here.”

Mikey smirked at me and rasied an eyebrow.

“What was her shirt doing in your room while she’s in the bathroom?”

I rolled my eyes at him and pushed past him to get to the bathroom.

“She was wearing one of mine you fuck tard,” I growled as he laughed loudly.

“You know I’m kidding!” he yelled after me as I slammed the bathroom door behind me.

Mama looked up from where she was scrubbing dirt and blood out of her shorts, “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” I said flatly which made her frown at me.

She snatched her shirt out of my hand and dunked it in the bathtub as well. We sat in silence until she was done. She drained the tub and wrung her clothes out as best she could. She almost slipped and fell when she tried to stand because she was dizzy but wouldn’t let me help her up.

“I’m okay, shit,” she grumbled.

I frowned deeply at her, “I should get Ghoul…”

She shook her head violently, “I’m fine, seriously.”

I helped her grab her wet clothes and followed her down the hallway. Mikey was sitting at a booth looking at some magazine he had snatched when we were out in the zones. I watched his eyes widen when she walked by in just her underwear and my shirt. She didn’t say a word but continued out the front door and into the heat outside.

I chuckled at him and he shook himself out of it to scowl at me.

When I made it outside I helped Mama hang her clothes to dry and sat next to her in the shade. Grace and Jet Star were playing a few feet away with some old toys we had found in one of the rooms when this first became our home. The sight was enough to make Mama smile.

I watched her eyes narrow while she watched a car approach in the distance, the car wouldn’t be able to see us from where we are when it passed so we were safe but it was enough to always keep us on edge.

Mama sighed loudly and shot a glance at Grace, “We need to make a trip to New Haven."