The next few days are nice. Cassie spends hours every day working with Daisy to teach her how to safely use her knife. Sapphire was doing very poorly for a while, but she's finally recovering. Her fever broke yesterday, and she can finally keep the cherries that Daisy shared with her down.

Ivy and Vince spend most of their time with Sapphire, just to make sure she's ok. Plus, in their spare time, they do their best to teach a few people how to actually take care of the sick and injured. He also finds some time to teach people to fish and how to do it sustainably, but I think that's mostly because he wants to do it while he can.

Nimda, Lance, and Robin spend their days taking apart all but one of the cars that the slavers arrived in, and using that to build everything a city could need. An aquaponics system is constructed near the entrance ramp, on rails to let it be rolled out into the sunlight during the day. Numerous fish swim amongst the plants. Electricity gets routed throughout the city, powered by a closable wind turbine generator they repaired high up on the mountain.

Clover helps occasionally, but never for more than a few minutes before returning either to our room or to the car, seemingly at random. She does her absolute best to avoid Vince the entire time, never checking on Sapphire and always somehow returning to her rest a few minutes before he arrives.

Corax and I spend most of our time with Cassie, and by extension Daisy. I just enjoy listening to Cassie explain everything, never wanting her to stop. With every break in Cassie's explanations, she asks endless questions about my body and how it works, and I do my best to answer.

We ended up taking one of the tablets we found in one of the slaver's cars, and reformatted it to upload everything we know. Medicine, mechanical engineering, farming, defensive and offensive strategy, anything and everything that might be useful. I also can't help but sneak in my and Cassie's books, hopefully someone will enjoy them. I even try to simplify versions of the books so Daisy can try to read and learn from them. Sure, a lot of details get lost in the transition, but she can practice reading on those, and move onto the more detailed and complicated versions as she grows up. Plus, not many people can read, and the simplified versions may help those who can, but only barely.

I find myself almost fearing the end of the storm. I'm excited to get to the AI city of course, and also to let everyone get home, but it's nice here. I don't want to say goodbye to Daisy, I don't know how she'll handle it.

I don't know how I'll handle it.

That day comes far too soon. The storm has been weakening all day, but neither Cassie nor I want to talk about that. We just keep hanging out with Daisy at the side of the lake, letting Cassie teach her the last of her knowledge.

Vince comes to interrupt us and deliver the bad news.

"Hey, storm's passed and we're all packed. We've got to get moving." He says.

"Oh." Daisy deflates, her excitement at learning instantly leaving her body.

My mind screeches to a halt at her sadness. When it starts to think once again, it screams at me to stay, yells at me to bring her with us, to shelter her from this and all future bad news.

"Sorry." I say quietly.

"Are you going to be coming back to visit?" She asks hopefully.

"No, I don't think we can." Cassie says gently. "We live very far away. But you're going to be alright without us."

Tears well in Daisy's eyes, very nearly forcing me to promise her otherwise. But she clenches her hands and tries to hold back her tears. She rushes forward, burying her face in Cassie's stomach.

"Hey." Cassie awkwardly wraps her arms around the small girl. "You have your knife, you can always remember us through that."

Vince takes a step forward, crouching beside Daisy.

"If your life ever sends you east and you find yourself in Arc City, stop by Silver's scrapping gang. I plan to be there for the rest of my days. Blue and Cassie will be there too."

Daisy gives a small nod, and clenches Cassie tighter.

"Thank you." Her voice is muffled by Cassie's shirt.

"Just remember what I taught you." Cassie says.

"Fight like Hell." She mumbles.

"Fight like Hell." Cassie agrees. "But also, make sure you're fighting for everyone here, not fighting against them."

"I will." Daisy lets go, quickly wipes her eyes, and latches onto me.

Don't say she can come with us. I'm not going to take her away from everyone she knows to go with someone she's known only for a few days. I'm not going to steal her away from her family, even if she might be safer that way.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I wrap my arms around her, holding her tightly.

"If we're ever around again, we'll stop by." I promise her, my emotion thick and my tears running down my face. "I'm just not sure if or when that'll happen."

"Really?" She asks.

"Sure we will." Vince says. "But don't count on us reappearing. We live two thousand miles away, it's a dangerous drive, and we put an end to our reason to be out this way before we got here."

It takes her a moment before her grip relaxes, and I let go to let her step back. She turns to Vince, once again trying to wipe her tears from her eyes.

"Make sure they stay safe." She says.

"I think it'll be the other way around." Vince laughs. "The three of them are the only reasons I'm here talking to you."

She doesn't hesitate to turn back to Cassie and I.

"Keep them safe." She orders.

"Yes ma'am" Cassie says. "I didn't drag him out of Hell just to let him die now."

"You do the same. Keep everyone safe." I say.

"I will."

"Alright, I hate to rip Cassie and Little Blue away from you, but is it alright if we get moving?" Vince asks, crouching down in front of Daisy. "It's a long drive, and the sooner we leave, the safer we'll be."

"Yeah." She gives a few small nods.

"Thank you." Vince says earnestly. "We'll stop by the ramp to say goodbye to everyone. Can you go see if Sapphire is good to walk, and help her up if she wants to say goodbye?"

Daisy gives a final nod and begins to walk away, glancing back as she goes. She lingers for just a moment before turning a corner and disappearing further into the city.

"I think I want a kid one day." I say.

Cassie begins to cough, choking on seemingly nothing. Vince just looks away, suddenly finding the lake incredibly interesting. Cassie slowly recovers, fighting to get her breath back.

"Fuck Blue! At least give me a warning!" She fights to not yell, and turns to Vince. "Don't you fucking tell Ivy a word."

"I didn't hear anything." Vince says, holding his hands up.

"Sorry, should I not have said anything?"

"No, it's just, fuck. We'll talk about it later, in private." She glances around, ensuring nobody but Vince is around. "That's a big conversation, and I'm not ready to be a mom, not in our line of work."

"I didn't mean right now!" I say quickly. "I just meant sometime in the future. I think it would be nice."

"How about we see if we live that long before we start making plans." Cassie shakes her head and starts to walk towards our house. "For the record I'd be a fucking awful mom."

"What do you mean? You did really well with Daisy."

"Yeah, and she's not like most kids her age. The first time I have to clean up someone's vomit or shit? It's not going to be pretty."

"I can do that though. I can't smell, and I don't think cleaning up a normal human body function is gross."

"And what are you going to do when they hit their teenage years and decide they hate you?" Cassie pushes her way into our room.

"Why would they do that?" I ask.

"Puberty fucking sucks, that's why."

The two of us quickly scoop up our small belongings and head back to our car. Vince has already climbed into the driver's seat of our car and is ready to go. Ivy is sitting next to him, her seat reclined as far as it will go to be as flat as possible. Nimda and Clover have claimed one car, with Lance and Robin in the other, both groups already prepared to leave. I didn't mean to hold everyone up. At least we have a lot of experience packing up everything we own and can move quickly.

"Is puberty that bad?"

"Oh yeah. You're lucky you skipped the whole mess." She says, climbing into the back seat, and I climb in next to her. "Your emotions just go wild, everything is suddenly amplified a hundred times, and even small things can spiral out of control. Plus you're always sweaty and hot for some god forsaken reason."

"Oh yeah, I don't think I could handle that." It sounds a little too close to what I already experience, or at least experienced before I got a grip on some of it. I can't imagine it being worse.

"You three packed?" Vince asks.

"Yeah, we have everything." I answer.

"Alright, good. Let's get moving then." Vince eases the car into drive and begins to creep through the city. Lance and Nimda both follow closely behind us.

A fair number of people are waiting by the ramp, and the barricade has been partially dismantled and pulled aside to give us a clean shot outside the city. Sapphire is up and moving around, slowly making her way to the barricade, pulled on by Daisy. I'm glad she's feeling good enough to walk, I'm confident she'll be fine without us.

Vince stops the car in front of Joseph, and Daisy runs up next to him.

"We'll miss you." Joseph says. "Thank you one last time for everything you've done, from all of us."

"It was nothing. Just make sure you keep this place free." Vince says. "Try to set up some trade routes if you can. You can never have too much ammo."

"I will."

Daisy says nothing, just stands there, failing to hold back her tears.

What do I even say that I haven't already?

"Hey," Cassie, apparently, has no such problems. "There's no need to cry, you're going to be fine." She reassures Daisy. "You've got a lot of good people here, you don't need us. Keep your chin up."

Daisy can't bring herself to say anything, but she does stand up a little straighter, and lifts her head up.

"Don't listen to her, it's alright to cry." I say. "Don't hide your feelings, trust me. Find someone you trust and don't be afraid to talk to them, alright? Lean on your friends when things get rough, they'll help you through it if you let them."

"Ok." She says quietly.

Sapphire gives an appreciative smile to both of us, but doesn't say anything else.

Silence takes over for a few seconds before being interrupted by Vince.

"Alright, we've got to get moving. Good luck."

"You too." Joseph nods.

Vince brings us up the ramp, back onto the surface of the earth. The storm is quickly fading over the horizon, and the sun is beating down on us, baking the desert.

"Alright Little Blue, what's our heading?"

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