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Night in the desert was deceptively cold, but beautiful. Despite the destruction that had claimed the Earth after the nuclear strike, the night could make you feel like it wasn’t there. That there was peace. The stars didn’t know there was a war going on.“Back there. With that guy.” Blair started, breaking the silence as the she stared up into the sky while leaning against a large rock and Marcus, for warmth. Marcus, who was staring into the fire instead. “You weren’t going to stop, were you?”“…No.” Marcus admitted after a moment.“You were going to kill him.” She rolled her eyes down from the sky to look at him.“Yes.” He said with less of a hesitation this time. He remembered the scene almost like it was playing back in his head. The men, the cowards, who had attacked Blair. If Blair hadn’t shot the man, the man would be dead now. “I’m not a good man, Blair.” In case her next question was ‘why’.Blair went quiet, letting her gaze move back to stars. They were always the same. She wondered if she could remember all of them if she put her mind to it. Connor seemed to know most of them by name. Something, he said, his mother had taught him.“When I was little,” Blair said again, “we had this dog. Just a mutt, you know? Nothing special, but man did I love that thing. Didn’t even have a name. Called it ‘dog’. Spent all my time with it until one day he turned on me and ripped a chuck out of my thigh. The vet said we had to put it down. That once a dog turns on you, there was no going back.”Marcus was listening, even if he was pretending not to. He could already tell where the story was going. He could hear the moral of the story. He didn’t think it applied to him.“I didn’t want to see the dog die, so I ran away with it. For a week.” Blair smirked. “He bit me a few times, but after the third day he stopped. Became the loyalist dog I ever knew.”“Blair.” Marcus said after a moment, but didn’t take his eyes off of the fire until he felt her shift beside him to look at him. He turned his head to look at her head on. “You just compared me to a dog.”Blair stared at Marcus for a long minute, eyes meeting, before her lip twitched into a small smirk and then she laughed once on an exhale. “Shit.” She shook her head. “I’m not good with this TLC bullshit. Sorry.”Marcus lips cracked, just barely, then turned back to look at the fire. How much further to the base? Was Kyle and Star still alive? These thoughts sobered him up again quickly.“We should get some sleep.” Blair said as she shifted uncomfortably against the rock. Marcus nodded. Nodded, but he wasn’t tired. Didn’t feel tired. The adrenaline, he told himself. When he finally turned to look at Blair again, she was asleep. The damp clothes hugged the curves of her body, accentuating her figure. She was shivering too. He reached out quietly and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close to try and keep her warm. If she died, there’d be no one to guide him to the Resistance.At least that’s what he told himself.