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Joshua looked down at her hands, clutching a now-empty and long-since expired bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla. They were always so pristine. Her nails, cut short, were free of dirt, and her palms were smooth and her calluses were gone. Only the small, white outline of a scar on the top of her left hand marred the perfect outward appearance.
Audrey set the bottle in the dirt beside the campfire, wiping her mouth with her jean jacket sleeve.
"What keeps you out here?"
The question was innocent. Why was he awake at this hour? He never rested, even though he slept. Why was he here?
"It is peaceful to read at night, below the stars and beside a fire." There was a lengthy pause, a moment where he flipped no pages and she sat, waiting, or perhaps just watching. "I've noticed you also keep odd hours."
When he looked at her face she was licking her bottom lip, eyes trained on the campfire. The flames shone in her dark eyes, flickering wilder than they were in real life.
"How can I sleep when life is so exciting?" She laughed without smiling.
She kept odd hours, but tonight was the first time she'd chosen to sit by the campfire, near him, absent from anyone else. He tried instead, "We haven't spoken since you arrived."
She swung the topic back around, nearly interrupting him as he finished his sentence. "It was the head injury. It made it…hard to sleep. Maybe hard isn't the right word." She scoffed and tapped the side of the glass with her fingernail, having picked it up again absentmindedly. "It's like I don't need it anymore."
"A brush with death. I know how it feels. I don't think I've slept longer than four hours a night in a very long time." He closed his book, one bandaged finger still tucked between the pages he was reading.
"You've got one hour on me."
Neither of them had looked each other in the eye yet, both peering into the flames between them. Suddenly she coughed, a plume of black smoke exploding from the campfire, sparks showering over her jacket. She patted them away, waving a hand in front of her face to clear the smoke. She stood and moved to the other side of the fire where he was sitting, and took a seat there.
"Damn," she muttered, coughing one last time and frowning to herself at the empty bottle in her hand. She would kill for some water just then—but she didn't want to leave.
"Are you alright?" he asked, setting his book on the log bench beside him. He didn't move any closer, however.
"Just that damn smoke," she replied, brushing away a piece of hair fallen in front of her eyes.
He strained his fingers and closed his hands into fists.
She added with another small laugh, "There was an old saying my dad used to mention. Smoke follows beauty."
"I've heard it. It should have blown towards me then, no?"
She broke into a grin, the first one he'd seen on her—ever.
"I'm not sure if you remember," he did, "but I'm a trained doctor." With the NCR, she thought about adding, but decided not to. He knew anyway.
Sliding closer on the sanded log, Audrey set her palm face up, offering it to him so that he might give her his hand, silently referring to his burns.
He did so reluctantly. He might have shook his head quietly and denied her, and he thought she would have let the topic go, but he felt he had to do this. He set his hand in hers and she glanced up, meeting his eye. He nodded once instead.
She touched his wrist, her fingertips gently tracing the bandages from his forearm and down the center of his palm. They were clean, bleached with some desert flower; she knew he changed them almost daily. She wondered how many scars were burnt away by the fire. His hands were not clean before he was thrown into the canyon—a rebirth.
"Is it painful?" Audrey whispered, barely audible over the crackling logs.
"Yes," Joshua answered, but it was not that simple. The physical pain was dull, having receded over time, leaving scarred flesh and nerves which no longer felt anything. There were no wounds, not ones that he could heal, and he wondered how many of the tribals realized that.
"I've never heard of burn wounds lasting so long. I've read every medical book I've ever found, but maybe they weren't enough."
"It's deeper than the wounds. Beneath the skin, under my flesh. It's a pain I deserve to bear for the rest of my life, no matter how short it may be."
Her fingertips stopped tracing his bandages, coming to rest in his palm, her other hand holding his wrist. She should have felt sick at that touch. Audrey had the hands of a healer, having saved more lives than she took, even after her months of journeying throughout the Mojave. Taking a life sometimes meant saving many more, but those were not the hands of Joshua. He was a killer; he should have deserved what he suffered now. Dying would have been too good for a man like him.
But she wanted his touch anyway. And it did make her feel sick—sick at her longing, not at who and what he was. Some sins could never be forgiven, but she had enough of her own. In a place like this, she was no god; she could not judge.
"Why did you come back?" Joshua asked, his hand falling from hers.
Audrey looked back at the fire, logs splitting. It would go out in less than an hour if no one stoked it. It was warm enough without it, but the fire was comforting. She wondered if he felt the same. He saw the flame as purifying.
"I needed to get away. Vegas, everything…it was all too much."
"Why here?"
"Maybe the same reason you're here," she answered, eyes flicking over to his. "The waters of Zion are peaceful. Next to the waters I swam in as a child, I could believe these rivers are healing."
They are, he wanted to reply, longing to tell her to stay—both beside him tonight and in Zion forever. The red stone and clear, blue waters, your face stark within them, did not make you forget your sins, but forced you to confront them, to make atonement a life goal. He was only so lucky to be marred physically by his own crimes.
"I should go." Audrey stood abruptly, grabbing the glass bottle off the log where she was sitting initially. "Even if I can't sleep, I need to rest."
Joshua placed his hand, the one she had held, back upon his book. "Goodnight, Audrey. Perhaps tomorrow you can see how far the rivers flow."
She gave him a terse smile, not like the real one from earlier, and vanished inside her tent.