Note: I am bad and I should feel bad. Future content warning... terrible things happen, as with all my stories. Enjoy.
Update: Comma hunting.
It all came down to one thing: She hated ghouls.
He was relatively sure of it by the time she had dragged him to Rivet City, two days after her purchase of his contract. She had ordered him, with a one finger gesture, to park himself at the door. He had watched her walk off down to the Marketplace and had watched her speaking with everyone in the grungy tub, everyone except for him.
She must hate ghouls; why else would she not speak to him? Even to order him around, as was her privilege, for owning his contract?
He knew she had spoken with Ahzrukhal in order to obtain his contract. She had spoken to that bastard, but not to him. When she came to him to inform him about it, she had only held up the paper and lifted an eyebrow. Never said a word, just made sure he understood. She had stuffed the contract inside her shirt and watched him dispose of that slimeball, and left Underworld, all without a single word.
And after that? Days of nothing but non-verbal cues. As if his job was not hard enough already―watching out for the infamous Vault 101, the Lone Wanderer, who was not quite so lone when he was standing behind her. But she had not spoken to him, and he had never heard her voice. She had always made sure he was out of range or pointed at the ground, making him wait away from her while concluding her business and crooking that pale finger at him in a "come" gesture.
Charon fucking hated it.
It was not that he was not used to the discrimination. That one he had figured out, never bothered to do anything other than ignore it. People were dumb; ghouls were dumb, too, for idolizing the smoothskins that paid them any attention.
This one... she did not seem to want to talk to any ghouls, unless it was necessary. She had led him to a Metro while on a job, looking for some kid gone missing, and run into a pair of ghouls making drugs. Pointedly ignored the conversation the one called Murphy had wanted to have and pushed past them to the tunnel access in the corner. Left Charon hanging, to glare at them, to ensure that they would not start shooting and to catch up with her down in the tunnels. Mirelurks all over that place, too, and she sucked at shooting with that pissy little hunting rifle of hers.
It was not in good condition, and she did not seem to know how to fix it for herself. He was tempted to offer to fix it but he knew how that conversation would go; he did not relish the awkwardness of a confrontation.
It was annoying to know that she had hired him and she did not want to speak to him, though. Was it a game? He knew how to play the quiet game. Did that for ages in the Ninth Circle. Ahzrukhal had not been worth talking to and, unless ordered to, Charon had not bothered. The customers had tried, even if he had only spoken when he needed to respond. He half-expected this employer to babble like a little brat, given how young she appeared to be. Not at him; maybe with everyone else, but she would not babble at him.
She was very young, too. Long brown hair and big blue eyes. A chubby face that reminded him of a child, and always with a wide smile did she gesture at him to open his pack for her to fill. Charon hated children.
At one point he had decided he was probably going to go off on her if she did say something. No one had employed him and not spoken to him, in one way or another.
It was... frustrating. He vented that frustration on the things that attacked them in the wastes. Like when she was walking away from Canterbury Commons, a week after obtaining the contract.
That situation―she was calmly walking toward the highway, looking at her stupid Pip-Boy and a yao guai came flying at them. He had killed it, double-tapped it for good measure, before she even turned around to see what was going on. Her response was nothing more than a smirk and a head nod. "Let us go" without the words. Like he was a dog?
Nothing about the danger, nothing about his saving her ass repeatedly. He did not expect praise. It was a job, he obeyed the contract, he was taught that. But the silence being stretched out into the wastes...
Was it only for him?
The first time he ever heard her speak was in Vault 106. Once opened there was little to stop Vaults from becoming anything other than ravaged ruins, lost to the wastes. Vault 106 had the distinct honor of being inhabited by insane Vault dwellers, which he and the girl put down. She was doing a little better by this time, having learned to aim for larger body parts and compensating for her ineptitude. Charon suspected she would do ten times better if she had a shotgun like he had, to make up the difference.
As they were walking through the Vault the air began to change. It turned blue, and Charon was temporarily distracted by what was surely a hallucination. The hallway suddenly appeared to be pristine, and people were walking through doors, away from them.
"Dad!" the girl yelled. She began to hotfoot it through the hallway, running at something only she could see. Charon was both surprised and alarmed―surprised at her voice, alarmed at her action. He kept up with her easily, though she was running faster than he had ever seen her move before.
The blue tinged air returned to normal, soon enough, and she was standing at the end of the ruined hallway, her breath coming hard, her face stricken. He closed the distance between them, kept his gun up, and watched her carefully.
"Where―?" she said, and her eyes drifted to the ground. She put her hand on her face and rubbed her eyes, then looked around again.
It might have amused him to see her startled reaction, upon seeing him behind her, if she had not looked so upset. It was a new expression, one that he had not had the pleasure of seeing before, and she was definitely more attractive and less babyish for it. But she was about to cry, and that was not good. Tears would get them both shot.
She stopped herself, standing stock-still in the hallway, then turned on her heel and strode away. Perhaps she was mad that she had spoken, and broken the illusion. Perhaps the hallucination had made her angry because it was her father and she had been looking for him for a long time, according to what he had heard Three-Dog say. Looking for him long enough that the sight of him, even though not real, would draw her in such a manner to him.
Either way, it made Charon nervous. Angry employers sometimes took that anger out on him, because he was available, because he could take it, because they wanted to hit him anyway. He wasn't afraid of a beating but he did not want the evening's activities to include one delivered by the hands of a teenage girl.
It happened a second time when they were in the Science Labs. Again she gasped out a word or two, though she moved more slowly toward whatever hallucination she was seeing. A moment later, the blue air disappeared again and she halted her slow advance.
"It's not fair," she muttered. He heard her clearly in the gloom of the Vault. Her voice was nothing special. Almost a little annoying.
They moved through more laboratories. Vague sounds in the distance kept him alert and he almost walked into the girl when the air suddenly turned blue once more. She had planted her feet and was staring at the corner, her face screwed up in a weird way. Charon could not see anything other than the now pristine-looking Vault interior. He glanced at her, then at the corner.
She stood there for a few minutes, doing nothing. Her hands rose, and she reached out, then drew them back. He could hear the soft sounds of crying.
The contract provided him with little he could do, in this moment. He was allowed to exercise his judgement on dealing with threats; he was allowed to excuse himself, if he needed to perform bodily functions; he was allowed to speak as he desired unless the employer directed otherwise. But he was not allowed to voice judgement on an employer's actions, and he was not about to ask why she was crying. Nor would he ask if she intended to stare at what she knew was a hallucination, for as long as it appeared.
And it was not going away. The blue air stayed firmly around them, without wavering. This was a threat. He could step forward and drag her out of the room; remaining somewhere where one of the insane dwellers could sneak up behind them was not a good idea.
He thought she would probably kill him for doing that. She clearly wanted to stare at what probably looked to her like her father, possibly because she missed him. Charon could not think of another reason she would be distressed. Minutes stretched into a half-hour, and he had made up his mind to remove his employer from a potentially deadly area when she began to speak.
"Why?" she said. "Why did you leave?"
His hand froze in the air, ready to grab her upper arm and drag her away.
"Why did you not realize that they would try to kill me?" She was sobbing now, wiping her face with her forearms. Little trails of dust from the Vault outfit smeared onto her face. He watched her in silence, his senses alert to danger.
"Why did you think it was okay to leave once I became an adult? That I wouldn't miss you, that I would want a life sheltered from the truth?" She crouched down and covered her face. "WHY DID YOU LIE!" she shrieked out, and the sound echoed through the Vault room, bouncing back onto Charon's exposed eardrum with pain.
He cringed at the sensation and immediately decided that now was a good time to get out. Ignoring her protests, he grabbed her arm and pulled her from the room. The blue air was gone, the visions disappeared, and he slammed a fist onto the door panel to close it. He released the girl in the hallway,where she stumbled to her knees, and cried into her hands.
Charon took a deep breath and waited for the inevitable result. Maybe she might try to shoot him or would order him to wait and never return. The latter had happened once before, and he'd been shot at by many an employer. Ahzrukhal had a fondness for kicking him in the crotch when he was displeased with Charon. ...He hoped the girl would not do that.
She cried for a while but her sounds gradually faded away, and eventually she stood up and adjusted herself. She pulled out her rifle and stared away from him. He stood, without a word.
"Thank you, Charon," she delivered, instead of the bullet he had expected. "Thank you. That was smart of you."
He did not reply. There was nothing to say; he had fulfilled the contract. The action spoke more than any words could say. He did not bother to help her up from the floor, but he did notice the look in her eyes as she led him out of the Vault.
She did not hate him. She was... afraid. He would have smiled, but it felt like a criticism of his employer. Instead, he kept a grin inside his head and remembered that look.
It was a strange relationship, the two of them had.