Smoothskin

by How Like a Winter

After James' death, the Wanderer goes mute. "Finally she lost consciousness completely, and when she came to, she didn't speak for a year."

smoothskin

Most nights, Mara dreamt of ash and dust that wrapped its tendrils and choked her throat. But she could rarely afford to sleep for any significant length of time, and that was fine, because Charon grumbled about it for days if she thrashed enough to wake him up. It alarmed him, had him grabbing his gun and hoisting it up, because he always had to prepare for some threat. Although the nightmares hadn't always plagued her, she hadn't slept through a full night ever since the Jefferson Memorial without her twisting around and jerking up in a cold sweat. She didn't remember much of the Memorial, but she would never forget the air burning her lungs with every breath and Charon's face looming over her fluttering eyelids as she laid half-conscious on the metal of the floor. Up until that point, they had silently maintained that he was not to set a hand on her, but after that bitch scientist who said that James could not be saved ran off for fear of radiation poisoning, Charon carried Mara from danger. The written contract to protect her superseded any unwritten agreement.

As Charon dragged her away, Mara had screamed for her father until she gasped to fill her lungs with more air and scream again. She screamed until her voice sounded like that of a ghoul's, rough like gravel scraping against her throat. Finally she lost consciousness completely, and when she came to, she didn't speak for a year.

But death didn't haunt Mara's dreams every night. Sometimes, images of the Vault floated to her mind, faces that morphed into one another because she couldn't completely remember them, despite her strained attempts. Their words echoed, too, Amata's encouragements or insults spat from the mouths of Tunnel Snakes waking Mara with wet cheeks and arms wrapped around herself because she missed every moment of it, teasing and all.

Charon recognized Mara's dreams of the Vault because her whole body shook and her mouth shaped the word Fatherbut made no sound. She did that when she was awake, too. Or James. The ghoul would be hoisting his gun behind his back while she bent down to rifle through a Super Mutant's remains, and he watched as her lips parted and tongue struck the roof of her mouth like a funeral drum: Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.Back in Underworld, Charon had known ghouls that had lost their minds along with their loved ones, and they didn't act so very different from Mara, except ghouls didn't usually shed tears. Mostly, they released their despair by punching in a museum wall, a method of dealing with grief that Charon decidedly preferred.

He would have expected the Mara who freed Charon (with caps or blood; he never asked) to do the same, armed with her attitude of "shoot first, get answers while you're sorting through their shit." But New Mara followed Charon now, shuffling after him through the Wasteland from sunup till sundown. They abandoned the Citadel. Mara wandered from ruined town to town and Charon tagged along, a constant presence that she supposed had nowhere else to go even if she released him. She couldn't say anything to him anyway, but she thanked her mother's God for his company.

Every day she missed her father, with a volcanic pressure she kept clamped in her gut and the back of her head. Sometimes she couldn't help herself and sobbed soundlessly, and when she did, Charon waited.

When they could find a settlement, they rested until morning, or tried to. The residents of Megaton welcomed them to the extent that they could and even Doc Church offered a discount, albeit a small one, when Mara stumbled in aglow with radiation. But everywhere else, people stared or, worse, spoke to them.

Charon wouldn't soon forget their reception in Rivet City. They were the talk of the town. While the men jeered, and one shouted "You like it rough, huh?", Mara ducked her head and kept walking as Charon wondered if she understood. "Where'd y'get that pretty lil' dress, huh?" They were talking about the pre-war frock she'd picked off a corpse in Paradise Falls.

"Hey, I remember you," said the woman who hung around bars day and night. "Yeah, the ghoul's bitch."

"Who're you talking about?" The woman's son appeared behind her, blinking up with wide brown eyes.

"Well that ghoul, he either kills people like us for money or he picks it off us at night. Then he spends it on her so he's got a smoothskin of his own. You couldn't pay me shit to smooth that."

When Mara's eyes narrowed, Charon quickly reached to lower her arm as it jerked up to the holster at her waist. The rest of the sentence hadn't quite carried to her ears, but they perked at smoothskin, the ghoul name for humans, and Charon's for Mara. Although she otherwise moved as if in slow motion, she would respond to that word, if nothing else.

Most of the merchants refused to deal with Charon, so he went down to the Muddy Rudder, expecting that the bars would not be so picky. "Uh, what'll it be?" stammered Belle Bonny, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She directed the question to Charon without even bothering to address Mara, and the ghoul knew then that Belle had already heard about them. "Today's special i-is, um, our iguana o-on a stick—"

"Brahmin?" The bouncer barked a harsh laugh, but Charon only had to turn around to silence the man.

Earnestly, Belle bobbed her head up and down. "I-in the back. I'll have to go get it. Uh, can you wait here?" She was almost pleading, hands clasped earnestly as if in prayer. Clearly, she'd heard of the local ghoul with caps pouring out of his ears, and she wasn't about to let that opportunity slip away.

Unfortunately, Charon wasn't quite so rich as he appeared, forced to pick the pockets of most everyone and sell most everything they could scrounge up to feed Mara. Although she ate like a bird, she vomited up almost everything. If he placed almost anything but Brahmin-grade meat before her, she'd cut it into crumb-sized pieces and swallow each one only to spend the night gagging it up. After fleeing the Vault, she'd weaned herself off that high-quality food on her own, but New Mara could stomach only the best. Townspeople stared at Charon as he bought the most expensive steak available and they gossiped about it in the marketplace, swapping theories to explain it away like the merchants traded goods.

Worst, but perhaps the most amusing of all, he and Mara's true financial state didn't allow for much luxury when reserving a room. They could afford only one. Women tittered into the palms of their hands while men grinned rows of gold teeth and exchanged knowing glances.

Moistly they avoided Saint Monica's Church, except when Charon swiped the pre-war money from the donation box. Mara's eyebrows knit with concern and she glanced at the church sign, so he spread out his hands in a question, but she shook her head and gestured for him to go ahead with a wave of her hand. She never approved of theft, especially right under the nose of a priest; before she lost her words, she'd lectured Charon about stealing and declared that her father would be ashamed of such behavior. But she never directly commanded him not to do it anymore, so he mostly ignored the disapproving frown.

In one of Rivet City's dingy restrooms, she studied her reflection in the mirror, streaked with dirt like her face. The harsh fluorescent light revealed the pale face in all its glory: eyes underlined with bags and bruises, cheeks gaunt from malnourishment, scars crisscrossing like a spider's web. Smoothskinwas hardly the word she would have used for it, but what the hell. She glanced away and, wetting her hands in the water and filth gushing out of the faucet, she noticed that the undersides of her fingernails were black with grime. For a moment, she was frozen, and then she yanked paper towel after paper towel from the dispenser, until it was almost empty. She scrubbed under her fingernails until the last traces of dirt washed down the drain, until she had scraped the skin away and blood welled up over her fingernails.

She left the sink smeared red and exited the restroom, expecting Charon to be standing outside, but he was not where she left him.

Pupils dilated like tiny bullets, she rapped soundly on the wall, and then the door to the men's restroom. When there was no response, she poked her head inside to find it empty. She checked behind the torn shower curtain just in case and in the maintenance closet, but found only a few stray hangers and a pair of worn-out sneakers that someone had left behind. There were no signs of a struggle or traces of blood. Charon had simply disappeared.

Swallowing the panic that rose like bile in her stomach, she hunted the rooms nearby for a pen and notepad, upon which she scribbled have you seen the ghoul? When she showed the note to the droid running the hotel, the droid replied that no, he'd seen no trace of it. Mara stood there for a moment, lost, before she let herself back into their hotel room, hand trembling around the keys.

Inside, Charon was sitting on the bed like he'd never left, and grunted at the sight of Mara.

She fumbled for the notepad again. What happened?

Charon observed the new attempt at communication with no visible surprise. "Took too long, smoothskin. Guard said I was loitering and sent me back here."

Mara sagged against the wall in relief.

"Next time," he promised, "I'll tear 'em limb from limb before I listen to those bastards." She smiled, a faint curve of her lips that did not reach her eyes.

The next morning was a Sunday. Charon knew that Mara didn't like Sundays, because she slept in as late as he would let her and stalled as long as she could before finally leaving the room. As a result, Sunday was the one day on which she fixed her hair, setting curlers for up to an hour and powdering the bruises that spotted her face.

"Gettin' some church this mornin'?" asked one of the women, clutching a tattered book. "Goodness knows y'need it."

No doubt Mara's appearance implied that she planned to stop by Saint Monica's, but in fact she wandered the opposite side of Rivet City, even leaving for a few hours to stroll in the Wasteland. Only hours after church had let out did she return, Charon right at her side or even leading her back. People gazed on curiously, as they always did, but only the town drunk figured out the weekly ritual.

"I saw you leave yesterday," she said, "an' I saw you come back." When Mara ignored the dark-skinned woman, she punched Mara lightly on the arm, and Charon bared his teeth. Stepping back with her hands in the air, Tammy said, "Hey, I didn't mean nothin' by it. You're scared o' them priests, huh?" Mara actually nodded. "You know what they'd have to say about you. Same shit they say about me." She walked off laughing and Charon beckoned with a crooked finger for Mara to follow him away.

She did know what the priests would say. There'd been priests in the Vault, and they had a special word for women like her. Animals, the priests called them, animals who fucked ghouls like animals. The holy men begged whatever god they worshipped to smite such animals. There were other words too, but Mara shoved those to the back of her mind and tried to justify her actions. No priest forbade the purchase of ghouls as slaves, and she had purchased Charon, he was rightfully hers, and what they did under the cover of darkness was their own business. But still, Mara's mother had devoted her life to faith, and James had raised Mara to uphold her mother's morals. Sometimes when Mara looked up and gazed into the wasteland above her head, she wished that she didn't have to bear the shame that she and Charon shared, although for him, she figured, it was probably just another part of his job, his contract, to respond when she reached for him. The first time she did, too exhausted to really know or care about what she was doing, it reminded her vaguely of the Vault.

Of her childhood there, Mara remembered Butch and his Tunnel Snakes laughing at her once because she had never kissed anyone, or been in a serious relationship with any of the guys her age. "Come on, Mara, it's not like you're ugly or anything."

"Get out of here," said Amata, glaring at Butch and pulling Mara away before she could respond. "My father—"

"Look at Amata, sticking up for Mara like that." He clicked his tongue and continued, "I'm starting to think I know why you two spend so much time in each other's quarters. Alone."

The faces of the other Tunnel Snakes twisted with smirks and they punched each other on the arm; one whistled. "Invite me next time," one called, as Mara stomped off towards her quarters.

She couldn't exactly slam the automatic door, but swore under her breath as she walked away from them, and James looked up with a frown from where he had been reading a pre-war book. But before he could ask anything, her door was already sliding shut, and he didn't ask her about it until dinner.

"Honey, did something happen today at school?"

Not meeting his eyes, she shook her head, but he knew her too well. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

That was enough to break down her defenses, and she struggled to steady her voice as she replied. "It's just—I could deal with it if they left me alone, just for a day, but no. Every single day they follow me and Amata and make comments and pass notes to one another that they read in class, and everyone knows what they say—they want me to know—and they never let up. I don't want to get in a fight again, but…."

"I understand," he sighed, and stood up from the table, pushing in his chair. "I'm proud of you for not fighting back. There are some times when we must, but violence should never be anything but a last resort."

She smiled a little. "Where are you going?"

"To make sure that this doesn't happen again."

Later, Mara learned that James had spoken to Amata's father, and the Overlord did indeed make very certain that the Tunnel Snakes wouldn't actually say anything about the two friends. But Butch still leered at her with his eyes, and the gang still laughed whenever they passed, until one day Freddy Kreuger asked Mara if she wanted to "find something to do" that weekend.

At the time, that alone earned raised eyebrows from the adults; Freddy was more than a couple of years her senior, although large age gaps were sometimes unavoidable in the under-populated Vault. James simply warned her against doing anything that she might regret if the relationship did not last. Mara flirted shamelessly with Freddy around the Vault, flaunting their relationship to the Tunnel Snakes, and the rumors of Mara and Amata ended almost immediately. Naturally, new ones flared up before the end of the day, but Mara didn't dispute them. A couple of times, she let Freddy kiss her, which prompted the Overlord to summon Mara and caution her about the consequences of "breaking Vault law, and moral law" by "doing anything serious." She'd laughed it off with Amata; how silly the Overlord was, talking like that—but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was disappointing her father by receiving admonition from the Overlord.

When she finally overcame the embarrassment and asked James to tell her what he thought of the relationship, he repeated that age did not matter, other adults did not matter, and even the Overlord's opinions should not discourage her. Nothing could restrict love, he insisted, not age or anything else.

A few months later, Freddy broke off the relationship. That was the last man Mara dated and the only one she'd kissed, but she never forgot her father's words—nothing could restrict love, and nothing should try. She wondered sometimes if she loved Charon, and what Daddy would have said about it. Even now, his presence hung like a watchful eye over her shoulder; she couldn't imagine him not knowing, looking down from wherever he was now to the darkness where she and Charon committed every act that the townspeople whispered of.

It had begun as curiosity. Ghouls lacked hair of any kind, and her hand had ached to trace the flap of skin with which he shut his eyes. She ran a finger along the edges, the little bumps of ghoul flesh, dipping in the groove where his cheeks would have been. His breath had no odor, she discovered. He did not blink, or flinch when she leaned in to feel his heartbeat, her hand jumping with each pulse. Before long, she had committed to memory the time between thumps, and her hand expected every crevice on his chest. He sighed through his nostrils and did not object. The lines of muscle along his back tensed when she rested her palm atop them, and then they slackened. Their lips meshed like silk sucking dew off a rock until she broke away, red-faced with shame, but impulse urged her to return and she obeyed.

Not once did he press her forward, but neither did he hesitate to respond.

Once, he muttered, "Almost forgot this."

On one occasion, Mara didn't think, and reached for Charon's hand under the table at the Muddy Rudder. Her own hand was, like the rest of her, a bony mess that slipped away when Belle approached them. "I'm sorry, but I-I'm going to have to request that you—"

Mara knew what was coming, so she stood up and trudged out of the bar, shoulders slumping like an attempt to sink out of sight. By the next morning, Rivet City buzzed with the news, the reports of an unspeakable sighting. A child spat at Mara's feet as she passed, Tammy's son, and she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. It was the first time anyone had punished him, and he fled, though a guard confronted Mara an hour later. "You are causing a public disturbance," he said, eyes fixed on a point above Mara's head. "I am forced to request that you leave our city."

"And take that fucking monster with you!" shouted one man as he passed them. Charon bared his teeth again, and as they glittered in the dim light; the man swore and stomped off.

She left Rivet City and took the fucking monster with her. On the way out, the homeless man stretched out his hand and whispered for water, so she rummaged through her pack until she found a pure bottle.

Then she and Charon roamed Wasteland for days at a time. With no place for them to sleep or bathe, they snatched hours of sleep while the sun was still up, due to the risk of Super Mutants or worse sneaking up on them in the middle of the night. Often times, they leapt to their feet at the sound of gunshots, and one skirmish with the Raiders resulted in a tear down Mara's pre-war dress so that she had to don Raider armor from that point on. There was nowhere to hide, so she undressed right in the middle of the Wasteland to change into the armor that revealed much more skin than she would have preferred.

"You should eat," Charon said, really meaning that she should eat more. She nodded, grimacing at the sight of her chest, sagging and mottled with bruises, and the dark hue of veins contrasting with the pale skin. Staring into the reflection of an irradiated pool, she saw sprigs of hair, darkened with oil, splayed in every direction around her head. Her cheeks were hollow like Charon's; she hummed to herself in surprise, for her appearance now struck her as rather ghoulish. Maybe people in new towns would think her a ghoul, she thought, and hummed again.

Charon blinked. For the first time, she had uttered a sound, if a wordless one. "We should return to Underworld," he said. Turning from the muddy pool, she faced Charon with an expression as blank as the Wasteland. "We're a freak show here."

When she shook her head, Charon pointed at the notebook in her pocket, but she shook her head again so hard that hair whipped across her face.

They walked until Mara wore holes in the bottom of her shoes and couldn't eat anymore, because they'd run out of Brahmin. After they ran out of ammo, she wielded a Chinese sword and the blood of mutants stained her hands, dried under her nails again. They traversed the Wasteland, but never entered towns, and some mornings Mara did not walk anywhere at all.

One morning Charon awoke to the sound of a splash, and he looked to see Mara scrubbing the grime off her naked body in an oasis that gleamed with radiation. More likely than not, he realized, she was probably scrubbing the rest of her mind away with it. He scooped her up in his arms and set her down three days later when they reached the steps of Underworld.

The moment they entered, Carol greeted Mara with warm hello; Mara returned the welcome with a stare. "Cat got your tongue?"

When Charon replied, "You might say that," Carol's eyes widened in alarm.

"What do you mean? Did something happen?"

As each spoke, Mara's eyes drifted from one ghoul to the other. Charon whispered, "Her father," and Carol nodded in understanding.

Then Winthrop caught eye of Mara, and he approached them to exclaim, "I thought I recognized you! Just wanted to be sure. It's been…."

Mara's face was losing color by the second, and she swayed in place until her legs collapsed underneath her.

She blinked into consciousness to the sound of Doctor Barrows and Charon arguing with one another. Mara's vision flooded back in a rush of colors that swam together before parting like the Red Sea her mother had once spoken of. Still, she could not make out the voices for another moment, until—"…smoothskin?" The word tilted up at the end, a question from Charon to Barrows.

"The radiation was too much," Barrows urged. "Her mind…." Mara bit her lip, the pain forcing her to stay awake. "…gone. She will not survive the Wasteland."

"She gonna grow extra arms, too?"

"Very funny, Charon. There's more to it than that."

"And I thought it couldn't get any better."

"You'd be surprised how much better it can get. Mara can't speak, and to be honest, I'm not sure why. Could be some byproduct of the radiation. At any rate, you must convince her to stay in Underworld."

Mara's lips met to form letters without sound, and Charon noticed the movement, eyes sliding towards her. I can speak.Not a muscle on his face twitched in response, so she grabbed the sheets at her side with effort, but it felt as if an invisible chain tightened around her throat when she tried to force sounds from it. "She wants out," Charon said, and Mara nodded.

"Why? She is safe here."

Wishing that the doctor would not talk as if she wasn't even in the room, Mara slid off the bed, inching her feet onto the floor. She sighed in relief when she stood on them and did not wobble in the slightest. Charon's cracked lips parted, though he did not quite smile, but that hardly surprised her. "Beats me, Doc. You'd have to ask her." He held out the wrinkled paper in an offer for Mara to write her response down, but she shook her head, and Charon shrugged.

The doctor paced across the room with his arms folded across his chest, his creased forehead a sea of wrinkles. "I don't like it, but I can hardly force you to stay."

They didn't leave that day, though, or the next. While Mara slept for most of the following week, she dreamt of ash and dust that wrapped its tendrils and choked her throat. Charon hunted down the best food he could find and brought it to her at arbitrary intervals throughout the day. She dined on Brahmin under the sheets and imagined that she was a queen. Satiated, she would sit up against the wall and he sat in a metal chair that squeaked if he so much as budged, and they were silent. No complaints there; Charon had never been much of a talker. One day she stood up and motioned with her palms that it was time to go, and they left Underworld in the face of Barrows' protests. "I hope to see you both in one piece someday," he relented at last.

The Brotherhood soldiers outside the museum still stared at the two, but not quite so much. In her time in Underworld, Mara had the chance to bathe and even wash her hair for Snowflake to trim, and Winthrop had repaired the dinged-up armor. Leaving Underworld, she looked and felt considerably more human. Armed with additional ammunition and medical supplies, she no longer ducked behind Charon from the Super Mutants, and hissed with pleasure when she achieved the perfect headshot.

"Fuckin' Raiders," Charon muttered, when they stumbled upon one of the camps. The warriors had hidden when the pair had approached so that they could ambush Mara and Charon, surrounding them with taunts and bullets that screamed when they rushed past Mara's head. As usual, she didn't reply to their insults, though Charon indulged himself until he glimpsed Mara crumpling to the ground out of the corner of his eye. Whatever fun had been found in the battle ended there, and he reduced them to a heap of bodies, and ran to where Mara kneeled on the ground. "Hurt?"

Panting for breath, she shook her head, and stood up. Bullet got part of leg,she scrawled on her notepad. Just needed stimpack.

Suddenly they both heard a groan, and Mara whirled around as Charon lifted his gun. "Don't shoot!" a Raider cried from where he lay on the ground, stretching out his hand. Veins popped out like purple thread laced around his arms and fingers and, like Mara, he bled from the leg. Apparently, though, he wasn't so lucky to possess a stimpack. "I'm a slave, they made me fight." His voice was higher than Mara expected, and it cracked when he spoke. She guessed that, at the most, he was fourteen years old, despite the bulging muscles in his limbs and the rifle at his side. "Please…I don't want to die here…."

Although Charon fingered the trigger of his own gun, he didn't shoot, wouldn't have unless Mara signaled for it. From her unblinking stare and grimace, he couldn't decide whether she was going to leave the boy there or shoot him herself, and he didn't know what he would do if she did.

In the end, she shoved her remaining stimpacks in her pocket and walked away.

"Where are we going?" Charon asked once.

Citadel, she replied.

He snorted, recalling the slack-jawed expressions that the Brotherhood of Steel had stared through when he and Mara first emerged in the Citadel with Dr. Li. They'd approached her once about retrieving some object, but Mara had shaken her head and offered no explanation for her refusal. At some point the soldiers threw up their hands and stopped bothering her about it, but finally they told her that she "would do better off leaving," probably because she and Charon were taking up space in their bunks. And nobody likes a ghoul in their bunk.

Curiosity over Mara's sudden desire to return to the Citadel bugged Charon until he finally said, "Why?"

She wrote four letters in response: G.E.C.K.

By her pursed lips, pressed in a thin line, she didn't feel like answering any more questions. To the Citadel they went, in spite of Charon's constant string of muttered remarks that he didn't want to see those Brotherhood bastards again.

The sentries spotted them before they were even close enough to see the Citadel itself. Needless to say, the soldiers were surprised to see Mara again. The female that Charon remembered as Initiate Loring stifled a laugh in the palm of her hand before she "welcomed" them back, and when Charon told them that Mara wanted to talk to Elder Lyons, Loring said, "We don't take orders from ghouls. We'll need to hear it from Mara herself."

Reaching an arm behind her head, Mara dug her notebook out of her pack to write, This good enough?

Rolling her eyes, Loring sighed, and turned to the other senty. "Escort them, will you?"

Charon raised an eyebrow in a silent question to Mara, who shrugged. Neither of them recalled the dark-skinned man to whom Loring spoke. For her to order him around like that, he must be an even newer initiate, and since when did the Brotherhood let low-level, power armor-less beginners guard the Citadel? The Brotherhood, Mara figured, must be desperate. Then again, what else was new?

The male initiate scowled at them and walked away without a word, "escorting" them to the Citadel. As they entered the bailey, where soldiers shouted commands at one another and shot at targets across the training area, most stopped to stare at the sight of Mara and her ghoul returning to the Citadel. "Good to see you again!" called out Star Paladin Cross, although by the grumbling that arose across the grounds, the others were not so pleased.

As she strode out from the Citadel, Sarah Lyons silenced the soldiers with a glare. "You requested to see my father?"

Mara nodded.

"Follow me." Without waiting for an answer, Sarah spun around and marched back inside, not even checking to see if they obeyed. Like a lost animal, Mara trailed after the paladin through the A Ring and into the meeting room that Mara recognized as the Great Hall. Usually, other high-ranking Brotherhood members discussed plans and tactics in the Hall, but when Sarah led Mara in and directed her to sit down, it was empty. "We need to talk. Or, I mean…." For once, Sarah floundered for the right word.

Still standing, Charon said, "We need to see Lyons."

"I am not addressing you." Sarah pulled out one of the chairs and said, "You should sit." Mara hid her smile at the choice of words, in which Sarah hadn't quite attempted to actually order the ghoul around—probably the best decision for everyone involved—and then Sarah turned her attention to Mara. "I don't have time to think of a polite way to put this. Are you speaking yet?"

In reply, Mara slapped her notepad down on the table.

"In that case, I fail to understand what you intend to say to my father."

Mara pointed to Charon.

"I see. You should know that my father refuses to even see the ghoul." As Mara glanced back and forth between Charon and the paladin in surprise, Sarah continued, "He was never fond of them, but he views this one as a crutch that allows you to rely on it in battle. And the Brotherhood has not sunk to such levels of desperation that we will allow a ghoul to decide the outcome of any battle."

Snatching the notepad off the table, Mara scrawled, Two Initiates are guarding the gate to the Citadel. You're desperate.

Offended, Sarah huffed and said, "Lacking in numbers, yes. Not the point of relying on ghouls."

Has anyone else found the G.E.C.K.?

After a lengthy explanation of the various duties of each member of the Brotherhood and the amount of time that each responsibility entailed, Sarah admitted that the Brotherhood did not yet possess the G.E.C.K., because they could not spare even a single soldier to actually retrieve it.

The G.E.C.K. will decide the outcome of your war with the Enclave. If I get it, you at least have a chance.

"You're right that we need it. But your ghoul will have to wait outside, and you will have to prove to my father that you are mentally capable of undertaking such a mission."

Mara nodded, and Sarah, with a sigh, left the room without another word. Hoping that she had left to get her father, Mara waited in the room with her hands in her lap, reading the words on the wall: "Courage Today, Victory Tomorrow!" She snorted a puff of air in laughter; there was no shortage of courage at the Brotherhood, just a shortage of everything else. Then she remembered Sarah's warning about Charon, and Mara pressed her pencil to the paper with such force that she tore a hole in it at first when she wrote, You may have to wait outside. He obeyed, and Mara noticed that she had filled up the page in the notebook, so she ripped it out, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it across the room. She watched it bounce off the wall.

Only a few minutes had passed before Sarah reentered the Hall with her father, and she pulled out a chair to sit while Elder Lyons addressed the wanderer. "We did wonder if you would return."

As if to say, Here I am, Mara held out her hands at her side, palms up, splaying out her fingers.

The Elder coughed into his fist, apparently as lost for words as Mara. "You…wish to rejoin the Brotherhood?"

Shaking her head, she grabbed her pencil to write, Tell me where to find the G.E.C.K., and I will bring it back.

"I appreciate the offer, but are you certain that you are well enough?"

What do you mean?

"You appear physically strong, but how do you explain your inability to speak?" When Mara shrugged, he continued, "To be blunt, Mara, we have no use for a mute soldier."

Repeating her question, she pointed to the words, What do you mean?

"It troubles me that you lack any clear cause, except mental instability. If the death of your father triggered this, I fear that we cannot depend on you to complete a mission. A soldier must possess unwavering mental strength, but your current condition indicates otherwise."

Iwillfinish what James started.

Elder Lyons' posture, normally rigid as the metal walls, sagged for a moment. "We cannot stop you from searching on your own. But you will find that the entrance to Vault 87 is completely irradiated, and any attempt to penetrate it will kill you."

Rothchild said there was another way.

"Sarah," said the Elder, "lead the wanderer to the bailey. She can find her way out from there."

The paladin pushed her chair in and grabbed Mara's wrist, pulling her up and behind as Sarah headed to the training grounds. Noticing their departure, Charon followed, and met her in the bailey when Sarah headed back into the Citadel. He spit on the ground, in one of the footprints embedded in the ground by Sarah's power armor.

"Didn't go as planned?" said a voice behind them.

Mara turned to see Star Paladin Cross as Charon replied, "You might say that."

I want to find the G.E.C.K., but they won't tell me how to access Vault 87 because I can't speak. Then Mara flipped back to an old page and pointed to what she had written earlier: Iwillfinish what James started.

"As well you should," Cross snapped, "and a G.E.C.K.'s a G.E.C.K., words or no. Show me your map." When Mara pulled it out of her pack and unfolded it. Cross borrowed Mara's pencil and wrote in the words Lamplight Caverns, circling its location. Leaning in to speak in Mara's ear, Cross whispered, "Find your way through and you'll get in Vault 87. Now pick up the trail your father left behind and get your hands on that G.E.C.K. before the Enclave does."

They embraced, though only for a moment, as they had already drawn attention from the other soldiers that watched them as if afraid that Charon would open fire on them at any second.

As he and Mara walked away and left the Citadel, the two resumed what appeared to be an age-old tradition, one they had performed for months. While Mara muttered nonsense under her breath, Charon nodded and responded as if every word made sense. Once, Cross asked him if he had some special understanding, and he replied that no, he didn't comprehend a word of it. But still he grunted in answer to every mumbling, and the corner of her mouth would turn up and suggest a smile. Every now and then, she even touched him just briefly on the arm, a fleeting gesture of affection. In those moments his expression froze, reacting by not reacting in the slightest, and Cross wondered, brow furrowed in curiosity, what Charon could possibly be thinking or even feeling. And then she would avert her eyes, mortified to have witnessed such a private moment, but also dismayed at how every other human longed to rip that bond apart out of a simple distrust for ghouls. The companionship struck her as the most pure, untainted thing in the whole damn Wasteland.

The journey to the Lamplight Caverns didn't take long, because Mara did not rest but for a couple of hours a night, as opposed to the full night's sleep she had needed a few weeks ago. Upon entering the caverns, Mara lit a torch to illuminate their path, so it surprised her to find lanterns strung all along the stone on the path within the cave. It made sense—Lamplight Caverns and all—but they had anticipated darkness.

In the distance ahead, Mara made out the shape of a gate, and wondered how it had come to be there. When she approached it with Charon, a voice suddenly cried out, and she jumped in shock. Both she and Charon lifted their guns, but then she spotted a little boy on a platform near the top of the gate, so she held out her fist in a signal for Charon to hold fire.

"Whaddaya want, ya Mungo?"

Mara glanced at Charon, who blinked and shrugged his shoulders. "Let us pass," he shouted up to the boy.

"Ha! Hear that, guys? The Mungos want in." From behind the gate, children erupted into a sea of giggles. Thrusting out his middle finger, the boy said, "Fuck off."

Enraged, Charon stepped in front of Mara and reloaded his hunting rifle, but Mara grabbed his arm. The boy raised a gun of his own. "Try anything and I'll kill you," he insisted, voice wobbling like his hands around the barrel. Faces popped up from behind the gate to watch, but darted back down when Charon growled at them.

At times like this, Mara struggled for words more than ever, but her throat constricted when she tried to force out words. Instead, she couldn't even breathe. She yanked the notebook and a pencil out of her bag, scribbling on the paper as she gasped for air.

"What's wrong with that Mungo?" the boy demanded, pointing at Mara.

Charon's eyes flickered from his mistress to the boy, scrounging for something to say to distract the boy from Mara's condition, which grew more obvious by the second. "You…want caps?" ventured Charon, helpless without orders from Mara.

"Sure, I want caps. But what I really don't want is Mungos like you poking around here. Hellooo," called the boy, waving his hand to attract Mara's attention. She glanced up, and then back down at her paper. When she showed the notepad to Charon, the boy wrinkled his nose and said, "Can't you talk, Mungo? Hey guys, that one can't talk!" The peals of laughter rose up again.

"I shot down a pack of Super Mutants on the way here," Charon said, reading off the notepad. "Ate the skin off their bones." For emphasis, he traced his upper lip with the tip of his tongue, and the boy's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "A hundred caps to let us in or you're dessert."

"Okay, okay! Shit, why didn't you tell me." The gate lowered, and the boy's hand was still shaking when Mara dropped the caps into it. He stuffed the caps into his pocket and darted out of sight. "Fucking Mungos…." The kid was breathing way too hard; he must have been sobbing.

None of the kids so much as looked at them from then on. That is to say, they certainly stared, but jerked their heads away when Mara glanced in their direction. She passed through the rest of what she overheard kids referring to as "Little Lamplight" without interruption until arriving at the back of the settlement, where another gate blocked the exit to Murder Pass. A girl in a pink pre-war dress crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the ground when she saw Mara and Charon coming, and said, "If you think I'm gonna let you through, you're wrong."

When Mara held out a few caps, the girl laughed. "My name is Princess, stupid. Why would I need your ugly Mungo caps?"

Regretting the decision already, Mara nodded at Charon and swept her right hand in a forward motion. Obediently, he shoved Princess into the gate with the end of the gun until she squealed. "Fine!" He backed away and she knelt by the pulley that opened the gate. "You Mungos suck, you know that? I hope I never see you again…."

Neither Mara nor Charon replied as they waited for the gate to open, and once it had, they brushed past her and headed into Murder Pass.

The Pass, which Mara assumed would end at Vault 87, crawled with Super Mutants. She had never fought so many in so short a time, unloading round after round until she switched to the sword to conserve bullets. The ground quaked beneath their feet when a mutant fired a missile. Charon didn't run out of ammunition or tire of fighting, but now, as the blood in her temples pounded with the rush of battle, she didn't glance behind her shoulder anymore to make sure that he was right behind her. After every corpse fell at her feet, she wiped the blood off her hands and wondered if that would be the last, but it never was, until finally Murder Pass was silent and the floor was littered with bodies.

She hesitated only a bit when pushing open the door to Vault 87. In her time wandering the Wasteland, she'd chanced upon a couple of old vaults, and none of them had been particularly welcoming. It was hard to choose the worst—the one that trapped her in the simulated world of Tranquility Lane, or the one in which she hallucinated that she saw her father? Quickly she swallowed that thought and focused on the path of her to distract herself from memories of James. After Tranquility Lane, she'd awoken to see him at last, after journeying for months to find him, and he had been so happy to see—

Her eyes popped open when Charon shook her by the shoulders. "You smoothskins, distracted so easily," he muttered. Her lip ached and she felt strangely wet, so she licked it and tasted the copper of blood, realizing that she must have chewed it.

The vault surprised her with its utter emptiness as she searched it up and down. Occasionally a diseased creature attacked her or another mutant snuck up behind them, but other than that, she mostly looted gore bags and hunted for some sign of the G.E.C.K. until a fuzzy voice said: "Help me!"

Although Mara looked in every direction, she could not find the source of the voice, until locating an intercom attached to the wall. To the left of the intercom, a Super Mutant paced back and forth in one of Vault 87's many cells. Pressing the button on the intercom, Mara gestured to Charon, but he didn't know what she wanted him to say. Never had either of them heard intelligent English from the mouth of a Super Mutant, except for a couple of babbled words here and there. "Why should we help you?"

"Do excuse my frightening appearance. My name is Fawkes. I have been trapped here for years, but I used to be a human. There is much to explain, but if you let me out, I can help you in return."

How could you help us? Do you know about the G.E.C.K.?Mara wrote, and Charon repeated the question into the intercom.

"Did you come here for that? I can't imagine why else anyone would be down here anymore. Allow me to retrieve it for you."

You know where it is?

"Absolutely. If you'd like to get your hands on it, I believe there is a computer terminal nearby that opens up my cell."

Eager to leave the vault, Mara typed a few commands into the terminal, accessing the options on the main menu. Charon asked under his breath if she was sure that it was wise to free the Super Mutant, and Mara shrugged; they had killed so many at this point, what was one more, if he proved traitorous? Besides, the thought of a talking Super Mutant fascinated her too much to let it rot in a cell. When she keyed in the command to open the cells, the lock on the door clicked, and the door slid open. The Super Mutant lumbered out, face split in what probably passed for a smile on the bruised skin of its face. Mara shrank back, but it passed her and continued down the hallway, so she and Charon followed. Fawkes spoke as he led them along, saying, "I cannot recall many of the details, but I have observed many experiments being conducted outside of my cell. I believe that the former dwellers of this vault must have experimented on me as well, resulting in this form. However, you are remarkably fortunate that I remained here for all these years. Oh! I almost forgot to ask. What are your names?"

Jerking his thumb in Mara's direction, Charon said, "That's Mara. I'm Charon. She doesn't talk." Might as well let him know right away.

"Ah, like Merrick." No one knew what he meant by that, but Charon didn't ask. "The object you seek is right this way, but surrounded by radiation. Wait here, and I will recover it for you."

Although Charon could have retrieved it as well, if ordered, Mara was glad she didn't have to send him in. Fawkes ambled slowly down the twisted hallway, but even if Charon had moved faster, she still would rather not wait for him with only the Super Mutant at her side, even impressed as she was by Fawkes's apparent intelligence.

When he returned, he handed her the G.E.C.K., which she thrust into her pack. After coming this far, she wasn't about to wait another second.

"Not interested in staying here long, I see. Well, I can certainly understand that. Farewell, voiceless Wanderer. I cannot thank you both enough for freeing me, and I wish the two of you safe travels."

Mara smiled back at him and turned to leave, her steps quickening as she neared the exit to the vault.

As she walked, something buzzed behind her, and she whirled around to glimpse a flash of lightning before a blast of energy shoved her back and onto the floor. Her back slammed against the metal and she groaned, consciousness flickering in and out as she stared into white light above her head. Her ears rang with the echo of the explosion screaming in her head, fading away as she blinked and looked around from where she lay on the floor because her limbs still wouldn't move just yet.

Soldiers clad in the armor of the Enclave marched around her. "Objective is secured, Sir."

A man stood over her and knelt down over her face, and she wanted to screamed when she recognized him. "Make sure the G.E.C.K. is secured aboard my Vertibird."

"Yessir! I'll have the techs come down and remove it immediately, Sir."

"You're certain he's unharmed?"

"Yessir! He'll pass out shortly, but we can revive him."

Charon!she called out, but only within her mind. Mara fought to move, just as she struggled to speak, her muscles tightening uselessly as Colonel Autumn said, "Excellent. Prepare him for transport immediately."

"Right away, Sir!"

Her vision faded into darkness again.

Hours later, her eyes fluttered open, and Colonel Autumn stood before her, hands folded behind his back. "So, you're awake." Her muscles went slack at first, and she almost tumbled to the floor, but she caught herself just in time. He snorted with laughter, and she longed to wrap her hands around his neck, throttle him and slam his head into the metal wall. "Let's keep this nice and simple. You're going to tell me the code for that Purifier, and you're going to tell me now."

She opened her mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but she couldn't. Balling up her fists, she tried to step forward but the restraints froze her in place. "You tell me that code, or it's going to cost you."

With no words to hurl back at him, she could only shake her head. Where is Charon?she wanted to scream.

"Tell me the code now."

Suddenly a voice blared out over the intercom: "Colonel, I have need of you."

"Mr. President, I have no time for other matters. I'll be with you shortly." His thick accent slipped out more than usual.

"Now, Colonel," the voice insisted. Mr. President insisted. So this was President Eden, Mara realized, and shuddered at the thought. Colonel Autumn said his yessir and left Mara alone in the room, restrained still.

"Ah, alone at last. I do apologize for Colonel Autumn's attitude. He's been under a great deal of stress lately."

Shut the fuck up, Mara thought, fingers itching for a gun to fire at the intercom.

"I'd like to have a word with you, face-to-face. I think there are a few things you and I should discuss. You'll find your possessions in the locker near the door; I'll unlock the way for you, and I'll unlock your restraints as well. I'll be waiting for you in my office. Please don't tarry."

When the locks on her restraints clicked, she ran to the locker, rummaging for a rifle to sling around her shoulder. Out of the cell room, she faced an Enclave soldier right away, and didn't give him the chance to react before she lunged at him and slammed the barrel of the gun in his face. The soldier cried out and crumpled to the ground in a matter of seconds, and she imagined that he was Colonel Autumn. She imagined that every one of them was Colonel Autumn as intercom alerted the other soldiers of a violent prisoner that had escaped from one of the cells. She battled her way through the halls of the Enclave to President Eden's office, where a computerized voice informed her that the president would see her now.Like hell he will.

She stormed up the winding staircase that circled a tower of computers, ready to kill the man responsible for murdering James until a computer said, "Ah, face to face at last. It's high time we met. I am quite pleased you were able to make it."

She was vaguely aware of him describing "a few small modifications" that he wanted her to make to the Purifier, but the sound of his voice blurred in her ear. When he asked if she was listening, she nodded, and held up her notebook in the hopes that the computer system had optical receivers.

"You can't speak, you say? How fascinating. Colonel Autumn did mention that you were strangely quiet. No matter, it is of little consequence. By inserting the FEV virus in front of you into the control console for the purifier, mutations can be eradicated with little effort. Anything mutated that comes into contact with that water will be eliminated, removed from the gene pool. The men and women of the world will no longer share it with the horrors and monstrosities that have become so commonplace."

I'll give it some thought, Mara wrote.

"Excellent. I knew I could count on you. Once you've taken the vial, you're free to go. I'll do what I can to help speed your exit."

She threw the vial in her pack and thought of the various ways she could destroy it as she left the room only to face more Enclave soldiers outside. While Eden had guaranteed that she was free to go, she wasn't going anywhere unless it was with Charon, but she couldn't find him no matter how she scoured the place. She swept it clean of nearly all the soldiers, though, or at least all the ones that she encountered.

"I surrender!" cried one, surrounded by the corpses of those who had probably been his friends. "I don't even know who you are, I don't want to fight." He lifted his helmet and held up both of his hands in surrender. "They told me if I didn't join, they'd—" She shot him in the head and stepped over the body.

After hours of searching, she decided that Charon must have escaped. Even if not, the president had allowed her to leave, and he had no business with the ghoul, so she couldn't imagine why he would keep Charon around. Once he had promised to return to Underworld if they were ever separated, so she thought that perhaps he was waiting for her there and she exited the Enclave.

Outside, on Raven Rock, she saw Charon limping away from the Enclave. Unable to call out to him, she ran up behind him instead, and he said, "Good to see you in one piece."

No kidding. She sighed, comforted at the sight of him there, in the flesh, by her side. As they walked away from the Enclave, she noticed his limp and frowned. Did the Enclave do that?she asked, handing him a stimpack.

He nodded and applied the stimpack. "Thanks."

She slung the bag over her shoulder and pushed all thoughts of President Eden's words out of her mind, gripping Charon's hand as the wind whipped around Raven Rock and raised goosebumps on the back of her neck. Flushed with cold, Mara shivered, but hardly felt the chilly air. In Charon's absence, she had missed him more than words would have described even if she could speak, and her fingers tightened around his so hard that her knuckles whitened with the force.

And then something moved at the edges of Mara's perception, and she spun around, her pencil thumping onto the sand.

Before Mara could move, Colonel Autumn grabbed Charon by the throat and slammed him down into the ground. Charon growled at seized the colonel's wrists, but the colonel pinned Charon down with one hand and one knee as the wind howled because Mara could not.

"Mara," sighed Colonel Autumn, "you continue to disappoint me. After displaying such prowess in slaughtering so many of my men, you stand there and freeze when I threaten this ghoul, this mutation. Does that make any sense at all, Mara?"

Charon's eyes rolled in his head as Autumn knelt on his chest. Mara stepped forward, reloaded her pistol, but found herself frozen as if watching the scene unfold from behind a glass wall, as if James had taken Charon's place. Terror seized her muscles and held them there like the restraints that gripped her voice when she tried to speak, and her throat when she dreamed. "The president has asked that you end these mutations. Consider this my contribution."

Charon coughed up small, pained choking noises, and Autumn grinned down at him.

"No need to thank me," he said. "I am always eager to serve the good of mankind."

He drove a sword up to the hilt through Charon's chest.

"Charon!"

It took a moment for Mara to realize that she had uttered the scream from her own throat, and then she lifted her gun and unloaded the entire clip into Colonel Autumn's head.

Then Mara collapsed to her knees, pressing stimpacks against the wound as blood bumbled up between her fingers and escaped from under her palm.

"Charon, Charon," she said, her voice hoarse from its long slumber. "Charon, look at me. I have stimpacks. You're going to be fine."

"Stimpacks?" Charon said, and he barked out a harsh laugh, head slumping as he focused on Mara's face. "Guess your radiation wore off."

"Yeah, I…I guess it did." The voice she had just regained cracked with emotion, and she breathed in and out, savoring it, feeling as though she breathed in a new way. Hysteria bubbled up from some part of her that was still unstable, even though she was spoken so that was proof she was sane, she'd show that shriveled Elder how sane she was. Then, instead of laughter, she heaved dry sobs that shook her entire body.

With a trembling hand, she stroked the scabs and the dry skin on the top of his head where hair would have been, where it once was, and closed her eyes against the hot swell of tears that spilled out anyway. "I'm sorry I couldn't speak." The words clamoring to get out for so long couldn't tumble out fast enough. "And you had to lead me around because I couldn't lead myself, and you put up with us humans, and I dragged you all across the Wasteland and I couldn't kill him fast enough. I couldn't move, like I couldn't speak. I'm so fucking sorry."

And then he was the one who didn't, or maybe couldn't, speak. He opened his mouth and Mara lowered hers to met his in a kiss, and she hoped to fuck that someone was watching, that someone was shocked and horrified. When she drew away, she said, "Please forgive me, you have to forgive me. For fuck's sake say something!"

"You freed me from Ahzrukhal…free," he choked out in between gasps for breath. "I was never…your slave, smoothskin."

She wondered if he meant it or if the words were spoken from his contract. She had ordered him to speak, after all.

Despite the stimpacks, the pool of blood seeped out from under the ghoul's body. Autumn's sword impaled Charon all the way through his side, and Charon's eyes closed as his jaw went slack. Panicking, Mara gripped him by the shoulders and shook him, then slapped him lightly on the face. "Charon, wake up! I've got your contract, you're not allowed to get out of it this easy." Charon's eyes blinked open again, and Mara sighed in relief. She stared down at Charon as he panted for breath, blood smeared all over his shirt and dripping on the Wasteland where the blood of ghouls and smoothskins spilled every day, but never herghoul.

"I love you," she whispered, and then added, ""I've always wanted to say that, but I wanted to say it."

He touched the pad of one finger to the side of Mara's face, until his finger dropped suddenly.

For hours, Mara did not move from that spot. Charon's eyes stared blindly at the sky from where the sun stared back, equally unseeing. No one could have mistaken the ghoul for sleeping. Before she stood, Mara placed one last kiss on the ghoul's cold lips, and she burned the body in the only funeral that she could give him.

Mara strode away from Raven Rock and into the land where the apocalypse still raged on. She hoped that she did not cross paths with anyone on her return to the Citadel, because she intended to gun them down. She no longer dreamt of ash and dust that wrapped its tendrils around her throat, but she dreamed of being that ash, that dust, rising from the dirt to choke Colonel Autumn and everyone who had ever worn the Enclave armor.

There was no mercy left for her to dig up from the bottom of her heart. There was no sympathy. There was no love; it had shriveled up with James' death and died with Charon. Instead, Mara slung his rifle over her shoulder and resolved to find vengeance, for her father, for her mother, for Charon, for herself, for the wasted world that stretched out to silence every living thing in its grip. She didn't care that she had no plan to bring down the Enclave. It didn't matter. She'd do it because she was no longer unarmed.

She wasn't helpless. She could speak, and the Brotherhood would listen.

Finally, she knew exactly what she was going to say.