Fidgeting.
Endlessly.
Making little piles of charred pebbles,
balancing cans one on top of the other.
Because I cannot take this much longer.
Because nothing is nothing.
Sprawling, silent nothing.

Watching him watching the horizon.
Day after day.
His flayed fingers twitching against his shotgun.
Night after night, week after week.
His jagged symmetry over the image of my father in my mind's eye .
Death after death after death.
Everything runs together.
Blood and dust, rot and rust.
Nowhere to run to or from.
And if I hadn't of touched him for however brief a time,
I may think he was a hallucination too.

He crouches.
Never sits.
Perpetually vigilant, animal cool.
Scanning every inch of everything,
waiting to unload hot hot death
unto whomever or whatever may come.
I'm always hearing things, but sometimes nothing.
Can't sneak up on him. Can actually sleep.
How can I not be thankful to the man…the ghoul who makes it possible for me to sleep?

But.
I don't know what he wants anymore.
So I beat the shit out of an old car with a sledgehammer
and make a nice pattern with broken glass.

Because when I try to touch him he turns away.
When I look at him he stares harder into the Wastes
and the last thing I heard him say to me was "no."
no no no. The word sticks in my head.
A loop. A shroud. A limitation. A curse.

I envy those he slaughters sometimes because at least he talks to them before he offs them.
He doesn't talk to me anymore.
I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that we both kind of talk to ourselves.
As of late I've noticed that we're not only talking to ourselves but answering ourselves too.
It strikes me as sad so I mash Fancy Lad Cakes and Nuka Cola together and feel ok until I crash and have to search for something to set on fire.

Nothing about me doesn't ache.
Brain, body, heart, soul.
Even my teeth ache.
I always feel frozen despite being encased in sticky leather in 90 something degree weather. I've stopped caring. My hair is matted and my face and my hands are black with soot. People are weirded out by me. Even more so than usual maybe.

By the time I started coming around Megaton with Charon, people were already eeked.
I just rub people the wrong way. I know this but I try to work around it in the beginning when there's still a chance to convince people that I'm really ok before I prove otherwise.
Gob was always always cool to me. He's used to people judging him based on his looks and being shocked when he's all sane and easy and it's actually the opposite with me.
He just kinda took me astride. I just kind of exploded Colin in Gob's name.
I don't think he's figured it out yet.
I wanted to put a grenade in Nova's pocket too because she said she wouldn't "lower her standards" to do something nice for Gob even though I said I pay for it and she implied that I had low standards when I confided in her how I felt about Charon. The only reason I didn't take a ripper to her is because I knew if I did Charon may get gun happy and kill everything in sight because if you want to talk instability, I may have some unsettling habits but Charon takes the cake for going apeshit.
Nova pissed me off alright but that doesn't mean I want to wipe out Megaton.
Once he gets going I haven't figured out a way to stop him.
So I just sit down and make a sandcastle until he's done.
With or without a grenade in it.

It was hard not to grow very fond of Charon.
One day I was convinced that the way I felt towards him was love, so I
just walked over to where he was crouched,
watching watching watching as always, and decided that if I loved him maybe he could love me back and then I wouldn't feel like I was spiraling all the time.
So I fell onto and into him like falling into bed after days of running in the blistering sun.
Swimming, staring at the sky as he pulled me downwards for he was as ravenous as I.
One wobbly, rapturous moment, nothing existed outside the heat of his breath, his kiss
and his hands that left furrows of bruises on my ribs.
The ribs that hold my very viscera that he has single handedly preserved. Therefore as much his as my harmonica belonged to me because it was in my pocket and was therefore mine.
Not that I was in his pocket but I was trying my very best to get somewhere in there.
I was now pretty certain that this was actually happening but I wasn't certain that he wasn't trying to devour me because I've never kissed a meat grinder but I'd assume it would be something like this. So I did the logical thing and bit him to see if he would bite back. He mashed me down onto the ground I felt like bubblegum must feel when I step on it, so I figured I was done for either way so I may as well just relax. I unbuckled some of his gear and he unbuckled some of mine and things were just getting really interesting when he jumped up, scooped up his shotgun and pushed me so hard he knocked the wind out of me.

A moment of terror passed through me and I called out in shock.
He struck me in the solar plexus with his open hand, hard, sent me tumbling onto the ground, rolling down a slope. I clutched my chest , curled up into fetal position and lay still for a moment at the base of the slope my mind awash.
Did ghouls have some sort of combat inhibitor like bots? Did they frenzy like ants?
Was he going feral on me? Was he going to do me like he did Azrukahl?
Did Azrukahl try to get frisky with him too? Is that why he's dead? Is it possible that they could've done…stuff? Where was my harmonica?

I rolled over blind, trying to rub dust and tears out of my eyes.
I felt his feet on either side of me, straddling me and I scrambled to pull my combat knife out of my boot, raising it to stab him in the leg or wherever.

The familiar metallic ring of his shotgun echoed in my ears and I slid down another slope, bashing my head on a couple of rocks for good measure. My eyes cleared up enough to see an arch of blood squirting up from a smattering of holes near my abdomen, Charon's fuzzy shadow he stood over me like an angel of death, shotgun in hand.

Bleeding to the point that it was almost comical, I jumped up and flew at him, knife in my hand because I couldn't think of something better to do instead and I didn't want to blow him up because I liked him too much. He caught me in mid air and effortlessly flipped me onto my back like the duck and cover turtle, pinning my arms to the ground with one strong arm, grabbing my knife and throwing it far with the other.

"You're bleeding" He said, his voice ragged even for a ghoul .
He continued to pin me with one arm, brought his other hand down on where the blood was coming out. Pressed down. Searing pain.

"Freak." I croaked.
"I'm open minded and all but heavy beatings and being shot in the chest are a little hardcore even for me."

I coughed up blood.
Felt a strange sense of calmness.
I wanted to tell him not to feel bad for doing this.
I wanted oblivion. Killing was obviously preferable to him versus the things I wanted to do so why not let him do to me what he did to his last boss? Why not let Charon have a giggle for once?
I'd seen and had enough anyways.
Nothing and nothing.
Endless sprawling nothing.

"Charon." I rasped. Blood bubbled up from my mouth as I spoke., tickled as it ran down my neck.
"Just kill me already if that's how you like it, if that's what floats your boat. Just get it over with.
Enjoy."

He got up, growled and turned his back to me.

And that's when I noticed the dead Deathclaw.
Its head was splattered and its claws were crimson tipped.
He'd killed the thing and I'd basically screwed myself up yet again.
He'd pushed me out of the goddamn way and I'd tried to stab him.
What a wonderful person I was.
I propped myself up. Applied pressure to the wounds and meekly pulled my armor back up.

"I owe you an apology." I said.

I picked myself up and went to him but he held his hand out, preventing me from advancing any closer.

"No." He whispered almost inaudibly, his eyes haunted, harsh and heartsick all at the same time.

" I didn't really think you would do me in or that you were like a closet sexual raider or something." I laughed trying to lighten the mood.

His response was the back still turned to me.
I watched his shoulderblades shifting for a moment and then apparently blacked out.

I woke up at home in Megaton. Didn't know how I got there but my entire steroid and stimpack stash was gone and my arms were sore and bruised on the insides of my elbows.

Charon sat with his back turned to me, quietly harvesting what was left of Wadsworth for scrap metal.

He's sat with his back turned to me ever since the day of the Deathclaw,
silently expressing in no uncertain terms that
whilst I held the contract, he held everything else…including my life.
Love/lust were an unacceptable risk and nothing more and he would protect my worthless ass even if it meant sacrificing the last remnants of his basic human needs.
I wonder.
What was passing up sex when he already lived on next to nothing and slept
only enough to keep himself from collapsing?

All I know is that I escaped my vault but he can't seem to escape his and I feel like I'm no better than the scurvy slavers I've met in my travels because no matter what I do I'll always feel like he's not getting what he deserves.

Weeks pass and we peek out into the Wastes again and I still don't know how not to watch him so I'm just watching him. I'm watching him wait for something to inject his rage into because he's got to put something somewhere and I'm piling tin cans one on top of the others and making patterns out of charred pebbles and pieces of twigs and things because I've got to put something somewhere.

Charon crouches because he never sits and I can only see his pale eyes from the side because I still haven't gotten him to look at me and I'm not about to order him to do anything nevermind that.

Sometimes I just hope that he'll fail to protect me
because maybe then we can both be set free because either way
he's the only one who can release me in one way or another.
So I wait.

Day after day.
Night after night.
Bullet after bullet.
Death after death.

And time drags on.