"For fuck's sake, I don't know what to do with two thousand pounds of goddamned brahmin steak! Whadda I look like, a fucking deathclaw? It's a mistake, right? Go deal with it." Swank resisted the urge to pop the kid on the back of his head as he bolted for the kitchen to deal with the incorrect delivery and turned instead to the mountain of invoices, spreadsheets, and messages that had fallen back on him since the new ruler of Vegas had taken himself out of the game. "Fuck." He ran his hands through his hair and stared at the mess that was starting to creep across the front desk. Where in the hell had he put that claim note from the Kings' casino? It was worth six figs in caps, and if he lost it, Benny would have his head.

He stopped himself, then snorted. Who was he kidding? Benny wouldn't notice, not with that dame of his to obsess over.

But the other Chairmen would, and all of their employees, when none of them got paid if he didn't find that goddamned claim note.

Before he even got started on the stack, a commotion at the door interrupted his panic and gave him a whole new one. A very strange party had just walked in- two women in serious combat armor (one blonde, one strawberry blonde, and both gorgeous, he noted), a distinguished man in his middle age, and a lithe, well-muscled ghoul who was easily a head taller than anyone Swank had ever seen, excepting Mean Sonofabitch. The women carried themselves like professional soldiers, NCR rangers or Brotherhood, maybe. The ghoul carried himself like a predator. And apparently, he objected to surrendering the shotgun on his back. Swank was terrified of him on mere principle, even before he placed one huge hand on the stock.

The strawberry haired woman- and Swank gave her full points for bravery- grabbed his arm and restrained him. "Remember why we're here."

The ghoul visibly composed himself, his face suddenly devoid of any emotion, though the tension in his shoulders spoke volumes.

"Besides," the blonde said now, "it's not like you need a weapon to kill someone." She patted his other arm as he relinquished the shotgun and a combat dagger the length of Swank's femur to the doorman, and Swank let out his breath. He'd have to watch where these cats went, and speak to whoever ran their table; he had a hunch it would be best for everyone to ensure they had a good time.

He opened his mouth to greet them, but the blonde interrupted before he could speak. "We're looking for someone," she said, handing him a worn photo. "She has brown hair, green eyes. Her name is Honor Meservey. We were told she might be here."

He stared at the woman, then stared at the photo. Even though her hair was darker, it was unmistakably the boss' dame. "So that's her last name, huh?" Slowly, the implication of that information dawned on him. "Oh, holy shit. You knew her. You knew her before."

The ghoul spoke. "Knew her before what?"

Swank had feared this guy before, but the tone of his voice sent chills through him. "Uh, I think you better talk to the boss."

~#~

Sarah Lyons could hardly stand still as they waited for this "boss" to appear. An exchange of favors for favors for favors had sent Honor out west, taking a job as a courier in the place of a retired Brotherhood scribe, and when she hadn't come home they'd feared Charon was going to personally slaughter his way from one coast to the other in search of her. They'd been all the hell over the Mojave wasteland following tales and rumors of her, and Sarah knew his patience was already worn past the breaking point. She didn't know how he'd restrained himself from leaving more bodies in their wake already, and she prayed that this man had some answers. She didn't know how much longer Charon could go on, not knowing, before something snapped.

He finally appeared. He was a pretty man, almost- but not quite- too pretty for her, but he looked worn, beaten down. Everything about him spoke of weariness. His right arm, out of its sleeve beneath his jacket, was bandaged around the bicep and in a sling, so he shook hands quickly- even with Charon, without hesitation, she noted with mixed pleasure and relief- with his left. He shook her hand last, and she got a good look at him as he finished introducing himself. He had the deepest, darkest eyes she'd ever seen, startlingly intense. Luckily, Reilly and James had been nominated as the spokespeople for their little group, so she didn't have to worry about finding her voice any time soon and could just check him out instead. She'd have felt guilty about it except it also let her watch his body language as they spoke with him. Swank introduced him. "This is Benny. He runs the Tops. Well, the whole Strip, really."

Benny turned his head slightly toward Swank and the taller man fell silent. "What can I do for you?"

James had retrieved the photo from Swank and handed it to Benny. "We're looking for this woman. We were told to check here."

Benny looked down at the photo and his shoulders tensed, but his voice betrayed nothing. "Why?"

"She's my daughter," James replied, and Benny snapped his head up to look at him. "She came west to do a job for a friend, and never came home. Please, if you've seen her-"

"'A friend'?" Benny handed the photo back. "And just who is this 'friend'?"

Charon practically growled. "If you know anything, it is in your best interests to tell us."

To his credit, Benny didn't flinch. "You want to know something, I want to know something. They're both simple questions with simple answers. So, you show me yours and I'll show you mine, hey?"

Charon seemed to grow in every direction, but didn't lay a hand on the much smaller man, to Sarah's relief. But to her frustration- and just a little fear- Benny didn't back down either. He just met Charon's eyes calmly, as if he looked his impending death in the face every day with breakfast. Of course, judging by what they'd seen of the Mojave so far, that might well be the case, fancy suit or no.

Sarah spoke up to break the tension, just in case. "She was a retired scribe with the Brotherhood of Steel, a woman named Morris. It was a courier job, and she was down at the time with a broken leg. Honor agreed to do the job as a favor to my father- Morris is an old friend of his."

"Retired out of the Brotherhood?" He sounded skeptical.

"Our branch of the Brotherhood...doesn't see eye to eye with the rest of the order. On many issues."

Benny relaxed marginally. "I see. Okay. Yeah, she's here. Follow me, and I'll- I'll take you to her." His voice had an odd hitch, but the tension was gone, replaced again by the weariness.

She tried not to hope that their unpleasant adventure was really almost ended; they'd hit too many dead ends and disappointments already. Charon might just kill this guy if it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The elevator ride to the 13th floor was almost unbearable. Once there Benny led them to a nicely appointed suite. "Have a seat."

Charon looked fit to burst and James said, "Please, we just want to see my daughter-"

"She's here, and you'll see her," Benny replied. "But there's something you gotta know first, and I think it'd be better if you were sitting down."

With reluctance of varying degrees, they took the offered seats. Benny remained standing, his back to a door at the rear of the room. "'Bout a week ago, we had an- incident. Some goons with break-down rifles and collapsible batons smuggled them in, figuring they'd take us by surprise. And they did.

"I don't know what Honor was like before, but she's- well, now she's the sort of gal who runs toward trouble, not away from it. It's real charming most of the time, but-" He stopped, swallowed hard, and continued as if every word were a deathclaw digging its way out of his throat. "One of them clubbed her from behind before I could stop him. There was nothing anyone..." Here he trailed off, and didn't seem inclined to continue.

"But she's alive, yes?" James asked. "When you said we could see her-"

"Yes. You can see her, and she's alive. But she never woke up." Benny ran his left hand through his already-disheveled hair. "We've had every doc in from Tanner's Hill to the Mojave Outpost. None of them think she's gonna wake up. Ever." He turned away from them and rubbed his eyes; he looked exhausted.

Sarah snuck a glance at Charon; his expression was usually unreadable, and so it was now, but it was different somehow, as if his body was present but his mind miles away. James kept talking. "I'm a doctor, too, and I don't think I flatter myself to say of no small ability. Perhaps I can still help her."

At this, Benny looked much like Sarah had felt in the elevator: hopeful, and afraid.

She spoke up, offering what help she could. "We can take her back to the Citadel. We've got a vertibird; we could be there in a matter of hours. We could be in California even quicker, if my father's policies don't disincline them to help us."

Benny shook his head. "Can't move her. Nothing that might jar her or shake her around."

"Why can't she be moved?" James asked.

Benny shifted from foot to foot. "She has a- the docs call it a 'previous insult' to her brain. They say any substantial movement now might kill her."

"What sort of previous insult?"

Benny turned his eyes to the floor. "She was...shot. In the head."

Charon closed his eyes and bowed his head. "I need to see her." His soft voice, without its usual growl, almost startled Sarah as much as a shout. It sounded nothing like Charon; it sounded...defeated.

Benny shook himself back to the moment. "Right," he said, turning the doorknob behind him without looking. "She's in here."

They approached the room quietly, even James letting Charon take point. Though she was thinner than they'd last seen her and the desert sun had tinted her brown hair with red, it was indeed Honor who lay in the large bed, blankets and pillows carefully tucking her in, a small red teddy bear nestled under one limp arm. She had always been pale- after all, her skin hadn't seen the sun until she was nineteen- but now her skin looked almost translucent. Benny had tactfully remained in the outer room, and the four of them ranged around the bed, Charon dropping to his knee beside it. He picked up one of her fine, enervated hands and engulfed it in his. He nuzzled her hair, placing his lips close to her ear. Sarah realized he was whispering to her, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable; they all cared for Honor in their own ways, but now she felt this moment should have been Charon's alone- none of them was closer to her than he. When she saw a tear trace his cheek, she turned away. She glanced up and met Benny's eyes through the open door. He was leaning against the nearest couch, the pose one of casual familiarity, and it only took another beat for her to realize the situation. This wasn't Honor's, but Benny's suite- Benny's bed. Emotional as he was, he wasn't tearing up over a friend, but a lover.

Except Honor would never, ever betray someone, most especially Charon.

What the hell was going on here? Something the man at the front desk had said came to mind, something Benny had repeated, and Sarah tilted her head as a request to him to step closer. He obliged. "You and the man downstairs both commented about us knowing Honor 'before'- before what?"

Now, finally, Benny looked just a little bit nervous. But he answered, "Before she was shot."

James looked away from the heartbreaking reunion and toward them. "She was different afterward? Her personality changed?"

"No way of knowing. All she could remember was her name. It's like her mind was...wiped clean."

Reilly clenched and unclenched her jaw. "And who's the bastard who shot her? Or have you already taken care of the son of a bitch?"

Benny half smiled. "It was me." He met Reilly's eyes squarely. "I'm the son of a bitch who shot her."

Before Sarah could even wrap her head around that, Charon had launched from the floor and into Benny, propelling him from the doorway into the nearest wall. He had the smaller man off the floor at least a foot, one hand wrapped around his throat just under his jaw, his other forearm braced across Benny's midriff and holding most of his weight. So he can talk while Charon chokes him, Sarah realized. We're going to get to stand here and watch him kill an unarmed man. She knew better than to think any of them could stop him, and at the moment, probably none of them wanted to.

"What the fuck do you mean, you shot her?" Charon trembled from head to foot and punctuated his words by cracking the back of Benny's head against the wall, and Sarah was again amazed at how much fury and frustration Charon had managed to suppress. Up until now.

Benny seemed unnaturally calm, and offered no argument. "I didn't know her yet," he grated out. "I thought I had to, for what I needed to do. She'd have done the same, she said. I didn't know her then."

Charon tightened his grip, and Benny closed his eyes, still unresisting. Slowly, painfully (for both of them in different ways, Sarah figured), Charon lowered him. "Explain." He didn't remove his hand from Benny's throat, and Benny didn't protest. He just spoke. He told them everything, from the pre-war megalomaniac with his foot on the throat of New Vegas to his acquisition and reprogramming of Yes Man to that night in the graveyard. He went further, telling them how Honor had spared his life, helped him escape the Legion by giving him her only stealth boy so he could sneak out while she covered his retreat with her own blood. He told them how he'd slept better at first knowing she'd survived what he'd done to her, then worse after she willingly sacrificed her well being for his. And he told them how she had found him again, brought him back to the Strip and the only family he'd ever known, and how, in time, they had fallen so hard for each other. Sarah, worldly though she was, believed every word.

Charon seemed less inclined to do so. He stood for an interminable moment, his fingers flexing and unflexing around Benny's neck. "So the two of you are..."

"I didn't know she had anyone else," Benny replied softly. "She didn't know. I didn't think it was possible, that such a solid platinum gal would be alone, but...I thought I'd hit the greatest jackpot of my life. Several times over." He met Charon's eyes, then shrugged an apology. "It really was too good to be true."

Charon was silent long enough that Sarah began itching to reach for the gun she was no longer carrying. Of course, it was the four of them against one man- and one of them was Charon- but this was also a man who'd managed to come closer to killing Honor than the Capital Wasteland and the Enclave had, combined. He probably knew a trick or two, but still...

"I understand why you wanna off me." Benny had still made no move to distance himself from Charon, which, in Sarah's opinion, lent weight to his next words. "And it's copacetic if you do. I deserve it for what I did to her. But tell her-" here he broke off again before continuing- "that I love her. She's- everything. The tops." And he stood there, arms at his sides, Charon's hand around his throat, and waited.

Charon flexed his fingers again, then growled out, "That's acceptable." And in the next instant he had pinned Benny again to the wall, choking him to death with one hand.

Benny still didn't resist, even as the others begged Charon to stop, that he might still have information they needed. He didn't even reflexively raise his hands to Charon's. The awareness in his eyes began to fade.

Sarah heard the click of the main door behind them, and now Benny raised his arms, motioning- to move away? She didn't know why he had the change of heart; she was more concerned about the unknown at her back. She and Reilly spun to face the intruders, a redheaded woman in a cowboy hat and armed with a shotgun, and, of all things, an Enclave eyebot. The woman brought her shotgun to bear on them and the eyebot blasted a short burst of music before swiveling its weapon toward them.

"Why the hell not?" the woman shouted, and Sarah realized she was addressing Benny. He wasn't waving them away; he was warding off the woman and the robot from killing them.

"Charon, wait." Reilly darted to his side. His eyes flickered toward her, but Sarah couldn't tell if he actually heard. Reilly tried again. "If he really wanted Honor dead, she would be. She's helpless. If there's anything more he can tell us..."

"Get the fuck away from him before I blow a hole in your back," the redhead snapped in spite of Benny's protests. "Yeah, he's a fucking prick, but he's Honor's fucking prick." Beside her the eyebot darted side to side, aiming its weapon at each of them in turn, beeping and chittering relentlessly.

"You think he might know something useful?" Charon asked.

Reilly sighed. "I don't know. But I know you won't let yourself take that chance. Not where she's involved."

Charon growled under his breath and let go of Benny, who fell immediately to the floor. The eyebot headed straight toward him and hovered- protectively, Sarah thought- about a foot away, but the redheaded woman made no move except to relax a little. "Who the hell are you, and why are you here?"

Benny tried to answer her, but couldn't yet speak. James stepped forward slowly. "I am James Meservey, and Honor is my daughter. These are friends of hers."

The woman's eyes widened. "That a fact?" She glanced down at Benny, who nodded. "Well, I'm sorry then for the introductions. I'm Cass. This is ED-E." The robot chittered. "We're friends of hers, too." She looked them over, completely ignoring the man suffering on the floor. "So she's Honoria Meservey, huh? I've heard of you people, but what's her story? How's the 'messiah of the Capital Wasteland' end up as a lowly courier in the god-forsaken Mojave?"

Benny answered, though his voice rasped. "Favor to the Brotherhood."

"You're kidding. Those pricks? No wonder they rub her the wrong way." She gave Benny a wry look. "They got her shot in the face." She slung her shotgun back over her shoulder and listened while they told what they knew of Honor's misadventures until they'd lost touch when she'd neared Goodsprings. Here, she interjected, "Oh, yeah, when Benny shot her and left her for dead in a shallow grave."

"Yeah," Benny said, voice still husky, "let's dwell on that as much as possible."

"And then we tracked her here," Reilly said, jumping to the end of the story. The tension in the room was already making it hard to breathe without dragging the rest out.

"Hm." Cass glanced at the bedroom door, then back to Benny and the livid bruises rapidly rising on his throat. "Well, don't that just complicate things."