Gray. Her world had always been gray. From the bleak walls of the vault to the steel furniture. From the tin dishes to the antique slides blinking from the classroom projector. No matter how many posters or paintings she would hang in her bedroom—gray. The only difference in the outside was the softness of the sky. Thick clouds coated the world like a blanket, only lacking the heat and security of such a comforting object. The earth was brittle. The useless dry hills freckled with stumps of petrified trees. The further from the Potomac, the thirstier it was. It wasn't quite sand. Underneath the surface, clumps of dirt clung to moisture the same way a parched wastelander clung to a bottle of water. Her God slowly turned into her father's God and later into a myth she had grown up taking for truth.

The people were just as gray. The lights that simulated the sun in the vault barely brought color to the palest inhabitants. Those that were naturally dark, brown, olive, tawny—their skin lacked luster and flush. Those on the outside were wrought with disease, covered in dirt, blemishes, boils. The irradiated food and water left them sickly and green. But the most foreign and juxtaposed green. Not the lush organic hue printed on pages of trees and other botanical illustrations. Not the saturated color that spilled from a fresh paint can. No. It was the most unnatural and wilted version of green that mushed into gray on wastelanders' skins.

Along with the gray was the cold. Her life was always cold. It lacked heat, movement of atoms, friction. A metallic vault, though a perfect conductor, was comprised of quiet electrons and protons that barely nudged their neighbors. It was the reason she ran and the reason she fought. The cold rang like a chord across her skin, vibrating and closing in. She made her own sweat. She was hungry for energy and vitality. Any of her fights or arguments were sparks to the desire for blaze. Outside was lawless. No one had limits. No one stopped the brawls. Choose life or choose death. No in-between. Probably the only thing that lacked gray. Heat on the outside was only through fire and the burning of old world leftovers. Nearly everything was old. Nothing new. Always borrowed and always used. There were traders that brought in pristine guns and ammo from far up north, from The Pitt. But what did that really bring but more silence to an already muted world?

Blood was different. It was bright, alive. It was warm and brilliant as it poured from the bodies of the gray. She liked blood and how desperate people were to keep it. Don't lose too much. It caused hallucinations, a vacuum of sound. Blood was life. The opposite of gray. The opposite of dull. She wanted something alive like that. She wanted to feel the thick red liquid and see it coat her skin.

But that meant death and carnage. And it always dried too dark, blending with the gray again. She was sickened by what it meant to destroy existence-to end the story of another desperate soul. Was she a killer? No. That was not the right question. Of course she was a killer, but was she meant to be? Was she raised to massacre? If she laid down a map of her genes, looked at paths and patterns, was killing drawn into her geography?

There was a mix of terror and pleasure when she killed Silver for Moriarty to get information on her father's whereabouts. She had put her pistol to the woman's chest and fired three quick shots. There was the red, the dense crimson liquid poured from her wounds. She stared down, fascinated by the woman's frozen face and the slight twitches of dying nerves. Residual sparks firing off synapses. It wasn't the first human life she took, but it was the first she watched fade away. When Silver evacuated, she tied fabric around her nose and mouth to avoid the smell. Her gut ached and her body shook from the guilt. Someone ceased to be because of her, because of the gun in her hand. It wasn't even self-defense like when she had to escape the vault, shooting back at the crazed security officers. It was murder. But there was the red. The beautiful reverberant color she loved so dearly. It was existence in liquid form. She poked a trembling finger into one of the bullet holes, hypnotized by the torrid sensation. Moments later vomiting on the dry wooden floor.

She cleaned her hands in the sink before rinsing out her mouth. She risked a blood-borne illness every time she made contact. Her father had spent years going at her for how she bit her nails. After Silver, it was never a problem again.

She was twelve when she had her first period. After excusing herself from class, she sat alone in a bathroom stall with fingers drenched in her own menstruation. She had never seen so much blood. It was dark and thick. Vivid. It was the most vivid thing she had ever seen. She was thrilled when she grabbed a tampon from the dispenser and inserted it. She would get to save all of it. Keep it in a jar underneath her bed, like a secret piece of art. A secret piece of herself.

But a few hours later it was brown. The liquid had dried and the iron had oxidized.

Her heart was broken and her abdomen throbbed from cramping. And when her period stopped after a year on the outside, she felt as gray as the rest of them. She couldn't stand the thought of looking like the outsiders, lifeless and desolate. Doc Church in Megaton offered little help.

"Eat something. You're too goddamned thin, Gabby."

But the food made her sick. The molded taste and the gritty texture. She had survived somehow on old world cans of pork and beans and boxes of dandy boy apples. The only wasteland food she tolerated was mirelurk. And it was certainly not the cheapest or easiest to obtain.

She tried to eat better. She really did. It wasn't that she wanted a child. She doubted she would survive the birth on the outside. She wanted what her period meant—maturity, potential for life. It was part of her being and her grasp of being 'healthy.' It was evidence of the warm red still pumping in her veins. It was normalcy. She felt tainted without it, like her heart was missing from her chest.

After her father died, she started overeating. Each meal felt like her last. Squirrel was her new favorite food. Grilled on a stick with pieces of crunchy mutfruit. Stewed in a chili with ground ant and pork and beans. All with potato crisps and deviled eggs on the side. She washed it down with beer or bottles of Nuka-Cola. Or both. Charon would wait impatiently as her food digested before continuing on. He had been bothered by her picky eating before, but her new gluttonous attitude was hardly efficient for their work. Whatever work that may be.

Vodka was a fine enough drink to wet her lips, even if it burned the broken skin. Her bony fingers tapped incessantly on the neck of the bottle, still anxious from the super mutants on their way to the ranger compound. It always took too many bullets and she was still unsteady with a gun. Charon had crouched behind her, pointing where to shoot—his elegant hands directing her. Gravel and cement ripped holes in her pants as she crawled through the rubble. Her knees eroded and bled. The graze of a bullet froze her completely, until Charon dragged her around a corner by the hair. Bile spread thick in her mouth as loud gunfire rang in her ears, vibrating her joints. She didn't hear his footsteps, but the sight of him covered in blood and slated flesh shook her from the tumultuous haze. Her stomach turned, but she decided on alcohol as the remedy.

He was fidgeting with his gun across from her. It had been cleaned, scraped, thoroughly maintained, but he continued to play with it. He would glance in her direction every few moments or so before returning to his idle work. Vodka provided the warmth she needed, burning down her throat and lining her insides. The icy floor was too slow to suck away the heat gathering across her skin. Donovan's snoring echoed as white noise from the other end of the compound.

Gabby kept her eyes on Charon, watched him ignore her stare. Ghouls looked like zombies, that's just how things were. She had gotten used to their corpse-like features after several bed-ridden weeks in Underworld. And Charon was especially terrifying. She envied his large, but lithe frame, his overwhelming presence. The exposed muscles and tendons, the visible ashen bones, the stretched skin—they had hypnotized her at first. It was a flagrant display of his power within. And it was so red. His muscles, the tone of his scar tissue—red. The small patches of hair still sitting atop his head—red. She could see veins and tiny nets of capillaries. She felt malnourished compared to the embodiment of life that he was. His mere aesthetics made her want to quit sneaking and start fighting.

"If you keep bothering that, it won't heal properly."

She shrugged, only just then noticing her fingers pressing into the wound in her arm. Blood had soaked through the strips of fabric that substituted as gauze. The stinging reminded her of the super mutants, the grasp of the gray.

"If I poke at it long enough, maybe I just won't feel it anymore."

It was an internal battle. She wanted the vibrance of pain as much as she wanted to be numbed by it.

Charon glared.

"I did not save your life so that you could die from infection."

She mumbled something insignificant and fixed her braided hair instead, weaving her thick curls. Charon was being especially abrasive. They should have been sleeping like the rest of Reilly's Rangers. She was too shook up and Charon... well, Charon didn't voice his opinion one way or the other. He was too busy snarling at the smoothskin.

"Is there something else you want to tell me?"

His hands ceased their diligent movements and turned into fists against the ground. It took two hesitant breaths before he answered.

"No."

He was too tired for another pointless argument. She had much more energy apparently because she crawled over to him on her hands and knees, one arm limping.

"You got something to say to me, shuffler?"

What sick fucking thought was going through her mind to think that she could call him that? But he refused to play her game and kept his face as emotionless and flat as ever.

"Hey, you zombie piece of shit. I fucking asked you a question."

She shoved the gun from his lap and replaced it with her own body, straddling him and poking his still chest. Eye to eye.

"Answer me, you fucking slave."

And that was it. He gripped her arm with one firm hand and shoved her down with the other. Hot skin to cold floor. She replied with a swift kick to his jaw, hard enough to make it hurt. Make it count. She only felt fire when he slammed her face first into the floor, yanking her arms behind her back. It was almost comforting the way he laid on top of her.

"I am not your play-thing. Get your shit together, smoothskin, because next time you try this I will make sure you fucking regret it."

A cough. "I-I'm sorry. I just-" How could she explain it? How could she make him understand her? She wasn't exactly the best with words. Broken phrases. Mismatched allusions. He released his grip and let her fall. "-fuck it. Whatever. I'm sorry. I'm going to bed."

He watched her slump to the edge of the storage room and unfurl a bedroll. Charon was grateful when she first acquired his contract. She was naïve, from a vault of all places. Her bronze skin shined copper on her cheeks from windburn. A small silver cross dangled from her neck. She didn't even own a helmet before him. Twigs and dirt turning her wild curls into a bird's nest. She still didn't wear her helmet half the time.

He evaded punishment with her. Aside from her most recent actions, she was the least abusive of all his employers. The ones before wanted control, but this vaultie had other intentions that he was yet to flesh out. She did little to verbally expand on reasoning for it. He rationalized his sore jaw by labeling it "defense" and not the violence to invalidate his contract.

It took a few weeks in her employment for him to lose his previous feelings of comfort. Germantown Police Headquarters. That was where he lost it. At first, she acted appropriately. Stayed outside the gate and tossed in a few grenades at the super mutants stomping inside. But when they opened the decrepit building's door, she seemed to forget any tact. Room by room, spraying and praying. Her panicked face didn't stop her from continuing the same reckless path. Each wound was answered with a stimpak, leaving the bullets in to rub against her muscles as she ran.

They were stuck in Big Town for twelve days after that. Twelve awful days while she healed after Red, the barely competent doctor, dug the bullets out. It was a whole settlement of dumb kids just like her. They had no clue how to shoot their guns or plant mines. It was as if they couldn't bring forks to their mouths. Useless frail smoothskins. He had nothing better to do while the vaultie hopped around on crutches so he taught them how to properly defend themselves. She would throw in her two cents when Charon wasn't clear enough in his instructions.

Dusty was the only one he respected in the village. The two would sit watch every night, smoke cigarettes with few words spoken. He could breath, think, ease his tensions. It was nice to be so far out from the downtown. It was nice to be on the outside. Cold. But nice. Everything smelled better. The smoke from the fire pits and the dusty breezes. Grilled molerat and steamed tubers. It was more distinct on the outside. It wasn't muddled with the odor of crowded wastelanders and whichever insides had been recently released. The wind seemed to sweep away the bad and bring in the good.

The vaultie was finally asleep, mouth open and drooling. Charon wanted to understand her. He wanted her to stop grieving the loss of her father. He wanted her to be happy. Happy meant no more slurs, no more fights. Open road. Pleasant wasteland fragrances. As long as they avoided the small and few radiation puddles scattered around. Happy meant helping people again. Happy meant cautious, awareness. What could he do to make her happy again?

Reilly greeted them the next morning, handing them mutfruits and bottles of water. Charon watched the vaultie dig more food from her backpack.

"Who's your friend here, Gabby?"

"His name is Charon. Used to work in Underworld. 9th Circle."

"Ahhh, never did make it in there. I'm surprised you don't have Sydney tagging along with you," Reilly winked.

"Heh, uh yeah. She's pretty settled in Underworld. Good place to make money," she answered nervously.

"Long distance relationship?"

"Well, um... it wasn't really a relationship thing. Just you know.. um-"

"I gotcha, I gotcha. I'm not judging you, don't worry! Hit me up before you leave. I got caps if you've got data. And if you find yourself going north, there's a place I'd like you to check out. My Rangers and I will be heading west out of the downtown for a while."

She nodded as Reilly walked out, thanking her absent God that Charon wasn't the kind of man to ask questions.

Sydney was just a... few-nights stand. Reilly had caught them on one of those nights. Underworld residents were usually in the bars at 2 in the morning, leaving the coves in front of the Chop Shop nice and empty. Just as Sydney snaked her hand into the Gabby's jumpsuit, Reilly popped out of the clinic.

"Don't mind me, ladies. Just going to the bathroom. I'll be back in a few minutes, though."

Gabby groaned and Sydney dragged her to a storage room kissing her wide jaw and biting her neck. It was the bruised neck that kept Gabby around. Well that and Sydney's dexterous hands. And the tough girl act that wasn't really an act at all.

Charon had seen the two as well. He had been embarrassed by their shameless flirting inside the 9th Circle while he was stuck in the corner. He shifted his feet, tried to focus his hearing on any other conversation. Azrukhal watched the two women with a sick gleam in his eye, offering free shots. He was crossing his fingers that he would get to see some action and it disgusted Charon. Luckily the women left before any physical contact was made, much to Azrukhal's bitter disappointment.

"What a waste of fucking vodka, Charon," the old ghoul rasped out. "They don't know what they're missing, do they? I bet I could show them a thing or two." He laughed and Charon's stomach squirmed a little.

Maybe the vaultie missed Sydney. She was happy with her, wasn't she?

"Reilly wants us to see if we can find a place called Oasis. Ever been there?" Gabby asked.

Charon shook his head.

"Guess that's where we're heading, then."


A/N: Don't think I've seen a story that dealt with Oasis. It's one of the more ethically challenging missions of F3 and New Vegas. Reviews are welcome! Even if it's just a thumbs up or down!