"Whoa… whoa! I mean no harm." A woman staring down the barrel of Nora's gun lifted her hands and wiggled all her fingers. "No weapons just all the best intentions.'
The unknown person in front of her had a small gun strapped to her hip and a knife to her thigh, and a Pip-Boy around her wrist. She was clad in combat armor that resembled an outfit that Nate wore in the photos he sent her during his military work. This one had a white scribble on the chest piece that she didn't care to read.
The grime on stranger's face and dark stains on her armor paralyzed Nora. At that moment only survival filled her mind. She had to find her son no matter what so when the woman shifted, Nora pulled the trigger. The sound of a gun going off rang in her ears and she saw the woman recoil and drop to one knee.
"Oh my!" Nora vaguely heard Codsworth's voice in the distance.
"Are you crazy!? I was unarmed! You should quickly teach yourself some Wasteland etiquette unless you fancy a bullet hole."
Nora had shot her in the shoulder but she saw no blood. The woman glared at Nora after she had recovered from the blow. "Look, I will get rid of all my stabby and shooty trinkets if that puts you at ease. Slooow and steeeady. Here… see?" The woman demonstratively pushed forward her pistol that she had unstrapped and placed on the ground while speaking. Nora closed her eyes, kneaded her lips and lowered the pistol then ran fingers over her scalp, brushing cool brown hair out of her face. Cold droplets formed on her forehead and the bright blue vault suit clang to her dampening skin. Her body heat could melt the asphalt she stood on.
"I am… sorry." Her throat could not form more than a whisper. The woman did not attack her and Nora just did this? That no way could pass for self-defense. But the person looked dangerous. She had the right. She did nothing wrong. Nothing wrong.
And yet she had just nearly shot someone dead. Nora pressed her palm to her mouth but that didn't stop stomach acid to spill past it.
"Contrary to a popular belief, a bullet to the shoulder can kill, you know." The stranger closed up on Nora but she was too weak to escape. Stranger collected Nora's shoulder length hair behind her neck and rubbed her back. "Careful next time. Relax, though. I get it."
"Mum?"
"I am alright now, Codsworth." Nora straightened herself to preserve last of her dignity. "Who are you?"
"Name's Maria. We were scavenging when we heard that dreadful Vault noise so I insisted we checked it out. Then we saw you roll in the dirt, followed you and here we are. We would have shown ourselves sooner but you started talking to your floating bucket about a rather intriguing topic."
"What outrage! I am not a bucket for Pete's sake! I'm the proud butler of the Mills family."
"Whatever you say, Coddy." Maria chuckled at Codsworth's displeased huff.
"We?"
"Umm, yeah." Maria's attention fell back to Nora. "Promise not to scream or shoot again?"
"Depends."
"Fair enough. My partner, the one that's hiding behind that wall," Maria pointed her index finger to Ms. Rosa's former house, "is a ghoul."
"A what?"
"A ghoul. A badly irradiated human in other words."
"That's…"
"Very unfortunate, I know. He is harmless, though. Alright?"
"Alright…"
"No shooting?"
"No shooting."
"Promise?"
"Promise." Why did she act like a pre-school kid? But soon she learned that Maria's overly soft tone was well in place.
Maria's partner only marginally looked like a human male. Burn lesions covered all of his skin, in some places (mostly on his arms and scalp) it formed flaky patches but around his neck the skin was gone altogether and exposed raw muscle. Cloudy film covered his eyeballs, making him look blind but clearly his vision was fine as he strode up to Maria without stumbling. He reminded Nora of a brain-eating undead, the ones she saw in the zombie films she despised and now she was living it. Any time this creature would strike and eat her.
"Charon. Nora. Nora. Charon." The tension in Nora's limbs disappeared when no one attacked her. Maria had a meager smile on her face and she circled her thumb over where she had been shot, the spot Nora tried to avoid to her best ability but not because of shame or guilt but if she didn't see it then it never had happened. Typical denial.
Charon faintly nodded his head with no trace of displeasure on his face. His stare was rather intense and static, which made Nora's pulse spike. He was a tall, broad shouldered ghoul and wore heavy dark leather armor. He had a knife holstered to his right calf and a belt of frag grenades hung from his hips like Christmas baubles and a gun peeked from behind his back.
At closer inspection, her new female acquaintance was remarkably beautiful despite all that dirt and wear. The cute, youthful type. She also realized that she must have looked like a disaster, the ungraceful and petty woman that would horrify her mother. Her mom was a self-important, successful woman and some of it rubbed off on her daughter. Nora's older sister used to joke that vanity ran in the family mostly because of resentment towards it. She hadn't been in touch with Rebecca in years. Another regret to add to the collection.
"Are you soldiers? You both are heavily armed."
"Oh… oh, honey. This is a casual getup. You can't survive The Wastes otherwise."
Nora massaged her temple. What the fuck.
Maria winced every time her finger caressed the spot where bullet had hit. That hurt like absolute bitch. Fucking fuck. Her armor protected her flesh as reliably as it got but the bullet impact was no joke. She wished she hadn't stood that close to the obviously out of it vault dweller with a batshit tendency to act like a trigger-happy douche.
Well, she kind of did grasp the whole situation but one never gets used to being shot. Maria counted her long overdue blessings that it was one pistol bullet but then again it only took one unlucky hit and The Mighty Lone Wanderer would had been put to rest (that friendly neighborhood disc jockey from back home in Capital Wastelandia started that nickname – minus the mighty part – and it stuck despite her not being all that lone). Nah, she'd come back and push Nora off a cliff.
Nora hadn't shot Charon or even better she hadn't screamed like a lunatic. A way better reaction than Maria's first time around a ghoul. Bartender Gob from that fuckfaced Moriarty's Saloon scared the heebie jeebies out of her. Old jerk Jericho cackled like an absolute moron back then telling her he totally understood because Gob looked like the result of the unholy mating ritual between a woman and a bag of Brahmin beef jerky. But it's okay, Gob's golden, owned a bar now and generally kicked so much ass by not selling bullshit booze that left Jericho repeatedly dry on bottle caps and grumpier than ever. All Moriarty kicked was a bucket.
Nora being a fossil on ice didn't in fact surprise Maria. She had seen enough vaults in her lifetime to get accustomed to the Vault-Tec's degenerated ways. Freezing people didn't even place in top ten of fucked up experiments list. She once told Charon she would name their kid Gary but Charon's reaction fell into "can't knock you up, dumbass" category and that conversation ended with her not speaking to him until he apologized via sex. Took a while, too. She genuinely thought she was fucking hilarious but Charon thought otherwise. Prick.
Maria helped her new-found stray go through her old house to salvage whatever had been left there and every expression Nora made had Maria bite her lips and hold back tears. When Nora caught a glimpse of her image in a shattered mirror, Maria couldn't look anymore. Nora saw herself with makeup smeared all over her face, covered in dirt, blood and vomit and her nose was slightly crooked but nothing that couldn't get fixed along the way. Maria couldn't read the expression because there was… none.
Nora rocked back and forth for a short while then swung her arm elbow first into a wall. Maria's eyeballs nearly rolled out of her sockets and she dug a stimpak into vault dweller's shoulder long before Nora pulled away from the wall. Maria could hear broken bones from miles away. She broke so many of them in her lifetime that she developed freaking psychic powers. She could sniff out broken bones. Well not really, but she loved to say that. Charon constantly rained on her parade by telling her that self-preservation is the actual skill his lover should work on. Prick.
The Lone Wanderer decided it would be best to keep stimpaks ready because Nora's reactions were more than a little backwards for a grieving mother. All that anger vanished when Nora broke to pieces at a crib and curled up next to it. Maria didn't dare to touch her, only stood watching until Nora fell asleep.
Maria knew pain. Nora embodied pain. Pain was meant to be eased and Maria took mending as her warrior's quest ever since she crawled out of a Vault 101. It also had a lot to do with how obsessed she was over Grognak the Barbarian comics. She was all about that fearless hero life.
Understanding of suffering and misery connected her to people but Nora was something else. At first Maria thought they would check up on the vaultie, give some guidance, maybe a stimpak or two and set her on the way but losing loved ones resonated with Maria and intrigued her. Not every day someone 200 years old crawled out of a hole without looking like a beef jerky on whole lot of rads. Jericho had planted that imagery in her mind that she had a hard time letting go of after all those years.
The Lone Wanderer rejoined Charon outside where he minded his own business while Codsworth floated off to fry some roaches in the nearby houses. Maria's stomach rumbled just thinking about them. Radroaches looked like demons with six legs and tasted like demons with six legs however meat was meat and no picky eater survived the day.
"Well, color me impressed, Coddy, you are a good old bucket. Way better than mine." Maria gave Codsworth a thumbs up like those women on Pre-War posters after he informed the duo that all threat had been terminated and Charon volunteered to pick up the remains.
"For the hundredth time, miss, I am no bu…"
"Yes, yes. Don't overheat. Please, when your mistress gets up, would you mind informing me? I think we will settle in the house we previously hid in."
"Of course, I can't repay your kindness." Codsworth's voice raised a pitch.
"No worries. Take care."
While Charon fiddled with fire to prepare dinner, Maria pushed two old, stained matrasses together, sat down and browsed through their leather backpacks. Whatever unsanitary crap clung to those mattresses or grew out of them, long had stopped bothering basically everyone. Bed was a bed and no picky sleeper woke up without cramping the next day.
Thankfully they could afford to have another person along on their journey and Maria tuned in on what the worst radio host of all times referred to as Diamond City Radio. The Lone Wanderer broke out in laughter because he played those same damned songs that Maria used to loop back in D.C. Amazing.
Minus this Travis guy. Not amazing. Too stutter-y and had charm of a toothpick.
"She's a decent shot for someone who just crawled out of a Vault. I could see she aimed to my left. It took me months to learn to shoot straight. Dad's BB gun sucked." Maria prompted Charon as they ate.
"If I had a say she'd be missing a head."
"Don't brood. I am alive and well. I had to let her know I'm harmless, though. Now if I think about it, maybe I should have taken the rest of my weapons off."
"That's highly idiotic. Anyway, I wish to check your shoulder."
"I can feel its purple-ness. You'd still make love, right?"
"Can you move it?"
"Barely." Maria emulated Codsworth's huff from earlier. This man had no heart.
"Med-X?"
"Nah, but holy crap, that's a huge needle. The Commonwealth isn't fucking around with its chems."
"Worth teaching the raider scum some good Wasteland etiquette."