A/N: Second part. Honestly, this didn't go anything like I thought it would, but maybe that's a good thing. I was a little worried about where my muse was taking me on this one...maybe she's going soft in her old age. Anyway, I drew a sketch of Angel and put it up on dA - link is on my profile if anyone wants to see what she looks like in my head. I wonder if I should worry that I enjoy writing about insane characters so much...

Thanks for reviews. :)

Warning: Language, violence, mature themes

Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of Fallout 3 or any characters/locations/plot points therein. I do claim responsibility for Angel, though I really wish I didn't have to.

Part 2

Angel gasped and recoiled on instinct as Charon lurched to his feet, but she did not even try to move aside when his hand shot out and clamped around her throat. He towered over her by more than a foot, and he could not stifle his own satisfaction as she craned her neck to stare up at him. He had thought about, dreamed about this day for far, far too long.

He wanted to crush her throat. He wanted to feel her neck snap beneath his fingers. He wanted to see her dead eyes and know that she would never be able to torment him again. Maybe he would never escape her ghost, maybe she would keep haunting his dreams, but he would worry about that later. She had to die – it was the only way to truly get rid of her and he had sworn to himself to see this through too often to stop now.

But he wanted to hurt her first. Just like she had made him suffer.

He had never been the type to enjoy torture – killing and moving on was enough for him. But this was an exception, she was his exception. After what…eight months of this bullshit? God, was it really so long? He was not about to let her off easy. His mind still reeled from the destruction of his contract, and he could barely hold a coherent thought for more than a moment, but he knew he would not kill her quickly. She did not deserve that.

Still holding her throat, he pushed her back. Dogmeat gave a yelp and scampered out of the way as she stumbled over the dog, her hand flying up to grasp Charon's wrist for balance. The ghoul growled in rage at her touch – there was nothing seductive about it, or about the wild, breathless expression on her face, but fuck her for touching him.

That moment, the dog's yelp, her touch, it snapped him out of the weird daze that lay over his mind. He would have time some other day to think about the consequences of having no contract, no employer, but right now he had to focus. But when he did, when he focused, when he really, truly looked at what he was doing, it hit him. He realized it. And goddamnit if he did not hate her more.

She was not fighting back. Not that she could have escaped or beaten him in combat – that was never her strong suit. But she was not scared. She was not worried. She was not upset or angry or sneering at him in her arrogant way that said, "No matter what you do, I will always be the master, even if you kill me." In her eyes there was nothing but calm acceptance and…relief. She tried to swallow, gulping air around his tight grip on her throat, but in those eyes – those cold, haunting eyes – there was nothing Charon had hoped to see.

This was what she wanted. He should have seen it coming. What a fool he was to think she would expect anything else from him after the way she had treated him. She was smart enough to know better. After her father's death, after the purifier was started up, what was left for her? Nothing. She had even said that to him once, with this bitter little laugh. "Not even the Vault wants anything to do with me. I might as well be dead, huh?" She had been looking for death all over the Wastes, and luck or God or fate had kept it from her.

And now she looked for it in him.

"Fuck!" he spat in frustrated rage, shoving her suddenly away from him. She stumbled backward on unsteady legs and collapsed at the foot of the bed, and Charon forced himself not to notice the way her old, worn dress gathered up above her knees. Gasping for breath, her shining eyes wide and confused, she stared up at him and made no move to stand.

He could not do it. He could not kill her without giving her exactly what she wanted. After all this time of her denying him what he wanted, he could not stomach the idea of giving her what she desired most. He cursed again under his breath and turned his back to her, running one hand over the uneven skin of his brow as he tried to decide what to do. What could he do?

"Charon…?" her voice rang in his ears, hung in the air between them, and he ground his teeth together so hard he half expected them to shatter. "Charon…what are you…?"

And then it hit him. How to hurt her. How to destroy her, deny her as she had denied him. He almost smiled to himself, a cruel twitch at the corner of his broken lips, but his expression was blank as he turned to stare back down at her.

She moved closer to him, scooted his direction, but did not stand. In her eyes there was uncertainty and, even better, desperation, just a hint of it, but Charon knew how to exploit it. He could not wait to see it, see her shatter. He could already hear the fear in her voice. Without a word, he stepped around her and began to dig through her storage chest of ammo.

"Wh…what are you doing?" she asked in a soft, pleading voice. Charon ignored her and instead picked up his pack from beside her bed and began stuffing every shotgun shell he could find into the bag.

"Charon?" There was an impatient clip to her tone now – she was used to getting her way, and she always hated to be ignored. That made Charon enjoy doing it even more. "What are you…?"

He snapped open the wardrobe and waded through piles of shredded and broken armor, putting to use her bizarre habit of saving everything, and finally fished out one that looked to be in good shape and tucked it into his pack as well. Just in case, he told himself. Better to be prepared for anything. He shouldered the pack and looked around the room slowly, his eyes pausing thoughtfully on everything – except Angel.

And that is when she understood.

"Y-you're leaving?" Her voice squeaked in panic, and Charon almost laughed when he finally looked at her. She surged to her knees and stared up at him with those eyes, her face contorted with disbelief and fear. Tears pooled in her eyes, her mouth hung open. He decided it was a most satisfying turn of events. "Nonono, y-you can't just…"

"I can, and I am," Charon growled down to her. Right then she looked so very much like the pathetic slaves she had occasionally brought in to Paradise Falls. "Like you said. I am free."

"Yes, yes you are," she rushed the words together and stumbled to her feet, though she was wise – or confused – enough to keep a small distance between them, "b-but…don't you…"

"No." His voice was devoid of emotion. There were so many other things he wanted to say, so many cruel thoughts that circled around his mind and all but drenched his awareness, but he swallowed them all. She was beneath his contempt now. She was not worth it. He needed to go.

He was reaching for the door handle when she snapped. With a wail that could wake the dead, she threw herself after him, dissolving into frantic sobs as she fell prone at his feet and wrapped a deathgrip around his shins. "No, you can't leave me!" she moaned, her face half-buried in the tops of his boots. "Please, God, Charon, no…don't leave me like this…God please…I'll do anything…"

Charon just stood there facing the door and listened to her babbling. He thought about kicking her in the face, but right then she seemed so…pathetic. He knew himself well enough to recognize his own feelings, the tightening in his chest. It was the same way he had felt after her father had died, when she broken down in front of him and shown some other side of herself.

But he was not stupid – she was a master this sort of manipulation. He had seen her work over any number of people, from Ahzrukhal to Lyons to her own father. The woman could spin words and evoke emotions in anyone, and she was twisting Charon the same way. There was no way the sobbing wreck at his feet was the "real" her, and just like last time, she would be slapping him in the face and spitting on his concern before he could blink. Like hell he would let her get away with it.

There were only two rational choices. The first was to leave. He was ready, he was packed, he was determined. He should turn that goddamn handle. The second was to kill her and get this over with for good. Her wailing was starting to wear down his resolve to leave her to suffer alone and heightening his desire to shoot her in the face. He needed to make a choice, and he needed to make it soon. It was getting harder and harder to focus.

A half-formed idea popped into his head, and he both loved and loathed it the moment it came to him. It was a bad idea, a stupid idea. He should just leave. But it would not go away. His curiosity nagged him. He would regret this – hell, he already did and he had not even done it yet. Damn it. He had to do something.

His pack clattered to the floor and Angel flinched away from the sound, loosening her grip on his legs. Charon grabbed her roughly by one wrist, trying not to look at her desperate, tear-streaked face, and dragged her to her feet as he stormed toward the back of the room. She offered no resistance until he kicked open the balcony doors.

"Charon, what…" her words broke off into a gasp of fear as he dragged her toward the edge, and she outright screamed when his large hands closed around her waist just above her hips. With little effort, aside from her frantic struggling, Charon lifted the small woman to sit on the railing.

"Let me go!" she shrieked, her fingernails tearing at the armor covering his arms as she twisted and writhed in his grasp. The back of her dress waved like a flag out over the gaping expanse of nothingness below her, and when she glanced down, she turned deathly white and redoubled her struggles.

Charon shoved her back farther, her rear end dangling over empty air. Her scream of abject terror nearly deafened him, and he had to practically shout to make himself heard. "Let you go? Let you go? Is that what you want?"

"No! NO!" She shrieked again, but Charon held tight to her waist even as she clawed at his arms and shoulders, desperate to pull herself up. He had to admit, this idea of his was very satisfying so far.

Without warning, he pulled her closer to him again, balancing her on the railing, though he kept her trapped up there and did not ease his grip on her hips. "Calm your ass down," he said when her screams had died to frantic, panting whimpers.

Trembling all over, she stared at him. Her face was a mask of fear, her eyes wide, and he knew she was vulnerable right at that moment. Maybe, just maybe he could get some real answers out of her. "You burned my contract so I would kill you," he stated, not bothering to hide his anger.

Her fingers tightened around his wrists, and her mouth opened and closed a few times. When she spoke, her voice was very small and rough from her screams. "Yes…"

"Because you knew what you were doing to me was fucking with my head." He gave her a little shake for emphasis and she whimpered again.

"N-n-no, I…" she swallowed hard, and tears formed in her eyes again. "Not at first." She seemed to find an ounce of her old courage and blinked the moisture from her eyes with a defiant shake of her head. "Goddamn, Charon, why couldn't you just kill me? You hate me as much as everyone else does!"

"Probably more."

"Then do it! Fuck, just do it!"

He shoved her back off the railing again. "Like this?" he demanded over her screams.

"NO! God no, please, Charon!"

He settled her back on the railing and waited a moment for her to calm down. It was only then that he noticed how…intimate their situation was. Her thighs, bared now that her dress was pushed up and disheveled, rubbed against his hips as she straddled him, sending a fire racing through the pit of his stomach and enraging him at the same time. Doing his damnedest to ignore the contact, he focused on her again.

"You want everything on your terms. You do not have that right anymore." She panted and swallowed hard twice, her hands balled in a white-knuckle grip on his wrists. He shook his head when she did not respond. "You said 'not at first.'"

Angel's lips pressed together in a thin, stubborn line, but the sheen of sweat on her brow proved how truly afraid she was. "It doesn't matter," she hissed. "You hate me enough to do what no one else can do, what I can't bring myself to do."

He shook her again. "Answer me."

She gasped and snarled at him, the demon flashing behind the fear. "What the fuck do you want me to say, huh?! That I never wanted to hurt you? That all I wanted was to see you break, see you lose control, see you snap?! Because if I said anything, told you what I wanted, then it would be an order from your employer and the very thought of that made me sick?! That at first, all I wanted was you?"

Charon's mind went blank. She could not possibly be saying what he thought she was saying. There was just no fucking way that he had gotten her wrong, not about this. She was manipulating him. She had to be lying.

"But I was stupid, okay? And after a while, I understood." Her voice slowly dropped to a bitter, quiet sound, and she stared blankly at his chest as if she had forgotten where she was. Her grip on his wrists never weakened, so she could not have forgotten completely. "You weren't going to give in. You started to hate me as much as everyone else hates me. So I hurt you…because I wanted to. And after my father died…" Those tears appeared again, and this time she let them fall. Empty, lifeless eyes turned upward to stare into his face, and hopelessness echoed in her words. "For one moment, I wasn't in control. I couldn't stop the pain, I couldn't hold it in like I had with everything else. And I blamed you…because it was so…easy…to…"

"Easy to what?" the ghoul croaked when she faded off. He had to know what she was going to say. He did not want it to, but somehow he knew it would change everything. Damn him for not just snapping her neck.

She squeezed her eyes shut and a shudder ran through her small frame. "Easy to let you in," she finally breathed. "You knew the worst in me, and you still tried to comfort me." Her pale eyes opened, piercing him, burning him. "Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to care? I hated you and loved you even more for it."

Everything went very still for Charon. What the hell did she just say? There was no way, no possibly chance that this was happening. She could not mean what she had just said. He could not possibly accept that she was sincere.

You knew the worst in me…

That much was truth. He did know her, well enough to know her tells, the little things she did unintentionally when she was lying through her teeth to get what she wanted. Like the way she would bring her right shoulder up just a little, like a shrug, or the way she would wind her fingers in a stay piece of her hair, or the way she would chew endlessly on the inside of her bottom lip.

She was not doing any of those things right now.

She looked at him with hollow eyes. She seemed shattered, just the way he always wanted to see her. But he did not feel any satisfaction from it. Not now. What if she was telling the truth?

That small part of him that he had ignored, the part that tried to remind him how young and inexperienced she was in everything, that part nagged at him. She claimed she had started her games because she wanted him…and wanted him to want her, without the contract coming into play. If that was true…

Hell, did it even matter? It should not matter. She had still kept on with her torment, and he still hated her for it.

Right?

He could not face this now, he could not let himself think about it. But he was not prepared to let her go yet either. He sure as hell could not stand here in silence with her legs wrapped around his hips – it was maddening enough already, no matter how he tried to distract himself from it.

"Why do you do it?" he demanded to fill the void between them. "Why do you make them hate you, and then turn around and convince them to love you? Which one are you, Angel?"

It was the first time he could recall using her name, and she stiffened when he said it. For a moment, her eyes flashed with defiance and indignation. "Which one…?" She snorted and shook her head scornfully. "I am…me, Charon. I can be nothing else. You think it's an act, the way I treat people?" She laughed, cold, bitter, empty. "No. I do what I must to survive, and I couldn't have lived this long if it were pretend. I wouldn't know how to be any other way, Charon."

She was definitely a demon. A crazy, selfish, arrogant bitch of a demon. And he still had not killed her. He would be doing the Wastelands a favor if he just killed her.

But by then he knew he would not do it. And what irritated him even more was that she knew it as well.

"You should have just killed me," she echoed his thoughts with a sad, almost sympathetic look in her eyes. He flinched when she loosened her grip on his wrist and slid her soft, warm palm along his broken cheek. The corner of her full lips twitched upward in a wan smile. "I tried to tell you…it would have been so much easier if you had…"

She was doing it again. Tormenting him. Taunting him. Her life was literally in his hands and only the slightest push would send her over the railing, and she dared touch him like that? His stomach twisted in anger and desire and…something else. If he snapped, she would be nothing more than a red splotch on the ground below, and he would be free, truly free.

But there was something unusual in her face right then, something almost soft, tender. It worried him more than her cruel sneers and cold stares because he had never seen it before, not once. He was suddenly very aware of his hands on her waist, the warmth of her skin through the thin dress. Her foot slid slowly up the back of his thigh, urging him to step closer. He should have refused to move, should have stood back from her and maybe done the smart thing and run like hell away from her but…she leaned in toward him. Her chest brushed his, her haunting eyes held his gaze, and he could feel the heat of her breath against his ruined lips when she spoke.

"This is a mistake," she warned in a low, rumbling purr. "If you do this, you'll never be rid of me, Charon."

She was the one clinging to him, and yet this was his mistake? But she was right about one thing – this was who she was. She would never be anything other than what he knew her to. And all at once, he did not care. He knew what he wanted.

She should have burned his contract a long time ago.

He slid his left hand up the curve of her side, making a note of the way she twitched when he touched a ticklish spot, then thrust his hand ruthlessly into her hair. "If I do this," he growled, pulling her closer to him into a true embrace, the kind he had only had in his tortuous dreams, "then I will not need to be rid of you."

A laugh rippled up out of her and she pressed herself against him harder, drawing a low groan from deep in Charon's chest. "Then get me off of this railing," she murmured around a gasp as Charon's other hand swept under the hem of her dress, "before I kill you for not killing me."

-

She was asleep on his chest, breathing deep and slow, the sleep of someone without cares. She had not slept like that in months. Her pale, silken hair lay in a messy spray across his broken, rotting flesh. There was something fascinating about the juxtaposition.

He knew this was crazy. And he knew she was right. He would regret this. He already did in some ways. It would have been easier for everyone if she were dead.

He did not buy into the whole "evil incarnate" bit anymore – not now. He did still think she was a demon, but mostly he looked at her and saw a woman who had cracked under the weight of the Wastes. But had they all not cracked in some way?

Apparently sleeping with her had softened his perceptions, he noted wryly.

He did not lie to himself – he knew what he had gotten into. She would drive him feral still, find some other way to make him love and hate her in turns. It was her nature. She did it to everyone, maybe even to herself. He accepted that. And so did she.

He had lived a long, long time, long enough to know that there were far more years behind him than ahead of him. Looking down at her peaceful face, at the smooth contours of her body pressed against his deteriorating flesh, he knew he would be a fool to give this up, give her up. That made it sound like he was settling, taking the crazy bitch because she was willing to let him touch her, but that was not it. He could not put it into words, but it almost felt like there was a reason they had found each other. Just thinking that made him scowl. It sounded stupid even in his own head. Whatever was between them, whatever it was, he planned to enjoy it until it was gone.

And hell, when he finally did lose his mind, he would get the pleasure of killing her first.

She would probably laugh when he turned, he could almost hear her in his head. "I told you this would happen…"

Charon sighed, a soft sound of contentment, and shifted her weight against him into a more comfortable position before allowing himself to drift into restless, but blissfully dreamless sleep.