Author's Note
Meep.
One chapter gets a me onto a story alert list, and a review.
It wasn't that good, was it?
Either way, my personal thanks to both tennispanda and Teufelszeug, who's name I cannot even try to pronounce out loud.
Another thing.
Charon, as a character, is both very simple, and very difficult to write.
In the game, he does not say much. he had little personality beyond his battle cries, and his constant paranoia warnings. This makes him easy enough to write, as he can have almost any sort of personality.
This also makes him difficult, because to give him a personality and still make the character reconizable as Charon, certified BadAss, is a tricky tricky thing. Personally, I have been trying to see how certain fanon characterizations work, to see what mixes and and molds him into a person, instead of a plot device.
Difficult.
Anyway. I do hope this chaper is enjoyable.
-icewolf
"Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint." - J. B. Yeats
"So. You're not very talkative, are you, Charon?"
The ghoul blinked once, before tilting his head slightly at the girl treading before him in the metro tunnel. It was dark, light from the metro tunnel walls few in between, and not very illuminating. Charon couldn't even count how many times his new Mistress had tripped over debris, her own feet, or that dog that had the habit of circling around, and pressing against both of their legs, feeling teeth on the heel of his boot. It was annoying, slightly, but at least the dog had the good sense to warn them of danger, even if danger so far had been nothing more than a few swarms of radroaches.
"If you wish me to speak, Mistress, I will."
CL rolled her eyes, even though Charon couldn't see them for more than one reason. One, it was dark. Two. She sure as hell wasn't going to turn around to face him for the action of rolling her eyes. That was just silly.
"CL. CL. Not mistress. We've been over this, Charon. I gave you my name so you can use it. Derp."
They had been over this. Several times, in fact, but Charon, in CL's view, either had hardcore habits, or was trying to see how far her temper went.
To Charon? It was a bit of both. Testing the waters unintentionally, because of hardwired habits.
"I apologize Mistress."
Apparently that strangled, choking noise was her vent of frustration.
"Do you still wish for me to speak to you?"
CL didn't answer for a second, because she caught sight of a door up ahead, and flicking her gaze to Dogmeat, who was happily panting, decided to shoulder her bag and head to it, pushing the lever that unlatched it, and peering inside. Oh, an old maintenance room. Perfect. Maybe there were things she could scrounge. Ammo, or old guns to fix up, or scrap metal for Winthrop, or something. She actually skipped into the room, set her back down, and started to dig around. Dogmeat sat in the corner, and Charon...well Charon just stood in the doorway, keeping an eye both in and out of the room.
After all, that was his job.
"I wish for a lot of things."
She was still digging in a box, and Charon glanced at her. Out of the Museum, into bright, natural, and not shitty, orange red light that made everything darker than it was, he'd gotten a truly good look at her. In the washed out lights in this metro, he could still study her well.
"I wish for a lot of things. It doesn't mean I can make them all come true, you know. Even if I wished you'd talk, I couldn't actually make you do so if you didn't want to."
CL had poked her head out of the box, and was staring at him now.
Back in Underworld, her eyes could have been any shade of any color, and would still look practically brown or black. In Underworld, where even a platinum blonde head could look brown, her hair was dark. Skin was discolored from the lights, and looked reddish, almost.
"You are well within contractual obligations to order me to speak if you wish, Mistress. I would have no choice but to comply."
CL groaned, and lifted her hands to grip her hair, cropped short, jagged, choppy, and ending somewhere between her cheekbones and her chin, depending on where the layers ended. Unfortunately, she'd learned the hard way that having long hair in the wasteland was a luxury she didn't have time for. Pulled into a ponytail and hacked off with a combat knife. Up until Snowflake pointed out that he could fix it for her, she'd been quite disgruntled. The change, well, it just served a reminder when she woke up that this wasn't a bad dream.
To Charon, her hair reminded him of a radscorpion's shell, black and gleaming, but not, simply because there were no other colors in her hair. It was black through and through, in any light.
"You know, what? Let me clarify. I don't want to order you to carry a conversation with me. I do, however, like, wish you'd speak up once in a while, you know?"
"If you wish Mistress-..."
"And for the love of all that is holy and pure in the world, please do not call me Mistress. It's just...weird. It's like I'm above you or something, and well...totally not a nice feeling."
"You are my employer. You are indeed above me."
A finger was wagging at him now, her other hand on her hip, and CL was shaking her head, a smile tugging the corner of her lips, eyes flashing in the awful lighting..
"Out here, in the wastes, Charon... we're equals, or it's practically the opposite. You know more than me, you have more experience. Which means, Cha-ron, you have every right to do things like call me by my name, or tell me what you think, or to even call me a dumbass if I do something stupid. I want you to, even. "
Charon blinked once, jaw tightening. Did she have any idea what she was asking, and indirectly ordering from him?
Apparently, judging by the way she went back to scrounging, the answer was no.
Great. Orders he had no idea how to interpret, let alone take.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
"This place is not safe. Be cautious."
Thanks Charon. You could have told me that before I stepped on a bear trap!
CL just grunted. It wasn't attractive, that sound she made, but damn if her leg wasn't being a bitch about pain. Stimpack healing was awesome to watch, and ridiculously amazing in an emergency, but painkiller it not be. And CL sold whatever Buffout and Med-X she ever came upon, as well as any other chems. No need to risk addiction, on top of risking life, limb, and sanity. No need to get hooked on anything worse than Nuka-Cola.
"Yeah, okay."
Oh dear, did she sound bitter. Well, if he was limping, he would be bitter too. As it was, he was walking ahead of her, scouting for more traps, and disarming them. Dogmeat was trailing behind her like always, so her eyes were locked on the freaking giant in front of her, clearing the way.
Charon, well, he hadn't enjoyed seeing his empl-no. She'd said he was her equal. Inferred he was actually her superior. To Charon, he wasn't sure what that entailed. The girl had insisted he speak what he felt, to correct her. Indirect orders, but orders all the same, as well as refraining from calling her 'Mistress'. But what else was he supposed to do, or say?
Either way, he'd been very angry when the snap had been heard, the crack, and then the stifled scream.
Angry with her, for not looking where she was going, even after a murmur of caution.
Angry at himself, because he'd been caught up trying to figure out what exactly his indirect orders prescribed what duties to him to notice the trap.
And angry at whoever had set it, though, judging by the paint on the walls, and the shouts up ahead, Charon would be able to exact his anger on the people it was easiest to. The bastards who set the trap. Shotgun readied, a glance back at his employer, and Charon took off, a snarling dog on his heels, who too had sensed the threat.
"Hey! Wait!"
He didn't even turn back. Didn't even answer.
Duty: Eliminate threats to employer's safety before they reach employer.
And Charon disappeared around a corner, Dogmeat tearing ahead of the ghoul.
CL swore, and followed them both.
"I see you!"
Bullets flurried past him, some hitting the old wrecked metro car that Charon was taking cover behind as the assault rifle went off.
Raiders. Fucking raiders. Sure, they left their mark with all the paint, and the bodies, oh, and yeah, the traps before the station crossing, but the fact remained.
Fucking Raiders.
Charon would be lying if he said that he had expected more than one group. Charon would be lying if he said that everything was fine. Charon was not a liar. He had not expected the three separate groups of raiders emerging from one of the tunnels, and another from the crossing station overhead that only seemed to appear when the first batch of three were taken care of.
Then again. Maybe he should have expected it. Since when do raiders only have three people in an outpost like this?
The years in Azrukhal's service might have left Charon's skills with a slight bit of rust.
A snarl, a bark, a scream, and the bullets stopped firing at him. The Dog had decided to help him out, and was proving far more valuable than Charon would have initially believed from the way the smoothskin treated the canine.
Charon whirled away from his cover, shotgun reloaded. There was this human, and two more above, who had been taking shots every once in a while. Hunting rifles.
Too bad they couldn't aim for shit.
He could.
A motion, the dog backing away from where it had torn a ragged chunk of flesh from the woman's leg, blood splashing on the ground, down skin, staining the heeler's fur, and the raider woman reloaded to fire again, screaming unintelligibly.
Charon pulled the trigger, running forward. The first blast had the woman's good thigh almost ripped in half, and she fell to her knees screaming even louder, turning only to have the barrel of Charon's shotgun pressed against her head.
Trigger pulled, and the raider's head exploded in gore, blood and brain matter mixing, splattering on the floor, an eye landing with a wet plop on the ghoul's boot, rolling off only to be popped underfoot by an uncaring step, and the woman's body collapsed, the bottom half of her jaw the only part still attached to her neck. Charon didn't even pay a mind to the corpse, even if Dogmeat sniffed it once. It was just that. A corpse.
There were no shortages of them anywhere here.
As for the others. They hadn't shot for a bit, and Charon squinted filmy eyes at the upper station. Maybe they had brains and fled.
A crack of a rifle, and pain exploding in his shoulder told him, no. They had not. Well fuck. A stifled yell of pain, and Charon started to dart for cover, making himself harder to aim at while still heading for the stairs.
Well, broken down escalator, but come on now, without power, they really are just stairs.
Another crack, a whizz by his ear, and then Charon stopped dead at the next sound. Well sounds.
First was an explosion, which he could see. A small one, no doubt the product of a frag grenade. Shit. One of them had grenades.
The second?
"Fuck with me you bitches!"
And the third was a second explosion, and a couple more cracks of a rifle.
Charon ran full speed up the stairs.
Stupid girl!
CL was indeed a lucky, lucky girl. That was not in question. She also had excellent perception, only augmented by Dr. Lesko's 'Ant Sight' genome.
And she could be very sneaky.
So while she'd arrived a bit too late to help with the gunfight, which was in full fire by the time she arrived, with Charon and Dogmeat coming out the victors, there were things she noticed. Like the ammo boxes. The first aid boxes. The three grenades she could add to her count and bring it up to sixteen. And the two raiders on the upper metro station, firing at Charon and Dogmeat.
CL saw red.
Not blistering, blinding red, no. Charging foolishly into a firefight was a bad, bad idea. A very...rosy red. The kind of red that had her thinking to remain unseen, and sneak up behind those bastards while they were preoccupied. Which is just what she did, a grenade in hand, finger slipped through the ring on the pin, and her hand firmly clamped on the lever, ready to get up close and slip the grenade under those assholes feet.
Sadly, plans never go the way you expect them.
She saw the reloading, the careful aiming. Heard two blasts that sounded like the came from Charon's shotgun. Heard silence. And then the crack. The sound of a person being hit. And her finger slipped the pin out, and she stood, tossing the grenade the ten feet between them. Six seconds. One in the air.
One raider was reloading his weapon when the grenade bounce against his foot, (two), looked up, then back down, (three) nudging his buddy who looked down (four), looked back up, and turning to her (five).
They both dove away at the sixth second, the explosion both blinding and near deafening, and she had another grenade out and in the air.
"Fuck with me you bitches!"
No, plans never go the way you expect them, but this might possibly be better, because the second grenade landed, and CL was running for cover before the raiders could react fast enough to figure out what was happening and shoot at her. Another explosion, a scream of pain, and the grenade lobbing was switched out in favor for her own rifle, slung across her back. Behind the ticket station counter, propping her gun on the edge for better aim, and she fired twice.
CL was a lucky, lucky girl, because one round blasted through the chest of the man whose side she'd practically blown off with the second grenade. The second through the raider's neck. To be fair, she'd been aiming for his chest as well. A little high, but it got the job done, right? CL blinked, before standing, and crawling out of the booth's window as Charon made his way up the stairs, Dogmeat ahead of him and bouncing on her, enthusiastically licking at her face, her neck, her hands, and CL was petting and ruffling his fur just as happily, wide smile on her face.
"Dogmeat! Good boy! Good good boy!"
"Mistress."
CL blinked and looked up, the dog still licking her cheek, squirming happily under her petting.
Charon did not look happy, and she flinched slightly, her smile fading somewhat when spotting his shoulder, and she was up on her feet instantly, large eyes wide and moving towards him.
"Holy shit! You need help? I have a Stimpack, and oh, I have this water, it's irradiated, radiation heals ghouls, right? Oh, oh, let me see! Hold on, don't bleed to death please Charon."
She was digging in her bag now, speaking a mile a minute, until a large hand gripped her arm and pulled it up. CL squeaked, and looked up at well, only to cower back at the look on the ghoul's face. Which was close. And boy, was the size difference painfully being made aware. Charon's hand easily encircled her upper arm, and the grip was strong. She would not be able to break it.
"What were you thinking?"
CL flinched again, and swallowed. Her voice was frozen. Stuck. Mouth was opening, closing dumbly. What had she been thinking?
Nothing.
She hadn't had a thought at all.
Oh.
"I'm...I'm sorry?"
Charon had to really reign in his temper.
But this girl had been so ridiculously retarded. Charging into danger like that, without thinking as it was obvious she hadn't been doing. If she'd gone and gotten herself killed, his contract...his contract would be worthless, because he would have failed in the primary duty stated. To protect and serve that which holds the contract.
That contract was Charon's honor, practically. He was supposed to preform every duty without fail.
And in less than ten minutes, she had almost ripped up his reputability, his word, his honor, and tossed it into the wind.
Figuratively. If she'd done that to his contract in actuality, he might have killed her.
But now here he was, trying to calm himself down, grasping onto her arm, and a second away from pulling her off her feet, while she was staring at him with those almost too large eyes. She was nervous and frightened of him right now.
Dammit. She was supposed to know that she was safe with him, not be shitstruck terrified.
Though she might be more compliant if she was.
But no. All she could say was 'I'm Sorry.' That wasn't going to cut it. Between his contractual obligations and her orders to speak his mind and tell her if she had done something stupid, as well as her saying it was his right to do so, he was ready to give her a definite verbal slap.
After all, you'd never find Charon disobeying orders. Interpreting them, maybe.
But never disobeying.
"You're sorry. Did it even cross your mind, Mistress, that there may have been more traps? That these men were more heavily armed than they appeared? That there may have been further re-enforcements? You went blindly into danger, because it's very clear you were not thinking a fucking thing."
She'd shrunk back, and Charon heard the dog starting to growl at him. He paid it no mind, but released his grip on her arm.
"But...you were shot..."
Charon just stared at her, and the girl's words died off with a pathetic squeak.
"You are my employer, and as such, I do as you command. But understand, Mistress, that it is also my duty to protect you, and I cannot do my duty if you bolt headfirst into dangerous situations. Is that clear?"
CL nodded once, blinking and stepping back, tripping over one of the prone bodies and landing on her ass while the body twitched, and let out a rasp. Her eyes widened more, Dogmeat barked, and Charon reacted instinctively.
"HOLY SHIT HE'S AL-!"
Well, not anymore. There was a combat knife now embedded in his neck. Nobody dodges Charon. Be it his gun, his knife, or his questions.
"Is that clear, Mistress?"
Oh. Yes. CL nodded rapidly, and the hand was back around her arm, hauling her to her feet.
"Then we are in an understanding. Now, Mistress, if I may ask. Where is our destination?"
CL blinked, before looking down, and poking her fingers together, then glancing back up at the ghoul with a bright smile that so far he'd only seen her give to Azrukhal before she talked the dead ghoul out of Charon's contract. Somehow, Charon figured that with that smile, nothing good would ever come to the person on the receiving end.
"Vernon Square?"
God fuck it all!
This girl was going to be the death of him.
"Hold on Jonas, I need to record this first."
Dad.
Daddy.
Her heart beat a bit faster, and she was turning up the volume on her Pip-Boy, despite it echoing in her newly gained housein Megaton,and hearing it several times before. CL leaned forward in her chair, staring at the blinking green screen that was showing how long the downloaded holodisk was running.
"I... I don't really know how to tell you this. I hope you'll understand, but I know you might be angry."
No, really?
Teeth clenched, and CL closed her eyes, pressing her palms to them until she could see stars explode behind her lids. Of course she would be angry, you knew this all to well.
"I thought about it for a long time, but in the end I decided it was best for you not to know. So many things could have gone wrong and there's really no telling how the overseer will react when he finds out."
"He'll act crazy. You couldn't even have said a small clue? Left a better note? They killed Jonas, daddy, they killed him, and that's how I found this note. You know daddy, it was in his hand? I took your note from a dead man's hand. Are you proud, dad? Is this what you wanted?"
She was talking to the holodisk recording. She always talked to the holodisk recording.
"It's best if he can blame everything on me."
"He didn't. He blamed you, and Jonas, and me and even Amata."
"Obviously you already know that I'm gone. It was something I needed to do. You're an adult now. You're ready to be on your own."
"Says who? I never said I was ready for you to leave me, daddy. I never said I was ready."
"Maybe someday things will change and we can see each other again. I can't tell you why I left or where I'm going. I don't want you to follow me. God knows life in the vault isn't perfect, but at least you'll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going."
"Going where, dad? They kicked me out. I had to leave. They tried to kill me, daddy."
Hands were rubbing her face, before she looked up at the Pip-Boy on the desk, large hazel eyes streaming. She could never hold her tears back.
CL was lost all alone in this big bad world, and the only person she'd ever depended on to keep her safe had walked off into the dusty, radioactive horizon. How could he even say these things? Her dad was brilliant. Her dad knew everything. Her dad could not be so hopelessly blindly optimistic that he could leave and everything would be just fucking peachy.
A shuffle of sound in the back, and she let out a choked sound at the voice that broke through.
"Don't mean to rush you, Doc, but I'd feel better if we got this over with."
"Jonas, I'm so, so sorry."
Her fathers voice was back.
"Okay. Go ahead. Goodbye. I love you, Chen Lijuan."
Chen Lijuan Morrison, CL to everybody else, burst out into uncontrollable sobs.
"I love you too daddy."