Title: Parched
Author: No Volume Control
Character Pairings: F!Lone Wanderer/Charon
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating: T-MA+
Warnings: Explicit Profanity/Vulgarity, Gore, Sexual Content
Disclaimers: I own nothing Fallout 3.
Recommendation(s):
Page Width: Keep story's width at "3/4"; adjustment settings are at the top-right corner of the site, where the different font styles and sizes are located. "3/4" is the original width that this story was written in.
Light/Dark: This chapter is best read on the dark background setting because it deals with nighttime and dark thoughts.
Chapter Three
"No!" The panic that arose in her was like a splash of ice water across her body. She immediately started to fight, her mind going wild. Oh, God, this is not happening! It's not, it's not, it's not!But Charon's hands only tightened brutally, the bones in her wrists grinding as her breath lodged fast under his palm. She stared up at him, eyes wide under his bitingly cold gaze. Dimly, as she started to become light-headed from her shallow air intake, she heard Ahzrukhal speak.
"You will be partaking in this punishment as well, you defective cretin. And I swear on your soul, Charon, that if you kill this one because of another convenient play of mercy like last time, I will lock you away somewhere far from here and leave you there to rot until even the Ferals won't recognize you as kin."
Oh, God . . . they've done this before? And the bastard killed them as an act of fucking mercy? She held those impassive eyes with her own, her mouth pulled into a tight line. Her chin quivered slightly; her pulse thudding frantically in her throat.
In response, he did something that astonished her.
Those frost-blue eyes broke contact.
His gaze dropped away from her entirely as his warm, gloved hand slowly released her throat. His coarse fingertips were the barest of touches when they drew down the column of her neck and over her collarbone. And then they caught the tab of her jumpsuit's zipper and began pulling it down the length of her body.
She'd never been so consumed with the darkened hatred that she felt for him in that moment.
"Don't you dare look away," she hissed venomously, her voice a painful croak as tears prickled hotly in her eyes. The warm, humid air of The Ninth Circle licked mockingly at her skin when the tab came to a stop at the apex of her thighs, leaving her exposed in nothing but her plain, white undergarments. "Don't you dare! You fucking look at me when you do this to me, you goddamned coward!"
His jaw seemed to clench in response at her outburst. She could even hear his teeth grind.
But he staunchly refused to lift his gaze back to hers.
A sneer curled her lips as she felt his hand push inside her jumpsuit, the worn leather of his fingerless glove and leather bindings smoothing over her thigh.
She turned her glare on Ahzrukhal.
He was lazily braced against the alcohol cabinet, a lit cigarette sitting casually between his fingers. His half-lidded eyes were openly roaming over her flesh, a self-satisfied smirk on his rotting features.
Then he drew his eyes up to hers while taking a deep drag from the cigarette. Tendrils of smoke curled from his nasal cavities when he spoke.
"Finger her. Get her wet. I find that there is nothing more gratifying than crushing a woman's disillusioned sense of authority over her own body."
Without even showing her the decency of hesitation, that roughened hand slid back up her thigh and traced the elastic of her boy shorts before pushing deep beneath the fabric.
Her voice was raw with emotion, hot tears spilling over as those scarred fingers cupped her heat and began probing for her clit, her cry of unadulterated rage and hatred echoing off the walls as she struggled violently.
"Fuck you, you disgusting assholes! Fuck. You!" With a shrill cry, she kicked up. Her knee making solid contact with the side of Charon's face, knocking his head to the side. But, much to her bitter resignation after witnessing his past altercation with an Abomination, she figured the resulting throb in her knee was more than what he felt in his skull.
"Oh, for fuck's sake - subdue her!" snapped Ahzrukhal.
He whipped his head back, a smoldering irritation in his narrowing eyes.
Baring her teeth, she responded by kicking up again; however, he blocked her with his arm this time. Scowling, he released her wrists to catch her under her lifted leg, spinning her body effortlessly to face him before capturing her thighs with both hands and yanking her to the edge of the bar's surface.
Spitting out a curse, she reared up from the marble surface, throwing a fist at his radiation-destroyed features, but he quickly recoiled, effortless dodging her attack and shackling her wrist in his hand.
"Damn you!" she shouted when he seized both of her wrists again, snapping them painfully taut behind her back. He sank his arm inside her open jumpsuit and looped it around her waist, then jerked her fully against his body.
Her voice caught in her throat and she stared up at him, wide-eyed.
Unnatural heat was rolling off his massive frame in waves, enveloping her as he pulled harder on her wrists, forcing her to arch against him.
Reduced to nothing but like a weak child in the midst of superior strength, she couldn't help but mentally kick herself for leaving behind Jericho this time around. What she wouldn't do to have that vulgar old bastard at her side right now.
He leaned in, crushing her breasts against the unyielding wall of his chest as he crowded close. She swallowed thickly, the sharp scent of warmed leather, gunpowder, and something intensely coppery and musky filling her nose.
Her mind was a mayhem of ferocious anger, fear, and an unrestrained desperation.
She'd been in so many perilous situations and dealt with numerous close calls in just the five months that she'd been traversing the Capital Wasteland. stumbling onto raider camps; being stalked by Talon Company mercenaries and their damn laser pistols; Jericho's hands; Yao Guai; literally falling into a mirelurk nest; Jericho's hands; being abducted by aliens, walking in space, and destroying a whole other spaceship; getting caught by Moriarty being a bit too curious with Gob; super mutants and their massive brethren; feral ghouls; Jericho's goddamn hands.
Now she was stuck between a rock and a hard place once again - specifically, a minimum seven feet of immovable, highly-heated muscle and leather armor that was pressing against her exposed flesh, a steel codpiece digging uncomfortably into her inner thigh, his breath as hot and humid on her skin as the very atmosphere in Underworld.
But those glacier-blue eyes contrasted starkly to his near-burning temperature as they bore into hers - icy; emotionless.
The impatient and agitated jeers being barked at the both of them seemed to fade into the background as her focus tapered to just Charon and his impossibly large stature.
Swallowing, she willingly leaned up to him. Those harsh eyes watched her like a predator.
"Please, Charon," she whispered, her gaze holding his. She willed him to not look away again.
There was a faint softening around the hard edge of his mouth as something faintly remorseful seeped into those frost-blue eyes.
His slowly retracted his arm from her waist, the uneven skin of his fingertips ghosting over her skin as they drew along the small of her back and over her hip before slipping out of her jumpsuit completely. He brought it up and wrapped strong fingers around her throat again; however, there was no horrible pressure like before - only what was exerted in an attempt to coax her back down on the bar's surface.
Tears welled up once more, blurring her vision as a part of her continued to fight him, refusing to allow this to happen. The pressure at her throat began to increase.
It was a warning.
His breath was scalding against her mouth when he finally responded back in a scant whisper.
"Cooperate."
It was only one word, but there was so much self-disgust in his tone that it actually made her heart clench . . . for him. This goddamn ghoul was going to rape her or would kill her trying . . . and she felt pity for him.
She almost laughed at the bitter irony.
There was a distinct hatred in this cool-blue eyes for what he was doing - for the bar owner who was ranting at him to 'fucking get on with it already' or that he was going to 'do it himself' and then 'punish' him later.
Her tears spilled over as she dropped her eyes to his chest, a horrible sense of defeat overwhelming her, and she slowly allowed herself to be gently pushed flat against the bar top, a pained twinge in her shoulders as they were stretched to their limits with him still holding her wrists behind her.
A searing knot stuck fast in her throat, but she stubbornly held it there, refusing to show any more anguish in front of these monsters. She would not give them anymore satisfaction in any of this.
She closed her eyes and turned her head away, her jaw setting defiantly as she tried to ignore how her abdomen muscles clenched under those fingertips when slid over her stomach before pushing deep into her boy shorts again.
She tried to think of Gob. Tried to remember how he felt against her when she had been sitting on one of bar stools in the closed saloon, his trim waist entrapped between her legs; tried to remember the thrill that went through her when she felt the rigid bulge behind his pant's zipper teasing her inner thigh; tried to remember the heat of his hands when they'd pushed up her leather-clad thighs; tried to remember how his fingers felt against her heat.
But as she felt those radiation-roughened fingers probe between her folds, her attempt to fool herself into believing that they belonged to Gob was for naught. There was no uncertainty; no timid exploration; no treating her like she was delicate glass.
No. These fingers were self-assured in their ministrations; controlled and unhurried in their firm strokes as they slid up and down the length of her slit. These fingers were of a male who exuded experience; dominance.
Everything that was not Gob - everything that was not her, even.
She forced back a sob when a resulting soft gasp nearly slipped from her lips. He'd found her clit.
The pad of that thumb pushed over the sensitive nub again. It was a subtle demand for her submission.
She wanted to curse her luck. Of all the would-be rapists who failed to have their way with her, the one to actually restrain her had to also know how to stimulate a female body?
She tensed and clenched her jaw against the hot tendrils of pleasure causing her toes to curl in her boots, becoming desperate when he stroked her clit once more - a firm coaxing.
He was as determined to make her enjoy it as much as she was determined to remain detached and sexless in the wake of the cruel violation of her body.
"What the - ? Kid!"
Those relentless fingers stilled in the same moment that she'd snapped head her up.
Relief slammed into her when she saw Snowflake standing there, an angrily appalled expression on his gnarled features, and in that instant she couldn't have found anything more beautiful. It was enough for that burning lump in her throat to wrench free.
"Snowflake!" she wailed in uninhibited elation, choking on the sobs that wracked her body. Tears flowed freely down her face as she started to struggle again, her will to fight renewed at the sight of him.
"You evil sons of bitches!" he spat. Something glinted under the pub's dim lights and she saw that he'd suddenly flourished a gleaming straight razor. He flipped it open with an expert flick of his wrist and tossed it into his other hand.
"Get the fuck out of here!" she heard Ahzrukhal shout.
But it fell on deaf ears. The ghoul stylist suddenly charged at Ahzrukhal, slicing the air at him with the sharpened blade. The corrupt ghoul stumbled backwards, tripping over himself in his panic as he narrowly escaped being maimed.
"Charon!" he bellowed.
The grip around her wrists and the heavy weight of muscle pinning her was gone in a blink, and she watched as Charon went for Snowflake.
Without thinking, she was already off the bar's surface and on the floor, scrambling for her discarded energy weapon, her heart slamming in her chest with adrenaline.
"I don't think so, girl."
She cried out as pain arched along her scalp when a hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and gave a cruel yank, stopping her only a few feet short from the Destabilizer. A polished shoe gave a swift kick to the weapon, sending it skidding across the room and out of sight.
The scent of stale alcohol and cheap cologne invaded her nose and her head was wrenched back to stare up at the rotting face of a sneering Ahzrukhal.
In that same moment, she caught Snowflake in her peripheral vision as he was literally tossed over the bar, landing on his side with a pained grunt.
She looked up when the stilled air was broken by the clink of a gun's safety being flicked off.
"Snowflake!" she shouted as she saw Charon round the bar with his shotgun trained on the stylist, looking royally pissed off. Blood was seeping into the collar of his undershirt from the fresh blade wounds adorning his face and neck.
Heeding her warning, Snowflake scurried to his feet and shot off, covering his head as he ducked for cover around the corner into the sleeping area. The shotgun exploded rapidly after him with the massive ghoul in hot pursuit, metal clinking with each automatic reload as chunks of debris flew in the air when the pellets missed their target and embedded themselves in the wall.
"You damn smoothskins are too much trouble."
She gasped when the fist tightened viciously in her hair and gave her head another jerk, forcing her to crane her neck to an uncomfortable angle to stare up at him as he towered over her.
He pulled his lips back to brandish a sadistic smirk. "But do not think we're done here, girl. This is just a minor interruption."
She felt her temper flare as her confidence swelled in her again.
"Except you don't have your attack dog this time to say that," she hissed, her glare searing. "And you weren't the reason why I went for my gun."
She reveled in the pain clouding of his eyes when she slammed her elbow into his upper thigh, but felt a little peeved that her aim was only a few degrees off from her actual target.
Spinning from his shock-slackened grip as he stumbled back, she flung her arms around one of his calves and yanked on it, destroying his balance and bringing him crashing to the floor.
His string of filthy curses against her and her mother was abruptly cut short when she threw her weight into a right hook, her fist colliding with his jaw in one vicious blow.
It stunned him enough to allow her time to jump on him, but when she tried to wrestle his arms behind his back, he slammed his skull against her temple.
Pain and white-hot light erupted behind her eyes and she cried out, falling off of him as she grabbed at her head.
When she saw him scrabble for purchase on the floor, moving for the rejected energy rifle, she gasped and lunged at him. In spite of her swimming vision, she grabbed fistfuls of his slacks and suit jacket, pulling him back.
"Damned slut!" he snarled nastily, shucking out of his jacket before turning and slamming the heel of his dress shoe against her collarbone.
She cried out again, flying back against the marble tiles with the jacket. Vision blurred, temples throbbing, and pain now blooming across her sternum and shoulder, she struggled to get to her feet but stumbled, falling to her side with a groan.
The sound of flat heels hitting the marble floor resounded off the walls, and those polished dress shoes stopped right in front of her.
And then she felt the cold, rounded muzzle of her energy weapon press into the side of her head.
"Shit," she hissed under her breath in the same moment that he bellowed Charon's name. She began to perspire as she stared at the dirty, cracked floor. Think of something, think of something! Oh, God, think of something, Jill! Months of surviving this hellholish land, and you're going to let it end like this?"I have to admit, girl," the ghoul rasped disdainfully above her, "that in spite of your atrocious actions on my person and the ridiculous hassle that you've been, I'm still entertaining thoughts of fucking you. After all, there is something inherently special about a scrappy woman who also has flawless skin like yours. It's a crime that I actually don't own a Collar. In my time, I've seen some of the most influential men become harmless, compliant pets in those beautiful devices."
She flicked her gaze around the room, frenetic and desperate. Her heart was pounding in her ears, nearly deafening her to the unhurried footsteps of Charon coming back into the room. She found his presence difficult to ignore when he came to stand directly behind her, assaulting her senses. Imposing height and breadth; unnaturally elevated body heat that rolled off him and prickled her flesh; uncompromisable control that he no doubt perfected over God knows how many decades.
And she was wedged between all that and the muzzle of her own gun.
She was completely out of moves; trapped.
She might have been able to use Ahzrukhal's sadism against himself - put on a show as being more injured and weakened than she actually was, and then try to overpower him again and take back her weapon.
But when he'd called for his 'employee', she could only watch in helplessness as her last-ditch-effort plan flew out the window and fall to its death.
She couldn't play at the liabilities of the pub owner's narcissism if she was actually going to have to go up against the pliable granite that was Charon as he acted as Ahzrukhal's hands.
"Get her to her feet, Charon, and tie her to a chair until I've decide what the hell I'm going to do with her."
When she felt one of those hands cup her under her arm, she flinched away violently, snarling; however, her blustering might as well have been empty and harmless for he simply grabbed her under her arm again and pulled to her feet.
However, he made no move to guide her to a chair.
In fact, even through the haze of her anger and spitefulness, she couldn't help but notice how gentle he was being when he'd forced her onto her feet.
"Why are you just standing there? Bind her to a damn chair!" Ahzrukhal spat, the steel muzzle of her energy rifle having dropped to press into her shoulder.
But again, he made no attempt to drag her to a chair.
She tensed up, wincing as her bruised collarbone protested, when he instead dipped a long, leather-bound arm over her shoulder and down the length of her body.
But he made no untoward movements on her person except to render her bewildered and even a little frightened with the sudden turn of events when he quietly gripped the tab of her jumpsuit's zipper and drew it up her body, sealing the suit all the way to her neck.
When he eventually spoke, there was a chilled darkness in his roughened voice and it had her extremely nervous with him standing directly behind her.
"It would seem that you are no longer in possession of my contract, Ahzrukhal."
She saw the bar owner's eyes widened at the statement and for a brief moment, her alien energy rifle fell away from her shoulder, his stare dropping to her hands.
She followed his gaze to the grimy suit jacket that had been long forgotten but was somehow still clenched in her fist.
Swearing vilely, the Destabilizer was re-gripped quickly, but took a much higher aim at the ghoul behind her; however, before she could make a dive out of the way, the steel barrel of Charon's shotgun came up and violently knocked the energy weapon away, and then fired off an explosive round in the same moment.
She screeched in agony, clapping her hands over her ears as they rang deafeningly. An arm came around her waist like an iron band before she was twisted behind the solid barrier of Charon's body, the metallic clangs echoing loudly off the pub's walls.
She watched in frozen horror as the massive ghoul stood over Ahzrukhal fallen corpse and continued to unload round after round after round of flesh- tearing ammo into the motionless body, blood and decayed tissue and bone fragments coating the marble tiles and walls.
She started, feeling something wet land on her arm.
When she looked down and saw that it was tiny, bloody piece of Ahzrukhal's flesh, she almost lost it with how quick the bile rose into her throat.
As if Satan himself was upon her, she dropped the pinstripe jacket and spun on her heel, bolting from the pub area and speeding through the back doors, leaving Charon to continue his massacre on what was left of Ahzrukhal's headless torso.
She couldn't feel anything except the icy terror coursing through her veins; couldn't think of anything except her explicit need to put as much distance between her and Underworld as possible.
Fuck the her weapons, food, and the Virgo II satellite dish sitting safely in Carol's Place; fuck GNR and Three Dog; fuck even finding her father! She didn't want to do this anymore - she had to get away; had to find some place to hide from this screwed up land of sociopaths and psychopaths.
Her mind and legs were on autopilot. She wasn't capable of registering anything around her, not even when she tripped and stumbled over pieces of debris in the lobby - didn't register the confused and concerned shouts of the few ghoul residents who were still milling about when she shoved past them; didn't register the expansive, poorly lit foyer when she burst from Underworld's entrance hall; didn't register the massive mammoth replica or fallen Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton when she sprinted past them; didn't register the stomping footfalls of heavy boots closing in behind her, the sound reverberating ominously off the high, stone walls.
She didn't register the cool metal of the door handle in her hands, heaving it open; didn't register the large, gloved hand slamming above her head against the door's surface, fingers splayed wide, and roughly shoving it closed again; didn't register her shoulders being grabbed firmly before being spun around; didn't register the heated, callused fingers gripping her jaw and forcing her to look up.
However, in that moment, everything came crashing back down on her when her panicked gaze locked with glacier-blue eyes.
Her head was throbbing; her hearing was muffled; her collarbone ached; her lungs burned from exertion; her breathing was labored and erratic; her heart was threatening to break free from her ribcage.
But she couldn't focus on anything but the monstrous ghoul trapping her against the museum's entrance door, his hand dropping from her chin.
He was towering over her, his breathing deep but steady even after having chased her. The flickering flames in the barrel behind him cast a foreboding shadow across his face, but she could still see the grim outline of his mouth; could see Ahzrukhal's blood speckled on the ruined flesh of his facial features, mingling with the blood seeping from the deep cuts on his cheek and jaw.
He opened his mouth then, his gravelly voice revealing the solemn gravity of their current situation.
"We need to talk, smoothskin."