Yay, all my chapters and the reviews are back! And thanks so much for the new reviews on the new installment and the first one! That was super distressing for a while, lousy timing FF! So, with the way my shifts are I am going to try and make Tuesday update day. I may or may not try writing by hand at work(there's no way to fact check though, so it depends on what I'm writing), I have two fourteen hour shifts on the weekends, and let me tell you. They have the potential to drag out like blue stink.
Dogmeat was more than pleased with the improvement the big world was showing. He still couldn't get the ear thing right, and the dog was fairly certain he was still a few bits short of a full treat bag, but he had taken direction exceedingly well while taking care of the rancid-man. He had been thrilled when the big one asked him to lead the way to the meatsack, knowing that as another world he would probably do something, and, knowing who it was, that it was going to be good. When the gigantic twit wasn't getting himself tied up or straying away, he managed to be wonderfully vicious.
What had happened was beyond the animal's wildest dreams. He had expected the big one to tear the other apart, or blow him into chunks(and that would have been well enough, the dog thought, as long as there were pieces left over for himself to urinate on, announcing the rancid-man's status as being worthless even when dead, not fit to scavenge from). What had happened was even better. He had been dragged out by the big one like a sniveling whelp, and they had taunted him. Dogmeat had laughed in his face, making his queer imitation of his first's happy sounds that he liked to do. And then the big one had even made the other fly, and oh, hadn't that been fun, hadn't that been just as fine as fresh blood on his face. Personally, he had behaved himself, not leaving a mark, snapping his teeth with immaculate precision. The fact that no one had interfered during the entire affair made him feel even better. He had been right in wanting to slay the stinking bastard, and everyone's submission proved it. The big world giving him the good words after everything had made it perfect.
Dogmeat wiggled until he was nearly beside himself at the thought of it all, watching another of the smelly people poking at his first, the blood-smelling one. This one he liked, it was the one who his first world invariably gravitated towards whenever she came into this place, and he was currently replacing the rags over her eyes while he snarled back and forth with the big world(the dog thought it had something to do with the big world being too slow on the pickup for the other's liking. Dogmeat could not disagree). He was one of the persons the dog classified as a near-moon; not travelling in their pack, but attentive to his first when she was around. So was the woman putting a bowl down for him. The sour woman glaring at them from the wall was not. He glared back, and the woman twitched her gaze down, feeling him look at her after a few moments. Once he had rolled up his lips, she scuttled away somewhere, and that was good. Doing more was impossible, because of his first world's commands, and the fact that sour-face was bowl-woman's moon. Dogmeat liked bowl-woman as well. She attended to his first and fed him, and she knew how to scratch ears. Thinking about being fed, he blinked and turned back to the food she had put down for him as blood-smell finished and patted his first world, then snapped at the big world before leaving. There was meat in it, and that was very fine, and he made sure to clear everything up entirely after placing his head where his first's grasping hand could reach it, wiggling again when she gave him his perfect words. That was best, and so was he.
Cort was able to permanently remove the wrappings from her eyes after five days had elapsed. She had spent the time with the various people she had become accustomed to associating with, although this time Charon was conspicuously present for all of it, lurking like an over-sized gargoyle in some portion of whatever room she happened to be in. More or less everyone accepted the behaviour as perfectly normal, being used to the large ghoul standing motionless against the wall. There had been fifty years to get used to him standing motionless against walls. What there hadn't been time to get used to was his conduct now when he was away from the wall.
Charon's attestations to Greta shortly after Cort had hired him were entirely accurate; after their memories of his first weeks in Underworld had had a chance to fade, most people considered him part of the architecture(although balustrades and cornices generally did not make a practice of throwing people out on their asses when told to do so by an irate bartender). Some mentally slotted him in as a fleshy and taciturn version of Cerberus, not so much monstrous as mindless, silent and stupid. Only a few like Doctor Barrows had twigged to the fact that there was a lot more going on, up until Cort had blown in fifty years later. If still waters ran deep, Charon was practically an abyssal trench, and nobody had bothered to go swimming. Typically, she had dived right in, in more ways than one.
Admittedly, nearly everyone had known that Cort had shared a bed with him the last time she had come through, although Barrows, Graves and Carol were the only ones who knew why; the former two because Cort had told them, and the latter because she had been around the block a few times in the last two centuries. Being sweet did not preclude the pre-war ghoul from also being as sharp as a pin. None of them saw it as their business to air out the smoothskin's private laundry, for both ethical and personal reasons. The rest of the inhabitants tried explaining the incident to themselves in one of three ways, the most obvious reason, that the pair was involved, striking them as thoroughly impossible.
One, the smoothskin was too damn cheap or poor to pay for more than one bed. Some wondered why she didn't just make the ghoul sleep on the floor, but then decided that while definitely weird, she wasn't known for being mean.
Two, she was terrified that someone was going to try and kill her. This was plausible since there were residents who had been trying to, or at least maim her for amusement value. Even asleep, Charon was terrifying enough that no one would go within five feet of him unless they absolutely had to, and since he had apparently been wrapped around the girl(only a handful had actually seen them, and the rest were operating purely on conjecture), that definitely meant no one going near her, either. Some wondered if he was being used as a meat shield, and then most decided that since it was Charon, they really didn't care.
Three, she saw the sour, presumably slow-witted mercenary as a bipedal version of her dog. This seemed the most likely option. The kid was sweet, naive, latched onto anything that paid her attention, and popular opinion pegged her at more than a few molerats short of a burrow. The big ghoul listened like a dog, and had acted like one for Ahzrukhal. If the smoothskin was choosing to sleep with him like her actual dog, well. While somewhat distasteful, it wasn't even close to being as abhorrent as some of the tasks the deceased bar owner had had him perform. If the worst thing the nutty girl was doing with the brainwashed giant was conking out in close quarters, they were all getting off easy. Carlo's header into the trenches had reaffirmed that opinion slightly in the last week. However, their relief that Cort had not in fact ordered Charon to huck him into the Mall was stamped out at the thought that the man was now off of his leash, was a whole lot smarter than they had thought, and was now doing things of his own volition. The idea alone was unnerving enough to make several people feel a bit loose in the guts.
Of course, all of these perfectly logical, safe and somewhat acceptable hypotheses were shot entirely and resoundingly to hell the first time Charon picked Cort up in public and kissed her. Cort enthusiastically kissing him back totally napalmed whatever remaining shreds their jarred minds may have tried to hold onto, and also had some of the men holding onto something else in private later(not that they hadn't before, since she had spent two weeks bouncing around in leather pants and a tank top. It just meant that they could now more easily imagine her being excited about it instead of screaming in horror).
It wasn't overly hard for them to shelve this new development into the character of the girl, once they thought about it. She had always been unusually comfortable in Underworld for a smoothskin, since truthfully, most of them would run out like a scalded cat whenever they had finished whatever business it was that had brought them in, if they didn't do something that would require a forced ejection. It was hard to see the big man almost everyone had dismissed as being sub-human, that a lot had treated as such, acting like a relatively normal, feeling person. There was guilt involved, and shame, and for some irrational anger over the erroneous thought that they have been personally deceived by him. It was the reason none had accepted the indications that Cort and Charon had been involved; a hug, her smiling, his expression when looking at her. It had been easier to continue thinking of the ghoul as below them than to admit they were wrong, very wrong, and did nothing to change themselves or his situation for half a century.
What all this boiled down to in the end was that people tried to converse with Charon about any number of things, and overall, they felt more affable and protective towards Cort. Aside from receiving a cool civility, nobody got anywhere with the former, with the baffling exception of Carol. For the latter, having a pretty smoothskin who was now without a doubt honest in her overtures of friendliness towards the residents was a welcome change from the treatment they normally received from non-ghouls, and a rare commodity. If the way the pair was currently going at it in the concourse was any indication, the kid was about as ghoul-friendly as you could get.
Cort nuzzled around the side of Charon's face, talking softly as he stroked her hair. "Everyone's staring, you know." Barrows had removed the bandages from her about ten minutes prior to them coming out into the concourse that morning, and while she did have to wear her sunglasses for the time being, she was ludicrously happy to have all of her sight back. As such, Charon was happy, and had picked her up for a kiss after she had dashed out of the clinic to see everything, delighted by how new everything appeared. The smile on her face had been irresistible to him.
"So fucking what? They can stare at me doing something I like for once, instead of being some freakshow hulking against a wall. Half of them are probably shitting their pants trying to figure out what I may have heard over the years."
He smirked, and Cort smiled again. Five days in the dark had felt like forever, had felt like it was eating her alive, and she had missed his face. Seeing him made everything a thousand times better, and shoved the disjointed impulses that had been picking away at her to the back of her mind. Pulling back slightly, she looked at him avidly, taking in as much as possible. It was like finding water in the desert after subsisting for months on nothing but dust, and she bathed in the sight of him. For his part, Charon looked back, deciding that he would find somewhere dim and private for her so he could see her eyes without the glasses on. Or anything else.
"Sooo what can we do now? Metro Central tunnels? I bet those asshole Talons are in there again, if they were staking out the freaking Georgetown tunnels." She grinned, looking suddenly vicious and feeling more than a little unhinged. "I want to stalk. I want to hunt, I want to slaught-" Giving her head a shake, she struggled with herself, clawing her way back into a semblance of stability. Nonono, none of that loony shit. You will be in control. You are in control, it's not controlling you. "I want to scav up the leftovers, we need to make some caps."
"Yes, we do, and yes, those tunnels. They'll be perfect for you to get back up to speed with, nice, dark, and you know them." He set her down and they started walking back to Carol's, the ghouls around them trying to act normal, for the most part. One or two were still gaping, which both of them ignored completely.
Charon had watched Cort count their money out the day before to give herself something to do, and they were running low. His mouth quirked when he thought about her fussing over the tiny pile she had spread across their bed, patting them into two portions with her fingertips. She had stressed that anything she made or scavved was automatically half his, saying that was how it was supposed to work. He wasn't sure how she had come to that conclusion, but he went along with it since it seemed to be important to her, and agreeing had made her happy. He personally thought the idea was ridiculous, since everything he had or found automatically reverted to her ownership as his employer, including anything she gave him. Effectively, she was giving her own shit to herself.
Frowning as they went up the stairs, he calculated out the amount of work they would have to do to replenish the amount of caps she preferred to be carrying. A large portion of them had been used on their previous trip to Underworld, and Charon went through more to resupply from Durga before they left the Citadel, prioritizing those items as essential. As such, they had plenty of ammunition and medical supplies left, but they were still low on food. The only reason they weren't out of it entirely was because Carol had been feeding her at every opportunity, something the mercenary was incredibly grateful for. The woman had taken Cort's gaunt appearance entirely in stride, skillfully fussed her into eating whenever something was offered, and blithely chalked it up as future payment for delivering letters to Gob. Charon had refrained from making any forays out to hunt, not wanting to leave his employer alone while she was awake. She had become incredibly clingy since her sight was damaged, and couldn't stand it if she wasn't able to hear him nearby. He didn't want to leave her alone period, but how upset, how flat-out frantic she became now after losing track of him wasn't the way he wanted to do it.
Leaving while she was asleep was also not an option. He wasn't particularly worried about anyone hurting her, since he had convinced her to leave Dogmeat free to go after anyone threatening her, no matter who they were. He was worried about her waking up and panicking when she found he wasn't there. Charon was reluctantly resigning himself to the fact that Cort was going to continue having nightmares for the foreseeable future. She was still being chased out of her sleep, but thankfully hadn't shrieked since the first time back at the Citadel, only sobbed quietly, fiercely holding onto him until she exhausted herself. It happened like clockwork each night, and after their second day in Underworld he was now instinctively waking up before she started to go off, which was the only good thing to come of it. It gave him a chance to grab her hands before she could start clawing at her face, trying to remove the dressings from her eyes as she babbled about something in the dark trying to swallow her, which she would plead with him in a heart-breaking whisper to kill.
Unable to do anything to prevent the bad dreams and lacking a way to fight them for her, he found the entire situation extremely upsetting. Charon had never run up against something that he couldn't eliminate for an employer, and his inability to do so now was galling, even if the threat physically did not exist. He was getting uncomfortably close to considering having a talk with Barrows about it, as much as he didn't want to admit that something could be wrong. Thinking about it now, he scowled, abruptly quashing the impulse to go see the doctor. There's nothing wrong. She had nightmares and shit before too, remember? She just didn't tell you every time they happened. Coming into Carol's, he felt his anxiety dissipate as he watched her deviate slightly for a hug from the woman, who clapped happily at her uncovered eyes, then shoved an apple at her before letting go. Once Cort woke up for the day, she was perfectly fine; sometimes distracted, drifting off as she listened for things, but fine. He pulled himself away from the unwanted musings as she grinned up at him, simultaneously making short work of the fruit and putting her armour on, talking with a cheek stuffed full of apple.
"Know what I forgot? Reilly still owes me money. We can go to Seward Square later and collect."
Charon rolled his eyes and started putting his own armour on after sorting out Dogmeat's. "And what entertaining shit do we have to drag ourselves through to get to that hellhole? It was so much fun visiting them the last time, I can't wait."
Rolling her eyes back, Cort flipped up her Pip-Boy and started poking at and talking to it. "I have missed you, yes I have! Have you missed me? Let's see. Uh, we can go through the Capitol Building at the end of the Mall, that would be kinda neat, bet it's big in there...we can get in by way of Anacostia Crossing...and we can get there by going through Pennsylvania Avenue, where the White House isn't anymore. Well, I could admire the hole that's probably left, I suppose." Biting her lip, she looked up at him, suddenly nervous. I shouldn't decide, I don't trust it. No, trust myself. There's only me, just me. She winced, feeling her head start to ache, something that was happening with increasing frequency. Just trust him, I can trust him. "Which one do you want to take? You should pick."
Charon looked at her oddly before rattling off the reply. "Anacostia. It's familiar, and we can go to that rusting piece of crap on the way to Seward if you need to. We can try something different on the way back out." He furrowed up his brows, coming up against one of the rare occasions where Cort required a reminder about the fact that she was still his employer. She was shifting the responsibilities of her rank, and this was not the correct way of doing things. As much as he liked taking care of her needs, performing what she wanted him to do, it was inappropriate, and he had to say something, whether she liked it or not. "Cort, you should be choosing where we go. I know I rag your ass on it, but it's not my place to decide."
Trying not to fidget as he reached over to finish snapping her armour together from where she had paused, Cort felt uneasy and frustrated at his response, not feeling she was stable enough to make tactical decisions and definitely not wanting to tell him why. She knew something was fundamentally wrong with her, something extremely amiss in her head, but thinking about it made her feel painfully blurry around the edges. When she tried too hard to figure it out, she would suddenly find herself snapping back to reality, wondering where the last few minutes had gone and if she had done anything. She wasn't sure, but she thought the ghoul might have noticed a few of her little slips, and didn't want to give him anything else to worry about. "You've told me where to go before, to do things. And at the Citadel..." She trailed off as he winced.
"At the Citadel I did what I had to, and you know how difficult that was for me. With everything else, I've given you my opinion when you've asked, and the things I've told you to do were things you needed to do, but had forgotten about, or prioritized incorrectly. This is different. I can assist you in making the most prudent choices, but I can't make them for you."
"But why? You can decide for me every once in a while, I trust you." Charon's hands stilled on her shoulders, and he gave her another odd look, this one surprised and somehow guarded.
"You trust me."
"Well duh, of course. Implicitly." She smiled and tilted her head, thinking back over their history. It felt like the ghoul had always been there, always known what to do, and always taken care of her, even when he had still disliked her. "I always have."
He gripped her armoured shoulders tighter for a moment, his mind stalling at the concept. People didn't trust him, they trusted his contract, which for a few had still turned out to be a fatal mistake. The only time he had heard the word used in relation to himself had been in sentences starting with 'I trust you won't', followed by something that was usually denigrating. Cort's admission, another in a long line of things she had said which made him feel as if he had taken a mallet to the forehead, was a first. Fuck, she's a first for everything. I love her, so much. But she has to keep giving the orders, I can't do it without her, she has to know that. Resisting the urge to crush her to him, he focused back on her, wanting to make sure he had gotten his point across. "That's...that's good, but it still doesn't change anything. I need you to be in charge."
I still don't understand." Charon said nothing, only moved his right hand down and gently pushed against her chest plating, over the spot where his contract rested inside of her. Cort looked down at it ruefully. Oh, right. I'm the ol' ball and chain, literally. "I'm wearing the pants, huh. No other options."
"You always wear pants. Wearing a dress makes you want to eat glass."
Taking in his deadpan expression, Cort couldn't decide if he was joking or not, then smiled, deciding his statement was amusing either way. Oh God I love him, so much. But he has to take care of me, he has to be in charge, even if he doesn't know it. I don't know how much longer I can do this. "Okay, well then I'll just phrase it different, fussypants. Next time, I'll ask, 'in your opinion, what would be the most tactically sound route to our destination?', or something like that. I can do that for you. Would that be better?"
This time he did crush her to him, burying his face in her hair. Thank fuck she knows how to take care of me. I need her to. "Much. Now let's go fuck shit up."