When they set out the next day, they take even more care than before traveling through the Evergreen Mills area. Gal tries not to let her fear show, but Charon still sits closer to her during watches than before, and she's secretly grateful. They run into no more trouble than usual, though. She hopes her dad has the same smooth sailing to Rivet City; then again, it could be possible that they're having such an easy trip just because he's cleared the way.
Charon starts acting strange on the way back, though. She doesn't think he'll ever be a chatty Cathy, but there are times where they have real, normal conversations without her feeling like she's physically dragging the words from his mouth. Then, like a switch is flipped, he stops talking to her completely, except to ask pertinent questions or give information, and she's left wondering if she's done something wrong. Even his manner of speech changes; when he is feeling good, he's got a dry sense of humour that startles laughs out of her on a regular basis, but when he clams up, his speech goes back to the oddly formal tone he'd used right after she bought his contract. She practically gets whiplash from the constant temperature change between them.
She doesn't want to say anything though. Even if they are infrequent, the civil conversations she has with him are the highlights of her day. Charon has a lot of knowledge to share and when he offers it, she sucks up his advice like purified water and applies it whenever she can. The subtle lip quirks that denote his smile become more frequent. He even shoves her into a bush one day, and the feel of his fingers makes her shoulder tingle for the rest of the evening. So she decides that whatever is going on, it can wait until Megaton; the Wasteland is not a safe place to be on uneven ground with your companion.
Gal's strange dreams become more frequent after the time in Vault 112. It takes an embarrassingly long time for her to figure out what the missing limbs and ruined skin means, but the day she does, she has to keep her mouth shut for 12 hours straight because she can't even look at Charon without flushing. If the ghoul senses something strange, he doesn't mention it. Still, it reinforces her reasoning to stop in Megaton, because she's clearly suffering from lack of human contact and she needs to rectify that before something really embarrassing happens. She's pretty sure she's already made some noises in her sleep, but knows that Charon wouldn't ever bring it up.
They are just a couple hours from Megaton when Gal's Pipboy lets out a strange chime. She stops and fumbles with the dials, looking for the source. Charon, in one of his cold, silent moods, stands next to her and doesn't speak while she fidgets with it.
"Vault 101 distress signal? Shit." she curses. The path to her old home is just up the road, maybe fifteen minutes away. Quickly, she tunes in to the signal and draws in a quick breath when a familiar voice starts speaking.
"-ike you left home a long time ago, but I know you'll still out there. I just hope you're still alive to hear this. Things got worse after you left. My father's gone mad with power... if you can hear this, please stop looking for your dad and help stop mine."
If it were anyone else, Gal might have just turned it off and kept going. But she knows what the tone in that voice means, she's heard it a million times before and there's no way she can turn her back. Gal listens to the rest silently, and when it finishes, she flips the signal off.
"That was my best friend, the one who helped me escape." she tells Charon. "I have to help her. Her father is crazy - he's always been crazy, and he's in charge of the vault. If he would kill Jonas just because he helped my father..." she leaves the rest unsaid, and without hesitation turns in the direction of the Vault entrance. They can make it in ten if they hurry.
Amata is pushy, and overbearing, but she and Gal were always there for each other when they were growing up. Amata kept watch while Gal practiced her hacking skills on terminals throughout the Vault, and Gal let her shoot her BB gun so often that they were practically equal in skill by the time Gal left. They'd scoured every inch of the underground prison they called home together, and once or twice one of them had punched a Tunnel Snake for the other, which is a big deal when your age bracket only includes ten people or less. And even though the Vault residents had chased her out spitting and snarling, they're like family to her. She can't let them suffer, not when she has a chance to do something about it.
They reach the entrance in record time. The old, bleached skeleton is still lying in the doorway when she leads them through the wooden door in the hill. It had scared the shit out of her on her way out of the Vault, but now she barely pauses when one of the dry bones snaps under her boots.
When the reach the giant circular door, Gal pauses and turns to Charon, taking in his appearance.
"The Vault residents have never seen a ghoul before." she says bluntly. "I know you get shot at on a regular basis anyway for being a ghoul, but I have no idea what's going on in the Vault and I don't want you to get shot down here just because someone's scared."
"Do you wish me to stay here?" he asks, painfully formal. She sighs at the cold treatment but shakes her head, choosing instead to sift through her pack for something to disguise his features.
"Here, put this bandana around your face and wear this hat. That should be enough, if they don't look too hard. But stay close to me, if they see a giant strange man walking around they'll probably either attack you or piss themselves in fear."
Charon, as always, obeys without question. Gal enters the password on the control pad and steps back as the door is pulled out of the way. There is a strange sense of nostalgia as she traces the steps of the panicked path she'd taken out of the vault, and suddenly she feels young again and scared, vision dizzy from a concussion and clutching a stolen pistol in her hands. The soft crunch of boots behind her remind her that she is not that ignorant girl anymore; she is a different person now, wiser and stronger, and she has nothing to fear here.
Her concerns about the Overseer are confirmed when she stumbles on the first body. Jim Wilkins lies in a puddle of fresh blood, the front of his vaultsuit ripped apart by bullets. He can't have been dead more than a few hours. His sister Janice lays further into the room, her body similarly posed. They were Officer Wilkins' kids; neither one was a troublemaker, and Gal feels a pang of loss at seeing them dead.
When they reach the next room, they're stopped by a security guard in full battle rattle. He points his pistol at them, shouting at them to stop, but once he sees Gal's face he lowers it in confusion.
"It's you! I hardly recognized you from all the dust and grime out there." he says, looking at Gal in wonder. The comment makes her wipe at her face self-consciously. She nearly smiles at him but remembers the dead kids in the other room and schools her face into impassiveness.
"Gomez. Jim and Janice's bodies are in that room. What the hell is going on down here?"
His eyes go wide and he holds a finger up to his mouth, gesturing her frantically to quiet down.
"Don't shout. If anyone catches me talking to you down here, I'll get in a lot of trouble. The night you and your dad left, everything went crazy. Between the bugs and the confusion, we lost a lot of people. When your dad opened up that gate, he let loose a whole lot of crap, if you'll pardon my language."
Gal already knows that a lot of people blamed her father for the Overseer's batshit crazy actions, but that doesn't mean she'll let it slide. She flushes at the insinuation and jams one finger into his chest, her eyes hard.
"My father has nothing to do with whatever fucked up situation you're in, Gomez." she tells him, emphasizing the curses. "He chose to leave and the Overseer chose to shoot someone because of it, and I was almost next. Now tell me what's going on."
"Alright, alright, calm down, Gal." Gomez says, holding his hands up in surrender. "Look, after your father left, a lot of people started thinking he had the right idea. The Overseer didn't like that one bit, and started cracking down on that sort of thought. Some of your old friends think it's the right idea to open the Vault and start interacting with the outside world. They probably want to have a word with you, if you have the time."
Gomez stops and glances at Charon, who is standing behind Gal like a tall dark shadow. She sees the nervousness flicker in his eyes, but Gomez has always been good under pressure.
"Look, out of respect for your father, I'll let you in, and I won't tell anyone I saw you. But just you, not your friend there." he gestures at Charon with his pistol.
"You won't have to let us anywhere, Gomez. Sorry...in advance." In one fluid motion, Gal brings her weapon up and buttstrokes Gomez on the back of the head, catching his as he slumps bodily to the floor. Vault security armour is hardier than the jumpsuits the rest of the residents wear, but it's not made to withstand firearms, since nobody but the guards have them. Gal and Charon drag the unconscious man into a corner and lean him up against the wall where he'll be safe and out of the way, then carry on. It's better this way – now Gomez can say confidently that he didn't let them in, and he'll have the bruise to prove it.
When they reach the next floor down, they find old Officer Taylor standing behind a makeshift barrier of overturned tables. Freddie Gomez is standing on the other side, staring the old man down with an angry glare. When Freddie takes a step forward, Taylor draws his pistol and points it at Freddie in warning. The Tunnel Snake takes another step forward and Taylor fires, missing him to hit the metal wall instead, but it's enough to shock Freddie into retreating. He takes off into the Vault and Officer Taylor lowers the pistol with shaking hands.
"I tell you, I didn't meant to fire at him, but I never know when those rebels are going to do something dangerous." he says in a quivering voice. Taylor has had memory problems since she was young, so she doubts her remembers that she ever left the Vault; he should have retired years ago, but the Vault didn't have enough security guards to let him. She smiles at him, hoping he won't try to shoot either of them, and creeps past.
The Vault is in complete disarray, like she's never seen it before. Tables overturned, belongings spilled out on the floor, broken items everywhere – it's as they're in the middle of a warzone. Every once in a while they stumble upon a body. Gal stops at each one, unable to stop the flow of memories when she looks at their faces. There were plenty of people she didn't like in Vault 101, but none of their lives should have ended like this. The Vault was supposed to keep them safe. It wasn't supposed to turn into the same war that was raging on the surface.
She leads them through the Vault, darting this way and that to avoid the residents. She doesn't want to hear any more people blame her father for the mess they got themselves into and she knows they'll blame her too. She can't help but give Charon anecdotes as they creep through the rooms, little snippets of her personal history that she'd thought she'd forgotten. Her tenth birthday, when Andy the Mister Handy smashed her cake into a mushy pulp; the hallway where Gal nearly made sure Butch never had kids after he tried to put his hand up her shirt; the maintenance closet where she and Amata got drunk for the first time. Charon stays characteristically silent, even when old Mrs. Hudson suddenly stumbles through a door and right into him.
It's just her luck that she runs into the person she wants to see least before she's able to find Amata. Butch spots them before they're able to get away and barges over, his face set in a familiar sneer. He looks much worse for the wear, jumpy and tired-eyed, but Gal knows that's never stopped his sweet personality before. Maybe she's done a lot of growing up since she left the Vault, but he looks much younger than she remembers him looking before. Skinny, too, and the lack of facial hair seems now almost alien in a world where razors are a luxury. His hair is doused in pomade, as always, but it looks greasy and limp, like he hasn't showered in a few days.
Butch looks her up and down and scoffs, but the huge bags under his eyes make him fairly unintimidating. His quick, slightly nervous glance at Charon doesn't help.
"Look who came waltzing back into the Vault. You've got some balls, coming back here after everything you and your dad stirred up." he says, taking a threatening step towards her. Charon steps forward without prompting, grabs him by the jacket collar, and slams him into the wall; Butch loses his superior gaze quickly and blanches when he sees the peeling skin on Charon's hand.
"Don't talk about my dad that way, Butch. Where's Amata? I need to talk to her." Gal asks him. She chooses a little guiltily to let Charon play the silent bodyguard, but he seems to enjoy throwing people around occasionally so maybe it's alright.
"Okay, okay, let me go, geez." Charon drops his hand from Butch's collar and Butch brushes his shirt off, trying to regain his composure. "Amata's down in the clinic. But listen – you gotta help us get outta here. You gotta help ME get out of here. I figure, you're a goody-two-shoes, you're gonna help Amata out anyway, right? Let me tag along."
Gal can't help but let out a knowing sigh. He's as abrasive as he's ever been, but she's not surprised by his request. Butch has always chafed under the heavy hand of authority. As a kid he dreamed of finding something tougher, scarier, more dangerous than Vault life. At least, that's what her father told her when she used to come home crying because of something he did, talking about what a jerk he was. He doesn't know what he's asking for. Which could be a good thing for him, she reasons, since he could be a huge baby when he wasn't trying to be big and bad. She thinks with only a little vindictiveness that a few run-ins with raiders or radscorpions will temper his attitude some.
"Deal." Gal says. "I'll help you, if you stay out of my way. Let's go find Amata. And don't antagonize Charon, he'll squash you like a bug."
Butch looks at Charon and pales a little at the look he receives in return.
There's only a few more twists and turns to the clinic. When they enter, Amata is sitting on an exam table up against the wall, knees hugged in to her chest. She has her head buried, so she doesn't look up at them until the door whizzes shut. Her eyes pass over Charon and Butch with uneasy confusion, but when they come to rest on Gal, Amata nearly sprints across the room and grabs her wrists, shrieking in delight.
"Oh my god, you're back! You got my message and actually came back!" she exclaims. Her eyes tear up a bit and the grip she has on Gal's hands is bruising. "Everything's gone crazy since you left, and now that you're here, you can set things straight."
Gal gets a little sense of relief out of Amata's happiness at seeing her again. It's been long enough since she left that she wasn't sure Amata wouldn't get angry and try to hit her with something (Amata gets violent when she's mad, and there was one concerning incident with a wrench a few years ago). Embarrassingly, she feels her own eyes get a little wet and a heaviness settles in her chest when she looks at her best friend. She looks just the same, proud and independent under her excitement, shoulders always straight under the weight her father places on her. Gal swallows the heaviness and shakes her hands to get Amata to slow down and pay attention.
"It's good to see you too, Amata. What happened here? Why does everyone want to leave all of the sudden?"
Amata lets go of her hands and crosses her arms in front of her chest. Gal thinks it's meant to be intimidating, but it looks more like Amata is hugging herself for support. Her mouth tugs into a thoughtful frown.
"It's my dad. After you and James left, he just... went crazy. I found out that he'd been lying to us this whole time about opening the Vault – the Vault used to be open, but for some reason they closed it again and pretended it never happened. And now that we know he's been lying, he still won't let us make our own decisions. We don't want to leave the Vault, we just want to open it for trade and exploration. But he won't listen, not even to me."
"Your dad's a fucking pussy." Butch sneers, stepping up from behind Amata. "He's scared of the big bad wasteland, thinks something's gonna come and eat him if he opens the Vault. He never should have been Overseer in the first place."
Amata whirls on him and takes a few menacing steps forward. Her green eyes glitter like emeralds.
"That's rich coming from someone who's always talking a big game about leaving the Vault and never does it. Do you always run away scared like a little radroach, Butch, or do you just look like one?"
Gal cuts Butch off with a look, before they can get into it. She realizes the power dynamic has shifted a lot since she left; before, Butch would never have listened to Gal about anything. And Amata has always tended to assume that if she can't do something herself, no one else can it either. But now, she silences an argument with a look, and both of these headstrong people look to Gal as if she's the answer to their prayers. Nobody from the Vault, except maybe her father, had ever looked at her like that before. It strikes her again how much she has changed since she left the little, backwards world of 101.
"Maybe I can talk to him." she concedes carefully. "He listened to me once, maybe he'll do it again. Butch, you stay here." she commands. "I'll come back for you."
"Hey, what about your creepy diseased friend? You gonna have him put the Overseer up against the wall too?" Butch asks. She doesn't think he's honestly trying to be offensive, he just doesn't know how to shut up sometimes or use his words properly. Still, Gal turns and socks him in the jaw once, hard enough for him to let out a grunt of pain.
"He's not diseased, Butch. He's a Ghoul. And if you plan on living in the Wasteland, you've gotta learn how to keep your metaphorical foot out of your mouth or someone's going to do it for you in the literal sense. Now shut up and stay here before I decide I don't want to help you after all."
That's enough to shut the boy up. He looks at her in shock as he cradles his jaw, but she ignores him and heads for the door, Charon trailing after. They leave Butch and Amata in the clinic and head to the Overseer's office.
"That was unnecessary." Charon tells her, referring, she thinks, to Butch's comment. It's the first thing he's said since they stepped inside the Vault.
"No it wasn't. Butch is a dick. Shit, get back." together, the two of them duck inside a room while another security guard passes by. They keep quiet as he prowls the hallway, only emerging when he's turned a corner and been gone for a good few minutes.
"Come on. Butch has to learn how not to be an asshole to everyone if he wants to make it outside. Plus, I know you would just beat him to a pulp if he pissed you off, but I'd never forgive myself if he said something like that to Gob or Carol and made them cry."
Charon shrugs, dropping the subject. She doesn't know if he's convinced.
The entrance to the Overseer's office is blessedly unguarded when they reach it. Gal turns on the security monitor and inputs the password. It hasn't changed from the last time she snuck in here, tracking her father's footsteps, which is a surprising oversight for the man inside. She's never liked him, but he's always taken his job seriously. To overlook something as simple as changing a password is unlike him.
The Overseer is standing at his large circular window, looking down on the Vault below. When he hears Gal's footsteps, he turns. The pistol that Gal carries in one hand makes him step back, but he relaxes when she holsters it.
"Done with the dust and ruins of the Wasteland, are you? Thought you could just slink back in, like a teen missing curfew?" he sneers. He has a long, crusty cut on the side of his face that looks like it was made recently; connected to the rebellion, she assumes. His vault suit is wrinkled, as if he'd been sleeping in it, and she doesn't miss the half-dozen or so coffee cups that litter his desk. He's clearly been in his office a long time, working or making plans or possibly just trying not to get killed.
The look he gives her hasn't changed much in the time she's been gone. He's always hated Gal. He thought she was the bad influence behind Amata's actions, the reason that Amata snuck out at night and drank in storage closets and lost her virginity at sixteen. Gal may have encouraged some of those behaviors, but that wasn't the reason Amata did them. The reality was that Amata resented her father's heavy hand in her life, and did everything she could to defy him; Gal sometimes thought that the reason she and Amata were so close was because the Overseer hated her so much.
"Hardly." she replies coolly. "I've made a life out there, I'm not planning on coming back. And if something doesn't change, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who will make that choice." If anything, his frown gets even deeper at that.
"I won't risk all our lives for a few people's passing fancy of taking a Wasteland vacation. Many of us lost a loved one the last time the Vault was open, I won't let that happen again." he says firmly. In this moment, she admires his sense of righteousness, even if she thinks he's wrong. He has made some hard choices in his life that didn't benefit him because he thought it was the right thing; she clings to that now, knowing that if she can just find the right words, he'll agree with her.
"Overseer, you know that you can't stay down here alone forever. You don't have enough people, and more are dying every day because of this rebellion. You don't have a doctor anymore. What are you going to do if people get sick? Even with your security, you can't hold them here forever. And if you don't compromise with them, they won't open the Vault just to trade or do a little traveling. They'll leave. Permanently. And that includes your daughter."
She hopes that bringing Amata into this will force his hand, and for one second, he wavers. Then his eyes catch on something behind her, and he lunges forward. He grabs the bandanna around Charon's face and yanks it down, gasping when Charon's ravaged face is revealed.
"This is what waits for my daughter if I let her leave this Vault." he says in a shaky voice, drawing back from Charon as if he's afraid he'll catch some type of infectious disease. "You bring this creature in here and attempt to convince me that everything on the surface is safe for my people? You're delusional." The last word is spit out so viciously that Gal knows she has lost. The Overseer will never listen to her now.
Charon steps forward suddenly, tugging the now-useless hat off his head and tossing it to the floor.
"Gal is right." Charon says, stopping Gal in her tracks. She looks at him in confusion, but he doesn't acknowledge her as he continues to speak. "My condition is a result of having no safe place to go when the bombs hit 200 years ago. If I had a place like this to return to, it would not have happened. They are safer here than on the surface, that much is true, but that's not what they want anymore, and they don't trust you. You cannot control these people any longer. Either they will fight their way out, and be defenseless against the dangers of the Wasteland like I was, or your guards will shoot them and everyone from Vault 101 but you will be dead. Those are your options if you stay this track."
The Overseer falls silent in the face of this, a troubled frown on his face. Gal crosses her fingers at her side and hopes. The silence stretches on a few long moments; Gal can practically hear the gears turning in the Overseer's head.
"...you're right. We don't have enough people. We won't last another hundred years, whether or not we get supplies from the outside. But maybe if they contact the outside world, they may be able to save themselves."
"So you're going to allow them to?" Gal asks hopefully. The Overseer shakes his head tiredly.
"No. I'm stepping down as Overseer. This goes against everything I ever wanted for my people, and I don't think I'm the best choice to lead anymore. But Amata..." he stops, and the side of his mouth quirks up fondly. "I can think of no one better to take my place than my daughter."
He takes one step towards the door, stops, and looks back at them coolly. "I … trust you two will see yourself out?" Then he strides out before she answers, saving her the necessity of lying.
They stand in awkward silence for a minute, trying to give the Overseer time to reach his daughter before they return to talk to Amata.
"Thanks...for that." she says finally. She's not sure how to say, 'thanks for talking civilly to a man who basically called you a monster.' "If you hadn't brought him around... I would have had to kill him. I'm glad it didn't come to that."
"Would you have done it?" Charon asks, his tone harsh. The reasonable man that just talked the Overseer down is gone. She stiffens, but can't blame him for being angry. She didn't even defend him.
"Yes, I would have." she replies firmly. "He would have shot more innocent people. And Amata would never submit to being under his thumb again. So you're right, either they would have been ousted out into the wasteland with no idea how to survive, like I was, or they would have all died. I would never let that happen to her."
Charon snorts, seeming disbelieving. She's not sure what's prompted this sudden change in behavior but she doesn't think she'll get a straight answer if she asks. Instead, she sets off for the clinic, judging that it's been enough time that she can avoid running into the Overseer again. Charon follows, silent as always, but she can sense the anger flowing off of him even without seeing him.
When they reach the clinic, Amata is sitting at one of the desks, looking overwhelmed. Her hands are propping up her head as she studies the floor, clearly lost in deep thought. Butch is leaning up against one wall; he feigns disinterest at their arrival but shifts uneasily when Charon's shadow falls over him. The overseer is nowhere to be found.
As Gal stops before Amata, she looks up and breaks into a grin from ear to ear.
"Gal, you did it! I just talked to my dad. He said he's stepping down as Overseer and letting me take his place. I don't know what you said to him, but thank you." she pulls Gal into an embrace and Gal buries her head in the crook of Amata's neck, smiling at the familiar scent of her best friend. She's missed it more than she realized.
"Well, it wasn't me, really, it was my friend Charon. He convinced your dad it was a good idea."
Amata freezes against her and too late, Gal remembers that Charon isn't wearing the hat or bandanna anymore. She cringes.
Amata looks at Charon with wide eyes, then with clear effort, she swallows and pastes a smile back on her face. She looks Charon right in the eye as she speaks.
"Then thank you, Charon. You've saved us all. We owe you." she doesn't offer to shake hands, but the words and the eye contact are more than most can manage, especially for someone who's never seen a ghoul before. Charon just nods in response. Amata turns back to Gal and the smile slides from her face; her shoulders square and Gal knows instinctively that Amata is about to say something she doesn't want to hear.
"Now that everything is sorted out, there's just one more thing that has to change...there are still a lot of people who blame you and your father for what happened, Gal, and I don't think they'll change their minds anytime soon."
Her eyes, seemingly of their own free will, drop from Gal's and settle somewhere over Gal's shoulder. The uncharacteristic display of timidity sends a chill up Gal's spine.
"Gal, I have to ask you to leave."
The words hit her like rocks, sharp and painful. Gal takes an involuntary step backwards and tries not to let her mouth drop open in shock.
"Amata, I came back to help you. People tried to kill me the last time I was there, and my father's still out there in the Wasteland and needs my help. But the minute I heard your message, I came back. And now you... kicking me out?" she says, disbelieving. With every word, Amata's face reddens, and she struggles to lift her eyes back up to Gal's face.
"I'm sorry, Gal. You're still my best friend, and you didn't do anything wrong, but... the situation is so delicate right now that having you around, even just to visit, might set somebody off again. We'll eventually open the Vault for good, and start trading and exploring, but we need some time to regroup and fix everything that's happened."
Gal reaches for her hand, but Amata steps back out of reach. The message is clear. Gal lets her hand drop and watches her oldest, strongest friendship crack into pieces.
The hurt crystallizes and hardens as she looks at her former best friend, turning into something much more hateful. When she clenches her fist against her leg, she can feel the way it trembles finely. Amata doesn't buckle, just looks at her silently, waiting.
"Fine." Gal hisses. "We'll leave. I wouldn't want your precious fucking Vault residents to have to step outside of their comfort zone and stop blaming other people for their own failures. Just don't expect me to come running if you fuck everything up again."
She spins on her heel, not allowing Amata to reply, and strides to the door. Charon follows, as always, and after a minute Butch joins them, looking surprisingly uncomfortable with the scene he'd just witnessed. Gal doesn't bother to avoid anyone anymore; she stalks through the confused residents, ignoring their comments, heading straight for the Vault door with no detours. Nobody gets in her way. Even Old Man Taylor keeps his mouth shut as they pass by, thought he shrinks back from Charon like he's a Deathclaw.
Gal stops grudgingly when they exit the Vault, letting Butch adjust to the sunlight and the wide-open sky, but then they're back on the road again. He tries for ten or fifteen minutes to answer questions, but when all of them go unanswered, that approach is abandoned. Then Butch dares to ask for his own weapon and Gal shuts him down, telling him to stay between her and Charon and keep his mouth shut. He does both with no more whining; every noise he heads in the Wasteland makes him jump.
The hike to Megaton does little to lighten her mood; Charon is similarly quiet, and snaps at her no less than three times for recklessly rushing after an enemy. Butch proves himself completely useless in a fight; he runs into her, flees towards the attackers, or takes cover and refuses to come out until well after everything is dead and rotting in the sun. Gal tries to apologize for the everything that happened in the Vault, but Charon throws the apology back in her face, which makes her even angrier. At any other time, she'd be happy he's abandoned his stoic facade but it's one more thing than she can deal with right now.
When they finally reach the walled city, Gal lets out a long and audible sigh of relief. Crazy Wolfgang and his caravan are standing outside by Deputy Weld, and his grinning face is enough to make her shoulders relax a fraction. Wolfgang watches Gal approach and gives her a friendly wave, undeterred by her dark face.
"Hey there, Gal, anything Crazy Wolfgang can help you with today?" he asks as they stop before his caravan. He's unmoved by the dark cloud that hangs over their party, running his hands through his thick dark hair to make it stand up on end like he always does.
"Not unless you want to trade for a punkass barber with no survival skills except a foul mouth." she says sarcastically, shooting Butch a dirty look. Butch makes a face at her but jumps when one of the Brahmin's heads bumps his arm.
Wolfgang turns to the person in question and gives him a once over. His long, unkempt hair isn't enough to distract Gal from the calculating look in his eyes. The 'Crazy' in front of his name is an affectation that he uses to make more money, Gal knows; it makes him seem harmless and approachable, two good traits in a trader.
"Actually, I was just at Rivet City a month ago, and they were telling me that they're short on barbers. It'd be a good place for a Vaultie too, not so many biggies and baddies to fight off. Ey, boyo?" he directs to Butch. The Tunnel Snake is too busy staring at the two-headed Brahmin in horror to realize he's being discussed.
Gal digs out her bag of caps and counts out a handful, smiling at the way Wolfgang squirrels them away instantaneously. The exchange of money clues Butch in that something's happening, and he looks from Wolfgang's face back to Gal's with furrowed eyebrows.
What? Are you fucking serious, Gal, you're not leaving me with some guy I don't fucking know! I don't even have a gun!" the Brahmin licks his hand and he jumps about twelve feet in the air. Wolfgang lets out an amused snort, and his bored guard gives Butch a dry look. Butch doesn't dignify either with a response.
Gal sighs and gives him a tired look. "I'll give you another 300 if you'll give him a weapon and teach him how to shoot."
She digs out the rest of the caps, drops them into Wolfgang's hand, and presses some into Butch's as well. Butch's fingers tighten reflexively around them, but he's giving Gal what's almost a wounded look, as if he can't believe she's doing this.
"I don't even know where the hell Rivet City is, and that damn cow-thing probably has some type of disease and it licked me - hey, get offa me, what're you-" Wolfgang grabs Butch by the sleeve and drags him away, giving Gal a wave with his free hand. Butch gives Gal one last desperate look and she returns at him with an innocent smile, wiggling her fingers as she watches him go. He jumps when Wolfgang slaps his Brahmin on the ass to get it going and is already asking questions at a million miles an hour as they head off into the Wasteland. She's not sad to see him go; he had been a pain in the ass the whole time she was in the Vault, and she doubts the Wasteland will change that about him. Maybe if he'd spent more time talking to her when they were younger, and less trying to extort her for comics, she'd been letting him stay in Megaton with her and Charon, but the absolute last thing she wants is to wake up to the Tunnel Snake bitching that the water tastes funny or that the food is gross.
He's a damn good barber though, so she suspects that he'll be fine.
The short trek up to her house is even quieter with Butch gone, and not in a good way. Gal's good mood at getting rid of Butch disintegrates almost immediately with her companion's blatant cold shoulder; he even goes so far as to barge in the house in front of her, nearly knocking her over in the process. When the front door of Gal's house closes, Charon drops his pack in the corner and rushes for the stairs. She bets he's intending to hide in his room, away from his big, bad employer. Gal is tired, angry, and frustrated with his hot and cold attitude, and she thinks that now they're back home, it's time to get the bottom of it.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she growls. Charon doesn't respond or even turn around. She wants to chase him up the stairs, wants to grab him by the elbow and shake some answers out of him, but she knows that's not really her talking, and it wouldn't help anyway. Honey over vinegar and all that, or at least that's what her dad taught her.
"Charon, stop." she commands in a firm voice, loud enough that he can't pretend not to hear her. He freezes on the top step, one hand on the rails.
"Come here."
Stiffly, slowly, the ghoul turns around and trudges back down the stairs. His face is sullen and angry, which she reminds herself is a good thing; if he's showing his feelings, that means that maybe he'll talk to her honestly instead of hiding behind his blank mask. It's a big step forward that he's expressing emotion at all, so she hopes that addressing it isn't going to cause him to clam up again.
"Tell me what's wrong." she demands when he stops at the foot of the stairs. He clenches his fists, a low grumble in his throat. He's trying to intimidate her, but she is not cowed. She knows Charon, knows his limits, and she trusts him. More than anyone else in the Capital Wasteland, she trusts him.
"It's none of your fucking business, smoothskin. So keep your perfect nose out of it." He moves back towards the stairs and she shakes her head in warning.
"Don't touch those stairs. You're not going anywhere."
With a growl of anger, Charon snaps. He slams one massive fist into the wall, leaving a dent the size of her head in the thick sheet metal, and spins to attack the shelves, knocking books and trinkets to the floor as it crashes down. He doesn't touch the stairs, as commanded, but everything else in his wingspan is suddenly in danger of being destroyed. A toy car, thrown to the ground, rolls past her foot and bumps into the door, and a cracked vase that had come with the house shatters against the kitchen wall.
Shocked, Gal moves forward, unthinking, and reaches for him, desperate to calm him down before he hurts himself or breaks anything else. Charon turns back to the bookcase, possibly intending to pick it up, so she grabs for his arm. As she reaches forward, he twists. One arm pinwheels back towards her face while he's looking the other direction. The back of his hand catches her across the cheek and physically lifts her into the air, throwing her backwards. The resulting impact with the floor knocks all the breath out of her, and for a moment, Gal stares at the ceiling as she wheezes, unable to move.
She lays there for a minute, gingerly reaching to check her head with one hand, and finally sits up with a groan. Her breath whistles a little on each inhale.
Charon is frozen in place. His eyes are wide, wide enough to see white around each iris, and he locks on her bruised cheek with what she swears is a very real look of terror.
WARNINGS: nothing special. A huge thank you to everyone reading, reviewing, and favouriting! It makes my day every time I see a new email from AO3 in my inbox. I had a bitch editing this one, possibly because it has less Charon than usual, but all y'all's support makes it way easier to push through :)