A/N: ALRIGHT! So, this chapter is kind of a mix between Charon's thoughts and Aimee's thoughts, so I hope it's not too confusing for you, my dear readers!
Happy reading, happy writing!
~Konfessionist out!~
Aimee stared in disbelief at all the Super Mutant bodies scattered around. She was so preoccupied with trying to simply cripple just two, Charon had somehow managed to kill at least six. How the fuck did anyone do that?
"Shall we continue?" He walked towards her with a minigun, tossing it on the ground to her.
"What's this?" She crouched down to it, placing Samuel gently on the ground to inspect it. "It's in poor condition... Damn Super Mutants never take care of their weaponry. I'd be lucky if I get any caps off of it!"
"I trust that with your repair skills you'll find some way to manage." His eyes scanned over the rest of the metro tunnels for any signs of movement.
"I guess so." She grunted in an effort to pick it up, damn thing was heavy! "How did you know I'm good at repairing things?"
"You have small calluses on your hands, sometimes created if you hold a wrench the wrong way. They are old so you probably learned over time, suggesting that you at least have some skill."
There was awkward silence between the two as Aimee blinked up at him in bewilderment.
"…Would you prefer I carry it for you?" He finally asked.
She shook her head and swung it onto her back. "Nah I've got-" She shrieked out as she fell backwards, landing flat on her ass. "Oooow!"
Charon immediately walked to her aid, pulling the minigun off and hoisting her up.
"I'm carrying it for you." He finalized, and picked it up with relative ease.
Aimee huffed. "You can't do everything for me!"
"I only do what you can't do. I'm here to protect you. Now, are we leaving?"
She sighed and nodded, picking Samuel up off the ground and walked.
Wait a minute… I can protect myself!
Hours had passed and the duo hadn't spoken two words since then. They just kept walking on in silence, and it was awkward for Aimee because she loved to talk, but she felt Charon was a little more...Reclusive, and preferred silence over all.
Aimee spent a moment checking her Pip-Boy and sighed at the time and the distance they had covered once semi-fresh air hit their faces as they finally exited the metro. They wound through different stations, and she silently thanked that they weren't filled with as much super mutants as before, solely because she cleared them out as she made her way to the deeper part of D.C.
They were by the Tepid Sewers now. She was going to ask Dukov if the two could spend the night at his place, but she knew the old bastard was all hands and jumpy around guns; he might give Charon a reason to blow his head off and she had decided against it.
"We should set up camp here. We have a very lovely view of Mirelurks tearing Radroaches to pieces!" She joked with a giggle.
Charon's eyes surveyed their surroundings. "I don't like the look of this place…" He growled.
"We don't have much of a choice," She sighed. "Besides, it's only until morning. We can take turns patrolling the campsite, I'll take first patrol." Aimee began pulling herself up from her roll out mattress when Charon grabbed her arm.
"I will watch for the rest of the night. You may go to sleep, mistress."
"Well it's not fair if you're up all night! You need your sleep too!" The smoothskin protested.
"You hold my contract now." He pointed out, still holding onto her arm.
"Well, then, I'm ordering you to let me have first watch and let me take turns with you all night!" A crease twisted between her eyebrows in frustration, her tone, flabbergasted.
Charon gave her a silent glare before grunting in approval and letting go of her arm. What was with her? She got his contract yet she didn't want his help?
"Thanks." She grabbed her bag and shuffled through it, tossing him a box of Yum Yum Devilled Eggs and a bottle of Nuka-Cola.
"What is this?" He asked as he looked down onto the box.
"Dinner, obviously," She replied with a smile. "You have to eat too."
"What about you?" He questioned as he set the food in his lap.
"Already ate."
Charon looked up to her with calm eyes; she sucked at lying.
"I didn't see you eat anything."
She tensed up. "We-Well, I ate earlier! Before we set out this morning…"
"That was hours ago." He pointed out.
"Really, I'm not hungry Charon." She waved her arms to him in refusal.
"You need to eat mistress."
"My name's Aimee!"
"Don't change the subject," He barked. "You need to eat."
"Make me!" She replied childishly and crossed her arms over her chest, sticking her nose up in the air.
Charon grinned in acceptance of her challenge as he kicked some dirt over the fire, its flames flickering in and out, cascading monstrous shadows around them.
"As you wish…" He grumbled in the dark.
"Ch-Charon?" Aimee whimpered as the fire completely died out.
Her eyes would not readjust to the darkness. She sat there awkwardly, her body shaking as she looked around.
"Charon! Answer me da-damnit!"
Why did he kick the fire out? Why damnit? Her mind panicked as old memories attacked her mind.
"What's the matter, nosebleed? You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"
She outstretched her hand in front of her on the ground, patting around through the dirt with shaky fingers, trying to find her box of matches.
C'mon! C'mon! Where are they damnit? Where are the fucking matches? Her mind howled.
"Daddy's girl! Daddy's girl! Well, daddy can't help you now!"
Aimee's hand finally patted over the small box and she quickly yanked it open, taking out a match with quivering fingers and ignited it, tossing it into the fire pit to watch the wood temple be engulfed in flames.
She gave a silent sigh of relief and sat in front of the fire.
"Charon, if you ever do that again, I swear I'll-"
Aimee looked over to where he previously sat, finding it unoccupied by her new companion.
What the hell?...
Warm air blew in from the side of her face, like deep breaths, and she slowly pivoted her head. Charon was kneeling right next to her with the box of Yum Yum Devilled Eggs in his hand.
"GAH!" She squealed, falling back to land on her elbows. "G-God damnit Charon! You scared me half to death!"
He chuckled and crawled towards her. She froze.
"What are you doing?" She tensed up a little at the smile on his face. "Charon?"
"Following orders." He replied simply and grabbed her by one of her wrists to sit her up. "Making you eat."
Aimee understood the game he was playing and slowly relaxed herself, a smile spreading onto her lips.
"I'll never be taken alive!" She bellowed, jumping up to run away when a strong hand jolted out and grabbed her by the wrist again, pulling her back to him in a tumble of laughter.
"Damn, Charon! I never knew you were so fast, I-"
He quickly clamped a large hand over her mouth, and she could see from the corners of her eyes he was looking at something that only he seemed to acknowledge.
Aimee tried to pry his hand off to ask what was wrong, but he kept it firmly planted across her lips, using his other hand to restrain her against him.
The Lone Wanderer realized that she was sitting between his arched legs with her back pressed against his chest, one hand to her mouth to silence her and one strong arm wrapped around her midsection to hold down her arms.
"Don't make any noise." He whispered a warning into her ear, his hot breath exhaling onto her skin and making it tingle.
Before she could try and squirm her way out of his embrace, his foot quickly scuffed out the fire with another heaping mound of dirt. They were shrouded in darkness once again, and Charon could feel her tiny body tense up against his.
He recognized that reaction; she had done it earlier when he put out the fire to sneak over to her.
She's afraid of the dark… He realized with a smirk of abrupt interest. What a child.
"Are you afraid of the dark?" He mumbled into her ear teasingly.
"God, what a crybaby! What's wrong, crybaby? Calling for your stupid daddy?"
Aimee stiffened as one of her shaking hands came up to his, the one clamped across her mouth. Charon believed she was going to try to pry it off again, he knew that smoothskins wouldn't like having a practically rotting hand over their mouth, but instead she intertwined her shaking fingers into his.
Is she… Holding my hand? He thought as he looked down to their hands.
But he suddenly knew; Aimee wasn't just afraid of the dark. Aimee was utterly petrified of the dark.
He could feel her form begin trembling even more when in the cascading moonlight was the outline of a towering Deathclaw, crouching over the small hills, as if stalking something. It roared to the half moon in the sky with a terrible ferocity, before bounding away into the darkness.
Charon felt her body go limp against his, and could feel the rapid beating her heart gave to her surrounding ribcage. He didn't pay much attention to his terrified employer, he was too busy making sure the threat of the Deathclaw was gone.
Something's not right… Deathclaws don't come so close to settlements… Charon thought suspiciously as he began to push Aimee away from him, but was stopped when her arms grabbed for his waist.
"Pl-Please… Don't…" She mumbled against his chest.
"Don't what?" He asked in an emotionless tone.
"Don't leave…"
Charon had to laugh. So far, his new employer was as squishy as a mole rat and she jumped at the slightest things; Aimee was thus far severely disappointing him.
"I need to make the fire again. Unless you'd like to stay in the dark?" He thought aloud.
Aimee slowly let go off his waist. "Hu- Hurry…" Her voice cracked with fear, and he moved quickly, a roaring fire glowing in the pit in a matter of seconds.
The two sat quietly as Charon leisurely chewed at his food, taking small sips of soda between each bite. His blue eyes were focused on her face, her expression seemed impassive now, as her own eyes were trained on the way the flames licked at the night sky with tiny crackles.
"I've been afraid of the dark since-" The smoothskin gave a small chuckle of sadness. "Well, as far as I can remember…"
Charon kept quiet but stared at her. When her eyes darted to his, he stopped eating, and nodded at her to continue.
"There was this kid I grew up with. He teased me whenever he got the chance…" Aimee hugged her knees to her chest and wrapped her frail arms around them, nestling her chin into her knees.
"One day, him and his friends thought it would be funny to lock me in this little janitor's closet on the lower level… The key broke and I was stuck in there for- I don't remember how long… It must have been a long time because I was hungry after a while."
Charon was about to take a bite out of his food, but stopped and lowered it away from his mouth upon seeing the look on her face. Her eyes began to glimmer in the flicker of the fire, they were watering up with tears.
"It was really cold in there. Our heating system was acting weird that week, I remember, because Stanley kept complaining about not having the right parts." She smiled sadly into her arms. "It was dark, and I could remember calling out for my dad. I remember crying because all that boy did was laugh and laugh… He called me a crybaby, taunting me with any names he could think of."
Aimee buried her head into her encircled arms and her shoulders began to bob up and down as she quietly cried. Only a few sounds emerged from her arms as her short hair fell around them like a curtain.
She said lower level before, along with heating system… Lower level of what? Charon thought as he continued consuming his food. …She's from a vault.
"I heard them run away after a while because it got really quiet," She picked up her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. "Jonas found me just when I was starting to get hungry and he told my dad what happened. He was so fu-furious…" She hiccupped a chuckle and a smile.
Charon didn't know any of the people that she had mentioned. Stanley, Jonas, her father, she didn't even say what the name of her bully was. He thought it'd be best if he didn't ask at all. She would say when the time she was ready to came.
"I'm s-sorry Charon." Aimee looked up to him. "It's a stupid reason to be afraid of the dark. But I can't help it… I just am …"
Charon really didn't have any fears, he couldn't necessarily tell her that he understood, so he was confused with his thoughts when he replied with;
"I understand."
Aimee giggled lightheartedly. "Thanks for listening. It helps…" She wiped away the rest of the tears and gave a deep inhale, ruffling her short hair with her fingers. "So! We head out early tomorrow morning, we can sleep in once we get to Megaton." She smiled. "I think you'll like it there. It's really nice, and so are the people."
Charon didn't doubt that the people were nice, but he, like all ghouls knew, that even the nicest people would turn nasty once seeing a ghoul within a mile radius of them. But he had to second guess this thought when Aimee crawled over to him and fell asleep with her head in his lap, wrapping herself in a thick blanket.
"G'night Charon." She looked up at him with tired eyes and yawned. "Lemme know when it's my turn to patrol…"
"As you wish." He replied and looked out over the clearing.
He could see the bridge that beamed over the water, and on the mass of land across from them was a small shack with a wooden platform spread in front of it. He assumed it was an outdoor eatery from before the war, and the little tin shack was a later added development.
But slowly, his eyes began to trail over to the smoothskin who cooed with the sounds of sleep in his lap. She was curled up in a little ball in her blankets with her arms outstretched limply on the ground in front of her. The ghoul wondered why she chose him as a pillow when there was a roll out mattress across the campfire.
Hmn… A smoothskin who likes ghouls. Charon thought with meditative smirk. Now I've seen everything.
He has seen smoothskins before that had nothing against ghouls, they could tolerate being in the same room as a living corpse, but it depended on the time they could tolerate the smell. Most couldn't stand the stench longer than an hour. The longest he's seen was roughly thirty minutes.
Of course, his skin didn't really flake and peel off like most of the other ghouls did, it sort of dried up and turned leathery; his metamorphosis was difficult to explain or describe. All he knew was that he was treated like the others who had undergone ghoulification all the same; he was isolated. None of his loved ones had survived the radiation of the bombs, and if they had, they wouldn't have lived as long as he did. If they did, they wouldn't have recognized him either.
Charon was pulled out of his pondering when Aimee's hand came up to his knee, clasping onto the kneecap of his armor as a small smile came onto her lips.
She's a strange one…
The rest of the night went on in silence. Aimee gave tiny noises in the pleasure of her sleep with her head in his lap as he maintained watch. He once in a while looked down to the smoothskin he was protecting now; she could act like a small child at times, but otherwise, she was deemed tolerable.
