Gal freezes, confused.

"What? I don't -"

She takes a step towards the black-haired girl, but Sophia swings the slaver's pistol towards her and stops her. Gal gave away the only firearm she had, and Charon's is slung across his back; there's no way he can get to it in time. There's nothing they can do. As soon as Gal stops moving again, Sophia lines her sights back up on Charon, finger resting warningly on the trigger.

"I told you if I ever saw him again I'd kill him. Looks like I'm getting that chance." the girl says coldly.

Gal turns to look at Charon. He looks completely dumb-founded, one hand still raised in the air. His gaze is locked on the black-haired girl, eyes full of sorrow.

"Sophia." he says quietly.

Charon was the one who brought Sophia to Paradise Falls. Sophia is one of the eight girls Azrukhal doomed to slavery.

Sophia is going to kill Charon.

Gal swings around and looks at Sophia pleadingly, her heart in her throat.

"Sophia, please, don't - you don't know the whole story - Charon -"

Sophia cuts her off without even glancing her way. "I know about the contract. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't change what he did."

"She's right." Charon agrees. "It doesn't."

The words make Gal's heart physically hurt, at the same time it makes her veins flood with anger. Charon doesn't even try to defend himself. He lets his hand lower and just stands there. His eyes lower, like he can't bear to look at Sophia anymore.

"Sophia, Charon didn't have an option. He was as much a slave then as you were five minutes ago. Nothing he did to you was his own choice - Sophia, please don't kill him, please - "

Gal realizes that she's crying halfway through her speech. It becomes hard to talk through the tightness in her throat. She wants to throw herself in front of Charon, or take the gun out of Sophia's hand, but she's scared out of her mind that it will make the girl pull the trigger. The whole scene goes hazy before her as she furiously tries to blink back tears.

Behind her, Charon bows his head.

Sophia doesn't look at her at all. Time seems to slow down, but even as it does, Gal can't think fast enough of a way to stop what's about to happen. There's nothing she can do.

Nothing.

Sophia grits her teeth, tears sliding down her own cheeks, and squeezes the trigger.

There's a small click. Sophia looks at the unloaded pistol in disbelief. Then, as if her legs can no longer hold her, she slides to the ground and starts sobbing, slamming one small fist into the dirt. The pistol lands beside her.

Gal lets out a long, shaky breath, tears still sliding down her face. It's nearly enough to sap the strength from her own legs, but she stays standing somehow. She wants to do a thousand things at once - to slap Sophia for daring to pull the trigger, to sink to the ground and embrace her instead, to hug Charon to remind herself that he's not dead, he's not dead.

They all go silent for a moment, Sophia's sobbing the only sound. It seems loud to her, loud enough to attract attention, and she remembers suddenly that they're in the middle of an escape attempt.

"Gal. We have to go." Charon says. His eyes haven't strayed from Sophia, but he's at least unslung his shotgun. It's the only movement he's made since Sophia pulled the trigger.

Gal nods, unable to speak. Sophia doesn't react when Gal moves towards her. Wordlessly, she crouches down and once again pulls the broken girl to her feet, letting Sophia lean on her and cry, almost carrying her. Dogmeat, ever the forgiving type, paws at her leg and whines in solidarity. Together, they move away from the walls of Paradise Falls, towards the safehouse where Charon and Gal had stashed their belongings.

Charon bolts away from the pair like they're poisonous. It seems hard for him to take his eyes away from Sophia, but he wants to be near her even less, so he moves ahead of them twenty feet or so and starts scanning for threats. They've already wasted enough time lollygagging by Paradise Falls; they need to get out of the area before the slavers send out a search party. That's what she and Charon are focusing on; Sophia just buries her head in Gal's shoulder.

The house they'd stashed their belongings in is a few hour's south of the Falls. It's a silent walk, marked only by Gal's rumbling stomach and Sophia finally letting go and walking on her own. Charon doesn't look back at them, not once, but the lines of his shoulders are tense the whole trip. Sophia goes from burying her head in Gal's shoulder to watching him like he's a snake about to strike. The tension is killing Gal.

They arrive. Charon pushes the door open, shotgun at the ready, and goes to sweep the area. Gal starts to follow him, but Sophia stops in her tracks. Gal looks back and sees that her eyes are wide and frightened.

"No." she says, looking at the open door. "No, I'm not going in there."

"Sophia, come on. We can't stay outside, it's too dangerous." Gal says soothingly. Sophia shakes her head, her dirty hair swinging back and forth.

"I'm not going in there with him. He could…" she stops, unable to continue.

Gal puts a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Sophia, I own Charon's contract now. He can't hurt you. I promise."

The girl eyes Gal suspiciously, but it's gotten cold out and she's shivering in her thin shift. Slowly, unwillingly, she heads for the house. Gal follows her with a sigh of relief. She's not sure what she would do if Sophia refused their help. She can't just let her wander out into the Wasteland by herself.

Charon calls that it's all clear. When they walk into the front room, he's pulling their packs out of the steamer trunk they'd been stashed in. Sophia creeps in, takes one long look around the living room, and darts to an open door. It shuts behind her with a click.

Gal watches her go, and sighs.

She turns to her stack of armour and dresses slowly. She's still covered in dirt, but they can't fix that until they're back in Megaton. Charon clears the middle of the room of debris and digs out some dinner to set out on the table. He very carefully doesn't look anywhere near the locked door.

Gently, Gal pulls the bag of brahmin jerky from his fingers and goes to work opening it. His silence is not unusual, but it is heavy.

"Charon." Gals says lowly, fiddling with the tie. "It's not your fault."

The ghoul just sets an opened box of apples down and doesn't say anything.

"Charon." she says again, abandoning her task. "Seriously. It's not your fault. Nothing you did under contract is."

Slamming the box in his hands down, Charon looks up at her. His eyes are hard.

"I doomed eight women to slavery, Gal. And that's not even on the top of the list of things I've done. It doesn't make it any better that someone told me to do it. They're there because of me."

"Seven." Gal counters. "One of them is in that room. She's worse for the wear, but she's alive. And she's alive because you helped me get into Paradise Falls and break her out."

If Charon were the eye-rolling type, he'd be doing it right now. As it is, she senses the exasperation in him anyway.

"I helped you get into Paradise Falls because you fucking ordered me to. So then her being saved isn't my doing either." The sarcasm drips from his words. He nearly tears the next box in half as he's opening it.

Gal smiles. "No, I didn't order you, and you know it. You knew it when you told me what you knew about the Falls, and when you agreed to the plan, and every moment you were in there. You know that I wouldn't have done it if you really didn't agree. But you did agree, because it's the right thing to do. So stop blaming yourself for what Azrukhal made you do. You're as much a victim here as anyone else he wronged."

He doesn't look, but he does jerk his head towards Sophia's closed door.

"Yeah. That's what she thinks too." he says shortly.

Gal looks over at the door and sighs.

"She's as stubborn as you are." she agrees. She hesitates, but asks anyway, because it's important to know. "Did you have to… with her…"

Charon's shoulders stiffen. This time, he looks away, towards the closed door. After a few moments pass, Gal realizes he's not going to answer.

If she's reading the look on his face right, he doesn't have to.

She abandons the bag of jerky on the table and retreats to a sofa in the corner of the room instead. Brushing some plaster and debris off the cushions, she curls up on one side and looks pointedly at Charon, patting the space beside her.

"Come here." she says softly.

Charon throws the last box onto the table and stalks over. He stops just in front of her, looming, but she just purses her mouth and pats the sofa again, until he relents and grudgingly sits down.

She twists so her back is to the arm of the chair and she can face him, legs crossed on the sofa cushion. Gently, she clasps his hand between her own two and pulls it over to rest on her knee, thumb sliding along his skin slowly. His hands are as rough as the rest of him, pitted and gnarled, muscle visible and shifting as his fingers move. He looks down at their joined hands uneasily, but doesn't pull away.

"Listen to me." she starts. "No matter what happened, it's not your fault. You're as much a victim as she is."

Charon's hand tightens around her own painfully.

"Say it all you want. It doesn't make it true." he say shortly. His hand pulls from hers, and he gets up and walks back to the table without a backward glance.

Gal watches him go with a heavy heart. She wants to push the subject and keep telling him he's wrong until he actually believes it, but all of them are tired and hungry and she's feeling more frustrated and angry at the two of them than understanding. That's probably a sign that now isn't the time to push it.

So instead she takes a box of apples and some jerky and goes to knock on the closed door.

"Sophia?" she calls tentatively. "You hungry? I've got some dinner for you."

She hears some movement behind the door, but it doesn't open. Gal knocks again and waits patiently.

The door doesn't open.

Gal sets the food down next to the door and sighs.

"I'll leave it right outside for you, okay? Make sure you eat."

The door doesn't budge as she walks back to the table, but sometime between her laying down to catch some sleep and being woken for watch, the food disappears.

The next morning doesn't fare any better. Gal, grumpy from lack of sleep, spends her watch time sleepily trying to think of a way to help Sophia and Charon out, but she doesn't find any solutions. Charon tosses and turns all night; he finally wakes up an hour and a half before she'd been planning to wake him and stalks into the bathroom silently, clearly having given up on sleep. Sophia doesn't emerge at all.

Finally, when they're all packed and ready to get underway, Gal knocks on her door and calls out to her. Sophia cautiously cracks the door, peeks out to see where Charon is, and then glues herself to Gal's side again, just as she'd done yesterday. Absolutely no change. Gal wants to scream, but instead offers her a box of Sugar Bombs and they head out.

"I think we should stop by Big Town, since we're in the area. They might need some of the stuff we've salvaged." Gal mentions, a few hours later. Their trip has been blessedly quiet so far.

Charon grunts in response, the sound making Sophia's grip tighten on Gal's arm. She's possibly even jumpier today than she was yesterday. Whatever she'd done last night, while she was locked up in that room, it hadn't allowed her much rest. The circles under her eyes are darker, like bruises.

"What's Big Town?" she asks quietly. She still speaks like she's afraid someone might hear.

"It's a settlement just down the road. Pretty small. Everyone's friendly, though." Gal gives her a reassuring smile, but Sophia just slides her eyes away and ducks her head.

They hear the gunfire before they see it. Cursing, Charon and Gal duck behind an abandoned house, Gal dragging Sophia with her. Charon, back to the rotting siding, peeks out around the corner quickly and ducks back into safety.

"Super Mutants. Again. They never fucking give up." he curses. Gal kneels down next to him and glances out herself. At this distance, it's hard to tell how many there are, but there's enough to mean big trouble.

"Shit. We're too far away." she says. Charon nods.

"We can make it over to the playground and take cover there. That will put us in range." he suggests. Gal nods an affirmative and turns to lock eyes with Sophia.

"You should stay here." she says, but Sophia shakes her head resolutely.

"Are you kidding? What if they come back this way? Or there's more?" she says, not unreasonably. She looks plenty scared, but her shoulders are resolute. And she's handled herself well in dangerous situations so far. She'd be more protected if she were close by.

"Okay. But stay close and don't get shot, okay? We're going to sneak over there so we're in range to take them out."

Charon leads, quiet as a whisper as he creeps across the open ground towards the cover of the playground. It seems impossible that something so big can be so quiet, but Charon's boots barely make a sound over the gravel and dried grass. Gal, behind him, is more noisy but her sneaking has gotten much better in the last few months, thanks to her ghoul companion. Sophia, in her sandals and thin dress, might as well be a shadow behind her.

Most of the Super Mutants are dashing for the entry bridge to Big Town, but a couple are across the playground, trying to squeeze through a gap in the rusty, stacked car wall there. None of them notice the trio creeping up on them, and they make it to the safety of a large piece of playground equipment without notice. It's some type of big vehicle, like a squashed sphere on stilts, with a slide coming out one end.

Charon locks eyes with Gal and tilts his head towards the two Mutants on the edge of the playground. Then he pulls a grenade from his side and points at the other group. Gal moves herself to the edge of their cover so she has a clear shot at the two and watches Charon toss the grenade gently towards Bigtown's entrance.

One one-thousand, two one-thousand…

Just before the grenade explodes, she whips around the corner and opens fire on the Super Mutants. She catches one in the shoulder, and then rips into his chest when he turns towards her before he can bring his rifle up. The other is half-wedged between two cars. He flails, trying to get unstuck, but she gets him right in the temple before that happens.

Charon's grenade is less successful. It damages only one Mutie, but it does get their attention, and half of them turn towards the playground with roars of surprise, while the others rush the entrance with even more fervor.

Gal darts from her hiding spot further into the play equipment, so she and Charon are spread a bit apart, and waits for their adversaries to come to them. They have the advantage now; they have plenty of solid cover, while the Super Mutants are left out in the open and flanked on two sides.

What they really should do is find cover first; instead, they come straight for them at max speed. Gal sees a couple with nailboards, a couple with hunting rifles, but no miniguns, thankfully. They take a couple potshots as they're moving, but those just thunk harmlessly into the side of the equipment or into the ground.

Gal leans out, takes aim, drops one with a hit to the eye; Charon blasts another with his shotgun, stopping it in its tracks, but not downing it just yet. The ping of a round on the metal near her shoulder makes her draw back into safety.

Sophia is behind her, glancing out from behind the other side of the structure they're hiding behind. She pulls back for a moment, then darts out from safety and takes off running.

"Sophia! Shit," Gal exclaims, leaning back out to take a few more shots. One hits in the shoulder and causes the Mutant to drop his nailboard. Charon takes advantage of his pause and blasts him in the chest.

They take another down together, but the last is nearly to Gal's hiding spot when shots ring out from somewhere on the right. The Mutant turns to look. It's just enough time for Gal to bring her rifle up and put two through his belly. The Mutant looks back, confused, and then crumples. His head clangs against the steel side of the slide. With the way his guts are hanging out all over the place, Gal thinks he probably didn't even feel it.

They waste no time turning their attention towards the other Mutants. A few are laying dead in front of the bridge; the rest have ducked behind the sandbag walls and junk piles surrounding the entrance. Gal thinks she spots Red hiding behind a house, and somebody else toting a hunting rifle as well. There's blood covering the ground on Bigtown's side that can't belong to a Super Mutant.

The Muties are protected by their cover from Bigtown's residents, but not from Gal and Charon. Together, they mow the remaining Mutants down with little trouble. Sophia appears on Gal's right, solving the mystery of where the extra shots had come from; she has both hands wrapped around a revolver, and though her stance is clumsy, Gal sees two of her shots lodge in a Mutant's chest. They're not quite killing blows, but Charon's follow-up once the Mutant sinks to his knees, clutching his chest, is.

Then, there's a fearful scream that causes her to whip around. Gal goes pale as one of the Super Mutants from the playground staggers up and swipes at Sophia with a nailboard. Sophia tries to duck out of the way, but it catches her across the shoulder and flings her through the air like a ragdoll. She comes down onto the dirt hard, and doesn't get up.

The Super Mutant, covered with blood, collapses before Gal can react, but she puts two more bullets through his head just in case. Then, she runs towards Sophia's prone body, heart hammering.

Charon reaches her first. Without pause, he kneels down next to her and gingerly runs his hand over her shoulder, stopping when she whimpers in pain. Gal sees as she comes up on Sophia's other side that it's sitting funny and her whole bicep is bruised and bloody. She's still breathing normally, if hard, and her eyes are focused. A pretty good outcome for a one-on-one match with a Mutie.

"Was it your bad side?" Charon asks confusingly, but Sophia nods, as if she knows just what he's talking about.

"Think it's dislocated." Sophia replies, her voice taut with pain. She tries to shrink back from Charon when he reaches out again, but cries out again and goes still when it jostles her arm.

"We have to get her to Red. Hold her arm and try to keep it still." Charon orders. Gal carefully slips her fingers under Sophia's arm, being careful of the bruising, and lifts it as Charon lifts her body, so that it's not left to swing freely and cause more pain. She almost thinks about offering to carry her, knows she could do it, but Charon picks her up like she's a fine piece of china and cradles her gently against his chest, and she must be in too much pain to care because she doesn't react. Together, they walk slowly towards the Bigtown entrance.

Red is kneeling down next to a body when they enter the town. Gal blanches, but then relaxes when she sees Dusty's eyes are still open. He has a massive bloody hole in the muscle of his quad; as Gal watches, Red presses the handkerchief from her forehead to it and wraps it with some strips of cloth to keep it in place. His faceplate is cracked. He grimaces as Red and Shorty haul him to his feet in preparation to drag him back to her clinic.

"Good timing, you two." Red says, before looking back. "Oh - three. Who's this?"

"This is Sophia. We think her shoulder is dislocated. Can you look at it?"

Red smiles, as Gal knew she would, and jerks her head back towards her clinic.

"Of course. Let's go."

They tramp through town like the world's slowest, saddest parade, while the rest of the Bigtown residents start hauling the Super Mutant corpses away from the entrance and cleaning up the blood. The sight of Bittercup stumbling out of the sleeping area, only just now aware that something happened, makes her want to laugh and roll her eyes at the same time.

"Didn't think you'd remember." Sophia mutters. She winces a little when Gal jostles her arm by accident.

"Be hard to forget. You could pick up a toothbrush wrong and hurt your shoulder. Have you been doing your exercises?" Charon replies, maneuvering carefully through the front door of Red's clinic so as not to bump his cargo.

"Yeah… they help a lot. This is the first problem I've had in a few years." Sophia replies. Red points them to a mostly-clean operating table and then turns back to Dusty, who's bleeding at an alarming rate from the bullet hole in his leg.

"Gal, can you help me out?" Red asks as she carefully unties the bloody strips of cloth from Dusty's leg. "I'll see to Sophia's arm but we need to take care of Dusty first. He can't sit guard duty if he bleeds out."

Dusty smiles faintly at the joke and reaches up to push his helmet off. It clatters to the floor and rolls a few feet before stopping.

"I'm thinking it's time to get some other people on the roster, Red. You want to volunteer?" he asks. When Red pulls the bandana from his leg, he lets out a string of curses.

"Yup… it's still in there. Grab the alcohol, will you, Gal?" Red directs.

Gal glances back at Charon and Sophia, but they're talking in low voices now, and while the atmosphere isn't exactly friendly, it seems okay to turn her back for a moment. She's not sure what changed exactly, but she'll figure it out later.

It takes several long minutes of Red digging in the wound to find the bullet. Dusty watches for a moment, while Gal holds the edges of the wound apart, and then his eyes roll back in his head and he passes out cold. Red scoffs good-naturedly and starts dabbing at the wound with a piece of cloth and some alcohol before fetching a few stimpacks.

"He does that every time. I don't know why he bothers watching." she comments, watching the tissue start to knit back together as she injects the contents of the stimpack. "Dammit, Dusty, this is going to take at least three stimpacks, you jerk. Can't you get a smaller injury once in a while?"

There's a cry of pain from behind them. Gal whirls around to see Charon grasping Sophia's wrist, pulling it out from her body slowly. There's a popping sound and then her shoulder joint snaps back into place. Charon grasps her elbow and folds her arm across her torso gently.

Red, done with Dusty's leg, crosses to examine Sophia's shoulder, nodding in approval.

"Good work. You'll need a sling or something for a little while as it heals. I'll give you some Med-x for the pain."

The minute Red steps in, Charon moves back and out of the way, but he keeps his eyes on Sophia. Gal moves closer too, handing Red the syringe of med-x when she asks.

"You're a pretty good shot, Sophia." Gal says, smiling down. Sophia makes a face at the feel of the needle sliding into her arm. "Maybe you should be the one carrying the assault rifle."

"Can I have your armour too?" Sophia asks. She lets out a little chuckle when Gal narrows her eyes and puts one protective arm over her chest plate.

"I want to keep the gun." she adds softly, as Red settles her arm into a makeshift sling. Then the two of them help her sit up and slide off the table. Despite all the bruising, she seems steady on her feet.

"Not -" Gal eyes Red surreptitiously, and changes her words. "Not if you're going to use it."

Sophia looks over at Charon, watching him as he presses rounds into Gal's spent magazines. The look in her eye is strange, not soft, but not the hard hatred from yesterday either. Her hand comes up to rub at her shoulder unconsciously.

"...no. I won't." she agrees. If Charon hears, he doesn't make any sign of it.

Gal shoulders her pack and looks back to Red, who's eyeing them all weirdly, but wisely chooses not to say anything about it.

"I think it's probably time to take a breather after all that excitement. Do you mind if we spend the night, Red?"

Red snorts good-naturedly and mops her sweaty brow with the bloody handkerchief, leaving a streak of red where the sweat was.

"I guess that's okay, since you saved our butts and all. Again. Come on, we'll set you up in that empty house again."

Warnings: hints at sexual assault, attempted murder, violence and the fixing of a dislocated shoulder.

BONUS CONTENT:
The name 'Above the Deep' comes from the song 'In the Water' by Anadel. It's a very sad song. That doesn't mean this will become a sad story... but that doesn't mean it won't either.