And Wolves Beneath Their Seams
Part 26
Not long after, they leave.
"I hate it here," V tells him, curled into his chest one night. "Let's go back to Rivet City."
It is not an order. Rather, a question. He thinks, if he disagreed, she would stay.
Because he asked her to.
Though she is weak, though he worries about her on the road, Charon says, "Tomorrow."
"Three-dog first, though," she ventures. "I want to send a message."
Charon shrugs. "As you wish."
It doesn't matter where she walks; he will follow her.
And so they go.
Outside the Citadel, water caravans rumble through. Though many wear the Canterbury Commons insignia, he does not recognize the drivers. Walking along a loaded Brahman, V stops a woman to ask, "What's the safest route through DC?"
The woman laughs. "You're on it," she says. "This is V's Road. Just follow the shells and you'll be fine."
V falters. She stops. Immediately, Charon finds her side.
"V's Road?" she breathes.
And it is. It is their road—their path through the city—their spent shells and others' cobbled into the dirt by the passing of many feet. They walk, retracing their old path.
When they reach the closer city streets, they find signs, V's Road written on buildings, on scraps of metal, over and over. For those who passed through and could not read, someone marked the path with pictures: two empty shotgun shells on angle—a V to mark the way.
V stops. Halfway to Chevy Chase, in the thick of what had been a battle-zone not two months before, V stares—at the signs, at her name, at the safest road in DC—and begins to cry.
Charon does not know what to do. Still, he tries. He places a careful hand against her elbow, the way he has learned to tug her from her nightmares.
"We did good," he tells her and through her tears, V smiles.
"Yeah," she says and swallows, passes a hand over her eyes. "I guess we did."
Despite the Brotherhood presence at GNR, Three-dog had not expected them. When V turns the corner into his studio, the man bolts to his feet, nearly upending a table. A grin splits his face. Vibrating like an overeager child, he seizes V's hand, then Charon's.
"Well, if it isn't War and Death. Always a pleasure to entertain heroes," he says, bouncing from foot to foot. "Although if I know you two, you're not here on a social call. What can ol' Three-dog help you with?"
V shifts, scratches at a burn until Charon steals her hand. Her elbow knocks his—a gentle rebuke—but she does not return to picking at the scab.
She asks, "I was wondering if I could say something on the radio?"
For a moment, Three-dog does not react. He takes a step back, head cocked, looking between the two of them. But V's face does not change and Three-dog breathes, "You ain't joking," like a revelation.
"No, I'm not joking." V's hand lifts and stops, returns to her side. She shrugs instead. "It's not much—just a little love letter to the wastes."
Delighted, Three-dog laughs. "Love letter to the wastes. That's fantastic. Goddamn, girl. You better give me more of these or you'll break my heart." And then, "Come on. I'll show you my rig."
Like a proud father, he takes V into the next room, pointing out his equipment and explaining each until, at last, he sits her down in front of an old microphone.
"You're not live," he says. "I want this to be perfect, so we're gonna record it until it's right, okay?"
V pulls a scrap of a Citadel poster from her pocket, words scrawled across the back. "Jesus, Three-Dog. Don't get your hopes up."
Unabashed, Three-dog shrugs. "After all the stunts you pulled? My hopes are sky high," he says and grinning, flips the red switch.
"Dear Wasteland," she reads. "Didn't want you to worry. Purifier hurt like a bitch, but I'm not dead. Wanted to let you guys know. Megaton, give me a month, maybe two. I'll be on my way back. And Big Town, you're next. Top priority, I promise. With love, from V."
Three-dog slaps the machine off, pretending to swoon. "Perfection! As if I expected anything less. You have got to get me more of these. Please, tell me I can expect you on my show."
Smiling, V stands. "I'll think about it."
Once in Rivet City, they take a room at the Weatherly. News of their arrival spreads quickly. No sooner does V drop her duster over the back of a chair then footsteps echo down the hallway towards their room.
Lips pursed, armor stripped to the waist, Charon picks up his shotgun. He means to glower out the doorway—warn off their welcoming party—but before he reaches the door, he hears Butch outside.
"No, bug off! The shit she's been through, you think she wants to talk about your problems? Like hell. Go away. And you, too. Get out of here. Go home."
Kicking off her boots, V smiles. "He's getting faster," she says.
Shrugging, Charon lets him in.
The boy looks different. Older. Though he retains the ridiculous leather jacket, he no longer wears the jumpsuit, his clothing worn and practical.
Without an invitation, Butch strides into the room. He drops the package he carries on the table, hugs V so hard he nearly lifts her from her feet.
"Big damn heroes," he mutters into the newly grown fuzz of her hair. "Had me fucking worried. Exploding shit. Saving shit. Goddamn, V."
V grins into his shoulder. "Charon helped."
"Charon is a goddamn instigator." Letting her go, Butch turns, giving Charon the eye. "I mean, come on, man. You're not even trying to keep her out of trouble."
Charon thinks of their prior meeting, Butch laughing, "You're done for. You're in too deep." Thinks of the last night at the Citadel, his willingness to do anything V asked.
Still, even now, the boy is not wrong.
"V istrouble," Charon says. "It is pointless to try."
V laughs—after all that has happened, she laughs—and Charon feels the knot of tension in his shoulders ease.
They will be alright, he thinks. They are healing already.
The package Butch brings turns out to be a dress.
"Look, don't get any ideas," he says as she lifts it from its paper wrapping, reverent and gentle. "It's just, you always said you wanted a dress back in the vault. This looked like it'd fit Grognak, so I figured it'd fit you."
For a long time, V does not speak. She holds the dress to her body, running her hands over the fabric again and again, and though Charon sits at the table sorting their packs, he cannot help but watch her from the corner of his eye.
At last, she manages, "Butch, you are a goddamned sweetheart."
The kid shrugs, shifts his weight, "Aw, shaddup," he says. "Figured you could use something pretty. Now sit down and let me at least try to salvage the mess you made on your head."
When Butch leaves, V pauses only to sweet up the fallen hair before she strips down, steps into her dress.
"Zip me up," she says to him, smiling, offers him her back.
It is not an order Charon has ever been given before. He lifts the tiny zipper into place, knuckles grazing the skin of her spine, feeling huge and clumsy. When he steps away, Charon does not know what to do with his hands.
If V notices, she does not say. She looks at herself in the dusty face of a mirror, takes two of the big leather belts she uses to strap extra gear to her pack and cinches them around her waist. Though the dress went gray long ago, it glows against her dark skin. Barefoot, she spins. The fabric floats around her.
V grins. Her eyes find his. "How do I look?"
It takes Charon a beat too long to realize she asked him a question. By the time he does, the words have evaporated, senseless and forgotten in the air between them. Stepping into her boots, V laughs.
"Let's go get a beer," she says, hooking her arm through his. "Maybe some food."
Charon swallows twice before he can agree.
They head first to Gary's Galley, but do not make it there. A woman intercepts them at the Marketplace door, small and cringing, whispering for help.
"I used to be a slave," she says. "And now there's a slaver on this ship. Sister. I think he's after me."
V's face goes cold and Charon sees in her eyes the woman who stormed a super mutant encampment because no one else would, the woman who cleaned DC because it needed done, the woman who died twice to clean water for people she would never meet.
"Can you shoot?" she asks.
"I… yeah, I can shoot," the woman says. "But I don't have a gun. And I can't—he can't see me. I don't have any caps."
Carefully, V smiles, though her eyes are dark. "We're gonna go pick you out a gun," she says. And then, "Charon, I think I need you to wait in the room."
Charon knows the shape of this order. Still, he tries, "My place is at your side."
V nods. "I know," she says. "But I think the fucker will run if he sees us both."
Twenty minutes later, V returns, quietly frog-marching a large, scarred man into the room. Despite his size and V's illness, she propels him easily. Were he not pale and struggling, his arm wrenched unnaturally behind his back, they might almost look a couple.
"You are making a huge fucking mistake," he spits as V kicks the door shut. "Who the fuck do you think—"
Seeing Charon, the words die in his mouth. Over Sister's shoulder, V smiles. In her eyes, he sees Raven Rock aflame, sees the fall of an army.
"Who the fuck do we look like?" she asks and shoves him into a chair. Quietly, she takes a length of cording from her nearby pack, forces his hands behind his back.
"Look, I've got no grief with you, okay?" he says as she binds his hands and secures them to the back of the chair, moves on to looping cord around his feet. "Whatever you heard—"
"I heard you're a piece-of-shit slaver," V says, standing, dusting off her hands. "Are you a piece-of-shit slaver, Sister?"
The man's eyes dart between them, sizing up two monsters. He struggles against his restraints, slow and quiet, as though they cannot see.
"What? I sell a friend of yours or something?" he sneers. "It's not personal; it's business. How the fuck do you expect me to eat?"
V smiles again. "Through a tube, when I'm done."
Though he is tied to a chair, though his life hangs in the balance, Sister has the audacity to laugh. "Some saint of the fucking wastes. Frozen, corpse-fucking bitch, like you're not sucking him off every night for gun money."
Charon strides across the room and slams a fist into the slaver's gut, toppling the chair with the force of his blow. Only afterwards, does it occurs to him to look to V for orders, but V only smiles, mouths, "My hero," and rights the bastard's chair.
Then, she starts asking questions. V demands the layout of Paradise Falls, how many entrances, how many exits. When he does not comply, she breaks a finger. Then another, for the fun of it.
Slowly, Sister answers.
How many guards, she wants to know? How many guns? How many slaves and their location?
He lies. But then, they knew he would. Charon knocks out three teeth. V blacks an eye, bloodies a cheek.
"Leave his legs," V says. "He'll need those."
Charon nods and breaks a finger of his own. It is not the first time he has found himself in this position, only the first he has not regretted it.
Wheezing and bloodied, Sister gives V everything she asks for and volunteers more. Eulogy's house has a balcony, easily reached with a boost from below. The balcony leads to a second, inside, overlooking the ground floor. Eulogy's bed sits in the center of the room.
"You should know," he coughs. "You'll be seeing a lot of it, face down and—"
Calmly, Charon breaks his nose.
At last, V has everything she needs to know. She walks away, picks up a spare cloth to wipe the blood from her hands. None of it hers, Charon sees. He washes his hands in the sink, takes a stimpak for his scrapes, the wounds the walls of the Ninth Circle left him broken open, bleeding freely.
Sister spits, coughs, spits again.
"Fucking cunt. Think you're so goddamn tough. I know what you're afraid of," he says and laughs, staring at her from bloodshot eyes. "People like me."
V only smiles, real sweet. "You're absolutely right," she says and picking up Charon's shotgun, carefully knocks him out.
Untying his limbs, V hoists the man over her shoulder, easy as lifting the wreckage of a motorcycle.
"Mistress," Charon starts, but V shakes her head.
"I'm fine. I can handle one idiot. Anyway, I need you to walk ahead and clear the halls, head to the Marketplace."
He does not like it, but V does not waver nearly as much now when she walks, and so Charon obeys.
This late, few people are up and about. Those that remain take one look at the thunder in his face and find somewhere else to be. Many of those that remain are too drunk to notice or violently high. The sight of a woman in a once-white dress carrying a grown man over her shoulder will slide from notice, too strange to acknowledge.
They reach the Marketplace unhindered, avoiding the guards' patrols. Charon picks the lock, watches the door as V drops the slaver in the middle of the stalls, a mess of broken bones. Hazy and bloodied, he wakes a little, spitting curses, feeble insults.
V only smiles, pats his cheek.
"Do me a favor," she says. "Tell them I'm coming."
In the room again, V kicks off her boots and slips out of her dress. She scrubs the blood from the floor, takes Abaraxo to the stains Sister left her with. Charon strips—too hot from exertion, from the pent up sun-heat of the boat—and sits down, undershirt in his hands, watching her from the corner of the bed.
At last, V leaves her dress to soak and crosses to sit beside him.
Almost shy, she asks, "How do you feel about raiding Paradise Falls?"
Charon shrugs. It does not matter to him. Whatever battle she chooses, he will bear.
"Where you go, I follow," he tells her.
Frowning, V says his name—a gentle accusation. She means to say more, but when he turns, she reads his face. She understands.
"Okay then," she whispers. "Okay."
They sit for some time, together and silent, too wound to sleep and too tired to care. Charon feels V's fingers drift along his spine and closes his eyes, leans into the feel of her hand.
"Can I ask you what this says?" she ventures, quiet like a riverbank.
"Cheloveku volk," he tells her. "A wolf to man."
He feels V smile. Her hand flattens, then dances down his back. He thinks she is stroking what remains of the wolf, scratching behind its scabby ears. "That's beautiful."
"No," he says. "It is my designation."
And he smells smoke threatening on the corners of his consciousness, but it fades under the gentle pressure of her fingers, searching out the outlines of the wolf beneath his seams.
Behind him, solemnly, V nods.
She says, "I think it's mine, too."