Holy crap! I'm back! What happened? The long and short of it is that a friend of mine passed unexpectedly around the time I last updated, and it more or less sucked the desire to do anything out of me, particularly with where the story is going to go. Having it happen around the holidays kinda sucked too, so I went off the grid until I started to feel better. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I'd like to thank you guys for being patient, and for the alerts and messages, and to let you know that the story WILL be finished, no matter the bumps on the way. I outlined the entire thing when I started this, writing the rest is just filling in the blanks as needed. So once more, on with the show.

Cort pulled open the battered, slatted door and looked down the short tunnel leading back to her childhood home, sweeping her Pip-Boy's light through the gloom. Nothing had changed, aside from a few new drifts of dust leading from the base, lined up like tiny sand dunes. Moving rapidly forward, she headed straight for the door control panel, Charon hesitating long enough to take a hard look at the outside before following after. He glanced around at the signs left by the dead refugees scattered around the entrance while she poked at the panel, looking mildly amused until she piped up again, gesturing with her free hand.

"Okay, now move over to the right, right in the corner there. The door will open towards me, and if there's anyone in there, they'll be looking at the controls." Giving her a dark look, he complied, moving out of the sightline she had laid out. Bracing herself, Cort punched the last button, resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears as the klaxon rang out, the amber safety lights strafing over all three of them, turning the skulls at her feet into grinning, bony party masks. Great, well-wishers for my next little adventure. They helped so much on my way out of here. Grabbing her repeater, she dropped it next to her left thigh, hiding it with the line of her leg but ready to shoot from the hip if she had to. She didn't have to. Slightly baffled, Cort slowly peeped her head into the Vault as the giant plug of lead and steel retracted fully, darting her eyes around the entry room as it came to a discordant, squealing halt.

"It's empty. Why is it emp-oh wait, no. There's...whatsisface, he wasn't around much. Kept to himself. Mister Wilkins. Well, I suppose it's farewell Jim, I hardly knew ye." Cort walked up the stairs, nudged the corpse slumped next to the inside door control with one toe and turned around, narrowed her eyes and then smiled approvingly. "Someone's been fooling in here, naughty, naughty. Security camera is gone. Well, that's a plus, but that makes it even weirder that someone isn't guarding the door."

Charon moved up beside her, deciding to take the statement as a release from his position, since there was no one present for him to stay out of sight from. The area was entirely deserted, and while as clean as Vault 112 had been, there were obvious signs of conflict; sawhorses in place and overturned, papers scattered everywhere, and what looked like bullet marks in some of the walls. Idly wondering if they were from this particular conflict or Cort's hasty escape, he answered her question. "Makes sense, if everything's disrupted. Which way."

Cort didn't answer, having spotted another foot protruding out from the maintenance area to the right. Peeping around the door, she tried to keep her guts from falling any farther than they had at seeing that Jim was dead. Not even two minutes in the front door and already there's bodies. Oh jeeze, oh stars, what if Amata and the others-

She cut herself off before she could upset herself any further, glancing back to Charon. "This is Steve Armstrong. Bea, oooh, Bea is going to be so upset. He's married to Bea."

Hearing her voice start to jitter, Charon patiently repeated his question. "Which way, Cort? I need to know what to do."

"What? Oh. Yes." Distracted into focusing on him, she slapped the control panel to seal the Vault up again and then turned to look around appraisingly. While it would have been nice to go back through the Overseer's tunnel, something that would most likely take them to the heart of the matter, Cort didn't know how to activate it from this end, and turned back to face the levered door in front of them, sighing. "We're going straight ahead. Remember what I told you."

"Take point."

Despite herself, she smiled at his deadpan delivery. "Nice try. Out of sight, as in stay back, unless I say otherwise, and say it out loud. Don't think I didn't notice what you just did there, coming inside." Turning around as he let out a quiet grump, Cort slipped over to the door in front of the stairs, then nudged it open with one foot after cranking it open. After nothing jumped out at her, she risked taking a good long look into the next room, at least from where she stood. There was nobody in evidence, which didn't surprise her too much; if anyone was going to lay in ambush, this would have been one of the lousiest rooms to do it in. It had cover, true, but it was all made up of one of the giant sets of transformers running to the reactors. Starting a shooting match in there wouldn't have been the smartest move, but then Vault security hadn't proved itself to be the brightest of bulbs on her last day inside. She fidgeted. Now that she was here and ready to move in, she was unsure if she wanted to. What if there's someone in there? What if there's another dead someone in there, what if I have to make a someone dead? There weren't that many of us to freaking start with, I'll run out eventually it's not like I can pick more up at the store and if they attack Charon-

Cort jumped as the ghoul in question cleared his throat, and realized that she had been staring into the room and waffling for more than a few minutes. She turned back and raised an eyebrow. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and held his left arm up, looking exasperated.

"Oh. Right." Trying not to look too sheepish, Cort brought her Pip-Boy up and poked at it, then held up one finger. There was one person in the room, to the left. Just standing there, doing nothing except existing as a comfortably green dot. Considering the dot was close enough to hear her, it either meant it was someone who recognized her from the two words she had uttered and was waiting for her to stop being an indecisive ass, or someone who was so shit terrified they weren't a threat. Someone, it's someone, but who, who was left, oh just fuck a duck. Hell with it. Cort rolled her shoulders, chucked caution to the wind, then popped around the jamb and shouted. "Hi!" She blinked, staring down the barrel of a 10mm and into a pair of very nervous and very familar hazel eyes. "Oh! Officer Gomez?"

"Stop right there! I don't know how you got in here..wait, how do you know my name?"

Cort lifted up on her toes, feeling hopeful. Of all the people left in the Vault she could have run into, Herman Gomez was at the top of her list. He had always been nice, looking out for her when she was younger and a rare spark of level-headed rationality on her forced exodus the year before. She supposed that was a big part of why he hadn't just hauled off and shot her after her forced spurt of bravado. Remember that for next time, idiot. Christ, where did my brains go, same place as my guts? You're too old to be this stupid anymore. "It's me, Cort. Cort Schafer." She resisted the urge to slap a hand over her face, not wanting to get shot for it. Oh real graceful, that. What other Cort would you be, you dink.

"What? Hold on..." Gomez lowered his pistol slightly and tilted up his visor, peering at her with an expression that swiftly went from guarded to incredulous, and Cort smiled as he started to sound honestly happy. "Holy moly, it is you! I hardly recognized you with all the dust and grime from out there."

"...Oh. Uh, sorry." Smile turning into a pained grimace as an unwelcome and entirely irritating spike of self-conciousness rose up, she tried to furtively brush herself off while Gomez holstered his pistol and kept rambling on.

"Well I guess that explains how you got that door open. You've got more experience with it than most everyone down here combined."

Giving up on her brief attempts at neatening herself, Cort got straight to the point. "Yeah, about why I used that experience; I need to talk with Amata. I got her message."

Gomez frowned. "Amata's message? I don't know what you're talking about, but I'd keep that under your hat, for her sake. She could get in real trouble if people found out she sent you a message. So could I, just for talking with you now."

She snorted and crossed her arms. "Yeah, well, looking at the state of things and the fact that I just tripped over dead Mister Wilkins and Bea's dead husband, I don't really want to know what your current idea of real trouble is. What the hell happened in here?"

"Everything went crazy, is what happened. Your dad opened that door, bugs started attacking, and people started going crazy." Nettled, he started sounding crabbier. "When the smoke cleared, there were a lot of casualties and not many answers. Didn't help that our doctor had just left, either. When your dad opened up that gate, he let loose a whole lot of crap, if you'll pardon my language."

"He let!" Cort tucked her arms in tighter as a desire to rake her hands down the man's face surged up in her. Use your words, you can't kill people with words, words are good. Words cut bloodless. "Well, it didn't help that the replacement he trained was run out on the Goddamned rails either, Officer Gomez. The last thing Dad wanted to happen was any of this."

"Well it would be nice to hear that from him some day. He's got a lot to answer for in the opinions of a lot of people."

"Yeah, they can get in line." Cort muttered, then raised her voice, almost spitting the words out. "Well they can suffer their questions unfulfilled. Dad's dead." Seeing how shocked he suddenly looked, almost like he had taken a shot to the gut, she felt some of the rage draining out of her.

"I'm...I'm sorry to hear that. Regardless of how things turned out down here, he was a good friend. I always figured he'd do well outside."

"He did. He was doing...we were doing really well. Then someone murdered him. It's a long story and I don't feel like telling it, so how about you tell me one, hmm? Tell me why I got hauled back down here."

"Well like I said, what I figured. Well, a lot of folks started thinking he had the right idea. He usually did; people were just as inclined to go to him as to the Overseer when they needed to talk about something or ask advice. I think that's half the reason the Overseer had such a bad reaction-" He thinned his lips as Cort snorted. "Reacted like he did when your father left. After both of you were gone, people started asking themselves, if it was safe out there, why stay down here forever? Well, the Overseer didn't like that one bit, and started cracking down on that sort of thought, and now the whole Vault's split right down the middle, with a whole lot of unhappy people caught in between. Including me." Gomez jabbed his armoured chest with a thumb.

"Amata on one side and Alphonse on the other?"

'You got it. Amata and her 'rebels', as they've been labelled, are holed up in your father's clinic. My boy is down there with them. Alphonse is in his office, and the rest of the Vault is one big no man's land. Every so often there's a little skirmish, a few shots fired, a few more people dead."

Cort flipped up her own visor and rubbed her face with both hands. "Jesus Christ. So what now?"

Gomez went back to looking incredulous. "You're asking me?"

She dropped her hands and gave him a bland stare. "I'm asking someone who still belongs here and knows a lot more than I do. I'll narrow it down. So what are you supposed to do now?"

"Technically, this means I'm supposed to report Amata. To tell the truth, I'm supposed to report you for being here, too. I probably ought to put you under arrest and take you to the Overseer, but frankly, I know better than to try that." Gomez warily eyed her again and then shrugged. "On the other hand, I bet those rebels would like a word with you; a lot of them are your old friends. Now, more than ever. Amata herself was one of the first people to talk about life outside the Vault after you left. No surprise; she always did like you. Of course, if you want, you can just walk away as if you were never here. Out of respect for your dad, I won't even tell anyone I saw you. I've been getting mighty forgetful in my old age, you know?"

Cort stayed quiet for a long moment, thinking and running one hand over the wall next to her, the familiar textures and bumps in the metal making her feel a little bit more secure. "Yeah. But I can't do that. Amata helped me get out of here, so I've got to help her. And I can't leave you all like this."

"One could say it's not your problem to fix, Cort."

"Dad made it my problem to fix. If I don't take care of what he started, who will? Now, I've got to get..." Cort sucked her lips in and trailed off, finally remembering she hadn't entered the Vault on her own. "Oh, uh. There's a couple things I should probably bring to your attention before I do anything else."

"Oh?"

"Yeaaah, uh, we'll do the easy one first." Gomez raised his eyebrows as Cort puckered her mouth and started making a kissing noise, raising them even higher when Dogmeat got up from where he had slumped to the floor, unnoticed in the aftermath of her abrupt greeting and patiently waiting for them to get moving again.

"Is that a...what were they called? A dog?"

"Yeah, it is. Neat huh? You can pet him if you want, he's nice. Aren't you honey?" Cort's smile came back as Dogmeat whuffed and sat up in front of Gomez, his tongue lolling out as the man tentatively touched the top of his head. Getting more confident as the dog grinned at him, he started stroking the fine, soft fur on his ears with an entranced look on his face. "Listen, he's not the only one I brought back with me. I have a friend I travel with, and he came along to help me."

Gomez reflexively moved his hand back to the butt of his pistol and looked behind her warily, petting the dog forgotten. "Where is he?"

"I made him hide. Look, you know there's still radiation out there, right? Well, he got exposed to a lot of it, and it ah, hurt him quite a bit. He doesn't look like you or me anymore. Missing a lot of skin, and, uhm." Cort stopped and winced one eye shut as a rasping, irritated voice floated out from around the corner.

"Cort, just get it the fuck over with and tell him I look like a damned walking corpse. I'm tired of this shit."

Pinching the line on her nose briefly, Cort threw in the tactful-towel and just spat it out. "Yeah, he looks like a walking corpse. Hell with it. Officer Gomez, I'd like you to meet Charon." She tried to look reassuring while bringing her repeater back up at the same time, keeping it pointed downwards but ready to flick it up and fire at a moment's notice. "Please leave your gun in the holster. We don't need to have any accidents, do we? Charon, please come in."

"No, we doo-YEE-aaagh, ahrump!" To his credit, Gomez made it through his first sight of Charon with only a small stagger and a rather high-pitched yelp, which was quickly dropped into a relatively more manly-sounding register. The ghoul stood patiently, letting himself be stared at and refraining from making any moves that the other man might construe as threatening as he stared back. Eventually, Gomez's senses snapped to, and he cleared his throat."P-pleased to meet you, sir."

Charon raised an eyebrow. The greeting didn't sound at all sincere, which didn't shock him in the least, but neither did it appear to be mocking. He grunted in response and directed his attention back to Cort, the movement prompting Gomez to do the same as he had meant it to. Unsurprisingly, the other man looked relieved for an excuse to turn his eyes away.

Cort let out a quiet sigh of relief. She wasn't foolish enough to think that it was an indicator of how the rest of Charon's encounters with whatever was left of the residents would go, Gomez was probably going to be the best out of the lot, but it was at least something encouraging to start with. Might as well make hay while the sun shines. "So, they're in the clinic, then? Amata, and etcetera?"

"What? Oh, yeah. They-they are. Listen...I don't particularly feel like getting any more involved, but maybe I should take you there. A lot of people are still mighty angry with you, and with him..." Gomez's gaze slid back to the ghoul unbidden, simultaneously taking in the denuded state of his face and the biggest gun he thought he had ever seen balanced on the shoulder next to it. An extremely big shoulder attached to an extremely big everything else. Forcibly jerking his eyes back to Cort again, he continued. "If they start shooting at you, they'll end up dead. There's less chance of that with me in the way."

Cort frowned and started fidgeting again. "I can't let you do that. You're one of the best people in here."

"Thanks for that, but I wasn't asking permission. You've got your job, I've got mine, and keeping order..." He broke off with a bitter laugh and slapped his visor back down. "Well, I can at least try. Come on. Let's get this over with. I'm tired of this crap and I'd like it to finish, one way or the other."

"I'll be right behind you, I just need to have a word with my, ah, partner. It'll only take a minute." Looking like he was going to object and then appearing to think better of it, Gomez chanced another look at Charon, reluctantly nodded, and moved around the edge of the room, disappearing through a sliding security door on the opposite side. Once the door had dropped back into place, Cort turned to her oversized companion. "Charon?"

"Cort."

"That went well, huh?" She checked the action on her rifle as he snorted, tugged at her armour, checked her rifle again, looked to where Gomez had disappeared and then looked back up at him, eyes wide and solemn. "Charon, I need to ask you something very important."

Charon braced himself for whatever was obviously something particularly serious, which most likely meant that it was going to be something he didn't like. He didn't like any of this already, Gomez's surprisingly tempered reaction not encouraging him in the same way it had Cort. Having already noticed how high-strung the place was making her, he could only see her becoming even more upset when things degenerated as they were bound to. If the situation improved from here, fine, but he held no expectations or illusions that it would. Having things start on a high note would only make the fall even worse when it happened. The best he could do was what she asked of him until she could leave the whole sorry place behind her again. "Yes, Cort."

She hissed a breath in through her teeth and let it out in a rush. "Do I look okay to you?"

He blinked, and then frowned, looking at her closely. After slowly moving his eyes from her feet to her face, he reached out and nudged her around, then repeated the same treatment with her back before turning her forwards again. He grunted in approval. She wasn't injured, her weapons and pack were snugly in place, and her armour was in good repair. He wasn't quite sure what had prompted the question, considering she was conscientious to the point of obsession about her equipment, and blithely chalked it up to nervousness over returning to the hole in the ground she had grown up in. Even though her concern was misplaced, considering the fact she had previously started tearing the place apart in nothing sturdier than a Vault suit, Charon tried to sound as reassuring as possible. "Yes. You're perfectly fine."

Cort sighed in relief; Gomez's comment on her appearance had been driving her nuts since he had made it, making her painfully aware that it had been months since she had taken a look in a mirror. Grooming seeming rather pointless aside from keeping herself as clean as possible, she had no real idea of what she looked like, aside from what she could see when she looked down at herself. What she saw was well-kept armour and suddenly too-prominent scars on too-tanned arms. Those aside(and there was nothing she could do about them anyway, so she didn't see much point in worrying about that), if Charon said she looked presentable, then she did, the ghoul being far too blunt to obfuscate to spare even her feelings. Okay, that's good, I look good, so I feel good. Gomez probably just had dirt on his stinkin' visor. "Alrighty then, thank you. There might be bugs on some of these mugs, but there ain't no bugs on me, as the old song goes! I'm ready. I'm really ready. Let's go."