This segment turned into three, instead of two; I had more going on than I thought! The last bit will be posted tomorrow evening, about this time. As always, thanks much for the reviews/faves/alerts. :)
Charon found himself confused.
He was standing with Cort in the Wasteland, which wasn't necessarily odd. What was odd was the fact that he had no idea where they were. It was familiar(he had been there before, many, many times, uncountable in their number, he knew this, more than he knew his own name), but for the life of him he couldn't remember it. He frowned. He always rememembered where he had been. He always remembered everything he was supposed to.
Cort sighed, and he turned to her, pushing his worries away. It didn't matter. He had finally found the perfect gift for her. "Hold out your hands and close your eyes." She did, after giving him a sweet, questioning look. Charon reached up and pulled off what he had brought her, placing it in her cupped hands and smiling as she did, tugging in her lower lip in anticipation. "Alright. Open them."
She did, looking down. Anticipation became alarm, then horror, and she turned her face back up to him. Horror became fear. He looked at her hands.
His own skinned face was in them, nestled against her palms, the empty backward lids staring up at him. He could see a glimpse of eyelash through the gaping holes, set over a ghostly ridge of cartilage and a layer of thin, gleaming yellow fat. He looked back up to her, still mute in her fright.
"Oh. I see. I can fix it for you." Charon started pawing at himself, his armour sloughing off and then his flesh, piling it up in her hands as fast as it came loose. It fell off to the ground at her feet, burying them, and then her ankles, and then her knees, spreading out in a fan around her as it tumbled down, a breaking wave of gore against her legs, slippery strips of skin riding on the bloody froth like hellish seaweed. He pulled it from himself so fast it felt like it was shaking free, the recoil of loss making him shudder. He had stripped his arms and ribcage clean, was starting on his hips and thighs with bony wet fingers when Cort finally spoke to him.
"What is it. What is it, Charon. What is it."
He opened his mouth to tell her, and that was when he ripped out his tongue.
Cort woke up to a nightmare, but for once it wasn't hers. Charon was tossing around, his body spasming, a low strangled noise coming out from his throat. She clicked on her light and then shook his arm gently. "Charon? What is it? Charon?" Groggy and slow, it took her a few more moments before she put the pieces together, then another to accept them. "Oh, no." She reached out to give him another shake, then pulled her hand back, waffling. Waking him up was what she wanted to do, but if he came out of it too early...
What if he's like me what if he doesn't think it's over when he wakes up, I don't know if he can pretend it's over. He let out a sob. All reluctance fled at the sound of it, and she shook him with both hands this time, hard. "Charon, wake up." He sobbed again, a low, long cry that suddenly started breaking apart into more, and Cort shrieked. "Charon, I order you to WAKE UP!"
He shot out of the bed like he had been launched from it, nearly dragging her along with him as the blankets caught up around his legs. He staggered, twisted, and stopped, one foot floating a few inches above the floor.
"Charon?" He twitched and froze, not even breathing for a second, then turned around in an eerie, graceful pivot. Registering her and then recognizing her, he slowly dropped his foot back down, first the ball and then his heel making contact with the floor. They both stayed still, staring at each other for a full minute, before he broke away and untangled the blankets from himself, then sat down on the edge of the bed, pressing his hands firmly against his mouth. He could still feel the tendons slipping out from his throat and over his teeth, the sticky, cloying wash of blood.
He glanced to the side. Cort was still staring at him, still waiting for a response. He pulled his hands away just far enough for his lips to move. "What."
"Are you okay? You were-" Sobbing, crying, his face is wet and I don't even know if he knows, don't say it, don't- "Making an awful lot of noise."
Charon snapped at her. "You're not the only fucking one allowed to have bad dreams, Cort."
"Fine. Pardon me for caring." She flipped over and curled up into a ball, counting to herself. Three, two, one...
"Cort?"
Gotcha. She sat up again and turned back. "Yeah?"
"Do you ever think about what I used to look like?"
Oh crap. "Charon, what was your dream ab-" He snapped again, hard enough for her to flinch slightly.
"Do you ever think about it."
"Only once when I first met you. I do that with every ghoul, it's like a puzzle, I guess at their features using facial anatomy..." Cort dropped her head down and worried at her hands. "I'm sorry."
Of course it would be a game for her. "No, I am."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not particularly." He shook his head. "I'm fine now. Go back to sleep."
"No, you go. I'll watch you for a change." She shrugged sadly. "You know I'll just wake up again anyway. C'mere."
Feeling too tired and beat up to argue, he laid down with his head in the crook of her arm, drawing his legs up to keep them on the bed. "What if there's another one."
Cort settled herself against the headboard and clicked off her light, watching the fading ghost glow from it float in front of her eyes. "Don't worry. Mine can chase them away, they're scarier." And they love you so.
"Charon, remember telling me you could teach me how to use Power Armour?" Cort gave him a sidelong glance, wondering if this new tack would spark his interest. He had been tense all morning, and she had taken him outside of the town again to see if that would help him relax. They were spending more and more time out of it as the days continued to peel off, not for any rhyme or reason beyond avoiding the press of people without having to coop themselves up.
"Yes."
"Well, I know we don't have any of that, but I've been thinking. What else could you teach me? I know there's a lot of stuff about explosives you've shown me, but what about hand-to-hand? Could you show me how to do that? Right now all I know how to do is..." Cort trailed off, rolling her hands around while she searched for the right words.
"Throw yourself at an opponent screaming like an idiotic, flailing ditz?"
"Thank you, Captain Compliment. Yes, basically that. Could you do that and be comfortable with it? I know I'd end up getting a few scrapes."
He thought about it for a brief moment. "Yes. Teaching you is different."
Cofrt fidgeted as he didn't move to get up. "Will you?"
Charon grunted non-commitally and eyed her. Cort was capable of bringing down nearly any opponent she latched onto, but that was more a result of spiteful tenacity as opposed to any real skill, and the pure dumb shock her victims generally suffered from at the method of assault(it wasn't every day a scarred up batshit Vault girl launched themselves at you); she was more of a brawler than a fighter. She went at it with no real rhyme or reason, just looked for the softest spot she could find and started tearing. Once she got a hold of someone, there was no getting loose of her unless they knocked her out, and he was only really guessing at that, everyone else having died before getting the chance to sufficiently clock her one. Unfortunately, they managed to do just about everything else. She had been shot, clawed, bitten and stabbed without taking notice, and while she was in the midst of one of her berserker rages, none of them made any difference, until she calmed down enough to feel how hurt she was. Stopping that was nothing but an excellent idea.
He had considered it before, but this wasn't so much a case of teaching her something, which he knew was acceptable, but more that he would be implying she was doing things wrong. There was a great, great difference between showing someone how do to something new and training them out of their own established methods, particularly when those methods, even with how attritive they were, succeeded. But then, it was Cort. The real question here wasn't how would she react to him teaching her, but how she would react to him knocking the stuffing out of her repeatedly. Charon thought it might be personally. "You won't like me very much by the time we're through."
"You'll just have to make it up to me then."
Cort didn't like very much of anything after four hours of instruction, Charon having been absolutely relentless in an attempt to see just exactly what she might be capable of and for how long. She perfectly fucking hated the ground, having gotten intimate with it on so many occasions she had lost count. Unsurprisingly, he was an unforgiving teacher; Cort simply hadn't noticed because until now, she hadn't been terrible at learning anything he taught.
"You're still getting too damned angry, Cort." Charon shook his head. The impasse he was facing had turned out to be the exact opposite of the one he had expected; instead of her getting upset at him for dumping her into the dirt, trying to attack him was making her pissed at herself. She would hesitate, or not put any force into her attempts, or even try to block him with any real conviction. It was making her nearly useless. "You're not going to hurt me, you can barely fucking touch me like this. Now calm down, get up and try again."
"Oh, get bent. Go jump in a lake."
"There aren't any lakes left."
"You could still get bent." Cort sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm not very good at this, am I."
"You can't be good at everything."
"You are."
"It's nice that you think that."
"When I show you how to do something, it takes you less than five freaking minutes to pick it up."
Charon refrained from reminding her of just why he was capable of doing that, not wanting to make her feel any worse. He would have to figure out how to turn the entire process into a game. For now, distracting her with something else seemed like the best thing to do. "Well, then show me something new now instead. I'm tired of making you eat dirt anyway."
"Oh, screw you."
"I already know how to do that." Thinking, he selected something he knew made her happy, and would keep her mind and mouth running for at least an hour. "Show me how to use the Infirmary, I don't know how. That would be useful."
"'Kay."
Once they were back at the house, Cort went through everything with him, then decided to take care of something that had been nagging at her since talking to Barrows about the blood he had taken, which had gone from being irritating to nerve-wracking after her rather enlightening discussion with Moira.
After drawing some of her blood and setting up a little array of chemicals and tubes, Cort fidgeted anxiously as she waited. She finally relaxed when a detectable result finally showed up in one of them. "Phew."
"What?"
"It's good, I'm still O-negative. I think. That was a lot pokier than I'm used to." Charon looked at her blankly. "It's my blood type. Here, let's do yours." Cort tied the tubing around the arm he obligingly held out, flicked her hand against the inside of his elbow out of habit, and then plunged an empty syringe into his rather conveniently exposed cubital vein, keeping up a companionable patter to distract him from the sting of it. She felt a brief spike of sadness as the action reminded her of James.
"There are four blood types, O, A, B, and AB, which can be negative or positive, there's a bunch of other diddly details too, but we'll keep it simple for now. Uhm, think of them like different factions of an army. O-negs like me can send troops to anyone, and AB can receive troops from anyone."
Charon leaned in, sensing something useful. "What if the wrong one gets in."
Warming to the subject as he started looking genuinely interested(which probably meant he was mentally planning how to use the information to kill someone with it down the road), she rambled on. "Oh, it can kill them, or at the very least make things pretty darn nasty. Sometimes, and this is really, really cool, if the person's got something specifically wrong with them or their immune systems, or they get a transplant, it can change entirely, like they were conquered. That's really rare, though." Withdrawing the needle, she spent a few moments fiddling with a fresh set of tubes and pippettes, then pulled out a couple empty packs and started filling them with her own blood.
"What are you doing now?"
"Taking blood out for Moira to play with." Cort rolled her eyes as he scowled. "What, you'd rather she get it out of me?"
"What do you think?"
"Well then, fussbudget. Me it is." When she was finished, she turned back to the tubes with Charon's blood and raised her eyebrows. "Huh. You're B-positive."
"Which means what."
"Well, increases the chances that some of your ancestors were from a particular part of Northern Europe. Pretty neat, really, that's more than a lot of people today know about their family-" Turning to him, the words froze in her mouth, seeing the strained look Charon had on his face. "Charon?"
He pushed up and away from the little collection of fluids she had laid out, heading for the stairs. "Let's do something else now."
"Okay." Cort watched him for a moment further, cleared her throat hard, then dumped everything out into the trash.
Cort woke up the next day stiff as a board and about as pleasant. One sarcastic quip about the ground probably feeling worse than she did was enough for her to send Charon out of the town to patrol around again. After sitting for close to an hour and not feeling any better, she thought about going out to get him, dismissed it since he might still be angry, going out into the town, dismissed that since she was still angry, then thought about jabbing herself with a shot of Med-X and curling up with a book. This seemed acceptable, and extremely preferable to doping herself with irradiation and then wonderfully puke-inducing Rad-Away. The most effective option still would've been getting the ghoul to work the knots out of her back, but Cort would be damned if she would go sooking after him; suffering was preferable. Yes, definitely still very mad. Jerk. She snatched up a magazine, snorted when she saw it was a Pugilism Illustrated, then dug a syringe out of the locker by the door and jammed it straight through the back of her shirt.
When the pain suddenly flooded back into her no more than five minutes after injecting the drug between her shoulders, Cort finally figured out something very simple that would have saved her an overwhelming amount of grief if she had only been in a position to realize it sooner.
Hissing as her muscles clenched, she jerked up off the couch and started pacing, the pain taking a back seat as her mind immediately started dissecting the problem. The drug had just worn off abruptly, like a tap being shut off, instead of a gradual fade. "What the fuck? No, no no no, that-that just flushed out of me like..."
Cort frowned and directed all of her thoughts inward, combing backwards through her other memories of being under the influence of something, a cold trickle starting to work its way up her spine to join the stabbing ache around it. The Chlorazapine had only worked in a severely concentrated dose, and not well, seeming to be ineffective even though she had nearly overdosed on it. The Med-X hadn't in what should have been, either. Alcohol hadn't when she had tried, which was insane, considering she had drunk a pint of vodka after having over a quart of the moonshine Belle had been passing off as scotch, and she hadn't thrown up that second obscene amount. By all rights, that should have been enough to poison her, twice over, not just make her sick in the morn-
"It flushed out of me just like Snowflake." She dropped to the floor with a thump, the pieces finally clicking together for her; a dozen little comments from a dozen different people, being able to keep her cognitive ducks in a row while she should have been a slobbering idiot, the ability to get up the following day and keep going with seemingly no real detrimental effects, aside from a thumping head and a pissy attitude. All these things crashed down around her at once and made clear just what it was that her body was doing.
Oh sweet weeping Mary. It's not the drugs. It's me. She ran a hand over her Pip-Boy. "You smart, sturdy little thing. You were telling me what was going on the whole time, weren't you. I was just too Goddamned stunned to notice."
She ran a hand through her hair, her mind scrambling again. I have to make sure, I have to test this, what, with what, I don't know for sure, I'll keep trying if I don't, and do something even worse. I can't do that to Charon. What can I do, what have I done that I could-
Cort jerked to her feet as the solution struck her. Alcohol poisoning. That would do. It was simple, something she had done before, something that her body could forcibly expel if she got in too deep, something the only other person around that she trusted would recognize immediately and react to if she started to drown. Yes! That's perfect. I can go drink it for fun, I can still do that. Gives me a cover story, and not technically untrue if I actually enjoy myself at it. She paused long enough to scribble a note for Charon, crushed her reservations, then grabbed up her guns and left with Dogmeat at her heels.
"Hi, sugar!"
"Hi, Nova. I like the new sign." Wandering over to her usual seat after waving to the little clusters of Atomites nursing their regular bottles of Nuka, Cort grinned broadly and got an equally expansive one back from the redhead behind the bar. At some point between yesterday and this afternoon, Moriarty's name on the saloon's rooftop sign had been obscured by Gob's in a bright, cheery yellow.
"Do ya? So do I, but you wouldn't believe how wretched that paint stank. Moira and Walter made up just enough of it for him to do that, and am I ever glad there wasn't any extra left to hang around."
"Aw, that was nice of them. Where is Gob, anyway?"
"Right here." Cort looked up as the ghoul carefully came down the stairs, everything except his legs obscured by the stack of boxes he was carrying. Nova darted out and halfway up as the top one started to wobble, plucking it off just in time.
"Can I get a scotch, whenever you're done trying to kill yourself?"
"I don't know, can you carry boxes and help keep me from doing it?"
Obliging, Cort helped them with the rest of what the bartender needed to move and then sat down with a brimming tumbler, promptly sucking half of it back. At this point, she started to detect problems with her plan. If she wanted this to work, she needed to drink faster than normal; much faster. Chugging it would be too suspicous, and make Gob concerned, and Gob being himself, he would try to figure out whatever was wrong and help her with it. She roused up over her glass as Nova's words ran parallel to her thoughts.
"You're too nice, Gob." Cort rather thought that he was just nice enough, but held her tongue, not wanting to stifle the pair. She had made a discreet effort to stay away from the saloon as much as possible, not wanting to upset Nova or draw Gob's attention in the wrong direction, which she considered to be anywhere except at each other.
Gob sighed. "I have to be nice. We can't survive on just Billy and the Atomites chugging cola and Jericho."
"I can still-"
Gob cut her off, glaring."No."
Nova leaned back against the wall, smiling and shaking her head. "You know how much I like you when you say that?"
The hard stare he was giving her softened. "Do you?"
Cort tactfully avoided her eyes as Nova's face became serious, suddenly finding everything from her glove to the old posters on the walls extremely fascinating, but listening so hard her ears were nearly ringing. Any hopes of hearing what response the redead would give to that were dashed as Jericho banged in through the door, beelining for his own stool and bawling out his order. "Regular!"
Cort watched him curiously. The ex-raider had been surprisingly well-behaved since Moriarty had kicked off, and she had been driving herself nuts puzzling over it until Nova had explained that first, Gob's show of spine had impressed him, and second, she had told him if he kept mouthing off at the ghoul he would be barred from the saloon for good. There being nowhere else in town to drink but at the Brass Lantern, an establishment that was not particularly fond of him after some kind of incident involving Jenny Stahl, he had somehow found himself a set of manners. It mainly just meant he kept his mouth shut entirely, which made everyone happy.
Wish I could be happy right now. How the hell am I going to do this. Cort knocked the rest of her drink back and held up the glass. "Another please Gob?"
"Sure." He set another glass up, then leaned on the bar. "Soooo...when you going out again? You've been here for ages this time."
Cort gave him an offended look. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"
"No! No, that's not what I mean, ah, it's, crap."
"You like hearing stories." Cort grinned as he shrugged sheepishly. "I don't know. Soon, I guess, I want to go check out the remaining Vaults. There's still 92, 108, 106...87." Cort grimaced. "Save that one for last." Maybe like never in a million years last.
"Save that one for never. Unless things changed there's Super Mutants all over it."
"What?"
"It got a direct hit from a bomb, and you know those creeps. If there's radiation involved, they're like ants on a snack cake."
Cort intelligently repeated herself. "What?"
"What what?"
"Radiation lures them in?"
"Well, yeah. Everybody knows that." Cort held up her left arm and gave him a bland look. "Okay, so almost everybody knows that. Anyway, there's more of it around Vault 87 than anywhere. I guess." Gob fidgeted, then picked up a glass and started polishing it.
Cort was too interested to pick up on his discomfort for once. "You've been there?"
He hesitantly replied. "Y-yeah. I grew up in Little Lamplight. If you can call that growing up."
"What?"
Gob smiled despite himself. "You think normal people would name me friggin' Gobtholemew? Maybe if my non-existent normal parents hated me. Naming me I don't know, Sue or some shit would have been better."
"I don't know how I would react to having to address you as 'Some Shit'."
"Well I've gotten called that enough for it to be a middle name."
"Gooob."
Mock disapproval met her genuine pique. "Cooort."
"Tell me about it?" Watching his shoulders hunch in slightly, she regretted asking immediately.
"Maybe later." He reached out and nudged her glass towards her. "Ah. Don't forget this, huh?"
"Nosiree I shall not." Cort plucked up the glass and daintily sipped at it, blowing bubbles and trying to get him to relax again. The cheeky response to Gob finally gave her the solution she was looking for in the form of Jericho.
"Christ, no wonder you can't hold your booze, you can't even get it the fuck down."
Cort slid her eyes from Gob to the sullen lump at the other end of the bar, blinked, and then smiled a wide, saucy smile. "Oooh. That a challenge?"
"What?"
"You and me, hard liquor until someone drops. First one to hit the floor pays for both."
Sensing an easy mark, Jericho stood up and swaggered down to the closest empty table. "Oh, you're on, Vault rat, but we're doing beer first. Puke and you lose."
"Agreed."
"You're ready to lay out. Admit it, I can tell." Jericho pointed a shaky finger at her, the cigarette he was holding dribbling ash over the table.
"Really, because I've been drinking twice as fast as you, ya frigger, and I'm still twice as articulate." They had been pounding back shots for close to an hour, after each finishing a dozen beer. Cort narrowed her eyes as Jericho slumped forward and leered, a cloud of smoke wafting out in front of him. She wasn't quite sure, but she thought he was wobbling an awful lot. Part of it might have been her.
"Just make you twice as ready for me when we get back to my place."
She blinked slowly, nonplussed for a long moment before she giggled and licked the rim of her bottle, tapping on the table at the same time. Jericho noticed in time to match her satisfied look. "Mm, I got it. Perfect ending to our little encounter."
"Not yet, you don't, but you're gonna."
"Oh, really?"Cort sat up, cleared her throat, and started to sing.
"Don't do me no favours, you washed up old raider
I've shown no desire to be bedded
This drinking I'm doing is unrelated to screwing
And you see, I'm already wedded."
Jericho squinted at her with bleary skepticism as everyone else turned around to look. "Bullshit. You want it."
Cort arched an eyebrow, tapped quietly again, and rattled off another verse.
"Cravings I have, but you won't be the salve
For them, I have my man Charon.
Between me and you, since I've had quite a few,
You'd bang me without even carin'."
"Oh like he cares...stop the rhyming shit already. Like any of them care, they're just after a piece of whole flesh wherever they can get it. You need to get-get someone with alll the good stuff left on. You'll see, once I get goin'."
Cort flicked a stray bottlecap off of his forehead as he lurched forward, then streched a leg up and out to plant her boot against it when he continued to try and clamber over the table, wobbling her foot around in time to his movements and completely derailing his efforts. She made another series of tappings and took another long pull off the bottle.
"I have no desire to light that limp fire
And God only knows where you've been
If I have to pick between you and some dick,
I'll be choosing the one without skin."
"STAWPIT!" Jericho swayed even harder as the Atomites in the room clapped with approval, and Cort started using her foot to keep him from crashing into the pile of cigarette butts and spilled liquor below it as she drained the last inch out of the bottle, her fingers starting to fumble as she tapped one last time.
"While I'm taking the piss, I can not be remiss
In pointing out I am more than able
Three bottles, you're done, it's clear who has won,
I drunk you under this fuckin' table."
She flexed her leg, and the entire saloon watched as Jericho slowly but inoxerably keeled over backwards like a pitch-soaked tree trunk, picking up speed as he went until he thudded hard into the floor. Cort slammed the empty bottle down and whooped as the others around her did before grimly eyeing the remaining liqour lined up in front of her. "Well now. Here we go."
