"Where did you go?"
Pale dawn light has just begun to spill over the hills to the east but it's a long ways away from reaching their tiny deck. When Eva turns to him her face is in shadow.
"Different places. Nowhere in particular." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, shrugging. "I wanted to find someone to help."
Her motion pulls Charon's attention down to her hand. Even in the dim light, her scars are obvious, crisscrossing like cracks all down her skin. She looks as if she's been shattered and then poorly glued back together and Charon finds himself wondering just how accurate that image is.
He looks away before she can catch him staring, focusing on the faint wisps of orange bleeding out over the horizon.
"Did you?" His words crackle out of him, his ruined vocal chords changing the inflection from questioning to nearly accusatory.
Muted pink joins the orange and Charon keeps his eyes on the sunrise when she answers.
He's not angry at her, not anymore, but the hole the emotion left behind is still there. It feels like a pit, deep in his chest, and Eva is on the other side, so far away he can barely see her. Time will make the distance fade, Charon knows, but until then she is unreachable.
Eva's voice sounds emotionless when she answers, carefully casual.
"A few. I saved some kids from super mutants…not all of them though." Eva's eyes are fixed on the horizon but she seems to be seeing something else entirely.
"They were so fucking young. I…" she sighs, running a hand over her face. "How can anyone be that young out here?"
A moment of silence passes.
"There was a bit there when I didn't think I was coming back."
The light still hasn't reached them but it's bright enough to see her grimace. Her words sound like a confession.
"I know that's stupid. I still don't really understand what would happen to you if I died but I know it wouldn't help."
Charon can't keep his eyes off her. He's never seen a person wear their emotions so openly, each thought flickering across her face clear as day. Now, however, he can't quite tell what she's feeling.
"Don't you care if you die?" She doesn't seem to at times, her interactions with Moira alone are nearly suicidal. She flinches at his question, turning a little further away from him. She shakes her head.
"Not if it's for something important." The color pouring out over the sky makes Eva look even paler, leeching any pigment she's managed to gain over the months away until it's too easy to imagine her dead. Something inside Charon pulls tight at the thought, some little part of him that knows she's the closest thing he's had to a friend.
He shifts on his feet, feels the space between them grow wider, hyper aware of the distance.
Eva continues, mindlessly twisting the fabric of her night shirt.
"My dad died helping the world." Her voice is tight, restrained. "He gave us one of the most important things for survival. Who knows how many people he's saved." She pulls the fabric taut, hands clenched into fists. "Sometimes I think I missed my chance."
Charon chuckles bitterly. "You'll get a lot more chances out here, you don't need to worry about that."
Eva spins towards him, the sudden change in her demeanor jarring.
"How else can you die out here? Either it will be quick and violent and I'll die bleeding out on the ground with nothing to show for it or it's slow and I'll waste away, too hungry or irradiated to move." Her tone is harsh but not quite angry, bubbling over with emotion.
"You don't die of old age out here, you die once you can't take care of yourself anymore. What kind of death is that? What kind of way is that to go?"
One angry tear slips down her cheek. She doesn't seem to notice it, the tiny drop trembling at the bottom of her chin. He wonders… if they were closer, would he wipe it away? But the pit between them is still deep and he doesn't.
He just holds his ground and waits.
"What am I even worth? Nothing I do seems to matter! I tried to stop the slavers but the prisoners died anyway. I tried to let you go but you're still stuck here." She scrubs at her face furiously, wiping away the tears herself. "If my death could help someone, really help someone then maybe that would be better."
Her last words seem to drain the energy out of her and she turns away. Their tiny porch extends out over the ground and when she sits, her feet dangle limply above it. She looks so impossibly small.
When she finally speaks, her voice is weary, heavy with a weight Charon realizes he's only just glimpsed.
"Sometimes I can see the point of existing. I can watch the sun rise and smell the air and I know I have some things that make me happy but I'm alone. Once Moira is done with her book she won't need me anymore and the only other person I have is you."
She sniffs, her laugh changing to a tearful hiccup half way through.
"The only person I have is you and you're only here because you can't leave." Eva drops her head, sickly pale hands fisted loosely in her hair.
"I've trapped you."
Charon lowers himself down next to her, planting his own feet firmly on the dirt beneath them. He's a little closer then he would usually choose to be and she seems to appreciate it, leaning slightly towards him even with her head in her hands.
He's not certain what to do, one gnarled hand hovering awkwardly over her back. Eva loves contact, came from a world with an abundance into a life nearly devoid of it. She craves it.
To Charon it is foreign, invasive but to Eva it is comfort and clearly that's what she needs. And now, after everything, he finds he wants to be able to offer that comfort. His fingers twitch slightly, uncertainty making his hand waver in the air but then carefully, stiffly, he lowers it down to her shoulder.
Eva doesn't seem to notice the action, not even when his grip tightens enough to change from a phantom touch to something solid.
Her shoulder feels so slight in his hand and, while Charon expected a response from Eva, he's surprised at his own reaction. The instinctive need to hold tighter, pull closer is strange and sudden. It must be something left over from the person he was before, some old muscle memory from a prewar world of casual contact. As he pulls her closer, tucking her into his side in a gruff half embrace, Charon wonders who he did this with before. Did he have friends once, a sibling, a lover? Who did he use to hold?
Nothing comes back, no old memories, no faces. The person he used to be is long gone, buried beneath years of servitude and a too tampered with mind. As far as he knows, Eva is the first person he'd held this closely.
The sun has risen enough for the colors to fade but it's not a bright day. Grayish clouds have already begun to clog the sky, blocking out the warm yellow of morning light.
Eva finally responds, pressing in tighter against him, molding herself into his arm until she's as close as she can be.
She's very warm.
Eva doesn't raise her head when she speaks next, stays curled into her new shelter like she can block out the world.
"I almost died finishing what my dad started. Sometimes it feels like I was meant to and just….didn't."
He can feel her tense for a moment.
"I think I lived past my own ending."
Charon doesn't answer her for a few minutes, mulling over this new information. It makes sense, fits well into his understanding of her. He picks his next words carefully.
"Pointless martyrdom is useless. Dying doesn't make you noble, it just makes you dead." He runs his hand over what's left of his hair, searching for the right phrasing. "People die for good reasons and bad reasons but, for the most part, it's for no reason."
His thumb is rubbing small circles on her shoulder, rough skin catching on the fabric. It's a comforting action that he never would have thought of consciously. Another mysterious muscle memory but useful. He can feel the tension draining out of her.
"Death isn't the finale, it's just the end of the sentence."
Eva snorts at his words, the weakest laugh he's ever heard from her but it's something.
"Maybe you're right." She sits up a little, dropping her hands to her thighs and staring blindly at some vague spot in front of her. "But maybe not. If I died back then I would have died a hero but now no one will notice." When she looks up at him, her bloodshot eyes seem tired, hopeless.
"I don't care about glory really but that must mean something. If no one knows I'm gone then I just faded away after I finished being useful. Doesn't that matter?" She's searching his face for answers and he's briefly struck at how little she flinches away from his ravaged features. It's an oddly pleasant realization.
Charon doesn't break their eye contact. He wants to tell her it doesn't matter, why should strangers being aware of her matter, but she looks so achingly vulnerable and he doesn't want to shatter this fragile new something between them. So instead he just tells her his first immediate thought.
"I will." It's morbid, not something anyone should take comfort out of but it's true. "For better or worse, we're stuck with each other and unless something happens, I'll outlive you."
He looks out over the town. People have begun their days, indistinct in the distance, faceless forms going about their lives. Charon will most likely outlive all of them. It doesn't bother him, hasn't in a long time but when he thinks about the very specific person tucked against his side, something twists.
Beside him he hears her let out a relieved sigh, feels her sit taller.
"I guess that's true." She's smiling faintly, her expression drained but lighter.
"That's nice. Thanks Charon."
When she stands, he follows her numbly inside.
His chest hurts and with Eva's relief comes his own turmoil. He has lived so many lives, met so many people but this odd comradery is new.
She might find comfort in her lesser lifespan but Charon doesn't.
He's not certain he can watch Eva die.