Charon had to step out of the Chop Shop once Barrows and Graves asked Leah to assist with an autopsy on some feral ghoul Willow had to put down.
It brought back an ugly memory of a time when he had been restrained for a surgery and he needed to take a walk to hide his headache.
He made the rounds. Winthrop was elbow deep in a generator and balked when they locked eyes.
Snowflake was jetting and playing with his scissors, staring at himself in his handheld mirror, frowning and oblivious to Charon's scrutiny.
It surprised him how quickly he was forgetting the details. He even forgot the name of the store clerk, some female ghoul he had used to sneak lustful eyes at whenever they briefly crossed paths.
What was her name?
Fuck.
He couldn't remember.
He let out a snarl and punched the nearest wall, pain shooting up his arm. It felt like he had dunked it in battery acid.
"Jesus."
Charon turned, realizing Greta had been on her smoke break, the old woman taking a drag and looking impressed. "Sorry."
He had never given a free word to Greta, not in all the decades he lived in Underworld under Azrukahl's thumb. She had barely given him a glance, not in all the times he had been sent on reconnaissance to gather information on Carol's Place.
He knew she had a penchant for mint flavored cigarettes and red wine. She loved Carol, possessively. And she had told Gob one night that he would find happiness far from Underworld, if he packed up and left right there.
He had watched her push a sack of caps into the kid's hands, practically begging him to leave and never come back.
He never really thought positively of her.
"What happened? Fight with your pretty smoothskin?" Greta blew smoke in his direction, dark amusement dancing on her voice. The nearby barrel fires made her gaze look luminous, like a dark spirit of the undead.
"It is none of your business."
"Sure. But I didn't just punch a hole in one of the few intact paintings left in this museum. I liked that one. I used to pretend it was a window."
He doubled back to his handiwork. Fuck. It had been some old prewar piece of art. A typical landscape, with rolling green hills and a blue sky.
Not anymore.
The canvas had bowed and the wooden frame was now splintered. He looked at his fist, now broken and bleeding, the marble bricks underneath the canvas not in any better condition.
"Come here, you idiot," Greta held out a flask, shaking it. "Before you break anything else."
He set his jaw and glared down at the woman as her cigarette dripped ash from her mouth. She took his hand firmly, terrible pain shooting up his arm, and she poured the flask's contents onto his knuckles.
He felt the familiar vibrating warmth of the irradiated water healing his injury, connecting his tendons back together. He gripped his crooked fingers and forced them straight, the bones popping as he clenched his jaw.
"I knew you were a tough bastard," she laughed. "There. Now, have a cigarette. It helps."
She lit him one and the familiar sensation filled his chest, the smoke comforting as his lungs irradiated. He remembered, before the war, when they were starting to advertise that smoking was bad for the health. The irony.
"What set you off?"
He didn't have to answer. He almost thought he shouldn't. Because that was once an order he obeyed. Azrukahl's orders.
He hated how of all the things he forgot, it wasn't that bastard.
Greta had always been off limits to fraternize with. And though she never seemed interesting enough to have a conversation with, he suddenly wanted to.
Because he could now.
"Just mad."
"Don't blame you. You've had a rough deal, kid."
She talked down to him as if she was so much older than him. Which she wasn't. He didn't think so, at least.
"I'm as old as you, Greta."
"Age is just a number. I don't go punching walls. That's what kids do."
The warmth rising in his face was not from the cigarette. "You send kids away, instead."
The implication had set in like a bad smell and Greta looked away ashamed. "Nobody's perfect."
He felt bad. "Yeah. Nobody is."
Charon finished his cigarette, letting the butt fall and crushed it under his boot. "Ever wonder if you're going feral?"
Her eyes widened. "Every fucking day."
He didn't find comfort in that. He didn't know why he thought it would be a good idea to bring it up.
His mind shifted to Ethyl. To Leah.
And how happy she had been, when the glowing one recognized her.
A/N: Did you know smoking cigarettes releases particulates in your lungs that emit radiation? And because these particulates often settle in there, they continue to emit ionizing radiation for however long they remain inside you. (And, assuming these cigarettes were irradiated, that's just bonus rads for the Fallout smoker.)
Kind of weird that cancer just isn't as widespread of a problem in the Fallout universe. But hey, at least for ghouls, smoking saves lives!
