They're still an hour away from Megaton and Eva's limping is getting worse. Her arm is hooked around Charon's neck and he can feel one long streak of blood dripping down his back. Her breathing is labored, coming out in little puffs between gritted teeth. He's not fairing much better.
The day had seemed almost cursed from the start. Twice they stumbled over enemies they should have heard coming. The supermutant luckily had been slow enough to take down without much damage but not before it had slammed Charon to the ground with enough force to crack a rib. The raiders had been significantly quicker and they both left the fight with severe enough injuries to take up a majority of their stimpaks.
They hid in an old Pulowski reservation shelter, pressed tight over old bones as they injected each other. Charon thinks he can still smell it on them, that stomach twisting combination of rusted steel and bone dust. By the time they left, the metal and blood had combined into a stench so heavy in the air he could almost feel it as he breathed, sitting heavy in his lungs.
Still, they would have made it home if they hadn't stumbled onto that minefield.
From experience, they knew where the field was, having visited it months ago on one of Moira's maddeningly dangerous quests. Eva thought they could skirt it, cutting their time back to Megaton and ensuring that at least one side would lack any living threats, but it extended further than either of them had known and three had triggered at their heavy footsteps.
The first explosion threw them back far enough that the damage from the following two were minimized but the shrapnel was bad enough. Eva took the worst of it, with one particularly large shard of metal lodged in her knee and countless others ripping her left side to shreds. They couldn't stay by such a volatile area, uncertain as they were of where the minefield even ended so Charon scooped Eva's arm over his neck and they made a slow path towards the nearest building in sight.
Now he's clutching at his partner, trying to support the weight of her pack as well as her stumbling body while her knee begins to lock up from the pain. The hint of the roof he was heading for is now almost entirely in sight. It looks to be surprisingly intact, their first real stroke of luck for the day, and he hears Eva's heavy breathing stutter on what could be a sigh of relief. They reach the door just as her leg buckles and he scoops her up, carrying her through the doorway in a morbid recreation of a groom with his bride.
It's a long-abandoned bar, littered with empty bottles and shattered furniture but the bar in the back is still standing so Charon makes a beeline for it, shattered glass crunching beneath his boots with each step.
Eva has wrapped her other arm around his neck and, when he sets her down on the bar, she seems reluctant to let go, drunk on pain and clearly oblivious to how tightly she's holding him. He has to pry her arms away from his neck and the moment he does, she wraps them around her stomach, hunching forward and grimacing at the dirty floor. He knows that they used up every stimpak in her bag so he drops his own pack from his shoulders and starts to search, trying to ignore the muted sounds of pain Eva is trying to disguise.
Charon finally finds five extra stims at the bottom of the bag, wrapped carefully in some semi-decent leather Eva had found the week before and some of the tension he hadn't even been aware of eases out of his back and shoulders.
Eva's shivering when he returns to the bar, eyes fixed on nothing and both hands clamped over the top of her knee. She flinches when he lifts them away, jerks when he tears the fabric around the wound but doesn't scream until he pulls out the long shard of shrapnel, a short burst that sounds painful, as if he can hear her throat going raw with the force of it.
Charon tosses the chunk of metal behind him, realizing too late that she's littered with the stuff and he probably should have saved the worst one for last. Her shivering has changed from the light trembling induced by stress to the violent involuntary kind. Her pale eyes have left the empty space they were focused on and now are trained on him, watery and pained. The trust he sees there is unnerving, weighing down on him when he returns to his bag to search for tweezers. He thinks he can feel her gaze on his back.
It's six minutes of picking metal out of her body and four more while he searches for any he missed. At one point her hand finds its way to his shirt, clutching tightly at the fabric. He feels the edge of it tug each time he pulls another shard from her body and by the end of it, when he's certain he's found every piece, each sharp jerk might as well be the pinch of tweezers in his own skin.
It's sweet relief when he can finally reach for the stimpaks, using up four of them before she catches his hand, forces his to put one aside for himself. The contract has been twisting in the back of his mind, a dull throbbing headache fading in and out with sharps bursts of pain but once she's no longer in danger it fades, leaving behind a tightness in his lungs that he's not certain has anything to do with the yellowed piece of paper in her breast pocket.
He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding and drops his head until his forehead rests against hers. Eva is still perched on the bar and he's too relieved to move away, the tension of the day turning the release into a temporary exhaustion. He props himself up on the edge of the counter, hands on either side of her and Eva gives his wrist a light squeeze, either of thanks or reassurance, he isn't certain.
For a moment, they just breath, both relishing the quiet safety of the abandoned building.
Charon pulls away first, uncomfortably aware of how little her physical proximity had bothered him and checks himself over for shrapnel while Eva rests on the bar. When he finds nothing, he uses up the last stimpak, focusing on the always unsettling sensation of tissue knitting together on its own instead of the foreign impulse to return to their previous position, to stay too close to her.
Behind him, he can hear Eva rummaging through her own pack, searching for something to replace the shredded clothing she has on now. He can hear her tug something out of the bag, the slide of rough fabric as she changes, the quiet thump when she drops the ruined set on the floor. He doesn't turn around until he hears glass crunch underfoot as she jumps down.
"You okay, Charon?" She's watching him carefully, concern he isn't accustomed to plain on her face. He nods gruffly, still shaken.
"That was sudden, wasn't it?" She's laughing a little, the sort of laugh that only appears when something is so awful it's nearly amusing. Dried blood is smeared across her cheek, stains her hands and she rubs it off as she sighs.
"What a fucking day. Every little thing…" she trails off, looking around the bar absently. He follows her gaze. The building is surprisingly intact, the door still in place and the windows more cracked then shattered. It's clearly been picked over, any full bottles are long gone but it's littered with empty ones, the dingy glass glinting in the afternoon light making its way through the windows.
"I just…" Eva huffs, frustrated and wanders over to an old beer bottle, staring down at it like she isn't certain what it is. She picks it up, rolling it thoughtfully in her hand. "Today just wasn't our day, huh?"
Her hair is wild and she runs one hand through it absently, tugging at the roots like she would be tearing her hair out if she had the energy to.
"Damn it…" her brows pinch together and she exhales forcefully, still staring at the bottle in her hand. Charon almost steps towards her. She looks so frustrated, so lost and he's not certain what to do. He doesn't like that expression, doesn't understand why it's bothering him so much, isn't used to empathy yet.
He's confused, still hesitating, when Eva suddenly twists and violently hurls the bottle against the wall.
Charon takes a step back but she's laughing, genuinely this time, breathless as the glass shatters and she's grinning when she looks at him.
"Let's break every bottle in here." Eva scoops up another beer bottle and tosses it to him, her smile gone conspiratorial.
Charon catches it uncertainly, quirking a long-gone eyebrow until she grabs another bottle for herself and chucks it. It smashes against the door with a satisfying burst. Eva turns to him, watching expectantly and he looks down, running a thumb over the old brown glass. When's the last time he's done anything to release frustration? He tosses the bottle lightly, feeling the weight. Damn, was today irritating. Eva was right, every little thing went wrong. The worried adrenalin hasn't completely left him, knotting tight in sore muscles so when he looks up, sees Eva still watching him, a switch flips.
He grins at her, actually grins, knowing it looks feral and not caring. She's matching his expression, though on her it's more mischievous and less terrifying, and so he turns and throws the bottle as hard as he can. Something releases as the glass shatters.
Frustration, every moment of helplessness, being forced to hold back fury, the feeling of his body responding to someone else's whims, it all boils up into something he's never been able to let out.
Eva throws him another bottle before he can even think to go looking for one. This time it's whiskey, cheap enough that the bottle is huge and heavy in his hand. It nearly explodes when it hits the wall.
Eva's laughter mixes with the sound of falling glass and it's beautiful, it's release, freedom. It's this new stage of his life, this strange partnership, it's the closest thing he's ever come to owning himself.
They break countless bottles. Cheap vodka, vintage scotch, strange flavored liqueurs so strong that even long empty they release a scent when they shatter, filling the room up with sugary caramels, synthetic fruit, cream and chocolate. The floor goes from deep gray to a thousand colors, browns and greens, violet purples and neon blues so unnaturally bright they hurt to look at.
And then finally every bottle is broken and they collapse together, panting on the only stretch of floor not covered with broken glass. Eva's arm is caught up with his, clutching at him as she laughs and gasps for air and he doesn't care. She's grinning and he's so incredibly free, for once just Charon, the contract forgotten and he's tired and sore and thrilled. Eva presses into him and he presses back, not against his owner but his companion, his weird, confusing partner that sometimes he thinks he might like too much, who's holding onto him like he matters.
She's too close again but this time she's not just touching his arm and her face is flushed and his pulse is still racing and maybe he's leaning in, maybe he's just dizzy but she's getting closer and he can count those freckles again and…then he can't. Then Eva is scrambling to her feet, still smiling but something pulling tight in the corners of her eyes. She reaches out her hand and he lets her help him up but then she's gone, moving over to their forgotten bags and stuffing the supplies he had pulled frantically out back in. She's talking but he can't really focus on what she's saying, still reeling from the sudden emptiness her retreat left behind.
"And I guess we should make our way over towards that molerat den instead, they shouldn't really be out this early anyways and we took most of them out last week so it's probably our best bet." She pulls her pack on and waits for him to do the same, still smiling, even still breathing hard but it's clear the moment is over. She moves towards the door and as his heartbeat slows, Charon does the same. Without her proximity and the adrenaline, he feels awkward as well. It was thrilling but whatever was happening at the end was too much, too confusing to think about. He breaths out, pushing the still-sweet air from his lungs and the still-fresh memory from his mind.
When he finally follows after her, the glass crunching beneath his feet is just glass.