Charon detested the Jefferson Memorial the moment he stepped through the door.

At first, he struggled to pin down the reason. Life had long since desensitized him to the little miseries of this place. The buzzing fluorescents, the sterile white light. The claustrophobic hallways. The distaste that radiated from the Brotherhood scribes, when they passed just a little too close to him.

None of it justified the pit in his stomach. And after puzzling over it for quite some time, he'd realized what should have been obvious from the start - this discomfort had everything to do with Sadie.

She hadn't said a word to him since they entered the memorial. She kept her eyes down, weaving between desks and bundles of terminal cords as if by memory alone. She'd been here before - he knew that much. The scientists here gave her a wide berth, didn't greet her outright, but curt nods and fleeting eye contact belied how accustomed they were to her presence.

His understanding beyond that was cursory. There had been signs that something wasn't right. Sadie's feet dragged the closer they got to Rivet City, and after a few drinks aboard the carrier the night before, a blunt confession came tumbling out.

My dad died here, three years ago.

She didn't offer much of an explanation, and Charon didn't ask for one. It seemed the right thing to do, at the time. He'd never seen her bite back tears before. He didn't know how to respond. And she was drunk, all too eager to run from unpleasant memories and talk about other things.

He'd taken the easy way out. And now, thanks to his own cowardice, he struggled to understand what had come over her. Sadie stopped in front of a metal door. What lay beyond it was a mystery, but Charon suspected the epicenter of some past trauma. Her distant stare focused on the worn carpet beyond her boots. The few minutes she'd spent here, hesitating in silence, felt more and more like an eternity.

The onlookers she attracted didn't help. Out of the corner of his eye, Charon watched a handful of scientists and aides pretending to gather around a terminal. They glanced back at their clipboards as soon as he caught them staring. He wouldn't think much of it, usually. He was used to being a sideshow. Sadie was no stranger to it, either, a frequent recipient of disdain for choosing a ghoul as her company. That said, this seemed different. He recognized something in their faces - something other than contempt, something Sadie rarely elicited in anyone. He recognized pity.

Charon tried to ignore them. Sadie had a white-knuckle chokehold on the door handle, and he watched as her fist clenched, adjusting her grip time and time again. Something kept her from turning it. He only had himself to blame for not knowing what.

At a loss, he placed a hand on her shoulder, gently, so as not to startle her. Sadie stiffened anyway. Her gaze flashed up, then dropped back to the floor. She turned away just enough to hide her expression.

"I just... Need a minute," she said. "I'll be okay."

She exhaled. And despite the slight tremble in that breath, her steady voice gave little indication of the turmoil he'd sensed beneath the surface. Charon gripped her shoulder tighter. His touch was a feeble attempt at reassurance, a reminder that he was still beside her. It was a poor substitute for the words he couldn't find, and yet, it seemed to work.

Sadie braced a second hand on the door. Another shaky breath, another clench of her fist on the handle.

She pushed it open. And with her jaw set, her eyes forward, she stepped past the threshold.

Charon stood in the rotunda, under the green glow of the purifier, an anxious sweat beading on his palms. Sadie wouldn't look at him. She stared at some point at the top of the stairs, a landing by a pair of pneumatic doors.

The silence in here was suffocating, now that she'd stopped talking. She'd painted a picture for him. The day it happened - the day she stood on that catwalk, helpless, banging on the glass as she watched someone important to her die. It wasn't the breathless outpouring of emotion Charon had been bracing for. Instead, Sadie laid out the scene in clinical detail, cutting herself off just as her voice began to crack.

Charon wanted to console her, but he didn't have the faintest idea where to begin. He'd not experienced loss like that before - nothing so fresh, nothing he could remember clearly. He'd witnessed death, without a doubt. More than his fair share. Somehow, he felt divulging that wouldn't ease her pain. He couldn't think of a single gesture that would.

Sadie turned to him then, tearing her eyes from the purifier for the first time since they'd entered the rotunda. She glanced up at him, fists balled at her sides, the stifled agony on her face giving way to uncertainty.

"Can I ask a favor of you?" she said quietly.

He nodded. Sadie pressed her lips together. Charon waited, his pulse spiking as the seconds dragged on.

"Would you..." she began, grimacing. "Would you mind... If I hugged you?"

Charon let out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He should have expected this. Touch, relief, comfort - they went hand in hand in Sadie's world. He'd grown accustomed to that logic, but it wasn't his own. He wasn't certain it would ever be.

Sadie stepped closer, but kept her hands at her sides. She waited, fidgeting, a silent question on her face.

"I am... Fine with whatever you need," Charon said, at last.

Sadie straightened a little, as though he'd lifted some weight off her. Still, she chewed her lip, visibly reluctant to take him at his word.

"If you're sure," she said. "...Are you?"

He nodded. Finally - albeit slowly - she closed the distance between them. Her approach was awkward, at first. She didn't know where to put her arms. After some fumbling, she settled for a gentle hold around his waist, and pressed her body against his.

Charon stiffened. It was an unwelcome reflex, one honed by decades of close calls. He'd nearly managed to quash it in situations like these. Nevertheless, Sadie sensed the change in his posture. She always did. She pulled back, then looked up at him, her brows pinched with worry.

"You can change your mind," she murmured. "It's okay."

She searched his face, waiting, and Charon's throat tightened. This was a familiar exercise. Each time, Sadie conjured up a new kind of touch, a different kind of discomfort. Each time she offered him an escape route. And each time, he grew more and more reluctant to take it.

He pulled her against him. It was forceful - more so than he intended. His arms crushed the breath out of her, and Sadie staggered, thrown off balance by the unnecessary roughness.

"Is this..." he asked. "Is this alright?"

He felt her nod against his chest. They stood for a moment, in silence, the hum of the purifier's reactor core a pervasive reminder of what had brought them here in the first place.

A muffled sound escaped Sadie's mouth, then. Charon held his breath. He'd never heard his employer cry before, and it was almost unrecognizable as such. She didn't sob, didn't whimper. She just shook silently, her voice escaping every now and then in little strangled bursts.

Charon wasn't terribly compassionate by nature. Still, he thought he'd react differently to something like this. He didn't want to let her go, but the longer this dragged on, the more his instincts screamed at him to pull back. They told him she was a source of discomfort, an unknown. A problem he was ill-equipped to deal with.

That feeling surged as Sadie sank her head into his chest. She pressed her full weight against him, and her body curled slightly, quivering, as if someone had stabbed her in the stomach. Her armor dragged against his ribs. A part of it, maybe some hard clasp or buckle, bruised him when she shook just a little too much. Charon grimaced. He'd never seen Sadie so pitiful. He hated it. He didn't realize until now, how much comfort he found in her battle-hardened demeanor. How much he'd come to rely on that for a sense of normalcy.

He wanted to grab her by the shoulders, to tell her to snap out of it. Instead, a strange sense of duty kept his arms locked in place. As if gritting his teeth through this ordeal was the same as taking a bullet for her. As if, by holding her close, he could protect her until she found her wits again.

It didn't take long. Slowly, her ragged breathing evened out. Her trembling stopped. And at last, Sadie stepped back, gently growing the distance between them with the soft press of her palms on his chest.

"Shit," she murmured. "I didn't mean to lose it like that. I'm... I'm sorry, if-"

"Please," he said. "Do not apologize."

Sadie drew back slightly, then dropped her eyes to the ground. Charon frowned. He wasn't sure what prompted her to react that way. His tone was terse, less than reassuring, but that was hardly something he could control. He never meant to wound her. More than anything, he just wanted to put this moment behind them.

He succeeded, but not in the way he'd hoped. As quickly as she shrank back, Sadie stiffened. She set to tugging at her armor and scrubbing at her face, as a familiar tension crawled back up her shoulders. In an instant, she'd drawn her guard up again.

Charon meant to break the silence between them, but he didn't know how. She'd already turned for the door, metallic footsteps ringing out across the catwalk. He followed at a distance, grimacing. He'd begun to grasp where this crushing sense of inadequacy came from. Sadie had made it clear from the moment they'd met. She didn't want a servant. And as the line between friendship and obligation blurred, it became harder and harder for Charon to choose a side to stand on. He wished he could, for once, meet her expectations without floundering. He wished he could offer her something more than uncertainty.

He could, at the very least, show her he was trying.

"Sadie."

The urgency in his voice stopped Sadie in her tracks. She turned and staggered back in surprise, a hand flying to the holdout pistol at her hip.

"What?" she breathed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing like... that."

She gave him a curious frown, a crease forming between her eyebrows.

"I... just want you to know," he said. "If you need anything else, I am... here for you."

Charon chewed punishingly at the inside of his cheek. He'd forced the words out as quickly as they would come, but he'd still failed to project any amount of confidence.

Sadie's hand fell away from her gun. She looked him in the eyes, her confusion giving way to something else. The wide-eyed, bewildered stare she gave him now ground away at his nerve to keep talking.

Charon swallowed. He felt as if she'd caught him in a lie. Despite what he'd said, how much of his desire to please her was actually sheer force of habit remained to be seen. He braced for her to see that doubt written across his face, and call him on it.

Instead, she stepped closer.

"I... I really appreciate that," she said softly. "Thank you."

She looked up at him a moment longer, then reached out and brushed her thumb against his hand. It was just a small touch, a small expression of gratitude. It didn't chase away the creeping dread he felt, or the gut-wrenching worry that he'd mired himself in something he didn't understand.

Still, he found some relief in her fingertips passing over his. That sensation told him he'd done right by her. It told him he'd succeeded, by the narrowest margin, at something utterly alien to him.

For now, that was more than enough.

A/n: Stay tuned for another update coming up at the end of January!