Another night at Megaton's saloon meant another night bracing for the inevitable. Charon sat at the bar alone, fidgeting, trying his damndest not to look at Gob. He deconstructed the upholstery on his stool, worked his fingers into the seam and ripped at it with undue savagery - anything to distract himself from the current lull in their conversation. He knew for a fact it wouldn't last much longer.
To his credit, Gob gave Charon a wide berth. For the time being, he busied himself with the odd task behind the counter, but his frequent glances in Charon's direction meant he'd picked up on his foul mood, and he had every intent of getting to the bottom of it.
"So..." Gob said, at last. "Are you going to tell me what's eating you?"
Gob didn't look up from the mountain of caps he'd been sorting. He picked up a handful, dropped them in the cash register, then paused for a moment, listening, on the off chance Charon bothered to reply.
"I am uncertain what you are trying to say," Charon muttered.
"Bullshit. I wasn't born yesterday."
Charon glowered at a dirty glass left on the counter, a last-ditch effort to ward off interrogation. His stubborn silence never worked, not with Gob, but that fact wouldn't stop him from trying.
"Okay..." Gob began. He sighed and scooped up another handful of change. "Fine. If you're gonna be like that, then I can start guessing."
Charon grit his teeth. He didn't want to hash this out - not now, maybe not ever.
"It's Sadie, isn't it?"
Gob waited for a moment, then looked over his shoulder, shooting Charon an expectant stare. Charon shook his head - more a rebuke of the whole conversation than an answer in and of itself. Lately, the mere mention of his employer made his guts twist. He didn't see any point in making that feeling worse.
"Look," Gob said. "She gets in a funk sometimes. That's just how she is."
"I know."
Charon scowled and picked at a wine-stained rag laid out on the bar top. Letting Gob pry a response out of him felt a little too close to rolling over. That said, Gob was a master of one-sided conversation, and trying to outlast him never ended up in Charon's favor.
"Good," Gob said. "Then... Don't get too twisted up about it. Okay? It'll blow over. Whatever it is."
Charon growled, then balled the rag up in his hands. Gob had a solid read on Sadie, the kind only years of friendship could provide. Charon wanted to believe him, but nevertheless, a stinging doubt remained. This latest upset felt problematic. Prolonged. Since they last returned to Megaton, Sadie seemed distant, in the most literal sense of the word. He noticed the extra inch of space, here and there, that she'd put between them. It seemed like such a petty thing to agonize over. But he'd taken great pains to get used to her proximity, and now, a few inches may as well have been a gulf.
Gob dumped out a tip jar on the counter. The clatter shocked Charon back to attention. Gob glanced at him, as if he'd done it all on purpose, then set to sorting the caps into little piles.
"She's been a bit cagey lately," he said. "But you can't take it personally. She's gone through a lot. She comes and goes, you know? You just gotta give her some space."
Charon bit his tongue, fought back the urge to correct him. He so rarely felt responsible for Sadie's brooding, but he wasn't so sure what to think this time around. For better or for worse, Charon had come to expect her absent-minded touch - the stray bump of her knee while they sat side by side, a gentle hand on his forearm when she squeezed past on the staircase of her home. Those little gestures were markers of companionship, markers she'd painstakingly done away with. Charon couldn't comprehend why. And now, as if to make this inscrutable mess all the more agonizing, she'd spent the whole night across Gob's saloon, pressed up against someone Charon had never seen before.
"Jesus," Gob said. "You're staring at that guy like you want to snap his neck."
Charon didn't so much as glance in Gob's direction. He'd fixated on that table in the far corner where, earlier that night, Sadie had settled in with a group of regulars. Among them was a newcomer - a rough and tumble fellow, unremarkable through and through. Charon guessed he was a caravanner, some wandering brahmin merchant that paid Megaton a visit every so often. People here seemed to know him. Sadie certainly did. Nothing else would explain her tolerance of his hand on her knee, his armhooked around her. Nothing else would warrant that smile as she looked at him, laughing at something Charon couldn't hear.
Gob had gotten something right, at least. Snapping that caravanner's neck sounded appealing, moreso than Charon ever expected. Somehow, that didn't feel like something he should divulge.
"Ok, big guy," Gob stepped closer, watching Charon carefully. "What's the deal? You think he's bothering her?"
Charon didn't respond. He watched as the caravanner put his mouth on Sadie's ear, hands wandering, whispering to her as she leaned into his touch. It took a few seconds to sink in. Charon's temperature spiked, his fists curling against the bar top. No, snapping that smoothskin's neck wouldn't nearly be enough. Maybe a few broken bones, a fractured eye socket. Maybe a bit of buckshot, shredding something that no amount of stimpaks or stitches could reconstruct.
Gob slapped his hand on the counter, then, jolting Charon to attention. He leaned forward and spoke slowly, eyebrows raised.
"Whatever you're thinking," Gob said. "Don't. If she minded, she'd have snapped his neck years ago."
Charon grit his teeth and looked away. He stared at the bar top, willing his pulse to slow, struggling to understand this knee-jerk urge to maim. He knew anger, a hundred different kinds of it... But nothing like this. Nothing so unwarranted, so possessive.
"Christ, I haven't seen you seethe like this since Underworld."
Charon looked up at Gob, jarred by the mention of a shared past they so rarely acknowledged. Gob furrowed his brow. Chewing his lip, he searched Charon's face with an increasingly pained, knowing look.
"Oh, god..." he murmured, at last. "You poor son of a bitch."
Gob turned, dumped one last fistful of caps in the register, and shoved the drawer shut with an odd sort of finality. He shook his head, as if he didn't have any advice to offer. As if there wasn't any point in fixing this mess.
Against his better judgment, Charon let his gaze wander back to his employer, and this time, Gob didn't say a word. He left Charon to suffer in silence, watching as the other patrons in the corner got rowdy over a bit of gambling. They'd buried their table under piles of caps, pocket-sized souvenirs, and one very expensive-looking laser pistol. Sadie wasn't usually one to sit out on a round of dice, but tonight proved an exception. Tonight, she sat back with that caravanner, leaning against him, head resting in the crook of his neck. Charon grit his teeth. He didn't have any good explanation for the dull ache in his chest, but seeing her reluctance to leave that smoothskin's side felt like he'd taken a powerfist to center mass. The longer he watched, the more agonizing that feeling became.
He forced himself to look away. Gob had been staring again, but quickly looked down, frowning as he took a mop to some days-old stain on the tile.
"She's gonna leave with him at some point," he said, after a moment. "You get what I mean by that, don't you?"
He did, and Gob should have known better than to cast doubt. Decades of watching Underworld's drug den left Charon with a thorough understanding of things most people hesitated to talk about. It wasn't an education he wanted, by any means. And he'd remained indifferent to it all - a fly on the wall to comings and goings, public displays, patrons' fumbling hands and shallow bids for intimacy that so rarely lasted once the chems wore off.
This- whatever Sadie shared with that stranger - wasn't comparable in the slightest. In Underworld, Charon hadn't known anything approximating quiet closeness. In fact, he only recognized it now thanks to the increasingly gentle moments he'd spent with her. He grimaced, hollow misery wringing his guts like a wet rag. Gob sighed, strode over to Charon, and set his mop down against the counter with more force than necessary.
"Hey," he said sharply. "Snap out of it."
Charon ignored him, this time. Something new snared his attention - something about Sadie's expression, which darkened by the second. She'd been talking for a while, nothing he could make out from a distance, and when she finally went quiet, she pressed her lips together, her expression pained. The caravanner squeezed her tighter, as if to comfort her. Sadie tensed in response. She pulled back a bit, hand pushing against his shoulder, but he didn't relent. Charon narrowed his eyes. A different feeling burned hot - adrenaline quickened his pulse, sent blood rushing to his ears.
"Look," Gob said carefully. "I hate to break it to you, bud... But this isn't something you can... Y-You..."
He trailed off, frowning curiously as he looked back at Sadie. The caravanner stood, tried to pull her up with him. He gave her a tug towards the door. Sadie shook her head and dug in, pulling back, adamant and refusing to budge.
"Whoa. Okay. That's... New."
Gob's pinched look of concern told Charon all he needed to know. Another yank, and Sadie slipped free of the caravanner's grip, leapt to her feet, and tried to push past him. He caught her wrist, then. Her eyes went wide, flashing with alarm as he wrenched her back to face him. Charon's hand flew to his sidearm. It was sheer instinct, as thoughtless as breathing.
Gob didn't miss a beat. In a split second, he reached across the bar and yanked Charon forward with a fistful of his shirt.
"Do not," Gob hissed. "I'm serious. Don't be a fucking idiot."
Charon ignored him and rose to his feet. Gob scrambled forward, still refusing to let go, practically climbing onto the bar in a last ditch effort to avert disaster.
"Charon. You gotta get a grip. This isn't Underworld, okay? When Simms comes running, it won't be pretty. H-Hey. Numbskull. Hello? Do you get my drift? Are you even listening to me?"
He was. Still, no amount of sound logic, no amount of chastisement or pleading, could stop the programming hammered into his brain. His employer was in distress, and Charon's contract demanded he protect her. Any more of this, and there would be a dead caravanner on the floor, bullet between the eyes. He'd killed for less.
"Please, Charon, you're making a mistake. You gotta-"
In an instant, Sadie's concern turned to anger, and she shoved the caravanner back with both hands. Charon ripped his pistol from the holster, then froze. He'd already cocked it, already wrapped his finger around the trigger, but the barrel stopped short, still pointed at the floor. Just like that, his compulsion to kill vanished into thin air, and it wasn't Gob's panicked tugging on his collar that did it. The smoothskin staggered back, palms up in a gesture of stunned surrender. No longer a threat, merely a nuisance. Not worth the inevitable damage control.
Sadie whirled and strode over to the bar. Charon stiffened as she approached and shoved his pistol back into the holster. He pried his hand from the stock, then drew in an anxious breath, certain, for a moment, that she'd witnessed it all. It was peculiar. He didn't feel shame for doing his duty, but he still felt oddly exposed - as if any amount of scrutiny would strip away this thin veneer of obligation. As if she could see, all too easily, the tangled mess of feelings he struggled to keep hidden away.
"What the hell was that?" Gob asked.
Sadie stopped beside the bar. The twisted expression she gave Gob wasn't a happy one, but beyond that, Charon couldn't make heads nor tails of it.
"Later," she said, voice wavering. "I need to talk to you. Just... later."
She took a few steps towards Charon, then stopped, leaning against the bar. Her hand scraped across her face.
"Can... Can we go?" she asked.
It wasn't really a question. She preferred to talk around his contract, but he knew urgency when he heard it. Charon nodded, and Sadie let out a shaky exhale, her shoulders falling slightly.
"Hey, kid..." Gob leaned over the bar, and Sadie snapped to attention. "You gonna be alright?"
She looked back to the door. A stranger would have missed the tiniest shake of her head, but Gob never overlooked these sorts of cues. And Charon - though hardly able to make sense of them - clung to Sadie's little mannerisms for dear life. Gob caught Charon's eye and shot him a patronizing expression, one he saved for rocky moments like these. It was a look that said, We've talked about this.
If only reality were so simple. In the moment, Charon never remembered the advice Gob gave him, the little map markers for navigating Sadie's stormy waters. To make matters worse, Charon couldn't shake the feeling that circumstances had changed. They'd changed a long time ago, pushed past the point of return, and he hadn't managed to notice until tonight. He stole another glance at Sadie. He had the vaguest understanding of friendship - and an even flimsier grasp on affection - but that said, he wasn't oblivious. He knew what to call this flavor of misery. Recognizing it prompted a gut-punch feeling, a discomfort that only worsened as she stepped around him and made her way to the door.
Following her felt a bit too much like walking to the gallows. For once, Charon found himself grateful for the rigid set of rules that kept him glued to Sadie's side. It was his contract, rather than bravery, that bade him to stick to her heel. It was his contract that kept him walking. Jaw set, fists balled at his sides, he matched her hurried stride as she led him into the dark.
Sadie kept a mattress on the living room floor. The jumble of blankets and pillows only added to her home's general appearance of neglect, but Charon had long gotten used to it. She'd dragged the bedding down here months ago, wedged between two rotting armchairs, so the workbench that drew her during sleepless nights wasn't far out of reach.
She'd flopped down on it the moment they stepped through the door. It seemed, at first, that she had every intent of staying put - she'd thrown her jacket and holster on a nearby chair, kicked her boots off and left them in a pile, done everything short of burrowing under the covers. Still, tonight was no exception from the norm, and when tossing and turning didn't help her get comfortable, she gave up entirely.
Sadie sat at her workbench, now, under a flickering lamp, hunched over the metal guts of an old minigun. Charon watched her carefully. He'd stretched out the couch behind her, shooting furtive glances as she ripped chunks from a rotor assembly.
Her breathy curses punctuated the metallic sound of tiny parts skittering across the floor. And after one too many screws jumped from the table, Sadie leaned back, rubbed her face, then sat for a moment. She breathed slow, eyes closed, jaw clenching as it so often did when she struggled to shove down her temper.
Charon had been gritting his teeth through this for weeks, waiting for the other shoe to drop as Sadie's moods came and went. A night like tonight would usually see her through a fifth of whiskey, and leave him fumbling to pick up the pieces when she came to. But nothing happened like it usually did, not lately. She hadn't reached for the bottle - not once, not even for a swig or two to take the edge off. That fact did little to put his mind at ease. The reason for her abrupt sobriety remained as inscrutable as the distance she'd put between them.
Sadie bent down to rummage through a toolbox on the floor, and Charon scowled at the ceiling, a vain effort to keep from looking her way. He'd seen her dole out enough bloody noses and broken teeth to know she hated being stared at. Still, despite his better judgment, his gaze wandered to her yet again - tracing the gaunt angles of her face, following the trail of shrapnel scars that peppered her neck. He welcomed the little stabs of guilt that followed. It was an odd sort of penance, a ritual he'd kept up with all night long.
Sadie didn't notice, not immediately. But after a final, vengeful scrape of her hand along the bottom of the toolbox, she looked up, chewing her lip, scanning the room for whatever implement she'd misplaced. Charon's eyes shot to the far corner of the room. Too little, too late. Sadie straightened in her seat, watching him in curious silence. Then, she scraped the mess on her workbench into a pile, dropped a handful of screws into a coffee mug, and stood.
A quick yank on a nearby power cord plunged them into darkness. Charon listened as she stumbled across the living room, feeling for the mattress on the floor nearby. She flopped down on it, wrestling with a blanket before settling in at last with a long, shaky sigh.
"...Hey."
Charon winced. The softness of her voice offered little comfort. He could spot an interrogation from a mile away. Sadie couldn't leave well enough alone, and like always, she'd wring a confession out of him one way or another. It was only a matter of time.
"That... can't be comfortable," she murmured, after a moment. "The couch, I mean."
He frowned. She wasn't wrong - his boots hung off the armrest, and he'd scrunched his arms under his head in an effort to keep his broad frame from tipping off the thing entirely. Still, he couldn't fathom why something so obvious warranted comment.
Maybe this was a roundabout way of asking him to leave. She didn't typically dance around the subject, but he could take a hint. He planted one boot on the ground, then the other, when Sadie rolled over to face him. The weak light from the alleyway outside bled through a nearby window, illuminating her face. From what little he could see, she watched him expectantly, blanket pulled up to her chin.
"You can lay down, too..." she said. "There's room."
The realization took a bit too long to sink in. Weeks of cold shoulders had left Charon desperate for the smallest scrap of contact. But this... This was unexpected, too sudden, too much. His pulse spiked at the mere prospect of lying close to her. It felt as if he'd been sprinting in full kit.
He drew in a steadying breath. They'd slept next to each other before, a handful of times, during their long stints in the wasteland. It was a practical arrangement, a comfortable one. And on principle, this kind of thing wasn't new, or frightening, or noteworthy. Yet, circumstances told him this was different. Fundamentally so.
"It's okay," Sadie said quietly. "If you don't want to."
He knew that. And he meant to turn her down, to drag himself upstairs, to put as much distance between himself and this looming crisis as possible. Instead, his body moved on its own. It wasn't Sadie's doing. She'd tiptoed around his contract, but another kind of compulsion took its place - one devoid of rules and logic, and all the more terrifying for it.
He sat up, unclipped the holster across his chest, and pulled it free. Fumbling hands made slow work of his armor, struggling, for a moment, when a final strap tangled under his arm. He hesitated, then. The slight cover of darkness did little to soften his creeping unease, and he looked at Sadie, dumbstruck and unsure what to do next.
She scooted to the edge of the mattress. Charon drew in a breath, then knelt down, sinking stiffly into the warm space she left behind. It finally struck him how much of a mistake he'd made. They weren't huddled between rocks, or rubble, or sandbags. No awkward layers of armor separated them, no weapons clutched diligently against their chests. Just a ratty blanket, their worn undershirts, and a few painful inches of space - a rift that, for some reason, Sadie still refused to cross.
"Can I talk to you about something?" she murmured.
She kept her arms tucked close, pinning him with a pained stare. Charon managed a nod.
"I've... Been kind of an asshole lately," she said. "And I just want you to know... It's nothing you did."
She frowned into her pillow, pulling at a loose thread in front of her face.
"I'm just... confused. About a lot of things. And what happened tonight didn't help."
"You are saying... I should have intervened," Charon said.
Sadie grimaced.
"No. That's..." She trailed off, then sighed. "That's not what I meant. At all."
Charon bit back a growl. He never had patience for these kinds of conversations - or really, any conversation at all. He made every exception for Sadie, but the way she stumbled around difficult subjects chafed him in all the wrong ways. She looked at him, and the slight wince that followed told him he'd done a poor job of hiding it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean to be so fucking cryptic. But I'm... I'm not any good at this kind of shit to begin with. And this is... complicated."
Judging by her pensive frown, she meant to keep talking. And Charon had every intent of letting her, but his contract had other ideas. It ripped the words from his throat before he could bite them back.
"Is there anything you require me to-"
"No."
It was a soft interruption, barely more than a whisper, but it stung anyway. Charon dug his fingers into the mattress. He recognized Sadie's disapproval all too easily. It often surfaced in moments like these, when he reminded her how little agency he really had.
This happened more often than he'd like. Anxiety, frustration, shame - those feelings flipped some switch in his head, forced him back into the role of a servant. He tried to keep these slip-ups to a minimum, but no amount of wishful thinking could scrub the involuntary tics from his brain.
"Maybe... Maybe we should talk about this in the morning," she said quietly. "It's late."
Charon suppressed a scoff. He knew a piss-poor excuse when he heard it. Sadie was kicking the can down the road, as if he couldn't handle whatever she had to say. He didn't know how else to prove her wrong. It was stupid, impulsive, but he reached out anyway, snaking his hand beneath the covers, grasping blindly until his fingers knocked against hers.
"Charon..."
That reluctant waver in her voice didn't register right away. He took her hand in his. And when he closed his grip, she slipped free, shrinking from his touch.
Charon pulled back with a start. He should have known better than to fall back on old habits, but he'd forgotten how quickly she'd changed the rules. Sadie rolled onto her back - looking at the ceiling, at the window, at the dark corners of the room. Anything but him.
"Look," she said. "I just don't know if... It's a good idea to pick up where we left off."
Sadie's words didn't hold up to scrutiny. She'd asked him to lay down with her, extended him an unmistakable olive branch, only to rip it back at the last second.
"I am not certain I understand," he said, hesitantly.
"I know. That's exactly the problem."
"Then... Explain it to me. Please."
Sadie screwed her eyes shut and let out a quiet curse. Charon shoved down the surge of regret that followed. He reminded himself that it was better this way, better to take the plunge and be done with it. Anything was better than letting this problem fester.
Sadie let the silence drag on, frowning at the ceiling, hand resting across her face. Charon bit his tongue and waited. He'd already braced for a host of uncomfortable revelations. But he'd expected them to come in the form of words, not actions. It all happened too quickly - she felt for him under the blankets, then turned to face him. One hand found its way to his chest. The other slid around his waist, holding him as she pulled herself closer. All the while, she looked up at him, searching his face, scanning for the smallest hint of discomfort.
He swallowed dryly. Too many points of contact bound them together. Sadie's hips nudged against him, her legs tangled with his. Her fingertips pressed gently into his sternum, where his racing pulse marked the seconds before this inevitably fell apart. A twitch, a shudder, a too-sharp exhale. No matter what form they took, his unwelcome reflexes never failed to make an appearance, never failed to rip the curtain back at the worst possible moment.
Her hands wandered upwards. They came to rest beneath his chin, and she coaxed him to her, pulling down just enough to press her lips to his cheek. Charon flushed hot. Her kiss was feather-light, barely much of a kiss at all, but that made little difference in the end. The intrusion left him dizzy, made his stomach flip like he'd sucked down a bad hit of jet.
He couldn't stifle it any longer. He let out the breath he'd been holding. It was a sharp sound, sharper than he ever intended. Sadie flinched back. She pulled her hands to her chest, then screwed her eyes shut, face contorting with obvious regret.
"Fuck," she breathed. "I'm... really sorry."
She sat up, slowly, pushing the blanket aside. Charon knew was his last chance to interject. He wanted to stop her, to tell her she'd read him all wrong. But no matter how hard he pushed himself, he couldn't muster the courage. He stared at the bedding piled by his face, throat tightening as Sadie dragged herself to the edge of the mattress. She slumped forward, elbows resting heavily on her knees, face buried in her hands.
"That was... stupid," she said. "And selfish. And I... really shouldn't have."
Sadie's eyes wandered to the weak glow emanating from the furthest corner of the room - the green light of her wall safe, the place where she kept his contract under lock and key. She stared at that little metal door, her jaw clenched tight, as if she could banish what lay behind it by sheer force of will.
Charon shrank under the covers, reluctant to follow her gaze. Whether locked away in Megaton or shoved deep in the lining of her jacket, Sadie made every effort to keep that scrap of paper from seeing the light of day. She pretended it didn't exist. Charon tried to play along, but whether he acknowledged it or not, the terms of his contract remained scarred into his brain like a cattle-brand.
It told him this couldn't work. It told him she was the custodian of his free will, entitled to wield him as she saw fit. Sharing any anything beyond that was - in some sense - perverse. Irresponsible. Sadie knew that as well as he did. She saw it in every involuntary twitch, every robotic string of words that fell out of his mouth. And yet, she'd pressed on, as if playing make-believe was enough to undo untold layers of someone else's handiwork.
The result was far from liberating. Charon clutched the blankets to his chest. Sadie's warmth leached from them, just one more reminder of how brazenly she'd led him astray. For weeks, she'd been pulling him along with benign acts of kindness. She'd dragged him to the edge of a precipice he couldn't see until tonight. And even now, without the jackboot of his contract pressing down on him, his decisions felt far from his own.
She'd cast a lingering spell on him, an unseen force that propelled him forward, bade him to sit up and claw his way to her side. Charon reached out on impulse, hand coming to rest on her shoulder. Sadie startled and looked up at him. She reached up slowly, then lifted his hand from her shoulder, guiding it down to his lap.
"You don't have to do this," she murmured. "You really don't."
She gave his hand a soft squeeze, then pulled away. Charon bit back the urge to correct her. He'd never felt this beholden to anyone, with or without his contract. Desire, obligation, choice, reflex. She'd mashed it all together into one inscrutable mess.
"Sometimes..." he said. "It is not that simple."
Sadie grimaced. She drew in a sharp breath, as if she meant to argue. That little spike of dread spurred Charon forward, and he closed the distance between them without so much as a second thought. He kissed her. It was more of a flinch than anything, a violent press of his lips followed by a too-swift retreat.
Sadie stared up at him. Her eyelids fluttered, her throat jumping silently as she let out a breath. Charon froze. For all the icy terror it inspired, her bewildered stare may as well have been an empty clip, a dead-end hallway, a stimpak just out of reach. Whatever hare-brained bit of courage pushed him this far evaporated in an instant. His lips still hovered a few inches from hers, too petrified to pull away completely.
Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. Sadie leaned in, and Charon stood his ground, despite his every instinct demanding the opposite. She brushed her lips against his. Her trembling hands traveled up his neck, then cupped his jaw gently. She planted a second, then a third, then kissed a scalding trail along his jawline. Her mouth wandered down to meet his neck, and she came to rest there, burying her face against his collarbone, holding him in silence.
Charon shivered. The warmth running along his spine faded too quickly to a cold sense of disappointment. He'd heard his fair share of love songs, cloying little numbers that taunted him with fantasies he preferred not to indulge. They dangled romance in front of his face - a kind of elation he had no interest in knowing, soaring feelings that didn't compute with his grim understanding of the world.
Sadie's affection wasn't enough to repair those countless decades of damage. Her taste on his lips didn't spark anything beyond a routine, numbing anxiety, the kind of dread that often lingered after a nasty gunfight. It was the familiar gut-twisting worry that he'd soon stumble over a tripwire, that he'd left an enemy alive, that one misstep would bring this moment of calm crashing down around him.
He found an odd sort of solace, then, in the way Sadie trembled against him. She was just as nervous, just as unsure. It was so infrequent that he found himself on even ground with her. But there was something about a shared plight that tipped the scales, something about this feeling of imminent disaster that made him forget how unrealistic her desire for companionship truly was.
This so rarely happened outside of combat. This was the same stupefied feeling that washed over him before pulling the trigger, before bolting past her to land a headshot point-blank. In these moments of shared panic, he came painfully close to being her equal, to walking with her in stride, to acting like the friend she hoped he'd be.
Sadie's heartbeat raced against his chest, rivaling his own frantic pulse. He clutched her tighter, and she responded in kind, hands grasping at two fistfuls of his shirt. He felt it, then - a flicker of something unfamiliar, something fluttering in his stomach, something he could only describe as a cautious anticipation for what the future held.
It wasn't optimism, not exactly. But it came close enough.