"No." he replied, wishing more than anything for her to leave it; return the tags and lay back down with him.
"Where did you get these, then?" Charon sighed.
"They're from a long time ago." There was silence for a moment, then Anastasia sat down next to him, but stayed sitting up. He could see her body was tensed, as if she was ready to run.
"Tell me about it."
It wasn't all that long ago, but for Charon it had been lifetimes. He'd been a strong young man, ready to take on the world, playing with guns at age three, protecting his home at six. When his parents passed on he was about sixteen. He joined the Enclave after listening to Eden talk on the radio for half his life about a brighter future, the greatness of the enclave.
He'd had tons of friends, and one of his best friends, privet named Autumn introduced him to the love of his life, a young woman named Betty.
They'd been sent in to the capital to see what was left of the White House. He was lucky; he just had to patrol the borders of the operation, not go in. If he had, he'd be dead. There was a mistake when someone tried to disarm an un-detonated nuke inside the ruins, and it blew. Charon became a Ghoul from the intense blast of radiation, and was dug out of the rubble by a strange man, who trained him with the contract and started his new life. Charon still had hopes of a regular life back then, but they were dashed after Betty stopped by his temporary home at that time. She was disgusted by him, and immediately left without saying another word to him. He had wanted to re-join the military, too, but they didn't accept Ghouls.
"Bad for the Enclave image." They'd sneered at him, and so his life as a Ghoul started; being sold around to different contractors, with dog tags and meaningless memories to remind him of what he used to be.
He didn't tell Anastasia all of this, just most of it. She sighed.
"Damn the enclave." She said, and then held up the dog tags. Charon moved to take them, but instead she slipped the chain over her neck. They jingled quietly as they hit her armored chest. "You don't need to carry this weight by yourself." She said, and he looked at her.
Neither of them moved for a few minutes.
Finally he lay back down, and she scooted closer to him, and they reassumed where they had been before she'd felt the dog tags.
"Charon?" she whispered.
"Yes?"
"Thank you for telling me."
He sighed. He hadn't been so open with anyone before. He felt both relieved and exposed. When he didn't reply, she curled up next to him, and the dog tags jingled.