Cort leaned back against the edge of the rusted Vault entrance with Dogmeat, looking across at Charon. Both of them had slammed to either side when the mutant had started blasting away with its assault rifle.
"COME IN HUMAN AND GET TURNED TO GOO."
Charon yelled out from around the corner. "She can't come in there, your fat fucking ass is taking up all the room." He held up his shotgun, aiming it towards the top of the door. Catching on, Cort did the same.
"Yeah snotbag, I won't fit!"
"I SMASH YOU ROTTEN MAN. ME NOT STUPID, NOW STOP HIDING AND COME DIE!"
Grinning widely, Cort looked at Charon. "Charon, I think he's too wide to fit through the door. Like a mucus plug in a bottle!" She started laughing, big effusive gales of it. Nudging Dogmeat with her foot and winking at him, he started putting out short yelps. "Even the dog thinks you're funny! Hear him laugh?"
"Yeah shitface! Too big, too stupid!" Cort was perversely happy, seeing the ghoul actually starting to smile as he taunted the mutant again.
"YEAAGH I SHOW YOU ALL, I FIT IN, I WILL FIT OUT TO CRUSH YOU!"
The instant the brute emerged from the door he swung towards Cort, Dogmeat darting behind it. Apparently shooting out the thing's eye gave her top preference to being obliterated. She rolled away backwards, the dog sinking into the mutant's legs and Charon firing point blank into the back of its head. Cort recovered in time to fire a round into the still intact eye before it fell heavily forward. Panting, she crawled over the twitching corpse and through the entrance to the Vault, then pulled her pistol out.
"There it is. Right where it is at home." Looking up she fired into the loudspeakers, cutting the klaxon cut off mid-blare, then holstered the 10mm. "I hate that sound. That sound was the end of everything." Turning around, she watched Charon stripping the mutant of anything useful, then looked at Dogmeat. "Both of you are fine?" The dog whuffed. Charon just stared at her and stood up, the smile from earlier completely absent now. Taking that for a yes, Cort gripped her rifle tightly and started quietly moving deeper into the false Vault.
Cort hated it in here. She could imagine everyone she knew was around the corner, except the corners were all wrong, the walls corroded, and every few dozen feet an informational recording would go off, spooking her into hugging the walls even harder. It was almost a relief when another Super Mutant came haring around a corner at them, firing away with a hunting rifle. Dogmeat distracted it as he was supposed to do, and she fired another round into this one's head as Charon unloaded his shot into the chest, crumpling it in. I could actually feel content like this if it wasn't such a nightmare. Having someone else is so much better, even if he is a total jackass. Cort shot the mutant again as it staggered forward, ending it, then glanced at Charon. Christ, just how lonely am I?
Emerging from the simulation, they discovered the door to the West Wing around the corner. Cort cracked the it open for Dogmeat to sniff into while she fiddled with her Pip-Boy. She looked up when Charon quietly rasped beside her.
"How can you be competent one second and such a foolish child the next?"
"Growing pains." She was getting tired of the constant jabs but would be damned before admitting it. "Told you, I'm new. Three months old, give or take. I don't handle...surprises very well." Cort cut him off before he could finish opening his mouth again, no doubt to say something else wonderfully disparaging. "There's just two sections to get through after this one, and at least the same amount of mutants. I can't read far enough to see if there's any more there. Let's go."
The odd little party crept through the West Wing, into more ruined rooms and decaying corridors. Chips of plaster turned to powder under their feet and everything stank of rot. Coming into the next large room, which was several stories high and surrounded by a long staircase, Cort stared up in wonder, eyes crinkling in happiness. A rocket! It's a rocket, I wonder if Charon knows what ki- Her face fell when she looked over at the ghoul, who was staring at her impassively. Oh. Right. Silly me. Laying down on her belly, Cort wiggled to the railing and peered over. One Super Mutant was on the next landing down, and another was a few flights below that. Bringing the repeater in line, Cort flicked the sight up and drew a bead on the first brooding figure, then pulled the trigger. She turned back to her companions with a mad smile, the sound of splattering brains on the wall a counterpoint to the rifle's ringing shot. Shoving off the floor, Cort tore down the stairs as the other mutant shot up them.
"Come out, come out where ever you are, you sack of green shit!"
"HUMAN, I WEAR YOUR SPINE AROUND MY NECK!" It opened fire, and she grunted as at least one bullet hit her thigh.
"Yeah, yeah and my eyeballs for earrings, again with my fucking LEG." Cort leveled the repeater as Dogmeat flew past her, landing on the thing's face and latching on like a bulldog. Cort dropped her aim and shot into each over-sized knee as Charon reached her. Both dove as the mutant blindly strafed the staircase with its assault rifle, while Dogmeat kicked in with both hind legs again and again.
"Drop it, mutt!" Charon pushed off the wall and fired repeatedly into the mutant as soon as the dog was clear, halfway surprised it had listened to him. Cort turned her head and squinted as she was flecked with gore. Pushing her visor up, she walked down to him, limping slightly.
"I think you got it, Charon." He stared at her, then looked down to her leg.
"You've been shot."
"I noticed. It's not that bad. There's only a little blood in my boot, and I don't want to stop." Cort looked at her Pip-Boy and wiggled her toes. They weren't even squishing yet. "There's just one more long windy hallway before we're where we need to be, come on." She didn't spare another glance towards the rocket as she went by the base.
They moved rapidly up the sloping corridor, slowing down to glide around the corner, then approached another large room. Peeking in, Cort saw what she had spent so much time working towards. Almost a month for a Goddamned punchbowl. Another fucking month while Dad gets farther and farther away from me. Something in her snapped, and she walked bald-faced into the room, rapidly ducking behind a column when she was shot at from two different directions. Unfortunately, it meant she was in at least one line of sight while avoiding the other. Charon and Dogmeat darted out from behind the corner before Cort screamed at them.
"Get BACK." As they retreated, she threw a grenade up at the mutant on the balcony, then spun to throw another into the corner, hissing when another bullet -she wasn't sure from which one- went through the side of her arm. Spinning out towards the balcony after both explosions tore out in rapid succession, she screamed again. "NOW!"
Watching Charon and Dogmeat tear past her towards the brute on the ground, Cort threw another frag grenade up and hared around to fire towards the one now engaging with her companions. Charon was rolling across the floor, dust puffs following him, while the dog tore at the backside of the mutant.
"Fucking. Die. So. I. Can. Finish." Shots rang out of the repeater with each of her words, the last one punctuated by the grenade exploding. The brute crumpled, and Charon obliterated the last mutant as it came lurching down the stairway to the main floor, riddled with shrapnel. "Finally. Thank you, Charon."
"That was unbelievably stupid." Charon pushed up from the floor and glared at her.
"And yet it turned out! Amazing how that works." Cort frowned and poked at her arm. "Perfect. Did either of those two hit you?"
"...No." Charon avoided looking at her.
"Okay, fine. Dogmeat?" He whuffed. "Perrrfect." Cort carefully knelt next to the lander and pulled out her lantern, Stimpaks, and the hemostat Doc Barrows had given her after one of her first trips back into the Metro. Flicking the lantern and her Pip-Boy light on, she plucked two bullets out of her leg then rammed a Stimpak home in both her thigh and arm. After the sample taking incident, digging bullets out almost tickled. Almost. Cort giggled and looked up, scratching where she had injected herself. Dogmeat was sniffing around Charon, while he looked distinctly uncomfortable at the dog's attention. "What?"
Dogmeat yipped at her, then pawed at the ghoul's torso. He backed away, grunting. Cort walked over to him and darted a hand out to push at the same spot, Charon hissing when she pressed below his upper armour. Holding her hand up in the dim light, she confirmed what the sticky warmth she felt had told her.
"Shit, shit, shit Charon, why didn't you tell me? You said they didn't get you!" Cort yelled roughly at him, frothing herself into near-panic.
"They did not. You ignored your own wounds to carry on from the previous engagements. I can do the same." He was refusing to look at her and attempted to stand taller.
"I didn't have a Goddamned gut shot. Get over here and sit down. Come on." Grabbing his wrist after he hesitated, she pulled him towards the lantern and her pack, tightening her grip and pulling harder when he tried to jerk his arm away. "Stop being a baby." Cort shoved Charon down and hauled the belted pouches off of him, jerking his shirt up over the bottom of the chest plating. "Lean back." She pushed, hard, when he didn't comply immediately.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Cort raised an eyebrow at him as she poked a finger into the gaping hole below his ribs, one hand still on his chest. "Picking a bullet out. Is this the only one left in you?"
"You're touching me."
Cort slid the hemostat in to where she had felt the slug and started pulling it out. "Well, what the fuck did you expect me to do, I'm not telekinetic." She rolled her eyes and flicked the bit of metal away when he scowled at her.
"You've been out here for months, you fucking know what I mean." Cort made a face and emptied two Stimpaks into his side.
"And you missed a whooole lot stuck in that corner while I swanned around Underworld, you know that? 'Oooh, the smoothskin's touching a ghoul'. Seriously, yes I am and big fat hairy deal. There's nothing weird or saintly about me Charon, I'm not going to give you cooties, it's just that a lot of you out here are assholes to each other. I'm not like that. Frankly I'm too tired, and I don't have time for any of that crap. Now answer my question, was that the only bullet left in you? Furthermore, what other holes or grazes are you hiding?"
"I don't hide shit."
"I will strip you naked." Cort narrowed her eyes to slits and started tugging on his waistband when he hesitated, stopping when he snarled out an answer.
"Flesh wounds only. Nothing as serious as the gut."
"Good." Wiping her bloody hands off on her pants first, Cort dug around in her pack, hauling out a rag and two bottles of slightly glowing water, then froze at the look on the ghoul's face. It probably wasn't normal for normal people to carry around irradiated water. Companion or no, she didn't feel like playing show and tell just yet with Charon. Cort blinked rapidly. Oh God, that sounded horrible. Just get back to playing doctor already. Oh, God, that sounded even worse. Shut UP, brain. "I uh, picked it up before I came back to get you from Ahzrukhal. Doc-Doctor Barrows told me what to do." She soaked one of the rags and put it over the wound, then handed him the other bottle. "You can get the rest."
Charon watched as Cort turned away towards the lander and scrambled up the struts to the dish, feeling the radiation seep comfortably into his belly. Her actions had definitely been outside of the normal expected responses to him being clumsy enough to be wounded. Previous employers had punished him for becoming damaged, and left him to mend himself. He had reacted to what he had first perceived as her rightful anger with a prideful claim about matching her abilities, trying to cover up his failure. His hesitation afterward was a result of him trying to parse what Cort's following behaviour meant about her emotional outburst. Charon fell out of his thoughts momentarily as a muffled clanging started.
"Stupid. Goddamn. Punchbowl." Cort was kicking at the back of the relay dish. Charon snorted. As if I would have a problem matching or exceeding that. Opening the second glowing bottle he drank the contents, then frowned thoughtfully at it while his other damaged tissues started to knit. This was way outside. Reprimands for injury had only become worse after he had ghoulified, and a smoothskin employer looking out for his particular needs was practically ludicrous. He looked up again as Cort walked past him swearing and swinging her helmet, grabbing for her pack. Charon decided to go out on a limb.
"Why did you do this?"
"Do what, Charon? Goddamn ties." Yanking her baseball bat loose, she turned to look down at him.
"Reward me with medical attention when I failed to prevent becoming damaged."
"Wha-what? Are you flipping bonkers?" Cort considered him in a manner that inferred that he was.
"Previous employers have made it a practice to punish my failures."
"Jesus Christ Charon, you getting shot isn't failing. And I'm not your previous employers. I'm your employer now. That means I'm responsible for you, doesn't it? Wouldn't be very responsible of me to leave you impersonating a soup strainer. Have we forgotten the 'I'm new' and 'not an asshole' conversations or what?" Cort ran a hand back and forth over her head, flaring her hair into a crest. "I'm not going to punish you. You didn't do anything wrong. Just sit there and tell me when you feel normal again, or need anything or whatever." She returned to the lunar lander and climbed halfway up, then started wailing on the side of the dish support with the bat. Charon watched her antics and mulled uncomfortably over the very foreign concept of being taken care of by someone else. He couldn't decide what he thought of it, and had a sinking suspicion that he might be liking it. He had no idea whatsoever as to whether or not he liked liking it, but did not like the fact that he cared about the answer.
Cort yelped and Charon got up before he was quite ready to, the remaining sting helping to clear his head. Too much thinking. He walked over to where his employer was now hanging from the lander with her armour caught on a strut, then reached up and twisted the dish loose with one motion. Cort crossed her arms, staring at him haughtily and swinging her feet as he held it out, looking over the rim at her.
"Yeah well. I loosened it." Cort rolled her eyes to the ceiling, then around the room, anywhere but back at him. "Uhm. Charon?"
"You're fucking stuck, aren't you."
"...Yes."
