"Poor Theo should be somewhere in this stairwell. Remember the code for the ammo box, and to come back to the Ranger Compound for payment." Cort was punching locations into her Pip-Boy as Reilly rattled off the last bits of information for her.

"Yeah, okay. I'll head there as soon as I finish with GNR's dish." Cort sighed. "It's on the way back to Chevy Chase anyway." Finishing up, she waved farewell to Barrows and headed back to retrieve her things, Charon and Dogmeat trailing after her. She trotted up the stairs, brooding. It was another delay, potentially a long one, but it really was on the way to where she was going. There was also no way of knowing whether Three Dog knew her father's final location, or if it was another way point on the mad escapade her life had turned into. If it was only another temporary stop, Cort would need more caps to support herself and now Charon, and she clung to the responsibility like a lifeline. Entering through the back way to Carol's, she started slinging her armour back on and then Dogmeat's. All the plating's fine, and I can sew up the bullet holes in our clothes after we stop for the night, whenever that is.

"You should not have permitted me to sleep for so long, again." Turning around to face Charon after he spoke, Cort looked at him, exasperated.

"If you're conking out for that long, then you're burning off one hell of an accumulated sleep debt. It's safe in here, and if I want to let you sleep, I'm going to let you sleep. I can manage without you while you do."

"Why the hell then, pray tell, did you buy my contract if you can manage without me?" Cort bit the inside of her cheek. The damned sneer was creeping back into the ghoul's face again.

"I bought your contract because I was too gutless to to it for somebody else. That, and I'm a sad sack of shit who has abandonment issues, if you haven't noticed, so you're pretty much the perfect person to knock around with. That answer work for you? 'Cause it better. Let's go."


Paladin Jeffries had it both better and worse than Stockholm back at Megaton. Both were tied to guard duty, but at least Stockholm was safe above everything for the most part. Jeffries however, had power armour. Stockholm's problem was crushing boredom. Jeffries' problem was that it was boring until something tried to crush him, or one of the other Brotherhood members stationed at the Washington Monument.

"Sir." Jeffries snapped out of his reverie. "Sir, there's ghouls moving up from the left."

"Well Initiate Trouse, how many are moving?" Captain Jeffries would trade his last energy cell to be rotated back to the Citadel for a week, just to see if Trouse would shape up into something less clueless in the intervening time and save him some grief. He sincerely doubted there would be much difference even if he made the duration a full month.

"Two sir, and a dog. They're definitely moving towards us now Sir." Jeffries sighed. The kid was actually sounding excited.

"That must be what stirred the muties up on that side of the Mall earlier. Why the rotting bastards won's stay put in Underworld, I have no idea."

"Yes Sir. Should I fire on them Sir?"

Jeffries focused on where the Initiate was looking. There were two ghouls, a female in the lead with the aforementioned dog, and a male behind her. He frowned. One hell of a male, if he judged the first one's height right. The top of her helmet barely reached the level of the other's shoulders. Both were armed and armoured.

"Might as well, Trouse. They should all know better than to come near the Monument by now. Get some practice in with that Mini-Gun, hm? Try not to hit the dog." There was no way the idiot could miss with that piece of equipment.

"Yes Sir!" Jeffries watched the Initiate hoist the weapon into place and open fire. Wherever the ghouls had come from, they were surprisingly quicker than normal. He was fairly certain Trouse had missed both of them entirely, and the kid was waiting for instruction after the first pass had failed to hit anything. Colour me surprised. Gunny really has to include more heavy weapons training before-

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU ASSHOLES THINK YOU'RE DOING? I AM SO TELLING SARAH ON YOU." Jeffries swore and Trouse gave a tinny gulp as the female screeched at them from cover.

"Sir, that doesn't sound like a ghoul."

"I noticed, Initiate Trouse."

"Do you think she means Senti-"

"Shut UP, Initiate Trouse."


Cort and Charon had made it partway up the Mall without serious incident before a Super Mutant had popped out of one of the trenches and opened fire at them. Charon had shoved Cort hard and sent her sprawling face first into a puddle, right before bullets ripped up the sidewalk where she had been. She had crawled out of the ooze in time to retrieve her repeater and help finish the monstrosity off.

"What the fuck, Charon? Look at me! I'm a fucking irradiated mudbug!"

He snarked back at her. "You're welcome."

Cort slatted at the muck covering her, deciding to leave it when she noticed that pushing at it was doing nothing but move it and the blood under it around. It was like dirt-ridden glue. "For fuck's sakes, I'm going to have to wait for this shit to dry and flake off."

"Would you rather I let you get shot?"

She looked at him sulkily. "No. What about you, did it hit you? Dogmeat?" A whuff.

"No." Cort stared at him. "Not enough to warrant stopping and staying exposed out here."

"Me either. Let's get over to the Monument, I want to talk to the Brotherhood members before I try to swan right up to the gate." Charon hesitated when she started moving again. "What?"

"The Brotherhood do not take kindly to ghouls. In point of fact, they generally try to blow our brains out."

"What? No, they're nice. Kinda arrogant, but they've always been okay to deal with."

Charon stared at her contemptuously. "Oh, and I fucking wonder why you'd notice a difference in behaviour out of them. Let me think."

Cort flushed under the mud and crossed her arms. "Alright fine. But they won't bother you with me here. I'm doing a job for Three Dog and I've got all the appropriate codes and everything, so they can't argue. Come on." She snorted a final bit of mud out of one nostril and started walking, creeping low against the shattered buildings.

Charon muttered and followed along behind her. It won't be much of an argument if they don't let her get close enough to open her mouth. He was proven unfortunately correct a few minutes later when both of them had flung themselves behind debris after being driven there by rapid fire. "I fucking told you. Didn't I just fucking tell you."

Cort made a face at him, and snarled. "Yes, yes, you'll have a fine future career to look forward to as a fortune teller. Just give me a minute." Pulling in a lungful of air, Cort bellowed. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU ASSHOLES THINK YOU'RE DOING? I AM SO TELLING SARAH ON YOU." She waited, counting to ten and pulling more faces at Charon while she did.

A voice finally floated over to them. "State your business, civilian!"

"Oh for the love of- MY BUSINESS? Tell me, were you all not issued radios or are you too STUPID to check in? My business is to run up that damn phallus you're guarding and fix GNR's signal! Now can we come out or are you going to try, badly by the way, to aerate us again?" Cort sucked her lips in and waited, looking at the sky while Charon shuffled over to sit next to her. The pause before the response this time was somewhat longer.

"Are you the Vault kid who brought down the Behemoth with Lyon's Pride?"

"YES!" Cort grinned wickedly when Charon's mouth dropped open at her. "Yeah I kinda glossed over that when I told you about finding GNR. Uhm, oops."

"All right, approach."

"Christ, not even a sorry. Come on, you two." She scrambled out and over their hidey-hole, Dogmeat on her heels and Charon more hesitantly afterward. Cort stalked up to the Brotherhood member who had opened fire on her, then stood with her fists on her hips. "Well? Want to explain why the fuck you were trying to kill my guard and I, not to mention my dog?"

"Uh, you're covered in mud." In spite of the shielding helmet, Trouse looked anywhere but at the girl, and definitely anywhere that wasn't at Paladin Jeffries. "I thought-"

"When I tell you to shut up Initiate, you will stay shut up, is that clear?"

"Sir, yes, Sir!"

The other Brotherhood member swung around to look at Cort. "Just a simple misunderstanding Miss. You can't expect to travel with something like that and not draw unwanted responses." He jerked his head towards Charon. Cort hooked her thumbs over her belt and smiled, looking up at him.

"So what was your name?"

"Paladin Jeffries, Miss."

"Right. I'll remember that. I'll remember that extremely well." Cort cocked her head and started laughing. It didn't sound like anything Jeffries wanted to join into, and he became increasingly alarmed as it didn't stop. He had halfway made up his mind to slap the girl when she quit abruptly and hiccuped. "Paladin Jeffries, right."

The Brotherhood members watched as she walked towards the gate terminal and began tapping away at it, one of them on the other side hissing at Charon.

"What happened to your nose, rotface?"

The ghoul glowered and snarled back. "Your wife got a little excited. She closed her legs too fast." Cort slapped a hand over her mouth and fizzed while hitting the execute key.

"Come on Charon, let's leave the toy soldiers alone. Maybe some day they'll grow up and Sarah will take them out to do big boy things." She slipped sideways through the opening gate, punched the closing code on the inside terminal and headed towards the elevator, both companions trailing behind.


Charon looked at Cort where she was slumped sideways against the wall of the degrading elevator, the evening sunlight dappling through holes in the sides of the Monument and turning everything golden.

"I'm sorry, you were right. They're fucking assholes. At least those ones definitely are." She fell silent again until they reached the top, coming out into a roughly square area centered by the elevator shaft column, the relay station to the left of the doors. Cort slung her pack onto a table on the other side and took her helmet off, then started stripping off her armour. Charon rapidly moved to the other side of the column when everything else started following it, and she snorted. "You're the one who put me in the mud." Sitting on the edge of the table, Cort delicately pulled out a gun magazine after draping her clothes over the chairs, and waited for the mud to dry up entirely. "I'm not naked, you know, there's still my skivvies. You can come out without risking personal mortification, mine or yours."

His voice floated out from around the corner. "I'm fine here, thanks." Charon stayed resolutely behind the other wall and started tending to his scrapes.

Cort grinned and went back to her reading until the light started to fail, then vigorously slapped the dirt from herself. Grazes have scabbed over. That's a plus at least. Digging around in her pack, she looked for something clean to change into, pulling out her mended Vault suit and clean underwear. "Well, it'll cover everything and it's warm enough. Most importantly, it doesn't stink. Thank God Wadsworth got those stains out." Cort stared at her suit. Something was nagging at the back of her mind, but she couldn't place what and dismissed it. After dressing, Cort put her pack on the ground, placing the lantern on the table and turning it on. "Come on out Charon. I'm dressed, and it's time for supper."

The ghoul edged out and walked over, sitting down at the table and watching her pull out food and dirty water. "Are we not installing the dish tonight?"

"No. I'm tired, it's dark and I don't want to climb out there while either one of them is occurring. It would be completely typical for me to do something stupid like fall or drop the dish if I rushed ahead and did it now." She shoved a package of snack cakes and a Mutfruit across to him, and started munching on dried noodles after putting down a Salisbury Steak and a bowl of water for Dogmeat. Charon started stripping his shotgun and pistol down on the table after he finished, Cort staring at the wall and plucking at her faded blue sleeves. Wordlessly, he reached over and started work on her three guns when he had completed his own. "Thanks." Charon grunted in reply, and they went back to sitting in silence, Cort leaning against the wall. Eventually, she nodded off in the chair, lulled by the quiet clicks of the ghoul working.

Charon looked over at her when he had finished with everything and scowled. Kid's going to be stiff as a fucking board when she wakes up. That'll really help her scramble around on the scaffolding. And probably make her bitch all morning. "Cort. Cort. Wake up."

"Lemmielone." She went back to snoring

"Cort!"

"Lemmiefuckalone." This slur was particularly more cranky. Charon frowned. If he woke her up after that the chances of her having another fit at him was definitely more probable. He had decided at some point earlier to find more self-restraint when dealing with her. If he continued to wind her up he might prompt her to become senselessly erratic, and she was loopy enough as it was. That laughing shit had been alarming, and was more pronounced now than it had been in the MoT. Charon wasn't sure if his undisciplined behaviour was prompting any of it or not, but didn't want to risk it. He spent another half hour listening to the wheels turn in his own head.

Oh, the hell with it. She was light enough, and if she didn't mind touching him, she probably wouldn't mind him touching her. Cort had held her arms out willingly enough to be plucked off the lander; he could certainly move her off a chair to save himself some damned whining the next day. Charon got up and slid an arm beneath her shoulders and knees, then quickly and smoothly deposited her on the mattress shoved in between the support struts next to the table. Dogmeat came over to him and whuffed.

"Well get in. I'm sure as fuck not." He watched the dog lie down next to the girl and returned to the table, pulling over Cort's discarded magazine and flipping it open. He could find a spot on the floor later when he got tired, and settled down to read.


Dogmeat was considering things. His world had picked up another moon. So far he was reserving judgment; this one also appeared vested in protecting her and did a good job, but seemed to make her frequently angry. The dog wasn't quite sure why he kept doing it, it seemed silly behaviour for an otherwise good moon. The new one was risking the 'bad' word, although Dogmeat had yet to hear it come out of her, directed towards either of them. He preened and whuffed to himself. Of course not directed at him. He was best. He would wait for further instructions, if she gave them, and until then act as he had been told towards the other.

After the figure in the chair had been slumped over for a while, the dog trotted over and put his front paws on the table, then poked the lantern out. Neither of them apparently knew how to do this before sleeping. He crawled back into bed with his world, huffed, snuggled, and fell asleep.

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Psst, want a 25th chapter reward? Go check out my profile to see what Cort looks like. Oh, she's going to go places! Quickie sketch I did when FF wouldn't let me upload anything for like half an hour.