Charon made it down the hall and managed to pick up a few linens before he leaned against one of the walls and slumped. After all that, he needed a goddamn minute. Of all the previous behaviours he had witnessed from employers, this took the fucking snack cakes. His smoothskin was nuts. Securing his contract was one thing, but this was the first time anyone had mutilated themselves for his benefit. She had cut and ripped herself open for his safety. His employer was hurt again because of him. For someone who would never punish him, Cort was doing an excellent job of making him feel like she was.
This was, this was just... "Fucking nuts. Just fucking...nuts." This last came out as close to a breathy squeak as the ghoul's voice was capable of managing. Charon looked around the room wildly, feeling suspiciously close to what he thought was hyperventilating. He had no clue how to cope with this event, no previous experience to help put it into the correct context. If there even was a correct context. The entire scope of everything he had gone through lately had finally reached a watershed moment. Sliding down to the floor, he put his head between his knees and laced his hands over the back of his neck.
Cort felt pleasantly buzzy, floating comfortably just above 400 Rads. She finished swabbing at the blood covering her chest, wiping away to clean skin with a new straight streak of scar tissue. Well, join my happy snappy collection, fella. At least this one I decided to have myself, and got some good out of it. Tracing over it with her fingertips, she looked around. Charon should have been back from the distracting little errand she had sent him on by now. Cocking her head to favour her good ear, Cort held her breath and listened. Plaster falling, Dogmeat breathing, and a quiet thumping, probably an old loose pipe. It wasn't the Mister Handy, they had returned to the Hospital and found it smashed, probably by the two Super Mutants that had managed to encroach back into the building.
"Charon?" She paused to listen again. Nothing. Cort slid down off the table. "Charon!" Still nothing. Whipping her head around, she clicked at Dogmeat. "Go watch the entrance. Run for us if you hear anything come in." She watched the dog station himself at the left of the room and grabbed her repeater, slinking down towards where Charon had headed after socking the butt into her shoulder. Half naked bloody girl walking alone into the dark after someone goes missing. This was always a great idea in the old films. 'Oh shit, the mummy's after us, let's all walk a little faster'. Cort suppressed a laugh, swinging into the first room and moving the rifle from one side to the other. Nothing. Pulling rapidly back out, she silently made her way to the next room and repeated the action, venturing farther and farther down the hallway. The thumping noise was getting louder, and didn't sound much like a pipe anymore. The thought that this was the first time she had been completely alone since her first week outside crashed into her mind like a window shattering. She started speaking, barely whispering the words, while moving towards the room the noise was emanating from.
"Not a mummy, not a mummy, not the Mummy. Not the Wolfman either, or Dracula, or...Charon!" Cort stared into the room, slowly lowering the barrel of the repeater. The ghoul was sitting against the wall, head between his knees and hands over the back of his neck. The thumping was from the impact of his back hitting the wall over and over. Cort quickly glanced back down towards the atrium, then walked into the room. "Charon, stop it. Stop it!" Fretting, she watched him continue to rock back and forth. Whatever had just happened to him, it had apparently gone off like a bomb if he wasn't paying attention to her. Looking around the room, she didn't see anything obvious that could be considered traumatizing.
Letting the repeater slide down in her right hand until she was gripping the barrel, Cort crouched and shuffled closer until she was next to him, then sat down. The wall at her back vibrated with each impact, and brows knitting together, she quickly shoved her left arm behind him when he moved forward. "Ouch! You're heavy, you know that?" This statement or the impediment of her arm was apparently nonsensical enough to get through to him, and he stopped moving. Cort sat still for a few very long moments, pulling her rifle closer to her side.
"Sooo. Want to tell me why the wheels fell off your trolley?" Counting out the minutes, she slowly felt her fingers getting pins and needles and wiggled them, right before he quietly rasped from between his knees.
"You're injured, and it's my fucking fault."
Oh jeeze, not this all over again. Don't tell me I broke him. No, of course not, all this means he's just peachy keen, you moron. "Don't worry about my neck Charon, we went over this." Cort frowned when he didn't respond. "You're not gonna get punished." Still nothing.
Fisting up part of his shirt in her hand, she thought rapidly through her possible courses of action. Talking didn't seem to do much, so she selected something non-verbal to do first. What, though. Maybe...well, worked for Dogmeat when I went loopy. Pressing her head against Charon's side, Cort put down the repeater, slid as close as she could to him and hugged. Absently noting him flinch and squeezing harder for a moment in response to it, she considered what to do next while sitting quietly and listening to his heart thump in her bad ear. It was going way too fast for her liking. Finally, something dawned on her. Oh you're kidding me. He can't really think...
"Charon, d'you think you're responsible for my actions today?" A pause.
"Yes."
"Well, you're not. You didn't make me come up with this idea, or choose it. I decided to. Me. Not you. It doesn't matter why I did it. The physical action was my own." Cort stared down at the scar on her chest. "Was it wrong? Do you want me to cut it back out?"
"NO!" He pushed back against the wall so hard she hissed, prompting him to move forward again.
"Okay then. So was me cutting myself, which by the way is entirely healed, your fault?" Another, longer pause. She listened closely as the thumping in her ear gradually slowed down.
"...No."
"Okay again. You're okay. Promise. Think you can uncurl now so we can go back to kicking the shit out of things?" He unlaced his hands and sat up. Cort let go and straightened up with him. "Perfect. Feel better?"
"Yeah. The radiation is helping too." Drawing his brows together, he looked at her. "Wait. Why the fuck are you irradiated as hell?"
"Oh. Um. I uh, got thirsty and accidentally drank one of the glowing bottles of water. Blood loss made me kinda spaced."
Charon laughed shakily. "You are a complete fucking ditz, you know that?"
"Hey! They all looked glowy in the sunshine."
They pulled back into GNR long enough for Cort to sort through and select the most useful or valuable items to take with them before remaking her cache in the storeroom.
"If we're going to Rivet City, there's at least four or five different merchants to sell things to. I want to get together as many caps as I can, God only knows when we'll need them for something." Picking up her Fat Man again, she hugged it, then stuck her tongue out at Charon when he rolled his eyes at her. "Don't look at me like that. This thing is awesome. I have named it George."
"That thing is a fusion nightmare waiting to happen in your hands." Cort rolled her eyes back and tucked the weapon back under the blanket, giving it a final pat, then flipped up her Pip-Boy map.
"Okie dokes, there's about three different ways we can get down to the carrier. There's going to Metro Central from here, through Dupont Circle, to Pennsylvania Avenue. Huh, that's where the White House is."
"Was."
"Oh. Nuts. Well, anyway, from there we can come out at Seward Square, which connects to Anacostia Crossing. There's also a more direct route from the Museum Station. We could stop in and see the Rangers on the way there or back, really, and get paid for that fucking nightmare we went through. Lastly, we could follow the river down from Farragut West."
"Well, which route do you want?" Charon looked up from rearranging his pack. "Inside or outside?"
It took Cort a split-second to decide. "Oh outside. Definitely outside. With air. And sky. No crumbling walls." Brightening, she dug to the bottom of her pack and pulled out a thin package. "We can even pop over to Megaton, and I can drop off Carol's letters. And take the rest of this stuff back to the house! Haha, saddle up George!"
Charon groaned, shook his head, and started repacking everything.
All three of them laden down like mules, they headed east and back out of downtown DC. The problems with the Talon Company were greater on the way out of GNR this time, since it seemed most of them were travelling to the city through the Farragut West Metro. Cort had gotten impatient enough towards the end to literally drive the last squad outside by pelting down the tunnel with the Fat Man, screaming about ramming a Mini Nuke up each of them in a colourful and inventive stream of profanities. Charon ran beside her and shot each one of them in the back, bringing them down for Dogmeat to bite through the back of their necks.
"You are so fucking lucky they didn't notice that thing wasn't loaded. We're probably lucky it wasn't fucking loaded."
"It's called George."
"I am not humouring you with that. The sad face you're putting on will not make me do it either, jackass."
Cort reslung the heavy weapon and cautiously looked outside of the Metro Station stairwell. There were definitely more bodies on the ground, both from raiders and more Talon Company. "Looks like those assholes made this part of the return easy for us, at least." She looked around to where Charon was stripping the three mercs they had just killed. "Do you think we can manage a bit more material?"
"Fuck's sakes, you're going to snap in half if you load anything else on. I can manage a little more of this shit, armour plates, maybe a couple rifles. Want to stop and cache it?"
"No, I want to get moving, we'll just search the rest of them for caps. There's a couple stops along the way I need to make as it is."
"What fantastic news. That always turns out so well for us."
"Pessimist." Cort waited for him to finish putting things away, searched through the remaining bodies for money, then headed out towards Megaton.
The Super Duper Mart turned out to be laughably easy with her companions and the amount of experience she had accumulated, and Cort pulled out the small amount of food and medicines that Moira had wanted from the building. Her next stop was Springvale Elementary School. She eschewed total stealth in this task for something deeply more satisfying. Quietly slipping in the door, they stood in the lobby while Cort threw her head back and called out.
"Starla. Oh Staaaarla." After a few moments of steady stomping, a mohawked woman appeared at the top of the stairs, looking down at them.
"What? Who the fuck are you?"
"Hey Starla?"
"What?"
"Eat my dick." Cort whipped up the repeater and fired, splattering the raider's brains over the wall and ceiling, then nodded to her companions. "Rip them up. Every fucking last one of them." Both her and Charon rapidly moved through the building putting down anything that moved, sometimes after Dogmeat had slashed out tendons and sent the raiders crashing to the floor. Cort was positively radiant by the time they finally reemerged from the building, splattered in a mix of her own blood and others. After slatting the gore off her visor with the edge of a hand, she knelt down to rub Dogmeat's ears and turned her face to Charon.
"Let's go home. I need a nap. And a bath."
"The state you're in, you'll need a fucking fire hose."
Cort squinted up at him in the morning sunshine and smiled.
Cookie to whoever finds the Stephen King reference! Last chapter for the week, my training course starts tomorrow and I've got a looot of reading to do. Left you on a happy note while you wait. :) Don't worry, things will go to hell in a handbasket again soon.
