Thanks so much for the new reviews and favs, you guys are awesome! I've had a lot of time to write this weekend so remember to check and make sure you haven't skipped a chapter.


Charon was dreaming. They weren't linear dreams like he normally had, only random images, thoughts and sounds strung together in various orders fading in and out of the darkness. He would have pushed them away, looking for quiet, but Cort kept surfacing and speaking to him through all of them, and he was supposed to follow her orders.

'Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.' Her in the 9th Circle, barefoot and detested, then bare and cutting herself open for him. 'He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.' His ghoulification, the radiation burning him up inside, then her sleeping next to his chest, soothing warmth. 'Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.' Never touching or getting close, then her getting closer, touching him. 'Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' An employer trying to kill him, leaving him a bleeding pile in the dust. Crawling through the dust to die next to her. 'A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.' Holding her against him when she hurt. Hurting, and oh fuck, he hurt so much, and Cort...Cort was holding him.

"Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked."

Charon slowly opened his eyes, focusing on the two pale forearms draped over his bare chest, one of them partially covered by a dusty Pip-Boy. Both ended in slender, terminally filthy hands caked in blood and rust up to the wrists, their perfect fingers splayed on his patchy skin and exposed muscle. Two equally dirty knees were propped up on either side. She had somehow gotten herself underneath him in something that looked like a failed piggyback maneuver, his arms on either side of her thighs. He closed his eyes again and groaned, everything too bright with the sun beating down.

"Charon?" Hot breath and a familiar, hopeful voice next to where his left ear used to be. Taking in as deep a breath of his own as he could manage, the ghoul opened his eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head. It was getting easier, something nearby was giving radiation off at a comfortably high level, baking into him from nearly every direction. He squinted for a moment. The Pip-Boy's Geiger counter was turned off. He would have to warn her.

"Something's irradiated." The hands bunched into fists, then relaxed again.

"I know, I told you I'd bring it back for you."

"You need to get away from it." He tried to push himself up, failing miserably and resting his head back against her warm neck when she pulled down on his chest.

"It's fine, Charon. It won't hurt me, promise." Too tired to object and believing her anyway, he laid quietly and let the radiation sink into his damaged body, waiting for the jumble of events in his head to sort themselves out. Most recently there had been the Deathclaw, and Cort dying...no, not dying. She was here.

"You're not dead."

"No, I'm not. We went over this already, remember?"

"I told you to leave me."

"And just who precisely holds the fucking contract in our relationship? Oh wait, listen! I think the implant in my chest is saying it's me." Cort wrapped herself tighter around him. "You don't tell me what I can and can't do."

Head clearing even further, something else percolated through to Charon while the girl shifted against him; namely how blissfully hot she was wherever she was making contact with his body. If he had thought Cort felt like a radiator before, now she was like being next to a living blast furnace. He started trying to push himself around to face her, panicking. "Oh fuck, the radiation's coming from you, fuck, get it out! Where's the shitting Rad Away, you said there was more." Cort locked her hands around her wrists and tucked in her knees as he struggled.

"And I said it wouldn't fucking hurt me, so knock it off and stay fucking still."

"No, fuck no, you have to-" He cut off abruptly when Cort bellowed in his ear.

"Charon! What did I instruct you to do."

"Stay still." Latching onto the order, he calmed down and waited for the next one.

"Good. Now watch me, it's time for show and tell." Slowly letting go, Cort reached into her left boot and pulled out her combat knife, bringing it up in front of him as he cautiously kept his eyes on it. "Now mind me like I said and stay still, I don't need to accidentally stab you or something and have to start all this shit over again." Fighting with a massive impulse to grab her hands when she started slicing her right arm open, lacing new cuts over similar scar tissue, he stared wide-eyed as the slashes closed up almost instantly, the small amount of escaped blood running down and off her elbow. Shoving the knife back into its sheath after wiping it off on her pant leg, she placed her hands back on top of his chest and sighed. "See? No worries."

Charon was convinced he had just hallucinated. Radiation did not heal smoothskins, what it did do was damage the living hell out of them until it was removed. He managed to croak out a single word, staring at the new silvery lines on Cort's arm. "What."

"Radiation heals me just like a ghoul. The only difference is I don't flush it out afterward, which is damned lucky for you." His next question hurt her like hell.

"What are you?" Cort winced and wrung her hands together, resisting the urge to let go and turn around to hide herself from him entirely.

"I'm slightly ...mutated, that's all. It happened right after I came out of the Vault, one of Moria's bright ideas that unsurprisingly didn't turn out like she planned. Once I'm over 400 Rads, I start regenerating damaged flesh. I can't go over 1,000 without frying though, just like everybody else." She shook her head and sighed. "Why do you think I kept staying irradiated while we were fighting, and accidentally drinking all that glowing water?"

"I just thought you were fucking stunned." Feeling closer to normal and not quite as weak, he plucked her hands off his chest and sat up, slowly scooting backwards while Cort moved to the side and pulled her knees up under her chin. "Why didn't you tell me?" She folded her hands in front of her legs and avoided looking at him.

"Moira told me not to tell anyone. She was worried people would blow my brains out or try using me as a lab animal if the wrong person found out what I could do, so I just hid it from everyone. You're the only one outside of her, Dogmeat and Barrows that knows now, I don't even think he told Nurse Graves." Looking for something to distract herself with, she picked up several cans and boxes of food scattered around her emptied pack and piled them in front of Charon. "Here. You're going to be practically starving in a minute, if you aren't already." The ghoul picked up the closest item and broke it open. He was getting hungry.

"So how the fuck did Barrows find out, if you weren't telling anyone?"

"I let him cut pieces out of me to use for his and Grave's research."

"WHAT?" Clumsily making a mid-air retrieval of the can of Cram that had tumbled out of his hands, Cort held it back out to him, shaking it gently when he didn't take it immediately. He snatched it away from her as she scowled back at him, furious at the discovery that someone had mutilated her and he hadn't been around to stop it. "Why would you let someone fucking do that?"

"Why are you so pissed off? You didn't even know me then, and I offered to do it because he was good to me. Besides, I can and did grow it all back. That's why I know you should eat. Now." Watching him do as she instructed and noticing a wince when he leaned too far forward after one of the boxes, she shuffled back over and pressed against his side. "Better?"

"...Yes." After he had finished eating and sat staring inquisitively at her for a moment, Cort rolled her eyes and crawled into his lap, Charon immediately wrapping his arms tightly around her waist when she had settled.

"I'm not a fucking hot water bottle, you know. No, you twit, don't let go of me. It's alright, I know it feels good to you." Feels pretty good to me too right now. Resting her head on his chest as he returned to hugging her, she watched Dogmeat off in the distance, patrolling around in a wide looping circle. Once Charon was completely back together, she would have to flush herself out and take a closer look at the dog. He was moving fine, but if there were any gashes in him she would now have to resort to using stitches, and wanted to do that while the sun was still high in the sky. For now, it was nice to just lean against the big ghoul and take a moment to thoroughly decompress from everything they had just gone through. After sitting together for a long while, Cort reached down to poke around his midsection, looking for any remaining damaged flesh.

Would you fucking stop that?" Charon started squirming and looked distinctly uncomfortable as she methodically pushed in around his bottom ribs.

No, I most certainly will not. Your viscera was saying howdy-do to the sunshine a few hours ago, and we're not moving until I'm one hundred percent sure you're okay." Flicking her hands down over his side towards the hip that had been injured, she froze with an incredulous look on her face when the ghoul let out out a strange, stifled bark at her touch. "Oh, you're kidding me. No way."

"No way what?" Charon glowered at her, not liking the crazy grin breaking out on her face. Making another experimental poke, he gave off a noise that sounded suspiciously like a yipe and her grin widened even further.

"Hah ahaa, this." Cort darted her clever fingers in and started tickling everywhere she could reach as he frantically tried to grab the offending digits.

"What the fuck are you doing to me?" Smiling wickedly every time she got him to produce one of his strange barks, she easily slipped her smooth hands out of his rough grasping ones and redoubled her assault.

"It's called being ticklish! Lots of people are, even me, you find out by doing what I'm doing now to...oh no. No no no. Don't you dare." Cort took one look at his face and bolted, getting almost out of the range of his much longer reach but not quite making it. Grabbing her by the calf, Charon dragged her back and started performing the torture she had just taught to him, making Cort laugh like a loon.

"Let's see how you like it, you little bast-!" He cut off abruptly as the girl got her own hands back to work, and both of them rolled across the dirt, arms flailing and looking for the advantage. Grabbing her by the Pip-Boy a minute later, Charon hoisted her left arm up and attacked her ribs.

Cort bunched up, tears running out of her as she squealed. "Stop it stop it stoppit! Help, oh God I need help!"

Both of them froze stiff a moment later when a click cut through the air.

"Now why don't you just let go of the little lady, rotbag, before I blow your shuffling brains out." Both of them turned around to face a scavenger in a heavy pack and long coat holding a cocked .32 pistol, which was loosely trained on Charon while he looked at Cort. "Don't you worry, looks like I was just in time. Don't even have his own clothes all the way off yet."

Cort started up at him, open-mouthed, snapping it shut abruptly when Charon went to move in front of her. "No, you get behind me, you know why. Now." Looping an arm around Cort pushed back on the ghoul, who let out a quiet stream of profanities at her as he obeyed, then stood up in front of him and tried to make herself as big as possible. "I don't know what the hell you think you're doing or what you thought you saw, but he's not hurting me, so put the gun away." Watching the scavenger jerk the weapon down, she ducked to block it before he could fire, Charon reaching up to steady her.

Smiling and exposing missing teeth, the man shrugged and scratched the back of his head. "Now girlie, why don't you move so I can put down that giant mess behind you. Have to shoot them zombies in the head, you know."

"Why don't you go pound sand." Voice roughening, she reached back to grab the ghoul's hand where it still rested on her hip. The scavenger's smile turned into a sneer, his eyes narrowing.

"Like that is it? Disgusting girl, just disgusting. Far be it from me to criticize taking it where you can find it, and I'll find it with you before you go cold, but at least have the decency to find a corpse that ain't rotten. Now one last chance to move before I take you down, and maybe we can have some fun without you being dead first. What do you say?"

Smiling psychotically as Charon's hand tightened painfully on hers, she laughed. "You have so entirely missed the mark with your observations here. And what do I say? Rip him up."

The scavenger turned around as a snarl started behind him. "Wha-"

Cort bellowed triumphantly. "SIC 'EM, BOY!"

Something that looked like it belonged in the very pits of Hell slammed into the scavenger, shining white teeth in a face clotted with blood slashing into the arms he threw up to protect himself, the pistol discharging into the air. Trying to grab at the monstrosity working its way up to his throat, his hands slipped away, filled with chunks of loose and sticky gore as Dogmeat dug his hind legs into the man's groin and kicked. Screaming, he had time to wonder if dogs could be ghouls before his face disappeared inside a red roaring maw.

Charon stood up next to Cort and roughly hauled her against him, smiling and snarling in counterpoint to the dog as he watched the animal shake his head back and forth, ripping up flaps of skin.

"Look, Charon! Dogmeat found us some supplies."

"Good mutt."


After Charon retrieved his combat shotgun from where he had left it earlier and set himself up to keep watch, and she had taken enough Rad Away to clean herself out, Cort started sorting out everything scattered across the ground, Dogmeat helping her while she was still too nauseated to move very far. I hate Rad Away. I hate it so much. Hatehatehate. Finishing up with their damaged belongings, she stripped the pack from the scavenger, his clothing too destroyed to bother saving. "We've got more food, more Stimpaks, ammo, more purified and dirty water, new belt for you, oooh, just everything in here! Nice fat bag of caps too. Guy was a busy little bastard."

Yeah, well now he's a fucking dead little bastard." Cort tilted her face down and smiled. The ghoul had walked over and unloaded a shot into what was left of the scavenger's head after collecting his shotgun, blowing it into a paste against the ground.

She sat down and spent the rest of the afternoon fixing up and cleaning out everything that needed it, occasionally eating something out of the food pile. Dogmeat had had only a few superficial lacerations, the extra ablative plates stored in his armour protecting him from the worst of the Deathclaw's swipe. By the start of the evening she had managed to repair all their armour and salvaged enough of their clothing for them to wear under it. With enough medical supplies(now split between all three of them, she grimly noted), food and water, Cort wasn't worried. Those dumb Talon Company fuckers will pop up again like clockwork and give us all spares anyway.

Looking around, she noted the yellowing light and frowned. "Are you ready to get moving or do you want to stay here for the night?"

Charon snarled out from the rock he was perched on like a half-naked gargoyle. "I fucking hate here. Here can crawl up my ass and fucking choke on it."

"Okay, so that's a no, then. Come get your clothes changed, there's still lots of time before sunset. We can probably make it to the garage just after dark."


For anyone curious, the beginning is an excerpt from Psalm 91, King James version, which is what they use in the game for Catherine's favourite Revelation quote.