"I was born a long damn time ago, obviously. I'm not sure when, it's like what I told you about working for that fucking pig Ahzrukhal. Sometimes I was too out of it to keep track, and that's happened a lot over the years, so my counting is probably off on all of it. I only know what I was told when my training was finished, or what my first fucking employer was told when they got rid of me. Them. I don't know if I freaked the people who made me the fuck out or what. Maybe I did. I hated all of them. I couldn't do anything as long as one of them held my contract, but when they decided to test transferring it, well. Loopholes." Charon smiled darkly to himself. "The one who let go of it went out like Ahzrukhal did. They nearly put me down then, but the head of the group wouldn't let them, and after that they were smart enough to give direct orders about not killing any of them after giving it up. I think the only reason I hadn't before is because I didn't know I could do it, and only did it at all because the one I killed had been the worst of them. He was the one responsible for most of my training."

Cort quietly piped up from under his chin. "What was that like?" Charon drew his brows together, letting a slow breath out of the ragged hole where his nose used to be.

"Fucking training. I don't like to think about it, I'd rather forget it. But I'll tell you anyway. A lot of it was like being stuck in that fucking bar. No sleep, interrupted sleep, not even being allowed to piss without someone's say so. But instead of Ahzrukhal's bitching, you got beaten if you fell asleep or if you didn't. Beaten if you couldn't hold it, or couldn't go. Instead of standing in a corner in some shithole, it was standing in a literal shithole, and beaten if I threw up from the stench. Or the sun, or a dust storm, what the fuck ever. In between all of that, skills training. Small arms. Stealth. Explosives. There's...there's a lot of stuff I don't remember, too. I don't think I'm supposed to. I don't remember why I have to obey, or want to. I just know I need to. I don't know how long it was. They said I was 17 when they sold my contract to some kind of fucking broker, and I know I had just learned to read before they took me. But I don't know how old you are when that happens. I know I was very small."

He carefully tugged on Cort's hair again as she shifted, watching the strands of it catch on his ruined fingers in the dim light from the window. If he had managed to pull it too hard she hadn't complained, and so he brought her as close as their armour would allow and kept doing it.

"After that 'operational incident', they decided that there were flaws with my programming, but I was too big of an investment already to outright kill. I was a...prototype. I wasn't reproduced because apparently I was too much fucking work to go through to make, but they fucking finished me anyway because it was interesting to them and to recoup some of the expense. I was sold after being with the broker for a couple years, once he got tired of me and I'd been around long enough to get fucking popular with his regular clientele. That is the first and hopefully the last fucking time I ever end up on a fucking auction block. The fucking shitstain thought it was funny, my makers had been careful to stress that I wasn't a slave, and didn't think of myself as one. 'Charon is a highly sophisticated and valuable tool, not chattel. You will treat him accordingly', they said. Big fucking surprise, he didn't. My next employer was head of a mercenary company. It wasn't the Talons, one of the ones around before them. That lasted for a few more years, I don't know how many. I got thrashed to fuck doing that job, but at least it was interesting. I got really fucking good at offing the difficult targets I was sent after. Like I said before, big but able to blend in. When I cared to. When I could."

Charon looked over as James rolled over near the far wall, freezing and staying silent until he was sure the man hadn't woken up and started listening to him. Relaxing after a moment, he turned his face back to the window and continued.

"Tenpenny hired the company I was working for to clear out that shitting hotel for him. He had just come over the Atlantic, and was carving a nice fat fucking place for himself out of the Wasteland. The leader of the company was ready to retire, and I was used as fucking payment to get in. Tenpenny was practically shitting himself, that thrilled to have me. Gave the bastard merc a penthouse when he found out just exactly how obedient I was, and it was a game to him to see what I would do. To myself and others. Then he got fucking bored and started that sniper rifle shit, which is how he got interested in ghouls. I had to haul the first one back in after he shot the poor bastard so he could examine it. Then I had to bring them back alive. He wanted to see how they worked while they were still living, but of course he wasn't going to fucking touch them, so I had to do it while he fucking observed. I think he started to really hate them when he found out they looked the exact same as normal people on the inside. The things I had to do to them so he could see that, I'm not going to fucking tell you. Sometimes...sometimes I think this is my punishment for that."

He held one hand out, spreading the fingers and letting the weak light from the window fall over it, turning the remaining skin and raw muscle into a rough plane of desaturated blues and greys. He stared at it dully, hating the sight of it before a small and dirty white one reached up and laced its long fingers through his, almost disappearing in his larger grasp. Watching his ruined flesh hide hers away and hating himself, he pushed forward into the rest of his story.

"Fucking unsurprisingly, he eventually got bored with that, and decided he wanted to see how they were made. The residents weren't too keen on 'normal' people being held in radiation, but since I was a big silent fucker he used to intimidate all of them, nobody cared if he tried it on me. And I couldn't say no. After my skin started flaking off to the point where everyone noticed and demanded he do something 'about the vermin', he ordered me outside, then started shooting once he got back upstairs. Do you know what it's like, knowing some fuck is going to shoot you and you can't fucking try to get away until they actually do it? I managed to crawl out of range after being shot a few times and made it to where we are now. That's how I know he could shoot you in front of the gas station, it's the last time he hit me. He sold my contract to a trader that came through the next day, and told him he would refund it if he found me dead. All he would need to do is bring back my head for his caps. There was still enough left of me to live when he found me."

Charon stopped and looked back down as Cort started squirming, speaking quietly to him again a second later.

"I need to move around a bit. My hip's starting to stiffen up."

The ghoul released her as she readjusted her small frame against his bigger one and then closed his eyes, cursing himself all over again for injuring her. Fuck, she's wiping at her eyes. You really did a fucking number on her this time, you sack of shit. "If you wish to punish me for injur-" She cut him off, her voice thick and emotional.

"I don't. You know that. Now keep going." Cort snuffled and jabbed at his ribs, and he glanced back down at her. She had turned around to the side and faced herself out towards the window, leaning against him for support with her hands in her lap. Charon closed his eyes again to block out the sight of how wet her face was getting and did as he was told.

"I wasn't with the trader for long, at least I don't think so. Fucker decided that he couldn't stand looking at me the worse I got, and sold my contract off to another merchant. I went through a lot of them over the years, some stationary, some not. The novelty wore off for most of those bastards when I started costing them business. Apparently, most people don't want to buy shit when there's a giant fucking corpse hanging over the merchandise. The last one made regular trips into Underworld, and eventually lost my contract in a rigged poker game with Ahzrukhal. He was the first ghoul I had as an employer. I thought that meant it would be better for me. It wasn't. I just got what I fucking deserved for turning into this mess and thinking it could be better." He sighed, stopping for a moment to reflect. "Not all of those scrubs down there were bad, but they were all too afraid of Ahzrukhal and then me to do anything about it once he started bragging and they found out why I was there. What I was. There's no way he would have let me be employed by another ghoul anyway. He probably thought they'd have me kill him after he let me go. They wouldn't have had to ask."

"I noticed." Both of them jerked when something suddenly rattled around outside. Getting up, they grabbed their guns and silently went back downstairs, Cort fiddling with her Pip-Boy as she held her repeater braced against her left hip. They made two complete circuits of the building looking for the source before finding the tin can that was blowing around the outside of the blasted foundation. Staring down, she delicately mashed it between two rocks with her foot before turning to Charon. "Of course. The mighty and vicious Pork N' Beans can. If it hadn't already been gutted by a roaming pack of wild Cram, we'd be in trouble."

Charon rolled his eyes. "You're fucking looped."

"Maybe." Cort smiled up at him and tugged at his shirt with her free hand as the wind pushed her hair back up into a crest, fluffing out the tangles he had twisted it into. "Let's go back inside." After taking one last look around, the ghoul followed her back into the shelter of the building, pausing next to one of the ruined walls when he got there.

"Shine your light over here." Carefully shielding her Pip-Boy from the outside, she came over and snapped the light on. There was an old, blackened stain sunk into the concrete, fading out into the dust drifted up to it. "That's where I was. I think I was thirty-one then." Cort stared at it as new tears escaped her and tracked down her face.

"Why don't we go kill him? We could do it, you know." She turned her light off and backed up a bit, not wanting to stare at the old blood worked into the wall any longer, or even risk seeing its shadow.

"He never comes out, and it's impossible to hit him from the ground. We'd get shot down trying to get in. We can't go anywhere near that gate with without them trying to kill me. Any ghoul would have to be a fucking lunatic to try it, and Tenpenny's trying to have you offed as it is. If you went in there it would have to be by yourself, and you'd never come out. I don't know what he would do to you. I won't let...I don't want you to go in there."

Cort snuffled and absently rubbed at her hip after slinging her repeater onto her back. "Yeah, I kind of noticed that." Charon winced as she did it.

"Look, you need to give me some kind of punishment. It's not the correct behaviour. I injured you. You're-you're fucking crying for fuck's sakes." Cort looked at him oddly for a moment, her face unreadable in the starlight.

"I'm not crying over my leg."

"Then what the fuck is your major malfunction this time?"

Exasperated, she snuffed back on her stuffy nose and halfheartedly snapped at him. "I'm crying for you, you twit, not because of you."

What she had told him sinking in, Charon rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, the plating on them creaking with the motion. "I don't deserve those."

Cort laughed weakly, wiping at her face. "You go through all that and tell me you don't deserve me crying over you?" She sobered after a moment, watching Charon stare at the wall where the stain was, now hidden by the dark. "So do you think it's better for you now? With me, I mean?" He nodded. "You think you deserve any of that?" A rapid shake, and she was puzzled. Anyone who went through that amount of hell deserved some kind of happiness in return to make up for it. "Why not?"

The ghoul spread his arms out and came over towards her, suddenly almost on the verge of screaming, his boots kicking pebbles up against her shin guards as he advanced. "Fucking look at me and ask yourself that, ask yourself what you fucking see and what I should deserve for what I've done. What something like me should get. Brainwashed slave, robot, murderer, failed experiment? Rotface, walking corpse, flesh sucker, monster, braineater? I've fucking heard them all Cort, don't think I fucking haven't, so just go ahead and fucking tell me what you fucking see!" She planted her feet and looked up at him warily as he leaned over her, his arms still outstretched, one hand clenched tightly around the barrel of his shotgun while the other was hauled back in a fist. His eyes danced over her face as he waited for her to finally say something that would end all of it for him, prove that he had been an idiot for daring to be happy again, that she was like all of those who came before her. Charon waited to hear what he thought he deserved.

"I see somebody I want, remember? I see you." Cort staggered as Charon dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face against her plated chest and starting to shudder as all his memories overwhelmed him at once. She stared down at the top of his head, wide-eyed, before lacing her hands gently over the back of his neck and hugging him back. He crushed her against him painfully when she did so and shook even harder, almost lifting her entirely off the ground with his movements. She stood there holding and being held for a long time, bewildered, scared, and not knowing what to say or how to say it as he quietly wore himself out. Eventually his frantic grasping turned into tired stroking and she took it as a sign he was starting to come out of it. Leaning her head forward, she spoke softly down to him. "Better now?"

He muffled out a response against her armour. "I don't fucking know." She let herself slide downwards, coming to rest on her own knees against him. Cort wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her hot cheek up against his cooler one, letting out a long sigh.

"How about now."

"...Yes." He let his arms fall and leaned against her, Cort arching her back and digging her knees into the rubble-strewn floor, straining to support him as he buried his face against her neck. She left him there for a few moments, speaking up only when her legs finally started to give out from his weight.

"Think we can go get some sleep now? Then we can wake up faster and never fucking come back here again." Charon reached up and tugged at her hair, sighing out an answer while Cort promised herself she would make up for the lie she had just told him later. It's not really a lie if it's only me coming back. It really isn't.

"Yes fucking please." Hauling themselves up, they trudged back upstairs to the corner they had vacated earlier, Charon motioning to Cort to sleep first. After they had sat down against the wall, she curled up against his right leg, pillowing her face on it as he tucked an arm around her waist.

"Charon?"

"What, Cort."

"How old do you think you are right now?" The ghoul counted quietly to himself, feeling the comforting movement of her breathing against his hand.

"No less than eighty-eight, but I don't think over a hundred yet."

She paused, processing the numbers against her own age before asking one last question. "So do you remember anything from before...before they took you?"

Charon looked into the distance, his unfocused gaze going farther back than anything Cort could ever see.

"Her eyes were green, and she was kind."