Haha awesome, thanks for the new reviews! Ace on replaying F3 for those of you who are, gotta do something until New Vegas comes out. ;)
Charon had managed to get a hold of the knife Bill had dropped when he hit the floor, and cut both himself and James free before moving towards his employer, the dog at her feet continuing to fling gobbets of the dead man everywhere. Being the stronger of the two of them, the ghoul lifted Cort up off of the hook she was hanging from after her father had untied the ropes around her ankles. Having more Stimpaks than glowing water and not entirely comfortable with the idea of irradiating his daughter on purpose no matter what the result was, James used them on Cort, shaking his head and swearing at himself as he watched the thin holes fill in.
"Stupid, stupid stupid. Too much time in that bullshit Vault and depending on niceties."
Charon considered chipping in to share his thoughts about their previous blinding idiocy and then decided it wouldn't help matters, moving instead to stand at the door in case there was anyone else left to kill. Dogmeat discarded the remains of Bill and came over to lick the vomit off of Cort's face and neck, who totally ignored the gore all over him and hugged the dog to her. "Who's Momma's best boy, huh?" She watched James for a moment, her eyes starting to glaze over as he hurriedly gathered their things together from around the shed, bringing his daughter's clothing back to her as soon as everything was assembled. Thinning his lips at the sight of her, he nudged the dog away and carefully wiped the cannibal's blood from the side of her face and arms with the hem of his own shirt.
"Here Cort. Get yourself together and we can get out of here, honey." Staring up at him blankly, she looked back around the room, searching for something.
"They were eating. They were eating me. They ate me. They ate me." Cort looked over at the remains of Bill, literally flayed open by Dogmeat's attentions. She pointed to the gaping hole in his torso, speaking in an eerily conversational tone. "I think that is me. Hold on, I have to put it back in first." James instantly dropped what he was holding and lunged for her as she moved, grabbing her by the waist before she could get her hands inside the corpse.
"Charon! Drag the body outside, hurry. Hide it from her." Cort struggled, starting to pull him across the dirt floor with her as the ghoul dashed over and started rapidly throwing the pieces outside into the dark, Dogmeat starting to help him a second later. "Sweetheart, look down at your leg, just look at your leg, not up. It's all there. There's nothing missing anymore. Look at it for Daddy please, like a good girl."
"Okay." She obediently tilted her head down, and James took one of her hands and put it over the healed tissue.
"See honey? It's all there. Never gone."
She frowned, pushing at the new scars laced on top of the old ones. "But those two-"
"They're gone now too, Cort. Dogmeat was a good boy, remember?"
She absently corrected him, stroking her fingers over her leg. "Best boy."
"Yes sweetie, the very best. Now we're going to get you dressed so we can all get out of here, all right?" James quickly and quietly started putting her clothes back on her, Cort slowly starting to help him after a moment. They were finishing up with her armour when Charon and the dog came back in, the animal now mouthing Jack's pistol after retrieving it as a prize. James took it away and shoved it into a pocket on the dog's armour after petting him on the head. "We're getting out of here, now, before she goes any farther into shock."
"No fucking arguments from me." Charon shouldered both Cort's pack and his own, then followed behind the pair of them, her father gently nudging her in the direction they needed to go.
After walking for an hour, James decided to stop when they reached a deep gully covered with blasted trees, the sheltered depths hidden almost entirely from view. He gently pushed Cort down after setting his pack in place for her to lean against. "Go to sleep, honey."
"Can't sleep. They'll eat me." She flicked her eyes around while clenching her hands into fists, not seeing her father next to her as she looked for imagined threats. A voice rasped out above her as she did so.
"No they won't, Cort. I'll fucking blow them apart first. Splatter them everywhere for you." Charon came over and gently removed her helmet after kneeling beside her father, then ran a hand through her hair, ignoring James as he stared at him. "Won't I." Her eyes started to focus in on the ghoul as he rubbed behind her intact ear, the panic draining out of them in response to the caress.
"Yes."
"That means you can go to sleep then, doesn't it. Go to sleep, Cort."
"Okay." She slowly slumped back and pulled Dogmeat into her as he came over, Charon continuing to stroke the back of her head and neck as she started to do the same to the dog. Within moments, Cort was snoring.
"Thank fuck. That usually takes longer." Pulling off the packs he was carrying, he removed both their blankets and tucked them around her, covering up as much as possible.
"I expect she's more tired out than normal after that...unique experience." Charon glanced up at James, who was now looking at him with a strange sort of gravity. "I think we need to have a talk, whether you would like to or not. Now."
Not willing to start another shouting match that might rouse his employer, he gave in. "...Fine." Charon motioned to the mouth of the gully, James taking note as he placed a hand back onto Cort's hair and stroked it before leaving. Once they had stationed themselves to watch over the landscape and moved far enough away to ensure she wouldn't wake because of their voices, her father started his interrogation. The first question completely baffled the ghoul.
"Tell me Charon, and please be honest. Are you sleeping with my daughter?"
Charon blinked at the odd query and then answered plainly, keeping his language toned down to where he thought Cort would want it. "Occasionally, when we can find a secure enough location to do so." Of course they had slept together. Anywhere it was safe enough to go to sleep without taking up a watch was taken advantage of, the opportunities for a full night's rest being a rarity. They had all done that the night before leaving Vault 112, although admittedly her father hadn't been awake long enough to know it. He watched as James sighed heavily and rapidly ran both hands over his face before looking back to him, the gravity now replaced by a deep-seated weariness.
"Too late then. And just exactly which one of you initiated that?"
He thought back to their first night together, when Cort had instructed him to sleep after barricading them into one of the abandoned Metro's rooms, and subsequent occasions thereafter. For that matter, she usually always decided where they would sleep as well as how, as was proper for her dominant position. "She did. She always does, it's her decision to make, not mine." James spoke up again after a moment, almost to himself for the first half of it and sounding weirdly like Cort herself.
"Aren't you just a rarity. So tell me, and think very hard about your answer before you give it. What does my daughter mean to you?"
Charon wasn't sure why he would have to think about it that hard. The first question had been more difficult compared to this, and he gave his answer almost instantly back to James after being asked for it. "Cort means everything to me. She's the most important thing in my life."
Staring intently at the other man, James tried to decide if he was being sincere or not, grudgingly settling upon the former. "Charon, I don't know if she ever told you, but her mother and I started our lives out here. I am well aware that ghouls are exactly the same inside as the average person, albeit with some unique physical characteristics." James ignored the other man's snort and continued. "Cort has obviously managed to come to the same conclusion on her own, even without previous knowledge of your kind. In one way it's all I could have hoped for, having raised her to be accepting of others. However. That does not preclude me from being upset over my little girl becoming involved with a violent, dangerous man, particularly one that will expose her to the hates and prejudices of others. People will try to kill her for being close with you."
Charon snorted again, looking at him derisively as he misinterpreted the statement as a criticism on combat strategy. "People try to kill her for waking the fuck up in the morning. I'm not going to make it easier for them by going farther away from her."
'And if I impressed upon you the need to do so? To leave entirely?" The ghoul stared over at James, his expression clearly stating he thought the man had gone crazy.
"You can't. She's the only one that can ever tell me to leave and she won't. She wants me." James rubbed his face again, getting ready to protest the ghoul's claim before he continued speaking. "She's the only one who's ever wanted me." Charon watched as the other man shut his eyes in a painful expression and pinched the bridge of his nose while making a low grumbling noise. Lacing both hands over the back of his neck when it stopped, he looked back over.
"Cort has told you she wants you?"
"Yes."
"Do you want her?"
Charon gave him the same 'have you lost your mind completely' stare as before. "Of course. More than anything."
James dropped his hands and looked up to the sky, seeming to search for something in the starred expanse. Charon patiently waited for the next question as the minutes dragged out, using the time to wonder how he was going to make up for the level of harm he had allowed to come to Cort today because of his inability to protect her.
"Will you ever harm my daughter? In any way?" The ghoul suppressed a startled jerk just in time, surprised by the sudden query so close to his own line of thought. Unwilling to admit to his own failures and feeling guilt over the bruises that had been all too evident on her hip earlier, he responded in a way that hid behind the leeway afforded by the past tense nature of his offences. There was also the fact that he technically did not have to answer to James for anything in the first place.
"I will never harm her." Again. Never fucking again.
"Do you love her?"
He paused before responding and thought hard about his answer this time. Charon wasn't entirely sure what the term meant, but he had heard Carol use it in what seemed like a positive manner on more than one occasion over the years, and Cort seemed happy when she said it to the damned dog, so he decided to agree with James. He could always ask Cort for clarification later, since unsurprisingly no-one had bothered to explain the concept to him previously. Fuck, she will. She always knows the answers to weird fucking questions. "Yes, I do."
James sighed again, still looking up at the sky, and was silent for a long while. "Why don't you go get some rest. It will probably be another long day for us tomorrow, and I have a lot to think about before I can sleep. I'll wake you when it's your turn." Charon nodded in relieved agreement and turned to go just as Cort's father slowly reached up one hand to trace out patterns in the stars.
Placing his own pack next to Cort to lean on, the ghoul spread himself out next to her blanket-shrouded form and crossed his arms. Thoroughly and completely worn out by the odd conversation, having only compounded the stressful nature of the day he had had, he shut his eyes and worked his way as rapidly down into sleep as he could.
By the time Cort woke up it was near to mid-morning, and James had exchanged places with Charon, both of them having decided that letting her sleep herself out was the best course of action. Fuzzily looking around and flipping the blankets over onto her sleeping father, she staggered to her feet and made her way up the side of the gully, uncomfortable and desperately needing to find a bush. Emerging a few minutes later, she walked over to her pack for an apple and something to drink before wandering over to where Charon was keeping watch and croaked out a greeting.
"G'morning."
"Got your fucking marbles back?" She squinted into the sunlight and made a face up at him as he reached over and looped an arm around her waist, balancing the barrel of his shotgun over the other shoulder.
"You wish. Yeah, I feel better." Cort leaned against him as comfortably as her armour would allow, munching through her apple and putting the core into a pocket for Dogmeat before opening the bottle of dirty water she had selected. Charon let go of her as she did it, turning to face her with a thoughtful look.
"Cort."
"Mmhmm?" She glanced over towards him as she drank, making the inquisitive noise in between swallows.
"Do I love you?" Charon blinked reflexively from the spray that hit him as his employer suddenly ejected water out of her mouth and nose. "I didn't ask for a fucking bath."
Starting to cough and snorting while she tried to talk to him, she leaned on her knees and stuttered out a single word. "Wh-whuh-What?"
"Your father asked if I did. I said yes. Do I? Is it like wanting you?" Cort turned her head to the side and snorted the last of the droplets out of her nostrils before responding with a question of her own.
"Wh-What else did he ask you?" She sneezed violently and stared back up at him.
Not willing to get into the details of the question regarding him causing her bodily harm and not being asked what all the questions had been, Charon selected the most innocuous ones from the previous night's conversation. "He asked if I wanted you, and if we'd been sleeping together." He raised a ruined eyebrow as Cort made an odd strangled sound in response and dropped the water bottle. She absently clutched her fingers back around it when he pressed it into her hand after bending to retrieve it for her, hiccuping slightly as she did so.
"Well okay then! So, so what was your answer for the second one. The second question. I know the first."
"I told him yes. We've been doing that since you hired me, for fuck's sakes, whenever we didn't need to keep a watch. Stupid fucking question."
Cort tried to keep from giggling crazily at the ghoul's inadvertent double entendre, while simultaneously resisting the urge to clutch her head and groan. She settled for chugging the rest of the water to give herself a few precious seconds to think and looking everywhere except back at him. Oh God, I have to spell out complex emotions for someone who's been alive like five freaking times longer than I have. Complex emotions about ME. Oh holy flying Christ on a cracker. "Uh, well. Do-I can't believe I'm fucking asking you this-do you know what love is?" Cort slapped a palm over her face and waited, clinging to a ludicrously optimistic sense of hope that was quickly stomped out.
"No."
"Damnit. I mean. Uh. Oh, shitballs." Looking over her shoulder to make sure James hadn't moved, she turned back to the ghoul and looked up into his face. Working up a small and firm bundle of nerves, Cort opened her mouth, prepared to explain everything, and then promptly and completely chickened out. "Charon, as much as I would like to explain the entire concept out to you at the moment, this is a very uh, inappropriate place to do it in. It's a fairly involved topic that will take me at least an hour. Maybe more. And a bottle of scotch. I'll really need the scotch. Also maybe some diagrams, and like, uh, a pie chart of some sort. So for now, please just wait until we can get back to Rivet City and I'll explain the whole thing in a nice, safe, entirely private location. And don't ask Dad to explain it to you either in the meantime. You-you didn't, did you?" She sighed with relief when he shook his head and she turned to go get ready. "Okay, super-duper, let'sgetgoing."
"Cort?" She winced and ground to a halt, slowly swinging her head back to where he stood looking thoughtfully at her again.
"Yeeees?"
"Do you love me?"
Cort spent a split second thinking she would have preferred to be eaten the previous day instead of being in this particular situation before she shook herself out of it and re-focused her attention. Straightening, she stared at the ghoul in front of her, taking in the large, armoured, blood-spattered frame, ravaged face and chalky eyes. Searching for confirmation of something she already knew, Cort held her arms out and waited. Charon instantly responded to her unspoken request, coming over and lifting her up against him, their armour creaking together as he hugged her. She closed her eyes as he made one of his contented grunts and started tugging gently at her hair, feeling her feet swing in the air as he bent backwards to support her.
"Yes, Charon. I do."
