Three chapters within, what, a day? This will… Probably never happen again, but I'm babysitting, and I needed something to do. I'm still experimenting with tenses and different, er… Facets of Charon's personality. If anything seems off, mention it in a review and I'll be sure to get around to changing it as soon as I can. I'm still looking for a beta reader, since I tend to completely miss mistakes that I've made if they don't come up in spell check - use of the wrong word or punctuation is something I miss entirely when reading over my own stories before I post them, even if I can point it out rather consistently in the stories of others. To make a long story short: Read; review; criticize, if you so choose. A ton of hits doesn't really help me know if there's something I'm doing right or wrong - I need your reviews for that.
EDIT: I've had to reupload this, since the file glitched and I couldn't tell if it had actually uploaded the correct version of the chapter, because it wouldn't let me view the story.
He hasn't been timid since he was a child, sobbing in the compound where he was trained; Hasn't been polite since the last time he visited his parents graves, before all the training ever started. His employers have always made it extremely clear, in no uncertain terms, that they thought they were better than he was, all because they weren't tied to some stupid fucking sheet of paper with words that were faded to grey on yellow. His contract, that had once been clearly printed on startlingly white paper, was now old enough that he was actually surprised it was still in fucking tact. Never mind that it had started out as three sheets of paper, front only, clearly detailing what needed to be done, and had been reduced to one, the terms vaguely explained on the front and back. It still explained that it was for combat services… But he'd been stuck being a bouncer in the Ninth Circle for so long that he didn't even give a shit if the vault girl made him run stupid errands for her, so long as he actually got to move more than ten feet.
To put the icing on the stale, metaphorical fucking cake that was his fucking shitty life, those employers had also always been men. Now that he not only had a female employer, but an employer who has yet to give him an order since receiving his contract, he's nothing short of lost. He knows the contract is only good for combat, but he really wished she'd just give him some sort of order or something - be it 'sit down and shut up' or 'maintain the weapons' - just so he could take comfort in something he fucking knew. It wasn't asking much, and he knew it was strange to want to be given a command; It was just what he knew, how he'd been raised and trained and fuck, if she managed to set him free, he really didn't know what he'd do. He hadn't ever really been free - but neither had most people. As a child, your parents are your masters, your gods, forcing you down the path they've chosen for you, whether or not you're interested. As you get older, find a job - your job takes you over, even if it's not a job you like. You like it, you talk about it a lot, try to get others to see it as you do; You hate it, and all you do is bitch like a little fucking princess, like complaining is going to suddenly earn you so much money that you never have to work again. In the end, death is what rules you - you either fear it and avoid everything, are indifferent and go on living, or you accept it and go looking for it.
May that was just his experience.
They've been in Underworld a full two weeks longer than was originally planned when Salinger is finally sure that she understands Charon's contract as well as someone with no law degree can. In fact, she knew next to nothing about laws of any sort - the goddamn G.O.A.T. exam had said she was meant to be the vault psychologist. A psychologist couldn't even prescribe medication if it was needed. Nope, that was dear old dad's job, and then he'd decided to run out on her like a fucking coward, leaving her with a bunch of shit-for-brains vault dwellers who didn't seem to be aware of the fact that they were about two generations away from the inbreeding beginning, and after that… Well, they could only avoid becoming an inbred cesspool, completely destroying the purpose of the vault, for so long. Most of them don't even have the genes to keep a diverse gene pool going anymore - those vaults had been around for how long now, and people were just starting to die out? At least, vault 101. The others she'd managed to find in her travels… She shuddered at the thought. The fact that there had been someone out there who obviously felt absolutely no remorse when they'd sent out letters to families, promising them safety only to turn around perform some sort of crackpot social experiment on them… It unsettled her. Made her feel like this whole goddamn wasteland was just some sort of sick simulation designed to teach people survival or see the different paths people would take. She didn't like the idea of being toyed with like that.
She hasn't given Charon a single order the entire time she's been studying his contract. Mercenary or not, ghoul or human, he was still a person, and having complete control over someone who will serve you 'for good or ill' (his words, not her own) was not something she wanted. All she wanted was for everyone in the fucking Capital Wasteland to stop enslaving people, stop killing people - just work together and get the world back to what it was like before, or something close to it. The fact that it was taking some vault kid whose hair had gone completely white at sixteen to do all this work to help the wasteland after it had been destroyed for almost two hundred years… It was pathetic.
Like some song she'd heard on the radio down in the vault had said - 'The future's uncertain and the end is always near'.
"Charon." She watches as the ghoul, all six and a half hulking feet of him turn to look at her. By this point, she's noticed that he completely dwarfs her, even seated - he's all height and thick cords of muscle; She's slender with a well-rounded chest and set of hips. Complete opposites, really. Under different circumstances, maybe it would have amused her. "The only way to… To free you from - to cancel out your contract… Physical violence on my part?" When she earns a nod, she pinches the bridge of her nose. Nothing about this can be easy, apparently. "There's no other way?" A shake of the head.
"Goddammit!" Her patience is rapidly crumbling, keeping her from noticing the fact that her fist is now throbbing - the tables in Underworld were surprisingly sturdy for being old as fuck. She wants nothing more than to ask why he can't just fucking take this lousy sheet of paper and run for the hills (though she would warn him against heading north, where most of the hills she's seen are - there's a shit ton of yao guai up there, and God fucking help him if he happens upon Ol' Olney), but she figures that if he hasn't taken it by now, there has to be a reason for that. The idea of seriously harming Charon doesn't sit right with her - sure, the way he'd just been sitting there, completely silent irritated her, but… Well, she'd grown up with Butch DeLoria and the most she'd ever done was get that kid to swallow a couple of his own molars. Silence was like a fucking blessing, even if he just wasn't talking because she hadn't said he could. It wasn't like she was a good person, anyways, so she wasn't sure why the idea of violence didn't sit well with her this time. It'd been fine when she'd found Silver in Springvale - she hadn't even thought before she'd pulled the trigger and looted the woman's houses; It'd been fine when she'd found Girdershade and picked off Sierra and Ronald from a distance two days later so she could take some of the Nuka-Cola memorabilia in Sierra's shack because she was short on cash. "Look, you ain't done anything wrong by me; Hitting you or shooting you or whatever the fuck it would take to get your contract to be void, it's not going to sit right with me."
Sallie doesn't know where to go from here - doesn't know if she should just ask if he wants her to keep his contract or what. She has an abundance of caps - in just four months, she'd managed to wrangle together upwards of eight thousand. If she's going to keep him around, she decides, she's going to pay him. He's a mercenary anyways; the payment may not be necessary thanks to that piece of paper folded as small as she could manage and tucked into one of her pockets (it was definitely going in a safe when she got home to Megaton, no doubt about it - at least Charon would have some semblance of freedom if she died, then), but if he was going to be one of the only things keeping her from dying as she continued through the wastes, searching for her father, then he deserved half her caps.
With a sigh, she pulls her caps - she's got enough that she'd had to find an extra pouch, something that was currently proving to be more helpful than she'd expected - from her hip, dropping the bags on the table. People were staring now, gaping at the smoothskin seated across from a ghoul as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Rolling her eyes, she glanced at Charon. "Keep watch for a few, would you? Make sure anybody who isn't Carol or Greta doesn't get too close to the table." She doesn't trust people in the wastes with her money - she hadn't trusted people in the vault, either, aside from Amata and Butch. She watches as Charon stands, arms crossing over his chest as he faces away from the table and giving the room a sweep with his eyes. Yeah, she wasn't going to have to worry while she counted. First, she set aside a thousand to pay Carol with (and dammit, she'd give them to Greta to slip in the safe if Carol refused them). Then, she set about splitting the remaining seven thousand between the two bags. It took longer than she`d expected - not that she'd thought it would be fast, counting out cap after cap. Why couldn't they just the paper money they'd used before the war? It would be easier to split, holy fucking shit.
When his employer finally gives him the okay, Charon turns to find a tattered grey bag being held at eye level. He blinks at the bag, sees his employer and her moonlight colored hair grinning at him around the bag. "Well," she starts with a shrug, "I figured, since the only way to get rid of you is physical violence… I figured I'd just keep you around. And pay you." He wants to tell her he can't accept it, it's not part of the contract, but nowhere does it say that she's not allowed to compensate him for his services if she so chooses - he just wishes she wouldn't. "You can talk, you know. You're a mercenary, by definition, based on what your contract says." She's telling him things that he hadn't ever really thought of, making him wonder if maybe he'd been reading too far into having a contract from the beginning. He doubts it. It's too deeply embedded in his head that he isn't supposed to question his contract. She was probably misinterpreting most of what that paper said, anyways. "You're a mercenary, which means you can walk, talk, eat, laugh, whatever the fuck you want."
That's probably not exactly what it means to be a mercenary, but Charon doesn't question her. He doesn't even know what she wants him to address her as - Mistress or ma'am or Salinger or Sallie or something else entirely. "I am supposed to follow orders, ma'am. For good-"
"Yeah, yeah, for good or ill, you serve me, I know that." He finds himself irritated when she waves a dismissive hand at his words. "Well, I'm telling you, you do what you want. I'll keep your contract, and I'll pay you - do my best to split what we've got down the middle when I can. You think I'm being stupid? Say it. Think we'll have a better advantage if we do something different, use different weapons? Tell me. And if, at any point, you want me to pass your contract on… Tell me that, too." It's quiet for a few moments, awkward as the large ghoul stares at his employer, feeling overwhelmed in what was very much the same way that he had when Ryan Hart had told him to act as a free man so, so long ago. "Ma'am-"
"Shit, I'm nineteen, quit calling me 'ma'am'. My name's Salinger. Call me that, or Sallie, or kid, or… Shit, anything other than 'ma'am'." Something akin to a smirk crosses the ghoul's features, if only for a second, and he nods. Before Sallie has a chance to speak, the ghoul looses a deep chuckle.
"All right then, smoothskin."
Salinger had spent all of her first day back explaining the predicament to Lucas Simms, and mentioning that, in the event of her death (he'd scowled at that, like he didn't want to think about the one person who'd done any good for the town dying), her house would go to Charon. Simms hadn't liked it - enough people had problems with Gob being in town, another ghoul wasn't going to do them any good. "He'll keep the town safe. You think Stockholm and Weld'll keep this place locked down? Like hell. Charon is… Unflinchingly loyal." She'd felt immensely awkward discussing this with Charon in the room, but it didn't matter now - she'd made her point to Simms, and warned him that she was going to get rid of Moriarty if he did anything to Gob after she'd handed over his letters. She wouldn't even have to wait for that; She could just use her last stealth boy and slip an active grenade into the filthy Irishman's pocket and the problem would be solved. But if she went about it that way, Lucas would know it was her, he'd kick her out, even once she spilled the beans about the piss in the still and the way he treated Nova.
The whole second day had been spent moving things around her house to make room for Charon - she'd had to run over to Craterside Supply and buy a bigger bed, or Charon's legs would have been hanging off the edge completely. The downside was that the only larger bed Moira had in stock was shaped like a massive heart and came with hideous magenta and red silk sheet. Charon probably wouldn't mind - he'd just be glad to have a real bed, since it hadn't looked like he'd had one back in Underworld.
They've been back in Megaton for three days before the vault girl makes it to Moriarty's saloon - Sallie was more than a little surprised to not see (or hear, for that matter) Colin Moriarty when they entered the building. But his absence, for the moment, was ideal - it would give her time to slip the two envelopes in her hand to Gob so he could read them. "Gob!" The poor bartender nearly throws the glass he's polishing into the air, he's so caught off guard by her exclamation. She takes off around the bar at breakneck speed, crashing into Gob's chest and throwing her arms around him in a tight embrace just as he sets down the glass. She's come to view the mistreated ghoul as, well… He was nothing short of her best friend. In all her time in the wastes, he was one of few people who was consistently kind to her, no matter the questionable choices she seemed to make. She absolutely loved him to death - and that was saying something considering she'd let out a rather high pitched yelp and promptly passed out the very first time she'd seen him. Pulling away from him, Sallie pressed the envelopes into Gob's hands. "They're from Carol." When she sees the look on his face, some strange mix of happiness and complete misery, she wants to cry. She hasn't wanted to cry since her first day out of the vault. She's definitely taking out Moriarty at the slightest provocation this time. "I'll take her a couple letters back when I leave, if you want? I mean, it's not like it's a problem, you're my best friend and she's your mom and I'm sure Charon wouldn't mind going back to Underworld for a while, anyways, since we'll have to head back in that direction eventually-" She's babbling again, like she always does when she talks to Gob. Something about that poor guy just makes her want to pour her heart out, anything to make him happy since she's gone so often; Nova doesn't really help when she isn't there, from what Gob says. The poor woman's always so stuck in an inhaler of jet that she probably doesn't even remember Gob exists, even when she's speaking to him.
Salinger is so caught up in her babbling that she doesn't even seem to notice the way the remnants of Gob's eyebrows shoot up at the mention of the large ghoul - hell, she doesn't even think about the fact that they'd obviously met in passing, since Gob had come from Underworld. "Charon… Like from the Ninth Circle, Charon?" When the girl nods, a quizzical look contorting her features, Gob pats her on the shoulder, like he knows she isn't going to want to hear what he's about to say. "He's bad news, Sal."
By the time she's managed to drag the fact that they'd met previously out of Charon, it's almost ten o'clock at night, and she's perched on her stairs. He refuses to tell her any more about the circumstances surrounding him and Gob meeting at this juncture, opting instead to begin removing his armor like it will make the vault girl cringe and look away. It doesn't. She stays there, glaring from her seat on the stairs until the ghoul mutters a brief 'good night' and turns off the light, climbing into his bed. With a groan, Sallie makes her way up the stairs to do the same.