Aaand, here's another chapter. I'm trying to update a lot while I get the ball rolling, because I'll be without internet access for roughly a month starting somewhere around the ninth of next month, and then school starts in August, sometime around the twentieth. I'm still picking through quests to decide which ones I want to do, because the more I look at the list I've made, the more I'm not entirely happy with it. I'm also not entirely happy with how this chapter turned out, but, oh well. You win some, you lose some. Whenever I finish the story up, I'll probably go back and make edits until I'm happy with it.
I also plan on bringing Sallie and Charon back through Rivet City later on; to search for Pinkerton, deal with Mr. Lopez, speak with Dr. Zimmer about the android... All that fun stuff.
Charon isn't expecting to hear that the murder of some shitbag saloon owner in a shitbag town is what's been causing Sallie to shake like a junkie. Honestly, he's a little bit disappointed. If anyone in Megaton deserved it, it was Colin Moriarty, the fucking human equivalent of that rat bastard Ahzrukhal. He doesn't understand why she seems scared about this - he's pretty fucking sure that Simms won't kick them out of Megaton if he figures out that Sallie is why the Irishman's dead. The ghoul almost snorts at the thought. Simms is more likely to give her a fucking medal or some shit. The fact that the vault girl still seems so nervous after spilling her guts about the whole thing is putting him on edge though. He hasn't felt much aside from rage and irritation in over two hundred years; He sure as fuck doesn't know how to deal with a girl, who can't possibly be older than twenty, freaking out. Doesn't know if he should push past the awkward, 'don't know what I'm doing' thing and just tell her things will be fine, or if he should just let her deal with things in her own way, even if that means she starts sobbing and screaming and the security in this rust bucket all come running to break the damn door down - because obviously, if there's a ghoul traveling with a human, he has to be raping or something behind closed doors. Ignorant fucks.
So he just stands there at the foot of the bed, while Sallie starts quietly sobbing. He thought he was nervous when she was wild-eyed and trembling, going from wringing her hands to tugging on her hair and back again? The moment those tears started, something like fear began twisting in his stomach, and he decided that maybe he was sort of glad he'd been fucking brainwashed into being this way if it meant that he didn't have to feel like this. If normal people or ghouls or what-the fuck-ever dealt with this sort of feeling all the time, they deserved awards; This feeling was not pleasant or irritating. It was downright sickening, the same sort of knot in his stomach he remembers from all the radiation back when he was still human. On top of emotions he can't quite make sense of, there's the fact that he doesn't understand why exactly the smoothskin is so upset. Since she bought his contract and hauled his ass to Megaton (six months today for the former, roughly five for the latter), he thinks he's seen what she's capable of - they've spent most of their time working on research for that survival guide that fucking retarded smoothskin who owns the Craterside Supply wants to write, and Charon has seen his employer kill ruthlessly. He's seen her gut raiders like fish without a second thought, seen her flash unsuspecting wastelanders in secluded areas coy smiles before pressing a gun to their forehead and pulling the trigger if they stood in the way of something she needs.
He just doesn't understand. "Smoothskin…?"
Sallie doesn't mean to start crying - shit, she hates crying with a passion. When Jonas used to tell her that she'd feel better after she had a good cry, he'd been fucking wrong. It just left her feeling stupid, with an awful pressure in her sinuses from all the sniffling and red-rimmed eyes like she'd been huffing a whole lot of jet. And this time is no different, but she at least feels like she has a valid reason to be crying with these great heaving breaths. When she'd killed Moriarty, she hadn't thought about the aftermath, not one bit. She just knew she was doing it for Gob, because he deserved something good in his life, and that something good damn well should have been the death of that filthy, liquored up old man who couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the goddamn ground if it wouldn't earn him some caps. But she didn't think.
Until just now, laying here on a bed in Rivet City with watery eyes, she didn't think about the fact that maybe Simms would suspect something - doesn't realize until now that maybe the sheriff will think Gob just finally cracked and killed the man who made his life so hopelessly miserable. Gob's not a violent man, but if Simms thinks Moriarty was murdered, that won't fucking matter. What will matter is who had access to the chems and the food and the liquor that killed the one man in town everyone hated; Sallie knows that if he thinks it's Gob, he'll kick him out. Only those stupid bomb worshippers like him being there, and only an incredibly tiny smattering of people don't mind him. She could have just lost her best friend his home - he'd have to go back to Underworld, and she knows he doesn't want to. She knows he wants to stay in Megaton, where he's carved out some semblance of a life, even if most people there aren't fond of him. There's nowhere else he can go, unless she can manage to convince someone at Tenpenny Tower to give him a room, and she knows that won't work, based solely on what she's heard about the stuffy tenants and the owner's affinity for gunning down ghouls or humans or whatever the fuck he wants if he decides he doesn't like the look of it. It's there or Rivet City, and fuck, she wouldn't wish anything like that on someone as sweet as Gob.
It's fifteen minutes straight that she's been sobbing when she finally perches her glasses atop her head and uses the sheets to dry her eyes. She shoots Charon a sheepish smile in an attempt to diffuse the tension of the situation, because she knows he's been standing there, confused, since this started and it's really all she can manage right now. "Sorry." Her voice is hoarse and she sounds like she's been smoking a half a pack a day with Butch down in the vault for the past ten years, nothing like what she usually sounds like, smooth and smoky like she should be singing jazz. "I feel bad, it just sort of hit me that… What if Simms figures it was… That somebody killed Moriarty? He'd probably blame Gob, kick him out of Megaton." She can't bring herself to mention that it would be more because he was a ghoul than because he was a supposed killer; Hell, she knows Lucas wouldn't even admit that much out loud since he was Mister goddamn Manners. Charon probably thinks I'm a fucking idiot, sobbing over something like this - twenty in a week and cryin' like a baby. With a sigh, she kicks off her boots and crawls into bed; Sleep is exactly what she fucking needs right now. At one point, as she drifts off, she thinks she may have motioned to the empty side of the bed and told Charon he could sleep, but she isn't sure.
Charon didn't sleep last night. He figures the smoothskin should count herself lucky he's even in the same room as her - if she insists on sharing a goddamn bed when they travel, it's going to be a long ass time before he even considers it. He'll just sleep on the floor or in a chair or forgo the sleep entirely. Much simpler, leaves him feeling less conflicted when he wakes at every movement during the night to find her snuggling closer to him despite the fact that he reeks of leather and blood and gunpowder, and leaves him feeling less guilty because he doesn't have to worry about pushing the girl away from him as she whimpers in her sleep. The mistake was letting it happen when they stayed at Dukov's place after dealing with the molerat repellant (which was probably more fun that it should have been, but he'd always gotten a kick out of it when things exploded), when there had only been one spare bed. They should have just left, but Sallie had insisted, and he obviously couldn't say 'no' to his employer, like it or not. He'd nearly jumped out of his leathers when woke at half past four in the morning to find the wanderer tucked against his side, her face buried in his shoulder.
He turns his back when Sallie changes her clothes, exchanging her customary merc charmer outfit for some pale pink dress in a style he hasn't seen since before the bombs dropped. She's probably trying to look presentable or something, for when they go ask around about the history of this shitheap, and for when they go to speak to Doctor Li about the whereabouts of one James Harper. When he turns to face her again, he raises one ruined brow and tosses her a bottle of water and a box of those nasty Dandy Boy Apples that he can't fucking stand, but she can't seem to get enough of. They have more than enough caps between them to afford a fresh breakfast, but it's much easier to eat their own stash of food on the off-chance that they find something worth carrying that wouldn't otherwise fit in their packs. It wouldn't be surprising, the way Sallie collects twisted bits of scrap metal to take to Winthrop upon their arrival at Underworld - in just the three days it had taken them to get from Megaton to Rivet City, they've collected something like forty bits of metal that nobody else would cast a second glance at or Sallie tore out of a robot or an old Corvega.
When they spend the first half of the day dodging dirty looks and interrogating locals about the history of Rivet City, he's less than happy. The citizens either glance his way and fix Sallie with a dirty look before refusing to answer her questions, or they yap for twenty minutes straight about how they were 'so important' to Rivet City coming together, despite just arriving. The only sap here who is of any help is Seagrave Holmes, that idiot running around in a fucking motorcycle helmet - he points the pair in the direction of the broken-off bow, to find the home of some old man who only Seagrave actually seems to remember - and that's only after Sallie mentions, in a dry tone, that Vera Weatherly spoke oh-so fucking highly of him. It's too easy to read some people out here, the way they stutter over words and flush at the mention of some other idiot.
She isn't impressed by Doctor Li. The doctor seems nice enough, but even at nineteen, nearly twenty, Sallie has no trouble being able to tell that the woman is only faking kindness in case she manages to find her father, so there's not an unkind word to be said about her. Maybe it's just her, but it sure as fuck seems, as she interrogates Li, that the woman has some sort of feelings for James, and it makes her more than a little bit uncomfortable. Part of that is that it's always strange to think of anyone having feelings for one of your parents; The other part is that she doesn't fully trust this woman. But she's feeding her the information she's asking for, the truth about everything before the vault and her mother dying. It's when she asks about where her father is now that Madison starts stumbling over her words. It seems like, maybe, she's trying to give a believable answer, so she doesn't send some poor little vaultie to her doom, especially if she's the daughter of James Harper, but Sallie doesn't give a shit, and the longer the doctor rants, the more irritated she grows. She wants nothing more than to grab this woman by the neck and slam her face into one of the tables surrounding them, but instead, she grits her teeth and lets her fingernails bite into the palms of her hands.
"Well, you see, I'm not entirely sure where James went… He mention-"
"Will you just fucking tell me where my father went?" Her voice is several octaves higher than usual in her frustration, tone sharp as she glares at the scientist. It took her long enough to get to this point, and she really doesn't fucking need some know-it-all scientist who's as the persona of polite little vault dweller that the white-haired girl has been putting on all goddamn day. She's been out of the vault for a full fucking year, and she's done things in that time that her ghoul merc doesn't know about, just to prepare herself for whatever might happen while she looks for her father. Sure, Charon's seen her pick off raiders with ease, seen her kill wastelanders she's never met for the clothes on their backs and the weapons in their makeshift holsters just so she can make some cash (she was basically putting those poor bastards out of their misery anyways, with their tattered Brahmin-skin outfits and ten millimeter pistols in such poor condition that she doesn't think that a bullet would even pierce Charon's leather armor); He doesn't know about her meeting the two inhabitants of Girdershade and returning two days later to put bullets in their skulls from a distance. He doesn't know that she robbed the town of Arefu blind with little more than a stealth boy equipped before she'd gone off to find Ian West; He sure as fuck doesn't know about Bryan Wilks approaching her near the Super Duper Mart and asking her to find his father, and the fact that, instead, she goes to Grayditch and picks through the houses and shacks there before deciding that she'll go back to deal with all those fucking fire-breathing ants some other time.
He only knows the good.
He's not even slightly surprised to find a rather large group of super mutants inhabiting the Jefferson Memorial. What he is surprised about is the ease with which Sallie manages to hack into the turret control system, sending the mutants into a frenzy as they alternate between screaming at the turret and shooting at it. It's enough to distract the lot of them, giving his employer the time to lob a few frag grenades into the room and slam the doors shut. Both of them know that it won't kill the mutants - but weakening them or crippling a limb will on a few them will make things easier, and that's all they can ever really ask for out here. When they open the doors again, the mutants turn on them, roaring with rage and swinging poorly-constructed weapons that are merely two by fours studded with nails. Between the two of them, the dispatch the mutants - there were roughly eight, total, and while Sallie looks proud of herself, it's Charon who has dealt most of the killing shots. There are three more mutants in the rotunda, and he makes quick work of them before following Sallie up the stairs. He finds her there, listening to holotapes she's found, and he can tell by the look in her eyes that it's her father speaking.
"Let's keep looking." It's said like it's a suggestion, but Charon can't quite bring himself to tell her no - both because she's his employer and because there's something in those cool grey eyes that's completely unfamiliar. Even when she was crying in the hotel room two nights ago, her eyes didn't look this sad, like what she wanted was just out of reach and she couldn't quite remember why she wanted it in the first place. Since she bought his contract, he's seen her angry, happy, drunk, but he's never seen her sad. He's pretty sure he doesn't like it. There's still the sub-basement to check, and he refuses to let the vault girl lead, on the off-chance that there's a whole fucking settlement of mutants down there. There are two, right off the bat, hidden in a room where they find more holotapes that Sallie simply shoves into her pack, waiting for a safe place to sit and listen to them. There aren't many rooms in the sub-basement, and they only find one more mutant, plus one of those fucking creepy centaurs wandering one lone stretch of hallway. There's what appears to be a bedroom near the end of the hall, and there are at least five more holotapes on the tables inside.
Sallie doesn't bother listening to the tapes in order, even though they're clearly labeled by number. All she knows is that now, she only has two left and she still has yet to cry - numbers ten and zero. Ten tells her where to go next - some vault numbered 112, in a garage in the ass end of the goddamn wasteland. If the data on her pip-boy regarding the location is correct, it's startlingly close to where she hid the bodies of Ronald Laren and Sierra Petrovita, like someone was ever going to fucking find them anyways. She shakes the thought off, and forces herself to listen to the final entry.
"Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me. It's been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my daughter. We spent all that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was safe, and that's all I could have hoped for. Now, my daughter is a grown woman. Beautiful, intelligent, confident, just like her mother. And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore."
A frown tugs at her features. That was bullshit, all of it. It wasn't safe - Alphonse was out of his fucking gourd; She wasn't beautiful or confident or intelligent - at least, she didn't feel like it. And she sure as fuck needed her dad. She didn't have anyone in the wastes, not really. Of course, she had Gob in Megaton, and she had Charon until he up and told her that he wanted someone else to have his contract, and she supposed that she had Carol in Underworld… But that was nothing like having her father. Maybe it was selfish, but she just didn't give a fuck. Project Purity had no point - people were fine without clean water. Look at her: she'd gone and got irradiated as fuck for Moira, and now she'd heal the moment her radiation climbed past four hundred. And it healed the ghouls! It was just... She was frustrated and scared and she missed her father, even if she kept saying he was a deadbeat or an asshole or anything else.
She stood abruptly. "We're going to Underworld to give Carol her letters and sell some of this shit, give Winthrop all his shitty scrap metal, and then we're going to find vault one twelve."