And here's yet another. Most of next chapter (which I'm hoping will be much longer than all those preceding it) will be dealing with finding James, getting back to Rivet City, and either arriving at Jefferson Memorial or dealing with the beginnings of The Pitt DLC. I haven't decided yet. I'm also not entirely sure which choice Sallie will make in the Pitt, since the whole quest line is very much morally grey - leave suggestions in the reviews, as far as kidnapping Marie or siding with Lord Ashur.
By the time they've reached the Museum of History, Sallie's calmed down some. She's deleted all the journal entries from her pip-boy and thrown the holotapes into the Potomac. She knows that if she doesn't, she'll just keep listening and listening and listening, caught in an endless loop of growing angry and deleting the files, only to re-upload them and listen again. As someone who already lacks all certainty that anything she's living is real, she doesn't think that would be the best idea; The fact that not only her best friend, but her surrogate mother (for lack of a better term) and her current companion are ghouls doesn't really help, either. Quite frequently, she finds herself wondering if maybe her whole life is a series of creepy simulations, meant to test her sanity... But despite that, she's fairly certain that, despite all these completely unrealistic situations and the stress and the fact that she can gun someone down or gut them if she gets close enough, but can't deal with hand-to-hand combat no matter how many issues of Pugilism Illustrated she finds, this is all real.
Plus, all her memories from the vault, they're too realistic and imperfect for them to be fake. She clearly remembers spending a lot of time with him despite the way he treated Amata, and despite their more physical disagreements, one of which had earned him a surprisingly solid right hook that had knocked a few of the boy's teeth down his own throat. He always meant well, even if he was abrasive and violent and a chain smoker by sixteen; She thinks she might be the only one who knew it. The Tunnel Snakes sure didn't - between Wally Mack, that fucking psychopath; Paul Hannon, who'd never been anything short of sweet before he'd turned fifteen; and Freddie Gomez who was too awkward and sincere to warrant any of the treatment that gang got... Well, Butch didn't exactly have a good reputation for meaning well. But she'd been close to him, for a while - she'd trusted him almost as much as she'd trusted Amata, and he'd never given her a reason not to, even if everyone else thought he was a no-good alcoholic like his mother. She smiles fondly. She still has the boy's jacket, tucked at the bottom of her pack. By no means had they been lovers or anything like that (well, aside from one night, but that was just to get rid of any awkwardness when it came to losing their virginities), but... The jacket reminded her of home, of a better time.
She pays Carol for three days in a roughly put together two-bed 'suite' ahead of time (she knows it's not ready when they get there, because Greta ends up just setting up a cot in the room Sallie usually takes to avoid moving things around). When she moves to drop her bag on the cot, Charon tries to stop her, but she simply holds up a hand to silence him. "Charon, you're a fucking giant. Take the bed, I can handle a few days on a cot that you won't fit on." Ignoring the ghoul's protests and rolling her eyes, she digs through her pack to find the box of scrap metal that she's collected for Winthrop, along with Carol's letters from Gob. "You can stay here, get some food, if you wanna."
Obviously, she goes to Carol first, watching her face light up when she's presented with those envelopes. With a bright smile, she tells her that, if she's done by then, she'll take the letters back to Gob when she leaves - Megaton's not far out of her way, and she feels like she is obligated to go back and check on Gob, anyways. It isn't like it's a bother.
It's the final day of their stay in Underworld, and he's following after Sallie, glancing around at the dirty walls that he's glad are no longer a fucking constant in his life. He doesn't notice the smoothskin come to a stop in front of Underworld Outfitters, almost causing him to run into her. From inside the shop, he can hearing Tulip scrambling to find who knows what, but the moment she finds it, Sallie's in the room to accept it.
"Happy birthday, smoothskin! It's not much, just a handful of stimpaks and some of those apples I know you like so much." For a few silent moments, Charon is puzzled, to say the least. A birthday seems like something someone would mention, even in passing, and the fact that Sallie has obviously mentioned it to Tulip at some point causes mild irritation; Part of him doubts that the ghoul shopkeeper would even acknowledge the vaultie if she knew what the girl was capable of. Most of them wouldn't, they hold themselves to such high moral standards. They're not as high and mighty as they like to pretend they are. He hears Sallie yelp out her thanks, nearly knocking the box out of the female ghoul's hands as she embraces her. Why does she have to hug everyone? Christ. It's weird enough that she spends almost of all of her time outside of Megaton with ghouls, but to keep hugging them like it didn't even computer with her that they smelled of old leather and older blood was just fucking wrong - she should just be happy among her own kind. He's voiced these concerns before, told her to be wary of humans knowing she was in so deep with the ghouls, but she brushed him off. "You're still people," she'd said, "in fact, I think most ghouls are more human than, well... Humans."
Even now, he's not sure he understands that comment.
They make their stop in Megaton three days later. She doesn't stop to drop her pack at her house - she heads straight to the saloon. She's more than a little bit surprised to Lucas Simms there; The only other time she's seen him in there is when she turned in that pulse charge from that Burke asshole. "Is, uh... Is Gob here?" She hopes she sounds more confident than she feels, because she's just arrived and her hands are already sweating like mad.
"He's right upstairs." The sheriff is silent for a beat before he leans on the counter. "Still asleep, I reckon, since it's nine in the morning and Moriarty ain't here to knock him around for sleeping in." Sallie is sure she looks startled, but she does her best to keep her calm as she raises an eyebrow.
"And what, pray tell, happened to that rotten asshole?" She's perched on a stool at the bar now, her pack dropped beside her, even just taking a seat makes her feel so much calmer that it's ridiculous.
Simms looks, briefly, like he doesn't believe that she doesn't know already, but he shakes his head and pushes on. "Keeled over a couple weeks ago. The deed automatically went to me - I've been waiting for you to come back, actually." Now, she notices that there's a sheet of paper on the counter beside Simms, and she's confused, tilting her head and trying to get a good look at the paper as it's lifted. "Thought maybe you'd want the place."
Why exactly he'd think that, Sallie doesn't know, but she knows that, even if they pool their caps together, Gob and Nova won't be able to afford the deed to this place - she doesn't know what Moriarty used to do with the day's caps, but there's no way they'll ever find them. "How much... Uh, how much will I have to put down on this place, if I say yes? And I mean, I'm gone so often... Can Gob... Can Gob co-sign this thing?" She knows she looks put out when the sheriff chuckles, but she can't help it. There's got to be some kind of catch to this or something.
"Thousand caps, and that's mostly just so you can get new inventory in here. Gob told me all about... The still." He slips the contract over to her, along with an old pen, "And Gob's already signed."
She can almost cry as she scribbles her name on the deed, she's so relieved, and she's glad that the saloon is going to be in good hands now. Booze that's as clean as can be managed in the wasteland, and good that's as fresh as they can get their hands on - hell, they'll practically put the Brass Lantern out of business, once people realize there's no piss in the booze. There's a door opening upstairs and then Gob is coming down and the twenty year old is practically throwing herself at him, almost knocking the poor old ghoul down. She's just glad Gob's not kicked out of Megaton and Moriarty's dead and they can just go on with their lives; Gob being the lovable bartender at the saloon and her being the carefree, not-so-lone wanderer. Behind her, she knows Simms is torn between disgust and confusion and amusement, but he says nothing aside from "I'll leave you to talk this over," before he leaves.
"Gob. Gob, you're free. Free."
"Where have you been, smoothskin?" Charon rumbles when the front door finally swings open again, looking up from the table where he's cleaning his shotgun. She looks like she's been crying, but there's a triumphant smirk twisting her features and she swells with pride as she drops her pack beside the door.
"Getting some things straightened out with Gob." He looks disbelieving. "No, really. Go out, look towards the saloon sign." With a skeptical look, he stands carefully placing his shotgun on the table, and exits the house. Leaning against the railing, he squints at the sign above the saloon - it's obvious that 'Moriarty's' has been crossed out, but what he isn't expecting to see is 'Gob + Sallie's' scrawled in yellow paint." Guess when Moriarty passed, Simms decided I deserve the place. Gob's co-owner."
He nods, looking from the sign, to the girl, and back again. "This is... What you wanted." Sallie lets out a sharp bark of laughter, causing him to swing his head back around to look at her.
"Hardly. I just wanted Moriarty dead. Gob's free now. He gets about forty percent of the profits from the saloon, figure that's fair since he's here all the time. Twenty percent to split between employees and inventory... You and I split the last forty even between us." she explains wearily, and it's obvious it took them a long time to reach this conclusion - he's fairly certain that, sap that he is, it took a long time to convince Gob to take as much as forty percent. Probably still feels guilty about it. "Still don't know what Nova's gonna do, though. She always talked about how she was gonna go out, see the world'nd shit once she'd paid off her debt, but she's so deep in a jet inhaler that she'll have to spend any caps she has to flush her system at Doc's place before she can ever leave." The tone of her voice suggests that she feels worse for Gob for having to deal with the former prostitute than she does for Nova herself, and this vaguely amuses Charon.
"Charon... If I ever manage to find a way to get you out of your contract... Would you want to be free?"
Charon's not sure he knows the answer to this question, so he simply gapes at the vault girl, thoroughly confused. He knows she'll never find a way to get him out of it, but the fact that she's brought this up makes him wonder if she wants to be rid of him, and he voices as such.
"Oh, no, no, no, no! I don't... Charon, if it weren't for you, I'd be twice dead by now. I was just wondering if you'd prefer being... Free, to dealing with some twenty year old chick out of the vault who can't fight to save her life."
He nods slightly, purses his ruined lips as he ponders the question. "I do not know, smoothskin." But in that moment, he's pretty sure his answer is no.