Charon

We've been wandering around the general area of the Satcom array for three days now. She's getting antsy, desperate. I make a decision – perhaps the only decision that I've made on my own, ever. I persuade her to turn west. I'm doing something that I don't ever do – I'm taking a huge gamble. I shouldn't do this, but it's our only option now.

It's time for the last resort.

Wendy

We're crouched behind an outcropping, watching a small Enclave outpost. Charon says that the wasteland used to be thick with them forty years ago, but now they're few and far in between. He also says they used to put a device on a deathclaw's head that turned them into attack dogs, but I think he's just trying to scare me. Well…I hope he's trying to scare me. It looks like the Brotherhood is slowly taking over the DC area. I guess sometimes regime changes take a while.

We'd tried to track down the location of the bunker, and haven't met with much success, other than the general direction of north. He said that we should look west for some reason, and desiring a change of scenery, I acquiesced. We're out of options; any new strategy is welcome.

We watch the Enclave soldiers mill around their outpost, which consisted of what looked like little more than a series of metal plates set up as cover for an inevitable firefight. I could hear a generator running, so they must have a computer terminal set up somewhere. Nothing else could justify the energy expense. "What would you do to find him?" Charon asks, out of the blue.

"Anything." I say. He meets my eyes.

"How much do you love him?"

"More than life itself." His eyes turn glassy, distant.

He suddenly drops his pack and his shotgun, and puts his hands up in the air. "Don't shoot!"

"Charon, what the FUCK are you doing?"

Charon

This is my plan – give ourselves up. We won't have to find it; they'll take us there. Take us to him.

She said that she would do anything to find him. Anything. With that admission, I'm confident that I didn't willfully disobey an order.

I mentally brace myself. I am under no illusions that I won't be tortured. This will hurt, a lot. Probably for a long time. Especially for me. They'll want to tear me up, test on me. It's a price that I'm willing to pay. For Wendy. For Mallie. For Virgil.

We'll find him.

I approach the power-armor clad soldiers, arms raised high. "My name is Charon. I was with Maleficent. Radio your superiors; they'll know who I am." After some initial confusion, Wendy and I both sit against a storage crate, hands bound behind our backs. Well, my hands anyway. They had to get creative with Wendy.

"Charon, why?" she asks.

"Because you love him." I reply.

"They'll hurt you. Me too." There's tears in her eyes. She's trembling, terrified. The only Enclave that she's ever met kidnapped her husband and threatened her life. She has good reason to be scared.

"They'll hurt me more." I turn my face into a mask of stone. I can't allow myself to betray any emotion. If I do, she might go from scared to hysterical. God only knows how the Enclave soldiers would deal with a situation like that.

She's crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Why? Why, Charon, why?"

I know it's a rhetorical question, that she doesn't expect me to give her an answer. But I answer her anyway. "It's a price I'm willing to pay."