Note: We are putting the nnngggg in angst today ya'll
Now you know why he hates mirrors
Charon had spent a long time walking across the wastes with little ammo, slicing up mole rats for dinner, watching his armor go to ruin as he was attacked repeatedly by enemy upon enemy, wandering around and becoming lost. A long time, trying not to think about her.
He followed the sun until he found the deathclaws. Thought that they might kill him; it was all he deserved after―but he was too good at what he did, even if he could no longer protect... her. From himself. From the wastes.
He protected himself, now. Could not protect her, any longer. It was hell.
Goddammit. He missed her. Fuck him and his confusion, fuck her and her stupidity―fuck his thoughts, they only made him angry. He missed it. He missed being able to wander about with her, shooting things for her, being used as a teddy bear, even their fights. He missed her cheerful nature, her clean smell, her perfect smile.
Missed being able to reach out and touch skin that was not ragged, whenever he pleased. Being with someone who did not care what he was, who valued him because he existed, even if he existed only to serve. Being able to have physical love on her whim, being able to feel... whatever it was he had felt, that he could not recapture. He still loved her, in his way. In the only way he knew how.
He was terrible at everything except for murder. Terrible at trying to love her. He tried not to think about her. It would only get him killed.
After the deathclaws, he had gone south. Found a burned out slaver stronghold. Reminded him again. For a long time, even ignoring his stomach when it growled for food, he sat in the slavers' former home and thought about Annapolis.
Thought about how he had been raised up to serve, and now that he no longer existed to serve he was lost; how he had no purpose in the wastes without serving. Without... without Emily, he had nothing to do but to wander like she had. Her wandering always had purpose. His had none.
He had nothing. Nothing, without her.
It did not lend to him a good mood. Without a good mood, he was too dangerous for civilization. He knew this. He stayed away from towns. Ate things that were best left unmentioned, to survive. He shot at and killed creatures that were no threat, creatures that were a threat, and he scavenged the corpses of many a man who crossed his path. He only shot the ones who tried to kill him; the others he ignored and moved on from as quickly as he could.
At some point he came across the Friendship Heights Metro. His sense of direction led him down into the Metros, where he existed among the ferals. Had not had many thoughts about how he would eventually become one of their kind. Without companionship, it was easy to imagine himself becoming as insane as they were. But it was not something he enjoyed contemplating.
He had enjoyed her. Even her stupid attempts to control him, which had led to his leaving her.
Never thought he would come to that. Thought he would be with her forever, until she died and he was forced to go out into the world again. To wander and find a new employer, someone else to serve. To do... this, what he was doing now, moping about in a Metro like some angsty child. Like Emily herself might have done.
He snarled at himself, feeling the cracks along the edges of his mind. He was pulling the same stupid shit she did, now.
Walking the tunnels and fighting raiders, scrounging through the rubble for food, existing on the bare necessities. He was better than that. He had been the best of his kind, until circumstance forced him into the worst of a new kind.
Fucking Azruhkhal. Fucking Luther, dooming him to this existence. He had killed all those who wronged him except Emily, and he could not kill her. She did not deserve death; she was a sleeping child and he was the monster under her bed, grabbing ankles and growling at night. The thing that she was both frightened of and enamored with.
Charon stayed in the Metro station at Friendship Heights and imagined as if he were not the monster that he was. Found himself talking to the ferals as if they could understand, desperate for a social aspect to his existence. Never bothered him before, had gotten by on the small amounts of conversation from bar patrons at Underworld. Had enjoyed many a moment talking with Emily, even the times when she treated him as an inconvenience or was angry with him because he was who he was.
He stared at himself in a Metro bathroom mirror. Shattered as it was, he could still see the rough texture of his rotting face, the cold eyes without anything more than a thin strip of lid to cover them. The hard muscles that he'd come to accept as unchanging, under the leather armor he had been given, flexing with every movement, powerful and tightly bound just as he was by that fucking contract. Bones peeking from the red mass, peeling skin and sand-blasted flesh, the dry texture of the skin that remained.
He removed his gloves and stared at his hands. Hands that had held her, that had played over her skin when she asked. Hands that could not feel the delicate nature of her skin, that sometimes had bruised her when she was on top of him because of that. She never complained. She never praised it, either, but she accepted him.
Hands that had strangled her near to death in willing cooperation with the conditioning. He clenched his fists and stared back up at the mirror, forcing himself to met his own eyes. Leaning on the sink with his full weight, hearing the ceramic protesting under his grip, the chipped edges digging into his hands and cutting the marred flesh wide open.
There was no difference in color, between the blood that came from him when he was injured and his skin color. He was bloody every moment of every day, as Charon the ghoul.
Emily bled easily, too. She spent a lot of time being bloody, like him. Her blood would wash off, wash with the clean waters she had brought to the wastes. Her blood spilled for reasons that made the world a far better place, even if she did not appreciate it, even if he did not wish that her blood ever be spilled.
She did not have to grapple with being human. She grappled with being Emily, a child lost to the wastes when her father revealed his lies. She did not have memories spanning one hundred years of murder and brainwashing. She had memories of life in a Vault, safe if somewhat dramatic at times.
She had been whole her entire life, until the wastes broke her mind like a Brahmin's back. He remembered, but he hated. Hated when he'd been whole. Was better to forget those memories, again, to partition his mind and lock away the things that should not define the monster he'd become.
He knew more about being Charon, the ghoul, more than he had ever known about being Peter, the man. Had not contemplated his existence as Peter. He was Charon the ghoul, now and forever, unchanging and―fuck, he was lost without her. Emily had not known him as a man. She only knew him as a ghoul. She had only loved him as Charon the ghoul.
As her guardian, existing only to serve, until she opened the floodgates to a being who had not truly existed in his entire life. She'd loved him because he was hers to have, without question. She did not have to work at him. Did not have to worry that he would cause some drama, that he would hurt her, that he would leave. Until he had turned on her, just as he had turned on Connie Alexander.
Until Emily removed the binding the contract made, but not the contract itself, she had been safe.
Charon growled and stared at himself in the mirror.
He had been a rock for her. Stability. Kept the bad things away, even if she did not understand why, at first. Had devoted himself to her even after she relaxed his conditioning. And then he had left her.
His hands bled onto the chipped ceramic, coating the sink in warm blood as it gushed from his palms.
Charon's voice grew louder, snarling in his throat as he hated the thing in the mirror. Anger flooded his veins, replacing the blood he was losing. The noise rose to a maddening volume in the tiny bathroom, echoing off the walls and bouncing back onto his exposed eardrums with pain, assaulting himself.
The thing in the mirror grew angrier, too. It was a contest. Unblinking, he stared at it, trying to frighten it into going away. Into backing down.
But it would not leave. It would never leave him, like it had left Emily. Broken, strangled, frightened, lying on a pile of rubble in a city full of that which she hated the most.
He took a shaking breath, ceasing his growls, and let it out again. There was a solution. One he did not want to put into effect, but one that would inevitably make the monster behave.
Charon stared at himself in the mirror, seeing his torn mouth making words. The monster howled in outrage at the idea. Pain crept through his hands, up his arms, weakening his grip on the broken sink.
He was powerful. Everything about him was powerful, in one way or another. He was more powerful than the monster in the mirror. More powerful that than thing that he hated, that hated him, that made him feel so fucking angry he could stab himself in the heart just to make it shut the fuck up.
Charon's voice came over his mangled tongue, not a growl or a snarl, but clearly defined words that made the monster stand up straighter. Made the monster look around the room, unsure why it was standing in a Metro with no gloves on, bleeding from its hands. Why it was out of ammunition and why it had been staring into the mirror.
Made it realize that its employer was nowhere in sight, and that it must return to her side as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Charon spoke the words to the monster and felt himself cease to exist.
It was as easy as that.
"Do Re Mi."