"My name is Erik."

How long had he been standing there? Christine remained in her spot on the bed, guitar resting limply in her lap. There was something meaningful and heavy in his gaze, and he was watching her as though he was only just truly beginning to realize she was there. Had he heard her sing? Her face ran hot. She hadn't meant to be loud.

"Your voice," he murmured again, pulling her from her thoughts. "I didn't realize you could sing."

She glanced down at where her hands were folded on the body of the guitar. "I took choir before Bennu. My dad was a violinist… he would help me practice."

The masked man— Erik, took a step into the room. "A violinist?" he said.

She swallowed and nodded. It felt so… weird to be holding an actual conversation with this man all of the sudden. He'd almost shot her in the face– which was something she still wasn't quite over, honestly— and now they were here, standing in her parents' old bedroom, talking about music, of all things.

He spoke again, softly enough that his voice was not much more than a velvety purr. "I had forgotten I had music books in that room."

It took her a moment to catch on that he was talking about the dressing room where she had slept the night. She exhaled slightly in embarrassment. "I'm sorry for going through your stuff," she said. "I shouldn't have."

His head tilted. "That song you were playing was something I had written."

"...Oh."

That cold feeling pooled in her belly again. She hadn't realized it was his music. God, was he going to get angry with her? Was he really gonna kill her this time? She cast a nervous glance at that combat knife she'd watched him select with extreme thought. But when she looked back up to meet his eyes, he didn't look mad. Not at all. In fact, she didn't quite recognize the emotion that she saw there.

A long minute passed without a sound. He seemed to hesitate where he stood, thinking, before taking another few steps forward until he was a foot from where she stood.

"Christine," he said, and the back of her mind noted that it was the first time he'd said her name aloud. "What exactly is your plan after this?"

"After this?" she echoed, disoriented by the turn in conversation.

"When you are ready to leave this house. What are you planning on doing next?"

"I… I don't know," she replied, flexing her hand against the wood. "I'll go back the way I came, I guess. I'll head back home."

Her stomach flipped at the idea of traveling those long, rural miles alone.

"Back through downtown?" he said.

"Uhm. Yeah. I suppose. It's the only way back I know."

He was silent again for a moment, before his eyes narrowed slightly. "You barely made it through there with your life when you came. Your father did not. What makes you so sure that you won't befall the same fate as him?"

Christine's mouth felt dry. "I don't know," she replied. "I just know I can't stay here. I-I have people waiting for me back where I'm from."

"If you return through downtown you will most certainly die."

She paled. "Then I can go around," she tried to infuse confidence in her words, but her voice sounded weak even to her own ears. How many days would that add to her journey? A week to just avoid the heart of the city? Even with double the amount of food from Papa's stash, she knew that she'd likely end up running thin by the time she neared home. She would have to turn to hunting for food, and she was no good with a gun.

Not to mention how worried Antoinette and Meg would be if she took twice as long to return. They would think her dead, for sure. She lifted the guitar from her lap to set it against the bed, running a hand through her hair.

Erik let out an audible exhale through the nose holes of the mask after a minute, his hand twitching at his side, almost tapping against his leg in a rhythmic manner. Then, he spoke again.

"I have a deal for you."

A… deal? She stared at him uncertainly. He continued on.

"I will lead you through downtown. I've lived here amongst these feuding idiots for decades. I can guarantee your safety more than anyone else in this… hellhole that you'll find. The only thing I ask of you in return…" His head tilted, and those unnerving yellow eyes gleamed at her. "Is for you to sing for me."

Any responses or polite declinations that Christine'd had ready to go when she first heard "deal" entirely flew out of her head the moment that he said those final words. He wanted her to… sing?

Her brows knit together. She stared at him like his head had just fallen off. "What?" she replied.

"Your voice is perhaps one of the most incredible things I've ever heard," he said, and her face flushed. Since when had he decided to be… nice to her? "All I wish as a recompense would be to allow me to give you formal training. Some… fine-tuning, if you will."

She blinked at him. "And nothing else?"

"And nothing else."

A thousand thoughts were going through her head. On one hand, she still didn't trust him. Sure, he'd had the opportunity this entire time to kill her and steal her stuff and hadn't done so, and he'd also told her his name which was a marked improvement from yesterday's floor-takedown, but she still didn't completely trust him.

And yet, on the other hand, how many choices did she really have? He was right in that she had no clue how she was going to circumvent the city with her life intact, and so far he was the only person to ask questions first before shooting. He could still kill her… but what if he was telling the truth? He'd get her out, and all she would have to do is sing some songs for him, if that was what he wanted? A little weird, but Christine was not naive. She knew there were far worse things he could demand of her.

It either looked as though she would take her chances with this bizarre, masked man, and put her life in his hands… or take her chances with the vicious wilderness outside.

She swallowed. When she spoke, her voice had far more resolve than she had expected. "It's a deal."

…

They left the house not long after that. There wasn't much else Christine wanted from the home, not much more she was able to carry– although she did eye her father's guitar with heartache as she set it back on its stand. It was late afternoon, and the clouds had lightened up enough for the sun to peek down at them from above. It didn't make the weather any warmer, but the sunshine was something, at least.

As with before, Erik took the lead. He'd handed her back the map right before they left the house, and he seemed to have memorized the area already, navigating the city blocks without any sort of guide.

Erik.

She was still puzzled by his sudden disclosure of his name. It seemed such an abrupt change from his aloofness from before. He'd been adamant before against telling her his name, so what had changed? The guitar? Her voice? She was dubious of that. What, her rusty humming was enough to make him decide he liked her enough to disclose his name?

Erik fit him somehow, though. She couldn't quite put her finger on as to why. It was a short name. Brisk. It would've made less sense if he'd had a perfectly normal name like… Dan, or something.

She must have been staring at him for a little too long, for his head tilted in her direction, those gleaming eyes shifting to her's once again. They never ceased to give her goosebumps. Though he gave no physical indication, not with his face entirely covered by that mask, she had the sense that he was waiting for her to ask him something. To speak.

About the mask?

She'd admit, she was curious about it. Initially she had wondered if it was to protect his identity, or something like that, but then why keep it on once they were in the security of his home? Did he not want her specifically to see his face?

Any questions she had about the mask, though, she had the sense that he wouldn't be receptive of. And they had only just set down this sort of unsteady… alliance between them, and she was in no rush to mess it up.

So instead she asked, "Uh, so, what's the plan now?" As it seemed like a much safer question.

He glanced away from her and back to the road. They were walking through another bland, dilapidated cookie-cutter neighborhood. After a while they all started to look the same.

"Back to the theater," came his response.

"Oh."

A quiet pause. "Did you expect something different?" he asked.

"Oh– no– I just wasn't sure what the plan was after this. Immediately speaking, I mean. I'd thought we were gonna head straight out of town, I guess."

"The city is very big. In order for us to leave, I'll need to collect some supplies before our departure. If we were to leave automatically, we would undoubtedly run out of provisions. Unless," his gaze flickered back towards her again. "That is what you desire."

Christine rubbed at her arm and looked down.

"No," she replied. "That's fine."

They fell into a heavy silence after that, passing beneath the looming shadows of houses as the sun lowered further and further on the skyline. Erik wasn't much of a talker, that much was for certain. That was fine, she told herself. She didn't need to be his friend. Their relationship together was to be purely transactional. He would get her out of here, and then they would go their separate ways. That certainly didn't mean they had to become acquaintances, even.

Still, his cold words left a stiff feeling in her stomach. She missed Papa something terribly at that moment. Oh, what she would give for him to just be there.

Whenever she closed her eyes, she would see his. And somehow, that final view of his lifeless body was almost as terrifying as the realization that she would never see him again.

It was a few hours later, when dusk was truly beginning to settle on the horizon in earnest, that he deemed it late enough for them to camp out for the night. It was hardly dark out, she thought, and they easily could get an hour or more walking before all the daylight went away completely, but of course she did not voice her opinions.

He led them away from the main road, instead embarking down a thickly shaded alleyway, cement under broken up in chunks by the grass and weeds desperate to retake their rightful place on the surface. They passed a garage with the door panel entirely smashed in, as though someone had lobbed an entire boulder at it. Eventually he came to a stop at a small, one-story house, where he tested the doorknob. It was unlocked.

"We will stay here for the night," he said. Then he must've noticed her furrowed brows, because he continued speaking. "If we remained out walking in the evening, the chances of running into various scavengers and raiders increases twofold. The RF aren't the only people around that pose a danger."

Christine had run-ins with scavengers before. They were usually lanky, skinny, wild-eyed people, driven almost mad from starvation. Papa had always said that there were so many after the asteroid initially hit with the nuclear winter that followed, when food was at its scarcest. People's entire worlds changed so much that they lost their humanity.

Most of them had long starved to death. But she was definitely in no hurry to meet any of the ones left alive. Or raiders. She nervously stepped after him into the darkened house. Erik did not wait for her at all before he began scouting out the entire floor– there was no second level to the house, and the only stairs they could find led down to a creepy looking basement. He didn't seem to be scavenging through any of the cupboards or rooting through the items that were still left in the house, so she assumed that him holding his pistol tightly and sweeping into every room was to check for any other people, not to loot.

He moved like a cat. There was some odd sort of gracefulness to his motions.

Eventually he seemed to deem the house safe enough for them to camp out in, as he met her eyes briefly and gave her a short, very brisk nod before shucking his backpack onto a nearby table. They stood in the dining room of the house, where a moldy couch lay shoved up against the wall, and brownish shag carpeting laid underfoot. It wasn't a very pretty room.

"We will stay the night here," he said. "You may sleep on the couch, if you wish. I shall keep watch."

She blinked at him. "You're not going to sleep at all?"

"I do not need to."

He doesn't need to… sleep? She stared at him incredulously, before turning and taking off her own backpack and rubbing at her sore shoulders with a palm. It wasn't really any of her worry whether he slept or not, after all. She lowered herself onto the grimy couch to shuck her boots, although after giving the carpet a second glance, she settled for pulling her sock-clad feet up on the couch.

She glanced at Erik. His back was momentarily turned to her, a hand smoothing back his hair and adjusting his mask. When he turned towards her again, their gazes met for an awkward second before she looked away.

For some time they both did their own things. He disappeared off into another room in the house to do… who knows what, and she took that brief moment of solitude to try and brush a hand through her tangled mane of curls, before pulling some food from her backpack to eat for her supper. She would've wondered (or worried?) if he'd left, but every so often she could hear the sound of footsteps on the floor across the house, or the shift of furniture. The sun sank quickly until it was truly dark out, and she lay curled up on the couch when he returned into the room. One of the things of Papa's that she'd kept was an old book he was working through, some thriller about a man on the run after committing murder, and she had begun to flip through its pages to distract her wandering mind, clicking on the flashlight pinned to her shirt.

There was a recliner on the opposite end of the room that he delicately lowered himself onto, long fingers twisting together on his lap. She looked at him occasionally out of the corner of her eye, before he eventually spoke.

"Have you received any formal training in music?" he asked.

Christine shifted from where she sat. "...No. Not really."

"Not really?"

She let out a small exhale. "Papa sometimes— would sometimes have me sing along with him on his violin. He was a musician before, uh, everything. He'd correct me on my technique a little bit, sometimes. He went to school for music."

"Nothing else, though?"

"No."

He seemed to lean back in the recliner in deep thought. Outside, through the small windows high up on the wall, she could see the moon blinking down at them. The sky was clearer than it had been in months, and she could almost see some stars from where she sat.

Was Papa up there? In the stars? She didn't know. Christine had never been religious, but she could truly understand it, right then, why some would lean to something as such for comfort, that hope that their loved ones were watching from somewhere far away. The mention of Papa in their discussion made her heart start to hurt again.

Erik began to speak again. "When we return to the theater, I would like to run through some scales, see the full range of your voice." When she cringed slightly, knowing full well how disused her voice had become, he said, "There will be no need to be embarrassed. This will be purely professional."

Well. Alright, then.

She decided to change the topic, tired from thinking about music and singing and ranges. "How long do you think it'll take for us to return?" she asked.

He tilted his head. The light from her flashlight reflected off the sleek plastic of his mask. "We should not arrive any later than midday. It would be in your best interest to rest. We will resume walking early tomorrow."

She gave a nod, and settled back against the cushion. She wasn't quite ready to sleep, even despite the exhaustion that was wearing down at her eyelids. There was no reason why she couldn't stay up and keep watch, as well. And so she kept the light of her flashlight on, and shifted away to look out the window from which the moon was visible. Erik did not speak to her again.

…

Christine's dreams that night were deep, and heavy, not much lingering within her brain than the memory of her father's voice and the angry growl of deep voices always on the edge of her peripheral.

Once morning broke, she was roused by the soft clearing of a throat. She opened her eyes blurrily to see Erik, looming tall above her, still clad in the same long, black coat that he had worn since they had met. He made for quite the intimidating figure to see above her right upon waking, and she shrank away from him a little bit as soon as she became conscious of how close he stood to her. His eyes narrowed and he took a step back.

"We should leave soon," he said. "It is unsafe for us to linger here too long."

Christine sat upright and rubbed at her face with a hand. God. She had not meant to fall asleep, but she'd fallen asleep hard. She could see the lines from the couch fabric on her arms from where she had laid too long, although the uneasy feeling left behind by her nightmares made her nearly regret having slept entirely.

"What time is it?" she asked as she tugged her boots back on. There was a scrunchie that she found in one of the pockets of her coat, and she wrangled her hair back into a low pony. As soon as they got back to the theater, she was definitely making a mental note of asking him if he had any showers.

"It's a little past six," he replied, and turned away from her, towards the way they had come. She scrambled to catch up to him.

The morning went by them quietly and without complaint, the sun obscured by thickly gray clouds that clogged up the sky. A heavy wet taste lingered in the air, and around midday it began to rain. The large droplets initially sent her running for the nearest overhang for cover– she did not have an umbrella– but at the baleful look he gave her when she did so, she retreated back near him, tugging her hood up to try and keep herself as dry as possible. When they passed by an old strip mall, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window. She looked like a sad, wet rat.

The only upside of the storm was that it seemed to at least keep any fights away, for they did not encounter any other people for the duration of the walk back. The two of them arrived at the theater just as thunder began to truly ring out, lightning occasionally flashing off in the distance. Instead of entering through the entrance where Christine had snuck herself through yesterday, like she assumed they would go, Erik led her around the side of the building, down an alleyway where he eventually came to a stop by a large dumpster, pushed against the theater wall. She stood, huddled behind him, lifting her arm to shield herself from the rain as she watched him fiddle with what seemed to be an electrical panel of sorts, until the dumpster made a groaning sound of sorts, like metal sliding against concrete. Erik lifted the lid of the dumpster, and nimbly heaved himself over the other side. She could hear a distant thud as he landed.

She neared, standing on her tiptoes to view down where he'd jumped. The dumpster was emptied completely inside, and at the bottom the floor appeared to be gone, dropping down straight onto what appeared to be an old… mattress? Lights flickered from somewhere out of sight. Erik did not reappear from where he'd jumped down, but she also hadn't heard any gunshots or sounds of a struggle, so she assumed he was safe down there. Not that she was really worried about his safety, but more so what would happen to her.

Fuck it, she thought, and then grabbed onto the rusty lip of the dumpster to lift herself over. Her muscles burned as she did so. How had he managed to do this with such apparent ease? Eventually she was able to pull herself up enough to balance precariously on the edge, but the rain had left the metal slick, and she found herself slipping from her perch and tumbling down to the mattress below. It squeaked as she hit it with all her weight, and blearily she raised herself on her hands and knees. She wasn't hurt, at least.

Well, physically she wasn't. Her ego, however, took a bit of a hit when she looked up to find Erik was standing just feet away from her, where he had stopped to wait for her, she supposed. Evidently he'd seen the entirety of her majestic fall, and when she met his gaze his eyes narrowed. This guy definitely thought she was a completely incapable loser.

At that, one part of her brain went, well, so who cares what he thinks? Not everyone has to like you. But another part of her, a louder, darker part that had begun to cloud her mind since she'd watched Papa die, said: would he be wrong? Maybe she was incapable. Maybe she was no better than a helpless child. Her hands burned where the metal had bit at her scabbing palms, and she looked away from his gaze.

She mutely trailed after him through a maze of plain, limestone hallways, passed the occasional unmarked doorway and went around what appeared to large boilers and pipes, marked brightly with different colors as they snaked around the room like colorful metallic snakes. They must've been in some maintenance sector of the theater, and the air down here was colder, staler than it had been up above. There were no windows down here.

She was relieved when they began to ascend a plain stairwell, with the occasional glittering light on the wall to luminate the steps. There were no words passed between them as the traversed what seemed to be countless floors, before Erik came to a stop at one of the landings and opened the adjunct door. It was here that he finally glanced back to acknowledge her, before he passed through the doorway. When she followed him, she found themselves back in the familiar hallway with the dressing rooms from yesterday.

Same as before he walked to the door he had stayed in, and he opened it to enter. He didn't close it behind him, so she supposed it meant he wanted her to follow. She trailed after him into the room and closed the door shut behind her.

Erik was at the kitchenette set up in the room, lifting what appeared to be a tea kettle and setting it on the small stove. He set his backpack on the bookshelf to his left, and she watched as he shucked his long, black coat, giving her a clearer view of his long torso, covered by a thick gray turtleneck. He was very skinny. At the kitchenette he was moving around something, the occasional noise of what sounded like porcelain clinking against the tabletop as the kettle began to whistle. Finished, then, he turned around to set down a steaming drink on the coffee table before her. He pulled over another chair to sit diagonally to her spot on the couch. He did not make his own drink, she noted.

Stunned slightly by the sudden change in hospitality, she gently picked up the small mug between her two hands, glancing from it to him uncertainly a few times. The warmth from the mug seeped into her cold, worn fingers, and it was a welcome change from the wet coldness of the past few hours.

"It's chai and honey," he said. "No milk, unfortunately. It is hard to find much in terms of expirable food around here anymore."

"Oh… thank you," she replied, earnestly, and sipped the tea. It was very hot, and burnt at her tongue a little as she did so, but she relished the heat.

He watched her closely for a minute or two before leaning forward in his chair. In his hand he seemed to have a folded up wad of paper, and he spread it smoothly out over the coffee table. It was a map of the city, she realized.

"I expect I shall be ready for us to leave by the day after tomorrow, at the earliest. It will take us a week at least to walk through the city entirely, bar foul weather, and so it would be best to stock up on munitions before we depart," he said.

Her brows furrowed. "A week? It only took me and Papa around… three days to hit downtown." She quirked her lip in a lame attempt at a joke. "What, will we be crawling the whole way there?"

He did not seem to find it very funny. His voice was cool and low as he replied. "That there was your mistake; we will not be descending through downtown, unless you wish to meet the same demise as your father. We will instead avoid downtown and curve around the nearby suburbs. It will take longer, undoubtedly, but it will also be safer."

He shifted one of his hands to tap at a specific place on the map. "I have a few places around town that we'll be able to stop at along the way. The trouble will begin once we hit Schaumberg, here. We'll be veering closely to one of the RF's favorite hideouts."

Christine swallowed down more tea. "Why do we have to go near it, then?"

"Ascending higher than that will add countless days to our journey." His gaze met hers again. "I'm assuming that you would like to return home as soon as possible. In all likelihood they'll be more distracted by themselves to notice us. I've traveled through the area before. As long as we do not make much noise, it is unlikely they will notice us, nor care enough to investigate."

"Alright."

A silent moment as he leaned back in his chair. His spider-like hands flexed against his thighs.

"And where is home for you, exactly?" he asked.

Deep question, she thought to herself, though she knew he meant it not in the metaphorical sense. Her hands tightened around the porcelain cup. Though she did not drink it, she held it close to her face, as though the steam from the heat could act as a blanket.

"Nebraska," she said. "A little place outside of Central City. I have friends there who are waiting on me."

He nodded. His head tilted slightly, and then he seemed to be studying her for a moment. She felt unnerved under his scrutiny.

Eventually he spoke again. "I will give you a few hours to settle in. When you are ready, I want you to meet me in the auditorium. It's time we try out your end of the bargain, hmm?"

He stood to his full height, lumbering over her. Those damn eyes gleamed down at where she sat, and her mouth suddenly felt very, very dry.

"Okay," was all she could think to reply.

Please let me know your thoughts! I'm very curious to hear what you all think :)