"Minefield?" Murphy rasped. "Why are you trying to go there, smoothskin? The name ain't enough of a clue for you?"
She shrugged, shouldering her bag after offloading her cargo. Her muscles were killing her. "It's for some highly respected research, obviously, I'm a woman of articulate business ventures, can't you tell?"
"Heh heh." The ghoul scratched at his elbow, handing over the caps he owed. "Don't get yourself killed, you're the only one that's getting me these Sugar Bombs."
"No guarantees," she replied dryly, turning for the open doorway. "About the dying or the Sugar Bombs." She paused, her fingers fiddling with the strap of her pack before she spun around. "Do... do you happen to know anything about that ghoul that was here the last time?" Rolling his name off her tongue burst butterflies in her belly. It felt weirdly intimate to say it aloud. "Charon?"
Murphy adjusted his specs while Barrett raised his eyes over the screen of a terminal.
"You looking to do business with him, smoothskin?"
She shrugged, feigning her gnawing interest with a cool attitude.
Murphy coughed into a fist. "Take my advice. Stay as far away as you can. I might be dealing Ultrajet with Ahzrukhal, but he's a slimy bastard who always tries to cut my share anytime he thinks he can get away with it."
Tell me something I don't know, she thought sourly.
He continued, "I've been working with him for awhile now, but I still don't trust him."
"Okay, I get it, but what about his partner?" she insisted.
"What about him? He's hired muscle. Don't get in his way, and you might come out with all your limbs attached."
She sighed, exasperated. "I mean, don't you find him...weird?"
"I find him to be good at his job." Murphy opened a box of cereal, beginning the lengthy process of breaking the components down. He eyed her when she remained in her spot. "You have a better chance at surviving Minefield than being tangled with the likes of him."
It wasn't too far from the truth. Evading the general wildlife and strolling into the empty town seemed as easy as throwing an intellectual insult at poor Butch's tiny brain. She had begun collecting a few mines to shove inside her bag, wiping her sweaty hands on her thighs repeatedly from nerves at listening to the erratic beeping. It wasn't until she was actually set to leave that she was fired upon by some quack with a sniper rifle, his shots lighting a vehicle aflame.
She stared at it, horrified, and then her brain screamed move! Her boots slapped the pavement as she tried to hightail it to the edge of town before the whole place would explode. She nearly made it when the rusted-out frame blew in a dramatic eruption, lighting off the rest of the surrounding landmines in a deadly domino effect. A piece of shrapnel had the unfortunate luck of making contact with her thigh, but the override on adrenaline didn't really register the hit until she was a way up the road...and then it body slammed her with all the force of a steel-toed boot to the face.
"Gah!" she screamed, loud and without shame or sense of self-preservation. A sharp hiss bled from her lips as her fingers automatically went to remove the thing causing her so much pain, but the light touch brought another crescendo of sobbing curses and pounding thrush of blood to her skull. Her ears were ringing from the blasts all around her; she couldn't breathe with all the swirling black smoke in the air.
She was a doctor's daughter with no interest in the science of the human body, bleeding out from a piece of junk metal in her leg with no one to come ease her pain.
I'm here sweetheart, you're alright, what's the matter?
"Dad!" she wailed, coughing from the toxic fumes filling her lungs. "Daddy!"
It's just a little scrape, nothing that a bandage and a kiss can't fix. Mwah! See? All better.
Her father wasn't coming, no matter how hard she cried.
If it weren't for this supply run, Charon was sure to have gone feral at this point. Ahzrukhal had been most displeased upon learning the truth of his inhospitable negotiations with Dukov, forcing him to speak with the Russian himself before losing a long-standing client.
His employer had taken it upon himself to make his service most...disagreeable, since then. He had been stripped of his rations and was tasked with reimbursing his employer the potential caps he could have lost by any means necessary. The ghoul was set to return with them along with the run of weekly chems...he was still devising a strategy, and all of them involved some form of murder and stealing.
It wasn't his preference, but it also wasn't his choice.
The two ghouls in Northwest Seneca station looked up upon his arrival and went about their habitual task of counting caps while trading over stock. The bouncer leaned up against the wall, eerily silent and abnormally sullen as he gave them a look meant to flay the meat from their bones.
"Smoothskin left her crap behind," Barrett rasped as he took notice of a sledgehammer propped to the side.
Murphy shrugged his shoulders, too busy counting caps for the second time. "She'll be back...maybe."
Charon didn't take an interest in the side conversation...but he couldn't help staring at her weapon of choice. He knew it was hers.
"Who the hell wants to research Minefield, anyway?" Barrett remarked to no one in particular.
"Can't pay me enough to," Murphy agreed.
The rest of the deal was conducted as normal. Charon left with Ahzrukhal's bidding and glanced up to the sudden spiraling of black smoke off in the distance. If he had to make an educated wasteland guess, it would appear the smoothskin wouldn't be coming back after all. He expectantly didn't feel two ways about it- he shrugged the duffel bag higher up his shoulder and resumed his usual travel routine. The ghoul had only just about turned the corner of the grocery store, an intrusive thought pinging around inside his brain. That smoothskin was a little scavver... she was bound to have some caps on her; it would at least be something to start with.
Plus, she was already dead, and there was no shame in collecting from a corpse.
His boot made an indent in the dirt as he swiveled around and followed the road to Minefield. The town itself was covered in a thick haze; it was hard to discern just what was where, and he felt it almost to be a complete waste of time until his sharp eyes spotted a trail of blood, fresh. He tracked it to a house on the edge of town, the wind picking up slightly to give him better visibility.
The door was halfway propped open, bloodied prints decorating the frame and trim. Being ever cautious, the ghoul widened it with the barrel of his shotgun, only closing it behind him when he scoped the living room was clear. The smoke followed him like a rolling fog, and he gave a guttural cough as he inhaled the tarry smell down his throat. A bloated corpse was staring up at him with a slack-jawed mouth, and judging by the decomposition, he would venture it had been cold for at least a week.
Not the dead smoothskin he was looking for.
The blotted tracks led him around the side underneath the stairwell, all the way to a back bathroom that was curtained in shadow. His heavy footsteps creaked the floor beneath his weight as he crouched down close to eye level with the girl.
It wasn't too hard to deduce the situation- she was dying.
She was barely propped upright against the wall, slouching into herself like a folded doll. The once bright blue threading of her vault suit was stained dark and more than likely sticky from the loss of blood; her eyes were pinched closed and her breathing came in shallow waves, the skin a sickly pale shade.
He lifted her arm to gauge the nasty injury to her upper right thigh, and then he noticed the littering of some Med-X syringes. She would at least die in somewhat of comfort- she had either accidentally overdosed herself or simply couldn't tolerate the amount of pain. Whatever the case, it wasn't his issue.
He dropped the dead weight that was her limb, slightly startling her. The ghoul ignored the groaning from her lips as he rummaged through her pack that had been discarded to the side. A hefty bag of caps was pulled out, assessed, and judged enough for Ahzrukhal's demand. He unshouldered his own bag to stow the currency safely away when her hand shot up and gripped his forearm with waning strength.
Her lips moved, and he had to read them to understand what it was she said.
"...Dad?"
He almost snorted. Not quite. The pack was zipped closed, and she licked her lips before blinking sluggishly at his face.
"Charon," she whispered faintly.
He froze. It was a surprise to him, she remembered him well enough to know his name, hell, it was a surprise she was aware to even know who he was.
The ghoul looked down at the chunk of metal protruding from the flesh...if he were a man of any merciful stature, he would put a bullet in her brain and end her suffering. He stared at her dirt-streaked face and drooping eyelids, and then she weirdly smiled at him.
"Asshole," she mumbled with a string of gibberish to follow.
This time, he did snort. She didn't forget a single thing about him. Her small fingers crept up the leathered skin that remained on his arm, traveling across the oiled straps of his armor and jacket until they softly rested over the horrid disfigurement that was his face. She traced him as though blind; a cartographer sketching the rough plains and high peaks; a shipbuilder admiring the knotted wood of a hull that had journeyed a thousand seas, christening it with the thick red wine staining her hands. She leaned forward with all of her weight bearing into his chest, and she kissed him.
The sensation wasn't comparable to anything he had ever experienced before- it was his first.
She pulled away before he could even react, the desperate collide of her lips to his stern mouth as brief as a match lit in the wind. With her chest now heaving labored breaths, she slumped back to the wall and closed her eyes.
Charon promptly shouldered his bag and made for the door...he knew better.
(It wasn't his business)
A few slaps from his thick fingers to her cheeks only mildly roused her.
"Wake up," he instructed, and she only mumbled a low whine of something along the lines of so tired, go away. "Wake up, smoothskin."
He dove through her bag once more, hands steady as decades of field medic experience came forth like a kick in the teeth. If he was going to save her life, he had to act very quickly and be very precise. Anymore wasted time or limited resources would most certainly spell her passing. Two Stimpaks were retrieved, but it wasn't enough. He cursed under his breath, his stride long and steps full of purpose as he scoured the kitchen on the other side of the house for useful items. A first-aid box containing another stim and some water was nabbed, along with a bottle of vodka he took from the fridge.
It wasn't ideal, but she would live.
When he returned, he promptly removed his belt from his pants, the leather snapping in the air as it was pulled from the loops. Holding her upright with one hand while fashioning the makeshift tourniquet with the other, he held her down with careful pressure, and then cinched it, tight.
"Fuck, stop! Stop!" She sprang alive as though the nerves of her body had been electrified, her bloodied hands scrabbling at his shoulders and chest as she wailed and choked on her own gasps.
The ghoul uncorked the vodka with a side pull of his teeth, spitting the stopper out as he kept his focus on the task before him. With a quick splash over his hands, he met her fading eyes- she could see him, now.
"Hold still," was all he said, and then he soaked her thigh.
Her anguished screams sounded like a soul crawling from the depths of Hell. Her uninjured leg spasmed as she writhed, her face shiny with sweat as she bawled. Her hands came up and found sanctuary around his forearm, holding onto his exposed flesh as though it were her only tether to this plane of existence. She squinted past the tears and snot at his face, her expression desperate.
Charon braced his hand over the embedded object; it was deep...it was going to be painful. He didn't take his eyes from her own and only gave her a single nod before ripping the metal free.
Evelyn screamed a decibel worth of rupturing his eardrums, fluttered her eyelids as her blue irises rolled in the back of her skull, and went limp.
He went about injecting the sight, using every stim and carefully holding the flesh closed until it stitched together as a newly formed jagged pink line. When he was satisfied with his work, he then uncapped a bottle of dirty water and splashed some on her face, rudely waking her from her traumatic blackout.
"Drink this," he ordered with a sharp rasp, tilting the rim to her lips.
She sputtered, sluggishly rolling her head around and blinking in confusion. He grabbed ahold of her jaw with one gloved palm and forced her to concentrate.
"Drink," he repeated, offering it at a much slower rate.
The muscles in her neck rolled as beads of water dripped from the corners of her lips, and when she became coherent enough, she gripped the bottle herself with both hands and nearly drowned from guzzling too quickly.
Charon held the water away despite her whimpers. "You will make yourself sick. Slow."
She smacked her lips, and he couldn't help but stare at them.
Like the rolling of a thundercloud, he suddenly grew angry and got to his feet, staring down at this pathetic smoothskin who would be dead if he hadn't intervened. This wasn't his job. She was not his employer.
This was a waste of his time, and so he left her there without so much as a single glance back or parted word of good fortune. As he began to make the return trip to Underworld, he could only think about the manner in which she had looked at him, when she had believed herself to die.