That strange feeling was firewater in his veins. It was bubbly, spitting from the strike of metal being welded together; iron fused with a delicate weave of copper. The spatter made her hiss as he grabbed her skin, his gunpowder fingerprints smudging her ivory caste, corrupting it with something less than satin sheets and flawless diamonds. The warmth of her lips had tasted like death. Ashy and cold, it bloated his tongue with an odor of edible despair. He pulled away, unsure. He had felt death many a time in his hands, but now it stained his mouth.
It's what he'd first imagined of her in all those days gone past.
She looked up at him, her eyes the barest of slits, and smiled before leaning over the side. There was puke on his shoes. (Again). It was blood- pure heaves of sticky red insides, coating his boots and sullying her chin.
"I don't feel good," was all she managed to say before dropping like a fresh corpse in his arms.
At that very moment, the contract suddenly wielded a very large hammer, brandishing sparks from the anvil that was his skull as it smote down- clang clang clang! The forge was molten, brimstone agony, as it dipped its steel to then skewer it straight between his eyes like a plunge in oil (hiss!). It made his inner ears ring and pulsate so powerfully he almost smashed his head into the wall to make it stop- make it fucking stop! He'd never acted so fast in his entire fucking life as he ripped the door off and bolted headfirst into the tempest.
The storm stretched wide, its claws pulling at the bones of the house to make it heave and shudder. The wails and shrieks screamed all around as the cold drop of rain battered his face, whipping him from every direction. Every clap of an unadulterated energy spike was a white-hot rod of steel lancing down his spine. It filled him to the brim with vitality, overflowed his cup, but he couldn't drink it quick enough, couldn't have two words make sense without the need to dig his fingers into something and just pull tight to either fuck it into submission or eat it raw while it still breathed.
The second house across the street was empty. He ravaged through it like the hurricane outside, upending everything and anything as he desperately searched for the aid he required. They were too far from any settlement, had too little time before the radiation poisoning would beget serious consequences.
Do you want to leave Megaton?
The third one had exactly what he required; a fallen first aid kit behind the toilet, the bag and surgical tubing camouflaged under a thick coat of dust. He came back to her, just as he had done before, holding the rope that he would toss as her lifeline, to pull her back from where he had led many before that he was now twice calling her from, from the edge of a place that he could not follow.
We can find somewhere else, someplace better.
She wasn't there.
He came to the back bathroom and found her, small and quivering like a beaten dog with no hope left in its life, guided only by the commanding purpose of survival. The discarded syringes crunched under his boots; the empty vodka bottle was kicked aside into the wall. The cold rain dripped from his body and freckled her face as he crouched down.
Go wherever you want.
Her veins nearly popped from her skin, black and angry and ugly; her fingers swollen and bright red. The sleeve of her arm was cut into with the edge of his knife and ripped away, his hands working swiftly and sure and steadily.
Why did you save me?
"Evelyn," he rasped, holding her chin tight to force whatever waning consciousness she still breathed to listen. "Do not die."
The poke of Rad-Away, the stench of acidic puke, (a faintly muttered prick). She trembled, moaned, screwed her eyes shut and wailed with the echoing heartbreak of the skies that had sought to curse her so. His hands nestled under her arms whilst hers clenched over his shoulders, both anchored to the other as she rode wave after wave of extreme nausea and boiling blood.
"Don't leave me," she sobbed, repeating the mantra over like a broken record, one he had set the needle to the moment he had embedded it under her skin. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me. Don't leave me."
Bit by bit, the Rad-Away purged her system of the accumulated radiation and tossed whatever lining was left of her stomach onto the floor, the sour webbings of spit smeared away by the glove of his hand as he kept her from falling over into her own sick. Her body grew spent as the bag emptied, and he carefully picked her off the floor to leave that personal purgatory he never sought to return to. The contract was now reduced to a dull pounding; the sides of his skull ached, but he could handle it. He's fared much worse.
As he climbed the staircase with her head lolled against his chest, her eyes became so heavy he almost feared they would never open again, but they did, and she looked up at him.
"Stay with me," she whispered with a croak, her throat raw and abused. "…please."
Her small hand snugged under the leather strap of his armor. He stared at it while laying her in the empty bed upstairs, disentangling her fused limb from himself so that they may become their own entity once again. The scruffy, thin blanket she kept in her pack was draped across her curled form, almost as an afterthought, before he finally sat on the edge of the bed with her blood still dyeing his boots. He stared out the thin cracks in the boards that were nailed over the window. The quiet calm of the night was beyond their door; the storm had passed. He watched her sleep well later into the early powder of dawn; the glow beyond a light shade of baby blue.
When she finally awoke with the birthing of the sun, groggy and eyelids fluttering as she raised herself up, she went to press her lips to his. Charon halted her advancement with a firm grip on her shoulders, the prickling of irritated confusion twitching his fingers against her skin. She blinked through the foggy layer of sleep dusting her lashes as her mouth quirked in a frown.
"Ugh…" she groaned as she laid back down. "…what happened? Where are we?"
Charon stood and reached for her bag, pulling out a bottle of purified water for her to drink. "You were ill from radiation poisoning," he dryly enlightened. The look he gave her was not one of relief or concern, but rather a, I told you so. "You were dying." It was said so matter-of-factly it came out like an extreme inconvenience for him.
The bottle was lazily slurped from as she exerted as little energy as possible, her eyes squinting against the slowly brightening illumination of the room before she flitted her eyes to her Pip-Boy screen. The little marker indicating their location made her tersely sigh, some water dribbling down her chin.
"Are you well?" he asked, his eyes chasing that bead of water like a fox down a rabbit hole.
She chortled, "No."
"Is there anything you require?"
"No." She closed her eyes. "I just need a minute…thanks, big guy."
"It is my duty," he gravelly rasped.
His heavy footsteps marched off; his weight pressed into the floorboards a little more forcefully than was necessary- he wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't go through the rotted wood as he stomped down the stairs. While he obsequiously waited by the front entrance for her to attend to her more 'private needs', he spied that little metal fragment on the side table, glistening under the halo of the sunlight.
(He suddenly didn't like this place)
The small cast of her shadow eventually came down the steps, her fingers and eyes fiddling with the tear in her vault suit that he had come to purposefully inflict. He heard her mutter something along the lines of Wadsworth and not happy. There was nothing about the previous hours etched in the lines of her face for him to read; she truly did not recall any of it. That would have suited him fine, preferred, even…but for a reason he could not fathom, it didn't.
"Have you eaten anything yet?" she asked with a little hum in the back of her throat, replacing that earlier desperate begging with impish inquisitiveness.
"I do not like this place," he answered instead. She gave him a look as though he had just spouted some foreign, dead language from a second head. He continued, "I advise we leave."
She briefly looked over to the couch and caught sight of the black spew that had poured from her very lips where there should have been them. It didn't bait any comment, however, for she stepped outside to blink and sneeze in the face of the full light of the sun. Charon hovered an appropriate distance at her back as she made off into the wastes…she didn't give one single glance back.
The once-parched earth was somewhat puddled here and sodden there, making his employer slip and slide more than once. Rather than the fresh scent Pre-War rainstorms used to carry, there instead lingered a tart, almost acidic haze in the air that slightly burned the back of the throat, something he didn't really notice anymore until he was forced to listen to her incessant coughing. His feet stopped of their own accord- a first in his books. The blue and gold of her body kept swinging away as she bumbled on towards their destination; this stupid smoothskin that somehow put herself in everyone's business (his own included).
"I do not know."
Her boots paused in the splash of a puddle. She turned to look behind herself and noticed the distance that had been put between them. Her brows furrowed.
"What?" she asked.
Charon retreated his eyes to the far distance- something that couldn't drag him under like the breach of a high tide.
"I do not know," he repeated. "Why I had saved you."
He relented his stare back over. There was no change to her expression.
"Oh…" she finally said a little sadly, and then she half-heartedly shrugged. "Maybe it's because you're actually a good person?"
He didn't know what to say to that, much less what face to wear in response, and so it remained blank as she started forward again while he stared just a little while longer, just enough until he felt the need to take a step of his own.
It had all been a dream, yes, one hellish scream in her ear sort of dream. His tongue had been snakes, his fingers vines with thorns, his needy breaths turned into thundered shrieks. The imagination of Charon kissing her like she was an idol to be worshipped had all been woven together from some horrible, nasty little part of her brain like a loom on fire, the dark crimson thread cut straight from her veins. She had begged him not to go, to not leave her in that horrible place where the venom was poisoning her blood and the quicksand was filling her lungs. He must have stayed, for he was still there when she awoke…then again, it's not as though he had much choice to be.
Canterbury Commons was a reserved journey across the thin stalks of brush and endless dead sea of sand, both simply left in the midst of their own thoughts. As the looming silhouette of the town grew closer, the outlines of the buildings went from flat colors on a backdrop to crumbled mortar and-
What the fuck was she even looking at?
Besides the littered corpses of giant ants (eck!) and electronic scraps of robotic parts lying in the empty streets, a small crowd of people (including the bald chemist she was there to see) were gathered around a single man who was standing on a small box, his hands waving in the air to appease the rising voices.
Evelyn looked up at her companion as he finally came to stand at her side. "I see Hoff. We'll be in and out."
He didn't say anything but gave a curt nod, and so she took the lead to draw closer to the townsfolk and eavesdropped on the general hubbub.
"This is getting out of hand, Roe-!"
"I can't sleep knowing this is going to continue!"
"Just put a goddamn bullet in them, already!"
Racketeering of agreements and dismays rose up. She once again peered over for the ghoul's nonverbal opinion of it all…he only seemed mildly annoyed. They patiently waited for the commotion to die away after a seemingly innocuous solution was spread around like a sip from a chalice, subduing the earlier hostility amongst the populace as they went back to their daily lives. The man on the soapbox finally gave them notice as Evelyn pattered off for the good doctor.
"Hoff," she called out after him.
The chemist trader turned around, surprised at her unexpected appearance. "If it isn't one of my finer clients-"
She was already holding the Ultrajet in hand, waving it at him with all the discretion of a nuclear bomb. "Can you sell this?"
Charon growled at her lack of sense, whereas Doc Hoff eyed the canister with a certain scrutiny. Something at her back made him quickly pocket the chem from any prying eyes, and he told her in a hushed voice, "I will see to its appraisal," and then he left her standing stupidly in her spot.
"Well." Evelyn grinned in relief at the smooth transaction, dusting her hands together. "That was easy." She heard Charon's grumbled mutter over her shoulder, his disapproval plain.
"Welcome to Canterbury Commons," a voice behind them announced. They both turned to a portly gentleman giving them an easy smile. "Everyone round here knows me as Uncle Roe- sorry for the state of appearances. We've just been having a little trouble as of late."
Evelyn glanced over at the carcass of a giant ant being towed away limb by limb, her face disgusted. "That's…unfortunate."
"It is," Roe agreed. He then openly stared at Charon and his gleaming arsenal. "I don't suppose you could lend a hand?"
Charon instantly whipped his head down to her, the glare on his face an easy read- it is not our concern.
Evelyn crossed her arms over her chest, her people-pleasing nature blooming despite herself. "Um…" She rubbed the tip of her nose. (It couldn't hurt just to ask). "…what sort of help?"
Charon didn't hide his frustration; in fact, he let it be known to the entire wasteland just how he felt about his employer's self-righteous sense of stupidity. She had even gone ahead and further insulted him by stating you can stay here, if you want. He shook his head. She nauseated him. A full twenty-four hours hadn't even had the decency to pass from her last near-death experience, and here he was, already prepping to prevent another.
At least he got to properly 'prep', this time.
The pulse grenades clinked in his side satchel as they made their way up a small hillside toward a derelict robot repair center where the aptly named idiot, the Mechanist, resided. Charon didn't really know and cared even less. Where she went, he followed, for so long as she held his contract, this was his way. They came to the main entrance that he propped a shoulder onto, giving her a look to indicate that he was ready to engage upon her word. His eyes followed the motion of her fingers grasping the handle of her knife, unsheathing it to wield it unconfidently before her.
"I advise you to remain behind me for cover," he rasped as though speaking to someone lacking in the mental faculties department. "That will be ineffective."
She blushed an angry scowl as she pocketed it away with indignity. "You're the one who gave it to me! I'm just trying to be useful." A jut of her chin to his pocket drew his eyes down. "Can I at least have one of those- what were they- pulse, grenades?"
A request, but not an order. He didn't have to comply.
"Do you know how to use one?" he countered flatly.
She quickly rebutted with, "Yes."
(An obvious lie)
His snort was so snappish it ruffled her hair. He was in no mood for her incessant antics at that moment, if he ever was. "I advise to take lead," he replied as he gradually opened the door to peer inside. "Be cautious."
Charon generally only filtered two things among conversations- what it was, and how many. The pulse grenades proved a wise choice against the array of robots they came across. He was (almost happily) disposing of the rust buckets, trading his well-thrown pitches for their erratic lasers as they kept behind solid cover of overturned desks and stayed flush against concrete walls, his employer safe and sound beside him-
His face nearly melted off into a puddle of pure vehemence and panic as he spun around to find her missing, the invisible outline of where she had just been comically flashing at him in mockery. He found her butt sticking out to the firefight, her sticky fingers busily prying open a locked box inside an office cubicle. Charon lobbed a grenade through the open doorway before storming over and decking the side of the container across the room with the steel toe of his boot, the loud bang making her jump from her skin and the abundance of pilot lighters sprinkling down like hard confetti.
"Focus," he growled. "There are more ahead."
She huffed at him after zipping her pack closed. "What else do I do then?!"
He leaned down. "Stay. Close."
When he turned back around to deal with the threat at hand, he heard her horribly grovel under her breath, "Stay close, smoothskin, grbergarbrar-ra-ra-ra."
(He did not sound like that)
A Sentry Bot wheeled inside the room, its audio synthesizer announcing, "HOSTILES: DETECTED."
Without a word, Charon picked her up and carried her like a limp ragdoll as he ran back for the front entrance, only to accidentally drop her when a shrieking projectile blew up the wall just feet to the side of them. He once again lost sight of her as he was forced to stand his ground and blow some decent-sized holes in the bot until a sudden tugging at his waist minutely diverted his attention.
"I got it open!" she shouted over the noise, pointing down a narrow corridor.
He quickly followed and provided cover fire, blasting shell after shell through the doors while she slapped the button closed like an erratic rabbit's foot. The Sentry Bot was nearly a husk of smoking wires and melted metal, but still it assaulted them until the silent hum of the elevator began to make its descent, the softly playing music a stark contrast to the chaos just above. Taking advantage of a moment of safe respite, he leaned into a corner and traded his spent magazine for a fully loaded one, not noticing her standing just before himself until he had finished pocketing away the empty drum. There was a Stimpak in her hand and a certain look in her eye that made him uncomfortable. She motioned to his thigh- there was a chunk of drywall embedded through the leather of his pants at his waistline. The adrenaline coursing through him didn't allow the pain to register until he finally took notice of it. He curiously widened the edges with a forefinger and thumb, tilting his head to inspect the severity of it.
"Um…" she timidly began, and then finished dumbly, "You're bleeding."
He considered the offer and then shook his head. "No."
"Charon, I can read the word 'safety' from the poster still on it."
He looked her over; the concrete dust graying her hair, the skinned knees of her vault suit, the dirt streaked on her cheek.
"Are you injured?" he inquired in return.
"No," she said. "Just let me-"
He clenched his jaw and ripped the obstruction free, growling low in his chest as he snagged the Stimpak she held over and injected himself, the warm flow of blood loudly dripping to the floor at their feet. As the chem worked its charm and stitched him shut, he closed his eyes and tilted his head against the vibration of the elevator wall, cracking his neck side to side when they came to a stop. She glared at him.
"I am better," he informed matter-of-factly.
She didn't seem too impressed with his doctoring method, for she spun on her heel and marched straight out the open doors on the lower level before he could even scope it to be clear. Much to his relief, there was no presence of any more erratic bots and simply just a wack-job smoothskin whose brain had to have been fried under the heat of the wasteland sun. Charon had him backed into a corner and kept the biting end of his shotgun planted precisely at his helmet's forehead (for a quick shot if needed).
"You're really causing a lot of trouble for the town," his employer reasoned, and then she gave a wide-eyed look like a puppy who'd just been kicked. "Can't you just…stop?"
And it fucking worked. They were back on the surface no sooner than they had left it with news of their successful delegation in preventing any further 'kooky' incidents. Charon watched her fill her caps bag to the newly stretched seams and trade over the clunky piece of armor the Mechanist had given her (that she had somehow managed to lug all the way down the hill). She kept the helmet, however…he didn't know what to make of that. When the business was concluded, she grew extremely shy and held up the ginormous satchel of currency for him to take view of.
"Um…I figured before I divided our share, I'll buy?" When he only stared point-blank at her, she nervously swallowed. "Food? There's a diner…I figured you'd be hungry."
He nodded. He was. She took her seat and made small talk with the smoothskin who ran the place. Charon hovered at her back, always keeping his keen sense of self-preservation on high alert. When she turned around, she patted the stool right beside her own.
"…it's better than standing out in a radstorm," she weakly jested.
His weight settled on the cracked leather barstool, the seating just barely gracious enough to allow him to sit comfortably. He listened to her engage in amicable conversation with the man making their food and himself.
"Charon's the only reason I'm even around," she joked over the counter.
(It was not a joke)
She then smiled up at him. He felt a violent warm rush to his face- he must have been injured somewhere else and was now feeling the aftereffects. It would need tending to, but before he could rise from his seat to begin assessing himself for the source, their bowls were set before them, and she dug in with all the tenacity of a starved yao guai.
"This is amazing," she gushed, beaming from ear to ear.
Charon began to study something of great interest in his bowl, the injury all but forgotten. It could wait. He, too, took a sip, and then observed her being helped to a second serving. She must have really liked it. He, unfortunately (and fortunately), didn't have enough tastebuds to know anymore. They promptly wrapped up their fine dining and met with the chemist trader just before the sun could set, and she again was lucky with good fortune (a very valuable thing in the wasteland).
"A ghoul had conceived this?" Hoff asked. "That does make a lot of sense…" He then looked to Charon, as though the mere sight of him had confirmed something. "Yes, indeed. Where did you say-?"
"Northwest Seneca metro station," she easily supplied, her naivety with trust knowing no boundaries. "Murphy and Barrett. I'm sure they'd love to do business with you."
After her tasking was (finally) finished (both preplanned and not), they were given shelter in a refurbished garage. The merc smoothskin had offered them the quarters and gave no insult or veiled prejudice to their shared company, and so they took advantage of the privacy in a backroom that had a single bed.
The light was dimmed. The bedframe squeaked as she rolled over to blink at him. He pulled up a chair to sit close and keep watch on the door. He leaned his back into the frame and crossed his arms, spreading his legs out for comfort.
"It's not so bad here," she whispered. He turned, watched her stroke the threading of her ruined sleeve. She tucked her hands under her head and gave him an owlish stare. "What do you think?"
He shifted his weight.
"It is..." He sat there, thinking, and then, "quiet."
Her hand dangled over the edge of the bed.
"I'm happy you're here with me," she softly said, and then she closed her eyes to drift off to sleep.
She kept her small palm over the side throughout the entirety of the night, just within reach, and more than once, he felt his fingers twitch to take it.