FIC: Flawed Assumptions, Chapter Two
Title: Flawed Assumptions
Author: Cyprith
Pairing: Charon/LW
Rating: PG-for-now-but-with-bad-language
Summary: Charon is used to his employers taking him for granted, but somewhere along the line, he's become the very people he so hates.
Shoot me.
She’s not awake.
It’s been a week and Charon wonders if he’ll have to. Wonders if he should. He’s been given an order-a direct, standing order-and she’s not getting any better.
She’s in pain.
It bothers him. Bothers him like nothing else. Like a metal slug worming its way deeper into the wound and every now and again he finds a gun in his hand without knowing how it got there. He won’t shoot her. He should. She never ordered him to do anything else, and she’s the holder of his contract come hell or high water. She ordered him.
He can’t do it.
He can’t.
He sits like a statue at her bedside, glowering at Doc Barrows over her still, medicated form. Charon’s never trusted much of anyone-trust is a weakness-and he trusts Barrows only slightly more than those assholes from the Brotherhood. Barrows, at least, understands radiation. But Charon knows damn well just what kind of Holy Grail of Ghouldom his employer is to him and the look in that man’s eyes when he sees her makes Charon want to…
Want to shoot something.
He grinds his teeth against the thought, against the agonizing burn of an aging order, and tries to ground himself with her. Hours ago-yesterday, maybe-her hand found his and he hasn’t let it go. She anchors him. She keeps him where he needs to be. By her side, protecting her.
She keeps his hand busy.
*
She doesn’t eat, and so Charon doesn’t either. He remains at her side, watching the steady drip of the IV into her arm. Occasionally Nurse Graves will bring him something, sit by his side and talk to him as he eats one-handed. He understands that she’s whispering, her voice as low and soothing as any ghoul’s can be, but the sound grates on him. He longs for his employer’s silence-the shared glances, the mute signals. This silence unnerves him. It speaks of sickness and death and Graves’ long dead husband-the latter at length.
He wants, more than anything, for his employer to wake.
Somewhere between a beer and the burnt carcass of an iguana, he wonders if she should.
It would be easy. There’s a .44 in her bag with a silencer she pieced together from the wrecked remains of a good dozen 10mms. No one would hear it. And he could leave. He could do what she ordered him to do, take his contract and…
And go where?
“Charley was a lot like you, you know. Well, not really. He died years ago-human still, you know-and… and I can’t really remember what he looked like.”
He doesn’t want the contract back. He hates that fucking thing and would happily see it burn, but somehow… somehow not when she holds it. She fights with him and… and he likes it. He wants to fight with her. He wants to be her comrade in arms, her backup.
He wants to be the man his contract said he is.
“Funny how the mind works, huh? I mean, I think about him just about every day, but it’s been… oh, about eighty years now. Since he died, anyway. I haven’t seen him since I went ghoul.”
There’s a patch of skin missing on her stomach where the sheet has fallen down. Barrows must have come and gone while he was sleeping. It’s a sad, strange thought and Charon wonders if he’s finally getting old.
He wonders when the last time was he slept.
“Always said he didn’t like me working in the hospital-that there was something funny about it. I guess he was right.”
Charon watches his employer sleep and twines his fingers closer through with hers. He looks at her tired, sleeping face, at her once-beautiful hair hacked off and matted and realizes with a sense of creeping horror he does not know her name.
*
She’s awake, she thinks, but she cannot tell if her eyes are open. She hurts. Every inch of her body aches with searing intensity, each shallow gasp of air like swallowing glass. She’s lying on a mattress, she thinks, but the springs have a mind of their own, burrowing into her skin like hatching botfly needles, eating her from the inside out.
And the world is dark.
This is not the afterlife she expected.
For a long moment, she feels like sobbing. Hasn’t she been the good daughter, living up to her father’s idealistic visions? Hasn’t she risked her skin to
save enough cities, enough terrified children and battered slaves? Didn’t she help to build the Purifier? Didn’t she sacrifice everything when no one else would so that a nation of people could live?
Hasn’t she done enough?
It takes some time before she realizes there’s a hand in her own, flayed and callused. For a brief, shining moment, the world seems a little brighter. Gob is here, she tells herself, and tries with what little strength she has left to pull him closer. Everything will be alright so long as Gob is here.
Except he isn’t. The hand she’s holding is far too large, with calluses that haven’t come from years of fixing pre-war tech and finally, painfully, the girl breaks down in tears. She wants to go back to Megaton. She wants to retire-to spend her days talking to Gob and fucking with Jericho. She wants to sleep for a hundred years. She wants to see the world again.
She wonders why Charon didn’t shoot her when she asked.
She wonders if maybe that costs extra.
She wonders why Azhrukhal got it for free.
(I promised a chapter two. And here it is. There should be a chapter three and four, but I do not promise these.)