FIC: Flawed Assumptions, Chapter Three
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.
His employer is awake.
She’s awake and nothing’s changed. The silent isn’t quite so silent anymore, but it still speaks of sickness and death. Only now it’s filling up with quiet, muffled sobs and Barrows’ soft attempts at stopping them and Charon’s pacing the floor.
He’s never felt so helpless and he hates it.
He’s never seen her cry before, not in all the time-has it been a year? -he’s known her and he’d do anything to make it stop. He wishes he’d been the one to walk into that room. Wishes he’d risked going feral to keep her from this. Wishes he’d done as she asked when she stumbled out and into his arms. But the memory of carrying her-her weight in his arms, her head tucked under his chin-keeps him from groping for his gun. He can’t shoot her. He can’t. He won’t.
But she might order him to.
The thought sends cold lightning shooting down his spine and Charon stops in his pacing, back to the wall, one hand over his eyes. She’s in pain, he knows. Not thinking clearly. But she was thinking just fine before she stepped into the chamber and he doesn’t want to hear those words again.
If she asked again… if she ordered him… he’d have to.
The thought’s enough to send him pacing again, glaring at Barrows out of the corner of his eye as he withdraws the med-x needle from her skin. Their eyes meet over her body-his employer-and Charon’s only ever wanted to strangle Azhrukhal more than he wants to strangle Barrows now. Anything to shake that look of pity from his eyes. He doesn’t need the man’s goddamned pity.
He doesn’t know what he needs.
*
Charon is beside her when she wakes. He’s sleeping, cramped up into the chair with an uneasy look resting on his flayed features and she doesn’t need another thing to feel guilty about, but there it is. She lies there, watching him sleep and feeling the drift of unnamed drugs floating through her bloodstream. She wonders how close she is to turning ghoul-if Moira’s experiments twisted her DNA into something useful. She wonders how long it’ll be until she’s up and running again.
She wonders how long Charon will stay.
He’s a merc, she knows, despite his oddly worded contract. He’ll want paid before long and she hasn’t got much, if anything, to give him. She aches too damn bad to peer over the bed and find her bag and anyway, what caps she has she’ll be shelling out to Barrows for the treatment. He’s a good man, she thinks, and the best damn doctor money can buy. But he sure as hell ain’t free.
Watching him sleep, broad shoulders hunched in a too-small chair, she comes to a decision. It takes a monumental effort to move her hand, and she finds, halfway to reaching him she can only touch his thigh. But he stirs just the same, one hand moving to settle over hers out of instinct-surprisingly gentle-and opens once-green eyes.
They watch each other for a moment, acknowledging a shared existence before finally, Charon speaks.
“What do you need?” he asks her, voice still thick with sleep and she finds it odd he does not move his hand from hers.
“Your contract should be in my bag. Take it.”
She feels him flinch, feels the hand on hers tighten a fraction and thinks briefly of her father and the gift with words they never shared. She is too much like her mother-straightforward, honest, unfortunately blunt. She is clever, intelligent, but without her father’s cunning.
James, she realized far too late, had always been something of a sneak.
And while she barely knows him, Charon doesn’t react the way she expected he would. He only stares at her, a look in his eyes she’d have read in Gob’s as distress, one hand still resting lightly on her own.
“Are you sure this is what you wish?”
She nods because her throat is tight and she’s seen enough Atomites to know the vocal cords rot first. Charon only watches her, watches her for a long moment and finally, finally takes his hand from hers. He pulls her bag from under the bed, finds the hidden pocket with his contract without being told and sits back, staring at the piece of paper in his hands.
Tension screams in the line of his shoulders.
She wonders if he’ll shoot her.
She wonders if ghosts are real. If she and Azhrukhal and the countless numbers who’ve died in this skeleton of a lost world will stay here, wandering the wreckage until the wasteland claims it too. She wonders what will happen then… how long it will take and if the Super Mutants will claim it first. She wonders what Super Mutants look for in a den. Wonders what separates this from the wrecked office buildings she’s snuck through, leaving landmines in her wake.
She wonders what kind of drugs Barrows has her on.
Charon takes a deep, steadying breath beside her and carefully tucks the contract back under her hand.
“I do not want this.”
She moves her hand away from the paper, under the tattered sheet and it is all the strength she has left.
“I can’t pay you.”
Charon only stares at her, looking haunted and guilty and somehow smaller than he was the moment before.
“Payment is not necessary,” he says softly and for the first time since she’s known him, he cannot meet her eyes.
She is tired of this. Tired of arguing with people. With roaming the wastes. Tired of caring for everyone but herself, of always being in some sort of pain, of being in this sort of pain. She wants to sleep and not worry for the first time in months if there is something more important-something selfless-she should be doing. She’s so goddamned tired of being the saint. She wants to think of her own damn self first, wants to lash out at something just to ruin it. She wants to rail at her father, at Three Dog, at Butch of all people, and she knows it’s not Charon’s fault but she glares at him just the same.
“It is or you wouldn’t be here,” she snaps and wishes she could hit him, even knowing she never would-even hating herself for thinking it at all.
There is a look like pain in his eyes as he frowns, shaking his head ever so slightly.
“It is my function to protect you.”
He is not saying what he means, she knows, but ferreting out what’s said and what’s meant was never her strong suit and even beginning to try makes her want to scream. And maybe it’s whatever the hell Barrows has draining into her arm, but she feels like she’s been here, in this moment, for far too long and she’s done.
“Take the damn contract,” she snarls, and somewhere in the back of her mind she realizes she’s shouting, her voice like shattered, burning glass. “I can’t handle it anymore, Charon. I won’t be responsible for you. I’m done. I’m retiring. That’s it. Just take your damn contract and go.”
For a long moment, he only watches her, a deafening silence stretching between them.
“You are my employer, regardless,” he insists at last, a dark, unreadable expression in his eyes. And then, quietly, “I will always do as you ask.”
She wants to call him a liar-she’s alive, after all-but he’s halfway across the room before she finds the energy to speak, his contract in his hand and watching his broad, retreating back, she realizes this is the most they’ve ever spoken to each other.
And that she hasn’t said goodbye.