Chapter Text
I love those dear hearts and gentle people
Who live in my home town.
Because those dear hearts and gentle people
Will never ever let you down.
- Bing Crosby
Charon realizes who he’s the contractually obligated employee of after they leave Underworld a week later. Three Dog doesn’t ever describe the physical aspects of the Last, Best Hope for Humanity, but that may be because he's incredibly unremarkable. He would have never pegged him as the hero type, but Vaultie gets this weird smile on his face as the DJ talks about how the Lone Wanderer had left Underworld not too long ago and aided the Brotherhood of Steel in clearing out the mutants camped out in the foxholes around the Washington Monument. Sitting around the small radio of his pipboy in a subway train car they’ve temporarily reinforced for the night, he’s humming along to the tone of the DJ’s sing-song voice.
“Him and his new stalwart ghoul manservant really turned the tide of the fight. Those super mutants will probably be back soon, but if we’re lucky, the Brotherhood will send reinforcements and finally secure that area. Nice going, 101!”
The kid bought him from Ahzrukhal; even Charon knew he was overpaying, but despite arriving to the ghoul sanctuary in armor that turned heads he was a stuttering, nervous mess and couldn’t barter to save his life. Startlingly youthful, soft and scar-free. He didn’t kill anyone for him. Vaultie didn’t balk, just owlishly blinked back at him; Ahzrukhal’s tongue darted between his non-existent lips, and he rumbled out a “Dear boy, say something to Uncle Ahzrukhal—or you can pay…” when finally the silence became too much.
He didn’t feel bad—didn’t even know the kid—when some of the spray back of Azruhkal’s blood got onto his vault suit, but before Charon could even notice (if he noticed such trivial things) he was babbling how it was no big deal, that some Borax and he would just, just, uhm, take some of Ahzrukhal’s spit, don’t mind me, it really works well on blood stains, it’s not a big deal. He had stuffed the contract into his pockets like he was almost ashamed of it, and the strange noise of the paper being crushed so haphazardly made Charon’s fingers twitch.
In the beginning, he is not sure why he is needed. The Lone Wanderer was already a well-seasoned gunman by the time Charon comes around, well beyond his years. He had bouts of long-winded babbling and even longer stretches of complete and utter silence. He never commanded, like past employers, unless they were on the field in the thick of things, and then he commanded like an army general so eerily well that it made the back of Charon’s eyeballs burn and his vision almost go white with how easily he slipped back into the roll.
He never asks how or why, but he’s around when others do: “I practiced a lot in the vault,” Vaultie offers to Willow when she lets out a low whistle of appreciation at the display he’s putting on. Bracing his rifle against the ledge of the metro’s wall, they took potshots at supermutants whose craniums peaked above the trenches. “I got a BB gun for my tenth birthday and never let it go.”
She snorts, shading her eyes against the setting sun to get a better look at the green heads popping like melons under Vaultie’s accurate shot. “I didn’t know the vaults were so fancy even their radroach poppers had scopes.”
Vaultie’s smile is strange. He pulls away from his position to glance uneasily at her. “Y-yeah.”
Charon makes a noise in the back of his throat, not even bothering to look up from the pistols he has deconstructed and cleaned on the rolled out sheet in front of him. He knows he is not a charmer himself, but the kid’s so uncharismatic it almost seems purposeful: he could have gotten away with the white lie easily enough with his face straight ahead towards the bunkers. Now the anxious smile and the pregnant pause and the shifting eyes are even making Willow flinch.
“That’s fine, tourist.” She mutters quickly, in an effort to pacify him, or at least get him to turn back to the mall. It works; he laughs, and it dies off in his throat before he presses his beet-red face to the scope. Charon snorts, just an exhale from the slits of his nose. Willow exchanges a look with him, but his milky blue eyes are impassive.
--
His favorite songs are “Crazy He Calls Me,” and “Civilization”. He is obsessed with the time before the war. Anything that alludes to the comforts of a Vault-Tec approved American home promptly finds its way into Vaultie’s knapsack, or more commonly, Charon’s. He loves sugar bombs cereal and once paid a trader 1,000 caps just to taste the strange, sticky sweet bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla he had brought from far west.
“Hey, Charon…” The Lone Wanderer’s voice ventures one night, just the two of them encamped in a small cave they’ve cleared out of ants. The radio plays quietly next to him as the ghoul cracks open a second can of beans for them to eat. “What… what was it like? Before the war? Just like the Vault books say?”
“I do not know. I have never read the Vault books.” Charon answers, robotically, his eyes downward.
Generally, when they talk, it’s little give, and mostly take. Vaultie understands the concept of the contract, but only in vague terms. Some things Charon does unquestioningly; Vaultie knows violence invalidates it, but when asked, what’s your definition of violence? Can words be violent? What about gestures? How violent--? And the look Charon leveled at him when he witheringly replied, “Violence that could potentially be terminal to myself or you.” Silenced him quickly. He’s his employer, sure, but he’s no Ahzrukhal. (Charon is thankful for that, if he could feel an emotion as tender as ‘thankful’ anymore.)
“What did you do before the war?”
Charon bites his tongue. He nearly draws blood before his body forces him to answer: “I was a soldier.”
He doesn’t look up to see his employer’s reaction. All he hears is the sound of his spoon hitting the tin of the can. They’re quiet for the rest of the night; this isn’t abnormal for them. The Lone Wanderer doesn’t ask again.
--
Ears have shells on them for a reason. They help funnel the sound into the canal; Charon hasn’t had any semblance of ears in years, and yet even he can hear the muffled sobs Vaultie’s trying to subdue with a pillow. He sometimes screams in his sleep. He says the word “father”, sometimes. Jonas and Benji and Amata and Butch are names mumbled during sweat-drenched fever dreams. Charon never asks.
--
The suit he wears is something that makes a corner of Charon’s brain itch, familiar. But, after being alive for so long, everything is dully familiar. It’s body hugging, sleek black and orange accents, with nodules and wires seamlessly integrated into it. The fabric is something else entirely, something pre-war. It dirties, but doesn’t stain. He arrived in it, and only seemed to be coaxed out of it after having spent a week plus in Underworld; without it, he was nearly an entirely different person. Meek, unsure. When they left Underworld for the first time, the bumbling boy left the room and came back something else entirely, the orange visor impassive, his sniper rifle strapped to his back.
They travel together, uneasily. Charon hasn’t been in the thick of fire for a while, but he slots back into the role well enough. His employer is a different matter; the kid is not used to traveling in a pair, and he does not seemed to be used to traveling with someone else. The first time his employer crouches and disappears, Charon’s gut clenches.
“Sorry,” A voice says, somewhere to his left. Charon’s eyes are wide as he turns, carefully. There’s a knock of knuckles on the ground that draw his gaze immediately. “It’s the suit.”
Charon glares. And then his eye catches the corner of something—a faint outline, shimmering. It moves as the rapping of knuckles on the metal platform they’re standing on grow closer.
His eyebrows knit together. “Stealth boy?”
“Chinese. Crimson Dragoon.” A pause, “Hei gui,” comes the reply, in text-book proper Mandarin. Charon turns away. This is not the worst curveball an employer has thrown at him. He can manage with an invisible one. In a way, it’s preferable; being the only one visible, his entire designation as protector is even easier. They only aim for him. Any thought that he may accidentally shoot him is unwarranted; it doesn’t take long for Charon to be able to catch the tell-tale shimmer of the cloak in all but the lowest of lights. And when his gun trains, accidentally, on his form, something scratches at the base of his brain, like a panicked rat. He nearly trips over him a few times. Vaultie’s nervous laughter is his only reply.
On their way out of the city, Vaultie makes small, strange chatter about how lovely the sky is, or asks awkward questions that Charon never answers with other than a frown. He collects useless things, like metro tickets, and tucks them almost reverently into the hands of passing protectrons as he sneaks behind them to shut them down for maintenance. He maintains the metro protectrons, near useless in their weakness. Charon watches.
He is a generally amiable owner. Strange, but more than mild compared to Ahzrukhal, and other past men and women. More than capable. A little too young, but every smoothskin was, nowadays, compared to Charon.
--
The Pipboy pumps the sound of the radio directly into Vaultie’s ears, if he so chooses, instead of being used as a speaker. Charon does not know the science behind it; he never applied to live in the vaults, and he was never chosen. Random tidbits the Lone Wanderer has told him is that there’s a hermetic seal on it, and an actual needle that buries itself into his skin to keep tab on his vitals. It’s the reason why if someone tried to say, yank it off, it would be more likely they’d take the Lone Wanderer’s arm with it than to get the machine off in one piece. He says hearing the music when no one else can has something to do with vibrations in his inner ear or something, but Charon is just glad that he can listen to music without drawing every deathclaw, raider and supermutant in a thirty foot radius towards them. He’s a strange owner, but he’s not the worst. It makes him uneasy that the status quo has gotten undeniably better; there’s room for disappointment there.