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Adam wakes up an hour before his midnight alarm on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, and immediately jams the butt of his palm into his nose in his sleep-blurred excitement. The pain makes his eyes water, but he can see it as clear as day, tied daintily around his pinkie finger; a red string, wavering iridescent in the halogen lights of the vault.
He throws on his vault suit haphazardly over his sleep clothes; he doesn’t bother zipping it up all of the way, shoving boots on barefoot, stumbling through the doors of his room, out of the common room he shares with his father. He follows it down the hall. It’s there, but not quite, only visible to his eye when he looks at it straight on. It’s thin, stuck underneath the sliding hydraulic vault doors, and it bounces up as they hiss open, through one doorway and then another.
He wonders, with each hydraulic hiss and metallic clank of an open door, if whomever he’s attached to is awake. If they can see it, too.
Adam loves Amata. He’s sure of that. Loves her like he loves his dad, and he thinks she’d be his best match, if he had to choose between anyone else in the vault. (He’s had dreams that his string would lead to Jonas, dreams that make him feel ashamed and unable to look the sweet, older man in the eye when he sees him the next day in the lab.) Amata hasn’t turned eighteen yet, but sometimes, when they’re close in age, the string might tie on a little earlier than that. So he’s hoping it leads to her room. He’s still hoping when it doesn’t. Still hoping when it leads him out of the living quarters of the vault, though his heart is bottoming out into his stomach.
Adam’s good at not being seen. He’s short, quiet. People don’t pay attention to him; there’s not a lot to pay attention to. And those who do, like Butch and his Tunnel Snakes, he wishes they didn’t— it’s easier to sneak around. Nobody is really out at this hour, just Mr. Gomez with his security helmet tucked under his arm, half dozing in the corner that he slips by. The excitement has soured, now heavy in his stomach as he climbs the stairs through the atrium. The string quivers, held taut between the space of his hand to where it’s pinned under the door. The words Main Entrance flicker above the doorway. It’s locked, like always; not that he’d try it, though he has a wild thought, bursting from his chest, that he’d like to fling himself into the nuclear hellfire of what was left of the world.
He waits until he’s back in his bed before he cries, open-mouth and loud into his pillow, jagged sobs that rock him back into sleep. His father wakens him with a hopeful good morning and a cheerful smile hours later. Adam rolls over. Says it hasn’t appeared, he can’t see anything. James smiles reassuringly, sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking his curls.
—
In 2070, his superiors line those who are around the age of maturation up against a wall. They say they can tell who has a string, and who does not, though he has always heard that this is impossible. Regardless, he does not have one. He is grateful for this. The ones who do are taken away, likely to be shot. They serve no purpose any longer, reasoned to be no longer devoted to the People’s Republic fully, as one should of his status. One, precociously, replies that their string is tied to Chairman Cheng. They are struck down by the butts of rifles, until they cry out curled up on the floor. If their reply was not an indication that they were unfit, then their reaction to pain surely is. He watches with impassive eyes as the other man is picked up, head lolling unresponsive against his shoulder, bruised and bleeding and carted off with the rest.
“And you, yeniceri?”
His clear, blue eyes narrow. “I have none.”
Junior Officer Gahng is not as cruel as some of the others. He doesn’t enjoy watching blood sport, and never dirties his own hands with canings the way others seem to relish the opportunities. Gahng grabs the wrist of his left hand; he lets his arm be wrenched up, not wanting any movement to be construed as violence, or as if he’s hiding anything. In the sun, his hand looks like its always has; rifle calloused, blunt nails, torn skin around the nailbeds.
No string. None that he can see, and though Gahng stares at his hand just a moment too long, he is sure there is nothing in his eyes, either.
Gahng drops his hand. “Good. Would have been a shame.”
He stares straight ahead as Gahng steps down the line to question the soldier next to him. He was born for this; the training, the programming, etched into his bones, in the mark of his red hair that spills down to his shoulders. The only red that comes from him. No string appears on his hand. Not the next year, or the year after; not when he follows his Lieutenant into the small, cramped submarine to infiltrate the capitalist, American dogs on their own soil. Not after, either, when the world ends and his hair falls out in clumps and his nose slides right off his face. And not years after that, when Ahzrukhal buys his contract, crinkling too-loud in his grasp, and he gives him the name Charon with a brassy, wheedling laugh after he tells him to stand against the wall of the 9th Circle. He’s never read the book; regardless, it’s an irony he finds no humor in.
It’s years afterward, on a balmy summer morning, when Charon is snatching a bag of caps from a slaver’s hand that he notices something on his finger. For a moment, he thinks, it is hair that has wound itself tight around; though that is a nearly hysterical thought, because he hasn’t had hair that long in at least two centuries. When he goes to brush it off, it’s not physically there, passing ephemeral through his fingers. But he sees it, clear as day through the early dawning light streaming through the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial, curling off and away from him.
“We done, zombie?” The man spits when he talks, practically snarling in Charon’s face. He is missing his front teeth, and his voice whistles when he talks. “Tell your boss we want more rifles, fifty cal, and less of these bullshit twenty-two pistols next time.”
Charon pulls his eyes upward from his hands. The bag weighs the same as it always does. He does not need to count it; they know not to make that mistake. He doesn’t respond to the man, because he doesn’t warrant one. He turns on his heel to leave.
The tin cans from the memorial seem to be busy, and he sticks to the edges of the buildings well enough not to draw the curiosity of the mutants in the mall trenches.
Turning the corner, Willow calls, “welcome back, Charon.”
She says this every time he returns. Charon very rarely replies. He doesn’t have the time. There is no need or want to be friendly, especially with a master as fickle and prone to retaliation as Ahzrukhal. The thread had been trailing opposite of the way he was going earlier, but now it dips down into the museum metro, touching each and every one of the halted escalator stairs. Charon stops to stare at it, though not long. His feet are pushing him back inside, to give Ahzrukhal his earnings.
Like many things, Charon doesn’t think about it. It’s easier that way. He counts the tiles on the ceiling of 9th Circle and the hairs left on the back of patrons’ heads. After a year, the glint of it no longer catches his eye, or makes him do a double take. Like it’s not there at all.
—
It makes sense why Adam’s string had led outward, when James leaves and he finds Jonas in a pool of his own blood. Finds blood on his own hands, too, but only in the metaphorical sense; he’s using a gun, after all, and though his aim is shaky and wide, none of them splatter onto his hands. Mostly his boots. He finds some in his curls when he’s sitting numb in Craterside Supply, crunchy and dark brown underneath his nails, Moira’s voice like static in his ears.
Vaultie doesn’t want to find his father, or the end of the string. He finds himself in Bailey’s Crossroads. In Anchorage, there is no string. Something like that was never programmed into a war simulation. Though he asks Benji about it, all the same, and he smiles forlornly and tells him about a beautiful gal back home whose dress flutters around her every time he picks her up, and how he wants to follow his string back home most nights, through the howling wind and piercing snow. Vaultie shivers and shivers in the cot in the barracks. He wonders why they programmed the cold like this; like he can never get warm, even when bundled in winterized gear, or with adrenaline thrumming through his veins and artillery rounds exploding hot and loud, or when the flames of a faceless Chinese inferno unit lick at his heels.
He awakens gasping from the simulation, wrenching his head from the grasp of the pod’s head brace, feeling the needle tear from his skin, the back of his skull crash against the corner of the receding monitor. He follows the string out, laden with armor and weapons, his boots mucked up his shins with even more blood.
The hei gui, the stealth armor works just as it did in the simulation. So, too, do all of the weapons he used in the months there, his body operating on a muscle memory he had never physically enacted before. Invisibly, silently, he makes his way through the metro tunnels, into the belly of the Capital.
Smartly, Vaultie decides to uncloak by standing and retracting the orange visor before approaching the entrance of the Museum of Natural History. There’s a guard out front who tenses and swings her rifle to train on him, but at the sight of his pallid baby face under the imposing armor, her gun dips.
“Hi.” He half-raises his hand in a wave, unsure of what else to say; the red string glints in the corner of his eye. The ghoul’s face wrinkles in confusion. “Uh, what... what is this place?”
“Underworld, tourist. Name’s Willow.” The ghoul’s painted lips quirk amused. She leans against the edge of the concrete half-wall, leading down into the metro. “Guessing this is your first time.”
“Yeah.” Vaultie replies, staring up at the columns. He swallows, lifting his hand up to stare at it, and the string disappearing under the museum doors. “I, uh. Uhm. Think... that, uh—”
Her eyes are wide. She can’t see it, of course, but nobody stands around stupidly staring at their left hand for any other reason. “Oh!” She lets her assault rifle, strapped around her shoulder, fall from her hands to grab him by the shoulders like an old friend. Willow’s gently guiding him towards the Greco-Roman museum entrance. “Oh, your other half is here, isn’t it? This is—“ she laughs, “this is something else. You know, this red haired girl, she stumbled in the other day— she’s a mercenary, cute thing. She’s bad off, right now, I won’t lie to you. But that has to be her. Reilly, I think?”
“M-my...” Vaultie swallows, tongue too-thick. “Uh. Okay. I, uh—“
“She should be in Doc Barrows office. Second floor, all the way back. Look, he’s trying his best.” Her voice suddenly gets solemn as she spins him around like he weighs nothing, her face thoughtful, “and I hope she recovers. Good luck, kid.”
She gives his shoulders one last squeeze, before heading back to her post. Adam turns on his heel, then turns back around.
“Do you have one? Still?”
Willow smiles toothily over her shoulder.
“Yeah. Tell her you’re finding yours, if you stop by the gift shop. She’s a romantic. Really eats that stuff up. It’ll make her day.”
The string winds underneath the heavy doors of the museum. It’s dimly lit on the inside, but the string looks brighter, like it’s glowing, looped around the crumbling ribcage of a mounted dinosaur, through the rotting toes of the mammoth looming in the atrium. Past the second set of doors, he can see it climb up the set of stairs.
He slides his visor closed, tinting the world a shade of orange. The string becomes harder to see. He doesn’t— maybe it is the woman, that’s his soul mate, this mercenary the nice guard had told him about. Though that thought is making his heart clench. He doesn’t like the idea, but fate is fate is fate, and it was undeniable, unavoidable, wasn’t it? But he feels pulled open and raw, even if this is meant to be. He doesn’t want to face her, with his homely face and watery eyes.
His legs are leaden as he takes the stairs, one at a time. He walks with his head down, following the string, only looking up when he reaches the end of the hall. A Dr. Barrow’s office door is before him; but the string leads through the door on the right. The sign above it overwrought: The 9th Circle.
“Hey. No helmets.” The bouncer barks as soon as he enters. So Adam removes his helmet, his hair spilling unkempt almost to his shoulders. It smells unpleasant in here; beer, cigarettes, and stale piss, and the sickly-sweet smell of ghouls.
“Oh, hello, smoothskin. Welcome to Uncle Ahzrukhal’s place. Sit down.” The owner and bartender, Ahzrukhal apparently, croons from behind the bar. “Pull up a seat.”
“I-I, uh—“ Adam looks at his helmet in his hands, because anywhere else may lead him to the end of the string. It’s pulling to the right, and the sight of it, so surely rigid, is making him want to throw up right into his helmet. “I-I actually, uhm... I’m not here, to drink.”
“Nonsense. Everyone comes here to drink.” Ahzrukhal purrs, “And if not, Charon can show you the door.” Ahzrukhal glances to his left, his brow subtly furrowing. “Right, Charon?”
Vaultie turns. Charon’s lips are pressed in a thin line. The thread is stark, glaring like neon between the two of them, tied tight to each other’s fingers. Where Vaultie’s side starts out shining and clean, as it gets closer to Charon, it fades and rots.
Charon’s eyes flicker downward, but there is no change in his expression, nothing but a neutral stare.
Vaultie runs out the door.
—
When Charon shoots Ahzrukhal, some of his blood gets in his mouth. He should have been wearing his armor, but the thought of bloodshed had been the furthest from his mind. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Not that, though. Definitely not Charon politely excusing himself to walk behind the bar to execute his former employer, as mesmerizing as it was to watch the string arc through the air as Charon righted his shotgun and aimed point-blank for his head. The noise of it is still ringing in his ears.
“Wh... what?”
“Ahzrukhal was an evil bastard.” Charon repeats as the whine in Vaultie’s ears starts to die down. He reloads his gun, the sound of it echoing through the now-empty bar, the spent casing flying hot to roll behind Ahzrukhal’s still warm corpse. For a moment, Vaultie is thinking he will be looking down the barrel, but the ghoul merely slings the shot gun behind his back as soon as he shifts the safety back on. “So long as he held my contract, I was honor bound to do as he commanded. But now you are my employer, which freed me to rid the world of that disgusting rat.”
Vaultie looks down, at his hands, and the string. Then back up at Charon. His emotionless stare has not flickered once.
“And now,” he continues, “for good or ill, I serve you.”
Adam’s hands find his way into his curls; shorter now, shorn by the nice ghoul out in the hallway, who had immediately called him over when he had turned tail and ran at the sight of Charon. Snowflake had talked enough for the both of them, even washed his hair in the sink like they used to in the Vault, though the water prickled his scalp. He twists pieces of hair around his finger, until they’re pulled so tight the pain radiates taut from his scalp.
“You’re, uh...” Vaultie trails off. He glances at Ahzrukhal. At his corpse.
“For good or ill,” Charon says, a little more tersely, “I serve you.”
“You’re my soulmate.” Vaultie croaks the words, staring up at Charon. He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t waver. “You—“
“Discussions are not a part of my contract.” Charon says curtly, cruelly. Vaultie shuts up. A strand of hair snaps around his finger.
—
Charon is surprised at how well they work together. The invisibility had been startling at first; watching his new employer disappear before his eyes was something entirely new, something that two centuries plus of training hadn’t exactly prepared him for. The first time his heart had nearly stopped in his chest, thinking he had somehow lost him, but it wasn’t hard to get used to after that.
(The glow of the string tells him where the Lone Wanderer is, if he’s anywhere in range of the sight of his shotgun. But more importantly his trainings and the contract, too, tells him when his shotgun is aligned, makes the ravaged skin where soft hairs used to be on the back of his neck stand up. It’s not the string. It has happened before with other contract holders. It is not the string.)
He wouldn’t say he’s used as bait, but being the visible one, it’s easy to draw would-be antagonists out, funnel them into a tight corridor where Vaultie picks them off cleanly one by one with a well-placed headshot and the loading of his sniper rifle clacking a loud, measured beat, so even one could time a metronome to it. Charon cleans up the rest. Deafening, the boom of the shotgun, the thunder of the rifle. They’re deadly together.
(Centuries ago, when Charon was in the Chariman’s army, they did not allow paired strings to serve in the same branch, let alone battalion; they fought markedly better than unpaired troops in every scenario, except when one died. The other almost always soon followed.)
They travel the wastes, picking up odd jobs; they collect sugar bombs and plunder the National Archives and find themselves nose-to-nose with a yao guai in a purportedly empty cave.
(The bear’s saliva flecking off its snapping jaws turning red in the soft glow of the string. And for the first time in a long, long time, watching the creature bare down on Vaultie, he feels fear.)
In Georgetown, they take shelter for the night in what was once a beautiful, sprawling rowhome, three bay windows wide and three stories tall, with a third floor bow front window; even with the red brick exterior crumbling, and the glass boarded over, it’s quietly stately as they make their way up the marble stairs into the house. They barricade the doors and stoke the old fireplace with molding books.
Vaultie hates the cold, and sometimes even when the flue isn’t properly cleared will try and suggest they start a fire besides. Luckily, this one has been eternally maintained by a Mr. Handy, and the smoke passes through. The supermutants never seem to notice. It’s just as common for it to be the mark of a wastelander as it is to be a mark of a budding abandoned house fire.
The Mr. Handy recites to them a bedtime poem, about soft rains and swallows. There hasn’t been proper rainfall in DC for years; there’s a humidity that lingers and thickens to a lung-swaddling fog, but actual rain rarely came to the former swamp. Charon doesn’t understand the poem. The earth did care when they ruined it; still, now, centuries later it is stuck in this state of perpetual decay. No spring has come, or ever will again. When the Mr. Handy finishes, Vaultie’s cheeks are wet.
(Glowing red as he wipes at his eyes, mumbles a thank you to the robot between his fingers, against the string that shivers under his breath. Charon can feel it under his skin so tangibly, as if his breath was playing over his own skin, and not a safe and reasonable six feet away in a separate bed while he sat ready to take his guarding shift near the door.)
When the robot leaves and Vaultie tells Charon, “good night,” he does not sleep.
(Charon knows this because of the sway of his string, as Vaultie fists his hand into the sheets, into his hair, fidgets and twists and turns. He doesn’t know if Adam knows he can feel it. Not in a physical way, but an inkling in the back of his mind, just a feeling, the way it bounces and shudders across the space they’ve placed in between them, like a guitar being plucked.)
Charon stands from the spread of their guns on the table, and walks to Vaultie’s bedside. His back is to him, facing the wall. At the sound of his footsteps, he stills, pretending to be asleep. He is a bad liar.
(Bad enough that he very rarely lies. Worst still is the way he wears the truth on his face, his eyes always following the line of the string, darting away too late to be sly about it, for any plausible deniability. The way, when nervous, he wraps it around his own fingers, a game of cats cradle only he can see.)
Charon sits on the threadbare rug next to the bed. When he reaches over Vaultie’s prone form, he shivers and tenses, his shoulders hurtling up to his ears; and then, when Charon’s hand finds Vaultie’s, he relaxes. Carefully, very carefully, he rolls over, eyes glowing soft in the moonlight pouring through the gaps of the planks hammered over the windows.
(Eyes glowing soft in the red light, as their fingers thread together and he clutches his hand, and Charon’s, to his chest, and Charon can feel the beat of his heart against his ruined knuckles and the soft, thin fabric of his undershirt. Can hear him swallow, nervous, gazing hopeful and questioning and with so much gentleness Charon’s fingers twitch tightly in his grasp.)
Vaultie falls asleep like this, with their hands clasped together, and he has no nightmares. And Charon finds himself nodding off against his own chest, too, half slumped against the side of the bed, only waking when a shaft of light from the window slashes over his eyes and a lone bird trills outside with the rising of the sun.
The next morning, Vaultie insists on setting the Mr. Handy onto his cleaning parameters, as it was only polite to leave the place somewhat put together. He looks at Charon’s hand with so much longing it is tangible. Charon keeps himself busy cleaning their guns before they leave.
—
The Sim-U-Tek pod door swings closed over Vaultie in a hiss of hydraulics and squeaking, derelict hinges. He watches the string, as it’s pushed lower under the closing of the pod, until it meets the edge and is trapped underneath the hermetic seal.
For a moment, as the monitors come closing in around Vaultie’s face and the needle slides into his temple and his face goes slack, Charon thinks to stop him. But then the needle is in, and the screens flicker, and Charon jumps to the virtual reality pod with such force that his palms sting against the glass. Adam’s eyes have rolled into the back of his head, whites with just a hint of pupil at the edge of his heavy lids, darting back and forth, back and forth. And Charon waits there, pressed against the glass, for hours, for days.
Relief pours over Charon when the alarms start to sound, and he is not met with a dead corpse of his employer in the pod but the sound of it opening; as soon as Vaultie seems to recover his wits, he’s wrenching himself out of the pod’s grasp, futilely trying to pry the doors open faster than the slow, automatic crawl. There is blood at his temple from the needle, red beading at the exit point.
“Adam,” his name feels right in Charon’s mouth, as scratchy as it is from disuse. Vaultie’s eyes are sleep-wild, as if awoken from a nightmare, stumbling to his feet; Charon catches him before he falls, hand to his elbow, his waist. The thread twists around their hands, his arms.
Behind them, another pod is opening: James. His father.
It’s as if he is looking through Charon. Vaultie stumbles from his grasp, hurries to his Father’s side. The string unravels between them. He watches as Vaultie helps his Father out of the pod, throws his arms around him.
“We— w-we can go back,” He insists, near tears. James smiles benevolently, sadly. Vaultie continues to blather. “To the Vault? You— you can talk with Amata’s dad, h-he—“ he hiccups, barely gasps in a breath, “h-he—“
“You must understand,” James patiently interrupts, “as much as I love you, this project has been my responsibility since long before you were even born. This is too important to throw away now, Adam. Almodovar would never let us back, besides. But you can accompany me to Rivet City.”
There is devastation written so plainly on Vaultie’s face, in the redness of his nose and the wetness of his eyes.
James does not seem to notice. His smile is serene, benevolent. “To Project Purity.”
Charon has seen this look before on Adam’s face only once before: when they had formally met for the first time after the contract changed hands in the 9th Circle, and he had shut him down before he could speak about the string.
Within an hour, James collects his things, some supplies, and leaves. Adam mourns upstairs in Smith Casey’s garage; each night, his quiet sobs making the string shiver and shudder between them.
—
James told him the story of Catherine multiple times before, throughout his life. How she died giving birth to him, a mother’s greatest sacrifice. Now, he knows some parts of the story were fabricated; Adam’s mom had never seen the inside of Vault 101. And he didn’t just take the string off her finger. Especially when he was younger, James had smiled softly, sadly, and had told him that after she had left this world, he had slipped the string from off of her finger and put it around Adam’s; now he was his world, and he would always be there for him as his father.
This was not true.
He was no longer a child. Strings did not work like that. The platitudes now felt especially hollow. Adam is sure his father watched his mom’s string fall off her finger like mutfruit rotting on the vine. The blood left her body and the red to her cheeks, her lips, the string— that string, that if he had taken it from her and looped that string around anything else, it would have been Jefferson’s statue standing in the middle of Project Purity’s main water reservoir. James presses his palm to the glass and stares at it like a long-lost lover. Maybe he never had a string tied to his mother at all. It would have always been Project Purity, and his life’s work.
A lie Adam hadn’t been expecting was that James would always be there for him. This, too, was not true.
—
It turns out that Amata’s string led to Freddie Gomez. Butch’s string leads outward, underneath the big main door exit like Adam’s had, and that’s just one on a list of reasons why he wants to get out of there.
Of course, Vaultie helps them open 101 after that. Of course he does. It’s one of the most humanizing things he’s ever seen Butch do, watching him talk as his eyes follow something he can’t see out the clinic door, almost sounding nervous as he asks for Adam’s help. He’s seen Butch afraid before; he helped his mother fend off the radroaches when he was escaping. But his mind had still been prepared to come back and find Butch DeLoria as he had remembered him, perpetually his childhood bully, rolling his shoulders back and cracking his knuckles, flanked by cronies.
“You ever find yours yet?” Butch asks, nodding towards Vaultie’s hand.
Self-consciously, his fingers curl into a fist.
“No.” He rushes out.
Next to him, Charon stiffens.
“Huh. That sucks,” says Butch unawares, shrugging. “I hope I find mine, y’know? But I’m sure yours will come along.” He pauses, idly scratching at a stain on his vault suit. “Freddie and Amata seem real happy. It’s messed up they’re trying to keep anyone else from finding that. Like, it ain’t right.”
“I guess,” Vaultie mumbles.
Almodovar is hard to convince; at one point, he raises his pistol, trains it on Adam’s chest. He’s not skilled enough to get a clear head shot, even at this range, but he is smart enough to know his limitations, and a shot near the heart was good enough. Maybe the shot would kill, or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it’d just be the blood loss. Adam stands very still. Charon has stopped breathing; the usual waver between their string has stilled.
“S-sir, please,” Adam pleads, “I get it.”
“But you don’t, do you? Stomping into my vault with that monster is a threat in itself. I should have had security throw you out as soon as you bypassed the doors. Nothing on the other end of that blasted string is worth losing the safety of the vault.”
“I know.” He speaks suddenly, with enough forcefulness it seems to surprise them both. His voice cracks, “But— you can’t tell that to them.”
Almodovar hesitates. The muzzle dips minutely.
“To... to the people who haven’t found it. They don’t get it. They think— they think it’s going to be everything, that it will solve all their problems. It won’t— and I know, I know that— okay? But...”
The fight has left Adam as he trails off, shoulders deflating.
“They don’t know that.” Almodovar finishes for him, the pistol slack in his hands.
Adam knows Charon could have killed Almodovar by now, as lax as he is with his gun now, without any real threat to Adam’s life. But when Adam glances over, Charon is stock still. Maybe he just knows not to.
“They don’t.” Adam agrees quietly.
The doors of Vault 101 would open to the outside, for people to come and go as they pleased. Even so, with a hand resting unconsciously against her belly, Amata asks Adam to leave. To never come back. It is strange, but he finds he doesn’t want to anymore.
Butch watches them leave, leaning over the platform railing next to the seal release button. “Are you coming?” Vaultie shouts over the blare of the opening door’s sirens.
“I will. I just—“ He hadn’t come to watch them leave. His eyes are on the door, watching as it disengages from the lock, rolling back from the walls with an earth-shuddering groan. His eyes are following something Adam can’t see. “Eventually, yeah.” Butch says it so confidently, finally tearing his eyes away to boyishly grin his way, “I’m sure I’ll see you out there, right?”
He doesn’t realize how big ‘outside’ is, saying it like they’re going to bump into each other in the wasteland’s hallways. Vaultie gets it. He’s still not sure if he himself realizes it yet, that he can go outside of those archaic borders on his Pip Boy’s pre-war map.
“I’ll see you.” He says, though it is lost in the last shrieking groan of the door, finally sliding back into place. Butch doesn’t hear him. Charon does, though, nodding as he brushes by for the door. He follows the red string looped easy between them. Maybe Almodovar was right. Maybe it was stupid to escape the safety of the vault for a whisper of a promise. Childhood stories that couldn’t even begin to breach the breadth of adult disappointment.
Past the open cavern that houses the vault doors, the entrance is a tight, natural hallway. The bones from past protesters are still here, kicked over with rocks and dirt from long-lost search parties heading through. The wind whistles through the tunnel; the light at the end is golden and soft, late-day. Plenty of time to get home to Megaton.
“Ad—“ Charon hesitates to say his name, starting, and stopping. As if he forgot, or if he’s not sure if he’s allowed to say it. “Adam,” is what he finally settles on, crossing his arms across his chest. The sun slants golden through the broken wooden slats of the door, across his ruddy face, the gauntness of his cheekbones.
Vaultie focuses on him, silent confirmation. Charon shifts, the buckles of his armor creaking in the quiet of the cavern. His breath is a rattle that he holds in.
“Charon?” Adam finally prompts.
He hesitates. The silence stretches.
Adam swallows nervously. “Are you...”
Charon holds up a hand. Not a silencing one— though it does that, anyway, Vaultie’s mouth snapping shut— but more as if he’s trying to grasp the words out of the air. He exhales. His arm curls back around his body, tucked across his chest. His sudden vulnerability makes Adam’s stomach bottom out, palms sweat.
“What do you wish of me?” Charon asks, slowly.
Adam looks down at his feet. “Is this... wh-what I said to the overseer...”
Charon says nothing.
“None of that... none of it is, was, a command.”
“But you could.”
“But I thought— you said that wasn’t a part of the contract?” Vaultie exhales, self-corrects “not— not that I would. That’s not— I’d never want that.”
Charon doesn’t say anything. Maybe Vaultie always could have commanded him to, and Charon lied to protect himself. The thought makes him sick. Commanded him to, what, love him? What good would that have done? He already chooses to ignore the fact that he has not handed Charon’s contract over to Willow, that he makes the ghoul follow him around despite being entirely uninterested in him. That itself is sickeningly selfish. He knows.
A contract should not be needed. He never wanted it to be this way. Never could have considered the possibility, and now that it presents itself— the idea of it is reprehensible. But Vaultie doesn’t think it’s true, that he can command Charon. If divine intervention hadn’t worked, what else would?
He shakes his head. “Don’t... I’m sorry if that was weird,” Vaultie says, and his smile is forced. “I-if... that made you feel weird. I didn’t— it wasn’t true, okay? I just, I was just trying to get Mr. Almodovar to open the vault—”
“It’s fine.” Charon says, before Adam can continue saying things he doesn’t mean.
“Good.” He breathes out. Looks at his feet, and then at the wall, because at his feet the string has pooled around his shoes, his hands uselessly limp at his sides. “W-we make a good team. But— but if you want, I can always, your contract—”
Charon shakes his head. “No.” He won’t look at Vaultie, so he doesn’t look, either. Not at the way his face pulls into a frown, the concerned crease adding one more line on his brow. The wooden door creaks open, and momentarily Vaultie is blinded by the setting sun and the sudden light.
When his eyes adjust, he can see Megaton from the scenic point. It’s beautiful like this, in its own way; the walls of Megaton just peaking over the edge of the hill, the propeller of the scavenged planes rotating lazily in the wasteland wind. Just below, an eyebot putters through the streets, a tinny rendition of Yankee-Doodle Dandy playing quietly as it bobs between the remains of houses.
“Are you coming?”
Vaultie blinks, and looks at Charon, already halfway down the path. The string stretches out between them. He nods. “Yeah,” he says, and follows, “let’s go home.”
—
Three-Dog needs help, so of course Vaultie answers; the radio station used to broadcast all over the Capital, after the bombs, and all over the DMV before the bombs, whatever that means— but now it barely putters out a signal that covers the metro area.
There are plenty of technological wonders in the Museum of Technology, true to its name; it’s barely been picked over, a veritable treat for a lone wanderer who collects scraps of pre-war advertisements and museum tchotchkes as if they’ll transport him back in time. In between picking off super mutants, Vaultie makes it a point to look at all of the exhibits that are still standing; he reads the placards aloud to Charon, since he can’t. They miserably fail a two-hundred year old quiz on one of the few working terminals left; Charon just manages to crack a smile, sarcastically promises him they’ll find something in the gift shop worth the trip anyway.
They had cleared out the museum near perfectly. Practically routine. They turn a corner. Charon leads, as he does when Vaultie is uncloaked. His toe catches the wire just as Vaultie looks down.
The sound is familiar and deafening in the small hallway, the shotgun going off as Charon steps forward. Vaultie twists. In the second glance, he sees it; the path the slug had ripped through the side of Charon’s armor, skimming his ribs. In reality, it’s a blessing he had only been partially shot, hadn’t been shot through in one quick, horrible moment. Dark blood, thick and nearly black like tar, slipping between his fingers as he clutches his side, and falls to one knee.
He does not have time to panic. Charon does not have time for him to panic. The fishing line lies broken on the ground, next to the red string as Charon doubles over, catches himself before he collapses entirely.
“I’m fine,” Charon rasps as Vaultie rushes to his side, grabbing him by his armpits; it’s useless, of course. Charon is so much heavier than him, and he’s strong, but he can’t carry him like this; he babbles under the growl of Charon’s pain, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, as he tries to worm underneath and support his weight. Charon staggers.
They backtrack to the planetarium they had briefly passed through; the show on the galaxy is still running on a constant loop, now in perpetuity. Charon’s knees buckle when they make it through the double doors. Vaultie barely manages to get him onto the concrete stairs before he collapses with a grunt.
Vaultie lays him back as gently as he can against the seats; he makes a pillow for Charon’s head out of extra clothes in his pack, and sets to work tending his wound, to stop the flow of blood. His shirt has ripped through from the bullet, and Vaultie tears it some more, to make space. He fumbles for a Med-X, but Charon stops his hand.
“Please.”
“Okay.” Vaultie says, and tosses it aside. He understands. He was in the army as well, and he knows how Med-X irreversibly changed some men. “But a stimpack—“
“No,” Charon grits out, “It’s not worth—“
“It is worth it.” He interrupts, firmer than he means. Charon’s breathing is coming out pained, wheezing. Removing his palm from the wound, a fresh gush of blood oozes out as his chest expands. He doesn’t wait before jamming the needle in; his body goes rigid from the pain, from his shoulders to his toes, his teeth very nearly audibly gritting, and then relaxes as Vaultie slowly pushes on the dispenser.
“S-sorry,” Vaultie mumbles, sliding the needle out smoothly. There’s Charon’s blood on his hands, his knuckles. He tosses the first spent needle down the stairs of the planetarium, and then the second, and the third.
Charon’s eyelids are heavy as Vaultie dresses the wound, though it’s smoothed over now, freshly scarred skin puckered over in a shade lighter than the rest of his patchwork colors. Still, stimpacks weren’t a guarantee; better to keep it bandaged, in case it did somehow open up again. VAULTIE tries to be as gentle as possible; he is not his father, he is no physician. But he tries.
As soon as Vaultie’s finished, he doesn’t ask, but stands to begin blocking off the exits and entrances in the planetarium. He has an old bike chain in his pack, some boards of wood that have fallen from the rafters that he wedges between the door handles. It’s not perfect, but they can take shifts. They can spend the night.
Briefly, the planetarium darkens. And then the narration begins again, and the stars flicker into view above, one constellation at a time. He settles in silently next to Charon, placing his own egg crate next to Charon’s to lie down. He’s still awake; if it were anyone else, Vaultie would be surprised.
“Still okay?”
Charon glances at him, exhaling. He holds his left hand against his breast, as if feeling for his own heartbeat.
“For now.” He turns his face back towards the ceiling. It’s a comfortable near-silence, but Charon’s countenance— in the glow of the stars, in the glow of the red string under the hand cupped over his heart, tying them together—
“Did you have a...” Adam trails off, licks his lips and clears his throat. As if the words are lodged there, unpalatable. So instead of saying them, his nervous gaze flits down to Charon’s hand. The ruined skin, cracked knuckles. The red knot, tied and frayed around his finger. His arm flops over into the space between them. He imagines extending it, reaching out to brush knuckles, and wind their fingers together. “Before... before me?”
“No.” Charon says simply. “It was you.” And he sighs heavily, and turns his face to Vaultie. And usually, he is too shy, and too ashamed to meet Charon’s gaze; usually he turns his face and looks towards the floor. This time, Vaultie holds it, watches Charon’s blue eyes as he says, “it has only ever been you.”
Stricken, Adam chokes, “I-...”
Charon looks quiet, and sad. He turns his face towards the ceiling; the constellations swim above them, nebulous and fuzzy with the age of the projector and the cracked tiles.
“I’m sorry.”
Adam’s mouth is dry. “What for?”
Charon’s expression quirks into a weak smile. “That it is me. That it only ever was me.
“That’s... not something you ever need to apologize for.” Adam mumbles. His eyes sweep down, gingerly reaching out to touch the edges of Charon’s bandages against his ribs. “Y-you’re— not saying this because you’re dying, right?”
“Not yet.” He deadpans.
“Th-that’s not funny.” He murmurs.
Charon exhales a soft ‘tch’, strained from the residual pain. “It is.”
“I... would be pretty sad, if you died.” Vaultie says lamely.
“Hrm.”
“Yeah.”
Hesitantly, Adam reaches out for Charon’s hand; just ever-so-slightly brushing his fingertips against Charon’s fingers, though as soft as he’s being, he can still keenly feel the coarseness of his skin, how rough the radiation has flayed him. Next to him, Charon sighs. He wraps his hand around Adam’s, large palm easily covering his own. Warm, and solid, especially when he threads their fingers together.
Charon’s breath evens out. Above them, the projector flickers out, snuffing out the stars; in the darkness, Charon shifts, eases his body up and over, using Vaultie’s hand to prop his body up. When the demonstration starts again, the lights of the Andromeda galaxy flicker on above them, but it’s Charon’s face that fills his entire view. And he kisses him, soft, slow, under the stars, the stars, the stars.