Chapter Forty-Seven-Down the Dusty Road

When Sunshine and Butch make it past the Vault door, Butch hesitantly steps out. He doesn't say anything as he steps over the skeletons that litter the ground in front of the door. It is only when they pass through the wooden gate that Butch cries out. He clutches his eyes, and Sunshine catches him before he hits the ground.

"Oh God," he says, and her heart aches at how terrified he sounds. "The Overseer was right-there's nothing out here."

"Shh," she soothes. "It's just the sun. Your eyes need time to adjust. I'd forgotten. Let me get you some sunglasses."

"Don't let go of me," he pleads, sounding small and childlike.

"Hold on to me," she says gently, pulling his arms toward her. He clutches her around the waist as though she were an anchor. She rummages through her pack for sunglasses.

"I can kind of see now," Butch says, squinting over her shoulder. "It's all brown though. Is it supposed to be brown?"

"The wastes are brown," she says. She places the shades on his face. "It's all there, though." Sunshine gives his eyes time to adjust before moving, and he gives a low whistle.

"This is nothing like the holos," he says flatly.

"Holos were filmed before nuclear bombs fucked everything up," she says. He murmurs his acknowledgement, his head turning every which way. His eyes widen when he sees the giant ants on the horizon, and the gleaming scrap metal walls of Megaton.

"The world is kind of a shithole, isn't it?" he says.

"Dunno," she answers, fixing the straps of her pack so it rests more comfortably on her shoulders. "I've never seen the rest of the world. It's on my bucketlist." Once Butch is steady on his feet again, she motions for him to follow her.

"Where do you live out in this?" Butch asks, eying all of the blown out and rotting skeletons of houses doubtfully.

"See those giant metal walls?" Sunshine says, pointing out the walls of Megaton. "That's Megaton, where we live."

"We?" he asks, ducking when Sunshine shoots an Enclave eyebot out of the air. She walks over to it for parts to scavenge, and hopes the camera in its grill was too far from its owner to send a feed back.

"Dogmeat, Charon and I live there," she says naturally, as if this had always been the case. Charon. She longs to get back to him but, at the same time, she's frightened of how things have shifted between them again.

"Dogmeat?" Butch says slowly. She's about to protest that she hadn't named him, but Butch lets out a full bodied laugh. "There are dogs out here?"

"Most aren't nice," she says. "But Dogmeat is. You'll love him."

"Tell me everything," Butch says seriously, and she watches him open an old Nuka Cola machine to see if anything is still inside. (There isn't-it is still as empty as they day she had first checked it.) "Tell me everything you know."

"I never knew you as eager to learn," she teases.

"There was never in point back in the Vault," he says, his head moving from side to side as he takes in as much of the wasteland as he can. "Who could care about the Battle of Hastings while stuck in a metal hole in the ground? Out here-out here it's living history, nosebleed. Tell me everything you know," he repeats. She takes a deep breath and, smiling, begins to talk.

"Well," she says lightly. "You should know about my friend, Charon…"

Charon sits at the faded and worn table Sunshine kept in the corner of her living room. Shotgun parts are scattered across it. The door to the house-her house, he thinks-opens and his hands reach for his back up pistol on instinct. He sees a familiar mop of curly blonde hair poke its' way through the door, and he exhales.

"Hey, big guy," she calls quietly.

"You've returned," he breathes, as though he couldn't believe it. She smiles at him and he resists the urge to melt. His head clears when he sees a man in a leather jacket that matches Sunshine's follow her in. He whistles lowly until he catches sight of Charon.

"Holy shit," he breaths, though he only sounds surprised and not frightened. "This is the guy you were telling me about?" Charon scowls a bit at that.

"Whose askin'?" he asks gruffly.

"Charon," Sunshine says warmly, and he finds he doesn't like the way she looks at the greaser punk who followed her in. "This is Butch, another stray from the Vault. Butch, this is my best friend, Charon."

"Hey," Butch greets, and Charon doesn't answer him. He moves his gaze to Sunshine as if asking her a question, but she doesn't seem to notice. She watches Butch as he sees Dogmeat, and a childish wonder lights up his face. He kneels down and Dogmeat obediently lets Butch pat his head.

"Neat," Butch says like a child, and Sunshine laughs. Charon's heart tightens as he realizes this is the first time she's laughed since Project Purity.

"Neat? I haven't heard you say that since we were ten," she teases. Butch turns red and, oh, Charon doesn't like that at all.

"Shaddup," he mutters, going back to petting Dogmeat. Sunshine turns her gaze to Charon and Charon, unsure of what to do with himself, gestures to the small pile of broken weapons next to him.

"People brought these for you to fix," he says awkwardly, and his eyes keep straying to Butch kneeling on the floor.

"Good," she says. "I'll get started on those shortly."

"Is your, uh, friend here to stay?"

"Until we can find a place for him," she says gently, shooting Butch a fond look.

"Oh," is all Charon says. Sunshine furrows her brow, opening her mouth to speak, but her attention moves to Butch at the sound of his voice.

"Where's the doc?" Butch asks, and Sunshine winces. While imparting her knowledge of the wasteland to Butch, she'd left out one very important detail. At her stricken expression, Butch's face falls. "Oh, no. Sunshine-"

"Dead," she says, forcing herself to keep her voice light. "Happens to most of the good people out here. Unavoidable, really." Butch reaches for her, wraps an arm around her shoulder, and Charon feels like an intruder when she rests her head on his shoulder.

"Shit, nosebleed, I'm sorry," Butch rumbles into her hair. She shakes her head, pulling away from him.

"Let's introduce you to everyone," she says, forcing lightness into her shaky voice. She looks to Charon and holds her hand out to him. "You up to it, Charon?" Mutely, he nods, but doesn't take her hand.

"I shall follow," he says, his voice without emotion. The look on her face is almost enough to break his resolve but he steels himself.

Butch is probably better suited for her company, anyway.

The first place Sunshine drags Butch is Craterside Supply. Moira's cheerfulness unnerves Butch, and Sunshine asks about getting two extra beds moved into her house. Moira nods empathically and Sunshine pays for them, promising to be back later to help Moira move them.

"I'll never get used to the fact that bottlecaps are money," Butch says, shaking his head. "Makes me wish we'd raided the trash on our way out." Sunshine then drags the two of the all around Megaton, introducing Butch to everyone before they finally end up at Moriarty's.

"I hate this place, and the guy who owns it, but most everyone gets their drinks here," she says by way of introduction. The bar is practically empty-Gob waves to her sadly with a dishrag as he cleans the glasses, and Nova is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Moriarty.

"Is this a bar?" Butch asks in amazement. At Sunshine's nod, he asks,

"Can we get drinks here?"

"Sure," she says. "If you like piss water."

"Here now," Gob calls good-naturedly, though his voice is subdued. Moriarity can't be too far then.

"Hey, Sunshine," Lucy West asks in a quiet voice.

"Hey, Lucy," Sunshine greets. "This is my friend, Butch."

"Hey," Butch says, his eyes focused more on the environment around him than the people in front of him. Sunshine wants to insist that Moriarty's isn't that big of a deal, more out of dislike than anything else, but Butch looks like a kid who has seen the entire world for the first time.

"Hello," Lucy says formally. "Sunshine, I have a favor to ask of you."

"Sure," she says. The smile she gives Lucy hurts in its insincerity, but it would be good to have something to keep her mind occupied. Sunshine looks down at Lucy's hands. She's clutching a yellowed piece of paper, trying not to twist it worriedly.

"I-I have family in Arefu," she says. "My parents and my little brother, Ian. It's a ways away, but I haven't written to them in a while. Could you deliver this to them?"

"Absolutely," Sunshine says, a little too quickly, holding her hand out for the letter. She takes the letter and puts it in her pack.

"There's a man named Evan King who is the mayor of Arefu," Lucy says. "Ask him where my family lives." Sunshine nods vigorously, ignoring the look Charon gives her. With a pang of guilt, she thinks of Vault 87 and the G.E.C.K. She has to find a way to get to it.

But she allows herself to get caught up with Butch seeing the world for the first time, and laughs when he coughs at the shot of whiskey he tries to shoot. Butch glares, pushing a shot of whiskey toward her.

"You try it," he grumbles. Without hesitation, she throws back the shot of whiskey and Gob lets out a surprised chuckle. She manages to keep a straight face before coughing into her sleeve. Her cough turns into rough laughter and Butch gives her that same easy grin she would have killed to see back in the Vault. It is so surreal to be out of the Vault with Butch, to be friends with Butch, but she finds an easy rhythm between his guffawing that she didn't think possible.

Butch orders a full bottle of whiskey and drinks deeply from the neck of it, coughing and handing it over to her. After a moment's hesitation, she drinks after him. The whiskey burns down a trail of fire down her throat, but she finds she doesn't mind that it hurts. She idly considers getting wasted-Butch doesn't seem to have a problem with it, if the way he eggs her on is any indication-but she's already starting to sway in her seat and she sees Clover when she closes her eyes.

She hands the bottle back to him, and tells him he can have the rest. He grins sloppily, pure Butch, and practically inhales the rest of the amber liquid. Sunshine looks toward Charon. He's been standing behind the bar with Gob, who has idly been trying to engage him in small talk. He leans against one corner of the bar, the corner furthest away from them, and looms like a large shadow. His arms are crossed tightly across his chest, and he reminds her of when she first met him back in Underworld. She opens her mouth to ask him if he's all right, but Butch grabs her and turns her physically toward him.

"Sunshine," Butch slurs. "Sunshine. Sun-shiiiiiiiine."

"What, Butch?" she asks, a smile creeping up her face in spite of everything. He wraps an arm around her shoulder, and she supports his weight.

"We should-we should, ya know, go places," he says dramatically. "Start up the Tunnel Snakes, ya know? We could be the baddest gang in the wastes."

"Oh yeah?" she says good-naturedly. "The two of us?"

"Yeah," Butch says emphatically, nodding his head up and down. It's all Sunshine can do to hold on to him. "We're all we need. You and me."

"Butch?" she asks.

"Yeah, nosebleed?"

"Shut up. You're drunk." Butch makes an indignant noise, and Sunshine orders some food for him to eat. He'll likely be hungover tomorrow anyway, but going to sleep with a full stomach should help lessen it.

Charon watches the two of them with hooded eyes, and his arms crossed tightly across his chest. That punk has made her laugh times since he got here than Charon has ever seen. It's good to see her smile, but something ugly breaks in Charon's chest at the sight of them together. Butch is young, and Sunshine grew up with him, and he would be a far better match for her than some decrepit 200-year old ghoul. Sunshine's eyes keep wandering to him and, as much as he wants to meet her gaze, he continues to avoid her gaze as though he can't see her.

Eventually, Sunshine drags Butch out of his seat and he stumbles, one arm slung around her shoulders. He slurs something Charon can't hear, but he can almost hear the clench in his chest as she laughs. Charon trails behind them as Sunshine leads Butch back to the house, keeping a hold on him even as he stumbles over the makeshift ramps of the town. She leans him against the house, opening the door and grabbing him by the jacket as he stumbles inside.

"Come on, you big lug," she says. "To the couch with you."

"Sunshine?" Butch asks, a strange vulnerability in his voice that causes her to look at him. "Stay with me until I fall asleep?" Sunshine nods, and Charon moves past her up the stairs. He watches over the railing as she almost pours Butch onto the couch in the living room, and sits in a chair next to it. Butch has an arm flung over his eyes, but holds the other one out. Wordlessly, Sunshine takes it and the two of them talk in low voices throughout most of the night. Charon leaves his door open, catching bits of the conversation as he cleans his shotgun for the umpteenth time.

"…sorry 'bout your dad…" he hears Butch, the other kid, say.

"…s'not your fault," his kid says. "Let's not talk about it."

"…what's with the ghoul?" Butch slurs instead, and Charon gets up to shut the door. He pauses in the doorway, damn him, to hear her answer. She hesitates, so unlike her, and says softly,

"Charon is..." she starts but he shuts the door quietly to muffle her voice. He leans his forehead against the door, listening to the familiar cadence of her voice.

He should only be her bodyguard, and leave things like love to those better suited for it, better suited for her.

Down below, Sunshine pauses and bites her lip before continuing.

"Charon is my friend," she says. "I met him in Underworld-that's a city of ghouls in the ruins of the old Museum of History-and the man he was working for at the time was awful. Scum of the earth, really. I hired him instead." She keeps the details of Charon's contract deliberately vague. While Butch had been malicious when they were children, she had always understood that malice was born from a sense of abandonment and neglect. As they'd gotten older, his malice had ebbed. Butch is many things, but evil is not one of them. She highly doubts he'd use the knowledge of Charon's contract for unsavory gains.

He had been conditioned to follow every order of his contract holder, and she winces at the thought. She must have had more to drink than she'd intended because she can almost see Clover and Burke out of the corner of her eye.

"Sunshine?" Butch asks quietly. She shakes herself from her thoughts, ignoring the shadows in the corners of her eyes, and gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

"We've been friends ever since," she says, sounding a lot more chipper than she feels. It's easier to fall into old habits with Butch, easier to seem cheerful. They continue talking and laughing well into the night. Sunshine repairs some of the weapons brought for her while they talk, more to keep her hands busy than anything else. She has to shush Butch more than once, ever mindful of the hour. Eventually, Butch yawns and shivers slightly, rubbing his hands up and down his arms.

"Are you cold?" she asks, and he nods blearily. "I'll be right back." He nods, clumsily fiddling with his Pip-Boy. She walks up the stairs quietly to get a blanket from her room. Charon's door is firmly closed and her brow furrows-he almost always kept his door open. She hopes she and Butch hadn't kept him from any well-deserved rest. She'd done her best to keep the other boy quiet, but he seemed to get even louder when he was drunk. She enters her room and pulls the blanket off of her bed-she didn't expect to get any sleep tonight-and carries it downstairs. Butch is already snoring softly and, with a soft smile that surprises her with its sincerity, she throws it over the sleeping boy.

Conditioning. She thinks uncomfortably of the ledger still buried in her pack- A Study in the Future Preservation of the U.S Commonwealth. She'd hadn't been able to stomach much of the information in the ledger, and had to put it down, but from what she had read it was a study of an experiment carried out by the U.S military. She opens her pack and fishes it out. It's as worn as the day she'd found it. It was a case study of mental conditioning, probably one of the few left from before the bombs. There were a variety of subjects, but the one who had caught the interest of the author was a young boy named Triggs, son of a Major, and a citizen of the Massachusetts Commonwealth. She'd hadn't been able to read much more, but she sits down and opens the faded ledger to find where she'd left off.

The boy has been adjusting to the conditioning surprisingly well. I believe it may be due to his age…the others will cry for their mothers, but he reminds stoic. He scores top marks in marksman ship and stealth-his father would be proud. He's growing into a fearsome young man-I shudder to think of what would happen were he not under our control.

…we're still working on an anchor. The subjects will need to be flexible in who they follow, and they will need to follow without question. We're thinking of requisitioning some of that indestructible paper RobCo has been working on-some of their customers are a bit on the old-fashioned side, and paper would be much easier to conceal than a holotape. Some sort of contract, perhaps?...

Sunshine's head snaps up at that, and she looks up at Charon's closed door. She closes the ledger with shaking hands. Maybe somewhere in this document of horror lay the key to rid Charon of the compulsion to follow his contract.

She owed it to him to try.

Charon wakes up to the sound of swearing and laughter, and to the smell of Brahmin bacon. He walks down the stairs of Sunshine's house to see Butch holding his head between his knees and Sunshine cooking breakfast at the stove. A pile of newly repaired weapons lay on a table next to where Sunshine had been sitting last night, and Charon wonders how little sleep she'd gotten the night before.

"Why did I do that?" Butch grumbles. He lifts his head up a fraction of an inch. "Why'd you let me fuckin' drink so much?"

"You're a grown man who makes his own choices," Sunshine almost sings, and Butch winces. She sets a plate of Brahmin bacon and scrambled Mirelurk eggs in front of him. "Here, eat this."

"Thanks," Butch grumbles, digging into the breakfast. Sunshine turns her smile to Charon, and something catches in his chest.

"You hungry, big guy?" she asks softly. Wordlessly, he nods, and she fixes him a plate. He takes it from her, trying not to react to the way she gently brushes her fingertips across the top of his hand. She goes to sit down next to him, but a loud knocking at the door interrupts. With a furrow in her brow, she sets her plate down and goes to answer the door.

Charon watches her as she opens the door to see Maggie and Harden. She smiles at the two children and rustle's Maggie's hair. Harden hands her supplies, such as ammo and food, and Charon knows they're from Lucas Simms. The town's sheriff always kept an eye on Sunshine, and whenever she ran errands for the townsfolk he always liked to make sure she had supplies. Sunshine hands the children the weapons she'd repaired last night for them to deliver, and watches as they scamper off.

"We're going to Arefu to deliver a letter for Lucy West," Sunshine says. Charon nods.

"Where ever you go, I shall follow," he answers.

"I didn't know we were fuckin' mailmen," Butch grumbles a couple of days later. His feet hurt, he's still a bit hungover (not that he'd ever admit it) and he didn't leave the Vault to be a goddamn goody-twoshoes errand boy. Sunshine hushes his complains and he huffs while she checks her Pip-Boy map.

"Arefu isn't much farther, is it Charon?" she asks. The ghoul shakes his head.

"It's just head, hanging on the ruins of an old overpass," he grunts.

"How big is it?" Butch asks. Charon doesn't answer him, and Butch huffs again.

Where Megaton shines with life and survival, Arefu is the type of town that hangs heavy with desperation. The town's buildings look like they're barely clinging to the overpass, and Sunshine wonders if the people are any better. A loud whistle rings through the air, and she looks up, eyes squinting to see what the sound is. Hard arms clad in leather wrap around her waist, lifting her off of her feet, and she's facing the opposite direction of where she was before. She reaches out to grab Butch's jacket when he tries to walk past them, and pulls him over the barricade when Charon jumps over it, his arms still tightly locked around her waist. The bang of a grenade goes off not a second later, and Butch flinches violently. She can sympathize-nothing had ever been loud in the Vault, except for its inhabitants. Charon pulls out his shotgun and braces it on the concrete barricade, aiming it at the man who'd thrown the grenade at them. He holds his hands up in surrender.

"Holy shit! You aren't one of them!"

"One of who?" Sunshine calls, placing a hand on top of Charon's. He looks at her with an unreadable expression, and lowers his gun.

"I thought you were one of The Family," the man says. "They're low life gangers who have been giving us a hell of a lot of trouble lately. They're the reason for my itchy trigger finger."

"I'm Sunshine," she calls. "I'm with two men named Butch and Charon. We're not gangers."

"I can see that now! I'm Evan King, mayor of Arefu."

"We have a letter for the West family," Butch says. "We're looking for them."

"Well, that's great, but we have bigger problems right now. Shit is about to hit the fan in this cesspool, and I don't think I'm enough to stop them."

"How can we help?" Sunshine asks.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Butch groans. "Are we really going to play the do-gooder schtick?"

"It's my rodeo, cowboy," she says in response. She turns back to the man. "Well?"

"I need someone to check on the residents," King calls back. I can't leave my post. You can deliver the letter to the West's house. It's the one in the very back of the overpass." Sunshine nods, standing up and dusting bits of concrete off of herself. Butch rolls his eyes but stands as well. She gingerly makes her way past the concrete barricade, tripping once. Charon reaches out to catch her but Butch beats him to it. The boy wraps an arm around Sunshine's waist, pulling her to her feet.

"Watch it, nosebleed," he grumbles. She smiles up at him, and thanks him softly. Charon averts his eyes, gritting his teeth. He had more urgent matters to worry about besides the fact that Sunshine smiles so brightly for this fellow vault dweller, and the boy doesn't take his arm from her waist until the reach the last house. Sunshine knocks on the door, and calls softly,

"Mr. and Mrs. West? We have a letter from Lucy for you." No one answers, and Sunshine's brow furrows. She knocks again, and silence is still all that greets them. Charon inhales deeply, his nostrils flaring.

"Sunshine," he says urgently. "This place is not safe." She looks at him, understanding lighting up her eyes, and she crouches down, pulling a bobby pin from her hair.

"Cover me," she says, and gets to work picking the lock.

"What the shit?" Butch says. He shakes his head as the lock clicks open. "I will never get used to seeing you do that." She pushes the door, and it swings open slowly with an ominous creak.

A cold feeling washes over Sunshine's spine the second the lock clicks open. The inside of the shack looks as though it's been torn apart. The coppery scent of blood and rot hangs heavy in the air.

"Jesus," Butch breaths, coughing into his leather clad arm. "What the hell happened to these people?" Sunshine crouches down next to Mr. West's body, limbs sprawled at odd angles, and gently turns the corpse's face.

"The skin is pale, and has a leather-like feel," she says. She opens the blood covered mouth. The man's mouth is all teeth. "Huh. The gums have retracted." She follows the splashes of blood to the man's neck. She gently presses down and sees the skin move, revealing a wound torn open in the man's neck. The jagged outside of the wound can have only been made by one thing.

"He's been drained of his blood," she says, looking up at Charon and Butch with a sick look flitting over her face. "These are human bite marks."

"What, you mean like fucking Nosfaratu just waltzed in here and sucked them dry?" Butch's voice betrays none of the horror that flashes on his face. "Jesus."

"Lucy mentioned a brother," Charon says. Sunshine looks around-there are only two bodies, corpses of an older man and woman.

"Shit," she says softly. "Ian, where are you?" She stands, wiping her hands off on her Vault Suit. "Looks like we need more information about this Family."

"She always like this?" Butch asks. Charon doesn't answer him, but a soft smile creeps over his face before he can stifle it. "Shit, don't answer that-of course she is. Somethings never change from the Vault."