IAMATERRIBLEPERSONANDIAMSORRY *shot*

I KNOW I have been gone for what feels like FOREVER (not just for me but I'm sure for you guys as well), and I was going to let this wait until Saturday but I CAAAAN'T because I've been gone for so long. I'll let you all be on your merry way into reading this chapter as soon as I mention a few things, 'kay? :)

1. As some of you may have noticed, if you are an avid reader for most of my stories, I also have a account where I post original work. I have recently posted ("recently" as in about ten minutes ago. No, seriously.) a new story that I hope most of you would take an interest in reading :D My username is "TheFloridaKeyz" and the story is The Silver Book. I would love feedback from anybody! Good or bad, I want it!

2. I have another poll going on my profile. It is already posted, and the rules that go along with the poll (along with any explaining you need) will be put in the bio of my profile as well. All you need to do is read the rules and you're good (read them CAREFULLY mind you), and vote in the poll! Simple as that, and I thank any and all of you who vote a head of time for taking the time to help me out. Back in the Black Bayou's FINAL chapter is written and it will be posted this Saturday in the later evening/night, which is the reason why this poll was started.

3. I hope you enjoy this chapter, because I have SO much planned out for the next several chapters of this story, and I am SUPER excited to be back into writing (fanfiction AND original) after such a long absence! Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy :)

Happy reading, happy writing (once again)!

~Konfessionist out!~

Chapter Twenty: No Reason To Stay

Day Five

Bryan sat behind the front desk of the Weatherly Hotel, staring back at the smudged screen of the Hotel's customer roster terminal, which illuminated a dull and dark green color, and across the glass did his face stretch over it like a mask. He gave a wide-mouthed yawn and rolled his hands into his fist, setting his chin on his knuckles. Business had been slow that morning with no new customers coming in and no old customers leaving either, so he had a lot of time to himself to think—and most of his thoughts were circled around the things he had discovered from Janny. His heroine removing her limp hand from her forearm flashed through his head.

"Because I'm still here— continuing to survive to keep on regretting all the things that I had done."

He sighed again and looked up from his screen to watch two Rivet City settlers (Mister Romero and his younger sister Emilie) amble by the door with the elder sibling complaining that he didn't think that he had enough caps to afford lunch for both of them with the younger sibling arguing that her big brother should eat and not her. Their conversation echoed down the hallway long after they passed by the open doorway of the Weatherly Hotel. Bryan removed his knuckles from his chin and rubbed at both of his eyes with the butts of his palms and tried to force an oncoming yawn back down his throat, and his jaw tightened at trying to restrain himself.

"I didn't want anyone else but me becoming the beginning of the reality my parents only dreamt of. I didn't think anyone deserved it any more but me."

"Hey, Bryan?" Aunt Vera called from the back room, and as Bryan turned his chin to his shoulder at the sound of his name being called, he heard a loud clatter followed by his aunt yelling out in surprise. He immediately got up and jogged halfway across the lobby to the back supply room where he found his aunt trying to pick up a mop and broom that she had knocked over.

"You need some help?" He asked with a lighthearted smile, but came over and helped her before she could even answer him. They were propped back up against the wall, leaning into a nearby metal shelf.

"Thanks," She clapped her hands together to get rid of the dress. "Do you know where Seagrave's toolbox is?"

"The toolbox?" He questioned, and looked to the metal shelving to find that it wasn't there. "It should be up here…" He got on his tiptoes to look on a higher shelf—his aunt was a bit shorter than him, so he was used to get things for her that were on higher shelves. He turned around and saw it sitting next to the sink, haphazardly covered by what appeared to be a dirty rag thrown on top of it. He pointed to it helpfully, and she turned around to catch it with her eyes and smiled warmly to him.

"What ever would I do without you, Bryan?" She chuckled and ruffled his hair before walking away to pick the rag off of Seagrave's toolbox and tossed it into the sink before opening it up to pull out a long screwdriver with a yellow handle. "So did you ever find out what that key was for?"

"Huh?" His brows furrowed together and he stepped over to her. "What key?"

"The one that was in his toolbox," She looked back to him as she closed up the toolbox. "You asked me for it… Hmn, I think yesterday or the day before. I don't quite remember. You said that you think you might know what it unlocks."

That's right, he vaguely remembered coming to his aunt and asking if he could take the key because he believed that he had found something that it opened. I forgot to give it to Janny… What did I tell her that it unlocked? He wondered, and this was why he was horrible at lying. Whenever he lied, he never remembered what he had said to her (or anybody else that he had lied to, for that matter). He liked to chalk it up to the fact that he disliked lying and rarely ever did so, and because his memory would fail him sometimes.

"I haven't gotten the chance to check out the locker yet," He finally answered her. "I've been busy."

"Oh, I see," She raised an eyebrow at him and her warm smile turned into a smirk. "Bryan Wilks, are you lying to me?"

He froze in place. "Wha- What?"

"You said before that it was a box that you were trying to open. Now it's a locker?"

"I—uh, well…"

"I'm only teasing you!" She giggled and ruffled his hair again as she strolled past. "Just let me know if this key of yours works for whatever you're trying to open, because we have to show it to Rogue."

"Huh? Why?" He inquired, following after his aunt into the lobby and closed the supply room door behind him.

"Because whatever you find is not ours." She answered.

"But this key is ours, and if there's something inside this… box, then it's finders keepers, losers weepers, right?" He argued.

His Aunt Vera laughed and shook her head dubiously. "I don't think I've heard you use that since you were a child."

"It's true, though…"

"If Mdison were still here and on the council, then maybe." She answered with a short sigh. "Hell, if Seagrave were still here and on the council, then yes, but he isn't—so whatever we find is considered Rogue's property until he decides what to do with it."

"That's not fair…" He muttered under his breath, and when he looked up at her she was staring down at Seagrave's screwdriver in her hand with her bony fingers wrapped around the yellow handle tightly. She had a glazed over look to her eye, as if she were vaguely there with him and most of herself was somewhere else—somewhere dark, thoughtful, and depressing. Bryan came over and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Aunt Vera?"

"Yes, Bryan?" She slowly turned her eyes to him and gave a small and sad smile, and a teary glimmer came to her eyes. Her thin lower lip trembled slightly, and he said nothing as he opened his arms to her and she hugged him tightly, still gripping the screwdriver tightly in her hand. "I sometimes wonder…" She choked.

"Wonder? About what?"

"I sometimes wonder… How things would have been if I said 'yes' to him." She answered.

Bryan knew how much his aunt missed Seagrave. When he was younger, he remembered that before Seagrave had to go to work in the lower levels of the ship, he would come to the hotel for breakfast before everyone else and talk about anything and everything with his aunt. After work he would come back for a late dinner, after everybody else was gone and most likely in bed, and she would heat him up leftovers free of charge. Bryan remembered that several times in a week the kind repairman would take a moment during his meal to stop eating, think for a moment, and then turn to Aunt Vera and asked her to give him a chance. Every time she would laugh it off, give him a warm smile, and ask if he would like a refill on his coffee. Seagrave would never look rejected or hurt, he would take the refill on his coffee, leave for work in the lower levels, and then try again a day or so later. He always wondered why his aunt never said yes, because she had always seemed at her happiest whenever Seagrave walked through that door.

"How come you never said yes?" Bryan asked her curiously. She sighed and pulled back, wiping away the tears from her eyes with a knuckle on her pointer finger and smiled up at him.

"I cared for Seagrave, Bryan—but not in the same way that he cared for me… He was always so persistent, though." She chuckled quietly.

"He must have really liked you, then."

"He did," She nodded in confirmation. "Which is why I regret never giving him a chance."

"Why?"

"Because then I might have given myself the chance to care for him in the same way that he cared for me." Aunt Vera answered quietly with another sigh and scratched the side of her head.

"…Whatever's in that box, I'm not giving to Rogue." Bryan spoke assertively. "If it belonged to Seagrave, he would have wanted you to have it. I know it."

"You're gonna get in trouble," She teased. He grinned and turned to walk back to the desk. "And I thought you said it was a locker?"

He laughed. "We'll just have to wait and find out."

Janny sat at her desk, legs crossed one over the other and she tied her hair back with a rubber band. It pulled at an uncomfortable tuft of hair under her neck, and she pulled it out slightly so it wouldn't hurt as much. She looked to the Pip-Boy in front of her, her father's Pip-Boy, and opened up the map console as she picked up her pencil and pressed it to the (somewhat) clean page of her notebook. At the very top of the page, she wrote, in clean lettering;

Places To Go

Then underlined it with a thick stroke. Twice. She moved to the next line and turned back to her Pip-Boy to begin scanning the wider screen for locations that she could go to. Little towns in the middle of nowhere or hidden away someplace were good places to run to, as they were harder to locate, but if the Enclave were to ever find her there they wouldn't have much defenses. If these towns are hard to find, they don't worry about firepower so much as bigger towns or cities do—bigger civilizations equals bigger targets for Raiders and the like. Of course, if she hid away in a big town or city (like she was now, in Rivet City), she would be easier to find but much harder to retrieve. Unfortunately, in Rivet City not only was she easy to find, but she was easy to capture, as well. She looked to the notebook, tapped it with the tip of her pencil in thought, and turned back to her Pip-Boy to better look around.

What about that Mirelurk village? She wondered. She had only visited the town once, and at first the settlers there weren't very friendly—they were quite hostile, actually—but she had managed to get them to warm up to her soon enough when the town was suddenly attacked by a Deathclaw and she took it down.

We took it down… She remembered sadly and her pencil suddenly dropped from her fingertips onto her notebook and she held her head in her trembling hands with her fingers going through her hair like quivering snakes. She clenched her eyes tightly shut. Charon was with me, then.

"Charon! Charon!" Janny coughed violently and covered over her mouth and nose with her scarf, her goggles pulled down snuggly over her eyes. The green smog was thick and tingled, almost burning, against her skin as glowing particles swarmed through the air over the disturbed dirt and tufts of metal that jut out like sharp and jagged teeth from the mouth of the sinkhole that Megaton now was. She barely thought of popping some Rad-X before crawling down into the pit.

She looked around, stumbling over slabs of metal that was still warm to the touch before she fell to her knees and sliced her shin. She cried out in pain and turned onto her side to look at it. Nothing too bad—just a flesh wound. She forced herself up to wobbly feet and looked around once again. Pulling down her scarf, she coughed again but forced herself to scream.

"CHARON!" Loud and long, she forced his name from her throat as if it were an unruly curse.

Somewhere in the sickening green smog and the warm debris, she heard gurgling—deep and throaty, almost as if someone were drowning, but she heard it. She snapped her head to the noise.

"Charon?"

Janny heard it again—louder this time, almost as if it were struggling or in pain, she scurried towards it. The throaty gurgling turned to scratchy groaning, long and tired, till she finally came to the end of her search. Hoisted like a white flag of surrender were the remains of her home, just where she had remembered it to be, in the same place that she had left it before… whatever this was that happened.

"Charon? Charon! Charon, is that you?" She cried, feeling tears streak from her eyes as she crawled up a dune of debris to hunks of metal piled upon each other, one after the other, to make a little hill. She started pulling out the smaller pieces, cutting up her palms in the process. "Charon, I'm coming! Just hold on!"

With a groan of effort and struggle, she finally pushed out of the way a large chunk of metal that sizzled against her fingers. She yanked off her gloves, whimpering under her breath at the leather that began to melt and merge with the fingertips of her right hand—the android hand that was attached to her. She didn't know how to fix and remold melted synthetic skin.

Another withered and tired groan emerged from the pile of dirt and debris that she crawled to and she hesitantly got to her knees to pick into it with her hands holding herself up over the pocket. It looked like a little nook had been created in the dirt, protecting whoever lay inside. She could barely see who it was, but somebody moved.

"Ch- Charon?" She murmured, reaching a hand in. "Is that you?"

Suddenly, a boney hand lurched out with a feral growl and latched onto her wrist, causing her to scream and pull back with her heart racing in her chest and her eyes went wide in horror. She saw every throbbing blood vessel on the hand lace through sinews, muscles twisting and contorting on brittle bone, crooked and sharp fingers digging into her flesh. She screamed again and pulled back, tumbling down the hill back into the sinkhole of Megaton to hit her shoulder against the destroyed remains of the Brass Lantern's neon sign, her assault rifle clattering in the dirt at her side. A sharp edge of the broken sign sliced across her bicep and she cried out, squeezing her fingers around it to apply pressure. When she looked up, a withered figure, tall and emaciated, crawled out of the pocket. A hand arched out, pawing at the dirt in front of it to help pull itself out. Another hand arched out, scratching at the air for assistance before a monstrous face—with harsh angles revealing yellowed teeth and waxy gums, bulbous and milky eyes that protruded from its eye sockets and ragged patches of thinning and leatherty skin barely covering the muscles that were stretched taut over its seemingly deformed skull—emerged from out of the debris she had cleared away. Red tufts of hair on the crown of its skull blew gently with the wind and it cracked its jaw open, emitting an animalistic croak that had its fat, slimy tongue squirming out of its mouth like a black worm. It began to crawl out of the hole and down the hillside towards her at an unhurried pace before forcing itself to its feet on skeletal legs and howled at the diseased sky in anguish, throwing its shoulders back and heaving its chest as it did so.

Janny sobbed in horror, gripping her scarf to her mouth and nose at the familiar leather armor that hung from the withered form of her best friend, oldest companion and bodyguard—Charon.

"Ch- Charon?" She hiccupped, forcing herself to sit up but she only fell back and hit the back of her head on the Brass Lantern's neon sign again. The noise caught the feral ghoul's attention and he looked over with a hiss forming from his pulsating throat. He shrieked and lunged at her.

Janny screamed and shoved her forearm against his throat, trying to force him off but even in his wasted state he was still too much for her. Her braced arm buckled and he collapsed on top of her, grabbing the sides of her head into his cold and skeletal hands before his head bowed down, and she felt blunt teeth—hungry and gnawing and strong—bite into the crook of her neck and shoulder and she felt her skin and flesh being torn away from her body. She screamed loudly at the flesh that hung from between his grazing jaws, and she kneed him in the side to have him roll off of her. He growled in surprise, and the hunk of her flesh that was between his bloodied teeth fell out with a plop in the radioactive dirt. She quickly scrambled up and clawed her way up the side of the sinkhole to flat land, not even thinking about retrieving her forgotten weapon and rolled away to collide into a boulder. Charon came up over the ridge after her, barely getting to his feet from his hands and knees to run at her. He tripped and fell face first into the ground, clapping up dirt in a thick cloud. She had to force herself to act quickly.

Getting to her hands and knees and forcing herself to her feet, she turned to run but stopped when she heard feral Charon gargle behind her. She her foot hitched in the dirt, and she stopped to look back at her friend, wriggling in the dirt, completely unsure of how to get up with his boney limbs flailing about. Looking down by her foot, Janny found a boulder that was about the size of a football, and she knew she had to do something. She couldn't leave her friend like that.

"Ferals are a bunch of poor mindless fucks that want to be dead without knowing it," He had told her once when she had refused to kill a pack of feral ghouls that had attacked them in the metro tunnels, as they had been returning from the DC ruins.

Janny picked up the rock and cautiously made her way back to Charon. He spotted her and tried to crawl through the dirt to grab at her ankle but she stomped down on his hand and kicked him in the chest so he was forced onto his back. He wheezed as she stood over him, falling to her knees with one leg against each of his sides and she held the rock high above her head with her tears trapped behind her goggles and the heat sent a curtain of condensation over the insides of her lenses, and she couldn't see. She felt Charon claw at her shirt, latching onto the thick fabric and for a moment she pretended that it wasn't to pull her down and bite her again—but because he needed her. He needed her to do this for him.

Her nails dug into the sides of the rock, and as she swung it downwards, a gravelly call invaded her ears.

"Jann—y?"

Her eyes went wide at the blood that splashed onto her, following a disgusting sound of crushed bone and squished flesh and the rock rolled out of her hands and fell to the dirt, coating her trembling fingers in red that she couldn't see through her tears. Charon's hands tensed in the fabric of her shirt before gently pulling away and falling to the ground. Janny squeezed her eyes shut and sat back on her heels on her friend's corpse, screaming at the sky in agony.

Loud banging caused her to snap her eyes open. Tears poured down her cheeks, agitating her eyes and she couldn't breathe. She grabbed the towel she had used from her last shower and blew her nose into it, struggling to keep herself from crying any longer. The banging continued and when she looked up, her scattered mind finally realized that someone was knocking on her door.

"Ha- Harkness," She croaked. "My door is open, you know that."

But when no one entered and the knocking had stopped, her brows furrowed together and she realized that it must not have been Harkness. Janny got up from her seat, quickly checking herself in the mirror to make sure that her eyes weren't so red that you could have easily guessed that she had been crying, and turned to the door.

"Who is it?" She asked with her trembling hand on the spinning handle.

And before she could open the door, it burst open and hit her in the shoulder, causing her to stumble back. She cried out in surprise at the hand that was around her neck, and only when she kicked at her assailant during her struggle did she realize that her feet weren't even touching the floor anymore. She choked at the fingers that encased her throat. It was a black man, tall and muscular, with an upraised white scar that started from his jaw, went down his neck, and ended somewhere past the neckline of his shirt. Janny struggled to reach for the combat knife that lay a few inches away from her on top of her desk, for her fingertips barely reached it. A smaller, Caucasian man stepped into the room from behind the black man. She couldn't make out who he was—her vision was a mess of dancing spots and blurry tears. But when the smaller man spoke, she knew exactly who it was.

"My, my, my—out of all the places I dreamed of finding you and wringing that pretty little neck of yours did I ever think that I would end up finding you here!" A scratchy, almost elderly voice called.

"Zimmer…"

Harkness ambled down the hallway, the soles of his combat boots resonating thuds of rubber against metal and he rolled his arm with his hand set upon his shoulder, trying to work out the kinks in it. He had been working the nightshift (as always) when a Wastelander picked the lock on the Marketplace and had made her way inside. When he had jumped out and startled her, she claimed that she had only come to find a place to sleep and to find refuge against the cold of the late night/early morning outside, but you could never be too careful, especially when any Wastelander far and wide knew that Rivet City was inhabited and that there was no need to pick the lock. He immediately escorted her to the detention center of the ship where some of the other officers could keep a close eye on her, and was now on his way to the bridge of the ship to find the security guard (or possibly lack thereof,) that allowed her to sneak by and pick the lock to the Marketplace. Heads were going to roll, big time, especially if Rogue found out. You would have thought that with the threat of Megaton's destruction scaring everybody, the man would take some extra precautions in security so that people could calm the fuck down. But, of course, Rogue was too stubborn to be bothered and he felt that acting like everything was normal and that nothing was going to happen was the right way to do things.

Sure, the settlers of Rivet City were still having their issues with Megaton's destruction (from the commander's understanding, a handful of them actually had family and friends there), but what could they honestly do? Rivet City had no reason to be under siege from the Enclave.

Except for Janny. He recalled a bit bitterly. They might come here for her if they know that she survived, but how could they?

Harkness thought about it—how could anyone know? How could the Enclave ever find out that she was in Rivet City, alive and well, and not dead like they had wanted?

If she goes out of her way to make her accomplishments—good or bad—known, he thought. Three Dog would probably jump on that bandwagon. If she tries to go head-to-head with them, which I also highly doubt that she would ever do, she isn't stupid enough to risk that… What if somebody here recognizes her?

He bumped shoulders with Mr. Romero as he and his younger sister, Emilie, brushed past him—arguing about who would eat that morning because there wasn't enough money. The middle-aged man apologized, and his young sibling said nothing. Harkness kept walking, entranced within his thoughts.

Who would recognize her as the Lone Wanderer?

Very few people knew that she was the good Lone Wanderer turned pillaging Devil's mistress because not only did she visit Rivet City maybe twice or three times at the most (the first time was to look for her father, the second time was when she had found him and brought him to Dr. Li, and the third time was when she was a slaving bitch with a dead father and an itching to turn Enclave armor into scrap metal), but she obviously wouldn't brag about her once promising status as the good Lone Wanderer, so she is automatically set apart from the Lone Wanderer and thought of as a common Wastelander by any others who see her. There is no connection between the Janny everyone knew now and the Janny from before—the good, and bad one that always had Three Dog flapping his gums on his radio show long before.

Harkness sighed dubiously. He knew he was putting too much thought into all of this, into everything that Janny had told him, and he felt like he wasn't thinking as clearly as he would have liked. He was looking at all the fine details of it, but it was all the bad ones. He had to look at something positive… Something helpful.

If she keeps her head down, they'll never know, his mind offered him helpfully, and he couldn't help but agree. Besides, what implication did the Enclave have that she could possibly be alive, anyhow? They will never know. He thought with finality—now all he had to do was talk to Janny.

The commander half-jogged half-walked to Janny's room, to find himself intruding on what appeared to be a shake down.

"My, my, my—out of all the places I dreamed of finding you and wringing that pretty little neck of yours did I ever think that I would end up finding you here!" Zimmer taunted maliciously, hands folded behind his back and his nose was in the air—his wrinkled lips pulled back in a satisfied smirk.

"Zimmer…" Janny growled, digging her fingers into the clutched hand around her neck of Zimmer's bodyguard—Cadence.

"Zimmer," Harkness barked sternly, and the elderly man simply turned his chin to his shoulder with disinterest. "I ask that you have your bodyguard place Miss Brookes to her feet immediately and I respectfully request that the both of you follow me to the detention center for detainment."

"This insolent bitch owes me an android," He answered calmly. "I will not leave until she tells me where it is!"

"This Brahmin shit again?" Harkness groaned. "Zimmer, we already explained to you that your android is not on this ship, and I believe that the last time you and Miss Brookes encountered each other she had proof that your android was no longer alive."

"Ah, but that is where you are wrong." The old man smiled, wagging a boney finger at the commander and he continued to smirk. "I have an inside connection who knows that my android is still here!"

"I see. And who is this inside connection?"

"I don't believe that I should tell you, for you have no need to know."

"Well I have your ass pinned to the wall for breaking into private property, disrupting the peace and attempting murder on an innocent civilian," Harkness hissed with his arms folded over his chest and his irritated expression was bold. "I can have you kicked off the ship. But, if you come down to the detention center and file a report on who this informant of yours is, you have the option of paying a fine or you and your walking brick wall over there can come down to the detention center for a night behind bars. Or we could bring this to Rogue's desk because I'm positive that he's tired of your shit. Your choice, Zimmer."

Zimmer frowned, his wrinkled brows furrowing together. "What is your interest in my connections?"

"If he, or she, is spoon-feeding you ignorant lies and tall-tales about your precious android being on this ship, I would like to find out why because it is causing you and your bodyguard to be quite the nuisances."

"Har- Harkness…" Janny wheezed, clenching her eyes tightly shut and she continued to claw at Cadence's hand. The muscled bodyguard simply continued to stare at her impassively, having not made a sound through the entire conversation.

"Make your decision now Zimmer, or I will make it for you if you are so indecisive."

"…Very well. I have no objections—I will come with you peacefully to file the report on my inside connection." The old man answered angrily. "Cadence,"

Cadence immediately dropped Janny to the floor. She tried to land gracefully on her feet but had instead landed on her side with a hard thud. She coughed and hacked, rubbing her reddened throat and breathing in heavily as if she had missed the air.

"Follow me, gentlemen." Harkness stepped out of the way and waited for Zimmer and Cadence to vacate the hallway. Once they did, he turned back to Janny's door to see her picking herself up off the floor. "You alright, Jan?"

"Ye- Yeah… Just a little lightheaded." She muttered as she pulled herself up into her chair at her desk.

"I'll tell the kid to come take care of you, and I'll send Dr. Mayfield up to check on you."

"There's no need…"

"Shut up and deal with it. I'll come back to check on you when I'm done with these two." He answered sternly and closed her door.

Janny sat in silence, still trying to regain the ability to breathe and stop her spinning head as tears streaked down her cheeks one after the other—she had to leave, and she had to leave soon. Now that Zimmer was (somewhat) taken care of, she had no further reason to stay.

Other than Bryan...