(AN: Before you begin reading this fic, I want you to know that I recognize this first chapter isn't the greatest introduction, but I've been working on it for a while now to try to improve it. Actually, I've been working on most of the chapters I wrote in 2015 to try to improve them. I ask you, in kindness, to give this fic a 2-chapter chance while I work on this first one to make it better. Thanks!)

It's been nine months since my Mistress Amelie bought my contract off that asshole, Ahzrukhal, for a thousand caps. At the time all I could think was "That's all I'm worth? A thousand caps? Thirty years of undying, unquestioning service, and all I'm worth to you is a thousand caps?" Now, nine months later, I'm fucking grateful for it.

When I met my mistress, she was a young, damaged child. Two months fresh out of Vault 101, chock full of scars, dirt, blood, and tears. I didn't know it then, but she was heartbroken over the temporary loss of her father - the man who ran away from everything safe to continue a project he abandoned 20 years ago when she was born: Project Purity. The idea that a bunch of scientists can purify all the radiation from the Wasteland, starting with the water in the Potomac. Eventually it will spread to the plantlife, and I am sure eventually animals will start to evolve, or devolve, back to being unmutated monsters over the years. Of course, that's only if it works - which I'm not sure it will. I've heard of thousands of people trying in the two hundred years since the Great War, since the bombs dropped, and it's never worked before. Why should it now?

My mistress - Amelie, as she insisted I call her - had spared me one glance when she first walked through the double doors into The Ninth Circle - my own personal hellhole corner of Underworld. Her look seemed angry somehow, as if I had done something to offend her. And maybe I had; in those days, I was nothing more than a slave to Ahzrukhal's whim, and his whim often meant beating innocent folks half to death. I hurt a lot of families in the thirty years I was under his rule. Later, she explained to me that she wasn't angry with me - she was determined. She had heard about my contract and desperately needed to save me. It's just like her, of course. Spare the hideous, monstrous ghoul from the life he deserves. Of course, it doesn't work that way - even if she set fire to my contract and ordered me to be free, I couldn't. Not having an employer would only cause me to wander the Wastes endlessly, desperately searching for orders, while I burn from the inside out. It didn't take Amelie long to understand that, and she let up on trying to free me. Now, we have an understanding - I am ordered to do things I like, say things I want to say, and to be... myself. I defend her in combat, protect her from harsh weather, and run the errands that are too dangerous for her (like the time we had to find medical supplies in downtown DC for Reilly's Rangers but had not yet eradicated the Super Mutants in the area. I couldn't have her risking her neck out there while my ghoul self can skirt right by, unseen by them, could I?). In return, she cares for me; always making sure I eat, and sleep, and stay warm on cold nights. Our relationship is more friendship than business. I've never had an employer like her.

As I watch Amelie quietly roll out of the bed we share in our Megaton shack, wearing nothing but a tank top and undershorts, I'm grateful for her finding me. She turns back to me, seeing me looking at her body (and not for the first time in our nine months), and chuckles. She lays a hand, milky white and scattered with thick, red scars on my peeling, grotesque chest and says, "Morning, Charon. How'd you sleep?"
"Decent as always, Mist-...Amelie." Two hundred years of habit (habit, orders, commands... same thing) cannot be broken easily; it will take a while for me to stop calling her my Mistress. Nine months is barely a dent in my entire life's timeline. "Decent as is every night I'm next to you." If I'm being honest, Amelie is the warmest smoothskin I've ever met - her natural body temperature must be at least 99 degrees. And as it turns out, being a ghoul and missing large portions of your skin means you lose a lot of body heat, and I hate it. The only times I'm ever warm are when I'm swarmed by mild radiation... and when I'm next to her. As a result, we end up touching quite often - holding hands, sleeping next to each other. Sometimes on especially cold trips I have to have her climb on my back and I carry her through the Wastes, else I'd freeze half to death.
Amelie flushes deep red and taps the center of my chest with her slender fingers. "Well, then get up. I want to be up, fed and out of here in an hour. We have a big day ahead of us."
"We do?"
She hesitates. Looks away from me. "I... want to try to clear up the Tenpenny Tower situation. And before you try to tell me how stupid of an idea it is, I know. But it's eating away at me. There are perfectly fine ghouls that need a home, and so many extra rooms in that damn tower that I have to try. Besides, there's nothing else we can do about my Dad until we can dig up some more dirt on where he went. We might as well do some good in this damned world."
"I wasn't going to tell you it's stupid. It may not be the smartest idea, but I know how strongly you feel about it. We should try to do... something."
"And if it takes shooting that goddamn Tenpenny myself, then so be it."