#oc: billie morgan/hundred dollar bills (lone wanderer)

[its-a-humanriot]

Embodiment of Love

@trashkingnyx did this and it seemed like fun so I’m joining in! tagging @radioactive-synth , @adventuresofmeghatron, @pchberrytea, and @theartofblossoming​ if you want a go!

 💕 RULES: Take this quiz for your OC/ship.

Completing for Billie/Butch and Charon/Harkness!

Billie/Butch: Love as being known

‘[ love is knowing all of someone and loving them anyway ] when tim kreider said “if we want the rewards of being loved then we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known” and when joe wright said “the idea that these two people know each other, knew each other when they first saw each other. that they recognised each other from their future” and when micah nemerever said “it was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly.” ‘

This is so perfect for Billie/Butch because they both spend a lot of their early life presenting a kind of front to other people to hide behind and then getting under each other’s skin and seeing the parts of each other that other people don’t get to see...like there’s a kind of understanding there before they get together or even before they’re really friends that really pulls the two of them together (pride and prejudice is actually not a bad fit for these two at all...uquiz op you did me a solid)

Charon/Harkness: Love as tenderness

‘[ love as gentleness after a lifetime of cruelty ] when ocean vuong said “sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined” and when pablo neruda said “like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar” and when anais mitchell wrote “all i’ve ever known is how to hold my own, and now I wanna hold you, too” ‘

ahhhh perfect choice for the two characters who have both suffered immensely at the hands of their oppressors and finding freedom and a sense of self in their own kind of way, and finding comfort and love with each other and experiencing softness for once in their lives 🥺

[its-a-humanriot]

Thank you so so SO much for this Atom, you did such a beautiful job on my baby girl 🥰🥰🥰🥰

Billie, for @its-a-humanriot

Congrats !! She's all finished; she was a riot to draw, I had fun with her custom outfit :3 Thank you to everybody who entered the 300 follower giveaway! I'm in the running for 500 now, so I may host another~

[its-a-humanriot]

👾 for whoever you'd like to tell us about the most :3c

eee thank you krok, I'll start with beloved Billie 💕

BILLIE: HOW NOT TO DROWN - CHVRCHES

This song is very representative of Billie's journey after she wakes back up after activating Project Purity - struggling with becoming this hero-figure in the Capital, what the Brotherhood of Steel wants from her/what the BoS are growing into after she deals with the Enclave, taking care of Project Purity and keeping her dad's legacy alive versus going after the things she wants for herself and licking her wounds after all the trauma and grief she's been through. The whole world puts her on this pedestal because of the things she's done, and she doesn't want it at all. Extricating herself from the Brotherhood's expectations gets...very messy.

👾 OC Playlist Ask Meme

[its-a-humanriot]

Six+ Sentences Not-Sunday

tagged by @adventuresofmeghatron (thank you! lovely to see you writing again!)

 I’ll tag @persephotea , @proserpinewrites , and @its-sixxers in case y’all have stuff you wanna share 😊 (no worries if not)

yay, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these! I’ve had a long weekend and put it to good use in making a start on writing a fic I’ve been planning for a loooong time, working title Universal Translator. It’s gonna be a long one and I wanna make sure I get a big old chunk of planning and development done before I post any chapters so it probably won’t see the light of day for a while, but I’m really glad to actually start writing the story properly.

Here’s a little over six sentences from chapter one - Billie is having a bit of a bad time, to say the least.

It’s not Autumn. Her father smiles weakly up at her. His nose is bleeding.

“It is done, darling.” He cups her cheek as he smiles, red dripping out of the corner of his mouth across the wet skin of his face. The water reaches their shoulders, then their necks. Their blood mingles in the water.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” He kisses her forehead, and holds her close. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. “The beginning and the end.”

The flood comes over her, inescapable as the arms around her. The water fills her mouth, her nose, her ears, unfathomably loud. The water covers her eyes, and she knows nothing more.

[its-a-humanriot]

Give us a rundown on your OCs and I can send some OC asks! (Name, bio, visual reference if possible, the world around them, trivia)

oh thanks friend, that's so kind! I hope it's okay that I answer this publicly cause I actually can't remember if I have done public bios for them anywhere

so both my main current OCs are protagonist characters from the Fallout games (Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas respectively, although their stories do cross over into the plots of the other games)

first up - Billie Morgan! (Lone Wanderer, FO3)

(above art by @its-sixxers of her around FO3 timeline - my pfp by @atomitron is her later in life around FO4 events)

Billie grows up in Vault 101 as the daughter of the vault doctor James Morgan, and all throughout her childhood she really feels the pressure to conform and be an upstanding citizen and follow in her father's footsteps to train to be a doctor. However not long after she turns 19, she wakes up to find her father having left the vault to the supposedly uninhabitable nuclear wasteland outside. Forced to leave the vault in the following chaos, Billie discovers that everything she was told growing up was a lie - that the world outside the vault is inhabitable (if unfriendly, to say the least), and that she and her father actually came from the wasteland to live in the vault when she was a baby following her mother's death.

From there Billie has to explore the wasteland to try and find her father again, and after his death eventually follows through on his dream of bringing clean water to the wasteland with the help of the Brotherhood of Steel. The anger and frustration of being lied to her whole life by her dad does take a toll on her though, as well as her dislike for becoming this recognisable hero-figure in the Capital wasteland. She also suffers after-effects of the massive irradiation she gets from reactivating the water purifier that her dad helped to build, gaining a mutation that is something of a double-edged sword - it increases the rate of her cell regeneration when exposed to radiation, increasing her healing rate, but it also consumes her body's energy stores so causes wasting of her muscles. She eventually has to leave the Capital area after being kicked out of the BoS, so she moves north and works in secrecy with the Railroad to help synths find a life of freedom (where she then crosses into the events of Fallout 4).

Lots of Billie's journey is about grief and how she reacts to things not being how they initially seem to her - about growing and realising that 'good' and 'bad' are not as simple or clear cut in real life as they are in stories. It's also about her finding the freedom to be the version of herself that she feels most comfortable in after having to be different things for different people throughout her life.

Billie trivia: she's actually a really good mechanic and inventor, but a terrible cook. She also has an unusual accent (compared to most people in the wasteland) due to the isolated nature of the vault where she grew up.

---

next - Rylan "Rye" Reed (Courier Six, Fallout: New Vegas)

(original art by @kharonion)

Rye doesn't remember a whole lot before he got mugged of the package he was carrying, shot in the head, and left in a shallow grave to die. The head shot leaves him with multiple physical mental issues including bouts of aphasia (not being able to speak), migraines, and impaired vision and hearing on his left side, as well as anisocoria (one pupil much larger than the other). His mental health also suffers and he thinks of himself for a long time as a 'dead man who hadn't stopped walking yet'. As his attacker had robbed him not only of his delivery package but of his life and his memories, he sets out to find him and gets embroiled in the conflict for who holds the power in New Vegas. Eventually,

Rye's journey is really all about the complete obliteration of who he used to be before and how he eventually rebuilds a new version of himself, with all the loss and fresh starts that come with it. It's also about the collapse of the way things were and the pain of change.

Rye trivia: when Rye is first recovering from his headshot wound, he learns sign language due to his initial inability to speak. even after he recovers, he tends to still use it a lot. He also has an aversion to mirrors and touch for a long time.

-

I have some other OCs in development, but these are my main two for now! Thanks so much!

[its-a-humanriot]

I AM VIBRATING OUT OF MY SEAT WITH HAPPINESS I LOVE IT!! THANK YOU!!

Hi all! Shippy Saturday request for my Lone Wanderer (Billie) and Butch: romantic dynamic (only just catching feelings), Billie is ace-spectrum and inexperienced at both dancing and relationships, but getting caught up in a fast paced dance and showing the wasteland how vault kids get down. Dealer's choice for colours! Thank you! (Billie lives at my side blog @its-a-humanriot)

[ Sketched by Supporting Artist @tarberrymentats ]

Bit of a crazy night, but she was glad she let him take the lead in many ways

[its-a-humanriot]

7, 15, 18, and 27 for Billie?

thank you friend! sorry this is so so late, my week went to shit 🙃

🎇OC & Creator asks🎇

7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

Most often the thing that makes Billie nostalgic is music. Life outside the vault is very different to life inside, so there's not a whole lot in her new life that reminds her of her old one. However she inherits her dad's love of music - he named her after Billie Holiday, after all. Much of the music she hears outside the vault are songs she's never heard before, but occasionally she'll hear one that her dad would sing to her or hum as he worked despite it never appearing on the vault jukeboxes. It's...bittersweet. Reminds her of happy times with her dad, but also of the lies he told her.

15. How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

Billie becomes known in the Capital Wasteland for having an usual accent and using odd slang terms (by wastelander standards anyway). She's pretty earnest when she talks and generally anything she says comes from the heart, but if she's got to lie or say something that she's worried will hurt someone then she'll go over and over it in her head beforehand.

18. What embarrasses them?

Getting any large amount of attention really. She always gets embarrassed hearing Three Dog talk about all of the things she'd done on the radio - it decreases a bit over time but she never really gets used to it. Also anyone flirting with her, because she really really doesn't know how to deal with that kind of attention.

27. What causes them to feel dread? 

Anything where she knows she's going to be the centre of attention. If she walks into a room and everyone is looking at her, she's gonna want the ground to swallow her up.

[its-a-humanriot]

do all questions for Billie 🥰

ooh yay, thank you Blue! sorry this took me a while to get to

01. Full name: Billie Franklin Morgan (Franklin was her mother's surname)

02. Best friend: Growing up , it's Amata. After she leaves, it's joint between Charon and Butch.

03. Sexuality: Demisexual

04. Favorite color: Aqua blue

05. Relationship status: As of post-FO3 main game/Broken Steel events, in a relationship with Butch Deloria

06. Ideal mate: The one who's there for her

07. Turn-ons: A good sense of humour. Touching her hair and neck (if she trusts them).

08. Favorite food: Dandy Boy Apples

09. Crushes: Billie is a big fan of old films and definitely had a bit of a crush on Gene Kelly when she was younger. Then James Dean as a teenager.

10. Favorite music: Billie Holiday reminds her of her dad. Otherwise, anything she can dance to.

11. Biggest fear: Losing her home again (whether that's a place or people)

12. Biggest fantasy: Finally settling down in one place with the ones she loves. Nobody knows who she is, no one has expectations of her to live up to. She wants it so bad she's almost afraid of it.

13. Bad habits: Very untidy at home, hoards knick-knacks

14. Biggest regret: Not fully making up with her dad before he died.

15. Best kept secrets: She keeps her mutation secret from the BoS ever since she found out about it (post FO3 events).

16. Last thought: "I wonder what would happen if I attached a flamethrower to this?"

17. Worst romantic experience: A game of Spin The Bottle in the vault resulting in her getting a kiss from Freddie Gomez (in public, no less). She liked him well enough, but it really did nothing for her. It certainly put pay to her thinking of him as anything but a friend.

18. Biggest insecurity: Being the centre of attention. She really hates being the subject of people's scrutiny.

19. Weapon of choice: Laser or plasma weapons if she has to fight. She's fond of a good old home-made smoke grenade or flashblang too.

20. Role Model: First her dad in the vault, then Sarah Lyons after. After she and Sarah fall out...not sure.

OC asks

[its-a-humanriot]

❄- What is this oc's favorite and least favorite food?

For whichever OC suits your fancy!

thanks friend! I'll do it for both Billie and Rylan just for fun

Billie has a real sweet tooth, so while living in the vault she'd go for anything sweet. Out in the wasteland Dandy Apples quickly become her favourite food. As for least favourite...radroaches were viewed as nothing more than a dangerous pest in the vault, so she never came around to the idea of eating them (or any other bugs). Plus the bits of exoskeleton that get stuck in her teeth are a bad sensory experience and will have her itching for a toothbrush.

Rylan is much easier going when it comes to food, but he'll avoid eating mushrooms unless he has no other choice. His favourite meal is one he can whip up himself easily on the road: gecko kebabs and grilled corn over a campfire. He also really enjoys grilled prickly pear, but usually feels it's too much hassle to make on a regular basis.

OC emoji ask game

[its-a-humanriot]

Utterly devastated and not knowing where else to turn, Billie hears Amata's call to return to the vault. She returns to find not her home, but the shattered remnants of her old life and everyone she ever knew. Through her grief she fights to secure a chance for the future for the inhabitants of the vault and herself while trying not to drown in the past.

Trying to run away from loss runs in the family, as it turns out. But the ghosts of what came before aren’t left behind so easily.

(A Trouble On The Homefront sidequest fic)

---

My FO3 Trouble on the Homefront fic that I've been working on on and off is finally up on ao3! (At least Chapter 1. We'll see about the rest.)

[its-a-humanriot]

👁️ EYE - what colour are their eyes? do people notice their eyes? is there anything special about them (shows emotion easily, literally magical...)? 💥 COLLISON - what emotions do they have trouble dealing with? 💢 ANGER - what are some habits they have that will take some getting used to? 🕷️ SPIDER - what is their biggest fear? do they have any irrational / mundane fears? for both Billie and Rylan

thanks Blue!! sorry this took so long to answer 😅

OC emoji ask meme

👁️ EYE - what colour are their eyes? do people notice their eyes? is there anything special about them (shows emotion easily, literally magical...)?

Billie has eyes the same colour as her hair: a warm chocolatey brown, which aren't hugely noticeable on their own but they tend to make people feel more at ease around her as her smile reaches her eyes. Her eyes show a lot of emotion - they're also a fair indicator if she's lying.

Rye's eyes are hazel, but they do draw more attention - one of his eyes was injured during the confrontation with Benny, and so the pupil is permanently dilated, and for quite some time after the injury the white of his eye is somewhat bloodshot. His vision out of that eye is impaired, a fact that he tries to mask from other people.

💥 COLLISON - what emotions do they have trouble dealing with?

Billie really struggles with anger. She spent her childhood living in the vault having to control her emotions in order to try and live up to people's expectations, and so she kinda stuffed all her anger down. Eventually, with enough stress, it all explodes out - usually with undesirable consequences.

Rye...struggles with a lot of things. He gets intensely lonely sometimes and so will seek out company, but then doesn’t always know what to do once he gets it. He also hates the feeling that part of himself is missing due to his amnesia.

💢 ANGER - what are some habits they have that will take some getting used to?

Billie speaks with an accent that many wastelanders find strange as a result of her growing up in an isolated vault. She also collects a lot of knick-knacks that other people don’t think of as valuable which means sometimes she will get a little too distracted while out on scavenging trips.

Rye sometimes forgets words (a side effect of his head injury), and will sometimes sign out words in sign language as he speaks to help him remember the words. He will also just go without speaking for long periods of time, which some companions find a little unnerving.

🕷️ SPIDER - what is their biggest fear? do they have any irrational / mundane fears?

Billie suffers from some agoraphobia immediately after leaving the vault, but she grows out of it as time goes on. She also (somewhat ironically) develops an intense and irrational fear of deep water after Project Purity because she associates the sound of rushing water with her near-death experience - it takes her a long time to even attempt to deal with that.

One of her deepest long-term fears post-game is losing her home and family - she lost her home in the vault, then her dad, and then later she loses her place in the Capital once she is kicked out of the BoS. She then combats this in a self-destructive way by not staying in one place too long, though it starts to take a toll on her and her relationships by the events of FO4.

Rye doesn’t like mirrors. He wouldn’t say why if you asked him, but really they remind him too much of his dreams and fragments of his memories.

He also is really afraid of brahmin. He couldn’t tell you why. Not even he really knows.

[its-a-humanriot]

for Billie - what it would take for you to lose trust in someone you call a friend?

"Jeez, starting on a tough one, huh?" She smiles for a moment in a way that doesn't reach her eyes and fades quickly, and she looks away. "I guess...when they do something to make you see you can no longer count on them. If they lie to you for their own interests and let you down when you need them the most." When Billie turns back, the smile is back, but it's faint and sad. "Something I have experience with, unfortunately."

send me a question directed to one of my characters and I'll answer in person!

[its-a-humanriot]

🍎 and 🍰 for the odd OC ask 👀

lol I thought I posted my response to this but!! I didn’t!! sorry for the wait, I goofed on responding to this one

🍎: Do they share any features or traits with any family members?

Facially Billie resembles her dad James a lot but her curly hair and freckles are straight from her mother Catherine, as is her big wide smile. Personality-wise, her intelligence and curiosity and desire to help people is inherited from both her parents, but she does inherit negative qualities from them too. From Catherine, she inherits a sense of idealism and a little bit of a temper; from James she inherits his tendency to be a bit of a workaholic and self-sacrificing (although this is also encouraged by the environment in the vault and James trying to encourage her to be an upstanding member of the community so she would be accepted)

🍰: What's something your OC counts as unforgivable?

Billie has a really hard time with people who take advantage of others - so people like Moriarty and Ahzrukhal are on her shit list pretty quickly. Even if their intentions aren’t necessarily bad - which is part of the reason why Billie struggles so much with Amata inviting Billie back to the vault to help only to kick her out again. She also has a big thing about allowing other people to suffer when they have the power to stop it, which contributes strongly to how she deals with the situation in Oasis and then later how she deals with the Brotherhood of Steel post main game.

odd oc asks

[its-a-humanriot]

It all starts with a potato.

(That is not quite true. It started over two hundred years and several lifetimes ago, when Charon still had all his skin and the world was whole. It had started again after he met Billie, after the memories of who he used to be started floating back up to the surface of his consciousness. They come sporadically, set off by the smallest things, inconsequential moments that loosen the anchors that hold the memories down in the depths of his mind. This one starts with a potato).

---

The fic formerly known as ‘the potato fic is here’ at last!

[its-a-humanriot]

“Billie, my friend, I have a question.”

“Shoot away, buddy.”

Fawkes, with an expression on his face that Billie is learning to read as confusion, starts reaching for his Gatling laser as he starts to look around for danger and she has to start backpedalling immediately. “Nononono, wait, sorry – just a turn of phrase. I meant to say go ahead.”

Fawkes’s huge shoulders visibly relax in the light of their small campfire, and he turns back to look at her again with that same odd look on his face. They haven’t spent an awful lot of time together since he carried her and Charon back from Raven Rock all those months ago, but since she had asked him to help her out on this trip scavving some heavier equipment from the scrapyard Billie has realised just how difficult he is to read. All of her instincts on body language are built for regular humans, and Fawkes sure is not that.

“Some of your phrases are very strange, my friend. Sometimes I do not know what to make of them.”

This comment startles a laugh from Billie, and she takes a swig of her Nuka Cola.

“Trust me, you are far from the first person to tell me that.” She says, grinning. “That’s what comes of growing up in an underground vault with no contact with the outside world, I guess. We just talk weird down there compared to everyone else.”

“You spent your life in a vault as I did, correct?”

“Yeah – well, my vault wasn’t anywhere near as shitty as your vault. Still bad, in retrospect, but not like ‘forcibly-injecting people-with-viruses-to-cause-horribly-painful-mutations-for-science’ bad.” Billie scratches at Dogmeat’s ears as he lays dozing between them. Fawkes shrugs – it’s an unnatural-looking motion on someone with his enormous build, all of the muscles in his shoulders bunching and tangling like huge twisted ropes.

“It is done now, and I cannot change what was done to me in the past. All the ones who are responsible for me being the way I am now are likely dead anyway. You have only been outside for a short time, yes?”

“Yeah, not that long. Less than a year.”

Fawkes grunts, then goes quiet, unnaturally so for him – the rumble of his voice normally suffuses the space around him at all times, like the hum of a generator. Billie isn’t sure yet whether Fawkes is just naturally talkative or whether he had just been so contact-starved during his long imprisonment in Vault 87 that when the chance came for conversation with another person came that he fell upon it like a starving man upon food. Either way, he normally takes any chance for discussion that presents itself no matter the topic, and the steady resonation of his rough voice combined with his contemplative nature makes Billie find his presence to be strangely calming in a way that seems at odds with his size or his ferocity in a fight.

But now he spends a long while staring in silence at the patch of night sky above their camp where the stars are making a rare appearance through a gap in the clouds. The look on his face has changed again. Fawkes has so many expressions that she has never seen on another super mutant, let alone another human, and are hard to interpret. The increased musculature on his face makes everything seem more strained, more forced. When he finally speaks, there’s a tense thread of something she can’t identify in it.

“Does the world ever stop feeling so big?”

The question takes a moment to land, but when it does it feels like it stuns her like a blow to the head. She remembers suddenly how it felt to leave the vault for the first time. After her eyes had first adjusted to the blazing daylight and she saw the sky for the first time, looking at it for too long made her stomach go all tight – for the first time in her life the world around her was not held up by walls, she couldn’t see the edges of it beyond the distant horizon, and it frightened her.

Sure, she was running on adrenaline constantly in those first few weeks above ground - when it had seemed everything in the world was out to get her and she didn’t have a grip on anything - but she had been half-convinced that the huge sky above her would fall down and crush her long before she ever found her father. Eventually the feelings had faded - sometime around when she started getting a handle on things, and after she learned that just because a place had a ceiling it didn’t mean it was any safer for it.

Fawkes had lived in a vault for far longer than she had. Not even just in the vault, but cooped up within the same four cell walls for who knows how long – certainly decades by his description, maybe even centuries – with few memories of his life from before his mutation. And yet when Billie had been captured by the Enclave, by Charon’s account Fawkes had essentially slung him over his shoulder and run after her into the great unknown despite having known her for less than an hour.

When she had emerged from Raven Rock, battered and burned and running only on the last fumes of her anger, she had been so overwhelmed to see her two friends that she had pretty much collapsed right into them from relief and exhaustion. She hadn’t thought of it being Fawkes’s first time above ground, and he hadn’t given any sign of being troubled by it that she had noticed. He’s never given any sign of being troubled by anything, come to think of it.

What would fear look like on a super mutant, anyway?

Fawkes is still staring into the distance. Billie takes another swig from her cola, and fiddles with the bottle cap. Maybe there are other reasons that Fawkes had taken to staying in Underworld than she had originally realised.

“Not exactly.” She shuffles a little closer to the fire. “The world still feels crazy big to me even now sometimes. But it’s less overwhelming now than it was. I found things to fill the space with, I guess.”

Fawkes looks back towards her, his tilted head a question in the firelight, and she continues.

“When I first came topside I didn’t have anything or know anyone, and the world was huge and overwhelming and I didn’t really know what to do with myself except try and find my dad however I could. But then I found Charon and having him around made things feel - less uncertain, I suppose. Then we found Dogmeat.” She strokes Dogmeat’s ears again, and the dog snorts at her softly. “Things got bad again after Dad died, but I kept meeting people and finding things that made me feel like I was part of the world and not just rolling around in this huge empty space where I might die at any second.”

She takes a last sip of Nuka and then offers the half-full bottle to Fawkes. Slowly, he reaches out and takes it from her almost delicately, holding it just with his forefinger and thumb before raising it to his mouth and downing the remaining liquid in one large gulp. Then scrunches his nose up.

“This drink makes my mouth tingle.”

“Hey, you got to re-discover soda! Did you like it?”

Fawkes contemplates this.

“I am not sure. I would like to try another one.”

Billie pops the cap off another cola and passes it to him, then briefly scrubs her teeth with a brush and a little charcoal, rinses with vodka mouthwash (and scrunches her own nose) and gets comfortable in her bedroll next to the fire.

“Billie?” Fawkes is still looking out towards the sky, sipping his cola, his voice quiet as she has ever heard it.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” She yawns. “Goodnight, Fawkes.”

Just before she drifts off, she sees a single huge green fingertip gently stroke the top of Dogmeat’s head, and then remembers nothing until she wakes, bleary-eyed, to a bright beam of pinkish light from the freshly risen sun. When she turns over, Fawkes is sitting cross-legged on the ground by the fire with Dogmeat curled up by his knee, eyes on the horizon. It is hard to tell, but she thinks as he watches the sun crawl up into the pink-orange sky that the morning light illuminates the slightest upturned corners at the edges of his mouth.

[its-a-humanriot]

Common Language, pt. I

(This is the beginning to a bunch of Fallout 3 works I have knocking around my brain. I’ll post bits and pieces here and then post the full work to ao3 once it’s done)

(pt. I) / (pt. II)

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Charon realises very quickly that he does not understand his new employer very well.

In the first instance, this is very literal.

Not many words were exchanged during her introduction as his new employer and him subsequently blowing Ahzrukhal’s brains all over the walls of the Ninth Circle. It’s not until after they make a very rapid exit and they are out in the quiet of the museum atrium catching their breath that he really pays any attention to her. Not much about his employer’s appearance immediately seems wildly unusual – she looks pretty healthy for a wastelander, if somewhat pale, and probably one of the youngest people to come through Underworld in several years. Her face is grubby with the expected dust and dirt of travel under her mop of short curly brown hair, slightly pink from sunburn across her nose and a clean strip of pallid skin around her eyes from the goggles that now hang around her neck (the look of it reminds him briefly of some small animal from before the war, though he can no longer recall its name). Although they look relatively well maintained, her armour and rifle have clearly been scavenged at least third-hand, and a faded red bandanna is tucked around the collar.

Charon takes all this in with a practiced eye, trying to evaluate what kind of person he is now bound to – as satisfying as it is to know that Ahzrukhal’s head is now spread all over the Ninth Circle, it has come at the cost of knowing his opponent. The girl in front of him does not look wealthy to be spending the number of caps he knows Ahzrukhal would have asked for his contract, nor hardened enough to have carried out whatever unscrupulous task he would have accepted as alternative payment. He can’t quite pinpoint it, but something doesn’t seem right. When she opens her mouth, his instincts are proved right.

“Well, fuck. I came to Underworld to cop a flop and a sling and hang loose for a while, maybe zee out for the night, and buddy up with you. I was not expecting to have to beat feet with a dead body behind us.”

Her accent is like no wastelander he has ever heard, and he doesn’t understand half the things that come out of her mouth. Charon can’t claim to be up to date with young people (as so few of them come through Underworld and most of Ahzrukhal’s associates were people who should absolutely not be allowed anywhere near children) but even among the various communities in the Capitol Wasteland there is usually a fair amount of common ground. This – whatever this is – is something else entirely.

His well-practiced poker face seems to keep his confusion hidden at least up until she turns to him with an uncomfortable smile on her face – she certainly has cleaner teeth than a lot of wastelanders, and not even any missing that he can see – and sticks her hand out in his direction.

“This isn’t how I was expecting to have this go but, uh, I’m Billie. Nice to actually meet you properly, Charon.”

He stares at it. A lot of people would avoid unnecessary physical contact with ghouls, even if they weren’t outright ghoul haters, and certainly none of his previous employers have ever tried to engage in something as cordial as a handshake. When he doesn’t react, she leans in a little sheepishly. “…I think you’re supposed to shake hands when you meet someone new, right?”

His stare moves up to her face. She looks about as confused as he feels. What rock has this kid crawled out from?

“What?” It’s hardly the first thing that he means to say to his new employer now they have time to talk, but this whole interaction is leaving him feeling entirely unfooted. She tilts her head at him and looks even more awkward, her outstretched hand dipping slightly before she withdraws it entirely and starts to comb it through her hair instead.

“Uh…I’m not used to meeting new folks? A couple of people have told me what passes for manners above ground but honestly, I’ve not had so many chances to try it on people who weren’t trying to vent me first.” Her face twists in an embarrassed grimace. “Is it the accent? I’ve been told it’s a little hard to understand. I can try, uh something else,” She drops her hand, brushes some stray curls out of her eyes and clears her throat. She offers her hand again and manages to take him by surprise yet again: saying clearly in an almost perfectly pronounced pre-war Transatlantic accent “Hello Charon, my name is Billie Morgan. Pleased to meet you.”

The sound hits Charon like ice cold lead in his stomach, a noise he hasn’t heard in decades beyond the occasional old holotape. It rings in his ears as fresh as it was then with all of the other memories he’d tried to bury - the cloying surgical smell of the lab in his nose, the claustrophobia of the sim pod – Scanning vitals… Welcome subject: 2875, identifier Charon. Beginning training simulation in 3, 2…

A hand touches his arm and the tension in his body spikes – Charon finds himself staggering backwards into a defensive stance. His hand, still moving on instinct, gets as far as the handle of his combat knife before his conditioning kicks in with a short shock of pain – the subject cannot harm the employer – and the opposing reactions form a strained stalemate and force him to a standstill, buzzing with adrenaline, as his presence of mind returns. His employer is now a few feet away, her brown eyes wide as she raises her hands.

“Woah, okay. Won’t do that one again. Sorry.” The artificial enunciation is gone and her original accent has returned, but she is speaking more slowly and clearly than before. He can’t tell if she’s just doing it to try and pacify him or if she is consciously trying to make herself easier to understand. Now that he has the frame of reference for it her natural inflection definitely has something pre-war about it, but it’s hard to pinpoint. “Easy there, big guy. I’ve got no scrap with you and I’m not gonna hurt you. Okay?”

Charon has at least a full foot of height on this kid, and while she looks healthy she does not look strong – the idea that she would be able to hurt him in a close quarters fight is almost laughable. Slowly, he forces himself to let go of the knife handle. The tension in his shoulders stays where it is.

“I am unable to harm my employer. Physical violence on your part invalidates our contract.” The default line gives him something to fall back on for a moment while he straightens back up to his resting position.

“That’s…something.” She doesn’t look reassured, but she drops her hands. “So we’re shiny? Cause you looked real ready to stab me for a second there.”

“I am unable to harm my employer.”

“…Right.” She appears to wait a moment for clarification that does not come before continuing. “So about your contract – it’s kinda hard to read and I didn’t really get the full shakedown before you greased Ahzrukhal so I don’t know what your rates are. I’m a little low on caps at the moment but I can pay you some upfront and then I can earn a bunch back from whatever scavving we do in the next few days to get you the rest of your cut, then we can work out an arrangement. Sound okay to you?”

“I do not require payment.”

“So what, I keep you watered and fed and breathing and we’re square? Seems like a pretty cheap deal to me.”

“I do not require protection and you are not required to provide for me, though several previous employers have chosen to do so.”

“Wait.” Her brow creases. “What does the contract say?”

“The holder of my contract is my employer.” The words come readily to his tongue after many decades of repeating them. “My employer has my services in combat and in any other duties as they see fit and I am honour bound to do as they command for as long as they hold the contract. The contract prevents me from harming my employer while I am in their service. Physical violence by the employer against me invalidates the contract.”

She stares at him hard for a long moment before she speaks again with horror in her voice.

“You’re a slave?”

“I belong to no one.” The response is automatic, the only protest he is able to make. The words taste sour in his mouth.

“You’ve just told me that you don’t require payment of any kind and that you have to do what I say. If that’s not being a slave, I don’t know what is.” She turns away and pulls on her curls for a moment while she paces before turning back to him, her face stormy. “If I’d know that skeezer was a slave owner on top of everything, I might’ve taken a pop at him myself before you ventilated his face. Fuck.” Her eyes widen again. “I bought you from him.”

“If you find the terms of my contract objectionable, you may pass it on to another.”

“I object to you being bound to the contract. Passing it over to someone else doesn’t fix that.” Pulling a face, she pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs, then pulls his contract out of her pocket. She looks over the worn paper for a moment, then a takes a single step closer to him and thrusts it in his direction. “Here.”

The ebbing tide of the adrenaline rush in his veins suddenly leaves all at once, and he is left staring at his employer’s hand again. There must a misunderstanding here. Again.

“You wish me to…hold the contract for you?”

She rolls her lips together before making deliberate eye contact with him.

“I want you to have it. Permanently, free of charge. The contract belongs to you - no more employers to boss you around.” Turning her eyes skyward for a moment, she takes a deep breath. “I’m hoping that greasing former employers of yours isn’t like a tradition or something, cause I kinda like being alive out here in the fresh air despite everything. And I have someone I really, really need to find.”

He stares at her for a long moment, stupefied. She stares back, with an expression that is perhaps supposed to be comforting despite the fact that her hand is shaking slightly. After the events at the Ninth Circle, she doesn’t have much reason to suspect that anything else will happen apart from her apart from the inside of her skull being spread all over the atrium.

“I cannot accept.”

At the sound of his voice she seems a little calmer, and gives him a warmer smile.

“Sure you can. No charge, no nothing, just like I s-”

“You misunderstand. I am physically not able to accept.”

“What?” The look of confusion is back.

“I am not able to hold my own contract. It is stated clearly in the contract terms.”

“You didn’t say that thirty seconds ago!”

“The contract terms are long. I paraphrased.”

“You paraphrased.” With a furrowed brow she pinches the bridge of her nose again with the hand holding the contract dropping to her hip, though her mouth pulls up at the corner – whether it’s from amusement or concealed frustration, he’s not sure. She takes in a breath, then drops her hand. “Right. Okay. And if I destroy the contract?”

“I am compelled to stop you from doing so, through any means necessary.”

“Even if you harm me? I thought you said you couldn’t do that.”

“Preservation of the contract takes priority over the life of my employer, though I must also take all possible actions to preserve your life.” Comforting people is not a talent Charon considers to be in his skill set. From the look on his employer’s face, he evaluates that this is still true.

“There must be a section in the contract for how it ends though, right? Surely no contract is gonna be able to hold you forever.” The naivety of the comment grates on his nerves more than he expects. Maybe it’s the aftermath of the adrenaline rush and the bewilderingly abrupt turn that this already baffling interaction has taken, but Charon’s response come out with more of a bite than he means it to.

“It’s not that simple, smoothskin.”

“But you don’t want to be bound by it, right?” Seemingly undeterred by the epithet or the warning in his tone, she continues earnestly. “If we just-”

“I said -” His voice is sharper than he would ever dared let it be speaking back to Ahzrukhal, louder than he has spoken in so very long, and he wrests control of himself back too late – his voice echoes back to him from the polished granite walls so that it rebukes him as much as it does the kid in front of him. Her eyes are wide, shoulders bunched up to her chin level, and he realises that he has unconsciously drawn up to his full height. The echo hangs in the air for a moment, and when it dies his words are back to their normal volume, even if the tone is strained: “ – it is not that simple.”

The moment continues to stretch out thin and the young woman doesn’t move or answer – just keeps staring at him. The silence leaves him feeling as unbalanced as the conversation did - worse now that he feels exposed in the wake of his outburst. Charon takes a rattly breath and fills his ravaged lungs to their full extent as he winds himself back under control – shoulders down, arms by his sides, he reverts to his typical guarding stance. When he speaks again, it in the direction of the young woman’s clenched hand rather than to her face

“For good or ill,” Charon says towards the faded scrap of parchment “I am in your service.”