Chapter Text
It was the armor he noticed first, as he returned to Underworld from one of Azhrukal’s demeaning little errands and saw the mercs coming out of the Chop Shop. A lot of mercs - at least, a lot of the smarter mercs - wore combat armor, but after 200 years even the sets that they hadn’t just pulled off a corpse tended to look a little battered. Most of the armor still around was missing plates, or had scrap tied on to cover old bullet holes. It usually hung a little oddly on the wastelanders too - he knew it wasn’t their fault that they were usually shorter and thinner than pre-war soldiers, but it still itched at him to see it.
This set though - the color was irregular - patches of green and black mingled with the standard pale olive (ambush predators, baby a long-dead voice cackled in his memory) - but it was complete and correctly fitted to the tall mercenary. It looked like someone had taken apart a few different sets and rebuilt one from the harness out, instead of the usual “patch the worst hole and hope for the best” approach. As the merc half-turned to hold the door open for their bandaged partner (the pretty smoothskin who kept stopping by trying to convince Tulip to set up an arms-dealing partnership - Sylvie or Sydney or something like that), they ducked a little to keep the long barrel of the rifle slung on their back from snagging on the doorframe and Charon noted that their bracers didn’t match, the silhouette on the left forearm oddly bulky.
He spared a moment, as he ascended back into his personal hell, to hope that they’d both stay out of the Ninth Circle.
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The mercs stayed in Underworld for a few days, but they did their dining and drinking at Carol’s Place. Consequently, business was slow in the NInth Circle as most of the curious ghouls followed them over there, leaving only the junkies and the desperate to trickle their caps into Azhrukhal’s grasping claws.
Listening to Azhrukhal seethe, Charon wished again, as he had so many times for so many years, that the ceiling would collapse and crush the loathsome little rat. Caught up in the fantasy, he missed the bartender’s hand signal and was jolted back to awareness when Azhrukhal called him sharply “Charon! Patchwork needs a little reminder of consequence. Throw him out - and down the stairs this time. Perhaps as he heals he can meditate on the importance of paying what he owes.”
Disgusted, furious, his contract choking him like a chain, he seized the snivelling drunk and dragged him out of the bar.
He didn’t specify which stairs, Charon realized as he prepared to heave Patchwork down the long marble steps that led to Underworld proper. Shifting his grip on the struggling, sobbing ghoul, he carried him down the stairs, out the doors of Underworld, and kicked open the door to the Mall. Willow looked up curiously, leaning against a lamppost and smoking. Charon glanced down in satisfaction at the few shallow steps that led from the ruined museum to the entry plaza, looked at the sentry, and threw the old junkie at her. Willow spluttered and swore as she steadied Patchwork, but Charon had already turned back to the museum.
As he stalked back into Underworld, he saw the tall merc in the mottled armor standing by the doors of Tulip’s shop, Winthrop’s hand resting on their arm, a pile of scrap at their feet. The torchlight reflected off their eyes as they stared at Charon, a brief illusion of the gleam a feral ghoul or wild dog would show. Winthrop tugged sharply on their arm as Charon climbed the stairs, drawing the merc’s attention back to him, speaking a little too loudly “C’mon kid, I asked you a question. You want the RadAway, the Rad-X, or the Stims for this load?”
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The smoothskin mercs left, and the rhythm of Charon’s existence in the Ninth Circle returned to normal. Tulip and Quinn discussed Sydney’s proposal to start up a weapons shop here in Underworld, Barrows and Graves resumed their habitual weekly whiskey-and-bullshit session in the back corner (they were arguing about whether social isolation or a lack of intellectual stimulation were contributing factors to ghouls going feral. Charon, unable to escape the sound of their discussion from two feet away, wondered if he’d be the data point that proved Graves right in a couple of years), and passing scavvers slipped in for drink or jet or harder indulgences. Some of them even left again under their own power, as Azhrukhal’s foul temper sweetened with the influx of caps.
A week later, Charon shoved open the door of the Ninth Circle, a moaning drunk with broken hands draped over his shoulder (“Now take out the trash Charon, there’s a good boy” Azhrukhal had said before turning to the fool’s terrified friend to settle the briefly-disputed bar tab), and a slouching smoothskin leaving Carol’s Place took three long strides and caught the door, holding it open for him without comment. He spared a brief hard stare for the human, who looked back blandly. Unarmored, no visible weapons save a 10mm on their hip, torchlight glinting off their battered glasses, hair and skin and clothing all in unremarkable shades of gray and tan, just another scavver looking for oblivion in the shittiest bar in the end of the world. He wished he could warn them off before they poured more caps into Azhrukal’s safe and wound up robbed or dead or beaten or sold or whatever sick whim the old rat had in store, but standing orders strangled any warning he could offer in his throat (“Stop scaring off the customers, Charon”).
When he came back into the bar, he briefly thought that the smoothskin had had an attack of good sense and left, until he realized that the customer deep in conversation with Azhrukhal at the bar was not the injured ghoul’s partner after all. The colorless wasteland clothing was the same, but the line of the shoulders was too relaxed, the body on the barstool too long and still and balanced to be the stocky frantic drunk Charon had last seen sitting there, the voice too low and calm to be a strung-out fool trying to spare themself a beating.
He didn’t want to hear whatever trap Azhrukhal was weaving for another stupid tourist, and he concentrates instead on the music of the radio, the morbid calculation of how long it would take until the ceiling fell in, the low burn of a two-day thirst in his throat. Sinking into his misery, he let the sounds of the Ninth Circle wash over him.
“-keeps hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’-”
“-unfailing, unflinching, until the day - “
“-drinks are foul-”
“-he finally met his fate/ But when they came to pay-”
“-a liability, the dog-catchers are coming-”
“-yesterday...I found one of Patchwork’s fingers-”
“-civilization is a thing for me to see -”
“ - must be kidding-”
“-bottle imp, Azhrukhal, will you be carried-”
“-how they coax him I’ll stay right here - “
“-need just a little bit of jet, I’ve got the shakes-”
“-never see him after tonight-”
“-what I do all year round-”
The sound of caps pouring onto sticky wood seizes the attention of every patron in the bar, and the refocusing of their bodies, rather than the sound itself, pulls Charon back to the present. The wastelander drops an empty bag like unremarkable garbage, a long messy pile of caps lying on the bar between them and Azhrukhal. The bartender draws in a single rattling breath and hastily shoves a filthy envelope across the bar to the human, eyes already on the treasure before him.
“Fine. Take your dog and get out.”
The human nods once, standing smoothly, slouch vanishing as they rise. They open the envelope as they walk over to Charon, fishing something out. Their eyes, briefly visible behind the tinted glasses as they pass one of the filthy wall sconces are an eerily pale brown, catching the torchlight like an animal’s as they open their mouth to speak. Abruptly he recognizes them, the height (tall for a wastelander, though not compared to him) and the gleaming eyes - it’s the merc with the mottled armor. Ambush predator, he thinks again.
”Talk to Azhrukhal” Charon snarls, cutting them off. Whatever idiot deal they had entered into with the bartender, whatever information they had purchased, he wanted as little to do with as possible.
“You are no longer under contract to Azhrukhal.” The smoothskin slides his folded contract from the envelope and extends it for him to see, looking absurdly as though they were offering it to Charon. One corner of their mouth curled up briefly, a snarl or a smile, there and gone again in an instant. “I promised him that tonight was the last time he’d see you.”
“You purchased my contract from Azhrukhal? So, I am no longer in his service. That is good to know. Please, excuse me.”
Dazed, wondering if he’s dreaming, Charon brushes past the smoothskin, closes the distance between him and his former employer, as Azhrukhal sweeps cap after cap into a box he pulled from beneath the bar. The bartender’s head jerks up, glowering, his mouth opening to spit some final insult but Charon’s shotgun is already in his hands. He had meant to confirm his change of employment, hear the old ghoul seal his fate by acknowledging that Charon was no longer bound to him, but suddenly the thought of hearing the bartender’s rotten voice even one time more is unendurable. Before Azhrukhal can speak, the spray of buckshot silences him forever. Charon watches the headless body fall and fires again, blowing apart the chest (head and heart, big boy, a woman’s memory whispers, if you want them to stay down). He considers shooting the corpse again, reducing it to scraps of meat and bone and buckshot until he runs out of shells, but decides that this is sufficient and slips the shotgun back into its sheath.
Over the startled screams that marked the patrons’ reaction to Azhrukhal’s death, his new employer’s voice comes clear and steady. “Do you need anything out of here before we leave?”
Charon snorts, rolls his shoulders to feel the press of the shotgun in its holster across his back, shakes his head. “No.”