Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2253, Northern Florid Wastes
Former Gulf Commonwealth, USA

Virgil's hand shook an unfortunate amount as he kept his revolver trained on the deathclaw in front of him. He was reasonably sure it was dead, but he wasn't about to take any chances.

Shit. He really hoped it was dead. His rifle had barely made it through the hide—even the softer scales on the belly. If that thing decided to get a second wind, he didn't think his revolver was going to cut it. But he needed to keep pressure on the wound bleeding on his leg—just long enough for it to, you know, stop doing that—and then he would be dandy. If he was lucky it would seal up enough on its own that it wouldn't need more than bandaging—or worse yet, wouldn't require him to waste his last stubbornly hoarded stimpak.

Fuck. What had he even been thinking? There was a reason he didn't do bounties, even when he was desperate. The caps were almost never worth what you got for your trouble. He would be lucky if he broke even after repairs to his gear and replacing the ammo he had spent taking that thing down, and his other supplies were already thin. Maybe he'd be able to restock the med-kit. Maybe. Perhaps he could try and leverage some gratitude from the locals in hopes of a discount. After all, a deathclaw hitting caravans and shutting down a busy stretch of road was everyone's problem...

(Yeah right. From the warning he was given in Bogdon, he could count himself lucky if the folks in Millsway paid out the caps he was owed in the first place. Even luckier, and maybe they wouldn't spit in his face when they did.)

Taking a slow breath, Virgil lifted his hand and cautiously examined the damage beneath it.

It was easy to underestimate how fast those things were. Nothing that large should be able to move so quick, especially not with the limp he had noted while he was taking aim through his scope. His first shot had been a good one, enough that he had hoped to stagger it for a moment. He definitely hadn't been prepared for the creature to charge him immediately afterward. And then—over the span of his second, third, and panicked fourth shot—it had fully closed the distance between them. His roll to escape it had still ended with a claw slash that caught him high up on the outside of his thigh.

He was pretty sure that it counted as a graze, technically, considering just how bad it could have been. His leathers had protected from most of it, and thankfully it was far from where it might have hit the main arteries. Still, that graze had managed to slice through his armor in three places, and straight through his jeans in two others. Fortunately, only one of those wounds was deep enough to actually worry about. The other had more or less healed up already—an ache still tender beneath the new layer of keloid standing out against the mottled texture of his skin, but otherwise nothing to fuss over. This one would give him trouble, though, if it didn't want to stay closed on its own. He really hoped it didn't need suturing, because the trek into to town was already going to be a nightmare.

(Look, when your options were between standing your ground against an enraged deathclaw and falling down a hill, you chose the hill no matter how rocky or steep it was.)

Luck was on his side, it seemed—for once. Gently testing the wound with his fingers, it felt like the gash had knit itself at least part of the way closed. That meant if he didn't do anything particularly stupid, it would probably heal up just fine without further help. For now he just took a bandanna out of his pocket. He folded it up and slid it through the gap in his armor to cover the wound, just to keep any more grit or dirt from getting in. If he had to, he could bandage it properly later, but it shouldn't need much more than that. At least he wouldn't have to worry about infection down the line...

(There definitely weren't many upsides to being a ghoul, not in his opinion, but it would have been lying to say that there weren't any.)

That could wait, though. First he needed to be sure that deathclaw was dead.

Heaving a rattling sigh, Virgil hauled himself to his feet. He tested his shoulder and felt it pop just a little—he could already tell it would be giving him more hell than usual for at least the next week, but it hadn't been dislocated again and nothing was broken, so he could consider that a solid win. Revolver in hand, he cautiously limped his way toward the fallen beast, watching closely all the while for any missed signs of life. Fortunately for him, it remained just as still as it had for the last several minutes. There was no movement from the dust in front of the creature's snout, and the holes in its belly were...well. Clearly his shots had been effective enough, even if they hadn't stopped the thing from trying to run him down with its last breath.

Reluctantly, Virgil let himself holster the revolver and continue to get his bearings.

Step two involved searching for his rifle—he had lost track of it during his tumble down the hill. And Virgil had just enough hope to spare on the thought that it might not be a total loss, but it would suit the rest of his luck if the deathclaw had stomped on it in its rush to get to him. Even if the deathclaw hadn't busted it, there was still the chance that gravity might have. His fall down the hill had left him stranded on the banks of a small stream at the bottom of a narrow ravine. While it would have been a step too far to call himself lucky, he had been fortunate in the section of hill he had chosen for his fall. While relatively steep, it had been largely devoid of rocks or bushes or other debris that might have impeded his rapid and poorly controlled escape to the bottom. Only a few yards either way and he would have been looking at either a sharp and painful looking drop directly onto the stony soil at the bottom of the ravine, or a cluster of trees and thorny-looking bushes that would have made further retreat from the charging monster impossible.

He eventually located his rifle tangled up in one of those bushes. The stock had taken a beating on the rocks and was starting to split lengthwise, which wasn't ideal, but it could have been a lot worse. It would probably even hold well enough if he took the time to reinforce it with some metal plating and the last of his duct tape. The scope, on the other hand, was completely busted. That was going to be difficult to fix and expensive to replace, but it wasn't the worst loss he could have suffered. Again, not ideal, but he could operate just fine without a scope for a while.

And step three was considering his options. The slope of the hill hadn't felt nice on his way down, but it wasn't so far up nor the grade so steep that the climb to the top would be especially difficult, even with the state of his leg and shoulder. But it did mean he was going to have to think long and hard about how much of a profit he wanted to make on this venture. Because the deathclaw was down here at the bottom with him, and a large part of the difficulty ahead would depend on just how much of it he was going to try carrying back up that hill with him when he left.

He wasn't getting those caps he was promised unless he had proof the job was done, after all, and he had gone to way too much trouble already not to get paid.

Taking the entire head was out of the question—it had to be nearly the size of his torso, no way was he dragging that up that hill, let alone all the way back to the town. If he took one of the horns he just knew someone was going to call into question whether the beast itself was dead or not. The hand would probably do it...it would be awkward to carry, but it was probably his best option. It wouldn't be too difficult to haul with him if he took the time to tie it tightly. Come to think of it, the hide was going to be worth at least twice its weight in caps. And the meat could be worth a lot more if he took the time. There wasn't much good meat on a deathclaw, mostly just the tail from what he had heard, but what was edible was... Well, he had certainly never had the pleasure, not at the price it usually sold. It couldn't be worth the trouble of getting it in the first place, if you asked him, but now that he was here he would have to be a damned fool to let it go to waste.

With a game plan finally in mind, Virgil returned to the carcass and knelt down to get to work.

He had several years of experience at hunting out in the wastes, but he had never had the dubious pleasure of butchering a deathclaw before. The hand, and the bounty it would hopefully secure, were his priority, but it was also the part where he had the least idea to start. Drawing his knife, he tested its edge against the scaled hide around the creature's wrist. The inside of the arm seemed to offer less resistance, though that wasn't saying much. Even once that barrier had been breached, there was plenty of corded, sinewy muscle and thick tendon to slice through before the massive hand-like paw would separate from the arm. At least he had been smart enough to sharpen his knife that morning. If only-

A sudden, sharp hiss was the only warning he got. Even then, he barely had the chance to react, raising his head only just in time to catch a glimpse of the slight, humanoid figure barreling toward him before he found himself tackled to the ground.

Whatever it was, it hit him with more than enough force to knock the wind out of him, so that he was barely able to put his arms up to defend himself from the onslaught of blows aimed at his face. And in those first, confused seconds, he was almost sure he had been jumped by a feral. Which should have made no sense—even having lost most of who they once were, ferals were more than smart enough to steer clear of a deathclaw's territory. More than that, a feral ghoul should have had no reason to attack him while he was traveling alone.

(And he knew that. He knew it. But...he was still getting used to it being a non-issue, wasn't he? The five or six years he had spent as a ghoul couldn't entirely erase a whole twenty years of fearful instinct built up before that.)

Despite the ferocity of his attacker and the vicious noises it was making, it certainly didn't sound like any feral ghoul he had ever come across. But it was humanoid, he thought, and though it didn't seem to have much weight to speak of, whatever it was clearly pissed off. And it was strong—relentlessly pummeling his arms and chest, and trying to reach his face with wild blows of its fists or claws. At one point it even hauled sharply on his hair-

Which was, embarrassingly, what managed to snap Virgil out of enough of his shock in order to fight back.

(Because he might have lost his nose and half of his skin, but he still had most of his hair, which was more than a lot of ghouls could say. And he had never honestly been vain, thank God, but he would still very much prefer to keep it that way.)

It was a struggle, but at last Virgil managed to catch hold of his attacker's wrists. And if that first step had been difficult, it was an even harder fight to keep it. Then, seizing his opportunity, he capitalized on the meager advantage he had in weight, and leverage to roll with his assailant. The maneuver worked, placing him on top with the other pinned beneath him, and his attacker faltered briefly in surprise. Within the brief span of that reprieve, Virgil managed to recover his knife from the ground where he had dropped it and-

And once he had the upper hand Virgil found himself staring down at-

At a kid.

Just a human kid—a boy he thought, surely no older than seven or eight—staring up at him with wide eyes. Just a kid, still and breathless and terrified where Virgil had him pinned with the bloodstained edge of a knife held to his throat.

He pulled the knife back immediately, but he was otherwise too stunned by the sight to react. And that surprise and that hesitation were both swift in exacting their cost. Though he saw the boy's eyes narrow as he recovered from the initial fright Virgil was unprepared for the blow that struck him across the right side of his face—neither the force of it nor the sudden sting of the kid's nails clawing his cheek. He drew back instinctively, hand held over the bleeding scratches, and that was all the opening the boy needed to scramble away.

Virgil watched, stunned, as the boy disappeared into a fissure in the side of the ravine—a cave, he quickly realized, one he had previously failed to notice.

The wounds on his face were shallow, superficial. They had only narrowly missed his right eye, but the bleeding had already begun to slow by the time he broke through his daze of confusion to check. He doubted any scar they might leave would even show against the existing ruin of his face.

Even once he had recovered from the initial shock, Virgil continued to stare at the shadowed opening in the rock. He was at a loss for what he should do about this. After all, none of it made any sense. How the hell was there a kid all the way out here? They were miles out from the closest town. They might not have been far from the caravan route that connected the string of nearby towns and settlements, but traffic and travel had been backed up for weeks with folks afraid to run into that deathclaw on the road. If his suspicions about that cave were right, they could be in the middle of the deathclaw's territory. Had the kid been a survivor of one of the last caravans? How long could he have been out here on his own?

Shit, how was this kid not dead?

Eventually, Virgil managed to bring his thoughts together enough to drag himself up out of the dirt. He picked up his knife once more, wiping the dirt and the blood on the side of his pants before returning it to the sheath. Then, with one hand on the grip of his revolver, he carefully stepped up to examine the cave. The river cutting through the ravine had probably run much higher in years past. Whether the change had occurred recently or long before the bombs fell, it was difficult to say, but at some point the water had risen high enough and flowed with enough power to carve a bit of an overhang into the surrounding rock. It wasn't very tall—maybe seven feet, enough for him to pass through easily, but the deathclaw would have needed to stoop down, perhaps on all fours, in order to enter. Sure enough, he could see traces of its passage around the mouth of the cave: scuffs and scratches in the dried earth outside, and even a few traces of keratin where its horns had scraped against the highest point of the cave mouth.

But there, in the loose dirt and dust, he saw other tracks as well. Tracks coming out of the cave. Tracks going in. Tracks of small, bare feet.

"Hello? Kid?"

Virgil winced slightly at the sound of his own voice. The dryness of both his fight with the deathclaw and his earlier shock had caused it to grate even more harshly than usual in his throat. He still wasn't used to the way it sounded these days, degraded over the years by the progression of his condition. For as much time as he spent on his own he had yet to develop a habit of talking to himself, and his voice still caught him off guard more often than not.

Regardless, there was no answer from within. It was dark inside—obviously—and so his view from outside the cave revealed nothing much worth noting. No further sign of the boy. And Virgil really didn't want to enter that cave, but it didn't seem like he was going to have much of a choice. It wasn't like he could just leave the kid in there—leave the kid behind—to fend for himself all alone.

Taking a deep breath, Virgil stepped forward to join him in the dark.

His eyes adjusted to the gloom quickly enough. He had always had decent night vision, and it was one of the few things that becoming a ghoul had measurably improved. And it wasn't totally dark, within—the faint, green glow of luminous mushrooms scattered about the cave offered just the slightest hint of light. Enough that he could make out the bones strewn across the floor—the leavings of the deathclaw's meals. Just enough so that his eyes could isolate the deeper shadow of the narrow crevice in the wall toward the back. Far too narrow for the deathclaw to enter, but just wide enough for Virgil to follow if he had to.

"Kid? You in there?" Virgil waited silently for an answer.

Nothing.

"You're not hurt, are you?" Virgil tried again. "I'm sorry about the, uh- The knife. Wasn't expecting to get jumped like that. You scared the- uh, pants off me, you know?"

He got no response, but he did hear the sounds of movement, faint though they were, tucked away somewhere in the shadows.

"Look, I'm coming in," he said, by way of warning. "Just don't, uh, tackle me again? Please?"

It was a tight fit and he very nearly had to crouch in order to pass through. His body blocked even the dim light of the rest of the cave, so that for a moment he was almost blind. He kept one hand close to the handle of his knife—just in case what he was hearing wasn't the kid—but with his other he fumbled a lighter out of his pocket. It took a couple of strikes before it would light, the oil inside very nearly dry, but when it did the flickering light filled up the narrow confines of the crack easily enough.

Virgil didn't know what he had been expecting to see once the light was lit, but...what he found definitely caught him by surprise. It was...oddly cluttered, for one. The boy was there, glaring almost accusingly from the far end of the passage, hunched amid what could only be described as a nest of filthy blankets. There were other items scattered around: empty cans and bottles, heaps of torn and stained-looking clothing, and a surprising number of toys. There was a brahmin skull topped with the unlit stubs of several half-burned candles tucked away into a corner. Nearby sat a splintered wooden crate, atop which rested a small stack of torn books and faded comics. A few of the walls even had drawings on them, doodles and stick figures scratched on with another rock, or charcoal, or chalk.

The kid must have been pulling things out of the caravans after the deathclaw left them to bring them here, that was the only explanation that made sense. Only...that didn't make sense at all, actually, because he would have had to have been out here doing this for a while. For a few weeks, Virgil thought, at the very least. People in the surrounding settlements had known about the deathclaw in the area for at least that long, and they had long since started planning detours away from this route, though that could add up to two or three days to the overall journey.

Weeks, hiding inside a crack at the back of a deathclaw's den? It sounded crazy. It sounded impossible. But that was still, somehow, the best guess Virgil could see as far as explaining what he was looking at.

And the way the kid was glaring at him, one really would think Virgil had invaded his home.

With the lighter starting to grow warm between his fingers, Virgil knelt down to light the candles before flipping it closed. As he slid it into his pocket, he took the time to get a closer look at the boy. And even in the low light, it was alarmingly easy to see that the kid was in rather poor shape. He was filthy, to start with. His clothes were ragged, and even crouched where he was they hung on his body in a way that Virgil hoped simply meant they were too large to begin with. The hair that fell around his shoulders was so dirty that the color was impossible to guess, and one side of it seemed to be badly matted.

And Virgil was no doctor, but...he definitely looked sick.

His left eye was probably blind, or close to it with how badly it had clouded over—a cataract or a film of some kind, perhaps the result of some form of infection. The skin around it looked somewhat inflamed, and it was covered across the forehead and cheekbone with a layer of oddly-textured, dry-looking skin—pale plaques or scabs, or possibly even scars, perhaps left by some past injury or disease.

Even as he knelt, doing little more than watch, the boy continued to glare at him, accusing and apprehensive in equal measure. Virgil had to wonder if it was possible the child had never seen a ghoul before. Or if perhaps he had only seen or been told about ferals before. Then again, it was just as possible that whatever his parents might have told him about regular ghouls was every bit as unflattering...

Either way, it was clear that the kid distrusted him—which was fair, and smart, honestly, when encountering strangers out in the wastes, but it was damned inconvenient for his purposes. Because there couldn't have been more than four or five hours of daylight left. He could probably make it to Millsway before dark, or at least soon after, even with the kid traveling with him. But on the off chance he was going to be stuck out in the wilderness at night he preferred to have the time to find a secure place to camp. And in a lot of situations, the cave might even have been ideal, but those were all situations where there wasn't a whole heap of dead deathclaw baking in the sun outside. Carrion didn't sit around for long in the wasteland, and the longer they spent in the area, the more likely it was they were going to have to deal with whatever came sniffing around for it.

"Hey," Virgil tried softly. "Do you want to get out of here? I can get you safely back to town. I promise."

The kid just continued to stare, eyes narrowing further.

"It's not safe for you to stay out here, you know?" he tried again. "But if you come back to town with me, I can get you something hot to eat. And some clean water?"

And a bath if he could somehow arrange it. And some clean clothes...

(Shit, he really hoped the locals made good on that bounty, or he actually was going to wind up broke...)

By now Virgil was beginning to think what he had taken for glaring was possibly a vision issue, because it intensified sharply before the kid simply looked away. Virgil let out a frustrated breath, but otherwise did his best to remain calm. He was starting to worry that perhaps the boy couldn't speak—whatever this kid had been through, it was an easy guess that it had probably been a lot. Honestly, it was hard to tell whether the boy even understood him. Maybe he was younger than he looked, or maybe he was deaf. Maybe his family was from some place farther south where English wasn't spoken as much.

Which...none of that would change his aims, of course. But it did, unfortunately, mean that Virgil was going to have to change his tactics.

(And he didn't want to. He wanted to get the kid to trust him. But if that wasn't an option, and if staying out here wasn't an option, then it wasn't as if leaving him behind was any kind of option either.)

Sighing, Virgil rose to his feet—at least so much as the ceiling allowed. And then he went rummaging through the heap of clothes in the corner. He endured the suspicious stare of the child while he dug through it, eventually locating a torn up jacket and a couple of belts—already scuffed and blood-covered from whatever fate had brought them here. That would be enough to bundle up the deathclaw's hand for transport, he thought...

Breaking it down into steps again, it went like this:

First, secure the hand so he could secure his bounty, because he was already going to be spending most of those caps the minute he got into town. Then, find a way to get close enough to the kid so that he could...secure him as well. Finally, take a peek through whatever the boy's stash had to offer, both for things the kid might want to hold onto or for anything that he could sell off in town, because...

If he was very lucky, the kid would have family in town that would take him. Unfortunately, Virgil doubted that was likely. If he was realistic, he might hope that someone in town would know where this kid was from and where he needed to go. If no one claimed him there, then Virgil was probably going to be stuck making sure the boy found a place for himself in the next town. Or the next. Sooner or later, he was sure to find someone better equipped for taking care of a kid than him. But until then the boy was going to need water—clean water, and that was spendy. And food, preferably fresh and hopefully low on rads. He needed a bath, and possibly new clothes, but definitely shoes. And likely medicine if Virgil could find a doctor to check him out. And if he had been out here on his own, living off of packaged Pre-War food recovered from the caravans, then sooner or later he was going to need to be treated for radiation.

(If he was lucky, Virgil thought he might come out with just enough to fix the stock of his rifle properly. And he was definitely going to be relying on hunting and forage to get him through after the next town...)

So Virgil left the cave, to give the kid some space and a chance to calm down. He finished taking the hand off the deathclaw, wrapped it up in the jacket, and bound it with one of the belts as solidly as he could before strapping it to his pack. And then he took the other belt—the thinnest one—and he cinched it into a loop around his forearm. Hopefully it wouldn't be obvious there, hidden against the straps of his armor...

And then he opened up his pack and chose his bait.

When he returned to the cave, to the crevice, Virgil was relieved to find the boy more or less where he had left him. He was still in his nest of blankets, no longer curled up on himself, though he tensed and crouched over defensively when he noticed Virgil's return. He was unsurprised to find that same, defensive, furious glare being leveled at him.

(Virgil was half beginning to wonder if the boy was even capable of any other expression than that.)

He made his approach slowly, lowering himself back into a crouch to put him on eye-level with the boy despite the protest of the still-healing wound on his thigh. The boy watched him uncertainly, tense and understandably afraid at being cornered in his place of refuge by a stranger...

(God, Virgil hated to do this...)

"Hey," Virgil said, striving in vain to soften the coarse tones of his voice. "I don't have any water that's safe for you to drink, but I've got this, if you want it."

He held out the bottle of Nuka-Cola for the boy to see. He was relieved to see some of the hostility in his glare slip, replaced by faint interest. Virgil had been saving it for a special occasion, but he honestly doubted he was going to get a better use out of it than this.

(In all honesty the soda wasn't all that healthy either, in terms of radiation, but it was still bound to be safer for the kid than the water Virgil was carrying in his canteen.)

Seeing the child's interest, Virgil straightened his arm, leaning forward in order to get a little closer.

He had to time it just right, but when his moment came he was ready. When the boy reached out for the bottle Virgil let it drop and lunged forward to grab his hand. The boy began to fight against his grip immediately, but Virgil was prepared for that too, and in the split second he had before the child twisted out of his grasp he slid the loop of the belt down his forearm and tightened it around the child's wrist.

This time he was expecting the fist that came hurtling toward his face, but a quick yank of the belt strap pulled it off course before it could land. It also put the kid off-balance, enough for Virgil to grab hold of his other hand and try to bring them together. Which wasn't an easy task at all—the kid was clearly terrified, and almost alarmingly strong, and he fought just as hard as he had out in the dirt. But Virgil still had the same advantages—of weight and leverage and experience in a scrap—to work with, and this time he was actually ready for a fight. And so it was only a matter of time before he got the kid's hands down in front of him, and tied them—snugly but carefully—with the length of the belt.

"I'm sorry," Virgil said, apologizing frantically as the child continued to struggle. "I'm sorry, but, I don't want you to run off and get lost, okay? You don't know me and you don't trust me, but I can't just leave you out here."

The only response Virgil got to that, beyond the expected growling, was a spirited attempt to bite his fingers as he was finishing off the knot. And he knew better than to take that personally.

"I promise I'll cut you loose as soon as we get to town, alright?"

Once he was satisfied that the knot was secure, Virgil picked the kid up—and fuck, he was so light—setting him back down in the nest. The kid rolled over onto his side, and then onto his knees. Virgil figured he still might try to make a break for it, but he wouldn't be able to do it so quickly or easily that he wouldn't have time to stop him from running.

"Just...stay right there for a second, alright?" Virgil said, almost hopelessly.

He rose slowly, wincing as his leg twinged, and once more took in the cramped space around them. A lot of this stuff had to have been scavenged from the caravans, but what if some of it was actually his?

"Is there anything special in here you want to keep?" Virgil asked him. "Anything important?"

But the kid only glared at him. Because of course he did.

With a sigh, Virgil took a look at the nest again. After a bit of poking around, he dug out two of the cleanest blankets he could find from amid the mess. Spreading these out he started to load it up with a few of what he imagined the kid might want to hold onto. The stack of books and comics went in, along with a grimy yellow and black teddy bear, and a toy car that still had most of its wheels. He found a hairbrush that looked like it...might have been getting some use, and threw that in as well. He unearthed a small metal canister that rattled when he tilted it. Opening it up he discovered that it held a couple broken watches and a tangle of old jewelry. There were several bottle caps as well, along with a few marbles and rocks and even a few teeth—one or two that were probably the kid's own, and a couple that had probably been shed by the deathclaw.

(Though there was one that was adult sized and capped in gold, and Virgil really didn't want to think about how the kid had gotten it...)

Investigating the box had drawn the full sharpness of the kid's attention. Virgil made a careful show of closing the lid and placing the box in the bundle with the rest before tying it up tightly.

"I can carry these for you until we get to town," Virgil said, "or I can make a sling so that you can carry them yourself. Which do you want?"

The indecision he read in the shift of the kid's eyes might have been the first real indication that the boy actually understood what Virgil was saying.

"If you want the sling, you need to let me close enough to tie it," Virgil said. "But if you try to bite me again, I'm carrying them. Understand?"

The boy first looked away, and Virgil might easily have missed it if he hadn't been watching so closely, but a few seconds later he gave a barely perceptible nod. It took all of his strength not to melt from relief.

"Good, cool," he managed with just a breath. "Just, uh, hold still then."

He folded the bundle into the second blanket and spun the corners into a sling. Then, very slowly and very carefully, he leaned over to settle the makeshift pack onto the kid's back. He threaded one end over one of the boy's shoulders and the other under his arm, and tied the corners in the front, all the while watching the boy's eyes as he did. The kid's breath was quick and heavy, obviously nervous at having a stranger so close. His whole body was tensed where he sat, and his eyes stared at Virgil's hands as they worked on the knot over the boy's chest.

"There," Virgil said. "That should hold at least until we get to town and find something better."

And at least the last problem to be dealt with would be easier now that he seemed to have secured even a sliver of the kid's cooperation. From the look of the callouses on the boy's feet, he had been running around without shoes for quite a while now. Which wasn't unusual, kids grew fast, and finding proper shoes in their size wasn't easy. But the world was full of broken glass and rusted metal, and dust and mud and standing water could all be tainted with God alone even knew what. Even a simple sandal or bit of sewn leather was to be preferred over nothing. Right now, his resources were even more limited, but there were still plenty of rags among the scraps that had been gathered in the cave. They would do for now.

"The nearest town, Millsway, is probably just over six miles from here," Virgil said, "and my leg's still not doing great, so I'm not going to be able to carry you. Would you let me wrap your feet up?"

The hesitation lasted for just a few seconds longer, but the nod, when it came, was noticeably more confident than the first. And, though he tensed visibly when Virgil took hold of his ankle, the boy did him the very helpful favor of not kicking him in the face. He had only just enough hope to spare for it, but Virgil allowed himself to consider this progress.

(Maybe if things went well he could untie the kid once they had made it farther down the road. Maybe then he might feel like less of a heel...)

Once he got the kid up and on his feet the boy had left the cave with only minimal coaxing, though not without an anxious look behind. And he almost seemed to freeze, for just a moment, staring at the body of the fallen deathclaw while Virgil considered his next step. He had anticipated that getting the two of them out of the ravine would prove tricky, though ultimately it had posed less of a challenge than he feared...

Even if the ascent hadn't been...particularly pleasant for either of them.

Despite his earlier insistence against carrying the boy, it wasn't like Virgil could expect him to climb up that slope with his hands tied. And he was certain that if he untied them now the kid would probably book. The easiest solution—out of a stack of difficult ones—was to simply loop the kid's arms around his neck to carry him on his back while Virgil did the climbing himself. With his pack and his rifle already occupying the space, it couldn't have been the most comfortable perch for the boy. Nor was it comfortable for Virgil—with his balance thrown off, both by the weight and by the throbbing ache in his leg, he was painfully aware for the entire climb that a slip could easily end with him falling on top of the child. But the alternative would have been to carry the boy on his front, which...would have made the climb even more awkward for Virgil, and undoubtedly much more unpleasant for the kid-

(The last thing the boy needed on top of everything else was to be traumatized by having to stare into Virgil's exposed nasal cavity for the entire climb.)

By comparison, the rest of the trek to the town was a breeze, though it was also, unfortunately, uncomfortably quiet. Which was saying a lot, because silence wasn't something that often bothered him. But every attempt Virgil made at getting...something out of the boy was met either with a glare, a flat stare, or on one occasion a dismissive roll of the eye. Eventually he gave up, focusing on keeping an eye out for threats. As dangerous as it would be to have the kid run away on him in the middle of nowhere, he hated just as much the idea of running into danger with the boy's hands tied. Thankfully, the deathclaw's recent reign of terror was enough to have kept even raiders away from the once-busy trade route. And most animals seemed, wisely, to have given the area a wide berth as well.

The closest they came to trouble was a tense standoff with a herd of radstags crossing the road ahead of them. The does all crossed the road quickly enough, but the buck seemed to consider making a charge at them. It stared them down, one antlered head lowered in warning while the other scanned anxiously for other threats as it pawed the broken asphalt with its hooves. It wouldn't have been difficult to put down with his rifle, but it also wasn't necessary. Instead, Virgil dragged the boy behind him and backed away a few paces. And that, it seemed, was enough to convince the radstag that they didn't want any trouble. Once it turned and ran after the rest of its herd, disappearing into the trees, he thought they both breathed a breath of relief.

They were about a mile and a half out from Millsway when they passed an overturned Corvega. Virgil had the boy keep his distance as he took the time to check the interior of the car, just to make sure there weren't any ferals—or any other unpleasant surprises—sleeping inside. Once he was satisfied, he decided it was as good an excuse as any to stop for a break, and they stopped so that the kid could take a rest. Not that the boy seemed much worse for wear, despite the humid heat.

(Virgil was just glad the kid wasn't getting overheated... He wasn't sure he still felt temperature quite the same anymore without those top few layers of skin.)

He had been checking the kid's bindings and his fingers every now and then—he couldn't help but worry that the belt might have tightened itself during the walk and cut off the circulation. Virgil had told the kid to get his attention if that happened or if his feet began to hurt. Both seemingly hadn't happened, but he still didn't know for sure just how much of what he said the boy understood. And, despite his examinations, he hadn't managed to get as close a look as he might have liked. The kid kept his left hand balled up in a fist whenever Virgil got close, and had refused or ignored his requests for a better look. Virgil had tried only once to pry his fingers open, but the boy had bared his teeth as if he might try to bite him again, so he had decided not to press the issue any further.

Virgil figured that, as close as they were to the town by now, it might be worth taking a chance...

"You want that Nuka-Cola I offered you earlier?" Virgil asked, crouching down beside the boy where he sat.

The boy narrowed his eyes suspiciously before bobbing a cautious nod. He probably suspected another trick, which Virgil thought was more than fair. He fished the bottle out of the bag and set it down on the ground in front of him.

"I'm going to untie your hands," Virgil said. "We're not that far out from Millsway, anyway. I'd appreciate it if you'd stick with me until we get there. I won't even stop you if you do run off afterward, as long as it's after we get to town. It's just- You'll be a lot safer there than out here. You understand?"

(And it was probably a lot safer for him this way. People were already going to be unhappy seeing a ghoul walk into town, let alone one with a traumatized kid trailing behind. He didn't need to make things worse for himself by showing up with the kid still tied...)

The boy stared at him quietly for a long moment and then nodded again. Virgil reached out slowly as the kid lifted his hands. He noticed that same hand—the left—was still being held tightly in a fist, but he didn't let his eyes linger on it for long. Now that he had some level of communication open with the kid, he didn't want to risk making him any more uncomfortable than he already had. Virgil untied the knot and unwound the belt slowly, taking his time so that he could get a look at the skin that had been trapped underneath. It was a bit reddened in places from rubbing, but it didn't look raw, for which Virgil was relieved.

Almost as soon as the boy's hands were freed, they darted forward, grabbing the bottle from where it sat. The movement startled Virgil for just a moment, caught off guard, but he wound up watching as the boy sat there, bottle clutched to his chest, that glare returning as if daring him to take it back.

"It's all yours, kid," Virgil said, spreading his hands. "Go ahead."

And then Virgil came to regret this almost immediately as he watched the kid pop the cap off the top of the bottle using his teeth.

The boy pocketed the bottle cap and chugged about a third of the bottle before stopping to catch his breath. He stared at Virgil for a moment, his gaze almost uncomfortably dissecting for a kid that young. Once again, the silence was enough to make his remaining skin start to crawl.

"I'm sorry that I was rough with you before," Virgil said. "I'm not...great with kids."

Virgil had barely known how to interact with kids when he was one, and growing up hadn't taught him much better. And that was before he had turned into something that many a wasteland parent used stories of to scare their kids into behaving.

(Hell, even his mother had warned him he might wind up a ghoul if he forgot to wash his hands before eating...)

"And you'd already attacked me, and I wasn't sure you could speak or understand, and all I could think of was the two of us getting stuck out there after dark with whatever came to scavenge that deathclaw. Maybe there was a better way I could have done it, but-"

Actually, as it came spilling out of him now, Virgil was starting to realize that a lot of his decision making, as focused as it had been at the time, might have been driven by the remaining panic of the fight. Which...it wasn't unusual for him to get caught in that mode of operation, and it had certainly helped keep him alive, but he was sure it hadn't done much to endear him to the boy who was now stuck with him.

Though it was hard to tell, given the skeptical eye being cast his way, exactly what the kid thought of him at the moment.

"Maybe we should start over," he suggested a moment later. "My name is Virgil."

He held out his hand, but was somehow unsurprised when the kid gave it one look and promptly returned to his drink.

"You don't have to give me yours if you don't want to," Virgil said, awkwardly taking his hand back. "That's fine. And if you can't tell me, that's fine too."

He let out a huff of breath, thinking.

"I guessed you might be a boy when I first saw you," Virgil tried, "but if you need to correct me about that, feel free."

The faintly confused look cast his way was enough to finally make him give up on the conversation.

"Nevermind," Virgil said, leaning back against the side of the rusting car. "Just enjoy your soda."

And yet, against all odds and despite Virgil's nagging fears, something he said or did must have earned him some measure of the boy's good will. Or at the very least he must have earned just enough trust that, when they ended their break a few minutes later, the boy seemed content enough to follow. And while the child was no more talkative after than he had been at the start, at least the silence overhanging their journey no longer seemed so tense.

Virgil felt some of that tension return, however, the moment they came within sight of Millsway. In fact, once they got close enough to see the shanties set up on the outskirts of town and the residents going about their afternoon, Virgil noticed the kid's demeanor change noticeably. Gone was the strongly defiant attitude with which he had seemed to regard everything before. The boy stuck close, posture slightly hunched, and Virgil even watched him arrange a hasty curtain of his ratted hair to cover his damaged eye.

"Do you know this town?" Virgil asked him. "Have you ever been here before?"

Half concerned by this shift in behavior and yet half hopeful it might mean that someone would know where this kid belonged, Virgil didn't know which answer he would have preferred. And, when the kid predictably ignored his question, Virgil couldn't help but sigh.

"Worth a shot..."

Eventually their approach was noted, and shortly after greeted, though certainly not warmly. A group of locals came to meet them at the gate, a couple of them armed and lightly armored. The carried their weapons in a way that screamed civilian militia—the type that knew how to use their weapons, but were generally hoping not to. They stood at the back of a man who wore only a pistol against his leg. It was an easy guess that this was the man in charge of Millsway—or at least that he had enough folks backing up his opinion that he was, anyway. An older man, maybe in his late fifties, with a stubborn fringe of greying red hair, who was staring Virgil down with both a scowl and with wholly undisguised disdain.

"You. Ghoul," the man said. "What're you doing with that kid?"

"Found him when I was out dealing with your deathclaw problem," Virgil answered, momentarily surprised when the boy ducked behind his leg.

The man's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Dealing with?"

"It's dealt with," Virgil clarified.

The man took a moment to look him over, first warily, and then with skepticism.

"Bullshit."

"I've got the hand right here if you want to take a look," Virgil said, gesturing to his pack. "Didn't think you'd part with the bounty on just my word."

"What bounty?" the man asked.

Oh. He was going to play it like that.

"The bounty you folks and the ones up in Bogdon and Black Lake are splitting the pay-out of fifteen-hundred caps for," Virgil said. "Unless the sheriff in Bogdon was lying about that. I don't mind making a trip back there to ask him again. Could I get a name so I could tell him who I talked to?"

Virgil watched him take those words in. He could practically see the man weighing the sort of trouble being caught trying to back out of an agreement like that would cause, versus paying Virgil his due. There was also a non-zero chance he was weighing the option of putting a bullet between Virgil's eyes and leaving him for the flies, but he must have known that was a risk too. A lot of folks didn't like having ghouls around, but a ghoul you didn't know was always an unknown quantity. For every one like Virgil, who had only recently fallen to the condition, there was another two or three out there who had been walking the wastes and braving its horrors for more years than any man should be allowed to live, and you never really knew which you had until you'd crossed them.

(And, well, Virgil had just made the claim of having killed a deathclaw and then walked into town under his own power.

So. He had that going for him, at least)

The pause drew out, but eventually the man was forced to relent.

"Marlon Frisk," he said, in answer to Virgil's question. And then, with emphasis: "Foreman Frisk. And that won't be necessary."

The foreman sighed, looking back to the armed citizens at his back before giving a jerk of his head. Two of them—as well as the gathered townsfolk that had shown up to gawk—all seemed to take that as their cue to find other business to bother with. The third, a short yet broad-shouldered man whose hand rested comfortably atop the revolver holstered at his side, remained, watching Virgil the whole while with the same keen eye as he had the moment they arrived.

"Well then," Marlon said, turning toward town and gesturing for Virgil to follow. "Let's see the hand I guess."

As they entered Millsway in the foreman's wake, several of the locals continued to gawk regardless, merely from a more discreet angle. With the amount of scrutiny they were getting, Virgil was honestly surprised the kid hadn't seized the opportunity to take off like he had offered earlier, opting instead to stick close to Virgil's shadow. Virgil really wouldn't have held it against the boy if he had—hell, he probably would have run off himself if he thought there was any chance to escape the attention. But Millsway was a small town, and their trip up the town's thoroughfare was blessedly short. Eventually they were brought to an old Pre-War house at the center of the town. Unlike most of the ancient homes still hanging on to life—albeit half-collapsed with decay—this one had visible signs of repair. For every board and timber still showing its age, there were at least five or six that were newer, no doubt courtesy of the repaired lumber mill that had given the town its name.

They were brought into a room on the first floor—a dining room or a parlor that had been set up as some kind of office. Once there, they waited for one of Marlon's people to run and fetch Millsway's cattle doctor. This was a rough, sturdy-looking woman perhaps a few years younger than Marlon, who was introduced by the name of Nettie. A space had been hastily cleared atop the battered desk while they waited for her arrival. Virgil set the deathclaw's hand on the table and unwrapped it, but from there Nettie took over examination of the severed limb.

"How far out was this?" Marlon asked as he watched. "In case we wanted to check."

"About six miles out, back the way I came," Virgil said. "Caught sight of its tracks about that far out. There's a ravine with a narrow creek that cuts through the area out that way. I had to leave the rest of the carcass behind when the kid showed up. Didn't know how long it would take to get here with him in tow. I doubt there will be much left of use once you head out there, unless you're after bones, and I doubt that's going to be worth the trouble. The bloatflies will have gotten to it already, and by tomorrow that place will be swarming with much worse."

"A shame," Marlon said.

"I'd say all that lines up," Nettie said. "Doubt this beast's been dead much longer than four hours."

Virgil was only able to suppress a snort. Fair enough that they doubted he could kill the thing himself, but it would have been the stupidest kind of luck to just stumble on a dead deathclaw that happened to have a bounty on its head.

And Marlon, at last, was forced to admit the job had been done. He let out a sigh.

"We're not going to be able to pay out the fifteen-hundred right here," Marlon said. "We can pull maybe four-fifty. Maybe."

That didn't surprise him. From the look of it, Millsway was a pretty small town.

"Then how do we settle?" Virgil asked.

"If you need it in caps, we can send someone to bring in the shares out of the other two towns," Marlon said, "but that would probably take a whole day to arrange and another to carry out. It's also a good way to wind up with more people knowing how much you're carrying than is good for your health. Otherwise, you can take part of your pay-out in trade and services here in town, and I can write you a reference for the mayor in Black Lake. She should be good for the rest."

It was a more complicated way of handling it than he might have liked, and one that was going to demand an awful lot of...talking. To people. But it wasn't an unreasonable solution.

"I'll gladly accept trade and your good word to the mayor," Virgil said. "What about the kid?"

"What about him?"

"I'm trying to find out where he's from," Virgil said. "He hasn't had much to say about that, if he even can. And I'm guessing he's not from here or you'd have had more to say about him. No one mentioned missing a kid in Bogdon, either. Did any of the caravans that got hit have children traveling with them?"

"Not that I heard of," Marlon said. "I can ask around. How long are you going to be here?"

"Probably just overnight and however long it takes to get things squared," Virgil said.

Which was as good as a promise that he wanted to be out of their hair as soon as possible, and he could see that the message had been received with visible relief.

"Overnight, then," Marlon said.

"You think there's anyone in town that would take him?" Virgil asked, nodding toward the boy. "If we can't find out where he's from?"

Marlon turned his eyes upon the boy—for the first time since greeting them, Virgil thought. He saw a similar appraising quality to the gaze to Marlon's assessment of Virgil before. Only now it put him uncomfortably in mind of watching someone weighing the value of a brahmin brought to market.

"Probably not," Marlon said dismissively, "but again, I can ask around."

"Sure," Virgil said, decidedly not getting his hopes up. "That bounty, in the meantime?"

Marlon's expression soured briefly, but he dug about in his desk, pulling out a pen and a sheet of paper. Scribbling until the ink started to run properly, he marked the top of the sheet with his signature, and wrote out the amount of "1500c".

"Take this around town with you," Marlon said. "Have any of the folks here mark down the value of what you're taking. I'll send Royce here with you, just so there's no trouble. Tomorrow morning we can settle out the rest for however many caps we've actually got on hand."

Royce was the man with the revolver that had been following like the foreman's shadow ever since the front gate. It didn't need to be said that the blade he would bring to bear against whatever 'trouble' he was meant to prevent would be double-edged. And it was, almost certainly, an edge that would be weighted in Millsway's favor. Still, better to have that pair of eyes looking over his shoulder than to let it just be his word against that of the locals. It was the best that he would get, anyway. And there was always a chance that Royce was honest.

A chance. A hope.

"Sounds fair," Virgil said. "Is there a place here that rents beds for the night?"

"Delaney at the flophouse can put you up. Make sure she knows it's just the one night."

"And what about a doctor?" Virgil asked. "To look over the kid?"

"Nettie's the best thing we've got," Marlon said. "If it's urgent you could have her take a look, but if you want a proper doctor you're better off continuing through to Black Lake. I'd advise it, actually. They're...more fond of your sort in Black Lake."

Virgil supposed he should have seen that coming.

"Yeah, I've heard that," Virgil said. "Thanks for the advice."

"Don't mention it," Marlon said. "Also...don't leave that here."

The foreman gestured at the massive severed hand still occupying his office desk. Virgil winced.

"Yeah, fair enough."

The sun was just starting to set when they cleared out of Marlon's office. Up until then, the boy had been so quiet and so...still, that Virgil was almost concerned for him. However, the moment they set foot out into the street some of his animation returned. And a lot of that concern was quickly vanquished, replaced by alarm when the kid took off down the street. And Virgil had promised not to stop him if he wanted to run off, but the boy had seemed content in following him around so far.

He didn't need to stop the kid, Virgil reasoned. He just...would very much like to know where he was going.

Anyway, he certainly didn't run after the boy—because he wasn't chasing him. He simply set off in the same direction at a brisk, reasonable pace—with Royce following somewhat menacingly at his back—and kept an eye open. That eye found the boy easily enough. When Virgil caught up, he found the kid lurking tensely outside the doors of a long metal shed that looked to be set up as some kind of communal kitchen or canteen-

Ah. The boy had probably just smelled the food.

"I did promise you a hot meal, didn't I?" Virgil said.

He was careful to keep his distance. The last thing he wanted was to spook the kid into thinking he was going back on one promise while he was trying to make good on the other. The boy turned suddenly at the sound of his voice, wariness visible in his eyes. For a moment he seemed almost surprised to see him there, but Virgil saw that wariness and surprise quickly replaced by a hopeful spark and he responded with a rather insistent nod.

"Let's see what they've got, then."

From the moment they stepped inside, it was obvious why the kid had been hovering near the door. The place was, unfortunately, more than a bit crowded. It was about the hour for many of the locals to be coming off of their shifts, either at the mill or elsewhere, all now settling down to eat. There was a line, at least, though joining it got him some unpleasant stares...

(Of course, people were bound to give him unpleasant stares regardless.)

The man behind the counter wasn't any sort of exception, frowning immediately with a sort of wary distaste when Virgil stepped up after the previous patron. He saw the man's eyes flick back to the doorway—to where Royce was hanging back, keeping watch. He saw him wait to be given a nod before even bothering to address Virgil himself.

"What do you want?" the man asked gruffly.

"Can I get a meal for the kid?" Virgil asked. "I mean, I'd love something too, if you can spare it, but I found this one lost out in the middle of nowhere, so who even knows when he last ate."

The man looked over the both of them.

"Forty each, for a bowl of what's on the fire right now," the man said. "I don't take special orders. If you're not happy with that, then you don't eat."

"What's on the fire?"

"Stew," the man said. "Squirrel and tato. Well. Mostly the meat is squirrel, anyway."

Forty caps was steep for a bit of stew, but not enough for Virgil to feel justified complaining about it.

"Sounds good," Virgil said, pulling out the paper Marlon had given him. "The foreman's extending me a tab. Said to have you put down the amount here. I assume he's good for it?"

The man cast a second glance at Royce. Virgil didn't turn around, but whatever he saw there must have been confirmation enough. He made a face that looked like he had bitten into something rotten.

"What the hell did you do to earn a tab that deep, kill a fucking deathclaw?"

"I- Yeah?" Virgil managed, tensely aware of the no-doubt impatient people behind him in line who were still waiting.

"Bullshit."

"I mean, that was pretty much what the foreman said," Virgil acknowledged uncomfortably. "I did bring proof. Speaking of, I don't suppose you'd want that, now that I don't need it anymore?"

Because he might as well try to offload the thing here, if it was possible. Curiosity seemed to win through the man's skepticism rather quickly. And, for better or worse, that curiosity seemed to be infecting the rest of the crowd as well.

"What do you have?" the man asked.

And so Virgil brought out the massive hand and laid it out on top of the counter. He heard one or two of the nearby patrons swear behind him. Even the man behind the counter had it in him to look impressed.

"Holy shit," the man muttered faintly, bringing out a knife to poke at the thing. "How fresh is this?"

"Maybe five hours by now?" Virgil said.

The man hummed thoughtfully.

"What are you asking?"

"It's yours if you want it," Virgil said. "I'm continuing on to Black Lake in the morning, and I'd rather not have to carry it with me."

"Eh, I'll take it. Can bet the meat will be stringy, but bones are bones in the stew-pot. This was really all you brought back?"

"Unfortunately," Virgil said. "Didn't have the time if I wanted to get here before dark."

"Shame," the man said. He glanced over his shoulder to the woman helping him in the kitchen. "Get a couple of bowls for these two. Forty for each, like I said, just make sure you bring the dishes back."

The amount was written down on the paper and the claw was taken away to be butchered. Virgil folded the paper and tucked it into a pocket. At last, two bowls were slid in front of him. He took both bowls with a muttered thank-you before leaving the counter in search of a seat. With the canteen as crowded as it was, there weren't a lot of options, and none of the glances he caught from the occupied tables were remotely welcoming. Finally Royce rejoined them and led them to a couple of benches outside.

The boy was practically glued to his side all the while. By the time Virgil handed the bowl over, the kid seemed all but ready to snatch it out of his hands.

"Careful, it's-" Virgil barely got the words out of his mouth before the kid was tipping hot stew into his. "Slow down, no one's going to take it from you. You're going to make yourself sick eating it that fast. Try using the spoon, you're getting it all over your chin."

The kid only then seemed to even notice the spoon. He sent a glare in Virgil's direction for his trouble—as if it were somehow his fault the kid had been over-eager—before wiping his chin with a grimy sleeve. Virgil watched as the kid sat cross-legged on the bench, hunched over his bowl and spooning mostly-tato-mostly-squirrel stew into his mouth, now much more slowly. Virgil sighed and sat down on the bench beside him. They ate in silence for a while. Eventually, the boy's pace slowed further, becoming almost mechanical as he worked his way, probably uncomfortably, through the last several bites. He was probably full, but Virgil had his doubts he would abandon the food while it was still in front of him...

It had probably been a while since the kid could reliably know where his next meal was coming from.

"So," Virgil said. "I'm going to be heading to the next town in the morning. If you wanted to stay behind and try your luck here, I wouldn't blame you. I don't think they'd run you out, anyway. You might be left to fend for yourself, but...you've been doing that out there for a bit, haven't you?"

The boy didn't look at him, but Virgil could tell he was listening. He was very...still, sitting there, attention by all appearances still on the bowl in his lap, but the efforts of eating had ceased.

"Or," Virgil said, "you could continue with me, to Black Lake. It's a couple days' walk, but it's a bigger town, from what I've heard. There might still be someone there who wouldn't mind taking you in."

The kid didn't look at him, but he saw the boy's lips curve down into a thoughtful frown. He inhaled quietly, and when he finally nodded there was a tension in his shoulders that felt almost fragile.

"Uh, cool," Virgil said softly. Or, at least as softly as his broken voice was capable. "Then...we're going to need to buy you a few things for the trip. Some shoes, and some new clothes. Maybe a backpack to carry your stuff. Let me know when you're finished and we can get that done."

Their meal was finished up shortly and the bowls returned to the canteen. And then Royce directed them to the town's main barter shop. It was being run out of a small wooden shack built onto the front of a trio of rusting cargo containers arrayed side-by-side. A shack which, among other signs prominently displayed, featured a painted scrap of wood which proclaimed "NO Ghouls! NO Credit! NO Refunds!" Virgil balked at the sight, but Royce simply jerked his chin to usher him on. Deferring to the man's—hopeful—authority on the likelihood of his being shot, Virgil stepped inside.

There was a young woman waiting behind the counter and, to no surprise, her expression hardened the moment she saw him. She immediately started shaking her head.

"Did you not see the fucking sign, or can you just not read?" she asked. "We don't serve mutants here. Go and shop somewhere else."

In a town this small, there almost certainly was nowhere else. Fortunately, Virgil wasn't forced to try and reason with her on his own.

"You'll serve this one, Bree," Royce insisted gruffly. "He's cashed in that bounty Marlon set up with our neighbors. Now, if you have a problem with that you can settle it with the foreman, but the sooner the ghoul finishes his business here, the sooner he's out of our hair. And I'd like to go home instead of following him around for the rest of the fucking night."

Virgil watched her take in these words unhappily, jaw working as she bit back some argument or another, but ultimately she blew out a frustrated huff as she apparently thought better of it.

"Fine," she bit out. "Show me the tab and tell me what you're after."

Virgil pulled out the tab and laid it on the counter.

"It's kind of a long list, but I don't want to bother you over anything that's too dear," Virgil said. "I need ammo, .45 cal, if you can spare it. Stims if you have those on hand. A small backpack if you've got one around. A couple of bottles of drinking water-"

"I ain't selling you the clean stuff," Bree objected sharply. "Your kind don't need it."

"It's not for me," Virgil clarified, just as sharply. "It's for the kid."

She seemed only now to have noticed the boy, hidden as he was behind Virgil. Her expression smoothed of some of its irritation, but not by much.

"We've got .45," she said, "but I can only spare about thirty, and it'll be a hundred and sixty caps for the box. If you want chems in this town you go through Nettie. I doubt she's got stimpaks, but she might have something. I can do a backpack. Water's eighty caps."

"Eighty each?" Virgil challenged. "That's robbery."

"That's what I'm selling," Bree said, practically spitting the words. "You can afford it, can't you? If Royce wasn't acting as your babysitter I wouldn't even be doing business with an abomination. You should be more grateful."

It might have taken a lot more effort to steady himself enough to reply without losing his temper if the boy hadn't chosen that moment to cling onto him, latching onto Virgil's hand with a grip so tight it almost hurt. Virgil looked down at him with a frown.

"Oh, what, you like me now?" Virgil asked, surprised.

The boy didn't look at him, merely gave a swift nod. Who he did look at was the shop-keep—though glared was definitely the more appropriate word. Because he was back to that apparently. Though Virgil was certainly glad not to have it leveled at him for once.

Bree, it seemed, was a much better mark for it, because he saw her waver slightly before heaving a sigh.

"Sixty-five," she said, looking back at Virgil—and she even looked him in the eye. "I'm guessing the backpack's for him as well?"

Virgil nodded.

"I can find a small one," she said, almost mildly. "Anything else?"

"He needs shoes," Virgil said, "and clothes if you have some in his size."

"I'll see what I can find," Bree said. Then, she added: "He needs washing up."

Virgil let out a huff.

"It's on the list."

"Delaney charges out for bathwater at the flophouse," Bree said flatly. "I've got soap for ten, if you haven't got your own. Also, he looks like he might be a bit fair skinned under all that dirt. If you're making the trek to Black Lake, maybe get him a hat."

Her demeanor was notably bland, but the words were almost helpful. Was it a move to get more caps out of him? Absolutely. But that didn't make it bad advice.

"You know what, sure."

By the time they left the barter shop, Virgil's tab was around six-hundred and fifty caps lighter, and his load a small leather backpack heavier, filled with the things he had bought for the boy. Bree had almost certainly overcharged him for most of it, but at least he could feel a bit better about taking the kid with him when he left.

Royce did them the favor of delivering them to the flophouse after that. And, it seemed, that was the last favor he was prepared to offer them for the night.

"Delaney will have heard about you by now," he said. "She shouldn't give you trouble so you won't need my good word, and she won't need my help if you decide to be a problem—that is a warning, by the way. Come to the foreman's house in the morning and you and him can settle up for the rest of the bounty before you take off for Black Lake."

Virgil nodded and thanked him, though he couldn't imagine his gratitude meant much to the man.

The flophouse was a long metal shack, set out at the busier end of town. It was also located within a lamentable distance of the section of town near the gates where visiting traders penned their brahmin. The smell of cattle was strong enough for Virgil to find it distracting, and he couldn't imagine what it smelled like to the kid. Then again, he reminded himself that the boy had apparently been sleeping in an animal's den for who even knew how long.

It was probably fine.

Delaney was a bored-looking woman in what was likely her late thirties, and she seemed neither surprised to see them, nor particularly impressed. Still, hers was overwhelmingly the most civil greeting Virgil had received in Millsway so far. He wasn't sure if it was professionalism on her part, or if she simply lacked the energy or motivation to put the effort into being worse. He was informed, blandly, that a bed was going to cost him thirty-five caps for the night. It was further emphasized that she rented the beds in the main room and that privacy was a luxury she didn't have to offer. Additionally, she warned that any issues he had with other patrons were his problem to handle, and that he was responsible for his own belongings. When asked about bathing, he was relieved to learn that the washroom did, thankfully, come with the luxury of privacy, and that filling the wash-tub full of water would cost him ninety-five caps.

There wasn't much to the washroom, just a small shed a few yards clear of the main structure of the flophouse, built up against the tall, rusting water-tank that kept it supplied. The interior floor consisted of cracked concrete and a corroding drain that he had to presume let out somewhere that was safe for used wash water to flow. One wall allowed access to a pumping apparatus built into the side of the water tank, and there was a weathered wooden bench tucked up against another wall, far enough away to keep one's belongings dry. A sagging length of rope stretched diagonally across the room to support a tattered bit of tarp which could be pulled closed for a little extra privacy. And finally, there was a short stool and a washtub in the center. The tub had probably been made for washing clothes rather than bathing, and might have been just large enough for the boy to fit in without a squeeze, but Virgil wouldn't have trusted the jagged, rusting edges himself. It would be a lot safer and probably more efficient to do their washing standing up. It'd make it easier for both of them to get some use out of it, anyway.

It took a bit of priming for the water to begin to flow, and when it did it came through in a lazy dribble. It was tea-colored and smelled sharply of rust from the tank it was kept in, but there wasn't anything swimming in it, and with a quick, testing dip of his fingers, Virgil felt only the faintest tingle of radiation.

"The rads are low enough for washing up in," Virgil warned, "but you probably shouldn't drink any of it."

Not that he thought the verbal warning was especially needed when the water looked the way it did.

(At least, he could hope the kid hadn't been drinking water that looked like that...)

Virgil dropped his pack onto the bench, opening it up to pull out the soap he had bought and a few of the cleaner rags that he kept. He didn't need much of a wash himself—part of losing his skin meant that he didn't sweat quite as much as he was probably supposed to—but a quick wipe-down to remove the dust and grime from his roll down the hill would be nice. Apart from the lingering ache, the wound on his leg was largely healed by now, but the stiff sensation of the blood soaked into his jeans was...stuck uncomfortably against his skin. And it would make it a lot easier to patch them up later if he was able to soak some of it free.

Setting those out on the bench beside his pack, he stepped back to the pump to continue filling the tub.

As he pumped, the boy just sort of stood there, clutching the new backpack to his chest and watching him uncertainly. He still had the makeshift bundle tied to his back, and Virgil worried it might be difficult to part him, even momentarily from either.

"If you set your pack next to mine, I can keep an eye on it for you," Virgil said, "and I promise I won't touch it."

It was hesitant, but the boy did finally come over and set his pack down on the bench and, just as hesitantly, began fumbling with the knot keeping the blankets tied to his back.

"Once you're a bit cleaner, you can try those new clothes on," Virgil said. "Then we can move all your stuff into the backpack so it's easier to carry. And if we make smart use of the water we can also wash those blankets when we're done, in case you need them when we're on the road."

The kid nodded, though he was still fighting the knot. Virgil winced, supposing he might have done it a bit too tight—but he had been more worried about it sitting secure on the kid's shoulders and not slipping open while they walked when he tied it. It finally came open, and the boy dropped the bundle into a heap next to his backpack. It came open just a little—not enough to spill all of its contents out onto the floor, but enough that the hairbrush slipped free. The boy bent over to pick it up, rifling the bristles almost thoughtfully.

Whatever the thoughts were, though, they clearly weren't pleasant from the way the kid's face fell into a scowl.

Over the walk together, and during their meal, Virgil had been given ample opportunity to look at the kid up close. While the grime still obscured a lot of detail, he had noticed there was an...unevenness to the neglect shown to the boy's hair. The right side wasn't nearly as bad, but the left side, above his affected eye, was a rat's nest of snarls, and it hadn't been hard for Virgil to figure out why. Whatever those patches were marring the child's skin, they weren't just on his face but on his scalp as well, showing visibly through his hair where it wasn't matted. It was probably painful trying to brush it on his own.

"If you want, I can help you get some of those tangles out first," Virgil offered, "it'd make washing your hair a bit easier."

The boy pulled the hairbrush against his chest, but from the softness of the frown on his face he seemed to be regarding Virgil skeptically rather than with outright distrust.

"Don't worry, I get it," Virgil said, running fingers through his own thinning hair. "Mine comes out in clumps if I'm not careful. I promise I can be gentle."

The sharp look that was given as the boy held out the brush made Virgil feel like he was being bestowed with an unprecedented amount of trust.

They sat down on the bench together, and Virgil began the painstaking task of carefully working the tangles free. It was slow work, particularly once he had the ends figured out and had to penetrate deeper into the underbrush of tangles on the kid's scalp. The boy's hair was impressively—and distressingly—filthy. At present it was a nearly-even reddish brown that matched the terrain of the ravine they had both crawled out of. It was also stringy with accumulated oil that the tangles had prevented from being distributed properly, and even the parts that weren't so badly matted had a few burrs and bits of leaves mixed in. Only so much of it could have been blamed on their brief struggle in the dirt, and once more Virgil was left to wonder how long this boy had been left out on his own...

The kid was tense at the start of it, which came as no surprise at all. And it was a gradual relief, as Virgil worked, to see the boy let go of it bit by bit. As his posture relaxed, the defensive rise of his shoulders dropped gradually, eventually leaving him to sag forward slightly where he sat. Virgil had to imagine he was tired, both from the stress of their uncomfortable first meeting and the walk to get here. And Virgil didn't think he was alone, for once, in finding the crowded confines of the town draining to navigate.

Virgil kept his focus sharp as he worked carefully with the tangles close to the scalp. Whatever the kid had going on, it was an easy guess that the skin there was probably tender as hell. Between the initial tensed posture of the boy's shoulders and his own focus, he didn't notice it right away, but as the boy relaxed and his task grew easier, Virgil's eyes wandered slightly. Once they did, they happened to fall on the back of the boy's neck, catching on the dull glint of grimy metal. It was a necklace or something similar—a thin chain made of tiny metal balls hung around his neck. And it was obviously something the boy wore regularly, because it seemed like the skin was slightly lighter—slightly cleaner—where the necklace would move against it.

And if he had been thinking—if his brain hadn't been half shut off from the repetitive task of brushing—Virgil probably would have thought better of it. But there was concern, first, that the skin there might be irritated, and curiosity second, but either way he couldn't stop himself from inspecting the chain with his fingers.

"What's-"

With a startling hiss, the boy was off of the bench in an instant, facing him down with that glare from before, a hand pressed protectively against his sternum, and-

And with the threadbare fabric pressed close to the chest, Virgil could see a faint glimmer of light peeking through—a pale, bluish glow just visible through the barrier of his clothes. Which was quite alarming for all of the first few seconds of reaction before his brain put the pieces together—the chain, the glow hanging over the boy's heart, and the protectiveness with which he clutched it to his chest.

Oh.

They were holotags, like the ones that soldiers used to wear before the War. Virgil had seen them a handful of times before. One ran into them often enough, either searching old military check-points or among hauls of salvage. Most were long dead, whatever technology had powered the small, back-lit display having burnt out decades or centuries ago. Every now and then you might find one that still lit up or flickered, though usually only dimly. And Virgil had certainly never seen any with a glow that was still so bright before.

(Though he had heard rumors that there were a handful of factions out there in the wasteland who still used them. Needless to say, any group that could make such casual use of Old World tech was no one to mess around with...)

They were probably some special treasure of his—either a favored find, perhaps valued for its light, or some family keepsake the boy had managed against all odds to hold onto. No wonder his reaction was so extreme.

"I'm sorry," Virgil said, holding up his hands. "I'm- I wasn't going to take them, I promise. I was just curious what it was."

The child continued to stare him down, clearly disbelieving. Virgil sighed and set the hairbrush on the bench beside him.

"Here," he said, picking up the soap and the rags from where he had left them. "How about you start getting cleaned up. We're both tired, and we've got a bed in there already waiting. Going to guess it's been a bit since you slept in one of those."

He held both out to the boy, but when he approached for neither, Virgil simply walked to the washtub. He wet a rag for himself and left the rest with the soap on the stool. He sat back down on the bench and started mopping at the back of his neck where it felt the grossest. An unfortunate amount of sand and dirt had gotten under his collar when the kid had knocked him on his back. He would need to try and shake some of that out before lying down for bed, but that could wait for now.

"Go ahead," Virgil invited, nodding toward the tub. "I'll stay on my side of the curtain."

The kid glanced at the tub and the curtain. The angry scowl had softened slightly, but there was still an uneasy frown on his face. A thought occurred suddenly. After all, Virgil could only guess whether his estimate of the kid's age was even accurate...

"Unless you need help-" Virgil offered quickly. "I mean- It's fine if you do."

The kid seemed less than pleased with this, though his expression was more annoyed than openly hostile the way his glaring had been. Virgil imagined this was more at the suggestion of him needing help than anything else, as the boy let out a huff of breath and practically stomped over to the tub, hauling the tarp across the rope with all the abrupt finality of slamming a door.

"Great then," Virgil said quietly.

He tried to feel relieved, but he barely felt like he could open his mouth around the kid without losing points. And it was clear by now that the boy was keeping some kind of a score. But the light of the single bulb that hung from the ceiling was just bright enough to cast a faint shadow against the tarp, and he could see the kid moving around on the other side. Enough to tell that he was in the process of undressing to wash and not, as Virgil had half feared, looking for a chance to escape once again.

(So maybe he wasn't in the red just yet.)

Releasing a breath, Virgil started to undo the straps on his armor. He removed the bracers first, then the straps that kept the leather shoulders attached to the chest-piece. He set both aside. And he had finally divested himself of the chest-piece and had just untucked his shirt to shake the dirt out when he heard it-

"What-"

The voice was quiet and dry, nearly inaudible at first—a rusty almost-croak, as if the boy hadn't spoken in ages.

"What'd that word mean?"

Virgil couldn't contain his shock.

"Holy shit, you talk?"

He heard a huff from the other side of the tarp.

"Sorry-" Virgil apologized quickly. "I just- Wait, which word?"

There was a brief pause, but the boy's focus was audible in the careful enunciation as the word was spoken.

"Ab- Ab-nomination."

Ah. Yeah. That one.

"Oh," Virgil faltered for a moment, uncertain how he was meant to explain something like that to a kid. "Well... It's a word some people use for... For monsters, basically. Like the deathclaw. But sometimes, when they're being mean, they'll use it for people like me. Because we're...different. Mutated."

Silence, again, but Virgil thought he saw a nod from the small shadow on the far side of the curtain. It drew out long enough that Virgil had nearly decided to continue what he was doing before the boy spoke up again, the words barely more than a mumbled whisper...

"Momma called me that too."

Oh. Fuck.

Those words hit Virgil's thoughts like a nuke, and for a moment his mind simply went blank.

"So, uh, what-" Virgil floundered, almost helplessly. "Do you- Uh. What...happened to your momma?"

Which was clearly the wrong thing to ask from the way that shadow shrank in on itself.

Shit.

"Nevermind," Virgil said quickly. "It was stupid of me to ask. Uh. What's your name?"

This, unfortunately, failed to deliver a response as well. And, as Virgil heard the sounds of water gradually pick up on the other side of the tarp as the kid began to wash, he had to conclude that either he or his questions were being ignored. Letting out a breath, Virgil chose to let it go, for now. Now that he knew the kid could talk, that actually meant there was a reasonable chance that he might open up more, later. He just...he'd have to give it time.

As he continued with his own cleaning up, Virgil's mind, still shaken by the boy's words, was left to wander. And unfortunately, as often happened when it did, the roads his thoughts chose to wander were...not particularly pleasant. In fact, those thoughts had grown rather grim by the time the sounds he was hearing ceased. And, as occupied as he was by those darker thoughts, it wasn't until he heard the tarp crinkle and looked up to see the boy peering out from behind it, that he realized the other was probably finished.

More than finished, it looked like, from the way the kid was shivering.

"Sorry, I spaced out for a bit. Let's get you into those clothes."

And, as the boy dressed—sullenly shooing off the offer of help—Virgil took the chance to properly assess his condition.

Firstly, he was definitely too skinny, and Virgil would have to see what he could do about that as much as it was possible. And, now that he was clean, it was much easier to make out the other details the dirt had previously obscured. His skin, as Bree had observed, was somewhat fair, but it showed the color of time spent out in the sun—if slightly paled by the chill he had taken after his bath. Either way, the reddish, tender-looking skin around his left eye stood out starkly. It would have been concerning even without the pallid blankness of the eye itself, and Virgil promised himself that—come hell, high water, or even a second deathclaw—he was going to make sure this kid saw a doctor. But of greater significance to Virgil, at least in that moment, was how much easier it was to make out the dull, whitish plaques clinging to the skin around the boy's eye-socket. They were surprisingly thick—at least partially keratinized—and arranged in a dense, even cluster over his forehead and on his cheekbone, and as he had noted before, creeping well up past the hairline.

And yet, as concerning as the sign was, Virgil found himself releasing a slow breath of relief.

Despite the condition of his skin and the improbability of the boy's survival, it somehow hadn't occurred to Virgil to consider that the kid might have been turning ghoul, not before the boy spoke. But whether it was the scratchy, disused sound of his voice, or the concerning implications the boy's words suggested about his absent mother, that possibility had become all that Virgil could think about. Virgil had never seen a child ghoul before, or heard of one that he could remember, but as far as he knew there wasn't any reason that it couldn't happen. And from there, the dark turn of his thoughts had spiraled into a near panic as he tried to think of how he would even manage—how they would manage. Dread had coiled up in his chest at the thought of explaining to a child that young what was happening, as it was happening, of helping him through that change-

(Watching his own skin rot off had been traumatizing enough at the age of twenty. Imagining that happening to a kid...)

But no. Thankfully, no. The thickening of the skin was far too pronounced, and the odd regularity of the pattern in which it had developed was unlike anything Virgil had ever seen before—not in any ghoul he had met, and definitely not during his own experience of becoming one. Of course, even beneath his relief there was still fear for the boy. Knowing what the child's condition wasn't wouldn't be nearly as helpful as knowing what it was or how to seek help for it. The best he could hope was that it was benign and not the sign of some kind of cancer. Though if the kid had been out on his own for however long, eating and drinking God alone knew what, it was an unfortunately high probability.

(Still, in Virgil's case, or at least in his opinion, he felt the devil he knew was far worse than anything else he could easily imagine...)

Once the boy was dressed he still seemed cold, and so Virgil wrapped him up in the blanket from his bedroll—which wasn't the cleanest, but it was certainly in a better state than the ones they had brought from the den. As exhausting as this bout of panic had been, he decided to put off washing them like he had first planned. It would be easier to take the time for that sort of thing once they got to Black Lake. Instead, he let the boy transfer his belongings into the new backpack while Virgil tipped the tub filled with murky water down the rusting drain. Then he gathered up the dirty blankets and his armor and his pack, and the two of them left the washroom.

In the main room of the flophouse, most of the other patrons had already settled in. While he wouldn't have called it quiet exactly, there was a restless sort of peace. Virgil was careful not to disturb it any more than was necessary as he made his way to their rented bunk, and fortunately the kid needed no prompting in order to do the same. The beds lay arranged in several rows, most of them stacked in pairs. While many of the beds were filled, the room was fortunately not being used to capacity and they were able to claim the lower bunk of an unoccupied set of beds.

Naturally, Virgil first spared a moment to examine the bed itself. It was a naked mattress, without blankets—which was more or less to be expected—and in the dimly lit room it...seemed clean enough. Running a hand over the surface confirmed that it was at least dry, and the texture of the fabric was...unexciting. That was more or less where the bar typically fell when it came to finding a resting place these days. Still, he first spread out the groundcloth from his bedroll, just in case, before even considering the blankets. The ones from the den were dirty, but with his blanket beneath them to act as a buffer it...should be fine.

"Here, lie down," Virgil said. "I'll, uh, tuck you in? I guess?"

Did you do that for kids his age? Virgil honestly had no clue. Given the look of confusion the boy gave him, either the child didn't either, or else Virgil was way off...

"Nevermind. Just...lie down."

He patted the groundcloth, just in case his meaning wasn't as obvious as he hoped. Whatever his actual depth of confusion, the kid seemed to get the message quickly enough. The boy settled in, though he almost seemed set to protest when Virgil tugged the blanket out of his hands, even if it was only briefly enough to spread it out on top of the bed. Once that promise of warmth was returned to him, he settled down underneath it, curling up as Virgil laid out the other two blankets on top of it.

Finally satisfied, Virgil stowed his rifle and both of their packs underneath the bed where it would take significant—and hopefully noisy—rummaging for anyone else to try and retrieve them. Then he sat on the bed and removed the armor from his legs. He tucked those beneath the bed as well, then unfastened his gun-belt and hung it up on the bed-frame near his head where he would be able to reach it in a hurry. Lastly he tugged off his boots before pulling back the covers and preparing to lay down to sleep.

At least...in theory.

It was impossible to miss the way the boy lay tensely beside him. Though at least his shivering had stopped, the boy was fidgety. This wasn't in any way surprising—Virgil couldn't imagine the boy found these conditions in any way relaxing. Until the boy chose to open up more than he had, there was no way for Virgil to even guess how long it had been since he had last been around people. Coming into town had probably left him overstimulated, and the number of strangers crowded into this room alone—Virgil included—couldn't have done much to put him at ease. Nothing about this situation or this place would be familiar to him. And that-

Struck by a thought, Virgil leaned down and brought the boy's bag back out again. Digging quietly through its contents, he pulled out the old cloth bear, which he reached out to offer to the boy. He was met, at first, with another confused and almost suspicious stare, but soon both boy and bear had vanished beneath the covers with an alarming and amusing quickness.

If only that could have been enough for sleep to find its way within reach.

Virgil wasn't unused to sharing a bed. He'd shared one with his parents as a very young child, and then with his brother until they were both much older. When he'd taken to working caravans as a guard, some nights were cold enough that it was better to lay bedrolls close than to let the night rob you of warmth. Once or twice, in particularly miserable weather, he had even taken his shelter on the leeward side of a particularly docile brahmin while the beast slept. However, he was also no stranger to restlessness. He had lost far more than his share of nights' sleep over some concern or another that managed to work its way through his defenses in order to needle his mind—from the life-threatening, to the existential, to the almost pointlessly mundane. His first couple of years as a ghoul had been particularly rough in that regard, with the addition of some pretty brutal nightmares to his nightly repertoire. So he certainly would not have called this the most unsettled night of attempted sleep he had experienced, but it might be the worst in recent memory.

Still, once the soft sounds of breathing evened out beside him, eventually he managed to sleep as well.

Given his general, inborn nerviness, Virgil had always been a light sleeper. His time traveling alone, with the dangers that the wasteland held, had only served to hone an instinctual awareness of his surroundings, even while he slept. He was also—for as long as he could remember, but particularly after becoming a ghoul—possessed of a strong sixth sense for when he was being watched. And so it wasn't an unusual experience for him to drift to consciousness feeling on-edge, or observed—but it was certainly odd to do so with someone's breath tickling his face. And he was just aware enough to remember the small weight that he had fallen asleep next to—just present enough to tamp down that first stab of instinct that would have had him reacting to a threat with appropriate violence.

Virgil opened his eyes slowly and found himself looking up into the face of the boy, one soft brown eye, one pale and milky, both staring down at him—narrowed, at first, in searching curiosity, and then as Virgil roused going wide with rapidly growing alarm.

(Staring, Virgil had managed to notice, not down at his face per se, so much as directly and deeply into the hole in his face where his nose used to be.)

"Rude to stare," Virgil managed gruffly—truthfully, with the added dryness of sleep his voice was absolutely wretched.

The boy froze at first, but was quick to shoot him an almost offended glare in return. Then he leaned over to shake Virgil's shoulder roughly. There was something almost exaggerated about it, and Virgil frowned up at the boy, confused why he would be shaking him when he was clearly already awake. Or was the boy trying to convince him that was what he had been doing?

Somehow, Virgil had his doubts.

Still, it was just as well that he was up, regardless. He had things that needed doing, and the earlier he did them the sooner they could both be out of this town and headed toward Black Lake. From what he had heard in his travels, Black Lake had its own community of ghouls in the town. He might actually be able to find work for long enough to stay in place for a little while. Just for a couple of days to a week, he could hope, long enough to take the time to find someone who could take this kid...

Or if he couldn't, maybe he could at least find someone who could give him some idea of what the hell he was supposed to be doing.

Taking a breath, Virgil heaved himself upward. He winced at the crackling noise his spine made as he sat up. True to expectations, he was feeling yesterday strongly. His wounds from the fight would all be fully recovered, by now, but the jostling he had taken, both falling down the hill and wrestling with the kid, had declared open forum for every joint he had to offer their complaint. Fortunately, he was able to stifle the groan that wanted to escape his lips...

(In a town that clearly hated ghouls as much as Millsway, he wouldn't want to give anyone ideas.)

Though, it looked as if the majority of their fellow lodgers had been early risers, because at the moment the flophouse was a lot more empty than it had been the previous night, and the few stragglers that remained seemed well and truly out for the count. After allowing himself another noisy stretch, Virgil opened his eyes to find the boy staring at him once more. This time, however, it was with something which may have been in the same neighborhood as concern.

"Yesterday was tough," Virgil said, wincing once again as his voice grated. "How are you feeling? Your feet aren't hurting, are they?"

The boy's eyes widened, and he quickly shook his head. An answer that was given so rapidly—and with such alarm—that Virgil didn't know how much he should trust it.

"Well, maybe we'll see if Nettie can take a look when we drop by," Virgil said. "Just in case."

When this seemed to have no impact on the boy's painfully apparent nervousness, Virgil thought a distraction might be in order.

"You hungry?"

The question brought the boy up short from whatever worrying was going on in his head, though he still seemed almost hesitant when he answered with a nod.

Virgil swung his feet over the edge of the bed and bent down to retrieve their bags. He passed the boy his backpack, and then Virgil opened his. First thing was first—he needed to make sure everything was there that should be—that his rifle was where he had stowed it, and that none of the pieces of his armor were missing, and that the revolver in his holster still had the same number of bullets chambered. That his ammo and his caps were still packed away in the same order they had been the night before. Once satisfied, he dug out the small bundle of waxed cloth in which he kept most of his food items while he traveled. There wasn't much left of his traveling provisions at this point—just a bit of smoked meat from his last proper hunt. He tore the hunk in two and offered the boy half. He wondered whether he ought to be worried at the eagerness with which the boy snatched it and started chewing—mirelurk always had that particular...tidal smell to it, no matter how strongly you salted it or how long you left it to dry.

(If the boy was willing to dive on that without pause, either he was starving or he had been forced to eat a lot worse...)

Breakfast might have been the most comfortable silence they had enjoyed together so far—which wasn't saying all that much, but Virgil could, on occasion, be persuaded to believe in positive trends. At least until the boy reached out for Virgil's canteen, and he very nearly ruined it.

"Stop!"

The boy flinched, freezing with his hand still on the cap. He was suddenly, visibly, tense, and the shift from the earlier ease between them to defensive alertness was so abrupt that it almost broke his heart. Virgil realized his mistake almost immediately in raising his voice, but he couldn't help his panic.

"I'm sorry," Virgil blurted out quickly. "I didn't mean to yell. And I'm not mad, but...you can't just drink out of my canteen unless I say you can. The water I drink might make you really sick, okay? That's why I got you your own."

The boy looked at the canteen in his hands with a skeptical looking frown, but a couple of seconds later he slowly handed it back. Virgil accepted it with a thankful nod and, as the boy dug through his backpack for one of the bottles stowed away, they managed to reclaim at least some of the ease from before...

Enough ease, it seemed, that the boy felt comfortable holding the hairbrush out to Virgil almost expectantly.

The boy hadn't done the most thorough job of washing his hair—perhaps hampered by the same sensitivity as brushing, or else he might just have needed the help after all. Still, it was much improved from the previous night. It had finally dried overnight to a dull straw blonde that Virgil suspected might brighten even further with better care. Once he was done, Virgil used a strip of scrap leather to tie the boy's hair back in a loose tail at the nape of his neck and dropped the battered derby Bree had sold him down onto his head. It was oversized, but it would do the job of hiding his scalp from the sun.

Afterward they both began to prepare for the rest of the day. The boy got into his shoes without trouble, but getting the laces tied was clearly a struggle. Still, he stubbornly resisted Virgil's every gentle offer of help. However, by the time Virgil had gotten his own boots on and most of his armor, the boy still hadn't figured out a knot that would stay tied, and, with an expression that seemed nearly mortified, he had finally given in.

"Take a walk around the room with those while I pack up the bed," Virgil told him, once that was done. "See how they feel. If they're too big or small or they make your feet hurt, maybe we can still trade them for another pair."

Finally, they were both ready to leave—or in Virgil's case, more than ready.

Almost from the moment he woke up, Virgil had felt like there was a fuse lit underneath his feet—the nagging question of just how much time the people in Millsway would even give him. It was unfortunately easy for a traveler to outstay their welcome, and for a ghoul that fuse tended to burn twice as fast. He had already slept in—the morning sun showing it was nearly ten by the time they finally left the flophouse—and the last thing he wanted was to test the limits of the people's good will any further than he had to.

The first stop toward securing their departure was stopping by Nettie's. This was a short jaunt, fortunately—her "office" or whatever you could call it, was a small shack down alongside by the brahmin pens. And they were just as fortunate in finding her at a hospitable hour, having finished most of her morning duties and not yet begun the crop that awaited her after noon.

Well. Hospitable being somewhat relative.

"You again," she greeted unenthusiastically. "I take it's my turn to soak up some of the town's debt?"

Her words brought Virgil up somewhat short midway through pulling the foreman's tab out of his pocket.

"You're all going to be paid back, right?" Virgil asked, suddenly unsure.

She let out a huff.

"Oh, most likely," Nettie said. "Though if it's not in caps it'll be in favors, and Marlon's good for that. Usually. But never you mind. That's local trouble. What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for stimpaks, if you have any," Virgil said, "or just whatever else you've got that can round out a med-kit if you don't."

"Well, I'm not parting with stimpaks," Nettie said. "As grateful as I am that you've dealt with the problem, make no mistake, it's been rough having the caravans bypass this town. We're in short supply of a lot of things, and until we restock we need to keep what we've got for emergencies. But I've got bandages and I've got bloodleaf salve I can sell you, if that's what you're after."

"I'll take it," Virgil said. "Also...I was wondering if you might take a look at the kid's feet?"

While the boy had been relaxed enough during the exchange, staring curiously at the variety of odd tools and instruments the woman had hanging up on her wall, he grew tense the moment the subject was broached. Nettie frowned.

"You know I'm not actually a doctor," she said, gesturing out toward the brahmin pens.

"I was told you're what the town's got," Virgil said. "He didn't have shoes when I found him, and it was a good six miles out near where I killed that deathclaw. I plan on getting him looked at properly by the doctor in Black Lake, but first I need to know if he's actually up for the trip."

"Alright," she said, dragging a stool out from a corner and set it down. "Climb on up and get your shoes off, so I can have a look."

The boy backed away several steps, bumping into Virgil's legs as he did. And, when he looked up into Virgil's face, the expression there was one that struck him as alarmingly close to panic, like he was being backed into a corner.

"Hey, it'll be okay," Virgil said. "She's not going to hurt you, I promise. She's just going to take a look, maybe touch to see if they're tender. Alright?"

These words seemed to do little in the way of reassuring him, and Virgil was at a loss for anything better. He wasn't even sure what part of the situation was bothering the kid. It wasn't as simple as being afraid of doctors or whatever. The kid had been a bit nervous when they first entered Nettie's shack, sure, but not much more than Virgil, and he had walked through the door without trouble—not that Virgil would have forced him to come in if he thought the boy was actually afraid. But there wasn't much that Virgil could do to fix the problem without knowing what that problem actually was, but the kid didn't seem ready to help him out by telling him any time soon. Though the boy could clearly speak, he hadn't said so much as a word since their exchange the previous night-

Their short, uncomfortable conversation from last night, when the boy had shut down the minute Virgil had asked about his mom.

Virgil didn't want to think it, but it was hard not to. It had been so much easier—simpler, kinder even—to assume that the boy's mother was dead, but the kid's words last night had offered...another, unfortunate possibility. His mind flashed back to those words—the boy's regarding his mother's words—and how they had caused Virgil himself to spiral. Abomination was a horrible word to throw at any one, ghoul or human, but it felt particularly vicious to throw it at a child for any reason. And that, of course, was what had set the storm of uncomfortable speculation brewing in his brain the previous night. It would have been cruel either way, of course, but the mother's words would at least have made sense if the boy had been turning ghoul. And it certainly wouldn't have been the first time family had turned against family for it-

(Virgil could only hope, if his life as a ghoul was a long one, that one day the memory wouldn't still hurt him as much as it did...)

But the boy didn't need to be a ghoul to be unwanted, did he? There were any number of reasons why someone might not be up to the task of taking care of a kid, and all it took was a shit parent for him to be made to suffer for it.

Despite their rough start, the boy had seemed to latch onto him concerningly quickly once they had reached Millsway. Virgil had assumed that getting a hot meal had improved the boy's disposition, but... Thinking about it now, he couldn't help but feel like the change had actually started afterward—after he had offered to take the boy with him to Black Lake.

Was there something waiting for the kid in Black Lake? Or was it possibly even simpler than that?

What if the kid was just afraid of being left behind?

"It's fine, you know, if you aren't up for the walk," Virgil offered somewhat shakily. "Worst case, we'll just ask if we can't stay another night before we head out."

It probably wouldn't be as simple as that—Virgil knew it wouldn't be, not in Millsway. But... What they could do, was find a place to set up camp somewhere outside town. Just for a couple of days, if the kid needed it. Virgil didn't know if he would find a secure enough place for that, and maybe he could ask, but it was always a risk camping too close to a hostile town. People were antsy enough just having him in town where they could see him. Running into the wrong person out in the woods, they were likely to be a lot more trigger happy.

But...what else could he do if the boy needed the time?

And it seemed, at least, that these words had been the right ones to say—or at least they made for a promising start. The boy glanced side-eye at Nettie, his expression still somewhat skeptical, though he climbed up onto the stool like he was asked. Nettie clucked her tongue.

"Let's not get too caught up in maybes just yet," she said. "I haven't even had the chance to look. And you weren't limping on your way in here, were you?"

The boy still seemed unnerved by her attention, but he was quick to shake his head.

"Well, then get those shoes off and let's get this over with," Nettie said.

The boy glared down at his shoes—at the laces—and he let out a frustrated breath that was almost a hiss. Remembering their difficulty earlier, Virgil couldn't help but wince in sympathy.

"Here, I'll get them," Virgil said.

While much of the tension had lessened, the boy was visibly uncomfortable during Nettie's examination. He sat hunched over, almost curled in on himself, with both hands stuffed in his pockets. From the focus of his gaze and the pinched expression on his face, Virgil thought it must have been a fight not to react to her touches.

"I think he'll be fine," she pronounced eventually. "A few red spots, probably from the heat on the asphalt, and maybe some sign of bruises. I imagine they might be a bit sore from the trek itself, but it looks like he's well used to getting along without. Him getting used to the shoes might actually give you more trouble. But as long as you don't drive him too hard it should be alright. If he does start limping or otherwise lets on he's feeling a bit ragged, maybe give the salves a try."

"We can try to take it easy," Virgil said. "Do you know of any reliable resting spots along the route to Black Lake?"

Though the boy made his distaste for Virgil's assistance painfully evident, this time he didn't put up a fuss while he was fastened back into his shoes.

"A few," Nettie said. "There's still plenty of rusting trucks along that stretch of road that no one's stripped down yet. There's even a few semi-trailers where you could take shelter out of sight, or keep dry from the rain. There's also an old service station, maybe fifteen, twenty miles out, that has its garage mostly intact. A lot of the traders like to use it, because it's defensible, but it's a well known spot, so now and then it gets used for an ambush. Maybe not now, since fewer folks have been traveling this way, but it's still probably best to be careful about your approach."

The salves ended up costing him another hundred and forty caps, but it wasn't a terrible price, certainly not much more than it would have cost to make something similar on his own. And with a permanent set-up like Nettie's it was sure to be of better quality than what he could have managed on the road.

And after that, the only matter of business left to them in Millsway was to square things up with Foreman Frisk.

The foreman was in the midst of some other business when they arrived, Royce at his side—the man clearly some sort of second or lieutenant to Marlon's operation, either of the mill or the town at large. They were, unsurprisingly, less than pleased when he made his appearance, but no doubt eager to see him leave. And that last was made only more obvious as Marlon took the time to review Virgil's tab.

"Well, you certainly didn't waste any time, did you?" Marlon observed unpleasantly.

His attitude was understandable—after all was said and done, Virgil would be walking out of Millsway with more than seven-hundred caps worth of goods stuffed in his pack, plus however much in cash Marlon decided to pay. Still, Virgil did his best not to feel guilty about it. After all, it wasn't as if he hadn't earned it.

(He would have bought more if the market here hadn't been so hostile to his business—his food supplies were all but nonexistent, but they would be enough to get them to Black Lake, if barely. Once there, he had hope that he might actually get the rest of his money's worth...)

Beside him, Royce gave a snort.

"I think he wound up spending most of it on the kid," the man remarked.

That drew Marlon's eye briefly to the boy, even as the kid tried to hide himself behind Virgil's legs.

"He wasn't going to make it to Black Lake without shoes or clean water," Virgil said.

The foreman gave a faint hum.

"Fair enough," he muttered. "They're your caps to spend, technically. Still. The folks in Bogdon had better come through on paying their share."

Once he finished perusing the list, he pulled out a piece of paper from his desk and began writing.

"I can spot you two-hundred caps in cash right now," Marlon said. "The mayor in Black Lake is a woman named Corey Watkins. She can handle the last four-hundred or so."

Virgil wasn't nearly stupid enough to point out that two-hundred was a lot less than the amount Marlon had mentioned the day before. All things considered, he was probably lucky to be getting anything more at all.

"Understood."

With that, Marlon signed the letter and nodded to Royce who left the room, returning to drop a small sack full of bottle caps on the desk in front of him. Both were slid over to Virgil who accepted them with a nod.

"Now, with all due respect and honor," Marlon concluded somewhat tiredly, "kindly get the hell out of my town."

And with a dismissal like that, it was never a good idea to argue.

The two of them left Millsway without fanfare. It was a couple of hours before noon, and they had plenty of road ahead of them. The sky was overcast, and the weather even muggier than it had been the previous day. It was enough to make the air itself a little swampy. It would warm throughout the day, and with the cooling temperatures of night it would no doubt turn into rain. Virgil would need to keep an eye out for shelter once it did.

Yet, if there was one thing that wasn't dampened by the weather it was the boy's spirit. Indeed, the farther they got from the town, the more the child seemed to come to life. Eventually, as the air warmed, the quiet tension the boy had worn from the moment they stepped into Millsway was shed at last, like an unwanted cloak. And though the boy still didn't choose to speak, Virgil did catch him humming. It was...unexpected.

It was nice.

It had been a while since Virgil had traveled with anyone. He landed the occasional caravaning job now and then, but that was...different. That was work. It wasn't that there was no comradery to be found on a caravan route, but Virgil had always had a hard time trying to find it. Caravan security was an unpredictable gig, and even when you knew the route it was hard to know how long you were going to be traveling it. And it was even harder knowing who you would be working with from day to day. People dropped in and out along the way for all kinds of reasons—injuries or deaths were common along the road, disputes and disagreements were practically inevitable, and theft was only too common. Oftentimes, the crew you left with and the crew you arrived with were composed of different people entirely. In an environment like that, people either tended to make fast friends, or else they would shun interaction altogether. And Virgil had always been uncomfortable enough with the former that he typically wound up the latter.

Compared to the silence of their travels the previous day it felt natural and undemanding. Comfortable enough that he didn't feel pressured to fill the quiet himself. Make no mistake, Virgil would be more than happy once the boy finally decided to speak up, but...for now, he was content leaving it be. He could remember how much he had despised the sound of his own voice after he had first changed. It had taken him a long time before he was willing to speak beyond answering the simplest questions...

Whatever the boy's reasons were for his own silence, Virgil could wait.

Which wasn't to say the travel wasn't without its worries, because...well, when was it ever? And he certainly had a lot of new questions to consider along the way. Because he wasn't used to traveling with another person—and because, on the few occasions when he did, he was on someone else's time—he wasn't used to being the one setting the pace. He wasn't used to dealing with a kid, with his shorter legs, and potentially much smaller store of energy from being poorly fed, and an as yet untested capacity for informing Virgil if there was a problem.

And Virgil could only do his best. As they traveled, he tried to set a light pace. To be honest, it had been much easier before his leg had healed. But knowing that the kid was probably adjusting to his new shoes, he tried to keep an eye out to make sure he wasn't limping. So far, he seemed to be doing alright, but the boy had a certain distaste for being offered help or...coddled, Virgil suspected. If that hadn't been clear before now then it would have become obvious with the irritated—almost offended—look he was given whenever Virgil asked after his comfort. At this point, Virgil was sure that he couldn't trust the boy not to soldier on in, well, silence, and since he was bound not to receive an answer regardless, eventually he gave up asking. Still, he was constantly on the lookout for any reasonable excuse he could find to take a short break, just in case.

But it was because of Virgil's attentiveness that he eventually noticed the scratching.

It wasn't obvious, at first. Only rarely, to start, but then with more frequency, Virgil caught sight of the boy scratching at the skin of his face. And it hadn't even seemed unusual when he first noticed it. While he hadn't seemed bothered the day before, there were plenty of reasons the boy might have been suffering now. Beyond the humidity and the heat, there was a definite possibility that the soap from the previous night, or even the water itself, had managed to further inflame the irritation of his skin. So even as the day wore on and the scratching became more and more frequent, while it was cause for some mild concern, it hadn't been enough to truly make him worry...

No, what had him worried was the number of times he caught the boy rubbing his eye—and what worried him even more was how tense the boy grew whenever he noticed that Virgil was noticing.

Over the first three hours of travel the boy had abandoned most of the defensive shyness he had exhibited in Millsway, and yet by the fourth Virgil watched that curtain beginning to close once more. He noticed when the boy started to avoid meeting his gaze, and when the hat was pulled down over his face as if to hide his eyes. And he noticed the draw of his shoulders, and the way the hands that were previously swinging freely at his sides found themselves balled up and hidden away in his pockets.

Virgil said nothing to acknowledge it, at the start, not the eye, or the scratching, or the change in his behavior. At this point, Virgil believed that doing so—forcing the boy to confront whatever was bothering him—was likely only going to make things worse. If it seemed like the kid was truly in pain perhaps he would speak up, but until then...

As the afternoon wore on and dusk began to near, Virgil started keeping an eye out for shelter. They had passed several old trucks and abandoned trailers, but had continued to press forward in favor of further progress along their way. He would prefer to reach the service station if he could, but they needed to find shelter before dark. He didn't need the kid getting caught in the rain once it started to cool off, and they definitely didn't want to get stuck traveling in the dark for long. Even before the sun was gone, once the heat began to die, they would start seeing more animals out and about. Which would be good if they wanted a chance to bag supper before settling in, but less than optimal when it came to avoiding threats. And once it was true dark, the panthers and ferals would start roaming about...

Best to find a place they could hunker down—preferably with a door that could shut or be blocked—long before then.

Finally, around mid-afternoon, Virgil started to see a few faded Pre-War signs advertising the ancient Red Rocket station up ahead. He allowed himself to feel some relief. If the distance on the signs was still accurate they should easily be able to reach it before dark.

(Which only left the potential for threats lying in wait, to tangle with...because of course.)

By the time the station came within sight, Virgil had taken his time considering his approach to scouting it out—which was to say, he had considered how best to keep the kid out of danger while he was doing it. If it was an ambush, the last thing he needed was the kid being caught in the middle of it. And, in the nasty event someone had left some surprises behind for the unwary, he also didn't want the boy blundering into any unchecked corners that might be harboring tripwires or much worse...

But, given his suspicions about how the boy had wound up on his own, he couldn't imagine that asking him to stay behind and wait was going to be easy.

A ways out—only close enough to see the shape of the place through the trees—Virgil found an old, rusted car off the side of the road. He instructed the kid to stand back while he checked the car out first. Photosensitivity wasn't uncommon in ghouls as a whole, and it was only too common to encounter ferals hidden away under cars, lying dormant to avoid the brightest parts of the day. It also, unfortunately, offered an easy vantage from which they could ambush unsuspecting prey. He remembered his father and his brother drilling it into his head when he was around the boy's age, warning him never to get too close to an old wreck because of what might be hiding underneath. He remembered having nightmares about it as a kid, too. About a hand coming out from under a car or from under his bed to snatch his ankle and drag him away into the dark...

(And he still had those nightmares now and then. Only these days, that hand and the waiting darkness meant something else entirely...)

Virgil shook off the memory as he completed his search. Nothing lurking underneath. Nothing hidden behind the seats or beneath them. The trunk and the hood had both been opened by scavvers long ago, leaving both open to the elements, the engine under the hood had been stripped thoroughly for its every usable part and the trunk had corroded so badly that he could see clear through the bottom. There was a door left ajar, so neither the heat nor the smell of the interior were as bad as it could have been. The fabric covering the seats had mostly rotted away, but there was enough of the cushion left to the back seat to protect from any sharp edges. The interior was empty, and the back windows were shockingly still intact, which meant the risk of broken glass was minimal.

Most importantly for Virgil's purposes, the car would provide cover, but the back window should also provide a clear view of the station ahead of them.

Virgil gestured for the boy to approach. Seeming to pick up on Virgil's own tension, he followed with only minimal hesitation. He crouched down on the far side of the car from the Red Rocket station, motioning for the boy to join him, and Virgil began to explain himself quietly.

"I need to check and see if that place over there is safe to approach," he said, nodding his head toward the building. "If it's safe, then we're stopping there for the night, but right now I need you to stay here while I take a look, just in case it's dangerous, okay?"

As he had predicted, the boy froze at the words, the tension in his shoulders suddenly tight enough that he trembled slightly.

"I'm not going to be gone more than ten, maybe twenty minutes," Virgil said. "And it'll just be over there. I want you to wait in here until I get back. I-"

Shit. And now the boy was staring down at the pavement, hands clenched at his sides. From the uneven way he was breathing, either he was trying to fight off panic or he was trying not to cry, and...fuck, Virgil didn't know what the hell he was going to do if he did either one right now.

"Hey," Virgil said, as softly as he could, "look at me."

He reached out for the boy's shoulder but he hesitated, terrified that he might make it worse. Still, eventually the boy did meet his eye—more or less—managing a sideways glance from beneath the brim of his hat.

"I promise I won't be gone long," Virgil said again, "and you can watch through the window until I get back. But if you hear anything—gunshots, shouting, anything like that—I want you to duck down under the seat and stay hidden, alright?"

It was obvious the boy was skeptical but, after a brief glance between the car and the station, he looked back and offered Virgil a shaky nod.

"Great," Virgil said, "thank you. Just...stay here, and stay safe, alright? I'll be right back."

The boy still didn't quite seem convinced as he crawled into the back seat of the car, but so long as he was willing to stay put for even a moment while Virgil checked ahead, that was all that mattered. Incentive, he supposed, to be quick as well as thorough so the boy wouldn't be alone for too long, or worse, come running and possibly run into danger...

No pressure.

(In fact, as Virgil stepped away and headed toward the Red Rocket, all he could think about was just how many ways this could all go south. What if the kid panicked before he was finished and took off before he came back? The idea of coming back to find an empty car was terrifying. Or what if he died in there and the kid was left alone again? What if he got injured, and the kid was left waiting? How long would he wait before he came out to check? Would he assume he had been abandoned and just leave him behind? If something did happen, would he try to make it to Black Lake in the dark, or would he run back in the direction they had come towards Millsway? What if Virgil missed something obvious—distracted by all this worrying—and managed to get both of them killed?)

Right. No pressure.

Virgil checked out the perimeter first, clearing the cars decaying beside the pumps and the dumpster out back before approaching the station itself. He was careful to check the entrances for tripwires or other dangers before heading inside. The doors to the small storefront were in very poor shape—one too rusted to slide open, the other too rusted to properly shut. That was something he would need to keep in mind if they did wind up staying the night. As a frequent stop, the place had been picked clean long ago, though the back office was filled with random detritus that past travelers had left behind.

Entering the garage from the interior door, he thankfully found that empty as well—at least of any occupying life that might have given him trouble. A fire pit had been assembled in one corner, just the front grill of some old vehicle propped up by old bricks. There was a gap in the wall right above the fire pit where it looked like a ventilation unit or something else had been pushed out, either scavenged for parts or to let the smoke from the fire escape. It could be dangerous lighting a fire out in the wastes, with smoke during the day and the light at night both running the risk of attracting unwanted attention. There wasn't much he could do about the first, but if they waited until after dark, the sheltering walls of the garage should hide their fire from sight if one was necessary.

(It might not be, but the boy had clearly struggled with staying warm the previous night. Once the temperature dipped cold enough for the humidity to turn into damp, he very well might need it.)

Overall, it wasn't a bad spot to spend a night. The garage was decently secure and relatively clean, the walls were sound enough to keep them dry if it decided to rain overnight. And they still had a couple of hours yet of daylight before they would have to hunker down. Possibly enough for him to do some foraging before the night set in so they weren't stuck eating the last of the leathery mutant shellfish he still had stashed away for their dinner.

Now he just had to fetch the kid and, hopefully, make it uneventfully through the night.

He was nervous returning to the car, barely able to breathe until he saw the small, pale face staring wide-eyed at him from the back window. And the kid must have been nearly as anxious. The minute Virgil gestured for the boy to follow he came flying out of the car, almost at a run to come and join him. Though he pulled himself to an abrupt halt just a few feet short. The eager spark that had lived for just a moment in his eyes was extinguished abruptly and he ducked his head, looking away once again. It was such a sudden shift that Virgil almost thought he had done something wrong, but he caught the boy tilting the hat down to cover that bad eye of his once again.

(Patience, Virgil reminded himself. Clearly something was wrong, but he would never get close enough to deal with it unless he was patient...)

"Let's get inside," Virgil said, pretending as much as it was possible to ignore the boy's behavior. "It looks like a secure enough spot for overnight. We can even light a fire if we wait until after dark, but we'll need to gather some wood before then, just in case."

The boy seemed...almost excited at the prospect of a campfire. His little crevice in that cave had been narrow enough to avoid some loss of body heat, but it still couldn't have been very warm, especially at night. As skinny as the boy was he had little doubt the chill would have cut him to the bone. And Virgil was left to wonder how long the boy had been out there alone. If he hadn't yet been taught how to build a fire, then he probably hadn't been taught much else about surviving on his own, so it couldn't have been for very long...

Right?

They returned to the Red Rocket together. And, together, they made their plans for how they were going to set themselves up for the night.

"We could set up our beds now," Virgil said, "but if we wind up needing to ditch before nightfall, we'll have to leave things behind. Might be best to wait, at least until long enough after dark that we're sure about settling in. Right now, we've still got enough daylight left to go looking for wood, and maybe try to forage something better for dinner than what we had for breakfast. Does that sound good?"

The way the boy's lips pulled back into what was very nearly a grimace at the thought of more mirelurk jerky was outright humorous. Fortunately, Virgil managed not to laugh.

"In that case, you could either stay here, and guard our stuff, or you can come with me."

It was painfully easy to see that agitation from earlier starting to creep back in at the question. And he was unsurprised with the answer. What was surprising was the way the boy seemed to hesitate, freezing briefly before communicating his wanting to go by pointing at Virgil directly.

"Are you sure?" Virgil asked gently. "We've been on the road all day. It's okay if you want to sit down for a bit."

The boy quickly shook his head, pointing at Virgil again as if to confirm his choice.

"How are your feet?"

It was hard to make out the boy's expression with his head bowed the way that it was, but Virgil saw his jaw clench for a moment.

"You can take a rest if you need one, that's all I'm saying."

The boy let out a frustrated breath, casting him a one-eyed glare from under the brim of his hat before shaking his head again.

"Alright, kid, if you say so."

Despite his earlier concerns about having to ditch camp in a hurry, Virgil decided they could probably take the risk of leaving some of their gear behind. There was a battered cabinet in the back office, and if they stashed it in there it was likely to be overlooked if someone did come poking through. And, if worse came to worst, less likely to be found if they were forced to ditch, so there might be a hope of coming back to retrieve it. In the meantime they would be able to move quicker without the added weight, whatever they came across, and despite the boy's silent denials, he could probably do with a break from carrying his pack for a while.

Virgil didn't know how much the kid's parents might have taught him about traveling or surviving in the wastes, but this detour seemed like a decent opportunity to try and gauge where the boy was at.

Traveling beyond the treeline was very different than traveling the old Pre-War roads. The roadways were far more exposed, of course, but the cover provided by woodland terrain was often a double edged sword. You had to be even more aware of your surroundings. You had to be on the listen as much as a look-out for whatever threats you might stumble across. There was much less margin for error in avoiding threats... And if they proved unavoidable, it was better they stumble across you instead. Whether it was instinct or had been trained, one thing that Virgil noticed—and one thing he clearly hadn't noticed, back in the ravine—was that the kid was very light on his feet. Perhaps less so with the shoes on than he had been without, but Virgil could imagine that, however long the kid had been out on his own, he had probably managed to keep himself out of a lot of trouble simply by avoiding it.

(It wouldn't have made him invisible to a deathclaw, not in its own lair where it would smell anything out of place. That...that still baffled him. But it was a question Virgil doubted he was going to be offered the answer to any time soon.)

It was also a chance for Virgil to get an idea of just how badly the condition of the boy's left eye had affected his vision—Virgil had tasked him with gathering sticks for kindling, but had needed to stop him from wandering through a patch of thistle just shy of triggering them to explode. But that was a learning moment for both of them, as when Virgil took the time to explain the boy seemed attentive enough. He seemed even more interested as he watched Virgil harvest the flowers carefully, showing him how to gather them safely without causing them to release their radioactive pollen.

"These have a lot of uses," Virgil told him. "You can make a tea out of them. You can also use them for wounds to keep them from making you sick. There's probably some of these in the salve Nettie sold us."

And, of course, that reminder brought another thought back to his mind...

"If you think you need some of that for your feet, let me know when we get back to the camp, okay?"

He could tell the kid's first impulse was to get defensive again, but instead Virgil watched him consider a moment before dipping a hesitant nod. Whether that meant he did need it or if he was simply agreeing to tell him, Virgil would have to interrogate once they returned to the camp. Still, he considered it progress of a sort.

Not that they wound up spending very much of their time searching, in any case.

They hadn't traveled far from the service station when the sound of frogs calling reached his ears—a good sign that water was near, as well as the wildlife that was bound to accumulate around it. Sure enough, they soon came across a marshy seep-water pond. It wasn't especially large, though it was more than large enough to hold danger. Virgil took the time to scan the banks carefully before allowing himself or the boy to get much closer. Fortunately, there was no sign of the kind of heaped clutter—mounds of branches or other vegetation—that would suggest that mirelurks or gators were currently nesting there. Which meant it was probably safe to approach, so long as they were cautious.

It was a nice spot. Peaceful, cool despite the lingering heat of the day—and offering the closest thing to an easy dinner as you were likely to find out in the wastes.

Up close, the air was lively with the sounds of the frogs that called the pond home. It was easiest to see them under the shade of the trees by the water's edge where the reed-choked banks lit here and there by the soft, pale blue glimmer of their bioluminescence.

"You any good at catching frogs?" Virgil asked.

Oddly, the boy perked up at the suggestion rather than expressing any sort of complaint. Judging by his energetic nod, he even seemed eager. Well, to each their own—Virgil found the flavor a bit muddy himself, but at least the boy knew not to be picky.

"Ever used a spear before?" Virgil asked.

(Unlikely he supposed, but it hurt nothing to ask.)

The boy shook his head.

They set the pile of sticks the boy had gathered aside and Virgil cut down a thin, sturdy sapling that was growing a ways back from the water's edge. It wasn't an ideal length for a spear—more than a foot shorter than he would have liked—but it was straight enough and sturdy enough to do the job. Using his knife, he split the spear on the end, wedging a thick piece of twig down the center to spread the prongs before giving them a quick sharpen. It was a hasty bit of bushcraft and some of his sloppiest work, but it wouldn't need to hold up for more than a few catches.

"I don't want you getting too close to the deeper water," Virgil told the boy while he worked. "It's going to be irradiated, and there still might be something hiding away in there. I'll use the spear. If you want to try to grab a few in the reeds over there, go ahead. Just try not to get your new shoes too wet, and remember to be careful of the spines on their backs, alright?"

Judging from the brief twist of the boy's mouth, either he found Virgil's advice irritatingly obvious, or he had already learned that lesson the hard way. Or maybe the answer was a little bit of both—after all, in Virgil's own, painful childhood experience, it wasn't a mistake that most folks would make twice.

Virgil unfolded the sack he used to carry game and handed it over to the boy to keep his catch in if he got one. Then he got some distance from the boy's spot in the reeds, stepping slowly and carefully out into the muddy bank at the opposite side of the pond. His approach had disturbed the frogs enough that he needed to wait for them to calm if he wanted either of them to have a decent chance.

Of course, when it came to the task in front of him, his own attention was not as sharp as it should have been. He certainly wasn't as focused as he normally was when he was hunting. The issue was, the child was quiet. Which made sense—you wouldn't have much luck at all if you were making a lot of noise. But, as Virgil waited, for the water to calm and for the frogs to return to their business about the pond, he had expected to hear...something. The sounds of the reeds rustling and bending, the sounds of shod feet on the muddy bank. The sounds of splashing once the boy made his own attempts at catching their prey. He wasn't sure how much patience the boy possessed, only remembering how little he had when he was that young. Maybe the kid was just built different, but every time Virgil cast a glance—nervously—over toward the reeds, it was either to the sight of the boy crouched with surprising stillness on the edge of the pond, or else—on a few alarming occasions—to no sign of him at all save for the slightest hint of movement among the reeds.

(That he always resurfaced eventually—casting his own watchful glance to keep Virgil in his sights—was the only thing that kept him from calling off the hunt altogether.)

Which was to say, over the span of their hunt, Virgil had spent more of his time watching the boy than he had looking for frogs. And, by the time an hour had passed and Virgil had bagged only his second frog, he decided he was ready to call it quits. It was something—there was enough meat on the large forelimbs for the kid to have a decent dinner. Virgil, meanwhile, would be just fine with the last of his jerky.

So color him surprised when he returned to gather the kid back to camp and looked into the sack to find the boy had caught another three.

"Huh," Virgil managed, trying not to seem as surprised as he was. "I guess you are good at this. How about you carry these back, and I'll handle the firewood? Does that sound good?"

(Fortunately, the kid seemed far too proud of his accomplishments to realize that he was being talked into carrying the lighter load.)

Virgil threw his frogs in the sack with the rest and gathered the sticks the boy had already collected. It was a fairly decent pile—enough to get a fire started, surely, but they would need something a bit more substantial if they wanted to keep it burning long enough to get their dinner roasted.

The sun was starting to set by the time they returned to the Red Rocket. It had also grown cool enough that the clouds gathering overhead had finally started to sweat out their burden, rain beginning to come down at last in fat but intermittent droplets.

Once inside, Virgil wasted no time getting a fire started-

Well. Perhaps his demonstration of the steps wasn't entirely necessary. At least not at that precise moment. But everyone should know how to start a fire. That was the baseline minimum of knowing how to survive out in the wastes. God forbid the kid wind up on his own again so soon, but anything could happen. And if it ever did happen again, it might take more than luck to keep him alive a second time.

Though Virgil's estimation of how long the kid could have been alone was up in the air at this point. If he could catch frogs he could catch other things, and it might have been enough for him to have kept himself fed. But if he hadn't even been taught to make a fire, then...

(Actually, Virgil decided it was probably better not to think about it. But on top of having him treated for rads, Virgil would definitely be asking the doc in Black Lake if he should be worried about parasites.)

The kid ate it up—figuratively—watching attentively throughout. He even seemed interested in watching Virgil skin and clean the frogs. Virgil talked him through that as well, once he noticed the boy's interest. Then, once the frogs were cleaned and roasting on the grill, they retrieved their packs and started properly setting up their camp. They cleared a spot for the groundcloth of Virgil's bedroll, which for now they would have to share. As an effective cushion from the hard concrete, it was somewhat lacking, but it was the best they had to work with. If it was just overnight, the kid would probably be fine, though Virgil had little doubt that he would be sore come tomorrow morning, just as he had today.

(Just as he did every day. It was only ever a matter of degree...)

Then they sat down side by side on the groundcloth, waiting for their dinner to cook. And perhaps it was just dust they had stirred up while laying out the blankets, but as they sat there Virgil caught the boy rubbing his eye once again. The boy was clearly trying to be sly about it, angling his face away before giving in, but unfortunately (for him) Virgil was still set on paying attention.

(And now was the ideal time, he thought. Now that they were settled in, now that food was just a few minutes away from being done.

If he addressed the situation now, there was a chance the kid wouldn't run if it meant leaving his dinner behind...)

"Your eye's been bothering you all day," Virgil said.

The boy froze, a sudden, shaky breath rocking his small frame as the child turned to look at him.

"Did you get something in it," Virgil asked, "or does it just...bother you sometimes?"

The boy's eyes narrowed warily, defensively, and he turned away.

"If you want to wait until we can see the doc in Black Lake, that's fine," Virgil said, "but that's maybe a whole day away before we get there. There might be a way to make you more comfortable before then."

He could tell that the boy liked the topic of seeing a doctor just as much as he had liked letting Nettie take a look at his feet.

"Hey," Virgil said, "maybe just let me take a look at it first, before we decide. I can't do anything if I don't know what's wrong-"

Taking a risk in hopes of offering some comfort, Virgil reached out his hand—slowly, fearful of startling him—with a thought to rest it on the boy's shoulder. He thought perhaps that it was only his wariness and his attention to the boy's reaction that saved him when the kid responded—not by pulling away or freezing, but by lunging forward with a sudden hiss, the action punctuated by the snap of teeth closing shut on the empty air where Virgil's fingers had just been.

He had been prepared for the kid to reject his comfort, but at this point he somehow hadn't been expecting that.

Judging from the sudden, fearful expression that overtook the boy's face, he might not have been expecting it either. As he stared at him in stunned silence, Virgil realized the boy was shaking. Virgil felt a little shaken himself, and more than a little heartbroken when he dropped his hand and watched the boy flinch. They both stared at each other for several seconds, silent, neither one sure what to do. Both of them were, in their own way, terrified—Virgil of spooking the child further, and the boy of...honestly, Virgil didn't want to speculate about what. Yet as he watched, Virgil saw the boy's breathing grow more ragged as they both teetered on the edge of panic that he knew he needed to say something.

"Uh," Virgil managed shakily, "it's alright. I'm not mad. You just...startled me."

If his words reassured the boy at all he gave no visible sign. Letting go of another tensely held breath, Virgil tried again.

"We should work on this biting thing, though," he said. "I kind of need all my fingers, and I can guarantee the frogs'll taste better."

He had been trying for some kind of levity, which...was not, by any means, Virgil's strong suit. Still, he thought that if he could make it into a joke then the boy might actually believe he wasn't in trouble—and that he wasn't about to be punished. And this time his words unmistakably had an impact, but it definitely wasn't the one he was going for...

The boy stared at him, speechless and pale for half a breath before promptly bursting into tears.

"Oh- Oh shit. No-"

Foolishly, his first impulse was to reach out for the boy, despite how this whole thing had started. He stopped himself just short of crossing that line, his hands hovering uselessly while he sat there blinded by his own panic. As he moved to pull them away he was shocked once more when the boy latched on to him suddenly. Both hands clung desperately to his forearm, holding onto him with a vice-like grip so strong that he swore the boy's nails might just draw blood...

Cautiously—terrified beyond measure—Virgil took the risk of placing his free hand on the boy's shoulder. Then, when he felt the boy's sobs beginning to shake beneath his palm, he dared to pull him closer. Suddenly the boy's face was being hidden against his chest, and Virgil sat there, paralyzed for several long, confused seconds as his brain scrambled desperately to decide what he was supposed to do. The boy, meanwhile, sat hunched—at this point, practically sitting in Virgil's lap—still trying, even now, to hide his face from sight.

So in the end they both just...sat together like that, Virgil absently rubbing the boy's back while he cried out whatever it was that had him so twisted up inside. But, eventually the boy's crying finally did quiet a little, and Virgil's internal panic wore itself out enough that he could finally think once again.

"I think we both scared each other a little bit there, huh?" Virgil finally managed.

The boy took a shaking breath, but he still didn't seem ready to look up just yet.

"I should have been more careful," Virgil said. "I don't know what happened to your eye, but, I bet it isn't any fun. You probably can't see out of it that well, can you? Hell, I'd probably be scared too."

This managed to gather some of the boy's attention, at least enough that he pulled away, cautiously looking up at last.

"And you don't really know me," Virgil said. "I haven't even done the best job of helping you trust me. But...I really do just want to see if I can help."

At last, two eyes, one brown, one milky and blank, reluctantly met his own.

"Can I take a look?" Virgil asked, his voice a rough but careful whisper. "Please?"

With a sniff the boy nodded. And he held himself so very, alarmingly still as Virgil carefully reached out to touch his face.

And Virgil could see, now that he was this close—now that he was being allowed—how irritated the eye was, around the edges. Between the redness from his crying and the livid shade of the skin around the socket of his left eye it nearly managed to disguise how irritated it was at the corners. And he sucked in a breath as he realized that part of the reason he hadn't noticed earlier was because of just how much that film over the boy's eye—pale, and almost opaquely translucent—was covering. It wasn't just the iris and pupil that were being obscured, but the rest of the eye itself. Moreover, the reason he could see the irritation now—no doubt the cause of the boy's rubbing—was because that film had become detached.

Virgil felt a vague panic beginning to set in once again. He was definitely out of his depth in trying to deal with this. He needed to get this kid to the doctor in Black Lake. He didn't know if there was any way of saving the sight in the boy's eye, but at this point, he would settle with saving the eye itself. And what if whatever was causing it spread to the other eye? He could wind up entirely blind, or-

His thoughts were interrupted just short of a devastating spiral by an odd, papery feeling under his fingertips. The boy had, very bravely, allowed him to pry his eyelid open to get a closer look. Shifting his attention from the eye for a moment, he moved his gaze to the skin where his thumb was resting on the boy's cheekbone. To his growing alarm, he felt something slide and start to flake away beneath his touch. Yet the boy only stared back at him—clearly terrified, but seemingly not in any pain. Swallowing back against the agonizingly familiar feeling of horror twisting in his stomach, he watched the plaques of roughened skin beneath his fingers peel back to reveal-

Scales.

They were tiny, fine-patterned things in shades of buff and brown that were surprisingly vivid once freed from the pale layer that had concealed them. A layer that had come off in Virgil's hand, thin and brittle between his fingers. Fragile and translucent, like the shed of a lizard or a-

And Virgil realized abruptly that what he had been looking at wasn't a film or cataract at all.

It was an eyecap.

So many confusing pieces of the puzzle the kid had presented were suddenly snapping into place.

The boy was a mutant.

(And, just as suddenly, everything the boy had said or hinted or given away about his mother began to make a heartbreaking sort of sense...)

"Does- Does it need to come out?" Virgil asked, shakily.

He was terrified, now, of getting this wrong. The boy seemed...understandably reluctant as he answered the question with a shallow nod. Shit, he couldn't imagine any of this was easy for him...

"Do you want...help?" Virgil asked, uncertainly.

Because the only way he could imagine helping was-

But the boy looked almost shocked by the offer, his face screwing up and threatening further tears as he nodded, his nails biting deep into Virgil's forearm as his grip tightened once again.

God. How long had the kid been dealing with this?

How long had he been dealing with it alone?

"Alright," Virgil managed gently, half a whisper, half a promise. "I'll...do what I can. Just...let me wash my hands first, okay?"

Because his hands were in no way clean enough to be touching this kid's eye.

Virgil got a bottle of water out of the boy's pack—because it was the only thing they had on hand that was clean enough—as well as a clean rag and the bottle of whiskey he kept at the bottom of his own...

(For medicinal purposes. Virgil had never been inclined to drink much before, and his changed tolerance had given little benefit for him to start.)

He washed his hands first with the alcohol and rinsed with the water before staring at the task in front of him like it was the barrel of a loaded gun. Quite understandably, the boy stared back at him in much the same way—bravely, yet unmistakably terrified. Virgil knelt down beside him, setting the bottle of water and the rag aside.

"Okay..." Virgil managed. "Come a bit closer. Try...I want you to hold onto my shoulders, okay? And I've still got my leathers on, so you can go ahead and squeeze as hard as you want, but if you want me to stop, I want you to tap on them, alright?"

The boy nodded and did as he was told, scooting closer so that he was kneeling in front of him. And Virgil fought to keep his hands steady as he reached out a hand for the boy's chin, carefully turning his head.

"Just...try to hold still..."

The boy's jaw was clenched as he fought to sit still, his body trembling as he fought what Virgil would have bet good money was the returning impulse to bite. Virgil could hardly blame the kid, particularly once his fingers drew close to the eye. The tears still ran, and it took all of Virgil's strength not to call this off at the sight of it. Steeling himself, he pulled the boy's eyelid open with one hand, and with the other...

It was...a peculiar experience, no joke. It had to be redundant, having an eyelid when there was already a scale covering the eye underneath. Or vice versa, he supposed. But then mutation was often like that. It did what it wanted, shaped the unfortunate as it pleased. The eyecap made about as much sense as a brahmin's second head, or a ghoul's cruel version of immortality. And whatever had caused the boy's mutations had worked its whims devoid of any logic or reason that a human might try to comprehend. The one grace granted to them in this situation seemed to be that the eye underneath—with a new cap now, under the old, Virgil realized—was less sensitive to touch than a normal eye might have been. Though the boy flinched as he brought his fingers in, he gamely held still as Virgil's fingertip made contact and—with more care than he had ever devoted to anything in his life—carefully extracted the shed scale from the eye.

And, in spite of himself, Virgil couldn't help but suck in a breath at the sight of what was revealed.

There was almost no white of the eye to speak of. The color of the eye flooded its entirety, a peculiar and arresting shade of sandy yellow, dully metallic and gleaming. And the pupil within, though blown wide with fear, still bore a noticeably elongated shape. It made for a stunning combination, striking and uncanny—captivating in just how alien it was, and Virgil, unfortunately, found himself captivated.

Unfortunate, because he was also painfully aware that every second that he wasted in staring was one in which the kid was left frozen and staring back at him. The expression on the boy's face was one of naked terror—expected, perhaps, in these circumstances, but there was an element of consuming resignation mixed in with that fear. The resignation of someone preparing to accept the worst as if it was all they could ever have hoped for.

God, that sort of expression should never belong to a child.

Was this kid convinced that Virgil was going to hurt him, now that he knew? Or was he simply afraid of being abandoned once again?

The child's wariness in town certainly made a lot more sense, in hindsight. Now that Virgil had this new information, so many things did. The way he had striven to hide his face, even with the shed covering it, and his wariness, even once trust began to be extended, at letting Virgil or anyone else get much closer. If this was normal for him, if he had gone through it before, then he must have realized it was only a matter of time before the shed came loose and revealed his secrets. And as young as he was, he was far too old not to have learned by now—probably long before Millsway—how easily people's tolerance could take a turn towards revulsion, or even fear.

And the more he thought about it, the more Virgil realized that the boy must have known there were people nearby. However he had wound up out there on his own, he had been too close to the area's best traveled routes not to have noticed. He would have heard people, brahmin, voices, or even gunshots from trail hunting or less savory conflicts. And the collection of items from the lost caravans gathered in that cave meant that, at the very least, the boy had known how to find whatever the deathclaw had left behind. Had he even thought of seeking them out? Or had whatever he experienced before his abandonment left him feeling safer hiding under the nose of a deathclaw than he did taking a risk among humans?

(The more he thought about it, Virgil admittedly couldn't find it in himself to fault the kid if he had...)

And, having taken far too long in silent, panicked thought, Virgil realized the boy was still waiting for something—some reaction. Whatever it was that was coming, the boy seemed prepared to face it bravely—even if it was clear that what he expected was pain.

Punishment or rejection or perhaps far worse...

Virgil didn't know what to say to reassure him, to comfort, to promise that he was safe. Right now, all that he could offer him was...a rather sad smile.

"There," he managed belatedly. "Is that- Does that feel better?"

The tension in the boy's posture slackened just a bit so that he almost wobbled with the slightly shaken nod he offered in answer.

Not quite satisfied, Virgil wet the rag with some more of the water and carefully reached for the boy's face. The flinch at its approach was barely noticeable, but the boy held still and allowed him to wash the tears from his face. The rest of the shed hadn't come away all in one piece—it still clung to the scales over the boy's brow and on his forehead, and there were no doubt still patches of it hidden beneath the boy's hat and his hair that would probably come free with some careful brushing. Once he was done, he wet the cloth again and took the boy's hand—his left, still clinging to the shoulder-pad of Virgil's armor—and pressed the cloth into it.

(The hand the boy had hidden from him yesterday—the hand on his scaled side. Virgil still hadn't gotten a good look at it, but he would bet every bottle cap waiting for him in Black Lake that if he checked his armor right now there would be claw-marks scored into the leather.)

"Hold that over your eye for a bit," Virgil said. "It should help a little. And the food should be ready in-"

Oh. Shit.

Unsurprisingly, while they had been...distracted, the frogs had started to burn on one side. Their one bit of good luck was that the neglected fire underneath them had started to die down before the damage had gotten too bad. Half in a panic—and half relieved to have something simple to panic about—Virgil went and turned them—naturally burning his fingers in the process—before taking the time to properly feed the fire. It wasn't unsalvageable, fortunately. There might be a bit less edible meat to go around, but there would still be enough to tide them over for the night.

They more or less settled in, after that. The boy went and sat on the groundcloth while Virgil continued tending to the food and to the fire. They ate in silence, after, the boy tearing into his food with as much enthusiasm as he had the stew the night before. It was enough that Virgil insisted that the boy help himself to all three of the frogs he had caught. He could tell the boy was conflicted—clearly he wanted them, but he hesitated, as if half convinced there was a catch. But to Virgil's relief, hunger eventually won over the boy's suspicion. After they were done they threw the bones in the fire, and Virgil briefly went outside to check the perimeter. The rain was coming down steadily now, and the sluice of runoff coming from the roof offered him the chance to refill his canteen from something that didn't have grit mixed in with it. Then he set up a simple tripwire to knock over some rubbish and alert them if someone tried to enter through the door.

When he came back, he found the boy had pulled the stuffed bear out from his pack again and was holding it tightly. The relief was plain in his eyes when Virgil returned, though he saw it smothered quickly, almost as if the boy were embarrassed. Virgil returned to the fire.

"We should both try to settle in and get some sleep," Virgil said. "If we get an early enough start, we might make it to Black Lake before noon tomorrow."

He was already thinking ahead toward the morning—toward their likelihood of encountering trouble on the road, as well as their likelihood of encountering trouble once they reached town. The latter wasn't as likely as it had been in Millsway, but a town that tolerated ghouls wasn't guaranteed to tolerate anything else. They would have to be cautious in their approach, just in case. Perhaps an eye-patch for the boy to cover the most obvious signs of his mutations...discretion and the boy's hat would probably be enough for the rest, and it was clear that the boy already understood the importance of the first...

Really, as tired as the kid was after this ordeal, Virgil hadn't expected much in the way of protest on the topic of sleep, or at least that if there was some resistance to the idea that it would be expressed in the boy's usual silence, but instead...

"You...you won't find my family."

The voice was raspy from its disuse, barely more than a whisper, and so quiet that Virgil almost couldn't make out the words over the sound of the rain rattling the roof overhead. And he hesitated for a moment, almost afraid to breach the silence after them, but he couldn't for the life of him pretend that he hadn't heard.

"I know," Virgil said, almost as quietly.

Because he had guessed by now that, wherever the boy's family—his mother—had gone, it was unlikely that they would find them easily, and certainly not as close as Black Lake.

"Even if you did," the boy said, voice finally gaining some life and volume, though it sounded almost painful. "She- She wouldn't want me."

"I know," Virgil admitted hoarsely, though it broke his heart.

It was cruel, but it was a cruel truth, and like so many of the wasteland's cruelties it wasn't one that either of them could afford to pretend wasn't so.

Virgil almost wished that there was some pretty lie that he could have told, just then, to make it seem alright. Hell, if there was one out there that was remotely worth believing, Virgil probably would have welcomed it for himself. But it wasn't alright that the boy's mother had abandoned him, and nothing that could be said would ever manage to make it alright. And it was clear that the boy was fully aware that he had been abandoned, so there was no benefit in pretending that it hadn't happened. When there was no way to fix or reclaim what you had lost, sometimes the only way forward was to allow yourself to leave it behind...

(Which was a tragic lesson for the kid to have to learn so young, but...there wasn't really a sure way of fixing that, either.)

He watched the boy pull the bear close to his chest, face crumpling with the return of his tears.

"No one's going to want-"

"No, hey," Virgil said, ready to stop that kind of talk in its tracks. "Don't say that."

He scooted closer to the boy, watching him draw in on himself as he did. This time, Virgil barely hesitated before reaching out to lay an arm across the boy's shoulders. This time, thankfully, the boy let him, though he didn't react otherwise.

"I know that there's a family out there somewhere," Virgil said softly. "One that's going to love you just as much as you deserve. There's a home out there for you, one that's safe. We just have to find it."

The boy wiped his face with a sleeve before looking up at him, seeming...almost baffled. To be honest, Virgil was surprised at his own optimism. Usually he didn't trust that sort of thinking, but... The boy was so young. And he was bright, and he was resourceful. And so brave. Even as broken as the world was, Virgil couldn't imagine for a second that it was a world where there wasn't someone out there who would want him...

(Though he certainly couldn't imagine that searching for them would be easy.)

"Until then, you can stay with me, okay?" Virgil said. "And I promise I won't leave you until we find it."

"You...promise," the boy echoed uncertainly.

Though the way it was said, it sounded less like a question and more like skepticism at the promise being offered. But Virgil didn't want to dwell on what sorts of promises the boy might have had broken for him in the past, so he answered as if it had been.

"Yeah, I promise," Virgil said. "I mean...us abominations have to stick together, right?"

The way the boy's lip started to quiver, Virgil was afraid for a moment that the joke had been a step too far. But the boy simply pulled in against him, clinging to his armor. His breathing was a little shaky, and Virgil could feel the warmth of new tears starting to soak through, but it wasn't the painful sort of crying from before, so Virgil simply pulled his arm tighter around him and let it be.

And he was rewarded for his patience moments later, when the boy spoke up again.

"Janus."

The lone, whispery word confused him at first, and Virgil looked down to find the boy staring up at him, face still reddened by his tears, looking almost embarrassed.

"I- My name," he stammered out. "It's- It's Janus."

Virgil couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips. Nor the slight sting in his own eyes.

"Janus," Virgil repeated carefully, as he reached out to wipe a tear from the boy's—Janus's—scaled cheek. "It's nice to finally meet you, Janus."

It was only as the boy smiled back that Virgil managed to feel the full weight of the promises he had made. The full realization of what they had meant, and how deeply he had meant every word.

This kid deserved the world, and there was little enough of it left to go around, but...God damn it, Virgil was sure as hell going to try.

2290, Northern Florid Wastes
Former Gulf Commonwealth, USA

Virgil paused on the trail to let his current charges pass ahead of him—partly to observe the road behind them, to make sure they weren't being followed, and partly to assess their traveling condition. It was clear that they were tired—practically dead on their feet though neither of them had raised any complaint. While he could appreciate their stoic attempts at perseverance, he would have preferred to be aware if their energy was flagging so that he could account for it if danger arose. He had told them as much before setting out, but perhaps they hadn't believed him. Perhaps they were concerned with being seen as a burden and being left behind. As frustrating as the attitude was, it was hard for Virgil to blame them.

He wasn't unused to traveling with others these days, not as much as he used to be, but it was his first time traveling with Vault Dwellers.

So far it had been...an interesting experience.

When they had first approached to hire him on as their guide and a bodyguard through the Wasteland, he could admit that he had been possessed of certain expectations. From every story he had heard about the Vaults and the people who lived in them, Virgil had assumed they would be soft, and unprepared for travel—and even less prepared for the sorts of trials that would arise on the road. But while he hadn't been entirely wrong, he had honestly found himself surprised.

Both men had possessed a fair amount of...academic knowledge about survival. Unfortunately, much of their information was more than two centuries out of date, and neither had been given much opportunity for its practical application during their lives below the surface. Their night vision was poorer than Virgil might have expected from people raised underground, and their awareness when it came to managing sight-lines and spotting hazards at a distance during the day was even worse. And they seemed to have a poor sense of what in the wasteland was dangerous and what actually wasn't. Still, they had both proven themselves willing to listen and to learn—and most importantly, to defer to his experience without argument when their safety urgently hinged on it.

They were also, both of them, almost painstaking in their efforts to address him respectfully from their very first encounter... Considering that he was possibly the first ghoul either of them had ever seen, let alone dealt with, this had gone a long way to earn forgiveness of many of their other shortcomings.

(Okay, maybe he was still a little angry about the yao guai. But in what world did it make sense to leave the road to try to make friends with an irradiated mutant bear? Fuck, but it still didn't make sense how that thing hadn't attacked them. How the hell was Patton even alive?)

Which was to say, Virgil had traveled with literal children who were better prepared for traveling the wastes than these Vaulties, but credit where it was due, he certainly couldn't say that their efforts were lacking.

He hadn't yet been too caught up in the memory, but he couldn't say it hadn't been on his mind. He always seemed to wind up thinking of that night any time he came back to Darkside. It was hard not to, he supposed, considering the way that promise had shaped the rest of his life.

And, unexpectedly, the lives of so many others. In fact, they wouldn't even be here otherwise...

(Or maybe he was just getting sentimental in his old age.)

"Is that-"

Logan's voice brought his thoughts up short. He was alarmed for a moment, thinking he had missed some threat or other detail that he should have noticed if his focus hadn't waned, but as he searched the direction the elder Vault Dweller was pointing in, he realized it was nothing so dire.

It was such a familiar sight that he had barely registered it enough to remark upon, but Darkside was now just barely visible on the horizon. In fact, Virgil was impressed that the Vaultie had noticed. After all, there wasn't much of it to even see just yet—only a hazy smudge of smoke against the fractured and vacant skyline of the city—exhaust from the generators and from various fires that burned to keep the settlement running. It wasn't dark enough yet to see more—the sun only barely setting—but once it had, then it would be a sight. The glow of neon, carefully salvaged from across various parts of the city, shining in its cacophony of colors to light up the night. And then once they were close enough, there would be the sign—the marquee of the theater at the center of Darkside where its master lorded over his court—proclaiming the name of the town in stolen, incandescent letters to any who might be seeking...

"Yeah. That's it."

"And you're absolutely certain this place is safe?" Logan asked.

It was only about the third or fourth time that one of them had asked during their journey together. Given the reputation that Darkside held—the stories that were passed around the wasteland, it was hard to truly blame him. There was no telling what the Vaulties had heard before hiring Virgil to guide them to refuge.

Nor even what the people who shared that sort of gossip might have had to say about him.

"I'm sure," Virgil reassured him, nonetheless.

Because that might not have been the reputation the town held in the rest of the wasteland, but Virgil knew Darkside better.

For all their searching, Virgil never did find Janus the home that he had promised him. Safety was always at a premium in the wastes, and it was always priced dearly for those who didn't fit in—who couldn't fit in, damned whether by happenstance or by the weight of their own choices. People like Virgil and Janus, who had been marked by cruel misfortune, were only one half of that sad story. It was a perilous world they lived in, and that world often forced people to make even more perilous choices. Every day, people were born into inescapable cruelty, and many of them had been forced to soak it up like water. There were too many that had been forced to do the unthinkable in order to survive. Too many that had turned toward dark or unusual or obscene practices of faith in order to get themselves through to the next day. And there were so, so many people whose pasts held crimes that no one else felt could be forgiven.

For many of them, the only safety available in the wastes had been that of solitude—which in the end was no kind of safety at all.

(And for far too many others, the only other option was surrender—to give in to the chaos and the despair and let it consume them. To become yet another vessel for the cycle of pain and rage that ruled the wasteland—to let their worst impulses drive them, to live and kill, reap and destroy with abandon until the wastes finally claimed them.)

To his regret, Virgil had never truly managed to deliver on the promise of safety, of stability—of a home—that he had made to Janus all those years ago. And so, in the end, Janus had taken it upon himself to build one—for himself, for Virgil, and for anyone else who needed it. For anyone else that needed a place of refuge that would take you as you are, no questions asked. And so Darkside had come to be, built out of sweat and steel and blood into a sanctuary for outcasts—for the burdened and the broken, the unwanted and unworthy.

To the average wastelander, Darkside was the home of mutants and monsters, of cannibals and criminals, of cultists and addicts, all trying to escape their shadowed pasts. A den of horrors and vice-

To people like Virgil, like Janus, like so many others, it was the safest place in the wasteland.

There wasn't much talking after that—they couldn't afford chatter once they made their way into the city proper. The maze of alleyways between the fractured buildings held too many opportunities for ambush, and this close to nightfall there were far too many shadows for threats to hide in. All three of them needed to stay on their toes. Within the next half hour the glow of Darkside became a halo of light whose presence drew them through the darkened streets. Within another twenty minutes, Virgil had spotted the flitting shadow of one of Darkside's lookouts—spotters who spent their hours holed up in nests up on the rooftops, keeping an eye out for threats or any other unusual visitors making their approach.

Though, in this case, Virgil suspected there was another reason the runner had decided it was worthwhile to bring prompt news of their arrival to the center of Darkside. They weren't stopped, as they continued on their way, and there weren't any alarms raised as they made their way toward the gates. And, when those gates opened up in front of them to reveal Darkside's lord-mayor—or whatever he was calling himself this week—standing there to greet them as if he had been awaiting their arrival for hours, Virgil was quickly proven right.

Obviously, he had been informed that Virgil had returned, but he also must have been told that newcomers had arrived with him. If there was one thing Janus believed in, it was the importance of making a strong first impression to his subjects. And if there was one thing he couldn't resist, it was the chance to make it a performance.

Flanked by the guards at the gate he made for a very imposing figure—posed with the tall, twisted walking stick he affected as his staff of office, his face half-hidden by the leather mask that covered his mutations and yet dressed from head to toe in blacks and yellows as if to warn all the same that he was something that would bite—or at least Virgil supposed.

(The showiness certainly wasn't for his benefit. Virgil was perhaps the one person in the Wasteland that Janus knew he didn't have to impress.)

Virgil had failed to deliver Janus the home he had promised, and, ultimately, he had proven too restless in the end to even keep his promise that he would stay. Years had passed before he broke that one—more than a decade before he had decided that his boy no longer needed him the way that he once did. Janus had been a young man by then, and well on his way toward building the connections that would one day build his town. Virgil had played his part in that for as long as he was able, but it just wasn't in his makeup anymore to stay in one place for very long, and so he had decided to leave. And there had been tears and shouting and a sense of betrayal, but also more tears, and more promises, and eventually forgiveness. Because what he had promised was that he would come back—that he would always come back—and while it had been impossible, in the grand scheme of things, for him to keep every promise he had made, if nothing else Janus knew he always did his damnedest to try.

Truly, the only promise that Virgil had delivered on flawlessly over the years was the one he had made to give Janus a family.

(Which was only the most important promise that Virgil had ever made in his life.)

He watched Janus's lips draw into that slow, wide smile that so many people found unnerving, and he felt the Vaulties' unease growing behind him, but Virgil wasn't fooled for a moment. The pomp and display was for the newcomers, but the warmth in his eye as he greeted them, that was all for him.

"Welcome home, old man."

Chapter Text

Janus

Janus is a unique FEV mutant and the warlord-mayor of a lawless wasteland town called Darkside. A man of many secrets, he has an almost mythic reputation, partly due Darkside's policy of welcoming even the most extreme wasteland misfits willing to play by his rules, and partly due to the conflicting rumors Janus has spread about himself in order to obfuscate his true origins.

• Despite having built Darkside from the ground up as a place where all are welcomed, Janus has kept his mutant status a secret from all but a trusted few. While his physical mutations might be accepted, his ability to suppress others' emotions (primarily hostility and suspicion) is something he fears will see him rejected from the very home it has allowed him to create for himself.
• Janus's deathclaw gauntlet is actually a leather glove designed to disguise the talons on his left hand as a crafted weapon. He is unable to wield a gun with his dominant hand due to his mutation, and suffers a lack of skill wielding weapons with his right. Between this penalty and his poor depth perception, he is practically hopeless with firearms. (Also, his handwriting is terrible.)
• Among his other mutations, Janus is cold-blooded. During the warmer temperatures of the day his strength and endurance are significantly increased.
• He keeps a menagerie of mutated animals. His favorite is a glowing two-headed snake named Flim-Flam.

Virgil

Virgil grew up on his family's homestead, living off the land and helping to defend it against raiders and wasteland wildlife. In his twenties, exposure to radiation caused his transformation into a ghoul, and the hostility of a previously loving family forced him to leave home.
A habitual wanderer and more than a bit of a loner, Virgil has since spent decades walking the wastes. His skill and experience is much sought after as a guide, hunter of beasts, and occasional hired gun, a well-earned reputation that he regards with an almost embarrassed humility.

• At sixty-three, Virgil is an old man by most wasteland standards but still rather young for a ghoul. The life expectancy of ghouls is unpredictable: he could easily live another century or more…or he might lose himself and go feral within the next month.
• Virgil practically raised Janus. While neither of them would use the word “son” or “father” out loud, it's understood by everyone who knows them that they're family.
• Virgil has always had difficulty interacting with people, and the discrimination he has faced since becoming a ghoul hasn't made it any easier. He gets very uncomfortable in crowds, and grows restless staying in one place. This sees him leaving frequently to wander the wastes on his own. Still, wherever he goes, in his heart he considers Darkside his home.

 (When people ask how he and Virgil met, Janus likes to tell them that Virgil killed his mother and kidnapped him. Of course, he's also claimed to have been raised by a deathclaw, and that his father was President Eden. By now everyone in Darkside knows you can't trust a word Janus says about his past.)

The "Twins"

As the grandson of a Diamond City water baron, Roland Kaiser was born into a position of relative privilege for a wastelander. Stifled by his family's expectations but daunted by the thought of braving the dangers of the wastes outside on his own, he was mostly just biding his time until the inevitable day he inherited his family's business and all the duties that went with it…
Until the day Roland found himself face to face with…himself.
C8-53 was a synth (synthetic human) created in Roland's image, sent by the Institute to kill him and take his place in order to further their agenda of controlling the Commonwealth. However, C8-53 was…less than happy with the mission handed to him by his masters. Fortunately for both, their first encounter did not wind up going as planned…
Two weeks later, a pair of twin brothers calling themselves Roman and Remus were seen passing through the Capital Wasteland, headed south along the coast.

• Janus's right-hand man in Darkside, Roman is the one he sends to smooth over disagreements with the locals and to field interactions with their neighbors when people come with complaints.
• In his free hours, Roman mans the radio station out of Darkside. He delivers wasteland news, reads from pre-War books, and his own stories, along with music he and his brother have made together.
• Roman still keeps contact with members of the Railroad out of gratitude for the help they offered to him and his “brother”. More than one refugee synth has passed safely through Darkside with his help.
  
  

• Janus's left-hand man in Darkside, Remus is the one he sends to deal with problems when a lesson needs to be dispensed at the blunt end of a bat. He's also the one sent to negotiate with raiders, slavers and others entities that think they want a piece of what Darkside has to offer.
  (Remus's approach to “negotiation” often ends with explosions…)
• A gleeful tinkerer in all things deadly, Remus likes to innovate with weapons. He is responsible for some of Darkside's most effective and…creative defenses.
• Remus oversees the sourcing of provisions for members of Darkside's populace who engage in…taboo dietary practices, though he doesn't partake himself.
• He also takes care of Janus's menagerie of mutant animals.

 (The twins are from Boston, and Roland from what passes as the upperclass in the wasteland. Consequently, both have a slight Transatlantic accent. Remus's isn't super noticeable, but Roman really leans into it over the radio...as he should.)

Logan & Patton

Born into Vault 66, Logan and Patton grew up together, cousins who are as close as brothers. Despite living a relatively sheltered life underground, all wasn't as normal or as pleasant as it seemed. As with most Vaults, their home had been designed with experimentation in mind, with its unsuspecting residents as its subjects. From birth through adolescence, the residents of Vault 66 are treated with drug therapy and surgeries meant to alter the way their bodies process emotion.
For the majority in 66, this has led to a population that is easily pacified and controlled. For the outliers who begin to “act out”, the only options are death or banishment.
Logan chose the latter. Patton chose to go with him.

• The experimentation Logan was subjected to damaged his ability to express or regulate certain emotions, as well as his ability to recognize that he is feeling them in the first place. Vault scientists considered this artificially induced alexithymia an acceptable outcome.
• As an unanticipated consequence of the experiment, physical pain or moments of acute stress will often trigger an abnormal adrenal release that causes a state of extreme hyperarousal and aggression. While far from mindless in this state, it can make him extremely difficult to reason with (and almost impossible to control).
• Because of these outbursts, Logan was deemed too volatile to safely remain in the Vault.
  
  



• Patton's alterations are an uncomfortable mirror of Logan's: not only is he is constantly aware of what he is feeling, he often experiences the emotions he perceives in others as if they were his own. This can sometimes result in an agonizing emotional feedback loop.
• His experience of this is so overwhelming at times that it can cause him to freeze, and he spent several months during his teenage years practically catatonic.
• Patton experiences all emotions strongly, from the softest to the ugliest, even those that aren't his own. He puts conscious effort into being kind, and hiding that ugliness behind a pleasant facade. When these efforts fail him, the results can be unpredictable and often terrifying.
• Patton's empathy is strong enough that he literally experiences the suffering of others close by. As such, he is the closest thing to a total pacifist that can successfully survive in the wasteland.
• When combat is unavoidable, he prefers to use a syringer rifle loaded with darts. These darts deliver chemicals designed to non-lethally take an opponent out of a fight through paralysis, pacification, or inducing them to flee.
  

(Patton is that most dangerous and unpredictable of wasteland creatures: a Charisma/Luck build…)

Chapter Text

Once they were committed to spending the month in Black Lake, Virgil realized there was...a problem. Living on the edge of a lake, Janus needed to know how to swim. 

But getting him in the water meant exposing him to radiation.

The boy was mostly clean right now. If he gave him a couple Rad-X beforehand and let the doc treat him afterward it should be...fine. 

Right?

(When, after an hour of happily splashing around, the boy had taken hardly any rads at all, it seemed clear the kid's mutations had done him a few favors, at least.)

Bonus bonus, a snakelet: