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2253, Northern Florid Wastes
Former Gulf Commonwealth, USA
By the time Janus realized that he maybe wanted Virgil to keep him, he was pretty much sure he had already ruined his chances. Because Janus knew that he wasn't supposed to bite—he knew it—but he had already tried to bite Virgil so many times.
And maybe the first couple he could have been excused, after all how was he supposed to know just by looking at him that Virgil would be nice? He certainly hadn't looked like he would be—Janus hadn't ever seen a ghoul before, at least not ones like Virgil that bothered to talk. The first time he tried to bite him was just after Virgil had killed Dragon—he had been going to cut her up—and Janus had been upset and really, really angry. And he hadn't had much chance to figure it out by the second time, either, not when Virgil had followed him into his hide-out and tricked him and then tied him up. And then he had started going through Janus's things, so actually Janus didn't think he could even try to feel guilty about trying to bite him then.
But that third time...well, by the third time it had been so obvious that Virgil was nice, and maybe even a bit of a pushover. Because he had given Janus all his stuff back, and he wound up giving him the Nuka-Cola he had used to trap him anyway, and then he bought him shoes and a hat and even got him a bag to keep everything in. And he had gotten him something nice and hot to eat—not just when they got into town like he promised, but the next night too. And even though Janus's voice was still being dumb Virgil hadn't once gotten mad at him when he couldn't answer the questions he asked him. He was even letting Janus come with him-
Virgil was nice and Virgil had been worried about him—about his stupid ugly eye and all of the gross old scales that were ready to come off that made him look sick. He was just trying to help, and by now Janus should have known that-
But then Virgil had reached out to touch him and, like so many times before, Janus just hadn't been able to stop himself.
It had been a long time since anyone had gotten close enough that Janus had needed to fight to keep his teeth to himself. He had been alone for so long now—well, not alone, not exactly, but for ages it had been just him and Dragon. Janus had known to keep his distance around Dragon—not that he had been afraid of her, but she had been such a big, wild thing. She could have a temper if he got too close to the food she brought back before she was done with it, especially after the time she came back hurt, and whenever he did get close he always worried about getting stepped on. Really, he had only ever bothered to get closer to Dragon when it got really, really cold, because she was so much bigger and warmer than he was, even if he had to worry about her rolling onto him...
(She hadn't had to share her food with him, and she hadn't needed to let him hide in her cave at all, let alone into her nest to sleep some nights. And he still didn't know why she had. He didn't know why that first day, when she found him digging through the pack still hanging off the brahmin she'd dragged back to her lair, that she hadn't eaten him as well. But she had taken one look at him and then a good long sniff and, for whatever reason, she had let him stay. And while she wasn't nice like Virgil was nice, and she hadn't been a person in the same way, Janus was pretty sure he was kind of going to miss her now that she was gone.)
Janus didn't know why it was so hard for him not to bite—why, even when he tried, sometimes he just couldn't help it. Back when he had still been with his mama, Janus had tried his hardest not to bite. She had made it clear to him that biting was unacceptable.
"Only animals bite, Janus," she had told him so many times. "You're not an animal, are you?"
But he had started to wonder if maybe he was, after all. Maybe he was, because it never mattered how hard he tried, when he got upset it was like his teeth had a mind of their own.
The only time his mama had ever hit him was just once, after he bit her.
It wasn't the first time he had done it, not by a lot, but it had wound up being the last. She always got cross with him when he bit her, of course, but that time it had been different. He had lost two of his teeth not long before, and though that hadn't scared her as much as it had him, the ones that came back had grown in sharp.
That time, when he bit her, Janus had broken the skin. That time she had bled, and he thinks that must have scared her at least as much as it scared him, because the next thing he knew he was sitting on the ground with tears on his face and a hand to his cheek and watching her dig, wide-eyed and frantic, through their things in search of the bandage kit. And Janus had told her I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, but she hadn't even stopped to look at him, not while she was cleaning the bite or bandaging it, and even after she just sat there for a while, staring down at the bandages on her hand and shaking.
Finally, she had called him over. She had made him sit down in front of her, and made him hold still. She had grasped his chin tightly in her hand and told him to open his mouth, forcing him to bite down on a stick to keep it open. And Janus had held himself as still as he could, trembling and gasping with tears on his face as she pulled back his lips to look at his teeth, poking around the soft parts of his mouth and prodding with her fingers all along his gums.
(And Janus had felt terrified and guilty, but also horribly, sickeningly upset in some way he didn't think he could name, and he was sure he had never felt the urge to bite that strongly in his life.)
But whatever she found there—or hadn't—must have calmed her down, at least a little, and soon she was shushing him and rubbing his back. She had taken the stick out of his mouth and Janus had buried his face against her chest and sobbed.
"I'm sorry," he had croaked out, once he managed to stop crying long enough to breathe. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I tried, I promise!"
She was silent for a very long moment and Janus had forced himself to pull away far enough to look at her. She was watching him, an expression on her face that he didn't know how to read, but she slowly, hesitantly reached out with shaking fingers to wipe the tears beneath his eye.
"I know," she had said. "I know it's not your fault."
Then she had sighed, playing briefly with his hair, arranging the long fringe of it down where it could cover the bad left half of his face and his ugly eye with it.
And that was another reason, he supposed, why he might have done it—why he had still been so scared of Virgil, even after the ghoul had shown that he was nice. Because his scales had gotten all stiff and itchy the way they did sometimes, and that always made him twitchy and jumpy, and his eye was hurting and he couldn't see out of it, and he knew the gross bit inside needed to come out or it was only going to hurt worse, but...
But he knew once it did he wouldn't just look like he was sick anymore, and then Virgil would see just how ugly he was.
"You have to keep it hidden, Janus. Always," his mama had told him so, so many times. "If anyone finds out you're an abomination, that'll be it for you. There won't be anything I can do."
So he had been scared, but then maybe he shouldn't have been. Because Janus was an abomination, like his mama said, and he couldn't let anyone see, but then apparently so was Virgil. And so was Dragon, if Virgil was right—Janus had always thought she was just a really big animal, but then again she had been pretty smart for a very big lizard. And she hadn't been nice, not the way that Virgil was nice, but she also hadn't tried to hurt him. Come to think of it, most animals were a lot meaner to him than Dragon was—that was why he had wound up sticking around her lair for so long.
Janus hadn't understood what it meant, before, being an abomination, just that he was different and that anyone who saw his eye would think he was bad. Now, Janus thought he understood what it meant even less, because Virgil and Dragon couldn't have been more different from each other, and he wasn't very much like either of them...
(Or at least, Janus hadn't been at the start. But over the past however long, as he had gotten too big for his old clothes and needed to find new ones from what was left of the caravans that Dragon attacked, he had lost even more teeth that grew back sharp, and the weird nails on his left hand had gotten bigger and sharper too...)
But maybe an abomination wasn't such a bad thing to be—he definitely liked that better than being an animal. They had barely even started traveling together and already he liked Virgil almost as much as he had liked Dragon. And Virgil didn't growl when he shared his food. The people in the town were definitely mean to Virgil for being a ghoul, though, and they were the ones that had wanted him to go out and kill Dragon in the first place. So he guessed it made a lot more sense now why mama had kept him away from towns unless his eye was gross and sickly, and why even when they did go in she had warned him to always, always cover his face...
What he didn't know was, if people did find out he was an abomination, would they treat him like Virgil, or would they wind up treating him like Dragon?
But now they were headed for this new place—Black Lake. It sounded like people there were a lot nicer. And Virgil had promised to help him find a family...
Janus didn't think there was a family waiting for him in Black Lake. He didn't think there was one out there anywhere, no matter what Virgil had said. And Virgil could say what he wanted about how he was a good kid and that someone should want him, but Janus wasn't going to hold his breath for some thing like that. He wasn't going to wait on something that might never happen.
(He had waited so long, too long—days and days and weeks and probably months—for his mama to come back like she said she would. But she never did, and Janus was done waiting—he knew he had almost died waiting. Never, never again...)
Janus didn't have much in this world, but for now he did have Virgil. And maybe Virgil didn't want to keep him—was convinced, somehow, stupidly, that anyone else would ever want to keep him—but Janus thought that was okay. As long as Virgil hadn't left him behind the way his mama did then that meant that Janus still had a chance...
And until the day that Virgil walked away, Janus would use every chance he got to prove to the ghoul that he was worth keeping.