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Her face was covered in scars. Her whole body was, really. From over a decade of travelling in the wastes, from getting shot, from getting stabbed. From fires, from radiation. From the first day she had crawled out of the vault, and a raider had taken a potshot at her from the elementary school.
Charon thought she was beautiful. But then again, he wasn’t exactly the most attractive creature in the wastes.
Alex wore a red bandana, to hide her face. To avoid scaring people she might run into. Charon didn’t. He let his scars show.
He’d been her companion for over ten years. He liked to think he knew every one of her scars. Even the ones that had been from before she was let out in the wastes. The scar bisecting her pinkie, from when she had gotten it caught in a vault door. The small one on her knee from when she’d tripped in the reactor room. The series of small pinpricks that appeared on the rare occasions she took off her pipboy.
And then there were the hundreds she’d gotten since. The slight cheek burn from a bullet passing too close by. The long, thick scar bisecting her torso from a super mutants bumper sword. The thin lines on her arms from chains holding her back. The radiation burns littering the right half of her body from the purifier. The multitude of blade scars. The twin scars crossing her forehead, from Doc Mitchell’s attempts at fixing her up. The three claw marks raking down her stomach from a deathclaws talons. The curved insertions of her cybernetics. And so, so many more.
And he knew every single one. And at night, when they were alone, when they’d gone back to the Red Rocket, and she could take off her armor, her bandana, he was thrilled.
Because every scar just proved how much she wanted to live. And how she wasn’t going to be leaving him anytime soon.