Charlie looked down at the girl he was holding by the ankle. He was, first and foremost, confused. He had no idea what was going on. Hell, truth be told, he didn't even really remember grabbing the poor girl. Rapidly, he began going over all the information he had. First, he was holding up a little girl by the ankle. Not good. Second, she had been holding onto his weird blood rock, which had been burning the fuck out of her hand. Also not good. Third, he had been passed out in the middle of the road just moments ago. Really not good. Finally, his stomach was growling like a street hound, and his head felt like someone had set fireworks off in his fucking skull. Just terrible. He pretty quickly figured out what was going on.

Slowly, Charlie began lowering the kid down to the ground. While he did, he gave himself a moment to really look at her. She was tiny; she looked like she'd never eaten in her whole lifetime. A lifetime that he figured couldn't have been longer than eight years. Maybe nine. She seemed disgustingly emaciated, so thin her patchwork overalls looked like sails. Charlie wouldn't be surprised if she struggled to walk. Her hair was a nasty brown color, though he couldn't tell if it was naturally brown and dirty or some other color and extremely dirty. It wasn't even just her hair that was filthy; she looked like she made a habit of rolling around in the mud for shits n giggles. Looking at her face, he realized he couldn't tell which direction she was looking, as her eyes were facing different directions from each other. In addition, her eyes were two different colors. One was a dull grey, and the other a piercing, almost glowing, red.

Charlie was holding the girl about a foot above the ground now, and he was unsure what he should do, so he said as much.

"How do you want me to put you down?" Charlie asked the girl. She seemed surprised he had even asked.

"Oh!" the girl responded, "I, um, just. Uh. I'll deal with it." And so she did.

The girl reached up and grabbed his forearm with her non-charred hand and looked at him.

"You, uh, you can let go of my ankle, sir." She half-spoke, half-whispered to him. And so he did. She swung on his arm like a monkey and let go, landing on her bare feet. She then looked up at him with one eye. Charlie could tell now which of her eyes was the lazy one. He also confusedly noted to himself that that very same lazy eye was no longer red but the same dull grey as the other. She continued to stare at him. He stared down at her. It seemed neither of them really knew what to do now.

Charlie had never really been good with children. He had no reason to be; he'd been single practically his whole life. They were never really an object of his concern. If anything, most of the time, he viewed them as a nuisance. The last time he'd interacted with one had been about 5 years ago when a client at Dick's Garage had left him alone in the office area with her 5-year-old son to grab something she had left in her car before turning it in to them. The kid had spent the whole three minutes straight talking about how he thought if Charlie were a dinosaur he'd be a stegosaurus and about how that was a bad thing because they were weak herbivores. Charlie had hated that. The kid was wrong, after all. He'd be an ankylosaurus. And the ankylosaurus was not a weak herbivore. It was a strong one.

Anyways, Charlie's mind was wandering. In addition to being a child, this was a child who had tried to rob him. And had paid some kind of price for attempting to do so. He figured that even if he thought she deserved more punishment, it wasn't his right to enact such punishment. Not his kid, after all. And so, seeing no other solution, he turned around and walked away. Towards his blood rock, of course, but away nonetheless. Gently, he reached down and picked it up, inspecting it for damage. Nope, none. He pocketed it. Without looking back, he began walking north again. He didn't make it 5 steps before he felt his stomach clench at the thought of leaving that girl back there. He stopped and looked down at his feet. God dammit, he thought to himself before he turned around and walked back towards the girl, who was still just standing there, staring.

"What's your name, kid." Charlie asked brusquely. The girl blinked before responding.

"You, um, aren't going to kill me, sir?" she asked politely. Charlie was taken aback for a moment.

"Why the- what? What the fuck did you just ask me?" He forced out. Charlie was confused enough now that it was starting to piss him off.

"I asked you if you-"

"I fucking know what you said; it just makes no blasted sense, girl. Why would I kill you?" Charlie interrupted.

"Oh," the girl spoke, smiling sheepishly. "I just thought that since I tried to rob you, and you were a Freehand, you'd kill me. Y'know?"

Charlie digested this for a moment before he responded. "That makes no sense to me, girl. Hell, I don't know what half of that means. We'll deal with that later. First, what. Is. Your. Name. Child?"

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The girl looked harried now; she almost seemed like she didn't want to tell him. But she did anyways. "Rat," she said in a small voice.

"Huh?"

"I said my name is Rat."

Charlie furrowed his brow. "I'm not calling you that. What's your real name?"

"Rat."

"Hmm," Charlie grumbled. "How about parents? Got any of those?" He demanded.

"Nope. Not anymore, at least. Mother ran off about a month ago."

"Father?" Charlie asked. He was beginning to despair.

"Never had one of those." the girl responded.

Charlie stared the girl in the eye. He tried and tried, but he just couldn't wrap his mind around this.

"So let me get this straight," he began saying, "Your name is Rat. You're, like, eight years fuckin old-"

"Eleven, actually." She corrected.

"Right," Charlie puffed, exasperated. "Your name is Rat. You are eleven years old, and you don't have parents. Your mother ran away, and you've never had a father. You appear to be starving and homeless. Am I correct?"

"Yes, sir. You are correct." She seemed quite chipper now for some reason. She almost seemed proud of his assessment. Charlie was beginning to feel faint. He took a moment to clear his mind before continuing along his current thought process. He started walking North.

"Follow me," Charlie told the girl. The girl began to follow.

"Where we goin?" the girl asked.

"North."

The girl stopped moving immediately. "No, we're not," the girl said. She pointed East. "That's north."

Charlie didn't even question her. He turned and started walking North for real this time.

"Where we goin?" the girl once again asked.

"Fucking North."

"Why?"

"Because I decided to go North. I. Am. Looking. For. People." Charlie ground out.

"Oh. Well, we're going the wrong way." the girl stated.

Charlie whipped around and glared at the girl.

"Then which direction, pray tell, should we be fucking going?" he growled. For some reason, his patience was wearing thin.

The girl pointed west.

To his credit, Charlie did not flip the fuck out. Not so much to his credit, he damn near did. He took one big breath in, and a bigger breath out. Everything would be ok. He started walking west. She followed. They walked in silence for a few minutes before Charlie spoke up.

"Are you hungry, kid?"

The girl looked up at him and stopped. She waited for him to stop completely and turn around before spreading her arms out to her sides as if to say, "Look at me." Charlie softened a bit. He had no real reason to remain mad at the girl. She was probably just as lost as he was. He walked up to her and went down to a knee, and even still looked down a bit to make eye contact.

"Alright, kid. Here's the deal," he spoke softly to her and cleared his throat. "Clearly, I'm fuckin lost. Clearly, you are too. I'm gonna make a deal with ya. I've never been good with kids. And you've never had real parents. But you look nearly on death's doorstep, and I feel halfway there. We both need help. You need food, and I need direction. So I'll get you food, and you'll give me direction. I'll be the father you never had, and you'll be the daughter I don't need but the navigator I do. Do you understand? Do we have a deal?"

The girl looked back at him blankly before responding.

"You'll be my father," she said, "and you'll feed me?"

"Yes." Charlie huffed.

"And you promise you'll be a good father?"

"Yes."

The girl smiled the biggest smile Charlie had ever seen and stuck her hand out. He shook it, his hand encompassing her entire hand and part of her wrist. He released her hand but found that she didn't release his, grabbing tightly his ring finger. They began walking east again as Charlie pondered his decision. He looked down at the girl and thought. He'd have to find her a new name. And new clothes. And a bath. Shit. And he still needed to find robot parts. He had a lot to do. Just as he was about to look back up at the horizon and now night sky, he witnessed the girl beat the shit out of the side of her head with her burnt hand. Just as he was about to intervene, she stopped and looked up at him. She smiled again, and Charlie watched as her lazy eye bounced around inside its socket. Just what the fuck had he gotten himself into.