1: Baby, Don't Yell

"Isabel!" He ran up the stairs, his voice rising in panic. "Isabel!"

A muffled shout answered his cries. He hurtled down the hallway, following the sound of her voice. He skidded to a halt in the doorway.

The first thing he could register was her dark eyes, wide with fear and confusion, staring back at him. Too soon, relief overtook him.

"Isabel!" he cried in half relief, half irritability. "Shit, I thought you were a goner..."

His words died on his lips as he saw the man in the room. The gag in her mouth. The blood on her clothes. Slowly, he put two and two together.

"What the fuck?" he demanded, even as he knew that she could not answer. He crossed the room towards her. She screamed through the gag, shaking her head frantically. Every line of her face was etched in terror. The fear was contagious; it set in his chest, too. He stopped in his tracks and followed her terrified gaze down, to the man kneeling on the floor.

The man turned his hand up towards the ceiling, revealing the presence of something small, blinking blue, in his palm. He didn't need telling what it was. He already knew.

His eyes returned to the man in the room. His once-neat hair was a mess, matted with blood and grime. His face, once well-shaven and clean, was shiny with sweat and streaked with mud. But his piercing blue eyes had not changed. They drilled two holes in his skull. His eyes were burning with the fires of a man avenged. Isabel's eyes reflected that fire.

"Don't do it," he warned him, fear constricting his chest. "I swear to God, don't do it—"

The man's hands joined momentarily, and then abruptly jerked apart. And then everything happened at once.

He lurched forward, all in vain. He hoped to maybe knock it out of the man's hands, perhaps buy them a little time to take cover, but he was too far away and the trap had already been sprung. She turned her head away just as the blue in his hands exploded.

A blinding white light consumed his vision, his head spinning, his ears ringing, as he briefly registered falling to the floor. Pain ripped through every fiber of his body and he screamed aloud, only to realize that his vocal cords would no longer obey him. He brought his arms up to his face. They were shaking madly with blue energy; he could feel the volts dancing in his head. His arms thudded to the ground. What...

His eyes returned to the girl, unmoving on the ground, her eyes glazed over in an eternal stare into nothing. Her hands twitched, but she showed no other signs of life. The sizzling remains of a pair of handcuffs hung from her limp wrist. He wondered if she was dead. He wondered if, indeed, he was. It was his last thought before he lost consciousness.

Looking back, Harkness always thought that his decision to pull bridge duty that night wasn't an accident, but fate, the prelude to a new chapter in his life. Life had managed to convince him that not everything happened for a reason, that everyone was perfectly prone to unforeseen, random disaster, but this, the fateful midnight meeting on a cool September night—he was sure that it had been destiny.

He often wondered where he'd be if they'd never crossed paths. It might have been less painful, less confusing. But whenever he thought of what he had gained in the end…well, he still didn't really know exactly what he'd gotten. Maybe it would turn out for the worst, but to be perfectly honest, he couldn't imagine things turning out any other way.

***TWO MONTHS EARLIER***

Looking back, Harkness always thought that his decision to pull bridge duty that night wasn't an accident, but fate.

The night in question was sometime in early autumn, about a week after Three Dog had first reported two people who'd escaped from Vault 101, of which one netted considerably more news than the other. Harkness had paid the reports little attention, but it was all the buzz in the Muddy Rudder and Vera's hotel (along with every other nook and cranny of Rivet City), so he caught little snippets back and forth:

"Oh, did you hear about that Vault girl, lost her father, poor dear…"

"…I heard she was only nineteen—did you hear what she did to the bomb in—"

"Megaton? Yes, I've also heard that she's a wanted woman…"

"A saint…ought to give her a medal…look at what she did for…"

"…Grayditch, I'm still not convinced that was a hoax. Fire-breathing ants? I call BS…"

"A criminal…ought to be put down like the animal she is…"

"…Don't be ridiculous, she's only a child…"

"Children can be murderers too, don't you remember…"

Harkness didn't quite know what this girl, a seeming newcomer to the Capitol Wasteland, had done to warrant such talk among the people, but he had a job to do and more than his fair share of fires to put out without thinking of that as well. So he paid it no mind and went about his relatively monotonous life until the girl in the blue jumpsuit showed up on the other side of the bridge, requesting entrance.

Harkness did a double take through a pair of binoculars. The girl was a curiosity to him not because of the blue Vault jumpsuit she wore—there had been another one who'd passed through not so long ago—but because of the little tidbits of news he picked up from around town. And what he saw didn't quite match up with the picture he'd kept in his head from the few things he knew. Soft brown eyes set in a delicate face conveyed a rather innocent image, marred only by a split lip still leaking blood. Even in the dim light he could see her hands wrapped in dirty bandages, probably from the trauma of gun use on delicate, soft-skinned palms. She couldn't be more than eighteen, he thought. Twenty, at most. Despite the all-over dirty look to her, her dark hair was still in a somewhat neat bun. There was a Chinese assault rifle hanging slack at her side and a backpack on her shoulders. The girl looked tired and her face was wet, as if she'd poured water over herself in an effort to stay awake. Already, her head had dropped to her chest. She looked less than threatening, but he was still wary.

Harkness lowered his binoculars. "Extend the bridge," he ordered.

The shriek of metal grinding on aged metal snapped her out of her trance pretty quickly. Her head snapped up and she seemed to take a second to collect herself before walking slowly and warily across the bridge, the rifle still hanging slack at her side. Harkness drew his weapon (more out of habit than anything else) and stepped forward, ready to confront her.

The bridge wasn't very long—only twenty or so feet at most—but it seemed infinitely longer that night. All the time while she walked, the girl's eyes somehow found his and did not look away. It was more than a little creepy; people in the Wasteland customarily avoided eye contact as a general rule. Eye contact was a delicate thing; too much marked you as a threat and too little singled you out as a target. She determinedly drilled him in the face with her piercing gaze, and Harkness couldn't decide whether she was a saint or a monster, and it scared him a little. He was usually good at reading people. But now, he couldn't decide if the look she was giving him was a challenge or an attempt to connect with him. Maybe it was both. Eyes were windows to the soul, after all…but he couldn't tell a damn thing from them.

"Hold it right there."When she got close enough, Harkness jerked his rifle and stopped her in her tracks. "State your business in Rivet City."

"Uhh." She blinked. "I'm just looking around."

"Looking around," he repeated, skeptical.

"Uhh, yeah," the girl stammered. "You know, like exploring."

Harkness raised an eyebrow. "Okay. So, explorer. Do you have a name?"

"Isabel."

"No last name?"

"No, sir."

He eyed her suspiciously one more time and decided that if anything, he could at least take her in a fight if she got out of hand. There was still something nagging at the back of his mind, but he decided to let it go. For now.

"You can go on in," he said finally. "But I'll be watching you. No funny business."

"I won't be around for long," she responded, brushing past him. It sounded almost like a promise to him.

Harkness turned to watch her stop, confronted by the two doors leading to the stairwell and marketplace. She eyed the signs over each one. He frowned. Was she literate? A lot of people in the Wasteland weren't. Usually, someone had to read the signs for newcomers.

"It's—" He opened his mouth, about to deliver the revelation that became a routine when he was on bridge duty, but then there was a sharp clang and she had disappeared through the door to the stairwell.

"…Closed," he finished lamely. Shaking his head, he motioned at the guard to bring the bridge back and followed her through the door. Not on purpose, mind you, he always went that way to get to the bridge tower. As he ascended the first set of stairs, Harkness saw the girl turn the corner at the end of the hall towards the Weatherly Hotel. Okay, so at least that was to be expected. He continued up the stairs, trying to shake the feeling that maybe he'd let a complete psychopath onto his boat. Maybe it was the odd manner in which she'd composed herself, or the incessant eye contact, or the creepy vibe that he got from her, but Harkness made a mental note to keep an eye on her at all times. He didn't know what her intentions were, and it scared him. People with veiled motives usually had malicious intentions, if Mister Burke was anything of an example. It was only luck that Harkness had run him out of Rivet City before he caused some real damage.

He had the feeling that he'd need more than a good night's sleep to shake off this apprehension that she was going to do something terrible to his ship. Harkness abruptly stopped in his tracks, thinking back to the buzz surrounding this girl, and turned on his heel towards the Weatherly Hotel. Vera might have some answers. At the very least, he'd have either the reassurance (or confirmation) that he was imagining things and she was nothing to worry about, or the revelation that she was, indeed, a security risk.

Either way, Harkness had a sick feeling that he wouldn't like the truth.

A/N: This idea has been in my head for the longest time. Unfortunately, school starts in about four days, so we can all kiss timely updates of any fashion good-bye for now. D: I hope you've enjoyed this exposition, though, and please review!