a/n: It has been a really long time since I've written, so bear with me. (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
Regardless of lots of personal changes, this is written in assumption that you have played the game;
LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD! I warned you, my lovelies.

Unwilling Heroes
by R-IsForRebel on
00: Intro

First light came as an invasive, unwanted companion, pushing its way through the wall boards to creep across the room at a subtle, yet steady, pace.

Bitter cold of a late summer morning found itself melting away in the presence of even faint sun, rising a thick fog from the earth in the early hour coupled with the heavy musk of aged blood; it was an all too familiar smell, dismissed in its daily commonplace among the breadth of wasteland that spanned the now-known world.

Robert MacCready had woken long before the lambent hue had even reached the foot of the weathered mattress, staring at a cracked ceiling that bore no words of morning wisdom for him, much like any before then. What was originally a mission to get back to sleep had become time slipping away from him, leading to the room having brightened enough now that he felt justified in twisting himself upright. He rubbed his eyes with stiff resignation, second-guessing his decision to get up upon being hit by the crisp air. He knew, all too well, what sleep would bring, what he had escaped from only shy of an hour ago. There was no point in it. He had spent too many hours as it was mulling over futile things that seemed to invade his mind, playing a cruel hand in reminding him of past failures.

There was little room for his toes to stretch out in what must have been a storage shed at one point, having to slide up on the mattress to have enough room for his legs to lay flat. Stretching his arm upward and releasing a stifled yawn, the thin-framed man quietly picked up a metal combat armor plate off the sliver of floor at his side to slide over his head. Each of his limbs ached from the claustrophobic rest, making effort of pulling on his gauntlets and boots; it had been better than the alternatives, however. Rain from the night prior had gone on long enough that it went above their ankles by the time they had found the tattered hovel, only thing for miles with a solid roof.

Was a wonder that they had heaved an old pre-war workstation to block the doorway, let alone managed to get a half-dry mattress inside. Clasping his rifle with one hand, MacCready swiveled, using the butt of it to nudge the figure clad in road leathers facing the opposite direction beside him.

A low-pitch, yet feminine groan came from her, legs curling further in to her chest, causing MacCready to lightly sigh as he put more force into a second prod. She simply rolled onto her stomach. This time he growled, leaning down to shake her by hand; even in the earliest cracks of morning, she somehow managed to smell solely of gunpowder, mumbling something inaudible in response to his touch.

"Gabe, wake up."

Her pale, freckled arm slowly rose up to dismissively wave him off, dropping to the ground with enough force to cause her to whimper in regret.

Standing up straight, he needed only one stride before being able to kick his foot out, sending the already weak door flying off of its hinges to the ground and sending splinters of wood everywhere in its wake upon colliding what must have seemed like a metal goliath. Gabriel sighed heavily as she pushed herself up off of the mattress, her eyes tightly shut against the morning light that now covered every corner of the hovel while brushing the freshly broken wood off of herself. One sweep of MacCreadys' arm gathered up the remnants of clothes and armor plates not yet fastened to him, throwing himself over the workstation whilst wrapping his rifle strap over shoulder.

When they had first met, this same woman had been little more than a wreck.

He didn't pay her any mind, then. Sitting on the stones of Goodneighbour amongst the ghouls, face smeared in blood-tinged muck bearing ragged clothes barely clinging to her body, she had looked like nothing more than a lost soul trolloping down the path to death on the best of days. Had been a pale thing, even more so than she was now, with arms coated in holes alongside bruises marking up more than half of her, topped by hair befitting a corpse; she had been a fly of the Commonwealth, one step away from raider trash. Couldn't have put a time on when the woman had joined the ranks of the street rats outside Hotel Rexford even if he tried, being that she was some sort of invisible hoodlum when first arrived.

Over time, her red hair seemed to keep finding itself in his line of vision. Every step she took seemed to be with shaky feet, led by eyes more similar to abyssal holes bored into her face; he understood that look, without knowing why. Bobbi No-Nose was the only one who ever seemed to pay her any true heed, spurning the woman into quick-footed action after her. He had lost count of the times she fell face-first into the cobblestones, dragged by her chem compatriots over to their metal hovel if only to rummage through her pockets, when reappearing. Didn't take long for her to move on up to being primarily inside the Rail, hair pulled back slick and testing her luck in the game of Marowski's ladies, so to speak, or wasting what caps hadn't been wasted on something to fill her veins instead on liquor.

Fred seemed to be the one to take a shine to her, although he was the knight of every drug-addled woman on their streets who also very-much so liked the ones who cooked their chems. Was more than likely him that nicknamed her Pincushion, or Pins for short, although MacCready never cared to get an elaboration as to why.

Hell, it'd been pure luck that they had even spoken to begin with, little over a month after he had first made note of her. She had been sitting alone at the Third Rail bar when their actual first words were spoken to each other, spinning a glass of bourbon disdainfully. He had tried to ignore her, disassociating himself with the local rabble breeding trouble with no caps to mention, but she had leaned halfway across the bar to cover his view with a damn near ear-to-ear smile, resting her chin on a palm while pointing at him with the other hand to say "I hear you're a damn good shot."

Called herself Gabriel, giving a simple brief of her being a vault dweller who had been alive from before the war, thrown into a refrigerator to wake up over two centuries later as if no time had past. And just like that, she was suddenly a regular intruder to his normally secluded hovel of the Rail, even if only to swing her head in and wave when she knew he was in from a job. Was never really sure if she was doing it for protection by association, loneliness, or sheer boredom.

But like a disease, she had grown on him.

MacCready would have liked to blame it on her eyes, an ice-cold set of piercing blue that seemed to always be calculating something behind them, but knew it had been the company. She had become the only person who actually cared if he was alright, actually wanted to hear his stories from the miserable wasteland of a Commonwealth, without asking, even wanting, for anything in return.

He could remember the dark-skinned poster boy of the Minuteman showing up on his way out to a caravan escort, asking the neighborhood watch about her. Maybe if he had been a better man, he would have stopped to return her the care she seemed to show him, but he had simply ignored the man with his funny hat. Caps had been in front of him, a client looking for way to Bunker Hill, and that was all that had mattered. Judging from the sounds he could remember, Gabriel had put up quite the fight, later finding that she broke most the tables and had to be knocked out by the butt of a laser musket.

Hancock must have believed the boy-scouts tale, as they had passed each other not too many miles out from Goodneighbour, the would-be cowboy carrying her over his shoulder while another woman in a red trench coat later identified as Piper fluttering about the two of them furiously, her words little more than chirpy noise from the distance. There hadn't been any caps in going off to find out if she needed rescuing or not, however.

And just like that, Gabriel the Vault Dweller had disappeared off the face of the Commonwealth. Not that he had spent much effort in trying to figure out where she was. His corner off the face of the earth became a quiet hideaway once again, a place of shying from the reality of his choices. It wasn't until some time later that he heard of her on the Diamond City radio, not too long after Travis took a sudden turn in his abashed host performance, hailed as the leader and General of the newly resurrected Minutemen.

Gabriel had come back to that same grimy bar and thrown down a bag full of caps, declaring him a hired gun. As if she had been some warped version of a cocoon that burst into a butterfly by whatever ploys her two compatriots had partaken in, life tucked in leather had stood before him in place of a corpse. Hadn't even noticed her with Winlock near inches from his face, catching him off guard enough to stare at her slack-jawed while she grinned like an idiot in turn. Those same eyes stared down at him without judgement, unwavering, and he had, like a good mercenary, picked up both caps and gun to follow her. What did he have to lose, after all?

Looking at her now, and remembering what she had been back then, it was nothing short of a hard hit in the gut.

"Ugh, Cready...you drank all the water, ass."

Gabriel came over behind him, casually adjusting the positioning of her light-weight synthetic armor about her shoulders as she used her body weight to shove MacCready out of her landings way. An empty tin can came loftily whirling through the air at him, easily dodged, as she dropped down onto the dirt, fighting with the ragged clasps to her greaves. Her shoulder-length hair had been swept to the left side, exposing a fully shaved right of her head, with a cigarette already lit hanging out of her mouth; if Gabriel truly had been from before the war, she showed none of that now, having been nearing two years since she originally woke up to what must be easily a nightmare in comparison. Scars now marred her face, the most major being a large gash carved by knife down her forehead, over the eye and down her cheek to jawline, as they did the rest of her body, leaving only the rough tattoo of the number 111 on the back of her neck as the only remnants of her Vault life. Her limbs were lined with taunt muscle and eyes hardened by the truths of a blood-soaked existence of their post-apocalyptic world; MacCready doubted the six chunks of metal hanging off of her right ear were around back then, either.

He still knew so little about her. But, in reality, he guessed that was the same for her, too. Couldn't seem to remember when that started mattering to him.

"Garvey said this place is less than five clicks from here, so we 'ought to have no trouble reaching there even if we go wide before nightfall," she started, yawning heavily as her fingers began to flip about her Pip-Boys dials. MacCready grunted at the mention of the boy-scouts name, leaning inside the hovel to pull out a leather sheet wrapped around the materials for the beacon they had to setup once clearing the destination and drop beside her. With their luck, avoiding him would simply be paramount to him getting on Radio Freedom to scream bloody murder at Gabriel in a self-imposed father role while demanding action at some settlement or other. Giving a once-over the makeshift shelter, he picked up her rifle before lifting himself off the workstation he leaned on, throwing it over the shoulder with his own. "Isn't too far from Diamond City. Taking the river looks like less traffic. I got enough cardio yesterday. Wonder if they call this place Hangman Alley because it makes you want to kill yourself reaching it."

MacCready bowed down to her wrist, curiously scanning the light-blue screens display of a map. Before beginning to traveling with her, he hadn't seen one of these in quite a long time, longer still the Pip-Boy. His hand then rose, placing a fingertip onto it flat along what seemed to be marked as some sort of old freeway before turning to her, shaking his head. "Better chances staying low, most of these old sky-ways are traps. Cardio sound better than Gunners?"

Gabriel stifled her displeasure by swatting his hand away, squinting her eyes while getting closer to the screen as if unable to see what he was mentioning. Finally, she sighed, flicking the screen off with a defeated exhale. "Yeah, alright. Another day to go around isn't going to work." She stood, shoving a blade the length of finger to elbow into a crude strap along her leg before bringing the leather bundle up and over her shoulder all while inhaling off her cigarette with a brooding furiosity, scanning the orange horizon and mindlessly blowing circles of smoke. Withered trees coupled with well-rusted vehicles laid strewn out everywhere about them, making it a thick forest for the wasteland but still relatively easy to see well into the distance. "Christ, suns barely poked over."

"What can I say? Early bird gets the worm" MacCready laughed, raising her rifle up in some sort of awkward peace greeting.

"Uh huh." She took her weapon almost begrudgingly, dropping the leather bundle for a moment so she could pull the strap over her head to rest the metal across her back, offering him her pack of cigarettes from her satchel as the leather once again rose up. Didn't even have to think about the answer before his hands did the motions. "I was getting tired of listening to you breathe like a dying whale anyway, putting a slug in you was the other plan. Next time, we walk the extra mile to find a bigger shelter."

Despite her voice coming out wounded and serious, he knew all too well there was less weight to her words than there was to a feather. The wastelands had no room for the need of personal space or niceties, making the friendship they had forged in the many miles wandering the Commonwealth, be it for the Minutemen, profit or sheer fun, something that their lives had come to depend on. Even if they had chosen harbor in an actual building, they would have pulled whatever soft surfaces they could find together, excusing it by only having to barricade off one room and spend no time migrating for smokes or sustenance in the night. Didn't much matter to him if either of them found it uncomfortable, he wasn't about to lose another person that important to him again, even if it made him look like some sort of wet paper cling on; was just a bonus she happened to like mercenary work as much as he did, while having an almost infinite supply of work.

"Awww, you wound me," MacCready cooed, flicking his flip lighter closed and exhaling smoke in what could have been easily mistaken for disdain. "I think I sound like a tunnel snake. Or a dolphin. I hear those were majestic." She simply growled, adjusting the weight on her shoulder before spinning around by heel and beginning her march in what he assumed, more so hoped, was the right direction. A couple quick strides closed the distance she had tried to put between them, a foolish grin spreading across his lips. "Pray tell, fair lady, what are we going to Diamond City for anyway? You hate their noodles."

"He's a chinese spy."

"Red chinese spy."

Gabriel sighed heavily, keeping her eyes fixed on the road ahead of them. As silence fell between the two of them, she cleared her throat, nodding as if deciding something in her head. "Nick found something on Kellogg."