It's been a while since I have written a fanfic, much less in the stream-of-consciousness format. Nonetheless, best foot forward. Characterizing Gunther and Anna's relationship was difficult, as few hints were given about it in-game. I pity Gunther, but do not think him a pure imbecile. I only own my brief OC.
Orange, he finally had it.
Gunther, however, could not find it in himself to smile at that. The aluminum squealed as he tightened his grasp about it, compacting the can. The image of the generic brand was distorted, the paint folded. Heavily, he brought it down upon the table, rattling the computer upon it. The can shook upon the surface before falling on its side, rolling in the bright blue light of the machine before falling off, clanging onto the floor.
He sighed, his tongue searching for the remnants of the sugar that the soda left in his mouth, the acidic content tingling against his gums. He had it, and now it was gone. Leaning back against the stone arm of the short staircase leading down onto his floor, he thought it rather fitting to his life, and immediately let out a laugh at such a notion. To begin, he was far greater the warrior, and far lesser the poet, to have the ability to make such a simile, never mind the fact that he was making an analogy out of a soda can, of all things.
He craned back his neck, staring up at the ceiling above. They thought he couldn't hear them, could they? Strutting back and forth on the stone floor, the commandos bore their sparkling armor and heavy artillery like peacocks. Newest models, rolled fresh off the line with all of the fineries attached, while he sat within the basement, the old model left to collect dust, all but forgotten.
At least he had the schadenfreude. The commandos were too methodical, too clean, too broken in their own sense. Targeting computers, courtesy of their technologically-advanced goggles, stole the thrill of the chase, and the precision-based weapons removed the sheer guttural delight of a close kill. The snapping of a neck, the twisting of a spine, the warm spray of blood...Gunther's nostrils flared. He wasn't quite used to this lack of action. How many days had passed, it really mattered little, at least to him, anyway. To his superiors, on the other hand, it was heavily so. Deadlines, plots, bids for the future…Oh, Navarre would have been basking in all of this.
He slumped to the floor, his one knee raised, and his arm draped over it. Anna, Anna, Anna. He could call out to her as much as he may please, but it would not bring her back. No, all that had remained of her body were blood splatters on the wall and floor, and chunks of shrapnel from her augmentations. Gunther had run his fingers through the former, while the latter had shone in the bright lights overhead.
He cursed his momentary weakness that night. Sentimental was never a word that Gunther associated himself with, but to lose her of all people was a differing matter altogether. Shock had taken over, freezing him within that hallway, without even a body to hold. Years among years of working by her side, and the competition of bodies that had fallen before them in a massive count had come to nothing.
Anna's augmented eye shone at him in a ghostly glow. "Denton's loose. I will take care of him; do not interfere." He'd kept her message on archive, replaying it over at length during slow periods such as this, his eyes functioning as the projector. Gunther knew better than to attempt to steal her kill, but the temptation to do so had been so tantalizing. Perhaps if he had gone after Denton, Navarre would still be alive today, and he would not be stashed as an artifact in this basement.
And the vending machine only gave him lemon-lime…
Manderley was gone, his chest pumped full of lead by Denton. He would receive a proper burial, flag draped over the casket. But what did it matter anymore? Gunther wondered if he ever did put in that order for the skull gun, but decided to not further entertain the notion. He rattled the bars of his cage as often as he could now in order to receive more upgrades, but to little avail. No boss to take care of him, no partner to speak on his behalf…He had voiced a fear, though anonymously, to Dr. Reyes of being reduced to nothing more than a golem to scare the children.
He wasn't stupid. Perhaps not as intelligent as Navarre, and perhaps more prone to anger, but not stupid. Otherwise, his kill count would not have been higher than Anna's, and he would also have been dead a long time ago due to the enemies he had made. Even so, many liked to pretend the alternative. While he still had his computer and the holographic terminal, the communication was sparse. That was all right, he supposed, all things considering. He wasn't much of a people person to start with.
His amount of kills reflected that. Standing with a creak of metal, he regarded the fact with pride, although it was for but a moment. Navarre's kills now had a set amount, the ceiling established by her death. In life, she had challenged Gunther's position, pushing him ever harder in their killing sprees. Cities were set ablaze by them at night while the innocent slept peacefully, the terrorists dragged out of their holes for a proper execution. If any truly deserved such, in Anna's opinion.
He should have known better than to charge into action on Liberty Island. Maybe then he would have remained her partner. But no, no that was a lie. He was bound to be phased out by JC anyway, in retrospect, and the fact that the nano-aug had been the one to save him from the NSF only twisted the knife further.
His fist clenched. Stupid woman, Anna! For once, it would have been nice for her to not brush him off as overly paranoid! The fist struck the side of the stone railing, chipping off a small portion of masonry. Gunther rubbed his hand, and drew his fingers away at a sense of dampness to find that it was bleeding. His anger slowly subsided as he wiped it off on his leg, smearing the metal with his blood. It was little more than childish wailing of how it wasn't fair, his playmate taken too early, but hell if he cared at this point; no one was watching. Stab him and he would bleed, hurt him and he would cry.
Cry? Though it was shameful for him to think of it, he did still do so once in a while. Fearing the future, whilst turning toward the shadow of the past, and resisting the urge to allow it to swallow him, did hideous things to him. Walls he had once thought fortified were broken down, the ultimate collapse looming ever higher within him. Shut down imminent, he would think to himself, lying upon his bunk from time to time. And he would awaken the next day, recharged to the fullest, to stride dutifully into the next field of conflict.
But that duty was never a strain upon him, although there were some nights where he did look back upon himself, and reach back toward what once was. War had been his mistress, his service in the GSG 9 their first courting. Images were easy to come by; firing his gun at the range, the sweat dripping off of his brow to hit the floor below as he lifted heavy weights, the sights of running, booted feet before him…He could hear things, too, sound bytes trapped in time.
"Gunther!" It was remarkably the only time a squad mate, Schwarzkopf, had had ever addressed him by his first name, the boy's voice barely more than a harsh whisper, his gloved hand grasping his arm. His dark eyes were wide, blood bubbling in his mouth.
Hands tight around the boy's neck, Gunther found he could hardly resist the temptation to strangle him. This young, flawed being, his poor compatriot was cut down in his prime. He supposed he could be kinder to the boy, but in that moment, the anger welled up within him. Every single mistake he had made, the slip shots he had taken, the stumbling in his step, the sheer frustration of his sheer human manner to error…It was magnified ten-fold in this instant, the boy splayed out upon the floor, his blood-soaked fingers held out limply before him, a vicious gash from the knife driven into his stomach. At least he had been competent enough to kill his assailant, mission accomplished.
But he relented, his hands dropping from his neck. Schwarzkopf needed help. The boy didn't survive, anyway, so the incident was dropped. Someone would cry over his death, and a short service would be given. Bury him, settle the earth, move on.
Yet there were things he could barely remember, if at all, the freshness of them lost to the passage of time in this mechanical shell. The last time he had raked his fingers through his own blonde hair, he could barely recall. The wind on his face would be shielded, or filtered in through his mechanical implants, when it had once freely brushed against him.
Anna had tugged him back from it each time, in her own way. It was utterly humiliating, but it was true. An accomplished military career of his own, and he still bowed to another. Kill streaks aside, Gunther had been outdone by her. And hell, did he miss her for it.
That damn helicopter carried JC off, moments before he could have him. Denton had taken his Anna away. Not that she would have considered herself to be his, anyway. In Navarre's personal opinion, she was the property of no one. But as he had pointed out once, she still abided by whatever UNATCO told her to do. "I tolerate the orders," she replied with a wave of the hand, "That is not to say that I would be totally bound to them."
Once he'd splintered the glass of a mirror, he remembered it was in Cairo. Shattered upon the floor by his fist, Gunther's reflection glared back up at him. He wondered if Anna had ever done the same, but decided to allow the matter to drop. If she did so, it was not any of his business. Higher the doubt stacked, considering she had a reputation to keep; he was the dumb muscle, and therefore was, in his own way, expected to do such a destructive thing.
She wasn't a weak woman by any means, otherwise he would not have bothered. Even so, there were a few chinks in the armor, although ones she could easily shrug off; they simply didn't matter.
"Rather fitting, I suppose," she had once mused out loud, "how our bodies have been altered."
Gunther glanced up from where he had been monitoring the repair bot, the little machine repairing a massive gash in his right knee, the frayed wires sparking. "How so?"
Anna's back was to him, her shirt torn to generously reveal her back, the pulsing blue circuitry splayed across it glowing in the low light of the hanging lamp above her. She leaned forward over a dirty sink, her black head bowed, the angle of her body shielding the frontal view of her face reflected back in the mirror. It was miles below Oxford, he recalled vaguely, but there was really little point in wondering as to the exact location; a new city, a new cloak of bright, dazzling lights to cover the dank, dark underbelly. Anna's foot, toe pointed down, tapped behind her.
Had she been facing him, Gunther would have seen her smirk. "Simple, it is how we integrate to this world. Do not forget that I am devoid of this dreaded 'shelf-life' which so many seem to fear. This is not devolution to me, it is evolution. Why allow myself to be forced to remain in this organic shell, when I could step out of it, and become something stronger, better?"
A few moments of silence between them passed, the repair bot completing its task, and swinging away.
"Then what does that make my path?" He inquired softly, much to his own surprise. His fist clenched slowly at his side.
Anna's head swung about sharply, a bemused look on her face at his reaction. A jagged scratch pierced through the left side of her lip, the lower front of her shirt torn and frayed. Her human eye blinked a few times, while her mechanical eye appeared to shut down, its red light pulsing once, before returning to its stagnant bright scarlet. "Agent Hermann?"
"What is it?" Gunther repeated, his more characteristic grit returning to his voice.
Her reply was sharp, heavily contrasting her prior shut down, as if it had not occurred. "A wall."
His fist unclenched suddenly at her candid words. "I'm sorry?"
"You are a wall," she responded slowly, drawing out and emphasizing her words as if he had misheard.
Hermann opened his mouth, wishing to express that his audio implants were in perfect working order, but closed it just as soon.
Anna raised an eyebrow, stepping one foot out to better balance her weight. Dropping her arms and splaying out the palms of her hands, she waited. Her pistol stood in her holster, the silver butt of it standing out. Strapped to her boot was a knife, the surface of it glinting with each turn of her ankle. Routine mission, cosmetic damage aside. She could always find another shirt.
When he at last spoke, however, he asked, "That is my purpose, an object?"
"Yes, and no," she replied in that same slow cadence of tone, "The sheer durability of your body forms you into a wall, my wall, to be exact."
Gunther internally swelled with pride at the statement, despite its context. Her wall, she had called him her wall. True, his necessity for implants had made him the property of the mechanics, doctors, and UNATCO itself, but for his assigned partner to actually to tell him that he was hers was a matter all in itself. Though it was probably a dismissive acknowledgment of their status, it was an acknowledgment all the same.
"But you still stand as a physical wall against those who oppose us, and frankly any who would threaten our stride into the future." Holding up a finger, she explained, "We are in changing times, you know this. It is better to cling to what solid things we may have." Gunther stepped toward her at that. Navarre dropped her hand toward him, and he reached out to take it. Moments before his much larger fingers would touch her palm, she dropped her hand to her side. "Take care to remember that."
What was affection, anyway? Certainly there was that brotherly closeness among JC and Paul, something so saccharine their earnest protectiveness of one another. Paul was a failure, little doubt about that. In retrospect, it wasn't much of a shock, as Paul had already proved himself to be quite soft in his conduct. But he was a nano-aug, not a mech. He was worth more money. He'd certainly not be sold at a pittance, that was for true.
But the bond he had with JC was easy to discern. The second nano-aug did not leave UNATCO without his brother. Even still, Gunther wondered how long that would last, destructive as JC was. He had left a trail of blood in his wake upon his departure, much despite his claims of pacifism. Hermann's anger at not being allowed to take vengeance upon his jailers on Liberty Island had remained, although it simmered in comparison to this new transgression for which JC was responsible.
He had entertained the notion more times than he would have liked to divulge. Anna would have been proud of his thoroughness, the sheer amount of details with which he would trap and murder JC. After all, being the killer of 1000 people, he had plenty of experience in knowing the gory details of the typical human body, the flaying of the skin, the cutting of bone (and the sheer amount of strength necessitated for such a process), the squishy surface of organs in his hands, the splatter of blood…But the fact that JC was a nano-aug, an oddity in himself, set him apart. His interest in nano-aug anatomy had been deep-seated, having already stripped mechs of their parts in the field, and seen his own interior and exterior parts degrade and be replaced.
He certainly knew he would take Denton's eyes, his defining feature. Whether he would store them as a trophy, or simply crush them between his fingers, he was unsure, but he would have them. He would be more than happy to gut JC alive, but he would also have to be careful to do so. For as much as he wished to crush the nano-aug's skull, he wanted him to suffer, not just for Anna, but also for supplanting him. Yet, he did want to snap him in two, all the same. And then there was the aftermath. He could keep the body for a trophy, as well, but there was a much more insidious idea.
He would display JC's body (at least what remained of it) for his brother to see. It would be fitting, one loss for another. Anna's killer would be taken, and the cycle of vengeance would begin again. He doubted Paul would be less of a challenge, but it would still provide a catharsis, nonetheless. Was this the future Anna had wanted, for him to be relegated to nothing more than an outdated, forgotten piece of scrap? He dared not think about it.
Even if he did fall against either Denton (though that item was doubtful), it would be preferable to whatever fate Majestic 12 had in store for him. Go out in a blaze of glory, with just one last request being fulfilled, yes, that would be the perfect epilogue.
Yet, he whimpered, a soft cry at the notion.
It was the perfect ending to the perfect story, the true warrior falling in combat. Wagner would wish him well, borne by the valkyries off to Valhalla.
Gunther shut his stinging eyes against the bright lighting of the console, and felt the tears welling up.
Anna would have called him weak for such a display of emotion, nay, she would not have even said anything to him in her utter disappointment.
He brought the back of his wrist up to wipe at his eyes.
But Anna wasn't there.
He couldn't help it; the stinging wouldn't stop. More whimpers, more soft cries whispered out from his throat.
Golems didn't cry.