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Unwilling Heroes
by R-isForRebel
01: Merciless

His flesh felt stiff underneath the smooth leather of her gloves, eyes bulging from blued skin.

Gabriel stood over him, her hands fastened tight about the neck, bearing a wicked smile from ear to ear as she kept her face close to his. Messy heaps of metal, some spitting electrical sparks from broken circuits, among a kicked-up storm of dust that seemed to adorn every inch of Fort Hagens' interior surrounded them, the air quaint with its time-lost atmosphere. Much to the disapproval of those around her, pleasure spread across her features, a joy left unjustified by words taking over. Kellogg fought, his hands batting with as much strength as they could muster against her body, but she stood fast, fueled by a fury unhindered by the wounds earlier inflicted upon the man. Feet beginning to kick, she laughed hoarsely, digging her nails into his skin while listening in silence to his strained gasps of futile attempts for air barely coming free from a near closed throat.

It may have taken him over a year, but Nick Valentine had found him. Nick had finally found him. The idiot had taken up, or simply re-moved in, residence in Diamond City to boot, almost as if he had suddenly decided to taunt her, a couple months back. Her best guess would have been he was nothing more than a cocky asshole, sure to the moon that he was untouchable. He was here, right now, in front of her. Had even tried to run, for what good that did him.

Was almost fitting that his running led them to an old abandoned military Fort from before the war, grating the speakers with his sandpaper voice as he had tried to stop her. Tried to turn her around. Had been just shy of an impossible task, though. It didn't matter if Shaun was alive, dead, old or young; was a matter of principal, now. The asshole had been crude enough to leave her now ex-husbands corpse in front of her face to discover whenever released from the ice prison that had confined her.

Their unblinking eyes remained locked as life drained from Kellogg, his resistance steadily weakening and mouthed words slowing down to a nigh stop. Her grip simply tightened in response, immediately hunching up her back as she strained the muscles in her hands; Gabriels' synthetic armor gave way to how violently her body shook. There had been so many words on the tip of her tongue that she had wanted to scream at the man she had literally between her palms, suffocating the life out of him, but she found herself completely taken by the blindside rage seeing him had injected her into, talking suddenly the utmost last thing on her mind. There was only the need for revenge, for closure.

She knew it wasn't going to bring anyone back. But it sure did feel good.

Even as his eyes rolled up to the back of his head and his body slumped lifeless, her knife seemed to find its way into her hand, quickly thrust deep into his chest between the fourth and fifth rib. Reflexively, Gabriel pulled the blade back to slam it back into the same wound, this time causing the blade to poke out through his back, rising the leather jacket. Blood gushed forth, leaving her unphased even as she thrust her blade deep into his skin again, coming from the opposite side this time. She became nothing more than a frenzied hoodlum, making a blended mess of his innards with lazy, dragged thrusts of metal.

Unsatisfied, Gabriel dropped Kelloggs mangled corpse onto the ground, her blade singing through the air as she ripped it out of his flesh, only to be stopped by a tight grip about her wrist. She spun, momentarily furious and ready to redirect her rage at whoever it had been to so much as touch her, only to find herself stopped dead in her tracks when met by the face of MacCready who bore a deep-set frown.

"Gabe... he's dead."

She stood quiet in the wake of his words that came out firm, filled with some form of disgust or disdain at her that she was unable to identify. She let her fingers loosen, blade dropping to the ground with a handful of clanks, while lowering her eyes down to what had been moments before just a corpse, albeit Kellogg had quite a few gears, so to speak, sticking out of his flesh. Try as she might, there was no remorse to speak of. He deserved far worse.

"Are you okay?"

Liam had always been the strong one of the two of them.

Ever since they met as kids in high-school, two polar opposites fighting from day one, he had always been the one defending her, picking her up off the floor. He had seen things in her that she never knew even existed, giving strength to the crippled rag-doll frame that made up her being, forcing her to face the failures she had run from; why-ever he gave an urchin like her a chance was well beyond her understanding. First love, mayhaps. Even after he had joined the army, he had come back to her, ignoring her unfaithful behavior like he did everything else bad in her. She was no hero, no stunning example of a human being or even a law abiding citizen despite her career choice; Abigael Wines was a coward, just another weak-willed flop with no spine who found nil hesitation or remorse in gunning down a fellow officer. Hell, she was too much of a gutless worm to hear her birth name anymore. Why she stood here, alive, instead of him, was by sheer luck; some sort of sick, fucked-up joke of coincidence, if it wasn't karma getting back at her.

Watching him die was like watching everything that had ever been good in her be torn asunder after being ripped straight from the chest, her screams echoing off of a refrigerator meant for a popsicle; Shaun died then and there with him, even if it turned out to be by a metaphorical sense. When her freedom came what felt like moments later, the woman who had come out of that stasis pod was a far different one than the one that had stepped inside.

In the face of his corpse, a bullet hole frozen bloodless in his features despite how peaceful they had found themselves resting, she had balked, falling to her knees on the ice-cold grate below her to empty stomach contents that she would later find to be over two hundred years old. Despite how many corpses she had seen in her lifetime, she stood like a virgin to the carnage now before her, pale-faced and sobbing while clinging to nothing but a chunk of frozen meat. Not even once had she given thought to the fact that her son, Shaun, could be out there breathing, alive, as all of the monster inside of her rose to the surface; if they had killed Liam, why would they leave Shaun alive? Gabriel didn't have that kind of luck.

Her first steps into the war-torn world that was now her home had been with Liam thrown over her shoulder rather than at her side, covering her squinted eyes with her free hand against a blinding, unfamiliar light. To a then-Abigael, it had been shy of a half hour that all this outside of the tomb of Vault 111 was full of life, soldiers, supplies and people running for cover; now, it bore skeletons and rubble, completed by the shells of vehicles left to rot in the wake of nuclear fire. Codsworth had been the only thing still there from earlier her day, although much worse for wear, calming what little gusto she had left with his enthusiasm of life in a son already sworn off as dead, flailing his thin metal arms at enormous cockroaches as she took to shovel and dirt.

Thinking back on it, it would have been better to leave him down there in that tomb, instead of making herself stand over that hole staring down at his corpse with their wedding rings in hand. She couldn't stomach having even one of them in her possession, leaving the unwanted memories of a happier life left with the last of it. While all of the guilt of being the one who survived, who couldn't do anything, came at her, she could feel it crushing what light Liam had put in her, a piece of her felt fluttering away into nothingness with each heap of radioactive dirt she dropped on top of his cold body. By the time she had sat beside the burial mound, winding metal wire around the remnants of Shauns crib to make three crosses, one small, something had already unraveled inside of her, broken and irreparable.

Was all just a matter of time before the last wire snapped.

Lady, I'm just a puppet like you. My stage is a little bigger, that's all.

Gabriel pulled her captured arm back with a hard jerk, lips pursing tight. "Don't worry about it," was her reply, each word thick with an alarmingly defensive poison. Turning on her heel, she lowered herself down to Kellogg's corpse, inspecting the pieces of machinery that now stuck out from between what little organic tissue he seemed to have left. You were barely human...

MacCready gave an audible growl before extending the gap between the two of them, careful to put his boots down in as little of Kelloggs' blood possible. His face scrunched up in minor disgust as Gabriel pulled a part of the freshly dead mans brain from his split skull, her face plainly undisturbed with the gore she now looked over in scrutiny. "Unless you were intending to make wine with him, I'm pretty sure that was overkill," he lectured, giving a quick sweep of his hand over a dust-covered desk before slumping down onto it and pulling forth his ragged pack of cigarettes. Flipping the pack open, his lips dexterously latched onto a solitary cigarette and lifted it up from its container before he added "Think I'm a little past worrying."

Instead of even so much as acknowledging him, she nonchalantly continued rifling through Kelloggs innards, peeling out anything that looked worth salvaging or a couple caps once cleaned up. He wasn't going to need it anymore, after all. Upon quickly tiring of the task, she rose back up and wrapped the chunk of brain in a scrap of cloth along with a handful of metallic pieces she had no names for; Gabriel wasn't exactly the science type. Better left to whoever Nick would find to-

MacCready had, without her noticing, closed the distance between the two of them again, causing her to run almost face-first into his upon turning around. Abruptly pausing, her eyes remained lowered, indecisiveness mingled with curiosity keeping her there; Kelloggs terminal was only a few strides off. With an exhale of smoke, MacCready loudly cleared his throat, using the butt of the rifle idly hanging off his shoulder to push her chin up level with him.

Her eyes rose, slow and steady. MacCready had been something of a blessing in his own right, the only man in possibly all the Commonwealth who had no intention of taking advantage of or ever laying a hand on her; what had originally been nothing more than her weakly clinging on to another miserable soul who wasn't more likely to pick her pockets than keep a conversation, had become possibly the best friendship Gabriel ever had in her miserable existence, someone she depended on without even a moments hesitation. She valued that more than her own life, for what little worth she found in it. Mayhaps that was why she found herself suddenly feeling guilty underneath his scrutiny, mistaking genuine concern for judgement.

Why did he always have to be so damn nice to her? Why couldn't he just let her suffer in silence like the rest of them, turning a blind eye to a woman in shambles? She parted the lips of her mouth as if to answer her, but instead found herself sighing, casually succumbing to her own disappointment by pushing by her partner in crime to set her fingers to the Terminal. Instead of finding herself a free ride to next subject, however, that same rifle slammed down on the keyboard, nigh catching her fingers, followed by both of his hands grabbing a shoulder. "Gabe."

"I don't know, okay?!"

She had answered him before being finished spun around, catching MacCready off guard. He had already begun into a rebuttal for being told off, words catching in his throat when realizing her face twisted in pain, suddenly frozen. For all the terrible things that she had done in her time long before it became a daily norm in the world, all the lives she ruined or ended, for all the people she failed, Gabriel didn't deserve this...this sympathy. She was shaking again, his eyes lowering down to her vibrating shoulders once his hand was swatted away.

"I-I gave up on, on all of this, buried myself in old habits, it's over, it's all over...and he's alive? Fucking christ, Robbie, he's alive.
"This whole time, I've been doing nothing more than everything I was supposed to have given up... just an easy chop with no common sense. I don't know how to be a mother. Me? A mom? Can't even make apocalypse jokes. I don't even know how to be a fucking person. This was supposed to be it, it was supposed to be over, no more chasing, no more... there's a whole 'nother race ahead of me now, a whole 'nother god damn race against some boogeyman in the dark. I don't know what's worse; the fact that I'm excited, but not for finding my son, for the blood, because the other is the fact that I don't even care. I don't even care, Robbie, don't even care, don't even..." Her hands rose up, clutching the sides of her head. Giving voice to the thoughts bouncing off her mind made it all too real, knees suddenly weak. Why was she saying all of this? "I buried him almost two years ago, with Liam. With my past. With Abigael Wines. Gabriel had no room for this, Gabriel doesn't have a son or a husband or...or anything. But that's not true, is it- he's alive. Despite everything, he's alive."

A package of cigarettes rose up to her face, graciously accepted. He rose a flame for her, flipping it closed as she inhaled sharply, still holding her head with one hand. "Fucking hell, Robbie."

"You know I hate it when you call me that," MacCready sighed, flicking his own stick of cancer dismissively. She remained unbothered and stationary, attempting to calm herself as she sucked back the nicotine from its cloth casing with an impatient need. "You got over things- so what? Chances are, he's not even a little kid anymore."

She growled, dismissively sending his rifle spinning to the floor off the Terminal keyboard. Answers, or a lead to somewhere other than a dead end, had to be somewhere, and she would be damned if she was going to miss any. "That's not the point. I need answers. I need to...I need to know."

"Piper's going to have a field day with us doing something involving the Institute again, at least," he laughed, trying to lighten her mood. Upon receiving a glowering response, he balked, backtracking immediately. "Okay, no Piper. No Piper. We'll just stop by rustbucket Valentine's and run."

"I-I don't know how this is supposed to-"

"You don't have to know anything; that's Nick's job," he hushed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and bringing her in to lean against him. "Just shut up, Gabe. You're overthinking it. We'll figure it out, just like we always do."