Distance
Synopsis: Long before Hoover Dam, in a land devoid of mercy, Joshua Graham taught a child to kill. (T)
Arizona, January 2266.
The deathclaw howled in rage, gagging on its own blood. With a final lunge toward the legate, it collapsed forward into knee-deep water. The echo of its roar and the wave its body displaced swept through the deep gash in the earth, bouncing off shiny rock walls. Then all was still.
The boy slid off its back with a splash. The machete in his hand glistened black with blood in the cave's green glow. His knees nearly gave out, and he steadied himself against the beast's side, alert for any sudden movement. None came; it was dead.
"Did it get you?" Joshua asked him.
"I— I think so," murmured Gabriel. "I am alrigh—" he stumbled. Joshua started in suprise, but the boy remained stubbornly upright.
As Joshua approached his apprentice, Gabriel glanced back at the fallen monster behind him. Its head alone was almost as tall as the boy's thirteen-year-old body. A gurgle of laughter escaped his lips, then another.
Within seconds, Gabriel had erupted into hysteria. Joshua could see tears of exhaustion and panic collecting in the boy's eyes, and without thinking, he pulled him into his arms. Such contact was a rarity for them, had to be.
Joshua took the opportunity to glance down at Gabriel's back. The boy had underestimated the severity of his wound: a seeping red diagonal to match the two crossed over his front. There was nothing to be done about it until they had escaped this cave, where light and sanitation were hard to come by.
His forlorn giggles subsided into labored breathing, and Joshua pushed him quickly to arms' length, hands not leaving his shoulders. Joshua would have liked to hold him until the adrenaline surge released its grip, but that wasn't how their relationship worked. Not when the soldiers were already beginning to snicker about their legate going soft, not with Edward's snide remarks about his priorities. Not with all he had to put Gabriel through in training. In the grand scheme of things, one boy wasn't important. The Legion was important. Caesar was important.
Gabriel glimpsed up at the starlight filtering into the crevice from above them. Joshua followed his gaze. They had climbed down to take the sleeping deathclaw by surprise, enticed by the cave's dim neon light. But they had vastly underestimated its size and ferocity. It had nearly killed them both with two swipes of its incredible claws.
Bravely, Gabriel had clambered from a raised ledge onto its back while its attention had been turned to Joshua. He had attempted to hack through its tough hide, but the deathclaw had quickly noticed and began trying to buck him off. Peppered with Joshua's bullets and butchered by Gabriel's machete, it had finally died, but not before shaking the boy up significantly.
Gabriel's breathing steadied. He exhaled into a smirk. "Good kill."
"Indeed, it was. You must have an excellent teacher."
Gabriel laughed again, shaky but no longer hysterical. "If I had such a teacher, he would have been up there in my stead." His tribal accent moved his voice in a cadence Joshua knew as well as his own.
Joshua snorted and shoved him. "Come on, you."
Gabriel was reluctant to leave his kill, but it wasn't as if they could bring it back to Flagstaff. Joshua finally allowed him to cut off a talon for proof. It was nearly five pounds and barely fit in Gabriel's satchel, but it distracted him from his injury.
They continued through the cavern. The deathclaw had gotten in — there had to be a way out. Both kept an eye out for more monsters, but none seemed to be making an appearance.
Gabriel chuckled yet again. "You look ridiculous."
"Why don't you remove that log from your eye and check again?"
"You know I don't understand your sayings, sir."
"It means 'you too.'"
Gabriel looked down at himself and laughed once more. The pond where they had fought the deathclaw grew thick with mossy foliage that let off a sharp bioluminescence. The both of them were covered in its waxy green glow, faintly illuminating the walls around them. The stuff grew in small ponds along the passageway, lighting their path.
Joshua looked back, noticing his apprentice had fallen behind. The boy was distracted, plucking fistfuls of the green flora from a small pool.
"Drop that," Joshua ordered.
Gabriel scowled but opened his fist. His prize fluttered to the ground.
"We don't know what it is. You're going to irradiate yourself if you aren't careful."
"Cave fungus heals radiation poisoning," the boy reasoned, a plaintive note in his deepening voice.
"Is this fungus? It looks more like grass." Joshua stooped to examine it. Maybe Edward would appreciate a sample. He pretended not to notice Gabriel over at another pool, shoving the growth into his pockets.
They climbed out of the mouth of the cave, met with soft traces of rising sunlight. Joshua patched up Gabriel's wound (an unpleasant task; the bandages were wet and foul-smelling, and sand was hard to avoid out here). The cut wasn't as bad as he had feared, but the fact that Gabriel had still been able to joke and navigate the cave tunnels was a testament to his fortitude. If Joshua couldn't give him love, he had at least taught him tenacity.
They traveled west. It was a long trip. Gabriel teased Joshua's decision to lead them into a death trap. Joshua fired back about Gabriel's insistence on keeping the deathclaw's finger. These were the moments Joshua ended up remembering. He forgot most of the battles, and the hard times, but what stayed were the moments where it could just be the two of them. Not a legate and his slave, but a teacher and his apprentice, framed by morning sunshine.
When Joshua returned from his mission report, he entered his house just in time to see Gabriel quickly hide something he'd been holding. From the way his hands glowed, it wasn't hard to guess what.
"Show me," Joshua ordered. Gabriel uncovered his creation: a little woven cord, made of the luminous cave reeds. He eyed Joshua cautiously, expecting a blow. But Joshua couldn't bring himself to hit him for this. He examined the cord. "Tribal craftsmanship?"
"Yes," the boy muttered.
"Well-made," Joshua said, giving it back to him. "I told you to drop those."
"You did, Master."
"Show me how much you have."
Gabriel pulled out great clumps of the grasslike organism (a fungus, Edward had concluded). He had managed to stash away an impressive amount, to be honest. It piled like a corpse over Joshua's coffee table.
"So, help me understand. You collected an unknown material after I told you to drop it—"
"Yes."
"Risking radiation poisoning."
"It isn't radioactive. I checked."
"And getting residue all over your armor and supplies."
Gabriel glanced into a pocket and cringed. "Yes."
"Then you used it for tribal art, which you know is illegal."
"The fact that my tribe taught me this skill does not make it a ritual."
"Tch. And you tried to hide it from me."
"Surprise?" Gabriel winced.
"What do you propose I do about this?" Joshua was required to treat his apprentice with the strictest discipline. Even a harmless breach such as this was unacceptable.
Gabriel looked him boldly in the eye. "I propose nothing."
"Nothing."
"I disobeyed no orders, and the law only forbids tribal art, which is not what I am doing. As for my armor... I'll clean it."
Joshua sighed. He really didn't want to have to beat the boy over something this stupid. "Very well. No punishment."
"Really?" Gabriel blurted, suprised. He knew full well Joshua's expectations, and his defense had been merely a token effort.
"Yes. But now is a perfect time to work on your sleep deprivation training, don't you think?"
Gabriel's face fell into irritation. "I would have preferred you just hit me."
Master wasn't angry. That was good, at least. Gabriel could always tell. He yelled plenty, but when he was truly angry, he would speak deathly low, straight to your soul. It was a thing to witness.
Sleep deprivation was exactly what it sounded like. Apparently it was vital to his training that he learned how to function without rest. The two of them had meant to arrive in Flagstaff and sleep a few hours before dawn, but they had been sidetracked by the cave. So Gabriel was already exhausted. Now, he had to force himself to continue functioning until he was allowed to rest again, which would only happen once the bracelets had all been made.
Gabriel suffered through morning training (stressful), a war council (tedious), lunch (two more bracelets made), an afternoon of supervising troops (Legate was tired too, so he yelled at a squad of them — fun to watch), an inspection of fifteen-year-trainees nearly cleared for battle (Gabriel could have defeated any of them in single combat, but they won Master's approval), dinner (no bracelets made because Caesar decided to be there and Master didn't want him to know about it), and evening training (agony). Finally, he was allowed free time to work on his bracelets.
It was nice to create instead of destroy, for once. And rare to have something of his own. Since Gabriel was property himself, everything he had was also the legate's. But Master had made it clear that Gabriel could do whatever he liked with the bracelets once they were made.
Obviously he'd have to give them away. He'd considered selling them, but discarded the idea. What could he even buy with the money? He got better food than most slaves, and the best weapons and armor, just by virtue of living in the legate's house. The only real reason legionaries wanted money was to buy slaves. Obviously, there was a slave he'd have liked to buy, but Gabriel wasn't on the market, and he couldn't exactly afford his freedom by selling cave reeds anyway. Or his mother's, for that matter.
Still, this felt like the most power Gabriel had ever had. He solemnly resolved to use his power for good, as if there were a way to give away bracelets in the service of evil. At this level of exhaustion, the thought was hilarious.
Joshua woke up sometime in the dead of the night. He'd have liked to keep sleeping, but knew he should check on Gabriel.
He found the boy standing on the kitchen table, lit by the soft glow of the fungus. Gabriel startled and nearly fell when Joshua walked in. The half-finished strand fluttered to the floor.
"Hello, Gabriel. Why are you standing on the table?"
"To prevent sleep, sir. I am exhausted."
Joshua stifled a chuckle and handed Gabriel his fallen bracelet. "Why don't you come down and talk with me instead?"
Gabriel clambered off. "What is it that you wish to talk about?"
"Nothing in particular. I mean to keep you awake."
"Oh."
They sat down, Gabriel on the couch and Joshua at his desk by the fireplace. The boy was only wearing one shoe. Joshua wondered if he even noticed.
"How many have you made?" Joshua asked, leaning to start a fire.
Gabriel was silent for a long moment. "Seventeen?" he hazarded.
"Do you think you'll finish by daylight?"
"I have no idea. Is it nearly morning?"
"No."
"Then I might."
The fire caught suddenly, narrowly missing Joshua's fingertips. The boy said nothing. Joshua turned to see him staring blearily into the flame, knees clutched to his chest. "Don't get distracted, Gabriel."
Gabriel set back to work, looking uncannily like a corpse. Joshua started on some paperwork. They passed time in silence until Gabriel finally spoke up.
"I miss my mother."
They had suddenly entered shaky territory. Joshua looked over to see the boy still hugging his legs, eyes like the abyss. Joshua answered, "Exhaustion is making you sentimental. It will pass."
Gabriel buried his face in his knees. "Do you think she is alright?"
"Likely. She's too old for manual labor, but she has charisma. No doubt she's found allies."
Gabriel didn't lift his head. "You do not even know her."
"Then why did you ask? Finish your work so you can go to bed and stop being miserable." Joshua went back to his paperwork.
Gabriel resumed working in earnest, unhappy with the dismissal but comforted by the thought that his mother could be happy. All was silent until his voice pierced the dark again.
"Where do we go when we die?"
"The Styx."
The boy scowled. "You don't believe in those myths."
"Are you asking unanswerable questions because you think I'll let you sleep early, or just to torment me?"
"I want to know."
"Don't we all."
His apprentice harrumphed in annoyance. "Very well. What do you wish to talk about?"
"What if we avoided topics that neither of us know the answer to?" Joshua proposed flatly.
Gabriel huffed in annoyance and tied off the end of his current bracelet. "Master?"
"Yes?"
"Do you miss your family?"
He really was trying to torture him. "My family, if they live, would not be happy to see me. I don't wish they were here."
Gabriel was unsatisfied with his answer. "But do you miss them?"
"No. I'm too busy to worry about things like that," he answered conclusively.
"So that feeling does go away? Or is it because you chose to leave that you do not miss them?"
"That is a decision I made for myself. You have the option as well."
"It does not feel that way."
"Not at three in the morning, it doesn't."
"I'm frightened that she is so far away," Gabriel persisted.
"One mile or a hundred. It's out of your hands. You need to accept your powerlessness. Not doing so is what got you and your mother to where you are now."
Gabriel opened his mouth, possibly to defend his mother, but Joshua was right and he knew it.
"That may be true," Gabriel admitted, weary conviction gripping his voice. "But I will never accept being a slave."
"And you wonder why you're unhappy."
Gabriel slumped over on his side, conversation ended.
2266 -
January - Distance
2267-2276 -
2277 -
January - Sage destroys the Divide
February - First Battle of Hoover Dam
July - The Mummy Returns
August 17 - Aniss leaves Vault 101
The Prodigal Son
September - To Set the Record Straight
November - The Burned Man Walks
2278 -
April - James dies (Purity War begins)
Bitter Springs
September - Project Purity activates
2279 -
Adams Air Force Base (Purity War ends)
2280 -
May - Dogmeat's Vacation
August - Boones are married
2281 -
New Canaan is destroyed
October 11 - Sage is shot in the head
October 19 - Sage wakes up
2282 -
ED-E, My Bud
2283 -
January - Second Battle of Hoover Dam
February - To Have and To Hold
April - Awake, O Sleeper
May - Worst-Case Scenario
