AN: It's going to take a darker turn for a few chapters. I personally wouldn't recommend skipping because it's plot-relevant (the themes aren't much more mature than some of the darker quests in New Vegas), but you theoretically could. Blake the Cowboy is based on my friend, who's been invaluable in helping me get this far in the story, which is why his portrayal is so... glowing.
Ensnared
Synopsis: (Continuation of No More, Protective Custody, and East and West) Gabriel is taken captive by the Fiends; Sage begins her quest to track him down. (Rated M for implied torture and other assorted adult themes.)
Arizona, 2268.
Cassius groaned lowly and shifted against Gabriel's back. He was reacting very poorly to this whole situation, in his employee's opinion, considering that Gabriel definitely got the worse end of the deal.
Cassius had been crouched on the ground when they'd sprung the net trap. He had the good fortune to be folded into a somewhat-dignified position in their hanging prison. Gabriel had been caught unaware by the net snapping them up, and his legs were currently pointed up toward the ceiling of the abandoned industrial complex. He was stuck folded nearly in half, and Cassius's squirming didn't help. Gabriel's shotgun was wedged painfully between them.
"Cassius," he growled. "If you would stop moving—"
Cassius froze, but not because of Gabriel. Crushed as he was, the boy only now noticed that the shadows around them were shifting.
They defined themselves into shapes, then into humans... or, beings. There was very little about these creatures that could be called human.
That was Legion propaganda talking, maybe. After spending so long in Flagstaff, it was easy to dehumanize groups less civilized, or less powerful. But even the tribes had been beautiful in their simplicity. Beauty was the furthest thing in the world from the Fiends.
Most wore Brahmin skulls on their heads, some driven through with nails, some filthy with unidentifiable substances. Their armor was patchwork — car tires, military-grade equipment, gecko skin, rags. They were bright with chems, or jittery with withdrawal. They bore savage scars across their faces and bodies, as if they fought each other tooth and nail when they weren't rallying against others. They moved like animals, coyotes waiting for the fight to go out of potential prey. Worst of all was the smell. It had been evident on the way in, but now it surrounded them. The only word for it was filth. Clotting, uninhibited, unwashed inhumanity. Gabriel could see it on them, a layer of inky-black muck that defied definition. The net shifted as he curled his hand protectively around his nose.
And from the mass of shadows-turned-beasts, a man approached. Along with his helmet, he wore leather pants, a cuirass, and a fur half-coat that covered only his shoulders. Rather than move a step to the side, he rotated the net around to look Gabriel in the face. His bloodshot eyes raked over the teenager, seeing something that seemed to amuse him. The man's odor was fiercer than the others'; it was transfixing in its obscenity. Gabriel didn't break eye contact, though he was absolutely disgusted.
The leader's dry lips pursed and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He ran a tongue casually over brown teeth. "What a good-looking thug you are," he addressed Gabriel in a voice like grit. He spun the net around to look at Cassius. Gabriel hissed in annoyance.
"Savage, you will release this net, or fear the vengeance of Caesar's Legion!" Cassius boomed, attempting lamely to mask the fear in his voice. The fiend cackled in response, doubling over with mirth.
Unimpressed with his employer's posturing, Gabriel muttered, "Keep them occupied," between his teeth as he surreptitiously fished out his serrated combat knife.
Cassius didn't seem to hear him, too distracted by the disgusting man hooting with laughter on the ground while his second-in-command held the net in place. Gabriel bitterly reflected on the easy communication he'd had with the legate. His master would never have lost control of the situation like this, and would know without speaking that Gabriel was going to cut them down. As bluntly as his memory struck Gabriel, the two had had far better chemistry than he did with Cassius.
Cassius seemed to think of his employee as a weapon or fine piece of armor — an attack dog at best. Good to have on hand, but not expected to speak or think. Gabriel didn't have much to say to the man anyway, but it was a lonely existence. He missed Juno and Rex, and didn't get along with Cassius's slave. He and Master had never been equals, but they'd had a trust, a mutual reliance of sorts, that Gabriel could never picture with Cassius. He pressed his thumb into the blade of the knife to banish the memory, and set quietly to work on the net.
Within a second, the man went from hysterical laughter to sly composition, and he picked himself up from the ground. "The Legion has no idea this base exists. You're an explorer, right? You travel for days on end before reporting back." He leaned in to whisper his foul breath into Cassius's face. "We may be savages, but we're not stupid. The Legion has no idea where you are."
Gabriel felt his employer's heart pounding against his back. "You can't—" Cassius yelled, losing his composure. "They'll come looking when I don't report in. I have the legate's most valuable property with me." Gabriel bristled at the epithet, but didn't dare change pace as he sawed through the thick cords of the makeshift net.
The cruel man gave another manic chuckle. His second-in-command turned toward the net she held steady and snarled wordlessly at its prisoners. Gabriel paused again so she wouldn't feel the vibrations of his blade against rope. The Fiend leader continued. "Sorry, soldier. My children are hungry." The last word came out as an animalistic hiss. Gabriel felt the first tendrils of fear clutching at his chest, but the contract's hold on him meant that most of his brainpower went towards protecting Cassius. No time to dwell on his own emotions, not right now.
The woman holding the net reached in and snapped her teeth at Cassius's arm. He jerked backwards, jostling Gabriel and nearly making him drop the knife. "The contract!" Cassius shouted in desperation.
Gabriel blanched with an adrenaline rush, though his hands never stopped sawing. "Cassius," he hissed in shock.
Cassius continued, tripping over words. "The contract. This slave... he doesn't — he isn't mine. I have a c-contract signed by the Mal— his master — that binds him to follow my orders... any order." Gabriel couldn't see his face, but the Fiends surrounding them leaned in with interest.
"Cassius, what are youdoing?" Gabriel pleaded under his breath.
"You're getting me out of here, boy," Cassius growled unapologetically.
Gabriel started to argue when he felt his combat knife plucked from his hand. The Fiends' second-in-command twirled it now, grinning broadly. She twisted the net back to face Gabriel toward the disgusting leader.
"So you're saying you could give it to me?" the leader asked softly.
"Yes," Cassius breathed.
"...Cut them down, Eileen."
Moments passed, tense as the ropes that held them. Then all at once, the net crashed to the ground, spilling the two onto the crusty stone floor.
Gabriel wrenched himself to his knees, and drew his shotgun as he pushed up onto his feet. If he could just get a shot off before —
"Drop your weapon." Cassius's voice sealed his fate. "Be still."
Gabriel's mind blared at him to flee or fight, but his will stayed put. The Fiend's tattered gray nails clutched at his chin, and beady eyes examined their prey from a curtain of greasy black hair. Everything about the man screamed danger. With effort, Gabriel maintained his composure. "Cassius?"
Cassius was crouched on the filthy floor. Gabriel saw with horror that he was signing his name on the contract, right below the neatly printed "Joshua Graham."
"Now," The Legion explorer muttered slowly, "I'm going to drop this on the floor right here, and you're going to sign your name on it." He thought for a moment and hung Gabriel's fallen shotgun across his back. "By the time you've finished, I'll be out the door. If you fire on me before you've signed, you're going to lose a lot of soldiers, and Gabriel too. If you fire on me after... well, you'll still lose people. Do not try it."
"Cassius. Don't do this."
His employer didn't spare him another glance before disappearing up the entrance stairway, his footsteps echoing from above.
"Eileen, get me a pen or something," the Fiend leader snapped. Eileen, the woman with the knife and the cruel smile, ran off to get one.
Within a minute, in shining red ink, the contract had a new holder.
Qavrok.
When given an order, Gabriel was singularly focused until the order was fulfilled. He was capable of doing other things in the meantime, but he couldn't intentionally delay, no matter how much he wanted to. His contract granted him a few exceptions to complete obedience, but he knew Qavrok hadn't even perused it.
His current objective was, in Qavrok's words, "Go to the G annex, the door with the deadbolt. Bring me a woman."
He knew it was going to be grisly — he half expected the room to be a freezer full of corpses — but the words hadn't prepared him for what he stumbled into.
The wall of stench hit him like a solid object. If Qavrok had been foul, this was abominable. Gabriel stood in the doorway until his watering eyes cleared and he could see into the darkness.
Four women shrank from the light, or maybe from Gabriel. It was abundantly clear that they weren't here by choice, and it wrenched his stomach almost as much as their putrescence had. Their cell had no light, and it had apparently used to be some sort of broom closet. Each took a corner, but the room was so small that their legs all touched.
They were filthy, so much so that he couldn't tell any of their races in the dim light filtering from the hallway. They wore torn dressescovered in multiple overlapping dark stains. They looked emaciated and sickly. Gabriel didn't want to touch them, both because he felt their frail bones would break in an instant, and because he had no idea what sorts of diseases were coated on the surfaces of that room.
Shaking himself from his shock, he held his breath and grabbed the one huddling closest, hauling her to her feet with as much gentleness as he could manage.
No one made a sound when he dragged her into the hallway and bolted the door behind him. She fought his grip on her arm, but her touch was that of an insect, even when she pounded fists against his arm and sides. He kept his face carefully neutral, shutting out her angry little grunts of effort.
That was, until she yanked down with her entire body weight, landing in a heap on the hallway floor. She curled her left arm around her right where he'd grabbed it and looked up at him in defiant expectation of punishment.
After a moment's eye contact, he dropped to scoop her up, bridal style, before she could react. She squeaked in fear until she realized she was being held.
She weighed little to nothing, and without having to look at her, it was much easier to ignore what was happening. Once he had carried her a little ways, she rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Gabriel realized, very suddenly, that she was beautiful. Not attractive, not by a long shot — her hair was frayed and unwashed, and left a thin sheen of grease across his armor; her features were bony with malnourishment, and she had a distinctly unhealthy pallor that screamed disease — but she was beautiful. In that dark closet, she had seemed like some feral animal, but now he saw her in her humanity. Her suffering, her peace. Her decision to make him a source of comfort rather than an enemy, when he was in such a state of shock and grief himself.
"What's your name?" she murmured, still curled up against him. She didn't acknowledge that she'd punched him at least ten times earlier, but the aching pinpricks were already fading.
"Gabriel."
"I'm Butterfly," she blinked her eyes open and smiled. The name was flashy and didn't really suit her. "Sorry about... earlier. Usually Qavrok comes to get us himself. It doesn't feel right just following quietly, so we have a policy of fighting back, if we can."
Gabriel didn't look at her. "He does not hurt you for it?"
"He's gonna hurt us anyway," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Qavrok is what you might call a sadist. We're not even here for the reason you think we are... mostly, anyway. He just likes seeing people hurt."
Gabriel's step faltered, but he didn't respond.
"He switches it up, too," she continued like a confession. "Keeps us guessing, you know? One day he'll be hanging you from the ceiling by your feet, and the next day he'll throw a tea party. He's a terrible person. But I guess you knew that."
Gabriel tried to grunt, but it sounded more like a sigh.
She held her silence for a bit as they neared Qavrok's "throneroom." Then she said, "It was sweet of you to carry me. I figured you'd just kick me until I behaved myself, or something. But I guess I sound kinda like a crazy person when I say it like that."
"I think you have low standards." He reached the door and deposited her onto her feet. Dehydrated, she reeled and clutched his arm for support until the dizziness receded.
"Showtime," she said to herself. She turned back to Gabriel. "You know, you're not very nice. But you are kind. One is more important." She threw him a small, grim smile, then entered the throneroom.
Tiktiktiktik-tiktiktik-tik.
Quest Objective Added: Visit Vault 3 for leads.
Sage wanted to leave before dawn. Some missions started off well and went south. This one already held an ominous, unclean quality that put her on edge. She had the distinct feeling that it could only get more complicated.
Still, who could track a man down better than Courier Six? (Benny's devious little wink played back in her mind, over and over.)
She fell like a stone onto the bed, next to her packed equipment. She knew she should sleep, but blooming from her forehead was a headache that she knew wouldn't go away with rest. She was eager to start — or eager to get it over with. She didn't know what she was really afraid of. That she'd fail? That Gabriel would be dead? Or... that this mission would reveal more about Joshua than she wanted to know.
Boone entered without knocking and sat on the couch. He seemed unsurprised that she was awake; she felt similarly about him. He finally spared her a glance. "Heading out?"
"Soon."
"Yeah."
Sage fiddled with her packed duffel just to look busy. Boone just watched her, or the wall. Her infant headache complained, so before it became insistent, she asked, "What brings you in here?
"Ah. Just seeing you off, I guess."
"Couldn't sleep?"
"Might sleep later. Not much point trying, this early."
She checked her Pip-Boy. "Boone, it's 3:48."
"Is it?" he asked distractedly.
"Okay." Sage sat herself next to him on the couch, too tired to entertain the delay. "How are you doing?"
"Fine," he said cheerily. "Pretty good thing we did, huh?"
Sage had heard Boone happy, and this was not it. This sounded more like Boone when he was injured. She couldn't quite figure out what subject he was dancing around, but it had to be pretty personal if he was faking a good mood. "Yep. We helped a lot of people through that peace treaty. Sorry I won't be here for the celebration."
"Yeah, too bad." He fiddled with his lighter and a cigarette, but couldn't quite commit to lighting it. "You mind answering a question?"
"Shoot," Sage said flippantly, feeling anything but flippant.
"You've seen enough to know how bad it can be in the Legion. For women."
Sage nodded cautiously.
Boone inhaled and propped his hands onto his knees. "If the treaty fell through, and you got captured somehow, would you ask me to—" He paused. She gave him time to finish, but the air rang heavy with silence for a beat too long.
"...To do what you did for Carla," Sage finished for him. Saying her name in his presence sent a pang through her heart, but he was currently in a staring contest with his unlit cigarette and didn't give an affirmative or negative.
His question wasn't for future reference, she knew. The cease-fire with the Legion had changed everything. If Carla were alive today, she would be free and safely in her husband's arms. Sage felt stupid for not realizing what the treaty had meant to him.
He was looking at her now, with that same flat expression, begging her to answer the question he'd never let himself ask before. Begging her to tell him he'd made the right decision.
Sage didn't know.
"Oh — uh, you caught me off-guard, there," she stalled.
"I need to know. Before you leave."
"Well..." Sage muttered. "If the Legion captured me, they'd probably want me for intel, and I haven't had any training to resist interrogation. So, assuming there was no safe bet of a rescue, it would be the responsible thing." It answered the question he'd asked, but not the one he hadn't.
"Right. Thanks." Boone stood quickly.
"...Boone."
He turned back to her, waiting for another opportunity to leave. She took his cigarette and lighter, set them on the coffee table, and took his hands in hers.
"It's... not just a yes or no thing. You know that. A decision like that is a gamble, always. You can't know how it's gonna pan out one way or the other."
He eased himself back onto the couch, hands still in hers. "I know."
The corners of her mouth tightened into a weak but steady smile. "I know you know. I can't give you a real answer, Boone, but... You're the only one I'd trust to make that decision for me."
"Either way, I'd have to live with what I chose."
A tear jumped to the corner of Sage's eye, but she wasn't quite willing to let go and wipe it away. "Yeah. That's how I know you're braver than I'll ever be. And why I trust you. Even if you choose wrong, I'll still love you for it."
"Thanks," he said, voice thick with something that sounded like absolution. He broke away to put his lighter and cigarette back in his pockets. "Guess you understand it more than I used to think you did."
"Nice of you to give me a chance to." Sage crossed her legs professionally. "You should sleep."
He gave a monosyllabic chuckle. "Don't know where I'd be without you looking out for me all this time. She'd be thankful."
Carla Boone, Sage knew from her investigation, had not been a perfect human being. But the person she had become in her husband's mind after her death struck Sage as a mythical figure, a legend passed down for a single generation. From an idealized memory, this was high praise. And if Boone had given himself an angel on his shoulder telling him to drink water and have social interactions, it meant she had finally forgiven him. Sage hoped that someday she'd let him move on.
Sage relaxed into a grin. "You know I never would have made it if I hadn't met you. I'm just returning the favor." Sensing the conversation was nearing its end, she migrated back to the bed and shrugged her bag over her shoulder. "Sleep. I should be back before nightfall."
Boone took the unoccupied bed as she went, and she left the suite in higher spirits.
Motor-Runner was high off his gourd when Sage approached him, so he didn't recognize the woman who ruled New Vegas with a platinum fist. With their leaders out of the picture, and the Khans gone from the Mojave, the Fiends were a shadow of their former self. Sage didn't quite have the heart to wipe them off the map yet, though, not when more and more of them were venturing up to Old Mormon Fort for a dose of Fixer and a good shower.
Due to their new supply line problem, Motor-Runner was easily bribed with a few doses of Buffout. In normal times, he would have had her empty her pockets, but he didn't quite have the gusto to barter today.
At the mention of the name Qavrok, he told her of a time before Vault 3, when the Fiends were situated in an underground base known as Tailless Calf Junction. They had been led by their gang's co-founder, William Qavrok. He had died some years ago.
When asked about Gabriel, Motor-Runner had grown contemplative. She'd had to jog his addled memory with a physical description, but eventually he'd managed to give her a name, and a business.
The following evening, Sage ended up at a darkened storefront somewhere near Junktown. Her begrudging chauffeur stood next to her. "I don't think it's open."
Sage tried the handle, but sure enough, it was locked. She rapped loudly on the door.
"Why are you knocking?" Arcade criticized. "They're closed."
A wild-haired shopkeeper in his early 20's opened the door. "Welcome to Oleastro Wildlife Solutions. We're closed for tonight, but come back any weekday between—"
"Hey there," Sage interrupted him jauntily. "We're looking for your boss."
"Uh... Alexandra's busy right now. She'd really prefer you to come back during business hours."
"Devon," she said, reading his nameplate. "This isn't a business meeting. It's personal." Her eyes pleaded with him.
Devon sighed contemplatively through his teeth. "Right, okay. Yeah, sure, that should be fine."
"How many other ways are there to say 'yes?'" Arcade wondered quietly.
"I'll put her coordinates into your Pip-Boy," Devon acquiesced. "But be careful. She can get kinda... testy, especially when she's on the drink."
"We'll keep that in mind," said Sage. She smiled confidently enough to win a smile in return, and exposed her arm for Devon to type the location.
The location was not a building, but a campsite overlooking a shallow cliff. Tinny notes of a song they didn't recognize floated to them before they could see the revelers' faces.
A mid-thirties woman in a blue newsboy cap lounged by the fire. Two bottles of something lay by her feet, but they were unopened and forgotten. Her attention was focused instead on the man in the beat-up old lawn chair, picking through notes on a cylindrical instrument fashioned out of piping. The music sounded nothing like the pre-war recordings, but it was nice, especially as it trickled out over the sound of the fire and off into the night.
The man trilled a final note when he saw the visitors approaching, and the woman, Alexandra, raised her head up from where it was propped on her fists to examine them. "What's up, strangers?" she asked.
Sage sat down, uninvited, on another lawn chair, and began to speak, but she fell short. Her memory wasn't stellar any day, but it fled her the moment she got a closer look at the clarinetist. She wasn't one to clock out upon witnessing a beautiful man, but she felt she deserved an exception.
As Sage's thoughts stuttered and disappeared into the aether of his gray-green eyes, the two strangers introduced themselves as Alexandra and Blake. Arcade covered for his spellbound employer by introducing them both in return.
"What brings you here?" Alexandra asked distrustfully. Her features were soft but her eyes were sharp. Scars and odd, ancient burns covered her face and arms, looking especially ghastly in the firelight, but she had an alluringly wry smile even as she questioned them.
"We're looking for some leads on a case," Arcade muttered vaguely, waiting for Sage to wake up and do the talking as usual. She was nodding along, red-faced.
"Sounds intense," Blake drawled in a southern accent. "I'm up from Texas. I work as a brahmin rancher, and I'm looking for some... long-term pest control options."
Alexandra laughed musically. "And we'd be getting somewhere a lot faster if he'd let me crack us open a bottle of rye, but they had to send the teetotaler."
Blake didn't look like the type to turn down a whiskey; his getup reminded Sage a bit of Raul, with jeans and leather chaps, a six shooter on his belt, a dark shirt and leather vest, and a bandana hung loose around his neck. But comparing him to basically-her-grandfather relaxed her a bit, so she finally spoke up.
"We're looking for a guy named Gabriel."
Alexandra's gaze steeled, and the jovial attitude around the campfire ended. Even the flickering fire seemed to freeze in place. "Who's asking?" she muttered.
"Courier Six."
Most people became a lot more forthcoming upon hearing the sobriquet, but Alexandra glared and sat herself up. "Hello, Courier. You killed my friend."
"Oh yeah," Sage whispered bluntly. She had forgotten that Alexandra and Violet had known each other. She stole a glance at Blake, whose mouth was quirked curiously within his dark stubble. "I'm sorry. I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter."
"You hunted her," Alexandra responded, deathly quiet.
"I had to protect people. It wasn't a responsibility I took lightly, but there weren't any other options, Alexandra." Sage remained calm despite the subject matter, though she was filled with anxiety.
The older woman huffed, uncorked one of the bottles, and drank an impressive amount without taking a breath. Marginally comforted, she whispered. "If you want to find out about Gabriel, you're running out of leads. I'm not telling you a thing."
"Alexandra. I don't know where he went, but he could be in danger. I want to bring him back to people who care about his wellbeing. Surely you want that too."
"To the Legion?"
"No. To family." A mild lie, though Sage sensed that it rang true in a way.
Alexandra's lips twitched angrily as she contemplated another swig. "You'll have to ask Avi."
"Okay..." Sage hesitated, "I can make do with another lead. Where is this Avi?"
"Dunno!" Alexandra announced, crossing one leg over the other in delight. "New Canaan, last I heard."
"What."
2262 -
Protective Custody
2263-2265 -
2266 -
January - Distance, No More
October - Power and Beauty
2267 -
2268 -
Ensnared
2269-2276 -
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)
June - Guide Her Through the Night
Bitter Springs
September - Project Purity activates
November - Human Capital
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
July - Mercury's Messenger
August - Safe Haven
September - Power and Beauty (pt. 2)/East and West begins
October - East and West ends
