James was woken up by a metal pipe to the face.

He cried out, high and pained, and the raider responsible laughed. "What's wrong, vaultie? Can't handle a little fun?"

James looked at him, and soon enough there were tears in his eyes. Somehow, despite the throbbing in his gut (metal pipe to the stomach) and the throbbing of his nose (again, metal pipe), he had fallen asleep. Until, of course, now.

He had saved a child running away from the raiders, and then, when he thought they were safe, the kid knocked him out with a rock. He woke up in this makeshift cell. A cell with another man, Francis. He looked to his side, but she wasn't there. Then he looked back to the raiders, and one of them was holding up a head - Francis' head.

"You slept through a lot, huh?" the raider grinned. "Fucker stared at ya a lot while we dragged him out."

James' stomach turned.

The raider turned the head over in his hands. The hair was missing, as was the nose, mouth, and eyes.

"Too much for you to handle?" the raider asked. "Come on, don't be a pussy."

He shoved the head up against the bars. James flinched and retreated to the back of the cell. The raider rolled his eyes. "Christ."

Another raider walked up behind him, and she was holding what had been a leg. James thought so, at least. It terribly mutilated, with some skin still hanging off in places. James was almost too terrified to think clearly.

"We gotta really do this?" she asked. "This is a little much."

"He thinks he's better than us," the raider said. "No." He took the mangled leg and tossed it into the cell, where it landed with a squelch. "Eat it, fucker."

James' eyes were wide, and he shook his head. "Please."

"Please," the raider crooned. "Please."

The other raider just looked at James, turned up her nose, and left. James tried to curl in on himself, get as far away from the leg as he could. Exasperated, the raider pulled out a pistol - his 10mm pistol, James realized - and pointed it at him.

"Eat."

"Please," James said.

"Eat it!" the raider shot James in the leg. James screamed, twisted, and dragged his head to look at the leg. Trembling, his skull and heart pounding, he crawled to it.

The raider laughed, fed him more, and giggled for every tear James shed.

After he got bored, the raider offered James a bandage and a stimpak, and promised that he'd put James out of his misery later. When he came back and ordered him out of the cell, one hand holding James' pistol and a knife in the other, James realized what the raider meant. The raider was high, giggling again, and despite having a gun pointed at his back, James took a chance. He got the better of raider and, one at a time, shot or beat or blew up each member of the raider gang.

Before he left, however, he took his tormentor apart with hacksaw, roasted him, and ate him nearly to the bone.

Jack woke up screaming.

He immediately looked at his hands, searching for blood, but found none. With a pounding heart his hands then went to his hair. He cursed, almost hyperventilating, but just about pulled himself back from panic. He ran his hands down his face as he breathed out slowly, shaking his head.

Stupid, that's what he was. Stupid. That night - day, he didn't remember at this point - was a million years ago. It didn't matter. He had crossed a universal taboo, but so had others in the Wasteland. So many, many others. The lesson he learned that day, although it wouldn't sink in for some time, was simple: sometimes, people are cruel, and they'll bring you down to their level. That doesn't mean you shouldn't keep moving forward. Those raiders had learned that, and it was perhaps the one thing they had right.

It wasn't as if he'd done anything like what they'd done. Forced someone to eat another person for sport? Never. Rape, torture someone for fun? That he was hungry, or that he kind of enjoyed it, those things were tertiary. Eating that raider was justice, plain and simple. Jack would do it again in a heartbeat.

After some more wallowing, Jack dragged himself out of bed and over to the showers. He was sweaty: he needed one. Besides, after checking his omni-tool, it was morning, so what he was doing was completely fucking normal.

But he couldn't help himself: he looked in the mirror, and the look in his reflections eyes, as it stared into his, transfixed him. Then he shook it off and took his well-deserved shower.

Breakfast across from Mordin was quiet. Jack's stomach wanted to furl in on itself as Mordin spoke vaguely of his research, and it got even worse when, for some reason, Miranda decided to sit next to him. Jack could feel her seeing through him, reading him, but she didn't say anything until Mordin left to "Re-work urine samples", whatever that meant.

"What happened?" Miranda asked.

Jack, again, didn't know how to put it into to words. The act itself or the fact that he had, for the first time, admitted it to someone of his own volition. Then, clearly, Miranda realized that too.

"I see," she said. "I'll speak to Mordin. Make sure he understands the sensitive nature of the information."

"Please," Jack said. "Don't. He already knows."

"And you trust him not to tell Shepard?" Miranda raised an eyebrow.

Jack swallowed. "I... he's my friend."

"So am I," Miranda said. "And you had no trouble threatening me."

"That's because you're an asshole," Jack snapped. Miranda remained impassive, because of course she did.

"By some standards, sure," Miranda said. "But do you really think anyone else could possibly accept you?"

"Fuck you," Jack said, but he knew that she was right. He sighed, then said, "Sorry. I - I should get started. Apparently Jack managed to jam her Carnifex in the shooting range."

"Before hurling it across the room," Miranda said. "I remember. I think you would have enjoyed watching Shepard chew her out."

Jack almost smiled as he said, "Probably."

Then promptly fled the scene.

The next few days went by unremarkably, until Garrus or Zaeed or Mordin - what. ever. - came up with another upgrade for all of their weapons. Yes, all of them, which suddenly put him and Jacob woefully behind on everything. The upgrade was good, clever, only changing a few parts. Parts that turned out to be really fucking small, and if put in improperly, were liable to fry the gun internally if installed wrong. Garrus, Jack remembered as he finally finished refitting Samara's gun, Garrus. Garrus came up with this brilliant idea.

Shepard rolled in right before Jack's lunch break. She was particularly grim-faced this time, though.

"How are things?" she asked. "Anybody need something?"

"An extra hammer, ma'am," Jack said as he saluted. "For the back of Garrus's stupid fuckin' head."

Shepard shook her head at him, then asked, "Are your weapons ready to go?"

Curious, Jack nodded. "Yes."

"Good," Shepard said. "You're off for today."

"Oh," Jack said. "Thank you, Commander, but why?"

"We're heading to the migrant fleet tonight," Shepard said. "And you're coming with Tali and I."

"The Migrant Fleet?" Jack asked. "Why are we going there?"

"Tali has been accused of treason," Shepard said. "We're going to be in close-quarters, which is one of your specialties. Geth might be involved somehow, as well, and you performed well on Haestrom."

"Yes ma'am," Jack said. "Thank you ma'am."

"Get your gear ready and get some rest," Shepard said. "I know you don't sleep much but I need you on alert tomorrow. Treat the Migrant Fleet as uncharted territory. Bring that ridiculous rifle of yours as well."

Jack nodded, saluted again, and wrapped up for the day, triple-checking and triple-cleaning his Railway Rifle before he went.

How long he walked, James didn't know. He was no longer keeping track.

Not so long ago, he was baking brownies for Susie. Double-chocolate chip, her favorite. They were going watch a movie and put on music and dance their long, boring shifts away.

Now... oh, god, the sound. He'd only ever been in knife fights: he wouldn't kill people, he wouldn't do that, but he had. He could still taste it, a bit like pork, smell it roasting. The images - he couldn't forget them. The hacksaw and the raider's neck, the satisfaction he felt as he finally separated it from the rest of the body. It felt like an accomplishment, somehow. The head - that fucker's head was the source of everything, his fucking brains, which Jack had taken out and stomped into pulp. In the holovids, if you destroy the head, you kill the monsters. And the Capital had monsters, that was for certain. How different were those raiders from those monsters? No... he did a good thing today. He saved people from those raiders, avenged their victims. Yes, he did a good thing.

He wasn't a bad person. He was only in this position because he tried to save a child. He wasn't a bad person.

James, still uneasy, took more time than needed when finding a place to make camp. A door behind him that locked from his side, and a long hallway which he barricaded with junk and scrap until he had a covered firing position if it came to that. He had scored a double-barreled shotgun off of those raiders, and one shell down that hallway would shred anything that decided to poke its head in. At the other end of the hallway he made a stack of tin cans that would be knocked over by someone coming, too. He was still off his game, but not that off.

He struggled to sleep, of course, and right when he was about to, the tin cans clattered He shot up, grabbed his double-barreled shotgun, and aimed down the hallway. There was a figure, a person, and James would have stayed his trigger finger, but then the asshole had to go and notice him James fired, the guy screamed, and he fired again when they tried to get up. To the tune of the stranger's death rattles, James promised himself that when he was finally back home, he was never touching a gun again.

James waited longer for more people, but none came. He deconstructed his barricade slowly, he was still kind of drowsy, but taking your time was a virtue. There was another good thing, too, because he found a real treasure on the body of the idiot who just had stick his nose in.

James had heard of these things - portable chainsaws - but nobody in Megaton had one. They were rare, at least this far out from what the Capital called 'civilization'. Rippers, they called them. Rippers. Using his pip-boy light, James saw the name scratched into its side: Jack.

James rolled his eyes, then considered that there was no way these people actually knew who Jack the Ripper was. He rolled his eyes again at them again.

All the same, he decided to keep the Ripper. When he would need it, James had no idea, but he was sure it would come in handy. Especially for... well, he would cross that bridge when and only when he came to it.

(As with all the taboos James would come to break, it was far sooner than expected.)

James was careful when handling the body, laying it 'face' up against the wall, with note that told whoever came that looters would be shot. He re-stacked the tin cans, too, and by the time he was done with all of that, he found himself tired. So, after triple-checking that the adjacent hallways were clear and barricading some of them, he went back to his camp and fell into a dreamless sleep.