003. Weapon - Fred Burkle (Angel)
Title: Nothing Else
Prompt/Number: 003. Weapon
Rating: PG-13
Character/Fandom: Fred Burkle/Angel
Word Count: 520
When Fred was a child, she hated weapons.
She loved her daddy, but she hated the rifle he owned because every time he took it outside with him, it made a loud noise and one of the cows would be dead. He would explain that the cow was sick, and there was nothing else that could be done, but still, she hated that rifle. She also didn’t like weapons because people on television always got hurt by them.
And she continued to hate them through her teenage years, especially when Jimmy thought it would be funny to pull out his dad’s gun and almost shot Jack one night while they were getting high in his basement. Fred also stopped smoking pot after that.
Then she was caught in the portal her reading that book opened in the library and ended up in Pylea, where she found that weapons were the only way to protect herself against the weapons of the demons trying to keep her a slave. After she escaped, she began making things to protect herself, starting with a mud slingshot to blind anyone who came after her. Before long, she began stealing anything she could, some of it food, some of it anything she thought she could use to make a weapon. She would sit in her cave in the dying daylight and tinker while muttering to herself, using the plans she sometimes scratched onto the walls.
The weapons worked - she was able to keep from being captured until the day she let her guard down and spoke to the girl that appeared not to know what had happened to her. But then her Handsome Man rescued her, and with his friends, they freed the other slaves, and Fred - even though she finally was able to go home - found herself in yet another life where weapons were needed.
So she kept tinkering and even learned to use a gun and a crossbow because she wanted to help in the fight against the evil that hurt people like her. The weapons were crude, but they worked. And they saved hers and the others’ lives several times.
Then they went to Wolfram & Hart, where her science lab was filled with some of the most expensive and technologically advanced weapons she had ever seen. Sometimes, they scared her, but she tried to remind herself they could be used for good, even after she got hurt when they were trying to make that deal, even after Wesley shot the thing he thought was his father to protect her.
But soon she realized that there would never be anything good about those weapons, so when they went after Black Thorn and the Senior Partners, she faced them with her own weapons, ones she had made, crude though they were.
And as she fought them, losing sight of the man she loved and her friends in the pouring rain, firing off shot after shot, wondering if this could have been avoided, she remembered what her father had told her all those years ago.
There was nothing else that could be done.
Prompt/Number: 003. Weapon
Rating: PG-13
Character/Fandom: Fred Burkle/Angel
Word Count: 520
When Fred was a child, she hated weapons.
She loved her daddy, but she hated the rifle he owned because every time he took it outside with him, it made a loud noise and one of the cows would be dead. He would explain that the cow was sick, and there was nothing else that could be done, but still, she hated that rifle. She also didn’t like weapons because people on television always got hurt by them.
And she continued to hate them through her teenage years, especially when Jimmy thought it would be funny to pull out his dad’s gun and almost shot Jack one night while they were getting high in his basement. Fred also stopped smoking pot after that.
Then she was caught in the portal her reading that book opened in the library and ended up in Pylea, where she found that weapons were the only way to protect herself against the weapons of the demons trying to keep her a slave. After she escaped, she began making things to protect herself, starting with a mud slingshot to blind anyone who came after her. Before long, she began stealing anything she could, some of it food, some of it anything she thought she could use to make a weapon. She would sit in her cave in the dying daylight and tinker while muttering to herself, using the plans she sometimes scratched onto the walls.
The weapons worked - she was able to keep from being captured until the day she let her guard down and spoke to the girl that appeared not to know what had happened to her. But then her Handsome Man rescued her, and with his friends, they freed the other slaves, and Fred - even though she finally was able to go home - found herself in yet another life where weapons were needed.
So she kept tinkering and even learned to use a gun and a crossbow because she wanted to help in the fight against the evil that hurt people like her. The weapons were crude, but they worked. And they saved hers and the others’ lives several times.
Then they went to Wolfram & Hart, where her science lab was filled with some of the most expensive and technologically advanced weapons she had ever seen. Sometimes, they scared her, but she tried to remind herself they could be used for good, even after she got hurt when they were trying to make that deal, even after Wesley shot the thing he thought was his father to protect her.
But soon she realized that there would never be anything good about those weapons, so when they went after Black Thorn and the Senior Partners, she faced them with her own weapons, ones she had made, crude though they were.
And as she fought them, losing sight of the man she loved and her friends in the pouring rain, firing off shot after shot, wondering if this could have been avoided, she remembered what her father had told her all those years ago.
There was nothing else that could be done.