The following text is scrawled in Gabriella’s distinctive handwriting. Her penmanship is usually a bit rushed and chaotic-looking – like her, to be honest – but this is much more carefully written than her usual fare, not that most would be aware. It is a page from one of the numerous diaries the Malkavian has kept over the past several decades in New Orleans. Perhaps the most striking thing, however, is that the diary can be found on the table in her haven, in plain sight, opened to this page in particular. It doesn’t seem like it’s meant as an open invitation to read, but given Gabriella’s nature, the fact that it hasn’t been stowed away from any potential prying eyes is probably no accident…but the message she might be sending by not doing so is anyone’s guess.
Gabriella Rosario did not Frenzy that night in Houston in 2020. She did what good childer do. She kept her mouth shut, bowed her head, and did as her Sire told her to do. She tried to suppress the terror that the thought of going off to New Orleans to fight the Anarchs put in her. Terror wouldn’t help her survive, though. It wouldn’t lead Dr. Klein to think any better of her. If this was to be her fate, Gabriella would do what she would always do in these situations. She would fake it until she felt it. And so that meant training herself to be the best Camarilla warrior she could be.
Dr. Klein found that while Gabriella was not quite what he hoped she would be, she was skilled in the areas of infiltration and social manipulation. She could weasel her way into places without detection, and as an ardent observer of the Masquerade, she could do it without giving away her true nature and intentions. It turned out to be a feather in the cap of Dr. Klein – while Luma Romano’s ability to entertain was beneficial to Dr. Henry Mitchell, Gabriella’s usefulness in field operations was preferred by the Camarilla Elders.
Gabriella succeeded in infiltrating New Orleans’ largest hospital upon her arrival, as the Chief of Medicine proved an easy mark. She was able to mobilize resources against the Anarch rabble, robbing them of valuable influence and supplies. She did so while keeping a low profile and rising in influence herself.
But it was never enough. Dr. Klein pushed for more and more, dissatisfied no matter how much she accomplished, how many foes were squeezed out, how many successes she accumulated. She always managed to pull off what was asked of her, but it was a blessing and a curse. Perhaps it made her more indispensable, but it also meant greater responsibility was heaped on her shoulders, with the standards growing ever higher. The more she accomplished, the more was asked of her.
When the hospital’s influence began to bump up against that of the Anarch-run security company, it was Gabriella who was tasked with cutting them down to size. She had killed in her time in New Orleans, as all New Orleans Camarilla had, but this assignment was much more delicate and important. Benjamin Kind had to be taken out, the ghoul of one of the Anarchs’ most vocal leaders and the man in charge of that security operation.
It almost went perfectly, but the man put up a much fiercer fight than Gabriella or Dr. Klein anticipated. She was successful, but at a significant cost. Witnesses managed to get her description, and she was suddenly the subject of an enormous manhunt from both authorities and Anarchs alike. Support from Dr. Klein dried up. He knew when to cut dead weight, and that was precisely what Gabriella had become.
It was the Anarchs that found her first. She was hauled to a cell where she awaited the decision of Alain, the man whose ghoul she had killed on orders from the top. She had no defense to offer for her actions. She knew that and offered none. There was no point. She had failed. Perhaps she had always been destined to fail, be it in this mission or perhaps any other. One that had yet to come. Perhaps one that never would, or one that only would have come had she taken a different path out of Houston many years before.
She was put on trial at a special Rant, a show trial if there ever was one. There was no chance of anything other than a guilty verdict. Gabriella hardly sought one. She simply wanted to be put out of her misery as quickly as possible, but the Anarchs had other ideas. They wanted him to suffer. And frankly, no one could blame them for that. She had inflicted countless setbacks upon them. Now the tables were turned. And no one was coming to save her.
Why would they? Dr. Klein would find another to take into the night. One who would succeed where his previous childe had failed.
They beheaded her in the end. They roared as she turned to ash in front of them, reveling in victory as if they had just turned the Camarilla as a whole into nothing. But again, could they be blamed? Gabriella had taken the life of an innocent man. A man the Anarchs on the whole were deeply fond of and attached to. A man who was only following orders, working on behalf of a regnant he believed in. In that sense, perhaps they weren’t so different after all. But perhaps they were. Someone with Benjamin’s virtue would have rejected an order to recklessly kill, consequences be damned. That was why they cheered Gabriella’s demise. It was no less than she deserved.
Gabriella Rosario met her final death without a hint of sympathy from her audience. She was remembered fondly by no one. Any of her mortal acquaintances were long dead, and there were few to begin with who had ever cared. The Anarchs rightly saw her as a killer who did her work in the name of a perverse Tower that corrupted and corroded everything it touched. The man who had Embraced her barely even acknowledged what became of her. Dr. Oliver Klein preferred not to harp on failures. It did no good. Her name would pass into the annals of history, mortal and Kindred alike, as an insignificant sociopath who accomplished nothing of note.
Not long before Gabriella met her final death, a pretty blonde woman overdosed in the back of a car. It was an undignified end to an undignified life of pain and addiction that saw a once-promising nursing student drop out of college and travel down a self-destructive path that ended with her own premature death. Perhaps it would have always been that way. Or perhaps, unknown to them both, Gabriella’s loyalty to the Camarilla saved that blonde from much greater hell. Perhaps Gabriella bore that hell for both of them.
Or perhaps it was always Gabriella’s fate to bear the burden – of her sire, of her Clan, of whoever she was running from and whoever she was running to. Perhaps she had to suffer so others could succeed. Perhaps that suffering is justified.
Perhaps Gabriella was the same as that blonde. Perhaps this Gabriella was and is the same as that Gabriella. Perhaps she always has and always will be capable of such cruelty. Perhaps she was miscast as a nurse. Perhaps pain and suffering are meant to follow her wherever she goes. In any existence. In any timeline. Perhaps she is merely a cancer bound to whichever city she inhabits at any given moment. Perhaps she has involved herself in something far too big for her. Far too personal for her. Perhaps her attempts to help have proven misguided and are only piling more pain on an already miserable existence.
Perhaps she has gone too far this time.
Perhaps she hasn’t.
Perhaps what she thinks will happen will make everything better. Perhaps what she thinks will happen will make everything worse. Perhaps the same is true of what she wants. Perhaps what she wants and needs are the same. Perhaps she has no idea what either of those represent anymore. Perhaps she never did.
Perhaps none of it matters at all. Perhaps she is precisely where she was meant to be. Perhaps she never has been. Perhaps she isn’t meant to be anywhere at all. Perhaps it all happened to remind her what she really is. What she will always be in the eyes of the world. In the eyes of those she desperately wants to trust her. What she can never truly escape, no matter how much she runs from it.
Perhaps when this is over, regardless of how it ends, she shall have nothing that she wants.
And perhaps that is the way it should be.