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Anachronism

Summary:

The Vault of the Traveler puts Rhys and Fiona right back where they came from.

More or less.

Notes:

I tried to tag the three relationships that will get most of the spotlight, but at its core this will be a pretty team-oriented piece, so any and all combinations of the four.

A big thanks to @nowrunalong for giving this a read-through and letting me know how well the set up works (or doesn't).

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“My eye’s not working.”

Bent double, with her hands braced against her knees and her stomach roiling, Fiona still found the time to look up at Rhys and glare incredulously. “What?”

“My eye,” he repeated, like it was her hearing at fault, and not his own logic. “It’s not connecting to the EchoNet. It says—”

“I feel like I got put through a blender,” Fiona interrupted, “and you’re trying to check your messages?”

“I was running diagnostics! That was…” He frowned. “What was that, anyway?”

“No idea.” Fiona tried to straighten up, but the world spun; she wrenched her eyes shut again and leaned against a nearby rock instead. “We touched the glowy box, and there was a flash, and then—” She mimed an explosion with her hand. “Blender.”

Rhys scratched the back of his head. “Is that supposed to happen?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“You’re the vault hunter.”

“It’s my first vault, all right? Cut me some slack.” She peeked up at him for a second before clasping a hand over her face. “God, my head. How are you fine? I feel like you shouldn’t be fine.”

“I’m not. I told you, my eye won’t connect—”

Fiona’s eyes felt like they might pop out of their sockets from behind. “So not the same, Inspector Gadget.”

“—which is a real shame, because I don’t know where the hell we are. Is this Pandora?”

“Sure smells like it.”

“Then where is… everything? Where’s everyone else?”

For the first time, there was enough alarm in his voice to cut through her irritation. She opened her eyes, squinting around through the dusk light. Her suspicions about Pandora were correct—there was Elpis, shining high and bright in the night sky—but Rhys had a point: there was nothing around them but a field of dirt and rock. Evidence of the battle, their friends, the Traveler and its loot… All of it was gone.

A new feeling of nausea swam through Fiona’s belly.

“Wasn’t it daytime?” With every word Rhys’ voice pitched higher in anxiety. “It was definitely daytime, and now it’s not.”

Fiona’s head pounded, and she could no longer tell if the magic box was at fault. She pushed herself away from the rock, only to realize with a start that it was the base of the stone archway at the mouth of the vault. The top of the arch had crumbled away, but there was nothing on the ground.

She decided to do what she always did with things she didn’t know how to process: package it away and deal with it later.

“Let’s just find the others and see what’s going on.”


“Quite a gate you got there.” Sasha stepped out of her caravan with a bag slung over her shoulders and a nod back towards the structure looming overhead. “Trouble with the neighbors?”

“Something like that.” Vaughn grimaced as he walked to greet her. “Don’t say ‘I told you so’.”

“Well, I did.” She shrugged, and the contents of her bag clanged together. “Pandora’s not an open-doors kind of place.”

“Still. You try to be friendly…” He sighed. There was no use arguing with Sasha about the best way to deal with raids; plenty of people around Helios were already happy to do it for her. Instead, he held out his hand to take her bag, a gesture that was sure to be ignored but felt right anyway. “Thanks for bringing all this, by the way.”

As he’d predicted, her own grip on the bag tightened. “Sounded urgent.” Sasha shrugged again. “Besides, I need that part for the caravan. Thought it might break down on the way here.”

Vaughn rolled his eyes. There was necessary risk, and then there was stupidity. “Why didn’t you tell me that? I could’ve sent a runner to—”

“Don’t start,” she warned, the prickle in her voice enough to fend him off for now. “Where do you want all this, anyway?”

“Supply room.” Vaughn beckoned for her to follow down the labyrinthine hallways. “Come on, we’ve got something I think you’ll like.”


ERROR: Unable to connect to server. Software update required.

ERROR: Software update failed. Please connect to server.

ERROR: Unable to connect to server. Software update required.

Rhys growled in frustration as he rubbed his cybernetic eye with the heel of his hand, a futile gesture that accomplished nothing but at least felt sort of satisfying.

Any attempt to connect to the EchoNet kickstarted an endless chain of recursive error messages. Diagnostics tests were equally unhelpful, and his arm fared no better. Over and over again, dialogue boxes recommended software updates he couldn’t install.

“If you tell me about your eye one more time I’m going to rip it out of the socket myself,” Fiona grumbled, and so Rhys settled for mumbling swear words to himself.

It just didn’t make sense. Rhys had always taken good—well... decent—care of his cybernetics, but in the wake of recent events, he was downright meticulous. Half of what he ran was custom code, and he’d had a lot of time for troubleshooting, stuck on his own for months at the Atlas facility. Everything had been working just fine, even after being dragged through the desert by a well-meaning but misguided robot. So why was it acting up now? He hadn't even done anything. Maybe piloting Gortys had interfered somehow…

“How do we get in again?” Fiona asked. “There’s like, a back way, or something, right?”

Rhys looked up from irritably jabbing at the with the error messages on his palm display. Several feet in front of them was a solid metal gate, fifteen feet high, connected in to the walls of what was once Helios.

“I... thought this was the back way,” he said slowly.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Fiona, and Rhys couldn’t argue with that. But she shrugged. “Whatever. You think they got a doorbell, or…?”

She needn’t finish the thought.

“What do you want?” shouted down a voice that ought to have been far more intimidating for the job it was doing. A head appeared at the top of the door, peering down at them from a crude-looking battlement.

“Door-to-door sales,” Fiona called back. “Wanna buy some knives?”

The person at the top of the door didn’t laugh. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Part of the uniform,” Fiona answered. “You should see what they used to make him wear—”

“Look, we just got a bit turned around after the vault,” Rhys intervened, not interested in spending the night outside because Fiona got into an argument with the doorman. “Can you let us in?”

There was a momentary silence from the top of the gate. “After the… what?”

Beside him, Fiona massaged her temple, her patience fraying. “Oh, for the love of…”

“Uh, the vault?” Rhys repeated, his uneasiness ceding ground to agitation. “Big alien treasure trove? Tons of people involved? Pretty hard to miss. What, was that not your shift or something?”

For another concerning minute, the person at the top of the door was silent. And then they said, “Just… stay there a minute, I’m gonna… get someone,” and disappeared from view.


“Oh my god, you’ve got a Volcano.”

An awed smile stretched across Sasha’s face, the widest Vaughn had seen in such a long time that he felt accomplished for having won it. She dropped her heavy bag onto the floor and reached for the gun, fingers hovering reverently over the barrel before she picked it up.

“Thought you might like it,” said Vaughn, choosing to disregard the smugness he heard in his own voice.

“It’s beautiful,” she cooed. “Where the hell did you get one?”

“Took it off someone in the last raid.”

Sasha snorted. “His loss.” She hoisted the gun to eye level, peering down the scope experimentally. “Man, you could really do some damage with this thing.”

Memories of the smell of burnt flesh came to mind, and Vaughn grimaced. “Yeah, well, he did.” But Vaughn waved away the thought—and Sasha’s look of concern—as quick as it’d come. “So, you want it?”

The frown that had begun to pool on her lips vanished entirely, replaced by surprise. “Huh?”

“I mean, you’re cradling it like a firstborn over here, so I thought…”

A Sasha off her game was as rare a sight as Sasha smiling. Her arms stretched out to return the gun as though of their own accord. “No, I can’t. Why would…?”

“You know our policy.”

“It’s a stupid policy.”

“Besides,” he continued, “you’ll make better use of it. You’re the best shot I know.”

Sasha opened her mouth to argue but caught herself before she made a sound, a familiar cloud passing over her face. She dropped her gaze back to the gun, worrying her bottom lip before she sighed in resignation. “I’ll do another supply run for you. I’ve got a job coming up outside Sanctuary, but after that—”

Vaughn took advantage of her wrong-footedness to clap her on the shoulder. “Dude, just say thanks.”

She looked at the hand on her shoulder before meeting his eyes. “Thanks.”

“There we go,” said Vaughn, and then he laughed. “That part you needed is over here. You sure Janey’s shop didn’t have it?”

Sasha avoided his eyes as she slung the Volcano over her shoulder and pulled her long braids out from under the strap. “I… was heading this way anyway.”

“So that’s an ‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask’,” he reasoned.

“Vaughn,” she grit out, a simple but effective warning.

Perhaps he was pushing his luck a bit.

“Hey, it’s fine, it’s good to see you. It’s been a while.” He cleared his throat and gestured to a box on the middle shelf. “Uh, I think it’s in there. I’m not really sure what it—”

“Got it,” said Sasha near-immediately. “Thanks.”

The device she pulled from the box looked more like a tenth-grade science project than a piece for a functioning vehicle. Vaughn scratched his beard. “You sure that caravan’s still, uh, road safe?”

“Well, it will be, with this and a bit of elbow grease.” Stowing the part away in her inventory, she wiped her hands on her pants. “I should be gone before morning.”

It was what Vaughn had expected her to say, almost down to a script.

“You could stay a few days," he said. "Take a break.”

Sasha’s eyes narrowed impatiently. “Vaughn, we’ve been over this.”

“We’ve got spare beds. Actual beds. I know they’ve gotta be more comfortable than driving around.”

“I sleep just fine,” Sasha insisted. (A little rich, coming from someone whose face was thin and drawn in a way Vaughn recognized as perpetual exhaustion; it was a look he saw in the mirror, often enough.) “And you know this place makes me wanna blow my brains out.” She paused. “Uh, no offense.”

“Not... really sure how to not be offended by that,” said Vaughn. But he was undeterred. “Just stay for the night. We can help you with the caravan tomorrow. Are you hungry? I usually eat around now. We can get you some food—”

“Whoa.” Sasha held up one hand to stop him, the other resting on her hip. “What’s going on? You know I just came here to get the part, why are you being so weird?” Her eyes widened. “Is that why you gave me the gun? Are you trying to guilt me into a sleepover?”

“No! No, that was… just... ”

But he’d floundered, and Sasha was too sharp to let it slide.

“Bullshit.” A threatening crease appeared on her forehead. “You’re trying to butter me up. Why?”

He’d definitely pushed his luck now. “No, no, I was just—”

“Did you even need any of that stuff?” She waved at the bag of supplies sitting on the floor.

“Well… I mean, we always need supplies, so technically... ”

“Vaughn.” They were eye to eye when she stepped forward. “What are you not telling me?”

After everything, Vaughn liked to think he knew Sasha well. Better than just about anybody. So he knew, whatever she might be saying, there was nothing more likely to scare her away right now than honesty.

He wasn’t sure what other choice he had.

“Okay, okay, you’re right, the gun was a bribe and I lied. A little.” He sighed under the heat of her stare, shoulders drooping. “I just… wanted you to be here. Today.”

“Today? Why?” And then the penny dropped. “Oh.” Sasha’s whole posture changed. “Shit.” She stepped back and turned away from him, face hidden behind her long hair. “I didn’t even… I’ve been on the road. I lose track.”

Vaughn doubted the track had been lost so much as it had been purposefully misplaced, but he wasn’t about to correct her. He could dress it up in his head as much as he wanted, pretend he was doing her some act of kindness or charity, but the reality of it was less glamorous. He’d brought her to a place she hated on a day she tried to forget for his own selfish reasons.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. He looked down at his shoes, the guilt he’d been keeping at bay seeping over the barriers. “I didn’t think you’d come if I told you the truth.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

She turned her head, just enough to see him in her periphery, and Vaughn watched her wrestle with it, her self-preservation versus her pity. Normally, Vaughn would resent being pitied. Today, he’d take what he could get.

Sasha's deliberation ended with a tired sigh, and she turned to face him properly. “I’ll stay for tonight," she conceded. "But I’m leaving tomorrow morning, once I fix up the caravan.”

Though small, Vaughn’s smile was drenched in relief and gratitude. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” She titled her head, all easy nonchalance, but her knuckles were pale where she gripped the strap of her gun. “Now, I think you promised me food?”

Vaughn’s smile grew wider. "Right! Yeah!" That part, thankfully, was easy to deliver on. “You know, we’ve had a bit of luck with the greenhouse, so—” Static buzzed in his ear, interrupting his train of thought as his ECHO comm sprang to life. He raised a hand to answer. “Hello?”

“Uh… hi,” came an anxious voice on the other end of the line. “Can you come to the gate? There’s something going on here I think you should see.”

Vaughn frowned. He looked over at Sasha, watching him with her head tilted curiously. “Kinda busy, can it wait?”

“Um… no,” was the answer. “Sorry, but I really think you should see this.”

Vaughn held back a series of impatient replies and settled for making a face at Sasha. “All right, fine, be there in a minute.” He dropped the call and shrugged at her apologetically. “Sorry, something’s up at the gate, they want me to check it out.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Another raid?”

Vaughn laughed, but it was humourless. “I hope not.” He wrinkled his nose. “And it better not be two skags having sex again, that was not a sound I needed in my brain.”

Unphased by either option, Sasha shrugged. “Well, let’s go check it out.” In one smooth motion, the sniper rifle was in her hands. “I got your back.”


The person at the door had only been gone a minute before Fiona threw her head back and groaned at the sky. “How did Helios stay up there so long with this many idiots running around inside it?”

Rhys decided it was in everyone’s best interest to let that slide.

A breeze rolled through, swirling the top layer of sand like a fine mist. Rhys folded his arms tight, an ineffectual guard against the shiver that shot down his spine. Pandoran evenings weren’t exactly cold, but there was something about standing on the wrong side of an imposing door in the middle of the desert that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“Do you feel weird?” he asked Fiona. “I feel weird. I don’t like this.”

Fiona wasn’t listening. She walked right up to the door and threw herself against it.

It didn’t budge.

Rhys raised his eyebrow. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

But she rubbed her shoulder as she stood up again. Craning her neck, she peered up at the top of the door, the gears in her mind turning.

“Give me a boost,” she said after a minute.

He snorted. “How tall do you think I am?”

“Well, do your thing, then,” she said. When he only stared at her blankly, she flailed her right arm about. “Y’know. Your hack-y thing.”

Rhys was agog. “Do you even listen to anything I say?”

“I try not to.”

“I can’t. My—”

A metal clang interrupted him as a panel slid open on the door, just big enough for them to see the masked face on the other side. Rhys’ shoulders tensed instinctively.

He didn’t like masks.

“Okay, what is this?" When they spoke, their voice was hidden too, modulated out of sorts. "A trick? A joke?”

“A joke?” Fiona repeated. “‘Two frauds walk into a vault…’” She pretended to contemplate it. “But what would the punchline be?”

Deciphering any expression behind the mask was impossible.

Fiona flashed a smile destined for sales. “So you gonna let us in, or…?”

Movement overhead drew Rhys’ eye as someone new appeared at the top of the door. He caught a glimpse of long brown hair—and then the muzzle of a very large gun pointed in his direction.

So much for laser pointers.

“Seriously,” the person in the mask was saying, “whatever this is—whatever you’re trying to do here—”

“You mean come in?” said Fiona.

“—this is really not a good day to try me, so—”

“Not a good day to try you? Buddy, we killed a gigantic teleporting monster just to get VIP access to the galaxy’s worst fast travel station.”

Fiona’s false cheer was growing more fraught by the minute, but Rhys was starting to tune her out, distracted by the sniper rifle aimed at his head. If he could just get his stupid eye to work…

“Look, can we just talk to Vaughn, please?” Fiona was asking.

Maybe it couldn’t scan, it could still zoom—

“You must know Vaughn, right?”

The sniper was a woman, Rhys realized. She had a handkerchief around her neck, pulled up over her nose to cover her mouth. The hair on the right side of her head was shaved short, and there was a deep line of concentration on her forehead.

“Short guy, shockingly jacked?”

The sniper tilted her head, staring back at Rhys around the scope. As she did, one earring poked out from behind her handkerchief. His jaw dropped.

“He’s like your mayor or king or something.”

For the second time in less than an hour, Rhys felt like he’d been tossed into a cosmic blender.

“Just find him and tell him that—”

He reached forward blindly, fumbling for Fiona without taking his eyes off the sniper.

“Fi,” Rhys managed hoarsely. “Fi, look…”

His fingertips brushed the leather of her sleeve, and Fiona turned to him. “What?” She followed the direction of his stare, but her angle was wrong, and without the augmented eye, she couldn’t see the sniper like Rhys could. “What’s got you all weird?”

Rhys didn’t know how to answer her, but his voice had stopped working anyway. With what felt like a monumental effort, he looked from the sniper to the person in the mask. His eye couldn't scan them properly, and he couldn't see more of them than the mask, but Rhys knew with sudden certainty who was on the other side of the door.

“Rhys?” Fiona gave his arm a rough tug, gripping his sleeve. Jarringly and uncharacteristic, a note of panic had finally crept into Fiona’s voice. “Someone tell me what’s going on, right now.”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” said the modulated voice—and then the mask came off, and sure enough there was Vaughn, more lines on his face than Rhys had ever seen. “Where the hell have you two been for the last twelve years?”

Chapter 2

Summary:

Reunited and it... doesn’t feel so good, actually.

Notes:

Another huge thanks to @nowrunalong for the beta! Always helping me find problem areas and preventing me from impulse posting shitty first drafts.

Also upped the chapter count estimation, since chapter two ended up only covering two of the four scenes I had planned for it. I'm long-winded.

Chapter Text

Déjà-vu clouded Rhys’ mind as Vaughn opened the gate. It didn’t clear when he stepped into an unrecognizable Helios, when Sasha walked down the stairs with an outfit and hairstyle he’d never seen before, or even when Vaughn crushed him in a hug Rhys was too stunned to return. His brain, like his cybernetics, couldn’t connect properly to the world around him.

Missing. Thought you were dead. Never thought I’d see you again.

Hadn’t they just had this conversation?

“Twelve years?” Fiona’s voice filtered through like a foghorn in an adjacent harbor, audible but difficult to make out. “What do you mean, twelve years? It can’t have been twelve years.”

“Well, it was.” Sasha watched them all from the base of the staircase and made no move to get closer, her expression inscrutable. The gun that had been pointed at Rhys’ head was strapped to her back, virtually the same size as she was. Even as she addressed Vaughn, her eyes were locked on Fiona. “Look, can we take this somewhere else before your weirdo peanut gallery comes out and asks for a blessing?”

Vaughn broke away from the hug just as Rhys’ arms finally began to move. “Uh… yeah.” He sniffed. “Yeah! Come with me.”

They all trailed behind Vaughn in brittle silence. More than once, Fiona looked over her shoulder, studying Sasha in disbelief, but Sasha kept silent and stonyfaced, staring straight ahead. Rhys fixated on the streaks of gray running through Vaughn’s ponytail.

Twelve years. Vaughn would be forty by now.

Rhys supposed that meant he was, too. Technically. Was that how it worked? Was it the cumulative years elapsed since birth that counted, or was it just the ones you knew of? What was the precedent for this?

Vaughn brought them to a retrofitted office. Moderately sized, it was about as big as Rhys’ had been, back before the promotion and Vasquez and the fake Vault Key deal—but beyond its structure it was unrecognizable. All the stark Hyperion furnishings had long been overtaken by a very Pandoran mishmash, like a weed growing out of a concrete sidewalk.

Dizzy, Rhys sank into the first chair he saw.

No one took the empty seat beside him. Fiona stopped at his side but remained standing, clutching the back of his chair. Vaughn stood across from him, half-sitting on the edge of an old desk covered by a stained tarp. Sasha walked to the furthest corner of the room, gripping the strap of her gun.

“Okay,” said Vaughn, once everyone had settled into place. “So… what happened? Where have you guys been?”

“Nowhere,” said Fiona. Rhys felt a rush of gratitude for her continued ability to use words. “We haven’t been anywhere. We were with all of you, and then we went into the vault. It was a big cavernous room, and there was a staircase leading to a giant chest. We opened it together and then—and then I don’t know. We were outside again, only it was nighttime, and we walked back here, and then…” She gestured all around her. “Here we are.”

Vaughn frowned. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Fiona confirmed. She nudged Rhys’ shoulder. “Right?”

Rhys nodded. “That… that about sums it up, yeah.” He cleared his throat. “What happened here?”

An uncomfortable beat of silence followed. Vaughn looked over at Sasha, whose expression was unchanged, but she said nothing.

“You were just… gone,” said Vaughn. “Athena noticed first. We looked up from the loot and the vault was… closed, or something. Just a big empty arch, and you two were nowhere to be found.”

Sasha caught Rhys’ eye for the first time, and the memory of their last reunion hit him like a freight train. A wide smile and a tight hug—so unlike her sister Rhys had been stunned. Even when he’d been indulging in daydream scenarios back at Atlas just to keep himself moving, he’d never dared imagine she’d be as happy to see him as he was to see her.

There was none of that familiarity on her face now. Throat tight, he looked away first.

“We couldn’t figure out what happened,” Vaughn continued. “We didn’t know if you’d… if something had happened, if you were stuck inside, or if it—if it teleported you somewhere, or…” He trailed off. “We looked, at first. For a long time. For years. But there were no leads to follow, and eventually…” He looked over at Sasha nervously again before he shrugged. “Eventually life goes on.”

Fiona’s fingers found Rhys’ shoulder and dug in.

Life goes on. A broad brushstroke to paint over more than a decade of lost time, time in which everyone Rhys knew had carried on without him. He suddenly felt very small.

“So there was nothing in the vault?” asked Sasha, breaking her silence at last.

“You mean besides the shitty time travel?” Fiona answered. “No.”

“Sure about that?”

“What?”

“Just wondered if maybe something slipped your mind.” Sasha folded her arms across her chest, a standoffish pose signalling danger despite its nonchalance. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Judging from the look on Fiona’s face, she had no better idea what was going on than Rhys did. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you—”

Vaughn interrupted with a sigh. “Sasha, they just got back. Maybe—”

Just?” There was definitely some danger in her voice now. “It’s been twelve years.”

“Exactly.” Vaughn sounded terse himself. “So maybe you could hold off on jumping to conclusions for another hour—”

“Oh, fuck you!” snapped Sasha.

Rhys felt it like a burst of adrenaline. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa, what?”

“Okay.” Fiona was loud enough to cut through as she stepped back in her self-appointed leadership role. “My head feels like someone took a meat cleaver to it and I’ve had a hell of a long week—”

Sasha snorted. “Have you?”

“—so will you please do me a favour, cut to the chase and tell me what you’re getting at?”

In the beat of silence that followed, Rhys looked between the three of them in alarm. Hands raised in surrender, Vaughn shrugged, the universal gesture for I’m staying out of it. Sasha’s face was fierce and set as she watched Fiona from the corner of the room.

“Like he said, we looked for you. For a while.” There was something treacherous in Sasha’s measured voice, a powerful riptide beneath a smooth surface. “Found Felix, actually.”

Fiona’s hand fell away from Rhys’ shoulder.

“He had a weird story,” Sasha went on. “Said he’d spoken to you, actually, just before we opened the vault. Said you’d asked for his help. He even—and this is where it gets really ridiculous—told me he’d given you money for the both of us. Nine million dollars, in fact.”

Rhys expected Fiona to look as confused as he felt. Instead she brushed her hand through her hair and looked down at the ground.

“‘Course, I knew he was full of shit, like always. I mean, I know you. You would have told me if you’d spoken to Felix, and you definitely wouldn’t keep that kind of money for yourself. Right?”

The veneer of confidence coating everything Fiona said and did had begun to rub away. “Sash, I can explain.”

“I never would’ve believed him,” said Sasha. “Not for a second.” The edge in her voice growing sharper with every passing minute. “Except that Loader Bot was there, too. Said he’d seen the whole thing. Seems like Felix was telling the truth, for once in his life.”

“Hold on,” said Rhys, staring up at Fiona incredulously. “You’ve got nine million dollars? Like, right now?”

“She didn’t tell you either?” Sasha raised an eyebrow, a tiny flicker of genuine surprise on her face. “Interesting. Thought maybe you two were in cahoots.”

“Told you,” muttered Vaughn.

Sasha glared at him. “Stay out of it.”

“Cahoots?” Fiona spluttered. “What’d you think, we stole whatever was inside and ran away together?”

“Doesn’t seem out of the question.”

Fiona scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe it is,” Sasha conceded. “I mean, clearly you don’t like to share.”

Fiona rolled her eyes so emphatically her whole head tilted backwards. “Sasha, I was going to tell you.”

Sasha snorted. “Of course you were.”

“Of course I was!” Fiona shouted, desperate and agitated. “I was waiting until after we got rid of the super dangerous vault monster, because I knew if I told you beforehand you’d be distracted.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Bullshit.”

“It’s true,” Fiona insisted. “You let your emotions run away with you, you always have—”

“Bullshit!”

“—and what we were doing was too big a risk. I needed your head in the game so you didn’t get yourself killed.” Fiona’s expression turned sour. “For all the good that did. I wasn’t trying to hide anything, I was just looking out for you, like I always have to. ”

“Looking out for me?” The explanation did nothing to quell the fire simmering in Sasha’s eyes. “That what happened in the vault, too? You went after the treasure on your own because you were 'looking out for me'?”

Fiona’s own frustration was coming to a boil. “I cannot believe you think this was all some sort of grand scheme to—to cut you out of the will.”

Sasha stepped forward, shoulders squared and muscles tensed. For as long as Rhys had known her, Sasha had been deceptively strong, but now she was downright wiry, the lines of her body sharper than he remembered.

“You know, it’s not even about the money,” said Sasha, quieter now that she was closer. “People get crazy about cash, I get it. Maybe once you had it in your hands you decided you didn’t want to share after all.”

“You’re being stupid,” Fiona ground out, eyes narrowed. “You know me better than that.”

“You’ve spent your whole life lying to people,” Sasha shot back. “What was stupid was thinking I was the exception to the rule.”

“If you would stop acting like a teenager and just listen—”

“A teenager?!”

Their voices had risen so loud that Rhys cringed away. Vaughn was studying the patch of ground by his feet, looking troubled but not surprised.

Fiona drew herself up, utilizing all of her extra inch of height. “I think I’ve earned a little benefit of the doubt after everything I’ve done for you.”

“Everything you’ve done for me? You left—”

“You want to talk about leaving?” Fiona sneered, thick and cutting. “You died in my arms, Sasha! I didn’t know what was going to happen in the vault, but you—you made that choice, you made me say goodbye to you—”

Shut up!” Sasha cried, and Fiona flinched and went quiet. “Ever since we were little, Felix liked you more than me. He trusted you with the hardest jobs, he asked your help with the planning. When he left, I felt stupid for ever thinking he’d stay. You were always his favourite, and now I know why. You’re just like him.”

Mouth ajar, Fiona took a step back, ceding ground. “Sasha…”

Sasha was shaking, her hands balled into fists at her side.

“You tracked him down with an olive branch and didn’t even tell me it was happening. You had a fucking family reunion and I wasn’t even on the guest list!” Vulnerability bled through the crack in her voice. “I trusted you. I thought you were on my side. And you took nine million dollars and you went into a vault without me and you left me behind.”

In the heavy silence that followed, Rhys exchanged an uncomfortable look with Vaughn and then stared at his shoes. They were intruding on something personal, but there was no way out now, nothing they could do to help.

What felt like an eternity passed before Fiona found her voice again, rough as it was.

“I am on your side, Sasha.” She closed the distance between her and her sister, placing her hands cautiously on both of Sasha’s shoulders. “I always have been.”

Stiff as a board, Sasha froze, watching her sister’s painted nails with her lips pulled together in contemplation. Looking as though she’d been wrung out, she said nothing.

“I didn’t mean to leave you. I never would,” Fiona went on, encouraged by Sasha’s quiet. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Felix sooner. I wanted to, I thought about it, I was just...”

Struggling for the right words, Fiona paused. In the beat of silence, Sasha met her eyes.

“Protecting me?” she suggested.

“Well, yeah.” Fiona grinned. “Been doing it my whole life, kind of a hard habit to break.”

Fiona squeezed Sasha’s shoulders, and for a second some of the tension in the air dissipated.

“That’s why Felix said he did it too,” said Sasha slowly, like she was processing it as she spoke. “Told me he needed the betrayal to feel real so he could protect us from Vallory.”

A cloud passed over her face, and she shook her head.

“It’s been twelve years, Fiona. I don’t need your protection anymore.” She shrugged out of of Fiona’s grip. “Frankly, I don’t want it.”

Too stunned to say anything, Fiona let her mouth hang open and her hand hover in the air where Sasha had been just a second ago.

“Keep the money, I don’t care,” said Sasha, brusque and distant as she adjusted the strap on her shoulder and looked back at Vaughn. “I’m fixing my ride and heading out. I’ve got to meet my client anyway.” On her way to the door, she paused and addressed Rhys from behind a wall of ice as thick as a glacier. “Welcome back.”


The silence that followed Sasha’s departure lasted a minute but felt like an eternity. Fiona had avoided eye contact with Rhys and Vaughn, fingers flexing at her side. Then she’d lifted her chin, turned to Vaughn and spoke as if nothing had happened.

“You got a spare room or something I can use?” she asked, casual enough to give Rhys whiplash. “My head’s killing me.”

“Uh… yeah!” said Vaughn, whose recovery was not nearly as quick or convincing. “Yeah, for sure.”

The bank of spare rooms—kept, Vaughn explained, for the odd traders and merchants who came from too far away to make the journey back—was not far down the hall from where they’d been. Rhys was pretty sure, though he elected not to ask, that they were the same set of rooms he and Fiona and the others had stayed in just the night previous.

Or the night twelve years ago. Whichever.

Fiona disappeared into the first available room with barely a backwards glance. “Thanks.” She flipped her wrist in a lazy wave. “See ya.”

Then she shut the door, leaving Rhys alone with Vaughn, and he felt a momentary flash of panic.

Talking to Vaughn had always felt like slipping on a pair of old shoes: easy, comfortable, familiar, occasionally an excuse to avoid leaving your comfort zone. It was one of Rhys’ favourite things about Vaughn, a stalwart companion in the uncertain seas of college and Hyperion and Pandora.

But twelve years was a long time. Twelve years was longer than their entire friendship. What if those shoes didn’t fit anymore? What if the sole had worn through? What if—

“Well,” said Vaughn, breaking the silence first as he stepped away from Fiona’s door and hopefully out of her earshot, “that probably could’ve gone better.”

“Probably?” Rhys half laughed. He felt like he’d run an emotional marathon, and he hadn’t even been involved. “I’m not sure it could’ve gone worse.”

Vaughn made a face. “Yeah, well, Sasha’s been holding that in for a while.”

“Sounded like it,” Rhys mumbled. He rubbed the back of his neck. “She really thought we meant to disappear?”

Vaughn led them down the hall as he contemplated the question, a small but familiar frown on his lips. Once upon a time, Rhys had known it as his how do I put this? frown, the sort Vaughn wore when he was trying to be diplomatic. Rhys had seen it many times: when he got his tattoos, when he’d announced his intention to have his arm replaced, just about every Friday night in college.

“When you guys first disappeared, we considered pretty much every possibility except that one,” Vaughn said. “But then we ran into Felix, and he told us about the money, and Sasha…”

Vaughn hesitated, and it struck Rhys that he looked caught between loyalties.

That was new. Usually Vaughn’s loyalty to Rhys trumped just about everything.

“I don’t think she knew how to process it,” said Vaughn finally. “After that, she was convinced there was only one explanation, that you guys were gone because you didn’t want to be found. We… argued a lot.” He flashed Rhys an encouraging smile that achieved the opposite. “I knew you guys didn’t do it on purpose.” His smile faded. “Well. I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Neither would Fiona,” said Rhys quickly, defensive for reasons he couldn’t articulate. He shoved the nine million dollar question mark to a dusty but increasingly crowded corner of his mind. “That’s not what happened.”

Vaughn raised his palms in surrender. “Hey, hey, you don’t have to convince me.” Then his expression softened. “It’s really good to have you back, man.”

The crinkles in the corner of Vaughn’s eyes were new, weren’t they? Or maybe they were just deeper than they had been. Rhys couldn’t remember. The beard definitely had more gray in it. How long had that been there? Had Vaughn panicked when he first noticed, or was that kind of vanity too low on the list of Pandoran priorities to get any traction? More than once, Rhys had joked that Vaughn was doomed to go gray first, because he worried too much. Had Vaughn thought of that when it happened?

“Uh, Rhys?” asked Vaughn. “Are you okay?”

Rhys’ chest and throat felt tight, but he nodded and tried to sound casual. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m—I’m glad to be back. I guess. I mean, I didn’t really know I left, but…”

He finished with a shrug and his most convincing grin. Vaughn frowned again, but he didn’t press.

“Yeah…” he said slowly. “Well, hey, do you want the tour? This place is pretty different from the last time you were here.”

“That sounds great!” said Rhys, a little too cheery. “I’d love to see what you did with the ol’ fixer-upper.”

He tried not to wonder if Vaughn felt as desperate as he did for a reliable source of conversation.

On their first day working for Hyperion, Rhys, Vaughn and about twenty other new recruits were given a guided tour of the station.

The tour itself had been short and to-the-point: the Hub of Heroism, a whirlwind tour of the entry-level offices, a printed brochure highlighting all the floors to avoid if you didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of an airlock. Vaughn had complained afterwards that the tour left out crucial details like where to buy food and where normal people lived, but Rhys had been starstruck by all of it, awed by his own employee badge and thrilled at the chance to be a cog in such a grand machine.

The tour Vaughn was giving him now was much different.

He’d been right to say the station had totally changed. Most of what Rhys saw was unrecognizable to him, buried under too many new coats of paint, literal and metaphorical, to be identified. Pandora had claimed Helios, and now they’d fused into something inextricable from each other.

With every new room, Vaughn referenced some remarkable feat as though it were nothing.

“We’ve had a bit of luck with irrigation, finally,” Vaughn would explain. Or, “We got a water treatment system running.”

Instituted some community policies. Made shaky alliances with some nearby settlements, brokered trade deals with them.

It was all very impressive, no matter how casually presented. Rhys slipped into the role of captive audience like a second skin, oohing and ahhing in all the right spots, asking the right mix of questions to seem attentive and interested. Years of sales experience had him well-equipped.

But a cold feeling had slithered up from his stomach and wrapped itself around his ribcage, squeezing his heart and lungs from the inside. He’d expected to shake it off, to smother it down, but the longer Vaughn showed him around, the worse it got.

Rhys reasoned that it was the fault of all the nosy strangers they kept passing. Whispers and double-takes followed them through the halls, despite Vaughn’s stern stares and efforts to shoo them away.

“Cult worship is totally overrated,” said Rhys, after one woman stopped in front of him, stared with wide eyes for twenty seconds, and then ran away without having spoken.

“Yeah…” Vaughn rubbed his neck apologetically. “It was kind of dying down, but popping back up again, twelve years later, looking exactly the same? That is pretty remarkable. You’ve probably just encouraged them.”

Rhys rolled his eyes. “Wonderful, I’ll keep that in mind next time I want a second date.” As they passed another curious onlooker, though, his shoulders sagged and he lowered his voice. “They know this was an accident, don’t they? Like, all of it. It wasn’t some kind of—of—planned liberation or—or performance art, it was just…” Now that he was saying it, the words were all jumbled up. “I mean, people died. A lot of them. They have to realize that, right? I mean, they were there.”

Vaughn only shrugged. “They’re still Hyperion. Historically, body count has been considered an asset.”

The icy feeling in Rhys’ chest tightened its hold on his heart.

Totally oblivious—or maybe entirely too perceptive—Vaughn clapped a hand on his shoulder. “But hey, on the bright side, we got rid of that Jack statue. Well… not so much ‘got rid of’ as ‘people tried to resculpt it to a better likeness of you and it totally crumbled’, but still. It’s gone now. So that’s good.”

“Great,” choked out Rhys, offering a thumbs up in lieu of sincerity. He eyed the nearest corner and made a beeline for it. “Hey, uh, what’s over here?”

The question wound up being rhetorical, because the answer wound up being obvious: almost a dozen different vehicles, parked around the room in various states of road worthiness. Sticking out like an eyesore at the back was a ratty old caravan that looked like someone had tried to digistruct a child’s drawing.

“Wow, dude, I can’t believe you have the universe’s first car, that’s amazing,” he joked, nudging Vaughn with his elbow.

“That’s Sasha’s,” said Vaughn.

Rhys blanched. “Oh.”

“She’s fixing it up,” Vaughn assured him, in a tone of voice that meant he was reassuring himself more than Rhys. Sensing the magnetic force pulling Rhys toward destruction, Vaughn tugged his arm. “But we should probably give her some space. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.” It was the truth; Rhys’ stomach felt like it was home to a nest of spiderants. But at the mention of food the spiderants perked up a little, and so did Rhys. “Speaking of—where’s Yvette?”

Vaughn’s face didn’t so much fall as it slowly eroded, like a mountain cut away by a river. “Oh, Yvette went home. Few years ago now. Haggled her way onto some ship—you know how she was.”

The spiderants in Rhys’ stomach evacuated, leaving behind a hollow void.

“Oh,” he said.

“It’s for the best,” Vaughn assured him, though Rhys didn’t feel particularly assured, or particularly anything, for that matter. “She really hated Pandora. She was never happy here.”

Too many plates were spinning in Rhys’ mind. He let the one labelled ‘Yvette’ crash, and focused on Vaughn instead. “Were you?”

Vaughn smiled.

Rhys had always thought his poker face needed work.

Then Vaughn’s face lit up, genuine this time. “Hey, actually, I know something you might like! We’ve had some… problems… lately—just usual Pandora stuff, don’t worry about it—but we’ve been trying to improve our security—y’know, the big gate and everything? Our cybersecurity could use some work too. You’re good at all that stuff, right? I mean, of course you are, you’re like a quarter robot, so... ”

The ice crept up into Rhys’ throat and suddenly it was hard to breathe.

“Uhhh sure,” said Rhys. “Yeah. Totally. That’s my thing. That I do.” If he sounded as strangled as he felt, Vaughn’s reaction didn’t show it. “But, y’know what, I’m actually pretty tired right now.” He stepped away from Vaughn towards the hall, gesturing over his shoulder in the direction of the spare rooms. “Mind if I…?”

Vaughn’s face filled with so much concern that Rhys felt a twinge of guilt. “Oh, shit, right, of course you are. Come on, there’s a room near Fiona’s.”

The trip back to the guest rooms passed quickly with Rhys in preoccupied silence. His cybernetics were like a toothache he couldn’t ignore, poking at it with his tongue every twenty seconds just to make sure it still hurt. Once again, he tried and failed to connect to the EchoNet. Error. Error. Error. Over a decade of missing software updates. No wonder he couldn’t get it to work.

He didn’t realize they’d arrived until Vaughn stopped and Rhys almost plowed into him.

“Here,” said Vaughn, nudging the door open to a sparse but decent room. “Fiona’s in the room on the left, so if someone starts banging on your wall in the wee hours of the morning, that’ll be her.”

Rhys managed a feeble grin. “Sounds about right.” As he entered the room, he ran his defunct right hand through his hair. “Well, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Vaughn hesitated for half a second, and then he lurched forward, hauling Rhys down into another tight hug.

This time, at least, Rhys had the wherewithal to return the favor. He closed his eyes, tried to lose himself in the familiar touch—but Vaughn was bulkier than he remembered, and stronger, and his ponytail tickled the back of Rhys' hand—

“God, I really thought you were gone,” said Vaughn, muffled by Rhys’ jacket. “It’s so good to see you. You have no idea.”

Rhys didn’t. He felt hopelessly out of touch, like a thin film of cellophane separated him from the world. “Seems like you did pretty well for yourself.”

Vaughn shrugged. “I guess.” When he pulled away, his eyes were bright, which only made Rhys feel worse. “Just don’t disappear on me again.”

“I’ll do my best.” Rhys’ throat felt impossibly tight as he reached for the door. “See you tomorrow, Vaughn.”

Chapter 3

Summary:

While some bridges burn, others get rebuilt.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Five minutes after laying down to sleep, Fiona surrendered to her restless energy and began carving a valley between her bed and side table. The pounding in her head served as a bassline.

In thirty years of hustling, Fiona had done her fair share of shitty jobs. She’d stolen from people who didn’t deserve it. Told lies that made her skin crawl. Sacrificed her dignity at the altar of petty cash. Gotten cozy with people she’d rather have fed to a bullymong. More often than she’d liked, the reward for finishing a job was less than the cost to complete it. It was a risk inherent to doing what she did, a tax on anyone stupid or unlucky enough to live on Pandora.

This vault key debacle didn’t just take the cake, it took the whole goddamn bakery.

Vaults were supposed to be worth it. They were supposed to be the pot of gold at the end of the hideous Pandoran rainbow of danger and violence. They weren’t supposed to punt you into the future with nothing to show for it but an I Found A Vault And All I Got Was This Lousy Time Travel t-shirt.

All that work. All that risk, and struggle, and fear, and loss, and for what?

She kicked the side table in frustration. It toppled to the floor with a loud bang. A muffled yell of surprise came from the other side of the wall.

“Fiona?” came a voice, and she stepped closer to the wall to try and make it out. “You still awake?”

Rhys.

Of course. Who else?

“Obviously,” she called back. “Couldn’t sleep.” She cracked a grin to the empty room. “You think this counts as jetlag?”

No reply.

What an asshole.

She made it another two laps of the room before there was a knock on her door. She answered it to find Rhys on the other side, looking as tired as Fiona felt.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” he told her with a thin smile.

It certainly looked like he’d tried. His jacket and waistcoat were gone, the shirt underneath rumpled and unbuttoned further than Fiona found strictly necessary. His hair was in a minor state of disarray, odd strands beginning to break free from the industrial-strength glue he’d imprisoned them in. His shoulders were slumped, and he seemed shorter somehow, diminished.

It did nothing to quell the unease that had settled into her bones since they touched that damn box.

“You look naked,” she told him.

“Gee, thanks for not being weird about it.” He nodded to the pile of clothes in the corner of her room, her hat in pride of place atop her jacket, belts and accessories. “Could say the same to you.” He reached out and gave the collar of her vest a tug. “Huh. So this part is all one piece? My money was on a long-sleeved blouse.”

Fiona knocked his hand away. “Don’t speculate about my clothing, you creep.” The bedframe squeaked as she sat down heavily. “So how’d it go after I left? You braid his hair and cry or whatever?”

“Come on, don’t be a dick.” Rhys barely had the energy to sound irritated, which made her feel a little guilty. “He showed me around. It’s, um.” He swallowed and reached for his hair, mussing it up more as he tried to fix it. “Changed a lot.”

“No shit,” said Fiona.

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Vaughn’s done an amazing job with this place. It’s incredible.”

The pride in the words didn’t line up with his tone of voice. Fiona raised an eyebrow, but Rhys didn’t elaborate. He sank down beside her, and with his legs stretched out out, his feet almost touched the opposite wall.

Rhys broke the silence first. “He wanted me to take a look at some code they’re working on. Cybersecurity. Thought it would make me feel better, I guess, but...”

He sighed and shut his eyes. The metal hand curled to a fist in his lap.

“Your tech’s still fucked up, then,” said Fiona.

“Yeah.” Rhys let his head thump back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “All the software’s out of date. Can’t connect to the EchoNet.”

Fiona hummed in consideration. “So can you still see and everything?”

“Yeah, but—”

“No offense, but your inability to stream cat videos directly into your brain doesn’t really seem like a high-priority problem right now.”

Rhys opened his mouth to argue and then thought better of it, slumping further down the wall. “Yeah.” Though he nodded, he was quiet and sounded unconvinced. “I guess you’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

She rested her elbows on her knees, staring at her tipped-over end table without really seeing it. There was an invisible weight in the room, waiting for Fiona to pick it up—only she knew that once she did she’d never be able to set it down again.

“What about about you?” Rhys’ tacky boot knocked against hers. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “Still got a headache.”

“That’s not really what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. It’s a stupid question. We passed ‘okay’ twelve years ago. ‘Okay’ isn’t even a blip on the horizon. ”

“Exactly,” said Rhys, “so I thought you might want to talk about what happened.” When Fiona didn’t respond, he added, “You know. With Sasha?”

“She’ll get over it.” Fiona dismissed it with a wave. “She always does this: storms off to do whatever-it-is, then a few hours go by, she cools off and realizes she’s being dramatic. It’ll be fine.”

“Um…” Rhys rubbed the back of his neck, his voice pitched higher in conjunction with his wince. “Are you sure about that?”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “You got siblings, Rhys?”

The question caught him off guard. “No.”

“Sisters fight. It happens.”

Rhys made an uncomfortable noise halfway to a laugh. “I know that, but—”

“I’m telling you, she’ll realize she’s being ridiculous—”

“She’s being ridiculous?” Rhys sounded choked.

“Of course she is,” said Fiona, matter-of-fact. “She’s mad at me for things she knows I wouldn’t do.”

“Right, but I mean…” Still rubbing his neck, Rhys’ nose wrinkled in doubt. “You did do them, though. Technically.”

Just like that, Fiona’s irritation flared up again. “Whose side are you on?”

“I’m not on a side,” said Rhys, in a patient voice that made her jaw clench.

“Rhys,” she ground out, a single-word warning.

Rhys did not look like a man who had any intention of heeding it. “Look, I get it.”

Fiona laughed despite herself. “Excuse me?”

“I know how you feel.”

“How the hell would you know anything about how I feel?”

Cavalier and idiotic, Rhys blundered on. “I know you're deflecting because it feels like—like if you face it, the guilt will suffocate you, but—”

“Guilt?” Fiona repeated. “I haven’t… okay, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you really need to shut up.”

“Fine.” Rhys sounded like he was speaking to a toddler. “Forgive me for thinking you might want to talk to a friend who knows what it’s like to have a secret blow up in your face and hurt the people you—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Fiona turned on him, eyes narrowed dangerously. “My secret was some extra cash. Your secret took over a space station and almost got us all killed.” She jabbed a finger in his face for emphasis, and Rhys leaned backwards. “We are not comparable here. What I did is nothing like what you did. Those two things are so different, they can’t even be quantified with the same unit of measurement. All right?”

“Okay, okay, point taken! Sheesh.” Palms raised in surrender, Rhys rolled his eyes. “I was just trying to empathize.”

“Don’t. It’s embarrassing for you.”

Rhys made an indignant noise in the back of his throat and folded his arms, his bottom lip jutting out in a ridiculous pout. “I’m trying to help you!”

“Well, save it. I don’t need life advice from the guy who let a psychopath ride shotgun in his brain.” She considered it for a second, one finger on her chin like she’d hit an epiphany. “It’s probably a good thing your tech stopped working before you could download another dictator.”

It was a low blow. Fiona knew it landed from the way he flinched.

“This isn’t my fault,” he said. He didn’t sound sure of it.

Some part of Fiona knew he was right. Rhys was a mere bystander, buffeted by the same winds of misfortune as she was.

But her head was throbbing, and she was tired. The nine million dollars in her inventory felt like a curse and she was twelve years out of the loop. Rhys had been welcomed back with a hug, and Fiona’s baby sister had been replaced by a bitter stranger.

Sinking her claws into something had been too tempting to resist. Now that she’d drawn blood, it was too satisfying to let go.

“No? You are the one who started running for the vault.” Fiona smirked. “Come to think of it, every time you show up, my life goes to shit. You’re like a bad piece of fruit. Your poor judgment spills over and contaminates everything around it.”

“Poor judgment?” Rhys’ laugh was high-pitched and mirthless. “Wanna talk poor judgment? I was the only one back there who didn’t believe you were selfish enough to keep nine million dollars for yourself.” His expression turned to a genuine scowl, his shoulders squared and eyes narrowed. In the shadows of her dark room, the lines of his cheekbones seemed sharper. “You can blame a lot of things on me, but your unique gift for driving people away? That’s all you, Fiona. The only surprising thing in all of this is that you managed to go this long before you fucked it up with Sasha too.”

The anger simmering inside her boiled over. She stood up, towering over him. “Get the hell out of my room.”

Rhys leapt up too. “Gladly!” In two long strides he was at her door, pulling it open so roughly the hinges creaked. “It’s not like I enjoy being your punching bag.”

Fiona was right behind him, drawn up as tall as she could make herself, her lip curled dangerously. “Yet here you stand, in punching distance.”

“God, it is impossible to be your friend!”

Fiona wrenched control of the door away from him as he stepped into the hall. “Then take the fucking hint and stop trying!”

Rhys flipped her off without a backwards glance. Fiona slammed the door shut.


With a flashlight held between her teeth and a wrench in one hand, Sasha rolled herself underneath the caravan and started running through her list.

The brake calipers would do for now, but they were on their way out. The rear struts were on their last legs. The windshield existed in a state of perpetual fog. The air conditioner was unreliable. The electronics were perpetually on the fritz. The underside of the caravan may as well have been called the Rust Commons.

Cataloguing it all felt like a losing game. For every repair Sasha cobbled together, two or three more cropped up.

Replacing the steering stack was more difficult than Sasha anticipated. The part itself had been in worse shape than she’d hoped, and the installation wasn’t her best work, sloppy and hurried and jeopardized by traitorous thoughts that kept wandering away from the task at hand. She could practically hear Janey’s voice lecturing her to focus on what she was doing, to not get lost in her own head—

You let your emotions run away with you, you always have—

Her hand slipped. The wrench jumped off the bolt she was tightening and hit her in the forehead, and Sasha swore.

That was enough maintenance, she decided. There wasn’t much more she could do to the caravan right now, and she wasn’t about to waste any more time at Helios. She had a real life to focus on. A life she’d painstakingly carved for herself over twelve long years. A life she wasn’t about to let be derailed by any vault or secret fortune or magical time travel again—

She rolled out from under the caravan and crashed into the legs of someone standing beside it.

“Ow!” Two metal-cuffed ankles limped out of her way.

“Rhys?” she said in surprise, garbled around the flashlight between her teeth.

He flinched and shielded his eyes as the light shone straight in his face. “Uh, h-hi.”

When Sasha took the flashlight out of her mouth and switched it off, he lowered his hand and put on a nervous smile. He looked even taller than she remembered from her ground-level vantage point.

Sasha stared at him. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Just a couple minutes,” he said, still fidgety and nervous. Off her look, he added quickly, “I didn’t want to say hello and scare you.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Scare me,” she repeated.

“Yeah…” Rhys turned bright red and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know how in movies when someone’s under a car, and someone else says something, and the person under the car sits up and hits their head? I didn’t... want you to... do that.”

Sasha shoved herself to her feet. “I don’t scare very easy,” she said flatly.

“Well, there was that time at the garage with… um…” His expression changed mid-sentence, like he’d only just heard the words coming out of his own mouth. “Actually, you probably don’t remember. Which is probably good. Never mind.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, just, um, it was a while ago—really a while ago, I guess—” He rubbed his neck more insistently. “We were all getting ready at Scooter’s, and you were picking out a Hyperion outfit, and… um…”

Amazingly, he managed to look even more sheepish than he already did, the blood draining from his face.

“Oh.” The metaphorical light bulb over Sasha’s head switched on. “You mean when you shoved a dead guy’s face at me.”

“Yeaaah…” Rhys squeezed his eyes shut as he winced. “Wow, I definitely did not need to bring that up.”

“Nope. But you did. And here I’d forgotten all about it.”

Rhys let out a pitiful groan. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did it. Or why I brought it up again now.”

“Well…” The corner of her lip twitched. “I thought it was pretty funny.”

Rhys opened his eyes, surprised but hopeful. “Really?”

“Oh, not what you did. That was disgusting,” she clarified. “Just the fact that you thought it would be a good thing to do at all.”

The little spark of hope extinguished immediately. “Oh.”

He cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders, a transparent attempt to regain some dignity. It had the opposite effect, instead focusing Sasha’s attention on how much worse for wear he looked than when she’d last seen him in Vaughn’s office with a dumbstruck expression on his face. He’d ditched his jacket, and his waistcoat was done up topsy-turvy, the second button laced through the wrong hole. He was both obviously anxious, and obviously trying to seem like he wasn’t.

The comforting blanket of shock must be getting threadbare.

Sasha wiped her hands on the rag tucked into the waistband of her pants. “So…?”

“So!” His eyes darted around for a topic of conversation and landed on her caravan. “Nice ride you’ve got.”

She snorted. “No, it’s not.”

“Nah, sure it is, it’s… homey.” He gave the hood an affectionate pat, something inside clanked, and he yanked his hand away. “Vaughn, ah, said you were fixing it up.” His voice, like his smile, was strained and not particularly convincing.

Sasha shrugged. “It gets me from A to B. Most of the time.” She tossed the dirty rag into the open toolbox at her feet. “And I’m not any richer than I was last time you saw me, so…”

For a split second she thought of Fiona, sitting somewhere in this godforsaken compound with the biggest wad of cash Sasha’d ever seen. With the toe of her shoe, Sasha slammed the lid of the toolbox shut.

“Are you leaving?” he asked, and when Sasha’s head snapped up to look at him he blanched. “I-I know you said you were, but Fiona thought—”

“What would Fiona know about it?” Sasha demanded. “She doesn’t know anything about my life.” Rhys shrank back as Sasha stood taller. “I told you, I’ve got to go meet a client. I didn’t just pause everything for twelve years in case the two of you decided to drop out of the sky—”

“I know!” said Rhys quickly. “I didn’t say you would. Or that you should've.”

Sasha only realized she was leaning forward from the way he was leaning back; embarrassed, she stepped back and relaxed her shoulders. “Sorry. It’s… been a weird day.”

“No kidding.” Rhys’ smile was small but sincere, and it faded quickly, replaced again by worry. “Actually, I came here because I was… kinda hoping…”

Jaw set, Sasha braced herself for what was sure to come: some sad plea for her to stay, to reconsider, to spend her time mending bridges Fiona had burnt years ago. It wasn’t fair. Fiona wasn’t the one who’d had to salvage a life from the wreckage—

“...you’d take me with you,” Rhys finished.

Sasha’s eyebrows shot up on her forehead. “What?”

“I could help you,” he said quickly. “Maybe. I mean, I don’t really know what you do. But—”

“No.” As the initial shock passed and Sasha recalibrated, her arms folded of their own accord and she started to shake her head. “I prefer to work alone.”

“Yeah, I thought you might say that,” Rhys admitted, discouraged but not yet defeated. “I’ll stay out of your way, I promise. I don’t need a cut of the profit. I could split the driving, or cook, or…”

“I don’t get it.” There was something strange about the offer, a desperation peeking around the corner that didn’t make sense. “Why would you want to do that?”

Rhys shrugged as though what he was suggesting wasn’t totally absurd. “Well, I just thought—”

But Sasha frowned, her eyes narrowing as she studied him closer. “Don’t lie to me.”

Rhys’ false confidence wavered. He hesitated, and then he said, “Because I don’t have anywhere else to go and I can’t stand it here.”

No matter that she’d asked for it, the honesty surprised her. When she said nothing, the words tumbled out of Rhys like a secret.

“Don’t get me wrong, this place is incredible. What Vaughn’s done with it is… is…” Shrugging hopelessly, he gestured to the rest of the wide room, his eyes darting around anxiously. “But I hate it. It was weird before, but it’s worse now. Everything’s so different. It all got… built back up, and that's good, I know that’s good, but I feel so—so—separate from all of it, and everyone here looks at me like I’m—like I’m him.”

“You mean Vaughn?” asked Sasha, confused.

“No,” said Rhys darkly. “I don’t mean Vaughn.” The bitterness was gone as quick as it’d come, replaced by remorse and fear. “This place is a monument made of all my worst mistakes.”

He scrubbed his face with both hands and let out a long, shaky breath. Uncomfortable and unsure what to do, Sasha kept quiet, hugged her arms around herself and waited for him to finish.

Rhys took a few more steadying breaths before he let his hands fall away. He slumped backwards, resting against the side of her caravan.

“Sorry,” he said eventually, a little hoarse. “I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. None of this is your problem to fix.” For the first time, Sasha noticed the dark circles blooming under his eyes. “And I know at this point I’m just… some guy you knew for a little while a long time ago.” He smile was filled with regret. “But for me…” The smile faded. What it left behind was shy and sad. “I still think of you as one of my best friends.”

A long-forgotten something wedged itself in Sasha’s throat and stayed put even when she swallowed to dislodge it. She looked away, squinting across the garage and mirroring his pose, her back against the caravan door.

“This place makes my skin crawl too,” she said, once she trusted her voice to stay steady. She glanced sidelong at him. “You talk to Vaughn about this?”

“No.” His shoulders drooped. “I… couldn’t. Not yet. He’s been through a lot, I…”

It was a flimsy excuse, one Sasha recognized from her well-worn library of excuses.

But it wasn’t her place to pry.

“Hmm,” was all she said. She worried her lip, chipped a broken bit of polish off her thumbnail. Ran her fingers through her long braided hair. Then lifted her chin and tried to sound casual. “I guess it’ll be nice to have someone to split the driving with.”

“Really?” Rhys’ head whipped around to look at her, stunned. “I can come?”

Sasha shrugged.

“Sure, why not?” A chorus of why-nots echoed in her mind immediately, but for once she ignored them. She pointed an authoritative finger at his chest. “One rule. We are not talking about Fiona. Okay? I don’t want to hear it.”

Rhys nodded, smothering the flicker of guilt on his face quick enough that Sasha thought she might have imagined it. “Works for me.”

“Cool.” She fished her keys from her pocket and tossed them towards him; they clinked against his chrome hand as he fumbled the catch. “Start the engine and take the toolbox inside. I’ll go tell them they better open that damn door.”

Notes:

Thanks again to @nowrunalong for the beta! Also, check out this sweet drawing of older Vaughn by @Nokikissa :D

Chapter 4

Summary:

Rhys and Sasha start their road trip, leaving Fiona and Vaughn to their own devices.

or: Everyone runs from their feelings, some more literally than others.

Notes:

Finally had enough of a sense of everything to properly count out approximate chapters. I think realistically we're looking at 10. Adjusted the counter accordingly. I've said that three times, but for real this time! Probably! Gonna aim for 10!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Once exhaustion claimed Fiona, she surrendered completely. By the time the frantic knocking on her door woke her up, the left side of her body ached from being in one position too long.

Her headache was better. Her mood was not.

“Ugh, will you relax?” she called. “I’m up, I’m up.” Groggy, she swung her legs to the floor and reached for her discarded clothes. “Didn’t know there was a damn roll call.”

To her surprise, the voice on the other side of the door was Vaughn’s. “Oh. Good,” it said. “You’re still there. Thank God.”

“Uh… yep.” She frowned as she pulled on one of her boots. “Where else would I be?”

Vaughn didn’t answer.

His silence had a way of feeling urgent, so Fiona dressed as quickly as possible for someone who wore quite as many belts as she did. She brushed her fingers through her hair, cringing at the dirty texture before she hid it away underneath her hat. Hopefully, at some point in the last twelve years, Vaughn and his weird commune had invested in hot water.

“Hey,” she said, redundant, as she opened the door. “Where’s the fire? I miss the continental breakfast or something?”

Vaughn didn’t crack a smile. With the fresh eyes of a new day, Fiona noticed the changes she’d been too preoccupied to pay attention to before. It wasn’t just age, although the wear and tear of a life lived on Pandora had left its marks. There was something else too, sitting heavy on his shoulders, so comfortable there Vaughn had probably stopped noticing it.

Fiona knew the feeling.

“Rhys is missing,” said Vaughn, and Fiona’s train of thought jumped the tracks.

“What?” She shook her head to clear away the last of the morning fuzz. “I just talked to him.”

Talked, yelled at. Same difference.

“When? Where did he go?”

“Few hours ago.” Fiona stepped past him into the hall, looking up and down like she might spot Rhys hiding behind a corner. “And I dunno, I assumed he went back to his room.”

“He’s not there.” Vaughn nudged open the door to demonstrate.

Hands on her hips, Fiona surveyed Rhys’ empty room like a crime scene. It was identical to Fiona’s except for the black jacket folded neatly over the end table. The bedsheets were rumpled like they’d been vacated in a hurry.

“I was checking in,” Vaughn explained, a note of panic rising in his voice. “It had been a while, I thought he might be hungry, but he wasn’t answering the door, and—”

“Relax, will you?” Fiona lifted a hand before he got ahead of himself. “He didn’t vanish into thin air.”

Vaughn glared at her.

“I mean, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere,” she amended hastily. “Probably sulking.”

“Sulking? Why would he be…” Vaughn’s eyes narrowed. “Hold on. When you say you two ‘talked’, do you mean in a civil, polite manner?”

Fiona adopted her most innocent expression. “Well…”

“Seriously?” Vaughn pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “Where do you two find the energy?”

“Rhys and I bicker sometimes,” Fiona assured him. “It’s our thing.”

Vaughn’s arms stayed folded, his mouth an unamused line; clearly, he didn’t fully appreciate this for the delightful quirk it was. “What did you say to each other?”

The question triggered an instant mental replay of her conversation with Rhys, and Fiona felt a tiny prickle of discomfort. It was possible things had gotten a little more heated than usual. Under the strangeness of circumstance, blows had landed with more force.

But that was just how they communicated. Rhys knew that. Rhys had always understood that.

Besides, if it was anyone’s fault, he was the one being a nosy jackass.

“Don’t worry about it,” she insisted, to calm her pesky malnourished conscience as much as Vaughn. “He’s probably busy crowd-surfing or getting carried around on a sedan chair.”

Vaughn didn’t laugh. Increasingly, Fiona felt her sense of humour was going unappreciated.

“I tried to call him.” Despite all her reassurances, there was still that frantic edge to Vaughn’s voice. “But I don’t think it’s going through. That’s weird. He’s never offline. I mean, not really. It’s wired into him—that’s the point—”

Recalling all Rhys’ complaints about his eye—and all her own threats to rip out it—Fiona winced.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” she muttered. “This place is full of people, right? Let’s just ask around.”

Asking around proved to be an exercise in anger management.

No one they met had any intel to offer. Instead, they had a number of follow-up questions, each more aggravating to Fiona than the last. Rhys, as in the Rhys? Was it true, was he back? Had he returned to deal with the raiders? Did he look the same as the drawings?

Could his cybernetic arm actually shoot lasers?

Was it true he was secretly a siren?

Had he really killed a zombie Handsome Jack with his bare hands inside the vault?

“It’s incredible you haven’t murdered every single one of these people,” Fiona growled, dragging Vaughn away from the latest useless idiot. “Your patience must be unparalleled.”

In the moment, Vaughn didn’t look much of anything besides increasingly anxious.

If Fiona were a more nervous person, she imagined it’d be rubbing off on her. Thankfully, she kept focused on the facts: Whatever had happened in the vault was a one-off thing. There were no more magic boxes lying around to stumble upon. She wasn’t going to get catapulted into the distant future while brushing her teeth.

When they inevitably found Rhys eating a breakfast burrito somewhere in the cafeteria, Fiona was going to kick his ass.

“Haven’t seen Rhys, have you?” she asked the dozenth passerby. The words had begun to lose meaning. Before they were even out of her mouth, Fiona was already imagining the inane reply she’d get. Something stupid about—

“Uh, I did last night, yeah,” said the woman, and Fiona’s brain fizzled. The woman turned to Vaughn. “He was talking to your scary friend.”

“Scary friend?” Fiona asked.

“Sasha,” said Vaughn immediately.

Scary friend?” Fiona repeated.

Vaughn didn’t think anything of it. Maybe he didn’t hear her at all; he was wholly focused on the other woman. “Where were they? In the garage?”

The woman nodded. “Yeah. Looked like they were getting ready to leave.”

“What?” Fiona hadn’t expected that. “Leave?” She turned from the woman to Vaughn and began to shake her head. “There’s no way—”

Preoccupied with Rhys’ absence, Vaughn ignored her. “Thanks,” he told the woman.

Then he was off down the hallway so quickly Fiona had to jog a step to catch up.

“Garage is too far,” said Vaughn, answering a question she hadn’t asked. “This’ll be quicker.”

He led her into the office from yesterday. For a moment, Fiona’s eyes were drawn to the corner where Sasha had stood, cold and silent until she wasn’t, a stranger in familiar skin.

Fiona turned her back to that side of the room as Vaughn rummaged through his desk.

“There’s no way Sasha left,” Fiona reiterated, since it’d gone unnoticed the first time. “Storming off to pout, sure, that’s very Sasha. But she wouldn’t just go. Not after…” She cut the thought off in its tracks. “Besides, there’s no way she’d take Rhys with her. When Sasha gets moody like this she barely talks to anyone.” Vaughn looked up at that, but kept quiet, and Fiona offered a grin. “Believe me, I lived through her teen years.”

Despite it all, the memory lit an ember of affection somewhere in Fiona’s heart. Slammed doors and temper tantrums, pouts and dramatic declarations: Sasha had run the gamut in her youth. Felix once said that while Fiona was a riptide, Sasha was a rapid.

Fiona’s grin disappeared, the ember extinguished with a cold douse of water. That volatility was precisely why she’d waited to bring up Felix and the money, and now—

Thunk. Vaughn slammed an old echo comm on the desk between them.


Rhys often had trouble sleeping.

Up on Helios, before, insomnia had never been a issue—whatever that said about his moral compass. But his first night on Pandora, fear had kept him awake, and then it’d been a never-ending adrenaline rush, a week-long sleepover full of too much laughing and chatting and bickering to ever settle down.

Atlas was better at first, if only because of the medication he’d downed to keep pain and infection at bay. As he recovered, the drugged daze gave way to long strings of restless nights and nightmares that left him feeling hollow when he woke.

So the speed at which he nodded off in Sasha’s caravan—in a hammock, no less—was a testament to his exhaustion. Swaddled like an oversized caterpillar, he rode out the wobble and bounce of the caravan’s shoddy suspension and dreamed, as he often did, of running though Helios.

The corridors were endless and labyrinthine, and his legs weren’t working properly. Fiona and the others long gone, leaving him to his own mistakes. He needed to find an escape pod. Why had he believed they would wait for him, anyway? When would he take the fucking hint?

Vaughn’s voice echoed after him like a spectre, wondering where he’d been, wondering why he’d left, asking for—

“Sasha?” Vaughn sounded strange, static-y and distant. “You there?”

Rhys’ eyes snapped open. For a fraction of a second, he hung there in total confusion, blinking at the caravan ceiling.

“Hey, Vaughn.” Up at the driver’s seat, only a few feet away, Sasha’s voice was clear as a bell. “What’s up?”

Rhys lifted his head to peer around the side of the hammock. So he could hear Vaughn’s voice, projected through the speakers on the caravan’s dashboard. Well. At least that was reassuring.

Fiona’s voice crackled over the line before Vaughn could reply. “Where are you?”

“On the road.” All the warmth bled out of Sasha’s tone, leaving behind something clipped and hard. “Like I said I would be.”

“You actually left, are you kidding me?” The heat of Fiona’s anger was palpable even through the Echo; Rhys cringed, still nursing the burns from the night before. “After all those theatrics yesterday, you just—”

Vaughn cut her off. “Sasha, have you seen Rhys?”

In stark contrast to Fiona, Vaughn didn’t sound angry. Instead, Rhys recognized barely concealed panic.

Guilt pooled in his stomach, sudden and sickening.

“Yeah,” Sasha answered. “He’s with me.”

What?” came Fiona and Vaughn’s voices in tandem.

Rhys burrowed as deep into the hammock as he could, hiding from two people who couldn’t see him anyway.

“I told the person at the door.” Sasha sounded matter-of-fact. “I figured the whole place would know in about ten minutes.”

Silence from the other end of the line. Rhys shut his eyes, rifling through his mental rolodex of Vaughn facial expressions to try and picture the most appropriate one. Angry? Upset? Sad?

Betrayed?

Getting no other response, Sasha kept her voice casual. “You wanna talk to him? He’s sleeping—”

In a momentary panic, Rhys snapped his eyes shut and did his best to look peaceful and asleep.

“—but I can wake him up if you want.”

Rhys waited in suspense, left hand curled to a fist at his side. He didn’t want to talk to Vaughn. That was the whole problem. If he knew what to say to Vaughn, maybe he wouldn’t be lying in a hammock in Sasha’s—

“No,” said Vaughn. “I don’t.”

The answer Rhys had been hoping for—but he felt it like a punch in the gut.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Sasha, with the slightest hint of guilt. “Babysit. Bring him back without a scratch.”

A derisive noise came from the Echo. Rhys guessed it was Fiona.

“You guys do whatever you want,” said Vaughn. “I don’t care.”

To an inexperienced audience, Vaughn would have sounded calm, measured.

Rhys knew better. His stomach twisted over itself in the cold grip of guilt.

“I’ll talk to you later,” said Sasha.

Vaughn and Fiona hung up without another word.

Rhys stayed where he was for some time after that, jaw clenched against a persistent nausea that was exacerbated by the hammock swaying as Sasha drove. Rhys had known that Vaughn wouldn’t exactly be thrilled by his decision to abscond into the night without warning. Of course he’d known.

But knowing something and witnessing it were two different things.

He couldn’t pinpoint the last time Vaughn had been truly angry with him. Back with Hyperion, certainly—but when? Over what? Unlike Sasha or Fiona, Vaughn kept things bottled tight. Rhys might not have even noticed.

The possibility made him feel even worse.

Still, did it really matter? Vaughn would be fine. Better than fine, if their previous separations were anything to go by. He’d built an entire community from the rubble of things Rhys had destroyed. Maybe this time he’d solve world hunger. He didn’t need Rhys lurking around, contaminating everything with his poor judgment.

Once enough time had passed—and his stomach had calmed down—Rhys swung his legs over the side of the hammock. Right as he tried to stand, Sasha hit a pothole, and he tumbled forward, landing face-first on the floor with a muffled curse word and a thud.

Up at the front, Sasha laughed at his misfortune. “All right back there?”

Recalling a college girlfriend who spent a lot of time talking about “karma”, he groaned again.

“Yep.” Peeling himself off the floor, Rhys rubbed his sore forehead. “Peachy.”

Sasha spared him a quick glance over her shoulder. The sun was peeking over the horizon, the colourful morning light silhouetting her as it trickled through the windshield. Suddenly very aware of his own state of dishevelment, Rhys tried to tame his hair and flatten out his rumpled shirt at the same time.

“I’ve never slept in that thing while the caravan was moving before,” she said, oblivious to Rhys’ malfunctioning heart as she turned back to the road. “How was it?”

“Oh, uh.” Rhys cleared his throat, approaching the driver’s seat with caution. “Kind of nauseating! But, you know.” He shrugged, doing his best to sound like a cool, seasoned Pandoran who didn’t need creature comforts like pillows or lumbar support. “I’ve spent most of the last week sleeping on rocks in the desert, so…”

“A real bed takes up too much space,” she said, an answer to a question he hadn’t asked. “Just seemed easier this way.”

Rhys surveyed the caravan as she said it, frowning. “...Right.”

Her new caravan was roughly the same size as the older one, if not smaller, but having only two occupants gave it the illusion of being much larger. Everything inside was designed for one: the tiny kitchenette, the hammock strung from the ceiling, the small table and its single chair, the slim mirror fixed to the wall over a tiny cabinet. He doubted if she’d even have enough cutlery for them to eat at the same time.

Perhaps it was simply economical. Minimalist. Or perhaps the caravan was unwelcoming by design, like Sasha had hung a no vacancy sign on the door to her life.

How had he managed to sneak past the velvet ropes? And how long he did he have before he got caught by the bouncer and evicted?

“You live in here all the time, I guess?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Yep. Home sweet home on scenic Pandora.” She looked sidelong at him. “I like being on the road. Spent enough time in fucking Hollow Point for ten lifetimes.”

Looking out into the desolate wasteland around them, Rhys found it hard to see the appeal. Hollow Point, at least, had something like civilization. People.

But only an idiot could miss the tired edge to her voice. Remembering her temper and his own perilous position one step above stowaway, Rhys held his tongue.

Bent to fit, he perched himself against the wall near the driver’s seat, watching the landscape roll by. If he focused on the road, on the rumble and shake of the caravan, it was easy to imagine everything exactly the way it once was: Fiona telling Athena tall tales while she flicked cards at Vaughn, Gortys rolling around shouting conflicting directions, Loaderbot thumping around on the roof like an enormous Santa Claus.

Sasha was staring determinedly at the road ahead, her knuckles tight on the steering wheel. Was she thinking the same thing? Or was that all too long ago to be anything but an aberration in her memory?

“Vaughn called, by the way,” she said, catching him off guard. “You didn’t tell him you were leaving.”

Rhys feigned interest in the windshield and rubbed his neck. “Well, it was… spur of the moment.”

“He sounded pissed.”

“I’ll call him back later,” said Rhys, browbeating his recently rehabilitated conscience back into submission. Eager for a change in subject, he nodded toward Sasha. “So... about this job we’re going to. What kind of work are you doing these days?”

Sasha didn’t look away from the road. She bit her bottom lip, shifted in her seat and draped one wrist over the top of the steering wheel.

“Worked with Janey for a few years. Learned a lot.” She patted the dashboard with her hand. “Helps me keep this thing running.” She slumped further down in the driver’s seat, a nonchalant pose he didn’t quite believe. “But it wasn’t for me. I was sick of Hollow Point, and Janey…” She grimaced. “Janey can be a lot.”

Rhys struggled to picture Janey’s sunny disposition alongside this new, older Sasha.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he admitted. “So now…?”

“Now I do a bit of everything.” She shrugged. “Whatever someone’ll pay me for. There’s always someone on Pandora with an odd job.”

Even with his comparatively limited experience, Rhys could appreciate the truth in that. He grinned. “Like a Vault Hunter, then.”

“No.” The steering wheel creaked as she tightened her grip. “Not like a Vault Hunter.” She looked at him seriously. “No vaults. Anyone stupid enough to get involved in that disaster can do it themselves.”

“R-right.” Rhys felt like he’d worn steel-toed boots to walk through eggshells. “Sorry.”

Sasha rolled her shoulders, relaxed her grip on the wheel and let out a long breath. Then she said, “I don’t do assassinations either,” like she’d simply been listing professional limitations, not guarding a sore spot. “Too messy. I don’t want to get dragged into someone else’s drama.”

“Sensible,” Rhys agreed. “Although I gotta say, no vaults, no murder… feel like that’s gonna cut into your market around here.”

To his great relief, Sasha grinned too, small but undeniable. “You have no idea.”

As she raked her hand through her hair, Rhys noticed that she still painted her nails. He clung to the familiarity like a liferaft.

“Luckily there’s always someone looking for a fetch-and-carry,” she continued, smirking. “I’m a courier with danger pay.”

She spoke casually, her posture still relaxed and at-home, but the look around her eyes betrayed her dissatisfaction. Alone in her one-person caravan for the better part of twelve years, taking odd jobs just to scrape by, believing the worst of the person she’d trusted most.

A profoundly lonely existence, as far as Rhys could see.

The thought he might bear some responsibility for it made him itch. Every hour that passed, the consequences of the Vault of the Traveler lay heavier and heavier. How long until he was buried alive?

Sasha broke the silence first. “If you’re bored, take a look at my radio.” She jerked her thumb towards a device sitting her dashboard. “It’s been acting up for weeks. Drives are a lot longer without any music.” She hooked her arm over the back of her chair. “I’m shit with electronics, but you can probably fix it with a wave of your hand. Literally.”

“Oh, I, um…” Familiar panic crept up his throat. “My cybernetics aren’t working. Software’s out of date and I can’t connect to update it. Even if I could…” He studied his right hand as he flexed his fingers. “Firmware’s old, too. Might just make things worse.”

Feeling Sasha’s eyes on him, he braced for the inevitable dismissal. It was a petty thing to complain about, all things considered. There were much bigger fish to fry. Should’ve thought of that before cutting your arm off and going time travelling.

“Can't you fix it?” she asked instead, and Rhys looked up in surprise. “I mean, there’s gotta be something. Right?”

“I could replace all of it,” Rhys answered. “Again.” He laughed nervously, letting his metal hand drop and running his left hand through his hair. “But I was, uh, kinda hoping I wouldn’t have to do that for a while.”

It wouldn’t have to be like last time, he told himself. He could do it properly, plan for it. There had to be someone on the planet with an approximate knowledge of medical skills. Hell, after twelve years, procedures might have improved.

The mere thought still made his blood pressure spike.

“Hmmm,” said Sasha, mulling it over and pulling him out of his thoughts. “Guess it’s not like getting a haircut.”

“Not exactly.” He smiled. “I like yours, by the way. Haircut, I mean. It’s cool.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. Rhys’ cheeks flushed.

“N-not that the other one wasn’t cool,” he added quickly. “It was. I just meant, um—I like the shaved side. And the other side. They’re both good. Uh.”

“Thanks,” said Sasha, putting him out of his misery. She tossed her braids over her shoulder, and for the first time Rhys caught a glimpse of a long scar on her neck, half-hidden beneath her handkerchief. “Well, if you don’t wanna look at the radio, take the wheel for a bit. I could use a break.”

She stood up without waiting for an answer or parking the caravan; Rhys scrambled to take control in her place.

“Where am I going?”

“Just keep driving south.” She stretched behind him, her spine cracking like popcorn. “You see any giant cliffs, man-eating creatures or angry bandits, try to avoid them.”

Rhys rolled his eyes. “Good advice.”

Her footsteps walked away, but paused half-way. “And if you wanna use the Echo, feel free.”

“Yeah.” He tried to make himself comfortable in the driver’s seat. With the Echo to the left of him and Sasha’s broken radio on the right, he focused his eyes on the road straight ahead. “Thanks.”


Fiona had never seen Vaughn angry before.

Amongst the other pennies dropping, that realization was an odd one. He clicked off the Echo while Sasha was mid-sentence, his thousand-yard stare fixed on nothing in particular. Though he didn’t look at her or say anything, Fiona could see his jaw muscles working as he chewed on unspoken words and a fury Fiona knew well.

The immaturity. The nerve. The absolute cowardice

“Okay, fuck that,” said Fiona, sweeping it all under the rug with an industrial-size broom. “First, I want a shower, and then please tell me you have somewhere I can shoot something.”

To her relief, Vaughn had given her a look of pure understanding and said, “Absolutely.”

That was how Fiona found herself riding shotgun in a bandit technical, with her hat in her lap, a rifle propped beside her and the wind drying out her damp hair.

The Children of Helios avoided guns, Vaughn told her—a policy that in practice seemed to mean Vaughn had all of them. It was safer that way. They tried to avoid conflict. Twelve years out, shaking off the Hyperion name and reputation was still a work in progress. Approaching situations muzzle first wouldn’t help.

“Sasha had a sniper rifle aimed at Rhys’ head,” Fiona pointed out.

“Sasha’s not exactly receptive to our rules,” said Vaughn diplomatically.

“Shocking,” Fiona muttered. But the whole point of this exercise was to stop thinking about her asshole sister and her idiot stowaway, so Fiona nudged him in the ribs. “So instead you stockpile your guns to go shoot the defenseless Pandoran wildlife?”

“Defenseless?” he spluttered. “I don’t think anything on this planet is defenseless. And it’s not senseless carnage, I mean, we can always use fresh meat, and—”

Fiona laughed. “Chill, I’m just messing with you. Shooting stuff is the traditional method of letting off steam here on Pandora. You’ve just gone native.” She kicked her feet up. “Matter of fact, you must be out here all the time. How many adult babies are you in charge of, anyway?”

“Oh, God.” Vaughn pulled a face. “Please don’t call them that. I’ve been on the EchoNet.”

Fiona laughed again at his disgust.

“And… I’m not sure,” he continued, a little shyer this time. “It… fluctuates.”

As a professional in the field, Fiona took great pride in being able to spot a lie.

“Seriously?” She narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you a numbers guy? Figured you’d’ve set up some kind of registration or something. Give people those creepy papers with, like, your photo and your birthday and stuff on it.”

Vaughn looked between her and the road repeatedly. “You mean ID? Are you trying to describe ID?” But he shook his head. “No. We’re not Helios. That’s the point.”

Fiona snorted. “Then you might wanna consider rebranding.”

He didn’t answer, leaving Fiona to wonder if she’d touched a nerve. Wary of making any more enemies in such a short timeframe, she let it drop, scanning the horizon instead for any sign of prey.

“Hey, I see some movement that way,” she said, pointing to a rock outcropping in the distance. “Might be some rakks.”

Vaughn frowned as he followed her finger. “That’s south,” he said.

Fiona stared at him. “So? What’s wrong with south?”

Vaughn’s frown deepened. “Nothing, but…”

“But? We’ve been out here twenty minutes and we haven’t seen anything.” She patted the barrel of her gun. “C’mon, I wanna shoot something. I have a lot of stress to relieve.”

Vaughn gave in with a sigh. With a turn of the wheel, they were off in the direction of Fiona’s sighting.

It was only a few minutes of driving to catch up to what Fiona had seen: a flock of rakks, spread out across the rocky terrain. Vaughn cut the engine early to avoid alerting the prey, they each grabbed their guns, and then the hunt was on.

The two of them worked independently, an unspoken agreement Fiona was grateful for. Firing at the rakks, trying to land hits that were efficient, shots that wouldn’t spoil the meat—it was a task that required her full attention, a run on instinct and reflex with no time for anything else. At least rakks hadn’t changed much in twelve years.

God, it was refreshing.

She took out three before she lowered her gun, catching a breath to watch Vaughn get off a shot of his own. She was impressed by the sight: steady aim, a clean shot, no hesitancy even as the rakk dive-bombed.

Huh.

“You’re a pretty good shot,” she told him, dragging one of her kills back to the technical. “You really have gone native.”

Vaughn shrugged as he heaved up one of his rakks, too. “Well, I had a good teacher.”

Fiona’s expression soured. It was easy to guess who he meant.

Still, she ignored it and went to fetch her next kill, sprawled in the dust a few feet in front of the vehicle.

“You can make soup with the wings,” she called over her shoulder. “You ever tried that? I mean, it mostly tastes like old leather, but in a pinch, if you have enough pepper…”

Vaughn was trying to dislodge his kill from a rock outcropping. “Delicious.” Hidden as he was behind the rock, she could only hear his voice, but his grimace was easy to picture. “Just once I’d like someone to say ‘hey, have you tried eating this monster? It tastes like actual food-grade meat.’”

She grinned. “Listen, I don’t care how long you’ve lived in your little commune, you are so unequipped to go toe-to-toe with me in a grossest foods conte—”

A nearby gunshot swallowed the rest of the sentence. Fiona’s head snapped towards the sound.

“What was that?” came Vaughn’s voice, that frantic note back in full force. “Was that you?”

“Nah.” Two figures, not so far off, had found their own flock of rakks. “Couple’a guys down there are doing the same thing. Told you it was tradition.”

Frozen by the rocks, Vaughn did not look reassured. “Oh, shit.”

The last rakk was the heaviest, and Fiona struggled to lift it into the vehicle. “Help me with this.” When Vaughn didn’t move, she rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, dude. Look, they see me.” She nodded at the silhouettes as they turned and headed in her direction. “It’s neighborly.”

The gears in Vaughn’s head looked to be turning very quickly. “Okay, you stay with the vehicle, I’m gonna hide.”

What?

“If they ask, just tell them you’re alone.” He backed further into the shadows and lowered his voice. “Okay?”

“Vaughn, what the fuck?”

“Tell me when they’re gone.” Vaughn was already disappearing from view, his scruffy head poking out from around the corner. “Just don’t mention me. Or Helios.”

“Don’t mention…?!” Fiona narrowed her eyes at the receding Vaughn-shaped lump amongst the rocks. “You got some sworn enemies you need to tell me about or something?”

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her, in a voice that suggested otherwise. “You’re good with people. ...You know. Sort of.”

Sort of?” she hissed.

But Vaughn had completely disappeared from sight, and when she checked again, the two strangers were almost in earshot.

Notes:

Very excited to write the next chapter honestly, so hopefully it comes out a little faster. Thanks for your patience, let me know what you think!

Chapter 5

Summary:

Fiona learns a bit more about what Vaughn and the Children of Helios have been up to.

Sasha and Rhys compare scars.

Notes:

So this chapter ended up being a monster, but I didn't want to split it in two. Half-way point folks!

A bit of a content note for this chapter: there's some discussion of, essentially, depression and passive suicidal ideation, though nothing explicit and not in so many words.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“Need a hand with that?”

The truthful answer was “yes”. Despite lifting with her back, like everyone always said, Fiona had only ended up with her knees bent and her arms full of rakk as she struggled to hoist the last kill onto the back of the vehicle. Having both hands fully occupied was not ideal. Even her righteous fury at Vaughn’s disappearing act hadn’t given her the boost of strength she needed.

But she had her pride, and more than that, she really didn’t fancy owing anything to whoever it was that had sent Vaughn scurrying into the shadows like a kid.

“I’m fine,” she grit out. “I got it.”

But the stranger—a woman as tall as Rhys and twice as wide—wouldn’t hear of it.

“Don’t be silly!” she insisted, sending Fiona a friendly smile as she grabbed the other end of the dead rakk. “Here!”

“Uh.” Fiona’s eyebrows shot up at the effortlessness with which the other woman heaved the rakk into the back of the truck. Before she murdered Vaughn, she’d have to ask what his lifting routine was. “Thanks.”

“Oh, it’s no problem at all.” The woman’s smile stretched wider, somehow, and she nodded towards the impressive pile of dead rakk. “You get all those yourself?”

“Yep.” Years of practice made it easy for Fiona to sound cool and casual as she leaned back against the flatbed. “I’m making soup.”

“Rakk wing soup tastes like old leather,” said a new voice, far less friendly.

The second stranger came around Fiona’s other side. Unlike her companion, she was a head shorter than Fiona, but with a scrappy, tightly-coiled look about her that made her more intimidating. It reminded Fiona of Sasha, back when they'd been kids living on rooftops and in alleyways. Forty pounds of teeth, nails and desperation.

“Sounds like you need to add more pepper.” Fiona was careful to keep her voice light, even as childhood memories threatened to pull her off course.

“I like rakk wing soup,” said the tall woman cheerfully.

The shorter one rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”

They were both a good decade or so older than Fiona. The tall one had a rifle on her back, the short one a pistol at her hip. Against the two of them, on her own, Fiona wouldn’t stand a chance.

Better not let it come to blows, then, she thought. Followed shortly by fuck you, Vaughn.

The shorter one looked around, eyes keen as she inspected their surroundings. Skilled and experienced in the art of deception, Fiona knew better than to check if Vaughn had stayed hidden, but the short woman didn’t react as though she’d seen anything.

“You alone out here?” she asked. “That’s a lot of rakks for one person.”

Fiona lifted one shoulder. “I’m a good shot.”

“That’s a lot of soup,” said the tall one, without a trace of suspicion.

“I know a guy who runs a kiosk,” said Fiona, which was true, technically speaking. “I can sell some to him.” She grinned. “Plus it’s fun.”

The tall one nodded in agreement, but the short one watched Fiona curiously, her head tilted to one side as though sizing her up.

“You look familiar,” she announced. “You live around here? Helios?”

Fiona snorted. “Nah.” Lying was easier when it aligned with the truth. “Pandoran born and bred, baby.” She winked. “I’m from a place called Hollow Point. It’s in a cave.”

Cool,” enthused the tall one.

“Hmm.” The short one didn’t look convinced. “Weird. Could’ve sworn I’d seen you before.”

“Maybe I’ve got a twin,” Fiona joked. “I’ll keep an eye out. Wouldn’t want her tarnishing my good name.”

The tall one did her the courtesy of laughing; the short one didn’t. She uncrossed her arms, and Fiona noticed an H emblazoned on the front of her jacket, so sloppy it must have been hand-stitched.

“Nice ride you got.”

The accusation was subtle, hidden in the weeds, but Fiona recognized danger in the grass immediately. Vaughn’s technical looked nondescript to Fiona—but what did she know? Was there something to mark it out as property of Helios?

And why would it matter if there was?

“Thanks, just got it,” said Fiona, cracking a grin. They sent her questioning looks, and she added, “Won it in a game of blackjack at a, shall we say, house of ill repute. Kinda doubt he was the original owner himself.”

“Lucky hand,” said the short one.

“Not luck,” Fiona countered. “Skill.” She tapped a finger to her temple. “It’s all about strategy.”

“That’s true.” The short woman walked around the other side of the vehicle, peering at the two guns propped in the passenger’s seat. “Some people are shit at bluffing.”

Fiona grit her teeth. Having a stranger within reach of her gun when she herself wasn’t made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, but she stayed as she was, cool and unconcerned.

“Or they’re overconfident.” Hooking her elbow over the back of the vehicle, Fiona crossed her ankles. “Some people don’t know when to stay.”

The other woman’s lips twitched, a tiny smile gone in a flash.

“No kidding.” She turned to address the tall one with a directive. “We should head back.” For Fiona’s benefit, she jerked her head in the direction she’d come from. “We’ve got a settlement south of here. Could always use some good shots.”

“I’ve got people back in Hollow Point,” said Fiona, and though she tried not to let it, the lie stung. “But thanks, I’ll keep it in mind. Good luck with your hunt.”

“Good luck with your soup!” called the tall one.

She waved, Fiona waved back, and then the two strangers were off, walking south again.

Fiona watched them until they were small specks among the rocks. Then she hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled around to park where Vaughn had hidden.

“Well, they’re not around to hurt you,” she told the crevice where Vaughn had hidden, “but I make no promises about myself.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Vaughn emerged from the shadows with his hands raised in apology. “Fiona, I am so sorry—”

“What the hell, dude?” She sent him a withering stare. “You better start coughing up some info, ‘cause—”

“I will.” Hoisting himself into the passenger seat took surprisingly little effort for someone his height. “I will, I promise.” He looked around nervously, even though the strangers were long gone and even the rakks were nowhere to be seen. “Can we just get back to Helios first?”


Sasha wasn’t used to having another person in her caravan. Aside from short meetings with clients and middle-men to get the job done, she kept to herself. On the rare times she wanted company, she found a bar full of people she’d never see again. The caravan was a private sanctum.

Now a spontaneous act of charity had broken her own rule. Instincts she’d been cultivating for the better part of a decade were blaring at her like claxons.

What the hell had she done?

She buried her nose in her book, but words on the page might as well have been glyphs. Constantly and perpetually, her attention was drawn over to the driver’s seat. The sight of Rhys at the wheel might have been ripped from an old scrapbook and sloppily pasted into her new reality.

Years ago, after finding Felix, the devastation that came with learning the truth about Fiona eclipsed everything else. It seeped into every crack inside Sasha and expanded until she felt she would shatter.

The magnitude of her hurt and anger left little room for any of it to focus on Rhys. Rhys was a knife wound to someone facing a firing squad. Excising him from the strange place he’d come to occupy in her heart was comparatively easy.

Or so she’d thought.

With a sigh of defeat, Sasha closed her book and moved to the kitchenette. Cooking required full attention and provided welcome relief from the whirlpool of her thoughts. Muscle memory was comforting. That was why she’d taken the job with Janey in the first place; using her hands kept her out of her head as well as anything could. Music helped too. If Rhys could get that damn radio working…

She froze, frying pan in hand. She nibbled her lip for a few seconds before she gave in and called, “You hungry?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, actually, now that you mention it.” The driver’s seat squeaked as he looked back to smile at her. “Thanks.”

Sasha shrugged while he turned back to the road. “Don’t expect anything fancy.”

Preparing a meal for two turned out to be one of Sasha’s rustier skills. Her timing was off. Pieces were burnt, ingredients were doubled haphazardly mid-way into production, and the end result was far from picturesque. She hoped Rhys happened to have the same exact taste in seasonings as she did, or at least have the sense not to complain if he didn’t.

On the upside, it kept her mind very busy for half an hour.

When it was finally done, she clicked off the burner and scraped the nicer-looking portion onto a plate.

“Park this thing and come eat,” she called, an instruction rather than an invitation.

Rhys did as he was told. While he brought the caravan to a stop, Sasha surveyed possible seating arrangements, realized they were lacking, and plunked herself on the edge of the hammock.

“Smells good,” said Rhys, a white lie if ever she heard one.

His eyes darted from the plate she’d left for him on the table, to the single chair, to the oven mitt she was using as a placemat for the frying pan in her lap. Blood rushed to Sasha’s cheeks, though she hoped it wouldn’t show.

“I don’t host a lot of dinner parties,” she said, aiming for matter-of-fact but sliding past the mark and landing on defensive.

“It’s all right.” Rhys was quick to be conciliatory, taking a seat at the table and flashing her a smile. “It’s cozy!”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. His smile faltered.

“Uh huh,” she said skeptically.

Rhys flushed. As he started in on the food, Sasha did the same, letting the scrape of cutlery cover up the awkward silence.

Once upon a time, Sasha could make conversation with anyone. It was an important part of a con artist’s bag of tricks. Break the silence, make them like you, win their trust. Tease important information out of them without giving away anything of yourself. Most importantly, make sure you never fall for your own lies.

That muscle, like so many others, had long since atrophied.

She expected Rhys to do the work for her—she was uncomfortably aware of his eyes on her, even as she stared down at her frying pan plate—and yet he kept silent. Was he scared of her, like everyone else was?

When awkward conversation seemed favourable to awkward silence, she finally said, “I can feel you staring at me.”

His eyes were on her neck, but jumped up to her face when she spoke.

“Huh? No, I was, um…” He turned even pinker than before and gave up the ruse quickly. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be rude. It’s just that...”

“I got old,” Sasha supplied.

“No! No, that’s—that’s not—”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I did.”

“You don’t look old,” Rhys insisted, firm enough that she almost believed him. “You just look… different.”

“A euphemism for old,” Sasha countered, but there was no anger in it. She shrugged. “You look different too.”

A confused line formed on Rhys’ forehead. “I do?”

“Than I remembered, I mean.” She shrugged. “Things got sort of… fuzzy, after a while.”

It was the strangest feeling, having her memories flake away like old paint. Realizing she could no longer imagine the quiet snoring that had been her lullaby for so long, or the exact sound of her sister’s laugh.

“Like what?” asked Rhys, a small mercy that pulled Sasha back to the moment at hand.

Sasha tilted her head to study him. “Your eye, for example,” she said. “Thought it was blue.”

Rhys smiled just a little. “Well, it used to be. Had to get a new one.” The smile wavered for a second, but he forced it back to full brightness. “Might change colours again, if I have to replace this one.” He pointed his fork at her. “What d’you think? Could go green. Match yours.”

“Eugh, no.” Sasha wrinkled her nose. “That’d be weird.”

Rhys laughed and ate the bite on his fork.

“Your hair, too,” she added, emboldened. “It’s redder than I thought.”

Rhys preened with his metal hand. “The sun brings it out.”

Sasha found herself grinning as an old memory floated to the top. “Didn’t you complain quite a lot about the sun when you first got here?”

“Hey, I lived on a spaceship for years, all right? Pretty low on natural light. It was an adjustment.”

“Uh-huh.” Sitting like she was on the hammock, her feet dangled an inch off the floor; she pointed to him with the tip of her shoe. “Still just as pasty, though. That I remember.”

“Oh, wow, really?” Rhys’ eyes rolled in exaggerated offense. “You meet a guy with cool prosthetics and sweet tattoos but ‘pastiness’ is what’s most memorable to you? Tough crowd.”

“I never said it was the most memorable.”

Both Rhys’ eyebrows rose. Intended as a simple correction, the words felt clumsier once they rolled off her tongue. Cheeks warm, she busied herself by scraping the last remnants of her lunch off of her frying pan.

He was staring again. Surely what she’d said hadn’t been that notable. He had a metal arm, after all. But when she looked up, his eyes were on her neck.

Ah.

“Go ahead and ask,” she said, once she’d swallowed her last mouthful of food. “You obviously want to.”

But still he hesitated, embarrassed or shy or both. “I, um…”

Sasha looked to the ceiling in exasperation, then she reached up, twisting her handkerchief out of the way so he could get a better look at her scar.

It was an ugly thing, she knew, a white slash on her brown skin that stretched down the left side of her neck to the top of her chest, where it disappeared into her shirt. Rhys’ eyes widened at the size of it.

“Got up close and personal with a stalker,” she said, matter-of-fact. “My fault. Wasn’t counting my ammo. Stupid mistake.” She put the handkerchief back in place. “Vaughn saved my life. I blacked out for that bit, though, so I missed the heroics.”

What Sasha could remember, vividly, was clutching her throat in vain to stem the bloody tide seeping through her fingers. Dizzy and unfocused, heart beating frantic and faint in her chest, she’d laid on the ground, watching the sky and thinking about how different dying felt the second time around.

No goodbyes. No magic tears. No sense of accomplishment, no feeling she’d given her life for a worthy cause, worthy people. Just wetting the dirt with her blood, alone and unremarkable.

A very Pandoran way to die. The kind of death she’d been born for.

“When was that?” asked Rhys gently.

“Years ago, now.” Sasha avoided his eyes as she shrugged. “Not long after we found Felix, actually.”

Rhys was quiet. It lasted so long Sasha dared to look at him again, bracing for the pity she saw so often on Vaughn, and Janey, and August. But Rhys’ expression, while sad, was different from theirs.

Not pity. Understanding.

“I’m going to buy you three hundred of those magic watches,” he told her, injecting some welcome levity back into the room. “And I’ll get you a big trench coat. Stitch ‘em to the inside.”

Sasha’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Like a flasher?”

“Whoa, what? No, come on, I mean those guys who sit on park benches and—” He mimed opening a coat.

Sasha frowned. “Flash people.”

“No! No, the watches are… you know…” He started gesturing to the inside of his imaginary trench coat, but he stopped when he saw the look on her face and shook his head. “Okay, not a mutual cultural reference, then.”

“You inner-planet people are weird,” Sasha concluded, not without a smile.

Done with her lunch, she plunked the oven mitt and frying pan on the table. Rhys started to gather her dirty things with his, but a thoughtful line had formed on his forehead, and he stopped.

“You know, I don’t know if anyone ever told you, but back on Helios, when everything started going to shit and we all got separated…” His words were careful and measured, but his fingers fidgeted on the table top and he didn’t meet her eyes. “I saw our ship leave. I thought you were both on it. I thought… well, I guess I thought you got what you came for.”

When Sasha recalled leaving Helios, she recalled mostly chaos: fighting with Finch—or was that Kroger?—for control, trying to stanch August’s bleeding, trying not to worry about the people still on the space station.

After the crash, she’d wondered often about what had happened to Rhys, where he was, if he’d even survived.

“You thought we left on purpose,” she said.

Rhys nodded. Blindsided, Sasha only stared at him.

“Afterwards, at Atlas, I spent a long time alone. Trying not to think about it, or what it meant, and then thinking about it a lot anyway. It was…” He stopped for a second, lips twisting as he tried to pick out the right words. “Well, it was hard.” His voice crackled with honesty. “I used to think about what I’d say, if I ever saw you again. Depending on the day, sometimes I hated you, and sometimes I wanted to beg for forgiveness.”

Sasha looked away first. She pressed her lips together, staring at her dirty stove top without seeing it.

“I know it’s totally different,” he continued. “That lasted less than a year. I had... other baggage, and we didn’t know each other that long, and frankly if you guys had meant to leave I probably would’ve deserved it. But...” His shoulders rose and fell in her periphery. “Knowing how it felt for me, trying to imagine twelve years of it?”

Sasha nibbled on the inside of her lip, an old trick for keeping a straight face.

“Surviving that—not just surviving it, but building something out of it… that’s incredible.” He gestured around the caravan, at the tiny hodge-podge of her life. “You’re really strong, Sasha.”

The unabashed pride in his voice plucked at a chord deep inside Sasha, one so unused it was out of tune. The note reverberated through her chest and left her feeling uncommonly vulnerable.

“It’s not strength.” Playing with the knot of her handkerchief, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice, she lifted her head, forced herself to look him in the eye so he’d get it. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Rhys didn’t waver. He looked down at the scar on her neck and then held her gaze. “I think you did.”

A shiver ricocheted down her spine. Sasha stood up quickly, gathering their dirty dishes and ushering them to the sink without a backwards glance.

“We should get back on the road,” she said, voice rough. “You drive. I need to get some sleep.”

Rhys stood up too, hovering behind her. He raised one hand, and for a second Sasha thought he might reach out and touch her—but instead he ran his fingers through his hair and walked back to the driver’s seat. “Okay. Sure.”


They were about ten miles from Helios when Fiona slammed on the brakes, parked the vehicle, and spun around to glare at Vaughn. “Okay. Spill. Who the hell were those people?”

Having been privately hoping Fiona had suffered a minor case of amnesia during their twenty minute silent drive, Vaughn was faintly disappointed. “I don’t know them, I didn’t see them.”

Fiona sent him a look that could fell a bullymong.

“I don’t know who they were specifically,” he amended. He rubbed his shoulder, a reflexive tick that had never faded. “But I can guess where they’re from. I know the settlement. Due south.”

And?

“They’re Hyperion.”

“Hyperion? Seriously?” Surprise temporarily eclipsed the annoyance on her face. “They’re back? How rich are those bastards? You’d think having your damn space city knocked out of the sky would put a dent in your pocket book.”

“I mean they’re like me,” Vaughn corrected. The association stung despite the truth. “From Helios. They used to live with us.”

It was obviously not what she’d expected to hear. She contemplated it with a thoughtful frown, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “Sounds like you didn’t open a satellite campus.”

Vaughn grimaced. “What gave it away?”

But even to his own ears the humour fell flat. Fiona waited, her impatient drumming echoing in his head. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and massaged his temples.

“It’s like I said. After the vault, for the first couple years all I did—all Sasha and I did—was look for you.”

He paused there, anticipating a reaction. Fiona’s drumming stopped, but she said nothing.

“Yvette—you remember Yvette, right?—she kept Helios going when I was gone. And she was good at it. Organized, efficient. Ruled with an iron fist. By the time Sasha and I…”

He caught himself at the last second, aborting the sentence before 'gave up'. Fiona’s fingers had tightened around the steering wheel.

“...by the time I got back, things were coming along well,” he continued. “And then they kept going well. People adapted to living on Pandora. We built better structures, set up better systems. Helios became more of a community than it ever was under Hyperion.”

“Low bar,” Fiona muttered. She looked at him, her keen eyes narrowed as she tried to suss out the bits he hadn’t said. “Okay, okay, so it’s all going great. But…?”

But Helios’ prosperity had coincided with a personal life in tatters. Rising tension with Yvette, whose eternal dissatisfaction with circumstance drove innovation but drove Vaughn mad. A fraught relationship with Sasha, who worried and infuriated him in equal measure.

A best friend who’d finally perfected his disappearing act.

Vaughn exhaled, long and slow, trying to loosen the perpetually-tight muscles in his shoulder.

“We were victims of our own success,” he told her instead. “Yvette used connections she’d made to haggle her way off Pandora. Meanwhile, people started talking about expanding. Things were going so well for us, why not expand? Neighboring communities could use what we had, the skills and knowledge. We could help them.” He paused, studying his hand. “Better them.” He paused again. “Civilize them.”

There was a beat of silence, during which Vaughn prepared himself for the inevitable.

Fiona threw her hands in the air.

“Are you kidding me? Seriously?” Even her laugh was incredulous. “Classic Hyperion! You guys really don’t get it, do you? You can take the giant spaceship out of the sky, but...”

“That’s what Sasha said,” he told her, smiling a little at the familiar response. “She also told me she’d kick my ass if I even thought about ‘starting an empire’, so I promised not to do that.”

Fiona snorted, folding her arms and sitting back in her seat. “How magnanimous.”

“Not everyone was receptive,” said Vaughn. “When Yvette left, one woman started jostling for power, tried to appoint herself Yvette’s replacement. Got a little faction going.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe-kinda-sorta tried to start a coup.”

“A coup?” Fiona laughed again and pressed a hand to her chest. “Ah, Hyperion, the perfect people to teach us savage Pandorans about civility.”

“I know, I know,” he agreed. “It wasn’t successful. Uh, obviously. The dissenters split off, started their own community in the south.”

She hummed. “The women I met.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “If that was all, I wouldn’t care, you know? People are allowed to leave if they want. That’s their choice. But they’ve started fights with our allies. They’ve started running raids on our base.”

“So that’s who’s been storming the castle,” she mused, and Vaughn nodded. “Helios has a hell of a lot of resources. Easier to take than start from scratch.” She tapped her fingers in thought. “Moving out’s a lot less fun once you realize you gotta pay your own bills.”

Vaughn remembered the nosedive his diet had taken when he’d started college. He hadn’t murdered his neighbors for their fancy bread.

“Every raid gets a little more desperate, and the more desperate they get...” He thought of the sniper rifle he’d given to Sasha and his stomach churned. “Both sides have lost people. Morale’s getting worse, at least on our side. People are starting to wonder if...”

If they’d chosen wrong. If he had any clue what he was doing.

He slumped further in his seat.

“I don’t want to start a turf war,” he said. “We’re not supposed to be like that anymore. Besides, most of the people who had any combat skill are the ones who defected in the first place. But the longer it goes on—”

“The more people you lose,” Fiona finished for him. “One way or another.”

“Exactly.”

Back in college, when they’d been staring down the barrel of graduation and job hunting, Rhys and Vaughn had talked at length about padding resumes. It was normal, Rhys had insisted. Everyone did it. There was nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Vaughn had only been able to picture the flipside: falling into a job he was underqualified for, scrambling, revealing to everyone that he was a fraud.

He closed his eyes and hid his face in his hands.

“Anything else?” Fiona prompted. “Any other secret rebellions you need to mention? Sworn enemies? Jilted lovers?”

Vaughn chuckled, but it was humourless. “No. No, I think we about covered it.”

“All right.” Next to him, Fiona hummed in consideration. Vaughn pictured the gears in her clever mind turning it over. “Here’s my advice.”

Vaughn peeked from between his fingers.

“Stop trying to help anyone,” she continued. “People are ungrateful dicks.”

Surprise wrenched a genuine laugh out of him. He dropped his hands. “What?”

“I’m serious,” said Fiona. “People are dicks! How long have you been looking after these morons, twelve years? No, longer than that! And they still start a damn mutiny?” She shook her head. “They’ve got a whole religion built around Rhys and he hasn’t done shit. Fuck ‘em. Let them tear themselves apart.”

It wasn’t a solution—not even close to one—but watching someone get angry on his behalf was gratifying. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as she ranted.

“I don’t think you have a future in motivational speaking,” he told her.

Once Fiona let out one last angry huff, she grinned a little too.

“Did that gig once,” she told him, brushing back her hair. “Set up this whole bullshit self-help weekend retreat, right? Unlock a better you.” She wiggled her fingers to accompany the sing-song voice. “Sasha and I, we—”

Her brain caught up with her tongue, and she froze, mid-sentence. Vaughn’s smile disappeared as a dark look washed over Fiona’s face.

“You can spend years of your life—your whole life—looking out for people, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t count for shit.” Her lip curled. “So forget it. Just look after yourself.”

Vaughn suspected she wasn’t thinking about Hyperion anymore.

She twisted the key to restart the ignition before he could think of anything to say. When the engine roared to life she looked over at him with one challenging raised eyebrow. “You sure you wanna go back to Helios? Feels like you could use a vacation.”

Doubting the selflessness of the offer, or the clarity with which it was thought through, Vaughn started to shake his head. “I don’t know, Fiona. It’s—”

“Come on,” she pressed. “When’s the last time you went anywhere? Hell, when’s the last time you did anything that wasn’t about looking after them?”

“Well…” She did have a point there. As everything had become shakier, the scope of Vaughn’s life had narrowed to so fine a point it might as well have been a needle in his side. “There was, um…”

“You’re gonna burn out,” she said, firm. “Get away from it for a bit, clear your head. Get some perspective. Strategize without a bunch of adult babies breathing down your neck.”

“I told you to stop calling them that,” he said, though the tiny spark of playfulness in her eye made it hard for his glare to stick. He tossed his head back, one last bout of indecision. “No. I need to go back to Helios.”

Fiona groaned. “Come on—”

“We can leave in a couple days. We need to grab supplies before we go anywhere,” he clarified. “And I’m not taking off without telling anyone. I’m not Rhys.”

Fiona’s face lit up.

Vaughn shrugged, but her grin was infectious. “Hey, my thing’s not working, so let’s try yours. Why not.”

“That’s the spirit!” She shoved him with her elbow, the spark of playfulness a full-blown fire now. It reminded him of every time Rhys had suckered him into a night of drinking or parties or video games when they really ought to have been studying.

Vaughn hadn’t been good at saying no then, either.

When she took her foot off the brake and hit the gas, the vehicle sprang to life with such a jolt that Vaughn gripped the frame of the door. “You have a destination in mind?”

“Oh yeah.” She pulled her hat down tight against the breeze. “There’s a few old stomping grounds I’d like to check out.”


When Rhys and Sasha were both awake, everything was fine.

After the abrupt end to their lunchtime, Rhys feared he’d pressed too close. Sasha slept for hours, and Rhys spent the duration of that long, quiet drive fretting that he’d ruined everything by making an effort, just like he had with Fiona—but then Sasha had woken up, chatted about nothing of consequence, and everything settled into a routine.

They ate meals together, trading off who got the real chair and who made do with the hammock. When one was driving, the other held conversation, whether it was all the way from the hammock or sitting cross-legged at their side.

They talked about the weather, about food, about music, about superficial things they’d done while they were apart. Worst meals they’d ever eaten and first crushes and favourite songs. They talked about the boy band they’d both loved when they were young. Sasha told him about her weirdest clients and Rhys told her about the wildest parties he’d been to.

They avoided touchy subjects—like Fiona or Vaughn or vaults or time gaps—with the skill and dexterity of professional figure skaters. It became their unspoken agreement: keep things light and easy. Don’t poke each other’s wounds, new or old.

That worked just fine for Rhys. Surely if he kept his closet doors barricaded long enough, the skeletons inside would eventually decompose.

It was only when Rhys was left alone with his thoughts that reality crept in to burst the comfortable bubble he and Sasha created.

The Pandoran road stretched on endlessly. When Sasha wasn’t awake to entertain him, it took every ounce of his willpower to not be lulled into hypnosis by the monotonous lumps of rock. Vaughn and Fiona never called back, and Rhys never called them. Sasha’s unused Echo sat on the dashboard while he drove, its silence mocking him like a heartbeat beneath the floorboards.

Trying to rest while Sasha drove was no better. He was too tall to fit the hammock comfortably, and without the help of an adrenaline crash, the awkwardness was harder to ignore. Worries festered and mutated and paraded through his mind like spectres, infecting his dreams and etching away at his sleep.

You’re building one shaky house of cards here, kiddo, taunted a voice Rhys tried his hardest to forget. How long do you really think you’ve got until it collapses again?

Rhys curled onto his side, squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block it out.

“Hey.” Sasha’s voice filtered through his dozy half-sleep state. Rhys cracked his eyes open to find her looming over head. “Your turn.”

“Right.” He heaved himself up out of the hammock, lower back screaming in protest as he stood, stretched and yawned. “Yeah, all right.”

He started towards the driver’s seat, but Sasha stopped him with a hand on his chest and a keen look in her eye.

“Hang on,” she said. “You look terrible. Did you sleep at all?”

“Uh.” Rhys blearily looked down at the one fingertip of hers pressed against his bare collarbone. “Yeah, sure. A little.”

Sasha took her hand away and folded her arms across her chest. “You were supposed to be resting.”

“I know.” He rubbed the sore spot on his lower back, as though a ten-second massage might fix it. “I tried. Didn’t work out. It’s okay.”

Sasha planted herself in front of him, eyes narrowed dangerously. “I’m not having you drive us off a cliff because you’re tired.”

“I’ll just have, like, six coffees.” He dismissed it with a wave. “One time in college—”

“No. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

Feeling self-conscious now, Rhys only shrugged. “It’s fine, I promise. I’m used to it. Happens all the time.”

Sasha’s fierce gaze softened like butter in a microwave. She frowned as though mulling something over, looked back through the windshield at the dark skyline, and then shook her head.

“Stay here a second,” she told him. She swept past him, tugged on the string for the trap door and climbed up to the caravan’s roof.

Rhys did as he was told, standing exactly where she’d left him in a sleepy daze. He hadn’t even noticed this caravan had roof access; he’d never seen her use it.

Before long, Sasha’s voice called down through the door. “Come on up.”

The sun had long dipped below the horizon, and the nighttime air was chilly. Elpis bathed everything in enough purple light that Rhys didn’t need his defunct Echo eye to see. In principle, the roof of this caravan was not so different from the roof of any other—except when he reached the top of the ladder, he discovered Sasha had covered the whole thing in plush blankets and pillows.

“Whoa,” said Rhys. He froze at the top of the ladder, hesitant to disrupt her creation.

“I like to sleep up here sometimes, when it’s dark out,” she told him, perched on top of the empty chest near the door. “I thought, maybe…”

Rhys gaped at her. This rooftop sanctuary was clearly a privilege Sasha afforded to very few people. “You thought—?”

“It’s probably stupid.” Shy all of a sudden, Sasha shook her head, one hand fidgeting with her handkerchief while the other dismissed him. “You don’t have to—”

“Are you kidding me? This is awesome, Sasha.” Exhaustion completely eliminated any chance he might’ve had at not sounding like an over-emotional dweeb, so he decided to roll with it and touched her arm. “Thanks.”

Sasha stiffened. For a fearful second he worried she’d pull away, but she only smiled and nodded towards the makeshift bed. “Go on, then, don’t just look at it.”

Rhys grinned back at her. “Right.”

Actually climbing into the blankets proved to be one of the less graceful moments in Rhys’ generally graceless life. They bunched at his knee, caught on his foot, got stuck under his own weight when he tried to fix them. By the time he collapsed at the end with the pillows, Sasha was laughing at him, and from his jumble of pillows Rhys laughed too.

“I'm usually alone when I do that,” Sasha teased. “Well, sleep tight.”

“Wait.” Rhys twisted around just in time to see her stand up. “You don’t have to… I mean, there’s plenty of room.” He scooted to one side in demonstration.

Sasha bit her lip, indecision written on her face.

“Sorry,” Rhys said quickly, feeling like a creep. “Maybe that was weird. I didn’t mean—I just—you said you liked sleeping up here. I don’t want to take your favourite spot.”

“Well…” After deliberating for another second that felt like a lifetime, she smiled. “It is nice out here tonight.”

The way she climbed in next to him must have been nearly as awkward as the way he had, but Rhys was too focused on giving her space and trying to calm his stupid heartbeat to pay any attention. The space between them was big enough that they weren’t touching, but Rhys was keenly aware of how easily either of them could change that. As Sasha settled onto the pillow beside him, blanket pulled up to her chin, Rhys kept his hands tucked tight to his sides and stared at the sky.

They laid like that for a moment, quiet and still and calm, but Rhys felt more awake than he had in days.

“Lotta stars out here,” said Rhys, whose brain, in lieu of something clever to say, settled for something factual instead.

“It’s funny, I wouldn’t have thought stars impressed you very much,” she told him. “Living on a space station and everything.”

“It’s different down here,” he said. “The scale of it. Every window on Helios looked out at Pandora, Elpis or darkness. Besides, I was…” Making constant mistakes. Brokering a deal with the devil for a corner office. A cog in a monstrous machine. “...distracted. Can’t say I did a lot of stargazing.”

“I love it. It’s nice to know there’s a universe out there, beyond this place.” The sound was so close to his ear that he shivered. “I can still remember when I first saw them.”

“Wait.” Rhys’ brow furrowed. “Saw… the stars?”

She nodded. “You can’t see stars from Hollow Point. Can’t see the sky at all. Just that cave ceiling, bearing down on you. Keeping you in place.” She sniffed in the cold. “Felix took us out of town for the first time when we were kids, and when the two of them were sleeping I crept onto the roof and took a look. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

“Holy shit,” said Rhys, who could no easier remember his first time seeing the sky than his first breath. “How old were you?”

“Must’ve been nine. I woke up Fiona, and we…” Her voice caught. “As I got a bit older I liked to imagine they were all planets, imagine what life was like for the people there. What it’d be like if I’d grown up there instead.” The breath she exhaled was almost a sigh. “Stupid kid stuff.”

“That’s not stupid,” he said gently.

Rhys could picture it so easily he felt a twinge in his chest: little Sasha and Fiona, telling each other stories about made-up planets and dreaming of better lives. He wondered if Fiona had ever believed in any of it the way Sasha had, or if—older and wiser and bearing the brunt of it all—she’d merely been playing along.

“Feels stupid now.” Sasha tugged the blanket tighter under her chin. “I used to think I’d see it myself, some day.” She smirked. “Tough luck, kid: you’re gonna die on this planet.”

“You don’t know that,” Rhys insisted. “You’ve got money now—”

Fiona has money,” Sasha corrected harshly—but then she sighed. “I promise I didn’t bring you out here to complain.”

“I don’t mind.” He didn’t. In a weird way, Sasha’s complaints were reassuring. Any permission to peek behind the curtain drawn around her soul felt like a privilege, even if the glimpses he got made him ache.

Sasha’s lips twitched, but when she spoke, she shone the spotlight on him. “What about you? Why haven’t you been sleeping? Bad back support in the hammock, or…?”

“Well, that probably doesn’t help,” he joked. Under her scrutiny, he found himself squirming, and chose one star out of hundreds to focus on. “No, it happens a lot, ever since…” He ran down a list of white lies before settling on the truth. “Well, ever since Jack.”

“Oh.” Like her gaze, Sasha’s voice was gentle, and Rhys focused even harder on his chosen star. “Wow. I haven’t thought about Handsome Jack in ages.”

Rhys snorted. “Lucky you.”

“Sorry,” said Sasha, “I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Rhys assured her. “Being forgotten by the people he tried to terrorize would probably be, like, Jack’s worst nightmare, so that’s something.”

“There’s one advantage to living in the future.” When he risked a look over at her, Sasha was smiling. “Pandora’s still here. You’re still here. He’s not.”

Rhys smiled too. “Yeah.” He freed his left hand from the covers, flipped off the air and shouted at nothing in particular. “Suck it, asshole.”

When Sasha giggled, Rhys did too, letting his hand fall atop the sheets. He looked at Sasha again, and she felt closer than before, even though Rhys was certain neither of them had moved.

“I don’t know, this whole thing, it’s weird,” he told her. “Sometimes it feels like… like…” Shame caught up to him and he shut his mouth. “Nevermind, it’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

It was impossible to deny her when she said it like that, so close to his ear, so captivated. Feeling quite warm, he sought out his chosen star again.

“Okay, well, sometimes it…” He took a deep breath. “Sometimes it feels like I was supposed to die up on Helios, or—or with Jack—and ever since I didn’t, the universe hasn’t known what to do with me.” In the beat of silence that followed, Rhys wished desperately for the ability to disappear. “Okay, that sounds even dumber than it did in my head, so...”

Sasha’s fingers curled around his right hand and Rhys’ mouth went dry. The prosthetic couldn’t feel the texture of her skin or the warmth of her hand, but it felt the gentle pressure when she squeezed his fingers, and in the moment that was more than enough. He squeezed her hand in return.

“I know what you mean,” she said, and Rhys doubted he’d ever listened to anything more attentively. “Back when we fought the Traveler, I didn’t want to die. But someone had to use the detonator, and I was right there. So I made that choice, and I got lucky, and I survived.”

Her voice was thick, and she wasn’t looking at him. Rhys wondered if she’d picked a star of her own, too, and gave her hand another squeeze.

“But then the two of you disappeared, and everything fell apart, and I thought… sometimes, I wondered if maybe it wouldn’t have been better if I’d just…”

She couldn’t finish the thought, but she didn’t need to. Rhys rolled to face her.

“Hey,” he said seriously. “I’m really glad you’re still here.”

Sasha turned towards him, eyes bright. “You were wrong, what you said the other day. About being ‘some guy’. You’re not. You never were.” She smiled and Rhys’ heart skipped. “You cried while I was dying. That counts.”

Rhys couldn’t be sure which of them moved first. The small space between them evaporated, and while Rhys’ heart thumped in his chest and in his ears, Sasha’s lips touched his. His hand cupped the side of her head, drawing her closer. Sasha deepened the kiss as she pressed against him, fingertips brushing his jaw, and for the first time in days—weeks, months even, Rhys felt like he was exactly where he was meant to be—

Then Sasha pulled away, her eyes wide and horror struck, and Rhys felt his whole world spin the wrong way on its axis, again.

“This is a mistake.” She scrambled to get away while Rhys’ brain scrambled just to keep up. “We can’t do this. This is—this is bad.”

What?” He pushed himself upright too, ears ringing. “No it’s not, it’s—”

“Rhys,” said Sasha, dripping with sympathy and pity and all the wrong kinds of adjectives. “You’re just lonely.”

It was so absurd that he laughed, strangled and humourless.

“What? No, I’m…” Not? Well, that wasn’t true. He jumped tracks. “I like you! Sasha, I’ve liked you for a really long time.”

“Rhys…” Her voice warbled, but she stayed resolute. “It’s been twelve years. You don’t know me.”

“I want to.” He did. He wanted to know every stupid detail he’d wondered about for ages, when he’d been desperate at Atlas and when they’d been in that biodome and when they’d been trekking across Pandora as a group. “Sasha, I want to, if you’d just—”

The crumpled look on her face was so stricken that for a second he thought he’d gotten through—but she shook her head. “I can’t. It’s too late for this, Rhys. This is all just… nostalgia.”

Rhys didn’t know what to say. All the air in his lungs had left at once, and he felt strangled.

“This is my fault,” she said, as genuine as he’d ever heard her. “I shouldn’t have let this get where it did.”

He reached for her on instinct, but Sasha stood, and he met only air.

“I’ll sleep inside.” She wasn’t looking at him anymore. “And I’ll take the first shift driving.” She moved to the trap door quickly, climbing onto the ladder.

“Sasha, please,” he choked out, even though he wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was asking. Everything was slipping through his fingers, again, and he couldn’t—

“I’m sorry, Rhys,” she said, meeting his eyes across the roof from the top of the ladder. She looked nearly as sad as he felt, only she couldn’t be, because if she was, why would she— “I really am sorry.”

Then she was gone, the door falling shut behind her. Lightheaded and heart pounding, Rhys stayed frozen as he was, sitting on her roof in stunned silence, his hand resting on the pillow where Sasha had been just a minute ago.

He thought fleetingly of every college heartbreak, all the times Vaughn had been there to coax him through it, and his wrung-out heart twisted even more. His breathing stuttered, shallow and quick.

Somewhere, he imagined laughter. What’d I tell ya, cupcake?

Rhys hugged his knees to his chest and cried.

Notes:

Please also go check out this gorgeous older Sasha fanart by the lovely @nowrunalong.

Chapter 6

Summary:

While Vaughn and Fiona prepare to strike out on a road trip of their own, Sasha and Rhys cope with the aftermath of a mistake.

Notes:

So that Borderlands 3 teaser, huh?

Obviously, this fic isn't written with BL3 in mind and won't be compliant. Officially AU, baby.

Chapter Text

Don’t get attached, Felix had warned, time and again, before every job they’d ever run. If he’d taught Sasha anything of value at all, it was that.

She paced the small cabin of the caravan, heart pounding and head spinning. Kissing Rhys was a category of mistake she hadn’t made in a long time. Letting Rhys come along at all was a mistake. He was lonely and vulnerable and desperate, and she—

She was just enough of those things herself to take advantage of it.

What the hell was she thinking?

Rhys, and the roof, and his warm mouth on hers—it was nothing more than the sheen of a soap bubble, beautiful and fragile and utterly temporary. Maybe Rhys couldn’t see that yet, but she could, and she had a duty to them both to do the smart thing. The mature thing.

God, Rhys had a way of getting under her skin. A few days with him and she was a stupid twenty-four-year-old again.

In his absence, she’d written it off as the naivety of youth. The adrenaline of the whole disaster had clouded her brain and impaired her judgment, and then—both times—he’d disappeared before she could shake it loose. Sure, he was more charming than he ought to be, and he was handsome, in a polished kind of way uncommon on Pandora, and he was sweet with her, gentle, unlike—

“Fuck,” she mumbled. She ran her fingers through her hair and gave the ends a frustrated tug. “Get it together, Sasha.”

At the end of the day it didn’t matter if he was sweet or gentle or handsome. Right now, Rhys was lost in a desert and Sasha was his mirage. If he got too close, he’d see right through her, and he’d be gone. No one who saw Sasha—who really saw Sasha—ever stayed.

Not even Fiona.

Her vision blurred as her eyes began to sting, so she shut them tight and climbed into her hammock. In the dark lonesome caravan, all the times Felix had chastised her for getting too close to a mark echoed in her mind. You need to use your head, he told her, over and over again. Your heart gets in the way.

Or, as Fiona had put it, you let your emotions run away with you.

Thing was, she’d tried. She really had. For twelve excruciating years. She’d cut away all the misguided parts of her that still yearned for things she now knew she’d never find: home, stability, belonging, family...

Fairy tales. Sasha was too old for those.

Slow but steady, the tide of her emotions ebbed back, leaving her barren. Her cheeks were still dry by the time she fell into a dreamless sleep.

She woke hours later, muscles aching from sleeping tense. Though hours had passed, judging by the faint glow of sunrise creeping through the window, she felt as exhausted as if she’d fought a rakk hive with her bare hands.

She wondered if Rhys had managed to get any sleep.

Breakfast, she thought instead, clinging to that simple tangible need like a lifeline. Stretching her sore shoulders, she pulled out her frying pan, grabbed the last of the eggs and got to work. The sizzle and smell worked magic, distracting her from the shadows circling the perimeter of her thoughts. Only as she switched off the burner and reached for her plate did she notice—

“Oh,” she said aloud, to no one.

She’d cooked for two.

For a moment she stared at the food, struck with indecision and a discomfort in her belly that couldn’t be blamed on hunger. Then she sighed, set the food on the table, and reached for the ladder.

When Sasha poked her head through the trap door, all the blankets and pillows from the night before were stowed away in the chest. At the other end of the roof sat Rhys, with his back to her, a solitary silhouette against the vast sky.

For a split second, Sasha half-hoped he’d give her an out by pretending nothing had happened, brush it aside with one of those see-through grins—

But he didn’t even turn to look at her.

“I made breakfast,” she said, finally digging out her courage. “If you want some.”

“No.” His back stiffened as he spoke. “I’m not hungry.” Then, after a pause, “Thank you.”

“Okay.” Calling across the distance felt unnatural. Sasha’s handkerchief twisted in her hand. “I’ll leave some in the fridge, in case you want it later.”

Rhys’ head jerked up and down, a curt nod. “Thanks.” Perfunctory.

“I…” Sasha began, but her mouth hung open, caught. I’m sorry? There was nothing to say that she hadn’t said last night, nothing that wouldn’t rub salt in an open wound. “I’ll start driving after I eat. Come in whenever you like.”

Hunching further into himself, Rhys only nodded again. Sasha left him watching the first hints of sunlight paint the edge of the horizon.


Despite what he’d told Fiona, Vaughn didn’t realize how long it had been since he left Helios until he was getting ready to do it again.

Word of his imminent departure spread quickly and against his wishes, the way all news seemed to. Preparations spiralled into other preparations. Supplies needed to be gathered and packed. Systems needed last-minute checking. People had to be briefed. One day fell into the next like dominoes.

“You’re stalling,” Fiona accused by the sixth day, barging in while he double-checked inventory.

“I told you I wasn’t going to run out on them,” Vaughn grumbled, finishing his third recount of food rations. There would be plenty, provided everyone behaved responsibly. “I want to make sure they—”

“You are absolutely stalling.” Fiona marched to where he stood, grabbed his arm and tugged. When he proved tougher to budge than she anticipated, she narrowed her eyes. “Push the baby birds outta the nest.” She made a sweeping motion in the air with her fingers. “Time to fly or die.”

Vaughn recalled finding a shattered bird’s egg beneath a tree in his elementary school’s playground. He grimaced. “Not a very maternal woman, are you?”

“It’s been a decade, dude.” She folded her arms and challenged him with a look. “You really think the ‘Children of Helios’ can’t hack it without you for a week? Either you’re not giving them enough credit or you’ve been kind of a shitty parent.”

Vaughn set the inventory list back on the shelf, stepping around Fiona and into the hall if only to avoid her eyes.

“It was easier to leave when Yvette was here,” he said, deciding to deflect from one truth with another. “She ran a tight ship.”

“What, you worried about your succession plan?” Fiona pushed past him with a roll of her eyes. “Hey, you!” She cupped her hands, shouting down the hallway at a man sweeping miscellaneous debris into a neat little pile. “What’s your name?”

“Uh…” Bewildered, the man looked both ways to check she wasn’t addressing someone else before he answered her. “Dennis.”

“Cool. Dennis, you’re in charge while we’re gone, all right?” She didn’t wait for affirmation before giving Dennis a thumbs up. “Don’t fuck it up. Good luck!”

Dennis barely had time to splutter a, “Thanks?” before Fiona turned and left.

Vaughn stormed after her. She was only a couple inches taller than him, but her strides felt long. “What the hell, Fiona? You can’t just—just do that.”

“Can and did,” she said, breezy as ever.

“Okay, sorry I can’t take off at a drop of a hat,” Vaughn insisted, not sorry at all, “but this place needs me.”

“Does it?” Fiona countered, and Vaughn’s eyebrows shot up. “‘Cause I’ve been here a little while now, and I’m not so sure who needs who. I think you like the excuse to stay hidden away, avoiding things.”

The absurdity of the accusation was too much. “That’s ridiculous.”

Fiona ran her fingers along the brim of her hat, unconcerned. “Is it?”

Irritation he’d suppressed for days reached its boiling point.

“Of course you don’t understand responsibility,” he snapped. “Just because you’ve spent your whole life running from it doesn’t mean you get to lecture those of us who actually try looking out for other people.”

He knew he’d crossed a line when Fiona’s shoulders tensed. She stopped dead in her tracks before whipping around to face him.

“I know you feel tough now that you’ve spent a few years roughing it here in your space station full of resources, but I was born on Pandora.” She glowered down at him, making those two inches feel like two feet. “I’ve been an orphan since I was eight years old. Don’t presume you know anything about my sense of responsibility, or my ‘instincts’.”

Vaughn gaped at her, caught between an apology and the stubborn insistence that whatever eight-year-old Fiona might have done, thirty-year-old Fiona was far from it. Before he could make up his mind, she turned heel and continued down the hall fast as ever.

“I’m leaving tonight. Come with, or I’ll steal a car and go without you.” She addressed him without looking backwards. “You need some tough love. I’m confiscating the security blanket.” Her arms spread in the air above her head, crude wings. “Fly or die.”

“That is so not as cool as you think it is,” Vaughn muttered—but Fiona was far out of earshot.

Maybe for the best. He wasn’t sure his temper could compete with hers.

Still, he stomped his way to his office with heavy steps and a scowl on his face.

So what if he had some reservations about leaving? The world outside of Helios’ walls was still more dangerous than the politics within. Last time he’d been more than thirty miles from Helios, he’d watched a friend lose a fight with a stalker and bleed out in the sand.

But he wasn’t hiding.

Besides, who was Fiona to accuse him of hiding from anything? She was a con artist who kept nine million dollars from her own sister. Vaughn could count on his fingers the number of times he’d seen her express a genuine emotion.

"Tough love", he thought bitterly. Yeah, right: that was just a nice euphemism for being an asshole.

He’d almost made it to his office when his Echo rang, triggering a fresh flare of annoyance. He got calls frequently, often from people located somewhere else on Helios asking a question that could have waited. See? he imagined saying to Fiona, as he lifted a hand to take the call. The people here did need him.

Until the voice that came down the end of the line belonged to Rhys.

“Vaughn?”

Vaughn froze.

“H-hey, Vaughn, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Vaughn answered shortly.

“Oh. Good. Wasn’t sure it was working.” There was a brief pause. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” Vaughn jerked open the door to his office and sequestered himself inside. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Rhys’ laugh was like nails down the chalkboard of Vaughn’s spine. “Whoa, language!”

Language? You disappeared on me, Rhys. The one thing I specifically asked you not to do—”

“I know I should have called,” said Rhys, infuriatingly measured.

“Oh, you think?”

“My Echo’s not working—”

“Nuh-uh.” Vaughn laughed. “You forfeited the right to use that excuse when you let Hyperion wire it into your brain.”

“It’s not—”

“And you know what, I don’t care that you didn’t call. I care that you left in the first place.”

“I know, dude, and I’m sorry, I—”

“Are you, though? ‘Cause it’s been days, Rhys.”

“Yeah… sorry about that.” Vaughn could picture Rhys’ grin over the line, artificial and eerie, because his voice had that slicked-over sound he’d used to charm his way around Hyperion sharks sniffing for blood. “It was a weird day—week… while. Things just happened fast. I needed some space. You know how it is.”

The trick, Rhys had explained once, three beers in, was to seem so easy-going you were bulletproof. Don’t let them see the soft, squishy parts.

It wasn’t a voice he’d ever used on Vaughn before.

“No, I don’t know how it is, actually,” he bit out. “Only one of us has a history of leaving the other behind.”

“Vaughn—”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. If you were sorry you’d stop doing it.”

Silence from the other end of the line. Maybe he’d managed to cut through the teflon of Rhys’ confidence.

Good.

When Rhys still hadn’t said anything, Vaughn asked, “Is Sasha around?”

“No. It’s just me. She—she stepped out. Saw some eggs, and we’d run out, so…”

“Surprised she left you unsupervised. Guess she trusts you. That’s rare.”

Bitterness crept into Vaughn’s voice before he could stop it. Leave it to Rhys to spend mere days smooth-talking his way into something Vaughn had needed to build, brick by brick, over years.

All Rhys said was, “Yeah… I guess so.”

The most infuriating thing about Rhys being a social butterfly was that he never even seemed to realize it.

“Glad you two are getting along,” Vaughn grumbled. “So what is it? I’m guessing you need something. That’s why you called me, isn’t it?”

“I…” Rhys sounded hesitant. “I was…”

When he offered no further information, Vaughn let out an impatient sigh. “Cut to the chase, I’m busy.”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.” With the corporate bravado stripped away, Rhys’ voice was faint. “I—I don’t need anything.”

It was as transparent a lie as Rhys had ever told, but Vaughn was in no mood to go digging for the truth.

“Okay, well if it’s nothing, then I’m gonna hang up.” He rolled his eyes to the empty room. “I don’t just wait around for you anymore.”

“I know you don’t.” The first thing Rhys had said so far that sounded completely honest, it pierced through the fog of Vaughn’s anger to strike his heart. “I didn’t mean to waste your time. I’ll let you go.”

With sudden clarity, he pictured Rhys, who-knows-where on Pandora, hopelessly out of his depth and removed from everything he once knew. Wanting things to be the same as they always were, knowing they never could be.

Vaughn remembered how that felt. All of his anger snuffed out like a candle.

“Rhys, wait—”

But the line was already dead.

A cold weight settled in the bottom of his belly, and he reached to return the call only to stop and rub his face with his hands instead. Maybe Fiona had the right idea after all. Ditch the security blanket. Rhys would be fine. If Rhys wanted space, now he had it. Sasha was a mercurial travel companion, but she’d keep him safe.

And besides—Rhys needed to hear it.

Tough love, Vaughn thought grimly.

With a heavy sigh, he rolled his shoulders and set about packing the last of his things. He couldn’t let Fiona leave without him.


Rhys had never been very good at being alone.

It was a recurring theme throughout his childhood, the perpetual "needs improvement" category on every report card: talks too much in class. A distraction to those around him. Shows difficulty with independent study. He’d read in a textbook once that only children were supposed to be good at entertaining themselves; when he’d told his mother about it she’d thrown her head back and laughed.

Atlas had been a crash course. Once his health stabilized enough for him to be cognizant of the passage of time, the loneliness of that empty facility had been crushing. He’d talked to himself as he wandered the halls. Acted out full-on conversations with people who weren’t there. Threw himself into prototype redesigns and data digs and cybernetic upgrades. Anything to take his mind off the gnawing chasm in his chest threatening to swallow him whole.

Even though Sasha was never more than fifteen feet away, being in the caravan now was not so different.

With crystal clarity he saw how stupid he’d been to believe she harboured any feelings for him beyond pity. He felt small and pathetic. Most of all, he hated the gentle voice she used with him—like he was made of glass, and if she wasn’t careful, some watchful shop owner would force her into making a purchase she didn’t want.

So Rhys avoided her as much as he could. If she tried to strike up conversation, he kept his answers short and factual until the talking points dried up. He ate at separate times. When it was dark outside, he retreated to the roof, and when the sun was too high and hot for him to stay, he laid in the hammock and faced the wall. When he was driving, he focused on the endless dirt and tried to forget anything else.

Echoing in the constant silence of the caravan, Jack’s taunts followed him everywhere, joined by a whole new chorus: Take a hint and stop trying. This is just nostalgia. I don’t wait around for you anymore.

He found himself returning to a strange fantasy that had plagued him at Atlas—the desire to curl into a ball, to let time pass around him for another twelve years, or twenty, or two hundred. He was sitting at Sasha’s table, indulging that very dream, when the caravan jerked to a sudden stop.

Sasha marched over, and dropped her broken radio on the table in front of him. “Fix it.”

“What?”

“I know this area. There’s a town nearby with a station, and we’re in range.” She nodded at the radio for emphasis. “Fix it.”

It was so different from how she’d spoken to him recently that Rhys blinked in surprise before reality caught up to him and he shook his head. “I told you, I can’t—”

“It’s just a radio, Rhys,” said Sasha, firm. “Didn’t you build your own arm?”

An arm that could no longer do half of what it was built to do. He scowled. “That’s not the same. And I’m twelve years out of the loop, I—”

“Well, good news: nothing I own is exactly state of the art.” She nudged the radio closer to him and folded her arms. “At least try.” The look on her face softened just a touch. “Look, it’s already broken. You can’t make it worse.”

Rhys snorted. “Wanna bet?” he muttered. But Sasha didn’t move, so he took the radio in one hand and pulled it closer to inspect. “Fine. I’ll take a look. But I can’t promise anything.”

“Thank you.”

Rhys grit his teeth as she walked back to the driver’s seat; she’d thanked him the way a teacher thanked an unruly child for cooperating. He dragged her toolbox towards him with his foot and started rummaging around for the right size screwdriver.

Working on the radio had pros and cons. Sasha’s toolbox was missing anything that would grant him the precision he wanted. He wanted to look things up on the EchoNet and couldn’t. Over and over again, he instinctively tried to scan parts, only to have a cavalcade of error messages flash behind his eye. When he turned it on, the radio emitted nothing but static that cut in and out.

But it gave Rhys something to think about besides his own precarious existence, an easy inanimate scapegoat for all his agitation.

Finally, after a lot of muttered cursing and a few accidental shocks that put his right hand on the fritz for a full minute, he was getting somewhere. If he turned the tuning dial just right, the radio picked it up, faint but clear. He leaned closer, reaching gently for the volume dial—

“Shit!” yelped Sasha from the driver’s seat.

She veered the wheel to the left, and the caravan swung to the side so sharply Rhys braced himself against the table. With a loud thud, something hit the front, and the caravan shook like it’d jumped a canyon.

The radio slipped from Rhys’ grip and slammed to the floor. For a second the radio blared in his face—way too loud—and then the speakers died with a pop.

With a few more jolts and several disconcerting noises, the caravan ground to a halt.

“Fuck,” said Sasha, rising from her seat and peering through the windshield. “Hit a skag. Jumped out of nowhere. Sorry. You okay?”

Dazed, Rhys didn’t answer her. He reached for the radio at his feet. The antenna was snapped.

“Ugh,” she continued, “that is not going to be good for the suspension.”

He turned the volume dial experimentally; no sound came out.

“That skag was pretty big,” Sasha was saying. “Hope it didn’t—”

Bang!

Rhys hurled the radio at the wall, where it split in two upon impact.

“Holy shit,” said Sasha.

Rhys hid his face in his hands.

Her footsteps were cautious as they made their way to him. “Um… what happened?”

“Told you I couldn’t fix it,” Rhys muttered. From the light filtering through his fingers, he could see she’d stooped to pick up the pieces.

“Not the radio I’m worried about,” Sasha answered, low enough that Rhys pretended not to hear her. She set the broken bits aside and walked over to him, a shadow looming overhead. “Rhys…”

“I’m fine,” he said, too sharp to be believable.

“I think I should take you back to Helios.”

“What?” In momentary panic, Rhys’ head snapped up. “I don’t want to go back to Helios.”

“Well, you can’t stay here,” she said, the gentle sound of her voice at odds with her words. “You’re miserable.”

It wasn’t worth denying.

“Helios is worse.” Rhys avoided her eyes. “I’m not going back to be stalked by a bunch of creeps who treat the worst day of my life like the start of a religious movement.”

“Okay, fine, not Helios.” Sasha sighed like she was exerting all of her patience. “What about… where were you before? Atlas, right?”

Atlas?” Rhys laughed outright. “What the hell am I gonna do there? Assuming by some miracle it isn’t home to a roving gang of cannibals by now, what do you imagine is waiting for me? A stolen deed? A bunch of barely-functioning prototypes using twelve-year-old tech? Atlas is nothing, it’s a pipe dream. It always was.”

He was aware that his voice had risen, that the words were barbed and angry, that his heart was beating faster than it ought. Taken aback, Sasha’s eyes widened.

“I told you earlier,” he finished, voice tight. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

In the silence that followed, Rhys’ heart thumped in his ears and his face grew hot. It was embarrassing, having to do this again, having to relinquish the few scraps of dignity he had left.

“Rhys…” Her face had that infuriating soft expression again. It was out of place on her, made her look like someone who… like she…

Just nostalgia, he reminded himself, before any caterpillars in his stomach could get any grand ideas. When Sasha stepped closer, Rhys pulled away.

“There’s got to be somewhere that’s better than here," she said. "I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be around me.” Her voice turned plaintive. “I’m not good at this stuff, okay? I never was. Even before.” One hand gestured to the caravan around them. “I’m dealing with my own shit, I’m not… I can’t…”

Somewhere in the blizzard of emotions, Rhys understood. He’d thrown himself at Sasha in a moment of panic, clung to her ankles like a stowaway on borrowed time. He’d left her no space to breathe, no room for her to cope with Fiona’s reappearance on her own. She’d probably wanted to be rid of him the moment they’d driven away from Helios.

Didn’t stop it from stinging, though.

He sighed. “Yeah. I get it.” He stood up, sliding around the table and avoiding her eyes. “You said there was a town nearby, right? How far? I’ll go there.”

“What?” She turned her head left and right like the setting might change. “Now?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“You’re not wandering off into the middle of nowhere. It’s dangerous.”

He dismissed it and walked toward the door. “I’ll be fine. I’m not missing any body parts this time, so it should be a cakewalk. Just point me in a direction.”

She was in his way immediately, barring the exit with her arm. “No way.” Resolute and much stronger than he was, Rhys doubted he’d be able to pry her from the doorway. “I am not letting you take that risk.”

“Risk? It’s Pandora, getting out of bed in the morning is a—”

No.

She said it so intensely, green eyes blazing, that for the briefest of seconds, his foolish heart stumbled. He imagined a dozen different reasons she might give, things those reasons might mean—

“I promised Vaughn I’d look after you,” she finished, and Rhys felt the last of something leave him.

“Of course you did.” He turned away from her, running both hands through his hair so he could grab on to something tangible. “Right, so you don’t want me to stay, but you won’t let me go—”

“I won’t let you wander off into the middle of nowhere and get yourself killed,” Sasha corrected. “Rhys, you need…” She paused for a second; Rhys was certain she was going to say 'help'. “You need to talk to Vaughn. Did you ever call him back?”

Rhys’ shoulders tensed. “That’s none of your business.”

“He can help,” Sasha continued, ignoring the warning. “He’s good at this kind of thing. He’s—”

“I don’t need you to explain Vaughn to me,” he snapped, bristling as he whipped around. “I know him better than you do.”

“Maybe,” Sasha frowned. “But I’ve known him longer.”

The knowledge that she was right twisted in his gut.

“Guess you two are besties now,” he bit out. “Congrats.”

“Don’t be like that.” Her chastising tone only made him angrier. “Vaughn saved my life when you two disappeared. He’s a good friend. And he’s missed you. You’re hiding from someone who loves you—”

“Me? You’re running away from your sister over a misunderstanding—”

“Don’t bring Fiona into this,” Sasha snapped, sounding angry now. “We are not talking about Fiona—”

“No, of course not, because then you’d have to admit you’re being a hypocrite—”

“—we’re talking about you, avoiding someone who spent years looking for you—”

“You own one plate, Sasha! That’s insane! That’s not even—it’s not even economical—”

“If you would just try talking to him—” Sasha carried on, a harder edge in her voice now.

I did!” Rhys blurt out, louder than before, and finally Sasha stopped talking over him. “I did try, all right? And he didn’t want to talk. He’s busy, he’s got his own life. He outgrew me.” The weight of the truth made his shoulders droop. “All of you did.”

Sasha’s anger flickered and faded. “Rhys—”

“I don’t blame you. Any of you.” He laughed, weak and watery. “Shit, even the fucking EchoNet left me in the dust.” His voice caught. “I’m old tech, Sasha. A collector’s item.” He lifted his chrome hand, waving his fingers so they caught the light. “Obsolete.”

“Rhys…” Guilt splashed across her face in technicolor. She reached for him, and Rhys backed away so quickly he hit the wall.

“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t do that. I don’t want your pity or—or—or your nostalgia.”

Sasha’s outstretched hand lingered in the air, inches away, but slowly her fingers curled back to her palm.

“Okay,” she said simply. Her arm fell back to her side. “What do you want?”

Home. Somewhere that felt like home again. It’d been so long.

“I don’t know,” he told her instead. “I used to, but…” Finding his eyes misty, he blinked down at his shoes and shrugged. “None of it feels feasible anymore.”

Her shadow on the floor nodded. “Do you want to stay with me?”

Rhys’ throat burned. It felt like he’d swallowed a baseball. “I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “I… I’m scared of…”

Leaving, and being alone again.

Staying, and contaminating everything.

“Okay,” Sasha interrupted, a small mercy he appreciated dearly. “First things first. Right now, we can’t go anywhere until I make sure the caravan’s still working.” Her hand brushed his arm, and Rhys couldn’t find it in him to push her away. “I’m worried that skag did some damage. Can you start the engine when I say?”

“Yeah.” It sounded rough, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks.”

Rhys sniffed. She squeezed his arm before she let go, a gesture that made him feel equally grateful and pathetic.

He climbed into the driver’s seat, mind foggy in the emotional aftermath. While Sasha tinkered outside, he stared out the window, working towards a blissful state of disconnection from reality as he watched a faraway rakk divebomb a cliff.

After a few minutes, Sasha knocked on the windshield and gave him a thumbs up. Nodding, Rhys turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught just fine, purring to life with its usual deafening rumble—

With a loud bang, something gave way. A huge plume of dark smoke poured out from under the hood. Sasha waved her hands frantically. Rhys killed the engine as quick as he could, but the smoke persisted longer, seeping in through the windshield and making his eyes sting again.

“Shit,” came Sasha’s voice as she threw open the door to the caravan. Rhys yielded his place at the driver’s seat, and she poured over the variety of indicator lights that were flickering angrily. “That stupid—” she coughed “—skag broke the—” she coughed again, waving her hand in front of her face to clear the smell away.

Rhys ducked his head below the smokeline, eyes stinging. “Can you fix it?”

Sasha pulled a face. “Oh, sure, yeah I’ll just digistruct a new—”

The smoke fogged up the inside of the windshield. Coughing, Sasha ducked out of the driver’s seat, and Rhys followed her.

“Is this thing going to, uh.” He scratched the back of his neck, searching for a delicate word and coming up empty. “Explode?”

“Explode?” Sasha snorted. “No.” A brief flash of amusement crossed her face, as if he’d just shouted useless commands at a computer screen. “But it’s also not moving again any time soon.”

“Um…” Rhys glanced back at the smoky driver’s seat. “What do we do now?”

“Now?” Sasha grimaced as she tugged down the ladder to the roof. “Now we get comfortable while I call in a favour.” As she began to climb, she lifted her hand to ear, activating her Echo. “Hey, August.”

Chapter 7

Summary:

Fiona & Vaughn's roadtrip gets off to a rocky start with a stop at a beloved spot from Fiona's youth, while Rhys & Sasha get some roadside assistance in the form of a grumpy ex.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Fiona drove with a cheer both misplaced and contagious. She turned the radio up as loud as Vaughn would let her, bounced along to songs she didn’t know and tapped the steering wheel to the beat. She cupped her hand and stuck it out the window, surfing the wind resistance.

It was as if her earlier tiff with Vaughn had never happened. She was either a woman who never apologized, or a woman who never thought she had anything to apologize for. Vaughn wasn’t sure which explanation to hope for.

The first stop on Fiona’s nostalgia tour was a place called Sven & Dudley’s Den of Sin.

“I love this place,” Fiona explained as she parked. “It’s got everything: gambling, slot machines, skag racing, cage matches, general debauchery.” She hopped out of the car and put her hands on her hips, giving the looming building a proud appraisal. “Pandora in a nutshell.”

Vaughn stared up at the neon logo of an enormous pistol firing at a roulette wheel.

Well, she wasn’t wrong.

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard that as a compliment before,” he muttered.

Fiona swung around the car to join him, giving her popped collar a fresh tug and lowering her voice. “It’s also a great place to make some money if you’ve got a poker face or sticky fingers, and I happen to have both.”

“Ah,” said Vaughn with dawning understanding. “Con artist nirvana.”

“Exactly.” Her walk was spritely as they approached the door. “Last time I was here was my twenty-second birthday. Made nearly a grand using counterfeit chips.” She winked. “It’ll be better this time, now that Sasha’s not here to fuck it up.”

“Sasha?” The words took longer to parse than normal, and when they did, Vaughn stopped in his tracks. “Wait, what does Sasha have to do with—?”

But Fiona was already tipping her hat at the bouncer and pushing through the doors, so he jogged to catch up.

Inside Sven & Dudley’s was pandemonium. Cheers, jeers and the occasional sound of a fistfight mingled with the click-click of slot machines, the clatter of poker chips and the clink of drink bottles. Free of any windows to offer natural light, the whole thing was illuminated in colour, flashing neon signs and multi-coloured pot lights and the glow of dozens of display screens. It was hard to tell through the din just how far the building stretched, but Vaughn had no hope of seeing the end of it in any direction.

He focused on his immediate surroundings instead. To his left, a huge wicker basket was filled with prosthetic limbs of various kinds. Another newcomer walked up while Vaughn watched, plucked his own eyeball out of his head and dropped it in the basket.

“Uhhhh…?” said Vaughn, watching the stranger stroll away casually.

Fiona nudged his shoulder and pointed up. He followed her finger to a hand-painted sign: ABSOLUTELY NO CYBERNETICS!! (Seriously!)

“Hope you didn’t have any work done while I was away,” she joked.

“God, no.” He wrinkled his nose. “Nursing Rhys through that was deterrent enough, let me tell you.”

Fiona snickered as she lead them away from the entrance.

“Bet he was a huge baby about it,” she mused, more to herself than to him. With a hand pressed to her collarbone she adopted a pout. “Wah, my head hurts because I’m a pathetic bootlicker and let Hyperion drill a hole in my brain.”

Somewhere in the back of Vaughn’s head, a small voice protested that this subject of conversation was unfair—but it was difficult to hear that voice over the bustle of Sven & Dudley’s, and so he ignored it.

“Oh, it was fine for him,” Vaughn corrected. “He was on industrial-strength painkillers the whole time. Probably doesn’t even remember it. I’m the one who had to make sure he didn’t crack his head open in the shower.” His voice turned petulant of its own accord. “I used up all my sick leave for the year.”

“Gross,” said Fiona merrily. She rubbed her hands together in excitement. “So, what first? Pick your poison, they’ve got all of ‘em.”

Vaughn surveyed the mayhem. “Dunno… haven’t been to very many casinos.” At her disbelieving eyebrow, he shrugged. “Rhys wasn’t allowed in the Hyperion casino either, and he doesn’t like being left out.”

It was a half-truth—like anyone with a basic grasp of probability, Vaughn knew gambling was a terrible investment, a game you were designed to lose. And on a space station that already made ordering coffee in the morning feel potentially life-threatening, he’d felt no need to get his adrenaline rush from a digitized lottery ticket.

But for the moment, he was happy to let Rhys take the fall in Fiona’s estimation.

She rolled her eyes.

“Yvette made me go with her a couple times, though,” Vaughn continued, on a roll now. “Usually when she was pissed at him.”

Fiona grinned. “A woman after my own heart.”

“You would have liked each other,” he said, ignoring the familiar mix of guilt and regret he felt whenever he thought of Yvette. With any luck, Dionysus was treating her well.

“Maybe,” said Fiona, non-committal. “All right, I’m getting bored. Let’s start with the skag races; those always get the blood pumping.” She pulled out a sizable wad of cash, giving it a satisfying flip with her thumb before stuffing it into the inside pocket of her jacket. “I’ve got some money to burn.”


For the duration of the call to August, Rhys dutifully kept to himself, pretending like he couldn’t hear the conversation. Even after the call ended, he feigned interest in the buttons of his waistcoat, as though he hadn't been hanging on every word.

Any other time, Sasha would have appreciated the discretion. Her privacy was a cherished possession, and anyone who tried to take it from her was subject to silence and derision.

Today, with Rhys, the quiet made her anxious. What if he stopped talking to her again? The recent silence had been smothering.

“August will give us a lift,” Sasha told him, deciding to cut it off at the root. “I can talk to Janey about the caravan.”

Rhys absorbed that information with a nod.

“Brace yourself for about six hundred ‘I told you so’s,” Sasha continued. “She’s been telling me to write it off for years.”

Rhys nodded again. The bottom two buttons of his vest were undone, and he moved to the third.

“It’s hot outside today, isn’t it?” she tried instead, as she watched him work at his vest. “Don’t worry, Hollow Point’s always cooler. Y’know. Cave and all.”

When he didn’t say anything to that either, Sasha resigned herself to the quiet, leaning back on her hands and dangling her legs over the edge of the roof.

“It’s Hollow Point?” asked Rhys suddenly, like he’d only just processed what she’d said. “The town you said was nearby.”

“Yep.” She grimaced. “Told you I knew the area.” She tipped her chin in the direction of the cave. “I used to work at the radio station, a couple lifetimes ago. That’s how I know we’re in range.”

To her surprise, Rhys hummed knowingly. “DJ Rakk Attack. Right?”

“Uh, yeah.” The long-forgotten alias made Sasha’s eyebrows rise, and she tilted her head at him. “How’d you know about that?”

“It was on your ECHOnet profile.” He pointed to his golden eye. “I, uh, lied about not scanning you.” The grin he gave her was apologetic. “Sorry.”

Sasha shook her head. “Can’t believe you remembered that.”

“Well, it’s catchy.” Buttons undone, he shrugged off his vest and set it next to him. “I always meant to ask you about it.”

“Not a lot to say, really.” Sasha crossed her ankles, bouncing them up and down. “The gig at the station was my first—and for a long time, only—legitimate employment. It was small-time: local music, what passed for news, commentary.” She paused. “Mostly of the anti-Hyperion variety.”

“Naturally.” Rhys only grinned. “I’ll bet you were a very passionate host.”

“Oh yeah,” Sasha laughed. “I was 21. I loved the music, and there was something freeing about being honest on air when I rarely was in real life. Felt like I was saving the world by saying ‘fuck Hyperion’ on air.” She shrugged. “But Felix and Fiona hated it. Felix thought I was risking blowing my cover in future cons—someone might recognize me. Fiona was worried I’d catch Hyperion’s attention and wind up on some hitlist. They got me to quit.” Her eyes rolled. “You know." She hooked her fingers in the air. "'Protecting me'.”

Rhys’ grin faded. Feeling his stare, Sasha looked out to the wide horizon. Like so much of the first quarter-century of her life, memories of working at the radio station felt like they belonged to a different person.

“How come you never went back to that kind of work?” asked Rhys. “I mean, if you liked it.”

Sasha squinted against the sunlight, watching in the direction of Hollow Point. It would take August time to get to them, but she scanned for his vehicle anyway.

“I wanted to, for a while. Used to dream about it. That was part of the plan, if I could ever get off-planet. I still love music. But… ” She wound her handkerchief around her finger. Unwound. Repeated. “There’s no money in it, at least not here. And after the vault...”

The once-alluring prospect of speaking openly to countless silent strangers now made Sasha’s skin prickle.

“I don’t know.” She dropped her hand back to her side and shrugged. “Guess honesty kind of lost its appeal.”

“Well, I’m in the market for a new dream job too, so if I find any, I’ll let you know.”

Sasha looked over at him. Long legs bunched up at the edge of the roof, Rhys had laid down on his back, the crook of his left arm thrown over his eyes to shade them from the sun.

“You’re really giving up on Atlas?”

“Trust me, that isn’t much to give up on.”

Sasha frowned. “You could go check. Might not be as bad as you’re expecting. I mean, it was mostly abandoned for a while when we found it, right? Maybe—”

“No.” Though his arm obscured his expression, his voice was sharp. “It’s fine. I’ll find something else.”

A polite way of telling her to drop it. Armed with enough similar lies in her arsenal, Sasha recognized this one on sight and understood its real meaning. Rhys was scared to see what awaited him if he looked for the truth.

There was no use pressing. “What are you going to do when we reach Hollow Point?” she asked instead.

Rhys tilted his head away from her. “I… don’t know.”

“There are always some rooms for rent at the Purple Skag,” she offered. “I’ll be there for a couple days at least, while I figure out what to do with the caravan.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Hollow Point’s a shithole, but it’s no worse than anywhere else on Pandora. You might be able to find work there, if—”

“Great,” he said, the tone at odds with the meaning. “Good thing all my skills are super transferable and up-to-date.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Rhys, I’m trying—”

“To help. Yeah. I know.” He let his arm fall away from his face and sent her a plaintive look. “Look, I appreciate it, and I promise I’ll get out of your hair soon—”

“That’s not—”

“—but can we just talk about something else? Please?”

Procrastinating the inevitable. An unsustainable strategy, but one Sasha was familiar with. She clenched her jaw but conceded. “If you want.”

“Thanks.” The uncomfortable silence didn’t settle for long before he asked, “What about your client, by the way? Do we need to call them or something?”

The question caught her by surprise. “Um… no, no it’s—it’s fine.”

“‘Cause I feel like we’ve been on the road for a while, and now—”

“Nah.” She rubbed the side of her neck. “It’s okay. No rush.”

“Are you sure? I thought…” Something clicked, and Rhys propped himself up on his elbows, eyes narrowed. “Sasha…”

Fiddling with the end of her braids, Sasha gave him her most most innocent stare. “What?”

Rhys said nothing. He raised an eyebrow and inclined his head.

“Okay, okay,” she admitted, “I may have… exaggerated… a little when I said there was a job waiting for me.” As his other eyebrow shot up, she added quickly, “I do have a regular client outside Sanctuary. He’s usually got jobs for me. I just don’t… know of one… specifically… right now.”

“You made up a fake job to get away from Fiona?”

“No, I... made up a fake job to get away from Vaughn,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know Fiona was going to be there. Obviously.”

Rhys only gawped.

She fidgeted. “Vaughn always wants me to stay, but I don’t like being at Helios any more than you do. Nothing but bad memories and, until recently, creepy repurposed Jack statues. It’s just easier if I go in with a reason to leave.”

For the first time since they’d kissed, Rhys let out a real laugh.

“Sorry,” he told her, grinning as she turned to stare. “But it’s kind of reassuring to know you’re almost as much of a coward as I am.”

Sasha pouted but could find no argument to defend herself with. “Please don’t tell Vaughn. He—he doesn’t get it, he’d take it personally, but it’s not like that, it’s just…”

“Don’t worry,” said Rhys. “I don’t think he and I are on speaking terms right now anyway.”

He said it lightly; only afterwards did his grin fade, his eyes downcast. Acting on instinct, Sasha’s hand lifted to reach for him—

Then she remembered the way he’d pulled away in the caravan, adamantly refusing her touch, and she ran her fingers through her hair instead.

You’re not what he needs, she reminded herself. You have to let him go. She’d give him a gentle push out of the nest and then get out of his way. Nothing else was fair to him.

“I should pack up,” she said, rising abruptly. “The caravan could be stuck here for a while, I don’t want to leave any valuables behind.” She wrinkled her nose, a self-deprecating smirk. “Fortunately, I don’t have many.”

“Need a hand?” he asked, sadness once again swept under a friendly rug.

“Nah. It’s okay.” As she stepped onto the ladder, she put on a smile she didn’t quite feel. “You look like you could use the sun, Casper.”


One skag race bled into the next, and the one after that. Vaughn enjoyed the spectacle more than he expected. There was something to be said about standing in a crowd, screaming encouragement at a bunch of undomesticated animals as they chased after a hunk of meat on a hook. (And if one such hunk of meat looked suspiciously like a human leg, well, it was recycling. Probably.)

Fiona’s first-round pick lost, but she got a 3:1 return for her long-shot bet on Pandoran Pharoah. When the third race descended into chaos following Skagretariat’s unprovoked attack of Sanctuary Slew, they cut their losses and headed back to the main complex.

“Love a good race,” said Fiona, ducking around a pair of men trying to settle their outstanding bets with a brawl. “What next? I’m thinking cards, and then shots.” Her face lit up. “Oooh, or shots and then cards.”

She was off to the bar before Vaughn could even reply.

Trailing after Fiona as she hopped from activity to activity, with pit-stops to get increasingly liquored, reminded Vaughn of the handful of times he’d tried to accompany Rhys on his more social of social activities. They had a similar way of weaving through a crowd without spilling a drop of their drink, of cutting in line by catching the bartender’s eye, of blending into groups like they belonged there in ways Vaughn could only dream of.

Methodical fun. To Vaughn it seemed both exhausting and impossible, and yet it was where people like Rhys and Fiona flourished. In the early days of his friendship with Rhys, Vaughn had hoped—naively—it was a skill he might learn to mimic. As he got older, he’d learned to be satisfied by riding the wake.

It was a good thing he had years of practice, because riding Fiona’s wake took skill. She threw herself into each new activity like it was a cure-all, only to grow restless quickly and hop to the next. Whatever gratification she was seeking wasn’t found at the blackjack table, or the slot machines, or the pool hall, or the shooting range.

“Slot machines next?” She flicked impatiently through a Quickchange machine, its screenlight giving her face an eerie pale glow. “Hmmm.” She paused on a long dark with a ludicrous pricetag. “What d’you think?”

She pulled out her wad of cash—considerably smaller now than it had been to start with—and thumbed through it pensively.

Vaughn’s eyes widened as she tucked the cash into her inside jacket pocket. “Is that Felix’s money?”

“No, it’s my money,” Fiona huffed, giving her lapels a tug and lifting up her chin. “Thirty years’ back pay for putting up with his shit and busting my ass taking care of an ungrateful sister.”

The quiet voice in his head protested louder with every passing moment. “Are you… sure you should spend it here?”

“I’ll spend it however I damn well please.” A hard edge in her voice served as a warning.

“I just mean—”

“Sasha didn’t want anything to do with it,” Fiona cut in, uncompromising, all her giddiness evaporated. “You were there. You heard her. Didn’t want a cent. So fine. It’s all mine.”

Vaughn rubbed the back of his neck. He found it difficult to believe even Sasha was stubborn enough to refuse four and a half million dollars.

Then again, it was Sasha.

He decided to try a different tactic.

“Okay, forget Sasha. How much have you spent? Is this really where you wanna blow—” He paused, glancing around and lowering his voice to a volume he hoped was inconspicuous “—that much money?”

“Relax, killjoy,” Fiona chided, turning from the Quickchange machine to glare at him. “I’ve only spent a couple grand—”

“A couple grand?”

“—and I’ve won some of it back.” She contemplated the expensive jacket once more, before finally shaking her head and flicking to the next item in the catalogue. “God, you’re uptight. You know, I thought a decade or so on Pandora would’ve loosened you up a little.”

“What part of ‘Hyperion civil war’ sounded relaxing to you?”

Fiona ignored him. She’d moved on to the next outfit, humming in contemplation. “Do you think this would clash with my hair?” Then she shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m asking, you don’t even wear clothes.”

“I wear clothes,” he muttered, self-consciously folding his arms over his bare chest. “And I think you seriously want to consider how much money you’re spending on whatever kind of mid-life crisis this is—”

A dangerous muscle in Fiona’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t turn away from the machine. “If you’re not having fun, you can go.”

“No I can’t,” he reminded her. “We came in the same car.”

“Then go do some shots until you lighten up,” she snapped. “The whole point of this exercise was for you to stop worrying so much, and yet here you are, worrying about my finances.”

“I wouldn’t have to worry about everyone all the time if any of you would just behave responsibly, which is clearly too much to ask—”

“Or maybe you need to accept that life is chaos, and no amount of micromanaging other people’s chequebooks is gonna stop things like a magic alien box from teleporting you twelve years into the future and fucking up your life.” With the punch of a button, her outfit was replaced by a new one: a dark pink jacket that hung long on one side, over matching pants and a black and white blouse. Adjusting her familiar old hat on her head, she turned to look at him. “If I buy you a drink, will you please chill out and have some fun with me?”

Once again, her imploring look reminded him of the questionable decisions he’d made in his twenties, spurred on by Rhys.

If she was any bit as stubborn—and Vaughn knew she was—there was no point in arguing.

“Make it a plate of nachos and we’ve got a deal,” he corrected.

Fiona grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

The bartender who had served them earlier in the day had been replaced by a massive older man, who watched with narrowed eyes as Fiona ordered a party platter and two of whatever passed for “the good stuff” in this kind of establishment.

“Do I know you?” asked the man, making no immediate move to fill the order.

“I doubt you’ve had the pleasure.” Fiona leaned heavy on the bar countertop, flipping over to her smooth operator voice. “Are you Sven or Dudley? I can never tell.”

The man’s attention was fixed. “You sure you ain't been here before? You look familiar.”

Over the course of his time on Pandora, Vaughn had trained his fight-or-flight instinct to calm down, to not overreact to every possible threat. The prickle on the back of his neck rarely steered him wrong these days, and he looked between Fiona and the bartender, trying to suss out if Fiona felt the same.

“Nah.” Fiona flicked an old beer cap away from the cuff of her new jacket. “I’ve been on the road for a very long time.”

The bartender nodded, but his eyes narrowed and he stepped back to the wall behind the bar. For the first time, Vaughn looked past the neon lighting to see the wall was plastered with bounties and missing persons and classified ads. The bartender flipped through a stack of papers pinned one on top of the other, until he plucked one very old, very yellowed one from the pile.

He held it up for both of them to see. The top read BANNED FOR LIFE, with several emphatic underlines beneath the word “life”. The bottom read FRAUDS & CHEATS, with several emphatic exclamation points. In the middle was an old photograph of two young women wearing shocked expressions at a blackjack table. Despite the danger, Vaughn couldn’t help but lean in for a better look. Even in the picture, Fiona had the same coloured streak in her hair.

They both looked so young. Sasha must have been in her teens.

“What?” asked the present-day Fiona beside Vaughn, almost convincingly nonplussed.

Sven-or-Dudley narrowed his eyes even more.

“Oh come on,” said Fiona, her silky-smooth voice starting to catch. “That’s ancient.” She put on a smarmy grin and gestured to her own face. “Do I look like I could be in that twenty-year-old photo?”

Sven-or-Dudley took a lumbering step closer and pulled a shotgun out from under the bar.

Fiona’s collected look evaporated instantly, replaced by wide eyes as she shrunk back.

“Uh…” Her eyes darted back and forth until she locked onto a target: an unsuspecting man drinking a beer at the other end of the bar. “That dude’s got an ECHO Eye,” she said.

In the second that Sven-or-Dudley’s attention was diverted, Fiona booked it, scrambling away from the bar and towards the door in a flash of pink.

“Sorry,” said Vaughn, more or less sincere, right before he flicked on all the beer taps and took off after her.


Never one for preamble, August’s first words to Sasha when he walked through the open door of the caravan were, “The hell did you do to this thing?”

“Hit a skag.” Sasha glanced back at him as she finished zipping up the bag she’d been packing. “Damn thing came out of nowhere.”

She straightened up, doing one final scan of the caravan’s interior. Though convenient, the fact that her life could be packed away in two tote bags was not a point of pride. A faint twinge of embarrassment warmed her cheeks as she reached for the last thing worth keeping: the sniper rifle from Vaughn.

“Huh. Least it wasn’t a rakk hive. I’d be scraping you out of the rubble.” August reached for one of the bags, but didn’t protest when Sasha grabbed them both. “Hey, did I see someone on your roof?”

“Oh.” More heat rushed to Sasha’s cheeks. “Yeah, uh, about that…”

Like he’d been cued by a stage director with a knack for comic timing, Rhys chose that moment to open the trap door and make his way down the ladder. August turned at the sound, and though she couldn’t see his face, Sasha could well imagine his expression.

“H-hey, August. Long time no see.” Rhys waved with one hand and brushed his hair back with the other, so excruciatingly awkward that the corner of Sasha’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Uh. For you.”

“What the fuck?” August took a disbelieving step towards Rhys, looked back at Sasha as though to check that she was seeing it too, and then turned to Rhys again. “Sasha, what the fuck?”

“Surprise,” said Sasha.

August’s jaw worked up and down as he opened and closed his mouth, trying to find the right words for his confusion. Eventually he settled on, “Why the hell does he look like that?”

“I moisturize,” said Rhys dryly.

August peered at Rhys so closely that he leaned backwards. “Is this one of those digistruct disguises?”

Rhys swatted August’s hand away as it moved to poke him in the forehead. “Hey!”

August turned to face Sasha instead, lowing his voice to be a little more discrete. “Is this a sex thing?”

What?” yelped Rhys.

“No, it’s just Rhys,” said Sasha, losing the battle to hide her smirk. “I was with Vaughn a few days ago. The Vault gave us an anniversary gift.” She tipped her chin in Rhys’ direction. “They’re back.”

“Both of them? Where the hell were they?”

“I’m right here,” Rhys added, audibly annoyed now. “Will you stop talking about me like I’m a mannequin?” He folded his arms and made use of the extra inch or two he had over August. “And Fiona and I weren’t anywhere. We went into the Vault, there was a big magic box, we touched it, it gave us a one-way express ride to the future.” He spread his arms in sarcastic presentation. “Voila.”

August was momentarily silent as he processed the story.

“Bullshit,” he said after a second.

Rhys threw his hands into the air. “It’s true!”

But August had turned back to Sasha. “You’re not buying this?”

This only incensed Rhys further; he crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the wall.

Sasha ignored the theatrics. “Look at him, August. Does he look like it’s been twelve years?”

“Nine million dollars can buy a lot of plastic surgery,” August reasoned.

“I did not have plastic surgery!” Rhys’ voice got higher as he became more indignant. “Or nine million dollars,” he muttered as an afterthought.

“Fiona has the money,” Sasha clarified. “Didn’t tell him about it either.”

“Where’s she?”

“With Vaughn, last I knew. Swimming in her pool of money, for all I care.” Sasha gave the best indifferent shrug she could muster with heavy bags on either shoulder. “Not my business.” She caught the matching expressions on Rhys and August’s faces, but elected to ignore them and stepped out of the caravan. “Let’s get going. We can chat in the car.”


Fiona already had the engine running by the time Vaughn fought his way out the door and caught up to her. How the hell had she moved so fast? He’d barely heaved himself into the car before she kicked it into gear, speeding out of Sven & Dudley’s parking lot.

A shot whizzed over their heads a second later. Vaughn sank down instinctively, but Fiona only tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

“You wanna deal with that?” she asked, while the accelerator roared.

“Not really,” he muttered. But he grabbed his gun and spun around in his seat anyway, trying to make out shapes through the dust kicked up by their tires.

Only one vehicle pursuing them. That was something.

While Vaughn tried to line up his shot, the gunner in the other car took two more. One went wide; the other dinged off the tailgate.

“Hold on,” said Fiona.

Before Vaughn could process the instructions, the car veered to the right.

It threw off Vaughn’s shot, but threw off the gunner’s shot too—a couple more bullets sank into empty dirt. Vaughn raised his gun and fired, a mostly-blind shot that wedged itself somewhere into the front fender. Right as he squeezed the trigger a second time, Fiona veered their car to the left.

“Take out their tires!” she yelled over the noise.

“I’m trying.” Vaughn looked away from the sight long enough to glare at her. “Why do you keep swerving?”

“Makes us harder to hit.” She swerved again.

Vaughn grit his teeth as his shot went wide and hit the ground uselessly. “It also makes it harder for me to hit them. Just hold still!”

“Do it fast then.”

She kept the car steady. The wing mirror beside him exploded as a bullet ripped through it. Vaughn ignored it, steadied his shot, and fired.

The front left tire went with a bang. Sacrificing precision for firing rate, he emptied the rest of the clip in quick succession. Another bullet caught the right tire, and with both tires shredded, the car spun out and ground to a stop.

“Well done,” said Fiona, grinning at the sight in her rearview mirror.

The praise had little impact. Adrenaline still pumping, Vaughn set the gun down and turned to scowl at her. “What the hell was that? Did you forget something back there?”

“Yeah, my hat.” Fiona patted the empty space on top of her head with a pout, then looked to him expectantly. “Why? Did you grab it?”

Completely agog, Vaughn stared at her. “Me. I meant me.”

The hopeful look in her eyes was instantly replaced by annoyance. “I didn’t forget you, you’re right here.”

“No thanks to you!”

“Oh please.” With the threat of the chase gone, her grip on the wheel loosened, her posture casual again. “What was I supposed to do, carry you?”

“You could have waited,” Vaughn insisted.

“Forgive me for thinking you could find your way out of a bar.”

“You were about to leave! You had the engine running!” He shook his head in disbelief. “You know, I don’t remember you being this selfish.”

“I remember you being this needy, but I hoped you’d grown out of it,” Fiona shot back. “I had the engine running so we could leave faster. Should I have waited until we were both shot?” She lifted one hand off the wheel in frustration. “God, you’re just like Rhys and Sasha. Would it kill you people to give me some benefit of the doubt?”

“You haven’t exactly done anything to earn it,” Vaughn grumbled.

She kept her eyes on the road, no doubt grateful for an excuse to avoid eye contact. A muscle in her jaw clenched as the bitterness finally bled into the open. “None of you’d believe it anyway.”

Not at this rate, he thought, but valued his general safety too much to say it. “You could have at least warned me we were going somewhere that had a price on your head.”

“I told you about the counterfeit chips,” she shot back.

“You didn’t tell me you got caught!”

“For the record, I didn’t get caught. Sasha got us caught. She got sweet on the dealer we were supposed to be conning and ruined the whole thing.” Despite all the intervening time, Fiona’s sisterly resentment over the botched birthday was strong. “How was I supposed to know they’d remember? It’s been like twenty years, who keeps track that long?”

“Guess I should stop waiting for an apology then.”

“That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said yet.”

At least Fiona’s refusal to admit fault made a change from Rhys’ empty apologies.

With one last glare that went ignored, Vaughn settled back into his seat. He crossed his arms in a show of defiance, but wound up hissing in pain instead as something sharp dug into his side. “What the…?”

The culprit wasn’t hard to find. A piece of glass from the wing mirror stuck straight out of his vest, wedged deep enough when he’d crossed his arms to pierce his skin.

“You all right?” asked Fiona.

“Yeah.” He plucked out the glass and tossed it from the car, watching the landscape roll by in strained silence. “Just a scrape.”

“Okay.” The tiny frown on her lips held an even tinier hint of regret. “Good.”

Off in the distance, two skags played tug-of-war with a bone the size of Vaughn.

Fiona broke the silence first, a reassuring sign that it was making her uncomfortable, too. “Nice shots, by the way.”

“Thanks.” For a vindictive second he thought about leaving her to languish in it. But as he was reasonably sure he’d suffer for it more than she would, he relented. “Swerving, really?”

“Someone... told me it might work. Thought I’d give it a try.” Fiona shrugged. “And we’re still alive, so I guess I can’t disprove it.”

“So,” he said. “Where to next? You banned from anywhere else?”

“Probably.” She grinned. “Y’know, I’m actually kind of flattered. Should’ve asked them if I could keep a copy.”

“You guys must’ve made off with a lot to make an impression.”

Fiona shook her head. “Zilch. They took everything off us when we got caught, even our real cash. Only reason they didn’t kill us was because Sasha was so young and the dealer thought they were in love.” She adopted a simpering expression before rolling her eyes. “I was mad Sasha ruined my birthday; Sasha was mad we were standing in the way of her great romance.”

“Huh.” Even factoring in the young girl from the yellowed old poster, Sasha swooning over a card dealer seemed impossible. “Hard to picture Sasha as a romantic.”

“You didn’t know her as a teenager.” Fiona snorted. “Got obsessed with this inner-planet band when she was twelve and it was all downhill from there.” She pushed her coloured hair behind her ear. “But hey, good to hear she grew out of it. Finally.”

In the years following Rhys and Fiona’s disappearance, Vaughn had been granted a front row seat to what the aftershocks had done to Sasha. While he’d let himself be consumed by the Children of Helios, Sasha became a remote island, difficult to access and hostile to trespassers.

Vaughn wouldn’t have called it growth. He’d have called it retreat.

But his mind drifted back to the call with Rhys, how quickly and easily he and Sasha had taken off together, and Vaughn’s sympathy flatlined.

“Guess so.” With the warm breeze on his face, he took down his ponytail and ran his fingers through his hair. “Where’d you say we were going?”

“I didn’t,” Fiona answered. She drummed pensively on the steering wheel. “I, er, kind of thought we’d be spending the night there.”

“They’ve got rooms?” Unexpectedly grateful for the change in plans, he suppressed the shudder and gave it some thought. “Well, I know some people who might put us up, but I’m not sure how much you’re going to like it. On the bright side, we could get a new wing mirror.”


“You could have given me a heads up.”

Half-way to Hollow Point, the ride so far had been characterized by forced pleasantries, awkward silences, and, finally, the music of Hollow Point Underground Radio rattling through August’s tinny speakers. Lost in the bassline of an old favourite song, it was a moment before Sasha realized what August had asked.

“Worried you’d think I lost my mind.” Sasha looked away from the dust to face him. “Seemed easier to explain in person.”

“I do think you’ve lost your mind,” August countered. “How the hell did he wind up on the road with you?”

Sasha glanced towards the back seat. Rhys was slumped down, eyes closed, chin lolled against his chest. Asleep.

“He asked,” she told August.

“He asked? And you let him? That’s it?” August didn’t so much roll his eyes as his whole head. “Hell, Sasha, how many times did I offer to—”

“Exactly. You offered, like you'd be doing me a favour, because you thought I needed help, which I don’t—”

You definitely need help,” August muttered.

“—Rhys asked because he’s sensible enough to want away from Helios.”

“Where’s Fiona, then?”

The way her expression soured at the mention of her sister was almost instinctual. “None of my business. She can do whatever she wants.”

“You’re mad at her but not him? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Sasha clenched her jaw. “Rhys didn’t have anything to do with the money, or Felix.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes.”

August sighed, a disappointed sound that made Sasha bristle. “I thought you’d figured out what kind of people they are.”

“Oh, don’t act like you’ve got some kind of deep insight I don’t,” she said. “You barely knew them.”

“It’s not insight. It’s objectivity, which you’ve never had when it comes to those two—”

“Rhys isn’t lying to me. I—” Her well-practiced tongue skipped over the word trust. “I know he’s not.”

August made a noise encapsulating disbelief and scorn at the same time. “How can you possibly say that? You remember he had Handsome fucking Jack in his head, right?”

Sasha cast a paranoid glance back at Rhys, but he hadn’t moved. “Keep your voice down.”

August snorted. “Oh, yeah, sure, wouldn’t wanna wake the baby.”

“Get over yourself,” she snapped, temper flaring. “This jealousy of yours is why we stopped seeing each other.”

He shook his head. “No, we stopped seeing each other because I got sick of watching you throw your life away for a pair of ghosts.”

“Right, because I’m the over-emotional idiot and you’re the martyred voice of reason.” Lips twisted in a sneer, Sasha shook her head. “That is such bullshit.”

“You could’ve been off Pandora years ago. But no, you chose to waste away here, pining after some selfish assholes.”

Sasha’s nails bit into the heel of her palms as she clenched her fist, the anger bubbling in her chest threatening to boil over. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The fuck I don’t. That woman—”

“Ugh, shut up!” Sasha’s own rule fell by the wayside as her voice rose. “You know what our real problem is? You think you know me, but you’ve never been able to see past who you wish I was.”

August laughed. “Whose fault is that?”

Sasha grit her teeth. In the uncomfortable momentary silence, she chanced a look back at Rhys, still dead to the world.

Good. This wasn’t a conversation he needed to hear; he had enough baggage on his own without being the bellhop for any of Sasha’s.

“Look.” August’s new tone was measured, an attempt to de-escalate that made Sasha’s skin prickle anyway. “I get it with your sister. Family’s… weird. It’s hard to let go, even if you want to. Even if you should.”

Sasha said nothing. She played with her handkerchief while August flexed his fingers around the steering wheel.

“But him?” He gestured to Rhys with a jerk of his head. “You barely even knew him. Why is he really here?”

“I told you—”

“Come on. Seriously.”

August’s questions were the same ones she’d been asking herself for days; in all that time, she’d yet to come up with answers that sated her own curiosity, let alone his.

She looked back at Rhys as she thought it through, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Light pink dusted the exposed skin of his face and neck, a gift from the high Pandoran sun. Sleep washed all the worry from his face, leaving behind only his startling youth and the familiar magnetism Sasha had all but forgotten in his absence.

Once upon a time, for a few short weeks, Rhys had known Sasha as she truly was: no tricks, no cons, no personas or careful performances.

And he’d liked her anyway.

No one had ever done that before.

The simple truth of it sank through her like a stone, an anchor weighing down her heart. Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Sasha squinted at the open road and chose an answer August would believe.

“I felt bad for him,” she said quietly, folding her hands tight in her lap. “He doesn’t have a job, doesn’t have anywhere to go. His whole world’s upside down. He’s not handling it well.” She picked at a chip in her nail polish. “I know what that’s like.”

Mollified but far from thrilled with the response, August sighed. “Yeah, well, he should find someone else to play therapist. You don’t owe him shit.”

“Relax, he’ll be gone soon.” As the cave mouth of Hollow Point crested over the horizon, her stomach did uneasy somersaults. Hollow Point always had that effect; that was all it was. “I told him it was for the best.”

“Good,” said August.

Sasha stayed quiet. Movement sparked in her periphery vision as Rhys curled to the side, his head angled away from her, his face half-hidden in shadow.


Janey and Athena Springs lived in what passed for the nicer part of Hollow Point. The buildings were a little sturdier, the street-lights went out less frequently, and the etiquette of finders-keepers held a little less water.

To Fiona, it was memorable as the place she and Sasha would dumpster dive sparingly, a neighbourhood where raggedy street urchins were conspicuous and likely to take a precautionary bullet between the eyes. Despite the brand new clothes, the millions sitting in her inventory and Vaughn’s repeated assurances that Janey and Athena did not hold any long-standing grudges, trepidation still haunted Fiona as they approached the door and knocked. With no hat to adjust, she stuck her hands in her pockets instead.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked Vaughn, grabbing his wrist before he could knock on the door.

“For the seventh time: yes, totally.” He said it so casually she felt the opposite of reassured.

“Right, right. It’s just, I wouldn’t want to impose, you know.” She lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “I mean, I’ve got the money, I could put us up somewhere nice.”

“Somewhere nice?” Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “The only other place in Hollow Point that I trust enough to sleep at is the Purple Skag. You wanna go there instead?”

Fiona wrinkled her nose. “Point taken.”

“Besides, you didn’t hear Janey on the Echo.” Wrist freed, Vaughn knocked on the door. “She’s—”

He’d barely knocked once before the door jerked open and an enthusiastic blonde blur launched herself at Fiona with such force that she staggered back a step.

“...excited,” finished Vaughn, with a barely-concealed laugh.

“Whoa,” said Fiona, stunned and unable to lift her arms. “Hey, Janey.”

“Fiona!” With another bone-crushing squeeze, Janey let go to get a better view. “My god. You look just how I remember!” Her eyes fell on the new clothes. “Well, more or less.”

The same could not be said for Janey, whose hair had been cut shorter than ever, all the length on top pushed to one side. With her mouth stretched into an enormous grin, she looked as happy as Fiona remembered her.

Fiona forced a grin in return. “All part of the magic trick.”

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Gathering herself, Janey beckoned the two of them into the door of her home. “Thought Vaughn was messing with me when he called.” She reached out to give his shoulder an affectionate shove. “Good to see you too, mate. Been a while. Didn’t think you left Helios much these days.”

“Hi, Janey,” said Vaughn. “This place looks great.”

The conversational redirect didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated by Fiona, who fell into step behind them. With no point of comparison, she had nothing to offer on Janey’s interior decorating, and hummed politely in response instead as her host pointed out new furnishings and other decorations. As Janey led Vaughn into the sitting room, Fiona lagged behind, inspecting this brand-new glimpse into the world that had carried on without her.

Hung on the wall in the hallway was a framed photo, out of date by years, of Janey and Athena arm-in-arm and wearing white. Janey held a bouquet of purple flowers that matched Athena’s hair. Even in the picture, there was a visible flush to Athena’s cheeks, a glimmer in her eye that Fiona had rarely seen. Both of them looked incandescently happy.

Fiona felt a faraway pang in her chest as she studied the photo. She’d only just been invited to a real wedding, and already she’d missed it. What was the food like? The ceremony? Had people danced?

Had Sasha been there? Had she allowed herself to have fun, or had she sat in a corner table like a grumpy wallflower?

Fiona tore her gaze away, turned down the hall, and nearly collided with Athena.

“You’re back,” said Athena, plain as ever.

“Uhh, yep.” Fiona rocked on her heels. “Funny story about the Vault—”

“Janey told me,” said Athena, and Fiona was grateful to be spared recounting the whole stupid story again. Athena’s lips pulled into a small, tight frown. “Vaults are risky business.”

“Ha, now you tell me.”

“I always told you.”

Older than the rest of them to start with, the change in Athena was the most noticeable. It wasn’t only the rivers of white running through her hair, the way it was long enough now to be pulled back into a bun, or the laugh lines starting to bloom on her face. It was the set of her shoulders, the way she held herself. Relaxed. Calm.

Whatever time had done to Sasha, it’d had the opposite effect on Athena.

“Welcome back,” said Athena. The corners of her lips turned up in a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

Fiona’s throat felt funny, so she cleared it. “Y’know, this is the warmest welcome I’ve had yet. Thanks.”

A fine line of concentration appeared between Athena’s eyebrows. “Really?”

“So!” called Janey from the sitting room, hands on her hips like she was preparing to assess the problem. “A skag tore up the undercarriage?”

“Huh?” Fiona raised an eyebrow. “Nah, someone shot off the wing mirror. Should be an easy fix.”

A confused line to match Athena’s appeared on Janey’s forehead. “That’s not what Sasha said.”

“Uh.” Vaughn’s glanced nervously in Fiona’s direction. “Sasha?”

Athena’s frown returned.

“She called,” Janey said. “Said she needed to talk about the caravan.”

“Is she in Hollow Point?” asked Vaughn.

“I’m not sure, I—”

“Is anyone with her?” He sounded keenly interested now, for reasons Fiona guessed had less to do with Sasha and more to do with her stowaway.

“I don’t know.” Janey was shaking her head. “I figured she was with you, I thought you’d all want to be together since…”

Fiona’s laugh overrode the end of Janey’s sentence.

“Oh, no. Soon as I got back she threw a temper tantrum.” The eyes of the other three widened, but the short fuse inside Fiona ever since the Vault had been reignited. “Went gallivanting off with her idiot boyfriend.”

“Rhys isn’t my boyfriend.”

Fiona’s eyebrows rose in surprise at the sound of her sister’s voice. She turned just in time to watch Sasha stroll through the open door.

“And it wasn’t a temper tantrum, I had a job to go to.” Head held high, she brushed past Fiona without a glance to greet the others with nods. “Janey, Athena. Vaughn. Should I come back later?”

Notes:

Road trip's over! Thank god, says everyone. This chapter took longer than I would've liked, sorry about that! Shout-out to @AnnaLytic who read it through and gave me some pointers so the rest of you could read something better.

We broke 100 pages this chapter! Longest coherent thing I've ever written by myself. I'm still aiming for ten chapters, but anticipate the next one will run quite long. It's a good one though, I swear.

Say hi over on Tumblr and witness me periodically whining or bragging about character counts: @oodlyenough

Chapter 8

Summary:

While Fiona's caught in the mess of the present, Rhys wrestles with the ghost of choices past.

Notes:

Chapter count went up one, as you might have noticed, because even at 10k (!), this chapter doesn't cover everything I initially outlined for it. Whoops.

Content warning for this chapter in particular: we again deal with some references to suicidal ideation, slightly less oblique than they were last time. (Not sure, at this point, if the whole fic should be tagged? Open to suggestions.)

Also note a new tag: canon-typical violence.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“How about I get everyone a drink, and we all sit down?”

Janey’s attempt at defusing the tension in the room only made Fiona more keenly aware of it. It didn’t help that Athena was looking between the sisters with narrowed eyes, trying to decode the animosity between them.

“Drinks would be great,” Vaughn agreed, his own discomfort clear even through the smile. “Hey, Sasha, is it—uh—just you?”

He leaned around her to watch the door expectantly, and Fiona followed suit, but no one else entered.

“Just me. And I’m not staying that long,” said Sasha quickly, raising one hand to stop Janey from playing hostess.

“Just you?” repeated Vaughn. “Where’s—”

“I just wanted to talk about the caravan,” Sasha carried on. “I can come back later.”

Janey frowned. “No, no, it’s okay, you said you—”

“Hit a skag, yeah,” said Sasha. “Couldn’t get a good look at the damage, but I can’t drive it.”

The derisive snort came out before Fiona could think better of it. “You totalled your car on a skag?”

Sasha ignored her and addressed Janey. “We left it where it was, it’s about an hour out of town. I was hoping you could help me figure out what’s wrong.”

“I dunno, Sasha.” Janey’s smile had faded into a frown as she absorbed the information, and she reached up to ruffle the hair on the top of her head in thought. “You sure it’s worth fixing? What it’ll cost…”

“I can do the work myself,” said Sasha.

“You can?” asked Fiona, eyebrow raising in surprise. “When did you learn about cars?”

Sasha’s eyes rolled. “This doesn’t involve you.”

“It was a genuine question!” Palms raised in frustration, Fiona shook her head. “You are such a child.”

Sasha shot her a dark look before turning back to Janey. “I’ll just need to buy some parts off you, probably.”

Janey’s frown persisted. “You’ve sunk so much into that thing already, you’d be better off spending it on something new.”

Stubborn as ever, Sasha shook her head. “I can fix the caravan.”

“Every time I take money for that thing I feel like I’m robbing you,” Janey insisted. “Let me build you something new—”

Sasha held her chin high as she tugged the handkerchief at her neck. “I don’t have the money for something new. So.”

Though her closed-off tone left little room for debate, it was less effective at hiding the embarrassment hiding underneath. Fiona knew it well.

Something jabbed her in the ribs. She looked over to see Vaughn nudging her expectantly.

“She needs money,” he offered pointedly, when Fiona still hadn’t said anything.

Sasha caught on first. “Absolutely not. I don’t want anything from her.”

Fiona laughed. “Convenient that I hadn’t offered, then.”

Vaughn’s stance changed from hopeful to annoyed. “Oh, come on, this is so stupid—”

“No,” Sasha insisted. “I don’t want to be in your debt.”

“Fine by me,” Fiona shot back. “I’ve got better things to spend it on—”

Sasha raised an eyebrow at Fiona’s new clothes and snorted.

“—and I’m sick of bailing you out anyway.”

Athena and Janey exchanged uncomfortable glances, while Vaughn groaned and put his head in his hands.

Sasha’s eyes had narrowed fiercely. “Bailing me out? When the hell is the last time you bailed me out?”

“You would have died if I hadn’t carried that goddamn watch around for a year because you were too fucking stubborn to accept a gift.”

“A gift?” Sasha shook her head. “That was a bribe to forget about all the shit he’d done, same as that nine million, same as any money you’d give me for a new caravan. Don’t apologize, don’t try to understand me, just throw something shiny at the problem until I get over it.”

Fiona folded her arms. “You know, I hoped you’d grow out of it some day, but you are still unbelievably ungrateful.”

Ungrateful?” Sasha spluttered. “Are you kidding me?”

“You never appreciated anything Felix and I did for you.”

“Oookay,” interrupted Janey, her cheer increasingly strained, “really thinking we could all use that drink, right? How about—”

Both sisters ignored her, glares fixed on each other.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sasha, the apology doused with a lethal amount of sarcasm. “Which thank-you card are you still waiting on? ‘Thanks for lying to me’? ‘Thanks for making sure I always knew who the better daughter was’?”

“Your persecution complex is not my problem.” Everything on the tip of Fiona’s tongue came tumbling out before she could stop it. “God, you make it sound like I ever wanted to be stuck taking care of you. You have no idea what a tough, thankless job it was. You finally wanna look after yourself? Be my guest. I’ve been waiting my whole life.”

A muscle in Sasha’s jaw clenched, and her lips pressed together in a thin line. In the pause that followed, Fiona’s heart pounded in her own ears.

“Guess the vault gave you what you wanted after all,” said Sasha finally, eerily calm as her anger vanished beneath a wall of ice so thick even Fiona caught the chill of it. She twisted her head to look at the others, courteous and remote. “I’ll be staying at the Purple Skag for a few days. Janey, if I can figure out which parts I need…”

“Right, yeah,” said Janey, too quick to be casual. “Uh, just give me a holler.”

“Thanks.” Sasha tipped her chin in acknowledgment. “If any of you want that drink, it’s cheap night at the Skag—though I guess that’s basically every night.” She slunk towards the door without even a passing glance at her sister. “See you later.”

Fiona didn’t need explicit instruction to know the invite didn’t extend to her. “Please, no one wants that watered-down—”

“Wait up, Sasha. I’m coming.” Vaughn followed after her, walking backwards to look back at his hosts. “Janey, Athena—back in a bit.”

Sasha gave them all a curt two-finger wave, but Vaughn paused just long enough to shake his head pointedly at Fiona. She gawped as the door swung shut.

“Rude,” she muttered. But when she turned around, Janey’s forced smile had disappeared, and Athena was watching her with narrowed eyes.

“What the hell was that?” Athena barked, instantly transformed back into the imposing figure who had once chased Fiona through the streets of Hollow Point.

“Sorry about that,” said Fiona, brushing back her hair, “she’s always been a bit of a drama—”

“Not Sasha. You.” Athena took a step forward, the look on her face intense enough to raise Fiona’s eyebrows.

“Me? I didn’t do anything, she’s got a chip on her shoulder because she thinks I hatched some grand plan to seek fame and fortune without her—”

“You did leave without her.”

“Not on purpose!”

“It doesn’t matter if it was on purpose. It still happened.” Athena’s gaze was uncompromising. “You have to fix it.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Right, so it’s all on me, of course.”

“Yes.” Athena spoke plainly, steady but unyielding. “You’re the one who made the mistake. You fix it.”

Whatever anger of Fiona’s had been tempered by Sasha’s departure was quickly stoked ablaze again. The nerve of them, every one of them, treating her like some backstabbing mastermind, some colossal fuck-up responsible not only for mistakes, but for other people’s misunderstandings and worst assumptions—

Her lip curled. “Sorry, Athena, but you’re not really the first person I’d go to for relationship advice. The only reason you even got engaged is because I lied to her for you, because you were too much of a coward to—holy—”

Athena moved faster than Fiona could’ve anticipated; one second, she’d been standing feet away, and the next, she’d slammed Fiona back into the wall, eyes blazing.

“—shit,” finished Fiona, around the same time Janey shouted, “Athena!”

Athena didn’t react to either voice, or to Janey’s hand on her shoulder. She pressed her forearm across the top of Fiona’s chest, pinning her in place. Age might have softened the lines on her face, but it hadn’t dulled her strength.

Stunned and smarting, Fiona only gawped at her.

“I would give anything for the chance to see my sister again,” Athena snapped. “To apologize. To right the wrong I did to her.” The pressure from her forearm increased, and Fiona swallowed. “But I can’t. She’s dead.” Her face was inches away, and there was nothing gentle about it now. “Sasha’s not. Yet.” She leaned closer, her voice as hard as the look in her eyes. “You fucked up. Fix it. Coward.”

With that, she let go, backing away to the opposite wall, her intense eyes still fixed on Fiona. Unaware she was even being held up, Fiona slid an inch down the wall, rubbing at the sore spot on her collarbone and avoiding two pairs of eyes.

“Wow, okay,” she tried to joke. “Thanks for the gentle encouragement.”

“I’m serious,” said Athena.

Fiona snorted. “No kidding. Think you made your point when you bruised my sternum.”

“You’re still not listening—”

“Okay,” said Janey, who’d found her way between the two of them, “time out. Fiona, maybe you should—”

“Let me guess, go grovel for forgiveness? Write 'I will not touch Eridian artifacts' a hundred times?”

“—give us some space,” Janey finished, colder than she’d started.

Athena stood, unyielding, with Janey at her side like a disappointed teacher. Fiona rolled her eyes, straightened her jacket and adjusted her collar.

“Fine,” she told them both. “I know how to look after myself in Hollow Point.”


The water pressure at the Purple Skag was barely above a light drizzle, but after a few days on the road, it felt like a luxury spa to Rhys.

When asked about the possibility of a shower, August had glared, grumbled “don’t use all the hot water”, and then pointed Rhys to a bathroom that made him long for the questionable communal showers of his first college dorm.

Skipping the reunion with Janey and Athena had been something of a controversial choice. Sasha had frowned deeply and asked if he was sure, like a parent hesitantly leaving their child without a babysitter for the first time; Rhys wasn’t sure if she was concerned for his safety, or worried he’d burn the house down. Still, ducked beneath the showerhead, feeling the layer of dust and grime on his skin wash away drip by drip, Rhys knew it was the best decision he’d made in… well, in a depressingly long time, come to think of it.

Which he definitely didn’t want to.

He turned around, tipped his head back and tried to rinse every pesky grain of sand from his hair instead. If he focused on the immediate present, things weren’t so bad. There was hot water. He was safe, or safe enough. As far as he knew, there wasn’t even anyone left who particularly wanted to kill him. He had a place to sleep for the night. And then…

And then what? He couldn’t stay at the Purple Skag forever. He didn’t have money, and August certainly didn’t want him around. In a couple days Sasha would fix her caravan, and then she’d be off on her own again, like she’d wanted from the start. Helios was out of the question; even if he could learn to withstand all its ghosts, it wasn’t fair to shackle himself to Vaughn when Vaughn thrived in his absence. Wherever Fiona was, she’d made it clear Rhys wasn’t welcome.

Atlas was gone, nothing left but memories of infection and loneliness and long nights working towards a dream that had never been viable.

“Don’t think about it,” he muttered, eyes squeezed shut as he leaned his forehead on the cracked shower tile. “Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, and…” He sighed. “And stop talking to yourself.”

Since he was twelve years old, Rhys had known what he wanted to do. For as long as he could remember, he’d had goals, and detailed step-by-step plans to achieve them. What grades he needed, in what subjects. The university to attend. The job application. The prosthetics to get, the backs to stab, the promotions to shoot for. Even after Helios, when everything was in pieces—including his body—Atlas was a carrot on a stick, the distant point of light from the far end of the tunnel.

Now the tunnel had caved in. He had no plan, no pinprick of light to claw his way towards. Forget the carrot—he didn’t even have a stick.

You’re pathetic, kiddo.

Icy panic twisted in his chest. Rhys shivered, suddenly aware that the water had turned cold and his skin was covered in goosebumps. He rinsed off the last of the soap as quick as he could, shut off the water, and wrapped himself in a threadbare towel. He dripped on the linoleum, struggling to think with a brain preoccupied by screeching white noise. Showering was precisely as far as his future planning currently extended.

Now what?

Ignoring the existential quandary and the frantic beat of his heart, he focused on the immediate, toweling off and reaching for his clothes. Only once he’d hit the necessary step of styling his hair did he bother to wipe the fog from the tiny broken mirror.

Jeeze, cupcake, you look like shit.

The Rhys staring back at him through the glass was not unlike the shadow that had followed him around Atlas for months, caught in windows and blackened screens and other shiny surfaces. The lingering moisture from the shower didn’t mask the bags under his eyes, the faint sunburn, or the way his once-pristine clothes badly needed an iron.

You gonna job hunt looking like something a skag coughed up? Hell, maybe that’s the vibe they look for down here, who knows. Maybe someone on Pandora’s in the market for a washed-up wannabe with defunct tech in his brain.

Though he was standing still, his heart pounded like it was trying to break free. Rhys looked away from the mirror, staring at a chip on the porcelain sink and willing his pulse to slow down.

Y’know, it’s kind of funny, when you think about it. All those things you did… crashed a space station, killed all your coworkers, stuck a piece of glass in your goddamn eye… and for what? So you could grill mystery meat in some crapsack town for a two dollar wage?

He gripped the edge of the sink hard, jaw clenching against the swell of nausea rising in his stomach. The small bathroom of the Purple Skag felt claustrophobic.

Should’ve let me finish you off then and there. Phantom fingers tickled the base of his neck. It would’ve been so easy…

Rhys jerked away from the sink, stumbling into the opposite wall. His left arm flew to his throat instinctively, rubbing it as though to soothe away the sudden tightness making it difficult to breathe. In the crooked mirror, he caught another glimpse of his reflection, wide-eyed and terrified and pitiful.

In the silence of the bathroom, imagining cruel laughter was too easy. With shaking fingers, he pulled open the door and set off to find August.


Sasha stomped away from Janey’s place with her fingers making impatient grabs at the open air, like she might get lucky and find an invisible stress ball.

In thirty-seven years, Sasha’d had her share of bad days—more than her share, some would argue. The longer she lived, the harder it became for anything to crack the top ten.

This day was giving it a good run, though.

Arguing with Rhys. Totalling the caravan. Running into—and fighting with—her sister, again. Having to beg help off of August. Getting marooned in bloody Hollow Point. Rhys pulling away, bit by bit.

Her fingers curled into her palms. That last part was good, she reminded herself. Inevitable. Needed to happen.

“Sasha!” Vaughn was almost breathless as he tried to keep step next to her. “Sorry about that. She’s been an asshole all day, if it makes you feel better. ”

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

“I guess she’s… uh… let’s say ‘adjusting’.” He mimed quotation marks in the air. “She took me to this casino-slash-bar-slash-nightmare, and I know I’m usually like ‘oh, give her a chance’, but—”

Sasha ground her teeth together. “I said I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Right, right, yeah, sorry.” He shrugged. “But, for the record? Kinda starting to think you were right to cut her out.”

Sasha said nothing, glaring at the cobblestone that made up the roads in this part of town. Visiting Hollow Point was always a mistake. She hated the dampness in the air, the flat darkness of the cave ceiling, the way time lurched along at an invisible, monotonous pace, unmarked by sun or stars or weather. How did she keep getting stuck here? What kind of curse had this place put on her when she was a child?

“Sorry to hear about the caravan,” he continued, when she hadn’t spoken. “If you need to borrow a vehicle for a while—”

“No. I don’t need any charity and I don’t want any debt.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not charity, Sasha. Friends help each other for free.”

“I can take care of myself,” she insisted, eager to end the conversation before it could blaze out of control. “I’m not interested in being anyone’s burden. I haven’t asked any of you for help, so stop trying to give it to me. Okay?”

Vaughn might have wanted to argue, but he settled for muttering, “Stubbornness is genetic, huh?”

She glared. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Vaughn never held his ground around her. Sometimes Sasha wished he would. “So…” He tried and failed to sound casual. “Where’s Rhys?”

“Left him with the caravan. Someone’s gotta defend it from bandits.”

“You what?!”

Sasha snickered. “I’m kidding. He stayed behind at the Purple Skag.” She tossed her braids over her shoulder. “Don’t think he was feeling up to another reunion.”

“Should’ve guessed.” All traces of Vaughn’s concern were immediately replaced by annoyance. “Avoiding people is his new thing, so that checks out.”

“He thinks you’re mad at him.”

“I am mad at him!” Vaughn’s hands swung out in front of him to emphasize the point. “Do you know how much I’ve put up with for him? From him? How many hangovers and bad breakups and elective surgeries? I joined Hyperion because of him! I came to Pandora in the first place because he didn’t get his stupid promotion. He can’t put up with a few awkward stares in the hallway after he’s been gone for a decade?”

A strange feeling of defensiveness unearthed itself in Sasha. She swatted it down. “Thought friends helped each other for free.”

Vaughn’s arms sagged mid-gesture. “That’s… uh… I didn’t mean it like that.” With a deflated sigh, he dropped his arms completely. “He was gone for twelve years. I’ve missed him. And he just…”

“I know,” she said calmly. “I’m not saying he was in the right, I’m just saying he’s…”

A wreck. Lost. Panicking. Coming apart at the neatly-stitched seams.

“...still finding his footing,” she finished. “He misses you too.”

Vaughn barked a bitter laugh. “Oh, right, sure. Then why’d he leave?”

Recognizing a fight that wasn’t hers to have, Sasha shook her head. “You’d have to ask him.”

Vaughn kicked a pebble so that it skittered down the road in front of them, a tiny clatter against an awkward silence.

Street by street, Athena and Janey’s nicer neighborhood gave way to a seedier part of town, cobblestone fading to dirt. Sasha’s eyes darted around as they walked. Perhaps the dangers of Hollow Point should have felt more familiar, and therefore less alarming, than the similar threats lurking elsewhere on Pandora.

Instead, the effect was the opposite. Sasha knew all too well what every corner might hide. When electricity was scarce, rolling power outages were common, plunging quadrants of the city into pitch blackness. Though it had been years since her face had been splashed across any wanted signs, old habits were hard to break.

“Nice to see you out of Helios,” she said, making conversation as her attention lingered on shadows. “I’d started to think that was impossible.”

“It was Fiona’s idea,” he said flatly. “She insisted it’d be good for me.”

Sasha wrinkled her nose, choosing to hold her tongue rather than agree with Fiona on anything.

“It’s been almost a day,” Vaughn continued, fretting now. “No one’s called me. That’s probably good, right? That probably means they’re not dying.” He paused. “Or they all died, and that’s why no one’s called me. Because they’re all dead.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “I’m sure no one’s dead.” The impatience gave way to a frown, and she looked at him. “You used to leave Helios all the time.”

“That was different. Yvette—”

“No, no,” said Sasha, shaking her head, “you stopped venturing out long before she left. It’s like something spooked you.”

The look on Vaughn’s face was withering. “Gee, what could it have been?”

Sasha’s cheeks flushed, but she stopped herself from reaching for her handkerchief. “That was an accident. I ran out of ammo.”

“Yeah, so you said.” Though he sounded resentful, he didn’t press. “Man… this sucks.” He sighed, shoulders rounding forward as he slouched. “Is this what you thought it’d be like if they came back?”

In the early days after their disappearance, Sasha had thought of little else. It had been the subject of every dream, every wayward fantasy, every fleeting thought when she turned a new corner. She’d imagined hugs and tears and relief so intense it would make her dizzy.

Then they’d found Felix.

“I don’t know,” she told Vaughn. “I didn’t think they were coming back.”


Having only been to the Purple Skag once before, Rhys had no point of comparison for how the intervening years might have changed it.

He appreciated that. It was nice to be somewhere that still held an illusion of familiarity. Still, he found himself lingering at the bottom of the stairs. There was no one at the bar itself except August, wiping down the counter with a rag.

August would not have been Rhys’ first choice for companion, given the circumstances—given any circumstances, really, except maybe a bar fight. He was certain August felt the same.

Ignoring that his out-of-control heart rate and persistent nausea, Rhys walked over to the bar like he was heading to a performance review, shoulders back and head held high in an easy simulation of confidence. August raised his head as Rhys approached, managing to make apathy feel hostile.

“Took you forever,” he commented. “Was starting to wonder if you’d drowned.”

Annoyance chipped away at Rhys’ lingering panic. Maybe August was the right person to talk to after all.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he deadpanned, sliding onto a bar stool. “So…” He cast a glance around the bar. A few patrons were playing a card game in a corner. Someone had fallen asleep on the table next to their full beer. The place was mostly empty. “Business looks… good…”

August narrowed his eyes. “It’s off-peak hours, all right?”

“...Right,” said Rhys.

The person who’d fallen asleep started to snore.

“Sasha tells me you’re looking for a job.” August said it so casually Rhys couldn’t tell if he’d intended to twist the knife or not.

Not about to let his feathers be ruffled in either case, Rhys smiled. “Why, you hiring?”

“No,” said August; Rhys snorted. “Do you even know how to bartend?”

“Technically no, but I did go to college.”

August lifted his hands in mock reverence. “Oh, well, excuse me. Forgot I was speaking to high society.”

“Wha…?” Rhys shook his head. “No, that’s not—I just—I meant I used to drink a lot. In college. You know?”

“Nope.” August folded his arms. “Never went to college.”

“Okay, well—”

“Drinking a lot’s not a qualification,” August continued.

“I know, it was a joke. Jeeze.” Rhys rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Surprising you don’t have more regulars coming here for your companionable chatter.”

“Maybe they like the quiet. Some people like to be left alone with their thoughts.”

Rhys knew at least one patron who very much did not want to be left alone with his thoughts, but he wasn’t about to tell August that. “...Right.”

The front door to the bar creaked as it swung open. Rhys twisted on his chair to watch someone lumber in, so tall they had to stoop under the doorframe.

“Sasha won’t be back for a while,” said August, jolting into Rhys’ thoughts before the disappointment had even coalesced into something tangible. “Janey lives in the nice part of town. It’s a walk. Especially if they went to see the caravan.”

August wiped a spot near Rhys’ elbow with prejudice, then slipped to the other side of the counter, leaving Rhys on his own.

The prospect of several hours alone at the Purple Skag with August was not Rhys’ favourite, but he had to stop thinking of Sasha like a security blanket. She’d only brought him along in the first place out of pity; she’d said it herself, once she thought he couldn’t hear.

Duh. What’d you expect her to say, dumb-dumb? Loooove?

Rhys scrubbed at his eyes with his index and forefingers, a gesture he hoped might be the hard reset his brain needed. Despite everything the universe had thrown at her, Sasha was too good-hearted to leave a pitiful stray by the side of the road. God only knew how long she’d let him leech off of her, if she thought he still needed to.

He had to show her that he didn’t, so she could move on with a clean conscience. Even if the thought of finding his way without her—or Vaughn, or Fiona—made him want to throw up all over August’s nice clean countertop.

Running low on options, Rhys decided to do what everyone else in the Purple Skag was doing. His meagre amount of cash wouldn’t go far—wouldn’t have, even twelve years ago, when he’d taken it with him to go “meet Fiona” and instead wound up getting clobbered in the head by Loader Bot. It certainly wasn’t enough to live off of, or even enough to act as seed money for whatever vague future he was about to lumber into.

But it was enough to buy a few drinks. At the moment, Rhys could think of no better cause to throw money at than slowly losing coherent thought.

“So, what’s a drink cost these days?” he asked, experimentally thumbing through a few bills as August returned to his post behind the bar. “It’s, uh, been a while.”

Maybe there’d been a spike in inflation. Or maybe Pandora had given up money all together and now operated on a bartering system of skag bones, or something equally grim.

August made a noise like the world’s most long-suffering man. “You’re on Sasha’s tab.”

The short-lived thrill in Rhys’ chest was quickly engulfed by guilt. Sasha’s disposable income was limited and he’d never done anything to earn his keep. Couldn’t even fix her radio.

Oh, come on, kid, you never gave someone a bit of go-away money?

“She didn’t have to do that,” said Rhys quietly, staring at his useless handful of cash.

“No, she didn’t,” August agreed. “But she’d kick my ass if I took that from you.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

August considered it, but then he shook his head. “Nah. You keep it.” He slung the rag over his shoulder and reached to fill a pint glass. “But I’m giving you the cheap stuff.”

Resigned to defeat, Rhys put the cash away. “As long as it’s alcoholic, I don’t really care.”

August slid him a glass of something that looked approximately like beer. With an appreciative tip of his chin, Rhys gulped down a swig of his drink.

Then he choked and coughed until his eyes watered.

“Oh my god,” he managed, once he could speak again. “I thought this was the cheap stuff!”

“Thought you’d be able to hold your liquor, Honour Roll.”

“Hey, in college ‘the cheap stuff’ was shitty watered-down beer, all right? Not acetone.”

“I said cheap, not weak. I don’t sell anything weak,” said August. “But good taste’ll cost you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up for the first time, which by August standards probably counted as hysterical laughter. Rhys shook his head, but since he was in no mood to pay for something better—or stay sober—he wrinkled his nose and managed a second, much smaller sip. It burned the back of his throat and tasted just as awful as it had the first time, but at least it’d be strong enough to get the job done quickly.

Low-cost drinking in a dive bar. College indeed.

“Thanks, by the way,” he said, some time after the third sip had started to settle in his bones. “For all this. I know I’m probably not your favourite person to have around.” He wiped a line in the condensation on his glass. “I won’t stick around long. Promise.”

Drying clean glasses and stacking them artfully on the shelf behind the bar, August shrugged. “Not doing it for you.”

Ah. Twelve years in, and Sasha asking was all the convincing August needed.

“I figured,” Rhys admitted. Wary of the jealousy he could feel lurching like a zombie through his conscious, he offered, “It’s nice that you and Sasha are still close.”

“We aren’t. Not really.” August kept his back to Rhys as he arranged and rearranged the glasses. “Gave it a go for a few years, but Sasha won’t let anyone in. Usually.”

“Huh?” Preoccupied with tracing shapes on the side of his cup and working on a buzz, Rhys took an extra second to notice the weight of the word or August’s pointed stare. “Uh, yeah, about that: think you’re misinterpreting my relationship with Sasha.”

August glared at him. “Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m not,” said Rhys, narrowing his eyes in return. “She feels sorry for me, maybe a little nostalgic. That’s all.” Saying it out loud twisted his heart in his chest, and he tightened his grip on the pint glass. “So you can drop the jealousy, okay? She’s not interested. Trust me.”

Then he tossed back a large gulp of his drink.

August watched him for an uncomfortably long time, most of which Rhys spent scowling at the rim of his glass, bitter he’d had to have the conversation at all, wishing August’s shitty alcohol would hurry up and dull things faster. The universe had become creative in its cruelty.

After what felt like a long deliberation, August turned, folding his arms and leaning back against the counter with a deadly serious expression.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said.

Rhys’ head snapped up and his voice rose to an incredulous high. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” said August. “You two really fucked things up for Sasha and Vaughn when you disappeared.”

“Gee, keen observation, detective,” Rhys snapped. “You think I meant for this to happen? Everything I had, or planned, or wanted—the vault took all of it.” His voice shook. “I’ve got nothing left.”

August was unmoved and unsympathetic. “Nothing. Right. Just a friend going out of her way to make sure your sorry ass is taken care of.”

“Because she thinks I’m pathetic! You heard her too—she can’t wait to be rid of me, she’s just too nice to say it to my face.”

None of that registered with August, whose eyes narrowed. “Years I watched her and Vaughn turn themselves inside out ‘cause of you two. Years! Now, just when they’re finally moving on, you two come back—and you’ve got the nerve to sit here with your free drink complaining about how hard it is for you?”

“I’m not saying—”

“Used to think I must be misremembering. Gotta be something I missed that got two good people so hung up on you, right?” August braced both hands on the bar counter, looming overhead. “But no. You’re still the liar who was too selfish and cowardly to warn anyone he’d let Handsome Jack into his head.”

Guilt stood no chance against the mix of alcohol and anger already flowing through Rhys’ veins. “Oh, fuck you, mama’s boy.”

“Sasha’d be out of here by now if it weren’t for you two.”

It was a ridiculous statement, so Rhys scoffed.

“She would be.” August was firm. “Got an offer from your Hyperion friend.”

“Yvette?” he croaked in disbelief. That couldn’t be right. Yvette had gone home. There was no way Sasha would turn down a chance to escape Pandora—

“Yeah. Hooked herself up with a ride off Pandora and was looking for company. Vaughn wouldn’t budge, so she asked Sasha. Sasha turned her down too.”

Rhys shook his head. “No, that’s—that doesn’t—Sasha wouldn’t—”

“She would,” August insisted. “She did.”

It was hard to organize words in the deafening buzz of Rhys’ brain. “Why?”

August’s stare was cold and hard. “Why do you think?”

Rhys was having difficulty thinking much of anything. He couldn’t make sense of Sasha being handed her golden ticket yet turning down her visit to the chocolate factory.

“You really wanna repay Sasha?” August continued. “Leave her alone and let her move on before you screw it up again.”

Rhys’ mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. He wanted to defend himself, but no words were coming to mind to do it.

Then their stare-down was interrupted by a crash, as one poker-playing customer threw another into an empty table.

“Ugh.” August had the tone of someone whose annoyance should not be confused with surprise. “Hey! Douchebags!” He ducked through the trap door to the bar. “You break that table, you owe me a new one!”

Rhys watched him confront the customers in a daze. His head spun like he’d had far more than a few sips of whatever sludge August had served him. On legs that felt longer and looser than normal, he slipped off the bar stool and stumbled out the back door.


The back alleys of Hollow Point felt surreal, like a thin film separated Rhys from the world around him. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the culmination of twelve intervening years, an invisible barrier he couldn’t break through.

Anxiety clawed at the inside of his ribcage. Fiona was right: his mistakes were contagious. August was right: he shouldn’t have come back. All he’d done was dig up scar tissue for Sasha and Vaughn, scars he’d help make in the first place.

Jack was right. It would have been better for everyone if he’d just…

Easy solution to that problem, Rhysie. No time like the present, am I right?

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Rhys burst out. His own voice echoed back at him against the brick walls of the empty alley.

So he was sober enough to hear ghosts, and drunk enough to talk back to them.

Great.

He picked up speed as he rounded another corner, wandering with no destination in mind except “away”, as though it were possible to put enough physical distance between himself and the thoughts nipping at his heels. He nearly walked into the rough stone of the cave wall before he realized he’d hit a dead end.

Then the street lights went out, and everything around him plunged into darkness. The ambient hum of electricity gave way to eerie silence—for a second, anyway, before it was broken by a psycho a few streets over shouting something incomprehensible and few rounds of gunfire. Business as usual, then.

The night vision of his cybernetic eye clicked to life on command, a small mercy Rhys was in no mood to properly appreciate. He walked to the end of the alley and looked both ways. Another short dead end to his right. Back where he’d come from, to the left, there was a man standing in the middle of the alley, frozen and tense. He must not have been able to see anything at all.

Rhys considered his options. The man was in the way, but Rhys might be able to slip past him if he just—

“Fucking blackouts,” the man muttered. Then, by chance, he turned to face Rhys, and his eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”

For a moment, they stared at each other in mutual confusion; then, in the time it took Rhys to imagine what it would be like to see a single glowing eye six feet off the ground, the man had pulled out a gun and aimed it square at Rhys’ chest.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy!” said Rhys quickly, staggering back a step, both hands raised. “It’s just my eye. See?” He turned on his palm light too, illuminating his own face and hopefully-non-threatening smile. “It’s cybernetic. Lights up when I use it.”

The man’s face turned from fear to suspicion to intrigue in quick succession, his thick brow furrowing.

“Fancy,” he commented, eyeing Rhys’ arm, before he focused on the eye again. “You can see in the dark with that thing?”

Rhys could, very well. Specifically, he could see the muzzle of the gun still pointed in his direction, which was very distracting. “Uh… yeah.”

The man took a step forward; Rhys compensated with a step back.

“Sounds useful,” said the man.

“Yeah, I mean, it… comes in handy…” said Rhys, offering another friendly shrug.

“Been a lotta blackouts around here lately,” the man told him, still advancing while Rhys retreated. “Sure could use something like that myself.”

Deciding that he liked having the advantage of sight, Rhys shut off the light from his palm. “Well, you know, they’re handy, sure, but then you have to keep them upgraded, and let me tell you, the installation process is not pleasant, and… and what are you doing?”

The man had pulled out a knife, adjusting his grip on the gun to hold both weapons at once. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Right,” said Rhys, who was in fact very worried about it. Backing away steadily now, he stumbled over one of the many cardboard boxes lining the street. “Look, I’d love to help, but I, uh—don’t have any spares on me, at the moment, unfortunately, and I’ve kind of been… out of town… for a while, so I’m not really up-to-date on the best manufacturers…”

“Oh, no,” said the man. “You’ve been plenty helpful.”

“Great,” Rhys squeaked. “Glad to hear it.” He squared his shoulders, trying to look as tall and confident as he could for a foe that could barely see him, before taking a cautious step forward and around the man. “I’ll, um, just be on my way, then—”

“Not quite yet,” said the man. He jabbed the muzzle of his gun forward until it poked just above Rhys’ belly-button. When Rhys froze, the man gave him a wide, toothy grin. “Don’t worry. If you hold still, I’ll let you keep the other one.”

Fight-or-flight response kicking in, Rhys scrambled backwards. He made it three steps before his heel caught on another box and slid out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground and landing flat on his back.

Fuck.

The man approached slow but steady in the dark, gun still pointed in Rhys’ direction. Rhys’ mind raced to catch up, fumbling its way through alcoholic fog. His cybernetic eye offered a nice, glowing target—but if he turned it off, he wouldn’t be able to see anything either. Crawling backwards, he cast wild looks around the alley, searching for something to use and finding only dumpsters and cardboard boxes. Maybe if he turned off his eye and made a blind break for it—

“I wouldn’t run if I were you,” said the man, eerily prescient as he loomed overhead. The hand holding the knife pat the gun affectionately. “This thing’s got a pretty quick fire rate.”

Rhys’ mouth had gone dry, his heart telegraphing panic with every beat. His back hit the wall at the end of the alley.

“You really don’t wanna do this,” he told the man, voice far shakier than he would’ve liked. “It’s a super messy job, believe me. Lotta blood. Tons of wire.”

The man held his gun in one hand and twirled his knife in the other. “I ain’t squeamish.”

“It’s an outdated model,” Rhys carried on quickly. “Can’t even connect to the EchoNet anymore, it’s—it’s obsolete really—”

The man crouched down, pinning Rhys in place with a knee to his stomach, the knife—and the gun—now much closer to Rhys’ head than Rhys wanted.

“Y-you should just get a pair of goggles,” Rhys continued. “Easier. Way less mess. N-no brain surgery required—”

The cold tip of the gun found the spot under Rhys’ chin, tilting his head up. “You keep talking, this job’s gonna be a lot messier than it needs to be.”

Trapped against the back wall, Rhys eyed the tip of the knife and choked down a whimper. On the list of terrible life experiences he’d done once and hoped to never do again, having his eye ripped out of its socket was right near the top, just behind accidental mass-murder.

Of all the ways to die, hacked up by some freak in a back alley—

How Pandoran. He’d gone native.

“Please,” he stammered, “please, I…”

Now you’re just embarrassing yourself. Like anything in your sad blip of a life is worth begging for—

“Shut up,” said the man, forcing Rhys’ attention back to the present threat, not the shadow of an old one. He pushed the gun against Rhys’ neck so hard it became difficult to breathe. “Your fancy hand. Turn it on so I can see better.”

Rhys didn’t move. The pressure of the gun against his throat wiped everything from his mind except screeching terror and—

Ask him to give you the ol’ Sweeney Todd shave. Make sure he hits the jugular. Finish you off real quick. It’ll be painless, probably. Mostly. Who knows. Let’s find out.

The man rolled his eyes. He held the tip of the knife to Rhys’ cheekbone, just below his left eye. “Turn it on, or I just start jabbing wherever I want.”

C’mon, pumpkin, what are you waiting for? What have you got left to lose, really?

Trembling, Rhys turned on his palm light, illuminating them both. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe it’d be quick…

BANG!

At the sound of gunfire, the man slumped forward, his knife grazing Rhys’ cheek as he collapsed. Confused, and with a heart that felt like it might work itself to death any second, Rhys shoved the body away.

The back of the man’s head was a grisly mess. Blood began to pool where he’d fallen.

In a crescendo of fear, Rhys scrambled further into the corner, flattening himself against the wall. Both eyes wide, he turned his head toward the gunman and his jaw dropped.

“F-Fiona?”

“Holy crap,” said Fiona, arm still raised as she tucked her derringer away. “That was close, huh?”

Gun hidden, she stretched down her hand; Rhys took it, letting himself be pulled onto unsteady feet and staggering away from the growing pool of blood.

“Wh…” Rhys’ chest heaved as he caught his breath, stunned and confused and still reeling with adrenaline. “Where did you come from?”

She shrugged. “Was out for a walk. Thought I heard your voice when the lights went out.” She wrinkled her nose. “Then I heard this charmer.” She nudged the body’s foot with her shoe. “Sounded like you could use the assist.”

The laugh that bubbled out of Rhys’ chest bordered on hysterical. “You think?”

“I was waiting for a clean shot,” she snapped, angry suddenly. “I couldn’t see you, and I wasn’t sure what he’d do if he knew he had company. He could’ve blown your head off. I could’ve blown your head off. If you’d used your stupid personal flashlight sooner—”

“Okay, okay, sorry! Jeeze!” He lifted his hands in surrender and then began to dust himself off. “I appreciate the help. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

Fiona’s mouth froze open, like she’d been about to argue—then she shut it again, and let her hands fall to her sides.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, an odd note of defeat in her voice. She grabbed his chrome hand by the wrist, positioning it like a flashlight so she could better see his face. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” said Rhys, which was three-quarters of a lie. He touched the scratch on his cheek and his fingers came away with a thin line of blood. “Just a scratch… and some heart palpitations.”

“What a douche,” Fiona concluded, turning Rhys’ hand again to shine the light on the body. “He was severely underestimating how difficult it is to scoop out someone’s eye. What was he gonna do with it, anyway? Use it like a contact lens?” She bent over. “He lied about the fire rate, by the way. This thing’s crap.” She kicked the gun aside. “Oooh, sweet knife, though.”

“Oh come on, really?” Rhys’ stomach lurched as he watched her wipe the blood—his blood—off the blade using the dead man’s coat.

“What, you want it?” She held out the handle. “You could use a weapon.”

“You’re disgusting,” he told her.

Fiona grinned as she straightened up and pocketed the knife.

Nose wrinkled, Rhys shook his head. “Okay, can we get away from the corpse of the guy who wanted to maim me now?”

“Sure.” She waved her arms in a flourished 'after you' gesture. “Light the way, Rudolph.”

Hand aloft, Rhys led them away from the dead body and the dead-end alleys, lost to the near-death buzz that Pandora handed out like candy. More intoxicating than the swill at the Purple Skag, it left his legs shaky and his head feeling like it was tethered to the rest of his body by a mere string.

“This place has had blackout problems for years,” Fiona started explaining. “Different bandit clans vie for control of the power station, and…”

But his scattered brain let the words drift by without notice. Fiona kept in close step beside him, almost-but-not-quite touching, an anchoring presence in his periphery. Rhys matched his stride to hers, listening to the synchronized click of their boots on the dirt road. Whatever sick cosmic sense of humour kept tossing them together, he was grateful for it now. Step by step, panic relinquished its iron grip on his nervous system.

“...get fed up and form their own gang,” she was saying, “and they go to the power station and… hey, are you listening to me?” She nudged him with her elbow. “Rhys?”

“Huh? What about gangs?”

Fiona narrowed her eyes, but for once it seemed more concern than annoyance. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Peachy,” said Rhys, who felt like he was held together by two safety pins and some duct tape.

“Right.” Her tone was full of skepticism. “So why are you alone getting mugged behind some dumpsters?”

The truth was uncomfortable, so Rhys shrugged it off. “August’s hospitality could use some work.” He looked at her, taking in her new outfit and her hatless head for the first time. “Where have you been? How did you end up in Hollow Point?”

“Vaughn and I went on an excursion. When that—er—ended, we stopped by to visit Janey and Athena.”

“Vaughn’s here?” It came out by accident, but when she raised an eyebrow, he cleared his throat. “That’s why Sasha and I are here, too, the caravan—”

“Hit a skag,” said Fiona, curt. “Yeah. Sasha said.”

She very carefully avoided his eyes, but Rhys saw her frown.

“Guessing you ran into her, then,” he prompted.

“Yup,” was all she said.

“Guessing it didn’t go well,” he reasoned.

“Well, you know. She’s still pissed.” Her shrug was too stiff to be casual, but she changed the subject before he could dwell. “What about you two? How’s the romantic getaway?” There was something amiss in Fiona’s teasing, a razor blade buried in the candy apple. Was that bitterness? Jealousy? “Cozying up in a broken caravan?”

He twisted his illuminated hand so that the embarrassment on his face might be hidden in the dark. “We did kiss, actually! And then she regretted it immediately, told me it was a mistake and now we’re spending the night at her ex boyfriend’s house, so… could’ve gone better, actually.”

“...Oh.” Fiona’s voice sounded like a faceplant, all the humour sucked out along with whatever else had been lingering there.

“Yeah. Strong contender for the worst first kiss I’ve ever had, and there’s been some doozies—one time in high school I gave a girl anaphylactic shock ‘cause she was allergic to peanuts.” His artificial grin went unreturned, so he let it fade and shrugged. “Sasha and I missed our chance, that’s all. Maybe we had a shot once, but… that was a long time ago now.” If he said it out loud often enough, maybe it would stop stinging. “It happens.”

“Not like this it doesn’t,” Fiona said, so bitter he was taken aback. “This is… this is…”

“Garbage?” Rhys suggested. “Nightmarish? Unrelentingly terrible? Cruel and unusual punishment?”

“All of the above.”

“Maybe we’re dead,” Rhys posited. “Maybe we died in the vault, and now we’re in hell. That would make sense, right?”

Fiona narrowed her eyes.

“Are you saying I’d go to hell?” But she only let him squirm for a second before she laughed. “Kidding. ‘Course I would.”

“Oh, me too. Obviously.”

They passed another block in silence, Fiona slipping into the lead to guide the way. A cowardly part of Rhys wanted to linger in the communal misery for as long as he could, skirting around everything the way Fiona did.

Instead, he asked, “How’s Vaughn?”

She seemed thoughtful as she looked back at him, like she was deciding how much honesty he could handle.

“Angry,” she settled on. “You ran away.”

She didn’t sound as judgmental as he’d expected.

“I know. I panicked. But...” His right hand flagged, and he rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. “Honestly it’s probably better if I stay away.”

Fiona scoffed. “Uh, pretty sure that’s not how he sees it.”

Rhys smiled weakly. “Vaughn’s never seen clearly when it comes to me—if he did, he wouldn’t have stuck with me so long.” Before she could protest, he added, “Look at everything he was able to do once I got out of his way.”

“Y’know, taking credit for getting out of the way is still taking credit. You’re still making it about you.”

“I don’t mean it like that. It’s... I meant… ugh.” The alley darkened as he scrubbed at his face with both hands, frustrated that no one else could see the truth of it the way he could. “It’s like you said, right? My bad decisions have a lot of bystander casualties. I don’t want him caught in the crossfire anymore. I don’t wanna do that to any of you.”

Fiona’s mouth opened and closed silently as she chewed on what she wanted to say.

Eventually, she chose, “You shouldn’t listen to me.” Pushing her hair behind her ear, she looked away, down the dark road. “I lie for a living.”

“Well, you were right about me.”

“No, I wasn’t, I was just doing what I always do: making it impossible for anyone to be my friend.” With her back to him, Fiona spread her arms in demonstration.

Guilt flared up. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

She shrugged. “It’s true. I can sabotage relationships without even trying.” She spun to face him, hand pressed to her chest in a false boast. “Vaughn, Athena, you—I even got my sister to hate me, and I didn’t think that was possible.”

Rhys’ frown deepened with each shake of his head. “Come on, none of us hate you.”

Fiona snorted. “You weren’t at Athena’s earlier.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t need to be, I know they don’t. Vaughn’s hated like two people in his whole life; one of ‘em was Vasquez, and the other is the guy who pantsed him in eighth grade gym class.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Sure—and he happens to believe I’m a selfish jackass who would leave him behind to die.” She kicked at one of the boxes as they passed. “A recurring theme, actually.”

Rhys decided it was best to ignore that and choose another angle.

“Sasha doesn’t hate you,” he tried, “you’re her sister. She loves you.”

“Twelve years and nine million dollars ago she did.” The quiet way she spoke was unnerving, stripped of all the bluster and confidence he associated with Fiona. “Now I’m not so sure.”

“Just because she’s angry—”

“It’s not that she’s angry. Sasha’s been angry with me plenty of times, okay? This is different. She’s different. I can remember the day she was born, and now...” She fidgeted with the cuffs of her new jacket. “My sister’s a stranger and it’s my fault.”

He understood where she was coming from, he really did. He knew how unsettled he felt around Vaughn. How strange it was, seeing someone who looked like his best friend obscured beneath an impenetrable wall of years. How horrible it felt, knowing you’d stolen something from them you could never give back.

Still, he couldn’t help but think of Sasha, sleeping on the roof of her caravan so she could gaze at the stars and imagine a better life.

“She hasn’t changed as much as you think,” he said gently. “If you just talk to her—”

“I’ve tried. I only make it worse,” said Fiona, miserable. “That’s what I always do.”

“But—”

“Rhys, stop.” She said it so firmly his eyebrows rose. “I know you’re trying to help, but this whole thing, with Sasha? It’s not your problem to solve. Just leave it alone.”

Rhys opened his mouth to argue. He badly wanted to help—wanted to feel like his continued existence had some net positive influence on someone, somewhere.

But he supposed he couldn’t blame her, or Sasha. When was the last time his involvement had meant anything other than unmitigated disaster?

Defeated, he sighed. “Fine.”

Fiona’s hard expression gave way to something near remorse, but she turned away before he could study it closer. “Thanks.”

They walked a minute in silence before he nudged Fiona with his elbow. “Just for the record, I don’t hate you either.”

Fiona looked at him, scarred eyebrow arched in doubt.

“I mean, yeah, sure, you make me crazy, but… honestly I kind of like that.” He paused. “...Most of the time.”

Fiona stopped in her tracks, so abrupt he nearly bumped into her. She tilted her head, scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Trying so hard.” She watched him like a puzzle to be solved. “Even after I told you to stop.”

“I’m a glutton for punishment?” But she didn’t smile, so he sobered. “I don’t know, I like you. You’re my friend.” He shrugged, and adopted a self-deprecating grin. “Guess I keep hoping you’ll eventually feel the same.”

Fiona stared at him in disbelief, jaw ajar. “Of course I do. Do you really not know that?”

Rhys blinked; that wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. “I…”

Before he could answer, she raked both hands through her hair and started pacing on the spot.

“Well, why would you?” For once, the frustration in her voice wasn’t directed at him. “What happened the other day, when we got back… I’m better at picking fights than being honest, so that’s what I did.” Her lip curled, a surprising level of inward anger. “You tried to help and instead you got caught in the blast radius of my emotional fallout. I’m sorry.”

Rhys struggled to remember if she’d ever said that to him before. “Fi, it’s okay.” He put on an encouraging smile. “Family fights, right?”

She froze. She stared at him, the cogs behind her clever eyes turning, and Rhys felt a flash of panic. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Maybe he’d overstepped. Maybe—

Fiona launched forward and threw her arms around his shoulders, a hug so fierce it knocked him back a step.

“Whoa,” said Rhys, regaining his balance on slightly bent knees. “Thought you saved hugging for near-death experiences. Are you sure we’re not dead?”

“Shut up,” she muttered. Her grip was tight, her nails biting through his shirt as she clung to him. “I keep fucking it up. I’m not good with people. Not when it’s real. I get scared and I push them away so when they leave I can pretend it was my choice, but it doesn’t work. I still...”

Her breath hitched. Stunned, Rhys could think of nothing to do but wrap his arms around her in return.

“I didn’t mean what I said, about taking the hint,” she continued. “I don’t want you to stop trying to be my friend. You’re the only one who still trusts me.” She buried her face in his shoulder, her muffled voice shaking. “I need you.”

That anyone wanted—no, needed him around hit Rhys like a moonshot, and he felt like he’d chugged an entire keg of August’s disgusting liquor: light-headed, dazed, throat burning, unsure whether he ought to laugh or cry. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear those words until Fiona said them.

“I need you too,” he admitted. He pulled Fiona as close as he could. “I can’t do this by myself. I don’t wanna be alone again.” The truth came out raspy and desperate. “I don’t think I’d survive it.”

Fiona gave him an extra squeeze. He was fairly certain he heard her sniffle, but it was lost in the sound of his own staccato breathing. They stood that way for a moment, two castaways reaching for the same life raft in the dark.

Fiona pulled away first, ducking her head as she did so and swiping conspicuously at her cheeks.

“Right,” she said, hands on her hips, suddenly decisive. “Gonna be honest, I have no idea where to go from here. But whatever it is...” Her smile was warm and genuine. “Do it together?”

Eyes damp, Rhys nodded as he returned the smile. “I was kinda hoping you’d say that.”

With a sudden thrum, electricity returned to the street; the overhead street lights sparked back to life, as did the glow inside some of the nearby windows. Fiona yelped, squinting as her pupils adjusted, while Rhys clicked off his palm light and ECHO eye.

“Forgot how annoying that is,” Fiona muttered. “So… where to next?”

Rhys considered it. “I should go back to the Purple Skag. I don’t want to disappear on Sasha.”

A sad shadow flickered over Fiona’s face, but she nodded. “Probably a good call.” She straightened her shoulders, ready for battle. “I should probably apologize to Vaughn and Athena.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s… gonna be difficult.”

“Nah.” He nudged her shoulder. “Just be sincere.”

She wrinkled her nose into a childish pout. “Ugh. Do I have to?” But she strode off down the alley and waved him on after her. “C’mon, I’ll walk you back.” She pointed one reprimanding finger back at him. “You really need to stop wandering around unarmed. I’m gonna find you something idiot-proof. How did you work at a weapons company for so long without learning anything about weapons?”

Rhys fell into step behind her, grinning even as she rambled on about his incompetence. The pinprick of light filtering through the rubble of the caved-in tunnel wasn’t much, but it shone like a beacon against the pitch black.

Notes:

It's possible -- maybe even likely -- the rating will need to be raised with the next chapter. I'm not sure how much, because I haven't written it yet and am not sure where it'll land in the grand scheme of things.

Another shout-out to @AnnaLytic who read through a draft and noticed when I accidentally had a ghost Vaughn wandering around a scene he didn't belong in.

Say hi on Tumblr: @oodlyenough

Chapter 9

Summary:

Sasha finds out about Rhys' reconciliation with Fiona, and things between them hit a boiling point.

Notes:

Rhysha special edition, feat. the scene I had to bump from chapter 8 because chapter 8 was uhhh 10 fuckin k long already.

As mentioned prior, you may notice I also upped the rating on the fic and added some tags in anticipation of the climax. Sorry about that; wasn't really sure how far things were gonna go until I got there.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

They neared the Purple Skag in time to watch Vaughn walk out the front door.

“Guess he’s done with drinks,” Fiona mused aloud. “Or maybe he was just hoping to see you.”

But when she turned around, Rhys was frozen in the alley behind her, eyes fixed on Vaughn. Probably hadn’t heard a word she said.

Fiona poked him in the stomach hard enough to get his attention. “You could go talk to him.”

Rhys’ eyes widened in horror at the prospect and he shook his head. “N-no, I…” The half-formed excuse died on his tongue. “Not right now. Not yet.”

Can’t avoid him forever, Fiona almost said, but for once she had the good sense to shut her mouth. Rhys still looked a little pale. Nearly having his eye gouged out might be enough stress for one evening.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll catch up with him, you go talk to Sasha. Once I’ve done the rounds I’m definitely going to need a twelve-hour nap, so I’ll check in with you tomorrow. We can figure it out from there.”

Rhys’ nod gained speed as he looked away from where Vaughn had been to focus on Fiona. “You sure you don’t want to see Sasha?”

Fiona’s stomach churned at the thought. “Yeah. I, uh.” She fiddled with her cuffs. “I don’t have a lot of practice apologizing. Figure I should start smaller and work my way up, y’know?”

Her smile was cavalier, but Rhys’ earnest, encouraging expression activated a deep-rooted instinct to joke, or deflect, or run away. How did he always do that?

“You’ll do fine,” he told her. “Just do what you did with me.” His grin turned wicked. “Hug him and start crying, it’ll work like a charm.”

Fiona glared, the urge to flee replaced with the urge to smack him. “Tell anyone about that and I’ll kick your ass.”

Cheerfully ignoring her scorn, he bumped her shoulder. “Aw, c’mon, it was sweet. It was a moment. Surely it felt good to finally—”

“Right, I’m going after Vaughn.” She left the alleyway with a shake of her head, ignoring the snicker she could hear behind her. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Try not to get murdered in the meantime, all right?”

“See you,” called Rhys. The sound of his footsteps faded in the direction of the Purple Skag, but they paused. “Hey, Fi.”

She turned to find him with a look on his face so serious that, for once, she felt no desire to poke fun at it. “Yeah?”

His mouth opened prematurely, long enough that Fiona found herself bracing for a speech, but all he wound up saying was, “Thank you.”

A simple phrase shouldn’t have had the effect that it did. She felt warm again, the way she had when they’d hugged, a way that reminded her of late nights in the old caravan, laughing over a meal with Sasha and Felix, plots and schemes and marks temporarily forgotten.

She hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

Throat thick, she said, “You’re welcome,” before she turned to catch up to Vaughn.


Sasha’s room at the Purple Skag was small, but after years in her caravan, it felt oversized. The carpet was peeling up at the corner, the sheets threadbare, the three-legged dresser wobbled at the slightest weight.

None of those things bothered Sasha. What bothered her was that the room, much like all of Hollow Point, felt like a shackle around her ankle, chaining her to a life she’d wanted to escape for as long as she could remember.

At least August had running water and a decent shower.

As she towelled herself off and pulled up her pants, she mentally rifled through her short-term options. Drinks with Vaughn and August had dulled the edge, but now that she was alone, the future remained a rock in her shoe. She’d have another look at the caravan, try to diagnose it herself. If the parts were more than she could afford, she could bartend. Save up. If the caravan got stripped for scrap before she fixed it…

Maybe she and Rhys could search the classifieds together.

Even in jest thinking of Rhys made her stomach clench. When she’d tried to invite him down for drinks with Vaughn, he hadn’t even answered her. It made sense; she’d hurt him that night on the rooftop, whether she’d meant to or not. For the first time since then—the first time since his poor decision to tag along with her in the first place—he had the opportunity to get some space away from her.

Of course he’d taken it. She would have done the same. So she pushed him back into the quarantine zone in her mind, alongside Fiona and Felix and nine million other things it was best not to think about.

The knock on the door came before she was finished getting dressed. August, probably, stopping by to say goodnight. Maybe angling for a nightcap.

Now there was an idea—a bad one, certainly, but things with August always started as a bad idea. It would be a good stress reliever…

“Just a sec!” she called.

She dropped the towel and considered the pile of clothes on her bed. With a mind for expediency, she slipped into her short tank-top and tossed the rest onto the wobbly dresser—no sense leaving them where they might get in the way.

Once she’d wrapped her wet hair in her towel and tied her handkerchief back around her neck, she pulled open the door and found—

Rhys.

Oh.

“Hi,” he said quickly, “I…” He trailed off momentarily as he took in the state of her outfit, eyes widening. “Sorry, I, uh, I didn’t—I was… uh...”

In another life, watching him get tongue-tied might have left her smug or flattered. As it was, her attention zeroed in not on the rosiness of his cheeks, but the red gash along his cheekbone.

“You’re bleeding!” She reached up but caught herself before her fingers made contact. “What the hell happened?”

“I am?” Rhys blinked at her, and then at last his brain caught up with the moment. “Oh! Yeah, that.” He brushed his fingers along the cut. “I, uh, got mugged. Can I come in?”

“Mugged?” Sasha repeated, even as she stepped aside. “When did you get mugged?”

“Like an hour ago?” He waved his hand like it was of minimal concern.

Sasha’s jaw dropped. “August said you were in your room. I knocked. I thought…”

“No, I went for a walk,” he explained, like that was a normal thing to do in Hollow Point when you were unarmed and ill-equipped for self defense. “There was a blackout. A guy got jealous and wanted my Echo eye.”

The scene unfolding in Sasha’s head became more absurd with every word Rhys said. “He wanted your eye?”

“I’m fine now,” he continued, which might have been a lie, but Sasha thought nothing of it, because what he said next drowned out everything: “Fiona saved me.”

Once again, Sasha’s train of thought derailed. This time a cold pit in her stomach accompanied it.

“You were with Fiona?” She tried to keep her voice neutral, but it sounded brittle.

“Not at first,” he explained. “She was out for a walk too, heard the commotion… came to the rescue.” He smiled, seemingly oblivious to the newfound tension in Sasha’s shoulders. “That’s um… that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Hands on her hips, Sasha bristled. “What, she send you to apologize for her?” Before he could answer, she shook her head. “No, wait, that’s right, Fiona doesn’t apologize. Never mind.”

Rhys scratched the back of his neck, a conflicted look on his face that only served to make Sasha more irritated.

“We got talking, and… she and I are kind of in the same boat, now, with all of this. You know, starting over, figuring out what’s next.” He shrugged, his gentle smile at odds with his words. “Feels like it’d be easier to muddle through it together. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

The pit in her stomach opened up like a sinkhole. “You’re telling me you and Fiona are… what, running away together?”

“Wouldn’t say ‘running away’, exactly.” His grin wavered, his laugh a little nervous. “That’s why I’m telling you. Didn’t wanna disappear.”

Wordless, Sasha stared at him, grappling with a fact she’d been doing her best to ignore. It’d been obvious on the caravan, obvious on the trip to Hollow Point, obvious when he’d chosen to stay with August rather than accompany her to Janey’s.

He wanted to get away from her.

Of course he did. He should; he needed to forge his own way forward, to figure out—just like she had—how to carve his own place in the brave new world he’d been thrown into.

Still... with Fiona?

“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” he said, filling her silence. “I really do. You didn’t owe me anything, and you still helped out. But you don’t have to anymore! Fiona and I can be each other’s problem.” He finished with a cheesy grin. “You’re off the hook.”

“How considerate,” she said finally, voice clipped. Turning her back to him, she tugged the towel out of her hair. “Well. Good luck then.”

She waited for the sound of the door, but Rhys didn’t move.

“You’re angry,” he said. He sounded stunned.

“No I’m not.” She wrung the dampness from the end of her braids. “I spent the better part of twelve years believing the two of you took off with Felix’s money. At least now it’ll be true.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” he carried on, disbelieving. “I’m leaving you alone. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The words dug into Sasha’s skin and burrowed there. What she wanted? Since when was that of consequence? Things rarely happened the way Sasha would have chosen.

“What I want isn’t the point,” she said flatly. “Do what you like.”

“Oh come on.” Rhys’ surprise mutated to an anger of its own. In three long strides he walked around her, back into her field of vision. “This is ridiculous. You wanted me to figure something out. You told me to leave—”

“Because you were miserable. And I’m not telling you to stay now. Go where you’ll be happy. Seriously.” She tossed her damp towel over the chair with enough momentum to make the chair wobble. “Word of advice, though, for travelling with my sister: always have an exit strategy. You never know when a con artist might cut and run.”

Something clicked for Rhys, his anger briefly overshadowed by hurt—but it was gone as quick as it’d come. He scowled. “Oh, right, I get it now—it’s not about me at all, it’s about Fiona.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s about Fiona. After everything she did, you really thought I’d be happy about the two of you together?”

“We’re not together, and she didn’t—”

“She left me!” Sasha burst out, louder than she’d intended. “Both of you did! Now you’re gonna do it again, and you want me to, what, congratulate you?” She shook her head. “No way.”

Rhys frowned. Underneath his frustration was what she hated most: pity. “No one’s trying to abandon you, Sasha.” He spread his arms. “We’re right here.”

It was hard to know which was worse: that he would say it at all, or that he honestly believed it.

Disappointment eclipsed everything else, and she sighed.

“Look, just… forget it, all right?” She rubbed her forehead with one hand, gesturing towards the door with the other. “Good luck. Bon voyage. Whatever you wanna hear.”

But Rhys didn’t move. “This is so stupid. If you’d just talk to Fiona—”

“I’ve told you, stay out of it.”

He folded his arms. “No.”

The brazenness tripped her up. “I beg your pardon?”

“No, I won’t stay out of it anymore, okay? You’re both important to me and I’m sick of watching you do this to each other.”

“To each other? She’s—”

“—sorry. I know she sucks at saying it—believe me—but she is.” His stepped closer, voice like a bath she wanted to sink into, coaxing and warm. “Just give her a chance. You owe—”

“I don’t owe her anything,” Sasha snapped. Her hands trembled with everything that had been festering since Janey’s place. “She got nine million dollars for the misery of being my sister, that’s not adequate back-pay? I didn’t ask her to do any of it, you know. If she hated looking after me so much, she didn’t have to wait twenty-five years to leave.”

Undeterred, Rhys waited for her to finish, and then he said, “—yourself. You owe yourself a chance to be happy. Otherwise everything you went through, everything you gave up or built for yourself, everything you survived…” His gaze travelled to the handkerchief around her neck, and a self-conscious blush flooded Sasha’s cheeks. “What was it for? So you could spend the rest of your life scraping by? Why? What’s the point?”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“I know she hurt you. We both did. It was a mistake, and an accident, and please believe me when I say I am so sorry for the twelve years of pain and loneliness and heartache.” Though his tone was uncompromising, he implored her to listen with wide, gentle eyes. “I’ve done a hell of a lot of things I regret, but putting you and Vaughn through that…? Top of the list.”

He stepped closer, his face like a bath she wanted to sink into, coaxing and warm. Unable to put words to the storm of thoughts swirling in her head, Sasha pressed her lips together and stayed silent, staring at the floor.

“You’re right to be angry. I would be too. But Fiona’s back now, and you two have a chance to work it out. Pushing her away like this...” He shook his head. “You’re just hurting yourself even more.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sasha grit out. How could he? He hadn’t lived with it for the last decade, hadn’t felt the weight of it like an anchor in his soul every day.

But Rhys raised an eyebrow like he was accepting a challenge. “You could’ve been off Pandora by now, but you chose to stay.”

Her brow furrowed, her head snapping up to look him in the eyes again. “What?”

“You could’ve gone with Yvette—”

“Who told you that?”

“—but you didn’t. You stayed here, on Pandora, the planet you hate… because you wanted to be wrong. You couldn’t leave, not if there was even the tiniest chance Fiona might come home. Right?” When she didn’t answer, he prompted again. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“That was… that was years ago.” Sasha’s voice shook along with her head. “There were… other things… and…” It wasn’t convincing, even to her own ears. She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, I wasn’t wrong, was I? She did meet Felix. She did have the money. She—”

“—would have told you. You know she would have.”

“It doesn’t matter what she was going to do, she left!” Sasha felt as though she’d swallowed a hot coal. “You both did! And I had to…”

Grieve. Move on. Figure out how to survive. Convince herself it was worth it, without the two people she’d—

“Sasha.” Rhys’ fingers touched her bare shoulder, featherlight and gentle. “I know.” The lump in her throat burned. “It’s hard to trust again when you’ve got so many reasons not to. Caring about someone is scary; it’s even scarier when you already know how much it hurts to lose them. Sometimes...” He paused to take a deep breath. “Sometimes being alone feels safer than taking the risk of going through it all again. I get that. I really do.”

His voice was raw and open like a wound. It brought to mind that first awkward lunch they’d shared on her caravan, and the way Rhys had looked at the scar on her neck not with pity or horror but understanding.

“And look, maybe you’re right about me and you,” he continued. “Maybe whatever we had, or—or could’ve had… maybe it is too late. Maybe it is just nostalgia.”

It sounded as though it pained him to say it. Sasha clenched her jaw so hard it ached.

“But you and Fiona are different. You’re family. You can work this out. I know you can. More importantly, I know deep down you want to.”

Sasha searched his face the way she had so often in those early days, looking for any sign of dishonesty or suspicion and coming up empty-handed.

“You act like you know me so well,” said Sasha, a rough whisper, “but you’ve been gone for so long…”

Rhys didn’t waver. “Then tell me I’m wrong.”

Sasha said nothing. His eyes—earnest and focused and kind—held steady with hers, and it was like he’d shone a flashlight into every dark nook and cranny inside of her, illuminating all the shadowy corridors she’d roped off year after year.

Feeling that had been percolating for days boiled over. She stretched to the top of her toes, put a hand at the back of his neck and kissed him.

Rhys’ shock lasted only a second—then the tension in his neck released, his hand gripped her shoulder tightly, and he leaned down to help bridge the space between them. As Sasha wrapped her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, cool metal fingertips brushed her hip—

Then Rhys broke away. He backed up until he hit the wobbly dresser, eyes wide and cheeks flushed.

“I—I can’t,” he stammered, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I…” He struggled to put it into words, chrome hand gesturing uselessly.

“But you…” Confusion dulled the sting of rejection. “I thought you liked me.”

Rhys laughed, high-pitched and borderline hysterical.

“That’s just it.” For another moment he floundered for while Sasha watched. “I don’t want to be a—a fling, or—or a spur-of-the-moment decision you regret an hour, a day, a week from now. It’s not fair.” His smile was sad. “I like you too much.”

Oh.

Realization came hand-in-hand with relief. “A fling isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Rhys looked down, deep lines of conflict creasing his forehead, tugging at the corners of his lips.

“You don’t mean that,” he said quietly. “You’ll get scared, or you’ll change your mind, and I—I can’t do that. Not again.”

Seized by a combination of guilt and affection, Sasha’s heart clenched.

“Rhys.” She stepped towards him, adopting a small but encouraging smile. “I’m sorry about before. You’re right, I got scared. I was scared you were only interested in a ghost and I was scared that once you saw me clearly… you wouldn’t want me anymore.” She reached out, tracing her fingertips over the back of his hand. “But I think maybe you have a point. Maybe I should stop hiding from the things that might make me happy.”

Rhys’ worried frown deepened, but he turned up his palm, lacing his long fingers through hers. “Are you sure?”

“Promise.” She touched the underside of his chin, guiding his head up until his eyes met hers, and then she smiled. “Think I’ve waited long enough.”

Rhys regarded her with keen, narrowed eyes, and said nothing.

Sasha’s heart lodged itself in her throat. With every second of inaction that followed, it beat faster, an early prickle of anxiety creeping up her spine. The gravity of what she’d said tugged her out of the clouds and back into orbit. What was she thinking? She was showing her hand, every card she’d kept close to her chest for the better part of a decade—

Then he surged forward, lips crashing against hers, and the anxiety vanished, crushed like an old cigarette under her heel.

Rhys kissed like a starving man who’d found a feast, eager and unleashed. The strong prosthetic arm snaked around her hips while his other hand brushed across her undercut to grip the back of her head. Energized and electrified, Sasha responded in kind, holding him close with fistfuls of his shirt and hair.

“This means you’re…” He struggled to get the words out when he broke away for a breath. “You’re gonna talk to Fiona, right?”

She groaned. “If I say yes, do you promise to never bring up my sister again while we’re making out?”

“Deal.”

In the course of a lifetime, Sasha’d had her share of hurried trysts, rushed connections in bar bathrooms or empty alleyways or anonymous bedrooms she never saw a second time. Encounters as simple as they were temporary, characterized by impatient hands and impersonal words and sometimes-unsatisfying endings. Even with August, familiarity was a different beast than intimacy.

But this was more than that. She’d promised Rhys more than that. The knowledge of it sparked like a firecracker in her chest, casting a new light on every touch.

Rhys’ head tilted to the side as Sasha nipped at his earlobe, his breath hot against her bare shoulder. When her tongue traced along the lines on his neck, he let out a whine and gripped her hip so tight it almost hurt.

“God,” he muttered, voice rough as Sasha sucked a bullseye bruise in the centre of his tattoo. “Not to sound gross, but I’ve thought about this for a long time.”

She grinned against his skin. “Not as long as I have.”

Rhys made a contented noise, the sound of it vibrating pleasantly through his chest. Maneuvering around him, she cleared the dresser with a sweep of her arm, winked, and sat on top of it.

Kissing was much easier when their heads were the same height. She looped her legs around his waist to haul him closer, and when his hand slid up and around her thigh to cup the curve of her ass, Sasha moaned encouragement until he squeezed. They were as flush together as space would allow, and it still wasn’t enough.

Rhys broke the kiss first, breathing heavy as he rested his forehead against hers. “Should…” He stopped to suck in a breath. “Should we slow down?”

Reluctantly, Sasha leaned back. Her fingers stilled in their quest to destroy his hairstyle. “Do you want to?”

“I mean…” Rhys considered it, then shook his head. “No. Not particularly.”

A wicked smile spread across her face. “Well, good.” The flush in his cheeks gave her an unreasonable sense of accomplishment. “Me neither.”

“All right, then.” He grinned, too, and something in it made her quick pulse even quicker. “Super glad I had a shower earlier.”

Sasha chuckled. “That makes two of us.” She ground her hips into him, searching for some friction while she worked away at his buttons. “Glad you ditched some of those layers, I…” She trailed off as she pushed open his shirt, eyes widening. “You’re kidding me.”

An expanse of blue ink stretched from the base of his neck, across his pec and over his shoulder where it disappeared under his sleeve.

He preened. “You like it?”

“I can’t believe you don’t show this off,” she muttered.

“What, and miss this look on your face?” Rhys was dangerously smug as he tapped the tip of her nose.

Sasha ignored him. With the patience of a spoilt child receiving a birthday gift, she pulled his shirt the rest of the way off. The tattoo ran all the way down to his wrist.

“Y’know, I spent years wondering what the rest of this tattoo looked like.” She followed the pattern with her nails. “Wasn’t even close.”

“Years, huh?” With an expression both staggered and self-satisfied, Rhys threw his head back and whistled low. “Holy crap. Need to build a time machine so I can go tell 21-year-old Rhys those four months of excruciating six-hour sessions are totally gonna pay dividends one day.”

That’s what you want a time machine for?” Before he could answer, she pinched his left nipple—an island of pale pink in a sea of blue. “You missed a spot.”

He glared. “Okay, you know what, unless yours are tattooed, you don’t get to comment.”

She raised a challenging eyebrow. “Why don’t you find out?”

Rhys didn’t need telling twice. Both his hands slid up her sides, the cool prosthetic sending a pleasant chill down her spine. She wriggled out of the crop top as he pulled it over her head and let it join the rest of her discarded clothes.

A flare of self-consciousness rose up as the air hit her bare skin, but it was extinguished quickly by the hungry look in Rhys’ wide eyes.

“Wow.” He clucked his tongue. “Hypocrite.”

Her laugh was cut short by a sharp intake of breath as his hands cupped her breasts and gave both an experimental squeeze. Goosebumps sprang up where he touched, and another shiver ricocheted through her nervous system. One thumb traced gentle circles around her nipple; the other pinched.

The dresser thumped against the wall as Sasha arched backwards.

“Which one do you like better?” he asked.

Her brain took a second to parse the question and even longer to formulate an answer. The prosthetic was uniquely smooth and the cold chrome was refreshing, but his other hand was warm and soft, the way she always thought of him—

“Right,” she said, a little embarrassed by how rough it came out. “Wait. No. Left. I mean—my right, your left—”

In another scenario, Rhys’ arrogant chuckle might have been infuriating. He let his metal hand fall away, replaced it with his mouth, and Sasha moaned.

“Shit.” She grabbed his hair with one hand and used the other to brace herself on the dresser. Her head was at an awkward angle against the wall, but the mild discomfort was lost in the cacophony of more pleasurable sensations—his fingers and his tongue and his teeth, the bare skin of his torso between her legs. She ground her hips forward as best as she could. “Shit, I…”

No other words came to mind. Rhys laughed into her chest.

What a bastard.

While he sucked a hickey onto the top of her breast, his free hand crept up her side, over her shoulder, ‘til it reached her neck and the knot of her handkerchief—

Sasha’s half-lidded eyes flew open and she grabbed his wrist.

Rhys pulled his head up immediately, his hand suspended where she’d caught it, a question splashed across his face.

“It’s, um.” She cleared her throat, trying to sound casual. Her cheeks burned. “It… doesn’t look very nice.”

“I don’t mind what it looks like,” he said quietly.

But he gave her more space, and Sasha straightened up, staring down at her lap as the wildfire of embarrassment spread across her cheeks.

This was stupid. Plenty of people had seen her scar before. Most of them barely paid attention to it. Scars were a fact of life on Pandora, too commonplace to be a point of intrigue or disgust. Lost a fight with a stalker? Big deal—who hadn’t?

Rhys was different. He knew what it meant, even if he hadn’t been there to see it happen. He would know—

“Sash. Hey.” His warm hand brushed the shaved side of her head, gentle and soothing. “Keep it on if you want. It’s okay.”

Reluctant, she forced herself to meet his eyes. Rhys always looked as though he could see right through her. It ought to make her feel exposed, vulnerable, naked—

Instead, it made her feel safe.

She could get addicted to that.

A tidal wave crashed over her, one that made her want to laugh and cry in equal measure. She waited for it to break, and then she took a deep breath.

“No,” she told him, shaky but decisive, “it’s fine. Go ahead.”

He didn’t move. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” She guided his hands to the handkerchief. “Yeah, I want you to.”

Rhys nodded as though he’d been granted a very serious task. His fingers worked the knot, and then—so easily it felt anticlimactic—he pulled the handkerchief away.

His eyes widened.

The glimpse she’d shown him in the caravan left some things to the imagination. Up close, he’d be able to see the full span of it, all the way down to her sternum, wider the lower it got.

“Told you it was ugly,” said Sasha, trying for a joke and flubbing the landing.

“You’re beautiful,” Rhys countered breezily, like it was obvious enough to be an afterthought. “It’s just…” His fingers hovered over the scar without touching, a thoughtful line on his forehead. “All that pain…”

Shy at the scrutiny, she shrugged. “I barely remember the pain, actually; I passed out.”

He frowned. “Not what I meant.”

To her relief, he chose to plant a series of kisses along her scar rather than elaborate, each one melting the tension in her shoulders. His hands moved to her thighs, and the handkerchief fell to the floor with the rest of her clothes.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

The stray thought escaped before she could think better of it, so softly he might not have heard it at all—except then he was kissing her properly again, his eager tongue against hers. She ran her hands through his hair, ruffling and tugging. When her thumb caught the edge of the port on his temple, he groaned.

“You like that, huh?” She did it a second time, and his whole body shuddered, the metal hand spasming on her thigh.

“Easy,” he chided, so Sasha filed the information away for later investigation. He pulled her closer to the edge of the dresser, his left hand moving up and over until it was sliding under the waistband of her pants, his long fingers exploring until—

“Fuck,” she gasped, breathless. She nearly fell off the dresser as she squirmed closer to his touch. She tried to return the favour, but he was out of reach. “Fuck, Rhys, I want—”

“Me too,” he agreed.

His fingers rubbed maddening circles while his free hand fumbled to undo his belt. She clung to his shoulders, nails biting into his skin, bucking against his hand. The dresser thumped against the wall again.

“We’re gonna break this damn thing,” Sasha muttered—though truthfully she was having trouble caring about anything beyond Rhys’ dexterity.

“Whatever,” Rhys reasoned, “August already hates me anyway.” He wedged his prosthetic hand underneath her and lifted her up. “But hey, check it: robot arm’s still good for something.”

With her legs wrapped around his waist, Rhys half-walked, half-stumbled the both of them over to the bed, and Sasha laughed. She was still laughing when he threw her onto the sheets, and she kept laughing when Rhys tripped stepping out of his pants and braced himself on the mattress.

“You know, instead of laughing at me, you could help,” he whined, scowling at her harmlessly as he kicked off his last pant leg.

“Nah, this way is more fun,” she teased. Excitement coiled tight in her belly as he finally undressed, and she made a show of running her tongue across her lips. “Chop chop.”

“Jeeze, I have to do everything around here.”

He stood at the end of the bed to unbutton her pants and tug them down. Sasha wriggled to help him out, her heart lighter than it had in… how long, exactly?

Unbidden, she remembered fighting the Traveler. How the pain of a broken arm had been nothing when she was being crushed by a hug from every direction. How she’d dug through piles of rare guns while dreaming of ways to spend her second lease on life, blissfully unaware of all she was about to lose—

But then Rhys climbed between her legs, kissing the inside of her thigh, and she let it all go. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she relaxed and focused on the present, twelve years into an improbable future.

Notes:

Easily the steamiest thing I've ever attempted to write, so hopefully it wasn't a disaster. We're approaching the climax of this fic now, so there'll be 2-3 chapters left, maybe an epilogue... as you may have noticed I chronically underestimate how many words it'll take me to tell a story.

This chapter breaks 50k and 50+ subscribers! An arbitrary milestone, but a milestone.

Thanks everyone for the support thus far, I've been having a blast writing it. As always I welcome any comments, here or if you choose over on Tumblr where I'm @oodlyenough.

Chapter 10

Summary:

Fiona Learns to Apologize (sort of), Vaughn second-guesses himself, and Rhys and Sasha have everyone's favourite kind of pillowtalk: the kind where you're, like, really sad.

Notes:

This took WAY longer than I had hoped, but I can blame a big portion of that on Borderlands 3. Sorry about that!

Thanks to @Annalytic for the read-through and identifying the hole I had impatiently glossed over.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“One skag burger, please.”

With only a grunt in response to the order, the man at the window turned to his grill.

The smell of sizzling meat made Vaughn’s empty stomach rumble impatiently. The shabby street vendor was, by Sasha’s description and to August’s ire, the best food in Hollow Point. Though that was a low bar to clear, he had to admit their burgers were good, and at the moment, the promise of some delicious grease was the one bright spot in this whole misguided adventure. Street meat was better than listening to Sasha and August bicker, or wallowing at a bar while Rhys continued his game of one-sided hide and seek.

Wallowing out here, alone, was totally different.

“Actually, make it two. On me.” Fiona stepped up to the window beside him, a small but friendly smile on her lips.

Vaughn’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and a crack appeared in her easy confidence.

“Or I can fuck off, if you prefer,” she added quickly, brushing back her hair. “But technically I still owe you nachos, so…”

A petty part of Vaughn was tempted. But August’s potent cocktails had blunted the finer points of his frustration with her, so he shrugged. “Whatever you like. Where did you come from?”

“After you left I, er, ruffled some of Athena’s feathers the wrong way.” She rubbed a spot on her collarbone. “Probably have the bruise to prove it. Janey suggested I go for a walk.”

So even Athena had run out of patience. Vaughn couldn’t help a smirk.

Silence settled between them as they watched their burgers cook. Judging by previous experience, Fiona would get uncomfortable first; he imagined counting down the seconds on his old Atlasio.

On cue, Fiona said, “Best burgers in Hollow Point, this place.”

“Sasha says so. She took me here years back.”

He expected the mention of her sister to earn some kind of reaction—a scowl, or a wrinkled nose, or an eye roll. Maybe he’d even kind of been hoping for it, a reminder of all the reasons he’d gotten tired of her in the first place.

But Fiona only nodded as she counted out her bills.

“We used to eat here as kids, whenever we had a bit of money to spare. Which was basically never.” Her frown was almost imperceptible. “Nice to see it’s still in business after all these years.” When the man turned around with their burgers, she flashed him a smile and handed him a wad of cash. “Make it combos.”

With a dead-eyed sigh, the man slammed two cans of soda onto the counter. The food must be good, Vaughn reasoned; the business certainly hadn’t survived on the strength of its customer service.

“Thanks.” Fiona handed Vaughn his order before she scooped up her own and started unwrapping her burger with her teeth. “Doesn’t seem like Hollow Point changed much in general.” She led them both to a dumpster she started using as a table. “Can’t tell if that’s a relief or not.”

“Sasha says the same.” Vaughn took a bite of his food. The salt and grease were a satisfying complement to the alcohol in his bloodstream. “Says it’s like a time loop.”

“Well, she’s always hated Hollow Point. Hated this whole damn planet.” Fiona picked at her food without taking a bite. “Always promised I’d get her out of here one day.”

“Did you ever mean it?”

“I wanted to mean it. Whatever that’s worth.” She shrugged. “I never truly thought we’d have the money.” She pulled the pickle out of her burger. “That vault key deal was our first shot at serious cash, and… well, look how that turned out.” She made a face as she ate her pickle. “Never liked that deal, to be honest. Made me nervous. Didn’t like the idea of Sasha getting caught up with August and his gang. Really didn’t like the idea of ripping off Hyperion—I mean, that’s how you wind up on the wrong end of some freaky slag experiment. But Sasha was determined. That was our ticket out of here, and God did she wanna leave. Ten million dollars, Fi. Where else are we gonna get money like that?

Her impression of Sasha was uncanny. It made the food Vaughn had eaten feel like a ton of bricks.

“You ever regret it?” he asked. “The whole thing, I mean.”

She took a healthy bite of her burger, chewing in thought—or buying time.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “If it was just me… I mean, yeah, all of this is fucked up, but at least it was an adventure, you know? Even with all of it—Helios and Gortys and this twelve-year bullshit—at least I wasn’t wasting away here, pinching wallets for a living. At least I actually did something.”

For a moment, she spoke with enough conviction that Vaughn recognized the aspiring Vault Hunter in her.

“But Sasha…” Her expression crumpled, guilt shining clear as day through the cracks. “If I think of what it did to her I regret every second.”

It was the first proper show of remorse he’d seen from Fiona since she’d returned from the Vault—come to think of it, it was the first proper show of remorse he could remember seeing from her ever.

Unsure how to respond, he settled for taking another bite.

“What about you?” she asked. “I know you’re pretty settled here now, but you ever wonder if…?”

It took a minute for Vaughn to process her meaning. “Are you asking if I ever regret coming to Pandora?”

Fiona’s innocent shrug was answer enough.

No, he wanted to say. Of course not. That would be ridiculous; Hyperion was a distant and regrettable past, a misguided few years he’d spent his entire adult life trying to escape.

Instead he found himself fidgeting under her scrutiny. “I mean, Hyperion was awful. Crazy awful. The kind where you don’t realize just how crazy-awful it is until you’re roasting mystery meat on a campfire in a hollowed-out space station and you find yourself thinking ‘sure, a skag tried to eat my face earlier, but it’s been six months since I’ve seen anyone get airlocked for taking a second coffee break’.”

“Sure sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“No, no, it’s…” He cleared his throat. “Hyperion did terrible things. I’m glad it’s gone. I’m glad I’m not helping it do terrible things anymore.”

Fiona raised an eyebrow while she chewed.

Vaughn hesitated. “It’s just… maybe there were some, uh, very select parts of my life that were arguably, possibly, a tiny bit… better.”

He cringed as he said it. Fiona took another bite of her burger, a small line forming between her eyebrows as she thought it over, and he braced himself for the sort of wrath such a statement would invoke in Sasha.

“Select parts,” Fiona repeated. “You mean Rhys.”

“I…” Instinct pushed him to deny it, but the words never came out. “Well, yeah.” Embarrassment caught up to him, and in his rush to explain he tripped over his tongue. “It’s just—I mean—it’s not like I—” Shoulders slumping, he scrubbed at his eyes under his glasses.

With unusual patience, Fiona waited and said nothing.

“We lived together since our first semester of college,” he told her, once the thoughts began to crystallize. “I spent more time with Rhys in my twenties than I’ve spent with anyone ever, except maybe my mom. Then we came to Pandora, and I was paralyzed for half of it, and then the rest of you went off to Helios, and… that was it. After that he was just… gone.” Automatically, he lifted his hands in defense against an argument she hadn’t begun to make. “Yeah, I know, we all got together again and fought the Traveler. But it was so quick, and then he disappeared again, and even now that he’s back he won’t talk to me. At the Purple Skag tonight, and he hid in his room the whole time! What the hell am I supposed to make of that? He was the best friend I’ve ever had, and now…” His arms, spread wide in frustration, started to sag. “I’m not even sure we’re still friends at all.”

The silence of the little Hollow Point road after he finished was smothering.

It was embarrassing to say any of it, and more embarrassing to say any of it to Fiona. If he were given a long list of possible confidantes, it was hard to imagine any scenario where his first choice would be her.

“He wasn’t hiding from you tonight,” she said, calm and measured and inscrutable.

Vaughn rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, ‘sleeping’, that’s what Sasha said, but—”

“He wasn’t sleeping either,” Fiona insisted.

“How would you—?”

“He wasn’t at the Skag at all.” She brushed back her hair. “He was out here, with me.”

“He… what?” It took his brain a moment to sew this new piece of information into his reality. “You two met up?” Was Rhys talking to everyone else?

“Not on purpose. We just ran into each other. Small world, huh?”

Vaughn gawped. “So while I came all the way here hoping to talk to him, you two were—”

“It wasn’t some master plan. He left before you arrived. He didn’t even know you were there.” She finished the last piece of her burger, crumpled the wrapper and tossed it into the dumpster she’d been using as a table. “Believe me, I love complaining about Rhys as much as the next person—”

Vaughn snorted.

“—but remember, you’ve had twelve years to miss him. We blinked and the whole world changed. It’s gonna take him more than a few days to settle in.” She tried for a lighter tone. “I mean, I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that you’re shredded.”

Unamused, Vaughn narrowed his eyes. Excuses, excuses—somehow there was always an abundance of them when Rhys needed one. “You didn’t run away.”

“There’s more than one way to run from something.” Fiona grinned ruefully. “You sure my technique was any better?”

Vaughn opened his mouth, but couldn’t find an answer to that.

“Speaking of which, I, uh.” She cleared her throat. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass. Turns out, you spend enough of your life lying, you kinda lose the knack for honesty.” She widened her stance, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, psyching herself up. “Sorry I dragged you into it. You were a lot more patient than I would’ve been.”

“It’s all right.” When she looked skeptical, he insisted, “Really. It’s possible I was redirecting a bit of misplaced anger.”

Relief spread across her face. “Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she joked.

“Besides,” he said, tossing his own empty food wrapper into the dumpster as well, “getting away from Helios has been nice. I mean… okay, so mostly this trip has been a disaster. But on the bright side, I’ve barely thought about the raids at all, and, you know, skag racing’s kind of cool.”

“Hell yeah it is.” She wiggled her eyebrows enticingly. “We should do another death rally sometime.”

“Oh god.” Her cheer was infectious; it was impossible not to smile back. “I was like, ninety-eight percent sure we were gonna die.”

“But we didn’t.” She spread her arms wide. “Welcome to Pandora.” When he laughed, she said, “That was the first time I thought you guys might not be complete dead weight.”

“Gee, thanks.” It was as if she’d blown the dust off a forgotten picture frame in his mind, and for the first time in years he could see the details. “You helped me when you could’ve gone for the briefcase,” he blurted out, stunned by the memory as it crystallized. “Wow. I forgot you did that.”

“I don’t recall you being very impressed at the time.” She widened her eyes, splayed her fingers and put on a frantic, nasally voice. “If we don’t get that money, I’m dead anyway!”

He supposed the unflattering imitation was a fair tax on his past ingratitude. They were barely acquaintances back then, and yet in a pinch Fiona chose to look out for him rather than secure the money she’d come for.

“Well… belated thanks. Not sure I would’ve done the same back then.”

That was a white lie: he knew he wouldn’t have. Back then, he didn’t even have the guts to refuse Vasquez’s deal.

Rhys had.

Ancient guilt rose from its grave. Vaughn rubbed the back of his neck.

Unbothered by his admission, Fiona grinned. “Pandora’s a good influence on you. That’s rare.”

“Yeah… guess so.” Still unsettled, he forced a smile, and then faked a yawn. “You ready to head back to Janey and Athena’s? I’m wiped.”

Now it was Fiona’s turn to shuffle her feet, awkward again. “Yeah, sure. Um, unrelated question, is it cool with you if I sleep in the car?” With no hat on her head to play with, she tugged the cuffs of her jacket. “Just in case Athena’s not feeling particularly magnanimous this evening.”

He waved a hand. “I’m sure she’s over it.”

“She revenge-killed an entire company.”

Vaughn blinked. “Fair point. Okay, let’s go see Athena… and if you really need to, you can sleep in the car.”

As they walked back, Fiona went on to explain how she’d met up with Rhys again, with the typical colourful flourishes that left Vaughn uncertain how much of her story was true. To hear her tell it, she’d been there in the nick of time, a magnificent sharpshoot putting a bullet in a bandit’s head before he could claim Rhys’ eye for himself—

“Wait, someone wanted the ECHO eye?” Vaughn spluttered once his brain caught up. “It’s not like a contact lens, you can’t just pop it out at leisure, it’s connected to his optic nerve, there’s three feet of wire that—”

“Well, that’s where this bad boy comes in.” She pulled a knife out of her pocket and and held it out for Vaughn to inspect. “Pretty sweet, right?” She made a stabbing motion at the air. “You can never have too many knives.”

They passed beneath a street lamp while she showed off her prize. The knifepoint glinted in the light. Vaughn blanched. Had someone really wanted to use that on Rhys?

“Gotta wonder what his installation plan was. Didn’t seem like the neurosurgeon type.” She pocketed the knife with a shrug. “Then again, neither does Rhys.”

Fiona kept on recounting the rest of the story, how she and Rhys had mended a rift Vaughn wasn’t even aware of, how the two of them had made rough plans to navigate an uncertain future together.

Another day, Fiona talking so positively about Rhys might have served as an amusing novelty. In the here and now, though, Vaughn’s thoughts were stuck on the blade she’d brandished around. Its intended use. The damage it might have done, had serendipity not been on Fiona’s side.

Intervening years had not erased Vaughn’s memory of the fine print on countless medical consent forms, or the laundry list of side-effects Hyperion nurses passed him like an afterthought while he’d sat in the waiting room chewing his nails to shit. Once upon a time, he’d known it all even better than Rhys; while Rhys spent the early days after surgery in a drug-induced fog, Vaughn read, re-read and read it all again. He mapped behaviours to the list, fretting about their “temporary” nature. Watched hawkishly for signs of what the brochures called “critical failure”. He’d worried more about Rhys in that week than he’d ever worried about anyone in his young life.

And now, years later, he sat in bars and moped while Rhys nearly got shanked in some back alley.

“...meeting him at the Purple Skag tomorrow,” Fiona was saying, in her roundabout way trying to grease some wheels. “You could come with. Say hi. I can pin him down if I need to. He’s not very strong.”

“I don’t want to force him to do anything, that’s not the point.” Vaughn shook his head. “I just wish…”

But he trailed off, seized with sudden self-doubt. What did he wish, exactly? That Rhys would call? Rhys had called—and Vaughn, angry, had brushed him off. Meanwhile, Rhys had made amends with two of the prickliest women Vaughn knew.

Maybe Vaughn had isolated the wrong variable as the problem. Maybe it was just the inevitable drift he’d feared since freshman year as he’d watched his new roommate effortlessly charm half the dorm in the first month. Whatever Rhys had said in the past, Vaughn had always known who needed the other more—and who was the dead weight, waiting to be cut free.

“He does miss you.” Fiona’s gentle voice pulled him back to the uncomfortable present. “He does.”

“So people keep saying,” he sighed. Gritting his teeth, Vaughn reached for the doorbell.

Fiona stopped him with a hand on his arm. “I always used to wonder how he could keep Jack a secret from everyone, but I get it now. Sometimes, when you fuck up bad enough, when you hurt the people you really love… running can feel like the only option.”

The words were too heavy and sad for her to be speaking on Rhys’ behalf. Before Vaughn could think of anything to say in response, she reached up and rang the doorbell.


During long sleepless nights at Atlas, exhausted but unable to rest, Rhys swapped counting sheep for imagining someone—anyone—lying next to him. In melancholy moments, he’d feared it was a sort of intimacy he might never know again.

Finding himself beside Sasha now was unreal, like he’d entered another vault and wound up in a happier alternate universe. When she curled onto her side away from him, he’d contented himself with having her near—until her fumbling fingers grabbed his arm and tugged it around herself like a security blanket.

Rhys thought his heart might explode. Arm around her, he drifted off into a deep sleep marked by pleasant, forgettable dreams.

Years might have passed before he started to come to. As consciousness clawed its way back to his brain, Rhys burrowed his face in his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut, reluctant to surrender the best sleep he’d had in more than a year. He pulled Sasha closer—

His arm closed around air.

It was like an espresso shot directly into his veins. He pushed himself up on his elbow, momentarily sick with regret that he’d let such a good dream feel so real.

The spike of panic was short-lived: Sasha was sitting at the edge of the bed, her back to him, her face hidden by her long curtain of braids.

A hybrid laugh and sigh escaped him.

“You scared me,” he told her. “Morning.” He sat up properly. “Or, uh, whatever time of day it is. I kinda lost track.”

Her head lifted at the sound of his voice, but she didn’t turn. “Mid-morning,” she corrected. “You slept for a long time.”

“You wore me out,” he joked. But when she still didn’t look at him, he frowned. “Everything all right?”

Sasha’s bare shoulders rose and fell in the dim light.

“Just been thinking,” she said, quiet and somber.

Rhys’ jovial mood disappeared so quick it might have been sucked out an airlock. Cold dread crept up his skin and twisted around in his chest, driving a spike of panic through his heart. No, he tried to reassure himself, she’d promised…

You are so freaking gullible, kid.

“You’re having second thoughts.” Unable to face her while he said it, he stared at the threadbare sheets instead. He felt stupid, again. Hadn’t he learned the lesson yet, about things that seemed too good to be true?

The mattress squeaked under Sasha’s weight as she turned. Her fingers brushed back his messy hair, and next he knew, her soft lips were pressed to his forehead.

“No,” she said, gentle but firm. “Definitely not.” She rested a hand on his shoulder while Rhys searched her face, desperate to believe her. “That was the happiest I’ve been in a long time.”

Rhys waited until his panic receded to manageable levels. “But…?”

“Like I said…” The corner of Sasha’s lips twitched, a self-deprecating smile. “It’s been a long time.” Her hand disappeared from his shoulder and she twisted away again. “So long I think I forgot what it felt like. Pretty pathetic, right?”

Embarrassed, she shook her head, her eyes were careful to avoid his. Moving to sit next to her, Rhys took one of her hands in his and kissed the back of her palm.

“Ages ago, I promised myself I’d stop dwelling on how things could’ve been. That kind of thinking just makes you crazy, and I wasted too much of my life dreaming of one I’d never have.” Her lip curled, a glimpse at anger that ran deep and faced inward—and then her expression softened. “But after last night, I can’t help thinking… I almost had twelve years of this.” Stripped bare, she drew a raspy breath that rattled in her lungs, more vulnerable than he’d ever heard her. “I was almost happy, and instead, I...”

Her voice cracked. Rhys felt the shockwave in his heart.

“Oh, Sasha.” With no magic words of comfort at his disposal, he put his arm around her instead, and Sasha melted; she twisted into his lap, burrowed her face into the crook of his neck, wrapped her arms tight around his ribs. Her shoulders rose and fell with each jagged breath as she mourned the person she might have become in another life.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered.

The desperate, childish complaint dug into his heart like a knife and twisted.

“No,” he said gently, “it’s not.”

Somehow, Sasha hugged him even tighter.

As he rubbed soothing circles on her back, a satisfied warmth formed in his chest, then a pang of guilt close on its heels. Despite sadness and circumstance, here was something he’d missed even more than sex. After the Helios crash, he’d have given his remaining arm for this sort of human connection. To be held by someone who cared about him.

Offering that to Sasha was a privilege. Had anyone else done that in the past twelve years? Had she let them?

“I’m being stupid,” she said, followed by a sniff. “I didn’t mean to ruin this morning. Last night was great, I swear, I just...”

“Oh please,” he scoffed. “I can think of a ton of things that could’ve ruined this morning, and giving you a hug does not make the list.”

He thought he could feel her smile. He kissed the top of her head.

In time her breathing calmed, and she settled against him differently, cozy rather than desperate. He stroked her hair, and for a pleasant while nothing existed except that room in the Purple Skag, the weight of Sasha on his lap, the heat of her skin against his. So often in the last year he’d fantasized about being able to fast-forward; for once, he wished he could hit the pause button.

“You know… twelve years is a long time,” he said. “Anything could’ve happened. Maybe we would’ve been happy for all of it; maybe we would’ve been trampled by a rakk hive, like, two days later.” She made a quiet noise of concession, and he grinned. “Maybe right now you’d be in bed with some other, less-attractive person, reminiscing about how you almost dated a super-cool CEO but then a prototype tragically exploded in his face—”

“Hey, excuse me.” Sasha pulled away to stare at him with narrowed eyes. “Less attractive?”

“Just being realistic.”

“Think you’re selling me short here.”

“It’s not about you, it’s about the fact that personal hygiene is a foreign concept to most people on this planet.” When she raised an eyebrow, he diplomatically added, “Present company excluded.”

“Good save.”

“And look, silver lining: I’m definitely going to age way worse than you, so this just evens the playing field.”

Her lips pursed in a playful smirk. “Oh, well, as long as your vanity is protected, this was all worth it.”

Rhys pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “This isn’t just about my vanity. It’s mutually beneficial: you get to cradle rob, I get to be with a sexy older—oof!”

Rhys back onto his pillow with a soft thump. Both hands still on his shoulders from the shove, Sasha straddled him, her eyes glinting, her smile wicked.

“Watch it, smart ass.” Her long hair tickled his neck and his heart revved like an engine as she leaned down. “Who are you calling old?”


Fiona had every intention of apologizing to Janey and Athena. She really did.

It was just that when the door swung open, and she was faced with the two of them, her mouth dried up, and every word she’d ever learned seem to fall out of her head. Where was she supposed to start?

“I… um… hey,” she found herself saying, with an uncomfortable plastic smile. “How was… the rest of your evening?”

Janey raised one eyebrow. Beside her, Vaughn sighed. Athena’s expression was inscrutable.

“I thought about what you said,” Fiona tried again, “and—well, actually, I was still kind of angry—it’s been a weird week—but then I ran into Rhys—someone wanted his eyeball—crazy, right? Who wants an eyeball? I mean—okay, I know technically I stole one once—well, twice, sort of, but that was different—and useful! Athena, you remember—”

Vaughn clamped his hands on either of Fiona’s shoulders, part reassurance and part stop talking now.

“Believe it or not,” he interrupted, “she’s trying to say she’s sorry.”

“Um. Yeah. That.” Fiona’s mouth clicked shut before it could continue running away.

For a moment, no one said anything, and Fiona wilted under Athena’s stare for what felt like a hundred lifetimes. She imagined herself going gray. It was like stepping into the Vault of the Traveler a second time.

But Janey was a merciful god, and after a few excruciating seconds, she intervened.

“Okay, think that’s uncomfortable enough for everyone, yeah?” she said, with a commiserating glance at Vaughn and a weary smile for Fiona. “Why don’t you two come in for the night? We were just about to head to bed—”

Fiona was certain her face had turned so red it could be seen from orbit. “That—that’d be great, thanks.”

Vaughn didn’t need telling twice. He breezed through the door and made for the living room.

“I’m older than you,” he called to Fiona. “Dibs on the sofa.”

Grateful to be done with the worst of it and eager to hide for a good twelve hours or so, Fiona followed him without argument, avoiding Athena’s eyes along the way.

It didn’t work. For the first time since swinging open the door, Athena spoke as Fiona walked past. “Have you talked to Sasha yet?”

It wasn’t a command, but Fiona froze on the spot anyway.

“No… not yet,” she admitted. “But I will.” With effort, she met Athena’s unflinching gaze. “Seriously. Just gotta find the right words first.”

“I can see why you’d want to wait,” Athena deadpanned.

Fiona’s cheeks felt like they might catch fire. “Uh…”

“But I know the feeling,” Athena continued. She nodded towards the living room. “You should sleep on it.”

Realizing that might be as good as she was likely to get from Athena, Fiona smiled. “Thanks. I will.”

A mix of relief and exhaustion carried her silently into the room where Janey and Vaughn had begun to assemble some spare blankets. Accustomed to sleeping in unconventional places, Fiona drifted off quickly on Janey and Athena’s rug, a spare throw pillow crushed under her head and a Catch-A-Ride branded blanket tugged around her shoulders.

When she woke several hours later, it was to the smell of breakfast wafting from the kitchen and the sound of voices too quiet to be decipherable. Stretching her toes, she lay there, listening to the mundane, inaudible chatter with a pang.

She’d missed waking up to this kind of domestic morning bustle; it reminded her of life with Sasha and Felix, plotting the next big score, or trekking around Pandora in search of the next Gortys piece. Once Helios fell, mornings became quiet affairs, dampened by a grief neither she nor Sasha had been willing to name.

At the time, she’d feared what those losses might do to Sasha. What might twelve years have done?

Fiona allowed herself one last, quiet sigh before she rolled to her feet and straightened out her blouse. Athena was right; she’d fucked up, and there was nothing left to do but fix it.

Behind her, the Vaughn-shaped lump on the sofa groaned. As he began to peel himself off the sofa, he cringed. “Okay, maybe the sofa was a bad idea. My back hurts.” He pushed himself upright and frowned. “God, aging sucks.”

“Do some yoga,” said Fiona blithely. Turning to face him, she swatted at his shoulder. “Hey. When I meet up with Rhys today you’re coming with me.”

Vaughn froze in the middle of his stretch.

“You two need to hash it out,” she continued, “and I need to talk to Sasha. We are figuring this out today, all of us.” When he looked skeptical, she crossed her arms and lifted her chin higher. “We killed an enormous teleporting monster together. How hard can this be?”

“I mean, beating that monster is kinda what put us in this position in the first place, plus it nearly killed Sasha…”

Fiona narrowed her eyes and he shrank back.

“...but yeah, yeah,” he added, “I guess this car’s gonna crash eventually. Might as well strap in.”

“That’s the spirit! Sort of.” She stamped down the anxious uncertainty bubbling inside her. The more people she roped in, the more difficult it would be to lose her nerve later. “Well, I’m starving. Gonna see if Janey and Athena need help with breakfast.”

“You do that.” Vaughn was staring at his ECHO device, impatient. “I need to check in with Helios. Missed some calls.” He waved the screen at her in illustration, then sighed. “They probably tripped the firewall and brought down the network again.” With the sigh of an underpaid babysitter, he headed for an empty room to take the call. “Word of advice, don’t let all your best tech guys get sucked into a mutiny.”

She snorted and shook her head. She made it as far as the kitchen doorway and lingered there, loath to interrupt. Janey and Athena’s existence around each other in the small space looked synchronized, a well-practiced dance.

A tiny piece of Fiona’s heart ached. She snuffed it out quickly.

“Morning!” chimed Janey, catching Fiona’s eye and flashing a bright smile. “You sleep all right?”

“Like the dead.” Fiona nodded her chin towards the food preparation. “Need a hand?”

“It’s under control.” Athena answered without looking up from the coffee she was brewing.

A little curt. Fiona tried not to wince.

But Janey crossed the kitchen, holding out a spatula.

“Can you finish up the eggs? I’ve got to get ready for work.” She handed over the spatula as though passing a baton. “Thanks!”

She didn’t wait for an answer before leaving with a wink. Fiona had the strong suspicion she was being set up, and it filled her with renewed trepidation. Even a domesticated Athena was intimidating, and yesterday’s hatchet hadn’t been buried very deep.

“I’m putting toast in,” said Athena, brusque and matter-of-fact. “The eggs are burning.”

“Right, right—got ‘em.” Fiona hurried to fill the space Janey had left behind, flipping the eggs just in time. “So, uh…” She cleared her throat. “Seems like you two’ve got a good thing going here.”

She looked sideways, but the angle granted no clear view of Athena’s expression.

“I got lucky,” Athena agreed. There was a short pause. “Most people don’t.”

“You’re telling me,” Fiona couldn’t help but mutter. She smashed the yolk with the edge of the spatula, watching the bright yellow ooze into the white.

“I might not have been,” Athena continued, “if no one had been there to push me over the ledge I had been too scared to jump.”

As the sizzle of the frying pan and drip-drip of the coffee machine filled the silence, Fiona chanced a look over at Athena and steeled her will.

“Hey, Athena, listen, I didn’t say it well yesterday, but I’m sorry. This situation’s bad enough, and all I’ve done is make it worse.” She focused on the yolk bubbling in the pan. “You were right. Time to step up and fix it.”

“Good.” Though firm, Athena’s voice wasn’t unkind. “Hurting someone badly, someone you never wanted to hurt… it’s hard to come to grips with that. I don’t want you to make my mistakes. You’re better than that.”

“Debatable,” Fiona muttered as she clicked off the burner. “But I appreciate the vote of confidence. Hey, at this point I can’t make things any worse, right?”

“Things can always be worse,” Athena deadpanned. But when Fiona scowled, Athena’s lips quirked. “But I think you’ll do all right. You’re good with words when you try.”

The flattery was undeserved. But arguing seemed ungrateful, so Fiona chose only to avoid Athena’s eyes. “Here’s hoping.”

Athena poured the coffee. The mere smell of it boosted Fiona’s mood. The great weight on her shoulders was being chiseled away piece by piece.

Maybe there was something to the whole apology gig after all.

“Eggs are done,” she announced, holding up the pan. “Where do you keep your plates?”

Athena jerked her thumb towards a cupboard. Vaughn appeared in the doorway just as Fiona began to set the table.

“Showing up just as the food’s ready. Typical.” Fiona clucked her tongue, but when she got closer, she saw his grave look and frowned. “Oh, come on, I’m joking. What’s that look for?”


Sasha had very curious fingers. She traced the outlines of tattoos, brushed her knuckles over his ribs, explored the hollow of his collarbone with her thumb.

Rhys was all too happy to be the subject of her scrutiny. He basked in the attention like a housecat discovering a prime patch of sunlight. He’d never realized how much he missed being touched. Combined with a post-coital buzz, it was basically bliss. He wanted to drink it in.

But when she reached the scarred skin where his shoulder gave way to metal, he braced himself. Could she guess that no expensive Hyperion surgeon would leave behind such a mess?

Back before the Traveler, he’d given Sasha and Vaughn the abridged version of events, sparing them the gruesome details of how exactly he rid himself of Handsome Jack. The full story, he’d figured, could come later, once the Vault was open and Gortys was safe and everyone was lounging contentedly in their mountains of invaluable loot.

Later had never come. Now, twelve years on, sharing seemed unnecessary. What did it matter, how he’d done it? What would they care about the death of a ghost they’d never even met?

“Does it hurt?” The question pulled his thoughts out of Jack’s office and back to the present where they belonged.

Where he wanted to be.

She wasn’t talking about his shoulder. Instead, Sasha’s feather-light touch ran over the wound on Rhys’ cheek, so gentle he barely felt it. Though the initial sting had long faded, keeping pace with some of Sasha’s rougher kisses made it ache. The scabbed-over skin pulled uncomfortably whenever he smiled, and he’d done more smiling in the past few hours than he could possibly have anticipated.

Trade-offs he was happy to make.

“Not very much,” he admitted, exercising—in his opinion—commendable willpower not to exaggerate; having your dream girl coo over a mild injury held a certain appeal. “But for the record, if this leaves a scar, I’m making up a way cooler story and I expect you all to back me up on it.”

Sasha’s hand fell away from his face, resting on the centre of his chest instead.

“I can’t believe you got mugged.” She paused. “Actually, I guess I can—what the hell were you doing out there on your own?”

The question dampened Rhys’ good spirits. He shrugged, tilting his head away from her. “Oh, you know, just… sightseeing.”

“Sightseeing.” Her fingers drummed on his chest, a simple rhythm conveying a world of skepticism.

He cleared his throat. “Well, yeah, I mean, I’m—uh—basically homeless, so I figured—y’know—might as well get a feel for the neighborhood, right?” He sent her a smile that hurt his cheek.

She didn’t return it. On the contrary, her expression was deathly serious. “Don’t lie to me, Rhys.”

“Okay, okay.” Sighing, he let the fake cheer fall away. “I had a… conflict with August.”

“He kicked you out?!” Her head disappeared from his shoulder as she propped herself up by the elbow, face contorted in righteous outrage. “God, he can be such a jealous dick.” She glared viciously towards the doorway, as though August were on the other side and might be able to sense it.

The part of Rhys that had gotten very good at navigating Hyperion politics wanted to leave it at that—a truth-adjacent explanation that satisfied Sasha and left his own hands clean. August made an easy scapegoat. It was tempting.

Rhys’ conscience got the better of him. He shook his head.

“No, no, no, he didn’t kick me out, I left.” When Sasha looked back at him, he focused not on her eyes, but on her painted fingernails resting over his heart. “It wasn’t his fault. I uh…” He swallowed. “I don’t know. Needed some air.”

It was true, more or less. He’d felt like he was suffocating.

While she digested the information, Rhys was careful not to look anywhere but Sasha’s nail polish. Dark red. Chipped around the edges.

“You shouldn’t walk around unarmed,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You could have been killed,” she said.

“Haven’t been yet, and I’ve done a lot more dangerous things than take a walk.”

“You said he wanted to cut out your eye.”

“Well, he didn’t, did he? Nothing happened.”

Nothing? There’s a big cut on your face!”

“It’s a scratch, Sasha. It’s not like you lead a risk-averse life.”

“I’m just worried that—”

“Will you let it go?” he snapped. “I’m fine.”

His voice croaked on it, an unnecessary indignity. With a disapproving growl, Sasha gave up. She flopped down beside him onto her pillow, a small mercy that removed her from his line of sight and made it easier to dodge eye contact. In absence of her hand, he studied the sheets instead, guilt blooming like algae in the silence.

Maybe he’d underestimated her, back on the caravan. Mistaken her compassion for pity. She was being kind, and he’d mucked it up, like he always did. No surprise there; it was his special talent. Given enough time, Rhys could ruin anything.

But this might be a new record.

He bit his inner lip. “Sasha…” He wanted to burrow under the covers and hide. “I. Um. Look, I—”

“I didn’t really run out of ammo that day,” she blurted.

The confession—and confusion—drowned out any apology he might have made. “What?”

“With the stalker. I didn’t run out of ammo. I mean—technically I did. But…” She shook her head. “I was so angry that day. At everything: Fiona, Felix, you… the universe.” Short of a handkerchief to play with, her painted fingers rubbed the scar on her neck. “I wasn’t trying to get hurt. I just wanted to shoot something. When I saw I was low on bullets...” She paused, and then shrugged. “Didn’t seem like it mattered.”

While he focused on the peeling wallpaper, her voice washed over him, dredging from the deep images of Sasha on the ground, her skin split open, choking on her own blood. He shivered, pulling the threadbare blanket up higher.

“Vaughn was furious with me when I woke up,” Sasha went on. “He called me a coward and I called him naive. For a couple years after that we fought all the time. He was scared of being alone. I was scared of having anything worth losing.”

Rhys’ heart hung heavy in his chest. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

“I used to picture the future, sprawling out in front of me. No matter how hard I looked…” She fidgeted with the ends of her braids. “I couldn’t see anything good ahead. It was like—like—”

“Like a tunnel caving in,” Rhys suggested quietly. He stared at the wallpaper until he could imagine shapes in it.

“Yeah. Exactly.” Sasha rolled to face him, kind green eyes pinning him in place. “Have you ever felt that way?”

Rhys’ jaw hurt from the pressure as he clenched his teeth together. He nodded.

“Is that how you feel now?” she asked softly.

“No.” He answered too quick, and the lie plucked at a loose thread in his soul. “Not right now,” he corrected. “Not with you.” He tried to swallow away the thickness in his throat. “But yesterday, I—maybe I…”

Like some Eridian horror, it all rose up at once. The space station was falling, escape pods crashing into debris around him, and it was all his fault. The wreckage of Helios was vast, by morning there would be bruises on his neck that matched his own fingers and they’d left him here, all of them had left him behind. Atlas was empty, his own voice echoing in the halls while someone else’s echoed in his head.

The water in August’s shower turned cold. The lights went out, and in the pitch black, Rhys couldn’t see a thing.

“It’s okay.” Sasha reached for his hand at the same time he fumbled for hers, their knuckles colliding before their fingers made way for each other. “I know. It’s okay.”

Rhys squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. He let out a watery but long-overdue breath, and she curled around him, her warm body a soothing balm against his. He clutched their joined hands close to his chest like a life preserver.

“I felt that way for a long, long time. Thought I saw my whole life stretched out.” Barely above a whisper, her words nonetheless resonated somewhere deep inside him. “But I was wrong. I couldn’t see everything. I didn’t see this.”

Her lips found his cheek, kissing the mark left behind by the stranger’s knife. He turned his head to kiss her properly, deeply, desperate to imbue it with all the things swirling in his heart that he didn’t have words for.

He could only hope she understood.

Sasha broke the kiss first, twisting her head away from him and slipping her hand free so she could raise it to her ear. An ECHO, then. Rhys felt a petty twinge of annoyance—how dare the real world intrude on the pleasant little oasis he and Sasha had found?—but it vanished when Sasha spoke.

“Fiona?” she said. “Is that you?”

His eyebrows shot up.

Sasha’s expression changed to a deep frown, but—for once—she didn’t sound angry with her sister. “Say that again.”

With no working ECHO of his own, Rhys sat, curious, and waited.

“Of course I will.” Sasha pulled away from him entirely, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rising to her feet. “How long?”

Rhys mouthed what’s going on?, but she ignored him, suddenly focused on collecting the clothes they’d strewn about the room.

“Okay.” She slipped her underwear back on and tossed Rhys’ shirt onto the bed. “He’s at the Skag too. I’ll tell him.” She pulled on her pants. “See you soon.”

Rhys frowned as the call ended. “Sasha, what’s—”

“Get dressed.” His patterned socks and his belt landed on the comforter as well. “Fiona and Vaughn are on their way. Vaughn needs our help. Helios was attacked.”

Notes:

as always, you're welcome to say hi over on tumblr: @oodlyenough. I infrequently post previews and/or complaints there while I'm writing!

I'd love to say the next update will come quicker, but since it'll feature my great nemesis, action, and I'm on vacation in November, might be another slow one. But it'll come!

Chapter 11

Summary:

Rhys, Sasha, Fiona and Vaughn are forced to reunite as they try to save Helios from a coup.

Notes:

It's been a long time, huh? More detailed notes at the end! For now, thanks to @Annalytic for reading this over.

Previously on: Fiona made amends with Vaughn and Athena, Rhys and Sasha cuddled while talking about their respective angst, and then everything changed when the other Hyperion crew attacked.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

By the time Sasha made it to the main floor, the Purple Skag was empty, and August was perched on the second level of a stepladder, replacement lightbulb in hand. Without customers, he defaulted to the necessary evil of maintenance work.

“They’re not here yet?” she asked.

August’s reception was cold, though his scowl skipped past Sasha to land squarely at the base of the stairs where Rhys’ footsteps had stopped. After an excruciating second passed, he turned back to fixing the burnt-out bulb. “Let me worry about business, all right?”

“I mean Vaughn and Fiona.” He couldn’t have known, but nerves drove her to impatience anyway. “They’re on their way. Helios was attacked.”

Again? That place is more trouble than it’s worth.”

Truthfully, Sasha was inclined to agree. No amount of Vaughn’s hard work could erase the truth that Helios was a relic of times Sasha would rather forget, a watchful corporate eye turned painful personal nightmare. But—

“It’s important to Vaughn.” Rhys came to a stop just behind her, a reassuring shadow in the periphery of her vision.

Close enough to touch, if she wanted. She folded her arms to avert temptation.

August eyed the distance between the two of them, a line of displeasure forming between his eyes. He stepped down from the ladder as though conceding defeat.

“Yeah.” He walked past the bar towards the storeroom, willing her to follow with a wave of his hand. “I got some stuff that might help. C’mere.”

Sasha turned to Rhys, but he shook his head, unwilling to follow August into a room full of weapons. “I’ll—uh—wait for them out here.”

With a sudden thought towards the wobbly dresser in their rented room, she nodded her understanding and followed August by herself.

The back room of the Purple Skag was familiar territory to Sasha. An extra hand bartending or leaving the Skag in her care for a few days were the most common favours August traded in, the sort that had earned Sasha a few days rent-free grace. Over the years, she’d watched the bar evolve from a base of operations for Vallory’s gang to a more innocuous room full of extra Maliwan Black Label and salted peanuts.

August flipped open a chest as she walked in, revealing a stockpile of guns, ammo, grenades.

“Lost and found,” he told her, with just a hint of humour. Emptying the last few bottles of beer from a case, he tossed the empty box down for her to use. “Take whatever you want.”

“Thanks.”

Old-worn instinct took over, and her fingertips brushed his elbow gratefully before she knelt down to inspect the offerings. Nothing special from the looks of it, but firepower was firepower, and she had no idea what Fiona and Vaughn might need. How much of Helios had been taken over? What kind of arsenal did the opposing side have?

Arms crossed as he stood beside her, August said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I know how guns work, thanks.” She picked the four best shields and tossed them into the box.

“I’m talking about you and Mr. Ten Mil over there.”

Sasha bristled with a simultaneous rush of embarrassment and possessiveness as she picked up a Maliwan shotgun. What she had with Rhys now was new and fragile, and Pandora had a habit of breaking things. She wanted to keep it tucked away safe, or clutched close like something precious.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she lied.

“C’mon, I’m not stupid. I gave you guys two rooms. Only one got used.” He smirked a little. “And I’m not deaf. I know that dresser needs replacing.”

Resigned, she tossed aside a sniper with a broken sight. “I’m a big girl, August. I don’t need a lecture.”

“I’m not giving you one,” he insisted. “I’m just…”

“Jealous?” she shot back before she could help herself.

“Worried.”

“Oh, yeah. A purely altruistic concern for my private life.”

Under her pointed stare, August lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, yeah, I’m not exactly thrilled my ex is using my spare room to bump uglies with some Hyperion pretty boy—”

Guilty, Sasha bit her lip and focused on the Jakobs in her hands. A pistol with a nice kick. Thinking of Fiona, she tossed it in the box.

“—but that’s not what this is about, I swear.” August’s voice was as earnest as it ever got, the sort Sasha knew he saved for rare occasions. “I remember what happened last time you let him get under your skin.”

Last time, Sasha thought with a smirk. As if Rhys had ever really left. “Trust me, so do I.”

“Do you? ‘Cause I don’t wanna get another call from Vaughn about how some stalker ripped your throat out—”

With the newfound supplies in the box, Sasha stood to meet August’s eyes. The concern there was genuine, the same sort she’d grown used to seeing from him and from Vaughn any time they spoke.

“Fine. I’m terrified, all right?” She twisted the Volcano’s strap between her fingers. “Is that what you wanna hear? You really think I haven’t already imagined every way this could go wrong?”

August rubbed the back of his neck and stayed silent.

She took a deep breath. “But... what’s the alternative? Being so scared of losing something you never let yourself have it in the first place? I’ve tried that. It hurts too.”

August was quiet for a moment, inscrutable gaze locked on hers, and then he nodded. “Yeah. Guess so. Just… just try to be careful, all right?”

“Oh, you know me.” She winked. “Always playing it safe.”

He shook his head. “Yeah right.” He picked her box of supplies off the ground and held it out for her. “I’m still charging you for two rooms, by the way.”

Sasha laughed. “Fine.”

Just as her fingers gripped the supply box, there was a knock on the door frame. She swivelled to see Rhys in the doorway, his serious expression a sobering reality check. “They’re here.”


The rush to get ready and anticipation of a fight had left little time for Sasha to brace for the awkward reunion until it was happening. She and Rhys met Fiona and Vaughn outside, and under the neon purple glow of the bar’s sign, the four of them stared silently at each other for a beat too long.

The one mercy was that the other three felt just as uncomfortable as she did. Rhys rubbed the back of his neck and looked towards his shoes. Vaughn nibbled his bottom lip with uncertainty. Only Fiona, well-practiced grifter, managed not to look away.

“Hi,” said Fiona.

A minute too slow to pass as normal, the greeting broke the spell nonetheless. Rhys gave a little wave, his gaze wandering to Vaughn before quickly snapping back to Fiona. “Hey.”

Sasha stood taller, shifting the box on her hip. “August was good enough to give us some supplies.” She plunked the box onto the back of the technical. “Take what you like; I’ve got my own.”

Fiona and Vaughn moved in on the box like rakks swarming a corpse. Vaughn went for the Maliwan shotgun first, testing the weight of it; Fiona zeroed in on the Jakobs.

“Nice,” she muttered. Her approving fingers ran along the barrel before she stuffed it into her pocket and continued rummaging.

Rhys made an awkward noise, craning his neck to look at the selection without actually approaching. “No, uh, stun baton, I take it?” He cracked a nervous smile as three disapproving faces turned in his direction.

“You really ought to learn to use a gun,” said Sasha.

“Or like… any ranged weapon at all,” Fiona agreed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rhys waved both hands. “Point, shoot—I get the basic principle.”

If it was a joke, it didn’t land. Sasha’s frown deepened, and Rhys’ nervous smile started to wither in the silence. Silent all this time, Vaughn finally spoke without looking up from the shotgun he was inspecting.

“Maybe you should stay here, Rhys,” he said.

Rhys’ smile vanished immediately as his attention snapped over to Vaughn. “What?”

Vaughn looked up, his expression stony. “I’m serious. You should wait here in Hollow Point.”

“No way.” Stunned by the sudden rejection, Rhys’ eyebrows climbed higher on his forehead. “I’m coming to help.”

“How? You’re not…” Vaughn paused, fishing for the least offensive phrasing. “You’re not really a fighter.”

“Okay, I know I’m not exactly the—the muscle, or anything, but I can still help!” Rhys spread his hands, half-argument half-plea. “I can… I can…”

He trailed off, distracted by his own cybernetic hand in front of him. His metal fingers curled into his palm. With a pang, Sasha thought of the radio lying in pieces in her caravan.

“This isn’t a finger-gun fight,” Vaughn continued, plain and simple. “They’ve got real bullets this time.”

Rhys snapped out of his thoughts with a scowl. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. I’ve survived plenty of dangerous things, thanks. Remember the giant vault monster? Helios? Jack?”

“You’ve been lucky.” Resolute, Vaughn folded his arms. “It’s too risky. You’ll get yourself killed, or get one of us killed, looking after you. You’re…”

Vaughn’s brain got ahead of his tongue in time to pump the brakes, but it was too late; Rhys caught on, cycling quickly through surprise and hurt and landing on cold anger.

“I’m what? A liability?” he pushed. “Dead weight?”

“That’s not what I meant.” The guilty tone contradicted Vaughn’s words.

“Uh-huh.” Rhys turned to Sasha and Fiona. “What about you two? Worried I’ll drag you down?”

Fiona’s lips twisted but she stayed quiet, for once not ready to share whatever was percolating in her brain. Sasha opened her mouth, eager to reassure him, but her eyes found the still-healing cut on his cheek.

Anxiety crept up her neck like a vine. Every time she’d gotten closer to Rhys, the universe had taken him away again. What if it happened again?

Their silence was response enough for Rhys. His voice was brittle. “I see.”

Sasha cringed at the betrayal on his face. “Rhys—”

“We just don’t want you getting hurt, man,” Vaughn tried, plaintive and honest.

“So what?” Rhys spread his arms wide. “What about the rest of you? You all get to run off and risk your lives and you want me to just—just—sit around twiddling my thumbs, hoping you all come back?”

Frustration fractured his voice and revealed the vulnerable truth underneath: being alone frightened him far more than any imminent danger could.

Sasha knew what that was like. Her resolve crumbled and she looked at the ground.

“No way.” Rhys crossed his arms, trying and failing to seem more stern than scared. “I’m not doing that. It’s—it’s not fair.”

It took a moment, but eventually Vaughn nodded, somber. “You’re right. That isn’t fair.”

Thank you—!”

“This is my mess to deal with,” Vaughn continued. “You should all stay here.”

“...What?” said Rhys.

“That’s stupid,” said Sasha.

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” said Fiona.

“But—” Vaughn began.

Fiona clucked her tongue. “Nope. Three against one. You’re out-voted.”

“It’s not a vote!”

But Fiona ignored him. A line had formed between her eyes, the sort she got when she was solving a riddle Sasha hadn’t even heard yet. “Hang on a sec. These attacks are from ex-Hyperion, right?”

“They are?” asked a bewildered Rhys.

“Unfortunately.” Vaughn’s confirmation was dejected. “I mean, I think so—can’t imagine they’re hosting any successful job fairs.”

“All right.” Mind made up, Fiona spun to face all three of them. “Here’s what we’re doing.” In the manner of someone who’d found a missing puzzle piece hidden in the box, she nodded her head towards Rhys. “We send Rhys in first. Let him talk to the Hyperion diehards. Put that creepy cult status to good use.”

“Right! Yes! Great idea!” Bolstered by the tiniest encouragement, Rhys pointed towards her in excitement. “Told you I could be helpful.”

Fiona spun the elemental barrel of her derringer. “That doesn’t work, we start shooting.”

“That’s a terrible plan,” Vaughn objected.

“Yep,” Fiona agreed, “but it’s a plan, which makes it our current frontrunner. We’re wasting time, we should go. All of us.”

She pointed to all three of them in turn, waiting for buy-in. Vaughn groaned, but ultimately relented with a nod. Rhys celebrated with a tiny, victorious fist pump that made the corner of Sasha’s mouth twitch.

“I want it on the record that I don’t like this,” Vaughn grumbled.

Fiona tucked the derringer back up her sleeve and clapped him on the shoulder. “Tough.” But her leadership facade slipped just a little as she turned to her sister. “Sash—you, uh, good to drive? I can take the gunner.”

A rogue wave of nostalgia slammed starboard into Sasha as she watched her sister take the lead. She pushed the thought aside and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

Adrenaline buzzed in her veins as she hopped into the driver’s seat and waited for the others to get into position. There was something else too, simmering in her chest, making the hairs on her arms stand at attention.

Vaughn tapped the side of the truck when the others were ready. Sasha turned the key, and the engine roared to life beneath them. Only as the sunlit mouth of Hollow Point came into view did Sasha realize what it was that had her heart knocking heavy on her ribcage.

Fear.

It’d been a long time since she had anything to lose.


Vaughn caught them up as they drove toward Helios—or at least, he tried. Over the wind and the engine and the crunch of the dirt beneath the tires, he shouted information up to Fiona who in turn shouted it down to Sasha, a short-form game of telephone.

Vaughn had gotten the call earlier that morning. A splinter group of former Hyperion, vying for control of Helios and its resources, had managed a successful insurgence. They’d knocked Helios’ systems offline and taken control in the chaos. Dissenters that hadn’t been killed yet were trying to group together, and then—

Then the call had dropped. Vaughn hadn’t been able to get back in touch since. Jammed systems, or something worse? Time would tell.

Rhys hugged his knees in the corner of the truck bed, absorbing the information with his mouth shut and one foot bouncing up and down. The worry of being left behind had abated, so he was free to worry instead about the highly-dangerous task that lay before them. Back to Helios, again, to fight with survivors of a wreck he’d caused.

Hyperion. Again.

That letter of offer he’d signed at age 21 really had been a lifelong appointment. Twelve years on, and the shambling corpse of the once-giant corporation remained a thorn in their side. All he had to do now was try to weaponize hero worship he neither wanted nor deserved.

Easy-peasy. Right?

“Hungry?” asked Fiona.

Rhys had no time to register the question before a protein bar hit him square in the forehead. Rubbing the point of impact, he glared up at her. “Really?”

Fiona smiled back, the picture of innocence but for the mischievous sparkle in her eye. “Courtesy of Springs.”

Though he’d known Janey only briefly, the image of her handing panicked guests a stockpile of food on their way out made him smile. Hunger took precedence over his nerves, and he tore into the protein bar.

Her attention turned to Vaughn. “What about you, Abs?”

Vaughn didn’t look up from his Echo; he’d spent the past twenty minutes fiddling with it, trying and failing to make contact with Helios. “No, thanks.”

Fiona’s eyes moved back to Rhys, who pretended not to notice. “Well, if you change your mind…”

She tossed the protein bar near Vaughn’s feet—gently, Rhys noticed—and then, with a last pointed jerk of her head and eye motion, she spun away from them, facing toward the driver’s seat.

Gnawing on what tasted like sawdust and pebbles, he watched Vaughn play with the dials on the Echo, frowning like he was trying to decipher a problematic balance sheet. The crow’s feet, the beard and ponytail, the gray sprinkled through his hair—despite it all, the quiet frustration on Vaughn’s face was achingly familiar. Rhys had seen it a thousand times, in all-nighter homework and exam season cram sessions and late-night career scheming.

He ought to say something. Do something. Reach out. Be a friend.

Guilt drove a piton into his heart. What was he so scared of? It was just Vaughn. How many times had they had a conversation like this? How many times had Vaughn been there for him?

Yeah, well, maybe he’s not such a total freakin’ cowar—

“Hey, Vaughn,” he said, loud enough to drown out the devil on his shoulder. “Are… are you okay?”

“What do you think?” But he cringed when Rhys flinched away. “Sorry, that—that was passive-aggressive.”

“Aggressive, yes. Not sure about the ‘passive’ part,” Rhys joked. His tentative smile went unreturned.

Vaughn hung his head and scrubbed at his eyes. “...Yeah. It was uncalled for, I shouldn’t’ve said that. I’m just… on edge.”

An understatement. If there was an edge, Vaughn was definitely dangling precariously from it.

“It was a pretty stupid question,” Rhys admitted. “Here’s a better one: what do I need to know? I mean, who’s running the show here, who do I need to convince?”

Vaughn set the Echo down between his knees and leaned back against the side of the truck, squinting up at the sky. “Leader’s a woman named Vicki. Used to work in R&D, so she’s not as squeamish as a lot of our people. According to Yvette, Vicki was always stubborn, but it got worse after Vicki went out on a scavenging mission and came back alone.”

“Tragic accident alone or five time wealthy widow alone?”

Vaughn pulled a face. “That’s just it. Vicki claims it was the former, but Yvette figured it was the latter. By the time I was back, Vicki was, uh, let’s call it ‘vocal’ about how things should be done around Helios. She wanted everyone to be armed. She thought we should use force more often. She couldn’t understand why we had allies when we could have subjects.”

“Well, that sounds… like Hyperion,” Rhys muttered. Dreading either answer, he asked, “She, uh, a big fan of mine?”

Vaughn shrugged. “I don’t know. To be honest, I always tried not to know much about that. Especially after the vault, it was just… it was a lot.”

Rhys stared at his shoes. “Can’t imagine why,” he said quietly.

“I don’t think Vicki ever liked Yvette, but she respected her. Never tried anything like this. Once Yvette was out of the picture... I guess she saw me as a weak link.” He shrugged. “Guess she wasn’t wrong about that.”

Rhys’ head snapped up at that. “What?” With a sudden rush of courage, he unfurled his legs and crossed the gulf between them to sit next to Vaughn. “Oh, c’mon. You’ve been looking after everyone for how long? Twelve—no, thirteen years?” He nudged Vaughn’s shoulder. “That’s like, three times longer than the average executive served at Hyperion.”

“Three and a half times,” Vaughn corrected. “I’m the one who calculated it for you.”

“See? Y’know, if you served in the same executive position for more than five years without dying they gave you a lifetime achievement award.” Rhys rubbed the back of his neck as a very belated penny fell. “In retrospect that probably should’ve been a red flag.” He brushed the thought aside. “Anyway, the point is you’ve done way better than anyone could’ve expected. I mean, a bunch of ex-Hyperion trying to kill each other? After more than a decade on Pandora? I’d’ve put money on that happening in the first ten minutes.”

“Yeah…” Vaughn looked over, and the corner of his mouth twitched, a fraction of a smile. “You probably wanna leave out the part about betting on their demise when you talk to them.”

“I’m… still workshopping the pitch.”

That made Vaughn chuckle, and as some tension visibly bled from his shoulders, Rhys relaxed a little too. Laughter was encouraging. Laughter could be an olive branch. Maybe…

But as the humour ebbed away, Vaughn was grave again. “Listen, Rhys… I know I said it like a jerk, but I meant what I said earlier. You don’t have to do this.”

Relief rushed out of Rhys like air from a deflating balloon.

“Yeah I do,” he said quietly. He rocked his right hand back and forth as it sat in his lap, watching the light reflect off the chrome knuckles. “I crashed the thing; trying to talk the survivors out of killing each other is the least I can do.”

Vaughn was shaking his head before Rhys had finished speaking. “That was ages ago. That’s ancient history.”

“Not to me.” That Helios—and Jack—might ever stop breathing down his neck was impossible to fathom. Rhys took a second to steady himself. “Besides, you were right the other day: what’s the point of apologizing if you’re not gonna change? So—so—yeah. Not gonna disappear again.”

“That’s… that’s not…” What was meant to be encouraging only made Vaughn sigh miserably. “I don’t want you getting killed ‘cause you think you owe me something. It’s not your fight—or Sasha’s, or Fiona’s.” He massaged his eyes beneath his glasses. “If something happens to one of you because I—”

“Okay, okay, let’s break this down.” Rhys held his hand aloft as he counted down. “Number one: not gonna get killed. C’mon, have a little faith in my persuasive speaking here. Remember when I convinced Professor Cowan we should all get an extra 15% on our midterms ‘cause the hot water in the dorms was broken for two days?”

Vaughn’s frown walked the tightrope between exasperation and amusement. Rhys took it as a win.

“Number two.” He raised a second finger. “I do owe you, but that’s not why I’m doing this. Because—number three—this is your fight, and whether you like it or not, that makes it our fight, too.” He lifted his palms in a faux-apologetic shrug. “That’s how family works. Sorry.”

Vaughn cycled through a half-dozen emotions too quick for Rhys to pinpoint any of them, before finally settling on a small but affectionate smile. “You are pretty persuasive.” He paused. “Or at least persistent.”

“As any good salesman knows—” Rhys straightened his collar “—those are one and the same.”

“...Uh-huh.” But the shake of Vaughn’s head was fond. “I gotta admit...” The lines on his forehead deepened as he figured out what to say next. “Feels good to have you in my corner again.”

A weight Rhys had forgotten he was carrying crumbled and fell to dust. Unencumbered, his face split into a smile. “Always, bro.”

He held out his fist, and Vaughn pushed their knuckles together.


Fiona polished the Jakobs with the cuff of her sleeve until it was shiny enough to give Rhys’ stupid arm a run for its money. Loaded both her guns and meticulously counted her remaining ammo. Switched on her shield and clipped it beneath the long side of her jacket. Shot down rakks that strayed too close.

She was bored.

Bored, and impatient, and a little jittery. It was the feeling she used to get on the lead-up to a job, the way she’d felt a lifetime ago watching Felix paint finishing touches on a fake Vault Key. A spring-loaded toy that couldn’t unwind, buzzing with potential energy.

Once upon a time, she’d calmed her nerves by talking things through with Sasha. They’d quiz each other on their made-up backstories, warm up with improv games, fantasize about how they’d spend the money they were about to steal.

Not much of an option now. Sasha drove in silence, focused on the road ahead.

The only break in monotony came from Rhys and Vaughn. The rattle of the engine and the wind in her ear made it difficult to eavesdrop—difficult, but not impossible. It was good the two of them were talking again. Any familiarity was progress.

Nevertheless, jealousy joined the cocktail of emotions clouding Fiona’s mind.

“Sasha, you hungry?” she called, because if she was going to be jealous, she might as well have reason. “I’ve got some protein bars from Janey.”

From her seat up high, she couldn’t see the look on Sasha’s face. She imagined a flash of irritation, some thinly-veiled contempt.

To her surprise, Sasha let out a short laugh. “Hungry? Yes. Hungry enough to eat one of those? No.”

Fiona looked down at the unopened bar in her hand. “That bad, huh?”

“Oh yeah. But she fixed up the guy’s food truck for a cut rate, and he gave her a lifetime supply. Which, if you ask me, is like the opposite of payment.”

Despite the rejection of her offer, Fiona was encouraged by the anecdote-sharing. “Huh. Good to know.” She tucked the bar back into her pocket. “Janey, uh, mentioned you used to work together.”

“For a little while,” said Sasha. “Pay was all right. Learned a lot. Helped me keep my caravan running.”

“So why’d you stop?”

Sasha changed her grip on the wheel. “Working alone suited me.”

Fiona frowned. Though she’d have denied it, the Sasha that Fiona used to know had always longed for connection. It made her a great honeypot—and an emotionally-spent con.

“What do you do now?” Fiona asked, as neutrally as she could.

“Whatever someone’ll pay me to do.” Sasha paused. “Mostly.”

They weren’t fulsome answers, but Fiona found herself clinging to each tidbit anyway. She felt like a beggar, desperate for some crumbs of information about the person her sister had become. There was so much she’d missed, so much she’d never really understand no matter how forthcoming Sasha was. It was a strange, sick feeling.

“Sasha, I…” Her heart was in her throat. “We should talk. I—”

“Not now.” Sasha’s answer was like a slap, but she twisted her neck, looking away from the road to meet Fiona’s eyes. “Later, okay? Right now I need to keep my head in the game.”

The echo of Fiona’s own justification rang in her ears, a bucket of water doused on the tiny spark of hope she’d been nursing.

There was no use arguing. So Fiona said, “Okay,” and wondered if Sasha was doing it out of spite.


By the time Sasha brought the vehicle to a stop, the giant H of Helios loomed on the horizon like the carcass of a mythical creature.

“I don’t know if I should get any closer.” With the engine cut, her voice travelled the distance to Rhys and Vaughn much easier. “They could have snipers set up.” She twisted around in the front seat, half-hanging out the door to catch Rhys’ eye. “You might have to walk the rest.”

Walk up to the sniper’s nest. Well, that was comforting.

“...R-right,” he managed. “Uh, sure.” Not wanting to kickstart another of Vaughn’s guilty spirals, he stood up, privately congratulating himself on the fact that his knees were only slightly shaky. “I’ll just… knock?”

“We can’t send him in alone,” protested Vaughn, who’d begun to stand himself.

“Yeah, not sure you’d be an asset here,” said Fiona.

“I don’t need an escort,” Rhys began, although as he looked out at the desolate distance between himself and Helios, it sounded kind of nice, actually.

“Yeah… Vaughn, you’re Public Enemy Number One,” added Sasha. “I could go.”

“You haven’t exactly endeared yourself to them either,” Vaughn told Sasha, folding his arms and pouting just a little.

“Guys, really—”

“I’ll go.” Fiona hopped down from the gunner seat, landing neatly in a crouch and a tiny cloud of dirt. “Haven’t had a chance to burn these particular bridges yet.”

Vaughn’s eyes widened. “Okay, I know that’s just an expression, but I need you to promise me you’re not gonna burn anything.”

Fiona wagged her eyebrows mischievously.

“No one’s setting anything on fire,” announced Rhys, climbing down from the truck with all the grace of a bullymong, “because this plan is going to work awesomely...”

“Just like our plans always do,” said Fiona with a nod.

Rhys scowled at her before continuing louder. “...and in a few hours we’ll all be happily eating skag-kabobs and singing Kumbaya. It’ll be fine. What could go wrong?”

Three different shades of disbelief stared back at him.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, anyway, Fi, let’s—let’s go.”

“Wait!” Sasha scrambled out of the driver’s seat before he and Fiona had done more than turn. “Shields!” She hurried to rummage through the supplies from August. “You need shields—I brought enough for everyone—”

“Grabbed one already.” Fiona lifted the long flap of her jacket to reveal one clipped to her belt.

It hadn’t even occurred to Rhys. Before he could say so, Sasha bounded back over to him, shield in hand.

“This one has the highest capacity.” Her fingers shook as she clipped it to him, a fact almost as alarming as what she said next. “Slow to recharge, but it should absorb a few shots from a sniper.”

“Okay, can we stop assuming I’m going to get sniped?” he wondered aloud while Sasha made adjustments. “These people already love me, and I’m effortlessly charming. I’ve closed tougher deals than this.”

Rhys raised his eyebrows at Sasha, hoping she might at least be amused by the implication, but the worry line stayed etched on her forehead. Up on the truck, Vaughn had folded his arms, once again wearing the still-don’t-like-this look of silent protest Rhys had seen countless times throughout their friendship.

“Guys, I’ll be—” But before he could finish any reassurances, Sasha’s strong arms were wrapped around his shoulders and squeezing like hell.

“Just… be safe.” Though she’d wrestled the anxiety out of her voice, it was plain in the tightness of her hug.

At once thrilled with and embarrassed by the open show of affection, Rhys turned red. Under Fiona and Vaughn’s scrutiny, he ignored the impulse to kiss her and settled for patting her shoulder. “I-I will.”

When Sasha released him, she’d composed herself, tough and determined once more as she turned to her sister and added, “Both of you.”

Disarmed by surprise, Fiona nodded dumbly.

“We’ll be back before you know it.” Rhys smiled encouragingly. Judging from the way Vaughn’s eyes narrowed, it was unwelcome. He tapped Fiona’s elbow to pull her out of her reverie. “C’mon, Fi.”

Sasha reached up to grab Vaughn’s hand as the two of them walked away.


Rhys’ act lasted only as long as they were in earshot. Once Sasha, Vaughn and the technical were out of sight, he fizzled like an old balloon animal, his shoulders sagging.

“Are you getting major deja-vu?” he asked Fiona, worry bleeding into his voice as they trekked across the sand towards that large, imposing gate. “‘Cause I’m getting major deja-vu.”

She grunted in vague agreement. Her mind was elsewhere, replaying Sasha’s goodbye on a loop. Both of you, she’d said, the entirety of her concern wrapped up in three short syllables. Calm and controlled. More than Fiona expected and far less than she was used to.

It was hard not to feel slighted; ten seconds earlier her baby sister had been clinging to Rhys like a life raft. Jealousy slipped out before Fiona could help herself: “That was quite the hug.”

“Well…” Though he tried not to look caught out, the rush of pink to his cheekbones betrayed him. “I… um…”

“What happened to ‘oh, time itself has cleaved us apart—’”

“I didn’t—I didn’t say that.”

“‘We are but ships passing in the night—’”

“We…” He paused to consider his next words carefully. “We made up.”

“Up, or out?”

Rhys’ non-answer was a wordless noise of discomfort accompanied by a shrug.

“Gross. What, you give Sasha those big puppy eyes too? Is that your move? Being all… sad?”

Now more exasperated than embarrassed, Rhys threw his head back. “Okay, if you have to be a dick about this, can it at least wait until after we do the dangerous thing?” He waved both hands towards Helios, its enormous silhouette looming closer with every step.

“Fine.” Fiona rolled her eyes. “I’ll put it in the queue.”

“Thank you.” As he adjusted the tuck of his shirt, he turned smug. “And for the record I have plenty of moves, you’ve just never seen them.”

Ugh.” Fiona made a gagging noise. “Who would want to?”

“Lots of people, thank you very much. People like my moves. Just because you’re…” He paused. “Uh.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Just because I’m what?”

Rhys looked over at her, doing some private mental arithmetic, before reconsidering. “Nevermind.” Eager to change the subject, he pointed ahead. “So do you think I should just… knock?”

The Helios gate that had crept up on them while they were talking. Looming ever closer, the skyline was intimidating enough to stop Rhys in his tracks.

Fiona stood next to him. “Well, I don’t have a boombox for you to hold, so…”

“...Right.” Still, he took no steps closer, instead fidgeting with his collar and smoothing his hair. “I’ll just—go over there, and… and…”

“Ask politely if they’ll reconsider this coup, please.”

He barely disguised his pout. “You are not helping.”

“Since when do you need my help? You’re effortlessly charming.”

Rhys was definitely pouting now.

“You’ll be all right.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “You’ve got plenty of experience convincing people not to murder you on sight. I mean, Sasha and I definitely wanted to, and we haven’t yet.”

“Yet?!”

She shrugged. “There’s still time.”

He glared. “Your pep talks? Awful. Just awful.”

“C’mon, what happened to skag-kabobs and Kumbaya?”

As Fiona’s voice deepened into a parody of his, Rhys’ glare intensified. “I obviously only said that to look cool, I—”

Whatever his forthcoming excuse was, Fiona never learned; it was drowned out by someone shouting at them from the gate.

“Hey there! Uh, hi—sorry to interrupt—”

Stunned, Rhys and Fiona turned from each other towards the source of the voice—a woman, face mostly hidden, peeking out from the same sniper’s nest Sasha’d been in when the first arrived.

“—but whatever kind of… uh… spat you two have going on, you might wanna take it somewhere else.”

Fiona frowned. She recognized that voice, unusually cheery as it was.

“We’re all kind of going through something right now,” the woman continued, “so it might be best if… hey, wait a second! I know you!” She picked up her sniper, peering down the scope, and Fiona squinted as the laser sight was aimed at her forehead.

Rhys reacted first, his jaw dropping and his hands lifting in horror. “Whoa, whoa! Hang on—”

“Soup lady!” cried the sniper cheerfully; the red dot disappeared as she lowered her gun. “Is that you?”

Fiona nodded and waved. Next to her, Rhys mumbled an incredulous, “Soup lady?”

“Hi,” Fiona called back. Taking advantage of the situation, she walked closer to the door, and after a second’s confusion, Rhys followed. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, I am so glad you stopped by. Is this the guy with the kiosk? Did you bring any soup? Please tell me you brought some soup. I’m starving.”

“Sorry, we’re fresh out,” Fiona told her, while Rhys muttered a wondering “kiosk?”

“That’s a real shame,” the woman continued, disappointed but no less friendly. “‘Cause—hoo boy—fighting is hard work. You ever overthrown a whole camp before? Really works up an appetite. And with the resistance locked in the supply wing...”

Rhys sent Fiona a look, but she ignored him, her polite smile pinned in place. She stepped as close to the door as she could without having to crane her neck.

“...who knows how long it’ll be. I told Vicki we should’ve stopped at Moxxi’s first, but nooo…”

“Vicki?” Rhys inched forward. “You know Vicki?”

“Everyone around here knows Vicki, she’s kind of a big deal,” said the woman, like it was an answer even a child should know. “Although I wonder sometimes how many other people truly know—”

“Can I talk to her?” When she hesitated, he puffed himself up, putting on a smile so slimy Fiona wrinkled her nose. “You know. One big deal to another?”

“Uh…” The woman paused. “Sorry, who are you?”

Fiona smothered a laugh as the wind disappeared from Rhys’ smarmy sails.

“Uh, Rhys?” More of a question than an answer. “You know, I’m the one who… who… did... ” His arms swept in a disbelieving gesture toward the enormity of Helios. “...this.”

Honest though his words were in their intent, as Fiona gazed up at the skyscraper wreckage she only heard a lie. True, thirteen years ago Rhys had planted the seed—but what had grown out of Helios since, for better or worse, had little to do with him.

The woman in the sniper’s nest was silent for an uncomfortable moment, during which Rhys’ arms sagged and Fiona wondered if being forgotten would be a blessing or an insult.

And then the woman said, “Oooooh, that Rhys.” She sounded amused and stunned. “Wow, I had no idea you went into the food industry.”

“The… what?” But Rhys recovered quick enough, shaking his head. “Look, can I please just talk to Vicki? She’s in charge, right? I just wanna make sure everything’s…” He paused, watching a thin column of smoke rise skyward from inside the campus. “...under control.”

“I dunno, I’m not really supposed to leave my post, and with this signal jammer going I can’t Echo her…”

Signal jammer? Fiona tucked that away as Exhibit B.

“We can wait!” Rhys offered. “We’re not gonna do anything. Just wanna talk.” He held his hand to his heart. “Promise.”

The smile he flashed was so cheesy Fiona fought back a grimace. But—to her disgust—it worked. The lure of fame won out, and the woman in the sniper nest smiled. “Aw, what the hell. Lemme get her, you hang tight.”

With that she disappeared from the top of the gate.

“Well, so far so good, I guess,” said Rhys, quiet enough for only Fiona to hear as he pivoted towards her. “She seems nice! Maybe this is all some kind of weird misunderstanding?”

“Yeah, maybe Vaughn never tried saying the magic word.” Her eyes were trained on the spiral of smoke as it wound its way against the deep blue sky. “Look, I met that woman the other day—”

“Yeah, question about that: were you selling soup?”

“Not sure she’s representative of the cause,” she continued. “She mentioned a signal jammer.”

Rhys nodded. “That’s why Vaughn can’t get through.” He rolled his metal wrist. “For once I'm glad my tech’s broken, those are so annoying. Like when you eat popcorn and there’s a kernel stuck in your teeth for the next three days.”

“You should brush your teeth more,” said Fiona. She tapped her chin in thought. “Sounds like Vaughn’s people are holed up in the supply wing. That’s good. They should have plenty of food.”

“You say that, but Hyperion can get weird about food. One time a fight broke out because the cafeteria ran out of chicken tenders.”

Fiona raised an eyebrow. “And when you say ‘fight’...”

“Okay, yes, it was a finger gun fight, but it was vicious. And before you ask, I was not involved, because I had the foresight to sweet-talk the lunch lady, and...”

Static in Fiona’s ear overtook Rhys’ rambling as her Echo struggled to pick up a transmission. She cut him off as she brought her hand to her ear. “Hello?”

Sasha’s voice was barely audible over the static. Disjointed snippets of sentences mingled with dead air and crackling. “Fiona, how—going? Can—in touch— Echo—ing—”

“I can’t understand you,” said Fiona, for all the good it might do. “They’ve got a signal jammer going, it’s messing with the Echos. We’re about to meet with—”

Sasha’s voice continued, uninterrupted but for the bad signal. Fiona doubted she’d heard a word. “—called. She—spring—want—help—”

“Help?” The hairs on the back of Fiona’s neck stood at attention.

“—need help—”

“You need help?” She spun around, but Sasha, Vaughn and the technical were well out of sight, as planned. “Are you okay?”

“—coming to—”

There was another few seconds of static, and then the call dropped entirely. Fiona cursed.

“What’s going on?” Worry had taken up its usual roost on Rhys’ face. “Are they in trouble?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t make out anything.” She clenched her jaw as she tamped down the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Sasha and Vaughn could look after themselves. They’d been doing it for twelve years. “I heard the word ‘help’.”

“Help?” Rhys wrung his hands anxiously. “As in, ‘hey, you guys need any’ or ‘now, please’?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, what should we—?”

“Wow,” called a dry voice from the Helios gate. “Look at that. A celebrity.”

Peeking out from the same panel where they’d first seen Vaughn was a woman’s face, her mouth a taut and threatening smile. Even with an obscured view, Fiona recognized her as the short wild-haired woman she’d met the other day.

Rhys recovered quickly, turning on his heel with a broad, albeit tone-deaf, smile. “You must be Vicki!”

“Rhys.” Vicki’s nod of acknowledgement was barely movement at all. “Heard that name a lot in the last decade.” Her eyes turned to Fiona. “And you—I knew you looked familiar.”

“I’d tip my hat, but I lost it,” said Fiona.

Vicki was unamused. “You lied to me.”

“Not really. I’m not from Helios. I am Pandoran. And I make a good soup.” She reconsidered. “I make a passable soup.”

“You’ve never made me soup,” said Rhys, petulant.

“Lou, keep an eye on her,” Vicki directed over her shoulder.

In a moment, the woman reappeared in the sniper’s nest—and so did the laser sight, pointed once more at Fiona’s forehead.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Rhys objected, ineffectual but well-intentioned. “Come on, that is totally unnecessary. We just wanna talk!”

“We are talking. Think of it as collateral,” said Vicki, smooth and cold. With two fingers she beckoned Rhys forward. “You come closer. And keep your hands where I can see them, both of you.”

Fiona did as instructed, spreading her hands theatrically as she weighed the likelihood of Lou shooting her in the head. From far away, Lou’s huge stature meant little, and she seemed like the sort to hesitate before pulling the trigger. A rare flaw to find on Pandora.

Fiona had a good shield and a quick draw. She might stand a chance.

“Sure.” Rhys’s obedience was reluctant. He spared Fiona a worried glance before he stepped toward Vicki, arms spread to his sides. “Is that better?”

“Almost.” She jerked her chin. “Take off your shield.”

“What?!”

“A show of trust,” explained Vicki, as if she weren’t protected behind a large metal door.

“Don’t, Rhys,” Fiona warned, her patience threadbare. They ought to bail while they still could. She was itching to check in on Sasha and Vaughn. They’d have to come up with something else—

But Rhys was already unclipping it from his belt. “Okay, okay, sure. A show of faith.” With a look of silent apology in Fiona’s direction, he tossed the shield to the ground. “There you go. I’m not even armed. I’m trusting you.” He spread his arms. “Are we good?”

Vicki snapped her fingers and pointed. The laser sight of Lou’s gun shifted. She fired off a shot that hit Rhys’ shield dead centre, and it split apart in a shower of circuitry and tiny electric sparks.

Rhys flinched away from the shrapnel with a yelp. Fiona clenched her jaw hard enough to hurt. This had been a bad plan.

Regaining composure, Rhys folded his arms. “Okay, that was just overkill.”

“Now we’re good.” Vicki smiled. “So let’s talk. You’re quite a legend around here. People have a lot of theories about you. I’ve got some questions.”

“Great, me too! For example: why are you doing this?”

“You’re in no position to demand anything.”

“Not making demands, just asking questions.” He almost sounded at ease as he edged closer to Vicki. “C’mon, I’m curious, you’re curious. We can work something out.” He raised his palms like he was offering something irresistible. “One for one?”

Vicki’s lip twitched in irritation, but she nodded in acquiescence. “Fine. But I’m going first.” Once Rhys gestured for her to continue, she asked, “Why did you crash Helios? And don’t bullshit me.”

Though she couldn’t see his face, Fiona saw the tension work its way through Rhys’ posture, a rock hurled into a calm lake.

It was a second before he answered. “We were trying to leave. The station was on lockdown. I went to the control core so I could open the hangar and we could get our ship out. Jack’s AI found me there and I…” He paused and then shrugged. “I wanted to get away from him.”

“So the rest of us were collateral damage,” said Vicki.

Rhys ducked his head and said nothing.

Fiona looked past him, eyes narrowed at Vicki. “What about you? You’ve got your own settlement, don’t you? Why start a fight here?”

“Because Helios is a wealth of resources being wasted by cowardly leadership with no idea what it’s got or how to use it.” She gestured to the massive structure around her. “This place could be so much more than they’ve let it be.”

“Yeah, never heard that before,” Fiona muttered.

“Seems to be doing pretty well to me,” said Rhys, jumping back into the driver’s seat to try and steer the conversation back to safety. “Y’know. Considering the, uh, neighbourhood.”

“What would you know?” Vicki snapped, her glare directed at him once more. “You disappeared years ago.” She tilted her head, taken by the new line of inquiry. “People have all sorts of theories. So what’s the truth? Where have you been?”

“In the vault. Sort of. We—” He gestured behind himself to Fiona “—went in together, touched the big glowing chest, and…” He snapped the fingers on his left hand. “Poof. Express ticket to the future. Eridians, am I right?”

Vicki said nothing.

He cleared his throat. “All in all, total rip-off.” He pointed two thumbs down. “Zero stars out of five for the Vault of the Traveler. Would not go again, would not recommend to a friend.” His grin was cheesy. “At least I look good for my age.”

Vicki didn’t laugh.

Rhys cleared his throat. “Okay, my turn. Lou said people are barricaded in the supply wing. Are they okay?”

Vicki gave her answer some consideration. “They won’t go hungry. But I think they’ll be more cooperative when they realize they don’t have a water supply.”

“You—you cut off their water?” Rhys asked. “Did they barricade themselves, or did you—”

“Uh-uh.” Vicki waved one chastising finger. “My turn. What are you doing here?”

“I heard what was going on. I wanted to help.”

“Help the people?” She raised an eyebrow. “Or help Vaughn take control again? You’re old friends, aren’t you? Or you used to be.”

“I…” He wasn’t wrongfooted for long. “I don’t really think of it as an either-or situation.”

“Liar,” said Vicki.

“I’m not lying! I’m—”

The muzzle of Vicki’s own gun poked out from the panel in the door, pointed at Rhys.

“—okay, yes, I am here to help Vaughn, but it’s not about power.”

“Liar.”

“It’s not! He’s worried about the people here, and so I am. And not just his people, I don’t want to see anyone get—”

Vicki cut him off with a sharp laugh.

“Hurt?” Her simpering tone was mocking. “You don’t want to see anyone get hurt? You care about the people here? You’re worried about what I might do to them?” All the mirth in her expression evaporated, replaced by a dangerous glint in her eyes. “You didn’t care when you knocked Helios out of the sky with all of us on it.”

“I…” Rhys’ posture wavered like he’d received a physical blow. “Um…”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Hey, here’s an idea: maybe don’t preach about innocent lives when you’re the one running a violent coup.”

“This doesn’t concern you,” Vicki snapped at her. She focused on Rhys, and, sensing a weak spot, she dug in. “Have you ever even thought about all the people you killed? The lives you ruined?”

“Yes.” Rhys’ voice was quiet but honest. “I did. I still do. That’s why I wanna help; I owe it to all of you.”

Vicki scoffed.

“I mean it,” Rhys continued. “Look, I was Hyperion too. I get it. It—it gets inside your head, you start thinking about other people like—like tools, or obstacles, between you and the next promotion, the nicer office, the better salary. But I never would’ve survived my first day on Pandora if I hadn’t been lucky enough to find people who could watch my back. Pandora is so much better—life is so much better—when you have a team. Helios’ resources aren’t its food and its ECHOnet connection, it’s the people.”

Vicki’s response was slow, an inscrutable expression that gave way slowly to a sneer. “Don’t tell me how to survive Pandora. You trapped us here and then you disappeared, left us to our own devices.”

Lou fidgeted nervously from her post. “Hey, uhh, Vicki?”

“Not now, Lou,” said Vicki.

“I hate to interrupt—”

“Then don’t,” Vicki growled impatiently. She hadn’t looked away from Rhys. “Some people think you’re a hero, that destroying Helios was some grand act of liberation. They’re the same people who lined up behind Handsome Jack. Lemmings looking for a nice cliff, duped into following someone who tells them to fear guns on a planet that uses them as currency. But I’m not stupid. I’m not you or Vaughn. I know what this place can be, I’m not afraid of its potential.”

“Oh, please,” Fiona groaned, tossing her head back in exasperation. “Listen to yourself. You think you’re tough shit because you’ve had to rough it on Pandora in a big gated community and you’re mad because, what, you had a curfew? I’ve lived on Pandora longer than any of you, and Rhys is right. Trust me, life around here gets a lot easier when you start making more friends than enemies.”

The venom in Vicki’s eyes was unmistakable as she looked to Fiona. “You’re not one of us. You shouldn’t even be here.”

“Don’t really wanna be here either, but you dragged my family into it, so here we are.”

Rhys turned at that, sending Fiona a fond smile that felt totally out of place for the atmosphere—and then his brow furrowed, his attention shifting to something beyond her.

“Vicki,” Lou tried again, “I really think you should—”

“Shut up, Lou!” Vicki yelled. Whatever cool composure she’d had earlier was disintegrating, frustration and anger skimming to the surface. “All right, enough of this. There’s work to do here. Sorry, you two are old news.”

Like a premonition, Fiona saw what was about to happen a second before it did. Vicki reaching to cock her gun—

Fiona drew her derringer faster. “Rhys, get down—”

He dropped to a crouch before she’d finished speaking, his arms over his head as Fiona fired off her corrosive bullet.

Vicki hissed in anger as the acid ate through the muzzle of her gun. “Lou! Do something!”

A shot from Lou’s sniper hit Fiona in the head, but her shield absorbed the impact, pulsing uncomfortably around her. Fiona fired the shock bullet from her derringer in return.

Ducking for cover threw off Lou’s next shot. Her bullet hit the ground a foot from Rhys’ head and he yelled; Fiona fired her last round in Lou’s direction as she sprinted towards him, reaching down to haul him to his feet.

“Time to go.” This was bad. He was defenseless, her shield could absorb a couple more shots at most—

Rhys grabbed her by the wrist and pulled, hard, until she toppled onto her front beside him.

“What are you—”

“Get down!”

A red blur sped overhead. Vicki screamed. With a horrible metal clang, something collided with the gate, crushing Vicki’s gun and impaling itself in the panel where she stood. Laying on the dirt, Fiona craned her neck to see what it was.

Athena’s shield.

“Uh,” said Fiona.

Anything more eloquent would’ve been drowned out by the sound of a technical’s engine and the loud rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire that followed, focused up on the sniper’s nest. Lou disappeared, seeking shelter.

Fiona craned her neck the other way. Janey Springs sat determined in the driver’s seat, her wife hanging off the side. Perched in the gunner seat overhead, August shot cover fire at the sniper’s nest.

“Uh?” Fiona repeated.

“Time to go!” Rhys sprang to his feet and yanked Fiona up by her elbow.

Janey skidded to a stop in front of them. “Need to catch a ride?” she called over August’s gunfire. “Ha. Get it?” As the two of them climbed into the back, she added, “Thought you might need help.”

Help. Springs. Sasha’s fragmented ECHO call ran through Fiona’s mind as she reloaded her derringer. “Gotta say, your timing is impeccable.”

“Yeah,” Rhys agreed breathlessly. He stared up at August in particular wonder. “Thanks.”

August gave a jerky one-shouldered shrug and kept laying cover-fire.

“Janey!” called Athena.

The one-word instruction must have been sufficient, because Janey called, “On it!” and hit the gas again. She drove toward the gate, then swerved to bring the car alongside it—close enough for Athena to reach out and dislodge her shield from the gate.

Rhys all but collapsed next to Fiona in the bed of the truck. “That... definitely didn’t go as well as I hoped.”

Fiona snorted in agreement. “Yeah, who knew Hyperion’s full of self-important pricks?”

But Athena shook her head as she climbed into the truck with them, her mouth a determined line. “You’re both still alive. By my count, that’s pretty good.”

“Yeah…” Overhead, August stopped firing, though he kept the gun trained towards Helios. “We might wanna get outta here before someone changes that.”

“Good plan,” said Janey. “Hold tight!”

The warning came too quickly, and the sudden acceleration sent Fiona colliding with Rhys. Only Athena stayed planted solid, Aspis back on her arm, shielding all three of them as they sped away from Helios.

Notes:

So I know this took WAY longer than I ever anticipated. My bad. There are two main reasons, the first being that winter blues hit me like a truck in November, and the second being that this entire 10k chapter is comprised of scenes I never outlined for at all, that I realized I needed while I was writing them. It be like that sometimes.

I come bearing a few gifts, though, besides the chapter:

1. This amazing piece I commissioned of Sasha & Fiona's fight over in chapter two:

You can see it in its full-sized glory over on artist @washingtubb's Tumblr.

2. You'll see this is part of a series! I wrote and published a companion one-shot that mostly covers Sasha's time during the twelve year absence. It's called Time Lapse. Spoilers through chapter 10.

3. If anyone's interested, I have a big ol' Spotify playlist for this fic. (It's pretty Rhys/Sasha heavy because as it turns out, much easier to find sad love songs than to find songs about your sister and/or bestie disappearing for twelve years.)

If you're still here, sorry about the delay, and I'd really love to hear from you! Leave a comment or say hello on Tumblr: @oodlyenough. I post updates there sometimes about how the next chapter's going and sometimes sneak peaks.

Chapter 12

Summary:

A fetch quest, an escort mission and a bunch of shootouts.

Notes:

This chapter really makes use of the #Canon Typical Violence tag. Nothing more than you'd seen in a Borderlands game, but, well, probably with more emotion behind in than most of the pew pew...

This is I think the longest I've ever taken to edit a chapter... a full two weeks and I could probably noodle at it indefinitely, so I'm just gonna take the plunge and post. Thanks to @Annalytic for giving it a read and helping me trim some fat.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Vaughn tapped a rhythm on the side of the truck, a drumline to the anxiety Sasha knew they shared. The panicked what-ifs running laps in her brain must be haunting his as well.

Send Rhys and Fiona off on their own. Wait for them to come back. Sasha’s empty stomach roiled.

Had she and Vaughn lost their minds?

When Janey’s truck appeared on the horizon, she curled her hand around his arm and squeezed, and his drumming stopped—though due to surprise or pain, she neither knew nor cared. Only as Janey pulled close enough for a headcount did Sasha finally exhale.

“Oh, thank God,” muttered Vaughn.

Crisis averted. Temporarily.

Sasha’s nails left little crescent moon marks on his arm when she finally let go.

“So, the good news is we survived.” Fiona brushed dirt from her new coat as she climbed out of Janey’s truck.

Rhys hopped down next to her. He was covered in dirt, too. “Bad news is Vicki, like, super hates me.”

Up in the gunner seat, August tried to smother his laugh with a cough.

“Join the club.” Though Vaughn sounded grim, Sasha wondered if he, too, was privately relieved this phase of the plan was over.

“We did get some intel, though.” Fiona folded her arms and leaned against the side of the vehicle. “Your people are stuck in the supply room. Vicki’s cut off their water, but it sounds like they’re safe.”

“For now.” Athena, ever the optimist. Armoured up, with her shield on her back and her sword in its hilt, she looked in her element. Not for the first time, Sasha was glad they were on the same side.

“...Not just that.” Rhys cast a nervous sidelong glance at Athena. “They’ve got a signal jammer going. That’s why you can’t contact anyone by ECHO.”

“Mixed bag,” Sasha reasoned. “We can’t call anyone, but—”

“Neither can they,” finished Vaughn. He scratched his beard in contemplation. “If Vicki’s shut the water off, they’ve probably taken control of the computer system running the base. It’s centralized. They can redirect power, barricade entire sections…” He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “I knew our firewalls needed work.”

“I can fix it,” said Rhys. When several skeptical faces turned in his direction, he straightened his shoulders, undaunted. “But my cybernetics don’t work—”

Vaughn’s forehead scrunched as he looked up from his hands. “They don’t?”

“—so I can’t do it remotely. I have to be there.”

Nerves reignited, Sasha thought of the busted radio in her caravan. Rhys must have known what she was thinking, because he caught her eye for a guilty second before looking away again.

Oblivious to her sister’s worry, Fiona said, “That’s where we go, then. Take back nerd central.”

“Not all of us.” Athena’s gaze was trained on Helios as she spoke, no doubt planning the ambush while she spoke. “They’ve left themselves splintered with that signal jammer. Be a waste not to take advantage of that.”

Fiona nodded, apparently still eager to follow Athena’s lead years later. “Right. Some of us go for the computers, some of us go for that signal jammer—”

“Oooh, can that be me?” Janey’s cheery tone matched the sparkle in her eyes as she hopped out of the driver’s seat. “Love to get my hands on one of those. They sell for a pretty penny.”

That broke Athena’s attention away from Helios. “I thought you were staying with the car.”

Janey folded her arms, her smile turning defiant. “I didn’t come all the way here just to be a getaway driver. If you’re allowed to risk your neck—”

Athena capitulated quickly, a grudging shrug. “Fine. That leaves one more group, to go after—”

“Vicki,” Vaughn finished. “That should probably be me.”

“I got your back.” Fiona nodded seriously in his direction.

Vaughn smiled.

“I’ll go with Rhys.” Sasha ignored their various stares. “I know where the control centre is, and he’ll need a bodyguard.”

Besides, keeping him in her sight might mitigate the anxiety pacing her brain like a hungry skag—but they didn’t need to know that bit.

Rhys was properly smug about the idea. He wiggled his eyebrows. “Bodyguard, huh?”

Fiona made a disgruntled noise to match the look on August’s face, but Janey lit up like a Torgue grenade and nudged Athena as if to say are you hearing this? Sasha’s cheeks grew warm.

But Athena was focused, watching Helios like a predator ready to strike. “That leaves me and August. We should…”

Her voice trailed off as she wrestled with the same arithmetic as the rest of them: how to best complete the mission without losing anyone she loved.

Janey spared her the decision. “You should go with Vaughn and Fiona.” She pressed a kiss to Athena’s downturned mouth. “They’ll need the muscle.” Facing August, she nudged him with her elbow. “You’ll keep me company, right, big guy?”

With the enthusiasm of someone complimenting the chef on a meal they hated, August said, “...Sure.”

“See?” Janey beamed. “Settled.”

In any other scenario, Sasha would have laughed at the look on August’s face. He folded his arms, an attempt to look cool and unbothered. “One question: how the hell do we get inside?”


The answer to August’s question was “explosions”.

Two, to be precise.

The first, orchestrated by Rhys and Sasha, involved sacrificing Vaughn’s technical with the missing wing mirror. Sasha cut the brakes and sabotaged the fuel tank. Rhys dropped the heaviest rock his cybernetic arm could lift onto the accelerator. Loaded with as many grenades as the team could spare, it hurtled towards the Helios gate while Sasha and Rhys ran for cover. They barely made it behind the rock outcropping, collapsing onto the dusty ground with heaving chests, when the huge chain reaction of booms announced their successful distraction.

On the other side of Helios, a second, much smaller explosion took place, focused on a section of the wall still damaged from a raid two months earlier.

“We had a lot going on,” said Vaughn, a justification no one had asked for.

One well-placed grenade later, a three-foot section of the wall was concave. Vaughn reached for a second grenade to finish the job, but Athena stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“I got it.” She sounded almost playful as she pulled back her arm and hurled her shield at the dent.

What remained crumbled on impact.

“Damn,” said August, ever a man of few words.

“Oooh, nice arm, hon,” cooed Janey.

Fiona winked, clapping Vaughn on the shoulder. “Might not wanna put off fixing it this time.”

Athena was the first to step through the hole she’d created, sword and shield at the ready. Winner of a silent war of wills with Vaughn, Fiona brought up the rear, pistol at the ready. By the time her eyes had adjusted to the new light, there was a grim look on Vaughn’s face and two bodies at Athena’s feet in an otherwise-quiet hallway.

Fiona’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh. Starting to think we brought a bazooka to a knife fight.”

The satisfied glint in Athena’s eyes undermined her modest shrug. “I’m a little rusty.”

“Jammer’s probably somewhere high,” said Janey. “Better signal coverage. This place got a tower or something?”

In unison, the four of them turned to Vaughn—but he was preoccupied, still staring at one of the bodies by Athena’s feet.

Fiona elbowed his shoulder. “Hey. High places?”

Vaughn jumped, as though he was surprised the rest of them were still there.

“Oh… yeah. There’s a radio tower in the east wing.” He pointed down the hall. “First left, and then the third corridor on the right, and then follow that hallway until you get to the part of the wall that’s half-painted, there’s a set of double doors on the left, and then the sixth building on the right—”

“Right, right, thanks, I’m sure we’ll find it.” Janey nodded with almost enough enthusiasm to cancel out the rudeness of interrupting. She kissed Athena’s cheek. “Go easy on ‘em, hon.”

Athena’s cool poker face cracked into a tiny smile. “No.” Then, serious enough to make Fiona feel like an intruder, she added, “Love you.”

“Love you too.” Janey replied with the ease of someone who’d had those same words roll off her tongue countless times before; a distant part of Fiona wondered if she’d ever know how that felt. Beckoning August to follow her, Janey started down the hall. “Not scared of heights, are you, mate?”

August’s answering scoff was too defensive to be convincing.

Fiona smirked at his back, then shook herself to refocus. “We should keep moving. Sasha’s distraction won’t last long once they realize what’s going on. If we’re lucky, Vicki thinks we’re still storming the gates, and that’s where she’ll be.”

“Agreed.” With some reluctance, Athena turned away from her wife’s retreating form and led them down the corridor, shield at the ready. “Stay behind me.”

“Like I was planning anything else,” Fiona joked—but Vaughn, a few paces behind, didn’t return the smile. As she stepped over the bodies Athena had dispatched so easily, Fiona raised an eyebrow. “So… what exactly have you been doing the past decade anyway?”

Athena shot her sharp look. “We should keep quiet. Element of surprise is still our best weapon.”

Fiona’s best okay, mom face met an unappreciative audience.

Energy thrumming in her veins, she flicked through each of the elemental chambers on her gun. She remembered traipsing around the Atlas facility in search of Gortys’ chassis, how the anxiety and adrenaline had mixed together into an addictive substance. She’d understood then, for the first time, how people like Athena lived the lives they did. She’d wanted it for herself.

Was it danger itself, or the mere illusion of importance she craved? What was any Vault Hunter after, really?

They turned a corner to find a handful of bodies crumpled where they’d fallen, indistinguishable to Fiona as friend or foe. When she saw Vaughn staring again, she asked, “Yours or theirs?”

But he shook his head. “Does it matter? They all lived here once.”

“You can’t control what other people do,” Fiona told him. “You’re not responsible for them.”

Vaughn said nothing, still staring at the body closest to his feet.

“When we find this Vicki,” said Athena, her voice low, “what do we do?”

Both women turned to Vaughn.

“I don’t know.” He hadn’t looked up.

Fiona expected a remark on how there was only one obvious choice—but instead Athena frowned, and turned to continue down the hall. “Better start thinking about it.”


Each passing second felt like a century as Rhys and Sasha crouched behind a boulder together—and not in any of the romantic, time-freezing ways he might have liked. Anticipation had him on high alert, just as it had when they’d flown the caravan to Helios, or when he’d sat in the waiting room for his first elective surgeries. His brain, struggling to juggle too many anxieties at once, had settled on going blank. Snow on a TV screen.

Sasha’s hand clamped down on his jittery knee. “Relax.”

“Sorry.” He’d been unaware his leg was even bouncing. But Sasha’s hand stayed in place, grip too tight to be mistaken for the sign of affection he was hoping for. “Are you okay?”

A muscle in her jaw clenched. Rhys found it hard to believe a former con artist could think it passed for a smile.

“I’m going to check one last time, and then we should head in,” she said, sidestepping his question entirely. “Don’t move unless I say so. Okay?”

“Uh… sure.”

Releasing his knee in exchange for her Maliwan sniper, she set herself up against the boulder boulder protecting them.

Determination etched lines in her forehead. Not too long ago—and not too far from here—she’d had her gun trained on him. Selfishly, Rhys wondered what she’d felt then, staring down the sight, that first instinctive flare of emotion before reason and heartbreak took over. Disbelief? Excitement? Joy? Fury?

“Stop staring at me,” Sasha grumbled. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh! Uh, yeah, yeah, sorry. Happy… shooting.”

Sasha only looked more annoyed.

With nothing else to do, he watched the sun reflect off his cybernetic hand. Hacking into Helios’ systems without any of the bonuses he was used to would be time consuming, but it was doable. He’d found his way around Atlas one-armed and one-eyed, after all. And, okay, sure, at the time all he’d had to focus on was finding painkillers and building new cybernetics, and true, there’d been no race against the clock, no hostile armed forces lurking around, and yeah, the only life on the line then had been his own, negligible in value as it was—

Bam!

The sound of Sasha’s shot was like a punch to his eardrum. Rhys yelped, clapping his hands over his ears just in time for Sasha to fire again.

“Stay here until I signal for you.” Her words were barely audible over the ringing in his ears.

“What? Where are—”

But she ran towards Helios before he could question her.

Dazed, Rhys peeked around the rock and watched her disappear through the hole the others had left. Fear caught up with him the second she was out of sight. What kind of useless back-up was he? One of the others should have come with them. If she got into trouble—if she needed help—

Sasha reappeared, sticking her head and her arm out the hole in order to beckon him forward. “Rhys!”

He scrambled to meet her inside so quickly he almost tripped over the body in the entrance.

“Most of this looks like Athena’s handiwork.” Sasha watched him take a wide step around a pool of blood. “They’ll have headed to the front. We should be quick. I think we want to head south, which is…” She paused. “Rhys?”

“That’s Jerry.” His hand twitched towards the body at his feet, a half-hearted point. “He used to work in procurement.”

The bullethole in the body’s neck was surrounded by burnt flesh. Sasha’s incendiary sniper.

It took Sasha a moment to answer. When she spoke, it was measured and careful. “I forget you used to know these people.”

Rhys shook his head. “Not well.” Still, he stared at the hole in Jerry’s neck and felt a duty to explain. “His cubicle was next to Yvette’s. She complained that his breakfast sandwiches stank. Said it made the whole room reek.”

Now, the smell of burnt flesh made Rhys’ stomach churn. Yvette would’ve had something to say about that.

Sasha watched him curiously, trying to suss out the right response. “Are you hoping I’ll say I’m sorry?”

“No.” He hadn’t thought of Jerry in years; Yvette moved offices, and Jerry’s impolite sandwich choices fell out of conversation. “It’s just… weird, you know? You kinda know someone and then one day you’re wiping their blood off your shoes.”

“I get it,” she said, in a tone that left Rhys wondering how many Jerrys she’d encountered after nearly four decades on Pandora. She looked down the hall in both directions, orienting herself. “Come on. Vaughn’s group will have headed to the front. We wanna go this way.”

Rifle in both hands, she motioned for him to follow. After one last frown in Jerry’s direction, Rhys did.

“Stay close to me,” she repeated. (Rhys, guilty of having dawdled, took a few quick steps to catch up.) “And do what I say. Okay? I’ve done this before.”

“The sneaking around or the bodyguard part?”

The admission was stiff, almost embarrassed. “The… latter.”

“Wait, seriously?” Rhys’ face lit up. “Tell me everything.”

“Guy wanted some information off an old Dahl computer, but the site was contested territory between these two bandit clans. Paid me to usher him through.”

“Ooooh, a professional.” His mind crafted a distracting image of Sasha in a suit and dark sunglasses, stoically whispering into an earpiece. He leaned forward to grin obnoxiously in her face. “So what do I owe? What’s your hourly rate?”

“He died. Wouldn’t listen to me. Kept wandering off on his own, doubling back into danger when he thought he saw something interesting. Walked into a grenade.”

Rhys’ grin fell away, and he straightened up. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Taught me to always take payment up front.”

“I, uh, wouldn’t recommend putting that on your resume.” He rubbed his neck, looking nervously behind them. “Well, I’ll do my level best to not get exploded.”

“You’d better.”

She led them down corridors that gave Rhys deja-vu he didn’t trust. Was this one of places Vaughn had shown him on that whirlwind tour after the Vault? Somewhere he’d wandered in the day before the Traveler fight, practically giddy with disbelief that his friends were still alive—that they were still his friends at all? Or was this a hallway he’d walked a lifetime ago, when the space station was still in orbit and his main concern was getting to the next rung on the corporate ladder?

Sasha kept a slow but determined pace, finger near the trigger, scanning constantly from left to right. The methodical way she moved recalled Athena. Rhys wondered how much time she’d spent with that half of the Springs household.

“How confident are you about this?” She sidestepped a fallen body without so much as a downward glance. “Hacking into the system, I mean.”

Rhys laughed his best job-interview laugh. “Hey, how hard can it be?”

“I’m serious. I’d like to know exactly how stupid what we’re doing is.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But—no offense—even twelve years behind I probably still stand a better chance than the rest of you.”

Sasha’s head tilted, a silent can’t argue with that.

“Besides.” He puffed himself up with empty bravado. “I installed my own eye one-handed. Everything else is a cakewalk, right?”

He didn’t expect that to be what broke through Sasha’s intense focus. For the first time since they’d started walking, she tore her eyes away from routine surveillance in order to stare at him incredulously.

“You did what? How?” She turned to scrutinize him in both horror and awe. “What happened, anyway? You never said.”

Searching for the appropriate summary of an event he’d rather never think about, Rhys rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from her narrowed eyes. “Oh, ummm, yeah, heh, about that. I…”

As luck would have it, what he saw spared him from having to answer: over Sasha’s head, he spotted movement in the corridor for the first time. Someone rounded the corner, dishevelled and armed. Rhys gawped in surprise. He’d just about forgotten there were other people in this compound.

The lag in his brain lasted only a split second. He shouted “Sasha, look—!” right as the person at the end of the hall raised their shotgun.

Sasha fired as she turned, faster than he could’ve expected—but shooting blindly from the hip took a toll on her accuracy, and the bullet lodged itself into the wall.

The person down the hall fired too. The shotgun blast hit Sasha dead-on and Rhys’ heart leapt into his throat, but her shield absorbed it all. She raised her sniper properly, taking an extra second to stare down the scope while the other person reloaded.

Sasha was quicker on the draw. Her bullet nicked her opponent’s shoulder with enough impact was enough to disrupt their aim. Their shot fired wide, missing Sasha entirely and—

Burning pain erupted on Rhys’ bicep, and he yelled. Instinct had him grab the injury, only—no, actually, that hurt very much too—

“Rhys?” Alarmed by his cry of pain, Sasha’s head whipped in his direction with an expression both horrified and accusatory. “Wha—where’s your shield?!”

No time to explain. The person down the hall repositioned their gun. Rhys grabbed Sasha around the waist and brought them both tumbling to the floor. A third shot echoed over their heads.

“Where the hell are you people coming from?” Taking advantage of their prone position, the person rushed forward, loading another round of shells into the shotgun.

Sasha fired from the ground, but the angle was bad. The ceiling took the hit while she scrambled to reload.

“Seriously,” the person continued, “thought you were all cowering with the food.”

They shot again. Sasha’s shield took the worst of it, but the impact knocked her back against Rhys.

The bullets she was loading into her chamber clattered on the ground and rolled out of reach. “Shit, shit,” she muttered.

The person loomed overhead. The barrel of the shotgun pointed at them again, and this time there was nowhere to move. A desperate wish crossed Rhys’ mind like a prayer—had Sasha’s shield had time to recharge?—and he gripped her tighter as he braced for a bang.

And then the person paused. They lowered the barrel just slightly, tilting their head around it to stare at Rhys with narrowed eyes. “Wait, why do you look like—”

Bang!

Sasha’s bullet, aimed from below, ripped through their chin and out the top of their skull. For a cartoonish second, the body maintained its balance, then fell into a heap, shotgun and all.

Rhys’ ears were ringing again, but it was nothing over the thump of his own heartbeat. Frozen in place, he watched the wisp of smoke coming off the incendiary shot, Sasha’s back against his chest like a grounding line.

Then she ripped herself out of his arms to kneel overtop of him, furious. “What the hell, Rhys?!”

“I… huh?”

“Where the hell is your shield?”

“Oh… yeah.” He pushed himself up on his cybernetic elbow, wincing. Now that the threat of imminent death had abated, the pain in his left arm was harder to ignore. “Vicki made me take it off earlier, and then she shot it.” Off Sasha’s look, he clarified, “It was a negotiation tactic!”

Negotiation tac—?!” She cut herself off with an aggravated noise, then reached gingerly for his arm. “You got shot.”

“Yeah I… guess I did.” Following her gaze, Rhys sat up to look at his own wound for the first time. Part of his sleeve was gone, the exposed skin oozing blood that trickled down the rest of his arm. “That’s like a Pandoran rite of passage, right?”

He poked the area with a curious finger and, predictably, hissed in pain. Sasha slapped his hand away.

“Let me.” She shooed him back to rest against the wall.

Despite offering healthcare, she sounded livid. Commenting on her bedside manner seemed like a one-way ticket to a painful doghouse, so he did as he was told without argument. Carefully, she ripped the sleeve apart further—Rhys couldn’t help a mournful pout—and examined the wound closely.

“So, what do you think, doc?” he asked, as Sasha all but crawled into his lap to get a good look. “Two robot arms in my future?”

Sasha glared. His cheesy smile vanished.

“Doesn’t look too deep,” she said, once he’d been properly chastised. “How does it feel?”

“Well, y’know, on the pain scale it’d be the little smiley face that isn’t so smiley.”

Sasha wasn’t so smiley either. “I need to clean it.” She spared him a sympathetic frown, fingers hovering above the wound. “It’s gonna suck.”

“Actually I’ve got quite a high pain tol—owww, ooookay, jeeze, you weren’t kidding.”

He scrunched up his face and clenched his metal fist in an effort not to squirm while she pulled scraps of his shirt out of the wound. The little smiley on the pain scale was definitely frowning now.

Still, by the time it was over, Rhys had squeaked in discomfort only twice—a general win for his dignity, even if his eyes were watery.

“I still need to rinse it.” With bloodied fingers, she grabbed the flask strapped to her arm and twisted off the top.

Rhys braced for the sting of alcohol, but when Sasha tilted her flask water poured out. It ran down his arm, soaking the cuff of his shirt. He wrinkled his nose again, this time from disgust rather than pain. What a waste of good clothes.

And then she did something that stunned him—she untied the handkerchief from around her neck and wrapped it tight around his arm.

“Best I can do right now,” she told him, matter-of-fact but for the extra colour in her cheeks.

“I… uh… thanks,” Rhys managed, distracted by the gravity of the gesture. How long had it been since she took it off in public?

Sasha avoided his eyes as she replaced her flask. “We’ll find you a real bandage later.”

Maybe she didn’t want to dwell on it. He decided to play along.

“So do I get a lollipop?” He grinned. “Or you could try kissing it bet—”

Her glare was so fierce his voice turned to a squeak before he’d finished. “Is this all a joke to you?”

‘Wh—what? No, I—I was just trying to—”

“A few more inches and that bullet hits you in the heart. Or the head. You wind up like that.” She swung her arm to the corpse behind them and the spray of blood decorating the wall. “Or like Jerry. Is that what you want?”

“No! No, come on, of course not.”

“Why the hell did you let me bring you in here without a shield?”

“I told you, Vicki—”

“No, you didn’t tell me, that’s the problem.” Anger made her voice shake. Her fingers trembled as she unclipped her own shield and attached it to his belt.

“Whoa, hey, I can’t—”

“Don’t argue with me,” she snapped.

When she used that tone of voice, Rhys had a hard time imagining anyone who would be brave enough to do so. “I’m just—I’m—what about you?”

“I’ll be fine. I have a gun.” Shield attached, she stood up and brushed her bloodied hands on the sash she wore around her waist. “You are a walking six foot tall target.”

“I…” The idea of Sasha walking through Helios unprotected made him nauseous, but the look on her face was uncompromising. “Sasha…”

“This is not a debate!” As her temper flared, her eyes were wide and vulnerable, and Rhys saw his own fear reflected back at him. “I cannot watch you die.”

The handkerchief tied around his arm left her scar on full display.

Twelve years. He owed her.

“Okay,” he said, resigned to a deep state of panic.

Sasha nodded her appreciation, but it took a few more seconds before she regained control, Sniper rifle tucked under one arm, she held out her hand and helped Rhys to his feet. “Control room’s this way.”


They hadn’t found Vicki yet.

They had stumbled across a number of the emancipated Children of Helios, most dispatched so quickly by Athena that Fiona had begun to feel like she might be more useful as a cheerleader. It wasn’t that Fiona relished violence—she’d never even shared Sasha’s passion for weaponry. But she was beginning to wonder if they’d broken into unbalanced teams. Athena was a one-woman army. The rest of them, seasoned Pandorans or not, were amateurs at best, and Rhys—well, Sasha was basically on her own, wasn’t she?

She’ll be used to that by now, whispered a dark voice in Fiona’s head she usually ignored. Sasha could take care of herself. Wasn’t that the whole point, the lesson Fiona kept refusing to learn?

Meanwhile, veteran bandit Vaughn trailed behind and kept quiet. Fiona wasn’t sure he’d fired his weapons once.

Athena motioned for them to stop as they approached a room with its door ajar. The voices inside were unfamiliar to Fiona—not a good sign, as far as their manhunt went—but when Athena kicked the door open and raised her shield in defense, a firefight erupted.

There were more than half a dozen of Vicki’s people inside. Athena dealt with two of them before Fiona even made it into the room.

Fiona lined up her corrosive round at one woman’s armour, but sustained fire from a Maliwan SMG sent her shield on the fritz and she was forced to kick over a desk for shelter while she waited for it to recharge.

From her hiding spot, she watched Athena wield her sword against four people at once. Two met the business end of it, but the third man ducked out of the way, quick enough to get behind Athena while she was preoccupied with the fourth, and—

“Hey, jackass, over here!”

Fiona fired her shock bullet. It glanced off the man’s shield, but that was enough to catch his attention. As he spun to face Fiona she fired again, her incendiary bullet burning a hole in his shoulder. With an enraged snarl, he lifted his old Hyperion gun—

Fiona fumbled for her Jakobs instead. Why wasn’t her shield recharged yet? Goddamn Pangolin—

Athena ran her sword through his chest.

“Thanks,” she said, simple but effective praise as she gripped the man’s shoulders to pull her sword back out again. “And—heads up.”

Fiona barely had time to wonder what she meant before the Maliwan SMG and the woman wielding it appeared over the top of the desk Fiona was using for cover.

Fiona kicked the desk forward as hard as she could. It took out the woman’s legs and she collapsed across it with a string of profanity. Kicking the SMG out of her hands, Fiona made to stand, but the woman caught her ankles and tugged. Fiona fell flat on her back, and while she was dazed, the woman grabbed her by the coat and hauled her closer.

Fiona blocked a punch with her forearm. “Hey, watch it! These clothes were really expensive.”

“Who the hell even are you people?” This time her fist connected with Fiona’s stomach. “Why are you here?”

“Kinda wondering that myself right now,” Fiona grit out.

She swung a blind right hook and her knuckles glanced off the woman’s cheek. She lowered her left arm to reach for her Jakobs, but the woman—and the desk—collapsed on top of her, smacking her in the forehead and pinning her to the floor.

“Oh, come on,” Fiona groaned.

Her fingers brushed the hilt of her pistol right as the woman slammed the desk into Fiona’s face again. Nose throbbing, Fiona tried to wriggle into a better position—to get her arms up from her sides, to grab the Jakobs, to move her head before she got a concussion, get out from under the crushing weight, but she could barely move, and by God was she going to write Pangolin a very strongly worded letter about—

The weight on top of her lifted up, so sudden it took her brain a second to catch up and shove the desk away. Head still smarting, Fiona pushed herself up to take stock of the room. Vaughn stood over the woman she’d been fighting, his gun drawn.

“Oh please, you’re gonna shoot me?” The woman on the ground smirked at him. “How’s that no guns rule working out for you?”

Vaughn didn’t answer. Nor did he shoot.

“You’re such a hypocrite, this is why—”

Fiona watched the woman’s hand inching closer to the discarded SMG—

Athena’s Aspis slammed into the back of the woman’s head with a sickening crack, popping her skull open like a loot chest.

Only Vaughn and Athena were still standing in the carnage. In the silence that followed, Fiona’s shield gave a little beep as it recharged.

Fiona glared down at it as she wiped a trickle of blood from beneath her nose. “Gee, thanks,” she muttered. She pushed herself to her feet, waiting for her head to stop throbbing.

Athena retrieved her shield but stopped a foot away from Vaughn, eyes blazing more than they had been in battle. “What the hell are you doing?”

Startled, Vaughn looked up from the body at his feet. “Sorry?”

“You haven’t done anything this whole time.”

“What? I just helped Fiona—”

“You took your time helping Fiona, and you didn’t even pull the trigger. You haven’t fought anyone. You’ve been holding back.”

Vaughn glared. “Doesn’t seem like you need a whole lot of help killing everyone.” He gestured to the woman lying between them.

Athena stepped even closer, pulling her shield out of the body without breaking eye contact. “This is your fight. Whatever second thoughts you’re having—”

“I know these people, okay?” Vaughn spread his arms. “They’re not anonymous goons to me, I lived with them for years, I’ve eaten with them, I’ve—”

“Big deal. I knew the Atlas soldiers I worked with, too. They still sent me to kill my sister.” When Vaughn had no answer to that, she continued. “Your friends are risking their lives to help you right now.”

“I didn’t ask any of you for help! I wanted you all to stay behind, but—”

“Tough. We’re here now. Janey’s here to help you and you’re getting cold feet now? Do you wanna be a leader here or not?”

Vaughn shrank, suddenly reminiscent of the accountant she’d first met and nearly forgotten.

Having been on the receiving end of an Athena lecture herself, Fiona knew how it felt, and she grimaced in sympathy even as she found herself thinking Athena had a point. Helios wasn’t her home, or Athena’s. Sasha, Rhys, Janey, August—none of them were here for Helios.

Well. Maybe Rhys had his reasons.

Vaughn floundered for a second longer. “I…”

A buzz in Fiona’s ear drowned out whatever he was about to say. She reached her hand up to her Echo to fix it when Janey’s cheery voice came through, loud and clear.

“All right, how are we all doing? Anybody hurt?”

“Janey!” Athena’s whole posture changed. So this was a party line call, then. “You got the jammer?”

“Sure did,” said Janey. “Climbed the whole ruddy tower. Nice view up here! Long fall. I don’t envy the operator who took the quick way down.”

Fiona and Athena shared a mutual look of disgust.

“So, anyway, good news: we can talk, bad news: so can everyone else,” Janey continued. “And they definitely know we’re here. August and I just saw someone look up at us, make a face, and then skitter away, so…”

“I offered to go after them,” August interjected.

“Yeah, but I think we’re good,” said Janey. “Pretty defendable up here.” She paused. “Well. Guess it wasn’t for the first bloke. But there’s two of us, and August here is really good at shoving people.”

“We’re fine here.” Athena’s relief at hearing Janey was palpable in the way she moved. “No lead on Vicki yet though.”

“What about you two, Sasha?” Fiona followed Athena and Vaughn into the hallway. “How’s Rhys’ computer thingy going?”

No response.

Fiona waited a few seconds and then tried again. “Sasha? You good?”

More silence.

Fiona’s heart picked up its pace. She ignored the looks she saw Vaughn and Athena exchange. “Sasha—”

“We’re here.” Sasha’s voice came through, finally, strained and out of breath. “Rhys got shot—”

“Oh my god.” Vaughn’s voice had returned, horrified. “Is he all right?”

“—so I gave him my shield. We made it to the control room. Rhys is working on it.” There was a pause, and the sound of gunfire. “But they noticed.” More gunfire. It sounded closer this time. Was it Sasha firing, or Hyperion getting closer? “They’re, uh, keeping me busy.”

“We’ll be on our way,” said Athena.

Already sprinting down the hall, Fiona heard it in her echo.


“We’ve got a problem,” Sasha told Rhys, whispered in a brief respite from gunfire.

“Just the one?” Rhys called back. “I was counting at least a dozen.”

“I’m nearly out of ammo.” Three shots left. Enough for one person, maybe. If she got lucky. If their shield was low, or weak.

“...Okay, you’re right, that’s definitely problem number one.” Having otherwise done an admirable job at keeping calm while trying to code as he was shot at, Rhys now sounded nervous. “Y-you said the others were coming, right? So…. so we just need to—”

“Not get shot before then, yeah.” Loading her last three bullets, she set her sniper in place and took two deep breaths, flexing her fingers until they were steady. Nerves wouldn’t help anything. “You almost done?”

“It’s… coming. I think.” Not the most encouraging. “I’m almost in the water system! I’m… I… Okay, I think I just turned on the sprinklers somewhere. Er. Oops.”

“Just try not to get us wet, thanks.”

“Ah, don’t worry, the sprinklers in this room wouldn’t use water. Bad for the electronics. These ones probably release a fire-suppressing gas to displace the oxygen—it’s non-toxic. Uh, probably. Hopefully?”

Sasha clenched her jaw to hold back the more impatient things that came to mind. “Just… focus, would you?”

The one good thing about trying to hold onto the control room was that most people were scared of damaging the equipment. Sasha reckoned it was stopping anyone from lobbing a grenade, and even Rhys, giant target that he was, took fewer shots than she’d feared, lest a stray shot hit the console he was standing at.

The rest of it was a wash.

She’d blown down the door to get in, and that left them without a door to lock. The makeshift barricade they’d tossed together out of spare chairs and desks was being whittled to pieces. Without a shield, Sasha’s range was limited.

Now that the ECHOs were back online, it was only a matter of time before a few of Vicki’s people got organized. How close were Fiona and the others?

She peered down the scope, finger primed alongside the trigger. Three bullets. Better make each of them count. Last time she’d been counting bullets, she’d lost four to an invisible target, and then—

She reached to tug on her handkerchief and found nothing there. Right. Rhys’ arm. She let go of her neck and put her hand back on her gun. Deep breaths. Focus, Sasha.

She heard the footsteps in the hall first. Multiple people, from the sounds of it. Her heart leapt hopefully in her chest.

Two unfamiliar women appeared in the doorway, one so tall she had to stoop beneath it.

Shit.

Sasha’s first bullet got eaten by the tall one’s shield, as expected. Down one. She was about to fire the second, but she lost her clear shot as they entered the room. In the second it took her to adjust, the tall one opened fire in her direction, and Sasha was forced to duck for cover.

Shit, shit—

“I’d step away from that console if I were you, Rhys,” called one over the gunfire.

“H-hey, Vicki, look, see, I’m just trying to—”

A shotgun blast cut him off, followed by a yelp of fear, and then a second blast. Rhys dove for cover next to Sasha while his shield recharged.

“Just couldn’t stay out of it, could you? The ego. This has nothing to do with you, and here you are, dragging all your little friends around with you. But I guess collateral damage never bothered you very much.”

Vicki’s footsteps approached, slow and confident. The sustained fire had stopped, and Sasha frantically weighed her options. If she fired blind, she’d almost certainly waste precious ammo. If she tried to take a look, she’d most likely get her head blown off. Two bullets wouldn’t be enough to take out both of them.

And if she waited too long, let them get too close, none of it would matter.

“Y’know, I really feel like we got off on the wrong foot,” Rhys called. The salesman sheen in his voice was transparent. He looked at Sasha while he spoke. Wide-eyed. Scared.

Sasha held Rhys’ gaze, nodded, and then she rolled to the side, peeking out around the corner of the desk to land a second shot on the tall woman. It, too, got absorbed by the shield. One left…

Sasha squeezed the trigger. The last bullet ripped through the tall woman’s shield and lodged somewhere near her collarbone. The skin and the fabric of her shirt caught fire.

“Ohhhh damn that stings.” She dropped her gun to swat the fire out before it spread. “Aww, jeeze.”

The flash of triumph Sasha felt was interrupted by the pump of a shotgun. She looked up at the barrel of Vicki’s gun—

Rhys’ metal fist punched Vicki square in the face. She stumbled back, blood gushing from her nose. Her shot hit one of the computer banks behind Sasha, and it sparked.

“Careful,” said Rhys, “those are expensive.”

He reached for her gun, but Vicki was faster. She shot hit him in the chest, and the force of it knocked him back. His shield rippled to absorb it, and he ducked for cover again.

“Sorry,” he whispered to Sasha as he crouched down beside her, “that was as far as my plan extended.”

Sasha smiled grimly. She let go of her empty sniper to squeeze his hand.

“You should’ve stayed away,” Vicki snarled from above. “We don’t need you. We were better off with you gone.”

Sasha knew she ought to do something, even if all it did was buy Rhys a minute or two to make a break for it. Dying to protect others was the best Pandora would give you.

So why couldn’t she move?

The shotgun clicked as it was reloaded. Rhys put his arm around Sasha and pulled her close, and she let her eyes shut.

And then Vicki howled in pain.

Sasha’s head snapped up. Vicki staggered away, one hand twisting backwards to swipe at her back. As she turned around, unsuccessful, Sasha saw the hilt of a knife sticking out of one shoulder-blade.

“What the… fuck…?” Vicki complained. “Lou, get it out!”

“You’re supposed to leave it in, actually.” Fiona strolled in through the door, Jakobs pistol raised. “They say taking it out’s like being stabbed twice.”

“You again?” Vicki roared. She fired her shotgun at Fiona, whose shield shimmered with the impact, but the recoil hurt her injured shoulder and she doubled over. “Lou! Do something!”

“Oh, yeah, um, see, I would, but I’ve kinda got my own thing going on right now,” Lou protested. She was clutching her bleeding shoulder.

“And I’ll take that.” Fiona wrenched the shotgun out of Vicki’s hands with little resistance. She tossed it to the ground and Sasha dove for it. Relief at being armed again flooded her veins, and she sat up on her knees, ready to train the shotgun on Lou.

She needn’t have bothered. Athena and Vaughn entered the room behind Fiona. In a second Athena was crowding Lou against the wall, somehow managing to look intimidating even next to a woman twice her size. She brandished her sword.

“I wouldn’t get any ideas,” Athena warned.

“Oh, don’t worry, I am fresh out,” Lou assured her.

In spite of the pistol in her face, Vicki was still trying to reach the knife in her shoulder, glaring fiercely at the lot of them as she did. Her attention turned to Vaughn. “What is it with you? Why do people flock to do your bidding?”

Vaughn sighed. “Vicki, you didn’t have to do this.”

“Yes I did! You’ve been squandering this place for too long. We built this place while you were running around Pandora like a lost puppy, and all you’ve done since you came back is try to keep everyone as weak and scared as you are.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe I shouldn’t be in charge here, but you definitely shouldn’t be.” He turned to Rhys, who was cautiously rising to his feet. “You get in yet?”

“Ah—no, I was… interrupted.” He cast a nervous glance at Vicki and gave her a wide berth as he moved back to the console. “On it!”

“We should head over to the supply room,” Vaughn said to Athena. “Bring these two with us. The others can decide what to do with them.”

Remembering how many bodies she and Rhys had encountered along the way here, Sasha didn’t like Vicki’s odds.

“Mob justice?” Vicki smirked, hands raised stiffly as she was prodded towards the door by the muzzle of Fiona’s pistol. “Coward.”

Vaughn kept his own gun trained on her as Athena led Lou into the hallway. “Hey, you’re the one who keeps saying I should stop calling the shots around here.”

Vicki scowled, but kept any smart comebacks to herself as she followed the others into the hall.

“You held this place on your own? Without a shield? That’s...” Fiona tucked away her pistol and turned to Sasha, but the pride changed quickly to a look of concern, her brow furrowed. “Whoa. How long have you had that scar?”

Sasha’s mouth dropped open while she weighed her answer, instinctively reaching for her scar. “Oh… I, uh…”

“You know, Vaughn,” said Vicki loudly, taking slow, decisive steps into the hall, “the thing about holding someone at gunpoint is they have to believe you’ll shoot.”

The next few seconds elapsed as if in slow motion. Sasha watched Vicki reach for something in her pocket and toss it back into the room. She watched Vaughn’s split-second hesitation—

And then Fiona was on top of her, fumbling with something. She heard Vaughn fire his gun, she heard Fiona scream, “Rhys, get—!”

And then the room exploded.


Rhys woke to ringing ears and muscles that ached with every heartbeat. It hurt, but he’d felt worse. An automatic mental inventory confirmed all limbs present. He cracked his eyes open, saw smoke, the floor, and broken glass, and he very nearly shut them again, until he caught sight of—

Sasha, sprawled on the floor.

Not moving.

His consciousness clawed its way through the fog to take the wheel while adrenaline hit the accelerator. Sasha. Oh no, Sasha—

He pushed himself onto his elbows and crawled towards her, fear mounting a lump in his throat. Her shield—his shield, now, the one she’d given to him, the only reason he was still in one piece, probably—

Sasha’s head moved. Then her arm. She pulled a broken shield off her shirt, and a tiny, confused frown appeared on her face. She pushed herself up, and she looked over at him, her bleary green eyes more beautiful than they’d ever been.

Relief hit Rhys like a tidal wave.

Then Sasha turned the other way and screamed.

“Fiona! FIONA!

She crawled away from Rhys, still screaming her sister’s name in a voice that made his blood run cold. He tried to push himself to his feet and faltered and stumbled.

Someone strong caught him around the waist. “Easy.” Vaughn. “Rhys, are you okay?”

Rhys couldn’t answer. From this new vantage point he saw—

“Oh, god,” he whispered.

There was so much blood. Bile rose in his throat.

“Fiona!” Sasha shook as she crouched over her sister. “No, no, no, no, no, Fiona, you can’t—”

Rhys’ legs moved of their own accord. He staggered to close the gap before Vaughn lowered the both of them to kneel near Sasha.

Fiona didn’t move. Was she even breathing? The red pool beneath her was growing, staining
her own clothes and Sasha’s—and her arm—

“You can’t leave me!” Stripped of all pretence, Sasha’s voice was raw, as frantic and desperate as a crying child. She grabbed Fiona’s shoulders. “Y-you can’t leave me again. Please don’t leave me again!

Fiona’s eyes—so much like her sister’s—opened just a crack and sought out Sasha’s. Sasha gulped in a hiccoughing breath.

“Sorry, sis,” croaked Fiona. Then her eyes slipped shut again, and she was still.

Notes:

Action is not my natural wheelhouse at all. Would love to hear from you if you're still reading, I know this fandom is sleepy and that these last few chapters have taken time!

We're now, like, a year and a half into writing this story, which is wild to me. Almost done though!! One more!

Say hi on Tumblr: @oodlyenough

Chapter 13

Summary:

Sasha didn’t have to imagine what it might be like to lose her sister. She already knew.

Notes:

I wanted this to be the last chapter, but midway in I realized I'd hit 8k and had only covered half of what I wanted... I didn't want to post a mega-long chapter, so, I've had to split it.

As usual, thanks to @annalytic for giving it a read-through and letting me know what to fix!

Also: I commissioned the very talented @kaseyno on Twitter to do sketch page of this Sasha. I LOVE it, she looks just how I've been imagining. So, you know -- visual aide!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

In the split second before Vicki threw her grenade, Fiona saw two choices play out before her.

Option 1: Go for Vicki. Maybe she could redirect the grenade, get the blast radius further from the rest of them and the console Rhys was using. Her shield would have some heavy lifting to do. If Sasha was quick enough to take cover, she might be spared the worst of it. Cuts and bruises, definitely. A concussion, probably. Maybe some broken bones.

Option 2: Get to Sasha. Give her the shield. Keep her safe.

It was a no-brainer.

She clipped the shield to Sasha’s shirt with her right hand, reached out to warn Rhys with her left, and then—

Everything hurt. More than it had ever hurt before.

Except the pain was too intense to last. There was a peace to it, too—resignation, or maybe relief. The moment when a rollercoaster crests its first hill and there’s no turning back.

Sasha was there. Sasha was safe.

That was all Fiona could do. Someone else would have to take it from there.

Fiona closed her eyes as the rollercoaster sped towards the ground.


Sasha was six years old the first time she considered life without her sister.

A job had gone badly wrong—although with a lifetime of hindsight, even calling it a job felt like exaggeration. It was a straightforward snatch-and-grab organized and executed by desperate, hungry children. Take some cash and run. Easy.

Sasha’s role in it all was simple: hide and wait for Fiona. But she was so hungry, and all she could see from her hiding spot was a shelf full of candy, a colourful array of tantalizing packages the likes of which she’d rarely tasted. The lure of chocolates and sweets snared her like a fishing hook and drew her out.

Sasha got caught right as Fiona made a break for the cash box. The store owner had cornered her, raised his hand—

And then out of nowhere Fiona had been there to catch the blow herself. A ring on the man’s finger sliced the skin above her right eye, and the side of her head cracked against the candy shelf. For a moment, Fiona lay dazed, and time froze to a stop as Sasha waited, an ugly possibility beginning to coalesce in her young mind—

Then Fiona got up again, indomitable, and grabbed Sasha by the hand as she ran them both to safety. Sasha’d watched blood stream down her sister’s face, too seized with terror to feel guilty.

For the rest of the night, Sasha braced for a lecture that never came. Maybe her teary eyes and babbled excuses had been penance enough. Maybe Fiona had been too rattled herself to bother with I told you sos. She’d just hunched over, pressing the bottom of her vest to her bleeding head and gripping Sasha’s hand in hers. That night, they huddled closer than usual beneath their threadbare blanket, and Sasha tossed and turned with bad dreams.

Thirty years later, Sasha didn’t have to imagine what it might be like to lose her sister. She knew.

As Fiona choked out an apology and fell still, the emotional bonfire raging inside Sasha extinguished like a snuffed candle. She was a passenger in her own body, watching someone else react. Someone else’s hand gripping Fiona’s shirt. Someone else’s voice screaming.

“Move.” Another voice, strong and commanding, filtered to Sasha as though underwater, muffled and far-away. Before she could begin to process it, a pale hand jabbed a pink syringe into Fiona’s neck. “She’s losing too much blood,” the voice continued. “Vaughn, get me something to—”

“On it.”

There was a flurry of movement in Sasha’s periphery, the sound of fabric tearing, but her focus was fixed on Fiona. Fiona, who still hadn’t moved, even with the hypo—whose blood was soaking through her own clothes and Sasha’s, whose arm—her arm

“Sasha.” Something tugged at her shoulders, pulling her away. She shook it off, but it tried again. “Sasha, let go.” Strong metal fingers pried her grip loose. “They’re trying to help—”

She grabbed for Fiona again, but the metal arm arm was persistent and pulled her away.

“Let’s give them space—”

She struggled forward again, but the arm was strong, and her energy was waning. Her throat felt raw. Had she been screaming?

The arm held her back. Athena and Vaughn descended like rakks in the gap she’d left behind, obscuring Fiona from view. She watched Vaughn wrap something tight around Fiona’s left arm—what remained of Fiona’s left arm, bloodied and grizzled and—

Nausea spiking, Sasha ripped herself out of Rhys’ grip. Debris and broken glass sliced her palms as she crawled a couple feet away and was sick to her stomach.

“It’s okay.” Rhys’ voice was at her ear, his hands holding back her hair while her empty stomach dry-heaved. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he kept repeating.

But it wasn’t.


The one tangible thing Rhys could think of to do—the only concrete objective he could grasp through his haze of fear and worry and grief—was to take care of Sasha.

No point in tears, this time around. Fiona wouldn’t want them anyway.

She’d want him to look after Sasha.

Sasha, who’d faced her own death with dry eyes. Sasha, who’d tied off his bullet wound with the handkerchief she used to keep the world at bay. Who’d insisted he wear her shield because she couldn’t bear to lose someone again.

Who was quaking under his touch now, sick to her stomach, covered in her sister’s blood.

This was bad. This was so bad—

Shoulda had your own shield, huh, kiddo? Funny how those bad decisions always catch up to the people around you...

Rhys’ own stomach lurched, but he ignored it. Look after Sasha. He had to focus on her. He rubbed her back, mumbling comforting nonsense he knew neither of them believed.

“Rhys!” Panicked but determined, Vaughn’s voice pierced through Rhys’ thoughts. “We need your help.”

“Yeah, just—just a second,” he heard himself answer, still rooted to the spot and fixated on Sasha. Her eyes were screwed shut and her breath came in short, quick gasps. Was she hyperventilating? Did she even know he was there?

Now, Rhys.”

That was Athena. Better not argue.

“R-right.” At a loss, he gave Sasha’s shoulder what he hoped was a comforting squeeze and then got to his feet and turned to face the others.

At the sight of Fiona, his stomach bottomed out again. Her left arm ended above the elbow, wrapped in a bloodied scrap of fabric Vaughn was tightening. The dark red puddle beneath her was seeping into her new clothes, and if she was still breathing, it was too shallow to be seen.

Where was that old man with his magic watches now?

While Vaughn worked on the tourniquet, Athena tossed an empty hypo aside and set about crafting a stretcher; metal ground against metal as she sliced the legs off a table with her sword. With the last table leg sawed off, Athena knocked it flat onto the ground and lined it up beside Fiona.

“You,” she barked, harsh enough that he flinched—but her eyes were fixed past him, and he turned to see Lou, crouching over Vicki’s body, her face contorted in misery. “Help us carry her.”

Lou’s head jerked up, her mouth falling open. “What? But—”

“Help us or my sword separates your head from your shoulders.”

Lou’s mouth open and closed in silent defiance, but when Athena’s hand moved to the hilt of her sword, she conceded defeat. With one last mournful look at Vicki’s body, she stood up.

Rhys stepped out of her way, arms at his sides, feeling useless. His own experience with field medicine amounted to falling in and out of consciousness with holes in his head. The fact that he was still alive was a better testament to the universe’s sense of humour than his own skill. What use was he here?

“I…” He twisted his hands together as he watched Athena and Vaughn slide Fiona onto the makeshift stretcher. “I’m not sure what—”

“The med bay’s not far.” Vaughn spoke with surprising calm and authority. “I need you to make sure it has power. And get that supply door open—there’re doctors in there.” He frowned. “At least, I hope there are.”

Rhys looked over his shoulder. Most of the machines had been damaged in the blast, if not destroyed. “Uh… I don’t think...”

“She doesn’t have time, Rhys.” Athena’s voice was grim. As the three of them hoisted Fiona gently off the ground, her right hand—only hand, now, he realized with another swell of nausea—hung limply over the edge of the table.

I need you, Fiona’d said to him barely a day ago—right after saving his life, in more ways than one.

“Go,” he told them, nodding. “I’ll get it done.”


The console Rhys had worked at earlier was destroyed, its back concave from explosive force, its screen shattered.

A quick survey of the room let him know much of the tech had met a similar fate. Broken panels sparked. Multi-coloured indicator lights that previously dotted the room had gone dark. Repairing anything to a workable state would take time Rhys didn’t have.

Time Fiona didn’t have.

Only one console in the corner was still running, despite the piece of glass that pierced its screen. In his rush to get there, he tripped over Vicki’s body. The hilt of Fiona’s knife was still sticking out of her shoulder. A point-blank shotgun wound to her abdomen finished the job her own explosion hadn’t. Was this the outcome she’d chosen, rather than face defeat and be left to pick up the pieces? Or a bad miscalculation?

Collateral damage, he thought bitterly.

Back on his feet, he reached the console. Its damaged screen flickered as he tapped at the keyboard to bring it to life.

To Rhys’ immense relief, despite the intervening years the Helios network had not strayed far from its Hyperion origins, like an old model car with a new coat of paint. Familiar lines of code meant familiar weaknesses to exploit.

A little bit of digital B&E. Piece of cake. He’d done it a thousand times, emboldened every time a bit of reconnaissance helped him land a promotion or secure a deal or sink a rival.

He’d just... never done it with a friend’s life on the line.

On the stress scale, working while picturing Fiona limp and bloodied ranked well above Hyperion crunch but slightly below being shot at, if only because being shot at was very loud. Now the room was eerily silent but for the sound of his own typing. Was Sasha okay? She was awfully quiet. He should check on her—

No. Focus. Fiona first.

He found the power grid. Spurred on by the victory, he made his way easily around some piecemeal code from Vicki’s people, and then—

The screen he was using sparked and went black.

“Oh come on, not now, you stupid…” He whacked the side of the machine with his metal fist, just in case.

The screen stayed dark.

He raked his left hand through his hair as if it dull his spiking pulse. “Shit.” Think, think—

The indicator lights on the console were still lit. He typed a simple, experimental command and heard an affirmative beep from the speaker.

“Okay, just the screen, then. You know what, I’ll take it.”

All he needed was a working monitor. He unplugged the broken one, feeding the adaptor cord around to the front as he surveyed the room again. Most of the screens had been blown out by Vicki’s grenade, their broken glass littering the floor. One that didn’t had a piece of debris impaled through its side. Another survivor was mounted high on the wall—the time it would take to get up there, to disconnect it, to carry it over—

The tiny spark of hope flickered. Too slow. He needed something now.

Stress tightened his grip on the adaptor until the plug at the end dug into his palm. There was always one more option…

Aw, what’s wrong, kitten? You scared?

As extra adrenaline in his bloodstream tipped the scales towards panic, Rhys fought to retain a clear head. Jack’s AI was long gone. He’d hitched a ride in Rhys’ brain rather than take his chances in a broken-down space station, and Rhys had ripped him out, crushed him. More than a decade had passed. Jack wasn’t renowned for his patience. If any trace of him was left in Helios, he’d have made himself known by now. If something was amiss, Vaughn would’ve said something… wouldn’t he? It wasn’t like Rhys had thought to ask…

I’ll skin you alive with your own—

It didn’t matter. Fiona needed his help. Fiona couldn’t wait. Rhys closed his eyes, sucked a shaky breath through his teeth, and jammed the end of the cord into his port.

Dozens of warning messages flashed in his ECHO eye like fireworks. Normally, he’d rejoice at the proof that his custom-built firewalls were working; now he dismissed each as quick as he could, doing his best to ignore the dread that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

He felt the lag and strain of his own outdated tech mingling with Helios’ systems like diesel in a petrol engine. Pressure of a future migraine built in his head, and then the floodgates opened. The feed from the ECHO eye eclipsed the rest of his vision, so he redirected it to his palm display.

It was like riding a bike. Working within his own cybernetics was faster and more intuitive than any interface the console could provide. The invasive surgeries and the expensive tech, all in the name of expediency—he’d had plenty of time to regret them in the past year, but they’d be worth it now if they helped Fiona.

“C’mon, c’mon, talk to me… here we go!”

He found the power schematics. Clumsy code shut down huge sections of the station.

“Nice try.” Erasing the code was like flipping a digital switch. Med bay—full power. “While I’m in the neighborhood...”

He powered up the rest of the station too.

“Now the supply room…”

Pinpointing that set of commands took longer, but once they were found, it was easy. Like wiping down an office whiteboard, he deleted swathes of Vicki’s malicious code. Turn the water access back on. Turn off the lockdown protocols.

“Bingo!” Victory and accomplishment overcoming his panic and mounting headache, he pulled the jack out of his port and punched the air. “Sasha, tell Vaughn I—”

He turned as he spoke, and the sight of Sasha was like a bucket of cold water dousing his excitement. Curled against the wall, she sat eerily still and quiet.

His heart plunged through the floor. Swallowing down his dread, he stepped carefully around Vicki and tried not to stare at the puddle of blood where Fiona had been.

“Hey, Sasha.” She didn’t look up from her lap, so he knelt down next to her. He put his hand on her arm, though Sasha didn’t seem to notice. Up close, he saw she was clutching something in both hands, so tight when she let go there would be marks in her skin. “I did what Vaughn asked. Med bay’s up and running. Do you mind if I use your ECHO? I wanna let him know.”

He spoke as gently as he could, but she gave no sign of having heard him, all her attention focused on her lap. Wordlessly and mechanically, she unhooked her ECHO earpiece and handed it to him. She never met his eyes.

“Thanks.” He squeezed her hand as he took the ECHO—an utterly inadequate gesture of support—and slipped the ECHO over his ear. He shifted away from Sasha to make the call. “Vaughn? Hey, I got the—”

“Power running. Yeah. We’re here.” Far from the ecstatic triumph Rhys had been hoping to hear, Vaughn’s voice was brittle and exhausted. “What about—”

“Got it open too, yeah.”

“Thank God. I don’t know how to use most of this stuff.” Rhys pictured him rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Athena found more hypos, but she’s still bleeding, and…”

And. It hung in the air, an ominous balloon.

Extremely conscious of Sasha’s proximity, Rhys tried to inject a bit of optimism into his voice. “You’ve got medics. They’ll know what to do.”

“We had medics. Assuming Vicki didn’t kill them all.” Vaughn sighed. “I gotta call them. You should… you should keep an eye on Sasha. If this goes bad—I don’t know if she told you, but that scar on her neck—”

“I will.” Rhys glanced to the huddled form on his left. “Go help Fi. I’ll see you soon.”

Call ended, he tucked the ECHO into his pocket and turned back to Sasha.

“Vaughn’s got her in the med bay,” he told her gently. “They found some more hypos, and there’s medics on the way. She’s in good hands now.”

Still no reaction. What was he supposed to do now? Nothing he could say would make a difference. Whatever he meant to Sasha, he was no substitute for her sister.

Then Sasha finally spoke, her voice so quiet he almost missed it. “She gave me her shield.” She held out her hands to show him. The blast had cracked it down the middle. “She…”

Hot guilt pooled in his stomach; Fiona wouldn’t have had to make that choice if Sasha hadn’t given up her own shield for him.

He waited, but Sasha left the thought incomplete, so he finished it for her. “She wanted you to be safe. She loves you.”

Her face crumpled. Her words tumbled out in a rush. “We never—I didn’t even—I should’ve—”

A memory surfaced of Fiona the night before, worried she’d done the impossible and gotten her sister to hate her. Now proof she'd been wrong was sitting right in front of him, gutted and shellshocked.

“She knows you love her,” he lied around the lump in his throat. “It’ll be okay.” He cusped the shaved side of Sasha's head in his hand, stroking her hairline with his thumb. “She’s gonna be okay.”

Despondent, she shook her head. “You don’t know that.”

“I…” He didn’t. Fiona’s blood had stained Sasha’s gloves, her clothes. “I know they’ll do what they can. Vaughn—”

She wasn’t listening. “I’m gonna lose her again.”

She said it like plain cold fact, and a chill shot down his spine. What would he do if she was right? What if she retreated so far into herself he couldn’t reach her anymore? The scar on her neck was an eerie reminder of Vaughn’s warning.

He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t. Fiona would kick his ass in the next life if she had to.

“Sash…” He wrapped his arms around her. Sasha tilted stiffly into the hug, an old tree bending to a stubborn wind. “Whatever happens, she did it because she loves you, all right? We all do.”

Gently, her bloodied fingers travelled up his injured arm. They ghosted over the knot holding her handkerchief in place, wonderingly—and then she grabbed at his back like she was trying to scale a cliff, her nails biting through the fabric of his shirt.

“I just got her back,” she whispered.

So did I, he thought selfishly, traitorously, as his own throat burned with unshed tears. “I know.”

Sasha said nothing more. He guided her head to rest on his shoulder, and Sasha let him.


Hyperion doctors weren’t known for good bedside manner. Vaughn learned that years ago waiting for Rhys to get out of surgery; he’d asked a passing nurse for an update, only to be reminded that in the event of catastrophic failure, the subject or their next-of-kin was financially liable for any damaged Hyperion technology.

Pandora had cranked up their eccentricities and done nothing for their tact. Help arrived at the med bay with wounded of their own. Fiona’s need was urgent but not singular.

He thought he sensed resentment. But for what? Leaving when the camp was vulnerable? Leading them into this mess in the first place? He wouldn’t blame them for either. But that he couldn’t rule out the third possibility—that they resented resources spent on Fiona, when so many of Helios’ own were already lost—rattled him.

“We’ll try,” was the best a nurse named Julia could manage, and then they shooed him and Athena into the waiting room.

Vaughn took to pacing. Were his fingers not coated in blood and dirt, he’d have fallen to old habits and chewed his nails, too.

“You’re making me dizzy,” Athena remarked, with less bite than he’d come to expect.

“Sorry.”

He stopped too quickly, a pendulum caught mid-swing. In search of another outlet for his nervous energy, he wrung his hands. Athena was a soldier, assassin, Vault Hunter. She’d have seen her fair share of injury and field medicine. Maybe…

He cleared his throat nervously. “Do… do you think—”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen worse, but… not usually on my side of a fight.” Even Athena’s poker face had begun to crack, worry oozing through the cracks. But her gaze held steady. “This isn’t your fault, you know.”

Vaughn huffed a short, disbelieving laugh. Wasn’t it, though? All of it. That Helios had splintered into factions in the first place. That the attack had happened. That his friends were involved. That he’d let Vicki live long enough to do what she’d done.

What would Yvette have done differently? Or Rhys, or Fiona? Why had he thought he could play at being a leader?

“We’ve done what we can,” Athena reasoned. “What we do now is wait.”

Right. Waiting. Vaughn’s favourite pastime. He sank into an uncomfortable chair, its Hyperion yellow plastic long faded.

August and Janey were the first to arrive. While Vaughn had been ECHOing medics, Athena had called the others, and so Janey skidded into the waiting room to wrap her arms around her wife. Cold, familiar envy crept up on him, and he twisted his hands together.

August cast a somber shadow as he stood over Vaughn. “Where’s Sasha?”

“Still in the control room, as far as I know.”

“She okay?”

“She…” In all the time he’d known her, Vaughn had never heard Sasha scream like that. He’d be hearing it for years now. “She’s not hurt. Rhys is with her.”

“Right.” Whatever else August had to say, he decided against it, sitting down next to Vaughn in silence.

Vaughn fought the urge to call and check in. Truthfully he wouldn’t have known what to say—the lowest he’d ever seen Sasha was after they found Felix, and it hadn’t taken long for that to devolve into a shouting match. So—just as he had when Rhys got a hole drilled into his brain, or when Sasha lost her kamikaze fight with a stalker—Vaughn surrendered to the thousand worst-case-scenarios playing out in his mind like silent horror films.

Minutes inched by at an agonizing pace. Each time the door swung open, August and Vaughn’s heads swiveled to look. Like sand through an hourglass, people from across Helios with injured loved ones trickled into the waiting room. They were all familiar to Vaughn, yet he barely saw them, managing only perfunctory nods to each new arrival.

And then, finally—

Rhys guided Sasha into the room with his metal arm around her shoulder, his face drawn and serious in a way Vaughn had rarely seen. He met Vaughn’s eyes first, searching for and finding an answer in the same moment.

Next to him, Sasha was shell-shocked, her glassy eyes unfocused, her steps slow, her bloody hands clutching a broken shield like a talisman.

Automatic response drove Vaughn to his feet, though he couldn’t have said why—what was he going to do? Hug them? Sasha didn’t look like she wanted that; she barely seemed aware of Rhys.

August jumped up too, offering his empty chair to Sasha. After some coaxing, she took it, slumping down. August and Rhys hovered anxiously nearby while she stared at the ground with dull eyes.

“No news, huh?” asked Rhys.

Vaughn shook his head. Athena said, “It would be worse if there was. Means they’re still trying to help her.”

“...Yeah. Guess so.” Rhys—like everyone else, Vaughn realized with a pang of guilt—looked to Sasha for a reaction. Finding none, he cleared his throat and turned to Vaughn. “Hey, um, can I get some water somewhere?”

“Yeah, sure, fountain’s just this way.” Vaughn waved him on.

Sasha’s head jerked up, alarm flashing across her face as she watched Rhys walk away.

“Be right back,” Rhys assured her.

But Sasha didn’t look reassured. August offered a hand, and she grabbed it tight.

In the hallway, Vaughn got a better look at Rhys, weary and wrung-out in a way Vaughn caught glimpses of back when they worked for Hyperion, on the rare late nights when his conscience began to weigh on him.

Vaughn fleetingly wondered what he looked like. Worse, probably. Certainly grayer.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Rhys smiled weakly as he stooped at the fountain. “I’ll be okay when we know Fiona’s okay.”

“Yeah. Her arm…”

“I know.” Rhys rubbed his own prosthetic self-consciously, and Vaughn’s attention shifted to the bandana acting as a tourniquet over his torn sleeve.

“How’s your arm?”

“Huh?” He seemed genuinely confused for a moment until he followed Vaughn’s gaze. “Oh, right, that. I kinda forgot about it.”

“You forgot you got shot?”

He shrugged. “A lot’s happened since then.”

“You got shot!”

“I got grazed.” He poked at the makeshift bandage and frowned. “Kinda pissed about the tattoo though.”

Vaughn’s exasperated sigh mixed with a laugh. “Seriously, you should get that looked at.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” said Rhys, the same unconvincing way he used to promise to study for an exam the morning after a house party. “Hey, unrelated question, the network here—you guys haven’t had any problems with viruses or malware or sentient technology attempting global domination, have you?”

“Wha…?”

Rhys rubbed the port on his temple. “No—uh—no toasters threatening to skin you alive, or kill you in your sleep, or anything?”

“How would a toaster threaten me?” Vaughn’s eyes narrowed. “How much blood did you lose?”

Rhys looked relieved as he waved a dismissive hand. “Just checking.”

“Checking what?”

But before Vaughn could interrogate further, Athena stuck her head into the hallway. “Come back in,” she said bluntly. “The doctor’s here.”


Consciousness came back piece by piece, a connect-the-dots drawing that only revealed its shape towards the end.

It was as though a veil of haze separated her from the world. Her body felt relaxed but heavy and sluggish, the way running in a dream felt like wading in quicksand. Sometimes she heard voices, but they were far away and indecipherable, a party in a closed room while she waited outside. She was tired, and sleeping was easy, so that’s what she did.

And then, slowly, the veil lifted. Outside sound began to filter in, mechanical beeping and murmured chatter and the scraping of plastic chairs on a cheap linoleum floor. The commotion grew until it was too much to sleep through, and so she relinquished, and opened her eyes.

The brightness of the room seared her eyes. She squinted and blinked several times waiting for her pupils to adjust. Her mouth was parched, and she ran her tongue along her teeth a few times to conjure some saliva.

Unfamiliar ceiling tile. A strange room. Yet another unfamiliar bed. To one side she saw a bank of machines, and to the other—

Rhys, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, playing a card game on the display projected by his cybernetic arm. His tongue poked between his teeth as he squinted in concentration at his game. Dark circles lined his eyes and rogue strands of hair broke from their gelled formation, but the cut in his cheek had faded to a faint pink line. His torn dress shirt had been swapped for an ill-fitting sweater that showed three skags howling at the moon, its right sleeve rolled to his elbow and straining over the prosthetic.

“You look like an idiot.” Fiona’s voice, creaky from disuse, sounded more like a croak.

Rhys’ eyes widened at a comical speed as his head whipped in her direction. “Holy crap, you’re awake!”

“Just about.” Memories resurfaced in a confusing flood. Helios. Vicki. The grenade.

Sasha.

Where was Sasha?

“Is everyone—”

“We’re okay,” Rhys assured her. “Other than the fact that you scared the hell out of us.”

Fiona smirked. Three empty chairs formed a line beside Rhys, and she wondered how long ago they’d been vacated. Days had passed, judging by the barely-there mark on Rhys’ face. Maybe Sasha had gone off on another job, like she’d planned from the start.

Fiona swallowed her disappointment. “So what, you draw the short straw?” If she’d ever stopped to think about it, Rhys wouldn’t be the first person she’d expect to see at her bedside.

Maybe he should have been. The universe seemed determined that they go through life like it was a three-legged race. And there was no contesting Rhys’ loyalty.

He smiled at her. “Nah.”

He nodded down at something out of Fiona’s line of sight. She lifted her head to look.

Stretched out across three empty chairs, Sasha was fast asleep, her head cushioned in Rhys’ lap.

“Wouldn’t leave,” Rhys explained, as Fiona grappled with the sudden ache in her heart. “This is the only way I could get her to lay down.”

Fiona wanted to make a joke—how nauseating, really, that her sister would choose to sleep in the lap of some corporate stooge—but her throat felt thick.

“Hey, Sash.” Card game long forgotten, Rhys brushed his metal fingers gently over Sasha’s hair. “Wake up.”

Sasha resisted, burrowing her face into his bony lap.

“Come on.” He shook her shoulder this time. “Fiona’s awake.”

Sasha shot up like she’d downed a Torgue energy drink, propping herself up on her elbow so clumsily Rhys hissed in pain. Under the fluorescent light, the bags under Sasha’s eyes put Rhys’ to shame.

“Fiona.” The shock in her voice was dulled by sleep. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah, so everyone keeps saying.” Fiona managed an awkward smile. “That a surprise?”

Sasha’s expression shifted from surprise to worry, which would have been gratifying were it not so concerning. “How do you feel?”

Fiona considered it. The longer she spent awake, the more she became aware of just how shit she felt. A dull but constant pain with no clear radius ebbed and flowed with every heartbeat.

“Like something a skag coughed up,” she settled on. “But that’s pretty good, all things considered.” She tipped her chin at Sasha. “You’re not the only one who can come out of an explosion in one piece.”

The look of silent communication Rhys and Sasha exchanged gave Fiona a twinge of combination jealousy and dread.

“They had you sedated for days. You were hurt really bad.” There was an odd note to Sasha’s voice, like she was holding something back. Fiona couldn’t tell if it was anger or tears. “Concussion. Internal bleeding. Four cracked ribs. Blood loss. And…”

Fiona’s dread mounted as Sasha worried her lip. What could possibly—

“They couldn’t save your arm,” Rhys finished for her. “I’m sorry.”

Fiona watched the both of them, their matching looks of sympathy and concern, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. She could feel her arms: the right one like a pincushion above the sheets, IV drip sticking out the back of her hand, and the left—

Actually…

Fiona wiggled the fingers of her left hand, but the bedsheet overtop didn’t move. On autopilot, her right hand grabbed the sheet, drew it back—

Sure enough, her left arm was wrapped tight in bandages and ended just above the elbow. Dizzy with disbelief, Fiona willed her brain to make sense of what she was seeing, but it was like getting the caravan stuck in the ditch, the wheel spinning aimlessly with no progress.

“Holy shit,” was what finally came out, breathless and closer to hysterical than she liked. She raised her hand, wiggled her fingers again—but there was no visual to match the sensation. What remained of her arm lifted an inch off the mattress. “That’s…” Her breath caught in her throat, her heart beating faster and faster, vision narrowing to the empty spot where her arm ought to be. She swallowed. “That’s, I…”

Sasha’s hand closed over Fiona’s own.

The unexpected gesture commanded what remained of Fiona’s attention. She looked up to find Sasha watching her with concern and sympathy, the likes of which she’d begun to think she’d never see again.

It staggered her as much as her missing arm. Her breath rattled like spare change in a piggybank and her vision swam for more reasons than she could name. She let go of the bedsheet she was gripping and flipped up her palm to hold Sasha’s hand instead.

Rhys cleared his throat. “I should—um—go let Vaughn know you’re awake.” His plastic chair screeched on the tile as he stood up. Glancing between the two of them, he squeezed Sasha’s shoulder and smiled at Fiona. “Good to have you back, Fi.”

Only once he was gone did Fiona and Sasha’s eyes meet again. The same unnerving realization settled over them both like a blanket of fog: this was the first time they’d been alone together since they’d been inside the Traveler. She’d nearly lost Sasha to an explosion then, only to lose her moments later in a whole different way.

Sasha’s hand slipped loose as she sat back in her chair, suddenly awkward, like she was second-guessing herself. She rubbed her neck, drawing Fiona’s attention to the large scar half-hidden beneath her hair.

“I’m sorry about your arm,” she said, filling the silence with something equally awkward.

“...Y-yeah,” managed Fiona, who wasn’t ready to claim that baggage, let alone unpack it. She decided to do what she did best—deflect. “Wasn’t my favourite arm anyway.”

Sasha didn’t smile—a relief to Fiona, whose own smile was flagging. Instead Sasha’s eyebrows knit together like she was trying to reason her way through a con.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “With the shield.”

The question left Fiona wrongfooted. “Figured that’d be obvious.” When Sasha said nothing, she continued, “I wanted you safe.” Her smile was feeble. “Thirty years… Hard habit to break.”

Sasha’s lips pressed together as she struggled with an answer, and Fiona tried to brace for a fight she was in no shape to have.

She wouldn’t rise to the bait this time. She couldn’t. She would just have to ride it out, absorb the floodwaters of Sasha’s anger.

But when Sasha spoke, she didn’t sound angry. “That night, at Athena’s...” She sounded sad. “You said—”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Fiona quickly, seized with panic and the desire to reach back in time and slap herself. What had she been thinking? Why couldn’t she ever stop digging a deeper hole? “Any of it.”

The doubt on Sasha’s face made Fiona feel as though her heart was being juiced. “Fi…”

“I’m serious.” Her wobbly voice was a dead giveaway Felix would have lectured her for, the kind of emotional tell Fiona had spent her whole life learning to suppress. “Sure, sometimes it was hard, but it was always worth it. Growing up the way we did… I never could’ve gotten through that without you.”

Eyes bright and unyielding, Sasha’s once-stony poker face wasn’t thick enough to prevent nervousness from poking through the cracks like weeds. After what felt like an eternity, she said, “You really didn’t mean to leave, did you?”

It was the nervous vocalization of a long-suspected truth, like a child finding incontrovertible evidence that all the Mercenary Day presents were from Mom and Dad. Unshed tears in Fiona’s eyes blurred the new lines on Sasha’s face and the unfamiliar scar on her neck, and for the first time since stepping out of the Vault, she truly recognized her sister. Decades be damned, this was Sasha after all: Sasha, who’d cried so long and so loud when their mother died Fiona thought her tiny lungs would burst—who dreamed of planets that rained candy where pillows grew on trees—

—who stole her nail polish and her jewelry and gave Fiona her favourite haircuts—

—who ruined a casino birthday party because she wanted so badly, for once, to have a connection that was real—

—who detonated a bomb in the heart of a Vault monster so everyone else would have a chance—

—who spent twelve years abandoned, betrayed, alone.

A tsunami of guilt slammed into Fiona. Her tears overflowed like a storm surge.

“No. I would never. I swear.” A sob threatened to burst forth any second, but she pressed on. “I should have told you about the money. I should have waited. But it wasn’t on purpose. I would never do that on purpose. I promise.”

Sasha pressed her lips tight together and wrung her hands in her lap. Fiona’s breath caught as she waited for a response.

“I missed you,” said Sasha, so soft it was almost lost in the ambient buzz of surrounding machines. “All the time. Even when I hated you, I still missed you.” Her hands curled into fists and her eyes screwed shut. “And that made me hate you more, but I couldn’t stop.” A cry hitched in her throat, and through Fiona’s own tears she saw the wetness on Sasha’s cheeks too. “And then I hated myself for being so stupid. Felix knew. You both did. You always said that I was—that I—”

“Whoa, hey.” Sasha’s hands were out of reach. Clumsy and sore, Fiona maneuvered herself closer on the bed. “Loving people isn’t stupid, Sasha, it’s brave. And this is my fault.” Fiona hiccoughed, which was unfair, because Sasha was the one who had the right to be upset, Sasha was the one who needed comforting. “Looking out for you is the only worthwhile thing I’ve ever done in my whole, pointless life and I fucked it up.”

Sasha sobbed, a broken sound plucked from the worst of Fiona’s childhood memories. She still cried like a little kid, messy and raw. “I needed you, and you were gone.”

“I know.” Fiona’s voice was thick with regret she’d carry for the rest of her life. “I am so, so sorry, Sasha.”

Tears streamed from Sasha’s puffy red eyes. “Fi, I…” Her shoulders shook as she fought to catch her breath. “I don’t wanna be alone anymore.”

“You’re not.” It was hard to get the words out, around the guilt and tears and bone-deep shame, but for Sasha it was worth it. “You won’t be. I’m here, I promise.”

Fiona spread her arm, as inviting as she could. Emotions cascaded across Sasha’s tear-stained face, and then she gave in, chair scraping the floor as she dragged herself closer and sank into her sister’s hug.

Fiona held her as tight as one arm could manage. “I love you,” she managed, in between her own shuddering breaths.

Sasha couldn’t reply. She keened into Fiona’s shoulder, a hurricane of twelve-year-old grief lashing at a patient beach.

Fiona stroked Sasha’s hair while she cried it out, just as she had when they were freshly-orphaned children on the unforgiving streets of Hollow Point. Just like then, she knew that once the storm subsided, there’d be damage to assess. What could be repaired, and what would need to be rebuilt from the foundations.

Fiona finally felt ready to get to work.

Notes:

So this took quite a long time... whoops. The final scene of this chapter is one I've been imagining since I started the fic, so it was hard to get it right. Plus I agonized over some wonky plot stuff for ages. Also balancing regular and season depression with COVID depression is uh, something.

This fic will be 2 years old on January 15. I hope to be able to finally mark it "complete" sometime around then.

You can find me on Tumblr or Twitter as @oodlyenough.

Would love to hear from anyone who's made it this far!

Chapter 14

Summary:

After the battle for Helios, the denouement.

 

In the last chapter: After narrowly surviving the explosion, Fiona and Sasha have a long overdue heart to heart.

Notes:

After 13 months, and just a month shy from this fic's third anniversary, it's finally complete. I can't believe it's done! I always was determined to finish, but this past year has been rough and sometimes it felt like I might not. Very satisfying to hit 'complete'.

 

A huge thank you to @Annalytic for the beta read on this chapter and on so many of the previous, especially this last one, where I worked on it for so long I could no longer see the words properly, haha.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Vaughn’s door was ajar when Rhys arrived, the sound from within spilling out into the hallway.

“—need all the people we can get,” came one voice, unfamiliar to Rhys. “We don’t have enough to—”

“Well no one on my team wants to work with a bunch of traitors—”

“You’d rather take on a rakkhive shorthanded?”

“I’d rather face a rakkhive than deal with—”

Sensing Vaughn might need a reprieve, Rhys knocked on the door and stuck his head in.

“Heeey, sorry to interrupt,” he lied. “Vaughn, can I borrow you for a moment?”

The strangers in Vaughn’s office stopped scowling at each other to scowl at Rhys instead.

“Yeah, sure.” Vaughn’s eagerness must have been obvious even to the others. To them, he added, “Let’s talk about this later, all right?”

The woman made her displeasure known with a theatrical eye roll, pushing past Rhys on her way out of the room. The man followed suit, glaring as well.

But Rhys’ good mood was impervious to the internal politics of Helios. He clicked the door shut as soon as they were gone.

“Tough crowd,” he joked.

“You’re telling me.” Up close, under the fluorescent overhead lighting, Vaughn looked as exhausted as Rhys was. He took off his glasses to massage his eyelids. “Think I’m getting too old for this.”

Rhys helped himself to the empty chair across from Vaughn’s desk. Were it not for the view of Pandora out the window, it might have been any other late night working overtime for Hyperion. While one stared bleary-eyed at his screen and the work stretched on endlessly, the other would drop by with a pick-me-up—usually something greasy.

Rhys didn’t have any takeout. He had something better. “I can cheer you up.” He grinned as he leaned back in the chair. “Fiona’s awake.”

“No shit?” Vaughn’s hands fell away from his face in the middle of rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I should’ve known that’s why you were here, I…” He shook away the guilt before it had fully formed. “How is she?”

“Her first words were to insult me, so she seems like herself.” Rhys’ face sobered. “The arm was a shock. That’s gonna take a while to sink in.”

Vaughn rubbed his own arm reflexively. “What about Sasha?”

“Left her with Fiona. Figured they could use some alone time.”

Vaughn sank back into his own chair, arms dangling over the sides of it. Rhys imagined abacus beads sliding around in Vaughn’s brain as he processed it. “Wow. That’s great. I mean… really.” Yet the relief was tainted. “I should’ve been there.”

Rhys pulled a face; leave it to Vaughn to find guilt where there needn’t be any. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not like you were doing anything important.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Vaughn admitted. “Every day there’s some new complaint I don’t know how to solve.”

“Hey, that’s leadership.” Rhys grinned. “Remember when I had to call HR because Brian insisted Alex stole his coffee mug, and then it turned out they both just owned the same one?” His nose wrinkled at the memory. “It was yellow, and it had the H on it. Like everyone else’s.”

Vaughn’s lips curled up in amusement. “Y’know, I think we still have a few of those in the kitchen. They’re weirdly durable, and possibly not food grade.” His spirits fell as quickly as they’d risen. ”But yeah, ‘leadership’... Why’d you wanna do this again?”

“Oh, no, no, no, I just wanted to run a company. This”—Rhys splayed his fingers to encompass the room and, by extension, the rest of the base—“is way beyond anything in my talent management plan. You’ve done well.”

Vaughn leveled him with a stare usually reserved for when Rhys’ bullshit reached critical mass. “Come on. You haven’t been here for most of it, and now that you are here, you can see that everyone is trying to kill each other. Literally. Successfully, half the time.”

“Okay, yes, but—I mean, we’re talking about a bunch of ex-Hyperions living on Pandora. That’s two super murder-y things together. You know what they say about tigers and new tricks, or old dogs and stripes, or whatever.” At Vaughn’s incredulous raised eyebrow, Rhys waved his hands. “Point is: you’ve got a lot on your plate.”

“Yeah…” Vaughn’s sigh showed he wasn’t convinced. “Maybe I’m starting to lose my appetite.”

Rhys frowned. The exhaustion he felt after sleepless days fretting over Sasha and Fiona seemed like nothing next to Vaughn’s bone-deep weariness. It was the way Vaughn looked in the early days of Hyperion crunch, when it wasn’t just long hours weighing him down but the doubt creeping in. He’d start getting cold feet, and Rhys, ever the salesman, would talk him around back into it.

Rhys dreaded to think just how many bad ideas he’d talked Vaughn into over the years.

“Hey, I mean… I think if you wanted to take the early retirement package, no one would blame you.”

Vaughn almost smiled. “You know that was a Hyperion euphemism for death, right? It was a special code we used when we closed down people’s personal accounts.”

“Okay, dark, and also obviously not what I’m suggesting.” He scooched forward in his chair, leaning closer to the desk as Vaughn hunched over it. “I mean it. If you don’t wanna do this anymore…”

“Push the baby birds out of the nest?” Vaughn suggested. When Rhys’ eyebrows furrowed in confusion, Vaughn rose to his feet. “I’ll add it to the list of things I mull over at night instead of sleeping. C’mon, let’s find you a room. Those bags under your eyes are making me feel more tired than I already am.”


Self-consciousness didn’t catch up to Sasha until she was alone, knuckles hovering a millimeter above the door. Uncertain, she nibbled her lip.

Rhys was probably asleep by now, replenishing the energy it must have taken to wait with her in Fiona’s room all that time. Coaxing her to eat, or lie down, or shower. Making conversation to fill the silence even when Sasha was too lost in her own dark thoughts to answer.

He was probably relishing the first break he’d had from her in days. She ought to give him space now, find a room and bed of her own—

Some deeper instinct took over, and she knocked before she could overthink it any longer. “Rhys?” she called gently. “Rhys, are you awake?”

She listened as close as she could. Had that been a mumble in return? She reached for the handle and cracked the door open to check.

A thin strip of light shone from the hall into the darkened room, landing like a scar across Rhys’ face. Sprawled on his stomach on the bed, tangled in a thin sheet, he groaned at the disturbance and cracked open a sleepy yellow eye.

“Mmm… Sasha?”

Rumbly with sleep and muffled by his pillow, his voice lit a warmth in her chest that chased away any lingering guilt.

“Hi. Vaughn told me which room was yours. I wanted to… check in.” After a day of unprecedented emotional honesty, she thought she could be forgiven the half-lie.

Rhys twisted to look at her better, propped up by his cybernetic arm. “How’d it go with Fiona?”

Fidgeting under the scrutiny, she shut the door behind her and plunged the room into darkness again. Rhys’ ECHO eye glowed in the dark like a beacon.

“We… talked.” Her fingers twisted together. It was an understatement, but Sasha couldn’t bring herself to expand on the details. “It went well, I think.” Heat pooled in her cheeks. “It’s a start, anyway.”

“I’m doing my best not to say I told you so,” Rhys teased, a smile in his voice. “She feeling okay?”

“She got tired. Kicked me out, said it was too weird trying to fall asleep with me staring at her.”

The bedframe creaked and the yellow light moved as Rhys shifted in bed. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m…” Fine, she meant to say, but her traitorous throat closed off. Finally opening up to Fiona should have felt good, or healing, but mostly Sasha felt raw, an exposed wound stinging with the bite of the air.

“I’m exhausted,” she admitted, squeakier than she would have liked. Years of keeping her emotions at bay, and now they were drowning her. “Would it be all right if I—?”

“‘Course.” He slid towards the wall, his palm display illuminating her path to the empty side of the bed. “But you’re gonna have to be the big spoon this time. Can’t sleep on my right side. Robot arm sucks as a pillow.”

Sasha couldn’t have cared less. She sank into the bed gratefully, its worn mattress and wonky frame a vast improvement over the plastic chairs of the med bay. Aches she’d been ignoring began to subside as she was able to stretch out.

“Mmm.” The bed was already warm. She nuzzled into the pillow. “Feels good.”

“Oh yeah, four star,” Rhys joked. “I told Vaughn we wanted bacon for the complimentary breakfast tomorrow.”

“Should’ve gone with pancakes.”

“Jeeze, everyone’s a critic.”

He pulled the sheet over both of them and closed his hand, extinguishing the light from his palm. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Sasha studied the curve of his neck and her own desire to put her mouth on the bare skin she saw there. That night at the Purple Skag was like a distant oasis, cleaved from the present by days of endless anxiety and fear. She wanted to wrap herself up in him and stay there, protected from whatever misery the universe might dream up next.

But right now she was wrung out. Rhys must have been tired too. They had plenty more nights together still to come.

Didn’t they?

Cold doubt chilled her under the blanket. She inched closer, wrapping her arm around his waist.

“Thank you.” Her fingers slid beneath his borrowed hoodie to warm against his skin. “For staying.”

He bumped her leg with his. “Nowhere I’d rather be.” A beat. “Well… maybe a slightly bigger bed. Should’ve asked for the honeymoon suite.”

The joke that sprang to mind—moving a little fast, aren’t you?—died on the tip of her tongue as her stomach turned over. These moments of reprieve with Rhys still didn’t feel real. If prior experience was anything to go by, the other shoe would drop soon enough. Maybe in the morning, she’d wake to news that Fiona had crashed overnight. Or she’d wake up alone in her hammock on the caravan, dazed from a cruel, vivid dream—

“Uh, Sasha? I appreciate the enthusiasm, but your nails are kinda starting to hurt.”

“Oh!” Guilty, she pulled her hand away. “Sorry! Sorry.”

“S’alright,” said Rhys, though he rubbed the patch of skin she’d been gripping. “Let’s just save the scratching for a more—uh—active evening, all right?”

Cheeks alight with embarrassment, Sasha scrunched up her face. “Guess I’m still kind of tense.”

“Tell you what.” He held up his metal hand for her to take. “Squeeze all you want.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” As she cautiously laced their fingers together, he tucked their hands in front of his chest. “Advantages of a metal hand: no pain.”

Experimentally, she gripped his hand tight; when he didn’t pull away, she dug her nails in, too. His prosthetic wasn’t soft or malleable—after a few seconds her own fingers ached with the exertion—but it was sturdy and unflinching. Reliable.

Exhaustion swept through her again, and she closed her eyes to let it take her. She relaxed her grip but kept their fingers twined.


Checking on the caravan was Fiona’s first outing since the attack. Sasha had mentioned the errand in passing, and the newly-mobile Fiona had insisted on accompanying her. Officially, she claimed cabin fever—too much time cooped up in the Helios med bay, entertaining herself with card games by day and envisioning faces in the cracks of the ceiling tiles by night.

It was all true, but there was more than that. The ability to disappear was an essential element of a con artist’s bag of tricks. Charming one moment and forgotten the next. Now Fiona couldn’t help but feel conspicuous. She stuck out like a sore thumb.

Or a missing one.

All in your head, she told herself for what must have been the seventieth time. Lots of people on Pandora were missing things: arms, legs, eyes. There was nothing special about her.

And then there were the questions. Was she getting a prosthetic? When? What brand? What colour? Detachable or implant? Did she know a surgeon? Did she know that Dr. Lecter out in Thousand Cuts was running a buy-one-get-one-free sale?

She didn’t have answers for any of them.

“There it is,” Sasha announced.

“You sure?” Fiona squinted at the new speck on the horizon, shimmering through the waves of heat rolling off the baked Pandoran ground. “From this far it could be anything. A skag. A rock.”

“It’s too big to be a skag. And I know where I parked,” Sasha insisted. “Well… crashed.”

Over the rumble of the motor, Vaughn’s voice carried down from the gunner seat. “What is it you’re hoping to pick up, anyway?”

Fiona couldn’t help but wonder if his presence was intended as two-handed back-up in case of attack or as a buffer against awkward conversation.

Neither option appealed to her. Although things with Sasha had improved ever since that night in the hospital wing, long stretches of discomfort still plagued their attempts at renewed sisterly bonding. Missing years lay like emotional tripwires in every conversation, and triggering one was a surefire way to make Sasha retreat.

Forgiveness was one thing—trust was another. Sometimes Fiona feared getting it back was about as likely as regrowing her arm.

“Anything that’s left,” Sasha answered. “Parts to sell. Maybe a few blankets.” If she felt any sentiment towards the caravan, she hid it from her voice. She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, looks like some rakks beat us to it. Can you guys take care of that?”

“On it.” Fiona pulled the Jakobs pistol from her pocket and lined up a shot.

It went wide. The fire drew the rakks’ attention; they abandoned the caravan, taking to the sky and flying straight for the car. Fiona gripped her pistol tighter to steady her shot as best she could—

The rat-tat-tat from the gunner seat drowned everything out. Under Vaughn’s hail of gunfire, the rakks dropped quickly.

“Thanks,” said Sasha.

Feeling distinctly unhelpful, Fiona lowered her arm and tucked away the pistol.

One of the rakk bodies exploded under the wheel as Sasha swerved just a little to hit it, a gesture so immature it lightened even Fiona’s mood. “So where’s Rhys?” she asked. “How come the boyfriend gets to skip out on this?”

Sasha’s lips pressed together, an embarrassed tell that made Fiona smirk. “Hey, you asked to come.”

No denial, then. Interesting.

“He’s busy,” Vaughn supplied. “He’s working on a project.”

“A project?” Incredulous, Fiona wrinkled her nose. “Sash, if he makes you macaroni art, I will puke.”

Sasha only rolled her eyes and brought the technical to a stop. “We’re here,” she announced, teasing mostly ignored—which was also a little suspicious, actually.

But before she could interrogate the thought any further, Fiona was distracted by the sight of the caravan in front of them. The weeks it sat on its own had done it no favours—the misspelled graffiti on the side and the rakk droppings coating the windshield couldn’t have been there under Sasha’s ownership. But the rest of it, rusted-out and broken down, must have been like that for years.

Disrepair was nothing new on Pandora. Still, the unspent millions in Fiona’s inventory weighed heavy on her conscience. Sasha could have used that money.

Sasha could have left Pandora with it.

Unaware of the fresh wave of guilt plaguing her sister, Sasha hopped out and walked towards her caravan, her face falling as she took in the graffiti. “Aw, come on. Dicks? Really?”

“Pandoran fine art.” Fiona dismissed Vaughn’s helping hand, choosing to struggle over the car door on her own. “So cultured.” She repositioned her new hat as she straightened up.

Vaughn took her stubbornness in stride. “Hey, look, they spelled ‘piss’ right. They’re learning!”

Sasha approached the door slowly, SMG in one hand. Following her cue, Fiona reached for the hilt of her pistol. Sasha swung the door open and stuck her head in, she waved the other two forward.

“If anyone was in here, they’re gone now,” she called.

Fiona was last to cross the threshold, fighting a fresh wave of deja vu as she did so. Once upon a time, first stepping into Felix’s caravan felt like walking into a palace. As years passed and the sisters grew, the caravan began to feel overcrowded, with privacy nothing but a pipe dream—a problem only exacerbated with the arrival of five new occupants. Still, it had felt more like home than anywhere else Fiona had ever known.

Even with the three of them standing inside, Sasha’s caravan felt cavernously empty. A simple hammock hung in the corner and a lone chair sat at the small table. The door of the minifridge was left open, long-since looted by passersby. A broken radio sat on the floor, cracked in two.

It had probably been cozier when Sasha had been living here, Fiona reasoned. Anything of personal value would already have been packed and taken back to Helios. Still…

“How long have you had this thing?” Fiona asked, careful to scrub any judgment from her voice and keep the tone light and casual. Some plastic from the radio’s shell crunched beneath her boot.

“Dunno…” Sasha shrugged. “Six years? Something like that.” But her posture changed, her shoulders tense. Self-consciousness? She bent down to pick up the busted radio, setting it gently on the table before she moved to the ladder. “I’m going to check the roof. You two can wait here.”

Fiona arched an eyebrow and turned to Vaughn. “Did I say something?” she asked, voice hushed.

Vaughn shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He fidgeted nervously as he looked at the ladder, then back to Fiona. “Hey, uh, can I ask your opinion on something? Hypothetically.”

Fiona’s raised eyebrow stayed in place. “Shoot.”

“Okay. Uhhh.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s say someone’s been doing a job for a long time, right? Maybe not well, but they’ve been doing it. I mean, they’ve been trying! But now they’re thinking maybe they should do something else. Maybe they weren’t the right person for the job in the first place, and they just kinda got it by chance, and maybe it’s time for a career change—maybe that’d be good for everyone.”

“Uh…” said Fiona.

Vaughn carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. “But then they’re sort of leaving their… um… employer in the lurch. It’s kind of a specialized field. So, what do they do? How can they quit something like that? I mean, isn’t it kind of cowardly? But then maybe staying is actually worse—maybe it’d actually be better for… um… for the company if they left. Maybe they’ve already done enough damage to… to the stock value—”

The ladder creaked as Sasha reappeared, blankets draped around her shoulders like several capes. “Why are we talking about stock value?”

Vaughn looked up from his twisting hands to face Sasha, surprised by her quick reappearance. “Um—”

“Vaughn wants to leave Helios,” said Fiona.

Vaughn’s attention whipped back and forth between the two of them in alarm. “Ha ha, what? No, that’s… I was…” Finding no good defense, his shoulders sagged. “I mean… hypothetically.”

Sasha glanced at Fiona, gauging a reaction before she looked back at Vaughn; Fiona felt a small thrill at having been considered.

“Well, you know what I think,” said Sasha. She dropped the blankets onto the hammock and began folding them. “I’ve told you to get out of there for years.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Vaughn bristled, rolling his eyes and rounding on her. “Right, so I can live like you and hide away in some tiny van of misery?”

Fiona flinched, bracing herself for Sasha’s wrath. Even Vaughn seemed to realize what he said a split second after saying it, his expression switching to one of surprise as if some third party had spoken.

But Sasha simply folded one blanket and moved on to the next. “We’ve both been hiding. Just in different ways. I’m done with it. Aren’t you?”

Braced for hostility, Vaughn was thrown off guard by the simple question. He floundered for a second, mouth open silently, before he said, “Even if I am… what do I do about the rest of Helios? The place is a mess, I can’t just ditch them. And it’s not like I can just pick someone to hand it the reins to.”

“Let them choose.” Fiona tried to cross her arms, but the gesture felt unnatural now, so she settled on resting a hand on her hip. “The people want more of a say in how the place runs, give it to them. Have a vote or something.”

Vaughn scratched his beard, nodding in deep thought as he considered it. “Like a board of executives.”

“Yeah, uh...” Fiona’s eyebrow eyebrow quirked in amusement. Once Hyperion… “Was thinking more like a town council, but sure. That too.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” agreed Sasha. “You’ve spent a long time looking after that place, trying to do everything for them. Maybe it’s time you let the Children of Helios grow up.”

Vaughn dithered, looking between the two of them with uncertainty before he finally nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you guys might be right.”

“I’m always right,” said Fiona with a wink.

Finished with her blankets, Sasha gathered the whole stack in her arms—so tall it blocked her view. Vaughn moved immediately to grab a few from the top and lighten her load. Sasha’s small smile was so sincere Fiona felt like she was intruding on something she shouldn’t be, and she fiddled with the brim of her hat as a distraction.

“Thanks,” Sasha told him. “And… I’m sorry that I was never what you needed.”

Vaughn’s eyebrows shot up, surprised by the sudden apology. He shook his head. “Don’t be. I mean… I could say the same to you.”

Sasha’s smile grew. Then she looked around the caravan, nodded decisively and started for the door. “Right, then. Think we got everything here. Time to move on.”

Fiona stepped out to hold the door for them. “You don’t want any spare parts or anything?”

“No.” Clutching the blankets, Sasha squinted into the sun to take a last look at the caravan, and then her gaze shifted to Vaughn, and finally to Fiona. “I have everything I need.”


Rhys was still hunched over the desk in Vaughn’s office tongue between his teeth in concentration, when the door cracked open and Vaughn stepped in.

“Oh hey!” Rhys straightened up as he said it, wincing as the muscles in his back stretched like a taut rubber band. “Back so soon?”

Vaughn tilted his head. “I mean, it’s been a few hours.”

Surprised, Rhys twisted to look out the window, expecting the daylight to back him up—but true to Vaughn’s word, the sky outside was periwinkle, and the light shining in was much duller than it had been when he started. “Huh.” He shrugged sheepishly at Vaughn. “Didn’t notice. Guess I kept busy.”

Vaughn’s attention turned to his own desk, littered with the parts and tools Rhys was working with. “How’s it coming?”

“Good!” Rhys hoped the confidence in his voice eased some of the skepticism he read on Vaughn’s face. “Just need another couple days.” He grabbed the loose end of the tarp and flipped it up over his work. “How was the caravan?”

“Covered in graffiti and rakk poo, so pretty much what you’d expect.”

“She find anything?”

“Enough bedding to make a fort.” Vaughn lifted a shoulder. “I dunno. Think it was more of a ceremonial thing, you know?” His eyes widened. “Don’t, uh, tell her I said that.”

Rhys laughed. “You scared Sasha will find out you know she’s got feelings?”

“Yes,” said Vaughn without missing a beat. “Actually we tried to call. Tell you we were coming back. You didn’t pick up.”

“You did…?” The pieces clicked together slowly in Rhys’ mind. “I must’ve left the ECHO you gave me in the supply room.”

“Yeah, well, just so you know, it kinda freaked Sasha out. She didn’t say it, but I could tell.” Vaughn paused. “Kinda freaked me out too, to be honest.”

Guilt settled comfortably into the familiar crevices of Rhys’ heart, and he winced. “I’m sorry. It really was an accident, I swear! I’m just not used to carrying one around anymore, and I went to grab some stuff in the supply room, and I must’ve set it down, and—”

“Yeah.” Vaughn didn’t seem angry, which was a relief. “Guess that would be weird.” He pointed his chin towards Rhys’ prosthetic arm. “You think you’re gonna upgrade it?”

Rhys looked down at his chrome palm, self-consciously rubbing the shoulder joint while he contemplated his answer. This was a question he’d posed to himself near-daily for the past couple weeks, but he’d never made it past the mire of indecision. He missed all the functionality he’d come to take for granted; the bells and whistles were why he’d gotten cybernetic upgrades in the first place.

But the memories of struggling alone in the Atlas biodome were never far off. His stomach clenched at the mere thought of doing any of it again.

“Dunno,” he said truthfully. He let go of his shoulder and adopted a self-deprecating smile. “You remember when I first got them installed? Punched myself in the face trying to shave.”

Reminiscing brightened Vaughn’s face. “Uh, yeah, I left you alone for two minutes so I could make coffee and suddenly you were yelling and squirting blood everywhere. It was like a workplace accident PSA.” The nostalgic grin on his face was short-lived. “I didn’t think you remembered any of that. Those were some heavy-duty drugs.”

“The drugs were pretty nice.” Rhys had thought wistfully of them many times after Helios fell. “Didn’t exactly dull the embarrassment of you having to trail around after me like a babysitter though. That sucked.”

“You never said anything.”

Rhys shrugged. “Uh, yeah, ‘cause it was mortifying. I thought we’d just, you know, quietly agreed never to speak of it again.”

Vaughn’s face fell. He looked guilty, though Rhys couldn’t imagine why.

Not wanting to linger on this particular topic for any longer, Rhys waved his hand and made for the door. “Anyway, we should meet up with the girls. Did you guys eat already? Kinda getting hungry.”

“Actually…” Vaughn stayed planted where he was, those deep frown lines back again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Oh.” Rhys’ hand slipped from the doorknob before he could turn it, anxiety blooming uncomfortably in his chest. Did anything good ever follow a sentence like that? “Sure, what’s up?”

Vaughn beckoned to the empty chairs and then slumped down in one himself. Feeling a little like he’d been sent to the principal’s office, Rhys took the empty chair across from him.

“I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had the other day,” Vaughn said. “About… about retiring.” His eyes widened. “Uh, I mean the real kind, not the Hyperion death kind.”

Rhys grimaced. “Thanks for clarifying.”

“Sasha and Fiona are all for it,” Vaughn went on. “I figured they would be. They suggested I set up a vote. You know, leave the fate of Helios in the hands of its children… or something.”

He tilted his head, trying to source the anxiety and indecision radiating off Vaughn in waves. “So… what’s the question?”

Vaughn hesitated. And then, “Do you think that’s cowardly?”

The strangled, disbelieving noise Rhys made could best be described as a laugh. “You asking me as an expert coward?”

“I’m asking you as my friend. You’re better at all this leadership stuff than me—”

“I’m really not.”

Vaughn’s eyes narrowed, a hint of annoyance breaking through his worry. “Come on, Rhys, I’m serious. Don’t do that false modesty thing.”

“False modesty?” Rhys pressed an indignant hand to his chest. “Bro, I was middle management for a couple years. You’ve been running a city for a decade. On Pandora! The murder planet!”

“Yeah, and now they’re all trying to kill each other—”

“Like I said: murder planet.”

“I just wanna know what you think,” Vaughn insisted. “You’ve always been better with people than me.”

Rhys rubbed the back of his neck as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. What Vaughn perceived as people skills were in reality far less glamorous: smarm, a silver tongue, an unwarranted amount of luck. They could help you climb a corporate ladder or schmooze your way into frat parties. They weren’t the sorts of things that kept thousands of people alive on a hostile planet.

The shadows of self-doubt clinging to Vaughn now weren’t so different from the ones Rhys had seen when the roommate assignment algorithm at college first tossed them together. He’d hoped in the intervening years Vaughn might have shaken them loose—but then Rhys knew as well as anyone how hard it could be to ignore the nagging voice at the back of your head.

He settled back in his chair, chewing his lip in a last moment of indecision, before he said, “Ever wonder why I didn’t find you, after Helios?”

The question pulled Vaughn out of the rabbit hole of his own thoughts, his brow furrowing first in confusion before sliding down the scale closer to anger. “Are you serious? Is that a serious question?” He scoffed. “Uh, yeah, man, like every night for twelve years.” He spread his hands in exasperation. “That’s what I mean, though! We were best friends, and then something like that happens, and—I mean, what am I supposed to think? Was it me? Did I do something? Why—”

“Two reasons.” Rhys held up two fingers to illustrate the point. “Well… okay, three reasons, if you count massive blood loss and general incapacitation for a couple months.” He flicked his wrist. “But after that, two reasons. Number one…” He heard the wobble in his own voice and pressed on anyway. “Is because I’m a coward. I was scared to look and… and risk finding something I didn’t want to.” He swallowed. “And number two is because I thought maybe you’d be better off with me out of your way.”

Mouth ajar, Vaughn was silent for a beat as he processed Rhys’ words. Finally, he settled on, “How could you think that?”

Rhys shrugged. “Am I wrong? How many of our worst ideas were really my worst ideas?” Hand raised to stave off Vaughn’s protest, he ticked off examples on his fingers. “I convinced you to take the Hyperion job. Roped you into who-knows-how-many schemes just to get a leg up on the competition. Brought us to Pandora, where you got stabbed and taken hostage. I took out a whole space station… I mean, the safest place for you definitely seems to be somewhere I’m not.”

He cleared his throat, avoiding Vaughn’s eyes as he spoke. “Then we met up again, and in the time I’d spent eating fruit and jumping at my own shadow, you’d set up a whole community. Then there was the vault…” The chair squeaked as he sat back. “I dunno, man. Seems like you do pretty well for yourself once I get out of your way.” He shrugged. “I don’t think I’m the right person to give you advice on this. Unless that advice is ‘don’t listen to me’.”

Dumbfounded, Vaughn said nothing. In a blaze of self-consciousness, Rhys’ cheeks started to burn. Had Vaughn really never noticed what a liability Rhys was? He felt like a magician who’d explained his tricks to the audience.

Finally, Vaughn said, “D’you know when I got the worst grades of my life?”

Rhys raised his eyebrows. Even the concept of school marks now felt lightyears away. “Uh…” He scratched his neck. “No? Should I?”

“Second semester of first year,” Vaughn answered. “Right when we started to really become friends.”

Rhys’ hand slipped from his neck to dangle over the edge of his chair. “Uh… oh.”

Vaughn shook his head. “We started getting closer, and suddenly for the first time I had a social life. All that time I used to spend studying, or doing homework, or Sudoku or whatever—suddenly you were dragging me to parties, or bars, or B&B games, or—or just hanging out, playing video games, getting those $1 pizzas from across the street that tasted like hot cardboard…”

Well, there was something else to add to the scoreboard. He smiled weakly. “See? Like I was saying—”

“And it was fun,” said Vaughn emphatically. “Really fun. I’d never… I mean, I had friends, before, in high school and stuff, but not—not like you. And yeah, maybe my grades slipped, and maybe I missed a couple assignments, and maybe I got like a super stressful ECHO call from my mom about scholarships—”

“Er,” said Rhys.

“—but it was totally worth it. You think I’m better off without you ‘cause… ‘cause I get better grades? Rhys, you’re…” He paused for just a fraction of a second before jumping over the ledge. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

It was Rhys’ turn to be dumbfounded. A drakefruit-sized lump lodged itself in his throat. Instinctively, some part of him wanted to deny it—and he had plenty of evidence to support his counterargument, the monument of proof in the fallen structure around them.

“That’s, um…” Like the burning in the back of his throat, the guilt was persistent. He smothered it with a forced laugh. “Gee, bro, you’re gonna make me blush.”

Vaughn smiled, quiet and knowing. “That reminds me. I uh, have something for you, actually.” He walked behind his desk and knelt down, and Rhys took the opportunity to swipe at his nose. “Picked it up years back.” Rhys heard the click-click-click of a combination safe. “Been holding onto it for a while, just in case…”

Vaughn straightened up again, approaching Rhys with his arm outstretched. Rhys’ took the gift on autopilot, his cybernetic arm impervious to the way his left hand was shaking in his lap.

“I never told Sasha I went to get it. I didn’t think she’d approve. But I just… I thought… if you ever came back, I thought, maybe…”

The newfound blurriness in Rhys’ vision made it difficult to read the paper, but he didn’t need to; he already knew what it said, had clung to it for meaning like it was a religious text for long enough to know it word for word.

“Didn’t seem right, letting anyone else have it,” Vaughn was still explaining. “So I just… held onto it for you. I guess.”

The Atlas deed.

Rhys’ chair scraped against the linoleum as he stood abruptly. He tossed the deed down onto his vacated seat, and then he lurched forward, crushing Vaughn into a hug so tight he staggered.

There were a million things Rhys wanted to say, but the lump in his throat had swollen, so he settled for one he thought Vaughn deserved to hear. “I’ve missed you so much, man.”

“You have no idea.” Vaughn’s returning hug felt as desperate as Rhys’, and his voice just as thick. Was he crying too? “Bring me with you next time. Please?”

The fresh wave of guilt was drowned by a stronger tide of love that compelled Rhys to nod. “Yeah, bro. Promise.”


A button had fallen off Fiona’s jacket.

She noticed in the middle of dinner, when a piece of skag taco fell into her lap. Just about every meal they’d eaten since she came to was one you could eat with your hands—or hand, as the case may be. Tacos. Pizza. Sandwiches. Burgers. Skewers of mystery meat. Nothing that needed utensils or much in the way of coordination. If it was coordinated, like she suspected, it’d been orchestrated without her input.

That was how everything was these days. Since she’d left the hospital wing, Fiona was rarely alone, perpetually flanked by someone who leaped to help her before she could even ask.

She had to set her taco down on the plate in order to brush the crumbs from her lap, and her thumb caught the space where the button ought to be. Huh. When had that come loose?

“You all right?” Sasha’s foot nudged hers beneath the table, her eyes narrowed perceptively.

“Yeah.” Fiona’s head snapped up and she reached for the remains of her taco. Being subject to Sasha’s concern again should have been a relief, but Fiona felt her feathers ruffling nevertheless. Everyone’s worry was smothering. “All good.”

It was only a button.

Fiona excused herself early when dinner wound down, blaming fatigue as she left the others to chat. Out on her own, she scraped the rust off her people skills to ask around until she found herself at a workbench in the supply room, jacket draped across the table and every bit of sewing supplies she could find piled to one corner.

She’d been making her own clothes for most of her life. How hard could it be to replace one button?

Each step was more difficult than ever before, but Fiona muddled through on the same philosophy that had kept her and Sasha alive as kids: no choice. Figure it out.

She braced the jar of buttons between her knees so she could twist the lid off. Simple. She measured out the thread with her teeth so her hand was free to use scissors. Easy enough. She stabbed the needle into the pincushion so it stayed upright while she looped the thread through the eye. And then…

Her nose scrunched as she tried to think her way through the next step. Someone else came to use the workbench behind her, but Fiona’s focus—and frustration—zeroed in on the thread, the needle, and the button. She tried tying the knot with one hand. She tried using her teeth, and poked herself in the lip with the needle. More than once, the needle slipped off the thread while she tried to manoeuvre it and she had to start the whole process again.

Half a dozen attempts later, all she had to show for her efforts was an aching jaw and a desire to chuck the pincushion across the room. She stabbed the cushion again, flexing her fingers like an athlete warming up, rolling her neck side to side. One stupid button—

“Need a hand?” asked Rhys.

Fiona nearly jumped off the bench. Seriously, had they put some kind of homing device on her?

“No,” she said reflexively, but her resolve didn’t last. “It’s… I was…” Embarrassment caught up to her as she looked down at her failed attempt to assert independence. “It’s just a button,” she mumbled.

Uninvited, Rhys squeezed onto the bench next to her and reached for the needle and thread. Fiona grit her teeth to bite back the ungrateful words threatening to boil over. She stared intently at her jacket on the table and not at Rhys, who…

Who was tying the knot with his left hand alone. Fiona’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Here you go.” He held the needle out to her, but when she only stared, he set it back down on the table.

Now the universe was just making fun of her.

“I... would’ve figured that out eventually.” It was the least bitter thing she could think of to say. Being shown up by Rhys was personalized mockery. She wondered if he was enjoying it.

“Probably,” he nodded.

Amazing, really—even when he was being agreeable, he managed to infuriate her. She glared at the needle and thread like it was the source of all her problems.

Whether he was oblivious to or choosing to ignore the look on her face, Fiona couldn’t say. “I had a lot of time to practice,” he explained. He chuckled. “Y’know, Atlas kept their best painkillers in this, like, super childproofed container, and let me tell you, getting that open was a struggle. ...Partly ‘cause I was starting to hallucinate. But still. Figuring it out was maybe the single most gratifying moment of my life.”

The self-centred frustration bubbling in Fiona’s chest was quelled by the sudden influx of guilt. As smothered as she felt by all the unsolicited assistance she’d been receiving, the thought of navigating it all on her own…

He bumped her knee with his. “Nothing wrong with asking for help, though. Sure saves time.”

Her hand dropped to her lap and curled to a fist. “I know what you’re all trying to do, and I appreciate it,” she said finally, deciding to focus on the needle rather than on Rhys’ stupid expressive face. “But I have to be able to take care of myself. If I can’t do that…”

She’d be chum in the water. It wasn’t only her safety at risk.

Next to her, Rhys hummed in agreement. “Yeah, I get it. Which reminds me.” He nudged her again. “I made you something.”

He was up and off the bench as quick as he’d come. Fiona lifted her head in surprise, twisting to watch as he walked to a nearby workbench and flipped open a wrapped canvas. The gears clicked in her brain just in time for him to stand up straight and face her, beaming.

“Tah-dah!” His outstretched hands held a new prosthetic arm.

Fiona’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “You... made that?”

“Finished this morning,” said Rhys proudly. He walked closer. “Probably still needs a bit of troubleshooting, but no better way than user-testing, right?”

“I…” Fiona’s silver tongue turned to lead in her mouth. “Um.”

“I know we should’ve talked about it first, but it didn’t really seem like you wanted to, and I figured, well, why wait?” Rhys was speaking quickly, like a kid getting nervous in the middle of show-and-tell. “It’s just a basic model—you really wanna get fancy, you need an implant, which means surgery, and, heh, trust me, I am, uh, not the guy you wanna go to for that—but I figured, this’ll help you see what you like, and we can talk upgrades, and in the meantime it should help, and... and you haven’t interrupted me yet, which is alarming.”

She looked up from the prosthetic arm in time to watch his face fall.

“This is weird, isn’t it?” He winced. “I just—I figured—I mean, I know how to make one, so I thought… Sorry.”

He winced as he said it. Fiona felt a pang of affection in her chest.

“It’s not weird.” Then, with a shrug, “At least not any weirder than usual. It’s just...” She reached for the prosthetic but her hand hovered above it without touching. Accepting it felt like finally turning to face the shadow in her periphery she’d been trying to ignore. She imagined a “before” and “after” marker in the sand, and though she knew she’d crossed into After as soon as she’d stepped into the Vault…

“You don’t have to try it right now,” he said gently. “Or… ever, if—”

“No, I will.” Lips pursed defiantly, Fiona took the prosthetic from him. It was lighter than she’d imagined. The leather straps at the other end dangled onto her lap. She eyed the buckles, working out how it all fastened together.

“I can show you how to put it on,” Rhys offered. “If you want.”

Her pride was a lump in her throat. She swallowed it down. “Okay.”

She made space for him on the bench, and Rhys took the seat to her left, looping the long strap around her shoulder.

“Uh, is it all right if I…?” He gestured to the empty sleeve pinned up to her left arm.

Growing up, Fiona had done most of her own patching-up, with Sasha filling the rare gaps. Self-reliance had been one of Felix’s edicts, but she’d learned its importance long before he was in the picture.

“Sure,” said Fiona, because it seemed like the fastest solution, and she was eager to end the situation as quickly as possible.

Rhys’ touch was gentle as he rolled up her sleeve, but Fiona still wanted to squirm away as the bubble of her personal space popped.

At least Helios’ nurses had been plenty detached, their cold bedside manner enabling Fiona’s defensive walls even as she was poked and prodded. Rhys, on the other hand—Rhys knew her, really knew her. Somehow, that made it mortifying.

Her discomfort must have been obvious—Fiona’s face felt like it was on fire—but Rhys did her the courtesy of pretending not to notice. Instead, he talked as he worked, explaining what he was doing, how he’d designed the straps to be easily fastened one-handed, and then the mechanics of the arm itself—how it was wired to recognize nerve signals in her arm, how the dexterity could be refined with testing.

Fiona wasn’t really listening. All she could focus on was the way her eyes were stinging and her throat felt thick. Her leg bounced up and down like she was drilling a hole in the concrete with her boot heel.

“...and the on switch there, and… done.”

Rhys pulling away caught her attention more than his words did. She turned to look, forehead creasing as she struggled to reconcile what she was seeing with what she felt.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“Pretty much. How’s it feel? Too tight, or…?”

“No, it’s fine.” Her voice might have belonged to someone else for how far away from her it seemed. The weight of the prosthetic on her shoulder and upper arm was unfamiliar, but not yet uncomfortable; she wondered how it might feel hours from now. The metal resting against her thigh felt foreign, and there was no returning sensation from the fabric of her pants or the heat of her leg. “It’s…”

“Weird?” Rhys offered.

Concise but accurate. Fiona nodded.

“Yeah. You get used to it.” He flexed his own cybernetic fingers like he was contemplating them for the first time. He kicked her boot. “Try it out.”

“How…?”

But the question had barely formed before she had her answer, her eyes widening as each of the mechanical fingers in her lap began to move. She raised her hand, the same way she’d tried and failed in the hospital bed, and the mechanical hand shot up too—so fast and smooth Rhys ducked to the side. Mouth ajar, she rolled her wrist, made a fist, flexed each finger individually.

“Pretty good, right?” He sounded smug. Fiona couldn’t hold it against him. “It’ll take some getting used to. Especially pressure and force. Word of advice, don’t use that hand to grab anything fragile for a while—it’s stronger than it looks.”

“Coffee mugs in the right hand,” Fiona mumbled, taking turns pressing the pad of each finger to her thumb. “Got it.”

“Like I said, this is a basic model. Bad news—no feeling. Good news—no pain either.” He massaged his own cybernetic palm. “And, uh, should you decide you wanna go the more permanent route… if you find a surgeon… I could go first, if you want. Check they don’t steal any organs.”

The shift in his tone pulled Fiona’s gaze away from her new hand. Rhys wasn’t looking at her anymore, but staring straight ahead, his smile pinched.

Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you want?”

“I don’t love the thought of another surgery.” It sounded like an understatement. “But twelve years, the tech advancements! Who knows what kind of cool stuff an advanced prosthetic can do now? Besides…” Rhys shrugged, looking down at his palm. “I miss what I used to be able to do.”

Fiona punched his metal shoulder with her new hand.

“Hey!” Rhys scowled, rubbing the spot with his other hand—reflex more than necessity.

“You were right, no pain,” she observed, grinning as she wiggled her fingers. But she sobered quickly. “Seems like you can still do plenty. Not sure you need the tech for that.”

It took a second for the surprise of the unexpected compliment to wear off, and then Rhys smiled. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t push it.”

Grinning, Rhys bounced to his feet and extended a hand. “C’mon, first leadership debate tonight. Should be interesting.” That was another understatement. He nodded towards her arm. “You can show off your new tech.”

Fiona shook her head. “You go. I’ve got a button to fix.”

Rhys shrugged. His outstretched hand smoothed down his hair instead. “All right. See you later, Fi.”

He was nearly to the door before she called, “Hey, Rhys,” and waited for him to turn.

Fiona’s lips twisted, years of instinct fighting against what she knew she ought to say. A dozen variations came to mind, each too saccharine for her to swallow. I really appreciate it, or It means a lot to me, or If this whole vault mess had to happen, I’m glad it happened with you.

Instead, she just said, “Thanks.”

Rhys nodded. His smile said he’d understood her meaning just fine. “No problem.”

Biting down a grin herself, she turned back to her desk and picked up the needle and the button with both hands.


From atop Helios’ recently repaired gate, Sasha watched a pair of rakks put on a mesmerizing display as they swooped around each other, performing elaborate aerial acrobatics and somehow never colliding. It almost looked like they were dancing.

And then one squawked, and suddenly they were dive bombing each other, pecking at each other’s wings in mid-air. Sasha huffed a laugh and shook her head. Yeah, that about summed up the Pandoran experience.

Elsewhere in the bowels of the compound, the remaining Children of Helios were taking a democratic approach to resolving their ongoing sibling rivalry. While the others had gone to observe, Sasha had been quick to excuse herself. Crowds were foreign and unwelcome after a lifetime of self-imposed isolation.

As welcoming as Vaughn had tried to make the place, the whole of Helios still made her itch. Even now that the vault had regurgitated what it’d stolen from her, she felt the looming presence of that empty stone archway like an ankle weight. She longed to shake free. But without her caravan, and with her new… entanglements, where could she go?

“Hey, Sash.” Fiona’s voice cut through the sounds of the distant rakk fight as she appeared at the other end of the gate. “Mind the company?”

In an effort towards optimism, Sasha focused on the novelty of Fiona asking permission, rather than the redundancy of asking permission when you’ve already done something. “Sick of the politics?”

“Something like that. I lost interest once they got off the topic of cafeteria food.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Can’t imagine wanting a job like this.”

“Me neither. Looking after one person’s hard enough, hmm?”

Palms raised in surrender, Fiona shook her head. “Hey, your words, not mine.” She slumped against the lookout next to Sasha, surveying the landscape with casual disinterest. “Think Vaughn’s already having a bit of separation anxiety.”

“It’ll be good for him.” Sasha focused on Elpis as she spoke, nails tapping on the railing. “When… you were gone, I spent all that time trying not to think about anyone but myself. Vaughn was the opposite. He put everything into this place because the alternative was actually thinking about what he’d lost.”

“Yeah.” Fiona ran her mechanical fingers through her hair, her head downcast. “I get that.”

Naked expressions of guilt had become common in her, mirroring the ones Sasha saw so often in Rhys. Perhaps it was progress. It unsettled Sasha anyway.

Time for a change of subject. “You got up the ladder all right, then.”

“Yup.” Fiona held her new left arm out for inspection as though she herself were still surprised by its presence. Maybe she was. “I, uh, practiced a bit on the lower rungs. But that boyfriend of yours knows what he’s doing.” She leaned next to Sasha against the lookout. “Sometimes. Don’t tell him I said that.”

There was the B-word again; Fiona was using it with increased frequency, fishing for a reaction like a kid test driving a new curse word.

So far, Sasha had resisted the bait. “He told me he’s got some ideas for upgrades. Said he found some video on the ECHO net about new tech, he’s all excited. It was all kind of beyond me.”

“Can’t believe you’re dating such a nerd,” Fiona deadpanned. Her eyes burned into the side of Sasha’s head even as she did her best to ignore the pointed stare. “How’s that working out? He told you about his stock portfolio yet?”

Sasha clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Sorry, Fi. Jig’s up.You can’t pretend you don’t like him, I know you do.”

Fiona scrunched her nose and shrugged. “I could still kick his ass if I needed to.”

“Be nice,” insisted Sasha. “I… like him.” Even that understatement felt like a big admission. “It’s—it’s good.”

“Wow,” drawled Fiona, “didn’t realize he’d turned you into such a poet.”

“Oh, shut up.” Sasha punched her on the shoulder; Fiona snickered. “This is new for me, okay? I don’t wanna… you know… give the universe any ideas.”

“What does that mean?”

Sasha shrugged. “Nothing.” Her gaze dropped down to her hands, and she massaged the scar on her neck. “Forget it. Everything’s good.”

That was a mistake; Fiona turned to face her directly, arms crossed. “Sasha. Come on.”

“Everything is good!” she insisted. But Fiona’s stare was piercing, and she sighed. “It’s good when we’re together. It is. It’s just that sometimes… sometimes when he leaves the room, I think, what if that’s it? What if something happens, and he’s gone again, and that’s the last I saw him?” Her knuckles turned white on the guard rail. “Happens sometimes with you, too.”

Voicing the anxiety was enough to make it rise like a spectre, an icy hand squeezing the breath from her lungs. When she was with them, ignoring the nagging whispers was easy enough. But once she was alone, the fear spread like a creeping vine, wrapped itself around her until she could only think of the Vault, of the cut on Rhys’ face and the bullet in his arm, the broken shield caked in her sister’s blood—

Fiona’s prosthetic hand felt like Rhys’ when it touched Sasha’s shoulder. “You tell Rhys you feel that way?”

Sasha scoffed. “No, he doesn’t need to know I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy—”

“Besides, I don’t want him feeling like he has to babysit me. I don’t want to smother him. I just have to…” She fished around for the words. “Get on with it.”

“You know…” Fiona’s hand stayed planted on Sasha’s shoulder as she contemplated a response. “This might be news to you, because it certainly was to me, but it turns out sometimes getting on with it is a lot easier when you let other people help you.”

Sasha forced herself to nod even as the remaining tendrils of fear lashed at her heart. “That’s just it. I got used to being on my own, but now… if something happened… I don’t think I could do that again.”

“You won’t have to.”

“You don’t know that. It’s Pandora, anything could happen. You didn’t mean to disappear the first time either and you still—” Sasha cut herself off, inhaling sharply through her teeth and shutting her eyes. “Sorry. That’s not… I’m not trying to…”

The hand on Sasha’s shoulder squeezed gently. “It’s all right. Say what you need to say.”

Just like that, Sasha was twelve years old again, upset about botching a simple con job and being comforted by her sister.

Sasha let out a long breath and hung her head, staring at the sand down below. “Sometimes it feels like I forgot how to just be happy. Like I’m just… broken now.”

In the heavy second that followed, Fiona was quiet, and Sasha regretted saying anything at all. She reached for her handkerchief, but it was long gone, so she rubbed her neck instead, nails biting into her skin.

Then Fiona pulled her into a hug, so tight and sudden that Sasha squeaked.

“You are not broken.” Firm and decisive, Fiona’s voice left no room for argument. “That’s not true. And even if it was… even if you did forget… there are a lot of us now who’ll help you relearn. Okay?”

Pressed into the hug, with her arms trapped at her sides and her sister’s hair in her face, Sasha felt the ghost of a laugh leave her. “If you say so.”

Fiona’s hug didn’t relent. “You don’t have to do it all on your own. Felix, the stuff he tried to teach us… it’s not the only way to survive. You’re not weak if you need help sometimes. We all do.”

The grip of Fiona’s prosthetic was strong against Sasha’s back. Sasha wondered which of them the words were really for. “I know, Fi.”

“Good.” With one last pat, Fiona let go. “Just making sure.”

She winked, straightened out her jacket again before she leaned against the guard rail. Sasha settled in beside her, and in comfortable silence they watched as the sun hugged the horizon.


“You know, some people might think you were leading them into the desert to kill them.”

“Oh please.” With his eyes shut, Rhys wouldn’t be able to see Sasha’s smirk, so she squeezed his hand instead. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t take you to the middle of nowhere, I’d do it at Helios where there’s a ton of people I could frame.”

Rhys raised his eyebrows but let her guide him around a boulder without complaint. “Okay, suddenly reconsidering our sleeping arrangements.”

“No, you’re not.”

His goofy answering smile was impossible not to return. “No, I’m not.” He paused. “Bed could be bigger, though.”

“Yeah, you probably should’ve filed that request when Vaughn was still in charge.”

“There’s still a few days of transition! Maybe I could sneak in a last-minute request…”

“Don’t upset a fragile new democracy just because you’ve decided you don’t like cuddling.”

“Excuse me? I love cuddling. It’s on the record that I love cuddling. It’s just that someone happens to have feet like blocks of ice that somehow always find their way to—”

“All right, stop.” Sasha stopped him with a hand on his chest, and Rhys—eyes still dutifully shut—aimed a quizzical expression in her general direction. “Here we are.”

“So… can I look now?”

Sasha chewed on her bottom lip, casting a worried look over to her set-up. It didn’t look like any passing skags had chewed it up or marked their territory in the time she’d left it alone. Her stomach twisted with nerves and last-minute doubt anyway.

This was stupid. What had she been thinking? This was so embarrassing...

“Sash?” Rhys swung their joined hands back and forth. “The suspense is killing me.”

“Um… yeah.” She cleared her throat in hopes to sound less like a timid teenager. “Yeah, you can look.”

While Rhys surveyed their surroundings, Sasha studied her shoes.

“We’re… at the vault,” said Rhys, inscrutable after a long moment of silence. He scratched the back of his neck. “We’re at the vault, and there’s a bunch of… blankets?”

He spoke with the tone of voice one used to politely accept an unwanted birthday gift.

“I wanted to apologize. For that night when we were on the roof of the caravan and I got scared and ruined it.” Forcing the words out was easier if she wasn’t looking at him while she did it. Self-conscious, she gestured towards the pillows she’d arranged. “And I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me when Fiona was hurt—before that, even—and I thought… I hoped… that maybe it could be like closure.” Cheeks burning, Sasha dropped Rhys’ hand to fidget with her bracelet. “And it’s a clear sky, so you can see the stars, so… I thought...”

Her voice trailed off. She narrowly refrained from burying her face in her hands.

“...Wow.” Rhys whistled low, which did little to mitigate her embarrassment. “Well, this might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. I feel like I’m in a music video.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious!” He looped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her into a hug while she squirmed. “It’s nice to not be the biggest sap in a relationship for once.”

Wedged against his chest, Sasha wrinkled her nose. “Oh you are definitely the bigger sap.”

“I dunno, you brought me all the way out here for a moonlit cuddle…”

“I’m regretting that,” Sasha grumbled, finally breaking free. But it was hard to maintain much of a glare at Rhys’ smug face when he leaned over to kiss her forehead.

“I love it,” he told her earnestly, his soft hand cupping the side of her head. “You’re the best.”

Simple praise, yet it set off sparklers in Sasha’s belly. She moved backwards towards the blankets, one hand at the back of his neck and one finger hooked through his belt loop to guide him after her.

Rhys followed easily. His metal hand came to rest at her hips, thumb stroking circles on her exposed midriff. “There is a small problem, though.”

Sasha stretched as tall as she could, tangling her fingers in his hair to pull his face closer to hers. “Oh yeah?” Their lips were practically touching; Rhys’ eyes were half-closed on instinct. “And what’s that?”

Off in the distance, shouted through cupped hands, someone called, “Boo! Get a room!”

Sasha stumbled back, brow furrowed. “Wh…” She squinted at two approaching figures. “Fiona?”

Rhys made a sheepish apologetic squeak. “I, uh, invited the others. I didn’t realize this was supposed to be… y’know…”

Sasha gawped. “Seriously?”

“You didn’t tell me it was a date!”

“Because it was obvious!”

“You just said, ‘hey, wanna get away from Helios for a bit?’, and I thought, yeah, I know who could use that, Vaughn—”

“Vaughn?!”

“Besides, Fiona and I have been meaning to talk to the two of you about something. It was the perfect opportunity!”

“Correction: it was the perfect opportunity.” She rubbed her temples. “I can’t believe I ask you to go on a nighttime stroll under the stars, and you invite my sister.” Arms crossed, she shook her head in disbelief. “My god, I really am the romantic one.”

“I’ll make it up to you!” Rhys swung his head around to gauge how long he had before Fiona and Vaughn were properly in earshot. Then he lowered his voice and wagged his eyebrows. “Tonight, I can—”

“Nope. Nuh-uh.” Sasha held a silencing finger up to his face. “Don’t you finish that sentence when my sister is ten feet away.”

Rhys’ face fell into a kicked-puppy look, but the others arrived before he could say anything.

“Jeeze, this place looks like something out of a Boy Garden video,” said Fiona; Sasha glowered. “Are any of these blankets sanitary to sit on?”

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” said Sasha tersely.

Fiona grinned in response. “Too late.” She gestured with a tip of her chin. “Vaughn brought beer!”

At least Vaughn had the social graces to look uncomfortable as he held up a six pack in response. “Uh… yep.” His eyes darted awkwardly between the three of them. “I sure did.”

Fiona grabbed the first beer, popping it out of the plastic ring and nodding her gratitude. She dropped down on the blankets Sasha had carefully arranged. “We’re celebrating Vaughn’s newfound unemployment.”

“Not sure I love the phrasing,” said Vaughn, “but… thanks?”

“You put the kids up for adoption,” Fiona continued. “You’re an empty-nester now.”

“Please stop making it weirder.”

“She’s kinda got a point.” Rhys snapped two cans from the pack; he offered one to Sasha like an alcoholic olive branch, then tapped his beer against Vaughn’s. “You got any ideas for what’s next?”

“Not really,” Vaughn admitted. He joined Fiona on the blankets. “So far I just feel like I left the stove on.”

“Eh, you’ve got time.” With an apologetic shrug in Sasha’s direction, Rhys sat down too, patting the empty space beside him.

Relinquishing her original vision for the evening, Sasha sat next to him. He looped an arm around her shoulders, and after a moment’s stubborn resistance, she settled into his side.

Fiona raised an eyebrow in their direction; Sasha stuck out her tongue.

“I think it’ll be nice.” Sasha snapped open the tab of her beer. “Liberating. You can think about what you want. When’s the last time you did that?”

“Yeah, I know.” Vaughn took a thoughtful swig of his drink. “It’s just weird, you know? Like… what next? I haven’t really figured that out.”

“Heh,” said Sasha, “join the club.” She crossed her legs at the ankles as she stretched out. “We’re all in that boat now, right?”

But to her surprise, rather than the series of nods she’d expected, she watched Fiona and Rhys make meaningful eye contact.

Fiona arched her eyebrow and spoke first. “Actually, about that…”

“I’ve been looking into cybernetics,” continued Rhys. “Technology’s gotten way better! Pandora’s selection of surgeons… hasn’t, really.”

Fiona took the lead. “So… we were thinking… maybe we need to expand our search.”

“I’ve been doing a bit of research on Promethea,” Rhys carried on. “Technically there’s still a couple Atlas buildings that haven’t been razed to the ground yet. I mean, I think they’re mostly full of outdated garbage and something called ratches, but they could be my buildings full of outdated garbage and something called ratches.”

“Wait a minute, Atlas?” Sasha craned her neck to stare up at him in disbelief. “I thought you’d given up on that.”

“So did I.” Rhys turned his smile from Sasha to Vaughn. “Someone made me reconsider.”

“Getting off this rock is still expensive,” said Fiona, “but I think nine million would more than cover four tickets.” She lifted her beer and took a sip, trying to feign indifference even as her eyes sparkled. “If you’re up for it.”

Heart thumping in her ears, Sasha struggled to put words to the white noise buzzing in her brain. Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Vaughn, who’d found his voice much sooner. He leaned forward, looking between Rhys and Fiona with a scrutinizing gaze. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“It doesn’t have to be Promethea,” said Rhys, excitement crackling even in his measured words. “It’s just an idea. But there are a lot of other planets out there.” He gestured above them, to the deep night sky speckled with stars beyond the archway of the vault. “And it seems like it might be a good time for a fresh start.”

Clawing back to full attention, Sasha pried herself from Rhys’ side to sit up straight. “You’re serious?” She studied him, then Vaughn and Fiona. “You wanna leave Pandora?”

“If the two of you are up for it,” Rhys clarified.

“Yeah, we’re not going anywhere without you guys,” Fiona agreed. The corner of her mouth twitched into a smile in Sasha’s direction. “Besides, half the money’s technically yours, so…”

Sasha’s voice left her again. She felt dizzier than could be justified by the half-can of beer she’d managed to drink. Leave Pandora? Together?

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” said Vaughn. He was grinning now too. “New adventure, right, bro?”

He held out a fist, and Rhys bumped it with his. “Hell yeah.”

“Sash.” Fiona shifted closer on the blanket, her voice softer than before. “I meant what I said, about it being all of us. I know we used to talk about leaving Pandora, but that was a long time ago, and if things have changed–if you don’t want that anymore…”

“We can make it work here,” said Rhys, and Vaughn hummed in agreement. “Together.”

“Are you kidding?!” Sasha shook her head, slowly dissipating the fog of disbelief. “Of course I wanna go! Anywhere!”

Fiona’s face cracked into a full grin. Rhys’ relief bolstered his bravery enough that he leaned forward to kiss her on the temple.

“All right, then,” he said, as Sasha leaned back into his side. He held out his beer. “To whatever’s next.”

Three other beer cans clinked against his.

“To whatever’s next,” Fiona echoed.

A long-forgotten warmth blossomed in Sasha’s belly as she looked around at the others, one that stretched a smile across her face and made her heart beat faster. It was the same feeling she’d had years ago near this very spot, when Felix’s watch had begun to work and she realized she was getting a second chance at life.

Hope.

“So,” she asked the others, “where to?”

Notes:

Thanks so much to everyone who supported this fic along the way, even through the very long pauses between updates, and all the angst. All of your comments and asks and nice DMs meant so much and I really appreciated all of them. This is the longest fic I've ever completed, the first time in adulthood I tried to write a novel-length, and it was a learning process.

I want to give a special shout-out to @Tobi for your dedication in leaving such lovely, thoughtful comments on each and every chapter -- they were so very helpful to me finding the motivation to finish this last piece over the past year of pandemic and mental block.

I'm not sure if I will write more fic for Borderlands, this feels like a natural conclusion for me. I appreciated all the support over the years, and had fun carving out a little alternate ending for these characters I came to love. I hope you all enjoyed!

As always you are welcome to come say hi on Twitter or on Tumblr, where I am @oodlyenough. And hey, if you happen to also like Arcane... 👀

Notes:

It was only a matter of time until I tried a "what happened after the Vault" piece, I guess. After pondering this premise for probably more than a year, I think things have settled into place enough for me to give it a whirl. Fingers crossed.

You are welcome to come say hi on Tumblr: @oodlyenough!

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