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It’s the end of Pandora and Angel’s staring down the barrel of a pistol at her father. Her hands are shaking and she’s feeling lightheaded, but the sweat beading on her forehead is cold as ice and the blood in her veins chills like fresh liquid eridium. Jack’s looking at her one second and then his eyes fall to her toes, struggling to pull them back up. He’s done for, it’s written all over the scene – there’s going to be a murder tonight on far more than just his empire.
It’s the end of Pandora as they tried to make it, and she’s fine with that – she turned the tide, switched positions, except her projections came out flawed and the oddness of improbable actions swept her calculations clean.
The vault hunter variable didn’t work out in her favor. She got used for longer than she wanted to, for longer than her destiny intended. Tonight’s the night it’s all going to end, she feels it in her bones.
Just… She doesn’t want it to be like this.
She should have died when she wanted to, when she intended to, when her numbers were up. She never counted on the fallibility of her plans – and in retrospect, they all were perfect except that one. It’s still hard to say what went wrong but Jack… Jack upset the perfect balance.
And so they’re both alive at the crucial moment where everything has turned to crumbs and dust, and she never intended to be here. She didn’t want to, she shouldn’t be, a thousand ”this wasn’t meant to happen” lingering on the tip of her tongue as she tries to apologize. But her mouth is dry and his is filled with blood. When his lips part, it oozes forth in small bubbles.
His chin stained with blood, it drips down onto his shirt, and he coughs and sputters. The words are done. He’s made his speech. They’ve put the gun in her hands.
Her choices, her wishes, they made sense at the time. ”I want to be be the one who does it,” she said, crawling across the dirty ground, stumbling and flailing her limbs awkwardly. ”I need to be the one.”
Except now the lava churns, they’re staring at her with that regretful hesitation and doubt they’ve eyed her with since they first met face-to-face in the core, where they failed her plans. She swallows. It seems so long ago. The end result is good enough, but the path there…
She tries to breathe but the air is so thick it won’t budge around her. She wanted to do this, she reminds herself, gripping the pistol tighter, re-aligning it so that the barrel is pointed right at his forehead. At this distance, even she won’t be able to miss.
There’s a strange tingling burn inside her. She feels… Done. Used up. Her mind is clear, her thoughts her own, uninterrupted by the frantic ECHOnet of Pandora, and it leaves her empty. The silence alone is deafening.
Whatever the key did to her, it burnt something out, severed connections. It’s as good a time as any to end it all.
Squeezing the trigger she averts her face. There are things she can stand – excruciating pain as the needles sink into her flesh, the sound of scalpels cutting through her skin, the burn of eridium lacing itself through flesh and bone and blood – but to see him, bruised and beaten and barely able to stand upright, it’s too much. It’s what she wanted, but it hurt more than she could have guessed.
As she fires, she thinks she’s falling because she’s light-headed, because it seems only natural to fall when he does, because she’s not feeling the ground under her feet or feeling the heat from around her anymore – and she thinks, this would be a good place to die. Poetically fit. Both of them done for at the heart of their obsession. Poetic justice, for what it’s worth on Pandora.
Except neither of them die then.
Lilith stares at the ceiling fan, teeth gritted, fists clenched in the sheets, the howls from the basement growing louder. He’s like an unhinged beast, making noise at all hours, but it gets worst during the night when he just won’t quit. He screams, he rattles the chains and cage doors, drawing energy from an inexhaustible source to keep them up and writhing in their beds. Of course, the rest have adjusted – they could sleep through a bombardment without flinching, nerves dampened by what Pandora has thrown at them.
She used to be able to, but being weaned off eridium is killing her slowly. She’s just a bundle of frayed nerves and volatile urges, and right now, she’s consumed with the thought of how nice it’d be to shut that bastard up forever.
She squeezes the pillow over her head, trying to block it out, but he’s still there, voice loud and cruel, cutting past any barriers. It’s noise she can’t block out.
Sure, a promise is a promise, but this is too much even for her. Flopping out of bed she pulls on an oversized t-shirt and enters phasewalk, already picturing the gratifying scene of melting his face with a simple gesture of her hand. It’s all in the motion of the wrist, the energies built up and channeled into the middle and index finger. That’s all she needs to kill a man – two fingers and a hell of a lot of anger.
She drops out of the phase outside his cell, but all her momentum grinds to a halt when she sees Angel standing in front of the cage door, leaning heavily on it, her back hunched over and arms wrapped around the bars.
”Oh,” Lilith says, lowering her hand quickly, trying to steer the killing motion into something more casual. ”What are you doing down here?”
”You’ve ruined her!” Handsome Jack snarls at Lilith from the corner of his cell, but she doesn’t pay him any attention.
”Saying hello.” Angel looks exhausted, deep circles under her watery eyes, her knees shaking slightly. ”He doesn’t want to say hello back.”
”I don’t talk to traitors!” His voice bellows, but there’s a fracture in it, making his words high-pitched. If Angel looks on the verge of tears, he sounds like it – but hard to tell with that mask of his.
”It’s just me.”
”This is all your fault!”
”No, I did it intentionally.” Angel sighs, turning to Lilith, her expression so cold it makes Lilith shudder in the suffocating summer heat. ”You came down here to kill him didn’t you?”
”I, uh, well…”
”It’s fine. I knew you would. I don’t blame you for wanting to, but I still want to be the one in charge of his life and what’s left of it. If you don’t mind.” Her tone doesn’t really invite any argument.
”Just make him shut up. Permanently would be preferable.”
”I’m working on it.”
Lilith touches her forehead, rubbing at the tension spot right above her nose. ”Kid, you gotta toughen up.”
”I know.” And for a little while, Angel doesn’t look like the world-weary woman with answers to everything and solutions for all. With her shoulders hunched up and her big blue eyes shimmering, she looks… Well, like a scared girl who has no idea what she’s doing. Not anymore.
Lilith pats her on the shoulder, stiff and awkward, and Angel flinches away instinctively. They’re never going to be friends and that might be for the better.
Upon leaving, she stops at the top of the stairs, shrugging off all the insults Jack hurls at her without a problem, but she sees the curve of Angel’s back increasing. She bends for him, no matter how they try to straighten her up, and Lilith wants to be clever enough to snap her out of it, but… She’s more terrified of Angel than she is of anything Jack could ever have done to her.
Angel stands in front of the bathroom mirror, peeling away the tape covering the bullet wound on her cheek. They pulled the stitches out the other day, but her picking at the scabs keeps upsetting the healing process. She knows it’s bad and she keeps doing it without a second thought, standing in front of the mirror with a pair of tweezers and her outgrown sharp fingernails as her only weapons.
When her control over the situation – over Pandora – crumbles by the day, unplugged from the intricate network Jack built, she has to do something to keep herself busy. It’s just hard to find something that lasts.
She pauses, stares at her reflection, at the trickle of blood coming from the cheek, and she dabs at it with a cotton swab.
At the end, with Lilith ready to destroy the kneeling bleeding man, Angel asked her to stop. ”I want to do it. I deserve to do it.” And Lilith handed her a pistol as if it was nothing, waiting, and as Angel weighted it in her hands she stared at her bleeding, muttering father, his eyes half-closed and gaze unfocused, and she couldn’t.
When everything crumbles, they both end up alive in the hands of the resistance. They explain it to her as she wakes up: Angel’s powers flared up as she squeezed the trigger – intense emotions tend to do that to sirens, Lilith says, Maya shrugging at her side. The pistol was a shitty Hyperion one with electronic micro-chips scattered all throughout it that never were meant to carry an electric current, and she overloaded them all. The projectile went out through the back, hitting the side of her face.
Maya says Jack screamed when Angel sagged to the ground. ”Or he laughed. I think he did. It’s hard to tell with that asshole.”
Back of the pistol. She frowns at the mirror. All guns are made up out of parts, and if she’d been connected she could have pulled up the right name in a second. But the cords are gone, the connections severed. She can move her head without feeling the plastic fiber-optics graze over her bare shoulder, and that… Hurts.
Her body and mind have shrunk, and she’s adrift alone without the network she created to support her. She can’t sleep at night, anxious because she can’t draw upon the images and sounds that soothed her thoughts.
And her thoughts are her own and that’s terrifying. She’s small and tiny and who is she, what is she–
The bathroom starts spinning and she clutches at the sink, staring at the cracked and stained porcelain. The dirt has lost all its romantic appeal and just disgusts her now. She misses her home, she misses it so, and this freedom is just as appalling as she feared it’d be.
So they took them both back. They dragged them both along, alive. Sort of.
They patched Angel up best they could, but she’s still addicted, and getting weaned off a bad habit hurts. And all the while, Jack sits on the dirty floor of a basement cellar, refusing to talk to any of them. Well, any of the vault hunters. When Angel goes downstairs – and she does that all too often, knowing she shouldn’t, but she can’t do otherwise – he opens his mouth and unleashes it all on her.
She knows she doesn’t deserve what he throws at her, objectively, but subjectively she has to come down there and take it and stare at him hoping he’ll actually see her. But he’s so lost in his anger, his hatred, gone astray in his vision of the world – he sees nothing that doesn’t fit in his view, and she’s slipping to the periphery.
Coughing, a few blood drops hits the porcelain sink. She supposes it’s a small victory that the purple discoloration of her blood isn’t as bad as it used to be, but it’s not as comforting a fact as it should be to her.
At breakfast Angel stares at her food trying to remember where she misplaced her appetite, eyes heavy with the dark circles of insomnia. It’s been ages since she ate actual home-cooked food, used to synthetic flavoring and liquid diets, and here Brick is putting down plate after plate in front of her, never losing hope that she’ll eventually eat something.
”It smells good,” she says, trying to show gratitude. ”Delicious, even.”
”Then why aren’t you eating it?” Maya asks, one foot pushed up against the edge of the table as she only pretends to read the book in her hands. By the last count Angel did, Maya’s read it four times – and Angel memorized each line she highlighted, each margin scribble noted down during bumpy car rides.
”It’s a process.” She can’t explain it better than that, but forces herself to take a bite of the succulent sausage. The taste alone almost overwhelms her and the icy water stings in her throat as she washes it down.
It’s only them in the kitchen – the others are out and about, attending to business of their own. Angel traces Gaige to Moxxi’s bar where she’s trying to catch up on off-world business now that the Hyperion outgoing information blockade has fallen; Salvador’s sleeping off a long string of nights in Scooter’s garage. The others are outside of Sanctuary, and beyond her weak reach.
Maya pinches her arm and brings her back to the room, snapping her out of the trance. ”Hey. Don’t do that.”
”I was only checking on what everyone is up to.”
”You ask for that kind of information, like everyone else does.”
”I… Yes, of course. I apologize.” She tries to eat some more, but can’t swallow it and discreetly folds it up in a napkin, pushing it under the plate’s edge. ”So. Uh. How are you?”
”I’m curious.” Maya puts the bookmark into place and snaps the book shut. ”So. What was your plan, really?”
”To smash Jack’s empire to smithereens.” Angel keeps her gaze even, but can’t help the slight smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.
”Well, you succeeded, though it took you some time.”
”Yes, the hiccups were an annoyance.” Thinking back – and it’s not long ago, but it feels long enough – she used to be disappointed in them. She even blamed Maya for the failure, that they stood in the core of her immense prison and failed to do the necessary thing. They just injured her, and she got so close to death she felt the slowing of her heart… The shortness of breath… And then she felt Jack’s hands forcing her mouth open, forcing liquid eridium down her throat, burning her esophagus. She bit him, and he screamed at her.
She didn’t scream back then, but even half-dead in his arms she started plotting again for how to destroy him, for how to crush him completely. And in the dark recesses of her heart, she hated Maya for what she didn’t do.
”It was a stupid plan.” Maya’s annoyance speaks volumes. ”It was nothing more than a trap.”
”I understand how you can see it that way, but that time, my intentions were genuine.”
”That time? And all those other times you tricked us?”
”Maya,” Brick growls from the stove, flipping a pancake in the frying pan. ”Be nice.”
”No, I think we need to ask her these questions. Why are we letting her walk freely around here while we got Jack – her father – locked up? What makes her so trust-worthy?”
”I’m disconnected. There’s nothing I can do.”
”Excuse me if I don’t fully believe that.”
”That’s your choice. I can’t blame you for it.”
Maya’s lips tighten into a narrow line. She’s beautiful, always, but there’s something special about her rage that makes Angel want to lean forward, take her chances, and kiss her full on the mouth. It’s a terrifying expression gracing her face, but it appeals to Angel – she likes the idea of unrepentant anger. Of the curses that rest on the tip of Maya’s tongue.
She likes the risk inherent in desire, as thrilling as it is terrible.
”So…” Maya narrows her eyes. ”What would have happened? If things had gone according to plan?” Maya asks, though she doesn’t really want to hear the answer, Angel knows as much from the twitch of her eyebrow.
”I was planning to go down on my knees,” Angel says without missing a beat. ”Have you shoot me, right between the eyes.” She idly pushes the food around on the plate, poking and prodding at it, toying with the mashed root vegetables and forming them into round shapes. ”I wanted you to perform the execution.”
Maya’s still for a few seconds, eyes wide and staring at Angel. Then she abruptly pushes the chair out, the shrill scrape accompanying a low muttered curse as she gets up. ”I’m not baby-sitting her today,” she says to Brick in passing as she exits.
He shrugs his massive shoulders, cleaning up the platters. When he’s sure there’s just the two of them, he shakes his head. ”You’re terrible at flirting,” Brick says.
”I’m doing my best.”
”Well, your best is terrifying, to be honest. You might as well have asked her about her abbey life.”
”I was thinking of doing that–”
”I mean, it’s a bad idea.”
”Oh.” She licks her lips, idle hands playing with the loose side-swept hair.
Brick’s about to say something but changes his mind, reaches for something on a top shelf, then drops a pistol down on the table. ”You up for some shooting practice?”
Angel keeps her arms folded across her chest as she follows him down to the range, each step feeling… Strange. She’s still not used to walking, especially on the dusty and dirty ground, but the combat boots Lilith loaned her are too big and chafe against her toes. She avoids looking at anyone they pass, not that many know who she is – though she’s seen a few of their faces, projected herself to them when they were potential vault hunters.
Her identity as the woman behind Guardian Angel is a secret they keep, as well as the deposed man raving in the cellar lock-up. She almost wishes they’d just throw them both off the edge of the floating city, but she has those urges so often she doesn’t pay them any heed.
Brick gently lines her up in front of the live target, the Hyperion engineer tied to a target pole. Hands over hers, he helps her align the pistol. ”You hold it like this, see? Look down the sights.”
She smiles a little. ”You worry I might shoot myself again.”
”Self-sustained gun injuries are the number one killer on Pandora, no point continuing a bad tradition. Now, hold the grip tighter, not so close to your face or you’ll knock your front teeth out on the recoil.”
”And then I undo the safety?”
”What’s a safety?”
”Nevermind.” She takes aim, firing without hesitation. The dumb pellets hit until the cylinder has rotated a full circle and the empty click disappoints her.
”Not bad.” Brick takes the revolver from her and despite his thick fingers he smoothly refills the cylinder and hands it back to her in less than half a minute. ”Again.”
”What’s the point?” Still, she takes it and shoots, and they repeat it over and over. He adjusts her stance a couple of times, moves her elbows into better positions, nodding each time she hits the target.
When she stumbles and sags, the energy drained out of her, he catches and supports her as she catches her breath and the ringing in her ears quiets down.
”You gotta stop going to see him alone,” he says, and she thinks there’s concern in his delivery but the last time she heard that genuinely… Well, long ago, before she committed her first murder. Before she got chained to a cold metal throne.
”I don’t think any of you understand us.” She states it without anger or frustration, just the simple fact as it appears to her. They can try however much they want, but they miss the point too.
”Maybe we don’t, but you’re torturing yourself.”
”I appreciate the input.” She hates Jack, but… She can’t undo twenty years under his thumb with just a bullet.
”You don’t. But you’re a good liar.”
”I have to be good at something.”
He laughs and pounds her on the back so hard she almost sputters out a mouthful of blood on the floor, but with a harsh and bitter swallow she keeps it down. ”You’ll learn. Everyone does.”
The evening and early night she spends having Zed going over her back, pulling at loose wires hanging from her mauled body. The nerves near her spine have been dead for years, blunted with all the implants grafted onto spine and ribs. She sighs as Zed fumbles with his knife, missing the deft touch of the Hyperion surgeons. He’s bound to botch her up worse than she’s ever been in her entire life, but she dutifully goes there.
On the way back to the headquarters, she stops and spits out blood into an alley. She studies the flecks on the smooth wall and wonders how much stock she should put into it. More than she is, probably.
She slips into the basement unnoticed, but as she’s about to close the door she catches a glimpse of blue hair.
”Where is she?” Maya asks.
”At Zed’s,” Lilith replies. They’re talking at the foot of the stairs – perfect view of the entrance, no doubt.
A part of Angel knows the polite and proper thing would be to shut the door and not listen, but she flattens herself against the wall. Old habits break hard. Old ways of living take a long time to shake off.
”Good. I can’t stand being near her.” Maya sounds almost upset.
”Okay, what’s going on?”
”Nothing.”
”You were the one who defended her right to speak after she betrayed Sanctuary. You were the one who refused to shoot her when we had the chance – and you were the one who could have! You were the one who carried her out of the vault, and now you can’t stand being near her?”
”It’s complicated. And she’s… Scary.”
”I… Know what you mean. She scares the shit out of me. But now we have her, and what do you want to do about it?”
”Can’t we just… Not… Have her?”
”Are you suggesting we kill her?” Lilith’s voice rises in pitch. ”She may have been our enemy but she’s a siren! You just can’t do that to one of us. We’re like, sisters, or something…”
There’s a rattle from the bars and she quickly closes the gap in the door, peeling herself away reluctantly. Down the stairs she finds Jack already glaring at her, the food tray at his feet untouched.
She squats down in front of it, sighing. ”You have to eat.”
”They’re poisoning it,” he says defiantly.
”They’re not.”
”How are you so sure? They want us both dead!”
”Only you.”
He doesn’t absorb what she’s saying, as usual. ”They’re talking about how much they dislike you. They’ll never understand you, never treat you right.”
”You didn’t either.” She digs around in his food with a plastic spork, gathering up a little of each before bringing it to her mouth and eats it. ”See,” she says, finishing the mouthful with a loud gulp. ”Nothing dangerous.”
”That’s not the point,” he argues, desperation tinging his voice again. She notes how dirty his clothes are, the smudges on his mask and the tousled hair. ”How can you be so complacent with this? They’re bandits. They’re trying to get into your head and twist you around…” He grasps her wrist, hard and tight, hurting her. ”You could break me out of here!”
”I won’t.”
”What have they done to you? My precious girl, you’re still in there, they’ve just brain-washed you. I can bring you back, I can make you right again, just get me out of this hole.”
”Dad… I’m the same girl you made me into.” And you’re the same man you made yourself into, words she can’t say, just yet. It’s always been difficult talking back to him, arguing with him, instinctual pain conditioned into her. He just has to glare at her and she feels the need to flinch, but drawing on the little strength she has, she stands firm against him.
He lets go of her wrist with a sneer. ”There’s nothing here that will save you. You’re going to die in this dirty, disgusting pit, and you’re going to die because you’re too proud to listen to me. You’re weak, Angel. You’re pitiful.”
She’s about to argue back but her lungs seize up and she starts coughing, forehead against the bars as she tries to steady herself. To her surprise, he cups her cheeks, his long fingers cool against her burning temples.
”You’re really going to die here,” he says, pitying her.
”So are you.” She takes his hands, missing them as she does – against her better judgement, against her better will – and stands up, pulling her coat tighter around her shuddering torso. ”Goodnight, sir.”
”Angel… Come back to me… Come back to me!” He pleads, he demands, as he’s always done with her. ”Sweetheart!” He tries to control her, but this time, she’s the one who can walk away, and he’s the one chained in place. It’s not exactly freedom, but a step in the right way.
A teary-eyed Angel emerges from the basement, too busy pretending she’s not crying to give Maya more than a cursory glance. Maya watches as she pulls herself up the stairs with all her might, hears the bathroom door shut and lock.
She’s up on her feet instantly, light-footed as she slips downstairs. Jack’s leaning against the wall, head thrown back, the column of his throat illuminated by the slivers of light filtering through the blackened window slits.
”What did you say to her?” she demands, holding up a glowing fist. ”What did you do?”
He laughs, slowly, Adam’s apple bobbing. ”Why do you care?”
”Answer me!” The blue tendrils of energy around her hand swirl up, vicious and bright.
”Only the truth.” He pushes himself off the wall, teeth glinting in the dim room. ”What you say behind her back. What you really think of her.” He grins wickedly. ”Not that she needs to hear it from me when you’re willing to talk about it so loudly.”
Maya seethes, fist raised – she really wants to punch him, really wants to reach into his head and destroy him – but she holds back, barely.
”She scares you. Good. You should be scared of her. Her powers… If there’s no one controlling them, she will destroy. She will kill.”
”You’re full of crap.”
”Am I? You heard the logs, didn’t you? Do you think she’s ever been in control of herself? No, I was the only thing holding her back. She’s dangerous, murderous… And you’re not sleeping with one eye open, are you?” His voice lowers to an insidious whisper. ”You made a huge mistake trusting her.”
”Your lies aren’t working, so cut it out.” Reluctantly, she lets go of the energy in the palm of her hand.
”I know what you want, Maya.” He drags out the vowels of her name, letting them drip off his tongue. ”Answers, about sirens, about what you are. About what purpose your powers fill. There’s more to you than just being a vault hunter, isn’t there?”
”Why should I believe you?”
”It’s my word against Angel’s, isn’t it? And which one of us has lied to you the most?”
Maya narrows her eyes. ”Whatever you’re trying here, it’s not going to work.”
He laughs as she leaves – there’s nothing brittle about it, not like when Angel’s been talking to him – there’s confidence in that laughter. Certainty. Maya never trusted either but she at least thought he was broken enough to not worry about. Now… Now she’s not sure of either.