Denouement

(A Fallout/Borderlands Crossover)

- Prologue -

A/N: Hello, folks! Please bear with me. It's been several years since I have written anything on . Due to my own work schedule, I plan on updating this story every Saturday. Ideas and comments are always welcomed. Thank you!

"Please ... help Mama."

In the permeating confusion that was the darkness overtaking what had once been a room of floating crystals and brilliant light, Rhys wasn't sure if his ears were deceiving him or not. It felt like it came from over his shoulder, but a quick swipe with his metallic arm revealed nothing but empty space. Cold, vacant nothingness.

He exhumed a slow sigh in an effort to calm himself. 'It's not very effective'. Attempted Zen did nothing to relieve the tension in every muscle and the palpitations of his heart. Yep, nothing at all. No light, no sound, no sense of anything but a thick, creeping chill and a pending anxiety attack. He didn't dare move. The chest's platform in the Vault had been small, and a misstep could easily send him teetering into an assumed endless abyss.

They were still in the Vault, weren't they?

"Hey, Fi?" he called, voice shaky. A knot clutched his throat at the lack of a response. Rhys swung his arms out, feeling for something - anything. "Fiooonaaa, where are you?!" Shit, did she fall?

His palm slapped something solid - presumably the back of the con-artist's head judging by the clump of hair he'd felt. "Ow! What the hell, Rhys?!" She elbowed him through the dark - a lucky shot, considering she nailed him in the ribs.

"Hey, you could've answered."

"I'm thinking."

"I thought I smelled something burning."

She must have had damn night vision eyes or something, because the following whack got him in the gut.

"You can stop that now," he huffed. In a whisper, he added, "Man have you got anger issues."

"I don't see you doing anything to find us a way out of here," she bit back. With a bit of afterthought, she concluded that, "See, like, figuratively see. I can't actually see a damn thing so ... "

Rhys flexed his hand, activating the flashlight. Or he would have. Either nothing came out or the void was just devouring all forms of light like a black hole. "Well that didn't work."

"What didn't work?"

"My light."

"What light?"

"The one I can shoot from my hand?"

"Well, I don't see a light."

"That's kind of the point."

"Maybe you should change the lightbulb."

"It doesn't - "

"Enhance!"

He genuinely couldn't tell if she was being serious or attempting to lighten the mood. Either way, he pursed his lips and looked at what he thought was the other way. How did they wind up here? The Vault had been anything but dark and ominous. And the glow that enveloped them from the chest was warm and soothing. After having a homicidal AI integrated into his brain, facing a bad bitch with a rocket launcher, getting ejected from a falling space station and staring down a towering monstrosity of a Vault monster, it had certainly felt like their luck had made a turn for the calm and rewarding.

But Vaughn was right. Everything on Pandora could kill you. Who knew?

Who knew that the Vault chest would deposit them in some other plain of existence where literally nothing but them existed?

"Do you think they came in behind us?" Fiona proposed, sounding hopeful and worried all in one go.

"Who?"

"Sasha, Vaughn, Zer0, all of them? I mean, if we never came out than they must have gone looking, right?"

His frown echoed his thoughts. Who knew what was left remaining in the Vault once they'd vanished. Would they be in danger if they tried to look for their two missing companions? He opened his mouth to vocalize his freak-out -

"Please ... help Mama."

A womanly shriek erupted in the dark and it sure as hell wasn't Fiona's. Rhys jumped backwards, then was pushed forwards by a woman who was none too pleased that he'd stepped on her foot.

"I'm getting tired of you shit, Rhys," she barked.

"Sorry, sorr- c'mon, you had to have heard that!" Panic mode, enhanced! The fear of something else probing his head - something nobody else could see or hear - set his anxieties on fire. It sure as shit didn't feel the same way it had with Jack. In fact, Rhys felt ... normal. As normal as somebody with cybernetics installed in his body could, anyway.

So it was a relief when Fiona answered with a, "Yeah. Didn't that sound like a kid?"

It did. A little girl, no less. She couldn't be very old. But where the hell is she? Rhys thought, feeling around with his hands again with respect to where Fiona had to be standing. Where the hell are we?

Neither of them were prepared for the ear-splitting shriek that came a split second later.

Or the explosion of everything they had been deprived of while sitting in the nexus of nothing.

Light, sound, heat - all sensations that didn't exist moments ago came roaring back to life. The glare of a way-too-bright sun forced both of them to shield their eyes. "Okay, okay, there's a sun. So we're back outside?"

Fiona adjusted to the light first. He could see her now, and she was tipping her head from side to side. "Uh ... "

"'Uh'?" he asked, rushing his words a little much. "What's 'uh'?"

"I um ... I don't think we're where we want to be right now," she responded with in a voice way too concerned to be a happy Fiona, or even a cynical Fiona. It was a somber Fiona he was hearing - the same kind that had been there when Sasha was dying and he cried all over the place.

The former Hyperion blinked away the sunspots marring his vision and looked up. He could no nothing but join Fiona in a slack-jawed stare into a horizon filled with ruined buildings and tattered landscapes, none of which looked like they belonged to Pandora. Or Elpis or ...

"Ohhhhhkaaaayyy," he mused when his gaze switched skyward. "Fiona, there's no Elpis."

"What?" She followed his stare. "Shit, there's no - oh crap, you don't think we - "

Something groaned behind them. It sounded disturbingly close, frighteningly loud, and smelled like something a Skag would drag out of a dumpster. There was no surprise when Fiona was the first to turn - she and her sister were practically fearless. But Rhys? He found himself rooted to the spot, struck by an unfounded and unreasonable terror that kept him from looking at whatever was now casting an impossibly large shadow over the both of them.

"Rhys?" He could see the shock on her face as she took multiple steps backwards. "Rhys, you should-"

Too little, too late. And he wasn't sure that moving would have helped him anyway. Well, he was definitely moving now as something hard and sharp struck him hard in the side. Rhys had only recently known what it felt like to be rocket-propelled through space, and he really didn't like it. This sensation now was surprisingly similar - right up to the bone-crashing impact with solid earth.

"SHIT, RHYS!" He was pretty sure she was screaming, but it was hard to hear over the shifting and cracking of his own skeleton and the sound of rushing water in his head. Pain erupted blindingly from his entire left side. He rolled helplessly to his right, groaning at the movement because he couldn't holler. Why did it hurt to breath all of a sudden?

This isn't the Vault treasure I was hoping for, mused the cyberetically-altered man. Using his robotic hand, he reached for some kind of ground to pull himself forward and away from whatever attacked the shit out of him. But there was a long, deep growl and the quaking of earth. A foot appeared before his face, armed with thick, sharp talons and one hooked dew claw.

And then there was something next to his head. Something breathing. Plumed of exhaled carbon, warm and foul-smelled, pressed against his face. He tried to look at it from the corner of his left eye but found he couldn't see anything. And from the right eye everything was ... well, everything was blurry. Hazy. Brimmed with dark edges.

But this thing's mouth was right next to him. He gasped slowly and stifled a pained groan when he inhaled. Maybe if I don't move ...

Yeah, because that totally worked for you a second ago, cupcake, Rhys could almost hear Handsome Jack's berating. Buuuuuuuuut, it looks like you're about to die. You had a sweet little ride, but big ol' fossil here looks pretty hungry.

It was growling again. He heard saliva slapping between gums as it opened its jowls wide.

He could also hear something like a rock strike it and Fiona taunting from the distance, "Hey lizard breath, don't ya wanna moving target?!" followed by a, "Shit shit shit!" as the monstrosity moved away from him and towards her at a slightly quickened pace. There were gunshots and a fierce roar that literally shook the whole ground. What was she doing, shooting at it with that pea-shooter?

"Fi, don't - "

She obviously wasn't hearing him because the tirade continued. Instead, he focused on what little he could see. Rhys grabbed a firm stone and nudged himself along a little, but yelped instead when it felt as though his entire side was caving in. "Ffffffff- what the hell did I break?" Surprise and fear gripped him at how weak and faraway his own voice came through.

The gunshots ceased, but only for a moment. Soon it started again, followed by the cacophony of many, many more ... and more shouts, more voices.

"Ground crew, ready!"

"MacCready, get the lad!"

Somebody skid next to him, grabbing him from the left and attempting to lift him off of the ground, forcefully moving what had to be broken bones in places they weren't supposed to move. It was enough for him to blast off into an unfettered array of yowling screams, even when whoever it was managed to get him into a sitting position.

"Goddamnit Rhys, lay off the ice cream," grunted Fiona, pulling at him despite his feeble physical protests. She somehow got him onto his knees and began to lift, straining with each tug. "You ... heavy ... ass ... "

Another somebody slipped under his right arm. "I got this side," a man said with urgency. "Ready, lift!"

They both groaned and grunted, but with the two of them it was enough to get him on his feet. Rhys felt the blood leaving his face. Why did it feel so warm in some spots and so cold in the others?

"Fat Man, incoming! Take cover!" somebody yelled from beyond them. Those earthquake-worthy tremors were moving quicker now.

The man on Rhys' right screamed across his shoulder, "Move, move!"

"I'm moving, I'm moving!" snapped Fiona back. Their grip on Rhys tightened. At least, he thought it did. Was it weird that he couldn't seem to feel them? Hell, even the agony of shattered bones was dissipating. "You still with us, Rhys?"

He responded with a, "For the most part," but it came in the form of a mumble. The assisted walk was turned into a drag as his legs seemed to stop functioning on command.

"You're clear!"

"Firing!"

There was a blast of heat and sound - the most notable of which was an intense cracking like rock being split into several thousand pieces. The monster roared something so cataclysmic that for a brief moment Rhys thought the world was coming undone. Light ... light so intense that it burned what was left of his vision and forced him to close his eyes to keep it out.

And out it went. All of it.

Rhys was fairly certain the ground was supposed to be a lot harder than it felt at that very moment, but the striking of stone against his already limp body didn't feel any worse than falling on pillows. He was acutely aware that Fiona's face was above him, yelling muffled things and shaking him as his eyes closed.

But really, he was too tired to listen.