Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream? — Edgar Allan Poe
Meet Flake. Flake isn't his real name, or at least his given name. He's only been called Flake since he arrived on Pandora, six years ago. It's been so long since someone used his given name that he's started to treat Flake as his real name.
Flake is a Sawtooth bandit. Before that, a miner for the Dahl corporation. Before that, a convicted felon, wrongly accused of murder when he killed a man in self-defense. Before that, a loving husband, a father of two, and a representative at a marketing firm on his home planet of Dionysus. But now, he is merely Flake, a faceless bandit who wears a red ski mask, not to hide his identity, but so that he might be spared the foul smells of the men he is forced to live beside.
His home is in Sawtooth Cauldron. It is a well-defended crater, with a large tower overlooking the entire area. Life in Sawtooth Cauldron is relatively safe, compared to the rest of Pandora. Other bandits occasionally fight amongst themselves, and occasionally someone will be murdered over cheating at a card game or looking at one of the women bandits the wrong way (usually these unfortunate men are killed by those very women they offended), or some other imagined affront. The only other real danger is the threshers. The Slab clan often fights the Sawtooth clan, but these fights never take place in the home turf of either group. And Flake never ventures outside the Cauldron.
No, Sawtooth Cauldron is a pretty safe place, as far as safe places on Pandora go. That is, until the Vault Hunters showed up.
"WE GOT COMPANY!"
Flake wakes up from his mid-afternoon nap to the sound of a deep voice alerting everyone to the presence of outsiders. The deep voice belongs to an enormous man named Molar. Molar always carries around an enormous steel shield, fitted with spikes on its front. Most of the bandits aren't very smart, but they are at least smart enough not to cross this mountain of a man.
Flake picks up the heavy assault rifle he keeps next to his bed and heads to the door of his hut. He counts five different invaders that his fellow bandits are firing at. The first one that catches his eye is an enormous psycho, hacking at a goliath who is dual-wielding rocket launchers. Leading the charge with the psycho is a short, barrel-chested man, with biceps as thick as Flake's quads. The short man almost seems as crazed as the raving, buzzaxe-wielding psycho beside him.
A slender figure in black darts along the field, frequently cloaking and throwing down a holographic decoy. Flake can't believe how stupid these guys are. Can't they see they're shooting at a decoy?
Towards the back of the pack, a man who looks military and a blue-haired woman stand behind a large crate. Occasionally, one of them will duck down for a while, only to pop back up. At first, Flake thinks it's just to reload, but they're kneeling much too long for that to be the case.
Flake nearly drops his gun as he sees a large, legless, floating robot emerge, seemingly from inside the crate that the Siren and the soldier are hiding behind. Did they just deploy that thing? Are they taking turns remotely controlling it?
He exits his ramshackle house and begins firing at the intruders. The psycho and the short man almost seem to shrug off bullets. In fact, the psycho actually seems to enjoy being shot. Flake decides to focus his fire on the shorter of the two.
"Killing time!"
A massive Goliath everyone around the camp calls Punch exits the hut next to Flake. He raises the assault rifles in his hands in excitement, then begins firing at the intruders. Punch is one of the few who calls Flake a friend, though Flake isn't sure how genuine the gesture is.
For a split second, Flake hears a strange, ethereal hum. For a split second, his vision is awash in a strange, swirling purple hue.
"I... float?"
Flake looks up in amazement as Punch is lifted into the air, surrounded by a strange, purple orb. Flake knows there's only one person out of the group of invaders that can hold that kind of power.
Flake crouches down behind a crate, and takes aim at the Siren. He needs to make every shot count.
The first few shots get deflected by that massive floating robot. Luckily, the death machine seems more focused on an advancing psycho than it is on Flake. Where the hell did that robot come from, anyway? One minute it was just there, like somebody had built it out of thin air.
His fifth shot is eaten by the Siren's shield. Damn Vladof absorb technology. He hopes she won't use that same bullet to snuff out his life. He isn't sure he could handle the irony.
The sixth shot takes out the rest of her shield. Now it's time. Before he can take aim, she ducks behind cover. Dammit, did he just miss his chance? No. No, not when he's so close. He takes out his only grenade, pulls the pin, and lobs it in a high arc. It lands and rolls a few yards away from the crate.
He instinctively fires at the first head that pops up from behind the cover, the first to flee from the blast zone.
As his finger squeezes the trigger, he realizes what they were doing behind that crate: they were healing someone.
There weren't five intruders. There were six.
He barely has time to process the face of the girl before the bullet connects with her forehead. He sees a small spray of blood as she falls to the side. Her head thumps against the dirt; her right pigtail sticks straight up into the air. Flake can see her eyes even from where he is. They're wide open. They're staring right at him.
The Siren looks down in horror, the girl's blood splattered over her face. "GAIGE!"
Oh, Angel above, what has he done?
The Commando is quick to collect himself, and starts scanning the battlefield for where the bullet came from. Flake's survival instincts kick in first. He flees. A bullet grazes his side, but he's able to break off from the fight and run down the earth ramp that leads further into the canyon. Left or right? Left or right?
Left. They wouldn't be crazy enough to go into a lake infested with threshers, would they?
Flake runs.
Flake runs, so that he might lose the Vault Hunters. Flake runs through the Sawtooth Stilts, brushing past bandits and flying up the stairs. Flake runs to the Scalding Remnants, where even the threshers seem to be watching him with judgmental eyes.
Flake runs, so that sanity itself might not catch up with him.
The sun beats down on the Cauldron. The sun beats down on Flake, like an unblinking, accusing eye that monitors his every movement.
Flake finds an empty storage crate and hides inside, in the shade, where all he can do is sit and wait and watch.
Word quickly spreads of the death of Mortar, the de facto leader of the area. Nobody is sad to hear it. Most are glad that the asshole finally got what was coming to him. Such is life in Sawtooth Cauldron.
Flake watches the buzzards go up in flame as the intruders shoot them down, one by one. He watches as Slab buzzards come in and steal crates of explosives.
He knows that the surviving Sawteeth will want blood. They'll start a war against the Slabs. The Slabs, who apparently have five fearsome Vault Hunters on their side. Five Vault Hunters, thirsting for revenge.
Going after the Slabs is a suicide mission. The rest of the idiots might not be able to see that, but he does.
He waits until he's sure they're gone, and then he waits an hour longer just for good measure before heading back to the shack he calls his home. He tries to think of his family back home, he tries to think of trying to rebuild the Sawtooth clan's base, but his mind always drifts back to the same question:
How in the Guardian Angel's name could he have killed a girl that young?
He lies awake that night, thinking of the blank look in the girl's green eyes. Even as far away as she was, he could tell her eyes were green.
His thoughts drift back to his daughter on Dionysus. She was twelve years old when he left.
The girl he shot couldn't have been more than eighteen. As old as his daughter is now.
He's killed a daughter.
A mother who gave birth to her, who held her when she was just minutes old, who sang lullabies to her at night, just lost her little angel.
A protective father who read her books when she was young, who comforted her when she had her heart broken, would never see his precious daughter again.
Maybe an older brother will never be able to tell her that even though he teases her, he's always been proud of her.
Maybe a younger sister will never see the girl she idolizes again.
He's shattered a family.
If she was all the way out on Pandora, they may never figure out what happened to her.
How can he ever be forgiven? How can he ever forgive himself?
He gets out of his bed and takes a walk outside. A few of the huts still have lights on inside. Some of the bandits are no doubt already planning a way to get back at the Slabs for all the deaths that were caused today. But Flake can only think of one. The life he took. That poor girl.
What brought her to a place as vile as Pandora? What horrible circumstance could lead a young girl to a planet full of convicts and cannibals? Was she kidnapped and brought here, to a planet where even the most experienced hired guns wouldn't agree to travel to try and get her back? Did space pirates hijack an interplanetary shuttle she was on, in search of the Vault? Surely no sane girl her age would sacrifice her old life to come to Pandora.
Or was she born here on this desolate waste of a planet? Did she spend her whole life knowing nothing of anything resembling a normal life? Did she grow up, not once attending school, not once skipping class, not once sneaking out of her house at night?
He can't tell which would be worse: to never know happiness, or to have it cruelly ripped away at an age when she was supposed to be enjoying her freedom the most.
Something atop the tower catches his attention, jarring him from his thoughts. Two small, almost triangular sources of light, a peculiar mixture of orange and green. He squints, then recoils in horror when he realizes what they are.
Wings.
He presses his back against a nearby building, where he's hidden from the line of sight at the top of the tower. How could she have come back without anyone noticing? Did she ever leave? Was she just waiting atop the tower this whole time for the rest to let their guard down?
He risks another glance around the corner of the building. Another figure has joined her. Tall. Slender. Each of them holds a sniper rifle. He can see him nod at her, and then walk out of sight, presumably to watch over a different area of the Cauldron. Flake takes a deep breath and takes cover behind the building again.
He watches in horror as Davis exits a hut dozens of yards in front of him. Davis. One of the few people around he could actually call a friend and mean it. A man he worked beside in the mines, six long years ago when they were first dragged to this planet. It was Davis's idea that the two of them could join with the Sawteeth. Safety in numbers, he called it. They'd last longer in a bandit clan then they would left to their own devices.
He hears a sniper rifle discharge high above his head. Not even a second later, the round meets Davis's head, killing him instantly and spraying the nearby area with blood.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" comes from inside one of the illuminated shacks.
Two more bandits run outside, and are swiftly killed right in front of Flake's eyes. He recoils in horror. This is all his fault. If the girl had survived, the Siren and Assassin wouldn't be unleashing their wrath on them. The men that died earlier in the day would still be dead, but the Vault Hunters would have no reason to come back, surely, if the girl were still alive.
He gets down to the ground and starts crawling back to his hut, taking care to make sure there is always an obstacle between himself and the top of the tower.
He counts the shots from their rifles. Seventeen. Ten from hers, seven from his. There is no doubt in his mind that they landed every last one.
Seventeen. Seventeen men who would still be alive if not for what he did.
He should have made it eighteen, he thinks to himself. He should have run out, looked up at the tower, held his arms out to the sides, and challenged them to kill him. But he's too much of a coward for that. He was too cowardly to face them when they first invaded: what could possibly give him the courage to step out now, alone?
Instead, he does the only thing he knows how to do. He hides.
The Vault Hunters are back. And not just the Siren and Assassin this time. All five of them.
The Slab King sent five people in against a company-sized element of Sawtooth bandits, and the Sawteeth don't stand a chance.
Flake can't summon the courage to charge as the Vault Hunters raise the Slab flag up the flagpole in the middle of the Stilts. Sawteeth are turned to piles of ash and sludge, buzzards are blasted to bits, and the Vault Hunters don't bat an eyelash. The Siren takes great delight in turning the bandits on each other. The Commando throws out a seemingly endless supply of turrets. The Assassin riddles the larger bandits with exploding kunai, and merilessly slits the throats of the smaller targets. The Gunzerker dual-wields shotguns, letting out an angry stream of profanity and calling the Sawteeth "child murderers" as he blasts them apart. And the Psycho carves flesh and splits limbs as he sets himself aflame and rants endlessly of murdering the friends, family, and loved ones of every last bandit he kills.
Flake watches from his shack near the base of the Buzzard's Nest. All he can think of is his wife and his daughter, his poor family screaming out for mercy as the Psycho rends their flesh apart with his fearsome buzzsaw.
Just a few more days, he used to tell himself. Just a few more days until Dahl will send an interstellar shuttle to rescue him and the rest of the people they abandoned on this planet. He would still have to serve out the rest of his sentence, but even the thought of a prison cell anywhere else in the galaxy seemed luxurious compared to this hell-hole of a planet. In another planet's prison, he would be able to have communications with his family. He would have a reminder of why he was serving this sentence: for a chance to see their faces again, a chance to hold his daughter and kiss his wife just one more time. Oh, what he wouldn't give to see them one last time...
But that was years ago that he would tell himself that. He and the rest of the Dahl employees, miner and scientist alike, had lost hope that Dahl would ever rescue them. They belonged to Pandora, now. They belonged to the wastes. And the wastes, it was becoming clear, belonged to the Vault Hunters.
The Slab flag flies high above the encampment. The generator is destroyed. The Vault Hunters move on to the next flag, to the next group of Sawteeth fighting to defend their home turf. Flake knows they won't stop until every last Sawtooth is dead.
They won't show mercy. They won't accept surrender. This is personal for them, and Flake's the one who made it personal.
He walks slowly through the encampment in a daze, looking around at the dead bodies littering the ground. How many of them, too, dreamed about returning to their families? How many of them bought into the lies of the Dahl corporation? How many of them were driven mad by their obsession with the Vault? How many of them were turned into monsters, mutated by the slag that had become abundant on the planet in the past few years? How many of those men spent every day knowing those mutations meant they could never go home again?
The last Sawtooth flag is lowered. The Slab flag now flies high over the entire crater. The Vault Hunters will be heading back soon. He needs to hide.
He scuffs his shoes on the dirt to get the blood off of them, so that they might not track his footprints back to his shack.
That night, he dreams of coming home again, of visiting his family.
He's back in their home. Their quaint, two-story home, their family photos still hanging on the pristine white walls, just as he remembers when he left. The table still has three chairs set. They never did lose hope that he'd be able to come home one day, that maybe he would even receive a pardon.
He calls out their names, and his wife and daughter come rushing down the stairs. Annette's kind brown eyes seem to sparkle as she sees him, and Natalie, Natalie has grown up so much. Though he still can recognize her, she's no longer the little girl he remembers, she's grown into a lovely young woman.
"I missed you so much," he tells them, bringing them both in for a hug and kissing his wife on the cheek. "Every day, I thought of you. Every day."
But when he pulls apart from the family hug, something has changed in both of them. They're no longer happy to see him.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
Natalie screams at him. "Like you don't already know!" He startles slightly, and watches her as she runs back up the stairs to her room.
"Annette, I don't-"
"How could you do it?" she asks. "How could you have killed that poor, innocent girl?"
No. That's impossible. How could they know?
"It- I didn't mean to, I swear! I swear to you, it was an accident!"
"That poor young girl was the same age as Natalie!"
"I know...! I know... Annette, please, you have to believe me, I didn't mean to kill her!"
"That planet turned you into a monster."
"Annette-"
"I don't want to hear it," she says tearfully, shaking her head and backing away from him.
"Annette, it's not what you think!"
"Just- stop talking! I can't even look at you anymore!"
He watches helplessly as she rushes out the side door to their garage; he stands frozen in place as he listens to her car start up, to the sound of the tires rolling across their gravel driveway as she leaves.
The house is silent. Almost. A quiet sobbing from upstairs catches his attention.
He runs up to Natalie's room and pounds on the door. "Natalie, open the door! I want to talk to you!"
The handle turns and the door slowly swings open. Natalie isn't inside.
The girl with the pigtails lies on her back in the middle of the room, eyes closed, legs bent at the knee, right hand on the ground next to her head, left hand resting by her hip. The only color to her pale skin is the dark red bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Her head lies in a pool of blood. A small rivulet of crimson liquid creeps towards his shoes, almost as if it were alive, almost as if it were reaching for him.
He slowly shuffles his feet backwards, looking down at her face. "I didn't mean to... I swear, I didn't know..."
Her eyelids suddenly snap open, her dead green eyes staring right at him.
Flake wakes up with a gasp.
He sobs.
I am a monster. I cannot live with the guilt any longer.
Natalie, Annette - I love you both and I am so sorry
He sets the paper down on the desk and places the pen down beside it.
This is the only way he can get rid of the guilt. This is the only way he won't have to see her blank green eyes casting an accusing stare back at him when he closes his eyes to go to sleep.
He looks at the rust-colored pistol in his hand, running his thumb along its long barrel.
He probably won't ever be found. He can't imagine many Sawteeth are left. He can't be sure, though, because he never leaves his shack anymore. If any of them did survive, they probably already left to join some other clan.
He takes one last look at the family photo he keeps in his wallet. He wonders how long it took them before they lost hope that they'd ever see him again, that they'd ever even talk to him again. Six years is a long wait. Annette could have re-married by now. Surely she couldn't be expected to wait forever for him, could she?
And Natalie... he thinks of all the moments in her life he's missed. Her first date, her graduation... He thinks of all that he'll miss in the future. He'll never get to give her away at her wedding, he'll never know the joy of becoming a grandfather, of watching his daughter make a life of her own...
He sets the photo down on top of the paper, and sticks a knife blade into the table, keeping the picture and the paper in place. Though he's careful not to stick the blade through any of their faces.
He slowly raises the gun, places the barrel in his open mouth, and aims it slightly upwards.
And with the pull of a trigger, the bandit known as Flake is dead.
The purple bubble disappears. A bandit with a red ski mask falls to the ground. The goliath standing next to his dead body asks with an almost tearful voice, "Why shoot friend?"
"Little help down here, Maya?" Gaige asks. "That little midget guy really got me good!"
"It's about time you got your digistruct device fixed!" Axton shouts, firing a few explosive rounds downrange.
Maya gets down to one knee and quickly heals the axe wound in Gaige's side with a careful pass of her left hand.
"I'll thank you later. Rawr!"
The Vault Hunters stand at the foot of the Buzzard's Nest, craning their necks to watch as Brick's Slabs carry away the Odomo charges they marked earlier for pickup.
"You ever wonder what those bandits see when you Phaselock 'em?" Gaige asks, looking around the now-calm battlefield.
"How do you mean?" Maya asks.
"I could've sworn I've heard one of those psychos screaming about a Mr. Skaggles earlier," Axton says. "Sounds like a pet name."
"I guess I've never given it that much thought..." Maya mutters, scratching the back of her head.
"It has once been said," Zero's voice pipes up, "a man can live a lifetime / during one night's dream."
"Yeah, what he said," Gaige says. "You've seriously never thought about that?"
Maya sighs and considers her answer. "Honestly, Gaige, I'm not sure I want to know the answer."
Gaige slowly nods. "Yeah... maybe you're right..." As she watches Axton checking a dead body for loot, she asks, "Anything worth keeping?"
Axton shakes his head, only finding a single grenade, a heavy assault rifle, and a rust-colored pistol. "Nah, nothin' good... Come on," he says, straightening up and nodding to the rest of the group. "Let's get out of here."