Gaige stopped moving, an unusual state for the rambunctious teenager. She narrowed her eyes and folded her arms, flesh over metal and plastic.
"I don't think that I heard you correctly. It sounded like you said that we couldn't bring Krieg."
Mordecai looked uncomfortable and took a swig of his Rakk Ale, hiding for a moment to gather his thoughts behind the bottle. He glanced at Brick, who just shrugged and grinned at his friend's discomfort. Luckily for Mordecai, Lilith came to his rescue.
"It's not that we don't like the big guy," she began in a soothing tone of voice, "but he makes everyone in Sanctuary... uncomfortable."
"Come on, Lilith, let's be real here." Maya entered the room and immediately joined the conversation. "We all know that Krieg isn't exactly suited for polite company. You're afraid he's going to start shouting off about the Little Man and meat bicycles at Roland's memorial service."
The fiery siren's face flushed, and her markings began to flicker with a dull light. "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm worried about. Half the time I don't even know if Krieg is going to attack the enemy or smash his own face in with his buzz-ax, and the other half of the time I don't want to be too close to his fighting because I'm not convinced he can tell his friends from his enemies."
The argument devolved after that, with much shouting. Deathtrap made an appearance, and was subsequently phaselocked before things began to calm down. In the end a compromise was reached. Krieg would be allowed to attend the memorial service, but at a distance. Gaige would stay with him and, in the words of a distraught Lilith, "If he screws anything up, it's on your head."
Krieg and Gaige stood on a rock outcropping overseeing the service. Krieg initially paced about and glared at the crowd below as though daring someone to make a move that would result in a bloody rampage. Gaige split her attention between the service below and the man at her side. Eventually he settled down when there was no immediate promise of violence, and began to pick at his fingernails with the teeth of his ax.
"Do you know why we're here, Krieg?" she asked quietly as Tina climbed atop the statue, hugging around its massive neck.
Krieg just grunted and was silent for a moment. Just when Gaige had given up on him answering, he growled out, "The dark meat can't give his pain anymore."
She took a second to translate that and nodded with a sigh. "Yeah. That about sums it up."
"Their eyes spew salty blood," he continued, looking confused and frustrated before he gently (for him, anyway) knocked his forehead with the back end of his ax. "Shut up, Little Man," he mumbled to himself.
Gaige nodded thoughtfully, and then replied in a way that she hoped he would be able to understand. "Their souls are full of pain."
He just grunted again, and followed her as the procession filed back into Sanctuary and into Moxxxi's. Krieg had never been in Moxxxi's, generally staying on the other side of town where headquarters and the various shops were located. One of the conditions of him being allowed into the city was that he always have another Vault Hunter with him, something to help the various refugees sleep better at night. The monster needed a minder. Gaige scoffed, even as she understood the fear and paranoia.
Today, Moxxxi's was unusually somber. The pounding music was silent, and the rainbow neons and stars were turned off, leaving the place in a state of gloom that matched the mood of the various mourners. The usual barflies were also absent, save one or two that arrived to pay their respects. Lilith glared when Krieg walked in, but kept silent when Gaige glared right back.
The volume of the bar never really got loud. People spoke in low murmurs, and the drinks were poured quietly and without the flirtatious energy that Moxxi usually exhibited. If one looked close, they could see her eyes were red and puffy, but dry. An hour passed, maybe more, and nobody seemed to be planning to leave anytime soon. Hammerlock stood in his usual corner, and it was at the table nearest him that Gaige and Kreig had eventually sat.
Gaige and Hammerlock had a sort of friendly acquaintanceship. They initially bonded over their prosthetics, but their shared genius transcended the difference in age between the two. They often had conversations ranging from robotics to the taxonomy of the local wildlife, and Krieg fascinated him. From what they had managed to piece together, Krieg was the product of slag experimentation at the Hyperion Wildlife Exploitation Preserve and was understandably averse to being poked and prodded. This was something Dr. Tannis had discovered quite by accident, and Gaige and Hammerlock had quickly shelved any further ideas regarding their study of the unusual Psycho.
After a few drinks, Gaige muttered something to Hammerlock and disappeared down a hallway. Krieg stood as though to follow her, but Hammerlock interposed himself. "The young lady has simply gone to use the facilities, Mr. Krieg," he explained. Krieg cocked his head to the side and mumbled under his breath for a moment before he replied.
"Poop train conductor?"
Hammerlock slumped slightly, and he moved his flesh hand to massage the bridge of his nose in sudden exasperation, his face flushing slightly in embarrassment. "Quite possibly," he responded with a slightly choked voice.
Krieg grunted in acknowledgement and turned to sit down, but something caught his eye. It sat alone and dusty in a room slightly off of the main bar area, crafted of green wood with a series of yellowish and black buttons. Intrigued despite himself, Krieg moved into the room to examine the device. Buttons sometimes led to new blood splatterers, or better saw blades for his ax. They also sometimes caused fire or meat to appear.
Either way, a winning situation.
Cautiously, he reached out with his ax to press one of the buttons. "Ah, Mr. Krieg I'm not sure that-" Hammerlock began, but fell silent when Kreig leveled a fierce glare at him. When he was satisfied that Hammerlock would not try to stop him again, he depressed his chosen button firmly.
A clear, even tone emanated from the box, and Krieg looked around eagerly for something to happen. Nothing really did. He tried another, with the same results, although a different tone. Moxxi peered into the room from around the corner and frowned. She turned to Lilith and said, "Sugar, if your friend over there ruins my piano it's going onto your tab."
Further words were spoken, but Krieg ignored it. He was staring at the piano with fierce intensity, the entirety of his fractured mind focused on the machine and the sounds it had made. He sat at the bench in front of the array of buttons, his reserve saw blade digging slightly into his back, a trickle of blood dripping down its surface. He pressed another button and cocked his head to the side, ignoring Lilith's demands that he move in favor of exploring the strange feelings and urges that were coursing through his divided psyche. He pressed two buttons at once and the two tones grated against each other discordantly, causing everyone else to wince. Then, following some deeply buried impulse, he began to press several of the buttons in sequence.
All conversation stopped in the bar, Hammerlock uttering, "Good Lord," before he too went silent.
A haunting melody rose from the depths of the wooden box, mournful and sad. It swung through the lower registers, deep and rumbling through the chests of the gathering crowd before tinkling high notes joined in, counterpoint to the rumble. The high sounds faltered artfully, moving down the octaves until they joined in somber harmony with the bass.
At some point Gaige returned, but she stood stock still with a hand covering her mouth beside Hammerlock. Eyes began to fill with tears as the song wound about the crowd, rising into a combative staccato before transitioning back to a bluesy feel. The song told a story, a tale of fighting against impossible odds, of victory at a cost, and the soft tinkling of higher notes evoked images of falling tears and breaking hearts. It slowly resolved into a funereal dirge, the last note sustaining in the crowd's hearts long after the sound itself faded away.
Krieg rose and turned away from the piano, stopping short when he saw the audience he had unwittingly gathered. Lilith moved forward a half step before faltering to a stop. "That was... beautiful..." she said in disbelief. Krieg looked away for a moment and huffed before he locked his one-eyed gaze with her and spoke.
"Life is pain," he ground out roughly. "The dark meat puts his pain into your soul, leaving nothing in his bicycle but salty blood. He bled for us."
"Yeah," Maya said quietly. "He did."
Krieg moved forward and the crowd parted around him. He made to leave the bar, but stopped when Zer0 spoke.
"You once were a man / who desired more than blood. / What happened to you?"
The Psycho Vault Hunter kept his back to the crowd and spoke quietly, but clearly enough for the other patrons to hear. "I'm a martyr for my little one."
Silence fell in the bar once more, before Tina said, "You lost someone too, didn't you?"
He glanced back and met her gaze, sadness and madness warring for dominance until he turned away again and left the bar. Those standing closest were able to hear his last words, spoken quietly and with a strangely sane cast to his voice as he moved back into the streets.
"Heh. Close enough."