Heyo! New story! And NOT a year after the last one.
Anyways, self-deprecation aside, I wrote this story for my girlfriend (thus why it wasn't on my list of planned stories), and it is posted here with her permission.
Why yes, she and I do play as Gaige and Zer0 (respectively), why do you ask?
SPOILER ALERT: This takes place after a series of massive spoilers. If you know don't know what I'm talking about (and trust me, you'd know) don't read until you've finished the quest "Where Angels Fear to Tread".
All characters and places belong to Gearbox Software.
Enjoy the story, all. And lemme know what you think.
Note: Some of Zer0's emoticon's didn't come out right because the left and right arrows won't save to the document. So if one of them doesn't make sense, cram the arrow-bracket things into it until it does.
"Dammit…just dull the pain already," Gaige whined into her rakk-ale. The liquid burned with its intoxication, yet it couldn't knock Gaige on her ass no matter how much she downed, which was unfortunate, since she sure as hell wasn't drinking it for its all-too-resembling-its-namesake flavor. Looking at the neat row of five dark green glass bottles sitting in front of her, her lips parted, baring clenched teeth as she snarled, "I've done the damn math. This much alcohol should have me puking into a porcelain throne or passed out on the floor."
Fate, or luck, or perhaps even the will of Pandora itself, however, had decreed that the mancer of mechros would feel this pain that tugged at her chest, weighing down her heart. As she gazed out around Moxxi's, which had been closed for the evening's private engagement, she could tell she wasn't the only one.
But then, days like today could have that effect.
The day has started with an excruciating charge up the mountain towards the Guardian Angel's AI Control Core, capped off by a ferocious battle with a giant flying droid with enough firepower to level a small town. And they had had to do all of this while only being able to speak in Handsome Jack's voice, which only served to anger them every time they opened their own mouths. And despite the exhaustion, the battle with BNK-3R had been the easy part.
Once inside the Control Core, they were hit with one shocking blow after another. First, they discovered that the Guardian Angel, who they had been ready to kill for betraying them and nearly getting Sanctuary destroyed, was not only a Siren enslaved by Jack, but was in fact his own daughter. Cutting off the Eridium supply she had become fatally dependent on was hard enough after learning these facts, but then things had gotten worse.
Jack had killed Roland and captured Lilith.
While the Soldier's shields were still down from the battle with Jack's Angelic Guardian Loaders, the coward had shot Roland in the back, and when Lilith, in a rage had charged in to attack before Gaige or her companions could get their bearings, he had used some kind of device to entrap her, forcing her to teleport them into Marcus' basement.
After helping Mordecai spread the word to the specific people who needed to know, the drunken Hunter had quite rightly declared that everyone involved needed a drink, badly. And so there they all were, huddled into Moxxi's bar, trying to drink away sorrows that refused to go anywhere, even for one night.
Moxxi was still in tears behind the bar, mascara running down her chalk-white face more so than was the norm for her. Scooter, bless his stupid heart, was attempting to console her, but sadly, it turns out, when one is already dumb as a post, shotgunning lagers makes coherent sentences consistently impossible.
Marcus sat in one of the booths, wobbling in his seat, his craggy face somber, a pen in his hand and his checkbook opened on the table in front of him beside a not-to-be-sneezed-at row of beer bottles. He scrawled out something on a check, tore it out, and stuffed it into a crinkled white envelope, before scratching out a mailing address onto it and lick-sealing it shut.
Across the lane, Maya and Axton sat opposite Zed, as the medic slurred his way through a barrage of stories about Roland and his friends' exploits. Gaige couldn't hear him distinctly over the somber saxophone playing on the radio, itself distorted from when Salvador had punched it to shut up a renegade Loader AI Core, but she was able to pick out key phrases such as "Zombie Army", "Fort Knoxx", and "Robolucion".
Maya had been near catatonic ever since the return to Sanctuary. The Siren had clearly been overjoyed to discover another of the fabled dimension benders in Lilith, despite the latter's less-than-profound knowledge of Siren origins. It was perfectly natural that after watching one of her kin die and another be captured to be subjected to the same fate as the first, Maya's resolve would be broken. And so she was slumped in her seat against Axton, her cerulean locks splayed across the shoulder of his brown jacket.
Axton, to his credit, seemed to have switched off his near-omnisexual flirtatiousness, only putting an arm around Maya's shoulders as he listened to Zed's stories of Roland's band, gently rubbing her bare left shoulder with his thumb. As a fellow ex-military man, the Commando had a deep respect for Roland, despite openly stating that working directly under someone so reserved and cautious would have driven him insane. Taking a sip from his beer, he chuckled as Zed mentioned something about a "giant god damned Claptrap".
Further down the row, Salvador and Brick sat across from each other, pounding down beer after beer. Based on Brick's earlier suggestion of skinning everyone Jack had ever met "with their own damn teeth", the giant man had to be grieving. Such an idea might be laughable to some, but Gaige had some talent for observation, and no man who wears the paw of a cherished puppy as a keepsake can be without a soft side. As for Salvador, it was tough to tell exactly how he felt, what with the constant swearing and yelling, but Gaige had a feeling that despite Salvador's rather…exuberant indulgence in a not-insignificant number of criminal activities, Jack's cowardly assassination of Roland and torturous bondage of Angel were beyond even Salvador's surprisingly generous sense of forgiveness.
And then, in the back corner, sat Mordecai, with a pile of rakk-ale bottles that dwarfed the combined refuse of everyone else in the bar. He was mid-swig when Gaige looked back at him, before setting down the bottle, hand still gripping the neck. Suddenly, he rose to his feet, let loose a stream of angry spanish, and hurled the bottle to the floor, shattering and splashing its remaining contents across the wooden slats. His steady stance and even speech indicated that even he, chronically drunk as he was, couldn't dull his rage-filled brain. He stormed outside, after which Gaige heard several shots fired from his sniper rifle, and more cursing. But of course Mordecai would be furious. Not only had he lost two of his closest friends to Jack's machinations, but not too long before this, Jack had taken from him his lifelong companion Bloodwing in the cruelest way possible. The storming of Angel's Control Core was supposed to facilitate his revenge, not leave him with more lost friends.
Gaige turned back to the open bottle in front of her. How did she feel about all of this? Bad, to be sure, but what more than that? She was a late addition to the Crimson Raiders, and hadn't gotten to know Roland or Lilith nearly as well as the others. Angel, she had known a little longer, the girl having guided her from the Spaceport on the other side of the planet to the Tundra Express, where she had first met Maya's group in the middle of a raid to steal back some massive explosives for a very disturbed little bomb-maker named Tiny Tina. The Mechromancer had still been coming to terms with all the changes in her life, even as she and her new friends were gearing up to take on the dreaded Wilhelm and Maya was filling her in on the frankly disastrous situation on Pandora. Hell, even now, she was having trouble processing that the her best chance for avoiding execution on Eden-5 was to come to Pandora.
Pan-fucking-dora, the infamous goddamn death world. More lethal than Australia back on the old Earth, so many centuries ago. And shit, Gaige had never held a gun before coming to this place. Sure she had a floating robot with digistructing laser claws and a freaking electric face-laser, but the fact was she was just a mechanically prodigious high school girl from who had had to leave behind everything she knew because of one little accidental murder that wasn't even her fault and she missed her daddy and couldn't even echo him because what if the authorities traced it to her or worse him and her mother and ever since she had gotten here she had been feeling randomly horny which was incredibly weird for her and animals and people and robots of all shapes and sizes wanted to kill her or worse and-
Gaige let out a shuddering sigh, and folded her right arm on the table, brushing the bottles out of the way with her robotic left, and slumped face down on the table, letting loose a flood of tears. She didn't know whether she was crying more for Angel or herself. The girl's fate at the hands of her own father filled her with disgust and sadness, but it also reminded her that her own father, whom had been incredibly loving and supportive, even helping her escape from the most corrupt police force in the galaxy at an incredible risk to himself, was lost to her forever, even if he hadn't been killed or arrested for helping her.
Helping her… That was the worst part: Handsome Jack genuinely thought that the life he had forced Angel into had been for her own good. Gaige lifted her head from the table and dropped it back down with a thud. And she wept, both for Angel and for herself; Angel, she wept for the life the poor girl had never had, instead leading a life so painful that she welcomed an excruciating death; Herself, she wept for the life that she could never have again, and the excruciating death she would probably face on this godforsaken rock.
"Freely flowing tears,
Lead me to the conclusion,
That-"
"Please… Zer0. You know that I love the whole 'I can think of Haiku on the fly and be so badass that I don't care that some of them are lame, and can kill the crap out of anybody who says so to my face' thing you've got going on, but tonight is just-"
"… Yes. Brevity tonight," Zer0 replied, his voice hard through the synthesizer, "… Today sucked."
"Drown your sorrows? 'S not working very well for me anyway," Gaige sighed as she pushed the half-empty bottle out to him.
"I do not drink," he replied, sitting across the table from her.
"The hell you don't," Gaige looked up, one eyebrow raised, "You at least got drunk enough for the Zafords to let you into Lucky's wake. So, super drunk."
"… Anything for the challenge."
"Right. The challenge."
Zer0, more than anyone else, was a mystery to Gaige, largely because he was such a paradox. On the one hand, he was a badass ninja who walked into gunfights with a sword and won. On the other hand, he had almost no grasp of sarcasm or subtlety and spouted off frequently-awful haiku in the middle of battle. But on the other other hand, he did everything, cool and lame alike, with such confidence that even the lame stuff seemed kinda cool.
"Zer0… What the crap happened today? I mean… how could-?"
"Jack is a monster.
Monsters do, without reason.
And I'll have his head."
Zer0 hissed the last line, his black mask illuminated by a glowing red ":-[".
"So, you're angry too, huh?" Gaige asked, deciding not to comment on Zer0's continued use of haiku. At this point, it almost seemed like a tic or compulsion.
"How could I not be?
I may be a cold killer,
But I know evil."
"Yeah, and today evil kicked our asses. What are we gonna do, Zer0? Roland's gone, and we have no plan. Angel's gone so we're flying blind. Oh, and we might not even live long enough for any of that to matter because now that Lilith's been captured, Jack might decide to just blast Sanctuary out of the sky!"
"Well he hasn't," Zer0 shrugged, "Couldn't do anything about it if he did."
"… Zer0, you are awful at comforting people."
"Not surprising. Never try."
"Well, thanks for making an exception for me. Really, no sarcasm," Gaige smiled sadly at Zer0.
The assassin said nothing, but his mask lit up with "^_^".
"Y'know, Zer0? I know absolutely nothing about you. I don't know if the emotes actually represent how you feel. I don't know whether the haiku are intentional or not. I don't know if you're really as ignorant about how people interact as you seem. I don't know whether you really care about the rest of us. And even if I did know the answers to any of these, I wouldn't know why, and you know what?"
Zer0's mask lit up "?".
"I still think you're awesome," she giggled, reaching across the table to grab one of his hands, "I don't even know if you're human or not, by the way I'm guessing 'not'," Gaige noted as she intertwined her fingers with his and was reminded that he had one less per hand, "But I think you're awesome. You're like, everything I was thinking about when I built Deathtrap, except you're, y'know, a guy. Unless you're a girl, which would be just as cool. But the point is that you do with flesh and blood what Deathtrap does being made of metal and floating. I wish I could be half as awesome."
"Though Deathtrap is strong,
Strength does not come from nothing.
Its strength is your own."
"Well you are just sweet as hell," Gaige giggled, knowing as she did so that she was probably becoming disruptively giddy, but she didn't care enough to look around for the confirming stares she was no doubt receiving.
Zer0, evidently, did care, as he stood from his seat, stepped around to her side of the table and scooped her up, knocking over one of the…seven-? Gaige could have sworn it was only five earlier.
"I thought you didn't drink. What the hell?" Gaige whined.
"I thought it wasn't doing anything for you," Zer0 replied.
"… Did I really down two more bottles while we were talking?"
"Yes."
"I didn't even realize I had kept drinking… Though that does explain why I'm suddenly feeling very very nauseous. Zer0, promise you won't hate me if I puke on you?"
"I promise," looked at her with a ":)" on his mask as he walked past the bar, dropping a wad of dollars into the tip jar.
"… Insert double entendre here," Moxxi sighed half-heartedly, "I promise I'll have something better next time."
After a moment she shouted towards the door, "No, really! You can insert your double entendre here any time!" but they were already gone, "Well, shit."
A train in the Tundra Express…
A train station named "Ripoff"…
Too many bandits for a stolen Hyperion shotgun to handle…
Deathtrap digitally dissolving under a hail of bullets…
A ninja bursting into the station, his sword in his left hand and a Jakobs sniper rifle in his right…
Bandits screaming…
Bandits dying…
A three-fingered hand extended to her…
The ninja gently pulling her to her feet…
His hands holding her steady…
"This fight is over.
But many more are waiting.
Want to kill some shit?"
Gaige was awakened by a splitting pain in her skull, which she quickly found to be matched by a piercing one in her stomach.
"Ah crap… Please don't be skull-shivers, please don't be the damn skull-shivers…"
"Not the shivers. Alcohol," came the mechanically filtered voice of her ninja companion.
"Wuh…? Oh. Right. The drinking…" Gaige groaned, slowly pushing herself up. Her vision was still clouded, but she could tell from the dim, but distinctly teal light that they were in her room at the hostel.
Unless of course, Zer0 had the same Rainbow Dash nightlight that she did.
She was upright for not quite three seconds before she felt and very nearly saw an ice-cold glass being shoved into her hands.
"Drink."
And then, just as the glass touched her lips, she felt a plate being set down on her lap. In the dull green glow of her nightlight, she could see a pile of pretzels, swiped from the bar.
"Dammit Zer0, if I eat anything right now I'm gonna spew everywhere."
"Better to absorb the alcohol than to let it sit."
"… I swear, when I puke, you're holding my hair back," she grumbled, slowly picking up a single pretzel and chewing it even slower.
A long silence passed, broken only by soft sounds of Gaige drinking water and eating pretzels.
"… Hey, Zer0? Thanks for, y'know, this."
"It is nothing, for a friend," Zer0 replied, "Is it helping?"
"I am feeling better, now that you mention it," Gaige smiled, and pushed the plate toward the ninja, "You want any? I'm full."
"… No thank you."
"… Zer0, do you ever take your mask off? I mean, you've gotta take it off to eat and drink, right? Or do you just not do that?"
"Only in private.
I require food and water,
But very little."
"So…not a robot, then?" Gaige chuckled.
"No," Zer0 almost seemed amused by the notion.
"An alien?"
"… 'Zer0' is a man,
With some strange physical traits,
And a skill for death."
"… But you weren't always 'Zer0', were you?"
Zer0 didn't answer, and his faceplate only lit up "…". Realizing she had just made things very awkward, Gaige slowly got out of bed, slipping away into the bathroom. Flicking on the lights, she winced at the brightness of them, before her eyes adjusted enough to take a quick inventory of the bathroom counter.
Her toothbrush. Her mouthwash. Her…well, nothing else except the hostel's towels and soap, since she had had only been able to fill a small duffel bag before leaving Eden-5. But it was enough to confirm that it was her bathroom, and thus, her room. With a sigh that could have be born from either sheer exhaustion as much as disappointment that Zer0 didn't share her interest in ponies in equal chance, Gaige reached up and pulled off her goggles and unfastened the riveted metal straps that bound her hair up in pigtails, letting her red mane fall around her face to her shoulders. She then removed her homemade nuts-and-bolts choker, necklace, and bracelets and set them on the counter. Leaning over the sink, she turned on the faucet, and when the water was ice-cold to touch, she cupped her hands under the stream and splashed her face with it. Looking up at the mirror, she saw that she looked as bad as she felt. Her normally bright green eyes were dull, and still had a raw pink rim from the crying she had done at the bar. And then there were the dark, sunken rings beneath her eyes, which had been slowly developing since she first stepped off the transport. Seeing those rings of exhaustion, she was once again reminded that unlike the rest of her band, the life of battle was unknown to her save for the last few days. For the first time since she had arrived on Pandora, she wondered if facing her execution on Eden-5 might have been the smarter move.
"Too late for regrets, Gaige… Hell, come tomorrow, you and the rest of Sanctuary might be vapor."
Turning to the small washing machine and dryer in the corner, she popped open the door of the latter to find it distressingly, but unsurprisingly empty.
"This is what I get for only bringing one spare change of clothes," she muttered, unbuttoning her hoodie, peeling off her glove, unbuckling her tool belt and regular belt, unzipping her skirt and kicking off her shoes, knowing that somewhere out in the darkness of her room was a pile of clothes that she should have cleaned. After she hung her belts on the hooks on the back of the door and tossed the clothes into the washer, she began to slide her stockings down her legs. As they reached her knees, however, she paused, realizing that Zer0 might still be in her room where she'd left him, and while her torn red t-shirt did in fact reach down her thighs enough to technically keep her modest, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be showing off her panties to the alien ninja. She considered her options. She could always yell out from the bathroom that she'd like him to leave, and wait until he'd left to step out of the bathroom, but that seemed like poor manners, given what he'd done for her that night. The least she could do was ask him to leave in person.
"And besides, do I really want to be alone tonight, knowing that it might be my last?" After a long moment, she added, "… Would I really want to be alone after today even if a fiery death weren't an immediate possibility?"
Besides, Zer0, as she'd so bluntly pointed out, was an alien. He probably wouldn't care if she walked out to bed with no pants. He probably wouldn't even notice. And the stockings were stained with more blood and oil than was particularly comfortable…
But she would notice.
"… I'm not seriously considering this, am I?"
No. She was certainly not. After one last moment's hesitation, she pulled her stockings back up, started the washer, walked back over to the sink, popped open the bottle of mouthwash, poured some into her mouth, swished it for a minute, then spat it in the sink. As she turned to the door, however, she remembered exactly why she had been in such a hurry to leave. Still, it wasn't as though she could just stay in the bathroom all night…
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door, to find the room still dark, and Zer0 still sitting motionless beside the bed, "…" still gleaming red before his helmet.
"Zer0? Look, I'm sorry for the whole 'digging into your past' thing. It was bad form, and I feel like an ass-"
Zer0 simply held up a hand.
"Of my many pasts,
I have not shame nor regret.
But what's past is past."
Gaige smiled with relief, slowly walking back over to the bed, lifting the covers and slipping beneath. Meanwhile, Zer0 continued,
"Beneath this black glass,
Is flesh that once defined me.
Now, this is my face."
He said the last line with no small degree of finality.
Gaige sighed, lowering her head to her pillow, "And the suit's your skin? I can respect that, but…" she giggled softly, "That sounds like a really uncomfortable skin, Zer0…"
"… You get used to it."
"… Does this mean you don't shower?" Gaige let out a snorting laugh.
"Don't take it so literally," Zer0 shot back, his face lighting up "_".
"Sorry. I couldn't help myself," Gaige snorted again, before unsuccessfully stifling a yawn.
"If you are tired,
And who wouldn't be tonight?
I shall take my leave."
"Wait!" Before he'd even stood completely from the chair, Gaige was up on one knee, both her real and metal hands clasped around his wrist.
One awkward moment later, she released him from her grip, and began to slink back under the covers, turning away from him in embarrassment, tripping over her words, "… Please stay. Tonight. Here. Jack still has plenty of time to remember that with Lilith captured, Sanctuary has no defense against a moonshot barrage. I mean, yeah, Lilith was bluffing about being able to phase the city again, and the first time was a freakin' miracle, but that doesn't even matter now that he's got her, and I…" she hesitated, not sure how this all sounded, but Zer0's continued silence drew the last words from her, "… I don't wanna die hungover and alone."
"… Then I will stay. I think that…I too would rather face death…with a friend."
Gaige rolled over to smile at him in the dim teal light, before shuffling back to the other side of the bed to stand, "Would you like the bed, then? It'd be bad manners for me to ask you to stay, and then make you sit in the chair all night."
"Manners aside, the chair is fine. I always sleep as such."
Gaige paused as she heard this. "When you say 'always', do you mean 'Zer0' always sleeps in a chair, or do you mean that you've always slept in a chair?"
"Not always. Just since I became an assassin… Still a long time."
Looking over her shoulder at him, Gaige wondered if she was really about to do what she was thinking about doing. Turning to face him, she sighed, and then gave a slight smile.
"C'mere."
"… How do you feel?"
"… Exposed. Vulnerable," Zer0 replied sourly.
Gaige couldn't help but giggle, "You get used to it."
Zer0 was lying flat on his back beside her on the bed, still wearing his armor, and having vehemently refused to get under the blanket. Gaige almost wanted to think he was being gentlemanly, but it was probably so that in the event of a break-in he could immediately get up without getting tangled.
"Relax, Zer0. The most immediate threat to our lives isn't going to be stopped by you being a few seconds slower to wake up."
"… Is that a challenge?"
"No. No it is not."
Gaige felt Zer0 stiffen, but at last his muscles relaxed a bit, and he sank ever so slightly against the mattress.
"… Thank you… For this."
"Psh. Zer0, you've been saving my life since, literally, I stepped off the train in Tundra Express. This doesn't even compare to that."
"… Perhaps it's worth more than you think."
"I know it's not worth as much as saving a life. Do you remember how we met? I step off the train, and the bandits and psychos descend in droves. I send out Deathtrap, he goes down in like five seconds, and then I get pinned behind the train. And then, when I'm about to do the exact thing I left Eden-5 to avoid, which is to say die horribly, who should swoop in like a complete badass and mop up the whole station?"
"You did kill a fair share while I had them distracted."
"But I didn't do it while straight-arming a sniper rifle like it was a freaking handgun. Oh, and I was still hiding behind the train like wuss-"
"Sensible person."
"Well where's the damn fun in being sensible?"
"It keeps you alive.
Long enough to become strong.
No one starts badass."
"I can't imagine you as a non-badass, Zer0. Hell, I have trouble wrapping my head around you not in the suit or wearing the helmet. I can't even imagine calling you anything but 'Zer0'."
"As is the intent," Zer0 replied,
"'Zer0' is the void.
From which everything came,
And where all return."
"… Huh… That's a better explanation than I was expecting. So you did choose the name yourself?"
"In a sense. The number appears on my face when I return someone to the void. That was my choice, and that decision led to the moniker-"
"… Do you ever get lonely?" Gaige blurted out.
"?"
"Do you get, y'know, lonely? Like being such a badass is all anybody sees in you? Like nobody really connects with you?"
The "?" on Zer0's face was replaced by "…" once again, and he was silent.
"… I'm sorry-" Gaige was about to apologize, but then she saw something she could never have seen coming:
Zer0 raised his left hand and, with a few deft movements of the fingers of his right, revealed the zipper hidden in the elbow seam of the suit and ran it around his elbow, peeling away the glove and leaving his left hand and forearm bare.
"… I have a connection to you…Gaige," he said, his mechanical voice softer than usual.
That was the first time he had ever said her name; Any of the Vault Hunter's names.
She kinda liked it.
"M-me? All I do is gush about how badass you are!" Gaige stammered, still in shock at Zer0's gesture.
Zer0 simply held out his bare hand to her, a glowing red "3" lighting the bed.
"You ask me questions.
Questions I've given no thought,
For many lifetimes."
Gaige felt tears welling up in her eyes as she reached out to take Zer0's hand. Though the intense color of what little light the room had made it impossible to tell the hue of the skin, she could feel how smooth it was, how surprisingly soft, yet how firm the muscles beneath were, not cushioned by body fat. But above all else his hand felt warm.
Holding his hand in both of her own, tight to her chest, tears trickling down her cheeks, Gaige smiled up at Zer0, whose face still glowed crimson with, "3".
"… Zer0?"
"Yes?"
"… I think…" Gaige prayed that the red glow of Zer0's face was hiding the red blush of her own face as she stammered, "… I think I might be kinda, sorta…falling in love with you…just a little…maybe…"
Zer0 said nothing, but folded his thumb around the back of her hand and gently stroked it.
The feather-light feeling of Zer0's thumb on the back of her hand sent a soft tingle through Gaige, and then started lulling her to sleep. Just before she nodded off, however, she thought of one last question…
"… Hey Zer0? … How did we get into my room? Because I sorta…hid my room key…"
… In her bra, but Zer0 didn't need that much detail.
"I would not infringe,
Privacy or modesty,
So I smashed the lock."
Gaige let her eyelids drop, as she sighed contentedly, "… Such a gentleman."
Not long after Gaige soft snores began to fill the room, Zer0's head slowly drooped to the side, his mask displaying a dim red "Zzz…".
Leave comments/praise/death threats in the reviews section, folks! And again, I hope you enjoyed it.