"What you thinking about?"

Rhys startled, turning to see Sasha emerging out onto the caravan roof. He almost raised a nervous hand to smooth his hair but thought better of it at the last second – best to play it cool, not that he was ever that... not around her, anyway. "Oh, you know, just contemplating how this will probably all go wrong and we'll end up dead." He managed a lopsided grin. She grinned back.

"That's it, keep up the positive outlook." She shut the hatch behind her, but when she looked at him again he could read the concern on her face even in the wan light. "But seriously, you've been spending a lot of time up here recently... nothing's... wrong, is it?"

He stared back at her and tried to think what to say. He should tell her. He wanted to tell her. Heck, it had been easy to lie at first. Back then they barely knew each other, grudging accomplices in some harebrained scheme to find a vault, nothing more and nothing less. But as the days went by he'd begun to realize that that wasn't true anymore. Fiona and Sasha were his friends... maybe not as close as Vaughn but still, they weren't nothing... and Sasha... well. He didn't even know what to say about that. He was fairly confident she didn't hate him as much as she had before but that wasn't much... The trouble was, as much as he wanted to tell them... he was afraid.

Not of Jack. No, the guy was a murderous psychopath but he was also a hologram and as long as he relied on Rhys there was only so much trouble he could cause... he hoped. What frightened him was the girls themselves. He would have to tell them he'd lied, kept this a secret. He'd break any trust he'd built between them and he'd be back to being the lying Hyperion jackass in their eyes. In Sasha's eyes...

Oh, and Jack was pretty sure Athena would kill him if she found out and they'd probably tell her, so... that made it okay, right? It wasn't like he wanted to keep it a secret.

"Uh, hey Rhys? You've been staring at me for like three minutes now, anything you'd like to say?"

He blinked back to reality. "Oh, uh, I- no, nothing, just... the sky's really pretty, isn't it?"

God did he just say that? He fought down the urge to hit his own head against the caravan's roof while she raised her eyebrows.

"Riiiiight. Well, if you're going to be weird I might just go back down."

"No, sorry, I just thought... I've just got a lot on my mind."

After a moment's hesitation she sat down beside him. "I guess I can understand that," she said. "You're probably quite new to the whole 'people trying to kill you on a regular basis' thing. Takes a bit of getting used to for those not from Pandora."

"Yeah." He should say something now, something witty, something profound. "It kind of sucks."

She laughed. Well, it was more of a chuckle really but he'd take what he could get. "It does."

Her smile faded after a moment and her gaze grew distant. He didn't know what she was thinking of, didn't think it polite to ask. They sat quietly beneath the stars as the Pandoran landscape rushed past and for a while, at least, he forgot the gnawing guilt of his secret.

"Rhys..." she said after a while, "where did you live? Before Helios, I mean."

"Oh... Eden-5."

"Was it nice?"

"I guess. I always thought it was just normal but this place puts things in perspective. So yeah, it was nice."

"Do you... miss it?"

He shrugged. Why was she asking? Was his life that interesting? Did she actually care or was this just some kind of small talk? "Haven't given it much thought, really... Helios has been my home for years. I missed it at first but that was a long time ago."

She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. "Maybe I'll visit someday."

"You'll... what?"

She sighed. "Me and Fiona, we always swore we'd get off of Pandora someday. Once this is all over, if we do... then maybe we'll go there. See if it really is nice."

"Ah. Right." Of course that was all it was. He struggled to think of something more to add but came up blank. After a while Sasha got to her feet.

"Look, I should get back. It's my turn to drive, and I suppose someone should probably stop Fiona flicking cards at Vaughn."

"I told her to stop doing that!"

She smirked. "That's why she'd doing it. Don't worry, I'll get her to behave."

Rhys watched her go with the lingering weight of regret. Maybe she sensed it or maybe it was just chance, but she paused on the ladder to look back at him.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

He should tell her. He should just tell her. But he only smiled. "Don't worry, I'm fine. Absolutely fine."

She closed the hatch.


He should have told her. Could have, anytime... all those opportunities he's shied away from now far beyond his reach... and here he was, hands tight around Fiona's throat while Sasha shrieked in the background. And he couldn't say anything. Couldn't let them know it wasn't him, couldn't tell them he was sorry, that he screwed up... all he could do was scream in his own head while Jack laughed. And they didn't know, God, they didn't know. They would die without ever knowing. He would give anything to stop this, to go back, to save them... but he couldn't, he could only watch in horror and wish that it wasn't real.

Fiona's eyes were rolling back in their sockets, the burning hatred in them fading as she did. This was his fault. All his fault. Someone had to stop him, why wouldn't anybody-

A sharp pain in the back of his skull and everything went black.


Somehow from the smothering darkness he fought his way to back consciousness. His head hurt. It didn't just hurt it throbbed, ached with a pain so sharp he barely dared to move it. Yet he was alive, however unlikely it seemed. He blinked up at the dark ceiling above him and tried to get his bearings. Where was he? Where was Jack? Where was...

Despite the pain he pushed himself up to his knees, teetering as the room span.

"Don't move." The voice was cold but familiar. Rhys struggled to focus, staring at the bleary figure before him.

"Sasha," he said, relief keen in his voice. He reached toward her as if to convince himself she were real but she stepped away, leveling the gun.

"I said don't move," she spat.

He sat on the cold ground, staring up at her as his vision cleared. Her finger was tight on the trigger and there was no disguising the loathing on her face, the utter contempt. Why hadn't he told her?

"It wasn't me," he said, willing her to believe it no matter how feeble those words sounded.

"I don't want to hear it."

"It wasn't, I-"

"Will you just shut you stupid, lying mouth for once? I don't want to hear your excuses. I don't care. The only reason you're still alive is because Fiona is, and she still thinks we need you to get the vault open. So shut up and stay still!"

He shut up. She was on the verge of tears but her gun didn't waver for an instant and nor did her grip on the trigger. Would she shoot him? He supposed he didn't blame her. He deserved this...but still, that look of utter betrayal cut him deep. He couldn't say nothing.

"It was Handsome Jack."

"I said-"

"It was! You remember back when I stuck that ID drive into my head? Well, turns out there was an AI version of him in there which, you know, went right into my brain."

She took a deep breath. "I can't believe I ever trusted you... that I ever... that I even... I don't know what I expected. You're Hyperion." She dragged the word out like it was something dirty. "You're just like the rest of them."

"I'm not lying," Rhys said desperately but it was no good. She didn't believe him. There was no way he could make her, no way he could salvage this wreck. If Vaughn were here then maybe... no, that wouldn't help. Besides, Vaughn was safest away from him while Jack was still... actually, what had happened to Jack? Evidently he wasn't puppeteering his body at the moment, and he could see no sign of the flickering blue hologram but it seemed too much to hope that he might actually be gone...

He tried to push aside his own misery and the pain in his head, tried to worry about the problem in hand. "What happened," he asked, "after I... after..."

"After you tried to kill us?"

He winced at the venom in that tone. "Yeah, that."

"August happened," she said with satisfaction. "We all thought he'd busted your skull, it wasn't till later we realized you weren't as dead as we all wanted. By then Gortys was there, and she kept telling Fiona we needed you and well, you got lucky."

"And where are we?"

"You don't get to know that."

"What about-"

She waved the gun at him. "Enough talking. I've told you-"

The door clicked and they both turned to see Fiona enter, shutting it behind her. She looked pale and drawn, and even with the high collar of her shirt and coat he could see the telltale purple of fresh bruises on her skin. Regardless, her expression was every bit as harsh as her sister's, and while her voice was raw there was a reassuring fierceness to it. "Actually," she said, "I think we have a lot of talking to do."


((So, technically my second ever fanfic, would like to know what you think. Need to finish an essay before I can get onto chapter 2, by which time the last ep should be out which might change my mind about where I want to go with this anyway, but yeah, we'll see what happens.))