A/N It's back! I haven't updated for a while because I've been on holiday, but I have pre-written several chapters, so enjoy. Also thanks to all reviewers, my number one source of warm fuzzy feelings after puppies.


Despite frequent attempts made by Angel to make Lilith tell her more about 'the way he was looking', the redheaded siren continued to avoid questioning. By the time the vault hunters departed in their transport to the Circe facility, Angel was no closer to the discovering the secret. Giving up, she retreated to a corner of the transport and sulked while Lilith gave the briefing.

"Listen up. Brick and Mordy are staying in Sanctuary to guard it, so we're two vault hunters short. So here's how it's going to go. All these so-called 'sirens' actually channel their powers through objects. These could be staffs, guns, or tiny magical fairy wands. Whatever it is, you've gotta be prepared."

There were several raised eyebrows and concerned looks.

"So we don't know what they are?" Asked Axton. Lilith shook her head, then continued.

"However, we can deal with this. Angel here-" Lilith gave her a winning smile. "Says she can stop the channels if she gets to the main power core."

Angel nodded. "Channeling has to use up an immense amount of energy, so it makes sense that the objects draw power from the main core. If I can disable it, it will also disable the objects. In theory. I hope."

The vault hunters did not look encouraged. Lilith cleared her throat.

"Anyway. So. Zer0, you're in charge of infiltrating the base and sneaking Angel in."

Angel and Zer0 nodded. Lilith turned to speak again, and she had a glint in her eye that the younger siren could not translate.

"Axton, you're to go with them in case anything goes wrong." Angels eyes widened and Lilith dropped an almost imperceptible wink. No. Surely not. That woman wouldn't do that to her! She was sure to make a fool of herself, and in front of another vault hunter no less!

She fumed silently as Axton strode over to her and, misinterpreting her look of horror, gave her an encouraging smile that made her heart feel as if it had dropped from her chest cavity. Lilith smirked.

"Salvador, Maya, Kreig, Gaige and I are going to be our main strikeforce. We're going to get into that base and cause as much havoc as possible to cover the infiltration team. When the channels are disabled, we can wipe this facility out for good." She finished with a grim look on her face.

~o~

The shuttle landed in a crater a few kilometres from the facility, churning the ground below it as it landed. The assembled vault hunters disembarked, and moved their separate ways, the infiltration team, lead by Zer0, heading by car to the facility immediately, while the strike force followed at a more leisurely pace. Axton glanced at Angel, who was sitting opposite him in the back of the technical. She seemed anxious, but he couldn't blame her. This was, after all, her first mission. He gave her his best smile, but if anything, this seemed to make it worse. She pulled out the Jakobs pistol he had given her from her jacket and began examining its reload mechanism. He had begun thinking of it as her jacket now.

Despite himself, he couldn't help look at her. Her bodysuit underneath was skintight. Very skintight. He quickly averted his gaze before his traitorous eyes could run themselves any further. As the vehicle turned and the back was exposed to the high winds that coursed through this particular part of Pandora, she shivered and pulled the jacket tightly across herself. Axton felt that he could not help but to envy the jacket, the way it was wrapped around her body, giving her warmth.

He shook himself out of his trance only to see Angel looking directly at him. He flushed, but before he could apologise, the vehicle swerved suddenly, sending her crashing into him and almost over the side. His reflexes kicked in and he caught her before she could topple over the edge and pulled her towards him. Several breathless moments went by before he realised he was holding her close. Very close. Their faces were inches apart, and his eyes involuntarily flickered down to her lips. Angel's face was flushed, whether from her near-death encounter or her current, near-Axton encounter he couldn't tell. Their eyes locked and Angel bit her lip slightly, almost causing Axton to groan. Blinking rapidly, he pulled away with great effort and sat back down before he could do anything rash. The desire to kiss her was still raging at the back of his mind, but he calmed himself. Being a soldier, he had discipline, but what had really stopped him was the thought that if he had impulsively kissed her, he might never see her again. She was a newcomer to this world and the last thing he wanted to do was to scare her off with his forwardness. Better to suffer in silence than to never to see those beautiful eyes again or to hear her laugh or... Axton closed his eyes, but then a thought struck him. Would she be scared off? He was no expert on women, he thought dryly, and his hand unconsciously went to the ring hanging from his chain. That said, he wasn't blind either. There had been... something... in Angel's eyes that gave him reason to believe that if he had kissed her, she would have reciprocated. He snorted internally. Or it could be just wishful thinking. He glanced surreptitiously back at Angel their eyes met again. Was that disappointment he saw? Whatever it was, it disappeared as a sudden jolt told them that they had arrived at their destination.

Zer0 leapt out of the drivers seat and beckoned to them. They followed behind at a crouch as Zer0 lead them to a ventilation shaft at the side of the building. He turned to face Angel and Axton.

"We will go in here / Then wait for the diversion / Follow me closely."

With that, he sliced through the ventilation cover with his sword and leapt inside, before crawling further down the pipe. Angel climbed up behind him, and Axton took the rear. After scrambling inside, he turned to the others thoughtfully.

"You would think, in a top-secret facility like this, the the ventilation shafts wouldn't be human-sized." Angel's lips twitched upwards and Axton grinned in satisfaction before averting his eyes. He would do well not to focus on her lips for too long. It was only as they began making their way down the pipe did he realise that crawling behind Angel offered him a view far more dangerous than her lips. And despite his best efforts, this was something beyond his capability to resist.

~o~

Five minutes later, they stopped at a grate leading down to the main facility. Snatches of conversation and strange whirring and thumping noises rose through the grate and echoed in the narrow shaft. Zer0 raised a hand to stop the group.

"Wait for the signal / Then we will move to the core / For now, be quiet."

With this, he carefully sat cross legged on the ground and began to meditate.

Behind him, Angel also sat quietly on the floor, but unlike him her mind was in turmoil, thoughts racing wildly through her head. She glanced sideways at Axton and saw him double-checking his ammo pouches. When he had finished, he stretched, the muscles of his arms rippling slightly. She shivered. Even though those arms had been around her before, in training, there was something very different about the way he held her in the truck. For a brief moment she swore she could have seen a fire burn at the back of his eyes before he let her go. Could this be what Lilith meant? Dare she hope that he returns her feelings? She took a deep breath and collected herself. This would have to wait. She could not afford to be distracted in this mission. She looked at the clock on her HUD and frowned. What was taking so long? Lilith should be in position by now. She turned to Zer0.

"When did Lilith say th..."

Her words were drowned out by a klaxon blaring in the distance. The hubbub of the facility paused, then returned, much louder, as shouts of 'Intruders!' came from below. Axton gave her one of those grins.

"I think that's our signal."

~o~

They dropped down to the floor of the deserted room, the assorted tables and food trays identifying it as a cafeteria. Zer0 pulled out his sword and stalked silently to the door, looked through, then beckoned to them. Axton and Angel followed in a crouch and they made their way swiftly to a deserted hallway. Zer0 pulled out his ECHO and stared for a second at the minimap before taking the doorway on the right. The passage was a narrow corridor with large windows looking down on a immense stone courtyard. Axton paused to look closer. Thick pillars bordered the yard and there were several sandy pits, which Axton assumed were for training and sparring. Targets and straw dummies littered the training yard, many of them blackened and torn, and some reduced to nothing more than a pile of straw and some rags. Axton's lips tightened. That wasn't a good sign. He had to be careful. This was Angel's first mission, and there weren't any New-U's in this facility. Beside him, she had also noticed the dummies and swallowed audibly. He wanted nothing more than to hold her close and swear to protect her, but instead he just patted her reassuring on the shoulder. She smiled shakily back at him.

A commotion broke out at the entrance to the courtyard as several figures broke through the door, followed closely by a swarm of people in brown robes. Axton could see Lilith's red hair even from this distance. The distraction had arrived. As the two parties battled across the stone ground of the yard, Zer0 pulled them away from the windows and into another doorway. They moved stealthily down this hall, but as soon as they reached halfway a group of the brown-robed people suddenly rounded the corner ahead of them. The leader froze, then shouted in alarm and digistructed a staff in his hands. The channelers behind him also digistructed staffs, though two at the back simply raised hands that were clad in metallic gloves. The quiet corridor exploded into violence.

As the channelers started forward Axton immediately threw down his newly-repaired turret, which sprang to life before him. He drew his assault rifle while simultaneously pulling Angel behind the protective shield of his turret, before opening fire on the channelers. The leader of the channelers began twirling his staff with a smirk, and Axton realised that his bullets were being deflected by the staff. Another channeler charged Zer0, who stood still. As the brown-clad woman brought her staff down in a brutal overhead strike he flickered, disappeared, and reappeared behind her with his sword firmly lodged in her spine. Axton stopped firing suddenly when a purple light, much like Maya's phaselock, encased his gun and tore it from his grasp. The source of the light seemed to be one of the gloved channelers. He growled and pulled out another gun.

"That was a legendary, asshole!" A tug on his arm brought his attention to Angel, who hissed in his ear;

"Stop shooting! It's charging their staffs!"

Axton looked back at the channeler and noticed that the staff was growing increasingly brighter. He was about to shout a warning to Zer0, but no sooner had he opened his mouth did the channeler slam his staff to the floor, releasing a shockwave that blasted him and Zer0 backwards down the hall. Angel, protected from the blast by the shield, was suddenly face-to-face with the channelers. With a shaking hand she lifted the Jakobs pistol, but the leader sneered and batted it out of her hand with a casual swipe of his staff, and then leveled it directly at Angel's head. Axton, through a dull haze, saw the channeler raise the staff, and his vision immediately cleared, panic and rage replacing his pain. With a roar he barreled down the corridor and slammed bodily into the man, sending him sprawling. He pulled out his tomahawk and drove it down savagely into the channeler's head. Feeling a tell-tale tug on his arm, he quickly spun and sent the tomahawk spinning into the chest of one of the gloved channelers, and the purple light around his elbow vanished. Another channeler approached cautiously, spinning his staff. Axton, his blood ice in his veins, pulled out out a shotgun and leveled it directly at the man.

"Deflect this." He spat, and pulled the trigger. The channeler spun his staff desperately, trying to deflect all of the tiny pellets at once, but screamed as many of them hit home. Axton kicked the staff from his hands and ended his misery with one more shot. He spun to face the other, but Zer0 was already there, blade flashing. The last gloved channeled had a hand raised, and for a second Axton thought he was begging for mercy. And then the roof, alight with a purple flame, came crashing down apon his head.

~o~

Axton!

Axton, please!

He groaned, and tried in vain to move his head away from the noise. He was in pain, and the voice was very loud. If it would just leave him alone, he could slip back into comfortable oblivion. There was a hard slap on his cheek.

Ow.

The voice was back, but, oddly, it sounded choked, and hot drops of liquid were falling on his face.

"Axton. Please... please don't leave me. I don't want to be alone again."

Was that... Angel?

He wasn't aware of speaking the last aloud, but she answered, voice still thick, but her relief was palpable.

"I'm here."

"G-good."

His head felt like it was wrapped in several layers of cotton wool. He could feel cool, slender hands on his cheeks.

"Stay here." Her voice was more certain now. "I'm going to see if I can find health."

No. She couldn't leave. He reached out a feeble hand towards her voice.

"I'm coming back. Just don't move"

"W-wasn't planning to."

Her voice was clear but his sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. He felt her hands leave his face and for a short time that felt like infinity, he was alone with the void once again. It was so tempting. Peace. But then he remembered Angel's voice, her tears. The void beckoned, but he held to her. The memory of her smile, her eyes. If he died now, there would be no respawning. He would never see her again.

She was back.

A rustling, and her hand was on his face again. A sharp pain in his sternum and suddenly light flooded his eyes and pain washed off his body in sheets. He jerked his head up. There was Angel, light from the newly-formed skylight framing her windswept hair in a halo around her head. Her face was streaked with tears, but determined, and she was gripping a health hypo that was plunged into his chest. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

Angel smiled down at him, and he could not hold out any longer. His hand curled around her neck and he pulled her down into a feverish kiss. She froze, and for a terrible second he thought he had made a mistake, but then her hands were tangled in his hair and she was kissing him back, hard and fierce. He nibbled at her bottom lip and she moaned, a noise that galvanised him to rip the hypo from his chest and pull her body flush with his. He flipped her over so that he was on top, but then a polite, robotic cough brought them back to the present. Axton glanced up and saw Zer0, who was standing awkwardly on top of a large concrete block that used to be the ceiling. He was silent, but his helmet showed, glowing red.

"..."

Axton and Angel rose to their feet, hair tousled and faces flushed. Zer0 leapt down from the rock.

"Now is not the time / you can... celebrate later / it is time to go."

Axton lead Angel around the block and they trailed behind Zer0. And despite near-death at the hands of homicidal magic ninjas/large concrete blocks, and despite the rather stern, if awkward scolding from a homicidal alien ninja, they could not remove the silly smiles from their faces.