"And just like that, Gortys was gone. Vallory was gone. The Vault, the monster that protected it—they were all gone. All we were left with was each other. And the memories of those we lost along the way."
- Fiona, Recording from Loader Bot's memory banks, Day 517 since last wipe
—
The caravan felt new enough after being converted into a rocket ship, but its haphazard rattle along the craggy surface of Pandora belied how old it really still was.
Sasha stole her gaze away from the window long enough to survey her surroundings within, as if they'd changed at all since they left…well, she decided just to call it "the incident." If she really had to give it a name, that rolled off the tongue easier than "the Helios crash site where it all went to hell." Or "the site where the Vault came and went, leaving us even worse off than we were before."
Maybe "the catastrophe" fit better, she considered. But, no. "The incident" demanded less of her attention, just as she preferred.
Fiona sat in the driver's seat, looking ahead intently at the expanse of wasteland that their tin can navigational system assured them led to Hollow Point. August leaned against the wall, not so much looking at the back of the caravan as just facing it. He didn't even seem to register the sporadic bumps of off-road travel that jostled the wall where his head rested. Sasha peered more intently at him, wondering for a second if he was dead. She hadn't thought his injuries were that bad…though of course there hadn't been much on hand to dress them with. He looked flushed. Maybe he had a fever from an infected wound.
August gave a slow blink. In spite of everything, Sasha felt some relief for that. This caravan already felt bereft enough of living passengers.
She'd hoped they might have picked up one or two more by now, but…
She went back to gazing out the window.
August spoke like he was just waking up with a hangover. "You could still come and tend the bar, if you want," he offered.
"Thanks," she said, unmoving. "I'll think about it."
Those words, like so many, were tools of her trade. Depending on how it was spoken, "I'll think about it" could mean "Yes later, after I've had time to make you more pliable." It could mean "It'll never cross my mind again, but I'm not telling you that and risking a score."
Right now, it just meant "This silence is getting on my nerves, so here are some sounds in the guise of words."
August didn't seem to parse any meaning beyond that either. After awhile, he pressed again. "Be nice, not having to do it alone."
"August, I think…alone is exactly what you should be for now," she said. She didn't have to turn towards him to know her words struck, and with a barbed edge she hadn't intended. "Sorry," she added. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
"Could've fooled me." He gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Course, you knew that."
Her cheeks burned hot at that comment. She whirled to look at him…then somehow, she willed her sympathy to win out over her anger. She'd be lying to say she knew how he felt. If Felix and Vallory were buried side by side, she didn't kid herself which grave would get danced on.
She barely remembered her mother…but she remembered the sadness in Fiona's eyes always associated with her when they were younger. Their mother's absence has been felt when Fiona hit all those milestones of womanhood, then felt again when Fiona turned right around a few years later to support Sasha through the same milestones herself. By all accounts, Fiona had made their mother out to be someone more worthy of grief than August's by a mile—someone who should have been there, but wasn't.
Still, there wasn't a person in this caravan who didn't get what it was like to go from having next to nothing, to having just nothing.
She leaned in, as if weighing whether to reach out to him. A hand touch might be welcome, she figured, but a knee or shoulder touch was less likely to be misread, given their history. "All I'm saying is, you have a chance to start over," she encouraged him. "Figure your life out." She glanced over at Fiona, who still hadn't taken her eyes on the so-called road. "I think that's what we're going to do, ourselves."
"Starting over when the game was already shit is still gonna be shit," he said. "And you know it."
She couldn't argue. She concluded that there was no touch at all he would welcome at the moment, so she leaned back and turned again to the night sky.
A silence followed. "What do you keep looking out there at, anyway?" he asked.
"The moon," she said simply. "Haven't seen…all of it in awhile. I guess I thought it would be brighter now. But it's about the same."
More silence.
"Sasha. This isn't me being an asshole. I'm just being honest," August prefaced. "You're never going to see him again."
The look she gave his reflection in the window should have frosted the glass over.
"…I'm just going to let you blame that one on fever and pretend I didn't hear it," she near-whispered.
She decided she was done looking back for now. Fiona had the right idea looking forward, she figured, so she got up to join her big sister at the front.
"Gonna be much longer?" she asked.
"We're close," Fiona replied simply. "Few more miles."
That could be the truth, or it could be a deterrent to further conversation. Fiona had been an impenetrable statue since Gort— "the incident." Sasha wasn't going to pry…but just then on the horizon there was a bright burst of light, there and gone in the same second. A pop and crackle followed immediately after.
"What the hell?" Fiona articulated.
"Was that a…firework?" Sasha followed up.
"It looked like it came from Hollow Point," Fiona said.
So that part had been true. They were almost home—such as it was. And there was a shindig in full swing there, from the looks of it.
"Do you two seriously not get it?" August piped up. "Where did we just come from?"
Of course Sasha got it: Helios. All of Pandora had to know by now that Hyperion was finished—they'd have known just by looking up. Sasha couldn't help but snort at the irony. They would be the only ones in the entire subterranean city not celebrating the very thing they'd scarcely dared to dream of since the company first came here.
Well, there might be one other.
"You don't think Springs told anyone, do you?" Sasha asked. "About…" she carefully sidestepped around Scooter's name. "…About our part in it?"
Fiona shrugged. "Whether she did or not, be ready to make up some stories."
Sasha slumped into the nearest unoccupied seat and exhaled long and low. "So, what else is new?"
—-
Hyperion's fall must have meant a huge boost in profits for Torgue, judging from the explosions ringing out all over Hollow Point. In just the time it took them to deliver August to Tector, who had been dutifully manning his post at the Purple Skag, the cave ceiling shook ominously three times, and a stalactite the size of a baseball bat landed with a crack just shy of where they parked the caravan. The trip to the garage afterward wasn't much smoother. Not just because of the orchestra of rockets, or the parade of Psychos with even less regard for personal safety than usual.
Sasha knew that Fiona had wrestled enough with what to tell Springs about Athena…only to have to do it all again now, after Scooter.
The garage looked much like they left it. From the back echoed a jauntily hummed version of (if Sasha recalled right) the children's tune Bubbles And Birds. So, Springs was in a good mood. Did that mean Athena was back safe? She glanced at Fiona. For her sister's sake, she hoped so.
"Uh…hello?" Fiona called in a somber voice.
"That you, Love?" Springs chirped. The mistake was understandable; Fiona had sounded grim enough to be Athena. The mechanic's head poked out from around a corner. Her brow wrinkled for a moment when she saw it wasn't her girlfriend, but her demeanor did not deflate. "Oh! You're back, then? Delightful! I didn't know what to think, honestly, when that damn space station fell. Goodness. This day couldn't get any brighter if Mr. Torgue came out with some kind of new flare gun, that also explodes."
"Yeah," Sasha agreed half-heartedly. Why take issue with Springs' sunshine right before the dusk fell? She brought her hand up to fumble with her goggles—an old habit—only to remember she still had her Hyperion disguise on. That would have to go as soon as possible.
"It sounded like you were expecting Athena," Fiona noted. "Does that mean she's…?"
"Why, it's the most peculiar thing," Springs said. "You see I geared up, I was all set to go out after her, and just then I got this ping on the Echo-Comm. And there was Athena's voice, clear as a bell. All she'd say was she was free, it was a long story, and she would explain everything when she came back. She should be on her way now."
"Good." Fiona managed the faintest of smiles, to Sasha's relief. "…Good."
"Oh!" Springs chirped again. "Sasha—it is Sasha, isn't it? Before I forget, I have something of yours here." She turned and vanished for a few sparse moments, then returned with a battered old radio. "I do hope you weren't too angry with me when you blasted off in your new rocket ship and noticed it gone," she said sheepishly, placing the trinket in Sasha's hand. "Silly me just forgot to put it back when the work on the ship was finished. But I mean, not like there was time to tune into any of Elpis' stations while you were up there, right?"
Sasha hadn't noticed the radio was gone during their trip to Helios. In fact, she had forgotten all about it, until this very moment. "Thanks," she said. "Glad you held onto it."
"You've just got to stay awhile, all of you," Springs insisted to both sisters. "We'll raise our glasses, Athena can share her story, and you two can…" she trailed off. It seemed to just catch up with her that someone was missing. "Hold on a tick. Are the others on their way, too? Scooter, and the rest of your friends?"
Fiona sighed. "That's…what we came to talk about."
The elder sister began a story that was part testimonial, part confession. Meanwhile, Sasha examined the radio. She tested the dial knobs and fiddled with the antennae. Though it made no sound at the present, it spoke volumes to her about a certain memory. One that was only forged a matter of days ago, but now it might as well have been years.
—-
Night in the Pandoran wasteland was eerily calm. With the fledgling Vault Hunters' minds still on the turn of events in New Haven, and their hopes now hanging on the promises of a strange but chipper robot that bade them further and further north, they halted their trek to roast meat on sticks over a campfire. Sasha had said she "found" the meat in the first abandoned town they scavenged after leaving New Haven. She doubted even their accidental Hyperion companions were fooled into thinking it was anything other than the skag pup they turned into a speed bump mid-boost. In truth, all she had really found in that town was some ammo and a miraculously functioning radio. Both had proven a reliable source of entertainment so far into this trip.
As had the bottle of Felix's best whiskey. Sasha hadn't hesitated to ensure that bit of stinginess on his part came to an end in his absence. The bottle was nearing half empty now, and sat in Fiona's lap, well protected from overuse. But it had served to lighten moods and loosen tongues just a little.
"Hey, Fiona and I have a bet," Sasha piped up while twirling her campfire stick around and around between impatient fingers. Her shoes and socks shed and placed beside her, she wiggled her free toes closer to the fire. The dancing light flickered off ten little blips of the same orange nail polish that adorned her fingers. "Care to help us settle it?"
"Maybe." Rhys shrugged, gave a cursory scan of the doneness of his kebob, and looked disappointed with the analysis. "What's in it for me?"
She removed her stick from the fire, poked tentatively at it with a fingertip, then returned it to the searing heat. "If I win, I'll let you pick the radio station for the rest of the night," she said without looking up from her meal-to-be.
"Oh, really? A brief but merciful reprieve from Hollow Point Underground?" He grinned lopsidedly. "Tempting. I'm in."
"Hey, your art critiquing is not part of the deal," Sasha said. Her stint as a DJ for Hollow Point Underground hadn't lasted long. Nothing really lasted long, when her very livelihood kept her constantly on the move. Still, she remembered fondly the indie tracks she blasted and that invigorating sense of sticking it to the man. Not that Hyperion really suffered much for the station's brazen manifestos, she knew. Even with Handsome Jack's death (a party event itself on Hollow Point Underground's airwaves) still that ominous H loomed over Elpis to dominate the sky.
"Yeah, well, I've been pretty tolerant of the 'How Much You Suck' channel so far," said Rhys. "I hope you'll be adaptable when I take the tunes up a notch."
Sasha grit her teeth. "…If I win," she restated.
"If I win," Fiona said, "I promise not to yank that tie off and throw it in the fire." She gave an innocent smile. "If I lose, I still might."
He clicked his tongue. "Shoulda known the risks going in. …Okay. What do I have to do?"
"Just answer one question," said Sasha.
"Truthfully," Fiona added. "I know the difference."
"I'm listening."
"Where are you and Vaughn from?"
"That's all? I could have just told you that," he laughed in an oddly relieved way. "We grew up on Tantalus."
This was clearly not the answer Fiona wanted. She gave a brusque growl of defeat, slapped her money in Sasha's waiting palm, and used her campfire stick to point at Rhys. "Don't fall asleep. I'm coming for that tie." As though to emphasize her threat, she bit into the charred morsel right off the stick's end.
Sasha pocketed her riches and beamed. "Congratulations. Your cut of the winnings." She extended the radio out to Rhys. "But good luck finding a signal, Maestro. I don't think I could have picked up Hollow Point Underground much longer up here anyway."
"Gotta love a win-win." He balanced the campfire stick between his knobby knees, turned on the radio, and started turning the dial. "But I still don't follow," he said over the montage of static. "Why were you betting on what planet we're from?"
"Technically, I bet you were from a planet," Sasha explained. "Fiona bet you both lived your whole lives on some Hyperion station like Helios."
He gave a derisive nod towards Fiona. "I get it. You think Hyperion breeds indentured servants, is that it?"
"Well, they never seem to run out of disposable lackeys," Fiona reasoned. "Think anyone misses Vasquez up there yet?"
"But what makes more sense in their precious pocketbook, Fi?" Sasha posed. "An entire Hyperion station dedicated to cranking out little baby accountants? Or a Hyperion task force that goes out across planets to bring kids into the fold?"
Rhys made a face. "That was your theory?"
"Wouldn't put it past you." She paused. "…Them," she allowed reluctantly.
"Ha. The employment contracts aren't easy to get out of once you sign, I'll give you that. But no, I wasn't born Hyperion. Or, uh, drafted out of grade school." He finally settled on a radio station he liked. The music that issued forth was a mellow electro swing.
Sasha exhaled sharply through clenched teeth. She imagined this playing while a table full of overdressed Hyperion execs toasted each other over the successful transferral of baby corpses to black in a ledger. And Rhys had just confirmed what she secretly hoped wasn't the case: they were all in that life because they chose it. She regretted striking this accord already.
"So, got family back there on Tantalus?" she asked, more to divert her attention away from the music genre she had unwittingly agreed to. At least her kebob was well and truly cooked. She blew on it and took a bite, then leaned back to stretch out her legs and cross her ankles, her feet mere inches from the flame's heat.
There was a pause. "I prefer to think of them as 'relatives,' not 'family,'" Rhys said.
"That bad, huh?" Fiona cut in, chin on fist.
"Way back in the 'once upon a time,' Dad was a partner in a real estate firm," he began. This story already smacked of boring to Sasha, until he followed with, "'Strongfork and Price,' they were called."
"Which one was which?" Sasha asked.
"Huh?"
"Was your dad the Strongfork or the Price?"
"Oh. Strongfork."
"So your name is—?"
"Anyhoo," he pressed on. "He went to jail when I was yea high." His hand marked roughly the elevation of his earlobe from his seated position.
"What was he in for?" Fiona asked.
There was a definite tightening of his mouth. "You promise not to laugh?"
"Yes," said Sasha.
"No," said Fiona.
"Embezzlement."
They both laughed.
"Yeah, yeah. Chip off the old block." He scoffed. "Mom must have thought so, too, because she divorced him while he was on the inside. Annnnd, then she married the Price."
Sasha blinked. "Huh. Wasn't expecting that," she said. Not just because the synopsis of his childhood (combined with the pretentious soundtrack he chose) was starting to mirror some tacky radio drama, but because he had a stepfather, like her. The thought of having something—anything—in common with some cubicle-dwelling pomade addict was…weird.
"Uh-huh. Pro-tip: Calling it 'on the inside' doesn't make it sound any cooler," Fiona said.
"Hey, Sasha asked. And in all fairness, she won the bet," he retorted. "But if I'm boring you, by all means, I can just turn this up instead." He reached for the volume dial.
"No, that's—!" Sasha thrust her open palm forward to cut him off. "…That's okay, go on. Finish your story."
"Thank you." He released the dial. "Where was I? So, then along came the Price kids. My half-siblings." A mirthless chuckle. "Not gonna lie, it got pretty obvious pretty fast what having the wrong last name got you growing up in that house."
Sasha bit her lip. "Yeah." Her eyes fell to the fire. "That sucks."
Rhys waved dismissively. "It wasn't all bad. The house was big enough we could give each other a wide berth. And, there was the housekeeping staff to hang out with. They were good folk. This one au pair we had, Helga, she always used to save the last cookie for me when the little Prices got the rest. That woman had the magic touch with chocolate. Sometimes she'd let me have a dill pickle to go with—"
Fiona's mouth twisted funnily. "Hold on. You had a housekeeping staff?"
"Well, you know. …Realty's where it's at on Tantalus," he rationalized.
"A big mansion? Hired help? Cookies and pickles on demand?" Fiona ticked the clues off on her fingers. "You sure your pops was the one embezzling? It sounds like this Price guy just decided instead of a business partner, he'd rather have a scapegoat."
And a trophy wife, Sasha thought. With her son as just an afterthought. She remembered the day Felix caught her and Fiona pickpocketing, and wondered briefly if he would have bothered taking in that grubby, hungry younger girl without her older, silver-tongued sister to sweeten the bargain.
"Yeah. Dad said as much when I'd visit," Rhys admitted. "He'd tell me, 'Everyone does things they aren't proud of to get ahead in this life. The ones at the top just make sure it's the other guy who gets caught.'"
"That is spectacularly awful advice," Sasha said flatly. That didn't mean it wasn't true, though.
For a few seconds, only the crackling sound of electro swing filled the air. That, and smoke. Just then, Sasha looked down and noticed that the crackling sound wasn't the radio; it was Rhys' dinner.
"Hey, that's on fire."
He gave a triumphant "Oh-ho!" and made a show of inspecting his five remaining fingernails. "I knew you'd warm up to it a few bars in." He gave the radio a pat like a good dog.
"No." She pointed to the smoldering kebob. "Your thing's on fire."
Then came the yelp, and frantic blowing.
—-
"So that big advert in the sky was…" Springs was saying.
"The least I could do for Scooter," Fiona finished. "I'm sorry, Janey."
"You know, we've got to stop meeting like this." the mechanic sighed. "But, thank you for coming here to tell me that. It means a lot that you thought of me at the end of it all. Not many would."
Another round of whooping and a raucous explosion sounded outside the garage. Sasha wondered how fast the news of Helios' destruction was traveling to other planets, and how it was being taken. Someone, somewhere was watching their Hyperion stocks plummet and opening a top-story window to join them, she didn't doubt.
She had no idea where Tantalus was, or what it looked like. But she tried to imagine a massive house there, a mailbox in front with the name "Price" in gold letters. She pictured a gaggle of pasty-skinned, cashmere-clad siblings in their late teens to early twenties, pausing briefly to read a big bold headline on the EchoNet. "DISASTER ON HYPERION SPACE STATION. THOUSANDS DEAD."
Then she imagined them fighting over that last chocolate cookie.
Fiona looked in marginally better spirits now, knowing Athena was safe and having at least some of the remorse lifted for Scooter's last ride. Maybe, Sasha thought, once they had the chance to refuel and restock the caravan, they could organize an actual search. A real one this time—not like the rushed, careless drag race they'd conducted around the outskirts of Helios' impact zone, pausing to shout names into the city-sized mass off twisted metal and rubble. That was all there had been time for, with August wounded. But now…
She flicked the radio on. It bellowed out a roar of static, but somewhere buried under it she thought she could make out the odd note of that jaunty electro swing station. She promptly tuned the dial until she found Hollow Point Underground waiting for her like an old familiar landmark.
"AND YOU HOLLOW POINTERS CAN BET YOUR SWEET! SUBTERRANEAN! ASSES! IF TORGUE EVER DROPPED A GIANT F^#%ING LETTER 'T' ON THE PLANET, THE EXPLOSION WOULD HAVE BEEN TWICE AS BIG!" barked a local DJ who fancied himself a world-class impression artist, while his co-host guffawed.
An idea came to Sasha. She knew it was a longshot, but she couldn't just quietly go back to wallet-snatching and hustling without saying she tried.
—
Note: I just want to disclaim that I'm relatively new to the Borderlands fandom. The only games I have finished all the way through are Tales, and Borderlands 3 plus its DLC. I'm working on a Pre-Sequel play through with a group now, and Borderlands 2 will be next. It's just slow-going because we're all adults with conflicting schedules. I have seen a series synopsis on Youtube, but please bear with me if I get any lore details wrong. Let me know, and I'll do my best to correct them.