The twilight had sunken into a dark shroud around the flying city by the time Angle was able to pull herself up from the ground. All she wanted to do was go home and sleep in a bed that wasn't made of shattered glass. She looked like an awful wreck- dried blood sat in cracked lines across her skin, larger pieces of the broken bottles were lodged in various places on her body, her hair was matted with the stickiness of leftover alcohol and her own blood. While she was often prone to violent outbursts and raging tantrums, she had never had such a powerful episode before. In the aftermath, it scared her.
Numb and cold, feeling hollow, she trudged through the dimly-lit streets of Sanctuary, the glinting of the new buildings contrasting oddly with the dull metal of the old, but Angel barely noticed the difference in sight as she watched her feet slowly beat the familiar twisted path to her home, through narrower side streets to avoid any kind of confrontation about her physical state.
A cold and broken angel pressed her shaking body against the inside of the door, happy to finally be in her own sanctuary within Sanctuary. Her room was still half-destroyed- as was normal in the aftermath of such incidents, her brother had meticulously tidied his half of the room, leaving hers in untouched shambles. The idea, she knew, was that it would goad her into taking care of her side. It was not as successful as Roland always seemed to hope. More often than not, she would continue her existence unfazed in the slovenly mess that was her space, preferring to navigate through the heaps of items rather than sort through them. Some of the only military traits her father had not managed to confer unto her were a Spartan lifestyle and a ritually enforced rigorous cleaning schedule- this failure evident in the exorbitant amount of unnecessary and often-unused items and things that had never found a home other than the floor. To Angel, however, the mess was comfort. The clutter was a visual distraction, something for her eyes to keep busy; the alien emptiness of her brother's half of the room, with nothing but nothing to look at, unnerved her, and she firmly believed that if the entire space was this barren she would go mad. Well, she thought, glancing at the dried blood trails still trailing through her spiraling birthmarks, madder.
There had been no sign of Roland on her return to the home, which was not a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the sight of her often-absent mother, pouring over ancient texts in the kitchen. Thankfully, though her body was present, her mind most certainly was not, as she had taken absolutely no notice to the matted and bloody return of Angel, which could have led into a conversation that Angel really didn't want to go into, especially with Maya. With a heavy exhale, Angel left the brace of the sturdy door and slipped down onto one of the mounds of items that created the topography of her half of the room, draping herself over it like a dragon on a treasure trove.
A light beep from her personal ECHO disrupted the heavy, solemn silence, momentarily frightening the young Siren whose fried nerves still felt like they were laying bare to the elements. Slowly, with minor trembling, she brought the device to her eyes to see a new text alert flashing on the screen. While the primary use of ECHOs was for verbal communication, at this moment Angel was glad that the text chat system had still been implemented, however infrequent its use- also was she glad that whoever was trying to talk to her right then had elected to use a non-verbal means.
Angie! I'll be in Sanctuary at about sunrise! Visiting Colt and Urs. Haven't seen you in a while, let's fix that!
It was Priscilla, another child of one of the other Vault Hunters- and naturally, a lifelong acquaintance of Angel's. Unlike Riley, however, this particular vault child was counted a friend by the Siren. The Slab Princess, as she jokingly referred to herself, occasionally ventured from Thousand Cuts to Sanctuary to visit two of her five older brothers, who had been serving in the Crimson Raiders for about five years now, and also to visit the three vault children of the flying city, whom she often called her cousins. Two years her senior, Priscilla was one of the very few people that Angel looked up to, and though their time together was infrequent, it always provided Angel at least a few days of calmness uninterrupted by tantrums and rages. Unlike almost every other person Angel had encountered in her life, Priscilla's answer to frustration was elegantly simple and thoroughly efficient- go out and hit some stuff as hard as you can for as long as you can. Truly a Slab, Priscilla, on her visits where Angel was on the verge of losing it as she had today, would take her out to several of the Thunderdome knockoffs that were eternally popular on Pandora, and the two would brawl until Angel's fits of rage became fits of ecstasy, her mood skyrocketed from the adrenaline and the outlet.
This visit couldn't have come at a better time. Growing up at her father's right hand, maybe Priscilla would have some insight into the godawful idea of Roland's- in addition to piling up bloodied bandit corpses throughout the area. Just the idea of Priscilla arriving- in only about forty-five hours now- drove away a good amount of Angel's chaotic emotions, replacing them with excitement at the prospect of double-teaming waves of enemies in an arena. Angel had no idea how she was going to go through two sleep cycles- she was way too excited to see her friend.
Prissy- you don't know how much I need this rn.
By the time Roland returned home, Maya had retreated back to her study, and a now-bathed Angel had slunk out to the living room for television. Dull cartoon voices accompanied the distractingly bright colors that flashed across the screen- a veritable lullaby for Angel. Roland was glad to see she had found her way to a sedative activity. He had purposely decided to be absent upon her return, to give her the time to calm herself. After her outburst on the city's edge, he didn't want to run the risk of that anger returning upon seeing him again before she could normalize her temperament. Seemingly, the tactic had worked.
"Angie," he said softly as he slipped into the room. Her semi-glazed eyes shifted from the television towards him in a greeting, but she made no other efforts to acknowledge him. In others this would be an evident sign of hostility, but Angel was not like others- such apathy was actually a good sign at this point, indicating she was no longer angry enough to re-enter a fit of rage upon seeing him. Understanding her lack of screaming as an invitation, Roland joined her on the couch. "Mom was out earlier," he said passively, not actively trying to initiate conversation, rather, just remarking on an event.
"Saw," Angel muttered in reply, her voice tired and void of any kind of emotion.
He let the silence fall again. The screen changed at rapid rates, almost too rapid for him to even decipher what was happening in the cartoon.
"Priscilla's coming."
Ah ha. She had started a conversation. "Oh, when?"
"Said she'd be here by next riser."
"It's been a while since her last visit. I'm sure you're excited." The timing was perfect. During and after visits from Priscilla, Angel was the closest she could be to stable and agreeable- a state she sorely seemed to need right now. Also, he knew that the thrill-seeking Slab would not only join his and Riley's foray into the Abandoned City, but would also convince Angel to embrace the idea.
"Don't know how I'll be able to sleep twice," she admitted.
"You could always run laps around the city," he replied, referencing an old tactic that their father had semi-jokingly endorsed when the then-small twins couldn't sleep.
"I feel like the city ran laps on me," was the retort. "Like, I was the shoes, and the whole damn city ran forever on me."
The silence fell again and Roland hoped that it would act like a blanket, dampening the conversation about the reason for her exhaustion from sparking. The best way for Angel to get over things was to simply forget they had happened, or at least to forget why they had happened. As she didn't comment any further, it seemed that it was on its way out of her memory banks.
Angel again was the one to break the silence. "So where were you?"
He shrugged, purely for his own benefit- Angel, whose eyes were fixated on the television, didn't notice the act. "I went to see Mordy, and talk about one of the sniper contests that's coming up." Yet another Vault Hunter, family friend, and Riley's father, Mordecai had once been known throughout the galaxy for his skills as a sniper, and often coached Roland in the trade like a son he never had, as his own daughter had no further interest in guns after building them, much less in the competitive sharpshooting that Mordecai had won his fame in. "The grand prize is a Cobra sniper, which would be pretty nice to have. They explode."
"That sounds fun… just not as fun as anything Maliwan does."
"You know, Angie, you love Maliwan a little too much-"
"Rollie." There was a sense of urgency as she turned to her brother, who was taken aback at the suddenness. "No. Please don't finish that. It will remind me of… the Trauma."
Roland knew there was no other way to refer to the Trauma than with the drama and theatrics that his sister was currently displaying. "Angie, no. That wasn't what I was talking about, and now it's all I can think about."
"It vibrated, Rollie. It. Vibrated. I know what that's used for."
"Stop talking about it, stop talking about it. I want to forget."
"I PICKED IT UP, ROLAND. I WANT TO FORGET."
Despite the obvious horribleness of the Trauma, the two siblings were soon giggling at the shared memory of the event's scarring absurdity.
Wouldn't you also like to forget if you found a vibrating gun in your mother's nightstand?
Even though the Trauma was seemingly ill-regarded, the conversation had lightened the mood considerably between the twins. By the time they were ready to get to their downer sleep, they were laughing and joking as if Angel's earlier incident had never happened- which, of course, was the best way for her to move past it.
trashlady: some notes on sleeping
trashlady: pandora has a 90-hour day. the planet has no axial tilt, as seasons are caused by the planet's proximity to the sun. this part gets a little bit weird because winter is seven years and summer is three years, which doesn't make a lot of sense because since a single orbit around the sun is one year, having multiple years constitute a single season is kind of impossible. a plot hole if you will. i address this problem by ignoring it.
trashlady: the only thing i utilize from the above data is that the sunrise and sunset times will always be constant, since there is no axial tilt.
trashlady: on a planet with a 90-hour day, i make the assumption that humans adjust to work on three 30-hour cycles per day, instead of one 24-hour cycle per day. Each "cycle" consists of a 20-hour waking period and a 10-hour sleeping period, and this is done three times over the course of a single pandoran day.
trashlady: i based the pandoran clock on the earth military clock- the day starts at midnight, 00:00 and runs to 89:59. also like the earth clock, 00:00 (the start of the day) is not when the sun rises. the daytime period on pandora is a 45-hour period essentially in the middle of the day, with "noon" at 44:30. sunrise is at 22:00 and sunset is at 67:00.
trashlady: to demarcate between the three separate wake cycles and three separate sleep cycles, i have named them. a pandoran timetable is as follows.
22:00 (sunrise)- First wake period begins ("Riser" period)
42:00- First sleep period begins ("Siesta" period)
(44:30- noon)
52:00- Second wake period begins ("Midder" period)
(67:00- sunset)
72:00- Second sleep period begins ("Downer" period)
82:00- Third wake period begins ("Owler" period)
(89:59/00:00- midnight)
12:00- Third sleep period begins ("Nighter" period)
22:00- Riser period begins again
trashlady: obviously, this isn't strict. like on earth, people have their own sleep and wake cycles. this is just a generally accepted timetable.
trashlady: earth time periods (days, months, years) are referred to as Galactic Standard Days/Months/Years and I'm trying to work on how they relate to pandoran time periods but it's tricky and i might avoid it altogether for this story.
trashlady: now that that's out of the way
trashlady: i told you a new vault kid was coming and yes she is named after brick's first puppy. fite me.
trashlady: -laughs at own reference to Moxxi's Good Touch-