Rating: M-ish?
Warnings: A few curse words, but there's some disturbing stuff that makes the rating an M I think.
A/N: So I'm back! Had a few health problems and I'm finally over them enough to update. This chapter is dedicated to the people that wished me well through all the crap I was going through while I was laid up. So sorry for the long absence. I hope to get back to updating regularly in a weekly/bi-weekly schedule. Anyway, enjoy!
Cold.
Ice cold. It seeps into me and claws its way deeper with every breath. It burns into the base of my skull and snaps my eyes open and all I can see is white. White walls. White floors. Sterile and bare. All hard lines and sharp angles; minimalistic corporate. The beep of a monitor never far away and I'm here again, strapped in the good doctor's playroom with his needles and mind games.
My senses are dull and floaty with drugs, but I still manage to smell him before I see him. His breath forever smells of menthol; sickly fresh and strong enough to make the eyes water whenever he leans close. The clink of a cough drop often hits the back of his teeth as he swishes it around and as soon as he's worn it down to nothing, it cracks under the pressure and a wrapper crinkles with the sound of a new one. Grown so used to it, I could maybe time the next one he'll slip out of his pocket if I wanted to.
He wheels into view on a swivel chair and he looks by all accounts, a normal doctor. Clean and professional. Lab coat pressed with a pen and notepad in his lower pocket. Maybe even good looking in a bookish sort of way. He thinks I can't hurt him here. He thinks this room is his palace and I'm nothing but a lab rat to play with while he documents the results and strapped to this chair… I guess he's right. But he's human and breakable behind the sheen of his glasses and he's not untouchable. Get him on the ground and one foot could crush his windpipe. Strangle him, and he'll turn blue just like anyone. Used to think hell is something you carry around with you, locked and hidden away in the dark corners of the mind. Then someone comes along and unlocks the terrible things inside and hell, it's hard to feel guilty about these morbid and gory fantasies. They're the only things that keep me going when nothing else will.
The good doctor fills up a syringe with my usual poison and I picture the way his insides would tear so easily, twisted around my fingers in a Jacobs Ladder.
"I like to think we are friends," he says, and a gloved finger flicks the syringe. Small bubbles rise up to the surface and his face stretches into a rabid-dog smile; slow and unnatural, showing far more teeth than the human face should allow. And I wonder what I always do: how many teeth he'd lose if I ever got the chance to slam his face into my knee. "It may not be strictly professional of me, I know. But I have grown a certain kind of fondness for you over the past several months."
I say nothing and ignore him. He'll get bored listening to himself talk, do his thing, and maybe I'll live today. Or maybe I won't, and that's fine too. Ain't got much to say about it anymore. I talked in the beginning, sure. I begged him to stop. I begged him to stop until I prayed he wouldn't stop and finish the job, and then I stopped talking altogether. Used to think it'd encourage him to get it over with faster, but it don't. Men like him, evil men, like to put off murder like a fat kid would put off the very best sweet for last.
"We know each other so well… yes, I think we are friends," he continues and he's right in a way. I know more about him than I care to. I know he has two kids, a supportive wife and a cat he tolerates. He's shared pictures of them before the drugs kick in like a proud man would at a family reunion. Girl and boy, both with his smile and a pretty woman on his arm. And god help me, but I want them dead. I want him to come home with their corpses on display like a macabre flower arrangement; his wife's head as the centerpiece. Greeting card signed in blood. Cat lapping up the mess. "But even friends fight occasionally, don't they?"
And he holds up his left hand, fingers spread, and grins through the bandaged gap where his ring finger should be. Heh, so it was this doctor I had a taste of this morning. I laugh. Laugh long and hard 'cause its been ages since I've had good reason to and my breath fogs up the chill air.
So damn cold in this room... when did it get so cold?
"Yes, we can laugh about it now," he says although he's not laughing, and I manage to turn my head slightly under the restraints to gauge his reaction. His face gives nothing away as his fingertips, cold as ice, gently prods the bottom of my right eye and a sense of dread washes over me. This is not the usual routine. "And yet, I imagine my wife will not laugh when I have to explain why I can not wear my wedding ring. She is so... sensitive, you see. I do try to keep her happy."
This new fear breaks my silence. "What're doin'?"
The doctor's smile fades as his mouth works around the cough drop and a sharp crack fills the silence. "I'm curious what a direct full dosage will do to your eye," he pauses briefly to fish out another cough drop from his pocket and the crinkling wrapper comes undone. "At best, I suppose you will go blind in that eye. At worst... well. Let us hope for the best."
Part of me wants to scream. Tell him to stop. Somehow bargain my way out of it, but I've learned that you can't bargain with insanity. There are scars on my body that won't ever heal and I want his hand to slip, wanna arch as far into the needle as possible and hope by some goddamned miracle, I'll be too damaged to work and he'll have to toss me aside. So I don't struggle or say a word as the doctor adjusts the overhead light onto my face and it burns into my retinas, hopefully the last thing I'll ever see, until a man comes into focus leaning over me.
A man with a gas mask.
Haven't seen him before and yet there's something familiar about him that makes an uneasy feeling sink right into my gut and sit there. Blood streaks down his throat from whatever horror is hidden under the mask and I want the doctor back. He laughs, low and almost gurgling and it echos like sin in a roomful of god as he gives the syringe a little twirl before jabbing it right in my ohgodWHYAREYOUDOINGTHISJUST LET ME DIE
And everything goes white.
Snow white.
I'm sprawled out on solid ground again, back in my old skin and everything hurts, screaming for attention. In seconds, everything that's happened in the last five minutes catches up to me. Hyperion Loaders, danging from the underside of the speeding train, the chair slowly turning, Maya's eyes as metal and fire turn all around us and –
"Maya."
Something wet slaps across her face and Maya blinks slowly into consciousness.
Everything is a blur of white around her and nothing makes sense. A flash of pain at the base of her skull works down her spine and she sluggishly tries to search it out, but something pulls her wrist away. Someone calls out her name and she gingerly turns her head to find the psycho kneeling beside her in the snow, looking just as banged up as she feels. Snow dusts his shoulders and he's scratched, bruised, and bleeding but if he's in any kind of pain, he doesn't show it. A weight she hadn't felt before is lifted off and she realizes she had been buried under a sheet of smoking metal when the wind bites at her exposed legs.
Maya wiggles her toes and breathes a sigh of relief when they respond. "Where …" her head is swimming and it takes a strong effort to string words together. "The others?"
As if in response, the sounds of the rest of her teammates make themselves known, their voices thin and far away in the blizzard. The psycho shrugs and through the murky darkness edging around her vision, he starts to scoop her up out of the snow, but something on his arm catches her attention and she weakly tries to stop him.
"You... you got something in your..." she starts to say and tries to inspect what looks a sharp shard of metal sticking out of his bicep, but he brushes her hand away. "Let me..." But he yanks it out with one swift pull without even flinching and absentmindedly packs some snow on it to stanch the bleeding.
Then she's in his arms, weightless again, and she doesn't argue since she doubts she can stand steadily on her own yet. Dazed as she is, perhaps suffering a concussion, there's something about him that doesn't fit right. It's one thing to survive a train wreck, but it's another thing entirely to walk it off so casually, yank out shrapnel inches deep, and still be ready to carry someone through a blizzard. Blood melts though the snow on his arm and she brushes her fingers through the icy pink to take a closer look at the damage she might have to clumsily stitch up later. Briefly, she regrets paying so little attention in her healing lessons since using her powers to be a glorified nurse didn't appeal at the time. What once looked so boring sure is coming back to bite her now.
The wound doesn't look as deep as she thought and the ice seems to have constricted the blood flow. In fact, if she didn't know any better, it looks very clean. Too clean. As if its been on the mend for days and through the haze of snow flurries in her eyes, she wipes off the remaining blood and ice and… there's nothing but a scar where she knows a gaping hole would be.
That's not possible.
Maya saw him rip it out. Saw the blood on the shard inches high. It was in there, and it was in deep. That kind of healing is only possible if he were using a strong med-hypo and even then, it wouldn't have synthetically healed so perfectly.
"What are you?" Maya suddenly blurts out and thinks wording it like that is hardly polite, but since she's survived a train wreck and is in the arms of a buzz saw wielding psychopath and possible super mutant, Maya's not entirely worried about being polite right now. Something is very different about this man and she should be the first to know before the others find out by accident.
The snow crunches loudly with each labored step he takes as he squints down at her and she can't tell if it's because of the wind or if he's smiling. The latter doesn't comfort her; a psycho's smile doesn't always mean a good thing.
"Krieg," he rasps as if with some effort and the voices of the rest of the team sound closer, carried by the wind. He doesn't pause or offer any other explanation and it takes her a few seconds to realize he had told her his name.
"Krieg..." she tests how it sounds; hard like edged steel and bitter like a copper penny on the tongue. Feels like a thing or a state of being rather than a name. "It suits you," she says after a moment. "Better than Pooptrain Conductor, anyway."
He might have laughed then, just a small rumble in his chest, and it's at least some small progress towards a normal conversation. Not as much as she would've liked, but she now has something better to call him in her head. He had dug her out of a snowy grave, and now she knows his name. Making friends. Friends with a super mutant psycho who could possibly take a full clip of bullets to the face and spit them out like sunflower seeds. Oh, what would Brother Sophis say...
Her thoughts always seem to come full circle to this; back to the Abbey with her lessons and old man philosophies. She could picture his lips in a firm line, cautioning her as always. Airily waving aside her thoughts and telling her to give up on this. Look at where you are, child. You're in the middle of a tundra, on a planet that wants you dead, searching for what-ifs and maybes. In all your years of searing for the answers, you've found nothing but old wives tales and superstitions. He'd tell her to not call this man a friend, any of them, and that she's needed back home.
But then... that's why Brother Sophis is dead and the Brotherhood likely in ruins. He always did talk a lot of shit, right up until the moment she put a bullet in his head.
"I think I can stand," Maya says, although she's not entirely confident about it but if they happen to stumble upon the others in this snow storm, she'd rather not look weak in front of the team. They seem alright enough, but a few hours chatting away the boredom on the train didn't help size them all up. Out here in this harsh environment, she guesses it only takes a glance to decide who's going to be eaten first.
Krieg doesn't argue and she unsteadily stands with his help. A wave of dizziness washes over her then, but she focuses her remaining strength and drops into the familiar subspace of her meditations to ground herself. In the swirling snow, her Siren markings light up like a willow-the-wisp in a bog and the blue leaves a hazy glow all around her. In small degrees, she feels her senses sharpen, all coming back to her. The wind trailing its fingertips over her bare skin, the warmth of Krieg's arm anchored around her waist, the sent of blood and burning fumes all around them. It was almost enough to dizzy her again, but she bites back the pain and blinks the world back into focus.
Dark shapes start to show up in the whirling white ahead as she stumbles her first few steps against him. Twisted steel rises out of the scattered piles of iced over scrap like the ribcage of a long forgotten giant, and it slowly dawns on her that this isn't the first time a train has crashed here. Squinting against the snow, she's sure she's stepped over the grasping frozen fingers of one of its unfortunate passengers.
So, this is where a complementary ride gets you if you're a Vaunt Hunter. But why would Hyperion be going out of their way to get rid of them all? It was shocking enough to find out Hyperion called an open season on Sirens, but realizing they're murdering anyone going after the Vault after so warmly welcoming them to the job makes no sense. What does Handsome Jack have to gain by guarding the Vault so fiercely?
Maya barely has time to speculate this new mystery before the sudden worry of more Hyperion Loaders waiting for them comes to mind. If Handsome Jack had enough resources to crash a train every time someone boards it, he'd likely be smart enough to make sure none survive.
"Krieg, keep an eye out for more –"
"Oh, look!" A new voice, high and grating, cuts through the wind as Maya clears a tall drift of snow. "More minions have come to join my hoard!"
The blizzard starts to die down and in a small clearing of wreckage, stand the rest of her teammates around a small yellow robot. She had overestimated Handsome Jack. If this is what he has for a contingency plan, it doesn't look so threatening. The rest of the team look beaten, bloody, and smoke looks to still be rising off Salvador's shoulders, but they're still standing. Even though she's barely spent a whole day with them all, Maya can't help but feel relieved. Right now, they're all she's got.
"Aww, but this one looks lame," the robot rolls up to her and seems to eye her critically. "We might have to put her down, minion! And by 'we', I mean you," he swivels around and jabs randomly in Zer0's direction who's faceplate barely manages a flicker. "You shall be my favorite, oh tall dark brooding one!"
A random symbol spasms too quickly to make sense on Zer0's faceplate as he simply says, "No."
"Someone shut that thing up," Axton throws over his shoulder as he gingerly limps over. "We were about to search for you two before this Claptrap unit showed up."
"I can't find an off switch!" Gaige calls out and Maya thought she heard Salvador suggest a bullet would work just fine, but it was hard to make out over the robot's panicked scream.
"Friendly?" Maya asks, sparring a glance at Gaige and Sal as they inspect the robot. She's not familiar with all of Hyperion's robotics line, but the faded yellow and white makes her worry. After all this, anything Hyperion is enough to make her suspicious.
"Looks that way," he says slowly. "It had a few interesting things to say about Handsome Jack and lookin' around..." he waves a hand at the surrounding smoldering wreckage "... I'd say we're not as welcome here as he let on."
"I've gathered as much," Maya tries to ignore the way Krieg drops at her side to make a snow angel, softly laughing to himself. Looking at him would only make her giggle and her ribs feel bruised as it is. "Let's get our feet out of the ice before we do anything with him."
Axton's sigh was visible in the cold air as he eyes the Claptrap unit apparently giving orders to the rest of her teammates and slapping away Gaige's curious fingertips. The girl looked about ready to take the robot apart and however annoying the robot may be, they need it.
"Alright, let's rescue it before the kid uses it for spare parts."
The ECHO communicator stutters to life in the palm of my hand with just a few jabs of a button and it feels good; that old familiar sense normalcy. Been a while since I've had one and its updated since then, but my memory is still good enough to make up for it. Without hesitation, my fingertips tune into Pandora's frequencies and swipe through the new menu layouts, learning it all again as for the first time until suddenly, it smashes into my forehead and drops to the ground with a clatter.
The hell was that for?
It's not often I can sense what he feels, maybe because he's pure id and I'm all super-ego with no mediator, but there are momentary flashes of emotion between us. A flair of anger or annoyance, usually directed at me. Ecstasy when the blood on my skin is two inches thick. But at this moment, something new starts to filter through that very thin wall that divides us and I realize... he's scared. Not at the communicator still cold from the grip of a dead man, but what it means. It means that slipping so easily back into the old routine is stretching the boundaries of his tiny world. It means he could slowly loose himself to sanity. It means...
I'll take off this mask one day. "Nonono NO." Maybe find her again. Get off this rock and go ho– "SHUT UP!"
"Krieg?" It was Maya, and we hadn't heard her come back over the sound of the robot bumping blinding into things as the others try leading it out the door. Her eyes flick to the floor and back to me. "Having trouble activating your digistruct module?"
Great, now she'll think we're stupid and crazy. Tell her not to bother, you know how to do this. "Aha... hands still slick from the gore..." Krieg mumbles instead as the world tilts to pick up the ECHO device, and I wonder how this side of me became such an awkward liar.
Maya studies me for a moment before her hands close over my free hand, gently turning it over. The blood has long since dried away, leaving nothing behind but rusty smears and staining the bandage wrapped around the palm. Nothing new there, its been stained as long as I can remember. Her hands are touched with art with pale blue markings snaking and undulating around her fingers. Looking at the sharp contrast between us, it almost looks wrong dirtying her hands with mine.
"You were bleeding on the train …" she trails off, her eyes still on my hand and prodding through the bandages and finds nothing to confirm what she saw. A few faint scars are all that remain after splitting my hands open and she looks unsurprised, but concerned. "It's okay if you're different. I mean, so am I but… I need to know if it's something I should worry about. Can I trust you?"
I wanna say yes. That I'll kill for her and die before I'd ever hurt her and she's going to save me from myself. I wanna tell her that when I look at her, I see all the mistakes we're gonna make along the way and they are so beautiful.
But what comes out of my mouth is: "Your hand steaks are sweaty."
She blinks and I hate myself for hoping that I could have this one moment to say what I really mean. But then, she snorts out a little bubble of laughter before she pulls her hand away to shyly hide her grin and there it is - beautiful mistake number one.
"I'll take that as a yes."
"Krieg," his Siren whispers somewhere behind his shoulder. "Are you awake?"
Krieg should just lay there and ignore her, maybe let out a convincing snore too. It's late and after spending all day slashing out the throats of bandits and bullymongs, he's dead tired and he might not dream tonight. But something tells him not to, and he turns to face her in the semidarkness. The room is cramped with all of them under the same roof, but warmer now that the fire's been burning a few hours. After the ninja guy had melted the ice that jammed the locks of the bed and breakfast with a fire pistol, they broke in and rounded up whatever was left of the abandoned broken furniture and fed it to the fireplace. They spent the last few hours licking their wounds and eating whatever rations the mustache man with the funny accent had to spare.
His Siren had refused the only shabby couch in the room and instead opted to sleep near the fire and only an arms length away from him. Most of her features are in shadow, but he could still make out the hairpin kiss of her lips, the slope of her neck, the arch of her spine, the curve of her hip... and everything in his mind goes silent. All the whispers, all the constantly refreshing images just disappear and... he hates the silence she brings.
Suddenly, he wishes he had ignored her after all, but he knew he never could because it takes a certain kind of special to threaten everything he is and still make him want to stay by her side. He's the monster and she's the beauty, and they were huddled against the only flame on a glacier in the middle of nowhere and those words lose all meaning since he's always held an appreciation for masks.
"I didn't get to say thanks for watching my back earlier," she says in the flickering shadows. "So, um, thanks. Glad I didn't shoot you this morning."
Krieg thanks the rats 'cause he doubts he would've stopped her. He'd be another red splatter out in the dirt and she wouldn't lose any sleep wanting to thank him in the first place. Funny how the day goes. She shifts with a small sigh and suddenly, he wants the voices back. He wants the little man to tell him what to say 'cause this is one social interaction he'd rather avoid. She keeps looking at him so expectantly as the seconds of silence keep crawling by like so many spiders up his spine. A whole army of them tittering and rattling – sinking into his skin – and he doesn't know whether to beat his head against the wall or play croquet with the mustache man and bewilder the hell out of everyone.
So he says the first thing he can work out of his mouth before the spiders crawl in. "What voice do you hear when you think you're alone?"
More silence and he can't tell if she's politely ignoring his insanity by pretending to sleep or if he had spoken out loud at all. It's all in his head and he wonders if he'll ever see the doctor again to make it go away.
"My..." she hesitates softly over the popping fireplace. "… a dead man."
Krieg laughs quietly and rolls back on his side. "Me too."
A/N: Again, not all that happy with this chapter and shy again of 5k words but I was impatient to upload what I got. I think from now on, I'll try to reach 5k but I'll settle for anything over 3k. It'll help the updates go faster I think. Anyway, thanks for reading!