Note: Hey guys this is something I've started working on alongside P0is0ned- which I have not abandoned don't worry. Anyway this is another Zerhys fic but I also thought it would be interesting to explore alternate events for Borderlands 2 and the character's developing relationships. I don't intend to just write "Borderlands 2 but Rhys is there" though, his presence will effect things (and also some things just need to be changed to make them work for a written story rather than a video game)

The train was mostly empty when Rhys boarded, aside from the Hyperion soldiers that boarded at the same time as him. Rhys had offered them a faux cheery greeting, and been mostly ignored as the soldiers filed back into another car, somewhere behind them.

One had stopped, asked him, "You sure you're in the right place?"

"This is the train headed to Lynchwood, right? Jack sent me on a job down there."

"Yeah, well, keep your head down. Stay out of the other cars," the soldier said, before following the others.

Technically, Jack hadn't sent him, Vasquez had. But it was always better to invoke Jack's name, and Jack had given Vasquez the job. Vasquez had simply passed it down to Rhys, and no one outside of Security Propaganda knew who the hell Vasquez was. If you said a job came from Jack, no one questioned it. No one except Vaughn and Yvette.

"Are you sure Vasquez isn't just sending you down to die on Pandora?" Yvette had asked as the three took their lunch break the day before.

"It's a peace offering! He knows I'm a threat, so he gives me the prestigious-yet-inconvenient job so I feel like I owe him. If he wanted me dead, he'd throw me out an airlock."

"I dunno, Rhys," Vaughn said, mouth still half-full of hamburger. He swallowed. "He's thrown a LOT of people out of airlocks, they say at a certain level you reach your allotted murder-limit. Now, send a guy down to the death-planet…"

"Yeah, seriously, Rhys, you know there's a war going on down there? And the entire planet is populated by bandits? And man-eating monsters?" Yvette gestured with her fork as she spoke. "Is he even giving you a gun or something?"

"No, Yvette, because I won't need a gun. I looked up the route, it's extremely safe. I'll mostly be on a Hyperion train, there will be soldiers guarding it, it's fine."

Now, watching Pandora pass out the train window, he was feeling pretty confident that his reasoning had been accurate. He'd boarded at a Hyperion military post in the Highlands, its lush green landscapes a far call from the wastelands heaped with trash featured in propaganda videos. By now that green had given way to barren desert, but still not a single bandit in sight. At one point the train passed a pack of oversized skags, and later he was pretty sure he saw a body, but maybe it had been a weird rock. Occasionally there were remnants of Atlas and Dahl's failed attempts to colonize the planet. Broken-down buildings, being retaken by the elements. Obviously, those two hadn't thrown enough resources at the place. Jack was going all the way.

Yvette would probably note that he'd be safer if he shuttered the window, but hey, it wasn't often he got to see an undeveloped alien planet, and the glass was probably bulletproof. Rhys was starting to get the sense that Handsome Jack had ensured that Hyperion's propaganda greatly exaggerated Pandora's general awfulness–not that he blamed him. How else was he supposed to convince the investors? Not to mention, it was a fantastic motivator for the workforce. Still, Rhys was almost disappointed. He'd wanted to see something impressive, have some good stories for when he got back to Helios. This place was just a lot of empty desert, ripe for development.
At some point, the monotony lulled him to sleep, head propped against the window.

The glass was cold when he woke suddenly. Outside, the desert was gone, replaced by ice and snow. It took Rhys a moment to realize that the sound he was hearing wasn't the train, but nearby gunshots. Gunshots that didn't fade out at the train moved.
Well, shit.

He shuttered the window, hunkering down between the seats. It had to be a bandit attack. Bandits were no match for Hyperion soldiers. Just had to wait it out.

Yvette had given him a stun rod before he'd gotten on the shuttle. "It's better than nothing," she'd said. He clutched it now, wishing she'd hooked him up with something more powerful.

Minutes passed, and the shooting went on, accompanied by indistinct yelling. Still, no one boarded his car. He wondered what bandits would do to him if they found him. They didn't have a reputation for letting people live, except to torture them. Maybe, if Rhys stayed here, waited to unleash the stun rod until the last second, he could catch them by surprise. Then it was a matter of getting a gun from one of them, diving back behind the seats (Were those bulletproof, too?), and taking down the rest of them. They'd be lined up, it had to be easy, right? He hadn't ever touched a gun, but they didn't seem that complicated. Right?

His planning was interrupted by a deafening boom, and the next he knew he was flying through the air. He hit the ceiling, hard, and he knew nothing more.

It was dark when he woke, cold, hurting all over, and tasting blood. Part of him was afraid to flick on his palm flashlight, so he first tried to take stock mentally. He could only hear his own breathing, now. The gunshots had stopped. He wasn't sure what that meant for him, but he was starting to realize that the train had crashed, or been derailed, or something. Which, maybe meant he didn't have to worry about bandits anymore? Or, they'd be in at least as bad a shape as he was. Hopefully.

That led to the question of how bad a shape he was actually in. Okay, first, the blood taste. He ran his tongue around his mouth, finding the place he'd bitten the fleshy side, hard. Well, at least that wasn't gonna kill him. His face stung, but in the carpet burn way, not the "there's shrapnel imbedded in your cheeks" way. He had an agonizing headache, but maybe this was one of those times where you'd worry more if it didn't hurt. His ECHOeye seemed alright, at least.

Fingers checked out, both flesh and cybernetic, though when he tried to make a fist on the flesh side he found himself letting out a string of profanity.
Fine, okay, he hurt his wrist. No big deal. His cybernetic arm was fine aside from an ache at the connection point, he wouldn't be helpless.
His legs were good, at least. And his torso…Well, it sort of hurt to breathe, which wasn't ideal.

Better get it over with, then. He turned on the flashlight and sat up with a groan to get a better look at himself. Sure enough, his wrist was swelling, and bruises were starting to form all over, but there wasn't even close to as much blood as he'd expected. So, yeah, he probably wasn't in immediate mortal peril.

He turned his attention to his surroundings. In front of him were the rows of seating, the entire car had fallen sideways and he was sitting on what had been the wall. Snow drifted in from some broken windows above him. He realized how cold he was, now. He hadn't packed much of anything, it was supposed to be one night, he'd counted on there being a Quick-Change machine.

Okay, fine, Rhys had seen all those border planet survival shows, you had to be proactive in these kinds of situations. First, figure out where he was, maybe find one of those soldiers, if they'd survived. He rose, broken glass crunching under his feet as he walked unsteadily across the car until he found the roof hatch. It only opened part way when he turned the handle, getting caught on the snow bank the car was half-buried in. It was a little brighter outside the car, a combination of Elpis's light and a number of small fires revealed silhouettes of the train wreckage.

He had to wriggle and clamber his way out, managing to get snow up his sleeves and down his shirt before tumbling down the bank into a foot of snow.

As he pushed himself up, he found himself facing a…glowing blue line? His eyes followed it up to the hand that held it, and the strangely featureless owner of that hand. He blinked, taking a moment to put it together.

Oh. A sword. A bandit holding him at swordpoint.

He barely managed a "D-don't.", knowing he should probably beg for his life. He was finding he didn't have the energy for begging, though. Snow was already melting through his pants.

The bandit leaned in closer, not taking the sword from his neck. The light of the blade reflected on the dark surface that should have been their face. A helmet with a dark visor, Rhys realized—or maybe they were a robot, but they seemed to be shivering too, just a little.

"You are no soldier." Their voice was deep, nearly monotone. "But you are Hyperion. / You have ten seconds."

"Ten…? F-for what?" He started to rise without thinking, only to be prodded by the point of the sword.

"To explain yourself. / Jack had someone set this up. / You're the last one here."

"Look, I…I don't know what you're talking about. It's freezing, my head's killing me, can we just…Not do this?"

They prodded him again.

"I-I mean, I was here for a business deal. I didn't…"

The figure lowered their sword. A red, glowing ":\" appeared in front of where their face should have been, and Rhys found himself wondering if he was hallucinating this entire thing. "You got on the train / Meant as a place of slaughter, / Just by accident?"

Slowly, things were coming together. God, if he survived this, he was gonna never live it down. "I swear, I-I had nothing to do with this, I was told to get on this train, take it to Lynchwood. I was supposed to buy an artifact."

The emoticon was replaced by a question mark, but they lowered the sword. Rhys didn't move, lest he provoke them.

"Get up, or you'll freeze," they said, turning away. They limped as they walked.

By the time he was on his feet, they were gone, only leaving footprints and an occasional spot of blood. He hesitated. Helios hung indifferently above him, framed with curtains of green auroras. He could just find one of these little fires and sit down next to it for however long it lasted, and hope for rescue. Except, a middle manager didn't warrant a rescue, once the fire was out he'd just freeze to death. That, or Pandoran wildlife would get to him first.

Following that stranger might mean being stabbed, but maybe they knew where to find shelter. He got up, and followed their prints with his palm flashlight, hoping the snow wouldn't bury the trail before he caught up.

He passed smoking wreckage and the corpses of soldiers. Wind bit at him as he walked, and he held his vest close, for whatever difference it made. Snow clumped up on his socks and the bottom of his pants, even as he tried to step in their prints. He tripped and stumbled a few times, there was trash everywhere, much of it hidden beneath the snow.

Just when he was starting to resign himself to a cold death in a frozen trash heap, he saw distant lights. As he neared the word "Welcome" lit up one letter at a time, over and over. Again he wondered if he was hallucinating. Was that a symptom of hypothermia? But the footprints continued in that direction, joined by more tracks. Other survivors.

As he got closer, he found that the sign was outside a structure built of snow and defunct Claptrap units. He opened the door. There was a short hallway, built of ice and more dead claptraps, and ending in a warm glow. Fire.

He came out into a low-ceilinged room with six people and a broken–but still functioning–Claptrap. Before he could process exactly what he was looking at, five of them were pointing guns at him.

He held his hands up, trying to inch towards the blazing furnace. "Please—Please don't kill me. I-I-I–just, I'm trying not to free-freeze to death."

His eyes found the one who'd threatened him earlier, they were the only one who wasn't pointing a gun at him now. But they didn't come to his defense, either. They only watched him, arms crossed. Or, he assumed they were watching him, they could have just as easily been intently ignoring him.

When nothing happened for a moment, he took the last few steps to put himself near the fire. It was hard to care about getting shot when you were so goddamn cold. There were at least six dead bodies already beside the fire, but he couldn't make himself care about that either.

"That's a Hyperion uniform." The speaker was a Dahl soldier–marked by metal implants in his brow. He cocked his gun.

"I uh, I've got nothing against Dahl," Rhys tried.

That earned him a snort.

Right, yeah, they'd all arrived at the same conclusion as the first one. "I had nothing to do with that, with the train, I-I was being set up to die back there, just like you."

"What's happening?" The eyeless claptrap demanded. "I can't see–!" A high-pitched bleep censored out the last word.

"The mortar meat is too stringy! Where's your pain stick?!" The masked man who looked straight out of Jack's anti-bandit propaganda waved his gun as he spoke, then lowered it suddenly and gave a shrug.

"Big guy's right, he's obviously not a soldier," the blue-haired woman said, following his lead. Her tattoos matched her hair, and his first thought was "siren", which almost seemed too absurd, out of six in the universe, why would one be here, in this weird corpse-shack?

"Neither is Jack, and I mean, look at him," said the pigtailed redhead, making a wide gesture at Rhys with her robotic arm– a much more primitive model than his. She looked too young to be here, he was pretty sure that was a high school uniform.

"I uh, I don't have the kind of power Jack does, even if I wanted to kill you? Could-could you at least put down the guns, for a second?" His head hurt too much to be dealing with this, he just wanted to sit down and relax for a minute or two. "That Claptrap is a Hyperion robot, right? Arguably more Hyperion than I am. And considerably more annoying."

"FORMER Hyperion robot!" the Claptrap addressed the wall. "Jack discontinued and destroyed my product line! I am a free robot now!"

"I saw we kill 'im already. The guy, not the robot." The short, weirdly muscular man spoke up. "Then get this bullymong."

"You're actually going to kill an unarmed man just for a label on his shirt?" the maybe-siren asked.

"Yeah, really? I-I have… several broken bones, too, I think. If that makes any difference. And, if I uh, if I had anything to do with this, I definitely would have avoided hurting myself this bad." He looked to the one with the helmet, pleading. They'd seen him in the snow, they'd judged him innocent.

"Hurry and decide," they said, not even turning their head to look at him. "I am eager to move out. / And kill Handsome Jack." There was something strange about how they talked, Rhys was realizing. Measured, concise, short…

"What, you wanna freeze to death out there?" the soldier asked. "I'm not heading out until morning."

They crossed their arms, a red ":\" passing over their visor. "Fine."

"Oh come on, you already decided not to kill me, earlier! Could you at least back me up?"

This time they did look at him. "I have no stake, here. / And you are clearly dead weight. / You're doomed regardless."

"Your bones are made of toothpicks and my molars are SPOTLESS!"

"Yeah, alright, good point, I think?" the soldier said. We can always shoot him later, right? Once he's earned it."

The short man shrugged. "Yeah, whatever."

"Fine," the redhead said with a yawn. "If he kills any of you in our sleep, that's not on me."

At that, the group dispersed throughout the shack, finding comfortable spots, as if Rhys were suddenly of no more importance than one of the corpses by the fire. The maybe-siren hung back for a moment.

"Here," she said, handing him an insta-health. "If you try to screw us over, I will liquidate your brain with my powers." Okay, definitely-siren, then. "But for now, I'm not big on killing unarmed men."

"Thanks." He took the syringe, feeling strange about using a random needle on Pandora, insta-health or not. Still, he was in enough pain to jam it into his arm, gritting his teeth as bones realigned. "So, uh, hi. I'm Rhys." He offered his freshly healed hand and his most charming smile–he'd better ingratiate himself with these people, fast. "I guess we kind of got off on the wrong foot, thanks for uh, sticking up for me."

She looked at him, then at the hand, but didn't take it. "Maya," she said. "And I can't say the others were entirely out of line, considering who you work for."

"Worked for. I think trying to blow me up was Jack's way of firing me." Always better to invoke Jack's name. "Might have been a little too vocal in criticizing his policies on Pandora." He'd heard of people who criticized Jack's policies, Jack dealt with those hands-on, but bandits didn't know that.

She raised her eyebrows. "Well, good to hear. Perhaps you can do something worthwhile, now."

"Worthwhile, like?"

"Tomorrow, we hunt down the bullymong that tore Claptrap's eye out. Supposedly, he can get us into Sanctuary. We're going to kill Handsome Jack."