After the Vault

May I Be Blunt?

Rhys

The nightmares re-emerged with a vengeance the night after she appeared in his life again.

The one for tonight was where the Vault killed her outright, flinging her back against the stairs causing her neck to twist with a sickening crack. How Rhys' screams echoed around the room as he brushed the hair from her face, desperately murmuring that this couldn't be happening. They had worked too hard to get here dammit, she couldn't expect him to do this alone. It just wasn't how it was meant to be and they both knew it. And like clockwork, he began to sob, the words spilling out of his mouth.

"Fiona, I...."

He jerked up violently. His ECHO eye automatically scanned the room, rapidly recalling just where he was.

Head office for Kratos, trying to get himself some sleep after being kept awake until 3 am trying to get the guns properly sorted so they could be placed in the gun machines scattered throughout Pandora.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly as he stretched in the office chair, yawning widely as he smacked his lips together a few times. He wiped the spit from the corner of his mouth and chuckled for a moment as he thought of that trek across the desert more than a decade ago.

He'd always scoffed at the idea of "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and yet that was what precisely happened to him. A year without Fiona and Sasha, trying to rebuild Atlas from the ground up and he realized he missed their company.

The intention had been to find Fiona in order to find Sasha, not that he thought she'd be that much help in that regard. But the honest truth of it all was that he was suddenly in charge of a weapons company...and he knew next to nothing about them. And if he was going to be successful then he needed Sasha.

Except he hadn't anticipated after he tried to track Fiona (he'd heard from various rumours she was last seen in Prosperity Junction) that instead of her angry words he'd be greeted by a gun to the face.

And granted, he was happy to admit when he first saw her again he was practically livid with her. He thought a year might soften the betrayal he'd battled with in the first few months, and yet one look at her face made it all come back.

Because it wasn't until he saw her again that it felt...real again. That she had in fact abandoned him on Helios to save her own ass. Left him to die.

And he was ashamed to admit that in the darkest corner of his mind...he was overjoyed to see her again. Perhaps more than overjoyed.

Sure, he was mad as all hell 90% of the time with her, but there were....moments. How his head fit a bit too comfortably resting against her shoulder, how she smiled a little when she realized he had not in fact chosen Jack over her. At first it was easy to ignore, this familiar warmth blossoming in his body that would happen from time to time when he looked at her.

He'd always found her stunning, because well, he had eyes. But she never seemed to be of interest to him. Or rather, she never seemed like an option. Besides, they needed to find the Vault with as little distractions as possible, and besides, she was Pandoran scum. He couldn't be interested in that....

And then Sasha happened, so suddenly and quickly, and as it turned out he did like her, and he could easily and happily admit that. So, well, he ran with it a little.

Not that anything could happen there, but it felt...right. Like it made sense at the time.

Which was why he was more than a tad angry when he started to figure out, in those weeks in the desert being dragged along by a masked stranger, that perhaps he had been wrong before. Because as he looked at Fiona as they made camp, how her hair shone in the firelight and how her eyes twinkled when she was amused by his antics...as the smiles became a bit more genuine...shit.