Resolve

Prologue

An: I'm going to be taking a break from my crossovers to start on this since two of them need to wait for updates to their fandoms. No, it isn't another crossover. And no, I haven't forgotten the Stucky fic. This is straight Borderlands. Chapters will be much longer and greater in number than previously finished stories. Found the cover art on Pinterest under Linzi.

     Everytime you lay in a pool of your own blood or in a heap with broken limbs, you'd think of that night on Elpis, in a bar in Concordia. You were with Roland and Lilith, convinced to get some drinks and dance. At first, you were against the idea. Having only recently found the other siren and recieved counseling on your powers, you wished to remain in hiding. Sirens were a rare commodity after all, and you didn't want to get used or sold into slavery.

     You were just starting to feel a pleasant buzz and were debating stopping for the night; before you rolled up your sleeves in a sweaty dancing fit and revealed your blue tattoos in a drunken mistake. As you mulled over this, in walked the doppelganger of the man who was going to change your world into a hellish, desperate scramble. At first glance, he seemed innocuous. Handsome even. He zeroed in on your friends as if listening to something only he could hear and wandered over to them. They were talking, but you weren't close enough to make it out over the music.

     The stranger seemed agitated, almost. He turned away from them and came over to the bar, immediately tripping over his words at the sight of Moxxi. She seemed amused and told him that he was way too polite to be her ex. On an off chance, you both stood to leave at the same time and he hit you just hard enough to make a sleeve ride up to the middle of your forearm. He paused again as if listening to something and offered you a hand up. "Hey um....babe. You should come work with me."

    That had been the start of you running with Jack, attempting to help him on his quest to save Helios and Elpis too. Things were great at first. You felt purpose and for the first time in your life, comfortable enough not to hide. You changed your combat suit from something long sleeved with a long coat and jeans like Jack to a more form fitting, sleeveless tank top and shorts that stopped well above your knees. It was much better for fast paced combat and more to the point, really showed off the ghostly blue swirls climbing up one half of your body.

     Jack was on edge when you revealed this, showing up in Concordia after a regrouping in your new clothes, but he said nothing. Taking it in stride as a blessing, since both Lilith and Roland had declined to help him. Shortly after, he was faced with not one, not two, but three betrayals. First the meriff, then the two vault hunters who'd come in later to help, and lastly scientists from his own company. He changed after the last one, getting paranoid and...critical of everything. His goals stayed the same, clearing Pandora of evil, but his methods morphed, becoming tactics you were shocked to see in his hands. Means that didn't match the desired end results.

     Even so, you stayed with him. With Timothy. You couldn't abide by what the others had done to Jack with the eye of Helios, instead of speaking to him about it. Not when they had all killed to save themselves before, like Jack had thought he needed to with the scientists he put out the airlock. All the same, you knew Jack's reaction to the possibility of another set up was disproportionate. Unlike the others, unlike Timothy who quietly slunk off to do his own duties in Opportunity, you tried to point this out to the former programmer of Hyperion. You tried to make him realize that he couldn't just kill people on a possibility, that it wasn't what a hero would do. The look he gave you injected slivers of ice into your veins and caused a cold wave of dread to settle over you like a wet blanket. Jack wasn't Jack anymore. No. Now he was Handsome Jack, the tyrannical head of Hyperion affairs. To you, who had been watching his struggles, his ideals with some measure of admiration, it was world shaping. World changing.