Resolve

Chapter 5: Obedience

     You woke up, staring at the ceiling with an odd sense of detachment. For once, the strain of keeping the loop on track was taken off your shoulders. There was nothing for you to do. The pain of your ribs was little more than a muted burning, considering the amount of painkillers in your bloodstream. Done with your mental self inventory, you made yourself sit up, swinging your legs over the yellow sheets in a movement that held much Deja Vu for you.

     You looked at your hands, and they itched to do something. Over time, you'd developed an inventor's mind, which wasn't too shocking given your work as a Hyperion scientist. They were also shaking slightly. You quickly told yourself it was the pills, not anything like...guilt or grief. The lie tasted like ashes.

     Your hand went to the injection on your neck. As a show of faith, you'd let a tracker be implanted in you, your one condition being that Jack did it himself and he had. You made yourself stand and wandered over to the door. This must be what it felt like to be a pet or an animal in a zoo. Except...Jack was definitely being...different towards you. Oddly... Interested in your well-being.

     It made you instantly suspicious. He didn't make feigns just to spare feelings. If he wanted something, he usually just demanded it. Took it. As if summoned, your door slid open to reveal the man of your thoughts. "Sup pumpkin. We've got things to do today." Sup?

     "Yes, Jack." You replied with the tiniest bow of your head. A dark look passed through his eyes too quickly to identify. He stepped back into the hallway and you followed. You'd lick his damn boots if it kept Sanctuary from harm. Mordecai. You were startled from your thoughts when you ran into Jack.

     He'd stopped moving. "I got you a gift." He opened the door to a lab and stood aside with a smile on his face. You looked in curiously and your stomach dropped into your toes. Bound to a bloodied table was a very unconscious, very beaten Krieg. Oh no...You had a clue where this was going, which only strengthened into a certainty when Jack came in and locked the door.

     "I saw in your very detailed notes on how badly watching this murderer crush my face in rocked you. I thought peace of mind would be a good gift." You knew and he knew that you knew...This was no gift. Rather... another test of loyalty. Jack wanted to see if you'd take this chance to eliminate someone who had both scarred you and literally killed him.

     There was no more choice here than there had been between Roland and Sanctuary. "I've left you various tools to get your revenge. Just knock when you're done. A loader bot will let you out." And he was gone, leaving you with the expectation you would torture and kill a Vault Hunter.

X

     Mordecai was angry. If Lilith said one more time that they had all been betrayed, he was going to leave again. "I don't think that's the case, Lil. She was settled back in with me and Blood. She was talking. She had plans."

     "I helped (Y/n) learn to be a siren with control in the first place, Mordecai." Lilith was trying to be gentle, to dance around the issue. "From the very start she was always kind of...Well she had tunnel vision in the worst way. Once she picked something to do, that was it. It became everything."

     Mordecai exploded in a hazy red rage. "That doesn't mean she fucking went back to that jackass! Tunnel vision doesn't make a traitor. And since when does Jack ask for consent on anything?"

     Lilith just shook her head and stepped away, turning back to the war table upstairs from Tannis. Mordecai stomped like a petulant child from the room, down back to the center of town where he could take a fast travel back to the Tundra Express. There was just no way. (Y/n) couldn't have gone back to Jack. She just couldn't have. He hoped she didn't.

X

     You were sick. Nothing on the tray of instruments you had been given was...merciful or meant for painless death. Again, you reminded yourself. Jack needed you to do this do that your own hands weren't clean anymore and secretly...You thought it might help him to see someone get their hands dirty for him, and not for money like Wilhelm.

     Krieg watched you in silence. He remembered, which was odd, but the rules had never applied to him it seemed. Your inventor's brain was hard at work. Surely there was some way with what you had to make it quick. "You aren't scared?"

     "ANGRY. BUT YOU SAVED ME FROM HYPERION BEFORE. WON'T KILL YOU IF THERE'S A NEXT TIME." Your heart clenched. Despite being with Jack, you weren't a murderer. You never had been. And he knew that. It was probably exactly why he asked it of you. He loved mind games, after all. It wasn't him, you had to remind yourself. The real Jack died in the vault of the Empyrean Sentinel, when all that knowledge flooded his brain. You wondered briefly why he hadn't seen you in it, if it really showed him everything. Maybe the vault had hidden you just like it did Lilith, right before she punched a brand into Jack's face.

     You undid Krieg's latches and stepped back. "We fight." It still wasn't fair, but it wouldn't be murder. You'd have to work for it, maybe even fail and die. He gave you a new look of deepened respect before charging you. You froze time long enough to slip behind him and kick out a knee. Faster than you would've thought his arm swiped out from his place on the floor and made you fall in a similar fashion. Your ribs throbbed faintly through the painkillers.

     You rolled to avoid his attempt to straddle you into the floor and begin to beat your face in. You froze time again, two seconds to leap up and jump back. It wasn't enough and you took a blow to your chest from where he lay even still that sent you sprawling again. You gaped soundlessly, winded. Krieg was advancing. You rolled again, an action that took all of your strength in such a stunned state. You froze again when his fist came down, doubtless with the intention to crush your nose up into your brain and held it so long your guts started to burn and your heart skipped a beat purely from exertion. You drove your knee into his face with all the might you had left in your body and released the time, spinning away to catch yourself on the edge of Krieg's gurney. Blood pooled, moving in around your feet. You didn't have to look to know a fatality was certain.

     There was no mistaking the squishy crunch of a bone being broken and shoved into something vital. You fought to keep the vomit in. You had to show unwavering determination to keep him on the path he knew about now. You leaped for the door, pounding on it. You didn't want to turn around, didn't want to see what you had done or acknowledge it. A loader bot opened the door as promised, not prepared for you to come shooting out and fell over as a result. The walls were closing in by the time you found the lobby where the staff was fond of having finger gun fights.

     You crouched and slid under a table, frantically pressing yourself to the wall behind it and drawing your knees up your face in one quick snap. You struggled briefly with your breathing before getting it under control. In return, tears stung at the corner of your eyes. Was it too far for what you wanted to accomplish? Was it too much? Had you made the same plunge Jack did to Handsome Jack?