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“You trusted her?”
“Yeah. She never gave me a reason not to.”
-
Fiona sat on the hard-packed desert sand, her arms around her knees, watching the firelight flicker across Rhys’ sleeping face, thinking. He was curled on his side on the other side of the fire, mouth open, breathing softly. He was also sort of drooling. But he looked exhausted, faint worry lines she hadn’t noticed before showing at the corners of his eyes and between his eyebrows.
Fiona’s eyes moved from his face to his arm, his silver-chrome fingers peeking out from underneath the cuff of his coat.
The last time she’d seen him had been on Helios, before it had come crashing down to Pandora in a ball of fire. He’d begged her not to leave him behind and she’d gone and done exactly that.
Fiona rested her chin on her knees, gaze flicking back to Rhys’ face.
“He trusted you.”
Fiona’s head snapped up. The Stranger was sitting across from her, his masked face as blank as his voice.
“Yeah,” she said finally, frowning a little at their mysterious captor. Who the hell was this guy, anyway? Rhys had said something about him being someone from their past and she’d hoped that telling the story back would jog one of their memories.
All it really seemed to be doing was to make her stomach twist into unpleasant knots. And it seemed to be getting to Rhys too – he’d told the portion about Handsome Jack making his first appearance in a flat, almost dull voice, his shoulders sagging as he’d trudged in front of her.
Hindsight was 20-20, after all.
“He trusted you,” the Stranger repeated, “over someone he admitted he once idolized.”
“Well, he’s an idiot.” But even Fiona could hear the softness in her own voice. Rhys wasn’t an idiot. He was actually kind of brilliant, in a cocky sort of way. And he’d looked at her and trusted her, at a point when he thought he might be losing his mind.
Fiona rested her chin on her knees again, eyes falling once again on Rhys’ sleeping face. How naive of him to think she wouldn’t have her own agenda. But then, she’d hitched her wagon to his almost from the get-go, so what did that make her? How naive of her to think Rhys wouldn’t have his own agenda.
Maybe they were both the idiot in this story.
“I thought he’d died when Hyperion crashed,” Fiona said quietly. The Stranger looked at her – er, at least, she was assuming he was. She didn’t look away from where Rhys was drooling quietly into the sand. “And then he didn’t contact me – it’s been forever since that stupid place fell. He’s got a new arm and a new eye and he didn’t tell me he lived. He just went straight for Atlas and started building it back up again and didn’t stop to think that maybe I--”
She stopped abruptly and tore her eyes away from Rhys to glower into the fire. She should keep her mouth shut. Who knew who this guy was? Any information they told him could be used against them. Although, what did it matter, since he was basically demanding their entire life story anyway?
“Perhaps,” the Stranger said softly, “he was in the same position as you.”
Fiona frowned, considering this.
“Did you think to contact him and let him know that you and your sister survived?”
Fiona opened her mouth, then closed it again. “No,” she said, begrudgingly. They fell silent, the pop of the fire and the noises of the desert around them the only punctuation in the quiet. Finally, Fiona sighed.
“Want to know something crazy?”
The Stranger inclined his head.
“I trusted him too.” Fiona snorted, picking up a bit of wood out of the dirt and throwing it into the center of the fire, where it popped and crackled and dissipated immediately. “As ridiculous as that sounds. I mean, here’s this guy who basically stands for everything I’ve grown up hating. Works for the biggest asshole company in the galaxy. But then he goes and wears stupid socks and cracks the absolute dumbest jokes and-- you should have seen him when we didn’t laugh, oh my god, he would pout for hours.”
Fiona was grinning now, lost in the memory of the impromptu road trip in the Caravan. There’d been a lot of downtime driving that big hulking thing through the desert, and there had been a lot of card games and word games and figuring out how many times one of them could “I spy” desert sand before the others straight up murdered them.
The Stranger tilted his head thoughtfully. “It seems,” he said slowly, “that the two of you make an excellent team.”
Fiona shrugged and they fell silent yet again. After a moment, the Stranger stood and without a word, walked off into the darkness until he was swallowed up by the desert. Fiona picked at a loose bit of material on the toe of her shoe, lost in thought. They had made a pretty good team. She thought about the next bit of the story the Stranger would demand. She thought about Vaughn and a swift pang of regret twisted in the pit of her stomach. Maybe Rhys knew where Vaughn was. It hadn’t come up yet.
She turned to look at Rhys again and smiled involuntarily. He’d shifted in his sleep and was nearly face down in the sand. Any closer and he’d be sucking in a lungful of the stuff.
“You trusted her?”
“Yeah. She never gave me a reason not to.”
Fiona’s smile faded a bit. She’d given Rhys countless reasons not to trust her. She and Sasha were con artists. It was kind of their whole business model – trust at your own risk, etc.
But something had told Rhys that maybe she was worth sticking with. Probably the same feeling that had prompted her to stand in Scooter’s garage and call him a friend.
Rhys shifted in his sleep and turned his face down into the sand. There was a beat, maybe two, before he spluttered and jolted upright, coughing, horror and confusion plastered across his face as he spit sand out of his mouth.
“Oh, yuck,” he moaned, face scrunched up in distress. Fiona covered her mouth, trying to hide her grin, but he saw her immediately and made an exasperated face.
“Thanks for, you know, preventing that. Since you’re clearly awake.” Rhys sat up all the way, groaning softly. “I wonder how many dead bandits I just accidentally swallowed. Probably, like, at least three.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “It’s sand, Rhys, not the ground up bones of those who’ve gone before us.”
“You don’t know that,” Rhys countered. He stretched, popping his spine and reaching high above his head before dropped back into a relaxed slouch. He studied her. “Have you slept at all?”
Fiona shook her head, pulling her knees back into her chest and resting her chin on them. Rhys sighed.
“Come on, that guy’s gonna make us walk for ages again tomorrow. You should sleep.”
Fiona shrugged one shoulder. Rhys watched her for another second.
“Fiona.”
“What?”
“Come on.”
“I’m not tired.”
Rhys gave her a flat look and she resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Then Rhys shifted a bit on the sand, scooting closer to her and sticking his long legs out to the side.
“Here.” He patted his thigh. Fiona stared at him and he flushed, the color crawling up his neck to settle high in his cheeks. “Not… not like that, Fiona, geez. Just… you know. So you can close your eyes.”
Fiona squinted into the darkness towards where the Stranger had vanished, mostly to distract herself from the awkwardly sincere look on Rhys’ face and the blush still burning across the bridge of his nose. “What if he comes back?”
“I’ll keep watch.” Rhys patted his leg again. “Come on. I guarantee it’ll be more comfortable than the sand.” Then he paused, his smile fading a bit. “You’re not… still mad at me, are you? Because if you are, I’d like to remind everyone that this is totally kind of your fault too.”
Fiona’s eyes flicked to his. She was quiet for a long moment. Angry? No. She wasn’t mad at Rhys. She felt guilty. She was a little sick with regret, confusion, anger, guilt. She missed Gortys. She missed Loader Bot. She missed Vaughn. Scooter. Athena.
She missed sitting on the Caravan, sides aching with laughter as they stayed up too late playing cards.
Fiona felt adrift, lost on the planet she called home.
She shook her head. “No. I’m not mad at you.”
Rhys’ shoulders slumped and Fiona realized that he’d actually been nervous of her response. She pressed her lips together and scooted a bit closer, lowering herself down gingerly, lying on her back with her head pillowed on Rhys’ leg. She tugged her hat down over her eyes and squeezed them shut.
Cool metal fingers brushed the side of her head, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and a shiver raced its way down Fiona’s spine.
“It’s really good to see you, Fiona,” Rhys whispered.
“I thought you’d died when Helios crashed.”
The confession slipped from Fiona’s lips without her permission and she winced, glad her hat was covering her eyes so she didn’t have to look at the expression on Rhys’ face.
Rhys was quiet for a second. “I’ll… I’m sure this guy will make me tell it when we get there, but… some stuff happened. When Hyperion crashed. Jack stuff.”
Fiona reached up and lifted the hat off her eyes, looking up at Rhys, at the line of his jaw as he stared into the fire.
“Get some sleep, Fiona,” he said quietly, tearing his eyes from the flames to look down at her. “Story’s not there yet. And to be honest, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Fiona almost objected, parting her lips and taking a breath to speak, when she spotted the tension in Rhys’ jaw, the way he seemed to be trying to keep his composure. She closed her mouth and settled her hat back over her eyes.
Rhys would tell her when he was ready. She wasn’t going to force it out of him.
“I thought you were dead too, you know. After I… healed. I couldn’t find you. Or Sasha or Vaughn or anyone.”
Fiona didn’t move, listening.
“I’m really glad you’re alright. And-- and I’m sorry. For everything. For what it’s worth. Probably not much to you, but… I am. So, uh, there.”
Fiona reached up and lifted the hat up off her eyes again. Above her, the stars winked against the blackness of the sky. The space where Hyperion had once been seemed huge and empty. She tipped her head back and looked up at Rhys. He was looking down at her and for a moment, they just stared at each other.
Rhys’ eyes flicked to her lips and Fiona’s heart tripped over itself, stuttering in her chest before speeding up to a breathless hum.
Had Rhys always looked at her like that? Like she was the only thing he ever wanted to look at?
Thumping footsteps against sand were the only warning they got as the Stranger stumped back into view, his arms full of desert bramble to feed the fire and Fiona nearly smacked herself in the face shoving her hat back down over her eyes. She felt Rhys shift beneath her, felt him let out a long unsteady breath, and knew her own ears were burning bright red.
There was a long pause.
“Dude,” Rhys said. “You and your terrible timing are killing me.”
“Do not blame me for your total lack of game.”
Rhys made a tiny offended noise. “Lack of…! Listen, you—”
There was a click and Rhys went abruptly silent. Fiona suspected the Stranger probably flashed a gun at him again.
Fiona bit back on a grin and closed her eyes, feeling lighter than she had in days. She twisted onto her side, curling up into a ball, and felt Rhys’ thigh flex underneath her cheek as he tried to shift his own positioning.
This time she let the smile spread over her face. Tomorrow was another day of story-telling with this weird masked Stranger, but at least she’d face it with someone she trusted at her side.
She and Rhys had escaped worse, after all. Both of them working together? This would be a piece of cake.