Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Timothy shot someone was the day he set foot on Helios. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d held a gun. Not even the first time he’d fired one. It was considered standard procedure to know how to use a weapon without shooting your own foot off if you wanted to get involved with the corporates - cutthroat business at its finest.

It wasn’t what he’d been expecting though.

He’d read up on Jack when the program was first suggested to him. Dude was a programmer. On paper he didn’t sound that important, certainly not someone worth killing, just a man with a dream and an ego big enough that he was willing to shell out money on a doppelganger he really didn’t need. 

That sounded fine to Timothy. He was short on options, and the payout looked good. Just a few years playing a role, sitting around in a cushy desk job and pretending to be a target, then no one would be hounding him for student loans and threatening to break his legs when he couldn’t pay them off. Not his ideal start to life outside of university, but it could be worse. He could be in retail.

Then of course he’d stepped onto Helios and bullets were flying, people were dying, and Timothy was having a very bad time. 

His one consolation was that he wasn’t the only unfortunate soul stupid enough to get dragged into whatever mess was taking place on the station. There were five others, and even if Timothy was busy panicking because nothing had prepared him for the adrenaline fueled horror show that was a shootout or the sight of someone’s head actually exploding, they seemed like they knew what they were doing.

And there was Jack… as much of a smug asshole as Timothy had always predicted, and perfectly blase about the whole situation. He acted more like it was an irritating inconvenience than a life threatening turn of events. 

By that point Timothy was already having some deep regrets. It wasn’t like he could go backward though. Sometimes you just had to see where life took you… and sometimes it was into a moonshot cannon where you were fired off toward almost certain death, but at least he was getting paid? He really hoped he was getting paid.

Days passed, and somehow Timothy was still miraculously alive. Jack had them running across Elpis from one errand to the next, but the time at least gave him the chance to work on his performance. He focused on the way Jack talked, all that oozing self-confidence and casual charm, tried to hit all the right notes, to toss out one-liners like they didn’t taste fake and empty on his tongue. 

Whenever they had the fortune to rest anywhere with a mirror he would waste hours staring at his reflection. The face never felt like his own. It would bend and stretch when he moved it, grin and glower and grimace, but no matter what he did there was something missing, the subtleties of his own expressions he hadn’t even realised relied so heavily on the set of his jaw or the dimples that formed at the corners of his mouth. 

He got very good at mimicking his boss though - perfected that cocky smile, learned to square his shoulders and put swagger into his stride.

He was actually a little proud of it.

The days he always spent dedicated to the role, but the nights Timothy considered to be his own. While the rest of their motley crew slept or prepared for challenges ahead, he would find a corner to settle in and pull out his Echo. Then he would write.

He told stories of grand adventures where the hero’s were never afraid and everyone got their happy ending. The words might not have been profound, nor particularly artful, but they were a comfort regardless because he could control a story in a way he could never control his life. When he wrote, the panic eased. 

Timothy got better at using guns. Nisha laughed at his first few attempts at target practice, but she still took the time to correct his posture, taught him how to use a pistol like a professional and not just an actor playing the part. The woman’s aim was something to fear. Between her direction and the digi-clones he was beginning to feel almost competent in a fight, even if part of his brain never stopped screaming. Having the others around certainly helped too.

Athena was always there with a well timed shield, Aurelia with a blast of ice to lock his enemies in place, Wilhelm with air support… even Claptrap offered a convenient distraction from time to time. He didn’t know what he would have done without them. Die, probably.

But he wasn’t dead, and he began to think that maybe, just maybe, he might actually make it. Once Elpis was taken care of, life as a body double would return to something resembling normality. Jack would carry on his job with Hyperion, and Timothy would… attend meetings for him? 

Honestly, he still didn’t understand what a programmer actually needed a body double for, but by this point he suspected it had less to do with necessity and far more to do with ego. 

Jack was a total ass. The longer he played the role, the more he hated it. But student loans were student loans, and a contract was a contract. All he really needed to do was survive.

It would be generous to say that they were a team. They were still a rag-tag band of misfits in those early weeks, held together by spit and courage, and the thought of a shared payday waiting somewhere at the end of that dark track. They were learning a little of each other though.

Athena was brave. Aurelia was rich. Nisha was a sadist. Wilhelm was… really into cybernetic upgrades. Claptrap was a mistake. 

And Timothy… well, Timothy was Jack, mostly. It was what he was supposed to do, and in some ways it was easier… Jack was a jackass (haha) but he was handsome, and maybe even a little heroic and daring, in the way some corny TV star posing for witty one-liners might be as he took down the villain of the week. 

Jack didn’t freak out in the middle of a shootout. Jack didn’t scream while pursued by a pack of kraggons. Jack certainly didn’t wince at the mere sight of a hypo-needle. 

So long as he was Jack, things were fine. 

Unfortunately Jack’s personality was as grating for his new companions as it was for him.

“Darling, one of that man is quite enough,” Aurelia told him after the third time he’d called her ‘babe’. “If you ever get tired of this ridiculous charade, I will happily pay you to stop.”

“It’s my job. I have a contract,” Timothy said.

“What do you think lawyers are for? If you have enough money, rules mean nothing. And I’m rich. Have your people call my people and we’ll sort something out.”

And a part of him… a part of him actually considered it. That maybe this was his ticket out. No more lazers, no more moon, no more scavs, no more explosions… he could go back to being ugly and poor, and live out a boring normal life as Timothy Lawrence. Maybe his mum would even smile when he strolled in? They’d told him she was laughing when they delivered the news of his ‘death’, but that was probably just to hide the tears. Probably.

But even as he entertained the idea doubts began to brew.

Why would Aurelia do something so… generous? Her, with all her cruelty, all her coldness, all her not-so-subtle bragging as she sneered at a world so beneath her.

He knew that her words would never be anything but a trap, bait for a joke for which he was the punchline. He would say yes, and she would laugh, mock him for his desperation, his disloyalty…

So Timothy just pulled on that classic action-hero grin and asked, “And give up being this handsome?”

She made a disgusted sound. He didn’t blame her.

Timothy met the girl of his dreams on Concordia. Unfortunately for Timothy, she was his boss’s ex-girlfriend, ten thousand miles out of his league, and had a habit of making him blurt his thoughts out at high speed regardless of whether he actually had anything to say.

In his defense, Moxxi had that effect on a lot of people. Not to mention Timothy didn’t have a lot of experience talking to pretty people… 

Oh, he looked at them from afar sometimes, concocted fantasies in his head where his words were somehow swave and his grin enigmatic, and they found they were enraptured by the mystery of him… That was all just a pitiful way to run from the fact that he was entirely unremarkable though and everyone knew it at a glance. His old face never drew attention. His voice cracked when he got nervous. He was used to being overlooked, used to accepting defeat… he wasn’t used to going up and talking to someone who made his stomach flip and his palms sweat, certainly not while five other people sniggered at his discomfort in the background.

He knew he completely broke character, but he couldn’t help it. Timothy thought he was in love. After he saw her out of her makeup and cheerily singing some nonsense song to herself in her natural accent, grease stain on her cheek and spanner in her hand, well… if anything he just tumbled further down the rabbit hole. 

Moxxi was perfect. 

And yes, maybe it was hopeless, it always was with him, but there was still a little piece of him that wondered if he had a chance… even a small one…

He didn’t have his old face anymore, he had Jack’s, and as much as Timothy hated the man he was, admittedly, handsome. Moxxi had dated Jack once, so she must have seen something in him… if he could figure out where Jack had gone wrong, maybe he could fill in the blanks? Offer whatever it was that had been missing?

After the whole business with the moon, anyway. Save Elpis, become a hero… the hero always got the girl, right? God, who was he trying to fool…

It was shortly after Concordia and his complete failure to cling to the role of Jack that Athena spoke to him. She’d spoken to him before, they all had, but mostly just to tell him to get out of the way of incoming fire. She struck him as more of a stoic type than anything.

They’d just finished an errand for Janey that the others had declined to assist with on the grounds that it ‘wasn’t important and by the way did you forget that there’s a giant laser destroying the moon?’

Timothy quite liked Janey though. She was kind when she didn’t have to be, and also kept cat pictures lying around which made anyone a good person in his book. He had a sneaking suspicion that Athena also liked her, for different reasons, not that he was going to bring it up since Athena could crush him like a bug if she wanted to. 

Helping Janey was a pleasant distraction and she even threw in a little pocket money for their trouble, so he was in decent spirits as they made their way back to the group.

Then… and he’d never understand quite why… Athena went ahead and broke the comfortable silence between them. “You have a name, right?”

He blinked at her in surprise. “Course I do, babycakes, it’s Jack”

Athena gave him that look. The one that seemed like she was simultaneously disappointed and exhausted with the world, but still not surprised. She wore that look a lot. 

“You’re not Jack,” she said. “I’ve seen the two of you in the same room together.”

“I could be Jack,” he said, all grin, all charm, all the things he’d learned to copy. “Whole point of a body double, am I right? Identical. Who’s to say we never switched places?”

She narrowed her eyes. Squinted at him for a moment like she was studying something, but after a second she just shook her head. “You’re not. You’re a good actor, but you’re not him.”

Timothy’s grin stayed locked in place, but his heart stuttered. It was unreasonable that the words felt like that when he’d spent so long practicing the role until he knew it inside and out, until he lived it, breathed it… he should be frustrated at her conviction.

But he wasn’t. Goddamn it, he wasn’t.

They weren’t on Helios. There was no one else here. Right now, it was just him and Athena, trekking across yet another deserted stretch of the moon because this was the direction that life had tossed him, and he didn’t really… know her that well. She kept to herself when she wasn’t working a job. Rarely had much to say when she was. But somehow she was still the first person to ask anything about him since he’d taken on the role of Jack. How pathetic was that?

He cleared his throat, but he couldn’t quite meet her gaze when he finally spoke. “I did. Have a name, I mean. I’m legally forbidden to tell you, but, uh… it rhymes with Jimothy.”

Athena was quiet. “So you were someone. Before you were this.”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

She shrugged.

It was four days later when Athena walked up to him, and said without missing a beat, “Timothy Lawrence.”

He stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost. Athena had never really seemed to grasp how to ease her way into conversations, it was always blunt, like this, but Timothy usually didn’t mind. Not like he didn’t deal with his own share of awkwardness. How exactly she expected him to respond though he didn’t know.

He continued to stare. He opened his mouth, closed it, and when he tried again he found he still couldn’t string the words together. “I don’t… I’m not… what?”

“That’s your name, right?”

Okay, yes, he’d given her a pretty big hint on the first name, but the surname was a shock. 

She took his silence as all the answer she needed and gave a nod. “Thought so. I did some digging.”

“But how? I’m… he’s not supposed to exist anymore, not on paper.”

“You don’t. But there were still some Echo logs.”

Timothy weighed this information. The smart thing to do was probably to ask about them, so he could find them, wipe them, do what Jack would want. That was what he got paid for. He’d sold that identity when he’d signed his contract, tossed it aside like it was nothing. He’d never expected to miss it. 

What had he been, after all, but some loser drowning in student debt and a growing disillusionment with the world around him? 

Nobody missed Timothy Lawrence. 

Athena was waiting, her arms folded. 

“Don’t tell Jack,” he said, quietly.

“I won’t,” she promised.

“Blah-blah-blah, something Jack would say.”

Athena gave a snort, the closest she ever came to admitting amusement, but he could still read it. Timothy was good at reading people. 

He’d been dropping his act around her a little more when it was just the two of them. Small things at first, subtle, but the longer it went on the more his confidence grew, and it felt good to talk to anyone like that. To talk, and not have Jack’s words come out. Still his voice, but, well, it was something.

“Real smooth talker, aren’t you?”

“The smoothest.”

She sighed, leaning back against the cold metal wall of the outpost and staring off through the shimmer of the oxygen field into the unforgiving void beyond. Only the lifeless grey of Elpis, and the endless night that hung above. 

“Hey…” she asked, “you know what you’re going to do, once this is all over?”

Timothy just shrugged. “Honestly? No. Kinda figured I’d just spend the next six years sitting at a desk pretending to be this asshole, then once my contract’s up grab my paycheck and take the first ship off this dump. You?”

Athena was quiet for a few seconds. She didn’t look over at Timothy, but her eyes narrowed as if focused on some far off point neither of them could see. He wondered if he should have asked. If it was a step too far in a friendship they were still testing the shape of, uncharted territory for them both. 

Then she shrugged, a mirror to his own careless gesture, and he felt his tension ease. 

“I don’t know. Find someone else who needs bad guys shot,” she said.

Timothy nodded. “Cool.”

Maybe that was where he should have left things, his standard empty contribution to anything he didn’t have a scripted response for. Athena was still staring out into the colourless landscape before them though, and her expression seemed… darkly contemplative, if he had to pick a word for it. Grim, and uncertain.

If money alone was her motive she would have been easy to understand. Timothy knew that was Wilhelm’s only reason for sticking around. Aurelia was bored. Nisha just wanted to shoot people. Claptrap was anyone’s guess. But Athena… the more time he spent with her, the more he thought that she’d come here looking for something, even if she didn’t know it. And that maybe she really would pack up and move on to the next job looking for exactly the same thing, and not finding it there either. At least Timothy knew where he stood with student loans.

He stared down at his hands. Large, sturdy hands - Jack’s hands - but his fingers meshed together in an awkward twist that was all his own.

“Just, uh… putting ideas on the table here,” he said tentatively, with a furtive glance in her direction, “but maybe you should grab Janey a drink sometime… you know, once this is all over. Before you skip town.”

That finally did get her attention. Athena looked over at him sharply, and it wasn’t with the murderous glare he’d anticipated but the intensity of her stare was still uncomfotable. He fidgeted under it for several painstaking moments before her gaze softened.

“Maybe. You ever going to work up the courage to ask Moxxi out?”

Timothy felt the blood rush to his cheeks. “T-that’s- I mean, it’s not… that’s not the same.”

Athena just snorted again, and the corner of her lips twitched upward. “Yeah… real smooth talker.”

Despite his blush Timothy couldn’t stop his grin. He gave her shoulder a light punch - a playful tap - before letting his head fall back against the wall and staring up at the ceiling.

“Shut up,” he mumbled. There was no bite to it though. 

He wondered if this was what real friends did. He’d never been popular in school, or even university, and when he’d hung out with people it tended to be more of a herd instinct. Banding together to make yourself less of a target. Nobody had tried to contact him after graduation.

Would Athena try to reach him, once this was all over? Timothy thought he might just miss her, even if she didn’t.

Chapter Text

It was no news to Timothy that things were bad - they’d been bad for a while, he generally categorised frequent near death experiences that way - but it seemed that they were teetering on the precipice of ‘truly awful’, and his stomach was starting to flip the way it always did when staring down a sudden drop.

It wasn’t even the whole business with Elpis, which was clearly coming to a head, it was… Jack.

His boss was an asshole. This was something Timothy accepted, had even made his peace with, because Jack was an asshole who was paying him and that was all that mattered. After Felicity though, Timothy was starting to question a few things.

It wasn’t that he thought Jack was evil… egotistical, sure, and ambitious without a doubt… but he was trying to save Elpis, and that was what the good guys did. And he was right, time was starting to run short…

Still, the callousness of it all rubbed him the wrong way. Felicity might have been an AI but she still didn’t deserve to die like that… erased, as if she’d never existed at all. She’d been willing to help them, all she wanted was the chance to live…

Timothy could remember her declaring her new name with such open delight. It meant happiness.

But time was ticking ever shorter, lives were at stake, human lives… so he did his best to shove his reservations aside and focus on the job, even as he side-eyed his boss at every opportunity, trying to pick him apart with his eyes.

Then Jack went ahead and airlocked the scientists, and if Timothy’s stomach had been squirming at first it was doing barrel rolls now.

He couldn’t even think of anything to say. Just, “Oh no.”

As if those pathetic words could somehow encomance the enormity of the act. Cold blooded murder. And he hadn’t done a thing to stop it.

Jack seemed as stunned as the rest of them, but as he considered the cracked glass of the now empty airlock a smile began to work its way onto his face. “Huh. That felt... Kinda good.” 

Then he turned away. “Anywho, let’s talk.”

That was the first time that Jack had genuinely scared him.

Barely an hour later, the girl of his dreams tried to kill him. Or to kill Jack, if you were being technical, but Timothy still wasn’t too hot about being collateral. His life well and truely sucked. 

If he’d been by himself he probably would have just sat down with his head between his knees and tried to get his hands to stop shaking. But he wasn’t alone. He was smack bang in the middle of his rag-tag excuse for a team, with his boss screaming and throwing computer equipment out the window in a fit of rage.

He tried to focus on Athena. She, at least, was reliably steady regardless of what the universe put in her path, shoulders squared and with the stance of a battle hardened soldier. Her attention was on Jack though. Everyone’s attention was on Jack.

The man was unravelling, and not gracefully. 

There was a time when Timothy used to think he had a pretty good handle on his boss. He’d worked hard to perfect his performance, picked up the swagger, the charm, the careless overconfidence… he wondered why it had taken him so long to realise what it was that lay beneath. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to know.

He’d seen Jack shoot the Merrif without batting an eye… but Timothy had shot people who fired on him first plenty of times, so he could hardly take the moral high ground on that one…

And Jack had erased Felicity, but she had been an AI, so maybe that was different… He’d killed Zarpedon while she was talking, but she’d been trying to blow up the moon which kind of meant she deserved it… And Timothy really hadn’t had the opportunity to even process the scientists who’d been vented into space…

All just excuses. He should have known. He did, now, but here he was, standing by with no idea what he was supposed to do while Jack ranted and raved about the people who had betrayed him, and there was no mistaking his intent.

Timothy just wanted to go home.

A hand settled on his shoulder, and he startled, but when he glanced over it was only Athena. God, she was probably the only reason he was holding it together at all. Wasn’t that pathetic? Days, maybe even weeks running across Elpis, and he knew how to hold a gun with confidence now but the moment things turned to shit he was back to being the same old coward he’d always been. 

But… he wasn’t alone, at least. Any remaining trust he’d had for Jack might be running dry, but he trusted Athena, and he knew the others would have his back regardless of how hectic things were going to get. And it certainly did seem like things would get hectic, because there was no way they were going to get a break anytime soon.

Jack had finally come down from his tantrum, and his goal was clear - the vault, open and waiting. Timothy only hoped it would be enough to satisfy him, and that Moxxi and the other two had the sense to run while he was distracted. He didn’t want to contemplate the alternative. 

Timothy had heard tales of the vaults before. He’d never expected to see the inside of one though, and even if he had it wouldn’t have prepared him for the strangeness of it. The alien architecture was completely unlike the functional steel structures of Helios, or the rudimentary housing on Elpis, it transcended belief. If it hadn’t been filled with monsters he might have taken his time marvelling at every corner. 

As it was, the path they cut was swift, and when they reached the rift that would take them to the heart of the vault they only paused to check their ammunition before leaping through.

The fight that followed was the culmination of every moment they’d spent together since Jack called them in. 

Wilhelm and his bots kept up airsupport, Athena threw out her shield to block incoming strikes, Timothy used the digi-Jack’s to draw the guardian’s attention away from everyone, Aurelia whisked up her ice to lock the things limbs down while Nisha bombarded it with bullets… Even Claptrap did its part, stumbling toward almost being helpful for a change. They fought as a team, not the haphazard group of strangers of their beginning but the well oiled machine they were meant to be.

And when it was done, and the once towering behemoth was reduced to a pile of rubble that sank down through the water-like floor into oblivion, they stood battered and breathless, but elated.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline and the crashing relief of still somehow being alive, but for the first time in his existence Timothy felt like he could take on the world. He’d actually killed a vault monster. Actually, honest to god killed one! A couple of months back he would have been jumping at his own shadow, but here he stood, shoulder to shoulder with total badasses, having defeated a creature of legend. He was unstoppable.

Then Jack arrived, strolling calmly through the mess to claim his prize, and he remembered what it had all been for - to help a power hungry psychopath get his hands on alien technology with an unknown potential for devastation. That killed the mood a little. 

With it gone there was space for his usual fretful thoughts to return. A wave of ‘holy shit I almost died a dozen times’ and ‘I definitely shouldn’t have done that ’.

He was still caught up in his own spiralling thoughts as Jack absorbed the secrets of the vault. Maybe if he’d been paying a little more attention he might have intervened… but maybe not. 

Lilith punched the vault symbol right through Jack’s smug, chiseled jaw, and he did nothing but watch. She was gone before any of them even had the chance to react.

And there was his boss… rolling on the ground as he clutched at the red-hot brand seared into his flesh, shrieking about vengeance and all the fire and brimstone he would rain down upon his enemies… none of the others said anything.

Athena just walked away. She left it to the rest of them to figure out how to get him back to Helios.

The first thing that Jack did when the doctor told him there was no correcting the damage done to his face was to get himself a mask. He chose a design fixed in place with clasps, built of flexible material that would allow his features to still shift and bend with his expression. Something to maintain the illusion of the handsome hero he claimed to be. It was a glaringly obvious fake, even the skin tone was wrong, but it hid his injury completely.

The second thing that Jack did was strangle his own boss to death in his office and steal his position as CEO of Hyperion.

His next moves were practical, decisions to slowly shift Helios and the company it housed toward the vision he had for it. 

There was one thing that struck Timothy as odd however. 

He’d thought it was a joke at first when Jack told him to go win Moxxi back. Jack didn’t laugh though, and Timothy got the sense that if it was a joke, he didn’t want to know the punchline.

Maybe Jack really was delusional enough to think that taking control of Hyperion was all he needed to sway Moxxi back to his side… but Timothy knew him and Nisha were already banging (god he wished he didn’t), so he doubted Jack had any actual interest in rekindling a relationship. 

Perhaps he just wanted the chance to end things on his terms, to get her back to prove that he could, and send her packing so that he got the satisfaction of turning her down. Not Moxxi, bruising his ego by walking away.

Or maybe he just wanted to get close enough that he could lock her up and slowly torture her to death for her betrayal. Timothy wasn’t putting a limit on what Jack was capable of these days.

Timothy would have rather been doing anything else, but saying no was a risk he wasn’t willing to take, so he didn’t argue. Instead he went back to his apartment and stared at himself in the mirror while trying and failing to talk himself up into a state of confidence.

He practiced all the stupid, charming one-liners Jack would probably use, and pulled faces until he’d found one that hit just the perfect level of insufferable arrogance that it felt right.

Sticking to the role while Moxxi was around was always a challenge.

Exactly what it was about her he wasn’t sure, except maybe the tits, but also… also there was just something about the way she called him sugar that activated parts of his lizard brain he wasn’t proud of. She was beautiful, and clever, and damn sure of herself, and Timothy could never get used to someone like that so much as looking in his direction. She said one sweet thing to him and every one of his thoughts flew right out his mouth before he could stop them.

It was pathetic. Timothy knew it was pathetic. 

But all he had to do was walk up to her and spout some nonsense about taking her out to dinner, and she could turn him down, and Timothy could go back to Jack and tell him he’d done his best and life would continue.

He never expected her to say yes.

“You know… maybe everything isn’t completely awful.”

Athena’s expression left him no doubts as to her opinion on that. “It is, Tim.”

“Sure, look, everything’s a bit of a mess right now but maybe if we just give it some time to settle down-”

“You went out to dinner with Moxxi once,” she said. “Literally just dinner. While pretending to be Jack. And now you think things are suddenly all okay? Have you completely lost your mind?”

“I’m just saying things could be worse, alright? Something nice actually happened to me for a change, maybe you could… I don’t know, not mock me for it?”

It was times like these where he wondered why she’d even come back to Helios, why she hadn’t rinsed her hands of Jack completely that day and disappeared off into the sunset. Maybe she was just waiting to get paid. He hadn’t worked up the courage to ask. 

When he looked back over at her Athena’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I’m trying to be realistic here. You have to have seen the sort of things Jack’s planning.”

“Yeah but that’s…” Timothy tried, “I mean, he’s still pretty messed up after the vault business, so maybe if he just has a while to cool his head-”

“You’re not fooling anyone.”

He really wasn’t. It would have been nice, though, to live in a world where he could. Where he could forget about the boss he’d sold his own identity over to impersonate and just play that evening again and again in his mind. Moxxi, with her knowing smile and the way her fingers would trace the rim of her glass like she were caressing it… the way her laugh made him giddy… 

To pretend, just for a moment, that there was even the slightest chance she might be interested in him…

But he’d gone along as Jack. And he knew… as much as he regretted to admit to… that the safest place for Moxxi to be was as far away from his boss as physically possible, somewhere he would never see her again. 

Jack had already murdered Tassiter and several other Hyperion staff, and the things he had lined up for Pandora… awful didn’t even begin to cover it. As much as one glorious evening with the girl of his dreams made him want to hope for a kinder future there was a difference between optimism and idiocy.

“I know,” he said, his shoulder slumping. “It’s just… is it too much to ask for things to stay good for once?”

Jack killed Claptrap. Destroyed his entire line. Timothy hated Claptrap, everyone did, so by rights he should have been pleased.  

He wasn’t, though.

Yes the little robot gave him a headache everytime it started talking, and yes he’d always said he wished it was dead, but it tried to help, it tried no matter how frustratingly useless it was, it tried… and Jack fried it without a second thought, and laughed.

All Timothy could think about was Felicity. It left an awful taste in his mouth.

Nisha, Wilhelm and Jack were busy celebrating, but Athena turned away from the sight and met his gaze across the room. He couldn’t speak to her about it, not here, not now, but he liked to imagine an understanding passed between them. Silent, but meaningful. Just something to assure him that while everyone else stood around and laughed over the corpse of a fallen comrade, he wasn’t the crazy one for feeling just a little bit bad about the whole thing.

Sometimes he thought him and Athena were the last sane people left on the station.

Aurelia was the first one to depart. She waltzed into Jack’s office with a whole speech prepared, and marched out with her head held high. Jack pretended not to notice. Timothy suspected he’d still send assassin’s after her once he’d had time to brood over the matter in private, but Aurelia had more than enough money to pay off anyone on her tail. Even if she didn’t, she was a deadly shot. She would be fine. He liked to think so, anyway.

They might not have been friends, but comrades had to count for something, and he’d… kind of liked how she was never afraid to talk back to Jack. Never bought any of the bullshit he spouted. She said exactly what she thought right to his face, while Timothy just muttered under his breath well out of earshot.

Now it was just the four of them… and of them, only Athena offered any resistance to Jack’s increasingly questionable behaviour. He knew there were only two ways that would end, and he wasn’t enthusiastic about either. 

Maybe some part of him thought that if he just acted as if nothing was happening then everything would be fine. Like if he never admitted his boss was clearly a dangerous psychopath, or that the team he’d spent days running across Elpis with was crumbling apart one member at a time, then he could just carry on like normal. An actor, through and through. 

Athena had been right though, he wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself. He’d seen the sort of plans Jack had lying around his office. 

If things had been different maybe he would have been the first to leave… but he had a contract, student loans, and a bomb in his face, and even if he didn’t he knew he wasn’t suited to life on the run. So instead he did the only thing he could think to do, which was his job. Let himself focus on the performance and try not think about everything else. He wished it helped.

It was night when it happened. Or, as close to night as you could get in space. The internal lighting had been dimmed as it usually was every twelve hours, and the glowing numbers of his bedside clock told him it was 02:44.

Timothy stumbled out of bed, blearily pushing his hair from his face as he went to answer the knocking at his door.

Athena was standing on the other side. She had a bag over her shoulder.

Timothy knew what this meant, but he still said nothing, just stood there and waited for her to speak first despite the awkward way the silence stretched between them. Eventually she seemed to realise he wasn’t about to initiate a conversation and leaped in with her own characteristic bluntness.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

Timothy nodded slowly. “Do you know where you’re gonna go?”

“Not yet.” He thought that was all she was going to say, but after a brief hesitation she continued. “Janey says that’s half the fun. I… don’t really understand what that means.”

Ah. Maybe there was some good to be dredged from the whole mess after all, if it brough Athena even an ounce of happiness he wouldn’t begrudge her it. He tried to smile, twist his expression into something encouraging. “You two will be good for each other.”

“You could come with us.”

“I really couldn’t.”

“You can’t stay here, Tim, Jack’s-”

He laughed. “You think I don’t know that? You think I have a choice?”

“You do.”

“Yeah, try telling that to the guy without a bomb in his face. I don’t get to walk away.” His tone was wry, more bitter than he’d hoped to make it, and who it had even been aimed at he didn’t know. Certainly not Athena.

“There has to be a way to deactivate it, you could-”

“Athena, stop,” he cut her off, holding up a hand before she got any further. “Look… I’m not you. Even without the bomb, you think Jack would just let me leave? With his ego? He’d hunt me down across the galaxy just so he could make my death slow and painful, and as hilariously anecdotal as possible, and I’m… so not about that. Go. I’ll be fine. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”

This time his smile was warm, confident, and all the other things he needed it to be. After all, Timothy prided himself in being a good actor.

Athena frowned up at him. Her lips were pursed in a way that made her displeasure clear, but she didn’t argue further. Instead she stepped suddenly closer, and Timothy wasn’t sure what her intent was. A hug? That would be awkward for both of them. 

Then she reached up to grab the collar of his pyjama shirt and haul him lower until their faces were level, and dear god she better not be going for a kiss… But she stopped before they met and held his gaze intently.

“Timothy Lawrence,” she said. “That’s your name. Not Jack. Don’t forget it.”

Abruptly she released him, and Timothy straightened up and tried to collect his thoughts.

He cleared his throat, searching for something to say. “Thank you. And, uh… tell Janey I said hi.”

“Tell her yourself next time you see us,” Athena responded curtly as she turned away. There was no hesitation in her stride, no pause to glance back, she simply adjusted the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked off down the corridor. 

He watched her go, uncertain what feeling it was that stirred in his chest as she vanished round the corner.

“Yeah…” he murmured to the now empty hallway, “yeah, alright.”

Jack didn’t take Athena’s departure well. One person walking away was something he could overlook, but two? That was too much like the start of a trend, and Jack was paranoid enough as it was without questioning the loyalties of his precious vault hunters. 

Timothy was pretty sure the only reason he didn’t fly into a murderous rage the moment the news reached him was because of Nisha. The woman spent a lot of time with him over the next few days, doting over him, whispering in his ear and finding pleasant little distractions for him like torturing any underperforming staff. She told him it was a good thing Athena was gone, she’d only ever held him back. Timothy didn’t think that was a lie.

If there was one thing left that came even close to a conscience for Jack, it had been Athena, Timothy certainly wasn’t brave enough to fill her shoes. He kept his head down, followed orders and tried to make himself scarce whenever he wasn’t needed. That seemed like the smart thing to do.

A six year contract was starting to feel like a lifetime, but Timothy figured he could take it a day at a time. Then, once it was up, he’d grab the first ship he could find and get the hell out of dodge. Maybe Jack would have found something else to pre-occupy himself with by then, and he wouldn’t even notice? 

He could find a nice little house on a distant planet where nobody had ever heard of Hyperion, and spend his days writing novels under a pen name and not worrying about student loans. He could get a cat. He could get several cats. 

Timothy tried to keep that image in his mind - a life that he built on every time he revisited it - something to tide him through the bad days when a sarcastic inner monologue filled with insults he didn’t have the spine for just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a plan exactly, but he enjoyed the vagueness of it.

He didn’t need to worry about the feasibility of things, could add flower boxes to the circular windows of his fictional cottage and a hot tub in the library, a coffee shop that he would visit daily, details he could switch around whenever the whim took him. He even wrote about it on occasion, stories of another life he might one day lead. While he busied himself with his fantasy, the present felt less threatening. Sometimes he even forgot how precarious his position was. 

It was a short-lived luxury.

He hadn’t thought much of it when Jack called him to his office that day. About half his orders came in person rather than through his Echo. It could have been a clever way for Jack to limit the risk of anyone tapping the communications channel and figuring out his big plans, but Timothy suspected the man just enjoyed an audience. The chance to whip out one his self-congratulatory speeches, or stand pointedly by the airlock he’d sent the scientists out of and make several less than subtle threats… he liked watching people squirm.

Timothy just resigned himself to the usual song and dance, squared his shoulders, and marched on in.

Jack wasn’t sitting in his chair. Instead, he was leaning back against the desk, arms folded and watching the entrance. 

“Took you long enough,” he said as the metal doors slid closed behind Timothy. “Didn’t I give you a watch? That was a thing, right?”

“You did, sir. It makes holographic projections. Doesn’t tell the time.”

“Really? Man that’s some grade-a bullshit. Remind me to fire whoever I had working on that. Anyways, get in here, I’ve got something for you.”

Jack waved him over. Approaching the desk at a leisurely stroll, Timothy hid his caution behind a smile that mirrored the same natural aplomb his boss exuded. 

Something felt different, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on… 

The office was in perfect order. The library was in place on the right, hiding the airlock and the bloodstains at its rim behind a line of shelves. The fireplace crackled away pleasantly. Nobody was dead or pleading for their life. And Jack himself seemed to be in good enough spirits, to the point he’d brushed aside Timothy’s tardiness without even mentioning all the awful things that might happen to those who kept him waiting. Everything looked fine.

Yet still, something prickled at his nerves, stiffened the hairs at the nape of his neck and ran cold fingers down his spine. 

Timothy decided that this was probably the normal reaction to being in the presence of someone you’d personally witnessed murdering several innocent people, and that he was reading too much into it. 

“See, I’ve been doing some thinking…” Jack said once Timothy had made it to the raised platform his desk was set on. “And this CEO thing? Keeps you on your toes. If it isn’t some moron screwing up their division’s financial report, it's bandits trying to deface your property, or Maliwan sniffing around for juicy tidbits… and guess who everyone comes to for answers? Me. And hey, I get it, I’m awesome - who wouldn’t want advice from Handsome Jack? But it’s getting frickin’ ridiculous, I don’t even have time to drink coffee before someone’s knocking on my door because apparently no one here knows what ‘self-management’ is. You know what else I haven’t had time for?”

Finding his mind unhelpfully blank, Timothy grasped for the first thing he could think of. “Uh… pilates?”

“No, genius, I haven’t had time for you. So. Here’s where we fix that.” Jack pushed off from his desk and circled it, taking up a position behind the single yellow chair with his hands curled around the headrest. “Come on, take a seat.”

Oh that was pretty much the opposite of what Timothy wanted to do.

He really hoped this wasn’t Jack’s way of coming on to him. The occasional comments his boss made about his ‘gorgeous body’ were already deeply uncomfortable in so many ways, and probably considered workplace harassment (not that Timothy was crazy enough to file a complaint with HR). If Jack actually wanted to make a move… well, he wasn’t sure what his options were on that front. What was the gentlest way to turn down a egomaniacal murderer with control over an entire mega corperation? Definitely not by mentioning that his heart still belonged to Jack’s ex-girlfriend, who had tried to kill him only weeks prior. 

Uncertain what move to make he settled for stalling. “But that’s your chair.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Is it stating-the-obvious-o’clock? Yes it’s my chair, and who are you meant to be? Me. Bravo, glad you could wrap your noggin around that one. Now sit.”

He patted the chair, his eyes not leaving Timothy’s face.

Reluctantly Timothy did as he was told.

It was surprisingly comfortable, far better than the rigid metal thing that had filled its place in the days before Jack’s ‘promotion’ must have been. The padding had just the right amount of give, plush without sacrificing support.

“How does it feel?” Jack asked, his voice eerily close to Timothy’s ear. “To sit at the top? The Hyperion throne?”

“Feels good to be king,” he said, in his best approximation of his boss’s smarmy tone. It seemed like the sort of thing he’d like. His guess must have been right, because Jack gave a short bark of laughter.

“You bet it does. Go on, relax. You’ve earned this.” 

Jack’s hands left the headrest, sliding down the chair until they settled on Timothy’s arms, guiding them over to the armrests. He didn’t fight him. 

His pulse was already picking up and so much of the situation felt wrong, weird in ways their interactions had never been before, but he knew how volatile Jack could be. His safest bet, he decided, was to play along. If he was lucky Jack would get bored, or remember the work that supposedly kept him so busy. 

This was just a little uncomfortable. That was fine. He’d already had to deal with Nakiyama, so a bit of creep factor was hardly new.

He was doggedly repeating these reassurances in his own head, right up until the moment the restraints popped out of the chair and shackled his wrists. 

Timothy stared down at them in shock. 

Cold, unyielding metal. His hands flexed, shifting as if to check his eyes did not deceive him.

He knew it was very un-Jack-like, but he couldn’t help the faint waiver in his voice. “Uh… Jack, the… the chair-”

“Don’t worry about it, pumpkin,” he said, patting Timothy’s hair before strolling away, “you just sit tight for a minute.”

Left in mute agitation, Timothy’s gaze followed his boss as he crossed the room.

“Anyways, as I was saying,” Jack continued, “this whole CEO business? Got to be everywhere at once or the whole place falls apart. And, then it occurred to me, I can do that! I mean, that’s the whole point of a frickin’ body double. The Lost Legion is toast and there won’t be another vault till Pandora, and here I have you running around doing errands when you could actually be pulling your weight for a change. All we need-”

At that point he disappeared from view around the right side of the office, and Timothy wasted no time giving the restraints a proper test. 

Leaning back against the seat as he tried to break free first by merit of strength alone, and then by a more calculated attempt to squeeze his hands through the narrow gap around his wrists. The only thing he succeeded in doing was scoring welts into his flesh as he strained against the metal. Short of breaking bones, he didn’t think there was any chance of getting loose. Maybe that was for the best. Jack would probably kill him if he slipped out in the middle of one of his monologues.

Crap, what was he even thinking? He’d already told himself his safest bet was to play along with whatever Jack had planned, kicking up a fuss wouldn’t make things any better.

It did nothing to soothe his nerves though. 

Maybe the worst part was not being able to see him. Just listen to his amicable tone. Jack could talk in a light and friendly voice while smothering someone to death. Timothy had seen it.

And what was he doing? The right side of his office had still been set up as a library when he’d walked in, but he could still remember in horrific, visceral detail the day Jack had sent the scientists out the airlock. How he’d switched out the fireplace for a console, and with a few hastily typed commands revealed his trap.

Surely he wouldn’t airlock Timothy? It was too much of a wasted investment, and besides, he’d done nothing to earn it. Did a psychopath need a reason though?

“-don’t know why it took me so long,” Jack was saying. “Maybe I just liked keeping that pretty face of yours around. But we’ve all got to make sacrifices.”

Then at last he stepped back into view, and an icy dread pooled inside Timothy’s stomach. 

He knew what this was about now. He knew.

Held in Jack’s gloved hand was the final piece of the puzzle - a long length of metal that ended in a glowing brand. The symbol of the vault.

“No,” Timothy said.

“Now now,” Jack drawled as he ambled back toward the desk, twirling it as he went, “if you’re going to play the role you have to look the part.”

“Hell no, I did not sign up for this! You’re insane. You’re actually fucking insane.”

“Language.” He wagged a scolding finger in Timothy’s direction.

God, the madman was actually enjoying this, wasn’t he? Pacing his steps to draw them out, soak in the sight of Timothy’s increasingly frantic struggles with the chair. 

He simply could not free himself. The restraints at his wrists were impossible to loosen, and even when he tried to take to his feet he couldn’t even stretch to his full height, pulled short by their iron grip. 

His breaths were coming fast by the time Jack’s shoes hit the first stair. When they reached the raised platform the desk was set upon, he abruptly changed tactics.

“Jack, look, you don’t need to do this. Y-you said it yourself, right? Why ruin this pretty face? Just give me the mask,” he said. “I can wear the mask!”

His boss just shook his head. “Did you listen to anything I just told you? I need you to be me, kiddo, help keep this whole company in line. And we don’t half-ass things here.”

“But-”

“Ah! No buts.” Jack trailed his fingers across the desk as he circled it, prowling ever closer. 

Cursing under his breath Timothy made one last desperate bid for freedom as he wrenched himself forward with all his strength. It still wasn’t enough. All it granted was pain - sharp, stinging, and sure to bruise.

Then Jack was upon him, shoving him roughly back into the seat and following him down. He threw a knee across Timothy’s legs and pressed them still painfully hard before he grasped his neck with his free hand. 

Timothy could feel his pulse hammering away against his grip. A thudding, thunderous sound that rushed straight to his head. He thought he would have whimpered, if he could, but no sound would emerge from his open mouth. 

His boss’s face leered close. It had never occurred to him how truly unsettling that mask was before. Maybe he had just got used to it. But as the waxen, poreless plains of its synthetic flesh loomed only inches away, twisted in a bloodless smile that didn’t crease right, he knew this was a sight that would haunt his nightmares for years to come. 

The face of a monster - heterochromatic eyes watching him intently as he writhed like a beetle pinned in place. 

Abruptly the pressure at his neck abated, and Timothy wheezed in a breath as giddying air flooded his lungs. He choked on it, caught between gasps and sobs. 

Jack’s hand traced the lines of his cheek almost lovingly. “Got that out of your system now? Cos I’m gonna need you to behave for the next part.”

He took another shuddering breath. “D-don’t. Please. You don’t have to.”

It was a pitiful sound, even to his own ears, and Jack remained unmoved. 

“Yes I do. I have to know you can take it,” he told him. “I have to know you’ve got what it takes to be Handsome Jack. I have to see it.”

The hand that held the brand raised, bringing the heated metal up to his eyeline. Timothy turned his head away. He pressed it into the back of the chair, the leathery material sticking to his clammy skin. His heart was beating so fast he felt it might explode out of his chest.

“Please! Please, I’ll do anything you want. Anything! Just don’t… d-don’t-”

“Shhhh, this will only take a moment.”

A rough hand grasped his hair, yanking his head round and holding it in place. He couldn’t even focus on Jack. The only thing his eyes wanted to absorb was the glowing shape of the vault symbol that hovered before him. Inch by agonising inch the brand crept closer, and there was nothing he could do. 

His legs skidded uselessly against the floor. His wrists were rubbed raw and bloody. He could feel the heat rolling off it as sweat beaded on his face.

Searching for anything to bargain with Timothy was struck by one final, desperate thought.

“T-the bomb!” he cried. “There’s-there’s a bomb in my face, i-if you-”

“I know what I’m doing. You just keep reeeal still, alright?” 

The brand met flesh and Timothy screamed.

Consciousness came in fits and waves. Most of what he remembered was pain. The rest was a blur of voices and light that he couldn’t find the will to construe into something tangible, choosing instead to let himself sink back into the merciful oblivion that waited for him.

He didn’t know how much time passed. 

What he did know was that when he woke in full, he did not find himself lying in medical, but in his own room. It took him several minutes to work up the courage to move, and when he did he only shifted his head slightly to the side so that he could read the clock on his bedside table. Midday. No way to tell the date without finding his ECHO. He didn’t have the stomach for that just yet.

His face still felt like it was burning. His left eye saw only darkness. Timothy knew what that meant, but the horror was dulled by the plodding, lethargic pace of his own thoughts. Was he drugged or still in shock? What difference did it make? What difference did anything make? His capacity to care was conspicuously lacking, all he wanted in that moment was to surrender to sleep once more, to let it all fade to black, but no matter what he tried there was no shying away from the present. No running from the steady, throbbing pain that seemed to burrow right through the meat of him until it bit into his very bones.

When his shaking fingers found their way to his face they touched the soft surface of a dressing.

The image of Jack’s own visage flared unbidden in his mind - the symbol of the vault scorched in hideous, smouldering welts across his once handsome features. Worse, though, was the memory of the smell… the scent of burning human flesh… not only Jack’s now, but his… The hiss and bubble of skin melting beneath heated metal.

Timothy felt sick.

Closing his one functional eye he tried once again to let oblivion take him. Anything to escape the memory. Anything to flee from the desperate, gnawing agony that pawed at his ruined face, left him stiff and drawing in short, shallow breaths to keep from agitating the wound. 

But the darkness would not take him.

There was a doctor who visited him sometimes. He didn’t wear a nametag, and Timothy didn’t ask him who he was. Speaking meant moving his lips, and that only meant more pain. 

He would enter a few times a day, change the dressing on Timothy’s face and inject him with some kind of medication. Then for a blissful hour or two he would feel nothing at all.

All too soon it would fade though and he would come crashing back to his own body, like the teeth of a trap snapping shut around him, holding him in place no matter how he thrashed. 

The doctor brought him food too but it always went untouched.

Timothy didn’t eat. He could barely persuade himself to sip water, even the subtle motion of his lips felt like it was scraping the flesh from his face, sending a fresh wave of agony coursing through him. Possibly he would have expired like that, lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling while counting down the hours until his next dose of medication, but after the fourth day even that choice was taken from him.

Nisha straddled him and pinned him down with expert efficiency, gripping his jaw with one hand while she used the other to shovel food down his throat. 

“Can’t have you starving,” she told him sweetly. “Jack spent a lot of money on you.”

It would have been kinder if his protests fell on deaf ears, but if anything Nisha seemed to lap them up. Drink in his pain like it was nectar. His tears soaked through the dressing that covered the ruined flesh of his face and stung sharp enough he nearly passed out.

Timothy took the hint after that. He fed himself, choking down small bites regardless of how much it hurt. 

The doctor never mentioned the incident and Timothy thought it was better that way. He wondered if Jack would have the man killed after his job was done - punishment for seeing the truth of what lay beneath the mask. He wondered if Jack had killed the doctors who attended to his own injury after Elpis. He’d never thought to check.

Eating regular meals at least had the benefit of filling him with something akin to energy, and he began to leave his bed in favour of pacing the confines of his quarters. Sometimes he would make his way to the bathroom mirror, but he always swerved away at the last second. Sometimes, instead, he would sit at his desk with his ECHO in his hands and stare blankly at the screen. 

He never checked the door. The notion of finding it locked was one he’d rather not grapple with. And if it were unlocked… well, Timothy had no idea where he would go.

The wounds to his face were barely beginning to heal when they dragged him back to medical to replace his left eye, and fit him with his own mask. Despite his distaste for surgery, it granted him a few sweet hours of dreamless sleep, and afterward he was doped up on enough pain killers that he completely forgot why the whole thing was supposed to bother him.

He remembered the next day, of course, but by then it was too late to change a thing. 

Left with nothing but further time to stew, he braved the mirror.

Why he expected anything else Timothy didn’t know, but the face that stared back at him was a perfect replica of Jack - the masked version - all traces of the ruined flesh beneath hidden behind pasty, synthetic skin.

A mask for a mask. His third face, he supposed. 

And it hit him, then, the absurdity of it… all that had been done to him for a face no one would even see. 

Alone in his room, Timothy laughed, but it was not a joyous sound.

He’d defied Jack once. Just once. At the time it had felt monumental, meaningful, but looking back Timothy could only think how pitifully small the gesture was. 

One soldier. One life spared against thousands lost.

But at the time… at the time, he’d only known that he didn’t want to pull the trigger. Yes he’d killed people before, because you kind of had to fight back when people were trying to shoot you, but it was different when someone was weaponless and pleading for their life. 

He had said, “I’m not you, Jack.”

For just a second he’d felt like he had won, somehow, like this was drawing a line. He wished he could have stuck to it. Maybe then it would mean something, and not be his last, childish act of rebellion before he bent the knee like the coward he was. 

Jack asked him to jump, and he asked how high… because the alternative was… well, he knew Jack well enough to understand that the alternative wasn’t an option. He’d seen first hand what Jack could do to people. He’d had his own face disfigured, felt his own flesh melting away, and that hadn’t even been Jack when he was angry. He’d seen what the man could do.

So, Jack asked him to jump, and Timothy asked how high, and he hated himself for it.

It barely registered to him when Nisha and Wilhelm’s presence on Helios became a rare occurrence. He supposed at some point he’d stopped caring. He got very good at not caring. In fact, he’d didn’t even blinked when the first new bodydouble appeared, just carried on with his job and left it to Jack to fill in the blanks when he decided it was relevant.

The last of the team from Elpis crumbled away, and Timothy was left alone to drown in a sea of chiseled jaws and heterochromatic eyes. 

There were bad nights. Nights when he woke sweating and screaming, with bile rising in his throat. And there were nights too when he came back from a particularly bloody job and went to stare at his reflection in the mirror with his hands clasping the bathroom sink until they went numb. Then he would go and stare at his gun, as if he actually had the courage. But he never did.

His life was a fucking joke, and he still wanted to live - maybe that was the biggest joke of all.

He never wrote anymore.

“Which one are you again?”

Jack knew. He was the only goddamned one left on Helios who knew. It was always a game to him though, to keep him on his toes, spark that little voice of doubt in the back of Timothy’s head that wondered if he even existed anymore in anything more than concept. 

Jack liked to remind people they weren’t important. He hadn’t even bothered to number the bodydoubles chronologically, or in any system that mattered at all. Just random numbers and letters, just in case they hadn’t figured out how little he cared.

Timothy sighed. “21-c.”

“Twenty-one… twenty-one…” Jack mused, like he really was struggling to place a memory. Then he snapped his figures and laughed. “Oh, I’ve got it now! You’re the little wimp that cried first time I sent you out on a mission with Nisha.”

“Yup. That’d be me,” Timothy said miserably. There was no point trying to defend his pride, Jack would only make a game of that too, and attempting to push the blame onto Jack’s girlfriend was buying a one way ticket to a very bad time.

“Well, champ, today’s your lucky day… Been working on a little side project, a place that could do with a few handsome faces to liven it up. What do you say to a change of scenery, eh?”

“Sure, boss. Gotta share the handsomeness around, am I right?”

“That’s the spirit!” Jack slapped a hand on his shoulder in an almost friendly gesture, but it lingered just a little too long, fingers straying to the back of his neck. Timothy kept perfectly still until Jack released him. He’d learned long ago not to flinch. “Anyways, I’m gonna need that watch back before you head out.”

Despite himself Timothy tensed. “The watch?”

“Yeah, don’t make me repeat myself pumpkin, you’ll spoil the moment. Hand it over.”

The watch only ever left Timothy’s wrist when he showered. Otherwise, it had remained a constant companion since the day he’d put it on, his personal trump card any time a fight got too dicy. One press of a button and he had a pair of digital decoys to lay down cover fire or distract the enemy while he ducked out and patched up his wounds. 

Jack had never shown much interest in it before. Why now? Why strip him of his best weapon before he sent him off on a new assignment?

But he couldn’t ask. Nor could he refuse, not when it came to Jack. One way or another the man always got what he wanted. 

Slowly, Timothy undid the clasp and peeled the watch away. He held it out, letting it drop into Jack’s waiting palm while he forced himself to keep his stance relaxed and his expression the perfect shade of nonchalant.

Jack barely glanced at the device before he tucked it away. “Sweet. Now, get your ass down to C-deck, have something there for you before you head out.”

That was where medical was housed. A cold dread pooled in his stomach, but Timothy just nodded. “Whatever you say.”

Jack replaced his hand. It wasn’t even the worst thing to happen to him - he’d already had full body surgery, a bomb implanted in his face, DNA injected into his system, and a red hot brand seared into his flesh. It shouldn’t have been a big deal by that point.

But it still hurt like a bitch, and waking up in medical always left him with a powerful nausea that has nothing to do with the medication.

Just another piece of him, gone. 

At least the new hand was grafted competently, and it was sophisticated enough tech that he hardly noticed a difference in his motor controls. He couldn’t feel it though. It could pick up pressure, but no matter what surface he ran it across there was no texture, no sensation of hot or cold, nothing but the knowledge that there should be.

“I call it my ‘winning hand’,” Jack told him, with no small amount of pride, “all you schmucks up on the casino are going to have one. Gives you VIP access, the whole package. You’ll be living the high life, kiddo, enjoying luxury the Handsome Jack way! Consider it a reward for… I don’t know, you done anything useful recently? No? Elpis then, let’s say Elpis…”

Timothy was still staring at the hand. 

“Well?” Jack asked him. “Can I get a thank you?”

Timothy was tempted not to speak, but he knew better. There was an underlying note of danger in the man’s tone, one he’d learned to recognise, and even a hesitation was risky.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re damn right! God you people are so ungrateful sometimes… if you didn’t look so handsome, I’d airlock the lot of you.”

It was only then that the anger hit. A rage that rose too late to have any meaning, bringing with it visions of all the things he wished he’d done. Pictures of him drawing his pistol and sending a bullet cleanly through Jack’s insufferable, smug face. Strangling him with his own watch chain. Beating him to death with the nearest blunt instrument.

But as always, the thoughts went nowhere. Timothy Lawrence was a coward, and so he let the fire burn out the same way it inevitably always did and sat in silence while his boss bragged about how much profit his latest venture would churn up.

Just like that, he left Helios behind, shipped out with an accompaniment of fellow doublegangers for Jack’s shiny new casino. 

Timothy spent the journey staring out the window into the vast emptiness of space. He thought that if he had to describe what he was feeling, it would be something like that view… a nothingness that stretched on for lightyears.

Chapter Text

The Handsome Jackpot, as it was so tastelessly dubbed, was yet another testament to Jack’s planet sized ego. You couldn’t walk ten feet without being assaulted by some image of the man, be it the giant golden statues, posters, holographic projections, or the bodydoubles themselves. Timothy found the whole thing a gaudy, needless show, but he kept the opinion to himself. 

In all honesty he wasn’t surprised. Jack had always had a tendency to slap his face on anything he could. The moment Hyperion had fallen under his rule, Helios had undergone an immediate transformation as his aggressive rebranding campaign scorched every trace of the old company and its management from the station, replacing it with his own blatant self-worship.

At least on the casino he didn’t have to deal with the cutthroat, corporate politics of the business world, or the violent machinations of his boss. Here he was remanded to the role of mascot, just another part of the scenery for the guests to gawk at.

Perhaps if he still had any pride left it would have stung. As it was, Timothy had learned to leave such notions behind a long time ago. He accepted his task. He turned his broad grin on the patrons and spouted Jack-isms for them, shook hands, signed postcards and kept them spending. Watched as their debt slowly wracked up. 

It was easy work.

It also left him with a lot more free time than he was accustomed to. 

For the first day or two he’d simply sat in the quarters they’d allocated to him. This was what he normally did when not on duty - wait for the next time Jack would call him, send him off on his next job. 

Jack didn’t call him anymore though. His ECHO was silent, a useless weight with an empty blinking screen. He’d almost convinced himself that it must be faulty - that Jack must be furious, foaming at the mouth as Timothy ‘ignored’ his instructions.

When he’d taken it down to what passed for tech support though they’d assured him it was fully functional, and had gone to the point of contacting him themselves through it to put the matter to rest. 

With nothing else to do he returned to waiting.

It was almost two weeks before it finally began to sink in… that the call would never come, that Jack had tossed him aside like a toy he’d grown bored of.

Finally, tentatively, he began to leave his quarters in his off hours. 

Exploring was the only thing he could think to do. He mapped out every inch of the casino, familiarised himself with each district and all the nooks and crannies it hid. Soon he had it all committed to memory, from the glitz and glam of the vice district to the giddying open drops of the impound lot. 

Once this was done he was back to the same conundrum of before - an abundance of time, and a total lack of direction. He floundered for a while, pacing, staring out windows, until he remembered the cybernetic hand that had been grafted onto him. If he had VIP access, it made sense that he might as well use it.

Timothy developed a taste for hard liquor. Perhaps taste was the wrong word… He’d nearly choked on his first glass, but he found that with a bit of practice he could keep it down with barely a grimace. Just a little something to help him sleep at first, but soon the allure of a fine bottle of scotch became a constant companion regardless of the hour. It kept his thoughts pleasantly vague. Kept him from dwelling, kept him from running circles in his own mind when he already knew he was going nowhere. 

The experience was liberating in a way… Jack had never let him drink. He needed Timothy sharp, ready to leap into action the moment he found a task for him, be it boardroom meetings or good old fashioned homicide. 

His duties on the casino were minimal though. He could drink himself into oblivion in the comfort of his quarters so long as he sobered up before it was his turn to wander around posing for photos and anything else the guests required. 

At least scotch sounded refined. A gentleman’s drink. He could almost kid himself into thinking he was becoming a man of culture, not latching onto the first indulgence he could find to fill his embarrassingly open schedule. 

The hours before his shift were always bad though. Then, the pleasant fog would fade and the world would sharpen around him, leaving him restless and fidgety as he tried to avoid looking at the nearest bottle. 

These were the moments he most desperately needed to occupy. 

A good two months into his term on the casino he found his answer. He started writing again. Just a little exercise at first, where he would recount everything he could remember about himself before. His name. Where he’d grown up. His mum. His first pet. His favourite food. And when he came to a blank, he would keep going, move on to the next thing he could recall, however stupid it was, anything so that the words kept flowing. Then, when he was done, he would read it all back to himself. 

It always felt like reading the life of a stranger.

Words were tangible though. They existed in a very solid way, and reading them, feeling the paper in his hands, it made him feel like maybe Timothy Lawrence was a person and not just a ghost in his own head. 

Jack visited the casino sometimes. He preferred to stay in his tower, away from wretches he bled for cash, somewhere he could kick back and treat as his own private getaway while counting his riches. 

Timothy always sobered up just in case, but even when Jack ventured down it was never for him. Which was good. No matter what he did he couldn’t shake the lingering part of himself that still expected something though - a task, a torment, a test… all the things he’d resigned himself to long ago.

He never slept on those nights. 

Then Jack would disappear without any real fanfare, and he would be back to the same routine - playing the role of a man he despised, and drowning himself in liquor the moment he was off the clock. Maybe finding a hooker or two if it was a good day. Maybe passing out on the bathroom floor if it wasn’t.

Writing snatches of a life he could barely recall for no one’s eyes but his own. 

Sometimes the old anger resurfaced… a fit of hatred for the man who had ruined his life. That man who’d robbed him of his identity, his morals, his dignity, his purpose… 

And maybe worst of all, the man who’d left him here, trapped in an endless cycle of tedium, slowly destroying himself because he couldn’t fathom what to do when he wasn’t blindly following orders. 

Tossed aside, but not freed - no future but whatever cage he was gifted. 

If he was in a pragmatic mood he was willing to admit it was a pretty cushy gig. Fancy food, high class entertainment, drinks on the house and no gunfights. 

It was just that he had a bomb in his face that would explode if he took one step off the place, and a perpetual terror anything he tried to build would be torn down the second Jack glanced in his direction.

So he drank. And he wrote. And it wasn’t really living, but he doubted he’d been doing that for a long time.

Wilhelm was the first to die. Timothy didn’t know what to make of it when the news reached him. He’d never exactly got on with the guy, if anything they tolerated each other, because that was the politest way Timothy could think to put it. Wilhelm liked money, and killing things, and getting shiny new augments, and not much else. It made conversation a little stilted. 

But still, they’d fought side by side… had even saved each other once or twice, even if it was only a job… 

He was someone from the time Timothy liked to think of as ‘the start’. Back when he was adjusting to his new role, and Jack hadn’t flown completely off the rails. Back when things were still bad, but not as completely terrible as they could have been.

He didn’t even think he missed Wilhelm. But… he was someone who had known him, maybe not as Timothy, but as something more than a handsome face in a sea of doublegangers. And he was gone.

Nisha was the second to die. Timothy was pretty sure she deserved it. He’d always been a little terrified of her, and not the good kind of terrified, the kind where he had the feeling she was constantly contemplating skinning him alive to stave off boredom. She had a sadistic streak that matched Jack’s own, and an equal taste for blood. 

He’d been relieved when she’d left Helios to run her own town down on Pandora. Her visits back were blissfully brief, and she was usually too busy with Jack to spare him the time of day. He definitely didn’t miss her.

But… she’d helped him with his aim, and had always had his back in a fight… even beyond that she’d had a knack for telling him and Jack apart. Had only failed once. And sure, mostly she used it to tease or torment him, but she still knew, and that had been… oddly reassuring. In a demented ‘Tim you’re clutching at staws’ kind of way.

And now she was dead, and he supposed that was fine. At the very least it would make Jack furious, and a sick little part of him relished the idea, because anything that made Jack’s life worse felt like a sorely needed dose of karma. A balancing of the scales. 

And it could never be enough, but this was what he was reduced to… sitting back watching with his bitter, vindictive sense of satisfaction flaring up like it meant anything… like he wasn’t just a coward, trying to taste victory in someone else’s work.

But what else was he supposed to do?

He was eating a kebab when the news hit like a freight train. Handsome Jack. Dead. Just like that. And Timothy Lawrence didn’t know what he was feeling.

He left the restaurant in a daze.

The news was spreading quickly around the casino, he could tell by the sudden nervous look in people’s faces, the growing chatter, but he paid it no mind. He just kept walking.

Perhaps he should be feeling joy… or relief… years of his life suffering at the hands of a maniac, and suddenly he was free. But the news was so abrupt, and it felt hollow… like it was missing a piece he hadn’t even known he needed.

He’d always thought… no, dreamed that when the moment hit, it would be sweet… filled with all the righteousness it deserved. Maybe he’d wanted to be there… to see it… to watch him suffer, finally see with his own eyes the monster of his nightmares bleeding out and pleading, as he’d made so many others do… 

Maybe he’d wanted to kill him himself, even if he’d never had the guts.

But the news had hit his Echo while he was eating, and none of it had felt real. He should be celebrating, but when he got back to his apartment all his body wanted to do was sit and stare at the wall. Why? Was he so messed up he couldn’t even enjoy the one moment he’d been longing for ever since the Lost Legion, since the brand, since the countless murders he’d carried out to save his own sorry skin, the movies, the loss of his entire fucking identity? 

His life had revolved around Jack for years - there had been nothing else.

And now there truly was nothing.

What was a man supposed to do with news like that?

In the end he drank an entire bottle of scotch. Then he went to visit Trent, because Trent really only cared about one thing, and Timothy thought it would be nice to think about only one thing. To not worry about what his life even meant at this point, or thoughts, or feelings, or everything else that wanted to drag him down and bury him.

He wished he could say the distraction worked. His memory of the night was foggy though, and when he woke up it was with a splitting headache, and a sensation like emptiness in his chest.

A week after Handsome Jack’s death, the casino was on edge. This was the point where the lights went out. This was the point where people started to realise they couldn’t leave. This was when they noticed that no-one else was coming in. 

Timothy was busy worrying that the supply of top shelf booze was probably going to run dry. As little good as drinking himself numb did, it eased the panic a little, because he’d realised it too. He couldn’t step off of the casino without Jack’s authorization, and Jack was… well, very dead. Remembering that you had a bomb in your face was always a little panic inducing.

It was a surprise when one of the other body doubles approached him.

Typically they rarely spent much time together, because Jack felt it ruined the illusion, but there had been enough of them that they occasionally crossed paths up on Helios. He’d seen several of them around the casino too. Mostly they just gave each other a nod - a little acknowledgement, nothing that would risk going off script.

This double actually seemed to want to talk though. He shuffled right up, helping himself to the barstool at Timothy’s side, elbow propped up on the counter and body angled toward him.

Timothy said nothing.

After several seconds the double seemed to realise this wasn’t about to change, and he took the initiative. “Could use your help, if you’re interested.”

Timothy gave him a long stare. “With what?”

“Look…” the other double said, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. “We’re in the same boat, and it’s a really shitty boat, I get it... but if no one does anything this place is going to fall into chaos. I’ve been talking to a few of the others. We’ve got VIP access, we can use that to make sure everyone’s taken care of. Get them food, supplies… set up some kind of system. There’s enough of us that we can probably spread out across the districts…”

Timothy couldn’t help the sneer that pulled at his lips. “And take power for ourselves?”

“No, it’s not like that! Man, come on, we’re not him, not all of us are terrible... 44-B is a bit of a weirdo but no one’s seen him in days anyway.” The man actually sounded offended, and Timothy almost believed him. Wanted to. But honestly, he wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic given how his life was going so far.

“What I’m saying is we can actually do some good,” the double continued. “Get a society going before the looting starts.”

“And then what?”

The double shrugged. “I don’t know, live in peace and harmony? If we’re stuck in this damn casino, the least we can do is make sure it doesn’t go to complete shit. We make sure everyone survives. We get by. Work out the rest later. Beats wallowing in misery, am I right?”

He sent Timothy a wry smile, as if it were a joke they were both privy to, before spreading his arms wide in a gesture of expectation. “Well, are you in?”

Timothy didn’t reply immediately. He sat there for a moment, drinking in the silence as he tried to settle on an emotion. For some reason it was anger that flared. 

He wanted to blame it on the DNA, just an echo of a man ready to snap without warning, but maybe it really was all him. Tired, and bitter, and faced with all the things he wasn’t anymore.

He pulled Handsome Jack around him like armour, and when he spoke it was with all the contempt, all the mockery he’d practiced until he didn’t even need to think about it anymore. 

“You must be… completely friggin’ stupid if you think any of that’s going to work. I give it a month tops, kiddo, then they’ll be peeling your face off for a pizza party. You think they want to take handouts from a Handsome Jack knock-off? Orders? News flash, he’s the reason everyones stuck on this friggin’ pile of space garbage in the first place!”
The body double pursed his lips. “That’s not our fault.”

Timothy laughed. “You think they’ll care? One month, kiddo… count it down if you like.”

He turned back to his drink, effectively ignoring the other double and whatever expression he might be wearing.

Several seconds later he heard the scrape of the barstool as the man got up. “You could have just said no.”

Yes, he could have. Timothy knew he could have. But he had nothing more to say, no apology, no retort, so he sat and waited until the sound of footsteps finally retreated. Then he was alone.

He tried to hold on to the anger, relish it rather than surrender to the wave of misery and shame that followed. 

Maybe the rest of the doubles weren’t that bad. Better than him, even. What did Timothy do in the face of a life sentence but drink and pity himself and curse every one of his decisions? They actually wanted to do something. Make a change. Help the people he hadn’t even given a second glance… god, he was so used to pretending not to care that maybe he really had stopped caring somewhere along the way… it was easier, wasn’t it? Easier when it was just yourself.

Perhaps the other body doubles really would turn the casino around… make something of it. That would be a nice world to live in. It wasn’t the world he deserved though, and after so many years under Jack’s thumb it certainly wasn’t the one he expected.

In the days that followed Timothy kept his distance from the other doublegangers. He watched though, from the sidelines… whether this was out of a lingering sense of guilt or a morbid interest in the inevitable disaster that was sure to occur, he couldn’t say. Or maybe he was just short on entertainment since the fate of the casino had brought many establishments to a standstill as they tried to figure out the safest way to proceed.

On the whole, it was a boring spectacle. Things went ahead just as the double who had spoken to him had said they would. They used their access to the casino’s VIP supplies to make sure everyone was fed, provided rooms to those who couldn’t afford them, and doled out enough necessities to make people as comfortable as possible while under involuntary lockdown. 

Even their rulership seemed a vague and ill-defined thing - they didn’t throw around commands or demand obedience - people just gravitated to the atmosphere of camaraderie and hope they seemed to be trying to foster.

Timothy hated them a little for it, but mostly because it ran in stark contrast to his own behavior. 

Jack was dead, and there they were, the men with his faces, helping the people his boss would have happily trampled beneath his feet. Meanwhile Timothy did precisely what he’d done while Jack was alive. Nothing.

Here he was, waiting… and waiting for what, exactly? Someone to fly in and rescue him from this dump? Orders that would never come? The day he finally drank himself to an early grave?

There was no direction now except the one he chose, and languishing in various states of inebriation was increasingly beginning to seem like an inadequate path. 

Maybe he should join the other doubles. Maybe that was the right thing to do, the honorable thing. A small step toward making up for all his past mistakes. 

He couldn’t quite bring himself to make that leap though, but he managed to cut down on the scotch at least, and from there settled for smaller undertakings to keep himself busy.

He found himself a change of clothes in one of the many casino gift shops. Still Hyperion branded, but far better than the alternative. Every single piece of the Handsome Jack costumes he’d been issued he fed down the nearest recycle chute. 

For the first time in years he walked around in something he’d picked out himself, not Jack’s bizarre interpretation of ‘smart casual’, and it felt… strange. But in a good way. There was something uniquely humanising about putting on an outfit that wasn’t an exact match for over two dozen look-alikes. 

Still riding high on the coattails of the experience he nearly shaved his hair off as an act of true rebellion, a deviation from which there would be no return, but lost his conviction at the last moment and set the trimmer aside. He’d have plenty of opportunity to work his way up to something drastic later if he was feeling it. For the moment, it was enough just to be out of those stupid waistcoats and sneakers. 

The body language was harder to shrug off. It had become ingrained in him, and it took a conscious effort not to square his shoulders and swagger around with Jack’s customary overconfidence. 

That was the work of the DNA again, Timothy decided, because that was totally how DNA worked and far better than the possibility that he’d forgotten how he used to move. That what was once an act had become his natural state…

He practiced little habits, nervous tapping feet or twitching fingers, anything that came to mind until something would click and he could add it to his repertoire. A patchwork of traits that might once have been his own. 

There was a philosophical question posed once that spoke of a ship. Over the years of wear and tear that it suffered the battered pieces of its body were replaced, one by one. A new hull, a new engine, a pristine windscreen, modern wings… and the day would come, eventually, when not a piece of the old vessel remained. On that day, was it still the same ship?

The question plagued him more than it should. He found himself thumbing through his writing, reading the same words he’d scribbled on repeat to fill the empty hours. The last vestiges of the man he’d been before, proof of his own existence in a form he could grasp tight, even when he struggled to align it with the present.

An identity crisis did have the benefit of distracting him though, and it wasn’t… all bad. Sometimes it even felt good, when he parsed together something resembling Timothy Lawrence, a facet of his being that was distinct and removed from the role he sought to shed. 

To realise that… yes, cat posters were kind of cute, absolutely adorable even, and there was no one to stop him standing there and staring at them anymore. Or that he had a penchant to sleep in without his alarm, and forgo breakfast in favour of beginning his day with a hearty brunch. Little things. The building blocks of a real person.

And there were times he would go back to watching the other body doubles, and hate them all again, for how easily they dedicated themselves to the aid of others while he pottered about slowly unearthing his own personality. For their optimism. For the fact they still had yet to fail. 

Conversely, there were times he resented himself, and entertained daydreams of ditching his solitary lifestyle and dipping his toes in the waters of their fellowship. Tried to picture a world not shackled by his fatalistic outlook. 

He never closed the distance between them. 

Timothy supposed the option would be there though, if he needed it. If there was one thing a life sentence granted it was a plentitude of time. Perhaps the years would mellow him out, shave off the sharp edges of his distrust and cynicism, shape him into a better man. Perhaps he would find it in himself to believe in something again…

Or… perhaps not. His track record was hardly encouraging. 

Regardless, rushing in was a fool’s errand.

The doubles fell on the same day the lights came back on. The casino roused from its low power slumber, and all the neon signs and flickering holograms and digital billboards shone in sudden, blinding glory, breathing life back into the metal husk that was their tomb. So too did the security systems - the gleaming metal of every combat bot, every auto-turret, every drone… 

The peaceful society that had been slowly growing in the wake of Jack’s demise went down in a hail of gunfire and screams.
Watching over the carnage on the big screen was their newly declared overlord. Pretty Boy, as he purported to be called. 

His voice sounded like grease. There was an oily quality to it that reminded Timothy of the sort of person that threw a fresh coat of paint on a stolen vehicle and tried to pass it off as new, and was probably wanted on multiple accounts of fraud. His slicked back hair and thin mustache didn’t improve matters, even if you looked past his squashed up features and the fact he’d introduced himself in the midst of a massacre.

The casino was under his rule now, he declared - every debt was his to collect, and anyone trying to undermine his system would end up riddled full of bullets and regret. He controlled the casino. From Jack’s tower he could set the security on any target he pleased with the push of a button. No one could stop him.

Timothy, a seasoned survivor by necessity, took that as his cue to lay low and let things play out. What little he saw of the ensuing chaos only encouraged him to double down on the decision.

Unable to exact their revenge on Pretty Boy, the people who had once readily accepted handouts from the body doubles instead turned on them like rabid animals. Those few that had escaped the earlier slaughter unscathed were torn to pieces.

It was like Timothy had said… Jack was the reason everyone was trapped on the casino. When people started looking for someone to blame, they didn’t have to look far.

It was a pity he didn’t earn any real satisfaction for being right.

Timothy didn’t know what to expect the second time another body double approached him. It certainly wasn’t the steel pipe that cracked into the side of his face. 

He barely managed to catch himself as he hit the ground, jarring his elbow but sparing himself the pain of smashing his forehead against the metal walkway.

Static buzzed in his ears. He thought he could taste blood.

“Ow,” he managed, running his tongue over his teeth to check they were all there, “what is wrong with you?”

Rather than reply, the double swung the pipe again, forcing Timothy to roll to the side to avoid the blow. The sickening clang as it hit the space he’d been in reverberated all the way through his skull.

“Seriously, what the hell?” Timothy snapped, kicking out at the doubles legs in an attempt to unbalance him. The man stumbled for a second.

Trying to stagger back to his feet while he had the chance, Timothy reached for his gun. The pipe cracked into his ribs before he even got his fingers around the grip.

His breath left him. He hit the ground in a blur. 

Gasping against the cold metal floor he tried to persuade his body to move. He couldn’t lie still, knew better than that, had learned better than that. His side was in agony though and each breath was laced with pain, thoughts foggy around the edges when they should have been sharp. Maybe the hit to his head had been worse than he’d thought. He needed to move… had to move...

He managed to roll over so that he could at least see the other double, but he couldn’t react fast enough to stop the pipe smacking into his cheekbone with enough force to knock him senseless.

Timothy saw stars. 

There was still sound, somewhere distant, muffled and faded against the ringing of his ears. There were shapes, shifting, distorted and indistinguishable as his eyes failed to focus. He felt as if he were underwater. He felt tired. More than anything he just wanted to sink into that oblivion, to let the world slip through his fingers because he knew that would hurt far less, would be far easier, but some stubborn part of him refused. It found the pain and latched on to it like it was an anchor. 

He could feel every bruised rib, the pulsing of his skull, the blood leaking through the cracks in his mask and dripping in a steady trail. It was the sharp edge he needed to cut through the fog in his head and drag himself kicking and screaming into the present.

Timothy found himself flat on his back, staring up at the body double. The pipe was gone. Instead, the man straddled him, and Timothy realised to his horror that his hands were going for his neck.

“This is all your fault,” the double hissed as his fingers closed around Timothy’s throat, lips contorted in a vicious snarl, and for just a second… for a split second Timothy thought he actually knew. That somehow he had found out all about Elpis, about his part in Jack’s rise to power. All the times he could have struck back if he’d been just a little braver. A little wiser. How many lives could have been saved? How much disaster averted, if he had been more than the coward he was?

But that was impossible… the only people who knew exactly what had transpired on Elips had been there, the tale wasn’t one Jack, or anyone else, had been keen to share. People didn’t know him as Timothy Lawrence, they knew him only for his face… 

And then he realised, and Timothy almost felt like laughing. Of all the people he’d expected to hate him for that face, it was never another body double.

Any irony he could dredge from the moment was wasted though, because the man was absolutely trying to strangle him and there was no way he was about to die, not like that, not someone who looked like that. It was too close to his nightmares.

His first instinct was to grapple for the man’s wrists - anything to get them away from his neck. Struggle as he might though he couldn’t pull them off, nor loosen them enough to snatch a desperate breath. Timothy choked in silence, legs scraping at the ground but unable to find any kind or traction. 

Abandoning that avenue, he tried to reach for his gun, but it was strapped to his thigh and the double was on top of him and very much in the way. He wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, he stretched out an arm to fumble blindly around him in the hopes of finding the pipe. 

Blood was roaring in his ears. His pulse, lightning quick, did nothing to help. 

He did not want to die. He would not die. 

But he could not breathe, and black spots danced across his vision like ominous clouds gathering on the horizon. His fingers grasped uselessly and found nothing but air.

He had no weapons, he had no time, all he had was the same desperate, pitiful need he’d always had, to cling on to existence by whatever means possible. 

He went for the face.

The double flinched back, hands leaving Timothy’s neck as he tried to defend his eyes. That was all the opening Timothy needed.

He could shift his torso, finally throw his weight around, and in one practiced move flipped them both over so that the other double crashed into the ground with a look of astonishment.

Then it was Timothy’s hands around his neck, squeezing. Choking the life out of him.

The double fought back as best he could but unfortunately for him, Timothy had a lot more practice killing people, and he knew better than to make the same mistakes. He pinned the man’s arms beneath him before he had a chance to put them to use, and kept his weight where it was difficult to shift. He did not let go. 

Staring down at the struggling man, Timothy tried to see what the double had - tried to imagine it really was Handsome Jack, writhing and gasping in futility while the hatred in his eyes turned to fear. The chance to kill a nightmare, to take every ounce of fury and pain and suffering and pour it into one act of vengeance, the catharsis they so longed for. 

It was only an illusion though. The double was a fool - he could kill the face he so despised, but it would always still be waiting for him, only a mirror away. Timothy might have pitied him if it wasn’t for the anger bubbling under his skin.

After everything he’d endured. Everything. This idiot, this entitled shitbag thought he was the one who deserved some kind of compensation, as if he’d ever had to put up with Jack the way Timothy had. As if he could ever know how bad it could really get.

And as he watched the man’s struggles grow weaker and weaker, watched the light fade from his eyes until he finally fell limp, Timothy felt a surge of satisfaction.

DNA, Timothy told himself furiously, it was the DNA, it had to be, it was the only possibility, but he let go of the double’s neck as if it burned him. He shoved himself away from the body, but his first attempt to stagger to his feet got him nowhere, and he sank back down to his knees with no further strength to rise.

His hands were shaking. His breath was coming in pants. 

It wasn’t his fault, it was just the DNA… 

That thought became a mantra, echoed again and again over the next few minutes until his heart finally began to slow. He prayed it was the truth.

When he looked back at the body double now he felt only a profound sense of loss… he didn’t know the man’s name. He’d never know. Another life, drowned in the shadow of Handsome Jack, with no one to mourn and no one to remember. Maybe the double had tried to kill him, but nobody deserved to go out like that, as if they’d never existed in the first place.

With a sigh, Timothy laid a hand on the corpse’s chest. He closed his eyes. “Picked the wrong line, pal,” he said softly. “We both did.”

The casino seemed to have found its rhythm, and its rhythm was chaos. For all that Pretty Boy claimed rulership over the place he did little to police the behaviour of the guests, and even less to provide for them. Further destruction just added to their debt. As long as no one began to establish something he could conceive of as an opposition, he was content to sit back and let the rabble run amok. 

So the looting began. Honestly, Timothy didn’t think it would be long until people started eating each other. Hell, chances were that had already happened, somewhere - wasn’t like it would take much of a push.

It was almost funny, in a sick kind of way - that just when he thought his life had hit a standstill, it found a way to dig the shovel in and keep on burrowing. Jack’s legacy - the gift that kept on giving.

At least his VIP access made it a little easier to keep out of the way of the loosely formed roving gangs and their guns, hiding out in areas they couldn’t access and using the short-range VIP teleporters to cut down on time spent out in the open. 

If the option had been available to him he might have taken to the life of a hermit. Alas, supply runs necessitated he stuck his head out every few cycles. On those occasions he pulled his hood down as low as it would go and kept to the shadows, his gait hurried and purposeful as he catalogued each threat he passed, his hand hovering over his pistol.

Having survived this practice for several weeks, Timothy found the courage to make a detour through the vice district in the hopes of a well deserved bottle of scotch to soothe his nerves. Maybe check up on Trent while he was in the area. They weren’t close, but he owed him the courtesy of a quick social call just to see if he was alive. 

He should have learned by then, of course, that luck was never in his favour. Barely a dozen yards in and the air was split by the crack of gunfire and screams. 

Taking cover as best he could behind a nearby vending machine he peered out to assess the situation.

The scene appeared to be this: several thugs hauling their freshly stolen loot from a building with a door off its hinges, while exchanging shots with a woman who was shrieking expletives at them in a foreign language. There was no mistaking her fury. It burned in her eyes, smouldered in the snarl that graced her lips. 

Actually, a lot of things were burning, since she was wielding a Maliwan SMG and appeared to take a liberal approach to aim. 

He thought he recognised her vaguely - one of the casino’s many performers. Evidently her work hadn’t prepared her for fighting off packs of well armed looters, although she was doing better than a lot of people would while so greatly outnumbered.

Naturally they were right between Timothy and where he needed to go.

The smart thing to do… the smart thing… was to keep on walking. To turn around and slink off down the nearest alleyway before anyone noticed him. He could retreat to his latest hideout and come back once the heat had died down and the corpses were cooling.

This wasn’t his problem. There was no reason to go getting himself involved. He knew better than that.

Yet still, his feet refused to move…

Maybe there was a tiny spark of chivalry still buried deep within himself, or maybe a crazy part of him actually missed his combat days. The comfort of a perfectly weighted gun and the satisfaction as each bullet found its mark. The thrill and the fear, mingling together until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. 

Whatever the case he couldn’t leave, so with a string of curses under his breath Timothy pulled his pistol from his holster and advanced.

His first shot was clean - cleaving right through the back of the nearest thug’s skull. The man dropped without a sound. His second shot was less tidy, but only because he opted to take out a wrist rather than go for another killing blow. Give them the chance to run. To escape with their lives. 

It had been a long time since he’d been so generous.

Dropping his weapon, Timothy’s second target let out a sharp scream as he clutched the splintered mess of his wrist. His eyes went first to the performer, then cast about in confusion as they sought the true culprit. Timothy had almost reached him before the man finally picked him out from the decor he wove his way between.

A smart man would have recognised the threat - would have ducked for cover or called for help. The thug just reached for his grenade, so Timothy put him out of his misery. 

Two down. Six to go. 

Unfortunately, the element of surprise was well behind him, and as a bullet whisked past only inches from his ear he dove low and took shelter behind a nearby pillar.

His heart was pounding. Every muscle was taught, every nerve thrumming with anticipation. He felt more alive than he had in months. He was, Timothy decided, certifiably insane, but there was no denying how near death experiences really got the blood pumping. 

Another scream split the air and a victory cry from the performer followed. Peering out, he got a fleeting view of two approaching thugs before gunfire forced him back out of sight.

His hand reached automatically for his watch. He swore.

Of course, it was gone. He knew that. It was just that it was so instinctual, a habit drilled into him through countless skirmishes across the surface of Elpis. Trust Jack to strip him of his most valuable weapon right before his death. Asshole.

Changing tactics, he pulled an empty flask from the inside of his jacket and tossed it to the left just before he rolled to the right. The thugs took the bait and he managed to get a shot off and take down the larger of the two. The second twisted at the last second. Instead of the crippling blow he’d intended, the man scraped by with a grazed shoulder, and his gun whipped over to point at Timothy.

He never got the chance to pull the trigger. Nor did Timothy. 

Before either of them could move, a barrel by the thug’s leg exploded in a sudden roaring ball of flame, consuming the man whole. 

Laughter echoed across the floor. He realised it was the performer - an unhinged sound, but brimming with an almost childlike exuberance that defied the horrorshow he was witness to.

Swallowing down the urge to gag, he stepped past the charred remnants of the thug and made his way to her side. 

The remaining three went down fast. The performer clearly had little experience working as a team, but Timothy knew more than enough to compensate, and she never questioned him when he called out enemy positions or asked for coverfire. 

With his crew dead, the last thug finally took the hint and staggered away while clutching his bleeding arm. 

Timothy let him go. Like it made a difference, like his hands weren’t already stained bloody a thousand times over… But he felt a little better for it, catching his breath as the performer yelled taunts after the retreating man. There were enough corpses for one day.

He stood where he was, fingers picking at a hole in his jacket that a lucky bullet had scored while he watched her. She was pretty, in the right light… basking in the dying glow of the last flames that licked their way over the casino’s decor. It was that more than anything that sparked his memory.

“You’re Ember, right?” he said. “Caught one of your shows back before the whole… whatever this mess is.”

She turned to look at him, hip cocked to one side and her SMG hanging loosely at her other.

“Did you now? You enjoyed it, I hope?”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely, it was very… flamey. Look, not that it means anything, but I’m sorry about those guys… everyone’s losing their frickin’ minds in here, but there’s no reason to go destroying stuff like that.”

“It is a pity… the fire though, she is very beautiful, is she not?” she said.

Not the words Timothy would have chosen, but he supposed there was something about it, if only because of the way it made her smile. It took a certain strength of character to have your door busted down and your possessions strewn across the ground by armed men who would happily have seen you dead, and to still stroll through the rubble with such vivacity.

Stooping, she retrieved a necklace from a broken jewellery box and fastened it on before considering him again. 

The vivid blue of her eyes were intense. “Your face I recognise. Should I call you Jacque?”

“It’s-”

He almost said Jack. Almost. But he paused, took a moment to reconsider. Jack was dead. Finally gone, proper to god gone, and… and his contract meant fuck all. Who cared what he said now? Who was going to stop him?

And so instead, he stammered, “Timothy. It’s, uh, Timothy Lawrence.”

The name felt unfamiliar on his tongue, but in that moment he felt lighter than air.

“Timothy?” Ember mused. Her accent gave it an almost lyrical quality, but he didn’t think that was the only reason it sounded beautiful to him. When was the last time he’d heard someone call him that? His real name?

Probably Athena. He didn’t even know how long ago that was now.

“Yup. That’s me.” And still as awkward as ever. Great job, Tim.

If anything she just looked amused, maybe even a little pleased. “Well, Timothy, thank you for your help in clearing up the neighbourhood. Perhaps we can do this again sometime, no?”

And because Timothy’s brain was still catching up to several life changing epiphanies at once, all he had to say was, “Cool.”

Honestly, it was a wonder she didn’t burn him on the spot.

He didn’t think it was Ember that inspired him exactly, but maybe something about their fumbling first official meeting did something to shift his outlook. To really drive home the fact that, if he just stopped behaving like an asshole all the time, he could actually, just maybe, get to know a few people. He didn’t have to play at being Jack anymore. He didn’t have to worry about all the terrible things his boss might do to anyone he was foolish enough to try and forge a connection with.

Yes he was still trapped on the casino for the foreseeable future but that didn’t mean his life had reached the end of its track.

When he picked up his pen and paper this time he wrote something new. Not fragments of a distant past, disjointed and decaying in the threadbare tapestry of his mind, but whispers of something yet to be told.

He wrote of a man who could change his face to anything, and one day he looked in the mirror and realised he could not recall his own. It felt poignant somehow… but try as he might he could not find a fitting end for it.

Chapter Text

Every seventh cycle he and Ember shot target practice together. Timothy decided this was a Thursday, because he appreciated the normality of it, even if days of the week had very little meaning in space. 

So, he would pull his hood down low over his face and make his way over to the vice district to meet her, and they would line up empty bottles and take turns blasting them to pieces. Sometimes he brought some with him - evidence of a habit he hadn’t quite kicked. Sometimes he just left it to Ember to arrange. Always, he felt a little better for the company.

Her aim improved dramatically over their time together, and it wasn’t long before they started to make a competition out of it. Just for bragging rights, at first, but once they were comfortable with the tradition they began to wager on the outcome. They bet small things - a secret, a favour, a trinket… nothing they couldn’t afford to lose. He found he learned a lot of her from this alone. 

Ember was… passionate about her craft, protective of her people, and liberal with her body. She enjoyed attention. She never backed down from a challenge. She’d named her own ship after a pun, and had admitted to him after his third victory in a row that her greatest fear was finding her spark withering out in her old age until she was nothing but a husk of her former self, as bland and uninspired as the doddering old pensioners that spent their days mindlessly working the same slot machine in the hopes of a big win. 

His own choice of ‘heights’ felt paltry by comparison. 

If there was one thing he liked most about her though it was her total indifference when it came to the subject of Jack. People always seemed to fall into one of three categories where he was concerned - the wild fanaticism of his admirers, the obedient terror of his subordinates, or the unbridled hatred of those who’s lives he’d torn asunder. Ember treated his legend as if it were inconsequential, and Timothy knew for a fact that nothing would have infuriated the man more. It was an enviable stance. 

Made him feel a little less self-conscious in her presence too, like maybe he didn’t need to worry about what she saw when she looked at him. Not even his occasional slip, where Jack burst forth in a particular choice of phrase, or a careless gesture - mannerisms he still fought to smother. He wondered if she even noticed.

Suffice to say that he looked forward to their regular meetups, and not only because it was the backbone of his conspicuously bland social life. 

Things had been proceeding as usual that particular Thursday, with them passing Timothy’s pistol between them and taking turns to thin the line of bottles arranged on the balcony rail. The score was neck-a-neck but his mind was elsewhere. He fired on autopilot, busy bemoaning how their disconnect from the ECHOnet had left the airwaves a barren wasteland, populated only by the few channels that operated from inside the casino. As the Jackpot itself fell to insanity, even they disappeared, and there was little left but the screeching of rival gangs keen to proclaim their superiority and promote the deranged tenets by which they lived.

The last tolerable channel had fallen three days prior. 

Timothy had never taken a great interest in the medium. However, lying low involved a lot of sitting around inside an enclosed space with no one but himself for company, and having made leaps and bounds in becoming a person again he had rediscovered boredom. 

“Perhaps you should start your own channel, no?” Ember suggested.

“And broadcast my location to every crazy person on this dump? Yeah, no thanks.”

He shattered another bottle before holding the pistol out to her. She didn’t take it. Instead she leaned back against the wall, her eyes studying him intently.

Timothy quirked an eyebrow at her.

“What?” he asked.

She shrugged. “There are two bottles left. We have yet to wager.”

“Oh. Right.” It was likely pointless since he suspected today would be a draw, but there was no harm in keeping the tradition alive. Waving a hand around vaguely he searched for inspiration. “Uh… if I win, find me something to listen to I guess? Figure you performers have to have music stashed somewhere, but I’d settle for old ECHO logs at this point.”

“Hmm. A simple prize.”

“Yeah? What did you have in mind?”

Ember smiled at him. It was a slow smile, coy and more than a little playful. “If I am to win… how about a kiss?”

That stopped him in his tracks. Staring at her dumbly for a moment, he found his mouth suddenly dry as he echoed her words. “A kiss?”

“Or is that, how you say… off the table?” she asked.

Timothy hadn’t even been aware there was a table, metaphorically speaking. Not that he hadn’t contemplated the idea. It was far easier to grapple with as an abstract fantasy though, than a concrete possibility with all the messy details it entailed.

He liked Ember. She was fun, confident, and just the right amount of terrifying. And maybe, guiltily, she reminded him just a bit of the biggest crush of his life. 

But it had been an eternity since he’d had anything passably described as a relationship (he wasn’t counting Trent because the man was allergic to romance). Heck, he didn’t even know if a relationship was what she wanted, maybe just a casual fling… How did you start a conversation like that without immediately killing the mood? Or was he just getting ahead of himself? This was still just flirting, right? He could do that. Definitely wasn’t going to lose his cool the second an attractive woman suggested a kiss. He was a goddamn adult.

“No…” he managed, “no, that’s fine, sure. No problem.” 

Real suave, Tim.

Ember’s smile only widened. “Excellent.”

At last she took the gun from his hand, levelling it at one of the two remaining bottles. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, her body taunt, poised more suggestively than he’d taught her but she still hit her mark.

Twirling the pistol she offered it back. “Your shot, mon chéri.”

The weight of the weapon settled comfortably in his hand. Taking aim he tried to focus on the final bottle, and ignore how close Ember had chosen to linger.

He could… miss, if he wanted to. Make it look like an accident even. Probably wasn’t in the spirit of things, but he could live with that. Wasn’t every day he was given such a clear invitation…

Was that what he wanted? Kind of yes? But also it felt like a complication he hadn’t accounted for, he didn’t know precisely where this was leading and he didn’t know if she did either. And that was kind of terrifying, and also kind of electrifying.

Steadying his breathing Timothy narrowed his attention to his target. His finger tightened over the trigger even as his arm continued to waver by a near imperceptible degree - the difference between a perfect shot and a near miss. 

He’d hit the railing, he decided. Give himself plausible deniability. 

Timothy was just about to fire when the acrid scent of burning reached his nostrils. His arm jerked up, the shot went wild, and he abandoned all thought of their game in favour of frantically patting out the flames licking at the hem of his jacket.

“Ember! What the hell!?”

She appeared absolutely unrepentant. Examining the nails of her prosthetic hand she laughed. “Dommage, Timothy. Looks like you missed one.”

“Yeah, because you set me on fire! Again, what the hell?”

“A little fire never hurt anyone.”

“Not true, and also, definitely cheating,” he muttered. He didn’t think there’d be any salvaging the garment, the edge of it was ragged and blackened where the flames had eaten away at it. He’d just have to toss it in the back of his wardrobe in case his standards ever dropped enough.

“Oh?” she enquired. “Is a kiss so terrible?”

Timothy paused. “No,” he amended, glancing up cautiously. “I mean… I just… can you please not burn any more of my clothes? Pain in the ass to get new ones these days.”

Ember made a non-committal sound. “I make no promises.” 

She was already close, but she somehow sauntered even closer still while Timothy moved not an inch, until she was all but flat against his chest. He found he was suddenly unsure what to do with his hands. Was she expecting him to touch her? To grasp her hips, or her waist, or her arms, or… something? What would Jack do?

No, why was he thinking of goddamn Jack now of all times? 

“Now…” Ember murmured, “to collect my prize, unless you still object?”

Timothy swallowed. “Right now? Like… this second? Not grabbing a drink first or-”

Rather than answer she cut him off with the press of her lips.

For all the fire he’d expected, it was surprisingly gentle. Warm, inviting, and lingering just long enough that he began to respond in kind before she pulled away.

Her vivid blue eyes watched him curiously. Timothy could feel the tips of his ears burning an embarrassing shade of pink, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of what to say. The only words his mind would conjure were the standard Jack one-liners - the kind of cocksure, swaggering overconfidence he could quote in his sleep. He let the silence eat him alive instead.

Ember’s hands settled on the lapels of his jacket, adjusting them to her satisfaction.

“I will see you again next week,” she said eventually. “Until then, think on what it is you wish to shoot for.”

The third time another body double approached him, Timothy wasn’t taking any chances.

“Hey, no need to be like that,” the double said, hands raised and a disarming grin in place. “I just want to talk.”

Timothy didn’t lower the pistol he had trained on the man’s head. “Yeah, funny thing about that... I’m not really interested in talking.”

“That’s fair,” the double said. “I get it. Trust me, though, you’re really going to want to hear this.”

Oh, sure, like that wasn’t totally suspicious. “Nope. I really, really do not. Do us both a favour and get those legs marching the other direction, chop-chop - I’d rather not waste my bullets and I get the feeling you’d rather not be shot at.”

The body double frowned. “Alright, yeesh, you don’t have to spell it out for me. I just figured you might be interested in a way off of this casino.”

Of course he was. Everyone on the goddamned casino was. For Timothy, though, there was always the same complication every body double faced. Strange that this man seemed inclined to ignore it.

His expression turned scornful. “There is no way out. The bomb-”

“Yeah yeah yeah, the bomb,” the other double cut him off. “I know, not exactly something you forget. But think about it for a minute… Jack changed the parameters when he sent us here, made it so leaving would set the thing off… that means there’s a way to change it back, or deactivate it entirely. Has to be.”

A trick. A ploy designed to draw him in, that was all it was, all it could be… but still, Timothy allowed himself to play the thought out, and he was forced to admit there was a certain line of logic there. 

He wet his lips, considered his words for another moment before speaking. “Codes. We can fool most of Jack’s security, so he used codes, you can’t alter the bomb without them.”

The double’s grin was triumfant. “Right. And I know where to find them.”

Timothy stared at him. There was only one answer to that, and he wondered why it had taken him so long to see it. “Jack’s tower…”

“You’re quicker than I thought. Yeah, the tower. Only problem with that is it isn’t exactly easy to get in there what with all the security. I can’t do it by myself, and you may have noticed by now that most people here happen to hate us, so… you’re my best bet. We’ve got the same goal here.”

“Still sounds risky.”

“Never said it wasn’t. My name’s Ian by the way… although if you know me by anything it’s probably 7-F.”

The number meant nothing, but he hadn’t expected it to - he’d never care enough to memorise any but his own. But perhaps that was old thinking… There was a safety in maintaining his distance, viewing the others only as what they were, but never who… 

He had no name for those who had died in Pretty Boy’s initial masacre, nor the double he’d killed with his own two hands. 

“Timothy,” he relented.

“You go by Tim?”

“Sometimes.”

The double nodded. “Nice to meet you then, Tim. And, hey, not to be rude or anything but since we’ve got introductions out the way do you think you could maybe get that gun out my face now?”

Ian was a coffee drinker. This was not remarkable in itself, except that he treated the habit more like an addiction, constantly taking guilty sips from a battered thermos any time a conversation stretched too long.

“Calms the nerves, you know?” he’d said.

“Sure,” Timothy agreed, for whom caffeine did nothing of the sort. He appreciated those differences though, evidence that they were still distinct despite the face they wore. Sometimes he needed that. 

They were neither each other, nor Jack. He wondered what little habits the other doubles had hidden, the quiet pieces of their lives he’d never known. He wondered how many were even left. 

His own morbid line of thinking had little space to brew though, for in those next few days they were both absorbed in their work.

The plan, if it could be called that, seemed far too reliant on supposition for Timothy’s liking. He appreciated the concrete stability of certainties. Ian on the other hand had a slapdash approach to planning, and a habit of handwaving Timothy’s more prying questions aside.

This invited a degree of suspicion. There was too much he didn’t know, too much riding on the moral fibre of a man he’d only just met…

Timothy wondered if he was paranoid. That would be a neat little condition to add to his neurotic collection.

If he was forced to confront his feelings, he would begrudgingly admit that he… kind of liked Ian. He was approachable. Easy to talk to. Spoke enough to fill the silence, and breezed over those few moments when Timothy failed entirely to make a response. 

Timothy didn’t like a lot of people. Or maybe he didn’t know a lot of people. His life had been consumed by the role of Handsome Jack for years, and now he finally had the chance to shrug it off he’d been keeping a low profile out of a natural desire to not be shot by the nearest hoodlum to take offence at his face. He was… kind of a shut in. 

On the fifth day since their initial introduction, they met in the remnants of an old arcade just outside the spendopticom. It had never been much of a money maker - the real profit was in the slot machines - but Jack had tried his hand at every luxury entertainment plausible when designing the Jackpot. Anything to squeeze a few more pennies from his patrons. 

Timothy hadn’t given the place much thought. Like the rest of the casino, it had been ransacked of any valuables, and later trashed as the unlucky inhabitants explored new and exciting ways to vent their frustrations. It was the place Ian chose though. Having been the one to carefully select all their previous rendezvous, Timothy decided it was only fair to humour him.

So he picked his way over the glittering shards of shattered glass, and followed Ian’s lead past the broken machines into the depths of the arcade.

It was a plain door that they arrived at, and placing his hand on the palm-reader Ian quickly had it open and ushered him through. 

The room was dark.

“Pretty sure that used to be for employees,” Ian said in his usual conversational tone, “but VIP access can get you most places. Which, I’m sure you already knew… Never seen anyone else here though so either they’re dead or found somewhere else to be. Works for me.”

He must have hit the light switch, because the overhead striplighting flickered on. The room was filled to the brim with arcade machines.

In contrast to the space they’d passed through they looked pristine, untouched by the careless looting and vandalism he’d learned to take as a given. 

“Just a moment,” Ian muttered, and as he fiddled with some more switches sudden colourful lights flashed and the room came to life. There were pinball machines, and claw machines, and racing games, and classic 8-bit platformers, and shooters, and VR booths… all vying for attention in a kaleidoscope of vivid title screens and cheerful blips and whooping sound effects.

Unable to articulate anything meaningful, Timothy settled for the only thing his brain was willing to supply. “Neat.”

Ian grinned. “Yeah. Pretty sweet place to unwind, and private enough too.”

“You live here?”

“Nah.” He tapped the side of his nose and winked. “That place is a secret. Call me cautious, but you did threaten me with a gun.”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you,” Timothy said. 

“Hey, I’m not offended. Got as much right as you to a bolt hole though, right? It’s not a friendly place for people like us out there.”

That was an understatement. 

“Yeah…  especially not with Pretty Boy. I hear he’s in the market for a body double… offering cash. Ten thousand last I heard, which is kind of insulting, but also… not great.”

Ian just rolled his eyes. “God, don’t remind me… he’d have better luck if he hadn’t gone and killed half of us in the first bloody place, hindsight’s twenty-twenty and all that. But that’s a downer of a topic. Look, why don’t you have a go on one of these things while you’re here?” He waved to the rows of brightly flashing machines. “Take your pick.”

Timothy stared at the sea of colour before him, but made no move to approach. It felt all at once too much. Lights, and sound, and cheer - a whimsy that served only to burgeon the beginnings of a stabbing headache.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said, which in some ways was true.

“Then start anywhere.”

When Timothy remained rooted to the spot, Ian moved instead, pacing along the line of machines until he stopped at one and set his hand to it in an almost fond gesture.

“There used to be an arcade at the end of the street where I grew up, you know,” he said. “Couldn’t keep away from it as a kid. Wasn’t half bad at the racing games, but my real weakness was those claw machines. They’d fill them up with junk and I’d dump every penny I’d scrounged up into them, no matter what the prizes were. Think I just liked the idea of winning something, you know? Not money, but something, a trophy maybe. Back then I probably would have thought being stuck in a place like this would be heaven… bit ironic, don’t you think?”

He glanced back over at Timothy, watching his expression.

The proper thing to do was probably to offer some kind of consolation, to commiserate, or maybe just launch off into his own tangent on life before…

Timothy couldn’t bring himself to do either. Instead, he said, “Irony’s a bitch.”

Ian gave a sharp bark of laughter. “You can say that again! Well, fuck irony. I’m getting out of here, and that’s that.”

There was a harshness to the words, a conviction that belayed his otherwise casual attitude. Timothy marvelled at it. 

To him, the idea still felt… abstract. Alluring, but some part of him couldn’t seem to follow the thought through to its conclusion. As much as a small seed of hope had started to grow, some part of him was still waiting for the other foot to drop. For their hastily built plan that they’d patched together over the previous days to come crashing down around their ears. 

Perhaps that was another thing Jack had left him. A fatalistic sense of coming doom. 

But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. There was a way off the casino. And he had to grasp for it, had to take that chance, because the other option was surrendering to the prison his former boss had left him to rot in. He was done suffering for Jack.

“Well?” Ian asked eventually, patting the side of a pinball machine. “Sure you don’t want a go one one of these things?”

Timothy eyed the machine. There was a familiarity to its shape, something that suggested this was a thing he had played before, or at least seen… perhaps his hands would find the buttons almost naturally and a piece of him would come rushing back. Or perhaps not. It was the uncertainty more than anything that dissuaded him.

“I think…” Timothy tried, “we should probably just get on with planning. Like you said, we’re getting out of here… that’s the whole point of this. That’s what we should be focusing on.”

He didn’t think it was disappointment that coloured Ian’s face, but there was a hint of… something before he shrugged, pulling his wry grin back into place. “Suit yourself then. This way.”

There was a small coffee table crammed into the back of the room with a few plastic chairs surrounding it, and Ian wasted no time in settling into the closest seat and kicking his legs up. He sipped his coffee, pulled out a few rolls of paper from his jacket, and waited.

The legs of Timothy’s chair scraped loudly across the floor as he nudged it closer. 

“So,” Ian said when Timothy was finally done faffing about with the position of his chair.

“So?” he echoed, since the pause felt like an invitation to speak.

“So I say we grab the blueprints tomorrow, hit the tower the same day.”

Timothy laughed. Stopped suddenly when he realised Ian wasn’t joining in. “Oh,” he said, staring at the man in horror. “Oh you’re actually serious. That’s… I mean, that’s…”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence but Ian seemed to take his meaning.

“It’s a risk but I’m telling you, the longer we wait the more chance this thing gets blown to pieces before we even get started. If Pretty Boy catches wind…”

“Bad things. Yeah. You don’t have to paint me a picture, I get it. I just don’t know if rushing right now is the best play. What about the doors? What about-”

“I’ve got it covered, don’t worry,” Ian said, with a casual flick of his hand as if brushing the matter aside. “The hardest part of all this is gonna be once we’re inside, and that’s something no amount of planning will help. Either we can handle it or we can’t.”

“But-”

“Do you want to get off this casino or not?”

There was no delicacy to the question. No softening of the blow. It stood between them in all its ugliness, and they both knew there was only one answer.

“Yeah…”

“Then trust me, alright? We need each other.” And he smiled.

Timothy stared at him, struck at once by all he knew and all he did not know. Ian, with his nonchalance, and his secrets, and his coffee, and his private little arcade. Ian, who he’d known for a matter of days, and who asked him to risk everything in the name of freedom. A man who he almost certainly liked, but whom he was only beginning to unravel. 

Abruptly he stood, the legs of his chair screeching with nail dragging sharpness as he pushed away from the table. “I need another day. To think.”

“Aww, come on, Tim. Don’t be like that.”

Timothy was already retreating though. He turned his back on the other body double. Hesitated for a moment, and said, “I’ll contact you tomorrow.”

“Tim…”

He ignored Ian’s call, instead picking his way past the lines of flashing machines, out through the door into the dilapidated ruins of the old arcade itself. The gloom felt almost comforting, serene in the wake of the riot of sound and colour that had clogged his senses. The broken glass crunched under his feet.

Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe he was just overwhelmed - too much happening at once after months of solitude, surfacing only briefly for those few hours he shared with another’s company. 

But the need to leave nipped at his heels. So he pulled his hood down low, ducked out into the neon glow of the casino’s thoroughfare, and cut a swift pace toward the nearest short-range teleporter.

Spare time had never been Timothy’s friend. Once, it had meant only waiting. Then later it became something to fill, to quell his restless thoughts with anything at hand, be it a bottle or scratch of a pen against the rough surface of ageing paper. There were days he almost missed the dreamless stupor he’d been conditioned to, too deadened to the world around him to conceive of the waspish energy that filled him now.

He meandered for a time. Took paths he knew better than to chance before finally making his way back to his hideout. There, he poured himself a glass of scotch, and sat eying it across the table before getting up and leaving it untouched.

He went to visit Ember.

It wasn’t unusual for him to find his way to her’s these days. Whether they were dating in any official capacity was something he’d never found the courage to ask, but Ember herself seemed content to leave their relationship unlabelled, and in some ways that was easier. He could worry less about what was expected of him and focus on the gestures that felt right - a present when something caught his eye, a kiss when the whim took him, a night of revelry when she snared him by the collar and whispered pleasant little suggestions in his ear…

He hadn’t told her about the plan. Hadn’t told her about Ian, either, and he couldn’t say why. Perhaps it was simply because he didn’t know how she would react. He would say ‘I’m getting off of this casino’, and maybe she would nod, and take his hands, and say ‘then I’ll go with you’. Or maybe she would smile at him sadly and say ‘my place is here’, because it was, in a way that Timothy’s had never been.

The people of the Vice district were her people. Sometimes the way she spoke of them made them seem almost like family - names she uttered with fondness, or exasperation - a collective that would fight viciously to protect its own. 

He wondered if that was what the body doubles would have become if they’d ever been given the chance. He wondered if he ever would have joined them, or if he would have remained always the outsider, watching from afar with only his bitterness and self-pity for company. He wondered if Ian would have joined them.

“I know that face.”

Timothy glanced up from the cards in his hands. They were playing poker while sitting on the abundance of cushions her apartment harboured. Just regular poker today - strip poker, as he had soon discovered, was a lot less fun when challenging someone who could easily wipe the floor with you. 

“What, this face?” he asked. “The same face I always have?”

“Your thinking face. Brooding. You lose yourself in thoughts that are not kind to you, it is always this way…”

He wished it wasn’t. With a sigh he set his cards down. “It’s… complicated.”

Ember arched one elegant eyebrow. “When is it not?”

Great question. Perhaps he should tell her the crux of the matter. Perhaps that was something she was owed… and yet some part of him still shied away from the necessity. He could tell himself it was a kindness, sparing her the truth - that he would always want to leave, regardless of her choice.

He needed to say something though. Not just because of the expectant way she was looking at him, but because of the disquiet that twisted inside of him. It was Ember he had been driven too. Ember, always, who lended a willing ear.

He dropped his head into his hands, choosing to stare at the patterned carpet instead of the piercing blue eyes that watched him. Dancing shapes and lines - a rhythm, a reliable repetition that life sorely lacked.

“I don’t… I don’t want to rush things,” he found himself saying. “Or maybe I’m just being a coward. I don’t know. It’s like… if things go right I get everything I friggin’ want, but when has lady luck ever flipped a face card in my whole goddamn life? And if it goes wrong, I’ll probably be dead. Which means I won’t have to worry about this anymore, but I’ll be… you know… dead. So take it slow, right? Except if I do that then maybe this whole thing will fall apart before I even get a chance to do anything, and then I’ve got exactly nowhere…”

Ember leaned to the side, propped up by one elbow as she considered him. “And it is death that you fear, no?”

He shrugged, unable to express anything more eloquent. “I guess?”

“You?” She made a dismissive sound. “I have seen you fight. You don’t fight like a man afraid to die.”

“Oh, I’m constantly afraid. Absolutely terrified. I just have a lot of practice at shooting things first and panicking later.”

“Then what is it that stops you now?”

He peered through his fingers at her. She smiled back at him, a smile equal parts knowing and pitying.

“Aahhh Timothy… there is a saying for this - nothing ventured, nothing gained. Me? I don’t waste time on these questions. If I want something, I take it. If I want something gone, I burn it. It is simpler.”

“I’m not you though, Ember.”

“You’re not. You brood,” she said, reaching over to poke him in the arm in playful admonishment. “Some risks are worth taking. It is the question that eats at you, not the answer. Once you make up your mind there will be nothing in your way.”

“I haven’t even told you what this is about,” he said.

She put her cards aside then, scooting closer until she could press a kiss to his cheek. Her words were barely a whisper. “You don’t have to, mon chéri. I know what you’re capable of.”

He left before the start of the next cycle, traipsing through the dim interior in the synthetic pre-dawn. The glass of scotch he’d poured himself was waiting where he’d left it. Timothy downed it, then another, then capped the bottle and shoved it as far back in the cupboard as he could, well out of sight. A hangover was the last thing he needed. If he was actually going through with this, that was…

But what reason did he have to hesitate? Was it cowardice? Was it the parts of the plan still in flux, breezed over by Ian’s absentminded reassurances? 

Yet what reason did Ian have to lie? They had as much at stake in the matter as each other. Both the remnants of a dying breed, trapped on a casino surrounded by lunatics that would happily gut them for sport… 

He thought again to the vehemence of Ian’s declaration. Fuck irony, I’m getting out of here. 

Maybe what he truly feared… the hidden hand that held him back… was the thought of giving in to that hope, only to have it snatched away. To believe again in a future, a life, and watch as that dream crumbled. To know that it was never meant for him. 

What cruller fate than that? Better the skeptic than the fool…

No. That was a lie. It was this place that twisted him, poisoned the mind… the longer he languished the more he gave into that despair, that acceptance…

He needed out. He needed to be away from the steel walls and fluorescent lights, away from the cramped little room he spent the long stretching hours in, alone and maddened by the silence. From the image of his former boss - plastered across every wall, cast in glittering gold statues, staring down at him with ever following holographic eyes above the open courtyard of the spendopticom. Mocking him.

He needed to leave, and then… finally… he would be free. 

Ember was right in some ways - once he reached that decision, the weight of it no longer pressed on him. He could focus on practical things.

Timothy picked out a caustic SMG and several magazines of ammunition to hide beneath his jacket. Grabbed a new pair of boots while he was out too, something solid and unlikely to trip him. Tested them both out. Found the gun had more of a kick to it than he was expecting, not like the sleek, well tuned models he’d been equipped with during his time on Elpis. He could handle it though. Loaders and security bots tended to be bulky, easy targets without the need for pinpoint accuracy.

He counted his supply of grenades. Counted the bullets for his pistol, too. Went over every piece of equipment he had, cleaning it, checking it, tweaking it to his satisfaction. 

A sniper would have been a comforting addition, but they were hard to come by on the casino.

At last he reached the end of his arsenal, and paced for several minutes before picking up his ECHO. 

Despite the early hour Ian didn’t hesitate to answer when he put a call through. “Well?” he asked.

“Okay,” Timothy said. “Where do I meet you?”

He came to awareness slowly. Small pieces at first - the steady rush of his own breathing, the cold seeping through the synthetic skin of his mask where it pressed against the metal floor. The rough itch of rope around his wrists.

Peeling his eyelids open he squinted at the dark shape that moved across the room.

“Ian…” Timothy’s voice came out more as a croak, scratchy and unused.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”

The voice was Ian’s. The first thing to hit him was a sense of relief - Ian was alive then. He must have avoided whatever trap had awaited them. If Ian could get him loose then they could grab the blueprints and both be out before more trouble arrived.

“What are you talking about?” he mumbled. “What-”

And it was then that it clicked. The last of the fog that surrounded his brain slipped away, the curtains drawn wide, and Timothy stared at the other double for several mute seconds before he trusted himself to speak. “Pretty Boy offered you a deal.”

Ian didn’t respond immediately. He uncapped his thermos and took a long draught. His fingers, seemingly moving of their own accord, twisted the lid back and forth. “He’s sending someone down,” he said without meeting Timothy’s gaze. “I hand you over, he gives me the codes. He gets his body double and I get to leave.”

Of course. Of fucking course it would be something like that. What, had he actually thought life would toss him a bone for once? Him?

Heaving himself up into a sitting position Timothy did nothing to hide his contempt.

“I thought we were in this together,” he spat, “you absolute dickweed, and now- now you’re just stabbing me in the back? Just like that? How can you even-”

“Because I tried, alright!” Ian snapped. “And you know what I found out? There’s no way we get through that tower. Turrets? Sure. Doors? Maybe. The rest? We’re just two guys, not an army. I’m not gonna die on some suicide mission… I wish it were different but that’s just the way things are.”

He took another sip of coffee, pacing across the room in directionless loops.

“He won’t kill you,” he said in a softer tone. “The winning hand’s only any good with the right DNA - Jack’s DNA. He needs one of us alive for that.”

That might well be true. The casino’s inhabitants had quickly discovered as much after the initial massacre. Once the blood dried up and the flesh rotted away, a winning hand was nothing more than a fancy paper weight. 

Timothy found it a poor comfort.

“Oh, sure, so he’ll just chain me up for eternity. That sounds fun,” he said, surreptitiously testing the strength of the ropes.

“Look, it’s not personal. I just want to get out of here. You’d do the same if you were me.”

“Is that supposed to help you sleep at night?”

Ian turned away. “He won’t kill you,” he said again, almost to himself.

Timothy took a steadying breath. There was a rage simmering beneath his skin, the urge to threaten, to lunge at the man, even, despite his restraints. That would get him nowhere though. He needed to focus on a way out of this, because if one thing was for sure, he had no intention of sitting around waiting for Pretty Boy’s goons to show up.

Timothy let himself assess the situation one piece at a time. The first and most important detail was that he was bound, wrists and feet, and tightly. Wriggling loose was not an option. Snapping the ropes through brute force was a pipe dream. If he had the luxury of a few hours and something to wear them down with, well… maybe, but even if he did Ian was sure to notice.

The other double might be avoiding eye contact, but he was smart enough to stay in the same room.

Finding no obvious solution Timothy decided to sideline the problem for later.

Okay, next point. This was the absence of his pistol. The holster at his side sat empty, and the grenades he’d had clipped to his belt were also gone. He’d been disarmed.

Or had he?

There was something resting against the small of his back, and it came to him then that this was the SMG he’d so recently acquired, hidden beneath the bulk of his jacket. Ian hadn’t patted him down then. Oh boy … rookie mistake. 

The difficult question was how he was supposed to reach the damn thing with his hands tied.

A wall, Timothy decided. If he could get himself to a wall he might be able to dislodge the gun from its holster and grab it before Ian noticed what was happening.

Having made his mind up he began to scoot slowly backward, inching his way toward the nearest surface.

“Where are you going?” Ian demanded.

Timothy looked over at him, caught the glint of a gun in his hand. Recognised it as his own pistol a second later. 

Fighting to keep the fury from his face, he adopted a dry tone. “Oh, you caught me, I was just going to crawl my way to freedom.”

Ian hesitated for a moment before lowering the pistol. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m just trying to get comfortable, asshole. You have a problem with that?”

“Just… don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Harder? Oh the absolute entitlement… To earn his trust only to trade him away like a poker chip, and to stand there, moaning about how hard it was. Like it meant a thing. Like he really knew what hard was. Like he could even touch upon the horrors of what Timothy had endured in the name of his own survival. 

Ian was nothing but a slimy little weasel that grasped at the first opportunity to save his own skin rather than face any real challenge. 

Jack would have put him in his place. Jack would have crushed him beneath his heel, and laughed. He could almost hear him. Almost taste that vicious, gleeful fury, that swept up all in its path like the raging swell of a broken dam. 

It was oh so easy to embrace.

His back hit the wall and Timothy didn’t pause for a second. The moment he dislodged the SMG from its holster he twisted, seizing it and whirling on his target.

Ian caught the movement. 

Maybe if he’d had more time to think he might have been able to do something. Maybe if he’d been a better marksman things might have gone differently. But Ian’s shot clanked off the wall, and Timothy’s tore through flesh like it were paper mache. 

The bitter, keening cry that followed could have cut glass. Clutching the ruins of his wrist, the other double let the pistol tumble from his grasp and turned to clawing at the sizzling skin that melted like putty in the wake of the caustic bullets.

Timothy took the opportunity to turn the gun on the ropes that held him, grazing them enough that the corrosive substance could do the rest of the work. Then he was on his feet.

His pace was measured, a slow approach that didn’t falter.

Ian watched him coming with wide eyes. “Tim,” he tried.

Timothy said nothing. Kept walking. Ate up the distance between them one step at a time.

Perhaps sensing the danger Ian began to back off in the face of Timothy’s advance, leaving a trail of blood dripping behind from his injured wrist. 

Almost leisurely Timothy stooped to pick up his pistol as he passed it, and wiped it off on his jacket. He checked the clip.

“Do you know how many people I’ve killed while pretending to be Jack?” he asked.

“Tim, listen, we can talk this out-”

“I don’t,” he said. “Stopped counting after a while. Pretty sure it’s bigger than whatever pathetic body count you’re toting though.”

Slowly he aimed down the sight at the other body double.

Ian dropped to his knees. Both of his hands were wracked with tremors but he held them up regardless, imploringly, as the blood ran down his wrist. “Please… Look, I can just disappear. You never have to see me again. I’ll keep out of your way, I swear it, just… just please…”

He really was pathetic. No honour. No scruples. And worst of all, no class. To think someone like that actually believed they could pull one over on him. 

It was almost laughable.

“Nice try, cupcake, but it’s a bit late for that. By all means though, beg,” Timothy said with a sneer. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll let you live just a little longer, if you make it entertaining.”

Ian drew in a shaky breath. A sound slipped between his lips - half moan, half sob. “G-god,” he stammered, “I don’t… it wasn’t personal, okay? Please, just let me-”

“Boring.”

Timothy shot him. One shot would have been enough, but he unloaded the entire clip. Just kept pulling the trigger until it clicked empty and he stood breathing hard, staring down at the mess at his feet.

Perversely it wasn’t the sight that shook him from his rage. It was the smell. The rich scent of coffee mingling with the iron tang of blood… the battered thermos from which it spilled rolling to a gentle stop as it met the wall.

He staggered back. Dropped the pistol. Dropped the SMG too. His hands covered his mouth as he bent double, fighting the urge to retch.

It was the DNA, the DNA, the DNA… how hollow those words echoed. How flimsy they held against the scene before him.

This was his work. This was his doing. 

The blood that crept across the floor, stretching ever closer to the toes of his boots, that was on his hands - stained both literally and figuratively.

There was once a time he had faced down a wounded and weaponless soldier, had listened to him plead for his life…

And Timothy had said, “I’m not you, Jack.”

How that man would loathe him. But maybe that man was dead too, and who did that make him now? His own ghost? Jack’s? 

He found no answers in the stifling silence of the room, only the accusing stare of a corpse, the same heterochromatic eyes that fit his own face. They might as well have been peering into his very soul. 

In another life, would he have called Ian a friend?

For several minutes Timothy did nothing but breathe. He could focus on just that - slip away for a time, finding calm in the repetition of the act, waiting for his body to steady before he allowed his thoughts back in.

It took a monumental effort to persuade himself to move, but he did, falteringly, stiffly, finding his equilibrium as he went. 

First the hands - pulled back from the bloodless line of his lips and settled at his side. Then the legs - straightening slowly until he stood to his full height.

The corpse still waited.

He did the only thing he could think to do. He forced himself to step forward until he could lower one trembling hand to close Ian’s eyes and said, “I’m sorry.”

Timothy stopped carrying his pistol after that. The SMG he kept, but that, he swore, would only ever be for loaders.

Ember hid him. He hadn’t asked her to, but she’d been the one he came to - staggering through the vice district with the bloodstains still fresh on his clothes. He didn’t know where else to go.

She cleaned him up and got the full story out of him, and after that she’d let him lean his head against her shoulder while he tried not to think about anything and let the emptiness swallow him whole. He fell asleep like that, and in the morning she announced in her most authoritative tone that he would be staying. Timothy didn’t argue with her. Not at first.

Those initial days rolled by in a blur, but slowly he began to piece himself back together, and everything else came rushing back unbidden - the fear, the self-loathing, his usual pessimistic tendencies - all clawing over one another in a bid for control.

He wanted to run. He wanted to cower from the world. Maybe he just wanted to disappear for good. 

There was one thing he was sure of though, and that was the desire he tried to focus on, the one goal that had any meaning.

“I don’t think that other double was lying,” he told Ember, “about the codes I mean… I knew Jack, if he put them anywhere it would be in that stupid big tower of his. If I could just… if I could get my hands on them-”

“Nobody gets into that tower, you know that.”

“But there has to be a way! I can fool the security, it’s just-”

“Everything else?” she said. “Timothy… forget about the tower, you will get yourself killed. Here, with me, you are safe… Pretty Boy cannot get to you. Is it really so bad?”

Yes, he almost said, but the cruelty of such an admission was undeserved. So he bit his tongue, and instead said nothing at all. 

Timothy returned to the comforting numbness of alcohol. He probably would have drunk himself into oblivion, but Ember had a habit of swiping his bottles any time he began to build a stash. For molotov cocktails or pyrotechnics, she would say. ‘Think of it as your rent’.

He knew the real reason of course, but he never said anything. When he finally began to kick the habit it was mostly out of practicality - it was too risky, dashing about above ground just to load up on booze. His face, his hand - they put a target on his back. He knew that. Hated that. 

He would stare at the cracks spider-webbing their way across his mask in Ember’s dressing room mirror, and imagine it crumbling away. Imagine a different face beneath. Freckles… all the other details were fluid though, shifting faster than he could count, features tried on for size and discarded like ill-fitting clothing. No matter what he did he couldn’t find anything that felt right. 

The first time his frantic fingers found the clasps of his mask, and he almost undid them, powered by some desperate, senseless need that felt too close to panic. The thought that somehow he could pull the mask away and it would be right there - the face he sought, the one he needed.

He stopped himself at the last second though. He knew what was beneath the mask. It was only Jack, only ever Jack… Maybe it was Jack the whole way down.

The urge for a strong glass of scotch grew.

Timothy found himself a stack of paper and a pen instead. Try as he might, the mirror always pulled him back, but he supposed it was a better pastime than staring at his gun.

It was an inevitability, of course. A wonder, even, that it took so long. But the day came after a night lost to his usual vice, when he woke groggy and reaching blindly for a glass of water to soothe the pounding of his head, draining the entire thing before at last he opened his eyes and found Ember sitting beside him, flicking through the pages of his manuscript.

He must have forgotten to hide it. Too late to snatch it back, all he could do was curse his own carelessness and the evils of liquor. 

Timothy lay there for a moment, frozen, watching as she continued to scan the words. 

When she looked up her expression was inquiring. “What’s this?”

Timothy bit his lip. “Nothing.”

“You wrote this?”

He considered lying. Realised all too quick the foolishness of such an endeavour. Instead, he turned his head to the side to hide his awkwardness, scraping at the wild shocks of his hair still mussed from sleep. “Yeah… I mean, have to pass the time somehow, it’s… really not important.”

“You never told me you write. You are full of surprises, Timothy Lawrence… Is this what you studied, before?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that,” he said, because it was better than admitting he didn’t know anymore. That he’d sold his life away for a degree he couldn’t even remember, and that it had all been for nothing, so completely, utterly meaningless. Sometimes it made him want to laugh. Times like this, though, he just wanted to disappear.

He startled at the touch on his shoulder, but Ember was gentle, running her fingers across him in soothing patterns. Timothy just sighed. 

“You could read to me, sometime,” she said, softly. “I think I would like that.”

He chanced a glance over at her. “You sure? Not sure my stories have enough fire and chaos in them for your tastes.”

“Then add some for me, mon chéri. You can always change a story.”

Timothy decided to leave. He took the cowards way out, waiting until Ember was gone before packing his things and heading for the door. For a few moments he hesitated, wondering, perhaps, if he should leave a note… something to explain his sudden departure in a way that didn’t feel quite so callous. But what good would it do? She was safer without him, and she would understand. He hoped she would.

Ember had been kind to him, but the good things in his life always ended in tragedy, and she deserved better, far better than a man with his face could ever give her.

He could tell himself it was a noble act. The truth, though... the truth was that he was afraid, and he was selfish. They’d had a good thing going. Maybe not true love, but affection, and he tossed it aside because that senseless, panicky side of him couldn’t shake the feeling that it would somehow go terribly wrong. Maybe Pretty Boy would catch her, or maybe he’d snap and act a bit too much like Jack and she’d realise her mistake, or any one of the hundred other possibilities he’d entertained in his head. Waiting to find out which it would be wasn’t something he was prepared for. 

It didn’t matter if Ember felt it was her own risk to take. Life was easier when there was nothing to worry about but yourself. He’d survived that way for years, and he could fall back on it now, untethered, uncaring, with nothing else to lose.

So he ran, and the only thing he left for her was the story of fire and carnage she’d asked for, open and incomplete on the bedside table. 

He never called.

Chapter Text

Timothy’s new hideout was a maintenance area hidden behind a literal waterfall. It was… all kinds of cliche, like the old ECHOcast dramas full of gloating, dastardly villains, but it was also undisturbed. The floors were dusty. The few supplies left over from before the lockdown were stacked neatly and long forgotten. It was hardly a paradise, but it would serve. 

His favourite part though was the sound of water. A constant, static hiss that filled the silence he so often festered in. 

And so time passed. And he wished he could say that its passing dulled the pain, but life was rarely so fanciful.

Sometimes he felt as if there was a scream that had been building inside him for years, yet died a silent death before it ever clawed its way out his throat. What cry could encompass the entirety of the last several years? The life he’d all but forgotten? The future denied to him by the lingering shadow of a long dead man?

When the anger flared it was vicious, and when it waned it left only numbness in its wake. He was paradoxically exhausted and frantic. Perhaps worst of all, despite everything, that stubborn part of him persisted - the desire to live. 

On particularly venomous days he pretended it was an act of defiance. Jack would laugh if Timothy Lawrence croaked it in some quiet corner of his casino. Far better to carry on, and deny his ghost the satisfaction. To escape this all, somehow, and flip the bird at whatever cruel fate the world expected for him.

Other days it felt more like cowardice.

But he continued. Put one foot in front of the other. Each morning, each evening, blending together in a rhythm that he learned to make his peace with. Gave up counting each cycle and instead turned to writing little affirmations for himself, scrawled on the wall when paper would not do.

Sometimes he believed them. 

Sometimes, too, he closed his eyes and thought only of the tower, and could do nothing but despair. 

There came a day when Pretty Boy stopped asking for a body double. Instead, on every holoscreen and wanted poster plastered across the casino was a name - Timothy Lawrence. It came oozing from his lips as well, tacked onto the list of demands he so frequently broadcast.

Timothy supposed that made him the last. The first, and the last, and possibly the worst, but certainly the only one living. 

In some ways it was a relief, in others a tragedy. 

But as he watched the bounty on his head tick ever higher he admitted that above all it was an inconvenience. If there had been a target on his back before, now there was a glowing beacon. He knew it was only a matter of time. Still took the days as they came, regardless. Waiting for an inevitability. Dreaming of the impossible. Clinging on by the tips of his fingers, and too frightened to ever let go.

Bullets. In the end it was the lack of bullets that spelled his downfall. Absurd that something so small, something he’d long taken for granted would mean so much. But as he reached for a new clip for his SMG and found only empty space at his belt, he knew he was screwed.

Nisha would have laughed. She’d always counted her bullets, made sure each one hit with perfect precision, never a wasted shot or a careless threat. She would have laughed at him for a lot of reasons, really, and not kindly, but she was years dead on a distant shithole of a planet and reminiscing did him no favours.

He was out of ammunition and surrounded by loaders. So Timothy did the only thing he could, and locked himself away in the nearest available shelter.

It was a temporary measure at best. He knew that. Even if he didn’t, he could hear the loaders at the door, systematically cutting their way through layers of steel while he huddled in the semi-darkness with no plan of escape.

So that was it then. He’d be dragged away, and spend the rest of his life as a glorified magic key for some greasy dictator hellbent on bringing the whole casino under his control. He wouldn’t even go down in a blaze of glory, but peter out slowly, one miserable day at a time.

And it wasn’t fair. It was never fair. But the world did what it liked, and that clearly didn’t involve cutting him a break. God forbid anything ever went right for Timothy Lawrence.

He laughed, then, a bitter choked out sound that echoed in the narrow confines of the room before he stifled it.

There was only the whir of sawblades at the door.

Timothy stared at his empty SMG for a few moments before reluctantly tucking it away beneath his jacket. He pulled out his ECHO instead. Rested it against his forehead, and drew a few steadying breaths, in and out, waiting for his hands to stop shaking.

He put out a call on an open channel.

It was nothing more than desperation - a pitiful cry for help, blasted across the airways, like a prayer to an absent god…

But the other option was sitting there and twiddling his thumbs, so fuck it, he’d beg and plead like the coward he was until his voice turned to a dry, haggard croak. Why not?

He never expected anyone to actually answer.

The first thing he noticed about them was that they weren’t from the casino. You got a knack for the way the Jackpot’s inhabitants dressed - all the old gift shop apparel, patched and re-fashioned shirts, shoes with the soles worn through, panels of old loaders converted into makeshift armour. Even the best dressed amongst them had the telling signs of a seven year lockdown - fabric wearing thin, seams re-sewn for the fifth time. 

These people were new.  

He didn’t recognise anything they were wearing, and in case that wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway, one of them was a siren. And also there was a skag for some reason. Timothy was pretty sure he would have noticed if anyone was keeping a live skag on the casino.

The second thing he noticed was that they were all armed.

Staggering out with his arms raised, he managed a faltering, “N-n-no, don’t shoot! This is not what it looks like.”

The four guns trained on him suggested the strangers thought otherwise.

“I’m not Jack,” he insisted. “Not at all.”

“Well, you look exactly like all these ridiculous statues, so I’m gonna keep pointing my gun at you just in case,” the woman with the helmet said.

Fair point. So, for the first time in years, Timothy explained. 

It was strange, really, after so long living amongst people who were familiar with the body doubles as just another part of the scenery. But the rest of the universe had probably cleared out any doublegangers on the outside ages back, seeing his face now must be like a relic from the past… an unpleasant past it was sure it had buried. He didn’t blame them.

In fact, he found it hard to harbour any ill-will despite their initial hostility, because the only thing that really mattered to him was that they were new. The first new faces he’d seen on the casino in seven years. 

Heck, they might even be vault hunters. The next generation, he supposed. Or the third. Fourth? There was too much to catch up on… he’d been out of the loop long enough he didn’t even know where to begin.

But they were new, and… and he couldn’t quite shake the excitement thrumming its way through his very soul. Something was finally changing, and he had an idea.

He gave them his caustic SMG. A gesture of goodwill, but honestly… he was kind of glad to be rid of it. Defanged at last. Let them deal with the bullets, and the carnage, and all the ugly things he’d learned out of necessity and clung to out of habit…

If there really was a new group of vault hunters, maybe the right thing to do was step aside and let them do what they did best. And maybe that thing was murder, but hey, there were plenty of deserving targets on the Jackpot.

Back in the safety of his hideout his confidence fled. Upon closer examination there was too much about the situation that seemed too good to be true, a joke, a trap, maybe a fever dream.

He missed the comfort of a weapon at his side.

Here came the questions - all the little doubts his mind wanted to conjure.

Vault hunters didn’t work for free. They wouldn’t waste their time on a dump like the Jackpot unless someone sent them.

Hyperion, his mind seemed to whisper, and panic seized him for several minutes before he drowned it with a glass of scotch. Jack was dead, and whoever ran the company wouldn’t waste their time on a pointless little venture like a failed casino, locked up and falling to pieces in the blackest reaches of space.

Someone cared though. The question was who, and how he fit into all that. He needed to know who they were working for, and whether he could trust them.

He had a whole list of possible answers lined up, but the one they eventually gave him when they finally made it to his hideout was one he’d never entertained.

It was totally unreasonable that his stomach was doing somersaults. It had been years since he’d last seen Moxxi… maybe even edging on a decade by this point. He wasn’t so young anymore, wasn’t so naive… but she said his name with no hesitation, like she never even doubted it for a second, and all his bravado fled at once. Nearly ten years and she still remembered him… nearly ten years and his stupid crush was as blatant as ever, and he didn’t understand how she was able to do that to him.

Buuuut of course she wanted him dead, and he came crashing back to reality like he was plunging into a pool of ice cold water. Given how everything on Elpis had gone he wasn’t actually surprised. Moxxi hated Jack, and Timothy had been following Jack’s orders. Even if he hadn’t, here he was, his last spectre - his face and his voice and everything that people despised.

Yet… she’d said yes to dinner that night. He’d had years to contemplate the matter and he still couldn’t wrap his head around it. Couldn’t forget it, either. But he couldn’t exactly ask about it out of the blue while she was busy threatening his life, he needed to get his priorities in order and handle this like the mature adult he was.

So he bargained for his life and counted himself fortunate that their goals happened to align. 

If she ended up not hating him that would be nice, but Timothy just really, really wanted to get off of the casino. For the first time in years the impossible was beginning to look like an almost obtainable goal, and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by something as pathetic as a crush on the ex-girlfriend of his psychotic former boss. He was better than that.

Okay no, he really wasn’t, but he could be pragmatic.

He sent the little gang of vault hunters off in Ember’s direction. It had been a hasty decision - at the time he’d only known that he needed them to be gone, needed the space and the quietude he’d grown accustomed to.

It was after that he began to question the choice - acknowledge the cruelty of it. That after so long he couldn’t even do her the courtesy of asking her in person. Not even by ECHO. No, he sent a happy-go-lucky band of killers to beg on his behalf, when by all rights she would want nothing to do with him.

But there were precious few people left on the casino who would see him as more than an appetising bounty, and Timothy… needed her. Needed her skills. And maybe she would set him on fire for the insult, and maybe she’d look at his little plan with the same pitying expression she’d worn when he first started speaking of the tower, but maybe she would still be there… 

He still barely believed it when they told him she was on board.

When the vault hunters weren’t busy fighting their way through the casino, they holed up in Timothy’s hideout, because apparently personal space was a foreign concept to them and they took his invitation inside to mean this was also where they lived now.

At least it gave him the opportunity to get to know them.

The siren was called Amara. Apparently she was famous (she certainly loved to remind everyone of it every five minutes), and had made a name for herself fighting crime in the slums of Partali until the allure of the fabled vaults drove her off-planet.

She reeked a little too strongly of ego for Timothy’s liking. Confidence he could get behind, but he’d had his fill of egocentric killers.

At least she put her money where her mouth was. Or… her fist, as was often the case. Stood for what she believed was right, and never hesitated to take a hit for her friends when the fighting got rough. That he could respect. She still terrified him a little.

Flak on the other hand was an enigma. It was easy to take them at face value - a tall, ominous machine with a fascination for hunting down any target that presented a challenge. Timothy might even have gone as far as to describe them as cold blooded (except that technically they didn’t have any blood, and wouldn’t thank him for it). Beyond that, though, it was impossible to disguise the absolute adoration they held for their pet. A bonafide monster of a creature in its own right - named Mr. Chew - and god help anyone who didn’t concede their bedding to the thing if that’s where it decided to sleep.

The woman with the mech was someone he felt more at home with. She reminded him a little of Athena, except maybe with a better sense of humour. Perhaps it was just how unphased she seemed by everything. The soldier in her. The veteran. Someone a little weathered by the world, even if they were good at hiding it.

Moze would kick up her feet and give him a run down of their day's work like it was a de-briefing, before popping a piece of gum in her mouth and asking some mundane question about the casino - like who was keeping the hedges in the spendopticom trimmed? (Bots, Timothy guessed). 

And she would nod, accept this answer, then go check over her weapons with military efficiency because apparently keeping a conversation going was too much of a task.

If there was one of the four Timothy spent the most time with though, it was the oldest of them, a former assassin by the name of Zane. The man had made swift friends with his liquor cabinet. He had a thirst that rivalled Timothy’s early days on the casino, and Timothy had to bite his tongue to stop himself from pointing out how difficult fine spirits were to come by this far into their sentence. Most people had been brewing their own booze for years, which, put charitably, tasted like boiled feet.

He consoled himself with the fact that soon, it wouldn’t matter. 

At least Zane made a decent drinking buddy. All enthusiasm and wild tales of his escapades across the galaxy, each more unlikely than the last. Timothy understood only half of what he said, but he liked to listen. He made the universe seem vast. A place of adventure and fortune rather than a gaping uncertainty he still had yet to grapple with. Tipsy off the last of his vercuvian scotch he could almost believe it was real. 

And Timothy would stagger his way off to his own narrow bedroll before he managed to drink himself into a stupor, and lie awake staring at the ceiling while listening to rhythmic breathing of three other strangers and a pet skag.

It reminded him a little of his time on Elpis. Of how they would hole up in some abandoned outpost, and Nisha would sleep with her hat dipped down over her eyes, and Wilhelm would snore like an earthquake… Aurelia, obviously, got the cleanest spot to rest in, while Claptrap parked himself in everyone’s way and retracted his wheel before powering down.

Then there would be Athena, staring out into the darkness… No one ever asked her to take first watch but she always did.

And Timothy would settle in his own quiet corner and write words no one else would ever see. There was a familiarity to the routine. 

Some days he actually missed being kicked awake by Nisha’s sharp toed boots and scrambling to pull his jacket on and snatch his share of morning rations. Then they would sit around in a circle and sip tea because Aurelia always carried a stash and insisted on attempting to ‘civilise’ them…

All dead or gone now… He hoped Athena was still alive at least. If anyone deserved to make it out, it was her.

But these days Timothy would wake and sleepily stumble his way into what passed for his lounge and find Amara doing one handed push ups with Moze sitting cross legged on her back eating a bagel, while Zane lost a round of darts to his own digi-clone, and Flak tied a fresh bandana on their pet skag…

And it wasn’t a normal he was accustomed to, but it was… something. Less empty, perhaps. The right shape, even if he couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

Which wasn’t to say that the situation didn’t come with its challenges. He’d just about burst a blood vessel when he discovered the skag happily munching on a pair of his socks, the rest of which had been torn to ribbons.

Flak seemed entirely nonplussed. “He is showing his appreciation for your hospitality. He does not often eat socks - you should be honoured.”

“Could your pet maybe, you know, show his appreciation in some way that doesn’t involve chewing up all my things?”

“His name is Mr. Chew,” the robot said, in the same deadly tone they always used.

“Sure,” he agreed. “My point still stands.”

“Do you have a problem with how he expresses himself?”

Timothy stared into the towering robot’s single gleaming green eye and decided that, actually, this was very much a non-issue.

Then Moze went and upended a whole pail of neon paint all over his floor while she was digging through his shelves looking for something she could use to patch up Iron Bear.

“Actually, I think it looks better this way,” Amara said, while Zane cackled with laughter.

“My bad,” Moze offered, “I’ll find something to clear it up with.”

Timothy sighed, dragging a hand across his face. “No, it’s fine, kiddo,” he mumbled, “not like this place isn’t already a dump. I’ll be glad to be out of here.”

“That’s the spirit!” Zane said. “Ya got any more? I reckon I’d be grand at redecorating.”

“ No.”

He didn’t sulk - because Timothy refused to engage in something so childish, but he may have retreated to the quietest corner of his hideout and pretend that none of them existed for a while.

It was ridiculous. At times he couldn’t stand them - the noise, the chaos, the laughter - it was too much, and he felt impossibly claustrophobic in a space that was supposed to be his own.

Then they would leave, and the sudden vacuum they left in their absence picked and chewed at his nerves while he sat alone and contemplated why he even had two couches.

But… Ember called, sometimes. Filled the time with something other than his own thoughts. She never mentioned his departure, and Timothy didn’t either, and he was glad that they didn’t have to start with accusations.
She would tell him of the latest ‘gifts’ she had prepared for Pretty Boy and his thugs, and Timothy would complain about the smell of wet Skag, and it was easy to forget how much had changed.

And when the vault hunters returned, he was often in a more amicable disposition. He would appreciate, again, the little things. How Moze saved a portion of some deep fried concoction from the Vice district for him, or how Amara tightened up one of the loose valves he’d never had the strength to fix, or how Zane always knew exactly the right amount to pour when Timothy asked for another glass…

And sometimes, when Mr. Chew was lying on his back, with his tongue lolling out and his legs kicking playfully while Flak scratched his belly, he could almost be described as cute.

In uncharacteristically buoyant moments he thought that perhaps, life like this wasn’t so bad after all…

The Mayor was the last of their crew. Timothy had met the man briefly. He was an idealist, a dreamer - a perfect opposite to someone like Timothy himself. He’d run into Trashlantis by accident, touring the casino for a place no one would think to look for him, and after being greeted by a warm welcome and an offer of shelter had immediately turned tail and vowed never to return.

He’d seen what happened to good natured, peaceable societies when Pretty Boy took notice. And if that wasn’t enough, there was also the constant terror of living in a literal trash compactor with only a single steel beam between yourself and a very squishy, miserable death. And the smell.

But the Mayor was once one of Jack’s personal tailors, and the only person Timothy could think of that might still have what he needed to complete a disguise. So, he accepted that he would probably have to listen to several long winded rants on the evils of the material world, and sent the Vault hunters off to recruit him.

Timothy couldn’t remember the last time he’d been surrounded by so many people. It seemed impossible that they were even able to cram into the modest space of his hideout. There was his ex-girlfriend, a hologram of his boss’s ex-girlfriend, a crazy tech guy with a mullet, the mayor of a secret garbage society, a murder robot, an assassin, a mech pilot, a siren, and a skag. 

It took more effort than he liked to admit not to run to the nearest teleporter. 

But he swallowed down the panic, tried not to think too hard about all the eyes following him about the room, and took his place at the table.

“Okay, the gang’s all here! Sorry, the hideout’s not… really designed for event hosting, but we’re gonna make it work. Let’s talk tower!”

No one appeared suitably enthused by this opener, but at least none of them walked away.

“So, let’s hear the plan then,” Zane said.

Timothy nodded, drew a breath, and decided he was a coward after all. “Uh - this is Moxxi’s job, I’ll let her do the talking.”

Her hologram favoured him with a smile, hip cocked to the side and her long lashes lowered to make her gaze almost sultry. “Why don’t you take us through it, Timothy?”

And okay. Yep. He was still putty in her hands, nothing new there. Running his fingers through his hair he collected his thoughts for a few seconds before he began.

The culmination of seven long years suffering - the plan that would end it all. A way off of the casino. Freedom. A dream once out of reach now tangibly close, and the people he needed to see it come to fruition listening attentively to his every word.

It was really happening. But for some reason he couldn’t shake the desire for a strong drink and an hour of solitary contemplation… 

Moxxi focused on practical things, establishing suitable payment for their accomplices while Timothy wrestled with the contradictory nature of his own brain.

Then suddenly she was turning to him. “And you, Timothy? What do you want?”

He told himself it was just the abruptness of the question - the unexpectedness of it - that had him tripping over his own tongue and mumbling out, “Well, you know, you and I could…”

And what the hell was he doing? Trying to ask her out to dinner in front of seven other people (and a skag) while they were in the middle of planning a heist? After she’d threatened his life, and told him to his face she didn’t trust him? Because he still couldn’t get one night almost a decade ago out of his head?

Had he completely lost his mind?

Get your priorities straight, Tim, he scolded himself, it’s not like she’d ever say yes anyway.

“Y’know what?” he said. “Just… get me the hell outta this place.”

She made a small sound, like the answer wasn’t quite what she expected but was something she could take in her stride. “If that’s all you want I can arrange a ship to take you as far away as you can dream.”

“Yeah, good. That’s… all I want,” he said.

Moxxi seemed to accept this, and turned to address the whole table. “Alright then,” she told them, “what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s take the Jackpot.”

The vault hunters were the first to depart, eager to grab the last few pieces they needed to get the plan underway. Moxxi’s hologram disappeared. The Mayor slipped away to grab some of his old kit, anticipating repairs on Jack’s suit given the hectic lifestyle of the casino’s residence. 

Freddy didn’t even offer an excuse, but Timothy was glad to have him gone. The man kind of gave him the creeps, and not because of his habit of talking in third person. It was the way he kept eying people like he was considering how he’d reprogram them if the technology was only there…

He’d expected Ember to make a similar exit. She lingered, though, trailing the edges of his hideout like she was mapping it out.

This was the first time they’d been alone since the day he’d walked out of her life without so much as a wave. The first day he’d seen her in person, not just an icon on his ECHO screen…

He was probably supposed to say something. Apologies felt hollow though. He’d done what he’d done because that was who he was, because he was always better at running than holding his ground. He wasn’t sorry for leaving her. Not really. Not when she was standing before him, alive and as vibrant as ever, untainted by the mountain of baggage and danger Timothy dragged around like a second shadow.

But he couldn’t say nothing. So he cleared his throat, jammed his hands into his pockets to keep them from fidgeting, and said, “Thank you. For helping.”

Ember raised an eyebrow. “You thought I would turn my back on you?”

“I honestly wasn’t sure. I did kinda leave without saying anything…”

“You were rude,” she agreed. “But… perhaps it was for the best. You were not happy with me.”

I wasn’t happy anywhere, he thought. It was a useless thing to voice though, so he settled for something safer. “Still, thank you.”

Plucking the darts from the board on the wall, she twirled them in her hands, examining each of them like they were something new. The third had a bend in one the wings, and she flicked it with her fingers. 

“I was glad, you know,” she said, “when I heard you were still alive.”

“You thought I was dead?”

She shrugged. “I did not know. It would not have been a surprise.”

“Look, Ember-”

Whatever he’d been about to say she cut him off, holding one of the darts out to him. “Your shot, mon chéri,” she said, with a teasing smile. “And what is it you’re playing for now?”

Timothy stared at the dart. Cautiously, he took it from her, watching her expression questioningly.

The weight was different from that of a gun, lighter. The board hung across the room, peppered with the numerous holes he’d inflicted on the sketch of Jack’s grinning face.

He looked back at Ember. 

“How about a friend?” he asked.

Her smile widened. “Mmmm. I was thinking something similar.”

He felt absolutely disgusting dressed in Jack’s old outfit. The thing that struck him most though - the thing he’d almost forgotten - was how much he hated the layers. Who in their right mind wore a shirt, a button up, a waistcoat, and a jacket all together? And everything was so tight, not the loose hoodies or oversized pullovers he’d taken to wearing while on the casino…

He wanted nothing more than to claw it off and take a cold shower in the water flowing through his hideout. And then possibly burn it. Or maybe that was just Ember’s influence…

He squirmed, enduring the Mayor’s final checks with gritted teeth and monosyllabic answers.

It was a necessity, he reminded himself. Only a costume. Only a role he’d pull on for one last time before it was put to rest for good. 

The ghost of Handsome Jack on its final journey.

He was glad he never kept any mirrors at his place.

“You're up, Timothy,” Moxxi said.

Squaring his shoulders he tapped into the teleporter and let it wisk him away.

Turrets? Dealt with. Door? No problem. Deactivating the forcefield? Timothy had it covered. Everything was going perfectly to plan, until, of course, it wasn’t.

He could laugh at the absurdity of it - to have his one goal so palpably close, only to yet again find himself betrayed. Because of course. Because fuck him for ever thinking there was a way out. The universe knew exactly what he deserved, and apparently that was eternal imprisonment at the hands of men who thought power was the only metric of worth.

He missed his gun. He really missed his gun.

It wasn’t the pain that broke him. No. He’d endured pain far greater than whatever Pretty Boy could dish out. Could scream until his throat was raw and still not touch upon the exquisite agony that Jack had inflicted. Oh, he could weather pain, could bare his teeth at it, could stare it in the face and know it as an old acquaintance now reunited.

Nor was it the threat of losing the hand - a threat he’d scoffed at. Pretty Boy needed a winning hand that worked, and even if he hadn’t, so what? It wasn’t even his real hand. Just another piece that had already been taken. Replaced. Another part of the canvas on which Jack had laboured so lovingly. He was an amalgamation of someone else’s ego and the fragments of the man under which it had been buried, there was nothing left of him that hadn’t already been stolen.

No, the thing that broke him was the sickening realisation that Pretty Boy never had to break him at all.

To make him compliant all he needed to do was dope him up on the strongest drugs available until he was a drooling mess, with synapses so fried they’d never stitch themselves back together. Or maybe settle for a good old fashioned lobotomy. 

And he would live, yes, even keep the hand, but that would be the end of Timothy Lawrence. There would be no rescue after that. No escape. No dignity. The vault hunters could kill Pretty Boy, but they couldn’t save a vegetable. 

And what would his defiance mean then? 

So he caved, if only because the thought of losing the one thing Jack had never managed to take from him was more terrifying than a blade could ever be.

Pretty Boy bored quickly when he found Timothy compliant. He settled for locking him up like a prized bird - a trophy, on display for anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his control room.

There he had nothing but time. And every minute that passed, he felt more certain than the last, that they would not be coming.

That would have been too easy. Too kind. He didn’t get lucky like that. Why would anyone waste their time saving Timothy Lawrence, anyhow? He couldn’t pay them. The vault hunters weren’t even friends, really, just people who’d inserted themselves into his life and he’d accepted, because he was stupid enough to think they might actually be his ticket out…

He shouldn’t have been so desperate. Should know better than to fall for something as foolish as optimism.

But here he was, with no one to blame but himself. 

If he had only stayed hidden…

No. That was only another kind of prison. At least he’d tried, at least he hadn’t given up entirely…

He was tired, now. Tired of hoping. Of all the energy his pathetic scrabble to live demanded, when it was just one cruel joke after the next. All these years and where had it got him… all these years and it only kept on getting worse.

And then… and then, four pairs of boots hit the ground, and there was no sound that would have caused his heart to stutter quite like that.

His voice was almost a gasp. “You actually came.”

“Not out of the woods yet, boyo,” Zane called. “Hang tight.”

Timothy couldn’t think of anything to say. Nothing that would encompass the overwhelming surge of relief, the gratitude, the inadequacy of a mere thank you at a moment like that. So, like the smooth talker he was, he told them, “Don’t die.”

The end of Pretty Boy should have come with cheers and celebration. Instead, it came with the whoop of sirens and ominous red flash of the command consoles.

Jack never could let anyone else win. Of course he would have some protocol to launch the entire fucking casino into the nearest black hole. Seven years in the grave, and still, there he was, finding yet another way to ruin Timothy’s life.

He couldn’t deactivate the protocol without reaching the command console, which he couldn’t reach because of Pretty Boy’s stupid frickin’ lazer cage, and he couldn’t deactivate the cage either because, again, he couldn’t reach the command console, and it was so… unbelievably unfair.

“Approaching event horizon,” the computer chimed pleasantly.

Slumped on his knees with nothing left to give he supposed if nothing else he could appreciate the irony of the situation. He’d sold his life over to Jack, and in the end that was exactly what he took. Every last piece of him.

“Okay, uh… just go, I guess,” he told the vault hunters. “I-I… this place was never gonna let me leave anyway, right? So… uh…”

And he closed his eyes for a moment. Maybe it was just the sudden freeing relief of staring his own impending death down - in knowing that nothing he said now had any weight - but he found himself saying, “I’m really sorry, Moxxi. Guess this means no second date.”

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe he’d hoped she would take pity on him. Lie. Say that she was sorry too, or that she’d pour a glass out for him in his honour. Something to ease him through his last moments.

He certainly didn’t anticipate the utter vehemence with which she rejected his farewell.

“NO! No. Timothy, I shouldn’t have written you off. We’re not leaving you behind. I’m not letting Jack win.”

He’d never heard her speak like that. Any reply he might have made choked before it made its way out his throat, as he sat in stunned silence trying to make sense of it all. That she would speak that way about him. That… and he was still testing the thought, like a flavour that was unknown to him… she might actually care? That this wasn’t a delusion.

“Moxxi’s right, you’re coming with us,” Moze said.

“We’re in this together,” Amara promised.

And… and screw it. Screw Jack. He was going to live. 

Staggering upright he stared at his hand for a few terrible moments as the answer dawned.

“Okay. Wait - wait, wait, wait - I… have an idea, just… give me a second?”

He wavered like that far longer than he should have. He recalled the scent of scorched flesh all too vividly, a searing heat that burned for days, and haunted his nightmares relentlessly. Cold sweat trickled down his back. He had to grip his arm to keep it steady.

“This is really, really gonna suck,” he said with as much bravado as he could muster, “so you… might want to plug your ears, kiddos.”

His first attempt failed - flinching away at the last instance. Timothy swallowed. Bit his lip, steeled his nerves, and tried to pull his wrist through the lazer in one smooth motion.

It was agony. He didn’t know what he said, but he was fairly sure he screamed something as the red hot beam of light cut through fabric, and skin, and flesh, and bone, melting everything in its path until at last his winning hand dropped to the ground. 

He collapsed. Lay there like a fish out of water - gasping, and yet unable to breathe. The urge to retch was overwhelming. The smell was worse.

You just keep reeeal still, alright, Jack whispered in his ear, and he clutched his wrist to his chest and shuddered.

Jack was dead. He knew that. This was fine. He was fine with this. He’d had worse. It would pass, it would pass, it would pass…

“Yyyeah, that’ll do the trick,” he managed. “Just… get it over to the console.”

He didn’t even know which of them did it. Couldn’t remember much, except the pain. Then the sirens cut out and left his ears ringing in the abrupt silence.

He blinked. Realised that the consoles had stopped flashing red. Put things together a few belated seconds after. 

“Oh yeah, that’s great,” he mumbled to the floor. “I’m just… I’m just gonna go ahead and… pass out now.”

And he did. But only briefly.

“Need a hand?”

Timothy didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautiful sight. Moxxi, not in the translucent blue of a holo projection, but in the flesh. Almost a decade and she’d barely changed… Perhaps there was a hint of age in the subtle lines around her eyes, well hidden beneath the pale paint she lathered her face in, but she could have just as easily stepped right out of his memory without missing a beat. 

And more than that… more than that, she was real. And standing before him. And the whys, and the hows, and all the other little doubts didn’t seem to matter in that moment, only that she was there.

He murmured her name without thinking. Forgot the throbbing pain of his so recently dismembered hand long enough to haul himself to his feet. 

The air was awash with stars, swaying and refusing to settle. Timothy couldn’t care less. And maybe he was still in shock (almost certainly still in shock), but he found himself saying, of all things, “Y’know… I’ve been wondering… why did you say yes to dinner that night?”

Moxxi just shrugged. “I was hungry.”

Like it was the most casual thing in the world. Like they were old friends, sitting across the bar from one another and reminiscing about old times.

“Yeah but Jack…” Timothy persisted, “he was the worst.”

Somehow she was right before him, and he realised he must have closed the distance between them without noticing. Moxxi didn’t back away though. If anything she moved closer, only inches apart with her hand on his chest.

Could she feel how fast his heart was beating? Did she know what she did to him?

He could write a sonnet about the colour of her eyes - a gentle blue-green, like the ocean after a storm - and lose himself to their depths.

“Oh honey,” she crooned, with the same smile he’d fallen for the very day they’d met, “If I thought you were Jack I’d have shot you the moment you stepped up to my bar.”

“So… I didn’t even fool you a little?” he asked.

Her hand stretched up, tracing the edges of his mask. “Not even a little,” she said, and left him standing there like a love struck fool as she strolled away.

And on that day the seven year lockdown lifted. All debts were wiped clean. The security systems powered down, Jack’s holograms cut out, the impound lot opened its doors wide and people walked the halls with an air of confusion and delight.

Timothy barely noticed. He was busy running those words through his head, again and again, echoed on repeat.

Not even a little. Not even a little… not even a little…

He was almost all the way out the tower before it finally hit him.

Not even a little!

Chapter Text

Their second dinner was a week later. They’d both been busy. Moxxi, moulding the casino into something resembling her own vision for it, and Timothy, high off the best pain medication on offer and the luxury of a feather bed after years of sleeping in whatever dank corner he tossed his bedroll.

As the stump of his wrist began to heal though, and he sobered up enough to stop drooling onto his pillow all day, he could think of only two things. Firstly, jumping on the first ship he could find and leaving the casino light years behind, never to return. Secondly, the fact that the girl of his dreams was living on the same station and had given him the clearest signal he was ever likely to get that he might not be chasing a fantasy.

So, after a wretched hour battling his own indecision, he’d pulled on his jacket and ventured outside.

It was a disconcerting experience. Much had changed in a matter of days - trash cleared out, graffiti scrubbed from the walls, all of Jack’s golden statues conspicuously absent, none of the roving gangs that had long been a staple of the Jackpot. 

There were new additions too - traces of fresh carpeting or soft lamplight, signage he didn’t recognise. 

The shape was still there though. Halls he knew like the back of his hand. Long stretches of open space he’d dreaded setting foot in, corners that had sheltered him as he reloaded his pistol and caught his breath.

Even now, he couldn’t shake the urge to pull his hood down low and keep to the shadows. Felt as if a thousand eyes were on him. Devouring him, piece by piece. Every stranger was an assailant, every passing figure waiting to strike…

By the time he finally made it up to Moxxi’s temporary office, he was sweating hard. Worse, he found he’d completely forgotten whatever it was that he’d planned to say, so he stood there opening and closing his mouth in utter horror until he managed to mumble something about food.

And Moxxi… bless her soul… She dropped her chin into one perfectly manicured hand, and said, “I was beginning to think you’d never ask.”

So four hours later they sat in a recently refurbished venue of Moxxi’s choosing, eating a gourmet three course meal, sipping wine, and Timothy should have been on top of the world, but found to his despair that he was somewhere just shy of the high tide mark.

The suit that the Mayor had supplied him with itched at the collar. He knew the exact rafter that a body had been strung from six months back - a common warning to rival gangs - and how many exits there were.

His thoughts went back to his stockpile. Kept trying to calculate what he needed to grab. Food. Bullets. 

The wine was nowhere near strong enough, and he drank it like water.

It wasn’t Moxxi’s fault. She was as charming and effortlessly sensuous as always, dressed in a low-cut little number adorned with a sea of red lace. She talked about business - about her bar, about the underdome, about her plans for the casino… Sometimes she mentioned people - some of which Timothy knew and others who were a mystery. She confided in him the secret ingredient to her most popular cocktail, and told him that COV had blunted her taste for the ECHOnet despite her passionate following.

He clung to her words like they were the only thing keeping him afloat. Thought about the sound of her voice - melodic. The way she said his name. The fact that the nearest teleporter was a two minute walk, or a short jog away, and that he was down to his last pair of socks with nothing but debt lining his pockets.

She asked him if he’d heard the news about Atlas, and he couldn’t remember what he said. Had eleven witty rejoinders lined up, and all of them were Jack’s. Chased food around his plate with his fork and discovered his appetite had fled. Funny, considering the diet he’d endured for the last seven years. He would have killed for a good steak.

He heard her sigh. 

“You know,” she told him, as she popped a delicate bite of food between her lips and slid it off the fork, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say I was boring you.”

That caught his attention. He straightened up, the back of the seat digging into his spine as he stared across the table at her. “That’s not… I mean - no, never. It’s just…”

Just what? he asked himself, but unable to put a name to the feeling that dragged at his heels. He settled for something palatable. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For… I don’t know, screwing this up? I guess I thought… I don’t know, that I’d be less me?”

“And what’s wrong with being you?” she asked.

He laughed, a little, at that, but she didn’t join him and after an awkward moment he grabbed for the wine instead, and cursed as his stump clunked uselessly against his glass.

“Besides the obvious? I’m… Look, Moxxi, you’re… gorgeous. You’re goddamn perfect, and you don’t need me to tell you that. And this should be a dream come true right here. But I just… I can’t…”

And he still didn’t know how to put it. To tell her that she’d always had a little piece of his heart since the day she’d stepped into his life, and he could die happy in her arms… That he might, truthfully, be in love, and that right at that moment he still wanted to run far away and hide himself somewhere no one could ever reach him. That he hated himself for it. The inadequacy, against such a goddess. The uncertainty, still, that swirled inside him. That he’d outlived Jack, survived the casino, and yet he couldn’t shrug off the chains in full, nor escape the reminder that waited in every mirror…

Timothy dropped his head into his hand, and his voice was as tired as he felt. “I think I need some time away from this place… from everything.”

Moxxi said nothing for a while. He didn’t dare look at her, just studied the tablecloth - too clean to have come from before. 

Then her hand touched his arm - and he startled at it, but relaxed soon after, peering through his fingers at her.

“You still want that ship, sugar?” she asked softly.

Timothy managed a wry grin. “Yeah, well… I can’t exactly walk out of here.”

She made a sound he took to be agreement and retreated back to her side of the table, where she watched him critically while twirling one loose curl around her finger. “Know where you’re going?”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “I… actually haven’t thought that far ahead, if I’m being honest.”

He’d told himself he would get off the casino. That he wouldn’t die there. But maybe he’d never truly believed it. Maybe, even if he did, the future wasn’t something he knew how to plan for beyond a single goal. 

For years his life was only what Jack decreed. His path was laid out, and Timothy walked blindly along it because he hadn’t the will to fight. Even after his boss was long dead at the bottom of some volcano, he stumbled onward from one immediate objective to the next without sparing a thought for what lay ahead.

Seven years he’d spent trapped in this hellhole, and when he closed his eyes and pictured freedom it had no face, no name he could call. He could go anywhere… not where someone else told him to go, but anywhere he chose… and the terrifying truth was that he had no idea where that was. 

“You know…” Moxxi said slowly, “if you’re looking for a destination, there might be room up on Sanctuary for a man like you. Word is something’s brewing, and they could always use more vault hunters. Even one with a face like yours.”

Timothy made no attempt to hide his grimace. “The flying city?”

“It’s a spaceship now.”

“Oh. Of course it is.”

“I can put in a good word for you, if you like,” she said.

She probably meant it, too. Might be mad enough to think they actually wanted him there. But… maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. It would be a place to go. And she had a bar up there, she’d told him that much… 

He could just say yes, and it would be easy. An answer to an ambivalent future he hadn’t the skill to navigate. Just do what someone else told him… 

He poked at the stem of his wine glass, but made no effort to pick it up. “Can I think about it?”

“Sure thing, sugar,” she said with her classic coquettish smile. “Just don’t keep a girl waiting too long.”

“Thanks. I’ll, uh… still need that ship though. And another favour if that’s okay?”

Moxxi raised her eyebrows, but the smile remained. “For you? I think I can make an exception.”

There was little to pack, and even less to bid farewell. He left a few notes for the people he might generously describe as friends. Trent and the Mayor, mostly. But Ember… well, he owed her more than that, especially considering the abrupt way he’d stepped out of her life all those years ago.

So he waited in her dressing room as her show wound down, pointedly avoiding his own reflection. 

She came in still painted up - all glittering eyeshadow and impossible lashes - with a costume he didn’t recognise and the mephitic scent of kerosene. If his presence was a surprise she didn’t show it.

Timothy chose to take a page from Athena’s book. He skipped the formalities and told her only that he was leaving, as if those words alone were worth the trip.

Ember just nodded. She sat down at her dressing room table and set to work removing her stage makeup, and told him that she’d suspected as much, given that it had been his greatest obsession for the last seven years. 

It stung, a bit, but not because it was untrue (it certainly wasn’t), perhaps only because of the way she said it. Idly. Like it was immaterial.

Timothy supposed he deserved that. He’d been a poor friend, a poor… whatever they had been, and here he was without so much as a gift, ready to shatter the camaraderie they were just beginning to test the mettle of again. He thought of all the things he wished he had told her - all the things he might take with him to the grave.

In the end there was only one that counted. “I’ll miss you.”

“Then come back and visit sometime,” she told him. “I am not hard to find.”

“Right.” 

Perhaps she read something in his face then, a truth he dared not speak - that once he left the casino, Timothy had no intention of ever setting foot on it again.

Her expression softened. She put down the cloth she’d been using to clear her makeup off, and gave him her full attention, considering him in silence.

“Or,” she said at last, “you could write to me, no?”

Timothy ventured a smile. “I… think I could manage that.”

Her lips turned up. “Then I look forward to it. Tell me of your adventures, mon cheri,” Ember said, and stepped forward, stretching up to plant a gentle kiss on his jaw, “and make it a good story.”

He parked the ship under a sharp slope of overhanging rock, somewhere it might escape the notice of any watchful eyes. There, Timothy waited. His fingers grew stiff around the trigger of the laser cannons. Hours passed. No one approached.

The sky was turning to a livid, burning amber by the time he finally cracked the hatch open and emerged.

The air tasted different. Timothy was hesitant to describe air on the Jackpot as clean, but it had a sterile quality, recycled and purged so many times there was nothing left to it but a hint of dust picked up from the vents. Always still, always the same balmy temperature.

But the air on Pandora was dry enough to suck the moisture right from his skin, and the breeze that swept over the parched landscape pulled a deluge of scents along with it, all the dirt and putrescent stench of local wildlife. Foul, but not… stagnant. Alive. Real. It filled his lungs like it was something new entirely.

Taking up a post beneath the wing of the dormant ship, he watched from the shadows as the sun slunk its way from view. His first sunset in over seven years. Of course it would be on a shitty planet like Pandora.

He’d be lying if he said his eyes didn’t water a little though, as golds and reds fought for canvas across the scattered clouds, the final rays of light silhouetting the jagged hills and canyons like a gleaming halo before fading to a brilliant pink…

Yeah, real sap he was, getting misty eyed over a sunset... Keep it together, Tim.

When dark finally settled he pulled his helmet on. Then, he walked.

It was surreal - open terrain stretching out further than he could see, and the dry earth crunching beneath his boots as the distant cry of wheeling rakks echoed mournfully through the night. Not a wall in sight. And Elpis loomed above… larger than he remembered, fresh scars over its pale face, but a familiar sight nonetheless.

Two miles out it struck him. Not a presence, but an absence. Helios - gone.

He stared up and the stars with a strange tightness in his throat. Could an entire space station be moved? After Jack’s fall, had the company set their eyes elsewhere, and taken it to their next prospective planet? Did it haunt another distant sky?

These were not questions he had answers for though, and not the reason he’d chosen to touch down on the planet his former boss had terrorised until his very name became a curse. 

Timothy drew a few steadying breaths. They were musty through the helmet’s filter, but he felt a measure of calm returning.

He continued to walk.

Hollow Point had escaped the brunt of Jack’s wrath by virtue of location - the city bloomed like a fungus, hidden in the eternal dark of a vast cavern. Somehow the hodgepodge of scrap metal and wooden beams coalesced into a multi-story metropolis, complete with cobbled thoroughfares, rudimentary streetlights, and more bars than working toilets. It was in equal parts a monstrosity, and a testament to the perseverance of the eternally downtrodden.

Timothy was just glad he’d brought his pistol.

He’d told himself it was for the local wildlife - Pandora’s fawna took its lethality quite seriously - but it was a reassurance now, strapped securely to his thigh within easy reach of his only hand. Getting mugged wasn’t on his checklist.

He put a little of Jack’s old swagger into his stride - confidence that spoke of a man who knew where he was going and didn’t appreciate interruptions. It helped. The many eyes of passing residents still brushed over him, assessing the stranger in their midst, but they saw the gun and the broad-shouldered strut and searched instead for easier pickings. Then, as he found a secluded doorway or narrow back alley to duck into, Timothy would frantically check his ECHO for directions before stepping out and resuming the act. Like this he progressed, and the only sign of the anxiety pooling inside of him was the itch of sweat beneath his helmet and the ragged pant of his own breathing, loud in his ears.

Then it stood before him and he found he could not move. Could only stare, lock-limbed and frangible, caught in the quick-running spiral of his thoughts.

Should he be here at all? What if his information was wrong? What if it was right? Wouldn’t it be better to turn around, while he still had the chance? What good did he do, emerging from the past like an omen of misfortune?

Hilarious, that. Having a crisis in front of a garage. 

He counted to ten. This accomplished, he persuaded his legs to move, stiffly at first but soon finding their pace. By the time he made it into the well-lit interior he was fairly sure he was moving like a normal human being again.

It wasn’t much to look at - the standard fare as far as garages went - a lot of concrete, a lot of tools, and several vehicles in various states of repair. There was a woman working on a motorbike at the back, and she peered over the seat at him before calling out a cheery greeting.

“Be with you in just a tick!” she told him. “Hang tight.”

So Timothy hovered as far in as he dared, turning his head in an arc to slowly absorb his surroundings. The posters, the old radio, a photo of a man he didn’t recognise posing in front of a caravan, a half-eaten sandwich…

He’d just about crept close enough to begin deciphering the mess of handwritten notes scattered over the workbench when the press of a blade to his throat cut him short. Timothy froze.

With painstaking slowness he lifted his hand well clear of his gun.

“Easy,” he said, “I’m not-”

“Athena!” 

The voice snapped right through the tension, and he barely had a moment to think before Janey Springs popped into view, frantically trying to scrub engine grease from her hands.

“We’ve talked about this,” she said, in a tone that suggested they very much had talked about ‘this’, “you can’t go threatening every-”

“He’s not Crimson Raider,” a familiar voice said from behind him. “His helmet is, but he isn’t. I can tell.”

Janey paused. The rag in her hands stilled - he thought she might have forgotten it completely as she cocked her head to the side and gave him a once-over.

“Oh. Is that so?” she said. Then she seemed to shake herself, and a bit of her usual pep returned. “Well, one way to settle this then, stranger. Who are you, and what’s your business?”

Timothy felt like his tongue had turned to lead. He swallowed. There were a thousand things screaming through his head, but none of them wanted to emerge. He could say ‘ it’s me ’, or ‘ Timothy Lawrence ’, or ‘ can’t you tell? ’, or ‘ why are you living in a cave? ’ or ‘ did you ever look for me? ’, or ‘the ghost of the biggest asshole in the galaxy ’, or ‘ you didn’t forget me, did you? Did you? ’, or… or…

Or he could stand there like a lemon and get his head chopped off because he was busy running circles around a question that should have been the easiest in his life to answer.

“A friend,” was what he went with. “I think. Or, I hope I still am. I’m… going to take the helmet off now so uh… maybe don’t? With the sword?”

Taking care to keep his movements as unthreatening and deliberate as possible Timothy inched his hand up to the back of the helmet until his unsteady fingers managed to find purchase, and pulled. It came free.

A scream was the only warning he got. Or, a shriek really - high pitched and girlish - and then suddenly Janey tackled him.

His breath left him in a rush.

“Oh Timothy, you absolute bastard!” she cried. “I knew you weren’t dead! Athena always said you probably were, but I knew it! Why didn’t you call us?”

“Hi, Janey…” he managed to wheeze out from her crushing embrace, “it’s… it’s kind of a long story.”

The blade at his neck was long gone. Athena stepped into view, and they studied one another for a moment. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, her face a little older - a line had finally managed to set between her brows where her scowl so often sat, and another fainter one at the corner of her mouth. 

No more of the sturdy leathers and battered armour she’d used to favour. Now she wore something lighter, looser, possibly even casual if that was ever a word he could apply to her, though the conspicuous absence of sleeves at least showed the years had done nothing to dull her strength.

“The mask’s new,” she said eventually.

“Oh, yeah, got it not long after you left. Had to match Jack.”

“Jack’s dead.”

“I know.”

“Did he…”

“Yeah.” His smile felt as brittle as his tone. “Like I said, had to match.”

Her lips tightened at that, but she made no response.

“Athena?” Janey asked, looking between them. She’d finally loosened her death grip on him, having settled for clasping both his arms as if she feared he would disappear the moment she let go.

“Later,” Athena promised. Her eyes lingered on Timothy. “You should come in. To the house. It’s best if no one sees-”

“Believe me, I’m very much aware,” he said dryly.

The house connected to the back of the garage, and had most of the qualities he’d come to expect from Hollow Point. The architecture was slapdash, the windows narrow, and there was a peculiar number of storage crates. There were also touches of character though - the colourful choice of curtains, cushions that looked to be handmade… Several framed pictures of both women were mixed in with the posters lining the walls, and Timothy tried not to drift off course as he admired them.

It had been a rare occurrence to see Athena smile back on Elpis. She smiled in these photos.

They ended up in the lounge and Janey brought drinks (not strong enough for Timothy’s tastes, but he accepted the can she pushed his way nonetheless). There he began the unenviable task of narrating the last decade. He gave them the abridged version, the parts he could share without indulging too deeply in self-pity and poisoning the mood.

When he was done he asked very quickly what they had been up to rather than waiting for a round of questions.

Mercifully, they humoured him.

Turned out the pair of them had been a lot of places since he’d last seen them. Janey always fancied putting down roots though, and a local Pandoran mechanic looking to begin a franchise seemed like a good opportunity for a job. 

Then of course things got weird, there was another vault, and Athena was briefly kidnapped and sort of rescued by an Eridian before her girlfriend could storm up guns blazing and demand her return, and Janey now ran the garage since her boss had been blown up in space…

And they were married!

His fumbling and belated congratulations was met with smiles.

“We would have invited you if we’d known how to reach you,” Athena told him.

“I would have been there if I could,” he returned.

Janey tugged at her wife’s arm insistently. “Oooh, the pictures! Show him the pictures!”

So they huddled around the coffee table while pouring over photos of the wedding, which had the added benefit of allowing him to put faces to some of the name’s they’d tossed around, and Janey waxed rhapsodic about the magic of the day until Athena was visibly blushing.

Amongst the strangers that bustled in the background was something familiar though. Or someone, he should say, though he had to blink several times to persuade himself they weren’t a phantom of his imagination.

“Wait, Claptrap’s-”

“Yep,” Athena confirmed. “Not dead.”

“But I thought…”

“That Jack killed him? He did. He just… got better.”

The little yellow robot had collected a few more scratches and dings to his chassi, but there he was, dancing away with the rest of the wedding guests without a care… Claptrap outlived Jack. Maybe the universe had a sense of humour after all.

“Oh. That’s… that’s good,” Timothy said, stifling the urge to laugh. “I’m glad, really.”

“Would you like to mee-”

“Nope. Absolutely not. Super hyped to hear he’s not dead and all, but unless he’s picked up a new personality matrix along the way…”

“He’s still Claptrap.”

Timothy let out a breath of air - still not quite a laugh, but close to it. “Yeah. Figures.”

Not a bad thing though… he’d known Claptrap better than he’d admit, better than he wanted to, and the thing that had always struck him was his sheer resilience. 

It was quicker to write a list of people who didn’t despise him. He was a nuisance, a failure, constantly stumbling from one unwitting disaster to the next, barely one step ahead of all his mistakes. But he always picked himself back up. Always returned with a positive attitude and childlike enthusiasm. Trusted in his friends… Believed in the future.

It was a shocking discovery to realise that a part of him actually envied the little robot.

Timothy was still grappling with this revelation when Athena broke his train of thought.

“Do you remember,” she asked, “when Jack digitised our consciousness, sent us into his mind to find that code he wanted, and Claptrap had that song stuck-”

“God, don’t talk about the song! I had that thing in my brain for weeks…” he moaned.

“And you kept humming it, and Wilhelm-”

“Said if I didn’t stop he’d put me between two jump pads and let me puke myself to death.”

“So you stayed up all night listening to some weird folk-metal stuff-”

“And I finally had it out my head-”

“And then Nisha started humming it.”

They were both grinning, but he saw the moment it hit her. Watched as the expression froze, and slid slowly from her face. And he knew, before she even spoke, what she was going to say.

“She’s dead,” Athena told him.

“I know.”

“Wilhelm too.”

“I know.” Timothy stared down at the empty can in his grasp. “Aurelia?” he asked.

“Haven’t heard from her in a long time.”

He sighed. Elpis was far behind them. He could still remember it though… possibly the earliest he could remember with any clarity, and while he might not mourn the people, he could mourn the loss of their eclectic gang. They had been a part of something, in those days. Now they were just the shrapnel.

“Well. Claptrap’s alive. That’s something,” he said.

“And both of you as well,” Janey cut in. “Let’s not go forgetting that.”

The melancholy he’d inadvertently introduced was not easily dispelled, but they made some headway as she leapt into an anecdote about their honeymoon and an unfortunate choice of footwear, and later dragged out several children’s books she’d written for him to flip through.

Athena informed him he would be staying for dinner. Not a question, a statement, and he thought it rude to protest. 

Then Janey went and made up the couch for him to sleep on, and Timothy was beginning to suspect they were conspiring together but could think of no way to prove it.

So he was staying the night. Not what he’d planned, but that was fine. Certainly he’d slept in worse places. It would have been nice if the couch was just a bit longer though, so his feet didn’t dangle obstinately over the end.

As it turned out, this was not the biggest issue. No. The problem… the part that really sunk its teeth in… was the darkness that lurked behind his own lids. In that lightless void a terrible conviction came crawling - the thought that he had never left the casino at all. 

If he only stretched his fingers out he would feel the unwelcoming cold of embossed metal beneath his touch. The walls that had entombed him were there, they were there, and he huddled under his flimsy blanket and tried to will them away, like they would ever concede to his whims. Like they weren’t inevitable. Inexorable.

He closed his eyes, and the jaws of the Jackpot snapped shut around him. 

Timothy got up and turned the light on. For a while he just stood by the switch, breathing, soaking in every detail around him - the peeling wallpaper, the wooden floorboards, the posters tacked up with old pins - anything he could catalogue. It wasn’t the casino. It so tangibly wasn’t the casino. Yet the thought of returning to the couch was too much, he knew the moment he let himself drift it would all come crashing back. 

Instead he picked his way quietly through the house and found the ladder to the roof.

The air outside was cold but still. Keeping well back from the edge where the sudden drop was sure to set his stomach churning he found a place in the centre and lay down, hand folded over the stump of his right arm. 

There were no stars to be seen above, just the ragged, pockmarked ceiling of the cavern, and this was something Timothy was grateful for. The glittering vastness of open space was the only view the Jackpot had ever provided, the only piece of the outside they could ever observe. Here, it could not touch him. There was the openness he craved - free from the walls and doors that sought to contain him - but not tainted by that sight.

Soaking in the darkness he found a measure of calm. He lay like that for a while. 

Timothy wondered if this was what contentment was - peace, perhaps. It didn’t feel like it. 

Was this the future he’d clawed his way toward, all these years? Was this it? His prize, his reward for every misery inflicted upon him, the blood he’d waded through? Was this all there would ever be?

He’d won, Jack was dead, he was free, and it still wasn’t enough… still didn’t fill the hole inside of him, that emptiness that surged up in these quiet moments, or the anger there was no one left to answer for. 

But what was he doing but lingering? A ship as far away as you can dream, Moxxi had promised, and as soon as he had it he chased the past because it was the only path he could see…

The chapter closed, the page turned, and the question was: what next?  

Yet the words would not flow. Maybe he was still trapped in a way, reaching for something he would never find… 

Was it madness? Selfishness that drove him here? Athena had a life, and what good did he do, stumbling into it now with nothing to give? Thinking only of the time he’d known her, over seven years ago. Did he think it would restore some part of him, return what had splintered off since their time as colleagues?

No. No, he knew where this line of thinking went. It twisted him up when he let it. The simple truth was that Athena mattered, and they had been… well, she had deserved to know he hadn’t kicked the bucket, to hear it in person and not as some idle gossip passed between acquaintances of acquaintances… 

And it soothed some piece of his mind to see her. To see her happy. Janey, too. A conclusion he could appreciate. The ending they deserved.

And still the question yawned, open and ineludible - what next?

There might be room up on Sanctuary for a man like you…

Staring up at the cavern’s ceiling Timothy tried to picture it. Would it be so terrible to go along with the proposition, just for the meantime? Maybe not… but it wasn’t what he wanted, either, was it? Was it?

He was still lost in thought when the sound of the roof’s hatch opening came from behind, and Timothy startled, head jerked back to assess the new threat.

It was only Athena. She met his gaze squarely, and after a moment Timothy relaxed. Let his hand go back to where it had been, folded over his stomach.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked him.

“Something like that,” Timothy said, with a half-hearted smile. “You?”

She seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “Yes. Something like that.”

Without waiting for an invitation she emerged the rest of the way onto the roof, closing the hatch softly behind her. 

Timothy went back to staring upward. A few seconds later he heard Athena sit beside him, and a few seconds after that another sound as she lay down.

So, apparently they were both just going to lie on the roof then. As ridiculous as it was he felt no inclination to move.

She didn’t speak. He appreciated that. No ‘are you okay?’ or ‘do you want to talk about it?’, just her presence, as solid and immovable as ever. Athena never faltered no matter what the universe threw their way. She braced herself, dug her heels in, and powered through. He hadn’t even realised how much he’d needed that, leaned on her those days back on Elpis, not until she was long gone and his life fell to pieces…

Over seven years, and she filled that absent space without question. Over seven years… and lying beside her, she still made the world feel steady, like it was something he could traverse without the ground falling away beneath him.

He let a long, slow breath out through his nose. “I can’t remember my face.”

“Timothy…”

He didn’t stop there. Feared that if he might, the words would dry in his mouth and never emerge at all. “I know I had freckles, and I think my hair was kind of… frizzy? But that’s all I’ve got. The rest is a blank.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Glancing over, he saw that she had pushed herself up on one elbow, angled toward him but looking uncertain whether she was supposed to shift closer.

Timothy shrugged. “Because I want to,” he said. “I mean I know I probably didn’t look like much, but I was still me... Now it’s just Jack. That asshat took that from me, and I’m probably just going to have to get over it someday.”

He looked away, then, unsure what expression she would wear and entirely unwilling to find out. The darkness was a far more welcome confidant.

“You remembered your face while we were on Elpis?”

He focused on the rugged stone above him and forced his tongue to move. “Yeah.”

“I never should have left you behind, Tim. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I told you to go. I’m not digging for pity here, I just wanted to tell someone.”

“You could still change your face, you don’t have to look like him anymore. If the bomb’s deactivated we can find someone…”

Timothy pulled himself upright. “ Nooottt the biggest fan of surgery these days. Besides, what would I change it to? I don’t remember what I looked like. At least like this there’s a few people who recognise me. You, Janey, Moxxi, Ember, the Mayor, those new vault hunters, maybe even Pickle… god, how old is Pickle now? Actually don’t answer that, he was hard enough to deal with as a kid, I don’t want to imagine the alternative. All I’m saying… all I’m saying is it’s better than nothing.”

A beat of silence descended. 

“You’ll still have to hide it, on Pandora at least.”

He managed to turn his head toward her at last. There was… something resembling pity in those eyes, a hurt that was not her own, but there was still the strength he’d come to appreciate too, the well-disciplined scrutiny of a soldier - acknowledging the state of things, and turning to the practical. Thoroughly Athena.

His lopsided grin had more warmth than he’d anticipated. “Oh, yeah, totally, don’t have to explain that one to me.”

“Will you still be here tomorrow?”

“I guess? Wasn’t planning to just disappear in the night.”

“Good,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

When they rose it was still dark. Partially because of the whole ‘being in a cave’ thing, but also because Pandoran cycles were ninety standard hours long. 

Janey cooked rakk eggs for breakfast. Once Timothy was obediently shovelling them into his mouth, and she began to fill a bag for him, ignoring his protests.

“It’s easier to just let it happen,” Athena said, “otherwise she’ll hop on a bike and follow you.”

“I should!” Janey retorted. “Wandering off without even any spare food? How do you expect to survive out there? Do you have to go?”

He almost regretted filling her in on that part of the plan. He poked at the remains of his scrambled eggs. “I’ll be coming back.”

“Too right you will. But if it’s in another ten years don’t think I won’t be pissed.”

Timothy sighed, and took another bite. “It won’t be ten years.”

“You’ll look after him, right, Athena? Make sure he gets where he’s going?”

“Of course.”

The pack she eventually shoved his way was heavy enough to unbalance him, and he nearly asked if she’d put enough rocks in it before he caught her expression and thought better of it. Janey gave him a bruising hug.

“You take care of yourself, you hear me you big jerk?” she mumbled into his shoulder. “And I better get postcards! Lots of them!”

“Totally,” he promised.

With one final squeeze she released him and went to kiss Athena goodbye before they set out.

They took one of Janey’s bikes. It was an unsightly beast to Timothy’s mind, with an engine that thrummed like a live thing beneath them, but it was fast, he was assured, and burned less fuel than a four wheeler. He clung to Athena’s back as best he could around the shield and thanked the heavens for his helmet.

As soon as they made it out of Hollow Point she twisted the accelerator and they tore through the dirt with a trail of dust billowing behind them.

Sometimes they were fortunate enough to take roads, but most of the journey was cross-country. He got used to the rough quiver of the bike’s suspension. Spent his time watching the sawtooth shadows of the craggy landscape rush by under a darkened sky.

It was… strange. Difficult to comprehend the distance they ate up in any concrete sense.

For a painful stretch of time his world has encompassed the length and breadth of the Jackpot, which while hardly insubstantial still limited movement in a very real way. You could walk from one side to the other. He’d been everywhere there - from the vice district to the compactor. Travelling by foot could get you from one section to the next in a matter of minutes.

But Pandora zipped by endlessly, and the vastness of it was breathtaking. It was only then that dawned on him - the infinite span of the universe. He could pick any planet he liked and walk until he died of old age and still not scratch the surface. He had a ship. He could go anywhere. There were no walls to stop him now.

Several hours passed before Athena pulled them over for a break. She killed the engine and left it to cool, taking long gulps from a flask she’d brought with her before passing it over to him. The water was lukewarm but quenches his thirst all the same. 

Having sated one need, Timothy turned to rummage through his pack for something to eat, and paused as his hand found instead the battered form of a book hidden amongst the cans and other parcels Janey had gifted him. At first he thought it must be one of her children’s stories - he’d always done his best to encourage those - but as he studied it closer he noted a different name on the cover. And the title…

“Detective frog?” he mused aloud, tracing his fingers over the illustration on its front.

Athena looked across. “Oh. You said you used to read those.”

Timothy froze. He wet his lips. “I did?”

“Yeah.”

He stared at the book for a whole minute before very carefully putting it back in the safety of his pack. 

There were, thankfully, sandwiches, and they took two each and sat on the most comfortable looking rocks to eat them. The bread was soft, the meat was indeterminate, but the overall result was surprisingly pleasant.

“Your wife makes good sandwiches,” he told her between mouthfuls.

“She does,” Athena agreed. “She also makes terrible pastries, but don’t tell her I said that.”

He was about to respond when something in the distance caught his attention. Nothing big, just a flash of light really. 

“Top of the right ridge, about half a mile out,” he said instead.

Athena set down her sandwich and pulled out a pair of binoculars as Timothy wrestled his helmet back on.

“Bandits,” she said after a moment.

“Have they seen us?”

“I don’t know. Better not to take the chance.” Putting the binoculars away she reached back for her shield, strapping it onto her arm. “Like old times? I’ll take the left, you take the right?”

Timothy drew his pistol. It still felt odd in his left hand, but the shape, the weight, these had not changed. A companion he could pick out in the dark by touch alone, a weapon of precision.

He glanced up at the ridge, gawing at his lower lip. He returned the gun to its holster.

“I’d rather not.”

Athena’s eyes rested heavily upon him. She didn’t ask though. Didn’t breathe life to the question he knew she must have.

“Stay here then, I’ll be back soon,” she said, and left.

With nothing else to do he methodically re-wrapped the remainder of the sandwiches and waited. A little over a half hour later she returned.

“It’s dealt with,” was all she said. 

They got back on the bike, and drove.

Timothy saw it well before they arrived. There was no mistaking its outline, the familiar pronged giant, stretching up to the sky from which it had fallen. Helios, in ruins.

Maybe a part of him had already known. Maybe a part of him still refused to conceive of it. Yet he could not tear his eyes from it, could only drown in the sight of the wreckage with his heart in his throat.

This was where it began. The backdrop to Jack’s ascent to rule, the seat of his power, a symbol of the inescapable watch of Hyperion. His home for years. The first prison he’d known. He’d never dreamed it would fall.

Athena parked the bike a mile out, up the vantage of a nearby slope. 

“I… it’s really… gone,” Timothy murmured when the sound of the engine died.

She looked at him. “Sort of,” she said, and beckoned him to follow. 

Mutely he trailed after her, climbing further up the slope until it evened out at the crest where there was flat expanse of undisturbed ground. There, she handed him the binoculars.

After a brief hesitation he removed his helmet and accepted them, lifting them to his eyes.

Helios jumped into crisp focus before him. 

Cold steel, as towering and baleful as he recalled, but ragged - sheared off at odd angles, not the sleek structure that had once struck fear into all who gazed upward. There were… patches though, discoloured stretches of metal that did not match the whole, and he realised to his astonishment that these were attempts at repairs.

More than that, there were spots of brighter colour - banners, painted portholes, washing lines… and the station sprawled. Small shacks and marquees spread from its base, forming a close knit district of wildly varying design and materials. People moved amongst them.

He could see a gathering practising what looked like some kind of yoga with guns. Kids chased one another under the careful watch of several adults, while older individuals bartered and haggled at the fringes.

“They call themselves ‘the Children of Helios’,” Athena said from beside him. “Ex-Hyperion, survivors of the fall. Man called Vaughn leads them. They’re not corporate pen-pushers anymore, but… they’re not really Pandoran either. A new breed, I guess.”

Slowly Timothy lowered the binoculars. He swallowed. It took him longer than he would have liked to find his voice. “It’s… different. They look… happy. I don’t… I don’t think I ever expected anyone on Helios to look happy. Not unless someone else was suffering.” 

“It’s not the same place, they’ve changed it… also outlawed the colour yellow for some reason, which I think is part of some weird cult thing they have going, but I didn’t ask for details.” She gave him a quick smile, but he couldn’t quite get himself to mirror it, and her expression quickly sobered to something grave. “Helios doesn’t belong to Jack anymore. And from what I know about Moxxi she’ll wipe every last trace of him from that casino. Everything that Jack built, people are making their own. He’s disappearing one day at a time.”

“Not all of him.”

Athena didn’t waver. “Maybe not. But Jack’s dead, and I can’t think of anything more satisfying than taking even his face away. Make it yours, Timothy. Make people remember you, not him.”

He looked away before she did, studying the binoculars he still held. Studying the helmet that sat abandoned on the dusty ground. 

Impossible was a word he might have used once, but impossible was Helios, flourishing in the wasteland with its corporate strings severed. Impossible was Claptrap, dancing at a wedding while the man who’d killed him was nothing but bones. Impossible was Timothy Lawrence, still breathing, still walking, still here even if there were pieces of him that would never reform the way they had once.

He drew in the Pandoran air, savouring every execrable note. Wiped his eyes off on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Thank you…” told her, trying to keep his voice steady. “I mean it. I know I never, well, it wasn’t like there was ever a great time to say it, but uh… you were probably the closest thing I had to a friend in a long time. I’m glad I got to see you again.”

“You too,” Athena said, a little awkwardly, because that was always the way with her. She could call out enemy positions while under fire no problem, but still floundered in the face of sentiment. He loved her all the more for it.

“Do you know where you’re going after this?” she asked.

Timothy managed a smile. “I’m working on it.”

“Well,” she said, “wherever you go, don’t be a stranger.”

Timothy sat in the ship’s cockpit, legs kicked up on the dashboard and his ECHO held loosely in one hand. Athena’s bike had long since disappeared over the horizon. He’d watched it go.

The sun had yet to rise but Pandoran nights were never truly black - the luminous mass of Elpis saw to that - and he could still discern every dip and peak of the landscape. 

A hellscape, some people called it, but Timothy didn’t think it looked like that. Hell was a box with no key. Pandora was wide stretching plains and desolate canyons. He might never fully understand why anyone would choose to settle on such a planet, but he caught glimpses on occasion… snatches of something that could be described as beautiful.

His fingers tapped lightly at the edges of his ECHO. He counted to twenty, and put the call through.

The moment the connection clicked into place he was speaking. “Hey, it’s uh, Timothy… I mean, of course it is, it already says that on your ECHO and god why am I like this… Okay. Starting over. I just wanted to let you know I’ve thought about your offer.”

Moxxi’s sultry tone filled the cockpit. “Glad to hear it, sugar. I take it that means you’ve made a decision?”

“Yeah… look, I’ve been playing it over in my head a lot, you know I’d normally jump at the opportunity to see more of you but I’m also not keen on living near a bunch of people who’d shoot this face without even thinking, so that’s a lot to deal with…” 

He trailed off, wishing that he could see her, thanking god that he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to say his piece with her poised in front of him and slowly undoing him with her gaze. He was barely sure that he could manage it now, alone and lightyears from wherever she lounged.

“I spent the last seven years in a living hell, Moxxi,” he said all in one breath, “and then you showed up… might not have been what you planned to do but you saved me. Without you and those new vault hunters, I’d still be rotting in there. I owe you for that. And I’d love to pay you back for it if I can. But also…”

Timothy closed his eyes and bit the inside of his cheek. “Also, if it’s okay, I think I’d like to spend some time catching up with the rest of the world? Maybe travel? I’ve been looking at steel walls and space for waaayy too long, I think I just want to… stretch my legs... Yeah. That.”

For several seconds there was no sound at all. When Moxxi spoke, her voice was pleasantly neutral. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is. I was serious about paying you back though… and not just for the casino… I know it was just a job, but working for Jack was the biggest mistake of my life and I don’t know if I can make up for it, but I’d still like to try. If you or the Crimson Raiders ever need anything you can always call. Maybe if they get used to the idea of me I’ll join the rest of you up there someday, but I can’t make any promises. I just… I don’t-”

“Don’t want to nail yourself down,” she finished for him, and Timothy deflated in his seat.

“Yeah…”

“I hear you on that one, hun,” she said, and there was warmth to it this time, an understanding. “No harm in keeping your options open. I’ll give you a call if any work comes my way that sounds like your kind of gig, but if not, you know how to reach me.”

“Sounds good. And Moxxi… thanks. For dinner. And everything else. And just… thank you.”

“Oh Timothy,” she sighed, “you really are too sweet.”

The line went dead, but the lightness in his chest remained. He knew this would not be the last they spoke. Knew too that he would see Athena again. And Janey. And that he had a letter to write to Ember - the first of many - and she would write back with all the bountiful gossip of the Vice district and pyrotechnic plans for her show.

But in the meantime there was an entire galaxy out there, and the destination was not important, because that was something that would come in due course. All that mattered was the unshakable certainty that every direction was his to claim.

Timothy opened his eyes, took his feet off the dashboard, and pulled up the ship’s navigational program. There were no walls anymore.

He wrote of a man who could change his face to anything, and one day he looked in the mirror and realised he could not recall his own. But he remembered his name. And even when he didn’t, other people did… they saw him and they smiled, they recognized him, and the further he travelled and the more people he met, the more that new face became his in every way that mattered. 

And perhaps it was only a story, but perhaps that was okay.