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Jack was never much afraid of broken glass. Hell, he wasn’t afraid of anything, much less some shattered bit of refuse. He was Handsome goddamn Jack.
He never much thought of it at all. Maybe that’s why he was still laughing menacingly as he stood among the ruins of his beloved space station, his holographic form towering over Rhys, who laid crumpled on the floor, gasping and trying to right himself with his remaining arm.
In fact, if Jack had stopped to think about it, he might’ve realized what was going on sooner. Not that it would have mattered.
Maybe he would’ve remembered something very important about broken glass.
In another lifetime, Handsome Jack walked easily along the length of his desk, as someone, he couldn’t - no, he just didn’t bother to - remember their name read off statistic after statistic. The Hyperion employee told him the numbers just didn’t add up; the employee informed him what he wanted just wasn’t possible.
“I’m sorry, there must be some interference between your brain and your mouth, kiddo,” Jack said with a smile as he rounded the desk. “Because it sounded like you just told me that I couldn’t do something,” he added as he circled around behind the nameless soul. To his employee’s credit, they caught on much faster than Jack had anticipated. He supposed it was a testament to his own notoriety and oppressive presence, and he smiled wider.
“N-no sir,” the employee protested quickly, shoulders hunching as Jack stopped by their side, looking down at the surface of his monumental desk. He idly traced a finger along the top of it, shifting the papers there along with his finger’s path ever so slightly, nudging the empty plate from his previous meal, and finally coming up to hover over the fine water glass. “I just mean n-not that way; we can’t just-”
“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” Jack repeated boredly. “You’re quite the negative Nancy, aren’t you?” he asked, but he wasn’t really so much talking with his employee as at him.
Without waiting for a reply Jack gripped the top of the glass tight and spun around, slamming the bottom into the startled employee’s face. The half punch half slap delivered enough force not only to crush the glass into shards, driving them through flesh, into bone and eye sockets, but to also send the doomed figure head over heels down the steps, screaming.
“Crap!” Jack exclaimed, pain blossoming in his own hand.
He clutched at his wrist and brought his hand up to see a decent sliver of glass embedded in his palm.
“I probably should have seen that coming,” Jack half yelled half laughed as he straightened up. “Ahh well.” A fresh wail drew his attention back to the foot of the stairs leading down from his desk to the front of his office and he trained his two tone eyes at the slumping, writhing form there. He watched as it rolled about, scrunching up on itself and attempting to stumble away, hands afraid to touch the face but afraid to leave it alone, shaking violently.
“See? Look what you made me do,” Jack scolded, holding up his hand. “Oh,” he added as he started down the stairs, “I guess you can’t really see can you?” he asked as he reached his employee. “I hate naysayers,” he stated as he kicked the stammering employee over onto their back. “Nobody gets anywhere saying can’t do this, can’t do that, no, no, no,” he said and knelt beside the person.
“Nnnn-ahhh-nnngh-” came the garbled response and Jack arched a severe brow at him.
“What eloquent last words,” he replied. “What even was that? Was that a no? Another no? Hahaha, negative to the last! I almost want to applaud your dedication to consistency in being consistently annoying . You could be a little more creative though, beg for your life maybe? That’s always a fun one,” Jack said, tilting his head as he crouched easily next to the shuddering form with the bloody face marred with jagged pieces of glass. But no words could make it out of the garbled gurgling groans and Jack pursed his lip, as he carefully grabbed the shard in his own hand.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” he said. “Listen kiddo, it’s been fun,” he remarked with renewed vigor. He pulled the glass out of his palm with a quick tug and a pained gasp through automatically clenched teeth. “Wow, that stings, hooo crap,” he exclaimed, twitching his fingers just the slightest amount, the pain in his palm preventing him from trying much more. Then he returned his attention to the glass shard he clutched in his uninjured hand.
“What was I saying - oh, right, yes, listen, I like to make a practice of cutting the negative things out of my life,” Handsome Jack declared as he gripped the shard carefully, but tightly and descended upon the choking figure on his office floor.
Another naysayer, another man sat, crumpled on the ruins of his office floor again, having denied him. However this time, the company man wasn’t waiting. He lashed out with a shard of glass and Jack laughed as the sweeping strokes went right through his holographic form harmlessly.
What could broken glass do to him ?
Moments later, on his knees, Jack found himself doing something he never thought he would, especially in his own goddamn office: begging for his life. Rhys defiantly paused to glare at him, nostrils flaring, the treacherous shard of glass discarded on the ground, alongside the cybernetic port. The ECHO eye implant, the last thing tethering Jack to this world seemed to leer at him, almost taunting, as fingers twitched, threatening to close around it and crush it in its entirety.
Vaguely, Handsome Jack thought, cursing the glass on the floor, missing the glass in the monitors he’d been able to use so briefly to establish his presence on Helios again, and recognizing with a pang of… something… the glass of a broken picture frame… Vaguely he realized that it wasn’t the broken glass he was afraid of.