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Rhys looked up at the glowing, pink, box… thingy. The Vault of The Traveller. Unless, that’s what they’re inside of right now? It was kinda too late to ask now, especially since he and Fiona had almost traversed the entire staircase. So, Rhys would be stuck in this awkward phase of not exactly understanding what the Vault was.
“This life… Vault hunting, I mean. I don’t know. I think it suits me.” Fiona’s voice was serious, almost sincere. She very rarely talked like this with Rhys for extended periods of time without one of them making a stupid joke or shoving the other. This time, however, seemed to be their final hurrah, so they silently agreed to drop the bickering this time.
“You’ll make a fortune Vault Hunting.” Rhys said confidently, stopping where he was and turning to look at Fiona. He scratched the back of his head and returned to the stuttering, awkward mess that he usually was. “Well, I mean… money isn’t everything, but it helps.” He turned to continue up the stairs. “I’m sure you won’t let it control your life like I let it control mine.”
Fiona opened her mouth to argue that Rhys did have morals, money didn’t control his life, and that he did put his friends first. Except, he kinda proved to them that he did put money and Hyperion above Fiona, Sasha, and even Vaughn. Not only did he not tell them about the evil dictator AI in his brain, but he also plugged him into Helios. So, arguing this one was an uphill battle that Fiona really didn’t want to deal with.
Eventually, she decided, “So, what are you gonna do now? You finally made it up the corporate ladder. Atlas is a big name. Or, I mean… it was.” She turned to follow Rhys up the steps. Their pace was slow, but intentional. This conversation could be their last opportunity to have a second alone and there was a lot of ends they wanted to wrap up. After Rhys didn’t answer right away, she added, “You could make it be again.”
Rhys nodded, brain searching for the words. They went through so much shit together, from the fake Vault Key, to Vallory, to the Helios disaster… It seemed dumb and immature to brag about his assets now, although it would be in character. “Honestly? I’m kinda just glad to be alive. It was pretty touch and go for a bit there.”
“Yeah. It was.” They met eyes for a moment, both feeling excited to open the Vault, but both sad for their adventure to end.
“I think I am gonna work on Atlas. You know, as its CEO. Maybe I can do good things with it. Succeed where Jack and Hyperion failed, actually make Pandora a better place.” Rhys nodded, as if reassuring himself.
Fiona got a weird feeling in her stomach when Rhys called the psychotic dictator who ruined the life of everyone on Pandora “Jack,” as if they were old pals who had a falling out. Although, Fiona supposed, that was probably what the departure was like to Rhys. She should probably stop hating him for trusting the AI over her, allowing Jack to take over his body and assault her sister, and plugging him into a massive power source that directly lead to the death of hundreds of people, but it was about as difficult as it sounded.
“I think… with that level of power you could get things done. You know, as long as either Sasha, Vaughn, or I have some sort of input on your decision making.” She didn’t mention Jack. That was a sore spot for Rhys, both pride wise and mentally. If she brought it up, he would close himself off from the conversation. Besides, this wasn’t about that right now.
The moment got a little too serious, so Rhys turned and climbed up the step. He looked at the chest… thing, and turned back to offer Fiona a hand. “Hey, I forgot to tell you. I forgive you about the whole fake Vault Key thing.” He backtracked nervously. “I mean, you kinda started this whole Vault thing by faking you had a key, so I guess. I don’t know…”
Fiona grabbed his hand and helped herself up, stepping up onto the platform beside Rhys. “Thank you.” She adjusted her vest, then looked to the taller man, waiting for him to finish his thought.
He dropped his confident stance for a second. “Thanks, I guess. I’m glad we met. Anyways! Now that that awkward bit is over…” His gaze shifted to the Vault.
“Thank you too.” Fiona said quietly, barely loud enough for either of them to hear. “Let’s open a Vault.”
“Would… you like to do the honors?” Rhys asked. The honesty of his words were betrayed by his expression. He reeeaally wanted to open the Vault.
Fiona could’ve been a jerk and say “yeah, Rhys! I do want to.” But, she was the nicest person in the world, after all. Instead, she looked at him with a smile. “It’s the last one. It’s only right that we both open it. It’s the best part.”
Rhys grinned and put a hand on the treasure box thing. “I was kinda hoping you’d say that.”
Fiona pressed her hand on the box, pushing some at the lid. Buuut this was not a normal “treasure box thing,” because when they both pushed at the lid, the box split into thirds and spread apart, seemingly held together by a bright, white light.
“Are we dying?!” Rhys held back a whimper as the white light spread to and filled the room.
Fiona looked at Rhys for a moment. He was trembling, but definitely trying to hide his anxiety. She flinched when Rhys grabbed her arm, then opened her mouth to tell him to let go. She, very briefly, caught his look of anxiousness shift into terror as their feet lifted off the ground. “No, Rhys, I don’t think we are dying. Maybe it’s transporting us to the treasure.” She, internally, felt really fucking scared, because who knew whether or not they were dying. It’s not like she’d ever been in a Vault before. Maybe it knew they weren’t really Vault Hunters and that they’d gotten lucky and were just going to kill them off.
But Rhys was a much bigger coward than Fiona herself was, so she decided to be the optimist. Thankfully, Rhys held up her expectation and was a big old pessimist.
Like, Rhys definitely could hear her, the room wasn’t that loud, but he apparently decided to ignore her in favor of literally panicking. “I mean, I know I said I don’t have plans for the future, but that doesn’t mean I want to di-”
The sound of the box opening transformed into something really loud, a combination of gears shifting a metal screeching against metal. Rhys’s grip tightened on Fiona’s arm, and, as much as Fiona hated to admit it, it was a soothing pressure. She reached over with her hand and grabbed at Rhys’s shoulder, wondering if they were, in fact, dying.
Wind began rushing past them, coming from every direction. It blew the pair closer together, which led to them both clinging to each other out of fear, although both of them would never admit it. It felt like they were moving extremely fast, even faster than when Rhys was hanging out of the back of the caravan by a single sock. Neither of them could tell how long they had been moving, or if they were actually moving, but eventually, it stopped.
The wind stopped whipping past their faces and no longer held them together, but that didn’t stop them from holding onto the other for dear life. The noises dissipated slowly, fading to just an ambient hum. Whatever entity or element that was powering the vault held extreme power, making Rhys and Fiona’s skin feel electrified with energy.
Both of them pulled back from their embrace some to try and understand their surroundings, but there really weren’t any surroundings to understand. They seemed to be floating in some extremely bright expanse that, somehow, didn’t hurt their eyes to look at. It was incredible and hard to explain.
Rhys broke the silence. “Okay, so we are definitely dead.” He chuckled nervously, gripping the back of Fiona’s coat. “Right? I mean, this isn’t Pandora… Where the hell are we?”
Fiona did not let go of Rhys and Rhys had not let go since he had first grabbed on. Both decided to just pretend that the contact wasn’t happening. “I… don’t really know. I don’t feel dead. And if we’re dead, how are we talking?”
“Maybe you can talk to other people who died. We don’t know the rules of being dead. Well, I mean at least I don’t. I’ve never really been dead before.” Rhys murmured, trying not to hyperventilate.
“Maybe we should ask your buddy Jack. He’s been dead before.”
“Well, the AI was made before Jack died, so he definitely couldn’t have had the intelligence on what it’s like to be dead. Besides, I broke the software that he was stored on, so it’s not like I could-” He cut himself off, shooting Fiona a dirty look. “Oh I see now. A joke. Har har har.”
Fiona smirked, opening her mouth to make fun of him for being a big idiot when suddenly, they were falling.
And not like, kinda falling, or floating delicately. It was a literal free fall towards a ground that neither could see. “It was horrifying,” they would proclaim later in defense of why they grabbed onto each other and screamed like little kids. They shut their eyes and finally just accepted death as it came.
Luckily for Fiona, Rhys’s back is the one that hit the ground, and she landed on top of him comfortably, all things considering. Neither got up right away, but Rhys let out a pained groan and let go of where his arms were wrapped around Fiona.
She planted a hand on the ground next to Rhys, looking at the familiar brown ground of Pandora. “What… the hell?” Fiona sat up and climbed off of Rhys, who was still whining in pain. She, herself, was mostly unscathed, maybe bruising her knee from where it hit Rhys’s.
Rhys opened his eyes and saw the sky, blinking a few times in confusion. “Fiona… are we on Pandora?” He turned his head to look at her back as she surveyed their location. “Are we nearby? Oh my god are we lost? Are there skags? Ugh we should have brought Vaughn, he could’ve protected us!” He covered his face, whining half in pain from the fall and half in frustration.
“No, no. We are… Ugh! That stupid fucking Vault!” She kicked the dirt, pointing. “Look. There’s the Caravan. It literally just threw us.”
Rhys stood up, groaning in pain and clutching his ribs. “What the hell?” He looked at where Fiona was looking to see… yeah, the Caravan. Sasha and Vaughn seemed to be looking at some cool tech they found, while the other Vault Hunter trainees were picking up the stuff that was spewed on the ground.
“Really?! After all of that?!” Rhys shouted, frustrated. “Well, so much for using the money from the Vault to rebuild Atlas.” He looked to Fiona, who was dumbfounded. “You still wanna be a Vault Hunter? Because that totally sucked.”
She didn’t look at him, numb with shock. “I… don’t understand. We really did all of that for nothing?”
“Well, we did save Gortys. So I mean, that was something.”
Fiona nodded in agreement. She did love that little circle robot. “Yeah, but… no treasure?”
Rhys sighed happily and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She stiffened immediately, but decided to give him an opportunity to speak before she shoved him off. Maybe he wouldn’t say something stupid.
“Maybe, just maybe, the Vault’s treasure was teaching us that Capitalism is dumb.” Rhys grinned and patted her shoulder. “And the real treasure is the friends we made along the way.”
Nope, he’s still an idiot.