Chapter Text
It’s been a while since Rafa failed. At least, it’s been a while since he failed in a way that kept him up at night.
Lots of smaller failures, though. Getting his sweatshirt caught in his exo-suit, forgetting to bring enough ammo for his favorite gun, even—just once—that attempt at a beard. Those, he can let slide off him, rainwater on a spinning bullet.
Not this time.
If he wants to delude himself, he can pretend that at some point, Arjay could return. He could pull off a dramatic post-climactic-battle resurrection, and of course the only words he would say in response to Rafa’s delighted exclamation of surprise would be, “Rumors of my death were muy exagerada.”
Did Arjay speak Spanish? Eh, not important. What is important is the cinematic reunion Rafa can see playing out in one of the farm fields nearby. At sunset, of course. There’s a battered Arjay emerging from the gently waving stalks, and there’s Rafa, skin golden in the dying light and hair impeccable even with the breeze, and they meet in the middle with a manly clasp of arms. There’s a quip exchange—he’s still workshopping what he could say in response to Arjay—and then Arjay collapses into his perfectly toned arms. Rafa calls for a doctor in a voice that is strong but still threatening to break in a way that reveals his vulnerability in a socially acceptable manner, Arjay gets treatment, and they all live happily ever after. Fin. End scene. Roll credits.
It’s not possible, though. None of it. What was done to him couldn’t be undone—Lilith’s own words, and she’s a Siren, the Siren. She knows these things better than Rafa ever will.
Arjay died in the Phase and the Phase claimed him. He’s not coming back. He gets to live forever on his own pedestal in Rafa’s head as the only person Rafa failed to save twice. The person to whom Rafa owes a life debt that can never be repaid, because killing him was a mercy but it wasn’t right.
That hiss as his body broke apart into the violent ribbons of energy that had been crammed into it in Vile Lictor’s experimentes dejado de la mano de Dios—he can hear it even now, if he tries. In his dreams, whether he wants it or not.
What a choice, his dreams give him now. Two opciones divertidos: one, suffocate under the crushing weight of gravity while black tie Tediore shareholders sip wine glasses filled by the blood gushing from their own necks and ruminate amongst themselves on the inconvenience and expense of a soldier who can think. Two, float in a purple void while his limbs slowly spiral out like unspooling thread, every moment an agony as the Phase takes him like it took Arjay, and Arjay himself there too. Watching. Waiting for him to see what he saw, the end of all things, until the purple threads of fate sever Rafa at the neck.
The third one, which tends to show up whenever one of the first two has already ruined his night and so he considers it more of a chaser than an option of its own, is whatever flavor of battlefield he’s seen a hundred times, occasionally spiced up with an appearance of the Timekeeper or Rafa’s hands finding themselves around Arjay or Zadra’s throats, golden glass staining the edges of his vision. Occasionally he just shoots them. Or his Deadframe does while he, a severed head on the ground, can only watch.
This night is the Phase followed by the Deadframe. In their wake, Rafa stares up at the ceiling and blinks until his eyes adjust and Zadra’s dying whisper of you will break is lost to the crickets and distant beasts that call the Fadefields home.
A couple doors down, Rush’s snoring offers a counter-rhythm to Rafa’s pounding heart. The spare cot in the Outlander’s underground base is hardly the luxury Rafa’s dipped in and out of while chasing Vaults and taunting Tediore—casi, casi, un poquito más, casi me encuentras—but it’s warm, it’s safe, and it still smells a bit like the protein muffins Rush had been baking while putting together plans for a party.
The Timekeeper is dead. A party only makes sense, and were it not for the ghost that haunts him, Rafa would be nothing but thrilled to take part. He’s still thrilled, of course—a party is a party, and he’s waited far too long to try Rush’s pastries—but the feeling is tempered by knowing there’s someone else who should’ve been there celebrating the tyrant’s fall.
Plenty of people died to pave the way to his defeat, but Arjay…he did so much to help, only to be turned against what he loved through no fault of his own. So many people in this universe deserve death. Arjay wasn’t one of them.
Nothing got to Rafa quite like the death of a good man. He can still remember that instant when it seemed Rush had given his life for the cause, that moment before he realized Zadra had intervened, the moment it felt like his stomach bottomed out against his guts.
Outside, someone passes close by the vent filtering the world through the ground into Rafa’s room. It’s the crunch of their feet on the gravel that tells Rafa there will be no more sleep tonight.
Ay, enough melancholy.
Outside, the sun is just starting to peek over the horizon. He stretches a bit while eating the last of the muffins he nicked from the kitchen and tries to enjoy them even though the taste part of his brain is just tossing chalk at everything.
In time, the nightmares will lose their teeth, and he’ll taste his breakfast again. Until the next horror.
There are a handful of kratch screeching in the distance, but they’re far enough away that he can ignore the sound while he limbers up.
More gravel crunching behind him, then: “You’re up early.”
“Amon, buenos días. You’re up too?”
“There was a bounty I wanted to wrap up.” He pats the…limb…hanging from his belt. A closer look reveals it to be from a synth. “All kinds of Order types are choosing to wreak havoc without the Timekeeper there to restrain them. I have the time to show them why that is unwise. So I do.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“There are more bounties listed.”
“I’m sure.”
“Many, many more.”
“Sí, sí, I’ll take some. Don’t need to twist my arm off too.”
Amon claps him on the shoulder and carries on to the bounty board, still patting the synth limb. He hadn’t seemed the trophy type. Certainly hadn’t taken anything from the commanders or the Timekeeper. Eh, life is full of little mysteries.
He lingers in his stretching for perhaps a little longer than strictly necessary in hopes of another distraction, but in vain.
Bounties it is, then.
This is the short straw. The shortest of straws. Rafa leans a little lower over his digirunner and wishes the howling wind and engines could drown out the voice in his ear.
He would’ve vastly preferred taking up Harlowe’s offers on the bounty board, but Amon had snatched the rest of those up before he could. Going around hunting experimental synths to see if their tech could be repurposed almost sounds fun.
This? This is not fun.
“And when I was just about to give my heroic speech to inspire them all to do better in their miserable little lives, they took my arm! Can you believe it? The nerve of these people!”
“They are rippers, Claptrap,” Rafa says, knowing it’s pointless. “What did you expect?”
“A little common decency, that’s all! This is the last time I ever try to take part in the gig economy. Let the other schmucks deliver gross food to awful places for terrible pay! I’m going to stick to what I know best.”
“Griftng?” he suggests in the same moment Claptrap finishes,
“Inspirational self-help courses! Hey, what was that?”
A ripper camp mercifully materializes through the trees. “Nothing. Talk later, robotito.”
He hasn’t spent much time in this area of the Fadefields, and it looks like the rippers haven’t either—the camp’s shelters are slapdash and light on bloodstains. Looks like many of them are living out of their mining rigs.
No one emerges to say hello. Rafa leaves his bike behind and walks slowly through the camp, finger tapping his rifle’s trigger guard. Rippers and being sneaky—not common. It has him on edge.
So on edge that, when a sharp crack splits the air, he damn near jumps out of his skin. Nothing appears in his gun’s sights. No bullets fly his way. He lets out a breath.
When he clears the trees on the far side of the camp, he gets his explanation: the rippers are gathered at one spot in a big field. Though encircling one of their number, they’ve left a notable gap in their ranks so the circle is more of a U shape. They don’t seem to care about him as he approaches.
A blur of motion in the middle, a smack, and a collective held breath—followed by a groan of disappointment.
Rafa gets closer, and still, no explosions of violence. A couple rippers glance at him but don’t attack. Usually they have to be too drunk to hold an axe for that to happen, but all these rippers look steady on their feet. So why?
He gets his answer when the crowd shifts enough for him to see that the person in the middle is lining up a broken bit of pipe with a pristine white ball on the ground. Or, no. Not on the ground. On a tee.
The rippers are playing…golf.
“Echo-4, are you seeing this?”
An affirmative boop.
Among the participants, he counts three severed human arms, four bits of miscellaneous metal machinery, one Claptrap arm, three rifles, and one actual golf club.
After the next shot and groan, he nudges the nearest ripper and gestures at the golf balls and pile of broken tees.
“Where did all this come from? Did you make it?” He shudders to think how rippers would see fit to make golf balls. Carved bone, most likely.
“Hell no,” the ripper snorts. “Sporting goods store supply ship crashed over there.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder at a smudge in the trees that could, conceivably, be the charred remains of a ship. “Most all’a the clubs broke on impact, though. We gotta make do. Everyone ‘cept Holey Harriet.”
“Lo siento, did you say ‘holy’?”
“Yeah. No one can put balls in a hole like her. Look, she’s up next.”
A ripper in classic ripper attire save for a shockingly intact dark green sweater vest steps up to the pile of golf balls. She holds, in her hands, the one true and honest golf club. A four-iron, Rafa’s pretty sure.
The assembled rippers fall eerily silent. One starts to speak and, at a glare from Harriet, is instantly given an axe to the throat by a neighbor. They go down gurgling. Quietly.
Harriet adjusts her spiked boots a couple times, does a practice swing, then sets up against the ball. Her muscles bunch, the club goes up, and then she’s swinging. That now-familiar crack splits the air while the ball hurtles toward the farthest flag and the ripper standing a ways behind it.
It’s far enough that he can’t see exactly what happens, but it’s easy enough to piece together: the ball nails that ripper in the head and bounces toward the hole. The ripper falls in a heap.
Rafa hardly dares to breathe. It doesn’t seem like any of the other rippers are willing to break the expectant silence either.
Did she miss? What if their spotter is dead? Does someone have to go confirm what happened?
The fallen ripper stirs, crawls to the hole to peer inside, and gives a thumbs up.
Understanding dawns on Rafa. “Ah, holey. No es ‘holy’.”
Raucous cheers break out, smothering his comment. He ducks to avoid a wave of back-slaps and chest bumps and makes his way to Holey Harriet.
“Hola, amiga. I was very impressed by your shot just now.”
She scoffs and straightens up, her next ball teed up and waiting. “Good, because it was a goddamn excellent one. The hell do you want, Bolted?”
Everyone and their grandmother has a nickname for that around here. Rafa ignores it. “A friend of mine is in great need of that particular club.” He points to Claptrap’s arm.
“Hell no!” the ripper holding it yells. “This is mine! My ticket to victory!”
“Victory?” Rafa repeats with a raised eyebrow. “Is there a competition? If there is, I want in. Rafa loves competition. It’s so hard for me to find, you know?”
Holey Harriet rests her club over her shoulder and looks him up and down. “Alright, you look like you might be able to put up a fight.”
“Only if you add that arm to the grand prize.”
“Sure.” She shuts the complaining ripper up with a look. “But you gotta buy in. Cost of the arm included.”
He hadn’t started this day expecting to negotiate with a ripper, but such is life. If he wins, he gets to brag. If he loses, he’ll take out the rippers and claim the arm anyway. Win-win.
He spares his client a quick update while waiting for his turn. “Claptrap, I found your arm. The rippers think it’s quite valuable.”
“Of course they do! It’s my arm!”
“Ay, no. I mean I have to pay for it. Which means you will be paying, and that payment is not coming out of the reward. Claro?”
“Er. How much?”
“Don’t worry, robotito. I got a good price.”
He cuts the call before Claptrap can reply and nods at the ripper waving him up to the tee box.
A renewed breeze tugs at the edges of his hood as he lines up with the tee and the golf ball shining atop it. His club—a hastily-repurposed bit of piping from one of the drills that probably isn’t important and no one saw him take—fits well in his hands.
The last time he played golf was when a couple of executives he’d been buttering up to get the supposed vault key in their doomsday bunker had invited him. Their equipment had all been top-of-the-line: gleaming clubs in bags full to bursting, AI caddies, shoes that had never seen a speck of grass before that day. He’s pretty sure they’d been cheating, too. Magnets of some kind. Or rockets in the ball.
To the point: he’s done this before. In a way. Any experience at all is more than most of his competition can claim.
A hush falls over the crowd as he lines up his first shot. The competition is simple: one close hole, one a moderate distance away, and one far in the distance—the same one he saw Holey Harriet sink her practice ball into. The holes count for one, two, and four points.
Maybe not golf. Maybe something like golf. Something close enough to golf.
Holey Harriet sank the closest and farthest shots in her turn. No one else has hit the farthest. His strategy is clear: make the middle and farthest, and the closest too if he wants to show off.
And he always wants to show off.
A couple practice swings confirm the Deadframe can handle the motions just fine even when he’s wielding a pipe instead of a club. Some of the rippers start to get impatient, so he lines up with the ball and sights his target: the closest hole. Really just a warm-up, near as it is.
Swing, hit, wait. He grins when the ball goes in and gives his wannabe club an appreciative pat. “Not bad, not bad! Let’s do it again. By the way,” he glances at Holey Harriet, who’s watching with her arms crossed over that sweater vest, “what are the rest of the prizes? I might have gotten a touch ahead of myself, here.”
She snorts. “Win and find out or it doesn’t matter.”
About what he can expect from a ripper. He sighs and prepares for his next shot. The wind is…intermittent. He waits for a lull and swings.
Way off. Spectacularly far off. He knows it as soon as he makes contact, the pipe slipping in his hands. That’s it, then. He’ll have to fight them all for his prize. Did he even bring enough bullets?
A stray kratch, stuck in some kind of mating dance with another that’s taken them far from their hive in the forest, encounters Rafa’s golf ball. Specifically, the back of its head makes contact with a hollow pok sound carried on the wind.
It is impossible to keep his heart from soaring right alongside the ball as it goes right back toward the hole. Behind him, people shoot at the kratch pair, killing both before the first can hit the ground while jeers and curses intermingle with the gunshots.
“Is that an extra point?” Rafa asks, unable to help himself.
Holey Harriet purses her lips—at least, he assumes she does, hard to see under the mask—and finally shakes her head. “Not a rule of golf.”
Damn. Worth a shot. He turns back just in time to see his ball roll neatly into a hole, and his heart settles back into that place of perfect confidence insulated from all the consequences perpetually circling around it.
There are a few complaints about the legitimacy of the shot. Holey Harriet shuts them down and reminds them all of someone named Terry, who’d modified a Tediore gun to pick up the ball and carry it to the hole.
“What happened to him?”
“Flattened by moon debris a couple days ago along with his gun.”
“Ah. My, um. My condolences?”
She shrugs. “Take your shot, Bolted.”
He glances at the sky to see if more convenient wildlife are willing to lend a skull to his cause, but other than a few puffy white clouds, the overhanging moon, and the sun, there’s nothing of note. With a sigh, he tees up.
The farthest hole. The most difficult hole. His last shot.
Ah, pressure. It feels good, and he rolls his shoulders as he lines up his pipe with the ball. He’s wiped off his hands and ensured a proper grip this time. No mistakes. Rafa never makes the same mistake twice.
He inhales, raises his pipe, and swings on the exhale. The bang of the ball off his pipe rings clear and true, and he knows without having to check that it’s a perfect shot. He plants his pipe in the ground and leans on it while he watches the ball sail toward the flag.
A last-second surge in the breeze pushes it slightly off course so it hits the flagpole on the way in, but that’s fine. Swishing the shot was a stretch goal.
The rippers erupt into cheers and curse-laden shouts of disbelief. One guy snaps his club—a mishmash of wood and metal—clean in two.
Rafa glances at Holey Harriet. His grin’s hidden under his helmet but it’s plain in his voice. “I believe that makes me the winner, no?”
She looks like she’d rather be chewing rocks, but she nods. “Yeah. Hey, idiots, bring this Bolted his prize!”
He tenses a little when the crowd parts, half-expecting a last-minute betrayal. It wouldn’t be the first time. But no, they just haul out a red chest and dump it on the ground just outside the tee box. Rafa’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Fucker,” mutters the guy with Claptrap’s arm as he tosses that arm on top of the chest.
Rafa hadn’t realized he was playing for actual arms, not just Claptrap’s clamp. He rubs his hands together as he approaches the chest. Echo-4 takes Claptrap’s arm while Rafa pops open the lid.
A shotgun meets his expectant gaze. He hefts it up, inspecting the quality. It’s a Tediore weapon, but the ammunition isn’t a type he recognizes.
“Do you mind?” he asks Holey Harriet, indicating the wide open field. She shrugs, gaze lingering on the weapon.
He lines up a shot with the moon and squeezes the trigger. The gun kicks like a mule and a triangular spread of three golf balls erupts from the barrel. Rafa lets out a shocked laugh that turns more appreciative when those golf balls explode after a second.
“Par three,” the gun’s mechanized voice intones. “No hits. Recommend par five.”
Par…? Rafa inspects the gun again and finds the toggle on the side. He can change how many golf balls it fires, though he’s willing to bet there’s a tradeoff in velocity the more it’s shooting at a time.
Still, it’s a fun weapon to add to his collection and it almost makes this whole endeavor worth it. Almost.
“Interesting.” He turns it over in his hands, noting the distance readout on the scope. “What’s this?”
“Tells you your distance to the hole,” Holey Harriet bites out. “Obviously.”
“Right, obviously. I was just checking if you knew too.” He stows the gun. “Nice shots, by the way. Maybe I get an epithet of my own…? ‘Holey Rafa’ has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree?”
She snorts. “Get outta here before I shoot you, Vault Hunter.”
He supposes it’s only fair the rippers do what rippers tend to do whenever golf isn’t involved. With a jaunty salute, he hops onto his ride and sets a course back to Claptrap.
A long course. A roundabout course. It’s a nice day, after all.
Claptrap’s thrilled to have his arm back. Less thrilled to learn what the rippers were doing with it, but hey, it could’ve been worse.
“Did you know someone once stole my wheel to use on their treadmill? The nerve!”
“Sí, I know. I was the one who got it back.”
“Really? Wow, time flies, rookie.”
While Claptrap reattaches his lost limb, Rafa idly wonders if Claptrap will ever graduate him from the rookie moniker and figures the answer is no. “I did not wake up today thinking my day would be so focused on arms.”
“You’re a Vault Hunter, isn’t every day an arms day? Get it? Arms? Like guns?”
He sighs. “Yes, Claptrap, I get it.”
Thankfully, he gets a call before Claptrap can over explain the pun any further.
“Vault Hunter, you there?”
“Lilith. Feeling better?”
“Day by day. Listen, Rush said something about a party? Moxxi’s busy and Zane and Amara are off doing god knows what, so you’re my last hope for actual information.”
“Ay, Rush didn’t share the details?”
“He was pretty frazzled. Something about one of the ovens going out? I’m not sure.”
She still sounds tired. Rafa leans against a nearby counter. “Sí, there’s a party tonight at the Launchpad. Rush—”
Claptrap zooms right up to his feet, nearly knocking into his knees. “Did you say party?”
Hijo de puta, Rafa thinks. Aloud, he says, “Sorry, Lilith, I’m with Claptrap. Long story. The party starts at four,” he stresses, “but we both know only schmucks would show up before six, right?”
The guests all deserve at least two hours of peace, he thinks.
He can hear her smile when she says, “Of course. Four it is.”
She hangs up, leaving Rafa with the consequences of his distraction.
“Ooh, a party,” Claptrap says as he hustles around. “I think I still have some of those complementary hot dogs!”
“I think they are set on batteries.”
“What do you know? Oh, there’s so much I could do. You, rookie, you’re in the way!”
“I am the way, but fine, I have preparations of my own to make.”
He doesn’t, actually, beyond maybe polishing his gear. Calder helpfully solves that problem by calling while Rafa’s considering his next move outside the safehouse Claptrap claimed.
Just like that, Rafa has his excuse to leave: there’s an escort mission with his name on it.