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“What the fuck, Rhysie? I was having a swell time in the biometric sector decoding some mess that…”
“Heh… Sorry Jack, couldn't be helped.” Rhys’ voice was weak, gurgling, but he still made an attempt to be light. It didn't take but a second to realize how grave the situation was.
Rhys was pinned, machinery falling over him, a barb going right through his middle. His normally pristine fitted, styled suit was gorged in blood and visceral.
“Shit, shit, shit, pumpkin! What happened? How do I get you out?”
Another short laugh, Rhys' teeth stained pink with his own claret fluids mixing with spittle. “Guess I’m not a very good Handsome Jack, this assassination attempt seems to have actually worked.”
Jack scanned the room quickly, his mind flashing over the video feed seeing how Rhys had been inspecting a new product line demonstration when one of them happened to be a bomb. The kid had been smart, throwing it away from him in time, but still, the explosive did massive damage to the room. To Rhys himself, too, as it was plain to see.
Jack knelt down beside his partner, the only one clever enough and with just enough dumb luck he had let rule Hyperion by his side.
He was swearing over and over, his hands ghosting over Rhys wounds, trying ever so in futility to stop the bleeding. His digitized appendages just passed right through the man's body.
“We-we were so close to getting you that body too. Make sure- sure that they finish that? Hyperion needs you…” Rhys murmured.
“Don't you be talking like that, kitten! I've alerted medical and security, you are gonna be good as new! Just hold on.”
Rhys had a distant smile on his face, eyes glazing. Jack wish he could slap him, instead, he did his best to screech in a static voice, “RHYSIE , stay with me!”
Rhys let his eyes glaze over to Jack, so soft his smile. The kind that he saved for just the two of them. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“No, no no no no , don't you fucking dare die on me! You hear? That's an order ! You can not die!”
Rhys smirked, “Don’t you be smug on me while you are bleeding out, kiddo!” Where the hell was the support he called for not 15 seconds ago? Why were they so slow?
“I’m not you, Jack. I can’t survive this. I’m not you… I’m sorry I never could be. You know, I wanted to. I admire you so much.”
“Fuck, don’t get sappy on me, it's going to be okay! You were just kicking this company into shape, Rhysie!”
“We were, Ja--" A cough, a sputter and slosh of blood out of the partner CEO’s mouth, Jack uselessly trying to close the mouth as if to keep the fluid inside of the man. “Shit, shit, fuck. No talking, they are coming, soon. They have to be.” How helpless he was is this fucking digital form.
A hand reached up, cybernetic and sparking as it was bent at an odd angle. Who knows what his flesh side looked like under the rubble. It passed through space where Jack’s face should have been if he was meat and bone.
“I wish I could have done better for you…”
“You-you shut the fuck up!”
“It’s true, I had such big plans for us. God, when you were in a body, and still all able to hook into Helios as a whole... we were going to make worlds shake, Jack. Shit, what we were going to do…”
“What we are still going to!” His digitized hands kept grasping where that hand should have been, trying to hold it close, but never once could he feel it in his grasp.
Rhys stopped smiling, no no , keep smiling, please, Jack needed that face. He always needed that face. This grounding factor in his life, some fucking stability in his whirlwind mind.
“Jack, I am going to die.” His voice was smaller and smaller by the word. He wanted Jack to understand this, accept it, keep going. Keep going and going…
“They can't take you too…” They won’t take you too.
“It will be okay. You know where all the assets are--” Another sputter of blood, all business till the last moment.
“No no no no no no no …” Jack just murmured over and over, scanning, searching with his data to find something, anything. How could there be nothing he could do. He was Handsome fucking Jack . He toppled lives to their end like a house of falling cards. How could he not save one life?
The ones that mattered.
It was happening again. It’s happening again. He was helpless to watch the one he cared for just give up and fade away in front of him.
“No,” Jack said sternly. Rhys’ arm had fallen and his head flopping to the side, vitals low enough that he couldn't hold it up anymore. He was still looking at Jack, eyes a gray that he wished he could never have witnessed.
“Jack… I lo--”
That instant, Rhys felt it. That surge, that neurological tickle he had felt time and time again. His cybernetic hand made a fist.
“What are you--”
“Rhysie, baby, you are not going to die.”
Before Rhys’ black on the edges vision, he was watching Jack’s digital form start to glitch slightly, pixels of his body shifting and flying away from his bodily structure. In that moment, he felt his heartbeat through his body with more gusto than it had in its diminishing return the moments before.
His skin prickled, the way it always did when Jack let himself in.
“What are you do-doing?” Rhys was shuttering now, the pain he had been able to ignore in his dying moments coming back to his forefront of his mind like when he was first impaled.
“You are not going to die while I am here.”
“Jack… Jack, what are you doing?” He was frantic now, his breath coming back more and more as he watched Jack dissipate in front of him.
“No! Jack, stop!”
“H-Hy-Hyperion does need a ruler, Rhysie… And that-that-that per-person is you, pumpkin-kin.” Jack's voice was warping, cracking, his face only appearing for moments before breaking into lines of blue pixels in the space in front of them. That ever knowing smile visible on his face.
“Jack. Don’t you fucking dare!” Tears welling up in his eyes, he was not ready for this. He never would be.
It was quiet but so clear in the disjointed sounds that the digital form of the hero Handsome Jack was making, “I’m so proud of you, Rhys.”
A surge, electric and pulsating through every vein, every fiber of Rhys’ being. He screamed, in agony, in grief, his body having strength more than his muscles could ever even hold. He raised himself from the rubble, his body moving on its own, the skewer slowly being pulled from his flesh as he stood on his feet.
The hole in his abdomen; he could see his ragged skin, his muscles ripped to shreds, and god there was intestines and organs in this horrific sight. Blood pouring everywhere, how, how was he still conscious for this?
He was standing, though, his legs wobbly and not his own. His voice sounded like nothing as it echoed in the destroyed room. In that moment, of his anguish and terror, he watched as little blue lines, sparks, started connecting his flesh again.
“ JACK! ” Rhys cried into the nothing, wanting him to be there, to comfort him. He was so ready to die when he had seen that familiar blue apparition. Now that he was gone, where was he , and Rhys was so fucking scared. His heart couldn't possibly handle this consternation.
I’m so proud of you Rhys.
No.
I love you too, Rhys.
“NO!”
Jack was gone, and Rhys was standing on his own feet, gaping wounds healed on themselves.
Rhys was alone.