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The lights had been off for three days.
Not because there was anything preventing them from being turned on; there was a switch panel next to every door, and a universal remote floating around somewhere. Hell, clapping or shouting or simply waving a hand in the right way probably would have turned them on. It was a pretty well-appointed suite, after all, with multiple rooms, a good-sized kitchen, and soft furnishings, all tricked out with the latest tech Hyperion had to offer.
But a gilded cage was still a cage, and Timmy had absolutely no interest in looking at how shiny his prison cell was. So he kept the lights off, letting the blue glow of the holo-screen on the Echonet terminal be the only illumination in the entire place. He lazed on the couch in front of it, listlessly browsing the web, chewing absently on whatever junk food he could find in the kitchen.
He had no doubts that his Echonet activity was being monitored, so he didn’t even dare to look at anything exciting. Cat videos, mostly, and whatever shitty B-movies he could access on the Hyperion company account.
He was fucking depressed.
Not without good reason, of course. He’d been pretty happy on the lam, hiding out in the vacant blocks of Helios, more or less free to do what he wanted as long as he didn’t attract too much attention to himself. But these days, after Jack and Nisha had tracked him down, and he’d learned that Jack had always known where he was, he couldn’t shake the sensation of eyes on him at all times. Electronic eyes. Jack’s eyes.
Timmy rolled over and groaned, flinging an arm across his face. At least the couch, like all the other furniture, was ridiculously comfortable. Jack had offered him the apartment, with a strong undertone of “if you don’t accept it, things are going to get ugly,” and Timmy had very reluctantly picked up his few belongings and moved in. Aside from the extreme likelihood of it being chock-full of remote monitoring equipment, it was done up in borderline offensive shades of white and yellow, and he hated it. The blue light of the holo-screen helped a little, muting the colors down to shades of teal and cyan and black, but it was still awful.
The worst part was that he couldn’t even find the stomach to go near the very nice, very comfortable, very large bed located in the back bedroom because, as expected, Jack had decided that it needed to be ‘christened’ the very day Timmy had moved in. The stains had all washed out of the sheets, but Timmy could still see the ghosts of them every time he looked, and the headboard had left a series of ugly dings in the wall behind it. He just wanted one thing in his life that hadn’t been stained by the touch of Jack’s hands, but that was basically impossible considering what the man had now become: Handsome Jack, president of Hyperion.
Timmy flipped back over, burying his face in the couch. Apparently Jack had strangled Chairman Tassiter, named himself president, and performed an elegant yet hostile takeover of all the company’s assets. The man was absolutely insane, and now he had an impossible amount of corporate power backing him up.
He still remembered the Jack he’d met on his first day on Helios, his first impression of the man he was sharing a face and a voice with - a cowering mess, bleeding and bitching on the floor, trying to act tough even as he skittered through the halls with an edge to his tone that belied his barely-constrained fear. He’d been an ambitious cowering mess, obviously, but it was still a long road from getting shot at for the first time to throttling men in cold blood, and Jack had traveled that path at a shocking pace. It was enough to make you wonder what really lurked inside everyone, waiting to be set free by the right circumstances.
Smacking blindly at the holo-screen, Timmy managed to get the next cat video in his queue to start playing. Sounded like kittens, from the pitch of the mews, but even that couldn’t compel him to raise his head to look.
Things had been a little better when Jack had put him and the rest of the crew back to work for a while - but only a little, because the mission had been inside Claptrap’s electronic mind, and Timmy sincerely wished he could erase those memories forever. He’d thought Claptrap was annoying from an outside perspective, but he was apparently somehow worse on the inside. It had been like stupid, in stereo, on a big 3D screen, except the stupid could shoot you and annoy you at the same time. He was pretty sure the last two or three hours he’d spent on that job were some of the worst of his life - if he never had to engage in a fight that long ever again, it would be too soon. At least the rewards had been good, and seeing Athena again had been nice. She’d seemed well - not much happier than usual, but well.
His feelings on Claptrap being gone for good were mixed, though. He’d hated the robot, but getting your core processing ripped out so it could be used to destroy your entire species-of-sorts was monstrous and unfair. Jack in a nutshell, basically.
Timmy pushed his face further into the couch. Thinking about Jack was the absolute last thing he wanted to do, but it kept happening. Everything in his life seemed to revolve around Jack, now - his work, his rest, his actual, physical self. Even his memories of the past had taken on distinctive tones of Jack in light of his knowledge of the present.
He wondered how pissed Jack would be if he suffocated himself with a pillow.
The holo-screen beeped loudly, interrupting the adorable kitten noises to inform him that he had an incoming transmission. He groaned again, pulling his face out of the couch and looking to see who it was.
Of fucking course it was Jack - HANDSOME JACK ❤, more precisely, the flashing text reminding him of the new name the Hyperion president had chosen for himself. No idea why the heart was there, though - Timmy definitely hadn’t entered it into his contacts list that way.
He poked at the holo-screen, forcing the call window down to the bottom corner before answering it so he could watch the video that was still playing. Those were some damn fluffy kittens.
Jack’s masked face appeared in the small box, smugness not diminished by the size of his pixelated features. “Heya, kiddo,” he piped, sounding obnoxiously perky, “hope you don’t have any big plans for today, because I need to borrow you for…” He trailed off, eyes narrowing as he presumably inspected Timmy’s face on his screen. “Holy crap, you’re a mess. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Timmy mumbled, watching the kittens as they pounced on each other.
Jack frowned. “Seriously.”
“I am serious,” Timmy replied, pressing down further into the couch, vindictively enjoying the effect his petty resistance was having on Jack.
“Sure, whatever. Just uh, just get up and take a shower or something, jesus christ. You look like you haven’t moved in days.”
“Three.”
Jack sucked in a deep breath like he was about to start shouting, but instead exhaled smoothly and brushed it off. “Get up, clean up. I’ll be by to grab you in thirty minutes, and I cannot have you walking around looking like a goddamn zombie, okay? It’s a big day.”
Sighing, Timmy began pushing himself up off the couch, knowing Jack wouldn’t leave him alone until he did. “Where are we going? Do I need my guns?” he asked. A little action actually didn’t sound half bad - Jack adamantly refused to set foot on Elpis, so going down there to shoot some shit was a guaranteed way to get out of his reach for a little while.
“Nah, no need for that. We’re staying on Helios. Just need you and your handsome face.” He flashed his most charming grin, and Timmy resisted the urge to stick his tongue out in disgust. “Thirty minutes,” Jack reminded him, and the call window went black.
Timmy sighed, tapping at the screen to pause the kittens mid-gambol. He was probably still being watched, and if Jack was going to come by in person then he had to shape up at least a little bit. Less pain in the long run.
He shuffled to the kitchen, found some corn dogs in the freezer, and threw one in the microwave, which was literally the most effort he’d put towards making food in ages. He fired up the flash-boiler, and by the time the corn dog was done he had brewed himself a hot cup of green tea. He had no idea how the kitchen stayed stocked, but whoever or whatever was doing it apparently knew what he liked.
Mug in one hand, corn dog in the other, he shuffled off towards the bathroom, munching idly on his food as the hems of his oversized sweatpants dragged on the carpet. The bathroom was ridiculous, all tiled in black, and the enormous shower had jets coming out of weird places on the walls that he couldn’t seem to turn off. He dialed the lights to their lowest setting, just so he wouldn’t trip and crack his head open, and turned on the water. He took a moment to finish his corn dog before stripping down and sliding into the spray.
He winced as one of the weird wall jets struck one of his more tender bruises - several still remained from his last tumble with Jack, circling his hips and adorning his throat, yellowed and faded around the edges but still very much visible. Turning his face up to the main showerhead, he let the water soak his face and hair for a minute before groping for the soap and washing up with brutal efficiency - a habit from his days of being flat broke and neck-deep in debt, trying to keep his water bills as low as possible.
The towels that had been hanging in the bathroom when he moved in were ridiculously plush, but had the annoying tendency to leave little fuzzy yellow fibers all over him when he dried off. He picked at the little balls of lint as he wandered over to the mirror that took up a solid two-thirds of the bathroom wall. The thing never got foggy - he’d run the shower on hot for three hours once to test it, but it had stayed crystal-clear. And it was apparently unbreakable, much to the chagrin of his bruised knuckles.
He made only a perfunctory attempt at styling his hair - if it wasn’t perfect, Jack would be annoyed, but he couldn’t really lash out at Timmy for not getting it exactly right. He’d only had thirty minutes to get ready, after all. The five o’clock shadow would piss him off, too, so Timmy passed over the razor, though he did take a minute to brush his teeth.
Mint and green tea wasn’t the best flavor combination, but the mug was a comforting warmth in his hand as he shuffled into the bedroom, carefully avoiding looking at the bed as he ducked into the walk-in closet. The lights there weren’t adjustable, and he squinted against the sudden brightness as he looked for something to wear. Jack had sent over an absurd amount of clothing, but Timmy had barely touched any of it. Some of the color combinations were downright atrocious - on what planet was aqua blue considered a classy color? - and he’d shoved the worst of them into the back, keeping only a few basic articles on the shelves and racks near the door. He kept it simple - plain white T-shirt, blue jeans, boots, and a purple jacket he nabbed from some ridiculous all-violet ensemble - again because he knew it would tick Jack off.
He really should cut it out with the minor irritations, but the big things he should be doing - like getting the fuck out - were too big, and yet he couldn’t bear to do nothing at all. So he toed the line, pushing back just hard enough to get Jack’s dander up without risking punishment. He was going to get hurt anyways, so being on his absolute best behavior really just wasn’t worth it.
By the time he was dressed, he had eight minutes to spare and was seriously considering making another corn dog, and seeing if he had any ketchup this time. But his stomach was starting to do its usual nervous gymnastics, so he paced instead, clutching his half-empty mug of tea in both hands and taking tiny sips as he crossed the living room over and over. After a minute of blue-tinted darkness, he paused to fiddle with the control panel by the front door, bringing the lights up halfway so that the apartment didn’t look like a total cave when Jack arrived.
When the door slid open, he barely managed to avoid upending the tea on himself in surprise. Of course Jack didn’t knock, not when he could just barge in anyplace he wanted with his fancy president-of-the-company, high-overlord-of-Helios powers.
Timmy really, really hated this apartment.
Jack’s eyes swept over Timmy from heel to hairline, and his masked brow furrowed in frustration. “That’s really the best you could do?”
“You didn’t give me a lot of time,” Timmy pointed out, carefully setting his mug down on the end table, trying to disguise how his hands were already shaking.
Jack passed a hand back over his hair, stretching his neck in frustration. Over the past few weeks, a broad stripe of hair just to the right of his widow’s peak had faded out to grey, creating a pale accent in his immaculate coiff. “Alright, fine. It’s...fine.” He breathed deeply, then summoned his best smile. “Let’s go, then. Important places to be.”
Timmy frowned as Jack turned and strode back out the door, suspicious of the lengths the man was going to keep his cool in the face of all the microaggressions Timmy had very intentionally needled him with. Something was up.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and followed Jack, dogging his heels with his shoulders slouched forward, the deliberate opposite of Jack’s confident pigeon-chested swagger. He didn’t know what time it was, but the corridors were relatively free of people, and those that they did pass stepped out of the way with respect and a touch of fear when they saw Jack. Their eyes tended to linger on Timmy, though, and he ducked his head to avoid meeting their gazes.
“Where are we going?” he asked after a few tense and silent minutes of walking. He didn’t recognize the path they were taking, but it was fairly out of the way, the corridors narrow and unmarked. Helios was a veritable labyrinth, and for every part of the station Timmy was familiar with there were a dozen he had never seen before.
“My private med labs,” Jack replied, glancing back over his shoulder, his expression tightening as he saw the way Timmy was carrying himself.
“Why are we going to your private med labs?” Timmy pressed, and Jack huffed out a sigh through his nose.
“Because,” he said, and Timmy couldn’t make sense of his tone, “it’s time that we fixed you up so that you can do your job properly again.” He spun on his heel, smoothly transitioning to walking backwards as he smiled broadly at Timmy, gesturing at his own face. “Can’t be me unless you look like me, right?”
Half of Timmy’s body froze while the other half tried to keep walking, and he stumbled over his own feet. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. A buzzing panic crept up his spine, numbing him to the outside world as he swayed in place.
“Oh no,” he whispered aloud, and Jack frowned.
“Oh no what? ” he demanded, stepping forward to grab Timmy’s arm. “What the hell does that mean?”
His voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away. All Timmy could think about was the Eleseer, the wound, the blood - the scar, there had to be a scar, if there wasn’t a scar there wouldn’t be a mask, that damned mask, but the thought of the scar beneath was a thousand times worse.
If they scarred him like that, he’d never be able to get out.
“John,” Jack snapped, and for some reason that brought him back to reality. He looked down, to where Jack’s hand was gripping his wrist tightly enough to hurt, then back up to his face, unconsciously imagining the what the arch of the scar must look like beneath the false skin that stretched across his cheeks.
“You should have warned me,” he managed to say. “Ahead of time. Surgery. I...if I’d known I wouldn’t have had anything to eat, the anesthesia makes me sick.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say - that was something more along that lines of oh god no please no hell no let me go right now please let me go - but at least it was something.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, you know now, kitten, and we can’t exactly put it off any longer.” His tone was careless, but there was something shifty in his expression, and the grip on Timmy’s wrist stayed firm.
He thought I’d run, Timmy realized. He waited til the last minute because if he told me ahead, he thought I’d try to run. And he was right.
Now, though, he was trapped. Jack could summon a dozen goons at a moment’s notice, lock down all the doors on any possible path of escape, even kneecap him if worst came to worst, but he didn’t have to. His hand on Timmy’s arm was more than enough.
Timmy swallowed. “I’m going to be miserable,” he said in a small voice, trying to make it sound like he was talking about the anesthetics.
“You looked miserable enough when I called earlier, so at least this will be a change of pace, hm?” Jack tugged at him, and Timmy wished he could detach his own arm at the shoulder. “Come on. No point in keeping the docs waiting.”
He followed.
Jack led him to a small elevator, which whizzed downward at what had to be an incredible speed - he thought it was moving downward, at least. It was sometimes a little hard to identify directions on Helios. Jack’s grip was still bruisingly tight around his wrist, and he fought with everything he had to keep from trembling. The walls of the elevator were too close, and Jack was closer, and there wasn’t nearly enough space in his chest for his lungs - he felt like he was suffocating, and there wasn’t a place on Helios that would be open enough for him to breathe easily.
“What...what, exactly, are they going to do?” Timmy asked, clenching and unclenching his fists, and Jack looked at him askance and annoyed.
“Whatever they have to do,” he replied shortly, and Timmy’s stomach tangled itself into an impossible knot.
When the elevator doors slid open, Jack dragged him out into the featureless hallway beyond, heading towards the single set of double doors at the end. Timmy stumbled, caught himself, staggered after Jack even as his knees tried their damnedest to lock up. When they pushed through the doors into the room beyond, they did lock up, his heels digging in against the slick tile as best they could.
It was like a caricature of a doctor’s theater, bright lights over the operating table in the center of the room nearly blinding while the corners were lost to deep, dark shadow. Trays of sharp and shining metal instruments were lying about, and unidentifiable and complicated-looking pieces of machinery trailed their cords and cables across the polished white floor. The doctors were identical in their scrubs, caps, and masks, all watching, all waiting.
Timmy bit his tongue, his throat closing up in panic as he reared away, aiming to bolt back down the hallway to the elevator. Jack’s grip on his arm was unbreakable, though, and he hauled Timmy back, baring his teeth at the struggle.
When he couldn’t break away, Timmy fought to find his voice amidst the raw, long-suppressed fear that was coursing through him like a river, threatening to dash him against the rocks. “No,” he whimpered, “Jack, no, I can’t, please don’t make me, please-”
“Fucking-” Jack muttering, fighting to hold Timmy back as he turned to the doctors and raised his voice. “Someone restrain him, please! I’d like to get this taken care of sometime today.”
The doctors hesitated, glanced at each other uncertainly.
“Now! ” Jack barked, and the authority in his voice had them hustling. A multitude of hands were on Timmy in moments, penning him in, stripping off his jacket and forcing him towards the operating table in the middle of the room, the bright white glare of the lights more and more unbearable the closer he got. He fought back, turning to try to push through the mob, but a half-dozen hands shoved him down onto the table. “Let me go, please let me go!” he begged, but they were strapping down his wrists, pinning his legs, and he strained desperately against the bonds to no avail.
He was screaming, now, his voice burning his own throat as it fought against the vocal modulator, echoing hollowly off the walls. “You can’t do this!” he shrieked. “Please, you can’t do this, you can’t let him do this to me! Let me go! Let me go! ”
The doctors ignored him, not looking him in the eye, not acknowledging his screams. He sobbed, tears running down his cheeks as the restraints cut into his skin, tasting blood in his mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue.
Jack approached the table, and his gemstone eyes were cold and emotionless as he looked down at Timmy where he lay helpless. “Sorry, kitten,” he said, and his voice was flat like still, dark water. “It’s in your contract.”
He caught the attention of one of the doctors. “Knock him out,” he ordered, and Timmy felt the sharp point of a needle seeking out a vein in the crook of his elbow. He’d stopped fighting, collapsing beneath the overwhelming inevitability of his situation, though his chest still shook with restrained sobs. The table was cold and hard beneath his back, the lights painfully bright as they stared down at him like judgemental, luminous eyes - and then the whole room began to waver, going dark and fuzzy around the edges. He tried to resist it, but whatever they were giving him was strong, and his eyelids began to lower despite his best attempts to keep them open.
He’d known this was coming for so long, and he still hadn’t managed to get away.
There was a hand on his cheek, heavy and broad - Jack’s hand, thumb strangely gentle as it swiped away the tears beneath his eye, and his body had gone too heavy to quiver at the touch.
“Don’t forget to disable the anti-tampering devices,” Jack was saying, but he was slipping away, up and out of the reach of Timmy’s consciousness as he fell back into the chemically-induced darkness that was coming over him. “If they go off - well, I don’t think I need to describe the mess they’ll make…”
He was gone. The whole world was gone.
__________________________
Wakefulness came long before the realization that he actually was awake, and it wasn’t until his eyelids fluttered open that he realized he was no longer unconscious.
Timmy blinked, grimaced, groaned. He was still on the operating table, as best as he could tell – the the glassy eyes of the lights still hung over him, but were thankfully turned off. The illumination in the room seemed much softer and more diffused without them, though he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
He couldn’t really move his head – for some reason the darn thing was heavy as a box of rocks – but he managed to sort of slide his eyes around the room, and determined that he was alone. Was leaving an anesthetized patient alone in an operating room even safe? he mused. What if he hurt himself, somehow?
After a moment’s struggle, he found that hurting himself would be pretty difficult considering that he could barely move. Whatever they’d knocked him out with was taking its sweet time wearing off – he managed to wiggle his toes, but that was about it. At least he wasn’t puking, or not puking yet. Suddenly perplexed, he paused his thoughts, assessed his body.
He wasn’t even a little bit nauseous, which was kind of weird considering his past experiences with anesthetics. He actually couldn’t feel much of anything – there was a faint ache at his temples, chin, and on his jaw right below his ears, and a patch of skin at his hairline was terribly itchy. He tried to raise a hand to scratch it, but only succeeded at sort of flopping his wrist against the table.
Hey, he wasn’t tied down anymore. That was pretty nice, even though he still couldn’t move. The bit of machinery closest to the table looked to be hooked up to the IV line that was still firmly attached to the crease of his elbow, so he dragged his eyes over to the screen on the front of it, squinting as he tried to get it to come into focus. Most of what he could make out was unintelligible, notations and abbreviations he wasn’t familiar with, but he picked out a single word he did recognize – “morphine,” blinking softly, with a number next to it.
Old-school. Neat. He blinked slowly, his head sort of lolling to the side, which sent a throb of pain across his temples. With sudden prickle of anxiety, he wondered: what did they do to me?
“Looking good, handsome,” a familiar voice called from across the room, and Timmy blinked again. That sounded like – oohhhh. Of course he’d be here.
When Jack came into his line of sight, it took some effort to get his eyes to focus on the other man’s face, and even then the silly things kept sliding off to look at the wall instead. “How’re you feelin’?” Jack asked with a smirk, and Timmy sort of bobbed his head in what he hoped was a positive manner. It sort of hurt.
“This morphine is pretty good,” he slurred, managing to wiggle the arm hooked up to the IV drip in Jack’s general direction. “You should try some.”
He didn’t know what that was supposed to accomplish. Everything was still sort of mushy, soft around the edges and running like wet ink.
Jack grinned, and Timmy knew he didn’t like that, even though he couldn’t exactly remember why. It wasn’t a bad-looking smile. “No thanks, kiddo,” he purred, and Timmy’s itching scalp tingled a little more furiously. “I prefer to stay sharp.”
Timmy bobbed his head again. An incapacitated Jack probably wouldn’t be a good thing anyways. Why would he want Jack incapacitated in the first place, again? “Incapacitated” was a damn big word. His temples were aching, but the cool drip in his arm was really doing a good job keeping the edge off.
“So the doctors say that everything went pretty smoothly – the mask fitting went well, and all the stuff that goes along with it, so you should be ready to go as soon as you’re healed up. They had to set the pins in the bone, so you might be sore for a while – I know I was.”
Timmy suddenly managed to make sense of the places where his face was aching. “Mask?” he fumbled out. “Just…just the mask?”
“Just the mask,” Jack confirmed with a nod, and there was something conflicted in his mismatched eyes as he stroked the silver clip affixed to his own chin. “Oh, and this,” he added, carding his fingers through the grey streak in his hair. “Because I’ve decided to keep it. Crazy, right?”
Timmy didn’t answer. Instead, he closed his eyes, let his head tilt back as far as it would go. Just the mask , he thought, and his stomach roiled even as the fear lingering in his chest was soothed. No scar, just the mask. The mask and an itch at his hairline caused by whatever they did to turn the hair there grey.
It was better than he’d feared, so much better, but it still wasn’t something he’d ever wanted and it ached deep down, to the core of him, where he was still firmly Timothy and not in the least bit like Jack.
“John, hey. John. Don’t pass out on me again, buddy.” Jack’s voice was low and close, and he tried to ignore it, but suddenly there was a hand snaking up under the hem of the hospital gown he just realized he was wearing.
“Don’t -“ he choked out, struggling to sit upright, but he couldn’t, and Jack’s hand closed around his flaccid cock.
“Shh,” Jack shushed. “Relax. It’ll be fine.” His hand was warm and firm, working Timmy over with steady, practiced strokes, and the nausea that he thought he’d escaped started to come over him. “You just-“ Jack sucked in a hissing breath over his teeth. “You just look so good.”
Timmy tried to squirm away, but couldn’t get his body to coordinate the necessary motions. “Stop,” he begged weakly, “please stop,” but Jack’s hand kept moving, and much to his horror Timmy could feel his dick beginning to respond. He whimpered, throwing the arm not hooked up to the IV up over his face, trying to block out the sight of Jack leaning over him.
It’s a bad dream, he tried to tell himself, it’s an anesthetic nightmare and you haven’t woken up yet, wake up, wake up, wake up – but Jack twisted his wrist on the upstroke, squeezed on the down, and Timmy choked as his hips twitched against the sensation.
“There we go,” Jack purred, and Timmy bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming out loud. His heart was hammering in his chest at a frantic pace, his blood running hot and cold in alternating pulses, his limbs shaking with more and more intensity as he fought his way out of his drug-induced stupor.
“Stop touching me,” he whimpered, and Jack’s hand paused for a fraction of a second before carrying right on stroking Timmy’s cock. “Stop touching me,” Timmy repeated, “please stop touching me, please.”
Jack made a small hm noise. “Now why would I want to do that?”
Timmy pressed his arm down hard enough on his eyes to make spots of light blossom across the darkness behind his eyelids, struggling to breathe beneath the monstrous panic that had settled itself on his chest. “I never wanted this,” he choked out, “never.” Every memory of Jack’s hands on him, in him - they were burned into his brain, playing on a loop in the back of his mind, tainting his every waking moment and tormenting him when he tried to sleep. He couldn’t take it anymore - not now, not when he was too loose and uninhibited from the drugs and the fear to block them out. Not when the real thing was here, and new nightmares were being carved into him when he could do nothing to stop it from happening.
“I don’t know how to live with this, with you – with you touching me, hurting me,” he whimpered, the words bubbling up out of his throat despite his best efforts to hold them back. “I never asked for this, I don’t want this-“ He couldn’t help the way the pitch and volume of his voice increased as he spoke, building up to a shout. “Leave me alone, please just let me go, you – you’re a monster!” He was sobbing, now, spilling every ugly secret he’d kept hidden for fear of retribution. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do any of this, I – I don’t want to be a vault hunter, I don’t want to be you, I can’t be you –
“I’m nothing like you! ” he screamed, slamming the arm that had been across his eyes back down on the table, and his words echoed back at him coldly from the sterile white walls.
He looked at Jack, and Jack looked back, and in that moment he was certain he was about to die.
Instead, Jack leaned over him, eyes colder than the lunar ice, the hand on Timmy’s cock never stopping its ministrations, making him squirm and choke as every building spike of pleasure came with a surge of sickness.
“So what?” Jack said, and the bottom dropped out of Timmy’s stomach.
“So what?” Jack repeated, and his voice was so sharp and frigid that Timmy swore he could feel the frost forming on his body. “We all have to put up with our share of things that we don’t want to do – god knows I have, the things I’ve done to get to where I am today…” He trailed off, lips curling into a snarl, and Timmy’s heart stuttered beneath the pressure of his rage.
“And you,” Jack continued, looking directly into Timmy’s eyes, “you call me a monster?” He laughed a little – actually laughed, his shoulders rippling as the sound rumbled through him, but his eyes remained razor-sharp and furious as they bored their way right through Timmy’s skull. “You can’t pretend you’re better than anyone. Not a one. Not Wilhelm, not Nisha, not Athena, certainly not me. You say you don’t want to be a vault hunter? I think it’s a little bit too late for that.”
His hand never stopped moving, stroking Timmy’s cock with a mechanical precision, and he squirmed and swallowed down a whimper as he felt that telltale tightening low in his stomach, sickening and confusing beneath the haze of terror and painkillers. “You act like you’re a decent man, but the things you’ve done for that paycheck beg to differ.” Jack’s grin was angry, a grimace, cracking his masked face open and baring the whiteness of his teeth. “And I’m not talking about the fucking around, oh no. You’ve lied, you’ve schemed, you’ve killed – killed a whole lot of people, from what I’ve seen, and you sure don’t seem to feel very guilty about it. Say what you will about everyone else, but you need to square up and face the truth – you’re just as ruthless as the rest of us. ”
Something in Jack’s face changed as he spat out those last few words with enough vitriol to make them sting – he’d slipped, said something he didn’t mean to, but Timmy couldn’t figure out what it was because everything he’d just heard was true.
Oh, god, it was true, it was agonizingly, crushingly true, and the swell of disgust that nearly drowned him wasn’t enough to overpower the sensation of Jack’s hand on his cock. He squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out to catch in his lashes, and twisted his body as far away from the touch as he could – but it was too late, he was coming, gasping and sobbing as his back arched up into the fist around his cock, bile rising in his throat.
This is it, he thought, as the haze of orgasm cleared. This is the worst moment of my entire life.
Jack’s expression was pure disdain as he looked down his nose at him – eyes narrowed, chin high, lips twisted in disgust - but it somehow failed to ruin his face.
“This is your life now, Jack,” he said, and Timmy actually gasped as the name cut into him like a knife. “Get used to it.”
He turned, left, strides long and sure as he pushed through the double doors, and Timmy barely managed to wait until they swung shut before vomiting off the edge of the operating table.
He lay like that for a long moment, draped over the edge of the cold steel table with his hair dangling in his face, mouth bitter and throat burning as he panted and shook. There were tears sliding down his nose and dripping on the floor, but he couldn’t feel them – he could only see them as they fell.
Jack was right.
Timmy wasn’t an innocent. He’d never been an innocent – not in a long time, at least. When selling his body to pay his bills hadn’t been enough, he’d signed up to sell it in a whole new way – signed up for this. He’d volunteered, gone along with the plan willingly, and even if he hadn’t liked or agreed with all of it he hadn’t offered up a lot of protest. Maybe he’d never been shot at before that first day on Helios, just like Jack, but he’d responded the exact same way – he’d become a killer.
He’d been the one bounding across the surface of Elpis, gun in hand, taking out scavs and Lost Legion soldiers with no hesitation. He was the one who’d pulled the trigger, thrown the grenade, sent the holo-Jacks out to blast his enemies into oblivion. He’d used his teammates as pawns, crutches to help him stagger back to his feet when he was downed. He’d felt the sensation of fresh blood spattering across his face – of bullets biting into his shoulders – seen bodies burning, freezing, frying, melting – heard the sound of screams.
How many people had he killed? At Jack’s command, of his own free will? Innocents, enemies, in-betweens – he recalled the sound of Felicity’s voice, and had to stop himself from puking again, but then he remembered Gladstone, and the bloody smear his lithe body had left on the airlock glass, and he heaved until there was nothing left in him to come up.
He’d stood by and let people die at the hands of the one true evil he’d ever known – the evil he once again shared a face with.
When he wiped his mouth, the false skin that covered his face felt slick and alien against the back of his hand.
If there was still good in him, it was buried deep, deep beneath the dangerous Vault Hunter he’d become when he wasn’t looking. The things he’d been party to, the things he’d done – they were terrible, and there was no denying that. He just hoped that he wasn’t too late to save himself from what he was – and what he might become, if he remained Jack.
It took a tremendous effort to haul his numb, trembling body upright, and he wobbled as he was hit with a sudden wave of dizziness. Groping for the IV still embedded in his arm, he ripped the needle free and threw it at the wall as hard as he could.
He spotted his clothes, neatly folded on a bench against the wall, and swung his legs over the edge of the operating table. The tile was icy cold beneath his bare feet, and he swayed as he stood upright and crossed the room with a series of unsteady lurches.
Discarding the flimsy, soiled hospital gown unceremoniously on the floor, he struggled into his underwear, shirt, jeans, jacket. The socks proved to be too much trouble, so he collapsed onto the bench and shoved his bare feet into his boots, fingers fumbling at the zippers.
When they were secure, he hauled himself back upright, stumbled, managed to catch himself. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face – that spot at his hairline was still itching terribly, but he didn’t even pause to scratch it as he loped out into the hall.
Somehow, he found his way back to his apartment, following the pattern of widening corridors until he started to see signs for the central hub, then following those until the landmarks became familiar. By some miracle, he didn’t pass a single person on his way back, and he leaned against the door to catch his breath when he arrived.
It read his biometrics and slid open silently when he tapped the access button, and he staggered inside. The lights were still tuned low, just like he’d left them, and the room was dim compared to the blinding brightness of the operating room. He bumped into the end table, spilling the mug of cold tea that still rested there across the floor.
Ignoring the mess, he headed to the closet in the bedroom, dropping to his knees in front of a shelf in the back. There was a lockbox there, a dinged-up metal thing he’d snagged from a scav shack down on Elpis, and he pulled it towards him and pried it open.
It was full of junk – random odds and ends of no real value or importance. A bobblehead, a few interesting-shaped bits of moonstone, kraggon teeth, some Lost Legion insignias, and a small, unidentifiable electronic device. He grabbed the dongle, letting the rest of the box’s contents spill across the floor as he hauled himself back to his feet.
The device was a scrambler – a gift from Janey, on one of his last visits to her shop in Concordia. “It’s a spare, so you might as well take it.” she’d said, her moon accent sweet and bright. “Never know when it might come in handy – it’ll make any transmissions totally undetectable by outside parties, but it’s only really good for one use.”
One shot. It was all he had, and prayed it was all he would need.
Back in the living room, he dropped to the couch in front of the Echonet terminal, prying open the back panel with trembling fingers. He didn’t recognize the plug on the dongle at first, but after a moment he realized he was looking at it upside-down. After that, it was a quick job to slot it into the appropriate port, and it beeped at him as a series of little green lights began blinking on its side.
He brought up the holo-screen, minimized the kitten video with a tiny pang of regret, and made a call.
The person on the other end picked up on the third ring. “Please,” Timmy whispered, “I need your help.”