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"Athena-a-a," came Tina's sing-songy voice from the doorway of the workshop in the basement of the Crimson Raiders HQ. "You got some 'splainin' to do-o-o."
The gladiator looked up from where she’d been sharpening her Xiphos. The workshop had been peaceful up until Tina’s entrance, with Axton and Gaige quietly conversing as they worked on their war machines and Lawrence having long since fallen asleep next to her at the table, his ECHO device tucked protectively under his folded arms.
"If you've come for another story, I'm afraid I'm all out," Athena told the young girl as she skipped over to them.
"False!" Tina exclaimed, slamming her hands down onto the edge of the table.
Across from them, Lawrence jerked awake with a wet-sounding snort. "No pictures!" he shrieked, only to relax at the sight of familiar faces in a safe place. He dragged a hand across his mouth to wipe away the wayward strings of drool. "Cripes. Why're people yelling?"
"The only one yelling is you, T-Law," Tina told him. "But I'm glad you're both here. Now I don't have to track each of you down and scold you separately."
"Why are you upset, Tina?" Gaige asked, setting down her wrench. Behind her, Deathtrap rotated one of his arms and gave a coo of contentment.
"I'm not upset," Tina replied solemnly, "just disappointed. I was reviewing the ECHO recordings that Lilith made of the last story you and T-Law told - since nobody bothered to invite me to the party," she added sharply, sending everyone a swift glare before continuing, "when I realized that you never actually explained the bug incident.”
"Bug incident?" Lawrence echoed, sending Athena a confused look. "Like, the virus on Helios?"
Athena nodded, trying and failing to suppress a scowl. She had been hoping to escape to Elpis without having to explain the damned incident to anyone. "I mentioned it a few times when I was telling them how I left Jack's employment," she said. "I just didn't think it mattered enough to go into depth on."
Tina was tsking and shaking her head. "Any good storyteller knows that character development is key to a successful tale. Ya gotta make your characters likable, yet flawed! Strong, but still human! Unless, y’know, they ain’t human." She squinted at Lawrence and Athena. "Pretty sure you guys're human."
"True," Lawrence told her gently, "but the space hurps incident didn't fit in with the flow of the story that Athena was telling at the time, so including it - "
"Just shut up and tell me about the bugs!" Tina shrieked.
"I'm with the squirt," Axton said, coming over to sit at the table. "Was that when you guys really became friends? Seems kinda late in your adventure, doesn't it?"
Athena exchanged a glance with Lawrence, who subconsciously moved to lay a hand on his lower abdomen, over the faint remnants of a wound that she still had nightmares about. She swallowed hard and looked away, suddenly hating herself more than usual.
"Better late than never," Lawrence said, noting her apprehension and offering her a small, appeasing smile. "Do you wanna start?"
"I suppose." Athena waited for everyone to get comfortable before she dared to continue. "But I’m keeping this short. I have a shuttle to catch in three hours.”
~
Athena shuddered as something tickled her head. She absently scratched the back of her scalp, assuming that she had just brushed up on something gross. In this place, it was quite likely. The walls and ceilings were either dripping with liquefied trash or juices from the strange boils from the infection that plagued this side of the Helios space station.
Behind her, she heard the kid's clunky boots stomping through said piles of trash and infected garbage. They weren’t on a stealth mission, and Athena wasn't exactly being quiet herself as she picked off an infected ex-Hyperion worker with a quick blast to the back of his unsuspecting skull, but the sound still seemed to echo obnoxiously in the cramped space. It was getting on her goddamned nerves.
She was starting to wish she had forced Wilhelm or Claptrap to go on this mission with Not-Jack instead. Surely escorting a loader to a maintenance station to get an upgraded AI routine didn't take three people, Lost Legion infestation be damned.
"Wh-what did that crazy guy want us to do again, exactly?" the kid asked after another five minutes of silence that was only broken by the occasional gunshot or the pained, dying cry of an infected worker. "Hunting bugs, right?"
"Brain bugs," Athena confirmed as she reloaded her assault rifle. "Whatever those are."
The kid hummed, then let out a small squeal as an infected worker popped out from a moldy drain pipe and lunged at him. He was able to wound the guy with a spastic spray of bullets, allowing Athena to cast a finishing blow with her Aspis shield.
"Thanks - " the kid started to say, only to get cut off as Athena snapped, "When we get back to the uninfected part of Helios, you're going to get more training in how to shoot. I don't know how you've made it this far with your 'spray and pray' method, but we're getting too far into this now to have any liabilities."
The kid's expression would've melted even the iciest of hearts, but luckily Athena turned around before she could get the full brunt of it. She felt bad for him, truly she did; he was clearly not cut out for this type of work, but it wasn't her job to hold his hand every step of the way.
Eventually they came upon a pit filled with trash not too far from where Lazlo opened the door for them. In the trash pit they could see several glowing green piles of round...something. They certainly were the most unnatural thing in the area, not including Lazlo.
"Are those the bugs?" the kid asked.
"They must be."
They descended into the disgusting, disease-ridden pit and followed Lazlo's bizarre instructions to shoot, punch, and then stomp the glowing lumps of "bugs", but no matter what they did, they always seemed to grow back just as quickly as they snuffled them out.
The huge amount of particles floating in the air were making Athena's chest hurt and her eyes water, but she ignored it. She was bound to have problems walking around in this place without a gas mask, she reasoned. A long, hot shower would definitely be in store after this, along with a healthy heaping of disinfectant.
"This isn't doing anything," the kid choked out eventually. He was sweating and covered in gunk, but Athena knew she didn't look any better. She was going to be scrubbing this vile shit out of her armor and guns for days.
After a few more suggestive grunts and nonsensical statements from Lazlo over the ECHO, he instructed them to open the vents. Athena mentally questioned how ventilating the chamber would help destroy the virus, but she strangely found herself not caring as she turned the valve with more than a little difficulty.
It's covered in filth; of course it's hard to turn, she reasoned.
Lazlo wheezed more orders, telling them to turn on the ventilation system via the console on the second landing of the staircase. When she began to ascend to do just that, her legs wobbled beneath her.
Just from the constant slamming to kill the bugs, she told herself.
"But...how is ventilating..." she heard the kid mumble from behind her. When she turned around, she found him standing in the middle of the pit looking about as bad as she was starting to feel.
"Pseudo-Jack," she barked. "Move out."
He looked up at her, his expression one of confusion and slight worry. "I feel...bad," he whispered, reaching up to scratch the side of his head with his free hand. The action smeared nasty goo through his already-disheveled locks, but he didn't seem to notice, even as a little bit of it dribbled down the side of his face.
"I'm not feeling so hot myself, but we have to move," she ordered, reaching up to rub at her ear, trying to brush her hair out of it. Surely that was responsible for the itch. "We just need some fresh air."
A part of her was doubting that fresh air would help their situation any, but her mind was so adamant about denying every truth so far, so why would it stop now?
Not-Jack squinted through the clouds of particles and nearly tripped as he stumbled towards her, trying to obey her command despite his confusion. He made it to the top of the steps just as she finished turning on the ventilation system.
Lazlo snapped at them to return to him, but Athena barely heard him over the scraping she was hearing in her ears. She jammed her fingers into them, trying to reach the source of the noise, but it only intensified, as did the itching at the back of her head.
"Goddamned itch," she snarled, digging her nails into her scalp hard enough to draw blood, and even still the itching only intensified. Something was tickling the inside of her skull and she had to put a stop to it.
"Athena, stop," the kid said weakly from behind her, reaching out to touch her arm.
She whirled on him, furious, and slapped his hand out of the air. He stumbled backwards and would have proceeded to fall flat on his ass if he hadn’t hooked the railing with an arm.
"It's not an itch," he said shrilly, reaching up to yank on a handful of his own hair. "It's - it's the particles. Worms. Bugs. The bugs, Athena, they're burrowing into our heads - "
"Shut up," Athena growled. "There are no bugs, Jack - "
"They're in our brains!" the kid was yelling now. His boots were slipping in the filth as he struggled to straighten up. "We have to get out! We have to get outta here before we turn into those infected workers!"
She slapped him, trying to snap him out of his hysterics, but the violence of the motion triggered something in her that she couldn't explain. She was normally an angry, irritated person, but the unbridled rage she flew into was astonishing, and not in a good way.
She snatched the kid up by his jacket and punched him in the side of the head so hard that he slammed into the console, denting it and making it spark as it malfunctioned. The kid let out a wet grunt as he slid onto his ass.
Athena took several steps back, panting and trembling from a mixture of adrenaline, fear, and surprise. She hadn’t meant to do that. An apology teetered on the edge of her tongue, but her mouth refused to open for it.
"Shit," the kid breathed, blinking wildly. "Um, thanks?"
Athena stared at him, taking note of the blood dribbling from his mouth from where he’d bit the inside of his mouth. Despite clearly being in pain, the kid seemed more sound of mind than he had for the past hour as he struggled to his feet and approached her like one would a wild animal.
"It - it's okay," he assured her. "C'mon, we gotta get outta here. I remember where the exit is now."
Athena barely budged as Not-Jack gently took her by the arm and attempted to guide her back the way they'd come. Her feet were nearly rooted to the spot and practically dragged against the metal floor.
"Athena, come on," he gritted out, finally forgoing tentative touches in favor of gripping her arm and yanking on it.
She stumbled forward, only to lose her balance and collapse onto her knees. She barely felt the impact, and she almost missed the kid's cry of, "Athena, please, I know your brain hurts! Mine does too, but we can't stay here! That asshole’s trying to turn us, I know it!"
Athena opened her mouth to agree with him, but nothing came out. And when she finally found enough strength and brainpower to lift her head, she found herself staring up at General Knoxx.
Her blade was in her hands, and she was moving before she could summon the common sense to stop herself.
~
Athena sighed and frowned down at the table in front of her. "That's...when things get foggy for me," she mumbled. "I guess I passed out."
"You did," Lawrence agreed, nodding. "I don't think I ever told you how heavy you are with all that armor on."
"You carried her?" Gaige asked, grinning.
"Not, like, on my back or anything," Lawrence elaborated, becoming quite somber himself within a matter of seconds. His hand found his stomach again. "I would have if I, uh, hadn't been wounded pretty badly."
"Wounded?" half the room echoed.
Athena stood up so abruptly that her chair made an awful screeching noise as it jerked across the floor. "Getting some air," she snapped, stomping towards the door. She could feel the confused gazes from the room's occupants drilling holes into the back of her head as she left, but Lawrence's gaze made her feel the worst. There was no confusion there.
~
Lawrence watched as Athena disappeared out the door, crestfallen not because she left, but because it was clear she still felt terrible over a situation that was not her fault.
"Damn, Athena, you pretty as hell, but your lack of people skills makes Krieg look like an ambassador," Tina said through a sigh, shaking her head.
Axton shot her a disapproving look. "You're bein' pretty rude yourself, little lady," he growled.
"Keep sassin' me, boy, and I'll leave another surprise under your pillow!"
"You brat - "
"Enough," Lawrence groused, more annoyed than anything. "Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?"
The room quieted down, though Axton and Tina continued to send each other heated glares every chance they got. Lawrence ignored them, picking up where Athena left off.
~
The bite of Athena's blade as it tore through his flesh was a feeling he would never forget, Timothy decided.
It's the bugs, he assured himself as he slowly looked down at his gut. Through his shirt, she'd only managed to tear a line about six inches long just above and to the right of his navel, but it was deep enough to reveal his gross insides.
Just the bugs. Athena didn't really do that. Not on purpose. She didn’t hate him that much.
Whimpers and gasps escaped him as he took several steps away from the gladiator, who was now clawing at her head again with her free hand and muttering things under her breath. His blood dripped steadily from the tip of her blade as well as in thin streams from the wound in his gut, which he hastily covered with his hand.
Adrenaline kicked in, overriding his urge to plop down in the filth on the floor and cry for his mother as his organs slipped from his body. He approached Athena again, wary but desperate all the same.
"Get up," he wheezed, tugging on her sword arm. The gladiator didn't listen, probably didn't hear him over the scratching in her head - Timothy could relate - but he couldn't afford to waste any more time.
He tore off his jacket and, trying to ignore the fact that it was covered in slime, tied it tightly around his wound, hoping that it would be enough to keep all his guts from sliding out, at least until they were out of this hell hole and breathing slightly cleaner air.
With a surge of strength that he probably would desperately need later on when he was bleeding out, he hoisted Athena to her feet and hastily threw her arm around his shoulder, keeping her from sliding back to the floor. He tucked his bloodied hand around her hip for further support and winced at the pain it brought to his stomach.
He took several deep, steadying breaths before he so much as even thought about moving. "One step at a time," he told both himself and Athena.
It felt like it took him a year to get back to where Lazlo was. Every step sent pangs of pain through his body. Athena got heavier and heavier, and whatever was digging around in his brain was making it really hard to concentrate on shooting anyone that got in his way.
He was starting to see things that made him want to die. One of the infected workers sounded just like his mother as he rushed him, and he could've sworn another looked just like his youngest sister right before he put a bullet in his neck. But that's not - that's not right. They were safe on Eden. Right?
Timothy stumbled to a stop a few feet from the doorway to the main room. Bile stung the back of his throat as he gently lowered Athena to the ground next to the wall. He propped her up against it and tried to meet her gaze, but her eyes kept darting around as her lips moved wordlessly. God, he hoped she would be okay once they were out of here.
"Be right back," he rasped, taking her face in his hands in a desperate attempt to hold her gaze. She stared through him, even when he gently slapped her cheeks. "Don't - don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."
He left her there, intending to make quick work of the asshole who sent them in there for nothing.
~
"Sorry, I gotta ask," Axton interrupted. He had his chin resting in the palm of his hand, expression thoughtful. "You and Athena weren't really friends at that point, right? So why all the effort to save her?"
"Yeah," Gaige piped up. "Especially with a wound that bad. You could've died trying to drag her outta there, dude."
Lawrence shrugged. "Honestly? At the time, I was just so afraid to be alone. And Athena, she's - " he glance at the empty doorway before continuing quietly, grinning, "Athena's just so cool, y'know? She's super badass and strong and I always feel safe with her around, even if she wasn’t exactly with it at that time. That and I like to think she would've done the same for me."
The room’s occupants exchanged squinty-eyed looks of disbelief with each other for half a second before turning back to him.
He shot them all a glare without any real heat to it. "Anyway,” he continued through gritted teeth, “one annoying fight later, I killed Lazlo and made my way back to Athena..."
~
She was still slouched against the wall when he stumbled around the corner, splattered with his own blood as well as Lazlo's. He was dizzy for a multitude of reasons now, but he couldn't afford to stop - not when the exit was just a couple more dozen feet away.
He could have left after killing Lazlo. Bastard had bit it right in front of the exit. Salvation had been within arm's length of him, and it had taken every ounce of self-control, which, at this point, was rapidly dwindling, not to just leave.
Timothy went to scoop Athena up the same as before, but his body started crapping out on him. He stumbled forward and had to brace himself on the wall to keep from face-planting into Athena’s lap.
"'Thena, can you snap out of it now?" he choked out, scratching the sides of his head. "The bugs're making my brain hurt and I'm so tired. Athena?"
The gladiator blinked, but that was the extent of her acknowledgement.
Timothy whined and fell to his knees in front of her. "Athena-a-a, you owe me," he wailed. "You stabbed me with your pointy stick and it hurts and the bugs are..." He trailed off, realizing that words were hard and not making sense and the scratching was so goddamned loud.
Panic set in when he managed to realize why. The longer they sat here stewing in this filth, the worse off they were going to get, until they were roaming around with the rest of the infected workers gnawing on human flesh and babbling nonsense. The very thought of that happening pushed the portion of his brain that was still in tact to get the rest of his body in gear.
"Okay, okay, okay," he gritted out repeatedly, balling his hand into a fist.
He punched himself in the face as hard as he could, giving himself a black eye and jostling the worms in his noggin long enough for him to stand up and hoist Athena to her feet. The woman was almost completely limp now and Lawrence had to literally drag her down the rest of the hallway and into the main room, which certainly didn't help his wound any.
He could see the exit, but it still seemed so far away. The sight of the staircase in front of him was enough to make him want to give up, but he couldn't - he had to keep going, had to make it out of here alive, or at the very least, make sure Athena made it out. She would be much more useful to Jack than he could ever hope to be.
With the worms being quiet for the moment, he was all too aware of the burning sensation in his gut. The wound was probably already infected and festering and ugh. He could feel his organs sliding around the wound, not quite protruding but definitely not where they were supposed to be. The chance of him surviving this little excursion was...not good.
"You're buying me a drink after this," he wheezed to the unresponsive gladiator. "Lots of drinks. Blood drinks. Made from blood - what?" He shook his head, mortified at the words coming out of his mouth.
There were only a dozen or so steps to take, but Timothy felt every single one. By the time they made it to the top, he was gasping for air and reeling from everything - exertion, pain, the goddamned bugs rooting around in his noggin. He attempted to reflexively punch himself to wake up, but letting go of Athena's arm left him crumpling from her weight.
Hitting the floor made him scream, but it came out as a high-pitched wheeze. Athena remained motionless next to him, eyes wide and unseeing as they stared right through him. Was she even still sane in there? Was it too late?
"I don't wanna die," he told her quietly. His own voice sounded strange in his bug-infested ears. "I don't want either of us to die."
Athena didn't reply beyond a garbled, "Are they bugs or worms?" which certainly didn't help their situation any.
That was a pretty valid question, though, he thought absurdly. Bugs or worms? 'Cos worms aren't bugs, right? They're worms. They're their own category of grossness -
"Oh my god, shut up!" he yelled, only to almost immediately zone out again. He was clearly headed towards wherever Athena currently was, and in a desperate effort to resist, he did the only thing he could think of doing in his current position: he thrust his hands underneath the jacket wrapped around his abdomen and attacked the wound on his stomach.
Timothy's screams echoed throughout the entire space station. He writhed and kicked and choked on sobs and other hideous, wet noises as pain overwhelmed him, but it was worth it as the hazy cloud that had been trying to settle over him was dispersed, replaced with a glaring red one that urged him to fucking move.
He grabbed Athena and began to drag her and himself towards the door. He left a trail of blood in his wake and almost puked at the feeling of his organs finally poking through his torn flesh, but he didn’t stop moving. If he went down one more time, he knew he’d never get up.
With one last heave, he dragged Athena over the threshold and collapsed next to her as the door slid shut. Fresh air descended upon them; he sucked it in as rapidly as he could, desperate to rid himself of the parasites trying to make a home in his head. It was working, he noted, relieved for a moment until he realized that his vision was getting warped for an entirely different reason.
Gripping his stomach, he snuck another glance at Athena and noticed that her gaze looked a little less vacant. A moment later she grunted and lifted a hand to rub at her eyes instead of her head.
He opened his mouth to call to her, to ask if she was okay, but a wave of exhaustion swept over him like a thick, warm blanket. His eyes drifted shut without his consent, but that was fine. He could afford to take a quick nap now that Athena was safe, he thought.
~
"And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in Nurse Nina's station in Concordia," Lawrence concluded through a heavy sigh. "Bandaged, decontaminated, and somehow still alive."
By now, the room’s inhabitants were all sporting similar looks of disgust and shock, save for Tina, who was gazing at him with those big, slightly frightening eyes of hers.
“Y’know, I said before that I was glad I wasn’t a part of your adventure,” Axton mused, leaning back in his chair, “and I almost regretted sayin’ that up until this very moment.”
“It got pretty gross sometimes,” Lawrence agreed, shrugging. "But most of the time, it was worth it." In more ways than one, he tacked on mentally, shooting a quick look at the doorway. He knew Athena was probably sitting near the steps within earshot.
"So," Tina drawled flatly. When Lawrence brought his gaze back to her, he found the girl looking entirely unimpressed with the tale. "There were no actual bugs in your story about brain bugs."
He shrugged. "I-I mean, we never even really found out if they were worms or bugs or just microscopic particles - "
"Lame!" Tina declared, making Lawrence wince.
Axton made a scowling noise. “Leave the dude alone, Tina,” he snapped. “He told you the damn story. You can kindly bugger off now.”
Tina reared back, outrageously offended. She put one hand over her brow and the other over her chest as she declared, “You, my good sir, have just earned yourself another stick of dynamite wedged in the barrel of your lame-ass turret.”
The commando’s face turned an alarming shade of red. Gaige barely managed to grab his arm as he jumped to his feet with a threat of his own: “You touch my baby and it’ll be your head in her canons after I sever it from your dumb body!”
As Gaige tried and failed to play peacemaker between the two quarreling individuals, Lawrence made his way out of the room, eager to get away from the noise. He wasn't surprised to find Athena sitting at the foot of the steps, head low and gaze far away, lost in her thoughts. He plunked himself down next to her.
“What happened before I woke up in Concordia?” he asked softly. He could only remember bits and pieces in between passing out and waking up - mostly just smudges and distant noises that made no sense.
Athena took a breath. "I was just returning to consciousness when Wilhelm arrived. He turned you onto your back to try to wake you. That's when we saw..." She shut her eyes. "Wilhelm carried you back to Elpis so Nurse Nina could treat you. I didn't think you were going to make it. You were covered in that awful gunk from the Veins, your organs wouldn't stay in your body. I've seen a lot of blood and gore over the course of my life, Lawrence, but not until then had I ever been truly affected by it."
Lawrence swallowed hard and subconsciously touched his stomach. "Well, I made it out fine in the end," he assured her. "It's all in the past."
"I disemboweled you," she said quietly.
"No, the bugs in your brain did," he told her firmly. "You thought I was your dead boss. It wasn't your fault and I was never mad at you for it." He paused. "I never told you that, did I? Afterwards, when you visited me in the hospital."
Athena shook her head. "I assumed there were no hard feelings because you never acted like there were."
"Well, you assumed right." He kicked at a chunk of rubble, upset with himself. He never knew how badly she felt over the whole catastrophe. "Still sucks that I never confirmed it for you 'til now, though. I'm sorry."
"It's all right. I never thanked you for not leaving me to die in that horrid place, either."
Lawrence grinned. "You didn't have to. The fact that you even bothered to visit me in the hospital more than once was enough of an indication. But you're welcome anyway."
Athena hummed. There was a small, crooked smile on her lips, and her gaze had become softer, less tense with unpleasant thoughts and memories. “I’ve got to go catch a shuttle,” she said eventually, rising to her feet. “You sure you’re going to be all right here?”
He nodded in affirmation and cast a quick glance back into the room behind him. Axton and Tina were still locked in their argument that would probably only end after one of them was covered in third degree burns. Gaige caught his gaze and sent him an over-dramatic eye-roll that plainly stated, “please get your ass in here and help me with these two children.”
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” he assured Athena, winking. “Have fun with Springs.”
“Shut up.”