A HERO, A KING, A GOD.

Morals? And what’s that?

Some four hundred odd years are a long time, even for some monsters. Long enough to lose too much on the way, long enough to be broken and rebuild yourself only to be broken anew, time and again. Time enough to decide, somewhere along the line, that enough is enough, and build your own morals. For instance…

                  (Not that it matters much; not long as he can protect. And                    if he's being honest, he'd turn against her or Grendel in a                   heartbeat if it was necessary to keep Angel safe; even if it                   had to mean his doom. She doesn't need to know that.)

      "There's still too much trash around. Got a lot to do left."

“What life? You don’t have one of those.”

She’s missing something, obviously, but she’s also not about to drop the conversation because he’s not answering her questions. There were a lot of things kept from her from times before she arrived on Helios, but not all of it was on purpose. Yet the single word answer  somehow felt personal, considering they were talking about the Pandora mainstay Mad Moxxie.

      "Manners, Nat. Have you ever actually heard of that?"

                  Fine. He's just going to ignore her now. As childish as                    that might be; he's not going to murder one of his best                   assassins over that. Put too much effort and time into                   her, really — would be a shame to wreck all progress                   they've made. 

Stupid, fucking, murderous vault hunters. In another life she probably would’ve been one herself, but the bastards were barely better than the monsters populating Lynchwood. Her contempt had started out as simply mirroring Jack (easiest way to get him to warm up to her, right?), but the more she watched, the more she hated. The opening of the first vault had been heard around Pandora, and she’d heard a few bits and pieces about Elpis. But it really did take being up close and personal with Handsome Jack himself to get the whole picture.

It really was true that no good deed went unpunished.

The moment of thought distracts her, and she’s slow to stand back up with Jack. She can hear incoming hostiles and pulls her sniper rifled off her back, aiming the sight towards the noise. “We’ve got incoming. We need to move.”

The few brave bandits were taking their dear sweet time, probably due to the absence of gun fire not necessarily a good thing (she’d sat on some of the taller buildings in Lynchwood in the past, picking off the scum of Pandora with a laughing Nisha behind her keeping score). The temptation to pick off one of the idiots was there, but it would alert them all that she and Jack were still there. 

Obviously — he didn't mean that the very first thing he would do is just rip apart these goons for not doing their job, for not for doing the one simple thing that could have given their worthless life just about any sense of purpose at all. He would very much like to, of course he would, but there are more important things to do. Getting out. Getting Natasha and him out; and Nisha home, and then getting the fuck to these slagged brained Vault Hunters and tearing them apart, all of them, one by one, with his own hands. And once he's done that and opened the frigging Vault, he'd burn Sanctuary down to ashes, have them all know what grief and fear felt like, have them all pay.

The mask only translates half the expressions ranging on his face, anger and grief and fury and disbelief. And she is way too light when he holds her body securely to his own, too light and too still.

(He'll fucking carve into Lilith for that later. For them to take everything close to him one by one — through a fogged mind, for a second he realizes the one standing right next to him now is all that is left, a thought quickly drowned in emotions he doesn't want to accept.)

      "Yeah. Le- Quick stop home, and then we'll fucking burn them to the ground."