#〖 DO THIS LIKE A FAMILY 〗REL. FIONA & SASHA | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dragonbagel · 7 years

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Retrograde - Part 7

[while i’m working on those requests from everyone i figure i might as well post this update so here ya go. comments/feedback is appreciated!]

[possible trigger warning for this part]

Jack looked up at a sharp knock on the door. “Come in,” he said, clearing his throat and ending the call with Tim. The door creaked open and Sasha appeared, a smug look on her face and an accidental smear of purple sparkles on her cheek. “The key’s done. The paint’s drying now, but in a few hours it should be ready to go.”

“We don’t have a few hours,” Jack said harshly.

Sasha placed her hand on her hip, raising her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Are you deaf?” Jack snapped, Rhys’ pained expression on the forefront of his mind. “We don’t have time to literally watch paint dry.”

“And here I thought we were pretending not to hate each other,” Sasha replied sourly. “You asked me to make the key and that’s what I’m doing. If I say the paint needs time to dry, the paint needs time to dry.”

“He can’t wait that long!” Jack said before realizing his slip-up. “I mean, we can’t wait that long.”

Sasha simply stared at him, studying the way his fists were clenched and his gaze was anxiously darting towards his ECHOcomm, now resting on the bed. She could also see his eyes were rimmed in red. “What’s going on, Jack? What’s wrong with Rhys?”

Jack didn’t respond for a moment, clearly wrestling with his thoughts. “Can I--can I ask you something?”

“Uh, sure?” Sasha said, confused and a bit annoyed that he hadn’t answered her question.

“What happened on Pandora? To Rhys, I mean,” he clarified.

Sasha stared at him, biting her lip. “He didn’t tell you?”

Jack shook his head, his expression slightly hurt.

“I don’t really know if it’s my place…” Sasha said, trailing off.

“Please,” Jack said quickly. “I need to know. I need to know how to help him.”

Sasha could see the desperation written all over his face, his concern clearly genuine. “Okay,” she said finally, and Jack’s relief was instantaneous. “I don’t know everything, but I’ll tell you what I do. You’re, um, probably gonna want to sit down for this.”

Jack grimaced before sinking onto Sasha’s bed, not even bothering to argue. He crossed his arms over his chest, the shield he always wore attached to his hip shifting as he fidgeted.

“I’ve known Rhys since high school back in New Haven. It was a shithole, yeah, where on Pandora wasn’t? Besides, it was relatively safer than a lot of places.” Jack nodded, listening intently. “His family didn’t have a lot of money, and that’s saying something, because New Haven is known for being dirt poor. He was smart, though. Too smart for his own good. For all the time he spent with his nose in a textbook, he couldn’t see what was happening right in front of him.”

Jack’s mask kept his expression falsely neutral, and Sasha’s stomach churned at her inability to figure out what he was thinking.

“We started dating when we were seventeen,” she continued, trying to rush through any mention of their relationship so Jack wouldn’t go off again. “Things were pretty normal back then. We went to school, spent time with friends, snuck into clubs--kid stuff, y’know?”

Jack nodded mechanically, although “kid stuff” had never been a part of his life story--his grandmother had made sure of that.

“He never talked about his family, and I never asked. I didn’t think about it. God, I wish I’d thought to ask,” Sasha said, swallowing thickly. “But by the time I found out it was too late. The... damage had already been done.”

She paused to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye; it had been a long time since she’d thought about this shit, much less talked about it. But if Jack could help Rhys deal with what had happened in a way that didn’t involve getting blackout drunk, then the least she could do was talk. Plus, maybe it’d distract him long enough for the key to finish drying.

“His parents worked for a bandit leader named Vallory. I’d heard horror stories about her, but most of us considered her to be no more than an urban myth. Yeah, most people in New Haven were sketchy-- Hell, my dad raised me and my sister to be con artists-- but the shit Vallory did was on a whole other level.

“Rhys’ family had no money, but they wanted him to get an education, to get off that god-awful planet, so they struck up a deal. I’m not sure if he even knew at first, but once he found out, he blamed himself and he... he just wasn’t the same after that.”

Jack’s blue and green eyes were still trained on Sasha’s face. “Is that when he started drinking?”

Sasha looked a bit taken aback at Jack’s forwardness. “He... told you about that?”

Jack shook his head, chuckling. “Honey, I first met Rhys drunk out of his mind at a bar. Then I met him a second time there. And a third. Kid was a goddamn sponge.”

Sasha scowled slightly at the thought of that.

“Rhys and I were still dating at the time, for almost a year actually, but it didn’t feel like it,” she said, pausing to look at Jack and wondering if she should just skip over this part of the story. When he didn’t look like he was about to burst into flames of jealousy, she cleared her throat and continued.

“He stopped spending nights at my place, wouldn’t return my texts or calls. He still worked with me and Fiona on cons sometimes, but it wasn’t the same; he was there as an obligation, not because he wanted to be. I’d try talking to him, but,” she paused, trying to reign her emotions back under control.

“But he’s a stubborn asshole when he wants to be,” Jack supplied, earning a snort of agreement from Sasha.

“I don’t know everything that went on at that time,” Sasha admitted, sitting down softly onto the bed next to Jack. “I didn’t even know how bad it was at first.”

Jack’s ears perked up at that, and a mixture of anger and worry flitted across his face before it was absolved back into a stony neutrality. “What do you mean, ‘how bad it was’?”

Sasha gulped. “Rhys’ parents, they missed a drop. They couldn’t fulfill the contract and, well, Vallory wasn’t happy. She took them as hostages and made Rhys... do things in order to get them back.”

“What sort of things?” Jack growled, his voice low.

“I-I don’t know exactly,” Sasha stammered truthfully. “It was some sick sort of deal; he had to earn her back the money they’d lost, or she’d,” she trailed off, sliding her fingers horizontally across her throat.

Jack got the message. “So he stole some crap for her, and it fucked up his head. Is that what this is all about?”

Sasha regarded him warily, quirking an eyebrow with a pitying look on her face.

“What?” Jack snapped, that ferocity back in his eyes.

“He worked for her for years, Jack. For years,” she said, shuddering at the way the words tasted in her mouth. “Like I said, he was smart. And she knew that.”

Jack’s fists were clenched at his sides again, knuckles turning white. “Sasha,” he grit out from between his teeth. “What. Did. She. Make. Him. Do?”

Sasha maneuvered around the question, knowing that no answer she could give would be satisfactory; Hell, she didn’t even know completely what had happened herself. “Rhys started disappearing for days and then coming back absolutely shit-faced. We--our friends and I--were worried about him, especially when he kept avoiding us like the freaking plague. So we went to his apartment to check on him, y’know?”

Jack nodded slowly, although he was clearly still tense.

“We didn’t know anything then, so when we went in there we were half expecting him to be studying for the college classes he was taking or doing some other weird shit like sorting his socks. I even thought he might’ve been cheating on me.”

Jack’s flinch at her last sentence had her speeding to continue, once again aware of why they were in this shitty predicament in the first place.

“But the place was empty. It looked like nobody had been there for weeks, everything covered in dust, cupboards practically bare. We knew his family had no money, but this--this was different. I went into Rhys’ room to see if he’d left a note about where he was or anything, but the place looked like a goddamn crime scene.

“There were bloodstains in the floor, and more empty liquor bottles than the rest of New Haven combined probably went through in a year. I told everyone else to go home, that there was nothing to see. His room was just... private, I guess, and I didn’t want to betray him like that.”

“You still loved him?”

Sasha looked taken aback at Jack’s sudden question, especially by the lack of malice in his voice. “Yeah, I did. I really did.”

Jack nodded slowly at her response before gesturing for her to keep speaking.

“There was this folder on his bed,” she said, her voice even more cautious. “Vallory must have given it to him, because it wasn’t his handwriting, and it sure as hell wasn’t schoolwork.”

“What was in it?” Jack said, restrained anger seeping out from every syllable.

“Files,” she said shortly, struggling to string together the words to describe the impossible. Shit, what had she gotten herself into? “Not like coding or anything. They were profiles on people, bandit leaders and the like. Corporate execs too. I couldn’t read everything-- there was blood all over the fucking place--but there was a lot of, um, personal information on them.”

Jack clenched his jaw. He thought he knew where this was going, but didn’t want to interrupt Sasha.

“Physique, salary, connections, resume, frequent hangouts--it even had their allergies listed! It also,” Sasha paused, steeling herself for Jack’s reaction to what she was about to say next. “It also described what they preferred... sexually.”

Jack let out a hiss of breath he didn’t realized he’d been holding, his jaw muscles tensing despite his effort to calm them. He’d always had his suspicions about Rhys sleeping around, especially after one night of very, very drunken confessions and a subsequent two-day hangover. But enjoying hooking up was one thing; being forced to have sex for some bandit bitch-lord’s power play was very, very different.

Had that been why he’d been so submissive to Jack’s advances? Did he think he had to be? Jack felt his stomach tighten in fear; What if Rhys saw him as just another douche to get on his back for in his climb up the corporate ladder? If what Sasha was insinuating about his essentially forced prostitution was correct, Jack wouldn’t even blame him.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sasha said, cutting Jack off from his thoughts, which were quickly turning murderous. “And I don’t know for sure if you’re right. Like I said, Rhys was dead-set against telling me anything.”

Jack had started to fidget, wanting nothing more than to talk to Rhys and beg him to please, please tell him the truth. How much more was Rhys hiding from him?

“Jack,” Sasha said, pulling his attention back to her. “There’s more.”

He shuddered, not sure how this horror story could get any worse and definitely not wanting to find out the manner in which it did.

“Rhys called me one night. It had to’ve been 3 a.m. at least. We hadn’t talked in months at that point, and I’d basically given up on him. Given up on us. We’d mutually broken it off, although nothing official; I mean, we hadn’t been on a date in a year, what else was I supposed to think?” Sasha said, her cohesiveness starting to spiral. “But I--I answered him anyways. I was worried, to say the least. And when he talked to me… something about it wasn’t right.”

Jack was biting his lip to keep from interjecting himself into the conversation, from making a stupid comment to lighten the mood in a completely immature way if only to keep himself from feeling all these dumb… feelings.

“He was slurring his words really badly, and he kept saying he was sorry, over and over again. When he said he was at home, I told him I would meet him there. Something was up, I knew it. I made him promise not to hang up on me, but he just kept apologizing, saying it was all his fault. I don’t think I’ve ever driven that fast in my entire fucking life.”

Even though it was in the past, Jack’s heart was slamming in his chest at Sasha’s words. He’d seen Rhys scared and vulnerable, not to mention drunk as hell, but nothing like what she was describing. Did Rhys not trust him with this kind of shit? He was his boyfriend, for fuck’s sake.

“When I found him, that shit… it was straight from a nightmare,” Sasha said, either ignoring or not registering Jack’s discomfort. “He’d fallen on the floor trying to get in bed, and was waving a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand. And his right arm, it was just gone. Vanished. Blood everywhere. It reeked, even with the bandages he’d put on it,” she paused, looking like she might throw up. “I asked him what happened, and he just said that she killed them. That was it. Then he puked all over the floor.”

Jack was feeling quite nauseous himself, especially as he thought about Rhys’ cybernetic arm. He’d told Jack that he’d had it surgically removed when he volunteered for the cybernetic program, not that someone had literally blown it off. He swallowed thickly, which was painful with his dry throat.

“I think,” Sasha began, working to quell the trembling in her voice; it was clear she was still emotional about the whole ordeal. “I think Vallory finally killed his parents, and then tried to off him too. It fucked him up, all of it. There--there were pills too, when he threw up. He was passed out so I couldn’t ask, but I think he…”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence, but Jack could easily tell what she was getting at. Rhys, his sweet, confident (albeit sometimes assholeish) boyfriend, was so desperate and distraught that he’d tried to end his life. The thought alone almost made him completely lose his composure. But heroes didn’t cry, he reminded himself sternly. Heroes didn’t cry.

“I cleaned up the floor, bathed him, got him into bed. He woke up sometimes during all that, but he wasn’t making any sense. When he finally curled up in bed, I was pretty damn exhausted myself, practically passed out the second I hit the couch. And when I woke up, he was gone. I haven’t seen him since--at least, not until last week. He must’ve come up to Helios, started a new life for himself. I was happy for him, I really was. Not so happy when I realized that he’s still… dealing with this shit.”

Jack had remained silent during the end of her tale, and stayed quiet for a few minutes after she finished. Nothing made sense, and everything, everything was falling apart.

“Can I, um, have a minute?” he asked, looking slightly desperately at Sasha.

She nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen with Nisha if you need anything.” She looked a bit shaken up herself, but that was nothing some tea (and serious repression) couldn’t fix.

Once he heard the door close behind Sasha, he let her words sink into him again. And damn if it didn’t hurt worse than every fucking bullet he’d taken. Rhysie, he thought to himself. Rhysie, Rhysie, Rhysie.

Then, although he’d never admit it to anyone, he buried his face into a pillow and cried.

#rhack #rhack fic #rhack tftbl #rhys the company man #handsome jack #sasha the kid sister #drug mention #suicide mention #alcohol mention #retrograde #trash writing

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