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When Axton was six years old, his mother was KIA on Promethea. Being just a kid, he hadn’t understood what his father meant when he sat him down on the front steps of their private living quarters on one of Dahl’s great warships, the Winter Wave, and told him that Mama was never coming back.
“Is she mad at you again?” he asked.
His father’s handsome face, already drawn with a tired, sad look, grew even more somber. “No, Axton,” he said through a sigh, then set about trying to explain what death was and why it was a very permanent, ugly, unfair thing, especially for those left behind.
Now, as Axton stood on the rim of the crater where the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve had been mere hours before, he was six years old again, not understanding death. Not understanding how someone he loved so dearly could just be gone. Cease to exist, just like that.
“Axton?” came Lilith’s tinny voice through his earpiece. “You with me?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, he noted. Too tight. Too hoarse for someone who hadn’t spoken much in the past hour.
“Come back to Sanctuary,” Lilith ordered as gently as she could. “I need you to report on this.”
“Gonna take a while,” Axton heard his mouth say as he turned to shoot a glance over his shoulder at the kids behind him. Eg looked like a literal ghost with his pale skin and knee-length white tunic. Hale was just as bad. “Got some loose ends to tie up first.”
“All right,” Lilith relented almost immediately. She must have heard the defeat in his tone, even over the unstable link. “Be careful. And I’m...I’m sorry.”
Axton grunted out what he hoped sounded like a thank you, but he cut the line before he could hear any response.
He approached Eg, who was in the process of a panic attack, judging by how hard he was hugging himself and the way his mouth was hanging open to suck in air far too fast for what was normal.
“You two should go home,” he told them.
Eg’s wide, glassy eyes snapped to his. “We - we should look some more,” he gasped.
“There’s nothin’ here,” Axton growled, gesturing with a wide sweep of his arm towards the crater they’d spent twenty minutes staring into in search of a sign of life, a body, anything. “I’m takin’ the two of you back to Lynchwood.”
“But - ”
Axton opened his mouth to yell, but stopped short. He was suddenly seeing his six-year-old self in Eg’s wild expression, in the tightness of his hunched shoulders and the fat tears slowly trickling down his cheeks.
He exhaled heavily, trying to send out his impatience with it. “Law’s gone. I’m takin’ you two back to Lynchwood ‘cos that’s what he would’ve wanted,” he said firmly. “Let’s go.”
When Eg failed to comply - more so out of shock than any real defiance - Hale came over and ran the back of his knuckle down Eg’s arm, just enough to draw his attention. The shorter man turned his shell-shocked expression on him.
“We should go,” Hale said, voice even raspier. The dude wasn’t at all expressive, but Axton could see his pain in the wideness of his eyes, the limp way he held his shotgun.
Eg hiccuped, shuddered for a second, then nodded.
They had a lot of walking ahead of them just to get back to the bandit technical, and it was all done in silence, save for the occasional sniffle from Eg. Axton walked the two and a half miles in a daze, remaining aware enough to step carefully on the uneven path yet disconnected enough to not think about much else.
The sky grew darker. Axton knew he wouldn’t have the mental capacity to drive anywhere. If it had been just him, he would’ve said fuck it and drove and drove until he passed out at the wheel. But Eg and Hale were with him, so he had to stay sober and sane.
Upon reaching the bandit technical, Axton chucked his rucksack and weapons down, making both boys jerk. “Gonna go find some wood for the fire,” he muttered, turning away from them. “Stay put.”
“You’ll come back?” Eg blurted with a mounting panic.
“I’m just headin’ over that way,” Axton snapped, jerking towards a hill ten feet from them. “I’ll stay where you can see me.”
Eg just blinked at him, terrified, until Hale came up and leaned against him. His presence put the shorter man at ease, at least long enough for Axton to make a retreat towards the hill.
All he found littering the grass were a few twigs and leaves he could use to make a tiny, barely-worth-it fire. He hesitated in walking any further away from camp with Eg watching him like a rakk, so he fumbled with his numerous pockets in search for anything he could afford to toss into some flames.
Something cold and metallic in his left pocket drew his attention away from his thoughts. He reached inside and cursed when he brought out Lawrence’s digistruct watch. He’d have to tell them, he realized with another curse, this one louder. He’d have to tell Gaige and Athena and everyone Lawrence had ever been close to.
“Fuck me,” he said wetly, punching in the code before he could chicken out.
Both doubles materialized on either side of him with a flash of blue and orange pixels. Though they still looked like younger versions of Handsome Jack, Axton could still see the pieces of Lawrence in them. It didn’t help when Blue set his sights on him and cracked a grin that was on par with Lawrence’s.
“Dahl man!” he crowed, grinning. “Long time of the not-seeings!”
“Sergeant,” Red greeted with a nod. His sharp eyes darted around. “Where is Lawrence?”
Words failed him for a moment. What the hell made him think this was going to be any easier just because these dudes weren’t human?
“Law’s dead,” he said, admitting it for the first time. The statement rolled out of his mouth and fell messily at his feet between them. “I’m sorry.”
Both holographic men stared at him for a long, tense second. Blue’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. It was Red who managed to respond first.
“You’re lying,” he said, sounding rather alarmed despite the plain expression on his transparent face.
Axton’s shock swiftly churned into anger. “Why the fuck would I lie about something like this?” he snapped.
“Friends joke about death,” Red said. There was a faint tremoring in his tone, one that Axton almost missed hearing. “That was one of the first things Lawrence taught me upon me gaining sentience. This is a friendship thing, isn’t it?”
“No,” Axton rasped. “I wouldn’t joke about Lawrence being dead.”
Red shook his head. “Impossible. He - he has healing abilities. Nothing can hurt him to the point of death.”
Axton took a breath. “Nothing except himself.”
Blue gave a start, visibly disturbed by the suggestion. Beside him, Red’s lips folded into thin lines. “You are suggesting he killed himself,” he snapped accusingly. “He would never do that.”
Axton thought so, too. He still thought so, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried in the past. Axton never looked at him differently for feeling like the only way out was offing himself. He could understand.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.
Both doubles stared at him in disbelief. “Boss,” Blue whispered finally, wide eyes drifting downwards. His expression crumbled just as the rest of him flickered once, twice, then vanished with a burst of particles.
“Don’t,” Red began thickly, “summon us. Unless you need us.”
He disappeared too, leaving Axton staring at the thin night air. He clenched his fingers around the watch, wanting to smash it to pieces, wanting to break something. Instead, he tucked it back into his pocket and wandered back to camp, the small bundle of wood tucked under his arm.
When he got there, he found Eg in the throes of a full-blown panic attack. Hale was crouched by his side, but whatever he was saying wasn’t making a difference to the younger man. Hale whirled on Axton as he approached, pale and probably on the verge of his own breakdown.
“What do I do?” he rasped. “I don’t know what to do, what do I do to help him - ”
“Sit with him. Put his hand on your chest,” Axton ordered quickly. As soon as the kid complied, he looked at Eg and said firmly, “Breathe with him, Eg. Listen to me. You gotta breathe with Hale, okay?”
“It’s my fault,” Eg gasped, only to suck in another heaving breath far too quickly. His wild-eyed stare snapped to Axton’s. “It’s my fault he’s gone, I sh-should have never - ” Another out of control gasp, “never should have told him about the - the preserve.”
He was choking out what a part of Axton - the part currently screaming and crying inside - was thinking. That same part of him wanted to hate Eg, wanted to snap his pale, skinny neck and put a bullet between his eyes. But there was no was any of them could have known that this would have been the outcome of their trip to the preserve.
“He would’ve found out eventually,” Axton told him. “Breathe with Hale, Eg. You gotta breathe with him, okay?”
Eg nodded rapidly and tried to match his breaths with the slow, deep ones coming from his friend. It took him a long, tense minute, but eventually his heaving gasps leveled out into fairly stable inhales and exhales.
“I killed him,” he whimpered, lowering his head until it rested against Hale’s chest.
Axton scowled. “He killed himself,” he snapped, making both kids jerk. “Either by accident or - or not. That’s on him, not you.”
Eg just shuddered in Hale’s arms, unwilling to agree. Honestly, Axton didn’t blame him. He didn’t believe the half of the words coming out of his mouth either.
“C’mon,” Axton said through a sigh as he got to his feet. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Easier said than done, but neither kid objected to the idea. Axton laid out the spare blankets in the truck bed for them to curl up on. Eg practically collapsed, still shuddering, and welcomed Hale into his space when the hulking man crawled up behind him. Axton tossed them the last blanket, muttering that they should keep warm.
“Where’re you going?” Eg asked, sounding panicked. Hale’s arm around his waist tightened reflexively as Eg sat up on his elbow.
“Keepin’ watch,” Axton answered, gesturing to a large boulder not too far from the truck. “I won’t be far - ”
“Don’t,” Eg choked out. “Just - stay here. Please.”
Axton’s first instinct was to tell the kid to chill out and go to sleep, but his will to argue abruptly left him. With a grumble, he tossed out his turret to keep watch, then hauled himself into the back of the truck and sat on the edge of the bed, his gaze on the world around them. He felt Eg shift, falling back onto the makeshift mattress with a relieved sigh.
At some point, Axton found himself waking up flat on his back in the truck bed, his legs dangling off the edge of it. He blinked miserably up at the sky, which was now showing signs of dawn. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but at some point his body had said “fuck you” and shut down. Probably for the best, he reluctantly admitted.
He blinked and realized that at some point during the night, Eg had snatched his hand and now held it in his own, tight as a vice. Axton craned his neck to stare at it for a long time.
Tears burned his vision, but he blinked them away, shook off Eg’s hand, and went to rekindle the fire in preparation for breakfast.
~
The train ride into Lynchwood was just as quiet as the car ride back had been. Axton did it all in a daze that came mostly from lack of sleep, but he would be a fool if he denied that he wasn’t still in his own shock from the previous day’s event. The adrenaline had long worn off, leaving him strung out and shaking in his seat. The kids were too preoccupied with their own shock to really notice - something Axton wasn’t sure he should be grateful for.
Once they’d reached their destination, the three of them slowly made their way up the stairs to Main Street. It had been a while since Axton had last paid the place a visit, but from the looks of things it hadn’t changed much, save for a few burnt down houses and a new addition to the corpses dangling from the train station archway.
Hale stopped suddenly, causing Axton to bump into him. “What’s the holdup?” he groused, rubbing his battered nose. Damn, that kid was tough.
“You can’t come in,” Hale said, turning to face him. There was an intense look on his face that made Axton uncomfortable.
“The hell you mean? I come in here all the time - ”
“And shoot up the joint,” Hale snapped. “Like always.”
Anger bubbled in Axton’s veins, but he held back a tic to send the kid a hard, searching look. Hale was trembling and his hands had curled into giant fists at his side. His expression was fierce, hateful. Axton almost couldn’t hold his gaze.
“That’s all you vault hunters do,” Hale continued, his voice nothing more than a vicious hiss. “You show up and ruin everything. You ruined everything when you stormed the town and killed the last sheriff and all her marshalls. You shot my best friend in the face, and he never even saw you assholes coming!”
Axton set his jaw and let the kid rant. It was the most Hale had ever spoken in one go, at least since Axton had met him. He probably had a lot to get off his barreled chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, Axton caught Eg staring at them. Axton wondered if he’d try to tell Hale he was wrong, but he ended up turning away, his wide, haunted eyes on a random point in the distance.
“Things were fine before you showed up in Overlook. We were fine. Lawrence was fine! Then you showed up and everything went to shit!”
Hale finally swung at him, aiming for his face, and Axton let the blow land, feeling like he deserved every ounce of hatred the kid had to offer him. The hit knocked him back a few feet, but Hale wasn’t done; he didn’t stop swinging until he had Axton pinned beneath him in the dust and thoroughly bloodied and battered.
“I fuckin’ hate you!” he snarled, lifting his fist again while the other gripped the front of Axton’s blood-splattered shirt. “If you ever set foot in town again, I’ll - ”
“Hale! What in the seven hells are ya doin’?”
Hale was yanked off of Axton before he could hit him again. Axton rolled his swollen eyes up to see the town’s deputy, some guy named Winger, in the process of dragging Hale away from him.
“Let go,” Hale yelled, yanking himself away from Winger. “He fuckin’ deserves it.”
“Who the hell - ” Winger finally turned to get a good look at the man Hale had been pummeling and froze. “Vault hunter,” he growled, rearing back at the sight of his guns and the turret attached to his shoulder. “I know you. I should let Hale pick up where he left off.”
Axton just shrugged. He hurt like shit on the inside; it was only fair he felt the same on the outside.
Winger wrinkled his nose at him, then turned to the younger boys. “The hell’s goin’ on? Where’s Lawrence? Did he find his answers at the preserve?”
“He did,” Hale muttered, his gaze drifting downward as his anger began to bleed out of him.
“Well, good!” Winger rolled his shoulders back, pleased and entirely oblivious to the state of the kids. “Poor guy deserves to get a break after all the skagshit he’s been through. Where’s he now? He’s still got his house here if he wants to settle in for a bit - ”
Eg screamed, shocking everyone into silence. His cry was short and hoarse, but dissolved quickly enough into ugly, heart-wrenching sobs and wails that dragged him to his knees. He curled up, still sobbing wildly into the dusty ground as he finally snapped under all the emotional trauma.
Winger’s jaw dropped at the sight. He immediately went to sooth him, but hesitated to actually touch the kid’s shaking shoulders. “I - was it somethin’ I said? Eg, please, I’m sorry, whatever I did to upset ya - ”
“He’s gone,” Hale said, staring right through the deputy. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Winger asked, turning his wide eyes onto the taller boy. “Who is?”
“Lawrence. He’s dead. He’s dead.”
The deputy stared at him for a long, tense minute. His breath quickened, and his lip peeled back in a snarl as he turned to face Axton.
“Did he do it?” Winger hissed, practically growling. He drew his revolver and pointed it at Axton’s forehead. “Did ya do this, ya piece of vault huntin’ scum? I ought’a blow yer goddamned face off, ya - ”
“Lawrence did it,” Hale blurted, like he was ripping off a bandaid. His broad shoulders shook as he finally accepted the truth. “He killed himself.”
Winger stared at him for the longest time without saying anything. Axton was beginning to think he’d gone deaf when the deputy finally spat out, “Up. Yer gonna tell me everythin’, and if I don’t like what I hear, I’m gonna blow yer fuckin’ face off.”
That suited Axton just fine.
~
It was nearing nightfall again by the time Axton was done retelling the brief yet excruciatingly painful story of how Lawrence, Hero of Lynchwood, got himself killed. With a slightly more cognizant Eg and Hale there to back up his story, there was no denying the fact that their friend was well and truly gone, one way or another.
The hoard of women clustered atop the cliff by Gunslinger’s Corner took it the hardest. One woman with long black hair and sharp eyes yelled and denied it, going as far as to nearly take his leg off with a furious shot from the sniper rifle she had strapped to her back. Axton was positive she would have blown his face off if Winger hadn’t been with him.
They had tried to keep the story from the numerous children running about, but children had a way of learning the truth, either in due time or purely from being sneaky shits. A few of them eavesdropped on their conversation, and when Axton finally stepped out of the house the women were all living in, he was met with two dozen or so sniveling children wailing about “Lantern Man” and how he couldn’t be dead because the good guys never died.
Axton left the mothers to comfort their kids. He wandered away from the house and wound up vomiting into a trash pile nearby. He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t eaten since he, Lawrence, Eg and Hale had been on their way to the preserve.
He plunked his ass down on the small outcropping nearby, dizzy and unwilling to head out just yet. He was sure that if he tried, he wouldn’t make it.
Eventually a shadow fell over him. He peered up at the women’s matron, a woman named Imogen who was in her late sixties and looked like she’d been through hell. In her withered hand was a canteen that she offered him.
“You’re dehydrated, dear,” she told him gently.
He grunted. So what? But he accepted the canteen anyway and took a swig, only to proceed to chug the canteen’s contents when his mind realized just how desperate his body was for water. The woman didn’t bug him about it; she merely sat down next to him and remained quiet until he’d had his fill.
“Did Lawrence ever tell you what he did to earn himself the title of Hero of Lynchwood?” she asked after some time had passed.
Axton dragged his arm across his mouth. “Sort of. He killed that jackass Bogdan for you guys, right?”
She nodded, smiling softly at the memory. “That man abused us for a long time,” she said. “Had Lawrence not come when he had, I’m certain this town would be nothing more than a smoldering heap by now. And we would have been dragged kicking and screaming back to Bogdan’s camp for good.”
The water in Axton’s stomach began to churn, making him grimace and cover his mouth with the back of his hand. “He’s good like that,” he rasped, swallowing hard. “Too good for someone like me.”
Imogen tilted her head. “You loved him.” There was no judgement in her tone; she was making an observation.
He nodded. “He was my fortune and glory,” he muttered, feeling his eyes and chest burn.
“Two very important things for a vault hunter,” Imogen mused out loud. She struggled to her feet; Axton jumped up to help her the rest of the way. She sent him a grateful smile and patted his arm. “You should stay and eat something before you head out again.”
The logical part of his brain, which at this point was barely online, urged him to take her up on that offer, but his mouth was already spitting out the words, “I have to get back home to tell the others.”
Imogen nodded, frowning a little. “Then take something to go.”
“I’ve got food,” he lied.
The old woman arched a brow at him. “Do you know how I came to serve Bogdan?” she asked.
Axton blinked, startled by the sudden conversation change. “Uh - no?”
“I was twenty when they nabbed me and another co-worker of mine. We were waiting for a shuttle with a handful of others when they attacked, killing the men and taking us back to their developing stronghold in the Maw.”
She started hobbling back towards the building, still holding his arm for support, so he had no choice but to follow and listen.
“They made it clear what we were in for now. With no hope of rescue, I began to constantly think about killing myself, especially when my co-worker revealed she was unable to bear children and wound up hanging from a post in the yard.”
Axton swallowed hard, feeling nauseous all over again. He didn’t want to hear this. He was depressed enough.
“When I found out I was pregnant with Shea, I thought I’d want to follow through on that desire. But I realized that what had happened to me wasn’t her fault. I swore I would never take all the anger and pain I felt on a daily basis out on her, or the rest of my children. They didn’t deserve it.”
“Okay,” Axton said, unsure of where she was headed with this. He was too exhausted to try to pick apart the secret meanings or whatever in her story.
Imogen hummed, smirking. “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that, despite feeling like I had lost everything, I found that I still had something worth living for. I know you do, too, dear.”
Axton thought about Johnny, thought about Gaige and Maya and everyone he was close to. Even Eg and Hale, though he was reluctant to admit he’d gotten fond of the duo. “I could go for a meal,” he mumbled, earning another pat on the arm from Imogen.
A plate full of dagon bean stalks and some sliced aquamellon later, Axton was feeling physically better - at least well enough to stand without having his knees threaten to buckle from exhaustion. While the women were distracted with their blubbering kids, he made for the door, eager to get the hell out and away to - to - anywhere but there.
“Axton!” Eg called from across the garden before he could make it to the elevator. The kid hurried over to him; his eyes were still red from crying and when he threw his arms around Axton’s neck in a hug, Axton could feel him trembling, probably from an adrenaline crash.
Eg eventually pulled back and fixed him with a watery-eyed, thin-lipped stare. “Come back soon,” he rasped. “I don’t care what Deputy Winger or the others say. You’re welcome here.”
Axton nodded, feeling his chest tighten again. “Thanks,” he managed to say. “Take care, kid.”
“You too. Please.”
He couldn’t promise that, so he didn’t.
~
The journey back to Sanctuary was uneventful, which was damn unfortunate, because Axton could have really used a distraction or two to keep him out of his morbid thoughts.
He kept himself busy trying to figure out what he was going to say to everyone once he got back. Just making an announcement over the ECHOnet didn’t seem good enough, but just thinking about how Athena and Gaige and Maya and - fuck, Johnny were going to react made Axton want to vomit up the nice meal he’d just eaten. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to sit them all down separately and tell them what happened.
It seemed like everyone in Sanctuary already knew that something awful had transpired. The air was saturated with a heavy sadness that nearly smothered him the second he set foot in town. The pitying stares he got from the locals as he passed didn’t help.
Maya met him halfway to HQ. Her eyes were wide, her face pale and gaunt with worry. “He’s gone?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. His voice was lodged somewhere in his throat.
She didn’t prod him for more information, just reached out and took his hand in hers. The contact was unexpected - Maya wasn’t the type of person to touch someone willingly let alone hold their damn hand - but Axton quickly realized that the simple touch was something he was desperately needing.
She led him to HQ. Others were waiting for him there, all wearing similar grim looks that melted into ones of sympathy when they saw him stumbling through the front door.
Johnny was the only one among them who looked genuinely happy to see him. His face lit up with a grin the second he saw him, but it faded when Axton couldn’t bring himself to return it. Johnny looked past him, no doubt searching for Lawrence, and frowned when he realized Axton had returned alone. He reached for him, wanting to be held, but Axton found himself rooted to the spot, lips sealed shut, barely able to blink.
“I’ve got him,” Maya whispered before moving to pluck the boy up. Johnny liked Maya as much as anyone else, but he was still perturbed by his foster father’s rigidity and tried to wiggle away from her. “Calm yourself,” she cooed, moving into the next room. Axton wondered if she was going to explain the concept of death to the kid. She could probably do it better than he could.
Salvador put his hand on Axton’s back and gently directed him upstairs to the meeting room. Axton moved as if on autopilot, ascending the staircase on shaking legs.
He entered the meeting room and immediately caught Athena’s gaze from where she sat. Her shoulders were rigid, her eyes wide and glossy. She had been looking that way since Lawrence vanished, but now -
Axton’s knees buckled, but Brick snagged him with one of his massive hands and righted him before he could collapse into a mute pile of angsty mush in front of everyone. With his help, Axton was able to wobble his way over to the lone chair in the middle of the room by the table.
Lilith was standing on the other side of it, her lips a thin line and her brows pursed with pity. Axton was half tempted to ask her how she handled it, watching her own lover die and having to deal with the aftermath, but he bit his tongue. It wasn’t the same. Roland was murdered, and Lilith was able to avenge his death by blowing Jack’s dumb face off. Lawrence...Lawrence was just gone.
In a desperate effort to distract himself from his thoughts, he tried to take note of who else was in the room, but his vision was swimming again. “Gaige,” he rasped, blinking hard.
“On her way back from the Tundra Express,” Mordecai told him from somewhere off to his right. “Do you wanna wait for her?”
No. If he didn’t get everything out right the fuck now, he never would.
Seemingly realizing this, Lilith leaned forward to click the record button on the ECHO device in the middle of the table. Axton was grateful she hadn’t decided to broadcast it live. “Right,” she said through a sigh. “I guess start from the beginning.”
It took Axton a second to get his mouth in gear. “I got a call while I was at Ellie’s,” he managed to spit out. “It was Karima in Overlook. She said...said Lawrence was at her place. He was alive. He was okay.”
He shook himself mentally, realizing that now wasn’t the time for emotion. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and pictured himself in one of Dahl’s interrogation rooms that they sent the squad leaders after missions. This was just another debrief, he told himself. Relay nothing but the facts.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself sitting ramrod straight in his seat before his superiors. He picked up where he left off with all the cold professionalism that an ex-sergeant of one of the greatest militaries in the six galaxies had to offer.
~
Axton wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he was suddenly coming back to himself. He was standing in the room with the safe, staring down at Johnny’s slumbering form on one of the bunk beds. The kid was curled on his side, back to him, and looking impossibly small and alone.
Maya appeared next to Axton, her presence a relief. “He’ll be all right,” she offered quietly.
“Did you tell him the truth?” Axton asked, unable to keep the bite out of his tone.
She nodded. “Children are far smarter than we give them credit for,” she said. “Johnny especially. He understands death is permanent and that it happens to everyone. He’s upset, of course, but he also knows that he’s allowed to grieve.”
Axton swallowed hard. He wished he had been that smart at Johnny’s age. He’d spent months unconsciously looking for his mother after his father had told him she was gone, even entertained the idea of stealing a shuttle and flying down to Promethea to find her himself.
“Thanks,” he choked out.
Maya gave his hand a squeeze, blinked hard, then abruptly left the room, no doubt to mourn in private. A lot of the others had already gone off to do the same.
Axton turned to leave HQ, only to run into Athena at the foot of the stairs. She said nothing to him, just reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. It was a silent motion, one that said two things: “I’m sorry” and “it’s not your fault.” He appreciated them coming from her, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Maybe if he’d arrived sooner, maybe if he’d let Lawrence go like Karima had said - maybe he would still be okay.
That kind of talk would drive him bonkers - he knew from experience - so he shoved ever last bit of it out of his mind and headed for the bar.
He regretted that idea the second he plunked himself down on a barstool and met the Moxxi’s gaze. Her eyes were blessedly dry, but her expression was drawn tight.
“Axton,” she started to say, but he held up a hand. If one more person told him how sorry they were, he was going to either blow their brains out or turn the gun on himself.
“Just,” he sucked in a breath, “gimme the strongest you’ve got.”
She passed him a bottle of booze and a shot glass. It was whiskey from the Rotgut Distillery - the foulest, most effective booze Axton had ever tasted. It had only taken him three sips to get utterly shitfaced back in the day and he hoped it would be no different now.
He made it maybe three shots in before he couldn’t stand it - the noise of the bar, the pitying looks Moxxi and Hammerlock kept sending him. He slapped a wad of money down on the counter and slunk away with the bottle.
By now most of Sanctuary’s streets were deserted. Axton stumbled through them for a while, getting thoroughly shitfaced as he drank from the bottle of whiskey, before climbing his way up onto the roof of a nearby building. He probably should have gone back to his rented room, but the idea of having to face that big old empty bed by himself made him want to hurl himself off Sanctuary.
He sat up there drinking until his bottle was empty. He blinked down at it, irritated, until rage seized him so suddenly that he briefly lost control of his body. He jerked to his feet with a furious snarl and screamed into the dark sky, “You’re a fuckin’ piece of shit and I hate you!”
His voice was hoarse and echoed nastily through the night, but he didn’t care. Part of a wall had come down with the expulsion, prompting him to continue.
“You're so fuckin' selfish. You were supposed to come back with me after this! We were supposed to have a nice vacation on Wam Bam Island - you, me and Johnny! Johnny - you said you’d help me raise him! D’you know how crushed you’ve left him? Left all of us? You’re a goddamned dirty, filthy fuckin’ liar and I hate you!”
His voice broke on the last few words, as did his ability to stand on his own. He crumpled onto his knees, gasping for breath and choking on his own half-sobs. A pain like no other tore through his chest, leaving him winded and confused.
“What am I gonna do now?” he babbled hoarsely as he tried to get back to his feet. He was drunk, he felt lightheaded and nauseous. “What the fuck am I gonna do without you now…?”
Movement caught his attention. Gaige was standing not too far from him on the other side of the roof, her face wet with the remnants of her tears. She blinked, sending more down her cheeks.
Hot tears of his own finally, finally spilled down his rough cheeks as the dam he’d been desperately plugging up crumbled to pieces around him. A sob tore through his ribs and his knees threatened to buckle, but Gaige was at his side before he could collapse, gathering him in her tight grip and making shushing noises into his hair as he continued to scream and cry into her chest.
“I only just got him back,” he rasped, clinging to her like she was the only thing keeping him alive. “And now he’s gone again.”
Gaige sniffed hard and buried her face in his hair. “I’m so sorry, Ax.”
Another wet sob was the only reply she got.
~
When Axton woke up the next morning, he was confused to find himself lying on one of the cots in the Crimson Raider’s HQ. He didn’t remember Gaige dragging his drunk, sniveling ass back there after his breakdown, but he quickly found himself not caring - a common occurrence, these days, he realized as he slowly sat up.
His head was pounding, but not as badly as Axton thought it would be after downing an entire bottle of Rotgut whiskey. He tried to get up, but he suddenly became aware of the weight on his side. Johnny was clinging to him, one hand clutched in the sheets and the other shoved into his mouth so that he could suck his thumb - the ultimate sign of distress.
“Hey, buddy,” Axton whispered, reaching out to stroke the hair from his forehead.
Johnny sniffed, his expression crumbling with a new round of tears. His eyes were already red and puffy, his entire body shuddering with what was probably exhaustion. It broke Axton’s heart.
He gathered the boy into his arms and held him for a while, just rocking him back and forth and humming a wordless tune under his breath. The kid’s grip on him was tight, and no amount of rubbing his back seemed to rid him of his tension. How many times was Johnny going to be traumatized like this? Only technically a few months old and already he’d seen war and injury and death.
Axton tightened his grip, then loosened it as he exhaled. “I dunno about you,” he began quietly, “but I could go for a change in scenery. You ever seen the ocean, buddy?”
Johnny pulled back and shook his head, sniffling.
“I’ve been lookin’ at maybe rentin’ a place up north for a few months. It’s nice and bright up there. I think you might like it.”
The kid just shrugged, averting his gaze. There was only one thing he’d really like at this point, but that wasn’t going to happen. He knew it. Axton knew it. Believing it was going to be the hardest thing they’d ever have to do.