Chapter Text
The human mind was quite the delicate thing; fragile in specific ways, yet malleable in others. One could easily manipulate a person's thoughts and actions without much hassle, just as they could easily break them.
The Timekeeper understood this concept well.
He enjoyed, well, it was not snooping if a man's bolt allowed him inside. He relished in the intimate knowledge laid bare before him, sifting through memories as if the brain were a file cabinet. The Timekeeper kept his focus on the vault hunters new to his planet, dragging his fingers through their heads as subtly as he could while they were not paying attention. Glimpses of loved ones, losses, traumas locked away, free for him to peruse whenever. Each hunter was fascinating in their own right, of course, but one stuck out more than the others.
The Tediore runaway.
Rafa was his given name. A man on stolen time, living with the knowledge that the very machine keeping him alive could kill him at any time. The poor thing was born into a world of microgravity. His body only knew the comforts of home, and now the boy could never return. What a shame.
Of course, he could easily fix the man if he so desired, but would he?
Maybe.
For the right price.
The Timekeeper could not comprehend what drew him to the man over his other, frankly more intriguing, companions. He allied with sirens, after all! Still, something about Rafa's disregard for the ticking time bomb that was his life support—the acceptance of his agonizing destiny—was captivating. Was it the way he lived as if tomorrow would not arrive? His charming nature? The infectious way his attitude towards everything rubbed off on nearly everyone he met? Or maybe how easily it was to slip his hands onto the wheel of Rafa's consciousness and take over. Rafa certainly was not weak-minded; it was just so easy to take control of the man. Too easy. Almost boring, truthfully.
The Timekeeper fingered through Rafa's mind whenever the man fell asleep (as he did with the others), tucking any and all discoveries away for future use when he stumbled upon…guilt? A recent memory, one of his escape from prison. Ah, he grieved the fool who facilitated it. Fascinating.
It's all his fault. All his fault; he should've fought harder. Should've ripped his bolt out. Why didn't they stop him? Why didn't they help? They could've helped. They should've helped. Arjay, you didn't deserve this. I'm sorry. It's all my fault.
The Timekeeper savored Rafa's guilt, drinking it down like bitter wine; something he could not stand and yet adored. It was delicious. Blackmail worthy, something to hold over the man's head. Someone he could use to his advantage. Rafa kept his guilt well hidden, buried in his brittle bones where no one but himself could see it. Smart man. Unfortunately, there was not an inch of flesh or bone that could hide anything from the Timekeeper; he infested the man's every cell like a disease.
Guilt was consistently an effortless motivator. Anyone more intelligent than a Ripper could use even the slightest regrets against a man. But deep-seated guilt? Guilt that resides painfully deep and buried in one's body and mind? Oh, that kind of guilt made obtaining what you want all the easier. And Rafa? The death of a man he had only just met was eating him alive. It gnawed at his guts, desperate to escape.
I will kill him for you, Arjay. I swear it.
The Timekeeper possessed extensive knowledge that these vault hunters did not. Poor Rafa, making promises he could not keep. That did not matter, though, not for much longer. What use was a vault hunter, after all?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vile Lictor was just ahead. He knew this, kept repeating it in his head over and over. His body ached; his joints throbbed with each step. His short trek through phase portals was exhausting, but Rafa couldn't bring himself to stop now. He couldn't do that to his allies. To Amara. They needed to free Lilith. He would be okay.
His bolt had been feeling abnormal for hours now. It kept him on edge for some inexplicable reason, like someone was watching him from inside his own body. Which, yeah, the Timekeeper could possess him at any time, but it didn't feel like that. No crystalline structures were forming on the edges of his vision, no numbness in his limbs. No, it felt like someone was prodding around inside his nervous system, touching things they really shouldn't be touching. As if someone was gently shoving their fingers into his gray matter, looking for something. He had no idea what they were looking for, but he didn't want them to find it.
"Hard to sleep well in this suit, amigo," He claimed, mostly to comfort himself. He'd been struggling to get an even halfway decent night's sleep for days now, jerking awake at reminders of things he'd long forgotten. That, and Tediore did not create the deadframes with comfortable sleeping in mind. But he didn't need anyone worrying over him when they were so close to taking down Lictor, and by extension, the Timekeeper. They had bigger fish to fry at the end of the day.
He kept thinking about that person who had fled the rift. Amara believed that it was Lilith, and who was he to disagree? But…that grunt when they hit the floor was familiar. Their gaze immediately snapped to him upon standing. It felt like recognition. Like they had met before, yet neither could recall who the other was, or when they'd met. No matter how hard he tried to drag his thoughts to the present, he couldn't help but return to the mysterious person. If that was Lilith, why did she run? She knew Amara, didn't she?
You know who that was. Rafa ignored that little voice in the back of his skull. Didn't want to acknowledge it, didn't want to consider that the person could be him. He just bit his tongue and tried to think about anything else.
Rafa knew he wasn't paying total attention during their struggle with Lictor. His mind was elsewhere, worrying over things he hadn't thought about in ages. What if his deadframe finally gave out? Well, it would continue to pilot itself, so his fellow vault hunters wouldn't be down a man. But would they even want his corpse around? Shit, would his synth-muscles still work?
When Lictor died, Rafa said he'd grab his bolt. Partially so he could get in a solid kick or two to the bastard's head, but mainly so he had a moment to breathe.
"Amara'll love to know this bastardo suffered." He told Amon, shrugging the hand off his shoulder. "I'll grab his bolt."
"Don't take too long!" Harlowe smiled, waving at him before grappling her way back via the rift. Vex and Amon followed suit, leaving Rafa alone with Lictor's corpse.
He kicked the bastard a solid few times. For Amara. And Lilith.
Clutching Lictor's bolt, Rafa pivoted back towards the rift they entered, only to find it gone.
"Is that…the moon?" Rafa had no idea what he was looking at. His best guess was that he was somehow seeing the moon's core. It held a strange, almost unnerving beauty; pulsating purples, whites, and pinks surrounded a black orb.
The sound of a rift tearing open behind his back made him jump. Rafa whipped around, ready to fight—hands twitching, waiting for the moment he'd need to shoot. The mystery person from Lictor's lab fell gracefully out of the rift, quickly sealing it with a wave of their hand. They stalked right up to Lictor's corpse, squatting down with a blade drawn. A blade Rafa knew damn well shouldn't be in their possession. Unless it's him.
"At least you died screaming." The stranger huffed, poking their blade shallowly into Lictor's fucked up little head.
"Are you…Lilith?" Rafa asked, preemptively taking a step back from the figure. His gut was telling him that this stranger couldn't be Lilith. That voice was too familiar…where the hell had he heard it before?
The stranger chuckled. "Lilith?" They turned to stare at him, hands reaching up to remove their mask. "No. I'm no siren."
Rafa couldn't breathe. Staring at the stranger—the man before him, his iris a sickly yellow (just like how they looked when he died)—he held his hands up and took a few more steps back. The man took the same amount forward, crowding into his space.
"Arjay?" His voice caught in his throat. His hands trembled. It couldn't be…
Arjay looked dead—he was dead. Rafa had watched him crumple as the Timekeeper relinquished his hold. Seen the horror in Arjay's eyes before they rolled up into his skull. His skin was pale, tinged with rot, his face marred with purple burns and scratches. His visible skin was warped and mutated, arms patterned with deep grooves that led down to his hands, each finger tipped with a claw. His clothing was torn in places, scorched, and wholly ruined. The man had clearly been through hell, but why the fuck was he here!? Arjay died—maybe this wasn't even Arjay—weeks ago, by now, he should've been six feet in the ground.
"Oh, vault hunter…" 'Arjay' cooed, stalking forward until Rafa had no more space to back up. "I should be dead, shouldn't I?"
He couldn't speak. Barely wanted to breathe, because what if this Arjay dissipated into smoke? "Wh- how are you…?"
"Lictor needed prisoners for his…experiments," Arjay said, voice raspy and cracked, tinged with the same insane cadence that the rippers had. One of his hands moved to cup Rafa's cheek, a clawed thumb gently rubbing over his facial implants. "And even though the Timekeeper broke me, I held on! I guess that made me a prime candidate, huh?"
"I…"
"While you've been out saving the world…!" Arjay practically leapt backward, throwing Rafa off balance. "I've been cut apart, stretched across dimensions, holes burned through my skull so that universes of every color could pour themselves in!" He was pacing, whipping his knife every which way, breathing heavy like the world was pressing all the air out of his lungs.
Rafa kept his hands open and visible, held up to his chest as if he was facing a scared animal. "I'm sorry. I- we didn't know."
In an instant, Arjay appeared to calm down, his twitchy movements halting so he could stare back at Rafa. It was unsettling to say the least.
"Oh! No worries!" Arjay smiled at him, flashing his newly sharpened teeth after a beat of silence. "I mean, what's getting tortured in a cross-dimensional mindscrew between friends?"
Arjay was nearly on top of him in milliseconds, pulling him into a hug so tight Rafa distantly worried his spine would break. It hurt, he realized distantly, with his legs nearly giving out as Arjay leaned against him (was Rafa the only one holding the two of them upright?). His face pressed tightly into Rafa's neck, nails boring holes into his jacket as Arjay crushed their bodies together, like he was trying to slip into Rafa's skin. Hands forced themselves so tightly against Rafa's back that he swore there would be bruises.
A small, distant part of his brain recalled the feeling of regular gravity on his lungs. His heart rate skyrocketed.
"Besides, you got away." Arjay's breath was hot against his throat, teeth lightly scraping the delicate flesh. "You're safe. And I can make sure you stay safe."
"Arjay, let go of me." Rafa swallowed, pulling at Arjay's arms. He hadn't really given the guy the go-ahead to embrace him, and there were hands dangerously close to some critical mechanisms on his deadframe. That, and the memories the pressure on his lungs dug up (gasping for air, staring at his superiors with wide, teary eyes as they nodded and spoke to each other like he wasn't dying in front of them-!) were not pleasant.
"No, no, I can't…she can't have you. Lilith, it's her fault all of this happened." Arjay dug his claws deeper into Rafa's skin, anchoring himself to the man as if at any moment he might disappear. "Whatever her plans were for me… I'm free now, and she's still stuck. And I won't let her—" he squeezed tighter, cutting off Rafa's air supply. "—take you. Sh-She'll put you in her spot and abandon you there. She can't be free without a replacement, o-or everything breaks."
There were teeth in his neck. Is this how I die? It burned. Blood oozed out from the punctures, and he could feel his heartbeat rising. Any harder and Arjay would hit an artery, and he'd bleed out and die. Fuck, that was a bad way to go. Rafa had known a girl who'd ended up with her carotid sliced open at a bar. A freak accident; some guy had dropped his drink, she slipped on it, and the broken glass sank into her throat. It'd be a quick one if I'm lucky, though.
"Arjay, you're hurting me." His head felt light, vision blurring as the last of his oxygen ran out. His knees were trembling from the strain of holding himself and partially Arjay upright. There was blood dripping into the collar of his coat.
And he was free, and on the floor once again. It was all too fast—Arjay really wasn't human anymore, was he?—for him to comprehend. One moment, he was standing, held painfully tight in the arms of a dead man, and the next, he was a crumpled pile of uncoordinated limbs. He pressed a hand to the bite mark, palm squelching obscenely as he tried to stem the bleeding.
"I won't let you free her. I know that's your friends' little plan." Arjay was…calmer, now? Back to pacing, fiddling with his knife and all, but he wasn't trying to fuse himself with Rafa. His mouth was covered in Rafa's blood, though. "I went against her little plans, and now she's mad. If you free her…no, no, you won't free her. You're too smart for that, but your friends?"
Rafa struggled to his feet. "A-Arjay, what the hell are you talking about?"
Arjay ignored him. "One of your stupid little friends will take the bait if I don't do something…I need to stop them." He stopped dead in his tracks, turning to stare the exo-soldier in the eyes. "You shouldn't be out here." Arjay pointed his knife at Rafa. "You need to go back to reality. And drop the Vault Hunter act. All of you."
"And if we don't?
Arjay smiled. "I'll stop them. But you? You will. I know you will."
A tense beat of silence stretched between them, only filled with the soft thrum of the Phase and the heavy breaths both of them take. It was suffocating, the kind of silence that made Rafa's ears feel blocked and made each breath he took feel heavy. It hurt, and he hated it. Looking around, Rafa tried to redirect Arjay's attention. The way out wasn't visible (to him, at least), so his only shot at regrouping with the rest of his allies is the unstable, dead-not-dead man standing before him.
"I…think I'm stuck here." He says, standing straight and trying his damndest to appear relaxed. He felt like some poor prey animal, cornered by something much larger than himself, just trying to look harmless. His heart thrashed against his ribs,
"Right! Let me get that." The tension broke in an instant. "I'd hate to leave a friend behind."
Purple-black energy glowed from Arjay's palms, shooting out in unstable strings. It would've been beautiful if those beams of phase magic hadn't been aimed directly at his chest. The impact stung, and it sent him flying backward. He blinked, and he was back in Lictor's lab; another blink, and he was unconscious.
He came to with his back yet again on fire and propped up in a corner. Harlowe was kneeling by his side, holding his head upright. "What the hell happened, Rafa?" She let go of him when he stirred.
"Rafa, what the hell happened in there?" Harlowe asked. "You were in there for quite a while."
"Things got really weird," Rafa groaned, bracing against Harlowe as he struggled to his feet. "But I've got Lictor's bolt. And Amara?"
"Yes?" Amara's strained voice crackled over their comms.
"That siren we met…that wasn't Lilith."
"Damnit! Talk about adding insult to injury…"
"Wait, how do you know this?" Vex gave him an odd look—like she knew he was hiding something—crossing her arms across her chest.
"I…Lictor used someone else for his experiments." Should he tell them? Probably. He should let everyone fighting alongside him know that the man who jumpstarted their entire revolution was fighting against them now, in a way. He should tell them Arjay wants them to abandon the mission. But he doesn't.
"How do you know?" Amon looked at him, confused.
"This…mystery siren told me so. And I don't have much of a reason to believe that siren was lying."
The trek back to Belton Bore was a tiring one—Rafa nearly drove off a bridge—and all he could think about was taking a nap. Sure, he should probably attend the celebrations (being that he was one of the people who killed Vile Lictor, and all), but Rafa needed a solid five minutes to cry into a pillow. And maybe get black out drunk.
They holed up in a dirty corner of Belton Bore; a few tents set up by the locals surrounding a flickering (oddly warm?) digital fire. A few hours had passed, and while the other 3 Vault Hunters were off, presumably celebrating, Rafa was glaring into the fire, stewing in his emotions. It was mainly guilt.
It took Rafa an embarrassingly long time to notice Vex had joined him by the fire.
"You look like shit." Vex's voice reeled him back into awareness.
"I look wonderful, thank you very much," Rafa replied, but his voice was void of emotion.
"You're in a mood. Did something happen?" Vex moved to sit next to him.
"Amiga." Rafa groaned. "Do I really need to spell it out?" He tilted his head away from her, dipping his shoulder to show off the scabbed-up bite wound. He didn't know why he showed her. Knee-jerk reaction? She reminded him a lot of his little sister, oddly enough; kindhearted under an exterior of pessimistic sarcasm.
"Ouch…looks like it hurts." Vex sucked in a breath through her teeth. "How'd you get this?"
"When I grabbed Lictor's bolt." It just slipped out. Rafa didn't want to talk about it, really, but his guard was down. Vex was just…easy to talk to? She didn't feel the need to show him constant pity, just left it at that sucks, but we've got shit to do right now.
"What, did Lictor come back to life and bite you?" She snickered.
"...sure. Let's go with that."
"What happened in there, soldier boy?" Vex asked, gingerly pulling at his hood to get a better look at the bite. Her voice dropped its usual sarcasm, replaced with an odd, genuine concern.
"I don't want to talk about it."
The look on her face morphed from casual curiosity to one his mother had worn the day he told her he was signing up for Tediore's military. She started digging in her pockets after a second, presumably looking for something to cover up his bite wound.
"Oookay…well, were you hoping to find anything?" She asked, shifting to her knees to get a better angle to inspect his neck. He stayed silent for a minute, wincing occasionally, letting the siren "clean up" the bite and bandage it before responding.
"I…" Rafa winced. "I was hoping Lictor was experimenting on Lilith."
"Why?"
"Any time Lictor spoke about his mysterious test subject, I just…no sé, I had this gut feeling that it might be him, you know?" He let himself slump forward, but Vex kept a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it lightly.
Rafa didn't bother saying Arjay's name. Vex, as well as the rest of their little gang, knew very well how much his death bothered Rafa. He'd been the one possessed by the Timekeeper, the one initially given Echo 4 to sever the connection. It definitely didn't help knowing that Arjay had spent, god knows how long, being ripped apart and stitched back together.
"And when you, er- met this siren, it wasn't Lilith," Vex's markings glowed softly—god, they were pretty—as she removed her hand, letting it fall back into her lap. "Were you right?"
"He said to 'drop the Vaunt Hunter act'." Rafa glared down at his mechanical feet, hands clenched. "Threatened to stop us if we didn't. And he really doesn't want us helping Lilith." He doesn't mention what led up to the bite; Vex doesn't ask, either.
"He knows we can't do that, right?"
"I have no idea."