Chapter Text
Time was a difficult thing to parse on a place like Pandora. Maybe it was the long days that lasted an eternity as the sun bore down on him until his brain turned to jelly. Maybe it was the barren wastelands that stretched on forever with nothing between him and death except for a couple of skags and some dirt. Maybe it was the isolation; most of the colonial settlements had long been abandoned or destroyed, along with their inhabitants, leaving behind only the desiccated bones of civilization and the empty promise of a better life.
Maybe it was the way his mind refused to function properly, always playing tricks on him as he heard whispering somewhere just behind him. There were times when he lost entire days, entire Pandoran days, blacking out in the middle of a fight only to wake up dozens of miles away and covered in who-knows-what. But how did he even know he’d lost entire days when he couldn’t even tell the time? He knew that one daytime cycle on that hellhole lasted somewhere between three to four 24-hour days, with the nighttime cycles lasting just as long and twice as cold. How did he know that? Where did he learn it? He couldn’t remember. It was just some useless nugget of trivia left over from back when his head was still screwed on straight.
It didn’t matter, either way. Time passed the same there as it did anywhere else, and it wasn't like he really needed to be aware of how much had passed. Though he did often feel like there was something he was supposed to be doing…
In any case, it must’ve been well into the daytime cycle when Krieg woke up. He was laying on the floor of an empty skag den, thick with their rotten stench and the gnawed bones of their prey. He’d been making his way through some hot-ass canyon for some time, having accidentally lost his footing on a cliff and slid down the rocky slope to the bottom. Not exactly his finest hour, to be sure, but at least there hadn’t been anyone around to watch. No one living, anyways. After recovering from his tumble, he picked a direction and started walking, hoping that eventually he’d find a way out that didn’t require climbing the goddamned cliffs. Man, did he hate rock climbing.
It had been night when he fell, and an entire daytime cycle since then when he found the place, exhausted and ready to pass out. The skags had been a welcoming sight to his starving body, the hunger in his stomach roaring and clawing its way out of him like the fire under his skin. For once, he found he didn’t care if the big guy ripped them apart and ate them raw, their hot blood still pumping through the meat as he hacked their corpses open with his axe, pausing only long enough to rip the mask from his face.
God, he was always so hungry . Krieg didn’t think his appetite was always that voracious, but it could’ve just been a side effect of slowly starving to death. He halfheartedly tried to remember, not that the memory would do him any good.
The other guy, the other personality that Krieg shared his mind and body with, reveled in the blood and carnage, delighting in every opportunity to kill and drench himself with gore, and he was practically giddy as he sunk their teeth into the slick flesh, greedily tearing large bites out of the hunk he held in his hands. Krieg didn’t really share his sentiments, preferring to hold onto the vague remnants of morals and manners he’d once held from a life he couldn’t recall, always slipping just outside of his reach.
Once he’d finished devouring the skags, or, at least, the one’s not veined with the purple of slag, Krieg wiped some of the blood from his face and retrieved the mask, then wedged himself into the den they’d poured from. It was a tight fit, but he managed to get his shoulders through with a bit of wriggling. The inside of the den was relatively spacious, allowing him enough room to stretch out along the floor, but he was unable to stand completely upright.
If he was honest, a skag den really was not the most comfortable place to sleep. Krieg was used to sleeping on the stony ground of Pandora, or perched in some crevasse, but skag dens.... Ugh. They were among the worst places he’d had the misfortune of laying in, always littered with fragmented bones and chunks of the plating skags grow over their skin, not to mention they dug their dens out with their claws and bile, making the floors uneven and sticky. And the smell … it was something else. But it was better than leaving himself exposed out in the open.
Sunlight shone through the den’s entrance, casting a small patch of light onto his sternum. He didn’t exactly sleep very well at the best of times, and the night in the den, he’d tossed and turned for hours, his brain refusing to shut down as it threw wave after wave of nightmarish dreams at him. He was still so tired. The big guy blearily cracked his eyes open and rubbed from gunk from them, along with some of the flaking blood splattering him, before rolling onto his side to try and go back to sleep.
Krieg tried to recall the dream he’d awoken from; flashes of a life before he’d come to Pandora, muddled by the passage of time and the purple haze of pain that blanketed his memory. There was something he was supposed to be doing, someone he was supposed to be looking for, someone important to him, a name he heard being cried. What was it… what was it… what was it… G… Giorno? No… George? No. Ga… Gabby? No. Gage? No. Gr… Grayson…? No, that wasn’t right. Gray… Gray… Gray... It was definitely a G………… Grace. It was Grace. The voice of his past was calling out for someone named Grace, but who was Grace? Who had he heard crying out for Grace? Was it him? Or someone else?
He couldn’t tell how much of the memories he recalled were real and how much had been distorted by the poison in his blood, but that felt real. Real enough, at least. Oh god, how he hoped he had finally grasped onto something real. He hoped it was something he could keep holding onto, something he could keep that the other guy would never be able to take like he’d taken everything else. His body, his voice, his memories, his own mind , all of it had been ripped away from him.
Krieg was mildly surprised, but relieved that the other guy hadn’t tried to take that small victory away from him just yet. He supposed it was because of the sorry state they were in; exhausted to the point of collapse, dehydrated from the desert heat, the constant hunger from never having enough to eat, the seemingly endless stare of the sun beating down on him day in and day out.
He needed to get away, to get out of the canyon and leave. He couldn’t go back the way he came, had to keep going north and escape to where they would never find him, where no one would ever think to look for someone like him. There was nothing for him further south, only the source of his relentless phantom pains and night terrors, the source of the slag that made into a monster.
The floor of the skag den was relatively cool compared to the rest of the canyon, all hot stone and dry dirt, and so he laid there for some time, listening to the big guy mutter about the insufferable heat and their inability to sleep more. Any hope of going back to sleep seemed to have left them in the dust, so Krieg instead turned his thoughts to food.
Hey, big guy, I don’t think we’ll get any more rest here. Let’s go find some skags to kill and get some food in us.
The other guy let out a long groan as he pushed himself into a seated position, dragging a hand down his face. Flecks of dried blood stuck to the grimy bandages as he pulled his hand away. Krieg pulled the mask back on, then crawled out of the den. Now that he was outside again, he was able to stand up straight, taking a moment to stretch. The muscles in his back felt tight and sore, his atrocious sleeping habits no doubt playing a major hand in it. They burned as he stretched his arms up and around and rolled his shoulders. He felt like making a smart quip about the dangers of getting old, but he had no idea how old he actually was.
And so he set off down the canyon, gripping his axe as he searched for some prey.
It wasn’t long before Krieg started to see telltale signs of the beasts. As he crested a particularly large boulder blocking the path, he could see the distinctive gouges left in the ground from their claws. Dropping to the earth, he kneeled down to closer inspect the tracks; it must’ve been an entire pack, and judging from the corrosive bile soaking into the dirt, there were a few spitters among them.
Careful not to make any noise, he slowly crept along the canyon floor, following the trail through the winding tunnels and alleys. After another hour or so, he finally spotted the first of the skags: a lone, horned beast of a spitter with a grungy mane of fur and armor plating. It was about 10 meters away from the tunnel he was in, its feet planted firmly in a patch of light as it stood guard for the rest of the pack. A line of bile dripped from its ugly jaws onto the stone.
For a few seconds, Krieg didn’t move, just stared at the skag as he crouched behind a rock. He was worried that the big guy would just rush in the second he found it and go for the kill, but he felt some confliction from him. The exhaustion was wearing on them, and the soreness in his back and shoulders still persisted. The big guy leaned against the rock, back pressed against the stone as Krieg waited for him to make a decision.
Having finally, apparently, decided what to do, he looked around at the area surrounding him and the skag, then backtracked a bit, searching for a spot he’d seen earlier. There it was, a ledge, leading to the top of the tunnel he’d spotted the skag from.
The climb up was tricky; he didn’t really have a holster for his axe, and the ledge looked to be around four or five meters in height. Krieg considered tossing his axe up to the top, but that would certainly alert the spitter, and in turn all the other skags nearby, or he could take his chances of killing the skag head on, which also ran the risk of alerting it and the others, along with ending in him getting mauled by a pack of starving animals.
Instead, he settled for shoving the handle of the buzz-axe through the leather harness around his shoulders. The wrapped wood handle smacked awkwardly between his shoulder blades, and the cold metal of the saw-blade pressed into the back of his head as he desperately held onto the brownish-orange stone. It took several grueling minutes of scrabbling, but eventually he hauled himself over the top of the ledge with a grunt.
Krieg snuck along back towards the skag, one hand pressed to the stone while the other retrieved the axe. He could see it now, just over the edge, about eight meters ahead of him. There was no wind in the canyon, and for once, Krieg was glad for it. He slowly moved into position, lifting his arm above his head as he waited for the prime opportunity to throw. The skag turn in his direction, opening its jaws wide as it proceeded to vomit onto the dirt. He lined up the shot and let the axe fly. It flew end over end several times before the blade sunk into the skag with a loud thunk, spinning as it dug through the skin and plating and into its brain. The skag stood for several seconds as blood spilled from its mouth before collapsing to the ground, dead.
Good job, big guy .
He climbed back down to where the dead skag lay, planting a boot onto its head to pull the axe out. Carving the skag meat into several large pieces, he carefully inspected it for slag poisoning. It was a routine he’d developed during his time in the Pandoran wilderness, making sure his prey wasn’t sick with the nasty, purple tendrils that had put him into mess he was in.
He had accidentally eaten a small amount of slag infecting a chunk of varkid meat not long after he’d escaped his captors. Once his stomach acid broke down the meat and began ingesting it, Krieg had gone into a seizure-like fit that lasted for what felt like an eternity. He’d spent nearly an entire Pandoran day on the floor of a cave after the seizing subsided, curled into the fetal position, dry heaving and convulsing involuntarily, desperately trying to keep himself from vomiting blood after he emptied the contents of his stomach. The pain had been blinding, like lava being shot through all of his nerves at once. After that… well, it was safe to say that he was quite thorough when checking his prey.
Right as he was about to declare the meat safe, Krieg spotted a thin vein, just barely visible, colored that hideous purple. When he pointed it out to the other guy, he simply threw the meat back towards the skag’s corpse, snarling, “I love to wait for my meals…” the frustration obvious in his voice. Nevertheless, he felt a slight tinge of excitement at the prospect of continuing the hunt.
It was tedious work, and by the time Krieg found clean meat, his stomach was twisting itself into knots. He’d stalked three more skags through the canyon, but each of them had had the same purple discoloration in them. The fifth one had been the winner, a hulking bastard as far as skags went that stood almost as tall as Krieg. It had been too big for him to kill with one throw, so once Krieg threw his axe into its filthy mouth, he sprinted forward and climbed onto its back while it choked on spinning metal. As he clung to its disgusting back, he broke one of its twisted horns off and stabbed it through an eye and into its brain, jumping off as it fell to the ground.
As happy as he was that he’d finally found something edible, Krieg knew he wouldn’t last long if he kept it up; his diet was already severely lacking in necessary nutrients, not to mention that potable water was a rarity, and he was really walking the line by shoveling raw meat down his throat every chance he got. Sure, he hadn’t exactly been healthy when he broke free, but he wasn’t that bad.
We’re going to get sick if we keep eating raw meat. We should at least try to cook it first.
The big guy groaned and grunted, staring at the meat. He knew that Krieg was right, but he really didn’t want to do anything he said. “RRGH! The bloody shower of victory is best taken hot!” He howled, clearly preferring the eat the skag fresh.
You don’t have to cook it all the way through, you can still have it bloody and rare.
Although it took several moments of him-hawing, the big guy eventually relented, surprising Krieg once again. They must have been more exhausted than he thought if his alter ego was being so lenient; he was actually listening to him. Maybe he had a chance, after all.
He made a fire with the other skag corpses and whatever dry plant life he could scavenge, spearing the meat onto a long, thin, sharp bone bleached white by the sun, and held it over the fire. When it was cooked enough, he sprinkled crushed bits of bladegrass leaves over the top.
As he pulled the meat off the fire, Krieg whipped his head around, checking every wall and corner he could for enemies or, god forbid, someone who would see his face.
It’s ok, there’s no one around. We’re at the bottom of some canyon in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would ever be stupid enough to come down here. Nobody except for us, at least.
He pulled the mask to the side. The meat was pretty rare, but still good; the bladegrass added a bit of extra flavor that tasted almost like a cross between basil and nutmeg. As he sunk his teeth into the bloody, juicy skag steak, he was reminded of a time when cooking was the norm. He loved cooking for her, loved to hear her delighted little cries as he set a heaping plate in front of her. She always dug in with gusto, getting food all over her adorable cheeks. “When are you coming home?” she’d asked him, too many times to count.
Soon, Schatzi , I promise.
I love you.
The other guy growled menacingly, smacking his head with a palm and forcing it down, back underneath the ocean of slag.
What was he thinking about again?
Damn it! How many times was this asshole piloting his body going to keep doing this? Why didn’t he want him to remember? What was he keeping down? Was it really so bad? Every time Krieg felt like he’d finally connected some of the pieces, they turned to ash in his hands. His wretched, scarred, mutated hands, stained with the history of a life buried underneath the blood and violence and slag, buried so deep he could never wash it off.
Certainly they weren’t always like that.
…Right?
A heavy wave of nostalgia and longing for old comforts he couldn’t recall pulled him under, while the other guy simply continued the feast. Once the cooked piece was gone, he tossed the bone into the fire and cut a few more steaks from the skag, immediately tearing into them despite Krieg’s protests. He felt a sick glee from the other guy as warm blood dripped down his chin and hands.
After he’d eaten his fill, Krieg set back out to continue his search, wandering down the towering corridors for another hour or so before he stumbled upon a small stream. It wasn’t much, just a trickle of muddy water in a dried up bed, cutting horizontally across his path forward to create yet more corridors. The way ahead didn’t seem promising, so he decided to follow the water upstream, hoping to find the source, or at least a way out.
The stream led him steadily upwards, and eventually it brought him to a small pool of water, tucked away in an oddly room-like section of the canyon. With the walls of the canyon shortening, the sun shone directly over the pool. It was fed by a waterfall tumbling over a small ledge, created by fallen stones and years of built-up dirt blocking the stream’s path. The pool was surprisingly clear, he could see down to the bottom several feet below, and as Krieg crouched to dip his fingers in, he found that it was pleasantly cool as well. It was strange, the pool seemed like it had been dug out by someone, dropping down to the bottom on his side and sloping down on the other, but there was no sign of civilization in the canyon or the use of technology. Leaning forward, he pushed the mask up a bit and cupped his hands to take a drink or two or nine.
We should wash some of the blood off before we keep going. Don’t want the scent to attract unwanted attention.
The other guy grumbled as he stared at the surface, “Let the foolish little pus pinatas chase me, I’ll feed them their own liver and bask in their symphonic agony.”
Remember what happened the last time we let that play out?
Krieg mentally shuddered as he thought back, remembering how he’d drenched himself from head to toe in thresher blood, draping a severed tentacle around his shoulders like a fleshy scarf. It only took a few hours in the sun for it to attract a swarm of rakks. They’d descended like locusts, and while he’d managed to kill them, a particularly nasty one dug its entire beak into his shoulder, trying to rip his arm off. If it weren’t for his creepy weird healing, he probably would’ve died from either blood loss or infection. It helped that he’d caught on fire not long after, effectively cauterizing the wound.
The other guy apparently remembered as well. He might’ve been an unapologetic masochist, but he didn’t exactly like the idea of it happening again. He grunted and whined, but he begrudgingly complied with his suggestion.
Thank you.
Standing, he looked around for enemies, then began removing his gear.
He started with the mask, wincing in pain as direct sunlight hit his previously covered eye, then the leather harness, followed by the metal gauntlet around his forearm. The bandages came next, slowly unwrapping his arms, trying to ignore the purple scarring veining across his skin. He tried to avoid thinking too much about the events surrounding their acquisition.
Having exposed his arms, he kneeled down and removed the steel boots. They were always a major pain to take off, considering they weren’t actually made to be worn like normal shoes. The bullymong fur he lined the sides with was starting to degrade and smell, indicating he’d need to find something else to use as makeshift socks.
The boots were set aside, and he removed the contents of his pants, along with the belt. He pulled the comb from his back pocket and set it next to the mask. Why did he still have it? He didn't exactly need it.
As he pondered the question, another voice rose to speak in his ear.
Can you braid my hair?
Another smack to the head, another piece of the puzzle gone like dust in the wind.
Krieg unbuttoned and removed the orange pants, marveling at how well they’d held up. He’d been wearing them for a while, ever since the pair he’d escaped in got ripped to shreds. Now that was an eventful couple of days.
It’s a wonder they even fit. Now, only one thing left.
He raised a hand to tug at the necklace around his throat, but stopped before he could touch it. Why the hesitation? It was just a necklace, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to remove it. The other guy normally didn’t hesitate, yet his hand twitched and shook when he tried to touch the metal pendant.
There had to be a reason why. He knew there was a reason, but the answer fluttered just outside of his grasp, slipping through his fingers like smoke, tantalizing him with half-remembered whispers of a forgotten promise to the dead.
Was it dead?
Or just lost?
Krieg let the necklace be.
Sitting on the edge of the pool, he dangled his legs in the water and washed his gear. His pants had acquired several new stains from the skags he’d all but rolled in, not to mention he’d been sweating like a goddamn horse in the desert heat; the bottom of the canyon might’ve been cooler than up top, but he still thought he’d catch fire at any moment. And that was winter weather. There were several more… questionable stains from the previous owner of the pants, but he really didn’t want to think about that.
The bandages were also in surprisingly good shape, all things considered. How in the hell had they managed to last longer than his pants? How had they never burned? They should’ve been ash before he was out of Hyperion's sight. Maybe they’d been treated to be fire-resistant? There wasn’t a single burn mark on them, just innumerable blood and slag stains. He probably didn’t even need them anymore, since his arm had long since healed up, but the big guy seemed attached to them.
“A gift from our mother for being such a fantastic blood boy.” He muttered, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.
The boots, gauntlet, and harness were easy to clean, as he only needed to rinse the dried blood from the metal and leather. He didn’t dare get the inside of the boots wet, not wanting to get the fur inside soaked and have to deal with damp, itchy feet for the hours it took them to dry.
The mask was a bit more tricky to clean; the respirator was composed of many small parts that were very easy to lose, but he had to completely take it apart to get it clean. He needed to be careful not to get the leather too wet, lest it swell up again.
Once the mask was back to its original white and orange and put back together, he set it aside and reached for his axe. Heavy and curved, it was unlike the buzz-axes that he’d seen other sun-scrambled bastards wielding. Where did he even get it? He couldn’t remember, despite the memory having been relatively recent. Or was it? He pulled the head apart and dislodged multiple dried bits of flesh, flicking them over his shoulders onto the rocks behind him.
Having finally cleaned at least most of his gear, Krieg set everything side by side to dry in the sun, then lowered himself into the pool. It just barely reached his waist at its deepest. Compared to the dry heat he’d been under for days, the water felt incredible on his skin, soothing the nasty sunburn and tamping down and smothering the fire that threatened to engulf him.
Staring at the light reflecting off the water, he cleaned away the accumulated layers of dirt, blood, and sweat, wandering hands discovering scars he wasn’t even aware he had.
Just how recent are some of these?
Did he get them from the preserve, or were they already there from a time before? Were they remnants of lost life? Or did he just never notice when he acquired new scars? Krieg didn't know, and he wasn't sure which was more terrifying.
Scrubbing the grime away from his arms, he gently scratched at the marks left in his skin from the bandages. It felt good to have them off for once, to not have the thick fabric grazing against the sensitive scarring underneath. At least he didn’t have any arm hair left for the bandages to pull on. Or any other hair, for that matter.
It seemed a little odd to him, that even now, so long after escaping the preserve, his hair hadn’t grown back. How did he even lose it in the first place? Was it the slag? That seemed likely. He vaguely recalled feeling a bit of fuzz up top a few weeks prior, but if it was there before, it wasn’t anymore. For a moment, he thought he might miss having a bit of scruff, but was that was, of course, assuming he’d had any to begin with. Was it just wishful thinking? More dreams left behind by a dead man? Maybe his constant spontaneous igniting was burning it all off. The flames always encompassed his entire body, whether it was visible or not, the fire rising from under his skin like pent up energy leaking from his pores. He thought it could be worth trying to keep the fire down just to see, but that would only work if the other guy wanted to as well.
“Burn me to a crisp, I love the flickering dance of the orange Ladies on my Meat.”
Guess not.
Slowly, he made his way from his arms to his chest, and up to his neck, stopping when he touched the necklace again. Krieg gently caressed the leather strips, wiping away the crusted blood, part of him half lost in the nostalgia of what he couldn't remember. What the big guy wouldn't let him remember.
He pinched the pendant between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing blood out of the grooves in the metal. There was something almost tender about the way he held the necklace. Krieg wondered what it was that the other guy knew about it. It had to be something important to him, but of course he wouldn't share what it was.
A splash of water shook him from his reverie, kneeling down to bring the water level up as he washed his head and face. Was it as scarred as the rest of him? He felt scar tissue, but couldn't tell how bad it was. Maybe if he saw his face, he would be able to figure out why his right eye hurt every time he uncovered the damn thing.
He stood and looked down at the surface of the water, but it was so clear that he couldn't see his reflection, and even if it he could, there was too much disturbance from the stream trickling in.
Heh. So much a stranger in my own body that I can’t remember what my own face looks like.
Would he be able to recognize himself even if he could remember?
So clear… so clean… the pool sparkled as sunlight glinted off it, reflecting spears of light through his right eye and into his mind, piercing the cloudy veil that blinded and separated Krieg from himself. Was it really so bad that he couldn’t remember? Did it matter? The light stung, but it paled in comparison to the shocks of electricity that ran through his arms, his nerves set alight by slag and scalpels.
Krieg cupped some of the crystalline water in his hands, raising them up to slowly pour it down over his uplifted face, a baptism to cleanse the sin from his heretical body. Try as he might, God knew he could never really wash the blood from his soul, could never wash away the poison that coated his veins. He was a monster, then and forever. And a monster like him had no right to be in a fountain of such purity, stagnating it with his filth.
He stood there for several minutes, arms hanging by his sides, face lifted to the sky, eyes shut as the heat of the sun basked over him. It had been a long time since he’d felt its warmth on his cheeks. It was… nice.
At some point, Krieg finally dragged himself out, climbing onto a large, flat boulder next to the pool. The stone was hot from baking all day, and when he laid across it, the aching muscles in his back and shoulders began to relax as heat seeped into them. It was a far cry from a real bed, but it was leagues better than the skag den, to be sure.
Oh, Christ, was he tired. He was hoping the dip might wake him up more, but it hadn’t.
We could always take a nap right here while our stuff dries. Not like there’s anything for us to do in the meantime.
Krieg felt hesitation from the other guy, some worry that they’d get attacked in their sleep.
“Nnnngh, a bloody claw in the dark.”
If anything or anyone sneaks up on us, I think the sight of a giant, mutated, pissed off, naked, psychotic man would be enough to scare anyone. It’ll be alright. We can afford to get some sleep.
That seemed to be good enough for him. Krieg closed his eyes, the daylight fading as he sunk into a deep sleep.