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She hadn’t been herself since he died. All of that bright bubbly energy simmering into something that held the same sheen-- but slid like venom through her voice and dripped from her fangs. A girl who had so rarely taken a conversation seriously even in the utmost gravity was suddenly refusing to toy with even her favorite playmates. Something murderous in her eyes.
But no matter how much change he watched, she suspected nothing could have prepared Jack for what he heard on that call. For all he knew about their life before, they hadn’t needed to speak about it much. So she couldn’t blame how quickly he made eye contact with her when her voice softened from a mocking condescension to… something else. “I know you’re listening dad. Are you proud of your little girl?” He lingered. No matter how her hands shook, how they curled into fists that threatened to tear the life from between his teeth, how her eyes avoided him and he didn’t dare touch her. He still fucking lingered like he cared.
Like he gave a shit that her brother was gone. No one did. Her jaw tightened, his eyes subtly looking at her, “Oh dad? By the way? Troy’s dead. Your friend there killed him.” The emotion buried deep in her chest despite how the tension in her body wound tight around the words. Typhon hadn’t even dignified it with a response. No shock. No… nothing. Tyreen’s lip trembled and slowly, she set the echo device down as it happily played out the sounds of battle, and the promise to take the filthy vault thieves to their mother’s grave, so she didn’t crush the metal to a thousand explosive pieces.
Despite the noise playing from the overglorified tin can-- the room felt so fucking silent Neither monarch so much as moved until the vault thief brought him up again. Until, “Troy, and Tyreen. My kids. They became monsters. And you’re a Vault Hunter. You kill monsters, simple as that.” So after everything. After all of that… after years of clutching them by the throat in the name of their own protection -- his answer was that Troy deserved it.
The siren barely realized it might be the very first time the man had seen tears in her eyes as silver met green and blue with a wet, disbelieving laugh. Through the fury shaking her down to her bones, she tilted her head toward the echo as it continued to play out his little monologue about how he’d always done everything he could for them. How he needed to kill her too -- for Leda. Not even for her own fucking good. What a bastard. “Think that’s the first time he ever called me a monster out loud before. Glad he’s at least being honest now.” A wry smile pulled out of numb lips.
Jack’s fingers closed the communication line with a snap and before he’d even moved an inch closer, Tyreen’s voice dropped, “Don’t touch me. And don’t-- act like you care. It’s fine. He’s. It’s fine.”
“Don’t go after them.” He said so firmly and with such certainly, for a moment, the God-Queen wasn’t certain she hadn’t stated her intention to enter and stop the machine from closing the opening vault herself. As if Jack knew she needed some reminder that there was still someone in this universe who knew her well enough to know what she was thinking. “I’ll go take care of your little Vault Hunter issue, and I’ll meet you at the vault.”
The unspoken hung suspended in the air by fraying thread. His eyes darting between hers.
Between them the weight that regardless of if she thought he cared, he understood. To have your family-- the family you spent your life protecting-- ripped from your fingertips for the sake of a Vault by heartless hero-complex serial killers with no remorse. That he saw her pain and how little judgement there was in that. That he knew she didn’t want to talk about it, or for the sacrifices he’d made to charge the key to be in vain.
That the only way to make it worth it was to finish this.
Between them sat the question of what would happen to the father who had all but disowned his children and any responsibility for them the moment they ran away. Regardless of who set foot on that nowhere planet, the question of his survival was tenuous at best. And it was quite possibly the first time in the siren’s relatively short life that she felt someone trying to protect her without trying to control her.
She drew a long, shallow breath, and the blurring of her vision cleared just a bit. For all of his instability, all of his mania, all that those claws dragged out of the pits of the monster she had always been and empowered it -- in that moment, for the flicker of a second… Just his mere presence was grounding as much as it was infuriating and raw and too fucking vulnerable.
Tyreen shook her head tightly, “There are four damn sirens showing up in that machine. And they--” They’re the ones who did this. They were the ones who had targeted him from the very god damn beginning. Too terrified to come after the one with the real power, but boy could they pick at a dying man.
“Look at me. Tyreen. You walk in there like this. All exposed and bleeding, this will all be for nothing. You’ll get your revenge. Don’t let them distract you.” Far too much having been there in his face, in his voice for the venom frothing at her mouth to spill from her tongue. “I will meet you at the Vault. They’ll pay.”
The siren waited until he’d left the room for the drop pod before flicking the comms back open again. Her entire throat tightened each and every time she heard his grating fucking voice.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Starlight. The Destroyer is called that for a reason. It literally eats stars!”
“Not if I eat it first.” Her knuckles paled around the device, eyes trailing to the door where he’d left.
They’ll pay.