So this got extremely TL;DR but I'm posting it anyway. CW for torture, blood, violence...all those Little Borderlands Things (tm).
Never Ever Ever Ever Flash a Sassy Eye at the Good Doctor You're upright, restrained in a claustrophobic tank, your view of everything beyond your tiny prison distorted by the plexiglass that is an insurmountable barrier between yourself and the woman on the other side. She has glasses, and a white coat, and she'd be very pretty, if she didn't also look so haunted. She's your jail keeper and your own personal torturer, and while you're vaguely aware that she's not happy about being either of those things, you would still happily rip out her throat for the horrors she's visited on you.
Your breath comes heavily, erratically, painfully. There are needles in your veins, monitors attached to your chest and your temples and probably elsewhere, but you can't move your head to see them. The visible condition of your body is a mystery to you. You watch the blurry form of the woman as she crosses what you can see of her laboratory. You glare uselessly at her as she peers into your prison, eyebrows knitted and a frown on her face as she makes her assessments. Your entire body thrashes painfully - almost involuntarily - against your restraints, and you scream at her, a wordless, guttural exclamation of your overpowering desire to kill her and put her out of your misery. The sound of your own voice echoes painfully in your ears, and some small, tiny part of you is cognizant enough to think you don't even sound human anymore. She barely seems to notice your reaction to her presence, and in fact only pauses long enough to adjust her glasses on her nose before she reaches for something on the side of your tank that you can't see, and then your vision blurs as your veins are filled with fire, and you're screaming again, and it's not long before your throat, already raw from the times before, feels like it's been scraped over with broken glass.
The agony is as unbearable as it is implacable. It goes on and on, seconds stretching into into minutes into hours, though you have no way to know how long it's actually been. It feels like a lifetime. You used to scream words - you would beg, you would threaten, you would bargain. But the torture continues, each time for longer and worse than before, and the words have long since disappeared in the maelstrom of anger and horror and despair. The sounds you make now in place of language disgust you, but you can't stop vocalizing, even when you begin to gag from the creeping stench of slag in your tiny prison. The noises you make sound less and less human to your own ears as you begin to retch and heave, and the tiny shriveled up part of you that still cares about things like that shrinks a little smaller, and cares a little less.
I can't see her anymore...She was so clear and bright... There's a figure in front of you, but you can't make them out at first. You call out, and when they turn to face you, you can see them - It's Angel - It's Maya - It's Gaige - It's Zer0 - It's Axton - It's Salvador -
Angel meets your eyes, and smiles, that beautiful, joyful, unrestrained smile she saves just for you, and your heart lifts and your throat tightens a little, and when she reaches out a hand towards you, you know you've never been happier than you have been in this moment, and you extend your own hand, reaching back toward her, and--
Maya raises one beautifully manicured eyebrow and smirks at you with that mischievous glint in her eyes, the one that always has you dying to know what she's thinking even though you know she'll never tell, she'll just smirk even harder, and then laugh, and gesture at you to join her. And you'll laugh too, because you love her (you adore her you revere her you would kill for her you would die for her), and you move to approach her, but--
Gaige blinks when she sees you, and then grins that open, warm, charming grin, the one that surprised you the first time you saw it turned on you but that now grounds you and makes it easier to focus, and she moves to join you, her (awesome and supremely badass) robot arm raised for a high five. You raise your own arm and step forward to meet her halfway, and--
Zer0 regards you inscrutably for several moments before he flashes a bright red ":)" emote in front of his blank faceplate. He waves you over with a gesture, and you can tell from the set of his narrow shoulders and the tension in his wiry body that he's seen something he wants to share with you, and you know whatever it is it's going to be awesome, so you step closer to him, and--
Axton sees you and grins, and tosses something for you to catch. You react instinctively, and catch it easily, snatching it from the air and glancing down to see what it is. It's a class mod, a saw blade, something Axton can't use but you can, so he picked it up and brought it with him so that he could give it to you, and you're touched by his thoughtfulness. You look back up at him to say something, maybe even "thank you", but--
Salvador laughs when he sees you and immediately steps toward you, a wide, conspiratorial grin on his face as he shows you a large bottle with no label. You and he are going to get blasted, and paint the town red, and then pass out. In the morning you'll wake up with a pair of matching hangovers and bond in your mutual misery. Even knowing the end result, you can't wait to get started, so you start to approach him to hurry things along, but--
--She's gone--
--He's gone--
And you're alone, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, or anything you can do to change it. Sometimes they leave you. Sometimes they're killed. Sometimes you don't know what happened, but it doesn't matter, because they're not coming back, and it's what you deserve anyway. Monsters don't deserve friends. It serves you right.
Look at me when I scream at your soul! Your breath is rasping in your throat and your heart is pounding in your chest and your blood is screaming through your veins, and with each wet smack and heavy thunk of your axe, you know you're alive. Each and every scream of agony created by your hand, each and every death rattle confirms your strength, your power, your existence. You revel in the sensation of other people's blood and viscera that covers your hands and your arms and your chest and your face. The sound and sight and smell and taste of slaughter is intoxicating, and you laugh as you effortlessly end life after life, each body just another confirmation that you survived.
But you're also horrified by your own euphoria, sickened beyond measure at the massacre unfolding before your eyes, caused by your own hands. You want to stop it but you can't. You have no control over your own actions. Your soul was drowned in slag and all that's left is the rage wrought by despair, and that burning, smoldering anger is what has control, and it wants an outlet, and satisfaction, and proof that all of your suffering wasn't for nothing, and it's going to carve that proof out of living flesh until the blood rises so high you can drown in it for real.
Kiwi & her loser
Never Ever Ever Ever Flash a Sassy Eye at the Good Doctor
You're upright, restrained in a claustrophobic tank, your view of everything beyond your tiny prison distorted by the plexiglass that is an insurmountable barrier between yourself and the woman on the other side. She has glasses, and a white coat, and she'd be very pretty, if she didn't also look so haunted. She's your jail keeper and your own personal torturer, and while you're vaguely aware that she's not happy about being either of those things, you would still happily rip out her throat for the horrors she's visited on you.
Your breath comes heavily, erratically, painfully. There are needles in your veins, monitors attached to your chest and your temples and probably elsewhere, but you can't move your head to see them. The visible condition of your body is a mystery to you. You watch the blurry form of the woman as she crosses what you can see of her laboratory. You glare uselessly at her as she peers into your prison, eyebrows knitted and a frown on her face as she makes her assessments. Your entire body thrashes painfully - almost involuntarily - against your restraints, and you scream at her, a wordless, guttural exclamation of your overpowering desire to kill her and put her out of your misery. The sound of your own voice echoes painfully in your ears, and some small, tiny part of you is cognizant enough to think you don't even sound human anymore. She barely seems to notice your reaction to her presence, and in fact only pauses long enough to adjust her glasses on her nose before she reaches for something on the side of your tank that you can't see, and then your vision blurs as your veins are filled with fire, and you're screaming again, and it's not long before your throat, already raw from the times before, feels like it's been scraped over with broken glass.
The agony is as unbearable as it is implacable. It goes on and on, seconds stretching into into minutes into hours, though you have no way to know how long it's actually been. It feels like a lifetime. You used to scream words - you would beg, you would threaten, you would bargain. But the torture continues, each time for longer and worse than before, and the words have long since disappeared in the maelstrom of anger and horror and despair. The sounds you make now in place of language disgust you, but you can't stop vocalizing, even when you begin to gag from the creeping stench of slag in your tiny prison. The noises you make sound less and less human to your own ears as you begin to retch and heave, and the tiny shriveled up part of you that still cares about things like that shrinks a little smaller, and cares a little less.
I can't see her anymore...She was so clear and bright...
There's a figure in front of you, but you can't make them out at first. You call out, and when they turn to face you, you can see them - It's Angel - It's Maya - It's Gaige - It's Zer0 - It's Axton - It's Salvador -
Angel meets your eyes, and smiles, that beautiful, joyful, unrestrained smile she saves just for you, and your heart lifts and your throat tightens a little, and when she reaches out a hand towards you, you know you've never been happier than you have been in this moment, and you extend your own hand, reaching back toward her, and--
Maya raises one beautifully manicured eyebrow and smirks at you with that mischievous glint in her eyes, the one that always has you dying to know what she's thinking even though you know she'll never tell, she'll just smirk even harder, and then laugh, and gesture at you to join her. And you'll laugh too, because you love her (you adore her you revere her you would kill for her you would die for her), and you move to approach her, but--
Gaige blinks when she sees you, and then grins that open, warm, charming grin, the one that surprised you the first time you saw it turned on you but that now grounds you and makes it easier to focus, and she moves to join you, her (awesome and supremely badass) robot arm raised for a high five. You raise your own arm and step forward to meet her halfway, and--
Zer0 regards you inscrutably for several moments before he flashes a bright red ":)" emote in front of his blank faceplate. He waves you over with a gesture, and you can tell from the set of his narrow shoulders and the tension in his wiry body that he's seen something he wants to share with you, and you know whatever it is it's going to be awesome, so you step closer to him, and--
Axton sees you and grins, and tosses something for you to catch. You react instinctively, and catch it easily, snatching it from the air and glancing down to see what it is. It's a class mod, a saw blade, something Axton can't use but you can, so he picked it up and brought it with him so that he could give it to you, and you're touched by his thoughtfulness. You look back up at him to say something, maybe even "thank you", but--
Salvador laughs when he sees you and immediately steps toward you, a wide, conspiratorial grin on his face as he shows you a large bottle with no label. You and he are going to get blasted, and paint the town red, and then pass out. In the morning you'll wake up with a pair of matching hangovers and bond in your mutual misery. Even knowing the end result, you can't wait to get started, so you start to approach him to hurry things along, but--
--She's gone--
--He's gone--
And you're alone, and there was nothing you could do to stop it, or anything you can do to change it. Sometimes they leave you. Sometimes they're killed. Sometimes you don't know what happened, but it doesn't matter, because they're not coming back, and it's what you deserve anyway. Monsters don't deserve friends. It serves you right.
Look at me when I scream at your soul!
Your breath is rasping in your throat and your heart is pounding in your chest and your blood is screaming through your veins, and with each wet smack and heavy thunk of your axe, you know you're alive. Each and every scream of agony created by your hand, each and every death rattle confirms your strength, your power, your existence. You revel in the sensation of other people's blood and viscera that covers your hands and your arms and your chest and your face. The sound and sight and smell and taste of slaughter is intoxicating, and you laugh as you effortlessly end life after life, each body just another confirmation that you survived.
But you're also horrified by your own euphoria, sickened beyond measure at the massacre unfolding before your eyes, caused by your own hands. You want to stop it but you can't. You have no control over your own actions. Your soul was drowned in slag and all that's left is the rage wrought by despair, and that burning, smoldering anger is what has control, and it wants an outlet, and satisfaction, and proof that all of your suffering wasn't for nothing, and it's going to carve that proof out of living flesh until the blood rises so high you can drown in it for real.