weathertop | darling it's better down where it's wetter

He's listening for the mattress, if you'd stop complaining maybe you could hear it. It sounds like Augustuuuuuuus...I'm so soft and springy, let me lull you gently to sleeeeep....

Sinclair glances over the door signs, but the eye shop is marked well enough with a rather large poster that reads EYEGLASSES above a picture of just that. The door is already ajar so Sinclair pushes it open and steps inside.

She's more beautiful than he imagined, just give him a second to wipe this tear from his eye.

In no time at all, Sinclair is stretching out on it contentedly, yawning. He's taken enough abuse for one day, there was really no need to pass up a luxury like this.

Maybe you should lay off the drugs, pal, that mattress isn't talking. The court questions your ability to responsibly raise this three-year-old.

The three year old grumbles, loots a tin of ham from the cash register, and carries it over to a security camera he hacked earlier. There he squats down and eats the whole thing sulkily.

He certainly has no intention of going to sleep.

The both of them are behind cover, invisible from the street, and the security camera is watching, but this sort of thing never turns out well. The only place he's slept without splicer interruption in the last few days was Sinclair's place.

Just call him Jack 'Dedicated Watchman' Ryan, yes sir.

Uh huh.

Well whatever happens with Jack, Sinclair is out like a light in a matter of minutes. It's darker in this office than it is in his apartment, and although there's a part of him that can't rest when there's any potential of things going wrong, his sleep is deep enough. And much needed. If anyone listens, they might even detect a quiet snoring.

Jack definitely stays awake and alert. Definitely.

He definitely doesn't start nodding as soon as his brain catches up to his body, and realises it's finally stopped running around like a march hare. Funny thing about pushing yourself to stay up and stay up and stay up: you can run away from the need to sleep, but if you pause for even a moment, it'll crash right into you all at once.

He's just gonna rest his eyes for a moment, he'll keep on listening for splicers, totally.

If and when Sinclair returns to the world of the waking, he'll find Jack passed the fuck out on the floor. He's got his head on the mattress somewhere beyond Sinclair's feet. And he's drooling all over it attractively.

Three or four hours pass and Sinclair wakes out of habit, sitting up and trying to remind himself of where he is. In an office in the Medical Pavilion, being valiantly guarded by...

the Dedicated Watchman asleep at his feet. Sinclair laughs to himself. He told you so.

Maybe it's the dark, or maybe it's just the fact that he's sleeping, but Jack looks younger here. He's already young, obviously, but his time in Rapture's put a few years on him. Unconscious, the stress and exhaustion melt off of him and Sinclair can almost imagine him as a normal kid, somewhere topside with a job and a family and a hobby that doesn't involve copious amounts of blood.

Rapture robbed a lot of people of a lot of things, but somehow it's worse to think of all the time that's been stolen. From anyone. That he might have stayed in Georgia, run an actual business. Or maybe he would have traveled, seen places he'd dreamed of seeing since he was a kid himself.

There's still a chance for that, though. They're still going to get out of here, and once they do he'll be free to do whatever he pleases.

Keeping that in mind, he exhales and relaxes back against the wall, watching and listening in case he needs to wake Jack up.

Jack shifts, disturbed a little by Sinclair's movement, but doesn't wake up. He needed this, yo. He caught up a little at Sinclair's place, but sleeping through the night might not be something he's cut out for any more.

The shifting around kicks him into another dream. He runs through an endless field of wheat, on warm earth, beneath a glass and metal canopy that holds back the weight of the deep blue sky. The roof is still; the golden field moves beneath him, loops. There are wires in his arms, but they don't hurt.

Outside the dream, in the dark room in Rapture, his legs twitch as he runs.

The movement on Jack's end startles Sinclair at first, but it's nothing really. Although he does recall the last time Jack slept...that didn't turn out too well. With the way Jack stirs, it occurs to Sinclair that maybe he's having another nightmare. He weighs the pros and cons of waking him up. Maybe it would be a kind thing to do, bring him back from wherever he is. But then again, he needs the sleep. He's got to.

Plus, if it's a nightmare and Sinclair wakes him up, what if he starts crying again? He doesn't really know what to do with tears, and he doesn't really want the practice.

He opts to leave him alone. If it is a nightmare, he'll be alright. And if it's not, bonus points for not disturbing him.

It's maybe an hour before Jack finally wakes up, and he shifts around a lot in the meantime, now that he's started moving. Sometimes he mumbles too, unintelligible, at various levels of comfort and distress. Once he says "won't" out loud, quite clearly, and then fails to follow it up with anything at all except a snore.

He finally wakes himself up by kicking the wall.

"Ah!"

JESUS HE'S UNDER ATTAoh it's just. a wall. okay. He'll uh. Put down the wrench again, then.

He darts a look around the room for splicers and then looks up, which from his prone position brings an upside-down Sinclair more or less into view.

G'morning dad.

After the initial kicking around, Sinclair ignores the majority of the noises that come from Jack. Although a couple times he reconsiders his decision not to wake it up. It seems pretty obvious now that he's having a nightmare, or at least Sinclair is 80% sure of it.

But enough time passes that eventually Jack startles himself awake. Sinclair looks down at him.

"Some dream you were having," he says. Probably the closest he's going to come to showing concern, definitely the closest he's going to come to inviting Jack to talk about it. Especially after last time.

And so it is that Jack passes from the terror of dreaming, to the terror of oh god no is he going to have to talk about it again is that what's going on oh god no that was awful he won't do it you'll never take him alive

"I guess."

His voice croaks. His mouth feels like it's full of cotton, his eyeballs are itching and he has a headache.

Also he didn't mean to even go to sleep, so that's a bit embarrassing. Does this mean they were dozing unprotected all night? Without anybody watching for splicers? Christ. He tries not to think about it.

...Actually, speaking of 'all night':

"How long was I sleeping?"

He starts to pick himself up off the floor, ignoring tired muscles that would really like to keep lying down, and sore ones that are yelling at him for not finding softer floor tiles.

There was a security camera, it's okay Jack. At least someone was paying attention.

"Long as I was," Sinclair answers, "and then maybe a couple hours more. If I had to guess at a time, I'd say it may be somewhere in the range of 4 am."

Jack may be ready to stand, but Sinclair is still plenty reluctant to leave the agreeable cushioning of the mattress. He stretches his back and arms, he yawns. Hope you weren't too uncomfortable on the tiles there kiddo, because Sinclair slept like a baby up here.

4am means shit all to Jack, who is operative at all times of the night and day, so he just kind of mumbles and stretches. His various muscle groups already knew he was a jerk and this, hot on the heels of a Bouncer fight, has not improved their opinion of him.

Also the whole shaky tired splicer hangover thing. There's probably a lesson there, maybe an after-school special. Buuuut Jack has been lucky enough not to mutate into a zombie so far so he mostly ignores it.

Stretch, pout, stretch, is there any fresh water around here? The only place he's ever seen it was Arcadia for some reason, but he starts to poke around for it anyway, moving less stiffly as the minutes go on.

Jack's nosing around reminds Sinclair that he hasn't eaten since before they took off in the bathysphere, and his stomach gives a nice hearty grumble that. It makes the decision for him that he should stand up now.

"Didn't you say there was food in here?"

Well, there was a cache left over from whatever poor soul tried to live here before them, hidden in pockets of one or two cans all around the place. Jack knows this because he ate most of them when he first got here. But, uh, there might be a few left?

He noses around a bit further, checking in trashcans and behind bits of rubble that he doesn't think he's searched before. The whole optician's shop is in a bad way, so there are a lot of hiding places.

And then, in the bathroom, he finds two sealed tins inside a stack of broken spectacles. Jackpot!

One of them is beans. The other one is peaches.

Holy shit. Peaches.

Holy shit.

Moral choice: give Sinclair a well-rounded breakfast, or eat some actual genuine real delicious peaches?

A few minutes later Jack emerges from the bathroom, and tosses a tin to Sinclair, looking pleased with himself.

"I found some beans!"

Sinclair catches the tin and looks it over. Beans for breakfast. Okay. It's better than potato chips and creme cakes.

He offers Jack a thanks and peels the tin open. Bottoms up! It's not enough to satiate him but at least now he feels like he's eaten.

"You ready to try that stairway again?" he asks, thumbing away a speck of sauce at the corner of his lips.

Well he still kind of wants to go back to sleep, but he knows that'll change once they get moving. It's already started to fall away now he's eaten and run about a bit.

"Yep."

He still really really wouldn't mind some water, but the peach juice'll carry him until he can loot some coffee. Man, Fontaine didn't even need Code Yellow, he could've just strewn cakes and coffee flasks in Jack's path and given him a cardiac event much faster.

Aight, give him a moment to check his weapons and then they can go for a morning stroll.

Sinclair takes the opportunity to check his own, and...he's definitely running low on ammo. Two shots left, not exactly reassuring. He doesn't expect he'll need them as much as Jack will, but it's at least nice to know that he has the option of attempting to defend himself if he needs to.

"Got any pistol bullets on you, son?"

Uuhhh...

He feels around in his pockets. Maybe four or five armour piercing that the Bouncer generously let him keep. A handful of antipersonnel rounds. Tonnes of regular rounds, because he keeps on finding them and then never using the damn things.

Jack thinks for a moment, then tosses Sinclair a couple cylinder-fuls of the regular kind, still in the little sackcloth pouch he found them in. Sinclair probably won't have to do a lot of shooting, he figures. And Jack isn't rolling in ammo or the money for it either. But, you know, just in case.

"Thanks," he says, stuffing in four bullets and pocketing the rest.

And they're ready to go! He looks at Jack expectantly, thinking of what they're about to do. Suddenly he's not feeling quite as eager to leave. It's a good thing he's not afraid of heights, but...

"...You're sure you've got the whole telekinesis thing under control?"

This time, the response is not an amazing levitating Sinclair.

"Yes."

Or, well, he's as sure as he ever is about things, and he usually manages them anyway.

Well.

If he's wrong, at least a broken neck is a quick death. On the other hand, if they stay down here they'll die anyway. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, etc. etc.

"Well let's get on with it then," he sighs, gesturing at the doorway.

Jack sticks his head round the door to check the coast is clear, sucks some leftover peach juice off his teeth, gags a bit because he hasn't brushed his teeth since... well any harvests or even the petrol gargling incident wow that was a bad idea why did he even do that, and then heads out.

It's a quick enough jog to the broken staircase, but he hangs back a bit, hugging walls and keeping an eye out and letting Sinclair keep up. It really is like running through the Proving Grounds all over again. Except less smelly. Marginally.

Sinclair keeps up reasonably well, his leg healing a bit more easily with a secure bandage and some rest. He watches Jack closely though, in case he spots something up ahead that would require them to fall back and wait. But they make it to the staircase without incident and, well. Now's the moment of truth.

Stepping out into the middle of the room, Sinclair surveys the stairway once again. There's a banister at the top of it, if Jack can get him over that then they'll be home free. He shakes his limbs out a bit, trying to prepare himself. There's no way he's ever going to be ready for this.

"Ready when you are, chief," he says.

He's woken up properly now, and 'chief' makes him smile a bit.

And then his hand's up and Sinclair is rising into the air, fairly fast, though not at the massive speeds Jack usually throws things. Ease into it? What a concept!

Jack smiles even wider. He's had to get used to plasmids quickly, see them as a rationed tool rather than something fun, but every now and again he still gets to enjoy the novelty of the things. I mean, damn, a few days ago he was an average(ish) joe and now he's lifting a dude with the power of his mind. He's already picturing the havoc he can wreak among the splicers with this thing.

Spoilers: Jack Ryan enjoys being an overpowered sonovabitch.

(He fights the urge to make Sinclair do a pirouette.)

Sinclair stops. In mid-air, level with the banister two floors up but a good few feet away from it. And then he just hovers there, more or less upright.

"Are there splicers?" Jack calls.

You're his eyes now, man.

Sinclair holds his breath as he watches the ground distance itself from him. But it's a little easier to deal with when you're expecting it, and it feels controlled. It feels more like Jack knows what he's doing, and all he has to do is make it over that banister and--

he stops.

Why is he stopped. This is cruel, please just set him down on the other side of the banister, dear god dangling in midair with nothing to hang onto is not the most pleasant sensation.

He collects himself with a breath and looks around. There's a doorway that he can see through for the most part, but he can't speak for the areas out of his field of vision. "Not that I can see," he says, and whatever you just heard was not a nervous voice crack. You were imagining that.

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