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

And she looks away from Jack again, to Sinclair, quite decisively.

"Pretend I am returning the compliment."

She turns on her heel and sets off at a trot, perhaps a shade faster than she usually would -- she's very aware of the men and their weapons at her back. Particularly Jack's. The man is a weapon, and as she leaves, her stomach feels heavy at the thought of that weapon finding its way to the surface.

Sinclair watches her in silence until she rounds a corner and disappears from view.

"Charming girl," he says, shaking his head.

And then he turns to Jack, looks at him for a second or two and is about to speak when he hears a noise behind them, a quiet whoosh of air and some distant inaudible muttering. They're not alone, they need to get out of there now. There's time to talk later.

He motions for Jack to go first and follows behind him.

You're presuming a direction in which Jack moves.

He watches Tenenbaum go as well, his fists opening and closing, struggling with himself. Almost more than anything else he wants to run and stop her leaving again. The only thing holding him back is the vague promise that they can talk again -- and that means not now -- but he could make her talk -- but that's not the kind of interaction he wants. He thinks. He doesn't know.

Then she's gone, it's too late, he didn't decide. Sinclair says something but he barely pays attention.

Now that she's vanished from his life for a second -- a third -- time, more than anything else he wants to hurt something.

And what do you know? Something teleports in somewhere behind them.

Jack takes a long, deep, angry breath. Then he turns: not the way they're going, but the way they came.

"I'm here, you piece of shit!"

His voice is hoarse.

The answer is immediate, a woman's screech. "Who's there? This is my home! Get your own!"

Jack's already running around the corner, regardless of Sinclair, flinging electricity. Doesn't matter if she's a Houdini. So long as he can stop her for long enough to bury the wrench in her skull.

The second Jack turns around, Sinclair knows what he intends to do. He tries to reach for Jack's sleeve, but he's too slow and Jack disappears around the corner before he can even get a word in. There's the vicious buzz of Electro Bolt, a woman screaming nonsense and Jack screaming obscenities back at her. It echoes down the hall so loud it almost hurts his ears.

Jack will kill her, and he'll feel better for it. It won't fix anything, but it'll be a relief. So Sinclair hangs back, watching from around the corner.

Zap her, whack her. Jack's swing is even stronger and angrier when he remembers Atlas telling him how to do it. The splicer wails in pain and she's already coughing blood when she throws fire.

Jack swears and beats out his burning sleeve, and she has time to teleport, red mist blending with the spatter already around her. Her mistake is not teleporting away. She stays in the fight, and the second she reappears she meets fire -- lightning -- a heavy metal wrench.

She falls, and then a couple blows later, she's dead.

A couple blows after that, she's very very dead.

Uh, Jack?

You can stop now.

Splicer successfully overpowered, he returns to Sinclair, hurrying until he sees that the man has waited. His sleeve and arm are burned to a decent degree. His front is splattered with very close-range blood.

He doesn't say anything; his face is drawn up, scrunched.

He doesn't look as if he feels much better.

Sinclair looks Jack over in silence for a moment before his eyes land on his burnt arm.

"You oughta use a med kit on that, son. Looks painful."

Unfortunately a med kit's not gonna take care of whatever else Jack is carrying around right now, whatever's darkening his expression, making him look much older than he is (...reality of the situation aside).

Jack ducks his head, fishes out the kit Sinclair found earlier and jabs its hypo into his burned up arm. He stiffens, because second degree burns aren't generally the best place to stab giant needles, but doesn't react otherwise as his skin smooths over into smooth pinkish scars.

Doesn't do anything for his sweater, but let's be honest, his sweater had already seen better days.

"Coast's... clear," he says haltingly.

It's a deliberate echo of what he said when he went through the crawlspace. Remember that, Sinclair? That was a happier time, can they savestate back to that and forget all... this?

Things have definitely changed since the last time Jack said that, and the worst part is that Sinclair can't figure out exactly why. He needs to ask questions, but it's bad timing. Even if they were in a safer spot.

"...You okay, kid?" he asks, keeping his tone soft.

Unfortunately, Jack's a little more sensitive to his variety of regional nicknames than usual.

"Stop calling me kid," he snaps, "I'm a grown-up."

Sinclair frowns, an uncomfortable cross between annoyance and pity. "You're still a kid. You've got a lot ahead of you. A whole lot."

An entire life, actually. A brand new one, once they can get out of this hell hole.

"Don't leave me down here."

It's halfway between you'd better not, if you know what's good for you, and please, please don't.

'Kid' and 'child', the word in a Georgia or a Brooklyn accent, they're all tiny similarities but he hates them and he wants to be able to trust Sinclair. And he does, he thinks, but he's shaken. And he needs to be able to trust someone.

And with that, any trace of annoyance leaves Sinclair's expression. It becomes more of a sympathetic smile, and he thinks he's figured out at least part of what's going on here. He reaches up to squeeze Jack's shoulder, giving him a sincere look although he's not really sure what to say.

He decides on, "Let's get back to Olympus, chief. This place gives me the creeps."

After all, they need a chance to regroup if they're going to escape. Which they will. Both of them.

The narration is impressed with Sinclair for getting over the grossness of the shoulder in question enough to make such a fatherly gesture. The shoulder he squeezes is tense like a spring, shaking like a body with too much feeling and no clear direction for it.

Jack lowers his head slowly.

That wasn't a yes or a no. But the look and the tone were about right.

"Okay, mister Sinclair."

He doesn't sound miserable or happy, one way or the other. He just sounds agreeable: the one interpersonal skill he can always fall back on.

Jack may be the grosser of the two, but let's face it. They're both pretty gross. The shoulder squeeze was the least he could do, even if it was the most he could think of.

After following the hallway for a few more seconds, they pass through a set of double doors and are emptied out into another room. A sizable room, it looks familiar to Sinclair but not enough to point them in a specific direction.

"Catch a scent yet?"

...

Jack looks at him weirdly, but obediently sniffs the air.

The narration assumes he will be interrupted before getting a chance to report his findings.

"I mean do you know where we are?" Sinclair interrupts, completely unpredictably.

Sometimes he has to wonder if Jack is intentionally playing dumb, but then he remembers that Jack doesn't really have the sense of humor for that. It must be that he just didn't get out much back in Kansas. Or at all. Ever.

"Oh."

He has the decency to look embarrassed. Really quite embarrassed. Capital work not standing out as the freak y'are, boyo.

You know, this does look familiar. At a certain point either terror or tiredness just started to make everything blend together, but he thinks he recognises this.

"Ye-es. I think we can go through Emergency Access," he says, and sets off at a cautious pace. There'll be splicers jumping out at them, for sure. He remembers Med Pavilion being a pretty shit-scary place the first time he was here.

Sinclair follows close behind Jack, picking up on the extra caution being taken. The whole room is tile, the floor, the walls, and a glass ceiling that makes their footsteps echo. He cringes, stopping for a second to listen. Not to be paranoid, but he hasn't had the best luck with avoiding splicers lately.

When he doesn't hear anything, he takes a few broad strides to catch up with Jack again. The closer they get to the Emergency Access, the more Sinclair is sure he knows where they are. Granted, it looks considerably different than the last time he was here.

Jack keeps going, only pausing now and then to get his bearings, and never for long. He feels better when he's moving. Or at least he's preoccupied staying alive, and doesn't give himself time to start thinking again.

Dripping corridors open out into a kind of square lined with vandalised businesses. A little pile of machine-gun ammo lies in the centre, conspicuous as can be; the ceiling is giggling quietly.

Oh c'mon, that has to be, what? The third or fourth time they've tried this?

Jack pauses and looks over the ammo. It's not a question of whether it's a trap; just of whether the free ammo is worth the effort, whether he'll spend more bullets and EVE than he gains. And you know what, he just can't be bothered. He has Sinclair with him; he just wants to get to the safehouse.

As he passes the ammo pile by, the ceiling yells "Spoilsport!" after him.

Splicers are fucking weird.

Sinclair spots the ammo laying out in the middle of nothing, and yeah. It strikes him as odd, even if he hasn't been traversing the more infested parts of Rapture the way Jack has. And then there's a girl, tittering away like it's the funniest thing she's ever seen and someone else shushing her.

They didn't even really try with this one.

He looks to Jack to see what's going to be done, but Jack seems a little less than interested. As they walk away, the second splicer yells after them and Sinclair quickens his step just in case they're irritated enough to follow them. Jack doesn't appear bothered at all though, which is somewhat reassuring.

"When we get back," Sinclair says, once they're a reasonable distance away, "I can figure out something for us to eat. I'm not much of a cook, but it beats starving."

"That sounds good," says Jack, with feeling. He remembers cooking things back in the world, but as far as doing it for real goes, he may well have done little more than use Incinerate on some coffee that'd gone cold. Anything Sinclair can whip up is sure to beat that.

The rusting corridors of Emergency Access are still open. Jack thinks he still has the key somewhere, but searching for it won't be necessary. He leads them through the twisting tunnels, dispatching splicers with the air of someone who's done for the day and can't wait to clock out and go home.

It's not long before they see a bathy station, sign glowing invitingly.

Sinclair sees the sign for the bathysphere just seconds after Jack does, and he sighs, laughing. "We made it, son! Nice work."

And a few yards later, Sinclair plops himself down on the coated leather seating, relaxing back. He's sure he's got blisters at this point, walking around in half-soaked socks and shoes that certainly were not made for walking any kind of distance. That bath is calling to him.

But not as much as it's calling to Jack. Remember how the mattress spoke gently to Sinclair? Luring him to its soft, springy comfort? This bath is screaming at Jack. Screaming desperately.

"I can get something cooking while you get cleaned up, if you want," he offers. Oh so generously.

Jack has too much dirt in his ears to hear the bath scream.

He sits opposite Sinclair, and fiddles with his hands, suddenly antsy now that he has some waiting to do. Checks and reloads his gun, half just for something to do. Inactivity doesn't come naturally to Jack and it's twice as bad when there are thoughts he's trying to avoid.

"Does the water work in your house?"

Most all the working taps he's found poured water so thick and brown it'd just make him dirtier. He actually ended up washing off the worst of the Big Daddy scent in seawater*. But, you know. It's worth asking.

*maybe with hindsight he should've tried the ones in Fontaine's place before smashing them to pieces.

Sinclair nods, watching Jack fidget. "Most places in Olympus Heights have their own sets of pipes and water heaters to keep anyone from running out the hot water for everyone. If there's a leak, keeps it a little more contained too. Most of Raptures plumbers are either dead or too spliced up to work, but there're still one or two to be found. They keep up Persephone, if I ever spring a leak I imagine I could hire one to fix it for me."

And Jack fiddles the entire time, it actually makes Sinclair a little uncomfortable. But he's plenty familiar with the need to stay occupied.

"See if you can spot Hephaestus from here, sport," he says, gesturing out the window. "If you can, maybe you can catch a glimpse of a place Ryan might've been able to dock a submarine."

He turns towards the window obediently, glad to have a job. Shifts across his seat to get closer, get more of a view.

At the beginning of the voyage, he would've been close enough to the Welcome Center to spot the fuselage, maybe some of the unfortunate souls still trapped in and around it. It's... probably for the best that they waited, all things considered.

"I see glowing," he reports. He's not 100% on their bearings relative to the place, but glowing means power means Hephaestus, right? Low to the sea floor, some kind of frantic activity going on through the windows... The angle's all wrong to make much out, of course.

"Not much else, though."

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