darling it's better down where it's wetter

[did_unkindly]

It's been a day, it's been a day, it's been a whole damn day -- as near as it's possible to tell in this soggy excuse for a city. It's been a day since he killed Fontaine. And Jack is no closer to getting out. He's still down here. He did everything he was supposed to do and he's still down here.

All he's found is locked-down bathyspheres. Broken submarines. Even the goddamn boats are out of service. Where's Tenenbaum? Where's his fucking rescue?

Jack stares about into the greenish gloom, checks the ammo in his pistol, and then kicks and yanks off the rusting panel of a vending machine. His hands are soon full of little wires and pipes. A few seconds later, he straightens up with a grunt, and the machine gives him a tidy discount on a couple glowing hypos of EVE.

With his visit extended indefinitely, he's begun to wonder how many of them are left.

Now arbitrarily divided into chapters!
Part One: A Scene at the Rapture Adoption Agency ~or~ You Found [Pot of Ham]!
Part Two: Come On-A My House, I'm Gonna Give-A You Candy ~or~ Sinclair? More Like Sin Pantalones!
Part Three: Dream Sequences are a Fresh New Concept in Fiction ~or~ It's My Existential Trauma and I'll Cry if I Want To
Part Four: Southern Education Jokes ~or~ Engineer, Engifar, Engiwherever You Are ~or~ The Grave Escape
Part Five: Golfing Accident Memoirs ~or~ Mom... Dad... I'm Immortal ~or~ How To Make Friends And Immolate People
Part Six: Is It A Pie? Is It A Plane?? ~or~ Two's Company, Three's a Row
Part Seven: Escort Missions! In Rapture! Council's In An Uproar ~or~ Bioshock: Cheesecake Edition
Part Eight: Bread, Milk, BATTLE! ~or~ Pleasant Conversations, How They Bore Me
Part Nine: Choices, Schmoices ~or~ Baby's First Moral Philosophy ~or~ Go Away I Want To Take A Damn Bath
Part Ten: A Man Snoozes; A Slave Delays ~or~ The Four Second Rule Applies To Drugs
Part Eleven: A Hearty Meal ~or~ Skeletons In The-- That's Not A Closet
Part Twelve: We All Live in a Secret Submarine ~or~ Plasmids: Not Even Once
Part Thirteen: Paging Dr Tenenbaum To Surgery ~or~ Bribery And Deduction
Part Fourteen: The Prodigal Son Returns

Comments

[modestman]

Ladies first, of course. He lights his cigarette after hers and pockets the rest again, taking a few steps back to where he left his groceries around the corner where he'd been hiding.

"The kid's asleep right now, if you want to you're perfectly welcome to come back to my flat," he says, already starting in that direction. "Do you drink? You strike me as a vodka woman."

[so_shower_maybe]

"He is staying with you?"

She'd suspected as much, if they were trying to escape together, but confirmation is... something. Tenenbaum can't help but wonder how much Sinclair knows about what he's getting dragged into.

No word on the vodka, but after a moment of thought, she does begin to follow him. She was looking for his safehouse anyway, so here's a shortcut.

(Sinclair she thinks she could take in a fight if she has to. Jack... she hopes it wouldn't come to that; he didn't seem bent on revenge when they ran into each other before. It's a calculated risk.)

[modestman]

"As long as he doesn't start eating the furniture," he laughs. "I don't believe he's ever not hungry."

But there's a risk there too, he's not sure how happy Jack would be to wake up with her there. After their last run-in, he was...pretty upset. He's bringing her back with relatively high stakes in acquiring something in the process, whether it's help finding a way out or just an ally. Anything is useful at this point. But if Jack wakes up and Sinclair has nothing to show for it, he's not really sure what's going to happen.

[so_shower_maybe]

Something flickers at the edges of Tenenbaum's mouth. The massively accelerated growth did interesting things to his metabolism; if only it were so easy to get the girls to eat their vegetables.

She pushes it down; it wasn't a smile. If anything, if Sinclair is even looking, she might appear a little sick.

"You are not wrong about that."

Hey, it's no secret that she and Jack know each other.

[modestman]

Whatever face Tenenbaum is making, Sinclair definitely smiles. A small one, but there's no mistaking it. Apparently Jack has a reputation.

He lets them walk the rest of the way in silence, partly because he's got nothing to say and partly because he would rather not attract any more attention than absolutely necessary.

Once they get to his door, he motions for Tenenbaum to wait a moment while he goes in and adjusts his turrets to let her pass, and then reappears to motion her inside.

"I've got a study in the back, we should be able to talk there without disturbing him," he tells her.

[so_shower_maybe]

After a brief pause -- the time it takes to wonder if this is a huge mistake, and then dismiss that as emotion rather than logic -- she follows him in.

Jack is there, fast asleep, tossed around a bit but still curled around his wrench. He hasn't eaten the couch but he has drooled on it a bit. Maybe that's a preliminary warning sign.

He lies there like a living, breathing accusation.

Tenenbaum's glance is subtly pained, and goes on for maybe a few seconds too long. Then she gathers herself. Her face returns to normal.

Once they've made it to the study, she says quietly, her voice as dry as Rapture isn't: "You have given him a bath at last. My congratulations."

[modestman]

"He took it willingly too," Sinclair laughs, closing the door behind them and heading straight for the liquor cabinet. "Was it vodka? I'm a whiskey man, myself."

He pulls down the bottle for himself and a couple glasses, filling the bottom of his. There's nothing wrong with having a routine. This is how he executes most of his business conversations. Only this time, there's a little more at stake. Which, with as long as he's been doing this, is saying something.

[so_shower_maybe]

"I will take whiskey."

She raises an eyebrow at the fact that Sinclair literally has and maintains a liquor cabinet. There aren't many with the means for that in Rapture any more. Well, she won't look the gift horse in the mouth.

"Who knows what disgusting thing he will next find to roll in," she muses, as if the Big Daddy pheromones weren't entirely her idea.

[modestman]

Sinclair nods and fills her glass the same as his, passing it and he sits in an armchair across from her.

"I'm curious," he says, dropping his cigarette into an ash tray. "He's only been in Rapture for a few days, how is it you know him so well?"

[so_shower_maybe]

It's okay, she thought he might ask that.

"We have been in communication."

Her tone gives nothing away, if you don't count habitual iciness.

"The radio."

[modestman]

"Seems to me you're not particularly fond of the kid," he offers. If he has to pry information out of her, that's alright. Sometimes that's what needs to be done.

"Now why would you keep in communication with him if there's so much bad blood?"

[so_shower_maybe]

"Why should the blood have always been bad?"

She takes a sip of the whiskey, shudders briefly. Wonders whether to elaborate on what Jack's been up to with his moral choices.

"What makes you trust him?"

[modestman]

Sinclair shrugs casually, leaning back in his chair and taking a sip.

"I wouldn't say I trust him exactly, but I don't reckon he has anything to gain from stabbing me in the back. I'm his ticket out of this dump, he knows that."

That's part of it anyway. The rest of it was gut instinct. He's not usually wrong about people when he meets them. First impression is everything, and Sinclair's met some really crooked people in his time. Jack just didn't fall in with them.

[so_shower_maybe]

"Hah."

She's not disagreeing, just... yeah. Yeah, that's a motivation she can buy for the unholy union of Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine.

"Und with your weapons skills, I guess that you use him as a bodyguard?"

Would you guess that she won't buy 'I'm taking him out of the kindness of my heart'?

[modestman]

You wound him, narration. Sinclair is a charitable man, why would you believe otherwise?

"Call it a symbiotic relationship," he says. "Rapture's not getting any safer. And what about you? It sounds like something went wrong there, might I inquire as to what that was?"

[so_shower_maybe]

Tenenbaum looks at Sinclair for several moments.

Then she says bluntly:

"He kills the children."

(And do you know about that, she wonders? What do you think of it?)

Her voice remains steady, but disgust lines her face. Disgust and anger and disappointment.

[modestman]

Sinclair sighs. He should have known, really. Those pieces aren't particularly hard to put together, but without knowing the nature of their relationship there's no context. It makes sense, though. Of course.

"He needs the ADAM. He hasn't got much of a choice."

[so_shower_maybe]

Ahahahaa and now her expression is pure undiluted 'fuck you'.

"He has a choice! He can save them, collect a little ADAM and... agh." Not a complementary noise. She breaks off, lowers her voice again, remembering that the subject of their talk is just a couple rooms away. "As if you care what he can do for those other than yourself."

[modestman]

"I don't know what to tell you, doctor," Sinclair frowns. She doesn't offend him, this is the kind of thing he's used to during business transactions. "He's got a reason, whatever it might be. Maybe you should ask him what it is."

[so_shower_maybe]

"As, maybe, should you."

Her expression doesn't relent.

"Twice you have now asked me to come here. It is not for the pleasant conversation, I am sure."

It's a gamble. Tenenbaum is convinced there's an ulterior motive; it could involve Jack, or it could involve something else Sinclair thinks she can offer him. But she's not blind; she knows she made him ask some questions with their encounter in the Pavilion this morning.

[modestman]

Pleasant, no. But that doesn't make it unenjoyable. Sinclair can't remember the last challenging conversation he had; everyone around him is either too stupid or too spliced up. Or both. Mostly both.

But she's right. It's probably time to cut to the chase and just have the conversation he wants to have.

At least he thinks he does. He supposes that will depend on what he gets from it.

"There's something else here that I'm missing," he tells her. "I need to work with him, he's my ticket as much as I'm his, but I can't do that if I don't have all the pieces."

He sets his drink down and leans forward. "I want to trust him, and I believe that I can, but if I'm walking into something completely blind..." he lets the sentence peter off.

There's no reason she should give him any information, but it's usually best to try things the easy way first. If she won't tell him straight out, then he can worry about sorting out the more complicated approaches.

[so_shower_maybe]

She thins her lips, unmoved.

"If you think you can trust him, knowing how he kills without a thought, then I have nothing to say that will change your mind."

[modestman]

So much for the easy approach.

Sinclair drops his gaze to the floor, lacing his fingers together. "I don't think he's what you think he is, doctor."

[so_shower_maybe]

"You judge character with the same skill that you fire a pistol."

[modestman]

"You think he's some kind of monster," he continues, "but all I see out there is a kid who'd give anything to go home. Am I wrong?"