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

[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?"

[so_shower_maybe]

Tenenbaum closes her eyes briefly, rewords her answer so that it's less... revealing. She has more reason to keep Jack's secrets -- and her own -- than she does to help Sinclair.

"From what I see," -- she opens her eyes -- "he is perfectly at home."

[modestman]

It is an effective rewording. Sinclair takes it as a shot at his own moral code, about which he's not going to argue with her. Not that her nose is the cleanest, but that's not why he wanted her here.

"He doesn't belong here," he says, although really if anyone was made for this place, it's Jack. He can't die, he's a war machine, and sometimes it seems like he enjoys it. But that's not a life, and he doesn't want to stay here.

But Sinclair sits back again, easing up. "I'll ask him about the sisters, but I think the answer might surprise you. He's not a bad kid, doc."

[so_shower_maybe]

"But you do not trust him."

Flatly. And yet you're defending him awfully hard, Sinclair.

Tenenbaum doesn't think Jack'd have much to say that she'd want to hear on the subject of Sisters -- but that conversation is going nowhere, and Sinclair doesn't seem like a type who'd have any sympathy for the girls. So she drops it.

[modestman]

"I only just met him," Sinclair laughs, as if the idea that he would feel anything other than distrust toward a virtual stranger is completely absurd. Which it is.

"I don't know the first thing about him, really, except maybe a branch or two of his family tree." And if anything, that's cause to trust him less. "Looks like that reunion didn't go so well."

[so_shower_maybe]

Tenenbaum draws on her cigarette while Sinclair speaks; it's almost down to the filter, but waste not want not.

And -- now that was an interesting statement. If by 'interesting' you mean 'whoa hold up what did you say'. Her eyebrows are up again, surprised.

"He has -- told you much about his family?"

There are a thousand things at stake in that question -- and she tries to hide it, but a little of that intensity comes through. He knows about Ryan. Maybe picked up through rumour -- maybe not. The child is trusting, and Sinclair is a creature built for smooth-talking. Might the truth have come out about Fontaine? About Tenenbaum herself?

[modestman]

Sinclair shakes his head. "Not the most talkative, especially when it comes to whoever he was before he came here. Andrew Ryan's his old man and it sounds like he must have come from a couple others in Kansas, but that's about the whole of it."

But Tenenbaum knows. There's more to Jack's story, a lot more it seems like, and Tenenbaum knows about it.

"Can't figure out why Ryan would have left him topside, unless he didn't know about him. Which I suppose isn't impossible."

[so_shower_maybe]

Tenenbaum continues to look surprised for a few moments. After the way Jack railed against Fontaine, she wouldn't have expected him to stick to the story Fontaine came up with.

You know what, she's going to tackle the least difficult part of that, and with truth to make things simpler.

"Ryan did not know." The cigarette's gone; she stubs it out in an ashtray, watches the embers go out. "Not until the end."

[modestman]

"How did he find out, I wonder?" Sinclair muses, mostly to himself as he picks up his glass again and takes another sip. Once Ryan left the surface for Rapture, he must have been damn near impossible to track.

And yet somehow...

"Convenient plane crash, too," he continues. Just. Casually letting her know how well these pieces REALLY DO NOT fit together AT ALL.

[so_shower_maybe]

"Not so convenient for those who it killed."

If she had another cigarette she'd be lighting it blandly, but alas.