One thing I've noticed about the BioShock fandom: there is very little "Jackabeth," the pairing between Jack Ryan and Elizabeth DeWitt, going on. There's more fanart than any fanfiction in that department. Recently, I started this 50 word prompt for Jackabeth as an experiment to see how I do with word prompts. It was also a gift to Scorpiofreak, who recommended that I post the prompts.
So here they are, 50 words, each of them the theme for a one sentence story on Jack, Elizabeth, and their relationship. I hope you all enjoy these. Also, feel free to leave a review or PM with your thoughts on these little jewels, WOULD YOU KINDLY?
Oh man, I've been wanting to use that line. BWAHAHAHA! Ok, evil mastermind act done, let's read!
(Re-edited as of August 21, 2017 for the tenth anniversary of BioShock)
Jackabeth 50 Word Prompt
Threat
Jack made notes of both Ryan and Fontaine's contacts on the surface and stays far away from them after returning, as he doesn't want any reprisals from them for killing their bosses, especially as they seem the type who wouldn't have any moral qualms about targeting Elizabeth and the girls.
Empire
Jack considered making a bid for what little remained of his father's business assets, Heaven knew he, Elizabeth, and the girls needed the money, but considering the questions that would come with claiming to be the son of the missing billionaire, he decided that keeping the surname "Wynand" would be a better choice.
Falter
As much as Rapture is his true home, Jack doesn't look back as he leaves behind the city that by all rights belongs to him, though as his true father put it, "A man chooses, a slave obeys," and besides, what kind of man would trade the blue-eyed beauty by his side for any city?
Compliment
"Wow, nice shot!" Jack tells Elizabeth as she nails a solid bullseye at the practice range he's set up on his farm, to which she says "Thank you," before sending the remaining five bullets in her Hand Cannon into the bullseye as well.
Glass
Jack is both amazed and disgusted as he watches the Vita-Chamber in Suchong's secret lab repair the corpse of the young woman, turning her greenish, decomposed skin to porcelain, her clouded, dead eyes to sky blue, fixing the dent in her skull, until when she comes to with a gasp, it's only with amazement that he looks upon her.
Honor
With his Big Daddy disguise completed, Jack was about to head off to the Little Sister vent when he caught sight of himself in a mirror, the bulky suit and helmet looking rather ridiculous on his smaller frame, but considering his quest to stop Fontaine and all of the young lives he had saved, Jack wondered if he could be seen as a knight in armor.
Work
When he's not working on the farm which he inherited from his "parents," Jack tries his hand as an amateur mechanic, using his hacking skills from Rapture to draw in extra money from the neighboring farms and in town, which is where Elizabeth makes her living as a waitress while she tries to figure out what she's going to do with her second chance at life.
Jealous
Jack feels the green-eyed monster stir in his chest as Elizabeth introduces him to her friend from work, a handsome man named Ronald who shows great promise in the field of advanced physics, but as much as he'd rather tell "Ron" where to get off, he swallows his pride and shakes hands, with just a little more grip than necessary.
Strings
After Rapture, Jack suffers from nightmares where everyone from Fontaine to Ryan to Cohen use the "W-Y-K" command to turn him into their puppet, doing their bidding, with the absolute worst dream of all ending with Elizabeth telling him to "get lost, would you kindly," staring at him in disgust for what he is truly is: a living, breathing weapon.
Semantics
"I will admit, brother, I did not calculate this specific outcome."
"Neither did I, sister, but I see can how it came about. By saving the girl Sally-"
"He earned enough of her trust to tell him about the girl who gave Atlas the Ace-"
"And while he wasn't happy with that action itself, her motive was enough-"
"For him to ask Sally what became of the girl herself-"
"Resulting in her guiding him back to Suchong's Clinic-"
"Locating the secret lab behind Suchong's clinic and the prototype Vita-Chamber-"
"Along with the hair sample, and the second body of the girl herself-"
"Allowing him to bring her back from the dead."
"Lives, lived, will live."
"Dies, died, will die."
"Interesting how in all the worlds where the boy started out harvesting the Little Sisters and then begin saving them after Atlas' betrayal-"
"Sally is always among the ones he harvests-"
"Just as Masha Lutz is always harvested or saved in Port Neptune-"
"Constants and variables, though it's a pity that the girl doesn't always stay dead in the Harvesting worlds."
"Or that the boy's attraction to her isn't limited to his better counterparts."
"Hmph. At least the versions of him that wish for redemption can take a hint."
"Especially when said hint is a loaded Hand Cannon and her angry threats to kill him."
"The evil ones treat her hatred and threats as a game. If his wretched hands ever go where they shouldn't-"
"We will happily intervene, though I wouldn't recommend cutting off his hands with a collapsing Tear."
Innocence
Jack is surprised to learn that Elizabeth is only nineteen years old, as the look in her eyes and her skill with her plasmids and weapons peg her as someone in their 20s, to which she replies, "I learn quickly and I've been through a lot, qualities we both share."
Dispose
When Jack and the girls arrive at the farmhouse, they find the place abandoned and in disarray, every scrap of money gone with everything else left behind, including the animals, the farming equipment, and the photographs of Jack and the actors posing as his "parents," the last of which he tosses into the garbage pile.
Blaze
Wrapped in Jack's strong and comforting arms, Elizabeth returns his kisses with equal if not greater fervor, the desire for him that had been building ever since Rapture kindling a bonfire within her, one that demands him and only him for relief.
Neglect
The animals of the farm were left to starve after his fake parents left the house, and while Jack finds it in himself to forgive them for their deception and compliance in working for Fontaine, as he pours water and grain into the feedboxes of the farm's horses and rubs a hand over their quivering flanks, he knows he can't forgive them this.
Quake
Jack knew from photos and other research gathered from Suchong's device that Elizabeth is more than merely human, but he's still shaken when she explains to him just what she had been and what she could do, a human that could shred the boundaries separating different times and different spaces, a girl to whom there were no mysteries.
Guess
"I'm going to say…twenty-six. No? Ok, um, twenty-nine? You're younger than twenty-six? Twenty-two then. Alright, twenty. Fine, I give up, how old are you? WHAT! You're chronologically only four years old?! Tenenbaum!"
Quarrel
"You think that just because Jack is a farmer and mechanic that he's not good enough for me? I've seen the man he really is, and he's more than you'll ever be!" Elizabeth snaps at Ronald before stalking out of the diner, angry and flustered that he would think Jack so beneath her, and deep down inside, she's afraid that Jack thinks the same.
Brood
Every Sunday after church, Jack sits in his room with his Bible, pondering the implications of his origins, taken from his mother soon after fertilization, a human made in the image of God twisted by Man's science into something unnatural, leaving him to wonder if the Almighty would reject him, or worse, if Elizabeth would revile him if he told her of his feelings.
Effort
During her time as Sander Cohen's "Songbird," there was only one point of light for Elizabeth in the gaping maw of Rapture, and that was Kyle Fitzpatrick, who had been duped and drugged into following Cohen long after his other disciples had left him, and when she learns from Jack about Fitzpatrick's final defiance and death, she is just able to wait until she is alone to shed her tears of both joy and sorrow.
Now
As he kneels before Elizabeth, Jack can see how every moment of his life has led to this present moment, how every single "divergence point" as Elizabeth calls them, every single Little Sister he saved, every single splicer he killed to defend himself, how it has all come to this place and moment in spacetime, in which he holds out an opened ringbox to the girl he loves, and as she says "Yes!" and simultaneously cries, hugs him, and kisses him, he somehow knows that in all the universes where they are together, her answer is a constant.
Solve
The FBI agent wishes that he had been given a different assignment, such as Andrew Ryan and his North Atlantic Project or finding out what happened to his old friend Johnny Thompson, rather than sending him to spy on "Jack Wynand" for possible involvement in the Apollo Airways Flight DF-0301crash, but he doesn't do anything to change his assignment, because as painfully obvious as it is to him that neither Jack or his girlfriend Elizabeth DeWitt are criminals, Russian spies, or communists, the mystery surrounding them and their romance is too intriguing to pass up.
Rest
The girls sometimes ask Jack and Elizabeth why they don't go out and fight crime, "like the superheroes in the comic books," the reasons for which range from the scarcity of EVE on the surface to the simple fact that the both of them have done enough heroics for a lifetime.
Soon
Eleanor's eyes widen in amazement, her hand on Elizabeth's swollen abdomen as she feels the enthusiastic kicks of the small life growing within, only a month away from entering the world, and as she looks up into the joy-filled eyes of Elizabeth, Jack, and the girls, she wonders how Sofia Lamb, who she no longer counts as her mother, could possibly mess up the concept of family so thoroughly.
Listen
Arcadia, he explains to her, would be the ideal place to settle if the Cuban Missile Crisis sparks a nuclear World War III, after they've killed or kicked out every splicer in the place, with its green, calming environment, access to soil to grow crops, and that by taking control of Rapture's sole supply of oxygen, they'll be able to lay down whatever terms they want to whomever took charge of Rapture in his absence.
Haze
The night after they move in, after the girls are put to bed and before Elizabeth drives back to town to the small house where she has taken up residence, she and Jack sit out on the porch of his house and look up at the stars, the last pack of Nico Time cigarettes between the two of them.
Excite
Jack and Elizabeth have no idea what to say when Booker, their youngest child and only son, comes running into the room, a little flame dancing in one hand while arcs of electricity spark in and out of his fingers in the other, declaring happily "Mommy, Daddy, I have superpowers like you and Auntie Eleanor!"
Verbal
The modifications to Jack's voice aren't noticeable on a normal basis, the booming, whale-like tones of a Big Daddy hidden unless in pain or angry, as the driver who almost runs over Sally finds out to his everlasting terror, or the drunk who strikes Elizabeth after she turned down his advances.
Fragment
Jack wasn't too concerned about his false memories; he instead looks forward to making new ones with Tenenbaum, Elizabeth, and the girls he has adopted, that is, until his real memories begin to surface in bits and pieces, horrible little things that make him want to curl into a ball and cry, and his already-rocky relationship with the German geneticist is strained anew.
Inert
Sometimes Jack feels restless, after all he is a genetically-engineered assassin with massive stamina, an extensive range of enhancements and superpowers, and an arsenal of advanced weaponry, after Rapture he could have hired himself out as the ultimate mercenary, or he could have auctioneered off Rapture's technology to the highest bidder and become one of the richest men in the world, but then he might not have the girls or Elizabeth by his side.
Classic
Jack's favorite plasmid will always be Electro-Bolt (perfect for jumpstarting farm equipment and vehicles) with Incinerate (lighting fire pits and cigarettes) and Telekinesis (easy object retrieval) as close seconds, while Elizabeth will always favor her Peeping Tom plasmid (perfect for pranks and locating things) with Old Man Winter (cooling drinks in the summer) in second place.
Animal
Tenenbaum originally got the puppy for Jack after the memory of losing his cocker spaniel comes back to him, but Elizabeth also cherishes the cute beagle, naming it "Lucky," and while it's clear that the dog loves his master, he utterly adores his mistress, and Jack is just fine with the arrangement.
Jagged
Jack and Elizabeth both have their scars, and while the mark on the side of her head and the circular hole in her back are cringe-worthy, it's the sheer amount of scars on Jack's body that prompts him to wear long sleeves on even the hottest days to cover up the holes left by the ADAM and EVE hypos, the burns from fire and electricity, the bullet wounds, the horrible marks left by the burning hot fish hooks of the spider splicers, and worst of all, the huge scar on his throat from becoming a Big Daddy.
Strange
While perusing the local bookstore one day, Elizabeth comes across "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, the title enough to make her buy the book and show it to Jack after reading the cumbersome tome, leading them both to wonder if Ayn Rand was any friend of Andrew Ryan's and if she has any idea of the existence of the underwater city, because she obviously hadn't known of the author of its destruction.
Measure
For Elizabeth's 20th birthday, Jack and the girls attempt to bake her a cake before she and Tenenbaum arrive at his house to celebrate, only for the two of them to arrive in a kitchen with eggs on the ceiling, five giggling, flour-covered little girls, a burnt cake, and one man at his wit's end, after which they help him clean up the kitchen and bake a new cake for a belated but very celebrated party.
Ashes
Jack, Elizabeth, and Tenenbaum are the only ones present for what passes as Andrew Ryan's funeral, where they place his body on his desk, Jack says his first and last goodbye to his real father before using Incinerate to light the makeshift funeral pyre, and Elizabeth realizes yet another constant: the offspring destroying the parent.
Leave
As soon as Elizabeth opened the Vita-Chamber doors, she mistook Jack for Atlas thanks to his wrench, her eyes blurry from being resurrected after so long, prompting him to drop the wrench and kick it away to assuage her trauma-induced panic.
Fit
On the rare occasions that Jack took off his shirt before their marriage (and the not-so-rare times afterward), Elizabeth would never fail to blush, for while his body was riddled with scar tissue, Jack's physique was quite impressive, even without the Wrench Jockey tonics equipped, which they usually were, for "farm work," he says.
Elusive
One of the girls' favorite games is hide-and-seek, specifically hide-and-seek-Elizabeth, a variant in which the girls and Jack team up to find Elizabeth, who hides somewhere on the farm and uses her Peeping Tom plasmid to keep the seekers constantly guessing about her location, often only a few feet away from them as they discuss where she could be, her giggles often ending the game.
Painstaking
Elizabeth has to laugh when she catches sight of Jack changing Booker's diaper, the poor man wearing a clothespin on his nose while applying the baby powder, securing the new diaper with a safety pin, and getting rid of the used diaper as carefully as though he was hacking a Rapture safe without the assistance of any gene tonics, all the while muttering a fervent prayer of thanks that he's only had to do this for one of his children.
Unfold
Jack is originally confused when Elizabeth apologizes to him out of the blue, before she explains her part in freeing Fontaine from his own Department Store, starting the Rapture Civil War, and giving Fontaine the activation phrase to control him, and by the time she finishes, tears are beginning to leak from her eyes as she starts to apologize profusely before he tells her that he already knew of her part in Atlas' rise, and that her motivation in saving Sally, and later on saving him from Fontaine's lies and possibly the world from Rapture's horrors, has more than exempted her from any need for forgiveness.
Wrap
Jack is originally surprised that Elizabeth doesn't mind the cold as much as he thought she would, until she explains that Columbia's buildings would often accumulate large amounts of ice from flying through moisture-laden clouds in the winter months, making for some exceptionally chilly days.
Friend
Jack had not known that Bill McDonagh had been married, Elizabeth had long since forgotten about their child, and neither had known that his wife and child had been able to escape Rapture during the war, but as Masha and Sophie reunite for the first time in years in Central Park, they meet with the former Mrs. McDonagh with trepidation on her part for finding someone else involved with Rapture, but they all leave New York knowing that they are not alone in surviving Ryan's destroyed dream.
Swift
On their first anniversary with Eleanor visiting, Jack and Elizabeth are surprised by her gift to them: two bottles of her own homemade plasmid, Summon Eleanor, whose only other recipient was the Alpha Series Big Daddy, Subject Delta, the closest thing that Eleanor has had to a father, and it speaks volumes of what they've become to her.
Seasons
Elizabeth and Jack's idyllic childhood worlds were turned upside-down and destroyed in the spring of their lives, in their summer they came together and built a home for themselves and those they had managed to save, in the fall they watched as their lives took off and as their adopted and biological children began their own flights, and now, in the winter of their existence, Jack takes Elizabeth's wrinkled hand with his own and wonders how his selfless decisions in Rapture could possibly warrant the blessings he has enjoyed.
Need
Jack enjoys listening to Elizabeth sing both in real life and on one of the two records they brought with them from Rapture, and as much as he loves it, he's sorry for the underlying tone of sorrow evident in her art and wishes that he could bring more comfort to her than the seemingly meager supply that his embraces, gently-spoken words, and later kisses give to her.
Antiviral
They both avoid visits to the doctor as much as possible, only going for the girls' yearly check-ups and illnesses, Jack to avoid the questions that his scars attract and the reminders of Steinman and the other mad doctors wandering the halls of Rapture, while Elizabeth doesn't want to replay the infinite versions of Pettifog and Powell that tortured her in every iteration of Comstock House.
Chalk
As Elizabeth walks down the aisle, resplendent and angelic in her wedding dress with Robert Lutece by her side to give her away, Jacks remembers back to the drawings that the girls made of him and "Lizzie" getting married and of his younger self sadly dismissing their doodles as a pleasant, beautiful, and unlikely daydream, one that he's glad to be living right now.
Ape
One of the girls' favorite places to go in the nearest city is the zoo, where their fascination over the nature of the surface is satisfied like no other place, not even the farm with its diverse set of domesticated and wild species, with Jack and Elizabeth enjoying the sights just as much as the children, just don't ask the former to go anywhere near the primate house, not after the "Great Fling of '62".
Choke
Every once in a while, Jack and Elizabeth are reminded of the tragedies that they bore witness to in Rapture, with the worst reminder for Jack being the time he found Masha in his collection of audio diaries, the tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she clutches her mother's diaries to her chest, while Elizabeth is reminded of her fall to vengeance after waking Sally in the midst of a nightmare, her cries of "Hot, hot!" bringing a flood of old guilt.
French
While spending their honeymoon in Paris, Jack learns of his fear of heights while on the highest observation platform of the Eiffel Tower, with only Elizabeth's joy at finally viewing the City of Love from a bird's-eye-view (Darn her childhood in that flying city!) keeping him from bolting to the elevators and the safety of the ground; well, that, and the snooty looks and glares he'd be sure to receive from passing Parisians.
I hope you all enjoyed these little forays into the world of BioShock following both the good endings of BioShock 1 and 2. These were basically fusions of the word prompts and my personal headcannons for BioShock. My headcannon for the good endings is that after Jack kills Fontaine, Sally tells him about Elizabeth and her sacrifice. She then leans him to Suchong's Clinic, where he resurrects Elizabeth using the prototype Vita-Chamber and the lock of her hair as a DNA sample.
Afterwards, they leave for the surface with Tenenbaum and the former Little Sisters, including Sally, Masha, and Leta, which they adopt along with two others, Susie and Adelaide. Jack settles in his old farm house with the girls while Elizabeth tries to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Jack wrestles with an inferiority complex brought on by the revelations of his origins, doubting his humanity, his worth in Elizabeth's eyes, and even the validity of his own soul.
Elizabeth realizes her feelings for him and they eventually get married. After one of the good endings of BioShock 2, Eleanor often comes to visit their home when she's not off doing her vigilante/drifter thing. They have one biological child, Booker Andrew Wynand. And they live happily ever after, as the old saying goes.
My personal favorites are "Brood" and "Blaze," the last of which earned an eyebrow raise from my mom. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed reading these word prompts, and maybe I'll try my hand at some others. Happy reading and writing everyone!