I must be nuts. Here I am, starting a new fic, a BioShock fic nonetheless, when I'm not done with my beloved WonderShock, or The Good, the Mad, and the Infamous. Blame my rather idiotic and overzealous message-fic "Make Jackabeth Canon", I guess.
I've been thinking about this one for a long while, and it might be time for me to actually write and publish it when I'm not writing WonderShock or GM&I. Seeing as most of my stuff is action adventure with strong sci-fi themes, a good friendship/romance fic would be a nice change.
I have been a fan of the underrated Jackabeth ship (Jack Wynand/Elizabeth DeWitt) for a long time now. It's probably about time for me to contribute my version of Jackabeth to the fandom. I hope you all enjoy, and I will include shout-outs to the writers and fellow Jackabethers who inspired me along the way.
WOULD YOU KINDLY LEAVE A REVIEW OR PM ME? Maybe this time it'll work. Have a good one, and happy writing!
The Lion and the Lamb
Prologue
Jack Wynand of rural New York took a long draw on his cigarette and sighed heavily, the smoke from his mouth emitted as a dense cloud. The trip to see his cousins in England had been sudden and he was still getting used to the fact that he was leaving the US for the first time, along with his state and even the farm. The ride to the airport had been interesting, what with all the sights to see. He had never seen so many people together in one place before. Trips to the nearest town from his family's farm had been rare, and it wasn't that big of a town anyway.
Taking his cigarette out of his mouth and flicking it to get rid of excess ash, Jack took out his wallet and flipped it open. A picture of himself and his parents looked back at him, their smiling faces bringing back warm memories. He smiled back as he gently rubbed the picture with his thumb before closing his wallet and putting it away. It was time for his present.
His parents had given him the package just before he had boarded his plane, telling him to read the attached note.
It read: To Jack with love, from Mom & Dad. Would you kindly not open until 630 2' N 290 55' W. An odd note to be sure. Jack had requested an atlas at the beginning of the flight. He had been able to calculate how long it would take the plane to reach the coordinates, and it was about that time.
Opening the box, he found himself squinting to see what was inside. Flicking on the overhead light, he froze as he saw what was within the present: A revolver and another note.
The gun filling him with an icy fear, Jack took up the note and read it.
Would you kindly hijack the plane and crash it into the ocean.
What? Why would….
Something clicked in his head, and the why didn't matter anymore. His body seemed to act before his mind had completed sending out orders. Tossing the box into the aisle and raising the pistol, Jack stood up and leveled the weapon at the stewardess. The pistol felt like a natural extension of his arm, like he was familiar with using it, even though the only guns he had ever touched had been his father's rifles and shotgun. Just behind her was the cockpit, where the pilot and copilot were. All he had to do was get by her, kill them, and fly the place into the ocean. Just as he was ordered.
As the stewardess cowered against the wall and begged him not to kill her, Jack became aware of something behind him. Suspecting that one of the other passengers was trying to get the drop on him, Jack turned around to confront them.
There, standing right behind him, was a young woman, but she was no passenger. Her clothes were dirty and torn, spattered with blood and grease and torn in several places. Her face, beautiful as it was, was bloodstained as well, and her blue eyes…the only word to describe them was haunted.
She looked him dead in the eye, and then spoke.
"Save us, Jack."
L&L~L&L~L&L
Jack awoke with a start, his heart hammering in his chest.
Confusion set in for a moment as he looked at his surroundings, then he remembered where he was and why. He sighed loudly, jumping when it came out like a whale's call. That's right, the modification, or mauling, of his vocal cords. Yet something else to get used to.
It was only a few days ago, yet it felt like a lifetime. Three days ago, he had been an American farm boy on his way to see his English cousins. Now, he was the pseudo-king of a ruined underwater metropolis who had begun life as a science experiment/weapon and had killed his way to the top. A few hours earlier, he had arrived back at Tenenbaum's from killing Fontaine/Atlas and after dinner, had fallen into a very deep sleep. From that first splicer all the way up to Frank Fontaine himself, he had become the undisputed apex predator of Rapture.
Between the Rapture Welcome Center and Point Prometheus, there was a trail of bodies that marked his path. Only a few had names: Dr. Steinman at the Medical Pavilion, Peach Wilkins at Port Neptune, Martin Finnegan, Silas Cobb, and Hector Rodriguez at Fort Folic, Andrew Ryan in his office at Hephaestus, Sander Cohen in his Mercury Suites Apartment, and Frank Fontaine at the highest point of Point Prometheus. That didn't take into account all the Thuggish splicers, Leadheads, Nitros, Houdinis, Spider splicers, and Big Daddies he had killed. In the genetic jungle that Rapture had become, he was King. A lion among hyenas.
Maybe part of the reason he was top dog in Rapture was the fact that he wasn't really human. After conception, he had been taken from his mother's womb and artificially grown by Tenenbaum and Suchong. Accelerated growth and memory implantation had replaced a normal childhood, along with who know what else. He was scarily proficient with firearms, could hack Rapture machinery like no one's business, and his affinity for plasmids and gene tonics was amazing. He had spliced whenever he could and so far, he wasn't showing any symptoms of ADAM sickness. And if the behavior of Rapture's inhabitants, before and after splicing, was typical of human beings, then he was definitely something else.
The only people who had escaped his wrath had been the Little Sisters. Taking pity on them, he had cured them of their condition, freeing them and turning them back into little girls. Getting only half the available ADAM from them had been a good price for keeping his soul (if he even had one).
Rubbing his eyes, Jack sat up and straightened his back, a round of soft pops ringing out. Stifling a loud grunt, he turned and set his feet on the floor and looked around.
Tenenbaum was asleep in her room, a little girl cuddled to her chest. Jack had no idea how to feel about her. She was responsible for the discovery of ADAM and thus the destruction of Rapture, for the existence of the Little Sisters, and for his upbringing and condition. She had also known about the trigger phrase, and while it wasn't clear if she knew that Atlas was really Fontaine, she still didn't do anything to stop that. Also, his vocal cords were now mutilated to the point where he sounded like a dying whale.
On the other hand, she had been rescuing Little Sisters before he had arrived in Rapture and she had been the one to give him the Little Sister Cure plasmid. Without that plasmid, harvesting the Little Sisters would have been his only option. The ADAM and other supplies she had provided more than made up for the ADAM shortage from saving them, plus her voice over the radio had reminded him that he wasn't alone in Rapture, both before and after Atlas' betrayal.
She had a lot to make up for, but at least she was on the right track.
Most of the other little girls were fast asleep on the multiple beds set up around the safehouse. They all had a tendency to sleep two to a bed. Considering all they had been through, it was more than understandable. Behind the main support pillar, he could hear a couple of voices conversing in whispers along with some flickering lights.
Jack got up and walked over to the support pillar. He was wide awake and not going back to sleep any time soon, plus the girls had taken a shine to him. He was probably the only adult besides Tenenbaum that they trusted not to implant an ADAM slug in their abdomen or to rip it out. They were definitely adorable little things, their lapses back into their Little Sister programming more sad than anything else.
Peering around the corner, Jack spotted the girls. There were three of them, grouped around something on the little table. Surprisingly, they were ignoring the toys spread around them on the floor in favor of whatever it was on the table. Peering closer, Jack saw tears forming in the eyes of the little blond girl. If there was one thing that tugged at his heartstrings, it was a little girl crying.
Glancing around the room at the sleeping girls, Jack made the quietest grunting noise he could. Talking was practically impossible now, not that he did much of that in the first place, but still.
When the girls all looked up at him, he recognized them. The blond girl was the final one he had saved in Hephaestus, one of the brown-haired girls had been saved in the Fighting McDonagh's, and the other had been in Fort Frolic. Odd that the Little Sisters all looked somewhat alike before they had been cured, their natural features revealing themselves afterwards.
"Mr. Bubbles!" the blond one whispered-shouted. Jack cringed and held one finger to his lips. Tenenbaum wouldn't be happy if they woke everyone up.
"Sorry," the blond whispered. Jack smiled and nodded before craning his head like he was trying to get a look at whatever it was they were poring over.
They all made room for him to kneel down. It was an old poster, likely something from Rapture's heyday.
"We were looking at the pretty lady," the first brunette explained as he picked it up for a better look. The first face he recognized was that of Sander Cohen's. He suppressed a shudder before moving on to the rest of the poster, only to freeze in shock. There, on the poster, was the young woman from his dream. The dream itself was obviously a memory, but that last part with her, that had to be a dream, part of his subconscious going weird on him, right?
The girl was even more beautiful without the bloodstains on her face and clothes. Presenting…Elizabeth, the poster read. Cohen's New Songbird! "You Belong to Me" Available in Stores Now!
His hands shaking, Jack set down the poster and took a deep breath. This had to be some more weird brain stuff going on, right? Who knew who he knew in Rapture before Suchong and Tenenbaum screwed up his real memories with his fake ones.
"Mr. Bubbles, what's wrong?" the other brunette asked him, concern in her blue eyes.
Giving his head a good shake, Jack picked up a piece of blank paper and a crayon from the table. He wrote "Who?" on it and then pointed at the young woman.
"That's the pretty lady," the blond girl explained. "She saved me from the bad man a long, long time ago."
Jack raised an eyebrow. Someone else had faced off against Atlas to save a Little Sister? What if she was still alive? "Alive?" he wrote down and then waited patiently for the girl to sound it out.
Tears reappeared in her eyes again. "No," she choked out. "She gave the bad man what he wanted, and he…he," her jaw shook so badly that she couldn't talk. Jack hurriedly leaned down and hugged the little girl before she could begin bawling. She instead cried softly in his shoulder, soaking his sweater.
"She helped us too," the first brunette piped up. When Jack looked up at them, the other brunette continued.
"She helped us to turn scary monster into Mr. Bubbles." Jack raised an eyebrow at that. "Not you Mr. Bubbles, other Mr. Bubbles."
Jack patted the blond girl on the back as he considered what he had been told. This girl, "Elizabeth", had helped Little Sisters before being killed at the hands of Fontaine himself. Who was she, and why had she given her life to save a Little Sister? From what he knew of Rapture before its current state, the Little Sisters were seen as a commodity or resource, not as people. Had she been the blond girl's mother, her aunt, her older sister?
And why had she appeared in his dream? Was she a friend of Tenenbaum's, someone who also saw the Little Sisters as something to save instead of use? Maybe she was someone he knew in Rapture before leaving? Who and what was she? Did it really matter when she was dead now?
"Save us, Jack." He remembered her voice from his dream. Save us. Not just them, me too. Well, he had nothing better to do at the moment. Down here, he had nothing but time.
The blond girl was done crying now, pulling away and rubbing her eyes. Jack patted her on the back and waited for her eyes to clear before writing more.
"Where?" he wrote before pointing at Elizabeth.
The blond sniffed loudly. "Po-Poppa Suchong's Free Cl-clinic," she managed.
Jack raised an eyebrow. He hadn't seen any corpses there that looked remotely like her. Then again, it had been a "long, long time ago".
"She's in a secret place," the blond girl answered his unasked question. "Only I know where."
"Save us, Jack."
He was silent and still for a long moment, and then he wrote once more on the paper.
"Show me please."
And that is my prologue for "The Lion and the Lamb". Scorpiofreak is the lovely individual who beta-read this prologue and has been a great proofreader, idea-bouncer, and friend for some years now. I absolutely recommend her fics, especially "Winter Wonderland", which ultimately inspired my fic "WonderShock".
Hope you all enjoyed this. In the beginning, I had originally planned for the Luteces to send Jack after Elizabeth, but thanks to deathbearABC123's "Matter of Perspective" here on FanFiction, I changed it so that instead Sally led Jack to Elizabeth. The dream sequence was inspired by ruoyuart's "BioShock Poster" on DeviantArt. May their contributions to the BioShock fandom always be remembered.