Notes: This is something I've been wanting to write for a while, about the characters of the first two Bioshock games after we leave them. It started out with what is now the second chapter, Grace, Stanley and Gil, and sort of spiralled from there. So, enjoy! Oh, and I'm taking the Good endings of both games as canon for this.

The story contains violence and character death, as well as neglectful parenting. If you are affected by this, please take care or do not read.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but these specific words in this specific order, please don't sue me.


Chapter One – You Must Protect Them

To look at it, the little house was just another family home. Not all too big, no, or too rich-looking, but a normal home nonetheless. It certainly wasn't much to look at. The peeling white paint on the walls, dust on the windows, splinters on the porch and general air of shabbiness saw to that. But still, you could tell that the inhabitants were trying. In most windows, yellow bunches of flowers were displayed in glass bottles, and through the windows, rough crayon drawings on yellowing paper proudly hung on the walls of each and every room. It was as clean as its occupants could make it, and that was just fine for the citizens of Salacia Street.

They knew, too, that the man at number 46 was just an average guy. Sure, he had his quirks. He couldn't talk, for one – he wrote notes and used sign language, which made people quite suspicious of him until they learned to pick up the language. Big guy, too, with strange tattoos on each wrist. But anyone who had seen him around knew that he was a gentle souls. They were the five little girls that he had rescued from a plane crash years ago, each an orphan. Each adopted by Mr Wynand the moment he got back on shore, helped by the only other survivor, a woman named Tenenbaum. She was a regular visitor to Salacia Street, showing up at number 46 at least once a month. People talked, of course, as people did. But Jack Wynand never seemed to let people's talk bother him.

The year was 1967, and Jack had been out of Rapture for seven long and tumultuous years. In some ways, he wasn't even sure if his time in the underwater city had been truly real – if Rapture had just been some kind of weird nightmare, and everything else was his reality. But then he found some definite, irrefutable proof, and remembered. The chains tattooed on both of his wrists, the hypos of Eve that he had taken with him, the occasional lightning that sprouted from his fingers and the dull groaning sound that he made every time he tried to speak.

It wasn't just him that Rapture had left its mark on, of course. The girls he had taken with him were just as affected, if not more so. They had once been Little Sisters, walking ADAM factories for the people of Rapture. But Jack had taken pity on them. He took the ADAM slugs from them and left them alive, in the hands of Brigid Tenenbaum, who was trying to rehabilitate them. It was harder than it sounded.

The girls could barely remember anything from before they were turned into Sisters, and still acted as though they were sometimes. It was good for them to be around Jack, with his deep, rumbling Big Daddy voice. It soothed them, made them more open to what Doctor Tenenbaum was telling them. Despite them not being Little Sisters any more, the girls still acted as they had back in Rapture. She had tried to teach them how to be normal, how to resist gathering ADAM and fit in with surface life. It had been a long, slow process, but they eventually made it.

Some of them had kept their original names. Tenenbaum remembered two, even after all this time. Leta and Sally, who had come to her through Sander Cohen. She had worked on their cases herself, she told Jack, not quite meeting his eyes. Afterwards, she had tried to find out as many of the Sisters' identities as she could. It wasn't enough, she said, but she had tried. One girl Jack recognised himself – Masha Lutz, whose parents he had stumbled across back in Rapture. She looked just like her mother, once the Sister conditioning began to fade. The other two didn't know, and Tenenbaum had no answers. They named them Rosie and Anna, and the girls took to their names without a second word.

It had taken them just over a year to be ready to face the world. Despite Doctor Tenenbaum's best efforts, the girls were not easy to rehabilitate. But eventually, she deemed them ready. Jack was a little harder to prepare for surface life, however. He was the adult among, even if it was only in body. He had to look after himself and the girls, earn money and be the responsible one. It wasn't going to be easy for someone who was technically three years old. But Jack wanted to try, he signed to her one day, and he was making a good go of it.

That day, when they had first come to the surface, Jack had been terrified. Now that the WYK conditioning was broken, he could remember a little more of his former life down in Rapture. And he remembered how, like the other children of Rapture, he was terrified by the idea of the sun. It had made him oddly vulnerable, and he had stood by the lighthouse, peering up at the light with trepidation, holding Leta's hand hard enough that she had cried out. There they stood, Jack, Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters, up on the surface with nothing but the clothes they stood in, and none of them knew what to do next.

It wasn't long before the ship came, looking for survivors of the plane crash. And all they had found was wreckage, water, and the seven escapees of Rapture. Doctor Tenenbaum talked to them, told them that they were survivors of the plane crash. That the Sisters were now orphans, victims of the crash that she and Jack could take in. But Tenenbaum forgot to factor one thing in. She was born on the surface, she had no problem proving she existed. But Jack and the Sisters were born of Rapture, and had no documentation. It looked odd, to say the least.

In a sense, Jack had Fontaine to thank. It made sense that the girls had no identification; they claimed that their papers had gone down with the plane, with the girls' original parents. But for him, it was more suspicious. But Jack had his papers, forged by Frank Fontaine, and suspicion passed over him quickly. Soon they reached land, and with what little surface money Tenenbaum had, they rented a little place while she tried to undo their conditioning.

It seemed like a lifetime ago to Jack. Now, of course, things were different. With care and a lot of saving, they had managed to buy 46 Salacia Street, and Jack got a job at a nearby garage. With that and the little bits of money Tenenbaum sent each month, he had raised the girls as best he could. They were never rich, but they made do.

The girls were teenagers now, the oldest being Masha at fifteen. They were all in school, and doing relatively well. For children that had never been to school on the surface before, they surpassed all expectations. Slowly but surely, they had started to adjust to having a normal life. Each girl had found their own niche. Rosie excelled in sports, Masha was incredibly popular, Anna was a budding writer, Sally had a brilliant head for numbers and Leta's had discovered a passion for drawing. They were moving on with their lives, and Jack was proud of them.

He wasn't doing too badly, either. It was a bit of a culture shock for him at first, adjusting to life on the surface, learning everything that was expected of him and how he was supposed to act. But if nothing else, Jack was determined to see this through. He enjoyed his work, and he enjoyed looking after the girls. They were sometimes a handful, and it wasn't always easy. But over the years, they had come to be a family. That was enough for him.

That day, Jack had come home from work a little bit late. It wasn't too unusual. Try as he might, Jack didn't make a whole lot of money at the garage, and looking after the girls wasn't always the easiest thing on his pay. The older girls, Leta and Masha, had taken part-time jobs to help out, but it was still tight, and Jack was almost always exhausted when he came through the door.

He took off his coat, throwing it over a chair as he walked into the living room and sinking down into an armchair. Across the room, one of the girls looked up at him, her light brown hair tied out of her face with a purple ribbon. She smiled, her still-too-wide eyes warm as she regarded him. He raised his hand to greet her, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

"Hey, Rosie," he signed. He had made his own signs for the girls early on; Rosie's was a loop around the hair, mimicking the accessory she always wore. It always made her smile to see it, and she didn't disappoint this time.

"Hey, Dad," she said, before looking back down to the paper she was studying.

Jack pointed at it, frowning. "What are you doing?" he signed, knowing as he did that he wouldn't understand it. He was not much help when it came to the girls' homework, but he still tried wherever he could.

"Maths homework." Rosie poked her tongue out, wrinkling her nose. "It's hard, but I don't really care."

"Need help?"

The girl giggled, brushing her hair away from her face. "It's okay, dad, I'll just ask Sally when she gets in. You're not so good with numbers."

Jack sat back in his chair, closing his eyes with a contented moan. "Just remember me when you're out at clever school," he signed, smirking in her general direction from his armchair.

Rosie shook her head, returning to her homework. They sat there for a moment, her scribbling and occasionally staring into space, him just relaxing and hoping he would fall asleep soon. Jack's breathing was deep, with a low, Big Daddy hum in the back of his throat being the only noise in the room. After a second, however, Rosie looked up and coughed emphatically, staring at her adoptive father with a pointed glance. It took a few seconds for Jack to get the message.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" he signed, internally preparing himself for one of those family moments that he was still not prepared for. He clenched his jaw, before looking over to Rosie and smiling about as enthusiastically as he could.

"Can I ask you something, Dad?" Rosie looked pensive, and Jack groaned internally. Yes, this was going to be a situation where he had to dispense fatherly advice. He'd only been at this 'father' thing for a few years, and even though he thought he was coping, he wasn't wholly sure about how much.

"Go ahead."

"It's about…" Rosie glanced from side to side, before finishing her sentence in a guilty whisper. "Rapture."

All those years ago, Tenenbaum had made it clear that they should never talk about Rapture. Now, he realised what she was doing – if the girls, with their young minds and running mouths, mentioned the underwater city at the wrong time to the wrong people, there could be trouble. The last thing they wanted was for someone to realise that they weren't just survivors of a plane crash, to find the city and its technology and take it back to the surface. But it had instilled a paranoia in the young girls, and even now they were reluctant to talk about it for fear of the consequences, even behind closed doors.

"It's okay, Rosie," he signed to her, smiling comfortingly. "You can ask."

"Okay," she said, biting her lip. "I'm sorry, dad. I just wanna know."

She took a breath, not quite meeting his eye. Instead, she stared at the curtains across the room, ugly and threadbare in a shade of green that nobody could find appealing. Her gaze shifted, across the flowered wallpaper and the sparse photographs of the family, to the blank ceiling. She sighed again, looking back down at Jack.

"You said we were probably born in Rapture, right? And our parents came down from the surface."

Jack nodded, not sure where she was going with this.

Rosie tapped her pen against the desk, ink splotching onto her hand. "Does that mean we might have other family up here, and not even know about it?"

It was a question Jack had dreaded hearing, and one he had no answer for. He thought for a moment, screwing up his face as he chose his words very carefully. Eventually, he raised his hands with an apologetic look in his eyes.

"I don't know," he signed, and Rosie's face fell. "We don't know much about who you were before you were a Little Sister. You might, you might not. There is no way to tell." His sign for 'Little Sister' was something he had made up himself – a quick mime of him drawing a needle out of a body and putting it to his face. It usually made Rosie at least smile to see her adopted father acting like a little kid. This time, she barely even reacted.

The girl nodded stoically. It was the answer she had expected, evidently, although not the one she had wanted. Uncomfortably, Jack clenched and unclenched his fists, before raising his hands once more.

"I'm sorry," he signed, and Rosie nodded again. She bent her head over her homework, her hair falling once more into her face. This time, she seemed not to notice it. Jack almost went over to her, tapping her on the shoulder and offering some other meaningless signs of comfort, but it was at that moment that there was a knock on the door.

Specifically, there were three knocks – short, sharp, and to-the-point. Jack knew that knock instinctively; he heard that knock every other week, and it was always a welcome sound. It was Doctor Tenenbaum's knock.

Rosie looked up at the sound, and gave Jack a half-smile, her brow still furrowed in thought. Wordlessly, she gathered up her homework and went out of the door behind her, her light footsteps ascending the stairs.

Jack turned, reaching out to open the door. Doctor Tenenbaum stood behind it, her greying hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing the same mustard-coloured jumper and brown skirt that she seemed to be wearing every time she visited. Her face was, as usual, devoid of emotion. She acknowledged him with a nod, and made no move to enter.

"Doctor!" Jack had no specific sign for Tenenbaum – he just called her 'Doctor', and she accepted that. "Come in. How are you?" he signed to her as he motioned her into the house with his head. She stepped inside, coming into the living room to perch precariously on one of the armchairs. Jack took the other one, sitting opposite her and looking her straight in the eye.

"I am well, thank you," Tenenbaum said, her voice clipped and formal. This wasn't too unusual, but there was something new to her tone that gave Jack pause. While he searched for something else to say, he looked her up and down, trying to assess what was different today. Her hands were clenched tight on her lap, so tight that her knuckles were white. Her jaw was set, her gaze firmly fixed on him, with her shoulders high in some kind of anxious anticipation.

"You look upset," Jack ventured, not wanting to cause offense. He had learned a lot about what people on the surface were offended by in his time up here, and he was always cautious to try and avoid that.

Tenenbaum shook her head slightly. "Yes," she said briskly. "This I will discuss. But first, tell me: how are the girls?" She leaned forward even more in her chair, looking at Jack inquisitively. It was always like this – before she talked to Jack about anything, she would always discuss the girls first. Despite everything, they were her first priority.

"Doing well," Jack signed, the smile creeping onto his face as he warmed to a subject that, admittedly, he liked. "Masha got an A last week in her English exam. And Rosie has been helping me at work sometimes." He paused, almost not wanting to sign the last part. "They haven't called me Mister Bubbles in months."

The doctor nodded, her mouth twitching upwards in the semblance of a smile. "This is good. Their rehabilitation is working faster than I had thought." She leaned back a little, until her back was just brushing the chair. She bit her lip, her mind obviously on other things. "And you?"

He stopped for a moment, thinking it over. 'Coping' would be the best way to describe his state. He was moving forward, taking every day as it came. Dealing with the past was as easy as not acknowledging that it existed, and throwing himself into the challenges of every day. Was it a distraction? He didn't know, and he wasn't going to admit it.

"As well as I can be," he signed, his grim face showing the compromise.

Tenenbaum nodded, her thin lips stretched into a worn smile. "I understand," she said, and it seemed all that needed to be said. They were never really good at the emotional side of things, Jack had realised over the years. He hadn't considered it at first – he was raised by Tenenbaum, as much as one could call it that, and her style of emotional detachment had registered for him as normal for the first few years of his surface life. But after a while he had grown less shy, more eager to interact with new people, and he had realised that most people weren't like Tenenbaum. Most people didn't immediately grow cold whenever there was a mere hint of emotion in the air. He understood why. She had told him one night, a couple of years ago, about the circumstances that led her to Rapture. It had taken him a while to comprehend exactly what she meant, as well as an hour or so of looking things up in the local library, but he understood.

They sat together, in Jack's small living room, for a moment, the silence ringing in their ears. Tenenbaum was picking at her nails with her teeth, her eyes decidedly not meeting Jack's. His brow furrowed as he looked on her, concern flooding his mind. He felt a sense of childlike panic, the worry a kid feels when they see their parents upset. He grunted, attracting Tenenbaum's attention up to him.

"What did you want to talk about?" he signed, trying not to let the tension he felt show in his hands.

But Tenenbaum hardly reacted, her eyes barely even flickering over to him to read his signs. She sighed, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath. Opening her eyes, she looked him square in the face, her eyes wide and filled with anxiety. "I am going back to Rapture," she said, her voice ringing clearly in the empty room.

"What?" Jack's expression was aghast as he made the sign, the motion a lot more intensive than it should have been. He couldn't believe it. After all that they had been through to get out of Rapture safe and alive, after all that they had suffered and sacrificed to make a life for themselves up on the surface, she wanted to go back? It was a terrible idea. There was no way that any good could come of going back to Rapture, even if she could find a way back into the city without attracting attention. "Why?" he signed, his mouth agape.

Tenenbaum shifted in her seat, twisting her hands together as she tried to explain. "Something is happening on the coast," she began, her voice low and faltering – but still, she was looking straight into Jack's eyes, fixed with a determination that Jack recognised as being unstoppable. "I hear things, sometimes. Little girls are going missing. And each time, a light from the sea."

"You think it is from there?"

"It is increasingly likely." Tenenbaum bit her lip, nodding faintly at Jack.

He shook his head. "But not certain." He met her eyes, desperate to try and convince her out of this. He had no idea what he would do without her there, that was the worry that he had. He had never been a social person, given the lack of time to develop any social skills, and if he was honest with himself, Tenenbaum was the only person he ever really saw outside of work. She may not have been the kind of person that you could spill your heart out to, but she was still there for him when he needed her.

But to go back to Rapture…he closed his eyes, remembering. The claustrophobic tunnels of the city, closing him in, trapping him. The weight of the water above, threatening to crash through the glass and smother him. The silence of the dead city, broken only by his footsteps and the sound of his gun – until a Big Daddy groan echoed from some far-off room. Crouching beneath a table as gunfire cracked above his head, the sounds of splicers sharpening blades or banging pipes against the walls, calling to him, beckoning him out of his hiding place. Blood, red and bright, on the grimy floors from another faceless enemy, their expressionless mask staring up at him, its white surface covered in red and black. How anyone could go back there was nigh-on unthinkable to him.

"I have to see. To finish what I have started." Unconsciously, Tenenbaum's hand curled into a fist on the arm of the chair. Her gaze was unflinching, her face was lined with determination. Still, Jack was unconvinced.

"Who could be down there?" Jack's signing was getting faster, more erratic, as his frown deepened. "The city is broken. Andrew Ryan is dead. Fontaine is dead." Although even as he signed it, he remembered how big the city of Rapture was. There was no way he had seen anything more than a short fraction of it during his time down there. Who could tell how many others there had been, waiting there unspliced for anyone who would come their way, with their own nefarious agendas.

Tenenbaum nodded slightly, as though to confirm his thoughts. "There were…others," she said slowly. "People who would take over the city, given the chance. And the splicers, they are stronger than anyone I have seen. They carry on." She snorted. "Survival of the fittest, they call it."

Jack sighed, running his hand down his face, trying to clear his head. The problem was, Tenenbaum was an adult. He respected her, both as the person who had raised and saved him and as a valuable friend. And she seemed to know what she was doing – it wasn't as though she hadn't survived Rapture before. But it had been so long, and the city was so dangerous. If there were any splicers down there, they would be stronger than any human could face. Putting those thoughts aside for a moment, he raised his hands to sign again. "How are you even going to get there?"

"I have my methods." Tenenbaum sat back, tight-lipped. Jack gave her a look, and she sighed. "That bathysphere we arrived in, I have been repairing. It will suffice." There was a note of steel in her voice, and Jack realised that he could not convince her out of this. She was determined to save the Little Sisters, no matter what it took, and no person could tell her not to. Not even him.

"Do you really have to go?" His look was pleading now, blatantly so, but Tenenbaum just shook her head.

"I have no other choice."

Jack clenched his jaw with a slight nod. It was time to make a choice of his own. "Then I'm going with you," he signed, trying to get the same no-nonsense look that Tenenbaum was exuding so that she wouldn't argue with him.

"No."

Jack began to sign, desperately. "But you need-"

Tenenbaum raised her hand, shutting off his protest. "I said no, Jack." Her voice was firm, and he looked to the floor, sobered. "You are needed here. The little ones, they cannot live up here on their own. I am prepared, this time. I will go alone, and I will survive." She smiled softly at him, sadness creasing the corners of her eyes. "They need their father, Jack. And so do the girls that are still in Rapture. For their sake, I need to go."

Jack sat back, resigned to his role. Truth be told, he didn't exactly relish the idea of going back there, but he would have done it to keep her safe. Now, as the relief that he didn't have to washed over him, he felt a twinge of guilt at leaving her alone to face that place. But at the same time, he knew that she was strong. She could do this, with or without him. With a rueful smile, he signed to her again. "Good luck, Doctor. You're going to need it."

She smiled, standing up out of her chair and smoothing down her skirt. "Look after the girls. I will see you again, Jack." She took his shoulder, squeezing it softly before turning to leave. Jack waved at her, trying once more not to let his hand shake.

Without another word, she headed for the door, Jack following her. The silence between them was comfortable, if tinged by the weight of what was to come. At the door, they stopped and Jack waved again, bidding Tenenbaum goodbye once more.

"Do not worry, Jack," she said softly as she stood by the door. "I will survive Rapture once more."

He just looked at her, pity in his eyes. "I hope so," he signed, and with that, she was gone.

As he closed the door and turned away, he could feel the dread bubbling up from the pit of his stomach. That was it. Tenenbaum was gone, and he had no way of knowing when she would be back. If she would be back. Behind him, he felt Rosie's hand on his shoulder, and as he turned her concerned eyes seemed to bore into him.

"What was that about?" she asked, head tilted to one side. "Is something wrong?" Of course she would think that, Jack mused. Usually when Tenenbaum came over she spent at least a little time talking to the girls, seeing how they were doing. The fact that she had come and gone so quickly meant that something unusual was happening, at least.

"Don't worry," Jack began, trying to keep his expression neutral. "Doctor is just going away for a while. She will be back soon."

"Oh, is that all?" Rosie said, her face brightening. "Fair enough. Thanks, Dad!" She skipped away, leaving Jack alone in the empty landing, burying his head in his hands.

She would be back soon. Jack felt another prick of guilt from lying to his daughter, but that was what she had said. 'I will see you again, Jack.' Jack trusted Tenenbaum with everything, had done ever since they got out of the city. How could he not trust her with this? She would keep her word, he decided. She would go to Rapture and return triumphant, unharmed with a group of Sisters in tow. A hero. It was a compelling image, and a faintly ridiculous one at that. Jack smiled, sadly. But that was what she said she would do, what she believed.

He just hoped, for all of their sakes, that she was right.