Fontaine's heart feels like it might explode. It's beating too fast, way too fast, and it hurts. He can feel it pounding against his ribs, threatening to beat right out of his chest.
Maybe all that ADAM is giving him a heart attack. Maybe it'll kill him so he doesn't have to do it himself.
His body aches. Legs, arms, back, chest, head.
There's too much going on.
Too much ADAM. Too much pain.
Just too much.
He can't catch his breath because every time he tries to inhale it feels as if he's being stabbed in the lungs.
Those brats got him good it seems. He's leaking from a hundred tiny puncture wounds letting all that precious blood out. Like a goddamn aquarium leaking precious water.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
He used too much at once. He used enough to kill a damned horse, but somehow he's still alive—for now.
Bones growing, muscles swelling, skin stretching, vocal cords distending and pulling and doing crazy things to his voice. A thousand volts chasing a rabbit through his body, a fire roaring along his blood stream.
Searing, aching, burning, electrifying.
It felt nice at first, the way most things that are bad for you do. He was doing pretty well. He couldn't feel a thing. But then the adrenaline faded and so did the ADAM.
The ADAM got sucked out of him, more like, all thanks to Mister I-Don't-Know-When-to-Quit and his mangy pack of pups.
Fontaine never liked kids much. Especially not these. Dirty, half-rabid, ADAM factory freaks, that's all they are. Or were. They've been cleaned up a little, they aren't drooling slime like they used to, they're eyes aren't glowing piss-yellow, but they're still crazy if the jumping him with syringes is any indication.
Fontaine idly wonders how Jack could stand to fix them. Fontaine had seen Tenenbaum's "reversal plasmid" in action once, and that was enough. He cringes at the memory. Sure, he hadn't actually been there when that Little Sister starting puking up the pieces of a partially dissolved sea slug, but it was enough to hear it over the radio and see it on the monitor from his little office in the Fisheries.
It splattered onto the ground, splash, splash, splash. It just kept coming, racking the tiny body like mad, and Fontaine thought: this is it for her, she's going to puke her guts out; so long, little girl. His own stomach churned and he looked away, but he could still hear it, the splat,the girl's retching echoing over the shortwave. It was like some kind of backwards abortion, this plasmid-induced purging. He glanced again at the monitor. Jack stood beside her, expressionless, like the paradigm of impassivity that he is. Fontaine didn't know how he could just stand there and take it.
Apparently, Jack has taken it five times.
Five girls, five purges, and so it goes.
Fontaine can imagine all the flack Tenenbaum's been giving him. Bless your noble soul, and all that. Maybe Jack does have a noble soul, maybe he actually cares about the kids. Or maybe he's just looking to hook up with Tenenbaum. Whatever.
Fontaine doesn't really care. He's never done much hobnobbing with people of noble inclinations, but he can spot a nice guy from a mile away, and Fontaine's "nice guy" radar has been going crazy ever since he had the pleasure of properly meeting Jack. And in Fontaine's vocabulary, "nice guy" is synonymous with "sucker". The nicer they are, the easier the con.
But then, things went a little awry. The whole "Atlas is a lie" thing didn't exactly go as planned. Fontaine assumed that Jack would take it the same way he took every other inconvenience: by getting a casually peeved look on his face, like you do when the soda machine takes your money but doesn't give you a soda, give the metaphorical machine a half-assed kick, and then move on.
But this time? Well, Jack went a little bat shit. Not like, use-a-hot-clothes-iron-for-a-telephone-biting-people's-heads-off bat shit, just bat shit for him, which involved him marching after Fontaine like an army of Huns and informing Fontaine quite politely that he would be dead very soon.
And that is why Fontaine is so surprised that Jack hasn't killed him yet.
Fontaine's got nothing left. Hell, he barely had the strength to drag himself into the corner. Fontaine's not sure why he crawled behind these boxes of shit while Jack and the girls have their little victory-party-hug-fest, he just felt drawn back there.
Maybe he's ashamed of himself. Maybe he thinks he's unworthy to watch an innocent group hug between a bunch of little mutants and their surrogate daddy. Maybe he's scared. Just a little.
Perhaps Fontaine would rather die where no one can see him instead of giving Jack the pleasure of watching his last breath pass through his lips.
But no, Jack can't let Fontaine have his way. He has to come over and kneel beside him like he's going to pray over him or some shit. At this point, Fontaine wouldn't be surprised.
Fontaine feels the urge to cough up a big wad of phlegm and spit on Jack, just because he doesn't like him. It would be like spitting on Andrew Ryan, too, by extension, and Fontaine always wanted to hock a loogie on the king of Rapture.
He coughs, tries to get something up, but he can't. It hurts too much.
"I'm sorry," Jack says.
Fontaine wants to punch him in his face and say, "You are apologizing to me?" But he can't. Too many words, too much movement.
Instead, Fontaine asks, "What for?"
Jack only shrugs, but he may as well have said: Sorry for your shitty childhood, sorry nobody ever cared about you, sorry you're so miserable.
Fontaine gnashes his teeth, itching to throttle Jack. But Jack doesn't actually know all that stuff, Fontaine just thinks he does. Fontaine is losing it for the last time.
Jack takes out his revolver and Fontaine thinks it's over. Finally.
But instead of digging the barrel into Fontaine's forehead, Jack puts the gun in Fontaine's hand. He curls Fontaine's fingers around the handle for him and says, "Sorry I can't do it."
A whimper escapes Fontaine's lips. A pathetic little noise like a puppy that just got kicked in the ribs. He wants to say, "Now you can't kill a man? Now you're a sensitive son of a bitch? Now it's all sentiment and poetry? All I want is for you to make it quick, and you can't even grant me that?" But again, too many words.
He feels like kicking Jack in the face and screaming, "You promised you'd kill me. You promised!" Jack didn't really, but he may as well have.
Fontaine is sweating like mad and he feels like he's about to piss himself out of fear. The world is shifting around him, the room is spinning, the walls are oozing blood, his head is throbbing. He thinks he's going to be sick, so he squeezes his eyes closed and wills it all to stop.
His heart his pounding, pounding, pounding. His head is pulsing like it's going to explode. Stop, stop, please stop.
When Fontaine opens his eyes again, Jack is still sitting there, staring at him with that sad look on his stupid face.
Fontaine's mouth is bone dry, but he manages a few more words.
"Fuck you."
Jack swallows hard and Fontaine can see the lump move down Jack's throat. Jack gets to his feet, brushes his hands on his pants, and walks away.
No.
Fontaine feels wetness on his cheeks. Tears.
He hasn't cried in ages; he thought he couldn't. But the tears are flowing now.
That heart attack still hasn't happened. God—if there is a god—has no intention of being merciful today. And why should He be? Fontaine hasn't exactly been a force for good. He's always been nothing but a piece of garbage floating along wherever the wind carried him. Sometimes he gave the illusion of being something good, something worth stopping to pick up, but at the end of the day, he was still trash. Always was and always will be.
Maybe that's why his dad dumped him all those years ago. Maybe Fontaine's old man saw that he was worthless from the start. Or maybe the old man was trash, too. Maybe abandoning him was his dad's way of trying to give him a second chance.
Well Fontaine missed it.
He lifts his arm and the gun feels impossibly heavy. He turns his head slightly to the left and lets the barrel rest on his right temple. He lifts his other hand and, clutching the gun with both hands now, puts his finger on the trigger. The thing is already cocked. How thoughtful of Jack.
Here we go, he thinks, shaking, stomach churning like it's full of snakes. Goodbye, cruel world. So long. Sayonara.
Fontaine sees himself on a stage. Ah, the stage, the only home he's ever known. It's so dark that he cannot see into the house, but he knows that there is no audience, the theatre is empty. It's quiet as the dead and a single spotlight shines on him. He paces back and forth, spotlight following his every move, and finally comes to a stop dead center. He moves downstage, looks out into the empty house, and smiles.
There is a bang.
The curtains close.
Goodnight, everybody.
Wow. I did it. After many years of prowling around on the site, I submitted a story.
This story was an experiment that I think went well, but I would so love to hear what you think. I tried my very hardest to make Fontaine sound, well, like Fontaine. But this is still just my impression of him.
Anyway, thanks to anyone who took the time to read this. I hope you enjoyed it. My goal with my writing is to just make somebody happy while they read it. (Then again, I don't know how happy you can be while reading about death.) Feedback would be appreciated too, of course.
Toodles!