{Somewhere beyond the sea, Somewhere waiting for me}
"So I've made an observation."
Yang looked up from the box she was rifling through in search of ammo for her pistol. Standing opposite of her was her dark-haired client, Blake Belladonna, a woman no older than twenty. Her long hair was pinned up in a bun which was now falling apart due to all of the rigorous activity the two had recently experienced. Fresh and dried blood was splattered on the torn and frayed white skirt she wore, tainting the pure cloth. She was flipping through an unraveled book absently as she waited for the golden-haired detective to finish her looting.
"Oh?" Yang said with a smile. "And what is that, dollface?"
Blake rolled her eyes at another of Yang's ridiculous nicknames and set the book down gently beside her. She crossed her legs and leaned back on the cabinet she was currently perched on, eyeing Yang with the utmost intensity. "You've only been using a fire plasmid."
The young detective crouched on the floor scoffed. "Yeah and this pistol strapped to my hip is just for decoration." As if to prove her point, she yanked the pistol from the holster, twirled it expertly on a single finger, and shot a glass vase across the room, hitting her target dead on and shattering the fragile furniture.
Blake shook her head as Yang returned the pistol to its home on her hip. "No, I meant that the Devil's Kiss plasmid is the only one you use." She crossed her arms and leaned forward, quirking up on side of her painted red lips. "Many people I know have at least three or four handy."
"Yeah, well, I'm not them," Yang tersely said, delving back into the cardboard box. Her entire focus went into the small task at hand, never once glancing back up at Blake. It was clear from her body language – her hunched over shoulders and furrowed brow – how uneasy she was becoming with the subject. Typically, Blake knew better than to pester someone with no desire to talk, but given that this was a rare occurrence for the boisterous detective to be so out of character and reserved peaked her curiosity.
"How so?"
Her question was answered by an exasperated sigh. Yang had closed her eyes and rested her arms on her knees, an attempt to keep her composure. "Y'know, for someone so quiet and reserved you're very nosy."
"What can I say? Curiosity tempts me."
"Curiosity killed the cat."
Blake slid off the cabinet lithely and sauntered over to where Yang was still crouched, not missing the way Yang's lilac eyes followed the sway of her hips. Once she stood right in front of the blonde beauty, the only thing between them the cardboard box, she bent over, hands on her hips.
"And satisfaction brought it back."
Yang choked out a dry laugh, turning her lips up into what was more of a grimace than a smile and rose up to level herself with Blake's face. "Looks like you got more spunk than I originally thought. That attitude could get you into a boatload of trouble 'round these parts."
Blake shrugged and straightened up, looking down on her partner again. "I take my chances. Besides, who're you to talk?"
This time her laugh was more genuine. "Ya got me there, doll." Her smile waned away as quickly as it had appeared and her lilac irises hardened. Blake's smirk disappeared as well and she uncrossed her arms to let them hang limply by her sides, watching as Yang kicked away the junk-filled box. She stepped aside when Yang pushed past her and jumped up onto one of the cabinets that she had previously been seated upon. The brunette dared not to move and instead opted to carefully watched Yang as her expression gradually darkened as the seconds ticked by, an odd look on someone so loud and rambunctious as she.
"I have…issues with ADAM," Yang began. "You could say I'm not a very big fan of the side effects."
Both of them simultaneously glanced over at the mutilated corpse of the splicer they had to kill to get into the abandoned shop. Blake nodded in understanding. ADAM was like a bad, addictive drug that was quite difficult to stray from. Those who overdosed on it lost their minds along with any semblance of their humanity. To get spliced up was the easiest ticket to damnation.
"I don't think anyone in all of Rapture is keen on the side effects," Blake agreed.
"Except the few desperate bastards," Yang rebutted. Blake didn't respond.
"If I get too many plasmids, I'll eventually start using ADAM to make it easier on myself. And I've seen firsthand what that does to a person," Yang continued.
Blake frowned. Hadn't just about everyone? Her eyes strayed to the dead splicer again, making a face at his rotting flesh and pus-filled blisters. Yang seemed to notice her client's gaze and chuckled lightly, yet it lacked any actual amusement.
"No, I mean I've watched it happen right before my eyes. The whole damn process." She paused, eyes looking off in the distance beyond the walls of the shop, beyond the ruins of the underwater prison, perhaps beyond Rapture itself. "It's sickening," she spat. Her eyes dropped down to her lap and her tone softened to one of a small child left alone in the dark filled with ghastly creatures. "It's frightening."
Neither spoke for a moment, Yang lost in whatever memories she was experiencing, Blake lost in the tragic beauty of the blonde. Her long, voluminous hair was loose and down just as unruly as it had been when Blake had first stepped into the young detective's office to hire her. She was wearing high-waisted, pinstripe slacks and a crème blouse, straying from the typical feminine apparel of skirts and dresses. It suited her.
Blake was snapped out of her reverie when Yang finally moved to reach into her pocket where she pulled out a carton of cigarettes. She shook one out and stuck it between her lips before holding out the carton to her employer. The dark-haired woman scrunched up her nose in distaste and Yang shrugged, withdrawing her offer with a muttered "suit yourself" around her cigarette. Smoking was a filthy habit, one she would never allow herself to indulge in, yet she still watched in complete fascination as Yang snapped her fingers, producing a small, flickering flame displaying the fire plasmid she favored over firearms. Plasmids personally weren't Blake's cup of tea, but she'd be damned if she didn't admit they were an interesting concept to say the least.
Yang puffed out a cloud of smoke and looked back up at Blake. "It all started with my mother." She leaned back on a single hand, holding the cigarette with the other." She had agreed to test out the very first prototypes of the plasmids when they first started producing them. They wanted to make sure they'd worked out all the kinks."
"So…like a guinea pig?"
"Exactly."
The stories of the first people to test the newly developed plasmids were infamous. They were brave souls to fully accept the altering of their DNA without knowing for absolute sure what was going to happen to them. However, it was this bravery (or as others might deem it their stupidity) that cost those poor people their lives. Every last one of them. All of their bodies had grossly rejected the DNA-changing chemicals injected into them, practically disintegrating them in the process.
"Yang," Blake started softly but stopped as she was unsure how to continue.
"Save it. I'm not here for your sympathy." She took another puff of her cigarette and flicked the ashes on the floor. "That happened when I was about fourteen. My old man was absolutely devastated. He drank, he gambled, and he drank some more. Eventually all of the pain caught up to him. Soon, drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey just wasn't enough." Her eyes locked with Blake's before she quietly murmured, "So he turned to ADAM."
Blake sucked in a deep breath. Losing both of your parents to something as stupid and dumb as ADAM had to be tough. Especially for someone who hadn't even properly reached the age of twenty. She took a step closer to Yang, hoping to offer some comfort, only to be turned away with a shake of her golden head. The young woman's arms stiffly returned to her sides and she watched still and quietly as Yang rummaged through a pouch clipped onto her belt, finally finding purchase on a wrinkled and folded piece of paper. She handed the slip of paper to Blake, shaking it when the brunette only stared.
Reluctantly, Blake took the slip of paper, brushing her fingers with the detective who seemed to jump at the slight contact. She smirked at the obvious effect she had on the suave woman before focusing back on the folded piece of paper. However when she unfolded it, it revealed itself as a photograph rather than just a slip of paper. Looking at the picture itself, there was a small, dark-haired child with a round face and large, innocent eyes staring right back at her. The child was donning a large, toothy grin, even though a few of her front teeth were actually missing. In her hands was a large cookie – almost as large as her head – already bitten off of. Blake smiled at the cute and innocent picture before looking up at Yang who was down to the butt of her cigarette. She flicked it on the floor before taking the toe of her shoe and squashing the ashes into the floor.
"Who's this?"
Yang shot her a fond smile and glanced down at the wrinkled photo. "That's my little sister. Her name is Ruby."
Blake looked back down at the picture, unable to resist smiling back at that semi-toothed grin. "She's cute."
"I loved her more than anything in the world. I treasure her life more than my own."
Past tense. She was using past tense.
"Yang…what happened?"
The fiery young woman tensed at this, anger building up inside her small frame as she clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. Her hands began to smoke as flames licked at her knuckles and Blake could've sworn she had seen her eyes flash a dangerous, blood red: the eyes of the devil.
She looked ready to burst into flames and explode.
"Those sons' of bitches took her." She pounded her fist into the cabinet, effectively denting it. "They took her away from me."
The air grew harder to breathe from the overwhelming heat of her anger and Blake's heart and throat clenched in comprehension of just what the detective was saying. Her eyes began to water at the thought of just what had happened to this sweet little girl in the picture. Little girls were taken for one reason and one reason only, and many who knew of their fate thought of death highly. "Oh Yang," Blake cried. The blonde didn't look up at her, keeping her eyes downcast; her thick yellow bangs covered the top half of her face.
Blake looked back at the picture in her trembling hands and gulped down a sob. This poor, innocent girl had been turned into one of those monsters, the devil's advocates. She had become a Little Sister.
She had so many questions to ask, so many racking the inside of her brain, questioning what kind of desperate crook would have the stomach and cold heart to turn such a small and defenseless child as the one picture in her hands. So many questions, so many thoughts, yet all she could get out was a stuttered, "H-how?"
Even with a broken question drowned in unshed tears, Yang seemed to understand her just fine. Her body deflated as the rage quickly left her, leaving behind exhaustion and the remorse of someone who had lost so much and done so little. Blake knew the feeling well, almost too well for her liking. Slender fingers found their way to the broche pinning her black scarf together, thumb running over the smooth face of it. The two stood without words, each lost in their own thoughts, drowning in their own regrets, cringing from the overbearing waves of pain and heartbreak that consumed them and swept them out further and further with each haunting memory.
"With all his ADAM abusin'," Yang broke the silence, startling Blake back into the dark shop, clutching her broche so tightly it dug into the palm of her hand. "It wasn't long before he started to get spliced. Ruby and I tried to ignore it, not out of hopes that the problem would stop or go away, but rather because it was easier that way. We preserved the good man, the honorable man our father was before our mother's death and avoided the monster he was becoming." She paused. "In retrospect, I guess that was really stupid, huh?"
Blake sniffed. "Well, you said it and not me."
Her partner shrugged. "I'll admit it, I'm not perfect. Not really tryin' to be either." She slumped over suddenly, resting her elbows on her knees. "But maybe if I had tried, Ruby would still be here.
"So one day, he just completely went rogue," she continued before Blake could get a word in. "Like, really cuckoo bananas, He went off on us, screaming about…anything and everything really. I guess splicers don't need a real reason to scream and shout. With their logic, whatever that is, there's no need to reason anything at all."
Truer words had never been spoken. Blake brought her hand away from the broche, the metal searing her skin now, and crossed her arms around her midriff, holding herself together and shielding herself from more bad memories. She would not sit back and allow them to chain her down and make her weak. Yang clearly hadn't, judging by how sassy she was and her overall happy demeanor most of the time. They were both victims as it were, but Yang chose not to embrace this title and cling to it as Blake once had. But no more.
Yang was now looking at her curiously, noticing that her stare wasn't really seeing anything and that her mind was in other places. Blake nodded for her to continue.
"He tried going for Ruby, maybe he confused her for a Little Sister or something I don't know. I panicked, I didn't want to see her get hurt, so without really thinking about what I was doing I picked up the gun he was cleaning on the table and I…" she trailed off here, fiddling with her fingers and biting her lip. "I shot him. In cold blood."
Blake blinked. Watched your father turn into a monster was one thing, but killing him? That was on a whole new level. Maybe Yang wasn't as bright and filled with never-ending joy as she had first thought. In fact, she had a darker past than most, perhaps even more so than herself. It gave her even more reason to admire the blonde detective after seeing how well under wraps she kept all of this behind her dazzling smile. She was seeing Yang in a whole new light right now and she knew that after they left this dingy shop things wouldn't be the same.
"After that whole ordeal, I decided to run with Ruby, getting as far away from there as I could. It never occurred to me to call the authorities. I guess I was still in shock." Yang straightened up and frowned when Blake went to speak. She tucked her thick hair behind her ear and sat there, a look of concentration on her face. The brunette stood absolutely still, not wanting to risk doing anything to disrupt Yang's focus.
Without warning, Yang hopped down from the cabinet and pushed Blake down and off to the side as her hand reached for her pistol, firing two shots at a splicer who had just rounded the corner. His lifeless body fell to the floor in a heap of limbs and Yang cautiously approached him, gun still aimed. Once she had determined that he was, in fact, dead, she waved over to Blake with a smile and replaced the gun at her hip. "Hey! You think this guy might have some ammo?"
Blake narrowed her eyes at the radiant blonde from where she still lay on the floor, having been knocked into some boxes and crates. She stood up and brushed the dust off of her skirt, making her way over to Yang who now flashed her a sheepish grin. Rolling her eyes, Blake jutted out her hip and crossed her arms, donning a smug grin when she noticed once more the hungry look in Yang's eyes as she looked at her. "If not, then maybe some money so you can get some from a vending machine."
"Oh right. Forgot about those."
Blake chuckled. "You'd be a lost cause without me."
"I've handled myself just find before now!" Yang shouted defensively, hands on hips. Golden eyes followed this movement; now it was Yang's turn to smirk. She snapped her fingers and pointed up, causing Blake's face to heat up in mortification. "Eyes up here, doll."
"S-shut up!"
Yang laughed at the flustered woman before crouching down and making work on searching the corpse at their feet. As her hands roamed and prodded, her expression sobered and the depressing air from before returned. Blake's heated cheeks cooled down as she watched Yang work, then glanced around in case there were any more splicers lurking about. They definitely didn't need any more sneak attacks or ambushes, being low on ammo as they were and having been able to find any bottles of Eve for Yang recently.
"We ran for a really long time, ran for so long that we could've run out of Rapture had we kept going just a bit longer. But we both grew tired and Ruby began to cry and became so scared that we came to an abrupt halt in some strange and foreign place. At this point, Ruby was clinging to me for dear life and I realized that I still had the gun I had shot our father with." She pulled out a wad of cash stuffed in the splicer's coat pocket and began straightening out the bills. "We were both lost and hungry and officially orphans. We didn't have anywhere to go, but I still held onto hope that someone would sympathize with us. I was a fool." She tucked away the bills into her pocket and reached for the splicer's gun to check it for ammo. "But it was even more foolish to leave her behind while I searched for help. At the time, I thought keeping her hidden in one place and out of sight would be safer and she'd have less of a chance of being stolen. Oh how wrong I was." She emptied all of the bullets from the pistol into her hand. "I came back without help, without food, with anything, just to watch as the last of my family was snatched up and stolen into the night." She reloaded her own weapon and shut it with a click. "I watched them take her away with my own eyes."
Blake crouched down and plucked a broken, silver pocket watch from the waist of the corpse. "That must've been hard on you."
A short laugh. "That's an understatement, sweetheart."
The blonde then stood up and stretched her arms above her head. 'Well, we best not sit in one place too long. We'll just be sittin' ducks for any splicer that decides to stumble in here." She gave one last roaming glance at the shop, heaving a great sigh. "Kinda wish we'd found some Eve, though. "I'm running real dry right now." Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a blue glow and looked down at her employer to see her holding a full, round bottle of the very substance she was craving. The corners of her lips turned up into a bright smile and she cracked her knuckles.
"Now that's more like it."
Author's Comments:
So here's my first story in months (I'm sure it's crap and I'm sorry.)
I got this idea from watching Cry playing the recent Bioshock Infinite DLC: Burial at Sea. It was originally just going to be a humor-filled adventure between Detective Yang and Blake as they were on a hunt to find out who really stole the Schnee Dust Company's shipment of dust, but then I began writing it as a Bioshock AU and then it got depressing really fast. I don't know how I always revert to angst but I do.
Anyway, if a lot of people like this, not only do I have a continuation of this particular storyline but I have other ones and then little snippets of just little moments between our characters in the city of Rapture. So if this gets good reviews, I may write more for it.
Side note: I have this headcanon that 20's!Yang would be that suave person who's always dealing out different nicknames which annoys everyone around her but Blake somehow puts up with it and even finds some of them endearing (the only one she doesn't like is "toots" and Yang stopped calling her that after the first time).