A Saint in Rusting Armour
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Author's Note: MAJOR SPOILER WARNING for those who haven't finished Bioshock 2. This is a drabble about the best of the good endings. And yet it's still so sad...
Eleanor stood by her father's corpse.
He hadn't been her real father; she never knew who that man had been. But in every other respect, this man was her father. He had always been there for her after she had been kidnapped from her mother and placed in Little Sister orphanage. And on that horrific day, when her mother had killed Father, he had ceased to be there for her.
But she had waited and bided her time. She knew that her mother's first thoughts of her had been disgust at what she had been turned into, before such feelings turned into blind greed for what she could be. Mother would never have called it greed of course. That was a product of the Self, a concept loved by Ryan. But it was greed all the same, a hunger for her collectivist utopia. She had believed that for utopia to exist, the people had to be changed. And though she had loved Eleanor in her own way, her love had always been hampered by her 'condition'.
But Father had always loved her no matter what she was, or what she did. He had once been there for her before and, after she brought him back to life just a few short days ago, Father had been there for her again.
Father had always protected, had always tried to save her. She loved him for it but she never wanted his love for her to end like this...
He had shielded her from that last spiteful trap left by Mother. He had protected her one last time and he had paid the price, the last price he would ever pay.
She cried silently as her probe extracted the last flows of Adam from her dying 'knight in rusting armour'. He had wanted it to be like this. Even in his death throes, his only thoughts had been to protect her, protect her by giving her the precious fuel that gave him life.
As his lifeblood joined hers, he felt his mind slide through her and join the rest of the others inside her. Even though she wasn't calling on it, she could feel the love, mercy and compassion that made her Father who he was. His rages had been terrifying things to behold, smashing Splicers to red mush in bursts of raw, unfettered power that not even her new Sister suit and powers could match. But after the rage had left him, he had always granted mercy to those who would see him dead. He never killed or harmed anything that had not been attacking him or others. He had always rescued the Little Sisters and had saved them from those who would hurt them.
One of those sisters walked past now. A large group of them were milling around aimlessly on top of the floating escape pod. He had saved them, each and every one of them.
But where would they go now?
She and the rest of the sisters had lived their entire lives under the ocean in a society that had been nothing but a series of social experiments by a series of tyrants with good intentions, Mother being but the latest of them. Before now, none of them had even seen the sunlight. It blinded them, even though it was setting.
They had been creatures of darkness, all of them.
She felt the wind tease past her hair and pale skin and she thanked the creators of the Big Sister suits that the helmets were detachable. The rest of the suit wasn't however. It was permanently fused to her body, giving her life. How would the surface ever accept them for who they were? Mother had said it best when she claimed that Rapture was a 'place of monsters'.
She looked back at the body of Father and chided herself for her self-pity in the light of his sacrifice. Father had been burdened with a bulky monstrous suit while hers was relatively form-fitting and lithe. And he had never even been able to take his helmet off either. And he hadn't sat around moping; he had gone and done something about it, helping people along the way.
A small bittersweet smile lit up her face. Mother had always been in search of a 'secular saint', a being of infinite compassion and mercy, with no sense of Self, always willing to help others. Only then she said, could Utopia ever be achieved. But Mother had been blinded to the truth.
Such a being had existed all along. He might not look it with his massive frame and bloodstained drill grafted to his hand, but Delta...Father, had been a saint all along.
The light from the setting sun seemed to paint the whole sea red and gold. It was beautiful, even if it stung her eyes to look at it. There was so much beauty here. Now that they had seen it, they would never be able to go back. She smiled as she felt a phantom hand on her shoulder and a comforting groan from a man that was dead. He was not dead. Not really. He was part of her now, his Adam was her Adam, his blood was her blood, his mind was joined with hers. She would never be alone again.
The surface may not be ready for them...but since when had she cared about whether other people were ready for them or not? Utopia was waiting.
End