Slight warning for this chapter: there is some brutality in the first major fight scene we see in the story. 'El' is quite murderous when it comes down to it, and there is evisceration and limb-tearing. Not too graphic, I hope, but it's a warning all the same.
Jack uses his new Old Man Winter Plasmid for the first time to successfully freeze the burst water pipe, much to everyone's relief. Sally grabs Jack's hand as soon as it's available, staying close to him despite her almost immediate acceptance of the splicer—El, he autocorrects inside his own head. Might as well use her name, or at least the name she's given herself. He wonders if El is short for something. He wonders why he cares.
They reach the tram station, at long last, passing through quickly before boarding the actual bathysphere itself. El seems amazed at all the technology just at their fingertips, and reverently runs a hand over the window port once they're inside. Jack notices her severed pinky again, and means to ask about it, when Sally beats him to the punch.
"What happened to your finger?"
"Sally!" he hisses, pretending he wasn't about to ask the same thing.
El looks away from the window and down at her own right hand, inspecting the severed digit in question as if she had never seen it before. "Gone'," she says, showing Sally.
"We know it's gone," Jack intervenes, before she can start rambling again. "Sally was just asking how it happened. How'd you lose your pinky?"
"Oh." The woman stares at her pinky again, flexing what's left of it—not much, admittedly, and she's more moving her hand side to side since there's no joints left in the finger. She seems to make up her mind after a moment, removing the black thimble that's covering it. Jack looks closer as Sally recoils in fear.
"Oh, it's not that bad," he chides, examining it. It looks like she cut the finger off herself, no way was that an accident or proper incision done by a surgeon. The end of it is crooked and malformed, suggesting unprofessionalism, and the thimble, once she replaces it, sits haphazardly on the finger itself. The only question remaining is why. He's seen splicers do some really weird shit to themselves but this takes the cake. Self-mutilation?
"Did you cut it off yourself?" Sally asks, completely oblivious to how not okay that question is.
"Sal, don't ask her that," he chides, but El jut shakes her head, apparently unbothered by the question. She shoves her pinky into Sally's face again, showing off her thimble. She looks deep in thought, as if seriously considering the question, and Jack finds himself against his better judgement interested in what she'll say next.
"Pretty pretty," she babbles instead, smiling, and Sally smiles back.
"Pretty pretty," she parrots, and Jack decides to tune out the infant babbling of two people who should really know better.
He turns to the controls, examining the destination selection, and frowning when almost all of the options are gray. That means that the destination can't be reached, and that in turn means that without even looking Jack knows they only have a couple of options. He takes a closer look at the options themselves—most of them are just places in the main area of Rapture, like Mercury Suites or Olympus Heights, residential areas like that. He supposes it makes sense—after all this had been a shopping mall. Apollo Square, Fort Frolic, and Arcadia are on there as well, all of them gray. The only ones that are lit are to places he's never heard of: Athena's Glory, High Street, and Housewares. El sees him looking at the directory and points to Housewares.
"Housewares? Are you sure?"
"We're looking for a boat, to take us to Lilly Poppy. Mister Jack says we can't use this boat because it won't go to the surface, but...um…" Sally looks to Jac for help, and he fills in the blanks for her.
"My plan is, we find a bathysphere at one of those stores that sells them, somehow get it down and in the water, and ride it up to the surface. No plan yet on how we're going to get off the lighthouse, but at least we'll be breathing fresh air."
El nods like she understands. "Good plan. Bathysphere goes to sub bay, we ride to surface there. Go here, we find it."
"Sub bay? Do you mean the one in the Smuggler's Hideout? There's no way a private bathysphere company would deliver there. Though—wait, although; private bathyspheres do have a market here in Rapture, obviously, so they'd need a place to put them. Is there a dock or some sort of hub where everyone's private bathyspheres are sent until they need them?"
"No," Sally speaks up, surprising the two adults in the small shuttle. "Private...ba-thy-spher-es are just sent to people's houses and they can have a place for them built in."
"Aaaand you know this how?"
The girl shrugs, not offering up an answer. El, however, nods approvingly, patting the Sister on the head none too gently, though probably not on purpose. "Good Little Bird," she hums, and Sally preens at the praise. Jack rolls his eyes. They'd adjusted to having her around far too quick, or at least she had. He's still wrapping his head around it. Anyways.
"Well, that's something, I suppose. We'd just have to select a bathysphere, provided there's at least one left, select some random person's apartment from whatever grid they have on system there, and then we go get our bathysphere. In theory, simple. In practice, probably exhausting and extremely time-consuming. But hey, we've got nothing but time, so I'll take it."
"Good plan?" El asks 'Little Bird'. Sally nods, giving Jack a thumbs up. "Good plan," El tells Jack, mimicking the action.
Jack wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all—imagine, a disgraced and deeply traumatized freak of nature, picking up an orphaned but immortal little girl who's worth her weight in sass, taking on a city of drug-addicted freaks and disillusioned idealists who want to watch the world burn. People exactly like the disillusioned drug-addicted freak they've just picked up, who's missing a bit of her face and several other essential body parts, and said addict doesn't want to kill them because she's got enough brains left, somehow, to realize that she wants to see the surface and know that they're her only hope of doing so. What the hell.
He sighs deeply, running a hand over his face and rubbing his eyes to banish the tiredness from them. He needs to sleep, or he fears he'll collapse. Just a few minutes. But he doesn't trust the splicer—El, he reminds himself—not to snatch the kid while he dozes, or for either of them to go off on their own and leave him here.
"Okay. So, Housewares? That's where the Bathyspheres DeLuxe is. You're sure?"
"Yes," comes the simply reply, and Jack, knowing that there's no way he's not going to regret this, selects the destination and pulls the lever.
The ride there is fairly short, and submerged in darkness—most of the neon signs announcing the individual buildings had long since been damaged beyond repair, though they're the only part of Rapture that looks damaged on the outside too. It's over almost as soon as it begins, and for that, Jack is thankful—he doesn't want to be cramped up in a space with this splicer any longer than he has to. The bathysphere port they surface in is incredibly poor lit, Jack being forced to equip Incinerate! and illuminate the way for the rest of them. The first thing they see as they step out of the bathysphere is a Little Sister vent, the design far different than the usual ones seen around the rest of Rapture. There's almost nothing else of interest—it doesn't look like they've even surfaced in an official dock, actually. It's too dark to actually see, and the light from Jack's Plasmid isn't helping much, so he decides to put the splicer in front of him as protection against unseen threats, grab Sally, and begins to lead the charge out of there.
"El, do you have any idea where we're going?" Jack asks after a bit of wandering and mostly blindly following the splicer in front. She seems to have some solid idea, which is more than he has, but he'd rather not put his and the girl's life in her hands if he can help it. If there's some way to wrestle back the bit of control he'd lost, he'd like to know.
"Toys," is her brilliant response. Jack can only assume there's a Toy Department somewhere, and that's connected to wherever the Bathyspheres are. He nods, accepting this, and they continue on.
They're only interrupted once, when Sally shrieks and backpedals furiously away from whatever it was that had startled her. Both Jack and El quickly whip out their weapons and point them in the direction Sally had run from, but all that's there is a puddle of water. Jack immediately understands, and turns to Sally, holstering his gun.
"Hey, hey, it's alright. It's just water. I know you don't like it—here, I'll carry you, okay?" he coaxes, reaching out to take the girl in his arms. She cautiously but quickly jumps into them, and Jack once again adjusts her on his hip. He means for that to be the end of it, and for them to continue forward, but El points at the girl, confused.
"Little Bird?" she asks, worried.
"She's just scared of the water," he explains, sidestepping her and moving forward. There is more light here, coming from somewhere up above—they should head that way, he thinks.
"Water? Why?"
He waits for a moment to see if Sally will answer that, since he actually doesn't know himself, but when she just burrows her face farther into the crook of his neck, he sighs, turning to El. "I don't know, and she doesn't feel like talking. It's not really your business anyways, so why don't we continue forward and get this over with, eh?"
"Eh."
Jack sighs again, turning back to his intended path. This is going to take a while.
They emerge, after a short while, in a main area, leading to places with signs that he can't read, either due to them missing several letters, their neon going out, or they're just out of sight. The place is, of course, littered with bodies, but they're only here and there—the puddles, however, are not, and Jack groans as he realizes he's not going to be able to set Sally down anytime soon.
"This way," their new companion whispers loudly, defeating the purpose of a whisper. "Come. Be quiet."
Having really no other choice, they follow her through the area, Jack making a note of the basic layout in case something happens after on and they need to retreat back here for whatever reason. Probably won't happen, but you never know, right? She leads them around the left side of the giant centerpiece of the area, and right behind it is a metal SECURIS door. APPLIANCES/TOYS is written in black on a white, illuminated background above it.
"Well, that was easy," Sally remarks, pointing upward at it. "Now we just need to find the bath—uh—ba-thy-spher-es."
"Sal, you don't have to say it like that."
"That's the only way I know!"
As they make their way further into this section, Jack teaches Sally the proper way to say it, enunciating clearly and making her say it back to him so she'll get it. El, meanwhile, leads them through this particular maze of death and water to the Appliances section, which is as waterlogged and dimly lit as the rest of Rapture. He's not going to be a dick and put her down now, forcing her to get over her fear, but damn, are his arms tired.
They make their way down a grand staircase, Jack more than once misstepping due to the lack of light, and finally, they're in—and that, apparently, is where the real trouble begins. El swings out an arm, whacking Jack in the stomach and depriving him of several seconds worth of air. As soon as he gets it back, he glares up at her, wondering what the big deal is, but she shushes him loudly, pointing to something rounding the corner. A splicer.
Jack rolls his eyes, getting his gun out again, pointing, and shooting the thing in the face, effectively killing him, loudly but quickly. He looks at El.
"I'm good, thanks."
El, if she's displeased by his brashness, doesn't show it, merely nodding and continuing forward. Jack takes extra caution not to step in any of the water surrounding the bottom of the staircase, but it's difficult. Even so, he manages, and they continue onwards through the maze of display pedestals and overturned display cases, until El stops them again.
"More," is the word, and Jack cocks his head, confused. She puts a finger to her lips and then points ahead of them, revealing a group of unusual looking splicers lurking ahead of them. Jack takes out his gun, cocks it, and prepares to fire, but El pushes his raised arm down and shakes her head. "No. Too many. Too strong. I will kill." And with that, she abandons them and climbs the nearby art decor to disappear into the rafters.
It's not in Jack's nature to let someone else do all the work—he needs to be sure that the damn thing is getting done, and well at that, but he's seen her fight once before, so for now he's barely content to let her do her thing and hide himself away with Sally. He moves towards a display pedestal, with a happy mannequin showcasing their brand new oven on top, and ducks behind it, shushing Sally when she speaks.
They're closer to the group of splicers now, close enough for him to get a good, close look at them. He notices that like El, they don't bear the usual trademarks of the normal splicer. Their skin isn't droopy or lumpy, though it is discolored, and in some parts is gone completely. Not like El's skin, though, where it's simply completely transparent, but the skin looks like it's eating away at itself, revealing the raw muscle underneath. It's a disturbing sight, especially when one of them reaches up to adjust their mask, but it falls off, revealing that almost their entire face is muscle.
Jack waits for a few seconds more for El to do her thing, and he's just about to jump out and do the damn thing himself when she strikes, dropping suddenly from the rafters and landing on one of the ones who had wandered away from the group. She sinks her meathooks into his back, tearing them away just as quick, and repeating the process several times while he screams in agony. His screaming, of course, catches the attention of his buddies, and though it's too late for them to save him, they attack anyways. El is quick to fend them off, back-flipping off the tattered corpse and swinging a meathook into the nearest one's eye, and saying that she's about to repeat that particular party trick, he clamps a hand over Sally's eyes and ignores her protests. As promised, as soon as he gets close, she grabs her meathook from his eyeball and rips it out along with his left eye. Disturbing, but fascinating. He moves himself and Sally closer behind the display pedestal, hoping that he doesn't need to get involved.
She rips out the throat of another and eviscerates him while she slashes the face of a different one, ducking when both collide in an attempt to dash her to bits. She rolls out from between them, slashing another face—he can't tell whose from his vantage point. She rips out that someone's nose with her meathook and laughs maniacally when he clutches at it, screaming in pain. Jack winces, though he feels no sympathy for the splicer. His hand is still covering Sally's face, but he's not paying much attention to that, so she's probably already peeking through his fingers. El continues her assault on the noseless fellow, jabbing her hook into his skull, and Jack looks away then so he doesn't know exactly what happens, but he's dead and she moves on to the second to last splicer.
She jumps on his back, perching there catlike as she peers at him curiously. Her hooks are sunk into his shoulders, securing her there despite his thrashing and bucking. El has a surprisingly strong grip, and uses it to her advantage—she tears one of her hooks out and uses it to jump higher onto his shoulders, taking the other hooks with her as she does. She forward flips and turns, slashing his chest and sinking it into a particular spot, wriggling it in further as the splicer attempts in vain to stop her. She stabs him in the neck to stop him, and as his hands fly up to stop the sudden and urgent flow of blood pouring from his neck, she jams the hook into the same spot and rips out an actual organ, though from his vantage point he can't say exactly which one. He thinks it might be a kidney, or a liver. Who knows, who cares.
He actually feels a bit sick, watching her brutal and vicious assault. There is more blood on her clothes and face, dripping from her meathooks along with small chunks of people. Her half disappearing smile is made all the more sinister by the not evil, but incredibly disturbing grin spread on her face. He can only imagine how Sally feels—he doubts she's ever seen this level of brutality before. He certainly hasn't, and he's seen a lot since he came down here.
The last splicer cowers before her, pleading for his life, and she kicks him to the ground, standing over him and tilting her head birdlike as if unsure what to do with him. Or perhaps she's considering which bloodthirsty method of execution to choose. Either way, she doesn't move for a few long seconds, enough to give the splicer pause and believe for a foolish second that she's not going to do anything. Jack shudders as he realizes that had he been a bit more foolhardy, and if he hadn't had the girl with him, he might not have been spared either. He probably could have fended her off, sure, but he wouldn't live to tell about it. He's suddenly very glad she's on their side.
The enemy splicer, in a rare moment of semi-cognitive thought, kicks El's legs out from underneath her and jumps up, brandishing a gun in her face and yelling something Jack's not even sure is English. El is quick to react, proving yet again that she's not as simple-minded as the rest of her kind, and pulls out a gun from somewhere and shoots him point blank in the face, causing his head to literally explode all over her face. Every threat neutralized and her new friends safe, she returns to them, taking the consideration to wipe her face on the dress of one of the display mannequins.
"All better," she announces, as if they didn't get the message. She crouches down next to them, bopping Sally gently on the nose as the girl separates herself from Jack. "El is a friend."
"Yeah, we figured as much," Jack responds after a moment, still slightly shaken by the merciless display. He'd seen and done some serious shit, but he's never ripped out someone's organs before, just filleted them alive.
"All better," Sally mimics to El, her loyalties clear. Whatever happened to the whole bonding thing they'd had going before El had showed up? He thought they were getting somewhere. He shakes his head, interrupting the conversation before it can go further.
"Yeah, all better. So there's no more splicers. Next time, let me do the killing, alright? I won't make such a show of it, and it'll be far easier to just shoot them and go. None of your fancy acrobatics."
El cocks her head to the side as her gaze shifts from Sally to himself, watching him curiously even though he's not doing anything. He endures this for all of five seconds before standing up, stepping over her and Sally and turning back towards them. "If that's all the splicers for now, then we'd best get going. More will no doubt turn up and I have no desire to stick around waiting for them."
El is still staring at him, but Sally jumps up and rushes to grab his hand, squeezing it tightly and trying to use it to pull herself up onto his hip. He catches wise pretty quick, and at first attempts to let go, but of course all that ADAM running through her veins, she's far stronger. He still refuses to carry her on his hip again unless he has to. Maybe his shoulders, but not his hip for a long time.
"El?"
The sound of her name stirs her out of whatever stupor she'd fallen to, and she nods, pointing in the direction they need to go. "This way, Ace."
"Well, lead the way, then."
They make their way through the showcase floor relatively quickly after that, stopping to rifle through the area for supplies of any kind. They don't stick around long, as Sally is getting curious as to what the deal with the "angels" is and why she's not allowed to go near them, and she's beginning to not take no for an answer. He himself looks over at the bodies a couple of times, but just a quick glance is enough to make him nauseous. He wonders if there's a way to calm her brutality somehow. Either way, they clear the area before long, and they're on their way through a glass set of double doors when El stops, perking up at something.
"What is it?"
"Sal, shh."
"I'm just asking," the girl complains, tugging on Jack's hand again. He'd neglected to give her another free ride, as there hadn't been any significant sources of unavoidable water since the staircase and his arms are tired. "Up?"
"No. El, what's wrong? More splicers?"
El doesn't respond—she barely even spares them a glance before moving cautiously forward, as if in a trance, towards one of the open lockers in the Staff Only room they'd just entered. Jack cranes his neck to try and see what she's so damn interested in, but her body is in the way, staring intently at whatever it is that had caught her interest. Jack pushes Sally aside, ignoring her questions and protests, and moves slowly towards the splicer, not wanting to send her into a fit. El pushes the locker open a bit further, running her hands over something hung on the back, and Jack groans internally when he sees it's just a stupid poster.
"El, come on. We have better things to do than look at posters of pretty girls."
"Pretty lady?" Sally pipes up from behind Jack, peering past his legs and up at the poster that's stolen El's attention. She tugs on Jack's sleeve, pointing up at it. "Mister Jack, look. That's the pretty lady. The one who saved me," she whispers, perhaps once again demonstrating her intelligence by realizing it might not be the smartest idea to jar the mentally unstable freak in front of them out of her stupor.
Jack looks from Sally, to El, and then to the poster again in a new light. He has his suspicions about El, that's for damn sure, even if the kid might not realize, but he'll analyze those thoughts later. He takes another, closer look at the poster in front of them, starting when he sees the name Cohen written on it.
COHEN'S NEW SONGBIRD, reads the text over a picture of the man himself, looking all too punchable in his crisp suit and surprisingly no makeup face as he purses his lips into a microphone, eyes closed in mock contemplation. Beside him is a woman, one he vaguely recognizes though he can't possibly imagine where, the text over her head reading PRESENTING...EL—and the rest of her name is scratched out, as is the name of the record covering most of her profile and the advertisement at the bottom of the poster.
El...El….
He looks at the splicer woman in a slightly different light now, regarding her with morbid curiosity as a small child would a worm crawling in their mother's garden.
It would seem that El is short for something, after all. Eloise, perhaps. Eleanor? If she does manage to get out of this with her mind, he'll have to ask. That is, if he doesn't shoot her first. Which he's still planning to do, by the way.
"We should get going," is what he means to say, but the words that come out of his mouth are different entirely. "Was that you?" he asks instead, his voice softer than he'd meant it to be. He realizes he's reaching a hand out for her—he quickly withdraws it, accidentally smacking Sally on the forehead. "Before…before."
El looks back to him at long last, sadness in her eyes, but confusion written all over her face. "Pretty," she says, stroking the picture again, almost longingly. "Before, before. Knew her," she tells Jack, clearly not understanding what the rest of them have already figured out. "Knew her, miss her…pretty birdy…" She points to the woman's neck, at a pendant fastened on a choker—
"But that's you," Sally protests, pushing past Jack who, in his shock that he's actually feeling sympathy for someone else, doesn't stop her.
She points at the woman in the photo—now that he's comparing the faces, he realizes that there's no way it isn't her. Same facial structure, same eyes, same lips. The skin is different, more frostbite and translucency, but everything else is right there if you know what you're looking for. This is her, before splicing and Rapture took away everything she had and everything she was. This is who she wants to be again, who she wants Jack to make her into once more. Jack's heart does that weird twisty thing again, and he freaks out for a second before he remembers that that's called emotion—specifically, sorrow. For another person. Oh, right, pity. That's the word, isn't it? Pity. He pities her.
"That's you, El," Sally tries again, when the splicer doesn't respond. "You're the pretty lady. You saved me, remember? From the bad men. I saved you back, I gave you my ADAM and you came back. Don't you remember me?"
Wait, what?
Sally tries again, turning fully to El now and tugging on her sleeve, trying to force her to pay attention. No luck. EL is still transfixed on the picture of her past self, looking as sorrowful in real life as she does in the picture. The Little Sister is not to be deterred—she tries again, revealing a bit more incredibly important and relevant information as she does so. "Pretty lady—El—you've got to remember. I sang to you…"
Pretty lady? Wait just a goddamn second.
"Sally, what the fuck are you on about?"
Sally pays him no heed until he grabs her upper arm and drags her back before she gets the splicer to eviscerate her in a fit of confused rage. He's thinking El is less likely to do that now that she's got somewhat of an attachment to them, but she's a splicer, for God's sake. He can't be too careful.
"Hey! Mister Jack!"
"Sally, tell me what is going on right now. How do you know the woman in that poster?"
"I told you, it's the pretty lady. She saved me from the bad men." Her tiny, cherubic face is drawn and defiant as she glares up at him, but the effect is lost by his own anger and confusion.
"You said she died. Or, at least implied it. How is she still alive if Atlas killed her?"
"After she became an angel, I found a pointy stick and gave her some of my ADAM. She didn't come back right away, but I waited really patient and eventually she came back. She started crying and screaming though, so I got scared and left. I didn't see her ever again after that, until I found you and we found her again together."
"ADAM can't bring dead people back to life, Sally." Or, wait, can't it? Technically speaking...he remembers reading something about the human body being able to be revived after death a couple of minutes after the heart stops beating. The exceptions and limitations vary from the different ways of death, and he can't recall the exact number of minutes, but if Sally had gotten to her in time...if she'd loaded her up with ADAM within the time frame, then El and this 'pretty lady' could very possibly be the same person, and by extension, she'd also be the Songbird chick in the poster. "Holy shit," he realizes.
Sally nods solemnly, relieved that he finally understands. "Holy shit," she echoes gravely, to the sudden annoyance of her guardian.
"Don't curse," he says, fully aware that he's being a hypocrite. Eh, he's done far worse. He pulls Sally behind him, storing away the thoughts and theories that having El's identity revealed prompts, and focuses on the here and now—his favorite method of deflection. "Hey, El. We have to get going." He cautiously reaches out a hand and shakes her shoulder, knowing that it could be the last thing he ever did.
Thankfully, it isn't—El starts almost violently, whirling around with meathooks raised and poised for action, but upon seeing her friends, stores them away and raises her hands placating. "All good. El is fine. Just...scared. Ace is saying something?"
It takes Jack a second to remember that he's Ace, and he takes it upon himself to try and rectify that. "No, actually, it's Jack, not Ace. And I was saying that we should get going. It's unlikely that anyone else is planning on hitching a ride to the surface, at least the way we are and with the tools we have at our disposal, but if you don't mind I'd like to hurry all the same. Just to be sure. Also, the sooner we all get out of here, the far better for our mental health."
"No, you are Ace. And I say yes. Let's go."
Jack is fully prepared to argue with her until he's blue in the face, knowing that it won't do him any good but prepared to try all the same, but she's already left, Sally trailing behind her without the usual skip in her step. He decides to file away the name thing for later, and ask after his only sort-of friend.
"Hey, Sal. You alright?"
"No," Sally admits, looking ahead at El, who is babbling to herself about...something. "She doesn't remember me, Mister Jack. Why not?"
"Why are you upset about this now? I mean, no offense, but you recognized her as the lady who saved you as soon as she met us back in the shoe shop."
"She was trying to hurt us then," the girl protests, folding her arms. "After she became nice, I couldn't remember if she was the pretty lady or not, because she looks so funny now. But then we saw the picture and I knew it was her. But she doesn't remember!"
"Sal, you have to understand…" Wait, hang on. He has an idea. "Do you remember anything about your past? Your mom and dad, your home? Your last name?"
Sally considers this very seriously, shaking her head after several long moments. "No. Did I...used to have those things? I can't remember almost anything except for after I met you, Mister Jack."
Jack nods, but spares a moment to roll his eyes. "You can just call me Jack, you know. One of you has to. Anyways, exactly. You don't remember anything from before you became like this. You only really started to remember things when you met me. It's the same for El. She has so much ADAM inside of her that she's gone completely crazy. She doesn't remember where she is, who she is, or anything about who she was before. She doesn't remember you, she doesn't even remember herself. You can't expect her to."
"She's like me?"
"Yeah. Well, maybe not just like you, but close enough. If it helps you understand."
Sally pauses for a long time, so long that Jack thinks that's the end of it and they continue walking, her hand eventually slipping into his as they follow El up some stairs, around some corners, and through a dark, abandoned storage room of a toy store. Eventually, she finally speaks again, and Jack prepares himself for another heavy-hearted and bleak conversation with one of the only residents of Rapture who can't seem to fully grasp it. "Mister—Jack. Why don't you want me to call you Mister?"
Oh. Well, okay. He'll take this over that any day. "Maybe because nobody talks like that? I don't know, it makes me feel weird. Old, I guess."
"Aren't you old?"
"What? Pfft, no. At least—I don't think so." He takes a brief pause to mentally calculate how old he should be versus how old he actually is. He concludes he's about four years old in reality, if he was created in 1956 and it's 1960 now. Damn. The kid next to him is seven, which makes her officially older than him. Fuck. No way in the seven circles of hell is he telling her that, though, so he goes with his fake age. "I'm about mid-twenties, twenty-three or so. I'm fairly young, nowhere close to being even kind of old."
Sally stares up at him, eyes wide in surprise as she lets her mouth hang open in very good imitation of a fish. "Wait, how old is old?"
"Eh, about sixty or so."
"Sixty!" Sally uses his hand to lift herself up over a fallen stuffed teddy bear instead of asking him for help. She stumbles as she lands, but she manages to get herself back up again. "Sixty? Nobody can live for sixty years, that's just ridiculous. You're just a bone man by then."
It takes Jack longer that he cares to admit to realize what she means by bone man—fucking skeleton. "Well, how about this: I'll cut you a little deal, shall I? Kind of like a...uh...oh, like a game. If one of us lives to sixty, then either you or I owe the other one money. Say, around ten dollars?" He's totally joking, of course, this entire conversation being far more light-hearted and actually kind of endearing than he'd hoped or even expected, but she takes the bait eagerly, jumping up and down and nearly toppling them both over.
"Oohh, a game! You're on, Mis—Jack. I'll be the first person ever to live to sixty!" She gives him a long, exaggerated wink, and Jack can't suppress a few chuckles of genuine pleasure. Damn it, she's growing on him.
Oh, what the hell, fine, he's ready to admit it to himself—the little brat's already grown on him, way before this point, and far past the point of no return. He still has no idea what he's actually going to do with her once they're out of this—his original, barely thought about plan of dumping her off at the first orphanage he sees is still the most logical, and practical, but it's become far less appealing than the last time he thought about it. He knows eventually that he'll have to deal with all these emotions and the half-baked plans and the mindfucking theories all swirling around in his cranium right now, but right now is far from the best time to do that. Maybe in a couple of hours, when they eventually have to stop and rest before continuing. He, of course, would love to keep powering on at least until they reach the surface and he knows he's safe at last, but after all he's been through, not even counting the original journey that he'd been through before his brilliant escape out of here—the one with Atlas/Fontaine and Andrew Ryan, boasting a whole roster of colorful characters that had turned out to be equal parts trustworthy and backstabbing. Anyways.
Sally's quiet now, content to walk alongside him and occasionally use him as leverage to pull herself up and over obstacles, which he's fine with. As long as he doesn't have to carry her. Jack falls silent as well, becoming lost in his own thoughts as they finally near the Toys department. He wonders what awaits them there—certainly not the bathyspheres themselves, but El had promised that Toys was where they wanted to go.
He looks up ahead at El, barely visible both in the dim light and on account of how far ahead she is. He thinks about calling to her when she disappears completely from view, having turned another corner, but a few seconds later she pops back, staring at them and waiting for them to rejoin her before moving again.
He goes back to his musings, finally deciding to get at least one of the many nagging thoughts in his mind out of the way while there's a bit of a reprieve. Who knows how long it will be before they can stop and rest, and this particular thing, for whatever reason, won't leave him alone.
The nickname thing.
He still doesn't know what to make of her calling him 'Ace', despite his repeated requests not to, but, as aforementioned, he has a theory. A while back, when they had first noticed El following them, Sally had cautiously called her 'pretty lady'. 'Pretty lady' is what she had also called the woman who had saved her from Fontaine and his goons...and the lady who had given his activation phrase to the man himself. If this woman was somehow the same person, which Sally had said quite plainly that it was, way back in the locker room, then the 'Ace' nickname would make sense, considering the whole 'Ace in the Hole' thing. But what about Sally's, 'Little Bird'? Jack leaves the question behind as he realizes something else about the woman.
She had called him 'Ace', which would of course make sense since she is in fact the 'pretty lady'. But as far as Sally had said, and as far as he could figure, he was already on the surface when that had happened, and she had only given Fontaine the activation phrase. So, unless there were recent photographs of himself down here that were not taken in Rapture, at the time of that event, there is no plausible reason why she should know who he is or what he looks like. It occurs to him that maybe she had heard him talking about himself being the Ace, but the idea is dismissed almost as quickly as it comes.
She couldn't have overheard him talking about it. She had only been following them...well, okay, he doesn't know exactly, but he knows it was sometime while they were in Fontaine's department store. The only time he had talked about being the Ace was with Sally, way back when they were making their way to Artemis Suites, and even then he had not revealed that he was in fact the Ace in the Hole. He didn't even allude to it. Even if she had recognized him from some photos, she's so spliced up she can't even talk in long or complicated sentences, and she can't remember little details of her past either. He thinks it's a pretty safe bet she has no memory of her past, or any idea who she is or was before. He remembers her saying she missed that person, but he wonders if she actually knows who she was or what she's lost, or if she simply knows that she's not right. He supposes there's no point in asking, but he'd sure like to know. He's just glad he's not getting attached to her as quickly as he had to Sally. Though…
He's drawn rather abruptly out of his musings when El stops, holding up a hand and pointing ahead at nothing in particular. "We're here?" he asks, and she nods, more of her hair escaping from the bun she'd put her hair into. "Great. Let's get through here and head to the Bathysphere's DeLuxe." He makes to move forward, past her since she doesn't seem to be moving, but she stops him, whipping out an arm to prevent him from moving. Once again, it knocks the air out of his lungs. She has got to learn how to do that gentler. Once he's got his breath back, he turns to her, incredulous. "What are you doing?"
"We stop here for now. Tired, broken, all of us. Need...healing. And sleep. Then we go to bathyspheres."
"No. Hell no. We're going to the bathyspheres now. I can't stand this place any longer, and especially when we're so close to getting out. We can rest on the surface. I'm not closing my eyes anywhere near you, and neither is Sally."
"You want to die? Want to lose focus and lose pretty head? Get your insides ripped out? Your call. But I sleep. You cannot leave without me."
"Yes, we can," Sally chirps up, for once taking his side in an argument. "If Mi—if Jack says we aren't stopping, we aren't stopping. He's in charge here."
"Sal, I appreciate it, but she's also kind of right. We don't know the way out and she does, and we can't advance without her." El grins victoriously at hsi answer, and Sally looks confused, but seems to accept it. "But," he begins again, before El can butt in, "I'm not sleeping. I am staying awake, to watch over Sally, and make sure you don't sink your meathooks into her, because again, I can't trust you. Are we clear on that?"
"Clear," the woman repeats, and Jack finally relents.
"Alright, good. We'll rest here for about thirty minutes, scavenge for supplies and whatnot, then we're out of here. Understood?"
"Understood."
Ace falls asleep within five minutes of sitting down and resting, Little Bird quickly following his example, climbing onto his lap and encasing herself in his arms. El lets the two of them rest, perching catlike on top of a crate not far from them, guarding her new friends. She won't let them get hurt. They will help her, even if they do not like her that much. That's okay. El likes them just fine, especially Little Bird. Little Bird is sweet, and pretty, and small. She is full of precious ADAM too, but El doesn't care about that.
She cares about Little Bird. She suddenly remembers that Little Bird has a name, like Ace, but she can't recall either of them. She sets to work sharpening her tools and reheating them, all the while trying to recall her new friends' names, but she can't manage it. Why can't she remember? She has never been good at remembering. She can't remember her past—not anything solid, anyways.
El remembers...a city. A pretty, beautiful city, floating high into the sky riding on the clouds. She does not remember its name, or its people, or what it meant to her. She gets more flashes of the city sometimes, when she's reminded—some are of beauty and elegance, but others speak of malice and carnage. She did not know at first if it was the same city, for the two moods of the memory flashes are completely different from each other. But she came to realize that whatever this city had meant to her before, something truly terrible had happened to it. She wonders if it was her fault. It does not matter—she is not there anymore. She is here, with Ace and Little Bird.
Ace is still asleep, his mouth open as he snores. Precious Little Bird is curled up in his arms, like a contented cat, and she smiles—or tries to. She does not find it hard, but Ace tells her that her smile is "horrifying". That means scary. She doesn't want to be scary. But Ace is not awake now, and neither is Little Bird, so she can smile all she wants. No one to scare. She reaches out a half-sharpened meathook, bringing the curved side to underneath Ace's chin, and using it to close his mouth. That should stop the drool, she thinks.
She returns to fixing her weapons, and to her thinking—El likes to think. Her favorite thing to think about is her past, whatever brief flashes she can get of it. She likes thinking about the city. She remembers something else, too, about this place, this city. She hardly ever gets flashes here. She remembers the flash of the pretty woman in the picture, singing a pretty, sad tune, but she can't remember the woman's name or her song. She remembers a flash of the pretty woman, a piece of metal coming through her chest, her lifeless eyes open and sad as she stares at El. She does not like this flash very much. It makes her sad.
Little Bird knows who the pretty woman is, or was. She will have to ask. She had said that the pretty woman was El herself, but El knows she is just playing a game. Little Bird is silly, El is not the pretty woman. El is El.
El has always been El. Hasn't she? It does not matter. El will be okay again, once Ace brings them all to up above and saves them both. She does not know why Ace hasn't fixed Little Bird yet, but she trusts him. He is the Savior. The protector of all the Little Ones. She used to get many flashes about him, all about him. A man, that man, coming down to this city and putting an end to the spinning wheel of blood. He stopped two other men—she had long forgotten their names, though she suspects she once knew—and he saved the Little Ones. He would not hurt her, or hurt Little Bird. He is good.
Speaking of.
"Oh, fuck. Fuck! Sally?"
Ace startles awake, sitting up and searching frantically around him for a few seconds before realizing that the girl he is after is lying right in his arms, startled awake by the screaming of her name.
"Mister Jack! What is it? Are we okay?" She, too, scrambles awake, frantically trying to get out of his hold, but in both of their confusion they end up knocking foreheads. "Ow."
"Wait. Are you...are we...what…" Ace seems to be confused about where he is and what's happening. El knows the feeling.
"You are awake," she tells them, sitting down on the crate at last and eyeing them curiously. "You fell asleep, but no worries. You are still alive. Little Bird is right there." She points to the girl herself, frowning when Jack pulls her closer to him.
"M—Jack, I can't breathe," her muffled voice says into his vest after a moment. Ace releases her, patting her head gently and breathing hard. Nightmare?
"Nightmare?" she asks, and Ace turns to face her, his expression angry, then, confused, then calm again. "It is okay. I get nightmares too." She shrugs. "It happens."
"I…" Ace shakes his head, bringing Little Bird closer to him again, and she seems happy to comply, although still very confused. He takes several deep breaths, seemingly getting his affairs in order, and sighs. "Right. Yeah. I, uh...panicked. I didn't mean to fall asleep."
El nods, suddenly understanding. "You do not trust me."
"Not even a little. But I guess...well. Maybe you've just earned some."
"I do not want to hurt. Only protect, and guide. I want out of here. You are best hope—you leave this place, I go with you, everyone is happy. Yes?"
"Yes," he says, after a moment. He looks like he's thinking. El is not sure what about, but she does not need to know. If she does, he will tell her. He is a good man. "Right, well. We're all rested up, save for you, I suppose. Why don't you get some shut eye while Sally and I look for some supplies."
"Good plan," El announces, and stores her meathooks away, settling into a ball for a quick nap. She does not need to worry about them leaving without her. They won't get far, and besides, unlike Ace, she trusts them.
They are El's friends.