Listening to Stanley again after all this time was…nothing short of agonizing.
Sitting back in his seat, Sinclair had to listen to Stanley's fractured ramblings and admiration. The brief pause they'd had, some blessed silence as Delta went about his chores without Stanley's fumbled words was perhaps the best twenty minutes of Sinclair's life.
Granted he'd spent it a touch put off.
While Delta worked, he would occasionally chime in over the radio for pointers here and there with the odd word of distaste for Stanley intermixed here and there for good measure, but when he was quiet it left him with nothing but time to think. There were two thoughts that dominated his mind as he watched through Delta's eyes.
The first was simple enough – what in blazes had happened to Atlas?
Part of Sinclair was incredibly irritated by Atlas's abrupt radio silence. It would have pestered him less had the last thing he heard not been a question from the man running that errand for him. "Who am I looking for?"
A simple question that he thought was perfectly reasonable at the time, although admittedly he had been avoiding names. He usually did now days. But on the slim chance – and chance he wouldn't have put money on – that the old pain in his neck might still be kicking around and continue to pain him, he was willing to be upfront with Atlas.
"You remember Miss White, yes? I should hope so." Sinclair had answered, and it was only when Atlas failed to immediately bite back at him both as confirmation and another chance to snap some rude remark that Sinclair frowned faintly. Beginning to wonder if Atlas had failed to hear him.
When he started to ask just that, Atlas's voice came through the radio again. But not in any comforting way. His tone questioning. "Sinclair?" Atlas called him, voice tinged with irritation. As though it were Sinclair that had kept him waiting rather than the other way around.
There was no great mystery to it. Atlas couldn't hear him. That was concerning.
He heard Atlas try to reach him a few more times but with every word he sounded less present. Further away. Until finally it seemed like Atlas had abandoned the attempts all together. Sinclair vainly tried to raise him through the radio again but was unsurprised when he got no answer in return. Only hearing his name one last time.
And it sounded wrong.
Sounded like Atlas was pleading for something. For him, to be accurate.
At that point Sinclair had set the radio down, leaving it in Tenenbaum's care. The doctor casting him a critical look, one that was both questioning and judgmental. As if she were questioning his logic in leaving her with a direct like to Atlas after she had made it inescapably clear as to how his current status as 'alive' irritated her sensibilities. But Sinclair gave her no explanations.
Some small juvenile part of him thought it served her right. He knew she was keeping cards close to her chest and while he could respect that – his patience for games like that had diminished considerably since Rapture's decline.
So he left the abandoned radio with her and moved to the furthermost train cart he could. A shield of cured little sisters between he and the damn thing. He couldn't stand to be near it, let her figure out the cause for his silence. He would stick with minding Delta, guiding him as he worked through Stanley's ridiculous quest. It was not a wonderful indication as to how his life was panning out that this was to be a solace to him currently. But better he deal with Delta's lack of conversation than sit there and listen to Atlas try to call for him anymore.
Settling himself back down Sinclair took a moment to light up a cigar and ease some of his trodden-on nerves before risking saying a word to the kid. God knows he couldn't be coming off as jittery. Cool and calm – that was what Delta needed right now and Sinclair was nothing if not accommodating to Delta's needs. Anything to keep this ball rolling ever closer to an escape from Rapture.
Satisfied that he wasn't about to flip some switch inside of himself he didn't want to know the reaction for, Sinclair let out a steady stream of smoke before letting his gaze adjust to the feed from Delta's helmet. Still busy on his errands, always so busy.
All this finally brought him to that second thought of his, which was arguably far more critical to his current circumstances than Atlas's peculiarities had been.
Just how far did Stanley's knowledge go?
How much did he know and how much of it would come out of his spliced-up ramblings?
When he blinked Sinclair was sure his mind took the opportunity to further push his buttons, set him further on edge. Behind his closed eyelids Sinclair could still see the flickering film reel that Stanley had put on for them. An already hazy footage becoming more difficult to make out through Delta's eyes. Not that it mattered, Sinclair knew well enough who the stocky boy on the reel had been.
Sighing with a weight that seemed heavy beyond his years, Sinclair sat forward with his fingers pressed to his temples. Trying to massage the headache out through sheer force. It went nowhere.
Part of him, a small and resentful part of him, wished that he'd had the ruthlessness of Ryan or Fontaine the first time Stanley came to him. Wanted to write about his work for that paper he cared about so much. Sinclair let him of course, with a sly smile and the agreement that he'd only write what Sinclair liked the sound of. Nice things. Things he could buy Stanley's pen to write.
He harped on about integrity now, but he'd always been a rat. Ryan sent him all around Rapture to dig up dirt, sneak into people's areas of comfort. Their business, their home, their weird artistic parklands.
Even then it hadn't been hard to pay him off and back then when he'd read over the glowing reviews Stanley left him – he'd been quite pleased with the result.
Now, however, he found himself wishing he'd seen the rat for not what he was but rather what he could be. A problem.
Ryan and Fontaine had ways of making problems disappear. Ryan sent them to him, Fontaine sent them to an early grave. But Sinclair had never been a killer. Never directly and very rarely indirectly. It wasn't part of his business model. He used money and a quick wit to deal with his problems.
For once that seemed to have failed him and now Stanley was out there, spliced off his rocker an' spilling names like 'Johnny Topside' all willy-nilly.
What if the next words he happened to let fall from his loose lips were things like Persephone or test subject?
His headache grew worse.
Fortunately, thus far Stanley was too busy garbling around all of that awe he had jammed down his throat to say anything besides how wonderful it was to have Johnny around to say anything particularly meaningful.
Harping on about how he was just so lucky to be working with his hero Johnny Topside. Fighting some imagined wat with Ava and her band of needle-jabbers. To vaguely quote something he'd said in passing. He said so much in passing. It all blurred.
Still, there were moments that his prattling turned Sinclair's stomach. He'd returned to the radio, erratic and delusional as ever. Telling Delta that he just had to uncover the truth about Ava. Sinclair doubted that the woman was still alive of course, considering they hadn't found any of these parties that Stanley insisted were going on.
But in his mad ravings he always took a moment to tell Johnny about just how wonderful he was. All the while digging the hole Sinclair wanted him to fall into a little deeper. "I can't believe Johnny topside is back." He gushed upon his own return to the radio line. Sinclair had just been getting comfortable without him there. Been thinking about talking to Delta himself before he started ranting again. "That 'Subject Delta' malarkey is just, just your...serial number! They-they-they covered it up, y'know, turned your story into an urban myth — but I wasn't fooled! No siree! I told 'em you were real! It wasn't just you that she up and erased, y'know... It was Doctor Lamb too - and heaven knows how many others who stood up to Ryan!"
Oh yes, sure you did Stanley. Sinclair thought with a sneer that no one else could see. Something a little colder and angrier than he'd ever let anyone else catch him wearing. Stanley hadn't seen through anything. He hadn't even seemed to have existed for years. Might as well have vanished as suddenly as Johnny Topside had. He didn't tell anyone a damn thing.
Until now that was. Now he couldn't seem to stop telling people things.
There was a break in that seemingly endless stream of pointless words from Stanley and Sinclair took that opportunity to break in. "Son, don't mean to be hurrying you along any, but…ah, well let's just say that ol' Stanley don't seem to be presenting us with many of these hidden parties of debauchery. Might be chasing Ava's hangover, if you catch my meaning." Hard to tell with Delta. But Sinclair had faith he did.
"Now look, chief, we're not exactly men with the luxury of time down here." For a second Sinclair hesitated. Words catching where he'd expected them to flow smoothly. It took a second to recover and when he did he found the words came out unbalanced. As though he didn't quite know what to do with the things he was saying even as he spoke. "You most of all have to understand that. We gotta get you out to Fontaine HQ on the double."
Strangely Sinclair found the thought settled a bit heavily on him. Delta was a machine in more than one sense of the word, but for this case it was a matter of fortitude. He was strong, resilient, resolute – but he was also dying.
Hard to tell at a glance but Sinclair had been with the kid for a while and he'd slowed down considerably. He took blows more quickly, stayed down longer than he should have and at times…it was as though his body had shut down for a moment due to no outside influence.
Sinclair wasn't daft, nor was his memory short. Delta was an Alpha series. A design he'd watched get put together. Seen the fallout after the loss of a little sister. He was watching it now. In slow motion. He knew the steps, the agony, the shut down – as a best-case scenario.
But as he watched Delta's gradual decline now with Elenore too far away, it reminded him of one of those rare worst-case scenarios.
For a moment Delta's movement paused. A gentle sway as he halted, and Sinclair knew that Delta could not look at him, but that slight tip of his head and the following stillness seemed to be as close as it came. With the man's silence Sinclair was left to conjure up his own accusations and weighted looks.
His mind was rather apt at the practice to his genuine frustration.
"Let's just keep you hustling on, yeah?" He said while thinking himself incredibly transparent. Perhaps his wit wasn't as sharp as it had once been or his words not as charming as he'd once made them.
Couldn't tell one way or the other when Delta continued his heavy meandering pace through the parkland. Leaving Sinclair to once again fill in all the blanks where Delta's words should have been.
It was easy to know that the scathing accusations and sharp resentful remarks his imagination provided were not accurate to the man's thoughts. Just Sinclair's grim thoughts being reflected back to him.
For once he was genuinely relieved when Tenenbaum came to him distract.
That relief lasted only a few seconds as he turned in his seat to be a gentleman and face the lovely lady – only to see that she'd gone an ashen colour. Tenenbaum had never been a rosy cheeked, sun kissed woman. Hard to find and fake in Rapture. But even by the underwater city's standards, Tenenbaum looked deathly pale. It may have been the way her tired eyes were widened and panicked that added to the effect.
Sinclair didn't need to ask if something was wrong. It clearly was and so the question instead became, "What?"
"Quick. Where is Delta?" She asked, her accent seeming to become heavier the deeper her alarm ran.
"The kid is about to get himself a key out of here. Why?" The answer was halfway given when the German woman muscled her way into Sinclair's space, hastily making space for herself at the monitor, seeking out Delta's surroundings thought the beast's own eyes. "Hey, what do you think y-" Sinclair began to protest the incivility but Tenenbaum's steely voice cut clean through his own.
"Look!" She remarked, dragging Sinclair's attention forcefully to the screen and then closer still to the camera held precariously in Delta's large gloved hands. "Do you not see?" She asked, some sort of guttural anger in her question. Though it did not seem to solely be directed to Sinclair, he recognized self-reprimand well enough. What had they missed. "The figure on that lens, is it not Stanley's image?"
"Stanley? That can't be right. He's been holed up in that security booth since we got in." Sinclair breathed in disbelief, forgetting his irritation and leaning forward to look for himself. Properly. The jittery, chaotic movements of a splicer they'd caught in motion that Stanley seemed to think proved Ava's crimes was still dancing there on the reel.
They'd gotten the 'evidence' Stanley wanted but…they might as well have made a series of home videos for the man. "Christ almighty… been following up on a mad man's fairytale." Sinclair muttered, disbelief still strong in the words as he struggled to come to terms with what he saw. "I didn't...even recognize him." Splicers barely resembles the humans they'd once been and although Sinclair never thought for a moment that Stanley's prudish act was anything besides a druggy's deluded ramblings…he hadn't expected Stanley to be this.
Some of the horror waned and in its place was a growing sense of security. A splicer spoke nothing but mad lies after all. Let Stanley talk. Let him jabber on and on till his bit off his own tongue – it would amount to nothing.
Still. One less splicer and set of loose lips in the world would make an old man feel a great deal safer.
As they both stood there, letting this information settle in, the Stanley not on Delta's screen chimed in. "Oho, you caught 'em with their trousers down, Johnny! I just, I just can't hardly wait to see that footage! Ha! Debauched sons of guns! Once the people see what kind of a low-down, splicerized Jezebel she is, why, she'll have to erase herself! Come on back and I'll dry out some popcorn!"
One way or another, the key was about to come into Delta's control but it became a question as to how well Stanley would take to a mirror being turned onto him.
Carefully Sinclair looked to Tenenbaum, seeking out some resistance on her part as he reached for the radio. He was given a stiff nod, assent and the closest to approval she'd ever give no doubt.
The way he spoke to Delta was quieter now. Conspiratorial even, as though Stanley might just overhear his words of caution. "Now, son…" Sinclair began, voice a perfectly crafter mixture of mild concern and tact. Not the voice of a man that intended to point Delta at a target and simply command 'bite'.
"Stanley's little expose is all made and done…I don't know if he's gonna like it all that much. I'm fairly certain all you've got on film there is Stanley himself. Spliced off his rocker an' carryin' on in the very manner he seems to despise." Sinclair felt the doctor's gaze on him but did not stop to face her scrutiny. She was sharp as one of her scalpels at times, but Sinclair couldn't stop speaking when his words were a weapon of his own. "What's he gonna do when he sees it?" He finished, planting a simple thought for Delta to dwell on as he turned to head back towards the security booth.
Without missing a beat Tenenbaum stole the airspace from him again. Taking the radio that Sinclair had manned since abandoning the one to Atlas that currently hung silent at the woman's hip. "Sometimes..." She started, voice concerned and steady in a way Sinclair's hadn't been. To put a single word to what made them so unalike, compassionate. "Sometimes it takes the lightbulb moment to see what you become. Perhaps this film will make Stanley see that he is the devil he fears. If this is so, Delta, you do not have to kill him."
Now it was Sinclair's turn to scrutinize Tenenbaum. He knew she did it to undermine him, to try an upheave the subtle groundwork he laid. That he was more than accustomed to working side by side with the woman and yet he felt those words were not strictly for Delta's morals nor his own chastisement.
The radio strapped to Tenenbaum's hip still listening.
Sinclair waited till both radios were muted before he spoke. Voice cheerful but no less grinding on her nerves he suspected. "How long do you want to make the kid watch mommy and daddy squabble, hm? I hear it's quite damaging for little minds."
Tenenbaum did not so much as grace him with a play along. Turning to him, spine stiff and expression pulled into a near violently uniform look. Pursed lips and firmly held muscles speaking legions more than if she'd shrieked at him. Part of Sinclair morbidly wondered what seeing a broad like Tenenbaum shrieking would look like, the rest of him recalled with great detail the reason she'd been released from his employment back when Rapture was still shiny and new.
When finally her ice broke enough to allow the joints in her face to move again, she spoke her judgement just as smoothly and sharply as before. "Rapture suits you ill, herr Sinclair." She told him sternly. Met with a lofted brow and a crooked smile that edged on questioning she went on only to hammer him with words he'd could have gone without hearing. "Nein, it is the solitude that suits you ill. Rapture was a playground for your kind. Relying on others must cause you such great suffering." He bristled but Tenenbaum's cold conviction rolled over his insult, suffocating it before he could breathe life into it with words of his own.
"You believe I do not know of you." She told him slowly, every word a threat he hadn't expected. "Do not think me blind to you, Augustus Sinclair. Do not think you can so easily erase these truths."
The very breath in Sinclair's chest had frozen because when he looked at the steady, ice like gaze of the woman standing firm at his side, he knew she held secrets that could destroy him if they were spoken out loud. Stanley's mad ravings could throw doubt, could shine ugly lights – but it was Tenenbaum's calm clarity that could undo him.
And yet. She'd been the one that initially came to him. She'd found him. It had been this woman that stood there uttering words of destruction should he move too far from his set parameters, that had pulled him first out of the dark little dwelling he'd carved for himself down in Rapture's personal hell.
"You are nuts." Sinclair breathed, unaware he'd spoken till the quiet accusation slipped free. He knew he was staring at her, could practically see his own horrified expression reflected in those determined eyes.
Then Tenenbaum smiled and Sinclair was sure nothing was scarier than that. "Rapture is the city of man-made monsters, this is true. Yet, monsters are given chances here others are not. Were I not to believe this…you and the voice would not be with us today."
He and Atlas…Sinclair couldn't fault Tenenbaum for that. Neither of them were upstanding people. Neither could claim they were even if they argued the reason and rationality behind their cruelty.
Questions were bubbling up. Sinclair wanted to ask, to demand, what it was Tenenbaum was playing at. What she knew about Atlas that he did not, what she knew of him and how much she'd say. Why she seemed willing to offer chances that shouldn't have been given.
All that and more he was unable to ask as through the radio, Stanley was testing his own second chance without even realizing it.
"A-Alright brother!" Stanley chimed, and the man had indeed returned to the security booth, acting to himself as though he'd never left. His shadow shifting around the murky glass, just as animated as he'd been before but now more obviously unnatural using the film as a reference point. "Let's just see what you've got! The n-naked truth on Ava-Marie Tate and her grove of sin! I'll start 'er up!"
Delta seemed to hesitate. Helmet dropping down to his camera. A silent contemplation. There was no other way besides forward but there was no doubt that progress would hurt. Still, Delta stepped forward, offering the evidence Stanley had wanted. The film spinning and throwing up all the dirt he'd wanted to see, the silence that followed promised that he was seeing it for what it actually was.
The figure of Stanley running around the ruins of the Park was the only thing shown on the footage. Delta wasn't even watching the reel play, instead watching for Stanley's reaction.
It took time but slowly, ever so slowly, Stanley began to speak. "B-but...that's me...I didn't do those things...did I?" He whispered. None of the manic glee or determination his voice had jumped with previously to be found. "I'm…no, I'm a family man." He argued with no one. With himself. Looking for some answer that would wash away what he saw with his own two eyes.
But slowly grief and guilt set in like a poison. Sapping the pretty delusions from Stanley's ADAM addled mind. "When did I do this to myself...?"
A lightbulb moment.
What came next was a flood of clarity and panic. Clear and present. "No...little Eleanor! My little girl! I couldn't have sold her to...to those gangsters...does that mean they turned her into one of those little freak-babies! I did that to her?" Delta straightened at the name of his little one. Stepping forward on a reflex like he might be able to somehow pluck her from Stanley's words alone. When he could not the next best thing was what Stanley claimed next.
"Oh God, I have to find her...please, come on up, we have to get out of here. I've got the override key to the railway station."
Delta turned to run. Speed put back into his step at the mere suggestion of getting to his little sister just that bit faster. It was Sinclair's voice that cut through the radio. A shout that would have become warning had he the time. Sinclair was not fooled, Delta and Tenenbaum too hopeful to recognize a con for what it was.
By the time Delta heard the cry the door to the security booth had already been flung open and from inside the splicer that had once been Stanley stood, throwing out an unexpectedly heavy piece of machinery that had once belonged to a control console built into the wall. Upheaved with a strong pull of telekinesis and launched at Delta so quickly that he had little else to do besides brace for the impact and try to land without sustaining too much damage.
Once he hit the ground, only then did his assailant step out. Stanley's blood was thinned, too much ADAM in his system to leave much room for the rest of him. At his feet lay a history of drug abuse. Hypo after hypo left empty and crushed underfoot as he stepped out of the booth, eyes wild and mutated skin stretched into a feral, desperate grin. "Ha! I fooled you! You double-crossin phony!" He shrieked, voice broken up by hysterical fits of giggling as he approached the momentarily dazed big daddy. "The…the...oldest trick in the book! Just you wait until you see what's downstairs, you faker!"
Stanley was barely left. Somewhere in that splicer's shell there was likely the memory of the man he'd been. Those values he thought he held had started to sap away long before ADAM took his human looks. He'd been weak to sins of the flesh from the very beginning – his obsession with Ava-Tate was little more than an extension of this. Even now he was seeking out things to put to blame for his depravities, and now that was to be Delta.
"I know you aren't the real Subject Delta! He was Johnny Topside! You're just some spook who works for Ava, and you're planning to erase me too!" Through Stanley's screaming, Delta had started to right himself. He'd taken harder knocks than this, but his drill had stilled. He watched Stanley in silence, the glow from his port hadn't changed to red just yet, but he could not force it to become a welcoming green either.
The two looked at one another, blamed one another for the same crimes in many ways. Stanley said it couldn't be him – but there was no doubt in anyone's mind. If his cleared enough to see through the EVE and ADAM he'd have seen it too.
It was his fault a little girl had been stolen from her family twice over. Delta should spear him through with his drill where he stood. Put him down right now and be done with it.
Sinclair's mentality.
But while he stood, Delta didn't send the drill whirling to life. Tenenbaum's word might have held him back for a moment but those were just the words of men and women. There were always eyes on Delta that were more valuable than either of those to him. So he waited. Even as Stanley raved about his lies and trickery – Delta held steady and tried to think beyond himself for a moment.
Out there somewhere was his little girl. His little sister. His daughter – whatever Elenore might be to him. She'd one day have to look at him and see him for all he was.
Delta tried to get Stanley to do the same.
The first step he took forward had him met with another onslaught of debris. Stanley's voice whipping out as he drew up metal and cement from all around him, anything he could hurl at Delta. The splicer's focused telekinesis was harder to avoid with his own. Delta couldn't throw things away from himself with the same precision and speed with which Stanley pelted them and too many failed attempts led to Delta taking one too many blows once again.
Taken down to one knee as a large piece of metal crashed against his leg, taking it out for a moment and forcing the big daddy to use his drill for a crutch. Overhead Stanley shouted. "Well, you got another think coming, buster! I'm not the only one around here who serves the truth!" He declared and in answer to his claims there was a string of hysterical giggles that Delta had never heard before.
Emerging from the doorway behind Stanley a long, lanky figure crawled free. The splicers form was too long to fit through the door properly, needing to twist and contort itself to fit under the low hanging doorway. Once inside the space the first of the jesters let out a shrill scream. Accompanied by one more screaming from Stanley. "Come on, brothers! Get him!"
Now Delta's drill came roaring to life.
His knee ached in protest as he was thrust to it once more but Delta put that pain aside, knowing he had to move or risk being further damaged in his hesitance. The towering splicer wailed as it saw the metal man rush at it. So swift and unnaturally lithe it managed to avoid Delta at first. Crawling its way up the walls, long stilt like legs creating holes in the structure to scuttle its way around. Delta swung, trying to keep track of its head in order to cleanly kill the beast.
The jester was faster still. Delta turned only in time for the thing to try and sink its jagged teeth into Delta's shoulder. Roaring, the big daddy tore away. Most of his body protected perfectly by his suit but where his arm and drill disconnected the suit was at its weakest and the jester was lucky enough to find that small vulnerability.
Again Delta screamed as its broken teeth sank into his arm. The pain came surging through him but Delta did not falter. Instead reaching over with the arm not caught in the beast's maw, grabbing the creature by its mask and with one bright explosion of heat, burned its brains out of its head. Delta felt the heat wash over him, sting his open wounds, but the jester wailed in agony far louder – dropping and writing on the ground with its many long limbs.
Taking this moment, Delta moved to step on it, crush its throat before it could recover enough to become a threat again. The motion nearly carried through until that second monster latched itself onto his back, throwing him off balance and focus.
These splicers were unexpected, Delta had not yet figured out the best way in which to dispatch them. They'd taken him by surprise, in a moment of weakness he'd tried to afford Stanley. Now the second of the two monsters took him to the ground and tore at his already heavily bleeding arm.
All the while Stanley shouted over them. "That film you made was a fake!" He asserted as Delta struggled to try and rip the splicer from his back. "I never did those things! I'm no needle-jabber!" He went on, voice closer as he tried to convince the world and himself of his delusions. Rally, people! He's trying to kill the truth!" Then Delta could see Stanley standing a small distance from the scuffle, nothing coherent in those manic eyes as he spat at Delta.
"I would never sell my little girl!"
Delta had no voice with which to scream, she's not yours!
A sudden explosion cracked through the air. Bang went a gun and down went the beast on Delta's back.
Shock rushed through Delta as the creature sagged, not dead but just as surprised as its intended victim. At least until the next two shot rang out, both striking the creature through the temple where it's mask could not protect it. Leaving the jester still and lifeless on Delta's body.
Stanley had stepped away, expression twisted into one of panic. Barely able to hold onto a sense of intimidation when he'd spent his life as a weak-willed man. The reverberance of the final bullet firing hadn't even settled before the owner was speaking.
"Yeah, let 'the voice' tell you a little something about 'the people.'" Atlas drawled with a careless cruelty. "They ain't listening to your howlin'." With every step Atlas took closer to the scene, there was a loud metallic grinding as he dragged what appeared to be the remains of a security door behind him. Further behind that Delta's ever focused gaze landed on a little sister, huddled close to Atlas but far enough to be out of range of anything he might do.
Coming to a halt by the first fallen jester, Atlas put a stop to its squirming with a boot slammed down against its masked face. All it took was one swift upward jerk of his arm and then downward swing that brought the door down like a guillotine's blade. Silencing the splicer's gurgled moaning. It's blood painting the ground out across him his feet and leaving it to dribble down the steps towards the remaining three.
The sleet dropping carelessly from his arm. Careening forward and taking a large sloppy chunk of flesh from the splicer's throat as it did, detaching head from body as it landed with a thunderous thud hitting the ground below. Atlas's eyes ten times colder than the body crushed beneath.
Only then did the voice look up at them, a mirthful sneer stretched across his face. "Hi there, Ava."
"No…no, no, no…" Stanley began muttering to himself, backing up rapidly. As though fear robbed him of his ability to act. To recall he was not without teeth with which to bite. But he looked at Atlas like a man possessed. Fear loosened his tongue again but did not bring him anymore clarity. "I…no! I'm in charge of the truth! Me! I got Lamb locked up, Ava thrown in with her! I…I control the truth!"
He pointed toward Atlas as though he might very well be able to wipe him out on a whim alone. "I….I'm gonna erase this v-very conversation! You-you-you... faker!" Atlas's vicious expression turned cold. But Stanley continued to prattle on. Words he'd used once before when a different delusion had been his skin coming out once again.
"You don't even exist!"
Atlas's eyes snapped wide, a feral anger burning behind them. Stanley must have realized his words stepped on a hidden mine but the mistake had been made and Atlas wasn't about to give Stanley another chance to off him. Once was enough.
There was nothing measured about Atlas's movements. Nothing at all strictly business like in the way he tore the broken door up off the ground and away from the shards of bone and puddle of blood it had fallen into. It was all perfectly personal when he lifted it above his head in the same way one might have a stone with the intention of crushing a bug and smirked manically down at Stanley's now seemingly extremely fragile body.
"Nighty-night, Ava."
What did, however, feel very personal, was when Delta heaved himself to his feet and caught Atlas's arm. The motion brought what should have been a killing blow to a halt. Atlas could not believe what he was seeing. Feeling. Delta's hand stopping his own from putting an end to this little bastard and his whole slew of lies and nightmares.
That felt extremely personal.
Every violent, vicious and venomous word in the English language launched themselves to the forefront of Atlas's mind. But intermixed between those curses were weaker words. Pleas, justifications, anything to just say, he was going to kill you!
But not a single one got out. Instead what came out was Stanley's voice.
No more shouting. No more delusions or cries of fakes and lies. A truth he didn't want to accept slowly settling in. It was with a weak, throaty sob that Stanley managed a laugh.
"Thought… thought it'd be easier ya know?" He asked meekly, eyes wet as his voice wobbled with the effort of just being able to speak without breaking into tears. "C-Couldn't pull the trigger myself…back then. So I thought…ha. I really did admire ya, Johnny. I swear I did. Everything just got so...confused." He admitted with a small wave like motion of his hand, like he could pluck the right word from the air but the one he caught was insubstantial.
Neither Atlas nor Delta had moved yet. The weapon that would be used as a means of execution caught between them, should either let go the other would use it to spare or take a life.
This time, it was Stanley that was in control. If only for a few seconds and for the first time in who knows how many years.
"Just…tell Elenore I didn't mean it, yeah?" Stanley mustered a smile but then seemed to think better of it, a crushing sort of acceptance falling over his face though his smile remained. Tiny and sad. "Or…or don't. No…just let her be happy."
Both Atlas and Delta saw the gun slip into Stanley's hand from his side. Both registered it as a threat and yet neither mistook it as a threat towards themselves. Proven right as the cold metal mouth pressed to Stanley's temple and with little more than a second between it being placed and Stanley taking a small steadying breath – the trigger was pulled.
A sharp crack and then a sudden drop. Just like that.
If Stanley had wanted to control the truth so badly, this was perhaps the only thing he could have done to stop himself creating more lies. It did not make the final act any less pitiful or jarring for either witness.
But for Stanley, it was the closest he could come to a 'light bulb' moment and snuff out the devil he was.