Thank you so much to the guest that spotted the weird error this chapter had. If you ever see any weird formats or mistakes please let me know!
...
...
The satisfaction of the small jab he'd taken at Sinclair lasted up until the world took it upon itself to move them along. Quite literally in this instance.
He heard a call from the front of the train, the doctor saying they were leaving. Atlas didn't think to argue with her as it would require moving into her direct line of sight and being in the same general vicinity as her. He preferred not to. Even though the thought of having to return to Fontaine's shell of a company set him on edge. He hadn't forgotten what he found down there last time.
He had no particular fondness for the place that had spat him back out into the city after a couple of years of hibernation.
It was easy to tell Delta had received this message as well because upon his arrival the train gave a small shudder. Dipping under his heavy footfalls as he first entered. Accompanied by the happy cry of delight from a child. Both father and sister safely inside, they were clear to go.
The rickety train gave a lurch as it shuddered back to life, groaning the whole way. Atlas felt a distinct sense of empathy to the old machine. Both he and Sinclair absentmindedly looked upwards towards where the loudest of clinks and clangs sounded off as the old beast got moving again.
In an effort to console himself, Atlas thought that at the very least he'd not be dealing with those sea monsters lurking outside of Rapture's shiny walls.
"How long should this take?" Atlas asked, noting with some irritation that the train was practically dragging itself at a snail's pace. He distinctly recalled these rides being faster than this.
For once Sinclair shared in his frustration rather than mock him for it and sighed, letting his weight slump back against the wall. "Damn thing hasn't been playing nice after damn near getting drowned. It moves but that's the best you can say for it."
"Well colour me comforted." Atlas drawled, voice tight with irritation. He eyed the metal beast with a newfound distrust. He once again longed for the bathysphere he busted up just to get out of that wretched place. Now here he was being carried back in a far less trustworthy vessel and very much adverse to the idea.
But his wounds ached, his head throbbed, and Atlas didn't have the energy required to kick up a fuss. Wasn't worth the effort and so he let it lie. However, what did ignite his desire to find that energy was when Sinclair in turn ignited a cigar.
Tensing Atlas tried not to stare at the sight. Tried to pretend the familiar scent of smoke didn't wrap him up tight and strangle him. After the stunt he'd pulled with Sinclair's liquor he didn't think he could weasel a smoke out of him. He genuinely regretted that moment of cheek, thinking it had cost him a hit of desperately needed nicotine…
Hold on.
"The hell is that?" Atlas asked finally, turning to look down at the other man quizzically. It smelt wrong. After the initial hit of smoke and familiar chemicals reached him Atlas realised it was off. It was not bad per say but it was akin to drinking milk when you expected juice - jarring.
Languishly Sinclair breathed out a puff of the unusual smoke before looking to Atlas, all in his own time. "These?" He mused, an edge of mocking to his rich voice as he lazily gave the burning stick a wave. Seeing as Atlas didn't seem to recognise the replacement cigar anymore from just this, Sinclair sighed and reached into his pocket to retrieve the packet. He handed it over without a fuss which startled Atlas. He'd though the man would fight him tooth and nail for these.
Turning the packet over he then understood why. These were not real cigarettes.
"Haven't been able to get my hands on anything stronger, they help take the edge off. If only out of habit." Sinclair uttered, almost as though he felt the need to defend himself for using the farce of a cigar.
In his hand Atlas held one of those rare cartons of supposedly 'safe' smokes. They were a short-lived venture Sinclair Solutions had put onto the market.
Shockingly most people liked their poisons whole but that wasn't to say these products had fallen flat. They'd started to pick up popularity among pregnant women. Supposedly a rumour had started going around that cigarette and alcohol was bad for the unborn babes. Atlas was unsure if this rumour had stemmed from Sinclair himself or not, but it had picked up traction all the same and these rare commodities had become a niche market - so naturally Sinclair had jacked up the price.
The thought of mocking Sinclair did cross Atlas's mind, but he couldn't quite focus on that option. He realised now that the scent was familiar not because he'd had them himself, but he'd been around women who had used them. It was a fairly unpleasant realisation.
Instead he scrutinised the deceptively clean packaging. Knowing inside that it was likely a different sort of danger. "Aren't these things infused with EVE?" He asked flatly and was sure he could hear Sinclair's teeth grind. Just as well the replacement cigar was braced between his fingers and not clenched in his teeth.
But he offered no answer and Atlas took that as confirmation enough. Perhaps Sinclair's irritation stemmed from the thought that perhaps he'd given something potentially dangerous to expecting mothers. But, no. Of course not. ADAM and EVE were medical marvels, not to be hidden away as some hazardous ingredient but herald as wonderfully innovative.
In this way, if no other, Sinclair had swindled no one.
The train gave a sway as it passed through the final gate of the Park. Finally leaving it behind though it would have been too optimistic to say they were heading somewhere better.
As they rolled along to a slightly less agonising pace, Atlas glanced back to Sinclair and noticed the rigid set of his shoulders. Still clearly agitated and for once Sinclair felt like he might give a little. Perhaps it was because he'd been plied with alcohol that he felt more agreeable.
"If it does take the edge off." He said, a vague sort of peace offering. "Better than nothing. Reckon it did those gals some good back in the day."
Atlas wasn't given the chance to see if his attempt at civility landed or not because the sharp tap of shoes approaching caught both men's attention. One tensing more so than the other, both knowing that those footsteps could belong no other. Too heavy to be a brat, too light to be delta – the only other adult on the train.
Atlas felt his expression pull into a grimace as Tanenbaum's pace stopped in the doorway. He made some attempt to warm it into something friendlier, if only to truly drive home the sarcasm of his eventual smile.
"Well if it ain't the good doctor 'erself." Atlas remarked, tossing the cigars back to Sinclair but not without snagging one for himself to slip into his pocket.
There was a decidedly defensive response to seeing Tenebaum again. One that had him adopting a forcible casual stance, one foot jammed up against the steel wall he leant against with arms folded in a mockery of disinterested confidence, he ignored the contradictory nature of the effort he put into appearing as though he didn't care.
As reward for his crass attitude he was met with Brigid's pinched expression. A familiar face pulled into a familiar set and yet once he actually saw her Atlas lost his footing.
The arms he'd made a point of crossing falling to his sides as he placed both feet firmly back on the train floor. Turning to give the woman his full attention, aware that he was openly staring at her but equally unable to stop himself.
"Brigid…" He found himself murmuring her name mindless. Too lost for a moment to think of any crude titles or nicknames to put in place of the doctor's first name which he had no recollection of using before in earnest.
Like Sinclair, time had passed for her.
Those familiar features had softened rather than sharpened with age. She'd never appeared well rested even when she was a young woman. Always steely, closed off, pointed. She'd carried herself in a way that no other had. That was gone now. While her stance still suggested the makings of an immovable woman with a purpose few else could emulate, she was no longer a glacier in a ragged sweater.
Her hair longer, eyes softer, whole demeanour alien to Atlas. He was sure she'd even shrunk, though he would not dare say so currently. There was still a spark of a dangerously sharp woman in her eyes but it was so easily drowned out by everything else. The softness she'd fallen into.
Time had worn on her.
It had smoothed out her harsh edges until the woman before him was more human than he recalled.
The brows that had been pulled tightly towards the centre of Tenebaum's forehead smoothed back out as she took in Atlas's expression herself.
A quick one over and it seemed Brigid had struck right through him and seen all there was to see. Atlas did not know what her conclusion was but the first words she spoke to him were not as biting as expected.
"Time takes us all, voice." She assured in a way that boarded on compassionate. If nothing else it was a tone of knowing. "All but the dead."
By his side Sinclair snorted before taking another drag of his stand in cigar. "Makes you feel old, don't it?" He remarked, and Atlas privately took solace in Sinclair's voice. Used it to ground himself and shake off the shock of seeing Brigid again, so changed.
The sense of being left behind had been nagging at him since he first fell from the vita-chamber. It became increasingly difficult to ignore as time went on. Brigid had shaken him in a way he hadn't been prepared for. Perhaps because for him he'd heard her voice, young and sharp, only days ago. Everyone else had moved far beyond where his memories ended, and he was struggling to catch back up.
Shaking himself out of that dazed state Atlas hurried to right his attitude. That small stumble had been a vulnerability he didn't plan on. "Not here to give me the boot?" Atlas finally asked once he was sure his voice was just the right level of scornful.
In turn Tenenbaum's expression hardened and she once again looked more familiar to him. "No." She dismissed sharply. "What good would it do?" Despite himself Atlas found it strangely amusing to listen to her accented irritation without the radio between them again. "No, I am here to assess you."
"Me?" Atlas repeated dumbly.
"You." Tenenbaum reaffirmed, just to make him feel more foolish.
Mercifully she did not leave Atlas more time to kick himself for the stupid reaction. "Your body took much damage. EVE, miraculous as it may be, cannot mend all. Come."
Tenenbaum turned and strode out of the doorway, expecting Atlas to obediently follow. He almost did before pausing to glance back in Sinclair's direction. Met only with another puff of smoke and vague gesture for him to get. Atlas smirked to himself and then turned to follow after the old broad.
"Aw, you worried about me, doc?" Atlas probed once he fell into step at the woman's side, unable to help himself. The side eye he got in return from the doctor was scathing enough that his burned arm throbbed. Ha, that seemed about right.
Clever woman, Tenenbaum did not entertain him with an answer to that. Instead keeping her focus ahead and as always, she disregarded unnecessary distractions. In this case the distraction being Atlas's very attitude.
Rather than give him the chance to further play on her nerves, Brigid spoke first. Tone firm as she discarded any possibility of pleasantries. "We return to Fontaine Futuristics in search of the child." She reminded stiffly, as though she expected Atlas to recoil in some way. Yeah. He knew. When Atlas failed to respond Tenenbaum tossed him another sidelong glance. "You have no complaints?"
At that Atlas scoffed. "Well preferably I'd be taking the first ride topside, but seeing as the only ride going seems to be on this ship I'll just have to stick around, now won't I?"
Briefly the doctor's pace stuttered, a minute pause that was quickly pushed aside and moved past. "Here." Tenenbaum commented simply, gesturing to yet another area of the train that broke away from the main hall. This time Atlas knew what to expect and yet still found himself taken aback by the sheer level of equipment they'd hoarded.
In the small compartment there were stockpiles of bandages, needles of the correct proportion, bottles of what he could only assume were pills, unopened medkits, canteens of water. Among the supplies was a simple table with a blanket haphazardly thrown over it. A makeshift medical bay.
Tenenbaum did not stop Atlas as he almost dazedly stepped inside. Injuries screaming out, demanding attention despite having the most grievous of them mended with that hypo the sister had passed his way in a moment of need.
Taking it all in was no easy task and slowly he turned back towards Brigid, expression not unlike the initial look of shock he'd worn upon seeing her for the first time in years. "How long have you been here?" He asked. Voice bordering on a whisper, unsure if it was horror that prompted him to speak.
"Too long." Tenenbaum replied, breezing past the alarmed man only to just as flippantly add. "Not long enough. Depends on who you might ask."
Without giving Atlas the opportunity to ask by what criteria she judged that, Tenenbaum turned back towards him with head raised. "On the table with you. Let us see if cannot find a man under all those scars."
He wished her the best of luck in searching.
…
…
With Atlas and Tenenbaum's footsteps fading further into the metal beast, Sinclair was left on his own to try and enjoy the replacement cigar set to the backdrop of the swaying train.
Another puff of smoke into the air and Sinclair watched it dissipate as he wondered how the world might seem to Atlas now. His reaction to seeing the doctor hadn't gone unnoticed and Sinclair recognised that the world must seem a very different creature to Atlas now.
Not unlike the man himself, Sinclair couldn't quite put his finger on it, but Atlas truly didn't seem himself.
Idly he ran over their interactions in the past. A glint of knowing, of certainty in Atlas's eyes had left an impression but now the man didn't seem to know anything at all.
Admittedly, it did make him harder to resent.
That look of knowing had dug deep in the past. As bodies piled up and Atlas pushed on forward, acknowledging each loss the same way one would a calculated drop of a pawn as the game progressed – it had Sinclair seething. Their business concluding once he was given the boot from his own establishment. Those nights he'd spent on a friend's couch some of the worst before Rapture truly hit its boiling point and he was unable to even return to that couch.
And Atlas had barely faltered in his pace. When Sinclair last saw him, there was a feral edge about him – he'd hand the man that much.
But now the names he'd attributed to Atlas were harder to stick. He didn't know anything. No glint. No strings. Just some lost, pathless man. Sinclair could empathise with that. He put blame on plenty of names in Rapture. Ryan an easy strike, Fontaine next and perhaps the most loathed of the three, then Atlas. Who barely seemed worth hating anymore.
As Rapture burned Atlas had been fighting tooth and nail to drag something from the wreckage. And Sinclair had just sat there.
Alone in the dark with the remains of his enterprise around him.
He had wondered defeatedly if this was how Ryan must have to felt with his creation crumbling around him. But he knew that wouldn't be the case, Ryan never had seen what became of his livelihood. Not for what it was. Too deep in a bottle and his own paranoia to take notice of the walls being pulled down around him.
But Sinclair watched as his fell away and bars went up in their place. Kicked from his own businesses by a mad woman, sent scrambling to old friends seeking out charity that he'd never have afforded them had the situation been reversed and then even that small comfort had been snatched away from him.
Leaving him where he sat now, fresh deaths hanging on his mind. His mind, but not his conscience.
He'd never allow himself to feel guilt for death brought onto people by their own doing. They stepped into their own graves, he had no hand in it. If anything his hand may have been the last that offered to pull them back from lunacy. But he'd not blame himself when that hand fell short – it was not his fault.
He'd never let those ghosts weigh on his conscience.
No matter how deeply the wound ran.
One of the girls rushed by the door to his little hole in the wall, jarring Sinclair from his memories. As if to spite himself, Sinclair stood, bones protesting the movement as he got back to his feet. Walking to the doorway Atlas had spent so long leaning against to do just the same. Looking out into the corridor the girl had rushed through. They weren't supposed to run in the train, never seemed to stop the girls.
Sinclair watched as she ran right on past him to rejoin the others. A smile on her face despite the decrepit surroundings. The others met her with the same enthusiasm and Sinclair would have found it troubling were those smiles not ones of forced optimism. Of all the people in Rapture, young girls seemed to have the least reasons to smile – but they kept stubbornly on.
He supposed he admired that. Always had found himself a little too easily endeared to the stubborn sort.
Looking up and around the train car Sinclair found himself viewing it just a little differently now. He'd been stuck in here alone for so long he'd forgotten the lights could even be turned on until Tenebaum found the switch upon her arrival to Rapture. While he'd sat there, scrounged up what he needed to just keep on surviving by a thread, she'd come back at the risk to her own safety and turned on the lights. Even if it had not been for him, the lights had turned on for him all the same.
The world shifted just a little since that first day he'd collapsed there. He couldn't say it was any better than it had been before, but at least he could see past his own two dirtied hands again.
Just as well because when one of the girls, Lucy, called to him to come play with them he knew he'd need clean hands for a change.
So he snuffed the cigar out.
They didn't exactly have much in the way of toys for the girls though they complained precious little and made do with what they had. Sinclair had provided the playing cards and laughed to himself when Lucy's freckled face twisted in displeasure. Not seeing the merit in a stack of cards among a group.
"What? Got something against a good game of cards?" He'd asked with a smile that once upon a time had been reserved for winning over business deals. It felt lighter on him now.
"They're boring." Lucy asserted.
Only for the child by her side to chime in to the conversation sharply. "They are not." The dark-haired girl protested with a quiet anger and Sinclair recalled seeing her setting up the cards before. Making houses as best she could. Often the practice ended in the third young girl sitting among them running through the constructs and toppling it all to the floor in a fit of giggles.
It had been one of the few times the girls began to fight and Tenenbaum lamented their behaviour, being forced to pry them apart before Viola could put a bruise on mischievous little Esme.
While Viola could be rather unsettling at times, Sinclair was inclined to agree with her now. He had to show the other two the value of a simple set of cards. Lives had been staked on these here flimsy cardboard pieces.
For now they could settle for staking that night's entertainment on them. "Tell you what, kiddo. You let me show you some games and if by the end of it you're still bored we'll push tonight's bedtime far on back, how does that sound?" Sinclair suggested as he left the confines of his little pocket of privacy and walked to join the cluster of girls – willing to be their entertainment for a while at least. Better than sitting on his own and letting ghosts bounce around in his head.
The agreement was instantaneous, and Sinclair knew without a doubt that no matter how much fun was actually had – they'd claimed boredom by the end and demand a later bedtime.
Sinclair also knew the precise look ol' Tenenbaum would shoot him, but she'd not take away the deal he'd made with the young ones. Trust so hard to build and easy to break, even small infractions would not be forgotten. They had so little reason to trust her after all. Even if the girls didn't know it themselves, their thoughts mattered to Tenenbaum more than anyone else's.
So he forced his sore knees to bring him down to the floor and deal out the cards with the sound satisfaction that this was a deal he'd lose nothing in and perhaps gain something. It didn't dawn on him that the something he sought to acquire was dangerously close to something charitable.
He only stood to gain the happiness of these children.
But if he did not think of it then he'd neither have to deny nor accept that truth and so he set out cards and began to teach three children how best to win in a simple card game.
Truthfully Sinclair did garner some amusement from seeing the different ways the girls tried to play the game. Seeing they had their own personalities once broken from the mould set by those slugs that had sat in their bellies too long.
Esme was ecstatic and resourceful, and most notably a cheater. However, she had no concept of what a poker face was, being caught out by Lucy each time she tried a new underhanded tactic. Viola was quiet, as always, dutifully learning the rules and rarely attempting to bend them. Happy to let the other two squabble as she learnt how to handle her cards carefully and more often than not seemed to win.
It was only when quiet Viola paused, hands lowering her cards just a few inches too far and catching Esme's eager eye, that Sinclair was forced to actually focus on something. "When will the new girl join us?" Viola asked and Sinclair for a second was thrown through a loop.
The new girl.
He tried not to sigh, knowing that wasn't exactly the greatest response to that question. The newest little sister Delta had saved- actually, it hadn't really been Delta had it?
Sinclair swallowed down some resentment. Atlas had protected the girl. That was a good thing objectively speaking from a moral standpoint but…
It was hard not to think that it was just one child he helped against others he hadn't.
Biting back his personal grievances, Sinclair managed a fairly benign answer for the kid. "Just as soon as ol' Delta and the good doctor get her feeling good as new." Sooner rather than later he supposed. "You all be welcoming when she does arrive, yeah?
There was a general consensus of obviously amongst the girls. Bicker at they might, they were about as tight as any family could be. Fair enough given their situation. Sinclair had no doubt the newest girl would be warmly welcomed.
The matter seemed thoroughly settled and the games went on, a nice distraction for any doubts still lingering.
Sinclair only had to quell two arguments between the girls and the wins seemed almost an even split, Sinclair himself making private bets of his own on who would win between the three. Unsurprisingly Viola took the crown. Much to both Lucy and Esme's dismay.
All in all, the games went over well. Sinclair never really had any trouble besting the three, but their reactions and obvious delight with the game almost had him actively letting losses pile up.
Just as well Tenenbaum had turned on those lights or he wouldn't have been able to see his own cards in order to play.