Atlas was quite aimless as he walked. After all there wasn't really any way out of Persephone he could reasonably take and backtracking to the train and Sinclair was firmly off the table. So he wandered, dazed and weightless he made his way deeper into Persphone's belly. Soon finding himself staring listlessly up at the faded 'Therapy Wing' sign.
He knew that the Therapy Wing was its own little pocket of nightmares and decided he was already this deep in them, what was a few more to add to the list?
Before he'd even set foot in the wing, Atlas had pulled the carefully tucked away photo from his pocket. Looking at the faded, worn photo of baby Jack for the first time in a while. Despite himself he couldn't help but chuckle when looking at what an ugly little brat he'd been, though he supposed most babies weren't exactly serene pictures of grace and glamour when they first popped out. Regardless, he felt a distant pang of melancholy fondness for the little bundle of fat with a big set of blue eyes slapped onto its face.
He also recalled, with an even more bitter feeling in the pit of his stomach, how he'd felt much the same when his niece had first been presented to him.
Funny that, Fontaine had always planned to do away with both those babies, only to be pulled up short by their blue eyes.
All that could be said now everything was done and dusted was; well, at least one of them had made it to adulthood in the end.
Expectedly, that made Atlas feel no better as his gaze swept over the dusty Therapy Wing and found himself faced with dozens of child sized beds. Their design too familiar to him to be anything else besides Little Sister's chambers. Rusty old hospital beds adorned with tarp like covers that lay stretched, torn and dirty over the metal skeletons beneath that kept them hanging listlessly overhead. An assortment of machines and doctors equipment still left scattered by the bedside tables. They were truly unwelcoming but Atlas supposed children did love their little hideyholes and once implanted with the slug, maybe the vile excuse for housing looked like any other cubbyhouse to them. He could only hope so.
Atlas wondered tiredly what Jack would be doing now. What the kid might have said, quiet as he'd been, if he could see him now. Likely nothing good, but a deadman walking could have his little flights of fancy couldn't he?
And if he wanted to delude himself and pretend Jack might have been happy to see him somehow, then he'd just keep on with that idea until he couldn't think it anymore.
"You know," Atlas said to no one in particular as he walked between the rows of beds, feeling he always had an audience of sorts with the dead. "Don't think two babes could have been more different. Didn't really think kids had much o' a personality until they were more like tiny people than squishy balls of snot and tears."
"You were always the easier one, mind you." Atlas told his imaginary audience with a far away chuckle. "Charlotte was always...far too much like her mother. Although, I might have had something to do with her attitude too, maybe. But you, kid? You were pretty tame, never called me nasty names or threw fits to get your way. All things considered, I think you'd have made a good son for a real family. But man, you would hate the stories I could still tell about you, kid."
Of all the ghosts that might have heard him, Jack was not among them. A shallow relief that still left him feeling lonelier than before.
But he couldn't bear to address the ghost of the child that hadn't seen herself to adulthood, for fear he might actually see her and with her the flames.
So he spoke to Jack even if it'd never be heard by anyone else besides the lingering dead.
And so because Jack wasn't able to hear him, Atlas couldn't really share with him any of those embarrassing stories. All of which were all coloured through the lense of Fontaine's firm distance and Jack's childish desire to be close to the man that would be his only human contact. Contact Fontaine had repeatedly held hostage to get the results he wanted.
"Wouldn't have killed you to throw him a bone." Atlas muttered to himself irritably as his fingers skimmed along the dirty bed sheets.
Jack had been such a crybaby, but always so desperate to please and impress. Would it have been so much for Fontaine to simply tell him 'good job' once or twice? Not like Jack would remember any of it in the end. But still Fotnaine had carefully guarded himself. Perhaps to avoid getting attached himself. Jack was already good and attached to him after all.
The Therapy Wing was still now. No children left inside, which seemed like a small mercy. Surely all the girls on the train had once been here. Thinking about Beatrice laying on one of the musty old beds, hooked up to all those cables and hidden away under a looming tarp, it turned Atlas's stomach and he reminded himself that she was good and safe with Delta now.
At least she wouldn't have been alone in this horrible place. The other girls would have been with her. But for Jack? Well Jack had never gotten the chance to play with other children, or even swap stories between them when the doctors were busy. He was always on his own save for the tests and rare visits from Fontaine.
Why exactly he had to be kept miserable for the process Atlas couldn't have said. Maybe they just never cared much for his emotional development outside of obedience and a basic understanding of human norms to not bring attention to himself topside.
Now there were no more children like Jack, Beatrice or Lottie, and Atlas could only hope that the abhorrent practices drowned with the rest of the decaying city.
Coming to a slow stop Atlas sighed, feeling the familiar prickle of his own ghost lingering by his heels. Too tired to fight the other back down he waited for the feeling to grow stronger, to become a stabbing pain that was too mild to really bother doing anything about but just grating enough to set his teeth on edge.
Perhaps he just wanted someone else to talk to, even if that someone had to be Fontaine.
"What are you?" Atlas asked tiredly as he turned to face his personal devil, not letting Fontaine get the first word this time. A petty victory on his part as he clarified. "I mean what are you really?"
At this Fontaine gave a single bewildered bark of laughter as he stepped into the room. The sound was decidedly unpleasant. "You're asking me?" Fontaine replied unhelpfully as he followed after Atlas into the Therapy Wing.
He did not take the time to study the beds as Atlas had. Instead opting to focus on his revolutionary other exclusively as he made a slow loop around him. Taking in the body from the outside at his own pace. Humming to himself as he took note of something in the subject of his scrutiny. Atlas didn't bother asking what exactly Fontaine thought of his body now, he didn't need any comments about it.
"If you don't know then how do you expect me to know?" Fontaine asked. "Do I look like one of those crackpot scientists to you? All I know is that you shouldn't be here. Yet, here you are anyway."
"Don't blame me." Atlas hissed, having quite enough self blame as it was. "You're the one that shot up with some untested, unstable ADAM."
All Atlas got for the reminder was a sharp scowl from Fontaine before he went back to his shark like circling. Atlas almost prefered the real shark he'd encountered. Almost.
"Alright, Atlas, buddy,"
Atlas could even begin to tell Fontaine how much he was not his 'buddy' and so did not even speak up to try.
"Given our situation I think it's time we bury the hatchet. Face it, without me and without plasmids you'd be long dead by now and you're going to keep abusing the stuff to stay alive. So let's not pretend you're above it all now. No. Instead let's, you and I, figure this out. We have a golden opportunity here that you're not acknowledging."
"I don't see what you're gettin' at." Atlas groused, though he had the sinking feeling that he just might.
"The key, Atlas." Fontaine stressed, frustrated but still trying to get the little cogs in Atlas's mind to start spinning. "The genetic key to all of Rapture. That old coot Lamb has it. These idiots need it to get topside and we can take it from both of them at once. It's almost too perfect!"
Atlas paled.
He'd known what Fontaine was after. In the back of his mind, of course he knew. They were, at times, of one mind and so there were precious few things that Fontaine could desire that Atlas would not be subconsciously aware of. Then he too would not covet to some degree, no matter how hard he fought against those cravings.
It was one thing to know, to feel those desires in his very bones. But it was another to stand there, in this dilapidated facility and listen to Fontaine explicitly state his intentions. It all left Atlas feeling dizzyingly sick.
Hadn't they already done this?
Used Jack to take the key from Ryan. Now he wanted to use Delta to take it from Lamb? How many times could Fontaine play this same hand before realising the futility of it?
Fontaine didn't seem to take notice of his quiet distress for even a moment. Pushing on ahead unwaveringly as he always did, knowing that if he let his stride falter the weight of all he'd ever done would drag him under in an instant. Fontaine's voice carried on strong as he spoke of dreams like they were not currently standing in a nightmare.
"Think of it!"
The showman stepped ahead of Atlas, hands lifted from his sides, as if he could get Atlas to actually visualise the future held in their hands the same way that he so clearly did.
"With Lamb out of the way everything down here falls into our laps just like that!" Fontaine emphasised with a snap of his fingers.
Energy buzzed around him as though Fontaine were truly a child in the spotlight again. Dreams filling up his head, stealing all his attention and leaving no room for anything else. Not reason, not regret. Just that all consuming ambition.
With his back to Atlas, Fontaine went on. Eager, manic even, as he spoke of these plans of his. "Atlas, you and I, we can't be all that different. We're cut from the same cloth, damn literally at that! You have to see the same thing that I am seeing here."
But all Atlas could see was the empty, child sized beds lined up against the walls. Machines built from and for misery gathering dust, and instruments that fell just short of tools of torture laid out around them. All he saw was Rapture's atrocities with their own alongside them.
If Atlas looked forward he did not see Fontaine's future in the same radiant light that the mad man claimed to. All Atlas could see was more of the same.
All he saw was the world he'd been written into. The same exact things that he saw since being born from the vita-chamber and moments from the time when Fontaine was alone in this lie of theirs.
All Atlas saw were a clutch of unwanted memories he couldn't clean himself of again now they'd returned to him.
Things like, Beatrice's eyes blown wide in terror as she clung to a man she had no choice but to trust her life to. Delta sitting alone on a theater stage screaming his lungs out. Sinclair's silence as they carried each other's shames without a word passing between them. Knowing full well their hands were both caked in the blood of friends. Even Tenebaum's lingering looks and quiet watchfulness. So busy trying to repair what she'd broken that she had even let a thing like him survive this long.
Things like the haze of fires that reeked of burning flesh. His back turned so he didn't see when they added another tiny body to the pyre.
The night before his own surgery crafted face had been made, that he'd shared with his closest friend over one last bottle. Knowing they'd never see one another again as he signed both their death certificates knowing only one of them would be gone.
His own niece's smile which he now saw in the face every little sister he came across. The same smile and dirty red dress that he had seen the day Fontaine resigned the girl to the flames with the others.
His arms cradling the last of his family with her body already cold, frost still clinging to her fingertips as the only evidence that she'd died fighting to protect what Frank hadn't.
Atlas saw Jack's eyes when the fight was won at Rapture's summit and the kid had stared at them both like his heart had been torn anew despite his resolve to defeat them.
That was all that Atlas could see. Just more of this.
More scared eyes and fires burning in the city as it sank them ever so slowly into the depths where they ought to be snuffed out if there was even an ounce of justice left in the world.
Atlas would welcome that end in the dark abyss now. He didn't think he could endure a single second more of this.
But how could he even hope to share these things with Fontaine if he did not already feel it? The depth of this agony they'd made for themselves.
Speech couldn't do it justice and if Fontaine wasn't already buckling under the weight of it, sharing all that they did, what hope was there that Atlas could ever find the right words to make him see what he did not allow himself to feel?
"You're mad." Atlas said in a quiet breath, eyes wide and fixated on Fontaine's back.
The vibrant glee faded and Atlas watched as those outstretched hands gradually sank back down to the Fontaine's sides.
A terse silence fell between them with Fontaine's mind ticking away, his mouth set into a tight, grim line. Then, slowly he turned to face Atlas again. Eyes cold and dead. There was something unsettling in that dull, lingering stare.
As though he already knew what had to be said, but waited for Atlas to say it out loud all the same.
So that was exactly what Atlas did.
"Rapture is nothing but rust and rubble, Fontaine."
It may have been the first time since he was thrust into existence, with ADAM nipping at his heels, that Atlas had implored Fontaine to see an ounce of sense. To truly bargain with him, to perhaps even beg the man to see reason just once.
"There is nothing here anymore. You know it, I know it - the whole damn world seems to know it! So... why?"
There were so many questions to be levied at Fontaine, but Atlas couldn't pin a single one of them down. They all merged and mixed together to simply become - why?
The silence from Fontaine stretched on for what felt like an eternity before gradually his gaze moved away from Atlas. Not looking at any one thing in particular. Hardened eyes sweeping across their environment. Maybe he couldn't really see it. Couldn't see how Rapture leaked and inched closer to collapse every second they stood within its walls.
Atlas didn't know which of them felt it. Himself or Fontaine - hell maybe it was both of them that felt it creeping in. The desperation.
They were suffocating under the weight of the city. Crushing them slowly and while he struggled and clawed at the walls for a way out, Fontaine seemed unwilling to admit the ship was sinking at all. Even with the water pooling around his waist.
Eventually, Fontaine's stare turned back on Atlas and, for just a single precious second, the desire to see something in that stare was overwhelming.
Fontaine had been so many things in their life. Atlas knew the way his eyes gleamed and seemed to glitter when victories were won. He knew the fire behind them when a plan went belly side up or some fool tried their hand at cheating him. He even knew the shine of a softer joy that they'd so very rarely held in those few moments of calm before all this. Before Rapture. Before Fontaine. Back when it was just a rundown little bar topside with nights spent drinking and dancing with his little awkwardly stuck together family. He almost longed to see those eyes again.
But now Fontaine's stare was flat.
No grand show of malice or wicked delight. Just this level, endless stare. Like somewhere along the way he'd lost something and Atlas didn't know what or where that something might be.
Still, Atlas stepped forward, his own arms held out, gesturing to the ruins that Fontaine had so eagerly held up as an impossible 'what if' moments earlier. Atlas didn't hold that visage of the future, all he held was the image of the city rotting.
All Atlas saw was reality.
"Frank." he pleaded again, "Just this once, hear me."
A tell tale cold that they both knew pricked at his spine and Fontaine came alive again.
Recoiling from Atlas. he took two steps back for every one that Atlas had taken forwards. He had not been the first to ask that Fontaine hear him, nor the first to be denied.
Fontaine looked over Atlas's shoulder and though he knew there was nothing there to see, the cold at his spine made Atlas wonder if Fontaine had seen the ghosts lingering behind them.
For once, Fontaine had no words for them it seemed.
He'd written and rewritten lives and lies as easily as he breathed, but now he had nothing and it was with one final, pitiable scowl that he vanished this time. Running rather than stepping back behind the show's curtains to wait for another time to put on a performance. Really truly, fleeing from Atlas back into the depths of their shared mind.
The cold did not abbate with him and Atlas's eyes turned downward, as those familiar cold fingers circled around his wrists. He couldn't tell if the touch were meant as shackles or as a comfort. Maybe both, he was too far gone to tell anymore.
A world weary heaviness settled into his bones. No one could say he didn't try.
"He doesn't see it." Atlas muttered into the empty air before him. Addressing the ghosts although he wouldn't dare turn and face them. "All he sees is plans and schemes and - fuck - god damn lies. That's all he damn well sees!"
The cold answered him. It's all he knows. It said.
Yes. Atlas knew that too. But was that really any excuse?
Atlas had always been a lie. His entire existence was made to serve as one. He too only knew lies because he was the lie. But here he was all the same. Trying to speak some kind of reason to the man that first spoke his lie to begin with.
He could not even begin to understand how far the rift between he and Fontaine had become. How he stood so far from where they had started and yet Fontaine stayed right where he'd always been.
But, loathe as Atlas was to admit it...he and Fontaine did inevitably share an end goal even if their reasons behind it wildly differed.
The genetic key.
They all needed it for one reason or another. Fontaine wanted it for control of the city, the rest of them needed it to get the hell out of here. So, no matter how much he wanted to avoid letting Fontaine anywhere near that key - he'd still have to obtain it.
One problem at a time.
"So what do I do now?" Atlas asked quietly, hoping that his voice would still reach Rapture's dead as the cold clung to his fingertips. A careful embrace that chilled as much as it comforted.
Without fail an answer was provided in one voice, in a hundred, it hardly mattered anymore what face the ghosts wore when guiding him anymore.
Find the Girl.
That….that he could do.
With a steading breath Atlas closed his eyes, collected himself and straightened out his spine. If he and Rapture shared the same last dying breaths it might as well be used doing something of worth.
Perhaps he just wasn't willing to let all the efforts they made to get this far go to waste, he may as well try to finish what they'd started.
"Alright. To Elenore then." For a second Atlas hesitated, a question catching in his throat and staying there as he struggled with the fear of asking it. But the alternative was the feeling of loneliness and directionless wandering and so he eventually did speak the question aloud for the dead in a quiet murmur.
"...can you show me the way?"
The cold pulled away and for a horrible second he thought the ghosts to have abandoned him when he sought them out, but turning to seek their vision he found himself both comforted and horrified to find one of them waiting for him among the decaying children's beds.
Frightening as the spectors of his mind could be, Atlas calmed quickly one he recognised the long dead figure waiting for him.
Again he wondered how much of it was his broken mind, ADAM's influence or maybe something more tangible that caused him to follow and flee the dead with such frequency.
Grimly Atlas acknowledged the ghost of choice without a hint of surprise in his voice.
"So it's you then, Eddie?" he greeted dryly, ignoring how his insides crawled at the sight of the long dead man.
Expecting any moment the specter would begin to drip blood around the bullet hole between his eyes. But the visage of the long gone man didn't waver or shift, just waited without a word at the other end of the room for him.
With a steadying breath, Atlas stepped towards the ghost that he could never be sure was really there or not.
He wouldn't get anywhere by standing idle, what did he have to lose by following the dead now?
"Fine…" Atlas uttered under his breath, meeting the empty eyes of the ghost steadily. "Let's get on with it."
…
…
Beatrice was inconsolable and furious.
While Tenebaum's chidings were stern and quiet when speaking to the child, all the girl's anger was directed Sinclair's way and he didn't acknowledge her at all. He half expected she'd demand her doll back at this rate.
Rather than face the fuming child, Sinclair had watched the place Atlas vanished from. Trying and failing to make sense of all that had happened. They couldn't stay here for too long but they all needed a second to regroup after that...incident. Sinclair more than anyone else needed to sort through his flying, disorganised thoughts.
Atlas. He was still using that accursed name. There was no Atlas, just another one of Fontaine's many acts. But it was difficult to think of him by his proper name. Proper being a bit of a stretch, Fontaine wasn't even his real name was it? God was the only one left that might have known what name Frank had been born with and even He might have lost track by now.
Why did they always swap names on him like this? How had they kept track of all the changes? Conartists, he'd had a gutful of them by now.
Distantly he heard Tenebaum trying to hush Bea and tell Delta in clipped words that this was not a story she had the time to tell in detail and an abridged version would suffice for now. Delta, who was still so baffled at everything that had happened, was no doubt more than little upset with him. Although it was hard to tell when he didn't have the voice to flay Sinclair with if he were angry.
Just long, lingering stares that Sinclair didn't acknowledge anymore than Beatrice's accusations of treachery. Which was quite rich considering the circumstances, but he didn't expect a child of her age to understand. Especially not when she seemed so bloody fond of Atlas.
At least he had not killed her favoured guardian in front of her. He'd wanted to. Planned to. Had the gun in hand when he exited the train with every intention of shooting Atlas before he could open his lying mouth and spin some new tale to weasel his way out of another corner.
But he hadn't.
Instead when he'd seen Atlas the blinding rage that filled him pushed Sinclair to lash out and strike Atlas across the jaw rather than put a bullet between his eyes. A considerable downgrade from his initial murderous intent.
In retrospect, Sinclair figured it was because when he'd seen the old bastard's sorry face, he had thought 'Atlas', and not 'Fontaine'.
Imagine that. Still being fooled by that mug even once the gig was up.
As he sat, pondering this and thumbing over the revolver's barrel, Tenebaum had appeared at his side. Bea rather firmly put into the train and guarded by Delta.
Tenebaum wasted no time prying into his thoughts. "You do not believe him?"
Sinclair chuckled dryly. "Amazed you do, doc. Fontaine was always a good actor, I just didn't know he was this good."
Good enough that it gave him reason for pause even now.
For a time Tenebaum did not speak. Standing in companionable silence at Sinclair's side as he continued to turn the revolver over in his hands. She was looking at it and Sinclair felt sure she must have known it only had one bullet and exactly where it had come from. There was every chance she'd seen this gun before. She'd played midwife to Jacyln and little Lottie after all.
On Fontaine's request. Sinclair's jaw clenched tightly.
Finally Tenebaum ventured to speak. "Do you not think that perhaps you and Atlas are a bit more similar than-"
"Well he's not 'Atlas', now is he?" Sinclair snapped, not wanting to relate to Fontaine anymore than he had to be.
They had both been men that worked suckers over for their own gain and Sinclair had never been particularly apologetic for that. But where they differed was their willingness to put friends in the ground.
Tenenbaum's stretching silence was hardly comforting to him. After she'd left the air quiet for just a stretch too long, Tenebaum shifted the focus of discussion without even pretending that wasn't precisely what she was doing.
"Once you have found your head, you will join us to discuss our next movements. We cannot afford to be idle for too long. Don't take too much time finding your senses, Sinclair."
Steely as always. Sinclair couldn't help but scoff softly. In part amused and part insulted by her refusal to engage with the conversation of he and Atlas in any meaningful way.
Sinclair refused to believe his inaction was the same as Fontaine's crimes. He never meant to hurt any of those close to him. It just...turned out that way.
But then again, there were crimes like Delta. Sure he hadn't been a friend to begin with but-
Sinclair's fiddling paused abruptly as that thought crossed his mind.
Now that he thought about it...Fontaine knew all his dirty laundry. He'd been with Delta for days and now that his little act was over, he still hadn't said a word about the protector program or his involvement in Persephone and Johnny's case specifically.
It would have been quite the thing to throw in his face in front of Delta right before they could escape Rapture. So why the silence, why not get one last jab in at him?
Why hadn't Fontaine spoken up?
It seemed just like ol' Frankie to throw him under the bus just to drag him down with him once the whole act was up. But Fontaine had been alarmingly tight lipped even during their confrontation, he hadn't put a specific name to any of his crimes nor outed him to current victims. That didn't seem much like Fontaine.
Was he still trying to pull this Atlas angle? Why?
Staring at the loaded gun in his lap, Sinclair tried to puzzle it out. Cut the con from different angles, seeing what might fit. After a moment Sinclair looked to Tenebaum who was yet to abandon him to his thoughts entirely. Guarded but curious and lost enough to ask.
"What do you think he's up to?"
The little upward twitch of Tenebaum's lips stood on the edge of being a smile. "I would imagine just the same as you, Augustus. Survival."
With that she left him and Sinclair couldn't be sure if what she'd said was in contempt or not. She'd made no secret her distaste for him in the past, even if the icy woman seemed to have warmed to him some. Irritated Sinclair looked back at his gun and with a sharp sigh, placed it back into its holster. Keeping it close just in case.
The same as him. They always had been running through the same circles in the past, going for the same goals until Fontaine's just got too big. Too megalomaniacle. Too homicidal. Now Sinclair didn't know what to make of the man.
"He's just like you." Sinclair muttered into the dead air around him. "Doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Did it run in the family?" Sinclair mused to himself with a tired smile.
For all the ghosts he swore floated around him, he'd not yet seen the one he thought would pester him in life and death most relentlessly. She'd told him in no uncertain terms to expect a thorough haunting should she die before him - but she remained suspiciously absent now.
If Jackie wouldn't be the death of him, then her little whelp of a brother just might do the trick.