Author's note: Welcome to flash back land. Status: Fucking painful.
…
…
"Do you remember why we're here, Johnny? It's not to bloody well go sightseeing!"
That was Walter's voice. Cross with him, as it so often was.
But he heard it from within, the memory of being the one speaking rather than the one listening and when he heard himself, it was from the outside. Through Walter's eyes.
Johnny laughed. Back before he was Subject Delta. Back before he was anyone other than a lucky idiot that stumbled his way across the biggest secret in the world and a disgruntled artist that let him in.
Back when he had a voice.
"Come on, Walter!" Johnny encouraged with a lopsided grin that could just as soon set Walter off as soften him to Johnny's antics.
However, just as quickly Johnny's own tone softened as he gazed out upon the hidden city.
"Just give me another minute. I want to remember it like this."
Walter did not ask what it was Johnny saw in Rapture. Through his eyes the city did not look like much.
To the artist it had long since become a monstrosity of steel and gold plated promises that felt cold and lifeless to the touch even as the residence scrambled for just a scrap. It was nothing short of a watery tomb that many had not yet realised would sink and take them all with it if given half the chance.
And Walter was not going to allow the ocean's depths to take the little sunray standing by him with it.
Without a word he once more observed the adventurer that had so stubbornly found himself a way to Ryan's buried city at sea. Johnny was a fine young man, though Walter would never tell him as such in so simple terms.
There was something in his eyes that never cooled despite the dreary, manufactured lights of Rapture. Something warm and alive. Something that reminded him of an open sky and leaves changing their colours.
Still, as those autumn touched eyes looked out over the bubbling depths of Rapture's city expanse, perhaps Walter could see it reflected in his eyes. Something not yet withered and cold, maybe if he looked at Rapture through Johnny's eyes he'd find something worth the words for poetry or paint for canvas.
But more likely than not he'd only paint the colours of those eyes again.
"Johnny." Walter began again, tone gentler but no less urgent. "We have to leave. Miss White's work can only buy so much time for us and I assure you that you do not want to be trapped down here. No matter how pretty you find it."
It almost hurt when Topside turned to him and smiled. It burned in the way warm water did against frostbitten fingers. Walter didn't know when he'd frozen or when Johnny began to thaw him back out, but he would miss the little idiot terribly when he was gone.
"I know, I know. But I can't paint like you. I can't keep a good picture of this place the way you do. And you wont paint it for me-"
Walter snorted derisively. He still adamantly refused to paint Rapture. Even if Johnny pleaded with him frequently.
Johnny had gotten good at ignoring his rude little expressions and went on just as earnestly. "-so let me get a good look at her before we go. We have a little more time right?"
Well...yes. They were technically running early. Walter's anxiety about the little escape attempt allowed for nothing else. Valery had assured him the small pod she'd designed for them would work a charm, but Walter was nothing if not filled with doubt.
If it were not for the woman's sturdy reliability he'd never have risked putting the little sun spot in some home built evacuation chamber.
"Just another minute, I am timing you." Walter warned sternly and was rewarded for his seriousness with cheerful laughter from Johnny.
Without saying so, he added another minute to that timer. Just because he wasn't sure if he'd hear that laughter again.
For a while they stood in silence and looked out over the city. Walter did not see the beauty in it, but he could admire the way that Johnny did.
That, he could perhaps paint.
But eventually the timer ran out, even with the extra seconds tacked on due to sentimentality and Walter placed a careful hand on Johnny's shoulder. Urging the young man away from the wide, stretching windows of Rapture. "We have to go." He repeated once again and this time Johnny nodded, albeit reluctantly.
Even Johnny couldn't ignore the mounting pressure. Ryan was after his head, everyone knew that.
Their white king's paranoia had grown more and more oppressive as Atlas's name began to be murmured more loudly with every passing day.
The presence of an outsider that had stumbled upon his city had all but sent the man into a frenzy from what Walter had heard and he knew immediately that if discovered Johnny would be whisked away to wherever people that slighted Ryan went. A watery grave or something worse. Something the young moron certainly didn't deserve.
Ryan had always been a detestable old fool but his insistence that commies and supposed parasites were lurking around every corner set Walters teeth on edge.
And really, labeling Topside as a spy of all things! It was laughable.
Johnny could not keep a secret to save his bleeding life, so Walter had to save his life for him.
Finally the man seemed to be done with his sightseeing and Walter was able to release a breath of relief. Beginning to remind Johnny that he needed to thank Valery for sticking her neck out for them once they saw her. Hopefully on the surface should she decide to make an escape pod for herself oneday.
Only for the sound of a child's screaming to take both of them off guard.
It sounded like a little girl…
Walter paused, looking in the direction of the crying, wondering what on earth a child would be doing this deep in the back workings of Rapture's foundations. There was nothing down here but airlocks, boiling pipes and countless fatal accidents waiting to happen should a child be left unattended. But that was definitely a child screaming.
The artist had not yet decided what they ought to do about the racket. Wondering nervously if it would draw too much attention to their efforts to escape, but Johnny had no such hesitations.
In fact Topside immediately broke from his side and ran bullforce towards the echoing cries. Damn him and his stupid bleeding heart.
"Johnny!" Walter tried his best to call the man away in a familiar warning hiss but Johnny's mind was set.
No amount of griping, scolding or warning would keep the explorer from a course once it was set. No wonder he'd ended up within Rapture when all others failed.
Now he put that single minded determination to finding the source of the child's distressed cries.
Walter had no choice but to trail after the fool, trying to find any way to tell him to leave the child without it sounding as though he was suggesting they abandon a girl in distress. But really there was no way around that end intent and Johnny might just scowl at him if he dared say as much. Walter's heart couldn't stand that.
So he said nothing more and just followed after Johnny in hopes they'd find a child with a skinned knee and send them back off to whatever negligent parents let them down here.
What they found instead caused Walter to stop in place even as Johnny pushed on forward, as if he could not see the unnaturally greyish hue to the child's flesh or catch the orange glow emanating from her eyes. As if he couldn't tell the difference between a little girl and some sort of monster.
Without a shred of healthy self preservation Johnny dropped down to his knees by the sobbing creature, hands hovering over her shoulders as he took in the bare foot, child shaped thing. Walter did not dare get any closer, voice caught in his throat as he watched the thing initially shy away from Johnny.
But oh, who could refuse the man's insistent kindness for longer than a few moments? Walter occasionally lasted an hour or so. At best.
Quickly the child turned to Johnny's welcoming arms and buried herself within them, sobbing still as the diver wrapped his arms around her. Expression caught in one of quiet, confused horror. So he did see something was amiss with the girl, it simply had not stopped him from immediately enveloping her in a protective embrace. Typical.
Finally Walter found a couple of his lost wits, enough to slowly approach the pair. Ghoulish as she seemed, the child did not try to latch tooth or claw into Johnny and just continued her crying, thankfully quieter since hiding away against Johnny's chest. Those hiccuping sounds only grew softer and more infrequent as Johnny ran fingers through her matted black hair, soothing the child even as he continued to stare uncomprehendingly at the creature he held.
"What...what is wrong with her." Johnny asked Walter in a hushed, horrified voice as if the artist had ever seen anything like this.
While never once had Walter ever seen anything like the cursed child before him, he knew the cause all the same.
"Rapture."
The answer was as quiet and cold as the grave.
Walter might not have understood exactly what it was that afflicted the child and caused her eyes to glow quite so bright, but he knew it was the city that had undoubtedly done it to her.
Perhaps a new form of ADAM consumption? Children had been known to occasionally splice, be it from neglect or lack of parental common sense, but they responded much the same as anyone else. This was nothing like a little overindulgence of Old Man Winter or the odd athletic gene tonic.
This was something new. Something they'd never seen before.
The poor thing was filthy and trembling in Johnny's large, warm arms that ever so carefully cradled her and it was the sight of Johnny clutching the girl closer to his heart that let Walter know that there would be no abandoning her now.
No matter how ghoulish she might look, he was sure Johnny would sooner put him out an airlock than he would let them leave the girl behind.
Walter gave up his hopes of escape that day.
Instead he resigned himself instead to apologising to Valery and begging her to conjure up more time from the limited amount they'd already squandered. Somehow he expected she would - because for as rough a woman as she was, Miss White had never once abandoned a pleading soul.
"What's your name, love?" Johnny was askin the tiny, haunted looking girl.
Walter had no expectation that the freakish little thing could even manage human speech anymore, but once again was shunned by the city for expecting anything of it at all as the girl spoke. Voice quiet with a great many that Walter couldn't fathom as anything other than lovecraftian in nature.
"Eleanor."
…
…
They spent but one week with little Eleanor.
That was the soonest that Valery said she could move the escape pod back into a position they could access it through. It could not stay there too long lest Ryan's many eyes take notice.
So they went back into hiding for one week more.
Squirreled away in Walter's cluttered apartment. Any efforts once made to organise his materials and books had long since been abandoned by the pair. But on that night Johnny had set to cleaning the space with a renewed vigor and a little monstrous girl dangling from his shoulders.
Walter had little choice but to trail behind his path of destructive clearing and watch as the girl, Eleanor, giggled in delight at any other inane thing Johnny said. Walter made no note of it out loud but he was pleased that someone with a freer voice would laugh at Johnny's absurdities when he stalwartly refused.
Eleanor seemed good for Johnny, an observation that Walter begrudgingly made only a few hours into their unexpected new role as babysitters.
The discussion of what to do about the child was had in hushed voices as they'd returned to the apartment.
It hadn't taken them long to come to the bleedingly obvious conclusion.
Rapture had it's orphans. Hence the need for an orphanage, courtesy of Fontaine of all crooks, but it had no love or sympathy for the wayward or weak. Let alone the warped.
Never mind the questionable motivations behind that particular act of 'charity', or Ryan's decision to maintain the facilities even after Fontaine's demise, there were precious few that could protest its growing necessity.
It seemed everyday that there were more children without parents in Rapture, those lost to the needle or revolution. Some just gave their children up in hopes someone could provide for them better and some...just vanished.
Walter cringed, trying not to think of Warren and his missing little sister.
The posters with Mary's face on them had likely all been covered over with others by now. All equally left unresolved.
Still, he would rejoin with his friends and brother to help them search once more. Just as soon as he had handled this new situation with another lost child.
He did not wonder at the time why all the missing posters were of girls. Nor why the orphanages did not take boys. His mind was too full thinking of ways to hurl Johnny and Eleanor above the waves once more.
Walter couldn't be sure what would be done with a child like Eleanor, even though he was positive that it could not be some strange accident of Rapture's. Little girls did not suddenly change to have glowing eyes and speak with many voices, everything about it spoke of purposeful intent to him. Although he couldn't have guessed as to why anyone would want this.
But if it was a purposeful creation then someone would surely want it back, or to steal it for themselves. As was the nature of Rapture.
If Rapture had orphans than it too surely had ways to make use of them and even if the girl did have a family somewhere, looking as she was now, strange and warped as she'd become - he and Johnny had decided that any effort to seek help within Rapture would likely end with her strapped down and dissected. At best. The 'worst' didn't bare dwelling on.
Even Johnny's usual sunny optimism hadn't broken through that line of thought. Only holding Eleanor a little tighter as they rushed back to the privacy and relative safety of Walter's apartment.
It was all too easy to imagine unwittingly handing her over to some authority in Rapture that would just as quickly pawn her off to Ryan or whoever else could make money off little monsters in the shape of children.
Simply put, it just wasn't worth the risk.
So Walter had been the one to suggest it in the end. Little more than a quiet murmur of, "...we'll bring her to the surface. Somewhere that people can help her."
All he had was the hope that the world above had not become as harsh as the one below.
Walter could only trust that because when Johnny smiled at him, all relief and gratitude, it was something so warm that surely it could not come from a place as grim as Rapture. The surface was the only hope for both the unusual girl and those bright eyes.
That was not to say Walter was thrilled by the development.
Instead he hung back. Watched on as Walter played with Eleanor, little games of make believe full of giggles and delight. He felt thoroughly out of place around the happy pair, but comforted himself in the knowledge that perhaps they'd keep one another's spirits up for the journey ahead.
But it seemed Johnny's determination to attach himself to other's hearts was a trait quickly taught and it wasn't halfway through the week before little Eleanor was scrawling pictures of them with Walter's charcoal.
"Missie!" Walter chided when one evening he found her scratching into one of his many abandoned and forgotten sketchbooks.
"Look at you! You're filthy, for heaven's sake, girl. You've got charcoal on your face. Were you holding it with your teeth?"
Oh lord, had she eaten any of it?
Walter just knew Johnny would have some cross words for him if she had. As though he had any time to child proof his work station before she'd arrived.
Not only that, she'd surely spoil her appetite for the dinner Johnny was putting together for them. Something else he'd undoubtedly be held responsible for.
Eleanor only blinked up at him, as if not able to really process his stern tone. Instead just getting back up onto her feet and holding the little scribble out to him. Beaming with an expression she must have surely learned from Johnny. A quick little learner this one.
Begrudgingly Walter took the picture, acutely aware that his expression was too severe. He'd have softened it if he knew how to, if only to not let the girl see how much he disliked her work.
Except...well for what it was he didn't actually hate it.
Oh sure it was nothing he'd have kept in the book himself, but Eleanor didn't hand him simple stick figures either. Without realising it himself, Walter's expression did actually smooth some as he looked at the work thoughtfully.
There was no finesse, no well practiced hand behind the lines, but there was...certainly a warmth to the way she'd drawn them all. Johnny's smile large and as true to life as a child's cartoons could be. The little squares she'd drawn around them framing what he supposed was intended to be happy family fantasy. Books, actually. He acknowledged once noticing the little boxes had pages drawn into them and the indication of titles in little wiggles down the spines.
It did not once cross Walter's mind that he was critically going over a child's gift to him. The polite thing to do would be to tell her it was lovely and put it on the wall or something. Although he didn't actually have anything to pin it up with.
Instead Walter sat down next to Eleanor among the chaos of scrap paper, abandoned sketches and open books.
"What are these?" he asked, pointing to the little circle like shapes in their hair carved out by patches of white in the charcoal.
"Flowers!" Eleanore told him eagerly, shuffling closer to begin pointing out other things in the picture. Like how Walter's glasses and ponytail looked awful funny to her.
But all Walter wondered about was the flowers.
"Have you ever seen them before?" he asked curiously. "Flowers that is."
Not many children in Rapture really had. Apparently seeing trees for the first time in person could be quite overwhelming for them.
"Hmm...no, but I dream about them." Eleanor told him in her strange echoing trill. "Flowers white as snow and pretty angels in gold. I like my dreams, I'd like it if you would be there too."
Walter didn't like that one bit. He wasn't sure exactly if what Eleanor was experiencing were really dreams and he certainly didn't want to be a part of them but...well…
"Your shading here is all off." Walter told Eleanor primly, getting a small offended squark from the girl.
He would have none of her defensiveness. Eleanor showed remarkable promise for one so young with a couple of broken bits of charcoal. It would be truly negligent on his part not to foster another young artist when the opportunity presented itself. Before she got infested with things like Cohen's perversions.
"You have potential my dear girl, but if you won't improve any by pouting at me. Here, let me show you. See? This is what you call cross hatching, you can use it for simple shading practice- Eleanor? Are you listening, Eleanor?"
She wasn't. Instead she was just looking at him again with those wide, pooling orange eyes. As if in awe of something.
After a moment she spoke, voice ever so quiet, careful and unsure, "I do?" she asked meekly, as if Walter would retract the compliment.
How foolish on her part. He did not give praise frivolously! Did she think him so vapid?
"If you did not, I would not say it. Now pay attention, you're still holding the charcoal all wrong, no wonder it's on your face more than the paper."
Walter didn't question it when Eleanor hugged in close to his side after that and listened eagerly. Only protesting a small amount when Walter finally got around to cleaning the charcoal off her cheeks. Chiding her once more for the messiness. If she didn't want to clean her face then she ought to have been more careful.
But eventually it was time for food and bed on the last day of the week.
They'd have another big day upon them in the morning. Johnny returned with a fresh meal and they sat together among the mess and books to eat. Walter stalwartly refused to think of it as a family dinner.
Johnny gave his praise freely and uncritically, which Walter knew could act as quite the ego boost, a very dangerous thing for an artist but...well Eleanor was still young. She could use some of his unenthusiastic compliments for her art.
Walter also pretended he did not see the soft look the diver cast him when realising he'd been teaching Eleanor some basics. He adamantly refused to engage in that conversation.
Instead he only pressed the sketchbook into Eleanor's hands before bed. Finger pressed over his lips as if sharing a secret with her. "Keep this one, missie. Every young artist needs their own canvas."
When Eleanor smiled at him, Walter distantly promised himself he'd paint something in the colours of her dazzling golden eyes one day too.
Truly, Walter could have written some downright miserable poetry about the joys of loving and losing so quickly. But he would not be deterred.
Tomorrow he'd see Johnny and Eleanor off safely, even if that left him behind.
…
…
As it turned out Johnny was no less determined to escape with him than Walter was to stay behind.
Honestly he should have seen that one coming.
It was perhaps the first truly fiery fight they'd ever had and it was in poor form to do it right in front of Eleanor. The poor thing left confused as to why the pair were bickering as she huddled inside the tiny escape pod provided to them. Watching the argument spiraling with Walter's sketchbook pressed to her chest.
And for once it was Johnny angry with him and Walter, admittedly, did not really know how to respond to that.
"Are you barking mad, Wally!"
Johnny was shouting at him despite Walter's pleas for him to be quiet. Their voices echoed too far in the bowls of Rapture and he remained aware of how perilous their effort to escape was. But Johnny would not heed him and he feared the man would bodily throw him into the pod if the fight got too out of hand.
"Get in the pod, Johnny. I am not asking!" Walter hissed back. "This is the only way out of Rapture and you will be in it. You and the girl."
"All three of us." Johnny bit back just as stubbornly. "The plan was for us to escape, we can all fit!"
"Topside, you listen to me and you hear me this time. The escape pod can maybe fit two people. Miss White built it as large as she could without it triggering Rapture's detection but she couldn't even promise me that we'd both make it with enough air to the surface. Let alone with a child! It has to be the two of you."
"You never told me that-" Johnny halted mid accusation.
A terrible understanding breaking across his face, the expression was enough to force Walter's gaze to slide away from Johnny's face. Unable to face it when Johnny saw right through him.
"You were never going to come, were you?"
"...the pod has enough air for two if we were lucky, but it surely has enough for one. I was being-"
Johnny interrupted Walter angrily. "Pragmatic. Yeah, I know. That's what you always say."
Johnny had never sounded so irate with him before and Walter could only feel disappointed that they were always destined to end on such a sour note.
Rather than fight the young diver, Walter only shrugged uselessly. "Optimistic stubbornness won't conjure up more air for us. Especially with little Eleanor here now. The three of us would never make it to the surface and I wouldn't ask you to leave her nor let you stay in my place. Rapture might be miserable but I'm well suited to it. We match you see. You're out of place here, Johnny. Go home."
"Sweet jesus." Johnny muttered under his breath like he simply could not fathom the man before him. "You just have to be so clever, don't you? Wally, I am not leaving you here."
"I think you'll find you are." Walter replied flatly. "Pragmatism and all that."
"Walter I don't want you to be pragmatic, I want you-"
It would be no exaggeration to say Walter had wondered every day until his demise what Johnny had wanted of him at the end of it all. But the thunderous bang of a trigger being pulled and sharp strike of a bullet's impact well and truly erased any chance he'd get to hear the answer.
Walter knew he'd been shot before he really understood it.
The simple key facts all lined up. An explosion, a sudden thud of impact, his body lurching forward to the ground in front of him, iron in the air and red sprayed out before him. The pieces were all there, but for as clever as he supposedly was, Walter could not comprehend the reality of it.
Not until little Eleanor screamed and the pain came racing in alone with the sound.
"Johnny- Sunshine, the pod-" Walter tried to order Johnny away once more.
But his voice was frail, the words a ragged rasp as he gripped at where he thought he'd been shot. Finding torn cloth and sticky blood around his side quickly.
And, of course, Johnny could not leave well enough alone, instead dropping to his knees to take hold of Walter inside. Not recognising him as the dead weight he now was.
Really, he couldn't have asked for a more immediate 'you need to leave, no arguments' incentive than being fucking shot - but naturally Johnny being as stubborn and sweet as a blasted puppy, just refused to go. Instead putting himself between Walter and the gunman.
Collapsed on his knees Walter could do little more than clutch his side as he tried to look at their assailants over his shoulder. Teeth grit against the searing pain lancing up his spine, the presence of pain in the tips of every finger and toe was the only promise that he was not going to be left paralysed from the blow. Not that he truly expected to survive long enough to hold a brush or pen again.
He almost wished he could say that having Johnny at his side was a shallow comfort, and he'd have preferred the man run to the escape pod. But he was weak and he was afraid, and nothing felt sturdier or safer in the world than Johnny's at his side.
Perhaps were their attackers just some other poor souls looking for a way out of Rapture there was the chance they could give up the pod. Buy some more time to look for another way out.
That hope was dashed when the voice of Andrew Ryan himself rang out above the hiss and turn of machinery around them.
"Careful, Sullivan, we should want them alive enough to speak. Or all Sinclair's work to find them as such will be put to waste." he spoke to someone else, not yet even giving them the courtesy of some dry acknowledgement.
The man that had shot him lowered the gun mechanically. As if he'd long since lost whatever soul he had and just moved when Ryan demanded it of him. Pathetic.
Walter had never met Ryan before. Never been close enough that he appeared as a true flesh and blood person.
So when their resident king stepped past his goons and the horrified woman to observe them, Walter was surprised to find himself shaking. As if the gaze of the tyrant were so heavy it was crushing them beneath it.
Then again, that may have just been the shock settling in.
Ryan regarded them both with a cool, quiet satisfaction. Something vicious and smug behind those eyes that appeared too feral and perhaps a tad hazy to be entirely sobre. Johnny hadn't understood Walter's warnings about the man, not really. Ryan had been ravenous and afraid for too long to see reason anymore and Walter knew they were dead men under his stare.
Again Walter distantly cursed Stanley for writing the story on Johnny that dragged Ryan's feverish attention to them. He very much hoped to see the little weasel in hell some day.
"Now perhaps we can see about finding out who sent you. Which foriegn overlord you bark for." Ryan mused darkly and Walter felt the last of his wits leave him.
"He is not a spook! You over paranoid drunkard!" Walter snarled, affronted by Ryan's continued delusions.
Spies and infiltrators around every corner with this one. But anyone with eyes and something sloshing between their ears could see Johnny was no agent.
He had neither the temperament, inclination or cruelty for such work. He was an explorer, a good man, someone Rapture simply could not understand. Someone Ryan could not understand.
Walter half expected for the next bullet to go between his eyes, but instead another voice rang out shrilly.
"What is the meaning of this? What has happened to my daughter!" The woman's cries were shrill and distressed, but in a way that entirely felt off. As though the emotion were alien to her.
Walter distantly recognised her but he couldn't conjure up the name. Didn't care to try harder to recall. He was more focused on the red dripping between his fingers and the gun that remained trained on Johnny.
"Well, Miss Lamb. I am a man of my word. Your daughter found and returned."
"That...you would call that subhuman thing my daughter?" Sofia demanded in horror. "This is not what you and Sinclair promised me, Ryan."
"The state of your daughter has nothing to do with our pact, madam. Your daughter is already a monster, perhaps take solace in the idea that she can fall no further."
Walter had to wonder if there were ever anything good in Ryan once. If there were, it was long since strangled down now.
The memory faded for just a moment. Only snippets of conversation remained.
A question asked of what was to be done with the girl, a choice being made. Small moments that Walter could not make out in detail in the memory as he began to succumb to shock and blood loss.
He only snapped back into awareness of their situation when Johnny surged away from him with a shout.
The sudden loss of the man at his side and outburst stirred Walter back into awareness. He didn't know what may have been said when he started to fade but was once again wide awake as he looked to where Johnny rushed.
There stood the woman, this Lamb person that claimed to be their Eleanor's mother - by the airlock.
With little Eleanor on the other side.
Walter didn't know when they'd put her in there. If she'd screamed and struggled the whole way or if she'd trusted the woman that was supposed to love and provide for her about all else. And had walked unknowingly into the chamber that would be her death. Only realising once the doors shut that she'd been betrayed.
Eleanor's tiny fists were pounding against the glass and she was crying. Walter couldn't hear a word of it, but her silent shouting spoke of terror and hurt as the woman that had given life to her once opted to take it away.
Lamb pulled the lever before Johnny could reach them.
Sullivan fired at the man on reflex only to be shouted at by Ryan to put it down once again. The bullet missed Johnny, striking close to where Lamb stood, the only reason neither was hit was due to Johnny. He slammed into Lamb, throwing the woman far from the lever she'd just pulled as if that could undo the action.
But it was too late.
Water rushed into the airlock, devoured the girl in but seconds and dragged her out into the icy depths of the sea.
Walter knew she was dead.
The pressure, the cold, the simple seconds it would take to drown a girl so young out there - it was far too late.
But Johnny really truly never knew when to leave well enough alone. When to give up. And damn his heart, Walter loved him all the more for it.
Without hesitation, ignoring the bafflement and horror of the onlookers, Johnny tore the airlock open once more.
Walter could have told him the pointlessness of it as he stepped inside and sealed the lock behind him. As he pounded his fist against the controls within to open the doors to the ocean once more. By the time he got to her, if he got to her, Eleanor would be long dead and he would do little more than join her out there.
He almost wished he could have gone in the lock too. He knew they were all dead and the idle thought of dying together in the icy depths did soothe his soul some. But he would remain there on the floor while they floated through the sea.
Except...none of that happened.
Because Johnny was too stubborn and too good and Rapture simply could not crush him no matter how hard it tried.
They all watched on in equal parts disbelief and a quiet, niggling sense of terror, as Johnny reemerged. The tiny body of the girl gripped tight in his arms and pressed to his chest. He dragged them both to the airlock once more and the water began to drain out once the outer doors sealed.
Still Johnny stood, panting and heaving as he fought just to stand there. His entire form shaking from head to toe until finally his legs seemed to give up on him. But when he fell it was only to his knees, still cradling little Eleanor close to his heart.
And her tiny chest continued to move.
There was silence then. Not a soul among them knew what to do or say. It was impossible. To dive out into the depths of rapture unprotected and return alive - it was unthinkable, unachievable.
But then again, so was finding rapture with a simple diving suit and a stupid goofy smile.
Ah...Walter had to smile. His little idiot was seemingly unsatisfied until he'd broken every law of common sense ever laid down before him. Typical.
Finally one of them moved. Walter scowled when he recognized the man that strode past him to unlock the inner air lock doors as Augustus Sinclair. Where there was trouble, the snake was never far behind.
Johnny didn't move even once the doors slid open once more. Seemingly the last of his strength had gone to making sure that when he finally fell it was against his shoulder. Still protecting the child until he was physically incapable of doing so.
Sinclair looked at the sorry pair and whistled in appreciation. But he said nothing, a small mercy.
Walter was sure if he had to hear Sinclair's thoughts on this after all the pain the bastard had brought onto his family and friends, he'd have lost what was left of his sanity.
It was Ryan that spoke. Words always did seem to come to him with ease.
"My...I do believe we have just the place for men such as this." Ryan noted.
The words were so flat that it was hard to discern if he thought 'men such as this' was complimentary or scathing.
"Take them to the penal colony, into your protector program, miss Lamb. You may find more luck with one so devoted to paternal instinct."
"Not gonna interrogate him, boss?" Sullivan asked tiredly, as though he could not care less one way or the other and asked out of mere habit.
"Hardly any need in the end is there? He's just one of many that would seek to infiltrate my city. He is the first and he will be the only. Who sent him is of no consequence anymore. Besides,"
Ryan glanced back at the unconscious diver and Walter could have sworn he smiled.
"Once the protector program is ready, he will be just another defence in the great chain."
The world began to turn hazy again. Walter watched for as long as he could keep his eyes open. Refusing to tear his sight away from Johnny and Eleanor as he wondered if he could have fucked this whole escape thing up more spectacularly than he already had somehow.
But he still saw Ryan approach the escape pod, disgust and rage etched into his face against the deep dark circled that had formed under his eyes.
"Augustus, this contraption, who made it? I want them in Persephone immediately." Ryan was demanding as he and Sinclair stood before the pod.
Through the muddled sensation of pain and regret, Walter still felt fear.
Sinclair must have known who designed it. Surely he would.
He and Valery had been in competition seemingly from the day Rapture opened its doors, they'd worked together many a time in begrudging alliships.
There was no possible way he would not know.
Yet, all Walter heard Sinclair remark upon was the sleek design and, "Wouldn't have a clue who came up with this one, Andy. Maybe one of Fontaine's old projects. Can't very well ask him anymore now can we? Suppose we'll just put it away for now then, can't do no harm locked away. Leave it to me, old boy."
Why Sinclair chose to lie, Walter never figured out.
In fact, beyond occasionally cursing the man's name when he was coherent enough to remember it, he never did think of Sinclair again.
There were greater horrors in the world than the old snake and Walter didn't know yet that they were all to be introduced to him soon enough.
As he began to fade once more, Walter only faintly remembered one of Ryan's men hauling him up. His consciousness had scattered soon after and all that was left for them was this protector program Ryan had doomed them to.
But still, somewhere in the back of his mind, Walter did wonder if he'd be able to see Johnny again. Stranger things had happened in Rapture than that.
And Walter thought it owed them at least one last good thing.