Rapture felt dead now.
Atlas didn't have a better word for it.
Things around him had become too still and quiet. He didn't hear the scuttle rats that had found their way down to the city in the contraband they'd once smuggled in. Nor could he catch the distant wailing and chattering of splicers in the distance.
For all intents and purposes, the city's heart seemed to have finally sputtered out and they were all left floating in its shell. Just waiting to sink with it.
Maybe he had not chosen to linger after all and this was just the world's most droll idea of hell.
Among the towering forest of ADAM containers Atlas was left to mull over his position. At his back there was a city's worth of poison he could drown himself in if the urge became too great. At his front was that same city sucked dry and dying.
They were both just such appealing options weren't they?
But of course he couldn't very well be left to his wallowing on his lonesome. Disturbed from his focused staring at the puddle ridden floor by the sound of someone else drawing closer.
Then again when those soft, steady footfalls neared him, Atlas remained acutely aware that it was still just he and himself.
"Not looking so swell there, pal." Fontaine mused viciously. Voice equal parts ridicule and accusation.
Atlas did not answer him, instead his gaze drifted down to the gun in his hands. Toying with it idly as he traced the old engraved letters. It was their gun, always had been. Atlas never had wondered why it felt so comfortable and at home in his hands. But he'd never questioned much of anything seriously had he?
If he had maybe he wouldn't have ever tagged along with Delta in the first place and put himself into this position.
His thoughts ran darker still as he considered the gun and his echo. Atlas wondered if he popped the barrel open and let all the bullets fall to the floor, would it still sound off with a bang when directed at Fontaine?
Likely able to read his murderous intent from a mile away, Fontaine lifted his hands in mock surrender. The crooked sneer on his face got under Atlas's skin in an instant but he kept his mouth firmly shut for just a short while longer.
"Hey now, is that any way to greet a man that comes in peace?" Fontaine drawled.
Unwilling to indulge the other anymore than was strictly necessary, Altas stood back to his feet, tossing a scowl at the other as he snapped back. "The hell do you want now? Another grab at this body?" he guessed hotly and even though that body was in shambles and he bore no love for it, Atlas had no intent to had it over. He told Fontaine as much.
"Hate to tell ya, but I don't feel any more charitable with it than I did last time."
His voice was strong, but when Fontaine stepped forward, Atlas mirrored him with one back. That sneer twisted up further on the original's face. Fear was blood in the water to Fontaine and Atlas did have such terrible luck with sharks.
"Don't see why not. It's not as though you even take very good care of it." Fontaine noted with an irate quirk of his upper lip.
Couldn't argue that, he felt more scar than man now.
Granted he evidently wasn't much of a man to begin with. What with not being fucking real and all that lovely stuff that even the most expensive therapy surely couldn't untangle.
"You look like you could use a friend, Atlas. I'm about the best you got now and…" Something shifted on Fontaine's face. A pinched, disgusted expression that fleetingly overtook his usual smug confidence. "...consider this my olive branch. A fair trade off. All you have to do is accept it."
Atlas did not even pretend to consider it. Scoffing derisively right in his mirror's face. "No." he replied simply, a crooked smile on his face.
"We're going to drown down here, Fontaine. You and me. Me and you. Way we started this, way we end it."
"Oh please." Fontaine snarled right back with a roll of his eyes. "Spare me the fucking theatrics. You're not going to drown down here. Every time you've even attempted it you've somehow, miraculously, been unable to. Fancy that. It's like someone's after a lil' attention. Well you got it buddy."
Another step forward, met with one more back from Atlas as Fontaine drove on relentlessly. "You and me, me and you - right?" he threw the words back at Atlas, practically spitting as he lost whatever farce of civility he'd briefly tried on. "You can't fucking lie to me Atlas. I made you. I know you inside and fucking out. You're not going to let yourself drown down here. You're too much of a bleeding coward."
"...but I'd let you drown." Atlas breathed back almost surprised with the answer himself.
It was a marvel to realise he hated Fontaine more than he wanted to spare himself. If he had to be the anchor around Fontaine's foot as they sank, then wouldn't that be enough?
Fontaine's expression contorted into something hateful but that wasn't what cause Atlas's eye. Through Fontaine's barely opauiq form he saw more than just loathing. There was fear there too.
Almost hysterically Atlas let out a breath of laughter.
"Showed your hand, Fankie." he whispered saccharine sweet and Fontaine was the one that took a step back now. Reeling like the old nickname had struck him in the gut. "You're way more afraid than I am."
They both knew how this ended if Atlas was left in control of the body now. He'd sit here and wait for the end to come to them and Fontaine could only fucking watch it.
"Just like last time, yeah?" Atlas mused distantly, gaze slipping towards the ADAM chambers with a far away smile.
"The kid came up to meet us, expecting you." he recalled softly. "Gave him a right show at the end to convince him it was. Must have been good enough, seeing as I made him be the one to do us in. I think… I think that's my first true regret as myself and not you."
Jack was a good kid. Always had been, despite Fontaine's best efforts to influence him otherwise.
It must have broken his heart, something fierce to face off with him at the end of his ordeal. Atlas was faintly thankful for those little sisters of his being the ones to deal the finishing blow. Sparing the boy that at the very least.
But he could now see through hazy memories Jack's grief stricken face before dark nothingness.
He had plenty more regrets since becoming self aware, but the weight he'd forced Jack to carry at the end...that was his first. Maybe Jack had shaped him just as much as Fontaine had once shaped the boy in turn. Funny that.
"If this is your last olive branch, Fontaine. Consider this mine to you. Because one way or another, there must be something worth a crok of shit in you, because I refuse to fucking believe Jackie raised herself a complete waste."
It was almost something of an unspoken rule that they did not speak about family. Did not use that old name that still cut so deep. Not Reggie, not Jackie, not Lottie, not Frankie. But Atlas was done with it.
Stop lingering right? If he chose to join the ghosts then there was point in avoiding the past anymore.
Fontaine took a second step back. Expression twisted like he did not know if he ought to express grief, rage or something else he could not even begin to place.
Finally Atlas thought he'd found it. That same resignation that had once prompted him to take hold of Fontaine's body and wait for Jack at the top of Rapture, never intending to survive the final confrontation.
His final olive branch. A chance to come clean and accept it before the end. To maybe meet those ghosts on better terms when they inevitably went to hell.
Stepping back from Fontaine once more Atlas drew deeper into the ADAM reserves. His taste for the stuff was nothing more than a far away itch he had no intention of scratching anymore.
"There's nowhere left to run in here, Fontaine. This head o' ours is full as it can get. There's no more hiding from it."
A pause.
"We killed our best friend."
Fontaine flinched, expression settling on a warning scowl. An unspoken demand for silence. They did not talk about these things. They did not acknowledge these things. These were the ghosts they wanted to keep buried the most.
Atlas unearthed them with ease.
"Got Reggie to take our place in that shoot out. To wear our face so we could slip away. So you could become 'Atlas' for a while. Asked him to walk to the slaughter, and he did, didn't he? Good ol' Reg...so dependable. Woulda died for us or our sis. And he did. Because we asked him to."
"Reggie made his choice. Weren't my fault things went down the way they did. He could have refused." Fontaine snarled back. Atlas didn't dignify that lie with a reply. They both already knew better.
Instead he presented Fontaine with a second truth he tried to bury.
"Then we killed our sister."
"That was not on my head! Sinclair could have helped. Could have done anything besides sit on his ass if he really gave a damn! She would have been fine if Ryan hadn't been such a weaselly little shit and stepped aside like he should'a years ago! It...it wasn't my fault. We were protecting them."
If nothing else, Atlas could perhaps admit they tried. But every action taken from the moment Frankie locked eyes on Andrew Ryan's city had led his family by the hand to their death. Why argue the fine details of the final days?
In the strangest way it almost felt good to say it. To admit aloud to what they'd done. "First our friend, then our sister. And let's not forget Edmund immediately after her. A good little footsoldier him, tried to follow Jackie's word to the end, what'd we give him for that? A bullet between the eyes. Should we even mention all those children we set ablaze for the slugs in their tiny stomachs?"
"That's enough." Fontaine's voice was rough growl but Atlas had long since lost his fear of his other half. His past in a sense.
"What does that leave us with then, Frankie? Who left to kill?"
"Shut up, Atlas. You shut the fuck up right now. Not another damn word out of your parasitic fucking mouth. I swear I'll-"
"Done with the rest, so then we killed our niece."
"No!" Fontaine roared back, trying to grab for Atlas in a moment of blind anger. "I did not! That thing was not our niece! She was already dead."
Atlas only moved back. Stepping deeper into the towering red trees of ADAM. Fontaine's snatching hands missing him by inches. Neither knew if the contact would work even if he could catch Atlas.
The words did not cease despite Frank's desperate protests. Atlas was nothing if not words and so he spoke.
"Hunted her down across the city, just because we were so ashamed of what we'd done. Swore to ourselves didn't we? When we decided not to kill her in her crib the day she was born, that we'd protect our girls just like our sister protected us when we were a whelp. Swore to ourselves 'not our girl. Never our little girl' when we put slugs in the others. You were always delusional, Frank. Really it's no surprise I exist."
When Fontaine took another step forward, he crumbled. Down onto his hands and knees amongst the red glow of the ADAM that they'd been the ones to produce. A poison that killed a city.
A poison that had killed them and theirs.
"No, Frank." Atlas corrected quietly. Recognising their shared thoughts. Another shift of blame. "Only poison here was us, right?"
"...couldn't leave 'er like that." Frank whispered, fingers gripping at his chest as if he had just felt his heart beat for the first time and it frightened as much as it hurt. "Couldn't let her...Just- just shut up…"
"Live?" Atlas supplied dryly. "No, instead you had to set her on fire with the rest of them. The only mercy god has ever granted us is that we haven't had to see Lottie's ghost too."
There was no answer this time. Atlas saw Fontaine's figure flickering. He couldn't maintain this form. Not when his chest was breaking to pieces. He'd never been good at facing himself after all.
"My olive branch, Fontaine." Atlas uttered softly. "We stay right here. They go."
Still no answer. He was fading further. Atlas knew it was not any sort of death. Fontaine would be back once he had the energy, his desire to survive too strong for anything else. But for now it would be a momentary peace.
For now it meant Fontiane would have no choice but to hear him and listen.
"I can't lie to you, that's what you said, yeah? Well you can't lie to me either. You want to see the surface, you want to see...see our son again. I know."
Finally Fontaine was gone, and for a little while it was just himself. Still Atlas finished the sentiment, knowing Fontaine would hear it all the same. "But we can't. Frankie…we killed everything else we loved."
"Let's leave that one be."