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"I don't know how you survived that plane crash, but I've never been one to question providence. I'm Atlas. And I aim to keep you alive."
Jack sits up with a start. Sweat beads on his brow, despite the chill in the air. Those words, that voice, echo through his mind as though seared into every cell in his body. Atlas is gone. No; Atlas never existed. He is nothing more than a trick that left a brand on Jack's soul. A memory clinging to the ragged mess of Fontaine's greatest con.
Nothing was real before Rapture. All his memories, all his life, just a construct that Fontaine dreamed up for a single purpose.
Would you kindly head to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch.
Andrew Ryan was right about him. He's not a man. He never was.
He staggers out into the freezing night air. The sky glitters with stars. He wishes it were water.
Clad in only thin pyjamas, he sits down on the porch and lights a cigarette. Since coming topside, Tenenbaum's given up the habit. Says he ought to as well. For the girls' sake. He's trying his best. Even managed to cut right back, these scant few months they've been back in the world.
It's almost laughable. Atlas haunting him. 'Cause Jack's not really real, either. Makes sense he'd be swooning over a man who's even less real than he is. Even now, knowing what he does about his past, he can't shake the false memories They're stuck, playing over a loop in his head. A family, a life, and none of it real.
Just like Atlas.
Jack's doomed to believe in things that were never real. The lie is all he has.
"Mr Jack," a little voice whispers. He grinds out the cigarette and turns. Jessie gives him a shy smile. "Are you alright?"
"I'm just fine," he replies. "What are you doing up, little lady? You know Tenenbaum doesn't like it when you girls don't sleep."
There's a haunted look in her eyes. "When I sleep, I think I'm back in the city."
"Sit down." Jack pats the step next to him.
"You miss someone too, Mr Jack?"
"What makes you say that?"
Jessie shrugs. "I…I miss Mr Bubbles an awful lot, is all."
They don't talk about the Big Daddies all that much. The more Jack learns about them the more he feels sick for what he's done. Slaughtered them like cattle. Hell, aside from the sisters, they were the purest things in Rapture. All they ever wanted was to protect their wards.
"Yeah," Jack says quietly. "I miss someone an awful lot too."
"Who is it?" Jessie questions, poking his arm. An adult might know better than to ask, but the sisters are far from grown-up, despite everything they've been through.
"Atlas." He doesn't half know why. Is it even Atlas that he misses? Or is it Fontaine? As though there's a fucking difference.
There ain't no Atlas, kid. Never was.
"I knew Mr Atlas," Jessie says. Jack's soul, if he even has one, aches. "He used to visit us in the orphanage."
"He did, huh?" Fontaine, playing tricks as always.
"Yes." She goes quiet, playing with the hem of her dress. "He and the bad man used to fight a lot."
Jack feels all the blood drain from his face. He doesn't even dare to hope. It doesn't mean…it can't mean…no. "Jess, do you mean you saw Atlas and Fontaine together?"
The little girl nods, looking confused. "We all did, Mr Jack. Katie was there when the bad man…he hit Mr Atlas over the head and took him away. Then he started talkin' like Mr Atlas."
Atlas was real. The thought repeats over and over in his head. Atlas exists.
"Jessie, sweetheart, this is very important. What happened to Mr Atlas?"
She fidgets, going quiet for a long moment. Jack wants to shake her, shout, he needs an answer. “Sally says he got locked up down below. In Mr Fontaine’s Store, where Mr Frank was before the pretty lady rescued him.”
None of the words make much sense to Jack, but his mind is already whirling. Atlas was alive, he survived, he was real. They need to…they need to go back. Lurching to his feet, Jack bursts into the apartment. Four pairs of tiny eyes peer up at him sleepily.
“Mr Jack? What’s going on? Are you alright?”
Tenenbaum is glaring at him. “You’ve woken them, foolish boy.”
“Atlas was real. They saw him.”
She frowns at him. “They are wrong. Atlas is just trick.”
“No he wasn’t!” Katie protests. “I saw Mr Frank hit him, and then they dragged him away. It was right after Mr Jack got to Rapture.”
“I need to go back to the city,” Jack says breathlessly. “I need to find him.”
Tenenbaum argues. For three days Jack tries everything to convince her. It's only when the girls insist that she finally agrees. She can't say no to them. They spend another two days getting Jack geared up and ready to go. Tenenbaum will stay with the sisters, of course. To take care of them until he comes back. If he comes back, they don't say. They both know it's just as likely to end that way.
The day he boards the ship, he gets five tiny hugs and one normal one. Tenenbaum even looks as though she might cry. She slaps him as she steps away. "You be safe. No plasmids. Find him, come back to us. Understand?"
"I will."
And then he's walking away, his heart pounding. It doesn't stop pounding until they reach the lighthouse. There's a heart-stopping moment where he's certain that the bathysphere won't be there, won't work for him. It is there. It does work. Andrew Ryan's speech about his beautiful utopia rings on hollow ears. Jack has seen the utopia fall apart. His father's grand designs are turned to dust.
He has a detailed list of instructions describing how he will hack into the bathysphere system. It can't be done from the surface, only from the control panel at the Welcome Centre port. As the doors slide open on the familiar room, Jack's fingers twitch for a radio that isn't there. Nobody is waiting for him on the other end of a shortwave radio. No gentle irish voice to guide him. Only the silence.
At first he can only sit in the open bathysphere, struck dumb by fear. What if he's too late? Atlas was alive down there and Jack had left him behind. What if there's nobody left to find, after all this time?
Drawing his weapon, Jack steps from the bathysphere.
Now would you kindly find a crowbar or something?
There are no splicers waiting for him, this time. Glancing out the windows at the city beyond, he feels a part of himself reach out for it. Rapture, for all its ruin and destruction, calls to him. He supposes, in a way, it's just latent instinct. This is what he was built for. Rapture was his destiny, once. It seems that no matter how many demons he slays, he just keeps coming back to this city.
His father's son, after all.
The Department Store feels more like a graveyard. He steps out of the bathysphere into utter silence. Tenenbaum and the sisters had impressed upon him the dangers waiting below, in this place. Only he can see no danger at all. Could they have been wrong? Jack curls his hand around the gun and moves deeper into the heart of the building.
As he steps into a central atrium, Jack feels an eerie sensation creep up his spine like a shiver. Someone is watching him. He turns on the spot, trying to discern who, or where from. He lifts the gun. "Show yourself!"
A voice echoes back at him from the dark. "You gonna shoot me, boyo?"
"A-Atlas?"
"Hallucinations aren't much for aim, I'd say. So go ahead."
Jack lets the gun fall back to his side. "I'm not a hallucination. I'm Jack."
"That's what all the hallucinations say."
There's a shuffling noise from behind him, and he turns to find a man stepping from the shadows. His leg is dragging in a slight limp, and he has a myriad of scars. But it's Atlas.
"You're real," he says breathlessly. Jack can't help but throw his arms around the irishman. His gun clatters forgotten to the floor. Atlas is warm in the cocoon of his arms. He clings to the man. "Atlas, you're real."
Atlas slowly shifts, bringing his arms up to wrap around Jack. "Are you?"
"I'm here, Atlas, I swear."
Rough hands shove him away. "So this is a trick. Did Fontaine send you? Come to gloat, Fontaine! Well I'm not falling for it!"
"Fontaine is dead!"
"I've heard that before," Atlas snarls. "So would you kindly turn around and go right back to your master."
Jack stands there, furious. "Fontaine is not my master. He's dead."
Atlas stares at him in shock. Cautiously, the irishman takes a step toward him. Reaches out. Jack takes his hand. Suddenly Atlas is hugging him tight enough to bruise, face buried against his neck. "I missed you so much, boyo."
A lance of heat goes through Jack. He lurches back. Atlas is real, but that doesn't change the fact there's nothing between them. Not like Jack wants there to be. His cheeks are flushed, and he ducks his head. "We need to go. The ship that brought me here is only going to wait a few hours."
Atlas hesitates. "Can it take another passenger?"
“Another…Atlas, what are you talking about?”
The other passenger, as it turns out, is a young woman with a vicious scar on her forehead. A woman who looks at Jack as though she’s seen him before. She hugs him with thin arms and delicate fingers, apologising over and over. For what, he doesn’t know.
It was them, the two of them, who cleaned out the Department Store. As they ascend to the lighthouse, they tell him about it. Atlas, thrown into the prison. Elizabeth, beaten and left for dead, saved by…providence? She says she doesn’t know how she survived, but Jack senses that she’s hiding something. Hiding a lot of things.
Aren’t they all.
They all have nightmares. Rapture is a thousand miles away beneath an entire ocean, and still they are drowning in it. Jack can only hope that, with time, they will all begin to heal.
It quickly becomes obvious that four adults and five children in a two bedroom apartment ain't working out so swell. Only thing is, none of them want to leave. They belong together. Nobody else could ever understand the things they've done and been through. And they have the girls to think of.
Jack and Atlas find work in a factory. Tenenbaum shoulders her way into some fancy scientific research company. Elizabeth gets work at the local library. Somehow, between the four of them, they scrape up enough money to buy a nice little place just outside the city. Close to the school where they enrol the girls.
For a time, Jack thinks that Atlas and Elizabeth might be going steady. It hurts, but he's glad that Atlas might have someone who makes him happy. It's not as though he ever expected anything. Atlas was married to a lady, after all.
But as the weeks go by, it's not Atlas whose bed Elizabeth ends up in. She and Tenenbaum, they seem to gravitate together. Jack's not sure why, only that there's something that connects them. He catches them kissing one day, when he comes back early from dropping the girls at school. Tenenbaum throws something at his head and shouts at him to knock.
That leaves Atlas unattached. Only Jack knows Atlas wouldn't ever fancy him. Why would anyone? Jack's just a puppet. Fontaine's little creation. That's okay. He has the girls, has his family. He can survive a little heartbreak. If it means he gets to be near Atlas, it's enough.
They get a call one day from the principal of the school. Atlas and Jack are free that day, so they trudge into the building and find all five girls fidgeting nervously. The incident is explained to them. Jack nearly laughs. The girls had been drawing pictures of their family. Someone had made fun of them for being weird, and having two moms and two dads. It'd been Jessie who'd thrown the first punch. Soon enough all five of them were crawling over the boys bullying them like tiny demons.
It's not as though they can explain why their girls are so violent, so they simply apologise and tell the principal that it won't happen again. On the way back to the house, Jack and Atlas take them to get ice cream. It takes a while to convince them that it's not okay to beat people up just because they say mean things.
"But they insulted our family!" Emma insists. "They said you were weird. We like our family. Miss Brigid loves Miss Elizabeth. And you love Mr Atlas!"
Jack goes very still. Refuses to meet Atlas' stare, though he can feel the way it burns into him. He pats Emma on the shoulder. "I know, sweetheart. And there is nothing wrong with it. But we have to accept that people don't always agree."
When they get home, Elizabeth and Tenenbaum get the full story. Both of them look ready to march into the school and raze it to the ground. They mellow slightly when they learn that the girls had managed their own bullies quite efficiently. Elizabeth takes the girls out into the garden for a picnic. Tenenbaum hates picnics, but between Elizabeth and the girls, she has been on more than a few. Jack goes to follow, but Atlas grabs his wrist. "We'll join you in a moment, ladies."
Unable to meet his eyes, Jack stammers, "If this is about…it wasn't…I just-"
The excuses are silenced by Atlas sealing their lips together. Jack whimpers, his hands fisted in Atlas' shirt. At first the chaos in his thoughts stops him from responding. When Atlas' hand cradles his jaw, a rough thumb brushing over his skin, Jack throws himself into the kiss. All of the emotion he's been bottling up spills out in desperation. Atlas is just as eager, the talented movements of his tongue driving Jack to insanity.
It's the first real kiss he's ever had. He never wants it to end.
When they do break apart, out of breath and dazed, shock filters through his system. He stares up at Atlas. The irishman chuckles, his palm still hot against Jack's cheek.
"Been wanting to do that a long time. Thought you'd hate me for it."
Jack gapes at him. A thousand arguments clatter through his mind. In the end all he can find to do is lean back in and kiss Atlas until he can't think clearly anymore.
There's a house on the outskirts of town with a strange family of nine. A group of girls, all adopted, with innocent faces and a penchant for violence and eerie words. An irishman with a charming smile. A blonde with a selection of cosy knitted sweaters. A blue eyed lady with a vicious scar. And a rude foreigner with a brilliant mind.
Jack knows that the folk in town think them strange. He wouldn't have it any other way. They are all strange.
More than anything, they're all real.