How long had he been sitting beside this Vita-Chamber? Days at least. It had reached the point where he just hadn’t given up only because of how long he’d been working at it. But… in the end he had gotten it. It had worked, after so much frustration it had worked. Honestly he had no idea what he’d done in the end to make it work, remembered kicking the side of the damn machine and the pain of broken toes, something he’d never suffered from with the boots of his suit guarding them so he would jump from high heights down to defend his Little Sister. But when those blue-green lights had started dancing his heart had jumped into his throat and he hadn’t cared one bit about the pain in his foot. He’d lived with main almost every moment of his short memory of his life, what was a little more?
There was a giddy sort of feeling sitting in the center of his chest, not an emotion he can ever remember but he knew instinctively what it was.
He knew the pain and disorientation of coming out of one of those things, so he hung back even as Sinclair fell pretty much onto his face. As he rolled over onto his back and took stock of being breathing once more. It was the same thing he had done himself only a few days? ago. He understood. Understood the confusion of knowing you should be dead but you weren’t. He had made sure first to clear the area of splicers and keep them away, so the man wouldn’t need to deal with those first thing alive the same way that he had had to.
He had been looking away though when he heard that voice speak his name, a voice he had last heard thick with pain and begging for him to end his life (thanking him for killing him) but now it wasn’t. And it called to him, made him turn back around and let that feeling from his chest bubble up, lips spreading in a pleased grin as long legs closed the distance between them. He could see him breathing but he needed the reassurance that came from touch.
One hand curled around Sinclair’s wrist, just below the cuff of his shirt and nodded once.
"Made it" he said, having discovered that yes, he did have a voice again but not much of one. Every word he spoke came out in a whisper, rough and though he could form the words in his mind, only the simplest seemed to form properly on his tongue. "Died. Woke up—" he gestured around them with his free hand and then at himself, "Like this."
But the smile grew a bit as he released Sinclair’s wrist, and maybe it wasn’t the best thing to be pleased about because he had trapped the man once more down here but there was something selfish in the back of his mind, the knowledge that he didn’t want to be alone, didn’t know if he could handle that and dragged the man back to his side to quiet that whisper.
Looking at Delta was like staring his sins in the face.
There was no such thing as a truly good man, but Sinclair was sure that if anyone reached the quota, Delta would be the one close enough. With that realisation, came the crushing guilt that he had trapped the man (an innocent man) down here in his prison and subsequently into that damn suit, with no real chance of escape. Before any of this had happened, before the fall of Rapture, the entrepreneur would have never felt this way – too happy with looking out for himself to worry about what irredeemable sadness or misery it wrought on other people. Now, though, things had definitely changed. It was like somewhere along the line, he had grown at heart that worked only for Delta – would only allow him to feel guilt for what he had done, because maybe they were some kind of friends now, and friends didn’t do that sort of thing to each other.
It was easy to disregard the fact that they were nothing to one another before – just a captive and the one trapping him – in the face of his sins. And Sinclair was a man weighed down by many of them.
At least he wasn’t the only one alone in this. Even if that wasn’t the most comforting thought (no one should be subject to this hell again), Sinclair wasn’t sure if he would want to carry on down here by himself. Would prefer to climb his way out of the fallen city and swim his way up to shore, if it came down to that – there was a reason why he had hidden himself away until the end, until he really tried to help. And that was because he couldn’t stand what the city had become, and didn’t want to face the Splicers on his own.
Call him a coward; it wouldn’t be a lie.
Then his wrist was taken a hold of, and the first non-aggressive contact he’d had in a while almost came as a shock to the elder. It wasn’t anything much – just a hand on his wrist, nothing to write home about – but it made this whole thing seem more real, and it felt as if the realisation that he was alive had hit him once more. Johnny Topside was here, Augustus Sinclair was here, and they were both trapped in Rapture once more, in a city that would try to kill them.
“It’s good to see you’re still kickin’,” He finally said, after a moment of immobilised silence. “Even if you’re in the wrong place,” And look at that – Topside was talking again, even if his words were fragmented. Even if, it brought comfort to Sinclair, letting him know that he wasn’t the only one who would be talking. There was another sane, human voice with him.
He rocked on his heel for a moment, as though testing his balance, checking his body for anything wrong before he spoke again. “Sorry that you’re stuck down here again, chief,” And he sounded genuine. More so than he had been in years. “You don’t deserve to go through any’a this again. You’ve been here long enough.”
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