Okay sososo, basically post-banana, Owen manages to get a note out to Curt saying he’s alive and coming home and actually gets on a plane back, but it ends up crashing around Rapture instead. Frank Fontaine takes him down to Rapture and Owen lies and says he’s just a diver but Andrew Ryan isn’t buying it. He correctly guesses Owen’s a spy but doesn’t believe that his arrival was a total accident. Cue Owen getting locked in Persephone and being turned into Subject Delta.
Meanwhile, on land, the letter gave Curt renewed hope that Owen’s out there somewhere, so he spends practically every penny he has travelling the world in order to find him.
Over the next few years Sofia Lamb kills Owen/Delta, Rapture goes into a civil war, Fontaine fakes his death, Bioshock 1 happens and Curt refuses to give up hope, but his money is running out so he doesn’t manage to search the far corners as much as he’d like.
In 1968, while she is plotting to retrieve the Thinker and save the stolen Little Sisters, Dr Tenenbaum recognises Owen’s name and face on one of the missing posters Curt left behind and contacts him. Curt thinks it’s all bullshit at first, but he literally has no other lead to go off of.
So he goes down to Rapture during the events of Bioshock 2 to find a recently revived Delta/Owen and hopefully take him home.
Curt gets into a confrontation with Lamb, who offers to let Owen go, bc she wants him out of the way so he can’t influence Eleanor, and Curt almost accepts before remembering that being separated from Eleanor would kill Owen.
Eventually, Curt and Owen reunite in Dionysus Park, but Owen doesn’t know who he is, which breaks Curt’s heart, but he hopes that Tenenbaum can fix him. They find Eleanor together and when Sofia stops Eleanor and Owen’s hearts, Curt doesn’t hesitate because it has been eleven years and he’ll be damned if he lost Owen again. Eleanor and Owen wake up and they decide to leave Rapture behind.
I initially had a more Bioshock 2 compliant angstier ending, but Lamb would be dead before she can mobilise her people to explode the bathysphere and prevent them for leaving, so they all get to go back to the surface.
Meanwhile, Tenenbaum and Charles Milton Porter/Sigma managed to get the Thinker back and use it to create a cure for ADAM sickness which Owen accepts as well!
This is just... ✨ GOLD ✨
Like I would read the hell outta this you have no idea.