{{i completely ran away with this. i don't know if this is at all what you were hoping for, but in any case your prompt inspired a fun adventure of writing for me, so thank you!!}}
He opened his eyes to an unwelcome blackness, where within there were only infrequent pocks of light that decayed into jaundiced yellow dust. Dead veins of infertile gray glistened against hard and chiseled shadows, smearing into view like old blood as Atlas regained the events that had led him to this place.
“Wh-where’re we goin’?”
His breath came in short gasps, his insides a swill of inky blackness. His midsection convulsed in an attempt to disavow the titan’s preciously red and shining wound, which was opened up and exposed to light as the result of some misguided brand of violence.
Jack was grunting in a flighty rattle that landed coarsely in Atlas’s ears. Atlas’s arm was stretched harrowingly, as if by rack, over Jack’s unforgivingly broad shoulders, and Jack’s hand served as the inexorable roller that threatened to snap the ligaments in Atlas’s arm. It was almost a relief to be distracted from his onerously open abdomen.
“We—we’ve got to get to Arcadia,” Atlas insisted. He blinked in defiance against the rocky blur around him, his frustration causing his vision to suffer and roll, unwilling to accept how far it appeared they had strayed from his plan. The walls rose up and displayed perdition swathed in tiled floors, flickering lights, and the ominously broken emblem that read Medical Pavilion.
Ryan’s splicers had been an expected rebuff at the submarine bay, but in Jack was a combustible unpredictability. When the explosion had collapsed in clouds of wet dust around him, Atlas lurked towards his perfect disappearance. There was no doubt in his mind that Jack would use his godly-given abilities to get himself out in due time. However, Atlas had underestimated just how quickly Jack would be able to fight through the splicers: a crest of flame expanded in front of him through the cryptic turbulence and spread in wings to wrap around Atlas’s midsection like a misconstrued gift. The fire seemed to lick like a sash up through to his throat, from which Atlas felt and heard something punishing and bird-like in a shackled version of his own voice. The flare pecked through his clothes and skin and he turned to see his assailant flying towards him.
Atlas had not bargained for coming face to face with The Prodigal Son at any point in time. A significant part of his plot had been to specifically not meet the man with his own eyes. He knew now how right he was to avoid the encounter.
In front of Atlas stood a confused and hulking chimera framed by the singed and narrowed corners of his vision. The man’s brow and jaw looked like they were hoven by thumbs pressing into clay, unnaturally square with oblong edges that were eerily reminiscent of the boy Fontaine placed into the sub two years ago. His nose had been smashed into existence while his mouth was like a jagged line drawn through mud by a bored god, a ploy, a gag with no foreseeable purpose as if Suchong had been playing at an ironic joke. His shoulders bowed as if a downed bird lurching in protest from the greedy sea. Surrounded by all this and pushed into confused, defensive shadows were his eyes. His eyes gleamed and grew with startling light, vast and unreserved, and while Atlas couldn’t help but stare into them they provoked a suffering sense of unease. Then he was reminded of his searing infliction.
“Boyo!” Atlas groaned, feigning optimism and curling his arm protectively around his stomach. He saw the recognition in Jack’s face as his eclectic eyes fell to the burning skin. Jack collapsed to Atlas’s side with an earthy huff, unintentionally grabbing onto Atlas’s burn and sending a searing blankness through his skull.
Atlas imagined Jack had fought the both of them out of there. He wavered in and out of full consciousness along the way, in and out of Atlas and Fontaine and sanity.
“Where are we, lad?” Atlas managed within the burning turmoil of his frustration at the revelation of their surroundings. “The damn Medical Pavilion?” He winced with either fury or pain. “Are you up the pole boyo?! Why would you bring us here?”
Jack deposited Atlas onto an exam table with the ceremony of a malformed bird taking on too large of a prey, an eagle with an unwieldy chunk of Prometheus. Atlas moaned as he tumbled onto his back against the cold rock, his burn stretching and tearing with the clothes over his skin. The room was layered in rot and the dank, deceased wilderness that Atlas usually managed to avoid on his end of the radio.
“You’re a safe pair of hands,” Atlas’s Irish lilt trickled through the congesting stench of stale slaughter. “But I can manage myself, boyo. We just need to get to Arcadia, to Ryan—“ Atlas lurched a hissing, sour breath in agony. Jack’s hands came from the corrugated darkness; he seized Atlas against the table with a mistaken brutality. Atlas gazed in surprise at Jack, who looked at him with something as bare as - innocent concern.
“Let me help you,” Jack finally spoke. It was the voice of a grown man; the only thing that gave away his true four-year-old nature was the naiveté that dragged open his eyelids into that merciless puppy dog stare.
Atlas stared back at him, in awe of his own helplessness. Finally, he troubled himself to relent – for now. “Don’t leave me with much of a choice, do ya lad?” He subsided and carefully lowered back onto the table. “But why all the way to the Medical Pavilion? We need to keep moving forward. We’re not through yet! We could’ve made short shrift in Arcadia…” he cursed the boy’s foolishness and their lost time, tactfully translating it into an appearance of lament for his lost family.
Jack busied himself with the materials he could scavenge to tend the burn. Atlas was distracted by how much Jack’s head swiveled about to look at him. His face flickered back and forth, over his shoulder, lifting up from whichever angle necessary to get a glance at Atlas. Atlas became conscious of his heavier eyebrows, the bulb on the end of his nose, his clean-shaven upper lip, each feature as Jack’s eyes wisped back and forth between his face and his stomach. It was pissing him off. “Ryan… that bastard...” Atlas vented, blistering. He allowed himself to believe in the loss of family, a pain he was always too proud to feel unless it was a lie at its core. He needed to get Jack back in the game. “We’ll get him, boyo. We’ll find him, and we’ll tear his damn heart out…” In the midst of his brooding, Atlas had the pleasure of experiencing something like hooks chaining themselves to the edges of his open lesion as Jack fussed over him, unbidden, unwelcome, like an intruder eating away at the hard skin Atlas had so painstakingly crafted. “Christ!” Atlas howled, jolting up through the agony of his vulnerable skin. “Do ya even know what in damn Hell you’re doin’?! Get this off me.” Atlas indicated his shirt with a rough, feeble jerk.
Jack moved with a morose eagerness, the appearance from which Atlas found himself curtly turning away. He held himself up with his arms as Jack began tugging at the end of his shirt. “Might wanna undo the buttons, first off…” Atlas grimaced. Jack nodded, hurriedly obliging with his clumsy, calloused fingers. Atlas closed his eyes and waited, trying not to breathe in any more of the fetid infliction.
He sighed. “Sorry for the outburst, boyo. If it weren’t fer…” Atlas trailed off suggestively, allowing Jack to assume the rest.
Jack’s hands slid tentatively over his shoulders, his palms abrasive as they combed over his skin. His hands were unpleasantly stifling. Atlas kept his eyes lowered, almost holding his breath. He stiffened in defense against this man, who knelt so close to his cover and was yet still allowed to live. Atlas’s sleeves fell loose and the straps of his suspenders dropped off. His shirt was tenderly peeled away layer by agonizing layer from his stomach, leaving his wound fully exposed and unallied.
Atlas knew Jack would attribute his flinching and detachedness to the loss he had apparently just suffered rather than the clanking manacles of a con man suddenly insecure of his cover. If Jack looked close enough with those gaping eyes of his, he might see that forgotten abyss between the cracks in his mask, and wouldn’t that be a fake out for ol’ Frank? He felt as if the tear in his gut was threatening to play Pandora’s Box and release his cancerous secrets.
Yet Jack carefully bandaged the burn, sensitively shutting it away and tucking the lies out of sight where they could remain useful. Atlas watched Jack with an unwelcome diffidence. He unwittingly glanced into Jack’s eyes and suddenly it felt as if the wound hadn’t been tended to at all.
Jack uttered the inevitable condolence. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, boyo. It’s Ryan.” The name shivered and swelled in Atlas’s seething voice. Returning to his tissue of lies and all the weaves of hate left a pleasing taste in his mouth.
“I want to do something for you.” Jack said. Music to Atlas’s ears.
“No boher,” Atlas thanked darkly. “Matter of fact, there is somethin’ you could do.”
“Can you walk?” Jack initiated.
“That I can,” Atlas replied, thoughtlessly assuming Jack had caught on to the commonly woven motive of revenge. Jack wrapped his arm around Atlas, aided him off the table, and began leading him through the solitary halls.
the proud can feel: part one
He opened his eyes to an unwelcome blackness, where within there were only infrequent pocks of light that decayed into jaundiced yellow dust. Dead veins of infertile gray glistened against hard and chiseled shadows, smearing into view like old blood as Atlas regained the events that had led him to this place.
“Wh-where’re we goin’?”
His breath came in short gasps, his insides a swill of inky blackness. His midsection convulsed in an attempt to disavow the titan’s preciously red and shining wound, which was opened up and exposed to light as the result of some misguided brand of violence.
Jack was grunting in a flighty rattle that landed coarsely in Atlas’s ears. Atlas’s arm was stretched harrowingly, as if by rack, over Jack’s unforgivingly broad shoulders, and Jack’s hand served as the inexorable roller that threatened to snap the ligaments in Atlas’s arm. It was almost a relief to be distracted from his onerously open abdomen.
“We—we’ve got to get to Arcadia,” Atlas insisted. He blinked in defiance against the rocky blur around him, his frustration causing his vision to suffer and roll, unwilling to accept how far it appeared they had strayed from his plan. The walls rose up and displayed perdition swathed in tiled floors, flickering lights, and the ominously broken emblem that read Medical Pavilion.
Ryan’s splicers had been an expected rebuff at the submarine bay, but in Jack was a combustible unpredictability. When the explosion had collapsed in clouds of wet dust around him, Atlas lurked towards his perfect disappearance. There was no doubt in his mind that Jack would use his godly-given abilities to get himself out in due time. However, Atlas had underestimated just how quickly Jack would be able to fight through the splicers: a crest of flame expanded in front of him through the cryptic turbulence and spread in wings to wrap around Atlas’s midsection like a misconstrued gift. The fire seemed to lick like a sash up through to his throat, from which Atlas felt and heard something punishing and bird-like in a shackled version of his own voice. The flare pecked through his clothes and skin and he turned to see his assailant flying towards him.
Atlas had not bargained for coming face to face with The Prodigal Son at any point in time. A significant part of his plot had been to specifically not meet the man with his own eyes. He knew now how right he was to avoid the encounter.
In front of Atlas stood a confused and hulking chimera framed by the singed and narrowed corners of his vision. The man’s brow and jaw looked like they were hoven by thumbs pressing into clay, unnaturally square with oblong edges that were eerily reminiscent of the boy Fontaine placed into the sub two years ago. His nose had been smashed into existence while his mouth was like a jagged line drawn through mud by a bored god, a ploy, a gag with no foreseeable purpose as if Suchong had been playing at an ironic joke. His shoulders bowed as if a downed bird lurching in protest from the greedy sea. Surrounded by all this and pushed into confused, defensive shadows were his eyes. His eyes gleamed and grew with startling light, vast and unreserved, and while Atlas couldn’t help but stare into them they provoked a suffering sense of unease. Then he was reminded of his searing infliction.
“Boyo!” Atlas groaned, feigning optimism and curling his arm protectively around his stomach. He saw the recognition in Jack’s face as his eclectic eyes fell to the burning skin. Jack collapsed to Atlas’s side with an earthy huff, unintentionally grabbing onto Atlas’s burn and sending a searing blankness through his skull.
Atlas imagined Jack had fought the both of them out of there. He wavered in and out of full consciousness along the way, in and out of Atlas and Fontaine and sanity.
“Where are we, lad?” Atlas managed within the burning turmoil of his frustration at the revelation of their surroundings. “The damn Medical Pavilion?” He winced with either fury or pain. “Are you up the pole boyo?! Why would you bring us here?”
Jack deposited Atlas onto an exam table with the ceremony of a malformed bird taking on too large of a prey, an eagle with an unwieldy chunk of Prometheus. Atlas moaned as he tumbled onto his back against the cold rock, his burn stretching and tearing with the clothes over his skin. The room was layered in rot and the dank, deceased wilderness that Atlas usually managed to avoid on his end of the radio.
“You’re a safe pair of hands,” Atlas’s Irish lilt trickled through the congesting stench of stale slaughter. “But I can manage myself, boyo. We just need to get to Arcadia, to Ryan—“ Atlas lurched a hissing, sour breath in agony. Jack’s hands came from the corrugated darkness; he seized Atlas against the table with a mistaken brutality. Atlas gazed in surprise at Jack, who looked at him with something as bare as - innocent concern.
“Let me help you,” Jack finally spoke. It was the voice of a grown man; the only thing that gave away his true four-year-old nature was the naiveté that dragged open his eyelids into that merciless puppy dog stare.
Atlas stared back at him, in awe of his own helplessness. Finally, he troubled himself to relent – for now. “Don’t leave me with much of a choice, do ya lad?” He subsided and carefully lowered back onto the table. “But why all the way to the Medical Pavilion? We need to keep moving forward. We’re not through yet! We could’ve made short shrift in Arcadia…” he cursed the boy’s foolishness and their lost time, tactfully translating it into an appearance of lament for his lost family.
Jack busied himself with the materials he could scavenge to tend the burn. Atlas was distracted by how much Jack’s head swiveled about to look at him. His face flickered back and forth, over his shoulder, lifting up from whichever angle necessary to get a glance at Atlas. Atlas became conscious of his heavier eyebrows, the bulb on the end of his nose, his clean-shaven upper lip, each feature as Jack’s eyes wisped back and forth between his face and his stomach. It was pissing him off. “Ryan… that bastard...” Atlas vented, blistering. He allowed himself to believe in the loss of family, a pain he was always too proud to feel unless it was a lie at its core. He needed to get Jack back in the game. “We’ll get him, boyo. We’ll find him, and we’ll tear his damn heart out…” In the midst of his brooding, Atlas had the pleasure of experiencing something like hooks chaining themselves to the edges of his open lesion as Jack fussed over him, unbidden, unwelcome, like an intruder eating away at the hard skin Atlas had so painstakingly crafted. “Christ!” Atlas howled, jolting up through the agony of his vulnerable skin. “Do ya even know what in damn Hell you’re doin’?! Get this off me.” Atlas indicated his shirt with a rough, feeble jerk.
Jack moved with a morose eagerness, the appearance from which Atlas found himself curtly turning away. He held himself up with his arms as Jack began tugging at the end of his shirt. “Might wanna undo the buttons, first off…” Atlas grimaced. Jack nodded, hurriedly obliging with his clumsy, calloused fingers. Atlas closed his eyes and waited, trying not to breathe in any more of the fetid infliction.
He sighed. “Sorry for the outburst, boyo. If it weren’t fer…” Atlas trailed off suggestively, allowing Jack to assume the rest.
Jack’s hands slid tentatively over his shoulders, his palms abrasive as they combed over his skin. His hands were unpleasantly stifling. Atlas kept his eyes lowered, almost holding his breath. He stiffened in defense against this man, who knelt so close to his cover and was yet still allowed to live. Atlas’s sleeves fell loose and the straps of his suspenders dropped off. His shirt was tenderly peeled away layer by agonizing layer from his stomach, leaving his wound fully exposed and unallied.
Atlas knew Jack would attribute his flinching and detachedness to the loss he had apparently just suffered rather than the clanking manacles of a con man suddenly insecure of his cover. If Jack looked close enough with those gaping eyes of his, he might see that forgotten abyss between the cracks in his mask, and wouldn’t that be a fake out for ol’ Frank? He felt as if the tear in his gut was threatening to play Pandora’s Box and release his cancerous secrets.
Yet Jack carefully bandaged the burn, sensitively shutting it away and tucking the lies out of sight where they could remain useful. Atlas watched Jack with an unwelcome diffidence. He unwittingly glanced into Jack’s eyes and suddenly it felt as if the wound hadn’t been tended to at all.
Jack uttered the inevitable condolence. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, boyo. It’s Ryan.” The name shivered and swelled in Atlas’s seething voice. Returning to his tissue of lies and all the weaves of hate left a pleasing taste in his mouth.
“I want to do something for you.” Jack said. Music to Atlas’s ears.
“No boher,” Atlas thanked darkly. “Matter of fact, there is somethin’ you could do.”
“Can you walk?” Jack initiated.
“That I can,” Atlas replied, thoughtlessly assuming Jack had caught on to the commonly woven motive of revenge. Jack wrapped his arm around Atlas, aided him off the table, and began leading him through the solitary halls.
{{TBC hopefully very soon!}}