la vie en rose

He clears his throat. Anything associated with that name never set well with him.

"I have yet to see a working washing machine, so I’ll settle for trying to keep clean clothes this way. But this isn’t a black tie affair, so you don’t have to go on formalities. ‘Jack’ works just as good."

       She's fully aware of what she's doing. Pushing buttons. To her credit she doesn't crack a smile, rather she holds her amusement inwards.

And it wasn’t a common sight to see these survivors, no, not by any means.

He’d only been in the room for a few seconds before he managed to spot her, a woman who lay motionless along the floor against a window. 

Knelt down on one knee beside her, his eyes watched her carefully for a sign on life, moving close to frantically for any sign of movement along her bloodied face. He had broken his gaze to scan the room for a few seconds, wary that perhaps the culprit of this barbaric act had been nearby or hiding along the shadows. Jack was already preparing to lay into them for harming yet another innocent. His thoughts of retaliation and growing tempers had ceased when she stirred, his focus darting back to see evidence of life, or at least a struggle for it.

Perhaps a bit of first aid in exchange for hunting down the guilty party.

Pulling out a spare kit’s contents, his fingers began to gingerly pat away at the blood along her forehead while his free hand still held hers. His voice was quiet to keep from attracting more attention, leaving a hushed tone to be spoken in the silence of the room.

            But the hand that curls around hers is solid. Real. The warmth of the fingers intertwined with hers brings a comfort she's certain she's never known. For a time perhaps, with him, when she'd been so easy with her touches and seen even his iron-hard resolve melt with a hand against his and a smile on her lips. When innocence hadn't been brutally stripped away by a father who thought himself a messiah. Two fathers, both the same man, both who'd managed to fail her so spectacularly. Still, she'd loved one of them and she still missed him now.

                    Somehow, after all she'd suffered, a naive part of her still nursed a small hope that he'd be there for her in the end. 

            The voice that coaxes her back to the world isn't his, riddled by static or imagined, but she knows this man all the same.

     Not Booker. But... there's a struggle. A fight to remember what she should know.

            “--Jack,” she whispers.

     Her eyes flutter open and even in the dark, it's still too bright. She flinches, letting out a pained whimper. Still she holds on, too weak to move, her vision still swimming. Even with the world still blurred, she recognizes her surroundings. Not the Lighthouse then, but Rapture. And somehow, she still sees him.

            He's fighting for her with blood on his hands. Her blood. She should be dead. A clinical part of her mind knows her own injuries and catalogues them all. Concussion. Skull fracture. Intra-cranial bleeding. No amount of bandages would do a thing for her, but somehow, she's alive. The hand of god or more interference by a pair of twins who have made meddling their new mandate. She doesn't know, she doesn't want to know.

                  ------A new memory breaks the surface.