Welcome to Rapture [FIC, possibly more to come later]
There was not much of him left anymore, only a mess of skin and organs and pipes and systems and gears welded into a metal suit. Faintly, very faintly, he thought he remembered himself- he was positive that his eyes had been blue, even if he was not sure whether or not he even had eyes still attached to him. His mind clung to that memory of blue, though he did not know why. Small, pointless things such as eyes made no difference to him now. All that mattered was the purpose he had been recreated to fulfill.
He turned the corner, his heavy boots clunking along the floor and his drill held just high enough not to scrape anything, and found himself looking at some kind of creature crouching at one side of the glass hallway, looking out at the fish as they passed by. He stopped, froze in place, and stared, mutilated brain attempting to understand. The creature’s graying skin, thin body, dirty clothes and hair… It all looked familiar, almost like the little girl creatures he had seen earlier. But this one was not a little girl. It was bigger, older, its hair short and matted, and it had the body of a male. He let out a low, cautious warning moan, his vision clouding slightly with gold.
Then the creature turned, its wide eyes glowing yellow-green with ADAM, and smiled a twisted, broken smile. It lifted itself to its feet, and it was indeed taller than the little girls, but not taller than him in his heavy suit, and held out its dirty, gray-skinned hands. One of them limply held a long syringe. “Alfred, Alfred,” the creature nearly sang in its dry, raspy voice. “They sent you to me again. I knew they would send you to me. The other Alfred left me. It wouldn’t get up. But now you’re here again. You came back.”
It stepped forward, pressing its hand against the helmet that covered his- Alfred’s- head, or what had once been his head. And he- Alfred, because Alfred was what this creature called him- was in love. At that moment, he knew that no matter what happened, he would protect his creature from anything that tried to harm it. He would do anything for it. His drill arm spun weakly as he let out a moan full of love and affection, his other arm reaching up to press his huge gloved hand gently against the smaller gray one.
The creature smiled again. “I knew they would send you back to me, Alfred. I love you. I knew you wouldn’t leave me forever.” It giggled, high and broken, and leaned in to press a kiss against one of the metal bars around Alfred’s helmet. “Let’s go find some more angels, Alfred. It’ll be just like before, just me and you, just Alfred and Arthur. We can have so much fun together.”
Arthur. The creature was called Arthur. Alfred fell even further in love with it. He moaned again, gentle and warm. He would follow his Arthur wherever it went, do whatever it wanted, as long as he could remain by its side, and so he was happy to follow its laughing voice and quiet steps down the long glass hallway, uncaring of whatever lay ahead of them.
This was his purpose. He knew that now. This was what he had been made to do, and he would fulfill it joyfully, even if it killed him.
**
A/N- Because what’s more romantic than a love story between a hallucinating, parasite-infested man with a child’s mind and the mutilated, mind-controlled remains of an unknown man welded into a diving suit?
I know other stories (and probably Bioshock 2, which I’ve never seen/played) give the Big Daddies more of a human mind, but I think being welded into a suit (as they are in the first game) and mind-controlled to kill would probably cause some problems within what’s left of the functioning brain. So yeah, unreliable narrator.
Also, there is a backstory to why Arthur would end up being a “Little Sister” and why he would call the Big Daddies “Alfred”, but it’s complicated and could be a story all on its own.