This one was clever, she noted with a self-derisive growl. He'd issued her a challenge by taking away her little sisters. He'd done so, and then planned a trap for her. She knew he had ensnared the mind of a Big Daddy and stolen Andrew's clever machines, but she also knew why.

Lonely.

She could tell, she could feel it. She'd heard her sisters whispering about his return - their father gone so long, Eleanor's father - and had been smart enough to know it was not a good thing. Her sisters would not lie. If they said he was back, he was. She wasn't sure why it was so, but she knew it as truth.

She recalled Eleanor, the only girl who remained who was her senior. The first among them to be so close to a specific father, and also the last. Alive, anyway.

Poseidon's wrath, how she hated Eleanor. The girl in white all her sisters looked up to, the one they quietly served. She was using them like such tools, to serve her own gain, but they didn't care. They did whatever she asked, including helping the outsider who had returned so miraculously from the grave to "save" her. The shining knight, rescuing the sleeping princess!

She had to hold back her thoughts for a moment, because her hands had begun to shake.

There was a bit of time, Sophia had told them, before she'd need them. She was taking this encounter very seriously because she'd come to realize that her insipid little daughter's Daddy was a bit more than a cardboard cutout with a slingshot. What a surprise. He'd killed so many of her sisters that only she and her first assistant remained, the eldest of the Big Sisters.

She'd seen the outsider when he first arrived, daring to threaten her little sister. Oh, she should have ended it there, but Sophia wanted him tested. She wanted him alive. All because she wanted to play "house" with her dolls. The stupid-!

It hurt her, and that part of her thoughts immediately took a crashing halt.

She could get away with so many things; hating Eleanor, hating the outsider trash, and even the occasional game of tic tac toe, but she was never allowed to truly hate Sophia. It took so much just to maintain her unyielding disdain.

The corridors were barren and beaten beyond use, but she knew them. Abandoned soon after the Man had raped Rapture and left her to the cold embrace of the ocean, the glass was cracked and the iron pipes twisted into parodies of sculpture by circumstance and time.

Raided trinkets of a bygone era of prosperity that she wasn't sure she remembered were strung as decoration: records, pearls, scarves, wires, mirrors, frames and so much more were arranged in her own anachronistic symphony. But never bottles. Those she broke, to collect the pieces.

And in the armchair, gazing out the window, was Daddy.

She was fairly certain father's holidays had come and gone, but he'd never told her when they were. All she knew was that he was just so difficult to find good presents for, although she did her best. She'd seen posters with fathers wearing hats, and he'd seemed to like the one she'd brought him, although he was as bashful as ever about it.

She also knew all fathers needed a pipe, which had been difficult to find, but she had done it. It was in a worn tin box lined with ripped velveteen, but it held no cracks, and she was certain that he was the most proud of that possession, even though he promised he was nonmaterialistic. After all, he'd brought her up that way.

It made sense, because she'd rarely owned anything. She'd made dolls when she was little, just like her sisters, but they seemed to... disappear. Blocks and toys belonged to the family, not just her, and father could never afford her presents.

Then again, she'd never wanted for them. She had enough.

But now, she was taking care of the family business for Daddy. She brought home gifts of all kinds to share with her father, and it was only sometimes that she would gaze into the mirror and then wake up in a forest of shattered china and glass. Then she would clean everything up, just like Mama Tennenbaum had when the play got a little rough, and then...

Then she would leak.

It was so strange, to know she'd sprung a leak. In her eye, no less! Unusual, peculiar, they'd call her if she told them, and then they'd study her like they had Mr. Alexander, so she never spoke of it. She just waited, and eventually it would stop on its own. She figured it was less like the leaks she feared in her deepest nightmares, and more like the ones from the sink.

She could deal with that.

This time, though, there was no inconvenient sleeping, or any leaking from the eyes. She had no gift for Daddy, but that was okay. He wasn't greedy. He was the nicest man ever, and she'd never love another like him. He knew that. She made sure.

Anyway, this time she'd come to... well, she wasn't sure.

She'd actually been avoiding going to this place too often. It was a magic place, and she didn't want to overstay her welcome... her sister wouldn't like that.

Where was the pest, anyway?

Oh, yes, in the corner, with her dolls. Her favorite was the one with tawny eyes. It had looked just like her, back when she'd had eyes.

She was so quiet these days, and had been for some time. It was really starting to worry her big sister, who knew that the loss of father's attention could have... well, drastic effects. Luckily for her sister, Daddy still loved her. Just not as much as the daughter who'd followed in his footsteps, of course. But her younger sister was still young. There was still hope.

She said nothing to the shadow in the corner.

The bed, oh how she hated it. She hated it more than Eleanor. She hated it more than anything else because nothing else hurt so badly as the empty bed.

Someone had been there, once, someone special. Someone whose smile could take the hurt away and make it seem like they'd never left the sunny world he had so few precious memories of. He held onto them desperately when she was gone, because that was all he had left of her - memories of a green world kissed by glorious fire and soothed by silver-calm light.

But sometimes the sun had never been there, and it was her son instead. So young, so young, and she'd begged and pleaded but they still took him away. She'd known they were looking for little girls en masse, but her son? What crime had he committed, youth? Innocence? Hope? What was this madhouse under the sea doing, stealing away the only hope she had? She'd show them, ohhhhhh yes. She would. With their own goddamn strength, she'd show them. All she needed was enough ADAM...

ADAM. That was a word she knew, that she understood. ADAM, yes... her first. Her first ADAM.

She remembered him. She'd been promised her father would be wonderful, and love her, and never leave her unprotected while she did her sacred duty, but all she could think of were half-familar screamed words and a hazy face that scowled. She remembered a syringe and a knife and a lady with coal hair and sad dark eyes that tore into-

No. No she didn't.

Of that, she was promised.

They were nightmares. They were bad dreams. They were silly, and childish, and she was a big girl, wasn't she, out saving the city she'd loved? Mama Tennenbaum had promised, and even though her own name made her shout and break things, Mama Tennenbaum was a very smart lady.

Mama? Mama? ...Monsters!

Monsters? Monsters? Why did this child yell at her, why did she so accuse? A monster? I save my family-

'tlistencouldn'tlisten. WOULDN'T. LISTEN.

There was something, someone, speaking softly. No, singing. Singing. Softly singing, a song just for her. Daddy didn't know this song. It wasn't the broken ones the other sang; NO. She was different. She was... special. She sang a song no one else knew, because they couldn't remember, but she could. She dared to remember.

And they broke her for it.

That was why she was so different. That was why she was the first Big Sister, and would be the last. She was different than the rest, and it made her stronger. She understood emotions of a complex nature to a far further degree than her sisters, little or big. The others were rage-filled automatons, endlessly serving the desires of Sophia because they believed it would save their sisters, or so they believed that they believed.

They truly believed nothing. They served as they did because she told them to, and they obeyed. But she...

She did it because...

For so many things, actually, that it was a bit difficult to keep track.

But among the reasons was her father.

Among the reasons were her sisters.

And among the reasons was her hatred.

These were the three facets of her main motivation; for love, duty, and honor.

She loved her father beyond all belief; so badly it made her ache with loneliness because he could no longer sing with her in the deep tones of the bellows of Rapture. Somewhere, never seen and long-buried inside her, she knew this was because he was dead. But everywhere else didn't even consider that as possible. She didn't consider it at all.

It had been her job for so long to keep the sisters safe, that their cries of joy and wonder had begun to... mean something. They struck something out-of-place, like the off-key note played in a piano piece, and barely noticed by anyone save the pianist, who obsesses and writhes in agony as they continue on, refusing to let go of the one different note, even though the rest of the work was flawless. It is the flaw they can never move past, not the perfection.

And that was the truth of the third reason.

She, without limit, despised Eleanor for everything she was. The true first, last, and only. The princess. The damsel. The beauty.

It didn't take the look she made into the mirror to tell her that she was the opposite of Eleanor in every way; her -'s dark unkempt hair, her father's red eyes, the shadows that clung to her ashen skin, and the unplaceable feeling of disease at realizing she was truly as old as she was. She was no longer young.

But Eleanor was, in a tangible way. She slept in her castle and waited for her knight to rescue her, with her clean-feeling appearance and easy smile and natural ability to seduce the sisters with some element of her personality that so closely drew them in.

She wasn't sure how, but she knew it was Eleanor that had brought back Papa Delta. She knew that shed manipulated, used, and abused anything and everything she could to bring her father back, and that just made her that much more...

Perfect.

She had everything. She was... she was the comfort... the love... all she had to do was smile. Her father loved her. He... he was mindless in his devotion, but in that trait, so much more wise than anyone she'd ever faced. Delta was perfect. Eleanor was perfect.

And she, Eleanor's sister, was nothing.

She was a mere shadow on the wall, as Eleanor told her own fairy-tale with captivating puppetry. And it was her story. She was the heroine.

Which made her shadow... what, exactly?

Nothing to her father. He would kill her without a second thought, and that was fine. He was all every daughter wanted.

Every... single... one...

It hit her like a tunnel crash.

Sophia would kill him.

Loneliness.

Sophia was unstoppable.

Sisters in loneliness.

she denied he died, and grinned a broken smile.

The other sisters were helping HER... They had been all along. For ten years.

SHE knew he was dead, and did something about it.

It made sense now.

SHE had succeeded.

Their little sisters had chosen a side.

she had succumbed.

And now her path was clear.

she would save her SISTER from ending as a shadow.

She kissed her father on his helmet.

SHE was meant to bring their siblings to light.

And then she pulled on her own.

Thus ends this three-part miniseries of madness. Hope you enjoyed it.

A few bits of random trivia that didn't quite fit in:

Her "sister" is not a Little Sister, it's a carefully-selected corpse. So much happier, I'm sure.

She did not kill her Big Daddy. She found his body only because she drew a whale with a bowtie and tophat on his back.

She actually does have a name. She just doesn't recall it.

Her favorite color is blue, and she likes salt-and-vinegar chips.

She does not drink alcohol unless its fruity and has an umbrella, and since this is Rapture, that means she never drinks.

Final note: I tried my best to allude in the ending to the fact that she becomes, by her actions, the "perfect altruist" that Sophia wanted so badly.

Duality=irony? I guess.

Anyway, thanks for reading.