« down to the sea bed »

Title : Down To The Sea Bed
Pairing : Rosalind Lutece/Sofia Lamb
Chapter : 4/?
Rating :  M (for later chapters)
Synopsis : Rosalind Lutece is a renowned physicist who was invited in Rapture by Andrew Ryan, in hope that she would help improve the city’s structure. There she meets Sofia Lamb, a psychiatrist devoted to the cause of the people.

Note : SERIOUS THING COMING UP

Rosalind woke up in a bed that wasn’t hers, and with a slightly pounding headache. She wasn’t wearing her clothes either: someone had put her in a nightshirt which fell to her knees. Next to her, a slim and tall figure moved.

She was slightly taken aback and startled at the sight, then remembered where she was – Sofia Lamb’s chamber, who still laid asleep quite deeply. Rosalind gently shook her shoulder. “Sofia…” she whispered, trying to wake her up, and when her movements became more insistent, all she got were a loud groan, and the woman rolled to the other side.
The redhead sighed and looked around. The bedroom was decorated as elegantly as the living room, in the same art deco style. She pushed back the covers and got up, her hair falling on her shoulders.
The shelves were covered with medicine books, along with some philosophical treatise about altruism. There were also photographs of her : from when she was at Oxford, when she graduated, in Japan with her friends. Rosa was surprised to note that she had worn her hair quite long when she had been young – while they were cut rather short now. She turned to the woman still asleep, wondering what she had been through in Hiroshima, yet knowing she’d never be able to begin to imagine what it must have been like. All of a sudden, she felt her heart clenching in her chest, and she was surprised. Rosalind was not the sensitive type – yet she felt something for this woman, something she could not yet quite describe and which made her feel sadness towards her, but at the same, she was happy the two had met.

On another shelf they were records of all type – Rapture Records, of course, but also some others coming from the surface. An old-looking caught her eyes, and she drew it out. It was an old record from 1927, by a singer called Ruth Etting and which was called “It All Belongs to Me”. Rosa spotted the phonograph in the corner of the room, and put it on. The good ol’ cracklings greeted as it began to slowly turn, and Rosalind put the volume to the lowest. The voice was sweet and a bit nasal, but it was agreeable.
“You woke me up” came a grumbling voice from behind her, and Rosa jumped up in surprise. Sofia stood there, her hair a mess and her eyes swollen with sleep as she wrapped herself in a bathrobe. “Put that off, please.”
She did as she was told as quickly as possible. “I’m sorry ! I woke and you didn’t look like you wanted to do the same and I didn’t want to bother you…” she blurted out.
“It’s alright, it’s nothing. I need a lot of sleep, that’s all. It’s all forgotten. Come, let’s get breakfast” The tall woman exited the room and Rosa followed her quickly. The kitchen appeared simpler than the rest of the apartment. It had been plainly painted a light green and blue, and the furniture was made of wood. “I hope you like eggs” Sofia said as she took a frying pan out of one of the cupboards.
“Yes, it’s alright” Rosalind said as the psychiatrist broke two without spoiling the yolk.
She found out that the blond wasn’t exactly the talking type in the morning, and that she’d rather sit alone at a table to eat in silence and drink a cup of coffee, while Rosa was always full of energy whenever the moment of the day. 

“Do you take tea or coffee ?” Sofia asked as she set down their plates, and as a true English woman, Rosa was feeding herself on green tea. The psychiatrist prepared a tea pot for her guest as she made coffee for herself.
They ate almost in silence, the blond only inquiring if the eggs were fine and if Rosalind felt better, since she had seemed quite tipsy last night.
“Would you want to come with me today, and see my works?” Sofia asked as they were clearing their breakfast table.
“Well, why not” Rosalind replied “this way, I’ll be able to see the true Rapture, I suppose.”
They got dressed and she followed Sofia as they took to Bathysphere to get to Pauper’s Drop.

As the psychiatrist explained during the brief journey, this district wasn’t there where Rapture was originally constructed – the workers built it for themselves. It was the poorest district of the city and as she would be able to see by herself, completely abandoned by Ryan and his followers. The place was poor, and dirty. Everywhere they were workers without a job who drank all day long at Fishbowl dinner, and kids playing in the dirt in the streets. Everyone greeted Sofia like a mother, with shouts of “Dr Lamb!” and “Ma’am !”, and the smile they put on her face was a priceless one, Rosalind could tell.
“Come, we’re going to see Grace Holloway” Lamb told her, before leading her through the crowd that had gathered around them.

Grace was a famous jazz singer, here in Pauper’s Drop, Sofia told her. But she sang against Ryan and for that, she had been blacklisted. “She is one of my more faithful followers. She is such a sweet heart, you will see.”
Rosalind encountered a Black, middle-aged woman who still looked beautiful, despite the harshness of the life she lived that marked her face. She seemed happy to meet Rosa, though she had to admit she had never head about her before. “Physic’s not really my cup o’ tea, ma’am !” she said with a smile. Grace had come in Rapture, because she thought everything was better than her old Hooverville of St. Louis in Missouri – but she had been wrong. The dream Ryan had been offering didn’t exist for her, and she had ended up in the Drop, where you could find all the scum of Rapture.

“Dr Lamb – Sofia, she is the only one who cares about us, here. Ryan pisses on us and Fontaine uses like we’re tools and not human beings. This ain’t a life, ma’am. But Sofia – she has told us we can be part of a greater family, a family that will accept us as we are. I can’t have no children, ma’am, and that’s sad.  But Dr Lamb told me this would be my family, and I believe her. Before her, none of them “Best and Brightest” raised a finger for us.” There were sparks in her eyes, sparks of hope that told much more than any words could have done.
Rosalind saw the true work of Sofia, then – to give hope to people who had none anymore, who had been stripped bare down to their own dignity.

Today was not the day for the free counselling session, and thus Sofia left rather quickly after having greeted a certain number of people. In the Bathysphere, Rosa could see how tiring it all was for her. “It takes a lot of energy, you know – to watch misery in the face and combat it, even though you know the chances are slim” she confessed “yet you keep on fighting, because what are our lives for, if not for the constant fight to be better, the everyday strive to become someone else? You do it in a more concrete matter, physics – while I set my battlefield in the mind. But in the end, we do the same, don’t we ?”
Rosalind smiled. “Except when people look at me, they don’t have that light in their eyes, all this love. I’ll always be working in the shadows – that is the path I have chosen. I admire you, because yours isn’t easy – you have condemned yourself to be always in the light, and therefore always the first to blame, too. You are a very interesting woman, Sofia Lamb. I am glad I have met you and you have taken me out of my posh office.”
“I am glad, too…” Sofia whispered, the corners of her mouth curling up. “You are as equally interesting, Rosalind Lutece.”

She leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. Rosa’s eyes went wide, her body tensing up, but as their mouths didn’t part, she closed her eyelids, and leaned into the touch.