The only difference between past and present, is semantics.
Sarah - Rapture - 1966
Sarah hauled herself up into the vent. Everything was so familiar and so strange at the same time. The tunnels were slightly rusty, and a lot smaller, but at least she could avoid the splicers. No wonder Helena had preferred to see them as angels - the few she had seen had still been in their fancy clothes, now tattered and bloodstained, the filthy masks hiding their faces. They stank, too. Sarah paused and tried to get her bearings. Getting around the tunnels used to be second nature - like a glowing map in her mind - but now she was just trying to head in the right direction and hoping to come out where she was supposed to be.
She rounded a corner and stopped short, gasping bloody hell as a pair of glowing eyes appeared before her. The Little Sister squealed and started to back up, babbling no no no no no no. Sarah rested both her arms on her elbows, raising her palms in the gesture of peace.
“Hey...hey...it’s okay…” she said soothingly, surprised that she sounded so calm.
The girl slowed down, then halted, and peered at Sarah through a fringe of dark hair. In the dim light she could see that the girl's face was grubby and her hair unkempt.
“I wish I had some jellies!” she exclaimed suddenly, looking at Sarah expectedly.
“Umm...let’s see what I’ve got here…” Sarah rummaged through her backpack and pulled out some muesli bars, then a small packet of biscuits. “How about some chocolate biscuits, hey?”
The Little Sister grinned and started crawling back towards Sarah. When she reached her, she reached out a small hand and touched Sarah’s hair, dark and frizzing up in the dampness.
“Your hair is a different colour today.” she stated, taking a biscuit from Sarah’s suddenly unresisting fingers.
“My hair?” Sarah echoed. Her heart thumped in her chest, so hard she felt out of breath for a moment. “What colour is it usually?”
The girl giggled.
“Six times two is lemon!”
Lemon? Yellow...blonde...the kid had to mean blonde, right? She must mean Helena...god, she sounds just like her...
Sarah handed the girl another biscuit, and kept her voice as casual as she could.
“Oh, the lemon-haired girl isn’t me. She’s my sister. Do...you know where she is?”
The Little Sister gaped at Sarah, and then asked in an hushed voice,
“Big Sisters have sisters?”
“Yeah,” Sarah answered, “They do. Do you know where she is?”
“She’s everywhere! She looks after us when our Daddies go away! She sends us angels full of ADAM!”
Sarah smiled, then furiously rubbed the tears from her eyes.
“Yeah, that sounds like Helena.” she said in a barely cracking voice.
“He - lee - na.” The girl repeated slowly. “Helena. Then what’s your name?”
“My name is Sarah, “ she answered.
The girl echoed again with “Sar - rah? Sarah! Big Sister’s sister!” She giggled, evidently finding the entire idea marvelous.
Sarah reached out to the girl, brushing the hair off her face. “What about you, what’s your name?” There was something strangely familiar about the girl, but she assumed it was simply down to the way the Little Sisters had always resembled each other - matching pinafore dresses, same hairstyles, same golden eyes...
The girl hesitated.
“Um...the silver lady calls us Leda. But Big Sister said my name could be anything I wanted! Today my name is Violet because they’re pretty flowers!”
“That is a very pretty name.” said Sarah, smiling at the girl. God, were we this young? she thought, she’s so young…”Wait...who’s the silver lady?”
Violet looked down, then crawled closer to Sarah and put her mouth close to her ear.
“She’s the mother. But not really. She’s mean but it’s because she’s sad. That’s what Big Sister says.” She looked over her shoulder as if this silver lady could be creeping up behind her, and whispered “I’m scared of her.”
“Well,” Sarah whispered back, “Do you wanna come with me and we’ll find our Big Sister together? And I’ll make sure the silver lady doesn’t find you, okay?She gave the girl a crooked grin, while her mind whirred.
She’d never imagined there would still be Little Sisters down here. DYAD kept the program going? Did they go and steal a whole new crop of little girls? What the hell had they been doing down here all this time? Did that mean the Duncans were still around? And Rachel...what the hell had happened to Rachel?
“Sar-rah?” Violet tugged at her sleeve. “Do you have a Daddy?”
Sarah hesitated. “Uh, no. I used to. When I was a little girl like you…” A picture of Mister Bubbles lying on the ground, helpless, welled up in her mind, and she felt a sudden surge of sadness. “But...uh...I went away and he had to stay here.” She smiled wistfully. “I missed him a lot.” And she had. Despite being washed clean of the ADAM and whatever else had been involved in the pair-bonding, she had genuinely grieved for her Big Daddy. In the years after leaving Rapture, she’d held a secret hope that he had recovered and somehow reunited with Helena. At least she would have had someone to wait with…
Violet’s face held a sad expression as she crawled even closer and whispered to Sarah.
“My Daddy fell down and wouldn’t get back up again. When the spliceheads caught us. Then Big Sister,” she paused and corrected herself, “He-len-a, came and got me and made the bad people into sweet angels!” Another pause. “She couldn’t make Mister B better though...” The girls voice trailed off, and Sarah took one of her hands and squeezed it.
“Hey,” she ducked her head so she could look the girl in the eyes. “I know it hurts, yeah? But I have some good news. When we find Helena, I’m gonna take you all back up to the surface.” The words she’d spoken to Rachel all those years ago came back to her. “You’ll get to see the sunshine and live with all your sisters and...and have cake every day!” She smiled at the little girl, whose eyes had opened wide and shone brightly in the gloom.
“Oh, I like cake!” exclaimed Violet happily, the sadness in her voice washed away.
Sarah leaned close, fixing a grin on her face and said brightly, “Me too! Now, let’s get going, okay?” She felt her legs itching to move, to run until she found her sister again. Helena was somewhere near and getting closer, and she was filled with a jittery excitement at the thought of being reunited with her.
Violet pointed and said “This way!” She turned around and started crawling back the way she had came.
Sarah slung the backpack over her shoulders and followed her deeper into Rapture.