What Is Love?

Love is not a choice,

Something that humans can freely control

Love is an instinct

It synchronizes with the beating of our hearts

It flows with the rhythm of our breaths

It Harmonizes with our very souls

Love is not a choice

Can one choose to live life without water?

Can one choose to live life without food?

Love is not a choice,

It's a necessity

~Cryoshock123~

Time had slowed down. In Subject Delta's eyes, everything had nearly stopped as he ran down the flooded halls of the walk way. Crates upon crates of explosives lined their path, piled haphazardly on top of each other. Sofia Lambs final effort to completely destroy him. Eleanor spun on her heal, graceful as a ballerina, and extended a hand out to her father, desperately trying to embrace him, desperately trying to save him from a fate that was already decided.

She was almost there, she had nearly wrapped her fingers around his massive hand, but in an instant the bombs detonated. Eleanor dematerialized in a bright pink mist of molecules and rose pedals as a wall of fiery concussive force and pressurized water rushed forward, slamming into Delta's colossal figure with the force of a tsunami. Subject Delta was sent careening backwards, howling and yelling as the walk way collapsed under his feet. In a frenzy, the Demo Daddy desperately grasped for anything that would halt his decent. Delta's hand clutched the banister of the bathysphere and in a torrent of bubbles and rushing water, they began to ascend.

The fourth father of the protector program chanced a glance over his shoulder, gazing upon Andrew Ryan's failed dystopia one last time. The city's luminescence bathed the ocean floor in an eerie glow, shining like a single super colossal organism. The bombs had caused Persephone Penal Colony to slip away from the city, like a seed who's flower parent has let her be gone with the wind, and slipped into the dark abyss bellow. His eyes returning to the apex of the bathysphere, Subject Delta began to scale the vessel like a mountaineer pushing against the fiercest of storms, enduring the howling tempest winds. A vortex of bubbles threatened to engulf his sight as he clutched a nearby notch with both of his massive hands and flung himself towards the next, nearly losing his grip but enabling him to reach the peak of the vessel.

With a will and strength almost broken, Delta hoisted himself onto his feet, straining against the whirling maelstrom. It felt as if he were carrying the ocean on his shoulders as he stood there, peering into the bathysphere's cockpit, a massive hand placed firmly on the thin layer of glass. His nemesis was drowning. Her cheeks bloated with trapped air, Sofia Lamb waved her limbs about in a frenzied desperation, as she attempted to reach a small pocket of air. The Demo Daddy's gaze immediately locked onto the dark armored figure that effortlessly glided through the water, circling Sofia's struggling form like a shark stalking a bleeding seal.

Eleanor waded through the water, approaching her mother painfully slow. Delta smirked, a hateful and excited sneer, as his daughter grabbed Sofia by her scrawny leg and pulled her to the bottom of the sphere. Sofia kicked and waved her limbs wildly, creating a cloud of bubbles that hid her form. Eleanor held her mother in her vice, until her limbs went limp and her body went still. Her porthole shining a joyful green, Eleanor approached Delta's huge form and put her lithe hand over his massive one, the glass barrier the only thing preventing them from touching. The bathysphere rocked as it finally breached the surface, throwing Delta onto his back. The few rays that peaked out from behind the overcast sky blinded Delta, his underdeveloped eyes sensitive to even the slightest amount of ultraviolet light.

For a moment, all Delta could see was white. But his blindness faded quickly, revealing the beautiful but grim face that stared back at him. Her eyes were dark sapphire rocks lodged into a skull made of porcelain. Her shadowy strands of hair fell over her face ever so slightly as she leaned in for a closer look at her father. Eleanor tilted her head to the side as she gently wrapped her fingers around Delta's hand. A confused and frustrated expression was painted onto her face.

"Is this love father?" She asked. "This warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach? I want to know what love is father, is this it?" Eleanor demanded desperately. Raising a hand to rub the side of her face affectionately, Delta nodded. Eleanor's face was still grim, not even the slightest traces of a smile showed on her frigid features as Delta gently caressed her cheek. Why wouldn't his baby girl smile for him?

Killing the innocent, killing that pervert Stanley Poole who would dare even lay a finger on her, he had done it all for her. He had given up his purity for her, but in the end he realized that she had done the same for him. He had watched as she mercilessly slaughtered eight innocent children. He could not smile, not truly, not after the things he has done and neither could she.

She had felt every one, that is what she had told him. She told him that she had felt every single connection with her new sisters severed when he yanked the ADAM parasite from their stomachs. Wasn't that like killing her over and over again? This pain he was going through, the edges of his vision being consumed in a over grown cluster of bloody veins, his body shaking and his heart threatening to explode out of the confines of his chest; did she feel this pain? Did she go through this every single time he murdered one of the Little Sisters?

Was she angry at him, did she hate him? He wouldn't blame her if she did. Killing everything in his path, stopping at nothing to gain the power to save her, Delta knew very well what he was doing and that Eleanor might end up hating him.

But he didn't care. Her safety was more important than what she thought of him and now as he lye on his back, dying, he was just glad that he had a chance to gaze upon her angelic face one last time. Eleanor's stony cold gaze softened slightly and her lips tugged upwards into a the barest traces of a smile as her father continued to caress her cheek gently.

"I love you father. Very, very, very much." She cooed as she leaned into his touch, her eyes half lidded. Delta smiled slightly, his hardened face softening at the sight of his daughter. How could he not smile for her? She was the one whom he was conditioned to love, to protect. Even if she was forced on him, he wouldn't let her go, he wouldn't give her up for anything in the world.

Not even his old life, a life he couldn't even recall.

Slender fingers wrapped around the latches to Delta's helmet and before he could even protest it was ripped away from his person and tossed carelessly to the side, impacting the bathysphere hull with loud thud. Delta yelped in fright as he had barely even noticed Eleanor's movements. He attempted to hide his face from her, he attempted to hide his grotesqueness; but she pinned his arms to the ground. She brought her face close to his, their noses touching and smiled. Her whispering voice like a phantom's warning carried away by the wind sent a shiver of dread through his being.

"I really love you Daddy." She gave him a deep kiss on the mouth.

How could he have failed so miserably? How could he have failed the one he cherished most?