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The City was the City. It wasn't Rapture. There was a sky and sun. Which was better than Rapture.

The curses were a pain but... It wasn't Rapture.

On this particular day Alec walked into a bar with his limp looking for somewhere to sit and maybe someone to talk to. It was crowded and busy but he spotted an empty seat at the bar. Hobbling over to it he slid into the seat and gave the man next to him a short nod of greeting.

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Jimmy nods at him, immediately recognizing Alec's limp as very similar to his own. He doesn't necessarily know how this guy got injured, or whether their situations were at all the same, but it's a point of commonality, at least, a point of commonality he'll ask about as soon as he orders himself another drink.

He nods at Alec, smiling slightly. "Hey."

"Hello," Alec says with an slight smile back.

He orders a drink for himself and pulls over a bowl of peanuts. With quick fingers he starts cracking them open.

"I dunno if this is really the kinda question you ask a guy in a bar, but..."

Hell, why not, he's drunk enough to be rude, if he wants to be.

"That a war wound?"

He gestures to Alec's leg.

For a second Alec thought Jimmy was going to try and pick him up. (Hey, it's happened before. He's good looking and Andrew Ryan's son... okay that didn't mean so much here but...) The question throws him briefly but he recovers.

Alec frowned thoughtfully wondering if he could call what happened a war wound or not. He points to the scar on his face. "That was a war wound. The leg... it depends on who you talk to."

"I got one myself. A war wound, I mean."

He gestures to his own leg, shrugging. It's not obvious, since he's sitting there and not walking, but he's got a pretty damn bad limp himself.

"What do you mean 'depends on who you talk to'?"

"Which war?" It's hard to tell with some people, isn't it?

He sighs. "My father's city is... sort ... not sort of... has fallen into anarchy and about half the city is determined to see him dead. The leg came from people trying to convince me that I should help them take out my father."

He's heard about other wars, which is why he's not particularly surprised to hear that question. "1917. The Great War." What an ironic name. Of course, by Alec's time, they probably call it World War I, but Jimmy's not quite at that point.

He frowns slightly. "'n did they convince you to help take out your father?"

"1945. World War 2." Insanely ironic, yes. "I wasn't on the front lines though."

He shakes his head. "No. He's... I don't agree with a lot of what he's doing... but he's my father, you know?"

"Yeah, I heard about that one. Sounds even worse than the one I was in, which is hard to believe, but y'know, people always find ways to be worse."

He's not necessarily an optimistic guy at the best of times, and recent experiences have tried his patience. He turns his glass around in his hand for a moment before shrugging. "Just 'cause someone's your father doesn't mean he's the kinda guy you gotta respect, y'know? I mean, maybe killin' 'em ain't the right answer, but..."

"It... wasn't so much the fighting, I think... but what they did to some of the innocents." He gets a distant look on his face and then snaps out of it.

Alec tries to be optimistic. He does, really. It's hard sometimes. "I used to respect him... now... I'm more worried about how he's become who he said he wanted to get away from."

He laughs bitterly, taking another swig of his drink.

"I know exactly what you mean. Know a guy like that myself. Acts like he's so fuckin' above everyone else, but he's exactly the same. He just doesn't do his own goddamned dirty work, y'know? So he can pretend he ain't just as bad as the rest of us."

"He used to have someone who did that... but he ... killed himself." Sullivan's death bothers him. The wall of dead bother him.

"He doesn't think he's better than us. He doesn't believe in that sort of thing." Alec snorts. "No kings. No. Gods. Only Man."

"Well, shit, y'know, when your hired guns start killin' themselves over your bullshit, it's probably time to think about reconsiderin' your tactics."

He shakes his head, taking another long swig. "He sounds like a jackass, if you want me to be completely honest."

"Ah! But he's never wrong. And this will just blow over. The free market will correct itself." Alec takes a long swig of his drink too. "His entire city is going up in flames and it'll just blow over. He can't let anyone out because it would violate the one law... but he's ..."

There's a shake of his head. "He is a jackass."

"I'd ask how you got out, but this is the City, and shit doesn't make sense here. I know a guy whose city is fallin' apart, too. He's in denial about it, too."

Ah, similarities.

"Honestly, I was so glad to get out of Rapture. It was driving me crazy. Twelve years without seeing the sky and sun? Being here was a relief. No one's trying to kill me." He sighs and laughs softly. "I guess people enjoy being in denial when their world is falling apart."

"Not seein' the sky 'n the sun? I'd've gone fuckin' crazy."

Fuckin' crazier, actually, but that's a matter of debate, right?

"No one's trynna kill me here, either. At least, not so far as I know."

Alec hesitates a moment. "I think I might have. I think I did."

He grins a little. "Why were people trying to kill you?"

"Oh, y'know, the normal reasons. Business, rivalries, the fact that I tried to kill some of 'em first."

"Hah!" Alec laughs. "Yes! Perfectly normal reasons. Mine are about that. Though I've only tried to kill people who tried to kill me first."

There's a sigh. "How sad are our lives that we have people trying to kill us and that's normal?"

"I dunno. Where I'm from, seems to happen to a whole hell of a lotta people. Seems stranger if you don't have anyone trynna kill you."

"Same. Someone tried to kidnap me when I was little even. I didn't think it would be considered normal when I was little."

"Yeah, probably not, but the way you put it, your father's pretty powerful. That makes people do strange things."

He'd know all about that.

"He was one of the most powerful business men in the world. He gave it all up to build a city under the ocean," he says. "It made me a target. I don't think he ever ... he took it as an insult to himself that people would try to hurt me."

"Yeah, well, that's what guys like that do. Guys who own cities, guys who think that just 'cause they made a city what it was, that they're infallible."

He doesn't come from the same kind of world. There are no cities under the ocean. But there are powerful businessmen, and men who might as well have singlehandedly made a city. His biological father is one. His surrogate father is another.