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Mr. Porter asks her at one point if she’d like him to escort her down the aisle - not to play the fatherly role, not really, but to spare her of the looks she’ll get, being a bride without a father to hand her off to her future husband.
Eleanor thanks him for the thought, but she’ll be fine; no matter what anybody thinks, no matter what they see when she walks down the aisle, she has her father with her, and he will be walking her down the aisle.
When she’s in her dressing room, her soon-to-be mother-in-law stops by to have a word, briefly fuss over how beautiful she looks in her dress, and to tell her again what a shame it is her parents couldn’t be here.
Eleanor smiles all the same and tells her, “My father is with me, don’t worry.”
Of course, she gets the sympathetic smile and the awkward “Of course he is,” before the older woman leaves, and Eleanor almost wants to laugh because it’s just a funny thought, the idea of trying to explain to her new family what she really means when she tells them her father is always with her.
She looks in the mirror and smiles at her reflection, no longer seeing a freak, and there’s a swelling in her heart, an intense emotion washes over her that isn’t really hers, until her smile isn’t really hers either.
Pride.
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, Father,” she says, staring at the tiny sparkle in the eyes of her reflection. “You should be proud of yourself as well.”
She feels a wash of humility go through her - Father has always been a modest man.
Mr. Porter and Dr. Tenenbaum meet her outside and escort her to her place, where she’ll begin the walk to her new husband, and they tell her good luck before they leave her with her bridesmaids, Mr. Wynand’s daughters.
She stands in front of them as they wait to follow her - and she’s alone in her spotlight, but not really.
Someone gives the cue to the organ player and the music starts and everybody stands, and Eleanor feels a shot of nerves go through her as she peers out at the crowd - most of them belong to her soon-to-be spouse, but she sees Mr. Wynand, her friends, her past ‘sisters’, Mr. Porter and Dr. Tenenbaum, and the empty seats in the front row that she requested. She finds herself rooted to the spot, sweaty hands holding her bouquet.
“Eleanor,” Susie - one of Mr. Wynand’s daughters - whispers to her, as if she’s forgotten to move, while the rest hold the train of her gown.
Then warmth spreads through her, comforting, soothing, and she swallows thickly and turns her head to look up, to her left.
She imagines Father’s stare from behind his porthole, his soft note of whalesong, and then her left hand releases her bouquet and goes to her side and she turns it just slightly, as if she’s taking hold of somebody else’s offered hand - a hand that’s huge and made of leather and metal.
Eleanor grips the invisible hand tightly, and then she walks.
As she moves down the aisle, she feels the stares of her fiancé and his family, the sympathetic furrows of brows at the sight of the bride all alone without a parental escort, but they don’t faze her. They can’t hear it, but she can: the sounds of diving boots thumping against the carpeted hall with each step, heavy enough that they could even drown out the music, and Eleanor suppresses a smile.
Her bridesmaids go to stand behind her; Felicia takes her bouquet from her before she goes, and the rest of the guests in the church sit down.
Father is with her as she stands in place at the alter, opposite the one she’s pledging her life to, and that swell of emotion goes through her again, even more intense than before, until she finds a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Father,” she whispers with an amused smile, as quietly as she possibly can. “Please, Father - wait until I’ve said my vows.”
She feels her father’s embarrassment, but doesn’t bother wiping away the proud tear he’d shed through her eye.
As the priest talks, telling the crowd why they’re here, who they’re here for, and starting the vows, Eleanor peeks over her shoulder, at the pews reserved for her guests.
Mr. Wynand is in the second row, looking back and forth between her and his girls, smiling proudly all the same. There are some of her friends that she’d made when she attended university, the people who had thought her a little strange but wanted to be her friend anyway, the ones who’d made her feel welcome. Alongside their parents, some of the Little Sisters are here too, the ones she and Father had rescued; older now, and some unrecognisable since they got their identities back and changed them as they’ve grown, but they’d still greeted Eleanor with hugs when they’d first seen her. Mr. Porter and Dr. Tenenbaum are seated in the front row since they’re practically family, she’s been with them since leaving Rapture.
And beside Dr. Tenenbaum, in the front row, are the five spaces she requested to remain empty. In the blink of an eye, she imagines them filled.
Mother is seated next to Dr. Tenenbaum, for despite how things were left the last time they’d seen each other, despite how Eleanor really feels about her, there’s a part of Eleanor that wishes she were here to see her get married, to see who she has become since escaping Mother’s reign, since escaping the so-called Utopia. It’s perhaps a bit petty to think that way, but she’d always hoped Mother would change her views, if she saw Eleanor now.
Amir sits next to Mother. In her mind, his image constantly shifts between the child she knew and the adult she tries to picture him as. When she’d been little, if she imagined her wedding day, she’d innocently think of Amir standing opposite her, as her first crush and the one she’d planned to escape Rapture with. A part of her hurts when she thinks of it, how - if the stars had aligned for her, back when she was little - Amir would’ve been the one she’d be standing opposite, but if this were a world where she was marrying Amir, she thinks it would mean she’d have to sacrifice knowing Father, and she just can’t do that.
Aunt Grace is seated next to Amir. She used to talk about Eleanor’s wedding day sometimes, while she did her hair. Told her she’d be there, she’d do Eleanor’s hair on that day too, perhaps her makeup. Talked about what a beautiful bride Eleanor will make, since she was already such a beautiful little girl. When Eleanor had been choosing her dress, when she’d been getting it fitted, she imagined Aunt Grace’s opinions, her happy tears when Eleanor found the right one, her kneeling at Eleanor’s ankle as she adjusted Eleanor’s gown herself, since Aunt Grace had been good at sewing and Eleanor had always hoped Aunt Grace would have a hand in making it perfect. She thinks Aunt Grace would be crying too, just like Father.
Dr. Alexander is next to Aunt Grace - not the monster that Mother had turned him into, but himself, the way Eleanor vaguely remembers him, the way he’d been in the photographs she saw. His place in her wedding is her extending of an olive branch, to show that she forgives him for what he’d once done to her; she knows he’d felt guilty. His placement in seating, however, is to act as a barrier, to stop Aunt Grace sitting next to somebody she dislikes -
- as next to Dr. Alexander is Augustus Sinclair, smiling at her like he used to smile at Father. As she remembers word that he and Dr. Alexander had worked together in the past, she imagines this as a reunion for the pair of them. Of course, Augustus is invited, and of course, he gets to sit in the front row - he’s one of the reasons she’s here. When Eleanor had been sitting in her dressing room, watching the clock countdown to Wedding Time and feeling herself get nervous, she imagined Augustus giving her a pep talk. She imagined him telling her what a picture she looked. If Father could leave her side, he would walk back to Augustus and they would sit together, and when Father cries, Augustus would give him his handkerchief and reach over to hold his hand supportively, uncaring if anybody saw.
(And as she stares where Augustus sits, she feels a stinging in her heart - grief, grief, longing, guilt - and feels another tear rolls down her cheek. Father never had truly recovered from what he’d been forced to do back in Persephone. For Father, she will visit Augustus’s grave before she leaves with her new husband, so he can have a moment to reflect.)
To everybody else, Eleanor barely has any guests at all.
To Eleanor, everybody she needs is here, even if her new family members aren’t aware of it.
Comforted by the thought, she turns her head to look back at her waiting spouse, just as she hears her name spoken by the priest, asking her if she’ll have and hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, if she will love and honour for the rest of her days.
And Eleanor, with the swelling of pride and love in her heart, with her father’s proud tears in her eyes, says, “I do.”