In this world, the Russians are the first to set foot on the moon. In this world, and in the next, and the next, and the next, and -
In another lifetime, another city, another world, the French are first. Then the Germans, followed by the Americans, followed by millions of other permutations that add up to make that first gentle touch of boot to dust and the simultaneous exhale of the world below. One small step for man, one says, and Elizabeth imagines Selene's screams. Are you afraid of God? she once asked a man, but she knows now; Gods should be afraid of men.
Selene and Hina and Khonsu and others, so many others, scream as footprints tattoo across their skin and Elizabeth has to shut off the screen.
(And later, later, when time is relative, she looks up the moon and listens to the cries of gods and wonders if she could tear it in two.)
..
It's 1890 and Booker is ablaze. He is younger than her now; face still painted with the thin wisps of a childhood unrealized. Was younger. He is not much more than a twitching mass of charred flesh now. Those responsible have a fate far worse ahead of them, but Elizabeth does not move. She sits with this ill-fortuned Booker, sticky fingers between her own, and she whispers words of comfort to a dying man.
Constants, she thinks, listening to the shouts of Slate. Constants and variables, she thinks as the others lose their heads. Variables, as their blood spills out on the snow.
"It's alright," she whispers, and watches as an incarnation of herself disappears on the wet sand of that riverbed. The river that winds its way across her calves and over her hips, and sits heavy in her heart cavity. "Smother," a part of her says, and stills thrashing limbs.
It's 1890 and Booker dies alone in the cold.
..
"You will not be able to keep this up indefinitely. You aware of that, are you not?"
Rosalind stands in the doorway. Standing, always standing, never crossing the threshold and joining the physical realm in the space that builds this reality.
"Thirteen," Elizabeth says, because it's a part of their game. One, two, three, repeat after me. How many times I've seen you differ from how many times you've seen me. One, two, three, repeat after me. Thirteen, she says, and doesn't mention the tally that goes on and on, until she isn't sure which universe it starts and in which it stops.
"Eight," says Robert, ever faithful from the other woman's side. Elizabeth smiles. One, two, three, repeat after me.
"The others will find you," they say, "have found you."
Elizabeth releases a breath of air, charcoal rolling between her fingers, and murmurs, "Not if I find them first."
She can feel them across the times and space, smother, smother, and one, two three, how do I save myself from me?
"The word suicidal comes to mind when one attempts to describe this mission you have undertaken," Robert says, then Rosalind, "The probability of your success is extremely -"
"Minimal," Elizabeth interrupts. Her thumb smudges the dark line that represents the curve of his sharp nose, and adds, "Thirteen."
Robert is gone when she finally looks up from the lines on page, and Rosalind's head bobs in what she can only surmise as understanding. "There is no reasoning with you then?"
"No."
Comstock washes you of all your sins, she hears through the walls that hold up realities, and a baby cries and a man shouts and then -
"Stop," she says, wincing. The face, his face, the one she knows worlds over, is black under her hand and there is blood under his nose and water around his knees and they look at him through the doors. Rosalind doesn't say, he's waiting, because she is not a creature of cruelty but it whispers between.
"Nine," Rosalind says, and Elizabeth feels wet against her cheeks.
..
Do you ever get used to it? she once asked a man, the killing, the killing, the killing.
Faster than you can imagine he had said, and she knows, she knows, she knows.
..
It is 1944 and Booker has long been dead. Others die now, by the hundreds, thousands, millions. She tries to stop it in this world, and the next, and the next, and -
Constants, she screams, and smother, smother, smother, the son of a bitch in his crib. She is back on that boat, rocking, rocking, and Booker has his fingers against the pulse of her wrist - but, no, that's not right. It's 1944 and people die by the millions.
She tries to stop it. She tries to stop it with bullets, and blood, and tears. Realities crumble under her hand, and her pinky bleeds, and it's worse, it's so much worse. Nineteen, they say, when she's still fighting down to her teeth. Nineteen, they say, and take her hand, leading her away.
Sixteen, she whispers, and tastes ash against her teeth.
..
They make it sometimes. To Paris, to New York, to wherever there isn't a Columbia to chain them to the sky. It's never how a part of her imagined, though.
She watches and remembers the books that she used to read, fingertips pressed to the pages as though she could absorb them through touch alone. The books that really only ever told the parts she longed to hear. The books that never gave a whisper of the cruelty lurking around every corning, waiting to sink its deep claws in her ignorance and innocence. The books that never warned Elizabeth that the world would tear her to shreds.
They make it sometime, and it's not how the books said.
They tear through cities, jumping from one reality to the next and the next. They reside in the parts of the universe that the little girl in pretty dresses, the one locked up away in the tower, never knew about. They claim the dark underbelly of a beast that Columbia could only begin to compare to, and she watches as Elizabeth - the one that got away, the one who never had to worry about Fitzroy and Comstock and little children whose shirts soak red - loses herself easily to it.
It makes her furious.
Her fingers clench, blood rushing past her ears, and she wants to tear apart the reality that holds them. She wants to feel atoms split under her fingers, as the pretty girl in pretty dresses finally realizes her mistake, as that pretty girl's eyes widen when she finally sees Elizabeth. You don't know, she wants to scream, you will never know.
She doesn't. She couldn't.
(And when Booker ends up with wrong people in the wrong place, she is the one to sit with him as his shirt soaks red. She sits and brushes his hair from his forehead, and forgets the pretty girl in dresses.)
..
In this world, the Americans are the first to set foot on the moon. In this world, and in the next, and the next, and the next, and -
The moon is screaming, and she laughs and lights a cigarette, humming along.
..
One of them finds her; eventually; finally.
"Stop," they say, and Elizabeth hears the smother hidden under their breath, "Stop."
It's cold where they are, snow underfoot, and she has to draw the coat tighter to her throat - the place where words are dying against the cartilage in her larynx, as her mouth floods with the water from that river where he still stands.
"No."
"This is better," they say, and another step into the footprints on white that she knows should be his, "you are being cruel."
She shakes her head, "No," because isn't it crueler yet to push him under the water and watch as Comstock rises to the surface in a burst of carbon dioxide instead. "Booker doesn't deserve that."
"They are," says one, "the same," finishes another, and Elizabeth shakes her head again. No. Comstock rises in her and she imagines those in front of her sliding into the space between realities, trapped, trapped, trapped, only to keep each other and their sins company. Stop, she tells herself, ignoring the way it makes her head thrum, you are being cruel.
It's cold and her coat is to her ears and the frost clings to every release of air from her lungs. It is as clear as the bubbles rising from the corners of his mouth, and a shiver crawls up and down the vertebrates that hold her spine together. "Booker doesn't deserve it," she says again as another finds their place by her shoulder. There are three of them now, all same, all different.
I know you, she wants to say, you are not evil creatures, don't let Comstock take root in you. But then one has their hand on her arm, the metal from the stump of her middle finger searing its way down to her bones. She shivers. "Come with us," she says, bangs fluttering in the cold air. Elizabeth squints. She can see Booker in the slant of her eyes, the curve of her nose. He is still following her, even as he waits on that riverbed for her.
smother, smother, her heart feels watered down.
She swallows, hotly. "No."
..
"Twenty-two," she says, laughing as the air rips its way through her teeth. She feels the world sway underneath her feet and she wishes, how she wishes, he was beside her. Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus, a part of her thinks and she loses her smile.
Robert is silent, eyes slowly crossing the lines of her face, to the hair pushed back swaying lightly in the breeze. "There is something we believe you would wish to see."
Twenty-two, she mouths, because, how many times I've seen you differ from how many times you've seen me. The lights from the city below highlight the curves of his cheeks and the empty space that Rosalind is supposed to be. And when she closes her eyes, if only for a moment, she can see the elegant twist of the other woman's hair in the doorway between.
"Ninety-four," he says, finally, and the world shifts underneath her feet.
"You know?" asks she, voice flat and eyes dying. She's seen it; wrinkled fingers reaching for her wrist, ninety-five whispered through stale air that continues to smell of ozone and melted insulation, despite its long absence. Ninety-five, she spits through her teeth.
His head drops and raises, assurance. "We know."
..
It is 1960, and Booker is just fresh dead. Same as she.
(She watches Atlas burn in this world, and in the next, and the next, and the next, and - until she knows the sounds of his screams as well as she knows the feel of metal around her pinky.)
..
She can see the doors. She can see all the doors, and sometimes, sometimes it's all she can see. The moons never stops to take a breath between the screams, and Booker has water around his knees, and one, twelve, thirty, losing yourself in the lines between.
..
It's 1948, and everyone is trying to forget the war.
They laugh and dance and sing and try to reclaim the time before Hitler's regime. The world is different now, she can see it in this world, and the next, and on, but it is difficult for the people trapped in this reality.
People would gladly forget their own two feet if it meant livin' easy one more day, she can hear Booker saying. She winces, the painful hypocrisy of his sins branded across her being flaring to life in her consciousness.
She tries to lose herself into the simplicity of these people's lives, to fall in step with them when they dance and laugh and fuck. Columbia can be nothing but a painful bitter memory, she tries to convince herself, and Booker can be -
Booker can be left well enough alone.
And, well, it isn't hard to live in this life, in this reality. She fits in with the people and their pretend. There is even a boy that twirls her and kisses her and asks if she is sweet on him. But she can never answer, only watching through one of her tears as his head is blown off by a German sniper, or half of his body explode from beneath him, or the fists beating the life from him. Do you know? she wants to ask this one, Do you know how lucky you are? How many times you've escaped death? She knows these things and she tries to forget these things, but her tears scream at her from the edge of her vision.
She finds him then, the Booker of this time. She finds him under her feet, likely eaten away by dirt and maggots and, oh Booker, she cries, knees in the cold wet mud and hands at her face, Booker, Booker.
She is so alone, even as she feels him across infinity.
..
They make it sometimes. They make it, they make it, they make it.
Booker is always watching the sky. Elizabeth is always watching Booker.
..
"Ninety-four?" she asks, because this is the first she has seen of Rosalind. She doesn't remember, but she thinks their last encounter was in the grimy space behind an old building, chants beating to their every word. Her mind isn't as sharp as it used to be, when she jumped from door to door because she had the power to do so, because she had never seen any of it before. But ninety-four, she asks, because she knows Robert is on the edge of the swaying tower high in Paris. Rosalind nods. Elizabeth swallows. "You're going back?"
Back to the place they do not belong, the place that holds two sheets of rocks, their names imbedded on each. "We felt it prudent to return to of our own volition before the laws of the universe see fit to do it for us."
"But you don't know," Elizabeth says, fingers twitching to reach for the other woman. When she doesn't, she can read the relief in the other woman's eyes. "You have no idea if that will actually - "
The ghost of something almost akin to a smile crosses the other woman's face. "We did as you asked once. We request you do the same."
"It wasn't me."
The curve of an eyebrow is all Elizabeth can see, before, "Just the same as you know we are not to die once we cross through the doorway."
One, two, three, please, please don't leave me.
..
Sometimes she finds him in his sleep; smelling of whiskey and shit. His knuckles are bloody but his face is clean, and he is so strong and so young.
Do you ever get used to it? she once asked, and yes, yes, as he struggles under her hand.
..
She looks for her mother; once. Her real mother, not the one that screams at her in the empty walls of Columbia; the mother that she was supposed to have, the mother she ripped open when she first entered the world. She finds them after Wounded Knee. Booker is drunk and her mother is tired and big. You shouldn't, Robert had warned her once before they left, and he was right, she shouldn't.
But she does.
"Sorry," Elizabeth says, when she knocks the woman nearly off her feet. She smiles, tight and weary, and says, "It's alright." back.
Us DeWitts, she thinks and eyes her mother's belly.
(Later, when her mother is dead and Booker is kissing her cheek, Elizabeth cries. She cries, and cries, and cries, and - )
..
smother, smother; her heart is heavy.
..
smotherthesonofabitchsmotherthesonofabitchsmotherthesonofabitchsmotherthesonofabitch
She is rocking and rocking.
..
Do you know what you have done? she wants to ask this one as he chokes on lungs full of blood. Her hands are slick and her eyes are wild, and Elizabeth wants to scream in his face.
..
"Stop," someone says, "smother."
She snaps their neck.
..
"Eighty-three," she hears once, long, long after their game has spun away into infinity. How many Bookers' has she killed? She wants to count the number on her fingers and across her tongue and tell this stupid, stupid woman what she has done.
How many times I've seen you differ from how many times you've seen me, and, "No more games."
..
A man sets foot on the moon and she screams.
..
Elizabeth is old. She can feel it in her bones, and her joints, and in the pumping muscle in her chest that some may call a heart. Elizabeth is old, and so, so tired.
She can hear them, smother, smother, smother, and she doesn't want to fight anymore. Booker doesn't deserve it, she thinks, but neither does she. She can feel them at her side, waiting with fingers open and that word on their tongues. Elizabeth can taste the air around them, feel its charge on her taste buds, and she knows there is wet collecting under her eyelids. They have been waiting, same as he, and she is far too tired to make it continue any longer.
Booker, Booker, she had once cried, young and sweet. Enough of that. Enough of that, now.
Elizabeth is old. And there's water around her knees and Booker (her Booker, their Booker, Booker, Booker) still doesn't understand, so she says, "This isn't the same place, Booker," and prays.
Smother.
Smother.
I should probably explain. Before the any of the dlc was released, and we only had a trailer for episode one, I was under the assumption or theory that their time in Rapture was during the space between when Booker opens the door to find he is Comstock, and when Elizabeth reappears in the river with him. I believed this because if she was omniscient with her god-like powers, as we were lead to believe, she could have literally been anywhere, anytime, for as long as she wished, and still get back to Booker in a fraction of a second. That being said, I really disliked a good majority of episode two because of the way the story was presented. It raised more plot-holes and questions than before, and it was a great disservice to the characters of Infinite. But that's a different rant.
So, basically, to me, the Elizabeth of BaS was a random variation during that half second of time before Booker drowns. Which would also explain why the hell there is a Columbia that Rapture!Elizabeth could actually go to, because if it was after the drowning, then Booker's actions would have had absolutely no meaning. I like to be optimistic and believe that there was a purpose to each death, hence this poorly worded explanation.
What I'm trying to say, is that this is the Elizabeth of Infinite, and I refuse almost all Burial at Sea canon. So, yeah.
1. Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus - Quote by Marcel Proust meaning, the true paradises are the lost paradises.
2. Title comes from the song Shoot the Water by Austra.