A/N: As I'm sure just about anyone who's read any of my other stories knows by now, I'm not a big fan of Burial At Sea. I didn't like the plot, didn't like what it did with Rapture, didn't like the explanation for the Vigors, didn't like what happened to Elizabeth, didn't like what they did with the Luteces, couldn't care less for Sally, didn't like what was done with Songbird, and utterly despised the ending. Suffice to say, I have a massive hate-on for it - especially considering that I was writing this very story at the time. See, as much as I liked Bioshock Infinite, I wanted to end on a more optimistic note - Bioshock 2 flavour rather than Bioshock 1. So, I wrote this... and I was writing more chapters to continue on into a grand exploration of the multiverse, but then Burial At Sea took the wind out of my sails - not least of which IS THE FACT THAT COLUMBIA IS STILL ALIVE AND THE MULTIVERSE IS DOOMED, WHY THE BLOODY HELL DO WE CARE ABOUT SALLY? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.
Ahem.
Anyway, it's been years since I wrote this, and after finding the old file cluttering up my documents, I decided it was time I put out the first chapter as a stand-alone story. You'll have to be the judge as to how well it works. So, without further ado, my own ending to Bioshock Infinite, with my own interpretations and ideas in the mix, and without a trace of Burial At Sea. Read, review and above all, enjoy.
Disclaimer: Bioshock not mine. Burial At Sea not mine - thank god.
There is a terrible pause, as Booker Dewitt's final breath slowly bubbles to the surface of the river; then, with one last twitch, the man submerged goes still and lifeless as Elizabeth and her alternate selves complete the baptism. The few quiet splashes that had been echoing across the riverbank a moment ago now fall silent; the water flows onward, the ripples of Booker's final involuntary spasms erased in a matter of seconds.
There, in the depths of the river, Booker Dewitt lies dead of his own free will; and at the very moment of his creation, Zachary Hale Comstock lies dead as well – smothered in the crib. And with that sacrifice, positioned at the very moment of convergence and augmented with Elizabeth's powers, the death ripples across the multiverse: on the endless Sea of Doors, dozens upon dozens of their number wink out of existence, to be replaced by new Doorways as innumerable histories warp and fold into new shapes.
One by one, each incarnation of Comstock vanishes from his respective timeline. Every word he spoke, every act he committed, every atrocity he directed, everything of him ceases to exist, for the man himself never existed at all. Columbia fades from the skies in a million different worlds, never to pose a threat to the world below, never to extend its insanity to the rest of the multiverse under the reign of the Lamb. The countless multitudes who would have died in the cleansing of "The Sodom Below" or in Columbia's regular purges of "sinners" among its own population will go on living. The tortured monstrosities forged in the laboratories of Fink MFG and the workshops of Comstock House – the Boys of Silence, the Handymen, the Siren, the Songbird – will never be created, and the innocents that they were built from will never have to suffer the agonies of half-lives spent in twisted servitude. The Luteces will not have died in any iteration of Columbia's history: Fink never sabotages their equipment, for Comstock never orders their assassination and indeed never encounters either of them; without his funding, Rosalind and Robert do not meet in the way that they did – in some timelines, they never meet at all – and carry on with their work as independent scientists in different worlds.
And in New York, Booker Dewitt is never disturbed with an offer to "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt," nor does he ever accept the offer. Comstock never takes little Anna from his world, never accidentally severs her finger in the closing Tear, never locks her in the Tower, never takes steps to mould her into the Seed of the Prophet.
Anna never becomes Elizabeth.
But if this is the case, then who performed the sacrifice? How could this version of Booker have come to be here, and how could he have been drowned? How can any of this have been performed without Elizabeth's power?
For a moment, there is silence as the many Elizabeths bow their heads in grief at the passing of their father – and in expectation of what is about to happen next.
Then paradox lashes out.
One by one, the crowd of Elizabeths begins to vanish: from the edge of the gathering inwards, they disappear, first from sight and then from existence as the logical consequences of what has happened finally catches up with them, leaving behind nothing – not even ripples in the water where they once stood. The group slowly dwindles from six, to five, to four, to the three that carried out the drowning.
Eventually, only one remains. She knows what will happen now – what has to happen: she's known it from the moment she unlocked her true power and gained access to the Sea of Lighthouses; the need only became more apparent when she saw the very moment when Comstock's madness first blossomed, when she saw the menace that Columbia would one day represent to a much larger universe, and again when Booker demanded to see Comstock "smothered in the crib."
This is the only means of ending the nightmare once and for all, only one way of ensuring that the future that was so briefly glimpsed never comes to pass. It'll mean that the nightmare never began, sure enough…
…But she also knows that it means death, both for Booker and for her.
Outwardly, she remains just as calm and composed as her other selves had: inwardly, beneath all the newly-gathered knowledge of the multiverse, there's still fear welling at the pit of her stomach – fear of death, of nonexistence, of what lies beyond either, and of the few things her transcendence hasn't granted her any knowledge of. There's grief and regret there, too: that Booker had to die to make this happen; that Booker had wanted to die in the end; that, with so much of the multiverse to explore, Elizabeth has only been able to process a fraction of it; and a silly, childish regret that she'd never see Paris after all.
In the end, she can only close her eyes and wait for causality to sweep her out of existence.
For a split-second, it does.
For a split-second, Elizabeth is no longer standing in the river.
For a split second, she is adrift in lightless void, floating aimlessly across emptiness like a balloon drifting into the sky. Her body is as ephemeral as a ghost, her senses dulled to blindness, her mind foggy and growing more distant by the second; she doesn't know who she is, where she is, or even what she is, and her memories of what she might have been once are all but gone.
For a split-second that seems to last an eternity, Elizabeth no longer exists.
Then, light blossoms across the void: suddenly, she finds herself once again in possession of both a physical body and a mind. She remembers herself again – her name, her age, her past, the time she spent with the Songbird, Booker, and Comstock; there's even the familiar tickling at the back of her head as the knowledge of her other selves returns to her, waiting to be accessed. Then, she is aware of the world around her again: at first, she sees only Tears and Portals glimmering across the blackness like stars, and the distant Sea of Doors glowing distantly beyond them… but then the sound of buzzing insects and flowing water fills her ears, and from the blinding light that surrounds her head, colours slowly emerge – autumnal gold and sunset pink, and the murky blue of river water. Slowly, they are redefined from aimless swirls of colour to blurry, semi-distinct shapes, until finally, Elizabeth finds herself back at the river, waist-deep in the murky water and sporting a thundering headache.
She's soaked to the skin, freezing cold, disoriented by the headache…
… but she is alive.
Somehow, she has erased the very events that led to her becoming the person she is now, and yet she still exists: she still has the memories of her own life, even though most of the events she can recall never happened; with a modicum of concentration, she can access the memories of her other selves, though concentration is becoming increasingly difficult as her headache worsens; she can still see Tears and Doors, and can still harness their power as easily as she did from the moment the Siphon was destroyed; and last but not least, the worlds of the multiverse remain an open book to her.
Has the sacrifice failed? Does her continued existence mean that some version of Comstock survived the baptism and set everything in motion once again? Was it all for nothing?
Frantically, she peers through one of the nearest Doorways – channelled through the front door of the small house that overlooks the river: to her surprise, the doors that once led to Columbia and its many iterations are gone; the stretch of ocean where their Doors once stood is empty, the infinite network of crumbling Maine lighthouses and rotting piers that she'd walked across scant minutes ago now swept from existence. Nothing remains of that particular multiversal construct except for a thick cloud of mist hanging above the surface of the water.
The worlds accessible through those Doors have vanished as well. Comstock is gone from the multiverse: his city, his teachings, his madness, all have ceased to be – and never have been. Elizabeth's other iterations are gone as well: those that had joined her in the baptism; those who'd only made it as far as the Sea of Doors before turning away from their appointed task for whatever reason; those who'd been forced to take up Comstock's mantle; those who'd been killed, either in tragic accidents or at the hands of assassins; those who'd never left captivity and never met Booker Dewitt; and those who'd faced stranger fates still – all of them are gone.
All that remains of the Prophet is Booker Dewitt, whose surviving iterations never attended the baptism; all that remains of the Lamb is Anna Dewitt, a child with no carefully-plotted destiny and no world-destroying potential.
But somehow, there's also her: the impossible surviving incarnation of Elizabeth Comstock.
A sharp pain in her head disrupts her focus, and she's forced to let the Door shut of its own accord; for almost a minute, she can only lean against the wall and wait for the worst of the headache to subside, hoping against hope that it won't get any worse. She's half expecting to find blood oozing from her nose by the time it's over, and its absence only makes the pain that more conspicuous: this isn't the onset of merging-induced insanity, but something quite different. Whatever it is, it's not making concentration any easier, as if being soaked to the waist in cold water hasn't been distracting enough already.
On the upside, now she has the time to think on what's happened, and with a few peeks through the Doors at the fabric of the multiverse she might just be able to figure out why she still exists… once the headache's gone, of course.
And after she's had a chance to dry off.
Truth be told, a hot shower and dry clothes wouldn't be amiss at this point.
A cup of coffee probably wouldn't hurt, either.
She could do with a decent meal, too.
Somewhere comfortable to sit might help, if she stayed there long enough.
And, maybe after three days of sleeping in a proper bed, she might actually be ready to focus on the problem at hand.
Shivering at the cold, she glances back down at the river below her – and then sees Booker's corpse floating in the water, his expression strangely tranquil for a drowned man.
Across all universes where Comstock was born, the picture presented is the same: the future Prophet drowned in baptism at the hands of an inept fanatic (or so it will seem to those who do not see the workings of space and time). But, thanks to her intervention, dimensionally spliced into those embryonic dictators is also the penitent Booker, the means by which history has just been altered, the key to the supposedly unbreakable lock of established events.
More than that: he's her father; the consciousness that now lies dead in the water had once rescued her from the tower, befriended her in his own awkward way, had saved her from captivity just as she'd saved his life in battle, had allowed her to finally cross the threshold of her power, and in the end, sacrificed himself to stop the madman he might have been.
Booker Dewitt lives on elsewhere in the vastness of space and time, in iterations and incarnations beyond counting.
But her Booker remains dead.
She'd known that there would have to be a price to pay if Comstock was ever to be erased; she'd known that Booker had agreed to pay that price and allow himself to be drowned. In the minutes before she had "vanished," Elizabeth had taken comfort in those facts despite her sorrow – perhaps because she'd also known that she was going to die with him... but now that she remains alive, she finds herself with nothing to distract herself from that same sorrow.
The grief buried within her finally erupts.
She wants to descend the hill, to cry and sob over her father's body, to give him the funeral he deserved, to thank him for everything he did for her, to wish that she'd taken the time to hug him and call him father – just once.
But she can't: time has returned to normal, and in the world that she has emerged into, the body is now surrounded by horrified acolytes. So, well out of sight, she sits behind the ramshackle house and quietly weeps.
All she can think of is that last moment before she revealed the truth about her past – right before I drove him to suicide, she wretchedly acknowledges – the point when Booker started asking if there was a way to get to Paris through one of the Doors. He'd given up on all thoughts of his debt by then: the only thoughts that had occupied his mind had been of escaping Columbia and seeing Elizabeth happy at long last; he might not have known he was her father yet, but by then he'd more than proved himself the part.
Sobbing bitterly, Elizabeth now finds herself wondering why she hadn't accepted the offer.
It wouldn't have hurt anyone, would it? She and Booker had stood outside time altogether by then; a few days spent in Paris wouldn't have done the multiverse any harm. She knew of worlds where Columbia had never been realized and would never reach before a certain date (if at all), worlds where Paris was every bit as magnificent as it was in her fantasies: she and Booker could have spent months there, enjoying a long-deserved escape from the hardship of the last few days. She could have explained the truth to Booker there, convinced him that it wasn't all his fault, and allowed them a chance to be a family before making the final sacrifice.
Would it have really been so terrible if she'd allow her focus to slip for just a little while?
Had a few short days in Paris been simply too much to ask?
He'd wanted her to be happy. Why couldn't she have accepted it?
Forcing her self-loathing to the back of her mind, she does her best to steady her breathing and tries to think of something else. Eventually, the sound of shouting reaches her, and she looks back at the crowded riverbanks to see what the commotion is about. As it happens, the fanatical sect that would have baptised Comstock is in an uproar: acolytes vainly struggle to resuscitate the youngest member of their flock, whilst others demand an explanation from the increasingly frantic-looking Preacher.
Whatever they do to him, Elizabeth isn't too concerned: after all, Preacher Witting had been the man who'd first ensnared the young Booker Dewitt, helped him sweep away his old identity, and initiated him into his own fanatical brand of Christianity, gradually assisting him (knowingly or otherwise) towards the role of Prophet; the old bastard had even joined the Founders when Comstock had fused the cult's beliefs into his own vicious set of ideals and made the resulting dogma the official religion of Columbia. There, with the Prophet's blessing, he'd spent his last years continuing his normal routine of baptism with a new routine of partial drowning ("He fills our lungs with water so we may better love the air,") and not caring how many pilgrims never emerged from the baptismal waters alive. As of now, Columbia no longer exists, the drowned are alive to pursue their own beliefs, and Witting is really only guilty of fanaticism and exploiting the vulnerable… but knowing what happened to the last man he drew into the cult, Elizabeth still can't muster an atom of pity for the old Preacher.
It takes all her self-control not to peek through the nearest Door and see what might happen to Witting across the multiverse: after all, it doesn't take much imagination to guess that a few of those possibilities might involve a lynching... but as tempting as it is to watch the executions play out, to watch the old bastard's face turn as grey and bloated as his victims' did in now-impossible futures, Elizabeth knows that it isn't going to help anyone or anything – least of all her own grief. By now, she's had her fill of vengeance across the multiverse: she's seen Daisy Fitzroy smear her face with Jeremiah Fink's cooling blood, seen the doctors of Comstock House flung across the skies of other dimensions by the tornadoes she's summoned, seen Booker battering and drowning his alternate self in the long-misused baptismal font, and countless other grisly visions of revenge witnessed or committed by her other selves – though her head still aches to recall them. For now, she wants no more of it.
Instead, she takes a deep breath, leans against the wall of the shack, and tries to think of what will become of her.
And it's then that, just as she's starting to wonder if she should look to the Doors for some advice, a shadow blots out the afternoon sun and Elizabeth looks up to find two very familiar silhouettes standing over her.
"That went better than expected," says Robert Lutece.
Rosalind rolls her eyes. "You can't have known that was going to happen."
"On the contrary, I predicted this would be the result."
"You did not "predict" this: you hoped this would happen."
"This has always been within the realms of reasonable probability-"
"Only in your mind, dear brother; this is a fluke beyond any of the variables you may have calculated before or during this experiment."
"Doesn't change the fact that we have succeeded."
"Only through sheer luck."
"And careful experimentation-"
"-By me more than you-"
"- and constant repetition-"
"- and concerted effort-"
"- by me."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I seem to recall doing all the rowing."
"You really are determined to hold a grudge over that, aren't you?"
"I might be prepared to let bygones be bygones if you acknowledge that this experiment went exactly as predicted."
"Now you're just being childish. More to the point, it didn't."
"Yes, it did."
"No, it didn't."
"Oh yes, it did."
"Oh no, it didn't."
"Did."
"Didn't."
"Did."
"Didn't-"
Elizabeth coughs loudly, bringing the squabble to an abrupt conclusion. "Why am I still here?" she asks, voice hoarse from crying. "I've looked through the Doors: Comstock and Columbia are gone, along with everything they did and might have done. So how can I still be here? How can I still be like this?" She holds out her right hand by way of explanation, allowing them to take in the sight of her still-missing finger. "If Comstock wasn't around to buy me, then how would I have lost this finger? How can I still be Elizabeth when causality dictates that I should be Anna? As a matter of fact, how are you here?"
"You needn't ask us," Rosalind notes disapprovingly. "It's well within your power to discern the answers on your own."
"She has had a very trying day," Robert points out. "Maybe we should at least give her a few hints."
"I've always said that the best lessons learned are those you learn on your own."
"Is this really the time?"
"What would qualify as the right time-"
"-when all of time is accessible to us?"
"And to her, yes. Potential omniscience eliminates excuses."
"Cognitive inundation might make that difficult, sister."
It takes every last drop of Elizabeth's willpower not to lose her composure all over again. "Listen," she almost screams, "My head feels as though it's been crammed full of broken glass, concentrating hurts so much that focussing on the doors is about all I can do, and the back-and-forth between you two is not helping! So, could you both stop being mysterious and just give me a straight answer for once? Please?"
"We aren't here," says Robert ominously.
"And neither are you," Rosalind adds.
"To clarify, there are no worlds that allowed you, as Elizabeth Comstock, to exist."
"The three of us exist independently of temporal and dimensional causality, including the pasts that we might have originated from."
"You are not the Elizabeth who successfully destroyed the Siphon and eradicated Comstock from the multiverse."
"Nor are you any of the alternate selves eradicated by the alterations made to the timeline."
"You are not even Anna Dewitt."
"You are something different."
"Something greater."
"I…" Elizabeth takes a deep breath. "How did this happen? More to the point, how did you know it was going to happen?"
"We didn't."
"I did."
"We've been over this before, brother; you didn't know, you only guessed."
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Did-"
"Enough!"
There is a long pause as the echoes die away and Elizabeth slowly recovers her temper. "Just tell me what your plan was," she sighs. "From the beginning, please."
"The goal you already know," says Rosalind, "given that you have just accomplished it."
"The method, however, was something of a quandary," Robert continues.
"When we realized that our interference would lead to apocalyptic consequences for countless universes if Columbia were allowed to remain, we attempted to put an end to Comstock on our own-"
"-Once both of us were convinced of the necessity, of course, and only after Comstock himself had managed to scatter us across the Possibility Space in his attempt on our lives."
"We assassinated numerous iterations of the Prophet at points throughout his personal history, the most common variations being before he could claim you as his daughter."
"But we could never overcome the logical difficulties in altering history: it was simply impossible for our actions to have any kind of effect on an established timeline without paradox immediately undoing it."
"And even if we could have found a way to preserve the alteration-"
"-Which we didn't-"
"- it was restricted to a single universe and its offshoots; in millions of other universes, Comstock would remain alive and well."
"But you eventually discovered this place, didn't you?" Elizabeth gestures to the baptismal river. "The divergence point, I mean."
"We did. However, the problems were still insurmountable. Even if we could have bypassed paradox, we could still only effect one universe at a time, leaving an infinite multitude of other potential Comstocks remaining. Without your ability to fuse and merge realities, attempting to eliminate each Booker one at a time would have been futile; it did not take long for us to realize that there were limits to what we could accomplish on our own, even with our newfound powers."
"So we sought out others who could act in our stead; it took a great deal of thought and conjecture, but we eventually determined that you and your father were the only logical solution to the problem. You, with your power to alter realities as well as traverse them, and your father, with the past he and Comstock shared; both deserving of a second chance, and both integral means of undoing the Prophet's designs."
"Give or take a little interference on your part," says Elizabeth, remembering the Lutece twins' infrequent appearances in and around Columbia.
Rosalind coughs loudly for attention. "Unfortunately," she said, "the exact results of this method were a point of some disagreement between us. Even with your powers in evidence, paradox was still an issue. To me, there was only one logical conclusion by which we could ensure the safety of the multiverse at large: in the event that you could remove Comstock's origins from existence, we would still see paradox undo everything that had just been altered. You would be imprisoned on Monument Island once again, your father would be destitute and alone, and the threat to the world and the multiverse beyond would still be present. From here, there were only two outcomes: give up, or repeat the entire sequence of events all over again… and again… and again… and again."
"An infinite loop," Elizabeth murmurs.
"A quarantined set of dimensions in which the Prophet's apocalyptic legacy could never escape, so long as my brother and I continued repeating the cycle; standing outside time, we could afford to take this option, give or take a few lengthy holidays in between repetitions."
"And it meant you'd have your brother with you for all eternity," Elizabeth smoothly interjects, unable to keep herself from smiling. "So, you were content with that option. Am I right?" Her smile grows as she notices the faint blush creeping across Rosalind's cheeks.
"… Correct," Rosalind sheepishly concedes. "I should have hidden that damnable voxophone," she adds under her breath.
"Meanwhile," Robert continues, "There was another option that my sister had not considered."
"Oh, I had considered it. I simply did not consider it probable."
"To put a long story short, I postulated that you were even stronger than initial projections suggested, enough to allow the effects of your actions to remain in spite of your cessation. While your sacrifice of Booker Dewitt would erase Comstock once and for all, your power would elevate it beyond a simple paradox to be swept from the multiverse, and allow your act permanency as an indelible imprint upon the fabric of the space-time continuum."
"And that was the logic I was working to when I carried out the baptism," Elizabeth surmises. "But it's more than that, isn't it? You actually said "this went better than expected"; it's not just my actions that have been preserved – it's the three of us."
"In your case, certainly. In much the same way that the potent time-space distortions of Finks' sabotage allowed us to continue existing in spite of being recognizably dead, the immense distortions created through the application of your own powers allowed you continued existence in spite of never having existed to use them."
"But what about you? How can you still be here if the effect was only centred on me?"
"We are already similar to you, though nowhere near as powerful: Fink's sabotage saw to that."
"We have already demonstrated an immunity to the effects of paradox, as we discovered in our previous assassination attempts on Comstock –"
"-hence my suggestion that we could apply this immunity to actions as well as people, though my sister argued that the likelihood of you ever achieving the power to do deliberately what had previously had only occurred by accident was slim-"
"-especially since that "accident" ended up killing us outright in every other universe it occurred in; I accepted that you had the power to alter reality, but not the power to transcend it altogether, let alone applying the same transcendence to an event."
"Admittedly, encouraging your powers towards that level and guiding you all the way out of Columbia was something of a trial, but the results are, as I said, better than expected: though our original selves have been eliminated, all three of us remain as enduring impressions upon the Possibility Space."
"A rough metaphor: normal paradoxes are little more than twigs thrown into a rushing river, too buoyant to sink and easily shifted by the current, ultimately being swept downstream and lost in the rapids; in much the same way, the people we once were have been swept from the shore and drowned. The three of us here and now would be comparable to boulders, as would the effects of your actions: too heavy to be easily budged by the current, they sink to the bottom and become part of the riverbed."
"Elegantly put, sister."
"Thank you."
Elizabeth gently massages her temples, trying to soothe the cacophony raging back and forth inside her head. "I take it that the headache's just a logical consequence of all that?" she asks.
"Correct. You are effectively a newborn, and your mind has been overburdened with information: the memories of your original self, the lives of her alternate selves, and your knowledge of the multiverse – all implanted into a mind that has just started to exist again."
"It is similar to the cognitive dissonance experienced by those exposed to their other selves through dimensional travel or merging, and yet different; standing outside time and well-accustomed to the mechanics of the multiverse, you can reconcile the difference between yourselves without the usual barrage of nosebleeds and haemorrhaging. However, even you are not entirely immune to the physiological effects of the influx."
"The headache is an effect of your mind successfully assimilating all the information inherent to your other selves and the multiverse itself. We experienced similar discomfort upon our first transcendence, though doubtlessly not as severe; speaking from experience, the pain will fade in time."
"And what happens when it does fade?" Elizabeth asks.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, to put it lightly, we've managed to accomplish the impossible: the f…" Elizabeth's heart sinks for a minute, as her eyes flick back to the body being hauled out of the river. "The three of us," she amends, "Have managed to completely reorder the multiverse and end the threat of Columbia before it could ever happen, and we're free to do as we please."
"Correct."
"For all intents and purposes."
"In that case, where do we go now?"
"We thought Paris would be your destination of choice."
And for a moment, Elizabeth almost agrees with them: the promise of finally being in Paris, regardless of whatever time in its history she might arrive in, is almost intoxicating; God only knows she's dreamed of seeing the city's beauty up close since she first glimpsed it through the Tears, of walking amongst its people, of visiting all the wonders her books and her visions spoke of. She remembers the unbridled joy she felt when she discovered a Tear leading to Paris had emerged in the Tower, and the disappointment that had followed when her attempt to escape through it had failed. She even remembers the longing for Paris that fuelled her journey across Columbia and its alternates, the sense of delight when Booker had offered her the chance to reach it, and then the blazing anger she'd felt when the offer had turned out to be nothing more than a con. That longing had become desperate as the atrocities of Columbia had grown more horrific, verging on insane fixation during her time in captivity. And countless iterations of herself had felt the same and more – to reach Paris, if only because Paris had stopped being a city and started being emblematic of the freedom they'd hoped to achieve. In the moments before the final revelations, Booker himself had suggested that they forget all about Comstock and just go straight to Paris.
Now, the city of lights is within reach.
But…
"No," she says at last.
The Luteces look perplexed, to say the least.
"It's too soon," she explains. "It's too soon after… after Booker…" She can't finish her sentence; her throat has tightened to the point that she can barely breathe. "It's still too soon," she says at last. "I need time to… to…"
"To mourn," says Robert, gently.
"Yes."
There is a long silence.
Eventually, Elizabeth manages to temporarily smother her grief, and asks, "What were you thinking of doing?
"Beg pardon?"
"Now that you've finished the experiment, the entire multiverse is open to you – you can go anywhere you like and do anything you please; what are you going to do now?"
Rosalind opens her mouth to answer, and for the first time since Elizabeth met her, she has nothing to say.
Robert raises a hand, as if to suggest something, only to lower it as he realizes that he, too, cannot think of a response.
This time, the pause is quite distinctly embarrassed.
"Er," says Rosalind.
"Aha," Robert laughs sheepishly.
"We…"
"We…"
Robert's ears have turned pink, whilst the blush spreading across Rosland's cheeks is almost garnet by now.
"Well, you see…"
"… we spent so much time trying to formulate a solution…"
"… what we'd do once it was over was…"
"… wasn't really… um…"
"… not exactly something we focussed on…"
"But we'll think of something."
They lapse into a very uncomfortable silence, practically wilting beneath Elizabeth's gaze. Something in the atmosphere has changed; there's been a very subtle shift in the balance of power, but it's only now that anyone's really noticed it. With the headache finally beginning to loosen its grip on her senses, Elizabeth looks again at the fabric of reality and the patchwork of Tears and distortions that it seems woven into, and for the first time, she notices the links that connect Rosalind and Robert to the Possibility Space.
Then she looks at herself, and realizes the true extent of her power compared to them. Suddenly, the so-called siblings don't seem anywhere as mysterious and powerful as they once did; if anything, they seem so much less than her.
So small.
So…
…vulnerable.
"I think," Elizabeth says softly, "That whatever I do with this newfound freedom, I should start by doing something about the two of you."
There is a sudden but understated change in the twins' expressions. Up until now, the Luteces have been as aloof and enigmatic as always, last minute's gaffe notwithstanding: now, there is a distinct hint of nervousness on their faces, a subtle but noticeable look of fear.
"After all," she continues, "I haven't forgotten the role you played in Comstock's success: there were others who helped him to build Columbia, but your research made it possible in the first place, Rosalind; you mightn't have foreseen how he'd use it, but you and Robert gave Comstock the means to predict the future as well... and you, Robert, you made sure that I became Comstock's heir: you were the one who bought me from Booker – true, he played his own part for selling me to you, but he wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been there to hound him into submission."
In some ways, she would have preferred it if she'd have been able to shout these words, if she could throw all her rage and frustration at the two worried-looking scientists; but after everything that's happened in the last few hours, she's simply too exhausted to yell. So, instead she whispers, and allows what little remains of her anger emerge in a quiet, understated hiss:
"You might not have decided to have me imprisoned in the tower, but you certainly didn't mind profiting from it. You mightn't have condoned what Comstock was planning, but you certainly didn't have a problem with anything he was up to before then – the corruption, the purges, the extremism, the bigotry – as long as you got what you wanted from him, you didn't care. In fact, in a very real sense, the two of you are directly responsible for the deaths of everyone who was murdered under Comstock's regime – in every version of Columbia across the possibility space."
Elizabeth reaches out with her powers, solidifying the twins' presence in this reality enough to make them permeable – a temporary measure, but it'll last long enough for what she's about to do next. She also readies herself to block any attempts to escape back into the Possibility Space; and yet, even with so many obvious fluctuations in space and time, the twins do not attempt to retreat – either frozen with terror or paralysed by the knowledge that fleeing would be pointless.
"Well," she concludes, "Now that your experiment's complete and I'm exactly as powerful as you intended, your abilities are effectively worthless against me. Now, you have to pay the price for what you've done. Now… I can hurt you."
There's no mistaking it: the twins are definitely afraid now… and yet, there's also something akin to resignation written plainly on their faces. She can't help but notice that the two of them are now holding hands.
Elizabeth stops perhaps a foot away from them, and pauses just long enough to make the Lutece "siblings" start to wonder, just long enough to savour the atmosphere. Then without a word, she darts forward, grabs the two of them by the hair and smacks their heads together as hard as she possibly can.
She's immediately rewarded with a satisfying thud of skulls colliding, followed by a yelp of pain and surprise from both scientists. This has been the first time in a very long while that either of them have experienced physical pain, let alone an encounter with someone who was actually capable of harming either of them, and the shock of it is written plainly on their faces – likely compounded by the fact that neither of them were expecting to have their heads banged together.
And they're even more surprised when Elizabeth flings her arms around the two of them and draws Rosalind and Robert into a very awkward hug.
"Wha-"
"But I also know that you didn't have to save me," Elizabeth whispers.
"Didn't we?" Robert mumbles. "In spite of what Comstock had planned for the rest of the world – and for the rest of the multiverse after that? It was the only logical alternative."
"Are you sure? You could have gone along with whatever Comstock wanted; you knew that the city wouldn't be ready to start the "cleansing" for over seventy years, and you'd be long dead by then. But no: you tried to undo things. You risked death or worse to save the world and reunite me and my father, and even when Fink killed you, you didn't give up. You could have left the mission at any time you liked: you could have fled as far as you could from Columbia and retired to a world it could never reach. You could have cut your losses before you even started the thought experiment, abandoned me and my father to whatever miserable lives we'd have had. But you didn't: you stayed behind and made amends."
"At…" Rosalind coughs uncomfortably, as Elizabeth releases her from the embrace. "At the risk of disrupting this tender moment, are you aware that I only went along with my brother's plans because he threatened to leave me if I didn't?"
"I am," says Elizabeth, unable to hide a smile. "You're terrible at hiding voxophones, incidentally. But apart from that, I think you're a far better person than you think. You and Robert weren't like any of the other scientists in Comstock's service: we met only once or twice before the sabotage – sometimes more in other iterations - but you were never cruel to me, and you never accepted Powell's measures of controlling me, either."
"Being neutral isn't the same thing as being kind, child; I think you may be seeing laudable traits in me that simply don't exist."
"Maybe so. But are you aware that you could have tried to talk Robert out of this experiment? After all, you had plenty of time and the failure of every single previous attempt to wear him down; you could have convinced him to give up if you'd really wanted to. You could have bowed out and helped Robert from a distance rather than walk through the entire experiment again. You could have ignored the ultimatum altogether, taken a chance to see if he'd really be able to leave you or not. And yet you're still here, still helping even though you didn't believe it would work, still helping even when it was within your power to be selfish."
And for the second time in almost as many minutes, Rosalind can't seem to think of a rejoinder.
"So," Elizabeth concludes, smiling in spite of everything that's happened today, "the matter's closed; the debt has been repaid… and I forgive you both."
And with that, she leans forward, and hugs the Lutece twins once more.
Then, almost as an afterthought, she releases her metaphysical grip on the two of them: almost immediately, the two of them vanish back into the Probability Space; a second later, they reappear, flickering in and out of view as they hastily stretch their multidimensional legs.
"I need a place to stay," Elizabeth admits at last. "At least until I can figure out what I'm going to do next. I know the two of you don't really need to sleep anymore, but do you know somewhere where I could shelter?"
The Lutece twins consider this.
"We did," says Robert.
Rosalind nods sagely. "Between experiments, we often retreated to our own laboratory to plan out our next attempts, knowing that its reputation for hauntings would keep any uninvited guests away; unfortunately, that residence has gone the same way as the rest of Columbia."
"However, at times during our selection of the next Booker Dewitt, we often sought out lodgings in New York for similar planning sessions – lodgings where we would not be disturbed."
"We know of a time and place where one of these buildings is still fit for human habitation. You can stay there for as long as you wish; you can use it as a permanent home –"
"Or as a stopover on the way to bigger and better things. The choice is yours."
The two of them hesitate a moment, their faces once against showing something akin to embarrassment. "In truth, we may be staying there for some time as well," Robert confesses. "We haven't had much time to plan out what we might do with our continued existences."
"Though a holiday might be called for at this point. Someplace sunny, for choice."
"As long as it doesn't involve me rowing."