Dedicated to and inspired by Julio Bojorques...
"Well, don't this bring back memories."
"It's been a while since we had to do this!"
"I don't think you ever threw up your hands and walked us THROUGH the door instead of just picking the lock."
"Even with that first lighthouse, I needed a key."
"And it's only gotten easier from there."
"I wonder..."
"Wonder what?"
"If it's getting easier because I'm better at it...or because there are less choices to sort through."
"Now what the hell does that mean?"
"Shh!" Elizabeth put a finger to her lips, the same way she'd done in the bookstore all those days and days ago. Days? Hours? Weeks? Booker wasn't sure just how much time meant any more, and like the man in the...what had they called it, a movie? Just like the man in the movie they'd seen in Michigan, he wasn't sure he gave a damn. "Do you want to bring the night watchman in on us?"
"It's not like he could catch us; you could just pull us away to another building where he HASN'T heard us."
"But this one is perfect!" she whispered as she felt the wall gingerly for a light-switch.
"Perfect for what?" he asked. "Here, let me." With a snap of his fingers, he produced a small flame in his hand and held it up to the wall. She shielded her eyes with her free hand and continued searching.
"There isn't anything here." Booker sighed after a while. "You wait here, I'll check the basement."
"Sure thing, pops!" Elizabeth said cheerily, leaning back against the wall.
"Will you stop calling me that?" he grumbled. "It makes me feel like I'm a hundred years old..."
"You LOOK like you're a hundred years old!" she taunted him.
"Keep that up, missie, and you can have your fancy dress party in the dark for all I care."
Elizabeth pouted prettily at him for a solid minute before he caved in. "All right, all right; you win. I'll be back..."
"I always do." she said, turning her frown upside down in record time.
Some minutes later...
"Honey, I'm home!" Booker shouted into the now illuminated dance hall. Elizabeth was nowhere in sight, but a hastily scribbled note on a piece of paper at the bar told him almost everything he wanted to know. "Went shopping for something to play music. Hope your back didn't give out on you down there."
Booker frowned to himself as he crumpled the paper up and dropped it back on the counter. "She's gotten way too good at pushing my buttons since we got out of Columbia. Don't get me wrong, it's nice she's having fun for once, but how am I supposed to make her behave when she can do damn near anything she wants? Can't ground her, can't send her to bed without any supper..."
A loud rushing noise behind him told him his wayward daughter had returned. "What time do you call this?" he demanded in mock outrage as he turned around.
"You never gave me a curfew!" she replied, hefting a strange black box onto the countertop.
"Now there's an idea..." Booker stroked his chin thoughtfully before giving Elizabeth a firm hug. "You know I don't like it when you go running off, right?"
"I'm sorry." she murmured into his shoulder. She hugged him back before pulling away and smiling brightly at him. "I'll make it up to you though!"
"Oh, I can't wait to hear this one. So why'd you want to come here? Where is here anyway?"
Elizabeth took him by the hand (something she'd done quite a lot since they'd taken to wandering the lighthouses, as she still called them).
"Come on over to the window and I'll show you." They walked slowly across the room, Booker unable to stop staring at the girl he'd sold to Comstock and only recently discovered was his daughter. "Even if I live to be a hundred like you were saying, I still won't be able to make it up to you. But that's not going to stop me from trying."
"Remember those times you promised me you'd take me to Paris?" she asked as they reached the window.
"I didn't promise you anything when we first met, although God knows I should've." Booker corrected her.
"I know." she sighed. "You just broke my heart, that's all." He flinched, but as she turned to face him, the corners of her mouth lifted up ever so slightly to let him know she'd been kidding. "Put it like this..." She paused for dramatic effect, then whisked back the curtains. "I got tired of waiting."
A long cobblestone street stretched before them. To the left, an open-air cafe like the ones that had been all the rage in Columbia. Off to the right, there was a familiar brightly-colored sign advertising 'La Revanche du Jedi', and further beyond, Elizabeth's beloved Eiffel Tower, aglow with electric lights.
Most men who knew Booker DeWitt knew him as a man of few, but well-chosen words; although oddly enough, he disliked awkward silences. This time however, he was stunned speechless. With all the crazy stuff the two of them had seen (a city in the clouds, holes in thin air, strangely-colored monsters that were said to control space and time, and an inn at the end of all worlds with a man who claimed to have punched out God), he could be forgiven for forgetting even a promise like the one he'd given her. But bless her heart, she hadn't.
"That box on the counter?" Elizabeth nodded at it briefly. "It plays music. It has this thing like a record in it, only instead of being big and black and twice as big as my head, it's smaller than my hand." She held it up for him to compare. Her right hand. The one with the missing finger.
Booker harrumphed loudly to clear a sudden lump in his throat. "So uh...what tune did you pick?"
She smiled at him. "Something I heard in that theater where we saw Gone With the Wind. It's PERFECT."
"Well, I'm glad something's turning up right." he said as she led him away from the window and into the center of the hall. "I'm a little rusty at this..."
"That's not all." Elizabeth said, looking at him in wonder. "You're nervous." He almost blushed, and she laughed out loud. "Booker DeWitt, the False Shepherd, the hero of the Vox Populi. He's only afraid of drowning and dancing with his daughter!"
"It's your first time," Booker mumbled as he scratched his neck. "I just want it to be something special."
She pulled him close into another hug. "Don't worry about that. The music's what makes it special." He squeezed her tight and tried to unknot his stomach. After a long but all too short moment, she let go and drifted over to the bar, stopping briefly to do a slow pirouette. Booker's mind flashed back to the first time he'd laid eyes on her as a young woman, in that damn tower. "She's been dreaming about this her whole life, DeWitt. DON'T mess it up." he thought frantically to himself.
Elizabeth reached over to the box and frowned slightly as she tried to remember how to turn it on. Seconds later, the frown lifted and she pushed several buttons in sequence. The front of the box lit up and, sure as there are stars above, music began to play. She hurried back over to him and placed his hands in the proper position, one holding hers at the waist and the other with her other hand in the air and off to the side.
D ance with me my old friend, once before we go
L et's pretend this song won't end
A nd we never have to go home
A nd we'll dance among the chandeliers
A nd nothing matters when we're dancing
I n tat or tatters you're entrancing
B e we in Paris or in Lansing
N othing matters when we're dancing
Y ou've never been more beautiful
Y our eyes like two full moons
A s here in this poor old dance hall
A mong the dreadful tunes
T he awful songs we don't even hear
When the voice paused and a strange unidentifiable instrument took over, Booker cleared his throat again in mild alarm. "Uh, Elizabeth, you didn't...do anything just now did you?"
She frowned. "Of course not, I was too busy admiring the way you move. You're like a gazelle, only without all the jumping."
"You seen a lot of those?"
"No, but I read about them in a book when I was young. They looked so strange, I just had to go find one! So I opened a tear (it seemed normal enough at the time), and then another..."
"Look, you know how much I love hearing you talk about your time as a damsel in distress, but that thing just happened again."
She pulled her gaze away from her father's stubble-covered face, and watched the room warily. Sure enough, there was that flash of lightless light, as she thought of it, that usually indicated a tear was nearby. As she watched it happen again, she noticed that the whole hall was affected by it, and even the two dancers seemed to lose all color and flicker slightly.
Elizabeth wracked her brain for answers as the vocals resumed.
A nd nothing matters when we're dancing
I n tat or tatters you're entrancing
B e we in Paris or in Lansing
N othing matters when we're dancing
A nd nothing matters when we're dancing
I n tat or tatters you're entrancing
B e we in Paris or in Lansing
N othing matters when we're dancing
N othing matters when we're dancing
As the music shivered to a halt (that was the only description either of them could conceive of), Booker sighed contentedly. "You were right."
"Aren't I always?" she said, raising an eyebrow at him coyly.
"Got me there, but I was talking about the music."
She smiled happily and let her arms fall gracefully to her sides. "I wish we could stay here and dance the night away. I'm sure there are other songs out there that would fit almost as well!"
"Well, we still got time, don't we?" Booker asked, stretching his neck from side to side with an audible crick. Elizabeth's smile faded.
"Not anymore. I think I've figured out what's going on."
"I'm all ears." he said.
"We won." she murmured, and Booker saw her face take on that strange otherworldliness he'd seen when they were newcomers to the worlds upon worlds of the lighthouses. "The ones the universe wanted, for whatever reason; they did it. They stopped Comstock."
"How'd they do it?" Booker asked. "And what's wrong with us? Why couldn't we have done it?"
"We weren't right somehow. We were just...shadows, voices in the wind compared to them."
"If there's one thing I know for real in all this crazy mess, it's that YOU, Elizabeth, you're no shadow. You're the best thing that ever happened to me, twice over."
"Maybe that was a bad example." she admitted. "I'm not sure I understand it as well now. All that knowledge and power I've felt since Songbird destroyed the siphon...it's gone. I don't know where it went, or...or why."
"What happens now?" he asked solemnly. "We just going to have to walk out of here?"
"It's just like the song said, Booker. We have to go home."
"Home? What do you mean? What home?"
Elizabeth clasped her hands in front of her and began to explain. "Comstock is dead. Worse than dead; he never exISTed. Not just here, but everywhere! Without Comstock, Columbia will never be built. Without Columbia, there's no us."
"Whoa whoa whoa, what do you mean, no us? I wasn't born there, and I'm damn sure you weren't born there."
"We weren't born there, but it MADE us who we are now." she said. "And the universe doesn't know what to do with us if we never lived our lives this way." Booker's expression changed subtly; he was beginning to understand. "It's going to...erase us?" he asked. Elizabeth nodded, and he could see tears forming in her eyes. He took a step forward and put his hands on her shoulders comfortingly. "Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe...maybe we get to go back to that inn in between worlds, and we just spend eternity talking away with whoever gets blown in through the door."
"Oh Mr DeWitt," she whispered. "You were always the optimist." They laughed at that for a moment, before he swept her up into another hug, lifting her clear off the floor and twirling her around effortlessly. Elizabeth smiled broadly at her father through the tears that were now streaming freely down her face. When he finally set her down, she sniffed loudly and tried to say something. "Booker..."
"Can you call me dad again?" he asked, clenching his fists tightly to avoid bursting into tears himself.
"Father," Elizabeth corrected herself as the world around them began to flicker and dance more wildly. "I don't want to go."
"I know." Booker replied as they both faded out of sight...