The city in the clouds made his skin crawl.
Which is saying something.
He had waded through blood and gore, had done unspeakable things without so much as a second thought. None of them gave him pause like Columbia, and it's not just the fact that he is walking on solid ground high, high up above terra firma, though that might factor into it.
That was different, Booker thought to himself. All those wars, all that blood; that was different because that wasn't hiding what it was. Blood was blood, war was war, they didn't masquerade as a haven, a pit stop to heaven.
His sense of unease certainly wasn't help by the fact that some white bearded man seemed to know his actions before he knew them, seemed to know him. It was like walking into one giant trap. Or being in a play he didn't know he was in, a play that even the audience is in on.
And using real bullets, a sour thought that made him grimace.
None of the bright sunlight, or warm water and sand of Battleship Bay could erase the anxiety that crawled up his spine and down his arms. The only relief from the creep was the steady weight of a pistol in his palm, fingers wrapped around the grip, settling into the groove of the trigger, it wasn't the same as the one handed to him before the lighthouse but he had slipped into the newly obtained one easily enough. He had made it his own in a baptism of blood, a trial by fire, and now the piece was his.
Taming violence and using it for his own means had always come easy to him, like sliding into the warm spot you left in your bed on a cold winter's night. That kind of simple ease, second nature, an unconscious thought, no contemplation, just do, action not reflection.
It's what made him the best.
Snapping out of his thoughts and turning away from the concession stands he gazed around for Elizabeth. Not much trouble she could get into on the beach, right? Everyone is in bathing suits, nowhere to hide a weapon in those. No warriors lounging around the soft handed upper class on the beach today. Plus, it seemed that Comstock, or whoever wanted to at least give the appearance that shit hadn't totally hit the fan yet, that the powers that be are still in control.
Booker wasn't here to start a revolution, he was just hear for the girl. Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt. Any side effects of such an action weren't really his fault.
Where is she? Back to the matter at hand, Elizabeth, the dark haired girl who had actually asked him to dance on the pier. Booker couldn't even remember the last time someone asked him that, it had to have been a life time or two ago. Fine with him, he doesn't dance anyway.
He spotted her easily enough, actually it was the man and woman he spotted first. Those two, they had rowed him to the lighthouse, and had him flip a coin… How did they get here before him? And the woman, the woman he was sure he saw somewhere in the city, a statue or something. They were possibly as weird and infuriating as the city was to him.
"Which one?" His eyes move down to the dark haired woman and the boxes that she is holding, two decorated broaches, one bird, one cage. The first, immediate thought was that she was asking him for his opinion on women's wear? The second, was the cost of such trinkets. A pocket full of silver eagle coins reminded him that he wasn't short on funds for any trinket she might desire.
His decision wasn't the subject of an internal dialog or debate of any kind. It was a split second decision, more unconscious than conscious.
"The cage," he gestured to the box on the left.
Maybe it was reflective of his feelings of Columbia, or his life, the limited avenues and constant dead ends full of metal walls and unconquerable obstacles. Maybe it was because he had just broken her out of a cage, a pretty little song bird, with dreams of Paris and an odd sort of power that he had never seen before.
Maybe that why he picked the bars instead of wings.
As he watched her fasten the broach to the lace collar around her neck, delicate hands brushing black strands of hair away, from pale skin he came to the conclusion that maybe, like most things in life, it just didn't matter which one he picked.