A/N: Once upon a time, this story was only going to be three chapters in length. Then I went slightly mad. Suffice it to say that this chapter's going to be heavy on the drama and a little light on the comedy - hope you won't mind.

Anyway, without further ado, the next chapter! Feel free to correct, theorize, recommend and spread the word to your friends! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Bioshock is not mine. Also..

Warning: this chapter might be a bit on the preachy side and contain more than a little few of my own complaints about Burial At Sea. If you like Burial At Sea, more power to you - but in the meantime, brace yourself for an avalanche of bitching on my part.

"What happened next?" Elizabeth asked.

In perfect unison, the Luteces gave her a look that fell somewhere between 'baleful' and 'condescending.' This wasn't merely a look that could kill: this was a look that could irradiate.

"Obviously, she kicked the shit out of you," said Rosalind, wearily.

"As tends to happen when you try to hug Big Sisters," Robert noted.

"You wandered through another couple of dimensions-"

"Leaving a substantial trail of blood and vomit along the way-"

"-Before you eventually made your way here."

"Apparently you were just lucid enough to find an unoccupied apartment at the Mercury Suites-"

"And in a dimension where they weren't flooded or claimed by Splicer gangs."

"You spent the next ten hours asleep on this couch, up until we found you."

"The couch?" Elizabeth echoed. "Why not the bed?"

There was a sheepish pause, as Rosalind and Robert's eyes anxiously flicked towards the darkened bedroom and back again. "You don't want to know," they said at last.

"Ah."

"On the upside, we've managed to find your purse-"

"Along with a small collection of souvenirs you gathered during your journey across Rapture."

As Rosalind handed over the purse, Robert reached down into the shadows and picked up a small wooden crate for Elizabeth's inspection: inside was a Drowned Leviathan matchbook, a copy of the Rapture Tribune with a tyre track right across the front page, a programme from the Fleet Hall, the control pad used for the bathysphere, several empty bottles of Arcadia Merlot, a chunk of a Delorean's front bumper marked with blue paint scrapes, an invitation to the gala night at Dionysus Park, a handful of petals from one of the ADAM flowers that grew in the Fontaine Futuristics lab, a crumpled ball of research notes defaced with childish drawings of Suchong being sexually assaulted by a large octopus, a tattered collection of lingerie and toys from the Pink Pearl, a leftover spool of red string, a vuvuzela, a handful of rusty teaspoons, and what appeared to be a Big Sister's right glove.

There was an awkward silence.

"So nothing that I saw in Rapture was real?" said Elizabeth at last. It seemed hard to believe, even now; despite everything she'd heard since the Luteces had woken her up, she couldn't help but cling to the vague and distinctly self-destructive hope that it had been real after all, if only because it would have been more laudable than what had actually happened.

The Luteces merely nodded.

"I guess we can add the imaginary Booker Dewitt encounter to the list," she added bitterly.

This time, there was only silence.

"But other than that and the space-time misconceptions, my story at least sounded plausible, right? It wouldn't have been totally unbelievable if I'd been sober, would it?"

The Luteces exchanged glances, expressions swinging wildly between irritation and despair. Then at long last, the two of them spoke:

"We…"

"Have…"

"So…"

"Many…"

"Fucking…"

"Questions."

"Why would you believe that Comstock would be alive?" Robert demanded. "You were the one who went to the trouble of eliminating him from the multiverse, in case you've forgotten that as well."

"I…" Elizabeth floundered. Somehow, it seemed as though the reasons for Comstock's continued existence had made a lot more sense back when she'd been staring him in the face; in hindsight, though, it all became a little trickier to explain. "I… I thought it was because he was in Rapture when I made the sacrifice," she said limply.

Rosalind sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. "The multiverse doesn't work that way, dear. And on a related note, why would Columbia still exist?"

"Come to think of it, why would we have let you run off to Rapture if Columbia still existed?" Robert added. "In case you'd forgotten, the entire point of our mission was to ensure that the city was erased from the space-time continuum."

"As I recall, that was what the locals here might call 'a big deal,' especially considering what happened in possible futures where Columbia continued its reign of terror. You recall what your future self said? 'Once this world has been born again, a million others wait their turn.'"

"One would think that erasing a genocidal theocratic dystopia with ambitions of multiversal conquest would have been a greater priority than letting you run off to Rapure for a pub crawl."

"All of which is a moot point given that, As all three of us conclusively proved, Columbia is gone: it no longer holds a physical presence in the multiverse except as a memory – one that nobody, least of all Suchong, can meaningfully interact with."

"Also, why would Suchong of all people be the one to be messing about with Tears? I'm comfortably certain Rapture had plenty of reputable physicists who'd be interested – more interested than specialists in genetics and subliminal conditioning, at any rate."

"What about the bond between you and Songbird? You said he'd been injured in a fight – hence how you were able to bond with him. What was he supposed to have been fighting with? Also, for a relationship you seem to believe was founded on love, your protector certainly didn't have any problems handing you over to Comstock to be tortured into submission. I don't recall much in the way of Big Daddy-esque reactions when Dr Powell was implanting an electroconvulsive device in your shoulder sans anaesthesia."

"Speaking of which, what about this nonsense with the Big Daddy? When the Siphon was destroyed, you stopped Songbird with a wave of your hand… and yet, you're under the impression that a single Big Daddy could kill you without even trying."

"Leading to you being outwitted and outmanoeuvred by a man who – according to you – wasn't quick or clever enough to avoid being imprisoned in his own department store-"

"-a department store that was never seen or mentioned in any other iteration of Rapture, even prior to the date it was supposedly detached from the city. At least Sofia Lamb had the excuse of being on the receiving end of damnatio memoiae."

"And Vigors being engineered from Plasmids?"

"Anachronistic kinetoscopes?"

"Leaving your old dress in a sex shop?"

"You starting the Rapture Civil War?"

"Okay!" Elizabeth interjected, testily. "Nothing I told you makes sense, I get it. Just…" She took a deep breath. "Why are you so angry with me about what I saw in a dream? I'm just reporting what I witnessed! Like you said, it wasn't real!"

Rosalind groaned. "The reason why we're angry at you, Elizabeth-"

"You're angry, sister, I'm merely disappointed-"

"-is because even after the drug wore off, you still believed your visions to be true – not a good thing considering your abilities. You only used your powers to make one scene from your dreams a reality, and that stopped just short of getting people killed or driven mad: what if you'd done more? What if you'd managed to inflict your perceived reality on everyone in Rapture?"

"Back in Columbia, you recall how your hatred of Lady Comstock helped transform her into the Siren when Comstock used the Siphon on you; you yourself said that she was a conglomeration of the real woman from another reality and your own feelings. What if you'd managed to do the same for Fontaine? The man was a psychopathic con artist with no regard for anything but profit, but the results of him being fused with your vision of him as a lobotomizing thug would be much worse by far."

"And what if you'd done the same thing to Jack or Dr Tenembaum? You would have been destroying their personalities and replacing them with facsimiles of your own devising – as good as killing them in many ways."

"Furthermore, it's not just what you might have done either, Elizabeth," Robert plunged onwards. "The things you witnessed were not conceived of in a vacuum: this fantasy was born from your mind."

"And it doesn't exactly speak very highly of your mental state. You conjured a scenario in which all the work we did to stop Comstock and Columbia was for nothing and your father's sacrifice was completely pointless-"

"-a fantasy in which you cast yourself as a failure and condemned yourself to humiliation, misery, torture, and finally a lonely death-"

"-but not before you ensured the start of the Rapture Civil War, dooming roughly two thirds of the populace to addiction, madness, and death – probably much more, if you count the events following Sofia Lamb's rise to power."

"Also, given that many Little Sisters were killed during the Civil War, your efforts to save this 'Sally' would have been completely pointless-"

"Even if you hadn't ended up in a timeline in which Jack decided to follow Fontaine's orders and gut the girl like a carp."

"He still has that option, as you know."

"Constants and variables, remember?"

"We are very concerned, Elizabeth."

"And more than a little insulted."

This threw Elizabeth for a minute. "Why?" she demanded. "What have I done now?"

"Another little thing you revealed in your dream," said Rosalind, her voice now downright glacial. "You appear to be under the impression that the two of us are complete and total psychopaths."

"What?"

"You really think we would go to such insane lengths just to get blood on your hands? You can't imagine Daisy Fitzroy doing something of her own free will, without prompting from us?"

"I-"

"At the risk of sounding plaintive, we aren't masters of the universe: we aren't responsible for every sparrow that falls from the sky. We are scientists, not gods. We conducted experiments, operating through trial and error until we found a way of helping you and Booker to a divergence point in the possibility space. We did not set out to make you our puppet."

"I know but-"

"And then there's the part where you believed we would so casually abandon you to Rapture," said Robert, who was looking uncharacteristically disapproving by now. "You really believe that we would just sit back and watch you condemn yourself to death via… quantum collapse through visiting a reality where you'd already died, or whatever the hell it was-"

"-Assuming such a thing were possible," Rosalind added helpfully, "which it isn't-"

"-without trying to stop you? As in actually physically stopping you, not just tossing out a few smart-alec remarks over our shoulders while rowing you to your doom."

"You really believe we care so little for you? Is that it?"

"Also, given the disagreement that occurred between me and my sister over what was being done to you, do you think I would so cavalier about allowing you to abandon a child?"

"Alright!" Elizabeth roared, composure cracking noisily. "I get it! I get it! You're both understandably angry over how I acted over the last few days and you're both horribly insulted over how I depicted you in a psychedelic trip I had no conscious control over! I get it, and I'm sorry! Satisfied? I – am – sorry! Now could we all get out of this dripping wet hellhole and agree never to speak about this ever again, please? Also, in case it hasn't sunk in already, I GET IT!"

Robert sighed. "Thank you."

"Now… can we leave?"

"You haven't apologised for vanishing on us yet."

"Excuse me?"

"Seventy-two hours ago, you said you were just going to get something from Rapture and come straight back," said Rosalind icily. "Instead, you went on a binge that left numerous iterations of Rapture in shambles, and you nearly got yourself seriously hurt in the process."

"Do you have any idea how worried we were?" Robert snapped. "We thought you might have actually met someone capable of capturing you – or worse! We spent the better part of two days searching for you, and every step of the journey, we had to follow you through the wreckage you left in your wake."

"Look," Elizabeth sighed, "I'm sorry I worried you, but I don't even remember what I was doing on the night this started, much less the last seventy-two hours-"

"This isn't just about what happened that night. It's what happened prior to it."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been getting drunk every night for the past three months, Elizabeth.

"Every time we've asked you to help with one of our experiments, you've stepped through a Tear and emerged in some bar in a far-flung dimension. You always come back stinking and covered in vomit."

"And when we try to get you involved in something productive, you give up halfway through and start stealing drinks from other dimensions."

"You remember that novel you were trying to write? 'Columbia's story committed to paper at last,' you said. But you kept getting depressed and stopping so you can hunt down a bottle of vodka-"

"-and you puked all over your typewriter as well."

"And then there were your attempts at painting. We saw your work back in the tower, and apart from the Francophile leanings, you were more than capable as an artist. But the moment you'd almost gotten some work done, you stole two bottles of moonshine from a neighbouring reality, drank one and used the second to set the canvas on fire!"

"And when we asked what was wrong, you just sat there, crying!"

"Even the codebreaking hobby went nowhere. I mean… do you actually remember any of this?"

Elizabeth sighed deeply. Pushing her tired memory to its very limits, she could just about remember the smell of grain alcohol and still-cooling ashes, but that was about it. "Vaguely," she said at last.

"Then you should probably have at least some inkling of the fact that it's been getting worse," said Rosalind. "The night you disappeared was…"

There was a sheepish pause, as the two scientists visibly struggled to tiptoe around a very sensitive issue.

Eventually, Robert coughed uncomfortably and said, "Well, it was…"

"The anniversary," Rosalind finished.

"Oh for god's sakes," grumbled Elizabeth. "Just call it what it is or don't call it anything at all. It's been a year to the day since Booker died."

"And you spent that night and the next days after it getting intoxicated in was heretofore unknown to psychopharmacologists. Now tell me, do you really think Booker would want you to-"

"Don't you dare; don't fucking dare put that on me."

Even Elizabeth was surprised at the venom in her own voice.

"You want to know if Booker would have wanted me to spend my life like this?" she snarled. "I don't know, because he's dead, and in the last year of searching the possibility space, I haven't been able to find any iteration of him remotely like the man I knew. For all intents and purposes, my father is lost forever, and all the fever dreams and fantasies in the world can't bring him back. Meanwhile, in all those months since the two of us erased Columbia, I haven't done anything even vaguely worthwhile, not compared to what we did last year: we saved the multiverse. We smothered Comstock in the crib, stopped Columbia from turning pandemic, and nobody but the three of us know that it ever even happened. There's no memorial to Booker out there, no appreciation for what he sacrificed; for all I know, there's a Booker still living his life out in the possibility space somewhere, drinking himself to death and not knowing how much the universe owes him. And no matter where I go, the more I travel, the more I feel as though Columbia was only real in my imagination; the more I feel as though I belong in an asylum… and maybe I do. You know why? Because the most worthwhile thing I've ever done in my life only happened because I killed my own father."

"With his consent," Rosalind reminded her.

Robert nodded sagely. "It was his choice to sacrifice himself."

"And look just how much better the multiverse is because of that," said Elizabeth, not even bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. "Wars go on, bigotry continues, the so-called utopias fail in bigger and more spectacular ways, and we're left sifting through the ashes, wondering what the hell went wrong this time. And there's a chance the three of us might very well get to do it forever. Now tell me, do you really think there's anything worth doing in my life now that I've outlived my one purpose in it, now that I've killed the one person who made it worth living?"

There was a long pause, as the echoes slowly died away.

"I'm going home," she said at last. "Don't wait up for me."

And with a flex of her power, Elizabeth flung herself across the possibility space, leaving only a flash of light in her wake.

For some time thereafter, there was silence in the apartment as the Luteces considered the situation.

"That could have gone better," Rosalind sighed.

Robert offered a shrug. "It could have been worse."

"Truly, brother, your optimism knows no bounds."

"She isn't suicidal, if that's what worries you."

"No, but she certainly doesn't have any problem destroying herself."

"What do you propose we do? Chase her down again?"

"I would be more comfortable knowing she was at home and stable rather than drunk and roaming the multiverse."

"We cannot infantilize her, sister. She's not a child anymore."

"No, but we can't afford to give her the same leeway we've given her in the past. This problem is not going to solve itself. She needs help; she needs to be guided to a better course of action."

"What do you propose? We can't very well take her to rehab: there's not a facility known to man that would be able to hold her."

"Perhaps not, but there are other forms of rehabilitation, just as there are other kinds of cages. Perhaps, if she had an obligation of some kind…"

There was another, slightly more uncomfortable pause as the two considered this.

Then, Rosalind craned over her shoulder and peered into the darkness shrouding the bedroom. "You've been very quiet through all this," she said. "Perhaps you'd like to render your opinion on the subject."

Somewhere just beyond the shadows, someone laughed mirthlessly. "I don't think even the biggest obligations in the world would be enough to make her behave herself," said a gruff voice. "Look at how badly I did with familial obligations. Like father like daughter, am I right?"

"Don't be too hard on yourself," said Robert. "You eventually faced up to your obligations-"

"-and by then, it was almost too late. If you're thinking of helping Elizabeth, you'd best make sure she doesn't make the same mistakes I did."

There was a pause, and then the voice asked, "She's gone, right?"

"We detect no Lutece field distortions in the vicinity."

"Good. We were getting a little uncomfortable back here. I still don't see why you have to keep me hidden; after all, she's going to find out about me sooner or later."

"By which time, we hope to have her in a much healthier frame of mind - one more suited to your unique circumstances. Now, if you would, please step out here and talk; we feel distinctly ridiculous at having to converse with a vacuum."

"If you say so..."

And with that, Booker Dewitt stepped into the light.

A/N: Final chapter up next, folks - revelations abound and more drama inbound!