I saw my reflection
in the dark dirty glass
I think about you

when I think of the past

If you want to be free, don't think about me
Don't you look in my eyes
Don't you hang around me no more, oh

The thing that you want is what's killing me
Don't you dare take my hand
If you want to be free, oh no

- King Dude & Chelsea Wolfe - Be Free

Drowning. He's drowning. He's dead, and the underworld is a vast city of coloured lights at the bottom of the ocean. Ridiculous, he thinks, and then the city turns upside down, the water falls away and he upwards, and when he looks down there is nothing left of the city but a burnt out shell, and he realizes he's lookin' at New York. And above it circles Death, on a giant bird, like a fell beast. But Death is an ancient crone and he knows her face. And the bird pounces on him and tears at his face, at his eyes, again, and again, and again.

He sees. He can't stop seeing. He sees a rodent in a labyrinth and a pale, hard face regarding it under a red updo. He sees a puma in a gully tearing little girls limb from limb. He sees an aged white haired preacher man, joints burning with pain and hands shaking from drink. He sees rivers of blood. Churches built on skulls, splintered by mortar shells. Men drowning in mud, wrapped in sickly yellow fog, vomiting their insides up.
He sees flying machines, smooth and foreign with only one set of wings, crashing into oceans. And above the wreckage, lighthouses, like merciless guardsmen. Don't dissapoint us, DeWitt.

He screams, voicelessly: he has no voice. He is nothing but vision. He sees in 360 degrees, and his brain rebels. He knows he is bleeding, but he has no body and no hands to wipe off the blood.

And then, he sees her, walking through all of it, and across oceans of grass. The pale, dusty green stretches out in all directions. There is so very little to see out here, and it's such a relief, he almost cries.

Her complexion has become ruddy, sunburnt; her cheeks red and dry, her nose shiny. Dust covers her hair. Shotgun on her shoulder.

He has never seen a thing so damn pretty as her. It makes him more than vision again. He remembers himself. He is Booker DeWitt, gambler and good-for-nothing drinker of panther-piss, and this bearcat of a damsel, for reasons beyond his comprehension, chose to be his.
You'll be damned if you give that up, DeWitt. Literally.
He hears her voice. She is speaking slowly, calmly. Like she's reading poetry.

"And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,

And lost to life and use and name and fame..."

It's a tired voice, there is an unfamiliar hoarseness to it. But it is unmistakably hers. He lies still, and clings to it. Vision, finally, leaves him alone, to be replaced by sound.

...

She is surprised when he gets up.

For days he has just laid there, saying nothing, his eyes bound, but his breath betraying that he was not asleep. Initially he was tense when he heard Songbird, but as time passed without incident, less and less so.

She gives him water; he eats only little.
So when he does get up, unceremoniously swinging his legs over to sit on the bedside, it feels abrupt. It startles her.
His laconic first words to her no less so, softly spoken as they are.

"Elizabeth."

"Booker." she responds timidly.

He tilts his head slighly, listening harder. Then he bends his neck and chuckles, soundlessly, running his hands through his hair, big shoulders shaking like someone on the verge of crying, then lifts his face again.

This beautiful, terribly wounded face. Wounded by her hands, like so much else. Or at least a version of her hands. Again the memory of a maiden wells into her, is maiden still. She is an old hag, and she will always be a maiden.

"Am I late again?"

The terror in his voice makes her get up, hobble over. She bends forward, lifts his chin with a hand and caresses his face, soothingly. He starts at the touch.

"No, Booker. You are not late. Not this time."

She can see the relief in him, the way he breathes out. Long, slow, shaking. He leans into her hand. Warmth and stubble against her fingers, and something dissolves and melts away in her. An old grief for something which came and passed, unused.
It is no longer unused. She has touched him. Along a thread, away onto plains of grass, she can feel the strong legs of a young heifer running, one who touched him more. It's terribly, vicariously satisfying in a very unexpected manner.
The Queen and Lamb of Columbia has no mirror, so she doesn't see the lewd amusement in the smile that appears on her own face. No one sees it. A low, coarse laugh shakes her gut. He lifts his head, gently grabbing and removing her hand from his face.

"I need to get back to you... to her."

"Need to? She's free, Booker. Out of Columbia. Probably safer than she was with you."

"Aw shucks," he throws his arms wide, "I want to, then."

She winces, grateful that he can't tell, and only slightly guilty that she's grateful. The same time which rotted hope, it seems, has also rotted her shame. There are perks, even to age and rot, she muses. I may discover more of them, even now.

...Yes. You do. Don't you?"
Straightening up slowly, hands supporting her lower back, she tucks into her shawl again, and crosses back to her seat at the fire, leaving him alone on the bedside.

And there, conversation strands for a while. But he's catching on:

"Did you know...could you see when..." he falters, defeated by modesty. But she got the gist of it.

"Yes," she says, matter-of-fact. It's close enough. She knew.

He stews over that for a while. Then:

"How?" and she recognizes it, that focus in him. He is being the invetistigator, working things out. Looking for a way forward, even now.

She hesitates, irrationally, but really there is no reason not to tell him.

"The Siphon. The contraption which siphons away my... our powers. My siphon was broken, recently. I am free."

And she can't help cackling at that, gesturing at the squalor of the old hospital.

"Free, would you believe it? Absolutely free."

"Good."

He clearly doesn't get the joke. Oh, of course. He is blind.

But looking at him now, searching and finding his skyhook, she once again feels uncertain how blind. There is something uncanny in the way he moves, and when he gets up, it is even clearer. Someone who was born without eyesight might move like this. Not a man who got his taken away a week ago, after having full use of it for almost four decades.
He seems oblivious, doesn't remark on it, so she doesn't ask. But she notes. Rosalind was right in that he will just have to do without. But Rosalind was also wrong: there is nothing mere about it.

Stretching, then cracking his neck, he squares off.
"Smells like a cemetary here."

"Hm?"

"Strike that. It stinks like New York during the last big bout of cholera."

"This is my home, Booker," she remarks, dryly.

He clears his throat. "I meant ouside."

True, she realizes. He saw outside, last time they met.

And there he stands now, again. Eyes covered, like a veteran of that Great War which she has to remind herself has not yet begun when he belongs. With nothing but his skyhook, and a six-shooter which he seemed to decide to bring almost as an afterthought.

He turns towards her. His adam's apple bobs as he swallows.

"...thankyou."

And with that, she realizes that it's over. The evenings of Tennyson, of reading Merlin and Vivien. The luxurious revel of having both of them with her, just for a while. And she knows her own lie for what it is: there is nothing she can teach him. She told Rosalind that she would, told herself that she could, because she wanted this window of time, and because Rosalind doesn't care, not like she ought to. But whatever this is, it is not tearcraft. He will have to master it himself. She has no guidance to offer, even if he had asked her. Which he hasn't.

Still, she had hoped to keep him for a bit yet. Just a little bit yet, her Merlin caught in the hollow tree in the forest of Broceliande.
'And the forest echoed, "Fool"!'

He seems to read her silence. He strides over to her, as sure of where she is as ever. Taking a knee in front of her chair, he grabs hold of the armrests on either side of her. And then, he returns her earlier gesture, reaching up very gently to cup one side of her face in his hand.
"Elizabeth..."
Salt. Smoke. Leather. No, not yet. A day. Just another day. Another minute.

"Bess. Please." She wishes she could convince herself that he doesn't know what his request means for her. But his voice is shaking. He knows full well. And she quietly thanks him for pretending otherwise, be it poorly.

Bess was what they called Elizabeth Raleigh, née Throckmorton, the handmaiden and namesake of the Queen. The lucky one, who got to marry Raleigh.
Oh, lucky lucky Bess.
Songbird honks, somewhere off the back of the room. He is in the stairwell, busily demolishing the elevator shaft. Any day now, he might fly again, more beautiful than he ever was, and she with him. She chose, long ago, and she chose Songbird. Her first friend, and her last. She got him back. She can't regret that. She softens.

"Allright. I'll give it a whirl."