There's always a lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a city. Those are the constants. Locations. Names. Times. Relationships. Outcomes. Those are the variables. Constants & variables, elements & components. Those are what make up the lives of characters and stories of the world. And sometimes those stories intertwine, piling up on top of each other as time passes like grains of sand in an hourglass.
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth had lived all of her life pulled to and fro by the whims of men. Some of them were power-hungry, some were regretful, some were arrogant, some were delusional, and some were just sad. Booker DeWitt, who sold and then saved her. Zachary Comstock, who sought to control her. Robert Lutece, who helped steal her then helped set her free. Albert Fink, who made a game of turning blood, sweat, and tears of the underprivileged into money. Songbird, who loved her too much to ever share her with anyone else. Dr. Pettifog & Dr. Harrison Powell, who poked and prodded and jabbed and shocked her all under the name of 'caring' for her. Dr. Yi Suchong, who made her dance and jump through hopes for a useless hair sample. Andrew Ryan, who thought Elizabeth valued her life more than her own convictions.
And then there was Frank Fontaine, the so-called Atlas.
It was almost chuckle-worthy; a man at the bottom of the sea who wanted not just to control Rapture but the surface world and industry as a whole named after the Titan who was doomed to hold up the sky for all of existence.
So many jokes, so little time.
Elizabeth wasn't afraid of Fontaine, no matter what name he went by. She wasn't afraid when he ordered her killed the first time. Elizabeth wasn't afraid when he stuck an ice pick in her eye and threatened to turn her into some mindless, drooling doll.
So why would she be afraid when Atlas bashed her over the head with a wretch -even thinks back to doing something similar herself and feels only a little bit guilty in hindsight- and left her for dead? After all, with that first swing that smashed against her skull, both of their fates were sealed. Fontaine would fail, Rapture would die, and Sally would be free.
Elizabeth would never get to see Paris, not really. She'd never get to paint another picture or crack another code or read another book that was not yet written. Her life would end here.
And that was okay.
Right here, with Sally holding her hand and singing La Vie en Rose, Elizabeth could die happy knowing that the sweet, sad little girl would be saved from a life of pain and violence and death by Fontaine's own 'Ace in the Hole.' Maybe she wouldn't be around to see it, but it would still happen and that was the important thing.
Constants and Variables, as the Lutece twins always said.
Death... that was one of the few true constants.
"You remember songs of heaven
Which you sang with a childish voice.
Do you love the hymns they taught you,
Or are songs of earth your choice?
You can picture happy gatherings
Round the fireside long ago,
And you think of tearful partings
When they left you here below.
One by one their seats were emptied.
One by one they went away.
Now the family is parted.
Will it be complete one day?"
The last note from the strummed guitar hummed through the air as the string vibrated, mixing with the final word of 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken.' Booker was not exactly a good singer, years of alcohol and cigarettes having left his voice far too rough to carry a proper tune. But there was enough soulfulness left in his voice that, when he sang, it still sounded pleasant enough.
But maybe Elizabeth... or, rather, Anna DeWitt was just biased.
"Can you play me another?" she asked, her head rested on Booker's shoulder as she stared out at the Seine River.
Her father chuckled, nuzzling his prickly cheek against the top of her head. "You can't like my singing that much, sweetheart."
"I like your singing because it's your singing," Elizabeth pressed. "Hearing it makes me happy."
"Ahhh, I see," Booker nodded, adjusting the strings of his instrument.
Elizabeth waited for him to start the next song but instead, after a long moment of silence, the man said, "You know that you have to go back, right?"
The young woman went tense. "What do you mean?" she growled, teeth clenched.
"You've got to go back, there is more for you to do in Rapture; there are more people that you can save, more tragedies you can stop, and more life for you to live," he explained, testing out a few plucked notes.
A flash of pain shot through Elizabeth's body, nearly breaking through the pretty dream of Booker & Anna Dewitt's peaceful Paris vacation. Soft and quiet, in a voice far younger than she felt, "What if I don't want to?"
"You gave up that choice when you decided to save Sally, Sweetheart. Now you are stuck dancing to the whims of destiny just like the rest of us," her father replied, not unkindly.
.
.
.
"Do I have to leave right now?"
The defeat in her voice was palpable.
"No, we have time for one more song."
"Thank you," Elizabeth whispered, tucking her face against Booker's shoulder again and threading her hands around the man's elbow. Neither could have made it easy to play the guitar but Booker didn't complain, instead he started up a tune.
"Booker? Do you think they... the people of Rapture, the people I'm supposed to save... do you think they're afraid of God?" she asked.
"No," her father shook his head. "But they'll be afraid of you."
"Did you ever see two Yankees part upon a foreign shore
When the good ship's just about to start for Old New York once more?
With a tear-dimmed eye they say goodbye, they're friends without a doubt;
When the man on the pier shouts loud and clear, as the ship strikes out."
Elizabeth Comstock or Anna DeWitt or Eliza Dewitt or Belle Comstock or Liz Songbird or whoever she was in this timeline, behind this door, was thrust back into consciousness with all the gentleness of someone falling through a deceptively thin sheet of river ice into the deadly cold waters below.
"Ghhuuuuhhhh!" she gasped, pain shooting through her stiff body. Automatically, Elizabeth tried to sit up but the muscles in her body all spasmed, contracting rapidly and causing her to collapse back on the thin mattress beneath her.
Unable to move properly, Elizabeth's eyes shot around the dim room as she tried to make sense of her predicament as panic fought its way to the surface. Cabinets? Mirrors? Chairs? Medical equipment?
She flopped an uncoordinated hand down on her stomach and ran it over the thin, papery garment she was wearing. 'A hospital gown? Is that where I am, a hospital? How did I get here?'
Every muscle in her body still tingling with the pain of a thousand needles, Elizabeth gritted her teeth and grabbed at the first handhold she could find. In this case, it was a tray of medical needles and glass bottles of medications. It wasn't a particularly good anchor for finding her footing, however, as Liz immediately found herself crashing down to the floor the second she put too much pressure on the tray. Broken glass, split medicine, and fallen needles scattered around her, and a sharp pain in her arm told Liz that she'd ripped out an IV line from her arm. Elizabeth pushed herself up on her weakened forearms and crawled toward the thin stream of light provided by the cracked open door.
"...lp," she croaked, her throat dry and rough from disuse. "Help...me."
Weak as her call was, someone obviously heard it because Elizabeth heard the distinctive sound of high heeled shoes against a hard floor coming towards her. She went to call out to them but before Elizabeth could force anything out, the door was thrown all the way open.
Silhouetted against the bright hall was a female figure with pinned-up hair and heels. The woman looked down at Elizabeth, her features obscured, and swore in another language. She bent down, grabbed Liz under the arms and hauled her up to sit back on the hospital bed.
"Le... go," she growled weakly, trying to shove the woman away.
"Stop that," the woman hissed as she swatted Liz's hands away. Then she shined a small, bright light into Elizabeth's eyes, holding the younger woman still when Liz attempted to squirm away. "Evenly dilated pupils... color is good... no fever... and the wound is healing properly. Good."
Elizabeth swallowed hard, rubbing her tongue against the roof of her mouth to generate saliva. Her words were still heavy and slow, but she finally managed to get out a full thought, which, she supposed, was already an improvement. "I... don't... have a concussion. Where... am... I?"
The woman tutted and pulled something small from her shirt pouch. "It is good you are finally up but I am not ready for you yet."
Liz went to ask what that meant but then she felt a sharp pain in her neck and the darkness returned with vengeance.
When Elizabeth next regained consciousness, it was in a much gentler way. Her dry eyes flickered open, blinking rapidly as her vision came into focus. A quick glance around told Liz that she was still in the same room she'd woken up previously and had been resettled onto the bed, her IV reinserted.
Mouth still dry, she coughed out, "Hello?"
At first, nothing happened but, after a few more calls, the door creaked open once more. Elizabeth's eyes widened as the distinctive figure of a blonde Little Sister pattered into the room.
"Sally?" Elizabeth whispered, her heart fluttering with hope... only for it to be brutally crushed after a closer look revealed that this was another girl.
'How many Little Sisters are out there? How many little girls have had their lives stolen and their bodies twisted by this city?' she thought mournfully. "H... hi, Sweetheart, do you know where I am?"
The Little Sister cocked her head to the side, blinking her large, distorted eyes. Then she turned back to the doorway and whispered in that eerie little voice of hers, "The pretty lady is awake."
There was the distinctive sound of tiny bare feet on a linoleum floor and three more Little Sisters filed into the room, none of which were Sally. They all blinked up at Elizabeth and parroted, "The pretty lady is awake."
"Little Ones, it is rude to hover around the patients," a woman's accented voice called out. "Please give me space; go check on detoxing rooms."
The blonde Little Sister, seemingly the leader of this little group, gave a low whine but then there was the click-clack of high heels and a slender woman with green eyes and graying brunette hair entered the room. She patted the girl on the head before tutting and pushing her forward, "Go on, Little Ones you have chores to get to. Then you may play."
With identical pouts and huffs, the four Little Sisters shuffled away. The woman clicked her tongue but smiled wryly, "Little troublemakers, never listening. So sweet though."
"I know you!" Elizabeth realized, forcing herself to sit up despite her sore, stiff muscle screaming at her. "You're Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum!"
"Yes," the doctor replied, pulling out a small flashlight. "Tilt your head back and keep your eyes open. Double or blurry vision? Confusion? Headache? Nausea or vomiting? Ringing ears? Difficulty concentrating?"
Fighting the urge to close her eyes and flinch away from the bright light, Elizabeth stared upward. "No to the vision problems, no to the nausea, no to the ringing ears, and no to the concentration problem. I do have a headache though, probably because I was bashed in the head with a wrench! I'm also confused because I'm pretty sure you're working for Ryan and I'm pretty sure if Andrew Ryan had me then I'd be locked up somewhere, not getting medical treatment."
Just because Elizabeth had cut herself off from the doors, from the universe, doesn't mean that she couldn't remember everything she'd seen and learned. It was all still there, it just meant that she couldn't quite pull that information into focus; it was the same frustration as when you couldn't remember the right word for something and it was stuck on the tip of your tongue.
Having all the answers so close yet so unreachable was frustrating, almost as much as being stuck in that damn tower.
"I did work for Ryan," Tenenbaum nodded, "but not for a long while now. I would not be surprised if he tried to keep up an illusion that I still was, however. What did he do? Hire someone to play me in public appearances?"
"I... guess so," Elizabeth mumbled.
That was as adequate enough explanation as anything, she supposed.
"Where-"
AHHHHHHH!
A scream -loud, drawn-out, and anguished- tore through the air, echoing through the halls of... wherever they were.
Liz jumped, jostling away from Tenenbaum as her head jerked towards the door. "What the hell was that?"
The doctor clicked her tongue, "An experiment. It is going... well, it is going."
'Is she being purposely obtuse or just doesn't realize she isn't actually answering me?' Elizabeth thought, annoyance building. "Where am I? Your house?"
"House... yes, I suppose it is," the older woman nodded after a moment of contemplation. "This is a safe house facility I set up for myself and all the Little Ones I could gather after I went into hiding. I never intended to bring anyone else into our lives but, after Rapture fell... I suppose it just didn't feel right to leave everyone out to die."
.
.
.
"Rapture... what? Fell? I don't understand! For god's sake, tell me what is going on!" Elizabeth demanded, rising wobbly to her feet look the doctor in the eyes. She'd seen the fall of Rapture in her visions, of course, by not how. Not why.
Tenenbaum pursed her lips, biting at the inside of her cheek, and was silent for a long time before... "You've been unconscious for a long time, Liebling, and much has changed in that time."
To prove her point, the older woman pinched a lock of Elizabeth's messy black hair and held it up to show that it was now to her mid-back. Liz's eyes widened and jolted backward, yanking her hair out of the woman's grasp.
'For it to grow that much... I must have been out for months! Maybe half a year!'
"Rapture is no more," Tenenbaum pushed forward. "The people have descended into chaos. Greed, lack of order, and ADAM addiction all played their part, of course, but perhaps this is what the city deserved? Perhaps that is what we all... Ryan, Fontaine, Lamb, myself, and all the rest deserved?"
A cold, uncomfortable silence settled between them. Eventually, Elizabeth could no longer stand it and swallowed hard against her dry throat. "If that is what you believe, then why set up this safe house? Why are you trying to protect people?"
"Because while I may deserve this, the Little Ones do not!" Tenenbaum snapped immediately. "The Little Sisters, they are my creation. I am the reason their innocence has been stolen. I am damned to Hell for my actions, that I have known for a long time. But my Little Ones deserve better, they deserve a chance. I have a plan to save them... and you are going to help me."
A refusal was already on Liz's lips when...
"There is more for you to do in Rapture."
.
.
.
"What do you have in mind?"
A small smirk twitched on the scientist's lips and she turned, digging through a small cupboard to pull out an oversized robe and slippers.
"Put these on and follow me."
Ignoring the musty, old person smell, Elizabeth obeys]ed and followed the swiftly moving Tenenbaum out of the room and through the narrow, poorly lit hallways of the safe house facility. The pair met no one on their walk but Liz could still hear the faint echoing of voices, screams, and footsteps.
"There, do you see him?" Tenenbaum asked when they finally came to a stop, pointing out a window to the murky ocean floor.
Elizabeth squinted through the gloom at a barely discernible mass covered in algae and barnacles, "Is that a Big Daddy?"
"Yes, but a very special one," the scientist confirmed. "His name is Subject Delta."