tearmeanewone | SIX + Action / Voice

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SIX + Action / Voice

[VAGUE SPOILERS FOR 'BURIAL AT SEA' BELOW]

Elizabeth Comstock, you have been tried and found guilty of leading this man to his untimely death--

[Booker sits in the gallery, staring coolly back at her, and Elizabeth feels both wet and cold. And bloody--there's blood all down her front. But she doesn't feel shock or even surprise. She knows why it's there, she just can't see the memory. Every time she reaches for it, nothing happens.]

[Words feel unsteady, and she has to chase each one and hold it, own it, before speaking it.]

I was never his! But he… he had to have me! [What choice is she defending herself for making?]

--You have therefore, been sentenced to have your head forcibly torn from your body until you are dead.

[A cord is looped around her neck, Robert and Rosalind almost waltzing around and past her as they do so. Elizabeth scrabbles at the cord as it's pulled taut by one Lutece at each end.]

But he’s right there! He’s right there!! I didn’t kill Booker, he’s right there! He’s been here the whole time! [The cord tightens, Elizabeth’s hands don’t work, her fingers can't get under the cord.] Stop pulling, stop pulling, please! I’LL BE YOUR DAUGHTER!

May God have mercy on your wicked souls, child.

[Action - Locked to Gai and BioShock Infinite Crew]

[Elizabeth writhes in bed, her breathing becoming quicker and shallow as though she were having trouble filling her lungs. And whatever she’s trying to get away from her neck, there isn’t anything there. She’s scratching at nothing.]

[END SPOILER CONTENT]

[Voice – Early, Early Morning of December 1st]

Has anyone here ever had a dream that was prophetic? I know that most dreams are a product of our subconscious thoughts, but… I had a dream and I know I couldn’t possibly have been thinking any of the things that were in it. Not even subconsciously.

I thought that maybe this could be an experiment of some kind. [Read: ‘I’m hoping this was an experiment of some kind.’]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[At least now, when Robert fails to sleep, it's not useless.

He's been reviewing all the notes he took during the time he and Rosalind had spent researching for the Malnosso (what he'd been able to copy down) and organizing them. Nothing spectacular, groundbreaking... But a little.

So, he heard the question for the community and went to Elizabeth's door, knocking lightly.]

Elizabeth?

[Elizabeth is sitting at her desk in her nightgown and robe, Gai either back asleep or pretending to be for her sake. Her hands are in her lap and she's watching the journal as though she expects some kind of response at such an ungodly hour. This early in the morning, she's only left with her thoughts.]

[At least, she thought she had been. When she hears the knock at her door, it's genuinely startling--because she'd thought she was the only one in the house. The familiar voice has her nearly knocking over her desk chair to get to the door.]

[She closes it after her quietly, then throws herself at her visitor to get a hug around him.]

Robert! [It could be that she's tired, or emotionally wrecked from the dream, or glad to see he's returned from his research safely--whatever the reason, her voice is very strained, nearly on the verge of tears.]

When did you get back? I didn't hear you come in-- Where's Booker? And Miss Lutece?

Two hours ago.

[He doesn't really hug her, but he does put his hand on her arm. Robert smiles faintly.]

You were asleep, so we thought it best not to wake you until morning.

I was... [She swallows.] ...you looked in on me.

[And no doubt saw the sleeping man in her room. Not that Elizabeth is ashamed or embarrassed--they couldn't have expected her to live alone again--but Gai could have woken her. No doubt he had woken up if her door had been opened. It was at least fortunate that the both of them were clothed--Elizabeth hadn't expected the three of them to be back until the day of the first.]

Two hours ago, though... You couldn't wait to come home until morning? Did the Malnosso just kick you out in the middle of the night?

We left when our work was complete.

[Rosalind doesn't quite know what this is about - only that Robert had gone from a drowsy warmth at her side partaking of the murmurings of his journal to a flurry of motion retreating out their door, and she'd followed after just as soon as her dressing gown had been cinched in place and hair smoothed (albeit in the rare state of a full, auburn tumble about her shoulders). Materializing from around Robert's shoulder, she looks down at Elizabeth, gaze sleepy and curious.]

What is the meaning of this?

[She not affronted, or even put off. Just in no mood to flit about emotions and frivolities when clearly something has happened to have Elizabeth clinging to Robert.]

A nightmare, I believe.

[As to why they'd left when they had... Rosalind's response works well enough. Besides not wanting to enjoy the "hospitality" Malnosso offered.

What else to say about the matter? He hardly knows himself. Simply the words about a prophetic dream... something he could only hope was a nightmare. Though, with Elizabeth and her abilities being what they are, they might be something entirely different. And that is what matters now.]

[Elizabeth has a moment where her heart jumps into her throat--but as Rosalind comes closer Elizabeth recognizes Robert's other half. It's a little strange to see Rosalind in such a state of undress, with her hair down no less. For a moment, Elizabeth stares and wonders if she'll ever have that much hair.]

[Then Robert speaks, and Elizabeth realizes why Robert was knocking on her door in the middle of the night--the announcement she had made to the network, of course. She wouldn't have made it if she'd known they were all home, though.]

Yes, just a nightmare. [She casts a glance back at the door.] Maybe I knew you were on your way back, somehow, and so I had a dream with all three of you in it. [Elizabeth shrugs.]

[A nightmare. Rosalind flits a glance toward Robert, knowing in that seamless way what it can mean, when a dream is called a nightmare, even if it does not then follow that the dream must mean that.

Some dreams are merely overgrown restlessness, after all. But some others . . . ah. Some others are so much more, or may grow into such, however humble their birth.]

Come. [Her hand passes over Robert's arm and Elizabeth's hand in a brush, a distant cousin of a gesture that might waft fumes or flick filmy sheets of tracing paper, before she pads toward the kitchen and beckons they follow.] No need to crowd the door. You can speak of it over tea.

[Robert follows easily, sure the girl will come, too.

He takes down a tea set -- not, though, the one he brought to Rosalind in October. That is set aside, not hidden but... not displayed, either, and puts water in the kettle.]

[And follow Elizabeth does, even if shes twisting her fingers in the tie of her dressing gown.] Really, this is too much trouble for what it was. Everyone has nightmares of being killed, I'm sure.

[Rosalind is a counterpoint to Robert as they move around each other in old habit, all spare economy of motion, putting leaves in the pot and having the burner lit by the time he sets the filled kettle upon it. She spares Elizabeth a glance as they finish and settle into waiting. A heaviness draws deep in her chest with the words, as if her heart is becoming denser, an unwelcome point of gravity for all the other things clustered in the hollow of her ribcage.

They aren't nightmares, for her. They're just memories, and ones she does not care to revisit.]

That seems a curious thing to be certain of.

[Memories Robert tries very hard to avoid getting anywhere near, despite having been forced to viciously face them.

But his tone and actions betray nothing. Not, this time, for Elizabeth's comfort but to hide the full effects of his time alone in Luceti from his "twin." To keep the same even countenance that he usually has.]

I shouldn't think it's uncommon, but it may also prove worth examining. What sort of death was it?

[Drowning? It might be that, even here, ripples could be felt. Memories she didn't have yet. Memories that became dreams of experiencing it, rather than doing it.]

Well I'm not certain, but most people have nightmares about things they're afraid of, right? And I would think that people would fear death more commonly than anything like... spiders or falling.

[She swallows again and sits down on a nearby ottoman, her fingers brushing over the welts on her neck caused by her own fingernails.] I was decapitated. With a cord that the two of you pulled together.

Comstock... he was there, and he accused me of leading Booker to his death. And that was my punishment--to be executed.

[Oh. It's that.

Strange they should be on the topic of death. It feels like a muted version of that experience, the flush of chill and heat and pressure, the off-balance lumbering in her chest for a few agonizing moments of inwardly-directed clarity. It's a truth she knew. Has known. Still knows, even if she is cut away from the state of being that lets her see it at every moment, from every angle, only the smallest fraction of all the moments that exist, simultaneously, across the breadth of eternity.

Such an infinitesimal fraction. It had been one of her assurances that she might still be more human than anything else, that something so small could snarl inside of her so tightly.

She looks at her brother - bare-wristed, sombre, hands mantled lightly on the countertop. And all at once, heat still prickling through her skull like the last stray sparks of dying neurons, she feels both small and unspeakably vast.]

From one angle, a perfectly fair assessment.

From the other, a fight of fancy.

[It isn't said meanly, merely with that same, calm dismissal the Luteces are well known for. Something Robert hopes will translate into it being nothing to worry about, a creation of the mind and nothing else.

His voice and posture remain the same. Only his hands, hidden from Elizabeth as he stands with his back to her, convey actual reaction. They tremble slightly, clench, then unclench.

He can't be sure it's a memory or even a ripple of one. There are many reasons for that sort of dream, after all, but there are memories he had managed to bury (though never forget) that are crawling their way to the surface.

Robert pours three cups of tea and turns around, saying, almost amused:]

Have you been studying French history again?

No, not at all. And if I had, I think a guillotine would have been more appropriate. [It is calming, strangely enough, to have both Rosalind and Robert treat her dream with skepticism. It's true that there's nothing to suggest that it could be in any way prophetic.]

Maybe... I was afraid you would come home early and find out I hadn't been living alone while you were all gone. [She smiles and stands up, moving to get her tea. It sounds like just the thing to calm her nerves, actually.] I suppose I was going to be on the end of many disapproving looks in the morning, Robert?

[She tries not to smile so wide as she glances at Rosalind before settling her gaze on Robert. Rosalind, Elizabeth expects, probably doesn't much care if Elizabeth hadn't been alone all month. Robert, though...]

So maybe it was a case of... extreme prophecy.

Extreme anxiety, I should think.

[Rosalind cants her head as she glances at Robert, a moment's wry questioning in the look before she takes up her own cup in passing and moves to dose it with the appropriate amount of sugar. If this is the game he wishes to play, this seems neither the time nor the place to shatter it, for either of their sakes.

It's made easier by the fact that there's no artifice in the bemusement that comes with Robert, of all people, appointing himself this young woman's chaperone.]

Unless you've taken upon yourself the mantle of our moral guardian, brother.

[Robert chuckles faintly at the last remark and shrugs his shoulders slightly.]

I certainly know what conduct is unbecoming to a young lady.

[But, as he sets a cup in front of Elizabeth, he makes a small nod of his head, acknowledging the unspoken admonition he knows is coming.]

Even if I have little room to remark upon it.

I'm twenty-one, by Columbia's standard if I hadn't been so carefully kept I would already have a husband and a child. [There you go, Robert.]

[Elizabeth pulls her tea closer and reaches to put some milk in it.] But even if it is unbecoming... I didn't want to be by myself again. I've had enough of that--and If I'd woken up, alone, after that nightmare...

[She swallows and doesn't want to think about it much past that.]

[Rosalind knows she does not need to retort about conduct unbecoming of young ladies or her own experience with the practical limitations of such sentiments. So she simply looks flatly over the rim of her cup at Robert, lifting her eyebrows mildly.]

You were the party arguing in favour of romanticism all over her shelves, as I recall.

Yes. You'd have had a husband. Thus, the conduct wouldn't be unbecoming.

[Because, of course, Robert Lutece entirely and completely advocates chastity outside of marriage. Whole-heartedly...

He has never carried on affairs before his jump to Columbia, never had any record of unbecoming behaviour. And certainly never engaged in anything questionable in Columbia. Or so he can damn well pretend to claim.

Even if both parties present know better than that, even simply based on allusions he's made to his history.]

I have no objections to literary romanticism, nor do I, I admit, have any say in her conduct, which is why I make no pretence of scolding her.

[Elizabeth levels a disbelieving look at Rosalind, then flips it immediately to Robert. She knows she's being held to a standard Robert himself didn't follow and Rosalind didn't even care about (or, maybe she did and was on Elizabeth's side, purely for the rebellion against what constituted 'conduct unbecoming of young ladies'). After holding the look for a good long five seconds, Elizabeth breaks it and puts milk in her tea. Robert may not be overt about scolding her, but Elizabeth does feel as though he's trying to impress his opinion of what would be best for her. And, somewhat, that he's judging her for her entire relationship with Gai. Strangely enough, it didn't make her angry--she wanted Robert's approval, so it hurt.]

Then the next time everyone decides to pack up and leave to do research, give me some warning and I'll marry the first available man. Then living with someone won't be unbecoming at all. [She raises her cup and sips, the brief moment giving her a chance to refocus.]

I was the first one of us to get here, and I was all alone for two months. And considering I had lived alone almost my entire life before then, I thought it would be easy to go back to the routine. But it wasn't. I just didn't want to be alone again, for a whole month, in this empty house.

I think you both understand what it feels like. To wake up knowing that you're alone in the room, but also knowing there's someone out there who could vastly improve the silence.

["Robert, they're dreams."
"No, they're not. I can prove it."
"How? A book? Robert, you've been shut up there for days. Come on. The university's written. Another offer of a job. Just accept it."
"I don't want to teach, I want to innovate. Do you realize what I've done?"
"You're driving yourself mad!"

"I haven't left this building in five days. But people have come. Claiming to be my family. People I know aren't."
"Hold on, Robert. We'll solve this."
"No we won't, Rosalind. Not this time."
"Don't talk like that. You, my dear brother, will think of something."
"I don't know what to do."
"You'll figure something out. You did before."
"With you."]

Well played.

[It's a simple statement said easily. He even sounds almost amused as he concedes the point.

But it's not so easy in his mind. Because he knows exactly what it feels like. To be so used to being alone and then... utterly unable to go back to life that way. To follow it to its ultimate conclusion, to a point where he began to doubt whether the world had gone mad or he had simply lost his mind.

To be so alone...

He takes a sip of his tea, properly flavoured with sugar, and doesn't look at either woman, merely keeps his gaze on a fixed point low on the wall, so he can seem contemplative when all he's really trying to do is shut off his mind, keep it from going out of control, keep himself from revealing anything.]

My remarks were unwarranted. If you will allow, I will rescind them.

Your remarks were nothing she will not hear elsewhere.

[It's as much of a comfort as she will give Robert, for she knows what that admission must cost him. But Rosalind's reply is also a simple statement of fact - for above all else, fact is a comfort, and has always been her solace against the cleverest and deepest of blows.

She knows the threat - the promise - of loneliness. She has known it since she was a girl and stubbornly chasing her studies, under the assurance that she did so at the cost of every happiness and comfort available to her. She was promised a life bereft of certain things and so she determined to not require them. The threat became nothing but another of those cool, comfortable facts. For a time.

She still wakes sometimes to the phantom oil-and-copper smell of pooled blood. The threat is there, then, for a few seconds, and it has never been more yawning or terrible. Then it is gone, before it can manifest entirely, and for a few rare seconds Rosalind is aware of finding comfort in a form of ignorance.

The reply does not cut, for she does not know this thing as keenly as Robert does. And in truth, even though it separates them, she does not wish to.]

Given that they are in such plentiful supply, though, I don't see why we should trouble ourselves to be merchants of common goods.

She's right. [Elizabeth reaches over to put a hand on Robert's. She hadn't meant to hurt him, she had only wanted Robert to understand her perspective.]

About those remarks. And that you aren't anyone common. You're as close to a father as I may get, Robert, what you think of me... it matters a lot. [Elizabeth looks warily to Rosalind--because she's straying far outside of comfortable logic and into feelings. But it's the only explanation she can give for bringing up something like this.]

I just want you to know why it was so important to me. You don't have to apologize, you're only doing what you always did: looking after me. And I understand that.

[She looks down at her hands around her teacup and fusses with them, trying to find a pattern in her laced fingers, trying to fix the pattern--] He's not turning me into something unsightly or immoral, we're just trying to not be alone. I'm not expecting you to like him, but I just want you to. [There's a little futile laugh in there as she says the words, because she knows it's not going to happen. But there it is--she's never been one to hesitate before telling someone what she wants.] Or at least be glad I have someone to spend time with who's close to my own age.

SIX + Action / Voice

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[Burial At Sea Spoilers - for real!]

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