tearmeanewone | rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

Oh, I don't-- [Elizabeth stops. She doesn't know if she can dance right now, or if her brain is working enough to remember the steps. But that doesn't matter, she realizes. She just wants to hold Robert's hand for a minute.]

[She nods uneasily and stands up, sliding her hand into his. It feels warm, and she nearly cries then and there.

[Dance with me.

Robert closes his hand around Elizabeth's and pulls her a little closer, wrapping an arm around her waist. Not, really, a proper form for the waltz. But that wasn't what he cared about in the slightest. What he cared about was having her close to him, letting her have someone else close to her.

He took a step forward, leading her slowly into something like a waltz.]

[The feeling is almost overwhelming, and Elizabeth wonders where this intense sense of loneliness came from. She had felt cold and alone since the dream, and it scared the daylights out of her.]

[But encircled in a semi-waltz position, Elizabeth feels her shoulders warm slightly. She loved dancing, she lived in a house full of people, she had a fiance who loved her. She wasn't alone, no matter what her tiny, frightened heart told her.]

[The first few steps are a little rough, but then Elizabeth falls into them and trusts Robert to lead her well. She would be okay, they would make certain she would be okay.]

[Robert leads her through the waltz. Easy and uncomplicated, just holding her close to him. This little girl. The closest he has to a daughter. Even if he didn't always do wrong by her.

He can keep her close.

Robert bows his head as they continue, pressing a soft kiss to the top of her head, his hand against the small of her back. She's just a young girl who needs her family. And that's what he promised another Elizabeth he'd provide.]

[It's easy if she lets Robert lead, Elizabeth barely has to do any work at all. Just let the music wash over her, and the waltz carry them both across the room.]

[She stops dead when she feels Robert kiss her, because that's all her fragile, exhausted heart can take today. Elizabeth squeezes Robert's hand tightly, feels the lump in her throat refuse to go down.]

You've seen everything, Robert. Existed everywhere, learned so much... [She looks up at him, pleading, hoping he has an answer that will help her sleep.] Why do I feel so scared and alone right now? It was just a dream...

[If she says that, maybe it will be true.]

[He stops when she does. And she looks up at him and asks him that question.

That...

He sighs a little, giving her hand a soft squeeze.]

Because you've been alone. Because there's always going to be that fear. That you'll be alone again.

[He really, really doesn't want to ask it. But... Well. He knows he needs to ask it.]

What sort of a dream was it?

I have so much to lose now, too...

[Elizabeth leans further into Robert, her arm hooking around his shoulder as though to hold herself up. She doesn't want to remember, but it's too late. She can see it again, and she can almost feel it.]

I was being tortured. Someone was sticking a pin through my eye, into my skull. He wanted me to tell him something but I-- [She shivers and grips Robert tightly. In Columbia, she had never swooned, never felt faint at the sight of blood, but she's so tired, and so afraid. She has everything to lose now.] --I didn't know what he wanted to hear.

[Atlas.

Another Prophet, a different book, another war.

He's removed from the Infinite now, but he remembers. Not always clearly. But enough. Enough to know what has been, what is, and some of what will be. How some of the stories end. What's behind some of the doors he's helped open.

But she doesn't ever need to know about that.

His arms tighten around her, hugging her to him. Maybe just a reaction to hearing something like that, to understanding that sort of terror. The thought of it -- the knowledge of what it was intended to be -- reminds him too much of the Institute.]

Because no one can know everything. [He doesn't want to dismiss the nightmare; only soothe the girl.] And sometimes we can't accept that. Can't accept human failing, either in ourselves or someone else.

But. Elizabeth? Nothing like that will ever happen.

Gai won't allow it. Rosalind won't allow it. Booker won't allow it. I won't allow it.

And--

[He gives a faint smile.]

--you won't allow it.

[For a dream that could have been about accepting human failing, it had been terribly specific. That pin, the calculated way the man had explained the process, the pain and terror.]

[Which, perhaps, had stemmed from the idea that nothing was worth anything anymore. She had no one come to help her in the dream, nothing that she was regretting losing, no pain was enough to make her care.]

[No... Gai, and Rosalind, and Booker, and Robert wouldn't allow that to happen. Elizabeth would always have something worth losing, she would never be completely alone. And no one would let her be hurt again.]

I know. I know. [She nods, swallows again, tries not to cry again.] I'm not alone here. I never will be, I never will be.

We're a family.

[An echo from another time, to another woman. But he means every word.]

We argue. We clash.

But we're a family.

[Because even if he had too small a hand in raising her, he supplied much of her education. Can still teach her.]

For as long as you'll have us. And even after.

I love us. [Elizabeth finally lets her tears spill over, and even though she bites her lip hard, she can't stop her voice from wavering as she cries and talks at the same time.]

I love our family. I thought I wanted something different in my tower, a mother and a father and siblings, but I didn't want that. This makes me happy, I want this. No matter what happens, no matter what I say or think, I'll always want our family. It's given me life when I didn't have any.

It's why I can't be angry at you, Robert. No matter what happened in the past, no matter what landed me in my tower. You've given me something that was taken from me before I even knew it. The one thing I wanted more than Paris or puppies.

You can be angry. Maybe even should be. It may come later, it may not come at all. But if you get angry at me? Don't feel like you shouldn't be.

After all, I helped take it away.

[Especially hearing her phrase it like that, talk about everything in that manner. It highlights for Robert the fault that lies squarely on his shoulders. His hubris, his lack of concern.

Maybe it's guilt that motivates his thoughts sometimes, his inclination toward the idea of a child. To, not that differently than DeWitt, have a second chance. Get to prove to himself that he can handle the situation better.]

But even if you get angry at me? I'm still going to be here. I promise.

And then you helped give it back. Here. Right now. [Elizabeth doesn't want to hear that someone is responsible for everything that happened to her. Back in Columbia, she had gone the path of revenge, wanted to kill Comstock herself. But it hadn't brought her closure, or joy. Only more questions. And life moved on.]

[She wants to move on, and keep going forward. Which is why these dreams that always seem so specific scare her so much. She always wonders what she's looking at.]

I'll get angry at you, I promise. For eating the ingredients I was planning for dinner, for hitting me in the face with a snowball, for running your wires down the hall... [She grins.]

And that is what family is.

[He smiles, unable to help it. Robert kisses the top of her head again, giving another slight squeeze.]

I never had much of a family myself.

It was my mother, my father, and me. Nothing extended.

[And he'd gotten involved in his own world. In his studies and inventions.]

Oh! [She says it almost as though it's just occurring to her now that Robert and Rosalind had parents. Elizabeth pulls back so she and Robert can keep dancing (and so she'll stop crying onto Robert's clothing).] What were your parents like?

Very traditional.

[He smiles as he considers it, shifting to accommodate the continued waltz.]

They grew up in the height of the Victorian era. My father had aspirations to be an inventor, but he never had quite the know-how to achieve it. Plenty of money, though.

So when I became interested in physics, I had nearly a whole library at my disposal and the best of education.

That's very handy. I guess that's why I had whatever books I wanted at my disposal, almost overnight? [She smiles knowingly at him.]

That must have been handy for Rosalind too.

I would have very much liked to speak with her parents.

It's not entirely shocking, but I wouldn't have thought they'd have encouraged a woman to pursue the sciences as much as I was encouraged.

[It isn't a slight against Rosalind, not at all. He will invariably say she is the more intelligent, more dedicated, and more resourceful of the two of them.

But his parents -- her parents -- surprised him.]

Handled-- as in fired one? [Elizabeth looks shocked for a moment, then realizes this is Rosalind she's talking to. Learning that Rosalind did anything shouldn't be a surprise anymore. If Rosalind announced tomorrow that she was off to ride tigers, Elizabeth shouldn't be surprised.]

[She takes a bite of the croissant.]

Does Booker know you want to teach me how to fire a gun instead of how to throw them around? [She'd read up on them, of course. What ammunition went in which gun, their purposes and so forth. But practical applications? Never.]

[At first, Elizabeth frowns because she's confused. It was true that her books had never featured many women in positions of power, but she had never once been discouraged from becoming stalwart and strong. Or pursuing her interests, or seeking knowledge about anything.]

But... aside from the fact that Miss Lutece is a woman and you're a man, you both have the same interest and talent. Why wouldn't they have encouraged that?

Because in the early nineteen hundreds, women weren't encouraged to go into the sciences.

Cambridge first accepted women in 1869. However, they attended a separate campus and received only mailed degrees.

[Simple, yes. Embarrassing. But true.]

Most of Rosalind's studies were done on her own, independent of a university, whereas I had the luxury of having that thorough education.

[Elizabeth is honestly stunned by this. She'd never thought that Rosalind had endured something as crazy as being mailed her degree instead of receiving it with the rest of her student-friends.]

[But of course, it makes sense that she's never heard this before. She was never educated about other cultures so it would intensify her sense of foreigners as 'others'. She was never told that a woman couldn't achieve what a man could, so she would feel outrage whenever someone looked down on her power.]

Well the joke was on them. She went and built a flying city.

She achieved what none of them could even dream about.

[He smiles a little more, still waltzing through the conversation. His own thoughts had been trained by that world, but he'd gotten proof enough in everything to change his mind.]

I wrote a book, while he studied the Lutece Field.

"Barriers to Transdimensional Travel."

What did she do?

Proved it wrong.

[And it's said with the utmost pride.]

[Once again, Gai reacts out of pure instinct, propelling himself off the bed to kneel down on the floor beside her and make sure that she's all right. What's notable is the fact that, rather than trying to embrace her again, he simply rests a gentle hand on her shoulder as a sign of support, that he's willing to do more if she needs it, but that the boundaries here are up to her.

Especially given that Booker is currently standing in the doorway with a shotgun. Understandable, yet not a variable he wants introduced to this equation. As long as Booker has that out, he's not going to do anything without Elizabeth's explicit approval.]

[Hearing Robert speak so fondly of Rosalind makes Elizabeth smile. She supposes that if she met herself, and she had done something so monumental, Elizabeth would be fond and proud of herself too.]

I think we all long for someone who understands us, and cares about what we care about. And watching the two of you together, I always got the feeling that you both weren't competing, but looking to understand together.

Or looking to mess with me and Booker together. [She laughs.]

rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

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