tearmeanewone | rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

[Rosalind may be feeling her tension dissipating, but Elizabeth feels and looks like she was run over by a parade of carts. Obviously she hadn't gone back to sleep after that, and so a restful night's sleep had completely eluded her. She was jittery, her head hurt, but she was afraid to sleep again.]

I feel like I'm not even human right now, so maybe it has.

I would argue that feeling wretched is a thoroughly integral part of being human.

[Overflowing with worry, Rosalind is not. On the contrary, this all seems very normal. Heavens know she probably would have woken up screaming if she'd seen the sorts of things Elizabeth has seen at her age.

Still, her curiosity is not unkind, and she looks to the girl as they walk.]

What troubled you so?

Well I haven't felt this bad since-- [Since Comstock House. Since spending six months imprisoned, forced to undergo procedure after procedure.]

[Elizabeth nearly starts shaking. On her best days, she can hold herself together and push it away. But today...]

I had a dream someone was pushing a pin into my eye. To get to my brain.

[She has to stop walking, otherwise she might be sick.]

[Rosalind stops as well. And she looks at Elizabeth with a silent shift in focus, from observation to recognition. From study to . . . well. To action, it seems, as she draws close and takes Elizabeth's shoulders, as if expecting her to crumple to the ground. It brings her in close, and she murmurs, firm and careful.]

Breathe. In slowly, and out even more so.

[There are silly fears that one should be capable of mastering, she thinks. But this - this is real in more ways than she cares for.]

[Elizabeth is startled the moment she feels Rosalind's hands on her shoulders. It's strange, to Elizabeth, to see Rosalind touching her without really being prompted. Not that it feels like a comforting gesture--perhaps Elizabeth really had swayed and she didn't even notice. But the tone of Rosalind's voice suggests there was validity to what Elizabeth had revealed. The last time she had been afraid and miserable, Rosalind had reminded Elizabeth that whatever had happened to Booker had been his own choice no doubt. This... this was a dream, though. Even if Elizabeth couldn't pinpoint what her subconscious was trying to say, it had been a dream and nothing else.]

[Except Rosalind's reaction seems to suggest that it wasn't just a dream.]

[Elizabeth follows her instructions, breathing slowly as she tried to push the images back again. But they were still there, vivid and bright.]

These dreams I've been having, they aren't just nightmares, are they? [She looks up at Rosalind, eyes searching the other woman's face for a twitch or a tell.] You've seen these things happen to me. You're not brushing this off and telling me it was only a dream because it wasn't just a dream.

[Rosalind has steeled herself to so many cruelties, great and small, that meeting Elizabeth's fear and questioning with impassive quiet comes with a thoughtless, seamless ease. She releases her slowly and folds her hands in front of herself, holding the same cool eye contact that has won more staring contests than she cares to count.]

I have seen you in numberless worlds, with numberless variables strewn among the constants. What will it help you to know those stories?

[She might tell her, of her own accord. But she is bound by duty to Robert, and by a promise to the girl herself.]

Edited 2014-04-04 05:33 (UTC)

[Would it help?]

[No, it wouldn't. It would probably make her sick. As sick as she feels now, thinking about how her future could hold a pin being stuck through her eye socket. She breathes in slowly and out slowly again, and again, she's lost track of how many times.]

So these things I'm having nightmares about-- they actually happened to me? [The color is draining out of Elizabeth's face, but she has to know.] I shouldn't be dreaming about them, though. They haven't happened to me yet, I shouldn't have those images in my head.

I'd hoped you would know better than to be so linear. And so literal.

[Rosalind can wait for Elizabeth to steady herself, and does, gratified at least that the girl seems to be steadying herself.]

'Should' is the domain of phenomena with existing data. You, however, are singular in this regard.

I don't give a damn about data, I shouldn't be having dreams that are that specific!

[Elizabeth is exhausted, and doesn't want to hear that she's a special case, strange, or outside of normal--even if it's true. Under any other circumstances she would accept the answer, nod sadly and carry on, but she doesn't want to be different in this case. She wants to know why.]

How am I supposed to go back to sleep? Knowing that at any moment, my abnormal self could throw a horrible, graphic dream into my brain?

I am telling you, I have no precedent from which to draw your answer.

[It's very near an exclamation, the sharpness that meets sharpness, a light of frustration sparking in Rosalind's eyes. It would not be so vexing if at least she had expected this response, but she is giving perfectly sound reasons and Elizabeth is rejecting every last one out of hand.]

The very best I may offer is theories. Conjecture. And if I knew of some solution to nightmares-

[She would be the wealthiest woman in the world. And she would have given it to Robert, long ago. It gives her pause, before she continues, some of the venom bled from her.]

. . . but I don't.

[Elizabeth has never been so bluntly introduced to the possibility of Rosalind not knowing something. She always assumed that if Rosalind didn't answer a question outright, she did know the answer but wanted to lead Booker or Elizabeth to it. But Elizabeth had no patience for being led at the moment.]

[She looks startled and almost scared when Rosalind insists she doesn't know. If Robert and Rosalind didn't know, nobody did. The two experts on her lived under the same roof, and if they didn't know...]

[Her eye twinges again, just another latent sensation from the memory, and Elizabeth presses her fingers into her eyesocket again.]

Can you find out why? If I let you both... do tests, observe me, something, can you find out why?

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