tearmeanewone | rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

You see, I stick this pin...

[Elizabeth pulls, tries to turn over, tries to move--]

...You feel that, love? [She shudders--] It's going right through your nasal passage, past your eye socket-- [--and clenches her jaw, tries to stay quiet, can't move, can't even breathe.]

And what do you suppose this is for? Just a little tap-tap--

[Elizabeth bolts up, screaming and clutching her sheets. She's never woken up from a nightmare screaming, but there's still that sensation of that pin, in her head, and it was dark and all she wanted was--]

BOOKER!!!

[Gai jolts awake so abruptly that he doesn't even realize what's going on at first, all of his senses switched into high gear and his hand reaching out for a gun that isn't at his bedside. It's sheer instinct that motivates him; he would recognize Elizabeth's scream anywhere. He doesn't need to know what prompted it to spring into action, steel grey eyes scanning the room for any intruders... only to find none. They're alone in the room, just as they had been when they went to sleep.

A nightmare, then? Usually he was the one who awoke screaming. This was a decidedly upsetting reversal of things, because if it was bad enough to make her scream like that...

Immediately he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close against his chest so that she can hear his heartbeat and feel that solid physical presence, even if she doesn't quite register who he is just yet.]

Elizabeth, it's all right. It was just a bad dream-- I'm right here.

[Elizabeth has forgotten that Gai is next to her in bed, and being grabbed only makes her scream again and fight. Fight like he's going to kill her.]

NO NO NO, LET ME GO!! [She struggles to get her elbow into position so she can get him in the solarplexus.]

[That... is not what he was expecting, yet it isn't surprising either, as he too has gotten combative immediately after awakening from a nightmare. That attempted elbow isn't difficult to anticipate and avoid, and he's quick to let her go and back away, lifting his hands up to show that he isn't going to hurt her.

Still, it hurts more than he'd expected to see her struggle like that and yell at him as if he were some sort of attacker rather than her fiance.]

It's just me, Elizabeth. It's Gai.

[Elizabeth, to contrast, has never been this upset or violent after a nightmare. But she feels so threatened, her head hurts, she feels like her heart is going to explode out of her chest.]

[But she sees Gai's face, and it isn't dark, and it isn't demanding to know things Elizabeth can't tell him.] Gai... [Hand shaking, Elizabeth gently combs her fingers through a lock of Gai's hair. It is him, it's him.]

Oh God... oh my God... [Elizabeth presses the heel of her hand into her eye socket, trying to make the feeling of that pin go away.] I'm sorry, I'm sorry--!

[Booker has barely drifted off when he hears her scream his name, and at first - he's too tired to register that it didn't come from his mind. Until she starts screaming at Gai to let her go. Then he's off like a shot with a shotgun in his hand - either out of reflex or memory - and shouting like madman:]

Elizabeth?!

[Memories of Elizabeth being taken....by Songbird, by the droids here...both times screaming for help and both times Booker didn't do enough, not nearly, to save her. Despite his promise.

It might be that which motivates him to burst into her (their) room without knocking, panicked and too in his head to realize right away what wasn't happening.]

[At least by the time Booker arrives, Elizabeth and Gai are at arm's length. She's still pressing at her eye, trying not to cry, nearly hyperventilating.]

[And when she looks up and sees Booker in the doorway with his shotgun, Elizabeth can't keep it in anymore. She feels like a child, scared of the dark, and only wanting to be reassured and tucked in. Only wanting to not be without him, ever.]

Booker! [Her first few movements result in her legs getting caught in her nightgown, so she falls when she tries to get off the bed and to him. She feels almost drugged she's so confused and disoriented and upset.]

[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.]

[It's a few hours later, the immediate crisis past, when Rosalind manages to get Elizabeth away from the house temporarily. Some pretence regarding the grocery store, and though it is the most transparent falsehood possible, there is a merciful lack of a fuss raised over it.

Once she's walking in the warm midmorning sun she takes a slow breath, relaxing it and feeling a vague tension dissipate ever so slightly with it.]

That's better. I'd begin to worry the pressure alone of so much concern would compress you into a new elemental form.

[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.

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