tearmeanewone | onze + voice/action

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onze + voice/action

[Voice]

Has anyone seen Booker DeWitt? Tall, sandy hair, typically frowning, has 'AD' on his hand? He's at Good Spirits usually, but I haven't seen him there in the past few days...

[She's been looking, too. Ever since that strange hole in everyone's memory, the destroyed wall in her bedroom, and Booker doing a disappearing act, she's felt very uneasy about his being missing. But all of his things were still in the house, so he couldn't have gone far...]

If anyone sees him, would you let him know that I'm-- that Elizabeth is waiting for him to come home?

[Action]

[In the mean time, there's a giant hole in her bedroom wall, and her bedroom is, of course, a disaster area. It's a little unnerving, truth be told, to not remember where so much damage came from, but she's trying to focus on Booker instead of her own memory. She's trying to distract herself with cleaning--moving chunks of wall out onto the grass outside, shaking out her bedding, attempting to put a curtain over the giant hole until it gets fixed...]

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Mm... soup does sound good. I don't know how much of a stomach I have for heavy food right now, to be honest. [She snorts quietly and swings her and Gai's arms idly.] Maybe I'm pregnant? [It's meant to be a joke, even if it's a little odd.]

[That's enough to get Gai to stop in his tracks and grimace, even though he's pretty sure that she's joking.

... she'd better be joking, or else they might have to push the date of that wedding up.]

Let's hope it isn't that. I was hoping to have you to myself for a few years first.

No, it's not, trust me. [She stops too, blinking and wondering why Gai stopped walking. Well, he'd always been terrified whenever Elizabeth brought up the possibility of being pregnant, or skipping their contraceptives. It wasn't a funny joke, and Elizabeth thinks to herself that if she hadn't been feeling so down she would have avoided it. She wouldn't have made Gai worry intentionally.]

[She realizes as she stands there and analyzes what she said, that she's completely out of sorts and wants Gai to fix it. But he can't, he doesn't know how and Elizabeth doesn't know what to tell him to do.]

Booker's dead, isn't he? [It's an incredibly abrupt subject change, but it's what everyone had been thinking and no one had been saying--she knows it.] He's dead... and I can't even remember how I got him killed this time.

[Ah, he'd thought as much. The fear had been there, and they all knew it; without any proof or memories, however, it became more of a nebulous possibility that no one really wanted to address directly just in case one of them HADN'T been considering it before. The end result was that it was in the back of everyone's minds, yet none of them wanted to be the first to bring it up.

He understands that.]

I don't know. We don't know, without any memories of what happened over the weekend. He could be dead, or he could be kidnapped. There's no way for us to know for sure.

[Then his voice softens.]

And that just makes it worse.

No, that's not the worst part. [Elizabeth swallows, trying to steady her voice and push down the lump in her throat.] The worst part is that some of the damage looks familiar. The torn up grass, mostly, and the hole in my floor.

It was Songbird, I know it was. My jailer. [The more she admits out loud, the tighter her voice becomes. Gai is going to see her cry at this rate, and Elizabeth couldn't bear to do that to him. What could he do except watch her, and suffer because nothing would help?]

[She tries to stop herself from crying by pulling, hard, on her ponytail and wringing it with great intensity.] He's never done anything to me, he's never hurt me before. He's only killed the people who threatened me, or tried to keep me from him. I know that, I know that. So why did I leave Booker alone with him? Why did I run away to leave him to be killed?

Songbird?

[She'd spoken of Songbird before-- her captor back in Columbia, the giant creature that had made sure that she had stayed locked in her tower and that no one was able to get close enough to rescue her before Booker came along. But how could it have appeared here and then vanished within a matter of days? Even with the unpredictability of Shifts, it seemed improbable.

Still, none of them could remember anything, that much was a fact. If Elizabeth thought the damage looked like something caused by Songbird, that combined with their strange memory loss made it all the more likely that there was something unusual at work here.]

Even if it was, there's no way to know for sure what happened. For all we know, you could have been fighting him off just as hard as Booker was.

[He's trying to apply logic to an illogical situation and he knows it. The words ring hollow even to him, but what else can he say?

Instead, he opts to enfold her in his arms in a protective yet gentle embrace, one hand coming up to stroke her hair soothingly. If she needs to cry, she can let it all out. Maybe that will make her feel better.]

You can't let yourself get mired in 'why's and 'what if's. The only thing that's going to do is make you feel even worse about the situation. None of us would've been a match for him if it was Songbird, but even if I don't remember what happened, I know that wouldn't have stopped me from trying to fight him anyway. And I know Booker would've been the same way.

That's not brave, it's suicide. [Elizabeth still refuses to cry, despite Gai's cues that she should let go. This is serious, she can't just fall apart when there's a bigger danger. Gai can't go around thinking that Elizabeth wants him to fight impossible and fatal odds.]

I could have stopped it. The last time Booker faced him, he would have died if I hadn't put myself between them. If I hadn't let him take me away. [Which, yes, had resulted in torture for her. But Booker had lived to come back, and that was all that mattered.]

You're both idiots. What am I supposed to do without you and Booker? I might be alive, but what would the rest of my life be?

It's what you do when you love someone. You'd do anything to keep them safe.

[In his eyes, it's as simple as that. He wouldn't think twice about laying down his life for her; while he may not know Booker all that well just yet, one thing he's certain about is that the other man would do exactly the same thing without any regrets.]

Or are you trying to tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing if either one of us had been in danger?

[It's making an assumption, yes, but he knows her. He knows how much she cares about both of them-- the fact that she's saying she should have sacrificed herself to protect them even if it wouldn't mean physical harm to her is proof of that much.]

I wouldn't leave you alone... [Elizabeth has to bite her lip, hard, to keep herself from crying.] I promised I wouldn't leave you alone, I promised I wouldn't leave him alone. No matter what I had to do, I wouldn't just leave you to mourn me.

[At least, she wouldn't want to. She's seen Booker ache over the loss of his wife, she never wants Gai to feel that continuous and slow-burning pain.] I would do anything to keep you safe, yes. But I'm not going to break my promise to you either.

[There's a moment of silence while Gai considers this. He'd do anything to keep her alive; of course he would, because she's the entire world to him. But at the same time, he also knows the pain of being the one who is left behind, and while he may want to protect her, could he really knowingly inflict that same pain on her? He isn't sure.

Instead, he just hugs her tightly.]

Then I guess that makes us both fools.

I've never felt idiotic loving you, not once. To me, it means we're trapped in a wonderful and terrible place--we can't live without one another.

[Finally, Elizabeth's tears spill over despite her desperate attempts to keep them under control.] I always wanted friends, and family... and lovers... when I was in my tower. I never stopped to wonder what would happen if I lost them. I never realized how afraid I would be once I fell in love with someone.

[Seeing her cry hurts him, of course, but not nearly as much as watching her try to bottle it up does. This at least he can deal with, albeit somewhat awkwardly, as he's still a novice when it comes to more emotional matters.

What he can do is hug her tightly so that she can cry into his chest and just press his lips against her hair. Hopefully that will help her feel at least a little better.]

That's part of why I always avoided getting close to people. I was always losing people, and I didn't want to put myself in a situation where those losses would hurt more than they already did. But I don't regret falling in love with you in the slightest. I'd do it over and over again if given the chance.

Even if you could lose me someday? And when you did-- it would hurt more than anything, probably. I know if I ever lost you, I would never recover. Life would be darker, and I wouldn't want to face it without you.

[Elizabeth presses her face into Gai's chest until her nose hurts, but she can't move her arms to hold him just yet.] I lived without Booker for months here. Why am I so scared now that he's not here again?

Even then. You've given me the most happiness I've ever felt in my life, and that's something I wouldn't trade for anything, no matter how much it might end up hurting me. It would still be worth it.

[He just holds her protectively, allowing her to press against him. She'll hug him back when she's ready, he knows that much, and so he won't push her on that.]

Because you got used to having him around, and now it feels like something is missing. That and the uncertainty of what happened. The imagination fills in the blanks in the worst ways possible-- believe me, I know.

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