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She raised her hand and stepped through the lighthouse door. Her surroundings froze, then faded; Booker’s broad back in front of her dissolved into the darkness. It was as if her eyes had been closed until this moment when she could see all that lay before her, and everything that lay behind, and all the different branches her story could take.
She took a deep breath and, remembering the lessons imparted to her by countless novels, resolved to fix things.
—
She went to see Rosalind first.
“Why did you send him for me?” Elizabeth asked. She wandered around the tables of Rosalind’s laboratory and came to stand behind her.
“My brother has, over the years, developed a conscience,” Rosalind replied. From what Elizabeth could see, she was calibrating a kind of measuring device with a needle oscillating slowly at the top. “He got it in his head that we had to fix the events set in motion when we told Comstock about a child he could take.”
“New York,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve seen it destroyed.” She shivered. For a moment she could see it again as if in a dream: explosions rocking the dirigibles and lighting the sky. The sirens had wailed through the night and the air had been thick with smoke. Rosalind’s voice rang through the fog of the memory.
“And there is a debt.”
“Another debt?” Elizabeth laughed bitterly.
Rosalind turned toward her. “Comstock betrayed us, myself and my brother. He attempted to have us killed. We held too many of his secrets, I suppose, and had outlived our usefulness. Because of him there is only one of me left and one of my brother. We would see that betrayal repaid.”
“So what do you expect me to do?” Elizabeth asked. She was growing tired.
“You are the key to all this. You’re Comstock’s daughter. He will listen to you above anyone else.”
“I am not his daughter,” Elizabeth said hotly. “He stole me.”
“And you’ll have to convince him of that if you want to stand a chance at fixing things.”
“In order to fix all this-” Elizabeth began, gesturing vaguely to encompass the laboratory, the city, and possible all of existence itself “- I have to convince Comstock to let Anna DeWitt stay with her father?”
“Yes. There’s only one point left that needs changing - that can be changed.”
The words, carelessly thrown her way, gave Elizabeth pause. One point, she thought. All of time and space, and it all hinges on this. Rosalind went back to her tools and pieces of equipment, and Elizabeth felt more lonely than ever.
She went to New York. Her father was there, pleading to get her back.
In Columbia her father was insisting she was his daughter.
In Rapture her father was wasting away in a tiny, cramped office, and nursing his guilt on cheap alcohol.
She went to Paris and immersed herself, drowning her sorrow in sweet-scented pastries while tumbling from conversation to conversation.
It wouldn’t last. It could never last.
—
“Are you even trying?” Rosalind asked. They were sitting on a bench in Emporia. It was quiet; the Vox Populi were nothing but a formless idea in Daisy Fitzroy’s mind. Across the street, a man was performing fire tricks with a Devil’s Kiss vigor that let him swallow and juggle the flame. Rosalind was writing away in a notebook, scrawling calculations and arcane symbols even Elizabeth couldn’t decipher.
“I tried,” she argued. “But he’s not a rational man at that point of his life. And he certainly won’t listen to a stranger telling him to abandon the plan his ‘angel’ put in his head.” She sighed. “What if I can’t convince him?”
“But you must,” Rosalind replied. She looked up, her scribbling pausing momentarily. There was no trace of sympathy in her eyes. “You’ve seen how things will turn out.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and remembered the moment Booker had fallen into her library.
There were no do-overs for women like her, she knew. She’d read it a hundred times in books and seen it a hundred more in her mind’s eye. She knew she would be called and she must answer. In a way, she’d been preparing for this since the day she’d awoken in the tower, since the day she’d first opened a book.
Elizabeth surveyed the street. “Where is Robert?” she finally asked.
Rosalind pursed her lips.
“He has accomplished what he intended. Now that our initial actions will be undone, he’s trying to forget his part in all this.”
—
It was painful to see herself mutilated time and again, to witness her father’s desperation. She didn’t count her attempts - one blended into the next until she was no longer certain how often she had stood on the other side of the portal, begging Comstock to reconsider.
She started playing the odds. Gambling ran in the family after all, and she could only hope to be more successful than her fathers. She counted the Bookers that arrived, and the Bookers that died - died by the hands of her father, or his soldiers, or, in one case, herself. She counted Booker’s guilt in his scars and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
She became lost in the Sea, hoping she could still find a path among the myriad of universes.
There were so many universes where her fathers took her and lost her, universes in which they tore her apart again and again.
“Booker,” she said. She was crying despite herself. “You can’t give her up.”
He didn’t recognize her, of course. There was an emptiness in his eyes, a hollow, aching place that he’d shut himself in, and she was almost swallowed by their collective grief. All her knowledge, all her studies, and she had to find a way to save both of them.
Anna DeWitt deserved a father. She would not be raised in splendour, or learn lockpicking and French, but she would dance and fall in love.
She went with Booker that day, and stared at her would-be father through the portal that, for one last, brief moment, connected the two worlds.
It always ended the same way.
—
“I can’t do it,” she told Rosalind quietly when they met in Paris. As Elizabeth nudged her parasol up, she saw herself and Booker reclining in chairs across the street. They were smiling, wearing unfamiliar clothes, cheap but free of bloodstains.
“You are the key.” Rosalind said. “Remember your childhood. Remember the things you’ve seen that will come to pass if you don’t do it.”
Elizabeth lowered her parasol again.
“Have you seen the things I’ve tried?” she countered. “There isn’t a timeline I’ve found where I can reason with him. Instead, you’ve decided to move that vile man to another universe when he killed a child!”
“Ah - Rapture. Yes, he begged us to let him forget.” Rosalind sipped her coffee.
“And to make more people’s lives a misery, I’m sure.” She was still bitter.
“We can’t kill him,” Rosalind replied. “We can only point him at a door. You’re the one with the power to interfere. And I wish you would.”
“I am,” Elizabeth said darkly, “but it doesn’t seem to make an impact.”
Rosalind laughed. “Child, you can see all the paths that ever were and ever will be. You will find one that fits our purpose.”
“And what about the Bookers in the timelines when I don’t succeed? The ones that go insane, or that drink themselves to death?” Her voice rose, and Rosalind shot her a reprimanding look.
“If you can find one path where that man lets the child be-”
“- there will still be countless paths where he doesn’t!”
“Nevertheless,” said Rosalind primly, and pushed her chair back. “That is the only point where the timelines can handle interference.”
“How long did it take you to find a way to bring your brother to Columbia?” Elizabeth asked, and Rosalind paused. “Or rather, how long did it take you to find a version of him that would do it?” Her words were meant to hurt.
“Does it matter?” Rosalind said in a tight voice. “I was the first to succeed, and now we’re the only ones left.”
They broke eye contact, both aware of Robert’s absence. Elizabeth hadn’t seen him since they met in the graveyard in Columbia.
“It’s the only way,” said Rosalind.
“If you say so,” Elizabeth replied.
—
Destiny was a concept that had once interested her, back when she had been trapped in her beautiful cage. She had imagined herself to have a destiny, to be waiting for the moment she was called to fight for the people - the ones her teacher said she would rule - for the city. Over time, her vision of destiny had changed, but the concept had not. And when the call came, she had answered.
There was no destiny but the Sea. There were only the shores, all different and all the same. She moved through their permutations methodically, one by one, evaluating and discounting each. Rosalind’s words kept replaying in her mind. All the paths that ever were. Was there only one point she could truly alter?
She went to New York.
Her father owned a modest house at the edges of the city. She observed him quietly for a few days, stealing food from bins and tables. He didn’t notice her. Her heart beat faster when she realized that he did not have a daughter or a mark, and for one heady evening she imagined the chain of events that had led to this and weighed whether it was a preferable state. Then she realized that she was merely early. She closed her eyes and saw them: Booker, and a young woman with brown hair, a golden ring, an empty house.
She moved on.
—
She gambled high and lost. And she lost again. Each time she saw a flicker of doubt cross Comstock’s face, her heart beat wildly. Each time her father reached out to take her back, she hoped.
It was later, much later when she saw it. A current in the endless expanse of loss and sacrifice and guilt that, with a careful twist, could be turned into a small eddy where time would loop and whirl them in an endless circle.
She plucked at it mentally, visualizing the effects, and her heart sank. If she did act, the twist would ripple through the ocean and redirect all other currents. No more constants, no more variables; instead, there would be one sequence of events that would inevitably lead to their end.
It’s the right thing to do, her mental voice said, and it sounded suspiciously like her father.
—
She searched for Rosalind first. It would be so much easier if she knew she wasn’t alone. Rosalind had made Jeremiah Fink’s office her own, at least for the moment. The floor was covered with papers, some empty, some neatly scribbled on. A portrait of Robert seemed to have replaced the actual man, reflecting the light of a handful screens. She remained silent for a while, unwilling to disturb the scientist. Rosalind looked almost disheveled.
“If there’s a way,” she finally said. “Another way…”
“Don’t you dare,” Rosalind interrupted her. She turned around. “There’s been enough damage done to this part of time. A thoughtless act could erase us all. What happened must happen.”
“Removing the problem at its root-” Elizabeth began and then paused, horrified at her calculating tone. Rosalind seemed to agree.
“Your father’s blood runs in your veins, but it doesn’t have to be on your hands.” Her tone was gentle, and Elizabeth felt sick.
“If there’s a chance for one Booker and Anna DeWitt to live free of Columbia,” she said quietly, “if there’s one timeline where people's actions are self-determined, it’s worth destroying an infinite number of timelines where their lives are not their own. Where they never meet, or kill each other, or cause others unimaginable pain.” She looked away. “There are a million, million girls who grow up hating and not knowing their father, and a million, million girls who die.”
“So your solution is to make it so they never existed?” Rosalind mocked. “And you call me a fatalist.” Then she grew serious. “Your actions may well kill you. This part of time is not stable, there are too many loops and - thin places, for lack of a better term. I won’t help you rip the worlds apart.”
“You don’t have to,” Elizabeth replied. “You told me to find a path that fit our purpose. I will do what’s necessary.”
—
There was one thing left to do. Her own death would be highly inconvenient, and someone would have to return her to where she would need to be.
Robert was polishing the countertop when she entered the Blue Ribbon. “Yes - ah.” He blinked at her. “This is highly irregular, you know. I’m certain we will succeed eventually, but it’s still poor manners to just show up.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I’ll be gone in a moment,” she said, “but I need your help.”
He smiled. “Of course. Rosalind?” he shouted. And in the warmth of the Columbia bar, Elizabeth laid out just enough of her plan to secure their help.
“But why would you knowingly destroy yourself?” Rosalind finally asked. “Even when we pick you up in the Sea -”
“- and we will -” her brother interjected.
“- you will be, for all intents and purposes, human. This is not something that should happen.”
“I disagree; it’s about time something unexpected happened.”
Rosalind turned toward Robert. “That’s a nice sentiment, but we are omniscient, and interfering in a place even we can’t see is dangerous.”
“Supposedly omniscient,” Robert replied. “Even we cannot see all paths. And if it doesn’t work, there will always be next time.” He gave Elizabeth an apologetic look.
“You will help me, though?” Elizabeth asked. The scientists shared a look, then Robert sighed. “We shall leave right away.”
“Not quite,” Rosalind corrected. “First, I believe we must offer a man a drink.” With those words, she disappeared back into the store room.
Robert nodded. “In a few minutes, then.”
Elizabeth left.
—
The knowledge that at any time she could open a tear to a world where Booker was searching for her, would welcome her with his gruff voice and steady hands, gnawed at her. She has lost - will lose - two fathers: the one she had never known, and the one she could have grown to love, and she could feel echoes of their presence in the currents that divided the worlds.
She raised her hand and stepped through the lighthouse door.
—
She forgot for a time. Even when she could no longer see the path, the voice in her head soothed her.
“How do you know I’m doing the right thing?” she asked while she was crawling on her hands and knees through a vent in Fontaine’s sunken city.
“You’ve already done it.” Booker’s smooth baritone was just as warm as she remembered.
“I - I don’t know if I trust myself,” she murmured and paused to let a Splicer pass underneath.
“Do you trust me?”
That at least made her smile. “You mean, do I trust my subconscious? Or would I have trusted Booker?”
“Either,” Booker replied easily.
“Yes. I suppose it depends on the circumstances,” she hedged. “I shouldn’t have trusted you at the beginning.”
“I’m not a trustworthy guy,” Booker agreed.
“But here and now, I suppose I would.” She crawled a bit further. There was a lockpick stuck between the metal sheets that she could just barely reach.
Booker hummed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not really here.” He continued, louder, “Careful. Suchong’s Laboratories are right ahead.”
“You’re somewhere,” Elizabeth murmured.
— FIN —