Rapture Noir: Intertwined

        Booker...Booker....BOOKER!

        I feel cold, and I feel water everywhere, soggy dress, wet hands. I see myself, like a reflection in the mirror, and that reflection has its own reflection. They stretch out to infinity and all are in the same place. My fingers are closed around the coattails of his vest and I feel two other pairs of hands helping me. I cannot help but see the struggle of his body against the water, even as he willingly suffers. His face is blurry and it slowly dissolves in the water as he ceases to struggle. Other reflections follow. Then me.

 

        I'm strapped to a chair, a spike of iron is lodged in my back and seeps something into me. All I can do is struggle and pray in my mind for Booker to come, while I'm attended to by men in surgeon's coats and rubber gloves. I cry out as I feel the iron in me, rubbing raw against my spine. But he is not here, he is not here... I feel an electric shock and I spasm painfully. I am paralyzed. I cannot do anything but whimper and curl up, even though the leather restraints bind me.

        Booker... Booker...

 

        I am alone in a dark hall, surrounded by walls of steel and glass, murky green of the sea visible beyond the glass. A man lies on the ground haplessly in front of me, struggling to say say something he only whimpers and chokes on his own blood. The gaping hole in his chest and and the look of guilt are the sweetest things I have seen so far. I feel his blood on my face and my hands, and I revel in the crimson liquid. I crouch beside him and stick my hand in his hair to grab it and pull up his face to look him in the eye again. And I can only see Booker, his eyes shining with tears and pain. Oh god, Booker stay with me, I didn't mean to...

 

        I woke up with a gasp and a headache attacked me as soon as I opened my eyes. Everything was blurry and I squinted my eyes, trying to avoid harsh light that flooded my vision. I squirmed and slowly begun to make out my surroundings. The place looked like a gallery, only most of the items were on the ground and covered up or packed away. It was filed to the brim with busts and statues, paintings and items of craft. The room itself looked wretched and not in the best state, but that was the last thing on my mind as I tried my best to wake up and fight off the pain.

        Next to the bed I saw a man standing and looking at me with a friendly smile. I looked at him closely and noticed no one other than Eddie. I knew the man, but it took me a moment for memory of who he was to punch through the mist of the thumping headache. Booker's friend and a bar owner, He seemed friendly enough and it appeared that I wasn't in immediate danger for now.

       

        I tried to speak up but only an incoherent squeak came out. I was parched and Eddie must have noticed as I moved my hand to my throat and mouthed wordlessly for water. He returned a a scarce moment later, holding a glass in his hand.

        "Here you go, miss." He sat down in a chair nearby while I clutched the glass and drank from it with big gulps.

        "Say, it wasn't an accident, that thing on your head, was it?" He asked me, with curiosity and and an inkling of care.  I suppose it was normal for anyone to ask, but I still felt rather shocked. I set the glass aside, after draining half of it.

        "E-edie, right? Where am I? How did I get here?"

        "Well, I don't know where were you headed, but I scooped ya up at my door, so I was hoping to get few answers."

        "Its fine. Thank you for help." Now that the headache slowly settled and Eddie looked at me as if waiting for my next word, I became aware of myself. I touched my head and felt a bandage that went around it and covered up the wound. I also became aware of the blanket over me and the fact that I was just in my bra. I looked around and noticed my bloodied blouse hanging on a metal bedpost at my feet.

       

        Eddie became visibly embarrassed once he saw me looking at the shirt and under the blanket.

        "No worries, I only took it off to look you over and clean you up, that's all."

        I looked at him again. I was too weak to argue or treat the man with suspicion, but he was right, blouse was the only thing to come off. I was still in my skirt and stockings under the blanket. "£Eddie, could you bring me something for that headache?"

        "Sure, I'll be back in a moment."

       

        As Eddie took off to bring me some pills, I rested my head on the pillow and sighed. I will have to go medical pavilion to have that wound looked at... but as my thoughts became clearer, I suddenly recalled why I was here.

        I knew Booker from inside out, right down to his fears and preferences. I couldn't find it at all strange that he had met someone in this place. After all he was a lost man and people like him search for some safe harbor, a kin soul. Abigail appeared to be similar, from what few glimpses I had of her. But I never thought about her seriously, her and Booker together especially. How could I? I felt no jealousy, she was no obstacle to me, yet I didn't expect her to do what she did. Rapture had its way of twisting everyone and everything as they chased their desires, like a monkey's paw wish.

 

        Comstock often mused over whether things are changed if we glimpse into them before they happen in his many logs. The problem of observation, as Luteces noticed and proved with constants and variables and as Schrodinger described it neatly with his cat. Was Abigail of different Rapture a different person or did she fall in mad love with someone too? I saw alternate scenarios in Columbia and I learned to push on regardless, just as Booker did. and I learned ot push on to do what had to be done. Could I blame her for knowing Booker? No. But there was no way out for her.

       

        I winced as I turned my still throbbing head to pick up the glass. I tried to pay as much attention to the wound and be careful, but those thoughts bugged me, now that my own failing kicked in too.

        I was certain that the baptism was a conclusion of everything, yet I found myself with him in Rapture. My longing for him was too great and it wasn't the longing alone that brought me here, it was everything that he did, even though he had his place in another time and another city. But without him, I was empty and standing at the crossroads of infinity did not make me feel like its owner, but like someone who is invisible in a myriad of places, belonging nowhere.

       

        So I settled on Rapture, where we had no past. While the city lived up to its name in the beginning, I stopped seeing it that way once I learned of Ryan and Fontaine, of ideology without humanity and finally of Little Sisters. The parallel between them and my own experience was too great and painful for me to not act on it. I could have enlisted Booker's help from the start, but I knew better. I knew what would happen, even Booker could not hope to face the whole city without risking what I planned for us. I still owed him explanations but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Showing him that tear was hard enough, and I couldn't break the spell of those few blissful moments we've spent together, wanting more.

 

        I took a sip of water and thought about myself. I was not going to try and deny the responsibility, I did indulge in few things once I was free to go through any door I chose. Rapture was a dream, quite altogether different from Columbia, but at the same enticing and I liked it. I looked for a constant across the city which I could use to save the girls with; at the same time I enjoyed the lifestyle unconstrained by men or ideas, I enjoyed the glamour in the spotlight and the technology of the city and its goods. But Booker was still at the center of it all, and I wavered, unsure if Rapture is the place and if I was doing right by him, even as I could not resist.

 

        Eddie was back with a packet of painkillers in his hand. He handed them to me and I took one and swallowed it with water.      

        "Thank you again Eddie. Could you do one thing for me?"

        "Uhh, sure what is it?"

        "Could you try and get in touch with Booker for me? He is probably looking for me." I was hoping that I wasn't outstaying my welcome or anything of the sort, but I wasn't in any immediate danger either, unlike Booker.

        "Sure, I could do that." He stepped out again leaving me to my thoughts. I didn't want to linger in here more than I had to, as desperation set in. Booker was looking for me and Abigail thought she already won, and I kept convincing myself that it wasn't just us that were at stake but lives of little girls too.