thisavrou_log | [CLOSED] LA's, Truth to Tell, Not Much Different--

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[CLOSED] LA's, Truth to Tell, Not Much Different--

Who: The Legs and The Eyepatch
When: May 11th
Where: Kauto
What: One of Elizabeth's storytime regulars has gone missing, she enlists one of the few people she still knows, Badou, to help track the kid down. As with most kidnapping incidents, things go south.
Warnings: Badou. And violence. Definitely some blood.

It'd been some time between Elizabeth's bar fight, but not much longer since Thane had left. Vaguely, she's been aware of things going on around Thisavrou, but has she had any desire to engage with any kind of activity or person on both planets? Not exactly.

She has to eat, so she goes through the motions of work. That's easy enough. Shelve this here, catalog this there, straighten up the inevitable disaster the children left in the kids' section. That-- she didn't mind so much. She smiled at one of the girls who was hugging one of the beanbag chairs and pouting, and crouched down.

"Viola it's time to go home, where's your brother?" The two of them usually walked home together, but now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen Frankie in a few days. Viola gripped the beanbag tighter and Elizabeth's smile flickered.

"Dad said he's coming back soon?" The little girl didn't sound convinced, so neither was Elizabeth. As she closed up the desk, Elizabeth casually abused her librarian privileges and found some full names. Sure enough, Frankie had been abducted a week ago, and his parents were getting desperate if all of their network activity could be trusted.

"...well, what the hell else am I doing?" she muttered, gathering up her coat and walking with purpose to the door. It's the first time she's actually decided to do something after work in a long, long time.

It's your favorite psych patient. What have you got on at the moment? Anything exciting?

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She's so razor-focused on the kidnapper, the less-than-human, the child-thief-- that she hardly notices Badou grab Frank. She's going to kill him, then they'll all be safe, she'll be safe, her life can move forward, she'll know who she is and what she's doing here--

Oh God no.

No, it's happening all over again. She's lost and alone, the world doesn't make any sense because it's all moving so, so fast away from what she knew before. The people who could help her make sense of it are long gone and she can't reach them. And here is this deluded man-- not Comstock-- who she can take her rage out on and no one would blame her. But she could never live with it.

Badou almost reads her mind-- it's not worth laying this on her conscience. She looks at Badou, eyes wide and wet, her hands shaking on the gun as she slowly lowers it. "It's not worth it..."

One of the tendrils of air passes between them, and the alarm that registers on Elizabeth's face seems to completely pull her out of the spiral. Once she sees what's happening, realizes there's no way to convince him it's not her, the color drains from her face.

"Oh no..." She waves her hand up and closes it into a fist-- and nothing happens. Panic shifts to terror, she's lost control of this tear. "Get out. Get everybody out-- GET THEM OUT NOW!"

She drops the gun and uses both hands, the tendrils starting to fight with some kind of energy reminiscent of the Ingress. Something is holding this tear open, and her own mind is so scattered she can't focus enough to find the metaphorical knob on this particular door. Her nose starts to bleed as she strains to bring her hands together, as the tear shrinks and pops open, as the tidal wave gets closer.

The kid is terrified, Badou's terrified, Elizabeth is terrified-- this is all one big frightfest. Worse: it's reality. Its not that he's scared of his companion, he trusts her-- but whatever the fuck's coming out of her? In a place like this? Not so much.

Keeping the kid behind him, Badou takes one step towards Elizabeth.

"But what about you? I'M NOT GONNA JUST LEAVE YOUR ASS HERE!" He could care less about their adversary, who's now cowering as low to the ground as possible, where he belongs, with the dirt. Things could get very, very bad if that....wormhole or whatever it is doesn't close.

But if it closes with Elizabeth in it? That'd be worse.

"You have to!!" Elizabeth says over her shoulder, still working to close the tear. The Ingress energy is fighting her, she can feel it jacking open the tear while she pushes it inwards.

"This is my mistake--" she says, barely audible over the wind and sea. "--this happened before, just like this. I let my anger control me, and I've put you and another child in harm's way." She swallows, facing down the wave. "It's alright. I died the first time I let my anger get out of control-- I'm ready for a second time."

She's not, though. She's scared, but there's no other choice. Not if Badou and Frank don't want to drown.

Another chi-- died the first time?!

He finds himself take another step, and another, and another--

"Can't you do this from somewhere NOT in the fucking middle of twister zero?! DYING IS NOT OKAY, ITS THE OPPOSITE OF OKAY!"

But it's harder for Badou to keep coming forward, tendrils whipping about and stealing his voice, pushing him back.

"No, this came from me!" Elizabeth swallows and redoubles her efforts to close the tear, and for a moment it looks like it's going to work-- then it slingshots open again and Elizabeth shouts in frustration. "This is a tear, it's a hole between timelines, between possible universes, I create them because when I was an infant--!" She holds her right hand out, the one with half a little finger. "--half of my pinky was left in another timeline! I used to have perfect control, but the Ingress--"

The Ingress picks that moment to try to open the tear wider, but Elizabeth groans and holds it. "--the Ingress interferes with it! I have to close it Badou..." It'll close if she dies, though. Probably. Or the Ingress will keep it open and everything will be for nothing.

"But if I can't, if I die, it unravels-- you'll be fine if you're far enough away! It'll be alright!" It has to be, because she can't drag another person into her blast radius. Not again, no more. She's so tired of destroying lives because she doesn't have one of her own.

Elizabeth looks back at Badou, the tear holding for the moment, the image flickering between colored and fuzzy blue. Half of her face is covered in blood, but the rest of it is tired and hurting. "It is okay. I'm tired, Badou. I've been fighting to find a reason to live for a long time, ever since I lost Ivan. If I go out doing this one thing..." She smiles weakly and nods her chin towards a terrified Frankie. "At least he'll remember me for it."

He feels his throat close up with half strangled shouts, accusations, 'what about me's in the face of remembering her for her deeds. He'll remember this tired smile, the blood, and remember a very different smile on someone else before the end.

He'll remember how he stuck there, unable to move...about like now.

"Is that what you really want? Is there really no other fucking way?" He's not even going to get to the whole pinkie thing, he's confused as is. He knows if he doesn't get the kid out of here now, no one'll tell their story.

He begins to take a step back, but he doesn't turn his back on her.

Children were impressionable, children remembered-- but Badou? She wouldn't blame him if he forgot her. Almost everyone had. Life had moved away from the Moira, into something normal and strange to her-- but perfectly acceptable for nearly everyone else. What else did she expect? Invitations to events like this one, where everything went tits up and she was staring death in the face again? In a twisted way, she's almost glad it could end like this-- her doing something.

"Of course it's not what I want--" Elizabeth shouts back over the noise, nearly choking on her closing throat. "I wanted to go on so many more dates with Ivan. I wanted to tell Miles everything about my abilities. I wanted to paint my nails with Wanda again. I wanted to watch the stars go by on the Moira's observation deck every night for the past month. I wanted to find a real home, with friends and people I could think of as family." She shakes her head. "But I can't-- I'm not built that way, this is how it happens every time! Everyone disappears and I'm left never knowing how to keep going! It destroyed me then, it's going to kill me this time too!

"My life is nothing but circles-- it has to stop!!" Elizabeth's hair and hands glow a violent white and the tear snaps to the size of a manhole, Ingress energy crackling angrily as it fights her. "But no one else is stopping here, not today!"

God, she's fought so hard. To do the right thing, to keep going, to not give up. His heart tears just like this tear is a fucking tear in the ass-- but at the same time, he's angry about it. Angry she feels she has nothing left.

"THAT'S NOT FUCKING TRUE! None of that is true! And when you live through this, I'll show you! So don't just give up! You ain't a pussy! You're stronger than steel."

But there's no more he can do for her. No more he can physically do, spiritually, anything. All he can do is grab Frankie, throw him over his shoulder, and take off-- biting his lip until it bleeds because he doesn't want to leave her.

(how many more times will he be forced to leave someone behind because he isn't strong enough?)

Finally, finally Badou takes Frankie and runs. Who knows what's happened to his kidnapper-- Elizabeth is fairly certain she doesn't care. All she cares about right now is that Badou and Frankie are out of the warehouse before the tear inevitably won't close all the way and lets this tidal wave in. She's putting everything she can into it, but the more energy she feeds into it, it feels like the Ingress energy just meets her mark for mark.

She closes her eyes and exhales. She can let go of it now, she can just let it come in and it would seal itself once she's gone.

'He's right, you know.'

Elizabeth doesn't open her eyes. She knows what-- who-- she'd see, and it would only serve to make her more unstable and less willing to let go. "You're not real," she says to herself, to the hallucination in the shape of Booker DeWitt. "You're not real, you're not real, don't say anything to me, don't talk to me--"

'None of it is true. You just don't want to get back up again. You figure you've fallen down enough, time to stay down.'

"I'm tired Booker--" She swears under her breath when she realizes she's talking to herself again, and she won't get out of this trap until she's finished the conversation. "--I've lost everyone I loved, I tried to have a normal life with a job and a home, but Comstock ruined me. Those few months where I wasn't in my tower, those few years I spent trying to feel satisfied, it was too much, it changed me too much.

"Please, just let me go. Let me end this, I want to rest."

'No you don't.' God, she can almost feel Booker's hands on her shoulders. 'I'm in your head. If you wanted to die, I wouldn't be here.' The realization is like a jolt through her spine, and Elizabeth opens her eyes. The wave is finally cresting, it must be twenty or thirty feet tall. 'Your friends, even the ones who are gone, would say the same thing Badou did-- you don't get to ignore them because they're not here! Badou is speaking for them now, and you have to goddamn listen Elizabeth!'

The wave's about to break, but she can't see how fast it's coming-- her eyes are full of tears she's tried not to cry for months. "I miss them, I miss you."

'Close it, Elizabeth!' She pulls her hands together, slowly, as the wave rushes to them. 'CLOSE IT!!'

The wind is deafening as the tear snaps closed, Elizabeth screaming over it from the effort. The Ingress energy tries to hold the line, but what opened this disaster-- Elizabeth's will-- is more than a match for the phenomena. It collects in an angry ball, condensing as the tear closes, and disbands outwards in a blinding flash that consumes Elizabeth and sends her flying backwards. For a second, as the energy passes through her, she disappears.

But only for a second. She hits the ground and rolls a ways before she stops. There's no blood down her nose and mouth, it's all on her forehead now, and down one side of her face.

It's almost deafening how quiet it is now. Frankie's self-appointed uncle is audibly shaking against the cubicle door, but Elizabeth is close enough that he can start crawling towards her. She looks hurt, she might need help.

Edited 2017-08-03 16:59 (UTC)

(Badou, on the other side 'see you on the other side', has his hands full with a beyond frightened kid, or else he'd rush in there, guns blazing.

How he so wants to)

All is quiet. Too quiet. Even alarms have stopped blaring, perhaps they never did, couldn't compensate for the chaos that had just happened. Either way, Frankie's shitty uncle probably pissed himself, and hardly dares to approach Elizabeth for a few moments.

Though eventually he does, cautiously, crawl forward, a shaking hand reaching for her wrist at the very least. He doesn't want to go near her, he really doesn't, but...to get out of here, he's going to have to pass her. Might as well see if she lived through...whatever that was.

The scum that he is.

The sound is what she hears first-- the scrape of knees over concrete. Elizabeth can't imagine what that sound is, why she's hearing it when everything had been fading and she'd started to feel no pain at all. Sally there, watching her slip away, Elizabeth wishing she had the strength to tell her what new life awaited her once Jack arrived.

Instead, the floor is hard and she can feel her limbs. Her head doesn't even hurt. All at once she thinks: Atlas.

Her eyes snap open and she grabs the wrist of the hand reaching for her. The man shrieks and cowers, Elizabeth searching his face while her eyebrows come together.

"Who the hell are you?"

For a moment, the piece of scummy shit can't form words, so unexpectedly was her revival that he lets out a second shriek to follow the first.

Oh god, he's got to think quick-- he's good at that! Got to think fast because she doesn't seem to remember his face and this is the best news possible! Even more than not actually shitting himself after seeing all that.

"I-I'M THE JANITOR! I'm just the janitor-- I saw something-- something weird happen, some...stuff floating? So I came to see what was going on and found you! Are you alright, miss?"

"The janitor?" Elizabeth arches an eyebrow and looks around. The first thing that's immediately apparent is that the floor seems dry. The air seems dry. And there's night sky outside those high-up windows if she can believe her eyes. Somehow, she's not in Rapture anymore.

But she is in a warehouse, and apparently this warehouse has a janitor?

"Yes. Somehow," Elizabeth says, wiping her face and examining the blood that comes away on her hand. She should be dead from head trauma right now, but she can hear and see clearly and she's fairly certain she can stand. Which she does, after letting go of the janitor's arm. She looks around again, and pauses when she spots a gun-- her gun-- on the floor.

"Where am I?"

Thank fuck, she believes him! She believes him and won't kill him! Thank god...just have to keep in control and NOT PUT HIMSELF IN THE LINE OF FIRE. Literally and figuratively.

"You're on Kauto, currently. One hell of a place...lots of business...no idea what you're doing here-- maybe you got lost in town?"

"Kauto?" She's never heard of it. But apparently 'businesses' equals warehouses she carries guns in. Elizabeth goes over to her handgun and picks it up, tucking it into the holster. More is going on here than she knows, she's been here before-- waking up confused and unsure of where she is and what's going on.

"Can you show me the way back into town?"

A little more nervous now-- she's got enough sense to retrieve the gun, great-- he sweats profusely, but can't refuse. A normal guy would help a girl out! Even if he had stuff to do, like get the hell outta dodge.

"Sure can! No problem. Let's get out of here, for starters."

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[CLOSED] LA's, Truth to Tell, Not Much Different--

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