"I don’t know what it is about this place…I never liked putting my money on fate. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m supposed to be here. I came to get away from my old life. Put my skill to some use. But sometimes…just sometimes…things seem so familiar to me. People I’ve never met, places I’ve never been. And the girl. Elizabeth.
They say that just happens with some people, you feel like you’ve known them your whole life. I guess that’s all it is. But the kid has a lot going on upstairs. I don’t even know if I can help, let alone how. Maybe she’s got the same feeling about Columbia that I do.
There’s something about this city. Like it’s full of bones nobody can see. But maybe that’s the point. The people here just keep unloading the skeletons they keep around so they can start over.
That’s what I did.
The question is, why do I feel like I’m past square one.”
The second she heard the door open, Elizabeth contemplated tossing the stupid thing over her head, making up some crazy story; it didn’t matter, as long as he didn’t know.
Why was his opinion so important?
But she spent too long thinking, and she was there now, holding the cigarette from the ends of her fingers. She settled on owning it. She squared her shoulders and stared him down.
"First, I’m eighteen. Second, don’t judge me."
Ah yes, very original.
"I’d like to see you deal with the news that you have children you abandoned, Booker.”
Booker puts his hands up in an almost mocking sort of submission.
"Alright, easy. I'm not here to judge. They don't like guys like me behind podiums."
At her last statement, he popped an eyebrow and moved his head back as if not hearing her properly affected his vision. Then he huffed a laugh and gave her a look of unamused disbelief.
"I think I would remember if I had kids, kid. Besides, you're too young to be a mother." That was a lie, lots of people Elizabeth's age had kids. But somehow-- even though she'd just told him she was eighteen and was sitting there smoking a cigarette-- to him, she was just a kid herself.
As a matter of fact, those days were so few and far between he often found himself wondering if it was worth the pay to keep going. But whenever he did take the pay into consideration, it was usually a yes. And considering today's pay, it was a begrudging yes.
He'd just seen the end to an investigation he didn't want to be a part of. It was the same old he said, she said, who's cheating who sort of witch hunt everyone knew the truth about, but never wanted to admit. So the lady of the house brought him in to dig up the proper amount of dirt to bury her husband under.
He sighed.
It was the same all over, part of him thought he'd have been better off in New York with the Pinkertons.
At least the scenery here was nice. Booker took comfort in walking around New Columbia during the day. There was an odd serenity to the whole place, and it was easy to see why so many people moved up here. There were always people smiling, there was always sunlig--
What happened to the sun?
Booker looked up to the cause of sudden shadow, a look of bewilderment cemented onto his features. He took several very quick steps back as the airship settled into a landing position, his bewilderment taking on an angrier edge when the door opened to reveal the responsible party.
At some point, Elizabeth would admit she had been the one stealing Booker’s cigarettes. At another point, she would teach him how to make his belongings more secure. At still another point, she hoped she would find something better to do with all of her nerves.
It was most likely the guilt that kept her perched on the bench just outside Booker’s agency. As she touched the flame to the end of the cigarette and took a drag, she caught herself hoping he would come out, or come back, or something, just so she could be wrong, just so he could tell her to stop.
No one had really looked out for her before, she realized as she watched the constellations drift overhead. Smoke curled its way out of her mouth when she sighed.
The world’s most absent man was her only friend, and the reason she was destroying her lungs. She vowed to go back to books.
Yet another late night, yet another dead end. And they wondered why he was keen on drinking. He ran a calloused hand through his hair, wondered briefly why he took this job in the first place, and muttered something less than gentlemanly under his breath before taking notice of the figure outside of his establishment.
Great.
He couldn't quite make out who it was from the light of the cigarette, but he was willing to bet it was some turned out broad who couldn't find the answers on her own.
If he had a nickel for every time he'd heard that story, he could retire.
It wasn't until he was close enough to make out her face that he choked on his own spite. The local girl who stopped in a few months back, and hadn't left him alone since, was sitting outside of his front door smoking like a chimney. Surprised wasn't the word for it. He'd never even heard her curse.
Alrighty, folks, so there are a few things I need to say to you all and they are under the cut.
You're all lovely people, and I would like to play with you.
I am leaving for Wyoming either tonight or tomorrow and I will be gone for two weeks without internet, so my available playtime is either the next hour or two weeks from now.
When I return from Wyoming, I am going to do what I can to be active on Booker, so that I can play with all of you.
My Skype is MarvelousManga, and if you'd like to plot, plan or talk to me, feel absolutely free to.
I apologize (for the umpteenth time) for my lack of activity.
If anyone wants to play like, right now, Booker's a PI in New Columbia so feel absolutely free to send him asks or hit me up on Skype or whatEVER your clever mind can think of.
And thank you for reading. You're beautiful and I love you.
[[ I think Comstock still exists in this world (I just don't think anyone's playing him at the moment XD). I'm not sure how to explain it though, other than maybe when Liz reset everything she made them different people? Or Booker went through a tear at some point and hasn't realized it. Not sure about that one, haha. Mods? Liz? Thoughts?]]
This is kind of for my own reference. As some of you know, I've been struggling to place Booker in this new world, and I've been speaking to Mod Jordan and FledglingLamb about what on Earth to do with him. Through a few discussions, I've decided on a rough estimate of what the hell happened to Booker from the end of Infinite to Beyond Rapture. Since our Post!Infinite thread is still open and happening, I'll just leave that to itself.
Headcanon:
When Elizabeth rewrote the world, Booker's past didn't change drastically. He was sixteen when he fought the Battle of Wounded Knee, joined the Pinkertons when he got home from war, and made a lot of mistakes with a lot of the wrong people. The trauma of losing Anna caused him to black out his memories of her, and of her mother, but a subconscious need to understand what happened to his daughter led him to become a detective. He believes it was just a decision he came across when he realized his skill set and experience might do him some good in that particular field.
A few years after he began his work, he traveled to Columbia on a job and decided to stay, thinking maybe the floating city held more high-dollar clientele. He was indebted to a few bad people back home, so Columbia seemed like a good move for all of the right reasons.
He had a strange sense of familiarity with people he was sure he'd never met before, and some of them even gave him nosebleeds when they spoke to him about things he couldn't remember doing.
Booker has a lot of nightmares, but never so strange as the ones he's had after coming to Columbia. People he's met there, people he doesn't recognize, bizarre happenings and terrible costs all swim in his head. He could never remember most of them when he woke up, but he always remembered they had to do with the young girl he'd met in town a few years after he'd come to Columbia. He always wrote it off, convincing himself she was just the person he saw most consistently, so she showed up more often in the dreams.
They're only dreams, to Booker.
If you guys have any feedback, anything to add, anything you'd like changed due to character relationships (Daisy, Fink, Luteces), hit me up, let's chat about it. This is a foundation for Booker's place in this rp, primarily, and I'm still working out kinks.
