daughter of columbia

sir, the word struck something in his mind and got his attention faster than his own name may have. he turned on the heels of his shoes to face the woman that had been speaking to him. his gaze fell to focus on her face in the dim lights of the mirror ball that was hanging in the center of the room. “uh, yes?” LOST, she was lost? not so long ago he’d been lost here as well. it was one of the last places - and time zones anyone needed to get lost in. especially someone that was so outwardly polite. “where are you trying to go?” he paused but only for a moment. “what are you looking for?” 

THE VALIDATION THAT SHE offers him makes his fucking skin crawl. There’s something so sickening about having someone validate his trauma – something about her assurance that he didn’t deserve it, that it was an atrocity, that Walter White was a cruel bastard who deserved to be melted alive in one of those god-forsaken barrels – it makes him want to jump out of his skin. Jesse has spent so long trying to convince himself that it wasn’t that bad, that he should be over it. There’s nothing worse than spilling his guts and then immediately feeling as though he’s exaggerated every fucking word.

He’s clearly grateful for the subject change when she begins speaking, but his gratitude is short-lived when she tells him that her own father cut off her finger and sold her. The same father who’d locked her away in a tower for nineteen years. 

     What a heavy burden, he wants to tell her. Let me carry it with you.

But instead he just swallows the lump in his throat, listening as she goes on, and when she holds up her hand, he reaches out and wraps his fingers around hers. It takes every goddamn ounce of self-control to keep himself from bringing her fingers to his lips. Her eyes carry such sorrow. He can’t possibly look away, not if his very life depended on it.

Oh, what he’d do to see her smile again.

      “Elizabeth…” he breathes, too much emotion behind it. 

Jesse knows what it’s like to have a shitty dad, but he doesn’t think he’d ever be able to understand trauma this deep, this painful. His grip on her fingers tightens just so. Part of him wants to ask her about the deep gashes on her back, ask her what her father had to do with those, but he knows better. 

      “Thank you for trusting me with this.” 

trauma has gone unspoken of for what feels like a lifetime --- elizabeth’s been yearning to let it out in some way, though she never anticipated it’d be so freely and openly, without judgement or blame, as this. here with jake, elizabeth feels a certain level of calmness she hasn’t felt in far too long. though, her heartbeat is a pace faster when he takes hold of her hand in his own. his touch is warm & it leaves a similar warmth settling in elizabeth’s chest.

she doesn’t expect him thank her, but when he does, one can easily spot a small, but genuine smile show on rosy lips --- sorrowful, but not displeased.   “ thank you. ”   her gaze hasn’t moved from his face.   “ --- and, thank you, too, jake. thank you for opening up. i’ve never met anyone who’s lived through so many atrocities. someone -- like me. ”   in a way; though their pain may differ in nature and cause, it’s pain all the same and it's just as much felt.

elizabeth swallows, her throat gone dry; she’s certain this is the most positive interaction she’s ever had in such a close proximity. she breaks eye contact only to look at the room around her, at the photo of a younger jake and an unidentifiable woman, of the decorations he’s put in the room.   “ it looks like you’ve still made a life for yourself, in spite of that. it’s beautiful here. ”

she thinks of his paintings, of the art he’s created that’s known to the rest of the world. maybe the rest of the world will see his messages, his feelings in those creations. maybe they won’t. regardless, elizabeth’s glad to have found him, glad to share this moment with him.

“ oh, um -- excuse me, sir. ”   elizabeth’s voice was quiet, soft, but loud enough to be heard over the din of the bar, or club, or --- well, to be quite honest, she’s not entirely sure what this establishment is, as she’s quite out of place here. her travels have lead her all over the world, but never to a country like this, and she’s having a bit of trouble adapting to the unfamiliar society here. the man she approaches seems a bit more colorful than the rest here, and elizabeth can only hope that he’ll be responsive her, at the very least.

“ can you understand me? i’m afraid i’m kind of -- lost. ”

THE WARMTH OF ANOTHER person is somehow welcome and sinister at the same time. It’s unfamiliar enough to be frightening, but Elizabeth exudes nothing but kindness, good-naturedness. He trusts her, almost implicitly, and almost immediately, and that scares the absolute shit out of him, but he lets her move closer and he doesn’t move away. Instead his marred, calloused hands curl around hers, delicate and small like a bird’s, and softer than anything he’s ever felt before. There’s a power behind that softness – something that tells him that it wouldn’t be there had she not had to learn what it means to be truly cruel. Jesse imagines his hands feel the same way. 

He can see her stare at his hands. He wonders what she thinks of them – he wonders what she thinks of him. But as her face darkens and the silence in the room begins to weigh them both down again, he’s reminded of the gravity of the situation, of the trauma they share, almost too similarly. She says that he’s dead, and then she cries, and he doesn’t fight the urge to wrap his arms around her and pull her into an embrace as comforting as he can manage. 

      “I understand.” he says, sensing her shame, her guilt. 

He releases her after a few seconds too long and when she looks at him again he forgets all that has ever ruined him, all that’s ever troubled him. He’s lost in her gaze, the same way he’d been lost in Jane’s, and he knows he looks starstruck and doesn’t bother to hide it this time. 

His eyes dart all over her face as she speaks: the corners of her lips, her eyes, her jawline. All of it moves so perfectly, like a machine made to function just right. He wants to lean forward and claim those lips in a kiss, but instead he takes a deep breath and tries to process her question, to answer it in the least amount of words. 

        “He was my junior year chemistry teacher.” he explains. 

Jesse knows that he needs to give her more information than that; knows how unsatisfying of an answer it is, however true it may be. 

       “He found out about my little operation and, uh… blackmailed me into workin’ for him. We had the best crystal in the world, swear to god. Everyone wanted it.” a pause. “People died for it. But Mr. White, he, uh… he just, he made me feel important. Like I was finally useful at somethin’, y’know? We were at basically the same skill level, but, um… he was Heisenberg. Like, a living God.” 

Jesse isn’t sure whether or not Elizabeth knows who Heisenberg is, or if she does, how much she knows, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t particularly feel like elaborating.

      “What about you? How did you meet your, um… y’know. Your abuser?” saying that word out loud leaves a sour taste on his tongue. 

elizabeth can feel her breath grow shallow as jake pulls her toward him. she’s confused at first -- what’s he doing? what does he seek to achieve -- before she realizes that he’s giving her a HUG, an embrace. & it then dawns on her that this is the first time anyone’s ever done this for her, anyone’s ever hugged her, for even her own father could not manage that simple, human contact. it feels so overwhelmingly intimate. she embraces him in return, fingers curling into the warm fabric and feeling his larger body against hers, newfound security she’s never had a glimpse of before within reach.

& then he pulls away, and maybe for him it may seem too late, but elizabeth wishes she had the courage to ask for MORE, to keep holding onto him, to feel his body against hers once again for any fathomable amount of time. she wonders if jake felt her heart beating as heavy as it does now. she wonders what his heartbeat feels like, too.

there are still tears lingering in the corners of her eyes when jake continues --- when she hears that jake was taken advantage of -- abused by -- his chemistry teacher. elizabeth’s never been to a highschool, but she recognizes the word, the name; this man has been looped into this since he was a child.

“ he was your teacher, ”   elizabeth repeats, softly, like she’s blown away by how deeply rooted his pain grows.   “ what a... a cruel thing to do to your own student. there’s no excuse for that. ”   again, she wants to hold him closer to her, to run a hand through his hair and protect him from a world that’s been so undeniably cruel to him. would that be peculiar, though? it feels like they’ve only just met.

“ no god, living or not, should ever treat someone like that. you’re so much better than he ever was. ”   elizabeth states this like she KNOWS it, deep within her bones, deep within her infinitely threaded soul.   “ you are so much more important than he ever was. ”

SPEAKING OPENLY ABOUT THOSE 187 DAYS never fails to strike a pang of guilt deep into his heart. With every word he speaks, he feels more and more like he should never open is mouth again. No matter how bad it was, he can’t shake the thought that someone out there had it worse, that he isn’t allowed to complain, to have such a difficult time talking about what happened. 

Still, a part of him wants to sit here with Elizabeth for hours, telling her every detail of his story. He wants to tell her about the people he misses. About Jane. Andrea. Gale. But he knows he’ll never be able to talk about those things, so he settles for imagining it instead – he imagines telling her, tearful and shaky, and he imagines her wrapping her arms around him and telling him that she understands. The thought brings tears to his eyes that he has to blink away before they spill down his cheeks. 

Jesse is overcome with an urge to tuck the stray strands of hair in her face back behind her ear as she speaks again. He wants to take her pain, her sorrow, and feel it for her. He wants to keep her safe. Happy. 

      “Me neither,” he murmurs. 

It is a strange sensation, this kind of kinship. To meet someone whose story is so eerily similar to his own that part of him thinks she might be a specter sent from the heavens to teach him some grand cosmic lesson. He wonders how many tears she’s stepped through. How many threads of space-time she’s crossed in getting here. Part of him wonders if there really are no such thing as coincidences. But, part of him knows that doesn’t really matter anyway. 

      “… Yeah,” he responds. “He was old and, like, dying. He had cancer. He, uh…” 

He sees himself, shaggy and dirty, holding a pistol in shaky hands and forcing Walt to tell him he wanted to die – and then refusing to do even one more thing that bastard wanted. Do it yourself. 

      “He’s dead. What… what about you?” 

there’s something so intimate about learning so much about jake in this way. theoretically, elizabeth could just step away, use her omniscience to find out everything about this man’s life. yet, she doesn’t want to -- she finds herself wanting to hear all about him, from him. hearing such a sorrowful, difficult tale from his own lips feels like the only way elizabeth should hear it. she wants to know the pain he’s lived through, wants to support him and reassure him that he’s not alone -- not with her own blood-soaked history.

when elizabeth sees tears spilling from jake’s eyes, she can ono longer resist the urge to move closer -- so, she does, situating herself closer beside him and placing both hands ujpon his -- tender, thin digits upon marred, scarred hands. elizabeth notes the details of the tattoo on his right hand. ( the same place booker once had himself branded. ) it’s peculiar, how she’s gone nineteen years without human contact, and yet she feels so drawn to have any bit of contact with jake she can get -- without him being made uncomfortable, of course.

“ as he should be, ”   her words are firm in response to jake’s proclamation, but there’s a crack in her voice, one of heartache for this man, for his own past.   “ your life is worth so much more than being spared on a whim. he never should have treated you like he did. ”

it’s a moment before elizabeth can gather the courage to answer jake’s returning question, though -- for, the thought invokes both the imagery of father comstock’s bludgeoned head, RED staining the water of a baptismal font. &, in the same note, her own hands holding booker down in the water, as per his request. booker, comstock --- the two men sometimes blur into one in her mind, the same man who was her only friend was also the father who abandoned her, the man who imprisoned her.

“ he’s dead, too -- the man who hurt me. ”   & now it is her own tears that flow from her eyes, dripping onto the worn blue fabric of her dress. elizabeth shudders, swallowing thickly.   “ i, um --- i made sure of that. ”    her gaze averted in shame & discomfort with herself, she shakes her head.

JESSE GIVES HER HAND A GENTLE SQUEEZE when she offers her condolences to him. He wants to tell her the same thing, to tell her that no one on earth deserves what happened to her, least of all her. He wants to tell her how amazed he is at her ability to remain tender in a world that’s made her hard. He knows there’s an underlying brutality to her – knows that no one can survive something like that and come away without the knowledge of what it means to truly hurt another person. Some people survive with it, turning it outwards at others. Some turn it inwards, like Jesse. But Elizabeth… 

She’s free. 

When she looks at him again, eyes full of tears and voice thick with sorrow, he forgets everything he wanted to say to her, lost in her gaze, her hands warm and soft against his own. He swallows hard at her question, his knee-jerk reaction to tell her about the bear that mauled him. But they both know it wasn’t a fucking bear. 

Where does he even start?

      “I, um… I used to be involved in some… some pretty bad shit. I was, uh… I was a meth cook. Best in the country. And, uh…” 

He heaves a sigh, unsure of how much information he should give her. 

      “My partner, he um… wanted me dead. Handed me over to this fucking – this gang of skinhead assholes ‘cause I’d turned on him. I wanted him to answer for what he’d done. He’d… he’d ruined everything I ever cared about. Took it all from me and acted like I was an idiot for suspecting him. Son of a bitch poisoned a kid just to get me to do what he wanted.” 

His jaw is clenched in anger, unable to hold back the hatred in his heart. 

      “Anyway, they, uh… instead of killing me they took me to their, like, headquarters or whatever. Kept me in a cage in the ground and fucking mutilated me. For… for six months. I escaped when Mr. Wh – uh, he came back and decided to just fuckin’ spare me on a whim.” 

her hold on jake’s hand only becomes more firm as he tells her his own story. elizabeth wants to hold him like he’s someone she’s known for years, like they’ve got a shared history behind them, as if they’re anything more than two people with disturbingly similar traumas who’ve only just met. she feels a shiver run down her spine as he recounts his past line of work & the partner that wanted him dead. a BETRAYAL. a hand-over to a group of sinister people. elizabeth knew that sort of life well, though familiarity did not make it easier to hear.

“ oh, god, jake. i’m so sorry. ”   voice breaks as the hand she’s resting atop his rubs reassuring, comforting circles into the scarred flesh. her touch is warm, soft.   “ i don’t understand how anyone could be so senselessly cruel, even after -- everything i’ve experienced. ”   even elizabeth, who’d killed others had done so out of necessity, out of pressure & not without devastating amounts of GUILT. not without massive quantities of trauma. she couldn’t even fathom what would lead someone to posion a child.

she looks to jake, understanding the anger in that tenses his jaw & fills him with hatred. elizabeth’s disposition mainly remains soft, gentle -- though, she relates to that level of hatred, knows it well from her won experience.   “ you’ve been so kind to me, and to think you’ve been through something so awful--- ”   for six months, even. what are the odds, out of every encounter in any reachable occurrence of universes that she’d run into someone with such a shockingly gruesome, SIMILAR history? elizabeth cannot fathom how anyone could specifically be so cruel toward the man sitting by her. he'd been nothing but decent toward her from the moment the two of them met, and to think that anyone could torture him — well, she does greatly empathize with him.

“ it was even six months for you as well? ”   there's some irony in her tone, but it's not exactly humorous, given circumstances.   “ i'm surprised we didn't grow up beside each other. i've… ”   she swallows back more tears, heart heavy at the thought of any horror that could've happened to jake.   “ i've never met anyone else who's been through something like this before. ”   something like what she'd been through. it's all too similar, even down to the way he almost adds a mister to the man who's lead him astray.

JESSE’S FACE FALLS AS SHE CONTINUES. There’s is no way – absolutely no way that there was another person on earth who’d experienced the same hell that he had. It feels absolutely unreal to hear another living, breathing human being say the words ‘for six months, i was tortured.’ 

He can feel her anxiety, her sorrow, her burdens. Whoever this man is that she mentions, this family member, he left a deep and lasting scar on her psyche. Jesse can’t help but wonder about his role in all of this, even though it’s none of his business. All he can really think about is the horrors that Elizabeth must have been subjected to, with people trying to steal away a power like that. He feels tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, emotions bubbling up in his chest and threatening to spill over. He wipes his eyes with his free hand.

      “I… fuck. I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, Elizabeth.” 

It can’t possibly be an appropriate time to chime in with ‘me too!’ 

There’s an energy about her hat Jesse can feel when she looks at him again; an energy with power like he’s never felt before. She’s undeniably strong, undeniably calloused, and yet… so warm. Compassionate. She longs for a connection in a universe that she’s so long felt disconnected from. Jesse imagines that hopping from timeline to timeline on the wings of space-time tears is a lonely existence. He can’t imagine Elizabeth existing without forming bonds with others. 

She asks him if he ever feels caged. He glances to the space above the bed, where a painting hangs, faintly lit by moonlight. A reddening evening sky with two birds shines through a series of thick iron bars, painted in a deep, thick black. It had been the first painting he’d ever done. That view of the sky from behind those bars is a familiar one; one that had made him famous. 

      “… Yeah. I do.” 

she cannot speak of her past without being hit by fragments of it like shrapnel left over from a massive explosion. the last moments of it are the most vibrant -- booker returning after half a year with no appearances, putting a halt to it. her own hands pulling open a tear that dropped her torturers into a storm that undoubtedly would rip THEM apart. the unfathomable power that she’d gain not long after it all. but most vivid of all memories was the PAIN. the tenderness of bruises & electrical shocks, the holes left from needles prodding into various parts of her body, the poorly-healed surgical wounds from leftover experimentation. even now, it had healed, but it didn’t feel that way.

the way jake tells her that he KNOWS what it’s like, his eyes casting toward a painting above the bed that shows iron bars blocking a sky above -- the way his voice sounds, elizabeth knows his shared experience to be true. even if the details haven’t been shared, she instantly feels akin to him far more than she ever has.

“ i’m sorry that you have to bear the burden of knowing what that’s like. ”   her voice is undoubtedly trembling now, as is the rest of her body. elizabeth can no longer contain the tears that fall from her eyes, & though she doesn’t cry loudly, in the same way, she doesn’t bother to hide this emotion. phantom pain & memories that have kept her from sleeping properly in GOD ONLY KNOWS how long have kept her existence a miserable one. she’s felt disconnect from every other person she’s met --- before meeting HIM.

there must be a story behind those bars, one that can’t be easy to recall. still, elizabeth cannot quell that burning urge to learn as much as she can about him. she finds herself inching just a bit closer to jake, longing for contact she’s been so deeply deprived of for her whole life. her own tear-filled gaze meets his, and in a voice thick with pain & emotion alike, she speaks to him again.   “ jake --- ”   her hands haven’t moved from his. elizabeth hopes that he doesn’t mind.

JUST LIKE THAT, THE TEAR IS GONE and the silence that envelops them is deafening. The bright moonlight that illuminates the room absolutely pales in comparison to the bright green beams of the aurora borealis that had been within arms length just moments ago. 

Her fingertips against the marred skin of his knuckles shouldn’t elicit the response that it does. He has to bite down hard on his lower lip to keep a noise from escaping him at the feeling of someone else’s kind touch – a touch he hadn’t realized he’d been missing until this exact moment. Goosebumps break out over the surface of his skin. He hopes that Elizabeth doesn’t notice. 

He’s so awestruck at the sheer power behind every move she makes – absolutely astounded that someone so kind, so curious, could wield a power as dark as this. It makes her infinitely more mysterious, more alluring. She is everything he wants to understand, personified. 

      “You… your dad locked you in a room for nineteen years?” 

He frowns. The glance she steals at his scars doesn’t go unnoticed – but this time, Jesse doesn’t feel the need to shy away from that gaze, instead letting her take in as much of the view as she wants. After all, it’s only fair. 

      “How… I mean, the people who… who did that to you…” 

He trails off. Part of him already knows the answer. No one escapes with marks like those without leaving marks on others, too. Jesse knows what it is to escape captivity. He knows the price that must be paid for freedom. He meets her eyes, his gaze soft, understanding. 

      “… Are you safe, now?” 

“ i am. they can’t get to me anymore. ”    she nods, swallowing dryly. her heart feels heavy with the weight of everything she’s told him -- & that’s only just the beginning of it all. she wonders how he obtained the scars he bears -- they look as if they’d healed over much longer ago than her own. if elizabeth had less of a sense of boundary, she’d be undoubtedly tempted to reach out and touch the raised marks along his face as well.

“ it wasn’t a room, but a tower, yes. i was isolated, save for my only friend, who also happened to be my WARDEN. for a time when i grew up, i was able to leave through tears, but they were just wish fulfillment at the time. i mean, i never wanted to really LEAVE until i knew for sure that i was trapped there. ”   once the siphon was installed. elizabeth’s fingertips linger on the surface of jake’s scars, gauging his reaction carefully.

“ a man came to me once. he was -- family, i suppose. ”   there’s an audible note of PAIN in her words, like speaking of that particular man was an act of being tortured itself. saying an alternate version of her father didn’t seem quite right, so she’d leave booker’s description as that for the time being.   “ he freed me. a lot happened in between then, but -- essentially, my warden pursued me. he wasn’t happy that i’d left, he wanted me to come back, and in the end i had to sacrifice my freedom to protect the same person who’d helped me escape. ”

her eyes linger where the tear once was. speaking of this is difficult -- it’d be easy for elizabeth to run away at the easiest convenience, leave this whole story behind. yet, she didn’t WANT to. she wanted to stay -- needed it, even when her voice turns lower, hollow upon speaking of it all.   “ for six months, i was -- tortured, indoctrinated, experimented on. they did everything they could to take my power, my freedom. ”

THE ANXIETY BUILDS IN HIS CHEST as Elizabeth reaches forward to take his hand in her own, and he threads their fingers together, mostly for his own comfort, so that he feels that he has a secure hold on her. Like she might disappear if he doesn’t hold her tight. She speaks about an ability, and Jesse’s mind begins to race with the endless possibilities until – 

What the fuck? 

A cool, green light floods the room, reflecting off of his wide eyes, the cold air blowing his hair back. His first thought is, of course, that he’s never had such an in-depth, realistic hallucination. Perhaps this is what it is to be truly insane, to have such a loose grip on reality that there’s no telling what is real and what is not. He gapes at the tear, breathless, as she begins explaining it to him as if there’s any possible way he could ever wrap his mind around it. 

The weight of what she says to him begins to set in very slowly. The fact that she’s able to do this – to just pick a place and a time and literally rip open a portal – must make her an infinitely powerful person. A god. Someone with the power to create and destroy everything in her path – a weapon. And he can’t imagine what people would do to get their hands on her. 

      “… W-What…” he breathes, his throat dry. 

He can’t seem to look away from the tear, his fingers tightening around her hand. 

      “Does – Is… is this how you… came into my gallery? Can you… can you, like, use these to travel?” 

He turns to look at her, almost all the fear gone from him as he stares at her face, awestruck. 

      “That’s… that’s incredible.” 

elizabeth gauges jake’s reaction like it’s the sole thing her life depends on. the bewilderment & fear aren’t unexpected, though her heart still flutters anxiously at the chance that things could go awry in a horrible way.  ( anything’s possible, right? )  yet, he doesn’t react terribly at all -- not yet, at least, much to elizabeth’s relief. he asks questions, curious, and then states something that she surely hadn’t anticipated -- that it’s INCREDIBLE. her hold on his hand remains firm.

“ thank you. ”   her words are soft, voice unsteady, tears ( the crying kind, not the universe-distorting variety ) pricking in the corner of her bright eyes. she shivers from the cold of the alaskan winter she’s just opened up into jake’s bedroom, and realizing it’s her own doing, she’s quick to close the tear. it vanishes into thin air, the only remnants being a few flakes of snow that gently flutter to the bed and the floor beneath it. her free hand finds its place on jake’s -- his hand that she’s been clinging so dearly to. oh, & it’s frightening, but she finds herself wanting to tell him EVERYTHING.

“ to answer you, though -- yes, it’s how i came here. they're like -- oh, they’re like doors that can open up to -- ANYTHING. ”   a fingers tenderly run over jake’s hand, over knuckles that have scarred over. she could get so easily lost in such a small surface, damaged but healed.

“ i’ve been able to make them for as long as i’ve been able to form memories. when i was a child, my father decided that locking me away was preferable to raising a daughter like me. ”  there’s a twinge of bitterness in her voice, & she sighs.   “ i spent the first nineteen years of my life isolated, and that was before all of -- this. ”   a nod of her head to gesture toward the scars along her body. as she speaks, she can’t help but look to what scars jake has visible -- those on his hands & face -- and wonder what caused his pain.

THE WAY HER SOUL SEEMS TO leave her voice as she recalls her trauma breaks Jesse’s heart in half. He wants to reach out to her, to pull her close against his chest and hold her and tell her he understands what that’s like, but he doesn’t. Instead he just takes a seat next to her on the bed, leaving a good amount of space between them so that she doesn’t feel uncomfortable. 

He can see that round wound in his mind’s eye – he can see that hole in her back and suddenly, he can almost feel it on himself. His skin breaks out into goosebumps and he swears he can feel pressure at the base of his neck, but he knows it isn’t real. He just swallows the lump in his throat and meets her eyes when she looks at him. 

God, those eyes. He’s never seen someone else so expressive, so unafraid to be vulnerable and sorrowful in the face of a stranger. Jesse finds himself lost in them for a long time, trapped in the serene blue pools of light and the emotion behind them. He doesn’t want to ever leave. 

      “Yeah.” he breathes. 

He can feel his heart beating in his chest, anxious to understand what she means, anxious to find out why on earth anyone would want to hurt someone like her. Part of him is afraid that it will be too similar. That he won’t be able to hear her trauma without reliving part of his own. It would be worth it, though; to find that kind of solidarity with someone else is a very rare thing. 

He sets a gentle, reassuring hand on her knee. 

      “Tell me everything.” 

it feels as if she’s been set alight by a mere spark, brought to life again by a sudden jolt. she can feel jake’s anxiety -- not in some otherworldly way, really, but in empathy that she’s never been too good at containing. ( booker had oft tried to hurry her along, tug her away from sources of empathy and connection. she hadn’t gotten this far before. )

the hand of her knee, gentle as it is, raises her heart rate more than its already quickened pace. elizabeth’s never spoken much about her trauma before, hasn’t had many to speak about it to begin with. there’s blood on her hands that she never wanted there, the unwilling but still long-complete deed of murderous action severing any bonds she had in the past. if she gets close to jake, will he beg her to kill him inevitably? will someone take him from her? will he prove to be like the rest, ready to take advantage of her vulnerability? anything could happen, & it’s frightening.

it doesn’t matter. elizabeth wants to tell him, and looking into those equally captivating eyes of him, she begins to speak.   “ i think it might further my point to prove what i can do to to you. i have a certain -- ability. some might call it a gift. just -- watch this. ”   she reaches forward to take jake’s hand, longing for more contact. she’s not sure if it’s to reassure him or herself. with a mere flick of her wrist, her free hand rips open a tear.

it’s simple, familiar -- probably the gentlest way she can break it to jake without fearing that he’ll do something absolutely drastic. about a foot in diameter, the hole through thin air gives way to a view of a sight that isn’t uncommon for this area -- the aurora borealis. a sky alight with vibrant colors, much more than the current sky as it is in this world. cold air wafts through as if she’s opened a door to the house. she watches it with a distant, hazy expression, through her hold on jake’s hand tightens.

JESSE IS SUDDENLY AWARE OF HOW UTTERLY shocked he must look, his blue eyes wide and his jaw slack. With a clear of his throat he rights himself, watches as she apologizes and folds in on herself, wringing her hands, stepping towards him. He feels a pang of guilt shoot through him – he knows what it is to be gaped at. What it is to be asked that question from a place of curiosity rather than true concern; and he doesn’t want Elizabeth to feel that way. 

      “No, no, don’t – don’t apologize. I’m sorry, I should’ve – I shouldn’t have asked.”

But then she offers to open up to him. She offers to share her story. The shocked expression he’d been wearing previously returns tenfold and he stares at her again, utterly awestruck at her willingness to speak about what is so obviously a massive trauma. He’s never been able to do that, though he’s always wanted to. 

It seems like such an impossible task in his mind that her blatant ability to do the impossible seems to shatter his mind for a brief moment before he shakes his head, clears his throat. 

      “I – um, wow. Sorry, it’s just… how… how do you..?” 

How do you do that? How do you open yourself up to other people? How do you unburden yourself? 

      “Sorry. I wanna hear it, if you wanna tell me… I’m no stranger to ugly stories.” 

He takes a step towards the bed, setting the two thick throws at the foot of it and setting the pillow on top, soon to be completely forgotten. 

      “Do you, um… should we sit, or..?” 

she’s silent as jake seems to fumble over his words, how he apologizes and struggles to word what he’s thinking. elizabeth meets his gaze as he does, her own blue gaze cautious & just about as wide as his is currently. she’s greatly tempted to ask just what it is he means -- how does she WHAT?  yet, she remains quiet and allows him to get his words out, frowns when he mentions being no stranger to ugly stories. ( her own curiosity is burning, filling her to the brim. she’d rather hear his tale than her own -- but, she IS the one who essentially offered to share. )

“ i think it’d be best if we sat, ”   comes her response, an almost humble smile showing on delicate features as she takes a seat upon the edge of his bed. fingers folded together hesitantly part, and she watches the man nearest her as if she’s anticipating something to happen. yet, he’s just -- he’s there, and he doesn’t seem revolted by her thus far. how surprising. how new. elizabeth takes a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment.

“ the, um -- the circular mark below the back of my neck is from what you might call a spinal tap. it -- i mean, the name’s obvious. it goes deep into the spine. ”   gesturing to it, her voice has suddenly turned hollow, like the sadness within her has been held back by a sort of flood gate. it’d be hard to contain from this point. she’ll stick to explaining WHAT it all is for the time being -- an easier start than explaining just WHY it all happened. she can’t keep her voice from breaking, though.   “ the others are from -- well, various forms of torture. ”

JAKE NOTICES THE SHIFT IN HER MOOD. It would be almost impossible not to – it’s such a stark change from the bubbly, curious demeanor that she’d displayed before. Suddenly she was… harder. Her eyes were dark. They warned of a sinister tale, of a heartbreaking story. Jake remembers seeing that look in his own eyes, the first time he’d seen his face in a mirror after escaping. For some reason, it puts a pit into his stomach that hadn’t been there before; he’s wary at the notion that someone so intelligent, so kind, could have suffered at the hands of others. 

He grips his mug a little too hard, and he swallows. Of course he wants to know. Jake isn’t the kind of person that can be satisfied with vague answers and cryptic riddles. He wants to know the truth. And, considering he’d just shown off one of his deepest secrets to a complete stranger, he figures he doesn’t have much to lose anymore. 

      “The unknown?” 

He repeats her like she’s speaking a different language, a somewhat incredulous smile tugging at the corners of his scarred lips. The unknown for him, he figures, is most of everything. He doesn’t know shit. 

      “I mean, I don’t know most things, so, like… I’d have to say I’m pretty open to it.” 

Jake can’t tell if she’s being serious or not, really, but the longer he stares at her, the longer he allows himself to take in the detail of her dress, the more trepidatious he becomes. There’s something absolutely otherworldly about Elizabeth. Something tells Jake that that isn’t just a misplaced gut feeling. His smile fades.

      “… Why?”

elizabeth isn't one who'd grown so gracefully into omnipotence. ironic, for all those who'd sought to break her, to steal her uniqueness and weaponize it. the fact simply is that tears were once limited, once the wish fulfillment of a trapped & isolated girl yearning for escape. now, however, the burden of every experience in every universe weighs upon her so heavily that a little thing called human consciousness has repressed most of it. elizabeth isn't excited or happy to be what she is — she simply is, and facing that with a new person is frightening.

at the very least, though, her nerves are put to ease at jake's claim of not knowing most things, a slight smile returning to rosy lips. he's far more down-to-earth than any man she's met before. good. his willingness to admit to not knowing gives her hope. she'll just have to explain gently.

“ the truth is, i'm not from here at all, jake. i'm from a city called columbia. ”   running delicate yet immeasurably powerful fingers along the plush surface of the blanket she rests on, elizabeth looks to jake. looks to his scars, not in a judgmental way, but to again soak in all she can about his beautifully unique features. if she explains this wrong, it might be the last time she sees that face.

“ you may have read about it in a history book, though i'm thinking you probably wouldn't have. see, columbia was — ”   traumatic. abusive. hypocritical. discriminatory. elizabeth doesn't even realize her face has turned to disgust until after she's paused for too long. her expression softens.   “ it was a city that loved to push boundaries in the ways of… a hell of a lot, actually. ”

the easiest thing would be to open up a tear, right here, right now. yet, she doesn't want to scare jake. doesn't want to break such a fragile relationship in its earliest stage. elizabeth sips more of her tea.   “ scientifically, though, glimpsing into other worlds was the latest and greatest. ”