ablankpage | Apponitments

I know.

[Robert is standing when Booker comes in, leaned over his desk with the journal open.

He saw what Booker saw, heard it, and... now he can only stand without a thing he can do. Like opening a tear. He doesn't have the technology or the ability here.]

[So do something! He rages in his mind, outwardly doing nothing more than standing there with the same shell-shocked look he had when he burst in. Why are you just standing there, why don't you open a tear why don't you kill me for letting her be taken again why don't you act human why don't you do something.]

...Do we wait?

[He needs help, an answer of some kind because this is Robert Lutece. He has all the answers. If he can tell Booker what to do, by God he'll do it. If Robert told him the only way he could see Elizabeth again was to burn Luceti to the ground, he'd raze it all.

The realization makes him feel sick.]

What else can we do?

[The words are very, very quiet.

Robert hasn't turned around, is still standing at his desk, his hands on it, braced. He hasn't gone to Rosalind yet, much as he wants to. Because he wants to be able to do something. To tell Booker even just to be patient. He wants to know how this ends.

But it's empty. He can't see anything beyond the present moment, can't be sure of what's coming. Or even have a sense of probability.]

I don't have our machine. There's nothing I can do, DeWitt.

[And it's eating at him, a slow, gnawing sensation.]

-- Booker, Robert.

[He spits it out, grasping for the normalcy that they had developed in some strange way as housemates and through their mutual attachment to Elizabeth.

Beyond that, he would let Robert call him Comstock if he wanted to and if it meant he wouldn't hear his name DeWitt in that voice. It haunted his dreams for years and continued to do so still. He couldn't hear that now. He just couldn't.]

Jesus Christ.

[What had burst out like the crack of a gun finished in a whimper that had him sliding into the nearest chair with a hand running through his hair, trying to pull himself together but failing spectacularly.

He needed a drink, he needed it badly.

Several, in point of fact.]

[Robert finally turns his head, looking at the man.

They both needed a drink.

No, they both needed to start over. To shed at least some of their burdens. Luceti offered a kind of chance to move on, yes, but only from an artificial point, not what they both knew was the end.

A few moments later, with the quiet sound of rattling glass and liquid pouring, Robert sets a tumbler of neat whiskey down next to the other man, one in his hand as he slides into a chair of his own.]

Booker, then.

[It feels familiar in a way that it shouldn't. That fucking shift that made him think he had a family here and that Robert and Rosalind were apart of it still sticks out in his mind sometimes. In moments like this, the fabricated memories come back. One in particular of Robert offering this same silent kind of comradery when his wife and Robert's then sister had died.

He doesn't like it. In many different ways he doesn't like it, particularly though, in that it makes him feel as if they're mourning Elizabeth. And she is not dead.]

Thanks.

[He mumbles curtly, too focused on the drink set in front of him to really be gracious and he doesn't waste his fucking time pouring it down his throat. He wants to be drunk he doesn't want to enjoy the slow burn. Not right now.]

Her things are still here. That's... all I can offer.

[And he sounds, in his own way, miserable at that admission.

He is powerless. He doesn't even have his notebooks to begin to understand how this anomaly of a world works. To get back to where they were, he and Rosalind, so they can start unlocking this world's secrets.]

That means she's coming back.

[Hearing the obvious fact of the matter stated from Robert calms him more than the whiskey could. He knows, logically knows that Robert is just as mortal and fallible as he is here. That he isn't the omnipresent pain in the ass he knew when they first met.

Well...when his memory told him they first met...before the artifice was all stripped away.]

Okay.

[He offers back, sounding a lost and sad shell of a man as he goes to the bottle Robert poured from and serves himself another glass...

and another...

and a final third before he sits down.

This one, he doesn't finish in a gulp. This one he watches, as if he's expecting it to get up and walk away. Perhaps, subconsciously, he wants it to.]

[Robert watches him for a few moments, watches the final drink, and tilts his head.]

At least there's no price on anything here. That's very good whiskey you're not even bothering to taste.

[An... almost kind way of remarking on it.

Kind, especially, for Robert Lutece.]

Shut up.

[He spits it and feels anger rise in him like bile; acidic and harsh. He chokes it down with the rest of his glass, mostly just to spite Robert and his goddamn sensibilities.]

It's drink. I'd take the worse moonshine ever created right now.

[If it got me drunk.]

Which is precisely my point.

Treating it like you would any swill. It's a waste of good whiskey.

[Such a supportive not-brother.]

Apponitments - [ IC ]

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