Have Yourself a Merry Little Day or Trhee After Christmas

[wipeawaythedebt]

He spends the first few days back in a bottle, wracked with guilt and pain unlike anything he's ever felt. But it doesn't help. The memories, fresh as if they had happened last week instead of twenty years ago, won't leave him alone and here in Darrow there just isn't anywhere left to run. There aren't any wars to go off and fight, and while the temptation to hit the tables or see if he can't pick a fight in a bar somewhere is strong, he resists it. She wouldn't want him to.

Elizabeth.

Anna.

Two sides of the same coin and he's the one that had set them spinning. It was his doing, all of it. He sold his daughter to a man who promised her a better life than the one Booker could give and the man had been a monster. Comstock locked his little girl in a tower, treated her like an experiment and tried to make her his... sacrificial lamb or whatever the hell Comstock had planned. Booker still hasn't figured that out. There's nothing he can do to ever fix that.

But he has to start somewhere. For whatever it's worth, he is her father. And he had been planning on getting her something for the holiday before everything had gone so crazy. So today, even though it's after Christmas, he's standing at her door, freshly showered and shaved with a small package in his hands. Only he can't bring himself to knock. She'd made it perfectly clear when she moved out that she was done with him and after that whole mess back in New York she might hate him even more now. He doesn't blame her. He hates himself quite a bit these days. So in the end, he leans over and sets the wrapped gift near the doorframe and turns to leave.

Best if he's not here when she finds it.

Comments

[cagedlamb]

What Elizabeth had found out - it was days later, and she still wasn't really sure how to feel about it all. She had wanted answers for so long, but the answers she had gotten -

They were nothing she ever saw coming.

She hadn't spoken to Booker since then. She didn't really even know where to start, or what she wanted to say to him. This was the man who gave her away to someone who would eventually lock her away for most of her life. At the same time, he couldn't have known - he couldn't have known what was being planned for her.

It was preoccupying her thoughts that morning, while she was cleaning up her small apartment. It was Oliver who noticed his presence first, suddenly whining at the door. Elizabeth thought he needed to be walked, but it became clear what was really going on when she stepped out with him and saw a familiar person walking toward the stairs. She barely registered the gift on the ground.

"...Booker?" she called out before she even thought about the consequences of getting his attention.