The Lost Love Above | Elizabeth x (m) Reader!

My Love, So Long pt.1

The winds moaned around us. Booker and I regarded the figure at the end of the massive corridor, filled with snow and debris from the building. I felt my body ride with a chill as all other sounds around us became hollow. We took slow steps forward with our weapons drawn and directed at the person at the end.

"As you both can see," the person said as we got within earshot of them. "The lunatics are running the asylum. They don't even listen to me anymore. All I can do is watch as what I set into motion slides into its terminal stage. It took all I had left in me just to bring you here."

I'm terrified to know the voice, but it's different. I understand why, but the reason doesn't make sense to me. I knew it was Elizabeth, but she sounded so much older that I couldn't accept it immediately. I moistened my lips.

"Elizabeth," I stammered. "I don't understand...we heard you screaming- I was...we were coming to get you-!"

She stops me with a soft voice. "Here... Take my hand."

My fingers grasp around a frail hand, and I'm helped up. I intend to turn around and help Booker, but the scene before me puts me on a state of shock. It's a massive city, on fire and in chaos. Hovering in the sky are the airships we've been using to get around occasionally, but that isn't transporting; they're raining explosive payloads below at the skyscrapers and apartment buildings. Distant screams echo from the streets as cars are blown up, and fire spreads through the area.

I see some different things about this, however. Billboards with unfamiliar...cars are advertised. The model goes over my end, but I know it's a date set in "1984." I wondered where this was; then I saw the Brooklyn Bridge. I swallow and look back at Booker, finally remembering I wasn't here alone. I help him up and point in experastion. "Is that...All...New York?"

"What the hell?" Booker is dismayed by all of it.

Elizabeth, her youth is gone. I see her gray hair strands swaying in the hot breeze as the world before us is set ablaze-the end of an era and the start of a bleak replacement. The plumes of smoke choke the life inside the city, both manufactured and human. My eyes dance over her, trying to not to take in too much for my mind to process. Her hands are wrinkled, and crow's feet are in the corners of her eyes. "The seed of the prophet shall sit the throne and drown in a flame of mountains of man," she rehearses a prophecy. "Say what you will about Comstock, he was a hell of a fortune teller."

She turns to us. And I grimace, feeling my stomach drop. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that we were late, but seeing her so old shattered my heart. This didn't make sense. Her eyes fixated on mine. "It wasn't the torture that broke me. It wasn't the indoctrination. It was time. Time rots everything. Even hope."

"I was...We were coming," I sigh heavily, my hands are shaking with emotion.

"Songbird," she says. "He always stops you."

"I would have found a way," I say, Booker still besides, saying something, too. But I'm too far out in my own direction to hear what he's saying. I think it's the same thing, but it's for a different reason. I loved Elizabeth, and to see how hard I failed her tested my faith in everything. Even seeing New York burn before me wasn't as close as failing the girl I...I've known for seemingly long.

Elizabeth regarded me and Booker. "No. It's too late for me. I brought you here for your sake. Yours and hers. Here," she extended her hand out and gave me a piece of paper with a birdcage drawn on it. I take it, asking what it is.

"It's for her," she tells me. "She'll know how to read it."

"What does it say?" Booker interjects softly.