His shoulders slump. It's over. The little girls (not Little Sisters any more, he has to remind himself; that's how long he's been down here) are waiting for him in the elevator. He looks down at the massive corpse of what used to be both Atlas and Frank Fontaine. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel. He imagines most people would still be angry at Fontaine, but he's not most people. He was whipped up in a half-baked science experiment, as Fontaine had said. He's willing to bet somehow it'll take a long time to get that man's words out of his head.

But the little girls are still waiting. He can't do what he wants to do, which is to dish out a bit of poetic justice and hit Fontaine across the head the way he had been made to do with Ryan, so he nudges him tentatively with his foot, and when the body doesn't move, he drops his wrench besides it and walks over to the elevator, holding the key to Rapture in his Plasmid hand.

"Mr Comstock? There's someone here to see you."

"Could you show her in please?"

"Hello Booker."

"...well, look at you. You look... Well, of course you look older." He smiles, and Sally laughs. "You look good too. You look beautiful."

"Thank you. I- I wasn't sure if I should come; there was some television program asking about you-"

"Television program?"

"Truth From Legend, I think it was called, or Fact From Myth. Something like that. But they showed me a picture of you and that woman, and I thought 'Well, it's been almost thirty years, if he was an old man then who knows if he's even still around?' But I did some digging and- Here you are."

"Here I am." Comstock laughs. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. She only said it was up to you."

They're silent for a moment, trying to think of what to say. "Oh, that reminds me!" Sally says. "She left this record for me, said to play it when the time was right. I don't know what she expected me to do with it if I never wanted to see you again, but... I felt like I owed you something, you know? For the longest time I just wanted to forget, and forgetting, well, it doesn't do anyone any good does it? You've got to come to terms with these things or they just keep eating away..." Sally trails off, and abruptly takes a record out of her travelling bag. Comstock examines the cover while she sets the record player up. Presenting...Elizabeth. Cohen's New Songbird! You Belong To Me, Available In Stores Now! He doesn't remember either Cohen or Elizabeth mentioning a musical tutelage, but like Sally had said, for the longest time he'd just wanted to forget.

The record begins to spin. "And now, we've got something very special coming up next. This little lady, who goes by the name of Miss Elizabeth, was picked out of the thousands by the maestro himself, Sander Cohen. And when Sander finds a songbird, you know for sure she's gonna sing sweet. So, here's Miss Elizabeth with 'You Belong to Me'."

There's a couple seconds of quiet, broken only by the record buzzing and scratching with age, and then... Comstock's heart stops beating for a moment when he hears her voice again. "'See the pyramids along the Nile... Watch the sunrise from a tropic isle... Just remember darling, all the while... You Belong to Me...'"

"Mmm, mmmm mm... I'll live a Riviera Life." And with that, the song that's coming from the radio ends.

"Is this seat taken?" Elizabeth asks.

The other slender brunette on one of the reclining beach chairs looks up at her. "I don't think so. I only just got here myself."

"If they come back I'll find somewhere else." Elizabeth tells her as she settles in. "I have to be careful anyway; I haven't had much experience with the sun."

The other girl laughs. "Me neither. I was something of a shut-in. Mother's doing unfortunately."

"Really? It was my father for me." Calling Comstock her father still takes some getting used-to, but it's easier than the truth.

"What a strange coincidence." the girl remarks. She seems ill at ease, like she's not sure what to say, so they both go back to tanning.

The next song makes Elizabeth peer over her sunglasses and glare suspiciously at the radio. Elizabethan Reggae? That's a little on-the-nose. At least it's not forty two years ahead of its release date, unlike the last song. Only two… Still, these things do tend to happen around her, albeit far less frequently than they had in Rapture or Columbia.

She looks over her shoulder, feeling someone's eyes upon her. The girl is staring at her. "Have we met?" Elizabeth asks.

"I don't think so." she says thoughtfully. "My name's Eleanor."

"I'm Elizabeth."

Eleanor laughs again. "There's another coincidence. 'El.'"

"What? Oh, our names!" Elizabeth laughs as well.

Suddenly Eleanor's expression changes. "You were there." she whispers. "You were in Rapture."

Elizabeth looks around quickly to make sure no one else is around. "How do you know that?" she whispers back.

"That's a long story." Eleanor says. "We should probably go someplace private." As she and Elizabeth get up off the deck chairs and head back inside to the resort, Eleanor reflects that it'll be nice to have someone to talk to who's not inside her head for once.

She works as a teacher during the day. At night, she's a singer at a rather nice night club in Brooklyn, making just enough to get by. One night in 1961, she sees a face in the crowd, and has to look twice to make sure it's really her.

After her shift is over, she hurries to the table where the little girl is sitting. She's sure it is Sally, but the little girl hasn't noticed her yet. She rubs her restored pinky finger nervously, and is about to introduce herself when the man sitting at the table turns and looks at her. Fighting back flashes of a time and place she thought she'd left behind, she extends her right hand, and says, "Hello Jack. It's nice to meet you."

Author's Note: And that's the end of In Absentia. It took longer than I would have liked, and took many turns I was not expecting, but I hope you all enjoyed it. There's a lot of stuff in my BioShock favorites that I would have liked to be able to use, like the SOSUS project and the fortunetelling machines from BioShock 1, and loads of the removed content from BioShock Infinite. The wiki is a very useful source of information, and I spent more time than I probably should've on there.

I won't make this too much longer. Thank you for reading, and thank you also to MasamuneZERO, who was essentially my beta during this whole ordeal! Ideally, I'd love for people to stumble across this story after playing The Collection when it comes out on Thursday, but then ideally this story wouldn't have to have been written!