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She’s been an enigma, of sorts, since the first moment he set eyes on her. An enigma to him, and to everyone else who had locked her in her sky-high prison. It reads in his furrowed brows as he watches her discreetly in their quieter moments. It reads in his eyes as he picks up the guitar and reacquaints himself with the instrument, just for her, it reads in the slant of his shoulders as he looks upon her bloodied hands and her wild eyes, wondering if she’s going to come at him with the scissors also, and it reads in the tightening of his grip on his weapon as he watches her hair whip in the wind of the twister.
By the time he’s ready to ask her, properly, it’s too late. She’s not herself anymore. She’s — as far as he knows — omnipotent, endowed with the knowledge of every door and everything behind those doors. She’s not the girl he rescued from the tower. She’s not the woman who’d emerged from the airship, leaving whatever had died within her in that red room. She’s the daughter he had sold, the daughter he’d never known, and yet she’s not Anna at all.
To him, she is an enigma, not to be solved, but to be pondered. There’s precious little time to ponder, though, and if he’s honest, Booker barely notices the little nuances in his actions whenever he’s doing anything for her. The way he lifts the metal gates all the way so Elizabeth can walk through them without even having to bend her head. The way he doesn’t quite laugh at her attempts to lift the medicine ball, but instead turns away so she can’t see him snort in amusement. The way he lingers for longer than was strictly necessary in the arcade and glares threateningly at the vendor to give her all the free cotton candy she wants.
It’s only in hindsight that he realises how he changed for her, how much he would have changed for her, perhaps, just given the chance. It’s not enough to remedy the mistakes of the past, he knows, and it hurts him that they’ll never get a chance to find out in the future.
But that’s all right, he thinks as bubbles burst from his lips and takes his life with them. That’s it, that’s all she wrote, and in light of the knowledge that the circle was now, finally, broken... it’s all right.