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[originallutece]

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[originallutece]

Of course. Is everything all right?

[uncertainrelation]

Physically, without question. I've just something on my mind tonight, is all.

[originallutece]

Tell me.

[uncertainrelation]

When I first came through the tear, all those years ago. When we hadn't anticipated the effects the new universe would have on me, and I collapsed...

You handled the whole business of my infirmity alone. Didn't you?

[originallutece]

Yes.

I didn't trust anyone else with it. And once I'd bandaged Elizabeth's finger, Comstock left.

[uncertainrelation]

You must have been frightened, surely? Irrespective of how competently you handled it, mind. Certainly you were...terrified?

[originallutece]

Yes.

[. . .]

There was a large chance you would die. I had no idea how to stop you from hemorrhaging, and you were every time you woke up. Of course I was terrified.

[uncertainrelation]

...That's what's been weighing on my mind today. The thought that prior to our ACTUAL demise, you once came close to being forced to watch me die.

[Let's carefully not think about the looming question of whether or not there's a universe out there where, in fact, it went beyond coming close, and she actually did.]

I love you, is what I think I needed to say. Simply to have said it again. I love you more than anything in this life — in any life.

[originallutece]

I love you. More than anything, more than anyone. And there's nothing I wouldn't do for you.

[He wouldn't lie to her about being in danger, but this is worrying.]

Robert, what's brought this on?

[uncertainrelation]

I was speaking to one of your students the other day. Young Mr. Strider.

...There were times in our conversation when he reminded me a great deal of Elizabeth Comstock, and occasionally of Booker Dewitt — and sometimes of you.

[originallutece]

Why?

[More importantly: what precisely had he said to get Robert thinking of such morbid things?]

What did you speak of?

[uncertainrelation]

He's told you of his abilities, I presume? We got to talking about the nuanced differences between parallel universe travel and linear universe time travel.

[originallutece]

[It isn't so hard to guess, then, what might have happened. Hadn't Strider told her a little already? Doomed timelines, he'd called it, and she'd meant to ask after it, but then she'd gotten distracted. She'd asked after how he resolved his memories instead, and the point became moot.

But he makes copies of himself. He becomes-- not two people, but merely the same person, split in half, gone back in time to enact and reenact something. Because past me witnesses future me performing a certain action, future me's obligated to go through with that, that's how he'd put it. But what happens if future-him doesn't go through that action?

Strider has watched himself die. That alone would be horrifying, but the question also becomes: how often?]

He told you that he died. Or one of his time-traveling copies did. And you thought of you and I, and what you'd nearly gone through.

[uncertainrelation]

...He told me of a time he found himself tasked with disposing of his own corpse. He suggested that was only one incident of many.

Rosie, he spoke of it like it was...commonplace...

[originallutece]

[She doesn't reply for a long minute.]

He told me he uses his powers exceedingly often. I imagine such powers come with a large learning curve.

Come home soon.

[uncertainrelation]

He bears up like you do. You both endure no matter how the deck is stacked against you.

He doesn't want any condolences. I suspect he'd be irritated to know I'd said anything at all, honestly.

[originallutece]

[But what you tell one Lutece, you tell the other. That's how it always is. That's how it'll always be.]

I imagine that he doesn't want anyone to ever see his grief.

[And if the unspeakable had happened, if her Robert had died, she would have lashed out at anyone offering something so petty and useless as condolences. She would have snarled that they couldn't understand, and she would have been right.]

Where are you?

[uncertainrelation]

Merely walking the streets. Clearing my head. I suppose I got to thinking about the Dewitt that turned up a few weeks back — the same time as when I arrived.

He was still looking for Elizabeth. I asked him where he intended to take her, and he said to Paris, not to New York. It made me wonder which one he was...not, I suppose, that it would really matter for him either way, in the end.

But Dewitt at least had the choice. A weighted choice, a terrible choice, but still a choice. When Mr. Strider makes a choice that defies what the universe has planned for him, he winds up a corpse.

We can't very well fix every wrong, though, can we?

[originallutece]

No. We can't. And most especially not here, rendered human as we are. You'll drive yourself mad if you think we can.

[uncertainrelation]

It's hard to swallow, even so.

Do you need anything, before I come back? I've still time to pick something up, if you do.

[originallutece]

No.

[. . . ]

Not unless you want some kind of alcohol tonight.

[uncertainrelation]

...Now that you mention it.

I'll see you in a bit, with a fine old red — and some bourbon.

[And indeed, as promised, it isn't long before he simply appears, as he tends to do, with a wine bottle in one hand and the bourbon in the other, and a general look of idle dishevelment to the rest of his clothes.]

[originallutece]

[Rosalind, on the other hand, looks utterly unfazed. Her expression is coldly neutral. If she's rattled by this new revelation about Strider, she's determined not to show it.

And yet it comes out in her actions: the way she crosses the room so quickly the moment he appears; the way she presses up against him, her hands going to tug anxiously at his waistcoat, trying to straighten him out.]

[uncertainrelation]

[Ah. Ah, ah, she's as rattled as he is, by this. And really, this is precisely why he'd compared her to Mr. Strider, precisely why he hadn't been wrong in the slightest in his assessment — because there she is, bearing up like a champion, never letting on about the turmoil she might be hiding within...

And yet he knows precisely what she's hiding. He sees how her fingers fumble at his hems, where ordinarily they might be steady and sure.]

You take such good care of me.

[It's not a coincidence, that that's his opener.]

[originallutece]

I refused to let you die. I wouldn't-- I refused to let it be a possibility.

[She still doesn't look up at him, though her hands still against his torso. Rosalind stares down at her fingers, pale against the dark fabric of his clothes, and thinks about how he'd looked all those years ago, pale and splattered in blood as he lay in her bed.

She remembers, too, the two of them regenerating quickly enough to see their corpses. That had shaken her. She'd had Robert at her side, of course, but still: it had horrified her, to see his corpse lying in his coffin.]

I don't know what I would have done if you'd died.