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No.

[. . . ]

Not unless you want some kind of alcohol tonight.

...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.]

[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.]

[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.]

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.

We had no idea it would turn out like that. How could we possibly have anticipated the universe might treat every R. Lutece as the same R. Lutece, indiscriminate and unforgiving...

[It's a sort of oblique way of trying to say that it wasn't her fault, and it takes him another minute to try to work out why it is he feels as though he even needs to say that at all. But it's something he'd said to Dave the other day, too, hadn't he? One becomes conditioned to respond with action — and so a failure must therefore mean a lack of action, a personal failing that might have been prevented.

They couldn't have prevented the universe. They couldn't have avoided what unfolded, and still managed to be together. And anything in the world, any world, had been worth being together at last.]

...You're the only one who would've missed me. Before my debut, I didn't even exist to anyone save you.

No one else mattered.

[And it might sound incredibly arrogant to say that, except it holds true both ways. There isn't a person in the world, in any world, that matters to Rosalind as much as Robert does.]

. . . I was so scared to touch you at first. Do you remember that?

I remember...Dewitt, charging down the alley, throwing everything into chaos. He lunged for Comstock, of course — I leapt through in the confusion. Then they were fighting, the tear was unstable...you were yelling...

[He hesitates.]

In all of it, I think even I didn't notice at first how things were going hazy, there was so...much.

[...]

You took my arm. You were frightened, I think? You had my arm as though you were afraid I might be pulled away, the way Dewitt and Comstock were fighting over the girl.

Yes.

[She was terrified of so many things that night. She was afraid Comstock would betray her once he'd gotten the baby, and shove Robert right back through to deal with a furious Dewitt. She was afraid this was all some kind of dream, that he wasn't really there, or it wasn't really him. She was even afraid for the baby, caught in the struggle between two men. God knows there are universes where Elizabeth hadn't--

She's not going to think about that now.]

I took your arm, and then Elizabeth came through, screaming and bleeding. We bandaged her, and Comstock left, and you--

[She laughs breathlessly, entirely without humor.]

You bloody well exploded. You started bleeding out on me right then and there, and god, Robert, there was so much of it. You must have lost at least a pint in the lab, and then by the time I got you to the bed . . .

I didn't know what had set it off. I didn't know what was wrong, and you kept muttering in your sleep, and--

I thought perhaps that was what had done it. Touch. Or-- or something else, or both, I had no idea what any of it meant. And I was never so afraid of losing you as I was that first night.

I don't remember much of that at all — though I suppose it's no great surprise, considering. Did I help with Elizabeth? I truly don't...

[He shakes his head slightly, eventually punctuating the lack of a thought with a shrug to match.]

I remember you would sing. Those moments were clear. The rest...I hardly knew up from down, I think. Although once I seem to recall finding out the hard way — I tried to get up for something and fell, didn't I?

You thought you were late to the atom.

[She takes the bottle of bourbon from him. Grasping his hand, she leads him over towards the couch.]

I'd left to go buy us more food. I came back and you'd collapsed in the hall in a pile of blood. I thought--

[She shakes her head. She'd thought the worst, of course. The one time she'd left, Robert had seen fit to get up, and Rosalind thought she'd never forgive herself for it. She certainly hadn't left the house for the next week or so, too terrified of what might happen.]

You told me, when I put in the IV. Let me up, you told me, I have to talk to Rosie.

...Ah. Yes...of course I would've gotten up for that.

[Of course he would've. Likely it'd come to pass from a rare moment of lucidity — perhaps she'd left a gramophone playing to help center him — and he'd realized he was laid up in bed. Bed would've led to the connection of oversleeping, of having somewhere pressing to be, and what could possibly be more pressing or more urgent an appointment to keep than their nightly rendezvous?

No, he must have been terrified. There isn't much he's able to recall concretely about the things that had passed through his mind during the ordeal, but he remembers clinging to the thought of her. He remembers clinging to the thought of Robert, too, but of course he knows by now why he'd been confused about that.]

You didn't let me up, though, naturally?

Of course not.

[She sits on the couch, waits for him to do the same, and then leans over, resting firm against him. Her head presses against his chest, and she sighs softly to hear his steady heartbeat.]

I told you that it was only six o'clock, that you and Rosie weren't due to talk for another four hours. Eventually you settled down and fell back asleep.

[It's somewhere shortly after the point when her head comes to rest against him that he realizes they have no glasses, despite being satisfactorily armed with red wine and bourbon both. But then, on a night like this, perhaps glasses are overrated — or so he thinks rather grimly, as he sets his bottle of red aside and decides to definitively start forgetting with the assistance of the bourbon.]

I was quite the oaf, I see, when I wasn't wholly possessed of my senses.

[He sighs, though, softly.]

But we did make it, somehow.

Of course we did.

[She holds the bottle steady as he twists the cap, and soon they've got the bourbon open. She's the one who's holding the bottle, so she takes the first mouthful: half a shot's worth, and she swallows and shudders.]

There's no one better at making it than you and I, my darling. Here--

[How effortless it is, how utterly instinctual, to work in tandem with her like that. It's as though both hands belonged to the same person (which, technically, they do, since each hand belongs to R. Lutece), with the way she holds and he twists and the bottle comes open so easily.

It's equally so when he takes it from her, downing his own mouthful — which phenomenally enough, if they were to have measured it out in beakers and flasks, would have worked out to precisely the same amount (down to the milliliter) that she's just poured into hers.]

I don't regret it, you know.

[He hands the bottle back to her, and moves his hand to her hair instead.]

Even knowing full well what would transpire, what would happen to me, I'd choose it again. I'd always choose you.

[One last mouthful, then, before she surrenders herself entirely over to the sensation of his fingers running through her hair.]

So would I.

[All the deals, all the regret, all the rage and destruction and horror . . . years upon years of serving Comstock's whims, dealing with Fink, living with all that guilt, god. She'd happily go through it all again if it meant getting him. She'd go through far, far worse if it meant getting him.]

. . . I'm not going anywhere, you know.

[She tips her head back just far enough that she can peer up at him.]

And nor are you.

No. Not ever again.

[Well, if she's abandoning the bottle, he'll take it right back. He's down by a mouthful, now, and it's a poor universe indeed when R. Lutece and R. Lutece are not equal in all things.]

...D'you know, if I had met my premature and untimely demise, I wager Comstock would've simply had me thrown right off of Columbia?

[They're going to end up finishing the bottle if they keep competing like this. Certainly they are if Robert keeps saying things like that; Rosalind flinches, inhaling sharply.]

Robert, for god's sake, you can't-- don't. Don't say that.

[It's more than a mouthful now; Rosalind swallows twice, glaring at him all the while.]

I'm only saying I'm quite convinced the man secretly loathed me.

[Hmmm.]

...And possibly hoping black humor will prove as effective a medication as the bourbon.

Pick something else to joke about.

[Though she's apparently not so angry that she's ready to pull away. Rosalind shoves the bottle towards him, her eyes narrowed.]

Which Dewitt was it that fell off of Columbia? I lost track.

[Which is probably as good an excuse as any to hit the bourbon again, all things considered.]

...No, I oughtn't joke about that, either. Hm. Well...d'you know young Mr. Strider wants a pony?

[Frankly, Rosalind is quite a bit more inclined to joke about Dewitt falling off Columbia (numbers 76 and 77, for the record), but she'll switch topics.]

. . . truly? Are you certain he wasn't being sarcastic?

I suppose he might've been, but that wasn't the impression I took away. He was strongly opposed to puppies but quite in favor of ponies.

[Important data to be added to his file, naturally.]

Shame, really. Ponies are far harder to come by, I would think, than a puppy.

Both are hard to come by around here. I had to--

[The alcohol is just starting to hit. Rosalind rubs her face, feeling the flush there, and squints up at him.]

If I tell you something, you can't laugh.

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