originallutece | ic contact;

I'm on my way. Expect me shortly.

[z o o m]

[She'll feel a touch guilty later for worrying him, but she hasn't room for such thoughts now. Rosalind drops the watch into her pocket and promptly forgets Kurama, too busy focusing on what's in front of her. Her fingers slide across the cover of a notebook (1890, part I), and she bites her bottom lip. She's flipped through them, of course, searching page after page with desperate scrutiny, hardly able to believe it's truly what she thinks it is. But no, it's all truly there: notebook after notebook filled with her handwriting, years of correspondence all hers for the taking.

All she needs is a friend's help, and they'll be hers.

She stands stock still in the Emporium, blue eyes wide, head bent as she reads line after line. Which one was this? 1890, yes, June 6th, the evening of their nineteenth birthday: Rosie, I feel most remiss in not giving you a gift today, but--]

[He's quite the sight when he ultimately comes through the door, mostly on the part of his hair — it's tousled and windswept, gone in all directions, and though he's far from out of breath, it's still immediately apparent that he's literally run the entire way from the flower shop to the Emporium, and the first time he's stopped is when he appears in the doorway and braces his hands on either side of the frame to look around for her.]

Rosalind?

Here.

[It takes her a long few seconds to tear her eyes away from the notebook. Rosalind takes a step back, and then another. Now a slight bit of guilt curls in her stomach, but she doesn't move to him. She won't leave those notebooks.]

Kurama--

...There's something of yours in here.

[It's not so hard to guess, really. Tonika had been this way, too, about her music player technology, hadn't she? Not wanting to leave it, desperate for assistance. He'd built her a battery and it had enabled her to take her prized possession free, and she'd never had to leave it.

Rosalind is acting the same way, now. The difference is, when it's Rosalind, he's got slightly more of a breadth of knowledge to draw on about what that certain something might be — and in his estimation, the only thing that's likely to have provoked a reaction like this is probably something to do with Robert.

So.

Watch yourself, he reminds himself, as he walks over to her. Check your words. Don't be careless or needlessly cruel. Be careful, because likely this is something raw to her, something involving Robert, something that needs particular consideration and care.]

Do you need help meeting the price for it?

. . . yes.

[Notable, that he asks about the price before the item. She takes in the details of his appearance now: the way his hair is tousled, the way his chest rises and falls a little quicker. He'd run here. He'd run here, run because he'd been scared, and god, but he deserves much more than an explanation, doesn't he?]

I--

[She hesitates for just a moment, her fingers wrapping tight around one of the notebooks. Time isn't of the essence, not really. The notebooks will linger here no matter how long this takes. Hell, she can even carry them around the shop if she pleases, and that thought comforts her. Gathering the rest in her arms, she nods towards the back, where a few antique chairs sit.]

I do require your help. But . . . I would show you what I had you race over here for, before anything.

Rest assured — you have my help, even without it.

[He moves automatically, arms extending as if to offer to help carry the load for her, but then it occurs to him that she might just as well not want to share it, and it makes him pause and glance toward the chairs instead.

...No, let her, he decides. She's hardly going to find him rude if he doesn't offer, the way that some people would, and it's not as though she's incapable of managing it, anyway. Let her have them. Let her be the dragon with her hoard, the thief with her haul.

He nods, retreating to the antique chairs as bidden, and finds himself a seat in one of them.]

But I'm happy to hear what it is, of course.

[And, let's be real: he's curious, too.]

[All right. She relaxes a little. He isn't offended she'd had him run across town, thank god, and this will smooth over any lingering ruffled feathers. Rosalind curls on one chair, an unusual enough action for her: legs tucking beneath herself, her fingers wrapped tightly around her notebooks, she looks younger in that moment.]

I told you Robert and I were from different universes, and I told you we were united: that I brought him over to my world. But I made it sound rather simple, I think, when in truth it was an endeavor that took us quite a long while.

[She glances down for a few seconds, thinking, before meeting Kurama's gaze.]

We discovered one another when we were around your age, in fact. Two months after our seventeenth birthday. I'd just graduated university, and I was experimenting with what would eventually become my Lutece field. I measured a particular atom, encasing it in light, suspending it in midair.

[Odd: she's told a fragment of this story to Urameshi, but not Kurama. It hadn't been a deliberate exclusion; it had simply panned out that way. And yet the fact strikes her, as she tells the story.]

I woke up one morning to find my atom suspended, when I'd known for a fact I had left it in a different state. The oddness continued over the next few days: the atom would fall and be resuspended at odd intervals, on and off. It took Robert and I less than a week to realize what was happening: that the atom itself was caught between universes, and that he and I were both experimenting with the same methods. Rather like two people fiddling with two light switches that are connected to the same light, in fact.

Once we realized, of course, we were desperate to communicate with one another, and so we used the atom itself to do so: we used it as a morse code. Dots and dashes, as rendered by an atom encased in light.

[She taps the notebooks.]

It took us seven years to find a way to one another. And in that time . . . well. I could hardly translate morse code in my head at first, and so I wrote it all down. And then after . . . sentimental, perhaps, but I enjoyed having the written word to look back on.

Seven years worth of correspondence from him. That's what these are.

...That's fascinating. So that same atom somehow spanned both universes, or at least straddled them in such a way that you were both able to reach it? And the chances of you selecting the same atom — no, perhaps that's not surprising at all, given the nature of who was doing the selecting, but still...

[You know, there was an explanation about why she wants these notebooks in there somewhere that he should probably respond to, but consider: the ramifications of the science she's describing are breathtaking, and this shit is just plain interesting.

(Is this how she feels when he describes demon norms, he wonders? Is this what it's like? No wonder she's always eager to hear more, if it is...)

Amazing. An atom encased in light. And who would have thought —]

And you found a way to use that to communicate. Remarkable — how did you settle on the Morse Code? Which of you thought of it first? What was the first message you sent — the first exchange that was received successfully?

[There are people who might be offended at Kurama's priorities, but not Rosalind. She more than anyone understands, and truthfully, it's far easier to speak of the science than the sentiment.]

I did. I, ah, rather overrode control of the atom when I knew he was on the other end, and sent out a fairly simple code at first: hello, slowly and clearly. I relied on the fact he would likely have the same ideas I did in terms of communication.

After that, we established who we were. [A beat. She opens the first notebook, fingers sliding down the first column.] Robert Lutece, he told me, and I replied with my name. He wondered if I was Robert's sister or wife.

[Not his finest moment, but to be fair, she too had imagined her counterpart as the same gender. And here: she tips the notebook his way, showing Kurama those first scrawled remarks. The ink has faded a touch, but each letter is still legible: WIFE/OR/SISTER?]

...Oh, dear.

[He can't help but smile a bit at that, leaning in to look at the notebook before tossing a friendly, fond glance up at her.]

I'm sure that went over well, as you straightened all that out. Were you surprised when you discovered that he was Robert, to your Rosalind?

Oh, yes. I'd thought of parallel universes before, of course, but I expected myself: entirely so. A girl who was and was not me . . . a little kinder, perhaps, or who had chosen a few different paths than I had. To find myself as a boy was . . .

[She wrinkles her nose.]

Well. I was not particularly pleased at first. But he proved himself in time, as did I to him.

The first few days were spent organizing ourselves: first, setting up a daily time for us to speak to one another, and secondly, to discover all our similarities. Family histories, birthdays, friends and suitors and the like . . . he wondered if I had freckles as well, actually. That was one of the first things he asked.

Oh, no.

[Oh, help. Help, help him, this is cute and now he's not just getting invested, he's getting enthralled, and it's all thanks to the seemingly irrelevant little asides that paint such a clear and rich picture of who the mysterious Robert really is — and by extension, who Rosalind is in parallel to him.]

He was so concerned about the status of your freckles, was he?

Red hair isn't common. He wanted to establish if we were alike in looks as well. He wanted to know all kinds of irrelevant details, really: what music I cared for, and if I danced, and what my favorite foods were . . .

[She smiles softly.]

He's sentimental. But though I say irrelevant, those details were just as important as the broader ones. We found ourselves almost precisely alike in tastes.

Yes...and even less so in Japan, I imagine, as in your part of the world.

[He plucks up a lock of his hair from his long mane, showing it to her between two fingers before letting it fall again.]

...Though I think sentimentality is a trait he shares with his double, moreso than she might give herself credit for.

[He smiles, softly.]

What will it take, to pay for these journals for you?

"A journal entry on a personal topic, handwritten by a friend."

[Which, despite their conversation, is still a thought that makes her uncomfortable.]

...Clever. Handwritten by a friend necessitates dictation. It's a subtle way of causing you to confess and narrate your feelings on some personal issue to another person.

[Which is a far cry from building a battery out of a soda can and some copper wire, but. You know.

A good thing to remember if he ever ends up finding anything of his own in the Emporium, after all...]

Tell me more about your atom, if you like. That should be sufficiently personal — it is your personal discovery, after all.

Yes, all right.

[But first: a piece of paper. If she's to dictate this, he'll need somewhere to copy it down. Rosalind skims through the last notebook, flipping to the back. She'd never filled it: there'd been no need, once he'd crossed over. Tearing a sheet free, she offers it to him, as well as one of the pens she always carries on her.

It's like speaking into a voxophone, she thinks. Simply narrating at length.]

I began to theorize about encasing the atom when I was fifteen. I'd just completed my first semester at Girton, and while it was certainly educational, I'd begun to dream of bigger and better things. Things no one else had ever tried before.

In short: defying gravity.

[She pauses, then, making sure she isn't going too fast.]

[He's copying this down, meticulously, as she begins to narrate, and line by line neat strings of Japanese characters begin to appear on the paper — the calligraphy clear and orderly but slightly cramped, undeniably a young man's handwriting.

He's glad for the breather, though, when she pauses, and his lips move faintly as he finishes out the thought and then picks up the pen.]

Girton was...university? You were in university at fifteen...

[Well, of course he's writing in Japanese, and yet Rosalind still has half a second of surprise seeing her words transcribed into unfamiliar characters.]

Yes.

[Her gaze lingers on the paper for a few seconds before focusing on him again.]

Fifteen to seventeen. Robert was the same, although he took a semester longer than I did to graduate.

[Not because of anything to do with work ethic or intelligence, but he'd enjoyed university. He'd liked the social aspects of college life. Rosalind had simply been eager to get the diploma in hand, before anyone could suddenly yank it away from her.]

I'd had my theories before, but they'd been idle things. It was only at university that I had the tools and means to begin to experiment. So I did: slowly, painfully, and with quite a few errors. It wasn't until two years later that I managed to get all the variables correct, as well as learn how to build the machines I needed.

[A beat, and then, more to Kurama than the narrative:]

As it turns out, when you wish to go beyond what anyone else ever has, you rather have to become a Jack of all trades. In order to entrap an atom in light, I had to build a device that would do such a thing, which required an education in electrical engineering and general metalwork, among other things.

Painfully in a figurative sense? Or were you hurt in your experiments?

[He doesn't look up from his writing as he remarks that, but the concern is there anyway, as line after line the bits of the story continue to appear on the paper beneath his pen.]

It must have gotten much easier for you once you'd managed to connect with Robert. If he ended up with the same skillset as you, then finally you had help that even could meaningfully assist you in your endeavors.

Both, frankly.

[Electric shocks hurt, and anyway, she's not built for-- well, building things. All that grease and oil and hammering and welding . . . she'd done it, but she hadn't enjoyed it, and her body certainly hadn't thanked her for it.]

But yes. Contact with him was why opening a doorway between worlds took us only seven years, instead of twenty.

Well. That, and proper funding.

And proper funding?

[His pen stills now, and he stares at the words on his page for a moment or two, recalling a distant memory of a fantasy between them that once was, and the circumstances that had led her to seek her support and survival in a marriage that never once made her happy...]

Of what variety?

[She hesitates for just a moment.]

Patronage. You're familiar with the idea of it in terms of the arts, yes? A wealthy man keeps an artist funded, and in return is rewarded with continued art. It was a rather similar relationship.

Patronage.

[Hmm. He has his suspicions that he can see where this is going, and on one hand, at least it's not marriage, but on the other hand...

On the other hand, there's something about science for hire that always comes with an ominous sort of feeling to it.]

So in exchange for helping to enable you to reach Robert, a wealthy man received...

[...]

...The ability to use the door you'd pioneered, I assume, at his own discretion.

ic contact;

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