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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.

. . . yes and no.

[This is not a conversation, truthfully, she wants to have at all. But if they are to have it-- and, she thinks, it might be an inevitability that they do-- she doesn't want to have it here.]

But the story of my patron, and his contribution to my reaching Robert, is not one I wish to tell here. Nor will I have it written down.

...Understood.

[And this, perhaps, is one of those rare benefits of both his esteem for her and what he considers to be the value of their friendship: for most anyone else, it's doubtful that someone of his curiosity would have relented so immediately and so easily, even if on the surface he'd given every appearance of it for the sake of form.

But this is Rosalind, and she has said no, and so as far as he's concerned, the matter is settled, until the next time it arises on its own.

It occurs to him, though, that she probably can't read the notes he's taking in Japanese, and so he shifts the paper over into her view, methodically noting each character in turn as he elaborates: ]

Contact with him took only seven years. That's where we paused.

Seven years.

[She sorts through the notebooks in her lap, carefully sorting through them until she reaches the newest one. Flipping to the last filled page, she taps the message there. It's written so neatly, because she'd gone back and filled it in later, once everything was said and done and Robert was asleep in her bed.]

Ready. That was the last message he sent me.

[That makes it sound so much nicer than it had been. Ready, golden and firm, as if they were both waiting with baited breath in their laboratories, Robert having said his last goodbyes and taken care of his affairs, eager and willing to step through and start their life together. Like something out of a storybook, really: ready, ready to be united, ready to start something grand and perfect.

Instead: it had come through at eleven in the evening, a frantic thing. She'd torn open a doorway into a filthy alley, with her Robert dancing anxiously from foot to foot, the price of his ticket to reach her cooing in his arms.]

I see.

[He sets his pen back to the page again, resuming his notations in his usual methodical way.]

And was he? Ready.

Of course.

[She leans back in her chair, relaxing somewhat as the memory passes.]

He's as precise with his words as I am. He wouldn't have sent such a message until he was.

You mention that often. Precision with your words. That's very valuable to you for some reason.

[He finishes off writing, then regards the piece of paper he's holding, gauging it for its thoroughness.

Start to finish, from notions of the atom to Robert's arrival; surely that's sufficient for "an entry", when it's a whole story in isolation.]

What is it about imprecision — in vocabulary, specifically — that you dislike?

The time wasted when one needs to clarify.

[She holds out a hand, ready to take the paper and set it where her notebooks had lay.]

I'm hardly going to think less of a person if they need to clarify once or twice, but meandering on and on with an explanation four sentences long when only a word would do is irritating.

[A beat, and then:]

And words are . . . important. Use one incorrectly, be imprecise and careless, and you might find yourself more vulnerable than you'd intended.

...You want to be perfect — no. Now I'm the one who's been imprecise. You want to be impenetrable.

[He hands over the paper, obliging, and tucks the pen behind his ear in an idle bit of mischief for his own quiet amusement.]

If that's what it is, it's an impulse I understand, believe me.

Yes.

[There's no fanfare as she sets the paper down. The price tag falls off her notebooks, and that seems to be that: she's free to take them. Rosalind clutches them closer to her chest and nods to Kurama, indicating they ought to head out.]

You can well imagine why a fifteen year old girl in 1886 would want to learn to be impenetrable. After that first semester, I learned that in order to be taken seriously, I would have to ensure I didn't provide any easy ammunition to my detractors. That extended to tone and subject material as well as word choice.

[He follows her then, silently, mulling over what she's said and fitting it to his own vibrant, profound memories of her: of the heel of her hand coming up to her teeth to try to stifle the upwelling of emotion that had followed her release from the wendigo; of the rigidity in her shoulders when he'd thoughtlessly twisted her longing for Robert and turned it into a knife against her; of her genuine pleasure, even excitement, at the gift he'd made her of the ojigi; of the softness in her voice when she'd wrapped her arms around nine multicolored roses and longed for a ghost in her memories.

Rarely is she impenetrable around him. It's what she does when she's upset, of course — her defense mechanism against a situation that sets her off balance, or presents her with circumstances wildly out of her control. But without those extenuating conditions, she — unwinds. Shows her hand.

Never fears for whether she'll be taken seriously.

He smiles, softly, and quickens his steps a fraction to bring himself up next to her, using the momentum to hold the door for her as they exit the Emporium, and now extending his arms to her for real.]

...I'll take a few of those, if you like. If you'd prefer to read while I walk you home, that is.

. . . no. But I thank you for the offer.

[For more than that: the implication that he's beginning to understand the sheer importance of Robert. Rosalind offers him a slight smile, rare even for him: something soft and pleased. It doesn't last, but the fact it was there at all speaks a great deal.]

And for rushing to my aid at a moment's notice.

...I promised you.

[He says it lightly, a fond bright echo of another adventure they'd had together when he'd meant it much more profoundly, and his rescue had been much more serious than the one he's completed today.

A smile like that...strange to think that there had once been a time in his life when he'd thought such things didn't belong to him, for one reason or another.

It makes him, fleetingly, think of his mother. Not because Rosalind is very much like her, of course, or anything to do with how he sees her, and it takes him a second or two to place why before he realizes —

Of course. That's how she used to smile at him when he would coax her to eat, murmuring so sweetly about what she would do without him, how he always takes such good care of her...

He doesn't, obviously. And yet.

And yet.]

Happy Valentine's Day, Rosalind.

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