Work Text:
There was only so much that one could do on a Sunday in the summer, and unfortunately, Pacifica had done all of it and then some (there were only so many issues of Teen Vogue worth rereading, after all). This left really only one option—lying facedown on the couch, mentally bemoaning the crushing boredom .
Heavy footfalls broke the silence as they ascended from the basement, shuffled about in the kitchen (cabinets opened and closed, a few drawers opened), then started back for the basement. On the return trip though, they paused. "Everything alright?"
She lifted her head, then sat up fully. The footfalls had belonged to Ford (no surprise there—who else wore heavy boots, and a sweater for that matter, in the dead heat of summer?), who was standing in the doorway with one of what Pacifica suspected were at least a dozen old journals in hand. "Yeah," she confirmed. "Just really bored ."
He nodded once before looking back at the page—then again at Pacifica. "Want to help me with a project?"
"What is it?" she asked, trying not to sound wary. She wasn't exactly sure what kind of science Ford did (she heard him reference six doctorates, so it was anyone's guess), but that didn't stop her from assuming the phrase "mad scientist" would come into play at some point.
"I'd appreciate it if you could take some numbers down," he explained. "I'll be doing all the hard work." A brief pause, then almost as an afterthought—"There's dangerous chemicals involved."
Part of Pacifica wondered if the courts would have agreed to place her in Ford's care if they had known the phrase "dangerous chemicals" was going to come up… But still—"Yeah, that sounds kind of fun," she agreed, standing and moving to follow him.
Ford passed her the journal and pen in his hand as they went down into what he described as "the lab." It wasn't quite what Pacifica pictured when she thought of a science lab, but it did give off a vague "mad scientist" vibe—possibly because it looked like he'd set up shop in a nuclear bunker. Had she not lived through the weirdest two or three weeks last summer, she might have found this odd.
Her job, as Ford explained it, was incredibly simple—write down the volume of the liquid in a row of beakers, report back to Ford. Hell, there was even a table, and figuring out what was meant to go in each cell was simple. As she wrote, she spent time observing the beakers' contents (light green, somehow simmering despite a lack of an obvious heat source) and the notes in the margins of the journal (mostly higher order math and notes in Latin and Greek). It was a good thing, she supposed, that Ford was doing all the science, but… fascinating at the same time.
"Done," she announced a few minutes later.
He pulled the journal over to his station farther down the workbench, his gaze flicking from the page to the row of beakers. "Looks good," he said, drawing a sample of a second solution into a dropper.
"What happens now?" she asked, her chin in her hand.
"Adding this—" He indicated the dropper— "to these and observing. Whatever happens from there depends on the reactions."
She hmm ed thoughtfully. "So what was the point of the numbers?" Wow, where did that question come from?
"Had to know how much to put in," he replied, his words short as he focused on keeping a steady hand. "Trust me, an assistant's work on an experiment is just as important as the scientist's is."
She didn't answer, but blinked several times. She was an assistant—more mind blowing than that, her work was important ? In all her life when was the last time she had contributed something of importance ?
She didn't get to ponder the question too deeply. One of the contents of one of the beakers started to hiss and bubble more violently than the others, its contents turning the color of toxic sludge. "Uhh… Is it supposed to be doing that?" she asked slowly.
"Hmm?" Ford's gaze tracked from her to the beaker to which she was referring. " Ohh —" He pushed the journal into her hands and, surprisingly quickly, dragged the stool on which she sat, and by extension, herself, back several feet. "Stay right there—try not to breathe the fumes."
She might have managed an incredulous "what" had the situation not been so serious; instead, she tucked the neckline of her blouse up over her nose and mouth. Ford took no such precautions, but given the speed with which he worked, maybe it was unnecessary. He tipped a test tube into the beaker, waving away the smoke as the contents mixed and neutralized themselves.
"Alright, major crisis averted," he announced, picking up the beaker with a pair of tongs and moving it to a different counter. "Good catch."
"What happened?" Pacifica asked, tugging her collar back into place.
"That's what we're going to try to find out," he replied, pulling a second stool over and accepting the journal from her. He flipped to the pages they had been working on, Pacifica leaning closer, her weight on her elbows as she observed. "Alright, Sample Two, eight cc's of solution…"
A feeling not unlike ice water down her back washed over Pacifica. "That's… not right," she mumbled, her stomach knotting up.
He turned his full attention to her. "What was that?"
It was such a simple question, and she almost didn't want to answer it. "That eight is supposed to… it's a nine." She carded her fingers through her ponytail, then stopped. That would damage it.
Ford looked back at the notes, peering at the page closely, then through his bifocals. "So it is," he announced, his voice, to Pacifica's ears, damnably devoid of any real emotion. "Alright—lesson learned, just write more clearly next time."
"Wait—next time?" she echoed. Ford, up to this point, hadn't struck her as being a mind games kind of person—but then again, people wouldn't have thought that about—"What do you mean, 'next time?'"
"I wouldn't mind having you help," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm not sure about the ethics of listing a fourteen year old as a co-author, but—"
"But… I ruined your work," she pointed out. Where was the catch?
He laughed, the sound short but somehow ( somehow !) without malice. "Trust me, you're not the first person in my life to accidentally mess up an experiment."
"…You're not mad." It came out sounding more like a statement of fact than a question.
"I'm a little disappointed about having to recreate that one," he admitted, "but I've learned it's a lot easier in the long run to let that stuff go." He rubbed the back of his neck, looking almost sheepish. "Trust me."
Pacifica could only stare. The idea was mind-boggling—that kind of thing happened to… other people .
Her confusion was far from lost on Ford. "Were you expecting me to be upset with you?"
"… Yeah !" she finally sputtered.
Ford closed the journal and turned to face her, his attention more fully on her than ever. "That's…" He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose and briefly displacing his glasses. "That's not how I do things, Pacifica, and I think you and I both agree that's not a way to go through life."
This was what a conversation with an adult was like. There wasn't a bell—a bell or a snide comment or a dirty look, and here she forced herself to stop thinking about it before she started to cry . "…Yeah, it isn't."