Work Text:
Rosalind Lutece sips her wine, and looks deep into the inky blackness that glitters beyond her sitting room window. The small warmth of candles light distant glass panes, greater lights reflecting dimly off of the clouds, the glow touching the light flakes of snow. She tabs her nail against the base of her fluke in expectant clicks.
The atom shivers.
Rosalind Lutece, blinking against her mind's calming wooliness, presses her hands to the leather back of her lounge and totters elegantly for the stairs. She can hear something below, a soft crackle, like a campfire, if the flames were composed instead of cottony snow. Her heart patters, like a restless bird, small wings beating against the cage of her ribs. It is happening.
Rosalind Lutece adjusts the needle of the phonograph, brushing strands of chestnut hair from her eye. The reverberations of a great base crackle to life from the pavilion, higher pitched strings balancing it with the assistance of a quiet piano. It is nice to see what fortune their work has brought men like Albert Fink, whom she has sure she has never met, or cared to—but perhaps, tonight, something they found on their own. The luxurious sound fills the room, and she lifts her head away from the machine.
She leans over the delicate contraption to see the miniscule quivers of the particle's pulsations. Her sleeve brushes the paper on which she had written her own message, scribbled in Morse code for simple reference. (Despite its difficulty, spelling out women's intuition in all its incensing glory was worth the effort.) The sound is just quiet enough to be overtaken by the scratching of her pencil as she jots its incoming reply, in time with the atom's small beats. D-E-A-R-S-I-S-T-E-R—
She catches herself against the side table in the hall, presses her hand to the wood as she edges to the great room. Her teeth worry her lip as she sees—sees, though it is small, only reaching her through the faintest of perceptions. Something she sees with her mind, more than her eyes. She will have to examine that at a later time: a shadow darkens that light.
She moves on her own a moment, hands drifting and feet sliding, carried on the notes as if they were corporeal. Perhaps somewhere they are. Her lip quirks, and she stretches her arms in a crisp, succinct motion.
Warm autumn light spreads from the window to the floor, catching on dust particles as they swirl with her movement. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. She hears a chuckle at her back.
T-H-Y-A-R-E-F-O-O-L-S-STOP she translates with a scratching of her pencil.
He is blunt. It's unlike him—or perhaps unlike her. She knows their mode of communication is complicit in the matter; it leaves little room for poetry or grandeur—of which she can be fond, truth be told—and it has hampered their efforts at complex language before. But she feels there is something different about this occasion. It is as if, preposterous as it may be, it is something in his tone.
Her breath leaves her of its own accord, the sound harsh in the quiet room. The machine is on by its own power, glowing, fizzing gently. The soft white-blue of its internal glow seems to spread in her eye, brighter than it can possibly be. It feels as if her chest is occupied with much the same, bursts of electricity that fill her as fully and thickly as mist.
She does not need to call. Feeling static across her skin, she watches the light grow and clear as layers are pulled away. The shadow becomes starker, blacker, until it is not a shadow at all. It struggles to push through.
"You strike an imposing figure. I imagine you'd scare most dance partners away like that," she hears at her back, a creaking of leather with the shifting of a body. She ignores it a bare moment—unlike her, perhaps, but an excellent stage to respond in proper form.
I-K-N-W-Y-O-U-R-B-R-L-L-N-C-E-STOP I-T-I-S-M-Y-O-W-N-STOP
She chuckles, brushing hair behind her ear. She is not sure if he is saccharine or narcissistic—or perhaps narcissism takes a different meaning between them.
The atom grows still, and she sighs, taking up her wine glass. She thinks on her composition, wonders at his bold favor—compliments, complement. How does one return a serve when it is purposefully put to the net? But she thinks, and sips, and begins her draft.
The atom pulses again, and with a surprised pause and huff she scribbles this new message in place of her own. She will simply take longer to respond, and he will have to be satisfied with the effect of his impatience—
Her annoyance falls away, like drapes whipped in a gale, as the message unravels itself.
Rosalind races to the contraption, rips away the layers the shadow cannot. She touches that darkness, feels warmth, the edge of a sleeve, the shape of curling fingers. She pulls the shadow close to her chest, and wrenches it through.
Robert looks at her with her own, blue eyes, and collapses to the ground.
The gramophone plays to the quiet, and she lets it answer for a moment, two. She turns her face toward the touch of the light.
He writhes on her floor, nonsense flowing from his mouth like the red from his nose. He hemorrhages, blood dripping down his cheeks in rivulets, eyes clouded and fingers grasping. She lets him cling, cradles his head in her lap, lets him bleed on her skirts and cuffs.
"Ssh," she coos, running a hand through his hair, and though she can feel her own small quivering in the tips of her fingers, her mind is calmed enough to withstand it. She guides him to his side, lets him grip tightly to her thigh.
With painful slowness the convulsions ease, until he is left to pant for breath, shiver in her grasp. "I—" he says, voice thick and cracked. "Where?"
"Don't you remember, Brother?" she says, and some small warmth in her chest intensifies. There would be no more whispering. "You have been transfused into a new reality."
He looks up at her and she touches his cheek, feeling nearly giddy at its solidity. "You?" he asks.
She will be patient. This is new to them both. "Rosalind," she says. "Your sister."
He stares at her, gaze unclear, like a lost child. A new dribble of blood seeps down his face, and she brushes it away with her sleeve. "I—I am Rosalind," he says.
Oh dear. This will take some work. With a small smile—and without, uncharacteristically, another word of her own—she touches his head, and leans close.
"It is not the first time I have danced alone, as you well know," she says, stepping crisply as she turns, beams of July sun touching the back of her neck through the open window. "But a waltz is hardly an optimal choice for a solitary dance. If you would, dear brother."
She holds her hand out to him—and Robert, sitting up from the lounge with a smirk in his clear eyes, takes it.