Work Text:
First and foremost, Miranda Lawson is a scientist.
She understands the natural order; she respects it – far more than she does most anyone or anything else – but she doesn’t bow to it, doesn’t consider nature the ‘be all and end all’ of life. (How can she, when she herself was crafted outside its laws?)
She understands the world too, the way it works and the many ways it could, and she likes that understanding, craves it. Because knowledge is power and, while she enjoys learning for its own sake, power has merits of its own and, for a very long time, power was all she thought she needed.
She understands there are some rules that should never be broken while some are made to be so. That things often taken for granted – things like gravity, home, family, and the distant but constant warmth of the sun – are relative to who you are and where you stand.
She understands that the typical star has approximately 1x10^57 atoms whilst its plastic counterpart has only a few paltry thousand and she understands that love, no matter how potent, can be reduced to a chemical cocktail of adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine.
But understanding these things doesn’t make her immune to their effects, doesn’t make her more aware or less human, because she also understands that there are some things you can’t learn from books or lecture. Like how it’s possible a single look from Natasha can make it hard to breathe, how their children’s smiles can fill her heart to bursting, or how a plastic star on top of a fiberglass tree can shine brighter than a supernova.
And, though it takes her an almost embarrassingly long time, she eventually understands that, maybe, just maybe, there are some things she doesn’t need to understand at all.
She just needs to know them.