Chapter Text
Lyra doesn’t come, that evening, and the next morning Marisa finds herself waking up in one of Boreal’s many rooms with a familiar feeling of curiosity and rage strumming through her. That Dr Malone, who has no idea what she has, who is living a life that Marisa had never even dared to dream of, a life that Marisa had never known was available to her. A life that isn’t available to her, in her world, where the female children of aristocrats go on to marry well and have heirs to that masculine fortune and nothing else is considered. Marisa was supposed to languish, was supposed to support Edward in his endeavours, was supposed to, supposed to, supposed to. She’d always been too smart for her own good. And Mary was here, doctorate published under her name, her research available to all, and Marisa wants .
She wants to be respected, she wants to be seen, she wants to publish, wants to have ideas and not have to simper and pretend like it’s some man’s work just so that she can share with the academic community, because her and Asriel both know that half of his work was hers. Not that he would ever see it that way; visionary as he is he’s stuck in their times, in their world, and she wonders absently if perhaps he too is hiding somewhere in this one, if he’d gone through that liminal world, that crossroads, and ended up here.
She flicks through the clothes Boreal brought her, and thinks he might have something resembling taste, if only his house wasn’t some kind of monolith to masculine power. She’ll go back today, find a way to make her excuses for disappearing without a word, and try to find a way to make Mary talk without revealing anything about herself. It’s the first time (and it turns out, the first of many) she brings the monkey along; separation is distracting, in its way, and mother and daughter are more alike than Lyra would like to let on; a large bag is an easy ploy (it’s a trick she will make much use of, later).
Mary is, of course, surprised to see her. And wearing another blouse Marisa wouldn’t be caught dead in.
“Ah, Dr Coulter, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be back after yesterday,” and something in Marisa’s brain whirrs, buzzes, twitches, and she feels like she’s been flung out of space. Dr Coulter is what she should be, what she would have been, if she’d been born here, if she’d been born to the privilege that Mary doesn’t even know she has, regardless of whether she’s right to make assumptions like that. Something in her tightens and she almost lashes out, at what, she’s not sure, her eyes full of tears and her breaths too close together and Mary doesn’t even notice, shuffling papers, because Marisa knows how to keep her cards close to her chest. “Lyra hasn’t been back, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, I know she hasn’t,” she manages, voice softer than she meant it to be, because she knows it’s what she should say. “She’s safe,” she says, even though she has no idea if that’s true, even though she’s grasping and grasping and Lyra doesn’t want her, doesn’t want her help or her safety or to be part of Marisa’s world. Part of her is starting to understand. “I got called away yesterday, terribly sorry for how sudden it was.”
“Something to do with Lyra?” Mary asks, with something knowing, like she wouldn’t be surprised if Lyra was that kind of kid, and Marisa lets a small smile emerge, something tentative and softer than she was used to.
“She is very headstrong,” she says, and let’s Mary believe it, knows it’s the right answer when she laughs, shaking her head.
“I’ve known a couple kids like her; have a knack for trouble.”
“You weren’t one?” she asks, because she could imagine it, that impertinence, how being quick to smile and brighter than the others might have led her there, but she shakes her head.
“No, no, not anything like that; I was mostly quiet back then, more grew into trouble than anything,” and her smile is something slanting and easy that makes something in Marisa’s chest constrict, makes her feel some kind of out of control.
“Trouble has a tendency of reaching us all eventually,” Marisa agrees, like this is easy and she’s allowed to have a normal conversation, like there’s not a monkey hiding in her bag and a holy war glimmering on the horizon. Like she’s not who she is. “Anyway, I just really wanted to hear more about your work?” she asks, leading, simple, and Mary gestures for her to take a seat.
“Coffee?” she offers, and Marisa nods, grateful, confused that she is somehow welcome in this office, the glimmering envy and resentment still boiling at the back of her mind. If Ozymandias was less well-trained she’d be worried about him drawing attention to her, but she lowers her bag to the floor and knows he won’t move, will barely breathe, without her permission.
It’s illuminating, her discussion with Mary, illuminating in such a way that she leaves it unknowing whether she has learnt anything more than how to put different names to things that have been discovered already in her world. Illuminating, in that Mary doesn’t have to prove herself but that Marisa, somehow, doesn’t have to either. She doesn’t have to make a point of proving what she knows, that she’s her equal, because Mary had believed it as soon as she’d asked about her research, because Mary looks at her like someone who is deserving of a doctorate, because Mary can see something in her that makes her believe that she could be doing her own, parallel research, in her own world. They don’t discuss anything personal, and Marisa doesn’t have to trick or deceive - they just talk about the work, just apply themselves to figuring something out together, without underhanded intentions or subtle manipulations. It feels honest, in a way that Marisa didn’t know she was capable of, and she steps into the sunlight dazzled and dizzy and refreshed. She thinks what it would be like, a true women’s college, not one full of second rate scholars and women that had time and resources to devote to pretending at an education because they were third-born daughters of aristocrats, and needed a convenient excuse for their perennial spinsterhood and closeness with other women. She knew what was said about them , and it was something she’d long declared would never be said about her (she doesn’t think about Mary’s smile in the sunlight, doesn’t think about her one and only female best friend, the one that she’d splintered away from when she realised how it could kill her, crush her, ruin her , if anyone was to ever know).
------
Mary is something light, something unknown, something unprecedented, and Marisa is sitting here opposite a dead man, drunk out of her mind, almost sloppy , and she really must be letting herself go to end up like this. And Mary is just walking, is gazing around this city like she’s never seen bricks before, like she’s never seen something she wasn’t expecting, like she doesn’t know what to do with herself, do with all this proof . Mary is walking towards her with something inside her like the absolute knowledge now that magic is real , that religious belief could be the opposite of folly, that her misguided youth in a religious institution that had chipped away at her in a way that she hadn’t long made peace with might not have been misguided after all. She’s here, walking through this city, she’s here, protected by angels, she’s here, with a religious task, with a role that her background of science and theology in a world where those two things do not mix have set her up perfectly for her task, have left her in a position of belief and knowledge, have let her do something more like reconciling the two.
They’re the only two adults that can be safe within this place, within this city, within this world, the only ones that can walk through these streets without the power of innocence to protect them, and those powers live so separately, present so differently. Come from something like humanity and the inhumane, something sacred and profane, come from something like the willingness to be hurt and the urge to do anything in order to protect themselves. Mary walks into this world with trust in her heart, and Marisa walks into it knowing that anyone will do anything to prove to her that she doesn’t belong here, that anyone will take any chance to rip this from her.
Marisa is femininity and hatred, abuser and abused, something shattered and broken that’s only capable of harm. Marisa and her evil fucking monkey, the monkey she hates because she hates herself, the monkey she hurts because it’s the only thing she has any control over. She is cruelty delivered with a smile, she is a scream that she can’t let out where anyone can hear her. She is her mother’s child, she is her father’s nightmare, she is rage and shimmering eyes, she is something that burns so cold she hurts anything close to her. And Mary is walking right into her fucking eyeline when she knows, she knows she knows she knows, that when she’s like this all she can do is harm. All she can do is take this scholar, this eager, clean, good person, this person who carries wonder in her every step, and try to cut her down, try to bring her down to Marisa’s level, try to wound with the same intensity that’s always been given when applying wounds to herself.
“Don’t you know there’s something dangerous lurking around every corner?” she asks, at the same time as she sees Mary realise that Boreal isn’t going to be getting up from this table ever again.
“I think the something dangerous that was lurking around this corner was you,” she responds, like this is all a joke, like this is something silly, something fun. “Or at least it was for him,” and she sort of flicks her hand in his direction like she’d rather not look at him again. This isn’t her world, the world of poisoning and intrigue, of seduction and disposal, and she can only view it with some kind of distant disbelieving morality; she wouldn’t have done it. She can barely believe Marisa Coulter did it, for all her coldness, for all of the strange interactions with strange people she’s had in her office recently. None of this makes sense in her world, where she is a normal academic, where she smiles at everyone she meets, where her biggest concerns are funding for her research and how she doesn’t see her sister and her kids often enough. Her world is small, and doesn’t have space for the sort of things that Mrs Coulter would bring with her, for the kinds of things that she wields with the efficiency and transparency of a fast-acting poison.
“He earned it,” she says, like there’s a way she could justify murder to Mary that would ever make her understand, like she could ever tell Mary even a fifth of the things she’s done and expect her to see anything beyond those actions. Something makes her stay her hand, stops her from revealing anything else, regardless of her own wine-stained lips, regardless of her monkey’s intense eyes looking between them, regardless of disappointments and rages swarming up through her chest. “Have you seen Lyra?” she asks, instead, standing, swaying, and Mary moves like she wants to help but she’s met with a gaze so acerbic it makes her step back a little instead.
“No,” she cocks her head to the side. “I’m quite sure you should have been keeping an eye on her.”
“She’s always been headstrong,” Marisa says, like that’s an answer, like that explains why she is here with a dead man and wine burning acidic inside her, and Lyra is nowhere to be seen. It’s an echo, a remembrance of a time in an office in a different world, where both of them knew even less than they do now, a time when Marisa had one less death on her conscience, a little less sin to her name.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Mary says, ignoring it, because the girls had told her about the Spectres, and the monkey on the table has curled up like he’s going to sleep, and that somehow seems wrong, like he shouldn’t be out here in the open, and Marisa sees her looking.
“He’s fine,” sharp, unrelenting, ignoring the way he twitches like he always does, like he doesn’t know how to take cruelty even though he should be used to it, even though it’s all they’ve ever gotten, all she knows how to give. Marisa doesn’t know what Mary knows about d æmons, doesn’t know what she’s been told, and Mary isn’t sure what she knows, just knows that there’s something there, that that is not just a monkey, that he doesn’t deserve the dismissive malice that Marisa looks at him with.
“You might not be,” she points out, instead, and Marisa rolls her eyes.
“I can handle myself,” but she’s leaning heavily on the table, and Mary knows how to roll her eyes right back.
“Suit yourself,” she shrugs, but she takes a seat a couple tables down from Boreal’s body anyway, slings her backpack onto the floor and rummages through it, drawing out something with entirely unfamiliar packaging.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a break,” Mary replies, bright but neutral, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to linger here, where there’s a dead body and wine bottles and Marisa, full of malice and unstoppable cruelty. Marisa, who is full of hurt, too, who carries in every line of her body in a way that Mary, who has known people from all kinds of lives, who has lived different lives herself, can recognise.
“I can look after myself,” Marisa says, defensive until the last, defensive with no reason to be, here with someone who doesn’t wish her ill, here with someone who doesn’t understand her world or her ways, doesn’t recognise the very brokenness in the way in which she interacts with her d æmon.
“I know, I’m just tired,” and she yawns, like that’ll prove it somehow, and it’s the worst ruse Marisa’s ever seen and she takes her chair anyway.
“What are you doing here?” She asks, curious, wanting to know Mary’s motivations.
“I’ve got a task.”
Marisa raises her eyebrow and Mary does some kind of shake of her head, something that indicates how little she knows and understands, something that makes it clear to both of them that she doesn’t know, in a lot of ways, what she needs to do. “A task?”
“Yes. A task.” And they’re quiet after that, because Mary doesn’t need to know why Marisa’s here; it’s clear from her question about Lyra, clear that she’s following her, and Mary loves Lyra even if she doesn’t know her but she doesn’t know enough to stop her, doesn’t know what Marisa wants with her. Doesn’t understand how Marisa lost her, really. Doesn’t know all of the details, has a vague awareness that Marisa might not have had her in the first place. Doesn’t understand this world that Marisa comes from where casual brutality and the actions of heroes and villains are par for the course, doesn’t know how much she could learn.
Mary doesn’t understand, can’t understand, all of the things that have brought Marisa to this place at this time, all of the things that have led to Boreal dead at the table, to Ozymandias gazing up at Marisa with those wet eyes she hates. Marisa walks inside, leaves Mary without a word, lets her wonder, and Mary just gets up after a long moment, continues on her way. She’s full of questions, nothing clear to her, but she’s aware of her task, aware that this lack of knowing is still leading her onwards.
Mary is the serpent, and that doesn’t make sense. In a story where Lyra is Eve, where Lyra leads them into evilness and sin, into suffering, wouldn’t it make sense for the serpent to be her, to be Marisa, fingers pulling Ozymandias’s fur hard enough to feel the pain wavering through them both. Wouldn’t it make sense, for all of Marisa’s sinful lust and greed and envy, all her gluttony and pride, to be what leads Lyra into filling this world with sin, to be what leads Lyra’s descent into something inherently wrong. And that, Mary as Marisa’s foil, is what will be Marisa’s downfall, what will lead to her, Asriel and Metatron, falling, falling, falling, what will lead her to the abyss.
------
She wakes. She had not expected to. She looks up into her d æmon’s eyes and understands that this must be some form of final punishment. She was not allowed to fall into the abyss and know that maybe her crimes and her faults and all the ways she had failed were to be left behind. She was not allowed the absence of existence. She was not allowed to lie content in the knowledge of the end. She takes some time to lie there, grass damp against her clothes, against her cheek, and wonders which section of hell this is, wonders how far she must fall.
It’s Mary’s world, she learns later, the one where experimental theology doesn’t exist, where they’d called it physics. The universe is kind in that she recognises where she is - it’s Mary’s university, in the post dawn quiet that can only mean that it is late spring or early summer - she is not cold, and there is no one around. She gets up. She begins again (with a little help from Boreal’s resources, since he won’t be needing them. Men in this world are for the most part the same as they were in hers).
Lyra’s in her world. And she devotes plenty of time to trying to find her, but she remembers Mary, the one person who might know of windows, ones that could still be open (she’s been searching, finding them closed, finding anomalies shut on all sides). She doesn’t know if she’s welcome, doesn’t know if Mary would consider speaking to her, doesn’t know what she knows, doesn’t know what Lyra has told her, and thinks, sometimes, that Lyra believes her dead and is probably thankful for it. She knows some things about trying to remove yourself from the poison that plagues the relationship between mother and daughter. Her mother was cruel and she has always been a product of her, has wrapped her cruelty like a shield around herself, that which she learned at her mother’s knee. Learned like she learned how to present herself, her aggressive disdain taught side by side with how to know which shades of lipstick suited her and which made her look like a whore (this knowledge had not stopped her mother from screaming that word at her, when she had found out she was pregnant, when she had discovered whose child it was, hadn’t stopped her from backhanding her across the face, hadn’t stopped the way her d æmon had launched himself at Ozymandias).
She’s been in this world for a year, more or less, and she blends in, these days, her trouser suits and her sharper blouses, her large bags and cosmetics, using femininity as armour as she always has, heels silent when she wants them to be. Everything in this world is smoothed over with money and manipulation, just as it had been in her own, and with fewer rules, too. She gets accepted as a PhD candidate at Mary’s university, long before Mary hears from her again, long before she reveals herself to Mary (Marisa thinks she doesn’t know, like she doesn’t hear about everything that happens). Mary probably thinks she’s dead, too, and they don’t meet, for a while, and then suddenly Mary is her PhD supervisor, because Marisa’s strayed further into the experimental than most of the department deals with, and Mary’s had a candidate or two drop out.
“I thought it was unlikely to be a coincidence, your name cropping up in my emails,” is the first thing that’s said, when Marisa strides into her office during office hours, Mary’s door shutting behind her. “Lyra’s in your world, you know.”
“I know.” Marisa says, even though she hadn’t, not for sure, not with the kind of definite quality that spoke of Mary having seen it.
“You misled me, Ms Coulter,” she says, emphasis on the Ms, and Marisa’s lips twist a little.
“You assumed. And I had completed the work; the Magisterium simply wouldn’t allow me to publish.”
“I used to find it strange that your religion and science were so closely intertwined, but it makes more sense to me now,” she tilts her head to the side. “They were wrong about you, not allowing you to publish, but they weren’t wrong about that, your Magisterium.” She pauses, gestures to a chair, slumps into her own. “I’ve read your proposal; it’s good.”
“Thank you,” she frowns, sets her bag down gently in something like a direct echo of something that happened what feels like a lifetime ago. Mary’s eyes move to the bag like she understands something, tracking it’s slow movement to the floor carefully. Marisa’s aware of it as she asks - “do you have any revisions to suggest?”
“It’s still early stages,” she says, eyes still on the bag. “Is your dæmon in there?”
Marisa laughs, something sharp and quick that seems tugged out of her, and the monkey takes that as an invitation to fidget a little, the black leather handbag wobbling, keys rattling around him. She’d forgotten what it was like to have anyone she could be honest with, what it was like to know anyone that knew of other worlds, that knew of dæmons and witches and Spectres, of windows and holy wars and desperate battles. Of falling. “Yes, he is.”
Mary knows little of dæmon etiquette, knows mostly of the existence of them and little else, knows about physical manifestations of souls and the things they can tell someone, and sometimes she wishes hers had lingered, that she’d gotten to hold onto him, but she acknowledges that hiding a bird may have been more difficult. “I had one, briefly,” and something a little wistful and uncomfortable crosses her face. “I would have liked to have gotten used to being an us, I think.”
“It’s not all blessings,” Marisa says, her tone cryptic and dark and hinting, something that makes her monkey poke his head out of the bag.
“Oh, he was there when you were in Cittagazze.” Marisa inclines her head and Mary smiles at him, like he’s deserving of her kindness, like she herself is still deserving of her kindness, and Marisa feels a little like she’s breaking in two, like she’s falling all over again. There’s something about Mary, about her calmness and her practicality, her cheerfulness, her kindness, that makes Marisa feel somewhat like she’s spinning out. She’s never known anyone like her. “He’s gorgeous,” she continues, and then she blushes, like she realises what that says about Marisa, like she’s remembering they’re one and the same. Ozymandias practically preens under her gaze in a way that makes Marisa want to kick him across the room, that makes her wish she could find a way to punish him without Mary seeing, because there’s something about her that makes Marisa think she shouldn’t have to witness cruelty like that, something about her that makes her feel like everything in her world should be light. Something about her that makes Marisa feel like she shouldn’t be here, like she shouldn’t have brought her sin into this office that’s full of her smiles and her light, that’s full of something like hope.
She finally rips her eyes away and looks back to Marisa, rubbing her palms on her thighs to refocus, leaning back again. “I’m not sure your proposal needs much work honestly - it’s very clear to me what your intention and area of research is, and I simply think you need to crack on to get to the meat of it. Did you have any questions or anything you wanted to discuss with me?”
“Not yet, I primarily think the same; that research and time will lead to the root of it,” and she remembers the last conversation that they had in this office, the one that she had left feeling some kind of changed, one that she thinks might have been part of what led her back here. She starts to think maybe her descent to this world might have been something closer to a blessing than a curse, and she stands, tucking Ozymandias’s head back into her bag, slinging it over her shoulder with more force than necessary. A reminder. She is changing but she is not changed. She is in a different world but she is still her mother’s daughter. She lives with recriminations in her heart and poison in her veins, cruelty at her fingertips, and she shakes Mary’s hand and walks out of her office with her head held high and an awareness of how long her reading list is.
Marisa is a lot of things but she simply doesn’t have an awareness of doing anything without the best of her. She haunts the department, is there even longer than anyone else, and she sneers at the work ethic of those she shares office space with. She’ll be teaching, soon, an essential part of her PhD and the one she looks forward to least. She doesn’t want to help others, doesn’t want to extend the hand that had never been extended to her, because there’s a bitterness that lies in her heart that is never going away. This is a whole different world and there are different customs, and she sits in on as many of Mary’s lectures as she can.
Mary lectures in a way that is much more like leading a discussion, and Marisa almost scoffs every time she lets an eager undergrad try to impress her, every time a small voice pipes up to volunteer a wrong answer. There’s no prizes for participation in Marisa’s eyes, and sometimes she thinks Mary sees it, sees all the ways her experiences have made her hard and sharp and unable to be understanding, sees the way that she eschews anything that could be understood as soft. But Mary is soft, she’s softness and light, and she’s just as respected for it. Mary is feminine in ways that Marisa has long been unable to be, Mary displays qualities that in Marisa’s eyes make her less than the men that stop her in the corridors for her thoughts, and none of these people see it. She demands respect with kindness and openness and a willingness to help anyone who is brave enough to poke their heads into her office, will offer a smile to anyone she passes. Marisa doesn’t know if that’s a strength or if it’s stupidity, but she knows it’s something that is not available to her. She will wield her power with an iron fist just as she always has done, will make undergrads cry, probably, will mark harshly and without compromise. She knows all this before she takes on her first classes.
Mary is, oddly, just as welcoming to Marisa as she is to everyone else. Marisa does not think she deserves it, but there she is just the same, smiling when they pass in the halls (and to think she’d been avoiding her, before, jumping through doorways so as not to alert Mary that she’s here, doesn’t think about how Mary probably knew all along).
“Oh! Marisa,” she says, and draws her to the side in a hallway that is not particularly busy but in which she makes space for others to pass anyway, and Marisa thinks that her smile makes her want to throw herself back into the abyss. “I was going to send you an email, how’s your research coming along?”
“It’s going more or less as expected,” by which she means she’s been spending every hour on it, by which she means if she continues at this rate she will either burn out or finish long before she needs to (and Marisa does not experience burn out, does not know what that is, would not let herself, would work herself into an early grave). Mary gives her a look, and she can’t see Ozymandias but it feels like she’s looking right into her, like she can see more than Marisa would ever want her to.
“Not overworking yourself, I hope?”
“I don’t know the meaning of such a thing,” she responds, and it’s something like a joke, something dry that makes Mary smile.
“I’ve noticed you’ve been attending some of my lectures; anything helpful in there?”
“I’ve been made aware that I will be… teaching. Next term,” and the distaste is evident, and Mary really does laugh this time.
“The undergrads aren’t gonna know what to do with themselves. I assume that hasn’t been required before?”
“They wouldn’t let me anywhere near young minds,” she tilts her head. “Couldn’t let the young men see me as anything other than a pretty pet of the Magisterium.”
“You’ll be a doctor soon, and that’ll show them,” Mary smiles, and nods, and moves back into the absent flow of traffic in the hallway, leaving Marisa some kind of shocked, some kind of adrift. Mary believes that she deserves this, regardless of what Marisa’s done, regardless of what her role has been, regardless of whether she is deserving of ever seeing Lyra again (she’s not).
Mary doesn’t tell Will that Marisa Coulter is somehow here, is doing a PhD at her university like that’s something that makes sense, doesn’t tell him because she knows what he’ll say. He loves Lyra, much more than she ever really expected a kid to be able to, and him and his mum are doing okay, are back at theirs, even though her and Will keep in touch. He asks her about work and she asks him about school and he’s still not interested in physics, particularly. It’s been enough time that it feels like a dream, sometimes, even with her mysterious seeds flourishing and with Marisa Coulter skulking through her halls. Her first thought should be Will, and how he would feel upon finding out, and knowing everything that Lyra told her about Marisa should be enough for her to feel that she must, or to feel like she shouldn’t be given an opportunity to live her life again, seemingly without repercussions. But she also knows that it won’t be a long life - that Marisa will have ten years, maybe, if she’s lucky, and to be able to get a PhD before she returns to nothingness should be enough. And Mary knows that she helped end things, and she thinks that maybe in some ways that should be enough for a second chance, and as much as Will has grown a lot she doesn’t know if he’s old enough to understand that, that sometimes it’s not up to them to pass moral judgement.
She’d known, for months, that Marisa had been sniffing around the department, that eventually she got herself assigned to someone else, and she wondered vaguely if they were going to keep avoiding each other. If she was going to keep catching a glimpse of her in the very back of department meetings, and she thinks that if it was going to be such an issue she could have just gone to Cambridge instead. The problem is that she thinks about her, and it’s pointless and distracting, and she’s about to just walk up to her and ask if she remembers her when she gets the email that Marisa’s been assigned as one of her PhD students. She knows that that means Marisa must have approved it, that this department isn’t in the habit of moving students around without their approval, and that means that after months of this weird stalemate Marisa is actually going to have to talk to her. And, she realises, she’s going to have to talk to Marisa. She has no idea what to say to her, no idea how to say anything that’s not trite about everything that has happened. There’s a lot between them, for two people who have only spoken three times, and a lot of unknowns besides.
It had been hard, coming back. The rush, rush, rush of all that pure discovery, and now she was back with no way to explain it, no way to prove it, the Cave destroyed and her work in ruins. Charles Latrom’s money gets redirected into the multiple universes theory, instead of rebuilding the Cave, and she’ll realise, when she finds out that she’s still alive, that that’s Marisa all over, Marisa trying to find her way back to Lyra, back to her own world. Oliver stays, and works on it, and Mary doesn’t know how to explain to him in a way that he would believe a single word of that all of it is true but he’ll never find proof, he’s wasting his time. He offers her Director back, and she doesn’t take it. She concentrates on teaching, talks vaguely about a research project that doesn’t have a name or a purpose or really anything other than watching for signs, watching for something to tell her that there’s something happening again. The good thing, out of all of it, is that she loves teaching, loves that little moment where a student figures something out, the second where they make everything connect and it all makes sense to them finally, and without a research project that eats her time like her particles did she can actually teach them the way she thinks they deserve. Part of her yearns for it, though, all that time spent just learning and learning and learning, time spent consuming information that she would never get anywhere else. It’s been a long time since her research or anyone else’s has made her feel like that.
Marisa’s PhD proposal is Dust-adjacent - it lives somewhere within the multiple universes theory but is purely theoretical - a Science PhD where she will do very little actual data collection. Mary almost asks her, one day, what the point is, when they know about souls and Dust and other worlds, when they know about the downfall of their very Gods, when they’ve spoken to angels and people whose evolution had gone in the opposite direction of theirs. When they both know that Oliver’s skulls are older than anyone would ever believe and they can’t prove it. They know that magic and science exist side by side, that wonder fills the world in ways none of their level-headed colleagues would ever believe, and if they ever talked about any of it people would assume they’d cracked under the pressure. Marisa’s world is full of the sorts of things that this Western, Science and facts based institution would tremble to look upon. Marisa’s seen and done things none of these people could ever imagine, and some of that extends to Mary too - she doesn’t ever want to know what she’d had to do in that other world, the lengths she had had to go to to reach the heights of her ambition, had heard more than enough from Lyra, doesn’t want to know how she carved out her space in the Magisterium.
If there’s one thing that’s true it’s that Marisa always lands on her feet - she’d barely had time to get all the words straight, all the concepts that echoed her own but were slightly off kilter, all the things that she knows that fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge here. Her PhD thesis is going to be full of things from her world presented in such a way that no one even notices that some of those things are things that no one had known - the sorts of things that are so obvious when put down in front of you that you can’t believe you didn’t see it before. Physics and experimental theology, combined, in a paper that can only ever be seen by one half of its intended audience. One day, she doesn’t even know she hopes for it, it will be seen at Jordan college, and they will see what she knew all along; she has always been deserving.
She still has to Google things, sometimes, concepts that she knows with entirely different names, that are mapped out a little differently, universal truths that she doesn't quite picture in the way they do in this world. It’s part of the reason she had accepted Mary as her supervisor; she can see the parts of her work that reveal too much of her without the jig being up, because she’s in on it whether she wants to be or not. They are in cahoots regardless of whether Mary signed up for it. They’re playing some sort of dangerous game that covers the span of whole worlds, that covers the truth of the universe, and neither of them can do anything to stop it, anything to prevent it. The secrets between them are huge and unyielding, and neither of them knows the other’s part in it, not fully. They’re simply two people who could talk about something that they can’t talk about with anyone else, simply two people who have to trust each other, because there’s something in mutually assured destruction. Mary has Will, but Marisa has nothing but scouring message boards in the middle of the night to ascertain whether there really is a window that they missed, maybe there’s something , in the rambling of random people online. There’s a whole world of information at her fingertips, just waiting for her to unlock the perfect search terms, and the idea of information being available so readily to anyone baffles her. Information and knowledge are something to be hoarded, something to be guarded jealously and used against someone when they least expect it, it’s not something that should be available in a little light-up box that everyone carries around with them.