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Raphaella La Cognizi is a woman of science. She has always been a woman of science. She thinks luck is for mortals. This means she is logical, and calculating, and not cold, exactly, but certainly not emotional. She has always held firm to her belief that immortals should not form attachments further than acquaintanceships and amusements with mortals (just seeing what had happened with Bertie was enough to convince her of that).
Of course, standards are made to be broken (so are a lot of things) and she found herself very, very tempted within three weeks of landing on Midgard, after millennia of standing strong. Because by every deity in every system, Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda was gorgeous.
Raphaella had not thought much about relationships. Her profession (scientist) and her physical state (immortal) did not often have room for relationships. She had thought for a while, and was perfectly content with the idea that she would just not engage in romance. But the instant Lyfrassir walked through the door to begin the very first interrogation, Raphaella’s breath had caught in her throat. They had just looked around like this was their least favorite thing to be doing, with piercing violet eyes that scoured the cell with all the disdain of a schoolteacher. That was probably a bad sign, that Raphaella had become enchanted with that.
But the next day they’d walked in to try again, with their pure white hair flowing like a waterfall, and chewed on the end of one of the thin braids at their temples, and Raphaella had stumbled into love just a little bit further. She was very good at hiding it, of course. More than a millennia of life gives you very good practice at forcing any emotion down deep inside where it can’t cause any problems. She refused to get attached to a mortal. And her refusal would have worked, if Lyfrassir didn’t make it so tempting.
The day after that, they entered with a stack of reports on various crimes — it didn’t much matter which — and did that funny thing where they licked their thumb to separate the pages, and Raphaella noticed their tongue was forked. That was enough to set the butterflies in her chest going, no matter how tough she acted. Marius might have noticed, because after that his flirting attempts with the Inspector became absolutely insufferable. Raphaella still helped him come up with bad pick-up lines, though, because when Marius rattled one off to Lyfrassir with all the confidence of a drunken ferret and an expectant wink, it was a little like Raphaella was making her own consequence-free pass at the Inspector.
The day after that, they had arrived four minutes late, leaning heavily on their cane, with dark circles under their eyes and their usually-immaculate uniform unbuttoned to fight overheating. Raphaella thought that seeing that white button-up shirt beneath the needless Inspector coat was the most seductive thing she’d seen in centuries. At that point, Lyfrassir’s presence was enough to make her heart skip (only a little, though, really) and seeing them in such a messy state did absolutely nothing to help. Raphaella was just a sucker for people looking like they had just spent eight consecutive nights not sleeping; they felt like a kindred spirit. It certainly wasn’t her fault.
Wasn’t her fault that she cried the day the trio left Midgard, either, but Marius might tell you otherwise. The train had come, of course they had to leave — but Raphaella was afraid that just a warning wouldn’t be enough and she had known she would have to leave anyway and the Inspector was mortal besides that so what was the point — and leave Lyfrassir behind. Raphaella didn’t want to admit that’s what it felt like. She actually did entertain the thought of staying and dying with the Inspector, but it was a foolish one, and Raphaella knew herself better than that. She would not throw away the potential of her life for a mortal. Didn’t she have enough dignity after the disintegration of her standard for that?
It was for the best, Raphaella decides, her head lying heavy against the pillow. It was for the best.
She leans over and gives Lyf a kiss on their sleeping cheek, soft despite the angles of their jaw and cheekbones. Raphaella is very glad she decided to leave, because otherwise she would not have been here to greet Lyf when Jonny yanked them through the airlock from deep space. Otherwise, she might have died in the now-razed Yggdrasil System and been unable to have this, here, now.
It is time to stop living in the past, Raphaella chooses, because she is in the present with an indescribably lovely immortal at her side. She may be a woman of science, but even scientists lose their ability for description when staring into the endless beauty of space (for that was the sort of beauty that Lyf expressed, and perhaps had always expressed, even before the Bifrost changed them). She is a woman of logic and calculation, and in both cases Lyf has seemed quite an excellent answer.
She is also, now, a scientist who believes in luck.