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The room was full of them. Their ages ranged from early-30s to late-60s. (No, wait - there was one pudgy bespectacled boy among them, munching on a pastry and glaring at her.) To a man, they were men; white, mustachioed, many of them hatted (cloth cap, round bowler, square bowler, top hat…fez?). Their eyes were brown, blue, green; level, narrowed, suspicious. From the portly gray-haired Victorians with watch-chains and the odor of tobacco and hair grease, to the cocked eyebrow from the dark-haired and dangerous-looking one in the square bowler, they all said the same thing without saying anything:
Chinese.
American.
Woman.
Even the man as modern as she, the one as unmustachioed as herself and wearing an oatmeal sweater, gave her a skeptical look.
She supposed she ought to be grateful they weren't giving her lascivious looks.
But a Chinese-American woman has had to deal with a lot more crap from white males than a few mustachioed glares from what looked like a gathering of an 1880s Parliament session (with one sweatered time-traveler amongst them). She felt her usual response set in: her spine straightening, her self-knowledge and self-belief rising high, and her head lifting. This new, impossible thing stirring within her opened her mouth.
"I know I don't fit in with your little gentleman's club," she said bluntly. "I don't expect to. And I don't need your approval, frankly – none of you.
"What I know is what I know – and I know what it is that we two have. I didn't expect it. I didn't want it, at first. But it happened, and it's real.
"He's the strangest person I ever met – and he turned my life upside-down from day one, when I thought I'd come to do him the favor. He is also the most amazing person I've ever met. It's not just what he does or how he does it – Asperger's, I'd say – it's what he does with it, and why.
"For someone in command so much of the time, that everyone else sees as so arrogant and cocksure, he's fragile. He needs me more than he likes to let on, to anyone. I've seen his bad times, and his weakness.
"I was … at a bad time in my life myself, when we met. My past had left me walking-wounded; I was diligent in my new job, and that was it – I was not happy, so I decided I would be useful. Now? It's like I'm alive again. I don't just do my work, I look forward to it every single day – even when he wakes me up at ungodly hours to investigate something.
"And I'm repaying him by keeping him healthy, and away from his drugs. And by being his friend – probably the first real friend he's ever had. I know I'm making a difference in his life.
"I believe in him. We need each other. Some may giggle or sneer at seeing the two of us together, and imply things that are not true, because of how it looks sometimes. But it is not romance that binds us. It's as if we were simply meant to be together. And no one and nothing is allowed to sunder that. Not even you."
She exhaled, and looked at them again, prepared to walk out on their derision.
Their faces…All of their faces.
A portly, white-haired fellow stood first, with tears glimmering in his eyes. "Sister," was all he whispered, before the others rose to join him.