Chapter Text
Her self from the other timeline was softer than she’d imagined, for a man. There was probably something to be said for growing up a man, and having everything and the silver spoon all but handed over to you.
When you were a girl, people not only expected nothing of you (except fitting into glossy, flowery cages), worse, they impeded you if they thought that you were trying to break out in any way. Her mother wanted her to marry, to become a mother, to do everything that was expected of a young lady of her status. Rosalind Lutece knew even then that there were too many endless possibilities for her life, to even imagine such a dreary fate. She instead attended the Wellesly College in Massachusetts, one of the top academic institutions for women in the United States, where she received her degree in Physics. Following this, she worked in a lab at Harvard. It was hateful. She was a scientist, but all the men seemed to look at her as an up-start secretary. As woman, she was not even allowed to operate much of the equipment by herself; the protocols cited something about the delicacy of a woman, the difficulties of managing expensive machinery, and cost and liabilities.
She used everything herself, anyway, secretly.
She built her own equipment.
She managed to get along reasonably, but if only she’d the resources…
Comstock found her in the labs, one day, writing up reports on subatomic particles, and when she talked to this man, what she saw was a means to an end. He would be her patron. She would go on to… so many grander things.
On the day that Comstock sent in laborers to help her move her equipment to a new lab, she watched it all from the path leading up to her building. She watched then move out the boxes and crates. She was wearing a brand new tailor-made in fawn colors. The undergraduates and other post-grads of the building were watching the curious scene. The weather, in early spring, was glorious. Rosalind minutely adjusted her gloves, then her hat. She lifted her chin a little as she surveyed the labor. She felt… proud, of it all. There was a kind of hunger, for so much more.
--
Her self from another world had a weird sweetness to him. He had been oh-so-eager to meet her.
“I’m sure you know what it’s like,” he said, clasping her hands. “To finally meet someone of a like-mind.”
Another man, she might have pushed away, perhaps with even an air of disdain. Instead, she looked at Robert, and said, “And yet, why do I have the feeling that we are not completely of a like-mind. Like—“
“—and unlike,” he finished, but he was smiling rather, and Rosalind only stopped herself from giving him the driest look in response.
He was a man who did not look down on her as a woman, all the stranger. If she had been a man, she wondered, would she have looked down on a woman scientist? Had he ever thought less of the women in his field? Would there have even been a difference between them at all, if not for—
“Odd how a single chromosome could cause so much difference in appearances,” Robert said, blithely. “And yet, so many similarities.”
“More or less,” Rosalind allowed. She let go of his hands, and walked round him.
Rosalind inspected this man carefully. If she’d had his height, she would have used ever inch of it to her advantage. She wore heels, and wore her hair in a high up-do, and even that did not close the gap between them. But this Robert. He was softer than she would have imagined herself, as a man. Put him in an uncomfortable situation—for instance, Comstock and Robert arguing over their scientific work and the appropriate ethics thereof—and Robert had this mannerism of folding his arms over his chest, hunching a little when he was unhappy. Rosalind never hunched. She would never waste precious centimeters of stature. She looked people in the eye. Robert had a certain air he could put on when he really wanted something, when he wanted people to look at him a certain way, a kind of polish to it, but more often than not he was too blithe.
He was easily bullied. By herself, anyway. When she needed equipment moved, she made him do it. When she needed someone to row the boat, he did all the rowing.
Such a child, her other self could be.
--
For example, right then.
For several weeks, they had been investigating the properties of tampering directly with the materials of the known universe, in the laboratory of Comstock’s providing.
At the moment, they were experimenting with the probabilities of coin tossing.
Robert was trying ever so hard to weigh the probabilities towards head’s up, each toss; so far, they could not manage that kind of influence on the mechanics of that reality. Rosalind surveyed the scene at the lab bench, her pencil pressed against her bound journal. She thought: maybe they’d never manage. Maybe they were approaching this from the utterly wrong angle.
Robert tossed the coin into the experimental field. The air seemed to warp and spark around it. The coin landed in a metal dish, spinning round, before coming to rest. Robert frowned down at the coin in the dish. He folded his arms over his chest, and Rosalind looked at him, brows lightly arched.
The coin was tail’s up.
Her Robert looked oh so disappointed.
Odd, how it was nearly endearing.
On a whim, she reached across the table and tapped his chin with her fingertips.
Rosalind always faced the world with her chin held high.
“Chin up,” she said, briskly. “There’s always next time.”