Summary: Everything is made from the elements.
Disclaimer: Lie to Me does not belong to me.
A/N: I have been watching a lot of Breaking Bad recently, and there was a little bit in it somewhere about everything being made from the elements, which led me to write this.
Tungsten/ Symbol: W/ Metal
After everything they'd been through, he knew how strong she was.
Like tungsten, that ultra-hard metal with high tolerance to heat and pressure. It was difficult to shape, too. However, from that unexpected trip down memory lane courtesy of a terrorist hell-bent on revenge and audio recordings lasered into plastic, he learned that she already knew exactly when the rules should be broken — no malleability needed. Tough? Yes. Unfeeling? Never. When the tungsten in the x-ray tubes made a blue-black picture that showed she'd been unhurt after being scraped along the rough, black tarmac, her defiance was there down to the marrow in her bones. Tungsten was also curled into tiny coils to make lightbulb filaments. Appropriate, given that she gave him so much warm, precise and long-lasting light. Cold dread flooded his veins with a relentless ice when he dared to consider a time when there would only be darkness.
Caesium/ Symbol: Cs/ Metal
She knew how important it was to handle him with care.
28 years ago in chemistry class, she had seen the teacher use tweezers to prise tiny silvery-gold pieces of caesium from an oil-filled jar. Behind the clear glass of the protective screen, the students watched as the metal reacted with water in an instant; its explosive, destructive and raw energy laid bare. Sometimes she considered the possibility that in certain circumstances, he'd react with anything, too. He was the metal and she was the oil that had to be there to prevent him from reacting with mere air. Caesium was liquid at room temperature, though, and she basked in the knowledge that the fluid warmth of his touch caused a very different reaction indeed. Something just as powerful, chaotic and wonderful.
Hydrogen/Symbol: H/Gas
He wasn't surprised when science showed him something he already knew.
In that white, cavernous tomb of the fMRI scanner, it was the hydrogen molecules in water that the magnet was attracted to, allowing the machine to cast out those patterns of colour. An unconventional but unsurprising manifestation of love on a medical chart that he kept filed away secretly, as tightly packed away as the emotion itself, and only visible to an expert. Hydrogen burned in the stars that she couldn't really see when the light faded from the lamp atop his head. All his response to her kiss offered was a solitary vow — that the next time their lips found such an uneasy yet simple synchronicity, there would be white-hot light searing in every cell in her body.
Copper/Symbol: Cu/Metal
She'd never imagined that she would feel anything so deeply.
For days, all she tasted was the metallic copper of blood that had even seemed to permeate the air in the home that had become a crime scene. The terror and powerlessness returned every time she bit her lip, sending the grief and bitter hurt to mingle with her own blood, as if she were also meant to carry the weight of the pain in her own capillaries. It hurt her inside and out, with a brutal and uncompromising totality. When he paused to wipe the steady flow of her tears after the funeral, the sight of the blurry bronze of his unusual copper-coloured cufflinks presented two sun-like discs. Somehow the light reflecting off them only brought the lambent glow of his love into sharper focus, leaving her with the undeniable knowledge that it too would flow in her blood one day.
Lithium/Symbol: Li/Metal
He was thankful for her colour in the monochrome.
Lithium burned bright pink when thrown into a flame. Her post-divorce dress was more than a symbol of freedom and choice; it was also one of perseverance. He knew long before that moment that she possessed the rare skill of finding the good in the bad, but more than that, too — finding the good in the bad and making it shine. Nothing in their world was black or white, and nothing in his behaviour was ever simple. Yet, in between his barrages of betrayal, his skilfully thrown swords of self-preservation and the dark daggers of illusion and secrecy, she was the constant burning colour by his side.
Oxygen/Symbol: O/Gas
When it became hard to breathe, she knew where to find air.
Day 64 was the hardest, longest day, with night seemingly refusing to take the light and leave her in the shadows with her unending despair. Once exhaustion finally reigned supreme over her emotions, the day ended with her breath misting an oxygen mask; body numb, empty and useless under patterned hospital sheets. Hours passed and all she had for company was the pinpoint pity in the nurse's eyes. The pure gas chased away the immediate anxiety and restlessness, but it had done little else to bring calm. Only when she felt the soft stroke of his fingertips at a dark, blank time that was definitely not conventional visiting hours, had she finally felt able to breathe. He was not mere oxygen; he formed all the components of her air.
Gold/Symbol: Au/Metal
He was astounded that there was beauty in her scars.
One rainy morning, with the drops beating an insistent heartbeat against the car window, he asked her what she had done with her wedding ring. Wordlessly, she lifted her wrist and showed him a tiny golden butterfly looped on a bracelet. At first he could barely hide his disbelief at it still being on her person, even if the gold had been melted down and reformed into something different. After blocking away tiny bursts of anger, he finally understood. It was a showing of scars, a wearing of the pain on the outside, perhaps even a reminder that not everything in her marriage had always been bad. It was sentiment without too much softness; a catharsis without words.
Aluminium/Symbol:Al/Metal
She knew that he always wanted to keep her safe.
Aluminium was the strengthening protector: a thin, silvery sheen to prevent corrosion and fatigue. She had felt the weight of his protection in many different ways — from the physical shelter from a bomb blast to the thin stack of papers piled in his safe. Sometimes his need to keep her from harm was too intense, bordering on the possessive and dangerous. She felt he would have willingly been like a second skin, a perfectly moulded galvanising layer of metal, glove-tight, impenetrable and undeniably close. The first line of defence. Then again, she was painfully aware that he couldn't protect her from himself, so she had to draw strength from the good times, from the moments when their teamwork was immaculate, when they were in sync and there was nothing in the way.
Carbon/Symbol: C/Non-metal
Some things are essential in life.
Carbon is in every living thing. It makes one of the softest and one of the hardest substances in the world. It is in the stars and the sun; it makes the very atmosphere that surrounds them. Life as we know it is impossible without it, and, to an extent, they are carbon to each other – essential for the everyday, life-giving and ever-present. It is there in the bricks of their building, etched in the ink under his skin, sparkling in the diamond in her engagement ring.