Simple Complications
by Shu of the Wind

The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.
~ S. Gudder

"Excuse me."

The woman at the chalkboard didn't respond. Her headphones were big and clunky, the kind that DJs and music students used when they wanted to practice keyboard in the middle of a library. Hathaway tapped his statement book against the table a few times, wondering how long it would take for her to notice his presence if he simply stood here and waited. Probably a while. The mathematical equations up on the board looked either highly complex or fantastical. Then again, he'd never been all that good at maths. So it could have just been something simple. Calculus simple instead of theoretical equations.

She looked more like a grad student than anything else, but some people were built with faces that defied all ideas of age. Of course, the shorts and torn T-shirt didn't help much. It did, however, show a surprising amount of smooth skin. "Excuse me." Hathaway said again, and stepped into her line of sight. She didn't break her staredown with the chalkboard; her heavy plastic glasses were thick and sliding low on her nose.

"Now isn't the best time." She said, and bit her thumbnail, staring at the marks on the board. "I'm breaking ground with Riemann's Hypothesis."

"Not really something that can wait."

"Oh, for—" She yanked her headphones off, and glared at him. She had shockingly green eyes behind the glasses. "Hell. Do I even know you?"

"Dr. Lambworth?"

"Yeah." A scowl flickered on her face. "What's it to you?"

He flashed his badge. "Sergeant Hathaway. Oxfordshire CID."

Lambworth grunted. "About bloody time you showed up, Oxfordshire CID."

"Excuse me?"

"Considering I reported it four hours ago, you would have thought someone would be coming sooner." Dr. Lambworth – she looked a bit young to be a doctor, but still – turned back to her whiteboard and seized one of the markers, adding a few more unintelligible squiggles to the end of her equation. In the background, he could hear the echoes of the music from her headphones: some electro-pop hip-hop creature. He wasn't even sure they were speaking English. "I was about ready to call and complain. What's your supervisor's name?"

"If there was a mistake made, Dr. Lambworth, my supervisor probably won't be able to do much about it." Not to mention the fact that Lewis would probably scoff and roll his eyes and question why Hathaway had even brought it to Lewis, and not to Internal Affairs who could actually do something about it. He raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry for the trouble, though."

Dr. Lambworth glared at him for a moment longer, and then pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, frustrated. "Oh, for God's sake. Never mind. Come on. It's upstairs." When he hesitated, she glared at him, furious. "Come on, CID! I don't have all bloody day!"

She was prettier without the glasses. Hathaway shook that thought of his head – today was really not his day – and nodded. "Right. Coming."

He'd heard things about Lagrange House from Parkhurst, the resident mathematics geek at CID, but considering all the hype, it really wasn't much of a place. It looked more like a residence hall than an actual academic building, and compared to the rest of Oxford it was sticks and stones, but it had a peculiar quirky charm to it. Someone cocky had pasted a paper to the door to the attic stairs. Holy shift! Check out the asymptote on that mother function! Below it was another note, with an arrow pointing upwards. Clay, stop telling this joke and lock the door when you come back inside, you sodding twat. Hathaway cleared his throat. "Pardon me for asking, but how many people live in Lagrange House?"

"There's nine of us." Dr. Lambworth said, and she sounded a lot less grumpy, but not particularly welcoming all the same. They turned left down the hallway. "There's me, and Missy Kiem, our landlady, and then Clay Michelson, Adriana Kraig, Danny Morgan, Thom Agarkar, Si-Won Reed, and Chang Yung-Min, he's our exchange student. And then there's my sister, she's the project supervisor. She's not here right now." She slammed her palm a few times against the door with graffiti stains on it. There was no answer; after a moment, she turned the knob and stepped aside. "Be my guest, CID."

For a crime scene, the room was surprisingly cleanly; something had shattered the window, but other than that, it was a typical unused room in a university dormitory. Someone had stacked a bunch of filing boxes in the corner. Hathaway glanced back at Dr. Lambworth, who raised a dark eyebrow and scowled at him again.

"It happened this morning." She said, in response to his unspoken question. "Someone chucked a rock in through our window. I didn't touch it, it's under the bed." The doctor added, when Hathaway looked pointedly at the floor around him. "Someone threw a rock in through our window. It's not the first time it's happened, otherwise I wouldn't have called you. Last week we had someone leave a graffiti message on the garage door."

Hathaway looked in the file. Then he looked up at the window again, and then at the file, and said, "Dr. Lambworth?"

"Yes?"

"Dr. Christina Lambworth?"

There was a flicker of surprise in her face, and she shook her head. "No, Christina's my sister. Tabitha Lambworth." Dread flared in her eyes. "You….did come because of the vandalism report…didn't you?"

"I was sent to collect a statement from a Dr. Christina Lambworth about a mugging that took place last night." He turned away, so Dr. Tabitha Lambworth could pretend that he hadn't seen her flush crimson to the very tips of her ears. Hathaway ran his fingertips along the frame of the door, testing for weak spots. "I'm more than willing to assist, though."

"Oh, Lord, I'm so sorry." She said it very quickly. "I'm so, so sorry – I just assumed that you were – oh, God." She ran a hand through her hair, and fisted it. "I'm such an idiot! Of course they wouldn't send a fancy detective to look at a bunch of graffiti! I'm so sorry, Inspector—"

"Sergeant." He corrected automatically.

"I'm such an idiot!" Dr. Lambworth said again, and looked up at him from under her bangs, shamefaced. "I don't usually jump to conclusions like this, it's just I had to miss class today because I needed to wait here for whoever was supposed to come collect evidence or whatever it is you do with vandalism, and Si-Won's making a wreck of herself in the basement, and my sister's late home, and – damn it, I'm so stupid!"

She looked slightly hysterical. Hathaway raised his hands. "It's not a problem, honestly—"

"Christina won't be back until late," she added quickly, bunching her hands into fists around the hem of her T-shirt. "You shouldn't have to wait for her. I can give you her number, and you can call her, yeah? I'm just – I'm so sorry, I can't believe this is even happening, it's so completely ridiculous!"

"It's fine." He repeated, a bit more forcefully this time, and Dr. Lambworth looked at him with enormous eyes. "There should have been someone out here hours ago. Now, it would be a great help if you go back downstairs and try to track down your sister. I can look around up here, and see if I can find anything out. All right?"

Her eyebrows went up, and her eyes narrowed. She pursed her lips. "You're trying to placate me."

"Do you need it?" He asked noncommittally. Dr. Lambworth looked at him for a second longer, and then her whole mood shifted; she beamed at him, and Hathaway blinked, more than a little taken aback.

"What's your name again?"

"Hathaway."

"Well, then, Sergeant Hathaway." She held out her hand. "If you don't mind, I'd like a little bit of a redo. So, I'm Tabitha Lambworth. Don't call me doctor. And for reasons we shall not mention, I probably owe you tea."

The handshake, when he accepted it, was quite firm and concentrated. Hathaway fought a smile. "I'll call CID again, shall I?"

"Oh, God, yes." Dr. Lambworth – Tabitha – said explosively, and then flushed pink again. "I mean…right. I'm going to go and make tea now. Come downstairs when you're done."

"I hope I won't have to pull you away from your hypothesis again." He said, and Tabitha smirked.

"I dunno, I think it might be entertaining if you tried."

Hathaway blinked a bit, and tried to keep his mouth from twitching up into a small smile. He failed. "I'll keep that in mind then."

It might have been his imagination, but he could swear the good Dr. Lambworth was chuckling on her way back down the stairs.

A/N:

I have no idea what this is, or if it'll go further than this (I have a feeling it won't) but I like it. :D