Title: Complexity, Structured and Not
Author:DianeB
Pairing:L/M
Rating: PG
Summary: This is a short narrative from Megan's point of view, and it takes into consideration the events of the episode "Longshot" (wherein Larry and Megan devise the "structured complexity" plan), as well as the ep, "The Art of Reckoning" (wherein Larry returns from the Space Station), but nothing much more than that. All references to the quipu are taken from the episode and from a small bit of internet research I did, some or all of which might be incorrect. But it's useful for this story, so I ask forgiveness for any errors.Written in May, 2007, and revised in April, 2008.
Author's Note: This is my first attempt at Numb3rs fanfic. Please be gentle. Thanks to Mighty Editor Goddess, Brenda S., for her assistance with the stuff I'm no good at, such as grammar and sentence structure.
Megan had heard briefly about Larry's quipu from Charlie over the telephone, but she hadn't watched the live feed of the shuttle landing, so she didn't actually know what it looked like. Glancing at the note stuck to her refrigerator with a magnet denoting National Pi Day, she was diverted from the note to the magnet itself, hearing Larry's voice in her head: "March 14th. You know, pi, three point one four?"
No, she hadn't known. Pi was not exactly something she thought about on a regular basis, if ever, but Larry sure did. She shook her head, smiling at the absurdity of it all, and focused again on the note under the magnet, the one she had typed using Larry's old Smith-Corona manual typewriter on an ancient piece of Cal-Sci stationery:
Dinner and a movie every other Friday.
Lunch on Thursdays.
Megan gets a wild card once a month, to use at her own discretion.
Wednesdays? Remain undecided.
Under this peculiar "dating plan," which they agreed should be called structured complexity, they'd managed the lunches, and even dinner and a movie or two before Larry'd been shot into space, but she had only ever used her wild card twice: once on the night they came up with the plan, and again – just to give Larry a conniption – on a Wednesday night.
Smiling again, she took the note from beneath the magnet and walked with it to the television, already tuned to CNN with the mute on. It didn't take long before the clip of Larry descending the steps appeared again, and Megan finally got a look at the quipu. Oddly enough, it looked very much like the beginnings of a macrame' wall hanging her mother had made when Megan was young, but her mother had never clutched her knotted creation the way Larry was clutching his. She didn't need sound to see the look in his eyes, and it brought an ache to her throat.
She recalled her phone conversation with Charlie, wherein Charlie explained that Larry was fearful he would "habituate and lose the vision," which she did not quite understand at the time, but which made more sense now that she had seen Larry.
He looked changed, almost vacant and frightened, and the ache deepened into her chest. She made a mental note to research the quipu, to discover if there was a way to stay connected to the man, but felt a rising sense of foreboding tugging at her. She wondered if Larry's "habituating" – if he was able to habituate at all – would even remotely include her.
Megan dropped her eyes to the paper in her hand, not surprised when a teardrop landed squarely on it. Silently cursing whatever female intuition might have afforded her this painful knowledge of the future, she folded the paper carefully in half, then in half again, and then, just to honor the math, kept folding until she couldn't anymore, hoping against hope that maybe this time, this one time, her intuition, her gut, her inner sensibility that made her who she was, might be mistaken.
End.