Author's Note: I want to apologize for not updating quite on time, but hey, it is the holidays. Hope you enjoy this one, and I really appreciate all of the support for this story that I've been getting!
Epiphany
Courtney's illness passes within three days, during all but one of which she goes to work, but her sickness stays with her. It always has. She has not talked to either Tabitha or Maxie outside of professional conversations for an entire business week since that dreadful day, and it is not for lack of trying on their part, to be sure. The advantage is hers because being misunderstood is not without its perks: namely, none can discern, with any sort of consistent accuracy, her thought processes. They know she is avoiding them, but they do not know why, or where she hides.
Over the past week she has developed something of a routine in her evasion, and the plan is so simple that it's complex, or, at the very least, easily overlooked. Avoiding them outside of work is très facile. She ignores their calls, texts, and voicemails; she lets them simply stand outside her house, banging on the door, until they frustrate themselves through their own impatience; she does not frequent any of her usual haunts (library, independent research lab, Lilycove University, Mt. Pyre, Lilycove Yoga Center) just in case they plan to ambush her there; she even goes so far as to attempt to disguise herself outside of work, wearing oversized hoodies and baggy pants and mussing her hair so that she looks like an adolescent boy and not a woman.
Avoiding them at work is considerably more difficult, but, for Courtney, that's where the fun comes in. Although she takes it seriously, it's a game to her, a puzzle, an enigma. Her mind delights in the task, but not its cause. Her first and foremost rule is that she can never be alone with either Tabitha or Maxie. All her strategies, then, flow logically from this one condition. The stairs become her preferred mode of vertical travel because one never knows who one will encounter in the enclosed space of an elevator, and, knowing Tabitha and Maxie as she does, she does no doubt that they would readily stop the elevator and trap her there until she talked. As an added precaution, she uses empirical observation to determine the times when the corridors are busiest and emptiest and plans her excursions accordingly. Lunch and breaks are further obstacles, ones that force her to deviate from her usual habits. In both, she uses the laws of probability against her foes, changing her lunch venue daily (and, should it reach that point, she has even planned to weekly change the order in which she visits each) in order to decrease the likelihood that they will find her or stumble upon her accidentally. The approximate ten minute downtime following conferences provides another, admittedly unexpected, issue. It is a window of time during which Tabitha or Maxie could potentially request a private meeting with her, and to preclude this, Courtney makes certain she is talking with one of her coworkers for the entirety of those ten minutes. They are not so juvenile or ill-mannered as to blast their personal qualms to the general staff. That, however, is the only realm off-limits, as she smartly realized early on that not even her own office is safe. During this past week, it has become more of a storage area than a work space since she refuses to be caught alone or unawares in a room with only one means of exit. Most of her time, then, is now spent in the labs, bustling with fellow scientists and abundant in its modes of egress in case of a scientific emergency. By far, though, the most difficult, inconvenient part of avoiding them comes not at work, but directly after it. Most Magma employees, not excluding Tabitha and Maxie, reside in Lilycove or its suburbs, so they all take similar commutes to and from the HQ. To circumvent the possibility of finding herself walking home with either of them, she makes certain to leave the building approximately fifteen to thirty minutes before or after they do. (This is rather tricky to coordinate, as the amount of work they have finished, not the clock, signals when their day is over, unlike for most of the other employees. The two of them are far too dedicated to leave tasks incomplete.) Just in case—Courtney never fails to prepare for every eventuality—she makes sure to take a different route home every day. All in all, logic is, as it always has been, on her side.
Still, her mind betrays her. Despite her efforts, she cannot insulate it from the effects of this tragedy. She tries to hide the injury, like she tries to hide herself, but she cannot deny that she has been wounded. Her only solution is not to probe the laceration further by analyzing it, so she ignores it, blots it from her thoughts and memory, slaps a band-aid on it and hopes that it will heal on its own. But it's tempting, oh so tempting, to peek, to see if the wound really is healing or if it has festered in the moist darkness and gotten worse. The temptation is strongest in the first couple days following the incident, but as she becomes accustomed to her self-sequestration, the desire mellows out into dull curiosity and finally into apathy.
If they want. . . a machine, then they shall have one. . .
By day nine of her avoidance, she has fallen into a new habit, and with that familiarity comes complacency. She has come to rely heavily on her plan but has forgotten to consider that fortunes in war change as capriciously as the wind. Once she realizes she has been caught out in a gale, it is far, far too late to flee for cover.
Once Maxie dismisses them from the first of their biweekly administration conferences, Courtney seeks out the man she has becoming fast acquaintances with over the past nine days.
"I told you I decided to go back to college, yes?" Jethro says as he collects his papers and files them into his backpack. "To get a degree and finally become something more significant than a lab tech?"
"Yes, how is it?" Courtney says, watching Maxie warily out of the corner of her eyes.
"Well, the classes related to my major aren't the problem. It's Calculus." He laughs sheepishly and holds out a notebook to her, looking anywhere but at her face in his nervousness. "Could you maybe explain it to me? Perhaps it would do me some good to hear it from another source."
She nods and glances at the notebook, but most of her attention is focused on the red-headed man who stubbornly refuses to leave the room. "It asks for the amount of oil in the tank at time 12. That is equivalent to the initial number of gallons in the tank, 125, added to the amount poured in over the 12 hours—the integral of the rate of oil being pumped in the tank from time initial to time final. Then, subtract from that sum the integral from time initial to time final of the rate oil is being drained from the tank. . . and the solution is 122.507 gallons."
"I would love right now to tell you how much of an amazing genius you are," Jethro said, "but I need to go submit this homework online before the deadline closes out. Thanks, Courtney!"
He runs out of the room before she has time to follow or even comprehend what exactly has just occurred. It takes her mere seconds to piece together the details of the trap she has just walked into, but that isn't fast enough, and neither is she. Courtney sprints to the door, ignoring her purse and folders still sitting on the table, but Maxie's reaction time is quicker than even her own. She feels her hand on the doorknob, turning it, opening it, nearly there. Everything is dashed when Maxie slams first his hand and then his weight against the door, pushing it shut and locking it. He braces his arms against the door, on either side of her head, keeping her from escaping through both the door behind her and the one on the other side of the conference hall. The lines in his face are sharp in his rage, but his lips are curved in a dangerous smirk.
Elevated heart rate. . . Increased blood pressure. . . Nausea. What is this? Fear?
Her mind reels, rapidly calculating all of the ways she can get out of this, simulating the possibilities of how this could end. Even as she faces the dire reality of her situation, she cannot help but commend his strategy. He has to have been observing her, taking note of all her habits, waiting for a mistake to exploit. Obviously, he somehow managed to convince Jethro to distract her while everyone else cleared the room and then to abruptly exit, effectively leaving her alone with the mastermind.
"I believe I told you," he says, slowly, because with her right where he wants her, he has all the time in the world, "that you would not best me so easily a second time. Did you truly expect me to fail to realize that this was a game?"
My mind. . . my heart. . .are no game. "Release me, at once." She makes a move to duck under his arms, but again he is faster, catching her by the wrists and pinning them to the door.
"The time for civility is past. I will exercise every femtoliter of my power to keep you here until I have probed your mind and forced it to divulge the cause of your strange behavior."
His eyes flash, and the mere thought of having that exquisite, capable mind, in all its rage, turned upon her is enough to set her trembling. Not in fear, but in exhilaration.
Excitement. . . This is more ensnaring. . . than could be any game of chess.
"Then. . . you shall find yourself detained for a. . . sizable period of time," she warns.
Her wrists twist experimentally in his grasp, testing how far he will allow her to struggle before himself retaliating. The answer is immediate and unanticipated. He will not allow her to so much as move without tightening his grip on her. Possessive. . .? That is not a quality. . . I foresaw in him. . .
"I'll inform my secretary to cancel my meetings." His hawk-like eyes never stray from her face.
"You won't. You are far too dedicated to your work." She thinks she has called his bluff.
His grin only widens. "While it is true that my stamina is inexhaustible once I have committed myself to a task, it behooves you to know that I am entirely resolved on splitting open and devouring the contents of this." He raises his hand slightly to tap her temple.
"You shall discover it an endeavor wholly fruitless, for the world thinks it a shell unyielding to all attempts to penetrate it!" She tries to remain neutral for the sake of not giving him any further weaknesses to exploit, but acrid venom born of her wounds creeps into her voice regardless of her efforts.
"I am not the rest of the world."
Before her mind can restrain her, swift as it is, she spits back, "You have not proven it thus as of late."
His grip on her slackens for a moment, and his eyes lose some of their intensity. "Is that what this is about? The words I said all those days ago?"
"You will. . . have to refresh my memory, as I have forgotten," she lies. She has tried to forget, but to no avail.
His voice is softer now, quieter. "The lengths you have gone to avoid me argue otherwise."
"Was I in that, too, as beautifully efficient as a machine?" Maxie's attempts to placate her only drive her into greater anger.
"You mistook my meaning."
"I did not," Courtney says. "Now, release me!"
She pushes against him, trying to make him lose his hold on her, but he merely presses her closer against the door with his weight.
"Allow me to appeal to your reason." He pleads with his eyes, and that fact alone is enough to rivet her attention. Maximilian Asche is not one to beg. "Please."
"You have. . .my ear."
The tension in his chest relaxes somewhat as he sighs. Relief. . .? Why?
Words fly out of his mouth faster than she has ever heard from him, and forethought seems entirely absent. "I by no means intended to insinuate that you are a machine—cold, unfeeling, a means to an end. In fact, the implications of my statement were exactly the opposite. Your mind. . . it is beautiful. You are capable of performing calculations and thought processes as rapidly and accurately as a machine, your logic is as flawless as is its, your mental universe is as expansive as the greatest technology of our time.
"But, for all that, it is still human. That, that is why I am fascinated—no, enamored—with you, Courtney."
Her face contorts into the vilest of expressions as a mixture of rage, raw hatred, and tears overtakes it. "Fascinated with it because of its imperfections? Yes. . . You are only fascinated by the thought of debugging all the defects of an otherwise perfect human machine!"
"Again you do me the injustice of misjudging me!" His protestation is as emphatic physically as it is verbally. He presses his body onto hers until their foreheads are close enough to touch. "That is to say. . . No, dash it all." There it is again, that same curse in German that she heard the day she was sick and hung up on him. "You are a tactile learner, so perhaps I can convince you by suiting action to word."
Before she can question what, precisely, that means, Dr. Maximilian Asche is doing the one thing she never could have predicted as an outcome of this situation.
He is kissing her.
He tilts his head, and his lips meet hers surprisingly gently. They taste like dark chocolate (approximately 47-52% cacao) and the Rooibos tea she has smelled on him many times.
At first she is unresponsive to his advances, so paralyzed by the tidal wave of her brain's analysis, but, for once, she happily shuts out her reason as she smiles into his lips and reciprocates. His hands release her wrists in favor of sliding lower and taking captive her waist. He pulls her tighter against him as he deepens the kiss. Because Courtney has thought of this, dreamed of this, simulated this moment, she does not fumble in her actions. She weaves one hand through the fire of his hair and splays the other across his back.
Oh, Heaven, that my mere dreams of were as an attempt to reach you by a step ladder to the sky. . .
At some point, she shuts her eyes because the secure blackness of her own mind is less overwhelming than that storm of slate grey.
1.6 seconds until I fall short of breath. . .
When they end the kiss, the only part of their bodies that disconnects is their lips. Her head rests against his chest, and his arms remain around her waist.
". . . You. . ."
She does not know what she wants to say, or how to say it. Her mind has not yet recovered.
He speaks softly, lightly pulling up her face to meet his eyes. "All this time, you have incorrectly taken my exaltations as debasements. You have misconstrued my fondness for your idiosyncrasies as intolerance of your so-called defects. You have misjudged how significant a place you have carved for yourself both in my head, and in my heart."
"I. . . did not anticipate this. . .sentimentality." She does not smile because, like Maxie, she rarely does, but her mind is alight with the joy of this pile of new, pleasing evidence to analyze.
He smirks. "Yes, well, don't become accustomed to it. I most certainly will not endure this sappy declaration of . . . affection again, even for your sake."
"Once. . . once is sufficient. It gives me. . . quite enough to ponder."
His brows furrow. "I must admit, I'm not entirely certain how to take the fact that you seem to relish analyzing me as if I'm some sort of scientific subject."
"Positively. . . definitely positively." She smiles up at him, even more so as she hears him sigh when she says, "This development. . . warrants further experiments."
"You won't find me a compliant guinea pig," he says in hauteur.
Courtney raises herself on the heels of her boots and presses her face into his neck, smirking into the patch of his skin exposed above his turtleneck. "My mind. . .relishes. . . a challenge."
He stiffens, and she can feel him flush. "Now, now," he chides, "while I am pleased to see you are returning to your usual self, this is hardly the place for that."
"Agreed." She pulls away, smiling ever so slightly into those slate grey eyes. "Once. . . I have internalized this data. . .we should have a conference. . . outside a professional environment."
Maxie levels a knowing gaze at her. "Ms. Kanner, are you implying we go on a date?"
"Affirmative."
Courtney slips out of the door he'd had her pushed against, and he lets her this time. Her mind feels lighter, clearer. New data to analyze. . . This could lead to a new discovery. . . an epiphany.
My sickness. . .is it really a sickness at all? No. . . Like my mind, it, too, is me. . .