Chapter Text
It started like this.
The clock had tolled midnight nearly an hour ago—or more, but Rosalind hadn’t bothered to keep count. She had been awake nearly thirty hours, and the familiar ghost of fatigue ached in every bone, pulled at her eyes and unsteadied her normally precise to the point of fault hands, and yet sleep was still the dream of a distant future. Sleep, she thought, was but a privilege afforded to those dull of mind. Twelve empty coffee cups were stacked haphazardly on Rosalind’s desk, and usually such untidiness would drive her mad, but she could barely notice now. There was nothing in the universe quite as important as this instant, and now she was quaking not from exhaustion but exhilaration. This was it, this was her moment.
Every night before this spent in the laboratory until dawn, the lack of sleep, the skipping of meals and lack of social contact, the loneliness—all of it, all the good parts and the bad were all worth it if this were to be her moment of triumph. Her mother’s nagging voice in the back of her mind, the one that only existed to cast doubt on all her dreams and aspirations, diminished her intelligence and denounced her accomplishments, was utterly silent now. Rosalind’s fingers fumbled at the focus of the microscope, not daring to let another breath escape her body until she was sure, so sure she’d stake her life on it. She had poured her mind, body, and soul into this research—as much as she disliked the man, part of her remained thankful Comstock had believed in her enough to provide her the funding. It wasn’t like she had much choice in her benefactors; despite her utter brilliance, much of the scientific community still balked at the idea that a woman was as smart as any of them, if not even smarter.
There—there—
There it was. Rosalind stared long and hard, completely frozen for a few moments before starting to pinch hard at her arms, unsure of whether this was a dream or reality. If she were to wake up in bed at this moment, in her childhood home in Boston with her door only a few feet down from her mother’s, still only seventeen and dreaming of university instead of finishing school—god, she’d kill herself. Shock ran the course of her body like electricity as the realization dawned on her that it was real, the particle everyone told her didn’t exist, the one she’d drawn up dozens of hypotheses over and yet no one listened, no one came to see her experiments, no one was here now. This discovery was all hers, and not even her mother could take that away now.
It was simply beautiful. There were no words lesser or greater she could fathom to describe it. Of course, she was entirely sure exactly what she was seeing, but yet it was like a child staring upon the magnificent artworks of the ancient Greeks, or the masters of the Renaissance—for her lack of complete understanding, she still inherently knew how gorgeous, how monumental this was. Still shaking, Rosalind pulled over a chair, taking a moment to sit and thread her fingers through her hair. She was freezing, and there was a shawl across the room but she wasn’t quite sure she could yet muster the strength to pull herself up on her legs again to grab it. No one had ever discovered anything quite like this before in history, and yet—here was the evidence, under the lense of a microscope in her dinky little lab in the basement of Comstock’s church.
Rosalind took a moment to breathe. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to take in the stale, musty air, and for a split moment she allowed herself to wish there were someone else here to revel in this discovery with her, someone to shake her and cheer and tell her she was brilliant—
Stop, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she particularly needed another person’s gratification. Quickly, Rosalind cast the thought out of her mind—she had been on her own with her endeavors her entire life, and by now she knew she was all the company she ever needed. Early on she had learned she couldn’t rely on the praise of others; she would recognize her own accomplishments, even if no one else would. Taking a determined breath, she pulled herself up on her feet again and allowed herself another glimpse at her discovery.
The method she had developed for viewing the particle, which she had aptly named the Lutece field, was still in the highly experimental stages. This posed a problem—though Rosalind knew she could not study the particle without using it, she had no idea what effect it would have on herself or her equipment. Nevertheless, this seemed like a small price to pay for her life’s work. She observed the rays of light emitting from the particle—the only way she had been able to make it visible in the first place—her body still tense, her mind still slightly numb from her own shock. Fumbling around on her desk, she managed to find her journal and a spare pen, quickly writing down everything she could observe. The work didn’t just stop here—she still had a million more experiments to run, more theories to postulate, more to discover…
A theory; for every new scientific advancement made, the workload of the founding scientist increased exponentially.
It was halfway through her initial notes that it happened; truth be told, she almost took no notice to begin with, and she would have missed it entirely if she had, say, blinked at the wrong time, or glanced away for even just a second. She would have missed the slight flickering of the rays, a tiny waver of light that she knew couldn’t be possible. Rosalind paused, eyebrows furrowing as she focused in closer and tried to discern the reasoning for the subtle flash. Theoretically, it could only have been possible if someone turned the Lutece field off, and she had been nowhere near the switch when—
The thought barely had time to process in her mind before Rosalind sprang up once more and raced to the switch, grasping the mechanism in her hand and shutting it off. Once more, she felt that strange sensation of electricity flowing through every nerve in her body; not from true electrical shock, but again from sheer excitement. She wasn’t entirely sure yet what this exactly meant, but there were a few theories in place already. There wasn’t a moment wasted before turning the machine back on again—if there had, it would ruin the entire exercise. She nearly tripped over her long, billowing skirts as she dashed back to her microscope, and she apprehensively took another look at the mysterious particle. It was still beaming just as ever, just as it had been before it flickered. Yet she waited—here she could wait all day, deprive herself of another twelve hours of sleep if need be, just to see the particle repeat the strange behavior it had earlier possessed. Luckily for her, she didn’t have to wait long.
Now it was a deep curiosity that filled her more than anything else, as she watched the rays dim once more for only a fraction of a second. If the only thing that could hinder the rays was her own apparatus, then why were they flickering in and out now? Perhaps it was a mistake in her meticulous calculations—but perhaps…perhaps it was something more.
It wouldn’t do her any good to jump to conclusions now, however. Occurrences such as this required rigorous testing—whether it was a simple malfunction in her device or something completely unfathomable…now, only time could tell. Rosalind steeled herself, unable to ward away the feeling she had only just discovered the tip of the iceburg.