It is Lucien's first time in space and he's nervous. This is not really the best sign considering that the reason he's going to space is to join Starfleet but presumable his nerves will settle and it will be fine. It's only a six-hour trip anyways. His nerves not particularly settled he sits down for the acceleration to warp, which is completely pointless given the inertial dampeners but it makes him feel better.
Despite all his worrying takeoff goes smoothly-
Teno Aamind has the horn with him, because he's trying to make it back off with the guilt thing for future users and that's impossible unless he has it on his person. And he's just excavated a new artifact from a dead person's house, but he's got elbow-length gloves on for the purpose, so he didn't touch that.
Then someone appears in midair and lands on both of Teno and the necklace he's found.
"Aaaaaaaa-" Oh wait, things have stopped exploding, maybe he should stop screaming.
"....aaa."
"Bloody hell," says Teno, from the floor. "Did you touch - which one did you - did you land on both of them? Bare skin or did your pants get between you and the - bloody hell."
Lucien of course can't understand this since it's in Noregrsk. It'll take the universal translator a minute.
He needs to tell his mom where he is and what happened. Now. Where is he - is there a window?
There's a window but it's frosted glass; just a vague blur of green is visible through it.
Teno still has his gloves on. He is looking, hands first, for the necklace. Will gestures be enough to get Lucien up and out of the way of the pile of stuff on the floor he created with his fall?
Yes, because he needs to get up and find a door to make up for the unreasonable amount of time he's spent lying on the floor and failing to inform his mom about what happened, as well as anything else he's fucked up by failing to tell her because he's the worst son.
"Sorry where am I, and do you have a subspace relay I can call my mom with right now?"
"Earth or the Federation...please tell me you have heard of either one of them."
"I could tell you that but I'd be lying. Hell, I need to tell my wife about this, I hope the old lady's phone service never got disconnected..." The necklace located, he triple-bags it. "Did this one touch you or did you only get the horn?"
"...both? Have you uh, heard of spaceships that go to other star systems?"
"No?? You can use the phone after I'm through with my call if that'll do." He's found the phone; the headset rests on his head, wrapping around so part of it's on his ear and part of it on his mouth, and he dials.
Lucien will resist the urge to interrupt to ask the extremely stupid question of whether the phone happens to call other worlds, which it definitely doesn't but he should still at least check.
...though hopefully this doesn't take very long because he hates this and himself soo much.
"Honey, somebody teleported onto me. He got the horn and the new thing. He's freaking out but I think only in a horn way, no idea what the new thing does. It's a necklace. I love you more. I think that's everything urgent but if you'd wait by the phone? Love you most."
And now Lucien can have a turn if he wants.
"I know this is a silly question, but can this device make calls to other star systems?"
"... no reason." He is not actually supposed to admit he's an alien to a pre-warp civilization. Probably. He's not sure because he's barely had time to memorize the Starfleet cadet handbook, read through the ensign handbook twice, and the command track cadet handbook only once. And none of them had information on how to do away missions beyond 'defer to your superior officer' in the ensign handbook. Really this is on him for not doing the reading eight years ahead of the earliest time he thought he could possibly end up in the field on his own.
"... do you um. Have an image of where we are in the galaxy."
"Not... on my person...? - ah, fuck, did the necklace make you think you're a space alien, that'd be one for the books and combines very badly with the horn."
Oh no.
"Um. Not that? I just... like astronomy a lot??" He is really not good at this, is he.
"This is not the time to be indulging your astronomy hobby! You just landed on at least one probably two artifacts and we don't know what the necklace does till we give the Dean of Artifact Studies three weeks minimum to stare at it."
"You don't need my permission to like astronomy but I don't have a map of the galaxy up my ass no matter how nonsense your priorities are."
"No! For fuck's sake, man - what does the thing do, do you think the galaxy is your favorite sister now or something -"
"I'm taking you with me to the university to let them sort you out." He tucks the horn into its case. Makes sure the necklace is wrapped up properly. "This way. Probably I should be cleaning up all the stuff you knocked over but that's not my job."
"No." He manages to choke out.
At least the wind chimes sound sort of nice, though he's increasingly confused about where they are located.
They seem to be following the guy! "The benefit is that you can hear where artifacts are. That's why I was in the old lady's house, so now her heirs can sort through her stuff and know none of it that I left behind is magic and it's safe. Drawback is the thing where you've got to tell your favorite person all your secrets. The term of art for your favorite person, if you've touched the horn and it matters who that is, is your 'keeper'."
Maybe the guy has a speaker or his species makes these noises or something.
"... oh. That. Oh."
"What happens if you can't."
"God, I don't know, I took this job because my wife was on board with it and if anything happens to her my brother'll pick up where she left off and only make a little bit of fun of me for having to tell him all about my erstwhile sex life. Make friends while you think you're the worst person in the universe for not being able to tell the galaxy you used to wet the bed or whatever."
... oh, he needs to tell his mom about his masturbation habits, doesn't he.
"Mm."
"I recommend not fucking teleporting into dead people's houses next time. What does your teleportation artifact even do? Is it the drawback, that it sends you places uncontrollably?"
"How'd you wind up touching a mystery artifact before you had an uncontrollable teleportation problem?"
Lucien will curl up and wait to get to a new place where he can ask about where he is and then if he's not nearby... figure out whether without the mind control he'd consider helping this civilization achieve warp travel to be a remotely reasonable choice.
Teno drives them to the university and pulls up out front of the artifacts building.
There's a guy standing out front yelling, "FUCK. FUCKSHITFUCK. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK," and looking kind of bored otherwise. He reads minds!
Lucien would probably be interested in whatever strange cultural thing is going on here, were it not for how irrelevant it seems to him fixing his mistakes and getting word to his mom about all the secrets he's kept from her.
Teno parks. He and the yelling guy have a brief, swearing-punctuated conversation and then Teno beckons Lucien in.
The sooner he gets this over with, the sooner he can figure out just how far away he's stranded himself.
As Lucien disembarks from the car, a young woman at the next building over trips and falls over on the sidewalk with a yelp.
Change of plans, Lucien is sprinting over to the woman who fell.
"Are you okay??" Is there blood? Bone? Something twisted?
"Oh, uh, I think I'll be fine, thanks." She's sitting up on her own. "Do I know you?"
"No - are you fine right now and also I have a bunch of things I really need to tell you."
"I-oh you are my favorite person in the world now, so I guess that would make you my keeper. Sorry I. Sorry."
"Is there an artifact that makes me your favorite person in the world - presumably not me specifically I guess -"
"I don't know, there was a second artifact that touched me that didn't have known effects so maybe?"
"Ah. Uh, I'd offer to come with you to the artifact department to get it sorted out but they have a mindreader on guard duty. What do you need to tell me so you can go back over to that guy who's gesturing at you?"
"Um, you don't listen to any of my secrets if you don't want to and I'll go away if you ask but uh - if you wanted to know I would tell you a bunch of details from my personal life, the fact that I'm an alien, and how faster than light travel works."
"Yes. Unless you are humans who were transported here from Earth a long time ago - that's happened at least once, I think."
"I mean, not as far as I know, and we have a fossil record and stuff..."
"Then probably I'm an alien, though there are other possibilities. Um, I can possibly prove this to you with my badge if you don't have universal translators or small recording devices?"
"Do you need to prove it to me or do you just need to tell me, the guy looks pretty exasperated."
"Okay. Uh, do you need me to wait nearby for keepering reasons once you've concluded your appointment?"
"Ah, but, suppose I want to be a nice person. Then what should I do."
"I would really prefer you not go out of your way to help me if it at all inconveniences you? That would be worse than my having to deal with not telling you things."
"I'm going to send a note to the department office if you change your mind about that so they'll know how to find me, I guess."
And she finishes getting up off the ground and proceeds on her way.
He can do that. Also now that she's not there to be pressured by it he can cry.
The good news is they know what the necklace does now. The Dean will get back to them with more updates.
The bad news is that he has no money and nowhere to stay and people are pretty skeptical of his story, because it's a much simpler explanation that he touched an artifact somewhere which did both of [made him delusional] and also [made him able to teleport, if apparently not very well].
The good news is that the tracker/necklace combination equips him to go chase down an artifact which has been the scourge of the region for quite some time now!
The university'll handle the expedition preparations since he's indigent. He's just got to take the necklace to where the knife was last seen - they can have some precautions in place if it turns out the necklace isn't strong enough to fend off the knife, but if it is he can go up to the flock of people it's taken and bap them all with the necklace and then get the knife embedded in some cement so it can be dropped in the ocean. There's a large bounty, he'll be set for life, it's a great solution to his problem.
That will do.
As it turns out, so long as he is thinking about his love's face or voice or general demeanor, he can mostly distract himself from how horrible he is for not telling her everything. So he spaces out doing that for a few hours until he realizes that this is probably creepy and rude and that it's probably wrong to obsess this much.... possibly the thing to do is limit his time spent doing so to a reasonable amount and spend the rest of the time thinking about other things, like how he's a terrible a person for not confessing all his secrets to her. ... yeah, realistically that's the only other thing he's going to think about.
In the morning he and a safety escort can head out for the last known location of the golden knife. They're going to have him on what is basically a leash, so he can go to within knife radius and be dragged back if it calls him.
Sure.
He's saving his thinking about his love time for later in the day. Does anyone want to talk to him about astronomy now?
That doesn't seem to be anybody's job nor directly related to securing a portion of the knife bounty.
The next day he and his escort can set out. They have to go quite a long way and take a train most of the way there.
He distributes his thinking about his love time evenly throughout.... She was so very pretty. The prettiest. She had eyes that were really good. And a nose that was really good. And lips...oh no that's rude to imagine but he can just imagine the lips on their own for a bit that's probably fine.
It transpires, when they arrive at the evacuated village that the knife is passing through, that Lucien is in fact immune to the call of the knife; they can detach his leash and he can go in and bap people with the necklace. The cut might be violent but they're mostly not in very good physical health and shouldn't be too dangerous; still, he can have a long stick to put the necklace on the end of for added safety margin.
Lucien is in shape even if he hasn't had any actual combat training yet, he does fine.
Now there are a bunch of injured miserable people two of whom start confusedly making out, and a knife, which can be straightforwardly dunked in concrete and taken to a boat to be dumped in the sea! Hurrah! The menace is ended!
Lucien stares wistfully at the people making out for an inappropriate amount of time.
The now-necklaced people who are in relatively good health can come along on the trip to bring the knife to the sea; this group includes the ones who are making out. They pass through a town (well, near a town, the knife itself can't go into the town) on their way to the coast and the happy couple come back with one earring each.
Well, another one of the party congratulates them on their engagement, so maybe that's what it means!
The knife is dropped forty miles out to sea with appropriate finality and they can all go home now. Lucien gets a lot of money.
Yes, definitely. He assumed it was just her contact info, but if there's more he would definitely like to see it.
I don't understand how your artifacts are interacting with each other and it looked like it might be complicated, so I'm leaving this in the department mailbox and you can come find me if you need me later. I try to be a generally benevolent and responsible person and if you would be more comfortable talking to me regularly to tell me all your secrets etcetera we can definitely do that. If the artifacts have combined to make it so you don't want to see me after all that's of course also fine.
- Annie
She has such pretty handwriting. And a name! Annie! It's perfect.
He calls the number.
"Lucien Schulman, I met Annie after I had an accident with some artifacts and she left me her contact information in case I would be more comfortable telling her all my secrets."
"Oh, I can call back later? I don't really have a location she can call right now."
"Okay. Thanks."
He's going to spend the hour looking at the note and repeating 'Annie' under his breath.
"Yes, uh. I was calling to ask about the best way to send you the reward money."
"...don't you need it? Rumor around campus was that you appeared out of nowhere and if you have family here you're too touched to remember them."
"I would probably like to have enough to have a place for the next week or so, I guess? I can probably find something else after that by explaining more advanced science to people."
"...can... you? Like. I wouldn't be so sure people will... believe you."
"I don't think your technology has created a universal translator yet? If I'm wrong about that than proving I'm an alien will be harder."
"The going theory is that you've been exposed to at least three artifacts and it wouldn't be nearly as weird as you being a space alien, if there were more."
"Is my badge being able to act as a universal translator consistent with that theory?"
"It does it by itself without anyone having to touch it?"
"It needs to be close, but you don't actually need to touch it - it can also receive and transmit short-range subspace communications, which isn't useful without something else similar, but is supposed to be secret from species that haven't discovered it yet."
"Would it be helpful to you if I promised not to tell anyone what you tell me?"
"I did some reading on trackers. They have helpful pamphlets about how not to torture your tracker. I am requesting your assistance in not being a torturer because that is very important to me."
"I can tell you all the things and explain why I think it might be a bad idea for you to share some of the technology ones, and then I will not be tortured. If that's really what you want."
"I think very negatively of people who do torture and really don't want to count myself among them!"
"Is telling me stuff on the phone sufficient, the pamphlets think it's fine but if you want to come to campus I can meet you."
"Telling you stuff on the phone is sufficient, but I would also like to meet you very much. Oh, and I might need a means of writing to explain the warp equations in full."
"Okay. How about you tell me what you can on the phone, and tomorrow at ten a.m. I can meet you in the library atrium on campus?"
Lucien is an alien, from an alliance of different alien civilizations called the Federation, all of which are capable of faster-than-light travel using something called warp drive and most of which are spread across multiple planets. His first time at warp on such a ship on his way to Starfleet academy went very wrong until it caused him to meet Annie, which definitely feels worth it now because - maybe he should save that for later, there are other very important secrets he can share right now instead.
The Federation has a strict policy of not contacting civilizations like this one that haven't discovered warp drive, which is a huge humanitarian tragedy that he wanted to change from within or at least push a bit towards a better direction that didn't let so many people die of preventable causes. The reason she might want to keep it secret is that if they are near enough to the Federation to be discovered, then it would be good for the Federation to be under the impression that this civilization discovered warp on its own and not with his help.
He can go into the basics of warp drives and subspace next, but he'll need writing implements to actually explain the details he can remember in a way that thoroughly communicates them - also has her planet discovered that space and time are sort of intricately related and very massive objects can bend both and such? That will help with understanding it.
Also, his species is human, and the planet of origin is Earth. That's uh, the first few secrets, does she have questions or anything?
Annie doesn't have a lot of physics background, unfortunately, does she need to acquire it so as to be adequately keeping him?
"... yeah, I think so. I'm sorry um. I... just considered lying to you and saying that it wouldn't really be torture if you didn't learn it, but apparently that is not an option even if I decided that you would actually prefer it, which I don't think is true so I probably wouldn't have lied to you anyways."
"Are you qualified to teach me or should I be getting physics books?"
"I can figure out how to teach you the important bits, especially if I know how much math you have? Unless you prefer the textbook."
"I took statistics last semester but I don't think that's the kind of math that physicists use."
"Oh, statistics is very good! Though uh, do you know calculus or linear algebra? Those are more relevant for warp theory even if statistics is better."
"I took calculus before university but it was not my best subject."
Nod.
"I can figure out how to present the relevant information without too much in that case."
"Okay. I'll do my best but I do have classes so I don't know how long it'll take me to catch up on physics background."
Nod. Which doesn't work since this is an auditory-only medium whoops.
"Yes - you also don't have to do it at all if you would rather not, but the torture thing you mentioned makes sense so probably you do want to do it I guess. ...unless you would prefer me being dead, I guess. But probably that isn't the case?"
"Okay - it's nice that you don't want me dead given how much I'm in love with you."
"Oh, it wouldn't. It's just that if you did I'd kill myself and I don't want to do that."
"Normally I'd be unwilling to do it, but my priorities have been rearranged substantially since seeing you."
"I get that sense. What are you... like... when you're not psychologically tortured and mind controlled."
"More organized and reserved, though not always those things? Less emotionally all over the place. It is also not helping that I didn't sleep last night due to thinking about how pretty you are and then feeling bad for doing that an impolite amount and also for not telling you things."
"...thoughts aren't really the kind of thing that can be impolite. You have permission to think about me."
"In absolutely full generality unless your thoughts have some kind of unusual causal power outside of your own head, you have permission to think about me!"
"Um. I um."
"In order not to be tortured, I'll need to share some amount of those things with you? And this seems like it would be unpleasant for you, and so I'll end up feeling very terrible whether I tell you or not."
"...okay, but normal guilt from having had to tell me what thoughts you have about me will go away eventually and magical guilt from not telling me won't."
"I think the extent to which I don't want to hurt you is also magical."
"That's... true... you might be overestimating how unpleasant this will be for me though?"
"...especially compared to being responsible for torturing you."
There's a sort of strangled sob but then Lucien claps a hand over his mouth.
"Can you just get it over with and then we can both sleep on it and catch me up on whatever else you need to tell me tomorrow?"
"Whatever can happen over the phone till I need to go to bed."
"Okay."
Lucien's parents signed an open letter supporting theoretical research in genetic engineering to eliminate untreatable genetic disorders and the public response about this got them both fired and ostracized. When Lucien was eleven he used a student's unattended computer to fix the formatting on the History Club's club informational flier and to make sure it accurately reported what times they met at instead of being wrong. Since he was fourteen he's been pretending that he likes the Prime Directive that says you can't interfere in pre-warp civilizations but actually he hates it. Also he should note some basic details about what transporters and replicators are.
"Um, do you have any questions or should I go on to the um. Other things."
"I'm taking notes so you don't have to go over all this again, but don't want to ask any questions right now."
She takes notes....
"Okay. Um. I already said I was in love with you. I also think you're the prettiest person I've ever seen and I think some of that is the mind control since I don't think normal people are capable of finding anyone so pretty and good but also I think even if there wasn't mind control I'd still think you were pretty. And. Um. Uh....."
... She prefers this so he should really do it even if it's hard.
"Earlier when I was going to ask you whether you meant to include permission to think about a thing the thing was having sex with you. Because I would really like to think about that except for how it feels rude and I'll have to tell you which will hurt you so I'm going to try not to think about it much. But also I already pictured having sex with you last night because I get hornier when I'm stressed. It made um, hard, when I imagined you smiling about having sex with me because you enjoyed it a bunch and that was really nice and I'm so sorry for telling you this. I didn't masturbate about it though but I wanted to but it seemed rude and I distracted myself by biting my arm really hard which didn't work and now I have a bite mark but thankfully it's hidden by my shirt. I also think you have the best hair and the best lips and the best teeth and I've realized as I'm saying this that I could continue going on listing every part of your body, including ones I havn't seen and have no knowledge about."
"... Also I seem to have become physically turned on by telling you about all of this. I'm. So sorry."
"Okay, I'm just going to assume as a background fact that sometimes you think about having sex with me and might jerk off while you're doing that so you don't have to avoid it or tell me every time, okay? It's just a thing that happens and it's none of my business and magic is making it have to be my business a little bit but not in a way that I think should impinge on your ability to do it, for all I know half my classmates do the same thing and they just don't have to tell me and they aren't being rude."
"... I still need to tell you some other sex things about my past but. Only the once."
Then she can hear all the parts of Lucien's sexual history that he's ashamed of! Which is most of what little of it he has. He's never actually had sex, but a friend gave him a handjob once and kissed him. He first masturbated when he was 14 and it was about the "where babies come from" book his parents gave him. He made a spreadsheet of his masturbation habits when he was 16 after he decided it was inconvenient to not have a good idea of exactly how long he should expect it to take so he collected data for four months about it. He once put an appropriately shaped item from a board game in his butt and it was interesting. He once had a wet dream about a talking train from a cartoon. He's never kissed anyone.
It takes a while but eventually he has confessed all the sex things, and apologized for doing so several dozen times.
"Okay," she says levelly when he's through with that. "Anything else suitable to cover over the phone?"
"Yeah my passwords for things, I should do those even if they aren't very relevant."
There aren't that many - most things just use various bio authentification methods.
"Love yo-bye. Yes."
He is sufficiently tired and untortured that he can actually get some sleep! And then he's at the university library atrium at 9:55 exactly.
She shows up at 9:58. Waves at him. Takes a seat under the skinny tree that they have growing in the atrium.
He guesses at an appropriate distance to sit from her and wrestles his expression down to something resembling one people normally make in their everyday lives.
"Hi!" I love you.
"Good morning. I started Math For Would-Be Physicists but I haven't gotten very far."
Sooooo pretty.
"I can look over it and tell you which chapters are important for warp theory?"
She hands him the book; looks like she got it out of the library this morning.
He's still really sorry.
Okay, what's in this table of contents...
"Oh this spends way more time on limits and the single variable integration chapter looks mostly useless past the first part - and wait is that how they're teaching derivatives that's... needlessly confusing. Especially when you need multidimensional derivatives which I guess this book doesn't cover at all. I don't actually know Chapter 4 or anything past chapter 12 except for 14, and you won't need to either. Really I can probably explain the warp equations without 14, you just won't be able to derive the constants on your own but I'll just tell you them."
"... it's also occuring to me to ask if your society has made nukes yet. Or genetically augmented super soldiers."
"Okay, I don't actually know as much about how the technology for genetically augmenting super soldiers works - you won't need a background in anything to understand what I know - but I am going to need to explain it to you I think."
"...unless you plan on explaining it to your military or something similar, in which I case I want time to figure out whether doing so will start a World War that will put you at serious risk of being killed."
"Okay.... I hate that I am apparently running my desire to avoid risking billions of lives through the risk that it might hurt you in particular. At least if the alternative is making you particularly unhappy, my values seem to be unchanged without you involved."
"I don't want to risk billions of lives either, if that helps."
"It does, a bit. Though I don't think the people who used it recklessly on my world wanted to."
"I don't actually know that much about how the technology works but if you're comfortable agreeing not to share this particular thing without my permission I'd be more comfortable sharing what I do know?"
"...I kind of don't now have much reason to think that you are actually an alien so I'd be making that promise under presumptions we do not share."
"Oh, do you want to test out the universal translator for yourself? Assuming that would do it."
"Uh, I'd give you this badge and then everything would sound like it's in in your native language. It can also record and playback audio and translate written text, though that last part isn't always as reliable. I could also turn it off and you could hear me speaking in my native language."
"I don't know how to get someone to talk to me in another language on short notice in a way that wouldn't contaminate the experiment. There are books in other languages in this library, but that's the part that's unreliable."
"You could try it with the books? Or uh, if you know any of the languages and could talk aloud in it for a bit my guess is it will work fine for that language afterwards."
"In the land of Ealun the clover grew thick enough to support the stride of a grown man without leaving his footprint in the soil; and the rain floated rather than fall, misty dew-kisses upon the greenery; and the bees made honey sweeter and more golden than those in other countries; and yet Prince Caillun was unhappy."
She goes into the Jaillais section and pulls a random book. "Do I have to hold the badge for it to work?"
She takes a step back, pulls her gloves out of her coat pocket, puts them on, sits on the floor, checks the gloves for holes, and then accepts the badge.
She's so careful and the gloves look really hot on her, apparently.
... he should probably do a better job of controlling his face.
Badge.
She checks her glove again. Offers the badge back to him.
"Okay, was there any other evidence you wanted to present?"
"My uniform is back at the hotel I'm staying at and might be made with unfamiliar methods or something I don't know. All my other things were packed in a bag that didn't make it here. You could take the translator apart but if it breaks I won't be able to communicate... maybe there's some open math problem I know a proof for? But I don't really think we covered anything obvious that would qualify in highschool. You could also ask me questions and see if my story is consistent."
"-oh I have synthetic antiviruses in my blood, though I guess that would require a lab to verify at this tech level. And maybe my DNA would be obviously from a different species but I'm not confident about that."
Nod.
"Could just be the translator using your word - but it wouldn't be the first time there have been humans on a planet other than Earth."
"Okay. And you don't want me to tell anyone about genetic engineering," she says, "because - I don't understand why exactly, how does it kill people? There are simpler ways to kill anybody you can get in a position to genetically engineer them, surely?"
"Uh, so when it was perfected on Earth some scientists used it to create augmented humans who supposedly had some sort of emotional issues - though possibly that was just how they were treated I find the official story at least a bit suspect - anyways uh. The augments ended up overthrowing several governments and setting up dictatorships and several billion people died in the ensuring conflicts. I think this probably could have been avoided but empirically it wasn't and genetic engineering is still illegal over three centuries later where I'm from."
"...that's sufficiently specific I'd be pretty surprised if it happened twice."
"Most people where I'm from think the broad strokes inevitably result from genetic engineering. I think they're wrong but.... I don't know, there are a lot of other people and completely ignoring them all insisting something is super dangerous makes me ... nervous."
"I... guess I wasn't very likely to go into specifically genetic engineering without your involvement, so I'm not exactly cutting off the world from advancing in that direction if I agree to keep it to myself, but it doesn't sound like you even have technical details sufficient to reconstruct the work, and it's not something that is personally private to you such that I'd keep it secret out of general decency, and it doesn't sound like there's a way to conduct more of an investigation into what went wrong there, from here."
"I think I know some of the key advancements, though not the details, it might be enough to help someone know what to research... um. My instincts are telling me I should trust your judgement about using the information wisely, and I can't tell if that's because of the mind control or not."
"It probably is, but you kind of have to do that anyway, it's not like you know a lot about how reliably I keep promises."
"Yeah. That's a fair point."
"So um. Are you in fact okay with keeping the details I know secret?"
"I guess I'm more okay with it than with you torturing yourself to stop me from acting on a disagreement about it."
"I'm really really sorry."
And then he's going to hurriedly say everything he knows about the breakthroughs that led to augments.
"...not really, no, it's not like I'm allowed to use the information anyway so it's pretty useless."
"I'm sorry - I um. Have a lot more knowledge amount medical advancements I can tell you about if you want to know useful things."
"If I express interest in them you're going to feel obliged to tell me and I don't want to do that. Have we gone over everything you need to tell me, now?"
"Yeah."
Which means she can leave which she should definitely do if she wants to but will also incidentally break his heart.
"Huh, I was sort of expecting you to - relax visibly or something."
"I um, still feel really bad about how this is unpleasant for you. The guilt for that isn't as unpleasant as the guilt about not saying things was but. It's still there."
"I mean, I wouldn't call it recreational but it's not that bad."
"I'm going to try to convince some biologists I'm from a different world and then dump all my future medical knowledge on them, I think."
She picks herself and her possessions up and leads him out of the library onto campus. It's cold.
Does she look like she needs a sweater or something? Lucien doesn't have one but he could probably figure something out.
She's got a coat. He probably does too if he kept any of the stuff he was issued for his expedition. She picks her way very carefully over the icy walkways and sometimes preferentially stomps through the snow if a patch looks particularly slidey.
Well, she'd also be welcome to his coat if she needed a second one for some reason. He trots after her through the snow.
"Here's the bio building. The faculty offices are on the third floor, but I don't know who specifically you should talk to."
"Okay I can try to ask around, I guess."
He looks at her face like she's the best most beautiful person in the world (which she is) for a moment, before remembering that that's probably weird to do and diverting his gaze to the ground.
"...and you've got my number, if you need to tell me anything else, I guess."
