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 Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 12:10 pm
It had not been so long that Kostya forgot the location of her lab slash makeshift home resided. His mouth set into a grim slash of determination, he clutched the tupperware in his hands with white knuckles.
Robert had insisted-- insisted-- that Kostya had been wrong about his assertion that he was no longer a necessary piece of Mimsy's life. Mimsy had also insisted, in her own way, but her words were not ones that he could trust. Her decisions were tinged with a madness unchecked, one that went down beneath the surface of her skin and spread like an invisible disease.
He was almost horrified to admit that he had no desire to treat it.
With hunched shoulders, Kostya entered the lab, setting the tupperware next to where Mimsy was furiously scribbling. Off to her side, just within peripheral vision, but not close enough to infringe upon her personal space. He laid a plastic fork and a napkin on top of it, and procured a bottle of water to set beside the food as well.
And then he went across the room, and sat down at a desk, opening a book of his own.
There was a distinct possibility that Mimsy wouldn't notice him, but he was prepared to wait out the day. He considered it an...an offering. This was a service he could provide: a constant, a non-variable.
It wasn't the same, but it was...something. It was him taking an initiative, for better or for worse.
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Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 9:59 pm
The book in which Mimsy was scribbling was not any of the standard moleskine varieties that she typically carried around, but a thick, red book that looked much too old for her to write in without ruining it. Its age didn't seem to bother her, for whatever reason, and she wrote as if she were taking notes in any random notebook. The handwriting was slightly less tidy than it usually was, and there were significantly less numbers involved, but there were enough normal variables that the abnormal ones were almost too easy to ignore. Each time her mind strayed from her writing to the events of the previous day, she'd bear down on the page until the ink splattered out of her pen, stop, then pick up again at a slower pace. It was a fairly reflexive practice to simply ignore anyone who walked into the room while she was working, lest she be distracted every few moments. This portion of the lab had been fairly quiet today, so she spared a sidelong glance towards the door to see who it was. When it registered as Kostya, trying to ignore him became a more conscious choice. The resolution was supposed to have been straightforward, she was sure. It wasn't. As furious as she had gotten, she never said a word she didn't mean, and it was difficult to immediately go back them. It was even more difficult to accept that he was anything other than someone who would leave her if the opportunity presented itself; she tried to avoid anyone who might potentially do so, and he had set a very clear precedent. She nudged the food aside, frowned at it, frowned at the book, and began to write again, page now filling with splotches and marked indentations.
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Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 1:33 am
Kostya took note of the book, and while it struck a chord of familiarity, it rung no real bells. He didn't need to look at her to know how intensely she was transcribing her thoughts, he could hear the pen scratch against the paper in a staccato. Slow, fast, stutter, repeat. It was a litany of ire and it was foolish to think that Mimsy did anything without the intensity of a blazing star.
As always, it took time for Mimsy to register Kostya's presence, but that fact was more of a comfort than anything else. It was...normal. Or at least, it was the closest that the limit of the equation of their friendship could manage. It was like .9 repeating equalling zero, except somewhere along the way, someone had subtracted an indeterminable amount from the .9 repeating.
In layman's terms: so close, and yet so far. Far enough that 'normal' was 100% out of grasp. They would be locked into a give and take dynamic with the give to take ratios locked at 1:20 with no way out and no alternative.
There were many things he wanted to say, so much gentle chiding and ferocious scolding, so many questions that had no good answers, so many queries that would calculate in little more than an error because of Mimsy's missing library dependencies (Empathy, Understanding, Compassion, Kindness, etc).
Kostya watched as she ignored the food, and was glad he'd chosen a plain dish, bliny stuffed with plum jam, for the sharp, tart flavour that had underlying notes of sweetness not so egregious as honey. They would keep for several hours, and he had devised a dish around that as the main specification.
He turned back to his book. It was a children's book, and he had paid an embarrassingly exorbitant amount for it. It was a copy of Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss. He read it for what seemed like an eternity, but the day concluded, and he left.
They repeated this.
Every day, he would find her, a new food in a container for her. Sometimes it was an insulated canteen that retained heat or cool, sometimes it was hearty, sometimes it was light but still calorie-packed. Every day, he brought a book to read, or work to complete.
Every day, he tried.
Kostya did not expect her to understand. Or to forgive. It was a tired song and dance, but if he abandoned it, it would mean that Robert would consume her entirely.
She was worth more than that.
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