[For Flavia]

[adifferentlife]

Tutorial this week was much of the same, if only for one exception. This was the day Sybil has brought Flavia with her and their teacher seems determined to impress. Not that they wouldn't be studying biological oxidation-reduction reactions but it does make a few hours of carefully monitoring and recording all the reactions.

Once they're done, Sybil takes her time cleaning up their station, letting Flavia approach the unit leader with all the questions she might have. The girl's curiosity is only to be encouraged, she thinks, and she's glad to have had any part of it.

"Should we get lunch? I've work this afternoon, but I thought it might be nice," she says when Flavia eventually returns. "Or do you have to get back to your regular classes?"

Comments

[spirit_of_vitriol]

Walking into the classroom with Sybil, Flavia had almost expected someone to appear, barring her way with some rot about misunderstandings and aren't you a bit young, run along now. And yet, that hadn't happened, not even slightly--she'd sat taking copious notes, of course; even answered a few questions, reveling in the impressed, assessing look the instructor had given her as she came up with the correct answer.

The professor's business card now held in her hand and his words--I hope to see you back here soon, Miss de Luce--still ringing in her ears, Flavia makes her way back to Sybil's lab bench. "I think having lunch sounds brilliant," she says, unwilling to let such a glorious day end so quickly.

[adifferentlife]

"Then lets," Sybil says happily as she shoulders her bag. "There's a cafe that I rather like on campus. They have lovely pastas, and it's not something we had much at home."

It's only once they're well out of the class that she looks back to Flavia with an eager smile. "What did you think?"

[spirit_of_vitriol]

Flavia follows along behind Sybil, looking in open classroom doors as they walk, then hastening to catch up again. At the question, she breaks into a wide, excited grin. "It was utterly amazing," she gushes. "I'd read some of Uncle Tar's notes on the subject, back home, but it's another thing entirely to watch the process happening right in front of you, isn't it?"

[adifferentlife]

"Did you really?" It amazes her that anyone has notes on such things outside of this time and age, if she's honest. There is a small part of her that wonders if it's magic in part still, but a very small part. "It can be amazing to follow such things, I do admit. At first I used to forget to take notes."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"Uncle Tar became quite a hermit, after he was sent down from Oxford," Flavia explains. It feels almost disloyal, sharing the story of Tar's disgrace with someone not a de Luce, or even from Bishop's Lacey. Though in a world where Hinley doesn't even show up in an atlas, should it really matter? "He had loads of time to spend on experiments, after that."

After Sybil's confession, Flavia looks sympathetically over at her. "I did the same thing when I started my explorations of the chemical world," she admits. "You feel a bit like a wizard, don't you?"

[adifferentlife]

Every family has someone who's met with some level of disgrace in their time, that's nothing unusual to Sybil. But to have a scientist as a relative... She thinks her father would have more disturbed about that than he was at having a Lawyer.

"I did," actually, she says with a bashful smile, glad that Flavia understands. "Some days I still do, if I'm honest."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"In this city, I think everyone does," Flavia muses. "It's hard not to, popping out of nowhere."

They walk on in silence for some time, Flavia following Sybil's lead out the front doors of the science building and into the cold. "You were in Yorkshire before coming here, isn't that right?" she asks. "I remember you saying something about it, when we first met."

[adifferentlife]

"Yes," she says amidst slipping on her gloves, wondering how it was the one always managed to hide itself deep in her bag, even when she'd tucked them together. "My father was the Earl of Downton."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"An earl?" Flavia echoes, suppressing the sudden urge to curtsy or do something equally ridiculous. Sybil was just another person, after all, and one who'd been so wonderfully kind. "I've never met an earl..ess?" she guesses, wishing she could magic Mrs. Mullet's copy of Inquire Within Upon Everything out of the ether, "before. Though I did write a letter to the King."

[adifferentlife]

"Countess, but only my mother and the heir. Which was not my lot in life, so I am merely Lady," she says with a gentle smile. "Here I'm just a nursing student and nothing more."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"That seems quite a lot, to me," Flavia replies quietly.

[adifferentlife]

"Does it?" It's a serious question for Sybil. There are days when it seems like everything, and other days when it's not nearly enough. "I wonder sometimes."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"You help people," she says. "You know what to do to make them better, if they're ill or hurting." The stricken face of Grace Ingleby floats up into her mind's eye, then, and Flavia recalls the panicked minutes in the dovecote, the woman's head cradled in her lap, waiting for Dr. Darby to come speeding up the lane.

"It's very noble."

[adifferentlife]

"Perhaps you're right," she says, considering Flavia's words the same way she would consider a peer. "It's hard to think about sometimes, when you're in the moment. I do love it, nursing, working as one. I feel as if it has meaning, even when I'm not sure it does."