long post is long

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Dealing with national secrets was one thing. Multinational, another. Multidimensional, a little bit suspect – and, after all, this didn't quite fit with his worldview. The fact that there were multiples, that every reality was real and every reality was suspect all at the same time didn't reconcile with his worldview. None of it did.

But then again, that was how it had felt when it started, and then, Robert had only been a hundred and two.

By now he'd grown used to it. All of it. The absurdities and nuances and discomforts. The different kinds of ideals and the differen tkinds of species and the different kinds of magic. And yet the only person he was really comfortable working with was Cecily. She was insular and disinterested in just about everyone and everything, but as the Protectorate of Irelands she was important; she had to deal with being important. Her choice was therefore to deal with Robert.

He wasn't all that good, but he was a better alternative than many others, as far as Cecily was concerned. As far as Robert concerned, he wished she would care about something besides the Irelands so that they could make proper partners. She intrigued him, a little bit. When they talked it was never personal, only business – he wondered, sometimes, why she liked people so little.

She didn't travel much. Ever, except when she had to touch on another Tory, and most all of them were uninhabited; Cecily took care of her world, and her land, and took care of it better than any other Protector ever had. So nobody argued about it. She cooperated with Robert. Bitterly, but she did.

He knew a lot about her particular island, and visited yearly starting in AD 1930 and continuing on after that. His job, at that point, neccessitated the move. It didn't bother him. He liked her. He wished she'd come to Headquarters. She laughed at him.

But he knew the family. Or thought he did.

Which was why he was shocked when he met a girl who looked so much like her aunt.
___

"Does Aoife have a daughter?" Robert's Irish was slightly modern and slightly choppy, but that wasn't why Cecily was looking at him like he was absolutely insane.

"What?"
___

Her name, the file said, was Alice Fitzwilliam.

She was from his world. Theirs. But she wasn't the daughter of anybody named Dunne, or anyone from Ireland. Her mother was a true mystery – no known information about her at all that could be authenticated. Not a single story, until the mid-1920s AD.

This Alice Fitzwilliam couldn't tell anyone anything that wasn't in the file.

Perhaps because she didn't know.

Robert didn't find himself caring if she didn't know; she hadn't been recruited because of her mother. She had been recruited because she was gutsy and wanted experiences. (She had missed the final 's' on the poster, some of the jokesters said.)

She hadn't been given to him as a trainee because of any mystery about her parentage either, or because of Cecily.

She had been given to him as a trainee because they were the same species.

It didn't happen very often.
___

The real problem was that Alice Fitzwilliam was beautiful in far more than a shallow, physical way.

Robert wouldn't let it distract him.

It distracted quite a few other people, and Robert's own interest had Chris and Cass talking about him being a bad choice to train her. He ignored them. They were nosy, anyway. But at least they weren't trying to get their hands on her – he'd be protective as long as he could be.

Even if it was very hard to be protective over someone who kept getting closer to him than maybe she should be.
___

"Do people usually – I mean, relationships with partners – are they entirely taboo?" Alice asked her temporary roommate, who she was only staying with due to a lack of space.

"Not entirely," the girl, Dawn, said with a shrug. "But my partner's an idiot stoner. There's no way."