An afternoon in the lab
hi!! this is the first fan fiction I have written. Do give me feedback if you read this.
characters: Grace Blackthorn and Christopher lightwood from The Last Hours by Cassandra Clare
----------------------------------------------
Christopher rarely felt this energised after a session of training. Usually, it exhausted him quite a bit, as he wasn’t the fit sort. But this day, kit was really excited- as he finally had a sample of ichor from an iadelon demon and he wanted to run some tests on it.
He skipped towards the winding stairs that led to uncle Henry’s laboratory when he heard aunt charlotte call out “kit is that you?” from the other room.
“Yes aunt charlotte it’s me” he replied cheerily.
“alright then, Henry and I are leaving for an enclave meeting, try not to blow anything up this time” she told him kindly.
“yeah thank you- I’ll try not to aunt charlotte” he replied with a smile to himself. He really liked aunt charlotte. One because she let him dally about her house whenever he pleased to the point of allowing him to use Matthew's room as a resting place, and two- she never objected to his curiosity and interest in science- as long as he didn’t blow up the place; which he, unfortunately, did a lot. He liked how she always encouraged uncle Henry’s genius pursuits.
As he climbed the stairs he thought that although a partner's encouragement in the sciences was always good, he always craved for his partner in life to be his partner in science too. Like Marie and Pierre Curie. His mind shifted to grace blackthorn, which he thought was odd since they weren’t very well acquainted. He suspected that she was interested in science like he was. perhaps he should ask her to be his lab partner? But he didn't know if she would agree to that, after all, she used to be close to James- and James never had a keen interest in kit’s many experiments. Besides, he thought, she must have been going through a lot. He knew that her mother had been sent to the citadel and that she probably was in no headspace to be courted- not that kit was good at courting girls in the first place. Kit barely knew how to talk to people, let alone court them.
as he reached the bottom of the staircase he turned to enter the laboratory when he saw a shadow sitting near the Venturi meters. The figure was familiar- short frame, and hair the colour of platinum which glowed like the moon. He saw that she was staring at the ticking pendulum of the grand clock across the lab from her. She looked like she had been crying
He quickly hid behind the door. Did him thinking about her bring her to the lab? He had read a few books on psychic abilities, was that what was happening? “No,” he thought, those claims didn’t have sufficient scientific backing. Then what was grace doing here? And why had she been crying?
—
Grace has no idea why she asked for the carriage to go to James’s Parabatai’s place. She still had no idea why, as she slipped into the back entrance and went to the lab. James had to leave with his family to search for Lucy, so he had let her leave Curzon street on the condition that they would report everything to the clave when he got back. After that, she made her way back to the Bridgestock’s residence. Now it was a few days later, and Grace was at the consul's house.
But she hadn’t gone there to see Ms Fairchild, she was sure of it. She entered the laboratory and sat directly across the vast wooden clock. Its steady ticks rang across the room. Tick-tock. Tick tock.
As if on cue, tears slipped from her eyes. She didn’t know why she was crying, or rather for what exact thing-out of everything- in particular she was crying about. Her mother always told her she was a stupid, weak child, and now she was crying like one.
She heard the door swing open slowly and quickly rubbed off her tears and straightened her skirts. it was Christopher. He looked at her curiosity with his beautiful violet eyes. He looked concerned. He was gnawing at his lip and was restlessly pushing the door open.
“Er- grace is that you?” he said softly.
Why had she come here? How could she explain this to him? He probably thought that she had lost her mind.
“Christopher! I’m so sorry, I’ll leave right away if you’re busy- I was passing by and er- I wanted something from you- um do you have any dried lavender extract?”
Dried lavender extract? she thought cringing a little bit at his puzzled expression. Surely he knew that she could make it from the Bridgestock gardens and didn’t have to come all the way here for it. But she couldn’t help it, lavender was the first thing she thought of after seeing those bright eyes of his.
“yeah! yeah- I could give that to you by tomorrow!” he said brightly.
“Thank you, Christopher,” grace said. She could feel her cheeks hot with embarrassment as he stared at her with a small smile. The ticks of the clock were louder than ever now. She turned to look at it, to avoid making a bigger fool of herself.
“I always liked the way clocks ticked. Like with a steady frequency, you know?” Christopher told her, breaking the silence. Then he started tapping the table with his long scarred finger and matched the frequency to the clock. She didn’t know why, but she started tapping to it too.
“Ah! Look we’re in resonance!” He said and beamed at her. Then he looked away a little embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, this might be a little uninteresting to you” he said shyly.
“No! It’s not” she said, adding “I read somewhere that resonance is when the amplitude increases because of matching frequencies. The book said that with very loud sounds- you could break windows. Is that true?”
Christopher stared at her. and then he smiled his perfect, cat like smile.
“maybe, I’ve never tried it! We ought to try it sometime don’t you think? I mean I don’t think aunt charlotte would appreciate that too much because the windows might break- but what is that small damage in the grand scheme of things?” He told her excitedly.
“Anyways, I wanted to run some tests on iadelon ichor. Er-if you’re not occupied elsewhere, would you like to help me?” He asked, as his fingers fluttered a little in his pocket.
Grace liked how Christopher didn’t think she was uneducated just because she was a woman. She liked how he viewed her as an equal. And somehow he made her forget all of her worries.
“Sure.” Said grace “as long as I get to blow some things up.- if it comes to it!”
and Christopher beamed at her again, brighter than the unusual London summer rays falling in through the window that day
And slowly they fell into a routine. Both of them took turns running the experiments, with matching goggles and smocks to protect their eyes and clothes. Grace ran some preliminary tests, while kit scratched away in his books. A couple of times the samples of ichor boiled out of the test tube, or exploded into a huge fire- but overall the tests went rather smoothly.
Kit found that he worked well with Grace, and she was extremely smart too. When the ichor reacted with concentrated sulphuric acid, it had become a huge fire- and he and Grace had to put it out quickly before it burnt them and the lab. He had looked worriedly at Grace then, to see that she was smiling- and then they both were smiling and giggling over their blunder.
He liked her company, he liked how she chewed the back of her pen as she took down the observations, or how she furrowed her brow while calculating the density of the ichor.
By the time they both were done, the clock chimed to indicate that it was 3:30pm. Grace looked at him with a small smile. “Do you want to go out into the garden for a while? I don’t think this much time with ichor is good for us” she said
“Yeah sure!” he told her as he followed her into the garden. A few silver strands of hair had escaped her bun and he had the urge to put it back in place. he didn’t know why he had that urge. Her hair was beautiful, as the rest of her was. She was more beautiful in her smock and goggles too. Kit never understood fashion, but right now it confused him the most. Why wear expensive dresses when you were beautiful in anything? He was suddenly self-conscious about his rattled appearance and stained clothes.
They had reached the garden. Aunt charlotte’s cook had laid out tea for them after seeing them. The birds were fluttering, and the Sun-rays were falling on Grace’s small face. Her hair was reflecting some of the light- and she looked radiant.
“Do you know why the sky is blue?” she asked him. He did know, but he wanted her to keep talking, so he didn’t respond.
“It’s because of Raleigh’s scattering. the light of colours with a wavelength less than blue gets scattered off, while the blue light passes though” she said and looked at him. “Interesting isn’t it?”
“It is interesting.” He told her and leaned back against the chair to look up at the sky. all this talk about wavelength and frequency made kit’s mind wander to all the books and papers he had read about them. He and uncle Henry had spent so much time on documents about light and energy, and he knew many things about frequencies and wavelengths. But the fact that was the most obvious of all, was that Grace Blackthorn for some odd reason matched his frequency perfectly. They were the perfect resonance.
he suddenly sat up. She was steering sugar in her tea and looking at him with a half-smile. He picked up his teacup too and asked her
“Have you heard of the Curies?”
-----------------------------
by vash
An era.
