Work Text:
"Dr Parry?"
Will didn’t look up from the computer screen at the sound of his colleague's voice. "Yes?"
"Tomorrow's Christmas Eve, you know."
"I hadn’t noticed." He continued studying the image on the screen before him, occasionally looking down to sketch something in a thick notebook. The preceding pages were filled with detailed drawings and notes, some of which had been written several years ago. It was rare that anyone in the Museum saw him without this notebook.
"Most of us are leaving early," his colleague, Dr Gray, replied. "Three days off, Dr Parry. Go home and get a head start on it."
A dismissive grunt was Will's only reply. "Later," he said, waving a hand. "I want to finish this first." He put a final touch on his sketch and finally looked up, a warm smile softening his strong, stubble-shadowed features. "Really. I won't be working late tonight, I promise."
"Somehow, I don't quite believe you," Dr Gray said, with a touch of amused resignation. She produced a small biscuit tin from her bag and placed in on the countertop, safely away from any of Will's equipment or materials. "In case you get hungry while you're here, not working late. Have a good holiday, Dr Parry. See you after Boxing Day."
Will shook his head as she left, turning back to the computer screen before him.
"You aren't going to listen, are you?" said a softer, lower voice, and Kirjava leapt gracefully onto his desk, curling up beside the keyboard and resting her chin on Will's wrist.
"I'll be here until security comes by to give me a friendly reminder," Will assured her, reaching over to scratch behind her ears before resuming his work. Ever since he had taken this position at the British Museum ten years ago, a number of unusual artifacts had trickled in over the years that they were unable to place in other, more appropriate departments. Most were revealed to be hoaxes or fakes, but a few of them... a few of them were things that Will recognised from other worlds.
The first one, and the most obvious one, had been an alethiometer. It had come in through the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and it was only because his colleagues in other departments had not been able to place it that it had come across Will's desk. Someone on a geocaching expedition in the north of England had discovered it, keeping it to himself for three years before turning it over to Museum officials.
Since it had mystified his colleagues, it had come to him.
It had been difficult for Will to keep his shock hidden, but Kirjava had helped with that, and later that night, after most of the conservation staff had gone home, they sat at Will's desk and looked at the small golden object until Museum security came by to secure the building. Will got very little done for the rest of the week. Nearly every free moment in his day had been consumed with studying the alethiometer. He learned nothing he didn't already know, of course, but there was no way he could share his knowledge with his colleagues. Instead he had to pretend to be as mystified as they were.
He and Kirjava liked to imagine that it was Lyra's alethiometer, although he had no way of knowing for sure. If it was, what was she doing with it in that particular location? Had she learned to read it again? How had it come through to his world? For the last several years of his adult life it had been easier not to think of her between those Midsummer Day visits to the Botanic Garden, but now he found himself thinking about her more and more often. What was she doing? Did she have a good life?
Was she happy?
That was what Will wanted to know more than anything else. The bit about never seeing her again that bothered him most was not that they couldn't be together forever the way they wanted, but that he didn't know whether or not she was okay. He didn't know what she was doing with her life, if she had a good life, if she was happy. If he could somehow know that she was happy and safe, that would have been enough for him... but there was no way to know. And the older he got, and the more that life's adult responsibilities weighed on him, the more he wondered if she was navigating the tricky waters of adulthood as well as he had.
When more and more unclassifiable items began to filter in, Will was given a larger staff, more resources, and an entirely new department was formed within the museum structure, specifically devoted to studying unclassifiable artifacts. Their latest acquisition was keeping Will occupied tonight. It was what appeared to be a floor-length mirror, half-encased in a chunk of rock-like material similar to granite, but darker. There was an unusual quality to the mirror's surface that had caught Will's attention, but more than that, there were a series of markings embedded into the rock that, while similar to the alethiometer's symbols, did not quite replicate them.
Those symbols had become an obsession for him. He found himself doodling them on take-away napkins, tracing them in the condensation that fogged his car windows, looking for them in the patterns of life that surrounded him every day. If they did something, or meant something in the way that the alethiometer's symbols meant something, he did not know what it was.
But he wanted to know.
Rubbing his eyes, shaking his head to clear it, he peered at his notes again, then got up and crossed the room to the mirror. It did not reflect light as clearly as a normal mirror did, yet he could see his reflection well enough. He could see Kirjava, too, although the glass at the bottom of the mirror was distorted slightly, as if it had been subjected to a high temperature, and her reflection looked wavy and strange.
"I feel like we've seen this before," said Kirjava, sniffing the mirror. "Maybe not this, but something like this. It smells familiar."
"What do you mean?" Will asked.
"I don't know," Kirjava said. "It just seems queerly familiar. I don't know how to say it. I might just be imagining things, though. Did you ever figure out what those symbols mean?"
"No," said Will.
Kirjava sighed a very cat-like sigh and wound round his ankles. "Well, I think they've got something to do with the alethiometer," she said. "I'm not the one with degrees in archaeology, but I did go to all your lectures, and sat with you while you wrote your dissertations. And I'm telling you, they're connected somehow. Look at them again, side-by-side."
Kirjava had hardly got the words out of her mouth before Will had located the alethiometer. Since it had never been properly identified, it had not been included in any of the Museum's displays, but catalogued and stored here in Will's department for safekeeping. He removed it from its archival box, and turning back to the mirror, compared the markings on both. They weren't the same pictures; the baby, moon, hourglass, and so on from the alethiometer were not the same as the symbols on the mirror. What they did have in common was their very similar style, as if the symbols on one item had been drawn to imitate the look of the symbols on the other. Not quite similar enough to have been created by the same person, Will realised after closer inspection, but very close.
"This is from Lyra's world," Will and Kirjava said at once.
"What do you think it does?" Kirjava asked, sniffing at it again.
"I don't know," said Will. "I don't know if it even does anything, but I want to find out, now more than ever."
He touched his hand to the surface of the mirror, a gesture that spoke more of not knowing what to do next than having any real purpose. As soon as he did, the mirror began to glow--with a brightness that seemed to come from behind the glass as opposed to reflecting the room's ambient light.
Will jerked his hand away, and the mirror instantly went dark. "Did you see that?" he asked Kirjava.
"Yes," she said. Her whiskers quivered with excitement. "Do it again!"
"But I don't..."
"Just do it," she urged, and pressed a paw to the glass. "Will, touch it again. Trust me. I think I know what it does."
Taking a deep breath, Will touched the surface of the mirror again. A glow spread across it, stronger this time, and his office behind him reflected in it. The way the mirror glowed, he expected to feel the glass growing warm beneath his hand, but it was curiously cool. As the glow shifted behind the surface of the glass, the reflection of his office dimmed and faded, to be replaced by the image of another room, curiously similar in size and shape but different in contents.
And different, too, in the image of the person visible--no longer reflecting himself and Kirjava, but the image of a woman was now visible, her hand pressed to the glass almost exactly opposite his.
"It worked!" Not his voice, nor Kirjava's, but the woman on the other side of the glass, and as soon as he heard her voice, he knew who it was. No one else could have that tone of voice, instantly recognisable despite years of age and experience and education. There was only one voice in this world or any other that made his heart swell till he thought it would stop.
"Lyra," he said, his face as close to the glass as he could put it before everything grew blurry. "Is that you?" It was a stupid question--he knew who it was, and if the sound of her voice hadn't made him certain, the small brown pine marten scratching at the glass at Kirjava's level would have been confirmation enough--but he was so stunned he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"It's me, Will," she said eagerly, and her whole being trembled with happiness, just the way he remembered her doing years ago when she got excited or nervous about something. "I didn't know if you'd find it or not... I hoped you would, but I couldn't be sure." She tucked her hair behind her ears with the hand that wasn't pressed to the glass, and as she did so he could see that her eyes were bright with tears.
Will just stared at her. He hadn't been expecting it, and he wasn't prepared for what he felt. This was not like his Midsummer Day ritual of coming to the Botanic Garden and sitting on their bench. He had time to think about that. He knew Lyra wouldn't be able to actually hear him. He couldn't see her.
This... was none of those things.
"Aren't you going to say something?" She bit her lip anxiously, and in that moment Will saw the girl he remembered, even though the woman standing on the other side of the glass had changed in so many ways since he had seen her last. "Will?"
"I'm sorry," he said softly, and his other hand came to rest on the surface of the glass. He had thought that if he could only talk to her again, it would be enough, but now that he'd seen her... he knew it wouldn't be. It didn't matter that they had met and parted when they were only children. It didn't matter that he had only been with her for a very brief part of his life.
It didn't matter.
"I'm just surprised, I didn't expect..." He wanted to touch her face, but the glass was in the way. He settled for touching her reflection. "It's good to see you."
"Oh, Will."
"How did you do it?" He had to know.
Lyra shook her head. "I'm not sure," she said. "It was partly work but mostly an accident. It would take too long to explain now, and I don't know how much time we have or if we can activate it again, and if we've only got a little time..."
Will nodded. He didn't want her to waste it explaining if it took all their time. "Are you okay? Everything's all right, isn't it?" Everything looked fine--she looked well, all grown up and beautiful but in so many ways still the girl he remembered--but sometimes things weren't as they looked, and had she tried to reach him because she was in trouble?
She smiled and nodded and wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. "Oh, Will, there's nothing wrong with me," she said. "Everything's fine. It's better than fine... I just wanted to see you again. I en't... I'm not in trouble." He could hear the familiar speech pattern hiding behind years of training herself out of it, coming to the surface under the stress of emotion. "I missed you."
"I missed you too." He pressed his hands more firmly against the glass, as if by doing so he could get closer to her, but it was unyielding. It gave him a thought. "Is this safe?"
"Yes, yes, of course it is," Lyra assured him. "I wouldn't do it if it wasn't. Dust can't get out. I ran hundreds of tests to make sure, before I tried to get it to work. No Dust can leak out, no Spectres are formed. I wouldn't have done it otherwise."
Will let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding, and his breath briefly misted the glass. That, at least, was a relief, but he had so many things he wanted to say to her, things he wanted to ask... and he couldn't find the words. He was peripherally aware of Pantalaimon and Kirjava's conversation down at their feet, and the tiny sounds of their noses and claws bumping aginst the glass, but it seemed far away. Lyra didn't know how much time they had. Maybe it was only minutes. What was he supposed to say to her? He had often thought of what he would say to her if he could ever speak to her again, and now that he had the chance every bit of that had completely left him.
"I don't know what to say," he admitted. "It's such a surprise."
"I know," she said. "I was surprised it even worked. I just thought, if I could see you again..." She shook her head, opening and closing her mouth as if she were trying to say something and changing her mind again. "I just wanted to know that you were happy. I had to know."
He nodded, feeling a smile warm his face; he knew that feeling well. "I am," he answered. "You?" He glanced at her hand pressed against the glass--bare, no rings.
She noticed his glance, of course. Lyra had always noticed everything. "I have a good life, Will," she said. "No, I didn't get married... no one ever..." She shrugged. "But I'm happy. I like my work, I have friends... it's a good life." She swallowed. "Did you find someone?"
"I thought so, once," Will answered. It had been a short marriage, ending amicably, but ending nonetheless. There's a part of you I just can't reach, his wife had said, just before she left, and though he knew why, he would never be able to explain it to her. "But it didn't work out."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay--don't be."
"You shouldn't be alone."
"You shouldn't either."
"Will... " Lyra glanced away, and at first Will thought she was crying, but then he realised she was looking at a piece of machinery on a nearby table. The angle was wrong; he couldn't see exactly what it was. "We haven't got much time," she said, turning back to him.
"How much?" They had only a little time, and he was wasting words asking how much when he hadn't really said anything to her at all. He felt like kicking himself.
"Just a few minutes." Her cheeks were wet, and Pan was making plaintive little sounds, rubbing his face against the glass. His nose left little spots on the surface where he touched it.
Will's fingers curled into a fist, slamming against the glass once, twice, before stilling again, fingers splaying across the surface. He wanted to touch her. Even just to hold her hand--what he wouldn't give to do that just for a minute! All he could do was talk to her, and he wasn't even doing a very good job at it. "I miss you." He'd already said it, but that didn't make it any less true. "All this time, all these years... I still miss you."
"I know," she replied. "I miss you too... it never stops, does it?"
"No."
"I'm going to try again," she said. "I promise. I'll get it to work again somehow."
"I know you will," he said, and rested his forehead against the glass. He could hear the soft sound of her forehead touching the glass as well, and his heart ached. It wasn't as good as touching her, but it would have to do. "I love you."
That had never changed.
"Dr Parry?"
Startled, Will jumped away from the mirror, and the image immediately faded. One of the night security staff stood in the doorway. "Yes?" He couldn't hide his anger at the interruption, and didn't bother to try.
If the guard noticed, he didn't show it. "I'm closing the museum for the night and setting the alarms. Were you on your way out?"
Will sighed and turned to the mirror, but Lyra and Pan were gone. Gone. And he didn't know how to get her back.