The opera had not, of course, been the end of the evening for Moira, and it seemed her latest suitor was along for the ride, whether he would or no just like all the rest. Aldean was amiable enough, perhaps even "charming," which was one of those archaic words Moira seemed so endlessly fond of, pulled from the innumerable ancient novels she devoured by the shelf-ful when she was not in her lab. This "charm" - whatever strange, nebulous quality this was that seemed to have Moira so rapt - was the reason Elke's sister-like indulged his every last whim. It was Aldean who had an absolute passion for the opera, some such thing about the tragically beautiful people to be found there, to a night spent in their shared bed with her Guardian, when he wondered aloud once, about the prowess of a genaltata.

Elke did not mind. She had performed that duty as she did all others that Moira had ever requested - thoroughly and well. But even if Aldean did not know this one thing of Moira, Elke most certainly did: while Moira greatly enjoyed a great many things in this world, and savored the company of even more people who moved contentedly about her orbit like satellites of flesh, she only had one great love - and that was her work. 

A physicist of the first order, Moira was acknowledged globally as the brightest mind of her generation. It was her work that had become the basis of all inroads into Verihistoriography. Time travel, in essence, into the past in discrete parcels, or chronoquanta: moments mathematically determined to be infinitesimally insignificant in the development of the modern human timeline. 

Of the tiny number of chronoquanta computed, only a precious, miniscule fraction of those provided proper vantage points from which to watch human history unfold. The masking, shielding and sanitation procedures alone for sending human researchers into these chronoquanta had taken the resources of entire small nations to develop and implement, but the information gleaned had solved some of the greatest mysteries of human history. In essence, priceless.

Roanoke, a colony of the nascent state of Virginia in the former United States, was decimated by a version of the bubonic plague, decimating the children and the elderly first and leaving the survivors to bury their own until they could not anymore. The mass grave was located some half mile from the original site. Fortunately, this particular strain died with the last of the Roanoke colonists, and only by the most insanely fortunate circumstances, did it not infect the native population.

The Rongorongo hieroglyphics of ancient Easter Island had been deciphered, the richness of this people's lore finally available for anthropological study.

And of course, the explosion in Tunguska, Siberia, was only ever a meteor after all.

[i]This.[/i] This was Moira's true passion, her one love, the answers found to the mysteries of the world, as perfect and true as any mathematical equation. As the scion of the great Sonnengir family, the inevitable products and offshoots of her work had more than doubled the family's already indescribably vast coffers. And though this did not displease her, of course, it was still no better than a pleasant side effect of her first love.

And if this was what her sister-like held dearest, Elke could do no less. The Guardian would never know if her eidetic memory was a product of her altered genetics, or an honest gift from the roll of the genetic dice from her parents, like her hair and eyes. But all those elegant calculations, the intuitively impossible mathematics that painted the masterpiece of time travel, the filigree links that traveled back in history, to moments magnificent and abhorrent... There was a mystery there, a mystery Elke might have called profoundly spiritual if those words had the least meaning to her. 

But Elke did not sully that mystery with her hands, or degrade it with her voice. She simply suspended it in her mind like a celestial body in the void of space, a treasure as profound and immutable in the confines of the Guardian's vast trove of thought and experience, as her undying devotion to her charge.

This night though... This night Aldean truly [i]wanted[/i] to accompany Moira to her laboratory. 

Elke frowned as they drove through the streets, Moira and Aldean whispering and giggling in the real leather seats of the luxury aero, the Guardian ensconced beside the ever-silent driver as they hummed silently through the rain-drizzled byways of the District. The Guardian had never been sick a day in her life, her immune system a bulwark as formidable as the fortress walls reaching to the skies about the District. And so this strange, bitter gall rising up in the back of Elke's throat, this tense twist to her stomach was an entirely new and disconcerting sensation as she did her level best not to hear a single, bliss-filled word of the lovers behind her.

When the driver stopped before the enormous neo-art deco skyscraper that contained Moira's laboratory, Elke all but leapt from the aero to the sidewalk. With a growl she didn't even realize she'd made, the Guardian opened an umbrella before opening the backdoor as Moira and Aldean exited. She thought nothing of the fact neither acknowledged her presence mattered not at all, nor did such a notion that they should so much as enter her head. 

By the time they entered the grand marble- and onyx-lined lobby, Elke was soaked utterly, the pale green sheath dress plastered to her body from chest to waist; her silvery-blonde, carefully-coiffed hair hanging in ragged, wet tendrils to her cheeks and neck. Still, the state of her appearance mattered no more nor less than whether the dry, pristine, laughing couple walking ahead acknowledged her when they left the aero. It simply... Well, it simply [i]was.[/i]

And so as she walked, folding the umbrella away quickly, Moira removed the leather heels she wore as in swift, fluid motions that involved no clumsy jumping or maneuvering. Padding barefoot across the stone floor, her skin began to prickle with the sudden cold combined with the rain. Yet there was no other reaction that indicated the Guardian felt even the least touch of discomfort.

Not even with that strange, utterly foreign twisting in her gut.

The elevator ride to Moira's laboratory - a complex that actually encompassed several floors including what might have traditionally been called the "penthouse suite" - was entirely silent but for the deep, excited breathing of the thoroughly involved couple, studiously ignored by the Guardian who knew, for all intents and purposes, she was as relevant to this moment for her charge as the mahogany panels and the elevator instrument panel before her. 

When the doors opened, Elke stepped out as always, moving aside for Moira to proceed first, accompanied by Aldean this night. The pattern was as steady and known that Elke sometimes liked to imagine that one day, their footsteps might yet be worn into the elegant marble tiles of the floors. 

So when Aldean held up his hand to her outside Moira's main laboratory, where all her prototype works were sealed off from scrutiny by all but Elke and precious few others in this world, the Guardian damn near walked right over him. Not with malice, no, nor inattention, but simply because... Because such a thing was frankly unthinkable, without precedent in all her life. Those grey-blue eyes widened in genuine surprise for, perhaps, the very first time as her mouth fell open, her gaze darting between Moira, to Aldean, and then back to Moira again.

She quickly squelched her fist impulse, ingrained almost enough to be instinctive, to break his wrist in a single fluid movement, throw him to the floor and crush his windpipe with the heel of her bare foot- though the mere thought, strangely enough, relieved that growing, bitter ache in her belly. 

Only the swift shake of Moira's lovely head stopped her instinctual reaction. Her eyes searched her charge's face, without even enough guile to mask her surprise or growing dismay.

"No Elke," Moira said softly, not unkindly, as she lay her warm, soft hand against the Guardian's rain-cooled shoulder. The contrast in temperatures sent an involuntary shudder through Elke's body that she noticed not at all. "Stay out here for a few moments. Aldean and I would be alone, yes?"

Though the "yes" at the end of her words might have sounded no less than any small bit of casual conversation, Elke knew well what it truly was. It was a command. A command from her charge to do exactly as she was bid, and she could no more refuse that single word, than she could somehow stop her own beating heart.

"Yes," was all Elke did - or even could - reply in perfect, unreflecting acknowledgement, Moira and Aldean entering the laboratory as the Guardian took up a position outside the solid metal doors. Still and unmoving as a sodden piece of statuary, with a strangely bitter gall rising at the back of her throat, Elke didn't know that her own hands had begun to wrap around her bare, cold arms, gently rubbing up and down over the prickles of flesh. No, not for some need to fight off the cold that barely touched her consciousness, but the sudden desire to feel the warmth all over again, of her sister-like's touch.