She doesn't time it, but standing there it feels like she waits hours for her lover's attention. Within that span of time - which surely must be very short in the grand scheme of things - the floor drops out from under her finally. It's been a long time coming but she couldn't see it because of how tightly she was holding on, and finally time has loosened her grip enough that she feels how completely alone she is in here.

It's like she sees the office for the first time again, but this time there is no laughing Mira beside her, excitedly showing her the view from the window and pointing out the gap in the floor where they've started tearing out the carpet to start replacing it with her favourite marble. She stands on the same spot, the same stone, though scuffed from wear and regular cleaning, with the same woman. It doesn't feel the same, though. It feels like she's been barely keeping up for too long, like she's become obsolete and the doors have closed with her still outside.

When Mira meets her eyes, they're both different people than they used to be in youth and ambition, and it's terrible and momentous and she can't open her mouth or sharp cruel things will come out and then it would truly be over, and her fault to boot. She's just here to hand over a report, make pleasant small talk. Mira regards her from behind the desk with tired, hardened eyes like she's a nusiance. The bidden words won't come.

The woman huffs and pushes her chair back from the desk. Silicia watches mutely as she passes her, counts the steps of heeled boots on marble and then the carpet of the lobby to stay her tongue from saying it, from getting angry.

Mira slows, and as they turn towards each other she sees it in her, the spark that got her into all this trouble in the first place.
Mira wordlessly gestures for her to follow, and she does.

"Come, then. Speak."

They cross the lobby towards the relaxation area. She's headed for the bar, that much is clear.

"I'm not a dog, Mira."

The woman halts; lays a hand on the wooden top beside her and half turns to look at Silicia over her shoulder.

"Then why do you follow me?"

Her voice is toneless.

Suddenly, or maybe finally, Silicia is angry like she never has been before. It rises up in her chest and climbs up the back of her neck to cloud her vision and it's all she can do to throw the report she's still clutching on the ground so the pages escape their paper clip and go flying everywhere, and storm out.
Rome wasn't built in a day, but it burns in one.

---

They're lounging on the pulled out fancy couch that Mira's parents bought her, and Silicia is only half awake when her college-friend-maybe-girlfriend shifts to sit up. She looks down at her, and Silicia's cheeks go warm at the expression on her face. Mira has had an idea, and Silicia is as giddily happy to listen as she is to tell it.

---

It's an odd, precarious balance of how she's so swept up in everything, while at the same time, she takes every step purposefully. She follows Mira, she lets herself be ensnared by her futuristic vision. 'Flesh and electricity, Silica,' she says one night on the floor of Silicia's tiny, dingy apartment, 'are not so different'.

She's right, they aren't, and Silicia is entranced by the easy way Mira picks up patterns, concepts, in systems, in people. They've only known each other for a few months yet she imagines Mira can read her like a book, and she likes what she's reading, and that's very flattering. It's good to be liked by people who are good. Mira, she understands later, is not good. She is good at what she does.

She reads her perfectly well still, she just doesn't care to anymore. She has bigger things to think about these days than Silicia.

---

She sits on the edge of Mira's desk and tells her about a book she's just finished, and it feels like the longest moment of her life. Mira has her head leaned back against the back of her chair and is just watching her talk, with the fondest little smile on her lips, and time stretches as far as the eye can see.

Maybe, they can stay like this forever, and maybe everything Mira has been trying to do for them will turn out just like they dreamt. She can certainly believe it, looking the woman in the eyes.

They are interrupted by an alarm going off, Mira has an international conference call to attend in five minutes. Silicia slides off the desk, disappointed but still glowing, and Mira kisses her with practiced ease and tells her to send her the rest over email so she can read it tomorrow morning, in her next boring meeting.

The meetings are important, but individually they're boring. Silicia is important, too, but she has to respect Mira's unwavering dedication to the task she's set herself to. She doesn't mind much. She's doing this for them.

---

She hardly understands what Mira is working on as they rise through the ranks, because Mira never frames it as something worth knowing, and so she never asks. And so it takes her until it's far too late to realize what has been going on for years now, maybe as long as they've known each other.

And now her head is full of her, half a lifetime filled with memories of Mira, of evenings spent studying and evenings forgetting to. Of dates and business meetings, of different labs, of seeing her girlfriend on magazine covers and laughing about it with her. All of it was real. This, now, is real as well, but it's so hard to let go of everything she felt her life should have been.

For a long time, she lies awake at night trying to sort through her memories to find the moment that everything changed without her noticing. She pores over increasingly shorter conversations and goes half mad in the attempt to catalog her own descent down the priority list.
When did 'our future' become just Mira's? When did she fall behind that last time and didn't get picked up again? For years the lack of a clear ending makes it feel like there is still something of Mira left in the wound where she's been torn out of her. She grows around it like an oyster creating a pearl, and makes it round and smooth so her still rough edges won't catch on it.

---

She sees Mira again, and it hurts in a new and inventive way when Silicia realizes how far gone she is. And then, she's truly gone, and it's just Silicia left.

---

"What are you working on?"

She drops her book bag and then herself on the bench next to Mira and props her chin up on her hand to look at her expectantly.

Mira grins at her, pushing the assortment of loose papers she'd been bent over towards Silicia so she can take a look at her frantic notes and scribbled diagrams.

"The same thing I'm always working on, our future!"