Fractured Curie
by sacredlilac
Maria Skłodowska paused outside her father's Warsaw home to look at the paper that was starting to wear thin along the crease lines. "Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel," she whispered as she ran her finger over the author's names, something she'd done daily since her sister, Bronisława, sent the paper from Paris on a whim that Maria would be interested.
After a great deal of trial and error, she'd built a simple machine to measure the uranium rays that Curie and Becquerel had discussed over the course of several papers. Her heart hammered in trepidation because now she was finally ready to reveal what she'd discovered.
With a heavy heart over the secret she bore, Maria pushed open the door and called, "Father, are you here?"
Władysław Skłodowski leaned back in his chair to peer at his youngest daughter who came around the corner with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes. "What has happened, my dearest Mania?" Even her family nickname didn't bring the barest hint of a smile to her face.
Maria slowly lowered herself to the chair beside her father's desk and clasped her hands in her lap. "What are you working on, Father?"
Władysław frowned ever so slightly, but let Maria avoid answering his question. "I'm working on that new formula we went over with your husband. How is Kazimierz today? Over his cough?"
"Yes, he's much better now," Maria replied absently.
Her father narrowed his eyes slightly in concern. "Are you two fighting? Is Kazimierz's family stirring up trouble again?"
Maria shook her head, but pursed her lips. Her husband's family had not made life easy for the couple. They resented that Kazimierz was willing to choose her over them when they opposed the cousin's marrying, and that their beloved son threatened to walk away from his mathematics doctorate and run away to Paris with Maria to join her sister.
They ignored that fact that Maria had given up her own studies at the Flying University so she could take on more tutoring students to support them financially while Kazimierz finished school. Like so many others, they didn't think women needed, or were intelligent enough, for education beyond basic reading and writing, which flew directly in the face of her own parent's beliefs that had shaped her.
Kazimierz's family focused solely on his preference for her over them, and how they could make Maria pay for that allegiance by making life hell at every turn.
Maria knelt in front of her father and clasped his cool hands upon his knees. Hands that had held her, nurtured and encouraged her all her life. Hands that had rescued the school laboratory equipment when the laboratory program was scrapped, then patiently used that equipment to instruct his daughters at home.
Time had passed more quickly than she expected, though, and now she was struggling with the feeling that her life was... lacking.
Yet, the paper currently burning a hole in her pocket was filling up that void. Not for the first time she wondered if Fate had designs on linking her with Paris.
"Father, you know I have always loved tutoring students." She smiled warmly. "Seeing the light of understanding, come on in a student's eyes is one of the most satisfying things."
Władysław smiled back. "To be part of someone's development is an undeniable gift."
Her father watched Maria push to her feet, clasp her arms around herself again and stride back and forth across the room in a state of agitated emotion it was rare for her to display.
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