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"I took the liberty of putting together some rooms that resembled your apartment back in the twentieth century." Odin allows himself a knowing grin and a little flash of pride and sweeps the door open, watching for Lyla's reaction at the grand reveal.
There isn't one. She scans the sitting room, the hot pinks he carefully color matched himself, the shag carpet, the ridiculous and gleeful art, the useless knick-knacks. Her expression is blank.
"I did most of the decorating myself," Odin explains. "A good number of these pieces are original historical ones, too. They're hard to find, but they're out there, if you know where to look, and I assuredly do."
Lyla just stands there, staring.
"Lyla?" he prompts.
She inhales. Androids don't need oxygen, but there are mechanical benefits to respiration, as well as social ones. "Thank you," she says quietly. "It's beautiful."
She steps around the coffee table and curls up on the couch, resting her head on the arm.
"Don't you want to see the other rooms? There's a bedroom, you know, and a-a powder room, that one I did up in buttercup yellow, just for the variety, and there's a study with some truly grand windows that give you the most stunning view of the city."
She shakes her head. "It's been a long day," she says. "I'll look at them later. I'd like to reset a little, if you don't mind."
It's been less than a day since she discovered she was well and truly stuck in the 23rd century, and since Donald vanished back to his own time--without her. And Odin is sure that she doesn't really have much in the way of repairs that she needs to do to her system, but he also knows that her entire life has been upended in a way that an antique bubblegum pink office he's been preparing since he began to suspect this day was approaching can't fix.
"Not at all," he says, and opens his mouth to make some sort of shallow plans for tomorrow, but her eyes are already closed, and she's in sleep mode.
For the first time today, he lets himself remember what losing Donald was like the first time for him, the way his world fell apart and the future shattered. The feeling slams into him like a wave, washing over him and leaving his head well underwater, and he hurriedly tucks those thoughts and feelings away for later.
It doesn't have to be about him, right now.
Android or not, there's something comforting about waking up with a blanket draped over you, a sentiment Odin understands quite well. So he throws a heavy and impractically soft blanket over Lyla's shoulders, brushes a hair out of her face, and leaves her alone in the dark.
They have all the time in the world, after all.
"Good morning," Odin says, opening the door to Lyla's rooms.
"Good morning, I miss Donald," Lyla says, like she says every day.
"Uh huh." He slaps down a couple of magazines and books on the coffee table. "I collected a few more works of 21st century literature from the library archives for you to peruse. Are you going to come out of your rooms today?"
"No."
Odin sighs. He sits next to her on the couch, flipping his hair out of the way. "When are you going to come out?"
Lyla shrugs. "I haven't decided."
She's staring straight ahead at the wall.
Odin inspects her. Lyla looks perfect, because she always looks perfect. Outside, there's much work to be done now that time travel is no longer possible, trying to reorganize and refocus the time police, tracking down the last dregs of the Organization, and making sure his scientists stabilize the fabric of time--that is to say, much is changing in the outside world, and rather quickly, but in here, nothing has changed in the few weeks since she arrived in her old home for good.
"Lyla," he says, "you can't stay in here forever."
Lyla turns to look at him with an expression that says try me.
"I'm serious."
"I'm having a mental breakdown," Lyla informs him. "I've never gotten to have one before, and I figure this is a good a time as any to try it out. Let me have this."
Odin leans back into the armrest. "I don't think staring blankly into space for weeks at a time constitutes a productive mental breakdown."
"If mental breakdowns were supposed to be productive, they wouldn't be called mental breakdowns, now, would they?" Lyla rolls her eyes. "Anyway, I've only been trying the dissociating thing for about four days. The first week I tried being really angry and destroying all the antique crockery you gave me. Then the week after that I felt bad and spent a couple of days gluing the crockery back together."
"When, pray tell," Odin asks, "are you going to consider trying the 'going outside' tactic? You'd feel better if you went and saw some of your friends from the time police, I'd bet."
"Don't tell me how to feel," Lyla snaps. Odin flinches. "You're the richest, most intelligent man alive. You don't know what it's like to be invented for a purpose, to exist only to work for someone else, then to be sent away to live your life like a real person in a foreign country, and to-to meet all these people, and create this whole life for yourself, and have it ripped away from you without warning. I told Donald this was my home, but that was just to make him feel better. It's not, really. I spent all my time in the 20th century, and I want to go home."
Her voice breaks, and she sounds just like a little girl. As a class 5-Y droid, Lyla never got to have a childhood. There wasn't much learning that took place, no space for vulnerability or frailty, just nothingness directly into being and responsibility. This is a reality of droids' existence that plagues him, and something he's trying to change.
For now, all he can say is, "You're right. I don't understand."
This isn't exactly true in its entirety, but that's a conversation for a later date.
He's finally convinced her to take a walk with him through the gardens. Once she acquiesced, he began holding her to it every day, threatening to drag her outside himself if he needed to. And, almost immediately, he began prodding her to open up. Luckily, Lyla's always been fairly open, anyway, and easygoing and tender and resilient, so this wasn't too hard.
"All my friends are back there, you know?" she says, so caught up in her talking she barely notices that Odin has stopped to inspect a particular rosebush. "I mean, you're here, and you're, like, the only person I have, and I'm pretty sure you're just being friends with me because you feel bad for getting me stuck here."
"Not true," he interjects.
"And, like, my coworkers were okay, I wasn't ever that close with any of them-- but I even kind of miss them now, that's how homesick I am. I loved it at 00. I even miss Angus Fangus."
"Don't say that."
"It's true!" She laughs. It's a musical sound, one he hasn't heard in some time. He's always liked rebuilding things, seeing what he can salvage to create something new, and helping Lyla gain her footing is the best puzzle he's had in years. "I'd be glad to see Angus Fangus, I swear. But I'm worried about Camera Nine. Nobody really gets him. I got him a little, and we were just starting to have fun--I was just starting to get him to open up--before I... Before I got stuck here."
Lyla pauses, dropping to her heels to poke at a sprig of lavender. "I really miss Donald, though," she says softly. "He was my best friend. We had the best times together, and he understood me. He challenged me, too, which nobody else ever did."
"Rest assured," Odin says, "I'm going to challenge you. You're in the easy stages right now, but I'm going to make your life a nightmare if I get a chance."
"Okay, buddy." She pushes to her feet and moves to sit on a park bench, kicking her feet on the ground absently. "I miss his family, too, the kids and even his uncle-- there was this one time when they invited me to Christmas dinner..." She trails off, giggling.
Odin remembers that Christmas. Donald came back to the tower that night raving about the thousands of complaints Scrooge had had about everything, and the boys' impatience at having to wait for their presents, and Lyla's utter glee at her first Christmas celebration with anything even vaguely resembling a family.
"I just keep thinking about things I'm going to tell him," she whispers suddenly, shrinking into the bench, "or things I'd ask for his advice on. And then I remember I can't, not ever again. And I feel so utterly, completely lost."
Odin closes his eyes and summons a file, a memory of Donald's silly, sloppy grin.
And for the first time, he tells her something about himself.
"I had a friend, once," he admits. "Someone I treasured very dearly. And he's gone now. But for the longest time he was my entire world. Without him, nothing made sense." He looks up at her. "Time moves on. It's really the only thing we have. But it smooths things out as it goes. And soon enough, life begins to make sense again."
Someday, Odin knows, he'll tell her more about himself, where he came from, who he's been, what he wants to be. But he's not quite ready for that. Today, he sits on the bench next to Lyla and watches the roses, still as snapshots, growing around them.