The alarm clock read 3:49 am when Renee blinked awake, her heart racing and the memory of blood still dripping down her skin.

She shuddered and contemplated getting out of bed to take a shower and try to reset so she could get back to sleep. She discarded that idea. It wouldn’t work, not tonight. There was too much adrenaline in her system, too many memories.

She grabbed her phone off her night stand and sent a quick text.

-Renee: awake?

A second layer the response came back, too quickly for Andrew to have been sleeping.

-Andrew: yes

-Renee: would you be up to sparring right now, in one of the study halls downstairs?

-Andrew: yes

Renee got up as quietly as she could and grabbed the pile of clothes she’d gotten ready for morning practice. She quickly changed and slipped out the door into the hallway. Andrew was waiting there, a blank look on his face.

This was a familiar song and dance to them. Nightmares woke them both frequently and they were often awake at the same time. They both found comfort in a fight, letting the familiar motions soothe the memories that threatened to tear them apart from the inside.

They went downstairs together. Andrew wordlessly handed Renee her knives.

They made quick work of the study room, shoving everything to the side to make room. At her nod, Andrew dropeped to a crouch.

The leaves start to change and Ilya and Svetlana go dancing. They hop from bar to bar and Svetlana pretends she doesn't notice the way Ilya checks his phone every five minutes, smiling as he furiously types back and then asks her to repeat what she just said. She is patient, so she does.

They dance closely and fluidly, their bodies so familiar to the other's, and when Ilya's attention is not on his phone, it is completely on her. It is this Ilya she loves so fiercely; the way his energy moves outwards, always giving more than he takes— the way he drags her out onto the dancefloor, something in how he grips her hand that somehow says both I'm here and thank you.

They tired of dancing but not of the night, and find a hot dog stand to eat at, sipping on a shared drink and dripping mustard over the sidewalk. They decide to walk back, even though they've found themselves rather far from home.

They stumble back into Ilya's apartment, hanging onto each other and laughing over some shared joke from their childhood. Svetlana falls into bed giggling. Ilya playfully shakes her, reminds her she is going to be really upset if she falls asleep without taking her makeup off, so she asks him to do it for her, half-joking, and of course he agrees. He messily runs a makeup remover wipe over her face, trying to hold her still as she laughs and laughs and laughs.

She is only half awake when Ilya slips out of the bed to call someone in the other room. She blissfully listens to his soft voice and occassional giggles, too quiet to hear the words but just loud enough to hear the joy in them. When he comes back, she pretends to be asleep.

The next morning, Ilya is up first. He rolls over and watches the steady rise and fall of Svetlana's sleeping body. He had made sure Shane was okay with them still sleeping in the same bed, had asked him over and over and watched for any flicker of doubt or uncertainty, and when he had found none, he was overwhelmed with the feeling of falling even more impossibly in love, feeling so trusted and believed. But now he wakes up next to his beautiful Svetlana— no, not his anymore— he wakes up to her and realizes he can never wake up next to anyone not-Shane ever again for as long as he lives. Nothing could possibly compare.

Ilya takes a shower and dresses, then sits on the edge of the bed. He touches Svetlana's shoulder softly, runs his hand up and down, up and down. Her eyes flicker open and she smiles. He asks her how she slept, and then explains that this is the last time they can sleep in the same bed. She laughs sofly, sighs and stretches her arms above her like a cat.

"I was wondering when this was going to happen. So are you going to tell me about him?"

--

They put on coats and scarves and grab coffee at the cafe down the street, taking it to-go and strolling around the neighborhood. Ilya makes her guess who it is, and stops dead in his tracks when she gets it right on the first try. Svetlana looks just as shocked though, having thought surely this was some ridiculous theory of hers.

"No!"

"Yes!"

"Ilya!"

She throws her head back in laughter and takes his arm, and they walk like this as he tells her everything, and his cheeks hurt from laughing by the end of it.

--

Later, Shane receives a photo of Ilya and Svetlana, a selfie, the two of them bundled up in scarves and smiling with scrunched eyes and full teeth. The accompanying message just says svetlana says hi.

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

You'll have a sandwich