#I'm wildly inconsistent with how much I care about Minkowski and Koudelka's marriage

[hephaestuscrew]

Sometimes I think about Dominik Koudelka's assistant who takes Minkowski's call in Ep43 Persuasion...

In the moment, dismissing the voice on the other end of the phone feels like the right thing to do. She can't just put any random person who calls through to Mr. Koudelka immediately; if she did, there would be no point in him having an assistant at all. And when that random caller is claiming to be Mr. Koudelka's dead wife, of course it would be wrong to subject him to that. (Cont. below cut)

She's seen Mr. Koudelka in the denial stage of grief, if only from a professional distance. She knows that the only time he took off after he heard the news was the day of his wife's funeral. She knows he started working days so long it was a wonder he got any sleep at all. She's heard rumours that he tried to insist that The Times' coverage of the shuttle crash ought to use the word 'allegedly' more. Apparently he ignored every sensitively-worded inquiry about whether he wanted to have any input on his wife's obituary.

Mr. Koudelka certainly doesn't need some cruel joke reopening emotional wounds. It's better not to mention it to him. His assistant knows that she did the right thing. 

Or at least, she thinks she did. But she still can't stop thinking about that voice on the other end of phone, its desperation, its sense of urgency, its bizarre impossible claim.

So maybe she finds herself looking up Renée Minkowski, just to set her mind at ease. And there's surprisingly little information out there, but she eventually finds a clip of an interview from just before the launch of the Hephaestus mission. And that's when her stomach drops. She recognises the voice in the video. It's the same voice as the one she heard on the end of the phone. She's sure it's the same voice.

And what is she supposed to do then? Go to her boss and tell him that his wife is alive? Tell him that she lost him potentially his one chance to talk to his presumed dead wife? Admit that she didn't tell him about that call straight away? She's got no proof, just her memory. What if she's wrong about it being the same voice? Maybe it was a good impersonator, or a technological trick, or the power of suggestion. Is telling him the truth worth risking her job for? Is it worth risking giving false hope to a widower who has only just begun to move on? What if he doesn't believe her? What if he does?

#Wolf 359 #w359 #Dominik Koudelka #Renée Minkowski #Renee Minkowski #Personally I imagine that Koudelka's assistant didn't ever tell him about that call #because how can you tell someone something like that? #but if she did #there is some very interesting potential in terms of how he might react to that #which I'm sure other people have explored probably #In terms of thinking about Koudelka not taking time off #after hearing that his wife was dead #Minkowski is the kind of person who works super hard to avoid her feelings #so I think Koudelka would be similar #Thinking about when Gabriel Urbina said that before she left. Minkowski made Koudelka promise #that he would only worry about her for 10 minutes a day #and that he would be busy doing stuff the rest of the time #What can he do with that promise once he thinks she's dead? #I'm wildly inconsistent with how much I care about Minkowski and Koudelka's marriage #When I think about it in relation to the Hephaestus crew found family and their return to Earth #I'm like 'get in line Dominik. Renée's got new priorities now. #Deal with it or go away.' #But when I think about how Dominik Koudelka is someone who loved (and was loved by) Renée Minkowski #and didn't want her to go to space for two years but let her go #because it was her dream and anyway he couldn't stop her if he tried #and then he thought she'd died out there #and Minkowski tried to speak to him from 8 lightyears away but her words never reached him... #then I'm like 'oh actually I can care about this unvoiced character' #wolf 359 spoilers #w359 spoilers