[PRP] If You Go Chasing Rabbits [Cami/Mimsy]

[Nothing Yet]

In the middle of the afternoon, mid-transit from one lab to another, Mimsy suddenly came to a complete halt of a pause.

Had she locked the door?

Typically, there was nothing that could deter her from her experiments, especially one that was so steadily in progress. This was a very strong exception. She abruptly turned and walked in the straightest possible lines towards the dorms, with wide eyes and a look of muted horror the whole way there.

She hesitated, fingertips lightly pressed against the door. What if it was gone? What if she would be gone, as a result?

With a deep breath, she pushed the door open and stepped inside, one eye closed to prepare herself for a potentially catastrophic loss.

nesshime

 

[nessy]

Every now and then something rare and mysterious happened: Cami shut up. She shut up because there was something she was trying to listen to, a bit of data to be mined, or perhaps it just wasn't worth her life to keep talking. In this particular instance it had been while camped out in one of the first-floor common rooms she wasn't really supposed to be using yet absolutely did so anyway.

Mimsy was the word in particular and while some might think that it was just referencing an old poem or a really horrible 2007 movie, it meant so much more to Camille. She'd been mid-sentence when hearing the word but her jaw immediately snapped shut, head rotating almost all the way around to hear where the name had come from. It hadn't taken long to charm one of the Hunters who'd been here longer than a week (unlike her) to find out that there was indeed a woman named Mimsy here. She was in the Life division which meant she was a scientist.

Coincidence was something that the redhead believed in but this much? No, there was something to it.

Being that she was an Ace Sleuth (which meant she knew how to ask really obvious questions) it didn't take long to find what was apparently Mimsy's room. It didn't take long to decide on a course of action, mostly because she had a very prim voice in her ear telling her that knocking was polite and proper and sweet Jack what was the importance of this Mimsy person?

Instead Cami just lightly thudded her forehead against the wood of the door which, to her surprise, creaked open. Not locked? Maybe it wasn't her Mimsy. Carelessness was not the hallmark of the girl she'd known. Yet one look inside confirmed that no, it was her Mimsy. Carefully entering, shutting the door behind her, the history student slid off her boots and put them with meticulous care next to the door. Everything had a place and that place could not be disregarded.

Padding into the center of the room she looked longingly at the bed. Light was streaming through the windows and she was so, so tired. Sleeping in the basement had its own sorts of noises, the dark, the damp. Circles had been starting to form beneath her eyes and already Vanessa's voice came back to echo in her ears. "Smile, Camille. Everyone loves to see a smile." But she couldn't sleep. She had to wait, to make one hundred percent sure that the person she was looking for was here. It wouldn't hurt to wait on the bed, would it?

Sitting on the edge turned into sitting with her back against the headboard. Which turned into stretching her legs out. Then the rest of her. Ten minutes later the baby Sun Hunter was asleep in the middle of the scientist's bed, sprawled and utterly comforted by the shaft of light falling across her face.  

[Nothing Yet]

The daylight was waning, growing faint as the last remnants trickled in through the window, but Mimsy could very clearly see that there was someone in her bed. This was not necessarily unusual, and she might have ignored the person entirely, had the silhouette not been distinctly female. Not Robert, or Lucky, and not tiny enough to be Shu, so...

Eyes narrowed, she crept past the bed towards the statue in the corner. With slow, calculated motions, she removed the clothing that had been scattered over it during her last visit to the room, and checked its surface for any signs of damage. Every inch of it was inspected in detail, examined to ensure her sense of comfort and safety.

Just one single chip missing from the bangs, as per usual.

Why, then, was someone in her room? If they were not attempting to sabotage her by destroying her primary physical existence, what use was this place to them? She frowned, nudged her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and drew in a deep breath.

After thoroughly considering her options, she knelt next to the bed and blinked over at the woman, now that she was nearly at eye-level. There was a bizarre familiarity that struck when she looked at her face, still lit by the setting sun, but she felt certain that they had never met before.

How uncomfortable.

Her hands curled around the edge of the bed, and she leaned forward, stopping just an inch or so away from her ear.

"Good morning," she whispered.

nesshime

 

[nessy]

Having not meant to actually fall asleep, let alone be caught in the middle of the room of a VIP in her past history before coming to the island, Camille was wide-awake the moment she heard the voice. It didn't matter the volume, didn't matter who it was, all she knew was red alert. "Ah!" Sitting up so fast her hair all but whipped the woman standing over her in the face it took a few more seconds before math became involved. Which meant that one plus one equaled Mimsy. Family picnics might have fallen along the wayside sometime before her tenth birthday because manman couldn't handle them anymore, but it didn't mean she forgot.

Twelve years wasn't enough to erase a face as memorable as the solemn pre-teen she'd shadowed as much as she could get away with, trying to make her smile. It hadn't always been successful but when it had the redheaded Antiguan had felt so good about it. Manman had seemed pleased about it as well for reasons that still did not make perfect sense to her daughter. Vanessa had always been somewhat of an enigma to her daughter. Rose-colored glasses had come off somewhere around fifteen and never come back leaving only a baffled young woman in their wake.

One place the glasses had not have time to be removed was in the case of Mimsy who she'd always found sublimely intelligent, if not emotionally remote, and utterly fearless. She didn't seem to be afraid of anything that Camille was which meant, to a child, that she must not be afraid of anything. At all. Ever.

Squinting in the darkened room the historian nonetheless beamed. "Mimsy!"  

[Nothing Yet]

Even now, despite not knowing how Camille thought of her, Mimsy didn't disappoint. It neither startled nor surprised her that she greeted her by name, and she certainly wasn't frightened. She did find it especially curious that she knew her name when she did not know the woman's in turn, but she refused to let on about that fact, lest she seem somehow uninformed.

That sense of familiarity was more nagging now, as she felt that she should have recognized her. The longer she stared, the more inwardly frustrated she grew, still unable to place it.

"Greetings and salutations," she slowly addressed her, head tilted just slightly to one side. No, not even this angle helped with the problem of the familiar woman, but a question just might. "What are you doing here?"

It was a vague inquiry, as it could have meant anything from 'what are you doing at this bizarre faux-military facility' to 'what are you doing in my bed', but she hoped that the lack of specificity might provide her with the missing details. Simply coming out and asking her was not going to be an option, unless it truly reached a point of impossibility.

But Mimsy didn't really believe in that point anyway, so it would be a while.

nesshime

 

[nessy]

Events could have been very frustrating for Mimsy had it not been for the fact that her dear relation was an incredibly talkative young woman who had found a piece of her past. Something familiar to hold on to which, considering Mimsy in general, might have been frustrating in and of itself. For Cami, however, she was scooting to the edge of the bed to sit and spill out her life story to this point. Remembering, belatedly, who she was talking to she tried to revise it down to the short version. "I saw them, finally! Remember how I always tried to convince everyone that there were actually things out there in the darkness, trying to hurt us? Nobody ever really believed me except you." Which had been an important part of her formative years.

Quickly she took the dark-haired Life intermediate through waking up, meeting Bix, Kidana. "I kept hearing your name, though! I mean, I don't know how common the name Mimsy is but I had to come check it out. Your door was unlocked. I felt a little bad coming in but we're family so I thought I'd sit down and wait. The basement though it...it's bad for me." Dark. Lonely. Cold. Everything that made it impossible for her to sleep well, if at all. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on your bed. I promise I tried really hard not to move or touch anything else!" She was so earnest, so desirous to impress, it was like she was nine again instead of twenty-two.

"I'm so happy it really is you, though! It makes it seem less bad here. Less lonely." She smiled, wide and brilliant as anything. Apparently 20 minutes of sleep made a huge change. Or maybe that was just Mimsy's presence? "So uhm...surprise!"  

[Nothing Yet]

Just as Mimsy hoped that she might, the woman very eagerly related the information that she required to connect the dots and put the pieces into place - and then some. There were portions of the lengthy explanation that particularly stuck out to her, snagged on a special curiosity, and they made it difficult to listen as well as she would have liked to. Nonetheless, she did her best, if only for the sake of her understanding.

She was silent for a moment, studying the face across from her. There was a smile that never seemed to leave, much better practiced than her own, and an excitement that easily carried over into her words. They were family, she'd said, and she tried (and failed) to immediately pick out the genetic indicators of such a thing. The only thing that staring at her eyes elicited was a reminder of what it felt like to stare up into her father's eyes, and she no longer wanted to stare at her.

After a long sigh of an exhale, and a brief glance towards the floor, she abruptly smiled at her and began to speak.

"Welcome! What did you see, if you do not mind recounting the sighting to me? Were you harmed in any way?" She scrunched her nose up in thought as she tried to recall each point of conversation, to address all of them in order.

"Mimsy is not common as a name. Mildred is no longer common, either. Millie is slightly more so. Regardless, you have indeed found the correct one--er, theoretically. It is a somewhat philosophical problem, as that," she said, indicating the statue in the corner with a nod, "may be the original. It is complicated. I tend to avoid leaving the door unlocked for the sake of my safety, but I regret to admit that I was distracted when I left. I am relieved that you are the one to have discovered that the door was unlocked."

That provided her with an interesting idea, potentially beneficial to both of them. It was unlike her to trust someone with immediacy, but she had the ability to solve any problems that arose - and there was something about the way she spoke about her that reminded her of the way she spoke about Dr. H. The risk seemed minimal.

"If it is the conditions in the basement are what cause you to classify it as 'bad'..." Her brow twitched, and she tried to remain calm in the face of so many what-ifs. "You are welcome to use this room if you choose to. I ask only that you leave the door locked when you are not in the room, and that you avoid touching or harming the stone figure in any way."

nesshime

 

[nessy]

Millie. Hearing that nickname was like a blast out of the past and had, in fact, been the way the two girls had originally met for the first time. Family picnics had never been quite the hell for Camille the same way they had for Mimsy but the former was far more outgoing and acceptable than the latter. Her mother had not been all so different from Mimsy's father; she'd ensured a daughter that was as socially acceptable as possible. The only difference was the society Vanessa had raised her daughter to fit within was not the same in which Mildred had been prepared for. Still, when someone had called out the nickname 'Millie' two girls had arrived which had rather sealed the deal as far as the younger of the two had been concerned.

Confusion had her turning to the statue in the corner and wondering what must have happened to convince Mimsy that she was not the original and this statue might have been. However there must have been a good reason for her to think that way and Cami was just going to trust, as she always had, that the scientist knew what she was talking about.

Really she wanted to focus on the question asked her about what she'd seen the night that the magenta-haired student had demanded to know what was going on. The night she'd 'died' and been brought into Deus Ex Machina as a trainee for the Sun Division. Yet all her mind was latching on to was the idea that she could stay here. Upstairs. In the land of windows, sunlight, and what seemed to be a working lamp in the corner! Cornflower eyes lit up and she sat up that much straighter, nodding aggressively in response to the conditions of her stay. "Yes! I can do that very easily. I could also keep the statute clean if you'd like, but I understand if you'd rather I not."

Her arms itched to reach out and enfold the other woman in a tight hug of gratitude and welcome but she wasn't sure of her reception. Didn't want to anger Mimsy when she'd just met her again after so many years, when the scientist was being so damned kind to her. So instead she bit her lip and tried to remember. "That night...it was actually Halloween. I was in the pod far longer than I would have thought possible. What I saw?" She tried to pull her thoughts back down into that moment to remember what it was she'd finally seen to vindicate her life-long fears.

Frowning she tried to fit the hazy pieces together. "I remember the man in the Deus coat. Moon Division. The creature was definitely furred but not a werewolf? Not the traditional idea of one anyway, there might be a species of werewolf that I know nothing about. There seemed to be quite a few tails?" The frown deepened. "I'm sorry, I don't seem to remember much more than that. Everything was a bit of a whirl and I had been drinking. All-in-all it was an ill-advised evening." Interesting how her speech changed when talking to Mimsy. It was very precise, her accent all but gone beneath the to-the-point English, smile still present but not as exuberant. Not unlike how Mimsy herself spoke and it was because she wanted to make her more at ease that the speech was unconsciously adopted.

Still, the smile returned once she'd finished, in full force. "I'm just so happy I found you!"

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

While Cami took a moment to examine the statue that she was to avoid harming, Mimsy folded her hands in her lap and patiently waited for her response. The answer was of no tremendous importance to her either way, so the pause was not stressful - but it was nice to know that she could worry just a little less over her original, if someone was more frequently in the room with it.

"All right, then." She nodded, mulling over her options again. "You may clean it if you would like to, but I do request that you take care when doing so. I have not tested its durability, and it is of critical importance that it does not break. Surely you understand. If you sought the correct Mimsy, and doubt that I fit that description, then damaging that in any way might make that a very challenging quest."

It was a joke, but the laugh that followed was faint and brief. There was something that had changed about the woman across from her, which seemed to have begun when she'd made the offer, but she couldn't place what it was. The information that she willingly provided did little to help her understand the connection between the two of them, but it was intriguing. That was very different from her own story of recruitment, which had not been nearly that exciting, and differing information was always of interest to her.

"The pods sustain life for a surprising amount of time, actually. They are incredible technology that allows for sustained life and dedicated healing, and--well. That is not quite the point, is it? I apologize."

She waved a hand dismissively, and cleared her throat before continuing.

"There are several species of many different races that fit that description," she began, matter-of-fact. "If you are curious, there may be records of the report from that specific incident. If you would rather not read it, you are not obligated to, of course. It is simply an option."

It continued to bother her that she was failing to place what was different about the woman; she was moving more than she had been before, almost resembling an impatient child, but she could find not reason for her to do that. She hadn't forbidden her from doing anything, and they were talking freely. What was it?

"I am sorry, but...is something wrong? Are you unwell? It seems as if you are particularly...ah. Displaying an excess of kinetic energy."

There was no more polite way that she could put the observation of 'you sure are wiggly' that she could think of, so she sincerely hoped that this would suffice.

nesshime

 

[nessy]

Mimsy might have had doubt about being the 'true' one in the contest between her and the stone maiden in the corner but Camille did not. Or, perhaps more accurately to say, there was not yet enough data to prove that there was a difference so material as to make her care. This woman looked, acted, felt like the budding teenager that the nine year old had been so enamored with when they had met. She didn't need any more reassurance than that!

Several affirmative bobs of her head told the scientist that her advice and imparted knowledge would be heeded, had been absorbed. "I will be very careful and if I think that I am in a precarious position in relation to your avatar I will back away immediately. I would hate to hurt something so important to you." This would become a theme between them, she was sure. Cami would have hated to do anything to even disappoint her somewhat-sister. Actively harm? Horror.

Her final question as to whether or not she was unwell was a bit surprising, then confusing. Looking down at herself the Sun trainee realized that her fingers had curled into the sheets where she all but sat on them to keep them still. Both knees had turned inwards. Her feet had been tapping slightly. "Oh! No uhm..." Color crept up her neck, darkened her cheeks slightly, in an embarrassed flush. "I remembered that you weren't all that fond of spontaneous contact but I keep wanting to just jump up and hug you. I'm trying to resist and it makes me...fidget?" There wasn't much of a better word for it.

Nothing Yet

 

[Nothing Yet]

If she had not known better, Mimsy would have thought that Cami cared more about the statue than she did. Some of her actions towards it had been somewhat careless, to say the least, and it probably should not have been holding discarded clothing. Ever.

"Avatar," she murmured, considering the word, testing the way that it felt when she spoke it. "I like that. Clever. Thank you."

It was unclear what the gratitude was specifically for, but it seemed sincere nonetheless. Following the appreciative statement, she continued to watch her as she looked down at her hands, and noted the flush of color over her skin and the way that her posture changed. That was familiar enough to allow her to recognize the sight of anxiety or discomfort.

With a deep breath, she shifted to enforce the stability of her sitting position, and smiled at her again.

"I appreciate your consideration. I do prefer to avoid spontaneous contact in most cases, but I think that this would be all right." Another shift of her body, more awkward than strategically planned this time, and she extended her arms towards her. The spontaneity was far gone by now, but she seemed to think that the hug might still be meaningful in some way.

"Okay," she urged, turning her palms upward in an attempt to indicate an invitation. "You may hug me now."

nesshime

 

[nessy]

No, Cami actually cared for the statue very little for what it represented in general. Everything she attributed to it was because of what Mimsy herself attributed to it. Had Mimsy tomorrow said that the thing was worthless the redhead would immediately cease caring at all for the stone double of her semi-sister. Except Mimsy had said it was important and thus Camille would care for it as if it were her own potential soul trapped in limbo beneath stone. Perhaps even a little better than if it were her own.

Gratitude eased some of the anxiety as the younger woman grinned like someone who got a pat on the head from a favored teacher in class. The grin got wider still at the arms that were extended towards her and permission granted for a hug. Without even waiting to ask if the offer were genuine because why wouldn't it be Cami surged forward to squeeze the scientist around the middle. It was comforting and exciting because this was a person familiar and new at the same time. Mimsy it was certainly but a far more aged version of the teen she'd originally met and admired. A connection to her life before the island, a familiar face.

After perhaps a minute of this tight but not too-tight hug Cami pulled back, all but glowing with energy and affection. "Thank you Mimsy that was a really nice hug."

Nothing Yet