Welcome to Gaia! ::

The kitchen in the Morris house had been meticulously cleaned, scrubbed and disinfected from ceiling to floor, every countertop, every crevice. It had been done in preparation of something of great importance, given the same level of attention to detail that Mimsy might give to a laboratory during its upkeep and maintenance.

Though she had paid attention to cleanliness on the occasions that she baked cakes, she had no intention of making confections today. Nor did she plan on preparing dinner for her busy husband like an adoring newlywed housewife, ready in time to greet him at the door with the irresistible scent of pot pie or oven roasted chicken.

This was more significant than that.

A set of tools had been placed out in order from start to finish on a single white dishtowel. She had arranged them with care, a pleasant smile on her face as she straightened each of them, nudging them into equidistant parallels with a gentle touch until they were perfect.

"Rooobeeert," she cheerfully called, voice raised to a volume that would be audible throughout the house. The town was fairly quiet for the most part, so she didn't have to be very loud, thankfully. No need to sound harsh, after all.

Then she waited, hands clasped behind her back, swaying back and forth like a child with a surprise.

Seeing Robert approach her with an appearance as eager as she felt was exceptionally nice, and Mimsy spared a rare beam of a smile to greet him. His actions were a bit surprising, considering everything, but it was an excellent surprise at least!

The smile didn't even have time to fade when he suddenly turned to leave - it snapped so quickly into a disappointed frown that it would have been entirely fair to question if the more positive expression had even existed in the first place.

Intentions aside, it hurt to be so abruptly denied all of that affection and adoration for such a silly reason. She thought that he would have known better by now. The fingers that had been splayed with anticipation of happiness curled into frail little fists, and she sighed.

"Robert?" The cheer was gone, and she was notably more quiet than was typical. "Please. I need you. It is regarding my heart."

"What? No." Mimsy laughed at how simply ridiculous it was for him to think such a thing, regardless of the apparent circumstances (and the tools that he was waving at). "I certainly hope that it is not exclusively about your heart, at least. I intend to achieve equality."

As a gesture of peace and positive intentions, she reached to take his hand and stood up on her toes to give him a kiss. When she pulled away, she kept his hand in hers, and gave it an encouraging squeeze.

"This," she began, as she tugged him towards the counter while pointing towards something in a petri dish, "is a three-dimensional microfluidic cell culture chip. It is a biochip, which can sustain thousands upon thousands of reactions simultaneously. Researchers have developed a method of studying specific genetic defects and diseases with these."

Her thumb brushed back and forth over the side of his hand as she leaned in towards the chip, marveling at it some more. No matter how many times she looked at it, it never grew less impressive.

"By collecting tissue from an organ which possesses what they intend to study, they can successfully replicate - fully replicate, with exact accuracy - the organ that provided their sample." Smiling, visibly enchanted by the concept, she turned to him and squeezed his hand again.

"So...you can give me your heart, just as you have said that you wished you could do on multiple occasions." The look she gave him when she paused seemed to indicate that she could provide specific examples, if necessary. "You can do this and continue to live and give me all of that love that you just referenced!"

Satisfied with that information, she sucked in a deep breath and stared up at him, anxiously beginning to bounce on her toes.

"Will you? Will you give this to me? Please? For us?"

Why was a question that Mimsy was always interested in answering, but the way he'd asked it caused her to share that sudden sense of unease. It wasn't a very objective 'why', from the sounds of it, and the faint hints of hesitation in his tone were not what she wanted to hear.

It seemed like this was one step above 'no', and that was something she didn't want to think about.

For a moment of tense silence she did nothing but stare at him, eyes flickering over his face to record each little change and motion as data to assess for assistance. When she felt that she had properly processed this, she nodded once and stepped towards the sink, pulling once at his hand to encourage him to follow.

She nudged the tap on with the knuckle of one curled finger, and let the water fall into the basin and right down the drain. This continued for several seconds longer before she glanced up at him, tapping the edge of the sink to keep his attention there.

"Consider for a moment that I am this sink, and this water is all of the love that you have so generously given to me. I am warmed by it, and enveloped in it, and feel it wholly as long as you are there to directly offer it. I am unable to retain it, despite the fact that I do feel it, and experience its benefits often." Her fingers trailed through the stream from the faucet, and she withdrew her wet fingertips to illustrate her point. Even that dripped onto the countertop, however, despite her direct contact.

She flicked the remaining droplets at him and ducked her head to mask her grin, then cleared her throat to continue.

"It does not mean that your efforts are not appreciated, and I believe that I have expressed as much on previous occasions. It does, however, mean that I remain with the nagging sensation that I am incomplete by a small fraction. I feel as if this lack of completion is hindering my ability to offer more healthy reciprocation to you, as I am forced to address doubts and inadequacies with relative frequency. I could instead be using this time and energy to address subjects that could move us in directions that are even more positive. We don't need to change, but this will impart an important sense of comfort - it will assert that if something does change, it will be a positive one."

The water continued to run, and she had almost forgotten her analogy until the sound of it hitting the sink basin reminded her.

"Oh! As I was saying...I am the sink, the emotion granted to me by you is the water, et cetera. Now this--" As she paused again, she reached for another dish towel, which she wadded up to stuff into the sink drain. "This is what the heart that you would give to me would do. This is that biochip, combined with your cellular tissue. This is how it would function. You continue to supply that love, as I said, and I..."

She waited, stare static upon the basin, which had begun to fill with water. A small hint of a smile found the corners of her lips, and she sighed with hopeful contentment as she looked up at Robert.

"See? Nothing changes, except my ability to retain most of what you give to me. No doubt. No anxiety. The water continues to run, and the sink continues to benefit from its presence. Don't you want that? Don't you want me to feel that within me as you do?"

Brow knit inquisitively, she pressed one hand over his heart, and pulled one of his hands towards her chest to do the same. Her eyes remained on his, pleading for approval that only he could provide.

The basin of the sink continued to fill with water, now well past the halfway point, but Mimsy just kept searching in his eyes for the approval she was desperate to receive. It wasn't there at first, when she'd finished explaining. It wasn't there when he spoke. It wasn't there when she couldn't catch his gaze anymore.

She dropped his hand and turned away from him. Another moment passed in silence, followed by the sound of the faucet being abruptly slammed down.

The water stopped running. All that was audible from the sink was the sound of it draining.

"All right." Her palm slid down the lip of the countertop until her fingertips met the slowly decreasing water level, and she trailed her nails through it to send ripples out towards the sides. The sink sent back echoes of tiny little waves that did not quite match what had been given.

If he couldn't look her in the eye, she couldn't sustain the ability to do the same. Holding (and returning) someone's gaze was inherently terrifying, but she was typically capable of that bit of normality with him now.

Typically.

"What do you not understand?" she asked, repeatedly distorting her reflection in the water. "Is there a particular portion that was not sufficiently extrapolated? Is the entire metaphor inadequate? Is it something outside of the metaphor that is troubling? If I am requesting help from you, it is only fair that I help you too."

Explaining this was a bit more difficult than Mimsy had anticipated after all.

She chewed her lip with a 'hm' that was as frustrated as it was thoughtful, troubled by the fact that she was faltering in her ability to clarify concepts to him. It had always seemed so easy before, when they spoke of physics and mathematics and laws of the universe. How were those simpler than this? Surely she could still find an answer somehow.

One response didn't take any thought, at least - when he touched her, she leaned into him and gently put her hand over his, a heavy contrast to their earliest interactions.

"It doesn't. It cannot." She shook her head. "A physical heart is just an organ, but yours - specifically yours - is exceptional. You are exceptional. All of you."

Though she still didn't turn towards him, her body shifted to settle back into his arms.

"Replicating your heart would not provide me with the water that filled the sink; only you can. It would not provide love on its own. It is an organic plug at best, as I showed you with the towel. A transplant, if you will. My heart is weak where yours is strong, and just...well, just knowing that I no longer have to be concerned about its weaknesses, that I would never have to worry that it might fail us..."

There was a growing agitation that became more and more physically obvious as time passed, turned inward as she struggled with a sense of lacking more than just a proper heart. Now she no longer felt especially capable at discussing the topic either.

"You are enough. You are more than enough. I proved that with the assessments and criteria that I gave to you, which recorded precisely that. And this is still--it's still you. Not a replacement, but something supplementary. To improve us, not divide us into two fragmented portions of one whole. And...and you will always be with me this way, won't you? Even when we cannot be physically present, you can be there?" At that instant, she gasped, startled by her own realization. "Do you...would you like your own? A portion of me to always be with you as well?"

The sudden admission of love elicited its own confusion, strong enough to temporarily overcome the conflicted feelings of self-doubting frustration.

"Yes, I love you too," Mimsy slowly replied, an edge of urgency in her tone. Had something gone wrong? Did he know something she didn't? Why had he said that now, of all times?

But he didn't elaborate, and she had no time to ask before her mind took a predatory leap onto the questions that he asked about the heart. They were a welcome simplicity among everything that was otherwise so tremendously unsteady, and her thoughts latched on rapidly.

"No! Of course not!" To avoid breaking away from him entirely, she clumsily ducked under his arms, slipped one arm around his, and tugged him back towards the neat line of tools. "It does not actually form a heart - it will never leave this chip, and the cells would live within this line here, never expanding past the porous membrane they are placed upon."

As she explained, she indicated each area as clearly as she could. The biochip was roughly the same area as a quarter, but more rectangular in shape, and the line she referred to was faintly visible as an empty portion right down the middle. It branched out on either side, not unlike the way their division emblem did.

"I thought...uh." An anxious laugh caught in her throat, and her pale cheeks were splotchy with color as she set the chip down and reached towards something at the very end of the line of tools. "I thought that I could place it in here, for ease of mobility. It will be quite simple to ensure that it is kept close to me like this."

The item she referred to was a necklace, which she meekly held up to show him. On a delicate silver chain hung an anatomically correct heart with a hinge on one side, apparently meant to be opened.

This all seemed a bit silly when she found herself saying it all aloud.

As he began to understand what she was saying, Mimsy nodded along with each new piece that he steadily put together. It continued until he called himself an idiot, at which point she immediately halted her nodding and narrowed her eyes at him.

"No, you are not an idiot. Stop saying that." She frowned, her pout almost comically childlike, before the discussion of the biochip returned to the forefront of her priorities. "It is very recent technology that most have never heard of, and are certainly not capable of understanding all of the details with any amount of immediacy. I researched this for quite some time. I wanted to ensure that this was the most suitable choice that I could possibly make, and I am truly excited about how impressively wonderful this technology is."

Knowing that she could have continued talking on and on about it fortunately allowed her to be conscious enough to cut it short there, if she intended to avoid lecturing him on all that she had learned.

It was a good thing that she had, too - otherwise she might have gotten so wrapped up in her enthusiasm over it that she would have missed what he asked.

"Not terribly difficult. Camille was kind enough to retrieve the base component of this for me when she ventured to Japan during her leave. It requires a minor amount of assembly after that, but is still fairly simple." A little smile spread across her face as she reached to close the silver heart container, growing into a grin when she tilted her head up to look at him. "Would you like to travel to Japan?"