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It was a necessity, a drive, a need--

She was so close--

And Mimsy closed her eyes for an instant, a moment of misbehavior to savor what she was accomplishing, breath held between a tiny smile and tightly clenched teeth. It might have been perfect, had the question of certainty arisen, if she was sure.

How could she ask such a thing?

"Of course I--" Her eyes opened into a wide stare, and everything ground to a halt. This was incorrect. The scissors remained firmly in her hands, fingers curled with a desperate ache around the handle, body stilled by the sudden demand to adjust a variable--no, the whole equation--

"It is not supposed to be you," she blurted out, with a panicked necessity to explain herself. "It is supposed..."

Her voice faltered, but her adopted weapon remained carefully steady, held just before the line she couldn't cross back over.

"He needs you," she murmured, her contemplative tone undeniable.

The restraint snapped beneath further inquiries, and Mimsy's hand twitched in response; it might have been disastrous, had she not pulled her hand away from the woman entirely.

"Do not tease me. We are both well aware that he needs." She narrowed her eyes. "And I need him in return. A bandage requires a wound to prove its use, as much as a wound requires a bandage to heal. I need not invent a reason to achieve what we already obtained."

As quickly as the reaction ignited, it fizzled out again, as soon as she registered a missing piece of information. The scissors fell as she held them limply at her side.

"No, I didn't know that," she replied, sulky, glancing down at her feet. A faint snip filled the silence as she toyed with the tool in her hand. "I am unsurprised that your opinion changed, however. I know that you are more than intelligent and observant enough to recognize potential."

Excepting her cousin's potential, which was a terrible one.

But everyone made mistakes.

With a deep breath and an equally heavy sigh of an exhale, she extended her hand towards Clarice, offering to aid her in sitting up.

That was not difficult to imagine, and Clarice was not difficult to believe.

"I suppose I should take this opportunity to thank you. Where others before me failed...you certainly did not. I owe my success in part to your efforts." As frequently as she boasted about her victories, she was not incapable of acknowledging someone else's - unless they directly contradicted her own.

It was not her words, but her worry that gave Mimsy pause. That emotional indicator was as good as a litmus test of a problem, and she swallowed hard and composed herself before she spoke again.

"I know what happens." An unguarded sincerity was heavy in her voice as she toed the frayed edges of her memory. "I am careful. I am trying to be careful. Do you have reason to believe that I have urged him beyond his limit?"

The answer brought relief, and Mimsy smiled in return, crooked but easy.

"I regret to admit that I have underestimated much about humanity as a whole." She tilted her head, taking in the other woman's expression in greater detail, recording it piece by piece. "I have placed little value in the majority, and am disappointed so frequently that I question my desire to be human at all, but..."

The scissors were replaced in her pocket, and she idly fiddled with her rings as she folded her hands in front of her.

"You are right," she mused, eyes somewhat absent as she thought. "I have perhaps continued to subtly limit him by the faults of our peers, while the values that equate to his momentum are far greater than the values supplied by all others. That was careless of me, considering all that I know to be true about him. And accelerating this process would allow us to accomplish so many great feats - don't you agree?"

What of herself?

Mimsy smiled with a stirring disbelief, caught off-guard by the very idea that she needed to ask. That was simple.

It required a pause to recalculate and recalibrate, to align her focus upon past solutions rather than those meant for the future. These were problems that she had already solved, oftentimes repeatedly, and answering her would be as easy as taking a quiz she'd both memorized and taken hundreds of times before.

Confident with her methods, she opened her mouth - and nothing came out.

• She thought of two decades of slow, purposeful twisting and warping and redefining of everything she was, assured that this was the right thing.
  'Things are different. You're different. You did these things on your own, with no messes.'
  
• She thought of the death she had fabricated to escape to a greater promise.
  To step into a life that began with immediate catastrophic failure.
  
• She thought of the statue, the second chance, the spare life.
  'You cannot have my life.'
  
• She thought of Wonderland, of her Cheshire body, of the home she'd always have there.
  The home she had here.
  
• She thought of Halloween, and the possibility of living near-forever with the guidance of her dearest friend.
  For all she'd have, she'd lose much more.

The options for her own sustained existence had seemed so comfortably numerous. When had they dwindled so dangerously? When had the once-objective risks become excuses? A lack of possibilities as a theoretical physicist--she was a theoretical physicist, wasn't she?

Mimsy looked at her hands. They were empty. They were clean. They were stained by nothing. She slowly curled her fingers and lowered her hands to her sides. Her right index finger began to pick at the thumb next to it, repeatedly pulling at the flesh around the nail with a faint, but audible tik tik tik.

Then she took a deep breath, and her eyes finally returned to the other woman's.

"I know what happens," she quietly repeated, solemn. "I would prefer to avoid this. I do not want such a thing to happen. Again."

She thought of the weeks spent hiding beneath a table, scrawling equations with no answer, formulas muddled by the careless mingling of human emotion with cold, sterile numbers. Of cakes and cakes and cakes, each created with the perpetually unfulfilled promise that this would be the one to make it stop, because that's what the whispers of a dead girl said.

Of the most terrifying experiment she had ever been part of.

"But if it does..." The sound of nail against skin grew louder, faster. "Then I will have the damage repaired. I have my bandage. I will endure personal experimentation detailing the efficacy of emotional energy and its potential to rebuild. I will find a way to continue my existence. I am too valuable an asset to this universe, and the universes that occasionally collide with ours, to end so easily. I will find a way to negate what is negative, up to the possibility of my own demise. I am confident that this can be done."

Her eyes didn't leave her, a glassy blue-green as she clenched her teeth and held her breath.

"You have accomplished this." The breath was released, thin and ragged. "How did you do it? I can help you, if you tell me. If we knew where to find you, I could aid in the continuation of your work. If you will be willing to share your research, I would be a valuable asset as a colleague. This I am sure of."

At the mention of the doctor, Mimsy's posture reflexively stiffened, a panicked response of paralysis to the conflict that such a comment created in her mind. While she certainly agreed that he was not to be experimented upon, the context and mention of modification implied insight that she wasn't sure she shared. The claim in general was more than a bit uncomfortable for her, considering the fact that her experiments on the island thus far had been dominated by hunter-centric theories and testing.

What would it mean to be wrong from the start?

The anxious motions of her fingers did subside beneath the soft touch of Clarice's hand. There was no instinct to pull away, to enforce her cautious sense of personal space, to retain the semblance of control for comfort's sake; only an allowance, an understanding that this was okay. That she could be trusted to guide her down the path that she created before she was ever gone.

An apparent docility overtook her as she felt the other woman's hands guiding her own, eyes absent of a spark of excitement or the glimmering promise of discovery, passively absorbing all that she showed her.

This was what it meant to be broken, to be the thing that resulted from recklessness and negligence. A girl--a woman--who had become so concerned with approval and the application of correct methodology that she found it necessary to cut through flesh and muscle and bone just to earn more, because who could not be proud when they saw what she'd done? Who could possibly disapprove of such success?

A smile struggled to find its way into her calm expression as she turned the instrument over in her hands. Key. Scalpel. Key. It made sense, she thought, in a task of quests and keys and obstacles. She had ventured out onto this quest before, and this was the key she needed. This was correct from the start, and she had no need to improvise this time. No kitchen knife. No scissors. She ran her thumb down the length of the scalpel, appreciative of its purpose, and the purpose it renewed in her.

"That is all right. I do not comprehend simplicity well." Not apologetic, but factual. "I work best in complexities, and I am of great use to you. I am sure of this. I will complete this task. This quest. I will continue my work, so I may prove myself capable of continuing yours."

The scalpel pressed lightly against the marked flesh, and her eyes briefly met those of the corpse, devoid of all but a purposed determination. With a slow blink, they returned to the instrument in her hands, the key to all that they needed, and she began to guide the blade down its necessary path. If this was what Clarice asked of her, she would ensure that it was done.