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Mimsy was so engrossed in her joke that she failed to catch that he wasn't laughing, and missed his expression entirely until she stopped speaking and he took her hands. Where had she gone wrong? Despite how readily he began to explain himself, she was already working through what she'd said; it wasn't a stretch to believe that she made a joke that was not funny to someone else, so it seemed viable as the problem.

Then it wasn't the problem, and she couldn't gauge whether she should be relieved or not. Her assumption was much easier to comprehend. This was not even an option that previously could have been found in her mental flowchart of possibilities, which meant that she had no chance of getting it right on her own.

"Um. I..." Svensyl snorted, and she just stared, lips barely parted, as she took the Jabberwocky's hint that she was missing something obvious. It had to be, because he scarcely noticed anything else.

When she got it, she almost knocked over her water as she perked up again. She really wasn't used to the restaurant setting in the slightest.

"Yes, I understand. My intention was not to concern you. It is important to me that you are also yourself - we discussed how incredible it was that we arrived at the same conclusion." Or she had, at least, which counted in her book. "It is a specific conclusion. You cannot be anyone else, because I specifically require you. Presumably, you mean the same."

She squeezed the hands that held hers.

"However, I still feel as if there is no harm in pretending, as long as it is for the sake of mutual enjoyment." With an apologetic smile, she pulled one hand away to pick up her water and take a long sip. There was a hint of a different sort of smile when she set it back down.

"Or, speaking of...was that one lengthy method of telling me that you do hope that our first date will end in such a way?"

Timing was the part of joke-making that she didn't really get. She clearly still didn't get it.

It was not the answer itself that surprised Mimsy, but the way he said it, in the importance and legitimacy condense into those two very simple words. She drew in a shaky breath and gave him half of a crooked smile. There was inevitably a reason for his tone, and she suspected that she would never figure it out, short of just asking him.

This was one time when the serious repercussions of failed timing was extremely obvious to her. Now she was unquestionably in above her head.

"Probably?" With an anxious laugh, she tried to hide how incredibly lost she now was by looking down at the glass in her hand, idly swirling the water into a miniature whirlpool as she tried to think again. It was as chaotic as the responses that fought among themselves to be correct here.

"Okay." She had nothing intelligent or witty to reply with, and she blurted out the word on accident, followed by another awkward laugh. Maybe it really would have been better for both of them if she never agreed to this. "Okay."

Still nothing. She cleared her throat and pulled her chair closer to the table.

"How do you select where to go on a date? Why did you choose this particular place, for instance?" When in doubt, try something completely different in hopes of more reliable results. "Were you familiar with it? Or was their menu just appealing to you?"

"Spent most of your brain on it, hm?" Mimsy asked, her tone of heavy amusement just close enough to impressed intrigue to pass for it. "It sounds as though you have put more thought into this than I assumed. I grow more and more curious about this surprise as the day progresses. You are making it difficult to keep my promise, especially with this explanation, but I will persevere."

This was harder than expected. Purposely attempting to avoid thinking of something often led directly to thinking about it, as most everyone knew, and making the connection that 'prox-symmetry' was likely meant to be 'proximity' did not help at all. If the waiter had not returned when he did, she might have found herself with an unavoidably broken promise.

The distraction of ordering was a bit of a mixed blessing - it required enough thought that her mind no longer threatened to wander towards what little she knew about the nearby geography, but no amount of thinking could fabricate opinions about food. The ingenious plan that she devised after a quick glimpse at the menu was to order exactly what Robert did.

However, that plan was very quickly determined to be heavily flawed when he ordered enough food to feed her for a week.

Maybe another route would be best. She resolved to just pick the first thing that stood out to her, and with an uncertain smile and a nod across the table, she extended her menu towards the waiter and pointed at one of the main courses. The description contained words like 'seared', 'bubble', 'squeak', and 'claret'; it had easily drawn her eye.

"It can be another first," she clarified, with a good-natured shrug. There were few other explanations that were sensible or sane enough to address in the middle of a public place full of people she didn't know, especially on a date. "You seem excited. Are you tired of our selection on the island?"

It became glaringly evident to her that she was worse at this than she even expected she would be. Was it to him? This could be a significant problem, she realized, if she was unable to rectify it before it was too late. It would be unforgivable if she ruined this entire undertaking because she failed to thoroughly research every portion.

With the waiter's retreat, they were left with relative privacy. Still, the idea of discussing anything past small talk around strangers was more than a little uncomfortable.

Mimsy abandoned her place setting and her bag of silly boots to drag her chair around to the other side of the table, glancing at the growing pile of napkin snow as she settled back into her seat. The emotion that led to silently tearing up paper was not a familiar one, whatever it was, so she would just have to try to work backwards to determine how to avoid this result.

"I am admittedly not well-versed in social dining, but I think that you chose well, even if your claim that 'anywhere' would have sufficed is true. There is a lot to be learned through experiences of this variety, like...um." She picked at her thumbnail and tried to find a previous analogy that might be relevant here. "Like an adventure? Except together."

No, that didn't seem like the correct answer. She dissected his words again and picked at the scraps until she found another avenue to try.

"Oh...does the sustenance bother you that severely? Or is it the island itself?" After glancing over her shoulder to ensure that there was nobody behind them, she leaned closer, lowering her voice to a more conspiratorial volume. "If it is that troubling to you, we could just...never return to it. I am not opposed to collaborating a joint disappearance with you, if you are not opposed to my company on a more permanent scale."

The ambiguity that plagued many of her attempts at jokes was absent. She sounded serious.

All of the cues indicative of his change in mood were completely missed as Mimsy remained lost in her thoughts, and she failed to catch on until the blatantly obvious signal of his hands on her face and his eyes staring past the cloud of calculations she'd pushed to the surface. It took an incredible amount of concentration to fight the reflex to look away, as she was sure that it would give the wrong impression.

"Well, yes. Of course." Her eyes narrowed as she tried to read his expression. There was a faint familiarity to this, though the circumstances were reversed. It reminded her of the numerous times she'd missed something that was so obvious to him, namely in the context of facts or actions constructed with the same reason: love.

She clenched her teeth, muscles of her jaw tightening beneath his hands.

"I need you," she elaborated, shifting her weight towards him. Most of her tensed posture began to relax, but her hands lingered above his, as if she were struggling with the decision to touch them or not. Half of her fingers finally curled around one of his hands as she slowly exhaled, unsteady fingertips tapping against the other.

This had such an air of seriousness. It unsettled her that she couldn't understand why, even when she included the factors of the punishments clearly defined by the 'rules' of Deus Ex. The primary reason that she agreed to come to the island appeared to be a dead end, and the tools to find the Higgs would be more readily available elsewhere. Maybe he didn't know that. Or was it a misconception of her connections within their organization?

Whatever the case, the troubled knot in her stomach only worsened as she continued to think about it. She just couldn't grasp why he was surprised, no matter how hard she tried. The offer remained a simple, decisive option to her, no matter how she viewed it.

"I, uh. I need you," she repeated, awkwardly attempting to clear her throat. It didn't work, and her voice came out hoarse, which was even more awkward than her failed throat-clearing. "Specifically. Remember? Therefore, it has to be you."

How many times had she mentioned that already?

"It is entirely possible that I have not been clear enough. That is an all-encompassing specificity. Tools are replaceable. I have many other opportunities for employment. But...statistically, I would never in my projected lifetime find another..." She clenched her teeth again. That was not an avenue of explanation that she wanted to go down right now. "Anyway. All of that withstanding, you surely understand that your contentment is imperative, correct? And if leaving provides the most favorable results, I would leave at the first possible opportunity."

There was one question he'd asked that still bothered her, even at the end of her clarification, tangled up with technicalities. The duality and implications of what she wanted to say made her hesitate, but she couldn't stand the thought of leaving an incorrect assessment untouched.

"I would do this for 'us', by definition. There is no singular involvement, hence my use of plural pronouns in my suggestion."

This was still severely lacking in the simplicity that Mimsy thought it should have, and she shivered at his first response, still lost in uncertainty. That was not what she'd expected to hear, and it was more disarming than she was prepared for. Now she had no footing for her assumptions and no foundations for her loose hypothesis, and the majority of the options that remained were options that she refused to consider. Not even scientific integrity could change her mind, which might have raised red flags if she were more attentive at the moment.

It took a deep breath to properly restart her thought processes, and another before she found the will to squeeze his hand, because it seemed like the correct action to take.

"Oh." That was really all it was? The thought of that seemed even less believable than some of the theories she'd quickly discarded. "You have little faith in me."

She laughed, and teasingly made a show of scoffing at him.

"And in yourself. The stories that they circulate to ensure the stability of our presence tend to have an underlying carelessness. With our attributes combined - averaged, even - we are far from careless, in my opinion." Despite the fact that she was openly speaking about this in an unsecured location, and the fact that her rationale was obliviously moving farther and farther away from reality with each passing day, she spoke the opinions with conviction. "At risk of dampening the mood again, I would be remiss if I did not mention that remaining at Deus is a death sentence. We need no threats to know that. Speaking more poetically, life itself is its own death sentence, isn't it?"

Her nose wrinkled. That dove further into philosophical thought than she'd intended, by the fault of the topic at hand.

"Er, my point is...the risk of death, by preliminary calculations, is no more significant. I can only speak for myself, but the risk is quite possibly lower in my case. Since my arrival just over one year ago, there have been no less than seven incidents that caused my death. I say that with certainty, regardless of the absence of explanation." Her thin fingers weakly pressed against his hand again, and she was strangely disappointed when it didn't help to comfort her. "You should recall some of them."

Regret began to sink in as she realized that she should have avoided that particular subject. It was no easier to process in this context. There was arguably some merit in absolving them of any risk by asserting that they would simply progress to the next nearest resonating string of existence, but the failed attempts to definitively confirm her identity hooked themselves like burrs in her throat, inciting an urgency.

"Ultimately, this is not about a better meal plan. This is about a better plan. I just wanted to make it very clear that we are not constrained to any existence that is not the best possible existence. We are capable of achieving much more than that. You need only to inform me of what that existence is, whatever and whenever it may be."