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She'd said she didn't understand why Mimsy was worthy of friendship, and she'd meant it with a ferocity unmatched by anything in her save her hatred for Caelius and horsemen. In her mind, there was nary a question or a quibble regarding it. Mimsy was hollow: those were the facts.

Was she upset? Perhaps. Ok, yes, she was. Irrationally? Almost certainly in the eyes of anyone else.

But after everything-- after friendship, after companionship, after saving his a**-- the last thing she'd expected to read from Dakota "most people would ask the same of you Clerise."

Clerise blinks once in absolute disbelief, phone slipping from her hand and clattering to the ground, its plastic click-clacking against the floor. Her stomach continues the churning its been doing for the past ten minutes, her vision blinded by spots.

Anything she'd wanted to say fell out of her mind, slipping through the cracks like water through a sieve. What do you say to that? To betrayal? To a line being drawn in the sand and being on the other side of it? The wrong side?

Looking down at her phone with utter blankness, Clerise chews on her lip in an attempt to stave off the tears she knows are coming. The tears, the tightness in her chest, the nausea. The sorrow. The loss.

Gently, she reaches down to pick the phone up, tapping out a few messages.

'I regret ever looking at, talking to, befriending, ********, or saving your a**.'

Delete.

'Get over yourself. in the real world, people don't get along and don't like each other. and now, I don't like you! isn't that fun!'

Delete.

'The next time you disobey orders and someone has to step in to wear a life-threatening object, I hope Mimsy steps in for you.'

Delete.

No, none of those would do. Pressing her palms against her eyes, Clerise lets out a long, shuddering sigh and licks the back of her teeth. The tingling has started to set in, white noise dancing against her skin. The sensation of impending doom that's been looming finally starts to press in on all sides, crowding out the last vestiges of her logic. Most of it has been gone for a while now, but now it's dripping and turning into dread and rage and the inability to catch her breath.

Quietly, Clerise lays on her side, fingers splayed across her chest to feel the pounding of her heart beneath it. She blinks blearily at the walls, double and triple checking that they're not closing in before closing her eyes.

Her phone chirps, but there's no way she can look at those messages right now, not with the way her world is swimming and her stomach is twisting into knots. Her legs yearned for a run, for a chance to dash down the halls and out the building and into the jungle-- but there was no point. She'd be stopped by the ocean. Clerise was stuck here, on this island, and if not this island then another base, and if not a base then on a mission, and if not a mission then she'd be dead.

(Sometimes it was tempting. Death, that is. That black world she knows so well.)

Clerise quashes the urge to fling her phone, renewed by the frustration of her wilfully chosen entrapment. She runs a hand through tangled hair that's limp and damp with sweat. The headache she's been nursing all day gets worse, and it's the kind that wraps her skull in a vice and squeezes. It's the kind that doesn't let her breathe and doesn't let her think and fills her body with pins.

(The kind that happens when she disconnects from reality, just for a moment.)

Clarice is in the workshop, so at least there's no one around to see her as she folds up and weeps into her open hands. She is inferior. She is being replaced. A year and a half on an island and what does Clerise have to show for it? A paltry handful of friends who no longer prefer her company. An intermediate coat when even failures climbed the ladder all the way to full hunter. A few failed lab ideas. A weapon that she'd broken within two months and had let stagnate ever since. Two showdowns with horsemen with horrible losses. A scarred body. A few months of experience off base in ******** nowhere Antarctica.

(A girlfriend who grows distant-)

Mimsy arrived a year ago, and a year ago it had been playful banter between them. From Clerise's end, anyway, because Mimsy wasn't capable of playfulness in any sense of the word. A year ago it had been fun to poke at her, because she had been so clearly the inferior one. A year ago she hadn't known Mimsy's lineage--nor her own. A year ago no one knew her and no one preferred her over Clerise.

A lot can change in a year, as it turns out-- getting replaced is just one of them.

Clerise's fingers find their way to the blanket, curling into them to ground herself. To remind herself that she is here, not trapped (pinned like a butterfly, being dissected like-).

She closes her eyes. (A black moon hangs in the sky.)

"My name is Clerise Wilson," she whispers to her dark room, an uncharacteristic quiver filtering into her voice. "My name is Clerise Wilson," she repeats, the words a little stronger. "It's 11:18 PM. I am in the Deus Ex Headquarters, and I am alive."

Balthazar stirs from his sleep, rustling his metaphorical feathers and a laugh escapes from Clerise that's almost hysterical.

{[ Breath. ]} Just one word, and Clerise obeys, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes as she sucks in a cold breath. It's not enough: her lungs are still tight, her fingers still trembling, her teeth still grinding.

(She can almost feel the sand underneath her fingernails. )

{[ You are not alone. ]}

"But I am," is all she murmurs, curling up tighter, putting her hands above her head to protect her from an unseen assailant that does not exist. "I think I'm going crazy, Balth," she whispers, as if someone across the hall or the next room over could hear her. "Really, really crazy."

She barks with laughter again, and it's brittle and sharp like the wood of a tree in the heart of winter.
Balthazar does not respond, not verbally. He wraps her up in his presence, covers them in a golden warmth that's sturdier than anything in her life.

(Clarice has been away, is all Balthazar gently says. Trust me, he says. I'm here, he says.)

This sickness in her has been festering since the end of the false dream world, since the memories of her vivid alternate life had returned and she was told in crystal clear terms that she was inferior. Her mind had been the meat and the butcher alike. Unbidden, the words come back, and Clerise shakes her head but they drift in anyway, cold and calculated.

(That version of Clerise would have liked Mimsy.)

'Pitiful. You're the version that gets to live on, between the two of us?'

Her breath turns staccato, and it takes all she has to stay connected. To remember that this room she is in is reality. That the chirps from her phone are from reality. That the air is stale and they need to get a ceiling fan. That.

'Unlike you, I actually made myself something great.'

The words-- she doesn't actually hear them. That would be ridiculous: Clerise isn't that sort of crazy. She's not mad. She knows, in theory, that those memories came from a version of her that (has not, will not) does not exist. It just stings to have disapproval from someone who knows her intimately, who sees every flaw and resents her for it.

'You do not deserve to continue on, but you will do so... Even though I suspect you shall do nothing but wallow in your squalor without ever truly achieving anything great at all.'

How far she has fallen that such words actually hurt. What does it matter? Her small circle of friends dwindles smaller, and it won't be long before every one of them has abandoned her.

{[ I won't. ]}

"But will I lose everyone else? Because they like her? Because numbers and coldness are better because she's funny?" She rubs her eyes again, sitting up, body still trembling-- but her phone has gone off again, and it's the sound it makes when Clarice messages her.

"They don't realize that she'd throw any one of them under a bus for a successful experiment. That she'd cut off their arm for science. That she'd abandon them. Is that what loyalty gets me? People wondering what good traits I could possibly have instead of her? What if they all leave me?"

She checks the message. It's an invitation.

Without putting on shoes, she leaves for the workshop.

Turning, Clarice embraces the other woman in a firm, almost painful, hug. "Hey," she murmured softly in Clerise's ear. "Hey, now. There's nothing to pick okay? There's just you and me."

Pulling slightly away, she reached up to cup the other woman's face, thumbs sliding gently along the tracks of her tears. Other people's tears were generally an awkward, painful ordeal for Clarice. They were a problem, and one she wasn't particularly adept at solving. At the end of the day all she really had to offer anyone was physical strength and technical skills. Which was great for a Life Hunter but absolute s**t for comforting others. Better to simply avoid or escape the sad and upset whenever possible.

But this one...

It wasn't that she was glad that Clerise was sobbing and distraught, but...there was a part of her that went soft and tight and so terribly ******** fond that she could be there and hold the other woman as she broke just enough to let the dark and vulnerable parts of her slip through. She was always so resilient and carefree in her affection, so quick to action, anger, and recovery that she always seemed somewhat invulnerable despite the scars that danced across her skin. But not now...not here.

Clerise was exposed and hurt and it was awful and Clarice loved her.

"Let's at least get out of these walls, okay?"

They're slow to disentangle, it's difficult to feel any urgency in reaching a destination when home is already in your arms. Eventually though, they're walking the bike through a portal and into a long stretch of desert road. Originally, she'd just intended for them to maneuver across the island's twisting mountain road, but one look at Clerise, the state of her clothes and the woman herself, had Clarice changing plans.

It's dark still, sunrise a good hour away, and the stars they never get to see on Deus shine brilliantly above them. Quirking a smile, she says lightly, "If we're getting away from walls, we may as well go all out, yeah?" Leaning into Clerise, she caught the other woman's lips with her own in a gentle, open press. A moment later and she was placing a set of keys, their metal warmed from her grip, into the redhead's hands. Smiling into the kiss before pulling away, she continued, "Let's go."

Settling behind Clerise, the blonde wrapped herself around the other woman and smiled against the line of her neck. The coveted Big Spoon position was finally hers. The soft chuckle froze in her throat before it could escape, clutched by three little words. In response all she could manage was a subtle tightening her her arms and thighs around Clerise as the bike came to life beneath them.

Physical strength and technical skills were all Clarice had to give in return.

"Then take it."

Take everything I can give you.

"It's yours."

Please let it be enough.

Face pressed against Clerise's shoulder, she mumbled a soft, ambiguous, "Me too."