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Everything was incredible.

The light that filtered in through the windows seemed a little brighter, and the air smelled a little better, and Mimsy felt a little more superior as she strode through the hallways. It showed.

That ecstatic feeling had only improved as time went on, and she was almost afraid that she might burst, had she not known that it was physically impossible to do so. She embraced it instead, held it close, and wished she could never let it go.

With her head held high and her stride confident, she appeared as if she owned this hallway - and, if the wrong people asked, she might have said as much, then encouraged them to prove her otherwise. This was what excellence felt like. This was what victory felt like.

This was what she thought happiness might feel like.

"Oh," gasped a startled Mimsy, stopping herself before she could literally run into him. She was not sure why he had called her name when he was so close to her, but she could return the favor, she supposed. "Hello, Robert."

In the instant before she was scooped up into a hug, she smiled at him, and it almost looked genuinely cheerful. But the smile slowly faded when the way he smelled rose a hundred envious questions that Simmy might have asked, which Mimsy refused to allow out of her mouth.

She uselessly wished that she could disallow herself from thinking them at all.

The look that he gave her when he asked about Caelius was enough to prevent her from lying about his status; the moments that he looked serious in any capacity were few and far between. As much as she wished she could say otherwise, her lips parted to speak the truth.

"Unfortunately, no." Any goodwill she had towards the Death Lead was now entirely gone, because she could have no positive thoughts of someone who stole any portion of such an important moment from her. "Though I am unharmed, your worries were not unfounded." She smiled again, though it was crooked and hardly there.

"There were casualties," she slowly began, shifting to put her arms on top of his to support herself.

"Clerise is dead."

"I'm sorry," Mimsy flatly offered. It was not a condolence, but a regretful statement towards his mention that he 'loved that b***h'. "If you loved her...no. You would not want to know. I would suggest avoiding those details."

Why did he love her? Why did everyone love her? Maybe, now that Clerise was dead, she could redirect this attention towards locations where it could be put it to use in a more productive manner. Maybe...

Her thoughts were interrupted, and she blinked up at him, then opened her mouth to speak, and blinked again instead.

"Um, yeah," she finally managed, watching his hand move over his face. "It was pretty nice in there."

She might have said more, might have asked what he remembered from the time 'in there', because it definitely seemed that there were vastly varying responses to this question. But he asked her something that she did not have an answer to, and she had nothing but silence to give him.

As her mind worked past the problems of a different world and the subtleties of interaction that she did not understand, she tried to process what was happening.

• Robert put her down, but did not step away from her entirely.
• He continued to hug her.
• This was generally not indicative of feelings of negativity towards the person being hugged.
• He appeared to be on the more 'disappointed' spectrum of 'sad'.
• His mention of Clarice caused this appearance to become more alert than sad at all.
• The question was asked in a tone more genuine than all of the rest.
• The question was not regarding her physical well-being.
• She could only assume that this was lending towards a 'Schrödinger's Clarice' paradox in his mind.

Had he loved Clarice too? Was she supposed to answer the question, or say that she was dead? Could she turn and walk away?

When the answer to the previous question was a mostly certain 'no', she settled on: what would Simmy want?

She took a deep breath and refused to look at him, and when she noticed that was already contradictory to what Simmy would have wanted, she very carefully reached to awkwardly hold his hand between both of hers.

"Unfortunately..." That seemed like an appropriate word. "Clarice was not capable of a reaction to her death." A realization emerged that her statement sounded like sarcasm. What had Clarice said? She was sorry? Would that help?

"Clarice met a similar fate, but I assure you that she apologized profusely before she could no longer be here." She assumed that was a comforting statement. This was entirely new territory, and testing the success of a variety of options tended to be volatile when emotions were involved. She closed her eyes tightly, because she was not wearing any protective goggles, and hoped that this would not end badly.

It was his turn to apologize, even if Mimsy didn't understand why. She opened her eyes to curiously look up at him, and found an expression that she didn't recognize. What did this one mean?

There was no time to consider the implications, however, when Robert very adamantly decided that he was going to go see Clarice.

"Okay," she said, moving to step away.

No. Not okay, she remembered, thinking of that pile of ash, and that hand on the ground, and that hand that Clerise had been holding. If he didn't want to know about Clerise, he most certainly would not want to see Clarice right now. She didn't even know if she was still down there in that cave - the probability that all of her remains were in a jar somewhere was very high.

She curled her fingers around his hand and held it tightly between hers. Treading on eggshells and grasping at straws was not an advantageous approach here after all.

"Robert." Her voice was stern, and there were no more smiles now. "You will not go to see Clarice. I will not dissuade you from any other course of action, but you will not, because you cannot. There is no Clarice to see, and no Clarice that you have ever seen before now would want you to see what remains of her."

She squeezed his hand and stared at him with steady determination. New tactic. Still no goggles. This was risky.

It made sense, Mimsy supposed, that he would not understand. It did not frustrate her any less, because she was running out of conversational methods to try, and attempting the sugar-sweet cooing method that she used on Clerise in her final moments did not seem very apt for the situation.

But she didn't try to explain, because he gave her no time to once those words finally sunk in. She flinched when he yelled - she had not been expecting that reaction - and was only halfway towards cautiously looking at him again when he was tugging much harder on her hand, and moving much further than he had been, and she could no longer just stand still.

"Wait, s**t, Robert, you're--ow," she hissed, simultaneously trying to keep up with him and wrench her fingers away from his grip. Though her legs were long, they were clumsy and not very fit for running, and she tripped over herself over and over as she haphazardly allowed herself of be dragged along.

"Robert, I...will try to help, but can...can we please not...?" She was very tired and words were hard to make and her hand was beginning to hurt and maybe if they just talked about it for a little while, maybe then he could calm down and not do...this.

With a thoughtful frown, Mimsy stared at the hands on her arms, noting that they were shaking now. A physical instability to mirror a mental one, she guessed. Was it really that simple?

Her gaze flickered back up to him, narrowing into a glare after the implication that she had not been sure about Clarice's death. Robert could think whatever he wanted to. She was sure that he thought a thousand <******** ridiculous things, in fact. But she would never let anyone leave her presence believing that she was anything between wrong or uncertain.

Ever.

"No," she snapped, reaching up to thump him on the nose. "Look at me."

She pointed to her eyes, which held a very angry 'serious' at the moment, and waited.

"You can accuse me of not being careful, because that is not an entirely unfounded claim, but never say that I am not sure." She paused to take a deep breath, but forgot the calming exhale. "This is not a trick. This is not another bird. Clarice is gone. She is dead. There is nothing left to see of her. You may be incapable of understanding some things, but you are not an idiot, so I trust that you can understand the simplicity of the difference between 'alive' and 'dead', and Clarice. Is. Dead."

Well. She had at least made an attempt to be pleasant.

Oh no. Crying. This was not a public activity.

Mimsy looked down one end of the hallway, then down the other, worry crossing her face when she realized that nobody else was here to see them. Most important, nobody else was here to help Robert.

She stared, unblinking, trying to recover any memory of any phrases of comfort. She wasn't going to tell him that it would be okay, because it wouldn't. Not for him, at least. Not if his reaction had been a string of denial and panic and this.

After clearing her throat, looking at the ceiling, and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she finally came to the conclusion that this was one of those instances where human-to-human contact was comforting. If there was ever a moment that she was willing to exchange words for actions, it was now; she had no strung-together sentences in her repertoire for instances like this.

Slowly, she lowered herself to the floor beside him, offering a lopsided smile that he couldn't even see. With slow, careful movements, she reached to rest her hand on his head, gently petting him like a beloved family dog.

"Hey..." No, still no words that fit this. She closed her mouth and clenched her teeth and just kept petting.