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[ New York City, New York ]

The heavy exhale of breath that escaped her lungs as she stepped outside was clearly visible in the chill of the night, and Mimsy frowned at it until it dissipated. She wanted anything but visibility at the moment, fearing that she had suddenly become some beacon of obvious exemption from the rest of society.

No one was looking in her direction - not even when they bumped right into her - but she suspected that it was only a matter of time. There was a limited window before everyone knew that she was some directionless creature of no redemption, and she would simply have to figure this all out before that happened. Surely she could achieve that. She would just have to rework, by her calculations...

Well. Nearly everything.

With her phone clutched tightly in both hands, held at her chest with an awkward uncertainty, she stood on the sidewalk among the pulse of New Year's Eve celebrants on their way to more relevant places, teetering on the heels of her shoes. They were new, just like her dress, and her purse, and all of the rest of her outfit, which were now entirely useless. These were things that her father cared about. Not her.

As her thumb tapped out a repetitive rhythm on the screen of her phone, her eyes wandered skyward. There was nothing but architecture in sight, and the patches of sky that were visible were polluted with light.

"This was a mistake," she murmured, yearning for the cold familiarity of ALICE.

Ever since she was a child, Mimsy accepted the stars as a reliable source of navigation. Each culture might have seen something different in the constellations, but they tended to agree that the same constellations existed, and she appreciated that sense of stability. It was almost a predictable irony that neither the guidance nor that stability were present here, when she needed them the most.

With a wry smile, she let her gaze fall back towards the crowd, pausing when she met the man's eyes. Someone had noticed, and it would all begin to deteriorate at any point now. Everything would crumble beneath her feet. All of her success would be publicly revoked. Any second.

Nothing was happening.

Yet he was most certainly staring at her, and she could not fathom why. This was not a familiar sensation. Generally, when someone stared at her, it was immediately followed by a request to repeat what she'd just said, which was typically due to her persistent inability to slow down while she was particularly excited.

With no precedent, she opted to stare right back - and he seemed to have noticed, if his apology and explanation were any indication.

"You made a mistake?" Her eyes slowly went from very wide to a curiosity-piqued narrow of faint disbelief, and she paused her fidgeting long enough to mull over his questions. The first remained too difficult to answer on her first assessment, and the latter did little but raise her suspicions.

"No, thank you. I am capable, but am not going anywhere anyway," she calmly stated, an affirmation to both of them. "And I apologize for the implication of this, but...would you accept assistance from someone who has just admitted that they have made a grave error in judgment?"

Despite the defensive edge to what she'd just said, there was a pleasant smile waiting for him afterward.

Of all days to stand in one place and refuse to move forward, Mimsy couldn't argue that this was the worst of them. Was she really so determined to stay somewhere she did not even want to be? How distressing would it be to find herself trapped in a lack of direction and understanding for the foreseeable future?

"Yes. Perhaps it is, and perhaps I am." His voice sounded strange, and this was something unfamiliar again - but it was not necessarily unpleasant. "But I could argue the same. What is waiting for either of us in this..."

She trailed off, but her expression seemed to indicate that whatever she might have said would have been of an unfavorable opinion.

Then every carefully calculated response that she had brilliantly devised was rendered irrelevant as she was somehow swept from one topic to the next, a phenomenon that she found overwhelmingly astounding. She had been practicing for years to master 140 characters and was still at a questionable level of competency, but he had effortlessly achieved some verbal equivalent of dancing with her mind. How was this possible?

The effect was dizzying, however, and she blinked at him as she attempted to mentally steady herself. Alongside the more logical efforts to directly respond to what he'd said to her, she found two diverging desires: one to ask him to do it again, and one to stubbornly counter this with a factual approach to particle physics.

"I will not waste your time," she assured him, shifting to continue providing him with her full attention, "but granting me your fate might be unwise, for reasons relating to my mistake."

Then the last of his words finally registered.

"Oh, but the only place that I have ever gone on a date is nowhere." Her tone was not quite startled, not quite offended, dusted with a hint of something playful. "In this case, are we going nowhere fast? Are you so certain that we are not missing more of the details that you claimed I was already missing? Or are they waiting for us? How many dates are we skipping together, if we embark on this journey?"

They were all important questions, and she stressed each of them appropriately before expectantly waiting for his answers.

Just as quickly as he swept her up with his words, they threatened to lose her again - until the option he selected above answering those questions was actually the correct answer. Skipping steps was absolutely unacceptable, and could result in anything from a misplaced variable to very literal explosions. There were risks that she would take tonight, but that was not one of them, and he was not going to encourage her to.

Mimsy smiled, and for a flicker of an instant, questioning if she was okay would have seemed utterly ridiculous.

"That is a better solution," she approved, nodding once as she placed her delicate hand in the palm of the (much larger) hand that he offered to her. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Robert. I am Dr. Sigrid Kercher, director and--"

That was not the right answer either. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and reconsidered that course of action. It had been far too long since she introduced herself in a setting that was not strictly professional.

"Please disregard that." The hand was still in his, but she waved dismissively with the other. "My name is Mimsy, but it is still a pleasure to meet you. Assuming that this was the beginning, what on our journey to nowhere should we not skip next?"

The looming question of 'why' had begun to shrink, and she still couldn't see the stars for its shadow, but there was another light for guidance. This wasn't visible from lightyears away, but she could see it right in front of her.

And maybe she wouldn't find the answer to that 'why', but she felt sure she would find something.

Ah, she did know this part. A meeting for coffee was a common social tactic, and though she had never been invited to coffee as a date, she felt safe presuming that the concept was generally similar. The topics would be different, of course, unless he wanted to discuss the results of the latest ALICE experiment. Maybe he did. At this point, there was little that she was willing to rule out.

A sinking disappointment began to coil within her throat as soon as he made a mention of a 'problem', which implied she would be faced with the reality of exempted options, in spite of how open she was to considering them. Mimsy chewed her lip and nodded along as he elaborated, attempting to prepare herself to greet failure again.

"I see," was her only contribution to his first clarification, a blank and minimized portion of what her more typical responses would have been: something about the fact that cities were not capable of such biological functions, most likely.

But he readily offered another method, and she realized that all he was doing was going through all of the steps. Showing all of his work, from problem to solution, just as he said he would from the start.

She smiled again, just in time for him to make mention of standing still in nowhere. The thought was not an entirely unappealing one, but there was a budding hint of something in his expression that she waited to see, not wanting to interrupt his process before he had time to grow this to fruition.

The result was not unsatisfactory, though she was somewhat puzzled that he found it necessary to state that he would not blame her for her answer - especially when he had not yet asked the question. She raised her eyebrows and waited again. Patience for him was so easy to find when he so gladly proved that the wait was worthwhile.

That was no different this time, as he informed her of the location of his residence, supplementing it with information that she objectively understood to be something enticing. But why had he been so hesitant to make this suggestion, if it was such a favorable option? The promise that he would not try anything 'funny' was not framed in a way that suited the more comedic definition of 'funny', so what did he think she would suspect of him?

None of the implications surrounding the similarities between this situation and a one-night stand even occurred to her. The first thought was that he was assuring her that he would not steal her belongings, as that was a stereotype of this city that even she had heard. The second was that he thought she would fear something more violent in nature, which made her chest tighten painfully.

Of course he would think that she would be concerned. He thought that she was human. He probably wouldn't want to be around her either, if she showed him otherwise.

"Please." Her voice went hoarse, and she swallowed the rising anxiety to allow herself enough time to get through what she wanted to say to him. "Please don't imply that I have no reason to believe you. I have multiple reasons that I am quite comfortable with."

The look in her eyes was defiant, and somewhat taken aback, but not cold or hostile. If she was bothered by the incorrect implication, she wasn't lashing out at him. It didn't really seem related to him at all, somehow.

"And I find myself obligated to advise you against limiting possibilities as you have. What if following the steps brings us to an unanticipated solution? We will never experience it if we have refused it - or you will be breaking your promise, if we don't refuse." There were plenty of her own actions that she would not allow to intrude, but they were her own, answers to a problem she didn't want to touch. "I don't want to be the reason that you break your promise, Robert, but I am afraid that my curiosity would be too strong. I will do my best to remain within the boundaries of coffee and talking anyway, if that is sincerely what you want."

She offered her hand, slightly tilted, allowing him the choice of how to take it again.

"Show me the way," she urged, her earnestly eager appearance still fixated upon him. "I will match your pace, so you need not wonder if we are moving too fast this time."

From one point of light to another. If she couldn't find the constellations here, she would follow the man who seemed so skilled at making his own; and if that brought her to a territory that she had never seen charted before, maybe it would be one where she belonged, instead of a place where she could only play pretend.

Maybe she would stay there, just to know what it felt like.

This all might have been too cliché for anyone else to bear, but Mimsy slipped right into her role alongside him, easily playing her own part as his co-star of this performance. Social exchanges were always their own particular game, and this was a variety that she had not yet explored. That meant that she would probably misstep or confuse her lines somewhere along the way, but she was accepting of this fact.

It wasn't reciting the wrong words that she was afraid of. It wasn't him that she was afraid of, either, but not for the reasons of defensive prowess that he might have attributed to her. It was something that she could never avoid, never entirely, but if he meant what he said, she saw a statistically optimistic chance that it actually might not matter.

"Our night?" She laughed as she took his arm, careful to retain a respectful distance from him. "All right, then. If this is to be our night, then I will pledge to provide my attention to you for the remainder of it, as you demonstrate why we share its ownership. I will not burden you with failure. My company is yours for as long as you welcome it."

It was only right, she thought, to be in the presence of someone who truly wanted her to be there. She had spent more than three hours alone just to wait for someone who had no apparent interest in her company any longer, and she owed it to herself to negate that by spending at least the same amount of time with the person whose night would be a failure if she were not in it.

That was a sentiment that she would have wished she didn't understand so well, if her night were still stifled by that same sense of failure.

"Was someone waiting for you?" she asked, as she took the first step alongside him, fingers tightening around his arm as she relied on his stability for her own balance. "You told me that you were going somewhere, that is, before we took tonight for ourselves."

She wasn't sure why she'd asked. As soon as the question became a little cloud of condensation just beyond her lips, she knew she didn't care, but she allowed him time to answer, even if it didn't matter. If they were waiting, they deserved to spend tonight in the company of someone who actually wanted to spend tonight with them.

Just like she did.

The irrelevance of his answer must have been clear to Robert, if the answer he gave her was reasonable evidence. Mimsy was nearly too busy marveling over how incredibly astute he was to really listen to what he was telling her, and was caught off-guard when she did.

"Really?" She was instantly very conscious of what she was saying, as if she were staring down an empty text box on Twitter again. "I am pleased that you consider it 'nice'. Communication is important in my work, but I usually find it rather difficult. I would not have guessed that you would find it...well. Never mind."

Difficult as it may be, she did have enough social sense to know that it would be inappropriate to tell him that he was the exception to this. She had no eloquent way to tell him how well he guided the conversation, so the compliment would just have to wait until she did. It persistently attempted to come out anyway, so she bit her tongue until he offered another route to her, which she accepted graciously.

"You acquired all of that for yourself?" It wasn't really much, all things considered, but her reaction largely arose from the fact that she had never had champagne alone. That was a wholly unfamiliar premise. "Are you certain that you are not expecting someone?"

The idea that he might have planned to share this with a person selected with near random criteria was not apparent, nor was it within the realm of possibilities that she acknowledged. That by default made it far more likely that champagne could actually be consumed alone, information which had no prior relevance to her, so nothing about the scenario was perceptively sad or lonely in the slightest. This was just another new experience, and she deterred her anxieties with humor that she assumed to be harmless.

She stopped at the top of the second floor landing and glanced over her shoulder at him.

"Robert," she gasped, feigning astonishment. "Has this been waiting for us all day? How very considerate of you. And what a fine job you have done of locating me. I do apologize for nearly missing our date. I hope that you can forgive me for this."

As she waited for him to show her to his door, a nagging feeling questioned her use of the word 'date' in that sentence. Was that still accurate, or had that been a temporary jest that already passed? She knew that she would get the words wrong at some point, but this might have been too soon.

The details of the location and address of both the building and his apartment were observed by force of habit, but carefully sorted into a file of importance by conscious choice. Even as he bumped into her, breaking loose a little laugh that she'd been tightly holding onto, her mind was busy at work. It remained that way until he gathered up his pieces (and the one that she'd just lost) and actually responded to her, at which point it ground to a halt.

Had he just told her that she wasn't to blame, despite her clear admission of guilt?

Even in this back-and-forth make-believe reality, he thought it was important to tell her that she didn't need to apologize. It left her more stunned than bumping into her ever could have, and her breath started with a stutter when it returned again.

"Everything is just as I imagined it," she replied, wondering how this phrase managed to seem less strange to utter than the 'you have' that had been first to come to mind. "You are quite skilled at this job--but I hope that you won't think of me as work."

She glanced casually around the interior of the apartment, smoothing her dress as she spoke, attempting to provide an equivalent percentage of perfection. Anything she could do would fall short, she knew, but it would be rude to not try.

When her eyes landed on him again, they carried a restrained haze of concern; something residual, which made the hope that she voiced seem all the more genuine.