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When Mimsy left home with the intention of committing premeditated murder, she bore a strong resemblance to an eager, particularly nerdy child on her first day of school. She held her head high, stood with a positively perfect posture, and hardly kept herself from skipping all the way to request Dr. H's permission. It felt primarily like a formality - she was quite confident that this would be allowable, considering how functionally useless Maebe was - but it was a requisite to her nonetheless. She'd just confirm his approval, return to speak to Robert as promised, and everything would proceed according to plan.

The appearance she exhibited upon her return home was similarly juvenile, albeit diametrically opposite in disposition: no, she couldn't play, and no, she didn't deserve dessert, and no, she hadn't passed her social studies test. Her strides were slow and solemn, gaze downcast, and she walked through the front door without a word.

She remained silent as she returned to the spot on the couch where she was sitting when she received that message, folded her hands in her lap, and turned her head towards her husband to offer a tiny smile.

The smile twitched, then faltered entirely, and Mimsy quickly turned her attention to her hands, watching herself fidget with her rings. Shaking hands. Clumsy hands. More supporting evidence. And that was the worst of it - the knowledge that what Dr. H said to her was inarguably accurate, the dataset of validity increasing exponentially with each passing second.

She couldn't (wouldn't) disagree with him regardless. It had little to do with the fact that so many things would begin to unravel if she picked at that particular line of stitching in the fabric of her reality, which she fortunately did not intend to attempt, but shared as much gravity to her.

This was not something to fight, nor protest. This could only be accepted and improved upon, and in the meantime, she was not good enough.

"Nothing happened," she replied, tone flat and empty and devoid of all but the factual. Though her eyes remained on the rings, she shifted closer to him, and leaned against him as she counted off each marriage, each date, each location, a repetitive recital to calm her mind.

No other person could ever possess a comparable appreciation for the warmth and loving adoration that Robert always so readily offered to her, which Mimsy remained certain of, even in her battle with inadequacy. No one else could truly value what it was like to go from feeling nothing, a void of any evident emotions, to feeling so loved and cared for that she had an abundance of love to return. No one would know how it felt, because she was not sharing with anyone.

"Do you think that--" She pressed her lips tightly together, and braved the remainder of her question with a sharp inhale. "Do you think that I would have been awful, had I opted in favor of my intentions?"

That felt bad to ask. It felt like a tightness in her chest and a sickness in her stomach, and she wished that she had not asked. She pretended that she hadn't.

"When I talk to you," she hastily corrected, immediately relenting with a less defensive answer, because he wasn't technically wrong. "No. He didn't tell me that this was a 'bad idea'. The idea in itself was not the flaw in what I presented for approval to him. The idea itself was not met with individual opposition."

Dr. H did not express explicit disapproval for the idea of murder when faced with the topic. That would likely not come as a surprise; her readiness to request permission from him in the first place should have been an indicator of that much, if no other observations about the division lead served that purpose.

"I was." The words were scarcely able to claw their way out of her throat, and she swallowed hard, diverting more strength to speaking. "I was the flaw. I am the flaw. I do not deserve what I wanted."

There was no time to react or elaborate by the time that it was far too late. There were words in the voice of someone she needed to trust and believe that conflicted directly with another necessity, that hurt with an ache at the core of her, and she found herself trapped beneath the crushing weight of a desperate choice for indecision.

If she stayed here, it would be okay. If she stayed here, and said nothing, and did nothing, and touched nothing, she could preserve this. She could experience this cross-section of calm, this thinly sliced instant pressed into a single slide of perfection, as long as she just stayed right here.

When her survival was threatened, Mimsy's reflexive instinct had always been to freeze. There was no one chasing her now, no perceived risk of physical harm, but that absence did not mean the absence of a very real threat. Her pulse raced so rapidly that it registered only as an erratic flutter beneath her skin, and her breathing came so fast-paced and shallow that it was nearly imperceptible.

'Talk to me', he instructed her, so she had. 'Tell me everything', he advised her, so she tried. 'You know you feel better when you talk', he reminded her, so she did.

But she didn't.

So she didn't.

She clenched her teeth and sealed her lips and clutched every remaining word that she had not relayed to him instead, faced with certainty that she would make this worse. The wide eyes that refused to leave him seemed unnervingly dark, devoid of all but a dilated disconnect, and she mutely shook her head--just barely, just once--before she stiffened into tense anticipation again.

The shift in focus exhibited by something as simple as Robert rubbing her back to calm her was more soothing than the action itself. It was just the evidence that she needed to begin to reassure herself that he was not actually in a position of opposition towards her, and that he was doing this for her sake. He'd even admitted that his harsh words had arisen with the same intention, which was difficult for her to believe, but she did. This time she did, because she wanted to believe this, and accepting it was almost too easy in its simplicity.

Making a choice to progress forward in time (and her general state of existence) felt a bit simpler in turn; even if he still was not quite correct in his assessment of the reason for her reaction, he had given her a third choice that was not so cataclysmic in nature. She would not have to choose between two separate portions of her life, would not have to forfeit one in its entirety, and with that knowledge her pulse began to slow.

"Please," she choked out, fighting the impossible resistance of lifting her leaden arm, for the sake of placing her hand on his cheek. "Please don't selectively hide your feelings from me."

The alternative presented by the third option allowed a third priority: with her thoughts dulled and slowed to a halt and her stare so fixated upon him, the absence of sincerity in his apology was glaringly apparent. She couldn't identify the deficiency with such precision, especially when sincerity was not a separate emotion to her, but there was clearly something missing. This was what the term 'half-hearted' must look like, she thought - which caused the panic to rise again, because that did not equate with Robert.

"Please. Please. If you cannot suppress your negative feelings about someone else, but can obscure that you don't want to apologize to me, I..." No. She would give no credit to any of these speculations. "Please. Promise that you will not. Promise that I can be allowed to see everything that you feel. I want everything. I want to be allowed to have all of you. Please promise this, and I will elaborate."

Hearing the promise was all that Mimsy needed to believe him. It was the same ease of trust in him that caused this conflict to begin with, and it seemed reasonable to solve it with the same method. She still didn't question any of the claims, nor did she attempt to apply any evidence to determine the verity of each of them, and the idea to do so never arose.

"Thank you," she sighed, relaxing alongside him, her eyes slowly closing for a short repose. Attempting to stop time and space had been a bit exhausting, and she wanted to curl against him and sleep until morning, but she'd made a bargain - and he appeared to want her end of it now.

"I remember. I wouldn't be unfair to you." The response came as a sulky grumble, as though she'd honestly never given him any reason to think otherwise. She settled into the spaces that his body left for her, winding around him like a vine around a redwood, and drew a deep breath into her still-tensed lungs to relieve them. "Dr. H did not say that I didn't deserve it. I did."

Which complicated matters just a bit. If she applied what Robert said about Dr. H to the actual source of that statement, it would mean that she was nothing, and scum, and should not listen to herself. For the sake of everyone involved, she tried to refrain from doing so. Not yet.

"When I requested his permission, he informed me that I lacked the subtlety and social, political, and technical awareness to get away with murder. Then he...sort of..." Unsure of the best way to describe the gesture, she reached up to pat him on the head, just as Dr. H had to her. "...and directed me to return home. To you."

She gave Robert a small smile, because that had been kind of nice. It was always encouraging when he acknowledged things that proved he was paying attention.

"That is all. Nothing else. I was simply advised against it, because I cannot..." Something clicked, belatedly, and her brow contorted into a look of perplexed suspicion, withholding hope or excitement for the moment. "Were you suggesting that we use this time to make a child instead?"

When he shivered, Mimsy failed to consider any correlation between the topic at hand and the involuntary motion. She assumed that he was cold, and though she found that odd, she cuddled up to him more closely to help encourage his warmth.

"No. Of course I can't." They were physically tightly entwined, but she still managed to actually feel as though she missed him when his head was shyly bowed, largely because his eyes were no longer on her. She fixed this by reaching to curl her fingers beneath his chin and urging his focus back towards her, trying to dispel the flush of his cheeks by gently patting one of them. "Particularly not when he wants to make a baby with me."

That was most certainly the opposite of something that he should be scolded for. If anything, he deserved praise for his interest in this 'project', which she would readily provide for him. He made it easy to.

"I'm talking about you," she whispered, quietly giggling into his shoulder. Of all of her research assistants and lab partners and associates throughout the span of her life, he was her absolute favorite (breaches of safety protocol and all).

"I think that I would like to do that now. More than anything else." As drained of energy as she'd been, the idea seemed to revitalize her. The light in her eyes had returned, especially when she looked at him, and her words carried considerably more strength behind them. "In fact, I can't even recall the other options. So I suppose...if you think that I've earned it, and don't think that I'm a flaw..."

This time, as unsubtle as her suggestions may have been, she didn't guide him in any direction. Her hands didn't wander, nor did she nudge him in any other way - she just waited with a patient smile and an affectionate stare, hoping that his answer would be exactly what she wanted.