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Transitioning from one reality to another had not been especially abrupt in this instance. There had been time to allow the memories of one to mingle with those of the other, and time to externalize the events that occurred by finding them physically before her, a written tale of another knight. The name had been different, perhaps, and the narrative set out for her within it very clearly dictated that this was not her story, and that it was in the coming war that hers would be written.

Of course, she knew better.

She knew about converging realities, and she knew about love as a theoretically relative force, and she knew that Robert found her again, just as he promised. This was something that she positively refused to grant to anyone else - what they shared was incomparable. It surpassed all that had come before it, and all that would ever come to exist.

So it had been her. Neither how nor why were particularly clear, but that much was certain. She had been the one who allowed doubts to destroy every promise of happiness or normalcy, over and over again. She had been the one who stood her ground for what she knew she deserved.

And she had been the one who made a choice based solely upon an anxiety, which tore them apart and divided them between worlds. In spite of all of his efforts and acceptance, her failure to believe him ruined all that they created for their forever.

It didn't take a book telling her that this was a concerning parallel. She knew. She panicked.

The pulse of her heart was racing so quickly when she woke that she could hear it thrumming rapidly and irregularly along. She wished it had been Robert's heartbeat to greet her - the same steady sound that soothed her to sleep each night - and for one painfully crushing instant, she feared he wasn't there. But when she moved, she found herself confined within his persistent embrace, and the calm of relief began to settle in.

"I love you," she murmured, hoarse and fractured. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry. I was wrong and I love you."

The sense of dire urgency was still so strong within her that his effort to acquire kisses was almost startling. Though taken aback, she took a moment to readjust, and kissed him as he had asked of her. If that was all that he wanted after this, then she would gladly grant it.

Unfortunately for Robert, however, she failed to grasp that his drowsy mumbling and lack of coordination meant that actions were more preferable than words right now; she broke away with a small, pathetic sound when she could no longer bear the possibility that he had either not accepted or not heard her apologies, and began a verbal cascade of desperation.

"Yes. I am sorry." The cheek she pressed against his was faintly sticky, between the sheen of sweat and the brief outburst of tears that her panic brought on. "I am sorry for what I have done--failed to do--here. I thought that I believed the things that you have consistently encouraged me to believe. I convinced myself of so many falsehoods that directly contradicted what you have told me, and promised me, and..."

Already held within his arms, she did the work of tangling the rest of them together, legs haphazardly hooked around him, fingers curled tightly into his hair. She sighed and stilled, unwilling to move from here, unwilling to let him go.

"We saw it, Robert. We saw what comes of a failure to believe. When I keep any part of me from you, and harbor doubts that are simpler when I pretend they do not exist. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that, even still, I have been placing us in a position where I cannot be certain I would not unwittingly make the same choice. But no longer. I promise. I am returning to you with all of my being, all of it, and I will not withdraw any portion again."

"It's not about--I mean, the events that we have just experienced did not--"

But it was about that in a sense, just as much as the events of that reality affected her drive to make these apologies. Mimsy paused, simply because she did not want to claim something wasn't true when it had the potential to be. Realizing that she would now, with permanence, need to require herself to think at a greater depth than she had been was somewhat disorienting, but it was an acceptable thing to resolve. Anything would be at this point, truthfully.

"After the mission." That was specific enough, she hoped. There was a spark igniting her necessity to move forward, and slipping backwards in spite of it might have risked extinguishing it almost as soon as it began. "When I was unwell. It was illogical, contradictory. I hid myself from you, and lied by exemption in doing so. I confessed to being wrong, and to failing us - but that was a symptom, not the origin of this. I am apologizing because I have discovered it...or suppose that I have, at least. I withdrew because, in light of new evidence, I began to doubt much of what you instilled within me. My belief was shaken. I failed to adequately trust you."

This was not the first time she discovered faults in a previous level of her trust, found herself displeased and ashamed of her insufficiency, and while she hoped it would be the last, she had no assurance of that. For a considerable length of time now, she sincerely did want to trust him entirely; it had taken time, but she thought that she had. And when her doubts proved that untrue, she worked to achieve it again. And again. But knowing now what remained in her when all contexts and memories were absent, she could account for the greatest shortcoming:

Trusting him was simple, unless trusting him meant believing in the good in herself.

"In seeing the reality that we just have, and knowing the confidence felt over belonging with the darkness, I feared that I could easily make the same mistake. Were I stripped to the core of me, our love would still be undeniably evident, I know this...but my assertion of my monstrous nature would be too. Still. After all that you have done, I have stubbornly retained it. And I--what if in some similarly critical instance, then, I believed that I would find the other half of that love in Halloween again? That I would find you in Halloween? That is not where you are. I want to be here. Home. With you."

If Wonderland now paled in comparison to the sense of belonging she felt in their home, Halloween definitely did. They might once have had a place for her, but they no longer had anything to offer her if it meant being without him. 'Home' might not have been entirely confined to a location, but it was confined to what they had, or what they made, or what they were together. She would never have a home without him.

"So I want to be better. I will learn to see myself through your eyes, and to accept your truth as my truth. I will, because I cannot--"

A bit late, she finally let her actions speak for her, hiding her face against him as she hugged him with an affectionate ferocity that proved precisely how much she had already learned from her husband.

A truly thrilled smile and a sharp laugh of abrupt happiness followed the praise he gave for her hug, and Mimsy gave him another (with slight difficulty, because his hugs tended to consume her) before she began to answer him.

"Yes. I believed that I was good enough, because I wanted to believe for you, but wanting is not enough. At any instance where that belief faltered, I saw that I knew I was not."

In retrospect, this had been happening with increasing frequency. She halted those calculations when they reached the point of 'what if I had not come to this realization', because it was not relevant, and the answer had already made itself known. Elsewhere. Not here. Not ever.

"But...I do think, to the best of my knowledge, that I know that I am everything to you, as you are to me. My difficulty appears to be that I just cannot, in some instances, fathom why I am. I trust and believe in the reasons you provide, but I have failed to adopt a portion of them. I will try harder. I promise that I will learn. You have done so well in accepting the positive attributes that I find in you, despite having once convinced yourself otherwise. I will learn from your example."

As sure as she'd been that this did not require a cup of coffee to be understood, she paused and thought for a moment. Even if he had wholly grasped what she was saying, she was awake and able to focus - as his wife, if she could give him the same, shouldn't she?

"If you would still prefer coffee," she sheepishly began, shifting to pull the sleeves of his shirt that she was wearing back onto her shoulders. "I can make some for us. And breakfast to feed you in bed, perhaps?"

That part might have been less selfless than she let on.

Hearing him reaffirm just how significant she was to him gave Mimsy an even greater confidence that this was something she had come to learn as factual. It caused no real shift within her, no sensation of broken pieces coming back together - just the warmth of contentment and an effervescent happiness. She giggled at the way it tingled on her cheeks, and basked in imagining that they were sharing the same happy feeling, one shared between them. It was a nice image, a safe bubble that looked like daylight, which existed solely from happiness they had created.

"Good," she murmured, relaxing her shoulders to allow the cloth to pool around her elbows again. There was a strange freedom within her, an absence of the coiled tension that had been ever-present, and everything felt easier. "I like when you feel that way."

And she liked when he felt this way, too, but that was best expressed without an excess of words. She sunk down towards him, her lips brushing against his. Just a taste, knowing very well that it would not sate his insatiable appetite.

"I recall, by the way..." Her teeth grazed his lower lip, and her eyes flickered up towards his. "...that we have a marriage to consummate, husband."