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When she was close enough to look at her a second time, Mimsy looked for a long while.

The woman in front of her was hardly more than a stranger, even in appearance. It had been enough for her to recognize her, but when she thought about her mother, this was not what she remembered seeing. There was a calm about her that she had never once seen on her face. She looked happier, though it was difficult to tell if it was sincerely out of happiness, or just the absence of constant distress. There was no hatred or disgust or horror, which she attributed to the fact that her eyes were still closed.

Thoughtfully chewing her lip, she sat back and began to stare again. She was supposed to be dead. The records said she was dead. The room in their house had been empty, leaving only the signs that she had once been there. It made no sense that she was here, of all places.

She shifted to sit closer to her, knees resting against her body as she dared to chance the lack of distance. With a tentative hand she touched her cheek, and jerked it back as though she'd brushed her fingertips against a hot stove, not skin. It hadn't hurt like she somehow thought it would, so she reached to touch her again, slowly testing the feeling.

Strange. She didn't think she'd be so warm.

All at once she was curious about everything she'd missed. Her hand moved to touch her hair again, far less clinical this time. Softer than it looked, in spite of its unkempt state, its mess of clips and pen and hair ties. There was some sort of collar around her neck, which drew and held her attention. None of the others had mentioned this - was it something specific to her? Its light read '9', and she glanced down at the radio beside her, carefully putting the pieces together.

There was no wedding ring on her finger. Mimsy made a face of disapproval, but took her hand anyway, holding it gingerly as she searched through the pouches at her mother's hip. The notes in it were mostly incoherent: though she registered some possible names here and there, most were littered with 9s until the whole thing was incomprehensible. She added that piece to her puzzle, as well as the full deck of 9s she had, and the 09 on the blue jersey. Presumably this was connected to the numbers that some of the others had worn, though it wasn't readily apparent how.

Nothing explained how she got here, or why the nines were everywhere, or why she was alive. Nothing answered why she seemed so different, but everything seemed to point to the conclusion that she was not alone.

Realizing this made her feel sick with pity. Maybe neither of them belonged in the place they'd once been. Maybe her mother found her home, and the place they once lived had been home to neither of them. And in that case, if she could believe she wasn't a monster, that she wasn't the person she was in the past...how could she reasonably apply the opposite to someone who shared the same circumstances? The same stimuli?

It was so much easier to hate her.

Mimsy gently rest her head on Caroline's chest. She heard her sluggish heartbeat, felt the rise and fall of her steady breaths, and wrapped her arms around her for their very first hug.

Discovering that she was slightly taller than her mother was a discovery that merited a tiny smile, if only briefly. That was not something that she had ever imagined either - in her memory she was always so much taller, so much larger, so much more frightening. Everything she could recall about her was the embodiment of hurt and now she just seemed so human. Human and fragile.

Carrying her without the benefits of Svensyl's added strength was difficult, and she found herself feeling incredibly grateful for the fact that she had been carrying a child on her hip every day. Realizing that the woman she was rescuing was the grandmother to her child was odd, but nowhere near as disorienting as realizing that having a child contributed to her saving the life of her mother.

Thankfully, the portal wasn't very far. She still had to adjust the way she was carrying the unconscious woman's weight several times before she made it there, but with her arms looped around her neck, it wasn't terribly difficult.

This wasn't right.

It took less than a second after stepping through the portal for Mimsy to be miserably aware of this. Her knees buckled as her body responded in defeat, and it was only when she scrambled to keep a steady hold on her mother that she glanced up at the skyscraper in front of them.

Despite recognizing the vines, she didn't remember feeling so strained when she looked at them. She tried to blink away the headache, but it only got worse - and as something emerged from them, it became intolerable.

'Is it not natural for you to accept us?'

Her mind was always a tangle of simultaneous thinking, one string upon another, layered on and on, but so much at once--so much of this at once--was more than she could bear. She was nauseous from the pain of it, and no determination or insistence of her own bravery could get her through it. This was impossible.

And as the two of them began to fall, it was Svensyl that righted them again. Svensyl, who had taken such pride in disrupting her concentration for so long. He reminded her of her impossible things, and he didn't even laugh. Not once.

The cars nearby were more obstacles than options - though some may have still been fully functional, it did not occur to her in the slightest to use any of them. They were little more than an annoyance, though the vines seemed to make good use of them, taking every opportunity to uproot them and push them into their way.

The rumbling of the massive creature behind them didn't make it particularly easy for her thoughts to be on anything else, but they still strayed to the unconscious woman that she carried, wondering if she could possibly even wake up if she was not even stirring during this.

The relief at the sight of a portal, a working portal, was almost dizzying.

Mimsy closed her eyes as she stopped to catch her breath in silent gratitude, willing Robert to be right on the other side. Somewhere easy to find. She had managed so far, but if she could find him, she knew she could do this.

Her brief reprieve was cut short as she felt her mother's body begin to stir against her, arms tightening around her neck.

"Wait," she cried, sending them both sprawling to the ground in front of the portal as she lost her balance in her panic. "No, wait, please! Please, no! I am not--please, let me go!"

This was what she'd been afraid of, all those years ago. This was why her father warned her to stay away from that room. Now she'd believed she was brave, and she was going to die for it. She should have listened. She should have listened.

As she grappled with the unfortunate reality of her demise, barely able to keep her off of her long enough to catch her breath again, she realized something wasn't right again. This wasn't her: she wasn't screaming, wasn't crying, wasn't fighting to get away from the monster that haunted her. This was too hollow, too empty, and though she knew the woman was different, there was no way that had changed.

With a final forceful shove, she finally broke away, and they both struck the ground with enough force to knock the air out of their lungs. The courage to look up again wasn't easy to gather, and it was gone again as soon as she saw her mother was motionless. Had she killed her? No, no. Surely not. That was not what happened.

She curled up, legs tucked against her chest, portal entirely forgotten.

"It will be all right, mother," she murmured, settling her into her arms once more. "We will help you get home."