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It occurs to Mia, once, in one of her late nights, that she is the same. Or- well- that wasn’t quite true, was it?
Humans, she’s observed, are prone to change. A metamorphosis of thoughts and feelings and revelations of the body. And yet, she hasn’t changed since she was a child, her hair cut short, observing the kids around her playing- yet not actually joining in.
One could say- no, Mia, you have changed. And she would watch them with the same piercing stare Ethan told her that she had when they were on their first date- that he had leaned over, and whispered- you look, in every way, like a scientist. She’s not one to describe her feelings as bubbly, but she had felt the emotion burst in her chest to coat her lungs in something sticky. It was enough to make her heart flutter, her lungs choke up. Throughout all the little things he’d told her over the years, that one had stuck with her.
First in a good way, and then, after the Baker’s, in a bad way.
Her hands used to be so steady, drawing blood and writing down her observations in neat handwriting. She’s been a scientist, a biologist, a neurologist- no, a bio-terrorist. That was the proper title for it, wasn’t it?
And yet she had fallen, down, down, down. Got a little too close to the bioweapon she was watching, allowing her child-like appearance and Mia’s own want for a child- soon, as soon as she and Ethan were together again, they’d find someone to carry their child- to wear her down. Allowed herself to brush Eveline’s hair as she’d not-quite-slept, pretending to, realized that was normal after watching her and her nameless research partner fall asleep one too many times on duty. It had stirred her heart, in a way, that someone so inhuman could mimic their mannerisms- if only for the affection she’d desired.
Maybe it had saved Mia’s life. She didn’t care. It took her months, after that, to want a child again.
Yet, she remembered Ethan’s words, his glittering eyes. The way he’d leaned over in their booth- they had gone to a wafflehouse, of all places, neither wanting someplace fancy. The lilt of his voice- you look, in every way, like a scientist.
Her hair had been chin-length at that point. She’d just left her parent’s house, and finally- finally!- had begun her transition. Her brain still forcefully reminded her of how she looked every time she looked in the mirror, forcing her to trace the sharpness of her jaw, but she liked it. She liked how masculine she was, liked sharp things, liked looking like a scientist. Math and science and observing, that had always come so easily to her. And so she wore tank-tops and sports bras, never once thinking to dress in skirts and soft things.
No- that, like all things, had come after the Baker’s.
There was a disconnect, between Mia-the-scientist and Mia-the-housewife. She’d needed a cane to walk after the Baker’s- still uses it, sometimes, when her joints hurt after a thunderstorm, the mold gone yet still reminding the marrow of her bones what had transpired. It never really made her upset, though.
Few things made her upset after the Baker’s house.
One could say that she had changed, after the Baker’s house. Threw away her tools and notebooks, dressed in cardigans, and refused the voice in her mind that wanted a family. After all, she’d had a family- one that Ethan had to rescue her from, one that Chris had to destroy.
She wishes she could say the twinge in her chest was completely Eveline’s influence. But, like in all things, her biological family had never really been… all that. Despite how twisted the Baker’s were, there was something about being connected, being loved, that she missed.
She was getting off-topic, but there was so much more she wanted to think about, say.
How Ethan loved her- so different from before, and yet the same. How he’d held her in bed at night, his arms wrapped around her, pretending to sleep. They’d never had to do that before. She hadn’t had to know what sleeping-Ethan and not-sleeping-Ethan had felt like before.
How he’d gotten her a new wedding ring, though she hadn’t wanted anything fancy. She hadn’t wanted much, period, after the Baker’s. Just him, she supposed. Just him, and the way he stayed up at night to make sure they were safe, and the way he gripped her hand at the grocery store, the two of them counting the exits.
Not the same, no. Not nearly normal. They both needed therapy, desperately. But the way he loved her- and oh, how he loved her- it took her breath away when she had none to give.
The emotions came back in time. She’d been so angry, at the Baker’s house, so angry and desolate. Really, it was because she couldn’t trust any other emotion. Was the happiness at tending to Eveline just Eveline’s want for a mother? Was her sadness of Ethan not being there just Eveline wishing for a father? And was the nothingness, the void of all feeling, was that just Eveline too?
Only the anger was hers. She couldn’t imagine a little girl wishing anger upon her, no matter how hard Mia threw a fit. And so, she was angry.
It was only natural that she hardly felt anger afterward. She left that to Ethan, who had it in spades. Instead, she let the desire for a normal life infect her, consume her, allow herself to become content in Europe as long as all the doors were locked and they didn’t have a basement. And so he was the angry one- for once in his life, all the rationality people had expected to find with Mia was right where it was supposed to be. He was angry in a way that gripped him at three in the morning, angry in ways that got let out in punches and kisses with Chris, angry in a ‘you’ll never touch us again’ way.
It felt so, so nice to be looked after like that.
So, one could argue she had changed. All the impulsivity that came with the need to observe, write down, calculate, had left her. It had gone straight into Ethan, apparently, who had just enough of rationality left to keep Mia and Chris from becoming bitter rivals.
She wanted to tell someone, as the shower rained down on her, her head against the tile, how Ethan had almost fought someone in the store for her.
But it was two a.m., and there really wasn’t anyone to tell anyway. Well, she could wake up Chris, but the man rarely got any sleep these days, despite his protesting that whenever he slept with them he had better dreams.
Ethan slept beside him, slumbering despite his boyfriend’s faint snores.
They just were out of the picture entirely. It had been through so much pain, so much for the sake of defending their family.
She didn’t really think it was fair to dump this on him.
Lifting her head and closing her eyes so the water washed over them instead of into them, she left herself drift back into her thoughts.
This really wasn’t new, her ruminating on change and the precipice of it. One could say that she had changed when she was thirteen and abruptly decided to change in the bathrooms instead of the locker rooms. Or that she had changed when she went to college and started on estrogen. Or maybe when she kissed Ethan goodbye, right before moving to where the Connections wanted her to. Or, even better yet, she’d changed on the ship she’d studied Eveline on. Or during the Baker’s house. Or after the Baker’s house. Or during Romania. Or after Ethan’s death.
Or, when it came back.
But she didn’t feel like she’d changed. That was the whole thing, wasn’t it?
Recently, she’d been drawn to it- being a scientist, that is. Rose was having trouble in math, and Mia was helping her. Simple as that. But addition and subtraction led her to multiplication and division, and then theorems and collecting data and solving problems, and oh, Mia was itching for it.
It was her little secret- whenever Chris and Ethan went out, which, admittedly, wasn’t much- she’d pull up complicated math videos and watch them, hungrily sucking down data. And then science videos. And then videos on the newest techniques in the field, the brightest minds, the newest theories. It wasn’t a big secret. Wasn’t scary or monstrous. It shouldn’t have been a secret at all. But every time she did it, she felt a pang of guilt.
Mia bought notebooks and hid them. She conducted experiments on the plants outside- how much water was too much? Not enough? She scribbled it down in handwriting that she hadn’t had in years, handwriting neat and looping. Then it was measuring the house, then it was teaching Rose multiplication and division and fractions- really, she was a smart child, and good at math when she understood it.
Well, Mia understood the subject enough to teach it, and that was that. Rose was a quick learner, too. Really, what were her teachers doing to make her struggle this much?
It didn’t matter, didn’t matter. Not when Mia got everything she could from teaching her daughter. Not when she understood it so well, well enough to drink the information down like a smoothie and come back for more.
So Mia, while understanding that it didn’t matter, also didn’t understand when it did. When Rose had sat on Ethan’s lap and held up her fingers and explained to them that four times five equals twenty. When he had laughed and asked her how she knew that.
When Mia had froze in the kitchen, hearing Rose explain exactly what Mia was doing to her child. To their child.
But Ethan had just laughed and called their child smart. Intelligent, even. And Rose blabbered on, explaining the multiplication tables, the two of them unaware of Mia’s sudden panic. Of her breath suddenly coming too fast, of her hands gripping at the kitchen counter. It was nothing. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was teaching her child multiplication tables, for gods sake, it wasn’t anything bad.
It was just-
Just-
After so long playing the content mother, she suddenly had enough. Not like that- not like storming out of the house, leaving her family behind, running across Europe discontent. Like a scientist discontent. Like she had gone all those years draped in grief, and had just come out of it to realize- she could have been calculating this entire time. Observing. Watching.
She’d missed all the little things that she’d wanted to do, back when Mia and Ethan had just gotten married. Back before the Baker’s, when they had curled up in bed, unafraid for the future, and talked about having children. Making a graph of Rose’s height over the years. Modeling what Rose would eat and wouldn’t eat. Asking Rose more questions about the universe than Rose herself could ask- an almost impossible task, given how young she was. She wanted to buy one of those silly ‘All About Me!’ books, the ones for young children, with ages and likes and dislikes and the amount of teeth they had.
It was stupid of her, but she’d wanted to go about Rose’s childhood the way she went about all things: observing, calculating, and watching.
After the Baker’s, she shied away from these things. Shied away from even the concept of a child. Math and science flailed under her gaze. But one day, in the house Chris had moved the two of them too, almost passed out on the couch, she had thought, this house is too big for the two of us.
Pause.
Maybe a child would fit it better.
And then she had sat right back up and told herself it was too soon. She and Ethan hadn’t even gotten therapy yet, what was wrong with her-
She failed at convincing herself of anything, in the end. But she did know one thing: she wasn’t a scientist anymore. She was going to be a mother. And maybe there was nothing wrong with showing her child the truths of life, the scientific facts and theorems. Maybe there was nothing wrong with writing lists and taking data. But she didn’t want that, anymore.
Until suddenly, she did.
It felt wrong. Wrong like she was digging her family into a hole again. Wrong like she was going to let herself gloss over the dangers of just observing again. Wrong like maybe, just maybe, she was making another Eveline.
In the shower, Mia flinched and held back a sob. What was wrong with her. What was wrong with her?
Rose was their daughter, not a bioweapon- no matter what the BSAA said, no matter how much she and Ethan chirped at each other. Rose wasn’t Eveline. She wasn’t created with the intention to kill, to mutate. She wasn’t a test subject.
Mia couldn’t- she couldn’t think of her daughter- her own daughter, like that. Couldn’t believe herself. Her stomach rolled, and before she knew it, she was on the ground, hacking up spit.
What was under her hands was Eveline’s hair, as she sung the bioweapon to sleep.
What was under her hands was a pen and paper, white, lined, blue markings to indicate physical state.
What was under her hands was mud, and swamp water, and nothing much at all.
Ethan had said- Ethan had said that Eveline had asked after her. That was just what she got, wasn’t it? Show one ounce of care, of weakness, only to have it twisted.
Ethan had also protected Eveline, though. And she knew where that came from. She knew how familiar it was to feel like maybe they were doing something unethical. That Eveline was a bioweapon, but was still a little girl. And how she spoke of a family- how they’d made her like that, the scientists and the tests and the twisted love shown to her as she grew. How she spoke of connection like it was something to be used.
Mia couldn’t fall into that trap again. She couldn’t fall back into feeling sorry for something that would destroy her life, was destroying her life, had destroyed her life. So she wouldn’t. She’d use the scientist in her, the part of her that she’d been praised for all her life, the part she’d made her identity, the part that had hurt her so much in the end. She’d use her numbers and observing and pencils to observe the memories, the hurt, the three years trapped in the Baker’s house.
Her hands scrabble at the smooth tile of the bathroom, one which wasn’t hair or paper or mud. Just tile, normal tile, that was hurting her knees. And still she kneeled, hair falling around her shoulders, drifting over her fingers in the spray.
Raising a finger- no, a fist- she traced a ‘one’ into the tile, mouthing along as she wrote. The water swept the words away, pouring them down the drain, but it was just as well that no one else saw this.
One- repeated contact with Eveline caused her to form an emotional connection to you, one which cause you to not die. One which caused you to be dragged to the Baker’s house, and wake up in a cell.
Two- that same contact allowed Eveline to twist the Baker’s family, and let Eveline know about Ethan, in one of your moments of weakness.
Three- that caused Ethan to be dragged into this whole mess- which led, admittedly, to him rescuing you, but help was already on the way. He could have stayed out of everything, and never died in the first place.
Four- One could say that it was Mia’s fault for starting this whole thing in the first place. For joining the Connections. She’d accepted that- her role in hurting her family. Her role in playing god.
Five- that doesn’t also mean that Eveline didn’t do wrong. And, by allowing Mia to trust what appeared to be a child, everything in Mia’s life went wrong.
She sat back, allowed her hair to fall in her face, observed the tile. Nothing she had written stayed still, stayed real. But it was there nonetheless.
And really, she’d gotten off-topic. Again. Her mind was just one labyrinth and she was running down the maze, searching for a thread. A connection.
What had she been so upset about?
Right. Rose.
Mia swallowed and shut her eyes again. She had to remind herself- again, and again, and again- that Rose wasn’t Eveline. She couldn’t allow herself to compare the two, allow herself to even think that.
Rose’s view of family would never, ever, be like Eveline’s. Rose’s wants, her needs, her little quirks and interests- they weren’t Eveline’s. And even if they were- Rose sure was talking about mushrooms a lot recently, which came from Ethan, which they got from Eveline, which Eveline got from Mia, stupid, stupid Mia- they weren’t the same. One person could have an interest in something as harmless as fungi without them turning into a bioweapon.
It hadn’t been all that harmless when Mia was interested in fungi, though.
Really, it all came back to Mia-the-scientist. Not Mia-the-mother, not Mia-the-test-subject- right, right, she really was completely ignoring Romania, wasn’t she? And she would keep ignoring Romania, and keep ignoring Romania, and keep ignoring Romania.
Maybe that was why she wanted to be a scientist so bad. It was because finally, finally, for the first time in her life, she was a test subject. In the Baker’s house, she had been an unwilling mother. And in Romania, trapped underground, she finally had gotten to experience what it felt like for the bioweapons she studied years beforehand. Just a test, nothing more.
She hated it. Hated it more than she’d hated Chris Redfield, months after he’d gotten on her nerves for one last time. More than she’d hated the doctors and the BSAA, and the military, and Eveline. Being so powerless. Being so used.
In the Baker’s house, she’d had her anger. In Romania, she’d had nothing. Even her anger, the ugly parts of herself, even those were studied. Observed. Calculated and accounted for. And she couldn’t escape by playing the good housewife either, couldn’t escape just by the virtue of putting on a cardigan and pretending those parts that led her to ruin didn’t exist.
At least Mother Miranda had never treated her like she’d treated Eveline. At least she’d never had care thrown her way.
Really, it was almost surprising that the scientist had taken this long to show. Or, maybe, not at all. After Romania, she’d had Rose, and Chris, and one dead Ethan. She hadn’t had the time for anything other than grief. She hadn’t mourned for herself.
But now Ethan was back, and he fell into the role they’d talked about oh-so-easily, even more so now that he never left the apartment in fear that someone would see him. The role they’d planned for, before the Baker’s. The house husband, the caretaker, the watcher of their child. And Mia had planned to be the scientist, the breadwinner, the one who would never had to take care of a child all on her own because Ethan would be right there beside her.
Well, that plan had certainly gone well. The roles had flipped when Mia decided she’d wanted a child again, and Ethan too restless to stay confined in the house. But then, well, he’d died. And came back. And now it was perfectly content to stay home, too afraid to go out- Mia should be challenging that, shouldn’t she? Like a good wife? But she doesn’t know how to broach the subject, so she doesn’t. And it had taken all too little time for Mia to want to write again, to watch again, to go out in the world and make something of herself. Make sure she was never anyone’s test subject ever again.
Look how well that had done last time.
It’s a cycle, she knows it is. Become a restless child, unable to fit in anywhere, unable to do anything but watch and make notes. Forge her way in a field, using methods like she was a child in a sandbox, creating the tower that will finally reach god. Become trapped for three years. Have all that ambition and want to record drain out of her. Become trapped, in a different way this time. Feel the want to reach god again. Etcetera, etcetera.
She is stuck, stuck in a loop and if she tries to break free she’ll be trapped again. And again, and again, and again. Different basements, different cells. The shower tile is, again, fluid, concrete and dirty and clean at the same time. Who knows what will happen next? Who knows which cell she’ll find herself in?
Because Mia is the same. She’s the same, the same girl with the piercing stare and scientist eyes that Ethan had seen on their first date. She’s the same girl who brushes Eveline’s hair to keep the knots from forming, brushes the curls out of Rose’s hair as she grows and they turn long. She’s the same scientist, with an ache in her to watch the world burn. To create something that cannot be created. To make a name for herself, to see herself in the stars- Mia Winters, the destroyer of humankind, the creator of mold and fungi and rot.
Ethan was the last one to clean the bathroom, to get rid of the mold in the corners, not Mia.
Was she cultivating it?
Did it hurt him to destroy something she’d made them into?
She was running her fingers through her hair, methodically, sorting them into strands. Strands and broken strands and strands and broken strands and connections, water dripping onto the bathroom floor.
Suddenly, she knows: she isn’t in the shower anymore. It’s still running- of course it is, rushing behind her ears, white-water rapids behind her eyes, but she isn’t in it. There’s enough fog in the room that when she leans against the sink, she cannot see herself in the mirror.
Mia is a scientist. And that same scientist had hurt her family, and caused this whole mess. That same scientist was now bubbling at her insides- oh, didn’t she say that she’d never describe her emotions like that? It is clawing at her ribs, causing her to pick at her fingernails and run her hands through her hair. Again. Again. Again.
Mia is a scientist.
Mia is running her hands through Eveline’s hair and singing a song.
Mia is a scientist.
The fog doesn’t clear, but she can make out the shape of herself in the mirror. Broad shoulders hunched in on herself, hair running down her shoulders, skin and bones and clenched hands on the bathroom sink.
She stares at herself, and sees the dark hair of a bioweapon in the form of a child. She sees the crack, running along the side and fracturing her arm. She sees- she sees- she sees-
She sees Mia the bioterrorist, and it makes her angry. Mad. Explosive.
After all these years, she really is the same. The fear bleeds away, dripping down her gums, oozing from her mouth, and suddenly she wants to gnash and tear and scream. Stumbling away from the mirror, one hand comes up to drag over her head, but it catches in her hair- it always does, it always will, she will watch it like a scientist and mark it as it grows longer and longer and longer.
No. No. She won’t give in. She won’t watch or observe or see or know. She won’t write this down, her rapid-fire thoughts, her neat handwriting. She won’t let anyone know- does she deserve that comfort, after all the wrong she’s done?
Before she knows it, one of her hands is grasping at the drawers underneath the sink, searching for something she doesn’t know- no, she does know. She knows very well what she’s doing, knows exactly which steps to take.
Her hands close on a pair of scissors, and she holds them up triumphantly. They shine in the dim light of the bathroom, condensation rolling down the metal. Right. The shower is still on. That doesn’t matter.
She knows, finally, what to do. What to change. If only to change something, anything, so she isn’t the same Mia.
Maybe she’s giving into her impulsivity again. She doesn’t particularly care.
As she raises the scissors, her reflection mirrors her. She picks a piece of hair up from where it lays, limp and heavy with water, and the scissors move to close around it.
Knock.
Knock-knock-knock.
“Mia?” It’s faint, but she can make out a yawn. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. It’s Ethan.
“Are you going to come back to bed? You’ve been showering for a bit.” Silence. She doesn’t respond.
“Mia? Are you ok?”
Before she can think, Mia is at the door, unlocking and opening it. Fog pours into the hallway, light following close behind, and Ethan blinks at her.
Her husband just stares, eyes flickering from the running shower to Mia’s face to her chest, which is heaving- she hasn’t taken a proper breath since she entered the bathroom, it seems- and the scissors in her hand. Actually, its eyes linger there, on the silver she clutches, and she can see them coming to all sorts of unfound conclusions
“It’s- it’s not what it looks it,” she says, and it’s released on a breath. His eyes snatch back to her face, a barely masked concern blooming there. Ethan always was bad at hiding their emotions.
Mia swallows, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “I-” she starts, and stops. She’s aware that it’s not like her to stutter, to think over her words. “I was just going to cut my hair,” she settles on, and Ethan’s mouth turns into a grim line.
“At three in the morning?” He rasps, and she can feel those eyes checking her skin for anything out of place. Mia nods, like a puppet on strings.
It sighs and grabs her wrist. “Let me help you.” She can tell they don’t completely trust her- she wasn’t lying! Really!- but she lets herself be pulled back into the bathroom anyway, closing the door behind the two of them.
The first thing Ethan does is turn the water off, reaching in with his molded hand to twist the knob. It slows to a sputtering stop, the silence echoing in her ears.
The second thing they do is grab a towel, lifting Mia’s hair up so they have room to drape it around her shoulders and give them a little rub. Mia leans against the wall, and Ethan frowns, maneuvering her to the toilet. She lets him. After all, what would she think if she found him at two- no, three now- in the morning, clearly not in its right mind?
Well. She doesn’t have to imagine, since it’s happened before.
So she lets them fuss, and wipe away the condensation on the mirror, and turn on the bathroom fan. Finally, it turns back to her and holds out his good hand.
“Scissors, please.”
Mia pauses, running her thumb up and down the metal. She thinks about changing, staying the same. How she’s always running into things alone.
She drops the scissors into his palm, and Ethan smiles. He ducks behind her- man, this bathroom was much too small for two people- and pushes her forward, so she’s sitting on the edge of the toilet. Then, they hold her hair in its hand and begin to cut it.
It’s Mia’s turn to purse her lips, and she almost turns around to face Ethan. He’s cutting the edges off- sure, that’s something. Certainly is cutting her hair. Instead of saying anything, she fusses with the towel, pouts, stares at the wall.
Finally, she hears him sigh from behind her. “What’s wrong, Mia?” The scissors still, cutting sounds gone quiet in the already soundless room.
She wants to pout a bit more, grumble, and kick at the ground. Instead, she keeps her gaze on the wallpaper. “When I said cut my hair, I meant- cutting it.”
“I am cutting it.”
Mia feels her shoulders come up, the towel slipping to fall around her waist. “Like- drastically. Cut short.” She doesn’t know how short, exactly, but she wants it off. Ethan hums as if tucking her words away into a box to consider.
“Not to- coddle you, or anything, but you’ve- I don’t know, Mia, your hair was kind of a big thing. In the beginning.” She remembers. Remembers the way they’d celebrated when Ethan had run his fingers through her hair and told her he could braid it for her. How she learned how to put it up on her own. How she’d learned to take care of it, stumbling into a world of product she hadn’t had a reason to acquaint herself with before. But for all her complaints about how it got in the way, Ethan knew she loved it- and Ethan loved it too. Running his hands through her hair, calling her pretty- it was one of his favorite past times when they were still in college.
For all her protests, she soaked it up. Loved, in contrast to her sharp things, loved being seen as pretty by Ethan. And there was something dark involved, too, the whispers of not-quite-trampled transphobia.
But she’d gotten over that years ago. It didn’t burn at the edges of her mind anymore. Her hair had faded into the background, all her frantic research becoming her squinting at shampoo brands in the store and picking one that smelled good.
“I’m- we’re not at the beginning anymore, are we?” It seems sharp, sudden, but it comes out of her mouth like a quaking thing.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
So she feels Ethan shift behind her, and cannot watch as they take a fistful of her hair in his hand. Maybe they should do this in front of the mirror. Mia wants to watch each piece of hair fall down, she wants to watch her husband make each cut. And then she takes a step back and thinks about how only scientists want to watch things that badly, and lets it happen.
Ethan is humming, behind her. Or are they vibrating- purring? She doesn’t particularly care to know, to catalog, and so her hands slide into fists as she stares relentlessly into the wall. Their hands brush along her neck as he works, making sure she doesn’t feel the cool metal. And still, she stares at the wall, not daring to blink.
Finally, he hums an approval and scootches out from behind her. It casts her a grin, canines showing in a wary smile, and she feels herself soften. Allows herself to take Ethan’s hands as they pull her up and push her to the mirror.
The mist is cleared enough that she can see herself. The mirror is dirty in the way mirrors get when you wipe at them with anything else but an all-purpose cleaner. Her eyes settle on the dots in the glass, jumping from dot to dot to dot, before finally allowing herself to look at the whole picture.
Ethan is behind her, one hand on her shoulder, giving her a grin. The haircut isn’t the best- it’s ragged at the edges, dipping below her chin and back up again, falling like a wave. One hand comes up to run her finger along the edges.
It’s like she’s twenty again, looking at Ethan over dinner for the first time. His words, timeless, echo in her ears:
You look, in every way, like a scientist.
She wants her hair gone, suddenly. It’s like a switch has flipped. No more scientist, no more tangles, no more waves and rough cuts. Mia turns to see Ethan’s face curled in on itself, eyebrows dipping downward in defeat.
“Not good?” it asks, and she laughs. It’s a manic thing.
“I want it gone.”
They don’t comment, only setting their jaw and nodding. This time, he doesn’t lead her over to the toilet to sit. Instead, they reach for the clippers resting on the sink.
“I’ll start at the bottom and work up,” he mutters, and Mia nods in return.
It is silent, this time, no humming. The clippers switch on and she feels Ethan set them against her skin, and she does not turn away as the hair begins to fall. Gives in to the urge to watch.
The mirror has begun to fog again, condensation not yet evaporated in the bathroom sticking to the surface. Mia feels her hands begin to raise, itching to lean forward to clean off the mirror, but she stays still and lets Ethan methodically raise the clippers over her scalp. She does not blink, and Ethan does not falter, and the buzz of the clippers settles in her skull.
She watches, unmoving, as her hair falls to the floor, brushing against her ankles. They’ll have a hell of a time cleaning this up, Mia thinks, letting her gaze fall. Ethan leans into her back, and she feels it shift and it angles it’s hands to reach the top of her head. Too late, she realizes this might be better sitting down. Well, they’re here now. Too late to back down.
After minutes, Mia finds it in herself to blink. After hours, Ethan finally pulls away, settling the clippers on the sink after turning them off.
Mia is left to stare at herself. For a moment, she’s spell-bound: she’s never been one for close-cut hair, not even as a child. And, for a moment, she is scared; what if she doesn’t recognize herself? What if she never recognizes herself again? What if this failed, and Mia Winters falls back into treating bioweapons like toys to be pitted against the heavens?
Then her gaze collapses back in on itself, and she can see herself again. She can recognize the sharpness of her jaw that never really went away, the lines in her face, the darkness of her eyes. One hand goes up, rubbing against her head. It is scratchy and soft, new and old, and she sees herself again.
Ethan sets his head down on her shoulder, and her gaze shifts. Her husband is deadset on the mirror, tracing her face with his eyes; she has the feeling he’s memorizing her. It reminds her- no. She doesn’t want to think about it. Not about the days after the Baker’s house, not about those days when Ethan was tied down to a hospital bed. This moment is new, untouched- theirs and theirs alone, trauma and monsterhood notwithstanding.
Finally, she begins to cry. It starts small, little sobs in the back of her throat. It soon delves into gasping for breath, watching her face in the mirror twist and redden, her eyes glistening. Ethan hushes her, their good hand running down her arm and traveling across her back. She feels her legs lose strength; Ethan’s molded arm comes up to catch her waist, settling under her chest, and she falls gently to the floor, nestled against their chest.
Curiously, he begins to click and chatter and purr. Some rational part of her brain tells her that they don’t know that they’re doing it; some emotional part of her brain wants it to hold the sounds in her palms and drink them in.
It takes much too long for her to stop crying, and much too long for her to realize that Ethan is whispering platitudes to her. Much too long to realize that her knees hurt, and she is cold and damp, and she is tired.
Taking one last, shuddering breath, she brings an arm up to wipe at her face. Ethan whispers behind her, telling her it’ll be ok.
Mia wants to believe that, wants to take it at face value and hold it in her chest, bundle it in her heart and keep it there. But she still remembers the cages, and the cargo ships, and taking notes on little yellow sticky notes.
How can she truly know that she’s changed?
How can anyone?
In the end, she lets Ethan lead her back to bed. It brings her pajamas; Chris is sitting up in bed, blinking at the two curiously. Mia steals a glance at the clock and finds it is almost four-thirty.
Rose has school tomorrow.
Her hands shake as Ethan pulls her into bed, pushing her against Chris. It is a spot they rarely assume, Ethan preferring to be in the middle of the two. But Chris takes it up without much fuss, wrapping his arms around her, and Ethan settles on the other side.
Mia tries her best not to think of the past few years, but they slip into her dreams anyway.
She wakes in the morning, with her changed hair and scientist mind, and shakes as Ethan shoos her back to bed and promises that he’ll take Rose to school. She shakes, alone in the bed, Chris doing whatever he does during the day. She shakes as she dreams, and Ethan wakes her up, in the end.
“You’re keeping something from me,” they say, softly. She stares, tracing his too-long blonde hair, knowing that something horrible is brewing in her chest. Has always been brewing. Always will be.
“How do I know I’ve changed?” she asks, and Ethan’s face goes far away. It reaches out for her hand, and she grabs it willingly.
“Talk to me about it,” he responds, taking his place next to her under the covers, hands still clasped.
Her heart shakes as she thinks, you have always tried to keep yourself together. You have always tried to deal with things alone. You have never accepted help from others without a sacrifice from yourself.
How is anyone supposed to change like that?
Ethan runs one hand over her shaved head, and Mia begins to tell him about teaching her daughter about multiplication tables.