repealing

[mind_game]

Time has passed.

Inconsistently.

Jane's network has kept all the Bells' worlds - and every other world with a Janepoint stuck in due to its being attached to Downside - in temporal sync, but when Jane spluttered for just a moment, that was shot to hell.

Peace lost three seconds, because it was where Aegis torched; after that process was complete, Jane was there again. And as soon as a door between Peace and Milliways appeared, she could sync to her ansible hub in the Belltower and, from there, to everywhere else.

Atlantis and Sunshine each stand at about a minute apiece: Shell Bell's aura and Juliet's local copy of Jarvis both enabled them to get to Milliways immediately, pausing their homeworlds as standard for occasions when someone walks into the bar. Shell Bell's the one who connected Peace.

Everyone else was running on luck.

Luckiest is Rainbow, which lost only five hours.

Next is Alethia; in spite of Sherlock's mishap, it's fared reasonably well, spending only six weeks isolated.

Syntropy's just a little worse - seven weeks.

Origin waited two months.

Eos waited three.

Thilanushinyel, ten.

Everyone else is out a decade at least. Samaria's ten years, almost ten and a half.

Aurum is out eleven.

Rêverie has been separated for sixteen years.

All the Bells - and Elspeth, who was stuck in Downside for a day and a half on her end and whose mother was very upset - are collected in the Belltower, as are two Bell-attached Sherlocks who happened to be along for the ride. They all memorize this list of numbers. Aegis replaces her earpiece. And then they all go home to notify their loved ones and staff that there's a party cooking in the Belltower.

(Shell Bell, who has no particular cause on her own account to be distressed, sends her Sherlock to invite Tony in while she refits the Belltower to suit a party of a peal of Bells and their larger-than-last-encountered families and circles of friends.)

Comments

[pumpkin_pie]

"I am aware that my mother has had sex," she says dryly.

[self_composed]

"Well," says Stella, "I don't know if you know this, but several Bells with Jokers read our respective Jokers' minds. I'm one of those. And when my boyfriend went upstairs with his scary murderous committed-to-a-mental-institution alt, I figured, so what if I'm weirded out, I need to know what's going on. And then guess who sits next to me at the bar while I'm staring into my beverage hoping to hell that I get my Alice back in one psychologically unharmed piece? Because as I've mentioned - this was all I knew about the template. I didn't know he'd be fine. I didn't know the Joker would take better care of him than he did any of his happily admitted-to murder victims. Guess who sits next to me."

[pumpkin_pie]

"...Batsy," says Aedyt. "Batsy sits next to you. Because of course she does."

[self_composed]

"Yeah. Out of costume, at the time, so I didn't know that it was her. But we start talking, and I explain why I am looking at my beverage in this way, and what do you know, my dining companion is from the Joker's world. She does not have anything reassuring to say. So now what I know about the template is that there's my boyfriend, and there's the Joker, and what I know about the Joker is not good and corroborated by another source who really does not like him."

[pumpkin_pie]

She nods again.

[self_composed]

"And then Alice starts having traumatic flashbacks and he puts up a busy message when I try to talk to him and I discover that I cannot yoink him out of that room with any coin I have on me."

[pumpkin_pie]

"Ouch," she murmurs.

[self_composed]

"Yeah. At that point, your mom was officially my problem, officially had my attention, relatively smalltime otherworldly terrorist or not. And I'd already told him, if I ever found myself in his world, I would put him on an asteroid." She sighs. "And who should be sitting next to me but someone who could door me to his world and thought that sounded like a fine idea?"

[pumpkin_pie]

"Yeah," says Aedyt.

[self_composed]

"So she held the door, I terraformed an asteroid, I put the Joker on it, I woke him up, I put him back to sleep, I woke him up again, he said he got to Milliways and therefore did not require me to hang around supervising the consumption of hemlock, I left. Then I had a fight with Alice because I didn't warn him first, but that's probably not the part that interests you."

[pumpkin_pie]

"Well, I haven't met Alice, either," she says. "Just heard about him. Mum was going to show me off to the whole deck, but—" she waves vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

[self_composed]

"Yeah, that happens," says Stella. "They'll emerge eventually. Probably. They were all out a minute ago determining what to do with the baby one, but then they went back up again."

[pumpkin_pie]

"...There's a baby one?"

[self_composed]

"One of the worlds that got away from Jane produced a suspiciously familiar name born to a suspiciously familiar set of parents," says Stella. "We talked about it, Elspeth kidnapped him and is going to bring him up."

[pumpkin_pie]

"From what I've heard about Mum's childhood - good call," she says. "Why the princess?"

[self_composed]

"She produced some truth-out-of-nowhere declaring her a good idea and none of the Jokers contradicted her, pretty much."

[pumpkin_pie]

"Well, that makes about as much sense as I expected it to."

[self_composed]

"I mean, it does make sense. It would be weird for a Bell to raise him, weirder still for another Joker to do it, nobody else was lining up."

[pumpkin_pie]

"True."

[self_composed]

"I imagine little Harley Andrea will grow up in Aurum. You could probably be involved in his childhood without much weirdness later."

[pumpkin_pie]

"Also true!"

[self_composed]

"Anyway, now you have my side of the story you wanted. What do you think?"

[pumpkin_pie]

"I'm not sure I think anything," says Aedyt. "I mean, for one thing, if you hadn't done it my parents might never have met, so... thanks? In a weird way? But also - thanks. For telling me your side."

[self_composed]

"You're welcome," says Stella.

[pumpkin_pie]

She smiles tentatively.