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]

"Ki...ind of," she says. "I'm Aedyt. —Which you know already, because nametags."

[self_composed]

"Yeah. I'm gonna guess - Kerron's little sister? What'd you want to talk about?"

[pumpkin_pie]

"Kerron's little sister," she agrees. "The Joker's daughter. Who grew up on stories of how he met Dad, but never actually talked to you, and - I don't know, I just wanted to... see what you're like, I guess?"

[self_composed]

"I'm an approximately prototypical Bell," shrugs Stella. "Not far off from Golden except for vampire stuff."

[pumpkin_pie]

"I've never actually talked to her majesty either," says Aedyt.

[self_composed]

"Really? Huh. Okay."

[pumpkin_pie]

"She's not very sociable without her princess. Is what I'm told, anyway, the princess has been gone longer than I've been alive, so I've never seen her majesty any other way."

[self_composed]

"Well, now she's got her kid back, that should help."

[pumpkin_pie]

"I guess."

[self_composed]

"Why me, with a dozen of us running around? Or - no, on reflection that's obvious, I'm the one who happened to run into your mum before we knew much about the template and put him on an asteroid."

[pumpkin_pie]

"Yes," says Aedyt. "Yeah, that's - yeah."

[self_composed]

"You want me to explain myself? I think my reasoning's pretty well known, but maybe you haven't happened to hear it."

[pumpkin_pie]

"I've heard Mum's version," says Aedyt. "I think I want yours."

[self_composed]

"What's his version?" inquires Stella.

[pumpkin_pie]

"He never says why exactly, he just says he doesn't blame you and lets me guess the rest."

[self_composed]

"Hmm." Stella taps her foot. "Okay - keep in mind that at this time all I knew about alts was that Golden existed. Me and Golden have the exact same childhood except that some of her father's old friends are werewolfish and mine has a different set - other than that there are no discrepancies. The only difference was, she moved to Forks and she found vampires. I moved to Forks and found wishcoins. It's a standard setup - Pattern moves to Forks and finds a killer van, Aurora moves to Forks and finds a Device, Juliet has Sunnydale instead but she moved at the same time for the same reasons and found vampires of a different sort. And then there's the variants, but I didn't know any of that, I only knew there was me, and there was Golden." She sighs. "And there was Alice - and there was the Joker."

[pumpkin_pie]

Aedyt nods.

[self_composed]

"And I liked Golden from the start. We get each other. The Joker, on the other hand, was an unpleasant surprise. Keep in mind that at this time I also didn't know about Downside. And if I had, it might not have helped much, because we hadn't revamped it yet and there were no plans in place to do so. To the very best of my knowledge at that time, killing someone was condemning them to permanent oblivion. I didn't know that a bit later we'd find lots of other Bells, Pattern among them, and take over the afterlife, and have Jane, and that Pattern would be able to set up a program to resurrect every single person your mum ever killed, among others. To the very best of my knowledge, I was sitting at a table with someone who - if only he'd had a slightly different history - could have been my boyfriend, or just like him anyway. And this person had killed a bunch of people and had utterly no intention of stopping, because he wanted a certain someone's attention."

[pumpkin_pie]

"That must've sucked," she says sympathetically.

[self_composed]

"Yeah. I was not thrilled. But he was in another world, I didn't even have mine under control, and, you know what, there are lots of murderers running around, I don't spend my time individually bringing them each to justice. He's not Hitler, he's not even a prerevolutionary Aurum vampire, he's a theatrical terrorist. So," she shrugs, "I figured he was not my priority. I couldn't get into his world anyway, right, I might as well be sociable as long as we were hanging out. I introduced him to Alice." She pauses. "How G-rated do you need this story?"

[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.