self_composed | plotting to unnerve her

This time it's slow. All of it. The knife, his hand on the back of Alice's neck, his weight pressing Alice into the bed, holding him in place.

This time, it's going to last.

"I'm surprised the two of you are even here at the same time, then," Bella says, staring into the middle distance glazedly as all her attention is on another channel of vision.

"Me too," says Roberta.

As for what's going on in Alice's head: he realizes, for the first time in a while (at least consciously), that Bella is still reading him. On reflection, he's okay with that, although he worries that she won't like what she's about to see. And he's sorry he told her to fuck off, but he's not taking down his busy message; it fucks with his head when she interrupts him in the middle of this stuff, and two people fucking with his head at the same time - only one of whom knows what they are doing, because Bella might be able to read his mind but she's never lived in it - is bound to end badly.

"You still here, sweetie?" the Joker murmurs.

"Well, he's sorry for having told me to fuck off, at least, but he still emphatically doesn't care to be interrupted," Bella sighs.

"Do you care about that?" asks Roberta, with no knowledge of whose questions she is echoing.

"Yeah," Alice breathes.

"Good," says the Joker.

There's blood all over everything, in his mouth, on his hands, soaking the mattress under both of them. He holds Alice down and slowly, slowly—

"Ohhhh, that hurts," says Alice. And it does, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Not now, not this. For what it is, it's perfect.

"It's his - self. I don't own him," Bella says. "Bleah. I really wish I didn't feel obliged to supervise this, though."

"I know it does, sweetie," says the Joker. "And that's how you like it. Mm?"

"I'm... not going to advise anyone to take their eyes off the Joker," says Roberta. "Unless he wants you to be watching him. And usually not even then."

Alice hums agreement, even smiles—but there's a part of him that feels wrong for it.

Bella squirms. "I don't know if he suspects I'm reading Alice, but he should. They haven't discussed it though."

"Maybe you should stop," frowns Roberta.

"Oh, honey," the Joker says softly. "You're all fucked up inside, ain'tcha. I know the feeling."

"Shut up and fuck me," Alice growls. Nothing has prepared him for the Joker being sweet; it catches him off-guard every time.

"Do you think so?" Bella asks, rubbing at her temple with the first two fingers of one hand. "Alice's power I mentioned - it prevents mental tampering in addition to whatever crap it's pulling right now. If Alice winds up - broken - screwed up more than he started out - more like the Joker - then - I can't fix him. Not even with magic. Native powers trump wishes."

"Then maybe you can't help him," says Roberta, "but you can at least make sure the Joker doesn't get the satisfaction of messing with your head like this. I guarantee you he means to."

He laughs, and does as Alice asks him to.

Slowly.

"I'm squicked, and I'm worried, but squick won't hurt me and worry would definitely not go away if I didn't even know what was going on."

"Okay," Roberta says doubtfully.

Somewhere between the pain and the trauma and what anyone else might be able to identify as humiliation, Alice is achieving something weirdly like bliss. It's almost like what he felt the first time he made stars, but it doesn't take him over the same way.

Bella's poking at the emotion-blob tentatively, occasionally, because while they form their own coherent visual language, she doesn't fully know how to read them yet. She puts up with it for brief flashes. She doesn't like it. It... tastes different, from when he made stars.

When she first helped him make stars, he told her - that if there were mixed feelings - and she couldn't get a good answer out of him - that she should stop. And he's arranged not to produce answers for her.

He doesn't have a setup like that with the Joker. She wouldn't trust the Joker to stick to one if he did.

If it gets any worse than it did before - if it gets even that bad, and the Joker doesn't recalibrate and back off as before - she's invoking this as her justification for teleporting Roberta upstairs.

"When this is over with," Bella says, "I might ask you to hold the door for me so I can put some amenities and a person on an asteroid."

"Sure," says Roberta. "As long as you don't let the Joker—or, no offense, your boyfriend—get a good look at my face. Even if I'm never going to see either of them again, I don't want this identity involved."

The affect auras on Alice's thoughts right now are a collective mess. Most of his sensory experience gets a murky grey-white-grey with threads of black; some things, like his continued awareness of the Joker as present and causing all this, get snowy white.

He does want to be here, though. He hasn't stopped knowing that. He wants to be here, doing this, feeling like this. Even though it's awful; partly, in fact, because it's awful.

As long as he continues unambiguously wanting to be there Bella is sitting tight. Even if it makes her want to cry.

"I can do that," Bella says. "Would you rather be in a bat suit right now? Or, you know, would you rather duck into the bathroom and come out in one? Does this place even have a bathroom?"

"It's been known to," says Roberta. "But I think I'll sit tight for now. The suit draws attention, and I don't want any more attention than I've got."

"Okay."

Bella sits. And waits.

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