plotting to unnerve her

[self_composed]

Bella finds Milliways in the moon palace instead of one of her balconies.

"Huh," she says aloud.

Then, to Alice, Libby, Elena, and Mary, and Lazarus except he autoreplies with a busy message, [Hey folks, Moonstone Palace grew a bar that I don't remember putting in, come check it out.]

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

"Mad about what?"

[manofmyword]

"Guess."

[self_composed]

A triangle suffices to wake him. Bella's sitting on the roof of his new little house. "Well?"

[manofmyword]

"Yep," he says, and leaves it at that.

[self_composed]

"Grand. If you do get bored, your food replicator is more flexible than the standard model, it'll make you hemlock or whatever - it's voice operated. The glowy air is controlled by thought. You should be able to keep occupied. Ask for avocados and grow more from the pits, build a castle out of your dishes, whatever." She shrugs. "And there's nobody for you to hurt up here. Questions? Comments?"

[manofmyword]

"If you don't wanna talk about why you're mad at me, then nope."

[self_composed]

Bella doesn't even say goodbye. She flits back down to Earth, to where Roberta's door is.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," she says, sidling back in grimly. "He's alive, by the way."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...Thank you," is what Roberta settles on after a moment.

[self_composed]

"Thank Milliways. It showed up for him when I put him to sleep, or I'd have been another few minutes watching him swallow arsenic or something."

[edgeofyourseat]

She glances at the door, but doesn't comment.

[self_composed]

Bella goes back to the bar. Her milkshake is long gone. She wants hot cider now, and when it arrives she holds it in both hands, staring into the steam.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice is still upstairs, curled up alone in the Joker's bed, playing with that knife.

After a few minutes, he tries, [Bella?]

[self_composed]

[Mm?] Bella says, sipping cider.

[edgeofyourseat]

He relaxes a little when she reads him, but his thoughts are still chasing themselves in circles.

After a few seconds, he manages to straighten himself out enough to ask, [What're you mad at him for?]

[self_composed]

[I didn't strand him because I was mad. I'm pretty sure that at least one of his motives for what he did with you was to screw with me. And that put me in a bad mood - it would've even if he hadn't successfully frightened me. But I told him before you and he even laid eyes on each other that if I ever found myself in his world, he was getting put on an asteroid.] She sips. [It's a nice asteroid, and I stuck to what I said I would do regarding checking for Milliways.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Well, that helps. A little.

But:

[So that's where you were going when you said you wanted to visit somebody's world for a bit?]

[self_composed]

[Yeah. I met someone from his. She is of the opinion that the asteroid is a good place for him, and honestly I don't think too many people who knew he existed would disagree. He really fucked around with that city, Alice, and they don't have the means to contain him without outside help.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[There a reason you didn't mention that?]

[self_composed]

[I would've if if you'd asked, but as long as you didn't, I thought it would be better to have the argument after the fact.]

[edgeofyourseat]

If he'd known that was going to be the answer, he would've asked.

[I don't like that,] he says. [The thing where you know I'm gonna get mad if you do something, so you don't tell me until you've already done it. I mean, if I did that you'd flip your shit, right?]

Granted, that's because the category of things Bella would get mad about Alice doing is full of things that would, intrinsically, make her flip her shit. But... that's the kind of stuff Bella gets mad about. The kind of stuff Alice gets mad about is a much smaller group, for one thing, and for another thing it's harder to define, full of really specific situations like stranding his alternate universe double on an asteroid without telling him first so he could say goodbye in case the other him got lonely and killed himself. For example.

[self_composed]

[I didn't want to be in a situation where I felt like I had to choose between making you upset and letting people die in close enough proximity that it'd feel like a choice to me. I didn't want you to warn him in such a way that he might've taken his extra minute and intercepted my helper, or fucked around with your head that little bit more that he didn't happen to do this time, or gotten out the door first and through the weirdness of Milliways time gotten his shrink to give him a radio through which he could talk Earth-based space programs into coming and picking him up, or just talk people into playing his kind of jokes on each other. I didn't want anything to go wrong, because if something went wrong, people might have died.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Didn't happen to. Didn't happen to. Didn't happen to.

Now he remembers what they were arguing about before.

[Okay, well, you chose, and I'm upset,] he says. And spends a couple of squares to clean the room up and get dressed, and teleports to the front door, and leaves through it.

[self_composed]

Yeah.

"It was nice meeting you," Bella tells Roberta, drinking her cider fast enough to burn and feeling the faint tingle as the damage heals.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Um... you too," she says.

[self_composed]

Bella goes back to her moon palace.

She looks for Alice, and checks the time.

It's almost Christmas.

She supposes that's as good an excuse as any to wait until he calms down before giving him his present.