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]

Alice sighs.

He misses the other him. Even though the other him is nasty.

[self_composed]

"Maybe we'll find a nicer one who met a me or some reasonable facsimile early on," Bella says. "Or otherwise turned out better. Anyway. Without that particular test, is there anything else you know, Lazarus?"

[nonbird]

"No..." he says slowly. "No, I don't think so. No."

[self_composed]

"So... Alice's power wants Alice to be Alice, and while this most obviously extends to defending against mental tampering it will also block any attempts to remove him from experiences that, in its estimation, are making him Alicier," Bella says. "And we don't know what Alicier means exactly."

[nonbird]

"We don't," he says, gesturing between himself and Bella. "Or if I do, I can't explain it usefully." He points at Alice. "You should have no such trouble."

[edgeofyourseat]

"...I guess," he says. "I mean, if it wants me to be me, it makes sense that it wouldn't want me taken away from... me."

There's more to it than that, but the more resists words.

[self_composed]

Bella peers at it to see if she can make any wordless sense of it.

[edgeofyourseat]

It goes something like this:

What the Joker was doing—what they were doing, together—was helping Alice understand himself better and accept himself more. It was important to him to do it, not just because he wanted to have that experience, but because he wanted to learn from it. Well, 'learn' might not be the best word. Try: he wanted to change in the ways that that experience made him change.

Apparently, his power was backing him on that.

[self_composed]

Bella chews on her lip. "How smart and/or prognosticatory is this power? Is it liable to start steering him towards things instead of just resisting attempts to remove him from things?" [I'm planning on turning him into a vampire,] Bella adds privately to Lazarus, [for Christmas, it's a surprise - sometimes vampires have magical improvements after they turn. So if it doesn't do this now but that looks like a way it could change...]

[nonbird]

"...Well, it can't do what Alice doesn't or wouldn't want it to. Can't or won't, it's the same thing. So... that might be reassuring?"

[self_composed]

"Some," Bella acknowledges.

[nonbird]

"Okay."

[It doesn't look to me like this power wants to change what it can do,] he says. [But I wouldn't have said it would protect experiences he was having, either, and then it did.]

[self_composed]

[Well, if it wants to do what he wants, then him being a vampire can only improve it. I ran the idea by my alt's precog-sister and precog-sister says that his magical vampire mate bond thing will stabilize on me, no problem.]

[nonbird]

[I wonder what that will look like.]

[self_composed]

[I doubt he'd mind you watching. It'll happen three days after I start the process. However, the entire thing is also going to hurt in ways human beings don't even know how to hurt, so whether you'd want to be around...]

[nonbird]

He blushes faintly.

[edgeofyourseat]

"You're talking about me," Alice accuses.

[self_composed]

"We're talking about your Christmas present," Bella says, floating off the floor a couple inches to kiss his temple. "It has some magically interesting properties."

[edgeofyourseat]

"And it makes Lazarus get all blushy," he says. "I'm gonna like it, aren't I."

[self_composed]

"I rather think so."

[edgeofyourseat]

He beams and kisses her.

[self_composed]

Bella is quite pleased with this development!

[ignorable]

Kolya becomes apparent juuuuust long enough to laugh at them.

[nonbird]

Lazarus's blush kicks up a few notches, to catch up with all the blushing he didn't do because he didn't know Kolya could hear that entire conversation.

[self_composed]

Bella laughs hard enough that she can't even go on kissing Alice anymore. And she doesn't stop when he fades out, either, because she just doesn't have that much self-control.