Isabella cannot reconcile it.

Timid, respectful, obedient, harmless Nathaniel.

And a monster who'd capture Shell off the street and force her home with him and destroy her.

She can't fathom it. She is not a perfect copy of the other Bells. She thinks - they agree, for that matter - that she's turned out gentler and softer than they. Certainly she did not have as fine an education, except perhaps compared to Shell Bell, except in music. But they are still undeniably, essentially versions of her.

She has to know what happened to Voice, to make him Voice and not timid, respectful, obedient, harmless Nathaniel.

So she tells Micaiah where she will be going, and asks Jane to take her there, and she seeks out Voice.

Author: jovahs_heiress	Isabella cannot reconcile it. Timid, respectful, obedient, harmless Nathaniel. And a monster who'd capture Shell off the street and force her home with him and destroy her. She can't fathom it. She is not a perfect copy of the other Bells. She thinks - they agree, for that matter - that she's turned out gentler and softer than they. Certainly she did not have as fine an education, except perhaps compared to Shell Bell, except in music. But they are still undeniably, essentially versions of her. She has to know what happened to Voice, to make him Voice and not timid, respectful, obedient, harmless Nathaniel. So she tells Micaiah where she will be going, and asks Jane to take her there, and she seeks out Voice.
Author: pythbox	Voice is sitting in a dark room, in a hooded cloak, listening to quiet instrumental music. The room is the one with the box in it, but the box is open and empty. There is no one else in the house.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela just stands there for a moment, waiting to be noticed. She isn't sure how to begin.
Author: pythbox	He flinches. "Who are you?" he demands. "Go away! Go away! Don't look at me! Go away!"
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I have some questions for you," says Angela. "I will go away sooner if you choose to answer them."
Author: pythbox	He pulls his hood down over his face and shudders. "Leave me alone."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I need to know why you did what you did, because in my world, there is a child who is a version of you, and I cannot for the life of me see the danger in him, but if it is there I need to know where. When I know that I will leave you alone."
Author: pythbox	"I don't have any answers for you," he says. "Go away. Go away. Go away."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I can be very patient, if I have to," Angela says. "I will go away sooner if you tell me what I need to know."
Author: pythbox	"I don't know what you mean," he says, still shivering.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I might be a little familiar to you, if you looked at me. You had an alternate version of me, kept in your box, for twenty-five years," Angela says. "She is a lot like me. There is someone who is similarly like you, where I am from. And someone similarly like the prisoner who was taken from you recently."
Author: pythbox	"I don't understand any of that," he mutters. He is telling the truth.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela sighs and backs up. "There are many worlds. Some of them have magic and some don't, some of them have creatures other than ordinary mortal humans on them who can nonetheless think and speak and some don't, some differ in other ways. My world is called Samaria. There's another called Atlantis. There's another without a name, that you're from. A girl on Atlantis died, and appeared here, and you took her home with you and kept her for twenty-five years and let her go. Later, you captured someone from the same world as you, and that's the prisoner that the new management took away from you. Between worlds people are often similar - cut from the same mold and then sanded down a little differently. The girl who died on Atlantis and I are alternates of each other in that way. And my husband and your last captive are alternates of each other in that way. And my brother-in-law and you are alternates of each other in this way, but I don't understand, because he's a harmless child and I cannot imagine him growing up to kidnap and torture people who'd done him no harm, and I want to know why this could happen."
Author: pythbox	"I get lonely," he whispers.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela waits for him to go on.
Author: pythbox	"But I can't - I can't let anyone look at me, I can't stand it, don't look at me don't look at me go away," he says desperately, cowering in his chair with his hood still pulled down over his face.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I haven't seen your face," Angela says. "I have no reason to wish to. I'll know what you look like when Nathaniel grows up, anyway. Why can't you let anyone look at you?"
Author: pythbox	"I can't," he says. "I can't I can't I can't."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Have you forgotten why? Or did you never know?"
Author: pythbox	"I just—don't like it," he says miserably. "It's frightening."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Has it always been?"
Author: pythbox	"I don't remember," he mutters. "Go away."
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela considers, then expends a pentagon to offer Voice the same perfect recall that the Bells enjoy. Temporarily.
Author: pythbox	He curls up into a tiny ball in his chair and screams.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela has some sympathy for him. Not very much, but some. "The memories will not last forever," Angela says. "But I need to know, because an innocent little boy is somehow in danger of turning into you, and he is under my protection, and I won't have it."
Author: pythbox	He cannot hear her. Because of the screaming.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She sighs and adds another pentagon to muffle everything, the way Shell Bell's Downside memories are muffled.
Author: pythbox	The screaming continues unabated.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She undoes the perfect recall altogether and drops her head into her hands.
Author: pythbox	The screaming trails off after a few more seconds, but he doesn't uncurl, or speak.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I apologize," she says quietly.
Author: pythbox	He shivers. Which at least suggests he heard and understood her.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"If you have a better idea for how I could understand what happened," Angela says, "I am listening."
Author: pythbox	The little cloak-swaddled ball of Voice shakes its hooded head. "please don't do that again."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I'm not going to."
Author: pythbox	He doesn't seem to have an answer to that.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I didn't know it would trouble you. I have the same modification myself. I ought to have inquired." She sighs. "And I know Shell asked you to stop, asked you to let her go, asked you not to hurt her - and asked you not to hurt her again - and I know you didn't listen to her and it wasn't an innocent mistake. I need to know why, I can't just declare your template inherently evil, not when Nathaniel is ten and harmless and my brother-in-law and I have any hope of steering him into a decent adulthood."
Author: pythbox	"I don't like it when people do things to me," Voice whines. "I don't like it when they look at me or touch me or notice me at all. But I hate being alone all the time."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"You could have kidnapped Shell and kept her in your basement and not tortured her," says Angela in a low voice. "I would still want to know why you did that, but it would not have been so pointlessly cruel."
Author: pythbox	"...you can't quit," he says. "Being a torturer. You couldn't quit, until we were all fired. I was—I didn't understand that, once." He lapses into silence.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela waits.
Author: pythbox	"I had a sentence to carry out, and I - I didn't," he says. "And they punished me for it. They said - if I neglected my duties again - it would be worse. So. I didn't neglect them."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Shell wasn't sentenced to you."
Author: pythbox	"I had to keep in practice," he said. "I was afraid - everyone else would practice sometimes - I didn't get sentences that often - I didn't want to lose my touch."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Why did you become a torturer to begin with?"
Author: pythbox	"So I could make sure no one looked at me," he whimpers.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"You could have stayed home," Angela says.
Author: pythbox	"I do," he says. "I am. Since the - changes."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"We are very proud of the changes," says Angela.
Author: pythbox	The little ball of Voice shrinks back a little in his chair.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I'm nearly done. Do you know how long you have been afraid of being seen?" Angela asks.
Author: pythbox	"No," he says slowly. "I don't remember. A... a long time. I can't remember ever... not."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Even when you were a child, when you were alive?"
Author: pythbox	"I don't remember being alive."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"And I suppose you don't want me to fix that."
Author: pythbox	"nononononononono," he mutters, rocking back and forth.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela considers. "Would you let Jane look at you with her judgesight? She could see what's happened to you, that way. You wouldn't need to go anywhere. You wouldn't even need to uncover your face."
Author: pythbox	"nooooooooooooo," he moans.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela drops her forehead into one of her hands and adjusts her wings. "Perhaps I should go talk to whoever initially judged you and ask them."
Author: pythbox	"Please don't," he says, "please, I don't want them to remember me, I don't want them to think about me—"
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I don't want my brother-in-law to grow up to do terrible things to keep himself comfortable," says Angela. "I don't want to keep him under suspicion that he personally has done nothing to earn just because I don't know. If you have a better idea, I'm listening."
Author: pythbox	He shivers, and says nothing.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela waits.
Author: pythbox	"why don't you ask him questions," Voice says finally. "he's probably less afraid of you."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"He is ten years old. I don't want to explain to him in detail exactly what I'm afraid of."
Author: pythbox	Voice has no answer to that.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"He knows something happened, because he met Shell Bell, and she flinched every time he spoke, and all he wanted to know about it, when I explained without the details, was whether he was going to be punished for what you did to her."
Author: pythbox	"Of course," says Voice, and then he flinches.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"He isn't. Going to be punished for anything you did, I mean."
Author: pythbox	Voice shivers.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Neither are you, for that matter. I'm here for the reasons I stated, not to make you uncomfortable. We don't do punishment for its own sake. That's why you and all the other torturers were dismissed."
Author: pythbox	After a pause, he uncurls a little, although he still keeps his face muffled in his hood and turned away from her.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Your last prisoner was almost certainly your brother," Angela says after a silence. "Since you're from the same world, and since on my world your alt and his alt are brothers."
Author: pythbox	He really does not know how to react to this at all.
Author: jovahs_heiress	It was mostly for informational purposes. "I wish I knew where you began to be so afraid. Nathaniel is timid, but he doesn't seem to want everyone to avoid looking at him or thinking about him. I don't know whether to expect him to have avoided whatever became of you completely, or expect the timidity to turn him into someone more like you."
Author: pythbox	"I don't know," he murmurs, shaking his hooded head. "I don't know."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"And you don't want me to make you able to look for yourself, and you don't want Jane to look, and you don't want me to talk to the judge who already knows because it's possible they've forgotten, and you probably don't want me to go to the world you lived in and have a look at its past as concerns you either."
Author: pythbox	He shakes his head again.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"And there is a reason we arranged for Jane to need permission to judgesight, so I am not going to do any of those things anyway," sighs Angela, "in spite of the fact that you certainly didn't much care what Shell wanted, or what Queenie wanted, or what any of the other people you kept captive wanted." She shakes her head. "And lie detection only detects lies, not mistakes, so I can't just ask you to answer the question various ways until we find the right one."
Author: pythbox	He shivers.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Maybe you need a daemon," muses Angela.
Author: pythbox	"...A what?"
Author: jovahs_heiress	"There's a world one of us is from where people have external souls. Usually shaped like animals. They're part of the people they belong to, I can't imagine anyone being afraid of their own, but they have separate bodies. If you had one she'd be company of sorts."
Author: pythbox	"...that... might be... nice," murmurs Voice.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I could ask Jane to put you briefly in the world where they exist, and then you'd have one," says Angela. She leaves unsaid if I get what I came for.
Author: pythbox	He stays quiet.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I will, if you'll agree to one of the options that tells me what I want to know."
Author: pythbox	"...go to my world," he murmurs eventually. "Go to my world and look there. And, and don't, and please don't come back."
Author: jovahs_heiress	"All right. Just a moment." [Jane, is Amariah's basement empty?]
Author: mind_game	[Yes.]
Author: jovahs_heiress	[Does she mind?]
Author: mind_game	After a moment: [No.]
Author: jovahs_heiress	"She - it will probably be a she, but not necessarily - won't be able to go very far away from you without it hurting, unless you stretch the distance enough to snap," says Angela. "You won't want to let anyone else touch her - other daemons are fine but you're not likely to encounter any here. I'm not sure exactly what it would be like but I'm assured that apart from the most intimate of circumstances it's to be avoided. I can give you the ability to tuck her away inside yourself whenever you like, if you want. Say when and I'll ask Jane to send you to Alethia and back to get her."
Author: pythbox	"...O-okay," he says hesitantly, and he finally straightens up in his chair.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Does that mean you're ready?"
Author: pythbox	He nods.
Author: mind_game	Jane picks him up. Jane puts him down.
Author: pythbox	He arrives plus one smallish brownish bird, who squeaks and hides in the folds of his cloak immediately.
Author: mind_game	Jane picks them up. Jane puts them down.
Author: pythbox	"Thank you," he says, shivering.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"Do you want to be able to tuck her away?"
Author: pythbox	"Yes please," he murmurs. He sounds very like Nathaniel just there.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela has a few evils on her. She can stick it on, and stick the unnamed daemon onto his torching specially in the same motion. "I'll leave you be, now," she says. "Thank you for your help." She turns invisible so she won't alarm anyone at the Janepoint on Voice and Queenie's old world. [Now, please, Jane.]
Author: mind_game	And away she goes.
Author: pythbox	Voice sits down in his chair, and his daemon climbs out of his cloak. He pets her feathers. She cuddles into his hands. "I love you," she murmurs. "I don't," he murmurs back. "I know," she says, and she bumps the top of her head against his fingers, and he pets her some more.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Invisible in Voice's world, Angela teleports to "one hundred miles Londonward of the South Pole" - Amariah suggested it as an unobtrusive place to hang out on Earths, suitable for people who do not get cold - and finds that she doesn't not get cold to quite the same extent as Amariah and requires a bit of hexing to be comfortable. Once that is taken care of, she peers into her copy of Stella's past-watching power, and looks.
Author: pythbox	He is five years old and very like Nathaniel, and his mother is tucking him into bed and kissing his forehead. "Goodnight, Steven," she murmurs. "Goodnight, Mother," he murmurs back, and she turns off the light and walks out of the room.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She skips ahead. She doesn't want to look at more than she has to - not even with his permission, not when he hates the idea - and she can always go back. Where was he when he was - twenty?
Author: pythbox	In college, studying diligently late at night.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She skips ahead in shorter increments, a year at a time.
Author: pythbox	Twenty-one and he's studying again. Twenty-two and he's on a date with a girl about his age, laughing at her jokes, agreeing with all her opinions, hanging on her every word.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela skips ahead in smaller increments still after the girl, because - that might be important. One of Voice's distinguishing characteristics as a torturer is that he never touched his captives. Shell had enough of a sample to know this to be unusual. And yet here is a girl. What is he doing an hour later - two?
Author: pythbox	The date ends. He goes home and curls up in his bed and has the shakes for a while, then goes to sleep.
Author: jovahs_heiress	And the next day? Does the girl reappear?
Author: pythbox	He has a long phone conversation with her, and they go on another date the following week.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela supervises, skipping ahead by half-hours, patient.
Author: pythbox	The date goes fairly well. He flinches whenever she touches him, but he does his best to hide it. Afterward, he curls up in bed and shakes again.
Author: jovahs_heiress	This seems, if perhaps not formative, at least an examplar of the problem. Pastwatching is specific enough that Angela can just look in on the other dates with this person.
Author: pythbox	They follow roughly the same pattern: minimal physical contact, slight awkwardness, and intense stress reactions afterward. From him, anyway. The girl is not similarly affected.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She skips forward to the next encounter a month later.
Author: pythbox	She's started to notice how simultaneously standoffish and obsequious he is. She doesn't appreciate it. They argue.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela listens in.
Author: pythbox	"You're cute, but you're not really anything else." What he is is trembling. He hides his face in his hands. "And you're so sensitive! About the littlest things! Really, I don't... I don't think we can make this work." "Please," he mumbles, "I thought we were..." "Were," she says. "Yeah. Not anymore." He trembles some more. She stands watching him for another few seconds, then murmurs, "Bye," and leaves. He sleeps very badly that night.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Does he ever see her again? (Perhaps to kidnap her and keep her in his basement?)
Author: pythbox	They run into each other once a few months later. It is awkward. Then, nothing.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela skips forward another year.
Author: pythbox	He is on the phone with his mother, exchanging meaningless pleasantries in subdued tones.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Skipping by amounts of time is going to take a lot of trial and error to yield anything interesting. When is the next time he touches someone?
Author: pythbox	One accidental brush with a stranger on a subway train, that leaves him nervous and unhappy for almost an hour. One handshake with someone who seems to be a friend, if not a close one - that time he doesn't seem upset about it afterward at all. The time after that, he's standing outside an apartment building late at night, kissing a woman on the cheek and then watching to make sure she gets inside safely. He doesn't seem upset about that one, either.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela carries on with this skipping criterion.
Author: pythbox	There are several more encounters with this girlfriend. Many of them involve kisses. Sometimes he cries afterward, or has insomnia, or (in one memorable instance) throws up. But these reactions are not the norm. Just one problem: as their relationship progresses, she starts talking about how he should be on better terms with his parents. Apparently one phone call to his mother roughly once a month doesn't cut it. She wants to meet them, and she thinks he should see them more. He doesn't seem able or willing to give her any reasons behind his continued, faltering, hesitant refusals.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela does not think he should be on better terms with his parents. But this has already happened, and her input would likely not be called for even if these events were currently in progress. On and on...
Author: pythbox	And on and on. In one argument, she slaps him. He flinches away and then leaves almost immediately. The stress reaction that night is particularly intense. Most of the contact after that is initiated by his girlfriend, not him. But despite increasing tensions, they don't break up. They do keep arguing. About increasingly trivial things. Sometimes his girlfriend uses mild physical force, a slap or a shove, and that always ends the disagreement in her favour. As this happens more and more, he becomes more and more frightened and submissive in her presence.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Oh, that's not good, that's not good at all.
Author: pythbox	It very much isn't. They persist in this unhappy equilibrium for a while. And then one day they argue again, and she hits him again, and he hits back. There is a lot of screaming, and a lot of crying, and much shoving and slapping from both sides, and then his girlfriend's head hits the corner of the granite countertop and there is a lot of blood. He calms down after that. He doesn't seem to have a problem touching her once she's dead. He touches her hands, her lips; he cries into her hair and holds her and tells her he's sorry, over and over, he's sorry he's sorry he's sorry sorry sorry sorry until the word dissolves into quiet sobs.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela bites her lip and draws in a sharp breath. She goes forward, watching him - recover? Does he do that, this time?
Author: pythbox	...In a sense, yes. The death of his girlfriend is made to quietly go away, with the judicious application of money and lies. He returns to the normal rhythms of his life; he graduates from school and becomes a lawyer; he moves to a better apartment. He is more careful than ever not to touch anyone. But he... looks at them, sometimes. Longingly.
Author: jovahs_heiress	When does he next touch someone...?
Author: pythbox	Outside a cafe, he kisses a woman on the cheek and offers to walk her home. He walks with her. She does not get home.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Oh dear. She cannot retroactively read his mind, but what can she tell about why he'd do this?
Author: pythbox	He seems very pleased with himself afterward. Happy. Secure. A little nervous, but that passes. And he is less nervous when he does it again. And again.
Author: jovahs_heiress	Angela watches a bit more. But she's not sure how much more she can stand.
Author: pythbox	There is not so very much more of it. He is found out; he tries to evade capture; he fails; he is killed in the process.
Author: jovahs_heiress	[Take me home now, please, Jane.] And she is home, and she wants her Micaiah, where is he?
Author: yovahs_kisses	He is in their bed, snuggling a blanket!
Author: jovahs_heiress	He should be snuggling his wife instead.
Author: yovahs_kisses	He is now snuggling his wife.
Author: jovahs_heiress	She is snuggling back. "I went to visit Voice," she murmurs.
Author: yovahs_kisses	He kisses her forehead. "What happened, my angel?"
Author: jovahs_heiress	"A great many things, a long time ago. I - I think Nathaniel will be fine. Voice was never taken from his parents, and there was a long, slow descent into - problems, after that." Pause. "I gave Voice a daemon, to keep him company, in exchange for his consent that I look at his past on his world."
Author: yovahs_kisses	... He snuggles her some more.
Author: jovahs_heiress	"I think Nathaniel will be fine," she repeats. "But I want to make sure we are seeing him regularly. To be sure that nothing is going quietly wrong."
Author: yovahs_kisses	"All right," he says, curling up close and kissing her forehead again.
Author: jovahs_heiress	That seems to be all there is to say, unless Micaiah wants details. But further cuddling is in order. Angela settles her top wing over them and closes her eyes and sighs.
Author: yovahs_kisses	Further cuddling is definitely in order.