Author: self_composed | Alice eventually goes home for the evening.
Bella goes up and sits in her room.
She has five hexes.
Five.
That's rather a lot of hexes.
She gets out her notebook, with the lists, and she makes some wishes.
And then she goes to bed, grinning.
In the morning it will be time to make plans. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | After Alice goes home, he conjures a knife in the shower and has some fun.
The next morning, Theo drives him to school as usual. As usual, he doesn't go to his first class.
As is sometimes usual, he heads out into town instead.
And for the first time, he has a very specific destination in mind.
When he rings Bella's doorbell, his necklace contains two hexes, nine pentagons, and a lot of squares and triangles, of which four triangles and a square are still Elias Frobisher's opal-hematite and the rest are Alice's obsidian. |
Author: self_composed | Bella answers the door.
But from Alice's point of view, it just swings open of its own accord.
She even manages to stifle the giggling. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He looks puzzled for a moment.
Then he cracks up. |
Author: self_composed | "I'm invisible!" exclaims Bella in a stage whisper. "Come on in." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "You're awesome," he says, stepping inside. |
Author: self_composed | "I can also fly!" Bella says. She shuts the door and turns visible again; no one will be able to see her through the curtains. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Ooh, that sounds fun," he says. "I want that one." |
Author: self_composed | "Permission granted," says Bella lightly. "And I got the regeneration power too, but haven't tested it on anything more than a scratch yet - it's just in case I get hit by another freaking car." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | One of his hexes disappears. He grins at her.
"You wanna figure out the mind-reading thing now?" |
Author: self_composed | "Sure, but that one requires thought beforehand," Bella says with a deliberately pompous wag of her finger. "I could probably get the ability to read minds in full generality with one hex, and I have to figure out if I want to be able to do that." Pause. "In one step instead of two, anyway. Wow, I had better be careful I don't become corrupt. If I do I'll be lousy at ruling the world." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I will still love you if you become an evil dictator," Alice offers. |
Author: self_composed | "Yes, yes, but that is precisely why I can't use your approval as a barometer here," laughs Bella. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay, so use yours." |
Author: self_composed | "Hence the guarding against corruption thing. I don't want the set-of-things-I-approve-of to change a lot over time." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay," he repeats cheerfully. |
Author: self_composed | "Pancakes?" Bella says. "I made a bunch and some are keeping warm in the oven." She gestures, and sits herself down at the kitchen table. "I already ate. Hmmm. Mindreading on arbitrary targets. Kinda sketchy. I can do it in two steps anyway at any time as long as I have a hex on me. But it will feel more available if it's a power I already have and I don't have to spend any coins to do it." She's just narrating as she writes. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Pancakes!"
He fetches himself some and sits down next to her.
"Seems to me if you're worried about using it when you don't wanna, it's easier not to if you can't yet," he comments. "And hexes just got a lot cheaper." |
Author: self_composed | "Mm-hm. So you, my font of hexes, clearly have no objection to me spending one just to be able to read your mind. I guess that settles it." She turns to a new page of the notebook. "Now I have to determine exactly how I want this power to work." She flips a couple pages back, to where she did exactly that sort of reasoning about the invisibility, flight, and regeneration, and scans them for a template. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Font of hexes. Her font of hexes. Alice grins.
"I think I'd like it if I could tell when you were," he offers as relevant data. |
Author: self_composed | Bella writes that down. "Fair enough. In the form of a pleasant mental chime when I start and some corresponding alert when I stop, or just some kind of general sensation when it's happening?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He laughs.
"Second one's more like it." |
Author: self_composed | "Preferences on manner of sensation?" Bella inquires. She's meanwhile writing down possible forms she could receive thoughts in. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Dunno," he says, shrugging. "Not something too distracting, but something I can't mistake for anything else. So I'll know, you know?" |
Author: self_composed | Bella shrugs and writes down various existing senses plus "novel input?" on that list. "The advantage of this, I suppose, is that if I ever want general mindreading powers, I can arrange for them to work differently, without notifying anybody. So it makes sense to do this separately even if I do later decide I want to be able to spy on everybody." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice grins.
"Awesome."
Om nom pancakes! |
Author: self_composed | Write-write-write. "Help yourself to as many of those as you want, and let me know when you're all done so I can freeze the rest." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay!"
Mmmmpancakes oh hey.
"Djwff," he says with his mouth full; swallows; tries again. "D'you wanna give yourself a perfect memory? Wonder if that'd be a hex or a pentagon." |
Author: self_composed | Bella stops, and looks at her notebook.
"Huh," she says. "I wouldn't need these anymore." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Is what I was thinkin'," Alice agrees. |
Author: self_composed | Bella makes another list - she doesn't want to miss something and wind up with just, say, a photographic memory - but this is a quick one.
"Not a pentagon," she says after a moment. And then, "Hex did it." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Cool," Alice says sunnily.
He helped! |
Author: self_composed | Bella shuts her notebook, leans back, and thinks. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice eats his pancakes. |
Author: self_composed | "Are you sure you don't have a preference on what it should feel like to have your mind read? 'Cause you're the one who has to live with it," Bella says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...You could test things out with squares," he suggests. "Just wish for me to feel such-and-such for a bit and I'll tell you if I like it. Because even if I thought of something I thought I'd like and told you about it, you might not wish for it exactly the way I thought it and I might not think it exactly the way it'd end up." |
Author: self_composed | "Makes sense." She starts out with a stereotypical sensation of 'being watched', which has no direct analogue but is very distinctive. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...hmm," says Alice. "It's okay, I guess. Dunno if I want it to be the one." |
Author: self_composed | She shrugs and tries the sensation of being patted on the head. "Except," it occurs to her, "that might be confusing if I actually pat you on the head." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Oh my god, that's adorable," he says, "and also no way, because yes." |
Author: self_composed | Bella bumps it up a level of abstraction: like 'being watched', but 'being touched' instead - noplace in particular, no particular way. "Hm?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Ooh," says Alice. He wriggles a little in his seat, as though trying to find the point of contact, and then settles. "Yeah. That. That's nice. I like that." |
Author: self_composed | "Enough that we shouldn't spend a few more squares and minutes trying other ideas?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "You can if you want, but I like it," he says. "Up to you if you wanna try to find something I'll like more." |
Author: self_composed | She shrugs. "We'll go with this one. I bet I can modify it later with a pentagon at the most, if I have a better idea."
She moves on to the next parameter in her now-purely-mental list, which is how all this will feel to her. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "'Kay," he says contentedly. |
Author: self_composed | "What are your thoughts like?" Bella asks. "Verbal, visual...?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Not usually," he says. "Well, visual sometimes, like when I'm drawing. And verbal sometimes too, I guess. But mostly they're just," he makes an open-handed gesture of helplessness in the face of inadequate vocabulary, "thoughts." |
Author: self_composed | "I'm leaning towards a visual channel - superimposed on my peripheral vision maybe - but if your thoughts aren't going to readily translate into words or pictures that could be a problem. Hmm." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, not really," he says. "Like, when I remember something I remember all of it, not just what it looked like." |
Author: self_composed | Bella's composing multidimensional charts in her brain now. She likes her new memory. "This is starting to feel like what I imagine designing a complicated new computer program would be like," she says. As an afterthought, she expends a pentagon on programming skills. They might help. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Whatcha got so far?" he wonders. |
Author: self_composed | "The reason I don't want to read your thoughts in 'thought form', so to speak, is that I think it might get confusing - my memory's not going to fool me anymore, but thinking someone else's thoughts directly still might. So I want to have a basic text channel to just read, with pictures where pictures go - but that won't cover everything. So now I'm inventing symbols to stand in for various things that text and pictures might fail to handle, and if I'm curious about one I want to be able to mentally poke it and open it up, and attaching that opening to a unique action should make it clear that the thought behind the symbol is yours and not mine. I'll probably want to be able to open up words or phrases, and the pictures, too, for more detail - the text and images are just a first pass." She tilts her head. "Do you want any more fine detail on your end - to know what I'm opening up and what I'm just skimming?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure, might as well," he says. "That'll be fun." |
Author: self_composed | "Okay. I guess the obvious way to communicate that is just with a plain intensification of the regular signal, when I poke something." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure!" |
Author: self_composed | "I guess the trouble with this plan boils down to my cognitive speed." She hmmms thoughtfully. "I wonder if there are any disadvantages to just ramping that up as fast as a hex'll take it." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "You will get bored as shit," Alice predicts. |
Author: self_composed | "Possible. Maybe if I make it at-will like the invisibility, or suppressible like the regeneration. Or maybe I should just save it till I start seriously working towards taking over the world." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice beams a little.
"I love it when you talk," his tongue touches his lips, "megalomaniacal." |
Author: self_composed | Bella laughs. "What else would one do with wish powers, really, I don't know what Elias and his friends were thinking." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Maybe they were all like me," he suggests, tucking his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair, "and just wanted to screw around with magic a little. Maybe they were dabblers." |
Author: self_composed | "Or maybe they got into preposterous arms races with each other, spending all their coins protecting the rest of their coins against each other?" Bella suggested. "Or they were wussier than me, and didn't have friends like you... and could do little triangle tricks but nothing serious."
She shrugs, and changes the subject back. "I think cognitive speedup is probably kosher with corresponding physical speedup... if and only if we get our internet upgraded." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Also they had never heard of Wolverine," he contributes. "Huh. Why not just get an Internet connection in your brain too? There's gotta be a superpower for that." |
Author: self_composed | "I'll think about that one," Bella says. "I'm not sure about that. It might mess with the servers somehow - I mean, how would I assign my head an IP address?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Not a clue. I'm done raiding your pancakes, by the way."
A single, lonely pancake remains. |
Author: self_composed | Bella puts the pancake in a plastic bag and puts the bag in the fridge, and turns the oven off. "I also wouldn't want to hardcode my brain with a particular browser, when the state of the art in browsing and web standards are going to be all different in a year or two anyway." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "See, you are smart," says Alice. "You think of things." |
Author: self_composed | "Also, I wished myself programming powers a minute ago," Bella says brightly. "But apparently I wasn't specific enough, so I don't know any programming languages, just general principles and pseudocode and so on - which is fine for what I wanted them for, anyway." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I love you," says Alice. |
Author: self_composed | "I'm so surprised," Bella deadpans. "Goodness gracious. What brings this on?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I dunno." He shrugs; smiles. "The fact that you wished yourself programming powers?" |
Author: self_composed | "Why that, though?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Not sure," he says. "'Cause you used magic, and you used it to do something useful and cool?" |
Author: self_composed | "In that case, I wonder how long it'll take for you to get tired of reminding me," laughs Bella. "Okay, I have one hex left on here." Necklace-heft. "I think I have enough symbols and I can presumably add more with pentagons if I'm getting too many black squares - meaning 'other'. Let's see, what am I trying to neglect?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Huh?" |
Author: self_composed | "What would I smack myself on the forehead for not thinking of, if I wished without taking however long it would take to come up with it?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Oh. Not a clue. But then, I don't know what you have thought of." |
Author: self_composed | "Your signals, and my input stream and how I can manipulate it," Bella says. "And an image compression algorithm of sorts. Should I be able to poke around in your memories? Should I be using something other than a naive magical heuristic for generating the words - like, should the power be consulting you to determine what words you'd attach to a thought if prompted?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yes," he says after thinking about it for a moment, "and... I dunno, actually. They're my thoughts, but you're the one who's reading 'em." |
Author: self_composed | "So I need an interface for sorting through memories - browsing some organized representation of the whole shebang? Searching by keythought? Picking them out of an index by date?" She closes her eyes. "Man, wishes do not make everything simple, do they. How about - if you could produce a word for a thought, then that one, otherwise if I could produce a word for it if I was having it, then that, and otherwise, a first pass at a naive magical translation - and otherwise a symbol. And I'll color-code 'em." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "You are smart," he sighs, happily. |
Author: self_composed | "So," Bella says, "let me guess - you think in thoughts, and also, you remember in memories?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yup." |
Author: self_composed | "It's almost like your brain's fundamental architecture is not as much on board with this project as you are," Bella comments. "I think I'll see what I can do about a mixed strategy - category sorting and search and date organization as much as that's possible, and then if I can't find what I'm looking for I can try another way. And let's represent that thusly -" She expends another square to repeat the "abstract contact", a shade cooler, like she's just come in from the snow and her hands are cold. "Good?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He smiles. "Sure!" |
Author: self_composed | Bella closes her eyes and carries on thinking about how she wants to interface with Alice's mind until she's got a very clear mental picture of what that might look like and how she might poke things when she pokes them. Right before she's about to expend the hex, she remembers to include an option to manage scroll speed and how big everything looks, and then she has to take another couple minutes just to make sure that's the only thing she forgot.
Finally, she says, "Here goes," and makes one extremely complicated wish. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Well, did it work?" |
Author: self_composed | "Hex is gone," Bella says, peering at her necklace. "I'm all out of 'em now."
She closes her eyes again, and reads. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Want me to make some more?" he asks, smiling reminiscently.
Bella may choose to smack herself in the forehead for not including any kind of censoring in her scheme, if she likes. Even as a mental thumbnail, his memory of last night's shower is pretty graphic.
He passes by it quickly, though, instead thinking of turning on her stove and whether he could use a triangle (maybe a square) to make it heat up faster. (The coins are represented by a visual of their shape plus the feeling of black glass under his fingers, cross-referenced to the ever-present weight of the necklace.)
Also, he likes the sensation of her reading him. It was nice before, but now that it's connected to the reality, it induces a happy shivery kind of mostly nonsexual pleasure. |
Author: self_composed | "This thing might need a safe-search," Bella remarks. "Of course, then I'd probably get roughly nothing." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | ...He cracks up.
"Oh man, did you not think of that? You didn't think of that. I love you."
Because the idea of not thinking of that is completely foreign to him. |
Author: self_composed | Bella watches the words appear in her vision a little before he speaks them. "Somehow, I failed to think of that," she agrees. "But I suspect I'd get sufficiently incomplete results trying to read your mind without any... let's call it 'mature content'... that it could hardly be called mindreading at all, so I'll see if I can't get used to it." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay," he says, grinning. "Sorry." (Sympathy, and not a second's regret for the contents of his head.) "Anyway, do you want more hexes?"
The stove is right there! He could just... he catches himself before actually trying to triangle it on. |
Author: self_composed | "Using a triangle to save yourself the trouble of waiting four minutes would be slightly frivolous," Bella remarks. "You could make some more hexes. That's probably a good stress test of my ability to handle what your brain does." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "But" (honey, sweetheart) "Bella, I like being frivolous," he says, leaning over slightly and turning a knob. |
Author: self_composed | Bella decides she cannot very well chide him for thinking unapproved endearments. "Well, if you like it," she says, "by all means carry on, I suppose." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Laughing, he expends a triangle. The wish is simple: knowledge of the difference between a cool and a hot stove element (attached: a very relevant memory of yesterday), and the desire that the one he just turned on become the latter instead of the former.
It works.
Alice grins at the result in fond (and decidedly sexual) anticipation. His left hand flexes, remembering burns. |
Author: self_composed | Bella watches brightly white affect-background colors trail all these thoughts with vague interest. Hearing him talk about how he likes what he likes is one thing; watching it pace past her vision encoded the way she'd just wished for is another.
She closes her eyes and watches his thoughts. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | With only one stove element on, he can't lay his arm across two, so he drags it over the one. Slowly. Pentagon, pentagon, pentagon, hex. He puts his other hand up to touch the new coins, feeling the angle of a corner on each; by now that's enough to tell the difference.
It hurts like hell, and it is turning him the fuck on, and the fact that he can tell she's watching gives him a thrill that's part affection, part arousal. (And part that other thing—a feeling of vulnerability; the desire to be vulnerable, to her specifically, because he loves her.)
He lays his hand flat against the element and digs the fingers of his other hand into the deep, fresh burn on his wrist, and although most of his attention is taken up by pain, there's enough left over to feel each new coin as it appears. |
Author: self_composed | Bella very carefully does not open the lightning bolt signs that mean "pain" - she doesn't actually know if opening his nocioception would hurt, and would rather test that with something smaller - but she does watch the revolving blobs of color-coded emotion in fascination, and the string of mostly not sentence-ordered words in their colors. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | When the weight of the necklace around his neck has definitely, noticeably increased, he takes his hand away.
There are now thirteen pentagons and ten hexes on his necklace, and Bella's stove looks and smells like a small animal was cremated on it.
Make that fourteen pentagons, and then fifteen, both accumulated in the time it takes his arm to heal. He lifts up his necklace and looks at it, counting (one, three, four, and two is ten) the coins he cares about.
"That enough, you think?" |
Author: self_composed | "Ah, yeah," Bella says. "I don't have that long a list. Your regeneration power hurts all by itself? Why did you do it that way?" She wishes away the gunk on the stove and the smoke in the air with a pair of triangles. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I didn't do it like that on purpose, but I'm fucked if I'm gonna complain," he says cheerfully. "You can take 'em all, if you want." All his hexes, all his pentagons, hell, all his squares and triangles too if she feels like it. Being wishcoiny makes life so easy. |
Author: self_composed | "You realize you're not going to have time to make anything big in a time-critical emergency, should one occur," Bella points out. She leaves him two each of the hexes and pentagons, and all his squares and triangles because she has lots of those too, but she takes the rest, smiling like a satisfied cat. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Someday when we're not near anything obvious like the stove, remind me, and you can tell me to make a hex and time how long it takes," he says, idly considering methods (square up a jar of lye is the first to come to mind, although it might be too obvious if he had to do something fast with people around, but if he had to do something fast he might not care...) and echoing her smile because fuck, does he love that smile on her. "Bet it won't be that long. Like, a minute maybe."
(The thought of her reminding him of things reminds him of his semi-promise to find her another friend, which he hasn't yet remembered to do. Oh, well. He'll have lots of time while she is fake convalescing.) |
Author: self_composed | "I didn't have a minute when I saw Tyler's van go out of control," Bella says. "If I'd been a little less stunned-rabbit about it, I would have had time to make a wish, but not to make a coin and then make a wish." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, I guess." He shrugs. "But I'd like getting hit by a van."
(He didn't like watching Bella get hit by a van. He the opposite of liked it. He remembers the whole event clearly: the sight of her getting hit, the sound; air biting his lungs as he ran, cold asphalt under his knees and his hands buried in his hair; the feeling like something had been ripped out of him, the frantic gnawing ache of knowing he could fix it if only he could get to her if only if only.) |
Author: self_composed | "The van could have killed me. It could kill you if one shows up and hits you. I don't think hex regen powers will revive you from instant death-on-impact. A star might, but I am very wary of my star."
And... she pokes at some of those thoughts.
She notes that she is kinda self-centered. She's noted this before, so it's not surprising. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice shivers happily. The thoughts aren't pleasant, but knowing that she's reading them is.
"Okay," he concedes. "So I'll keep a few around."
Not that he really intensely desires not to die. He wouldn't like to, especially not now that he gets to watch Bella take over the world (love, love), but for a long time now he has been operating on the assumption that it is going to happen, and probably not that far in the future, and he might as well be okay with that because there's not much he can do to change it. Getting hit by a van sounds like a pretty nice way to go. |
Author: self_composed | "Y'know," Bella says, "when I take over the world? Mortality is so on my hit list." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | ...He hugs himself and loves her very much. |
Author: self_composed | Bella closes her eyes again and pokes that and basks. She doesn't know how to purr, but she's thinking it.
She notes that she is selfish. She made peace with that awhile ago. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He looks at her.
He wonders if that is her reading him loving her and concludes that it really obviously is.
He loves her very much some more, and is also completely delighted. |
Author: self_composed | "Well," Bella says. "That certainly has the potential to bog us both down for hours in a feedback loop." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "But an awesome one," he says happily. |
Author: self_composed | "A pleasant one, but we've got plans to make," Bella says briskly. She unpokes the thought, but keeps up the cursory scan for communication-facilitation purposes. "About your dad." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Ooh, watch the love and joy drain out of him.
Literally, watch that happen, because it does.
"Yeah," he sighs. "Okay. ...You know, hell, I'm almost tempted to tell your dad now that I know he doesn't suck? Would that work, you think?" |
Author: self_composed | "That's... a maybe," Bella admits, deflating somewhat now that she has nothing to actively bask in. "My dad can make an arrest, press charges, get it to trial - and maybe yours can bribe the jury or the judge. Or get a ridiculously good lawyer and get actually not-convicted. The evidence boils down to you turning up at a hospital in November with injuries. Would Theo say where he picked you up from? What would your mom do - she can't be compelled to testify against her husband, but would she? Does Hilary know anything?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Hilary knows squat," he says, rubbing his face. "No fucking idea which way Mom would swing, but I wouldn't bet on her coming down in my corner. I could always piss Dad off some more and go to the hospital again." (There's no particular positivity or negativity attached to that idea; it's just an option.) "Harder to pull off now that I heal, but not totally impossible."
Other ideas, other ideas... "I could show off all my old scars, I guess." Wryly, "Didja know Dad used to smoke?"
When he remarked on the difference between liquid nitrogen and cigarette burns, he was speaking from experience. Experience that left permanent marks on his back.
"Some of 'em ain't from him, though." A knife in a New York alley, twice, once under his jaw and the other biting deep into his hip—he's still proud of calling that bluff, of knowing that a knife to his throat means nothing to him, even if it helped shit-all in the end. |
Author: self_composed | "You could wish away the scars if you wanted," Bella points out quietly. "Later - if we need them for evidence - but you can."
And: "What about Theo?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice smiles. "I like my scars," he says, closing his eyes for a moment and experiencing the truth of that statement. Even the ones where he doesn't like what they remind him of—and that is most of them—are his, part of him, a physical record of the experience of his life. He likes himself, and he likes the totality of that experience even when he doesn't like the individual pieces that make it up.
The scars can stay.
"Anyway, Theo," he says, and considers what he knows of Theo. Damn little, really. "If he can possibly get away with keeping quiet, he'll do it, but if they drag him in there and sit him down and put him under oath, he'll probably admit he picked me up at home. Pretty sure he knows more than that, but he pretends he doesn't." |
Author: self_composed | "I'm trying to think if there's a good way to counter either the bribery possibility or the slick defense lawyer possibility," muses Bella. "I don't think you get to pick your own prosecuting lawyer in a criminal trial, though I could be wrong. And if we bribe or coerce or appear in the dreams of or impersonate the judge or jury or defense lawyer then I don't think we ought to bother with the trial approach at all - we have plenty of extralegal options, no need to dress that up like a procedural if that's the plan." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "We could use magic to catch him bribing somebody, if he does," Alice suggests. "And then figure out a way to nail him for it. If we can. Okay, but what are the" (he likes her phrase, it's cute) "extralegal options?"
Besides wishing the fucker off a cliff. Which is the thing they're trying to avoid here. It would be kind of viscerally satisfying, but it wouldn't really be that much better than any other option that took Alice out of his dad's power for good. |
Author: self_composed | "Well, where do you want to go, besides away? You can live anywhere. Wish yourself all the things you need and want. You don't need his financial support, his stupidly huge house, his permission. You could just pick up and go - like I suggested before, but now with added self-defense capabilities. Where would you go?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...I wanna be where you are," he says. Was that not obvious? He thought it was pretty fucking obvious. "I mean, if I didn't, I'd just... go." He makes an expansive gesture with both hands, thinks about hitchhiking and open roads with big cities at the ends and whether he'd rather try hooking again or maybe strip or maybe just wish himself diamonds and sell them. "But I do. So I kind of wanna keep the stupidly huge house at least until you go somewhere else." |
Author: self_composed | "Alice?" says Bella, amused. "We can both fly. If you don't mean you want to move in with me and Charlie - and I think that might be a bit much for Charlie - then 'where I am' can be a pretty big radius. Build an underground lair. Live in a floating invisible castle in the clouds. Make the inside of a tree bigger than the outside. Set up housekeeping in the temporally bizarre hill. Get a house in Port Angeles and show up to art class on alternate Tuesdays. If you're attached to the house in particular, we have to figure out how to pry your dad out of it, and that's gonna be more complicated." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I don't," he says slowly, working it out for himself as he goes, "want to be—here, and him also here. I want him to be where I'm not. And I do kinda wanna keep going to Art," and maybe gym and Home Ec, "and if I skipped out on him he'd already throw a pretty big shitfit, and if I skipped out on him and kept going to class he'd throw a way bigger one and it'd probably get all over everything and you don't like collateral damage and I don't like it when it happens to people I like." (Bella, Ms. Finch, Hilary.) "I mean, if we try something else and it doesn't work, underground lair all the way. Or whatever." |
Author: self_composed | "What kind of shitfit? Absent any plausible deniability, even rich people get convicted," Bella says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Got a teacher fired once because I had a crush on him," Alice recalls: he doesn't know details, but he knows he was about fifteen and his father was very happy that Junior was actually going to class for once until he found out why. And then that teacher was no longer employed at that school. Broke his fifteen-year-old heart, and also cured him of his nascent interest in algebra. |
Author: self_composed | "It would be useful to know how he did that. Absent that information we'll just have to be conservative, I suppose. Hmm." Think, think. "What's your patience level here? I wonder if we could just make him psychically allergic to you to the point where he moves away without realizing why." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...Psychically allergic?" he asks warily; no meaning he can think up for the phrase leads anywhere good in his head. It's not like his father currently likes him or gains any enjoyment from his existence. Making his father like him even less just doesn't seem like a good plan. |
Author: self_composed | "Not a matter of making him like you less. Just a matter of him being more comfortable the farther away from you he happens to be - subtly. Certainly it would get sharply worse if he considered something as drastic as interacting with you in any way." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "No," Alice says firmly. "No. No."
Because in his experience, the more his father hates being around him at any given time, the more likely his father is to take it out on the most convenient of targets. And no amount of hating being around him reached thus far has made him actually stop. |
Author: self_composed | "Okay." Bella doesn't think he actually understood the idea, but there's more where that came from anyway. "New angle. What is it that he does that takes him away on lengthy trips? Turn that up to eleven, he has to move, you happen to not be interested in moving, reason-to-move is still turned up to eleven so he goes." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "He's not gonna let go of me," says Alice. "Like, fuck, I am literally the worst son he could possibly have had, I could not get any less like his ideal offspring unless I openly wore dresses" (which he's into) "and did drugs" (which he isn't particularly), "and he hangs onto me tooth and claw because I'm his flesh and blood" (the phrase echoes in his head in his father's voice) "and it's his responsibility" (that word does the same) "to deal with me. Even though he obviously can't. Unless we do some serious brainwishing, in which case fuck it, might as well drop him off a cliff, he is gonna keep being a pain in my ass until he is in jail or thinks I'm dead." |
Author: self_composed | "The mechanism by which he would attempt to not-let-go matters," Bella says. "If he attempts it by defending himself in a court of law against abuse charges we have limited ability to substantiate, that's one thing. If he attempts it by kidnapping you and taking you across state lines, that's another." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Okay," says Alice. "I don't actually—wait, yeah, I do know why he keeps fucking off. He's just visiting his old buddies in New York. Probably not something we can wish up more urgency for. I don't know what he'd do," he says, shrugging. "I know he only breaks the law when he thinks he can get away with it. He's been pretty good so far about knowing when that is. But I don't, like, have a list of all the subtly vicious things a really rich guy can do when he's pissed off." |
Author: self_composed | "Right." Bella's massaging her own forehead with thumb and forefinger. "Right. Okay. Maybe we should tell Charlie and go from there. He's got a reasonable shot at understanding that he can't necessarily forge ahead blind without getting you hurt - he probably at least knows the judges around here and can get us a clear picture of which of them are corrupt asses - and the last time anyone tried to bribe Charlie personally he arrested him on the spot and that's a matter of public record. We can fuck with relevant attorneys - I don't think I want to brainwash them, but I have fewer qualms about their notes disappearing and their neighborhood dogs suddenly being very agitated every night at two in the morning." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...I love you," says Alice, hugging himself and beaming. "You're good at plans."
(Which he isn't. He's not even sure what he is good at in that area, although once in a while he thinks of something she doesn't, which is nice.)
This might actually work. They might actually get Delaney Hammond Sr. to go the fuck away.
Yeah, he loves her really a lot. |
Author: self_composed | "So we talk to Charlie," Bella says, but she's still frowning. "And if he says there's nothing he can do that you think has an acceptable margin of safety - then - hm." She looks up and makes eye contact. "How weird would your mom and Hilary find it if your dad just forgot you exist and could not be reminded or notice your presence in any way? Would this cause a lot of changes in his behavior, or by making yourself sufficiently actually scarce could this just seem like him deciding he doesn't want to be bothered anymore? Also, is there any risk that in this case he'd start going after someone else?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He thinks about it.
"...Hilary doesn't know enough about him to notice the difference," he concludes, "but Mom..."
His mother knows his dad better than he does - well, obviously. His mother knows that his dad wouldn't do that, that whatever combination of possessiveness and duty drives him to lay such a claim on his son is not something he would ever, ever willingly give up.
"And I have no idea what he'd do. I mean, I take up a pretty big space in the guy's life. Who the fuck knows what he'd put there instead. Maybe it'd be totally fine. Maybe he'd wanna have another kid."
Actually, the more he thinks about it, the more likely that is—he only exists in the first place because of his father's desire for an heir. And it is not a prospect that fills him with joy. A vague sympathy for the hypothetical second try, more like. |
Author: self_composed | "I have not a flicker of conscience with also sterilizing the bastard," Bella says helpfully. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice grins. "Yeah, that's better." |
Author: self_composed | "But your mom would notice something is up. How bad would that be?" Bella says. "What would she do?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...I don't really know," he says. "I mean, she's been pretty fucking clear that she wants me gone," no specific memories accompany that, just a vague sense that it has been repeatedly confirmed, "so it's not like she'd be unhappy. But I don't know if she'd care that he'd gone totally bugfuck overnight," because 'totally bugfuck' is an accurate measure of how far he would have to depart from his usual behaviour in order to act like he'd forgotten his own son, "or what she'd do about it if she did. Uh," because this seems like relevant information now, "he gets really pissy if anybody mentions divorce when they're both in the room, and she never seems to notice." As he recalls, Bella has witnessed one such instance for herself. |
Author: self_composed | "Huh." Bella chews her lip. "This is looking like, maybe not a dead end, but a risky avenue. Let's see what else I can think of." Think, think, think. "In jail and dead are probably the best places to put him, I'm not quite frustrated enough to vote for dead yet... has he done anything else illegal you happen to know about or suspect?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Mmm..."
What things does his dad do? Hang around at home getting pissed off if anyone has fun where he can hear them, mainly.
"Well, getting that teacher fired was pretty sketchy, but I don't know if it was against the actual law." |
Author: self_composed | "It almost certainly depends on how he did it. Maybe all the algebra was hiding a sordid double life and your father was just motivated to dig it up." She sighs. "And we're back to involving Charlie." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I am weirdly okay with that," says Alice.
Okay with it because it is so screamingly obvious that Bella's family (the subset of it that he's seen) works in a way his doesn't, and that Charlie is not the kind of asshole Alice expects him to be. Weirdly because in the face of all evidence he still expects Charlie to be an asshole. |
Author: self_composed | "But," Bella says, "we do need a contingency plan for what happens if Charlie is more cavalier about the possibility of a failed charge than us - or if we agree on the risk and then it doesn't pan out." Pause. "Would the mere fact of a trial having occurred be a plausible trigger for your dad to pretend you didn't exist, so we can fall back on that? I mean, I don't think he's been publicly accused before, has he?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Uh... maybe," he says. "I mean, I can't imagine him forgetting about me, but I also can't imagine him on trial for kicking my ass, so." |
Author: self_composed | "Okay." Bella closes her eyes. "We're probably going to want more complete documentation of the whole mess than 'you went to the hospital that one time in November'. We want to be able to have the lawyer for the plaintiff drone on and on in the most sickening terms possible about years and years of systematic abuse until the jury wants to eviscerate somebody and your dad is the most convenient target. Would you rather I just try out my new memory-browsing feature and write it all down myself, so you don't have to talk about it?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He grins.
"Sure, go nuts. I mean, I'll talk about it too if you want. Probably shouldn't get me up in front of that jury, though, 'cause I'll laugh and it'll just confuse 'em." |
Author: self_composed | "Nervous laughter in small quantities would probably be fine, but yeah. I wonder if you can wish yourself temporarily serious about it? If you don't act as a witness we're relying on hearsay from me and coerced testimony from Theo and fluttering ignorance from your mom if she goes up at all which she can't be forced to. That's thin stuff." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...I can probably just act," he offers, rubbing the back of his head. "I guess."
(The thought of getting up and having negative emotions in front of a bunch of strangers is slightly uncomfortable, slightly arousing.) |
Author: self_composed | "Yeah, you're gonna have to pentagon that," says Bella flatly, inspecting his thoughts. "You have to be sympathetic to a bunch of randomly chosen people. You have to make the jury enraged that anybody would hurt you so that they're on a hair trigger when the judge wants a verdict. You have to do this even though your dad's lawyer is going to tell everyone in the courtroom every remotely socially unacceptable thing you have ever done. This would be easier if you were a girl - no, wearing a dress will not help - but it's still doable if you pull off a good victim persona. Do you have an actual record - for the hooking or the getting into fights or anything else? If you do, that's bad, though not insurmountable - if you don't, that could be good, since it means the prosecutor's slinging around unsubstantiated claims that may or may not have run out the statute of limitations and yours can keep saying 'Objection!'." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "No record for the hooking," he says. "You probably couldn't even find a customer by now; it's not like I kept in touch. And oh, Dad's gonna shit himself if he has to drag out anything that's not public knowledge like the fighting. He only puts up with the fighting 'cause he knows I'm covering for him and he can't stop me anyway, I'm pretty sure. Although maybe he won't care as much about trying to cover up everything that's wrong with me when he's busy trying to cover up everything that's wrong with him." |
Author: self_composed | "So maybe he'll handicap himself," Bella says. "Maybe he's sufficiently embarrassed not to tell his lawyer, or thinks you'll flinch."
Pause.
"Are you going to flinch? Because if you recant halfway through this process it all falls apart." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, I am not gonna flinch," he says with absolute certainty. |
Author: self_composed | "None of that 'you told my dad a funny joke' crap," Bella says. "Double jeopardy is a thing. Cops and judges and so on don't like it when they think plaintiffs are crying wolf."
Pause.
"And you're going to need someplace to crash while this is all happening. I think it is pretty obvious you can't live in a house with your dad during this process. And it could take a long time. My dad can probably arrange protective custody, but as a temporary measure maybe you want to look into the underground lair anyway?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure," he says cheerfully. "Sounds like fun." |
Author: self_composed | Bella nods.
"Documentation time," she says, and she wishes a brand new notebook from her box of them upstairs. "Here goes memory-trawling. I can probably remember your memories better than you can 'cause I can just query them directly instead of having to elicit them from the inside."
She concentrates, and searches by keythought. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice closes his eyes and sits back and luxuriates in the feeling of being read, even though he can't tell what she's reading.
The list of search results is very, very long, and all of them have the pain symbol attached.
Here is Alice's father standing by a lit fireplace and grabbing a poker out of the stand. Here is Alice's father with clenched fists and a thunderous expression. Here is a memory with no visuals, just touch and sound.
All the iconized visuals contain Delaney Hammond Sr.; some of them show his wife, too, invariably covering her face or leaving the room. They span nearly every room in the Forks house and dozens more in what must be the old house in New York. In some of the latter, Delaney Sr. is holding a weapon of some kind—cane, belt, ruler; in one, a lit cigarette. But apparently, by the time they got to Forks, he was mostly inclined to beat his son with his own two hands. |
Author: self_composed | Bella grits her teeth, opens up the less sensory data around each one in turn, and writes dates - approximate when she has to, exact when she doesn't - and implements where applicable, exact details of each attack, instigating incidents especially when trivial, injuries and scarring and where it may be found, and all relevant visits to the hospital. She fills pages. And pages. In neat and tidy handwriting and careful, consistent formatting. She adds a footnote attached to each incident where Mrs. Hammond was there. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | It turns out the poker was the source of Alice's broken ribs in November. The offense that led to it: a tube of his mother's lipstick found in his room. Mrs. Hammond was not present.
(The poker left scars, of course. So did the cigarette. Most of the implements did, at one time or another, and Alice has long suspected that's why his father stopped using them except when he was really pissed off.)
Before the ribs, visits to the hospital were surprisingly few, and only for injuries as bad as that or worse—a broken jaw when he was twelve, a broken arm when he was sixteen. The former was incurred for wearing (and ruining) one of his mother's dresses; the latter, for swearing in the house. Not usually such a dire crime, but Senior was in a bad mood that day. |
Author: self_composed | Bella tries to stick to the plain, bare facts; a prosecutor will be better than her at spinning it into a story that tones down the things juries won't like and yanks on their heartstrings with everything else. She writes and writes and writes.
Finally, when her hand is cramped again after having been triangled into submission twice and she's filled both sides of every page in the notebook and sixteen pages of a new one, her mental representation of the memories will scroll no farther.
She puts down the pen and backs off to just surface reading.
"Does anything in your architectural plans for the renovation of this house suggest the soundproofing?" Bella asks. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Probably," he says. "I mean, it's not like he did it secretly or anything." |
Author: self_composed | "Good. That'll look like he did it specifically to keep everything from being audible."
Bella looks at her notebooks full of incidents.
"There is no non-magical way to have this much documentation unless you have an eidetic memory or you've been journaling aggressively all along," she says. "Is the second thing remotely plausible? Can anyone actually disprove the first if they go up against an actual eidetic memory that you could acquire via hex, like mine?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Hell, if I hex up perfect memory for myself, it'll be true," Alice says with a shrug. "Fucking hard to disprove it then. No way I could've kept journals all this time, though; he searches all my shit whenever he can stand to deal with the mess." Which is very infrequently these days, but not totally unheard-of, and was much more common back when he had fewer possessions to leave lying around in the first place.
Oh, thinking of which— "Does shit like going through my clothes and throwing out all the stuff I actually like count for this kinda thing? He's done that a few times." |
Author: self_composed | "...No, I don't think so," Bella says. "It should, but I'm not actually sure that teenagers have property rights, legally speaking, even though decent people pretend we have as a polite fiction. The occasion around Christmas is more ambiguous... but still ambiguous. We'll leave that one up to the lawyer." She writes it down in the second notebook, after two line breaks. "Anything else?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, figures. In that case, nah, I think that's it."
When he looks at the notebooks, he's not sure whether to be surprised it took that much or surprised it didn't take more. |
Author: self_composed | Bella gets a tricolor highlighter from the junk drawer, and goes through them all again and highlights the ones that left marks - or injuries that might turn up in a sufficiently thorough medical exam, and then in another color highlights the ones that were related to particularly jury-baitish incidents and not things like wearing dresses or swiping Mrs. Hammond's lipstick. "Lawyer'll do the rest. We'll talk to Charlie when he comes home." She checks the time. "I think it is lunchtime now." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," says Alice, "I think so too. ...Aw, fuck, I forgot to bring anything." |
Author: self_composed | Bella shrugs. "I'm not in the mood for anything more complicated than cold cuts on rye, and we have those. Sound good?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure." |
Author: self_composed | Bella fixes sandwiches - she polishes off the roast beef, so Alice gets salami. They eat. Om nom nom. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Over lunch, Alice finds himself considering the possibilities of an underground lair.
He concludes pretty quickly that he had better get Bella's help designing the place. And maybe also building it. |
Author: self_composed | "Sure, that seems like a good way to kill an afternoon," Bella says when she reads the thought. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Awesome! Please help me build an underground lair so I won't forget something obvious like bathrooms," says Alice. |
Author: self_composed | "I think if you forgot bathrooms, you'd realize pretty quick you needed to add them," Bella says. She gets a fresh notebook, so that diagramming may be done. "It'd be more problematic if you forgot, like, ventilation, and passed out in your sleep and suffocated. That would be really inconvenient." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "See?" he says, with a warm happy glow of affection. "This is why I need you. Okay, so: bathrooms, ventilation. Where should I put it?" |
Author: self_composed | "Uh, hm. Deep, enough that you won't run into someone's actual basement so the ceiling should be a couple stories down, but you don't want to overdo it and be next to the mantle of the earth or anything. Not in an aquifer. I wonder if there's a map of nearby aquifers on the internet. Probably want to surround yourself with rock, not dirt. Possible we need to learn some geology." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "What's an aquifer?"
So yes. Yes they should. |
Author: self_composed | "Underground pocket of water," Bella says. "How big do you want your lair?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Doesn't have to be that big," he says. "Well, it depends how much I wanna do there, I guess."
Absolute necessities: a bathroom (with a shower, because of what he can do there with a knife) and somewhere to sleep.
Things that would be nice, if he'll be staying there a while: somewhere to cook (conveniently also doubling as somewhere to hurt himself) and somewhere to sew.
"That doesn't add up to that much, right?" |
Author: self_composed | "Yeah, sounds pretty small. How long do you envision living here?" Bella sketches vague lines of layouts. "I'm not sure what'll happen to your dad's stuff if we can get him sent to jail, but it's not necessarily the case that you'll have access to the house after." Pause. "I'm planning to live in Forks till I finish high school in a year and a half, then go off to college somewhere." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Might as well go for the kitchen and the sewing room too, then," he says. "D'you know where you wanna go?" (Half-hoping, half-assuming that she will let him follow her.) |
Author: self_composed | "No, I haven't started seriously looking into that yet." She smiles. "But I see no reason that you couldn't make a duplicate lair near wherever I wind up. Even if any sane admissions officer wouldn't touch you." She adds to her sketches. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice smiles and loves her for a moment, then turns his attention to what she's drawing. |
Author: self_composed | Bella finally settles on a floor plan with a central room, radiating a bathroom and a kitchen and a bedroom and a sewing room. "Do you want the place to be accessible without using coins every time?" Bella asks. "You could make it person-specific, like the pillar and the fairy mound are specific to Elias's descendants. Or, you could just put in a staircase or an elevator and tuck the entrance away somewhere. In case anyone else ever earns the privilege of visiting." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Well, I'll put in stairs," he says, "and make it so you'n'me are the only people who can get to 'em, and if I ever wanna bring anybody else in, I can wish 'em in then." |
Author: self_composed | "Okay." Bella adds a stairwell that leads down to the central room, and moves the door to the kitchen so it's under the angle of the stairs. She starts drawing squares in the kitchen and labeling them - stove, double-decker oven, fridge and freezer, cupboards and counters and sink. "This is all gonna have to operate by magic. You're not going to be on the grid in your lair. Other furnishings that don't need electricity or water you can wish up separately after you have a feel for the space." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Wonder how much magic it's gonna take," he says, thinking happily of what he might do to provide it. |
Author: self_composed | "I think it might be possible that you could create an entire sufficiently-designed-in-advance lair with one hex," Bella laughs, "but maybe you'll have to outfit the kitchen and the bathroom with a few pentagons or something." She finishes tiling the kitchen with kitchen implements and moves on to the bathroom. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Pentagons are easy," he says with a lingering look at her stove. |
Author: self_composed | Bella is mildly amused.
"So, magic sewing machine, magic plumbing, magic kitchen appliances, magic ventilation not by means of device. Out of curiosity, are you planning to go grocery shopping or just wish yourself food?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Probably the wishing," he says. "Don't have to worry about money that way." |
Author: self_composed | Bella nods. Of course saleable goods can be conjured even with mere squares, but she's not sure how to step that up in volume without attention.
She checks the time. "Angela'll be here soon. I'm not sure whether it's best for her to spot you or not, but I should start playing invalid." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, good plan," he says. "Do you also wanna hide the..." with a gesture at the notebooks full of his childhood. |
Author: self_composed | "Yeah, probably a good idea." Bella shuts all the notebooks on the table, stacks them, and takes them upstairs; then she flops onto the couch, illusions herself various casts, and says, "I'm actually not sure how I'd let her in if I were as beat up as I'm supposed to look, so maybe you'd better own up to being here after all. I don't want to make her just leave everything in the mailbox for Charlie to bring in." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sure," says Alice. "Do I need some kind of excuse to be here, or is 'skipping school to hang out with you because I care more about you than school' good enough?"
It has the advantage of being pretty much true, but true and plausible are not always the same thing. |
Author: self_composed | "You are known to care almost zilch about school," Bella says. "I think it'll do. She might not even solicit an explanation." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Awesome." |
Author: self_composed | Bella lounges on the couch and practices wincing theatrically.
About twenty minutes after school ends, Angela rings the doorbell. "Bella? Bella, it's me!"
"Hang on!" Bella calls out the window. And to Alice, "Go let her in, would you?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "'Kay," he says, and wonders idly if she shouldn't pentagon herself some acting skills just to make it easier, and goes to open the door. |
Author: self_composed | That's a decent idea, and Bella has plenty of pentagons. She's Broadway quality before he gets to the door.
Angela's standing on the doorstep with her arms full of handouts and hand-copied descriptions of the day's assignments. "Oh! Hi, Delaney," she says politely. "You're visiting Bella too, that's sweet. Can I come in?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yep," he says, stepping back out of her way. "Hi." |
Author: self_composed | "Hi, Angela!" calls Bella with fake strain in her voice. "I'm in the living room." Weak smile. "Don't want to make Dad haul me up and down the stairs every day."
Angela tiptoes in. "Oh wow, Bella," she says, eyes wide at the imaginary casts. "Are you even going to be able to do the homework?"
"I bet the pinball wizard here'll take dictation for me if I ask him," Bella says, making a small gesture with her mostly-"unscathed" left hand. "Thanks so much for bringing everything." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice sits himself down on the floor in front of Bella and leans back against the couch. He doesn't consider it much beforehand; it's just, for him, the obvious place to sit. |
Author: self_composed | Angela seems to consider the "pinball wizard" nickname cute if inscrutable. "Okay. That's really nice of you, Delaney." She reaches into her purse and pulls out a greeting card that says "Get Well Soon!" and is utterly crammed with well-wishes and signatures from dozens of people. "Here. Practically everybody signed this."
Bella reaches carefully, with very convincing winces, for the card, and smiles. "Thanks, this was really nice of you."
"Oh, Jessica went in half on the card," Angela says. "But she couldn't come with me here because she has her voice lesson after school Mondays."
"Well, tell her I said thanks, too," Bella says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "All your friends are cute," Alice says to Bella, tipping his head back and grinning. |
Author: self_composed | Angela looks confused. Bella sighs quietly.
"I don't wanna keep you," Bella tells Angela. "It means a lot to me that you came out here, though."
Angela takes that as a dismissal, and gracefully. "Okay. I'll be back tomorrow, Bella. Feel better!"
And she lets herself out. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "...Did I say something wrong?" he wonders. Wrong in the sense of confusing to Angela, that is. |
Author: self_composed | "Well, for one thing, as long as I'm reading you, you don't have to say anything aloud you don't want the entire room to hear," Bella says. "And, 'all my friends are cute'? Even in context, yeah, that gets read funny. Angela seems to give everyone the benefit of the doubt all the time, so nothing's going to come of it, but that could have been anything from a bizarre comment on her and Jessica's appearances to a condescending remark about the card." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Huh." He shrugs. "Okay."
The takeaway from this seems to be: don't talk in front of Bella's friends. Well, whatever. He does not have strong feelings one way or another about that, so he may as well not. |
Author: self_composed | "It would probably be weird if you were around them for long and didn't talk at all," Bella says. Angela can be heard getting in her car and driving away, which is Bella's cue to get rid of the illusory casts. "But if you don't actually care either way, it might be simplest not do it a whole lot. I'm running a lot of social algorithms that would be complicated to document and explain and translate so they'd work for you instead of me." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I mean, I don't wanna freak 'em out because you don't want me to freak 'em out," he says. "But I don't think I care enough to follow a bunch of complicated rules anyway."
Predictably, there are no good associations in his head for following rules. |
Author: self_composed | Bella nods.
She collects the lair notebook and relocates to the kitchen table.
"So this is the basic shape of the thing. Color scheme? Flooring? Lighting?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Don't care," he says, "something that's easy to clean, don't care again."
He has a vague notion that bright colours might be fun, and another vague notion that he might get sick of them after a while, or at least sick of the same ones in the same places all the time. Lighting he just hasn't considered in enough depth to have any opinions at all. |
Author: self_composed | "I bet you can repaint a flat wall with a triangle," shrugs Bella. "Let's do neutrals with accent walls and you can fuck with the accent color once a month. And everything is easy to clean. We have magic powers." She starts labeling walls (dove gray and blue in the bathroom, beige and red in the central room, white and lavender in the sewing room, ecru and forest green in the bedroom, all pastel yellows in the kitchen.) She puts tile in the kitchen and the bathroom because Alice might just forget to clean for a while (she's seen his room), even if it only takes a triangle, and these will become less gross in the interims; everything else gets carpets to match the paint. She decides she liked the glowing-air effect in Elias's hidey holes and that this should pervade the entire lair, intensity of same fluctuating according to the interests of Alice or herself.
This is fun. She's humming. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "You forget," Alice says cheerfully, "I get off on scrubbing things. But eh, I can clean my bathtub once in a while for kicks." |
Author: self_composed | Bella nods. "Okay. Hm." She looks around the room for more inspiration. And adds a little arrow pointing at the word "carpet" indicating that there will need to be a nice padding layer between the carpet and the rock underneath, to make it comfy to walk on. (She does plan to visit this place, after all.) "I think this is probably it, except for your furniture that doesn't need magic electricity and water. Where do you want to put the entrance? We can check out the composition of the underground under your first choice first." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Somewhere near here," he says. "Like, off in the woods somewhere or something, towards the school?" |
Author: self_composed | "There's a big rock roughly thataway," Bella says, gesturing. "Big enough to walk into and not immediately fall down the stairs. By accident." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Sounds good!" he says. "I don't want you falling down any holes on my account." |
Author: self_composed | Bella laughs. "Okay. Time to see if you're going to run into any aquifers if you just put it twenty feet belowground."
She goes up to where her computer is located in her room. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice tags along. |
Author: self_composed | Bella does some cursory searching, and says, "Looks like we're good. We only live under permanent water, not above it. Wanna go install the lair now?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | It takes him a second or two to connect the weather reference, and then he giggles fondly.
"Sure, why the fuck not?" |
Author: self_composed | "Righto." Bella turns invisible. "Don't want the neighbors to wonder how I'm, you know, walking. Also, this way I can fly there." Alice can hear her go down the stairs. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Cool," he says cheerfully, meaning both okay and awesome. He trots down the stairs after her. |
Author: self_composed | Partway down the stairs, Bella remembers flying. She's not used to having it yet. Off the stairs and into the air she goes. She puts on her coat; it disappears from sight as soon as she picks it up. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Kinda weird," Alice comments, and then observes that he should probably get in the habit of not talking out loud to the invisible woman before they exit the house. |
Author: self_composed | "Yes, probably," Bella agrees. "You wanna get the door?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Sure he does!
Doing small favours for Bella makes him vaguely pleased. |
Author: self_composed | Aww.
Bella flies out the door and up, up, up into the air. She can "hear" Alice from any distance; if she needs to talk to him to direct him towards the rock, she can always dip low.
Wheeeeeeee! |
Author: edgeofyourseat | There is no actual way for him to tell, but he just assumes she is having fun up there.
That makes him vaguely pleased, too.
(He wonders idly about hexing himself invisibility powers that make them both able to see each other when they are respectively invisible, and thinks happily of going flying with her, and entertains a brief and completely unrepentant daydream about invisible midair sex.) |
Author: self_composed | Bella sighs, quits reading during the sex part, and swoops low so she can hear him if he talks. She's not offended - that would be silly - but that is not what she cares to daydream about at this time.
"Bear left a bit," she says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | When he feels the sense of being read depart, he cracks up; when she directs him leftward, he obeys. |
Author: self_composed | Bella offers no apology and does not caveat the obvious explanation. She just flies along, weaving between trees. She's a lot more graceful in the air, controlled by purely mental action, than she is when she has to act via her body. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He thinks of that after a bit—wondering whether the lack of tree-crashing noises is for that reason or because she's flying high enough to avoid hitting things. |
Author: self_composed | But Bella's still not reading him, so she doesn't know.
"Up ahead," she says after a couple minutes. "It's an easy trip. Do you want me to wish it for you?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah, you're the one who's good at details," he says. "How come you haven't hit any trees?" |
Author: self_composed | "Flying's mental. I'm not clumsy in the brain," Bella says cheerfully. She lands right on top of the rock, looks around, and turns visible again. "All right, here goes."
Aaand - yes, a hex can apparently do the lair and the appliances and the stairs and the rock passage and the restricted access all in one go.
"Hexes are awesome," Bella enthuses. She flies off the rock and walks through its side. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I love you," says Alice, which seems inadequate next to just feeling it and having her notice. He follows her into the rock.
"Ooh, lairy," he says approvingly. |
Author: self_composed | Bella flies in a spiral rather than chance the stairs. The air glows, the layout's just like the one she drew, it has high vaulted ceilings and big open doors with rounded corners into the sewing room and the kitchen and more customary ones - albeit made out of rock, like everything else - for the bedroom and the bathroom. The appliances are sleekly white and silver, and they look like extremely iconic versions of their types, without brands or electrical cords or even a humming noise from the fridge. All the colors are as she wrote, and she sinks an inch into the rich red carpet when she lands at the foot of the stairs in the central room. Bella lifts back into the air just so she can twirl without falling over. "Here ya go," she says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice trots down the stairs in a more ordinary way, but when Bella twirls, he beams at her and hovers experimentally.
"I love yoooou," he announces, and hugs her. |
Author: self_composed | Bella hugs him back quite willingly. "So, you're still missing key furniture - bed, sewing table, any shelving, places to sit, kitchen table, etcetera." She still doesn't have a new phone, so she has to guess at the time, but: "I think we probably have time to run around and put all that stuff in before it's time to start dinner."
And before the unspoken subsequent event, once Charlie gets home. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Awesome," he says brightly, letting go and spinning around to survey the space. "Read me?" |
Author: self_composed | Bella does so, amusedly puzzled. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Well, first of all, there is how much he loves her, which is: lots.
Second of all, it is easier to get a second opinion on furniture placement when he can just—see things where he thinks they should go, instead of having to point and chatter. Like, say, a kitchen table. Over there! Supplied with chairs! |
Author: self_composed | Bella shrugs; she's got lots of squares and he'll thrust more upon her at the next opportunity. She follows him around and conjures up furniture out of his thoughts, edited where necessary to have useful properties like "enough legs to not fall over" and "does not clash horribly with wall". |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He ends up with a bed of maximum comfiness, more storage space in the sewing room than absolutely anywhere else, and a single big squashy armchair in one corner of the main room with a little table next to it.
"Yeah, that'll do it. Thanks," he says, dropping the 'hon' that wants to attach to the end. |
Author: self_composed | Bella smiles and twirls her necklace around her fingers. "You're welcome. Do you have the time? I haven't gotten a new phone yet." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," he says, digging his phone out of his pocket and showing her the time display. |
Author: self_composed | "Probably time to start the pot pie with the leftover chicken," Bella says. "Homeward!" And she flies up the stairs. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice zooms after her. Flying is fun! Whee! |
Author: self_composed | Bella's invisible before leaving through the rock. She tests out her top speed. And gets above the trees and loops till she's dizzy. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice hovers for a second or two on the outside before he decides that not getting caught is probably a good plan and settles to the ground to walk back. |
Author: self_composed | Bella dives and comes up short near Alice. "You could learn to be invisible too," she points out. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "I could!" he agrees. "Ooh, y'know what else—"
That thing they were thinking of earlier, about some way to run his bad ideas past her without waiting for a phone. It doesn't need to be related to telepathy at all, but if they had some way to talk at arbitrary distance without being overheard, it would make invisible flying excursions that much more convenient. |
Author: self_composed | Bella designs a magic mental phone system, controlled entirely by mental action. It will be expansible, because why not; she and Alice will start as the only two nodes, but if she wants to throw in Charlie or somebody, or add an interface for Alice's sewing machine, she will be able to do that with only a pentagon. It will allow any number of nodes to talk to each other. There will be magic voicemail, in case someone does not want to receive a communique at a given time. And the whole thing can be compressed to text in either direction, in case one is in a loud environment or wants to send mental ASCII art.
She turns over this design in her head a few times, and then spends a hex to put it in place. [Like so?] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [I love you,] he says happily. [How's it work? Besides the obvious.] |
Author: self_composed | [Like a phone, basically. You wanna talk to me, you can, unless I have a busy message up, and then you can leave magic voicemail.] She switches to text, and the words "Works this way, too," march across his vision. [And I can add more people later, if desired.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Whoa," he mutters out loud, and then adds by mage-phone, [You're awesome,] although the words are probably redundant next to how hard he is thinking it. |
Author: self_composed | [You can put up the busy message manually and according to whatever algorithm you want. Mine'll automatically be up when I'm asleep, f'rinstance,] Bella goes on happily. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [What if I have a really bad idea while you're asleep?] he wonders. Operating on the assumption that brain phones don't ring, because why would they: [Guess I'll call you the normal way.] |
Author: self_composed | [Right. Once I get a new phone. I don't think I want to try to deal with the headache of trying to connect a conjured phone to any existing cell service.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Although he expects that she could totally do it, because Bella is amazing, he also expects that it would be exactly as much of a headache as she seems to think.
[Yeah, good plan.] |
Author: self_composed | They reach her house. Bella unlocks the door so Alice can let her in.
Inside, she starts working on the pot pie (with occasional directions for assistance from Alice), and, while cutting up the chicken, she pauses, shrugs, smiles, and wishes herself cooking skills on a pentagon. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice helps out as directed and basks happily in how much he loves her and how awesome she is. |
Author: self_composed | Bella enjoys that as she starts fucking around with her pot pie recipe. She's a little more careful not to get too much of the original sauce in it, because it won't go that well with the gravy. At least she saved the chicken drippings when she cooked it the first time around. Those are essential.
She likes being magical oh so very much. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | It's not any one thing, but something in the general tone of her cooking has him asking, "Did you pentagon yourself?" after a little while. |
Author: self_composed | "Yup!" says Bella. "It was on my list." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He loves her. |
Author: self_composed | Bella hums and assigns him to chop up carrots and celery. She whisks flour into butter on the stove, for the gravy.
A fair amount of work later, the pot pie is in the oven, and Bella has spontaneously decided to make tea. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice observes the tea!
His mind wanders a little while it is in progress. He wants to hex himself invisibility powers, but doesn't feel any particular urgency about it, so resolves to wait until it comes up or until the next time he makes a bunch of hexes. He really likes the way Bella's butt looks in those pants.
The thought of more hexes links to the thought of Bella being attractive; he considers the notion of her hurting him. She probably won't want to do it the messy way. Directly wishing pain on yourself doesn't make you anything but hurt, and he has no idea whether that holds true for wishing it on other people; you can wish up something to hurt yourself with, though, so why not a superpower? That would be hot. And really, really convenient. No more burning himself on her stove; he can do it on his when he's in the mood.
How 'bout it? he wonders, not bothering to mindphone her because he can feel her listening. |
Author: self_composed | She decides the tea's done steeping. A triangle chills it; she pours it into glasses and stirs in sugar and squeezes in lemon. [As a practical tool, that one's worth testing on a smaller scale first - and as a superpower, that one definitely has corrupting potential, although interestingly less than a general mindreading power because hurting people appeals to me less than learning things. And as an interpersonal interaction, we are still just friends, however convenient and periodically adorable you may be.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He is happily listening and considering her words right up until she gets to the 'just friends' bit, at which point he becomes confused and kind of worried.
It goes something like this: just friends? As opposed to what? What's the difference? Wait, are just-friends not supposed to do stuff together that one of them might get off on? Because that sounds completely terrible and is almost functionally equivalent to never doing anything fun at all. |
Author: self_composed | [...What working definition of "just friends" were you using?] Bella inquires. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He wasn't! Until now it has genuinely never crossed his mind to define their relationship according to rules other than direct observation of what Bella does and doesn't seem to think is okay! |
Author: self_composed | Bella sips tea and contemplates how to put this. [Let us suppose, almost certainly falsely, that Angela has a kink for, I dunno, dressing up as a saltshaker while someone else she's hanging out with is dressed up as a pepper shaker. And then suppose I knew that, and then she proposed these as Halloween costumes for the two of us. Would it surprise you even slightly if I declined?] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [...yeah,] he says. [Guess it shouldn't, huh?]
The example of the abandoned jar of lye in his basement comes to mind. None of Bella's stated objections to that were even tangentially related to the fact that he was going to get off on it - did she just not know? Maybe that list of his was not as complete as he thought. |
Author: self_composed | [If dressing as a pepper shaker with counterfactual Angela would get me easy access to a nigh-unlimited supply of wishcoins I'd otherwise have to do unpleasant things to get, I would put the costume on. That doesn't mean it's something that would happen under normal circumstances,] Bella says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [I really don't get you,] Alice concludes. Well, okay, that's not news. And he loves her for surprising him, even unpleasantly. |
Author: self_composed | [There exists a division between "sex things" and "not sex things", and torturing you by any mechanism would count as the first, and would require an exceptional reason to get me to do it despite being in a not-sex-things-doing relationship with you,] Bella says. [The division isn't completely sharp, and you in particular mess with it a lot, but that case is clear to me.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He turns that one over in his head a few times.
It surprises him how much he misses the possibility. Way more than he misses the possibility of having any kind of actual sex with her, which is also something he would like very much if she ever felt like it, but isn't really something he spends much time thinking about. He is getting very, very wistful about the torture in a way he rarely ever gets about anything.
But Bella doesn't, in fact, feel like it. So that's that.
Alice shrugs.
[Oh—it'd probably be the best way to get fast coins, if we ever needed 'em,] he adds as an afterthought. Maybe later he'll burn a hex giving himself such a power and then see if using it on himself works for making coins with. |
Author: self_composed | That one is slightly motivating to Bella. Emergency coin generation, without equipment, without an extra preparatory step. And yet. [It'd be an awfully specific kind of emergency, where I don't have the coins I need and can best address the problem by having you generate some. We'd have to both be in the same place looking at the same problem, I'd have to be running around without any hexes, we don't have enough time to set up anything else even by making squares biting our cheeks and conjuring you a knife or something but we have enough time for me to explain what to do with the coins or transfer them from you to me - I don't think it's a sensible emergency plan.]
Pause.
[It might be useful for sheer volume, though.] If she's planning to take over the entire world, she will need to do a lot of stuff...
Pause, pause.
[Okay. Let's experiment and see if getting around the bootstrapping restriction by having someone else make the ouch-wish even works. If it does, I will consider hexing up a power for it.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [Okay,] says Alice. [You wanna wish me hurt, or...?] It could go either way, really. |
Author: self_composed | [Yeah. I'm not sure if this is positive sum so I'll start with a square in case a coin can only do enough to make a smaller coin - and I don't know how much this is gonna hurt.] She finds a ninety-degree corner on her necklace, debates how exactly to do this, and finally just wishes upon him plain unadulterated pain in whatever quantity squares can generate.
And she supervises, curious. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | ...He bites his lip, lightly. It is a tiny bit uncomfortable to know that Bella won't like him getting off on this, but mostly it is really, really nice to feel that and know where it came from. A sharp little all-over sting, there and gone; he isn't surprised when he touches the new coin and finds a square.
[So, that worked.]
And now he is kind of a lot more turned on than he just was. Well, it's not like they didn't expect that. He tries not to dwell on it too much, in case she stops reading him again. |
Author: self_composed | She doesn't stop reading him, but she's not directly looking at him anymore.
[Good to know. Anti-bootstrapping restriction only works on people who work alone.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [Maybe that's another reason why nobody else has—]
—taken over the world. If other coinmakers are all solitary types. Why is she not directly looking at him? |
Author: self_composed | She turns her head back in his direction. She's sort of looking at his chin, though. [Maybe. I still haven't read all the profiles. But Elias had - and expected to have - descendants. He had a family. I'm still confused.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Still thinking more about Bella's line of sight than her long-dead ancestor, he answers, [Maybe he didn't know anybody he wanted to hurt.] Either because they got off on it or because they didn't, but probably the second one. And likewise for not knowing anybody who wanted to hurt him. |
Author: self_composed | [I guess.] She shuts her eyes altogether. [The book doesn't say anything about his family, which is kind of weird. Maybe I should do that genealogy project as soon as I can visibly leave the house.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Bella is acting really weird.
Well, she can tell he's noticed, so if she wanted him to know why, she'd say. He shrugs and lets it go.
[Maybe he hated all his kids,] he speculates, smiling. [Or they hated him. Or both. But he still wanted to pass it down to somebody in the family.]
This line of reasoning makes perfect sense to a Hammond! |
Author: self_composed | [That could be. He lived long enough ago that if he had, like, an estranged wife but he liked his kids, she probably did not get custody, so that's probably not it.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [Yeah, I bet not.] |
Author: self_composed | The oven timer dings.
Bella gets up and puts on oven mitts and pulls it out. [Charlie'll be home in about fifteen minutes, by which time the pie'll be cool enough to eat. And then after dinner we have a difficult conversation with him.] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [Sounds good to me,] Alice says wryly; it sounds good only in the sense that it is likely to lead to solving a problem. Actually having the conversation is unlikely to be fun.
On the other hand, fuck it, he has an underground lair now. |
Author: self_composed | [It's a pretty good lair, if I do say so myself,] Bella agrees. She turns off the oven and starts setting the table. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Ooh, it's fun when she answers his thoughts like he said them out loud! Alice indulges in fuzzy feelings for a bit, and then wonders if she wants any help. |
Author: self_composed | [You can get the forks and napkins,] Bella suggests, laughing softly. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Happily, he does. |
Author: self_composed | Charlie arrives as Bella's putting ice in the water pitcher. He sniffs the air appreciatively. "Pot pie, Bells?" He looks at Alice, unsurprised, unthrilled, unreactive. "Laney," he acknowledges.
"Yep, pot pie," Bella not-quite-sings, filling the pitcher with water and plunking it on the table. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice grins.
Are they inappropriately cheerful for the subject they will later be raising? Well, not like he cares. Pie! |
Author: self_composed | The pot pie is gravyish on the bottom and biscuity on the top.
Ohhhh, it is good.
Bella sighs as she noms it, blissful. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | It is good. On the border of sexually so, in fact. Alice noms pie, and smiles, and loves Bella. |
Author: self_composed | Bella looks at him just a little pointedly, but makes no objection, not even a silent brainphone kind of objection.
"This is real good, Bells," Charlie remarks. "Laney help you?"
"He chopped up the carrots, and stuff," Bella says. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yup," he concurs. |
Author: self_composed | "Well, this is a better recipe than the old one," Charlie says, nodding to himself.
Om nom nom, pie.
Bella puts out a bowl of grapes as a facsimile of dessert.
Om nom nom, grapes.
And then...
Bella wonders if Alice wants to start. He probably doesn't, but she checks. [You want me to take this?] |
Author: edgeofyourseat | [Yes please,] he says.
Talking about his dad isn't exactly the problem; talking to Charlie about his dad is a much bigger one. He just doesn't know how. And he clearly demonstrated with Angela earlier that talking to normal people is not a skill of his.
It probably isn't something you can pentagon, either. Or at least, it's not something he'd want to. |
Author: self_composed | [Yes, pentagoning that would be weird as hell. Who knows what kind of personality magic would glue onto you.]
"Dad," Bella says, when the grapes are a bowl of stems and no more, "in abuse cases - like, domestic violence and stuff - how is the victim's safety handled in cases where the defendant gets off? Even if it's on a technicality or something?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice wholeheartedly and definitively rejects the thought of modifying himself in such a way.
And then looks to Charlie to observe his answer. |
Author: self_composed | "Uh," Charlie says. "Not a lot we can do, honestly. Guy gets off, we have to treat him like he's innocent. Sometimes we can put the victim in lockup to keep 'em safe, but unless they do it again and we can arrest 'em a second time for a technically separate crime, not a police matter."
"Hmm," Bella says, reading Alice for a reaction. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | He didn't expect anything different, really. But the underground lair has him feeling a whole lot more secure about the prospect. |
Author: self_composed | "But certainly if the defendant, however technically-treated-as-innocent, were to do anything to harrass the victim - say, showing up at a workplace, following or hiring someone to follow them around, etcetera - then that would be a police matter again," Bella says.
"Yep," says Charlie. "Bells, is somebody after you? That's not why you moved here, is it? Renée would've told me if there was -"
"No, no," Bella says, shaking her head. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | This seems like a good moment to tell him, actually.
Alice hesitates on the vague suspicion that he would say it... wrong in some way. |
Author: self_composed | "Dad," Bella says quietly, "it's Alice's father."
Charlie's expression is one of slowly dawning comprehension. He looks at Alice.
"In November," he said. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yep," says Alice. "I really pissed him off that time. He usually doesn't hit me with things, and even when he does it's usually not a poker."
He recalls the felt/heard sound of his own ribs snapping and winces slightly. |
Author: self_composed | Charlie looks nonplussed at this straightforward description.
"Part of today," Bella said, "went to making a list of - well, everything." [Are you going to hex yourself eidetic memory? This'd be a good time. Copy my version.] "I know Mrs. Hammond can't be compelled to testify against her husband, but their driver knows enough to be suspicious if he were halfway decent as a human being, and even the fact that Alice went to the hospital in November and didn't explain why ought to be suspicious - I figured it out that way. Alice has a safe place to go, whichever way a trial goes, but is worried about his dad buying someone off or there not being enough evidence to convict, and then he could get harassed at school." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice obediently uses up a hex.
And thinks of the same sound again, this time with considerably more clarity.
Well, that's... definitely a mixed blessing. He carefully does not start down the road of mentally listing all the things it would be really inconvenient to recall in detail right now. |
Author: self_composed | [It won't call up anything you're not actually trying to remember; I specifically included that. I have stuff I don't want to replay in my head all day too,] Bella tells him.
"If he's got a place to go, no reason not to bring charges," Charlie thinks. "Bribing folks the sort of thing he'd do, Laney?" |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Maybe Bella has the self-control not to peek into her memory's septic tank. Alice expects that he doesn't, at least not perfectly.
"Probably," he says. "He'd do just about anything to keep his name clean, if he thought he could get away with it." [Good idea or bad idea to mention why we moved?] |
Author: self_composed | [Er - don't for now. Charlie takes a dim view of illegal things in full generality.]
"Mm," says Charlie. "Can let the right people know that's an issue, but if there was a way to make it go away altogether we'd already be doing it. I think Roberts is a solid fellow, though. He'd most likely get the case while Lawrence is on maternity leave." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Alice shrugs slightly, deferring to Bella's judgment, although there are certainly ways to summarize that reason that don't have him doing anything illegal. |
Author: self_composed | [It opens an avenue of investigation that both makes you look less like jury bait and that your dad may be tempted to neglect. It's a choice for the lawyer, later, not Charlie,] Bella explains.
"Right, I guess a little town wouldn't have that many judges in it," Bella says aloud.
"Don't have to worry about Roberts," Charlie says, confidently. "Jury might be a problem. There's procedures against jury tampering, but..."
"We might be able to block that," Bella says, "by unorthodox means you don't want details on. Or we can just catch it and after they go through a few juries, Roberts can decide the case without a jury." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | Bella is magic and smart and he loves her. So much.
Alice is slowly, tentatively beginning to smile. |
Author: self_composed | [Smiling's gonna look weird, right now,] Bella tells him.
"Right," says Charlie. "Well, I can make the arrest, Bells."
"He's out of town till the end of the week," Bella says.
"Flying in?" Charlie asks. "Could have him picked up at the airport if you know which one." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," says Alice, "he's flying. Don't know the airport, though."
And he kind of doesn't care how weird he looks. If feeling overwhelming relief at this point is an abnormal reaction, it shouldn't be. |
Author: self_composed | [It's not about being relieved or not, it's just about the whole thing being a serious matter. But whatever, this is just Charlie, you can pentagon acting for the witness stand.]
"Well, I can see if we can find that out," Charlie says. "With any luck he'll never set foot in your house again, Laney." |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," he says, and he does smile, crookedly. "Wouldn't that be nice." |
Author: self_composed | "I'll put word around first thing in the morning," Charlie said. "Can I see your list?"
Bella grimly fetches the notebooks.
"He's got an eidetic memory," she explains, as Charlie opens the first. "I wrote everything down from him, but this is straight out of his memories."
"What's the highlighter mean?"
"This color means it left marks and you can prove it - this one means 'jury bait'," Bella says.
Charlie snorts, and starts turning pages, grimmer and grimmer as he goes by. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | ...It is kind of amazing how that was all totally true and also totally lies.
He watches curiously as Charlie progresses through the book. |
Author: self_composed | Charlie decides he doesn't need to see anymore less than ten skimmed pages in, although he does pick up the second notebook to look up the November incident. "Your mother left her lipstick in your room and - Christ."
Well, Bella did just write that it was for her lipstick "being found" there. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yep," says Alice. Same difference, really. It's not like Dad even bothered to ask her if she'd known it was missing. |
Author: self_composed | "Christ," repeats Charlie. "I'll handle this first thing in the morning."
"Thanks, Dad," says Bella. |
Author: edgeofyourseat | "Yeah," says Alice. "Thanks."
He means it, too. |