inside

[arenaria]

Shell and Bell have worked out (well, Bell has worked out and Shell has tentatively commented on) a merging protocol that they think will work for them.

Shell's memories are going to be perfectly accessible, but they will not come up automatically in response to stimuli unless the resulting Shell Bell is expressly open to it. They will keep Shell's hard-earned tolerance to pain, insofar as that's separable (Shell is quite sure that she'd be able to make a pentagon if another situation as important as getting ahold of Sherlock to mint Juliet came up). All of Shell's insights about Sherlock's importance stay. Her itchy discomfort with Sherlock not getting her importance will be folded into Bell's resignation to same. The merged Shell Bell will be comfortable referring to either past in the first or third person, but will default to using "I" for Bell and "she" for Shell. She'll torch, but that's the only supernatural property Shell's bringing to the merger; she'll retain all Bell's magic. Shell looks a little older, but not much; they'll go with that, as they think torching probably conflicts with actually aging and they don't think twenty is the ideal place to sit forever and whatever Shell is supposed to be is closer. They are omitting the nightmares, good riddance.

"Last minute questions, comments, reasons to expect this to be a bad idea in some way?" Bell asks.

Shell shakes her head. She is looking forward to not being a separate person anymore.

Comments

[sicaria]

Sherlock voices no objections, nor does she think any.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell tries a hex. This is apparently not a job for a hex.

It is not a job for a star.

There are two evils left, from when Sherlock made evils.

She frowns, and rereads all the wish parameters from where she wrote them down for Shell to look at, and finally she touches one of the remaining, declawed evils and wishes.

There were two.

Now there is one.

[sicaria]

Now there is one, indeed.

Sherlock hugs her.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Hi," says Shell Bell with a very Shellish sigh.

[sicaria]

"I love you," says Sherlock.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I love you," says Shell Bell. "Well. Now I'm all neatened up - Tony, can you try for a door so I can write some extremely urgent notes in the Bellbook?"

[ferratus]

"Yep!"

He opens a door.

And lo, Milliways.

[arenaria]

Lo and behold!

Shell Bell teleports up to the Belltower.

She writes the story.

If Sherlock or Tony choose to observe her at this activity, they will see more of Shell than of Bell in her, because it's Shell's story and she's got Shell's memories open to share it. But the differences aren't so pronounced. It's quite possible that Shell-alone could have recovered much of her sanity simply by decluttering her apartment and living in it uneventfully for some months or years. Progress was made in the days she spent back home before the merge, and the merge itself helped between the magical excisions and the deemphasis of the worse memories.

The differences aren't pronounced, but they're there. Shell looks up when she hears unexpected noises and Bell doesn't. Shell's hands don't tremble after the merge, but sometimes, her lower lip does, where Bell is often still. Shell orients herself around Sherlock like Sherlock is the sun and Bell falls into more natural, less obsessive patterns.

And now that they're one and the same, it's all about -

[she_sells_seashells]

- context.

Bell concludes her outline of the facts and the narrative. She closes the book.

[sicaria]

Sherlock hugs her again.

[she_sells_seashells]

Hugs!

"Golden resurrected somebody. Since she's not here right now to handle it herself, I should probably see if I can still open the door to Downside and fetch him out for her."

[sicaria]

"Of course."

[she_sells_seashells]

Downstairs.

"- Ah, I just completely forgot about holding the door for the Joker when I saw you," Shell Bell says ruefully. "I was going to just see if the door would go there, but now I guess I'll have to actually hold it and brainphone him that I'm back and let him out."

She pulls open the door. It's Atlantis. She closes the door, closes her eyes, focuses -

[arenaria]

- and opens the door to her clutter-strewn little apartment in Downside.

There's probably a clock or six somewhere in the debris, but if there is, it's not set to what passes for the date in Downside. [Joker?] she tries.

[gunpowdergelatine]

[Yeeeeee-es?]

[arenaria]

[It's Shell.] After a fashion. [I left the door - and I don't know if this one is at the same time, or not, because I'm not quite as I was when you last saw me, so it might not have stayed put. I'm sorry.]

[gunpowdergelatine]

[It's fine,] he says cheerfully. [I had a little adventure.]

[arenaria]

[Okay. Did you happen to look up Nathan while you were there or did you have another reason for wanting the door? Golden resurrected him the way Sherlock resurrected me and he may have split the same way.]

[gunpowdergelatine]

[Yep! Got him right here.]

"Doorstop's back," he says aloud.

[arenaria]

[What I did was - when I found my live self - we merged. It took an evil, but I'm both now, mostly the live one because she was a lot saner. Does Nathan, or at least this one, want to do that?]

[temporal_affairs]

"What happened? Shouldn't any amount of time she spent in Milliways or wherever be nothing on this end?" asks Timer.

[gunpowdergelatine]

[I'll ask.]

"Mm, she's not exactly the same doorstop," he explains. "She found the resurrected one and they got back together. Now she wants to know if you wanna do the same thing with Nathan."

[temporal_affairs]

"...Back together, like...?"

[gunpowdergelatine]

He presses his hands together, pulls them apart. "They split..." together again, "they merge."

[temporal_affairs]

"...Well, there's a thought, but while I'd welcome being a vampire again and miss Kerron quite a bit and have no strong objections to resuming being stuck exclusively on you, I don't think Nathan's going to want to share an identity with a version of him who -" Airquotes! - "'cheated on you'."