arenaria | inside

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.

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(She's not like the torturers Downside, who've heard stop so many times that it's permanently lost meaning -)

"Golden, do you want one of the - what should we call them? There's not one for everybody."

The Joker presses his face into the side of Nathan's neck and whimpers softly, his arms tightening on his lapful of evils hard enough that some of the points draw blood.

"Babe," murmurs Nathan, "I got you - babe - you okay?"

"I have no clever naming ideas," Golden says. "You can hang onto all of the nine-pointed ones until we have a complete expedition put together and can discuss strategy, by which time more may have been accumulated, from the Joker's alts perhaps. I will take a few of the evils." She does.

Shell Bell takes everything else.

"Thank you, Joker," she says gravely.

No more armful of coins—he wraps his arms around Nathan and hugs him as tight as he possibly can.

And takes a deep breath, and lets it out, and takes another.

"Yeah," he says, slow and soft. "I'm fine, sweetie."

And he lets go and sits up a little to toss a smile at Shell Bell.

"Anytime," he says flippantly.

Nathan hugs back, snug but not breaking. "Good."

"You're not even boosted for that, are you," murmurs Shell Bell wonderingly. "I wonder if even Eights could do that."

"Bet you she could," he says with a grin.

"I'm not," Shell Bell says consideringly, "sure how she'll react to our disassembling Downside. I don't mind disappointing the torturers, but she was nice to me."

"She take your sentence?" Nathan asks. "Mine too."

"Yes. She did. But I wish I'd waited longer to find a contractor. A torturer who likes to keep long term pets got me before my grace period was even up and someone who only wanted to hurt me for nine hours would've been a better rescuer than none at all."

"Well," says the Joker, "that depends on who, doesn't it?"

"I was assigned to Chainsaw. I don't think, by reputation, he'd have been inclined to keep me as a pet for - I haven't counted it up exactly and I didn't have enough access to timepieces to know for sure even if I did count days, but I'm pretty sure it was on the order of twenty-five years. Undoubtedly it would have been horrible, but I still had most of my memories after the first time Voice tortured me, even the second and third and fourth, it took a long time for me to get as wrecked as I did. I wouldn't have thought of it as being better. But it might've been."

"Might have," he agrees, and leaves it at that.

"That reminds me," says Shell Bell, making eye contact with Golden. "I think you probably understand this more than any of the others do - but you need Edward and it's not just because of the mate bond. I'm sure turning hurt more than anything Voice did to me. I only had a human body to feel it with. But I was all by myself except for Voice. It made a difference."

"Understood," murmurs Golden. "I'm not planning to attempt to do without him. Ever."

The Joker closes his eyes and settles into Nathan's arms.

He's feeling... well, if they're done talking business for now, he would really like Nathan to take him somewhere quiet and throw him up against a wall.

Nathan is not exactly bad at reading his mate.

He slips out of the room, to no objection from either Bell.

He takes the Joker back to their lovely soundproofed room.

And pins him up against a wall.

"Love you, sweetie," he says with a happy wriggle. This is what he really needs, to get his head on straight after making all those coins.

It doesn't take long for him to come up with enough hexes to get his regeneration back up to pre-mortem levels, and then he adds flavour-tuning on top of that. Giving Nathan a nice tummyache seems like the perfect way to finish up.

Om nom nom, delicious mate about whose loose behavior he is no longer conflicted!

Ooh yes. Don't think he didn't notice Nathan being all serene about the Joker whoring out his mint powers like that. He loved jealous Nathan, but he loves okay-with-it Nathan too, he really really does.

And this one is so much more comfortable.

Not in the tummy region, though, that's fit to burst at the moment. He stops drinking. Eventually.

The Joker will just have to give him tummy snuggles.

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