downside

[arenaria]

Voice lets her go.

Shell doesn't know how long it's been. She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know how to get home, or if she has one.

She stands on Voice's doorstep. She blinks slowly at the brightness.

She walks in a random direction.

Downsiders aren't big on charity. It's not like it's going to kill her if she doesn't get help. It's not like she's unfamiliar with the effects of dehydration and hunger; Voice didn't always remember to take good care of the pet in the basement. Shell walks, and when she's tired she lies down on the ground and sleeps, and when she wakes up she walks, and every few days she curls up on the ground, waits to torch from thirst, and then gets up and goes on.

She doesn't count the number of times this happens. It doesn't matter.

She walks. She has nightmares. She walks.

On an unremarkable day on an unremarkable street after unremarkable stretches of years, she feels herself cross a telltale threshold of dizziness and headache: she cannot make significant forward progress towards Not Where She Is Currently Located until she torches or (less likely) someone gives her a lot of water. It's possible she'll be able to sleep through this torch. She sits. She leans on a wall. She should probably pick up the next sharp object she finds. Maybe a piece of broken glass will present itself. Then she can skip these parts.

She sits, and she closes her eyes, and she waits. If the buildings around her would ever have seemed familiar, they don't now.

Comments

[sicaria]

"It's all right," says Sherlock. "Who is Voice?"

[arenaria]

"Voice is a torturer. That's all I know, I never saw them, they never touched me, all there was was - their voice. Most torturers aren't so bad, if you get one's attention you're in for a bad few hours or a day maybe unless they think you're special for some reason but then they get bored. Voice kept me in their basement for - for a long time, I don't know how long, I asked for paper and they gave me paper but it took so long that I couldn't remember what I wanted to write anymore, except -"

She hesitates, still staring at Sherlock.

Sherlock is terribly important.

There is one other terribly important thing in Shell's head but she doesn't know if they're connected or not.

[sicaria]

"Except?"

[arenaria]

"Just the same thing, over and over, I couldn't remember anything else, I just wrote someone loved me once," Shell says. "I think that's true. I really think so. My apartment looks like it, too."

[sicaria]

"It is true," says Sherlock.

[arenaria]

"I thought so!" says Shell. "Anyway, Voice had me for a long time, and then they let me go, I don't know why it was when it was, and - I couldn't remember my residence code or anything - so I just - walked. I torched every few days because I couldn't usually find water."

[sicaria]

"...Would you like to come upstairs and sit down?"

[arenaria]

"Yes," says Shell, because this person is terribly important and I'll go anywhere with you sounds forward.

[sicaria]

They are now upstairs. In a smallish bedroom. Sherlock is standing still and looking as expressionless as she has for this entire conversation.

[arenaria]

"Oh," says Shell, in much the same tone she used when she found Milliways. "Oh, magic."

And she sits on the bed, and crosses her ankles, and uncrosses them, and finally she sits on her feet and her hands both, to hold them still, because they're shaking and it's annoying.

[sicaria]

"I don't know what to do now," Sherlock says quietly.

[arenaria]

"Why not?" asks Shell. "I didn't interrupt you doing something, did I? You're very very important and I don't want to mess up whatever you've been doing. - I'll help you, if I can, but I'm not very good at anything."

[sicaria]

"Right now," says Sherlock, "there is nothing I could be doing that is more important than you."

[arenaria]

"Oh," says Shell. She's not about to question the Important Person's judgment. "...Should I say more things? I think you have the, the broad shape of everything, but there are details, here and there, if you want them, except I don't think you'd necessarily like them -" Shell has no idea how she can read this into motionlessness and stoic calm expression, but she can, she's very sure. "- I remember this morning perfectly well and it's much nicer than the rest," she adds, "Strat torched me and then invited me home for tea, that was unusual, most often even if someone mercy-torched me they'd just walk away after."

[sicaria]

"I will not like them," says Sherlock. "I want them anyway."

[arenaria]

"Are... are you sure? It's a lot. Strat says it was sixty or seventy years between when I told him where I resided and when I found him today. It will take a lot of your time and you're very, very important."

[sicaria]

"I have a lot of time."

[arenaria]

"Okay, but you can stop me whenever you want," Shell says, and she starts.

She meanders, but she tries to keep her transitions as clear as possible: here is something Voice did (here is a digression on how torturer's control works, the finer points), here is how that is different from this one who caught here there or that one who caught her the next neighborhood over, here is her rueful description of how she tried tried tried to fall away from caring, any of the thousand times she's been tortured, because all she'd have to do to have a fair shot at escaping would be to bear one person's sentence - even a piddling single hour - without trying to change her mind. She never could; she is not whatever stronger-willed person took her original sentence (because she remembers the first time Voice hurt her; she'd remember if there was an occasion before that; if only she hadn't contracted it out her assigned torturer would have found her in Voice's basement and taken her away and tortured her for some much shorter period of time and then she'd have been free, she admires contractors but wishes she'd procrastinated on getting one). She never even made her way to the Crescent to try to sit the exam. She's desensitized, to dehydration (here is how she learned when it was time to sit down and wait to torch), to all manner of injury, but she has never gotten to the point of not wanting it to stop, and that forbids her the contractor's blessings. She certainly wasn't going to become a torturer, not even to turn it into a contest whenever someone took a liking to her. Here is something else Voice did. Here are the fragments of unbelievable fantasy stories she invented to console herself, stories in which she could do magic just like the Important Person and could get out and put Voice somewhere where they'd never be able to catch and harm another pet.

Here is a tangent about her apartment, and about how it is small so probably only one person mourned her, but it's nice, it's not a ramshackle hovel, and that means that this one person must have loved her very much. She is sure someone loved her, and she was sure even before the Important Person said it was true (though she does not know how the Important Person came to have this information, she does not think the Important Person would lie to her.) Her psychology does not make sense without it. And since no one has loved her since she died, and because her apartment confirms it, she is sure that this happened when she was alive.

She hopes they are okay.

[sicaria]

"My name," she says softly, "is Sherlock."

[arenaria]

"Strat told me I said I knew a Sherlock, seventy or eighty years ago," says Shell. "I don't remember anything else, though - I'm sorry -"

[sicaria]

"You are categorically not required to be sorry to me about anything."

[arenaria]

"But - was it you? Or someone else with the same name, that I knew, before? Did I know you? I could tell right away that you were very important - but I don't know why."

[sicaria]

"It was me," she says.

"I need to go—find someone."

[arenaria]

"Don't leave me," blurts Shell, involuntarily, her hands escaping from where she's sitting on them to reach out in Sherlock's direction, "no, please, I missed you, not yet, please -"

[sicaria]

Sherlock teleports both of them downstairs—Shell ends up sitting on a table—opens the door, and says,

[I need you.]