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]

"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.]

[she_sells_seashells]

[Right now?] Bell wants to know. She did not come along on this excursion to Milliways for a reason. Tony did not come along on this excursion to Milliways for the same reason.

[arenaria]

"Sherlock?" murmurs Shell in a tentative, mousy voice. She's sitting on her hands again. She has overstepped her bounds with Important Sherlock, clearly, and should not have made that request.

[sicaria]

She closes her eyes.

[Yes.]

[she_sells_seashells]

"Sherlock needs me right now apparently," Bell murmurs apologetically to Tony, and she kisses his nose and spends a square to make herself presentable and teleports. "What is it?" she asks her girlfriend, tilting her head.

[arenaria]

Shell, who cannot see Bell from where she's sitting, draws her knees up to her chin and hugs her legs.

[sicaria]

Sherlock points.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell steps into the bar, spots Shell, and - does not have quite Sherlock's powers of observation.

"...Another alt is an emergency? Or do I just need to read the story directly because words have failed you?"

[arenaria]

Shell doesn't look up from her knees at the sound of Bell's voice. (Like all voices, they sound different from the inside as opposed to the outside; she doesn't even recognize the sound.) She is berating herself for misjudging her leeway with Important Sherlock.

[sicaria]

Sherlock does not move.

Words have more than failed her. Everything has failed her. This is Bell but it's not Bell but it is and she is hurting and Sherlock does not know how to fix it how does she fix it what do they do.

[she_sells_seashells]

Okay. Bell knows how to deal with paralyzed Sherlock. She reaches out and squeezes her shoulder and spins up to top speed and reads.

"Oh, shit," she murmurs. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

And she drops her hand and she takes five long steps in Shell's direction and she cups Shell's face in her hands. "Hi, Shell," she says softly. "Do you want to remember?"

[arenaria]

Shell looks up at Bell, and then over at Sherlock, and says -

"I said this morning, if nice things happened to me, that would be a nice thing I'd want, a really good memory - but - but I think I upset Sherlock, and she's very important -"

[she_sells_seashells]

"She is," Bell replies quietly. "She's very important and she loves you more than you can imagine and she wants only nice things to happen to you, ever again, forever - here -"

She spends a hex.

[arenaria]

Shell flinches as though she's been electrocuted, and her eyes fly wide open and then squeeze shut.

[sicaria]

Sherlock slowly drops her arm from where it was pointing at Shell.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Do you need a minute?" Bell murmurs to her counterpart. "I think you've got more memories to process than I did."

[arenaria]

"Just a minute," breathes Shell.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell takes that minute to go over to Sherlock and steer her in Shell's direction. [You don't have to react any special way. It's you she wants, not somebody following some script. But be there,] she says to Sherlock.

[sicaria]

She sits at the table that Shell is sitting on.

[arenaria]

Shell flings her arms around Sherlock and clings tight.

"I forgot you," she says, weeping. "I forgot you. How could I do that? I tried - I really tried - I kept you longest of anything - but I forgot you, I didn't even recognize your name when Strat said it -"

[sicaria]

Sherlock hugs her back, shivering very slightly.