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

[arenaria]

"What?" asks Shell. "...Would it help something if I did? I can. It wouldn't be hard. I can't read what you're thinking anymore, Sherlock, what's she seeing...?"

[sicaria]

"I'm sorry," she says, "I am... having a moment."

[ferratus]

Tony hugs Shell-and-Sherlock again.

[arenaria]

Hugs!

"Is it the kind of moment where you don't believe me that you're very important, even though it is literally the only thing that is so true that I could still remember it after Voice when I thought I'd invented all our alts and that there was ever such a thing as magic and my own name? That kind of moment? Will it go away if I cry on you again?"

[sicaria]

"I believe you that I am very important to you," she says. "It is extremely obvious that I am very important to you. It is very important to me that I am very important to you."

[she_sells_seashells]

"We might have to settle for that," says Bell wryly to Shell.

[arenaria]

"But - but - no, you've just been putting up with it, that she thinks like that, but it's going to drive me just nuts!" Pause. "...A tiny, tiny bit more nuts?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'll let you monopolize her in the couple days we spend double-checking merger parameters, see what you can do - if you can't get any farther than that, we're keeping my attitude towards the issue," sighs Bell.

[sicaria]

"I love you," murmurs Sherlock. To... everyone, really.

[arenaria]

"I love you too," sighs Shell, just as -

[she_sells_seashells]

- Bell says the same thing.

[sicaria]

Shell being the one Sherlock is currently holding, she is the one who gets snuggled.

[arenaria]

That is pleasing!

[she_sells_seashells]

It's fine with Bell too. She's not the one who just spent decades all by herself.

[sicaria]

Snuggle snuggle snuggle snuggle.

She wishes herself the appropriate increase in strength and stamina so that she does not have to put Shell down until requested.

[arenaria]

Shell doesn't notice. She's too busy pressing herself against Sherlock like she expects this effort to eventually yield a sufficient closeness to turn them into some kind of hybrid being.

[she_sells_seashells]

[Let's leave 'em be,] Bell suggests to Tony, turning to go.

[ferratus]

[Deal,] he says, taking her hand and following.

[arenaria]

"You're important," Shell mumbles into Sherlock's neck. "How do I convince you, tell me."

[sicaria]

"I don't know," she murmurs back, helplessly.

[arenaria]

"Why don't you believe it? I do. Bell does too. We're smart. And she's also sane all the way through so it's not just because I've gone a little off. And Tony agrees with us!"

[sicaria]

"It is not wholly a factual matter."

[arenaria]

Nuzzle, nuzzle, hug, sigh. "Why isn't feeling it contagious?" she asks plaintively.

[sicaria]

"I don't know," she says. "I'm sorry."

[arenaria]

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I missed saying that," sighs Shell.