luminous_regnant | without recourse

without recourse

Bella doesn't even know that Elspeth had plans to visit Downside until after she finds that Jane is offline, that wishing doesn't fix it. Elspeth is a grownup; Edward does not monitor her every minute of every day, does not report all her comings and goings to her mother.

It's Addy who tells her, uncharacteristically grave, after Bella makes the announcement that Aurum will be isolated until Elspeth finds a door. Elspeth rescheduled an appointment with Addy to go offworld.

And now Elspeth is not going to find them a door, because Elspeth is gone, might well stay gone till Jane is fixed, because time is only synced up due to Jane. And Bella cannot fix Jane. Elspeth might find a door after fifty years have gone by in Aurum.

Bella makes the revised announcement by brainphone to everyone except Jake.

Jake she tells in person. Jake she clutches by the shoulders while he sobs and shakes. Jake she offers to put to sleep so Elspeth will not come home to find him having done something regrettable. Because she will, eventually, come home. Jake she tucks into bed like she's his mother and sends into dreamless nothing so he doesn't have to suffer however long his imprint will be vanished where he cannot follow.

And then she goes to Edward and, because she is a vampire, she does not cry, but she does sob.

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"Better not," the Joker agrees. "But don't worry too much about me if you do, okay? Your mummy's a patient kind of guy."

"And we told you about how one of me got stuck where the princess is now for a hundred years," Nathan adds, "and I was fine, because I knew you'd be fine. Wherever you are, you concentrate on being fine."

"Okay!" says Kerron, tracing colorshapes with his eyes and then nodding.

The Joker scoops up Kerron and hugs him.

"Atta munchkin," he says.

"Mummy, do you just forget my name a lot?"

"Never once," he says, grinning. "Why? Getting tired of 'munchkin'?"

"I'm getting bigger!" Kerron says.

"Are ya? I hadn't noticed," he teases.

"I am! I'm bigger."

"Well, tell you what," says the Joker. "If you want me to stop calling you munchkin, you let me know, and otherwise if you get taller'n me I'll quit all by myself."

Kerron can do that!

It takes him a little shy of four years.

Gosh, that's fast.

The Joker doesn't say anything about it directly. But coming from the Joker, well - 'Kerron' is all that need be said. It's just about the first time he's ever used the name.