favorite_three | (no subject)

(no subject)

After that, there are two conversations Bella wants to have very possibly more than she has ever wanted a conversation in her life.

One of them is going to have to wait until Charlie gets home, and that will be hours yet. (It's also the one she wants to have the most, but there is very little she can or would do about that, so she is putting it very firmly aside for now. Just because she knows about vampires now doesn't mean Charlie is in any more danger than he has been every other night he's worked. There is no logical reason to try to drag him home now. She can and will wait.)

(She's always known his job was dangerous.)

Prior to Milliways showing up, Bella had just arrived home after dropping Sherlock off; giving him a ride from school when he wants one has become routine.

She jumps right back into her truck and very carefully does not speed on her way to the Stark residence.

The other conversation she wants, she can have right now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yes. He clearly put a lot of effort into communicating to me that he is not in fact my worst nightmare incarnate, but he... did not take any of the thousands of cheap shortcuts that would have been available to him in that enterprise. If he'd been lying, I think he would have cheated more. So he is, somehow, a slightly-but-not-disastrously more amoral version of me."

And then, because after all he's still Sherlock,

"Or he's playing a very long game indeed, which I wouldn't entirely put past him. I'd have to know more to get closer to ruling that out."

Bella sighs.

"Try not to get turned into a vampire, okay?"

She thinks again of the physical differences. A vampire Sherlock would be much less pleasant to hug.

. . . that is not relevant right now.

And really not something she should be thinking about while they're still actually hugging. For one thing, she hasn't taken the time yet to sort out how she might or might not feel about Sherlock or about Tony's insistence that Sherlock likes her and she doesn't want to have anything even close to resembling that conversation before she's had an afternoon with her notebooks about it.

So, to stave that thought process off before he can become evident on her face (and hoping it's not already too late):

"Did this world's Obadiah Stane really die from an illness?"

Absently: "No, he got sucked into Hell."

Bella drops her arms so she can step back and stare at him.

"What?"

He blinks. He looks at her. He refocuses.

"—Sorry, I've been very thoroughly distracted by the concept of a vampire version of me on the loose in some other world - ah, Sunnydale is built on the mouth of Hell. Its physical locus is currently in the basement of Sunnydale High. Don't go down there. It's debatable how literal the Hell in question actually is, but it's verifiably at least an unpleasant place full of hostile supernatural beings."

"The - ?"

She has nothing to say, beyond that, so she closes her mouth. There's little point in trying to talk when she hasn't thought of anything to say.

When she does, after a very long moment, it's,

"So it's more than just vampires and - that entity, then?"

She is going to have a very long talk with Charlie tonight.

(It occurs to her that her first instinct, upon receiving this new piece of information, was not to verify it for herself. Apparently she can add "avoid getting sucked into Hell" to the very short list of things that are more important than confirming startling new knowledge.)

"Much more. The catchall term for anything that's sapient but not human is 'demons', and there are thousands of species from hundreds of more or less mutually accessible dimensions. Some of them are perfectly benign; some of them eat people."

There is so much to know. She has to wonder, though, how much help the library is likely to be on this subject, considering -

"Don't people know?" she asks. "They must know. Especially - Sunnydale must have a much higher concentration than the rest of the country, that's why the death rate is so high. Don't people notice?"

Then she makes a face, because yes, she does in fact remember that she herself was talking about anemia not so long ago. And worrying about the iron content of Charlie's food.

She has already established for herself that she is an idiot, thank you, that's not important right this second.

"People are remarkably good at fooling themselves."

That puts you well ahead of the crowd, the other Sherlock had said, and she knew he was right, has known for a long time that most people prefer to delude themselves to varying degrees, but.

But.

"Don't they want to live?"

"I'm not the one to ask," he says wryly.

There is a lot to unpack in that comment.

Bella adds it to the ever-growing list of things to think about later, when she's sat down with her notebooks. Between talking to Charlie and the journal entry she'll need to write, she may not get much sleep tonight.

That's fine; she wouldn't have, anyway.

Charlie.

She's not thinking much about what she says right now, so the question slips out.

"Do you think Charlie knows?"

He must know.

Everyone thinks the Sunnydale Police Department is a big joke.

But Charlie must know. He doesn't come home until after sunset most nights and he's still alive. He must know.

(All children want to think that their parents are better at everything than most people. Bella knows hers aren't. They're just people, too. That never worried her much, until right now.)

"Hard to say," he says. "With that sunset curfew of his, he's at least paying more attention than most people. I don't know him well enough to say more."

"I'm going to talk to him tonight," she says firmly. "As soon as he gets home."

If, somehow, he doesn't know, then he will very soon. She doesn't have any actual evidence of her own, but then, she shouldn't need it. Charlie's entire job is evidence enough.

If he doesn't know, she will fix it.

Bella grew up with Renee for a mother, after all. She's used to the idea of having to take care of her parent now and then.

He nods. "Good luck."

"Charlie is smart," she says. "It will be fine."

With Renee, maybe, that conversation would be a struggle, but Renee isn't sensible the way Charlie is. It's one of the reasons their marriage didn't last.

"So of course I have no intention of breaking curfew on purpose, but in case of circumstances outside my control, what else do I need to know to defend myself?"

(Her gaze flicks, briefly and without her permission, to Sherlock's scar.)

He takes a laser pointer out of his pocket and offers it to her.

"This is an ultraviolet laser. Shine it on a vampire's bare skin and they will catch fire. If they don't manage to put themselves out within a few seconds, which they almost never do, they'll go up in smoke. A vampire cannot enter a living person's home without an explicit verbal invitation from a resident, but once invited can return freely afterward until disinvited by an expensive and tedious ritual. They find crosses aversive and are scalded by holy water. I abstain from commenting on the theological implications."

Bella accepts the laser, studying it with interest.

(Unlike the last person Sherlock gave one to, she does not need to be warned that shining it into her eyes would be unwise.)

What an impressively useful thing to have.

"Thank you," she says.

. . . judging from her expression a few seconds later, she also has no use for theological implications.

"It would be interesting to know why it works that way, though."

"Wouldn't it just," he agrees.

Edited 2016-10-26 02:44 (UTC)

She gives him a little smile.

"I guess we'll have to figure it out."

With the afternoon she's had, the idea of researching the effects of Christian symbolism on vampires and why those effects exists seems almost normal.

Her definition of normal has become very flexible as of late.

...he grins.

"Do let's."

She grins back, suddenly feeling much better about - well.

Everything.

(Speculating on the timing of that coinciding with the timing of Sherlock's smile is going to have to wait for the relevant journal entry.)

"If you'd like more information about all this supernatural nonsense, I have plenty available. I could email it to you."

"I would appreciate that," she says promptly.

"Did you gather it all yourself, or did you have other sources as well?"

It would be helpful if she had an idea of where to start looking.

Edited 2016-10-26 03:00 (UTC)

"I'll include all the citations where applicable."