several kinds

[thaumobabble]

Glass appears in the Belltower, where the Jokers less Felicity are still assembled.

"There are," she announces, "kinds of you."

Comments

[pythbox]

"That's good."

[thaumobabble]

"Yeah. I mean, where would a poof even keep teeth? Did you ever name yours?"

[pythbox]

He laughs and shakes his head. "Nah."

[luminous_regnant]

Golden emerges from the meeting room. "Hi, Glass, Harley. What did you want to talk about?"

[thaumobabble]

"It looks like the twelve-year-old Joker that Jane found is going to be living with Elspeth," says Glass, "but, since he's twelve and not a baby, he's probably going to be harder to deal with than Harley was."

[pythbox]

(Harley grins wryly.)

[luminous_regnant]

Golden looks at Glass.

"You think I'm going to upset him somehow," she guesses.

[thaumobabble]

"It's possible," says Glass. "The possibility that you shouldn't interact with him at all was floated."

[pythbox]

Harley... decides not to say anything.

[thaumobabble]

"He's twelve. He had enough of a dose of Terrible Childhood that the minimum-suffering attractor is all done pulling on him. And Corona's concerned that - Corona's particularly relevant here, he's metacausally clustered closer to Felicity than the others - that he'll be able to tell if there's any hint of 'smug' going on, on your end, when you evaluate how he deals with having recently been traumatized. How he deals with it is probably going to boil down to 'not well'."

[luminous_regnant]

"I am aware that most people do not cope as well as me with devastatingly unpleasant events."

[thaumobabble]

"Yeah, that's not quite the - not quite it. Alice says," Glass adds, "that the state Felicity is in right now, where he's sort of background terrified of everything, is comparable to turning."

[luminous_regnant]

"On what axis?"

[pythbox]

"It's like... whiteout," says Harley. "Like being in the sun. Turning actually wasn't like that for Alice - he didn't ever not like it. But we can imagine that if you started out not liking it, it would be similar."

He considers his next words for a moment, perhaps also conferring with Alice and/or Corona.

"The way they're all like each other is... there's something you're feeling, and it's bad, and you can't get away from it, and it changes the whole landscape of what it's like in your head. Anything else you were going to think about, anything you were going to do, it all gets that much harder. Being in the sun was the worst for that - I couldn't think at all, most of the time. Turning we guess is somewhere in the middle, but we can't be sure where it'd be for somebody who didn't like it the way Alice did. Being scared all the time like Corona was, like we figure Felicity is... well, it's not as bad, Corona could still walk and talk and do stuff most of the time, but it's the same kind of thing. Inescapable pressure."

[thaumobabble]

When Golden doesn't reply immediately, Glass puts in, softly, "You're not better, you're luckier. Not the same way as me, but still -"

[luminous_regnant]

"Mm."

[pythbox]

Harley shrugs.

[thaumobabble]

"He'll need a while. I don't know how long a while. The resources don't exist yet in a - usable way."

[luminous_regnant]

"I believe I take your meaning."

[pythbox]

Harley nods, relieved.

[luminous_regnant]

"Carinna may yet grow better coping mechanisms," Golden adds to Glass in what only sounds like a topic change.

[thaumobabble]

Glass sighs. "She may. She may not. She wants me to tell all the other Bells with Sherlocks to skip her. I can't expect it to get any better. At least there are test cases demonstrating a light at the end of the tunnel for Felicity."

[pythbox]

"Yeah," says Harley. "Jokers even out. I think... if you give us enough time, we might all get to that last phase."

[thaumobabble]

"Even the off-course ones?" Glass asks. "Oh - Golden, when they were all in the Belltower they were dividing themselves into phases. Sort of the Joker version of the Bell life-cycle."

[pythbox]

"The off-course ones I'm less sure about," says Harley. "But I still feel like we're all headed to something like the same place, even if no two of us are getting there exactly the same way. I mean, I'm never gonna be a retiree, right, I'm not planning to go back to my Gotham and blow a bunch of things up and then die, but... I'd like to get to where Ghosty and Queenie and the Joker are, someday. That way they have of just being okay, even when they're not. I don't know, maybe it doesn't make sense if you're not a Joker."