in between moments

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell has not found Milliways by herself since the occasion on which she first met Sherlock.

Today, after eight months, she does.

She makes sure that Sherlock and Tony are both awake, finds that they are but do not want to join her in the bar today unless she finds something interesting, checks her coin supply and finds it sufficient, and steps through.

Comments

[pythbox]

"Are they both your age?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Yes."

[pythbox]

"Maybe I'll pass," he says wryly.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Why does their being my age have to do with that?"

[pythbox]

He shakes his head.

[she_sells_seashells]

"...Is this about the thing where it seems like every template but mine immediately gets a room when they meet their counterparts?" asks Shell Bell wryly.

[pythbox]

"No," he says, looking appalled.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Then what?"

[pythbox]

"I just... it would be weird," he says plaintively.

[she_sells_seashells]

"How does their being my age make it weird? I met a me who's in her forties, I mentioned her, it's not weird - not even that she's married to someone who's not a you or a Sherlock and has a kid."

[pythbox]

"It just is, okay?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Being not-me seems so confusing sometimes. Not knowing what's going on in your own head," Shell Bell muses, flipping over in the air. "You are what you're thinking and you can't even figure out what it is. But okay, if you don't want to meet them, that's fine."

[pythbox]

...Tony shakes his head and smiles.

[she_sells_seashells]

"How old are you?" Shell Bell wants to know.

[pythbox]

"Thirty-seven."

[she_sells_seashells]

"How'd you come to be full of shrapnel? Is that from when your version of Snow tried to kill you?"

[pythbox]

"How'd you guess," he says dryly.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Well, it was either that or an awful lot of people have been trying to kill you," says Shell Bell.

[pythbox]

"Okay," he admits, "very logical."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I actually managed to take over my entire world without anybody trying to kill me and without having to personally kill anyone, which was way better than our initial projections. Although one of my alts came for a visit and killed someone for me. And I burned down a couple of buildings, but I chased everybody out of them, I didn't catch them on fire."

[pythbox]

"...Definitely better than the alternative."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Yeah. So what do you do? I bet some kind of engineering, but I mean specifically." She glances around the house for clues. "I'm pretty clueless about what my Tony gets up to in the basement with the gadgets, and I know less about what it'd take to write a Jarvis, which mine didn't do." Pause. "Hm, the only Tony with no Jarvis is the one who had a Sherlock all along, I wonder why, maybe the writing Jarvis and the cloning are both about being lonely or something."

[pythbox]

"...I do pretty much every kind of engineering," says Tony. "And some superheroing on the side."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Ooh, superheroing. Need any help, as long as my friend holding the door isn't impatient yet?"

[pythbox]

"Nah," he says, "I'm good, thanks."