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Alice eventually goes home for the evening.
Bella goes up and sits in her room.
She has five hexes.
Five.
That's rather a lot of hexes.
She gets out her notebook, with the lists, and she makes some wishes.
And then she goes to bed, grinning.
In the morning it will be time to make plans.
self_composed
self_composed
Bella nods.
"Documentation time," she says, and she wishes a brand new notebook from her box of them upstairs. "Here goes memory-trawling. I can probably remember your memories better than you can 'cause I can just query them directly instead of having to elicit them from the inside."
She concentrates, and searches by keythought.
"Documentation time," she says, and she wishes a brand new notebook from her box of them upstairs. "Here goes memory-trawling. I can probably remember your memories better than you can 'cause I can just query them directly instead of having to elicit them from the inside."
She concentrates, and searches by keythought.
edgeofyourseat
Alice closes his eyes and sits back and luxuriates in the feeling of being read, even though he can't tell what she's reading.
The list of search results is very, very long, and all of them have the pain symbol attached.
Here is Alice's father standing by a lit fireplace and grabbing a poker out of the stand. Here is Alice's father with clenched fists and a thunderous expression. Here is a memory with no visuals, just touch and sound.
All the iconized visuals contain Delaney Hammond Sr.; some of them show his wife, too, invariably covering her face or leaving the room. They span nearly every room in the Forks house and dozens more in what must be the old house in New York. In some of the latter, Delaney Sr. is holding a weapon of some kind—cane, belt, ruler; in one, a lit cigarette. But apparently, by the time they got to Forks, he was mostly inclined to beat his son with his own two hands.
The list of search results is very, very long, and all of them have the pain symbol attached.
Here is Alice's father standing by a lit fireplace and grabbing a poker out of the stand. Here is Alice's father with clenched fists and a thunderous expression. Here is a memory with no visuals, just touch and sound.
All the iconized visuals contain Delaney Hammond Sr.; some of them show his wife, too, invariably covering her face or leaving the room. They span nearly every room in the Forks house and dozens more in what must be the old house in New York. In some of the latter, Delaney Sr. is holding a weapon of some kind—cane, belt, ruler; in one, a lit cigarette. But apparently, by the time they got to Forks, he was mostly inclined to beat his son with his own two hands.
self_composed
Bella grits her teeth, opens up the less sensory data around each one in turn, and writes dates - approximate when she has to, exact when she doesn't - and implements where applicable, exact details of each attack, instigating incidents especially when trivial, injuries and scarring and where it may be found, and all relevant visits to the hospital. She fills pages. And pages. In neat and tidy handwriting and careful, consistent formatting. She adds a footnote attached to each incident where Mrs. Hammond was there.
edgeofyourseat
It turns out the poker was the source of Alice's broken ribs in November. The offense that led to it: a tube of his mother's lipstick found in his room. Mrs. Hammond was not present.
(The poker left scars, of course. So did the cigarette. Most of the implements did, at one time or another, and Alice has long suspected that's why his father stopped using them except when he was really pissed off.)
Before the ribs, visits to the hospital were surprisingly few, and only for injuries as bad as that or worse—a broken jaw when he was twelve, a broken arm when he was sixteen. The former was incurred for wearing (and ruining) one of his mother's dresses; the latter, for swearing in the house. Not usually such a dire crime, but Senior was in a bad mood that day.
(The poker left scars, of course. So did the cigarette. Most of the implements did, at one time or another, and Alice has long suspected that's why his father stopped using them except when he was really pissed off.)
Before the ribs, visits to the hospital were surprisingly few, and only for injuries as bad as that or worse—a broken jaw when he was twelve, a broken arm when he was sixteen. The former was incurred for wearing (and ruining) one of his mother's dresses; the latter, for swearing in the house. Not usually such a dire crime, but Senior was in a bad mood that day.
self_composed
Bella tries to stick to the plain, bare facts; a prosecutor will be better than her at spinning it into a story that tones down the things juries won't like and yanks on their heartstrings with everything else. She writes and writes and writes.
Finally, when her hand is cramped again after having been triangled into submission twice and she's filled both sides of every page in the notebook and sixteen pages of a new one, her mental representation of the memories will scroll no farther.
She puts down the pen and backs off to just surface reading.
"Does anything in your architectural plans for the renovation of this house suggest the soundproofing?" Bella asks.
Finally, when her hand is cramped again after having been triangled into submission twice and she's filled both sides of every page in the notebook and sixteen pages of a new one, her mental representation of the memories will scroll no farther.
She puts down the pen and backs off to just surface reading.
"Does anything in your architectural plans for the renovation of this house suggest the soundproofing?" Bella asks.
self_composed
"Good. That'll look like he did it specifically to keep everything from being audible."
Bella looks at her notebooks full of incidents.
"There is no non-magical way to have this much documentation unless you have an eidetic memory or you've been journaling aggressively all along," she says. "Is the second thing remotely plausible? Can anyone actually disprove the first if they go up against an actual eidetic memory that you could acquire via hex, like mine?"
Bella looks at her notebooks full of incidents.
"There is no non-magical way to have this much documentation unless you have an eidetic memory or you've been journaling aggressively all along," she says. "Is the second thing remotely plausible? Can anyone actually disprove the first if they go up against an actual eidetic memory that you could acquire via hex, like mine?"
edgeofyourseat
"Hell, if I hex up perfect memory for myself, it'll be true," Alice says with a shrug. "Fucking hard to disprove it then. No way I could've kept journals all this time, though; he searches all my shit whenever he can stand to deal with the mess." Which is very infrequently these days, but not totally unheard-of, and was much more common back when he had fewer possessions to leave lying around in the first place.
Oh, thinking of which— "Does shit like going through my clothes and throwing out all the stuff I actually like count for this kinda thing? He's done that a few times."
Oh, thinking of which— "Does shit like going through my clothes and throwing out all the stuff I actually like count for this kinda thing? He's done that a few times."
self_composed
"...No, I don't think so," Bella says. "It should, but I'm not actually sure that teenagers have property rights, legally speaking, even though decent people pretend we have as a polite fiction. The occasion around Christmas is more ambiguous... but still ambiguous. We'll leave that one up to the lawyer." She writes it down in the second notebook, after two line breaks. "Anything else?"
edgeofyourseat
"Yeah, figures. In that case, nah, I think that's it."
When he looks at the notebooks, he's not sure whether to be surprised it took that much or surprised it didn't take more.
When he looks at the notebooks, he's not sure whether to be surprised it took that much or surprised it didn't take more.
self_composed
Bella gets a tricolor highlighter from the junk drawer, and goes through them all again and highlights the ones that left marks - or injuries that might turn up in a sufficiently thorough medical exam, and then in another color highlights the ones that were related to particularly jury-baitish incidents and not things like wearing dresses or swiping Mrs. Hammond's lipstick. "Lawyer'll do the rest. We'll talk to Charlie when he comes home." She checks the time. "I think it is lunchtime now."
self_composed
Bella shrugs. "I'm not in the mood for anything more complicated than cold cuts on rye, and we have those. Sound good?"
self_composed
Bella fixes sandwiches - she polishes off the roast beef, so Alice gets salami. They eat. Om nom nom.
edgeofyourseat
Over lunch, Alice finds himself considering the possibilities of an underground lair.
He concludes pretty quickly that he had better get Bella's help designing the place. And maybe also building it.
He concludes pretty quickly that he had better get Bella's help designing the place. And maybe also building it.
self_composed
"Sure, that seems like a good way to kill an afternoon," Bella says when she reads the thought.
edgeofyourseat
"Awesome! Please help me build an underground lair so I won't forget something obvious like bathrooms," says Alice.
self_composed
"I think if you forgot bathrooms, you'd realize pretty quick you needed to add them," Bella says. She gets a fresh notebook, so that diagramming may be done. "It'd be more problematic if you forgot, like, ventilation, and passed out in your sleep and suffocated. That would be really inconvenient."
edgeofyourseat
"See?" he says, with a warm happy glow of affection. "This is why I need you. Okay, so: bathrooms, ventilation. Where should I put it?"
self_composed
"Uh, hm. Deep, enough that you won't run into someone's actual basement so the ceiling should be a couple stories down, but you don't want to overdo it and be next to the mantle of the earth or anything. Not in an aquifer. I wonder if there's a map of nearby aquifers on the internet. Probably want to surround yourself with rock, not dirt. Possible we need to learn some geology."
edgeofyourseat
"Doesn't have to be that big," he says. "Well, it depends how much I wanna do there, I guess."
Absolute necessities: a bathroom (with a shower, because of what he can do there with a knife) and somewhere to sleep.
Things that would be nice, if he'll be staying there a while: somewhere to cook (conveniently also doubling as somewhere to hurt himself) and somewhere to sew.
"That doesn't add up to that much, right?"
Absolute necessities: a bathroom (with a shower, because of what he can do there with a knife) and somewhere to sleep.
Things that would be nice, if he'll be staying there a while: somewhere to cook (conveniently also doubling as somewhere to hurt himself) and somewhere to sew.
"That doesn't add up to that much, right?"
self_composed
"Yeah, sounds pretty small. How long do you envision living here?" Bella sketches vague lines of layouts. "I'm not sure what'll happen to your dad's stuff if we can get him sent to jail, but it's not necessarily the case that you'll have access to the house after." Pause. "I'm planning to live in Forks till I finish high school in a year and a half, then go off to college somewhere."