[He's the kind of person who reacts to having feelings for someone by kidnapping their loved ones to see what they'll do,] Bella says. [Are you that, too? And he isn't just like you except for having not met me or found magic! You were eighteen when you met me and found magic and he diverged before that and I don't know why.]

The Joker hugs Alice and, probably wisely, doesn't say anything.

[There's someone whose world I'm planning to visit briefly,] Bella says. [I don't wanna abandon you if you want me around right now, but if there are no circumstances under which I ought to pull you out of that room - especially since I apparently can't - then you don't need my supervision, and I wasn't doing it for my entertainment. Do you want to just meet up in Moonstone Palace?]

[If you don't wanna listen, don't listen,] he says. [Sure, I'll meet you back home. Love you.]

"Sure," says Roberta, and refrains from asking what all that was about.

Bella gets up. "This might take me as little as half an hour," she says. "If you really don't have any magic there, I can send him to sleep and wake him up by magic by way of testing whether he goes to Milliways from the asteroid or not. If you don't want to hold the door that long, that's fine, we can wait for another door - how often do you find them?"

"It varies," says Roberta. "But when I've let people through for a visit, it's been pretty good about coming back at a convenient time."

"Okay. If I get held up, I will pop down and inform you. You want, like, a book or anything?" She waves vaguely.

She smiles wryly. "No, thank you."

"You made yourself my problem," says Bella darkly.

"That pissed me off, but I was going to do this if I found my way into your world before you and he even clapped eyes on each other," Bella says. "G'night." Square goes.

"The fuck?" says Alice.

"Your girlfriend's jealous," says the Joker, smiling crookedly.