As usual, Bella started reading him as soon as he had her attention at all. "Copy mine," she suggests. [Libby, Mary, Elena, do you need a ride?]

"Sure," he says, and does. Also, hugs her.

Elena follows, looking fidgety. "I have no idea if packlessness will kick in over the course of a minute's stay in Milliways, so I'm just going in and letting myself out without lingering or getting a beer, and if you want to visit my world today you better follow me quick or hope the Princess is in there," she announces, when they reach the location of the door.

"Understood," says Libby.

"Well," says Bella, "wait until I've fetched Mary. Libby, hold the door?" When that's taken care of she teleports to where Mary's at. "All set to go?" she asks.

"Yep," says Mary, who will someday be portrayed by Natalie Portman. "Hi."

Bella teleports her up and they're off! through Milliways, briskly briskly, not delaying their shuddering wolf companion.

Libby and Mary pile through the door, and then pile back through it as soon as Elena has it open.

"Damn, that was unpleasant, good to see you Ashleigh," mutters Elena, lurching into the side of the first wolf she sees at the ongoing birthday party, a woman who pats her on the head indulgently.

"Man, where's the fun in that?"

"The fun is in getting to steer," says Bella lightly. "Mary, if we leave you here and Elena shows you around, can you do your fortune-telling while I go consult the Imperial Seer about that question you drew a blank on?"

"Sure," Mary says agreeably.

"Thisaway," Bella says to Alice. "The Imperial Seer is also named Alice. She's interesting. You'll like her. Now, her office is within range of the Emperor's mindreading, so... see if you can avoid deliberately antagonizing him, at least, you probably can't help but discomfit him somewhat. This assumes witch mindreading beats star defense powers, of which I am unsure."

"I'll be good," he promises, which is probably impossible. He'll give it his best shot, anyway.

"Good," says Bella, scritching his head. "Do you want your present to be a surprise till I can give it to you, assuming I can, or do you want to find out today?"

"Hi, Bella-clone!" says a tiny pixielike person with dark spiked hair. "Oho. Yes. You can do what you wanna do perfectly safely, there is no doubt."

"You are going to have a disturbing amount of fun, Whistle," Alice tells him.

Of course he can hug Bella. And Bella hugs him back, too.

"Is there anything else you wanted prophesied? That is here in this universe?" Alice asks.

(Whistle giggles.)

"And near as I can tell he would be doing that even if it were only me," Bella says. "Okay. Thanks, Alice!"

"No problem! You have fun and disturbing amounts of fun, respectively!"

"Always," says Whistle, and impulsively blows Alice a kiss.

Alice snorts.

"Whistle," suggests Whistle, helpfully. Because that's the less confusing one, right?

"That's probably not going to be doable," says Stellar Bella slowly.

"Yeah, there's kinda no such thing," says Whistle, rubbing the back of his head. "Call me whatever you want, or don't, but names aren't really my deal."

"What Allirea wants to call you," says Golden Bella, "is whatever it says on your licitly obtained birth certificate or your driver's license or your passport - the first name, at least. She's got a personal vendetta against nicknames. It's usually just worth accommodating her. She calls me Isabella, which no one else does."

"She can call me anything," says Whistle, "up to and including 'fuck you', except that."

"Does she have to call him anything? Give her the day off?" Bella says.

"Alice. Depriving her of one of her bodyguards would be very unfriendly, even if it started as an accident," says Stellar Bella seriously, planting one hand on each of his shoulders and making eye contact. "Do you want to go back to the wolf village and wait there and let me handle this? I can handle this for you."

Is she going to handle it in a way that tells anybody that name because in that case fuck everything.

"I didn't," mutters Edward.

"The first name on his licitly obtained birth certificate reads 'Frederick'," Bella lies. "If Allirea ever attempts to ever call him that, I imagine he'll be motivated to set her on fire, but that's a moot point, as I don't plan to bring him to this world again. Now I'm going to see what I can do to calm him down and then I'll come back, alone, and we can talk about my bag of futuristic technology and your wishes. Okay?"

"Okay," replies Golden Bella, as Allirea fades away again and Edward and all the spectators lose track of what they were talking about.

[I love you,] he says, curling up in the middle of his cozy little inferno. And he does, and he is happy and relieved and amused and admiring, but those things have to fight for space in his head with fear and horror and anger and the pain he is using to distract himself. (It doesn't work as well as usual.)

[Snuggles?] she offers, holding out her arms and sitting on the moondust.

He gets the tightest of hugs.

He loves her so very much.

"We can get your name legally changed," she says, running her fingers repetitively through his hair. "To whatever you like. I declare it legally not what it was on Mars, anyway, but we can get it changed in America. First thing when we get home."

He is too busy sniffling into her shoulder to say it out loud, but the first thing that comes to mind is Alice Whistle Swan.

She kisses the crown of his head. "That's adorable. Alice Whistle Swan it is."

"A whistle swan sounds like it's a species of bird," Bella murmurs. "You could be the star of a series of children's books. Alice Whistle Swan Goes to the Library. Alice Whistle Swan Gets Caught in the Rain. Alice Whistle Swan Visits the Moon."

He giggles softly.

Bella kisses his hair again and hugs him and waits.

"Thank you for not destroying anything in front of the other Bella in her not-technically-a-throne-room, by the way."

"Seemed like a bad idea," he says, although that might be overstating the complexity of his train of thought at the time.

She kisses his hair. "So," she says, "I did not think the Emperor had a chance to catch your original name. I can read your mind too and I didn't see it go by. But if he had, I couldn't have risked lying to them. And I wasn't sure what I would do if I bluffed him, told him he could go ahead and say, and got the actual name out of his mouth. I could've tried to avoid ever telling you about it - I don't plan to bring you back here - or I could've lied to you instead or I could've waited for you to calm down and explained what happened. Which of those would've been preferable, given that the risk was small but needed taking?"

"That's what I probably would have gone with," she agrees. "I don't think the Emperor had any reason to spread the name farther than that room, and everyone in the room except for you, me, Allirea, and Bella would've presently determined the whole thing unimportant as soon as she faded - it's disconcerting how she works, actually, but it would've prevented too much spread."

"Well," says Bartholomew, "we're moving the pack to the Lapis capital in a few weeks, so I'm going there. I go into town sometimes wherever we're living, to run errands or see performances or go to the zoo or whatever. I don't have, like, a calendar on me..."

"That's okay," says Mary. "Hmm." She chews absent-mindedly on her lower lip. "No prospects either way before the move... ooh, don't go out at night in the first week there, there's something you'll want to see but somebody's going to be there who you really don't want to meet... nothing in the next week, or—huh." Chewchewchew. "Actually, is there a calendar handy? This'll probably be easier if I can pinpoint days."

Someone fetches her a wall calendar and points out the date; it's currently February 8.

"...No? That's probably just going to be a normal day," Bartholomew says, writing down when he should stay put.

"Really? Maybe it doesn't depend on you..." Chewchewchew. "No, it does. You're going to get the chance to go somewhere in late August, and if you do, you'll meet somebody and work out really well with her. It'll be a long trip—about a week. There was hardly any chance you'd do it before, but now it's almost a sure thing."

"Go to Burning Man," Mary says firmly.

Bartholomew makes a face, but says, "Okay. Burning Man."

"Yep," says Mary. "You won't have a lot of fun until you meet your imprint, but you'll meet her pretty fast. And she's really going to like you."

"...What?" Embry says.

"I... well, I follow the pack around, wasn't planning to stop anytime soon... I didn't have any plans for December but there's always some chance someone'll put together a trip to someplace like Laurel did to Spain last summer. And sometimes I visit La Push or Volterra on not much notice."

"Spain is safe," says Mary. "Volterra is safe. La Push is not. Ms. Disaster isn't there, but she's going to be nearby. Let me see if I can narrow this down."

"...Okay," says Embry, shifting uncomfortably.

"Okay. And I can go there well in advance of Disaster December and all will be well?" Embry asks.

"Yep," says Mary. She sounds very sure of that.

"Hi, Lewis," says Mary. "Then you'll want to stay inside... actually, you're covered until Halloween. Don't go anywhere on Halloween." She pauses for a moment, then adds, "And at some point next January there's going to be some guests here you don't want to meet."

"Okay. No Halloween parties. Can I just go visit Aunt Brooke in La Push in January and be safe?"

Mary checks. "Yep!"

"And then after that? Or are you coming back around then?"

"I can't tell when I'm coming back," she says, "but it's harder to tell who you might meet by accident when it's more than a year away. Hmm... errands... libraries. There's a librarian somewhere in Canada you should be avoiding."

"No libraries in Canada. Okay. Is there anything else you can tell me?" He's taking notes too, very seriously.

"I am happy to steer you away from that," says Mary. "Let's see... oh, that's easy." She opens the calendar to May. "There's a movie you're going to want to see," she says. "See it on the twelfth, at, hm, ten o'clock.. It's not certain, but there's high odds you'll meet someone there that you'll get along well with, and there's no disasters waiting for you if she doesn't show."

"The second Wonder Woman movie's coming out then," he says, "is that it?"

"Yep," says Mary.

And when it's all over with, she gets to crawl under a blanket and not deal with people anymore. That is possibly the best part.

A few days later, Bella tells Alice, [Elspeth found Milliways. She's the only local here. Come on, let's go.]

Alice finally leaves his lunar cuddle nest.

And through they go! Elspeth orders a case of her bubbly to go, then heads straight home, bidding "Grandma" and the others goodbye on her way out.

Libby glances after him; Mary doesn't even bother doing that. The pair of them return to Bella's palace.

Bella decides she had better not leave him alone in Milliways, but as long as nothing actually happens there's no reason to insert herself into the conversation between Alice and the random girl reading Harlan Ellison. She glances around for someone interesting to pass the time with.

All the way on one of the other other sides of the room, sitting alone at a table for two with his back to the Window, a man with straggling greenish-brown hair and poorly maintained clown makeup is playing Solitaire.

"You - well - your underlying bone structure - looks familiar," she tells him, when she's gotten within a few feet of his table.

"Really," he says, glancing up at her with his face tipped forward as though looking overtop of imaginary spectacles. "Never heard that one before." He gestures invitingly at the empty seat across from him.

She sits. "Mine's younger, not as scratched up, and makes different aesthetic choices, but yeah. I'm Bella. What're you going by?"

Bella peers at the card and at the game. She picks up the offered card, inspects it.

"Joker?" Bella asks. "I suppose that goes with the thematic makeup."

"Mm-hmm," says the Joker. "So. How old's yourrr," he licks his lips again in that disquietly reptilian way, "friend?"

"Nineteen. Little older than me," Bella says. "And he goes by Alice, if you were wondering. Or sometimes Whistle."

"Alice," he says musingly. "Montreal?"

"Montreal?" Bella asks, puzzled. "If he's been to Montreal, I don't know about it."

"He told me it could've been any of a number of possible names," Bella says. "I think I may've been the first person to ask him what I should call him. Whistle, on the other hand, I made up. He needed a code name a while ago. Came in handy recently when there was another Alice around."

"How'd you kids meet?"

"High school gym class."

"Not quite a year ago, when I moved to the town he'd also recently moved to." And if that's not what he means: "February 2005."

"Occasionally," says Bella.

"Poor kid," he sighs.

"He quit showing up after I did," she says. "Of course, I went to college, and he didn't, but now I've dropped out to rule Mars instead."

"Thanks!"

Curiously: "What about his parents?"

"His father's in jail," Bella says. "I helped. His mother lives in a mansion in my hometown, with a housekeeper who I am trying to set up with my dad."

"Jail," he snorts. "Yeah, that'll work."

"Well, he hasn't escaped so far," Bella says, "and if he does, we have magic powers and he does not."

"I killed mine," he says offhandedly. "When I was, mm, fifteen?"

"That doesn't surprise me overmuch," says Bella. "Both of them or just him?"

To answer this question as concisely as possible, he makes a blowing-up motion with his hands and adds the appropriate sound effect.

"Mm. Mine's parents divorced rather acrimoniously as soon as there were public allegations. I've always found Judith sort of vaguely inoffensive. But I can understand not caring much if she was collateral damage."

"Yyyep," he says, "that sounds like mom. Never says a word as long as he can keep it under wraps, but once it gets out there—abandon ship!"

"At the trial she said she was afraid he'd turn on her," Bella says.

He shrugs. "Maybe she was."

"At any rate, Alice mostly doesn't live with her anymore. Hangs around the house sometimes - he's fond of the housekeeper, she's neat - but I made him an underground lair where he hangs out and bakes and sews and sets himself on fire."

The Joker flashes a quick, appreciative grin. "Sounds like the life."

"He likes it," Bella says cheerily.

"I'll bet he does." He smirks slightly. "So are you two...?"

"Oh, he fell in love with me way back in February," says Bella. "Then over the summer we zoomed around Europe a bit and I decided to kiss him on top of Mount Everest and start referring to him as my boyfriend to random people to whom such a reference might be called for."

"...Yes?" Bella laughs. "Not in the habit of doing either of the above with anybody else."

"We-ell, you could just be after him for his pretty face."

"He has got a pretty face, but nah, I also like him."

"Must be nice," he muses.

"So," Bella says, "how about you? Also nice? Not so nice?"

"The girl I like threw me off a building last month," he says dreamily. "Caught me on the way down, but you can't have everything."

"Why, were you hoping to splat? If you had Wolverine powers like me and Alice I think you'd be less visibly damaged. He burned off all his scars by setting himself on fire without fully thinking it through, and hasn't put them back so far."

"He have any good ones?" he inquires. "Or didja not see 'em all?"

"I didn't personally lay eyes on all of them in person," Bella shrugs, "but I can read his mind and we also have perfect recall, so, if I'm ever curious, the information's there. There was one on his neck he sometimes touched as a nervous habit." She peers at the Joker, looking for a match. "The others had less... interesting... stories."

"Similar. Not exact."

"And what was the story?"

"You know, I'm not actually sure of the status of that story as a secret or not, and it's the sort of thing that might be. Are you interested enough for me to check in with him?"

"Betcha I already know," he says. "I'm surprised, though. I got that one after I left home. It had a friend, too—if you ever got his pants off you woulda seen it for sure."

"I bet you already know too," Bella says, "but in case you don't, or in case he'd mind regardless, I'm not sharing without checking."

"I can read his mind," Bella repeats. "Anytime I like. Information comes in a pretty visual channel with borders around the content according to how much he likes it and my name appears bordered in white every time."

"Does your fancy mind-reading tell you why?"

"When I tell it to. Why do you ask?"

"'Cause I wanna know," he says, "duh."

"You looking for storytime or something more list-shaped?"

"Storytime," he says immediately, perking up in his chair. "I like storytime."

"After we'd known each other for a few days and had a handful of casual conversations and I'd broken up a fight between him and a random classmate in the cafeteria, he invited me over to his house. Before I said yes, I told him I was going to conduct an experiment. I put my dad the police chief's number into my phone, hovered my finger over the call button, and called him a freak. And he asked me to marry him." She pauses. "I said no."

Bella snorts.

"My story isn't nearly that sweet."

"Storytime," Bella prompts softly.

"She dresses up as a bat?" Bella says quizzically. "And mob bosses hired you to kill her? Okay... what're you planning to do with a job like that?"

"Terrifying expensive non-festive bat," amends Bella. "Got it. Go on."

"And then, y'know, I bombed the place and took a hike, and it was all very exciting for a while, and at the end..." he looks distracted for a moment, smirks secretively, then shakes his head and continues, "We fought it out in a half-built skyscraper and she threw me outta the top floor. And like I said, caught me halfway down." He shrugs. "Now I'm locked up, and she's out there somewhere hating my guts, and someday I'll get out and we'll do it all over again."

"And as long as you have access to some door you can sometimes pop into Milliways for a bit," Bella says. "Interesting. Is it satisfactory for her to hate your guts? Wouldn't you rather she liked you?"

"She's never gonna like me," he says. "She couldn't. I mean, even if I hadn't killed a girl I'm pretty sure she was fucking, she is ve-e-ery much about law and order and I... am very much not."

"Well, yes, killing someone she liked is not conducive to such a plan," Bella says. "Although I feel compelled to point out that a fondness for law and order isn't incompatible with whimsy. Even a very, very terrifying-expensive-nonfestive bat costume requires some whimsy somewhere."

"Whimsy," he says. "Sure."

"Yeah, I'm getting the impression that Alice-types who do not encounter Bella-types quick enough go from whimsical to something a little less socially acceptable."

"Smart cookie."

"Yeah. I only had to cheat with a little magic to get into Stanford."

"Tell me, smart cookie," he says, "say I kidnapped a lady you had the hots for, and you had me locked in a room and could do annnnything you wanted to make me talk. Well, anything you'd do with half a dozen cops watching you through one-way glass. How would you play it? No cheating."

"No cheating?" Bella says. "I've gotten very accustomed to cheating." She thinks. "Are the cops a threat to me, or just potentially embarrassing? My first idea isn't a problem either way, I'm just sussing out option-space."

"Batsy shoved a chair under the door before she started throwing me around. So no, not a threat."

"Wait, was that the first thing she did? She didn't expend twelve seconds on saying where is the lady I have the hots for first just in case that worked?"

"Hah! Actually, one'a the cops asked me a couple questions first. Great guy. I like him. He turned his back on me, and you gotta have some balls to do that, if you're a Gotham cop." He quirks a smile. "Bats, though, the first thing she did was slam my head into the table."

"No wonder you like her," Bella says dryly. "I take it you didn't answer the cop. Would you have answered... Bats? Is that what we're calling her?"

"I did," he says, smirking, "eventually."

"I'm sensing there's more to this."

"Bingo. But we'll get there. You haven't told me your angle yet."

"Sure I did. I would have tried asking where she was first. You want to know what step two would be if all you did was stare at me with a smug look on your face? I'd ask you what you wanted."

"Well, that's less useful than some possible answers. Honestly, as long as I'm not cheating, I don't belong in an interrogation room in the first place. I'd be more useful trying to find the lady directly and letting the cops handle you. I'm very good with magic. I have no special skill at getting kidnappers to talk, relative to police officers. Especially if said kidnapper's motive is something that inconvenient, since I imagine Bats is predictable once she knows where her ladyfriend is and unpredictable until she finds out. Skewing the incentives somewhat."

"Want me to give away the twist?" he offers.

"Go for it."

"The girl in question was assistant DA," he says. "She was dating the DA. I kidnapped 'em both. And after I let the Bat smack me around for a while, I told her she could find the lady at this address, and the gentleman at that one. Opposite directions, equally far away. Almost like a math problem." He grins. "And I told her she'd better hurry up."

"Some combination of," Bella guesses, "they were already dead, they were rigged to get that way or close to it, they were at other addresses, they were at each other's addresses, or you'd managed to convince at least one of them that Bats was somehow at fault."

"...Did she not even send cops to the other address? Did the watching cops not go on their own initiative, even if she didn't try to send them?"

"They went," he says. "But cops only have cop cars. The Bat's better funded. I knew she'd be faster."

"Cop cars are pretty fast, if they're trying," frowns Bella. "The bat costume's not expensive and unfestive enough to fly, is it?"

"Well, she can fall with style," he says, flicking his fingers dismissively. "But nah, she has some kinda custom motorbike."

"Ooh. I have one of those. I could beat a cop car in it, sure. Although mine is just riddled with cheating. All right. So she tried to rescue the lady, cops failed at doing same, she successfully rescued the guy. Unhappy endings all round. What's next?"

"Well all right, smarty pants," he sniffs. "I blew up a hospital—don't worry, they evacuated it first. Well, they almost evacuated it," he corrects himself. "I did have to shoot a couple of cops on the way out. And of course, the man himself, our glorrrrious new District Attorney, was left in the building juuuust long enough for me to have a quick chat with him. Boy's a looker even with half his face burned off." He winks. "Don't tell anybody, but I woulda gone for it in a hot second. 'Specially when he held a gun to my head. That was definitely a highlight of the evening."

"I don't think you'd previously mentioned the face burning," Bella says.

"Yeah, that time bomb I mentioned blew up on their way out," he says. "Guess it musta caught him funny, 'cause he was a steak dinner all down one side and good as new all down the other."

"Ah-huh. Well, go on, you're not at the part where they caught you and you found out how to locate Milliways through a barred door."

"Oh, you live on an island. That's worse," comments Bella.

"Let's suppose I did that, instead of buying an inflatable raft," Bella says agreeably.

"Smart cookie," he says appreciatively. "So you're on this boat, and you're halfway across the water, and allll of a sudden who could it be on the loudspeakers but your friend the Joker. Who tells you that your boat is rigged to explode, and - ha! - so's the one with all the criminals on it! And it just so happens that he has left you each a present, to wit, the detonator for the other - boat. Annnnd, naturally, whichever boat hits the button first wins the race and gets to live, whereas if you both wait around past midnight, or if anybody tries to escape, well, he's got detonators too."

"And has my friend the Joker generally shown himself disposed towards being honest about these games, or has he - say - lied about the locations of his kidnap victims?"

"Well, you don't know that," he says. "Not unless you're secretly the Bat." He gives her a look of exaggerated suspicion across the table, then laughs. "Which you're not, 'cause she was with me at the time."

"She didn't publicize this information? The cops didn't?" says Bella exasperatedly. "Grand. Well. If I'm not cheating, I have no hopes of overpowering the average person who might lay hands on the detonator, or want to take it from me if I had it in the first place. The choice is out of my hands here unless I want to jump into the water, and my swimming abilities without cheating always amounted to "dog paddle and wait for rescue". I don't imagine said rescue would be a priority on this day. I don't think a not-cheating me-on-this-ferry has any options besides sitting tight."

"Poor you," he says. "Don't worry, though, you got out safely. Nobody hit the button, and Bats got to me before I could hit mine. That was when she threw me off the building," he explains. "And left me hanging upside down from a grappling hook for the SWAT team to collect. As I recall, they stood around watching me giggle until I passed out, annnnd the next thing I knew - Milliways!"

"Welcome," says Bella, lifting an imaginary glass. She hasn't ordered anything and for some reason it seems rude to conjure beverages in a sentient bar.

"Besides rigging the ferries after warning about the bridges and tunnels? The detonators could be wired the other way around, or they could be dummies, or only one of them could be either, or there were only enough explosives to sink, not obliterate, the boats, so you'd get to watch survivors fighting over wreckage to hang onto..." She shrugs.

"Ooh, you're vicious," he says approvingly. "I like that in a woman. But nope, that's not it. The trick is, one of the boats had a detonator for its own bomb. The other one had a detonator for both."

"Which was which?"

"You tell me."

"I could see either one," Bella says. "If the prisoners blow themselves up and it looks like the civilians did it, the civilians think whoever had their detonator pushed the button. That person's confused, no one believes them if they say otherwise, everyone thinks they had the stomach to blow up five hundred people, they start doubting their own memory - just a little button, maybe they slipped, maybe they deluded themselves, maybe they repressed the memory? - and you've still got lots of live non-criminal civilians, the city doesn't mass-evacuate out of grief and panic the next time they think it's safe to do so and leave you with a ghost town. If the civilians blow themselves up and it looks like the prisoners did it, there's a crackdown on the prisoners, maybe you find your next stint in prison more interesting, political interests that care about looking after the welfare of prisoners get into fantastic fights with political interests that don't - I guess they do that in either case. Maybe a guard on the boat presses the button and you get most of the psychological benefits - so to speak - against him that you could've against a civilian who doesn't remember pressing hers in the other scenario. And it doesn't matter who pushes the button if they all explode. From the outside, from the perspective of everyone left alive, it looks like they both did it at the same time. It especially doesn't matter if you just explain the trick after the fact - then no matter what the buttons actually did, you get to leave everyone paralyzed with indecision if they get caught in one of your pranks." She regards him steadily. "I think I'm glad you're in jail."

"I'd make a terrible Bat. If you presented me with a building with an explosive and a district attorney in it, and I wasn't cheating, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I am an eighteen year old girl with a lot of magic and a lovely brain that, prior to locating the magic, I mostly exercised with high school curriculum and classic literature, not anything practical for combating terrorism. If it would be short, it would be because you got bored with me not being able to do anything but snark at you and you decided to kill me or move on."

...The Joker seems to find this hilarious.

"And if I did get to cheat, it wouldn't be interesting either," she shrugs. "I have superpowers coming out of my ears."

"Sweetie," he says, "that's half the fun. The other half is that you're too smart to fall for my cheap tricks."

"I wouldn't have to decide if I believed you or not, if I was cheating," Bella says. "I could nullify all the explosive materials that aren't actively operating well-controlled engines and power plants on the entire planet in less time than it takes you to blink, and then it doesn't matter what buttons originally set them off. I don't try to be clever when I can be sure."

"Well, yeah," he says. "And if I told you right now I had a bomb planted somewhere in this bar, is that what you'd do?"

"Yes," she says, "just to be sure, before finding out what you really did. I wouldn't like to start reading people's minds without their explicit permission, but I'd do it, if I thought I needed to."

"See? Short but sweet," he concludes.

She shrugs. "If that's to your taste, sure."

"It's not to yours?"

"I was thrilled when the nemesis I thought I had turned out to be a well-intentioned lady with a miscalibrated sense of personal boundaries who was happy to help me become the Empress of the Stars by teaching me some more magic and operating as my personnel department. Enmity is not intrinsically fascinating to me. You'd hate Mars the way I made it. Even Alice won't live there; he just can't get comfortable in a place where the local laws of physics have been bent so no one could suddenly decide to hit him with a baseball bat and successfully manage to connect it with his nose."

He bursts out laughing.

"So no. Your games are not to my taste. But talking about them passes the time while I wait for Alice to finish talking books with that girl he spotted reading his favorite."

"Anyway," he says, "if I wanted to play you, I wouldn't rig a bomb. I'd kidnap your boyfriend. And he'd like it."

"He would like it. When he stopped liking it, he'd teleport away. I wouldn't even have to be involved if that was all. If I had any suspicion you'd actually kill him - if I thought you could - or if this went on too long, I'd tell him to come home because I need him, and I think he would do it."

"Not a betting woman."

"I can tell."

"Besides, he's got a present waiting for him at home, and this would be a distraction."

"Ooh, presents. Is it a secret?"

"He wants it to be a surprise. I'm not sure if you're the sort of person who'd spoil it for him if you had the chance."

He puts on a look of utmost innocence. "Course not."

"Alas," says Bella. "You have not successfully made me sure."

"Could I?"

"Maybe. Not easily, probably."

"Mm." He smiles. "How?"

"If I tell you a sequence of actions to perform," Bella says, "they lose most of their communicative value."

"Nnot if the sequence in question is, 'Pretty please, read my mind,'" he suggests. "For example."

"That wouldn't rule out the possibility of you changing your mind. If anyone knows how to be sincere in the moment and less so a minute later, I'd bet on you."

"Smart cookie. So no, I can't convince you," he says. "Tell me anyway."

"No," Bella says. "It's a surprise. If I'm feeling particularly friendly towards you at the time I leave the bar I might conjure you a note when you won't have an opportunity to spoil it for Alice, but I might not."

"Can't you cheat?" he wonders.

"What, cheat at not letting you tell my surprise? Yes, but I think that would make you even more likely to try to tell him, and it's possible you'd think of a loophole, and I can make the probability of you successfully telling him zero by not telling you, and I am just not that strongly motivated to tell you."

"I don't wanna tell him," he says, leaning back in his seat. "Take a look."

"No," says Bella.

"Do you have a plan for getting out of jail?" Bella asks. "For that matter, how long are you going to cool your heels in Milliways?"

"I'm not in jail," he says. "Technically. I'm in an innnstitution for the criminally insane. And I can walk out anytime I want; their security's a--" he licks his lips "--heh, joke."

"I'm kind of surprised they left you in the makeup and the custom outfit," Bella says. "Don't they usually put everybody in unattractive smocks in those places?"

"Sweetie," he says. "I'm dreaming, remember?"

She tilts her head. "That wasn't given to me as part of my Milliways explanation, but I suppose it could have been incomplete."

"I don't think it's usual," he explains. "But I'm kinnnd of a special case. I think they're afraid of what I'd do, if I came in the normal way. 'Cause every time I'm about to do something particularly, hmm, un-friendly--" he snaps his fingers, "I wake up!"

"Interesting," says Bella. "All part of the lovely security system that renders my alternate willing to let her daughter come here, I suppose."

"I'm dangerous," the Joker says agreeably. "According to whoever runs this place, I am apparently more dangerous than anybody."

"Or at least more interested in being dangerous," Bella remarks. "I rather wonder if you'd pass my alternate's daughter's safety test. You're just a non-magical human, right? Albeit a... psychologically unique sort?"

"Plain old, plain old," he affirms.

"So I guess the only reason my alt's daughter wouldn't feel safe bringing you home would be if she didn't think anyone around her would be willing to kill you if you acted up, and somehow I don't think that's a problem her culture has. I'm now wondering why your Bat Lady hasn't killed you. You mentioned before she wasn't scared of the cops."

"Well, I don't know for sure," he says. "But she's got two good reasons not to. One iiiiis, she doesn't like to kill people. Thinks it's wrong, or something. And the otherrr," he smiles, "is that if she kills me, I win. But I don't know if she knows that. She might."

"If she cares more about not liking to kill people - let alone about you winning - than about people dying, I'm not terribly impressed with her," Bella says. "It's not like you happen to be innocently radioactive, that would be an actual moral dilemma."

"If I didn't know better," the Joker says amicably, "I'd think you were flirting."

"I like the one I have already better," says Bella.

"I know."

"And how is telling you I don't think much of your crush's ethics flirtatious, even by your standards?"

"You're telling me that you'd kill me if I made you have to," he says. "To me that's pretty much like offering to blow me under the table. But I bet you didn't mean it that way."

"Indeed not."

"But if you think she should kill me, why haven't you?"

"You're not my problem. I have an empire to run, I'm not an interdimensional vigilante. Besides, several of my goals for that empire would be easier to achieve if I retained routine access to Milliways, and I don't think the bar likes it when her customers try to kill each other - as you've noticed. And, you're asleep. Most people, when they die in their dreams? Don't die in real life. I doubt magical solutions would hold, for the same reason - and I have no way to check, either way."

"Not your problem," he hums. "Oh, sweetie, you disappoint me."

"There are probably dozens of you," Bella says. "And dozens more people who aren't you whose worlds could also benefit from their deaths. That's simply not my career choice, and even if it were, it wouldn't be consistent of me to attack one target of opportunity that I can't check up on, and likely lose any chance to perform equally or more useful assassinations under better conditions. Given that I've chosen to do something else with my life, it would be stupid to attack you and torpedo my ability to use Milliways to do what I originally planned to do, which is start up trade with alternate Empress Bellas and similarly congenial folks to improve quality of life for all our empires."

"Well you sure are a cold customer."

"When called for, I can be."

"I like it," he confides.

"Good for you."

He giggles.

Bella peers over in the corner of the room where Alice is talking to the girl. She's also reading his mind and knows they're still chatting, but the visual perspective is more useful for some purposes than filtering through the mindreading.

Alice and the girl are giggling together about the logistical intricacies of raining jelly beans. She is supporting her point with scribbled equations, while he prefers to wave his hands around and cackle a lot.

She smiles fondly and turns back to her interlocutor. She doesn't have much else to say at the moment.

"I'm playing 'take over the world'," Bella says. "On hard mode, where I don't do unethical things in the process. But with all my cheat codes." She tilts her head. "That's probably not what you meant."

"It's a good answer," he says. "I like that answer. But yeah, wrong question."

"Then you might need to be more specific."

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of games I could play with you, but most of 'em wouldn't be fun for you. And some of 'em wouldn't be fun for me either, at least - heh - not for very long."

"Mm." She peers up to the ceiling. "I'm not coming up with anything. At least nothing that would compare particularly favorably with my default activity, which, I remind you, involves ruling a space empire."

"I'm sure it's a very nice space empire," he says. "Can I come visit?"

"I might just barely be willing to put you on Mars somewhere for a visit. It's got lots of safety features. But all things considered I think not."

"If you put me somewhere with safety features, I'm gonna try'n break 'em," he agrees. "But I'll try'n break 'em nicely, 'cause I like you."

"And yet, funnily enough, I put the safety features in because I wanted them as they are," Bella says mildly. "And so I would not much care for even the nicest of breakage."

"Suit yourself."

"Always."

"I'm getting that impression."

"Aren't you observant."

"I sure am!"

"So your bat-costume-clad crush," Bella says, "do you not even know her name? Or is her name actually Bat or Bats or something?"

"Oh, it's a big secret," he says. "I tried to get it out of her once, at the beginning, but I don't really care. I already know who she really is. I don't need to know who she pretends to be when the sun's up."

"Is this dressing up as a terrifying expensive non-festive small mammal and then going out at night and getting into fights with the criminally insane a thing in your world?"

"Not until her, it wasn't."

"Has she," Bella asks innocently, "inspired copybats?"

"She did!" he giggles. "They were a riot. Dried up pretty quick after I killed one, though. 'S a shame."

"Ah. Yes, I'd imagine that would do it."

"Never made a dent in her, though."

"I'm curious," Bella says. "If she disappeared - suppose she died of a heart attack or developed a deadly peanut allergy, all by herself - something boring - would you even bother continuing to terrorize the place?"

"So she'd have a reasonable shot at quitting the carnage just by not dressing up as a bat anymore," says Bella. "If you don't know her daytime identity, that'd be all she'd have to do - quit appearing in the bat outfit in a way consistent with her being dead-or-disappeared. And then if it didn't work, she could just 'come back'."

"Yes, but I mean after you get out. Unless you're planning to dress up like a marmoset to throw her off."

"Well, maybe she can get the other half down to reasonable levels while you're put away, and then when you escape she'll have the leeway to retire-slash-fake-her-death," shrugs Bella.

"And once she's done that, whos gonna keep 'em down? Besides, she's not the only hot prospect in town. I could have some fun with our shiny new police commissioner, I bet."

"Fair enough."

"What's it like?" he wonders idly. "Dating mini-me."

"I like it," says Bella. "He sews me dresses. He's snuggly. He makes fascinating faces when in pain."

"I'll bet he does."

"Took some getting used to, but I'm pretty adaptable in some respects."

"Do you ever set him on fire?"

"I have a more all-purpose, sanitary tool for the job."

Inquisitively: "Mm?"

"Magic," says Bella. "Obviously."

"Well aren't you sweet."