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Bella looks up Tony Stark. (There's no reason not to.)
...Okay. He looks familiar. And his death those several months ago was really very suspicious, and she doesn't think anyone has been doing her morgue trick in New York City. And his more reclusive identical twin's body was never found at all. (If there was an identical twin, and not just Tony Stark theatrically pretending to be two people with mirrors or holograms or Photoshop and cooperative witnesses giving insistent interviews and then suddenly being dead and no longer able to pretend. There was, after all no sign of a twin before a sudden debut when he - they - was or were fifteen, and... "Sherlock Holmes", really? There's not even a hint of a twin in Tony's birth announcement, which she checks because that's the obvious thing to check.)
Come to think of it, Mr. Does Not Stick To Flypaper never introduced himself.
She supposes that his cute laser trick didn't work that well, if he got got. (But she saw it burn him. It's a clever weapon, should take almost no skill to wield a continuous beam - what kind of onslaught could have gotten around that?)
Nothing about her routine changes in response to this information.
Until several days later when she's crossing another neighborhood (seventeen to go) and - he just keeps popping up, doesn't he?
cross_and_bow
cross_and_bow
"Fancy that. I'm astounded. But I suppose there's a first time for everything," Bella says. She nudges a cross under a tree root with her foot. She pulls out her phone and her water balloon and perfunctorily dials-but-does-not-send; the stake can stay where it is. "You never introduced yourself."
eversomuchfun
"Sherlock Holmes," he says, "at your service." He sketches a bow. "And did you look up my late brother?"
cross_and_bow
"Yes. Do you want to tell me how an identical twin who didn't appear on the birth announcement materializes at age fifteen?" He could still easily be Tony instead. Sure, dozens of people are willing to say that they saw Tony and Sherlock together, but Tony was a technical genius, a vampire could have escaped his grave after his burial with little fanfare, and witnesses aren't all that compelling - dozens of people were willing to claim to have seen Joseph Smith perform miracles.
(Although come to think of it, the crosses she's stashing everywhere may suggest it's time for her to evaluate religious claims less skeptically.)
(Although come to think of it, the crosses she's stashing everywhere may suggest it's time for her to evaluate religious claims less skeptically.)
cross_and_bow
...Tony was a technical genius.
"Fits," she muses. "Why in the world would he clone himself?"
"Fits," she muses. "Why in the world would he clone himself?"
eversomuchfun
"Because he was incredibly lonely," says Sherlock. "To give you an idea, he popped me out of the tube when he was twelve and neither of his parents knew I existed until they were assassinated a year and a half later. A year and a half which I spent growing at a rate of seven to one and poking my nose into everything I could get my hands on."
cross_and_bow
"And then you stopped growing at a rate of seven to one," says Bella. "You looked exactly like him for three consecutive years. Was that designed in?"
eversomuchfun
"Quite," he says. "I caught up when he was fourteen and proceeded at an ordinary pace from there."
cross_and_bow
"As far as I was able to determine he was easily clever enough to pull this off if it's technically feasible at all," acknowledges Bella. "How'd he die and you turn? Those ultraviolet things are clever and even a regular human ought to be able to hold off a bunch of vampires with one. It'd have to be a gigantic onslaught or an extremely clever ambush."
eversomuchfun
"There were eleven of them, and they were hiding in our basement," he explains. "Even I am not paranoid enough to carry a laser pointer in my own fucking home. To my ultimate regret."
cross_and_bow
"The authors I've been reading," Bella says, "have obvious reasons to be biased - but their claims aren't consistent with regret being involved in that story. Let's hear your side of it."
eversomuchfun
"A gang of vampires killed everyone I have ever loved—it's a short list—and forcibly turned me. When I woke up, I slaughtered the rest of them and then waited for the man who let them in to come back so I could express my displeasure by torturing him to death. Apparently they were expecting me not to care afterward, but I cannot for the unlife of me imagine why."
cross_and_bow
"It seems to be a general expectation, that turned vampires won't care about that sort of thing. Or any sort of thing that isn't... sociopathic hedonism," Bella says slowly. "Is this just mistaken, or are you being an unconventional sort of fly again?"
cross_and_bow
"Noted." She chews her lip. "I'm sorry about your - Tony." She isn't really clear on what manner of relationship a clone and his creator might have, for all that they would have had to present as twins regardless of its content.
eversomuchfun
—He smiles, abruptly, softly.
"Thank you. Your sympathy is very much appreciated."
"Thank you. Your sympathy is very much appreciated."
cross_and_bow
She looks up. "You're welcome. It's always sad when people die. If vampires in general didn't undergo drastic personality changes and didn't have such inconvenient allergies I'd probably start looking into a species change when I was thirty or so."
eversomuchfun
"Turning into a vampire was the single thing in the world I was most afraid of, before," he says. "It's not so frightening from the other side, but all in all, I would rather have Tony back."
eversomuchfun
"As I knew him, yes. I would not mind him being a vampire as long as he was still essentially Tony, but I have some reason to doubt that would be the case."
eversomuchfun
"Even I have some changes. If I met my previous self, I am not sure we'd get along, although I am not nearly what he feared becoming."
cross_and_bow
"What changes do you have?"
She's not going to make any assumptions here. Plenty of humans would be happy to torture to death someone who'd arranged to kill someone they loved.
She's not going to make any assumptions here. Plenty of humans would be happy to torture to death someone who'd arranged to kill someone they loved.
eversomuchfun
"Previously my most compelling motivations were ethics and love of Tony. Now my most compelling motivation is hatred of boredom. I am also rather less upset about being a clone," he adds as an afterthought.
"If I had the sort of fabled destructive tendencies I was originally afraid of, this planet would currently be a smear of molten rock across the cosmos."
"If I had the sort of fabled destructive tendencies I was originally afraid of, this planet would currently be a smear of molten rock across the cosmos."