"I have never hated anyone as much as I hate you for that," he hisses. "I've killed people for less, I've killed people I didn't hate at all, and I wish to God I could kill you now, but it would upset him, and maybe if I'm very, very lucky, I will actually lose control of myself in a way a lie-detector can verify for him later and you won't go on existing. God, I hate you."
"He wanted your fucking attention," Nathan growls. "When that was finally off the table he was perfectly happy to settle in with me. Sweet as you please. You think I would've cared if he wanted to go on doing that? I wouldn't, I can't fall out of love with him no matter what and I've certainly got my own body count just because I was thirsty, and you know what he does when he gets unconditional love and magic powers? He settles in and raises a baby and solves random acquaintances' problems with magic and has ludicrous amounts of sex! I actually want him and it kills me that you got to him first."
Earlier today, back at home, she installed a threat-level sensor. It's been screaming about Nathan since he first laid eyes on her a few minutes ago, and it's telling her enough that when he blurs out of visibility, she assumes he is about to kill her.
She spends one of her two remaining hexes, and she is emphatic but not specific: she wants him to be in no state to cause her harm, right now.
He gets dressed, more slowly than usual because there's nothing to hurry for. He absently tucks a few knives into his pockets. He wanders downstairs, smiling to himself.
There's Nathan, all right.
"...Sweetheart?"
He spins through all the 'safe coins', trying to fix it. No, no, no, and nope.
Those aren't the only coins he has.
The Joker bites his lip. (Triangle.) Then he kisses Nathan on the cheek and teleports them both to the door, which he opens.
[Goldie-your-majesty?] he says, trying for lighthearted and not really making it all the way there. [Weeeee have a problem.]
"Star doesn't work," she says. "...The next one up can. Probably. Shell Bell got herself killed and her girlfriend was able to bring her back with one of the eight-pointed 'evils'. But with much less delay than it sounds like there may have been with Nathan."
"Bat":
You do not know me, but you know my alternate, "Stella". She's written in our template's shared room that she owed you three wishes. (In consideration for your secret identity she disclosed nothing further about why.) I was recently summoned to Milliways by the Joker, who needed me to revive one of my staff, Nathan - the Joker's boyfriend and the father of their small child - from the dead. The circumstantial evidence is extremely suggestive of your having killed Nathan with one of the wishes Stella gave you.
You may have intended some less fatal consequence from your wish, but in fact it's very difficult to incapacitate a vampire of the sort found in the world of Aurum without tearing one of us to pieces, burning us to ashes, or - as your wish appears to have done - starving us to death. You may have believed Nathan to be a threat to you, but his rendition of the events - which I believe - suggests that he merely startled you by standing up quickly.
In other words: you fucking hypocritical murderer, you killed one of my people in Milliways because he had the nerve to be vocal about not liking his mate's enemy and then he got out of his chair?
It is the good fortune of everyone involved that Stella's wishcoins, in sufficient size, prove able to revive the dead. Between the efforts of myself and the Joker, Nathan's fine. I'm leaving a note in the Belltower stating that you are not to be trusted with any further magic, and if Stella finds out what you did with her gifts, you may come to be unhappy that she can force the door to your world.
Sincerely,
Isabella Marie Swan Cullen, Empress Regnant of the Golden Empire
And she stalks towards the uncostumed Bat, making no sudden moves more because she wants to be trackable than anything else. She's not scared. She's decked out in defensive stars.
"You murdered my friend," Golden says in her pleasant bell-like voice, just shy of a purr. "You murdered a man with a three-week-old son at home. You murdered one of the people who, at significant personal risk and cost, was essential to my deposing a government that was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people per day. The only reason he's alive again is that I pulled out all the stops and deployed a level of magic that has been used exactly once before. Would you like to explain to me why I had to do that?"
"Your 'friend' told me explicitly and repeatedly that he wanted to kill me," she says flatly. "And then he made a threatening move. I didn't want him dead, just incapacitated. But I didn't have a lot of time for finesse."
One appears in her hand. "I don't think I can trust you with this," she says. "Maybe you can talk Stella into replacing it in spite of the note I'm going to leave in the Belltower. Maybe not. I really doubt she'd like it if she heard that she went to all the trouble of negotiating the Joker's move to my world and then you murdered his reason for going so nicely. Of course Nathan wants to kill you. You compromise his mate's attachment to him. I don't employ vampires who are incapable of wanting to kill someone and not doing it. I certainly don't employ vampires who are stupid enough to verbally announce their intention to kill someone who may or may not have the power to stop them before they do it. He was never going to kill you."
"I love her because she's different," he says slowly. "In Gotham she was... a legend. A scary story to tell the kids at bedtime. But she was real. And it was amazing, just knowing there was somebody out there like that, with the brains and the balls to terrify every criminal in the city. There's no way she could ever love me back. I think I might even be disappointed if she did. She loves Gotham, though, that's for sure. It's sweet, the way she feels about that place, it really is."
"Make sure Kerron knows not to bite humans," says Nathan wryly. "He could already jump high enough to reach a doorknob if he wanted to and we don't watch him twenty-four hours a day. Maybe Milliways will like him as much as it likes Elspeth."