Her bird was never very expectable.

[Jane, are you fucking with me?]

[No, he logged into it. What, you want me to put him in his own sandbox?]

The fiery fish waves back and swims closer, trailing a long candleflame tail.

[Hi,] says Sue. [Having fun?]

[It's more fun when you're younger, I think,] she says, dryly self-deprecating. [I just needed a break from reading.]

[Being back in the game?]

[Yeah. Well, that and everything.] He sighs over brainphone. [I want to hug you, or tell you I love you, or - something, but I don't know if any of that would be a positive contribution.]

[I know you love me. We did some hugging. I mean, it was better than coming home and not having that, so that's one possible value of positive, yeah?]

[Yeah. But 'positive' meaning 'an improvement on the current situation', not so much?]

[Yeah, I think I'm gonna be about like so until something else happens.]

[I'll grow up eventually. What?]

Whoa. This is clever. Sue is clever. It wouldn't cause some kind of problem for there to be two of you?

Nope. Well, it might if we paraded him around in front of a bunch of cameras, but I think we can manage not to do that.

Would you go back to being one Sue later or what?

Yeah. Probably. And if we didn't I'm sure we'd get in the habit of linking and catching up every little while, eventually. Or even stay linked permanently like I am with Ivy. With a mental laugh, You could end up with a two-for-one deal on boyfriends.

If I hit you with a rock, does that mean I get two birds with one stone? she snorts. Should ask Jane to poll the peal, see if anybody has input on forking and merging you should use before you start making wishes.

[Looks like I'll be the first person to do it, then - I'm forking and staying that way for a while, so Aegis can have her boyfriend back.]

[Juliet says it worked out nicely for her to give her fork her own unadulterated memories of the past little while so she'd pop into existence knowing what was going on,] Jane relays.

Sue hugs her. Yes, bird, definitely bird, it's so sad what happened, War is sad and Sue is sad but now he's here and everyone can stop being sad because he absolutely wants to kiss her.

Oh good.

So he's just going to be in her lap now, that sounds like an awesome place to be, did she miss him? Because he missed her! He missed her a lot!

The desk can do that. Sue has way better uses for Aegis's time.

Oh yes, she agrees completely.

Good. That is good. That is a good thing.

Around when Aegis turns off her Janegem, Jane reports to everyone who is presently open to receiving general peal-news-blurbs that Sue has forked and why.

"Aww."

"Aww," Sherlock agrees. "Clever solution to a tricky problem."

"Yeah. Um, so if Amariah looks murderously in Aegis's direction - I still don't think this is likely but it remains a good idea to distract her."

"Noted once again." He kisses her on the cheek. "Why, did Aegis's bragging rights just expand?"

"Aegis went home to a relatively more minor discomfort than Amariah did and even that has now been fixed, so yeah."

"What an odd lot you Bells are."

"We make sense to us. Is it really that strange?"

"I've never spared a moment's envy for Pearl or Steel, and I don't imagine they have for me."

"At all? About anything?"

"I can wish I had escaped certain things that never happened to them in the first place, but that doesn't make me angry with them. And in the other direction - I'm sure every Sherlock has spent an idle moment or two wishing to hate themselves just a little bit less, but they wouldn't take it at the price I paid. I remember."

"Inter-Bell jealousy doesn't usually result in anger. Amariah is just in an extreme situation of thing should not have happened, no appropriate fixes or outlets."

"What does it result in, then?"

"Competitive furor."

"Hah. Yes, you won't get a lot of that from us."

"In theory I should remember what it was like not to want to show up to a party going, 'Look at what I did! Look at what cool stuff I have! Look at how totally together my personal life is! Look at what clever ideas I have had! Am I not an excellent example of this thing we all are? Beat that!', but the things I did before this kicked in were relatively less interesting."

"Interesting," he says. "When Tonies get competitive, they try to outdo the results without directly copying the methods. But not for some particular end as much as just to say that they could. I'm sure if one day we found an urgent reason why every Tony has to have a suit of flying armour by approximately yesterday, they'd jump to it just like they did for installing a Jarvis in Chronicle. But until then, they're each fiddling with it separately for the bragging rights."

"It also allows us to sort of skip ahead for more interesting challenges that haven't been done yet. I'm not doing this so much since nobell else has my particular cornucopia of population segments to handle, but, like, Pattern's got farther than anyone else now on the 'colonize space, be a Good Samaritan to a basically standard Earth' strategy, so I bet Stella and Aurora and Cam crib her notes, see if they can do it faster and tidier and with niftier stylistic curlicues, and then when they're caught up they're on a level playing field."

"Right. Which is all noise to me, because Sherlocks don't seem to have a drive for material accomplishments."

"That is okay." Nuzzle.

Ooh, nuzzles.

Juliet's just such a nuzzly person. And Sherlock is so nuzzleable.

Ooh, mutual nuzzles.

They are extra nuzzly!

Double the nuzzles. Best. Snuggle nuzzle love.

Meanwhile, in Aurum, "So now there's an extra Sue. It just keeps getting harder to count you all, babe."

"Mm, not sorry," the Joker says cheerfully. "Good for Sues, anyway. It's a nice trick, don't you think?"

"The forking? I don't know, didn't do that part on purpose myself, but sounds like it'll suit their little problem to a T."

This calls for a hug and a kiss. Because love. Love is why.

Love! Love is not in short supply here at all.

"Noted," says Nathan cheerily. He will inform his mate of the best time.

"I love you," says the Joker, snuggling him.

"I love you too, babe."

Now there will be kisses.

Ooh, kisses! Nathan likes those. (The Joker has probably figured that out. It is not a well-kept secret.)

(It is the most poorly kept of secrets. And the Joker likes it that way.)