there is room here to expand

[cross_and_bow]

When Juliet leaves the party, she goes to meet the new Jarvis.

She knocks, to be polite.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"Maybe if I'd made an ill-informed promise," suggests Bella, but it's clear that she did not expect an affirmative answer to her question.

[eversomuchfun]

"It isn't really the same."

[cross_and_bow]

"Why not?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Because your entire cognition is not structured around misery," he suggests.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yours wasn't. For a while. Or was it always and I'm just woefully imperceptive?"

[eversomuchfun]

"The misery when I had no soul was the lack of Tony and Jarvis," he says. "And then I found you, and you were delightful, and I managed to dig up a Jarvis, and he also helped, and of course he came with a Tony, and then - well."

[cross_and_bow]

"...So you haven't actually tried having no self-loathing and all your people alive and no recent catastrophe at the same time and you're not sure how it'd work?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes. I was on my way to managing it. I might still be, if I had not latched onto the soul. But now that it's here I find I am irrationally attached to it."

[cross_and_bow]

"Is it doing anything that isn't unpleasant?" asks Bella.

[eversomuchfun]

"It gives me what you might call moral feelings, I suppose."

[cross_and_bow]

"Like?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Well, at the moment, without outside influences I would rather starve than eat a human. That was demonstrably not the case before."

[cross_and_bow]

"There is that. Part of me wants to point out that us outside influences exist, but maybe you'd rather not count on that."

[eversomuchfun]

"At the moment, if I were permanently deprived of all the people who make up those outside influences, I would rather starve than do much of anything. Also, I can't starve."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't want you to starve. Or unpleasantly fail to starve. Or have to be alone. Or," she sighs, "hate yourself."

[eversomuchfun]

"And yet, here we are."

[cross_and_bow]

Hugs.

"There's native magic capable of souling vampires," Bella says, "isn't there? It's not the case that the only way to do it is merging with your Downside fork. And when you were contemplating getting your soul back it didn't sound like you were horribly averse to the idea - would that change now that you know what it comes with, or is there some kind of, I don't know, compromise available, where you get to be attached to it but don't necessarily carry it around constantly feeling terrible?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I don't know what my opinion on having a soul would be without a soul."

[cross_and_bow]

"Because the last time you didn't have a soul and were thinking about getting one you didn't anticipate this side effect. Right." She sighs, chews her lip thoughtfully.

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes. The soul transition seems to have all sorts of unforeseen effects."

[cross_and_bow]

"If you had it to do over again what would the two of you have done?" she wonders.

[eversomuchfun]

"I have not the faintest fucking clue."

[cross_and_bow]

"Well, there goes that avenue of inquiry, I guess," she sighs.

[eversomuchfun]

"Indeed."

[cross_and_bow]

"Now I'm trying to figure out what would've happened if I'd had to come to some kind of agreement with - her."