and every hand shall wield the angels' swords of flame

[impetuous_force]

The lasers hit the market. The first ones are expensive; the USADI buys them all. The next batch is larger, mostly made in China, and cheaper thanks to economies of scale. They take triple-A's, and they're such a hot item that several battery companies compete for inclusion with the weapons.

Bella uses one of the ones that Sherlock gave her and pretends she bought it with the money her father gave her to pick one up. She can always use a little more untracked cash to buy magic things.

Her newt skeleton comes in.

She casts every part of the spell except the final act of will, which she can do any time, anywhere - the spell was effectively on her, to turn her into someone who can at whim destroy the Gem of Amara. She doesn't do it. Sherlock's harmless, and he still - apparently, given that he shows up at school - has the gem.

She can, sort of, trust him. Mint oil and divination lens, useful things.

She's not sure she can forgive him, but she doesn't have to forgive him to not want him to die.

Comments

[impetuous_force]

"It wasn't just that. I get that on roller coasters, I get it a little talking to you just now even though I trust my spell more than my gut - I also believed you were likely to hurt me and I'm whatever the opposite of suicidal is."

[eversomuchfun]

"Well - I'm sorry," he says.

[impetuous_force]

She peers at him.

"You said before that you'd say you were sorry, but you'd be lying."

[eversomuchfun]

"Before," he reminds her, "I didn't know how upset you were, or that I cared."

[impetuous_force]

"How would you not know if you cared?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I hadn't thought about it. The entire chain of reasoning failed to occur to me."

[impetuous_force]

"That sounds embarrassing."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes."

[impetuous_force]

She leans on a wall. She tucks her potion sage into the box from her mother's new laser pointer that she picked out of the trash to pretend it was hers. "It helps that you're sorry."

[eversomuchfun]

"That's good to know."

[impetuous_force]

"Heh. I wonder if I could teach you to do what I do. Then you wouldn't have this problem with unpleasant surprises."

[eversomuchfun]

"What you do being...?"

[impetuous_force]

"I think about myself. A lot. I figure out who's driving this thing." She taps her temple. "I determine what I want and what I have and how to use what I have to get what I want."

[eversomuchfun]

"And exactly what problem do you expect this to solve?"

[impetuous_force]

"I would never, unless deprived of privacy or paper for a long time, fetch up unexpectedly finding myself caring about somebody. And if I decided I definitely didn't want to, I could probably stop, although maybe it wouldn't be wise for me to teach you that bit."

[eversomuchfun]

"I am fairly accomplished at introspection already and I don't think I have enough data points to accurately predict who I am going to start caring about when or why."

[impetuous_force]

"I suppose that would present a problem. That doesn't mean you couldn't see it coming once it was underway."

[eversomuchfun]

"I did notice it when it happened."

[impetuous_force]

"It looked to me almost like you came to the realization of a sudden when I started crying."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes. Before that moment, I had no evidence about my reaction to seeing you cry, because I had neither seen nor imagined you crying. D'you see what I mean?"

[impetuous_force]

"I think we're talking past each other," says Bella after a moment.

[eversomuchfun]

"Correct my aim, then."

[impetuous_force]

"I have never imagined, in particular, before making up this example, imagined you crying, but because I periodically assess my thoughts on everybody worth thinking about, I wouldn't expect to find myself taken aback if you did start. Whatever happened would fit in with a pattern I already understood about myself."

[eversomuchfun]

"I observe my thoughts about people as they go past. But I don't see how I could observe my reaction to something I've never seen. And I don't care about people often enough to rationally predict the next target. You have hardly anything in common with the previous two."

[impetuous_force]

"That's why I pick apart why I care about people - and see if the patterns apply consistently - and apply my vivid imagination to various counterfactuals. There are occasional discontinuities. I couldn't guess except by reference to other people how something like - say - doing magic might affect me, before I did it. But if I have a sample of something I can take it apart. I guessed right about how much witchcraft practice it would take to develop noticeable dependence, after I'd tried two spells. I'm not doing statistics. I'm doing - clockwork. You don't have to take apart a hundred watches, you have to know what your gears do."