The Universe's Mixer

The City had been thinking. During the time after the conference as Thomas, and now, after Thomas. It had been giving consideration to the things that it had learned. It had also thought much about how the death of Thomas had felt, a disturbing, horrible thing.

There was one person who had taught it the most. Who had cared enough to take Thomas in. To call Thomas a friend. The City didn't know if she intended to continue the friendship now, but it did. It had started by telling Jesse Custer about her, and that she needed to be kept safe.

Now, it had something for her, that came from it directly.

At her cottage, The City placed her gift inside, and left a note on the door:

Dear Beauty,
You have done so much for me. You gave me a place to live, and you cared for me.
I felt that this was the least that I could do. Please accept my gift. I do hope you like it.
I won't be coming home anymore, but I will always be available to you if you want to speak.

In Friendship,
Thomas.

The cottage where she lived had taken to dressing her - whether or not Beauty agreed with the cottage's idea of fashion. This morning, she'd had a good long row with the invisible force over its latest decision on what she was to wear. The dress it left on the foot of her bed had been entirely too clingy, entirely too daring, entirely too thin, entirely too inappropriate for... for anything, and above all, entirely too pink for Beauty's tastes.

There was little choice in the matter. In the end, after her quiet denials, her pleading requests, her firm insistence, and finally an all-out physical battle to stay out of the dress, Beauty found herself, disheveled, panting, and exhausted, sprawled on the floor of her cottage. ( And most decidedly IN the dress. )

Jack was having a good time. He had his girl, he had his dogs - hyenas, whatever. He had his home. He had an entire city to play with. And to make it all so much better, he hadn't seen the Bat in weeks. He hadn't seen him at Wayne Industries, he hadn't seen him enter or leave the house during the three whole days he'd sat outside waiting.

The Bat was gone.

Jack picked some flowers out of the park and spent the day hopping around town, giving them to people. Sometimes the petals had been plucked off, sometimes they hadn't.

Wait until Harley heard, no more Bat.
Wait until the entirety of the City's underground heard, no more Bat!

Were there any superheros left in this place? Jack didn't know. He hadn't seen a costumed pansyfruit in a good long time. Perhaps now was the moment to snatch the City in the grip of some fear. Maybe he should spread the word that there was nobody left to stop them.

Oh yes.

Well, this certainly hadn't been how he had planned to spend his morning. The assumed plan had been to stick to his new routine: breakfast alone at the cafe down the street, finishing up the last of his toast on the walk to work, and then a lazy day of reading. With the occasional duties required of the bookstore in between, of course. It was what he was being paid for, after all.

Instead, less than an hour after arriving at work, Errol found himself turning off the store's coffee pot and scribbling out a note that the store would be open as soon as he returned from an errand. It wasn't, he thought as he locked the door, a bad thing. It was a much-delayed opportunity to sightsee and become more familiar with his new home. He had been remiss in that regard, content to stay in the same handful of city blocks since his arrival. And most importantly, it was an opportunity to help someone.

"Well," he said, tucking his keys back into a pocket of his black Cleric's coat, unbuttoned over clothes that no Cleric would have been caught dead in--or more accurately, would be dead in soon after being sighted wearing them. There was still a very large part of Errol that took a happy thrill in such daring items of clothing as jeans and polo shirts. "Shall we be off, then?" He looked expectantly at the girl he had been talking to only minutes earlier.

After a good, long rest, Beauty spent the rest of the new morning by discovering all she could about her new home. The over-arching theme of the place was that every single thing she needed seemed exactly where it should be. Odd, that. If she had designed the place herself, she wouldn't have done anything differently. It was as if the City were trying to cajole her into believing that it had done her a favor by taking her from her home. As if the City were trying to convince her that her life could be something better than what it had been. What the City hadn't apparently thought of - if a City could, indeed, think - was that although it had been a difficult life, she had been happy. Happy in the only way that truly mattered. She had her sisters. She had her father. And if sometimes during the winter, they struggled for warmth and struggled for food, they were at least still living and still together. She could have been living in a great and gilded palace here, she could have been the Queen herself, but it would not have made her happy. There was nothing that could replace her family.

Sometime after lunch arrived -- arrived, just as if it had grown legs and walked to her table or materialized from the very air -- Beauty had enough of it. She didn't quite throw the chunk of soft brown bread back onto its china plate, didn't quite shove her chair out from under the table and back again once she was on her feet -- but it was close. Reining in her anger, she tugged her hair into a loose knot at the back of her neck, smoothed the white muslin dress flat down her front, then marched herself out the door. She wouldn't spend another single minute in that crazy cajoling place! She would not be swayed into forgetting her family! This City was a monster!

These were her thoughts as she wandered the twisting streets. But as the strangeness of this new place began asserting itself, the anger slid away into something like grudging wonder. How many men had it taken to build such strong buildings? How many hours of toil had it taken to lay such smooth roads? And how had it been turned so black? There was no glare from the road's surface, and hardly any from the strip of wending white pavement under her feet. Strange horseless carriages roared by every so often, and the other people she saw in the streets around her or entering into the shops lining the streets were all dressed.... so oddly! But perhaps, she thought again, it was she herself who was dressed strangely. She stopped in front of a shop with a great glass window and stared at her reflection. Her hair was just slightly curled, and she recalled having to spend hours with curling papers to get just this effect. The color in her cheeks was high - and wouldn't it be, with all this fury? But as she checked her dress again - a simple white thing with minimal embroidery, violets across the collar, and lacy sleeves - she realized she wasn't actually angry anymore. The surprise at the discovery, however, was suppressed by a jolt of excitement as her eyes lost focus on her reflection -- and focused instead on what was past the window.

Books! Books! Shelves, great beautiful wooden shelves of them! She all but ran to the door, pulled it open - a bell sounded and went unnoticed by her - and leaped across the threshold. The scent of books - that earthy, cool, blanketing scent - mingled with the sharper allure of coffee. She drank tea most of the time, but the luxury of coffee was not outside her experience. If it were possible, she smiled even wider.

And that was all the time she spared at the door - just those two seconds as she drank the place in - before she threw herself into the first row of books that she saw. It happened to be a row of poetry. She saw a great amount of Shakespeare (she passed them, but her fingertips brushed them fondly), but most of the authors were unfamiliar. Her excitement heightened as she realized it. Unfamiliar! The vast wealth of new material was boggling, but she couldn't wait to attack it. As she filtered through the alphabet - not at all aware that she was reading effortlessly in English rather than her native French - she tried to think of what sort of binding would hold the best poetry. It was silly, of course, to judge the verse by its wrapping, but she had nothing else to go by. At last, a pretty blue spine caught her attention and held it. Keats? She'd never heard of that author. She'd try Keats!

Snatching the slender volume with both hands, she clamped her fingers tightly around the sides so she didn't open it before she sat down. There was a comfortable looking chair down the row, and to this chair she darted, curled herself up, and then, with very great care and deliberate relish, cracked open the book.

The bookstore, a nice little hole in the wall called "Bookmark Books," looked to be as unassuming a place as could be. Big bay windows with the name stenciled on them, a display of the week's new arrivals, and a good view for the stuffed chairs where people could sit and read. There was no Starbucks inside but a coffee pot was constantly in use, giving the place an appropriately pleasing smell.

The contents, Errol found, went beyond bestsellers and reference books. Towards the back were well-kept first editions, one of which he could have sworn he had burned well before his epiphany. But since this seemed to be a place out of time, he was not surprised for long. There were other shelves further back he had not had the chance to browse in-depth just yet, and none of the new arrivals were ever shelved back there. He'd get around to it some day, he decided. It wasn't like time was a concern for him here. He'd lived one life under tremendous stress with very few bright spots, and he was determined to enjoy this one much more and at a much slower pace.

There weren't many customers today, and the few that were here were content to sit and read. One trio sat around a low table, all looking at the same book and occasionally making quiet comments to each other. Students, Errol decided. He poured himself some coffee and walked back to his seat behind the counter, keeping a metaphorical eye and ear open as he opened his own book to its marked place.

"You're being ridiculous."

Gert was standing outside an ordinary brick-facade office building, her arms crossed over her chest and a frustrated look on her face. Old Lace hid behind a post-office box a few feet away; or rather, she attempted to hide but failed miserably, as she had several feet on the blue metal structure. The dinosaur hissed.

"You think this is fun for me?" The teenager demanded, her eyebrows scaling her forehead. "Dude, I would so much rather be at the park right now. Don't be a baby. I put up with this kind of thing all the time and you don't hear me whining."

Old Lace slunk backwards a step. Apparently, Gert's pep-talks could use some work.

"Old Lace." The teenager's tone was flat. "Do you know how hard it was to find a vet that would see you? Come inside."

"Don't."

Errol held his partner's eyes over the book, ignored the gun pointed at him, and kept his hand on his own pistol, though he had absolutely no intention of using it. He was here for one reason only, and he was at peace with it. He would choose this, and he would make sure that Preston was looking him in the eyes as it happened. He thumbed the safety off and exhaled, ready.

Preston did not disappoint. There was the sound of a Cleric's pistol and the noise of the bullet going through the book a millisecond before Errol felt the sting of the bullet in his throat and his eyes closed, welcoming the darkness, and then...

( He inhaled again, and opened his eyes. )