searchingfordistraction

The door opens into a front hall that Jim might find familiar. Not that Matilda knows that.

"Hello Jenny," she calls as soon as she shuts the door. "I brought Jim!"

After a few seconds of silence, Miss Honey appears from the direction of the kitchen.

...If she were going to be perfectly honest, she would have to admit that she didn't fully expect there to be a Jim. It shows in the way she looks at him at first—with some of the same scrutiny she gave the floating water jug—before she smiles in welcome.

"Hello, Matilda. And... hello, Jim."

It does look familiar. Not that you'd know it from the way Jim stands, in the slightly awkward manner of one who knows one's presence is - not unwelcome, necessarily, but unexpected.

(But only slightly awkward - he can't lay it on too thick with Matilda around, and Miss Honey doesn't bend as easily as you'd think on first glance. Some delicacy is required.)

"Miss Honey," he says politely, smiling. "Thank you for the permission to visit."

"I told you he wasn't made up," Matilda announces.

"Yes you did," Jenny admits, smiling ruefully. "And now here he is. Oh—come in, come in," she adds with a beckoning wave. "I'm sorry, I'm still not used to this house. We don't often have guests who are more than eight years old."

"That's all right." Jim closes the door behind him. "I think you're allowed a few extra seconds to adjust, under the circumstances."

What with the visitor coming through from the pandimensional bar and all.

"...Oh," says Matilda, "I forgot to ask about the lottery numbers."

Jenny pauses, slightly derailed from whatever she was about to say.

"I want to measure how close our universe is to Jim's so I asked him for winning lottery numbers from this year. It's not completely cheating if we buy those numbers because we don't know for sure yet if they work. And it's for science," she adds, winningly.

...Jenny laughs. All of a sudden, making Jim welcome in her home is just slightly less important than giving Matilda a hug.

"Yes, all right," she says. "But first, if you're staying, why don't we all sit down in the living room."

Matilda glances to Jim to ascertain his opinion on this subject.

He looks entirely amenable to any and all living room-related plans.

In which case, Matilda leads the way again, setting the laptop down on a side table with exquisite care and then bounding over to the comfiest corner of the comfiest couch.

Jenny follows somewhat more sedately. "And do you have any more surprises for me?" she asks, glancing between the pair of them as she nudges the coffee table out a little and takes a seat beside Matilda. (Jim is left with a wide selection of armchairs orbiting the same table.)

"Just a small one."

Jim holds out the box of cherry cordials.

"I know a bottle of wine is more traditional, but I realized at the last minute that I've no idea if you drink," he says. "But I do have it on good authority that chocolate is an acceptable substitute for most things."

Technically, most of that is even true.

"Thank you," says Jenny, accepting the gift with a pleasantly surprised smile. "That's perfect. You're very thoughtful."

(Matilda's eyes flick to the other box of chocolates on a smaller table by the fireplace, then to Jim. She looks speculative.)

(Well, he was only going to get away with that for so long.

He had to try, though.)

"My best friend has me well-trained, is all," he demurs. "She'd disown me if I neglected my manners."

Also true. The candy is from Irene's favorite chocolatier, whom Jim uses often. (Jim very carefully does not think of how she would react to hearing him claim she'd trained him.)

Matilda giggles. "You have a best friend? What's her name? Is she a bad guy too?"

Jenny, meanwhile, opens the box of chocolates. Some people acting in the role of parent might try to tell Matilda she shouldn't be rude. Jenny doesn't believe in discouraging harmless curiosity, or in expecting six-year-olds to act like adults. She also knows that Matilda, like Jenny herself, has a pretty good sense of how far she can go with any given person.

"I do," Jim says. "Her name is Irene."

He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial pitch and continues,

"Don't tell her I said this, but sometimes I think she might be the best bad guy."

That is one of the most adorable things Matilda has ever heard. She beams.

"I won't," she promises immediately.

Amused, Jenny slides the box of chocolates along the table toward her. Matilda takes one with a cheerful, if absent, thank-you-Jenny; Jenny offers them to Jim next, since he brought them and all.

Jim politely declines; he brought the sweets for them, and besides, he has very little interest in foodstuffs of any kind.

To Matilda, he says,

"Thank you, I'd never hear the end of it."

This is easily the truest thing he's said since they sat down.

Jenny picks up a chocolate and shares a smiling sideways glance with Matilda; they eat their chocolates at exactly the same time, a family ritual.

Then Jenny says, "Matilda, would you mind going upstairs so I can talk to Jim for a bit?"

Matilda considers this. She doesn't honestly think there's a conversation they could have that would be over her six-year-old head, but she's willing to accept that Jenny needs one anyway for her own peace of mind. Jenny's peace of mind is important.

"Okay," she concludes, gives Jenny a hug and Jim a wave, and heads for the stairs.

Jenny folds her hands in her lap and looks at Jim thoughtfully.

...She has no idea where to even start.

Before the silence following Matilda's departure can go on long enough to become awkward, Jim asks,

"How much has Matilda told you about Milliways? So we're on the same page."

More or less.

"I think her exact words were, 'time-travelling interdimensional bar'," Jenny says wryly.

Jim chuckles.

"Yes. Visitors from every point in time and countless different universes. Most people seem to be from a reality that's also a work of fiction. Mine is an adaptation of the Doyle stories, which I've known for some time."

So there's no need to worry about throwing him into a sudden existential crisis or anything like that. Jim skipped that step altogether. He never did see the point of it.

"She mentioned that, too," says Jenny, smiling. "Also called you—what was it—'really nice, in a criminal kind of way'."

"She reminds me of myself at that age," he says, "except she's got a bit luckier than I did."

Little Jimmy never had a Miss Honey. Perhaps he would have turned out differently if he had.

Or perhaps not. But there's not much point in dwelling on it either way, is there?

"She seems to have found a soft spot I didn't know I had."

"I'm not surprised," Jenny admits. "She's an extraordinary person. But I don't need to tell you that, do I."

He smiles fondly. (It's more genuine than he'd willingly admit to anyone, even himself.)

"Not at all," he says.

She smiles again, a little wryly.

"Not a day's gone by since I met that girl where I haven't felt somewhat out of my depth. I'm starting to worry that for once in her life she might be out of hers."

"Milliways has a way of looking after its patrons," Jim says, "especially the younger ones. Mother hen tendencies. It has to be slightly alive with a sense of responsibility, otherwise the entire system would have devolved into chaos a long time ago. I don't think it would allowed Matilda to meet me if I were a danger to her, and it certainly wouldn't have allowed her to bring me back here.

"I do think there are options she's going to want to explore when she's older that will be considerably easier without her father's record following her every move. The sooner she learns secure methods for dealing with that, the better."

Jenny's smile widens briefly. She glances at the ceiling, in the direction of Matilda's room.

"I think you're right," she says.

"I've learned a lot from her, but I think one of the most important things is this: you don't try to control a child like that. You teach her everything you can and then get out of her way. So just... try not to get her into any trouble she can't get out of, all right?"

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