As the old boy 006 lay at death's door, Bella finally tracked him down inside the Cauldron of the Cosmos, and brought him — man and diary both — back to 2005.
The biochemical virus really did pull its weight: even after a bullet through the head, 006 had held on for a full fifteen minutes. Bella extracted the round, then asked Sadako Yamamura to heal him, and in the end managed to bring the man back.
Opening his eyes to the familiar hospital bed and its bank of instruments, the old boy let out a breath of relief. He was alive again!
Bella watched him with an odd look on her face.
006 was used to it by now. He gave a rueful little laugh. "Isn't it perfectly normal for me to turn up in a hospital emergency ward?"
This time Bella's expression was dead serious. "Mr. Trevelyan, I still have to ask — what exactly did you run into out there?"
006 was sharp; he sensed there was something behind her words, that she was pointing at something else entirely. "Did something happen to me?" he asked.
"First, walk me through everything you went through."
006 began recounting his ordeal of nearly three months. When Bella heard that the old boy had put a bullet through the very man who would one day become the next Mentor of her own Brotherhood, her cheek twitched twice — the sheer nerve of it! Then again, she decided it didn't matter; the fellow hadn't even been born yet.
"John Preston?..." Bella didn't much care how the world unfolded after she and Beast had gone — with her around, that apocalyptic state of affairs would never come to pass. But this former Wall Street stockbroker who'd killed 006 — him she took very seriously indeed.
"Is something the matter with John?" Seeing Bella press again and again for details about John Preston, 006 realized at once that this had to concern his temporary companion.
Bella wasn't entirely sure herself. "How do I put this? Honestly, the way you handled it was fine. You and John both came from 2005; looking out for each other was the right call. You were natural allies — it had nothing to do with any of that emotion-or-no-emotion business."
006 nodded over and over; that was exactly how he'd seen it. There was no conflict of interest between them, and in a strange land, working together served them both, while splitting apart hurt them both. Couldn't a Wall Street man grasp even that much?
It was precisely because he'd reasoned that way that he'd sat there so carelessly, writing his diary. He was no fool — had he known the other man would simply open fire, he'd have fought back long before. In physical condition and in combat experience alike, he could have crushed his opponent.
Bella lowered her voice. "I never saw the man with my own eyes, so I might not have this entirely right, but my guess is... my guess is that this John wanted you dead the whole time — from the very first second he laid eyes on you."
Before 006 could ask, she laid out her theory. "The way the man behaves is a great deal like the Godslayers the old texts speak of. A Godslayer is more of a destiny — a fate written into a person. These types look perfectly ordinary, yet for them, killing a god is as casual as eating a meal or drinking a glass of water. Plenty of the heroes in history who slew gods actually carried a trace of the Godslayer in them."
006 stammered, "Then... then what does that have to do with me?"
"Because inside you there's a thread — a very small, very faint thread — of Zeus's divinity. In theory, once Zeus's true body perished, he would have been reborn within yours. And now that thread of divinity has been killed off by this John Preston. John Preston knew perfectly well there was nothing to gain from killing you, and he went for the kill anyway. That's the pull of the Godslayer's fate. I think he'd been holding himself back for a very long time..."
***
Bella took the matter of the Godslayer seriously, and that same day she returned to 2205 to run it down — only to arrive a step too late. Single-handed, John Preston had wiped out the Tetragrammaton's leaders and core members down to the last man, then triggered a 23rd-century time-travel device and vanished to who knew where.
Bella had no choice but to let it go. Her drive to chase him down wasn't all that strong to begin with — Godslayers killed gods, not sorcerers, so what business was it of hers?
She only felt the waters back in 2205 ran very deep. At first she'd assumed the whole chain of events was aimed at her, that she was the protagonist of it all; later she'd found the big shots' real target seemed to be Dormammu; and looking at it now, she realized this John Preston might have been the true objective all along.
Whatever, then! If he wanted to go kill some god, let him — Bella truly had no time to meddle in other people's affairs, because her wife was about to give birth!
"Aaah! — It hurts so much!"
"Why does it hurt this badly?!"
"It hurts, it hurts so much!"
Natasha's cries were full of agony, and Bella was beside herself with worry. Her brow was knotted tight, her eyes filled with profound hesitation, biting down hard on her lip as she circled endlessly outside the delivery room like a donkey harnessed to a millstone.
As Arendelle's court steward, Bilbo Baggins looked on from afar, Mr. Beaver perched atop his head, cheering Bella on from a good ninety feet away.
"Relax! Last year, when my missus had our little one, I fretted too — and how did it turn out? Not a thing went wrong!"
Our species aren't even the same! How can you possibly put the two side by side?
Bella's face was drawn and grim, which made Mr. Beaver pull his neck in and think better of saying anything more.
The little elephant family she'd hauled here by force from the wildlands came; the little fox came; the little squirrel came; even the unicorn couple came to see her, bringing along their two-month-old foal.
The little unicorn nuzzled Bella's leg with its head.
"Ah, if only my wife's delivery could go as smoothly as yours did!" she sighed, scooping the foal up.
She stood up and sat down, sat down and stood up again, stroking the squirrel's tail, pinching the little elephant's trunk. Five minutes braced against the wall, three minutes in a handstand, thirty sit-ups, twenty-five push-ups...
A whole cluster of little animals and Bilbo Baggins watched her thrash back and forth as though she'd lost her mind.
"Don't worry. Your child will be born safe and sound." A deep, resonant voice appeared out of nowhere at Bella's side, startling her right in the middle of a front flip.
There stood the great lion Aslan, regarding her with calm, steady eyes.
What was the old fellow doing all the way out in Arendelle?
As if he knew her thoughts, the great lion said with perfect composure, "Wherever the people of Narnia appear, there too is my presence."
At her core Bella was still a sorcerer, and she set her earlier agitation aside at once to weigh the deeper meaning of those words. The great lion was formidable indeed! The line brimmed with grandeur — it already carried a whisper of the divine.
"Mother and daughter will both be safe. You needn't trouble yourself."
Aslan offered Bella these few words of comfort, then turned and left. Bella hadn't caught how he'd appeared, still less the means by which he departed; she only felt he was unfathomable...
Aslan's words settled her. Bella could read the timeline herself, and she'd pored over it seventy or eighty times; every outcome was good. But those who care too much lose their heads, and she'd kept dreading some slip. Now Aslan's words steadied her confidence.
Bella soothed her fretful heart, letting herself ease back into calm bit by bit, and waited quietly for the result.
Natasha was in better physical shape than Samantha, but this was her first delivery; and though they'd made thorough preparations for the delivery, she still labored in pain through the whole night, and it wasn't until early the next morning that she brought a healthy baby girl into the world.