"I'm afraid not. Most her team is composed of people that are just shaken loose. A big event, they went right instead of left and suddenly they're displaced. Find the right resonance, poke the right stress points, and they can snap back home where they were intended to be. I don't know why Clarice is so different. It may be her power, it may be the fact her world was negated and most other variants of her are dead, but nothing within my reach, hundreds of thousands of realities, can hold her. She shakes loose. I can keep that act from killing her, but I can't place her in a reality." And he was honestly sorry about that.
"Plus I don't know if Clarice would accept such of her own volition. She's a leader and a hero. Layer those on soldier and I don't honestly know if she could just settle down with anyone, even if she loved them. She'd have to be active in the world, saving people because it's what she does with her life." Surely he'd seen that? Three years outside his reach and she was as dangerous as ever when she came back. Bill had to have seen it.
"As for new, well, that's harder to define. Consider your world for a moment. Next door to either of your worlds will be similar ones, your best friend is a girl instead of a boy. You have a dog instead of a cat, but very much alike. A thousand down? You wouldn't recognize the world but there would be a you there. You might be a villain, or a space pirate, or any number of things, but you're not new, you're just different and depending on how badly the YOU that you are when you arrive is from what the you in that reality should be? That creates stress and friction and will push you clear, or destroy you depending. Your world is so far from these here that Clarice never existed in them, or if she does? It's as a fictional character. A story. A book, a comic book, a movie. Something not real. That's probably what kept her alive for three years in your reality? There she was new, but she also tends to break reality rules so sooner or later the stress of existing in your world would eject or kill her." That was how it worked really.
"You don't have super powers. You don't tear holes in reality. You can be 'new' somewhere and not get a whole world angry at your existence. She can't. Even so? I can't reach a world where you both would be new and guarantee you wouldn't break it between you."
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"Plus I don't know if Clarice would accept such of her own volition. She's a leader and a hero. Layer those on soldier and I don't honestly know if she could just settle down with anyone, even if she loved them. She'd have to be active in the world, saving people because it's what she does with her life." Surely he'd seen that? Three years outside his reach and she was as dangerous as ever when she came back. Bill had to have seen it.
"As for new, well, that's harder to define. Consider your world for a moment. Next door to either of your worlds will be similar ones, your best friend is a girl instead of a boy. You have a dog instead of a cat, but very much alike. A thousand down? You wouldn't recognize the world but there would be a you there. You might be a villain, or a space pirate, or any number of things, but you're not new, you're just different and depending on how badly the YOU that you are when you arrive is from what the you in that reality should be? That creates stress and friction and will push you clear, or destroy you depending. Your world is so far from these here that Clarice never existed in them, or if she does? It's as a fictional character. A story. A book, a comic book, a movie. Something not real. That's probably what kept her alive for three years in your reality? There she was new, but she also tends to break reality rules so sooner or later the stress of existing in your world would eject or kill her." That was how it worked really.
"You don't have super powers. You don't tear holes in reality. You can be 'new' somewhere and not get a whole world angry at your existence. She can't. Even so? I can't reach a world where you both would be new and guarantee you wouldn't break it between you."