Chapter Text
Just as Rose stepped out the door, she crashed into a very solid man and fell on her butt. She reached reflexively for Orpheus on her shoulder, but the man had already grabbed him to stop him from falling. She looked up at him, and her jaw dropped.
“Uncle Joe? What are you doing here? Oh!” Suddenly his presence clicked with the state of the Library. Death may not have come, and Destruction may have changed his name, but he was obviously still drawn to certain situations.
“Rose! Ara! Orpheus! So good to see you all again! But what are you doing here?”
“We followed Hob and Johanna here, hoping to see Death,” Orpheus explained from where he dangled from Joe’s hand. “It’s Uncle Joe, now, is it?”
“Ha!” Joe laughed. “It’s good to see you away from that tiny island, my boy! Have your cousins been showing you a good time?”
As Orpheus launched into a long rendition of their adventures, Rose realized that they should probably let Hob know they wouldn’t be catching up. And then she realized Ara had already texted him to that effect.
“I love you,” she said, letting Ara give her a hand up and leaning against her shoulder for a moment. Ara hugged her tight, and then Uncle Joe interrupted them.
“You kids have done a lot of fun sightseeing, but I feel like you’re lacking the experience of really letting loose! Come with me and I’ll show you a real good time!”
Rose wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she was too tired to argue with one of her Endless family, so she just followed along. Time zones and geography didn’t seem to mean much to him, and she wasn’t always quite sure where they were in the world as he took them to axe throwing (he insisted Orpheus sit on his shoulder as he threw, for the full effect), and bowling (he was excellent at getting strikes), and pottery smashing. Rose was finally getting to see the appeal of unrestrained smashing of things as she caught her second wind.
But it was around then that Aunty Del joined them as well. She seemed to get along really well with Uncle Joe, and she was fun—nothing was going to be hurt, Rose figured. They tried to tell her the story of how they got there, but kept breaking down into laughter.
“And they, and they thought I was a cat!” Orpheus howled.
“The kid said they’d rather Orpheus was a real android,” Rose could barely get the words out between gales of laughter.
“We almost couldn’t get Orpheus off the London Eye!” Ara added, gasping for breath.
“And then we ended up in Dublin, where that beautiful library was all over the floor,” Orpheus chuckled, calming a little. “Hey, you can travel us around! Do you think we can go see the Library of Alexandria? I’ve always kind of wanted to go there.” Suddenly the laughter died.
“I hate to break it to you,” Rose started solemnly, “but that Library burned down. There’s a new one there, but it won’t be the one you heard about.”
“Sorry,” Joe mumbled in embarrassment. Then he perked up. “But! You know who still has those books and scrolls in her collection?”
“Lucienne!” Rose and Ara exclaimed together.
“Yay!” Delirium danced a sloppy jig. “We are going to visit Looshy’s Liberry! It’s great! Maybe we’ll see Dreamy tooo!”