Stephen had rather wanted to talk with Henry Winter at length, if for no other reason than to cement his hopeful deduction that Henry's recent wedding had well and truly laid to rest the remnants of old animosity concerning the woman who was now Mrs. Winter. Unfortunately, there had simply been no time for conversation. Stephen had brought little
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She squelched over the damp lawn, her footsteps crunching in the still-frozen bits in the shadows of the trees. Over the last weeks she'd tried meditation, square breathing, yoga, and even (far out in the forest), primal scream therapy, and while she'd felt no hint of that murderous rage that had gripped her on Halloween, she still didn't feel closer to anything resembling actual peace. And that, to put it plainly, frustrated the living hell out of her ( ... )
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She took a seat in the fat armchair across from his desk, most uncharacteristically hugging her legs and resting her chin on her knees. "Henry thinks I'm just not cut out for it, which is...somewhat annoying, really."
It was an odd sort of greeting, but Susan was in an odd sort of mood. Much like her grandfather, it was rarely a good thing when she got introspective. "How have you been?" she asked, abruptly changing tacks, and added in a burst of complete and utter honesty, "I've been worried."
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"I meant I've been worried about you," she said. "About the whole...well, Halloween thing. Incidentally, I found out what caused it--it was a spell sent out over the WART broadcast. Everyone who heard it had the same symptoms we did; we were hardly the only ones. It just lasted longer for everyone else." Somehow, knowing what had done it was both a comfort and a source of annoyance; it was such a stupid little thing, yet it had turned them both into monsters, and had almost cost Stephen his life. If she ever found out just who had cast it...but damn, she was trying to get away from all that. Maybe she could hire Shaun to beat him up, whoever he was.
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He imagined himself married to Shaun and the cricket bat.
Now was not the time for self-indulgent might-have-beens, he realized as Susan went on. Whatever her reasoning, her agitation was clear. "Henry told me a little of this," he said.
His nerves screeched at him not to let this opportunity slip. He forced himself to ignore the urge. "If you know, or feel reasonably certain, that your potion is harmful to the subjects who ingest it, what do you stand to gain from sharing it?" he made himself say.
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Vade retro, he told himself firmly, all the while.
"But you are to consider that even when you have given these senses to another person, by whatever means, potion or what you did to me, you are still alone, Susan. You can never make your test subject into a true match to your own experience, your own substance; you can only approximate for them what it might feel like to be such a thing. Their genes remain the same, their flesh unaltered. Throwing a man into the water does not make him a fish."
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"I know what you mean," he said, and whether he really did know what she meant or not, there was conviction in the words; he thought he knew.
He was quiet for a long moment, then said, very low:
"I would take it, if you wished."
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She looked up sharply when he said he'd take it. She thought she knew why he'd want it--Stephen hadn't gotten to go outside on Halloween, hadn't been able to look at the bugs and beetles and flowers he had wanted to see. Part of her really, really wanted to give it to him--to give him the chance to see all he wanted to see with her senses--but the rest of her knew just ( ... )
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She considered this, cheek still rested against her knee. Her skirt smelled of whatever fabric softener the house elves used--sweet, tumble-dried cotton. "You have a point," she said. "It could well be simply the sensory experience itself, rather than the potion, that is addictive. A psychological addiction." Kind of like marijuana, a drug Liz had had her try, and about which she'd been told quite a bit, too.
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