Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't own this story.

LOUD AND CLEAR! I DO NOT, HAVE NOT AND WILL NOT EVER OWN THIS STORY!

This story is the property of Tang Guangzhen who was kind enough to give me permission to post this here. Any flames about that will be used to fry your ass.

Thank You

Harry had been napping, after developing a headache as he and Bob practiced focusing their wizardly abilities together--or, rather, practiced trying to; Megare said once that she had a feeling their current course wasn't the way to go about fusing their abilities into one, but since she didn't exactly have a Dummies book on the subject lying around the library, she'd just let them continue in their efforts, unhindered by her lack of ability to express her particular twitch with their method. Cruachan appeared unusually pensive as well, which for him translated to noticeably less booming and bounding. Which was actually kind of a relief. When a semi-visible, semi-physical creature was bounding around the room, you ohmigod never knew which way to dodge, and usually ended up frozen in place, fighting the urge to hit the dirt and present the smallest target possible.

Bob had dispossessed Harry--or however that would work, semantically--about half an hour ago, saying the headache they were getting was interfering with his concentration too much, and that the reason for the headache wasn't exotic--no neurological problems, just some enlarged capillaries here and some shrunken ones there, and that they were both in need of relaxation, aspirin, and plain black tea if they could get it. Megare gave them her tea/juice/honey relaxation potion instead, which worked fine for Bob but made Harry a little sleepy; this wasn't surprising. Harry had the physical system to be messed with, and Bob received only the echoes and generalities of the messing. So Harry had lain down to doze while Bob did a little more reading into their predicament.

Megare was there when Harry woke. She was sitting on the bed in a leotard and tights--a red leotard and dark plum tights, matching her lipstick and eye shadow, and complimenting her olive skin and near-black, red-highlit hair perfectly. Her posture was straight and relaxed, her hands held up before her in a mudra, her fingers folded intricately before her lower belly. Harry recognized the pattern from his studies of yoga asanas and related subjects; it was the one for balancing sexual energy.

"Hi," Harry said, and her eyes opened. They had been mostly closed while she directed her gaze beneath them a bit upward, and breathed quietly but strongly through her nose--not quite the Breath of Fire, used to bring more active energy into the body, but close.

"Hello," she said, and smiled. He loved the way her big teardrop-shaped eyes crinkled at the corners just slightly when she grinned.

Oh, screw it. "Are you deliberately flirting with me, or am I just a horny bastard? I know you flirt with Bob, you both do that, but I can't tell if you are with me."

"Harry, of course I flirt with you. I flirt with the imp, you have not seen that? 'Helpful imp, very cute.' I simply make it obvious it is flirting, and not trying to…"

"Unsettle? Lead on? Tease?"

"Correct, none of that. If someone seems…confused or uncomfortable--" she shook her head definitively. "It is my way to be friendly, that is all. If it is not fun for both, it is not friendly, and I stop."

"You aren't a flirt," Harry realized, grinning hugely at what had been puzzling him about Megare. "You're just charming. Debonair. You're like Bob, except like you do it. Uh, it does get me horny occasionally, I should mention."

"I know that, young Harry. But you are liking it, so…" she shrugged. "I like it also, to be getting a bit excited sometimes." She smiled. "For example, Bob is very sensual man, shares it--usually quite tastefully--ghost or no ghost. He is a ghost, nothing can happen, yet is nice to feel heat in the firebox anyway, no?"

He looked away, feeling his face get a little warm. "Yeah, I guess you're right, and you're right that I wouldn't have done something like ask you to slide on top of me about a week ago, when you came and joined me and Bob in bed in the morning, if I didn't like it. Sorry for trying to blame you for driving me crazy."

She shrugged. "Is what men do. They want a woman they do not want to want, but they cannot stop--even if she barely know he is there? She is deliberately provoking him, end of story."

He frowned. "I like to think I'm a little more enlightened than that."

"You are. You continued to wonder what was happening; my teasing was only one possibility to you, and not one you considered very likely. Listen, Harry, unless you would like to do something about that right now--" she gestured at the lump in his jeans, which caused him to fall from his elbows back onto his back and pull the pillow over his face, "--we have ideas, ones I hope will help. Oh, dear--Harry, I am too old to see this as anything but reflex--" he felt, for God's sake, a maternal pat on his hard dick. That should NOT have been possible--that was the last straw; Megare was not human. "Women's bodies respond too like that, and we can feel it--men could see it, if they cared to look closely enough at how we walk and move, but they generally do not. Other women often can see, though. Oh, my--I have embarrassed you so terribly you are getting soft. I am sorry."

Harry began to laugh, near hysteria already. "Well, how would you feel if your aunt whoever that you used to have a massive crush on and now think you may be finding genuinely desirable sat there looking like utter canned heat and patted your hardon, talking about reflexes? Yes, thank you, I am embarrassed, and I want a side of fries and a large coke with it, it's gonna take a while to eat this one."

She was laughing, as he'd intended, and he pulled the pillow off his face, grinning. "I think I can control myself, Megare. Though I'm surprised you'd be willing. I know you have the perspective on age and everything that Bob has, but I'd think you'd be worried I'd bounce us off the bed and break your tailbone again."

She cracked up anew. "I am warned now," she said. "We get too close to edge, I lift us back to the middle. Or Bob can grab us."

"Eep." Harry blinked. He wasn't sure if he could handle them both at once, at least not at first, and he was glad the imp would have no reason to want in on the deal, but Megare was continuing with the idea that had brought her to wait for him to wake anyway. "As I was saying, we think the problems you are having--partly it is your separation," she said. "You and Bob are careful not to do anything that would…" she frowned. "Mix you up. You keep your own synaptic patterns in your part of neuronal network, he stays in his, where you both have access to lower areas of brain which control voluntary motor function."

"Yeah, that's right." How did she do that? Harry couldn't do that, and he listened to Bob talk like that all the time. Of course, the freakin' hobgoblin could do it, too. Maybe Harry was just a moron.

"Also there is Bob's body that he has now, whyever it is so. You--of course--do not want him to lose that. I think it is…separate from the possession when you let him in to you and practice trading who is driving. It makes you too careful in the wrong ways, protecting it."

"Uh huh." He sat up; it made sense. "Are you seeing something that makes you think this, or is it just a hypothesis you've come up with from other clues about--"

"It is my idea," boomed the room, and this time Harry just jumped a little and laughed as the not-furry not-rounded not-critter bounced around for a minute, working off some of his exuberance, before getting his shit together and bouncing onto the bed--which did not move--facing Megare and Harry. He was grinning, his claws were vividly displayed on the bedspread, and his eyes glowed; slanted, adamantine slits of radiant intelligence.

Harry had about decided he really liked this genius attack imp guy. Or girl, whatever; hearth imps were created by their abodes and those who lived there, and had no gender. Cruachan went on "My lady Wizard Megare and I have been conversing on the topic as we observe your work with the Wizard of Bainbridge, in order to monitor and correct you when you pass safe limits. We came to no conclusions we felt were cogent enough to present to you--until recently, however."

"Well, I'm all ears. Uh, somebody want to call Bob? Or should I?"

"We go to him," Megare said, unfolding one short but perfectly-proportioned leg and getting up. "He is in library, and we may need materials we have organized there."

"My, my, my," Bob said, smiling slowly as he glanced up from his current book at Megare leading the way into the library. "You certainly meant to have no truck with prying my concentration from whatever it was mired in, did you? You are a picture of both elegant simplicity and untamed nymphlike beauty, milady Megare; thank you for so gracing us."

Harry wondered how anybody else had got a girl when this guy was alive. He was outright lustful without being even remotely rude. He wondered if, after all, Bob had been set up in the skull so somebody else could get laid now and then.

"Flatter me too much, my Lord of Bainbridge--I will cease to take you seriously," she warned him, smiling and coming up to where he was setting the large book he held in both arms down on a table; she placed her hands on his shoulders; he settled his on her waist, and they kissed lightly, caressed each other's faces just a touch, and moved apart again, Megare stepping back in a graceful one-two--as Bob first took her hands as she moved away, and then released them at just the right point, one-two up, one-two back. It was so perfect Harry wondered if they'd practiced it. Then something told him, no; it was graceful and easy because it was friendly. There were no agendas, it wasn't head-game flirting, so there was no awkwardness or stiffness. In this particular case, it looked like dancing because it was. Megare, and her "just knowing"? Making it so Bob could "just know"?

Bob looked up at him, and considered him a moment, smiling. Harry couldn't help smiling back, because it was his adoring-Harry look, and it always made Harry smile bashfully at the floor for a moment and get blood rushes here and there. He felt silly, being as old as he was, but he couldn't help it; it affected him that much.

This time, he realized, the adoring look was because Bob knew what he'd been thinking again, the same as he often knew what Harry was feeling. Bob was proud of his insight, for a wizard so young and, even for his age, inexperienced. It was one reason Harry had never doubted Bob's love was genuine, whatever form it was currently taking. He was deeply proud when Harry surpassed him at any wizardly activity, be it instinctive or learned. Actually, Harry got the feeling Bob would be just as proud if Harry learned to sing as well or better than Bob, but that was hardly likely.

Megare was looking between them. "You are having conversation without us again," she chuckled.

Bob took a deep breath, closing his eyes to break the melting gaze he shared with Harry, and said "You and Cruachan have ideas for us. I must admit, at this point, we are in desperate need of input, both of us, before we begin to be irritable. There's no dealing with either of us when we get snippy."

"He's right about that," Harry muttered. "I get crabby and oversensitive--and occasionally assholish--and he gets snotty and hurt."

Bob shrugged a that's-about-it.

Megare smiled. "We will try not to irritate you too much. Right, then, Cruachan has said how Bob compares two living in one body to…sharing a house. Correct?"

Harry looked at Bob.

Bob shrugged. "I didn't use that imagery, but I can see where a hearth imp would see a metaphor there, and it's accurate, as far as it goes--using some but not all of the same facilities and spaces, different functions in different places that some use and some don't, that sort of thing."

Harry nodded, looked back at Megare, and leaned his ass against the edge of the huge polished table he was standing next to. "You think we shouldn't be trying to be roomies in my body?"

"You are good at that. You do that when you dream; you are now trying to do it in the areas, with the mechanisms, and at the levels of energy and activity you would need to do it when awake, yes?"

Harry nodded. "Close enough for jazz."

"But there is a difference; Bob is, in a sense, possessing you when you dream, but only to a point. He directs and controls; the fact that he could not do it without your trust and cooperation is not a difference in what you try to accomplish now, since he also has that when you are both awake, no?"

"Yes," Harry said firmly, with a sideways grin at Bob. "Yes, he does."

"You're going to give me a paranoid complex eventually, Harry," Bob sighed.

"Is it still paranoia if you think everybody's after someone else?" Harry wondered.

"Oh, do shut up, Megare has important insights to impart," Bob said, coming over to take Harry by the waist, down near the hipbones, and with a cooperative hop from Harry, hoist him up sitting on the table he was leaning on. Bob folded his arms and leaned against said table in fake-friendliness genuine-threat, right up against Harry's body, glaring at him. Harry giggled and so did Megare. Even Bob didn't quite manage not to smirk when the imp grinned, too. "So, Megare?"

"Right, then, I am talking, Cruachan is talking. Harry is shutting up. Bob is coming down off yellow alert, please." Harry doubled over at that, heels kicking in glee, but true to his tacit promise, he didn't make a sound. "All right," Megare went on when they seemed to have collected themselves, and she and Cruachan had exchanged a prepatory glance--how did they do that with no more face than the hobgoblin had? Except when he grinned.

"There are levels of neurological activity," boomed Cruachan, "which are not those of motor skills, voluntary or involuntary. They are run on separate nerve channels and different types of nerves. Their electrochemical signal-transmission fluid has different components, to some degree, at least."

There was a pause. He could have been talking about any number of things, but it was obvious what he had to be talking about here.

"Cognitive impulses," Bob said softly, "occurring in the cerebral cortex. It is your supposition that to share one body, Harry and I need to be one person?"

"No," Megare said quickly. "You already share one body all the time. You could learn--and will learn--to go from one to the other in charge of voluntary motor control. But you confuse your body with so many people. It would be easier for you to let one or the other of you control the body if that level of your neurological functioning received direction from only one consistent pattern; it would help it to develop reflexes, to train the muscle memory, to allow the reflexes already present to function."

"We know it seems like a contradiction," Cruachan boomed, but more softly than usual, and very deep, making things vibrate. "But we both have reason to believe it would work."

"If it doesn't--what happens? Bob and I end up in a coma? Schizophrenic? Catatonic? Exactly how do you propose we try this?"

"Harry, we would not propose anything that could hurt you so badly--not if you let us help."

"Help how?" Bob wondered. "And would Harry have any trouble regaining sole resident status in his own body after this? Because I will not try it if there is any question about that."

Megare said "There are places, times in trying--it is not all at once, not all or nothing. You will always be able to stop. If for some reason you cannot, you get confused, something, then Cruachan and I can stop it."

"How can you stop it?" Harry asked, calmly, just looking for the information.

"We can 'anesthetize' you. We can send you--easily and quietly--into a delta-wave sleep, or in this case, a very short coma; there will be no meaningful synaptic activity at all in your cerebral cortex. When the activity related to the procedure has ceased, we will wake you up. Bob has put you, Harry, into a similar state, more than once. It is almost identical to something we enter every night in sleep, so long as we sleep well; if we do not enter that state, along with a number of others, we become very sick. This method of entering delta is not dangerous when done correctly."

"Apparently everybody has had at least the short course in this kind of stuff except me," Harry complained, half-smiling, but obviously with his thoughts elsewhere, considering the problem. "And the hobgoblin? Were his people healers or something?"

"Cruachan would help me, monitor me," Megare explained. "He would not actually change your brainwave patterns."

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Cruachan watches the watcher," Bob said. "I suppose we've answered that question."

Megare smirked. "I think Socrates answered it when they asked him."

"It was probably that stupid daemonion," Harry said. "Okay, double failsafe. I say we try it. Whatever 'it' may be, exactly. One question--not to be insulting, aunt Megare…" he waited while she stuck her tongue out at him and smiled back, then went on "I realize you obviously understand the concepts here, but where are you getting the language? Sometimes you have problems with 'Breakfast is ready'."

Megare pointed at Bob. "I get from him. So does Cruachan."

Harry looked at Bob. "Uh…really?"

"This is news to me, Harry," Bob said, shrugging and raising his eyebrows.

"He is dead," Megare explained. "Very easy to hear--not with ears. Damn, is no word. In any case, having much better simulation of human body does not seem to change that."

"Well I guess not," Harry muttered, then leaned over and kissed the top of Bob's head; his seat on the table made it easy to reach. "You're just no end of helpful, aren't you?"

"Stuff it high and stuff it deep, Harry," Bob sighed, making Harry giggle and put his arms around Bob to squeeze him tight. Bob set his hands on Harry's forearms and squeezed back.

"Not frightened at all, are we not?" Bob asked, turning his head up and back to look into Harry's eyes.

"Hell no. Not of you."

"I didn't mean of me."

"Um," said Harry. "It's just that this is starting to turn into a Star Trek episode."

"Did that with the replicator," Megare muttered.

"Well, if it is, you'll recall that in the less…coherent episodes, everyone came out of it all with their individuality intact," Bob said. "Even that poor fellow with the lovely voice who ended up in a mud fight with his brother after it was all over."

"This will not impact your individuality," Cruachan said, sounding puzzled. "It will merely make you able to act and think as one."

"He sees a difference we do not," Megare admitted, "but he can see dimensions we cannot, too. We must forgive the occasional semantic confusion."

"Oh, this is not confusion. It will be something they do. Yes, it will be made possible by a state they are in, when they are in that state. The state will be constant while it applies. This is what will allow the things you said earlier, that will keep the body from being so confused. But to use their wizardly enteric energy as one directly supplementary force to another--that will be something you do, made able to do so by that state. Eventually, you will do it reflexively, but only in the same sense humans eventually develop a reflex to step on a brake pedal, whether there is one there or not, to slow a car."

"A car?" Harry said faintly.

"I have been on that tourist-trap hill for a long time," Cruachan reminded them. "One hears things. In fact, one could say that after as many years as I was up there--with the memorization skills of a Druid--one hears everything."

"Good answer," Harry said, nodding, eyebrows raised in an expression of being impressed. His eyes, however, had the unfocused appearance of being overwhelmed.

Bob wasn't doing too well either. "Cruachan--Megare--might we…have a bit of time to think about it? I'm sure of our answer, really, but…"

"Of course," Megare said, unfolding her small person from the corner of couch she'd been perched in. Cruachan grinned, bounded to the fireplace and vanished. This didn't mean he was gone, of course; he might just be in the fireplace, where he often liked to be invisible. "You must think about things. You will call when you are done. Talk and think today. You should sleep first, perhaps, and have a small breakfast."

"That sounds like a wise course," Bob said. Harry was just slumped, one arm still around Bob to rest on, swinging his feet and looking pensive. "I'm sure Harry agrees."

"Huh? Oh, sure."

"Things I must do," Megare said, and headed for the door. They watched the view as she did so, stepping carefully in stocking feet in a leotard; she smiled encouragement and waved at them before she left, pulling the huge wooden library doors closed.

"I think better in bed than in libraries," Harry said, and laid a hand along Bob's face, kissing the daylights out of him.

"It can be a stimulating environment," Bob admitted.

"I'd swat you, but I don't do that kind of sex," Harry said, hopping down from the table. "Though maybe the pun counted as pain already. Shall we?"

"Hello, my darling," Bob murmured, kissing his ear. "You're dreaming."

"I sort of figured, this time," Harry said, staring up.

They were in his dreaming bedroom. There was one difference; the walls with their big windows were all intact, and the bed hangings were there; right now they were hanging from the canopyholding-type frame that usually held them away from the bed--it left the space straight over the bed uncovered. And the roof was missing.

"What is it?" Harry asked in a hushed voice.

"They call it the Lagoon Nebula; I've forgotten its NGC number, if I ever knew it. It's a magnified version; I made it look as though it would on film over a time exposure, using a large-aperture scope."

"Really large aperture like the Hubble?"

"Modeled on that. But it's something I saw one night, when I was far-traveling. I focused in. The 'twister' effect caused by the action of Herschel 36 was fascinating, so I went to see if anybody in the mundane astronomical community was studying it--the Hubble hadn't been functioning properly for very long at that point--but lo and behold, a picture much prettier that I could show you without assistance."

"It's…"

"Yes, breathtaking, I know."

They were lying side by side, gazing upward, Harry with his eyes the size of hubcaps. "Y'know, I did say I wanted to see things the way you saw them, the way you remember them, if you could show them to me that way."

"I could have, but this shows more detail, and it shows…things I was able to discern in various ways, but which, looking at it in your visual center, fed by my memory, rather than by the entire experience, would be missing much of what I found so profound about it. This puts a little of that back."

"It's closer to what you remember than what you can show me without the help."

"Precisely, my darling."

"Wow. Say, you been followin' when they're gonna send up that great big-ass scope to one of the LaGrange points? I think the new issue of Sky and Telescope is out."

"I'm afraid I haven't checked; we've been busy lately." He smiled as Harry felt briefly stupid at forgetting that, though he smiled about it. "Don't be embarrassed, my love. Your enthusiasm is one of your most charming qualities."

Harry smiled a moment longer, then sighed, his eyes wandering the huge nebula, each fragment of cloud larger than a hundred solar systems, as though it were a mandala; finally, he turned his wide eyes back to Bob. "What's gonna happen after, Bob?" he asked softly. "Are we ever gonna have any peace?"

"I don't know, my darling Harry," Bob said, shaking his head. He could feel his eyes tearing, and see Harry's doing it just a tiny bit, as they often did, giving them that odd I'm-unhappy shine. "But one thing that will be assured is that we'll be together."

"I'd give just about anything for that," Harry sighed. "And I know you would, too. You did."

"Yes," Bob sighed, looking up at the shining overhead. "It is not certain that we would be…hunted down, harassed, as I know you fear, and as I fear in the abstract. I believe it is more likely we would simply no longer be able to stay even as far out of the politics of the entire magical world as we have been able to. Doing what you need to do--using your unique abilities to help people, and perhaps making a living that would feed a churchmouse--will be harder in some respects; in others, it will be much easier. You will be targeted even more for the endless sweetwater river that runs from your heart; and I will be very busy keeping people from taking advantage of you. We'll argue more, because you won't be able to give up in frustration and send me to my skull--"

"--you know I'm sorry I ever did that. That was in my asshole phase. You'd known so much that was so important--for so long--without telling me…"

"Hush, my darling, I know." Bob smiled. "I know you felt we were on an equal footing all this while. Now, though, we truly shall be, and you will feel the difference; I guarantee it."

"Okay, now I'm nervous." Harry chuckled.

"You should be, you naughty wizard. You will likely also be harassed by would-be apprentices."

"Me?"

"Yes, darling, if you accomplish what you seek to do."

"If we accomplish it."

"It will not be my name that becomes a magical household word, my love."

"Bob, you're more than my partner. You're my kingmaker. It always comes back to you somehow."

"If you start singing that revolting Bette Midler song--"

"You can drown me out with something from Rocky Horror. What I mean is, whoever you were once, and then whoever you were after that--now you're going to be something completely different."

"A man with three buttocks?"

"BOB!" Harry sat up and pillow-bombed Bob with every ounce of strength he possessed. "This matters! You're going to be in danger too!"

"Perhaps, but that's not what matters. You, my darling, are all of that."

"No I'm not." Harry grabbed Bob by the shoulders and sat him up with a yank. "You are gonna take this seriously if I have to tattoo it onto your brand-new body, because especially after this…ah, hell, Bob, how could I ever live without you? I know you love me. You're gonna throw yourself in harm's way too now, just to do it ahead of me. But you're what I love. Doesn't what I need count at all?"

Bob had closed his eyes and let his head drop a moment, trying to think how to approach Harry's tirade--and Harry's hands felt strange on his shoulders, an odd tingle. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the huge, wet brown orbs of a Harry possibly even younger than the one he'd first met. "You have me," the child whispered. "But what about me? Don't I get to protect you? Don't I get to have you? Is it all going to be you making sure I'm safe without even asking me, telling me, something? Are you gonna leave me one way or another, Bob?"

"Oh, mercy," Bob whispered, and swept Harry close and tight, Harry's arms squeezing hard around his neck. "I promise you right now, my darling, that I'll discuss everything with you. You'll never find out I'm dead by some drippy note in which I declare my love and tell you how this is for the best. I'll never do anything royally stupid without informing you first, which is something I'm going to hold you to as well. Partners don't make such decisions for each other; it's not romantic, it's not loyal, it's not devoted--it's selfish. Partners decide together, no matter how painful it may be for at least one of them."

"I can do that. Tell Bob if I'm gonna be an idiot, got it," Harry said into his neck; Bob could feel a smile, but he also felt tears, and Harry was still an eleven-year-old. Harry twisted a leg through Bob's nearest one and held on tight with it, too.

Bob explained "That way, you see, I can be there whenever you get blown to bits, and find all the pieces to put in the dustbin, and get you home to reassemble again." He kissed Harry's head; Harry quickly lifted his face for a slow, gentle kiss on the mouth. Bob tried to pull back from it once, but Harry grabbed the back of his neck and followed, and Bob let Harry run things after that. He did proceed the kiss with another to Harry's forehead, his temple, and his cheek, taking his time about it. God, how he wished he could have touched Harry when Harry was really this age, and needed it badly.

"I wish you could have, too," Harry murmured. He rested his head on Bob's shoulder and stroked his chest. Bob was going to stop him from that, but Harry was like this because he was afraid, was feeling deep insecurity he couldn't talk about or show any other way--but here, in his own mind, couldn't avoid showing somehow--and if Bob kept stopping his attempts at garnering reassurance, he would hurt Harry unimaginably, just because he himself hadn't the imagination to realize that this wasn't an eleven-year-old. This was a thirty-seven year old man, in need of comfort, and dreaming himself looking like he felt.

"My folks let me sleep with them when I was really little," Harry said quietly. "When I was scared. I remember a lot to be nervous about, but they were always there, they never got impatient with my…clinging. And then my Dad let me stay with him, but not as often, 'cause I was older."

"I would have stayed with you if I could," Bob said, knowing now the kind of thing that it would help to hear. "If you'd asked me. Or if I could have offered. I would have." But he couldn't have told Harry he'd never leave him. Harry hadn't been his master then, and slaves don't choose.

He could say it now, though. "I'll never, ever leave you now, Harry. I won't throw myself away to save you, I won't…do something foolish without your knowledge to prevent you from doing it, I won't…I won't do any of that, if you won't."

"I won't." Harry buried his face in Bob's neck. "I won't. I swear."

"So do I. I swear."

"I love you," Harry whispered.

"And I you," Bob whispered back, just before his eyes overflowed. He bit his lip and finished "I swear, my darling."

"We're gonna do this?"

"We knew that," Bob said softly. "But yes, darling. We're going to do this."

"Yeah. I knew that," Harry murmured. "Guess I must be pretty nervous."

"It's only natural. We don't know what might happen. We do know this--Megare, and Cruachan to a lesser degree, can stop whatever is happening at any point and shut everything down."

"The delta-wave kill switch."

"That's one way of putting it, yes. And as you mentioned, it's double-failsafed."

"I said that when I was a little more enthusiastic. You know me. I jump into stuff with all four feet and then my life is never the same afterward."

"I am very familiar with that tendency of yours."

"And this time, what changes is gonna be big, big, big. Plus we don't know about after, when we need to…"

"To separate."

"If we can, what it'll have done to me, to you, whether we'll…Megare and Cruachan couldn't tell us what would happen after, just that the process would be…we'd have choices about whether and how far to continue. Nobody said anything about what would happen after we'd been…one person, in a way, for however long. And when it's all over, if we make it, we'll have to rely on people we can only trust if we can give them an unassailable, guaranteeable reason why they should help us. Let's remember that these people may decide the simplest way to handle this would be to a., kill us, or b., just let us die if we conveniently end up doing that."

"It isn't fair to ask Megare to predict the future; she is an enigma of time, Cruachan of space, but neither of them can do that only for those reasons--it's too complex an issue with other sentients involved, for one of many reasons. But we can return to Megare. She would help us for love, not prudence, whatever our situation turned out to be."

"If we have to, maybe. I don't want to endanger her any more than we already have."

"Remember, as you're controlling your urge to run off and save the day, that Megare has such an urge as well, and might undertake to aid us on her own recognizance."

"You mean…um, if we don't come back to her for help, if we need help, she's going to come to us."

"Not difficult to figure. She won't let us go without following us with some sort of observation spell or technology. She hardly trusts anyone in the magical community, either; she's a hermit. Most of her many friends are people like Cruachan--less powerful or less human-connected daemons, spirits, chthons, and other such; or they're more mundane types, if human...all right, mostly less powerful. Cruachan is an anachronistic exception whom I suspect wasn't just one of the crowd even in his own day."

"Yeah, well, I'm a pretty good example of what kind of life you lead if you're a fairly nice human wizard looking to help people out and earn a reasonable living with your power, as opposed to…you know. What everybody else does."

"Pursue the insane accumulation of power and wealth--a great deal of the power through magical treasure, so I suppose it qualifies as both--through magical means, about which one then becomes quite paranoid? Perhaps not a literal psychopath, but nervous past reason all the same."

"Yeah. That's what I mean. I can kinda see why she gave up. It's just way too intense. No fun at all in life, man."

"I would have disagreed a long time ago, but with the perspective I have now…"

"Yeah, I hear you."

The voice that spoke the words was a slightly lilty baritone. They looked at each other; Harry's 37-year-old face looked back at Bob.

"But I think we could hack it," Harry said, touching his own cheek briefly.

"And if we decide otherwise, the Himalayas do have quite a lot of acreage," Bob said speculatively. "I hear good things about Sikkim in the spring. Perhaps we could be on Megare's mail route."

They both smiled. Harry lowered his head to Bob's shoulder again. "Think we could still help people?"

"Megare does."

"Besides idiot wizards like me, I mean."

"So do I." Bob kissed his head and stroked his back. "We'll be all right, my darling. We always find a way."