Epilogue:

"Her therapist is a real idiot, huh?" the Captain said cheerfully. Jonathan didn't look up from his notes. "I mean, it's not like she had an irrational phobia. She was kidnapped and tortured, psychologically, and had every reason to believe it would progress to the physical, as well. She was afraid for a damn good reason, wasn't she, and that asshole sent her back to let it happen all over again. You should have seen her face when she recognized me in the store. I'm surprised she didn't put up more of a fight."

"Mmm," he grunted. Yes, she had done a good job bringing back a former subject for a comparison test, and as a reward for her hard work (as well as, he grudgingly admitted to himself, because he needed the extra muscle until he was in a better state of health) he had decided not to chase her out of the lab when she offered to help. But this was the last time he would let her chug Mountain Dew in his presence. It was the only caffeinated beverage that really affected her, transforming the relatively taciturn woman into a blithering idiot.

And a contortionist, but that was nothing new for his girls. At the moment, she was perched on a chair that was tilted at a precarious angle on one leg, her hair brushing the floor, blood rushing to her face, a foot planted against the wall for balance. It must have been hell on her abdominal muscles, but she was too engrossed in the journal to care.

"Look at all this nervous energy, and the way she constantly has to reassure herself that things are normal. You broke her, sir! She was getting better, but you really broke her brain before." She pushed off, arms windmilling as she balanced on the chair's one leg for a moment before coming to rest against the wall again.

"Mmm-hmm." It wasn't that he wasn't interested in what she had to say. The girl was a born linguist; he was sure she could analyze the panicked scribblings rather well, and maybe even offer some insight that might not have occurred to him. But until she adjusted to the caffeine, she wasn't likely to say anything that made much real sense to anyone other than herself.

That was what he really hated about the girls. They were always eager to help, and they often had genuinely useful skills, but they were too unpredictable to ever be relied upon. They could be model assistants one minute, raving lunatics the next. They could focus on a project with single-minded determination until it was run into the ground, or they could suddenly develop the attention spans of a swarm of gnats. It was like living with three very affectionate Jokers who could never decide on the right balance between mad genius and crazy clown.

"Squishy!" The chair toppled over. He glared at the woman now sprawled out on the floor. She stared back, wide brown eyes brimming with sudden tears.

"If you're going to call me that, I'm going to have to insist that you go back upstairs," he said firmly, refusing to be taken in by the girl's emotional about-face.

"Have you read this?" she wailed.

"Yes."

"But—she was pregnant!"

"Yes, she was," Jonathan agreed. He had expected a reaction when she found out, but he hadn't expected her to whine at him like a kid with a flattened puppy.

"But, Squishy, pregnant! With a baby!"

"I didn't know that when you brought her here," he reminded her.

"But she was pregnant!"

"Yes, pregnant, Captain. We just scared a pregnant woman to death. I know you don't like it, I know you have a weakness for babies, but this was unavoidable. It's not as if you can always tell that sort of thing just by looking. Now, go upstairs and have a cup of tea if you're just going to get hysterical about this."

"I'm not hysterical, you fucking asshole!" She threw the diary at him. "I am perfectly fucking calm!"

Thoroughly exasperated, Jonathan wheeled himself across the room and hauled his minion to her feet.

"That's enough out of you, young—" No, he was not going to give her a talking-to like a stern father. "You moron," he amended. "I will not have you throwing things in my lab." She wrenched her arm out of his grip.

"Baby! I killed a baby! I—I—h-helped you kill—k-kill an unborn child!"

"So what?" he snapped. So she liked babies. There was no reason to get this upset about it. "What's the difference between killing it now and killing it twenty years from now?"

"It's—you—you're a horrible man! I can't—I ki—I—can't—kill—" She was gasping for breath, swaying as if she were about to faint. He reached down, picked up her glass of Mountain Dew—did her the scant courtesy of making sure it wasn't a vial of hydrochloric acid—and threw it in her face. "I—I'm wet!" she sputtered, her voice rising in pitch.

"Captain, get ahold of yourself." He slapped her.

"I—you slapped me and I'm wet and I killed a baby!"

"Calm down! It isn't that important!"

"I—I—I—" She launched herself at him, landing in his lap with a solid thump that made him grit his teeth against the unintended pain, and let loose a stormy stream of tears into his shirt. "I'm—" (sob) "—t-terrible—" (sob) "—pro-choice!"

Oh, was that all she was worried about? A presumed betrayal of her personal politics? She thought she couldn't feel bad about killing an unborn child without being a traitor to the liberal views she held so proudly. Well, if there was one thing he knew, it was that rational conclusions, even long-held ones, tended to die a gory death in the face of strong emotion.

He felt he really ought to say something before she soaked him right through. But what could possibly get her to stop crying? Would she feel better if she could get back to her own way of thinking? Should he offer to take her out for an abortion? And ice cream?

That thought reminded him of all the times he had found her upside down in her favorite armchair, reading Gone With the Wind. He patted her shoulder and spoke without thinking.

"Cheer up, Captain. Maybe you'll have a miscarriage."

She wailed loudly and clung to him harder. All right, so he was no Clark Gable.

It was quite a relief for once when the door opened and Al stuck her head into the lab.

"Captain? Techie's in the—Captain! Squishykins! What happened? Jonathan Crane, did you gas her again? I ought to tan your hide, boy!" She stomped down the stairs, one fist threateningly raised. "You can't just turn to the fear toxin every time someone pisses you off!"

"I didn't. She's just upset because the last test subject was expecting." The Captain wailed like a madwoman and slid off his lap to the floor between his legs, now clinging to his pants.

"Expecting what?" Al said blankly. Jonathan was far too busy to enlighten her, trying to squirm away from the teary face that could most charitably said to be pressed against his inner thigh.

"Baby," the Captain wailed. Al's eyes went wide.

"What?" She seized her friend and dragged her toward the stairs. "Come on, Captain. Techie needs you." The look she gave Jonathan was pure cobalt malevolence. "Someone has something to tell you, Scarecrow, but I think it's going to have to wait." When Al couldn't get the Captain to walk up the stairs, she picked her up and carried her like a bride on her wedding night. Jonathan watched them go, more impressed with Al's upper body strength than anything else.

What...what was that all about?