Minty Fresh!

"HA'DJSHt'Shuhh! Gah... guh-! hH! Huh'h'h-HA'ADTSHHT! SNF! Hell and damnation!"

The ropes sang and wooden frame creaked dangerously. Aneas turned his head: on the far side someone was yelling, the men there yanking on the pulley and cursing the rattle of wheels. Sweat poured all around like water: even the horses tossed their heads, impatient in the bright summer sun. Julius stopped by one of them as he circled the gun carriage to give its neck a strong pat, between a comfort and a friendly warning, then leaned on its flank to fold over for the umpteenth time:

"hdZSCCH'SHOOh!"

"Go on ahead, damn your eyes!" Gunther was shouting from the other side. "Get away from here!"

"When you can get your own damned cannon free, I will!" Julius bellowed back, sniffed mightily, and shouldered aside the pulley crew to tug and reset the ropes.

Aneas stood back and watched.

His own men were moving steadily onwards. There was no need for more hands at the errant carriage. The sun was shining: the People's Army was well in friendly territory, moving captured bounty. The only snag in the summery outlook was the overnight rains leaving rough muddy patches of road for the heaviest guns to struggle through. And the flora that had sprung brilliantly up all about that road.

"Here, take the - H'DZSHH'SHUHh! Hh! You never mind my damned sneezing, take the rope!"

Julius had taken off his shirt in the heat and tied it round his head, in the southwestern style. Sweat glinted richly in the hair on hard muscles of his chest. His forearm flexed under two loops of rope, then his broad shoulders and back as he put all his great strength into pulling. Three tonnes of metal began to move.

"Hold!" Gunther yelled from his side, the men bracing the carriage there grit-teethed and groaning. Julius held amid his crew, and cursed Gunther's lineage five generations back amid stuttering breaths. "Push it right - right - Dienes, if you sneeze and let go now - !"

"When," Julius snarled, and sniffed furiously, "have you ever known me to let g'hhh'hhuh! HUH - ! That's left, you hairless donkey!"

Aneas watched: it would not do to openly grin like some of the other seasoned officers, but watching was plenty and enough. Along with his muscles Julius's face was working most intensely, nose flaring wide even as he scrunched it this way and that, eyebrows lifting, lifting. His taut chest moved with unsteady breaths: moisture was starting at his nares and the corners of his eyes. He did not let go, of course. Only panted with desperate frustration. "Hah... h'ahhh... g'ihh'H...!"

And "HA'ATSCH'HUHH!!" - sprayed groundward and all over the front of his own bare torso - but his fists still every bit as tight on the rope.

Aneas swallowed.

"Pull!" came Gunther's shout, and the men moved, the metal moved. Another tremendous groan of the carriage shifting, and off went the horses down the road, their load trailing easy behind them.

Gunther whooped, the men jumped up and down and cheered, and Julius braced his hands on his knees and sneezed til he nearly toppled over, swearing thunderously between each outburst.

General wisdom held the rest of them from commenting on that, much less approaching. But wisdom had left Aneas entirely, if it had ever applied in his case. He walked over as the others resumed their march and took the commander's arm to help him straighten.

Too soon, as it turned out. "ADJSSHH'SHOOH!! God damnb this!" And he finally pulled upright, eyes bloodshot and bleary, wrinkled nose openly running before he wiped it on a bare arm, the headcover slipping and strands of sweaty hair sticking everywhere to his flushed face.

He was glorious. Aneas breathed out, "Oh, I love you."

Julius stared at him: gave a murky sniff that opened his nostrils wide and trilled all down Aneas' spine: then broke into a grin. "Good," he said. "By the end of today, you're the only onde who will."

He found himself with one hand hovering just shy of Griffin's back as he walked with him down the corridor. Now that they were inside it was hard to keep up any frustration with Griffin as he stumbled and faintly wheezed his hurried way to heat and light. The man was quite sick. And if his response to it were made abnormal by his circumstances, well... who among them could cast the first stone?

Mina must have seen to the bedroom, for it contained not only a fire and a sleeping robe, but also a basin of hot water and a handful of handkerchiefs on the nightstand. Griffin yanked on the robe and tied it tight, slumped down onto the bed and plunged his feet into the basin. Being in the warmth almost seemed to remind his body even more acutely of how chilled it was: his was a protracted thawing, shivering and sniffling wretchedly. And building a fever, Jonathan thought, though uncertain how he could tell. Dr. Seward had been right. Whatever might have become of Griffin's cold before his brief escape, now it would confine him to bed for days.

Unthinking, he reached out to put the back of his hand to Griffin's forehead, brushing against the awkwardly cut bangs. Griffin groaned at the touch, then wrenched himself back with a hiss.

"Pardon me," Jonathan said, genuinely abashed. "I think you have a fever. It might be good if you - "

"I t-t-told you I won't be drugged."

"I give you my word. But - "

"snrf! I w-wandt t-t-tea," Griffin demanded - it was too imperious to be a whine. "And soup. snf! And s-s-stop staring. You c-cand see mbe. I'mb SNF! n-ndothing more indteresting than a m-mban with a c-c-cold. "

Jonathan considered a moment, then shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Griffin, I'd like to make sure you're safely in bed before I go anywhere.

"Eugh, just..." Griffin's nose twitched hard and flared, his eyelids heavy. "Ngh'h... ah't..!" He seemed to flail for a moment, features contorting in the struggle between the urgent want of a sneeze and its resentment, and clamped down his jaw to strangle a straining "GK'ch!!"

"Please, there's no need for that. It isn't healthy."

"h'yh - !" Griffin snuffed, snorted, and "yH-HACHOO!!" sprayed all before him with impunity. Jonathan sighed.

"Or that. I'd really rather not catch your cold."

Griffin tried to reply, coughed soddenly, and ran a sleeve under his nose. "Hmpf! You, a cold?" he grumbled, coughing. "An English oak couldn't be healthier..." He pulled his feet from the water, scrubbing at his nose with a wrist all the while, and rubbed them dry on the side of the bed before putting the slippers on one-handed. Congestion was audible in his every breath. He swung his legs up onto the bed and pulled the covers up to his waist, sniffling and snuffling and swallowing small coughs, then gasped before he could quite settle back against the headboard, damp nostrils working.

He was going to sneeze uncovered again. Jonathan narrowed his eyes.

There was nothing else to it. He placed one hand on the nape of Griffin's neck, grabbing gently but quite firmly, and unflinching cupped a handkerchief about Griffin's nose.

"Harker what the fuA'gTSHOO!!" Briefly winded, Griffin took a moment to scramble to grab for the handkerchief over Jonathan's hand. Jonathan kept his grip in place, linen and all. And his hold of Griffin's neck, too.

"Blow," he ordered.

"Ugkh - I'mb ndot a damned child!"

"Mr. Griffin, you said you were tired of living like an animal. If you wish to be seen as a man - as a gentleman, as a scientist - then you must play the part." With deliberate slowness, Jonathan withdrew both hands, leaving Griffin to hold the handkerchief. "Now please, blow your nose."

He could practically feel Griffin swallow a sailor's weekly allowance of swearing. But he blew, and blew, and finally kept the handkerchief clutched in one hand almost jealously, close up to his chest. He coughed stuffily and lowered his head.

Jonathan nodded at him, and settled down onto the bedside chair. He tried to judge when Griffin might accept Dr. Seward's presence: however rotten his temper remained, his energy was fading, and a hot drink and meal would settle him even further. He felt bad about the handkerchief, a terribly undignified act, beneath both of them. It hadn't been his intention to humiliate Griffin. Only to reach him, make him see that he was welcome back among humanity if only...

"What if I don't?" Griffin muttered behind the linen.

Jonathan shook himself out of thought, blinking. "Excuse me?"

"What if I don't care to be a gentleman of science? One of your little circle... no, your pet freak. That's what I am. I can't very well - ack'tCHOO! - help it, can I? Every time I try to, to make something of this - this damned state of affairs I put myself in, this happens. I'm doomed to spend half my remaining life a snivelling invalid, begging for tea and - and - gy'hH-!"

He swung up his clutched handkerchief and gasped desperately into it, his face crumpling into pure helplessness. Hesitant, but with his heart aching in his chest, Jonathan leaned closer and patted his shoulder. He left just the tips of his fingers there, curled. Griffin sniffed with a stubborn clogged sound and slumped forward, muscle jerking faintly under the touch. He croaked, "You can't make it better, Harker. Leave me alone."

"I can perhaps make it easily to bear," Jonathan said softly.

"Why would you make it easier? It's nothing to do with you or anyone. None of you know what it's like. All I've... I told it to Kemp, and Kemp betrayed me. And Marvel. And every wretch that came into my path..."

He was rambling himself breathless. Jonathan chanced a small squeeze of his shoulder. "You know we have no such intentions."

"You might as well! What's the use?" Griffin shook his head sharply. "All this time, and work, and - and other things. To finally accomplish something, something truly terrible and grand, and all it gets you is cold and sneezing and sick in bed..."

"But you have accomplished something, Mr. Griffin. Think of everything you've done for the League..."

"You don't understand. You rube, with your wife and your friends - ! I didn't want to be part of a damned League. I wanted to - to - " He drew his arms about him as though again freezing, invisible fingers marking their presence by the twist of the fabric where they clutched at his sleeves. "I didn't want anyone to see me. Like this."

He shuddered and twitched, but Jonathan's hand remained where it was. Under the robe, he could sense, Griffin was chilled still, oddly hot and cold with his worsening fever. He thought of the man who had promised Mina to keep Jonathan safe, who'd lit up with childlike pride when Mina and Mrs. Norton had praised his cleverness and his inventions. Softly under the crackling fire, he asked, "Is that what you wanted?"

That quiet sat over both of them for a long moment. Griffin opened his mouth and closed it again. It was eerie, seeing the cascade of emotions flooding one after another over the shade of his face. Fury, despair, then slow alarm and confusion, settling as like a falling leaf into the still pool of a lost wondering.

He looked away from Jonathan down to his own hands, which Jonathan could see and he could not. And he mumbled, "What do I want?"

Jonathan waited, silent: touching him, but lightly, nothing that clutched or constrained. After a little while when Griffin snuffled and coughed again, he asked, "Do you want some tea?"

Griffin swallowed with a wince, but seemed stuck. He sat twisting the handkerchief in restless hands. Jonathan added, "I'll bring you some soup as well. And a cold compress for your fever - for my own peace of mind."

From the corner of one narrowed eye, Griffin watched him. The shade of his mouth made a quivering line.

"You really are..." he muttered, then looked away. "I don't understand why a man like you has the extraordinary laid down upon him, while I - oh, God, all that work - !"

He put his hand over his face - the unseen hand that could hide him only from Jonathan, the face that only Jonathan could see.

Jonathan laid a hand fully on his back.

"Mr. Griffin," he said "No, it's really Dr. Griffin, isn't it? Dr. Griffin, you have accomplished the extraordinary. Accomplished it, not had it thrust upon you. You've made a grand discovery unlike anything ever known and pursued it to make yourself unique upon this Earth. And if you need others to help you make the best use of it - if you are still a man - that does not reduce you." He rubbed one, slow circle over that slumping spine, and Griffin neither snapped nor moved away. "The question is, what now?"

He turned his gaze away when Griffin's hand began to lower: waited until Griffin had stopped sniffling, until his breathing was steady again. He looked back only when a different manner of hitch came into that rhythm. Griffin still had his arms about himself, held tight, and seemed to have lost track of or forgotten about his handkerchief. His chest jumped with stuttering inhales and face worked frantically. "hgh'hh... guh... ah-! ha'gh't - !"

There was nothing else to it. Jonathan rested a hand against the back of his head, picked up a fresh handkerchief - Griffin would need a good number; the poor fellow always did - and put it to Griffin's nose just in time.

"I - HA'GKK'sh!" Griffin strangled the first outburst, gasped mightily, and forced out, "I whh'wandt - g'AhCHOO! - to st'ghh'stop -yh'AhtCHOO! - sndeezing! hwHATCHOO!!"

He pawed up at the handkerchief and Jonathan released it, keeping his other hand rubbing comfort at Griffin's neck as he miserably blew. "I don't think even Dr. Seward can do much for that. But here, blow again? You're terribly congested; it might help..."

It helped only marginally - Griffin sneezed half a dozen more times before he could take a whiff of air in through his nose - but Jonathan sat with him through it nonetheless, and he ranted and swore but did as he was told and was at last able to carry on his complaining without breaking into a rattling cough. Exhausted and now faintly dazed with it and the fever, he lay back clutching his handkerchief as though for dear life.

"Here you are - I think rest would cure you better than any drug." Jonathan handed him one of the soft masks he used for sleeping, and Griffin took it readily. But as soon as he put it on he lifted it to peek out again at Jonathan with one half-lidded eye.

"Harker." He wavered, spoke on: "You won't go, will you? Forget about the tea, just... I'm sorry that... I..."

Jonathan patted the armrests of his chair. "I'm staying right here, Mr. Griffin."

Ashley, he almost said: held back from it at the last moment, moved by an instinct that perhaps belonged to the hunter in him that could most intimately see fatal weakness, and was glad he held back when Griffin sighed and permitted himself to sink back in the bed and pull the covers over his head. But it had been on his lips, the name and the presumption, the promise. Perhaps it was strange, this care and kinship, among all the other things that marked him now as strange. But of all of those things he thought he would take this one. Perhaps next time, since there would certainly be a next time. It was a hard lesson Griffin was learning, to not be afraid of still being a man.

Mina was in the sitting room: he found her along with Mrs. Norton and a nervously pale Dr. Seward, though all of them were pinched with worry. As he walked in, Mrs. Norton was saying, "Pardon me, but... how can you be sure?"

"I, ah... I took Arthur's dog around the grounds," his poor friend answered, paling further. "She hates him, you know."

"Goodness, Jack," Mina said: though Mrs. Norton muttered, "Perhaps one of the cat's little bells..."

"Is it Mr. Griffin again?" Jonathan broke in from the door.

"Jonathan!" Mina's delighted greeting soothed him as ever it did: he could tell that she was, if not calm, then at least not frantic, and his heart quieted again. He kissed her cheek and felt her puff out a breath. "Yes, I'm afraid we've lost track of him."

"I thought he was sulking over his lack of progress, what with having spent so long spying in the cold to no good end," Mrs. Norton mused. "But he didn't come to dinner - very unusual."

"I would have assumed Mr. Griffin was just being his... well, usual self," Mina put in. "But Jack is right that the dog should have been able to sniff him out."

Jonathan frowned, glancing at the window. The day's threat of rain had failed to manifest: but the wind seemed to be rising in vicious overcompensation. "How many hours has it been?"

"At least four."

Dr. Seward was besides himself: "Why would he go out again? And in this abominable weather! He's courting serious illness. He was already sneezing when he came back...."

Ah, Jonathan thought.

Mina looked to him, the same thought in her eyes. She pursed her lips, "The park?"

"Definitely." Jonathan sighed and abandoned his wish to take off his heavy coat. "He'd have some shelter there at least..."

"Shall I come with you?"

It was never good to miss Mina at his side, but Jonathan shook his head. "I'm afraid it has to be me."

"What?" Dr. Seward demanded, sharp in his anxiety. "Harker, for God's sake, I don't understand - "

"Jack." He caught his friend's arm. "I'm going to bring him back. But I will need you to stay back for a while, until I tell you he's ready for you. Would you do this for me?" Seward kept staring at him, all but crackling with dismay. But there was no time - not for him to find the right words. "Mina can explain."

Mina nodded: incomparable Mina, who understood it all exactly, matters of fear and grace. He kissed her before heading back for the door and thanked God for her warmth with even more vigour than he did every hour of the day.

"Mr. Harker," Mrs. Norton called out to him as he opened the door. "I don't wish to be mean-spirited, but... would it not do for Mr. Griffin to learn his lesson by himself for once?"

Jonathan paused, though didn't turn.

"I take your point, Mrs. Norton," he said, a little loudly to be heard over the wind. "But... I think that is not the lesson he needs to learn first."

The cold was indeed frightful outside. Jonathan pulled his coat closer around him, though a moment later recognised it as a gesture of habit more than anything else. He did have to cling to his hat through the wind. For a little while he entertained Mrs. Norton's notion of the bell, absurd though it was - and obscene, he thought with a sudden shudder. Treating Griffin like an errant housepet. Of course Mrs. Norton had meant nothing by it, he could understand her view, trudging through the streets of wintry London to retrieve Griffin from his own folly. And still...

Perhaps it was strange, the kinship and care he felt for a man by every evidence his polar opposite. A man easily put on the other side of the divide - Man and Monster. But then perhaps, hunter that he had become, this was the greatest gift left to him by his ordeal: a terrible care taken when drawing this divide.

The park was naturally empty, all windswept trees and trodden leaves. The stage and trick room they had used to trap the King had long since been disassembled, but the little artificial grotto among the trees still stood, out of sight, out of mind. It was at least reasonable shelter from the wind. He could see no light inside. Probably that would have been too noticable. As he approached on silent feet he thought of all the ways in which invisibility really was on its own hopeless: all the things a man needed to survive that surrounded and revealed him, clothes, fire, all the instruments of life - when an almighty sneeze rang out, echoing between the stones.

"Mr. Griffin," Jonathan called out.

A strangled breath sounded within the grotto. Jonathan peered carefully in. In the scarce moonlight his eyes could make out an amorphous mass of ragged covers in the far corner, and something that was and wasn't his eyes saw the shade of the man sat hunched within.

Griffin was trying to sit very still, set on causing no movement of fabric that might give him away. Unfortunately he was at the same time trying to smother a second sneeze. His eyes - Jonathan could see those best of all - were fixed glaring at Jonathan over the hands clasped to his lower face.

Jonathan sighed.

"Mr. Griffin, please," he said. "You know I can see you."

The eyes widened in - not alarm, but flat dismay, then rolled skywards.

"Ugh," Griffin muttered, shrinking further back into the covers. "I forgot."

The grotto was just large enough for Jonathan to join him inside. Just by Griffin's nest he spotted a crate, some tins of food inside - probably left over from Griffin's previous preparations for being turned out, smuggled here somehow along with the blankets. Griffin kept glaring at him. "See? It's all come in useful. I knew it would."

Jonathan knelt to look through the canned peaches, and decided not to bring up the absence of any can opener. "Do you have any medicine?"

"Wh - why would I need medicine?" His eyes shifted left and right. "So I sneezed once, so what!"

"Twice."

"People sneeze, Harker! I don't get sick every time I - hYHh'h... h'ghh-hh- h'hh!!..."

Jonathan hung back uncommenting, leaving Griffin's cold to speak for itself. He crouched to examine the supplies more closely until he heard behind him the sound of a nose being blown in desperation, and the guhh... gATCH'OO! of inevitability, before looking back. "I'm afraid this wouldn't last you very long, if you mean to leave us."

"What? No!" In his startlement Griffin flung both hands up before him, the ragged cloth flying: then seemed to realise what he had said, and slumped, bunching a corner of the fabric to wipe his nose. "Damn you, Harker, how do you always..."

He snuffled miserably and coughed. Jonathan moved to scoot closer and said nothing, certainly not to comment on the state of the blanket-cum-cape-cum-handkerchief. At least Griffin cleared his throat and ground out, "Fine, I am sick, and I didn't fancy putting up with any fussing. God knows I've had my fill of that the last time, and the time before that, and..."

He sniffed again in almost-convincing haughtiness. Jonathan nodded. "I'm sorry we asked you to undertake spying in this weather. We ought to have been more careful."

"Yes, you ought've!" Griffin snapped, then shook himself straighter in his rags. "But none of the rest of you are any use for it. And I'm not frail, you know. I onlyhh-gyh-guh'tCHOO!" Still folded over, he struck the floor with one savage fist. "Fuck!"

The moment was as ripe as it would get, Jonathan judged: he patted Griffin on the back, gentle but firm. "Then you must let us make up for our carelessness. Please, there's a warm fire in the house, and Mina made an excellent goulash soup..."

Griffin loved Mina's soups. He opened his mouth, closed it, then scowled darkly. "You won't bribe me into submitting to your little wife's fretting."

"Mr. Griffin."

"And your yapping doctor, too."

"It was unkind of you to leave without so much as a note for Dr. Seward. He's spent hours searching for you."

"Has he? Hah!" Griffin slapped his thigh with the snort, then cringed and rubbed at his throat. "Gave him a good scare, did I? Teach him one..." and he began to cough violently.

Jonathan studied him as he hacked and wheezed. "I could take you back."

Griffin froze, cough and all. "You wouldn't dare!"

"I'm worried about you, Mr. Griffin," Jonathan said calmly, puilling to his feet.

The shade among the blanket roused itself to a huddle against the corner, fists clenched. Jonathan's eyes prickled: seeing and not seeing. Are you even human. Despite Griffin's disavowal of his words of unreason, they had stuck, not wholly empty.

"I suppose you should tell me how bad I look," Griffin grumbled.

Jonathan looked, taken aback despite himself. He saw a man hunched and huddled in the stolen covers, miserable with his arms tight around himself and his nose running. Very human even in the half-nothing haze of whatever this was - this vision, this eerie other sense. His friend. Griffin sniffed and glared, pitiful, curled defiance.

"You look very pale," said Jonathan, and ducked a hurled rock.

"You won't leave, will you?" The man before him groaned and rubbed his hands over his arms, twitching with a shiver. "Is it true about the soup?"

"I wouldn't lie to you."

"Damn it." His shoulders slumped, and rose tightly again. "Even if I do come back with you, don't think I'll lie back and subject myself to Seward's ministrations. I don't want his drugs and I don't want his doe-eyed Christian charity. If he treats me like a weakling I'll show him how strong my right hook is - see if I don't!"

Jonathan raised his brows. "Are you familiar with the expression 'cut off your nose to spite your -'"

"Don't give me ideas," Griffin said sullenly, and sneezed again. "You just keep him off me."

He shrugged out of the covers with many mumbled oaths. "It's safer," he said to Jonathan's frown. "How do you think you'd explain an empty blanket marching down the street? Trust me, I know more about this than you ever could." And with this he shuffled bare and trembling back out into the park, leaving Jonathan to follow.

They walked a block without incident, though Griffin was all one powerful shiver. When the wind pitched up into a whistle he swore. Jonathan walked beside him more alert to the steadiness of his bare feet on the cold cobblestone than to anything else, until he saw the policeman approaching from the opposite direction.

Griffin stumbled briefly, his eyes widening like a hounded fox's, but caught himself and continued, now silent as the grave. Jonathan walked steadily on breathing through the crackle in all his muscles. The officer tipped his hat he passed them, friendly as anything, and for a moment Jonathan had the surreal experience of thinking, Griffin had good foresight about the blanket.

Then at his side, Griffin stopped with a hitch in his breath.

It was just barely audible up close. The policeman was still walking, if unhurried. But now Griffin was planted in place. His arms still wrapped around his chest, but his head tilting up and back, lips parted and nostrils dilating. He was utterly paralyzed, overcome by the immensity of his impending sneeze. Jonathan's own pulse were in his ears again. The policeman was now past and with his back to them, but if Griffin were taken with a fit...

" - hg-HA'gk'tsh!!" Poor Griffin's effort was audible, though that, of course, defeated its point. To Jonathan's relief, the policeman barely glanced back with his easy "God bless you, sir!"'; to his alarm, Griffin arched back once more with a desperate inhale. He had the mad thought of reaching up and - but it would hardly look less suspicious, to be standing with his finger in the air as it pressed under an invisible nose.

"'ngh... hh... fu'h'h'hh...!" The stuttering breaths were minute, but climbing. Of all the things to be undone by, Jonathan thought with a moment's desperate frustration, too aware of having stepped out of the house without a weapon: and it occured to him through the electric haze about the world that he suddenly understood Griffin's foul temper so much more than he ever had before. Then inspiration struck like sunshine through the London clouds, and he pulled his handkerchief from its pocket just as Griffin was undone.

"HAcktSHOO!-ACK'SHOO!-ASH'HOOO!!!"

The officer looked back at the explosion to see nothing more unexpected than a man folded in half over a handkerchief. He touched his hat again, called out, "Bless you, sir, don't mind my saying, but you shouldn't be outside with a cold like that!"

"Thank you," Jonathan called back in return. "I most certainly shouldn't."