âĄ"Harry, where are you taking me?"
Still gripping the arm of his handcuffed captive, he gave her a little shove as he manhandled her around the bend in the corridor. âOh, just gonna chain you up and have at you with a little bit of torture. Knives, hot pokers, a baseball bat, the usual suspects. I love baseball bats, donât you? That cracking sound they make when you hit something is just so⌠damnedâŚÂ satisfying.â He flashed a grin at her, careful to avoid her eyes so she couldnât get drawn in and see who he really wasâ and wasnât. âDonât worry, sweetheart, my sweet little love. Weâre gonna have lots of fun! Say hooray!â
He was already having lots of fun, in fact, simply by not disclosing to her that he wasnât precisely her broody, idiotically heroic lover. Watching the disbelief and sickened horror in her eyes, that heart-rending sense of having been betrayed by someone she had learned to trust, was proving to be spectacularly entertaining.
Of course, the look in her eyes when she saw what he had done to this universeâs version of Harry, to her Harry, would undoubtedly prove to be even more entertaining. He had been watching them for weeks before making his move, gathering all the little details. These two were just freaking adorable, so passionately, happily in love it made him want to barf. No, more than that, it made him angry. Furious. He wanted to destroy it, to tear it apart piece by piece, to break them both again and again and again until they could no longer stand the sight of one another. But he also wanted to savor it. To make it last. To build the anxiety and suspense. Their suffering was just so damn delicious. He could just eat it all up and go back for seconds.
He had developed a taste for these things over the years, as he had embraced the dark magic growing within him. He sometimes wondered what all the fuss about black magic had been about, how it was supposed to warp and enslave you, turn you into some kind of perverted, Picasso-like version of your true self. He didnât feel enslaved in the least. He felt wildly, ecstatically free in ways he had never before imagined, back in what he thought of as his Noble Idiot days. All of those urges that he had struggled so hard to suppress in himself, to push down deep, to deny, were just⌠him, now. Truly, indelibly, exquisitely him. In a way, he was thankful to Susan, rest her rotting vampire soul, for inadvertently opening the door that led to his new life.Â
It was strange, thinking about those days. He had an odd, detached sort of way of passing through memories of his Noble Idiot days, as if he was looking back at an entirely different person. He found himself thankful for that, though. He despised the Noble Idiot, and despised all the other Noble Idiots he had found in his travels through the multiverse. This universeâs version had been especially stubborn, but now he had the Noble Idiotâs girlfriend. That was always fun. He was going to have a very entertaining few days.
