How far would you go to secure the safety of your world?

Warnings: requires you to be familiar with the Hierophant social link; mild spoilers and vague, free-floating creepy; there are also hints of an odd fanon, for which I am not sorry at all.

      Igor's pale, narrow hands paused in mid-gesture. "Was it necessary?" he repeated, patently flabbergasted. "My dear Margaret, of course it was necessary! Do you really think that I would expose us to such danger, however momentary, if it were any less than necessary?"

      "I don't know." It was difficult to look straight ahead, but Margaret did so, wishing devoutly to be seated in her usual place. Here, sitting next to Igor on the unfamiliar beige upholstery, it was difficult to keep an eye on him. She was as devoted to Igor as was usual for one of her kind, but she also felt very strongly that one should always keep one eye on him, just in case. "Would you?"

      The pause was miniscule, but it was there. "Perhaps," Igor allowed, with his usual opaque smile. His hands--how spidery they were, it was becoming more and more difficult for Margaret not to notice--picked up where they left off, plucking at the air like they were strumming invisible threads. Occasionally he washed them together, spiders becoming snakes as his skinny fingers laced sinuously together and parted again. "I am a man of many hidden depths, after all."

      "And here I thought you were not a man at all," Margaret murmured.

      It was a statement very close to treason, but Igor's hands never stopped, and his smile never faltered. "I speak metaphorically, of course."

      "Of course," Margaret echoed. She fell silent for a time, eventually allowing herself the luxury of blinking. Margaret had only recently discovered blinking. So amazing, so unnecessary, to be able to cut oneself off from an entire sense at will, when so many creatures on the perimeters of reality would kill anything in order to have a sense at all, any one--when her eyes were closed she did not have to watch Igor's arachnid gestures at all. The dry, papery sound of it was ever so much more clear, however. Margaret was uncertain that this was a profitable tradeoff.

      "You have a question," Igor eventually said.

      Margaret glanced over at his absurd profile. His bulging eyes were intent on his fingers--it was useless to deny it. "I only wonder... what is the difference between that--" she gestured blindly ahead of herself "--and that which we seek to prevent, other than the scale?"

      Igor's hands never paused. "It is the scale, indeed, that I am concerned with. What is one in comparison with many? With all? If by snatching a hot coal from a fire one might keep alive all those that huddle in the cold, might one not be obligated to do so, no matter how it burnt one's fingers?"

      "Someone else's fingers, you mean," said Margaret.

      "Indeed," said Igor, vastly, obscurely amused. "One must suffer so that the rest may live. It is a pity, but I have always found pity to be a luxury."

      "Mm," Margaret said. She returned her gaze straight ahead, unfocusing her eyes so that she did not have to see. More than ever she missed the comforting midnight interior of the limousine.

      "I sense that you are not satisfied," said Igor. He plucked a single invisible thread. "Allow me to illuminate: by performing this one, simple act, I have guaranteed us a guest. And not only will he come to us, but to a situation in which he will be both freed to act and forced to grow. He will be needed... and that, my dear, is most important." One finger stroked lovingly along a thread and for a moment Margaret could almost see it, and the tangle of other threads around it--"Your first guest, Margaret," Igor said, pleased. "Shall we drink to it?"

      "Yes. I think we should. That would be appropriate." Margaret's hands disappeared up to the wrist as she plunged them into the beige seat-back in front of her. When she withdrew them again she held a crystal decanter and two glasses, already full; Igor wrapped skinny fingers around one and Margaret took the other. "And perhaps... we should have a toast," she said. "Is that not what is done in this situation?"

      "A toast!" Igor said, impressed. "You have been reading, haven't you? Very well! Let us have a toast."

      Margaret raised her glass. The amber stuff inside glinted in the late afternoon sunlight; momentarily she wanted it more than she'd ever wanted anything in her current existence. "How about... 'happy families are all alike'?"

      Igor's glass paused a fraction of a second before it could tap against her own. The pause was loaded, dangerous... "Unorthodox," Igor finally said, in general approval. "But, perhaps, fitting." Crystal rang against crystal as their glasses touched. "In many ways," Igor added, and the gleam in his eyes was truly dangerous now.

      "Perhaps it was an unwise choice," Margaret said. Bourbon burned her throat, but she did not yet have the knack of coughing, so she failed to care, instead. "After all, my sister and I were always happy together, and our kind is... not alike."

      "Ah, yes." Igor's little gray tongue dabbed at the rim of his glass as he thought. "Indeed, you and your sister are not alike, as you say. Elizabeth would have understood the necessity of... that."

      "Yes," said Margaret. "And where is she now?"

      Another pause, even longer than the last, broken at last by the crack of Igor's appalling laughter. "Well done!" he cried. "Oh, well done indeed, Margaret!"

      Outside, the first few tendrils of mist crept forward to caress the car as it slid from one world to the next with the ease of its breed. The half-world engulfed it, curled around it, changed the quality of the light outside from afternoon to deep twilight; the mist flowed about its sides, eager to strip everything that was 'white' from the limousine--and indeed, everything about it that was 'sedan', as well. Vaporous fingers stroked the horrific dent from the front fender like it was made of clay, and little wet mouths sucked the blood from the windshield, spiderwebbed with cracks; like a recording reversing the cracks ran backwards and vanished a moment later, leaving the windshield perfect, dark, and opaque.

      The world was white, and blue, and gray, and the limousine rolled on.

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