2 April, 1894 — Applegate Home, Evening

This time when he invaded Hanna's room he brought brandy instead of tea.

"She's gone," he announced. He felt jittery with the knowledge he'd carried with him out of the parlor. "With the ring. She's still in love with me. She admitted it. And —" This was the most important thing. "— she left in 1890. She left and everything went to hell."

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Hanna sat in front of the music box, which she had been listening to as she completed a large, circular-shaped puzzle on her desk. She'd turned away from the almost-complete puzzle when Ezra appeared in her room, and pressed her lips together into a thin line at his words. She reached out with grasping hands, took the bottle, unscrewed the top and poured a decent serving of it into two of the teacups that she kept in her room. She offered one to Ezra.

Finally she let the words spill from her mouth, the first impulsive words he'd caused, "I think that when I remember, I probably hate her."

Because this woman had left and then Hanna had to shove the will to live back into her brother's skin.

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   Ezra Applegate

"Yeah," Ezra agreed with a nod. He was not surprised to hear that Hanna hated her, though presumably he might have been if he remembered her. From the outside perspective — knowing the facts that he did, with none of the feelings attached — it was hard to imagine why she wouldn't. The most charitable way to frame this was that she was a massive liability — someone who could hurt him any time she wanted to, and had before, and might again. And if he had barely survived it the first time around, there was no way of knowing what might happen next.

"I can't — I'm worried," he admitted. Because he couldn't go through that again, and Hanna knew that better than anyone else. "I'm worried what might happen when I remember her. I can't — I can't be in love with her."

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   Johanna Applegate

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Hanna nodded, slow, and considering. "I would bring you back again," she said. Sometimes that was the way she considered it — bringing him back from the brink. "But," she added, quickly. "I want to — not have to." She could not consider the woman anything but dangerous; she sipped at her bourbon.

  

Ezra shook his head at his sister's response. It didn't surprise him to hear that Hanna would try to intervene again, if he ended up in the same place he'd been in 1890 — but he was never going to put her in a position where she had to. He owed her that much, and more, after what she'd done for him last time. He couldn't be in love with Miss Hunniford, because he couldn't end up like that again. Not an abstract. He couldn't let it happen, and wouldn't.

"I've got to do something about this," he said, feeling jittery because despite his resolution on the subject he had no idea what something might be.

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Hanna hummed at him. After a beat, she said, "I don't think this would be — easy. But maybe you should fall in love with someone else?"

  

Ezra let out a bark of humorless laughter. "In the next twelve hours?"

Even if he could manage it, being in love with someone else might not be any better. Someone else could leave, too. The real best case scenario would to have never been in love at all — since that was apparently off the table, it would only work to fall in love with the right sort of person. Someone who wouldn't leave when they learned about the curse — he wasn't sure such a person actually existed, was the thing.

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Hanna made a face at her brother. "In general, Ezra," she said. "Is there anything you've done at work that could help? With memories?" Obviously he couldn't spend much time with the woman going forward, but Hanna knew that was longterm - there had to be something easy. She sipped on her brandy.

  

Ezra raised an eyebrow. Things he'd done at work were generally not to be dabbled with by the general population, so it was quite a bold thing to suggest — but he supposed he didn't really qualify as the general population.

"Are you suggesting that I take the memories out again?" he asked, rotating the brandy glass in his hand nervously without taking a drink. "Get her back to normal, and then do something to my head?"

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Would losing his memories really be the worst thing? Hanna swallowed the question. "Nothing so extreme," she said, ""But there has to be something." Her brother needed something to get him off of his ex; there had to be options.

  

Ezra pursed his lips, musing. "Lots of things," he agreed. Not things he could talk about casually, necessarily — the things he handled at work were mostly classified — but memory, thought, and feeling were his area of expertise. He knew about quite a few things that could happen, and which might have the side effect of making it rather unlikely he would throw caution to the wind and chase down Miss Hunniford with another proposal.

"Not very many that are easy to undo, though," he continued. "We'd have to be sure."

(Maybe it was a little unfair for the management of Ezra's emotional state, or his love life, to be a we kind of concern, but — he trusted Hanna more than he trusted himself, in nearly everything).

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Hanna nodded carefully. ''I think we should try them,'' she said. It would be a dangerous decision to make, but one that she would rather make than miss out on keeping her favorite brother.