“Shh, shh, what’s wrong?” Donna asked the crying girl.

Between sobs the story came out.  She had found her parents sleeping one morning, and tried to wake them.  Nothing she could do had roused them for more than a few minutes.  She’d finally thought to call for help.  Donna tried to praise her for that, saving her parents lives…  That brought forth fresh tears.

Doctor O’Brien filled in what he could.  Ruby’s parents had never woken up, and had died of the same mysterious ailment that she’d been suffering.  “So far, no victims of Windsor Syndrome have recovered once they’ve reached this stage.”

Donna turned away from Ruby, a worried frown creasing her face.  “Windsor Syndrome?  Why Windsor?”

“Because that’s where all the victims lived, including Ruby here.”

Ruby tearfully told the rest of the tale, how men in “space suits” had taken her and her parents away.  She’d been allowed to see them a few times, still sleeping, before being whisked away to a new city and new “parents”.

“When I felt myself fading, I’d hoped it meant I’d be joining them soon,” Ruby whispered.

Donna turned to Gwen with tears in her eyes.  “I can’t…”

“What’s…  Oh, God.  Their souls?”

Donna shook her head, unable to trust her voice.  Destroyed souls did not move on, there was nothing left.

“What?” asked Ruby desperately.  “What is it?”

Gwen took her hands.  “I am so sorry, sweetie.  They’re gone.”

“But angels are real,” she pleaded, looking at Donna, who couldn’t meet her gaze.  “So I’ll see them in heaven.”

Gwen couldn’t say it either.  Her mournful eyes told the tale.

“Heaven is real,” said Ruby slowly, putting it together.  Gwen nodded.  “But their souls…  Are gone.  Forever?”

Donna knelt before the girl.  “I am so, so sorry.  Yours will mend, but souls can be destroyed.”

Ruby burst into tears once more, and Donna grasped her hands and cried along with her.  Gwen put her arms around Donna, and tugged her gently away.  “Sh, Donna.  This was not your doing, and you’ve done good here.  This is not your cross to bear.”

Donna slowly stood up, and nodded.  “Right.  What I need to do is find the root of the problem and fix it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Gwen.  “You can’t keep taking the weight of the world’s problems on your shoulders.  Bad things happen, and you can’t fix them all.”

“This one, I can.”  Donna turned to the doctor.  “Tell me everything you know about Winsor Syndrome.”

Doctor O’Brien shook his head and gestured at Ruby.  “Not here.”  He turned to his patient.  “Are you going to be okay now?”

“Considering she’s surveying the room for ways to kill herself, I’d say no,” said Donna, matter of factly.

Ruby glared at Donna.  “How could you tell?”

Donna tapped her temple.  “I can feel people’s desires.  Mostly I use it to turn them into what they want to be.  You just want to be dead, and I can’t let you do that.  You’re young.  There’s a lot of world out there waiting for you to experience it.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?  I’m fifteen, broke, and stuck in foster care.”

“I could fix most of that.  Stick around until the Moon is full, and I’ll find something that makes you want to live another month.  Deal?”

Ruby studied Donna skeptically.  “What do you think you can do?”

“I know that I can turn you into anything.  Human, animal, or otherwise.  I can fly you above the city so you can see its beauty from the edge of space.  Or just turn you into a toilet brush and leave you here, unable to do anything but also unable to harm yourself.”

Ruby stared at Donna at that last, then burst out into giggles.  “Would you really do that to me?”

“It might prove the point that things could always be worse.  But they can also get better.  Borrowing others’ words of wisdom, ‘This, too, shall pass’.”

“You could make me an adult?” asked Ruby.

Donna nodded.  “In body only.  Not in mind, or more importantly, in the eyes of the government.”

“Stupid government,” muttered the girl resentfully.

Donna laughed, and clapped her on the shoulder.  “Trust me, kid.  Getting older has its downsides, too.  Don’t be in too much of a rush.”

Ruby stared down at her hands, clutching them together.  Donna got a sudden image from the girl, of a plush purple cat that had been left behind when her house was quarantined.  She had no power to spare, but a few moments focus on Robo-Duncan allowed her to crack some crystals in the chest at home, and channel the power to the hospital.  A moment later, a purple plush cat appeared on the bed in front of Ruby.

Ruby picked it up, cautiously, as if afraid it would burst like a soap bubble.  “How?”

Donna wiggled her fingers.  “Magic.  I could turn you into a plushie almost as easily as making that one.”

Ruby hugged the plush kitten tight.  “Thank you.  Thank you so much.  I promise I’ll wait until the full Moon.  How long is that?”

“A little over a week.  I’ll find you sometime that night, and make a dream come true.”

Ruby nodded seriously.  Donna felt a little flicker of faith from the girl, and smiled.

The doctor still called for a suicide watch, but he at least did the courtesy of doing so where Ruby wouldn’t overhear it.

They went back to his office, where he pulled up everything in the medical record regarding Windsor Syndrome.  Depressingly little was known for an ailment that already killed hundreds.  The bulk of the record consisted of what had not worked to cure it.  Donna focussed instead on the epidemiology of it.  All the victims had lived in Windsor.  The cluster had grown over time, seeding from the area closest to downtown Detroit.

Donna sighed once the cases were plotted.  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.  Demons.”

“Seriously?” asked the doctor.

Donna explained what she’d learned about the Detroit disaster, and the portal that had formed there

“So it wasn’t a chemical leak?  No wonder they had so much trouble tracking down causes.  There’s pages and pages of tests here looking for contaminants.  Nothing.”

Donna shook her head.  “Magic censorship is a pain in the ass.  Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?  You’re the one that cracked this case.”

Gwen laughed.  “Still trying to take the weight of the world?  I was serious, earlier.  You can’t do that.  Even with everything you can do, the world will be full of tragedy.  And joy.  Have a little faith.”

“How can I have the wisdom to accept what I cannot change, when I can change everything?”

“You can’t fix everything.  You are not omniscient, you cannot know God’s plan for everyone,” said Gwen sternly.  “Accept that you have limits, even if they’re a lot further out than most people’s.”

Donna bowed her head.  “Yes, my Anchor.”

“Do I even want to know what that was about?” asked Doctor O’Brien.

Donna turned to study him.  “How do you do it?  How do you decide when you have given enough, done enough, and it is time to lay down your tools?”

“First, do no harm,” he quoted.  “That includes yourself.  If I burn out, how much good will I be to anyone?  I’ve seen how the work you do here energizes you, but there is a limit.  Respect that, and you’ll do fine.”

Gwen grinned.  “And on that note, let’s go do something fun.”  She shrunk out of sight, and a moment later Donna vanished as well.

* * *

They were back at Sidney and Duncan’s house in moments.  Gwen opted not to stay, she requested a shoebox worth of magic crystals “for Ettie’s sake”, and headed to her apartment.

Sidney was sparkly all over.  The effect had even worked itself through her hair, giving it an amazing luster.  Courtney bounced over to her father and demanded that she get sparkles as well.

Duncan chuckled, and at a nod from Sidney, smiled.  “What sort of sparkles would you like?  Plain, or rainbow-coloured?”

“Rainbow rainbow rainbow!” cried Courtney, making both her parents laugh.  As the colourful sparkles spread across her skin she giggled and danced happily.  Thanks to her imagination and infectious enthusiasm she also got a stubby unicorn horn on her forehead, and a pair of pegasus wings on her back, both covered in swirling rainbow sparkles.

After dinner, once it was time for the kids to go to bed bed, Sidney asked if Duncan intended to leave Courtney sparkly all night.  Courtney pouted, but accepted that it would be easier to sleep without her wings or horn.  She got a new sparkly-furred unicorn-pegasus plushie to take to bed with her, and seemed happy with the bargain.

“You’re going to fill her bed with plush toys if you keep going like this,” said Sidney once Courtney’s door was closed.

Duncan shrugged.  “So?  She enjoys it.  If need be, I’ll add another storage room just for her toys.”

“Or we could move to a bigger house,” mused Sidney.  “We could afford it now.”

“Is that really what you want?  We bought this place to be our permanent home.  I’ve grown attached to it over the years.  And I can add more space in the subbasement without anyone knowing.  Even an elevator, if you’d like.  We could have an indoor pool down there.”

“Really?  If you can give me a pool and a crafts room, I’m game to stay.  I have no desire to move all our stuff. ”

Duncan grinned.  “I guess I have some work to do next week.”

“And some to do right now, buster.  I was promised a new living room.  At the very least, get rid of the ugly carpet.”

Duncan gestured grandly, and the carpet began to fade away.  “But of course.”

Before long it was clear that the carpet wasn’t being replaced, it was just vanishing.  Sidney stomped a foot where it had been, landing on ugly plywood.  “This is not an improvement.  Can you make the flooring here match what you and your father put in the dining room?”

Duncan gestured again, and dark wooden planking started to spread from the dining room into the living room.  Sidney yelped as it trapped her feet.  “Don’t turn me into the floor!”

“But I thought you were looking forward to being the carpet, or the couch.”

Sidney shook her head.  “Just put in something neutral for now.”

Duncan materialized a page of sample colours, and Sidney pointed at one.  “That’ll do.”  The carpet started weaving itself into place.

“What’s the rush?  Anxious to get on to being a couch?”

Sidney shook her head, pulling her arms tight around her chest.  “My nipples have been hard as rocks since you sparkled my skin.  I am so damn horny right now I just want to tear your clothes off.”

Duncan laughed as he grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the bedroom.  Once the door was shut behind her, he pulled her shirt up, drawing a soft moan.  Tugging her bra down exposed Sidney’s nipples.  “See? They are rocks.”

Sidney stared down at herself.  “You turned my nipples into diamonds?”

“Too much?”

Sidney hugged him fiercely.  “I want you so bad...  But...  Can you make yourself human, first?”

Duncan looked away from her, studying the dust on the wall intently.  The silence stretched out uncomfortably before he admitted, “No.”

“No?  But you were human a couple weeks ago.  Why not now?”

Duncan wrapped his arms gently around his wife.  “Because of how that week ended.”

“Right.  The bomb.  Did it hurt?”

“More than I can possibly convey.  Normally that kind of damage would do the mercy of killing the target instantly.  But I’d made myself unkillable.  Probably was anyway, to tell the truth.  So I felt everything.  The thought of that ever happening again...  I can’t.  I just can’t.”

Sidney hugged him harder.  “I had no idea.  I’m sorry, I’ll... make do with this body, then.”

Duncan chuckled softly.  “Oh, I can probably improve on this.  What do you want?”

“This robot body of yours is too clean.  It doesn’t sweat, and...  You’ll laugh.”

“No, I want this to be right.  Tell me.”

Sidney nuzzled at his neck.  “You don’t smell right.  You smell like... freshly washed clothes.  Not sweaty, messy human.”

“Messy I can do.  I could become a slime-creature, slithering all over your... no?”

Sidney was making a horribly scrunched-up face.  “Ew, no.  Just... human levels of messiness.”

“And smell.”

“Please?”

Duncan extracted himself from her grip, and stood his body by the door.  It shut down, becoming little more than a statue.  In front of it, a glittering new body formed, sparkling just as Sidney’s skin did.  It didn’t look human, the skin was too translucent.  Underneath, a metallic skeleton could be glimpsed.

Duncan approached his wife with his new body.  “Better?”

Sidney eyed him curiously, then buried her face in his neck once more.  She inhaled, and her eyes closed happily. “Oh, yeah.”

* * *

Afterward, as she was cleaning up, Sidney started to giggle.  “Is this sparkly lube?”

Duncan grinned at her with sparkling teeth.  “OK, not exactly human messiness.  But close.  And... fun?”

Sidney threw a pillow at him.  “You’re a nut.”  She stared at confusion where the pillow had landed.  Duncan had vanished.  “Duncan?  Sweetie?”  She lifted the pillow up to find a large round chestnut with Duncan’s face on it.  She blew it a raspberry.  “That is so not what I meant.  Change back.”

Duncan flickered back into sparkle-skinned humanoid form.  “It’s hard not to do what you say, at least where my shape is concerned.”

Sidney bit her lip and grinned.  “I’d noticed, earlier.”  A hand slipped down his slick body to tease at his crotch.  “You got soooo big.  It was perfect.”

“Want to know another way this body is better than human?”

Sidney cocked her head to one side curiously.

“It doesn’t get tired.”

Sidney’s eyes glittered.  “Oooh.  Can... can you make me less noisy?  I’m afraid we’re going to wake the kids.”

Duncan grinned.  “I can take away your voice.  Or just create a gag.”

“Change me.”

Duncan’s smile broadened.  “Any way I like?”

Sidney bit her lip, then nodded.

“I love you so much.”

Sidney tried to answer, but her mouth was already changing.  “Wa are oo ooing o ee?”

Duncan leaned down and kissed her on her shifting lips.  When he broke, the change was done.  “Giving you a sex-toy’s mouth.”

Sidney’s grin would have been encouragement enough.  Her immediate lunge to try out her new mouth on Duncan’s crotch made him forget about caution, or much of anything else for a good long time.

With two tireless bodies, the lovemaking continued for a very long time, in various permutations and combinations.  Sidney eagerly accepted every new change, and Duncan’s body flowed effortlessly to fit every new addition or subtraction.

Some time in the wee hours of the morning, the Moon set.  Duncan pulled back from his radically transformed wife when he felt the change.  “Oh crap!  Sweetie, I’m...   You’re asleep?  That was quick.  I guess I wore you out.”

The smile on Sidney’s face – or at least what passed for a face, despite its lack of normal facial features – made it clear she’d fallen asleep happy.  Duncan chuckled softly to himself and used his tentacles to pull the duvet up over what was left of her.  “Sweet dreams.”

He snuggled up around her, and was asleep in moments.

* * *

In the morning, Duncan took control of robo-Duncan to care for the kids, leaving his other body entwined around Sidney.  He called in to work, claiming that his wife was ‘indisposed’ (which was true enough), and they had no problem letting him use a day of vacation time to watch the kids.

When Sidney woke, she flailed about in panic.  Duncan did his best to soothe her without starting into lovemaking again.  Doing so while in a tentacled form did not go over well, so he pulled away from her and brought robo-Duncan in to do the talking.

“Look, it’s fine, the kids are being cared for.  I got the day off work.  You can just relax in here for another hour, then I can make you human again.  Can you do that?”

Sidney slumped back into the bed.  Duncan carefully tucked her back in.  “I’ll see you in an hour.”

When Sidney finally emerged from the bedroom, human once more, she stomped up to Duncan.  “What the hell was that?”

“We got a little carried away last night.  I should have set an alarm, I’m sorry.”

Sidney pulled him into a tight hug.  “Do that next time.  Waking up as... that... was terrifying.”

“I’m... wait.  Next time?  What next time?”

“Tonight?  Pretty please?”

Duncan stared at Sidney in confusion.  “But... terrified?”

“I couldn’t move or speak.  Or see.  And there were tentacles.”

“Hah.  So many tentacles...”

Sidney poked him.  “It was scary!  I had no idea what was going on.”

“And now that you know?” asked Duncan with a grin.

“I wish…”

Duncan put a finger on her lips.  “You know what that word does to me.”

Sidney bit her lips and nodded.  “I still want it.  Would it be so bad to wish?”

“Not if you accept the consequences.  I’m not an evil genie.  Just a mischievous one.”

“More like a sexy one,” muttered Sidney, but she was smiling.  And blushing, just a bit.  “What would happen if I wished I could stay like that?”

Duncan’s eyebrows lifted.  “Seriously?  I’d... hm.  Definitely give you an out.  Like... maybe a robo-Sidney as well as the other?  And a switch that can turn your connection to her on and off.”

Sidney’s blush grew deeper.  “Do it.”