I get that this sounds like my fetishes talking, but that sort of weary, sadly experienced strength is also a sub-genre of my kryptonite. Thank you for reminding me.

You are welcome! And you're so right about the Mina-Renfield axis of Florence and Fischer: the only other person who knows what it feels like. (Belasco does like to try his toys on for size.) He would have been doing the house's bidding if he had kept his head down and let it do as it would with the rest of them; it's so tenuous but so wonderful that he finally fights back, which it occurred to me this time to wonder if Belasco was afraid he would, the one that got away, after all. Stronger in the broken places, which is basically all of Fischer when he walks back into Hell House. If it works, it works.

I am charmed by Cal's newest phrase, although I can probably say that because I'm not hearing it every time I ask him something.