Insanity was a difficult thing to grasp onto, and an even harder thing to describe while you were caught in its thrall. One of the simplest and most popular definitions of insanity defined it as doing the same thing over and over again. Albert had been talking about math and physics, however, and not people. His definition was not a true sort of insanity because he had been at the edge of brilliance and sanity for so long that the mundanely stupid and stubborn had appeared to him like maniacs.

No. If you were to define insanity, you would describe it first. The most incredible of lunatics, the most innovative of scientists, shared uncertainty - that question of whether or not they were insane. That knowledge that they stood on the precipice and would willingly jump because they were making an educated guess about where they would land and knew they might be wrong. That was one type of insanity. It was the kind that was beyond you.

Another, the more important sort, was the one where you could feel your stability crumble around you but not prove that it was doing so. Where the dirt beneath your feet was crumbling like sand but would not show that it was ready to give until it was too late. Where the people whispered behind your back. Where your mind focused more and more on anything else but the slowly-building truth that would not blindside you but could leave you with nothing in a moment and leave you knowing that you were both responsible for this disaster and had been utterly powerless for months to avoid your own ruination before and everything else could just crumble beneath your hands like so much dust.

Perhaps, in this way, that original definition of insanity was not wrong. It was insane to go to work every day, and smile, and laugh, and simply sit and sadly procrastinate or ignore your problems until it was too late because you knew that you couldn't properly solve them and a part of the fallacy that you had dug yourself into was not asking for or looking for help until it was too late. Because some fragile sense of pride, because some worthless and false sense of understanding, or because some mild displeasure at having to do anything at all had gotten in your way and made never looking the problem in the eye more appealing than it was sensible.

You were not insane. This you could say with total certainty.

It would do you as much good to list all the many things you had taken to as matter of habit that once had been attempts at making Barry accidentally or unknowingly break his contract with you as it would help to list the ways they had failed. Most often it was simply because Barry was a mindful, helpful, and genuinely good person, so much so that you had yet to dig yourself out of the debt he accidentally ensured you accrued despite technically making a profit working in his Bakery.

You were Apollyon, an Archangel cast into the Abyss and so left to become synonymous with it, fated from creation to be one of the ones who ravages the world when the time of Rapture comes. Despite what many scholars who you had gladly devoured would claim, you were no fool - evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

It was hard to finger the reason why you kept acting in such mundane ways. Certainly at this point it wasn't because you believed that little actions like making Barry breakfast or failing to bake better than him would make him act against his nature. Even more certainly it wasn't only because you enjoyed his meals, though certainly you would be much kinder to him when you inevitably claimed his soul. In the same way his face had been engraved into your mind and his name burned into your tongue, he had wormed himself into a place in your heart such that you would be much kinder to him in his damnation.

It was inevitable that you would claim his soul. You weren't insane for persisting the way you had been. Yet to call yourself no fool, you would have to acknowledge that Barry was not the sort of man small and ever-building gestures worked for. All it had done was earned you the smiles and compliments and other signs of happiness and gratitude you had long looked for and none of the expected sloth.

He had a habit of taking what you offered him and managing to turn it against you before you realized it. The grander the gesture you offered him, the more likely it seemed to you that he would co-opt it and turn it against you without even meaning to.

In his sleep Barry snorts, a little yawn that sends his breath scattering across your face. You pull him closer, shifting just a little so that you are utterly swaddled in his warmth. Waiting a moment to ensure he isn't about to wake up, you return to your scheming.

Perhaps it was the veiled nature of all that you had done which had truly thrown off your plans. If you approached him openly - and grandly - then what would truly happen? An open bid for power, for wealth, for glory - none of those things would work. He would dismiss them, because you knew well enough that they weren't what Barry wanted.

He wanted to run a little bakery. He wanted to laugh and joke and simply know the people who were his regulars. He wanted to impress you and offer you food he thought you hadn't tried before and eat what you made him in turn. You'd even taken to returning the habit, simply because trying new things made him happy.

He wanted to spend his days doing little more than being happy and helping others, and yet the road to hell had always been paved with good intentions.

That was true for you once upon a time, wasn't it? When you had been persuaded by the idea that even you could do better than Him. What did you want now? When had that changed? Had it changed at all?

You think... you know what to do.

Uncertainty is unfamiliar yet deserved. Barry fidgets besides you, accidentally tugging the bedsheets out from beneath you. Only one certainty remains.

You are not insane.

Barry had an incredibly, absolutely inflexible work schedule and a work ethic to match. This was not some new revelation. This was perhaps the first thing you had truly come to understand about him, and joining him in his daily schedule had done quite a bit to explain his odder behaviors.

He was an outgoing and extroverted man with a natural charisma when it came to the customers he treated like close friends. Yet he had no social life, and certainly no social media presence - you'd looked through his phone once and found his contact list filled with nothing but family members, businesses, and the occasional fellow practitioner who you had discreetly paid visits to some time after moving in with Barry.

They'd barely known Barry as more than the odd, eccentric mage who'd moved in far from any of their own lairs. Absolutely none of them had felt even vaguely threatened, and a few had gone so far as to forget his name. That was just fine by you. They weren't even strong enough to resist the basic mind-probes or memory-erasure spells you'd used on them.

Nothing about Barry indicated he talked to his family much either. There were more than a few unread messages from them that sounded more than a little unhappy to be ghosted.

So, putting together the picture, you had long ago realized you had been summoned by a deeply altruistic and extroverted man whose only chance to socialize and be friendly was while he was working himself half to death for twelve hours a day six days a week in the name of a passion he had divorced himself from both his family and previous social circle for.

It had been little surprise how easily and quickly he simply fell apart on Sundays, much less how quick he had been to return and enjoy the physical intimacy you'd offered.

Quite frankly you were fine with the way Barry led his life. He wasn't unhappy for all the strain and stress and fret he seemed to bury. The less time he spent with others or leaving the house, the more he spent with you. That you had accidentally resolved a good deal of the stress he'd been carrying with him for what must have been years was a happy accident perfectly well-suited for the path you had chosen to walk.

You were fine with it... until it came time to convince Barry to come with or do anything on Sunday, much less convince him to take days off.

A small part of Barry growing more competitive and more determined to grow his skills alongside your own, besides a constant supply of food more persuasive than Lucifer's silver tongue, was that the two of you had grown more casual about when and how you made one another meals.

You had learnt to stop making a spectacularly big deal out of every meal save for breakfast, because you had ample time in the morning and little else to entertain yourself with. Barry had learnt, much to your annoyance, that instead of insisting he make the meals all he really had to do to silence your protests was start making food before you.

This started a minor but significant war of who could begin cooking first. This Sunday, it had been you, and you'd made Barry a simple sandwich while he took a nap. He was barely awake when you slid it into his lap and began to lay on his side like a pillow.

"The Swiss Alps are very nice this time of year. Bit of a shame that they ruined the local ecology when they were forming, but still a very pleasant vacationing spot this time of year." You suggest. Barry cracks his eyes open, quickly snapping awake to grab at the plate in his lap as it nearly falls to the floor.

"Mrhph. No." He decides, clearly torn between drifting back to sleep and eating.

"Why not?" You frown. You'd thought the Alps were actually popular.

"Mountains are tall. And Switzerland takes a long time to get to. And I have laundry to finish." Barry explains like you were a child. You simply wait for him to give an actual answer, but instead he picks up the sandwich and starts to eat it. He gives a little noise of satisfaction as he eats. It is objectively cute.

"Fine, then. How about something smaller? Mount Wycheproof isn't a popular tourist destination, but it's still a mountain." You run an idle hand up his arm, fingers tip-tap-taping their way to his shoulder.

"Why are you so determined to make me climb a mountain?" Barry puts his nearly finished sandwich down, wiping his mouth clean as he looks at you with a raised eyebrow.

You could tell him. Giving him the carefully-tailored and carefully-worded speech you'd prepared now would just spoil the whole thing.

"Smaller still? Alright. Let's see..." You hum, eyeing up Barry's shirt. He was so tired he'd gone and gotten it dirty. You brush the crumbs off of him as you think. Barry bites his lip, brushing your own hand aside. You simply shrug and let them return to resting by his lap.

"If you're that determined to get me out of the house... there's a movie I wanted to see. I wanted to wait until it was pirateable, but..." He suggests.

It was not the goal you had been aiming for. But where Barry was concerned, you had come to understand that convincing him to change his daily life would be a slow and gradual thing. Today it would be leaving the house for a movie. Tomorrow you would take him atop a mountain and offer him the world in exchange for that one thing you had come to covet.

"Very well. It'll do." You nod.

The movie is some science fiction affair you can vaguely recall reading the source material of some decades ago. It is entertaining, in its own way, though it becomes much more so when you prod Barry into supplying a running explanation of everything that had been left out, of changed, or to his delight, very faithfully adapted. Especially as compared to an earlier and much worse movie, according to him.

The most important thing you got out of the entire affair is the knowledge that Barry used to read the genre of science fiction a lot, but as of late simply... hasn't had time. Hence why you had found no sign of an apparently deep-seated interest of his in his room.

It wasn't a notable experience outside of that. The two of you sat together, quietly talking, while sharing a massive bowl of popcorn. It was something you'd have to ask Barry to make you later, since the sort they had at the movie theater tasted like little more than wet Styrofoam to you.

Barry returns home with a smile and laughter in his voice. By all metrics, you would consider the night a success. Through the week it seems like the experience had done a lot to subtly improve his mood without his realizing it. When he shows annoyance at your pursuit of getting him to do something more, you drop the issue until Sunday comes again.

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You throw around ideas for some time. Eventually, you manage to convince him to come with a walk through the local woods with you. Spring had long since passed you by and with it the woods were verdant and bustling with life. Neither of you were familiar with it, but Barry looked both more out of place and more excited than you'd been expecting.

"It's been a while since I went for a walk like this." He admits after you press him.

Bit by bit you bring him out of a brittle shell you hadn't realized he'd encased himself in. Each week he becomes more and more willing to come with you wherever it is you suggest, a little more happy to bring up the topic first or talk with you about it before you gently bring it up with him while the two of you eat.

The destinations came and went in phases. Sometimes you would go out to eat for that month, visiting restaurants serving food Barry was eager to try. On these nights, much like that movie long ago, your interest laid much less in the food than it did in listening to Barry speak. He was a trove of niche trivia and knowledge, particularly as it related to food, and you were more than eager to pick up whatever he was willing to dispense.

The food itself wasn't bad, persay. It was merely lesser in the face of what Barry could make. Yet even you found yourself looking forward to those weeks when the two of you went out to eat simply because it meant that both of you would try to replicate and improve upon whatever you tried for weeks to come.

The two of you would revisit the movie theater, and the park, and as many surrounding gardens and forests and other natural attractions as you could. The goal became as much trying new things as it was about going to something the two of you had already done for the simple pleasure of experiencing it.

Sooner rather than later, it's Barry asking you where you'd like to go, or if you were interested in a certain location, rather than the other way around. You more than cater to his needs, simply happy to watch proof of your exposure therapy at work.

There inevitably came problems with deciding upon the course life should take when those plans involved gently letting the boat sail itself down the metaphorical river.

On Monday, you and Barry had gone for a walk through the neighborhood. At some point you had held one another's hands.

One Tuesday, you had gone out to eat at a favorite restaurant of his, and you had vowed to try harder to recreate his favorite dish.

On Wednesday, he hadn't felt like doing anything, and neither had you. You gently tucked him into bed and sat beside him until he drifted asleep, content to read a book he'd recommended you.

By Thursday you'd finished the book, and gone for another walk with Barry, hand in hand. You'd spent the entire time dredging up his forgotten knowledge on the book, and occasionally veering away from how interesting you'd found the villain's unique methods of eternal torture.

On Friday the two of you had felt like making a lasagna and argued about what should go in it. The fun thing about it being a lasagna was that you could compromise on both who made what and what went in it.

On Saturday Barry had caught a cold, and you'd refused to let him get out of bed. You'd sat in it with him while he blew his nose and miserably complained about Summer fading to Autumn, and about how he had a Bakery to run, but you'd merely tutted and tended to him, leaving only to teleport yourself down to his Bakery and make sure Customers knew it was closed.

Afterwards you tucked yourself back into bed, massaging Barry's back, pressing yourself against him as you soothed him back to sleep with a perhaps liberal amount of magic put into the act. Curing him would be simple, yet would relieve you of a day of laziness, tending to his needs and enjoying holding him close save for when you went to make him meals. He slept through most of the day and was awake for most of the night, only falling asleep a few short hours ago.

Herein lies the problem, common not just with the past week but with the many months since you had resolved to offer everything you could and then some to Barry when the time was right. You do not sleep. You do not rest. It simply isn't a thing you desire.

Drifting carelessly and ceaselessly through the days, nary a thought in your head, simply enjoying the moment... that could only delay boredom so long. As could reading, or entertaining yourself with the internet, or any other number of things before they grew dull and repetitive, in those silent and aching moments in between action and inaction.

Here and now, on a Sunday morning like any other, Barry sleeps yet. His head is hot and pale, faint sweat left to grow heavy across his brow, even as you gently wipe it clean. He barely reacts as he tosses and turns, leaving you to sit on your knees besides him, a notebook in your hands.

You had taken up many hobbies you had not visited in centuries to fill the time here where it mattered so much yet so little. You'd cracked the windows wide. White curtains flutter in the breeze like the ruffling wings of a dove as the world slowly wakes around you.

Beneath the sun's eyes

morning sings a song;

the light dancing by

knowing of no wrong-

framing his kind face.

It's a simple start. But it's one that leaves you happy.

Several Quintets later you're forced to abandon the project in favor of a more pressing concern. You are not Him, but it is no strainful thing to watch multiple places at once. There is food that you have to finish preparing.

By the time you've made your way back from the kitchen, food tray in hand, Barry's begun to stir. Perhaps you've simply trained him well enough that a mere hint of your food is enough to wake him.

The thought is enough to make you smile. You settle yourself back into bed, gently making sure that the tray sits at his legs, that he might not accidentally knock away any of the fruit you'd cut him, the soup you'd cooked, or splash a bit of the water you'd brought him, complete with bendy straw.

Barry looks almost dead as he sits up, a hand clutched to his head. Only when his hands fumble about and grab your own does he seem to fully wake, looking down at you with a smile. "Morning, Candy." He leans back, nose sniffling.

"Feeling better?" You ask, gently pulling his blanket back up. Barry doesn't protest, especially when you kick out the tray's legs and let it rest by his belly.

"A bit. Bleagh. I've missed an entire day of work." He stretches and winces, one arm held behind his back and the other clutching that arm's elbow. "Is this what it feels like to have stayed home from school?" His eyes widen.

"I'm just going to assume you never missed a day." You snort.

"I vomited in class once when I said I was feeling sick and my mom didn't believe me. She believed me when they sent me home." He admits. He gently pulls the breakfast tray you'd put out for him a bit closer, leaning down to sniff at it. His takes the spoon you'd taken

"Somehow. This explains more than I'd expected it to." You shake your head. Children and their parents never truly changed, did they? While you muse, Barry takes the spoon you'd laid out and begins to tap it against the edge of the soup's bowl. In his other hand he rolls around a grape, frowning. "Does it smell wrong?" You probe.

"No. It's just... I'm not as hungry as I'd like." He grumbles.

"Just eat what you can - I'm sure you'll feel plenty hungry later today. " You reassure him. He gently pops the grape into his mouth, chewing it like a piece of gum as you continue. "Now that you're nice and recovered, however, would you like to go for a hike?"

Barry pauses, a spoonful of soup bit between his teeth as he thinks. "This feels dangerous. But I am! Nothing like a day in bed groaning and moaning to make you want to limb a hill or two. Where to?" He claps his hands together, gently sucking the spoon in while making enough of a fuss that you grab his breakfast in a hurry to stop it from being knocked over.

"I'll show you later. Everything we need to get there is within arm's reach, after all." You chuckle at your own joke. One might impolitely call it evil laughter.

If Barry thought that this was odd, he very wisely did not say a thing. He instead tried his best to eat his soup.

The time spent waiting for Barry to get ready to leave is spent in idleness, much like the day before. He is slow to eat, slow to shower, and slow to dress, but clearly eager and awaiting whatever surprise you concocted while he was sick. If only he had any idea how long you'd actually been planning this.

It is an odd nervousness you rest in without understanding. It is a rather unbecoming feeling of you, really, even as you fidget about with your clothes, trading your normal formal clothes for something much lighter. Or perhaps heavier?

Indecision seizes you like nervousness. At the moment Barry had readily agreed to go with you, you had yet to truly decide which mountain to do things on. They are easily hidden and dismissed feelings. Everest would be nice, but far too many visited them. In lieu of that...

Barry says something. You nod, not truly listening, before you realize he told you it is time to go. So you take his arm in your own, realizing you had settled on the lighter clothes, and with one step take the both of you a little way up a mountain on the other side of the world and separated by an ocean.

The world is hot and arid. A stiff breeze blows by, a little sand scraping against you. Scruffy trees and yellow bushes dominate the landscape and are interrupted only by patches of flowering moss and Cecilia's. You take a proud step forward.

Barry stumbles and coughs. You fall with him, still holding him in your arms.

"Oh. Hold on - up you go." He grunts as you help him stand. Barry doesn't look the least bit upset with you, merely looking around curiously. "Sorry. I suppose I should've given you better warning than I did." You still feel the need to elaborate.

"No. It's fine. I'm just... bad with teleportation." He shakes his head. "Where did you bring us?"

"Mount Moriah. Or the former Mount Moriah, since they renamed the mountains in modern Nevada after them." You gaze up in remembrance. It was a thing you were there to tangentially witness, if nothing else. Frankly you're more annoyed that it barely qualifies as a mountain anymore than anything else.

"The one Abraham was going to murder his son on?" Barry's brows furrow. You nod, and his gaze sweeps out across the landscape, taking in the small mountain for everything that it was. "It's less impressive than I expected. Then again, I don't know what I expected."

"There is a tradition to these things. And sometimes, the tradition is all about giving Him a middle finger." You smile.

"Well. Considering everything I've done with my life, I suppose I can't disagree." Barry laughs. There is something about his phrasing that you would like to address, yet considering that by every metric he was correct, you didn't have any ammunition.

Climbing a mountain is no easy task, not even one so small as Mount Moriah, but it is easy enough with you there to guide Barry through holds and passages that shouldn't be quite so easily traversable. Even if you didn't intend to teleport both of you back into his home after you reached the peak, it was doubtful either of you would reach the true top in just one day.

Instead of worrying you enjoy the experience for what it is. For a chance to walk and climb and tread and see animals that to Barry are exotic but to you are homely and familiar.

"This is as good a place as any." You decide as the two of you reach a large, flat bend, high atop the mountain. Here stones provide decent seating, long ago shaped to resemble chairs by those with time, patience, and the determination to have a place to sit and stare out at the floodplains stretching before you. Large trees, foreign and placed here some untold centuries ago with the knowledge that they would not give those seated shade until long after whoever planted them was gone, swayed in the breeze.

You offer Barry a hand as though you mean to pull a seat made from sundried stones back and guide him into it. You can at least walk him to it before you yourself go to stand by the edge of the bend. Any desire to sit is conquered by the urge to stare out at a sun dipping below the horizon.

"I wanted to do this at the peak. Alas, we don't always get what we want. Please don't interrupt me until I finish?" You beseech him. He nods, and you turn your gaze directly into the sun itself. "Good. Good." You close your eyes.

"Bartholomew Katherine Quinn. Barry. Out of all the fools who have ever summoned me, and out of all the misguided men who looked only to do good I have taken for my own, you are the only one who I would call a good person. A person I like. A person I would go so far as to call a friend." You do not betray an inch of whatever it is you may feel in that moment. Neither do you dare look away from the light.

"So. I am here to do for you, to offer to you, everything and more. All the kingdoms on earth and all the world beneath the heavens. I would ask that you take my hand, take my earnest plea, and ask merely for whatever it is you want... and we shall have it together. If you would have me. All I ask is your soul, your everything, for all eternity, and I- I offer much the same."

Barry is quiet for a few moments that stretch themselves ever longer with each step he takes towards you. If you were to read into his actions then all you would give yourself is transparent falsehoods.

"Is this a proposal?" He says when he stands next to you. If he had to turn those words over, he does not show it. He merely squints and tries to stare at the sun with you. He quickly admits defeat, turning instead to gaze at you.

Was it? Perhaps. You were willing to offer him the world. It was so much more.

"If that is what you want it to be." You would be satisfied with even that much.

A rock goes tumbling off the sheer cliff face and plummeting to the ground below. Barry grunts just a little as he sits down at the edge of the cliff, following the falling rock bouncing and accelerating its way to the bottom of the mountain you had just climbed. "...Do you?" He puts voice to his doubts.

"Barry. I know I have not been the most transparent with either you or myself as to my feelings. Even now, in this moment, I do not think either of us fully grasp..." You purse your lips. "So please. Don't do this to either of us. For my own sake if not yours." You sit besides him. The robes you had dressed in, as though you were but a nomad from centuries past, spill down around you.

"In that case... I do." Barry says. You'd lain your hand down besides his. He takes it and grasps it in his own, sweet as can be. You can't help yourself.

You laugh. Barry looks a tiny bit offended and confused, not understanding what it was you found funny. 'I do.' - that's it? That's the structure he adhered to, even if it didn't make sense, when you were offering him all you had and all you could take?

"I appreciate the spirit if nothing else." You sigh. In the end, what had you expected? All Barry wanted was you. And all you wanted was him. A more passionate woman, a more impulsive man, might have gone in for a kiss. They might even have been tempted to take things further.

Instead, in your validation, all either of you did was lean against one another for support. Feelings that neither of you had accurately put voice to before now no longer needed to be aired. How much further could either of you expand upon things? What new feelings needed to be overcome that the two of you had not lived with?

Something wonderful didn't begin on that mountain. It began a long, long time ago. It was just there that you acknowledged it.

It doesn't hurt to enjoy the moment for what it was. But neither does it hurt to give Barry a peck on the cheek.

Just for good measure, and for all the things to come.