"No," he says slowly. "I don't remember. A... a long time. I can't remember ever... not."

"Even when you were a child, when you were alive?"

"I don't remember being alive."

"And I suppose you don't want me to fix that."

"nononononononono," he mutters, rocking back and forth.

"nooooooooooooo," he moans.

Angela drops her forehead into one of her hands and adjusts her wings. "Perhaps I should go talk to whoever initially judged you and ask them."

"Please don't," he says, "please, I don't want them to remember me, I don't want them to think about me—"

"I don't want my brother-in-law to grow up to do terrible things to keep himself comfortable," says Angela. "I don't want to keep him under suspicion that he personally has done nothing to earn just because I don't know. If you have a better idea, I'm listening."

He shivers, and says nothing.

Angela waits.

"why don't you ask him questions," Voice says finally. "he's probably less afraid of you."

"He is ten years old. I don't want to explain to him in detail exactly what I'm afraid of."

Voice has no answer to that.

"He knows something happened, because he met Shell Bell, and she flinched every time he spoke, and all he wanted to know about it, when I explained without the details, was whether he was going to be punished for what you did to her."

"Of course," says Voice, and then he flinches.

"He isn't. Going to be punished for anything you did, I mean."

"Neither are you, for that matter. I'm here for the reasons I stated, not to make you uncomfortable. We don't do punishment for its own sake. That's why you and all the other torturers were dismissed."

After a pause, he uncurls a little, although he still keeps his face muffled in his hood and turned away from her.

"Your last prisoner was almost certainly your brother," Angela says after a silence. "Since you're from the same world, and since on my world your alt and his alt are brothers."

"I don't know," he murmurs, shaking his hooded head. "I don't know."