"I don't know the exact numbers, I just think the 'on balance' thing matters more than you seem to. I acknowledge something would be lost even if I don't know what that thing is like, but that's just - if pain started out like a neutral damage report, and someone offered to let you change it to the other way around, doing that would hurt a lot of people, in a bad way. The way things start out isn't special. The one way and the other both have their good points, but the one adds up better."

"How do you know? How do you actually know? Look, the reason I wouldn't push that button is that pushing that button would be worse than dying. I can't actually think of a worse thing than that right now. And I have been through the kind of hell you get when pain isn't nice, I know who I'd be fucking over by not hitting it, but the way pain works is just not something I can give up."

"Well, what I'd actually do with a button like that is find who made it and find out why they didn't give me a better button," says Bella. "Assuming it is a naturally occurring thought experiment button, apparently we don't agree on what to do with it. I'm not judging, especially, it would be a wrench to push the Turnip Version of the button - but I would throw you under the bus to help the rest of the world." She shrugs. "I hope that doesn't take the flavor out of your cookies or anything."

Trouble shrugs. "Means you scare me, but hey, so does Ethan," he says, and grabs a cookie.

"I scare you because I'd make a tradeoff that didn't work out well for you if I obtained extremely specific magical abilities?"

"Not exactly." He nibbles the cookie. "I mean, I'm not afraid you're actually gonna get your hands on a button like that and wreck my life. But the way you talk about this stuff, it's like... you're so sure you've got it all down right, you're not waiting to figure anything out and see if maybe it's gonna screw more people over worse than you think, you're just gonna hit the button. And when I was asking you to keep quiet before I told you about Reggie, you said if anybody else started getting hurt you'd spill - not if anybody else started getting hurt and wanted you to. So if Reggie starts messing with somebody new, are you going to wait and find out if they like the odds? Or are you just gonna go straight to the cops? I don't think he will, or I might've asked you then. But people who want to make things better and are really sure they already know how - think they know how better than the people they're gonna be fixing it for - that's dangerous. I can't have too many of those around. Not with my life."

"We were idly conversing about extremely improbable events; I didn't think you were going to conclude that I'm somehow a dangerous person if I glossed over the information-gathering steps because they're somewhat less interesting to talk about. And in the other case - I just meant my specific promise to you wouldn't cover the situation where someone else was in harm's way, that I wouldn't promise to you about them, that they will not encounter me already committed to keep secrets whether they like it or not. I'd have to talk to them separately and that wouldn't be under the umbrella of the promise."

"You don't sound particularly impressed. I have no actual magical powers to responsibly wield for your approval and don't really care to spend much of my time seeking such approval in less magical ways, so I guess that's reasonable."

"It's not that, it's - it takes more for me to stop being scared of somebody than it takes for me to start. You're less scary now, but I'm not really feeling it all the way yet."

"I'm not that scared of you," he says. "And I'd miss you if you stopped. Look - if I know that when shit gets real you're gonna pay attention to who you might be screwing over, then you're not scary. I just need a little while where you're around and I can tell that's true, to give my feelings time to catch up."

"How little a while?"

He shrugs. "Dunno. Just - time. If I wasn't gonna be in the hospital and then out of school, I'd say a week."

He smiles encouragingly and takes another cookie.

"...Maybe not completely," he admits. "Especially with Ethan."

"Hmm?"

"I kind of love him because he's scary. I love what's scary about him. He'd screw me over in a second if it got him something he wanted. He'd do it to almost anybody. That's part of why it's so sweet that he's stuck on Robin like he is - I get to watch him have all these nice feelings when I wasn't even sure he had it in him."

"So you don't think he'd screw her over?"

"Well... not the same way he would with anybody else. He wouldn't think he was screwing her over; I'm not sure she wouldn't. He's still basically Ethan."

Bella snorts. "You have weird taste in people."