"So," Maitimo says, "he asked me what I'd have done if Findekáno wouldn't keep it quiet and - well, what would you have done?"

"Hmm, there wasn't time pressure, was there? Sat down for about an hour and tried to come up with options better than the ones popping into my head."

"I said one of the ones popping into my head."

"Knowing presumably that he'd be incredibly upset -"

"I wasn't trying to seduce him! Why is this so hard to get into your head!"

"I - I think you've correctly identified the mistakes you made, I am just losing my mind over how wasteful it is!"

"- I mean, sure, he's pretty, Elves are kind of all pretty actually it got to the point where I had to start ignoring it, they're ridiculous, but that can't compensate for having to be a secret all by itself and he wasn't offering me a monarchy -"

"My only hard power is the Department of Education, although people do listen to me beyond that and he does in particular."

"He wasn't even offering me a Department of Education! He didn't even actually hit on me, tell you the truth, the bit about me being his type came up when he was addressing that Findekáno thought we were fucking, why that would seem plausible."

"I suppose I don't know what it looks like when he's attracted but not trying as opposed to trying but not attracted..."

"I mean," Findekáno says, "what are the odds there are exactly two? There's probably one somewhere who isn't screwed up, and I'll just wait for that one."

"That doesn't sound like a healthy mindset."

"If Endore gets more socially liberal I can maybe even occasionally have casual sex."

"While waiting for your lover from a dimension where he can cut the power games out once you break up."

"I mean, if you want to point me at someone better -"

"Mitros is mine and I think I'd love him even if he locked me in the dungeons to feed my family into a black hole for the greater good. If he brought them back. Which you said he did."

"The ones he could."

"The black hole thing, assuming I'm getting all the significance of it without having the physics -"

"You are, there's not much to get besides 'planet and everything on it gone'."

"Well, I don't know how much it helps but it sounds like you won."

"Pyrrhic victory." The computer fails to translate. "Uh, I won, but it sucked."

"Do you believe the unpronounceable Maia about five hundred years -"

"...Not sure. But it doesn't sound impossible."

"You won."

"It sucked."

"But you won."

"Marrying someone you don't want just - Elves wouldn't do that. It's pretty fucked up."

"Finankar and I broke up and remained very good friends and eventually talked things through and got back together. Y'know. If you're calling me fucked up."

"Yeah, I don't think it's a feature of breakups in general, I think it's a feature of breakups under intense psychological pressure due to constant horrifying atrocities occurring that are by design just barely within my capacity to prevent or mitigate. Those ones are bad for me. I should avoid them."

"I'm sorry."

"I wasn't - that's not the point."

"It kind of is. You won and now there's six of you grinding your teeth to the bone in atonement, and you're all alone, and you're planning on staying alone - because if you won't try for Cam, you aren't going to find anyone worth trying for -"

"I do not stand a chance with Cam."

"Yep, I noticed immediately. I am just saying that's pretty fucking unfortunate."

"Do you want to, like, hug my parents or something...?"

"...I feel like that would be awkward. They won't recognize me and we'll probably have a way into Limbo soon."

"Okay, just thought I should offer. How hard would it be for me to learn to use a computer like you've got?"

"...learning curve would be a bitch, might be worth it, do not want you to be the first test subject on the chip in your brand of human though."

"Fair enough. Magic necklace?"

"You mean like the one you're wearing right now?"

"Yes, like that. And here goes your grace spell -"

"If you actually end up ruling an interdimensional empire and then you asked Cam out he might consider it."

"You are way more invested in this than I am!"

"Yeah, I kind of resent your world just getting, on every possible level, a sad ending..."

"I agree with you about that but you are missing all of the important levels and focusing on one thing that I don't even want that much, besides idly recognizing he has a personality I'd work well with under completely different life circumstances!"

"I sort of feel like you're lying to yourself here."

"Findekáno didn't invent resurrection to win me back but he invented resurrection and brought me back and it didn't fix anything. Some things aren't fixable."

"Bullshit."

"How old are you, seventy-five?"

"...try a third of that. What's your point?"

"I don't want to rule an intergalactic empire very badly anymore and I really hope you never understand why."

"Because you're depressed, yeah, I wouldn't want to be-"

"Not. It."

The three questions match and a lot of little trivialities match and he gives her a non-chiplocked computer to watch Atriama ("the subtitles will be badly translated but I think it'll still work") and other items, he teaches his computer her alphabet more properly and hashes out some translations that it wasn't handling by itself, Cricket sits in his lap, and Cam winds up sending Maitimo and Finekáno each a message that they're all set to talk electricity whenever the others are.

They've all four gathered in the conference room again but take a little while to tell Cam and Iobel they're ready.

"In the interests of honesty," Mitros says, "I spent most of our time haranguing Maitimo on the lost opportunity to court a boy Iobel and mostly just kind of avoided thinking about this, because what happened here makes perfect sense to me and also scares me to death and that didn't seem like as fun a conversation."

"I also assumed Maitimo'd take advantage of the opportunity there," Findekáno says. "It's out of character and a little worrying."

"I think he's dealing with some psychological issues stemming from the war," Mitros says. "If he were healthy he'd be ruling a few planets by now."

"Mitros is overly sure of himself," Maitimo says, "and has ulterior motives because he wants to vicariously have sex with alternate versions of his wife. He is probably right, though."

"I am obviously right," Mitros says. "Also I'm really regretting that I'm not sexually compatible with myself -"

"That occurred to me when we got forking," Maitimo agrees.

"...I am perfectly compatible with myself but don't find that at all tempting," Findekáno says, "wow."

Mitros frowns. "...is there an obvious reason why the two of you haven't just asked Cam for past, less psychologically scarred versions who still like each other?"

"It'd creep Cam out," Findekáno says. "I asked him to roll back Maitimo by three months for pressing strategic reasons and he refused. He might not have trusted my motives, though. And - I wouldn't erase the memories that got me to the point of not desiring to be in a relationship with Maitimo, and it amounts to the same thing."

"I considered it," Maitimo said brightly. "Making younger versions of me and sending them to Findekáno as a present, and hoping he got the hint, and then I'd have explain to my Findekáno at length everything I did to make it the considered opinion of his older self that we shouldn't be dating and he'd blink at me and say 'well, planning to do that again?' and then I'd have him back. But. I was in fact bad for him."

"Is anyone else," says Finankar, "really worried by this bizarre self-abnegation 'I won't take this thing I want, I don't deserve it' thing, I've only ever seen that on Mitros when he was apologizing for something, he sure as hell never steered with it -"

"He also did not feed any planets into black holes, now did he."

Finankar looks up at him, alarmed.  "Dude. If you are really an alternate version of my Mitros I am very worried about you. Why don't you - stop living among people who expect and reward conspicuous displays of shame and self-loathing over something you did, I think that's the operative ingredient here..."

Mitros nods as if in sudden realization. "Yes, definitely. Come live here, maybe."

"It'll be my pleasure to aid you in catching up with modern standards, but in the long term I'm needed at home."

"You're literally redundant there!"

"And I don't like it here particularly, it's ugly."

Findekáno snorts.

"I guess maybe I should give it some time," Mitros says. "But do spend that time becoming emperor of something, when we find another universe with a boy Iobel you can tempt him with power."

"Why don't we teach electricity," Maitimo says.

And then they ask Cam and Iobel to come back.

Cam and Iobel come back in rather chipper moods, her with a magic necklace and him with a bounce in his step. Iobel sporfles when she sees the Elves and that gets Cam going and they both sit down, stifling giggles.

"...told her stories of shampoo commercials and other censorship," Cam explains.

Maitimo laughs.

"...shampoo commercials?" Mitros says.

"You rather have to see them," Maitimo says.

"You really don't, this is an Elf thing," Cam says. "Elves have a hair thing. They're probably politely scandalized that you've ever had a haircut in your life if they haven't mentioned that yet."

"We didn't," Maitimo and Findekáno say in unison. 

Mitros raises an eyebrow and removes the crown and runs a hand through his hair. "We didn't spend much time on cultural exchange, actually, it all rather got shoved aside by the story. Congratulations on winning your war, by the way." 

"...thanks."

"This world has a hundred thousand people dying irretrievably every day. I watched my father torture himself over that for long enough. It didn't give him some brilliant insight. Didn't save a single one of them. We do the best we can with what we've got. And we're about to have a lot more to be doing our best with, right?"

"...yeah. Uh, I will want to do some medical research before actually testing anything but since you seem to be pretty much humans and not pharmaceutically inconvenient Elves you may be able to get some working memory boosts, temporary but that's all you need, with various drugs and so on, and that's if we don't figure out how to cyborg you, and also it may just plain work for you to come to Endorë and perform summonings there, was that explained?"

"That was, yes. We'll send someone with you to try it. Any particular criteria for a first test?"

"Ability to follow simple instructions. And we'll know sooner whether you get the daeva afterlife that way if it's someone who is likely to die soon."

"All right." Mitros starts taking notes. "I asked someone to fetch my father, he'll pick up the engineering content faster than any of us - well, I suppose you'd know."

"He's going to notice how we're not actually speaking Marlese."

"He's been very patient about Iobel refusing to teach him her idiolect. He will probably speak whatever it is you're speaking by the end of the conversation but he won't question you about it in the meantime."

"I'm told that one should not learn her idiolect because then one could understand what her cat is saying and this is inadvisable."

"Her cat is mostly spitting aspersions on my character," Mitros says. "My father can no longer do anything if he learns the whole story but I think Iobel prefers that he doesn't."

"It would be awkward and Cricket is not an ideal source of gossip!"