Cam receives all of the hug.

Endorë's third Maitimo and second Findekáno blink in bafflement at their surroundings. They are very pretty. Sufficiently pretty to distract even Elves who are motivated to talk to each other and these ones are not. 

After an hour or so Maitimo says "do you think it's true?"

"I am embarrassed that I hadn't wondered sooner. But - I would have expected it to be more - blatant, everything felt perfectly reasonable at the time -"

"Everything didn't feel reasonable to me, just out of my control."

"You were not acting out of character. Just your worst self a little more often."

"You were out of character but I understood why."

"It doesn't really matter. I didn't - it's not that I have a negative impression of your character and have therefore decided to have nothing to do with you, it's that, magic or not, everything that made us worth fighting for got fed into a black hole on your orders."

"Really? Everything?"

"You remain exceptionally pretty. But the - love, trust - yeah."

"You know, the armor does not actually sustain my life or anything, I just wear it by default," Loki remarks.

"...It isn't, admittedly, the most huggable."

"Wasn't a major design constraint. It's comfy to wear, not to drape oneself over."

"Do you by any chance have a way to teleport it away without me having to let go of you."

"Yeah."

And now this is much cozier.

There's a trail. They start walking on it. 

"Do our counterparts have a place to stay, here, or were they just expecting we'd have - I don't know - wilderness survival blessings -"

"I actually have no idea, their dynamic was weird." Maitimo says.

"Weird how?"

"I needed you very badly."

"I'd kind of like to come up with a different phrasing -"

"At some point I'm going to have to explain to my family that I have alts. Thor's going to make a really puzzled face. Then I will tell her this means there are also more Tyelcormos."

"They an item?"

"They are an ambiguously casual item. She had me hit on him for her at first after checking that I wasn't planning to keep him."

Cam laughs. "- with targetable interdimensional teleportation I can see my parents again."

"Sure. When?"

"Not right now."

"Before or after one of us comes up with an excuse to remove more layers of clothes?"

"...after."

"I'm a little surprised Maitimo didn't crack up, that face you made, he will definitely have noticed -"

"Was it that obvious -"

"You might as well have screamed 'TAKE ME' at the top of your lungs."

"You solved all of my problems," Cam says.

"Yes. I know."

"...is that what it sounds like when I do that."

"Probably. Why, does it come off very badly, I haven't seen 'smug' on you yet," Loki says.

"Well, I don't know that it would be universally popular but I'm a fan."

"The version of me in this universe is very dependent on the version of you. And also thinks of Cam's local alt as practically a sister. I don't know if being tortured improves my character or something but -"

Findekáno shudders. 

"Maybe if I knew more I wouldn't envy him. ...we could ask Cam for a post-upload rescue fork, see if you fall in love with him."

"...by envy him do you mean because he has his Findekáno or for some other reason."

"Mostly that."

"I find it implausible that you'd think fifty years of torture was worth it if it meant we still got along -"

Maitimo stares at him quizzically. "But of course I would."

"...what it would actually have taken was a lot less than that!"

"And it was during the war and I couldn't let myself - could never have forgiven myself for - wasting the time, there were people dying..."

"Not a waste of time now."

"No. But you said it's too late, the trust and love is gone."

"You're good at people. You could try fixing that."

"I had assumed you didn't want me to."

"I didn't. But - I guess I would like to know where we'd be without insidious mind control, even if the answer is 'the same place' -"

"I knew I would feel better after they were back," Cam says, "I knew that, but I was thinking I'd have to, I don't know, go see the look on Thuringwethil's face or something before it really hit me."

"You met a Thuringwethil too?"

"Yes. Did yours incompetently hit on you?"

"She wasn't that incompetent. That or my impression was colored by years of sexual deprivation, that could also be it. I didn't go for it, though, 'has fucked Sauron' is a dealbreaker."

"Mine was pretty incompetent. Something about being called 'the Destroyer'."

"I'm sort of fond of being called Godslayer but..."

"...better aim."

"Yep."

"In other people hitting on us news Iobel got her husband a birthday present which was me."

"Ha. Was it delightful? Should I find out when mine has his birthday?"

"It was nice, if you wish to dispense me as a birthday present too I don't object, I don't know if he'd go for it? He looked, uh, marrieder."

"I'm not actually sure what their arrangement is. I can probably waggle my eyebrows at him until he tells me if it would be tacky to ask."

"We should have some form of arrangement. I don't object to monogamy in principle but it seems, I don't know, vaguely wasteful, with all these universes?"

"Yeah... I need to figure out what to tell, like, Sigyn. - My best friend, with benefits."

They keep walking. "So," Findekáno says. "Are you going to try."

"I am trying to think if there is a way to do it that just involves sex and not lots of painful conversations, I don't know how much stamina I have for painful conversations."

"...lonely decade?"

"Of course. You?"

"I don't know if I love you but there is never going to be anyone else."

"I had kind of decided I lacked an important skillset and would be wronging anyone by even trying."

"Think the problem is an overuse of a skillset, not a lack of it."

"Mmm?"

"You don't know how to stop using people."

"I usually manage not to hurt them."

"You hurt me."

"Yeah."

"When Cam said I could get in the shuttle or he could kill me for practice -"

"What should we have done, there?"

"Depends what you wanted. But me to ever be able to trust you again was not the thing you wanted."

"We need a collective noun. Wasn't as urgent when it was just me and Iobel, but as it happens 'Bells' is a cute thing to call us in my native language."

"Suits me."

"Peal of Bells."

Loki laughs.

They exchange the stories of their lives.

Eventually one of them comes up with an excuse to remove more layers of clothes.

"I want you to be able to trust me again. What's that going to take."

"Nothing you'd be willing to offer," Findekáno says. "I have thought about it."

"...not going to swear to get your approval for future war crimes, I guess, no."

"I did not think so."

"I'm sure I could have done that conversation better, even if the outcome was fixed."

"Yes, you definitely could have."

"Would you have told someone?"

"...yeah. I understand your reasons and I'm not calling you evil for it but I would not have covered for it and I still think you're very lucky there wasn't some clever loophole you missed that made it a horrible mistake instead of just a horrible atrocity."

"We worked really hard on the wording."

"My assessment factored that in."

"I mean," Maitimo says, "it's not as if that specific thing is going to come up again."

"No."

"If you'd met me after it'd happened, what would you think?"

"...that you're very competent. You haven't actually displayed having a personality, lately."

"As you keep reminding me, we fed a lot of people into a black hole. I think I just kind of have to keep moving forward until -"

"Well. We're stuck here for a month."

"Could try writing a message in the dirt to Cam."

"I apologize on behalf of my alternate universe self."

"He did it for me, so I apologize on behalf of mine."

"Your alt needs my alt, that feels like an important difference."

Maitimo stops and stares at him wonderingly. 

"...you disagree?"

"I might not need you as badly as the tortured-for-fifty-years version does, but - you are the one who just observed that I have not discernibly displayed a personality in a decade, or any preferences on a smaller scale than 'a functioning empire' -"

"I don't think I'm the source of your personality, or the cause of you wanting things -"

"Having hurt you as badly as I did makes my personality suspect and my wants even moreso-"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Maitimo -"

"I need you. I have always needed you."

"I think our alts have unusual tastes or something because if he thought we were going to work this out he could have provided a planet with, like, furniture -"

"We'd better not tell him it worked, it'll encourage bad habits -"

"It worked?"

"You just expressed a desire for furniture. That's, um. Something."

"Maybe if we keep hiking we'll find it. Don't say anything else so I don't lose the mood."

"I need you. I have always needed you. I love you. I have always loved you."

There is, it transpires, a house. On the beach.

Cam goes and visits his parents and introduces them to Loki.

Loki brings Cam to Asgard and shows him off to her sister and father and Sigyn. (She's not exactly not speaking to Odin, but she is also not telling exciting news promptly to Odin.) Thor is confused and unsettled but manages to go along with the concept, and she is intrigued by more Tyelcormos (has she mentioned today that Tyelcormo is great, have you seen his smile). Frigg wants to know that the others of Loki have had easier lives and is reassured, mostly, by tales of benign parents and pleasant childhoods and the distinctly temporary inconvenience that was Cam being shot in the head at age 22. Sigyn wants to know if Cam wants to sleep with him. Cam's game.

They go and introduce Loki to Iobel. (And have to be decontaminated afterwards but it's a lovely visit anyway.)

Loki turns up on Jötunheim an amount of time later that can be described as a few weeks and tries to find the least weird possible way to say "so my alt got your alt the other one of my alts for his birthday...........".

Maitimo has been managing Jotunheim serviceably, of course, though she's the one with the advantage of being their missing princess. He beams at her. "All well?"

"All's well! Are you checking on your alts occasionally, they haven't written to Cam and it's not guaranteed that it's occurred to them."

"Findekano has. They are making Elf-paced progress - well, Elf-paced progress emotionally, they were sleeping together by the first day."

"How's this going to propagate to their forks? Or does this have to repeat four times, or six, or...?"

"I imagine they can just tell the other ones that it's worth working through it - that seems to have been the barrier, they'd hurt each other badly enough to decide that the relationship was not positive-value, it's not that they weren't in love..."

"I'm glad they're fixing it up all right. I met your Hex alt," she adds. "He has short hair! On purpose!"

He shudders. "I'm accustomed enough to it that I think it's cute on some people but I can't imagine doing it. How is he?"

"Vaguely chagrined that Iobel's cat hates him - conspicuously simultaneously not an Elf and definitely a you, it's really interesting - he's very flattering amounts of delighted that there are more of me! Well, more of Iobel."

"And it means you now get the chance to meet 'what I was like before the war', or a closer approximation, I always vaguely regretted that we did not meet back then."

"Me too."

"Thank you for killing Morgoth again. Hopefully we get word on Thauron soon."

"You're welcome. And yes, I hope so too, the closest thing to a redeeming feature of the existence of Saurons is that they're so satisfying to kill."

He smiles. "And I assume someone eventually got around to taking Cam around to fix all the obvious material-scarcity-soluble problems in the galaxy?"

"Yeah, he went out and saved a hundred million lives while I was asleep."