Sigh. "I will probably forgive you all eventually. And... all of me... eventually. That's weird as fuck, what else did I miss about - that."

"My human alt married your human alt and would meet most conventional definitions of 'in love with her' but is struggling to contextualize that because he's still as gay as I am. Also I'm pretty sure he and Cam have hooked up, which is interesting only because Cam's not close with his Maitimo and is I gather the only Bell so far not to be. Which makes me curious about the circumstances - maybe that Maitimo doesn't have a Findekáno to fix his inevitable moments of really screwing things up? The humans are a bit outclassed, Loki's the most powerful instance of you and I think the corresponding me, the one called Maedhros, the most powerful instance of us? Cam's indestructible and can make arbitrary matter so I'm intensely curious what the fuck makes Loki the most powerful instance. Cam and Loki are an item. Humans don't servantmake anywhere but your home world, we can definitely start galactic exporting if we want everyone on the lost world to be outrageously rich."

"I think Iobel and Cam have hooked up too," remarks Kib. "If you don't think the Enemy reads minds because the format of incarnate thoughts is too weird for him how do you explain there being clues in your environment of appropriate richness for you to pick up on things like that when presumably you don't consistently list them?"

"Really big corpus of interactions to copy and paste from? He must be really confused by the sort of things I sometimes identify as tells. I am also worried he can do things like 'have an interaction occur that leaves Maitimo with the following impressions'; that'd mean I can never ever be sure, and it's likelier than surface mindreading, it's consistent with how the brain actually stores sensory impressions and memories..."

"...wait, can you identify specific tells or can't you?"

"Can. I thought about trying to share at one point but you were doing entirely different strategies, all my tells require thought, so it wouldn't have helped."

"If you can, then he can't be doing the thing where he's directly leaving you with an impression."

"He can't be always doing that, there must be some required level of scaffolding."

...sigh. "We expecting your other alt with the weird consonant cluster in his name to show up in time for dinner?"

"...that conversation should be private, I can already imagine pretty much exactly how it's going to go and you guys shouldn't be present."

"Hell, I just regained the capacity for curiosity fifteen minutes ago and you go and do that."

"Remember when I said something about Angband and you said that if I didn't clarify your imagination was going to do the work and I said you weren't imaginative enough, was I right?"

"Not by a wide margin."

"My alt is going to say that I will never again experience a moment in which I prefer existing to not existing, but that there are a lot of worlds out there and a lot of people and what the fuck do I think it means, to be a King, if I choose not to do something about that? And what does it mean, every trust I've ever won, every person I have ever told I loved, if I hurt them merely because my existence is unendurable and always will be, has he run across a cowardly alt. He will tell me that there is no point in hoping and it hurts a little less once I stop. I don't get to die. That's what he's going to say to me."

"Well, if you can predict him that well why is he going to visit at all."

"I have no idea."

"I think," Kib says wryly, "Aydanci wants me to himself for a bit and is too overwrought with all the everything to say so."

Findekáno takes his hand. They leave.

And Aydanci - uncharitably, babbles, but it's all very Aydanci, and someday it will probably be useless to keep Kib alive anymore and some fifteen year old will roll over in bed back in the lost world and it won't do for the kid to pick up bad habits like mistreating one's spouse just because they had a bad dream, so Kib accepts apologies and issues apologies and lets himself enjoy the first actual kiss he's had in years.

And Findekáno refuses to leave - points out they can have the conversation without him anyway - and is still there when Maedhros shows up.

"Hi," Maedhros says to both of them. "So, first, I was persuaded by being handed free will, but you'll only be able to verify that you have that if there's some future-binding positive oath you know you swore before you were taken prisoner, is there?"

"Nope."

"Okay. You can also get married, Enemy can't fake that, you could be stubborn and conclude he also has Findekáno but at that point the war's lost and I'd expect him to stop playing excruciatingly subtle games and just torture you both for all eternity, and also I still don't think he'd do it, it means he can't force you to father any children for him -"

"How long were you there?" Maitimo says.

"Fifty years."

"I don't know how your world works but I can't marry Findekáno -"

"Can too, it's expectation-controlled! It didn't make much sense that the universe regarded marriage as metaphysically for straight people. Uh, since we're going to give you free will afterwards what you ought to do is select a person who is exceptionally unlikely to be in Enemy hands, maybe someone who stayed in Valinor, marry them, then get free will, but I'm guessing that'd be difficult -"

"Could you do it?"

"Yes. I could. I'd be faking, and I'd feel weird about the other person's capacity to consent considering how much I'd be faking, but I could."

"I'm not positive the Enemy couldn't fake the person, if not the marriage."

"So then marry the obvious candidate, get free will, conclude you're not hallucinating. I might come up with something else that'll do it but I haven't yet."

"I'll grant you that this is at least the most setup Thauron's given one of his pickup lines."

Maedhros nods. "Then, once you believe this isn't a hallucination, you can learn to teleport and it helps, a ton, with the feeling that as long as it could possibly happen again there is no such thing as a life worth living. We also might be able to become the kind of thing Cam is, and that means as far as we know we can't be killed but we also are indestructible and nothing can ever seriously hurt us again. I have been weighing it.  And there's a way to die but it depends on Loki and it'll hurt her if you ask so please don't, as a personal favor? It's a big multiverse, you can find a different one."

"Can I."

"You already know why you won't, you don't need -"

Maitimo sighs. "When we've fixed the multiverse?"

"Yeah, of course. We -" he looks at Findekáno - "I love him, I love my family, I love my people, but I am not sticking around for them, not once we've fixed the multiverse. If we still want to die then we can."

"If?" Maitimo says. "You're not sure?"

"I - suspect I won't want to. Things are tolerable a lot more often. There was something recently that made them much worse, I'm still in a mood about it, but the trajectory is good. Doesn't mean it'll be the same for you, of course."

He nods.

"I wanted to compare people, see who all we've got alts of -"

"Of course."

And they set to that, eyes alight like two people who do, however reluctantly, dig a great deal of joy out of living.

The next morning Kib asks the King whether it still actually serves a security purpose that he doesn't have root on the golems.

"Nope. Aydanci's welcome to add you back, and I'll tell Lári to on the ones Aydanci doesn't have. Would you like an apology?"

"I think I told you once that I only get annoyed about not being allowed to have things when I actually want the things. Wasn't an issue."

"I didn't mean for the golem permissions."

"Oh. What for?"