"Her compatibility with me is better but by a bewilderingly small margin, so the limited literal surface area she presents is enough to make it a net improvement to sit here when I'm debacklashing instead, especially since someone's gotta anyway and I don't have to go to any further effort to convince myself. I'll probably be able to run twice as many dungeons as I normally do if I just sleep on you most nights, though I think ideally you'd be on a ten-hour dose instead of an eight-hour if I'm doing that so there's turnaround time margin and no risk of you waking up debraceleted. So that's an improvement to the previous time horizon."

He nods.

"...I think—I have a lot of difficulty modelling my backlashed self—if he couldn't find an immediately obvious way to—get what he wants—he might play along. So it's not the worst possible thing if he does wake up without the bracelet."

"I mean, it's still worth avoiding, but good to hear. You don't think I would be at an alarmingly elevated risk of being murdered or anything?"

"He... might try it if he were completely certain he would succeed... My powers don't involve anything physical so handcuffs ought to maybe suffice. —what are your powers?"

"Well, in the interest of him not being completely sure he'd succeed I do in fact have a secret one which would be helpful, but publicly, I'm selectively imperceptible, I already mentioned psychic stuff bounces off me, and I can also fly."

"So he'd... probably not try to use handcuffs against you." The thing is Jaeha has no idea what his backlashed self would even want. To be dead, probably, because his current self also (mostly) wants that, but he—thinks he's—no longer obsessed with don'tthinkthename—or at least he's certain he's never going to ever interact with don'tthinkthename. And he shouldn't. And the fact that Jaeha still misses him like he'd miss a limb, like he'd miss a piece torn out of his chest, is immaterial. They should never, ever meet again. Jaeha should never, ever, ever be allowed to sully him again.

"Yeah, I can get a pair, and a bottle of ten-hour."

He nods.

...and then goes to see if he can find anything to eat. Since he should probably not starve himself.

Traceless has already helped himself to a frozen dinner, as evidenced by the fork he gets up to stick in the dishwasher - he was flopped on Jaeha for hours. Once the fork's away: "Those drugs get mixed reviews on how restful the sleep is, do you feel like you slept or just like eight hours mysteriously passed?"

He considers this. "More like the second thing, I think." He's not going to mention that that's how sleep always feels to him, lately. It doesn't seem useful.

"Then you should probably also get real sleep, after you've eaten, and I guess I should plan on the guiding mostly happening during the daytime to account for that. I'm going to go tie up all the loose ends I left dangling since I didn't know if you were coming to Canada or not, and I will be back tomorrow, midmorning, maybe after a dungeon if they can find me a suitable one in that timeslot on short notice. Try to move around and stuff so you don't atrophy, maybe shovel snow or something. You can get all the way out to the fence around the house without the bracelet alerting, I tested that."

"—are there any, ah... exercise materials? Weights, dumbbells...?" It somehow didn't occur to him that the cottage wouldn't have anything resembling a gym. Not that prison had much of one, people would've had too much opportunity to hurt each other with exercise weights, but they had, like, bars you could hang off of and reasonably breakable jump ropes and stuff.

"No, but if you want to pick some out, you can order them." He slaps down a debit card on top of the drug fact sheet. "That's got a limit and it sends me receipts but if you want weights or a pizza or - I actually don't recommend ordering a pizza in winter on Fox Island, it'll arrive half frozen, but in principle - if you want to order stuff you can."

He looks at the credit card with the faint airs of someone who was just presented with a live snake, except they're someone who has worked with snakes all their life so they're not scared exactly, they're just trying to determine what kind of snake it is and whether it's likely to bite them or strangle them or what.

"...I can get my agent to find somebody who'll take shopping requests in another format if this is horrible somehow."

"This is fine." He's not going to work on his facial expression but he does mean it. "Don't worry about it."

"...'kay. I wrote this silo's address, my number, my agent's number, etcetera, on the back of your meds fact sheet, anything else I might be forgetting?"

How should he know.

"Not off the top of my head."

"Alrighty. I'm gonna bounce, then, see you tomorrow." He starts ordering up a teleport on his phone.

"See you."

And he is gone. Not tracelessly. Whoever's powering the teleport system here has a reversed-color afterimage situation. But it's gone in half a second.

Okay.

Jaeha will... eat something. Then shower. Then lie in bed and stare at the stump where his missing limb used to be until he falls asleep.

Traceless appears at 11:05 the next morning. It is pretty obvious from his demeanor and also the fact that he's dialing the phone as soon as he resolves into place in the silo that he managed to find a morning dungeon to do. "Can you hear me now? Great, sorry about that, phones absolutely hate teleportation. Yeah, no, I am doing teleportation now, I think it's worth the money especially since I'm expecting to - oh, no you didn't tell me about that! Tell me all about that," he says into the phone, while he disgorges from his messenger bag a pair of handcuffs. "I might need to cut you off for a minute or two for some meatspace logistics, but then yes absolutely, let me make sure I'm recording so I can turn it into a post later." He waves at Jaeha.

...ah. Okay, he can maybe see how that could be compatible with his backlash.

He waves back.

"Hey do me a quick favor and read off that checklist I just sent you for me? - yes, I know, it's like that for infosec reasons, I think it still serves the purpose of a checklist as long as I remember what all the things on it mean - well I could have him do it but you know he'd editorialize. Mm-hm, check -" He taps the handcuffs, and hands Jaeha a pill to the tune of another "check", and, "yep, I told Paula to call me in seven and a half hours," and "check", and so on throughout the process of getting Jaeha ready to be knocked the fuck unconscious for guiding.