"That's - good. Uh, how long is it likely to take?"

"To stop being all right with hurting people? I got there weeks ago. To - experience everything the way you do, to not even want the things I gave up because my way of getting them hurt people - I don't know. Maybe a year."

"Another list item is in fact the nature of the appeal of - poorly specified badness."

"In order of how much they contributed... helped distract me from grief and powerlessness over whatever the latest horror in the war was, channel for feeling self-destructive, if I find someone fascinating then I will find the way they think and react under pressure particularly fascinating, and I kink on it. I can't tell you that I would never have found anything remotely appealing about hurting you, but I don't now."

"Is that ascending or descending?"

"Descending."

"And you don't now because... war's over?"

"Because it was horrible! I had all these justifications for not thinking about that, or thinking about it as a trade-off with other things, and then I just - couldn't -"

"...couldn't not think about it?"

"And couldn't tell myself it was a trade-off except insofar as I'd set up my brain to let it be one."

"You got all this from - what, playing Governor with me?"

" - that and having a prospect of the war ending and having to think about what I wanted my life to be like now that there was more than a ghost of a chance I could actually live it, and - when I meet someone I get a model of them, very quickly, and my model of you was just - better than me at thinking about this - and no matter how I tried to explain it I could just reason right out how unconvinced you'd be - started thinking all the time about it, trying to explain it in terms you'd understand - and they just weren't there, once you looked straight at it it was just horrible..."

Cor hugs him.

Slightly surprised hug.

"I'm... curious what would have happened if you hadn't had the luxury to - time the news -"

"I don't know. I would have been - a lot less credible in claiming that I'd meant to tell you soon anyway. And - and the telling you is important. I was tempted to just stop and let Findekáno leave and maybe get himself deoathed down south and pretend it hadn't happened - it'd be so much easier - the only thing to gain by telling you was that it was the only decent thing to do - 

- anyway. I don't know. As long as it was after Melkor died I think I'd mostly have just - explained the same - before then I would have been concerned entirely with the revelation not torpedoing the war effort -"

"It doesn't have any bearing directly on whether I ought to have killed Melkor - I guess I might have been scared, if I'd found out badly, that would have been a problem -"

" - yeah, that would have been, if you tried to leave -" squeeze. "Findekáno thought I should wait until after the war to ask you out. I should have. I would if I met you now, but that was before I - thought everything through."

Nod. "Then if I'd found out before you decided to tell me it wouldn't have seemed - personally threatening -"

"Yes, exactly, you'd have been upset in general but not scared. And wouldn't have - felt like you'd consented under false pretenses -" headshake - "I am sorry for not waiting."

"Well. Fortunately you got to tell me under - stable circumstances."

"I strive to provide a reassuring finding-out-your-boyfriend-tortured-and-raped-people experience."

"- people plural -?"

"No. Never."

"Careful with your declension there then. - Are there ways it could have shaken out where I would've been in danger -"