Cor gets to work on his Melkor-destroying spell!

Was she useful? 

Oh yeah, very, lots of highly aesthetic detail.

Oh good. Scared us pretty badly - didn't do anything but send you the information, right?

Was she supposed to? She wished me luck... how did she scare you?

She was not supposed to do anything else. She showed up at the gates - we've got protections against Maiar meandering around our city, obviously - and swore to some nonsense and said she'd speak directly to you. I didn't think she'd murder you but -

I am unmurdered.

Hadn't escaped me. Does the new information help you evaluate whether what we've got will work -

It could have told me one way or the other but instead it confirmed 'maybe'."

Figures. All right. Good skill.

Way ahead of you.

He watches Cor's progress and absorbs his downtime and suggests Elon presents for Ranary and positions his people to evacuate once Cor has something.

Cor is delighted with his boyfriend and makes test paints when he has the idea of dripping blood and is all set after just a few weeks.

"We've got to get Sauron too but I don't think it's worth delaying on Melkor to have something for him."

"I'll need separate intel."

"Orcs have some and will have more once Melkor's gone."

"I guess if I deoath some they won't have to hate Elves any more, even."

"Won't that be interesting."

"I guess. The ones I sent to my world didn't have a lot of time to explore the possibilities of not hating Elves."

"I vaguely expect them to hate us anyway, we do kind of routinely kill their families. Maybe once we have resurrection."

"I don't want to deoath tons and tons of orcs, so ideally find some who'll give credible Sauron information without that or at least definitely will cough up afterwards."

"Yep, we're on it."

"Good." Kiss.

Kiss!!

"I love you."

Snuggle. "I love you. I'm - so so happy you found us."

"Me too! When are we expecting evac to be all handled -"

"Two more days. Should've started sooner, sorry. We're running a sort of skeleton operation and I didn't want it running like that for too long if the spell took a while."

"It makes sense, it could have taken longer if I didn't have the dripping blood idea and went with something more conventional."

"Hopefully he'll just be gone with no chance to retaliate. But if he does - we can at least limit the casualties." Squeeze.

Nod. Snuggle. "Well. I hope it works, that means I get to keep all my toes. And stuff."

"If you die I will find a world that can fetch you back and make them do it."

"I know you will." Kiss.

Kiss!!!!

A few days later they're evacuated.

Cor paints. Cor chants.

Cor keeps his toes.

And it's over.

He is distracted managing lines of communication for twenty minutes and then he hugs Cor and cries.

Cor delightedly snuggles him. He is too happy to cry.

Four hundred years - felt like the best we could hope for was to drag it out more, drag it out forever...

And now you don't have to.

I love you.

I love you too.

The composers will struggle to come up with sufficiently exciting titles.

I'll cope.

I bet.

Kiss.

Kiss!

He enjoys his delightful boyfriend. He brings some orcs who he expects to be cooperative once deoathed.

Deoath deoath deoath.

Orcs sure do have tales to tell about Sauron.

How useful. He takes notes on the translation as he gets it, questions small details in shades of meaning in the words.

His translator seems to delight in this line of questioning.

Of course he does.

Cor gets to work on a Sauron spell.

Cor is doted on and brought presents and encouraged in spellmaking.

Being doted on is lovely. He shows off his progress.

"You're astonishingly good at this."

"Thank you!"

"Have an estimate -"

"Not as long as the first one took, I'm using a similar motif - I guess dripping blood is going to be the Maia destruction convention -"

"May we never again need it!"

"Hear, hear."

"The Valar are dangerous but - not in a way that'd require that, I don't think."

"I hope they don't decide they'd better squish me for being theoretically able to squish them, or something."

"If we were still there, maybe. Here -" Sigh. "They had better not."

Nod. Lean.

Lean. 

It was such a nightmare. And then followed with the war - I feel vaguely as if I've lived ten whole days that really belonged to me.

Which ones?

When we left, before we got here and realized how bad it'd be. And here, since you killed him.

Well then. There will be lots more. Days and weeks and years all for you.

Snuggle. 

Snuggle!

And he waits for Cor to be ready -

Art is done.

"Take care of your toes."

"I will." He wiggles his toes at Maitimo.

He kills Sauron.

He is so so loved and adored.

Marvelous.

Gonna start dismantling everything for peacetime. Maybe have something people can enlist in instead of the army, if they want the - cross-ethnic and cross-species exposure and the immersion and the advancement opportunities - but it can be building infrastructure or making magic items...

You can send them to help colonize the south continent.

Oooooh. I shall.

They'll appreciate it!

Kiss!!

Game of Governor tomorrow?

That sounds absolutely perfect.

Then the next day they can play. He does not let Cor have anything easily but he does indulge in staring delightedly at Cor more often.

Cor likes being stared delightedly at but not too much to ruthlessly stomp Maitimo's plans.

He is, as ever, captivated by this, but this time he does not immediately sweep Cor off to bed. "Come here? I need to tell you something."

"...yeah? What -" He goes and tucks himself under Maitimo's arm.

Snuggle. "I love watching you think. It's - I watch thinking the way other people watch - sports, or something, and you're so lovely at it and it's so elegant and sculpted -"

Giggle. "That's sweet."

"A few days after I met you I realized I'd been wrong about something really important. I'd - hurt people and I hadn't needed to, because I'd thought that - being willing to hurt people went hand-in-hand with being willing to get done the sort of things I needed to be able to get done, that they were the same skill, that you could be a good and soft person or a dangerous and cruel one. It, uh, was less obviously stupid in context, I hadn't met anyone else who could match me at 'dangerous' without compromising at all on anything else."

"- I would not have pegged that in particular as my unique skill but, yeah, I have that."

"You have a lot of unique skills. That was the one that, uh, I hadn't even realized I could have."

Cor squeezes his hand. "What happened?"

Lean. "The civil war - I killed Findekáno's parents. I had to, there was no way to do it without that. I think he agreed, actually - but you can understand things you can't forgive - I needed him. He would have left. So I kept him, I made him swear to stay."

"- uh."

"I did tell you it was horrible. I can explain my reasoning in more detail if you're curious but it's, uh, really not the important thing."

"You needed him like - how -"

"Like before the war."

"Why did... you need that?"

"People were dying on my orders all the time, or worse, the stakes couldn't have been higher and it wasn't ever going to change and I was shit at this job, I wasn't ready for it - I don't think anyone could have been ready for it - and there was one thing that had been right in Valinor and it was gone but I could sleep at night as long as I had the facsimile."

"I may need to talk to him."

"Of course."

"What's the oath exactly -"

"Not to hurt me, and to obey orders which are not unconscionable."

"How much does unconscionability cover -"

"Can't use him to hurt other people, mostly, or obviously anything that damaged the war effort. If you want to deoath him I expect he'd want that."

"...yeah. I should do that before - anything else probably."

"Mmhmm. I'll get you the stuff."

"Where is he?"

"This floor, across the courtyard -" Mental map.

Nod. "He can go once I'm done, if he wants." - not really a question, although there is a token upward inflection.

"Of course."

Cor goes.

Maitimo's other boyfriend is in a nice guest room that looks out on the courtyard. He raises an eyebrow at Cor.

"I'm here to deoath you."

" - okay."

"...assuming that is welcome."

"Yes, very much so."

Cor waits for his supplies, looking pensively at nothing.

Cor's supplies get delivered.

He paints. He chants.

He shivers. " - thank you."

"You're welcome.

I didn't know."

"He said he was going to tell you. I am a little surprised he did."

"He did. I think eliding over some detail, but he did."

"Do you want detail?"

"I might need it?"

"Elves don't keep our hair short because it hurts."

"Everybody around would have known that, wouldn't they."

"Yes."

He sighs. "I would be happy to answer questions but you might have to ask questions, I'm having a bit of a hard time generating a summary."

"Yeah. Sorry. Do you want to leave? I could walk with you, I don't want to keep you."

"I am not sure if I want to leave. I guess I could leave the palace without being inaccessible."

"Yeah. If you do want to go there's the south continent colony, I'm sure they'd be delighted to have you. Teach them magic songs and stuff."

"I am sure I could find things I'd enjoy, it's more - wanting to be sure there are steadying forces here."

Nod. "I'm not sure what step two is. Step one was de-oathing you, so I did that, now I'm - thinking."

"Yeah. So maybe I'll - get a place on the edge of town, but not leave - I don't want you to feel pressured to stay -"

"I'm not sure yet. He didn't - try to make me, or anything."

"His motivations don't make enough sense for me to guess at whether he had a sincere change of heart but I think he absolutely had a sincere change of behavior."

Sigh.

I think I do need details. He made it sound like you were - sort of a souvenir of happier times so he could do his job without disintegrating, but the conscionable orders limitation didn't sound very limiting and it's been a long time.

He could more or less arrange whatever he wanted, yeah. Cooperation with unifying our people and making it obvious the civil war was over and dead, I didn't mind that. It's hard to imprison an Elf, we - disintegrate - you can partially manage it by having someone swear not to go too far, or to be back at a particular time, or not to want to leave in the first place. He did sometimes have me swear mind-altering things. Always with a fixed duration, usually less than a day. 

Sigh.

I think it was good for his mental health, somehow. Maybe just by channelling all the self-destructive impulses into one place, maybe because he'd work harder on everything else, feeling guilty - I could usually get what I wanted - I picked policy things and felt - adequately compensated, most of the time. I could have died if I'd wanted to.

I guess 'not worse than death' is something. It's a different something for different people, I think, I don't know where it falls for you.

It wasn't even very close to worse than death. - I realize that's the answer to a different question.

Yes.

It's probably a very, very low bar, for me.

How bad did it get?

- when my sister was missing was probably the worst stretch, he wasn't worse but I had less with which to handle it. Fifty years of just - feeling numb and trying to be interesting enough he wouldn't be tempted to get a reaction out of me.

Get a reaction out of you -

- nothing we hadn't done consensually back in Valinor. Except the hair.

That's not a very reassuring boundary.

If how you feel about it turns on how bad it got, you should probably leave. It got bad. 

It turns on - something like a combination of that and how he talks about it? I -

I don't think that people who have done terrible things should just never be happy again, the question is whether 'ever again' is like, soon or not.

What are you thinking time would do?

It's not that I expect it to do something in particular. The question I personally need to answer is whether I can stay and so what matters is - would I be in danger, has he changed enough that even if I would be safe anyway I can condone how he is now and still love him instead of just hanging around out of vague principle, how much does it ultimately bother me that every single person here knew loosely what he was doing to you and didn't warn me or help you...

I'm sorry for not warning you, wasn't allowed. He stopped hurting me once he fell in love with you but he didn't want it to come out during the war.

I don't blame you for not warning me, I blame - everyone else - if I knew somebody's boyfriend went around constantly injured, knew they were being abused, and then the somebody picked up a friend of mine, or even a total stranger - there's reasons you don't tell people 'leave him' even when oaths aren't in the picture but they don't apply to tipping off new people.

Yeah.

I guess it's just barely possible they were all stoically refraining because I was needed for the war.

Or because you're safe, what with having the magic, or because they rationalized my hair away two centuries ago and have forgotten by now exactly what they thought when they first saw it, or because they assumed you knew, having seen my hair yourself...that's not it, though. People believe the King entitled to do as he pleases, by virtue of being the King, because that is how they were taught things work. - not even taught by Maitimo, it precedes him.

Uh.

I know. I - you'd have seen through it even raised with it, but most people aren't like that.

Even if someone can't reason out of it on a principled level I'd hope there'd be 'what if the king, or the next king if something happens to this one, happens to take a liking to me or someone I care about' -

Well, they're not into men, see, people who are like that deserve whatever they get.

It's not like he asked me.

- he didn't insist, though, did he - presumably you'd have turned him down if -

Yeah, if I were straight, I would have explained that. How much would that have mattered - not with me in particular, in general -

To my knowledge he's never wanted anyone else. I don't know. 

So you were an acceptable target because you'd been together happily before. Grand.

I was an acceptable target because of the war, they weren't worried for themselves because they're all normal. But - yeah.

...Cor has paper on him, of course. He starts making a little outline.

He sings to himself quietly.

Eventually the little outline says:

1) unmeliorated useful background horrible [wrt gay, wrt kingship]
2) counterfactuals with me
3) nature of appeal of Vague Bad Things
4) motives now

I'll be here if you need anything else from me.

Thanks.

Let me know if you need anything or think of anything you want me to know.

Of course.

Cor goes back to his room to think.

He thinks for a while.

He goes looking for Curufinwë.

In his office. "Cor!"

"...hi."

"Congratulations!"

"Uh, thanks, but that's not what I'm here for."

"Oh?"

"If someone I considered a friend - or a total stranger to be honest but that's not the point - if a friend of mine took up with somebody who was awful to their last significant other, current or past, I would warn them."

" - seems reasonable."

"I'm the only person around here who bought the line I was fed about Findekáno's hair, Curufinwë."

"I don't know what line you were fed. Findekáno is a political prisoner who the King at least likes it implied that he's sleeping with. I don't know what the arrangement between them is privately."

Sigh. "I am trying to figure out whether I can live here and a part of that is whether everyone here is - culturally incompatible with me."

Nod. "Like Valinor and us. I don't care who you're into, if that's relevant."

"That's... helpful but not really the... Findekáno was being kept under completely unconscionable conditions, which did involve sex. Maitimo fessed up and I have de-oathed Findekáno now and I'm thinking my way through everyone else and it would be just hilarious if I had to tell Maitimo 'I can overlook all the rape and the torture and the mind control but I can't get over the fact that everyone in your city overlooked it while you were still doing it'."

"Wow. 

I'm glad he cut it out. I'm not sure what you think people should have - started another civil war?"

"I know the whole point of kings is you don't vote on them but it implies a lot of coordinated ignorance that I didn't hear anything about it at all."

"He did in fact tell everybody to be friendly and helpful and say absolutely nothing that might endanger the war effort, but at least to me he didn't say anything specifically about Findekáno. Do you mind if I talk to him -"

"To Findekáno or your brother? Either way go ahead, I know people are having multiple conversations all the time and would have specified if I didn't want you osawnwëing people while we were talking, let alone separately."

"My brother, I don't actually know Findekáno."

Kind of chancy picking up the kid while doing things he'd be furious about and arranging for him not to hear.

I know. It was stupid. I got what I wanted but there was probably a sense in which I was gambling.

Probably a sense in which you were gambling?

"What would you have said if I had happened to wonder about the haircut while I was hanging out with you instead of while I was with Maitimo?"

"That they settled the civil war by really aggressively signalling that Maitimo's authority was uncontested and the hair thing was part of that, it means - I don't know if there's a human equivalent -"

Definitely gambling. I'm sorry.

Uh huh.

"I don't know if there's a human equivalent either."

"They're both sufficiently attentive to public image that I don't tend to infer things from their public presentation except about what they want us to know."

"I guess."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm... unharmed. But troubled."

Nod. "We're working on immortality now. We'll send it south if that's where you end up."

"Hopefully you would also send some south even if I weren't there."

"Well, yeah, but these are going to take about a year of engineer effort each, they'll get distributed internally first by default."

"Fair enough."

"No one should die. But it's easier to get people to put in long hours for their neighbors, their friends..."

"Completely understood. I can't think of an obvious way destroying things could even help with that."

"I remain excited about the potential for worldhopping and stacking things until we can just cheat."

"Me too."

He goes back to his interrupted notes.

Cor takes that as a dismissal. Goes back to his room and thinks more.

No one interrupts him.

Eventually he sleeps on it. Wakes up.

Someone brings breakfast.

That's nice of them.

And after breakfast:

Busy? he asks Maitimo.

No.

If you want to come up I have some questions. Or I could find you.

On my way.

He knocks a minute later.

Cor lets him in.

"Morning."

"Morning. So this has been... complicated."

"Yeah, I can imagine."

"I'm... curious what you think I'm thinking."

" - I imagine you are trying to decide how you feel about the person I actually am and how much information you have about the person I actually am."

"That all the detail you have?"

" no. Uh. You would have appreciated more directly having the 'I tortured him' information - I knew that at the time, too, just couldn't make myself say it - maybe I should've written a letter - you're deeply freaked out about everyone letting me get away with it -"

Nod.

"That's another thing I didn't really mind until I met you. It is horrible. I'll figure something out. Your society might rub off on people - just having it around as an example -"

"It's not really why we're decentralized but it doesn't hurt."

"And it could probably be fixed without going fully decentralized but on the other hand that might be the fastest way to kick it, and Elves are very slow about social change."

"I've noticed that. For example, you collectively rejected the Valar's entire project and I haven't heard any alternative rationale presented for the thing about gay people."

"I think at this point it's literally just 'ewww, weird'."

"Ewwww, weird, they deserve whatever happens to them as a consequence of being weird? I dunno about that."

"There's cultural residue of the - understanding we were raised with - but it mostly is just 'I don't want to think about that'."

"People."

"They didn't torture anyone. Just let themselves forget about it."

"Yeah." Sigh. "Uh, I have a list. One item on my list is actually that I'm weirded out by how you - used - the background assumptions about what being King entitles you to, about whether gay people have it coming, etcetera - you obviously have a lot of influence and you can afford to spend it towards personal projects or you wouldn't have hit on me and arranged for everyone to support the version of reality that allowed that."

"Yeah. I thought I was entitled to that, I could have changed how people felt about it and I didn't because I found it comfortable and reassuring. They thought being gay was horrible but they'd forgive it from me. Felt like - a kind of loyalty that wasn't all about the war."

"Can you elaborate on that?"

"I enjoyed the fact that people would overlook my conduct. It was more reassuring the more objectionable they found it, because it was a - stronger signal that they really were unconditionally loyal to me, and I liked that they were unconditionally loyal to me. I didn't consciously encourage the prejudice - and it's gotten substantially better than it used to be - but that's part of the reason I didn't push much harder, you know, find the most competent closeted people I knew and offer to protect them in coming out and living openly - I could have done it if I'd put everything into it. I don't think it was badly spent on the things I spent it on instead, but I could have done it."

"Is the unconditional loyalty thing just... useful or..."

"No. But, uh, I think I could get the thing I get from unconditional loyalty out of - conditional loyalty that's conditional on the kind of person I am, coupled with being a good person."

"What's the thing you get out of it?"

" - safety, comfort, a sense I can stop walking such a narrow line - that I can let whatever I am show and I won't lose everything for it - that's why conditional loyalty coupled with actually being a good person works, while conditional loyalty along with my willingness to play nice doesn't meet this desire at all - flexibility, the confidence that no matter what gets thrown at me I won't be scrambling to put together another coalition -"

"Do you think you can do actually-a-good-person to the point where you'd have all that?"

"Well, see, before I met you I didn't think so. But now - yeah. I can. On my own, even, if I have to."

"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 -"

"- if you found out while Melkor was still around and refused to help I can imagine committing to hurt you if you didn't help."

Sigh.

Hug. Sigh. "I love you, Cor. I'm so sorry."

Hug.

"Do you have - plans that are independent of what I do next -"

"Demilitarize, start pressing on various social progress things, import and translate books that you or someone else recommends as - transmitting good values. Work out a more distributed chain of command now that we can afford it. Talk with Huan about maging to scout, send aid south."

"My world is not uniformly great on social progress either, it's just different and Gatesnest was cosmopolitan enough to do a sort of common-denominator thing."

"I'm not expecting it to be a panacea, just that - there exist books which would be a good influence if widely read."

"If they were - interpreted right, yeah. If people are going to read A Romance of Red Mountain and go 'wow, those people deserved the scorn of their community, it's a pity they didn't listen to their sensible advice to stop dating' - less so."

"Some of them might do so, it's weirdly sticky. We'll look into it."

"What are your more contingent plans like?"

"Uh. If you're going to be around it would be a horrible waste not to give you things to do - the interworld magic-collecting, once we have that to get working on, but we don't yet and there are some candidates for the interim - I think I promised you some titles - if you are going to leave, and I know of people who have a crush on you but have chosen not to tell you yet, would you like me to tell you or wait for them to -"

"Uh. That probably depends on stuff?"

"Well. If you want to leave do tell me contingent stuff and then you can leave with a list of more respectable admirers."

"A whole list, huh?"

"You're amazing, Cor." Sigh.

"I'm not accustomed to listsfull of people thinking so!"

"Maybe they just usually don't tell you!"

"I wonder why." He squeezes Maitimo. "I will stick around for the time being."

Squeeze. "I will find you exciting things to do. - I'm not bribing you, see, just avoiding criminal underuse."

"You may find me things to do, wouldn't dream of insisting otherwise."

"...what?"

"Just being delighted about you. As one does." He looks like he wants to kiss Cor and thinks better of it. "Do you want to do refugee stuff or demilitarization stuff or vet and teach mages or supervise teams that are classifying magic items we found in Angband -"

"I'm reluctant to mage anyone new until there's more of a well-understood consensus about when and how to use magic in light of its world-eating properties, except maybe Huan since he'd have such a scouting advantage."

Nod. "Is a consensus shaping up? What would a good one look like?"

"I haven't been closely corresponding with the colony. It'll probably be like, 'definitely no cooking, some healing spells in case of life- or lifelong-ability-threatening illness that Elf magic can't fix instead, killing gods is okay if it comes up, keep de-oathing to a minimum and find a way to disincentivize swearing stupid shit in order to get de-oathed and have some reliable record of who has been de-oathed'."

"Makes sense."

"So getting them access to magic songs that do healing is probably a priority."

"We can send some representatives who know all ours."

"And who've picked up Gatetalk, ideally."

"Or can pick it up quickly, yeah."

"Shouldn't be a problem for Elves, although I can't promise the refugees are building very pretty places."

"Maybe I will send a blind Elf."

"Are there those? I suppose it would be odd if there weren't."

"There are! Rarer than in humans but in wartime not as rare as we'd like. Osanwë helps a lot, you can often borrow someone else's eyes for things."

"Ooh, useful. If that's as amenable to practice as I expect."

"It is! Some humans do it just for the benefits to vision."

"Now I'm curious."

He frowns in concentration and this is what can be seen through Maitimo's eyes right now.

"Wow. I have pores."

"More fun outdoors. From the tower I could count the bricks on Angband's walls. When Angband existed."

"Why'd you build that close?"

"It's a hundred miles. Farther and it'd be hard to direct operations without relays and I dislike relays, stuff gets lost along the way."

Nod.

"Might have been good for our mental health to be farther, though." Sigh. "All over now, everyone's safe."

"Mm-hm."

"May I kiss you?"

"...yeah."

Kiss.

Kiss.

And then he reluctantly gets to work.

Cor, presumably, will be given things to do.

He'd be such a bad king otherwise.

Cor does things. He gives Maitimo hugs and kisses but is a little shy about other stuff.

Maitimo doesn't push it. He transitions the army into a organization for humanitarian and infrastructure projects - "I'd say we need some standing army to deter Doriath but I actually think the Enemy being dead should suffice there -" and he ask Huan about scouting (Huan will scout if he can take Tyelcormo) and he forwards Cor some requests for divorces in case Cor wants to come up with a spell for that and he is meticulous about not pressing the kisses even though he wants Cor very badly.

Cor delegates divorce spells to Ranary. She divorces some Elves. Bringing Tyelcormo seems like a bad idea? Because planets found scouting might... not have air, and stuff?

Huan acknowledges the logic but is significantly more reluctant to scout without Tyelcormo. 

"It is extremely likely that he could bring you exactly once whereupon you would die," Cor says to Tyelcormo.

"Yeah, I realize. I am super in favor of not dying, but it's the - wrong aesthetic - for him to go alone." 

"You can't convince him it's, uh, planetary fetch? Or something?"

Snort. "If he didn't have to draw the diagrams on the other side to come back."

"That part is kind of unavoidable."

"Can they be painted in advance for the return trip, or does that not work?"

"I guess it would work if he didn't land in water and get rinsed off, and didn't stay long enough for it to dry."

Pause. "Apparently having to redo the diagrams is okay if it's a contingency plan."

"If he can determine whether a place is habitable in a minute or two then yeah he can use the same painting to come home as to leave."

"Then he can scout."

Huan makes an agreeable sound.

"Alrighty then. I will figure out how to adapt the designs for a dog body plan. Might also have to be a lot of blood to be clear on a shaggy surface."

Nod.

Cor figures that out. He brings Huan to the empty planet and mages him there.

And Huan goes off scouting. Most planets are empty. 

Which is sort of convenient.

Very!! If they have no atmosphere they don't even have to be too meticulous to make sure they're actually empty. 

Well, yes, although that does mean that mages can't go hook into points there. Since they can't survive there. Let alone chant.

Huan didn't realize that. They can't even hold their breath and chant over osanwë?

"I think having no atmosphere is actually more of a problem than not being able to breathe for other reasons like being underwater. Pressure and so on."

Huan will keep looking for planets with atmosphere. Also maybe the engineers could come up with something for that.

Like an airtight suit of armor. Some people are looking into it.

Cool.

Cor's boyfriend awards him titles and chaste kisses.

Maybe today less chaste kisses.

Oh?

Kisses are nice.

"- I maybe want to know more things about what you kink on and how that might be relevant."

"I was very satisfied with our sex life before my confession."

"...that's good to know but not what I asked."

"The thing is power. Doesn't have to all run in one direction, definitely doesn't have to be - nonconsensual - I'm fine without it, but that's what it is."

"I don't think I can model it from that description."

"Hmmm. I'm really not sure how to - I rule a continent, I could have whoever I want, I want you, the fact the first two things are true improves the experience for me."

"I guess that could motivate some things."

"I could maybe sort things in terms of what if anything I get out of them, if you have things in mind."

"- for certain values of 'could have whoever you want' that's not necessarily true. I could've left."

"You can any time. It's more an aesthetic thing than a descriptive one."

"So most of the fun is that we're, like, in your palace surrounded by people who answer to you and it is by your whim that I am having a pleasant afternoon? Except for the part where I am very dangerous."

"Yes. And all of that is fun including the part where you are very dangerous. It would be less fun if you were not dangerous."

"Findekáno wasn't allowed to be dangerous."

"No, see, he was, and then a civil war happened."

"I did mean after that."

"After that it didn't matter what was fun I had to have all the power or everything might collapse on me."

"I'm trying to figure out why it was - fun enough to do at all - to handle a captive like you did."

"The watching-interesting-people-under-pressure, the power things are still fun when it's all one way if less fun, the - self-destructiveness of it - and I told myself he wasn't that unhappy -"