We've been trying for four hundred fifty years but with her magic it really can be done.

Under other circumstances, I might offer to help.

Yeah, we don't take risks when we've got young kids either. I think Odette'll be more than sufficient, though. We can stay here until she gets strong enough.

He smiles. Odette being more than sufficient is also one of the circumstances.

I think she's looking forward to it. Has been from the minute she met my brother.

Her magic is painful to do, see. But he spent fifty years in Angband and barely even notices being in pain. He asked her when it'd start.

I can certainly understand why a version of my daughter would look forward to destroying someone like that.

I tried explaining to your daughter that she really shouldn't try reading my brother's mind.

He gives a mental sigh. I hope she listened. Do you think she's likely to get the chance?

Dunno how this bar thing works. If she's a frequent attendee, possibly? If it helps I think Maedhros around a mindreader would be three horrifying seconds then he figures you out and stops thinking anything he doesn't want you to know. He's scary that way.

He rubs his temples. I sincerely hope that if she ever does meet him it's after she's reliably able not to read anyone.

She at least took the warning seriously. Odette told her the Enemy was 'so much worse than Shaw that I don't think you can understand' and that startled her.

To her, Sebastian Shaw is the incarnation of all evil, he sighs.

To be fair he sounds pretty dreadful.

He was. But I do worry, sometimes. I don't know if it's healthy for her to blame him for everything she conceivably can.

Well. If it helps to expose her to bad things that are the fault of different evil people. I have a brother who believes that the last four hundred fifty years of his life have been a sadistic hallucination by the Enemy, who apparently let him 'escape' ten different times, sometimes for subjective decades, just to fuck with him.

I assume this is the same one.

Yeah, yeah, rest of the family either died cleanly or is still mostly sane.

I'm sorry about your brother. I'd offer to help but I suspect that would only make it worse.

Yeah, expect the most helpful thing will be winning the war. And once he has more powerful magic himself. In a couple millenia I expect he'll start believing this is reality just because there's nothing of strategic relevance the Enemy could gain from maintaining a hallucination.

My condolences that that's the best you can hope for.

Thanks. 

Wish Odette could have met him before it happened, is all.

I'm not sure she wouldn't be badly harmed by losing the person he used to be, but I certainly understand the sentiment.

Yeah, maybe so. If she needed it he'd pretend for her, does that help any?

...That sort of the opposite of helps.

If he's honest with her about how he's been hurt and changed, then she can take any improvements at face value; if he pretends to be other than he is then she can never trust it if she finds out at all.

Problem is sometimes I think it helps him to pretend. But yeah. Maybe it's best this way.