Thank you.

You're welcome.

He demands lots of information he can now promise he's authorized to have, and works all through the night. He does feel guilty. He does not endorse feeling guilty.

Elspeth may as well help the engineers while she's here and there's nothing else calling for her attention.

The next time he checks on Maitimo he's still lying in bed. 

Okay, he says, this is going to be distracting to me. There's still a significant fraction of my head that is totally dedicated to picking up on what you want and how best to manage you and I feel like I'm in constant danger when you're withdrawn and angry like this. Knowing I'm not doesn't help. Can you get yourself together?

Like I said. A couple of days.

Is there a way to - get you most of the emotional benefit, with less of the mind control and sexual slavery - 

Not if you are not going to willingly touch me.

It's tolerable. You could make it worth my time.

And again Maitimo stares at him like he's a shining beacon of all hope and goodness in the universe.

Get up, Findekáno says, and help catch me up to speed on the running of this country, and be as useful and complete and constructive as I know you are capable of.

I'm not lying here to spite you or manipulate you, I'm not capable of acting normally, I can't think about anything else- 

- I'll sleep with you if you're useful and constructive all day?

Shining desperate eyes again. And then he closes them. Said I wasn't going to do that.

I'm not feeling coerced, just exasperated. 

It does not make a lot of sense that you'd offer me everything I want just to save yourself some wasted time catching up. 

Firstly, it's a lot of wasted time, secondly, I don't think this is everything you want, thirdly, it really doesn't mean much to me. Three hundred fifty years...

Maitimo whimpers.

(Elspeth is not going to be that much use for PR in particular here because she is mostly only specialized for it when she's more deeply informed and more unambiguously pro-establishment, but she knows other things about how the Golden Empire is governed too, and organizes them so they'll float to the top of her mind usefully if Findekáno wants advice and there's any overlap of what's useful.)

Maitimo gets out of bed. They work together on a useful division of powers and Maitimo is in fact both ridiculously good at his job and invaluable in getting other people up to speed in it. Findekáno will occasionally ask Elspeth questions. Elspeth will probably be mildly surprised if she sees them sitting there wrangling over conscription procedures and he doesn't know how he'll explain himself.

It seems like Findekáno's own business how he wants to deal with his trauma. Speaks a little bit to Maitimo not being quite so awful at this time that his victim is capable of preferring to deal with it this way, really. She doesn't especially need an explanation, especially with the not being a suitable repository for secrets thing, it could easily be too personal to store in her head anywhere near anyone who might express curiosity.

They work all night. They can, and it makes it easier. The next day they spend the morning on logistics and then Maitimo goes out into the palace gardens and sings for five hours. He can catch pieces of the song. It is, at least, not self-pitying. Self-pitying would be annoying at that point.

It's pretty.

He passes Elspeth in the corridors when he's coming back from singing. He smiles at her. He cannot actually help himself on that front, he likes her. 

That's weird.

Why? It'd be weird to only like people who share his goals. Very limiting. And she's so knowable.

Well, it will get less weird as she cools off, which is proceeding at a fairly steady pace as he continues not to do anything really fucked up.

Look at him, not doing anything fucked up. Just running his empire and winning the war.

Findekáno walks with him to his rooms that night, kneels beside the bed, and waits.

It turns out that implying you might is enough to get a productive few days out of me, he says. And now you got it, so you can leave if you want. 

I'd kind of like a productive day tomorrow, too. 

We could do it differently? If you don't want to just have a mockery of everything I did to you before -

Oh, I don't want you. I am willing to let you have me. You are going to have to be just as forceful and ignore just as much disinterested body language as you always do. I sort of figured it didn't bother you, or -

You can leave if you want.

Yes, I know. 

Even magically modified to have regrets that's about as many scruples as he can muster. I love you, Findekáno.

An exasperated sigh.

Elspeth is not eavesdropping on this mess at all. It actually hasn't occurred to her in the first place that Maitimo might require bribery of this nature to get out of bed in the morning. She is asleep, dreaming dreams that anyone might listen in on if they held her hand, but no one does.

They have another productive day. Is there a timeline on nuclear weapons?

Shouldn't be that long. They have some advantages and some disadvantages over the actual Manhattan Project - she knows all the answers already; they have less manufacturing base - and with the head start she gave them and the fact that the synthetic blood recipe didn't involve rendering any of the uranium unusable they should be all set in months to years.

Good. 

Maitimo gets out of bed on his own fine. He gets rewarded for this unpredictably, Findekáno is familiar with research that suggests this is the most psychologically compelling kind of reward.

Elspeth could teach people to make airplanes so they can actually drop the bomb. If they don't think the Enemy will be able to do anything about the airplanes.

The Enemy tried knocking the moon out of the sky, that's why it's got scorch marks on the surface. He could probably do something about airplanes but they can make sure he doesn't react fast enough.

Okay. Airplanes are probably better than trying to figure out missiles on this infrastructure base. She explanes.

They learn, and work, and ask questions.

Elspeth is very good at answering questions. She can do that all day.

The King is practically back to his normal, functional self, and oversees project logistics effectively enough. They'll have whatever they need for airplanes. Nuclear bombs are much harder but they're progressing there, too.