Okay. But be happy in the meantime, too, don't try to push it off until then.

I'll do my best. Can't promise one hundred percent of the time, but I'll calm down. Finding out was a shock, I'm not going to just recover instantly.

Tonight after Imliss leaves I'm going to ask you to make me stop thinking. It'll help.

Any time, dear.

I love you so much.

I want you to be okay. Not coping-until-peacetime, happy and okay. This might drag out a long time. I need you to not spend it miserable or in a holding pattern.

I'm sure I can do 'not miserable' and confident I can do 'happy an overwhelming majority of the time'. I really can't promise you 'not in a holding pattern'.

Love you. We'll figure it out.

Okay, but--I need you to not pressure me to be happy or okay at any given time, alright? If I have negative emotions I have them, and if I feel like I need to not have them for you to be okay that just leads to repression and more problems in the long run.

I'm gonna be okay either way. I've done this for five hundred years and it was infinitely worse because I was facing down my inevitable death alone. I'm not worried about me, I just don't know how to loan you the - pieces that make it possible to grow when things kind of suck.

I love you.

If you die and I don't I'll find a way to bring you back. And if you die again I'll bring you back again, as many times as it takes. I'm never, ever giving up on you, I swear.

Same. Promise. And if all five hundred goes suck we'll keep planning for one when it's all over. But it'd be cool to, like, also level up in the meantime.

Where are you getting the number five hundred from?

That's how long the war lasted, if you have to bring me back that many times that's about as many over which I can confidently assert that I will be like 'excellent! Idaia! let's be happy until the next horrible thing!'

So if hypothetically it took more tries than that...

Then I might need to lean on you, dear.

I love you so much.

He sends everything he's feeling for her at her. It is meant to be very distracting.

It is at that. She kisses him delightedly.

Love you. 

I love you, she sighs happily. ...And we are in the car with Imliss and should not give her cause to regret enabling the permasnuggle.

Right. 

He runs his hands along her hairline very gently and sings.

Then he can have a contented melty kinda-emotionally-exhausted wife flopped bonelessly on him.

Yeah, understandable. He will keep singing.

She starts purring.

Love you, he murmurs, and nothing else, nothing complicated, until they're at the hotel.