"Oh, so you did help yourself there! Good, he's adorable and that look on his face -"

"I know, right - is this what it's like to be you all the time, because him I can read like a book - and isn't he just, did you want to borrow him?"

"...if we'd met before the war after all I'd be thoroughly delighted. But no. You're sharing? I'd bet Findekano that you two would get married -"

"Well, we might do that," she shrugs, "and we could not share but we could also just... share? I mean, imagine the look on Sigyn's face - anyway Cam let Iobel give her husband him as a birthday present, thought I'd see -" Shrug.

"I appreciate the offer." Fake smile, though. "Want a summary on what you've missed, here?"

"Yes, please."

He has a very thorough and readable summary for her. They work. He heads back to Vanda Nosseo to find Findekano.  "Loki offered me Cam."

"That's, uh, thoughtful."

"Apparently my human alt was thrilled."

Findekano watches him fondly. "I can see it. ... Shame about -"

It is a very long, excruciatingly specific list of triggers. It had taken them several years to get to 'an activity as enjoyable as other forms of socialization'. Maitimo insists that this is satisfactory and anyway he likes most forms of socialization quite a lot, doesn't he. "Yes," he says, "shame about that."

"I think," Findekano says, "killing another Sauron was next on the agenda."

It was! As soon as Cam gets word from Flat Aulë that the Space Valar have had enough time, Loki escorts them around to everywhere the bioweapon may have gotten that the Tesseract can't reach - it turns out to take a hop through the daeva worlds to get to Cam's Earth, which was also necessary for the trip to Limbo - and then, who wants to pretend to be very nervous at Sauron -?

"Think it should be you, he doesn't have as much of a psych profile on you yet."

"Do you think he'll notice I'm an alt of Cam? That'd get him somewhere, if not much of a somewhere."

"Cam, ah, did make a deal with him that he must have liked at the time, so I don't think it makes it extra implausible."

"Fair enough. All right, here goes, then."

And she goes and yoinks a Sauron.

"Aren't you very glad I decided to write? That would have been very sad, all of those dimensions suddenly dying off."

"It was very considerate of you," she says. "What do you want?"

"Cam's permission to leave this dimension and a worldleaper. I can't do that trick again and I will tell you how to clean this one up."

"Is that your only deadman switch - or anything else like it, is that all -"

"Cam's permission to leave the dimension and a worldleaper, and I swear I'll truthfully answer a few questions before I go."

"Has to be the other way around, if you've got the place rigged in fifty ways and then you leap off -"

"Shame you can't make oaths."

"I can't."

"I swear that if you confirm there aren't any other deadman's switches or things that'll happen that we disapprove of in our dimension when you take a worldleaper and go off to bother a different one, then we'll give you your worldleaper. Your plague's spread to six dimensions and we need to know how to clean it up. I swear I have interdimensional transit and will take you out of here to a location of your choosing myself once you've given us three honest answers."

Sauron's eyes glint, at that. "Reckless, Feanorian. There are dimensions that suppress unfamiliar magic, and you might not have a way back. Or are you thinking we'll get along? Because we do. Splendidly. I swear to answer the next three questions you ask honestly."

(Loki has Cam check that one -

- gets confirmation -)

"Other than the plague we already know about, exactly what contingencies have you set up that would inconvenience or upset us if you were attacked or died or found an oath loophole or otherwise found yourself interfered with or free to act?"

"There are many orcs still loyal to our goals who I expect to avenge us and to carry out what they understand to be our intentions, which I've left for them to the degree the oath that destroyed Valinor allowed. Some of the institutions in Angband run directly off Melkor or I and buildings will collapse and chasms open and volcanos erupt and so forth if we both die."

"Did you find anything we would consider a loophole in the oath Cam extracted?"