I've been wishing I had a way to look like Aly. Doubt she came up in the hallucinations. I even turn my head without thinking if someone says her name, Aydanci did it a couple times.

We can write him letters or something. 

Yeah.

Thought about the politics until I felt sick, didn't get anywhere. We can just hope the Enemy doesn't have any way to reliably swear to things even if he's trying to instead of trying to trick us...

We can do that - presumably he could have come and outed Maitimo before we had him actually on hand - but...

I know.

Maitimo said you'd know what the way to save your reputation was, is it just really unpalatable...?

Yup.

Scale of one to twelve how much will I hate it.

I mean, the candidates are pretty much 'I blackmailed him', 'he ended up indebted to me and this is how it amused me to call it in', or 'I thought it was beneath the dignity of the house of Finwe for him to let anyone else fuck him'. And then, for you, 'we needed Kib for the war, and his husband'd just died, so I thought I'd offer him something for his time'.

If we're assuming here the Enemy's swearing to things he can just be really specific, Kib points out, about when relative to any of this my husband died, about how you got together - Maitimo seems to think he has pretty comprehensive memory-reading -

In which case there is not much we can do, the actual situation is totally irretrievable. You can see why I'm inclined not to try at all.

Yep.

If we would have to rely on nonspecificity anyway I don't suppose we can go with "humans are weird exceptions to things, I seduced the both of you with my human wiles, and before that you were model citizens"?

No, see, the problem is that being seduced is much much worse, by sideways logic.

Ah, of course, my mistake. Is there some way to blame it all on me and humans being weird, though, people are tolerating a certain amount of humans being weird...

With your husband who the Valar declared you married to. And 'Maitimo seduced you because you were useful' is at least less horribly coercive and doesn't damage him much, but doesn't cover us...

Ugh.

You can see why I wanted to stab things! We had a plan for this but it protected Maitimo rather than me.

Oh, was it blackmail, debt, or the dignity of the house of Finwë?

Hmm? No, he could just get away with 'I wanted him, so I took him', and people'd believe that, they won't believe it the other way around. And if he implied carefully enough that it wasn't as if I could have refused an order like that then I'd have - more latitude than usual under those circumstances, my family probably wouldn't disown me - but again, can't credibly make the counterclaim and the thought of it makes me sick anyway.

Aren't you glad you didn't meet us after circumstances had forced our hand like that, you'd have justifiably wanted nothing to do with either of us.

If I'd thought you were the victim I would've talked to you.

A pained, exhausted sort of sigh.  And then a weak laugh. 

I am imagining Maitimo hopelessly crushing on you under those circumstances and - he was morose and dramatic enough about how hopeless it was when there were literally no barriers other than his own inhibitions -

Well, once you concluded that I was, like, a sane person, you could have convinced me that it was a story.