Loki reappears. She's missing a sleeve and her arm is streaked with blood. She waves her arm at Cam; he replaces the sleeve.

"Thank you," Findekáno says. "I think I like having free will." Maitimo's still petting his hair.

"...you're welcome. Speaking as someone who has ever fucked an Elf and doesn't have to rely on anecdotes about shampoo commercials: can you not."

He stops. "We'd be happy to get a room only I was under the impression that was being disallowed."

"Why are you so terrible. What is wrong with the place. It has friendly Valar."

"Oh, uh, that was me, it's recent."

"Oh. Might want you to repeat the trick. Were they worse than usual Valar before that?"

"Maybe, I don't know the usual ones."

"They were pretty awful. Mandatory reassessment by Mandos for antisocial tendencies every yeni, did your lot have that?"

Wow, how'd he get past that?

"...not as far as I heard, no."

"I time-limited-oathed myself into a saint - a heterosexual saint - and then took drugs to make myself forget I'd done so. It was less comprehensive than what he does with the dead, he'd catch that with the dead..."

Well, that explains that. Sort of no great options there, honestly, Elspeth doesn't hold that subterfuge particularly against him. Although he does in general suck.

"Well, at least he handed over all the orcs."

"I think Elspeth made him more reasonable, she does that. Though if you'd come before her you wouldn't have noticed I was doing anything wrong." He sounds regretful.

"Would've taken me longer, at least."

"Findekáno was under an oath to take all my goals as his own. You could have questioned us both all day and night, and we'd both have truthfully told you everything was totally consensual and exactly what we wanted.

I suppose I might have eventually mentioned to another Maitimo something that made it apparent."

"Yes - did you just think they were all like you, you didn't object to one visiting - and I might have noticed if you became alarmed if I mentioned it was easier to give everybody free will than to move all the orcs first -"

"He'd talk you out of it. Shares my goals. It's hard to describe how lovely that is. Though I never made it permanent, that would have been unjust to him..."

"Clearly an operative concern," she mutters.

"I draw the line a different place than you but I do care about it. It is possible part of the reasons my counterparts are panicking is thinking all the things they could do with no scruples and then assuming I'd do all those. Instead of being a very good King with one vice I never took too far."

"This strikes me as a really unproductive conversation topic," Cam remarks. He looks at Space Findekáno. "Opinions on how to nonhorrifyingly resolve this ideally sans civil war?"

"If he's operating in good faith there's no way it takes him more than a decade to pull off rearranging his state so it survives in his absence. He can do that, show he is operating in good faith. I want to take Findekáno with me. For minimum of a century. If after that he wants to come back that's his lookout, but." He turns to Findekáno. "Or you could go to Vanda Nosseo, they have a lot of very important projects in progress and can't fork like we do and are accordingly more pressed for capable people."

"And the local Maitimos, for each of those options -"

"No Maitimos! Either way! I think you shouldn't date any of them, even if you find a really nice one who lost his, for at least a century, and I'm going to tell them all I think so."

"I am a perfectly capable adult in my right mind and -"

"I think we'll all be more mercifully inclined towards yours if you bounce back, okay?"

Nod, nod.

They are still clinging to each other. Delight sighs and then pops out, taking Findekáno with him. Maitimo stands very still, looking deeply unhappy.