"And if I tell him to cut it out he just hears 'no, you do not have any angle to influence me, better hope I'm a saint keeping in mind that you wouldn't know otherwise until I wanted you to'. So he does that, and I'm flustered, and he feels safe, and then I go cry on my husband's shoulder."

"...that sounds exasperating in addition to distressing. And it sounds slightly implausible that he doesn't know it - could be a roundabout way of provoking you to see if you are not in fact a saint -"

"Very possibly. Though he can't lie to me, I can read all Finno's alts like an open book, so even if he were trying to conceal his expectation that I'm going to randomly abuse him I'd still notice it. So maybe more like - he's sure I can eventually be provoked into it, and he'd rather do it on his terms for whatever reason."

"Bleah."

"Yup! I don't even think he's happier than he was before we intervened! It's delightful.

If you have ideas I'd be appreciative, I keep - defaulting to imagining what I'd do, if someone handed me to an alt of Thauron who was perfectly-behaved..."

"...leave? He can do that, right? If he wanted to just move to a random planet, two hops away so I couldn't find him..."

"Until very recently he did not have the teleport because we were trying to figure out how to quarantine his home world, which contains his sister and brothers and will once they're reembodied contain his parents. Maybe he's just being compliant until he can sneak them all two hops away, that hadn't occurred to me. It is plausibly what I'd do."

"Any idea whether his immediate family is immune to the aura of the place - Elspeth likes the Irissë there but doesn't seem to be operating off comprehensive information -"

"That world's Nolofinwe had my father assassinated but that doesn't necessarily make him evil, ours came fairly close and they were only dealing with a standard-issue Fëanor. None of his immediate family members strike me as the kind of person who would be hard to imagine as evil."

"Well. We're only quarantining the world, not the planet, if he wants to smuggle his family outside your alt's sphere... cylinder... of influence, Cam'll be happy to make them a planetoid or something. But that's still within a hop of Edda, so if he thinks I'll be your accomplice in nefarious deeds..."

"More importantly it's findable, I could show up there if I liked. I don't know if that's what he's thinking. I can ask him, I suppose." He sighs. "Not that he'd be truthful but I'd know if he was lying."

"Is it just me or does this entire approach not feel as much like a celebration of his freedom and agency and whatnot as it ought to?"

"Starting to get a sense of why I keep having breakdowns over it?"

Sigh. "Yep."

"I'm vaguely inclined to let him run, if that's what he does, his family if evil is probably not more evil than your average human in a feudal society and they're not particularly likely to take over any planets. But, bad precedent, and what if they want their families -"

"Or if Irissë wants her friend Tyelcormo..."

"Yup.

Want to hop down to a planet that's maybe having a civil war and talk with Findekáno."

"Both of us or just me?"

He buries his head in his hands. "I'm really not sure."

Sigh. "Maybe I should introduce him to Sigyn."

"Oh?"

"I've mentioned to you, he's got - history - could probably empathize without endorsing fucked-up coping mechanisms."

"And he's not a familiar face or a particular friend of mine. Worth a try."

Nod. "I could go get him now."

"It's not exactly time-sensitive but there's no reason to wait, either."