"Didn't do Findekáno any harm either, at least not directly. I think some people might not be evil alt-able. There are a dozen besides Findekáno who come to mind and when I can be civil to my alt I'll go ask him if they exist and then go see whether I'm right about them."

"A dozen? Who?"

"Not people I'd expect you'd know - well, you might have slept with one of them - no one in my family," he says with a laugh. "Filtering by 'I wouldn't even recognize an evil version of them as the same person', which might be the wrong criteria, we'll see."

"Erdellë," guesses Loki. "She was a sweetheart."

"I'm genuinely impressed, I don't think I could have been sure off an hour's acquaintance. Well, not an hour's distracted acquaintance. Anyway, if his world even has the same people in it, I'll be curious if I'm right that they're not all evil, and if not that it's off personality somehow."

"Two and a half," says Loki. "I will be curious to hear your results."

"Maybe Findekáno - I asked him to pick a nickname, he asked what I liked - will have a lovely time deciding if we should intervene in Shaagar's civil war and then I'll be in a good enough mood to talk to my alt about it."

"Here's hoping."

"He doesn't seem to actually have impaired judgment except for preferring to interact with people more powerful than him as if they secretly want his very demonstrative submission. It's very confusing."

"It's generalized to powerful people, not just your template?"

"It's toned way down, but yes. Might just be because he assumes powerful not-me people are friends with me or persuadable by me. I wondered if it'd happen around Cam, as local powerful person who doesn't like me, but Cam's a little on edge around Finno's whole template, and also too sarcastic. It's not worth putting Findekáno in charge of the 'identifying situations where timely deposit of material goods saves lots of people' errands."

"What about Elspeth? She likes you but it'd be pretty obvious if that were a factor in anything she did and therefore obvious when it isn't."

"Probably healthy for him to interact with her, yeah. I'm not sure it's unhealthy for him to interact with me or I wouldn't be doing it. It might be that he's perfectly happy and I'm the only one being emotionally damaged by the mess."

"I can mention it to her, then. - Should you be taking point on this, would a Space one or Mitros hold up better...?"

"They'd probably be less inclined to tantrums about it but there's significantly less in common and Marlatia's really not pretty enough and I'm a little worried Findekáno'd combust around six of me. Several of whom don't have boyfriends, not that I'm even remotely worried they'd make a move, but to the extent I've gotten anywhere with him it's been by 'I have my husband, you are useful because I can send you on errands I'd otherwise send my husband on and trust you'll do them as well as he would'."

Sigh. "Right. Ugh. Alts everywhere and somehow the best one for the job is also the most freaked out about it."

"Once upon a time, if it were, you know, consensual and not a survival thing -" he shakes his head.

"If I asked him to do anything he considered actually wrong - or, well, actually a wrong to a person other than him - he'd refuse. It's a way of buying himself latitude to steer me away from being evil, and that's upsetting on so many levels..."

Nod, nod.

"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."