"I was going to do that too but you don't live very long so it seemed - unwise to pine even for a decade first. I promise I didn't mean any disrespect by bringing it up sooner."

" - you are so good. None taken, and I am going to enjoy my decade very much. When did you - did you, like, just now look up whether chip marriages could go one way, or...?"

"Oh no that was a while ago. When I noticed I wanted to know."

She hugs him again. "You're good. You're good and I love you and I'm mildly confused about your taste but I am not going to complain about it."

"You are a very brave person, Imrainai."

"...I'm glad you think so," she says quietly. "I try."

Hug. "I don't think I'm any more remarkable as - the thing I am - than you are as the thing you are. If that makes any sense."

"It makes sense. I suppose most of the people I know would be a little more impressive if they'd had centuries to work with and not a handful of decades. And had not been raised in abject misery. But - you're kind and you're thoughtful and you're understanding even about things that are super weird to you, and you think I'm worth listening to even when you also think I'm wrong, and when life throws surprises at you you do what you have to and handle them, and when you think things are evil or awful you say that and declare that they need to be fixed, even when we have no idea how to do that, and - and you're one of those people who, like - some people are really incredible and they just make you feel smaller by comparison when you're around them, and some people are really incredible but being around them just strengthens the best parts of yourself, and makes you more incredible in turn, and you're really, really the second thing. And - I don't know that any of that makes you remarkable. But I don't need remarkable, I just need - kind and good and caring and thoughtful and trying really hard, and the sort of person who reminds me why I should keep trying, too. And you're all of that."

Wow that was a lot. Oh well. Her prospective husband is good and he should know this.

"You're a very good person. Even without - even without any reason to be, even without anything that'd convince you that the world actually turns out all right if the people in it are good and trying to be good to each other. You've been very patient with us. It doesn't seem fair that there will only be a tiny little flash of you in the whole universe ever but I want to spend all of it at your side."

Best life. All other lives can go home.

She has a lot of feelings and she doesn't know how to say them, doesn't know how to pull out the words that will express how profoundly happy she is. But she has time to find them, Ettelië's not going anywhere and she's not going to die today. So that's all right.

"I would like that," she says. "Let's make it a really good flash."

Now that her baby is born the Elf doctors are willing to try to disable her chip. They expect it to go fine, but haven't done this before.

She would like them to disable her chip! (Hopefully she doesn't die. She suddenly cares quite a bit more about not dying any time soon. But they need to test this on someone first, if they're going to do it for other people, and she does want her chip disabled.)

Then she should come on down to the medical center!

Ettelië frets. 

She hugs him and hands him Kanael. Imrainai's going to be fine, almost definitely, but if she isn't then at least baby is in good hands.

She heads down to the medical center.

They give her something that'll get her to sleep.

She wakes up. She isn't dead at all and also isn't killswitched.

This is pretty great, even though it's only like the third-greatest thing that's happened to her in the past forty-eight hours. The past forty-eight hours have given it a lot of other competition.

She thanks the doctors and returns to Ettelië and gets to work feeding Kanael.

They're going to go to Earth next. He's waiting another two months, but he has a justification he expects even non-Elves to find satisfactory - they're building a shuttle without FTL capabilities in order to make contact lower stakes. It's almost done.

This seems good and sensible, not that anyone except maybe Ettelië actually needs to convince her that they are doing good and sensible things. It would be a complete disaster if the Alteri gained uncontrolled access to Lightleapers.

"I think they'd blow them up rather than that, but it'd still be terrible if they had to. We don't have many."

"Yeah. I know everyone's being really careful, and I know they have - at least some understanding of how bad it would be. It would... end the war, I guess? Just, uh, not in a particularly positive way. Anyway. Glad they're doing it this way, then, even if it takes a little longer. If they were going to figure out how to pass through the gate again in the near future, then they probably would have done it by now."

"It's very strange that it'd work the way it apparently did. Maybe Eru had a hand in it."

"Maybe so."

"I don't understand why he can't help - more - but I guess this is going to be enough help, maybe."

"Yeah. We'll have to see."

"What'll happen once no one has kill switches?"