“Are you kidding? Saying you found me in a cave is - almost - the best part. It’d break my heart to ever stop.”

"Then you can be my girlfriend whom I found in a cave!" he says cheerily. "Out of curiosity, what is the best part?"

“You,” she says, feeling like an absolute sap.

"You," he accuses, "are a treasure."

"Also a sap! A corny, romantic sap that can't believe she said something that... that. However much she means it." She quickly scarfs down the last of her breakfast. "Okay, done, let's go meet your staff before I say something else in that vein, clearly I cannot be around you without supervision, for fear of being too... that."

"Supervision? I did not know you were into that." Up he gets and towards the door.

"I, no, I'm," she stutters.

She gets up and follows him, sighing, "... I kind of walked into that."

"Yes you did—" There's a bell outside. "—huh. I usually don't have visitors."

"Oh? I suppose you'd rarely be home, that makes sense. Well, should I pretend not to be here, or...?"

"No, it's fine. I'll get it!" he calls to his servants, and downstairs he goes to open the door to—

   —a woman who looks very much like him. Tall, similarly-coloured-hair, the same eyes and nose and jaw, the same air. They're very clearly related, and she's just as beautiful as he is. "Oh, Commander! What a pleasure to catch you."

"—Deborah."

    "You remember my name! I should be honoured. And are you going to introduce me?" she asks, leaning to the side to look at Vetareh.

"Ah, Vetareh, this is Deborah, my sister. Deborah, this is Vetareh, my girlfriend."

... This feels a little too convenient for Vetareh, but okay, sure, she can be polite to James's sister.

She curtsies politely. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Deborah. He's mentioned you, I'm glad we could meet."

That last part was to help James with that barb about forgetting her. See? She's helpful.

    "I'm very glad, too! Now how come, dear brother, that I hear about Vetareh from the grapevine before being properly introduced by yourself?"

"Deborah, I've been around for two days—"

    "And you brought her to your place both days, don't think I've missed that!"

"—and we always arrived extremely late at night after very busy days working on saving the world from Elder Dragons!"

    "How convenient, that the Commander always has such excuses—"

He steps forward and hugs her. "I've missed you, dear sister."

    After a stunned second, she hugs him back. "I've missed you, too. I love you, and I worry about you." She blinks then looks up at Vetareh and steps away from the hug. "My apologies for making such a fool of myself," Deborah tells her. "It really is a pleasure to meet my brother's—" She looks at him again. "Girlfriend, really? Didn't think you did that."

"Times change," he shrugs, a smile playing on his lips.

Oh, that makes it much less awkward to be standing here, excellent. She's glad they could so quickly reconcile.

"I'm, ah, very charming? He found me in a cave?" she offers, with a pretty smile. "I have no other explanation, I'm afraid."

    "Ah, that explains it, of course my brother would find his girlfriend in a cave."

"Well, er—do you wanna come in? I was gonna introduce Vetareh to everyone and then we were going back to the Fire Islands—"

    "The Fire Islands, what in the Mists were you doing in the Fire Islands? —and I expect you'll go with him, won't you, of course he'd find someone just as fond of finding things to do in the most remote confines of Tyria as he is." She walks around James and towards Vetareh. "Come on, I'll show you around, knowing my brother I bet he hasn't shown you even half of the rooms here."

Vetareh snorts. But, yes, okay, she can get a tour from James's sister? If James is okay with it??

"No, not yet. To be fair, we've been busy," shit, no, that is the wrong line of conversation to go down, do not remind his sister that they're sleeping together, "the Fire Islands are kind of fascinating, and I've enjoyed the chance to do field research."

"Field research? Do tell me more," she says, going on ahead to show the manse. James just shrugs and shakes his head, smiling at Deborah's antics and following along.

She's not quite sure what sorts of things are okay to talk about, but she can wing it. Probably.

"Well, it's been a while since I've done field research, so I'm a bit rusty. To make matters worse, I haven't worked with asura before in research projects. I was just sort of... winging it." Like now. "It's sort of a pity I didn't know their standard preservation signet, I'll have to fix that when we get the chance. I expect Taimi will be pleased anyway, the researcher I handed it to was enticed away from her skepticism of my qualifications by my report on the signet I used, which I'm very pleased about."

"You've done research and not worked with asura? How'd that work? Here's the library, by the way," and there is indeed a room dedicated to books.

"I have a complicated personal history that I'm not quite ready for Divinity's Reach to gossip about, so please don't, uh. Run off to gossip about it." Oooo, library. She's briefly distracted from talking about difficult subjects by library. This is not entirely by accident.

"You don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I know what tragic backstories are like," Deborah says, shrugging a bit.

The library: is very nice! It doesn't have much magical theory stuff and what little it does is necromancer stuff, but it has history and geography and geopolitics and biology and fiction and even philosophy.

"I don't mind people knowing, precisely, but I have trouble talking about it." She wanders down the stacks and busies herself with looking at books and pretending she's not talking about her tragic backstory.

"I'm from Orr. I fell into the Mists a little over two hundred and fifty years ago." Wander wander, such nice books, there is no reason at all for her to be looking at anyone, because she's looking at books. "I only recently fell out. In front of James, in a cave. This was how we met."

"Oh, sweetie," Deborah says, but doesn't invade Vetareh's space. She clearly doesn't want it to be invaded.

James bites his lower lip but doesn't do or say anything either.

"Yeah." Okay, wallowing is stupid, and pity is uncomfortable, let's stop this now.

"I'll be okay," she says, taking a shaky breath and offering them both a little smile. "It doesn't get to win. I do. I got out, now all that's left is a long and aggressively happy life. And I think I'm doing pretty well so far."

"That's the spirit! —so wait you want a long and happy life and you're going out with him?" Deborah asks, hiking a thumb towards James.