"Well, keep in mind that accidents can happen and that humans can start bleeding at the drop of a hat, so please plan accordingly and do not get cocky. There is only one of her, if we lose her she's gone forever."

He nods seriously.

He considers also pointing out that if James hurts his sister, there is nowhere in the world that he could hide where Blair couldn't find him, and that he believes he has just proven that he's very patient and can play the long game, and plays to win.

Eh. 'It would hurt her' is probably more of an incentive. No need to get nasty.

"Questions?"

"Don't think so."

Yeah he would very much never ever ever hurt her ever he would rather die.

"No? Don't want to learn about the girl you trekked across Europe to cheer up?"

"I expect she will tell me if she wants me to know."

"Fair enough!" he agrees. Then he sits down to start forging letters.

"I don't think I'm ready to trust myself to be around her yet. My control's pretty good for my age but that's... not really saying much?"

"When I was that new I was much worse," he agrees, "but you'll know when you're actually safe to be around."

"Any tips? Ways I could practice my self control?"

"Start small. If you can get human objects, particularly clothing, and especially if there's blood in them, and be around them until you feel under control then that helps. Heartbeats are also an important part of it, though, so you should be around humans before attempting anything more sophisticated. Don't do that unless they are easily disposed of, because you will fail sometimes. Doing it while full for the first few times helps get into the right frame of mind, but eventually you should test your control while hungry."

He nods.

"All right. Thanks. My power gives me something of an edge, I can lean on it to help stop myself, or steer myself if I can't resist, but... My self control is too tenuous for my sister, I think. It's mostly a product of forward thinking and having an outlet to direct myself at."

He nods. "I think control is easier after eating animals, too," he adds as an afterthought.

"Really? I'd have thought it'd be the opposite. I can console myself with getting to eat a serial killer later instead of a mother of four."

He nods. "Really, yeah. So should I take these letters to Yvette and say there was some mixup, or...?"

"Or drop them outside her door like they arrived in the mail, if you don't want her asking inconvenient questions of you," he offers, slightly amused. He does not expect James to do this, but he might. "Blame it on the Germans. Maybe get some of them stamped with obnoxious red stamps with things like 'for review' or 'return to sender' in German, or something. Have a couple get forwarded to Belgium and then sorted out there. I vaguely recall bureaucracy as a terrifying amorphous thing, it can have plausibly held up some international letters for a couple of months. Don't say it was the English that screwed it up, it is both easier to verify and she's more likely to go yell at them so someone else doesn't have to lose their letters."

Wow. She sounds really adorable. Also hot.

He nods. "I'll remember that," he says, wryly.

"Luckily we did actually go through Germany, so I can make this pretty believable." Write write write, he has gotten through many letters very quickly, having a vampire boosted everything is awesome.

"Impatient to get back?" he wonders, mildly, as he writes.

"Somewhat," he admits. "But not enough that I'll rush you."

"I'm not happy about keeping her waiting either. I don't imagine worrying about me is all that much fun." Write write write.

"It's not."

He nods.

"In my latest letter I'm going to say that I'm going from Germany to, uh. Poland, I guess. So that the postage will not obviously mismatch the forgeries like it might if I tried sending anything from Germany again through channels that actually exist."

He nods. "...what's even happening here?" he wonders.

"Short version: they lost the Great War, and so everyone agreed that it was definitely all their fault in the first place. Because of this, they had their economy gutted and have steep war reparations to pay for all of the damages. This has overall made the country very miserable."

"Oh. Sounds terrible."

"Pretty much. The idea was to make it so that it would be impossible for them to ever conduct another war again."