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Okay.

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That makes the headache stop, at least. She sits up, trembling. I'm sorry, Bella.

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You're the one who's hurting. I'm just very short on ideas.

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There's another knock on the door.

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Who is it?

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Finwë.

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It's your husband.

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She buries her head in her hands again.

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Do you want me to let him in?

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He's going to demand to know everything. But yes.

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Bella goes and shows him in.

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"I got a summary of your therapeutic ethics lecture," he says. "I know your rules. But it is frustrating to learn from my son what's going on. Miriel, whatever you swore, I will not let you do it, ever, and all we need to do is figure out the best way to stop you. Is that sufficient?"

She sits very still. "I can't help you-"

"All right. I love you and I'll figure it out without your help. Bella, is Fëanáro in the right general area?"
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Bella looks at Miriel. "Your permission to tell him?"

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She shakes her head miserably. "She can't," he says. "Bella, the codes of therapeutic ethics they are now debating for our world have all kinds of rules for oaths, they're so different, they're so dangerous..."

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"Ugh," Bella says. "If we had oaths on my plane it would have been one. It might have been a different set of rules but it would have been one and I probably would've taken it."

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"I can fix this, but I can only do it with full information and she must be sufficiently sure that I could fix it with full information that she can't authorize giving it to me."

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"It is stretching the rules like crazy but she did say a few minutes ago that I 'should' probably tell you everything."
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"Please. If once it's fixed she doesn't want me to know it you can make me forget it, sharing information is reversible anyway."

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Okay.

And with infinite ginger delicacy she tells him what's going on.
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"That shouldn't even count," he says, "oaths are supposed to require intent. But I suppose you dwelled on it afterwards, on what you thought you'd committed, and that'd make it worse -" He shakes his head. "Bella, can you do an action block that is permanent?"

"No," Miriel says.

"She can't say anything else," he says. "Can you?"
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"If I can do it at all I can make it permanent but it would be much harder to do without error than the memory veil."

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"What kind of errors are we looking at?"

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"Similar broad range of side effects I mentioned when I was first warning you that this stuff is potentially hazardous, I'd guess there'd be a bias toward leaving fixed action patterns - getting stuck in loops of behavior and needing help or a context change to break out of them - or obsessive thoughts about the forbidden action, which might happen even if I do pull it off textbook perfect, or making it overbroad so she also couldn't do other, loosely related things..."

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"I think under the circumstances it's worth it."

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"I'm going to go write up a thing for you to sign just for - superstitious peace of mind reasons."

And she goes and gets some paper and writes up as best she can from memory a declaration that Miriel is to be considered incompetent to withhold consent due to prior magical alteration of her will and has two places for Finwë to sign, one as king and one as husband.
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