"Hmmm, the most objectively awful thing was extent of willingness to tamper with you in Lorien until I had you back, but you were pretty upset yesterday, too."

Shrug. "Aydanci beat you to it. It - seems like it fits wrong, apologizing for either."

"When I don't regret them and would do them again? Or do you mean since in neither case did I think I was doing them to you, and in neither case do you think I was actually acting?"

"I do not see a need to filter all my overt responses to everything through how pessimistic I'm currently feeling about how hallucinatory things may be any more than I feel a need to graffiti the margins of fiction I'm reading, so that doesn't enter into it. And I think you're adopting a consistent policy of acting in ways you'd endorse if this were real at least given your uncertainty... Not quite the first thing either, more - I would not have wanted the applicable motives to be weaker."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"My alt suggested a way I could know it was real."

"Well. Thank you for not running out and seizing it and turning up dead without leaving a note."

"I - we were of one mind on that. Got to fix the multiverse first."

"It sounds very big."

"Neither of us were exactly happy about this fact."

"I don't actually get more suicidal than wishing I'd wake up fifteen again having reassured myself it was all a dream. I don't know how bad it'd get for me if that weren't a realistic possibility for me."

"I am having a hard time modelling what knowing it's real would do for me. And the teleport, he says he has a teleport, so I don't ever need to fear it happening again. He's still in somewhat bad shape but he was there fifty years, he's probably got more to work through. Might turn out that if I knew that and had that I'd - basically be happy, most of the time. Dunno.

We could have killed you. Should we have?"

"You mean before or after you no longer needed Aydanci on a vengeance-fueled workaholic binge?"

"Sorry about that, too."

"What do you think he did when it was the pox, that's just what he does, it's not your fault."

"I sure used it, though. I was worried he might work himself to death."

"If he had actually died you probably should've killed me."

"Would have, yeah. I'm not sure he can function without you, and if he were going to be in the lost world - and we couldn't use you in the war anyway -

It's really good to have you back."

"But not good enough that you want to live or anything, let's not get crazy here?"

"I did hurt you, telling you how the conversation'd go. I knew it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"Yes you should have."

"On a moment-to-moment basis existing is very unpleasant for me. I can reconstruct what things not being like that were like, and rejoice to have you back, somewhere inside me, but it's all at a remove. Don't - don't expect you can be so miraculous to crack through the remove, I don't even know if it's possible."

"Expect, no."

"Do we want to get Cam's attention and ask about those notebooks? And then I can tell you my alt's plan to prove this is reality, and you can help me poke holes in it..."