My interest in intimacy is at this point powered entirely by a desire for the Enemy not to have succeeded. Might take a little while to find something you actually want in that mess, and I will not have hurt feelings if you decide you want the sane boyfriends.

You know, I think if I look really hard and apply myself to the problem I can probably locate a desire for the Enemy not to have succeeded.

He laughs.

I love you.

I love you too. So what are we making the Enemy not have succeeded at.

Convincing me to be terrified every time anyone but particularly one of you touches me? Getting me to disassociate whenever I think someone might want me, making me hate being touched - it's a long list. He delivers it as lightly as he can. He does not let go of Kib.

And Kib doesn't pull back, just listens and ponders and - Are you sure naive reexposure is how you want to handle this?

I also did lots of internally poking at things and untraining them. Lorien offered to roll me back. I'm not sure what else there is - I bet somewhere in the multiverse there's mind-altering magic, I don't want that -

The internally poking and untraining thing would be what I'd do if for some reason it were really important that I be calm during an earthquake or - something.

Some bits were hard to justify as a priority but I got around to a lot of it. Had to, or I couldn't have eaten, couldn't have handled people walking into the room, couldn't have handled it whenever I saw my face in other peoples' heads....

- not sure I understand the last one.

The scars upset me a lot. I know it's not very reasonable.

Ah.

I got over it. And then Lorien fixed it.

Nod. Occasionally when I'd forgotten the right things and was thinking anything I'd hope they'd miscalibrate on how fragile humans were or something...

Hugs. I bet they did, a couple times, with their servantmakers. When I was new and very naïve I thought I could maybe provoke them into it...

Sigh. No such luck. And anyway you'd have popped out of Mandos all - Mandosed - and I might be a girl next time but what would poor Findekáno do -

Written the saddest songs in the galaxy, probably! If you came back as a girl and I was already Mandosed I could see him asking to get fixed too, actually. If you wanted us. He shudders.

Well fortunately this hasn't come up. ...Sounds like I'm usually girls, sample of - five and a half. Odd that they all look alike and don't look like Aly. They don't look that different, but - different.

Yes, that is odd. The whole concept is odd. Why would lots of dimensions mostly have the same species, definitely why would they have the same people...

Sort of like reincarnations, just - nonsequential...

Yeah.

The numbers they've given also don't add up - Cam said there were three others of him on tap, but it had also been said that there were three Ardas. Had the Enemy made that careless a mistake? Just in case, he does not mention it.

Which is weird when you have to line up a family first, at least the reincarnations can just sort of happen without that.

Still weird that the people who name babies in creches would name you something with 'bel' in it both times. Wonder what Aydanci's name would have been if we hadn't snatched him.

If we knew what creche the stork stopped at before getting him to the portal they might've named him and might have a record.

And Cam was going to search for alts of him in all the other universes, but I didn't think there'd be any, if any of me had met any of him I'd have done something useful with him...