I'm not totally clear how the Elf imprisonment thing works and I'm not going to forcibly keep him cooped up if it kicks in however time-dilated we may be relative to you, but I don't think he'll actually object to hanging out in here barring that, if that's what you need. I will let you know before he leaves.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Gonna line the room now, see if magic osanwë goes through.

He puts up easy-to-uninstall sheets of blocking material.

Testing?

I hear you. Chip kind must be different.

Well, the only people he can communicate with if the chip kind's blocked are me and his sleeping alt, so I don't think we'll have a problem. Thank you. Tell him that if he's not secretly evil and just doing a convincing impression then I appreciate it but would be spared a lot of heartache over the future of the multiverse if he could find some way to prove this.

I'll pass it on.

And a little while later he wakes up and blinks confusedly at the ceiling and then sits up to check if he is clothed and look at Cam and - "what happened, is everyone all right -"

"Everyone's - okay. Findekáno got Edie to knock out you and Midnight so he could have some time to think. Edie spent a while in lockup over it, I sat with you being in line of sight of Findekáno so he'd get the full duration of time instead of something stupidly dilated, she's out now, they're keeping Midnight unconscious, for Findekáno's comfort I have lined the room with chip-osanwë-blocking material but you can be awake."

"Well. I think that's a marked improvement over obedient. Annoyingly I will no longer be able to promise there are no discontinuities in my memory during which I could have gotten up to suspect shenanigans. What's Findekáno thinking about?"

Cam pulls up his notes on the conversations he had with Edie and Findekáno, complete with the bit about Maitimo proving he's not evil if possible. "I can vouch for your being knocked out the whole time if that'll ever close the gap."

"If we assume that Midnight can't coerce information out of him anymore, which might be a safe assumption, the current oaths don't give him an obvious avenue, then I could just explain everything and he'll disapprove but he'll agree I'm not evil. If we can't assume that, it's better for him to believe I am working with Midnight because then Midnight'll pick up on that, find it more likely, and work with me.

Except that's putting 'Midnight lets him go' as the highest priority and it sounds like it isn't his -

We could just invent a time machine and roll back their entire stupid fucking planet to the moment the Valar decided to light it with Trees..."

"Before that it was lamps, lamps are also stupid... Magic osanwë still works through the stuff so we can talk to him if there's a good way to find out whatever information would be useful to steer."

"I mean, if he's a functional Findekáno, he wants to know how much saving from themselves his cousins are going to require in order to be assets to the world, and how much it's going to hurt him to do it, and whether there's anyone else who can."

"Do you know the answers?"

"I was notably more - sensible, careful, wise - when I was on the same page as mine but he's not literally the only person who can do it and when our relationship stopped being good for us we did not try prolonging it for the sake of the world, and I think that was right...and the cost of nudging me along is a lot lower than the cost of nudging Midnight along, I like to think I am also sometimes pleasant to be around...I don't know if in his world he's the literal only person who can do it. I know he can. And I know it will hurt him a lot."

Hug?

Hug. "Can I blame the moping-over-my-ex on the drugs or are they not that kind of drugs."

"I think they're not that kind of drugs."

"Sssshhh. Every annoying thing I do for the next several weeks is due to the drugs."

"Ah, my mistake, I don't know very much about Elf pharmaceuticals."

"Is it going to be awkward for you, if Mirror's Findekáno decides to fork mine?"

"I don't know, is it? Is he gonna make it weird? Are you?"

"No and no, we get along very well, but it sounded like you and Singularity's parted on less than ideal terms."

"I'm not expecting I will be best friends with him but I also don't really anticipate a need to socialize with him a whole lot..."