"By that point you'll also probably have had effectively arbitrary power in the multiverse for years and not done anything objectionable, maybe that'll steady people.  ...I'm okay with keeping our relationship secret, I really dislike the idea of having you unable to actually do anything except advise secretly -"

"I'm not actually a good actor..."

"People sort of assign daeva inscrutability and incomprehensibility by default, you might be able to slide by on that for a while."

"People in your world," says Cam.

"Most places we're going will have no idea what a black hole is."

"They will probably know what a planet is, or in this case used to be; and even if they don't know what a planet is they'll probably know enough about numbers to understand how many people died."

"So we can pretty much choose between 'tell the truth, not be able to use you for anything because people will be terrified' and 'lie by omission, hope that this even works and ignore that it's otherwise objectionable'."

"Might be able to very selectively deploy me in, I don't know, particularly understanding locales or something," Cam sighs, "but yeah."

"What do you want? Setting aside for a minute how and with what tradeoffs we could pull it off, what role would you like to have in all the empire-building? I shouldn't assume you want to lay down infrastructure just because you're a demon."

"I do actually have a long-held ambition to terraform Mars, I wouldn't mind doing infrastructure, but I'm more interested in policy sort of stuff for the longer term I think. I don't have a particular interest in roles with a lot of facetime anyway, I'm not a people person the way you are."

"Well, 'keep you out of sight, consult you on policy' is straightforward and shouldn't get people panicked."

"Yeah."

"Are you going to be okay with that?"

"Mm - not caring much if I deal with people as part of whatever my job description is isn't the same as not caring if I have to, to skulk around, if there are places I can't be or meetings I have to catch up with by reading the minutes afterwards or something - I'll be okay though."

"I think within a couple years all of the Noldor should be fine. Everywhere else is harder to predict.

Job description: catalogue all the new magic systems we get, test stuff, organize testing of more complex stuff, find ways we can stack it and so forth usefully?"

"...that sounds fun."

"Good. You deserve some fun and I suspect you'll be excellent at it."

Wag.

"And it means we just have to find a few people per universe who can do math and appreciate you accordingly."

"If that's what you want to call the prerequisite."

"I know you don't feel comfortable defending yourself but I feel very strongly someone ought to."

"It's sweet." Cam flops his head on Maitimo's shoulder. "I love you."

"I love you too. I - I wish we'd found you sooner."

"That would've been - would've been good."

Snuggles. Sigh.