"Milliways is probably safer than most random places you could land."

"Well, that's true, but I wasn't thinking 'random place,' I was thinking 'someone else finds somewhere nice and safe and containing more small children for Artemis to interact with and vets it to make sure it's actually safe and not like Valinor'."

"Valinor wouldn't be an awful place to raise kids. Although. There's what happened in Singularity, so if that were ever likely to happen again -"

"Probably it wouldn't but given that our Valinor is so far the only one that isn't horribly homophobic I wouldn't declare them adequate to raise children in as a category."

"Really doubt any kid of mine would give a fuck. But I guess."

"I'm not concerned that they'd--get infected, I'm concerned that if they were themselves not straight people would be shitty to them."

"And? People are kind of shitty. Unless we raise our kids only around alts of us people will be shitty to them. I don't want them to grow up thinking people are all wise and good and kind."

"Yeah, but--there's kinds and kinds of shitty, and growing up around people who take it for granted that a fundamental part of who you are is disgusting and wrong is a nasty one for a lot of people."

"I'd still probably raise a kid in Valinor over most places. Especially if they could leave."

"...If they could leave is a nontrivial caveat."

"Well, yeah, walking them out of Milliways to some place and then losing the door would be terrible."

"Yeah, I was just thinking about the kind of thing that tends to go down in Valinors without helpful friendly demons at the right moment."

"We leave? People with young kids mostly didn't."

"Yeah, sorry, that face was not so much relevant to the discussion at hand."

Hug.

Hug. "I love you."

"We're so lucky."

"We really are!"

"Wasn't really planning to have kids, back in Valinor. Because."

"Because the Valar suck?"

"Hmm, partially? Mostly because I wasn't happy and couldn't imagine they would be."

Snuggle. "I'm sorry you weren't happy."

"It's - I wasn't in particular need of cuddles or anything -"

"I didn't think you were. Cuddles is just--what I can do, right now. I can't fix it. But I can hug you. And even if cuddles wouldn't be comforting I want them."

"Well in that case -" Kiss.