"Please do. I appreciate your not trying to incinerate me once the jig turned out to be up, by the way."

She smiles breezily.

"You were nice enough about it!"

She buffs Zz'dtri.

"Okay, here you go. Anything else I should cast now?"

"No. But if you know of anything you can summon with Detect Thoughts or Discern Lies, I'd like you to have that on standby. ...a non-Evil anything. The rest of you, dismissed."

He doesn't let go of Sabine's hand.

Thog runs off towards Elan.

"not-nale want to play? nale think we get along."

She nods and heads off to continue to seduce her counterpart!

(He's cute, in a shy and awkward way. Honestly, she can see herself deciding to spare his life on her own anyway.)

"Yeah!!"

He turns to Roy.

"Roy, can me and Thog play together?"

"I—what? Elan, we're about to set off on…"

He sees that Nale and Sabine are apparently embroiled in private tactical talk still.

"Okay. Fine. You and Thog can… play… until it's time to go."

And as long as the part of Elan's Mother is being played by Roy Greenhilt…

"Make sure that you both go to the bathroom before we leave."

"Yay!"

Meanwhile:

"Okay, baby. Do we need to find someplace that nobody will overhear us?"

Instead of relying on the honor system. Plus, the rogue Nale wants her to reach out to keeps glaring daggers in their direction.

{...love, you're telepathic.}

Oh right!

{…Right. Okay, then, what's up?}

Her mental voice carries more concern than she'd previously been showing.

{Your apartment in Dis has a great view of the Spire of Thorns. The rent's higher than you could afford on what Cedrik pays you, but you're blackmailing the landlord, which you explained to me at one point is the Lower Planes' equivalent to rent control. You could live a little further out, commute into work by teleport, but without faint screams you have trouble sleeping; something inside you thinks that you're back in the Abyss and there's something coming.}

All of these things… are true. She'd weakly make a crack about him being the telepathic one, but—

You explained to me at one point.

Sabine doesn't know everything, and isn't much of a magic nerd, but she's thousands of years old. You don't need to be particularly nerdy to learn a lot, over that kind of timescale.

Time travel is not a thing. And—she doesn't have an eidetic memory, but she knows she'd remember telling Nale about her bosses. About any real details of her life in the Lower Planes. Sure, he's well aware of what her job is, but there's a difference, she's found, between mortals intellectually knowing that she's a demoness who works in Hell and…

Your apartment in Dis has a great view of the Spire of Thorns.

Time travel is still not a thing!

And yet.

She has so many questions. The one that gets promoted to reality is {Honey, what happened?}

{...we made it through the dungeon. Elan refused to join me, and his party got the upper hand. The talisman was destroyed. I swore vengeance. We... harried them, for a year or so, tried – more or less in vain – to even distract them from their actual priorities. Eventually, Elan wound up in Tyrinaria. On unrelated business travel, mind you. And I didn't even really know what to do. Father outplayed me like a rank amateur, got me to play his game while he tested Elan to see if he was the worthier heir, and I knew he was doing it and I didn't know how to make it stop. It drove me crazy, I think. I started taking risks. I killed Malack. And Father... finally realized, I guess, that he couldn't get what he wanted out of me. And that he could get something better from Elan.}

(The memory occurs with some frequency, these days. The cold lurch in the gut. The feeling, not sharp so much as bright. The life bleeding out of him... Laurin, Disintegrating him before he had actually passed -10 HP.)

(Damn that old witch.)

Nale doesn't verbalize the memory, but Sabine can pick up the gist of it anyway. She touches his cheek.

Lee would probably want her to ask him if he saw what (or who?) sent him back.

{I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry that your dad got under your skin, and…}

She's not sure she knows how to phrase the regret part, especially since she doesn't have the memories like he does. But…

{It sounds like I couldn't help you avoid any of it. Is this the first time?}

It seems like the first time, but maybe Nale's done dozens of loops and it's just that the first death was the most painful!

{It's the first time that I know of. And... thanks.}

Why does that feel...

never mind.

{Anyway. I'd been dead a little while, and we were talking about. I don't know. My regrets. And some kind of portal happened. And I... was here. And now. Instead of there, and then.}

…Huh.

{…Huh.}

She doesn't really know what to follow that up with.

{Well, um. Let's do our best to extend your life expectancy, right? And…}

This feels silly to say, and she's not even sure why she feels the need to say it. But.

{If I ever… I dunno, start to say or do something that's exactly the same as something I did the first time around… tell me?}

She realizes as the words get out. She's been in plenty of unequal relationships before. She's been the less-equal party, even! But with Nale it feels… wrong. Is that hypocritical? She knows that in the beginning she didn't care about it being the other way around. But that was then. And apparently, now…

Well. Is now.

{I can do that, I think.}

Whatever felt so never mind, that feels... sort of the opposite. It's encouraging, maybe. That she... admitted something might be bad for her.

{And maybe you can tell me if you think I'm... making mistakes. And I can... try to... be... normal. About it. If you do that.}

Her first reaction to the grit-teeth tone of his thoughts is to giggle. But she straightens her face.

{Sorry, I know you're being serious. I just…}

She takes a deep breath, shutting her eyes for a moment.

{That might be hard for me, too. Not because I'm scared of how you'd react! But… well, normally my job is to encourage mistakes, right? And…}

There's still a part of her that screams why are we saying this! whenever she goes to express something even a little vulnerable to Nale. But… she trusts the part of her that feels right about it more.

{Nobody in your dad's gang ever appreciated you. And it was hard, watching that. So I think that kinda shaped how I want to approach things. But I can try.}

{Then we'll both be trying. ...want to go over to Haley and see if we can make a decent impression on her together?}

Grin.

{She seems like she's already made up her mind, but sure.}

Although, now that she thinks of it, Haley's demeanor definitely has tones of sublimated sexual frustration. Mmmmm.

{Oh, does Operation: Actually Work Together With These Guys For Real involve dropping the regular human rogue act early?}

{Early, yes. Now, no. It really wouldn't help our case... ironic how telling the truth makes it so much harder to get people to trust you.}